PE
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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
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INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION
INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION
PEDAGOGICAL r
COMPRISING AN
STATE NORMAL S<
LOS AN<v;
INTRODUCTION TO RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
DESIGNED (PARTLY) AS A TEXT-BOOK FOR
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES
BY
S. S. LAUKIE, M.A., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF THE INSTITUTES AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
15106
gcrft
MACMILLAN AND CO,
AND LONDON
1892
All rights reserved
NOV 1906
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. GUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.
PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON, U.S.A.
Educatiom
Library
PREFACE.
I BEGA.N this book as a Handbook for the students
of my own class. It grew in the course of production.
I felt that I could be of most service to students, and
perhaps also to Lecturers on Education, if I printed in
full the more abstract portions of my argument —
those, namely, which dealt with the philosophy of
method. The result is that the volume is more than
a Handbook and less than a Treatise.
I have used the term on the title-page, " rational
psychology," to distinguish my point of view. Doubt-
less it might be maintained that no one should in these
days attempt any philosophy of mind until empirical
psychology has completed its microscopic task, and
psycho-physics has said its last word. This would be
to strike dumb all but the devotees of physical experi-
mentation, while they themselves do not hesitate to
travel outside their peculiar field, and commit them-
selves to speculative opinions {e.g. freedom of the
Will) which contain implicit in them a whole meta-
physical system. It will be granted that the uncor-
related phenomena of consciousness, which empirical
psychology offers us, cannot in itself yield a theory of
knowledge, much less a philosophy of life. There
must be some principle, idea (call it what you will),
which correlates and unifies. And until that princi-
ple emerges out of the laboratory (if that is to be its
birthplace), we may be allowed our own thoughts as
vi Preface.
to its probable whereabouts. Ill any case a writer on
the theory of Education is really writing at once a
theory of life and a treatise De emendatione intellectus,
and he cannot dispense with a rational and rationalised
scheme of mind, be it right or wrong. He will be
thankful for all that physiology and physics can give
him; but meanwhile, and until better advised, he must
follow his own course. What I have to say is a
practical application of my books on Metaphysics and
Ethics.
After all, psycho-physics can never be more than
physics, though it may throw some light on the char-
acteristics, as well as the conditions, of sensational
elements.
The notes at the end of some of the lectures, and
the whole of the Appendix, are to be omitted by stu-
dents of Education. They are written chiefly for my
own satisfaction, to justify and supplement the text;
but they are not needed for the understanding of it.
To the general student of philosophy they may be
interesting.
It is quite unnecessary, in my opinion, to carry
students of Education into all the details of Logic,
Psychology, Ethics, and Physiology. It is necessary,
however, that the philosophy which they study should
be seen to be truly the Science of the Art. Accord-
ingly, students have to get a firm hold, by the help of
their instructors, of the fundamental principles which
exhibit the nature and growth of mind. Everything
which diverts their attention from this is useless, so
far as the science and art of Education are concerned.
S. S. LAURIE.
r\IVER8ITY OF
October 1892.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAET I.
THE END, PHYSIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS, MATE-
RIALS, AND METHOD OF EDUCATION
GENERALLY.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION EDUCATIONAL LIMITATIONS AND POSSI-
BILITIES, ........
LECTURE
I. Education and the Ideal in their General and His-
torical Aspects, . . . . . 7
II. The End of Education. Philosophy as necessary to
the Formation of a Conscious End or Ideal, . 15
III. Body in Relation to the Education of Mind, . . 19
IV. The Supreme End and its Governing Condition, . 22
V. The Educative Process generally as determined by
the Supreme End, 31
VI. Materials in their Relation to the Nutrition of
Mind, 40
VII. Materials in their Relation to the Training and Dis-
cipline of Mind, 43
VIII. Methodology and its Scientific Basis, ... 49
PART II.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF INTELLIGENCE AS YIELD-
ING THE METHODOLOGY OF EDUCATION, . 53
I. The Animal Mind, 55
II. The Man-Mind. Will : Percipience. Self-Con-
sciousness, .75
III. Concipience and the Sense-Concept of the Indi-
vidual, 90
vii
viii Contents.
LECTURE PAGE
IV. Unity of the Rational Mind : in its Educational
Reference, 99
V. Summing up and Definitions (thus far), . . . 103
VI. Application of the preceding Analysis to Educa-
tional Method, 109
VII. The General Concept, 128
VIII. Reasoning or Ratiocination — Mediate Affirmation, 138
IX. Causal Induction, 150
X. Survey of the Processes of Reason in order to show
that they are each and all Analytico-Synthetic
in their character, 164
XI. Unfolding of Intelligence ; or Order of Intellectual
Growth in Time, 166
XII. Materials and Dynamics of the building-up of Mind
as a Real, 1(59
PART III.
METHODOLOGY, . . . .179
PART IV.
APPLIED METHODOLOGY, OR THE ART OF
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, . . lie;
PART V.
ETHICAL EDUCATION— SPECIALLY
CONSIDERED, .... 199
I. Ethical Ideas as the Real, or Substance, of Life, . 201
II. Brief Analysis of Mind as an Ethical Activity, . 205
III. Unity of the Intellectual and Ethical in Education, 211
(\utrition and Discipline: Real and Formal.')
Contents. ix
PART VI.
APPLIED METHODOLOGY AS ART OF *'
ETHICAL EDUCATION, . .215
LECTURE
I. The Real and the Formal, 217
(Instruction, Training, and Discipline generally.)
II. Method of Ethical Education in the Real — In-
struction, 219
III. Method of Ethical Education in the Formal — Dis-
cipline, 224
IV. Moral Authority and its Characteristics, . . . 227
V. Characteristics of the Exercise of Moral Authority, 229
VI. The Moral Sanctions of Authority, .... 234
VII. The Material Sanctions of Authority, i.e. the En-
forcement of Authority, 235
VIII. Natural Auxiliaries of Authority, .... 236
PART VII.
SCHOOL-MANAGEMENT, ORGANISATION, ETC., 239
HISTORY OF EDUCATION, . . 246
APPENDIX ON CERTAIN PHILOSOPHICAL
QUESTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE PRE-
CEDING PAGES, .251
A. PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS, 253
B. DUALISM, THE UNCONSCIOUS, AND CEREBRATION, . 261
C. BRIEF SYNTHETIC STATEMENT, 266
D. UNITY OF REASON, ....... 269
PART I.
THE END, PHYSIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS,
MATERIALS, AND METHOD OF
EDUCATION GENERALLY.
INTRODUCTION.
EDUCATIONAL LIMITATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES.
ENTHUSIASTS have spoken as if we could manufac-
ture men after a certain pattern, if only we proceeded
wisely. Religious and educational reformers have
often cherished this belief. It is as well to set aside
such pious dreams at once. Conditions outside our
activity as educators are too potent. We have to
reckon with all the forces that make for or against us
— instincts, passions, custom, connate predispositions,
and racial characteristics.
Locke, with all his sobriety of temperament, yet
held that the difference between one man and another
lay in their education. Even if we take education in
its widest sense, as including all the influences at
work from infancy upwards, Locke's view would be
incorrect ; if we take it in its narrower sense of the
conscious and regulated education of the school and
family, it is altogether untenable. If, however, we
understand Locke to mean by ediication the bringing
up of a human being so as to fit him for ordinary
citizenship, and make him a respectable member of
society and a satisfactory representative of the moral
standard and social consensus of his time, he is un-
questionably right. We can do even more than this ;
1
Institutes of Education.
for we can train youth to something higher and better
than the " spirit of the age."
The question did not escape the attention of the
ancients. Horace says —
" Naturam expellas furca tamenusque recurret."
He is right, for we cannot overpower entirely the
determinations of nature in each man. But he is also
right when he says —
" Nemo adeo ferus est ut non mitescere possit,
Si modo culturae patientem commodet aurem,"
which amounts to this, that however strong a natural
disposition to wrong may be, it can be largely modi-
fied, if not wholly extirpated, by education. Juvenal,
as becomes his rdle of truculent satirist, takes a gloomy
view of human nature and its possibilities. Seneca
the Stoic, again, thinks that much may be done if we
begin early, but has no hope of those who are allowed
to reach maturity with their faults and vices uncor-
rected. It is then too late. " As the twig is bent, the
tree is inclined." He also thinks that education never
wholly eradicates a vice or failing, but only modifies
it. Plato says that man is the most savage of all
animals, but that he can be made the gentlest and
most godlike by education, if there be a good disposi-
tion in him ; meaning by disposition, I imagine, such
a general tendency of nature as gives a hopeful field
for cultivation. Quintilian substantially takes the
same view ; but he believes more in the power of edu-
cation, as such, than Plato does. Plato's hope lay not
Introduction.
in the school so much as in the whole social organisa-
tion. Then there is the Greek proverb, which in its
Latin form seems to be approved by Erasmus, " Non
quovis ex ligno fit Mercurius," which may be paral-
leled by the form in which an aged Scotch educa-
tionalist used to throw the conclusion to which he had
come in dealing with the vigorous but rough and often
coarse-grained Scottish youth, "You can never put
the polish of marble on a bit of sandstone."
Modern enthusiasts have, as a rule, been much
more sanguine than the ancient critics of humanity.
Comenius, for example, had a firm conviction that by
education all men might be made perfect. Cicero per-
haps best sums up ancient opinion and the conclusion
of common sense, " Quae bona sunt fieri meliora pos-
sunt doctrina, et quse non optima aliquo modo acui
tamen et corrigi possunt."
We may safely hold that, save in exceptional cases
which may be regarded as abnormal products, educa-
tion wisely directed can form men into good citizens
if we begin the process of formation early ; that is to
say, it can guarantee in all, that amount of intelligence
and virtue and that standard of social intercourse
which fit them to discharge well the ordinary duties
of men in all their political, industrial, and personal
relations. But when we go beyond this and strive to
bring all men up to an ideal standard, either of intel-
lectual capacity or moral elevation, we are largely
dependent on the original and connate potentialities
of each, and we shall fail or succeed according as we
have the natural tendency on our side or against us.
Institutes of Education.
The greatest genius has defects, both of intelligence
and character, which education will do much to re-
move ; but whatever the education, genius will " out "
in some form or other. The man of moderate genius,
on the other hand, is almost wholly dependent on
education for the growth of such powers as he has.
Still more is this the case with the "average man."
Those again who are by nature distinctly below the
average can by education be brought up to the aver-
age, and help to swell the social current which already
tends in its main stream to good. The lowest natures,
finally, — the residuum, — are held in check by those
above them, and can and must be disciplined, by the
help of the whip, to obey their betters for the common
good.
I am speaking, however, of education in the large
sense, and as comprehending all the influences of a
man's environment as he grows from childhood to
maturity. The most potent of these is the home ;
next in potency comes the modern school, when its
function is properly understood.
The school is the schoolmaster, just as the family
is the parent.
As to the School :
Whatever may l>o the natural tendencies and capaci-
ties of each child, all can be made better by education
than they would otherwise be, and all have, by virtue
of their possession of reason, a certain ideal of life
growing in them, which can be further elevated and
confirmed by the teacher who puts before himself an
Introduction.
ideal aim. There is, in every age, a conception of
ideal manhood ; and to this and for this we all must
work in the field of education, if we are to work to
any good purpose. By striving to reach the top, as
Quintilian says, we get higher up than by sitting down
despairingly at the bottom of the hill. The aim of
education is, in truth, always an ideal aim, for it con-
templates the completion of a man, — the realisation
in each man of what each has it in him to become.
If a teacher has not an . ideal aim he had better take
to shopkeeping at once ; he will there, doubtless, find
an ideal within his capacity.
In his necessary ignorance of the possibilities of
each individual, the educator is justified in taking up
his task on the assumption that every member of the
human race is, by virtue of his distinctive humanity,
endowed with the same general capacities and powers,
and has in him the possibility of a complete develop-
ment. This is the assumption of his science and art.
He does not recognise a qualitative difference in human
beings, but merely a quantitative. No doubt, with all
men the possible development is " thus far and no
farther." The limitations as determined by physical
constitution, by locality, by race, and by heredity,
'must be theoretically admitted; but they may be
practically ignored. The aim of the educator is
determined by his conception of the ideal man,
towards which all may, more or less, be disciplined
and trained.
The influences which educate a man (as I have
already indicated) are both vast and subtle, the na-
6 Institutes of Education.
tional tradition, the family life, the unconscious pres-
sure of law and custom, the solicitations of external
nature, and all the local circumstances peculiar to the
environment of each. These, however, are fully ad-
mitted by the rational educationalist; but he at the
same time claims to supplement, to regulate and con-
trol, i;he various and manifold influences at work, so as
to harmonise the varied experience of the young into a
rational unity of life and character, and thus get them
within sight at least of the ideal possible for each.
The intelligent teacher will also recognise that the
natural educators are the parents, and that they are
always the most potent for good or evil. But, as the
exigencies of modern society have deputed much of
the parental work to a special order in the State, he
will also recognise that he, as a member of that order,
has great responsibilities, and is under obligation to
study education with a view to the proper discharge
of these. His function is, probably, the most impor-
tant of all social functions.
The duty of a professor of education is, I think, to
give the students of the subject an ideal and also a
method; but, above all, to inspire them with a sense
of the infinite importance and delicacy of their task.
He has to show them that they are not mere exactors
of lessons, but trainers of the human spirit ; and also
how, animated by this larger conception, they may,
in teaching subjects, educate minds. He will expose
the popular fallacy that the schoolmaster's work is
a drudgery, and convince his students that it is a privi-
lege.
LECTURE I.
EDUCATION AND THE IDEAL IN THEIR GENERAL AND
HISTORICAL ASPECTS.
THE word " Education " does not mean drawing out.
This is a modern gloss on the true meaning of the
word — a gloss suggested by psychology. It means
training up, as vines are trained up poles. The pri-
mary signification of a word is not always a safe guide
to its present use, though it is always interesting and
suggestive. When men first name a thing or process,
there often, perhaps generally, precedes the naming
(always a work of unconscious genius) a flash of
insight into the essential character of the thing or
process named. The Latin conception of education
is confirmed by our own early usage of the word, e.g.
" Train up a child in the way he should go," and by
the German erziehen.
Train up, draw up, not draw out — is the meaning of
the word "educate," and it is a name for the process
which we cannot, I think, supersede without loss.
Train up to what ? Evidently to some end or other.
To what end ? Looking at the nature of man, we
answer, To some habit of being and doing which the
child knows nothing of, but which we, the trainers,
are supposed to have as our aim, and of which every
child is held to be capable.
7
8 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
What, then, is your aim ? You cannot define it
closely, nor even describe it, when the question is
first put to you; but, all the same, there is vaguely
in your mind some type of manhood or womanhood
up to which you yourself are striving to live, and to
which, if you are in earnest, you desire to train the
young. This type you have more or less consciously
present to your mind, and you call it your " ideal."
Now, the mass of men and women, even including
parents, may be left to an ideal which is floating and
vague ; but it is the business and the duty of all who
adopt what is called the "profession" of education,
to have some clear conception of the ideal up to Avhich
they train — a conscious end, which they can express
in words. It is, when you think of it, a very daring
thing in you to profess to educate a human being.
Where are your credentials ? It seems to me that
one who stands before the world and professes to
educate is guilty of an impertinence, unless he can
produce a commission, not from an university or a
college, but from God Himself. It is a grave and
serious business. In any case, it is surely not too
much to demand of you that you have some definite
ideal. Why, a cabinetmaker has his ideal of the com-
pleted cabinet, as he saws and cuts, planes and joints
and polishes. You are engaged in forming the finest,
most complex, most subtle thing known to man, viz.
a mind ; and do you propose to go on from day to day
as your fancy prompts, tinkering here and tinkering
there, and seeing what comes of it ? Surely not.
Now, I wish next to say that the ideal you have for
i.] Education and the Ideal. 9
those whom you educate must be the ideal you have
for yourself — your own life. You cannot rise above
yourself, any more than you can carry your head in
your mouth. This is the true meaning of the saying,
"As is the teacher, so is the school," to which I beg
you to add an even more important truth, " As is the
man, so is the teacher." The prime qualification,
then, in the teacher who educates, is that he shall
have an ideal fdr his own life, and shall be educating
himself up to that : your pupils learn by doing what
you do. The educator has first of all to look to him-
self, and the study of education is also the education
of the student : the ideal and method are for him first,
and for his pupils next.
Whatever ideal he may have for himself as a
human being, and consequently for his pupils, the
teacher may depend on this, that the young cannot
form abstract ideals as he does : they look to the
parent or teacher as the concrete embodiment of that
which they are to strive to be. You may inculcate
what you please, but all the time you yourself as a
personality are doing more than all your inculcations
can do. This is a common-place. Very few parents
and teachers have had conscious ideals ; but, as I have
indicated, there is an unconscious ideal in every man's
bosom which moulds his character and governs his
actions, or at least prescribes what ought to govern.
The early history of education is, like the history
of other subjects, a history, not of conscious and for-
mulated ends, ideals, and processes, but of the uncon-
scious ends pursued by nations as they advanced from
10 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
barbarism to civilisation, and to the fulfilment of their
destiny in the world-history. These unconscious ends
are merely vague feelings of a result to be aimed at
rather than a distinct knowledge of it, and yet they
are most potent : they make history. As age suc-
ceeds age, the ideal becomes gradually more explicit.
Society begins to propose to itself specific aims, that
is to say, the development of certain definite faculties
which it desires to see active in all its citizens. Vigour
of body, courage, endurance, skill in the use of arms,
skill in this or that industry, obedience to civil law,
and so forth : all excellent in their way, but neither
singly nor in the aggregate an ideal of man as a living
spirit in a living body — a being of vast and varied
capacity, of rich possibilities, and whose life and acts
have infinite issues. Such an ideal as this we first
have among the Greeks, and thereafter more fully in
Christianity. Man as man, man for the sake of man,
not for his skill in doing this or that — this is, since
the days of Plato and Christ, the aim of the educator.
Not what man is, but what he may be in all his rela-
tions, finite and infinite — this is the problem of the
educational ideal.
I would, however, beg you not to suppose that edu-
cation was invented either by the Greek or the Chris-
tian world. It has always been going on. Every
child, always, at all times, and in all places, is being
educated — trained up to something or other which
constitutes the type for his time, his place, or his
class. The reflective movement in education, begin-
ning, perhaps, with Plato, is simply part of the
i.] Education and the Ideal. 11
philosophy of man, and therefore is to be justified as
all philosophy is to be justified. Philosophy in its ulti-
mate meaning is nothing but persistent thought on
man, his nature, his capabilities, his purpose, and his
destiny. And the philosophy of education is simply
the asking and answering of questions as to the
ends or ideals of the philosophy of man, criticising
custom in the light of these, and then studying the
processes by which true ends can be best reached —
i.e. Method.
In all ages of the world man has been educated:
not only so, but I would say further, that we cannot
afford to despise the education of early races; at
least, when men had reached the stage of settled
agricultural communities. In those primitive days
you can easily see that the education would be mainly
what is now called technical; that is to say, such
instruction as fitted the yoxing as they grew up to
supply their daily bodily wants. Difficulties of com-
munication, the rudimentary state of the useful arts,
the dangers and uncertainties to which individuals
would be exposed in maintaining intercourse with
each other, would prevent the division of labour and
the growth of that industrial interdependence which
is now an universal characteristic of civilised life.
This state of things, which gave a narrow horizon to
each, had its educational compensations ; for each
man, with the help of his household, would be himself
master of many, if not of all, necessary arts. From
childhood upwards he would be in continual training
to these. We should accordingly err much were we
12 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
to despise the education of those primitive times.
We still find it in many parts of the world, and sur-
vivals of it even in our own land. The family which
not only milked its own cows, made its own butter
and cheese, and ground its own corn, but clipped its
own sheep, cleaned, combed, dyed, and spun the wool,
and then wove it into cloth and made it into clothes;
which prepared its own cow-hides for the feet or the
target, which made its own rude articles of furniture
and moulded its own pottery, — had no small skill.
The faculties were by these occupations trained, and
popular instruction might be said to be universal and
domestic. There was more than instruction in those
prehistoric days, there was " training up " to a certain
standard of effectiveness in the work of life; and
there was, besides, provision for a higher life, although
the literature might be limited to the chanting of a
few rude ballads, indulgence in rustic mimes, and the
worship of a god or gods which were merely tribal.
Were we now, in these modern times, to educate a
man merely with a view to the adaptation of his powers
to certain finite uses (industries and the like), we
should be recurring to the education of primeval
civilisation without the advantages of our remote
ancestors. For there is now a minute division of
labour in industries, and the breadth and variety of
primitive technical education is gone for ever. If, as
a substitute for breadth, we were to train a man (as
in modern times we can do) to a knowledge of those
principles which should regulate the application of
his powers to the narrow field of his industrial work,
i.] Education and the Ideal. 13
we, while undoubtedly calling into activity his rea-
son, would yet be doing so with definite and restricted
reference to mere finite and bodily uses. This would be
a decided advance on mere training of the practical
powers in accordance with custom ; but it would not be
education, but only what we now understand by techni-
cal instruction. We should be putting brains into a
man's fingers; but this is not, I repeat, education,
though it contributes to it. It falls far short even of
the education of the primitive settler ; it gains in ra-
tionality, but it loses in variety and breadth, and in
its demand on the power of men to meet exigencies.
When we speak of educating a human being, we
think of something more than this. We all think of
more than this when we think of the subject at all.
There is (as I have before indicated) a presupposi-
tion underlying our conception of the word education.
That presupposition will be found to be this — that in
man, unlike the animals, there are the germs of a
possible growth to something or other to which we
cannot set limits ; and this something or other is our
ideal. So long as we keep this in view we are giving
a " liberal/' as opposed to a "technical" education.
It is the recognition of this potentiality in man which
makes us strive to educate youth and to educate our-
selves. A man is not a mere intelligent tool; he is
something more. He exists for that something more.
He is not a means but an end. A material civilisa-
tion is to be called civilisation only in so far as it
makes the higher end possible for a community. We
begin to see, in fact, that the education of man up to
14 Institutes of Education. [LECT. i.
a certain ideal is itself the very purpose of his exist-
ence, and that the history of our race is, properly
viewed, the history of its education.
