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THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 
 
^J1^2^ 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
 EDUCATION 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION IN 
 
 THE RELATED NATURAL AND 
 
 MENTAL SCIENCES 
 
 BY 
 
 HERMAN HARRELL HORNE, Ph.D. 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND PEDAGOGY 
 IN DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 
 
 
 KTeJu g0tk 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
 1904 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

 
 UBRAKYoy CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Reesived 
 
 urn 16 1904 
 
 . i • 
 
 Cooyrigft Entry 
 CLASS A, 50(c. Nb. 
 
 /-. ,. 
 
 CO>Y a 
 
 
 Copyright, 1904, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up, electrotyped, and published March, 1904. 
 
 J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 HENRY HORACE WILLIAMS 
 
 WHO 
 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 FIRST TAUGHT ME 
 
 THE PLEASANTNESS AND THE PEACE 
 
 OF THE PATH OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
PREFACE 
 
 "What, then, is education, and how are' we to 
 educate ? As yet there is no agreement on these 
 points. Men are not agreed as to what the young 
 should learn, with a view either to perfect training 
 or the best life. It is not agreed whether education 
 is to aim at the development of the intellect or of the 
 moral character. Nor is it clear whether, in order 
 to bring about these results, we are to train in what 
 leads to virtue, in what is useful for ordinary life, 
 or in abstract science." 
 
 These are modern words from Aristotle. They 
 indicate for us the Babel of voices in the educational 
 world. The times call not for another voice, louder 
 than the others, but, if it can be had, for a quiet 
 vision of the compelHng truth. I have simply at- 
 tempted in the following pages to help remove the 
 veil from the face of educational truth, in the light 
 of which, perhaps, some confused teacher may find 
 the way to his appointed task. I have no war to 
 wage, not even a battle to fight, wherewith to feast 
 the eye of workers hungry for the bread of educa- 
 tional life. My purpose has rather been to do the 
 
 more serviceable, if less spectacular, thing of passing 
 
 vii 
 
Vlll 
 
 Preface 
 
 on to willing ears the word of the still, small voice 
 as it has vouchsafed to speak to me, Ustening, as 
 I watched the educational combats. The artificial 
 manufacture of educational systems is noisy in our 
 day; the natural growth of the educated life is 
 always noiseless. 
 
 My word to the warring sects is peace through 
 unity. I have attempted to organize the contem- 
 porary conflicting claims in a system of mutual de- 
 pendence, giving value where value belongs. The 
 educational truth to-day is in the unification of those 
 educational truths for which the separate factions are 
 fighting. If claims can be rightly adjusted, harmony 
 should ensue for a season, until, indeed, the educa- 
 tional life develops new contradictions to be synthe- 
 sized. I cannot hope to have presented a satisfactory 
 organization of these opposing tendencies, but only 
 to have suggested where the contemporary educa- 
 tional problem lies, and, perhaps, some of the ele- 
 ments of its solution. The present problem of 
 education, really one of organization, is too often 
 and too easily solved by an over-simpHfication of its 
 elements; whereas a process so complex and even 
 confused in detail as education is, can be truly sim- 
 plified only by synthesis. The truth is in^ the whole, 
 not in the part. 
 
 With this message in mind, I have written for 
 those choice spirits everywhere among teachers (may 
 their tribe increase !) who love to pass at times out 
 
Preface 
 
 IX 
 
 of the arena of educational combat into the field of 
 labor where the flowers grow by the wayside, and 
 who love also to rise at times out of the working 
 valley of humble detail on to the mountain-top of 
 exalted vision ; and I have not been forgetful either 
 of those careful students of education, whether lay- 
 men or expert, who are always looking for under- 
 lying principles. Enough theory will be found here, 
 I trust, to illumine practice, and only so much; 
 enough practice, too, to give weight to theory. Some 
 readers may find, I fear, as Kant said, that my book 
 would have been shorter if it had not been so short, 
 for I have attempted to pack paragraphs with thought, 
 and not to pad pages with paragraphs. 
 
 The book itself is the result of a course of lectures 
 first given in the Dartmouth Summer School, 1900; 
 later to my students in the Graduate Department of 
 Pedagogy in Dartmouth College ; also in the Summer 
 School of the University of North Carolina, 1903 ; 
 and, finally, in the Harvard Summer School of The- 
 ology, 1903. The cordial hearing given these lec- 
 tures, which I here gratefully acknowledge, leads me 
 to hope that the book as now in part rewritten and 
 extended will still prove of service both to old and 
 new friends. To prevent disappointment, let it be 
 plainly said here in advance to the busy and practical 
 superintendent and teacher (though, perhaps, pace 
 tud, you most of all need its message), the volume is 
 not another manual of practice, but an interpretation ; 
 
X Preface 
 
 it would give not rules, but insight. The work of the 
 teacher, too often a temporary drudgery to the woman 
 until marriage, and to the man until a more remu- 
 nerative proffer in other employments, and too often 
 to their fellows a belittling occupation, will become 
 ennobled in the eyes of all only as we become con- 
 scious of the foundational place education occupies 
 in our world. 
 
 As to personal confessions and indulgences craved, 
 I beg to say that upon the fields of biology and 
 physiology in Chapters II and III I am a trespasser, 
 entering here, as I do, not at all as a natural scientist, 
 but as one who in the study of mind and its mean- 
 ing comes upon its physical foundations. I hope for 
 a welcome here by my fellow-workers beyond my 
 hedge in the interest of inter-departmental courtesy, 
 even as I am grateful for having entered into their 
 labors. 
 
 My psychology is the kind familiar since Kant, 
 that considers the unity of mind in its threefold 
 diversity of knowing, feeUng, and willing, though 
 for some reasons it is now time to reconsider the 
 ultimate phases of consciousness with a view to a 
 new classification. Such a new classification appears 
 in Professor Royce's recent " Outlines of Psychol- 
 ogy." In Chapters VI and VII of my discussion the 
 psychological results are from the rational, genetic, 
 and social points of view combined. 
 
 The philosophical system of the book, which I 
 
Preface 
 
 XI 
 
 have termed Idealistic Theism, appears in the final 
 chapter as the necessary implication of the educa- 
 tional process. It is also the presupposition of the 
 whole discussion. The book is an application of 
 this philosophy to perhaps the most important matter 
 of human life, viz., the education of men and women. 
 As Macaulay has observed, " The first business of a 
 state is the education of its citizens." To this philo- 
 sophical system itself, both in its purer exposition 
 and in its fuller justification, I hope to return with 
 the years as they bring the more philosophic mind. 
 In reaching this insight for myself, my indebtedness 
 is greatest to America's leading metaphysician, Pro- 
 fessor Josiah Royce. 
 
 My method of presentation, as those will recognize 
 who know the book, or its author's method of lectur- 
 ing, is derived, however faulty the imitation, from 
 the "Science of Thought" of the lamented Dr. Ever- 
 ett, — a book too little known by those writers and 
 speakers who want to be logical. 
 
 My own contribution to the definition of the con- 
 ception of education will doubtless appear in a cer- 
 tain large and systematic unity, herein introduced 
 into the hitherto rather unshapen notion of what 
 education is and means in human experience ; in the 
 analysis of the spiritual environment of the pupil, 
 together with the attempt to vindicate on sociological 
 and psychological grounds the equal right of aesthetic, 
 with physical, intellectual, and moral education, as 
 
Xll 
 
 Preface 
 
 contained in Chapters IV and V ; and in the induc- 
 tion of the Kantian ideas of God, Freedom, and 
 Immortality from educational, rather than ethical, 
 facts, as presented in the final chapter. For these 
 things I thank not myself, nor my stars, but my own 
 teachers, both the quick and the dead, who have 
 made them possible. 
 
 To the educational masters, from Socrates to Eliot, 
 my indebtedness appears on every page, but, rather 
 than cumber the pages with many foot-notes, and at 
 the same time to make the bibliographies most help- 
 ful, I have gathered the references together at the 
 end of each discussion. 
 
 My hearty thanks are hereby rendered my col- 
 league, Mr. F. C. Lewis, for assisting me with the 
 proofs and giving many valuable suggestions and 
 references. 
 
 Hanover, New Hampshire, 
 September 2, 1903. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Introduction: The Field of Education 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The Agencies of Civilization i 
 
 2. The Mottoes of Growth 4 
 
 3. Broad and Narrow Conceptions of Education ... 5 
 
 4. Points of View in the Study of Education .... 7 
 
 (i) The History of Education 7 
 
 (2) The Science of Education ...... 8 
 
 (3) The Practice of Education il 
 
 (4) The Philosophy of Education 1 1 
 
 5. Field of this Inquiry 13 
 
 6. Division of the Field . . . . . . . .14 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Biological Aspect of Education 
 
 1. The Biological Facts significant for Education . . . 19 
 
 2. The Increasing Size of the Mammalian Cerebrum ... 19 
 
 (1) Its Significance 20 
 
 (2) The Advantage of Educability over Instinct . . 24 
 
 (3) The Mental Basis of Natural Selection ... 27 
 
 (4) Biology and Education 28 
 
 (5) Nature and Nurture 29 
 
 3. The Prolonged Period of Human Infancy .... 30 
 
 (i) Its Final Cause 31 
 
 (2) Its Significance 32 
 
 4. The Brain as the Organ of the Mind 34 
 
 (1) History 34 
 
 (2) Proof 35 
 
 (3) Significance .36 
 
 (4) What can Education do for the Brain ? ... 41 
 
 xiii 
 
xiv Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5. Is Automatism the End of Education ? 48 
 
 6. First Definition of Education 52 
 
 7. Educational Consequences of the Biological Point of View . 53 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Physiological Aspect of Education 
 
 1. The Place of the Body in Education 57 
 
 2. The Questions that concern Physical Education • . • 59 
 
 3. The Influence of the Body on the Mind .... 59 
 
 (i) How effected 59 
 
 (2) The Physiology of Habit 62 
 
 (3) Psychosis and Neurosis 63 
 
 (4) The Degree of Mental Efficiency .... 64 
 
 (5) The Influence of Mind on Body 67 
 
 4. The Attention the Body should receive 67 
 
 (i) Mental Work 68 
 
 (2) Brain Rest 68 
 
 (3) Respect for the Limits of Brain Capacity ... 69 
 
 (4) Study of the Physical Child 71 
 
 5. The Attention the Body is receiving 72 
 
 (1) Manual Training ........ 73 
 
 (2) Play 74 
 
 (3) Gymnastics 81 
 
 (4) Athletics 83 
 
 6. The History of Physical Education 91 
 
 7. Second Definition of Education 95 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Sociological Aspect of Education 
 
 1. The Nature of the Pupil's Environment . 
 
 2. The Method of his Adjustment thereto . 
 
 3. Education and Sociology 
 
 4. The Questions of the Sociological Discussion 
 
 5. The Elements of the Spiritual Environment 
 
 6. The Nature of the Intellectual Environment 
 
 (i) What is Matter? .... 
 (2) What is Mind? .... 
 
 97 
 
 99 
 100 
 
 lOI 
 lOI 
 
 103 
 103 
 105 
 
Contents 
 
 XV 
 
 (3) The Classification of the Sciences 
 
 (4) The Relation of Science and Art 
 
 (5) The Educational Value of Science 
 
 7. The Nature of the Emotional Environment 
 
 (i) The Nature of Beauty 
 
 (2) The List of the Arts . 
 
 (3) The Nature of Religion 
 
 (4) The Educational Value of Art . 
 
 8. The Nature of the Volitional Environment 
 
 (i) The List of the Volitions . 
 
 (2) The Nature of History 
 
 (3) Is History a Science? 
 
 PAGE 
 107 
 1 10 
 112 
 117 
 117 
 118 
 123 
 127 
 130 
 
 135 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Sociological Aspect of Education {concluded') 
 
 (4) The Nature of Constitutions 138 
 
 (5) The Nature of Law . ... . , . 139 
 
 (6) The Nature of Morality 140 
 
 (7) The Educational Value of the Volitions , . . 142 
 9. Education as Participation in Racial Experience . . . 145 
 
 10. Third Definition of Education 150 
 
 11. The Social Effects of Education 150 
 
 (i) The Conservation of the Past 15 1 
 
 (2) The Preservation of the Present .... 152 
 
 {a) The Attitude of Founders of Society . '153 
 
 {F) Education and Crime 154 
 
 (f) Social Demand and Educational Supply . .158 
 
 (3) The Progress of the Future 160 
 
 12. Educational Consequences from the Sociological Point of 
 
 View 164 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Psychological Aspect of Education 
 
 1. Education Psychologically considered . 
 
 2. The Questions of the Psychological Discussion 
 
 3. The Notion of Self-activity 
 
 169 
 170 
 170 
 
XVI 
 
 Contents 
 
 4. The Insufficiency of Rational Psychology 
 
 5. Educational Services of the Newer Psychology 
 
 6. Internal Ways of Mental Development 
 
 7. Three Additional Ways of Mental Development 
 
 (i) Imitation 
 
 {a) The Nature of Imitation . 
 
 Id) The Effects of Imitation . 
 
 (c) The Educational Uses of Imitation 
 (2) Interest 
 
 (a) The Nature of Interest . 
 
 ((5) The Importance of Interest 
 
 (3) 
 
 (0 
 Effort 
 
 The Art of securing Interest . 
 Herbart's Doctrine of Interest and Will 
 
 The Nature of Effort 
 
 The Importance of Effort 
 (<:) The Place of Effort in Education 
 (d) The Mutuahty of Effort and Interest 
 
 172 
 
 173 
 174 
 
 175 
 175 
 176 
 177 
 
 183 
 187 
 188 
 191 
 194 
 197 
 198 
 199 
 200 
 201 
 203 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Psychological Aspect of Education (concluded) 
 
 8. The Notion of Self-development 207 
 
 (i) The Presupposition of Time ..... 207 
 
 (2) The Potential and the Actual . . . . . 208 
 
 (3) The Stages of Mental Growth 209 
 
 (^a) Childhood 209 
 
 (d) Youth 215 
 
 (c) Manhood 218 
 
 9. Some Things Education is not 220 
 
 ID. The Use of the Stages of Mental Growth in Educating . 222 
 
 11. The Qualities of an Educated Mind 226 
 
 12. The Psychological Ideal of Education 240 
 
 13. The Nature of Culture 242 
 
 14. A Liberal Education 244 
 
 15. Fourth Definition of Education 251 
 
 16. Other Definitions of Education 251 
 
Contents xvii 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 The Philosophical Aspeci of Education 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The Method of Philosophy 257 
 
 2. The Question of the Philosophy of Education . . . 258 
 
 3. Two Preliminary Generalizations 259 
 
 4. The Implications of Education 263 
 
 (i) The Origin of Man 263 
 
 (2) The Nature of Man 273 
 
 (3) The Destiny of Man 280 
 
 5. Fifth Definition of Education 285 
 
THE 
 PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION : THE FIELD OF EDUCATION 
 
 There are five great agencies of civilization which i. The Agen-"^ 
 conserve the past, preserve the present, and make zatLn^^^^^" 
 possible a progressive future. These agencies are 
 the home, the school, the vocation, the state, and the ' 
 church. The home is the basic unit of civilization, in 
 which appear in latent form all the powers that later 
 life is to realize. 'The school was first in the home, 
 and by growth became a separate institution as an 
 extension of the home. The teacher is still said to 
 stand in loco parentis. The vocation is made possible 
 through the enlargement of personal power that 
 takes place in the home and the school. The plying 
 of one's vocation safely and justly necessitates the 
 state. And underneath this whole procession of in- 
 stitutions, giving immortal significance to each and 
 all, is the church. Thus the agencies of civilization 
 are organically related. 
 
 Each of these agencies, too, discovers the social 
 nature of man, revealing him as they do in a series 
 of widening relationships with other beings. In the 
 home the child stands in relation to father, mother, 
 
2 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 brothers, and sisters. In the school the youth stands 
 in relation to teachers and fellow-pupils. In his voca- 
 tion man stands in relation to fellow-laborers. In 
 the state man stands in relation to his fellow-citizens 
 under the law. And in the church man stands in 
 relation to the ideal Person, to God, — the widest re- 
 lationship possible to man. 
 
 Each of these institutions of society is based upon 
 an underlying idea which explains their service to civ- 
 ilization, and which justifies their existence. In the 
 home it is the idea of obedience which is fundamental, 
 and which becomes the habit of the child's life. This 
 habit of the ready surrender of self to the standards 
 of a righteous and loving authority is permanently 
 desirable in a solid social fabric. To obey is better 
 than sacrifice. This fundamental virtue is the con- 
 tribution of the home to society and civilization. 
 
 The underlying idea of the school, which explains 
 the school and justifies its existence, is development; 
 development of the body as the fit mediurn of expres- 
 sion for the mind, development of the mind as the fit 
 governor of the body and as embodying rational ends 
 in itself. The school does for the child what the 
 aeons of past time have done for the race, — develops 
 its body and mind. 
 
 The underlying idea of the business world, in which 
 each man follows his vocation and justifies his exist- 
 ence by the sweat of his brow, is the interdependence 
 of the sons of earth. No civilized man produces all 
 he needs in order to live, nor consumes all of what 
 he himself produces. The members of the business 
 world, as they follow their vocations, daily enter into 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 each other's labors. Each man is both a producer 
 and consumer, producing one thing that is necessary 
 for many lives, and exchanging it for many things 
 necessary for his own life. The world of one's voca- 
 tion emphasizes the unity, the solidarity, the interde- 
 pendence, of man and man. 
 
 The underlying idea of the state is justice, suum 
 cuique^ to each man his own, the return of the deed 
 on the doer, whether it be protection for his con- 
 formity to the law or punishment for his violation of 
 the law. The state is the impartial judge, rewarding 
 every man according to his deed. Justice is the 
 foundation of the structure of human society. The 
 ** Republic " of Plato is the first great discussion, and 
 one of the final great discussions, of the ideal state. 
 Already it was recognized that the theme of justice, 
 which is one of the titles of the dialogue, is in all its 
 ramifications the theme of the state. To the modern 
 Platonist, Hegel, the state is also, in the political 
 organization of society, the final revelation of the 
 eternal Idea. Jt is in the ministrations of the state 
 that man becomes uniquely conscious of that which 
 is just. 
 
 And the underlying idea of the church, in which 
 man comes into his widest consciousness through 
 relationship to God, is righteousness, the doing of the 
 will of the supreme Person upon the earth, the trans- 
 formation of the kingdoms of earth into the kingdom 
 of heaven, the addition of love and mercy to law and 
 justice. The church is the perpetual prophet of the 
 ideal to human society, winning the attention of men 
 away from the things that are to the things that 
 
4 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 ought to be. In the church society becomes most 
 profoundly conscious of its inherent unrealized powers 
 of righteous attainment, and man of his infinitude. 
 
 It is the natural destiny of every man to receive 
 successively these continually widening views of his 
 nature, i Man comes into the fulness of his growth 
 and into the final consciousness of himself through 
 these elements of his social environment. \ Only by 
 subjecting himself to them and learning their lessons 
 and habituating his conduct to their ideas can he rise 
 through them to the full measure of his own self-con- 
 sciousness. 'The mottoes of spiritual growth are 
 three. In childhood, in the institution of the home, 
 the child must be another, imitate others, obey others. 
 He can become himself only by first subjecting him- 
 self, all unconsciously or with effort, to others. In 
 the school, which compasses the adolescent period, the 
 youth must be himself, develop his powers, become 
 all his nature permits, and gain the sense of his indi- 
 viduality and independence as a man. And in the 
 business, state, and church worlds, during the period 
 of manhood, he must find himself in the service of 
 others, must make himself a contributor to the life of 
 society, and must find his self by losing it. .First 
 obey, then become, then contribute — these are the 
 natural stages of self-realization as indicated by the 
 social institutions. 
 
 It is a familiar thought to-day that the physical 
 organs of man, to be understood, must be viewed 
 against the background of lower animal life. It is a 
 less familiar thought, but equally true, that the activi- 
 ties of man as expressed in the social agencies of 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 , civilization must likewise be viewed against this back- 
 ground of lower animal life. The home, the school, 
 the vocation, the state, and the church are due to 
 traits in man which are found also in simpler form in 
 the lower animals. They mate, build homes, teach 
 their young by example, form social communities, 
 have leaders of flocks and herds, and become attached 
 to higher beings who are good to them and upon 
 whom they depend. The unique thing about man 
 is not his uniqueness, but his comprehensiveness. 
 In him the lower animal life finds its fulfilment. 
 Through his highly developed powers of abstraction, 
 imagination, and reason, only intimations of which 
 the lower animals possess, man is enabled to carry on 
 to greater fruition the immanent ends of existence. 
 Through these institutions, taking up and adding to 
 his animal heritage, man grows, and finds himself like 
 a noble oak, which, in subjection to natural law, grows 
 into its own likeness, and then both shelters and 
 delights the sons of men. Only in the man these , 
 stages of growth are conscious as he subjects himself 
 in obedience, as he finds himself in development, and 
 as he gives himself in service. 
 
 This review of those natural social influences that 3. Broad and 
 come upon and shape the life of man lead to two ^pt[ons of°' 
 resulting conceptions of education, a broad and a Education, 
 narrow one. Broadly speaking, the whole of life is an 
 education, and life itself, in all its phases, is the great 
 school. Not a situation in life but leaves its influence 
 on the individual. Every agency of civilization is an 
 education. From this point of view education becomes 
 the resultant upon the individual of the sum total of 
 
6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the influences of life. Every human situation is an 
 educational situation, in which we grow from less to 
 more. The significance of past time, so far as organic 
 life is concerned, is found in the present stage of 
 development and attainment of mankind. The mean- 
 ing of the manifold present will be spelt in that larger 
 future situation to which the present is but the ante- 
 chamber. The human race itself as a whole is being 
 educated under the tutelage of the Infinite Spirit, 
 both in nature and in man, for a destiny greater, 
 both in time and eternity, than it can imagine. This 
 is the broadest conception it is possible to hold con- 
 cerning education, in which living is itself learning, 
 and life is itself the school, and the Spirit of the 
 world himself the teacher. 
 
 But, narrowly, education is the influence exerted 
 by the school, technically so called, upon the indi- 
 vidual. The school is the institution which appoints 
 to itself the task of developing into fulness of self- 
 consciousness and power the members of the race. 
 The other institutions of society educate incidentally 
 in the natural performance of their functions : the 
 school educates with set purpose ; it intends to do 
 what it can to put the plastic element in society, its 
 youth, into full possession of itself and into full con- 
 sciousness of its social relations and duties. The 
 school, in this sense, embraces the whole educational 
 system as a unit, from kindergarten, through primary 
 and secondary grades, college, university, and profes- 
 sional schools. These all work together as one for the 
 making of a man both powerful and efficient, and the 
 educational house should not be divided against itself. 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 The study of education may be undertaken from 4- Points of 
 either the broad point of view, as above defined, or study of 
 the narrow. From the former point of view the study Education. 
 of education is the study of civilization in its entirety. 
 With this aspect of the subject the present inquiry 
 will have nothing further to do, confining itself 
 rather to the nature of the education which it is the 
 function of the school to give. But even this field 
 for our present purpose will have to be narrowed 
 further. 
 
 There are four points of view from which the study 
 of education, in the narrow sense of the term, may 
 be profitably undertaken. Education has a history, 
 an ideal, a practice, and a philosophy. The educa- 
 tional ideal, as defined by the normative science of 
 education, is an outgrowth of educational history. 
 Educational practice is the attempt to incorporate 
 the educational ideal. And the philosophy of educa- 
 tion is the attempt to find the meaning of the whole 
 educational process as it takes shape in history, 
 ideals, and practice. Thus the philosophy of educa- 
 tion would give the inclusive truth which the preced- 
 ing points of view indicate. Let us briefly define 
 each of these four points of view, viz., the history, the 
 science, the practice, and the philosophy of education. 
 
 The historical point of view asks the question, (i) The 
 What has education been in the past .^ The answer JJ^^toryof 
 
 ^ Education. 
 
 is given from the standpoint of the history of civili- 
 zation, education being both an effect and a cause 
 of a nation's manner of life. The answer considers 
 both those educational systems that have controlled 
 a nation's life, being also controlled by it, and those 
 
8 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 educational reformers, who, like Goldsmith's village 
 preacher — 
 
 "... tried each art, reproved each dull delay, 
 Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way." 
 
 The historical consideration of education begins 
 with the Orient and treats of the educational sys- 
 tems and ideals of the ancient nations, China, India, 
 Persia, Israel, Phoenicia, and Egypt ; then the classi- 
 cal nations of Greece and Italy ; then the early 
 church and Middle Age education, followed by mod- 
 ern education, since the Renascence ; and finally, 
 the contemporary educational systems of the lead- 
 ing countries of the world. Such an historical study 
 discloses education as a growing body of theory and 
 practice, as a process of evolution in the system of 
 instruction become conscious of itself. The origin 
 and growth of the body under the laws of nature 
 was a process of unconscious evolution ; the develop- 
 ment of the body and mind under the nurturing 
 influence of the school is a process of conscious evo- 
 lution. As a resultant of historic forces the educa- 
 tional ideal is defined. 
 
 Second, the scientific point of view in the treat- 
 ment of education is the attempt to say what edu- 
 cation ought to be, to define the educational ideal, 
 to reduce the art of education to a science. In the 
 well-known phrase of Professor Jevons, an art teaches 
 us to do, and a science to know. The teacher, or edu- 
 cator, is doing something; the pupil, as he becomes 
 educated, is doing something. Education is doing; 
 it is an art. But is this art conscious of its basis ? 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 Are there universally valid principles which under- 
 lie this art, as anatomy and physiology underlie the 
 practice of medicine ? The science of education 
 attempts to answer these questions, to discover the 
 theoretic basis upon which the art of education rests. 
 
 The questions of the science of education are two, 
 namely, What is the nature of the body and mind to 
 be educated ? And how, in the light of their nature, 
 ought this education to proceed ? The answer to the 
 first question the science of education seeks in the 
 sciences of physiology, psychology, logic, aesthetics, 
 ethics, and sociology. Physiology reveals the nature 
 of the body. Psychology reveals the nature of the 
 mind when analyzed into its elements, and explained 
 through its physiological relations with the body and 
 brain. Logic is the science of the knowing function 
 of the mind, as aesthetics is the science of the feeling 
 function, and ethics is the science of the willing 
 function. Sociology is the science of man in organ- 
 ized groups. These are the sciences that underlie 
 the art of education. 
 
 The answer to the second question of the science 
 of education, namely, how, in the light of their nature, 
 ought the body and mind to be educated, is now in 
 process of making. It is the new question in educa- 
 tional history that originated with Herbart. It is 
 the question of method, or the right way of doing a 
 thing. It is being answered in tentative fashion, for 
 the making of a man is no simple matter, by the phys- 
 ical culturists, the applied psychologists, like James 
 and Dewey, the normal schools, the summer schools 
 for teachers, and the pedagogical departments of the 
 
lo The Philosophy of Education 
 
 colleges and universities, together with the growing 
 and for the most part undigested literature on the 
 methods of teaching. 
 
 The question of the right way of teaching needs to 
 be dignified in the sight of our most capable and 
 prominent educators. In his inaugural address in 
 1869, reviewing the increase in knowledge of the 
 modern centuries, President Eliot was led to say, 
 "The actual problem to be solved is not v/hat to 
 teach, but how to teach." Likewise there is no 
 fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam in quoting 
 from Talleyrand, ^^ Les methodes sont les maitres des 
 maitres'^ The study of method in teaching is but the 
 study of the best way of doing what must be done in 
 some way. And Dr. Arnold of Rugby has well re- 
 minded us, " It is clear that in whatever it is our duty 
 to act, those matters also it is our duty to study." 
 The use of method in teaching is seeing that the sub- 
 ject-matter taught is realized in the experience of the 
 pupil. Without this result, teaching and learning 
 are mechanical ; with it, they are vital. But those who 
 set about determining the method of education to- 
 day must look, not as they are tempted, to psychol- 
 ogy alone, but to that group of related sciences 
 defined above, one of which is psychology, and which 
 together define the physical, mental, and social nature 
 of the being to be educated. Education is primarily 
 an art ; it can become a science only as it grounds 
 itself upon universal principles, applicable to all indi- 
 viduals alike, deduced from the sciences of man, the 
 educable being. 
 
 In the third place, education in the narrow sense 
 
Introduction 1 1 
 
 of the term may be studied from the practical point (3) The 
 of view, viz., from that point of view which considers Education 
 the practice of education, the execution of the ideal 
 of education, as defined by history and science, 
 through the agencies of school boards, superinten- 
 dents, parents, teachers, and pupils, working together 
 with books and apparatus in buildings and fields. 
 This point of view has to do with the mechanical 
 and the vital environment of the educational process, 
 with the conditions in relation to which education 
 becomes an accomplished fact. The problems of the 
 practical point of view are three, viz., (i) how to 
 organize a school or school system ; (2) how to man- 
 age, in which the question of discipline is uppermost ; 
 and (3) how to supervise. Under the practice of 
 education are involved all questions of school hygiene, 
 incentives, work, play, offence, discipline, punish- 
 ment, and the improvement of teachers. In no par- 
 ticular has American education been weaker than 
 in these practical matters, and no educational sign 
 to-day carries more hope with it than the widely 
 growing recognition of their importance. 
 
 Finally, in the fourth place, after the history, the (4) The 
 science, and the practice of education, one raises the of^Education 
 fundamental inquiry as to the meaning of the whole 
 educational process. Does this education, which 
 occupies so large a proportion of the human history 
 that is worth remembering and repeating, whose 
 ideal it is so difficult to define, whose practice en- 
 gages the best service of the best minds of civilized 
 society, and consumes annually incredible amounts 
 of public money, — does this education mean any- 
 
12 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 thing significant for human happiness, progress, and 
 destiny ? What ? Does education imply anything 
 as to the final truth of man and his world ? In brief, 
 what is the meaning of education ? That is the ques- 
 tion which it is the function of the philosophy of 
 education to answer. That answer must give unity 
 to the truths of the preceding points of view. It 
 must locate education in the economy of our universe. 
 The masterpiece in the literature of this aspect of 
 the subject of education has been, since its publica- 
 tion in 1848, Rosenkranz' '' Philosophy of Education," 
 written in the spirit of Hegel. The problems of the 
 philosophy of education are divided by Rosenkranz 
 into three, viz., (i) Education in its General Idea; 
 
 (2) Education in its Special Elements, including 
 physical, intellectual, and volitional training ; and 
 
 (3) Education in its Particular Systems, being an 
 historical review, from the standpoint of Hegel's 
 "Phenomenology of Spirit," of the world's systems 
 of education. 
 
 The volume of Herbert Spencer on " Education," 
 published in America in 1861, has been one of the 
 most widely read and influential of the books on edu- 
 cation of the last half-century. He raises the ques- 
 tion, " What knowledge is of most worth } " and 
 discusses the nature of intellectual, moral, and physi- 
 cal education. 
 
 These two discussions of Rosenkranz and Spencer, 
 as do almost all of the theoretical treatises on the na- 
 ture of education, omit entirely the consideration of 
 the nature of aesthetic education. The education 
 of the emotions, ending in the appreciative sense of 
 
Introduction 13 
 
 the beautiful, is an unwritten chapter in educational 
 theory. The explanation of this omission is doubt- 
 less the late recognition, beginning with Rousseau, 
 accorded the feelings as real elements of psychic life. 
 But there is no excuse for this omission from the 
 point of view, either of the importance of the emo- 
 tions in life, or of their fundamental place in the 
 structure of body and mind of the individual. A 
 new philosophy of education must supply this lack. 
 
 Such are the four points of view in their mutual 5. Field of 
 interdependence that may be utilized in the study This inquiry. 
 of the education of the school. Now, what are the 
 self-imposed limits of the present task } Passing by 
 the history, the science, and the practice of educa- 
 tion, our sole present inquiry concerns the answer 
 to the last-named question, viz.. What is education.? 
 What, from a fundamental point of view, is the nature 
 and meaning of education .? What is the philoso- 
 phy of education ? In the answer to this question, 
 if true, the history, the science, and the practice of 
 education will find satisfaction. 
 
 In any inquiry which attempts to be ultimate, to 
 go to the bottom of a matter, which is the essential 
 characteristic of philosophic thinking, two questions 
 must be asked and answered. The first is, What are 
 the facts in the case under consideration ? The sec- 
 ond is. What is their meaning .? Both the dream and 
 the interpretation thereof is expected in a philosophic 
 investigation. The present inquiry, in so far as it 
 concerns itself with the facts of education, will take 
 us far afield into the related natural, social, and men- 
 tal sciences, will occupy most of our attention, and 
 
of the Field. 
 
 14 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 will furnish us with the data for the final answer 
 to our question, What is education ? This part of the 
 inquiry may be called empirically philosophical, and 
 comprises the following six chapters of the book. 
 For the second question, What is the ultimate mean- 
 ing of the educational process ? the only method of 
 answer is that of following out into some final form 
 the suggestions, the intimations, the implications, of 
 our present collected, though fragmentary, group of 
 educational facts. This method may be called the 
 purely philosophic, and the answer that it affords to 
 our question is attempted in the last chapter of the 
 book. 
 6. Division It must always be remembered that the term 
 educatio7i is abstract, that education itself does not 
 exist except as a concept of the mind, that the con- 
 crete existent thing is always some being or beings 
 educated or to be educated. The educable being, the 
 individual child, — he is the concrete thing with 
 which our discussion has to do. The nature of man, 
 as the subject for education, determines the nature 
 of education, and suggests the lines of inquiry in 
 our chosen field. When we ask concerning the nature 
 of man, the being to be educated, we are confronted 
 by an old and new view. Man, in his isolation and 
 remoteness from the world of nature and animals, 
 has been sufficiently emphasized in the generations 
 hitherto. It is the growing habit of our own genera- 
 tion to consider man in his integrity with the remain- 
 der of creation. The conception of the unity of the 
 world of creatures has been brought into clear con- 
 sciousness through the method and the doctrine of 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 evolution. This point of view characterizes the 
 thinking of the latter half of the nineteenth century. 
 It has been widely applied to various data of thought, 
 as religion and theology, society, philosophy, and 
 history, outside of its chosen domain of natural 
 science, and with uniformly suggestive results. It 
 remains, among other possible applications, to apply 
 the conception of evolution to the theory of the 
 nature of education. The following inquiry has at- 
 tempted to throw what light evolution can give upon 
 the subject of education. 
 
 Adopting the new view that considers man in the 
 perspective of his historic background, in his integrity 
 with the remainder of creation, we may note four com- 
 mon possessions that he shares with the lower animal 
 world ; viz., he possesses life, his life takes shape in a 
 physical form, he goes in groups with his fellows, and 
 he has intelhgence. Life is the great fundamental fact ; 
 with this we start. And life is always embodied in 
 some form as its vehicle, hence the body as the bearer 
 of life. And this life in physical form finds its com- 
 pletion only- in other life similarly embodied ; hence 
 the groupings of lives. And life in the body in com- 
 panionship with other life needs conscious direction, 
 and this is the function of intelligence. 
 
 These common characteristics as shared by man 
 differ prodigiously from themselves as shared by the 
 lower animals, but not absolutely. Each of these 
 characteristics is a field for special scientific research, 
 and concerning each of them a body of knowledge 
 has grown up using comparative methods of study. 
 The knowledge of life is called biology, of the body 
 
1 6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 in which life takes form is physiology, of the group- 
 ings of life is sociology, of the intelligence that 
 directs life is psychology, and of the meaning of life 
 is philosophy. 
 
 Here, then, we have the outline of our inquiry. 
 The nature of education, which is our quest, depends 
 upon the nature of the man to be educated. What, 
 then, have the essential sciences of man to say con- 
 cerning our question, What is education } Biology, 
 as the science of life in organic forms, ought to 
 furnish a primary and elemental conception of educa- 
 tion, whose function, as Spencer defines it, is to fit for 
 complete living. Physiology, as the science of the 
 function of the organs of the body, ought to be able 
 to add conceptions of the first importance concerning 
 the education of the body, without which any succeed- 
 ing education is baseless. Sociology, as the science 
 of society, of men in organized masses, ought to 
 enlarge still further our conception of that educa- 
 tion which socializes the individual and makes of him 
 a desirable member of human society. Psychology, 
 as the science that describes and explains mental 
 phenomena, that analyzes and gives causes for mental 
 states, ought to show the effect upon the mind of 
 that education which aims to develop the power of 
 mind and train to efficiency its natural capacities. 
 And finally, philosophy, as the science that attempts 
 to unify experience into some systematic and self- 
 explaining whole, ought to be able to indicate whether 
 education is a superficial excrescence on human life, or 
 whether it is fundamental in the structure of things 
 and possessive of deep-lying impUcations concerning 
 
Introduction 17 
 
 that which is invisible and eternal. The answer to 
 our single inquiry gives us, then, the pain of seeking 
 it through the finite facts of our human experience, 
 and finally into the transcendent world which our 
 present fragmentary experience suggests but does 
 not yet compass. In consequence, let us consider — 
 
 (i) The Biological Aspect of Education. 
 
 (2) The Physiological Aspect of Education. 
 
 (3) The Sociological Aspect of Education. 
 
 (4) The Psychological Aspect of Education. 
 
 (5) The Philosophical Aspect of Education. 
 
 REFERENCES ON THE INTRODUCTION 
 
 Barnett, Teaching and Organization. 
 
 Compayre, History of Pedagogy. 
 
 Davidson, History of Education.. 
 
 De Garmo, Essentials of Method. 
 
 Dewey, The School and Society. 
 
 Eliot, Educational Reform. 
 
 Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education, Ch. 31. 
 
 James, Briefer Psychology ; Talks to Teachers. 
 
 McMurry, Elements of General Method ; The Conduct of the 
 Recitation. , 
 
 Munroe, The Educational Ideal. 
 
 Painter, History of Education. 
 
 Pickard, School Supervision. 
 
 Reighard, The Biological Sciences and the People ; article in 
 Science^ June 22, 1900. 
 
 Rosenkranz, Philosophy of Education. 
 
 Royce, Articles in Educational Review, Vols. I and VI. 
 
 Shaw, School Hygiene. 
 
 Spencer, Education. 
 
 Starbuck, Psychology of Religion. 
 
 Tompkins, School Management. 
 
 Welton, The Logical Bases of Education. 
 
 Williams, History of Modern Education. 
 c 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 There is a natural human prejudice against con- 
 sidering man as an animal. This prejudice is doubt- 
 less due to many centuries of emphasis upon himself 
 as the lord of creation and to corresponding centuries 
 of ignorance of the nature and intelligence of ani- 
 mals. This prejudice, as such, is ill-founded; but it 
 serves a good purpose as a warning against taking 
 man as a mere animal, against that position which 
 expects little of man because of his underlying ani- 
 mal nature. Man is not a mere animal, nor even a 
 mere man. An animal is not a mere animal, but, like 
 man, has affinities in his nature with those beings 
 that come both before and after him. The creation 
 is one from lowest matter to highest mind, and noth- 
 ing occupying a place in this creation is merely itself. 
 In considering the biological aspect of education, let 
 the prejudice, then, against considering the original 
 animal likenesses of man be laid. That for which this 
 prejudice rightly stands will receive its meed in the 
 later discussions. 
 
 Biological problems underlie educational problems. 
 They deal with life in its adjustment to its environ- 
 ment. Indeed, Herbert Spencer, one of the first, in 
 time and importance, of the modern students of or- 
 
 i8 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 19 
 
 ganic and vital problems, claims that life consists in 
 the proper adjustment between the inner and the 
 outer, in right correspondence to environment. The 
 Promethean spark of life itself eludes as yet human 
 search, but Spencer has rightly named one of the 
 conditions of its manifestation. The same writer has 
 told us most strongly that, 'fto prepare us for com- 
 plete living is the function which education has to 
 discharge." Manifestly biology as the science of life 
 in its first and elemental manifestations has something 
 to say to that education whose function it is to make 
 life complete. 
 
 There are three facts known to biology, and to The Facts of 
 other sciences as well, which are sisfnificant for edu- B^°^ogy ^ig- 
 
 ' _ ° nificant for 
 
 cation. These are, (i) the increasing size of the Education. 
 cerebrum, or hemispheres of the brain, both abso- 
 lutely and relatively to the size of the body, in the 
 ascending scale of mammals ; (2) the prolonged period 
 of human infancy in comparison with lower animals; 
 and (3) the brain as the organ of the mind. 
 
 Let us consider these biological facts in succes- The increas- 
 sion in their bearing on education. And first, the Jjjfcg^^g^^ 
 increasing size of the cerebrum in mammals. The brum in 
 titanotherium, an extinct mammal of the Middle and Mammals. 
 Lower Tertiary periods, a true rhinoceros, had cer- 
 tainly not more than one-fifth of the cerebral nervous 
 substance which is possessed by the living rhinoc- 
 eros of to-day. Yet in bulk this creature was as 
 large, if not larger, than the largest present rhinoc- 
 eros. So again, as compared with the more ancient 
 pithecoid genera, the more recent and related, 
 though not in direct line of descent, genus Homo 
 
20 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 has an immensely increased mass of cerebral tissue. 
 Yet there is little difference of bodily structure. An 
 ape's brain is 2^ the weight of its body; a human 
 infant's brain, where the proportion is larger than at 
 any time later in life, is ^ the weight of its body ; at 
 three years old the brain of the human child is -^^ the 
 weight of its body ; and in adult life the proportion 
 has decreased to -^-^. This increase of the absolute 
 size of the cerebrum in man in comparison with the 
 collaterally related pithecoids accounts for the fact 
 that the ape and the lowest type of man differ in in- 
 tellectual range far more from each other than the 
 lowest and highest types of man. In fact, with the 
 exception of the whale and the elephant, man has 
 absolutely the largest brain of all the creatures. An 
 ox of a ton's weight has a smaller brain than a man 
 of a hundred weight. 
 
 This increasing size of the cerebrum, as one ascends 
 in the scale of existence, is characteristic not only of 
 the mammals, but also of the reptiles, which preceded 
 the mammals in temporal origin. A consideration of 
 these facts leads Professor E. Ray Lankester to sum- 
 marize the situation in these words, quoted from the 
 highly suggestive article referred to in the list at the 
 close of this chapter, " Recent forms have a greatly 
 increased bulk of cerebrum, as compared with their 
 early Tertiary or mesozoic forbears." And in general 
 the fact probably is that in every class of the animal 
 kingdom recent forms have a cerebral mass much 
 larger than that of extinct forms. 
 o-^__-^ _ Now here is a biological fact, which, it was asserted, 
 
 has significance for education. What is this signifi- 
 
 Significance. 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 21 
 
 canoe ? ' In looking for the meaning of the increased 
 size of the cerebrum in mammals, the highest form of 
 organic creature, it might be thought at first that the 
 power of control of the body was thereby increased. 
 Such, however, does not seem to be the case. The 
 nerve centres of the ancient creature, though small, 
 were sufficient to control his body. He lacked not so 
 much the capacity to do with his body what he wished, 
 as the capacity to frame the conception of what were 
 good to do. The mouse to-day has more cerebrum 
 than a lizard, but hardly controls its body better. 
 The average male brain weighs forty-nine ounces as 
 against the average female brain of forty-four ounces, 
 yet man does not control his body even as gracefully 
 as woman. 
 
 The question recurs, then, as to the significance 
 of the larger cerebral mass. Significance it has, and 
 some purpose it serves, else it would not have been 
 selected in the process of natural development. All 
 experiments upon the brain to-day go to show that 
 the function of the cerebral hemispheres is that of de- 
 liberate action. The lower centres act automatically, 
 from habit, and from immediate present stimuli ; the 
 higher centres act with deliberation, in new ways, 
 and in response to remote or future stimuli. It is 
 the lower centres that receive and convey hereditary 
 endowments of reflexes and instincts. It is the higher 
 centres that arbitrate between competing instincts 
 and that secure adjustment to novel situations. The 
 increasing size of the cerebrum, of the higher centres, 
 means, then, the transfer of life from the instinctive 
 to the rational basis, means that the organism which 
 
22 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 can act from remote, as well as from immediate, 
 stimuli is at a distinct advantage in comparison with 
 the organism that reacts only to immediate stimuli. 
 The cerebrum is the reservoir of experience of the 
 individual, whence he may draw considerate, and 
 hence desirable, reactions to stimuli. It makes learn- 
 ing possible, as an appendix to inherited instinct. 
 Man, the highest of the mammals, has not fewer 
 instincts than the lower animals, but he has a greater 
 capacity than they, owing to his enlarged cerebral 
 tissues, to delay reaction to stimuli, to learn from past 
 experience, to adjust himself to new situations, and to 
 form, in the course of his individual growth, new and 
 delicate nervous reactions. An instinct is an inherited 
 nervous mechanism which goes off, like an alarm 
 clock, at the proper stimulus and moment. As the 
 size of the cerebrum increases, the number of instincts 
 do not decrease, but the creature becomes less and 
 less dependent upon his instincts for survival and 
 more and more dependent upon judicious selection 
 among his instincts and upon what experience in his 
 own individual case teaches. In the history of 
 mammals the ability of the individual to learn has 
 been a superinduced perfection upon the basis of 
 racial instinct. In brief, the increased size of the 
 cerebrum in mammalian fo7'ms signifies educability. 
 The very possibility of receiving any education at all 
 is due to the existence of the enlarged cerebral mass. 
 This is the significance for education of the first 
 of the three biological facts. 
 
 A more discriminating statement of the evolution- 
 ary way in which the hemispheres became the seat 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 23 
 
 of intelligent functioning is found in the following 
 words of Professor William James : — 
 
 "All nervous centres have then, in the first in- 
 stance, one essential function, that of * intelligent ' 
 action. They feel, prefer one thing to another, and 
 have 'ends.' Like all other organs, however, they 
 evolve from ancestor to descendant, and then evolu- 
 tion takes two directions, the lower centres passing 
 downwards into more unhesitating automatism, and 
 the higher ones upwards into larger intellectuality. 
 
 " Thus it may happen that those functions which 
 can safely grow uniform and fatal become least ac- 
 companied by mind, and that their organ, the spinal 
 cord, becomes a more and more soulless machine ; 
 whilst on the contrary those functions which it bene- 
 fits the animal to have adapted to delicate environ- 
 ing variations pass more and more to the hemispheres, 
 whose anatomical structure and attendant conscious- 
 ness grow more and more elaborate as zoological evo- 
 lution proceeds. In this way, it might come about 
 that in man and the monkeys the basal ganglia should 
 do fewer things by themselves than they can do in 
 dogs, fewer in dogs than in rabbits, fewer in rabbits 
 than in hawks, fewer in hawks than in pigeons, fewer 
 in pigeons than in frogs, fewer in frogs than in fishes, 
 and that the hemispheres should correspondingly do 
 more. This passage of functions forward to the ever 
 enlarging hemispheres would be itself one of the evo- 
 lutive changes, to be explained, like the development 
 of the hemispheres themselves, either by fortunate 
 variations or by inherited effects of use. The reflexes, 
 on this view, upon which the education of our human 
 
24 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 hemispheres depends, would not be due to the basal 
 ganglia alone. They would be tendencies in the 
 hemispheres themselves, modifiable by education, 
 unlike the reflexes of the medulla oblongata, pons, 
 optic lobes and spinal cord." ^ 
 
 It would seem that in man alone of the mammals 
 has the cerebrum developed to the extent of limitless 
 educability. Certainly he is the most educable of 
 the animals. Indeed, perhaps it is only through 
 courtesy that we are permitted at all to speak of 
 educated animals. Trained they certainly are through 
 the processes of associative memory ; but educated, 
 in the sense that they comprehend what they are 
 about, and the meaning of the process, perhaps they 
 are not. 
 The An advantage of the combination of educability 
 
 Advantage of ^^^ instinct ovcr instiuct alone is what we should 
 
 Educability 
 
 over Instinct, expcct from the fact that the combination has itself 
 come to exist in the history of organic forms. The 
 advantage is also obvious. Direction by instinct 
 alone makes the creature an automaton, with predict- 
 able reactions, and with little power of adaptation to 
 varied conditions. Direction through learning, work- 
 ing with and upon instinct, make the creature a 
 person, with unpredictable conduct, and with great 
 power of mental adaptation to varied conditions. The 
 reaction due to an instinct is general and expressive 
 of what unnumbered ancestors have done in similar 
 situations ; it is unconsidered. The action due to 
 education is specific and expressive of the need 
 of the moment ; it is considered. Education means 
 
 1 James, " Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, pp. 79 <?/ se^. 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 25 
 
 that the judgment of the individual is added to the 
 past experience of the race in the determination of 
 conduct. It means that the elaboration of the new 
 is added to the transmission of the old. Conscious 
 rapid progress, dependent upon the insight of the in- 
 dividual, in contrast with unconscious slow progress, 
 dependent upon the experience of the race, becomes 
 possible. 
 
 On the advantage of educability over instinct, I 
 cannot do better than refer again to the admirable 
 language of Professor James, as follows : " In the 
 human race, where our opportunities for observation 
 are the most complete, we seem to have no evidence 
 whatever which would support the hypothesis, [the 
 inheritance of acquired characteristics] unless it pos- 
 sibly be the law that city-bred children are more apt 
 to be near-sighted than country children. In the 
 mental world we certainly do not observe that the 
 children of great travellers get their geography lessons 
 with unusual ease, or that a baby whose ancestors have 
 spoken German for thirty generations will, on that ac- 
 count, learn Italian any the less easily from its Italian 
 nurse. But if the considerations we have been led to 
 are true, they explain perfectly well why this law 
 should not be verified in the human race, and why, 
 therefore, in looking for evidence on the subject, we 
 should confine ourselves exclusively to lower animals. 
 In them fixed habit is the essential and characteristic 
 law of nervous action. The brain grows to the exact 
 modes in which it has been exercised, and the inheri- 
 tance of these modes — then called instincts — would 
 have in it nothing surprising. But in man the nega- 
 
26 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 tion of all fixed modes is the essential characteristic. 
 He owes his whole preeminence as a reasoner, his 
 whole human quality of intellect, we may say, to the 
 facility with which a given mode of thought in him 
 may suddenly be broken up into elements, which re- 
 combine anew. Only at the price of inheriting no 
 settled instinctive tendencies is he able to settle every 
 novel case by the fresh discovery by his reason of 
 novel principles. He is, par excellence, the educable 
 animal. If, then, the law that habits are inherited 
 were found exemplified in him, he would, in so far 
 forth, fall short of his human perfections ; and when 
 we survey the human races, we actually do find that 
 those which are most instinctive at the outset are 
 those which, on the whole, are least educated in the 
 end. An untutored Italian is, to a great extent, a 
 man of the world ; he has instinctive perceptions, ten- 
 dencies to behavior, reactions, in a word, upon his 
 environment which the untutored German wholly 
 lacks. If the latter be not drilled, he is apt to be a 
 thoroughly loutish personage ; but, on the other hand, 
 the mere absence in his brain of definite innate ten- 
 dencies enables him to advance by the development, 
 through education, of his purely reasoned thinking, 
 into complex regions of consciousness that the Italian 
 may probably never approach. 
 
 " We observe an identical difference between men 
 as a whole and women as a whole. A young woman 
 of twenty reacts with intuitive promptitude and secu- 
 rity in all the usual circumstances in which she may 
 be placed. Her likes and dislikes are formed ; her 
 opinions, to a great extent, the same that they will be 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 27 
 
 through life. Her character is, in fact, finished in its 
 essentials. How inferior to her is a boy of twenty in 
 all these respects ! His character is still gelatinous, 
 uncertain what shape to assume, * trying it on ' in 
 every direction. Feeling his power, yet ignorant of 
 the manner in which he shall express it, he is, when 
 compared with his sister, a being of no definite con- 
 tour. But this absence of prompt tendency in his 
 brain to set into particular modes is the very condi- 
 tion which insures that it shall ultimately become so 
 much more eflficient than the woman's. The very 
 lack of preappointed trains of thought is the ground 
 on which general principles and heads of classifica- 
 tion grow up ; and the masculine brain deals with 
 new and complex matter indirectly by means of these 
 in a manner which the feminine method of direct 
 intuition, admirably and rapidly as it performs within 
 its limits, can vainly hope to cope with." ^ 
 
 For the transmission of instinct or old brain The Mental 
 mechanism, only a comparatively small amount of ^^^^^°[ 
 cerebral tissue was necessary ; for the possibility of Selection, 
 education, or the formation of new brain mechanism, 
 a much larger amount of cerebral tissue is necessary. 
 The necessary size of the cerebrum, known as a bio- 
 logical fact, would seem to indicate that in all verte- 
 brates there has been a continual tendency to impose 
 educability upon instinct. Because of the accruing 
 advantage, those forms with the smaller brains were 
 unfitted to survive in the struggle for existence with 
 brains of increasing size. Whence it appears that the 
 brain, following after the general bodily structure, 
 ^ James, " Principles of Psychology," Vol, II, pp. 367 et seq. 
 
28 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 J 
 
 V and during an enormous period and gradual develop- 
 
 ment, is the last organ of selection, and evolution 
 begins to proceed on the mental instead of the hith- 
 erto physical basis of selection. Thus education from 
 the biological point of view cannot be regarded as a 
 superficial impingement upon the life of the organism, 
 but as the very condition of its highest development 
 and best adjustment to its environment. Education 
 is not an unessential side-play in the world's drama 
 of progress, but is written largely in the very consti- 
 tution of a growing universe. Adaptation by mental 
 power takes the place of adaptation by bodily struc- 
 ture. The capacity of learning from experience and 
 being taught in one's individual lifetime defeats the 
 otherwise triumphant transformation of the organs of 
 the body. To get food from trees, the giraffe develops 
 a long neck, the elephant develops a trunk, the bear 
 strength of body, the ape the ability to climb ; and man 
 alone uses a ladder or an axe. Mind is an organ of supe- 
 rior adjustment to environment. It is the most useful 
 apparatus of the organism in keeping it from immediate 
 reactions, in delaying action pending consideration, 
 and in discovering new and better relations to sur- 
 roundings. Man has not the bodily strength of the 
 horse, nor the health of dogs, nor the age of whales, 
 nor the endurance of the ox ; but he survives easily, 
 nevertheless, because he has superior intelligence, 
 the power of symbolic thinking. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes I think it is who says somewhere that the 
 difference between i-F2 and ;r-t-/ is that between 
 savagery and civilization. 
 
 From the discussion as thus far adlvanced, on 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 29 
 
 the first of the biological facts that have signifi- Biology and 
 cance for education, it is evident that instead of Education. 
 antagonism there is really large coincidence between 
 biological and educational points of view. Education 
 can be helpfully defined, in the first instance, from 
 the biological standpoint. Mind, which along with 
 the body, is the subject of education, is a useful addi- 
 tion to the organism. Education provides such con- 
 ditions as enable men to react on the outer world 
 in a useful way. By an intentional arrangement of 
 stimuli, education produces such changes in the brain 
 as insure safe later reactions upon the world. Bio- 
 logically, education is the formation of suitable habits 
 of reaction or stimuli. As Professor Adam Sedgwick 
 says, " Education is nothing more than the response 
 of the nearly mature organism to external stimuli 
 . . . the penultimate response of the zygote to exter- 
 nal stimuli, the ultimate being that of senile decay, 
 which ends in natural death." ^ 
 
 The lower animals and savages live under simple Nature and 
 and comparatively unvarying conditions ; civilized ^^'^"^^• 
 man lives under complex and rapidly varying condi- 
 tions. What Nature unassisted can amply do for the 
 former in their preparation for life, she cannot do for 
 the latter. Education, as the coadjutor of Nature, 
 provides man for reaction in a civilized community. 
 And, as Nature is the kind mother of the lower crea- 
 tion, so is the school, not destroying, but utilizing and 
 transcending, the powers of Nature, the Alma Mater 
 of civilization. What Nature could not do in that she 
 
 1 Article in Science, June 8, 1900, "Variation and some Phenomena 
 connected with Reproduction and Sex." 
 
30 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The 
 
 Prolonged 
 Period of 
 Human 
 Infancy. 
 
 was weak through her bondage to the law of inherited 
 habit, Education, making capital of the forces of Na- 
 ture, and becoming itself a kind of Higher Nature, 
 achieved in breaking those bonds asunder, and is be- 
 come the potency of freer and more responsible living. 
 The adjustment to environment which education can 
 give is superior to that which the lower animals enjoy 
 or to that which Nature unassisted can give to man. 
 (The term Nature means here all the forces of life 
 except those which man consciously [Rousseau would 
 prefer to say, worse than uselessly] brings to bear in 
 the amelioration and elevation of his own existence. 
 It may be rightly said, however, that such effort on 
 the part of man is itself a product of Nature, and is 
 natural, and, in this sense of the word, education is 
 itself one of the last and highest kinds of natural 
 things. The term Nature is one of the worst abused 
 in our language, and needs definition wherever used. 
 The above discussion attempts to turn on ideas and is 
 devoted to no particular terminology.) 
 