Education, however, in this larger sense was not in
old times possible. For this reason : by education,
we mean the training of a man with a view to make
him all that he can become. Now you will at once
perceive that this very conception was impossible
until men had thought about themselves. Philosophy
in brief, though in a non-self-conscious form (I mean
not explicitly developed), was the necessary precursor
of the idea of education in its fulness ; and philoso-
phy was itself the product of religion, or one with it.
The relations of dependence and awe in which man
stood to the mysterious power by which he and all
his works were surrounded, and by which his best-
laid schemes were so often frustrated, led to thought
on this universal power and on man's relation to it.
Life and death and man himself became objects of
speculation; and as soon as men became capable of
the thought of man, they were competent to conceive
the thought of the growth of man to the full fruition
of his nature — in other words, the thought of his
education. But not sooner.
This thought — the thought of what man truly is
in his highest expression, which we may call the
notion of man, we owe, I have said, to the Greeks
more than to any other race.
LECTURE II.
THE END OF EDUCATION.
PHILOSOPHY AS NECESSARY TO THE FORMATION OF
A CONSCIOUS END OR IDEAL.
THE education of a human being then has at all
times and in all circumstances a more or less conscious
ideal in view. The ideal of successive races of man-
kind is the measure of their civilisation and their true
history.
A conscious ideal is an ideal based on a study of
man — in short, on the philosophy of man. But phi-
losophy is not the subject of this Chair, and you must
therefore be often content to rest satisfied with state-
ments which cannot be presented to you in their full
reasoned form, but rather wear a dogmatic aspect.
The ideal is also the end or purpose. The ideal
end or purpose of education must manifestly be de-
termined by the ideal end or purpose of human life
itself.
To the question what this end or ideal in education
may be, various answers have been given. All writers
have found it necessary to propound some end or
other, for they have felt the truth of what Jean Paul
says, " The end desired must be known before the
way. All means or art of education will be, in the
15
16 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
first instance, determined by the ideal or archetype
we entertain of it."
Montaigne's aim is summed up in the words, Wis-
dom and Virtue. Comenius gives as his aim, " Knowl-
edge, Virtue, Religion." Milton's aim is Likeness to
God, best attained through Virtue and Faith. Locke's
aim is Health of Body, Virtue, and Good Manners.
The Pietists under Spener (died 1705) had for their
aim the building up of the Kingdom of God in the
heart of every child. Herbert Spencer's aim is stated
to be " Complete Living." A common German state-
ment is, that the end is the harmonious development
of all the powers. I myself would prefer to say that
the ideal aim of education is the realisation of the
ideal of Man by each individual in and for himself.
All these answers, including my own, are so very
generalised as to be wholly uninstructive. Nor can
we find such instruction as to ends and ideals as shall
at the same time be a guide to us in educating, until,
among many universally admitted subordinate ends,
we can find that supreme end which governs all the
rest.
And to ascertain this we must first ascertain the
supreme and governing end of man's life.
This end is the Ethical Life.
The supreme end, then, of all education is an ethi-
cal end. The determination of this end and of the
conditions of its attainment constitutes the theory
and methodology of education.
The standard by which we ultimately judge a man
is his worth as a man — the outcome in life and con-
ii.] The End of Education. 17
duct of all his capacities. " By their fruits ye shall
know them ; " and the fruit each yields is also the
seed he sows. All special knowledges are of value
only in so far as they contribute to the supreme ethi-
cal result. One man knows more Greek and Mathe-
matics than another : is he therefore better educated ?
May it not be that just because one knows so very
much more than another he is worse educated, — ethi-
cally a poor result ? The actual outcome in bearing
and conduct, which is life, is alone the test of our
having fulfilled life.
Even in the technical education of a carpenter or
weaver, I am fitting him to do his work better than
he would otherwise do it — that is to say, more effec-
tively, and therefore more honestly. I am qualifying
him for industrial citizenship. The most efficient car-
penter is, qua carpentering, the most moral carpenter.
True, the most moral carpenter, in the larger sense,
is not necessarily the most efficient carpenter : but he
will desire to be the most efficient, because he has a
moral ideal of manhood and of conduct as one citizen
co-operating with other citizens for the industrial pur-
poses of life. I give him technical instruction that
he may be enabled to give effect in sound honest work-
manship to his ideal of his own manhood and citizen-
ship. Even technical instruction, then, has its moral
purpose : it fits a man *to be a true man in the social
place he occupies. Thus, into everything we do, nay,
into everything we think, the ethical element enters
for better or worse.
But outside the question of man in his specific in-
18 Institutes of Education. [LECT. n.
dustrial and other relations to his fellow-men, there
is the question, of his manhood in its larger sense, his
fulfilment of himself simply as man ; for we believe,
with the Athenians, that thereby we best fit him for
all his duties, whether of citizenship, or carpentering,
or anything else. How am I to ascertain wherein
man's fulfilment lies — his true life, that which gov-
erns all his relations ?
Evidently only by inquiring into the nature of man
— his mental constitution, and his past history of
effort and failure. There, if anywhere, we shall find
what he is intended to be, and how he is intended to
act. But to do this we should have to deal with
Ethics in general, and this is not a Chair of Ethics,
but of Education. This much, however, we may say
bluntly — The education of a child is the bringing of
him up in such a way as to secure that when he is a
man he will fulfil his true life — not merely his life
as an industrial worker, not merely his life as a citi-
zen, but his own personal life through his work and
through his citizenship.
But this is not all, for we have to consider the con-
ditions of the attainment of the ethical end of educa-
tion from the point of view, not only of the growth
of mind, but of the growth of body ; for, " We have
not to train up a soul," says Montaigne, "nor yet a
body, but a man, and we cannot divide him." But
even the bodily conditions, important as they are, are
merely the basis of that which is higher.
First of all, I ask your attention to these physical
conditions.
LECTURE III.
BODY IN RELATION TO THE EDUCATION OF MIND.
MIND, we have said, is involved in matter or body
— the " clay cottage," as Locke calls it. There can
be no mens sana without corpus sanum. In discussing
the question of the education of mind, it is assumed
that healthy bodily conditions are first of all secured.
Each day must be so arranged, as to provide the nec-
essary time for physical exercise — especially in the
form of play. Manual instruction in covered sheds,
apart from its other uses, helps to maintain sound
physical conditions, and in a climate like ours seems
to be almost a necessity.
The physical or physiological conditions of mental
receptivity and activity have also to be studied by
the educator in their relation to healthy surroundings,
to the amount of brain-work to be demanded from
boys and girls, the length of school lessons, home
lessons, and differences of power and of temperament.
The following are the heads of a short course of Lec-
tures on Physical Conditions : —
(1) The Structure of the Human Body generally.
(2) The Blood and its Circulation — Waste — Nu-
trition — Purification.
19
20 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
(3) The Nerve-System — Sensory and Motor. The
Senses. Muscular Activity.
(4) The Nerve-Apparatus of Receptivity and Ac-
tivity ; Gradual growth of this, and lessons to be
drawn from the gradual growth.
(5) Waste of Nerve-Substance. Exhaustion of
Nerve-Substance. Nutrition of Nerve-Substance.
(6) Memory and Habit as determined by physio-
logical conditions.
(7) Reflex action : Automatic action : Secondarily-
automatic action, and its educational significance.
Summary of educational lessons to be drawn from a
consideration of physical conditions : (a) Nutrition and
Oxygenation of blood in brain (food and ventilation) ;
(b) Rest; and variety of brain exercise; (c) Gradual
growth of the intellectual and moral capacity in connec-
tion with growth of brain : the consequent limitation of
the teacher's demands on pupils (length of lessons, etc.);
(d) Habit of mind in so far as it is merely cerebral
habit; (e) Gymnastic, ivith drill; (/) Sanitary condi-
tions generally of intellectual and moral health and
activity.
Books of Reference. — Carpenter's Mental Physi-
ology; M'Kendrick's Elements of Physiology; Professor
Foster's Primer. These suffice for the student of
education.1
1 A complete course of physiology is not at all necessary for the
student of education. A general knowledge of the human frame
and of hygienic and cerebral conditions suffices. A course of four
or five lectures illustrated by good diagrams will yield all the in-
formation needed.
in.] Body in Relation to the Education of Mind. 21
Perhaps the most important lesson which physi-
ology teaches in the domain of mind is that mind
processes wear a kind of channel for themselves, so
that, with practice, all mind activities, intellectual or
moral, good or bad, flow more easily. Thus, things
difficult to do become in the end so easy that the
doing of them partakes of the character of automatic
action. This kind of activity is called secondarily-
automatic. On this point I would direct your atten-
tion to chap. iv. vol. i. of Professor James' Principles
of Psychology.
Many important questions also are suggested by the
relation of bodily growth to mental growth.
Under gymnastic, again, we have to compare the
Greek gymnastic with British games, in respect of
their recreative and moral influence as well as their
power of promoting a balanced physical condition.
Athleticism as opposed to a reasonable, or Greek,
gymnastic must also receive consideration.
The recent movement in the direction of manual
work is really an attempt to counterbalance the too
exclusive demands which the school makes on intel-
lect, and ought, in its due place, to be encouraged.
The bearing of such work in its reflex effect on the
intellect, as giving a certain firmness and solidity to
purely intellectual operations, is also worthy of dis-
cussion. We must leave this whole subject for lec-r
ture-room treatment.
LECTURE IV.
THE SUPREME END AND ITS GOVERNING CONDITION.
CONSCIOUSNESS, generally, is Mind.
The conscious subject is a one, self -identical mind-
entity.1 So far as mere consciousness is concerned,
man and animals are like one another.
But man is more than a conscious animal, because
he has reason, or is a reason. The fundamental form
of reason makes its appearance with self-conscious-
ness.
Man accordingly may be defined as a self-conscious
rational mind-entity, involved in body.2
When the conscious or self-conscious entity has an
object present to it, we call the former " subject," to
distinguish it from the " object."
It appears then that the distinctive characteristic
or difference of man as contrasted with other conscious
beings, is Reason.
Accordingly, man being specifically a being of reason,
the supreme end of human life, which has an inherent
title to govern all other minor ends, must be the life of
reason and in reason. Life is action, and, accordingly,
1 This lecture is somewhat of the nature of a series of paragraphs
to be fully expounded orally by the lecturer.
2 Vid. Note A in the Appendix.
22
LECT. iv.] Supreme End and Croverning Condition. 23
life in accordance with reason may be more fully ex-
pressed as a life of activity in the things of reason,
and conduct in accordance with reason ; and this,
speaking generally, is what we have called the ethical
life. Let us carry these propositions into more con-
crete detail.
Moral and Spiritual Life. — Life in the activity of
reason, i.e. pure thought and contemplation, might with
certain beings be the highest ; but for man, since he can
live at all only through multiform relations to the non-
rational nature within him and to other things and
persons, the issue of his life in conduct is the highest :
that is to say, life in reason through his relations to
things and persons, or, generally, life in relations as
these are impregnated and moulded by reason. This
is the moral life.
But man, by virtue of this same reason in him, has
relations with the Infinite. Accordingly, when, in the
life of thought and contemplation, man rises to the
notion of God as Being and Thought-universal, and
sees reason (which is also the truth) in relations, as in
and through God, who is Reason-universal, — he then
lives and acts in conscious communion with God as in
all and through all. He now lives, not only the life
of reason and in reason, but with Reason as the uni-
versal One in the many. This is the spiritual life.
But this spiritual life is only the moral life seen in
God, and, so, the completion and fulness of the life
of man.
The moral life, accordingly, when it has passed into
the spiritual life, is what I mean by the Ethical Life.
24 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
Note. — In seeking the end or purpose of a complex organ-
ism like man, we have to fix on some thought and phrase
which expresses at once the highest outcome and the specific
functioning of his nature. He must, of course, first be what
he does; but to stop at being, with a creature whose life
consists in his relations to external things, circumstances,
and, above all, to himself and other spirits like himself,
would be to stop short of the completion of life, which does
not consist in being and reverie, but in an activity deter-
mined by the state of being. We must, therefore, seek for
some expression (if we are to have only one expression)
which comprehends the essential activity of his nature, and
denotes, at the same time, its purpose or end. The expres-
sion most comprehensive and least misleading is, I think,
" ethical life."
Ethical life, then, is the spiritual life as including
the prior moral life.
The moral life, as such, is rightly called the vir-
tuous life. 9 For this, there is manifestly necessary a
virtuous state of being, and its sequel effective virtue.
I may be full of virtuous sentiments and principles,
but have very little effective virtue ; I cannot, how-
ever, exhibit effective virtue save as the expression of
a prior state of being.
Man, in so far as he is animal, has sensations and
emotions like the animals. These give rise to desires,
and impel him to do this or that. He differs from the
animals by virtue of the reason in him, which regu-
lates and directs these emotions and desires, and pre-
scribes ends. The relations which these emotions
and desires bear to each other, and to our fellow-men,
are ascertained by reason interpreting experience;
iv.] Supreme End and Governing Condition. 25
and they get the name of " moral ideas," because they
are ideas determining action or conduct. These moral
ideas, e.g. justice, benevolence, integrity, courage,
truthfulness, purity, holiness, etc., constitute the
motives of a man's conduct, if he is moral. They
are sometimes called moral sentiments or virtues,
and the man who acts in accordance with them as law
of his nature, is said to be virtuous. The idea is at
once end and motive, but he can fulfil the idea only
through particular acts.
Man cannot act on these ideas until he possesses
them as knowledge (more or less distinct). If he
possesses these ideas and lives in the contemplation
of them, he may be said to be in a moral or virtuous
state of being; but his life is not fulfilled, nor is he
virtuous, till he gives effect to them in his daily con-
duct : till then, they are only half-born. This is
effective virtue — the virtuous or moral life. In edu-
cation our main object is to train men to a habit of
effective virtue ; but we desire also to elevate the
virtuous life, if we can, to the spiritual life, so that
the ethical life may be fulfilled in its wholeness in
each man.
Note. — There are many who keep their eyes so steadily
fixed on a man's acts, that they are disposed to IOOK with
distrust on the inner growth of feeling and sentiment, or
what are commonly called moral ideas (and sometimes
" principles ") — those inner motives which are a complex
of reason and emotion, and precede the possibility of virtue.
The giving effect to these in conduct is certainly, as effective
virtue, in advance of the mere state of mind which we call
"virtuous"; but as the cause must precede the effect, we
26 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
cannot afford in education to dispense with the consideration
of the best way of creating the virtuous state of mind, sim-
ply as a contemplative state, with a view to the ultimate
issue in action.
We shall find in practice, doubtless, that the wisest way
of creating this virtuous state, is by getting the young (and
ourselves) to act, i.e. to do the right and good thing, and
in this way evoking the good emotion or sentiment. In
other words, the generalised emotion or moral idea and the
putting of it in practice, should, in training the young, be
inseparably bound together as far as possible. By doing
benevolent acts, for example, a child becomes a benevolent
being, and entertains in consciousness and imagination —
all ready for use — benevolent emotions.
At the same time, if we take the whole range of moral
ideas, this way of procedure is impracticable, and we there-
fore try to build up in the child and youth a system of moral
ideas which will constitute a permanent reservoir of motives
always ready for use, whether in moral judgment or moral
action.
Take the various moral ideas which constitute the motives
of a good-will, viz. benevolence, justice, purity, honesty,
integrity, truth-speaking, courage, resoluteness, perseverance,
and so forth, and you will see how the growth of these in
the mind (as furniture of the mind, so to speak) must be
premised if we are to secure our result — effective virtue —
in all conditions and circumstances.
If we cannot create these generalised feelings or ideas,
and give them lodgment in the minds of the young by reg-
ulating all their petty acts, how are we to supplement our
want of opportunity? We shall get a full answer to this in
the sequel ; but meanwhile I would say generally, that we
supplement the ordinary experiences of life in three ways : —
1. By authority and precept. 2. By our own example. 3.
By getting children to contemplate the acts of others, either
as they see them going on before their eyes, or, through
imagination, by the help of narratives and poetry. (But
this is to anticipate the discussion on method.)
iv.] Supreme End and G-overning Condition. 27
The moral life and the spiritual life (in brief, the
ethical life) must exist as a system of ideas and mo-
tives before it is active, and consequently presumes
for its existence an antecedent activity of reason in
ascertaining, or accepting, ethical ideas and ends.
Hence the importance in education of so training
the intelligence of all that each, though incapable of
ascertaining for himself the ideas which nourish the
moral and spiritual nature, may yet acquiesce in them
with intelligence and personal conviction, make them
his own, and not be merely the slave of dogma,
misapprehended or not apprehended at all. Man is
an ethical being only so far as he is a se(/*-regulated
being.
Men have, happily, not to depend each on the
activity of his own reason for the ascertainment of
the truth of life and conduct — the moral ideas which
are to constitute his ever-present motives. They in-
herit the fruit of the labours of past generations. As
regards its substance generally, indeed, education is
Tradition — the handing on of intellectual and moral
possessions by those set apart as competent for the
task.
We may now conclude that the supreme end of
education is the ethical life, and that the main instru-
ment in training to the substance of this is tradition ; l
and that reason in each has to be so trained that the
young may intelligently acquiesce, and so make the
transmitted moral and spiritual life their own.
1 " There is a history in all men's minds
Figuring the nature of the times deceased." — 2 Henry IV. iii.
28 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
The transmitters of this tradition are primarily the
parent and schoolmaster.
But, further, the ethical life is not only the Good,
but the LAW for man, because it comprehends the
ideas of his relations to things and persons — the truth
for life and conduct. By the fulfilment of this law
alone, can a man fulfil or realise himself ; and, accord-
ingly, he owes duty to the law.
The reason of man is by its very nature always
seeking for law, and we consequently meet its neces-
sities by bringing him under a sense of the law which
is inherent in the truth of his relations ; and we accus-
tom him, when young, to obey the law though he can-
not yet see the truth of it for himself. Thus we
strengthen the connate perception of law in him, and
habituate him to act in accordance with certain ideas
or truths as law, and because of the duty he owes to
law.
When a youth perceives the truth of the moral
ideas which ought to determine conduct, and has
acquired a habit of duty to them, he is educated
morally. The spiritual education may accompany or
follow this ; and then there is realised the full ethical
life in him, i.e. activity of reason or intelligence
whereby he perceives the truth and obeys the law,
and leads the life of law in God. The ethical life in
a man then (to sum up) is a habit of action in accord-
ance with moral ideas as the divine order, under a
sense of duty to the law inherent in them as spiritual
or divine law.
This may seem all very general ; but, in very truth,
iv.] Supreme End and Governing Condition. 29
the significance of all we teach and of every lesson
we give is ethical — always ethical, or it is, in its
educational reference, wholly insignificant or rather
non-significant. True, we have to educate experts in
the various departments of human activity in order
that the torch of learning and of civilisation may be
held high and handed on. But the education of a
nation does not aim at this, but at something much
greater. A school accordingly is not to be judged
as an educational institution by the number of its
"scholars," but by its ethical results, including, as
the precondition of such results, bodily vigour.
Our constant aim in studying the science of educa-
tion must be to bring all philosophic discussions and
conclusions to a practical issue. We have to deduce
rules for our guidance.
The supreme end is always, it is presumed, with
us, and is daily and hourly influencing us in what we
teach or deliberately omit to teach ; but, besides exer-
cising this governing function, it yields a principle of
method which helps us in our teaching. For the end
contemplated is a practical end ; it is the issue of in-
tellect and of moral and spiritual ideas in a habit of
action ; it is a turning to use — the use of life, of all
the furniture and trained activity of mind.
Principle of Method. — TURN TO USE.
Accordingly, this principle should be constantly
applied in every subject we teach and in every lesson
in every subject. We see the rule illustrated by a
30 Institutes of Education. [LECT. iv.
good teacher of mathematics, who knows that his busi-
ness is not to make mathematical experts, but to use
mathematics in so far as it contributes to the general
education of the human mind. Every theorem under-
stood has its consequences. The practical relations of
geometry to mensuration and geometrical drawing,
and the deduction of riders to be worked out inde-
pendently by the pupils, are never omitted from his
course. He is indifferent to the amount of Euclid
"gone over"; his business is to pause and to make
sure by means of deductions that the intellectual dis-
cipline and the practical application are insured. In
brief, at every stage he " turns to use."
So with the good teacher of language: he turns
everything to use from the first lesson onwards.
The ultimate and sole effective test of all knowledge
in every department is — Can the pupil use it ?
LECTURE V.
THE EDUCATIVE PROCESS GENERALLY AS DETER-
MINED BY THE SUPREME END.
THE spiritual life is not achieved except through
the habit of virtuous activity, and in like manner the
virtuous life is not fulfilled until it passes into the
spiritual life. The ethical life, accordingly, is not a
state of being solely, but a continued series of ethical
acts bound together by an ideal of life. If this be so,
and if the ethical life be the supreme end of educa-
tion, the analysis of the elements (moments or steps)
of an ethical act ought to yield to us the Educative
Process generally.
I find that the ethical act, as a final willing of the
good, contains the following elements : —
1. Right judgment as to the facts before us and
their relations : a process of reason. (Substance of
knowledge and power of discrimination.)
2. A moral idea (at the heart of which there is
always an emotion) following on the clear perception
of the facts ; which idea incites or attracts us to act
in accordance with itself : and this we call our motive
of action (at once end and motive). (Substance of
morality.)
3. Willing or action in accordance with the said
motive-idea under a sense of duty to it as Law — a
31
32 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
sense of imperative obligation (itself by itself also a
motive). (Moral discipline.)
4. The perception of the idea as in God and of the
law as Divine. (Religion.)
If I will in accordance with the idea (taking it into
myself, and making it part of my character for the
occasion), I have a resultant sense of harmony, non-
contradiction, or peace, which is always the inner
guarantee of the attainment of ethical completeness.
Note 1. — Let me repeat that when I say that the end of
the education of the young is effective virtue resting on a
virtuous state of being, in other words, the habit of virtue,
I do not use these words in a vague sense. The virtuous
life is not a life of contemplation, but of action ; it is not an
abstract, but a concrete made up of a series of daily and
hourly virtuous acts. We do not wish to rear citizens who
talk about the virtuous life, and walk about displaying moral
placards, but citizens who quietly do their duty as a matter
of course, and are ever watchful over themselves in all the
details of business and of social and family intercourse. A
large part of the virtuous life must always consist in the
efficient doing of the work for which we get wages, whether
that work be carrying bricks or guiding the State. To be
always virtuous is so difficult that there is no energy left for
ostentatiously talking about it.
Note 2. — The educator must always keep chiefly in view
the primary demands that may be legitimately made on all
men — a virtuous state of being and effective virtue. The
spiritual, which is the essence of all religion, will accompany
or follow. When we have trained to the ethical life in its
completeness we have built the temple. The activity of
reason in things of reason, the enjoyment of the beautiful
in nature and art, and the graces and courtesies of manner
and intercourse (evKooywa), all go, doubtless, to the ideal
fulfilment of a man. But our business is with the temple,
v.] Educative Process Generally. 33
before we concern ourselves with its decoration. The rational
and the aesthetic for their own sake will always receive the
attention of the educator, especially in their ethical relations ;
but we cannot afford to think of them save as accessory to
the ethical life.
The Educational End, as I conceive it, might now
be stated thus : —
EIGHT JUDGMENT AND A HABIT OF GOOD ACTION
UNDER A SENSE OF DUTY, ACCOMPANIED BY A
COMPREHENSION OF THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFI-
CANCE OF NATURE AND MAN.
The Educative Process, as that is revealed by the
analysis of the ethical act, is, speaking generally, a
process of Instruction and of Discipline.
A. — Instruction (Knowledge).
(1) Instruction in our relations to things and per-
sons, commonly called intellectual instruc-
tion.
(2) Instruction in moral ideas, commonly called
moral instruction (the virtues). (The
Good.)
(3) Instruction in the spiritual, i.e. the religious
idea. (God.)
B. — Training and Discipline (Faculty).
(1) Training and discipline to the habit of intelli-
gent or rational activity.
34 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
(2) Training and discipline to the habit of virtuous
willing, i.e. good action under a sense of
duty.
(3) Training to the spiritual habit of mind.
The educative process, as so conceived, gives us a
systematic view of the whole field of education, out-
side the presupposed physical conditions.
A. — INSTRUCTION.
The Realistic and the Humanistic.
To give the materials of right judgment we have to
instruct the young. It has been usual to oppose to
one another real (realistic) instruction and human-
istic — the former being instruction in those things
that concern a man's nafrn'e-environment ; the latter,
instruction in the relations of men to each other, and
in the creations of man as a being of reason, i.e. liter-
ature, art, and all thought on that which is specifically
human. The humanistic has also been identified with
Greek and Latin literature, because at the time of
the Renaissance the best literature was to be found in
those languages. A little thought suffices to show
that there is hopeless confusion in such distinctions.
Literature and the things of thought are in a much
truer sense realities than the things of sense, and
all literature and art, ancient or modern, is equally
humanistic. The best division of subjects is into the
Heal and the Formal or Abstract, corresponding to
the two demands of instruction and discipline ; and
v.] Educative Process Crenerally. 35
these again have each to be divided into Naturalistic
and Humanistic ; thus :
I. — The Real (with a view chiefly to Nutrition of Mind),
(a) The Real-Naturalistic:
(1) Knowledge of the world of nature by which the
pupil is surrounded. (In its initial stages
this includes lessons in colour, form, measure,
weight, number, sound, and object-lessons
generally : in later stages, a knowledge of
animals, plants, and manufactured products.)
(2) Knowledge of that part of nature nearest to
the pupil himself, viz. his own body, with
special relation to the laws of health.
(3) The distribution of men and nations, with the
physical conditions of their lives and their
related industrial and commercial character-
istics. This, with topography, constitutes
school geography.
(4) Physiography.
(6) The Real- Humanistic :
(1) Language, i.e.
(a) The vernacular language as the expression
of the thought of others. Literature.
(6) The vernacular language as the expression
of one's own thought, a synthetic exer-
cise. (Imitative composition, with a
view to the correct use of language.)
(2) Foreign languages as literature.
36 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
(3) Economics.
(4) History, with civil relations.
(5) Moral instruction [including minor morals].
(6) Spiritual ideas, including religious truth.
Siibsidiary Subjects:
Art.
(a) Music.
(6) Appreciation of the arts of painting,
sculpture, and architecture.
B. — TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE.
II. — TJie Formal or Abstract (with a view chiefly
to Discipline of Mind).
(a) Naturalistic. (6) Humanistic.
Drawing. Grammar.
Arithmetic. Rhetoric.1
Mathematics. Logic.1
The formal or abstract chiefly discipline the mind
and give power; the real feed the mind and give
nutrition.
To give adequate instruction in all these studies to
all is impossible ; but the instruction of all should be
on these lines, carried as far as time permits, and
given in such a way as will lead to the further volun-
tary prosecution of them.
1 Rhetoric and Logic are not to be formally taught till the pupil
has reached the university stage.
v.] Educative Process G-enerally. 37
Reading and writing, as instruments whereby we
receive the thoughts of others and convey our own,
are, of course, primary elements in all education ; but,
were it not that they are necessary as instruments for
bringing the mind into contact with the naturalistic,
humanistic, and the formal in knowledge, we should
not think of wasting time over them.
The above are our materials of instruction — the
food we give ; and they are also the subjects by which
we discipline and train the intelligence and moral
nature of the young to an ethical result. There are,
within the range of school life, up to the end of the
secondary period (the eighteenth year), no other
subjects having equal claims.
Liberal and Technical Education. — All the above
studies enter into a "liberal" education. Here again
we have to define. A liberal education is the educa-
tion of a man for the sake of his manhood, and up to
an ideal of manhood, without regard to any specific
use to which he may turn his knowledge and powers.
Doubtless, there is a sense in which all education is
for use — the uses of life and living ; but by the
"useful" is usually understood the materially useful,
that which enables a man to earn his living. Hence
the term to be opposed to "liberal" in education is
" technical," that is to say, instruction and training
with reference to certain industrial uses and material
results. "Professional" education is thus so far
technical, and is to be distinguished from industrial
technical education only in so far as it rests on more
advanced, and on liberal, studies.
38 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
All thinkers on education of any importance con-
tend for a liberal education — the education of the
man ; believing that thereby they best fit all men for
the work of the world generally, no less than for the
specific function each has to discharge as a member
of a co-operative community.
Whatever we teach for its own sake, with a view
to the ideal of man solely, is an element of liberal
education. Even manual instruction, not to speak of
the elements of science, falls under this designation.
All depends on the purpose we have in view, whether
it be general or special.
The Athenians held that the best men — simply as
men — made the best citizens ; the Spartans, though
Hellenic in their general conceptions of education,
had a more restricted view. Their ideal of man was
the soldier, and their training was, in truth, technical
in the gymnastic and military sense ; and, so far, it
was a debased Greek form.
Culture is a vague term ; but when we speak of a
" man of culture," we certainly mean a man of liberal
education. And if our definition of a liberal educa-
tion be correct, a man may be a man of culture though
destitute of Latin and Greek. On the other hand, in-
asmuch as a liberal education has regard to the ideal
of "man," it follows (and is a fact admitted by all)
that the humanistic or maw-subjects promote a liberal
education, and consequent culture, in a sense which
realistic studies do not. A man trained solely on the
latter cannot be liberally educated ; a man trained
solely on the former can, on the contrary, be liberally
v.] Educative Process G-enerally. 39
educated. In short, what is called " culture " is not
within reach of the man trained solely on the real-
naturalistic, but it is attainable by the man trained
solely on the real-humanistic. At the same time,
naturalistic siibjects, I admit, might be so taught as
to be humanised, and thus come within the sphere of
the humanistic.
LECTURE VI.
MATERIALS IN THEIR RELATION TO THE NUTRITION
OF MIND.
WE have now to consider the real elements of
education, naturalistic and humanistic, one after the
other, and ascertain what is the precise significance
of each for man, and in' what sense they contribute to
his nutrition. Always limiting our range of view
to the termination of what is called the period of
" secondary " instruction, — the age of seventeen
complete, — we have to ascertain how much of each
subject ought to be acquired within that period with
a view to the regulation of life — right judgment and
good action.
Two governing considerations must accompany us
in this inquiry, and be assumed throughout.
1. Whatever subjects we teach, each should be so
taught from the beginning, that at whatever age social
necessities may interrupt the course of instruction,
the pupil shall have received all the benefit from it
which his age admits of.
2. Inasmuch as the supreme end is always ethical,
instruction in every subject, and at every stage of
that subject, should be dominated by this end as re-
gards its quantity, quality, and method.
40
LECT. vi.] Materials as Nutrition. 41
[Here follows a consideration of real subjects in
detail and their educational values, — considered as
materials or substance of knowledge. The discussion
extends over five or six lectures, which would too
much encumber this book.]
Note. — Though it is to anticipate, let me here say a word
as to the Instruction-Plan. There has been much writing
ou the question of the organisation of schools — primary,
secondary, and so forth. The organisation of a school is an
external matter, and sums itself up in the time-table.
A far more important question is the organisation of the
instruction; and the first difficulty here is the selection of
subjects which we think boys and girls ought to have stud-
ied by the time they reach the age of seventeen complete,
and how much of each.
Then, we have to determine the amount and nature of the
instruction in each subject at the different stages of mental
growth. Every age has its own studies. The knowledge of
each and every subject taught must grow with the growth of
the mind we are educating, and not anticipate it. If it an-
ticipate it, the result of the instruction is not knowledge, but
rote-information .
The organisation of instruction is a difficult task. It is
not at all necessary for educational purposes that boys and
girls of seventeen should know much of anything, but it is
essential that they know thoroughly, according to a sound method,
what they profess to know, and that, when they leave school,
they find themselves, through the skill and devotedness of
their teachers, in a rational attitude to all knowledge.1 I
shall illustrate the quantity of knowledge to be conveyed,
and its gradation, when I speak in detail of applied method.
The amount, however, is of little value compared with the
1 1 am well aware that with some boys and girls such results are
unattainable ; none the less do they constitute the teacher's aim and
ideal.
42 Institutes of Education. [LKCT. vi.
result in respect of intellectual exactness, intellectual interest,
and intellectual power.
We have now before us the Ethical End in its full
statement. We have also laid down the Educative
Process in general ; and dealt with the first part of
the process, viz. Right Judgment, in so far as this is
dependent on mere knowledge. We have further
surveyed the materials of this knowledge — the sub-
jects which a youth of seventeen ought to have
studied, distinguishing those which are essential and
those which, though only accessory, are yet important.
However much more a youth may know, these things
(pp. 34, 35, 36) he ought to know, if he is to be fitly
educated for the work of life and his ethical function
in life. The youth of active mind will extend his
knowledge far beyond any limits which we might
think it reasonable to set; but all extension beyond
these limits has to do with the elevation of the plane
of intellectual and ethical life and the reach of the
mental horizon, rather than with that knowledge which
is imperative for all.
LECTURE VII.
MATERIALS IN THEIR RELATION TO THE TRAINING AND
DISCIPLINE OF MIND.
To Right Judgment is necessary, not only knowl-
edge, but an active, vigorous, and discriminating in-
telligence. The saying, -''Knowledge is power," is
only a half-truth ; for, without an active and vigorous
intellect, it may be a burden and an obstruction.
When we consider that the mere experience of life,
apart from books and schools, may give man almost
all he wants for the moral guidance of his life in all
ordinary matters, if only he can bring to bear on that
experience a perspicacious, penetrating, and interpret-
ing intellect, we feel that power alone is power, and
that knowledge — the accumulated results of experi-
ence — must take a second place in the education of a
human being. At the same time, it is scarcely correct
to say that training and discipline are of more impor-
tance than knowledge. Mathematics, for example,
disciplines the intelligence ; and we can easily con-
ceive a mind admirably disciplined by mathematics,
but conspicuously faulty in judgment because of its
ignorance of the real and concrete relations of things
into which moral and aesthetic elements always largely
enter. So with all pure discipline as such. Accord-
43
44 Institutes of Education. [LKCT.
iugly, the substance of knowledge acquired — the food
or nutrition of mind, is of more importance than some
educationalists are disposed to think. Let us say
that instruction and discipline are, in fact, of equal
moment. Instruction, however, naturally first engages
our attention when we have a mind to educate. There
is a void before us which we have to fill.
Now we can instruct, in a sense, without giving any
appreciable training and discipline to the intelligence.
For our instruction may be merely information — facts
which the pupil commits to memory ; the reducing of
these to rational cohesion being left to the chapter
of accidents. The acquiring of information, simply as
information and as an exercise of memory, is what is
meant by rote-instruction. Among other evils attend-
ing such a mode of conveying knowledge is this, that
it cannot possibly interest and attract the intellect, or
the moral and spiritual nature, of a human being ; and
thus, a distaste for learning and a silent antagonism
to the teacher, and also to authority generally, are
generated. Accordingly, it has been found necessary
to inflict physical chastisement, and to appeal to fear
in various other forms, in order to compel the majority
of boys to do the work of rote-acquisition. In truth,
this way of instructing is always necessarily accom-
panied with severity of discipline ; and hence, the
teacher or magister has been popularly known through
all the ages as pedant, dominie, castigator puerorum,
plagosus, and so forth.
Again, we may instruct intelligently, but with a
view to discipline alone. In that case, we equally fail
vii.] Training and Discipline. 45
to interest the young mind, and so to achieve our ulti-
mate intellectual purpose, which is the placing of the
mind in an attitude of rational activity to all knowl-
edge. Such an attitude can exist only when there is
interest as well as discipline. The growing body can-
not be fed by a series of difficult exercises in digest-
ing, but only by food which it can readily assimilate
and digest. So with the mind : it demands feeding,
and the food must be of a kind that it can digest and
assimilate if it is to grow either in knowledge or in
power, and above all, in intellectual interest.
These considerations place us, as students of the
science and art of education, in a critical position.
Are the questions of assimilation of knowledge and
of discipline to power different questions which yield
us answers involving mutual contradiction ? If so,
our case as educationalists would be a bad one ; for
we should have to follow two different methods in
order to attain the two different ends — nutrition and
discipline. Fortunately it is not so ; the best method
of instructing with a view to assimilation, is also the
best method of training and disciplining with a view
to power, as we shall see. The educational problem
is thus simplified.
In the preceding paragraph I have assumed that
there is such a thing as Method : and a method may
be good, better, or best. Indeed, the etymology of the
word " instruction " would of itself suggest to us that
there is method, for it implies the building of one
46 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
course on another in a certain order with a view to
the completing of a structure.
All will admit that there must be some method of
instructing: and further, that the best method must
be that which follows the way in which the fabric of
mind builds itself up. This, indeed, is the ultimate
form in which the question of educational method
must be put. This is also, let it be noted, the ultimate
question of all psychology (and to a large extent of
metaphysics also), so closely are the philosophy of
mind and the education of mind connected. The
answer to the one question is the answer to the other.
But the student of education asks the question always
with a practical purpose, and especially with distinct
reference to the building up or growing of mind. He
does not, in a mere abstract interest, analyse the com-
plex result before him — the adult mind ; but mind
in its process of gradual formation: and even this
abstract question he investigates with a view to a
further question, viz. " What can I wisely do to help
mind to grow so that it may reach a certain ideal
standard of knowledge and power?" All the tradi-
tionary words that have to do with the bringing up of
the young point etymologically to this, as that which
underlies all the particular problems of the family
and the school, e.g. "education," "training," "in-
struction," " discipline."
The best method of instruction, I have said, is also
happily, the best method of disciplining. We may fix
our attention, then, on the method of instructing, since
we shall find that the method of discipline is therein
vn.] Training and Discipline. 47
also contained. By a sound method of instruction we
shall find that we best train and discipline the mind,
and by a sound method of training and discipline we
shall find that we best instruct it. This will appear
more clearly as we go along. In the meantime, as we
have already defined the term " instruct," let us now
endeavour, before going further, to find whether there
is any distinction between "training" and "disciplin-
ing"— two words which I have generally used to-
gether, as if in their combination they expressed one
notion.
" Training " and " disciplining " are essentially the
same process; but there is a distinction.
To train the intelligence, is to carry it, or lead it,
through the various steps which end in the knowledge
of anything, e.g. I lead a boy, step by step, through
the processes which end in his adequate comprehension
of the demonstration of a geometrical theorem, and I
thus train his intelligence, inasmuch as I guide him
through intelligent processes ; and in so far as I ac-
custom him to such processes. He reconstructs in his
own mind, by my help and imitatively, the thought of
the original mathematician, and the thinking process
in him is thereby trained. Now, to discipline is the
same as to train, with this difference, that I call on
the boy to initiate for himself, and carry through for
himself without my help, the processes which end in
the demonstration of a theorem or problem ; as, for
example, when I set a rider. To do this a boy has to
think more closely, to apply himself more intensely,
48 Institutes of Education. [LECT. vn.
and in finding out the steps of proof for himself
he approaches more closely thought in itself, — the
processes of reason as such, and the conditions of its
satisfaction.
Discipline of intelligence, accordingly, is the self-
initiated activity of intelligence with a view to an end.
Approximately, it is the abstract exercise of intelli-
gence. Thus it is that formal or abstract studies
discipline much more surely and effectively than
real studies do : they demand self-sustained and self-
directed application.
Every mental act which involves self-conscious un-
aided effort is of the nature of discipline.
Training and discipline are thus constantly, in prac-
tice, passing into each other.
Let it now be admitted that if a master, when in-
structing in a subject, does so in such a way as to train
and discipline the intelligence by means of the subject,
he will thereby not only best accomplish this impor-
tant part of his educational task, but, at the same
time, best give instruction. A " war " is a " method,'-'
and we are now brought face to face with METHO-
DOLOGY — i.e. the way of best instructing, that so we may
best train and discipline, the intelligence.
[I postpone the question of the Training and Dis-
cipline of the moral and spiritual nature.]
LECTURE VIII.
METHODOLOGY AND ITS SCIENTIFIC BASIS.
IT now appears that we best instruct if we pursue
the method of instruction which best trains and dis-
ciplines, and that we best train and discipline if we
pursue the best method of instruction.
Now, the way or method of instruction is, in brief,
the way or method of knowing, or learning. To teach
with perfect success, the teacher must put himself in
the position and attitude of the pupil who, being igno-
rant, desires to know.
It is beyond all question that we can say nothing
rationally of the method of knowing without analys-
ing the process whereby mind as a matter of fact
knows ; that is to say, appropriates and makes use of
the raw materials presented to it with a view to the
building up of the fabric of knowledge. Doubtless
we might collect together the results of such an
analysis, as propounded by some well-known writer
on philosophy, and give them to you as a dogmatic
system, under the name of " Rules of Procedure, or
Methods." We might then apply these rules, one by
one, under the head of " Applied Method," to instruc-
tion in this, that, or the other subject, and show how
40
50 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
they worked out. And this would itself be a great gain.
But it would not be the Science of method, or the scien-
tific study of method, but only the more or less slavish
acquisition of the rules of the art of instructing
and disciplining the intelligence. These rules, when
further extended to moral and religious instruction
and training, would constitute the whole art of educa-
tion— an art based on science, it is true, but not
studied as a science by you, the teacher, and, therefore,
dead, as mere dogma always must be.
Accordingly, if we are to proceed scientifically and
introduce the teacher to the science or philosophy of
his art, enable him to see the principles which guar-
antee and inspire method, and how it is that they
contribute effectually to our supreme ethical end, we
must ask him to analyse with us the process of know-
ing : in other words, we must ask him to study the
psychology of intelligence from the point of view of
the growth of intelligence. While dwelling for a
time in this abstract region, we shall always keep
steadily in view our practical aim. It is not psycho-
logy as an abstract study that here concerns us, but
psychology in its relations to the education of mind,
that is to say, psychology in so far as it yields the
Art of education as a system of principles ; or, briefly,
as Methodology.
I have now, accordingly, to ask you to accompany
me into the abstract field of the philosophy of mind
with special reference to education. Apart from its
professional importance to you, it must be accepted as
part of your academic discipline. For I hold that the
vni.] Methodology and its Scientific Basis. 51
study of education is itself an education, and rightly
claims a position among university disciplines; and
that not in the interests of school-teaching alone : for
the philosophy of education is a philosophy of life.
Note. — It will be said that all of us, whether boys or men,
learn something somehow, whatever the method of teaching,
and that very clever boys learn a great deal. If scientific
method is of so much importance, how is this to be accounted
for? In answer to this question I would submit the follow-
ing considerations : —
1. As a matter of fact, the great majority of boys learn
very little, and get no mental discipline worth mentioning.
2. The proportion of those who learn anything is greater
in primary schools than in secondary, and this simply be-
cause primary teachers are as a rule alive to method (such
as it is).
3. All boys learn something, it is said, and some boys
learn a good deal spite of bad teaching. True, and the ex-
planation of this is that human reason is a pure activity,
and that it either shirks a difficulty and turns to something
else, or it seeks of itself io reduce to order and method the
confused lessons of the master. The abler minds accom-
plish this task : the great majority cannot do so, and never
do so.
4. It is universally admitted that boys learn more, and
get better discipline, from a good teacher than from a bad
one, and that many good, and some admirable, teachers have
been untrained. But if we look closely we shall find that
the " good " teacher is a man who instinctively follows good
methods, whether he knows it or not. The philosophy or
theory of education includes the questions of end, of the
educative process, of the materials of instruction and of
method. Now, the earnest teacher has always in his mind
some theory more or less vague; and having end, general
process, and materials clearly present to him, he instinctively,
if he is as able as he is earnest, finds, ere long, a way or
52 Institutes of Education. [LECT. vm.
method of instruction which is fairly good. Also, because
he is earnest in his work, he relies largely on moral stimulus.
This is the sort of man we call a " good " teacher, and
whose success we admire. The object of the study of ed-
ucation as a science and an art is simply to bring the end,
process, and materials early into clear consciousness in the
case of this naturally good teacher, and to show him, before
he begins, the best way or method of doing his daily work,
and so making it even more effective than it is. As regards
all other teachers (the vast majority), the object is to raise
them to the level of the " good " teacher — a level which they
could never attain but by the help of instruction in their
professional work. The study of education, in short, makes
the good master better and brings the inferior master up to
a fair average, and in very many cases, indeed, makes him a
thoroughly good teacher, as the results of our primary train-
ing colleges have amply proved.