 To recur, after a long interval, to our primal ques- 
 tion, What is education } and to concrete the biological 
 discussion as thus far advanced, it may be said in 
 answer, that. Education is the superior adjustment of 
 a human being to his environment. 
 
 Now for our second biological fact. The period of 
 human infancy is prolonged beyond that of any other 
 creature. In the lowest organic forms birth is by 
 partition of the parent, not by parturition. In such 
 a case there is no infancy, no period of helpless de- 
 pendence on the parent organism. As the mental 
 life becomes more complex, and as the conditions of 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 31 
 
 this change, the period of infancy lengthens. In 
 some of the higher vertebrates, both birds and mam- 
 mals, the young cannot take care of themselves im- 
 mediately after birth. This is particularly true of the 
 anthropoid apes. At the age of a month, the young 
 orang-outang is just beginning to learn to walk, 
 whereas a monkey has already learned the use of 
 hands and feet. The period of infancy in savage life 
 is years longer than in any lower mammalian life, and 
 in civilized life the years of infancy are extended, in 
 the estimation of medical jurisprudence to seven 
 years, in the eyes of the law to eighteen and twenty- 
 one usually for female and male respectively, and, 
 from the point of view of complete education, to a 
 quarter of a century or more. During this greatly 
 extended period those who are to live by the products 
 of mental work are devoting themselves to developing 
 productive efficiency, and remain more or less depend- 
 ent upon parental or institutional support. The longer 
 period of infancy of man as compared with woman, 
 which fact is recognized in the legal distinction of the 
 ages of freedom, is doubtless a kindred fact. 
 
 What is the cause of lengthening infancy in organic The Final 
 evolution ? As the situations of life become increas- p^^Q^J^^^Jg^j 
 ingly complicated with the higher creatures, it becomes infancy. 
 more and more difficult for all their desirable reactions 
 to be organized at birth as instincts. Consequently 
 the period of preparation for living is extended beyond 
 birth or infancy, and education does consciously in 
 infancy after birth what nature does unconsciously 
 before birth. Infancy thus is a sign that the organ- 
 ism possessing it has a complicated destiny. The 
 
32 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 adjustments to his environment made by man are 
 manifold more in number, more complex in kind, and 
 more delicate in nature, than those made by the lower 
 animals. Man's life being thus extremely varied and 
 its situations so numerous, any one situation is not 
 repeated as often as in the lower animal's monotonous 
 life of hungering and hunting. Consequently Nature 
 cannot fully prepare man in the pre-natal period for 
 living, and all the adjustments, other than the instinc- 
 tive ones, requiring, as they do, intelligence and rea- 
 son, must be learned in the post-natal period. This 
 learning is made possible, as the discussion of the 
 first biological fact showed, through the increased 
 efficiency of the brain in its cerebral hemispheres. 
 To answer the question of this paragraph in brief, the 
 cause of infancy is the necessity of adequate time for 
 preparation for complex living. 
 The Now, what is the significance for education of the 
 
 oHnfan^cy!^ period of infancy? The lamented Professor John 
 Fiske was original in his contribution of the doctrine 
 of infancy to the theory of evolution. He discussed 
 its significance for society as a whole and not simply 
 for education as a social institution. "Infancy, 
 psychologically considered," he says, "is the period 
 during which the nerve connections and correlative 
 ideal associations necessary for self-maintenance are 
 becoming permanently established. . . . The in- 
 creased complexity of psychical adjustments entailed 
 the lengthening of the period required for organizing 
 them ; the lengthening of infancy, thus entailed, 
 brought about the segregation, into permanent 
 family-groups, of individuals associated for the per- 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education ^^ 
 
 formance of sexual and parental functions ; the main- 
 tenance of such family-groups involved the setting 
 up of permanent reciprocal necessities of behavior 
 among the members of the group," etc.^ This is 
 Professor Fiske's well-known doctrine of infancy as 
 partly responsible for the institution of the family in 
 society and of morality in man. 
 
 It remained for Professor Nicholas Murray Butler 
 to interpret the significance of infancy for education, 
 as Professor Fiske had done for society, which he 
 does as follows : " The rich suggestion that this 
 doctrine of Mr. Fiske and this conception of modern 
 science have for us, seems to me to be this : The 
 entire educational period after the physical adjust- 
 ment has been made, after the child can walk alone, 
 can feed itself, can use its hands, and has, therefore, 
 acquired physical and bodily independence, is an 
 adjustment to what may be called our spiritual envi- 
 ronment. After the physical adjustment is reason- 
 ably complete, there remains yet to be accomplished 
 the building of harmonious and reciprocal relations 
 with those great acquisitions of the race that consti- 
 tute civilization ; and, therefore, the lengthening 
 period of infancy simply means that we are spending 
 nearly half of the life of each generation in order to 
 develop in the young some conception of the vast 
 acquirements of the historic past and some mas- 
 tery of the conditions of the immediate present." ^ 
 In brief, infancy is the period of plasticity, the 
 period of growth, in which that superior adjust- 
 
 i *' Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," Vol. II, pp. 342, 369. 
 2 "The Meaning of Education," p. 13. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The Brain as 
 the Organ 
 of the Mind. 
 
 History of 
 LocaUzation 
 of Mental 
 Function. 
 
 ment to environment which constitutes education is 
 effected. 
 
 To summarize, the discussion of the second bio- 
 logical fact adds to the conception of education as 
 reached at the end of the consideration of the first 
 biological fact, namely, education is the superior 
 adjustment of a human being to his environment, 
 the element of the time when this adjustment is 
 achieved; and further, it puts new significance into 
 the term human in the definition. 
 
 But there were three biological facts that had sig- 
 nificance for education, and it remains to consider 
 the third, viz., the brain as the organ of the mind. 
 
 The brain, for a long time, has been thought by some 
 to be the organ of the mind ; but only for a short time, 
 since modern pathology and anatomy, has it been so 
 conceived by all. Aristotle located the mental func- 
 tions in the heart. Ancient physicians, the proto- 
 types of the modern physiological psychologists, 
 located wisdom in the heart, joviality in the spleen, 
 anger in the gall, love in the liver, and vanity in the 
 lungs, whence a man might literally be puffed up with 
 vanity. The supposed origin of melancholy, black 
 bile, gave it, etymologically, its name. Even to-day 
 common usage of language makes the heart the seat 
 of the affections, the emotions, and the moral qualities, 
 and the head the seat of the intellect, as in the oft- 
 made contrast between education of the head and 
 heart. Hippocrates, 460-320 B.C., may possibly have 
 known that the brain is the seat of the mind, though 
 Herophilus of Bithynia, 300 b.c, is reported by 
 Galen as having been the first to hold this position. 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education ;^^ 
 
 To-day four lines of proof indicate the brain as the Proof of the 
 organ of the mind, — indicate, that is to say, that mental ^f Brahi and 
 functioning is, in some way, as yet only theoretically Mind. 
 understood, correlated with the functioning of the 
 brain. The evidence is pathological, anatomical, vivi- 
 sectional, and from common experience. Pathologi- 
 cally, it is shown by autopsies that different mental 
 diseases are due to lesions in different portions of the 
 brain. Anatomically, it is shown that afferent nerves 
 from the sense organs lodge in the brain. The 
 stimuli that they carry result in molecular changes 
 in the brain, corresponding to sensations in the mind, 
 and from the brain these stimuli are redirected through 
 efferent nerves or motor reactions. Vivisectionally, 
 the loss of certain portions of the brain of lower ani- 
 mals, as, for example, the hemispheres of a frog, pro- 
 duces characteristic changes in conduct. In this 
 particular instance the reactions to given stimuli are 
 no longer unpredictable, as normally. Finally, the 
 effect of stimulants, narcotics, and fevers upon con- 
 sciousness is a matter of common experience. Directly 
 these stimuli are changing the brain states, indirectly 
 they affect consciousness. 
 
 There is a fifth line of evidence to show that the brain 
 is the organ of the mind, but it is not yet sufficiently 
 made out, however, to justify its inclusion among the 
 lines of proof. It is known, with notable exceptions, 
 that large brains generally correspond with intelli- 
 gence ; but it is doubtless true that fineness of or- 
 ganized structure, intricacy of convolution, and devel- 
 opment of the associative fibres have more" to do with 
 intelligence than brain weight alone. Quality alone is 
 
^6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 better here than quantity alone, within the natural 
 limits, though both combined would seem to be the 
 desideratum. The most recent investigations seem 
 to confirm the impression that large brains are the 
 organs of superior intelligence. Thus M. Manouvrier 
 writes concerning the production of large brains, 
 " The first factor is evidently intellectual superiority, 
 since, for equal height, a series of intellectually dis- 
 tinguished men exceeds the general average in brain- 
 weight by about 1 50 grams." ^ The same writer points 
 out, however, that the brain-weight increases more 
 rapidly in proportion to the intelligence because " the 
 surface increases only as the square of the linear 
 dimension, while the volume increases as its cube" ; 
 also he thinks that large brains go with large bodies, 
 an increase of brain-weight of about 12 per cent be- 
 ing secured by an increase of bodily weight of 30 
 per cent. 
 Significance Accepting, then, the position that the brain is the 
 oTthis^Fact!" organ of the mind, and that brain states are the sine 
 qua non, at least in our present existence, of mental 
 states, it is manifest that education, from the bottom 
 point of view, consists in structural modification of 
 the brain and of the central nervous system of which 
 the brain is headquarters. Without the develop- 
 ment of the sensory and motor regions of the brain, 
 the fruits of education in the mental powers of obser- 
 vation, perception, reasoning, and volition cannot be 
 reached. Mental habits are primarily brain habits. 
 Mental inefficiency is first brain inefficiency. 
 
 It was the custom of educators until two genera- 
 
 1 Quoted in Literary Digest, Nov. 21, 1903. 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 37 
 
 tions ago, when physiological psychology arose (partly 
 in consequence of the newly awakened consciousness 
 of biological problems), and it is still too commonly 
 the custom, to regard mind as independent in toto 
 of *'the tenement of clay," as Locke called the body, 
 in which it resides. The old sharp line of cleavage 
 between the body and mind, which was erased by 
 such books as Maudsley's " Physiology and Pathol- 
 ogy of Mind," had to do with the formerly common 
 distinction between the secular and the sacred. The 
 conception of reality as an interrelated unity of 
 experience is a contribution of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury scientists and philosophers alike to the world's 
 thought. 
 
 Educators must yield the theory that the mind 
 is an isolated and unattached entity caught for a 
 time in this mundane sphere and detained in the 
 body as its prison-house, in favor of the theory that 
 mind and body together constitute one organic unity. 
 Gladly ought this transfer of theories to be effected 
 in view of the resulting, new, and serviceable means 
 of education thereby attained. The discipline of the 
 body, of the hands, of the senses, is also a discipline, 
 though not the only discipline, of the mind. It is 
 this reenforcement of hitherto simply mental means 
 of education by physical and physiological means 
 which is the significance for education of the third 
 biological fact, and which is the explanation of cer- 
 tain of the newer elements in the growing curriculum 
 of to-day. Education is not transformations of an 
 immaterial entity which is ageless and capable of 
 being influenced as easily at fifty as at fifteen, and 
 
38 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 of becoming with any late start all that it might ever 
 have been. It is always too late, so far as our pres- 
 ent knowledge goes, to be what one might have been. 
 Education is primarily modification of the central 
 nervous system. It is much more, as we shall see; 
 but without this foundation it could not be. Because 
 of the changing character of this nervous system, 
 education must do its great work while it can. In 
 his foundational work on "The Education of the 
 Central Nervous System," Mr. Halleck uses this 
 language in his preface : " If brain cells are allowed 
 to pass the plastic stage without being subjected to 
 the proper stimuli or training, they will never fully 
 develop- The majority of adults have many unde- 
 veloped spots in their brains." Education must 
 strike the central nervous system while it is plastic. 
 The plasticity of the nervous system means that the 
 individual is capable of being influenced by his sur- 
 roundings, yet without the sacrifice of his individu- 
 ality. Plasticity begins with life and reaches its 
 height perhaps at about eighteen years of age. After 
 twenty-five a new science is rarely acquired or a for- 
 eign tongue spoken without accent. The fibres of 
 association in the brain increase in number till the 
 approximate age of thirty-three, after which time how 
 hardly shall a man acquire a new idea except in his 
 own field ! What the youth does not learn, the man, 
 outside of his own line, will not. He may flatter him- 
 self that, like Cato, he can learn a new subject when 
 he is old, only to find, as a rule, when he begins the 
 task, that he is not a Cato, that the time is past for 
 all that sort of thing. A man is little more than 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 39 
 
 the sum total of the nerve reactions made habitual in 
 his youth. Whatever else he may become is due to 
 that mental factor, to be considered in Chapter VI, 
 which we call effort. And even with effort he will 
 have great difficulty in overcoming the results of 
 wrongly trained motor nerves in youth which remain 
 to vex us in age. The boy that cannot spell has few 
 chances in his favor as a man. The youth in whose 
 nervous system have not been well laid the two pillars 
 of sensory and motor training, the getting of all the 
 sensations that the organs of sense make possible and 
 the proper reaction upon them, cannot hope to have 
 reared in his case the superstructure of man's highest 
 thought and feeling and action. Every sense must 
 be trained by use, and self-expression must accom- 
 pany the reception of sensations and ideas. Only 
 so is the nervous system made the ally and not the 
 enemy of the educator. 
 
 The nature of the nervous system warns us not 
 simply against inadequate physiological foundations for 
 education, and against frittering away the educational 
 opportunity in the plastic period of youth, but also, 
 and particularly in our day of unprecedented com- 
 mercial activity, against abbreviating the educational 
 period of years which nature designed. The full 
 development of the brain is not reached until maturity. 
 The male brain reaches its maximum weight at fifteen 
 years of age, and later becomes slightly less. The 
 female brain is earlier in reaching its full weight. 
 The growth of the brain, which is responsible for its 
 increased weight, consists in the enlargement of the 
 nerve cells and in the multiplication of the fibres. 
 
40 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The development of the brain, which, rather than its 
 growth, is responsible for the quaUty of the intelli- 
 gence, consists in the separation of the organs of the 
 brain from each other and in their reunion through 
 the fibres of association, the brain itself becoming 
 thus one of the best illustrations from the natural 
 world of an organic unity through variety, of an 
 integrated heterogeneity. Such is the marvellous 
 mechanism with which the conscious life of man is 
 associated. Its highest centres, the frontal lobes, 
 with which probably one's serious thinking is done, 
 are not developed fully in childhood, but only at 
 adolescence do they begin to be serviceable in the 
 highest way to the individual. To continue the train- 
 ing of the nervous system through youth is actually 
 to lengthen the period of plasticity in individual cases 
 to an appreciable extent, with all the enlargement of 
 possibilities which this entails. To leave certain por- 
 tions of the nervous system neglected is to invite 
 earlier decay of those parts. To omit the most care- 
 ful and systematic training of the senses while the 
 sensory regions of the brain are growing together by 
 means of those associative fibres which condition the 
 exercise of judgment and reason is to inhibit the 
 best development of these highest powers of con- 
 sciousness. It is only an all round development of 
 the whole nervous system during the growing period 
 that is the surety of an integral individual and an all 
 round education which men so praise. What a rude 
 violence is done nature's gifts when children are taken 
 from primary and secondary schools and made to be- 
 come winners of bread for the family! Or when 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 41 
 
 children are cast upon their own resources in the big 
 world ! It is a physical sin when the problems of 
 mature life, either theoretical or practical, are forced 
 upon the immature child. Our American life, par- 
 ticularly in the factory towns, is in danger of gaining 
 the world and losing its own soul. 
 
 Admitting as now manifest that, from the point of what can 
 view of the third biolo2:ical fact, education consists Education 
 
 ° . do for the 
 
 in modifications of the brain and central nervous Brain? 
 system, the difficult question arises as to what edu- 
 cation can really do for the nerve cells of the brain. 
 The temptation is strong upon educators, particularly 
 upon those who have not duly considered the phys- 
 ical limitations of mental development, to extend 
 unwarrantably the possibilities of education. The 
 greatest philosopher of the eighteenth century, if 
 not of modern times, Immanuel Kant, showed this 
 limitless view of what education could achieve. 
 " Man can become man," he declares, " only through 
 education ; he is nothing but what education makes 
 him." But this view is too generous. The brain can- 
 not be born again through education. In capacity 
 the brain once for all is what it is. Though smaller 
 than its most ardent advocates would allow, the field 
 of education is exceedingly real. It is in the realiza- 
 tion of the innate capacity of the individual brain 
 that education has its excellent task. Education is 
 not a creator ; there is but one Creator : education is 
 a developer. Admitting that the inherent capabili- 
 ties of each brain are nature's original gift through 
 hereditary endowment, the question recurs. What can 
 education do for the brain ? 
 
42 The Philosophy of Edueation 
 
 Without exceeding the limits of conservative esti- 
 mate in this largely unexplored matter, it is safe to 
 say that education can develop and strengthen the 
 nervous tissue of the brain ; can make new nervous 
 connections and wear deeper old ones ; can awaken 
 the unawakened nerve cells of the brain; and can 
 through the formation of habit set the mind free for 
 new action and thought : in short, education can make 
 the brain approximately as efficient an organ as it is 
 capable of becoming. To stress these points briefly 
 in succession : — 
 Develop- Mr. Halleck puts on the title-page of his book, 
 
 ment of Brain already referred to, the following words of Drs. Mc- 
 Kendrick and Snodgrass, "Just as muscular exer- 
 cise causes an increased growth of muscular fibre, so 
 regulated mental exercise must develop and strengthen 
 the tissue of the brain." 
 Formation of Again, it is One of the unavoidable hypotheses of 
 modern physiological psychology, which attempts to 
 explain mental facts by their underlying brain equiva- 
 lents, that perception, memory, habit, and acquired 
 power are dependent upon nervous connections in 
 the brain. Professor Bain first, and Professor James 
 following, not to mention others, can explain memory 
 or acquisition only as a series of new nervous growths, 
 the establishment of a number of beaten tracks in 
 certain lines of the cerebral substance. These ner- 
 vous connections are often made for the first time 
 through mental endeavors in response to educational 
 stimuli, and are regularly worn deep and smooth 
 through such influence. In making such figurative 
 statements as the preceding concerning brain paths 
 
 New Nerve 
 Connections 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 43 
 
 made and worn smooth as the explanation of the 
 mental phenomena of memory, habit, and the like^ 
 care must be taken to guard against the strictly 
 literal interpretation. All that can be said is that 
 these explanations are the most serviceable of the 
 possible hypotheses, and may be true. 
 
 Again, with propriety is it claimed that education Quickening 
 can awaken certain unawakened portions of the ^f^^^^ 
 cells of the brain. Perhaps no brain is so normally 
 educated that its maximum efficiency is attained. 
 Among the most cautious of the students of the 
 effects upon the brain brought about by external 
 influence may be named Professor Donaldson, who 
 (in Chapter XVIII of his ''Growth of the Brain") 
 uses the following language : " Education must fail 
 to produce any fundamental changes in the nervous 
 organization, but to some extent it can strengthen 
 formed structures by exercise, and in part waken into 
 activity the unorganized remnant of the dormant cell. 
 No amount of cultivation will give good growth where 
 the nerve cells are few and ill-nourished, but careful 
 culture can do much where there are those with 
 strong inherent impulses toward development. On 
 neurological grounds, therefore, nurture is to be con- 
 sidered of much less importance than nature, and in 
 that sense the capacities that we most admire in per- 
 sons worthy of remark are certainly inborn rather 
 than made." 
 
 Lastly, it was mentioned that education could. Formation of 
 through the formation of habit, set the mind free for ^^^^*" 
 new action and thought. A voluntary action made 
 with deliberation requires the attention of the cerebral 
 
44 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 hemispheres. Through frequent repetition this action 
 becomes habitual, the lower centres of the brain can 
 take care of it, and the higher remain free again for 
 something new. The process thus briefly defined 
 constitutes from Huxley's point of view the very pos- 
 sibility of education. After narrating the practical 
 joke on the old soldier, now a table servant, who with 
 a waiter full of dishes comes at sudden command to 
 " attention," Huxley continues : " The possibility of all 
 education (of which military drill is only one particular 
 form) is based upon the existence of this power which 
 the nervous system possesses, of organizing conscious 
 actions into more or less unconscious, or reflex, opera- 
 tions. It may be laid down as a rule which is called 
 the Law of Association, that if any two mental states 
 be called up together or in succession, with due fre- 
 quency and vividness, the subsequent production of 
 one of them will suffice to call up the other. 
 
 "The object of intellectual education is to create 
 such indissoluble associations of our ideas of things, 
 in the order and relation in which they occur in 
 nature ; that of a moral education is to unite as 
 fixedly the ideas of evil deeds with those of pain and 
 degradation, and of good actions with those of pleas- 
 ure and nobleness." ^ 
 
 This is habit, which the Duke of Wellington en- 
 thusiastically exclaimed to be "ten times nature." 
 Through habits formed in school the nerve cells ^s 
 I pen these hues take care of the writing, the spell- 
 ing, and, for the most part, the expression, leaving the 
 mind free to attend to the thought. Rightly trained 
 
 ^ Huxley, " Elementary Lessons in Physiology," p. 302. 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 45 
 
 nerve cells are the trusty servant, leaving the mis- 
 tress of the household free to entertain her guests. 
 
 The law of association as stated above by Huxley, 
 and which underlies the formation of habit, is par- 
 ticularly serviceable in educating instincts. Purely 
 reflexly and instinctively, without malice or fore- 
 thought, a youngster does things that are unbe- 
 coming socially. A word of admonition, a threat, 
 or, finally, some penalty administered becomes asso- 
 ciated with the performance of the act. This associa- 
 tion once formed, the instinctive tendency to perform 
 the act is inhibited by the thought of the undesired 
 consequence of the act, or by the thought of approval 
 that follows the non-performance of the act. Thus 
 instincts become subject to direction by thought. 
 And, happily for us, the desirable association, once 
 formed and set in the grooves of the cerebral sub- 
 stance, becomes itself a kind of second instinct. 
 Thus habit is the friend as well as the foe of the good. 
 And when good action, that is, from the biological 
 point of view, action which is preservative of the 
 organism, has become habitual and not sporadic, we 
 have what Aristotle called character. And from this 
 point of view education itself becomes the process 
 whereby useful reactions on stimuli are made habit- 
 ual. The educational period is the habit-forming 
 epoch in life. 
 
 In addition to the practically certain influences. The 
 just enumerated, of education upon the physical i^^^"*^"^^ 
 nature of the brain, there is yet another that we Educabiiity. 
 should like to think, and with some degree of assur- 
 ance may think, results. It has to do with the effect 
 
46 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 upon posterity of long lines of educated ancestry, and 
 with the much-vexed question in biological circles of 
 the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is 
 much safer and preferable, when possible, to explain 
 results without the use of this principle for which 
 such meagre evidence is forthcoming. Professor 
 Donaldson, in Chapter XIX of his book already 
 quoted, states the situation thus, " We feel . . . that 
 the descendants of several generations of educated 
 ancestors should have a nervous system favorably 
 modified, more vigorous, more responsive, more accu- 
 rate in its reactions, and growing, perhaps, for a 
 longer time, thus extending the period of its adapta- 
 bility. But for this the evidence must still be 
 sought." On the other side, we have Professor 
 Lankester, in the article already quoted, claiming the 
 transmission of educability. It does not appear, 
 however, whether this is done through inheritance or 
 through the preservation of the more fortunate varia- 
 tions. On the same side such a leading educator and 
 wide observer of educational effects as President 
 Eliot speaks boldly out, " Thanks to the beneficent 
 mysteries of hereditary transmission, no capital earns 
 such interest as personal culture." ^ Of course, the 
 education itself has to be acquired afresh by each 
 succeeding generation. The question is whether the 
 acquisition does not become easier with the lapse of 
 time. The latest word on this subject is from Pro- 
 fessor Karl Pearson in the Huxley Memorial Lecture 
 for 1903. He writes: '* There can, I think, be no 
 doubt that intelligence or ability follows precisely the 
 
 1 Eliot, " Educational Reform," p. 21. 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 47 
 
 same laws of inheritance as cephalic index or any- 
 other physical character ... we inherit our parents' 
 tempers, our parents' conscientiousness, shyness and 
 ability, even as we inherit their stature, forearm and 
 span. ... If the conclusion we have reached to- 
 night be substantially a true one, and for my part I 
 cannot for a moment doubt that it is so, then what is 
 its lesson for us as a community ? Why, simply that 
 geniality and probity and ability, though they may be 
 fostered by home environment and good schools, are 
 nevertheless bred and not created. The education is 
 of small value unless it be applied to an intelligent 
 race of men." ^ 
 
 These words from Professor Pearson are in line 
 with the usual biological thought of the day. They 
 do not permit us as teachers to consider education an 
 inheritable possession from father to son ; we are not 
 endowing natures with capacities. But education 
 seems rather to be one ©f those acquired characters, 
 like the habits of speech, virtue, and temperance, 
 which must be won afresh by each generation ; we 
 are developing capacities into realities. Natural and 
 artificial selection improve capacities ; education 
 realizes them. Education is not a natural character 
 capable of physical inheritance; it is an acquired 
 character capable of social inheritance. That is, 
 like tradition, it is passed on from one generation to 
 another by invitation and word of mouth. It goes 
 not like dispositions from bone to bone and flesh 
 to flesh, but from hand to hand, as it were, like 
 
 '^Nature, Oct. 22, 1903, "Inheritance of Psychical and Physical 
 Characters in Man." 
 
48 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the way in which the son takes up the father's pro- 
 fession in life. 
 
 So far from discouraging teachers, this position 
 ought to stimulate them to greater effort. If educa- 
 tion is not capable of physical transmission from 
 parent to offspring, the greater the importance that 
 each generation be given its full benefit. There is 
 encouragement also in the thought that social heredity 
 is no less real a phenomenon than physical heredity. 
 Thus teachers conscious of their task may beUeve 
 they are laboring for future generations as well as for 
 the present, for they are, through the influence of 
 man on man, if not through the influence of man on 
 the embryo. 
 
 The last of the sure effects of education upon the 
 brain mentioned above, viz., the formation of habits, 
 whereby education itself is the process of making 
 useful reaction reflex, raises a last question, with 
 which the discussion of the third biological fact shall 
 have an end. The question is a theoretical one and 
 takes us into the future. It is this, Is a being all of 
 whose actions are completely reflex and useful the 
 end and aim of education ? Suppose we reacted 
 rightly and fatally to every situation which life pre- 
 sented, would we then have become the kind of beings 
 that education should want to make .-* In such a case 
 all intentions of ours would give place to mechanism, 
 and all directive consciousness would lapse into fault- 
 less unconsciousness. In brief, Is automatism the 
 end of education ? The statement of the affirma- 
 tive shall be made in the language of an advocate, 
 "Every conscious act, every thought, every senti- 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 49 
 
 ment, presupposes an imperfection, a delay, a check, 
 a want of organization ; if, therefore, to form the type 
 of ideal man, we take the quality which all others pre- 
 suppose, and which does not itself presuppose any 
 other, — viz., organization, — and if we think of it as 
 raised to the highest possible degree, our ideal of 
 man is an unconscious automaton marvellously com- 
 plicated and unified." ^ That is to say, human 
 Frankensteins are the end of education. 
 
 In estimating this position, it is to be noted, first, 
 that the automatic reflexes asserted to characterize 
 the ideal man are the summations of past experiences. 
 Hence the automaton would work in a stationary 
 world where the present was like the past, and the 
 future was barren. But our world is growing, and for 
 the new situations that continually arise the reflex 
 act is not sufficient. Consciousness is needed as an 
 engine of direction, as a deliberator, as a facile ad- 
 juster to novel situations, and this entirely without 
 regard to the mixed question of whether it is free or 
 determined in its action. The utility of conscious- 
 ness to the organism is evident from the fact that it 
 has been developed and remains a characteristic of 
 the highest mammals. Its function seems to be, 
 biologically, to hold by the pleasant acts, and to let 
 go the painful ones, thereby preserving and advancing 
 the life of the organism by that general, though not 
 exceptionless, law of nature whereby pleasure and 
 profit and pain and harm go together in pairs. And 
 
 1 Paulhan, " Le Devoir et la Science Morale," Revue Philosophique, 
 December, 1886. Quoted and discussed in Guyau, " Education and 
 Heredity," p. 283. 
 
 £ 
 
50 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the present constitution of our changing world seems 
 to render it likely that consciousness will remain an 
 indispensable characteristic of the organism. Man's 
 adjustment to his environment is not once for all, but 
 is a growing adjustment to a changing environment. 
 Unconscious habit can take care of the old in our 
 environment, such as walking, dressing, eating, and 
 much of our talking, indeed, all together, the larger 
 half of our lives ; but the new requires conscious at- 
 tention. Huxley cannot be wound up morally to go 
 forever right. Thus automatism as the end of educa- 
 tion looks only backward and not forward. It is 
 unpractical. 
 
 In the second place, the theory of the end of educa- 
 tion as unconscious automatism does injustice to 
 the nature of that consciousness which it regards as 
 a passing phenomenon in upward evolution. In the 
 words of Guyau, " Consciousness is not purely and 
 simply an arrested reflex action, as contemporary 
 psychologists so often define it ; it is a corrected 
 reflex action, brought into correspondence with the 
 changes of the environment, wound up anew rather 
 than stopped." ^ Only a being with a consciousness, 
 permitting the mastery of the untried, can greet the 
 unknown with a cheer. 
 
 Even if the theory of unconscious automatism 
 were practical, even if that position did justice to 
 the function of consciousness in life, still it would 
 be an undesirable end of education. We like to 
 be conscious, that is, we of the West, and we should 
 not like any end of education that made us uncon- 
 
 1 Guyau, " Education and Heredity," p. 284. 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 51 
 
 scious. Not simply does consciousness influence 
 action in novel situations, but it lights up all action 
 whatever, and we like to walk in its light. Through 
 it we become the world's mirror. Apart from the 
 pain that may attend physical dissolution, we fear 
 the unconsciousness that may attend death. Con- 
 sciousness is an agent, and as such justifies its ex- 
 istence from the biological point of view. It is also 
 a spectator, and as such enables men joyously to 
 see and to perceive as well as to act. 
 
 There are several additional services consciousness 
 renders the human organism, not explicitly involved 
 in the theory of automatism, but which render it 
 impossible ever to exclude consciousness from a defi- 
 nition of the end of education. It is the guardian 
 of those very habits which, when once consciously 
 acquired, continue to act so automatically and service- 
 ably. It gives us the sense of time, involving 
 memory, history, and prophecy, without which man 
 could not look before and after and sigh for what 
 is not. Again, by holding up an object to be 
 striven for, it makes demands on the latent energy 
 of our organism, even if, as against what some 
 experiments would go to show, it does not actually 
 add thereto. No work in fineness or in extent is 
 comparable to that done under the stimulus of a 
 pressing ideal. And again, consciousness gives us 
 ideas as ends of action. An idea pursued is an 
 ideal. Thus consciousness makes possible morality, 
 which is action according to ideas. A right idea 
 that appeals to consciousness with force is felt as 
 an obligation, while a wrong and appealing idea is 
 
52 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 temptation. And yet again, consciousness makes 
 us social by including the world of our fellows as ob- 
 jects of imitation, competition, affection, and sacrifice. 
 Thus at the end of the protracted discussion of 
 the third biological fact, viz., the brain as the organ 
 of consciousness, we are prepared to insist that the 
 being to be educated must be, and must remain, 
 conscious. Must remain conscious because of the 
 indispensableness, as described, of that attribute. 
 Must be conscious in order to frame to himself a 
 conception of the end which, in his own case, it is 
 the design of education to attain. Including, then, 
 the element of consciousness in the answer to the 
 original question as to the nature of education, we 
 First are prepared to say at the end of the discussion of 
 
 Definition of ^^iq biological aspcct of the subject, that Education 
 
 Education. , ^ . ,. r ■ i r • 
 
 IS the superior adjustment of a conscious human being 
 to his environm,ent. 
 
 There is the skeleton of our final conception of 
 the nature of education, but it remains to clothe it 
 with flesh and blood and meaning. Biology, dealing 
 with life processes, can start us aright, but since, 
 like other sciences, it is but one of the ways of look- 
 ing at life, its message alone is not final. It deals 
 with the way in which organic life develops, but not 
 with the origin or with the significance of that life. 
 The results of biology are many, but its main char- 
 acteristic is its method, its evolutionary point of 
 view in any object of study. We have had its sug- 
 gestive word as to the theory of education. But 
 even in a purely theoretical inquiry, as this intends 
 primarily to be, we must not lose whatever practical 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 53 
 
 word, as a consequence of its theory, biology has to 
 say to us as educators. So our last paragraph must 
 be devoted to the consequences for education of 
 the biological point of view. 
 
 In the first place biology, with its emphasis on Conse- 
 life as adjustment between the inner and the outer, J^^^^^esfor 
 
 ■^ ' Education of 
 
 puts the practical at the bottom of the rational and the Bioiogi- 
 
 the speculative. The first thing is to exist, to live, vfew°'''*°^ 
 
 and this is a practical matter. After that one may (i) The 
 
 pursue ideal ends. But unless the ideal ends them- Practical is 
 
 . the Basis of 
 
 selves are m some way contributory to living, in the the Theoreti- 
 wider sense of appreciation, if not in the narrower ^^^' 
 sense of physical existence, then are they phantasms. 
 This is the basis for the philosophical doctrine of 
 "pragmatism," whose test of truth is touch with 
 life. In the field of education this means that the 
 prime thing concerning any educational theory is 
 not, whether it is new or old, but whether its prac- 
 tice furthers sound education. 
 
 In the second place, biology has its own notion (2) Con- 
 of the purpose consciousness serves in the world, a^u^efuf^^^ 
 Primarily it is not declaratory of ideals, but a use- Addition 
 ful addition to the organism. The last agency de- organism, 
 veloped by the organism in its growing attempt to 
 come into the most practicable relations with its 
 environment is consciousness. Our reason is first 
 of all our guide ; later, it is the solver of our prob- 
 lems. It is more evident in the case of the lower 
 animals that intelligence is for action rather than 
 for thought's own sweet sake. In the language of 
 our master craftsman in the field of psychology ap- 
 pHed to teaching, ''Consciousness would thus seem 
 
54 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 in the first instance to be nothing but a sort of 
 superadded biological perfection, — useless unless it 
 prompted to useful conduct, and inexplicable apart 
 from that consideration." ^ It must be recognized, of 
 course, that emphasis upon consciousness as practical 
 by no means detracts from its function in life as 
 theoretical, by means of which latter function it 
 makes of man the only metaphysical animal. The 
 original use of a factor in evolution by no means 
 sets a value upon its final use. Herbert Spencer 
 rightly showed that it was no valid argument against 
 his theory that the belief in immortality originated 
 in dreams and reflections in streams to say that this 
 origin invalidated the real doctrine of immortality 
 to-day. We must distinguish between origins and 
 final uses. It would be as egregious a mistake to say 
 that because consciousness is primarily practical there- 
 fore it is not theoretical, as to say, with Plato, that 
 the ideas toward which the world is moving are the 
 cause of the world. The former substitutes origin 
 for end, the latter the end for the origin. We must 
 read the future by the past, but in a genuinely de- 
 veloping world we must not limit the future to the 
 past. All of which is intended to say, with correct 
 implication, that from the biological point of view 
 consciousness is primarily one of the cooperant agents 
 of the organism for its own well-being in its world. 
 (3) Educa- In the third place, education is a utility. This is 
 what biology has to say ; other sciences will have 
 other things to say in addition. Education forms 
 good habits, that is, regular and serviceable reactions 
 
 ^ James, " Talks to Teachers," p. 24. 
 
 tion is a 
 
 Utility, 
 
The Biological Aspect of Education 55 
 
 on life's stimuli. One acts differently as the outcome 
 of his education. Education is an extra increment 
 of power in the individual in his effort to conquer 
 his world. 
 
 Finally, and most practical of all, biology is totally (4) Educa- 
 against the doctrine of receptivity in the organism, fh°"^^hsif 
 the child, as the process of educating. In the same expression, 
 world different organisms have come to exist, and 
 specimens of the same kind of organism differ in 
 themselves, and all because these individuals reacted 
 differently to their identical general environment; 
 because they were not fashioned simply by their 
 surroundings, but also by their selection of their 
 surroundings, and their reaction to them. Education 
 comes through what the child does, and says, and 
 thinks, and feels in the presence of the environment 
 which the teacher supplies. The teacher teaches the 
 child ; the child educates himself. In being taught 
 the child is passive ; in being educated, he is active. 
 In the school these processes are practically syn- 
 chronous. The thing to be stressed is that teachers 
 educate more, even if to gain the time necessary for 
 it they have to teach less. Education is self-expres- 
 sion, not impression alone. Every impression made 
 by teachers upon pupils should be followed by expres- 
 sion in some fashion from the pupils. In this way 
 education becomes inwrought in the nervous system, 
 and is not simply content of consciousness. Teachers 
 who are students of the history of education will find 
 justification for this pedagogic principle in certain of 
 their own writers, particularly Froebel. Its growing 
 recognition to-day finds witness in more understanding 
 
56 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 and less verbal memory ; in more written work in 
 the form of note-books, drawings, plans, and maps ; 
 in measurements and laboratory experiments ; in the 
 kindergarten ; in methods of self-expression in wood 
 and metal through the physical and mental discipline 
 of manual training schools ; and, finally, in the de- 
 velopment of the powers of independent thinking and 
 original criticism. 
 
 This is what biology has to say, so far as we have 
 been able to interpret its message, on the theory, and, 
 secondarily, on the practice, of education. During the 
 discussion we have followed Spencer in insisting that 
 life is not simply protoplasm, but also adjustment. 
 But it remains now to insist also that life is proto- 
 plasm which takes form, among other ways, in the 
 human body. And this body, as an integral element 
 of the individual to be educated, and its rights, have 
 to be considered. This constitutes the physiological 
 aspect of education, to which we now come. 
 
 REFERENCES ON THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Bain, Education as a Science, Chap. II. 
 
 Brooks, Foundations of Zoology, Sec. III. 
 
 Butler, The Meaning of Education, Essay I. 
 
 Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, Chap. XVIII. 
 
 Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, II, Ft. II, Chap. XXII. 
 
 Guyau, Education and Heredity, Chap. IX. 
 
 Halleck, Education of the Central Nervous System. 
 
 Harris, Psychologic Foundation of Education, Chaps. XII, XIII. 
 
 James, Talks to Teachers, Chaps. III-V. 
 
 Lankester, The Significance of the Increased Size of the Cere- 
 brum in Recent as compared with Extinct Mammalia, Jubilee 
 Volume of the Soci^te de Biologic, 1899. Reprinted in Nature, 
 April 26, 1900. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 The biological aspect of education has emphasized The Place of 
 the importance of that kind of education which puts Education^ 
 one in touch with the real conditions of life. It has 
 emphasized the importance of the brain as the central 
 office of the nervous system, as the agent of adjust- 
 ment of the organism to its surroundings. We have 
 now to inquire more intimately concerning the nature 
 of the being to be educated, in whose adjustment to 
 life consists his education. For our purpose the 
 rough working division of the individual into body, as 
 the physical expression of his life, and mind is suffi- 
 cient. Such a division at the present moment in the 
 discussion is not intended to close in advance the 
 metaphysical inquiry whether ultimately body should 
 not be read in terms of mind as against the materiaUsts 
 who maintain that mind is but the body in an attenu- 
 ated and etherealized condition. Without attempting 
 to solve this dark difficulty, the discussion of which 
 would be irrelevant here, it is intelligible to say that 
 the child to be educated has a body and a mind. In 
 this respect he is like the everyday reality of life 
 untransformed by metaphysical insight, viz., matter 
 and mind. In extending further our conception of 
 education, let us begin with the education of the 
 body, rather than of the mind. 
 
 57 
 
58 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The reason for this order in the discussion is that 
 Hfe itself is first physical and then mental. The 
 highest powers of mind are the last addition in 
 the development of organic forms. The history of 
 nature seems to reveal in succession the inanimate 
 world ; then the plant world with powers of nutrition 
 and generation ; then the animate world with addi- 
 tional powers of sensation, consciousness, and move- 
 ment, such as the lower animals have ; then, finally, 
 the human world, with powers of self-consciousness, 
 thought, aesthetic emotion, and choice. Such the 
 order of creation seems to be. In this development 
 nothing valuable of the earlier stages is lost in the 
 later. The earlier stages of development are aufge- 
 hoben, as Hegel would say, in the later stages. Thus 
 man, the last in the list of developed beings, is mate- 
 rial and animal, as well as human and divine. His 
 body is live matter, possessing still, however, the 
 property of inertia to challenge his effort. Like the 
 plant, it demands nutrition. It also contains a ner- 
 vous system which allies man to the animals, which 
 crudely differentiates him from the plant world, and 
 which makes sensation and movement possible. Out 
 of sensation and movement develop the highest men- 
 tal powers of abstract thought and voluntary action. 
 Care must be taken to avoid sharp lines of distinction 
 between the roughly marked stages of this growth. 
 Final distinctions between the inanimate and the 
 animate, the plant and the animal, the lower animal 
 and man, are difficult, if not impossible, to discover. 
 To the scientist as well as to the philosopher exist- 
 ence is a unity. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 59 
 
 Thus the physical is the foundation of all life, men- 
 tal included, and in considering physical education 
 before mental education, we seem to be following 
 nature's own leading, and to be putting the education 
 of the body into the basic place that is its due. The 
 mind does not live in the body, as its *' clay cottage," 
 in Locke's phrase, but rather grows in the body as a 
 plant in its soil. A poor soil means arrested growth, 
 while a good soil conditions full fruition. 
 
 There are three questions concerning physical edu- The Three 
 cation which confront us : first, How does the body Questions 
 
 -^ concerning 
 
 mfluence the mmd.? second, What consequent atten- Education of 
 tion should it receive } and third. What attention is it *^^ ^°^^' 
 receiving in our educational system to-day .? 
 
 First, the influence of the body on the mind. The The influ- 
 fact of such influence is unquestionable. Common BodVon^he 
 experience shows that a tired brain means a slow Mind. 
 mind ; that a rested brain means a quick mind ; that 
 a brain artificially stimulated with alcohol, hashish, 
 and like stimulants means temporary brilliancy ; that 
 a brain deadened with narcotics means mental inac- 
 tivity ; that a brain improperly nourished by the 
 blood, as in fever, means delirium ; and that a brain 
 whose organic functioning is destroyed means in- 
 sanity. In the preceding chapter the scientific evi- 
 dence that the brain is the organ of the mind has 
 already been reviewed. 
 
 The question arises as to how this influence is How the 
 effected. In brief, it is by means of the central JfA^^n^eof 
 
 ' -^ ^ Body on 
 
 nervous system. Here body and mind come into Mind is 
 closest intimacy, and through this means the body ^^^^^' 
 most influences the mind. The composition of the 
 
6o The Philosophy of Education 
 
 nervous system is simple in outline, and intricate in 
 detail. It consists, first, of nerve centres in the skull 
 and backbone, the brain and the spinal cord, as they 
 are called, and, second, nerves connecting these cen- 
 tres with the sense organs of the body and with the 
 muscles. The nerves connecting the centres^ with 
 the sense organs are capable of being acted upon by 
 physical stimuli, such as air and ether vibrations, 
 touch, pressure, effluvia, in short, by motion, and are 
 further capable of transmitting these stimuli to the 
 brain ; hence they are called afferent or centripetal 
 nerve fibres. Such a stimulus transmitted to the 
 brain corresponds to a sensation in the mind, as 
 when we see light or color, or hear sound, or touch a 
 rough surface. Since they thus make sensations pos- 
 sible, the afferent nerve fibres are also called sensory. 
 The nerves that connect the centres with the muscles 
 cause them to contract, and so make movement possi- 
 ble. Carrying impulses out from the centres, they are 
 called efferent, or centrifugal nerve fibres, and since 
 they make movement possible, they are also called 
 motor. Sometimes a nerve may contain both sensory 
 and motor fibres. The nerve centres are gray in 
 color, and are composed of masses of minute cells. 
 Where the sensory nerve fibres enter the spinal cord 
 and brain are the so-called sensory centres, and the 
 portions of the spinal cord and brain immediately con- 
 nected with the motor nerves are the so-called motor 
 centres. The various portions of the centres are 
 mutually connected by nerve fibres. 
 
 The prime function of the nerve centres is the 
 transformation of sensory stimuli into motor im- 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 6i 
 
 pulses. One steps on the root of a tree, it remains ; 
 on the foot of a man, it is withdrawn. It is the 
 man's nervous system that makes the sensation and 
 the movement possible. From these two, sensation 
 and movement, develop all the final powers of con- 
 sciousness. Sensation interpreted becomes knowl- 
 edge, movement directed becomes will, the activity 
 involved in each of these giving a tone of feeling to 
 consciousness. 
 
 Such, in briefest outline, is the nature of the cen- 
 tral nervous system through which bodily influences 
 reach the mind, and the training of which, along with 
 the muscles, constitutes physical education. As a 
 telephone system makes a city a compact unit, so the 
 nervous system unites the body into one organic whole, 
 with the brain the central office. " Viewed broadly, 
 the brain is a mass of white matter, with nuclei of 
 gray matter deeply imbedded in it, and with a sheet 
 of gray matter, about one-fifth of a square metre in 
 area, and between two and three millimetres thick, 
 covering the folds, fissures, and convolutions of its 
 surface."^ All appeals to the mind, educational and 
 otherwise, must be made through the agency of the 
 nervous system. The senses on the one hand and 
 the muscles on the other are the two first gateways 
 through which educational influences must proceed. 
 The educator who would climb up into the mind by 
 some other way is unaware of the nature of the child 
 with whom he has to deal. The training of the senses 
 and the doing of things well that require delicacy of 
 
 1 Waller, " Human Physiology," p. 518. Quoted by Stout, " Manual 
 of Psychology," p. 35. 
 
62 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 muscular adjustment are the two beginnings of physi- 
 cal education, and only a sound physical education 
 can support a sound mental education. 
 The In speaking of the nervous system, then, as under- 
 
 Physiology , . ^ . ^ / , 
 
 of Habit. lyiiig conscious processcs, we must not let the op- 
 portunity pass to explain the physiology of the 
 formation of habit, which, as biology has taught us, 
 plays so essential a part in all education. Motor im- 
 pulses, or action, are either involuntary or voluntary, 
 that is, are due to impulses undeliberated upon, or 
 to ideas clearly viewed and exclusively attended to. 
 We involuntarily withdraw our hands from a hot 
 stove ; we voluntarily get some remedy for the burn. 
 The lower nerve centres, located mainly in the spinal 
 cord, are responsible for the involuntary, the reflex, 
 and the instinctive acts; and the higher nerve centres, 
 located in the brain, are responsible for the voluntary 
 acts. The highest mental processes, such as hesita- 
 tion, deliberation, choice, reason, and the like, centre 
 perhaps in the covering of the cerebrum, called the 
 cortex. The circuit of a stimulus from the external 
 world leading to an involuntary act, for example, the 
 stimulus of contact with a hot stove, which circuit 
 would represent the sensory and motor processes in 
 the lower nerve centres, would be as follows : first, 
 the sense organ of touch, located in the skin, would 
 receive the stimulus of contact and then an afferent 
 nerve fibre would take the stimulus to a spinal sensory 
 cell ; whence a connecting fibre would take it to a 
 spinal motor-cell, where it would be transformed from 
 sensory stimulus to motor impulse ; and an efferent 
 nerve fibre would carry the impulse out to the muscle, 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 6^ 
 
 causing its contraction and removal from the stove, — 
 all of which would have transpired in not more than 
 one-tenth of a second. 
 
 The circuit is much longer in the case of voluntary- 
 actions, requiring the use of the higher as well as 
 lower nerve centres, and involving in succession the 
 stimulation of the sense organ, the transfer of the 
 stimulus by an afferent nerve fibre to a spinal sen- 
 sory cell ; then its conveyance by an afferent nerve 
 tract to a cortical sensory cell ; then its passage through 
 a connecting fibre to a cortical motor cell, during 
 which process decisions are reached ; thence an effer- 
 ent nerve tract conveys the motor impulse to a spinal 
 motor cell ; and finally an efferent nerve fibre takes it 
 to the muscle, and directed action ensues. The action 
 may have been sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought 
 any length of time, or it may have been abbreviated 
 into one-fifth of a second. 
 
 Now, all habits consist in turning over to the lower 
 centres alone stimuli that once required the higher 
 centres for their reaction. And from this physiolog- 
 ical point of view, the whole of education, from the 
 alphabet through philosophy, is but equipping a man's 
 nervous system for proper and best habitual reactions 
 on stimuli. Systematic thinking, aesthetic apprecia- 
 tion of nature and life, and the virtues become con- 
 stituent elements of the man's physical being as well 
 as being mental characteristics. And the education 
 which is bad is as firmly supported by the plastic 
 nervous system as that which is good. 
 
 Our question was, How does the body influence the Psychosis 
 mind ? We have seen it is through the nervous sys- Neurosis. 
 
64 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 tern, and we are now prepared to give a still more specific 
 answer. It is only when nervous energy is operative 
 in the higher brain centres that the mind has any 
 content at all, that the mind is at all aware of itself. 
 Not all nervous action is accompanied by conscious- 
 ness. Most of that in the lower centres is not, but 
 all consciousness is accompanied by nervous action. 
 In the far-sounding phrase of the modern physiolo- 
 gists, " no psychosis without neurosis." Mental ac- 
 tivity is accompanied by brain activity. Conscious- 
 ness, as we know it in our present mode of existence, 
 manifests itself only as the correlate of a nervous 
 system. This stone, which the anti-materialists began 
 by rejecting, has become the head of the corner as the 
 working hypothesis of modern physiological psychol- 
 ogy.i It is also the basis for any conception of the 
 fundamental place of the body in any general plan of 
 education. The body is the home of the mind, in 
 the forceful New Testament phrase, " the temple of 
 the Holy Ghost." 
 
 It may even be claimed with scientific credibility 
 that not simply the normal consciousness is the cor- 
 respondent of cerebration, but those abnormal mani- 
 festations of consciousness, such as hypnotism, dual 
 personalities, trances, subconsciousness, the sublimi- 
 nal self, and insanities, are the accompaniments of 
 definable changes in the nervous system. 
 The Degree Since mental activity is dependent upon nervous 
 activity in the brain, it is evident that the degree of 
 one's mental efficiency at any given time will depend 
 upon two things : first, the state of the brain itself ; 
 1 Cf. Professor James, " Briefer Psychology," pp. 5-6. 
 
 of Mental 
 Efficiency. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 65 
 
 and second, the state of the physical body of which 
 the brain is an organic part. Considering first the 
 state of the brain as influencing mental activity, it 
 is noticeable that the brain is most ready for the 
 mind's work after sound sleep, during which unin- 
 terrupted repair, without waste, has been going on. 
 The nervous energy that mental activity consumes 
 by setting free certain organic compounds in the 
 brain substance, is replenished through the blood 
 supply, bringing in nutrition and oxygen to the brain. 
 " The brain may be likened to an engine which can 
 do its work only when fuel is supplied and refuse 
 removed."^ Fuel is supplied through pure blood, 
 fresh air, and good food. Lighter kinds of physical 
 exercise likewise repair brain tissue through the rest 
 afforded. The brain is least ready for work after 
 continuous application for two or three hours. The 
 brain energy of children is less than that of adults, 
 which accounts for the natural flagging of their at- 
 tention after not more than twenty minutes of con- 
 centrated effort. Heavy mental work demands more 
 frequent and longer rest than light, because with light 
 mental work the processes that repair the brain 
 almost keep pace with those that deplete it. In 
 general the quantity of brain energy at command 
 corresponds with the physical energy of youth, 
 maturity, and old age. 
 
 Considering, in the second place, the state of the 
 body of which the brain is a part, as influencing men- 
 tal activity, it is to be noticed that the body is an 
 organism, an assemblage of parts, each one of which 
 
 1 Sully, "Teacher's Handbook of Psychology," p. 33. 
 
66 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 in relation to the others is both means and end. 
 When the muscles of the body are fatigued, the 
 brain power is less. The harder kinds of physical 
 exercise temporarily unfit for mental work by ab- 
 sorbing the present vital energy of the system. 
 Students who play football keep awake with diffi- 
 culty over their books at night. Farmers go to sleep 
 reading newspapers. If the digestive processes are 
 very active, as after a hearty meal, the blood is drawn 
 from the brain and used to digest the food, hence the 
 mind is less active and heaviness is natural. A body 
 in distress from cold, heat, or hunger makes mental 
 action less efficient. In ill health the mind is slower 
 in movement, and good health conditions the alertest 
 states of mind. The quantity of nervous energy is 
 on the ebb from morning till the middle of the after- 
 noon, when the tide turns again. 
 
 These are the facts that show the influence of the 
 body on the mind, and prepare the way for the answer 
 to the second question, namely, What consequent atten- 
 tion should the body receive in educational endeavors } 
 
 Before passing to this phase of the subject, there 
 are two matters that have naturally occurred, doubt- 
 less, to the mind of the reader that are associated 
 with, but not relevant to, the immediate discussion 
 in hand. The first is the obscure problem in physio- 
 logical psychology, as to just what the ultimate con- 
 nection is between nervous energy being set free in 
 the brain and the processes in consciousness. Here 
 one may read to advantage a recent admirable sum- 
 mary of the positions that are held.^ 
 
 ^ Stout, " Manual of Psychology," Introduction, Chap. III. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 67 
 
 The second matter is the simple converse of the The influ- 
 question we have been considering, viz., How does the on^go^^^"^ 
 mind influence the body ? The unity which exists in 
 the individual composed of mind and body should 
 show itself in this way also. In brief, there are three 
 ways in which this influence discovers itself to our 
 common thinking. First, mental states, such as grief, 
 anxiety, fear, dread, depression, prevent the normal 
 functioning of the organs of the body, such as diges- 
 tion. These states, indeed, are partly physical in 
 origin, if not, as Professor James holds, wholly so. 
 Opposite mental states, like excitement, exhilaration, 
 may accelerate the normal functioning. The body 
 reverberates, as it were, with unusual states of con- 
 sciousness. Thus it appears that functional dis- 
 orders, like insomnia, but not organic disorders, like 
 cancer, can be caused or cured by mental influence 
 on the body. Again, mental activity uses up nervous 
 energy, which has to be replenished ; and finally, in 
 all selected action the body is the servant of the 
 mind. The body acts in response to those ideas 
 which are uppermost in consciousness, or which ex- 
 clusively occupy its focus to the inhibition of con- 
 tradictory ideas. 
 
 Let us pass from these related but not pertinent The Atten- 
 points to our second question, viz., Seeing the influ- ^^mM^^^^^ 
 ence of the body through the brain on the mind, what receive, 
 consequent attention should the brain and body re- 
 ceive in order to fullest mental efficiency .!* What 
 has already been said shows at once the necessity for 
 a fount of pure blood supply, of air with oxygen in it, 
 and of sleep and recreation. Further, it is to be 
 
68 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Mental noted that exercise of the brain is normal and, in- 
 
 °^ ' deed, necessary to its growth. It is as natural to 
 
 work when we have rested as to rest when we have 
 worked. Teaching children is not an artificial, but a 
 natural, stimulus to the growth of their brain. So 
 long as the brain's power is not over-taxed, teaching 
 is not, and should not be considered, a severe artifice 
 by either teacher or pupil. The body itself is healthier 
 when the brain is being exercised in moderation. 
 Rest for the brain is not so much the cessation of 
 mental activity, which is impossible during waking 
 consciousness, as its diminution or change, as in 
 absorbing games. 
 