Then, quite apart from this practical aim, the study of
education places the whole profession on a higher intellectual
plane. Whatever raises the schoolmaster's conception of
his task makes him a better man. Whatever instructs him
as to his duties, makes him a better teacher. A firm hold,
moreover, of end, principles, and method gives him faith in
his daily work.
53
SECOND PART.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF INTELLIGENCE AS
YIELDING THE METHODOLOGY
OF EDUCATION.
LECTURE I.
THE ANIMAL MIND.
POET and peasant are alike in this, that they are
dependent on tradition. Differ as they may in tem-
perament and in the quality of nerve-tissue, their
minds would at the beginning of their life-career be
blank, were it not for the inheritance which parents
and society pass on to them. The form and outer
expression of a man's poetic possibilities are as de-
pendent on the imagery of feeling and of thought,
and on the store of language to which he succeeds, as
on the materials of his present environment. The
peasant, again, finds his standard of life, and a way
of judging things and of using the instruments of a
struggle with nature, ready-made for him. Tradition
is the handing on of the achievements of the past, and
all are alike dependent on it. The schoolmaster plays
an important part as one of the chief vehicles of trans-
mission. Whether aptitudes, moral and intellectual,
acquired during each generation's life are also handed
on, has lately been doubted by the biologist. If it be
really so, the progress of humanity is less assured
than it was thought to be ten or twenty years ago.
The power of the existing generation in influencing
the future of our race is lessened ; but the teacher's
55
56 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
responsibilities as the transmitter of the past are not
thereby diminished, but rather increased.
With animals there is no tradition of recorded
victories ; and if the new theory be accepted, no tradi-
tion even of acquired aptitudes. They simply inherit
a certain constitution, and they have to make the best
of it in an ever-renewed contest with nature. They
have mind as we have ; but mind within certain re-
strictions of faculty.
If we are to understand the human mind, we cannot
do better than try to understand and to interpret the
animal mind in its highest forms, for we shall thereby
ascertain in what respects we differ from animals.
We, too, are animals; but something more. It is
because we, as self-conscious subjects, are animal and
something more, that we are able, by observing the
lower organisms around us, to say something regarding
them, and get some light on what man is and can be.
If we take the human mind by itself, without regard
to other and lower stages of mind, we are apt to com-
mingle elements which ought to be kept distinct, and
to interpret phenomena in a confused and often self-
contradictory way.
We certainly share with the higher class of animals,
not only the feeling of life-activity and life-impulse
generally, but specific forms of these. All our ap-
petites, as determined by our bodily needs, the out-
going feelings and desires which enter into our scheme
of moral motives — e.g. the feeling of goodwill or
kindness to others, a feeling of the supremacy of
i.] The Animal Mind. 57
certain things over us (in animals little more than
fear, which suggests escape from the presence of that
which is felt to be more powerful), and a feeling of
satisfaction or complacence in the goodwill or kind-
ness of others towards us.
Let me illustrate. When a lion and lioness are
lying with their cubs in a cavern, the lioness licking
her young or giving to them of the fruit of her own
body, or such fragments of the chase as she may have
brought home from her last raid, while the attendant
lion growls defiantly on hearing a crackling among
the reeds which he associates with a wild elephant
or boa-constrictor, we have all the primitive feelings
which I have above summarised in one tableau. In
addition, we have the feeling of resistance to an exter-
nal power as threatening the life of the family. Nay,
more, we must at once see that the community of
tenderness rests on a primary bond between the mem-
bers of this group, which is Sympathy — that is, the
feeling of the feelings of others, and the consequent
presence of a disposition to satisfy the feelings and
desires of others, in so far as these betoken a need of
any kind.
This is a picture, not only of the animal, but of the
primitive man in his primitive relations, which he
can no more help than he can help eating when he is
hungry or drinking when he is thirsty.
But at this point the lion stops ; whereas the man,
his wife, and children in the stone cave have in them
possibilities, which may be said to be (speaking
loosely) infinite, though always restricted by racial
characteristics and possibilities.
58 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
Let me point out, that in addition to the bodily
appetites which have to do with self-preservation,
propagation, etc., we have in the above lion-group
sympathy, kindness towards others, a pleasing sensa-
tion in receiving kindness from others, a feeling of an
actual or possible higher power, and of resistance to
that power as threatening the life or happiness of
the lion and his family. We can easily imagine the
approach of a force so great as to overpower resist-
ance by anticipation, and cause fear for life and a
rapid retreat for safety.
What now have we here as instincts ?
1. Bodily appetites concerned in the preservation
of life and the continuity of the species.
2. Sympathy.
3. Goodwill to others.
4. Love of the goodwill of others.
5. Feeling of superior power and dependence on it.
6. Fear.
7. Resistance to drive off danger to life (animal
courage) .
If man were no more than this bundle of needs, in
the form of appetitive impulses and desires, which we
find in the lion, he would not be man ; he would not
be even the king of beasts (save in the range of his
sympathy, of which more hereafter), for the lion
would soon make short work of him. So much for
the feelings and impulses, which we call instincts,
because they are connate. Let us consider, next, the
phenomena which we call the intelligence of the
animal.
i.] The Animal Mind. 59
We have to go beyond mere feelings and impulses,
and their inevitable manifestation in certain circum-
stances, as, e.g. when the lion roars defiance in the
circumstances we have supposed, viz. the approach of
an alarming power. This necessity of going beyond
mere feeling is forced upon us, if by nothing else
than by this, that the feelings of which we have been
speaking arise only after something else has happened
in the economy of the lion-mind.
That something else is seeing, hearing, and tactile-
sensation. Make your lion deaf, and blind, and in-
sensible to touch, and nothing happens as we have
described it.
Certain impressions are made on what we call his
consciousness, because he becomes conscious or aware
of them, through his eyes, his ears, and his skin. He
feels these impressions in his conscious living subject
— the impression of a crackling in the reeds, of the
sudden presentation of a wild elephant or boa-con-
strictor, and of the personal contact of his lioness and
her whelps. These impressions are impressions of
noise, touch, size, shape, motion, colour (in this rudi-
mentary sense at least, that the colour of the elephant
is different from the impression made by the sur-
rounding atmosphere and the forest).
The ear and the tactual sensibility thus furnish
materials or facts to the lion's consciousness as they
do to ours, but not to the same extent, or with the
same delicacy or variety as the eyes do, for they are
the chief channels of communication with the outer
world. We shall, therefore, drop here all reference
60 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
(except as it may arise incidentally) to any channel
of sense-impression save the eyes. This we do in
view of the task before us, and because what is true
of the eyes is true, mutatis mutandis, of other organs of
communication between the mind or consciousness
of the lion and the external world in which he lives,
and with which he has the hard work of correlating
himself, in the interests of himself and his family, so
as to secure a pleasing or instinct-satisfied existence.
I would at this point emphasise the phenomenon of
Feeling in presence of a presentation as the most uni-
versal and primary experience of animal being. It is
the starting-point of all manifestations of conscious-
ness, and lies at the root of all that animal and man
are and can be.
Feeling cannot in any strict logical sense be de-
fined; but it can be marked off from other experi-
ences, and in contrast with them. It is a vague and
indefinite awareness of a movement within the subject
effected by a stimulus within, or from without, the
physical organism. Without feeling there could be
no beginning of conscious life, and in the highest ex-
pressions of even self-conscious reason it is the ulti-
mate guarantee that there is anything present at all.
In the most abstract mathematical process a man in
the energy of pursuit is not self-conscious of that
process, and cannot be so until he makes that process
an object to himself; but, all the while, he is sup-
ported by the vague and indefinite feeling of conscious
activity — a feeling and nothing more.
i.] The Animal Mind, 61
When an animal or an infant-man (passing over
the preliminary experiences of life) opens his eyes,
his nerve system, and through this his consciousness,
becomes aware, through the external stimulus which
we call an impression, of an universal extensity in
which nothing is denned, all is confused and chaotic.
Subject and object are, though not identical in fact,
yet identical in feeling. There is no separation of
feeling-subject from felt-object, still less is there
separation of one object from another. We know
that there must be a reaction in the nerve-cells, but it
is not sufficiently energetic to reflect the stimulus as
something not the subject feeling.
By dint of continuous and oft-repeated impact the
reaction becomes gradually more energetic, and the
external stimulus B is placed outside as not the feel-
ing-consciousness A.
Generally it will be found that in its earliest mani-
festations this feeling of a not-A is restricted to a
single point, and does not embrace the totality of the
stimulating or impressing B. For example, a snail,
instinctively putting out its organ of sensation, touches
a rough stone and turns aside, or a leaf and takes pos-
session of it ; it does not feel the stone or leaf in their
respective totalities as stone or leaf, but feels only a
certain repulsion or attraction limited to a single
point. So, in the vegetable unconscious world we
have an anticipation of this conscious action, as in the
fly-catcher. There is more than vague feeling so far
as the snail is concerned; there is a definite feeling
of a " single " which is not-A ; and I would call this
62 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
punctual consciousness " sensation " in its lowest form,
and assign to it the name Sensibility.
It would require a patient, critical, and sympathetic
observation of the infant and animal mind to say at
what point a stimulating object is more than this unit
of sensation which I have called sensibility. To de-
termine the passage of one stage of consciousness from
a lower to a higher is probably impossible, because all
things progress by infinitely small steps. None the
less is the step taken, as we see from the result. At
what fraction of a moment the hour-hand on a dial-
plate points to twelve, I cannot tell, but at one
moment it had not arrived and at another it had
passed it.
The next stage of consciousness of a definite kind
worthy of notice here, is the feeling of total objects as
totals. But it is manifestly impossible to feel a total
save in so far as other totals emerge from the chaotic
confusion of the extended manifold and are felt as
there, and yet as not the particular total B, which for
the moment specifically impresses, attracts, and occu-
pies consciousness.
The feeling of a total as not-A (A being the subject)
but B, is the feeling of B as an object. There is here
a distinctly emergent duality, and we have Sensation
in full operation. This sensation involves a feeling of
diversity (of diverse many totals), and the particular
object specifically felt is that object (B) which at the
moment most vividly impresses the conscious subject ;
and B will remain as the object in the field of sensa-
tion until exhaustion takes place, or until C or D or E
i.] The Animal Mind. 63
has pushed it out and occupied the field of conscious-
ness for itself in turn. How long the object B may hold
the conscious subject in its grip, depends on the extent
to which it interests the particular consciousness in
whose presence it is. The point of special significance
here is that sensation is still feeling in a higher form
of reflex activity, that it is the object which holds the
subject, and that it is successive objects which move it
hither and thither. The Subject is subject (in the
popular meaning of the word) to the Object. We may
now, but only now, talk of Sensation as a phenomenon
of consciousness, and we may call that which is sensed
the sensate.
Some psychologists tell us that the total object so impress-
ing sense contains or brings with it all the categories. On
this see Note A, Appendix. All I would insist on here is,
that the sensing of the object involves externality, viz. B
there as extended, and the feeling of being in B.
The sensed total there-being (B) is sensed as a total.
This is the sensate. Future experience tells us much
more about it. We afterwards find that this total is a
confused chaos of particulars, which we call its quali-
ties and relations. But in the meantime we have to
be content with the total as a total.
This, however (as I have already indicated), is not
all ; for the animal and the infant-man feel also at the
same time the diversity of objects outside, and in a
vague indefinite way their localised relations in Space
and their successive relations in Time. I say feel,
simply to indicate that the consciousness of all the
64 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
other objects which crowd around B is so incipient in
its character as scarcely to deserve the name of sensing
or sensation — though it truly belongs to this category.
Note. — To say that an animal " perceives " an external
object in respect of its size, shape, colour, or relations to
other objects in space or in time, is to use a term which, in
my opinion, is equivalent to knowing ; and knowing is the
distinctive attribute of the man-animal, as we shall see in
the sequel.
True, this mere feeling of external objects, as objects and
as external, is of every possible degree, and rises to a point
of fineness and activity which approaches the borders of per-
cipience; but it never crosses into percipience except in a
human being. The sensing of external impressions is usu-
ally regarded as the basis of such intelligence, intellect, or
understanding as each living organism may possess. Intelli-
gence in its animal form is simply the reception and arrang-
ing of sensates with more or less of reflex co-ordination in
consciousness, irrespectively of the feelings or emotions which
they excite.
Keeping to intelligence, we find that the animal con-
sciousness receives the totalities of objects without
distinguishing the parts of these totalities and corre-
lating them with the total as inherent in that total.
This, I think, is an important point in the natural
history of consciousness. It may be said, how can an
animal see or sense the whole of a thing except through
the parts ? The answer is, that the parts in their
totality as a one extended object — e.g. a stone — make
an impression of a certain kind different from that
which another object in its totality makes — e.g. a
tree.
i.] The Animal Mind. 65
How, then, can an animal possibly, when it sees a
stone for the second or third time, sense that object
as the same object as it has formerly sensed, if of the
numerous qualities of that object it did not sense a
single one, but only a whole in which the single "ones "
of quality were all interfused ? The answer is to be
got from your own experience. You see a man's face
as he quickly passes you in the street, and if asked
five minutes afterwards, you do not even remember
that you saw it; but to-morrow the face you saw
yesterday meets you again, and you are at once aware
that you saw that same face on a previous occasion,
although there was no one part of the face — nose,
mouth, eyebrows, eyes, chin — which you could have
described even approximately the moment before you
saw it the second time and became then aware that
you had seen it before — in short, recognised it.1 So,
with your eye placed at the hole in the tube, you turn
a kaleidoscope and see a certain arrangement of col-
ours and forms in a pattern. You go on turning, and
you see the same pattern return within the area of
your vision, and you say, " I saw that before." If I
ask you which particular thing or things, character or
characters, in it are the same as that which you saw
before, you cannot tell me one; but you are none the
less certain that it is the same pattern or a similar
one ; that is to say, the totality, or the aggregate of
impression, is quite similar to a preceding one, and
1 It is difficult to avoid this word "recognised," though it is a
bad one, inasmuch as its etymology points to a prior cognition,
whereas there has been as yet no cognition at all, but only sensation.
66 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
different, consequently, from all the other totalities
of pattern which have been under your eye during
the interval that elapsed between your first seeing B
and then seeing the same B return within the area of
your vision.
Now, an animal does this. A dog does not con-
found the second bone of his experience with a stone.
He feels the similarity with the first bone, although
none of the specific qualities that go to constitute a
bone in sense are sensed by him. No doubt he asso-
ciates with bone No. 2 a lively sense of satisfaction
arising out of his pleasing relations of yesterday with
bone No. 1 ; but when I hold out bone No. 2 to him,
his recognition of it as a bone is due to the totality
of the impression being similar to the totality which
constituted bone No. 1.
And I select this illustration because it directs us
to the next point which I wish to note, which is
this —
Salient Qualities and Impressions. — While all the
qualities which constitute for the dog the " bone " to
sense are intermixed in a confused total, there prob-
ably stands out in relief, after some repetition at least,
one quality which gives rise to a particularly lively
sensation, viz. the smell or the "sweet edibleness"
of the bone. This experience of yesterday with bone
No. 1 stands out prominently as constituting the thing
bone more than anything else does, all the other qual-
ities gathering round this in the confused aggregate
of sensation. There has been an unpurposed selection
of what suits. Plants and animals alike are always
i.] The Animal Mind. 67
selecting what suits them. The chief, the prominent,
the salient quality of the bone is really the bone to
the dog, all else being subordinate to the extent of
being sub-sensational, by which I mean within Feeling,
or lying on the border-line of mere Feeling and Sen-
sation proper.
So with other objects. With most objects it is
simply the totality B, as not C or D, which has im-
pressed the dog and has clearly crossed the threshold
of consciousness, and he senses the totality a second
time with a consciousness of sameness or similarity
(as the case may be). But with many objects the
case is different : there is, e.g., the bone in respect to
which one salient quality ("sweet edibleness") im-
presses him most deeply ; again, there is water ;
again, the specific smell of any object; again, the
particular whistle which, when he hears it, calls up
into his consciousness the totality in sense which
constitutes his master.
Imitation and Rivalry. — Again you will notice that
if a dog runs at an object, taking it for a bone, other
dogs will also run and try to be at the object first,
although these dogs, or some of them, may have already
seen the object and had not themselves sensed that it
was a bone. There is here Imitation. We saw that
there was sympathy in the region of the natural
feelings ; we now, in this incident, see sympathy in
the sphere of Intelligence.
And this new phenomenon further reveals a feel-
ing in animals not yet adverted to — the feeling or
emotion of rivalry — the desire to outstrip each other.
68 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
Imagination. — One point more : the image of what
has frequently been present to a dog rises up be-
fore his consciousness when it is no longer present.
There is evidence enough of this when he is awake ;
much more when he is asleep and dreams that he is
hunting or worrying. A dog, then, has Imagination,
in its primary sense.
I have led you through this analysis of phenomena
familiar to all, in order to establish the following facts
regarding the sensational intelligence of an animal of
the higher order, viz. —
1. The animal senses a totality without being con-
scious or aware of the separate qualities which to-
gether go to the making of that totality, be it a stone,
or a bone, or water, or anything else.
2. The animal may have, probably always after a
time has, one quality of that totality so deeply im-
pressed on its sensory because of its prominence, or
salience, or some specific relation which that quality
bears to its own organic pleasures or pains, that the
total object is to it this particular quality plus a
vague and wholly unanalysed agglomeration of quali-
ties which together make a "total single" of impres-
sion on his sensorium.
3. The animal senses the likeness and unlikeness of
these totals or objects, i.e. it compares ; but its com-
parison is the comparison of sense or sensation, and
is accomplished on it by the diversity of objects, not
by it.
4. The animal associates one experience with
another; e.g. when a dog sees the cook open the
i.] The Animal Mind. 69
kitchen-door, he has a sensational image of bones, or
when he hears a whistling, it calls up the sensational
image of his master. The animal, then, has associa-
tion of sensations.1
5. The animal remembers : when he sees A for the
second or third time he feels the resemblance to the
A of the first time ; and, further, the association of A
with B tends to call up B out of the storehouse of
recorded impressions when A presents itself.
6. The animal has imagination : for it not only
retains sensates, but these are suggested to his con-
sciousness when the actual object is not present but
merely suggested by association. So also when he
dreams, the image of a sensate is clearly before him :
the dog hunts in his dreams.
7. Two dogs seeing a bone at the same moment, or
one seeing it and the other instantaneously interpret-
ing his excitement, run for it. Animals, then, have
sympathy of sensational intelligence.
8. Animals in presence of an object of common de-
sire have a feeling of rivalry — a feeling of competi-
tion one with the other, which we may call an emotion,
as it is distinct from the desire for the object they
pursue.
But all these characteristics of intelligence are in
sensation alone. The conscious subject is moved hither
and thither by the wind of the moment.
1 1 shall affirm, without further analysis, that the rule or law of
this association is fundamentally this, that things felt together (in
space or time), or as immediately sequent, tend to arise again
together in the consciousness,
70 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
In short, an animal's intelligence is a reflex intel-
ligence. He receives, and, under the stimulus of
impression or recipience alone, he reacts.
I am aware that the term reflex is generally applied
only to unconscious response to stimulus in vegetable
and animal. I think, however, we need it to mark
also a state of conscious response to stimulus. Ani-
mals are conscious automata.
The impressions of single " totals " made on consciousness,
whether from within or without, are, as we have seen, regis-
tered for future use. This means that they involve some
process in the nerve-cells. Consequently, the involuntary
or accidental repetition of the process in the cells (however
started) will place the image of the absent object before
consciousness. Also, any particular stimulus of the nerve-
cells may set agoing a movement in another set of cells in
a purely dynamical way, and without any consciousness
intervening. This relation of cerebrations, as such, may be
held, and yet we may also hold that the particular " conscious-
ness " set up by stimulus No. 1 sets up a " consciousness "
No. 2, which involves the corresponding nerve change as its
consequent.
RECAPITULATION AND SUMMING UP. ATTUITION.
By analysing a complex case (the lion-family) we
were enabled to collect together the various inner feel-
ings in animals ; meaning by feelings those states of
the individual which stimulate to activity of some sort,
and are complete only in activity. These arose either
primarily from within, as, for example, the appetites,
owing to those necessary workings of the animal econ-
omy which we call instinctive or innate (and which
i.] The Animal Mind. 71
we have simply to accept as given potencies within the
organism waiting to evolve themselves) ; or they were
stimulated into existence from without after a nerve-
transmission of impressions through the consciousness-
capacity of the animal (which we call its intelligence),
— the channel of communication with the outer world.
We have now also gathered together the characters
of this animal consciousness in its relation to the exter-
nal. It is mere repetition to say that we have assigned
to the animal mind the following characteristics : —
The animal has sensation, and senses as mere matters
of fact all that affects its being from within or without.
The animal senses external objects as " totalities "
without sensing the individual properties of these
objects, still less sensing them as individual properties
going to make up the said total object.
In sensing total objects the animal senses them
as diverse one from the other. Therefore the animal
senses likeness and unlikeness.
The animal senses an object, and when doing so
senses its sameness or similarity with the same object
as formerly sensed ; therefore, the animal has memory.
The animal can sense vividly some specific quality
of an object as involved in that object, while all the
rest of the said object is in the confusion and mist of
its original aggregate so far as sense is concerned.
Therefore (and for other given reasons), the animal
has association of sensations or impressions, and is
under the influence of that association.
The animal, further, through association remembers,
and through sympathy imitates, and rivals.
72 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
The quantity and quality of an animal's relations
to the external world (which external world is to it,
as to us, a various and complex chaos of coexistent
and sequent series) depends on the constitution of
the animal. Some animals may touch the world only
at one point at a time, as the sea-anemone and the
snail seem to do. Its sensations in these cases are
units, and very uninstructive to us, though sufficient for
the preservation of the animal's own existence. But
as we rise in the scale of animal life, we rind a more
complex constitution bringing the conscious animal-
being into wider relations with the complexity of its
surroundings ; and, above all, enabling it to receive and
deal with a sense-totality, a single object as distin-
guished from other objects, and to have, simply, however,
as sensation, Comparison, Association, Memory, etc.
To formulate and tabulate : —
ANIMAL MIND OR CONSCIOUSNESS.
I. As regards Intelligence, we have in animals —
1. Sensation of objects.
2. Comparison of the diverse as a sensation
(likeness and unlikeness).
3. Sensation of relations of objects in time and
space.
4. Association of sensations.
5. Memory.
6. Sympathy of intelligence, and consequent
imitation.
7. Imagination.
i.] The Animal Mind. 78
II. As regards inner Feeling, we have in animals —
1. The feeling of life-activity.
2. The natural appetites working from within.
3. Sympathy of being and of natural feelings.
4. The feeling of kindness to others.
5. The feeling of pleasure in kindness received
from others.
6. The feeling of a superior power in presence
of anything that may hurt.
7. The feeling of resistance (animal courage).
8. The feeling of fear or of evasion of anything
that may hurt (animal cowardice).
9. The feeling of rivalry.
All these insist on manifesting themselves as occa-
sion arises.
We have now before us the mental constitution of
the higher animals ; but I should not have thought it
necessary to dwell on this so long had it not been that
we have here also our own human constitution in so far
as we are animals. Further, we have before us our
own nature and limitations up to the age of twelve
months, less or more.
The animal is a victim of its own sensations and
feelings and associations. It is driven hither and
thither by them. It is, both as a creature of inner
feeling and outer feeling, merely a bundle of stimuli
and reactions or reflex activities. It does not get
beyond the reflex action of the cerebrum and of the
conscious subject, although the constant repetition on
74 Institutes of Education. [LECT. i.
its sensorium of external facts, calling for a constant
repetition of responses, enables the more finely organ-
ised animals to do things, by virtue of memory -and
association, that approximate very closely to the
actions of a rational being ; especially when they are
in constant contact with rational beings and imitate
them.
Now, the stage of Mind reached by the highest
animals, whereby they are able to sense a total object,
I call the ATTUITIOXAL stage. It is the highest form
of sensation (the lowest form of which is merely
sensibility to a unit of impression), inasmuch as it is
sensation of an aggregate of qualities (impressions)
constituting in their aggregate a single object, and
sensed by the animal as an externally existent whole.
There is, in truth, a sensational reflex synthesis ; for
which the proper name is Synopsis.
LECTURE II.
THE MAN-MIND. WILL: PERCIPIENCE.
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
WHEN we speak of educating a man, the question,
after all has been said, comes to this : How shall we
make a man of him ? and, in the case of a girl, How
shall we make a woman of her ? We do not propose
to make a woman of a boy, nor yet to make a man of
a girl. They are different from the beginning, and
they are to be as different in the end as they are in
the beginning, neither more nor less.
But boy and girl share something in common, and
that something is neither the male nor the female
element, but the human. Thus far, the aim of edu-
cation is the same for both; and when we use the
phrase, "the education of a man," we use the word
man in a generic sense as signifying humanity. The
" worthier " gender stands for both male and female.
Now, if I desire to "make a man " of a boy, I do
not wish to train him up to be like this man or that
man ; but to be a true man. My standard of man is
not Jones or Brown or Robinson, but the ideal of
man. It is something universal, not particular. And
this ideal of man must contain the essence or idea of
man — that whereby he is not anything else, but
76
76 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
only himself; not a wolf, nor a pig, nor a bear, but a
man.
Clearly, then, if I am to educate a boy I must have,
in my thought the ideal or complete notion (to call it
so for philosophical consistency) of a man; not of
Jones or Brown or Robinson, as I have said, who are
poor specimens enough, but of man universal — of
man as not anything else but himself.
Now, in building up the complete notion of " Man,"
I have already taken the first step, — an important
one, too ; for I have begun at the foundations of the
fabric, and shown you what man is in so far as he is
animal. Even as animal, man is richly endowed by
nature, of which he is still a part, and with which he
lives in the constant interchange of give and take.
Simply as an animal, man is the most capable of all
animals in the sphere of feeling and sensation. No
doubt an animal of one kind develops for his specific
needs a keener sense of sight, and an animal of
another kind a keener sense of smell, another is
fleeter, and so on ; but, take him all round, man is a
finer, subtler, more enduring, and altogether more
admirable product than any animal you can name —
in brief, the " paragon of animals."
If we stopped short at this point, then, we should
have to consider what steps had to be taken to edu-
cate him to be a perfect animal of his kind. And, in
truth, the earlier races thought of little else, for
obvious and sufficient reasons ; and even in these days
you hear such expressions as this coming with a pecu-
ii.] The Man-Mind: Will, etc. 77
liar gusto from those who have not, probably, in their
heart of hearts got very much beyond the stage of
barbarism, viz. "The English public-schoolboy is a
fine animal."
To pass from this, however, we must admit that if
man were only the finest of animals, our duty as
educators would be to have in our heads a standard
or type, and to educate him up to that. We should
not think of educating a cat into anything but the
perfection of its own kind, any more than we should
think of educating a rose into a vine or an elm, but
simply into being the best possible rose. You see
the labour and ingenuity spent on an ox or a horse to
make them the best of their own kind. In short, we
educate a horse or an ox or a rose up to the perfection
of itself ; that is to say, up to the ideal of an ox or
a horse or a rose, which ideal we have present to our
consciousness in imagination.
All animals and plants have much in common : and
to confine ourselves to animals here, they have the
greater part of their nature in common. But each
has something whereby it is itself. A horse and an
ox have a great deal in common : indeed everything
except that which finally differentiates the one from
the other, and makes the ox an ox and not a horse,
and the horse a horse and not an ox. This differen-
tiating "somewhat," which is a secret, but which I
infer from outer manifestations in appearance and
in action, I call the " idea " of the ox or horse ; and
if I am to educate either of these animals truly, I
must, while paying due regard to all other facts and
78 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
conditions of their existence, specially direct my
attention to the "idea." To this I must educate
them, so that they may be the best of their specific
kind respectively. The total conception I have of an
animal is to be called its NOTION, the differentiating
character or characters are the "idea" within the
notion.
Now man is not only the paragon of animals, he is
something more and different. If I am to educate
him aright, then I must, while paying due attention
to all other conditions of his existence, — to the total
concept of him, the Notion, — educate him up to that
" something " which differentiates him, and lifts him
above and distinguishes him from other animals, if
there be any such characteristic. And as this differ-
entiation is a differentiation which lifts him above
animals, it must govern all I do in educating him as a
whole, because it is placed there by his Creator to
govern all else that goes to constitute him, inasmuch
as it constitutes him what he really and truly is.
The idea in a thing always governs, always must
govern and control the parts of the whole ; otherwise
the thing would not be itself.
What is that " idea " in the notion man ? Here we
have him an attuitional animal of a very fine sort
placed in numberless relations to nature and to other
animals like and unlike himself, and instinct with all
those feelings, and innate impulses, and sensations,
and connate capacities, which I have already enumer-
ated. But all these feelings and sensations are on
an equal level — in so far as he is an animal. He
ii.] The Man-Mind: Will, etc. 79
gratifies first one then another as the fit seizes him
or necessity demands, just as an animal does. He is
a bundle of particulars ; he is without order in him-
self; he is an anarchy or chaos. Beasts, it is true,
have instincts to this or that, or away from this or
that, so strong that they manage fairly well to adapt
themselves to their environment, and live and act in
a satisfactory, though beastly, way. But man, alas !
has no such certainty of instinct to guide him, but
has instead an endowment which specifically charac-
terises him — " whence all our woe ! " This endow-
ment confounds the natural operation of instinct.
The specific endowment which makes man different
from other animals, lifts him above all animals, and,
consequently, above his own animal nature, is essen-
tially and primarily WILL. If I had asked you for
the differentiating characteristic which constituted
the "idea" of man, you would doubtless have at
once said Reason; and you would have been right.
But for the sake of simplicity itself, I beg you to go
deeper down and see in Will the root, possibility, and
essence of this very endowment which in its fulness
is called Reason.
When some speak of Reason as being the specific
endowment of man, they would almost seem to think
that a piece of clockwork had been put inside him,
on the top of his animal mind, to regulate that mind;
and then, when you come to the moral sphere, — the
sphere of conduct, and encounter Will, they seem to
speak of Will as if it were a bare force subsisting on
its own account, and working in more, or (generally)
80 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
less, harmony with the clockwork Reason, side by
side with which it stands like a sentinel at an " out "
barrack's gate.
Now, if you desire simplicity, — the simplicity of
truth, — try to get rid of these inadequate conceptions
of Reason and Will. If you do, you will attain to a
fundamental point of view which will give unity to
your whole conception of man as a being to be edu-
cated whether you regard his intellectual or his moral
relations.
Imagine yourself to be a conscious subject or being
such as an animal is, looking out on the world, re-
ceiving impressions from it, and having sensation of
them and of the various objects by which you are
surrounded and to which you are related. You re-
ceive these in sensation simply as they present them-
selves, and you sense and do this or that according
as objects impress and stimulate you to reaction.
This is the attuitional condition. It is summed up
in the words " reflex consciousness."
Again, throw yourself into a rudimentary state of
mind, and feel the dreaminess and confusedness of it
— the condition in which you are when the brain,
exhausted by illness, takes slight note of things, or
when, recovering from a faint, the outer has more
power over your mind than any inner energy you
can bring to bear on it, when the vital centres fail to
react, and you cannot distinguish object from subject,
and all is dreamily subjective. This would seem to
be the condition of a babe in arms.
ii.] The Man-Mind: Will, etc. 81
Better still, perhaps, imagine yourself coming from
another and wholly different planet, suddenly planted
on a clear night on Edinburgh Castle with the stars
above you, the brilliantly lighted town spread out
beneath you, girded by a moonlit sea and backed by a
misty suggestion of the distant northern hills. You
have not had time to recover yourself, your conscious-
ness is overpowered, you are aware of a multiplicity
and diversity of objects and qualities ; but that is all.
Sensation in an elementary chaotic form barely one
step beyond Feeling (in which subject and object are
inseparable) occupies the field. This gives place
quickly to a vivid sensation of this or that particular
object, and sub-sensations, or feelings, of all else.
Soon you rouse yourself out of this sensational or
attuitional condition, and bring the energy lying within
your consciousness to bear on all these sensations.
You move out of yourself to seize them one by one,
separate one from another, discriminate them as sepa-
rate totals, and reduce them all to some kind of order
— though it be only an order of locality.
Now, this movement, from within your conscious
subject outwards, to seize each separate thing by itself
and for itself, is to be called Will. If any weak per-
son, calling himself a "scientist," has a superstitious
dread of the word Will, let him call it Spontaneity.
This state of consciousness is no longer the mere
reflex action of animal consciousness stimulated by
external impressions ; it is that, but it is something
more. It is the free outgoing of your conscious subject
to take possession of these various and varied objects,
82 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
and make them your own by distinguishing one from
the other, and placing them back in your conscious
subject as your own — re-ducing them to the conscious
subject. Along with this act there arises the impulse
of naming. This is true doctrine unless you accept
the only alternative, viz. that the mind of man is to be
explained as a bundle of impressions and reflex actions
determined always and at all times by something not
himself, and that what you imagine to be the purest
and loftiest act of Will is merely (as some would call
it) the resultant of a " complex of sensations." It is at
this point, and at no other, that the battle of Free Will
as a moral question must be fought, and either gained
or lost. If Will be not root of pure reason, it is an
illusion to imagine it free when directed to moral ends.
Now this movement of will, prehending and bring-
ing back, or reducing, to your conscious subject an
object which is already in the subject as a sensation
(or thing sensed, a sensate), is PERCEIVING or Ele-
mentary Knowing.
The very word perception — per and capio, to take
— points to the nature of the act as an act : so does
apprehension — ad-prehendere, to seize to yourself.
Through the evolution of this Will in your conscious
subject you have emerged out of and beyond animal
sensation in its highest form (Attuition), and are now
a percipient being, a knowing being, a man-being, a
self-determining being, and no longer a mere victim of
the dynamical interplay of feelings and sensations.
Perception or percipience, then, is the separating of
an object already in sense from other objects, seizing it,
ii.] The Man-Mind: Will, etc. 83
and placing it in your own conscious subject as then
and thus known, and, in the crisis of being known,
affirmed ; and thus urgently demanding a name.
To ascertain what it is that you first perceive, you
must go back to the record of attuitional consciousness,
and you will find that you first perceive totals as totals
— total objects, diverse one from the other, e.g. the
guns, walls, trees, streets, lights, houses, sky, sea, hills.
Now, suppose you fall asleep, outworn and over-
whelmed by the multitude of objects that oppress you,
and awake refreshed, you re-perceive these "totals"
and recognise them — the guns, the walls, the build-
ings, and so forth. Remember that merely as an ani-
mal you are already endowed with memory, association,
a sense of likeness and unlikeness, and so forth : I
pass all this as known to you from our previous
arialyis.
Now, if you were asked to specify by what qualities
you recognise this to be a gun, that to be a ball, and
that a wall, you could not name one. You would
simply be able to say, " the total impression made on
my sense was that which you call here a gun, there a
ball, and there again a wall." You have discriminated
and fixed each total. Perception is always of the
single. This distinct differentiation of an object is
the reduction of the object to consciousness, in which
act se£/-consciousness is involved, though it does not yet
quite emerge. Of this differentiation and reduction,
affirmation, viz. " that thing is " — is the issue ; and if
we go on thinking for ever, our last question will still
84 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
be our first question, viz. what is the object ? Along
with the affirmation that A is, we have, I have said, an
impulse to name A. Without a word to fix the deter-
mination of the thing, and externalise our conscious-
ness of it, we should probably have to go through a
fresh process every time we saw the same object ; and
progress would be impossible. The articulated sound
fixes and symbolises an accomplished process, which,
though it be in a sense repeated every time we subse-
quently perceive the object, is yet repeated with ease
and rapidity by the help of the familiar symbolic utter-
ance.1
[There seems to be a general law in the universe that
impression completes itself in expression, and that the
former is incomplete without the actuality of the latter.]
Conscious subject, as now freely willing, moves
about prehending all that comes within the range of
the tentacles of sense. Further, the conscious subject,
thus spontaneously moving or willing, has, within this
movement (Will), an end towards which it moves, and
that end, at first unself-conscious and terminating in a
percept, is (after a slight experience) knowledge itself
as such (a universal). Of this again.
The bringing of the sensate a second time into con-
sciousness as a discriminated and affirmed object, is
1 According to this theory, a deaf-mute, hefore he attains to the
iise of manual signs, affirms when he perceives. The affirmation is
arrested hy the inability to articulate ; but there is an accentuation
of the affirmation, not only in consciousness, but also physiologically,
by an inner movement or outer gesture. The percept is thus in
some material way fixed, but always inadequately.
ii.] The Man-Mind: Witt, etc. 85
called reducing it to the unity of consciousness, — to
that basis which remains a " one " in the midst of end-
less receptivities and activities.
Perception, then, may also be defined as the seizing of
an object as a total and a single and reducing it, as itself
and nothing else, to the conscious subject1
We have now passed from passive-activity to active-
activity. We have got pure Will as the differentia
or idea of man as distinguished from other animals.
Let us keep fast hold of it as the clue which can
alone guide us through the labyrinth of mental evo-
lution, and, by reducing all to unity, give simplicity
of view. The "idea" in a thing, remember, governs
by inherent right all the elements in that thing. It
is supreme in all its relations to the thing, and all
the relations of that thing to other things.
We have now passed from Nature (with its impres-
sions and reflex activities) to SPIRIT and FREEDOM.
Note now: 1. The definition of Percipience; 2.
That percipience is of singles; 3. That it is an act of
discrimination whereby one is separated from all else
— all else being meanwhile in attuent sensation alone ;
4. That percipience as above defined is of inner
sensates as well as of outer sensates ; 5. That the
knowledge of all we can finally know begins with
percipience ; 6. That this percipience is the first
1 There is here manifestly a process which is a dialectic process ;
but for this I refer to my book entitled Met. N. et V., merely say-
ing here that this first and elemental process of percipience is the
process of Reason generally, or, as we say, its Form, Essence, or
Idea.
86 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
movement of Reason in taking the universal com-
plex we call experience, and, subsequently, each
individual complex, to pieces with a view to building
up these elementary percepts into a known unity, and
so superseding the sensed whole, the mere attuit;
7. That after the first act of percipience is performed,
the total sensate or attuit is converted into a percept ;
8. That an attuit involves consciousness ; a percept,
self-consciousness ; 9. That the mere separation of
sensates (singles or aggregate wholes) as diverse in
attuition, is a separation effected by reflex action in
response to an impression or stimulus ; while the dis-
crimination effected in percipience is through an act
of Will, and involves affirmation and speech. But,
above all, note that the movement in percipience is a
free movement of Will — a differentiating, pure, sub-
ject-generated act which lifts man out of the animal,
and is thus, as idea of man, the key to all intellectual
operations (e.g. Concept, General Concept, etc.), the
governing principle in Ethics, the guide in the maze
of Political Philosophy, the master-conception in the
education of a human being.1
The educational deduction is this —
THE EDUCATION OF MIND AS REASON IS THE TRAIN-
ING AND DISCIPLINE OF «WlLL AS A power / AND
1 Not only so ; but in an analysis of the percipient process which
lies outside our purpose here, and of the nature of the act as a
differentiating, negating, and determining act, lies the true critique
of knowing, and the explanation, though not perhaps always the
solution, of many metaphysical questions.
ii.] The Man-Mind: Will, etc. 87
SECONDLY, THE TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE OF THE
WILL-MOVEMENT AS A process WHEREBY THE CON-
SCIOUS SUBJECT TAKES THE WORLD TO ITSELF AS
KNOWLEDGE.
But, we live in a Meal, not in a Formal world; and
in selecting subjects for education we have to consider
man's immediate needs and duties, while always using
these subjects in such a way as to train and discipline
the Will-Power and the Will-Process.
I have pointed out that what I first perceive as a
one thing is that which is already a sensate. To
ascertain, then, what it is I perceive, I must under-
stand what the sensate yields to pre-percipient sense.
It yields — (a) The consciousness or sensation of a
complex extended total ; (b) The consciousness of that
total as being; (c) The consciousness of that complex
total as localised out there ; (d) A consciousness of
the spatial relation of that total to other diverse
totals.
None the less is percipience the percipience of a
one total sensate. The sensate itself is a complex,
but it is as a fused complex that it is first perceived.
Note on Consciousness and Self-Consciousness.
I have said that a sensate is an object in sensation. It is
only when the inner reaction is adequate that an impression
extricates itself from identification with the subject-con-
sciousness and becomes an "object." The fact and word
"object" brings necessarily with it the correlative fact and
word "subject." Prior to this there is a state of what we
88 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
may call subjective feeling, but there is no experienced
subject, because there is no experienced object.
Now in sensation I do not in any sense know the object.
The subject is at this stage merely a basis or point of sup-
port for the object. I sense the sensate (object) as a some-
thing not the subject, but the subject itself is not objectified.
The subject is sunk in the lower state of Feeling simply.
The subject senses the sensate, but it only vaguely feels itself.
That is to say, the subject is not yet extricated from the
whole of being and made to stand out as itself a substantive
and specific being. This is possible only at a subsequent
stage of mind beyond that of sensation and attuition, — the
stage at which there advances, from within, the energy or
force of which I have spoken (call it Spontaneity or Will as
you please), and seizes or grips the sensate and takes it back
a second time into consciousness.
Note that sense and the sensate, the conscient and the
conscite,1 are already there; but the latter, the sensate or
object, is sensed as the negation of the subject, the former,
i.e. the conscient or sensing subject, is merely felt as ground,
and not, in any strict meaning, sensed as the positive of the
negation.
But, when T a second time, through a pure act of Will,
take hold of the sensate or object, what do I do with it? I
replace it in consciousness as an object, and at the same
time affirm it to be an object there-existent (outside) and
not me the subject. In thus placing the sensate a second
time into the conscious subject, I affirm all that has been
sensed, including negation of the subject, and, further, be-
come aware of the subject itself as that into which I have
replaced the object. I perceive the object and I sense the
subject ; and have now, further, the power of perceiving and
affirming the subject when the time is ripe.
For the affirmation of negation is the affirmation of
position.
1 If I may use such terms.
ii.] The Man-Mind: Will, etc. 89
Why then do I not say at once that the perception of the
object is also the perception of the subject, instead of saying
that the result is only the sensing of the subject? The
answer is that the potency of perceiving the conscious subject
by the conscious subject, in other words, self-consciousness,
is certainly now on the field ; but the act of perception, let
us remember, involves the discrimination of an object from
all other objects through the negation of those other objects,
and we cannot attain to a clear perception of the subject as
such by the subject, except by an observation of inner facts
and conditions, — a more difficult operation than the obser-
vation of external facts and conditions. Accordingly, the
state of the case is this, that we, as a matter of fact, at this
stage do little more than sense the subject as, in a general
way, not the object. Mind grows gradually and by infinitely
small steps.
LECTURE III.
CONCIPIENCE AND THE SENSE-CONCEFf OF THE
INDIVIDUAL.
WITH all the celerity that belongs to Mind, the per-
cept of the determined total becomes a perception of
the elements in that complex total. The moment the
subject is conscious of any separate element in the
single total before it (the attuit or sensate), it syn-
thesises that element with the attuit as a one with it.
This is the point of transition from Percipience to
Concipience.
The attuited object, we have seen, may have some
quality so prominent as to impress sense more vividly
than the other elements in it (e.g. to a dog, the smell
of the object); still, this quality is, as yet, simply a
sensation. But if, in the percipience of the total, I
rapidly distinguish in it a specific character or quality,
the percept of the total is then affirmed along with its
most prominent mark thus distinguished.
And this means that the Percept of the total attuit
has suddenly become a Concept of the total attuit.
Why a Concept? Why not still call it a Percept?
Because percipience of the singular or individual must
precede the consciousness of an object as made up of
many singulars. The holding together as a unity of
90
LECT. in.] Concipience and the Sense- Concept. 91
differentiated elements in any total object is Conceiv-
ing in its strict signification.
I have the whole world present to my consciousness
as a sensational attuit and as individual attuits. Each
object comes to me as a complex and laden with all the
categories ; many of which are blazoned on it and
simply received by me, such as extensity, quantity,
quality, relation; others are implicit, and await the
emergence in my consciousness of the capacity to see
them, which capacity is a pure activity, viz. "Will. All
as yet is in sense.
I then make the first step in knowing ; for I reduce
this that, and the other sensate or attuit to self-con-
sciousness, as discriminated, perceived, affirmed. But
the pure activity of Will, just because it is pure
activity, insists on prosecuting its work of reduction
to consciousness, with a view to the ascertainment of
the elements, relations, and implications of the thing
before me, in order that it may ultimately convert the
as yet complex chaotic thing into a rational unity.