 Brain Rest While stressing mental work as good for brain de- 
 
 velopment, it is important to recognize the physio- 
 logical fact that brains can be over-taxed, resulting in 
 temporary, if not permanent, suspension of mental 
 work. Fatigue is the first symptom. The attention 
 wanders, the expenditure of nervous energy is greater 
 than the supply. He has already worked too long 
 who has to whip himself to further work. After 
 fatigue, headache is the next symptom, and continu- 
 ous over-work without periods of recuperation means 
 certain nervous breakdown. The dangers from over- 
 strain are greatest during the period of most rapid 
 growth, during which time the developing body de- 
 mands most of the nutrition. If the brain consumes 
 it, the body suffers arrested development, and so 
 involves ultimately undesirable results both to brain 
 and mind. Precocious children need to be restrained 
 rather than pushed. Real greatness cannot exist 
 before adolescence. The teacher can never afford to 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 69 
 
 forget that the youngest life is mainly nutritive, that 
 boys and girls are concerned primarily with sensa- 
 tions and movements, that only young men and 
 maidens are approaching fulness of brain power, and 
 that at all times our store of mental energy is not 
 unlimited. The teacher should become generally in- 
 formed of the brain capacity of individual pupils by 
 observing their real powers of attention, and see that 
 no child is over-taxed, that no willing child over-exerts 
 himself, and that the capable indolent child is stimu- 
 lated. The average child among the younger pupils 
 in American public schools is beyond doubt being 
 over-worked. The enriching of the curriculum, the 
 nervousness attending examinations, the rigidity of 
 promotions, the general ignorance of the amount of 
 brain work a growing child ought to do, all are men- 
 aces to the physical well-being of growing school 
 children. The students of child nature say that a 
 seven-year-old child should not study over two hours 
 a day, a nine-year-old may study three hours, a twelve- 
 year-old four. Herbert Spencer sounded the tocsin 
 of war a generation ago against our inattention to the 
 wants of the body in his famous chapter on Physical 
 Education, showing that children are under-fed, not 
 well clothed, and over-worked. 
 
 With growth of the brain during the school period Respect for 
 goes growth in the intellectual and moral powers, and gj-lin^""^*^ °^ 
 the considerate teacher will limit the demands made Capacity. 
 upon the child to its present brain capacity. During 
 the kindergarten period, indeed from the years one to 
 seven, the dominant conscious life is that of sensation 
 and movement ; during the period of the elementary 
 
70 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 schools, from the years seven to fourteen, the dominant 
 conscious life is that of the imagination, memory, and 
 that kind of understanding which likes to perceive 
 relationships between things ; during the secondary 
 school period, from the years fourteen to eighteen, 
 the mind begins to see the relativity of all things to 
 all things through the use of the reason ; and in the 
 college period, from the years eighteen to twenty-two, 
 the powers of reason are perfected in some kind of 
 single vision of truth and reality. Without this finally 
 reached real world-view, the end of a liberal education 
 has not been completely attained Demands made 
 by teachers upon pupils should be limited to their 
 present brain and mental development, as indicated 
 by the appearance of these increasing powers of con- 
 sciousness during the school career. Methods of 
 instruction should just keep pace with mental growth, 
 and neither forge ahead nor lag behind. 
 Suggestions To avoid ovcr-taxing the brain, frequent rests, re- 
 cesses, short recitations, and changes of brain exercise 
 are to be recommended. The description of the ner- 
 vous system showed us that the brain centres of sen- 
 sation are not those of movement ; then for rest for 
 the brain let intellectual work and free movements 
 about the room relieve each other. Even is it true 
 that different centres of the brain are exercised by 
 different subjects of study ; the subjects appeahng to 
 the sense of sight, or object lessons, may well be re- 
 lieved by those appealing to the ear, like music ; while 
 those requiring thought, like mathematics and lan- 
 guage, may profitably be followed by those requiring 
 movements as well as thought, like drawing. 
 
 for Brain 
 Rest. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 71 
 
 The first intimation to the teacher that the pupil 
 needs rest is fatigue.^ The appearance of fatigue 
 indicates three things, viz., that nervous energy is 
 being utilized more rapidly than produced, that there 
 is local waste in the parts mainly active, and that 
 there is a general clogging of cells and tissues. The 
 first of these three elements is most vital. Concern- 
 ing the causes of fatigue, the first and obvious one, of 
 course, is long-continued work. Apart from this, the 
 teacher himself, as tests actually show, is the most 
 responsible factor either in producing or in delaying 
 the appearance c-- fatigue. Thirdly, of the causes, 
 certain school subjects are in themselves fatiguing, 
 such as gymnastics, mathematics, and foreign lan- 
 guages, mentioned from the first in fatiguing power. 
 Certain other school subjects are recuperative, such 
 as drawing, singing, mother-tongue, history, geog- 
 raphy, and, perhaps, natural science, arranged in a 
 descending scale. For brain rest school programmes 
 should alternate the fatiguing and recuperative sub- 
 jects. 
 
 The physical nature of school children is a fact to study of the 
 be observed and considered. It was largely disre- ^wiT^^ 
 garded until the problems of modern city schools, 
 such as warming and ventilating, elevated the impor- 
 tance of the question to that of first rank. Both the 
 problem and the way of getting at its solution, to- 
 gether with admirable practical hints concerning the 
 physical peculiarities of children, are delightfully set 
 forth in Dr. Rowe's recent discussion.^ To convince 
 
 1 Consult Sadler, " Reports," Vol. IX, p. 527 and ff. 
 
 2 « The Physical Nature of the Child." 
 
72 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 us of our inattention to this problem, he calls upon 
 teachers to answer off-hand such questions as these : 
 
 " Can all the children see all the blackboard ? Are 
 any straining their eyes by holding their books at an 
 improper distance ? Are any partially deaf ? Are the 
 slow ones incapable or diseased or lazy ? Do they sit 
 and stand correctly ? Should the same degree of pre- 
 cision be expected from all ? What are the causes of 
 paleness ? Do the children know the principles of 
 hygiene essential for health? Are disposition and 
 temperament considered ? What work is done by 
 each pupil out of school ? and what kind ? Do they 
 exercise enough ? Which ones have defects in the 
 vocal organs, and what attention do these receive ? " 
 
 Teachers will find their higher problems easier in 
 proportion as they are ^successful in solving these 
 lower and basic ones. 
 
 These things, then, indicate what attention the 
 body and brain should receive in educational ways. 
 Physical education, meaning proper attention to the 
 body and the brain, is necessary both in itself and 
 because it makes a sound mind possible. Spencer 
 quotes a suggestive writer as saying, *' The first requi- 
 site to success in life is ' to be a good animal.' " Cer- 
 tain it is that the ages of asceticism, of scorn for the 
 body and its natural impulses, are the unstriking ones 
 in the progress of civilization. And Juvenal's famous 
 phrase, mens sana in corpore sano, is adopted by Locke 
 and other moderns as containing a lasting principle. 
 TheAtten- Having considered the influence of the body on 
 
 ii°recdv^ng^ the mind, and the attention it consequently should 
 receive, it is proper now to turn to our third question, 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 73 
 
 and ask, What are the agencies in our schools to-day 
 that make for physical education ? These are four, 
 viz., manual training, play, gymnastics, and athletics. 
 Let us consider these in succession. 
 
 Manual training stands for other things, as we Manual 
 shall see, than physical education, but it stands for framing, 
 this, too. That which furnishes opportunity for self- 
 expression is that which educates. Manual training 
 is an opportunity for self-expression in material forms. 
 Many boys find themselves in wood and metal and 
 clay when not in books, and the training of the hand 
 thus secured is also a training of the brain and of the 
 mind. The hand, indeed, is the mind's greatest 
 executive. Manual training stands for a specialized 
 form of that sensory and motor training which we 
 saw underhes and conditions the finest fruits of 
 mental culture. Among its immediate results may 
 be noted a coordination of mind and hand ; an extra 
 ability in the material execution of ideas ; a removal ^ 
 of awkwardness ; the formation of mental and moral 
 habits of accuracy, precision, and honesty; and a 
 realization of the dignity of labor. The basis of 
 civilization is and must ever remain the material, and 
 it is an educational effect of no small significance or 
 value to be in sympathetic touch with the working 
 world. 
 
 In the curriculum manual training furnishes needed 
 change from mental to physical employment, counter- 
 balances the emphasis laid upon intellectual develop- 
 ment, proceeds in method from the simple through 
 the complex to the unit, and makes education more 
 practical. It is a part of the new educational en- 
 
74 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 deavor, to make the body a readier and more delicate 
 servant of the mind and to make all arts artistic, in 
 accord with the new movement in industry of beautify- 
 ing the common. Its mission is not to supplant, but 
 to supplement the older mental disciplines. The best 
 educational results will be obtained when the pupil's 
 attention is bent on the character of his work, rather 
 than on the proceeds from its sale. 
 
 Rousseau, foreseeing the French Revolution, advo- 
 cated the learning of a trade by every boy, that when 
 upheavals came in society he might be independent. 
 So Emile was a cabinet-maker. To-day the purpose 
 of manual training is, on the other hand, primarily 
 educational, rather than utilitarian. In the Elmira 
 Reformatory it plays a prominent part in the cor- 
 rective discipline of the institution. Actually to-day 
 manual training has its place mainly in the secondary 
 schools in the educational system. It is desirable 
 here, particularly for those intending to make some 
 form of mechanics a profession ; but for the best 
 educational results, its real place is in the grammar 
 grades, from the years seven to fourteen, while the 
 development of the brain is most rapidly progressing. 
 Play. Second, play. The recognition of the service of 
 
 play in education and in life is, omitting the Greeks, 
 modern. Froebel ("Education of Man," 1826) has 
 done most in establishing its educational value, and 
 Groos in interpreting its real significance. We shall 
 have to consider the nature of play, its explanation, 
 and its function in education. 
 The Nature Play Stands in contrast with work. The subjection 
 of Play. q£ ^j^g individual to the demands that the environ- 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 75 
 
 ment makes on him is work. The spontaneous 
 physical expression of individuality is play. Work is 
 always for some ulterior end to be attained ; play is 
 always for its own sake. Work may or may not be 
 agreeable ; play is always pleasant. Work is serious ; 
 play is light. In work the universal self dominates ; 
 in play, the particular private self. In the philosophi- 
 cal language of Dr. Harris, " In work the individual 
 surrenders himself to the service of a universal want 
 or necessity of society, which has created a vocation 
 or calling. Man gives up his particular, special likes 
 and desires in work. He sacrifices ease and momen- 
 tary convenience for rational (universal) ends. He 
 adopts the social order. In play, on the other hand, 
 he gives full rein to the individual whim or caprice. 
 In play his activity is wholly turned toward his own 
 immediate gratification. After work, in which he 
 sacrifices his private particular inclinations for society 
 and for rational ends, comes play, in which he returns 
 to his individuality and relaxes this tension of work. 
 He regains his feeling of self in play, because in play 
 immediate inclination alone guides his activity, and 
 thus the particular self is the impelHng principle, and 
 also the immediate object of it." ^ 
 
 Play is the method the individual takes in preserv- 
 ing himself and his freedom. It protects him from 
 the loss of himself in his labor. It keeps the springs 
 of personal being ever fresh and flowing. A holiday 
 reveals and gratifies a pupil's interests, or a man's, 
 as a work-day does not. That man has worked too 
 long who no longer can enjoy a holiday. He is 
 
 i Harris, " Psychologic Foundations of Education," p. 283. 
 
Play. 
 
 76 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 no longer the master of his work, but has become 
 its servant. 
 
 The Expia- The explanation of play is not so easy to find as its 
 nation of nature. Any theory that aims to be adequate must 
 account for the following facts, viz., that most ani- 
 mals play ; that each kind of animal has its own list 
 of plays ; that they play instinctively and do not have 
 to be taught, though some games are learned by 
 imitation; and that there is an element of "make- 
 believe " in play, as when the dog pretends to be bit- 
 ing the master's hand, or the children "play house." 
 The theories that would explain play are many ; the 
 main ones are three. 
 
 The surplus-energy theory maintains that play is a 
 vent for superfluous vitality. This theory is associated 
 with the names of Schiller in Germany and Spencer 
 in England. There is an element of truth in it. For 
 example, children play when they need no recreation, 
 and athletics drains an institution of exuberant animal 
 spirits which otherwise might flow in bad channels. 
 But this theory does not contain the full truth, for 
 children and animals and men play when they have no 
 superfluous energy, as in some of the rhythmic games 
 of children. And why should the different kinds of 
 animals have instinctively different plays ? And we 
 should expect, further, that so widespread a phenom- 
 enon as play had some deeper significance in the 
 process of evolution than this negative function of an 
 exhaust drain. 
 
 The recreation theory maintains that play is for 
 the relaxation and recreation of exhausted powers. It 
 is associated with the name of Lazarus in Germany. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 77 
 
 The tightened strings of the instrument must be 
 loosened. It is true that the same game may furnish 
 both relaxation and recreation, as tennis lets loose the 
 motor energies penned up in study and tones up the 
 brain's power for work. Play does recreate, but there 
 is not always need of recreation when there is play. 
 
 The practice theory, associated with the name of 
 Groos in Germany and Baldwin in America, main- 
 tains that play is preparatory to the tasks of life. 
 " In child's play opportunity is given to the animal, 
 through the exercise of inborn dispositions, to 
 strengthen and increase his inheritance in the acqui- 
 sition of adaptations to his complicated environment, 
 — an achievement which would be unattainable by 
 mere mechanical instinct alone. The fact that youth 
 is, par excellence^ the period of play, is in thorough 
 harmony with this theory." ^ Or, more briefly, " Play 
 is the agency employed to develop crude powers and 
 prepare them for life's uses."^ Or, as Baldwin ex- 
 presses it, plays " exercise the young animals in the 
 very activities, though in a playful manner, in which 
 they must seriously engage later on in life." ^ Thus, 
 youthful play is nature's way of preparation for later 
 serious living. The kitten's ball is the old cat's 
 mouse. The little mountain goat on the plains in 
 play still jumps up and down, while the fawn whose 
 later life is to be on the plains, jumps straightaway 
 distances. The girl's doll and the boy's soldier and 
 horses are premonitory. The main education of early 
 
 1 Karl Groos, "The Play of Man," p. 2. 
 
 2/3zV.,p. 375. 
 
 3 "The Story of the Mind," p. 48. 
 
78 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 life comes to the child through play. It is nature's 
 schooling and should be supplemented, not interfered 
 with, by man's schooling. 
 TheFunc The function that play performs in education is 
 
 tion of Play. |^^^ ^ ^^^^ ^£ what it docs in life. Nations play as 
 well as individuals, and their games and festivals dis- 
 cover deep-lying national interests. Dr. Harris has 
 shown that the Greek games at Olympia are a revela- 
 tion of the Greek devotion to beauty of the physical 
 body ; that the Roman gladiatorial contests display 
 the sacrifice of the individual to the good or the 
 pleasure of Rome, upon which principle the empire 
 was founded ; that the Mardi Gras in America dis- 
 plays the American idea of the equality of all men 
 and the vanity of insignia ; but that plays are not so 
 prominent in America because our very form of 
 government permits that freedom to the individual 
 which play is designed to secure. 
 
 Play also explains art. All art is due to the play 
 of the productive imagination. Here the play is of 
 the mind and no longer of the body. Groos calls 
 artistic enjoyment "that highest and most valuable 
 form of adult play." Art is conscious self-illusion, — 
 we surrender to the picture, the story, or the statue, 
 as though it were real. Art thus goes back to the 
 *' make-believe " consciousness present in so much 
 play. 
 
 In the school the place of play is fundamental 
 beside work. It affords the necessary reaction from 
 work and preserves the individuality of the pupil. 
 It, and not calisthenics, is the true rest from work. 
 Without it, a return to work with zest is impossible. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 79 
 
 Its educational effects in the way of unintended 
 preparation for later living is incalculable. This is 
 particularly true in England, where play may be said 
 to be a national institution. Play justifies the recess, 
 which should bring a change of scene and air, and 
 which is a valuable example of what Rousseau 
 would call the noble art of losing time. Play explains 
 many student pranks against each other, the faculty, 
 and the town. Much mischief is not serious at all, 
 but only the pupil's natural and individualistic reaction 
 to school restraints. Such frivolous infringements 
 of school order should be carefully distinguished 
 from serious attacks upon it, when it is a ques- 
 tion of management. The demand for pleasure, 
 so natural and strong in children, and so forcefully 
 declared by Luther, is met by play in the school, fur- 
 nishing, as it does, opportunity for the pupil to follow 
 his own bent. 
 
 But as the school must not work at play, so must it 
 be said that it must not play at work. To do every- 
 thing playfully is to remain a child. The school must 
 teach the child to do his duty, even if it is against his 
 inclination. Nor must children be deceived into 
 working under the guise of play, which confusedly 
 mixes opposite elements in life. Yet the work, as 
 work, may be made so attractive that they will love 
 to do it. Indeed, the highest and noblest kind of 
 work has this element of play in it, this element of 
 joy in the activity for its own sake. Play in work is 
 very different from play at work. Hence it is not 
 desirable to have the school run on the sense of duty 
 alone. The work itself should be so compelling in 
 
8o The Philosophy of Education 
 
 interest that it is freely willed, and that the element 
 of drudgery is largely lacking. That school is a 
 prison-house where the stern mistress of law alone 
 rules unenlivened by the perfect law of liberty. 
 
 A last service of the impulse of play in the school 
 is that of socializing the individual, developing disin- 
 terestedness through the performance of something 
 for its own sake, and cultivating the moral personal- 
 ity in games that at any rate must be played fair. 
 The very aim of developing freedom of the personal 
 spirit is thwarted where teachers are officious in the 
 pupils' games. 
 
 As indicated at the outset, Froebel and the kinder- 
 gartners are the true educational interpreters of play 
 as one of the child's highest modes of self-expression. 
 " We should not consider play as a frivolous thing," 
 says Froebel; "on the contrary, it is a thing of pro- 
 found significance. ... By means of play the child 
 expands in joy as the flower expands when it proceeds 
 from the bud ; for joy is the soul of all the actions of 
 that age." In fact, in the kindergarten play is con- 
 verted into systematic teaching, skilfully suggesting 
 as it does aims of action and objects of study. The 
 kindergarten is supervised play ; in it the community 
 sense is developed ; children of the same age playing 
 and working together here develop unselfishness and 
 their social natures in a way impossible in the home 
 with children of different ages and the youngest the 
 object of central interest. With its basic principle of 
 self-development through self-activity, the kindergar- 
 ten is particularly serviceable to that type of child 
 which is naturally timid, undemonstrative, and inac- 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 8i 
 
 tive. As children outgrow the kindergarten, the work 
 impulse must appear increasingly prominent. Play 
 remains, but not as the sole spring of action. The 
 community life of the kindergarten is a true basis of 
 all later education. The practically uniform report is 
 that children who grow through the play of the kin- 
 dergarten do better the work of the grammar grades. 
 
 The discussion of play as a factor in physical edu- 
 cation illustrates how arbitrary are our distinctions 
 of education into physical and mental. Education 
 is really one, and physical education is an aspect of 
 the whole, and not an entity, but an abstraction, in 
 itself. As Schiller says, " a man is fully human only 
 when he plays " ; so it can be said that a man is fully 
 educated only when his body is developed, yet his 
 body cannot be developed without touching his mind 
 at many points. Certainly play brings out the bodily 
 powers, and perhaps dominantly does so, but its in- 
 fluence is coterminous with education itself. 
 
 Sometimes the needed physical exercise that play 
 naturally gives has to be artificially secured by con- 
 scious direction, in which case we have gymnastics, 
 the third element of physical education in our schools 
 to-day. 
 
 Third, gymnastics. As Herbert Spencer says, Gymnastics, 
 gymnastics is "factitious exercise," it is consciously 
 directed physical exercise. The element of spon- 
 taneity and freedom is less than in play, gymnastics 
 requiring a mental strain and the exercise of will 
 power. Mechanical gymnastics is inferior to play, 
 being more fatiguing and less interesting. Play has 
 the invigoration that always accompanies the agree- 
 
82 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 able. Spirited gymnastics, however, is superior to 
 play for physical development, because of the attention 
 given to all parts of the body. Spencer shows, how- 
 ever, that play also provides evenly distributed exer- 
 cise of the body. Gymnastics is decidedly not an 
 end in itself, but a means to an end ; the purpose 
 being not to make gymnasts, but strong physical 
 men. It should be particularly directed toward devel- 
 oping weak points and correcting any physical de- 
 fects of the body, requiring as it does special physical 
 apparatus. Gymnastics of a simple kind is espe- 
 cially valuable for girls, necessitating proper modes of 
 clothing, securing to the body its natural strength, 
 and giving poise to body and mind. No one thing is 
 more encouraging for the future physical welfare of 
 Americans than the present large and growing inter- 
 est on the part of our young women in all kinds of 
 indoor and outdoor bodily exercise. While the home 
 is still their peculiar sphere, the house is no longer 
 their prison. 
 
 The direct aim of all artificial physical exercise is 
 the reaching and the keeping of the normal size and 
 strength of the main tissues, the acquiring of correct 
 and economical habits of nervous and muscular activ- 
 ity, the development of the motor areas of the brain, 
 and the giving of the mind powers of easy direction 
 over the body. Through the right kind of physical 
 culture the nerve centres are organized and the body 
 becomes what it should be, — the ready and accurate 
 expression of the mind, the material that manifests 
 the mental. Culture of the body aims to make it 
 the fit bearer of a cultured mind. The tangible re- 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 83 
 
 suits of gymnastic exercise during the period of plas- 
 ticity are increased weight and height and strength. 
 Gymnastics is a good supplementary agency to play 
 in physical education, and should be required in the 
 educational system, at least through the adolescent or 
 secondary school period, if not the first part of the 
 time in college, of all students not regularly engaged 
 in other forms of bodily exercise, as athletics. This 
 brings us to a consideration of the last regular mode 
 of physical education, which, like the trust in the 
 political world, is a contemporary problem, and neces- 
 sitates regulation. 
 
 Fourth, athletics. In the beginning it is to be Athletics. 
 observed that athletics has been the cause of a gen- 
 eral alarm out of all proportion to its danger or its 
 importance in education. Athletics has been, and is 
 in no immediate danger of becoming other than a 
 simple and natural by-play in the course of American 
 education. The vexed fretting at its presence, the 
 conspicuous place it occupies in the illustrated and 
 unillustrated press, the printing of cuts of boys and 
 unremarkable players, all serve to magnify unduly its 
 importance, and to give it a place in the public eye 
 out of all proportion to the place it really occupies in 
 our educational institutions. 
 
 Athletics is playing to win. There is the general 
 consciousness, however, that it is better to lose fairly 
 than to win unfairly. The fact that a fairly won 
 victory over a worthy rival is the goal, is the secret 
 of the life of athletics. The success here is unquali- 
 fied; the game is lost or won. There is a square 
 estimate of comparative strength, with a clear and 
 
84 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 irrevocable decision. Usually, life provides us with 
 qualified successes or partial defeats. In athletics 
 the victory and defeat are each absolute. This final- 
 ity about the result explains both the animus for the 
 game and the feelings accompanying the outcome. 
 Athletics introduces the element of emulation in 
 games. It differs from gymnastics in that the latter 
 is mainly for the individual, with health in view; while 
 athletics is mainly for teams, with victory in view. 
 This associated play gains in attractiveness over the 
 isolated. In athletics, again, as differing from gym- 
 nastics, one specializes in his position, and exerts him- 
 self beyond what is necessary for physical exercise. 
 
 The development of athletics into national promi- 
 nence is a matter of one generation. Before the 
 Civil War college athletics consisted in rowdyism, play- 
 ing practical jokes on the faculty, attending cock-fights, 
 engaging in disreputable prize-fights, and sometimes 
 in untrained boat-racing. To-day a big intercollegi- 
 ate athletic contest means a multitude of spectators 
 and the expenditure of a fortune of money. Har- 
 vard's athletics for the season of 1 900-1 901 netted 
 nearly ^40,000, being an increase of about ^12,500 
 over the preceding year, the total receipts of the year 
 being over ^117,000. For some, though less than 
 a majority, of college students, athletic sports occupy 
 a competing place with scholarship on the one hand, 
 and with social intercourse on the other. What is 
 to be our attitude toward the part that athletics plays 
 in physical education ? 
 
 Actually the attitude is now one of disapproval, or 
 of approval, or of suspended judgment. The number 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 85 
 
 composing the last is considerable. Those who dis- 
 approve of modern athletics urge, in summary, four 
 objections, viz., it provides exercise for the few while 
 the many look on, it carries the idea of amusement to 
 excess in the serious work of getting an education, 
 it discourages scholarship, and it disturbs morals. 
 There are grounds, and often too good grounds, for 
 these objections ; but those who make them must bear 
 in mind the considerable replies made by those who 
 favor athletics. The many who sit on the bleachers 
 smoking, or lie idling around, really have recourse to, 
 and to some extent use, gymnastics, play, and out-of- 
 door hours for exercise. Further, a careful computa- 
 tion of the men in the average college who at some 
 time in their course have undergone training for 
 some team will actually show about fifty per cent. 
 At Harvard the percentage of players is larger. 
 President Eliot writes, ^' It is reasonable to suppose 
 that at least two thousand students out of the thirty- 
 five hundred in Cambridge take some active part in 
 one or more of the thirteen sports in which an enu- 
 meration of the number of participants was made." ^ 
 These facts indicate that athletic sports benefit de- 
 cidedly more than the few they are given credit for. 
 The second objection, that athletic contests pro- 
 vide excessive amusement, that the time and atten- 
 tion devoted to this kind of entertainment js out of 
 proportion to its relative value in life, is considerable. 
 The physical, though valuable beyond estimate, is 
 indeed not the most valuable thing in life, and that 
 
 1 Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 
 1901-1902, p. 41. 
 
86 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 youthful student's interest which is centred primarily 
 in athletic contests is certainly misplaced. And 
 recent investigations tend to show that the college 
 athlete attains a distinction in life slightly below the 
 average of his class.^ Yet one wonders if, as a na- 
 tion, the American people have enough play in their 
 life. Is not the world still too much with us, with its 
 busy and ponderous pursuits overwhelming individu- 
 ality .■* The world of matter and of commerce might 
 certainly become less wearing on our nervous mech- 
 anism were the play element introduced more largely 
 into our society through the infusion of an element 
 trained to appreciate its real place in life. The small 
 Greek nation, as a whole, once in four years cele- 
 brated athletic contests, under which the arts of 
 poetry, of sculpture, and of religion flourished. The 
 original of the Apollo is not that god, but some oily 
 Greek youth on the sandy plains under the shadow 
 of Olympus by the banks of the Alphaeus. In 
 America to-day the arts, due to play, are not keep- 
 ing pace with the sciences, due to work. The busy 
 American needs what Professor James calls "the 
 gospel of relaxation," and athletics, duly placed 
 among the educational influences, will forward this 
 interest. 
 
 The third objection, that athletic games discourage 
 scholarship, wants proof. It is true that these games 
 consume vital energy that might be given to study; 
 but it is doubtful if it would be, were there no ath- 
 letics. It is also true that athletics furnishes an 
 
 1 A. Lawrence Lowell : " College Rank and Distinction in Life." 
 Atlantic Monthly , October, 1903. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 87 
 
 interest often more compelling to participants than 
 books ; but it is doubtful if books would receive any 
 larger attention from these particular men, were there 
 no competing athletics. Time, it is true, is required 
 for athletic sports ; but only so much time under any 
 conditions can be given to study. A few athletes are 
 fine scholars, be it said, showing that the two things 
 are not inherently contradictory. It is doubtless true 
 that the scholarship of athletes falls but little more 
 short, if any, of their ability than that of other stu- 
 dents. On the whole, the conflict between the claims 
 of scholarship and athletics is rather a matter for 
 regulation than for the condemnation of athletics. It 
 is easy to require athletes to maintain a certain stand- 
 ard of scholarship, and thus the problem is actually 
 solved in certain institutions where otherwise it would 
 be gravest. With the growing differentiation between 
 the college and the university, it is necessary to recog- 
 nize that the college student is not yet the scholar 
 with specialized interests that he may become, but is 
 just the universal man, with all the natural human inter- 
 ests weaving the web of his life. Before athletics came 
 to occupy its present prominent place in education, 
 the college student was supposed to be a monument 
 of erudition, whose body shadowed forth in pallid face 
 and attenuated figure his nights of groping for the 
 light of knowledge. To-day, athletic contests, re- 
 enforced by other agencies as human, have trans- 
 formed this college student into a college man of 
 superb physical strength, of applicable mental fur- 
 nishing, and with all the interests of real life at heart. 
 Not since the days of universal Greeks has there 
 
88 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 been such an illustration of the simply human as that 
 shown by the college man to-day. 
 
 The fourth objection, that athletic sports demor- 
 alize, is partly true. The athletic record is stained by 
 betting on the big games, by carousal often in celebra- 
 tion of great victories, and by the sacrifice of days to 
 the prophecy and history of games from which recov- 
 ery of interest in study is a slow and painful process. 
 But this evil is not unmitigated. Another phase of 
 the truth is that athletic interests advance morals. 
 The student body has been taken out of itself and 
 made to appreciate strength and courage and virility 
 and skill as virtues, and a loyal disinterested devotion 
 to one's institution has been developed. And the 
 capacity for a disinterested devotion is an element in 
 the highest success, service, and happiness in life. 
 
 The positive case for the maintenance of the pres- 
 ent position of athletics as an agency of physical 
 education may be briefly put from three points of 
 view, the physical, the intellectual, and the moral. 
 First, athletic contests develop physical strength, force, 
 power, agility, dexterity, ease, grace, and swiftness. 
 The record in after life of American football men and 
 Oxford oars shows a vitality decidedly above the aver- 
 age. The fatalities in football have been advertised 
 beyond their significance, occurring as they do mainly 
 at the opening of the season and with unskilled play- 
 ers, though temporary injuries are numerous. The 
 actual number of fatalities in football, the world over, 
 is reported as less than in any other sport except ten- 
 nis, skating, golf, and boxing. Second, athletics de- 
 velop certain desirable intellectual qualities, such as 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 89 
 
 quickness, alertness, self-knowledge, and the ability 
 to think in a crisis. Third, they develop the moral 
 qualities of self-control, self-reliance, force, endurance, 
 courage, the sense of the value of training, the disci- 
 pline of defeat, if not humility in victory, the sense 
 of the value of concerted action, nerve, practicality, 
 and will power. Football, the most objectionable of 
 athletic sports, is the prince of games in moral qual- 
 ity. Its team, which is an organized unit, is the finest 
 training in associated effort. 
 
 Those who favor athletic amusements and are in- 
 clined to look into the future for some of the justi- 
 fying effects which have followed in their wake in the 
 past, point to the time when this devotion to the physi- 
 cal nature of man may generate another age of art, 
 when to know and to reverence the physical frame of 
 man will lead to its permanent and beautiful embodi- 
 ment in fitting forms. As the lamented President 
 Walker says in concluding his discussion on "College 
 Athletics,"^ "The vision of the Apollo may yet rise 
 to the view of thousands out and up from the arena 
 at Springfield, as erst it rose before the thronging 
 multitudes of Olympia." 
 
 In summarizing our attitude of qualified approval 
 toward athletics, the conclusion of President Eliot's 
 discussion of this subject, mentioned above, must be 
 quoted, " Such are some of the evils that attend the 
 prevaiHng exaggeration of athletic sports ; but when- 
 ever the evils consequent upon this exaggeration are 
 mentioned, it should also be mentioned that the out- 
 door sports on the average and in the mass do more 
 
 1 "Discussions in Education," p. 285. 
 
90 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 good than harm ; for they promote vigorous physical 
 development, and provide invaluable safeguards against 
 effeminacy and vice." ^ 
 
 Play, gymnastics, and athletics stand to each other 
 in supplementary rather than contradictory relations. 
 They take their turns in serving best the interests of 
 physical education. During the period of infancy, 
 say the first seven or eight years of life, the larger 
 neuro-muscular combinations must be developed, and 
 play performs this function. During the elementary 
 period, say the second seven years of life, the finer 
 neuro-muscular adjustments, unreached by play, and 
 the all-round development of the physical system 
 must be secured, for which gymnastics is peculiarly 
 adapted. During the secondary and higher school 
 periods specialization in physical training is in order, 
 to which aim athletics lends itself. Of course these 
 periods and their corresponding agencies for physical 
 development overlap to some extent. 
 
 Because the pupil is a psycho-physical integer, 
 these same agencies likewise best serve the interests 
 of mental education when so arranged. There is a 
 neat parallelism between what each ag>ency in its 
 period does for the body and what the mind educa- 
 tionally needs. Play occupies the mind with sensa- 
 tions and movements ; gymnastics supports the idea 
 of all-round development, the foundations of which 
 are laid in the elementary school ; athletics specialize 
 physically as the higher school periods do mentally. 
 Thus play, gymnastics, and athletics have places and 
 values relatively to each other. 
 
 1 "Discussions in Education," p. 41. 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 91 
 
 This concludes the discussion of the actual agencies The Atten- 
 of physical education in the American school system ha^recefved^ 
 of to-day. A brief glance at the history of physical in the Past, 
 education will serve to show the tortuous ascending 
 and descending path by which it has come into its 
 present substantial prominence, will put its present 
 position in historic relief, and will guarantee to it no 
 waning future. 
 
 In ancient Persia, under Cyrus the foremost nation 
 of earth, the youth were educated by the state for the 
 state in its military campaigns. The youth were 
 trained in gymnastics and military tactics, and, next 
 to moral rectitude, physical strength was held to be 
 useful to men. 
 
 Among the Greeks, who perhaps borrowed certain 
 of their ideas concerning physical training from the 
 Persians, gymnastics received a development second 
 to none, unless it be that of our own time. They 
 excelled in combining play and physical exercise. 
 The Spartan child, if ill-formed physically at birth, 
 was exposed. As a youth he endured hardships of 
 hunger and cold, in order to become an efficient sol- 
 dier. The Spartan girls have the distinction of being 
 the first women in the history of education to receive 
 physical training. This included gymnastics, run- 
 ning, and jumping, and was intended to make them 
 the mothers of hardy men. In advocating in his 
 *' Republic " similar physical training for girls and 
 boys, Plato was influenced by the Spartan ideals. 
 
 In Athens, the gymnastic training took the direc- 
 tion of beauty, rather than strength, of body. The 
 world has never elsewhere seen such devotion to 
 
92 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 athletic contests as in the Isthmian and Olympic 
 games. These were the occasion of Greece's largest 
 assemblies, and by them they reckoned their chro- 
 nology. The principal events were throwing the 
 discus, running, jumping, wrestling, and chariot- 
 racing. The laurel-crowned victor was a hero all his 
 life, was carved into marble by a Phidias, written into 
 verse by a Pindar, and honored by posterity as a god. 
 
 Rome, like Sparta, was more practical in its physi- 
 cal training and prepared for war. The Romans were 
 the first to encourage professionalism in games, pre- 
 ferring for the most part personally to be lookers-on 
 rather than participants. A Roman youth could 
 throw the dart, ride, box, swim, and endure extremes 
 of temperature. Juvenal's classic phrase, mens sana 
 in corpore sano, is now become a commonplace. 
 
 With the first centuries of Christianity physical 
 education went into a decline, though its roots were 
 too deep-lying to be finally extirpated. The body was 
 considered the prison-house of the soul, against whose 
 bars of sin the soul beat and bruised itself in vain, 
 struggling to be free. Man was a pilgrim to a 
 heavenly home, and it was his vile body that was 
 weighing him down and keeping him in bondage. 
 Hence arose asceticism, a product of unearthliness, 
 and inattention even to the natural needs of the 
 body. St. Jerome, in writing to Laeta concerning 
 the education of her daughter, advised against bath- 
 ing and long hours of sleep at night. 
 
 During the Middle Ages the sole exception to this 
 general condemnation of the body was the physical 
 education of the knight. The romantic institution 
 
The Physiological Aspect of Education 93 
 
 of chivalry preserved the natural play instinct, so 
 long done violence to, in games and knightly con- 
 tests. As he followed his liege lord the education of 
 the young knight was both physical and military. 
 He was trained in the so-called seven free arts of the 
 castle, viz., to ride, swim, shoot with bow and arrow, 
 box, hawk, play chess, and write poetry. 
 
 The modern thought about physical education was 
 initiated in the sixteenth century by Frangois Rabe- 
 lais (148 3-1 553). In his revolt against mediaevalism 
 this great French satirist urged upon youth and 
 monks the necessity of an hour's daily physical exer- 
 cise in the open air, to be followed by proper ablu- 
 tions. John Milton (i 608-1 674), in his famous 
 *' Tractate on Education," says, "The exercise which 
 I commend first is the exact use of weapons ; stu- 
 dents must also be practised in all the locks and 
 grips of wrestling, wherein Englishmen are wont to 
 excel." John Locke (163 2- 1704), teacher, states- 
 man, and philosopher, revives first among the moderns 
 the ancient phrase of Juvenal, saying, " First a sound 
 body, than a sound mind." Rousseau (1712-1778), 
 the real destroyer in the eighteenth century and its 
 greatest educational figure, permits nothing until 
 Emile's twelfth year but physical development and 
 training of the senses. Froebel (1782-185 2), the 
 child's prophet, gave play a fundamental place in all 
 education in his "Education of Man" (1826). He 
 first used calisthenic exercises for the physical devel- 
 opment of children. 
 
 It was only the latter half of the nineteenth century 
 that saw the general passage of mediaeval ideas about 
 
94 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the body and the growth of the conception that the 
 schools were to make physical men as well as scholars. 
 Herbert Spencer led the van of this last attack, and 
 the English, to-day, are the great outdoor-play nation, 
 with horsemanship, rowing, cricket, Rugby football, 
 and golf. Germany prefers fencing for student exer- 
 cise, and follows Froebel also in giving play a training 
 place in education, though the kindergarten itself is 
 almost expatriated. Gymnastics and military drill, 
 the latter due to the Napoleonic regime and for the 
 most part a failure, are the exercise of French stu- 
 dents. In America the national game is baseball, 
 strongly seconded by football, track athletics, and 
 rowing. The movement for gymnastics began in 
 1 86 1 with the erection of a gymnasium at Amherst, 
 with compulsory daily attendance. The physical 
 training of girls receives special attention in America, 
 — Radcliffe College, for example, having had a gym- 
 nasium before a dormitory. 
 
 This, then, is the place occupied by physical educa- 
 tion in the thought of the world to-day, as guaranteed 
 by its historic growth, and herewith the argument of 
 this chapter in its bearing on the general question of 
 the nature of education may be reviewed. Because 
 of the influence of the body on the mind as defined, 
 because of the consequent attention the body and brain 
 should receive, and indeed are actually receiving from 
 certain school agencies to-day, and have received in the 
 past, it is evident that we are justified in including 
 physical development as a necessary element in our 
 conception of education. The Introduction, in Chap- 
 ter I, taught us to think of education fundamentally as 
 
t\ition of 
 Education. 
 
 The Physiological Aspect of Education 95 
 
 development. *' The Biological Aspect of Education," 
 in Chapter II, taught us to consider it primarily as the 
 superior adjustment of a conscious human being to 
 his environment. Now the ** Physiological Aspect of 
 Education " teaches us that we cannot wisely neglect 
 to conceive of it also as the development of the body. 
 Including this last factor as an element in the defini- 
 tion already reached in answer to the question. What 
 is education ? we have the following. Education is second Defi- 
 the superior adjustment to his environment of a physi- 
 cally developed human being. 
 
 We have seen that biologically and physiologically 
 education provides the brain with individual and 
 useful habits of reaction on the world's stimuH, that 
 it adjusts the conscious human person in a superior 
 fashion to his environment, and that it develops his 
 bodily powers. The ultimate definition of education 
 cannot say less than these things, though it may have 
 to say more. The being to be educated, upon whose 
 nature depends the nature of education, is character- 
 ized not simply by life, with which biology can deal ; 
 not simply by the physical form in which his life em- 
 bodies itself, with which physiology can deal ; but also 
 by companionship with his fellows, without which his 
 nature cannot realize itself or grow toward complete- 
 ness. That environment in the adjustment to which 
 consists man's education must be capable of socializ- 
 ing man's nature. The new question arises. What is 
 the nature of that environment through adjustment 
 to which man becomes educated } And what does 
 the social nature of man require of education } The 
 answers ta these questions must be found in the 
 
g6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 " Sociological Aspect of Education," to which we 
 now turn. 
 
 REFERENCES ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Bain, Education as a Science, pp. 235-280. 
 
 Baldwin, The Story of the Mind, pp. 43-51. 
 
 Barnett, Common Sense in Education and Teaching, Chap. 
 III. 
 
 Bates, The Negative Side of Modern Athletics, Forum, May, 
 1901. 
 
 Burnham, Fed. Sem., Vol. II, pp. 17, 49? 67. 
 
 Compayr^, Lectures on Pedagogy, Pt. I, Chap. II. 
 
 Davis, Elementary Physiology, Chap. IX. 
 
 Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, Chap. XVIII. 
 
 Groos, The Play of Animals ; The Play of Man. 
 
 Ham, Mind and Hand. 
 
 Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education, Chap. XXXIV. 
 
 Hartwell, Physical Training. In Report of United States 
 Commissioner of Education, 1897-1898, Chap. XII. 
 
 Hutchinson, Play as an Education. Cont. Rev., September, 
 1903. 
 
 Huxley, Elementary Physiology, Lessons I and XI. 
 
 Laurie, Institutes of Education, Pt. I, Lee. III. 
 
 Stout, Manual of Psychology, Introduction, Chap. III. 
 
 Sadler, Reports, Vol. II, passim ; Vol. IX, p. 527 ff. 
 
 Sully, The Teacher's Handbook of Psychology, Chap. III. 
 
 Spencer, Education, Chap. IV. 
 
 Walker, Discussions in Education, pp. 259 ef seq. 
 
 Warner, The Study of Children, Chap. XII. 
 
 Woodward, Manual Training. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 The term environment, in our present definition The Nature 
 of education, requires exposition of us. What is the En^^on-^^^^ 
 nature of the environment to which man in the pro- ment. 
 cess of his education becomes adjusted ? This is our 
 new question. A child begins his life in ignorance 
 of himself and of his world ; he begins where primi- 
 tive man began» Without educational assistance of 
 some kind he must also live his life as primitive man 
 did ; he must depend upon his own experience for 
 the lessons he learns. But since primitive man not 
 only learned his lessons but also taught them to his 
 children, the experience of the human race has been 
 accumulating with the passage of the historic genera- 
 tions. It is this racial experience which constitutes 
 the environment into which the latest child is born, 
 and which gives him the handicap of the centuries 
 over his primitive forbears. 
 
 In brief, the environment of the pupil is the 
 achievement of the race, to which he potentially be- 
 longs, in the conquest of nature, in the movement of 
 affairs, and in the knowledge of itself. It is a spirit- 
 ual environment. The adjustment to this environ- 
 ment, which is the race's life, discovers to the pupil 
 his own social capacities ; he finds his own life in his 
 H 97 
 
98 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 race's life. This sharing of the race's life is education 
 as viewed by sociology. In the language of President 
 Butler, who first described education in these terms, 
 ** If education cannot be identified with mere instruc- 
 tion, what is it ? What does the term mean ? 1 
 answer, it must mean a gradual adjustment to the 
 spiritual possessions of the race." ^ 
 
 There is a special period in the life of each indi- 
 vidual dedicated by nature to this process of adjust- 
 ment. The first three years of a child's life are 
 spent under the influence of the family and in getting 
 possession of his body. The educational years, from 
 three to twenty-six or more, are the special period of 
 adjustment to his spiritual environment. 
 
 The term spiritual, used in describing the environ- 
 ment of man, is comprehensive and includes all the" 
 relations in which man as a conscious being stands to 
 his fellows, to what his fellows have done, and to his 
 own personal ideals. It includes man's relation to 
 Nature as itself the embodiment of ideas. Did not 
 man find Nature intelligible and responsive to his- 
 efforts to understand it, his relation thereto could 
 not be included under the term spiritual. Its present 
 inclusion in the spiritual environment to which man 
 stands related intends by no means to settle the 
 metaphysical question, whether nature ultimately is 
 atoms in motion or an externalized form of mental 
 energy, but only implies that no part of the environ- 
 ment of man is finally foreign to him. Everywhere 
 man finds himself reflected in the universe in which 
 he lives. Its ultimate confines may be unknown to 
 
 1 "The Meaning of Education," p. 17. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 99 
 
 him, but he will not admit they are unknowable. To 
 admit such would be to cripple his ultimate efforts at 
 knowledge and comprehension, and would be to 
 readmit the reign of mystery in his world, which he 
 has been at such pains during ages of ceaseless effort 
 to banish. In borrowing President Butler's happy 
 epithet, then, and in describing the environment of 
 man as spiritual, there is no unwarranted extension 
 of the legitimate meaning of the term. It opens 
 complete range to the present aspect of the dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 The question arises at once. How does man become The Method 
 adjusted to this environment which his race has made °^j.^^ Pupil's 
 
 •' ^ Adjustment 
 
 and which is himself objectified, and which he him- to his Envi- 
 self is potentially ? It is only by reproducing in his ^°^"^^^*- 
 own mental history the mental history of the race. 
 As biologists tell us that the human embryo in its 
 development to physical maturity passes through the 
 life history of organic forms, ontogeny repeating 
 phylogeny, so must educators realize that the human 
 mind in its educational development to mental matur- 
 ity passes through the spiritual history of the race. 
 Man, as himself a social being by nature, as a real 
 part of an associated whole, reproduces in his own 
 mental life the mental life of the race, and thereby 
 becomes educated. Mental reproduction is the cause 
 of education. The educated mind has been fertilized 
 by the life of the world and is fruitful in its concep- 
 tions. Education is giving birth to mental heirs, and 
 Socrates, the first great teacher of the Greeks, well 
 described his vocation as the art of intellectual mid- 
 wifery. He assisted the mind in bringing forth its 
 
 - 1 „ r .•^ 
 
lOO The Philosophy of Education 
 
 ideas. Often the reproduction of the spiritual envi- 
 ronment is barren repetition, the struggle of the 
 world toward knowledge and art and liberty coming 
 out of the mind as it went in, unassimilated, unappre- 
 ciated, and unused. 
 
 This production from within the mind of its own 
 world in response to the stimulating effects of the 
 world without is education as a process, as an activity. 
 The youth thereby unifies himself with his race in the 
 educational period, and becomes actually what he 
 always was potentially. What his race has produced, 
 he reproduces, and thus universalizes his individual 
 nature and socializes his private impulses. Thus for 
 him education is become the epitome of civilization. 
 Education as Thus from the sociological point of view, educa- 
 sodok)?v ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ reproduction of the spiritual environment. 
 This aspect of education is called sociological because 
 man, the reproducing agent, is social by nature, as 
 Aristotle showed, and because the spiritual environ- 
 ment which he reproduces is the product of the 
 thought, feeling, and action of man in organized 
 masses. In adjusting man to his actual environment, 
 education performs a social function. Man is not 
 himself alone, but his life is in relationship to his 
 fellows. Man is not a social deposit, simply, but his 
 life has its self-conscious centre in himself. The 
 bringing of the individual into unifying relations with 
 society is the function which education has to per- 
 form. Hence this aspect of the discussion is called 
 sociological. 
 
 Having seen thus the nature of the environment as 
 spiritual to which man must be adjusted in education, 
 
 Sociology. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education loi 
 
 and the method of this adjustment as reproduction, The Ques- 
 we are prepared to open the three questions of the gocLifgkiai 
 sociological aspect of education, viz.. What are the Discussion 
 elements of the spiritual environment ? What are 
 the social effects of its reproduction by individuals ? 
 and finally. What practical consequences follow for 
 education from this aspect of the discussion ? 
 
 First, the elements of the spiritual environment. TheEie- 
 This question calls for a more specific consideration spiritual En- 
 of the nature of the environment called spiritual by vironment. 
 which man is encircled. The elements in the spir- 
 itual environment are three in number. The reason 
 for this number lies in the nature of mind. The 
 spiritual environment is the achievement of the mind 
 of the race ; these elements are consequently declara- 
 tory of the nature of the mind of the race ; but the 
 racial mind is but the individual mind writ large : 
 psychologists are agreed that the different ultimate 
 modes of being conscious, the final phases of mental 
 life, are three in number, viz., the mind knows, and 
 feels, and wills, that is, it has an acquaintanceship 
 with the external world in which it takes a certain 
 pleasure or displeasure, and on which it works certain 
 energetic reactions. Consequently the three elements 
 of the spiritual environment are the intellectual, 
 what is known ; the emotional, what is felt ; and the 
 volitional, what is willed. Considering the objects of 
 these mental activities, the mind knows truth and 
 avoids error; it feels, as its highest object, beauty 
 and avoids ugliness ; and it wills, in momentous issues, 
 goodness and avoids evil. These are the natural 
 points of impingement of the mind upon the external 
 
I02 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 reality, with their foil-like, accompanying trail of the 
 serpent, whatever that may finally be. Truth, beauty, 
 and goodness, then, are the race's spiritual ideals, and 
 the adjustment of the child to these essential realities 
 that the history of the race has disclosed, is the task 
 of supreme moment which is set for education. 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' Physics 
 
 
 
 Geology 
 
 
 
 Mineralogy 
 
 
 
 Inorganic - 
 
 Geography 
 Physiography 
 Chemistry 
 . Astronomy 
 
 
 
 ■ Matter - 
 
 . Organic 
 
 - Biology 
 Botany 
 Zoology 
 Physiology 
 Anatomy 
 
 
 ■ Sciences . 
 
 
 Anthropology 
 Ethnology 
 Sociology 
 . Economics 
 
 
 
 
 ' Subjective 
 
 Psychology 
 ' Logic 
 
 
 
 . Mind 
 
 
 Metaphysics 
 
 
 
 
 Esthetics 
 
 The Spiritual 
 
 
 . Objective 
 
 Ethics 
 
 Environment - 
 
 
 Language 
 
 of the Pupil 
 
 
 ■ Mathematics 
 
 
 
 ' Architecture 
 
 
 
 
 Sculpture 
 
 
 
 Arts 
 
 Painting 
 Music 
 Literature 
 . Religion 
 
 
 
 r History 
 
 
 
 . Volitions - 
 
 Constituti 
 
 ons 
 
 
 j La^ 
 L Morals 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 103 
 
 What is the nature of the intellectual environment The Nature 
 of the child ? It is what is commonly called Science, °^f ^^^'^^-. 
 
 -' ' lectual Envi- 
 
 and is produced by the mind of the race in its at- ronment. 
 tempt to understand the physical and mental world in 
 which it lives. Science is a product of the effort of 
 the mind to know the truth concerning reality. It is 
 a resultant of intellectual activity interpreting the 
 world. In the broadest sense of the term, science is 
 knowledge. What divisions can be made in the knowl- 
 edge which man has of his world ? That is, what 
 are the sciences } 
 
 The universe in which man lives contains, for prac- 
 tical purposes of classification, matter and mind. This 
 present division does not commit us in advance to 
 dualism as the ultimate metaphysical point of view. 
 Concerning each of these realities, man has attained 
 and is attaining knowledge. They are first discovered 
 by man in the order mentioned, first matter and then 
 mind, by man who first looks outward and then in- 
 ward. In the words of Tennyson, the people's poetic 
 philosopher : — 
 
 " The baby new to earth and sky, 
 
 What time his tender palm is pressed 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 Has never thought that this is I. 
 
 " But as he grows he gathers much, 
 And learns the use of thou and me, 
 And finds, I am not what I see, 
 And other than the things I touch." 
 
 How shall we think of matter, the reality first dis- (1) what 
 covered by mind.? Ordinarily we do think of it in ^^ Matter? 
 
I04 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 two ways, viz., as inorganic and organic. Organic 
 matter is such an assemblage of parts that each part 
 is essential to the life of every other part. In an 
 organism, like a plant or an animal, each part is both 
 means and end. Inorganic matter, like a rock or a 
 mountain, is an aggregate rather than a unity. 
 
 But our question was intended to go deeper than 
 our ordinary thought about the nature of the matter. 
 This takes us at once out of the field of experience 
 into that of speculation, where our present purpose 
 does not permit us to tarry long. The last words of 
 physics, the typical science of inorganic matter, con- 
 cerning the ultimate nature of matter are atoms in 
 motion ; or ions, infinitesimal divisions of the atom ; or 
 electrons, infinitesimal electrified bodies ; or centres of 
 force. The last words of biology, the typical science of 
 organic matter, are life, the correspondence of internal 
 to external, and primordial protoplasm. In these last 
 words of the typical physical and natural sciences, they 
 have already become philosophy, and it is fitting to hear 
 what philosophy itself may say. Here the last words 
 are, crude indefinite and unorganized stuff (Plato), an 
 unknown thing-in-itself (Kant and Herbert Spencer), 
 the not-self (Fichte), and the infinite idea self -objecti- 
 fied (Hegel). Without definition of these positions, 
 which would take us too far afield, it is clear to say 
 that matter provides the mind with sensations, which 
 mind alone without the medium of matter of some 
 kind does not seem capable of doing ; also that matter 
 is external to mind ; also that matter is, to a degree at 
 least, intelligible to mind. For us an object is a unity 
 of sensations that will go together, and beyond this 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 105 
 
 our knowledge does not carry us. It is gratuitous to 
 assume that, if the object were completely known, 
 something entirely different would be discovered there 
 from that which is already known concerning it. 
 Combining these conceptions into a single' one, we 
 may say that matter is the extra mentem object of 
 thought, making sensations possible. This is what 
 we finally know about the reality of material environ- 
 ment, which is also a portion of the spiritual environ- 
 ment in relation to which man stands. Nothing that 
 we know about matter forbids us to believe, and every- 
 thing that we know supports the belief, that mind is 
 the ultimate reality of the universe. So far as mat- 
 ter alone, then, is concerned in the question of one's 
 metaphysical point of view, our present position is 
 rightly described as idealism, and this is our gen- 
 eral answer to the metaphysical problems previously 
 shelved concerning the relations of consciousness to 
 the brain and mind to matter. The little that we 
 already know about matter as mind **in its otherness" 
 or objectified form shows us how meagre are the 
 confines of human knowledge after centuries of intel- 
 lectual effort to comprehend, and what a useful dis- 
 position could be made of measureless time in the 
 extension of knowledge, should it be vouchsafed us. 
 
 The discovery of the self follows upon the discovery (2) what 
 of the not-self. Knowledge is first of matter, then of ^^ ^'^^'^ 
 mind. Matter reduces itself in the last analysis to a 
 sensation-producing extra-mental object of thought. 
 What is the nature of the mind that first discovers 
 matter and then itself } It was mind that we used in 
 discovering and defining matter. Mind, then, is our 
 
io6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 instrument of discovery and definition. Mind it is 
 wherewith definitions are sought and framed. It is 
 our view-point of our world. The eye of the mind, 
 after looking outward at the material world, may look 
 inward at itself, as when a man in a mirror sees him- 
 self seeing himself. Through this inward looking of 
 the mind's eye, commonly called introspection, mind 
 is immediately aware of itself. What is itself ? The 
 mind reveals its nature in its processes and its prod- 
 ucts. The difficulty in defining mind is mainly due 
 to considering it abstractly, apart from its manifesta- 
 tions. The attempt at such a definition can end only 
 in synonyms, like consciousness, the state of being 
 aware, intelligence, etc. Mind is the unity of its 
 appearances. It is no thing-in-itself, lying back of the 
 phenomena of consciousness, unknown and unknow- 
 able. It is the synthesis of those concrete experi- 
 ences known to all as sensation, perception, memory, 
 thought, feeling, will, and the rest. Mind is not one 
 of its own aspects ; it is the real unity of all conscious 
 experience. Consciousness is never just consciousness 
 but is always ^something. To define consciousness 
 as such, and without any content in terms of its syno- 
 nyms, is an intelligible but unserviceable procedure. 
 Such consciousness is only the abstract possibility of 
 those concrete mental experiences that occupy our 
 waking lives. To understand the nature of mind, it 
 must be found concretely, in its processes and prod- 
 ucts, that is, in the mental sciences. What are the 
 sciences of matter and mind .? 
 
 The attempt of the human mind to know the inor- 
 ganic phase of its material environment has taken 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 107 
 
 shape, first, in physics, the science of inorganic (3) The 
 matter, of its laws and properties, and of the forces ^'^^^f J?" 
 acting upon it, and, as Bacon called it, " the mother of Sciences, 
 sciences." Then follow, in succession, geology, the 
 science of the earth's form and structure ; mineralogy, 
 the science of certain naturally formed chemical sub- 
 stances of definite constitution and usually crystalline 
 form, called minerals ; geography, the science of the 
 surface of the globe, its features, products, and peoples ; 
 physiography, the science of the globe's climate, 
 moisture, and atmospheric and oceanic currents ; 
 chemistry, the science of the changes in the compo- 
 sition of molecules of matter ; and astronomy, the 
 science of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 Man's knowledge of the organic world has taken 
 form in biology, the science of plant and animal life, 
 the type and head of the organic sciences, dividing 
 itself into botany, the science of plants, and zoology, 
 the science of animals. Then follow physiology, 
 the science of the functions of the organs of the body 
 of plants and animals ; anatomy, the science of the 
 structure of the organs of the animal body ; anthro- 
 pology, the science of man comprehensively viewed, 
 and particularly in his primitive state ; ethnology, 
 the science of the races of mankind ; sociology, the 
 science of the constitution, phenomena, and develop- 
 ment of human society ; and economics, the science 
 of the laws of the production and distribution of the 
 wealth of nations. The term organic, as describing 
 these sciences, here includes not simply individuals, 
 but also groups of individuals acting in organized 
 masses; and economics, whose classification on any 
 
io8 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 basis is not easy, is placed here as the science of one 
 of society's products, viz., wealth. 
 
 The attempt of the human mind to know itself 
 takes two forms, viz., the mind may know itself as 
 such, its own processes and their explanation ; and it 
 may know itself in its products and their nature. The 
 processes of mind would be sensation, perception, 
 memory, attention, reasoning, and the like ; the prod- 
 ucts of mind would be philosophy, language, mathe- 
 matics, and the like. The former division is the 
 science of mind as subjective ; the latter the science 
 of mind as objective. 
 
 The typical science of mind as subjective is psy- 
 chology, the description and explanation of states of 
 consciousness as such. The description of a state of 
 consciousness, such as attention, memory, perception, 
 etc., is its analysis into its constituent elements. The 
 explanation of a state of consciousness is its corre- 
 sponding brain state. Wherever mind is, there is psy- 
 chology's opportunity. So there is a psychology of 
 the animal, the child, the adult, society, the races of 
 mankind, and of mind in its abnormal conditions 
 of insanity, hypnotism, etc. The mind gets knowl- 
 edge of itself as such through introspection alone and 
 through experiment and observation interpreted by 
 means of introspection. Introspection is self-observa- 
 tion ; experiment is the approach to the mind through 
 apparatus ; observation reaches the mind of others 
 through its physical manifestations. 
 
 The sciences of mind as objective are logic, meta- 
 physics, aesthetics, ethics, language, and mathe- 
 matics. All these are the objectified products of the 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 109 
 
 human intelligence. Logic is the science of thought 
 as an objective reality. Metaphysics is the science 
 of ultimate principles. ^Esthetics is the science 
 of the sense of beauty, Ethics the science of human 
 conduct. Logic, aesthetics, and ethics are the ob- 
 jective mental sciences corresponding to the three 
 subjective mental powers of knowing, feeling, and 
 willing, and deal respectively with Truth, Beauty, and 
 Goodness, as objective ideals. The history of phi- 
 losophy is the written record of what men have thought 
 on mental and speculative problems. 
 
 The expression of thought in words is language and 
 the science of language is grammar. A new lan- 
 guage learned is a new expression of thought, a new 
 weapon with which to think. Language is the door 
 to literature, which is one of the expressions of the 
 emotions, and will have its place later in the discus- 
 sion of the emotional environment of man. The 
 usual divisions of the science of language include 
 reading, writing, analyzing, the study of foreign lan- 
 guages, all ending in the master language science of 
 comparative philology. 
 
 Finally, of the objective mental sciences, there is 
 mathematics, the science of what the mind has pro- 
 duced in the realm of number, of measurement, and 
 of quality. As soon as any other science becomes 
 capable of being strictly measured or of statement in 
 numerical terms, it begins to use mathematics. The 
 exactness that characterizes this science is due to its 
 being the mind's own objective product. The usual 
 divisions of mathematics, showing the mind's progres- 
 sive comprehension of quantity, are arithmetic, the 
 
and Arts. 
 
 no The Philosophy of Education 
 
 science of number ; algebra, the science of symbol ; 
 geometry, the science of form ; trigonometry, the 
 science of angles ; analytic geometry, the application 
 of algebra to geometry ; and calculus, the science of 
 the ratios of numbers. 
 (4) Sciences This enumeration concludes the list of the main 
 sciences, material and mental, that compose the intel- 
 lectual element of the spiritual environment of man. 
 As sciences they are all theoretical. But in our world 
 theory and practice, truth and life, are so interwoven 
 that many of the sciences have corresponding arts. 
 Theory, after all, is but practice comprehended, and 
 practice is but theory applied. Truth is life under- 
 stood and life is truth embodied. Using Professor 
 Jevons's noted distinction, a science teaches us to 
 know; an art to do. In science, scimus ut sciamus ; 
 in art, scimus ut prodticamus. In science we possess 
 systematized knowledge ; in art we use knowledge. 
 In addition to meaning the use of knowledge for any 
 end, as the art of war, the art of navigation, etc., the 
 term art has two other common uses, viz., the use 
 of knowledge in producing the beautiful, as painting, 
 sculpture, etc., in which sense alone art is its own 
 excuse for being ; and also the term includes the prod- 
 ucts of both the aesthetic and the volitional powers 
 of mind, as in the common phrase, '' Faculty of Arts 
 and Sciences," and in the designation of the degree 
 of " Bachelor of Arts," excluding thereby historically 
 only the sciences, for which it is customary to use a 
 different scholastic degree. 
 
 To illustrate the application of the theoretic sciences 
 to the practical arts, reference may be made to the 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education iii 
 
 following sciences and their corresponding arts, viz., 
 physics, and mechanical engineering ; geology and 
 mineralogy, and mining and metallurgy ; physiography 
 and meteorology, and the weather bureau ; chemis- 
 try, and industrial chemistry ; astronomy and geog- 
 raphy, and navigation and travel ; physiology and 
 anatomy, and medicine; anthropology, ethnology, 
 sociology, economics, and the settlement of social 
 questions ; physiology, psychology, the social sciences, 
 and teaching ; logic, and thinking ; ethics, and con- 
 duct ; grammar, and speaking and writing ; mathe- 
 matics, and civil engineering. These sciences with 
 their corresponding arts indicate how knowledge is 
 first for its own sake and then for life's sake. 
 
 The question is sometimes asked as to the chrono- 
 logical priority of arts and sciences. It is practically 
 the invariable rule that first we do and then reflect 
 upon and understand what we did. First language, 
 then grammar ; first morals, then ethics ; first think- 
 ing, then logic ; first medicine, then physiology ; and 
 so on. The course of human progress in the arts and 
 sciences seems first to have been a weak and empiri- 
 cal kind of art ; then the science of this art painfully 
 worked out ; then, finally, rapidest progress in putting 
 the art on a scientific basis. First crude navigation 
 hugging the shore ; then astronomy and geography 
 and the mariner's compass ; then, finally, the naviga- 
 tion of the deep seas. First teaching ; then physiol- 
 ogy, psychology, and the social sciences ; then teach- 
 ing as an applied science. Teaching to-day is passing 
 from the empirical, the experimental, the customary, 
 to the rational and the scientific as its basis. A noted 
 
112 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 case where it is still uncertain whether practice pre- 
 ceded theory is in the ritual-myth controversy, though 
 analogy would go to indicate that the myth is an 
 attempt to explain the ritual. 
 
 The progress of the sciences themselves, apart from 
 their relation to the arts, has been from the empi- 
 ristic to the rational, as from the alchemist to the 
 chemist, from the astrologer to the astronomer, and 
 from the medicine-man to the physician, 
 (s) The The child born into the world helpless and ignorant 
 
 Educational jg encompasscd by this knowledge preserved in books, 
 Science. which the race to which he belongs has wrested from 
 the bosom of nature and the heart of man. He begins 
 life an alien and a stranger to this science. His edu- 
 cation, though reproducing in his own mind some- 
 thing of what the race has discovered and known, 
 adjusts him to this intellectual element in his envi- 
 ronment, puts him at ease in his intellectual world, 
 so far forth socializing him and making him ready for 
 living in human touch with Nature and Man. No 
 student in the educational period fixed by his own 
 development can attain the universal knowledge which 
 the race has discovered, nor is this necessary for 
 educational purposes. Sufficient is it for him to 
 know enough concerning the essential facts of men 
 and things to live in comprehension of his world, to 
 get the message of courage in investigation that 
 comes from the scientific achievements of the race, to 
 appreciate the unity of human knowledge, to know 
 enough truth to free the intelligence from the bond- 
 age of superstition and fear, and to be open in expec- 
 tant waiting to all truth. These are the worthy 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 113 
 
 lessons of science, which needs to-day to add to its 
 virtues yet another, viz., to become conscious of its 
 long, toilsome history, that more of reverence may 
 grow with the increase of knowledge. 
 
 Apart from these general considerations, there are 
 certain specific consequences of scientific study in 
 the way of training and culture that make it neces- 
 sary for the education of the child to adjust him to 
 his intellectual environment. Consider, first, the 
 effects of the study of the sciences of matter. They 
 develop the mental powers of observation, inference, 
 and insight. Observation collects facts by the detec- 
 tion of resemblances, and the discrimination of dif- 
 ferences ; inference sees the consequences of facts ; 
 and insight, their meaning. They test and train the 
 mental powers of abstraction, of forming general con- 
 cepts of a group, and of framing logical definitions 
 with correct genus and dijferentia. They permit the 
 gathering of knowledge at first hand, in the subtle 
 pursuit of Nature's own secrets, and they require pre- 
 cision, and accuracy, and clearness in results. They 
 arouse and feed the spirit of acquisitiveness and com- 
 municate practical knowledge. They give knowledge 
 of Nature, leading surely to command of her powers, 
 and perhaps to love of communion with her visible 
 and audible forms. They give one respect for his 
 own intellectual power, which is a part of that racial 
 mind that has compassed the universe in its concep- 
 tion, though not in final comprehension ; and they 
 lead to a vision of the unity of the material world. 
 They disclose the suggestion of intelligence in matter, 
 allow the recognition of the character of Nature as 
 I 
 
114 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 finally phenomenal, and the character of the immanent 
 Mind, without which Nature would be unintelligible, 
 as finally noumenal and the ultimate reality. And 
 last, since matter first of all things presents itself to 
 the child's and man's awakened mind, the acquaint- 
 anceship with it through the material sciences, both 
 inorganic (otherwise called physical) and organic 
 (otherwise called natural), is the basis of other and 
 later things to come. 
 
 After matter, mind. Why should the child be 
 adjusted in his educational period to the mental 
 sciences, both objective and subjective.'* To know 
 himself, the microcosm reflecting the nature of the 
 macrocosm, as in the subjective mental science of 
 psychology. To learn how he ought to think, and 
 so, perchance, to think more truly, as in the objec- 
 tive mental science of logic. To learn what the 
 lovers of wisdom of all times have thought concern- 
 ing truth, and so to be guided in his own thinking, 
 as in the history of philosophy. To discover what 
 answers can be given by the human mind to its own 
 ultimate inquiries, which by its nature it cannot but 
 raise, and yet not completely solve, as in metaphysics, 
 the queen of mental sciences. To understand the 
 nature of the beautiful and the ugly, and so, perhaps, 
 to enjoy the one and remove the other, as in aes- 
 thetics. To understand the nature of righteousness 
 and sin, and so, haply, to cling to the one and despise 
 the other. And finally, to comprehend the expres- 
 sion of thought in language, and so, possibly, to 
 become efficient in the communication of thought in 
 speech and in writing. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 115 
 
 In each case the mental result of the pursuit of 
 these sciences is certain, the practical result uncer- 
 tain, but desirable. This is because to do is not so 
 easy as to see what 'twere good to do. As Shake- 
 speare makes the learned Portia say : — 
 
 " If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, 
 chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' 
 palaces." 
 
 Doing is not so easy as seeing what ought to be 
 done> because perceiving the truth is easier than 
 the more energetic act of willing the truth. The 
 failure to draw this distinction led the wise Socrates 
 to slip in his famous dictum that knowledge is virtue, 
 to whom it did not seem possible that a man should 
 know what was best for him and yet not do it. Knowl- 
 edge is indeed a means to virtue, but it is possible 
 for a man to see the light and turn from it and walk 
 in darkness. The theoretic comprehension of truth 
 solicits, but does not compel, obedience. 
 
 But we left unsaid our word about mathematics, 
 as the last in the list of the objective mental sci- 
 ences. Like psychology, mathematics is a descrip- 
 tive science, and not normative, as logic and ethics. 
 In mathematics there is no distinction between the 
 is and the ought. The comprehension of the theory 
 of mathematics entails necessarily the practical con- 
 sequences that are desirable, for these practical conse- 
 quences are here primarily training and not conduct. 
 Apart from its manifold applications, mathematics is 
 the inevitable disciplinary element in the curriculum. 
 It trains in the habits of logical and symbolic think- 
 ing, of precision and concentration, and it develops 
 
ii6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the imagination. Its logic is particularly of the de- 
 ductive rather than the inductive type, for its argu- 
 ments are from axioms and principles rather than 
 from collected facts. Algebra and equations repre- 
 senting curves use symbolic thinking. The precision 
 of mathematics is due, as previously noted, to the 
 fact that the mind is here dealing with its own 
 achievements in the field of quantity. The habit 
 of concentration is developed in following through 
 a series of equations in a single problem. And the 
 use of the imagination is required in descriptive 
 geometry, and in conceiving the non-Euclidian space. 
 In the words of a recent writer, M. Berthelot : — 
 
 " Mathematics gives one a clear idea of demonstra- 
 tion and accustoms him to form long trains of thought 
 and reasoning methodically connected and sustained 
 by the final certainty of the result ; and it has the 
 further advantage, from a purely moral point of view, 
 of inspiring an absolute and fanatical respect for 
 truth. In addition to all this, mathematics, and 
 chiefly algebra and infinitesimal calculus, excite to a 
 high degree the conception of the signs and symbols 
 — necessary instruments to extend the power and 
 reach of the human mind by summarizing. Mathe- 
 matics is the indispensable instrument of all physi- 
 cal research." 1 
 
 The educational value of science guarantees it a 
 permanent place in the school curriculum. The prob- 
 lem is to adjust its rights with those of art and the 
 volitions. 
 
 1 *' Science as an Instrument of Education," Popular Sciencf 
 Monthly, Vol. 51, pp. 253 ff. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 117 
 
 This concludes our discussion of the nature of the 
 first of the three elements of the spiritual environ- 
 ment of the child to which his education must relate 
 him, viz., the intellectual; and it remains to consider 
 similarly the emotional and the volitional. 
 
 Under this treatment of the emotional element of The Nature 
 the spiritual environment which must become a part ^/^^l eT^" 
 of the life of the child will be included the highest ronment. 
 products of the emotions of man, viz.. Art and Reli- 
 gion. The constituent of the child's environment 
 which we call emotional is what man has felt and 
 its modes of expression. It is what we call Beauty, 
 as the intellectual element is what we call Truth. 
 Man feels, when feeling has reached its truest object, 
 the beautiful, and the expression of the beautiful in 
 permanent form is Art. 
 
 What is the beautiful.'* Subjectively, it appeals to The Nature 
 the sense of the perfect in the mind. Objectively, it ° ^^^^* 
 is the harmonious, the symmetrical, especially as this 
 quality appears in the unifying of diverse elements. 
 The crude stuff of the world has been called, since 
 the days of the Greeks, matter. When matter be- 
 gins to embody an idea in harmonious form, it begins 
 to be beautiful. 
 
 Art, as the expression of the beautiful, is the union 
 of the material and the spiritual, the union of matter 
 and mind, the union of the real and the ideal. When 
 matter begins to show forth the work of mind and 
 when mind begins to manifest itself in matter, then 
 is Art the result. Matter becomes in Art the perma- 
 nent expression of some human idea, or feeling, or 
 action, or any union of these. Without mind, matter 
 
ii8 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 is only the possibility of Art. All Art is a kind of 
 autobiography. " You cannot produce Art without a 
 man," said Wagner. The Romans first said that the 
 principle of Art is unity in variety, the unity of idea 
 in a variously wrought-out piece, and Coleridge re- 
 affirms this ancient insight. 
 
 The artist is the executor of the idea in material 
 form. Following an inward impulse to create, which 
 men formerly called the divimis afflatus and to-day 
 call genius, he lays hold of that material form in 
 which he can best express himself, masters its 
 technique, and produces art. The grade of work, 
 from the ugly to the perfect, depends upon the genius 
 of the artist and his technique, which is his mastery 
 of the matter chosen as his medium of self-expres- 
 sion. Plato conceived of the whole world as a work 
 of art, fashioned out of chaos by the demiurgos, the 
 divine worker for the people. But matter was diffi- 
 cult to form, and so arose the ugly. 
 The Arts. In how many pleasing and permanent material 
 
 forms may the life and mind of man take shape } 
 What is the number of the arts } There are five 
 separate arts, viz., architecture, sculpture, painting, 
 music, and literature. Other modes of artistic ex- 
 pression are accessories of these. Drawing, land- 
 scape gardening, and engraving go with painting ; 
 dancing, the poetry of motion, and vocal music go 
 with music ; elocution, the histrionic art, and oratory 
 go with literature. 
 
 A few brief words of description and interpretation 
 of each of the arts will serve to define more pre- 
 cisely the nature of the aesthetic environment and 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 119 
 
 its mission in the education of man. Architecture 
 is the art of building. In it the sensuous material 
 is in excess, adumbrating, not clearly revealing, the 
 ideal. Suggestions of the ideal appear in the con- 
 trast of light and shade, in the color, in the variety 
 and the relationship of the lines one to another, in 
 the strength and fitness of the whole, in the har- 
 mony and proportion of the masses, and especially 
 in the poised conflict between the down-pressing 
 weight of the heavy portions and the upholding 
 strength of the supporting pillars. Architecture is 
 the one case where beauty is not its own excuse 
 for being, for buildings are primarily for use. The 
 ornament is for the building, not the building for the 
 ornament. The building both protects and serves. 
 Not all buildings are beautiful, though all are use- 
 ful. It is the function of architecture to combine 
 the useful and the ornamental in the buildings of 
 men, be they devoted to religious, state, social, or 
 transportation purposes. 
 
 Sculpture is the art of carving, cutting, hewing, 
 wood, stone, or metals into statues or ornaments. It 
 is the permanent embodiment of an animate form, 
 human, animal, or plant, and showing, in the case of 
 the human or animal form, muscular development 
 and attitude. Sculpture is a higher step toward 
 ideality than architecture, being less subject to the 
 domination of matter. 
 
 Painting is the art of representing objects in color 
 on a flat surface, hence from a single point of view. 
 The painter, like the sculptor, puts the life of his 
 soul into his work, even if it be some material ob- 
 
I20 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 ject, and the work is beautiful in so far as it ex- 
 presses the soul of the painter. The elimination of 
 the third dimension of space in painting abstracts 
 from materiality, which in consequence is yet more 
 ideal, — the mind having to supply more to realize 
 the scene than in sculpture. 
 
 The three arts now considered appeal to the eye 
 and occupy space, are visual and spatial. The next 
 art in the list of five appeals to the ear and occupies 
 time, is auditory and temporal. 
 
 Music is the art of tones. A tone stands in con- 
 trast with a noise, both being sounds. A tone is 
 due to periodic, a noise to non-periodic, air vibra- 
 tions. Time is the condition of music, and thus 
 every trace of the three dimensions of space is 
 suppressed. This fact accounts for the untram- 
 melled character of the mind's production in music 
 and for the high ideality of this art. The con- 
 tent of music is man's inmost emotional nature. 
 The emotions of man in the presence of the facts 
 of nature or the experiences of human life find 
 voice in music. With its unutterable and indefin- 
 able message from the soul to the soul of man, music 
 summons us away from the known hard world of 
 reality to the unknown, invisible, and perfect world 
 of ideals, where things are as we want them to be. 
 It is an ecstacy of feeling, not a clear vision. Music 
 cannot tell a story ; it expresses emotions. Chopin's 
 ''Funeral March" means different things to differ- 
 ent listeners, but the emotions of all are thrilled. 
 Music cannot paint a picture. When the same piece 
 of music suggests the same picture to different 
 
/ 
 
 The Sociological Aspect of Education 121 
 
 minds, it is because of the associations of colors, 
 ideas, etc., that the tones have, not because the com- 
 poser has the picture in mind to represent. True, 
 in a freakish spirit, Wagner can imitate natural 
 sounds in his music ; but his great underlying theme 
 is a lonely soul longing for congenial companion- 
 ship, which is the story of his own life. Thus, music 
 is a call to an experience, not to ideas, and is hence 
 the most subjective of the arts. The attempt to fit 
 music to words is like the attempt to define a feel- 
 ing, is artificial, and not within the true province of 
 music. 
 
 Literature is the art of letters. It has been de- 
 fined as ''the written record of valuable thought, 
 having other than merely practical purpose." ^ It 
 aims primarily, not to convey positive knowledge, but 
 to enthuse, to inspire, through fineness of thought 
 and beauty of style. Originally it appealed to the 
 ear, and when in its poetic form still depends on 
 time, and not on space. Poetry is the rhythmical, 
 and sometimes the rhymed, expression in language 
 of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Literature, 
 whether in its poetic or prose form, is always fine 
 thought fittingly clothed. The poetic form of Htera- 
 ture is itself of three kinds, epic, lyric, and dramatic. 
 The epic is racial, like Homer and Beowulf ; the lyric 
 is individual, like Wordsworth's nature poems, or 
 Shakespeare's sonnets ; the drama is social, and may 
 be either comic or tragic. In comedy the individual 
 is pitted against society and overthrown, but not to 
 his own undoing, as Falstaff in the Henry plays. In 
 
 1 Richardson, " American Literature," p. i. 
 
122 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 tragedy the individual is seriously overthrown by 
 society, as Antigone or King Richard. Tragedy 
 is the conquest of society over the individual that 
 attacks it. Without this social conflict there is no 
 dramatic situation. In tragedy and in the more seri- 
 ous prose works, literature is closely akin to philoso- 
 phy. Literature is the lasting expression of the 
 meaning of life more or less intuitively reached. 
 Philosophy is the systematic expression of the mean- 
 ing of life more or less rationally reached. The truth 
 of literature is philosophy ; the garment of philoso- 
 phy, when it is well clothed, is literature. As a prod- 
 uct of society literature requires genius, leisure, and 
 experience. America has the genius latent, but it is 
 too youthful, and, as a part of its youth, is still too 
 devoted to material pursuits, to establishing the basis 
 of its civilization, to have produced yet a name to 
 rank with the world's five greatest in five ages born, 
 viz.. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. 
 Poe is our widest known name, though Longfellow 
 is doubtless our laureate. 
 
 Reviewing the arts as constituting the emotional 
 environment of man, it is to be remembered that their 
 common principle is that variety in unity announced 
 by the Romans, repeated by Coleridge, and expressed 
 by Wordsworth as " a multiplicity of symmetrical 
 parts uniting in a consistent whole " ; also that their 
 origin is due to the play impulse as previously shown, 
 and as expressed in the saying of William Morris 
 that "Art is the expression of man's pleasure in his 
 work;" and also that underlying all these arts of the 
 beautiful is aesthetics, the science of the beautiful. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 123 
 
 The development that the aesthetic element in life is 
 likely to make will be through the production in an 
 aesthetic way of the commonest things, the decora- 
 tion of the useful. 
 
 At the beginning of the discussion of the emotional The Nature 
 element in the spiritual environment, rehgion also ^^^^^^s^o^- 
 was mentioned as one of the highest products of the 
 emotions of man, and so as highly constitutive of the 
 environment into the full appreciation of which 
 the child must come. Religion and art spring from 
 the same fount of the personal being, viz., the feel- 
 ings. Art is the expression of the feelings in the 
 presence of the beautiful or sublime ; religion is the 
 expression of the feelings in the presence of the divine. 
 When the divine is considered perfect and beautiful, 
 as well as true and good, then religion and art have 
 in part identical elements. The fundamental feeling 
 in the presence of the divine, the Ideal Person, is, as 
 Schleiermacher says, the sense of dependence. Reli- 
 gion is not primarily what a man thinks ; this is dogma, 
 creed, or philosophy. Nor is religion primarily what 
 a man does, for the deeds of man may be done under 
 necessity or from motives of prudence or convention. 
 But religion is primarily what the man is, what he 
 feels, in the presence of the Supreme Person, and 
 then, and then, what he thinks and does in consequence 
 of such feeling. The translation of the feelings in- 
 spired by the presence of divinity into thought is 
 theology, the science of religion, and into volition is 
 the daily deed and ceremonial usage that constitute 
 the practice of religion. The infinite, which can be 
 thought but not imaged, is opened to the youthful 
 
124 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 mind in religion — the infinite in time, which is eter- 
 nity ; in knowledge, which is omniscience ; in power, 
 which is omnipotence ; in goodness, which is holiness ; 
 and in love, which is the Divine Passion, revealing 
 the unity, the at-one-ment, of the human and divine 
 in suffering. Religion is the broadest thing in the 
 world, and its effects upon the growing mind ought 
 likewise to be the most broadening of influences. 
 Unfortunately the best educational service of religion 
 is narrowed from insistence on the human unessen- 
 tials instead of the divine essentials. 
 
 The absence of anything like religious instruction 
 in our public schools must be considered as inevitable 
 under our form of government, which provides for 
 the separation of church and state, and at the same 
 time for the public education of all youth. To put 
 religion into the curriculum of the public school would 
 contradict the principle of the separation of church 
 and state. To say that the public school ought not 
 to exist if it does not teach religion, is to contradict 
 the principle upon which our national system of public 
 education is founded. Experience has indicated the 
 wisdom both of the separation of church and state and 
 of the existence of the public school system. Thus 
 the logical result of our form of government is that 
 religion be not taught in public schools. This result 
 is also desirable, in the interest both of religion and 
 democracy. Religion cannot be taught. To attempt 
 to teach religion is to reduce it to theology, as the 
 attempt to teach morality is to reduce it to ethics. 
 The democracy would also suffer by the attempt to 
 teach religion in the public schools, in that certain 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 125 
 
 elements in society would at once withdraw their 
 support from a government no longer religiously free. 
 To-day the public school is the great preserver of that 
 homogeneity in society necessary to a democracy. 
 It would cease to be so the moment it began to teach 
 religion. The public school itself, finally, would 
 suffer loss of influence the moment it ceased to serve 
 the best interests of the democracy. 
 
 Yet it remains true that religion is the most im- 
 portant element in the Hfe of man, and consequently 
 the most important factor in that spiritual environ- 
 ment to which the education of the child must adjust 
 him. Fortunately for the interests of reUgion, the 
 democracy, and the public school, religion is a life, 
 not a system ; is a natural expression of human nature, 
 and not an artificial graft upon it; is a growth of 
 the pupil's nature, not an acquisition of his intellect. 
 This being true, reUgion can be developed, if not 
 taught. As the reHgion of the life of the teacher 
 touches the germs of religion in the life of the pupil, 
 they spring into activity and growth, like seed in the 
 soil under the quickening touch of sun and rain. 
 ReUgion as theology is excluded from the public 
 schools only to make way for religion as life. If 
 teachers are religious, pupils do not need to be taught 
 religion. This is not to minimize the importance of 
 the teaching of reHgion as a system of truths in the 
 home and the church, — there must be truth as well 
 as life, — but only to indicate the relation of religion 
 to the pubHc schools. 
 
 The subject of religion in the public schools is 
 essentially related to the problem of the nature and 
 
126 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 extent of the possible use of the Bible in the public 
 schools. A few things are clear. A fairly familiar 
 knowledge of the Bible is essential to that broad cul- 
 ture of man which it is the function of education to 
 give. The Bible provides models of high grade of 
 practically all the leading forms of literature. It in- 
 terprets life in terms of the loftiest ideas possible for 
 man to conceive. It announces principles of highest 
 ethical and religious value for the conduct of man. 
 Because of these things it is necessary that in some 
 way the life of growing youth incorporate the life of 
 the Bible. But it is another question whether it is the 
 function of the public school to render this service. 
 This latter question to-day is essentially a legal one, 
 however infrequently this fact is recognized. As 
 such, it is wholly subject to the power of public opinion. 
 Public opinion to-day is strong, but not unanimous, in 
 supporting the reading of the Bible, without comment, 
 as part of a simple devotional morning exercise, con- 
 sisting also of singing and prayer. This quiet uplift 
 of the school interests into the eternal world, as a 
 voluntary exercise, effacing human distinctions and 
 uniting human hearts in a divine life, will not lightly 
 be surrendered by a nation whose officials are inducted 
 into office with an oath by the Scriptures and that 
 stamps upon its coinage its trust in God. To go 
 farther than this and ask that the Bible be used as a 
 text in morals or even in literature would be good for 
 morals and literature, no doubt, but not for religion, 
 whose interest it is the prime function of the Bible 
 to serve. The teaching under any guise in the public 
 school of the book upon which all the religious sects 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 127 
 
 are founded would end unavoidably in involving sec- 
 tarian interpretations. It would also tend to reduce 
 to the level of an ordinary text-book that volume of 
 the Christian religion whose sacredness is regularly 
 held to be essential. The Bible can retain its present 
 place in the public school, not as a book to be taught, 
 but only as its own spokesman to the spiritual life. 
 For the necessary work of instruction in the Bible 
 the public school must leave to the derelict American 
 home and the Christian church their duties to 
 perform. 
 
 With the substitution of the spirit of the religious 
 life for the letter of religious instruction in the 
 American public school system in contrast with 
 foreign systems, our teachers have both their greater 
 opportunity and their weightier responsibility. Not 
 theirs to keep religion from being odious through 
 compulsory instruction, but to make it attractive 
 through contagious example ; not theirs to keep alive 
 the spirit when the letter killeth, but to show forth 
 the spirit when the letter is absent ; not theirs to in- 
 struct the intellect with religious truth, but to quicken 
 the heart with religious life ; not theirs to be priests 
 of a particular religious institution, but prophets of 
 the universal religious nature. 
 
 Why should the child in the schools be adjusted The Educa- 
 te the aesthetic element of his environment ? With- of°Art.^^^''^ 
 out doubt it is the most neglected feature in our cur- 
 riculum, and yet it stands as an essential constituent 
 of the child's present and future environment and is 
 the product of one of the deepest phases of the hu- 
 man consciousness. The sense of the beautiful is 
 
128 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the finest pleasure the human mind can enjoy, calling 
 into play all the powers of mind working in harmony. 
 The beautiful object itself is harmonious and perfect, 
 and, in enjoying it, one identifies himself with it, be- 
 comes the thing he enjoys for the time being. Rev- 
 erence for the beautiful is an uplifting force in the 
 individual life. Beauty reminds morality that perfec- 
 tion is possible, and the holiness of beauty enhances 
 the beauty of holiness. An aesthetic appreciation of 
 the beautiful makes the imperfect and the ugly more 
 dissatisfying and repellent, and so tends to remove it 
 from existence. This is the practical outcome of the 
 love of the beautiful. Its selection means the death, 
 by atrophy, of the ugly. The doctrine of the beauti- 
 ful shows that life need not be exclusive to be worthy, 
 but may be abundantly inclusive. The Puritan ideal 
 of goodness needs to be supplemented by the Grecian 
 ideal of beauty. The life of the Middle Ages was 
 richer because there was the cathedral builder as well 
 as the monk. That which is ultimately beautiful is 
 also good. The feeling of this truth is needed to 
 bring up into just emphasis the aesthetic studies of 
 the schools. Pupils in the schools who know their 
 science and their history could not purchase a good 
 picture and would not spiritually miss from the room 
 a piece of art. The failure to possess this apprecia- 
 tion of art is arrested development, is individual de- 
 fect, is inability to come fully into the life of the race, 
 and so to universalize one's own life. In so far forth 
 education fails of its end, viz., the complete socializa- 
 tion of the individual life. 
 
 Literature, in particular, widens the individual 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 129 
 
 experience by presenting typical and universal human 
 characters, making our acquaintanceship world-wide, 
 which otherwise would be limited, as Tennyson says, 
 to ''the rustic murmur of our burg." For jealousy, 
 ambition, a sister's devotion, the hard schoolmaster, 
 in typical forms, we go, not to life, but to literature. 
 These ideal, that is, mentally constructed, personages 
 suffer, and we are instructed by their sufferings. As 
 Aristotle showed, we pity their ends, and fear similar 
 things for ourselves. Thus are we purified and 
 taught. In literature we see mirrored our possible 
 selves, and so progress in that self-knowledge which 
 the wise commend. This learning from the lives of 
 literary creations. Commissioner Harris aptly names 
 the vicarious element in literature. 
 
 The effect of the omission of the aesthetic element 
 in life is so well portrayed and deplored by Darwin in 
 his autobiography that perhaps the quoting of the 
 familiar passage is pardonable. He writes : *' Up to 
 the age of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds 
 gave me great pleasure ; and even as a schoolboy 
 I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in 
 the historical plays. I have also said that pictures 
 formerly gave me considerable, and music very great, 
 delight. But now for many years I cannot endure 
 to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read 
 Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it 
 nauseated me. I have also lost my taste for pictures 
 
 and music If I had to live my life again, I 
 
 would have made a rule to read some poetry and 
 listen to some music at least every week ; for per- 
 haps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus 
 
ijo The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The Nature 
 of the Voli- 
 tional Envi- 
 ronment. 
 
 have been kept alive through use. The loss of these 
 tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be 
 injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the 
 moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of 
 our nature." 
 
 After these words from the most eminent of mod- 
 ern scientists little need be said in support of the 
 growing tendency in American schools to have build- 
 ings of admirable architecture, to place statuary and 
 paintings in the school room, to have music in the 
 exercises, to make the grammar secondary to the 
 literature, to teach the elements of color and form, to 
 beautify the landscape and practise the presence of 
 the aesthetic with school gardens. 
 
 After the intellectual and the emotional comes the 
 volitional element of the social, which is the spiritual, 
 environment. The race has been thoughtful, compre- 
 hending, and busy interpreting its world ; hence arose 
 the intellectual environment into which the child is 
 born. The race has been sensitive, appreciative, and 
 affected by its world ; hence arose the emotional 
 environment of the child. And the race has been 
 active, original, and energetic in moulding the circum- 
 stances into which it was naturally cast ; hence arises 
 the volitional element of the spiritual environment. 
 Having to do with the will, being in fact the product 
 of the will, it is sometimes technically called the prac- 
 tical environment. It is the last element to which 
 the child must be adjusted in his educational period. 
 
 What is the volitional environment ? It is what 
 man has achieved, and the record of such achieve- 
 ment. It is the monument of the will of man. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 131 
 
 There are three ways in which the will of man may 
 act, viz., as an individual, as society, and as a nation. 
 Society is individuals organized, and a nation is a 
 compact society. The social and national wills are 
 not entities in themselves, but represent the consensus 
 of opinion of the majority of the individual wills, or is 
 supposed so to do. In so far as an individual acts, 
 we have morality ; in so far as society acts, we have 
 laws ; in so far as a nation acts, we have constitu- 
 tions ; and in so far as records of these actions are 
 preserved, we have history. Thus there are four 
 members of the volitional environment, viz., history, TheVoii- 
 constitutions, law, and morals. Each of these must *^°^^* 
 have its word in further definition of the volitional 
 environment. 
 
 I. What is history.? Herodotus, the father of The Nature 
 history, says it is investigation, and what is learned ^^^^^tory. 
 thereby ; hence its Greek name, laropia. This con- 
 ception is still present in our thought of history. But 
 what is learned ? 
 
 Emerson and Carlyle say, the lives and influence of 
 great men. History is biography. But the great man 
 needs armies of soldiers, navies of sailors, hosts of 
 followers, and a people, to be effective on an histori- 
 cal scale. Napoleon without the Old Guard is an 
 exile. 
 
 Thus many have been led to say that history is 
 past politics. Most of the historians before J. R. 
 Green were of this type. In the narration of past 
 politics it is a subtle temptation to the historian to let 
 his own prejudices color his view. Like a pane of 
 glass through which one looks, itself unseen, or like a 
 
132 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 telescopic lens, bringing distant objects near but not 
 distorting them, so should be the historian. 
 
 This position has given foundation to the school of 
 history founded by Ranke, who modestly sinks his 
 own personality behind the words : ** I will only re- 
 late how it really was." History then becomes the 
 unwritten record of the facts of human achievement, 
 and it is perhaps most commonly so conceived. 
 Many are those who say, however. Who will show us 
 any veritable facts in history .? The difficulty of dis- 
 covering precisely the nature of the past sometimes 
 leads these questioners to adopt the sarcastic state- 
 ment of the great Napoleon, who made his own 
 precedents, and learned nothing from the facts of the 
 past, viz., "History is fiction agreed upon." In 
 the same vein it is sometimes heard that history is 
 the record of what never happened, which saying 
 can be passed over in the same light spirit in which it 
 is uttered in favor of the conception that history is 
 the record of human activity. 
 
 Passing from the definition of history to its inter- 
 pretation, which is an unwelcome task to the majority 
 of historians, who find themselves more than occupied 
 with the facts alone, but which is a natural inquiry to 
 a synthetic and bottom-seeking mind, there are two 
 contradictory theories, the one of Helwald and Buckle 
 and that of Hegel. The former theory says that 
 history is a necessity, and that the events of the past 
 could not have happened otherwise than they did. 
 History thus becomes "the dull rattling off of a chain 
 forged innumerable ages ago." Nature knows no 
 exceptions to its laws, this theory says, and human 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 133 
 
 nature which is responsible for history is but another 
 kind of nature. Consistency would seem to demand 
 that man be denied the freedom in his deed that it 
 is known nature does not possess. 
 
 The objections to the view that history is necessity 
 are three. First, if history were necessity historians 
 ought to be able to predict the future, as astronomers 
 predict eclipses, but they are not. The prediction of 
 the number of thefts, suicides, murders, marriages, 
 etc., of which so much is made by Buckle, are only 
 approximately, not absolutely, true. Man is too inde- 
 terminate in his action for these predictions ever to 
 become exact, or for that knowledge of his choices 
 conditioning these predictions to be attained. 
 
 Second, if history were necessity, we ought to be 
 able to explain the past without the will of man, as 
 we explain the history of the development of the 
 natural world ; but we cannot, since there is no one 
 principle upon which all men act, either of selfishness 
 or unselfishness. Besides, man changes with his en- 
 vironment to some extent, and so can never become a 
 constant factor to be depended on in action, as the 
 distance and attraction of the moon. 
 
 Third, if history were necessity, the zest of action 
 would be groundless, since the outcome is inevitable, 
 whether we strive or not. If we trust our own con- 
 sciousness, we cannot help believing in freedom for 
 ourselves, even when we deny it to others. If we deny 
 the validity of consciousness in this particular, we have 
 no ground left for trusting it in any particular. The 
 freedom of man means that he makes history, and is 
 not simply made by it. So far from being necessity. 
 
134 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 history thus becomes a synthesis of the will relations 
 of humanity.^ It is the volition of the race. 
 
 Is history simply a chronicle of facts, even of willed 
 facts ? Is it only a phenomenal affair with no mean- 
 ing behind it ? Hegel has put meaning into history 
 for us, and has elevated it from the plane of the em- 
 pirical to the rational. To Hegel history is theophany, 
 is the mode of manifestation of the mind of God in 
 the life of man, is the dramatization of truth, — the 
 enactment in the world, as on a stage, of the inward 
 truth of things. It is the process whereby potential 
 truth becomes actual truth, and is a revelation of the 
 real nature of humanity. In this sense it is true that 
 the will of the people may be the will of God. With- 
 out the assumption of an immanent Mind, all things — 
 Nature, man, and his history — are meaningless. With 
 this assumption, all things are shot through with infi- 
 nite meaning, and life is the process of its interpre- 
 tation. The race is working out its salvation with 
 fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in it 
 both to will and to do of His good pleasure. To 
 him who admits this deeper meaning in things than 
 appears, history is indeed philosophy teaching by 
 example. 
 
 What is the truth of truths which the history of 
 the race seems to reveal ? Such a question must be 
 answered only by a wide induction, not by a priori 
 speculation. As Hegel, with master intellect, has 
 pointed out, history is a record of a certain kind of 
 progress in self-consciousness, — an increasing reali- 
 
 1 Cf. Munsterberg, " Psychology and Life," Essay, " Psychology and 
 History." 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 135 
 
 zation of man as a free being. In the East there 
 are none free but one, — the despot, the sultan. In 
 Greece some are free, but the most are not ; the 
 thirty thousand Athenian citizens are free, but the 
 hundred thousand slaves are not free. In the West, 
 with the Anglo-Saxon race, arose the consciousness 
 that all are free ; man as man is free. Freedom 
 means dependence on self, independence, and not 
 dependence on another. Freedom is not the absence 
 of law, but conformity to righteous law. Freedom in 
 society is not anarchy, — the absence of rule, — but 
 is righteous self-rule. Freedom, whether individual 
 or national, is the consciousness of one's self as the 
 source of one's law. The realization of the idea of 
 freedom is the movement of history, willed into being 
 by the actors on the world stage. Freedom is the 
 volition of the race concerning its own destiny. It 
 is because the race has given its life for this benefi- 
 cent idea that man is subtly attracted by this sacred 
 word. The indwelling divinity that shapes the ends of 
 human living appointed freedom, as it would appear, to 
 be the goal of human progress, and history is essentially 
 the record of the process whereby this freedom has 
 been attained. This apocalyptic conception of his- 
 tory is inconsistent with that theory of special Provi- 
 dence which sees God in some events, but not in 
 others, but is identical with that theory of general 
 Providence which sees the whole upward progress of 
 civilization as the will of God expressing itself through 
 the will of man. 
 
 The question is sometimes mooted as to whether is History 
 history is a science. We have seen what history is. ^"^"^^^ «* 
 
136 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 But what is science? One means by a science, 
 usually, following the familiar definition of Her- 
 bert Spencer, classified knowledge. Some modern 
 thinkers like to add to this definition the element 
 of verification. Science is thus classified and veri- 
 fiable knowledge. It is evident that history, as a 
 written record containing classified and verifiable 
 knowledge concerning the past activity of man, may 
 be called a science. 
 
 But the question, Is history a science ? means to 
 imply, also. Is it a natural science .-* Now the knowl- 
 edge of nature is the knowledge of determined, not 
 self-determined, facts. The atoms and the mole- 
 cules, the sun and the stars, act lawfully, but do 
 not choose the law of their action. The deeds of 
 society, on the other hand, are consequences of voli- 
 tions. Men have determined themselves, unlike the 
 moon and earth, to obey or disobey the law of their 
 own being. Usually feelings, passions, and preju- 
 dices, have influenced the decisions of historic actors. 
 The historian can never be sure of the motives that 
 led to the deeds he describes. This elusive element 
 in the historic record of past action is a consequence 
 of the self-determining character of the makers of 
 history. And this same quality of self-direction in 
 men also makes future history unpredictable. The 
 astronomer can describe the eclipses of sun and moon 
 from now till doomsday, whereas the historian, at best, 
 can write only current, not future, history. In the 
 light of these facts we may safely conclude that his- 
 tory is not a natural science. Nor do the apparent 
 predictions of Buckle and modern sociologists as to 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 137 
 
 the number of murders, suicides, and marriages that 
 are to come disturb this conclusion, since, after all, 
 they are but approximate, not exact. The possibility 
 of such approximations in predicting future fact lies 
 in the fairly regular uniformity of decision reached 
 by self-determining persons in the presence of similar 
 situations. Thus the nature of the material with 
 which history has to do justifies its place as one of the 
 constituent elements of the volitional environment. 
 It also justifies the division of the curriculum into the 
 three elements, viz., the sciences, the arts, and the 
 volitions. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 (concluded) 
 
 The Nature 2. CONSTITUTIONS. In SO far as nations have acted 
 tions°"^*^*^' ^^ nations and expressed their actions in some more 
 or less permanent documents, we have constitutions. 
 A constitution in the volitional life of a nation corre- 
 sponds to epic poetry in its aesthetic life. Both are 
 national products, but they come from different 
 phases of the nation's life. A constitution is a 
 written document containing the fundamental princi- 
 ples which a nation, or a state, proposes to enact and 
 embody in its national life. *' We, the people of the 
 United States, ... do ordain and establish this Con- 
 stitution. . . ." The word constitution means struc- 
 ture ; the constitution of a nation is the structure of 
 that nation, showing the elements of which the 
 national life is composed. 
 
 A constitution is a growth ; it is the flowering of 
 the national life, the profoundest expression of the 
 life of a nation acting as one. The deep principles 
 of a nation's being find voice in its constitution. The 
 thought of a nation concerning its own life and pur- 
 pose is willed into reality in its constitution. Thus 
 real constitutions are not artificial documents foisted 
 upon a people by agitators but are the people's voli- 
 
 138 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 139 
 
 tional expression of their own nature and destiny. 
 The framers of serviceable constitutions are inter- 
 preters of national life, they are not makers de novo 
 of human society. 
 
 If the written constitution is a real description of 
 the nature of a nation, being false to it is a kind of 
 national suicide. The only justification that a nation 
 can have for changing its constitution is that its con- 
 stitution is no longer an expression of its life. Its 
 life has grown since the establishment of the consti- 
 tution and so demands a new expression. A nation 
 that is really alive and growing will from necessity at 
 intervals of time consider modifications and amend- 
 ments to its constitution. The constitution of a 
 nation is like the creed of a church, it is the accept- 
 able interpretation of its life at a particular time. To 
 revise each under the strain put upon it by an inward 
 expanding life is a hopeful sign of progress. In its 
 revised constitution the nation wills for itself a future 
 truer to its nature and wider in scope. 
 
 3. Law. The third element in the volitional envi- The Nature 
 ronment of the pupil is law. In so far as society ^^ ^^' 
 acts we have what is called law. The will of society 
 concerning the welfare of its members is law. The 
 volition of society as law corresponds to the expres- 
 sion of its aesthetic life in the drama. 
 
 Law is the rule of human action, established by an 
 authority able to enforce its will. Without the power 
 to execute, legislation is useless. Law in its original 
 intent is what is laid down ; law lays down the acts 
 that must and must not be done by the members of 
 society in order to preserve the unity of society. 
 
140 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Law is not the volition of an act which society has 
 already done, but which society must do. In this 
 respect law differs from constitutions. The latter 
 are an expression of an actual, as law of a desirable, 
 condition. 
 
 Law is inherited, or made by the representatives 
 of society. The former is Common Law, founded in 
 long usage and the decisions of the courts of justice. 
 The latter is Statute Law, drawn out in form, and 
 distinctly enacted and proclaimed. Society enforces 
 law for its own self-preservation, and to insure rights 
 of life, limb, and property to its members. 
 
 The making and the enforcing of law is supposed 
 to be according to the idea of justice, suum cuique. 
 Thus laws are intended to be equitable, to the viola- 
 tions of which penalties are fixed. 
 
 The science which has to do with constitutions 
 and laws is political science. As the sciences have 
 corresponding applied arts, as the arts have basic 
 sciences, so the volitions have their sciences also. 
 Here again is shown the unity of the products of the 
 human mind. 
 The Nature 4. A nation, society, and the individual act. The 
 of Morality. yQiitiQ^ of the individual in the presence of right and 
 wrong is morality, the fourth division of the volitional 
 environment. It corresponds to lyric poetry in the 
 aesthetic sphere. We have now the action of the 
 individual in accord with the personal sense of right 
 and duty. It is no longer a question of national or so- 
 cial, but of individual action. Here is a sphere in which 
 the individual man is the maker and follower or the 
 violator of his own enactments. .Moral law is self- 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 141 
 
 legislated law. The following of an alien law which 
 the will of the individual does not confirm is not 
 morality. 
 
 Morality is enforced by that constitution of things 
 whereby evil is self-destructive and good is self-pre- 
 servative. The word of evil is, " I am the spirit 
 that continually denies." The evil-doer is a self-de- 
 stroyer. Good, as against evil, is self-preservative. 
 Plato 1 showed that the idea of the good is the princi- 
 ple of existence. The constitution of things whereby 
 evil is suicidal and good self -conserving is the greatest 
 sanction which morality possesses. 
 
 The individual whose life is conserved has the sense 
 of the righteousness of the principles upon which he 
 acts. When the birth of the moral law in self-con- 
 sciousness has once taken place, the tendency is strong 
 to conceive of that law as approved by the Ideal Per- 
 son, and so the moral law is thought of as the gift of 
 God. At this point Kant thinks morality ends and 
 religion begins. To him religion is the feeling of the 
 moral law as the command of God. In morality a 
 man stands in relation to a self-legislated law ; in 
 religion, man stands in relation to the Giver of the law. 
 
 Ethics is the science underlying morality. Ethics 
 as a science is impossible without the consciousness 
 of will. Socrates did not clearly have the conscious- 
 ness of will when he taught that knowledge is virtue. 
 A knowledge of the nature of volition would have 
 indicated that man may know what is right and do 
 what is wrong. Knowledge is not virtue, but is the 
 means to virtue. Virtue is voluntary action according 
 
 1 " Republic," Book 508, E. 
 
142 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 to the knowledge of the right. " I see and approve 
 the better, but follow the worse," is a familiar fact of 
 Roman and modern consciousness. The problem of 
 the will of man first came clearly into consciousness 
 with St. Augustine. And under the influence of 
 Christianity, with its doctrine of man as having a 
 soul to save, ethics has had its greatest development. 
 TheEduca- Thus WO sec the nature of the volitional envi- 
 tionai Value ronmcnt of the child. It remains to inquire what 
 
 of the Voli- ^ 
 
 tions. advantages accrue from its having a place in the 
 
 curriculum. Why should a child be adjusted to the 
 volitional (that is practical) element in the social en- 
 vironment } 
 
 (i) The child thus becomes conscious that man is, 
 and acts as, a part of a social whole. The movements 
 of history are the movements of men, not of man. 
 Even a king, without his subjects, is impotent. Indi- 
 vidualism dies the death from the historic point of 
 view. Witness the French Revolution ; society can- 
 not exist where the hand of every man is against his 
 brother. 
 
 (2) The child thus learns that the social whole is 
 composed of individuals, that Uetat c'est moi is a libel 
 against the French people. The state is not Louis 
 XIV. The Czar of Russia is not Russia. Univer- 
 salism, that is, the will of one individual or the will 
 of an institution as supreme, also dies the death. 
 Witness the subjugation of the individual in the 
 East to the caste system, and in China to the idea 
 of the family. 
 
 In short, the child learns the individual is a Glied- 
 ganzeSf a part-whole. The individual is a whole 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 143 
 
 and he is also a part of a larger whole. It is the 
 nature of an individual to be both himself and a socius. 
 Individuality is not a narrowly circumscribed sphere, 
 but is a large circle inclusive of one'r bellows. The 
 individual really finds his own unity in the service he 
 can render to many selves. Society itself is a unity, 
 through variety. It approaches the conception of an 
 organism, in which every part is both means and end 
 to every other part. A member of society is both 
 an end in himself and a means whereby larger social 
 ends are attained. An organism, whether it be the 
 body of a person or the figurative body of society, is 
 not an individual thing, but a unity of cooperant parts. 
 What the individual cell is to the whole bodily organ- 
 ism, that, in a figure, is the whole person to society. 
 "In history we see how little selves, or individuals, 
 unite to form the big self, or the nation." ^ 
 
 (3) The child sees the institutions that his race 
 with its life has made, and to which, as his own 
 producer, he owes loyal allegiance, viz., the home, 
 the school, the civic life, the state, and the church. 
 What President Butler calls the institutional sense is 
 awakened. 
 
 (4) The child learns in history the essential facts 
 of human achievement, — those facts that have made 
 present life and thought possible, and which a liber- 
 ally educated man cannot afford not to know. 
 
 (5) The pupil's mind is trained to judge through 
 the interpretation of the facts of history supplied by 
 the memory and quickened by the imagination. The 
 training of the judgment is history's great educational 
 
 1 Harris, "Psychologic Foundations of Education," p. 331. 
 
144 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 value. The finest result of a trained mind is the 
 ability to judge. But memory must carry the facts 
 of history by means of their logical continuity. And 
 through what Macaulay describes as the "historic 
 imagination " the pupil must re-live the scenes of the 
 past. In teaching history the use of the imagination 
 in picturing foreign lives develops an interest in all 
 humanity. And without a developed imagination we 
 are blind in estimating the inward values of the lives 
 of primitive and foreign peoples. 
 
 (6) The study of history and of the whole voli- 
 tional environment of the child has the practical 
 value of fitting youth for citizenship in a self-govern- 
 ing community. It fits for citizenship by develop- 
 ing the historic mind, which, without the power of 
 prediction, can yet interpret the present by the past, 
 and whose foresight is insight. The teaching of his- 
 tory assists in reaching the goal for which the public 
 school system was instituted, namely, to fit youth for 
 life. Men are too widely ignorant of the methods 
 and principles of government. The knowledge of 
 history, given the deductive power, tends to make a 
 man capable in national affairs. 
 
 (7) As the portrayal of the motives of so many 
 men and their consequent careers and end, the prac- 
 tical element in the social environment is a great 
 moral teacher of the pupil, and, apart from the ex- 
 ample of respected individuals, and intellectual habits, 
 is the greatest influence in the formation of character. 
 Character is the product of the will, the embodiment 
 of will relations ; character is what a man is in con- 
 sequence of what he wills to be. The moral charac- 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 145 
 
 ter of the individual and his will as its basis are 
 trained through acquaintanceship with what the will 
 of the race has done. 
 
 Thus we see the reasons that justify the place of 
 the volitions in the educative curriculum, and here- 
 with is ended our account of the reproductive aspect 
 of education. Before passing to the other sociologi- 
 cal aspects of education, let us gather up and unify 
 our thoughts, so far as they have been concerned with 
 the nature of education as repeating in the mind of 
 the individual the mental products of the race. The 
 following general observations may be made on the 
 reproductive aspect of education : — 
 
 (i) These three elements, viz., the theoretic, the Observations 
 aesthetic, and the volitional, that together constitute arReproVuc" 
 the social environment of man, are the products, and ing Racial 
 the only products, of the race's mental life. The ^p^"^"^^- 
 mind of the race is the mind of the individual writ 
 large. The divisions of the spiritual environment as 
 given are complete, since based upon the nature of 
 the mind that produces that environment. 
 
 (2) What has been here termed the spiritual en- 
 vironment of the pupil is identical with the educa- 
 tional curriculum. The courses of study offered by 
 the school, which men call the curriculum, is neither 
 an invention of some genius nor the discovery of some 
 explorer ; it is the accumulated racial experience, 
 the product of human society as a whole living its 
 life in its world. The curriculum of the pupil is the 
 career of human progress. The books he studies are 
 not the reality ; they are but the temporary earthen 
 
146 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 vessels in which the treasures of natural and human 
 truth are kept. 
 
 (3) The educated man, so far as he is educated, 
 has reproduced his race's achievements in his own 
 mind, and so has identified his own thinking, feeling, 
 and acting with that of his race. Thus education 
 socializes and humanizes the prospective members of 
 society. 
 
 (4) The essential foundation of education must 
 always include representatives of each of the three 
 great elements of racial achievement ; that is to say, 
 in every curriculum, indeed in every adequate course 
 of study pursued by the individual pupil, there must 
 be some science, some art, and some volition. A 
 good prescribed basis for any education that aims to 
 be broad and rounded would perhaps include the 
 following subjects, viz., physics, the science of mat- 
 ter, the typical inorganic science, acquainting man 
 with his natural world ; biology, the science of life, 
 the typical organic science, acquainting man with his 
 living world ; psychology, the science of mind, the 
 typical mental science, acquainting man with his own 
 and his fellows' minds ; mathematics, the science of 
 number and quantity, acquainting man with the 
 tools wherewith to express his mastery of his world ; 
 grammar, the science of language, the door to litera- 
 ture. Of these last two subjects Mommsen writes : 
 " The art of measuring brings the world into sub- 
 jection to man ; the art of writing prevents his knowl- 
 edge from perishing along with himself : together 
 they make him — what Nature has not made him — 
 all-powerful and eternal." To this list of sciences 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 147 
 
 would be added from the arts, doubtless, literature, 
 as the most accessible of the arts, language alone 
 being the necessary preparation, and also as per- 
 haps the most serviceable educationally. To these 
 sciences and arts must be added history, as the 
 most usable form of expression of the human will. 
 An educational foundation laid in these studies is 
 sufficiently stable and broad to support any later 
 superstructure in the form of electives or profes- 
 sional training. These, or equally representative 
 studies, cannot in wisdom be omitted from any plan 
 of culture. Yet, when this is said, it must also be 
 always added that a liberal education is rather an 
 attitude of mind than a knowledge of courses. Not 
 what enters the mind, but what comes out of it, 
 betokens liberality of training. These are simply 
 the courses of study that would seem most easily to 
 secure the desired attitude of mind. 
 