Finally, it strives to convert the whole world-presenta-
tion into a rational unity or cosmos.
In the last word of the Rational alone can Reason
ultimately rest. Will, and the process whereby it
reduces and harmonises sensation, has its own right
to live, as much as a rose or a bird has. It perseveres
in its own existence for the fulfilment of its own life.
It has a long and difficult task before it; for it has
not only rationally to know things, but to actualise its
knowledge in conduct in the face of an infinite number
92 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
of obstacles and antagonisms. But this it must do, or
it will die overwhelmed by nature and sense.
I have reached this point, that from among a multi-
tude of objects in sensation I have discriminated, per-
ceived, and affirmed a total object as a total, e.g. orange,
I thereupon discriminate the most salient impressions
or qualities ; and so, almost before I am aware of it,
pass from percipience to concipience, from self-con-
sciousness of the single or individual to a self-conscious-
ness of that individual as a unity of separate and sepa-
rable elements. At this point I have a Concept of
the individual — a true synthesis of activity (not of
mere sense) so far as it goes. The attuit is no longer
merely a total and single, it is a Unity and a One.
Now, still following the same lines, I begin to discrim-
inate, perceive, and affirm other parts or elements
which enter into and constitute the complex orange to
sense. These I continue to hold together as they exist
outside there together in the object. But the object
as sensate always remains as a total ; that is to say,
the general total impression of the object on sense is
not superseded: it is only, so far, transcended and
explicated.
Let us return now, at the risk of repetition, to the
salient feature of the object. In sensation-proper, a
dog, when sensing a man or a wheelbarrow, has a
sensate of these objects as totals, the particular quali-
ties of these objects being fused and confused in the
whole. But after a sufficient number of repetitions,
he becomes aware of one or more particulars as asso-
in.] Concipience and the Sense- Concept. 93
elated with the total in sense and distinguishing it :
it may be the general gait or swing of the man, or the
revolving wheel of the barrow. These prominent or
salient characteristics impress him most deeply (make
a deeper dint, so to speak, on his sensory), because
of their prominence and salience. Different animals
will have natural affinities, as determined by their
organisms and needs, for different qualities in a total
thing present to them. These salient qualities are
only associated in sense; not affirmed in percipient
and concipient activity.
Now, in percipience it is the same as in attuition,
but with a difference. In actively breaking up and
discriminating the qualities aggregated in the total,
you will perceive, first, the deepest impression, that
is to say, the most salient quality. The perceived
total, the orange, is, no doubt, sensed as distinct in
number and locality and relation from other objects as
a single, but the elements are as yet in sense alone, and
not explicated into perception : for this they are wait-
ing. It is only retrospectively, and after percipience,
that I am able to say that these elements ever were in
the primary complex at all. You will probably first
of all perceive the roundness, and then the yellowness
of the orange, as opposed to other objects which are
not round and yellow. You now are conceiving ; that
is to say, you are taking together two or more quali-
ties as constituting the orange as a perceived "thing."
Your concept is now a " round yellow thing." Observe
the word thing — the thing being the total sensate (or
attuit), which always persists in your consciousness
94 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
awaiting further dissection in percipience, with a view
to a richer and ever richer concept of itself.
Consequently, however many facts I perceive and af-
firm, these have always a sub-self-conscious reference to
the total in sensation. (Note at end of Lecture.) This
orange which I perceive is not only yellow and round,
but smooth, thick-skinned, pulpy, sweet, odorous.
All these percepts, taken together, ere long constitute
the object in knowledge, and are held together by the
force of my Will. The total single in sensation has
been transformed into a unity in percipience, or a unity
of percepts. These percepts are taken together — con-
cepted — and the unity of the perceived object is now
the CONCEPT of the object.
To CONCEIVE ANY OBJECT, THEN, IS TO TAKE TO-
GETHER IN A UNITY THE PERCEIVED PROPERTIES OF
THAT OBJECT. The Concept is a One in Many.
So various and infinite are the suggestions of the
universal outside me, that I, as a mind struggling to
know and to use what I know, am driven into a habit
of mental shorthand. When I perceive an orange as
a total thing presented to my consciousness, I, after
the preceding analysis has been effected, also at the
same moment, conceive it as a unity; but I do not
rehearse in my mind the series a, &, c, d, which make
up its concept. I see a house: what goes on in my
consciousness? This: first, I sense the house as a
total object, separated from other totals in space;
secondly, I perceive a certain quality or property, or
qualities or properties, of that house, e.g. its con-
in.] Concipience and the Sense-Concept. 95
figuration, its colour, its door and its windows (one or
more of these), and at the same moment I conceive
these percepts (take them together), and say "that is a
house," and not anything else. But there are numer-
ous other formerly perceived qualities of a house quite
well known to me which never emerge into clear con-
sciousness at all. They are sub-conscious, and are
ready to be brought up to the plane of self -conscious-
ness if I should happen to want them.
Once I have so far analysed the total object in per-
ception, and affirmed certain percepts as in and of it,
I cannot, if I would, now perceive a house except in so
far as I conceive it; for there is now more than one
element in my conscious experience of the total as a
one.
The percepts by which I recognise a house are, doubt-
less, those which most vividly presented themselves to
me in sensation — the salient and most impressive
properties (percepts) which came first in experience,
and formed a kind of nucleus round which the others
clustered. These not only came first in experience,
but, so far as we can see, they come first in every suc-
cessive experience of the same object. For the mind,
advancing by stages to knowledge, not only assumes
the prior stages, but repeats them. When I see a
house and call it a house, I feel, I sense, I perceive,
and I conceive. The ignoring of this fact leads to not
a little confusion in psychology.
Order in Concipience. — Observe now the order in the
Concipience of a complex object; (a) The most promi-
96 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
nent and salient qualities are first perceived, and (b) these
remain with us as a representative notation whereby we
recognise an object which has been once conceived by us.
As our experience extends, all our percepts of things
become concepts of things. As total single objects we
perceive the sensate as discriminated from other sen-
sates; as a one in many, we conceive the object in its
parts relatively to itself as a system of parts. It is a
unity. After this stage, we never can be said to per-
ceive an old object, whether in presentation or repre-
sentation, without conceiving it.
The parts of an attuit which we first discriminate
and perceive are, we have seen, the most prominent
and salient: these being the most impressive of the
qualities of the object, they demand the minimum of
exertion for Percipience. And these salient qualities
we hold in our consciousness plus the sub-consciousness
of the totality as impressed on sensation; and these
together constitute the object for us.
This psychological fact yields us guidance in the
Art of teaching, for it tells us this —
Principle of Method. — TEACH FIRST THE MOST SALI-
ENT QUALITIES OB CHARACTERS OF THINGS, AND THERE-
AFTER FILL IN, UNTIL THE CONTENT IN CONSCIOUSNESS
EQUALS THE CONTENT OF THE THING OR SUBJECT
TAUGHT.
We have now made some progress in our Psychology,
for we have the whole animal intelligence before us,
which is also ours, and, further, two movements of
in.] Ooncipience and the Sense- Concept. 97
mind which are distinctive of man, and which are both
dependent on the central energy, Will.
Note. — The Sub-Conscious. — Without entering on the
general question of the Unconscious, I would remark
here :
1. That conscious or attuent activity, being within the
sphere of the dynamical, is constantly operative ; but that
se//K;onscious activities (which are all on a higher plane),
when they are intense and concentrated, suppress the merely
conscious or sensational solicitations. Where there is no
self-concentration, these conscious or attue'nt solicitations
and suggestions occupy the whole field, being granted, when
vivid, a certain dreamy admission to the self-conscious
sphere. These consciousnesses, which never cross the boun-
dary line of self -consciousness, fulfil a function in the growth
of the fabric of mind generally, as regards its material.
They doubtless enrich the soil of mind (so to speak).
2. That it seems to be an error to speak of sub-conscious
operations ; for unconscious consciousness is a contradiction
in terms. There may be, of course, cerebration going on
which does not rise to consciousness. There seems, how-
ever, to be no limit to sub-self-conscious operations, which
may be going on unheeded by the self-conscious subject
when it is concentrated or asleep. Suspend self-concentra-
tion, and we constantly become aware of the fact that con-
sciousness as sensation has been going on. Harking back
a little, we recall that the "clock has struck without our
knowing it" (as is said) — the retrospective perception of
a dying sensate.
3. That a knowledge or volition which has been self-
consciously achieved becomes, by frequent repetition, a con-
stituent element in the merely conscious or dynamical life.
Effort is no longer necessary, and the act, whether intellectual
or moral, is accomplished with only a minimum of self -con-
98 Institutes of Education. [LECT. m.
sciousness being present. It is, secondarily-automatic. The
product of the higher energy of self-conscious mind would
seem to sink down, as a permanent possession, into the
merely reflexive conscious sphere of natural action and
reaction, and become an integral part of our nature and
character.
LECTURE IV.
UNITY OF THE RATIONAL MIND: IN ITS EDUCATIONAL
REFERENCE.*
RATIONAL intelligence, as yre have seen, is the con-
scious subject freely functioning Will as its instrument
in dealing with the multifarious presentations in sen-
sation or attuition. The subject, as functioning Will,
is like Neptune raising his head above the troubled
ocean to see what is going on, and to regulate and
direct. The conflicting waves have, however, dynam-
ical laws of their own, which they are obeying : the
sea-god has to accept these laws, and by his will to
control them to certain ends. This energising of Will
is at once, accordingly, an intellectual and an ethical
movement; for an ethical act is simply Will effect-
ing a thought end, which end is conceived, made
one's own, and projected by mind, as motive of
action.
You will observe, then, that this fundamental con-
ception of rational psychology has, because of its
ethical bearing, a very great significance in education.
In psychology as a science, also, apart from its edu-
cational reference, the conception is pregnant with
1 See also Appendix, D.
100 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
results. The most important is this, that it gives a
clue which guides through the labyrinth of mental
phenomena. Fix your attention on this Will, take
hold of it, and follow it as it moves step by step in its
triumphant progress towards the reduction of all pres-
entations to consciousness from without and from
within. In contemplation of this one movement, you
see revealed the fact that reason is essentially a one
faculty, and not an aggregate of many faculties. And
yet, there are steps to be taken by it which must be
taken one after the other, viz. Percipience, Concipi-
ence, etc., and these involve prior attuition, compari-
son, discrimination, analysis and synthesis. The steps
have to be looked at by us in order of time ; but, as a
matter of fact, these, and all further, steps are already
contained in the mere knowing of any one object.
This knowing is, in short, a one complex act; but in
order that we may understand it, the act has, as being
a, process of Will, to be resolved into its parts — broken
up into its elements. When we speak of Percipience,
Concipience, and the further steps of Reason yet await-
ing our consideration, we are simply analysing the
complex unity of the act of knowing any one thing as
it may be known. Since these steps are elements in a
complex, they are to be called " moments, " in the one
Will-movement or process. But we separate them
logically, and as the first is necessary to the second, so
we place them in a time-order.
Conceive, then, Reason (as distinguished from and
transcending feeling and sensation — the whole sphere
of Attuition) as —
iv.] Unity of the Rational Mind. 101
1. WILL-POWER, pure and simple.
2. WILL-PROCESS, with all that it involves.
Do this, I say, and there can be no doubt that,
whether true or not, the conception will give simplic-
ity and unity to your grasp of Keason in all its active
successive manifestations on the way to its end, which
end is knowledge and consequent action. Once grasp
the central thought and your future study is shortened
as well as simplified : the theory of the education of
man's intelligence is revealed.
To work out fully all that is contained in the above
conception of reason, would be to lead you into what is
called metaphysics; but it would be also to lead you
away from the practical aim of these lectures, which is
the doctrine of rational mind in the definite and re-
stricted field of the education of rational mind. It is
evident that if mind grows to maturity after a cer-
tain way, the education of mind must follow that way.
Method in education means simply a " way " ; and the
method of educating mind must be the way of mind
itself as it grows from infancy to maturity. Accord-
ingly, the Theory of Education, in so far as it is
Methodology, is simply the governing principles of the
method of discipline and instruction, as these can be
shown to flow from the way mind grows.
You will find, as you go on, that many of these
principles have been empirically ascertained, and have
received the support of every writer on education,
without regard to the question whether they have a
scientific basis in the laws of the growth of mind or
pot. Our business here is to bring to view the scien-
102 Institutes of Education. [LECT. iv.
tific basis, and make you conscious of it; and this is
Theory as distinct from Methodology.
Let me now sum up what we have ascertained as
regards the animal or sensational, and the man or
rational mind and also give definitions.
LECTURE V.
SUMMING UP AND DEFINITIONS (THUS FAR).
MIND.
Intelligence : Common to Animal and Man.
[The Feelings and Desires of Animals, as collected
in Lecture L, Part II., are here omitted, because
they fall under the ethical section of the phi-
losophy of rational mind.]
1. Sensation of objects, and a, feeling of the individual
subject.
2. Comparison of objects in sensation (or as sensates) :
likeness and unlikeness.
3. Sensation of relations of objects in time and space.
4. Memory (involving retentiveness, and a sensation
of similarity of a present to a former presentate).
5. Imagination (images of what is not now present),
or Eepresentation.
6. Association of sensations as sensations, viz. asso-
ciation of sensations as like and unlike, and as
coexistent, or immediately sequent, in time or
space.
7. Sympathy with the intelligence of others : conse-
quently, Imitation.
103
104 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
All this is on the reflex or passivo-active plane of
Consciousness. The animal is moved by the object,
tossed hither and thither by impressions as reflected
by its own subject. For example, when an animal
seems to be occupied with an object, it does not
"attend" in any true meaning of that term, any more
than it ever " intends " ; it is detained by the object,
and what we have before us is a detention of the con-
scious subject, not attention by it. Again, the animal
does not compare or discriminate : objects compare and
discriminate themselves on the subject. The term
assigned to the reflex sensational intelligence of the
animal is Attuition, not Perception, still less Knowing.
Man Intelligence.
All the above passive activities of mind are con-
stantly operative in man, and constitute a great part
of his daily life, which is largely automatic both in
the intellectual and moral sphere; and they occupy
almost the whole field of consciousness in the mind of
the infant and child.
But now, the conscious subject functions a free
energy or power to be called WILL, and the result is a
movement towards the prehension or apprehension of
sensates, and this in successive steps or moments, by
which it effects their reduction to consciousness,
affirmation, and rational knowledge. Hence —
1. Percipience and the Percept,
2. Concipience and the Concept:
v.] Summing up and Definitions (thus far}. 105
and the other steps in the one reason-movement still
to be considered.
Definitions.
At this point it may be well to make clear our
terminology, that you may have it for reference; and
the doing of this will give us an opportunity of, con-
versationally revising and supplementing what has
been said in past lectures.
A. — Mix D is Consciousness from the lowest animal,
to its highest man, manifestation.
The fundamental fact of mind is FEKLING, and this
is both outer and inner. Mind starts into existence
with a presentation. We can get no better name for
the rudimentary fact than Feeling, whether we speak
of the intelligence, or of the appetites, of instincts,
impulses, or emotions.
(a) Feeling is to be denned as an indefinite aware-
ness, in which mind as subject is not yet differentiated
from the presentation which is the content of the Feel-
ing, and which may be called the object. There is as
yet, however, no Object and Subject. Feeling may
be of the single or of the multitudinous.1
1 Some writers seem to have an almost superstitious delight in
exaggerating the mystery of certain phenomena, and the impossi-
bility of fixing them. Not only can this primal mental state be
detected in the young of animals and man, but the most cultivated
man, unless he is wholly destitute of the emotional element, and
lives an exclusively arithmetical existence from which everything
is excluded save what can be numbered and measured, constantly
experiences Feeling as I have denned it. Indeed, it is pretty certain
106 Institutes of Education. [I.ECT.
(6) Sensation is feeling which, at the continued
solicitation of the presentation, has evolved into a
feeling of the presentation or content as separate.
This stage of feeling is sensation. Sensation, becom-
ing aware of a variety of objects, is the sensation of
diversity ; but this is no new phenomenon, but merely
a numerical addition to the first sensation, and like it
in kind.
We now have, as a matter of fact, Subject and Object;
but we do not have a sensation of Subject. For this
we must manifestly first sense subject as an Object,
which is, at this stage, impossible. We feel the object
as not subject (this is sensation) ; but we do not feel
the subject as not object. We simply feel subject as a
vague point of support for object. To sense subject as
an object is to be se?/-conscious — conscious of one's
own being as a being.
The sensing of the " object " is not simple. There
is contained in this consciousness — the being of the
object and the extensity of the object, and the there-
ness or outness of the object.
The organic appetitive feelings we do not at this
stage sense, but only feel vaguely.
(c) Desire is to be defined as a feeling from within,
so intense as to cause movement and a pressing forward
to some object for its own filling or satisfaction.
that even the most rational adult has never a clear perception or
conception of anything new, without beginning at this point of
vague indefiniteness, where subject and object are undifferentiated.
This is Feeling in the generic use of the term : it is also specifically
used to denote feelings which have an inner origin.
v.] Summing up and Definitions (thus /ar). 107
(d) Emotion may be defined as desire to satisfy
needs outside and above the merely organic and appeti-
tive; e.g. the need of satisfying goodwill to others,
the need of satisfying the feeling (when "Keason"
appears) of the beautiful, of the universal and rational,
of the infinite, and of God. All morality and religion
are based on primitive needs, and corresponding
impulses to satisfy needs through that which is not
the subject itself, but something else.
(e) Sympathy is a community of feeling of one being
with other beings (and with the universal of Being),
and is the precondition of all emotion (though best
defined after it).
(/) /Subject and Object. — By Subject is meant the
one permanent conscious entity which receives pres-
entations to sense from whatever source, inner or
outer, they come. The Object is the presentation to
consciousness, and is to-be called the Presentate.
(g) The Representate is the name to be given to all
objects in consciousness which have been previously
there, but which are not ilier> , selves now really present.
It is equivalent to image, but ought never to be called
idea, which is a word sacred to a specific meaning.
(li) Analysis is the taking of a complex whole to
pieces; and Synthesis is the putting together again
of the parts, and so transforming the " whole " into a
"unity."
This involves the self-conscious separating of one
thing from another, and as opposed to that other,
i.e. Discrimination; and Discrimination is impossible
without an act of will directed against a complex
whole.
108 Institutes of Education. [LKCT. v.
(i) Will is the free self-generated nisus of the
conscious subject.
(f) Attention is an act of will sustained with a
purpose.
Note. — EVERY NEW MOVEMENT OF MIND PRESUMES
ALL THE PRIOR MOVEMENTS, AND CARRIES THEM
WITH IT.
LECTURE VI.
APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING ANALYSIS TO EDU-
CATIONAL METHOD.
WHEN we spoke of the Human Body as vehicle of
sensation and of activity alike, — the physical basis of
Mind, — we showed that it was the first thing to attend
to in the education of the young. The first, because
the necessary condition of the health of mind, but not
the most important. We must eat to live, but eating
is not so important as living. We also deduced the
lessons which the laws of the body impose on the edu-
cator, whether he be a private or public instructor.1
We might postpone a similar application of the
Doctrine of Mind until we had completed our survey ;
but it is, for many reasons, better that you should now
at this stage comprehend the educational and concrete
significance of the philosophical and abstract, so far as
we have gone.
The First Principle of Method, as deduced from the
supreme ethical end of education, is —
TURN EVERYTHING TO USE.
Corollary — Teach nothing that is useless.
1 To save space, these were not elaborated, but only indicated.
109
110 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
Passing from this, let us take up in order the vari-
ous stages of conscious mind. We encounter first of
all Feeling, as pre-condition of consciousness-proper.
Feeling.
I. The babe in arms is, in its earliest stages, a
creature mainly of Feeling — that state in which sub-
ject and object are practically identified. So far as
Feeling, therefore, is concerned, the philosophy of
mind teaches us nothing as to the education of mind.
All we can say is, that looking to the facts that all
is always in and through nerve, it is important to a
healthy nerve-tissue that we should protect the child
from all painful, discordant, or offensive impressions.
Calm and placidity, which indicate a harmonious equi-
librium of nerve processes, must have some effect on
the future mind-life of the babe. Were it possible
then (we speak of an ideal state of things) to promote
this equilibrium by securing perfect health in the
organic functions, and by admitting to the avenues
of sense nothing but pleasing sounds and smells
and sights, and avoiding all that is sudden, harsh,
discordant, and offensive, it would be a good thing.
When Montaigne's father would not permit him to be
suddenly awakened from sleep, but roused him gradu-
ally with gentle music, he was not so far wrong. Who
knows but that much of Montaigne's sweet reasonable-
ness of nature may have owed something to this deli-
cate solicitude? Can any one look at the treatment of
infants by the majority of well-intentioned mothers
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. Ill
without being surprised that they are so quiet as they
are? The mothers seem to imagine that if they are
gratifying their own animal affection, the babe should
in some way respond. Their general intelligence is
too low to understand the dictates of sympathy for
their little charge. They think of themselves and
their too explosive loVe, and not of the actual condi-
tion and ne"eds of the babe. The instinct of animals
teaches us a lesson. They never seem to meddle with
their young at this stage, save wisely. Providing for
all their wants, the parent seems to leave the rest to
nature. Men and women are apt to forget that mere
gushing tenderness for helpless babes is a very cheap
matter, and that true love shows itself, not in ill-
regulated fondling, but in the sympathetic action which
understands, anticipates, and satisfies the needs of the
infant. Doubtless, mothers and nurses more or less
consciously aim at this. Let us wish them more
success.
Let us not forget that the whole of mind, including
the essential man-characteristic, is always there in the
man-child, waiting for the conditions which make its
emergence possible. Accordingly, we cannot say at
what specific point a babe begins to perceive, as dis-
tinguished from the mere sensing of, objects; but this
is manifest enough that sensation comes first, and as it
is the source of all future material of mind (save the
matter and issue of the Reason-process itself — nisi
ipse intellectus), certain propositions may be advanced
with some confidence. There is an order in the devel-
opment of Faculty. Accordingly,
112 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
If one Rule of Educational Method be more conspic-
uous than another (so far as we have yet carried our
analysis) it is this —
Second Principle : — IN EDUCATING, FOLLOW THE
ORDER OF MIND-GROWTH, WHICH is ALSO, GENERALLY
SPEAKING, THE ORDER OF BRAIN-GROWTH.