 It is interesting to compare with these seven sub- 
 jects the so-called seven liberal arts of the Middle 
 Age curriculum, viz., grammar, logic, rhetoric, arith- 
 metic, geometry, astronomy, and music. These two 
 curricula differ from each other as mediaeval and 
 modern life. The one is formal, fitting for verbal dis- 
 putations ; the other is real, fitting for social service. 
 To the mediaeval life the modern world has added 
 progress in science, indicating that man is now a 
 citizen of earth as well as of heaven. The modern 
 life, beginning with the Renascence, has also been 
 conscious of the continuity of human development as 
 revealed in history. So the modern curriculum, as 
 the effect and cause of modern life, has added to the 
 
148 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 mediaeval curriculum the subjects of natural science 
 and history. 
 
 (5) After the foundation of education is laid in 
 these sufficient and representative subjects, it is evi- 
 dent from the magnitude of the human achievement 
 that necessity is laid upon managers of education to 
 provide a selection of studies for the superstructure. 
 The sum total of human knowledge, art, and history 
 is so great that some form of the elective system is 
 unavoidable. It would take a man a lifetime to pur- 
 sue all the courses offered by a single modern great 
 university. The best curriculum is not the pre- 
 scribed, which denies to the individual the freedom 
 of choosing the subject-matter wherein he will develop 
 himself, and tends to rid him of that sense of responsi- 
 bility through which alone strength comes. Neither 
 is the best curriculum the free elective, which permits 
 superficial scattering and the omission of one or two 
 of the three great elements of human achievement, 
 viz., science, art, and volition. But the best curricu- 
 lum combines the principles of prescription and free- 
 dom in a system of study wherein no great body of 
 human activity is omitted while at the same time 
 the student does thorough-going systematic work 
 somewhere. Thus both breadth and depth are 
 received ; both narrowness and superficiality are 
 avoided. Narrowness was the vice of the old pre- 
 scribed system ; superficiality is the vice of the free 
 elective system. Thorough discipline was the virtue 
 of the old prescribed system ; freedom of self-expres- 
 sion is the virtue of the free elective system. The 
 best system keeps the virtues and omits the vices of 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 149 
 
 the two others. This is the so-called "group " system, 
 which represents our contemporary collegiate educa- 
 tional progress. In this system the curriculum which 
 represents the student's spiritual environment is di- 
 vided usually, according to its nature, into three 
 groups of studies, viz., the sciences, the languages 
 and literatures, and history, etc., corresponding in 
 general to the elements of the environment as pre- 
 viously defined. The student must put his major 
 strength in one of these groups, chosen by himself, 
 and divide his minor strength between each of the 
 other two. Within the group his choice is condi- 
 tioned only by the nature of the courses themselves. 
 Herein is opportunity afforded for the student to 
 study thoroughly what he prefers, to the neglect 
 of nothing essential for liberal culture. This group 
 system represents the natural progress of the elect- 
 ive principle out of perfect freedom into that free- 
 dom within safe limits which characterizes all things 
 human as well as educational.^ 
 
 The necessary presence of some form of the elect- 
 ive system in a modern curriculum indicates that the 
 educated man is not he who has appreciated all beauty, 
 willed all goodness, known all truth, but enough of 
 these necessary things has he compassed to open his 
 life to the message they have to give. The educated 
 man does not know everything, but rather how and 
 where to find anything ; he is not an encyclopaedia 
 possessing all knowledge in storage, but a powerful 
 mind possessing a certain adequate method in the 
 
 1 The "group" system exists to-day in Yale, Leland Stanford Jr., 
 the University of ^H^^ui? Dartmouth, and Williams. 
 
tion of Edu- 
 cation. 
 
 150 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 attainment of knowledge. An educated man strives 
 to know everything about something and something 
 about most things. Some truth he knows, and to all 
 truth he is open. Striving to be an expert himself in 
 some matters, he has faith in the opinion of other ex- 
 perts. Thus education is not so much an attainment 
 as an attitude, not so much an achievement as a spirit. 
 Third Defini- We have now defined the nature of the racial 
 environment, in the adjustment to which, by men- 
 tally reproducing it, consists the education of the 
 child from the sociological point of view. And so 
 we are prepared to add this new element to the defi- 
 nition of education reached at the end of the preced- 
 ing discussion ; and with this result, Education is the 
 superior adjustment to his intellectual, emotional^ and 
 volitional enviro7iment of a physically developed con- 
 scious human being. 
 
 Our growing definition of the conception of educa- 
 tion is becoming clumsy, but perhaps it is also becom- 
 ing more comprehensive and more adequate to the 
 complex subject it would define. To this, our empiri- 
 cal conception of education, there remains but one 
 element to add, viz., the psychological. Before pass- 
 ing into that territory, however, we must face the 
 two remaining questions of this present sociological 
 inquiry, viz., What are the social effects of reproduc- 
 ing in educational institutions the spiritual environ- 
 ment of the race } and, What practical consequences 
 follow for education from this sociological aspect of 
 the discussion } 
 SociaiEffects To take the first question, there are three effects 
 ofEducation. ^pon society of having its members educated, that is, 
 
vative Effect 
 of Education. 
 
 The Sociological Aspect of Education 151 
 
 reproduce their racial heritage. These effects are : 
 (i) the conservation of the past ; (2) the preservation 
 of the present ; and (3) the progress of the future. 
 Education conserves, preserves, and produces. It is 
 evident that here we shall find the social justification, 
 indeed, the social necessity, of educational endeavor. 
 Let us give brief attention to each of these effects. 
 
 I. The conservative effect of education. Educa- TheConser- 
 tion conserves the advances of the race, so that past 
 life was not lived in vain. The fragments of past 
 achievements and experience are gathered up that 
 nothing be lost. Other men labored and the edu- 
 cated man enters into their labors. Having repro- 
 duced in large outline a portion of the race's work, 
 the educated man begins the work of the world where 
 the race before him has left it ; he takes up and bears 
 forward the burden of progress which his forbears 
 have laid down with their lives. The growth of 
 human civilization is Hke the upward mounting of 
 the coral reef in the midst of the sea, — each worker 
 rises upon the shoulders of his predecessors. 
 
 By conserving and using the past, education be- 
 comes the guardian of civilization, the transmitter of 
 its products, the keeper of its heirlooms, the treas- 
 ure-house of its priceless heritages. But for it, each 
 man entering the world would find the house of 
 knowledge empty, would have to begin his work at 
 the origin of the sciences, the arts, and the volitions, 
 instead of at their present conclusion. If the men 
 of one generation forgot their Greek and lost their 
 books, the learning of it again would be like decipher- 
 ing the Egyptian hieroglyph or the Babylonian cunei- 
 
152 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 form. If the men of one generation forgot their 
 science and lost their books, the work of the race, of 
 Ptolemy and Copernicus, would have to be repeated. 
 Destroy the temple of knowledge which was forty 
 centuries in building, and only divine power could 
 raise it again in three days. 
 
 Beside this far-reaching conception of education as 
 the great conservation of human society, how paltry 
 and unworthy the notion that the scholar is a neg- 
 ligible factor in modern progress ! Rather does edu- 
 cation make possible the taking of one's place in the 
 continuity of the best life of the race. It preserves 
 the past as the basis upon which to build the more 
 stately mansions of human welfare. 
 
 As Professor Dewey has so freshly expressed it : 
 ** All that society has accomplished for itself it puts, 
 through the agency of the school, at the disposal of 
 its future members. All its better thoughts of itself 
 it hopes to realize through the new possibilities thus 
 opened to its future self." ^ 
 The Preser- 2. The preservation of the present. Education 
 pfeTent!^^^^ protccts socicty. This it does by developing self-con- 
 trol in the individual members of society and by bind- 
 ing their affections to the human institutions and to 
 law and order. He who has reproduced the racial 
 attainments in his own conscious development appre- 
 ciates their nature and value. He who knows him- 
 self to be the recipient of the racial possessions feels 
 himself committed to keeping them. It were a kind 
 of parenticide for an educated man to attack the insti- 
 tutions of society whose life he bears in mind and body. 
 1 John Dewey, "The School and Society," p. 19. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 153 
 
 There are three considerations that will serve to 
 emphasize this protective aspect of education, viz., 
 the founders of society have recognized it, the influ- 
 ence of education on crime shows it, and society as a 
 would-be organism demands it. To take separately 
 and briefly each of these considerations. 
 
 And first, how the framers and reformers of human The Attitude 
 societies have regarded education as a protection. ca«onof'^^" 
 Plato's " Republic," the first in time of a long list of Founders of 
 Utopias and among the best, is also the first scientific °*^^^ ^^^* 
 treatise on education, and Dr. W. H. Payne has paid 
 it the tribute of classing it with Rousseau's " Emile " 
 and Spencer's " Education " as the three best discus- 
 sions in all literature on the subject. In the "Repub- 
 lic" it is by education that the ideal society once 
 established is to be maintained, and the paradox is 
 announced that philosophers are to be kings. The 
 philosopher was the beau ideal of Plato's system of 
 education. 
 
 Following the Reformation, there was a great re- 
 vival of interest in the common schools. When it 
 was judged by Luther and his followers that men 
 must save themselves religiously by the exercise of 
 faith and private judgment after the reading and 
 study of the Bible, it was necessary that men must be 
 educated to read, study, and think. Without educa- 
 tion, the new element of individual liberty projected 
 into human society could not have maintained itself. 
 
 Our third illustration shall be America. In his 
 fond Farewell Address to the people of his country, 
 Washington used the winged words now known to 
 all, " In proportion as the structure of a government 
 
154 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public 
 opinion be enlightened." And the author of the 
 Declaration of Independence, in a letter to Washing- 
 ton dated January 4, 1786, then wrote, "It is an 
 axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe 
 but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, 
 too, of the people with a certain degree of instruc- 
 tion." ^ 
 
 Emerson said, ** America means opportunity." 
 The individual citizen by the right of suffrage at the 
 polls determines national principles and policies. For 
 the safe exercise of this mighty prerogative, enlight- 
 enment is the necessary prerequisite. *' We must 
 educate the masses because they are our masters." 
 *' The citizen is king and the ballot is his sceptre." 
 In a republican form of government, the illiterate are 
 ciphers or the opportunity of the unprincipled. The 
 school unites with the library in the message, " The 
 commonwealth requires the education of her people 
 as the safeguard of order and liberty." 
 
 In these modern days no one more pointedly than 
 the president of Harvard has described '' The Func- 
 tion of Education in Democratic Society " and urged 
 it upon our attention. ''Moreover," he writes, "the 
 fundamental object of democratic education — -to lift 
 the whole population to a higher plane of intelligence, 
 conduct, and happiness — has not yet been perfectly 
 apprehended even in the United States." ^ 
 Education Secondly, the influence of education on crime 
 
 shows the preservative and protective social effects of 
 
 1 Henderson, "Jefferson on Public Education," p. 312. 
 
 2 C. W. Eliot, " Educational Reform," p. 403. 
 
 and Crime. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 155 
 
 education. Crime is conduct which the state disap- 
 proves and penalizes. Its origin when analyzed seems 
 to inhere partly in the will of man, largely in his 
 physiological constitution in the form of inherited 
 criminal tendencies, and mainly in the influence 
 of contaminating environment. Ignorance does not 
 seem to be a direct cause of criminal inclination ; 
 rather are ignorance and crime joint products of de- 
 fective initiative, weak inheritance, and hard environ- 
 ment. 
 
 It is evident that, since ignorance is not the imme- 
 diate cause of crime, education, in so far as it ban- 
 ishes ignorance, cannot directly banish crime. Where 
 education only succeeds in banishing ignorance, it 
 becomes often a weapon for social attack instead of 
 social defence. 
 
 There are three ways in which education can cope, 
 and increasingly is coping, with crime in society. 
 These ways correspond to the three sources of crime 
 as just stated. First, by reaching the feelings and 
 the will of man, as well as his intellect, refining the 
 one and strengthening the other, so that crime in the 
 one case becomes repulsive and in the other conquer- 
 able. Just how education can work partially these 
 changes in disposition is a psychological question, 
 whose discussion we must postpone till the succeeding 
 chapter. And the right intellectual point of view of 
 society which makes attack upon it difficult is par- 
 tially secured in so far as the curriculum brings the 
 student into the consciousness of his unity with his 
 fellows. The mental reproduction of the racial achieve- 
 ments is a socializing process. 
 
156 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Second, inherited criminal tendencies are being 
 dealt with early in life while the organism is plastic. 
 They are being thwarted by the development of 
 counter social impulses in two influential school 
 agencies, viz., the kindergarten and manual training. 
 The kindergarten idea is the rationalization of play, 
 thereby developing the communal sense. Through 
 the securing of desirable reactions on correct social 
 stimuli, correct social feelings and virtues are 
 developed. The evil innate tendencies are overcome 
 with good disclosed tendencies. An embryonic 
 criminal can be saved to himself and society before 
 the age of six when he might not be at nine. 
 
 The manual training school is a second great new 
 way for dealing with inherited criminal impulses. He 
 whose nature leads him to destroy is taught to pro- 
 duce. The rough wood, yielding to the movements 
 of hand and tool, teaches the fact and the force of hon- 
 esty and accuracy. The reformatories for youth have 
 been quick to utilize this moral value in manual 
 training. 
 
 Let us not be forgetful, either, of the educational 
 agency of athletics in suppressing criminal physiolog- 
 ical inclination. By muscular exercise manly virtues 
 are grown to supplant weak tendencies. Health, and 
 the love of it ; a sound physique, and a respect for it, 
 — these make immorality and vice difficult. 
 
 Third, the forces of an environment hostile to the 
 best interests of man, which are the main source, 
 after all, of crime, are being dealt with in many ways 
 by the influences that education disengages. The 
 hold of crime on the individual member of society 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 157 
 
 must continually tend to decrease as his environment 
 makes crime increasingly difficult. As educational 
 influences get possession of the environment of man, 
 that environment offers less opportunity to crime. 
 Among the influences that hamper crime, set free by 
 education in the environment, are to be noted the 
 illumination of our cities ; the skilled methods of de- 
 tecting crime by photography, electricity, chemistry, 
 thumb-impressions, etc. ; the better administration of 
 justice, tending in young and old to reform, and not 
 to harden; prison reform, probationary sentences, 
 humaner punishments, the regulation of the saloon, 
 and the growing public sentiment against crime as 
 unsocial. Through these and similar social checks, 
 the indirect influence of education in diminishing 
 crime is greater than its direct. 
 
 The evidence of statistics on the question of educa- 
 tion and crime is uncertain. In 1892 Proal showed 
 that advance in education did not necessarily mean 
 a diminution of crime. Most statisticians seem to 
 think that crime is increasing. The fact probably is 
 that the number of offences is increasing, due to the 
 multiplication of minor ordinances, while the disposi- 
 tion to commit immoral crime is doubtless decreasing. 
 On this point Professor Falkner writes : ^ " Crime in 
 the broadest sense, including all offenses punished by 
 law, has probably increased slightly in the last twenty- 
 five years. On the other hand, crime in its deeper 
 moral sense, as we are apt to picture it, has greatly 
 decreased. Changes in our environment, not changes 
 in our moral standards, have multiplied minor offences. 
 
 1 Forum, July, 1900, " Is Crime Increasing ?" 
 
158 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Educational 
 Supply and 
 Social 
 Demand. 
 
 The increase of crime which our modern Ufe reveals is 
 thus a social and not a moral phenomenon." 
 
 Putting these things about education and crime 
 together, we may say that education, in so far as it 
 succeeds in socializing the individual, in moralizing 
 his will, in cleansing his nervous system of the evil 
 taint of heredity, and in providing an environment 
 conducive to law and order, is tending to diminish 
 crime, and thus discloses its protective effect in 
 human society. 
 
 Our third consideration mentioned above, to show 
 the protective character of education, was the demand 
 made upon the school by society, as a would-be 
 organism, for protection. As Kant has taught us to 
 think, an organism is such an assemblage of parts 
 that each part is both means and end to every other 
 part. The human body is such an organism. It is 
 evident that the body politic, with all its present strife, 
 dissension, and discord, is not as yet an organism. 
 Its members war against each other. Its diversity 
 of parts is so great that no harmonious unity appears. 
 And yet the forces that civilize are unifying. Society 
 holds before itself as the hmit of its progress a unified 
 whole of cooperant parts. 
 
 During the slow progress of society toward this, its 
 ultimate and natural goal, internal needs are devel- 
 oped. The school exists for the discovery and the 
 satisfaction of those needs. In its dire want, society's 
 instinct of self-preservation leads it to turn to the 
 school for succor and protection. In Germany, after 
 the devastation wrought by Napoleon, this instinct of 
 self-preservation in society, leading it to lay hold on 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 159 
 
 the school for assistance, found a voice in Fichte, 
 crying that in the foundation of universities and 
 schools the desired regeneration of society could be 
 effected. 
 
 Continually before our eyes is the spectacle of a 
 changing curriculum. It means that society, as it 
 grows, is ever developing new needs, and the school 
 is ever hastening to meet them. Society felt its need 
 from of old of lawyers, doctors, and ministers, and 
 the school had its three faculties of law, medicine, 
 and theology. In modern times society has discov- 
 ered its need of the business man, the trained teacher, 
 the mechanic, and the engineer, and quickly have 
 corresponding educational supplies been established. 
 Society gives its positions of responsibility and power 
 to the expert ; education trains the expert and teaches 
 men to trust him. Those who have to do with direct- 
 ing educational institutions are the first to recognize 
 that it is for society to demand and for them to sup- 
 ply. As Professor Dewey says,^ **The modification 
 going on in the method and curriculum of education 
 is as much a product of the changed social situation, 
 and as much an effort to meet the needs of the new 
 society that is forming, as are changes in modes of 
 industry and commerce." And similarly President 
 Eliot wrote earlier,^ " The university must accom- 
 modate itself promptly to significant changes in the 
 character of the people for whom it exists." 
 
 Education is thus a matter of social effectiveness. 
 It protects society from suffering want. *' Education 
 
 1 "The School and Society," p. 20. 
 
 2 « Educational Reform," p. 35. 
 
i6o The Philosophy of Education 
 
 is the instinctive effort which the social body makes 
 to adapt itself to vital needs. ... A right habit 
 of mind becomes, then, no mere accomplishment or 
 grace ; it is a condition of continued national activ- 
 ity." 1 This adaptive effort on the part of the social 
 organism is exerted chiefly upon its still growing tis- 
 sue, upon its younger members in school, who are 
 plastic and susceptible to vital change. 
 
 Remembering what has now been said about the 
 importance accorded to education by the founders of 
 human societies, about the influence of education on 
 crime, and about education's supply to society's de- 
 mand, we have before us the notion of education as 
 the preservation of the present. 
 Future 3. The progress of the future. This is the third 
 
 Progress. social effect of education. Here it is that education 
 passes out of the service of conserving and protecting 
 into that of actively initiating. Society needs aggres- 
 sive leaders as well as wise protectors and cautious 
 saviours. Education does well to reproduce, and by 
 reproducing to conserve the past ; it does well to 
 protect the past in the present ; it does best of all in 
 adding to the present accumulation of knowledge and 
 power, thus making possible a future better than the 
 past. This is progress indeed. The form of progress 
 we have already seen to be through disintegration 
 into unity. Its content we have now to define as ad- 
 vancement in the knowledge of men and things, in 
 the use of such knowledge in directing the powers of 
 nature and in the relief of the estate of man, and, 
 
 1 Withers, Contemporary Review, June, 1900, "New Authorities in 
 English Education." 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education i6i 
 
 finally, in the enjoyment of such knowledge and its 
 use. In brief, progress is the increasing self-posses- 
 sion of the race in its world. Among the many kinds 
 of men that make this progress possible are to be 
 found the scholars. 
 
 There are two general discipHnes constituting the 
 educational curriculum that represent respectively 
 the conservative and the progressive tendencies, viz., 
 the humanities and the sciences. The historians 
 and the linguists are by training cautious ; the 
 scientists, daring. In those countries, like China 
 and India, where science has gained no foothold, 
 little or no progress is found. The progress of the 
 West, in contrast, is bound up with science. 
 
 It is the application of the knowledge of the scien- 
 tist that has given us our modern world of comfort, 
 convenience, and monumental productivity. A lead- 
 ing contemporary,^ in an editorial expression on ^'The 
 University as a Wealth Producer," thus conjoins edu- 
 cation and commercial progress : " Men must take 
 nature into partnership in order to succeed in large 
 undertakings ; and the interpreters of nature are the 
 scientists. It is they who put the great manufac- 
 turers, organizers, and captains of industry in touch 
 with the forces that produce wealth ; and the univer- 
 sity is at the heart of the great modern movement of 
 production." 
 
 Progress in knowledge of whatever kind must 
 always come only from him who is already familiar 
 with what has been done in his field. In our univer- 
 sities scholars become abreast of their fields, they thus 
 
 1 The Outlook, March 15, 1902. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 know where to begin original work, and so human 
 knowledge grows. 
 
 Likewise, in the making of history, it takes a man 
 of knowledge and of power to achieve those things 
 that are both new and good. The legislator must 
 come more and more to wait for and consider the 
 word of the historian and the sociologist. The 
 scholar himself in politics is a growing figure in mod- 
 ern times. Let it grow ! 
 
 It seems to be less true in art than in either science 
 or history that an educated man is necessary for prog- 
 ress. There are certain presuppositions in each art, 
 of course, which the artist must know. These are 
 matters of technique. Knowing these, the artist 
 brings a great deal of his law with him. Production 
 in art seems subject to no definable law. The artist 
 simply expresses himself, in material terms, for the 
 most part as he will. The great demand laid upon 
 him is that he have a self to express : that is, that he 
 be original. Progress in art does not come from the 
 imitators, but from the originators. Education has 
 nothing to do with creating originality. It can only 
 develop it, and supply it with its tools. 
 
 To show the secondary place of education in the 
 advancement of the arts, the common names of the 
 arts and artists will suffice. The poet, for example, 
 is, literally, a maker. A common thought of the 
 Divine Being is, the Maker. Therefore the poet has 
 always been considered, in a way, divine, subject to 
 the influence of the divimis afflatus. Music, for ex- 
 ample again, is literally " belonging to the Muses " ; 
 in its Greek original it referred to all the arts, now 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 163 
 
 limited to the art of tones alone. The musician must 
 conform to the law of tones, but the expression of 
 self that he puts into it is original, as though the Muse 
 had inspired him. As an artist, man is most divine. 
 In art we have the work of the productive imagination ; 
 the artist combining old past experiences in new 
 forms. Some think of an infinite mind as being able 
 to bring things into existence. The finite artist's 
 mind can combine the old elements in new shapes. 
 
 Because of the original element in art, one cannot 
 say that education makes art possible. One can only- 
 say that education facilitates advancement in the 
 arts. The forms of his art education can give; the 
 life of his art is what the man puts into it himself. 
 
 One statistical fact will illustrate how education 
 provides society with men who can do substantial 
 things. An investigation carried on some time ago 
 by President Thwing ^ of Western Reserve University 
 showed that one out of every forty graduates as 
 against one out of every ten thousand non-graduates 
 of the entire population reached a degree of distinc- 
 tion sufficient to give them a place in Appleton's 
 " Cyclopaedia of Biography," a proportion in favor of 
 the college man by two hundred and fifty to one. 
 
 Having now defined the nature of the spiritual 
 environment of man and seen what the social effects 
 of its reproduction are, it only remains to consider 
 the third question of this chapter, viz.. What practical 
 consequences follow for education from this socio- 
 logical aspect of the general discussion. To these 
 we now come. 
 
 1 Cf. Harris, " Psychologic Foundations of Education," p. 338, note. 
 
164 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Practical (i) It is evident from what has preceded that the 
 
 quinces for school as an institution is not a question simply of 
 Education, teacher and pupil, but of society and its members. 
 Education is one of the functions of society. Com- 
 menting on a recent educational text, Professor 
 Hanus writes : ^ *' Education is primarily a social 
 study like economics or government. The develop- 
 ment of the individual is fruitless unless it proceeds 
 with constant reference to his membership in the 
 contemporary social organism, and the maintenance, 
 organization, and direction of education constitute one 
 of the most important functions of society." 
 
 President Butler recently said, " As the century 
 closes, the soundest educational philosophy the world 
 over teaches that the individual alone is nothing, but 
 that the individual as a member of society and of a 
 race is everything." 
 
 Professor Natorp likewise sees the innermost heart 
 of education in the training of the will as conditioned 
 by the life of a community, and, again, as condition- 
 ing that life. 
 
 Indeed, it may be said with justice that the right 
 kind of education is society's greatest and gravest 
 problem, for in the last analysis the school is society 
 shaping itself to its future ends. 
 
 (2) The best society and the largest development 
 of the individual are really at one, since the largest 
 individual is really the best aid to society. President 
 Ehot says : 2 '' For the individual, concentration and 
 
 1 Science, June 29, 1900, reviewing Welton, "The Logical Bases of 
 Education." 
 
 2 " Educational Reform," p. 13. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 165 
 
 the highest development of his own peculiar faculty, 
 is the only prudence. But for the state, it is variety, 
 not uniformity, of intellectual product, which is need- 
 ful." 
 
 (3) The school must emphasize its cooperative and 
 not its individualistic methods, if it would best pre- 
 pare its pupils for life in society. The accusation 
 against the school has been that the educated man is 
 unfit to live with his fellows or to help them, but fit 
 only for the study of books. " Many people draw a 
 distinction between an educated and a practical man ; 
 but true education is, after all, nothing but systematic 
 study and practice under guidance." The school 
 must quicken the social sense. This it can do by the 
 use of such means as tramping parties, excursions, 
 school exercises, team work in athletics, the study 
 of men in common by visiting shops and business 
 houses, the study of nature in common, in geographi- 
 cal and geological expeditions, etc. " Preparation for 
 life is participation in life." 
 
 (4) The school must understand that its main 
 material, books, are poor substitutes for experience ; 
 that truth is life and not a knowledge of books ; that 
 we learn from books really only when their contents 
 are interpreted by life and experience. Books inter- 
 pret and expand experience, but they do not supply 
 it. Books are artificial, life is real. Professor 
 Dewey tells of some children in Moline, on the 
 banks of the Mississippi, who were surprised to learn 
 that the Mississippi River of their geography had 
 anything to do with the river running past their 
 doors. 
 
1 66 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 (5) The child must see in his daily occupation 
 something of eternal and human significance. Since 
 each thing is a part of all things, it bears part of the 
 significance of all. If he is studying, he is really re- 
 peating in his own consciousness past or present life. 
 If he is working, he is contributing to the needs of 
 the social whole. To gain the sense of the value and 
 dignity of the daily routine requires imagination and 
 insight. 
 
 (6) Parents should make the pupils feel that home 
 and school are working in alliance. The school is a 
 necessary extension of the idea and influence of the 
 home. What every parent begins by doing in the 
 home but cannot continue, that the school completes. 
 In a notable article on " School Reform," Professor 
 Miinsterbergi insists on this copartnership of home 
 and school as the present needed school reform, second 
 in importance only to securing teachers who know 
 their subjects. 
 
 (7) The school should supply to the pupil what 
 the society which he will enter needs. Now, human 
 societies differ with the races that form them. The 
 needs of the different races of the human family are 
 not identical. Where education is concerned with 
 different races, the first question is. What are the 
 needs and capacities of this race ? The second ques- 
 tion is. What culture material ought the curriculum 
 to provide that will best meet this race's needs and 
 develop this race's capacities ? Only in barest outline 
 is human nature the same the world over. There 
 must be an adaptation of educational material to 
 
 1 Atlantic Monthly y May, 1900. 
 
The Sociological Aspect of Education 167 
 
 racial nature. Each race should have developed 
 through its education those traits which are 
 nature's characteristic gift to it. Thus human 
 society gains the strength of a diversity of gifts, 
 and avoids the weakness of uniformity. You can- 
 not make a good Filipino, or a good African, by 
 supplying an education that would make a good 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 Herewith is completed the long account of the 
 process whereby the social nature of the being to be 
 educated is developed through mentally re-living the 
 race's life. We have seen the nature of that environ- 
 ment through adjustment to which man is educated, 
 the effects for society of such adjustment, and the 
 practical consequences that follow for educators from 
 this sociological discussion. But our pupil, upon 
 whose nature depended the nature of education, which 
 we are seeking to define, was characterized by yet 
 another possession. The life embodied in physical 
 form, and living in conjunction with other life, is 
 directed by intelligence. Our pupil is an individual 
 consciousness, in addition to his other characteris- 
 tics. Perhaps he is this essentially. But this very 
 individual it is whom our preceding discussions have 
 not specifically considered. We shall want to know 
 what the effect upon the individual mind is of repeat- 
 ing its race's experience, of learning something of its 
 science, of enjoying something of its beauty, and of 
 living through its movements. But psychology is 
 the science of the mind, and to answer our question 
 we must turn next to the psychological aspect of 
 education. 
 
1 68 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 REFERENCES ON THE SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Burrage and Bailey, School Sanitation and Decoration. 
 
 Butler, The Meaning of Education, pp. 17-32. 
 
 Dewey, The School and Society, Chap. I. 
 
 Dutton, Social Phases of Education, pp. 201 et seq. 
 
 Eliot, Educational Reform, Chap. XVIII. 
 
 Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, History as a Science. 
 
 Hanus, Educational Aims, V. 
 
 Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education, Chaps. XXXVI 
 and XXXVIII. 
 
 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, Introduction. 
 
 Howerth, Education and the Social Ideal, Educational Review^ 
 September, 1902. 
 
 Lotze, Microcosmos, Bk. VII, Chap. II. 
 
 Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion, Bk. I, Chap. IV. 
 
 Miinsterberg, Psychology and Life, Essay on Psychology and 
 History. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 The characteristic of the pupil which remains to 
 be considered is inteUigence; and the question that 
 remains to be answered is, What is the effect upon Education, 
 the maturing intelHgence of working through the car'^c^on?" 
 racial attainment ? The consideration of these mat- sidered. 
 ters constitutes the psychological aspect of education. 
 Since it is the individual after all, and not society as 
 a whole, that is really being educated, it is apparent 
 that this psychological inquiry is closer to the nature 
 of education than any of the preceding discussions. 
 
 What is the effect upon the individual mind of 
 reproducing its social inheritance.'' To answer, it 
 must be remembered that mental reproduction is 
 mental activity, and that mental activity means men- 
 tal growth. The individual mind that works its way 
 through what the race has worked out in consequence 
 grows. In possessing and assimilating its spiritual 
 environment, the mind is quickened, and expands out 
 of its potentiality into its true nature. Through par- 
 ticipation in the life of the race the rnind of the indi- 
 vidual finds its real self, develops its natural powers. 
 Through the educational process every mind builds 
 its own world, conquers its own environment, and 
 thereby realizes its own capacity. In brief, the psy- 
 chological effect upon the mind of repeating its race's 
 
 169 
 
lyo The Philosophy of Education 
 
 experience is the development of its potential powers 
 into actuality. Education, psychologically considered, 
 is mental development. When the significance of this 
 statement becomes clear in the following discussion, 
 we shall then have yet another essential element to 
 add to our definition of the nature of education. 
 
 Having touched here upon the heart of our empiri- 
 cal inquiry concerning the conception of education, 
 we must attempt to justify and give meaning to the 
 observations just made. This can be done by consid- 
 ering the three following questions that arise out of 
 our introductory statements above, viz. : What is the 
 nature of that activity of mind whereby it develops } 
 What is the nature of that development which takes 
 place in mind through its activity ? And what are 
 the characteristics of the developed mind ^ 
 
 To take the first question, it is evident upon intro- 
 spection that the mind's activity in getting and 
 assimilating its spiritual inheritance is its own. The 
 mind is the source of its own reactions upon its world. 
 Having power within itself, the mind commands this 
 power upon occasion; it sets itself to work. Such 
 activity is properly described as self-activity. This 
 principle of self-activity in consciousness is the root 
 of all knowledge, feeling, and will. Without the 
 mind's response to its world there is no world. 
 Through the mind's response to its world, all science, 
 art, and action result. This basic power of conscious- 
 ness whereby it expresses itself and interprets its 
 world is the presupposition of education as viewed by 
 psychology. Without mental activity there is no 
 mental growth. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 171 
 
 To define this central notion of self-activity more 
 closely as it discovers itself in consciousness, an illus- 
 tration may be used. A billiard-ball moves mechani- 
 cally according to an impact from the outside. A 
 man's mind moves teleologically according to an idea 
 on the inside. A vis a tergo moves the ball, a vis a 
 f route moves the mind. The one is the object of 
 impact; the other is the subject of impulses. The 
 one is directed by external forces ; the other directs 
 itself. Self-activity, then, as a principle in conscious- 
 ness, means self -direction. It is the mind's abihty to 
 frame and to follow self-appointed goals. " Con- 
 scious effort in the evolution of possibilities is termed 
 self -activity." ^ To quote from Dr. Harris, '' Self- 
 activity itself we perceive in ourselves by introspec- 
 tion. When we look within, we become aware of free 
 energy which acts as subject and object under the 
 forms of feeling, thought, and volition." ^ 
 
 This is self-activity as manifested in consciousness. 
 With its manifestation goes, as a consequence, self- 
 development. The psychological aim of education, 
 viz., to develop the mental self of the pupil, is pos- 
 sible only through the activity of that self. It is a 
 universal law that growth can come only through 
 activity. By using, we gain. The use of capital is 
 interest. The plant's use of natural stimuli enables 
 it to grow. Muscular exercise means muscular devel- 
 opment. Just so self-activity is the mode of self- 
 development. 
 
 Indeed, one may say the law is not simply uni- 
 
 1 Boyer, " Principles and Practice of Teaching," p. 35. 
 
 2 Harris, " Psychologic Foundations of Education," p. 31. 
 
172 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The Insuf- 
 ficiency of 
 Rational 
 Psychology. 
 
 versal, but is a law of the universe itself, as we know 
 it in time. Since the days of Heraclitus no observa- 
 tion of man has been commoner than that all things 
 change. Modern astronomy, geology, and biology 
 have shown the unity of these changes in one vast 
 system of cosmic development. The changes occur 
 within the whole system of reality beyond which 
 there is nothing to cause change. Manifestly, then, 
 the whole system, as a unity including change, is 
 self-active. The development of the universe in 
 time is conditioned by the principle of self-activity. 
 It is not surprising, then, but natural, that man, the 
 microcosm, reflecting the macrocosm, should find his 
 own self-development only in his own self-activity. 
 " My Father worketh hitherto and I work." 
 
 From the beginning until now it has been the good 
 service of rational psychology to insist upon self- 
 activity as the central principle in consciousness. 
 This truth is still true ; the mind does react by means 
 of its own nature upon the sensuous material pre- 
 sented to it, and upon its own conscious states. But 
 this rationalistic view of the mind is inadequate, not 
 so much because of what it does say as because of 
 what it does not say. This point of view regards 
 the mind as mature, as independent of its material 
 environment, and as individual. It omits to consider 
 the mind as growing through its immaturity into 
 maturity, as conditioned in its manifestations by 
 states of the brain and body, and as reaching its true 
 nature through contact with fellow minds. The 
 rationaUstic psychology is not supplanted, but it is 
 to-day supplemented by the genetic, the experi- 
 mental, and the social. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 173 
 
 In the words of Professor Dewey, "Genetic psy- 
 chology, instead of being set over against rational 
 psychology, thus becomes a necessary instrument for 
 translating the more or less vague, abstract, and 
 nominal propositions of the latter, into concrete and 
 realizable form. Of course we are far enough from 
 an attainment of this ideal but surely this is the point 
 of view from which to regard it. . . . What is most 
 needed in education is, I take it, the connecting links, 
 the intermediate terms lying between the formal 
 general principles and the specific details — a con- 
 nection which will make the former workable while 
 it illuminates and emancipates the latter. And I do 
 not believe that these connecting links can be found 
 except in a psychology conceived in a somewhat more 
 experimental and less purely rationalistic form than 
 that of Dr. Harris." 1 
 
 It is the merit of the newer modes of psychological The Educa^ 
 study to analyze into some detail and define with ^\°efo^^he 
 some care the way in which the principle of self- Newer 
 activity works in growing minds, and also to describe ^^^ ° °^^* 
 the stages of the mind's natural development. With 
 the former of these services we are now particularly 
 concerned as we continue the answer to the first psy- 
 chological question concerning the nature of educa- 
 tion, viz.. What is the nature of that activity of mind 
 whereby it develops .'' To the latter service we must 
 return in attempting the answer to our second psycho- 
 logical question. 
 
 The activity of the self differentiates itself in a 
 
 1 John Dewey, Educational Review, Vol. XVI, " Harris's Psycho- 
 logic Foundations of Education." 
 
ment. 
 
 174 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 number of ways. This differentiation is logical, not 
 psychological, that is, what we concretely find in the 
 growing self is not first a bare principle of self-activity 
 which later separates itself into its parts, but is a 
 number of ways of reacting on its world, all display- 
 ing the principle of self-activity. These concrete 
 Internal ways of manifesting its active nature that the self 
 M^ntar^ has and whereby it realizes its powers are too many 
 Develop- and too familiar to describe in detail. The list in- 
 cludes the appetite for better cognition which we 
 call curiosity; the impulse to originate mentally, 
 which we call invention, and whereby progress is 
 possible; the demand of the aesthetic sense for 
 rhythm, form, color, and the perfect manifestations 
 of the types of life ; the tendency of all young minds 
 to do what is socially approved, and so to satisfy the 
 sense of right ; the unwillingness to be surpassed by 
 an equal, which we name emulation, and which is re- 
 sponsible for the various forms of competition of the 
 child's world ; the instinct to have and to hold what 
 comes within the range of the senses, leading to the 
 sense of ownership ; the tendency to avoid all forms 
 of pain and secure the things that give pleasure, 
 which is the instinct of self-preservation ; the impulse 
 to make and to break, to build up and to tear down, 
 to put together and to pull apart, so educative of the 
 motor centres, and which has been named the con- 
 structive impulse, — all these are familiar and typical 
 ways that the immature mind of the child has of 
 developing itself through its reactive power. 
 
 From this list we have reserved for fuller considera- 
 tion, because of their supreme educational importance. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 175 
 
 the three factors of imitation, interest, and effort. Three 
 This trinity of wonderful words, each representing a AgendeTof 
 way in which the self -active mind works out its own Mental 
 growth, almost covers the theoretical part of con- mem."^" 
 temporary educational discussions. They are the 
 bases of our pedagogical orthodoxies and heresies. To 
 defend imitation is likely to bring down upon one's self 
 the demand of the individualists in education that the 
 independence of the pupil must be safeguarded. To 
 defend interest is sure to elicit anathemas from the 
 strenuous duty-lovers. And to defend effort is in the 
 minds of many to identify one's self with an unscientific 
 psychology. Thus the educational house is divided 
 against itself. In the midst of this confusion some 
 are saying there is no truth, what seems so is illusion, 
 and education is not a science. For us there is 
 nothing left to do but to observe again that the 
 child's mind develops itself through imitation, and 
 through interest, and through effort. The truth is 
 not in the part, but in the whole. This is the in- 
 sight that will keep us from becoming warriors on the 
 inside or sceptics on the outside of the educational 
 house. From this point of view the difficulty of our 
 discussion is in remanding each of these three agencies 
 back to the sphere of its legitimate operation in the 
 large field of mental development. 
 
 And first, imitation. The discovery of the influence imitation, 
 of imitation in individual and social development is 
 modern. It could not be detected so long as men 
 held only individualistic preconceptions of society. 
 This discovery in our day of the wide-reaching 
 influence of imitation in life is one of the effects, as 
 
of Imitation. 
 
 176 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 well as one of the causes, of our deeper social con- 
 sciousness. The description of the influence of 
 imitation in mental development is associated with 
 the names of Tarde in France, and Baldwin and 
 Royce in America. For the full discussion of the 
 subject in its universal bearing, the reader must be 
 referred to the works of these authors. ^ Here it must 
 suffice for us to do only three things, viz., to define 
 the nature of imitation, to indicate its larger effects 
 in mental development, and to suggest some service- 
 able educational uses of the principle. 
 The Nature Imitation is the tendency of the individual to act 
 upon the suggestions of others. In view of the social 
 nature of the individual, the tendency is natural and 
 instinctive. The imitation may be unconscious or 
 conscious, even as the suggestion that is received may 
 have been given consciously or unconsciously. When 
 the pupil performs what the teacher asks, both the 
 suggestion and the act are conscious. When the 
 pupil's life is shaped by the teacher's character, 
 the suggestion is doubtless unconscious, and the 
 imitation may be conscious or unconscious. The 
 suggestion is the tendency to act that accompanies 
 the having of any idea, the suggestive quality being 
 an invariable accompaniment of the occupation of 
 consciousness by any idea whatsoever. " All con- 
 sciousness is motor," ^ says Professor James. And 
 the body, delicate machine that it is, registers in some 
 
 ^ Tarda, " Les Lois de I'lmitation"; Baldwin, "Mental Develop- 
 ment," two volumes ; Royce, " Studies of Good and Evil," Essays VII, 
 VIII. 
 
 2 " Briefer Psychology," p. 370. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 177 
 
 physical movement every idea that flits through con- 
 sciousness. It is obvious that the suggestion upon 
 which we act may be self-given, but only when it 
 comes from others is the action imitation in the 
 usual sense of the term. It is also evident that the 
 suggestion received from another may be either what 
 is said or what is done, may be precept or example. 
 
 What does imitation do for the child in the way of The Effects 
 mental development ? Of course imitation is always on^Menta°^ 
 assisted by all the other developing agencies men- Deveiop- 
 tioned above, and so no one of the effects now to be 
 enumerated is wholly due to imitation alone. Among 
 the more prominent mental effects in producing which 
 imitation is a main factor may be included the power 
 of speech, voluntary movements, self-consciousness, 
 originality, and morality and religion. Imitation be- 
 gins to work near the beginning of the ninth month,^ 
 is at the maximum of its influence during the early 
 years, and continues its effect throughout life, though 
 diminishing in the amount of its influence as individu- 
 ality and maturity are reached. '' When the imitative 
 impulse does come, it comes in earnest. For many 
 months after its rise it may be called, perhaps, the 
 controlling impulse, apart from the ordinary life pro- 
 cesses. As a phenomenon it is too famihar to need 
 description. Its importance in the growth of the 
 child's mind is largely in connection with the devel- 
 opment of language and of voluntary movement 
 generally." ^ 
 
 1 Baldwin, " Mental Development, Methods and Processes," second 
 edition, p. 131. 
 
 2 /did,, p. 132. 
 
 N 
 
1 78 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Imitation 
 and Self- 
 conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 Imitation 
 and Origi- 
 nality. 
 
 The phenomenon of self-consciousness is largely- 
 due to the influence of imitation. Because the eyes 
 and the deeds of its parents and others centre so 
 much in the child, its consciousness in imitation of 
 them is directed to itself. The consciousness of self 
 would never be sharpened except in society. As 
 Professor Royce expresses it : " The early intellectual 
 life of the child is lost to us in obscurity, despite 
 numerous recent observations. But we are sure that 
 the infant, in the first months of life, has nothing that 
 we should call self-consciousness. The first clear evi- 
 dence that we get of the presence of a form of self- 
 consciousness intelligible to us comes when the infant 
 begins to be observantly imitative of the acts, and later 
 of the words, of the people about it. In other words, 
 the first ego of the child's intelligible consciousness 
 appears to be, in its own mind, set over against a 
 non-ego that, to the child, is made up of the perceived 
 fascinating, and, to its feeling, more or less significant, 
 deeds of the persons in its environment." ^ This rec- 
 ognition of one's self through the prior recognition 
 of one's fellows will help us presently in considering 
 imitation and morality. 
 
 After perceiving that self-consciousness is largely 
 due to the processes of imitation, it will not be so 
 difficult to see that even originality, contrary to one's 
 natural first thought, becomes possible through imita- 
 tion. To be original is to be something more than a 
 mere imitator. It is to add something characteristic 
 to one's copy ; it is even to be selective of the copy 
 that one will imitate. Once imitation has brought us 
 
 1 " Studies of Good and Evil," p. 182. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 179 
 
 to self-consciousness, then our choices will show and 
 develop our originality. Here are conscious processes 
 at work showing the uniqueness of our individuality. 
 Through bringing us to consciousness of ourselves, 
 imitation makes our originality possible. 
 
 But in two other ways still imitation indicates 
 originality. There are selective responses to copies 
 that are unconsciously made, and every response to a 
 copy that is not parrot-like and insignificant for mental 
 development is characteristic. The child does not 
 imitate all the acts of every person that he observes. 
 Many of them slip by him without making sufficient 
 appeal to him to lead to imitation. He does not 
 respond to them because they do not appeal to him. 
 His rejection is not conscious ; it is natural. But such 
 natural rejections of certain copies declare his indi- 
 viduality and strengthen it. And, also, in the second 
 place, it must be observed that those suggestions that 
 do appeal to the child, soliciting imitative responses 
 from him, are transmuted by his own individuality. 
 He copies characteristically. Just as in the old copy- 
 books for teaching penmanship, many pupils may be 
 imitating the same copy, but no two copies of the 
 copy are exactly alike, so every child declares his 
 own originality in the way in which he imitates. 
 " Very rarely do we find a literal repetition of what 
 is offered. Even from the beginning there is a ten- 
 dency to depart a little from the copy — to adapt it 
 somewhat to the special circumstances and tastes of 
 the individual ; so that the replica always has a turn 
 in it that the original did not have." ^ 
 
 1 Stratton, " Experimental Psychology and Culture," p. 224. 
 
i8o The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Because imitation gives the child a self-conscious- 
 ness which permits him to choose the kind of indi- 
 vidual he will be, because he shows and strengthens 
 his individuality by the unconscious selections and 
 rejections which his nature makes, and because he 
 is original even in the fashion of his imitation, we 
 must recognize the polar relation in which imitation 
 and originality stand to each other. " So that imita- 
 tion is, after all, but one side of the mental process. 
 The other side is origination, which is quite as real 
 and demonstrable as imitation itself. Imitation is a 
 mere schoolmaster to bring us to originality. The 
 child, through imitating others, becomes aware of his 
 own capacity for a wide variety of acts that he other- 
 wise would have believed were beyond his powers; 
 he finds that he is able to do what others do. In 
 this way, his own strength and skill and versatility 
 are not only cultivated, but are revealed to himself. 
 Imitation, then, even when we slavishly copy the 
 acts of those near us, is all the while teaching us our 
 own capacity." ^ 
 Imitation The last of the effects of imitation on mental de- 
 
 andReuSorf vclopment important for our present consideration 
 has to do with morality and religion. Morality is the 
 recognition in conduct of the rights of other persons. 
 Religion is the recognition in life of the rights of the 
 Ideal Person. Since the imitation of other persons 
 brings one to a consciousness of self, as indicated 
 above, it is evident that self-consciousness and the 
 moral consciousness are a twin-birth. In the words 
 of Baldwin : " The ego and the alter are thus born 
 
 1 Stratton, " Experimental Psychology and Culture," p. 222. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education i8i 
 
 together. Both are crude and unreflective, largely- 
 organic, an aggregate of sensations, prime among 
 which are efforts, pushes, strains, physical pleasures 
 and pains. And the two get purified and clarified 
 together by the twofold reaction between project and 
 subject, and between subject and eject. My sense 
 of myself grows by imitation of you, and my sense 
 of yourself grows in terms of my sense of myself. 
 Both ego and alter are thus essentially social ; each 
 is a sociuSy and each is an imitative creation." ^ 
 
 This fundamental sense of the unity of human 
 nature in all individuals is the basis of morality. To 
 the child's consciousness this is not a reflective, but 
 an experienced, truth. What his fellows approve is 
 to him the right, what they disapprove is the wrong. 
 As Dr. Gordy puts it, " From this it follows that the 
 beliefs of the very young as to what is true, fitting, 
 right, noble, beautiful, desirable — apart from objects, 
 which are desired because they satisfy the needs of 
 the animal nature — mtLst be the opinions of those 
 by whom they are surrounded : there can be nothing 
 else." 2 
 
 It is to be observed here, that when the copies are 
 bad, imitation works in the interest of immorality 
 quite as readily as in the interest of morality when 
 the copies are good. If there is no worthy model to 
 offset the suggestion of the unworthy, the imitation 
 is also inevitably of the unworthy. As the Apostle 
 Paul long ago wrote to the Corinthians, evil com- 
 panionships corrupt good morals. The bearing of 
 
 1 Cited above, p. 338. 
 
 2 « A Broader Elementary Education," p. 136. 
 
1 82 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 this negative influence of imitation upon the educa- 
 tional process, as well as the positive, will be pres- 
 ently indicated, though indeed it is already evident. 
 
 It is no less true in the realm of religion than in 
 morality that development is through personal imita- 
 tion of the superior spiritual attainment of another. 
 We come in the first instance to consider that other 
 as a superior personality because our fellows do ; 
 then our imitation follows our respect. It takes a 
 person to reveal personality, and an Ideal Person to 
 reveal human personality completely to itself. To 
 see one's own possibilities realized in another is to 
 be attracted by that other, is to begin to imitate and 
 become really like that other. "... whatever gain 
 most of us make is by a kind of spiritual appropria- 
 tion of what others have already attained. Through 
 imitation the gains of one become a common posses- 
 sion, without loss to him who first made the gain ; it 
 is multiplied in those who avail themselves of it." ^ 
 The Ideal Person, as conceived definitely by any 
 mind, is the unity of all the perfect characteristics 
 that one knows. This person may have been con- 
 creted once in human history, as in Jesus, in which 
 case the process of imitation, and so religious growth, 
 can go on far easier than when the ideal remains 
 impersonal. The Apostle Paul again had this imita- 
 tive process of spiritual development clearly in mind 
 when he wrote, " But we all, with unveiled face re- 
 flecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are trans- 
 formed into the same image from glory to glory, even 
 as from the Lord the Spirit." 
 
 ^ Stratton, " Experimental Psychology and Culture," p. 219. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 183 
 
 We have now seen the larger effects of imitation 
 on mental development in certain cases of educational 
 significance, particularly in leading to self-conscious- 
 ness, originality, morality, and religion. Let it be 
 said again now that imitation alone is not wholly 
 responsible for these great achievements of the 
 human self -active spirit, but it is largely contributory 
 to them. It now remains to suggest certain uses that 
 may be made of the principle of imitation in the 
 educational praxis, and briefly, too, since our general 
 inquiry is mainly theoretical. 
 
 It is the business of education from the psychologi- The Educa- 
 cal point of view to develop the minds of the young. 0° j^^t^^o^ 
 In so far as imitation is one of the agencies of mental 
 development, it is incumbent upon teachers and edu- 
 cational directors everywhere who desire to utilize 
 every means that nature affords in their work to put 
 the best models of every kind before growing chil- 
 dren. These models may be material or the more 
 potent ones of personality. Among the right mate- Material 
 rial models into contact with which the school should ^°^^^s. 
 bring the child may be mentioned a beautiful play- 
 ground, an architecturally good as well as serviceable 
 school building, well-lighted corridors, broad stair- 
 ways, carefully ordered schoolrooms, neat and clean 
 texts, a reasonably high requirement of the quality of 
 work done, and an atmosphere of agreeable and en- 
 grossing occupation, to breathe which cultivates the 
 sense both of the reality and the winsomeness of 
 living. 
 
 In particular, the use of the model in the teaching of 
 art and music has found and justified its place. It is 
 
184 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 just finding its place, also, and will justify it, in the 
 teaching of literature and composition.^ As else- 
 where imitation here will have its perfect fruit in an 
 original, though disciplined, style. 
 
 But since a person is more revealing and so more 
 imitable to the forming mind than a material model, 
 it is in the realm of personality and its influence that 
 the principle of imitation has its highest educational 
 service. Both the great common sense of mankind and 
 the expert educational opinion have put central empha- 
 sis on the personality of those who teach the young. 
 Emerson wrote to his daughter in college, " It mat- 
 ters little what your studies are, it all lies on who 
 your teacher is." Similarly President Jordan is insist- 
 ing upon ''constructive individuality" in the teacher 
 as the greatest thing in education. This emphasis is 
 not misplaced. It justifies itself whether we consider 
 the work of the teacher from his own point of view 
 or from the point of view of the pupil. The teacher's 
 own success is nine-tenths dependent on his person- 
 ality, his success to include such elements as the re- 
 gard of his pupils, his lasting influence upon them, 
 the estimation set upon him by the community in 
 which he works and by his employers, and the oppor- 
 tunities that come to him for wider service. " The 
 teacher may possess most approved pedagogical de- 
 vices, and be thoroughly master of the subject to be 
 taught; but if at bottom he be bored by his work, 
 nothing will quite prevent the child from being in- 
 sensibly affected in the same way. And, on the 
 
 1 See for such a text, Kavana and Beatty, " Composition and 
 Rhetoric," New York, 1902. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 185 
 
 other hand, it is due to the direct contagion of states 
 of mind that the enthusiast, ill-equipped and clumsy 
 though he may be, is often so successful in dealing 
 with the young." ^ I cannot forbear to add to this 
 fine statement the name of Pestalozzi in educational 
 history as an illustration of its truth. 
 
 From the point of view of the pupils the personal-, 
 ity of the teacher is even more important and signifi- 
 cant than in his own case, as they are many and he 
 is one. In this connection it is to be remembered 
 that the most valuable elements in human life, moral- 
 ity and religion, are largely the products of child- 
 hood's imitation. The supplementary truth is also 
 to be noted that these qualities of the human spirit 
 cannot be taught ; they must grow. The school can- 
 not omit them, for they are too important ; it cannot 
 teach them, for they cannot be taught. Ethics can 
 be taught, for it is the science of morality. The- 
 ology can be taught, for it is the science of reli- 
 gion. But morality and religion as dispositions of 
 the heart and will can only be grown by the indi- 
 vidual possessing them under the potent influence 
 of suggestive patterns of righteousness and spiritual- 
 ity. The quandary of the school as to how to culti- 
 vate morality and reHgion without being able (in the 
 nature of things, and not simply because of legal 
 enactments against religious instruction) to teach 
 them is solved through the provision of teachers 
 with personalities worthy of imitation by the pupils. 
 And the highest duty and privilege of the teacher is 
 to be in whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, 
 
 1 Stratton, " Experimental Psychology and Culture," p. 218. 
 
1 86 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 lovely, and of good report what he is willing for his 
 pupils to become. 
 The Nature Personality is one of those elusive words whose 
 of Personality, meaning Can always be felt, but hardly ever defined. 
 Personality, as the French say of style, is the man. 
 More definitely, it is the spirit that unifies the attain- 
 ments of a man ; it is his attitude toward life, his point 
 of view, his total character. All the great teachers 
 of the race have had winning personalities. To 
 take two illustrations, Socrates and Jesus. Plato, 
 the greatest pupil of Socrates, puts his own best 
 thoughts of most of his dialogues into the mouth 
 of Socrates. It is the Socratic personality pervading 
 the Platonic language. And the personality of Jesus, 
 the Great Teacher, is still, and will never become less 
 than, the dynamic centre of the Christian religion. 
 That personality has put into the mouth of the ages 
 the utterance of the demonstrative Peter, " Lord, to 
 whom shall we go but unto thee, for thou hast the 
 words of eternal life." 
 
 It is a patent but not sufficiently remarked fact 
 that the immorality and irreligion of a generation 
 are not traceable to the school alone. This responsi- 
 bility is to be shared with the central unit of society, the 
 home ; with that great sophist of human society, pub- 
 lic opinion ; with that great creature of society which 
 ofttimes gives men law that is not justice, the state ; 
 and with that indispensable, indeed inevitable, insti- 
 tution of human life which ought to utter the voice 
 of the ideal, the church. This fact is to be borne in 
 mind in rightly estimating criticisms of educational 
 results. Doubtless the American home, the very 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 187 
 
 heart of society out of which are the issues of life, 
 is falling further short of its moral and religious 
 opportunity in the cultivation of youth than any 
 other social institution. 
 
 . Thus we have reviewed the nature of imitation, the Transition 
 effects on mental development to which it conspicu- *° interest, 
 ously contributes, and its educational uses. We now 
 come to the consideration of that second wonderful 
 word in our contemporary educational discussions, 
 viz., interest, which, like imitation, is again one of 
 many ways utilized by the self-active spirit of man 
 in its own development. The transition from imita- 
 tion to interest is easy. The child imitates that which 
 interests him. What does not interest him, if left to 
 himself, he leaves alone. Where interest is present, 
 the educational machinery runs smoothly. Where it 
 is absent, the dual problem arises of developing inter- 
 est on the one hand or a will to follow the uninterest- 
 ing on the other hand. This second phase of the 
 problem will confront us presently when we come to 
 the treatment of our third modern sacred word, viz., 
 effort. 
 
 Like imitation, the doctrine of interest has asso- TheAdvo- 
 ciated itself with great names. It first won its perma- J^Jg^g°^ 
 nent place in the education of Emile as provided by 
 Rousseau, but, like everything else announced by 
 this untrammelled being, his doctrine of interest 
 stood unrelated to other limiting truths. Rousseau's 
 vision was penetrating but unorganized. A Herbart 
 was necessary to contribute to Rousseau's insight the 
 pedagogy of interest. The followers of Herbart are 
 many, both in Germany and America, and the doc- 
 
1 88 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 trine of interest has received many additions and 
 restatements. In America the theory has been 
 naturaUzed, as the kindergarten also is in process of 
 being, and prominent exponents of it, to mention only 
 two, are Professor Dewey and Professor de Garmo. 
 
 Like imitation also, interest in education is both 
 an ideal and a practice of the present age. That 
 education could be interesting and the schoolroom 
 an attractive place was, until the eighteenth century, 
 unthinkable. Dickens, in the nineteenth century, still 
 had an audience that could appreciate Squeers. And 
 Alexander Hamilton no doubt expressed the senti- 
 ment of his contemporaries when he wrote, **The 
 great problem of education is how to induce the pupil 
 to go through with a course of exertion, in its result 
 good and even agreeable, but immediately and in 
 itself irksome." It mellows one's vision and gives 
 a tinge of rose-color to one's outlook to be able to 
 record that to-day the happy life may, and of right 
 ought to, begin in the schoolroom. The emancipat- 
 ing words of Rousseau in behalf of childhood are in 
 process of fulfilment : " Emile has arrived at the end 
 of the period of infancy [twelve years], has lived the 
 life of a child, and has not bought his perfection at 
 the cost of his happiness. On the contrary, they 
 have lent each other mutual aid. While acquiring 
 all the reason suited to his age, he has been as 
 happy and as free as his constitution permitted him 
 to be."i 
 
 In considering interest as a means of self-develop- 
 ment, we have to inquire concerning its nature, its 
 
 1 "Emile," tr. Payne, the International Education Series, p. 128. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 189 
 
 importance, and the art of securing it. Interest is The Nature 
 not a form of knowledge, though knowledge may be °^ ^^^^rest. 
 interesting ; neither is it a kind of action, though 
 action too may be interesting. But interest is pri- 
 marily a feeling. A feeling is an immediate experi- 
 ence of consciousness, and the feeling of interest is 
 an experience familiar enough to growing minds of 
 whatever age. Every one knows that when he is 
 interested something is proving attractive to him, is 
 catching and holding the mind's attention, and that 
 to this something it is no effort to attend. Because 
 of the unity of consciousness, the feeling of interest 
 is always attached to some object. This object may 
 itself be something material, and usually is so in the 
 cases of primitive man and childhood. Or it may be 
 an idea, an act, or even another feehng. At this very 
 moment perhaps we are interested in the feeling of 
 interest. It thus appears that to be interested im- 
 plies (i) a person who has the interest, (2) an object 
 to which the interest may cling, and (3) an engaging 
 quality of attractiveness about the object which cap- 
 tures the feeling. Putting these things together, and 
 realizing that the definition of any feeling is inappre- 
 ciable to him who has never experienced it, we may say 
 that interest is a pleasurable activity of the self. The 
 object of the interest is that upon which the activity 
 of the self impinges. 
 
 Professor Dewey, having more prominently in mind 
 the fact that the feeling of interest has an object than 
 the absorbing quality of the feeling itself, thus defines 
 it, " Feeling, so far as it is taken out of its isolation 
 and put in relation to objects of knowledge or ideals 
 
.190 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 of action, is interest T ^ Professor de Garmo, who has 
 so entertainingly shown that interest is bound up with 
 some form of self-expression, writes thus, " For a gen- 
 uine interest is nothing but the feeling that accompa- 
 nies this identification of the self through action with 
 some object or idea." ^ And Herbart, who began the 
 work of systematizing the theory of interest in its rela- 
 tion to instruction, writes thus of its nature : '' Interest 
 means in general that species of mental activity which 
 instruction must create, but which has no place in 
 mere knowledge. For we conceive of the latter as a 
 store which the man may entirely dispense with, and 
 yet be no other than with it. He who, on the con- 
 trary, holds his knowledge firmly and seeks to extend 
 it, is interested in it." ^ 
 
 These words from the masters indicate that the 
 conception of interest current among those who deny 
 its fundajnental place as a mode of self-development 
 is superficial and inadequate. Interest in education 
 is not ease, it is effortless activity ; it is not a class- 
 room vaudeville, with the teacher as chief performer, 
 it is engrossing occupation ; it is not an amusing 
 entertainment of the pupils, it is a joyous attainment 
 by the pupils ; it is not play, it is attractive and com- 
 pelling work ; it is not pursuing the line of least resist- 
 ance, it is discovering the fine of greatest attraction. 
 And the true opposite of interest is not hard work, 
 but drudgery, not solid acijuisition, but wearying 
 
 1 Psychology, p. 276. 
 
 2 " Interest and Education," p. 27. 
 
 3 Quoted in Felkin, " An Introduction to Herbart's Science and 
 Practice of Education," p. 94. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 191 
 
 monotony. Interest is the oil which lubricates the 
 wheels of the class-room machinery. These con- 
 siderations bring us in the next place to attempt to 
 estimate the importance of interest in education. 
 
 *' Interest is the greatest word in Education." The impor- 
 These words of President Schurman stand on the title- interest 
 page as the motto of Professor de Garmo's volume on 
 Interest and Education. Though we might prefer 
 to save this highest estimate for the third of the 
 wonderful words in modern education, namely, effort, 
 this pronouncement nevertheless forbids us to treat 
 slightingly so real a matter. 
 
 Interest is one of the great words in education, 
 because it removes drudgery from the school, puts 
 the motive power of the feelings at the disposition of 
 the teacher, and is the immediate aim of all instruc- 
 tion. Interest removes drudgery from the school, interest and 
 As soon as an object of endeavor becomes interesting ^^ ^^^' 
 in itself, like the learning of a lesson, like the recita- 
 tion of a class, or the solving of a problem, this object 
 becomes an end of action in itself. It is no 
 longer done as a disagreeable means to an agree- 
 able ultimate end. It is done for its own sake. 
 The way has become attractive and worth while 
 as well as the goal. The daily toil, as well as 
 its final reward, receives the judgment of worth. 
 This is the effect of interest in study. And this 
 effect is also true, for, just as interest indicates, 
 values do lie in the doing as well as in the deed. 
 But the very essence of drudgery is the doing of 
 what one does not like for the sake of something 
 that one does like. " If the interest in the end alone 
 
192 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 remains and no interest attaches to the means, then 
 we have drudgery." ^ No wonder that so long as 
 the school was thought of as a preparation for later 
 real living, its tasks were also drudgery ; but now 
 that the school has become a participation in present 
 real living, its labors are also become meat and drink 
 to young souls. The day of the emancipation of the 
 individual from slavish work done in subjection to the 
 will of another is at last also dawning in the school. 
 Rousseau sounded the death-knell of feudalism in 
 education, and Herbart made the interment. No 
 doubt in those modern schools where the atmosphere 
 of interest has supplanted that of ennui the pupils do 
 those things which they ought to do quite as well as, 
 if not better than, in any preceding schools of civili- 
 zation. And they certainly leave undone the more, 
 those things that ought not to be done. And these 
 results are wrought, not through the old fear and au- 
 thority, but through the new love and liberty. Pupils 
 are nowadays doing what they ought to, more because 
 they want to and less because they have to than in 
 any period in the history of culture. 
 The Motor Interest puts the motive power of the feelings at 
 
 Feelings. the disposition of the teacher. It is an open question 
 whether the feelings are not the greatest motive 
 powers in life. No idea which the feelings fail to 
 welcome can abide in the home of the mind. And no 
 unchanging and uninteresting thing can remain the 
 object of voluntary attention longer than a few seconds 
 at the time. Without the enlisting of interest, ideas 
 quickly fade away into nothingness and attention is 
 
 1 De Garmo, " Interest and Education," p. 32. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 193 
 
 intermittent. " Present interest is the grand motive 
 power, the only one which leads with certainty to great 
 results/' announces Rousseau.^ The educator who 
 would instruct the intellect and fashion the will must 
 also win the feehngs. Of course interest is but one of 
 the many feelings of possible service to the teacher. 
 
 And the securing of interest in the subject is the Theimmedi- 
 immediate aim of the work of instruction. The instruction. 
 remote aim varies with circumstances ; it may be 
 the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake or 
 for utility ; it may be the formation of character ; 
 it may be the cultivation of the aesthetic sense ; it 
 may be social efficiency, or the comprehensive aim 
 of complete living. But in any case it is the 
 immediate business of instruction, in justice to its 
 opportunity, to develop an interest in the subject 
 taught as the most efficient means to its remote 
 end. The teacher who has solved the present 
 problem of interesting his class in the subject- 
 matter has solved the larger problem of instruc- 
 tion. The possession of truth is preconditioned by 
 its warm pursuit. 
 
 One of the Herbartians, Dr. R. Staude, has stated 
 the relation of interest to instruction in the following 
 way, " Interest is the Hght with which Herbart has 
 once for all illumined with the brightness of day the 
 dark and mysterious ways of the art of teaching ; it 
 is the magic word which alone gives instruction the 
 power to call out the minds of the young and make 
 them serve the master's aims ; it is the long lever of 
 education which, moved easily and gladly by the 
 
 1 op. cit.^ p. 82. 
 o 
 
194 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 teacher, can alone bring the will of the young into 
 the desired direction and activity." ^ 
 
 The discussion of the importance of interest as the 
 immediate aim of instruction shall close with the fol- 
 lowing words from American authors : " The prob- 
 lem of teaching an intelligent savage some technical 
 scientific matter would not be chiefly a problem of 
 how to give him sensations regarding it, nor how to 
 give him mental capacity enough to understand it, 
 but how to arouse his interest in such a way that he 
 would set his mind to work upon it. Interest is, there- 
 fore, as much a necessary source of knowledge as is 
 sensation. Sensations might have all the objective 
 qualities that they now possess, and yet if they failed to 
 interest, the mind would pass them over and they would 
 never enter into the structure of our knowledge." ^ 
 The Art of This significance of interest in the work of in- 
 
 securmg structiou brings us to our next question, viz., the art 
 of securing it. If interest is the immediate aim of 
 instruction, how can it be gotten } This is one of 
 those practical questions that from time to time have 
 wedged themselves into our general theoretical in- 
 quiry, and whose answers involve for their execution 
 not so much insight on the part of teachers as a cer- 
 tain art and skill. 
 
 In brief, it may be suggested that interest begets 
 interest, that interest accompanies natural mental 
 growth, that interest is felt in any unified variety, and 
 that interest appears in the novel that is similar to the 
 familiar. 
 
 ^ Quoted by Felkin, op. cit., p. 102. 
 
 2 McLellan and Dewey, "Applied Psychology," p. l8. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 195 
 
 Interest begets interest. There is nothing so con- Aninter- 
 tagious as a feeling. Given a teacher himself brim- teacher 
 ming with interest in the subject taught for its own 
 sake and for the pupil's sake, and that is a rare and 
 frigid class indeed that will not thaw under his genial 
 influence. 
 
 Interest accompanies natural mental growth. A An Ordered 
 pupil whose intellectual capacity is, on the one hand, <^""^icuium. 
 insulted by the elementariness, or, on the other, over- 
 whelmed by the advanced character, of the subject 
 taught or of the method of its presentation, cannot 
 be expected to follow the work with interest. There 
 must be an adjustment of matter and method to the 
 mind of the pupil. Interests, like instincts, ripen and 
 decay. Let the educator take the tide of the pupil's 
 interest when it is at the flood. The ordered cur- 
 riculum and the growing mind must be well met at 
 every point. 
 
 Interest is felt in any unified variety. This sugges- Unity in 
 tion applies to the character of the text-books selected, ^"®*^* 
 and to the method of the class room. Variety alone 
 is distracting ; unity alone is tiresome. The text-book, 
 and the method of teaching, must go on an errand. 
 There must be movement and there must be purpose. 
 The bane of texts is lack of unity ; of method is lack 
 of variety. The secret of interesting, as of aestheti- 
 cally pleasing, the mind is to present it with a variety 
 in unity. 
 
 And also, interest is felt in the novel that is similar The New 
 to the familiar. The novel that is unintelligible is and the Old. 
 simply curious; the familiar has become common- 
 place ; but the novel that is intelligible through like- 
 
196 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 ness to the familiar, solicits investigation and interest. 
 Knowledge is the basis of interest, — one is interested 
 in that concerning which he knows something, and 
 wants to know more. The pupils know something. 
 Recognize this, and present the new material so that 
 it makes connection with what is already in the mind 
 of the class. Their expression will interest where the 
 teacher's impression will fail. They are already in- 
 terested in some things. Discover these, and present 
 the new subject as an extension of old interests. The 
 teacher is like the householder who brings forth 
 things both new and old ; the old is what his pupils 
 know, and are already interested in ; the new is what 
 he wants them to learn. This is, of course, the Her- 
 bartian doctrine of "apperception." That teacher is 
 interesting who can make new things seem old, and 
 old things new. The secret of it is making the pupil 
 the centre of interpretation. Teach out from him in 
 all directions. He will be interested in the world, or 
 any part of the fulness thereof, if he can only see it 
 as his. To make the subject reflect the self of the 
 student, that is the very essence of securing interest. 
 A quotation from Professor James on any subject 
 which his brilliant pen has touched is always in order. 
 Considering how interest is acquired, he writes : 
 *' From all these facts there emerges a very simple 
 abstract programme for the teacher to follow in keep- 
 ing the attention of the child : Begin with the line of 
 his native interests, and offer him objects that have 
 some immediate connection with these. . . . Next, 
 step by step, connect with these first objects and ex- 
 periences the later objects and ideas which you wish 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 197 
 
 to instil. Associate the new with the old in some 
 natural and telling way, so that the interest, being 
 shed along from point to point, finally suffuses the 
 entire system of objects of thought." ^ 
 
 An object of thought that is, or has become, in- Herbart's 
 teresting in itself receives the involuntary attention of SrRektion 
 the pupil. He attends because he likes to attend, of interest 
 easily and without effort. There are those who, cap- 
 tivated by the doctrine of interest and feeling the 
 spell of their master, Herbart, eloquently declare, that 
 interest is the only avenue to attention, that the pres- 
 ence of compelling ideas is the only condition upon 
 which the will can act, that the will is subject to "a 
 circle of thought." In the words of one of these 
 enthusiastic champions of the bondage of will to in- 
 terest, " since study depends on the will, how is the 
 will to be reached .'' By the power of apperceptive 
 interest, he [Herbart] replies. Through apperceptive 
 interest, Herbart, as we have seen, appeals directly to 
 the will, and draws it without constraint, by the gentle 
 attraction of assimilated knowledge, into the service 
 of instruction. It is this, his interpretation of the 
 principle [of interest], which may without exaggera- 
 tion be called a great discovery, one which, as it be- 
 comes more widely known and understood, will tend 
 to mould all true education in the future." ^ 
 
 After the preceding discussion of interest no one The Truth 
 perhaps will say that I am unmindful of its place 
 in education. Only I would say that its place is 
 along with other important things, like imitation and 
 
 1 "Talks to Teachers," pp. 95-96. 
 
 2 Felkin, op. cit., p. loi. 
 
 is in the 
 Whole. 
 
198 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 effort, and not in their stead. Neither am I, on the 
 other hand, though preparing a way for the considera- 
 tion of effort in education, among that small strenuous 
 number who fear that the advent of interest in educa- 
 tion is synonymous with a reign of weakness. Rather 
 is my position, in idea at least, that each one of these 
 three great modern educational words contains and 
 conveys a needed message in our day, that the truth 
 which we seek is in the unity of the conflicting 
 opinions. Come we then to the consideration of the 
 third of the ways in which the self-active spirit of 
 man realizes itself, to that most significant of all per- 
 sonal words, viz., effort. 
 
 Let the teacher do what he will to interest the class 
 in the subject, at times his powers will fail, his words 
 return unto him void, and his class stare at him 
 vacantly without " speculation in their eyes." In such 
 barren and waste places in the work of the class room, 
 nothing but " a slow dead heave of the will " from 
 teacher and pupils alike can carry us safely over into 
 the inviting fields beyond. Howsoever winning the 
 work of recitation, at times in his private preparation 
 the tide of the pupil's interest will be on the ebb. In 
 that hour of trial only a vigorous will capable of pur- 
 suing the uninteresting, though important, task will 
 prevent the pupil from being beached on the shore 
 of inactivity and idleness. At that moment when in- 
 terest fails but attention continues we have effort. 
 And at any moment when the right thing to do is not 
 the most interesting there is the opportunity for effort ; 
 there, also, is a moral situation, full often of tragic 
 import. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 199 
 
 It is pertinent to inquire at this point whether the The Free- 
 effort put forth by the individual at a given time is a ^st?on^ed°" 
 variable in amount, subject only to the mind's initia- 
 tive in disposing of the physical energy at hand, or a 
 fixed quantity and determined absolutely by the sum 
 total of the conditions. To maintain the former is to 
 be a libertarian ; to defend the latter is to be a deter- 
 minist. Though the inquiry is pertinent here, its full 
 discussion is not possible on psychological, but only 
 on metaphysical, grounds. As such, we must reserve 
 this question for our final chapter. 
 
 But the phenomenon of effort, or the voluntary 
 attention to the uninteresting, is the same psychologi- 
 cally, whatever be the metaphysical interpretation of 
 its significance. There can be little question as to 
 what introspection reports concerning the mental 
 state of doing an unattractive, though valuable, task. 
 Concerning the phenomenon of effort, then, as the 
 last of the three ways utilized by the self-active spirit 
 of man in its own realization, let us inquire as to its 
 nature, its importance, and its place in education. 
 
 Effort is the strain consciousness puts upon itself The Nature 
 in performing unattractive work. It is voluntary ° °^*' 
 attention to the uninteresting. It is the will to do 
 one's duty when one doesn't want to. It is listening 
 to the still small voice of conscience instead of the 
 whirlwinds of passion. It is overcoming inertia, act- 
 ing in the line of greatest resistance. In the language 
 of Professor James, who has more eloquently pro- 
 pounded the ultimate worth of effort than any other 
 psychologist : " Now our spontaneous way of conceiv- 
 ing the effort, under all these circumstances, is as an 
 
200 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 active force adding its strength to that of the motives 
 which ultimately prevail. . . . The ideal impulse ap- 
 pears, in comparison with this [propensity], a still 
 small voice which must be artificially reinforced to 
 prevail. Effort is what reinforces it, making things 
 seem as if, while the force of propensity were essen- 
 tially a fixed quantity, the ideal force might be of 
 various amount. ... It [the effort] appears adven- 
 titious and indeterminate in advance. We can make 
 more or less as we please, and //"we make enough we 
 can convert the greatest mental resistance into the 
 least." ^ Professor James thus interprets the phe- 
 nomenon of effort from the libertarian point of view 
 as defined above. 
 
 Effort does not simply mean that through it more 
 of the same thing will be done ; it means also that 
 through it a different thing is done. When alterna- 
 tives of action are present and of unequal strength, it 
 takes effort to follow the weaker. " True effort con- 
 sists in reinforcing by additional ideas, desires, and 
 motives, the side felt to be the weaker. It may be true 
 that action follows the strongest desire, but it is also 
 true that we have the power to call up considerations 
 and feehngs that strengthen and that weaken the 
 force of a desire." ^ 
 
 The importance of effort grows out of its nature. 
 Unless introspection is deceived in reporting the 
 nature of effort, the pupil has the ability to reach 
 the port of knowledge, even though the tide of in- 
 terest fails ; and he has the ability to steer for the 
 
 1 " Briefer Psychology," pp. 443-444. 
 
 2 McLellan and Dewey, " Applied Psychology," p. 139. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 201 
 
 haven of virtue, even though the winds and waves of 
 impulse and appetite are boisterous and opposing. 
 Out of the depths of the soul's struggles the jewels 
 of knowledge and virtue are mined. Happy is that 
 child of fortune whose duties and pleasures always 
 coincide, but blessed is that son of toil who stops his 
 ears from hearing the sirens' song as he sails by the 
 enchanted isle of pleasure on the homeward way. 
 The originality and bare significance of the individual 
 soul appears in what it can do through effort as in 
 nothing else. Sir Fowell Buxton is quoted as say- 
 ing : " The longer I live, the more I am certain that 
 the great difference between men — between the 
 feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignifi- 
 cant — is energy^ invincible determination^ a purpose 
 once fixed, and then, death or victory ! That quality 
 will do anything that can be done in this world ; and 
 no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will 
 make a two-legged creature a man without it." But 
 to Carlyle must we go for the true gospel of effort. 
 " Sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of 
 the brain; sweat of the heart, up to that 'agony of 
 bloody sweat,' which all men have called divine! Oh, 
 brother . . . this is the noblest thing yet discovered 
 under God's sky." 
 
 What can the schoolroom do to cultivate so impor- How to 
 tant a mental power.? As heretofore, our practical Effoit^*^ 
 paragraphs must be brief. 
 
 /Teachers strive to awaken ultimate and remote Awaken 
 interests whose satisfaction demands long and labori- j^Jerests. 
 ous pursuit, as well as immediate and present inter- 
 ests whose satisfaction is easy. To discover to a 
 
202 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Form the 
 Habit of 
 doing the 
 Disagree- 
 able. 
 
 student his life-needs and interests, that is a prize 
 worth the best endeavor of a teacher. Really to suc- 
 ceed in doing so is enough to induce the student to 
 undertake whatsoever disagreeable means are neces- 
 sary to reach that esteemed end. Of course this sug- 
 gestion presupposes a certain maturity on the part of 
 the student, at least that the pre-adolescent age of 
 many and superficial interests is passed. It will be 
 observed how the principle of interest, though one 
 degree removed, still guides us in the cultivation of 
 effort To appeal to ultimate, not present, interests 
 is to cultivate effort. This is very different from 
 being interesting as a teacher. 
 
 Pupils should be taught that the strongest strength 
 is developed by doing what they do not like to do. 
 In fact, not to want to do a given thing, not in itself 
 bad, is itself a good reason for sometimes doing it 
 As Professor James writes in his famous chapter 
 on Habit, which President Faunce says has been 
 preached from a thousand pulpits : ^^ Keep the faculty 
 of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every 
 day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in 
 little unnecessary points, do every day or two some- 
 thing for no other reason than that you would rather 
 not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws 
 nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to 
 stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the 
 insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. 
 The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly 
 may never bring him a return. But if the fire does 
 come, his having paid it will be his salvation from 
 ruin. So with the man who has daily inured him- 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 203 
 
 self to habits of concentrated attention, energetic 
 volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He 
 will stand like a tower when everything rocks around 
 him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed 
 hke chaff in the blast." ^ 
 
 Teachers and pupils must understand the nature TheExer- 
 of concentrated attention through effort. Voluntary "^^°^.^°^" 
 attention given to an uninteresting subject can be Attention. 
 sustained only a little while at a time, at most a few 
 minutes; if the subject does not change, at most 
 a few seconds. Under such circumstances work can 
 be done only by continually bringing back the atten- 
 tion to the subject in hand. Concentrated attention 
 to an unattractive task is not attention that does 
 not wander, but attention that does not get lost. 
 Concentrated attention through effort is like a se- 
 rial story, not continuous but continued. " And 
 the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wander- 
 ing attention over and over again is the very root 
 of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos 
 sui if he have it not. An education which should 
 improve this faculty would be the education par 
 excellence y 
 
 As already intimated, so far from opposing each TheMutu- 
 other, effort and interest really offer each other eJ^^LcI 
 mutual support in education. Immediate interest interest, 
 must hold sway with all young pupils before the 
 powers of voluntary attention are developed. Imme- 
 diate interest must still hold sway, even with older 
 pupils, where it can be commanded. It does not 
 make them idle; it makes them work. Nor is it 
 
 1 "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, pp. 126-127. 
 
ao4 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 necessary for teachers to be intentionally less inter- 
 esting than they can for the sake of providing unat- 
 tractive difficulties for pupils to thrive upon. Be as 
 interesting as our genius or our effort permits, the 
 school will still be a training-ground of voluntary at- 
 tention to unattractive tasks. The difficulties whose 
 mastery develops strength are not the unnatural ones 
 provided on purpose by the teacher, but the natural 
 ones of the developing subject and curriculum, as in 
 climbing a mountain the natural ascent is difficulty 
 enough without unnecessary stones being placed 
 in the path before us. However, when interest has 
 done its best, effort has still to do its part. The ex- 
 tremity of interest is the opportunity of effort. They 
 stand to each other as love to law. Love is the ful- 
 filHng of the law, and where love is, there is liberty ; 
 but if love fails through human imperfection, the law 
 is still there behind us, urging us on to our duty. So 
 when interest is present, it is enough; but when it 
 fails, as it sometimes will in the best schoolroom or 
 in the best life, the capacity of effort is still there 
 to carry the burden. The breezes of interest filling 
 our sails may die away into nothingness, and then 
 only the strong oar of effort can bring in the boat. 
 Neither must we omit to observe that the begin- 
 nings, as well as the middle stages, of growth of a 
 subject, have their pecuHar difficulties, when interest 
 is hard to develop. The new subject will not quickly 
 make its connections with the old subjects or with 
 life. Here a little effort in the mastery of elemen- 
 tary and technical details will quickly lay a founda- 
 tion for real knowledge of and interest in the subject. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 205 
 
 The effort needed to conquer " the agony of starting " 
 is like the little sturdy tug-boat that tows the big vessel 
 out of the harbor into the open sea, where it can go of 
 its own momentum. Effort thus leads to interest. 
 
 Almost have we limited the conception of effort to A Larger 
 mastering difficulties, to voluntarily attending to the Q^g^ort^^'^ 
 uninteresting. This is true in a narrow sense of the 
 term, but would be incorrect as our final word. Effort 
 may be a large as well as a difficult activity of the 
 self. The little tug is noisy and puffing ; we say it is 
 making an effort. The large vessel under full head- 
 way glides easily; it would be incorrect to say no 
 effort is being made. The effort is concealed in the 
 largeness and the ease of the motion, but great energy 
 is being expended nevertheless. Just so a great and 
 compelling interest may solicit from us all our active 
 power, though quietly and easily. Thus interest calls 
 out effort, in a large sense of the term. Professor 
 de Garmo has this view of the matter in mind when 
 he writes : " Effort is really the process of trying to 
 realize an end through work. Desire is the tendency 
 of the energies to push on to accomplish the object 
 of effort. Effort, therefore, is really an evidence of 
 desire. These two things, effort and desire, are con- 
 sequently only two aspects of one thing, two phases 
 of self-repression, when the end to be attained and 
 the means for reaching it are separate." ^ Our words 
 about effort have intended to add to this conception, 
 not to take from it. Effort is the servant of interest, 
 as the Herbartians say, as the law is the servant of 
 love. But effort is also the master of interest when 
 
 1 " Interest and Education," p. 37. 
 
2o6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 interest is unable either to start a new process or to keep 
 it going, as he who is not under love is still under law. 
 
 And our last word about effort and interest shall 
 be this : it is only when they help each other that our 
 work approaches perfection. To be interested with- 
 out effort is to be entertained, to float with the current ; 
 to exert effort without interest is to be wearied, to row 
 against the current ; but to be interested with effort 
 is to enjoy what is being accomplished, is to be steer- 
 ing for my destination while the current favors my 
 progress. Interest with effort introduces the element 
 of play into man's work, when his efficiency is at a 
 maximum. Our work is never done best until it is 
 done easily. 
 
 And herewith is ended our discussion of those three 
 chosen ways, imitation, interest, and effort, whereby 
 man's complete self-realization is attained. The un- 
 derlying conception of self-activity as well as its 
 special manifestation in mental effort are contribu- 
 tions of the old rational psychology to our discussion ; 
 the conceptions of imitation and interest are from the 
 modern genetic psychology. The phenomena of edu- 
 cation demand for their interpretation all the varying 
 psychological insights. 
 
 Having seen the nature of that activity of the self 
 in its typical manifestations whereby self-expression 
 is secured, we have next to raise the inquiry concern- 
 ing the nature of that self-development which is the 
 consequence of self -activity. This is our second gen- 
 eral question of the psychological aspect of education. 
 To answer it, we must again call upon the results of 
 both the genetic and the rational psychology, and to 
 this answer we now turn. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 {concluded') 
 
 What is the nature of that self-development which The Notion 
 self -activity secures ? There are three things to be ^l^f^' 
 remarked concerning the nature of self-development, ment. 
 viz., it presupposes time as its condition, it marks 
 the transition from the potential to the actual, and it 
 proceeds through successive stages of growth. Each 
 of these implications of self-development must occupy 
 us briefly. And first, the presupposition of time. 
 
 In any development the element of time is neces- 
 sary as its presupposition. Through time things 
 grow from less to more. The abbreviation of time 
 is the abbreviation of development. The stoppage ThePresup- 
 of the educational processes before maturity is ^^^^^^^^ 
 reached means arrested development. It is a con- 
 spicuous fact that the time of mental immaturity for 
 the human being is longer than that for any other 
 creature. The physiological basis for this fact we 
 have previously seen in discussing the significance of 
 infancy. This fact it is, affording adequate time, 
 that makes the greater education of the human mind 
 possible. The period of youth, as well as the period 
 of childhood, is greatly protracted in the human 
 species. We may save time, if we will, by cutting 
 
 207 
 
2o8 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 short the years of youth in the school, but we are 
 thereby losing education. Time is the condition of 
 development, and generous nature indicates to edu- 
 cators, by the periods of childhood and adolescence 
 preceding maturity, the amount of time necessary 
 for the development of a man. 
 ThePoten- Secondly, in any development the potential be- 
 
 theActuai.^^ comes actual. That which a developing thing is to 
 become, it already is latently. Organisms, like plants 
 and animals, grow by development from the inside 
 out. Other things, like stones and mountains, change 
 by accretion and attrition. As Aristotle, the fulfiller 
 of the Platonic system, showed, the idea toward which 
 the organism grows is already in the organism itself 
 potentially. The ideal of a thing is the perfection 
 of that thing, not the making of it into something 
 else. A thing can become by development only 
 what it is already in germ. The thistles do not 
 grow grapes, nor the thorns figs. So in mental de- 
 velopment, education simply brings out of the mind 
 what was already in it. To aim at anything else is 
 to get an artificial accretion or a parasitic growth. 
 The young mind has within it already in latent form 
 all the powers it can ever hope to reach by develop- 
 ment. The school cannot send real men into society 
 unless the home sends potential men into the school. 
 Education can neither create nor endow, it can only 
 develop. But develop it should, and not substitute 
 any lower aim, like information, unless this word be 
 used in its etymological meaning of shaping from 
 within according to nature. The bane of the school 
 has been the insistence upon uniformity of method 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 209 
 
 and uniformity of product. This is not development 
 but moulding. Men are not made after the fashion 
 of the factory, but of the garden. The pupil must 
 not be conformed to the wooden educational image, 
 but transformed into the likeness of his true self. 
 Education was the ancient Roman's method of 
 bringing tip his child ; it is our method of bringing 
 out the child. The lofty and legitimate psychological 
 aim of education is to make of each pupil all it is 
 possible for him to be. Development is the greatest 
 word in the field of education. The idea of develop- 
 ment is as basic in the school as justice is in the state 
 and righteousness in the church. 
 
 Thirdly, after the element of time and the realiza- 
 tion of the potential, any self-development implies 
 successive stages of growth. " First the blade, then The stages 
 the ear, then the full corn in the ear." So in the «f Cental 
 
 ' Growth. 
 
 development of the mental and moral human nature, 
 first the child, then the youth, then the full powers 
 of the man. These divisions of the developing life 
 fall in with our common thought; they also have 
 scientific bases. A few words concerning each of 
 them. 
 
 Childhood is better described as the first stage of 
 mental development than as a definite period of 
 years. A youth, a man, a race, may still be in The stage 
 mental development Uke a child. To Hmit the term hlS^^'^" 
 childhood to a precise period of years is dangerous, 
 not simply because a given individual may remain a 
 child beyond the limit assigned, but also because all 
 individuals pass imperceptibly out of the stage of 
 childhood. The essential thing about childhood is 
 
2IO The Philosophy of Education 
 
 not its years but its characteristic point of view. 
 However, these limitations need not deter us from 
 striking averages and from saying for purposes of 
 convenience that the usual period of childhood as a 
 certain stage in mental growth covers about the first 
 ten years of life. Educationally considered, child- 
 hood belongs to the kindergarten and to the primary 
 grades of the grammar school. It includes the ini- 
 tial three years of infancy in the home. There is, 
 of course, no special sanctity in the term childhood 
 as covering this period, since usage is by no means 
 fixed in the case. 
 
 What, then, are the characteristics of childhood as 
 thus designated .'* 
 
 Intellectually considered, childhood represents the 
 reign of the senses. Even while the baby is still 
 weak and helpless, the nerves of the special senses 
 The Intellect and their corresponding brain centres are consider- 
 of the Child, g^^iy developed. Within a few days of birth the 
 lower senses of touch, taste, and smell are operative, 
 to be followed speedily by those of hearing, sight, 
 and the muscles. The first problem before the 
 child's mind is the coordination of sensations, to rec- 
 ognize the seen thing as also the felt thing, and to 
 reach successfully for the thing seen. This unifica- 
 tion of sensations gives concrete objects of experience, 
 things, the knowledge of which through a single sen- 
 sation or more is perception. When sensations sym- 
 bolize things, the child has developed the perceiving 
 ability, and is on the highroad to success in the 
 conquest of his world. The child is the true Berke- 
 leyan, esse est percipi. The concrete thing is the 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 211 
 
 object of his experience, and observation is his sole 
 mode of mental acquisition. At about the age of 
 three, through the muscular sensations, the organic 
 feelings, and the double sensation of touch when in 
 contact with a portion of its own body, the distinction 
 arises in a vague way between himself and other 
 things. This is the germ of later inner perception, 
 as the knowledge of states of consciousness and 
 self -consciousness. 
 
 To sensation and perception, as powers of the mind 
 in childhood, must be added the beginnings of mem- 
 ory and imagination. To remember is not yet the 
 easy delight it will be presently, however, and his 
 imagination is of that playful kind which does not 
 distinguish fact from fancy. The distinction of 
 truth and falsehood arises later than the imagination, 
 the bearing of which upon the exaggerated narrations 
 to which children are prone is evident, as well as 
 upon the question in casuistry concerning telling 
 fairy stories to children. In the morning of life the 
 rosy imagination illumines the world of the child 
 before the white Hght of truth appears. 
 
 Recognizing sense-perception as the characteristic 
 intellectual activity of the child, resulting as it does 
 in the knowledge of the concrete sensible things of 
 experience, we may describe the point of view of 
 childhood, intellectually considered, as the individu- 
 a Using epoch of mental growth. 
 
 But the feelings and the will, simple also though 
 they are, must not be omitted from our account of 
 childhood, though they by no means are subject to 
 the same definite analysis as the intellectual functions. 
 
212 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The facts themselves are vaguer, more difficult of study, 
 and also more neglected by child psychologists. 
 The Feel- The feelings of a child are mainly those of pleas- 
 
 ^J^5m f^*^^ ure and displeasure. Between these two extremes he 
 
 Child. ^ 
 
 swings easily, the slightest thing being sufficient to elate 
 or depress him. Out of these two primitive feelings 
 many psychologists develop the whole array of man's 
 emotional Hfe, ending in aesthetics. But the child 
 also undoubtedly has those other Wundtian simple 
 forms of feeling, viz., excitement and rest, tension and 
 equilibrium. The organic, vital feeling of comfort and 
 discomfort is continually present, the substratum of the 
 sense of self. The pleasures and displeasures of the 
 child are mainly, as would be expected, of sensational 
 origin. Every sensation, in fact, comes with its gar- 
 ment of feeling about it, — pleasurable, when within 
 normal limits, displeasurable when either minimal or 
 excessive in intensity. The sensations of movement, 
 either random or, later, playful, are full of the most 
 genuine pleasures to the child's life. Only the dis- 
 pleasure of great weariness can inhibit the pleasure 
 of the child's playing. Pain is a unique sensation in 
 itself, not to be confused with the feeling of dis- 
 pleasure. Pain, or any other sensation that becomes 
 disagreeable through monotonous repetition or high 
 and low intensities, excites the feeling of displeasure. 
 The complex, coarser feelings which a child of ten 
 may have make a long list, including such as joy and 
 grief, love and hate, anger and fear, and pride and 
 shame. These are called coarser feelings because 
 their bodily accompaniments are strong. In origin 
 they are rather instinctive than due to experience or 
 
the Child. 
 
 The Psychological Aspect of Education 213 
 
 teaching. The aesthetic feeling is present as love 
 of color. The feeling of wonder is early and very 
 important as a spur to the child's inquiring habit of 
 mind, often so unjustifiably vexatious to older persons. 
 Very strong and quickly formed are the child's likes 
 and dislikes, and in general they are determined by 
 what ministers to or hinders his personal comfort. 
 Sympathy is present as a feeling, it is evident, in the 
 child, but it develops later than self-regard, and in 
 general is in subjection thereto. Perhaps the feeling 
 life of the child may be described as self-centred, which 
 in itself forms one of the hard problems of social and 
 moral education. 
 
 The will of a child is unstable. He is largely sub- The wm of 
 ject to impulse. The inhibitive powers are weak, 
 the expressive powers strong. Ideas act themselves 
 out quickly ; they do not tarry in consciousness long 
 enough for contradictory suggestions to arise, which 
 would lead to hesitation and deliberation. For the 
 child, to think is to act. He is the best illustration 
 of Bain's principle of " ideo-motor " action. His will 
 is his ready and unthinking response to his upper- 
 most ideas. The proverbial thoughtlessness of the 
 child is the explanation of his explosive will. He 
 follows his ideas instead of directing them. 
 
 This impulsiveness of the child, which is the essen- 
 tial characteristic of his will, is preceded in early life 
 by random, reflex, and instinctive acts. The random 
 movements of the limbs of an infant are signs of 
 exuberant vitality, and conduce to muscular growth. 
 The reflexes of the child are simple responses of the 
 nervous system to mechanical stimuli, like withdrawing 
 
214 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the foot on its being tickled. The instinctive acts like 
 creeping, standing, and walking are complex reflexes ; 
 they are inherited nervous mechanisms that go off 
 like alarm clocks at the right moment. The acts of 
 children are mainly instinctive and imitative until the 
 age of three. Then they begin to know what action 
 is coming before it takes place, but with practically 
 no ability to change or thwart it. This mode of 
 action is impulsive, and properly characterizes the 
 period of childhood. The great service of the earlier 
 random, reflex, and instinctive acts is that they make 
 possible, through the development of impulse, the 
 later clearly chosen acts, which are the highest prod- 
 ucts of will. Acts often repeated involuntarily leave 
 in consciousness their corresponding sensations to 
 represent them, the so-called '' kinaesthetic ideas," 
 through the use of which consciousness later per- 
 forms its chosen acts. 
 
 The natural responsiveness and suggestibility of chil- 
 dren indicate the extra importance of their having only 
 right ideas from the beginning. Their moral educa- 
 tion had better begin in this positive fashion than in 
 the negative way of filling their minds with a multi- 
 tude of things not to be done. To have these for- 
 bidden things in mind is already to be doing them 
 incipiently. Children have no wills to be broken; 
 they have only ideas to be followed. Instead of blam- 
 ing them for being wilful, their consciousness should be 
 charged with the right idea. The moral education of 
 the child consists in keeping his heart diligently from 
 all evil and filling it abundantly with good treasure. 
 This problem changes faces considerably when the 
 
of Youth. 
 
 The Psychological Aspect of Education 215 
 
 inhibiting powers of youth are developed, as we shall 
 see presently. 
 
 Remembering all that was said above about arbi- The stage 
 trary divisions in mental development, the gradual 
 transitions from stage to stage, and the unequal rate 
 of growth of different pupils, we may venture to assign 
 to youth the period of years from about ten to about 
 eighteen, covering the last years of the grammar 
 school and the whole of the secondary school life. 
 It includes the growth into and through the wonder- 
 ful adolescent age when the great deep of human life 
 begins to show its passion and its power. 
 
 If, intellectually considered, childhood is the indi- 
 vidualizing epoch, youth must be called the relating 
 epoch. The things of the child have become the 
 classes, the groups, the conceptions, — in short, the 
 relations, of the youth. The sense-perception of 
 the child has become the understanding of the youth. 
 Not that the powers of childhood are destroyed ; they 
 are only fulfilled. Childhood with all its promise 
 and prophecy does not pass away ; it passes onward. 
 Each later stage in mental development is but the 
 blossoming of powers that were budding earlier. In 
 a genuine mental growth nothing is lost ; the earlier 
 stages are destroyed as such only to be preserved at 
 a higher level. The youth still retains the things 
 perceived as a child, but he understands them in 
 their relations to other things ; his feelings still centre 
 in self, but they reach out in fond attachments and 
 friendship for others ; his will, too, is still responsive 
 to ideas, only he takes more care as to which idea 
 shall be uppermost. In general the youth is begin- 
 
2i6 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 ning to appreciate the bearings of things ; he is also 
 getting his own bearings in the great new world, of 
 which he now feels himself consciously a part. It is 
 the formative period of life par excellence. 
 The Intel- To delay briefly on the intellectual, emotional, and 
 
 lect of Youth. yQiitional aspects of youth: Intellectually, it is the 
 time when memory, imagination, conception, and 
 the understanding represent the mind's best powers. 
 Memory retains and recalls the earlier impressions of 
 sense. It is the great time for providing the mind 
 with those essential facts of nature and history with- 
 out which later culture is lacking in positive content. 
 The imagination busily recombines the images of the 
 past in new forms, and paints for itself a future all 
 its own. It is the great time for the racial epics 
 and storied experience. Conception grasps individ- 
 uals in groups according to their similar relations, 
 and introduces economy into mental life. It is the 
 great time for the elementary classifications of natu- 
 ral phenomena, and for providing the mind with those 
 labels of life that give exactness and speed to deci- 
 sion. And the understanding, the power of detect- 
 ing resemblances and differences between individuals, 
 brings things into mutual relations with each other, 
 each after its own kind. It is the great time for ap- 
 preciating those essential connections between phe- 
 nomena without which nature is chaotic and human 
 life fragmentary. The intellect of the youth, seek- 
 ing relations, finds the world springing to meet it, 
 bearing those relations in its very constitution. 
 
 The case is not different with the feelings. It is 
 the period in which the self finds itself in other selves. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 217 
 
 Friendships are formed as lasting as life. The halo 
 of romance illuminates the face of existence. Affec- 
 tions, attachments, devotions, loyalties, have full 
 sway. Particularly is it the time of aspiration ; the 
 young life is seeking its source ; it has found its wings 
 and would mount to the skies. The sensitiveness to 
 the aesthetic is quick and becoming defined. Regard 
 for personal appearance, susceptibility to decorum, 
 consideration for the feelings of others, desire for 
 social approval, all indicate that the emotions are giv- 
 ing life some of its permanent hues. Not infrequently 
 a seriousness comes over youth in view of the great 
 real life beyond, like the clouds of spring. In brief, 
 youth disengages all the strong feelings that later 
 life shall temper and organize. Their centre has 
 shifted from the self of the child to the other selves of 
 the youth. Once again in natural manhood shall we 
 see a shifting of the centre of the feelings. 
 
 And now a word about the will of youth. The Thewm 
 general transitional character of youth is also mani- ° °^* * 
 fest here. Conduct is inconstant and variable. Re- 
 liability is not yet estabHshed. Many interests ripen 
 and decay. The youth is by anticipation a member 
 of the various occupations in life in turn. Attention 
 is solicited mainly by the things that interest rather 
 than by the things that are important. The externals 
 of study, like rewards, prizes, marks, and penalties, 
 still have their attractiveness for the will. Present as 
 against remote ends have predominating influence. 
 The personality of the teacher is at the maximum of 
 its influence. With all these survivals of childhood 
 present, the youth is nevertheless pressing forward 
 
21 8 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 into the region of self-mastery. The stirrings of new- 
 physical life are like frisky unharnessed colts trying 
 the powers of their owner. All the agencies are 
 under way that will presently make the youth the 
 man, but they are not coordinated and systematized. 
 A great underlying, controlhng purpose has not yet 
 organized the manifold impulses of youth into one 
 grand whole. His will and its manifestations are 
 like the runner who warms himself up with many 
 movements for the race that is to come. The steadi- 
 ness of strenuous activity is not yet. In summary 
 we may say that the will of youth is in process of 
 making sure of itself. 
 The Stage The transition from youth to manhood is " where 
 
 of Manhood, ^j^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^„ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ delightful 
 
 promise empties itself into the river of service. Out 
 of the ear grows the full corn. The blossoming of 
 youth becomes the fruitage of maturity. This third 
 period covers the work done by the colleges and the 
 universities. 
 
 The powers of conception are magnified in judg- 
 ment and reasoning. Classifications yield up their 
 unity. The sciences lead to philosophy. Things are 
 seen, not in themselves, nor even in their relations 
 simply, but in their totality. If, speaking intellectually, 
 childhood is the individualizing, and youth the relat- 
 ing, then manhood must be the unifying, epoch. 
 The senses and the understanding find their fulfil- 
 ment in the reason. The static and the dynamic cate- 
 gories yield to the organic. The independence of the 
 individual as revealed through sense-perception made 
 way for the dependence of the individual as revealed 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 219 
 
 by the understanding, only that both of these stages 
 might complete themselves in the independence of 
 the whole as revealed by the reason. In the admi- 
 rable language of Dr. Harris : " The lowest thinking 
 activity inventories things but neglects relations ; the 
 middle stage of thinking inventories relations, forces, 
 and processes, and sees things in their essences, but 
 neglects self -relation or totality ; the highest stage of 
 thinking knows that all independent being has the 
 form of life or mind, and that the absolute is a per- 
 son ; it studies all things to discern traces of the 
 creative energy which is the form of the totality." ^ 
 
 The feelings of the man have touched the high The Feelings 
 point of their development in the sense of the beautiful 
 and the sublime. Once the soul of man has felt the 
 perfect, which is the enjoyment of beauty, and has 
 felt its own exaltation through its kinship with the 
 infinite forces even in the moment of its humiliation, 
 which is the sense of the sublime, man's emotional 
 life has incorporated that unity of reaUty which his 
 reason has intuited. 
 
 And the will of man is that disciplined activity Thewm 
 which pursues purposes steadily, and realizes great 
 ends. Self-control and self-direction are its char- 
 acteristic qualities. Attention is voluntarily given to 
 the uninteresting present task for the sake of the im- 
 portant future accomplishment. The inclinations of 
 heredity and the influences of environment are but 
 helping or hindering forces in the will's masterful 
 achievement of life's plan. 
 
 We may omit here further details in description of 
 
 ^ Harris, " Psychologic Foundations of Education," pp. 36-37. 
 
220 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 manhood as the final stage of mental growth, in view 
 of that other question awaiting us presently concern- 
 ing the characteristics of the educated mind. 
 
 Thus we have reviewed those stages of mental growth 
 which are implied in the notion of self-development. 
 And herewith is completed our answer to the second 
 general psychological question, viz., the nature of 
 that self-development which is secured through self- 
 activity. The nature of education, psychologically 
 considered, is the realization of the self. The means 
 of education is the activity of the self. It only 
 remains to inquire concerning the characteristics of 
 the educated self. Before passing, however, into the 
 lofty air of this ideal region, we may pause a moment, 
 as often heretofore, in the valley of the practical. 
 These considerations we have had concerning the 
 notions of self-activity and self-development indi- 
 cate for us certain negative and positive things 
 concerning educational practice. 
 
 At least three things often associated with the con- 
 ception of education are not truly representative of its 
 nature. 
 
 (i) Education is not a gift to be bestowed ; it is a 
 trophy to be won. It is not the transmission of 
 mental power from teacher to pupil ; it is making 
 latent mental power in the pupil kinetic. It is not a 
 divine gift of tongues from the teacher, but a human, 
 hard-earned victory for the pupil. "The telling 
 teacher is not the telling teacher." Education is not 
 a jack-knife to be presented, it is an intellectual pil- 
 grimage to be taken. The teacher is not the pupil's 
 "pony," but his experienced travelling companion. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 221 
 
 (2) Education is not receptivity, but activity; not Notimpres- 
 impression, but expression ; not learning, but think- ^^°^* 
 
 ing ; not knowledge, but power. In the matter of 
 becoming educated, as elsewhere, it is more blessed 
 to give than to receive. Pupils usually lose what the 
 teacher gives them ; they usually keep what they 
 give the teacher. The mind is developed not by 
 receiving knowledge but by winning it ; not by having 
 the beauties of the world catalogued for it but by dis- 
 covering them under guidance; not by having the 
 moral quality of every deed labelled upon it but by 
 self-direction. Only at the risk of falling into the 
 erroneous, the ugly, and the bad is the mind estab- 
 lished in that which is true and beautiful and good. 
 
 (3) Education is not primarily fitting a child to Not 
 
 do something ; it is getting him to be something. It utilitarian, 
 is not primarily utilitarian, but cultural. The notion 
 of being is more comprehensive than the notion of 
 doing ; one must be something in order to do 
 something ; out of the fount of being flows the 
 stream of achievement. It is as serviceable to 
 learn to do by knowing as it is to learn to know by 
 doing. The ideal of the liberal education is being ; 
 of the technical education is doing. The former 
 underlies the latter. There is no short-cut to real 
 achievement ; the long route of personal development 
 is the only one. One must travel the way of self- 
 development, and behold in the way the visions of 
 truth, before he can fully enter upon the self-devo- 
 tions of life. 
 
 We must distinguish in our thinking between what 
 education is and what it is for, between its nature and 
 
222 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 its end. Milton and Herbert Spencer have admira- 
 bly defined for us the end of education, but we must 
 go to Pestalozzi for a definition of its nature. Milton 
 says, " I call a complete and generous education that 
 which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and mag- 
 nanimously all the offices, private and public, of both 
 peace and war." Spencer's most famous statement 
 is, " To prepare us for complete living is the function 
 which education has to discharge." Pestalozzi touches 
 the quick of the matter in his notable figure: 
 " Sound education stands before me symbolized by a 
 tree planted near fertilizing waters. A little seed 
 which contains the design of the tree, its form and 
 proportions, is placed in the soil. See how it ger- 
 minates and expands into trunk, branches, leaves, 
 flowers, and fruit. The whole tree is an uninterrupted 
 chain of organic parts, the plan of which existed in its 
 seed and root. Man is similar to the tree. In the new- 
 born child are hidden those faculties which are to un- 
 fold during life. The individual and separate organs 
 of his being form themselves gradually into an har- 
 monic whole, and build up humanity into the image 
 of God." 
 The Use of In Contrast with what education is not, the brief 
 MentaT^^ ° survcy wc had of the stages of mental growth in 
 Growth in self -development suggests unavoidably certain posi- 
 ucaing. ^.^^ matters of which education should take account, 
 (i) Education ought to help, and not to hinder, 
 nature in the work of carrying the mind through its 
 Adjust Sub- stages of growth. This the practice of education can 
 trPmSi-r ^^ ^^ ^^^ ways. First, there ought to be an ad just- 
 Mind, ment effected between the subject-matter of the cur- 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 223 
 
 riculum and the stage of mental development of the 
 pupil. Fairy-tales for the child, history for the youth, 
 and philosophy for the man will illustrate. To attack 
 a subject before the mind is ready for it is to do in- 
 justice to the subject and injure the self-confidence 
 of the mind ; it may also lead to over-development of 
 the mind for its age. To come upon a subject after 
 the mind has passed by the psychological moment of 
 readiness for it, is to bring contempt upon the subject 
 and insult the mind ; it may also lead to arrested men- 
 tal development. " In all pedagogy the great thing 
 is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave 
 of the pupil's interest in each successive subject before 
 its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and 
 a habit of skill acquired — a headway of interest, in 
 short, secured, on which afterward the individual 
 may float. There is a happy moment for fixing skill in 
 drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history, 
 and presently dissectors and botanists ; then for initi- 
 ating them into the harmonies of mechanics and the 
 wonders of physical and chemical law. Later, intro- 
 spective psychology and the metaphysical and reli- 
 gious mysteries take their turn ; and, last of all, the 
 drama of human affairs and worldly wisdom in the 
 widest sense of the term. ... To detect the mo- 
 ment of instinctive readiness for the subject is, then, 
 the first duty of every educator."^ This necessity of 
 effecting a timely conjunction between the subject- 
 matter and the pupil's mind is the basis for the 
 " Culture Epochs " of the successors to Herbart. 
 (2) There ought also to be a progress in method 
 
 1 James, " Briefer Psychology," pp. 404-405. 
 
224 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 stages of of instruction corresponding to the stages of mental 
 Method. growth. ''When I was a child, I spake as a child, 
 I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but 
 when I became a man, I put away childish things." 
 The methods of teaching men are not the methods 
 of teaching youth or children. The method of teach- 
 ing is the manner in which the subject-matter is pre- 
 sented to the learning mind. In general, children 
 must be taught by the method of illustration ; youth 
 by the method of combination, that is, showing the 
 connections that exist between different things or 
 successive events; and men by the method of sys- 
 tem, whereby unities, total points of view, and vision, 
 are secured. Children must see, youth must under- 
 stand, men must reason. There must be a happy 
 conjunction between the method of the teacher and 
 the capacity of the pupil. Only so can ''boyhood 
 ripen in boys, youthhood in youth, and manhood in 
 men." This suggestion was worked out in consider- 
 able detail by Herbart himself in the so-called " For- 
 mal Steps of Teaching." 
 The Child (s) It is customary to assert that the stages of 
 
 and the Race, cental growth in the child repeat those of the race. 
 The " Culture Epoch " theory implies this. Biology 
 suggests the same principle in the physical realm, on- 
 togeny repeating phylogeny. The claims of psycho- 
 physical parallelism are thus very neatly supported 
 by the theories of mental and physical evolution. 
 As usual, the poets have anticipated by intuition the 
 observation of the scientists. 
 
 " There is a history in all men's minds 
 Figuring the nature of the times deceased." 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 225 
 
 But it would seem after all that only in general does 
 the child repeat the experience of the face. For an 
 organism is the product of heredity and environment 
 and "organic selection," that is, its own unique re- 
 sponses to stimuli. This last element indicates a cer- 
 tain amount of self-determination even in the physical 
 organism. The environment is also a variable ele- 
 ment in its influence, since from age to age its com- 
 plexion is changed. Heredity itself, though the least 
 variable perhaps of all the three elements that go to 
 make an organism, is yet not constant in its transmis- 
 sions. Whence it happens that it is quite possible 
 for an individual child to begin somewhere short of 
 the "tooth and claw" stage of primitive existence, 
 even to omit some of the original epochs, to inherit 
 mainly from a mediaeval instead of an ancient aeon, 
 and to pass quickly by means of good home and kin- 
 dergarten supervision into modern civilized childhood. 
 Let teachers no longer feel under the necessity of re- 
 garding children as little savages. Children they are, 
 clad in the garments of ancestral possibility, with ani- 
 mal fears and angers lurking in the recesses of their 
 nervous systems, but also wrapped around with a 
 human heritage too from more generations than can 
 be numbered, and bearing in their bodies the insignia 
 of noble rank and infinite dignity. Let the child not 
 run wild because he is a potential animal, but train 
 him up in the way he should go because he is a 
 potential man. 
 