An old and empirical rule this : all we can do is to
point to its scientific vindication. Doubtless we all
have to recognise this rule, whether we will or not;
and in our attempts (which are constant) to ignore it
we meet with signal failure. But, spite of this, we go
on believing that we know better than nature and God,
and taking advantage of a child's memory for symbolic
sounds we impart knowledge (so-called) prematurely
— a practice not only useless, but hurtful and obstruc-
tive. Take any subject you please, you must regulate
your action by the principle, or fail. Not only has
each age its own fitting studies, but it has its own way
of comprehending and assimilating the same study.
Take, for example, religion and the idea of God. The
man-child is essentially a religious being, and you have
to help him in the slow evolution of his religious life.
What can God be to a child? He can be something;
but what ? Whatever He can be, He ought to be by
your help; but no more. And so on with morality
and with all intellectual teachings. Find out what
things can be to a child, and limit yourselves to that,
if you wish to succeed. Of this more fully when we
speak of applied method, which is the Art of education.
I would only make one remark here, that if ever you
have the mind of an undeveloped adult to deal with (a
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. 113
Central African, for example, or a British boor), and
desire to teach him anything, you must, even with
him, start from the simplest child-elements of it.
(Let the clergy and missionaries take note of this.)
The order of mind-growth in knowing is also the
order of the object-growth in completing itself. Not
only does the knowing faculty move to its end after
a certain manner and by a certain series of steps, in
other words, by an evolutionary process ; but we may
say that the object of knowledge itself by a kind of
parallel movement builds itself up out of sensation
into knowledge. It may be said to separate itself
from other things, assume its own percept and con-
cept, and so forth: A (tree) differences itself as a
percept from B (bush) and (7 (carrot) . We may look
at the growth of knowledge from the side of the object
as well as of the subject.
Consequently, we can deduce from the Second Prin-
ciple these Rules —
Rule 1. In the teaching of every subject build it up
in the mind of the child in accordance with the order of
mind-growth.
Eule 2. Proceed step by step, and step after step.
Sensation.
I shall not at this stage speak of those character-
istics of the conscious subject which follow the sensing
of an object, viz. retentiveness and memory, imagina-
tion, etc., because we have still to consider to what
extent these native capacities of all mind (if we may
use that term) are effected by the emergence and
114 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
activity of Will and the Rational; and, consequently,
anything I might say now would have to be repeated.
I speak here only of the Sensational or Attuitional
stage of human intelligence.
At this stage we have the conscious subject here and
objects there, which objects as sensed we have called
sensates. It is probable that this sensational life is
dominant (though not, of course, excluding Percipient
and Concipient activities) from the age of nine months
to about six years of age complete — the period
(roughly) of the beginning of the second dentition.
If this be so, then the educational lesson is that we
should not interfere with free sensational life.
Third Principle : — UP TO THE AGE OF six, WHAT-
EVER ELSE IS DONE LET THERE BE NO INTERFERENCE
WITH THE FREEDOM OF SENSATION, BUT RATHER EN-
COURAGE CONTACT WITH ALL FORMS OF EXISTENCE,
AND PROMOTE THE NATURAL ACTIVITY OF THE CHILD
IN EVERY DIRECTION.
Sensation is observation of external facts and rela-
tions; but this of a purely animal kind. It is not
human observation. Cultivate the senses, we are told,
as if this were the sum of early education. This is
one of the results of an inadequate psychology. What
we have to cultivate — i.e. train and discipline — is
Percipience and Concipience. But the universal basis
of finite mind is sense (sensations of the outer and
sensations of the inner), and a broad and liberal founda-
tion must be laid if the mental growth is afterwards to
be broad and liberal and sound. Some people would
make the child exact from the first. The exactness of
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. 115
Percipience and Concipience is limitation. Let the
child alone : let him be the victim of the myriad sen-
sations which pour in on him. The soil may be
growing nothing, but it is being fertilised with a view
to a future harvest. It is mere pedantry to interfere
at this stage, and the result will be, or ought to be,
narrow and pedantic. By all means provide raw
material for the child, but leave him alone to make
what he can of it. By all means give him paper, and
pencils, and painting brushes, and colours, and bricks,
and spades; but let him alone. We were not sent
into this world to be manufactured by pedants, but to
grow from our own roots and soil. Nature in this
earliest stage is itself accomplishing the work that has
to be done for the individual mind. But we can do
much to help nature here as elsewhere : and by " help-
ing " I simply mean giving nature a chance and remov-
ing the impediments which civilisation has put in one
child's way, and giving to another child the advan-
tages of civilisation.
For example, a city child comes into contact with
so many existences, — persons and things, — and these
for the most part in continual motion, that his senses
are stimulated to an early, even precocious, activity
beyond the possible experience of a rustic. On the
other hand, the rustic is impressed by the comparative
repose of things, with the forms of nature, with ani-
mals, and the slow operations of agriculture, and so
receives a depth of impression which gives solidity,
without variety and alertness, to the future intelli-
gence. A rustic child, then, should visit cities for
116 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
activity and versatility ; a city child should visit the
country for nature and repose. It is not necessary to
be always directing the child what to look at. Let
him feel to repletion, and leave " Eyes and no Eyes "
to the copy-books. Let him look at what he likes,
but give him opportunities. This is what I mean by
cultivating sensation. Percipience and Concipience
are, of course, going on in the child, because he can't
help it. He is selecting what suits him ; and you may
depend on this, it is not what suits you. Sensation,
as such, is the basis of the future operations of reason,
and should be rich and various that it may be fruitful.
Do not, therefore, limit, or in any way restrict, the
receptivity and natural free activity of the child under
the pretext of turning his knowing powers to account.
The Kindergarten system may, as regards the intelli-
gence at least, be abused by the over-direction, with
an ulterior purpose, of the free natural activities of
the child. The chief gain in the kindergarten system
is its full recognition of the activities of the young in
the direction of construction. It thus gives a city
child of wealthy parents, some of the advantages of
the gutter. It is an extension and an evolution of the
nursery practice of playing with bricks, encourage-
ment being, however, given to imitate definite forms
presented as drawings. The flat brick with toothed
ends, admitting of one being fitted into another, is of
more value than all the Frobelian " gifts." The moral
and physical influences, on the other hand, of a wise
Kindergarten are, considering the barbarism of the
lower stratum of our population, wholly good.
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. 117
And note : what is true of the child is also true of
us men. We are (if we may so say) too much the
victims of regulated and reasoned sensations, and, con-
sequently, too much the slaves of a narrow and logical
activity. We, too, should remember that it is God
Himself who so lavishly offers to each of us the riches
of sensation and feeling, and that if we do not keep
the sensational consciousness open we are guilty of a
" sullenness 'gainst nature " and God, and tend to
grow narrower as we grow older. Our little person-
alities shut out the wealth and glory of the universal.
We do not wish to rear poets ; but except in so far as
a man is a sharer in the inspiration of the poetic tem-
perament, he is only half -born. Philosophy and relig-
ion are to him sealed books : in the one department,
as in the other, he is fit onlyjurare in verba (literally)
magistri. Reason gives interpretation and form, but
feeling is the inexhaustible fountain of reality.
Men, whose avenues of Sensation have been early
blocked by the limitations incident to definite knowl-
edge, have often great force within a narrow sphere of
intellectual or moral activity; but their narrowness
interferes with enjoyment of life in any large sense,
and may even unfit them for the administration of
important affairs. Their sympathy and imagination
are cold and barren. True life, as distinguished from
departmental knowledge and purposed activity, in-
cludes (always along with these, of course) openness
to the universal in all its myriad forms, and a ready
response to its never-ceasing solicitations. Educa-
tion is an extensive as well as an intensive process.
118 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
The mind that is the slave of knowledge tends to be
essentially obscurantist, because it is the slave of tra-
ditionary conceptions by which it judges all things. It
is this traditionary spirit which is the enemy of
Humanism, though, strange to say, it is often most
conspicuous in men who have been trained exclusively
in the (so-called) Humanities. The historical struggle
between Obscurantism and Humanism repeats itself in
every age, and, indeed, in the struggles of each indi-
vidual with himself.
In the case of the city child, then, let him have the
country as much as possible ; in the case of the rustic,
let him have the city : and failing that, markets, fairs,
travelling circuses, panoramas (especially geographi-
cal), musical entertainments, games, and magic-lantern
exhibitions. It is true that the life of sensation is
never more, intellectually, than the attuition of objects
as wholes and of their relations in locality; but this,
after all, is the foundation of the fabric of mind, and
has to be respected. But we are not to forestall the
next stage of mind-evolution.
Take note of this, however : just because a child is
a human, and not a mere animal intelligence, the rudi-
mentary acts of Percipience, Concipience, Generalisa-
tion, and Reasoning are all going on, in a dim and
groping way, during the whole of the sensational period
without your interference. For example, the marked
and conspicuous difference of one thing from another
— a stone from a piece of wood, grass from trees — is
making the percipient act, though it is an act of will,
easy. So with concepts of individuals, which to a child
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. 119
consist of the most prominent characters only. So
with generalisations, which are rude and inadequate
because they deal only with what most vividly im-
presses sense. To hasten the ripening of these acts
is to barter life for knowledge, and to cheat the child
of a multifarious experience which will be afterwards
in due time turned to account.
Up to the age of five or six you may introduce a
child to new objects as sensational wholes, which in
his ordinary experience might escape him; but this is
all. He perceives these objects as " wholes " ; and
object-lessons should never go beyond this. During
the last two years of infancy — the sixth and seventh
years — you may safely give object-lessons of a more
extended kind, but they must be given as an exercise
in the perception of qualities which are obvious and
superficial; and objects not within the range of com-
mon life should always be avoided. It is in the
breaking-up of what is already attuitionally familiar
that the discipline of object-lessons consists. There
is no good to be got from a lesson on copper ore or on
a megatherium. This is a fact of ordinary teaching
experience, and confirms the deductions of the theory
or science of education. But, perhaps, we somewhat
anticipate in these remarks.
When we begin formal instruction, the principle of
method to be deduced from the above considerations,
which exhibit sensation (inner and outer) as the basis,
and as furnishing the raw material, of all subsequent
processes of mind, is this —
PRESENT TO SENSE.
120 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
The visible must be seen, the tangible must be touched,
the odorous must be smelt, the audible must be heard,
the inner feeling or elementary emotion must be felt.
Will and Percipience.
The characteristic of sensation is variety, multi-
plicity, disorder, even confusion, into the midst of
which, as we saw, Will enters in the form of the rudi-
mentary reason-ac£ of Percipience. The important,
nay, vital point in the movement which we call reason,
is this, that it is Will. I can perceive nothing, conceive
nothing, know nothing, save in so far as I do so as a
self-conscious subject that wills. The fact that there
is no conscious effort in much of our knowing, that it
is so easy to begin with, and becomes, in the course of
repetition, almost automatic, does not affect the ques-
tion. Try to perceive and conceive, or in any way
know, something new and strange, like that clock on
the wall, which you can imagine yourself seeing for
the first time when totally ignorant of its purpose and
mechanism, and you will realise to yourself what Will
is as an initiating energy, and also what it is in its
process.
What principle of method do we deduce from the
fundamental fact of reason? This —
EVOKE THE WILL OF THE PUPIL.
This principle lies at the root of all true discipline
of the mind of man, just as it lies at the root of that
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. 121
mind as rational mind. Sensation furnishes the mate-
rial and occasion of the new movement, but, at the same
time, it blocks the way, and has to be overcome.
It is true, as I have said above, that in the case of
a child as of a man, the oft-repeated and insistent
presentation of an object in attuition makes easy,
and almost unconscious, the movement from within
whereby that object is perceived. If, however, I pre-
sent, even to a child, an object which by its novelty
stimulates him to interest, he exerts himself to look
at it, and to handle it, and so forth, i.e. attends to it,
and so perceives it as a total, like or unlike previous
experiences ; and he then immediately advances rapidly
to the conceiving of that total through the perception
of its most conspicuous characters. The continuous
application of will to an object of knowledge with
the purpose of knowing, is called Attention. Every
teacher fails who cannot in practice solve for himself
this problem, "How can I secure the attention of a
class?" The general answer is, "By following the
principles of method in teaching ; " but to this has to
be added regard for physiological conditions, and the
extent to which the teacher's manner, as sympathetic,
interested, and vivacious, engages, by a natural reac-
tion, the interest of his pupils.
In teaching a subject, I must follow the process of
knowing, whatever that process may be. I cannot
advance by walking backwards.
Manifestly, then, in evoking will to enter on the
path of knowledge, I must begin with Percipience and
go on to Concipience, and so forth. Percipience is
122 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
first, and lies at the foundation of all accurate knowl-
edge. I find accordingly certain principles here await-
ing me. All is complex, but perception is of the
single. Accordingly we have this priniciple —
IN THE TRAINING OF PERCIPIENCE CONFINE YOUR-
SELF TO WHOLES AS SINGLES, AND TO SINGLES AS
WHOLES.
RULE. — One thing, or one element of a thing, at a
time.
Let any rational mind try to realise in itself an
adequate knowledge of any new thing whatsoever, and
he will fail until he has analysed the complex in con-
sciousness down to its underlying percepts, and dis-
tinctly apprehended these.
It is no mean element in the work of rational mind,
this accuracy of Percipience. It is the foundation and
necessary condition of every subsequent step, if that
step is not to be simply a step into confusion.
It may be of little moment to perceive distinctly the
object "tree" as opposed to "shrub," or any one qual-
ity in tree as opposed to any other one quality in tree,
so far as mere substance of knowledge is concerned.
But the important point in this, as in all other edu-
cative processes, is the training and discipline of
faculty. This has always to be kept in view as our
main end, — effectiveness of faculty ; and we can then
let knowledge take care of itself. This is education
of intelligence. Nothing else can be called education
without involving ourselves in a contradiction of terms.
One percept at a time, then, and that clearly differ-
entiated.
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis, 123
Concipience.
The next step in knowing an object is the raising of
the percept of the object as a single whole, to its per-
ception as a unity. Mind has been discriminating
diverse objects one from another. It now continues
its occupation with each object to see what the object
has got to say for itself. The various qualities impress
themselves on sense, and have now to be discriminated
in relation to the total object, and as elements in it;
and those qualities which are not obvious have to be
sought for.
The mind in knowing will not be hurried. It must
take one step after another, and only one at a time.
Like all things in nature, it grows by infinitely small
steps.
In teaching botany to a school I present a bluebell.
To the children it is familiar; but it is little more, as
yet, than a perceived attuitional total. If they know
anything about it beyond what they know about all
other plants that are becoming daily familiar to sensa-
tion and perception, it is that on the top of a thin
green stalk there is a blue cup. To this extent the
bluebell is not only perceived as a whole in sensation
discriminated from other things, but is conceived, by
virtue of certain qualities and characteristics of its
own, relatively to itself.
It is manifest that until Will, in the energy of
knowing, has reached the point at which it discrimi-
nates the various characters which go to make the
124 Institutes of Education. [LBCT.
complex individual in sense, it has advanced only one
step beyond attuition, and that the second step is the
truly instructive one. It is now answering the ques-
tion, What is that complex object before me? — the
first and final question of reason. The answer is
ascertained by an analysis, which gives an adequate,
though, of course, superficial, synthesis of the ele-
ments in the object; and this synthesis constitutes
its (unity in many) concept. Will has here a higher
and more difficult task to perform than in Percip-
ience, and greater demands are made on its sheer
power of holding things together. The discipline of
Will and the training in the process whereby Will
reaches knowledge, are here, accordingly, higher
than they have yet been. It follows the prior dis-
cipline in simple percipience. Consequently the
principle —
IN TRAINING IN CoNCIPIENCE PRACTISE IN THE SYN-
THESIS OF ONE IN MANY.
But remember, meanwhile, the magistral principle
of order in conceiving, and confine yourself to the
obvious for a considerable time. Not only must you
confine yourself to the obvious for some time, but in
your first exercises you must limit yourself to the
most salient characteristics. WThy?
Because we discovered in our philosophy of mind
that it was the salient characteristics which were first
apprehended by mind in building up a concept of a
thing. Thus a second principle (not to be called a
rule, because it is not a deduction from a prin-
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. 125
ciple, but itself directly deduced from the mind-
process) —
IN TRAINING TO ADEQUATE CONCEPTS OF OBJECTS,
TEACH FIRST THE SALIENT AND PROMINENT CHARAC-
TERISTICS BEFORE PROCEEDING TO OTHERS.
Anticipate a little, and apply for yourselves
this principle of method to geography, history,
grammar, language generally, etc., arid you will
see how sound it is, and how universally it is
neglected.
No doubt a human being, especially if he has a
happy nerve-basis and a suitable environment, may do
much of all this for himself; but if he could do it as
well as he ought to do it, education, whether by the
parent or the teacher, would be superfluous. It is
because the human animal cannot educate himself that
we interpose and educate him. And, so far as the
intellect is concerned, it is only by following the
method of mind in its process of knowing that we can
teach any subject effectively, or as Comenius would say,
easily, solidly, and surely. But far more important
than the teaching of particular subjects is (let us never
forget) the training and discipline of the knowing
function in man. Keason (which is sometimes called
divine) is in our hands, to make or mar. Our respon-
sibility is great. For on reason and its sane activity
in search of true knowledge, depends ultimately the
true ethical life — the life of conduct as well as of
contemplation.
Far be it from me, however, to say that, without the
126 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
formal training and discipline of reason, a man cannot
be ethical. He may be so constituted as to have a
natural affinity for the humane feelings which are the
fountain of the ethical, and he may be by nature so
open to the spiritual ideas which are presented to him
in the example and teaching of others, that he leads
an exemplary life in all his relations. God has not
left the all-important question of conduct in the hands
of intellect alone. Even "to the poor (in mind) the
gospel is preached." But we cannot trust to such
casual results. The very purpose of all education is
to strengthen the ethical in the individual, for himself
and for humanity, by the discipline of reason, at the
same time that, by that discipline, we secure a more
effective discharge of all the duties of life, individual,
social, and political. Surely a great work ! An unedu-
cated man, moreover, however finely attuned by nature,
necessarily has narrow interests : his horizon is limited,
and he must always fail to rise to ethical conceptions
in any large sense. The world and all its interests
are for him his village and his home.
It may be said by the hypercritical, that, after all,
many of these principles of method, so far as we have
yet gone, are already in the market. True ; but they
are not bought and paid for by those who most need,
and ought to use, them. Experience in the course of
the ages forces profound truths on men with the very
minimum of thinking on their part, simply by show-
ing them that certain things won't work and certain
others will. Nature, so to speak, takes care of itself;
for there is a Reason in the affairs of men. Our busi-
vi.] Application of the Preceding Analysis. 127
ness is to explicate that reason, and to find the scien-
tific or rational explanation of good practices, and to
show the untruth and ineptness of bad ones. This in
education is called theory, and it is this which every
man who proposes to educate a mind is asked to
study.
LECTURE VII.
THE GENERAL CONCEPT.
THE process of mind on its way to knowledge has
been our theine; but our work is as yet only half done.
The moments of sensation, of perception of sensates,
and the conception of the percepts inherent in the com-
plex sensate, take us a considerable step on the reason-
road. We can imagine an intelligence so constituted
as to stop at this point ; but if so, its reduction of the
material in sense to self-consciousness, and consequent
knowledge, would be partial and inadequate. The
concept, even supposing it complete, would give us
only the separate parts of a single thing in unity.
These are in the object fused, for we cannot locally
separate the colour from the form or hardness or,
odour : they are not separated parts of the thing stand-
ing side by side as a collocated aggregate. Still they
are collocated parts of an aggregate in the sense of
elements in the total thing. We may regard them as
the anatomical description of the thing. But we are
not content with this as knowledge.
We press forward to a higher conception — the con-
ception of the relation of these parts, which relation
truly constitutes them into the actual thing before us.
Passing over many subordinate and preliminary analy-
128
LECT. vii.] The General Concept. 129
ses, we ultimately desire to see the molecular elements
of the thing, and the dynamic force or forces which
bring about that specific constitution of molecular
elements which we call the "thing." The mere collo-
cation of parts gives us no satisfaction ; we desire to
detect the precise nature of the energy which deter-
mines that these elements shall be here A and there B
or C. In short, we seek the causal relations of the
elements within the thing and "for itself."
For, after all, the question we ask of each thing
(and of the whole of experience) is, What are you?
You have qualities which I find everywhere else : your
colour I find in other things, your texture and hard-
ness and odour and form I find in other things ; but
they are combined in you in such a way as to make
you a thing by yourself, and not anything else. And
I want to know what you truly are — in short, what is
your essence, which is also your idea, and the purpose
or re'Xos of your existence.
To face me, I have a quantitative difficulty : Will
is a great power ; it can hold present to consciousness
several percepts and concepts at once, while, at the
same time, more or less vaguely sensing a multitude of
subconscious or sensational elements which can be
made to emerge when I desire to realise them clearly.
But the multitude of individual concepts is so great
that Will exhausts itself quickly in their presence,
and gladly catches at some way of symbolising many
individual concepts as represented by one. Millions
of dogs are represented by the one word, " Dog " or " a
Dog " ; millions of individual men by the one word,
130 Institutes of Education. [I.ECT.
" Man " or " a Man. " We say " a Dog is a quadruped, "
meaning "all dogs;" Man is rational, meaning "all
mew." We thus abbreviate the work of Will-reason.
This is itself a great gain if it were nothing else,
because it abbreviates and simplifies thought.
[To this aspect of the general concept I mean here to
confine myself. Its relations to Cause, Essence, Idea, lie
within the sphere of metaphysics.]
If we can utter a judgment the predicate of which
will cover at once many millions of individuals, it is
manifest that we_ have acquired an intellectual sym-
bolism which facilitates enormously the progress of
reason in knowledge.
How then do we get for consciousness the word
"Dog" as distinguished from this, that, and other
dogs?
Thus:
I have already perceived and conceived an indi-
vidual object, differing from other creatures within
the area of conscious experience, and named it "dog."