 These considerations complete for the present our 
 breathing-spell in the atmosphere of the practical. 
 
 Having now seen the nature of that mental activity 
 Q 
 
226 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The Charac- which leads to mental development, and the nature 
 Educat^ed ^^ ^^ ^^^ notion of mental development as the psycho- 
 Mind, logical result of education, it remains for us to answer 
 our third question, and attempt to describe in some 
 detail the characteristics of a developed mind. The 
 answer to this question is both general and specific. 
 The General In general the qualities of an educated mind are, as 
 nswer. ^-^^ preceding discussions have fitted us to appreciate, 
 the power to know, the power to feel, and the power 
 to will. Education takes the natural forms of con- 
 sciousness and raises them to greater efficiency. The 
 educated man above others is possessed with truth as 
 the outcome of his power to know, of beauty as the 
 outcome of his power to feel, of goodness as the out- 
 come of his power to will. It is an incomplete edu- 
 cation that omits or neglects any one of these three. 
 The power to know, when exercised, makes the schol- 
 arly man; the power to feel, when exercised in the 
 appreciation of the aesthetic in nature and the ideal 
 in persons, makes the gentle and sympathetic man ; 
 and the power to will, when exercised in its true direc- 
 tion, makes the honorable man. The scholar, the 
 gentleman, and, with our form of faith, we may add 
 the Christian, are the natural psychological ideals of 
 human education. 
 Like begets Each of these phases of consciousness, viz., know- 
 ing, feeling, and willing, is dominantly developed, it 
 will be noticed, by that element in the spiritual envi- 
 ronment which it itself in the history of the race sup- 
 plied. Through sciences we learn to know, through 
 arts to feel, through volitions to will. In things of 
 the mind like is nourished by like. Because of the 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 227 
 
 unity of the human mind, however, each division of 
 the curriculum influences the whole mind as well as 
 that phase of mind to which it particularly appeals; 
 just as in the social achievement the whole mind as 
 well as one of its functions was operative in produc- 
 ing each distinctive product. The unity of mind in 
 its three ultimate modes is like a single cord com- 
 posed of three strands. In its action it is like the 
 human body which as a whole does things while call- 
 ing into play one part particularly. 
 
 This is our general answer to the question as to the 
 qualities which education develops in consciousness. 
 The specific answer must take the form of an enu- 
 meration in some detail of those particular and essen- 
 tial traits which betoken the educated mind. 
 
 (i) The doors of the mind are open. This means The open 
 two things, viz., the senses are responsive to all the c°°sJious- 
 stimuli of the world they are capable of receiving, ness. 
 and the mind is ready to receive whatsoever things 
 are true, lovely, and of good report. The senses are 
 the only avenues of approach to the mind which the 
 world has. These avenues, particularly those of sight, 
 hearing, touch, and the muscles, should be unob- 
 structed and usable. The senses are intended to 
 report the data of knowledge, so far as they can, as 
 it exists in nature. There is a great wealth of natural 
 fact from which the unaided senses are excluded, 
 such as the very minute, the very remote, the inter- 
 mediate wave-motions between hearing and seeing, 
 and the very high wave-motions, which makes it the 
 more important that the senses of even the unscien- 
 tific observer report well what they can report at all. 
 
228 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 To-day most men are shut off from the pleasures the 
 naturalist experiences in the woods because having 
 eyes we see not, and having ears we hear not, and 
 having minds we comprehend not the messages 
 nature would be continually giving us. 
 
 The term, the senses, has come also significantly 
 to connote an intellectual quality, as when we say, 
 " He came to his senses," meaning he regained con- 
 sciousness, or his rational self-control. The best 
 intellect is impossible without the best use of the 
 senses. Without open senses, the mind cannot be 
 open. 
 
 The educated mind is open to receive, and welcome, 
 and utilize, and enjoy the beauty of unadorned truth 
 and the truth of simple beauty. A willingness to 
 know, a readiness to listen, a desire to be convinced, 
 an attitude of candor, an honesty of the intellect, — 
 these things are wrought into the fibre of the devel- 
 oped mind. That immorality of the intellect which 
 withholds, distorts, minimizes, or refuses to acknowl- 
 edge, the truth, is characteristic of unrounded minds, 
 and is the greatest impediment to progressive thought. 
 The action of the immoral intellect is to be distin- 
 guished from that of the wise teacher who has many 
 things to tell his pupils when they can bear them. 
 This is the necessary adjustment of truth to life to 
 secure comprehension of the truth and uplift of the 
 life. It is a test too severe for undeveloped minds to 
 welcome personally disagreeable truth, and even the 
 educated man must love God with all his mind before 
 he is sufficiently humble to pass the test smilingly. 
 To such a man the whole truth is dear ; he has faith 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 229 
 
 in its capacity to stand alone without artificial sup- 
 ports, such as the decrees of councils and the sayings 
 of high officials. These things were said because 
 they were true ; they were not true because they were 
 said. The open mind is stifled in a closed system of 
 truth ; as well exclude from the lungs the free winds 
 of heaven ! Truth is the interpretation of life, and 
 so truth is continually revealed as life progresses. 
 The open mind, so far from staying the growth of 
 truth, assists it on its saving way. 
 
 (2) The treasure-house of the mind is well filled. Knowledge. 
 When all is truly said against knowledge as the 
 sufficient end of education, still it remains true that 
 
 the educated man must know something and know 
 it well. He cannot know everything, — the accumu- 
 lated knowledge of the race is too vast and the rate 
 of human learning too slow, even if encyclopaedic 
 information were a desirable educational aim. But 
 as the result of the activity of the intellectual aspect 
 of consciousness, the educated man has a wide knowl- 
 edge of the large and essential facts of men and 
 things and exact knowledge of that field of fact 
 wherein he proposes to devote his life. His knowl- 
 edge is general enough to make the universe seem 
 like home, and specific enough to make his work in 
 the world a profit to others and a pleasure to himself. 
 Without such knowledge, man's sympathies are 
 contracted and his services slight. 
 
 (3) Self-knowledge. The educated mind has Seif-knowi- 
 become acquainted with itself. In its voyage of ^^^^' 
 discovery round the world, it has found something 
 
 of itself in everything, and has finally come to itself. 
 
230 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 An educated man knows his strength and his weak- 
 ness, and is content to work within his Hmitations. 
 At some time during the educative process the 
 searchlight of learning discovers to the student his 
 special ability, and thereafter his capacity is his 
 calling. Once for all his mind is awakened. Such 
 a vision of his forte stabilizes his life by setting a 
 solid end in view, to work toward which is not dreary 
 drudgery but an invigorating pleasure, because it is 
 self-expression. 
 
 After describing many interests of youth that had 
 their day and ceased to be, Professor Miinsterberg ^ 
 reports in his own case that finally " the lightning 
 struck" when he came to psychology. Of such a 
 moment of self-knowledge. President Eliot writes : ^ 
 " When the revelation of his own peculiar taste and 
 capacity comes to a young man, let him reverently 
 give it welcome, thank God, and take courage. 
 Thereafter he knows his way to happy, enthusiastic 
 work, and, God willing, to usefulness and success.'* 
 In an unpublished educational address. President 
 Tucker has said : " Education is the process whereby 
 a man learns to find himself and to make sure of 
 himself, that is, self-knowledge and self-reliance." 
 The second quality here mentioned, viz., self-reliance, 
 we have to mention later as another characteristic 
 of the educated mind. 
 Imagination. (4) Imagination. The sciences, the arts, and the 
 volitions tend to call out the imaginative powers of 
 consciousness. In science it is the imagination that 
 
 1 Atlantic Monthly, May, 1900, Article, "School Reform." 
 
 2 « Educational Reform," p. 12. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 231 
 
 frames hypotheses for observation and experiment 
 to verify. In his essay on the scientific uses of the 
 imagination, Professor Tyndall writes : ^ " Bounded 
 and conditioned by cooperant reason, imagination 
 becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical 
 discoverer. Newton's passage 'from a falling apple 
 to a falling moon ' was a leap of the imagination. . . . 
 In fact, without this power our knowledge of nature 
 would be a mere tabulation of coexistences and 
 sequences. We should still believe in the succession 
 of day and night, of summer and winter; but the 
 soul of force would be dislodged from our universe ; 
 causal relations would disappear, and with them that 
 science which is now binding the parts of nature to 
 an organic whole." 
 
 In the arts the imagination is stirred as the mind 
 comes into sympathetic appreciation of the object 
 of beauty. It was through the productive imagina- 
 tion, recombining old elements in new forms, that 
 the work of art was made. The builder, the sculp- 
 tor, the painter, had in mind the image of their work 
 before hand was laid to tool. The emotions supplied 
 the heat, the glow, the impulse, the longing to pro- 
 duce, to which the imagination gave definite form 
 and direction. Perhaps the musician and the poet 
 do not always so imagine their work in advance, but 
 sit down with noble and uninterpreted emotions to 
 express, to which the expression itself first gives 
 shape and definiteness. 
 
 And in the volitions, particularly in history, the 
 imagination is called into play as the mind vividly 
 
 1 " Half Hours with Modern Scientists," p. 250. 
 
232 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 reproduces the stirring scenes and their settings 
 from out the past. Without this imaginative reading, 
 history is a record of dead things. With it, history 
 lengthens our lives by thousands of years into the 
 undying past. 
 
 Since writing this account of the imagination as 
 one of the essential characteristics of the educated 
 mind. President Eliot has made his great address on 
 ** The New Definition of the Cultivated Man " before 
 the National Education Association in Boston, in 
 which, after stressing character, language, and the 
 store of knowledge, he estimates the imagination as 
 follows : " The only other element in cultivation 
 which time will permit me to treat is the training of 
 the constructive imagination. The imagination is the 
 greatest of human powers, no matter in what field it 
 works — in art, or literature, in mechanical invention, 
 in science, government, commerce, or religion, and 
 the training of the imagination is, therefore, far the 
 most important part of education." He continues, 
 " I use the term constructive imagination^ because 
 that implies the creation or building of a new thing." 
 
 With this conclusion I dissent, in favor of the 
 training of the next mental power to be mentioned, 
 viz., the judgment, and for the following reasons. 
 Nature has endowed but a small fraction of the 
 human race with the capacity to create. The Dantes, 
 Goethes, Shakespeares, Darwins, and Pasteurs of the 
 world are very rare. Such creative minds, further- 
 more, have been and are mostly beyond the assistance 
 of the school, though the school ought now to begin 
 the attempt of discovering them to themselves. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 2^2 
 
 Neither is it necessary for either the maintenance or 
 the progress of human society that the mass of men 
 be creators, as the past and present prove. On the 
 other hand, nature has endowed a vast majority of the 
 human race with the capacity, when developed, to 
 judge safely and well. This natural sanity of mind 
 the school can cultivate. And it is necessary for 
 both the permanence and the progress of human 
 society that a majority of its members be men of 
 good judgment, not subject to every newly created 
 theory, whether it be true or false, as both past and 
 present abundantly prove. It is through the power 
 of good judgment that the imagination is tempered 
 in its flights, that worthy characters become the object 
 of earnest endeavor, and that sanity is estabUshed as 
 the order of human society. It is judgment that 
 distinguishes the true from the false, the beautiful 
 from the ugly, and the good from the evil. It must 
 be then that the school, as the minister to both society 
 and the individual, finds a less important function in 
 the training of the imagination than in the training of 
 the judgment. 
 
 (5) Judgment. The educated man has a trained judgment, 
 judgment. Judgment is the mind's power to com- 
 prehend and estimate situations, whether facts or 
 principles. It is the highest intellectual power. It 
 is the power to think. It comes as the result of train- 
 ing. The man of judgment is the man of intellectual 
 power. It is the main characteristic of a liberal edu- 
 cation received at Harvard fifty-eight years ago, in- 
 dicated by Senator Hoar in the following words (and 
 which to-day he finds lacking in a conspicuous degree) : 
 
234 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 " There was something in the college training of 
 that day, imperfect as were its instruments, and slender 
 as were its resources, from which greater intellectual 
 strength in the pupil was begotten, than there is in the 
 college training of the present generation. I will not 
 undertake to account for it, but I think it was due, 
 in large part, to the personal quality of the instruc- 
 tors. . . . The difference in the capacity of a college 
 graduate to deal with any matter requiring intellectual 
 power, and that of a man who had not got that edu- 
 cation, was marked and unmistakable. I do not know 
 how to account for or to reason about it, but Alma 
 Mater brought up her boys to be better boys and 
 to be better men, to serve the state better in war 
 and in peace, to be better citizens and better sol- 
 diers than could be found elsewhere." ^ 
 
 What are the elements of a trained judgment ? 
 {a) The ability to see the facts clearly and accurately 
 whose sense data are reported. The mind is trained 
 to interpret the sense data aright, {b) The trained 
 judgment generalizes safely. Generalization is the 
 power to unite facts in principles. The trained judg- 
 ment waits until sufficient facts are in to make a safe 
 statement about their meaning. It interprets aright. 
 This is insight, {c) The trained judgment deduces 
 validly. Having a general principle as the interpre- 
 tation of the meaning of facts, it sees what follows 
 from it ; it understands how to investigate and inter- 
 pret these new facts. This gives a mastership of 
 future experience. This is foresight, {d) The 
 trained judgment appears in a certain consistency and 
 
 "^ Scribner^s,}vXy, igoo. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 235 
 
 connectedness present in mental products. The 
 bearings of fact on fact, of principles on principles, 
 of truth on truth, are recognized. The interrelation 
 of the different parts of reality appears. Such judg- 
 ing repeats mentally the systematic nature of things 
 as they are ; such thinking is like a seamless robe. 
 This absence of gaps, this presence of transitions, 
 this vision of both sides at once, this perception of 
 the systematic nature of truth, is the finest fruit of the 
 trained judgment, as the trained judgment itself is 
 the finest fruit of the trained mind. 
 
 To summarize, the trained judgment reports facts 
 as they are, sees their meaning, foresees their con- 
 sequences, and glimpses the whole of which they are 
 fragments. Judgment is the mind's assertion about 
 reality; it reaches beyond the content of individual 
 consciousness and lays hold of that which is object- 
 ively true ; it is the typical act of intelligence in its 
 effort to comprehend its world. 
 
 The training of the judgment is unfortunately not 
 so common a product of modern education as we 
 could wish to see. Remembering the words of Sena- 
 tor Hoar, let us note also the following criticism from 
 Professor Faraday : " Let me next endeavor to point 
 out what appears to me to be a great deficiency in 
 the exercise of the mental powers in every direction : 
 three words will express this great want, deficiency of 
 judgment. I do not wish to make any startling asser- 
 tion, but I know that in physical matters, multitudes 
 are ready to draw conclusions who have little or no 
 power of judgment in the cases ; that the same is 
 true of other departments of knowledge ; and that, 
 
236 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 generally, mankind is willing to leave the faculties 
 which relate to judgment almost entirely uneducated, 
 and their decisions at the mercy of ignorance, preposses- 
 sions, the passions, or even accident. . . . I will simply 
 express fny strong beliefs that that point of self -education 
 which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires 
 and inclinations^ until they are proved to be rights is 
 the most important of all^ not only in thifigs of natural 
 philosophy^ but in every depart7nent of daily lifeT^ 
 
 (6) Taste. The mind's judgment on beauty is 
 taste. Through taste the beautiful and the sublime 
 in the works of man and God become objects of 
 mental perception and enjoyment. Such pleasure is 
 a pure gain, no sorrow is mingled therewith. Here 
 the mind rests content in the perfect ; or else, in the 
 presence of natural sublimity it rises trembling into 
 the infinite. Through judgments on truth men are 
 made observant ; on goodness, energetic ; on beauty, 
 appreciative. The finer, higher, and more delicate 
 things of human experience come into consciousness 
 through the aesthetic sense. To omit it is to be intel- 
 lectually cold or morally austere or both ; to possess 
 it is to walk in the more excellent way of sympathetic 
 communion with the best in nature and man. The 
 air of refinement, the atmosphere of culture, the sense 
 of the perfect, the love of the ideal, belong with the 
 essential characterization of the educated person. 
 They are the natural birthrights of the human being, 
 and neither economic opportunity nor material pros- 
 perity nor unaesthetic education should steal away 
 
 1 Quoted from Youman, " The Culture demanded by Modern Life," 
 pp. 189, 205. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 237 
 
 these unmarketable but priceless possessions from the 
 soul of man. 
 
 It is important here to bear in mind that unity of 
 consciousness which occasionally has forced itself 
 upon our recognition in the progress of this discussion. 
 The judging activity of consciousness is one, though 
 its field of operation is threefold, viz., concerning 
 truth and error, beauty and ugliness, and goodness 
 and evil. In the first case we have what is commonly 
 called judgment; in the second, taste; and in the 
 third, conscience. Taste is judgment in the aesthetic 
 field (Kant Hmited ''judgment" to this field); con- 
 science is judgment in the moral field. The judging 
 activity is the same, the objects judged differ. Of 
 course this is not to deny the response of the feelings, 
 of the sensibility, to truth, beauty, and goodness, but 
 such responses get definition and estimation only 
 through the act of judging. To conscience we next 
 come. 
 
 (7) Conscience and character. The mind's power Conscience, 
 of judging, we saw, can be directed to that which is 
 good, as well as to the true and the beautiful. Con- 
 science is judgment concerning right and wrong. 
 Character is what one is in consequence of what he 
 wills to be. The good reported by conscience is the 
 highest object of will. No man is properly educated 
 whose will falls short of its noblest end. Where 
 immorality is, there education has not had its perfect 
 fruit. It is the will-aspect of consciousness about 
 which judgments of worth centre. 
 
 To some thinkers, notably Kant, a good will is the 
 only thing of absolute value in the world. To such 
 
238 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 minds the formation of moral character is the chief, 
 if not the only, end of education. To Hegel educa- 
 tion was "the art of making men moral." This 
 conception of the purpose of education is most promi- 
 nently associated with the name of Herbart, who 
 found it in Kant. To quote one of the Herbartians : 
 " If Kant and Herbart are right in claiming that the 
 will is the proper object of all ethical valuation, it 
 certainly follows that the ethical culture of the will 
 must be regarded as the highest purpose of educa- 
 tion." 1 And again, " Education, both as a national 
 and social factor, must above all construct character." 
 While affirming with these post-Kantians the unique 
 value of the will as embodied in morality, our own 
 conception of the end of education has been very 
 much more comprehensive ; indeed, as comprehen- 
 sive as the nature of the mind itself. This larger 
 view is justified as soon as it becomes evident that a 
 good will without intellect is undirected, and without 
 emotion is powerless. 
 The Habit (8) The habit of work. The educated mind has 
 
 accustomed itself to the performance of tasks, which 
 are now done well because they are done easily. The 
 power of concentrated and continued attention has 
 been developed through long practice. Large mental 
 labors are planned and performed without waste, 
 worry, or fret. The untrained mind wastes time in 
 attacking work and worries through its painful and 
 poor performance. The trained mind quickly dis- 
 covers itself in a certain skill of execution, a certain 
 air of mastery, a certain manner of self-confidence, 
 
 1 Rein, " Pedagogics," p. 88. 
 
 ofV^ork. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 239 
 
 and, especially, a certain pleasure in performance. 
 Without the habit of work on the part of trained 
 minds, the productivity of society would cease. 
 
 (9) Freedom. The educated man has the mental Freedom, 
 freedom that comes from a knowledge of the truth. 
 
 The bondage of ignorance is broken, the slavery of 
 fear is abolished, and the subjection of superstition 
 is removed. Only the sovereignty of truth is ad- 
 mitted, only the perfect law of liberty is regnant. The 
 inteUigence has been emancipated from the sway of 
 decreed truth and freely yields itself to the leadership 
 of acknowledged truth. In this spirit of truth the 
 soul of man is guided into all truth, the development 
 of personal power is unhampered, and individualities 
 are set free. To and through every finite soul the 
 Infinite has a message to deliver. There may be uni- 
 formity of individual insight into truth, there should 
 be no conformity of one man's mind to another man's 
 truth. The limitless quality of truth permits every 
 individual to possess in it a personal, instead of a 
 proxy, interest. Such freedom of the educated indi- 
 vidual leads naturally also to 
 
 (10) Tolerance. To recognize the mental freedom Tolerance, 
 in others which one enjoys himself is tolerance. It 
 implies sympathy as the acknowledgment of the 
 fundamental unity of human life. Where such sym- 
 pathy is lacking, one is presented with the frequent 
 
 and sad spectacle of freedom becoming intolerant, 
 the Protestant becoming dogmatic, the Puritan becom- 
 ing persecutive. A liberally trained man is as willing 
 to share, as he is unwilling to lose, the freedom he 
 enjoys. When the sun of truth is shining in the sky. 
 
240 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Happiness. 
 
 The Psycho- 
 logical Ideal 
 of Education. 
 
 to every voyager on the ocean of life its beams are 
 reflected from the water as to himself alone. This 
 free and unobstructed view is his inalienable right. 
 An imaginative sympathy must widen his vision 
 enough to recognize the identical right of others. 
 Tolerance refuses either to force others into its boat 
 or to put others in its shadow. With tolerance the 
 course of life's voyage is independent, free, and happy ; 
 without it, the central luminary of truth, lighting every 
 man that cometh into the world, is obscured by the 
 figure of man. 
 
 (11) And finally, the educated man is happy. 
 Happiness consists in the possession and use of 
 one's full powers. He knows the truth, and the truth 
 has made him free. He feels the beautiful, and the 
 beautiful has made him gentle. He wills the good, 
 and the good has made him strong. 
 
 The briefest survey of these characteristics of the 
 educated mind suggests that the end of education is 
 a rounded and complete personality, integer vitcs. 
 It remains to be remarked that this conception of 
 education is an ideal; it is not an achievement but 
 a process. The ideally educated man as described 
 above does not and can not exist. The individual 
 cases of educated men that one meets, present either 
 arrested development in some direction or over- 
 development, or both. As Dr. Donaldson^ has 
 reminded us : " The avowed aim of certain edu- 
 cational schemes is to produce a rounded, balanced 
 individual as an outcome of the training process, a 
 psychological result comparable with the ideal human 
 
 1 " Growth of the Brain," Chap. XVIII. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 241 
 
 form sought at one time in sculpture. Since condi- 
 tions of life on the globe are not uniform, and since 
 man only approaches the ideal in his development 
 when in harmony with his surroundings, such an 
 ideal is as fanciful as Goethe's Urpflanzer 
 
 From the character of the ends pursued, too, it is 
 evident that the ideal thus set for us is unattainable 
 in a temporal process. The truth, goodness, and 
 beauty pursued in the educational process of com- 
 plete self-development are infinite ideals. The 
 truth without error, the good without evil, the beau- 
 tiful without the ugly, — these are the content of an 
 absolute consciousness, whose perfection is possible 
 through the imperfections of our present temporal 
 order. The completion of man's education, then, 
 ending in his attaining these infinite ideals, would 
 require an infinite time. In other words, the com- 
 pletely educated man, as herein defined, does not 
 exist to-day or any day. Rather, according to 
 Addison's beautiful figure, does the finite approach 
 the infinite as the mathematical curve its limit, ever 
 nearer and yet never there ; our imperfection leads 
 us not into the darkness of despair but into the glory 
 of hope. To the full implication of these considera- 
 tions we must recur in the following chapter. There 
 it may appear that in our present imperfection of 
 educational attainment lies deeply the significance 
 of life and the prophecy of our perfecting. 
 
 " And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 
 For the fulness of the days ? " 
 
 Meanwhile, let not the pains we have here taken 
 to show that our ideal of education as defined is 
 
 R 
 
242 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 unattainable, blind us to its value for us. Even as 
 it escapes us pursuing does it regulate our pursuit. 
 Even as it, rising heavenward, leaves us far behind 
 upon the earth, does the mantle of its influence cover 
 us. Plato replied truly it was no objection to the 
 Republic to say that it did not, and could not, exist 
 upon the earth. " The light that never was on land 
 or sea " still is " the master light of all our seeing." 
 Our educational work has value in proportion as it 
 embodies the ideal of complete self-realization. 
 
 There are two terms in common usage, occasion- 
 ally employed by us already in this discussion, which 
 indicate those approximations to self-realization which 
 the school can produce, and which summarize the 
 situation of the educated mind, viz., culture, and a 
 hberal education. A few words of description of 
 each of these terms will serve to clarify further the 
 conception of that development of mind which edu- 
 cation, psychologically considered, aims to secure. 
 The Nature The term culture is fallen undeservedly into some 
 disrepute. The grounds for this, though actual, are, 
 however, not such as really inhere in the nature of 
 true culture. The term is often disliked because it 
 reminds us of our imperfections ; but this it does not 
 to condemn us but to lift us. Its possessors we 
 imagine often as thinking of themselves more highly 
 than they ought to think, and as disapproving of 
 others ; but such is not the case with that true cul- 
 ture wherein the sense of the still unattained is 
 always present. Nor is culture selfish, but coopera- 
 tive and willing to communicate its good things, for 
 its presence is due to the reception of the best from 
 
 of Culture. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 243 
 
 all, which carries with it the duty of giving the best 
 to all, according to the meaningful motto, noblesse 
 oblige. 
 
 The cultured mind literally is the tilled mind. 
 Just as the culture of the soil precedes its finest 
 products of plants and flowers, so the culture of the 
 mind precedes its finest achievements. The tilled 
 mind displays the natural virtues resident therein ; it 
 has a zealous love of the best things in life ; it is de- 
 voted to the ideal ; it worships the perfect. Culture 
 seeks the sweet reasonableness, the eternal fitness, and 
 the beautiful holiness of things. To quote neither 
 from Aristotle nor from Arnold, who have compassed 
 this field of sweetness and light in so final a fashion, 
 but from the wonderfully brilliant Martineau : " Its 
 [culture's] zeal is spent upon the highest elements 
 and finest fruits of civilization, — the increase of 
 knowledge, the refinement and sincerity of art, the 
 purification of religion. It secures, therefore, a 
 genuine liberality of mind, a sympathy with what- 
 ever makes man intelligent, gracious, and noble, and 
 a delight in rendering this, as far as possible, com- 
 mon to all . . . the love of culture is selective ; and 
 he in whom it is represented is an epitome of the 
 higher faculties and influences of our life ; with sym- 
 pathy less diffused over men as they are, than con- 
 centrated on what they might be and are to be. . . . 
 Nothing can be more happily distinctive of the lib- 
 eral-minded man who impersonates our spring of 
 action, than this feature, that he would rather teach 
 his fellow-men than rule them." ^ 
 
 1 Martineau, " Types of Ethical Theories," Third Ed. Vol. II, p. 214. 
 
244 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Such culture is not antagonistic to the element of 
 force in personality, though the combination is rare. 
 Culture is broad ; force is narrow, for vigorous action 
 is always along definite lines. But a man may act 
 and still have a zealous love of the best things ; such 
 cultured action will be careful and discriminating, and 
 it will do no violence to the sense of values. Icono- 
 clastic action and culture are not consistent, but " in- 
 telligent, gracious, and noble " action can emanate 
 only from the cultured soul. Thus while culture 
 clips the wings of violence and cripples injudicious, 
 ungracious, and ignoble action, it is wings to the feet 
 of the messenger of light and life. 
 
 The following words of President Eliot will con- 
 crete our discussion of culture as a serviceable syno- 
 nym for the educated mind : " The worthy fruit of 
 academic culture is an open mind, trained to careful 
 thinking, instructed in the methods of philosophic 
 investigation, acquainted in a general way with the 
 accumulated thought of past generations, and pene- 
 trated with humility." ^ 
 A Liberal A Uberal education, we were saying, is a term also 
 
 commonly employed to signify what the school, par- 
 ticularly in its higher forms, gives the individual. A 
 change has occurred in the meaning of this term since 
 the great days of Greece which is indicative of a won- 
 derful widening of the educational ideal. The Grecian 
 liberal education was for the free man, implying the 
 existence of the slave class ; the English liberal edu- 
 cation is still for the gentleman, implying the existence 
 of the laboring caste ; the American liberal education 
 
 1 Eliot, " Educational Reform," p. 8. 
 
 Education. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 245 
 
 is for man as man, without qualifications, implying the 
 equal rights of all to free self-realization. So radical a 
 reformer of human society as Plato did not discern the 
 possibility of universal education, providing as he does 
 in the RepubUc for the training of artisans only by 
 custom and experience. Aristotle, the most catholic 
 mind of Greece, if not of the whole world, described 
 a cultured leisure as the ideal of education from par- 
 ticipation in which a large majority of the human 
 family, the workers, were necessarily excluded. The 
 effort of the cosmopolitan English nation to make 
 their founts of learning flow freely for even their 
 home people is a record of only one generation, and 
 even this educational stream, started toward univer- 
 sal service, has had its back eddies and counter 
 currents. In the American democratic form of gov- 
 ernment the idea of universal education has found 
 freest historic expression and fulfilment. Here a 
 liberal education is defined not as that intended for 
 the free man, nor even as that intended for the gentle- 
 man born, but, to quote Professor Ladd, " by a justi- 
 fiable turn of meaning, a * liberal education ' may be 
 defined as that which makes the free mind, which 
 furnishes the liberalizing culture of the trained gentle- 
 man." 1 A liberal education emancipates individual- 
 ity, sets free personal powers, and widens the human 
 outlook. 
 
 It is characteristic of the education that liberalizes 
 the human spirit that it be non-professional and non- 
 technical. Whether an education be liberalizing or 
 not depends not so much upon the subjects studied as 
 
 1 Ladd, "The Higher Education," p. 114. 
 
246 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 upon the spirit in which, and the purpose for which, 
 they are studied. It was a great mistake of the advo- 
 cates of the old prescribed curriculum, as against the 
 introduction of the newer elements like history, the 
 modern languages, and science, to suppose that 
 these latter subjects were not liberalizing because 
 they could be serviceable. It was also a mistake to 
 suppose that the pursuit of Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
 matics was always liberalizing, even when the pro- 
 spective teacher or minister was intending to profit 
 by them. A liberal study is one pursued for its own 
 sake ; a professional study is one pursued for the sake 
 of its application. Any subject in the University cata- 
 logue may be either liberal or professional, according 
 to the student's attitude thereto. The study of biol- 
 ogy will Hberalize a ministerial student more than 
 the study of Greek ; the study of Greek will liberalize 
 a medical student more than the study of biology. 
 The pursuit of any study for its own sake widens the 
 personality of the student to cover the new territory ; 
 the pursuit of any study for the sake of applying it 
 narrows the personality of the student into the chan- 
 nel of action. It is like two men walking together in 
 the fields, the one with open mind enjoying all he 
 meets and sees, the other with focussed mind hunt- 
 ing for specimens; the self of the one is absorbed 
 in his environment, the environment of the other 
 is absorbed into his self ; the one makes the uni- 
 verse the measure of himself, the other makes him- 
 self the measure of the universe. It is known that 
 the educational value of manual training is greater 
 when the student's mind is bent toward his task rather 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 247 
 
 than toward its proceeds. It is not the particular 
 study going into a man's mind that liberalizes him ; 
 it is the spirit coming forth from the man's mind as 
 he studies. To study any subject in a self -forgetful, 
 disinterested fashion is broadening; in a self-seeking, 
 partial fashion is narrowing. Liberalizing work is 
 interesting, not interested. 
 
 As a corollary to the non-professional, non-technical, 
 character of a liberal education goes also its unspe- 
 cialized quality. It is only through the gate of spe- 
 cialization that one enters the field of professional 
 service. It is the college as the fruition of the pre- 
 ceding educational agencies that is particularly de- 
 signed to secure the liberal education, with its historic 
 bachelor's degree as the symbol thereof. Because 
 of the unspecialized character of a liberal education, 
 the colleges have regularly been cautious to prevent 
 speciaHzation through the requirement of at least 
 a sufficient number of representative studies to 
 secure a living interest in all things natural and 
 human. After such a broadening, into howsoever 
 narrow channels of action the streams of personality 
 may later flow, they will be deep. The length and 
 breadth of the college is the best preparation for the 
 height and depth of the professional school. Any 
 disadvantage accruing from the later acquirement of 
 technique in the professional schools is offset by the 
 advantage of bringing a broad personality from the col- 
 lege. A well-trained mind with a less adaptable hand 
 is better than a less-trained mind with a more adaptable 
 hand, as an equipment for professional study. First 
 a man, then a workman ; first be, then do ; first make 
 
248 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 life worth living, then make a living in life; first 
 righteousness, joy, and peace in the inner rnan, then 
 an abundance of possessions. The lawyer, the doctor, 
 the engineer, are men as well as professionalists. 
 They are citizens, they are friends, they have homes, 
 they live in the wonderful world, and their horizon 
 should not be limited by the courtroom, the hospital, 
 and the factory. Just as specialization with a broad 
 basis is the highest safety of society, so specialization 
 with a narrow basis is a menace to society. As John 
 Stuart Mill says, " A man's mind is as fatally narrowed, 
 and his feelings toward the great ends of humanity 
 as miserably stunted, by giving all his thoughts to 
 the classification of a few insects, or the resolution 
 of a few equations, as to sharpening the points or 
 putting on the heads of pins." Those professional 
 schools which aim to send experts into society to 
 alleviate increasingly the lot of man through the lofty 
 passion for noble service will favor the current ten- 
 dency to require a bachelor's diploma from a reputable 
 college of their applicants for admission. On the 
 other hand, those professional schools which aim to 
 provide society with servants of special technical 
 equipment without great regard to prior general train- 
 ing will continue to demand the abbreviation or omis- 
 sion of the college course. It may be that in the 
 complexity of human needs each kind of professional 
 school will find its peculiar function, but the existence 
 of the former is indispensable for the enrichment of 
 society. 
 
 America has always demanded the application of 
 its educated power. Whether the education be lib- 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 249 
 
 eral or technical, or both, it must always do some- 
 thing in the end. Unlike Greece, America has felt 
 that the educated class was not apart from society but 
 a part of society ; unlike England, America has felt 
 that the appHcation of science is not vulgarizing but 
 elevating. Catholicity and equally extensive service- 
 ableness have been the distinctive notes of American 
 liberal education. As President Wheeler has recently 
 written, "The American passion for sweetness and 
 light will be fulfilled in such as are not knowers 
 only, but doers of the doctrine." ^ 
 
 Despite the fa.ct that America stands for the educa- 
 tion of man as man, in practice our society falls dis- 
 tressingly short of this lofty ideal. As Professor 
 Dewey writes, " Hardly one per cent of the entire 
 school population ever attains to what we call 
 higher education ; only five per cent to the grade of 
 our high school ; while much more than half leave on 
 or before the completion of the fifth year of the ele- 
 mentary grade." ^ Thus liberal education to-day in 
 the freest of lands and at the acme of historic educa- 
 tional progress is still for the few and not for the 
 many, as it was in the old unchristian days of Aris- 
 totle. Through emphasis upon the basic idea of 
 equal opportunity to all men upon which the Ameri- 
 can Commonwealth rests, through the enlightenment 
 of public opinion as to the true scale of values in life, 
 through a quickened sense of the educational duty of 
 parents to children and of man to himself, through a 
 heightened recognition of what education does for 
 
 1 The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1903, "A National Type of Culture." 
 
 2 Dewey, " The School and Society," p. 42. 
 
250 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the individual and for society, it is incumbent upon 
 all true Americans everywhere to extend increasingly 
 the unmixed blessings of a liberal education. 
 
 There are certain famous words of Huxley so fitly 
 spoken, like apples of gold in pictures of silver, that 
 we cannot do better than conclude this present dis- 
 cussion with them. He writes : " That man, I think, 
 has had a liberal education who has been so trained 
 in youth that his body is the ready servant of his 
 will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work 
 that, as a mechanism, it is capable of ; whose intellect 
 is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal 
 strength, and in smooth working order ; ready, like a 
 steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and 
 spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of 
 the mind; whose mind is stored with the knowledge 
 of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and 
 of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted 
 ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions 
 are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the 
 servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to 
 love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all 
 vileness, and to respect others as himself. 
 
 " Such a man and no other, I conceive, has had a 
 liberal education ; for he is, as completely as a man 
 can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the 
 best of her and she of him. They will get on to- 
 gether rarely ; she as his ever beneficent mother ; he 
 as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister 
 and interpreter." ^ 
 
 We have now given our answer to the three ques- 
 
 1 Huxley, " Science and Education," p. 86. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 251 
 
 tions that cover the psychological aspect of education ; Fourth 
 we have seen the nature of that self -activity whereby ^f^^^^^^^^^ 
 mental development is reached, the nature of that tion. 
 mental development which, psychologically consid- 
 ered, is the end of education, and the detailed char- 
 acteristics of the developed mind, together with its 
 general description in terms of culture and a liberal 
 education. Psychology has added to our preceding 
 definition of education the element of mental devel- 
 opment. It remains now to combine this result with 
 those biological, physiological, and sociological con- 
 clusions earlier reached in our next definition of 
 education as follows : Education is the superior 
 adjustment of a physically and mentally developed 
 conscious human being to his intellectual^ emotional^ 
 and volitional environment. 
 
 There are other definitions of education that might Other 
 be framed which would perhaps be more elegant in Educatkm °^ 
 expression but doubtless less adequate in content. 
 One might say with truth that education is self- 
 development through self-activity for self-hood and 
 social service. This definition is adequate from all 
 points of view except the biological, which insists that 
 education must provide the individual with proper 
 adaptation to his environment. " Self-hood " means 
 the state of possessing the self's realized powers. 
 This definition is convenient in that, to the nature of 
 education as self-development, it adds the means in 
 self -activity, and the end in self-hood and social 
 service. 
 
 It might be an interesting but hardly a profitable 
 undertaking to pass in review the historic definitions 
 
252 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 of education from Plato to Spencer with a view to 
 comparing them with our own. It would be mostly 
 a verbal display. Suffice it to say that most defini- 
 tions of the educational reformers stress truly one 
 or more of the aspects of education, without present- 
 ing that comprehensive view which it has been our 
 purpose to obtain. Bacon's definition, to take an 
 example, emphasizes the intellectual element, when 
 he says, " Education is the cultivation of a just and 
 legitimate familiarity betwixt the mind and things." 
 The But there is one rather common and decidedly too 
 
 Making euloffistic description of education which deserves 
 
 of a Man. ° ^ 
 
 comment. The classic statements of the great Kant 
 may be taken as illustrating this conception. He 
 writes : " Man can only become man by education. 
 He is merely what education makes of him."^ But 
 education is something less than the making of a 
 man. There are at least three elements in the mak- 
 ing of a man, viz., heredity, environment, and effort. 
 Many scientists would prefer to reduce the three to 
 two, and say that heredity and environment are 
 enough. But perhaps the preceding discussions of 
 the nature of history, of self-activity, and of effort, 
 will seem warrant to the reader, as they do to the 
 writer, for including effort, or will, as the third 
 factor. Man, the completed product, is partly born, 
 is partly made, and he partly makes himself. Shake- 
 speare rightly classified the influences that make men 
 in his famous sentence, '* Some men are born great, 
 some achieve greatness, and some have greatness 
 thrust upon them." Each of these elements in man- 
 
 ^ Churton, " Kant on Education," p. 6. 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 253 
 
 making is of essential importance ; the influences of 
 heredity are latent and lasting all one's life ; those 
 of environment are actual and omnipresent, those of 
 effort redirect inherited impulses and overcome en- 
 vironing obstacles. As Hamlet says, "Use almost 
 can change the stamp of nature." 
 
 Now our educational endeavors have not as yet 
 been able to include and to manage the fact and 
 influence of heredity, despite Dr. Holmes's famous 
 witticism about choosing one's grandparents. Edu- 
 cation has not as yet succeeded in leavening the 
 lump of social opinion sufficiently to insure to the 
 new generation the precious blessing of being well 
 born. And yet the desirability of just this thing was 
 recognized two millenniums and more ago by Plato, 
 who, to effect it in his Republic, made an impossible 
 reorganization of the family life. Education's slow 
 but only hope in getting possession of the influence 
 of heredity is through the patient instruction of the 
 masses. 
 
 Of the two remaining elements of man-making, 
 viz., environment and effort, education is in partial 
 possession. The school, with all its equipment of 
 curriculum, apparatus, and teachers, is a large sec- 
 tion of the pupil's environment. In the school, 
 through effortful reaction upon the educational stim- 
 uli supplied by his environment, and upon his own 
 inherited inclinations, the child becomes father to 
 the man; self-selected thoughts get embodied in 
 deeds ; repeated deeds fashion habits ; combined 
 habits make character, and character is destiny. 
 Thus education assists, but does not cover, the art of 
 
254 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 making a man. This impossible task for it educa- 
 tion cheerfully resigns in favor of its more modest, 
 but equally real, service of bringing out what is in 
 man. 
 TheTran- Herewith is concluded the discussion of the last 
 
 !^"°"^'"°.™ of the empirical characteristics of the being to be 
 caitothe educated, viz., intelligence, following upon the dis- 
 PhiT^^ cussion of his other empirical characteristics, viz., 
 
 sophicaiDis- life, body, and sociality. We have seen what the 
 cussion. nature of education is so far as the empirical nature 
 of the educable being is concerned. Thus far expe- 
 rience. Beyond experience we cannot go, except in 
 thought, by following out consistently to their logical 
 conclusion the clear implications of experience. It 
 may be that folded within the finite facts so far con- 
 sidered are suggestions of deeper truths and higher 
 meanings than have as yet appeared. Even if the 
 educational processes that, as we discussed them, 
 seemed so vital with significance and pregnant with 
 intimations of what must be the truth of truths, the 
 really real, the ultimate fact, even if these invaluable 
 human activities are deceptive, and mean nothing 
 deeper and truer than appears, — this too must be 
 discovered by proper methods of reasoning upon 
 what does appear. 
 
 At this point many may turn back and say. Who 
 will show us any further truth than experience dis- 
 covers .'* But the philosophically minded will reply 
 that this same experience, to which appeal is made 
 to check the ultimate seekings of the human mind, 
 itself thrusts questions upon us which it does not 
 completely answer, intimates more than it tells, sug- 
 
The Psychological Aspect of Education 255 
 
 gests more than it asserts, and implies more than it 
 reveals. To be true to experience then is not to stop 
 thinking at its boundaries but by thinking to inter- 
 pret the meaning of such fragmentary experience in 
 terms of its implications concerning the infinite and 
 eternal. To such readers the invitation is extended 
 to follow us still as we seek the ultimate nature of 
 education, in view of that characteristic of man, the 
 educable being, which makes him in thought already 
 the inhabitant of an eternal, rational, passionate, and 
 purposeful world. Just as the astronomer is led to 
 assert the existence of an unknown and undiscovered 
 planet through the perturbations that do appear, 
 which planet later experience may discover, so is the 
 philosopher led to assert those things as ultimately 
 true which alone give intelligibihty to present facts, 
 and which, too, later experience will correct and 
 verify. As the scientist is the discoverer of fact, so 
 is the philosopher the interpreter of fact. Our one 
 remaining question is, then. What is the meaning of 
 education as hitherto defined ? for the answer to 
 which we turn to the Philosophical Aspect of Edu- 
 cation. 
 
 REFERENCES ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Bain, Education as a Science, Chap. III. 
 
 De Garmo, Herbart and the Herbartians. 
 
 De Garmo, Interest and Education. 
 
 Dewey, Interest as related to Will. 
 
 Dexter and Garlick, Psychology in the Schoolroom. 
 
 Eliot, Educational Reform, V. 
 
 Froebel, The Education of Man. 
 
256 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Gordy, A Broader Elementary Education. 
 Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education, Chap. IV. 
 Herbart, The Science of Education. 
 
 — — , Introduction to the Science and Practice of Education. 
 Huxley, Science and Education, IV. 
 James, Talks to Teachers. 
 Ladd, The Higher Education. 
 McLellan and Dewey, Applied Psychology. 
 Munsterberg, Psychology and Life, Essay on Psychology and 
 Education. 
 Palmer, The New Education. 
 Pestalozzi, Leonard and Gertrude. 
 Putnam, A Manual of Pedagogics, pp. 92-115. 
 Royce, Is there a Science of Education ? Ed. Rev. I. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT OF EDUCATION 
 
 The characteristic method of philosophy is to take The Method 
 what facts it can find in a given field of human expe- phy^^"'''°' 
 rience and seek to determine their meaning. Each 
 such field is itself a fragment of the whole human 
 experience, and our whole human experience appears 
 itself but a fragment, implying for its interpretation 
 the existence of a still larger and inclusive experience 
 within which all meanings get their fulfilment. Any 
 such chosen section of human experience indicates 
 something as to its own final value and lasting signifi- 
 cance. The part implies the whole, and the meaning 
 of the part it is that suggests the nature of the whole. 
 The method of philosophy is to construct the whole 
 from the meaning of some of its parts, just as the 
 complete statue or animal is restored by artist or sci- 
 entist from its bust or bone. Philosophy has no new 
 facts of its own to consider, it has only to consider 
 the old facts in its own new way. Given such frag- 
 ments of experience as men possess, to restore the 
 whole, that is the problem of philosophy. What 
 must the final truth be in order to do justice to this 
 fragmentary bit of experience as now known ? This is 
 the question of philosophy. The instrument of phi- 
 losophy is thought, as it attempts to follow out in some 
 s 257 
 
258 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 The 
 
 Question of 
 the Philoso- 
 phy of 
 Education. 
 
 final and self-consistent fashion the intimations of 
 partial experiences. The invisible things are really 
 made known in part through the things that do 
 appear, just as Agassiz or Gray could describe the 
 life-history of an animal or plant from tooth or leaf. 
 One thing implies another, things go together, noth- 
 ing is isolated and unrelated, all things are interde- 
 pendent in the unity of the whole, — such well-known 
 truths as these philosophy takes seriously, and from 
 such details as it can find it attempts the work of res- 
 toration. It is a perfectly legitimate method of men- 
 tal procedure, as used and vindicated by both science 
 and art; only the whole which philosophy seeks is 
 larger, even reahty itself. In brief, the method of 
 philosophy is reflection. 
 
 From this definition of its method it is apparent 
 that the question of the philosophy of education is 
 this, what are the implications of education ? What 
 does the empirical nature of education as already 
 defined through the related sciences of fact suggest 
 as to its ultimate nature .'' Philosophy has no new 
 educational facts to present ; it asks only concerning 
 the significance of the facts already in. It takes our 
 educational experience, already narrated, as given, 
 and concerning so notable a matter of human life, it 
 reflectively inquires as to its meaning. Just as there 
 is a philosophy of art, religion, the state, human con- 
 duct, etc., so is there a philosophy of education. 
 Like these other departments of human life, educa- 
 tion has its own facts suggesting meanings in their 
 own way. Its facts, of course, are like other facts in 
 that they are closely woven into our unitary human 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education, 259 
 
 life; and the meanings they suggest in their own 
 characteristic way ought also to fit in harmoniously 
 with the meanings already wrought out in the phi- 
 losophies of other subjects. All facts ultimately mean 
 the same, but they mean the same in their own unique 
 ways ; just as signboards on different roads leading 
 to the same city point by different ways to the same 
 goal. ReaUty is the heavenly city of philosophy and 
 education is one of its signboards. 
 
 What then is the reality as indicated by education ? Two preiimi- 
 Attempting first to put the facts of education all to- Q^Jneraiiza- 
 gether so as to view them as one, two things are seen, tions. 
 viz., education is a world-process, and it is a temporal AWorid- 
 process. Education is a world-process ; it is the P'^^^^^^* 
 world at work developing a man into the fulness of 
 his stature. Philosophy with its inclusive view makes 
 us return at once to the broad conception of educa- 
 tion as defined in the first chapter ; all the experiences 
 of life, as well as those of the school, go into the de- 
 velopment of man. Just as it takes all the creative 
 powers in the acme of their exercise to make a man, 
 so it takes all the influences of life to develop a man. 
 Unimaginable ages of creative effort preceded the 
 birth of a human child ; unimaginable ages of educa- 
 tional effort must succeed his birth to round out man's 
 power. The heart of humanity in which eternity is 
 set, the mind of man with its eye opened to the in- 
 finite, have in our brief span of historic time not yet 
 begun to disclose all their latent secrets to the genial 
 and generous influences of their increasingly edu- 
 cational environment. Education is the process 
 whereby human kind is working out into fruition its 
 
26o The Philosophy of Education 
 
 own inner nature ; it is man's means of realizing his 
 destination, of reaching his goal of largest power, joy, 
 and service. It is a narrow though valuable sense 
 of the term which limits the meaning of education 
 to the influence of the school consciously brought to 
 bear through the agency of the teacher upon the 
 pupil ; in the broadest, truest sense of the term, it is 
 the sum total of the influences of life that educate a 
 man. All things develop the human being, whether 
 home or business, church or state, self or others, joy 
 or sorrow, victory or defeat, life or death. The world 
 is busy while men grow. As Browning sings, 
 
 " I count life just a stuff 
 To try the soul's strength on, educe the man." 
 
 A Temporal Education is also a temporal process. Philoso- 
 phers are not agreed whether time is a characteristic 
 of the ultimate reality or not ; that is, some say all 
 reality falls within the stream of time ; others say 
 that the stream of time itself flows within the terri- 
 tory of reality. The weight of opinion seems to favor 
 the view that reality is independent of the temporal 
 process, that time is but one of the many ways in 
 which reality exists, but that the temporal process, so 
 far as its nature allows, manifests in finite fashion 
 the non-temporal infinite reality. Education belongs 
 decidedly to the temporal process. In that reality 
 where is no time, any educational process is unimag- 
 inable. Indeed, all things in human experience, 
 except the objects of thought, dwell within the stream 
 of time. We think in time but of things, like truth, 
 which are eternal, — before, behind, and beyond, the 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 261 
 
 growth and decay of time. Time is the presupposi- 
 tion of education, without which as the logical condi- 
 tion of succession, of change from less to more, no 
 development could take place. In time the latent 
 becomes the kinetic, the potential the real, and the 
 actual approaches the ideal. From the fertile womb 
 of time man is born into the world, after which all 
 the events of time combine to nourish him. 
 
 It is the growing insight of our own age that the 
 development of organic forms through all the vast 
 periods of uncounted past time is a significant natural 
 process, voicing in long-drawn cadence the word of 
 the Absolute. The one-way, irreversible process of 
 organic evolution is one of the efforts of time to tell 
 the story of the eternal. Just as the nature of justice 
 appeared more plainly to Plato when writ large in the 
 structure of the state, so the nature of reality appears 
 more plainly when writ large through the past centu- 
 ries of productive change. If the world of matter 
 in its unrepeatable processes of evolution is a parable 
 of the truth, how much more may we expect that 
 the world of mind in its self-conscious development 
 through natural and educational agencies is a revela- 
 tion of reality.? Mental as well as material devel- 
 opment must be declaratory of the hidden things. 
 Education is the process of evolution become con- 
 scious of itself. The story begun by the fire-mist, 
 the spiral nebulae, the hot stars, the cooling planets, 
 the inhabitable earth, and the growth of life, ought 
 to be continued in the conscious effort of man to 
 realize his nature and fulfil his destiny. Otherwise 
 the universe cannot complete the story it was able to 
 
262 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 begin. As a significant conscious process of develop- 
 ment in time, whereby immaturity reaches maturity, 
 and the child becomes a man, education ought to be 
 a chapter in the serial which the universe is writing 
 through time in the heavens and upon the earth. 
 The constitution of things is so well framed to edu- 
 cate man that one is easily led through the gate of 
 education back into that reality whence man came 
 and whither he goes. As the rare Paulsen writes, 
 " Thus we are forced to repeat the demand. Out 
 of all the infinite possibilities construct a world that 
 would have been better fitted than ours to educate 
 man and would have accomplished more." ^ 
 
 If the temporal is just man's present inadequate 
 experience of the eternal, is that measure of the 
 eternal which the mind of man can span, is, in fact, 
 in the eternal without which it would be an abstrac- 
 tion, then a significant, notable, and valuable tem- 
 poral process like education ought to imply in a 
 certain degree the very nature of the eternal. What 
 are these ultimate impHcations of education } This 
 is the question of the philosophy of education. 
 
 In thus seeing that education from the philosophi- 
 cal point of view is a world-process and a significant 
 temporal process, we are led into the very heart of 
 our whole inquiry concerning the nature and mean- 
 ing of education. Any ultimate meanings we can 
 find in the empirical educational process will reflect 
 brighter light upon the nature of that process itself. 
 It is the lower that suggests the higher and the 
 higher that interprets the lower. 
 
 1 Paulsen, "Introduction to Philosophy" (Tr. Thilly), p. 326. 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 263 
 
 The implications of education can be grouped The impiica- 
 about three main concepts, viz., the origin of man, Education, 
 the nature of man, and the destiny of man. The 
 discussion must be limited to the self-consciousness 
 of man, so as to exclude the body, the problems of 
 which belong to the natural sciences. 
 
 First, as to the origin of man. According to the The Origin 
 reflective method of philosophy we must first array °^ ^^' 
 our facts and then see their implication. There are 
 three well-known facts of the educational process, 
 selected from the foregoing discussions, which, by 
 suggestion, will partly illumine this subject. 
 
 (a) Education, as a human process with a mean- Mindis 
 ing to spell concerning the truth, seizes upon mind ^^^* 
 as the final useful appendage to the organism in its 
 upward evolution. That which nature by sponta- 
 neous variation, the struggle for existence, and the 
 survival of the fit, bestows as its last best gift to the 
 organism, education seizes upon to improve, thus 
 raising evolution from the unconscious natural to 
 the conscious mental plane. The highest type of 
 selective agency of man, — education, lays hold upon 
 the highest selected product of nature, — mind, for 
 further improvement, thereby indicating mind as the 
 highest type of temporal reality. Education by its 
 emphases practises the saying of Sir WilHam Hamil- 
 ton, viz., " In the world there is nothing great but 
 man ; in man there is nothing great but mind." 
 The school and also the other more general educa- 
 tive agencies of civilization lay all their stress upon 
 mind as the most valuable, the most useful, the most 
 real, element in life. Chosen last as the result of 
 
264 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 an incalculably long, prehistoric process of natural 
 selection, mind is become first. Education may be 
 pardoned its ontological boldness if it questions 
 reflectively whether the reality it selects as ultimate 
 is not the ultimate reality. Is not reality mental ? 
 The (3) To take the second familiar fact (since philoso- 
 
 M^nd^r P^3^ presents us with no new facts) which may pro- 
 realized, vide us with a thread of meaning, to lead us through 
 the labyrinth of the phenomenal into the open place 
 of the noumenal, viz., education shows us a develop- 
 ment, the unrealized powers of mind through exer- 
 cise becoming actualized. But what in the nature of 
 things is the possibility of development ? that educa- 
 tion inquires which has begun to scrutinize its ulti- 
 mate bases. Can something develop from nothing ? 
 in disobedience of the dicta alike of mediaeval 
 scholasticism and modern biology .? Can mind come 
 from something not itself mental ? the unlike giving 
 birth to the Hke. Can maturity of mind develop out 
 of simple immaturity.? time thus making additions 
 to the sum total of reality as against what might be 
 called the law of the unity and conservation of the 
 Absolute. Can that develop in the temporal process 
 which is not eternally realized .? as against the doc- 
 trine of the Stagirite that there is no hvvaiii^ without 
 ^vepyeia. Education finds itself unable to understand 
 how the development of unrealized mind which it 
 secures can occur without implying that, underneath 
 its whole process and giving power at every point, 
 is the one realized mind. Not a first cause in a tem- 
 poral series of events does education reflectively and 
 vainly seek, but an adequate cause of its great cen- 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 265 
 
 tral fact of development. This it satisfactorily finds 
 only in the existence of a mind which needs no 
 development itself, and so can guarantee the fruitful- 
 ness of all educational efforts for development. Thus 
 education upon reflection is forced to hold that the 
 reality it declares mental it must also declare actual. 
 
 (c) Man is the only educable being. The horse, The 
 the do2f, — the lower animals, are trained, not edu- ^}^.^°}^^^ 
 
 °' ' ' Mmd IS 
 
 cated. Apparently the lower creature frames to Seif-active. 
 himself no goal to be reached, no moral or intel- 
 lectual end to be attained, no development to be 
 secured. There is direction, but not self -direction ; 
 consciousness, but not self -consciousness ; inherited 
 instinct, but not conceptual reasoning. Such intelli- 
 gences are trained, through processes of associative 
 memory, but not educated, through the pursuit of 
 rational ends self-consciously conceived. The divid- 
 ing line between training and education is uncertain 
 but real. In the field of animal intelligence least of 
 all is the modern psychologist permitted to dogmatize. 
 He only finds man with a history, literature, science, 
 and the arts of civilization which the lower animal 
 lacks. He knows man's works are due to his powers 
 of symbolic thinking. He must suspect then that this 
 is the distinguishing characteristic of man, differentiat- 
 ing him from the lower animals. All his observations 
 go to confirm, and nothing to contradict, this position. 
 To quote Professor James : " One total object 
 suggests another total object, and the lower mam- 
 mals find themselves acting with propriety, they 
 know not why. The great, the fundamental, defect 
 of their minds seems to be the inability of their 
 
266 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 groups of ideas to break across in unaccustomed 
 places. They are enslaved to routine, to cut-and- 
 dried thinking ; and if the most prosaic of human 
 beings could be transported into his dog's soul, he 
 would be appalled at the utter absence of fancy 
 which there reigns. Thoughts would not be found 
 to call up their similars, but only their habitual suc- 
 cessors. Sunsets would not suggest heroes* deaths, 
 but supper-time. This is why man is the only meta- 
 physical animal." ^ If these things be true, and they 
 have not been gainsaid, it is only a humorous exaggera- 
 tion to speak of educated animals. The lower creation 
 seems to lack that power of self-directed pursuit of 
 consciously conceived ends which makes education 
 possible. This power we have already named, in 
 brief, self-activity. Man is the only educable being 
 because only he has a sufficient measure of self-activ- 
 ity to attain by effort rational ends. 
 
 "The nature of education is determined by the 
 nature of mind — that it can develop what is in itself 
 only by its own activity. . . . Education is the influ- 
 encing of man by man, and it has for its end to lead 
 him to actualize himself through his own efforts. . . . 
 Man, therefore, is the only fit subject for education. 
 We often speak, it is true, of the education of plants 
 and animals ; but, even when we do, we apply other 
 expressions, as 'raising,' 'breaking,' 'breeding,' and 
 'training,' in order to distinguish it from the edu- 
 cation of man. ' Training ' consists in producing in 
 an animal, either by pain or pleasure of the senses, 
 an activity of which, it is true, he is capable, but 
 
 1 James, " Briefer Psychology," p. 369. 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 267 
 
 which he never would have developed if left to 
 himself." 1 
 
 The education that has grown reflective as to its 
 foundations asks concerning the source of this self- 
 activity which man displays and which makes of him 
 the only fit subject of educational endeavor. A suffi- 
 cient cause of man's self-activity is in question. The 
 cause of any phenomenon in the last analysis reduces 
 itself to the statement of the relation in which that 
 phenomenon stands to the whole of which it is a part. 
 Nothing short of the whole absolute reality is the 
 complete cause of the fall of a sparrow or the loss of 
 a hair. The sole, invariable, and necessary antecedent 
 of a phenomenon cannot be found this side the whole 
 truth, the sum total of things that are. The reality 
 of which man is a part, is a unity ; to assert any divi- 
 sion in reality is to imply the w^hole so divided ; to 
 assert any multiplicity of real principles is to imply 
 a corresponding multiplicity of inter-relationships be- 
 tween them, like good and bad, light and darkness, 
 idea and matter, etc., which thus reduce themselves 
 to one system. Is the whole of which self -active man 
 is a part itself self-active ? It is to be noted that man 
 is not absolutely self-active, but he is limited just in 
 so far as he is a part and not the whole. His limits 
 he becomes aware of in the forces of heredity and 
 the influences of environment. But the whole of 
 which man is a part is not limited, being itself inclu- 
 sive of all that is. Within this whole a measure of 
 self-activity is discovered in man. Here is a self- 
 activity of a certain degree then going on within the 
 
 1 Rosenkranz, " Philosophy of Education," Tr. Brackett, pp. 19-20. 
 
268 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 whole, which the whole itself, being the whole, could 
 not have received from beyond. There is limited 
 self-activity within the whole in man, the whole is thus 
 self-active, and so absolutely self-active. If there is 
 a movement within the whole, then the whole is 
 responsible for the movement, and so the whole pos- 
 sesses the quality of self-movement. The sufficient 
 source of that self-activity which education finds in 
 man is reached thus only in an absolutely self-active 
 whole. The ultimate reality, which education implies 
 to be mental and actual, it also implies to be self- 
 active. 
 
 If it be true, as education would seem to warrant 
 us in supposing, that reality is one actualized self- 
 active mind, then it would likewise appear that man, 
 as the only educable being, a potential mind capable 
 of actualization through its limited self-activity, is the 
 highest manifestation in the temporal process of the 
 true reality. The self-activity of man, conditioning 
 his education, is the clearest expression in the limits 
 of time of the immanent and transcendent self -activity 
 of reality. It is as though in man realizing his des- 
 tiny through self-activity, the Absolute beheld himself 
 reflected. The Absolute is ; the finite becomes. 
 The Origin Putting together these matters we may say, educa- 
 
 God^^^^ tion implies, in the first place, as the origin of man, 
 a reality which is mental, realized, and self-active. 
 In religious language this absolute reality is called 
 God. 
 The Con- The Conception of God as herein reached is that of 
 
 God°^ °^ one absolute mind, complete and self -moving. Being 
 absolute, there are no other gods ; being mind, He is not 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 269 
 
 less than personal, however far He transcends the 
 human conception of personality ; being complete in 
 Himself, there is no change of time, neither increase 
 nor decrease ; time exists in Him as a part, but He 
 does not exist in time and grow old with the centuries ; 
 being self-active, He is not the transmitter of an 
 alien limiting force but is the infinite free being, the 
 adequate explanation of all force, energy, and move- 
 ment that appear in time. From the point of view of 
 the speculative physicist, matter disappears into some 
 form of energy, like electricity; from the point of 
 view of the speculative philosopher, energy disap- 
 pears into some form of consciousness, like attention. 
 
 The only energy whose nature man really knows 
 through immediate experience is that which his 
 own consciousness exerts when he voluntarily or in- 
 voluntarily attends. Here is energy at first hand; 
 other energy, Hke electricity, appears at second hand 
 in what it does, not at first hand in what it is. The 
 energy of the world thus in the last analysis may be 
 held to be the attentive aspect of the consciousness of 
 God. 
 
 This conception of God is not that of the transcen- idealistic 
 dent Jehovah of the ancient Hebrews, for God is in 
 His world ; neither is it that of the immanent Deus 
 sive Natura of the great Jewish philosopher, Spinoza, 
 for the world and we are in God, living and moving 
 and having our being. Our conception is neither a 
 transcendent dualism, nor an immanent pantheism, but 
 an idealistic theism. God is the self-conscious unity 
 of all reality. Within His life falls the life of nature 
 and of man. We are the content of His consciousness, 
 
 Theism. 
 
270 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 and not we only, but all that which is, whether the 
 heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters 
 under the earth, — all that we know is a part of the 
 infinite fulness of the content of His consciousness. 
 
 The error of pantheism consists in saying, All is God, 
 instead of saying. All is God's. The ultimate reality is 
 not to be spoken about as It ; but to be spoken to as 
 Thou. The error of transcendent dualism consists in 
 supposing the world is without, instead of considering 
 it as within, the life of God. He is not far away from 
 any one of us ; it is not even enough to say. He is with 
 us and within us, and within the world; but we must go 
 the whole way with St. Paul and say, we live and move 
 and have our being in Him. The true doctrine of 
 immanence is not that God is in nature and man, but 
 that man and nature are in God. The truth is not an 
 immanent God, but an immanent world ; the world 
 dwells in God, not God in the world. God is the 
 including consciousness; the world is a part of 
 the included content. God is the infinite Person in 
 the unity of whose consciousness all things exist ; the 
 widening stream of time with its natural and human 
 developments is a significant process in His conscious- 
 ness, in which He is interested from before the 
 foundation of the world as the fulfilment of one of 
 His own meanings, and which is interested in Him as 
 rapidly as it becomes conscious of its own explanation. 
 Matter is the objective thought of the infinite con- 
 sciousness, no less real, substantial, and soHd on that 
 account than it shows itself in man's experience, but 
 nevertheless ultimately a process of thought in the 
 consciousness of God. This is the doctrine of ide- 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 271 
 
 alistic theism to which education brings us as the 
 only adequate interpretation of its own implications 
 concerning the origin of man. 
 
 A great new Hght is thus thrown upon the final The Environ- 
 nature of the environment of man, hitherto described ™^"* .°^ 
 as intellectual, emotional, and volitional, in adjust- 
 I ment to which consists the education of man. The 
 j environment of man is God. Science, reached by 
 I the intellect of man, is the thought of God in the 
 world ; Art, reached by the emotions of man, is the 
 feeling of God in the world; and Volition, as ex- 
 pressed through the will of man, is the plan of God 
 in the world. We work out our own science, art, and 
 volition, the health of civilization, our salvation, with 
 fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in us 
 both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Because 
 the world is the product of the Logos, the thought, 
 of God, it is intelligible to man; because it is the 
 product of the f eehng of God, it is beautiful to man ; 
 because it is the product of the will of God, it is 
 good to man. The Word became the world and 
 dwelt about us, before it became the flesh and dwelt 
 among us. Without the Word was not anything 
 made that was made. There is a material as there 
 is a human manifestation of the mind of God in time. 
 Those impersonal ideals of education descriptive 
 of man's environment, viz., truth, beauty, and good- 
 ness, become personalized in the one inclusive con- 
 sciousness of God. The world is His, and the fulness 
 thereof. The true, the beautiful, and the good 
 are the ideals of man because they are the ideas 
 of God. He thinks the truth, enjoys the perfect, and 
 
272 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 wills the good. Thus much is sure, as the temporal 
 process reveals, and infinitely more, too, unexpressed 
 in time and so not entered into the mind of man to 
 conceive. This last it is necessary to say emphati- 
 cally in order to avoid the errors, while enjoying the 
 fruits, of necessary anthropomorphism. No doubt 
 the infinite God has other ways of revealing Himself 
 to man than through the temporal order, but this is 
 the present plan. To us now He speaks only through 
 an environment, world-old, containing its essential 
 elements of knowing, feeling, and willing. This 
 total temporal environment is one part of the con- 
 tent of His consciousness ; it is as a unit His temporal 
 manifestation, His Son, which came to consciousness 
 of itself as one with Him in the unique Person of 
 all time, His greatest Son, Jesus of Nazareth, the 
 Christ. 
 The Trinity. God is the sclf-conscious unity of all reality ; 
 nothing falls beyond His providential care. In this 
 complete unity of self-consciousness, one can make 
 abstractions of thought that do not exist in reality. 
 There is the infinite Subject, the thinker, the I, the 
 Father, who does not exist apart from the infinite 
 Object, the thought, the Me, the Son, a portion of 
 which is the temporal order, rising into clear con- 
 sciousness of itself in Jesus, and there is the concrete 
 unity of both aspects in one Being, the Spirit. God 
 is Spirit. And the whole is one Person, as any self- 
 conscious individual, himself a subject-object, is one. 
 This is the true Trinity indeed, showing forth the 
 social nature of God. This counting of the phases 
 of the Absolute Self-consciousness, to which we are 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 273 
 
 brought through the recognition of the environment 
 of man as a manifestation of the ideas of God, is as 
 important as it is interesting because of its historic 
 and controversial bearings. 
 
 The sum of our discussion of the origin of man as Summary, 
 suggested by the implications of his education is, that 
 the adequate explanation of man as an educable being 
 is an actualized, self-active, Mind, namely, God, made 
 manifest to man through his temporal environment. 
 
 Second, as to the nature of man. Following our The Nature 
 now familiar and characteristic method of philosophy, °^^^°- 
 we have to point out three factual considerations upon 
 which rest the implications of education concerning 
 the nature of man. These considerations are not 
 novel to us after ploughing through the preceding 
 pages, only we have not as yet seen their deeper 
 meaning. Philosophy is always thus adding the 
 meaning of things to their seeming. 
 
 {a) Education is the product of the mind's effort. The 
 The development of mind is from within out, not of^he Pu^pii. 
 from without in. No teacher and no curriculum 
 can educate the youth who will not respond. The 
 teacher may lead the pupil to the founts of learning, 
 but he cannot make him drink. The teacher's art, 
 as some one has said, consists in making the pupil so 
 thirsty that he will want to drink. Teaching is not 
 so much the cause of learning, which is so frequently 
 asserted, as it is the occasion or condition of learning. 
 The cause of learning is the pupil himself and his 
 effort. The teacher, the curriculum, the apparatus, 
 the school buildings, — these all are but the stimu- 
 lating environment of the pupil. The teacher is like 
 
 T 
 
274 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the gardener who digs about and nourishes the plant 
 which grows of its own impulse. The pupil is like 
 the plant so stimulated in so far as his response is 
 his own, but he is unlike the plant in that his re- 
 sponse may be withheld. There is a possible wilful 
 obstinacy in pupils that does not appear in plants. 
 If they do not become educated in the day of their 
 visitation from the teacher, it is because they would 
 not. The ultimate responsibility for winning an edu- 
 cation rests with the will of the pupil. We try to 
 teach, train, instruct, and discipline him, but we can- 
 not educate him; he must educate himself. Every 
 educated man is self-educated; the only difference 
 is that in some cases the stimulating and nourishing 
 environment was lacking, unfortunately so for both 
 the man and his self-education, while in the other 
 cases the man had good assistance. The pupil's ulti- 
 mate power to make himself work must be acknowl- 
 edged by teachers. Their function is not to make 
 pupils learn but to make learning so attractive and 
 compelling in interest that pupils will want to learn ; 
 not theirs to hector over and be-lecture pupils, but to 
 provide a happy occupation for their free individuali- 
 ties. Not in me, not in me, sayeth the teacher, but 
 the kingdom of education is within you. Education, 
 all this means to say, is the result of the effort of the 
 self -active mind to assimilate the incoming stimuli from 
 the school ; is free individuality expressing itself. 
 Results {b) Education presents us with results proportion- 
 
 al to Effort ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ expended. The degree of effort put 
 forth by the pupil in response to his educative en- 
 vironment, determines his educational attainment. 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 275 
 
 The same school stimuli receive different responses 
 from different individuals ; the educational process 
 is not so much the stimulus shaping the individual, 
 as the individual responding to the stimulus. The 
 same school sends forth pupils with a diversity of 
 attainments, because the same stimuh have received 
 individual responses. Just as the natural world, 
 though one, has produced a variety of organisms 
 through their individual reactions upon its stimuli, 
 so the unitary environment of the school produces 
 a variety of achievements through the individual 
 responses of the pupils. The greater the effort 
 expended, within the natural limits of health, the 
 greater the amount of knowledge and the degree of 
 development secured. One pupil puts forth more 
 effort than another, he thereby secures a greater 
 return. This is indisputable. It may even appear 
 that the same pupil in successive periods of time 
 gains in proportion as he expends. Strenuous one 
 term, slack the next, his developed efficiency is cor- 
 respondingly more and less. It is as though the 
 degree of effort of the individual were variable in 
 amount. Not simply the prior question of whether 
 he will work or not, but also the present question of 
 how much he will work, seems subject to the free 
 decision of his own personality. Will I give atten- 
 tion at all.? How much attention will I give? 
 These two ultimate questions are answerable only 
 by the individual pupil himself, and upon their mo- 
 mentous answers hang the weight of his present and 
 future education. Every pupil is the keeper of his 
 own educational results. 
 
276 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Partial 
 Self-realiza- 
 tion attained. 
 
 The Nature 
 of Man is 
 Freedom. 
 
 The Nature 
 of Freedom. 
 
 {c) Through the energy of effortful attention man 
 becomes in his education what he is intended to be ; 
 he realizes his nature; develops his natural potential- 
 ities; attains his mental majority; declares his in- 
 tellectual independence; is emancipated from the 
 slavery of ignorance, superstition, fear, and evil; 
 becomes a free being. That which is cramped, 
 dwarfed, and hidden within the chambered recesses 
 of his own personal nature is manifested in full 
 fruition in the light. The word of educational de- 
 velopment, "I become," is partially exchanged for 
 the word of real existence, " I am." 
 
 Putting these matters together concerning the 
 nature of man, we may say that education means 
 that through his own effort, helped by an invigorat- 
 ing environment, man becomes what he is intended 
 to be ; but to become through one's own effort, through 
 response to stimuli, what one is intended to be is to 
 be free. The nature of man is freedom. 
 
 Education does not imply a freedom of acting 
 with an unmotived will, the so-called liberty of indif- 
 ference, for the stimulating educational environment 
 is present, presenting motives to consciousness to 
 which to respond ; neither does it imply a freedom 
 of will to respond to the strongest motive, which is 
 determinism, for education observes the inequality 
 of response of different pupils to the same stimuli, 
 and of the same pupil at different times. These 
 observations do not prove, but they are indicative of, 
 the presence of an independent variable in the con- 
 scious response of the pupil to educational motives. 
 But in contrast to the Hberty of indifference and 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 277 
 
 determinism, education implies the freedom of con- 
 sciousness to realize in some measure, through effort 
 of attention, its own selected ends. Such freedom 
 alone is the adequate possibility of education, for 
 only such a free being has a rational end to be self- 
 actively attained; only such freedom permits the 
 self-reaHzation of one's rational destiny. This is not 
 an absolute freedom to do anything at any time ; it 
 is a limited freedom to do something at some time. 
 It permits man to utilize his world to attain his own 
 rational ends; it prevents his being the puppet of 
 circumstances, the creature of environment, and the 
 slave of the strongest impulse. It is a freedom, not 
 of the will as a part of consciousness, but of con- 
 sciousness itself to direct its own thoughts, to attend 
 to selected ideas, thereby inhibiting others, and so to 
 enact its own purposes in conduct. The will is free 
 because the consciousness is free. My ability to 
 direct my thoughts is my ability to act as I will. As 
 a man thinketh in his mind, so is he in his life. 
 
 Since the mind is a unity, though its operations The Free- 
 are many, the question concerning the freedom of ^^^^ 
 the will is really a question concerning the freedom 
 of mind. The failure to recognize this fact has con- 
 fused much of the controversy on this old question. 
 Since the days of Augustine, even until now, the old 
 notion of the mind as divided into so many separate 
 and distinct faculties has most conveniently served 
 the purposes of polemics. On this old basis the free- 
 will question is threshed out, as Leslie Stephen has 
 somewhere observed. But once it is recognized that 
 the mind is a unity with a diversity of functions, then 
 
278 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 the question of freedom is reopened in a new way. 
 On this basis it is no longer possible to say that the 
 will is not free if it follows the strongest motive ; for 
 the strongest motive itself is a product of the ener- 
 getic, or attentive, aspect of consciousness. Through 
 attending to an idea the mind makes its motive, and 
 through attending to one idea to the exclusion of 
 others, it makes the strongest motive. The strength 
 of motives is not a given datum, like color or noise ; 
 it is the repelling or appealing quality of an idea 
 generated under the lens of attention. A casual 
 glance of the mind over its present ideas reveals a 
 series of strengths quite different from a studied 
 scrutiny with a view to selection among them. To 
 dwell upon a forbidden line of conduct may enhance 
 its appealing power ; to wait and listen for the still 
 small voice of right may magnify its volume till it 
 seems to drown all other sounds. Thus it may not 
 infrequently happen that a motive weakest at the 
 start is strongest at the finish. To follow such a 
 mind-made motive is not to be determined, but to be 
 self-determined, that is, to be free. If the mind in 
 its selection of ends of action makes us free, then 
 are we free indeed. The act of choice between con- 
 flicting motives, so frequently identified with the 
 question of freedom, and so frequently, too, an appar- 
 ently fated affair in view of the final strength of the 
 motive to which we yield, is itself but the culmina- 
 tion of the free mental process of attention. 
 
 Often indeed in unimportant matters there is the con- 
 scious sense of dual possibility at the very moment of 
 choice, which is by no means illusory, but signifies the 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 279 
 
 mind's ability to shift its attention, and so its choice. 
 But in important matters, when the mind is finally fixed 
 upon one course of action to the exclusion of others, 
 there is also the conscious sense that this is the only 
 thing to be done under the circumstances, in which 
 case the apparently determined decision is itself due 
 to the preceding free and voluntary process of attend- 
 ing to all the possibilities, under the general purpose 
 of following the best. No fact of introspection is 
 more certain than my ability to direct my thoughts. 
 But, through the recognized principle of ideo-motor 
 action, to direct my thoughts is to direct my acts. 
 Once a present idea is exclusively attended to, the 
 nervous system takes care of its execution. It is not 
 in man that walketh to direct his steps, for his nervous 
 system may refuse its service, but it is in man that 
 thinketh to direct his thoughts, and with an unim- 
 paired nervous system, the deeds follow accordingly. 
 On the pivot of attention the question of freedom 
 turns, as Professor James has shown. He writes, 
 " The question of fact in the free-will controversy 
 is thus extremely simple. It relates solely to the 
 amount of effort or consent which we can at ' any 
 time put forth. Are the duration and intensity of 
 this effort fixed functions of the object, or are they 
 not.? Now, as I just said, it seems as if the effort 
 were an independent variable, as if we might exert 
 more or less of it in any given case." ^ To this intro- 
 spective evidence, based on the unity of mental pro- 
 cedure, is added the weight of the implications of 
 education. Without the freedom to realize one's 
 
 1 James, " Principles of Psychology," Vol. II, p. 571. 
 
28o The Philosophy of Education 
 
 chosen end through effort, man, Hke the lower ani- 
 mals, is a creature of heredity and environment, the 
 fit subject of training with physical penalties and 
 pleasures, but not of education as the self-realization 
 of one's rational destiny. 
 
 Being a wholly temporal process, education implies 
 a real present freedom and is silent concerning a 
 transcendental freedom. 
 The Des- Third, the destiny of man. There are two notable 
 
 tiny of Man. things about education that bear on this far-reaching 
 question, and that go together, (a) Man's education 
 as an empirical process is never completed ; (d) the 
 possibility of man's development seems infinite. 
 The No man is ever all he can be. At any point in his 
 
 Finiteness of development he has a growing future. His purposes 
 are not ended with his life, nor does he live in a spent 
 world. Neither does the race in its development dis- 
 cover any waning intellectual possibilities ; rather a 
 growth in attainment, if not in capacity. Age does 
 not wither, nor custom stale, the philosopher's love of 
 truth, the artist's love of beauty, or the saint's love of 
 virtue. These ideals of the human reason flee us as 
 we pursue them in time. There is always more to 
 know, and to love, and to do. With these funda- 
 mental demands on the universe from the great 
 deeps of man's nature, the incident in life called 
 death seems apparently to have nothing to do. Man 
 does not limit his will to know, to enjoy, and to 
 achieve, to his life's unknown term of years. His 
 plans bridge the chasm of death ; they call for an 
 unending time in which their execution may be 
 effected. 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 281 
 Truth is as infinite as the thought of God, but The 
 
 Infiniteness 
 of Man's 
 
 it is waiting to be revealed to man's growing intellect 
 Beauty is as limitless as God's passion for the perfect, Reach. 
 but it is waiting to be appreciated by man's develop- 
 ing emotions. Goodness is as eternal as the will of 
 God, but it is waiting to be realized through the finite 
 will of man. These infinite ideals are the unattain- 
 able objects of man's legitimate endeavor; they rep- 
 resent the goal of his development; they are the 
 prophets of his present nature and future progress. 
 Man's development is an infinite process ; he is em- 
 barked on an unending voyage ; he has matriculated 
 in the University of the Universe, whence there is no 
 graduation. The essence of eternity never gets itself 
 fully expressed in the temporal order; time never 
 completely includes the eternal meaning. Eternity 
 possesses what time increasingly suggests. The true 
 self of man he presses on to attain ; his present in- 
 complete growing self is but the intimation of what 
 he really is. As the most philosophic of the poets of 
 the last century has said : — 
 
 " Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." 
 
 Given this unlimited demand by man upon his 
 world, what of it.!* Man has a nature to realize to 
 which any amount of time assignable is inadequate. 
 What follows ? Either the universe is irrational, with 
 a good work begun which could not be continued, or 
 man has the power of an endless life. But the tem- The Ration- 
 poral order as so far forth developed discovers reason ^^qj-m.*^ 
 at its core. The world is intelligible, appreciable, and order, 
 conformable, to the mind of man. The development 
 
282 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 of science, of art, and of history, presupposes a 
 rational, passionate, and purposeful world-order. A 
 caprice in nature indicative of an inherent irrationality 
 has never appeared to the wondering and scrutinizing 
 intelligence of man. If there be an unintelligible, 
 unlovely, and wilful element in the eternal constitution 
 of things, not once in historic time has it unmistakably 
 declared itself. The error, the ugly, the evil, of the 
 temporal order do not certainly declare the irra- 
 tionality of the eternal; they may signify only the 
 inadequacy of the temporal to express the whole 
 meaning of the eternal. In the very inability of the 
 infinite to get into the finite, as shown perhaps by 
 these failures of the real to reach the ideal, may ulti- 
 mately appear the very seal itself of the rationality of 
 the eternal and temporal order. For, these very failures 
 should we reasonably expect, in case the infinite and 
 realized truth were the limit of temporal development. 
 As Professor Royce^ has pointed out that the 
 very possibility of error implies the actual exist- 
 ence of an inclusive experience which recognizes 
 and corrects the error, so the argument may be ex- 
 tended to show that the very possibility of the ugly 
 or the sinful implies an absolute experience within 
 which they fall, are comprehended, and overcome. 
 This present object is ugly because the critic's ex- 
 perience is large enough to include it and also a 
 standard to which it should conform. This present act 
 is sinful because my insight is large enough to tell 
 me I ought not to do it in the very moment of its 
 committal. Without such insight there had been no 
 
 1 " The Religious Aspect of Philosophy," pp. 384 ff. 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 283 
 
 sin. To generalize, the ugly and sinful temporal 
 order are such, if so at all, only because an eter- 
 nal order includes them and judges them so to be. 
 If the very appearances of irrationality in the world 
 turn thus under inspection into evidence of its larger 
 rationality, then do we return to the thought of what 
 education demands of a rational world-order. 
 
 Education apparently reveals in man a capacity The Destiny 
 for infinite growth. Will the education of man, j^^^^^^^it 
 which is never completed at any chosen moment 
 in time, and for the eternal continuance of which 
 man seems fit, go on unendingly.? It would be an 
 irrational universe, one in which the part did not 
 manifest the whole, if a process with so much human 
 significance in it as education has, and crying out 
 so for an unending time, were to be cut short with- 
 out conclusion, like a refreshing river in desert sands. 
 If all the evidences are trustworthy and our world is 
 rational ; if the finite really manifests, though darkly, 
 the infinite ; if the fragmentary suggests, though im- 
 perfectly, the complete; if the part reveals, though 
 in a riddle, the meaning of the whole ; if, finally, all 
 temporal values get their ultimate recognition ; then 
 there is for man an opportunity, guaranteed by his 
 universe, and unabridged by the transitional incident 
 in life named death, to finish his education, to achieve 
 his destiny, and to grow unceasingly into the like- 
 ness of the Infinite Being. This is the hope of 
 immortality. 
 
 Being a temporal process, and implying an infinite 
 continuance wherein self-conscious personalities ap- 
 proach their goal, education is silent concerning a 
 
284 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 Spinozistic immortality of having aimed at the eternal 
 while living. 
 
 And since all minds with good brains respond more 
 or less to educational endeavor, education has noth- 
 ing to say concerning a conditional immortality. 
 
 And, like morality, education discovers after its 
 best appeals certain characters that prefer the dark- 
 ness of evil to the way of light. It also recognizes 
 the dependence of real happiness or misery upon 
 the quality of the character, whether good or bad. 
 Wherefore it cannot but assert the possibility of 
 permanently choosing the evil as against the good, 
 whereby men place themselves in the position of 
 the dragon under St. Michael's foot, while the victory 
 is eternally to the good. 
 Summary of Reviewing now the philosophical implications of 
 ^ h^ 0?^°^°' education as a world-process in time, it would appear 
 Education, that education means that the origin of man is God, 
 the nature of man is freedom, and the destiny of man 
 is immortality. Thus does philosophy, from the im- 
 plications of education as well as from the Kantian 
 intellectual agnosticism and moral ladder, though 
 baking no bread, as Novalis observed, still procure 
 for us, not by proofs but by plausible implications, — 
 God, Freedom, and Immortality. 
 
 It now remains for us only to incorporate these 
 philosophical elements with our preceding empirical 
 conception of education, in order that finally may 
 appear in as complete a fashion as we can frame it 
 our definition of the real and true nature of educa- 
 tion. Philosophy has taught us to think that the 
 adjustment to environment upon which biology in- 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 285 
 
 sisted as the essence of education is really an endless 
 process. The flow of time brings man momentarily 
 and unendingly into a new and changing environ- 
 ment requiring a continual adjustment thereto. Con- 
 cerning that physical body upon whose proper 
 treatment physiology could not too strongly insist, 
 philosophy reminds us that it is the temporary 
 vesture of the mind to be utilized while it lasts and 
 then laid aside. As for that development of mind 
 which psychology stressed as the natural fruitage of 
 the educational process, philosophy reminds us that 
 the mind of man is fashioned for a growth that is 
 unceasing. Concerning that environment to which 
 education adjusts man, and which sociology defined 
 for us as the achievement of humanity in the world 
 as it attempted to know, to appreciate, and to do, 
 philosophy has said that it is God, manifesting Him- 
 self in the temporal order, through man's ideals of 
 Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. And of the con- 
 scious human being who all along has been our 
 worthy object of educational endeavor, philosophy 
 teaches us to think as free, capable of fashioning to 
 some extent his own future according to his own 
 plan. 
 
 Putting all these matters together and summariz- Fifth Defi- 
 ing our preceding total inquiry concerning the nature ^^^^^J^q^ 
 of education, we reach the following last conception : 
 Education is the eternal process of superior adjust- 
 ment of the physically and mentally developed, free, 
 conscious, hum,an being to God, as manifested in the 
 intellectual, emotional, and volitional environment of 
 man. 
 
286 The Philosophy of Education 
 
 In the rich, brief words of Fichte, education is 
 " eternal perfecting." It is the ever continuing 
 process whereby the individual becomes the uni- 
 versal. The category of ultimate reality is being; 
 of temporal reality, and so of education, is becom- 
 ing. Through education the individual becomes in 
 time what he eternally is. Never-ending life is God's 
 education of man into His own likeness. In the 
 beautiful figure of Addison, man in his development 
 toward the Infinite is like the asymptote approaching 
 its limit, ever nearer, but never there. Or, in the 
 language of Dr. Everett, who says from the point of 
 view of thought what we have tried to say from the 
 point of view of education : " The individual is the 
 universal. This is the type of every logical proposi- 
 tion. . . . Our fundamental and typical proposition 
 is false. The individual is not the universal. The 
 universal stretches far beyond the individual. A 
 single man does not exhaust the possibilities of 
 humanity. . . . The individual is not the universal, 
 but it will be. Logic is sometimes taunted with being 
 a progress into the infinite. This is its highest pride. 
 Thought rushes from step to step, from form to form, 
 striving to subdue this great discord. It seeks ever 
 to find the universal in the individual, to lift the in- 
 dividual to the universal. So soon as any point is 
 reached, after all its pains and labor, it finds the gulf 
 as wide as ever. 
 
 This is not true of thought only, but, because 
 thought is one with nature and history, it is true 
 of these also. This, which is the moving power of 
 thought, is the moving power of the universe. 
 
The Philosophical Aspect of Education 287 
 
 Everywhere there is the same breach, the same 
 struggle. Everywhere the universal strives to shape 
 itself in the individual, and everywhere, failing its 
 aim, it breaks to pieces its own work, and presses 
 onward to new forms." ^ 
 
 Even so does the Infinite come, and quickly, into 
 all the lives of the sons of time ! 
 
 REFERENCES ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT OP 
 EDUCATION 
 
 Everett, Immortality and other Essays. 
 Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education, Chap. XVII. 
 Hyde, God's Education of Man. 
 
 James, The Will to Believe; essay, The Dilemma of Deter- 
 minism. 
 
 Kant, Theory of Ethics, Tr. Abbott, 4th Ed., pp. 218-231. 
 Martineau, The Study of Religion, Vol. II, Bk. Ill, Chap. II, 
 Bk. IV. ^ f , 
 
 Royce, The Conception of God. 
 
 1 Everett, « Science of Thought," pp. 106-107. 
 
INDEX 
 
 The Numbers refer to the Pages 
 
 Absolute, the, 264-268. 
 
 Addison, 286. 
 
 Adolescence. See Youth. 
 
 Agassiz, Louis, 258. 
 
 America, liberal education in, 248- 
 250. 
 
 Animals, the lower, as subject to 
 training, 265-267. 
 
 Apperception, 195-196. 
 
 Architecture, 119. 
 
 Aristotle, 34, 129, 208, 243, 245, 264. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 243. 
 
 Arnold, Thomas, 10. 
 
 Art, as related to play, 78 ; its nature, 
 117-118 ; its educational value, 127- 
 130; the service of education to, 
 162-163. 
 
 Arts, the, 118-123. 
 
 Athletics, as agency of physical 
 education, 83-90; as related to 
 play and gymnastics, 90; possi- 
 ble checking influence on crime, 
 156. 
 
 Attention, concentrated, 203; and 
 will, 277-280. 
 
 Augustine, St., 142, 277. 
 
 Automatism, as the end of educa- 
 tion, 48-52. 
 
 Bacon, definition of education, 252. 
 Bain, Alexander, 56, 96, 213, 255. 
 Baldwin, J. Mark, on play, 'j'j, 96, 
 
 176; on imitation, 177, 180-181. 
 Barnett, P. A., 17, 96. 
 Bates, Arlo, 96. 
 Beauty, its nature, 117-118. 
 Beowulf, 121. 
 
 Berthelot, on the educational value 
 of mathematics, 116. 
 
 Bible, the, in the public schools, 125- 
 127. 
 
 Biology, and education, Chap. II ; the 
 three facts of, significant for educa- 
 tion, 19, 29, 30 ; consequences for 
 education of the biological point 
 of view, 53-56; references on the 
 biological aspect of education, 56. 
 
 Body, the place of the, in education, 
 57-59; the three questions con- 
 cerning the education of the, 59; 
 the influence of the, on the mind, 
 59-66; how this influence is ef- 
 fected, 59-62; its state as condi- 
 tion of mental efficiency, 65-66 ; as 
 influenced by mind, 67 ; the atten- 
 tion it should receive, 67-72; the 
 attention it is receiving, 72-90 ; the 
 attention it has received in the past, 
 91-94. 
 
 Books, and experience, 165. 
 
 JBoyer, C. C, on self-activity, 171. 
 
 Brain, the, as the organ of the mind, 
 34 ; proof of their correlation, 35- 
 36 ; educational significance of this 
 fact, 36-41 ; what education can 
 do for it, 41-48 ; Waller on, 61 ; 
 Sully on, 65 ; its state conditioning 
 mental efficiency, 64-65 ; rest for 
 the, 68-71 ; respect for limits of its 
 capacity, 69-70. 
 
 Brooks, W. K., 56. 
 
 Browning, quoted, 260, 281. 
 
 Buckle, his predictions in the history 
 of civilization, 132, 136. 
 
 289 
 
290 
 
 Index 
 
 Burnham, Wm. H., 96, 
 
 Burrage and Bailey, 168. 
 
 Butler, N. M., on the significance 
 of infancy, 33, 56; on the meaning 
 of education, 98, 99, 143; on edu- 
 cational philosophy, 164, 168. 
 
 California, the University of, 149. 
 
 Carlyle, T., 131. 
 
 Cerebrum, increasing size of, in 
 mammals, 19-20; significance of 
 this fact, 20-24. 
 
 Character, as quality of an educated 
 mind, 237-238. 
 
 Characteristics, the, of an educated 
 mind, 226-240. 
 
 Child, study of the physical, 71-72 ; 
 the intellect of the, 210-212; the 
 feelings of the, 212 ; the will of the, 
 213-215 ; and the race, 224-225. 
 
 Childhood, as a stage of mental 
 growth, 209-215. 
 
 Chopin, 120. 
 
 Christianity, Early, and physical edu- 
 cation, 92 ; influence of, on the de- 
 velopment of ethics, 142. 
 
 Church, the, as an agency of civiliza- 
 tion, 1-4, 186. 
 
 Civilization, agencies of, 1-4. 
 
 Coleridge, 122. 
 
 Compayre, G., 17, 96. 
 
 Conscience, as characteristic of an 
 educated mind, 237-238. 
 
 Consciousness, a permanent element 
 of the educated mind, 49-52; a 
 useful addition to the organism, 
 53-54; the open doors of, 227-228. 
 
 Constitutions, their nature, 138-139. 
 
 Crime, and education, 154-158. 
 
 Culture, as synonym for the educated 
 mind, 242-244. 
 
 Culture epochs, 222-223. 
 
 Purriculum, its genesis, 145 ; of the 
 Middle Ages, 147-148 ; an ordered, 
 and interest, 195. 
 
 Dartmouth College, 149. 
 Darwin, on the atrophy of the aes- 
 thetic sense, 129-130. 
 
 Davidson, Thomas, 17. 
 
 De Garmo, Charles, 17, 188 ; on in- 
 terest, 190, 191 ; on drudgery. 191- 
 192; on effort, 205-206, 255. 
 
 Destiny, the, of man, 280-284. 
 
 Development, internal ways of men- 
 tal, 174-175 ; the stages of mental, 
 209-220. 
 
 Dewey> John, 9, 17 ; on the relation of 
 the school to society, 152 ; on the 
 changes in the curriculum, 159, 
 165, 168 ; on genetic and rational 
 psychology, 173, 188; on interest, 
 189; on the school population, 
 249, 255, 256. 
 
 Dexter and Garlick, 255. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 188. 
 
 Donaldson, Henry, on the effect of 
 education on the brain, 43 ; on in- 
 heritance of educability, 46, 56, 96 ; 
 on the end of education, 240-241. 
 
 Dualism, its error, 269-270. 
 
 Dutton, S. T., 168. 
 
 Educability, its advantage over in- 
 stinct, 24-27 ; inheritance of, 45-48. 
 
 Education, broad and narrow con- 
 ceptions of, 5-6 ; points of view in 
 the study of, 7-13 ; the history of, 
 7-8; the science of, 8-10; the 
 practice of, 11 ; the philosophy of, 
 11-14; ^^d the central nervous 
 system, 38-41 ; FIRST DEFINITION 
 OF, 52 ; a utility, 54 ; and self-ex- 
 pression, 55-56; Second Defi- 
 nition OF, 95; as viewed by 
 sociology, 100; as reproducing 
 racial experience, 145-150 ; THIRD 
 Definition of, 150; the con- 
 servative effect of, 151-152; the 
 preservative effect of, 152-160 ; and 
 crime, 154-158 ; its supply to social 
 demand, 158-160; the productive 
 effect of, 160-163; its service to 
 art, 162-163; sociological conse- 
 quences for, 164-167; and imita- 
 tion, 175-187; and interest, 187- 
 198 ; and effort, 198-206 ; what it 
 is not, 220-222 ; as expression, 221 ; 
 
Index 
 
 291 
 
 as cultural, 221 ; the characteristics 
 of an educated mind, 226-240 ; the 
 psychological ideal of, 240-242; a 
 liberal, 244-250; FOURTH DEFI- 
 NITION OF, 251 ; other definitions 
 of, 251-252; as the making of a 
 man, 252-254; transition to the 
 philosophy of, 254-255; a world- 
 process, 259-260 ; a temporal pro- 
 cess, 260-262 ; the implications of, 
 263-284; Fifth Definition of, 
 285. 
 
 Efficiency, the degree of mental, 64. 
 
 Effort, as agency of mental develop- 
 ment, 175 ; and education, 198-206, 
 273-275 ; its nature, 199-200 ; its 
 importance, 200-201 ; how to culti- 
 vate, 201-203; and interest, 203- 
 206, 
 
 Ehot, C. W., on the method of teach- 
 ing, 10, 17; on inheritance of 
 educability, 46 ; on college athletics, 
 85-89 ; on the function of education 
 in a democratic society, 154; on 
 changes in the people and the 
 university, 159; on the individual 
 and society, 164-165, 168 ; on self- 
 knowledge, 230; on the imagi- 
 nation, 232 ; on academic culture, 
 
 244. 255- 
 
 Emerson, 131, 154; on the impor- 
 tance of the teacher, 184. 
 
 Environment, the nature of the pu- 
 pil's, 97 ; the method of the pupil's 
 adjustment thereto, 99-100; its 
 elements, 101-102; the nature of 
 the intellectual, 103-110 ; the nature 
 of the emotional, 117-130; the na- 
 ture of the volitional, 130-145 ; 
 criminal, improved by education, 
 157; of man is God, 271-272. 
 
 Everett, C. G., on the individual and 
 the universal, 286-287. 
 
 Evil, and the world-order, 281-283. 
 
 Falkner, R. P., on the increase of 
 crime, 157-158. 
 
 Faraday, on the training of the judg- 
 ment, 235-236. 
 
 Faunce, W. H. P., 202. 
 
 Fichte, 104, 159, 286. 
 
 Fiske, John, on the significance of 
 infancy, 32-33, 56. 
 
 Freedom, the goal of history, 134- 
 135 ; as characteristic of an edu- 
 cated mind, 239 ; the nature of, 
 273-280, 
 
 Free-will, 199, 273-280. 
 
 Froebel, on play, 80, 93, 94, 255. 
 
 Froude, 168. 
 
 God, the conception of, 263-273. 
 
 Goethe, 122. 
 
 Gordy, J. P., on imitation and moral- 
 ity, 181, 256. 
 
 Gray, Asa, 258. 
 
 Greece, physical education in, 86, 
 91-92. 
 
 Green, J. R., 131. 
 
 Groos, Karl, on play, 'j'j, 96. 
 
 Group System, the, of studies, 148- 
 150. 
 
 Growth, the mottoes of, 4-5. 
 
 Guyau, M. J., 49; on the nature of 
 consciousness, 50, 56. 
 
 Gymnastics, 81-83 1 ^^ related to play 
 and athletics, 90. 
 
 Habit, formation of, 43-45 ; the phys- 
 iology of, 62-63, 202; the habit 
 of work as characteristic of an edu- 
 cated mind, 238. 
 
 Halleck, R, P., on the education of the 
 central nervous system, 38, 42, 56. 
 
 Ham, C. H., 96. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, on the prob- 
 lem of education, 188. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir Wm., on the greatness 
 of mind, 263. 
 
 Hanus, Paul H., on education as a 
 social study, 164, 168. 
 
 Happiness, as characteristic of an 
 educated mind, 240. 5 
 
 Harris, Wm. T., 17, 56 ; on work and 
 play, 75; on games, 78, 96, 129; 
 on history, 143, 168; on self- 
 activity, 171 ; on the stages of 
 thinking, 219, 256, 287. 
 
292 
 
 Index 
 
 Hartwell, E. M., 96. 
 
 Hegel, 3, 58, 104, 132, 134, 168; on 
 
 the nature of education, 238. 
 Helwald, 132. 
 Heraclitus, 172. 
 Herbart, 187; on interest, 190, 192, 
 
 193; on the relation of interest to 
 
 will, 197, 223, 224, 238, 256. 
 Herodotus, 131. 
 History, its nature, 131- 135; as a 
 
 science, 135-137; its educational 
 
 value, 142-145. 
 Hoar, G. F., on college education, 
 
 233-234. 235- 
 Holmes, O. W., 28, 253. 
 Home, an agency of civilization, 1-4, 
 
 186-187. 
 Homer, 121, 122. 
 Howerth, Ira W., 168. 
 Humanities, their conservative effect, 
 
 161. 
 Hutchinson, Woods, 96. 
 Huxley, on habit, 44, 96 ; on a liberal 
 
 education, 250, 256. 
 Hyde, Wm. De W., 287. 
 
 Idealism, 105 ; idealistic theism, 268- 
 
 273- 
 
 Imagination, as characteristic of the 
 educated mind, 230-233. 
 
 Imitation, 175-187 ; the nature of, 
 176 ; its effects on mental develop- 
 ment, 177-183 ; and self-conscious- 
 ness, 178 ; and originality, 178-180 ; 
 and morality and religion, 180-182 ; 
 educational uses of, 183-187. 
 
 Immortality, 280-284. 
 
 Infancy, the prolonged period of, 
 30-31; its final cause, 31-32; its 
 significance, 32-34. 
 
 Interest, as agency of mental devel- 
 opment, 175 ; in education, 187- 
 198; its advocates, 187-188; its 
 modernness, 188 ; its nature, 189- 
 191; its importance, 191-194; and 
 drudgery, 191-192 ; its power, 192- 
 193 ; as the aim of instruction, 193- 
 194 ; the art of securing, 194-197 ; 
 ultimate interests, 201-202. 
 
 James, Wm., 9, 17; on the evolution 
 of the hemispheres, 23-24 ; on the 
 advantage of educability over in- 
 stinct, 25-27, 56, 64, 86, 176; on 
 interest, 196-197; on effort, 199- 
 200, 202-203 ; o'^ the great thing 
 in all pedagogy, 223, 256 ; on ani- 
 mal intelligence, 265-266; on at- 
 tention and freedom, 279, 287. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, on the instruction 
 of the people, 154. 
 
 Jehovah, 269-270. 
 
 Jerome, St., 92, 
 
 Jesus, the influence of His personal- 
 ity, 186, 272-273. 
 
 Jevons, W. S., 8, no. 
 
 Jordan, D. S., 184. 
 
 Judgment, as characteristic of an edu- 
 cated mind, 233-236 ; the elements 
 of a trained, 234-235. 
 
 Juvenal, 92. 
 
 Kant, 104, 141, 158, 237, 238 ; on the 
 influence of education, 41, 252, 287. 
 
 Kavana and Beatty, 184. 
 
 Kindergarten, its possible checking 
 influence on crime, 156. 
 
 Knowledge, as characteristic of an 
 educated mind, 229. 
 
 Ladd, G. T., on a liberal education, 
 245, 256. 
 
 Lankester, E. Ray, on the mammalian 
 cerebrum, 20, 56. 
 
 Laurie, S. S., 96. 
 
 Law, its nature, 139-140. 
 
 Lazarus, 76. 
 
 Leland Stanford Jr. University, 149. 
 
 Liberal Education, courses necessary 
 for a, 146-147 ; its nature, 244-250. 
 
 Literature, 121-122; its educational 
 value, 128-129. 
 
 Localization of mental function, his- 
 tory of, 34. 
 
 Locke, 37, 72, 93. 
 
 Longfellow, H. W., 122. 
 
 Lotze, 168. 
 
 Lowell, A. Lawrence, 86. 
 
 Luther, 153. 
 
Index 
 
 ^93 
 
 Man, the characteristics of, as an 
 educable being, 14-17 ; as an ani- 
 mal, 18 ; the intellect of, 218-219 ; 
 
 . the feelings of, 219 ; the will of, 219 ; 
 the making of, 252-254 ; the origin 
 of, 263-273; the freedom of, 273- 
 280; the immortality of, 280-284; 
 the only educable being, 265-267 ; 
 his finite grasp, 280; his infinite 
 reach, 281. 
 
 Manhood, as a stage of mental 
 growth, 218-220. 
 
 Manouvrier, on the caus6 of large 
 brains, 36. 
 
 Manual training, 73-74; its possible 
 influence in checking crime, 156. 
 
 Martineau, James, 168; on culture, 
 243, 287. 
 
 Mathematics, the educational value 
 of, 115-116. 
 
 Matter, its nature, 103-104, 270. 
 
 Maudsley, 37. 
 
 McKendrick and Snodgrass, on the 
 effect of mental exercise on the 
 brain, 42. 
 
 McLellan and Dewey, on interest, 
 194 ; on effort, 200, 256. 
 
 McMurry, C. A., 17. 
 "■"'•Method, use of, in teaching, 8-10; 
 stages of, 223-224. 
 
 Middle Ages, physical education in, 
 92-93 ; curriculum of, 147-148. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, on specialization, 
 248. 
 
 Milton, John, on physical education, 
 93; on the nature of education, 
 222. 
 
 Mind, the influence of, on the body, 
 67, 68; its nature, 105-106; as 
 real, 263-264; the realized Abso- 
 lute, 264-265 ; the self-active Abso- 
 lute, 265-268 ; the freedom of, 277- 
 280. 
 
 Models, the use of, 183-186. 
 
 Mommsen, on mathematics and lan- 
 guage, 146. 
 
 Morality, its nature, 140-142; and 
 imitation, 180-182. 
 
 Morris, William, on art, 122. 
 
 Munroe, J, P., 17. 
 
 Miinsterberg, Hugo, 134, 166, 168, 
 
 230, 256. 
 Music, 120-121. 
 
 Napoleon, 132, 158. 
 
 Natorp, 164. 
 
 Natural selection, the mental basis 
 of, 27-28. 
 
 Nature, and nurture, 29-30 ; the phi- 
 losophy of, 261. 
 
 Nervous system, the, 59-62; and 
 education, 38-41. 
 
 Neurosis, and psychosis, 63-64. 
 
 Nineteenth century, and physical 
 education, 93. 
 
 Novalis, 284. 
 
 Origin, the, of man, 263-273. 
 Outlook, The, on " The University as 
 a Wealth Producer," 161. 
 
 Painter, F. V. N., 17. 
 
 Painting, 1 19-120. 
 
 Palmer, G. H., 256. 
 
 Pantheism, its error, 269-270. 
 
 Paul, St., 181-182, 270. 
 
 Paulhan, on automatism as the end 
 of education, 48-49. 
 
 Paulsen, on the fitness of our world 
 to educate man, 262. 
 
 Payne, W. H., 153, 188. 
 
 Pearson, Karl, on inheritance of psy- 
 chical and physical characters in 
 man, 46-47. 
 
 Persia, physical education in, 91. 
 
 Personality, the, of teachers, 184-186. 
 
 Pestalozzi, 185, 256; on the nature of 
 education, 222. 
 
 Philosophy, the, of education, Chap. 
 VIII; the method of, 257-258 ; the 
 question of the philosophy of edu- 
 cation, 258-259; idealistic theism, 
 268-273 ; the summary of the phi- 
 losophy of education, 284. 
 
 Physiology and education. Chap. 
 Ill; references on the physiological 
 aspect of education, 96. 
 
 Pickard, J. L., 17. 
 
294 
 
 Index 
 
 Plato, 31, 104, 118, 141, 153, 186, 242, 
 245, 252, 253, 261. 
 
 Play, 74-81 ; the nature of, 74-76 ; 
 the explanation of, 76-78 ; the func- 
 tion of, 78-81; as related to gym- 
 nastics and athletics, 90. 
 
 Poe, E. A., 122. 
 
 Potential, the, and the actual, 208- 
 209. 
 
 Practical, the, the basis of the theo- 
 retical, 53. 
 
 Proal, 157. 
 
 Psychology, and education. Chaps. 
 VI and VII; the insufficiency of 
 rational, 172; the services of ge- 
 netic, 173. 
 
 Psychosis, and neurosis, 63-64; refer- 
 ence to G. S. Stout on, 66. 
 
 Putnam, Daniel, 256. 
 
 Rabelais, 93. 
 
 Ranke, on history, 132. 
 
 Rationality, the, of the world-order, 
 281-283. 
 
 Reighard, J., 17. 
 
 Rein, W., on the purpose of educa- 
 tion, 238. 
 
 Religion, the nature of, 122-127 > re- 
 ligious instruction in the public 
 schools, 124-125 ; the Bible in the 
 pubHc schools, 125-127; and imi- 
 tation, 182. 
 
 Richardson, Charles F., on the na- 
 ture of literature, 121, 
 
 Rome, physical education in, 92. 
 
 Rosenkranz, J. K. F., 12; on the 
 education of man and animals, 266- 
 267. 
 
 Rousseau, 74, 79, 93, 153, 187, 188, 
 192 ; on interest, 192-193. 
 
 Rowe, S. H., on the physical nature 
 of the child, 71-72. 
 
 Royce, Josiah, 17, 176; on self-con- 
 sciousness and imitation, 178, 256 ; 
 on the possibility of error, 282, 287. 
 
 Sadler, M. E., 71, 96. 
 Schiller, 76, 81. 
 Schleiermacher, 123. 
 
 School, the, as an agency of civiliza- 
 tion, 1-4. 
 
 Schurman, J. G., on interest, 191. 
 
 Science, the educational value of, 
 112-117. 
 
 Sciences, the classification of the, 102, 
 107-110; how related to the arts, 
 110-112; their effect on progress, 
 161. 
 
 Sculpture, 119. 
 
 Sedgwick, Adam, on the nature of 
 education, 29. 
 
 Self-activity, the notion of, 170-172. 
 
 Self-consciousness and imitation, itS* 
 
 Self-development, 207-225 ; time as 
 its presupposition, 207-208; the 
 potential and the actual, 208-209; 
 the stages of mental growth, 209- 
 220 ; the use of these stages in edu- 
 cating, 222-225. 
 
 Self-knowledge, as characteristic of 
 an educated mind, 229-230. 
 
 Self-realization, partly attained in 
 education, 276. 
 
 Senses, the, trained in an educated 
 mind, 227-228. 
 
 Shakespeare, 115, 121, 122, 129. 
 
 Shaw, E. R., 17. 
 
 Sin, and the rationality of the world- 
 order, 281-283. 
 
 Sociology, and education. Chaps. IV 
 and V ; the social environment of 
 the pupil, 97-99; the method of 
 the pupil's adjustment thereto, 99- 
 100 ; the questions of the sociologi- 
 cal aspect of education, loi ; social 
 effects of education, 150-163 ; social 
 demand and educational supply, 
 158-160 ; its practical consequences 
 for education, 164-167. 
 
 Socrates, 99, 115, 141, 186. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 12, 17, 18, 19, 56, 
 72, 76, 81, 94, 96, 104, 136, 153; on 
 the nature of education, 222. 
 
 Spinoza, 269. 
 
 Starbuck, E. D., 17. 
 
 State, the, as an agency of civiliza- 
 tion, 1-4, 186. 
 
 Staude, R., on interest, 193-194. 
 
Index 
 
 295 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, 277. 
 
 Stout, G. F., 61, 66, 96. 
 
 Stratton, G. M., on imitation and 
 
 originality, 179; on the influence 
 
 of the teacher, 184-185. 
 Sully, J., on the brain, 65, 96. 
 
 Tarde, G., 176. 
 
 Taste, as characteristic of an educated 
 mind, 236-237. 
 
 Teacher, the influence of the, 195; 
 the function of the, 273-274. 
 
 Teaching, as an art and science, iii. 
 
 Tennyson, A., 103. 
 
 Text-books, 195. 
 
 Theism, idealistic, 268-273. 
 
 Thilly, Frank, 262, 
 
 Thwing, C. F., 163. 
 
 Time, presupposed by self-develop- 
 ment, 207-208; education a tem- 
 poral process, 260-262. 
 
 Tolerance, as characteristic of an 
 educated mind, 239-240. 
 
 Tompkins, A., 17. 
 
 Trinity, the philosophical doctrine of 
 the, 272-273. 
 
 Tucker, W. J., on the nature of edu- 
 cation, 230. 
 
 Tyndall, on the use of the imagina- 
 tion, 231. 
 
 Ugly, the, and the world-order, 281- 
 283. 
 
 Virgil, 122. 
 
 Vocation in life, as an agency of civ- 
 ilization, 1-4. 
 
 Volitions, the, the third element of 
 the curriculum, 130-145 ; their edu- 
 cational value, 142-145. 
 
 Wagner, Richard, on art, 118. 
 
 Walker, F. A., on athletics, 89, 96. 
 
 Waller, on the brain, 61. 
 
 Warner, F., 96. 
 
 Washington, G., on the enlighten- 
 ment of public opinion, 153-154. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, on habit, 44. 
 
 Welton, J., 17. 
 
 Wheeler, B. I., on American culture, 
 249. 
 
 WiUiams College, 149. 
 
 Williams, S. G., 17. 
 
 Withers, H. W., on education as an 
 instinct of society, 159-160. 
 
 Woodward, C. M., 96. 
 
 Wordsworth, W., 121; on beauty, 
 122. 
 
 Work, the habit of, 238. 
 
 World-order, the rationality of the, 
 281-283. 
 
 Yale College, 149. 
 
 Youth, as a stage of mental growth, 
 215-218; the intellect of, 216; the 
 feelings of, 216-217; the will of, 
 217-218. 
 
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