Many other creatures now pass before me which,
though differing in certain respects (which are super-
ficial enough), e.g. size and colour, are yet possessed
of those characters which made me originally call a
particular creature a " dog " in order to mark it off
from the many other creatures previously seen. Be-
cause they possess in common those characteristics
which difference a dog from other creatures, I call
them all "dogs." While doing so, I am gathering up,
by the force of Will, into a unity in my consciousness
vii.] The General Concept. 131
these common (differentiating) characteristics, and so
constituting a new reality (for consciousness), the kind,
species, or genus, or class, DOG. This is the General
Concept which manifestly exists as an entity of Reason
only; its actual existence being found only in that
series of individuals in which I have noted the common
characteristics. "Dog" is all dogs and no dog.
General Propositions. — Now this General Concept
is the mother of general propositions, thus : The com-
mon characteristics, above referred to as found in the
series of individuals, are a, 6, c, d. Consequently the
general concept DOG contains in itself, ready to be
explicated whenever I choose, the general proposi-
tions —
All dogs have a.
have b.
have c.
have d.
Note next, that the affirmation of the general con-
cept " Dog " presumes that I have seen all individual
dogs and recorded their characteristics. But it is in
no man's power to do so. There is, then, manifestly
lying buried in the general concept " Dog " an assump-
tion or hypothesis, viz. : This dog, that dog, and a
multitude of creatures (to which I originally attached
the differentiating name of "dog") represent or stand
for " all dogs ; " therefore, " Dog, " as a general concept,
contains all dogs. So firm and rigid is the conviction
that I have got the true general concept which exhausts
individuals and affirms a class or kind, that if any
132 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
traveller sent me a picture of a strange animal and
called it a dog, I should say at once, " It is not a dog,
because though it has a and 6 and also a certain general
sensational resemblance, it has not c and d, and is
therefore not a dog, but some new beast not yet clas-
sified.
[Some may say that the general proposition must precede
the general concept. Doubtless it is silently there, but in
its explicated form as a proposition it follows (I think) the
general concept, and is an explication of it. For educational
purposes this matters little.]
The formation of the general concept, apart from its
value as the shorthand of reason, is of great signi-
ficance. It implies a power of Will in discriminat-
ing and holding discriminations together in a unity,
with a sub-reference to innumerable individuals, much
greater than any yet brought into operation. The
abstraction necessary in percipience and concipience
is here quite outdone ; quantitatively outdone, and also
outdone because in holding present to consciousness
the general concept, we have now no longer the support
of the thing as there and then present to conscious-
ness, but, instead of this, only an entity generated by
mind.
The significance of the General Concept is great,
because it carries with it the whole process of reason-
ing or ratiocination as distinct from Reason in its
larger sense: and in reasoning are included both
Induction and Deduction.
vii.] The General Concept. 133
Its importance in the ordinary life of man is also
great; because the true measure of our power over
things lies in the truth of our general concepts. On
this the accuracy of our judgments in the affairs of
life depends.
Its ethical importance again is supreme; because the
general concept is the " form " of ethical ideas, and
these constitute at once the motive and the end of all
conduct.
Further, the importance of a proper understanding
of the process of formation is also great; because, if
understood as it has been explained above, ethical
ideas, however exalted, are not in themselves existent,
but are existent only in so far as they make manifest
their existence in the particulars of conduct — the
daily and hourly life of each of us. They live, they
can truly live, only in the particular.
You can understand, then, how it is of all things
most desirable that in the self -education of our own
minds, and the education by us of other minds, we
should see to it that they are trained and disciplined
in the accurate construction of general concepts. On
this depend soundness of judgment and the validity of
concrete reasoning.
A treatise, De Emendatione Intellectus, might well
centre round the general concept. Not only for its
own sake, but for its implications; for this stage of
the process of Will in knowing rests on the previous
stages, without which it could not emerge; and f it
contains also implicitly the ratiocinative function.
Without the accurate concept of the individual, which,
134 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
again, depends on accurate or true percepts, and these
on full and true presentation to sense, the general con-
cept would be hopelessly vitiated : and the vitiation
may enter at any one or all of these stages.
Principle of Method. — TRAIN THE YOUNG IN THE
FORMATION OF GENERAL CONCEPTS, AND IN THE
ANALYSIS OF THOSE THEY HAVE IMMATURELY FORMED.
With this object in view obey the following rule : —
KULE. — Teach generalisations as generalisations;
that is to say, proceed from the particular to the gen-
eral; from the concrete individual to the abstract.
The tradition-bound teacher of language will say
that the abstract syntactical rule of grammar can be
learned quite easily by boys. Of course it can — as
words; but it can never be anything but a meaningless
collocation of words until it is filled with the concrete
individual " instances " which the boy is daily encoun-
tering in his studies. And inasmuch as the human
mind, as a matter of fact, gets its general and abstract
proposition (even if it has to do so retrospectively, i.e.
by going back) through particulars, our duty is to lead
it to its general proposition along the road or way of
particulars. The mind will thus make easier and more
solid and more rapid progress in the knowledge of a
subject, and will also have an intellectual interest in
the subject. But these are not the sole, nor yet the
chief, advantages; for it is only by following the way
of reason that we can truly train and discipline reason
to the sound and effective exercise of its powers on
all the affairs of life.
The same remarks apply to the teacher of elementary
vii.] The General Concept. 135
science. Even the humblest school-science consists of
generalisations, or aims at them. Unless the pupil is
led, step by step, to approach these through particular
observations, full and exact, the conclusion, be it in
the form of a generalisation or a formula, is not knowl-
edge any more than the case which contains a diamond
is the diamond. The great facility many boys have
in appropriating the words and propositions that for-
mulate knowledge, deceives the teacher. Heal contact
with particulars, so that the boy himself can of him-
self draw the scientific conclusion, is alone of any
value. Even an unintelligent knowledge of a Greek
verb is more disciplinary and more instructive than
verbal scientific knowledge. Such knowledge is not
real; and it is only in so far as it presents the
real relations of things, and in so far as these are
clearly perceived and conceived, that science in-
struction has any rightful place in the school. The
Ratichiaii rule, "per experimentum omnia," is here
absolute.
And yet words and formulation are necessary. If,
without the help of language to fix and symbolise, we
could make little progress on the percipient and con-
cipient planes of mind, how hopeless would be the
attempt to convey a generalisation and reasoning with-
out it. Until we formulate thought to ourselves in
words, we are not, strictly speaking, thinking, but
only striving to think, struggling with thought —
"licking," as Montaigne says, "the formless embryo."
On this parallelism, or rather interpenetration, of
thought and language, rests ultimately all argument
136 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
for language as an educational discipline ; apart, that
is to say, from its ethical and aesthetic aspects.1
Note. — Here I may state explicitly what I have elsewhere
indicated, that the child — indeed, we may say more truly,
the infant — begins with general concepts. By this I merely
mean that the infant, having seen and named an individual
(the totality of impression which is the individual in sense),
forthwith uses that individual image and name as a general.
Having once seen and named a cow, he calls the four-footed
animals which thereafter come before him "cows," until he
knows better (as we say).2 So vague are sensates, and the
first percepts of these sensates, that he sees a general like-
ness before he begins to differentiate in any close analytic
sense. Till he gradually, by the concurrent processes of
differentiation and likening, builds up for himself the con-
cept of this and that individual, he is constantly wrong, and
the resultant in his consciousness is always confused and
inadequate. Still more must this be the case with the proc-
ess of forming the general concept, which demands much
more energy of will applied to things than the individual
concept does ; for he has to compare, analyse, and discrimi-
nate with a view to the integration of a new unity in con-
sciousness. Not only is this process one demanding in itself
more energy of will, but it is vitiated by all prior errors in
1 Dr. Sully (i. p. 420) refers to a deaf-mute who, before learning
the manual signs, reached " the highly abstract idea of Maker and
Creator, and applied this to the world or totality of objects about
him." If my analysis of percipience in Met. Nov. et Vet. be correct,
this is not impossible. He had the feeling of Being-universal, and
the perception and conception of the multiplicity of objects as
grounded in Being-universal.
2 Why does a child see generals vaguely, and only slowly advance
to differentiation and true generals ? Because he is in the sensa-
tional stage, the victim of impression, whereas the analytic act is
an act of Will directed against the object, and is necessarily of slow
and gradual emergence.
vii.] The General Concept. 137
percipience and concipience — nay, also, by the incomplete-
ness of the primary sensation. Concepts both of the indi-
vidual and of the general are allowed by the inactive mind
to form themselves (so to speak) as vague impressions, and
the result is fatal to adequate and accurate thinking. We
educate in order to correct all this. We do not, however,
wish to interfere too much with the natural flow of mind,
but only to regulate and direct it ; and, as the young grow
older, we further wish to rouse in them a self-conscious
purpose of attaining a knowledge which shall be exact and
true.
The next movement of Mind in knowing is Reason-
ing, Inductive and Deductive, already contained in the
general concept, but now explicit and self-conscious.
Having treated this briefly, we shall then speak of
Cause as ground of things, just as Reasoning contains
the ground of conclusions.
LECTURE VIII.
REASONING OR RATIOCINATION — MEDIATE
AFFIRMATION.
WE now have to deal with the final processes of
Reason, viz. Reasoning, and the ascertainment of the
Grounds or Causes of things.
As I am not attempting a systematic treatise on
Psychology, but rather exhibiting, in lectures, the
critical movements of the conscious subject in reduc-
ing the world of sensation to itself, I shall take the
privilege of a lecturer and briefly repeat, though in a
slightly different form, what I have already said on
general concepts, because a consideration of these is,
it seems to me, the best introduction to the reasoning
process.
Think what an unfortunate gift the power of acquir-
ing percepts and individual concepts would be if we
stopped there. The whole complex world would be
an infinite series of individuals. If we, as endowed
with Will, felt an impulse to go further, memory would
break down. You could not speak of " hill, " or " dog, "
or " cow, " but only of certain individual objects one
after the other, each with its own specific name.
138
LECT. viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 139
As a matter of fact, individual things outside are
all in community with other things, and share their
properties. The fire is hot, so is the sun; the grate
is black, so is a negro's face or a starless night sky.
Many animals are so like each other that we popularly
say they are the same animal; not numerically, but
yet the same, e.g. one cow is like another. There are
slight differences of size and colour, it may be, but
they are substantially alike (whatever " substantially "
may mean); and we apply the same name to all of
them, though, as individual objects there are hundreds
of millions of them.
This is, as we have seen, GENERALISING, or the
forming of GENERAL CONCEPTS; grouping individuals
as kinds or classes.
When I speak of a cow, e.g. in this way, "The cow
gives milk," "The cow is good eating," and so forth,
I do not specify in thought or speech any particular
cow more than another, but all cows whatsoever.
Thus, under cover of one word used as a symbol, I
am able to speak of millions of things.
Now, how do I get at this admirable time-saving,
thought-saving result?
Thus:
I have perceived an individual cow: nay more, I
have conceived it; that is to say, I have perceived
certain qualities which it possesses, and these quali-
ties— e.g. living, animal, four-footed, cloven-hoofed,
large-uddered — are grasped together as a unity or
concept in my mind, which reality I have called a
"cow." But numerous animals pass before me, and
140 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
I perceive such a resemblance of qualities in certain
of them that I feel that they are not only similar
animals, but substantially the same, though numeri-
cally distinct. All these similar individuals I call
cows ; and then I find that I can talk of cow, or " the
cow," in a general way, meaning all cows, but yet no
one particular cow more than another. This thing of
which I speak is the cow as a class or kind. The word
cow is now no longer simply an individual sense-
concept, but a GENERAL CONCEPT, and the name " cow "
is a general or class name.
Now, what have we been doing ? Evidently com-
paring one animal with another. That is to say, we
have held present to consciousness certain individual
sense-concepts, and looking from one to the other we
have seen likeness or unlikeness, and have gathered
under one general, or class, or kind-name, all the
similars.
This is COMPARISON. Comparison, then, is the basis
of generalisation.
The general concept cow is reached by us after a
comparison of a large number of individual or partic-
ular concepts. Looking at a great number of animals
which are prima facie like each other, we have found
a common expression for them — which common ex-
pression I call a general concept. Spite of many
differences, each animal has certain qualities a, 6, c,
d; therefore, a, 6, c, d are the common characters, and
any word may be the symbol of these.
There is, manifestly, in this process a high energy
of will as a sheer power holding things together; and
viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 141
that, without the advantage of a sensible support as
in the sense-concept.
But this general concept "cow," though it is one
word denoting a unity of particulars, contains implic-
itly the general proposition, "All animals called
'cow ' have a, b, c, d." The general concept then con-
tains in it and yields general propositions, which have
for their sign the word "all."
In saying " All cows have cloven feet, " I merely say
out at large what already had been put by me as the
result of my perceptions into the general concept
"cow." "Cloven-footed" was one of the qualities
or characters which we, on comparison, found always
present in a certain number of individual animals, and
was one of the grounds for our throwing them alto-
gether under the name, class, kind, or general concept
"cow." It is as if I had put ten pebbles into a bag,
one of them red, and then said, that bag contains ten
pebbles, and one of them is red. I knew what I put
in, and so I know what I shall take out.
Many difficult and subtle questions arise in common
with this generalising operation.1
Enough for our purpose to note that I have reached
the general proposition, "All cows are cloven-footed,"
"All cows are large-uddered, " "All cows are rumi-
nant," and so on, by perceiving these several char-
1 For example, as to the complex of qualities which constitutes
the general concept cow. A gentleman arrives from the Antipodes
to show me a cow which has solid hoofs like a horse. Another
arrives from Spitzbergen to show me one which has a thick coat-
ing of fur, and so on, and so on. I shall pass this question here
(advisedly).
142 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
acters in each of the animals presented to me, and
which I have classed as cows, or rather, under the
general concept and name "cow."
It is thus, as we have seen, through the perception
of the particular or individual that we reach the general
proposition, and that the general proposition has
meaning to us — is -alive to us. If we do not see the
general proposition, in and through its particulars, it
is simply so many words — voces etprceterea nihil. Of
this again in a minute or two, under "Induction."
As to Comparison : — We said that animals were able
to compare; but it was the comparison of one sensa-
tion with another, — a vague indefinite process on the
plane of sensation, and also very restricted for want
of Will to separate, to perceive, and to hold percepts.
They sense likeness and unlikeness of objects. The
likeness and unlikeness is imprinted on them. But
they make no further progress, because they cannot
function free Will : consequently, they do not perceive
and conceive objects; that is to say, know them by
separating, seizing, apprehending, and placing them
back in their conscious subject, as a thing taken pos-
session of and labelled. What enables the child to
shoot ahead of the animal and perform this process?
Will, and nothing but Will ; a free movement issuing
from the conscious subject, which spiritual dynamic
constitutes his differentia, and enables him to advance
and to conquer. By dint of this Will he perceives
and affirms relations, and also the fact of relation as
an abstract. By this he holds each percept or concept
viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 143
close to him, and perceives (not merely feels) the dif-
ferences. The holding of two or more objects close
to consciousness in order to perceive their likeness or
unlikeness is, we have said, COMPARISON. But it is
no longer now the comparison of animal sensation, —
a mere feeling, a comparison made by the thing (so to
speak) on the reacting conscious subject, — but the
comparison of perception and conception, — the com-
parison in which Will, the conquering energy evolved
in the conscious subject, plays from first to last the
leading, because the conditioning, part. It seizes the
qualities which are the common characteristics of indi-
viduals, and holds them apart from the individuals.
This is the Abstraction of generalisation. J
Note. — But before going farther, let me point out that
while the above is the order of the process whereby general
propositions are first reached, it is for the most part an
unself-conscious operation. The forming of percepts is un-
self-conscious, the forming of concepts is unself-conscious,
and the forming of general concepts and the general propo-
sitions implicit in them is unself-conscious. By this I mean
that we go on doing all these things, in the first instance,
without any set purpose, but only under the general stimu-
lus of Will-reason. But man being a self-conscious being,
can become aware of his acts and propose to himself deliber-
ately to perform these acts, with a view to knowing things.
For example, I become through sensation aware of a great
many objects which, though somewhat differing, yet, roughly
1 No dog or horse can speak at all, or name even one quality;
still less can either of them say or think, " All cows have cloven
feet." And yet, I think it by no means impossible that certain
sounds should emanate from animals as associated with certain
individual things.
144 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
speaking, may all be called " grass " : and I may deliberately
proceed to collect all these objects and endeavour to find out
what they have in common. And after careful observation
of each of the different, yet similar, grasses, I come to the
conclusion, " All grasses are a, 6, c, d" etc. One differs
from all the rest in respect of /, another in respect of g,
another in respect of /, g, and so on, but they all have the
qualities a, b, c, d, etc., in common. Thus I reach a general
proposition purposely and self-consciously.
The object of psychology of the Intelligence (in which
is necessarily included the fundamental principles of logic)
is to bring into view the various operations which mind
carries on in order to reach knowledge or truth. Thereby
we extend knowledge itself by a knowledge of that which
is the organ of knowledge ; the most interesting, surely, of
all objects of inquiry to the being whose differentiation and
prerogative it is to know. And besides this ; by revealing
the process we stimulate to the correct use of that process,
and guard ourselves against prevalent and almost inevitable
abuses of it; for the human mind is always packed full of
generalisations, a great many received from parents and
others — all of them provisional, most of them quite wrong,
and leading to endless errors of opinion and conduct.
The lesson to be drawn by the teacher, as I have
already said, is this, that general concepts and gener-
alisations are mere words and nothing more, except in
so far as the particulars are known : this is essential
to their being distinct and clear. In other words, let
general concepts and general propositions be taught
in the way in which they are formed.
The transition to the next movement of mind is best
made, I think, through a consideration of the act of
judging.
viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 145
Judgment and Deductive Reasoning. — From the very
first we have been judging — always judging.
To judge is to predicate one thing of another. But
even in the first percept ever formed by us, we affirmed
the identity of a thing with itself. Judgment is also
affirmation, which, when put in words, we call a prop-
osition; e.g. " a horse is a quadruped." The first limb
of the proposition we call the Subject, and the second
the Predicate.
Every successive movement of mind is by way of
judgments ; for of everything, whether it be a percept,
a concept, or general concept, we say that " it is, " or
"is not."
It is unnecessary for our educational purpose to go
farther into the subject of judgments. Indeed, the
subject is introduced here only because it seems to be
the most natural and easiest approach to the apprehen-
sion of the process of Eeasoning, or the Syllogism.
For a large number of our judgments are mediate
judgments ; 1 that is to say, they acquire truth and
validity, not by the direct perception of the fact before
us, but through other judgments. I am referring to
those judgments which involve general concepts. For
example, I say, "This tree is an oak," without realis-
ing to myself the ground of my affirmation. If I
realise that the ground of my judgment has been the
observation that it produces gall-nuts, it is at once
manifest that my judgment is mediate or syllogistic,
and when explicitly stated is this :
1 All judgments are at bottom mediate ; but to show this would
lead us aside into metaphysics (Met. Nov, et Vet.).
146 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
All trees that bear gall-nuts are oaks.
This tree bears gall-nuts ;
Therefore, this tree is an oak.
These three affirmations, propositions, or judgments
we call the major premiss, the minor premiss or sub-
sumption, and the conclusion.
Thus, in a multitude of ordinary colloquial judg-
ments, we are always syllogising without realising
that we are doing so.
The process which has been illustrated above is
mediate judgment, or reasoning, or ratiocination, or
the syllogistic process (deductive). If a traveller in
Central Africa writes that he met with a strange
animal which was yet to all intents and purposes a
cow, then I know that that animal must have the
qualities a, 6, c, d, etc., which he and I, and the rest
of us, have agreed to regard as constituting a cow, as
distinguished from every other animal. I then pro-
ceed thus :
All cows have a, b, c, d, etc.
This new animal is (I am assured) a cow ;
Therefore, this new animal has a, b, c, d, etc.
Or, you may ask me the question, Has a new animal
lately found in Central Africa cloven hoofs ? I say,
What does the traveller call it ? You answer, He
says it is a cow. Then I reply, It has cloven hoofs ;
because cloven-hoofed is one of the qualities which,
we have agreed, go to constitute the animal cow.
Thus:
vui.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 147
All cows have cloven hoofs.
This new animal is a cow;
Therefore, this new animal has cloven hoofs.
This is Deductive reasoning ; and its truth depends on
the truth of the general proposition under which you
conclude as to this or that predicate of the individual
which you range or subsume under the general propo-
sition. You are simply taking out of the general
concept or proposition, in relation to a particular case,
what you have already put into it. You see then
how careful men must be of their general propositions,
which, in truth, are mostly wrong ; and even when
they are right enough for colloquial and provisional
purposes, they are wrong scientifically.
Your syllogism may be in point of form quite cor-
rect, but if your general proposition is defective, to
that extent your particular conclusion is defective and
really incorrect.
How then did we get this general proposition on
which so much depends ?
Inductive Reasoning. — Here we must go back to the
general proposition (p. 141), "All cows are cloven-
hoofed," which was extracted out of our general concept
" cow," the moment we had made it. There was here a
secret process going on which has to be brought to light.
We had been gradually noting, as was pointed out,
the qualities which we might predicate of an animal
called a cow to justify us in calling other animals
"cows," and not horses, or anything else. Among
148 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
other things we noted "cloven-hoofed" in each indi-
vidual animal that passed before us. Then the general
concept cow yielded at the very moment of its for-
mation the proposition, " All cows are cloven-hoofed."
We might not put it in words, but the proposition
was silently there, contained in our act and the con-
clusion of that act. And it was so contained because
we had examined, one after another, a large number
of instances. We had virtually said this animal, which
impresses us in such or such a way, we call a cow, and
it is cloven-hoofed. Cow No. 2, which similarly im-
presses us, and which we also call a cow, is also cloven-
hoofed, and so on. And then we concluded, "All cows
are cloven-hoofed."
Now, had we seen all cows ? Certainly not. Accord-
ingly the process was this :
This cow, that cow, and the other cow have cloven
hoofs.
These cows which we have observed represent all
the cows not yet observed ;
Therefore, all cows are cloven-hoofed.
This process is evidently the same as the syllogistic
process whereby we affirmed confidently that the cow
in the African desert was cloven-hoofed, simply be-
cause it was a cow, and because all cows are cloven-
hoofed. But it is the reverse process. It is a mediated
general judgment, mediated through particulars. It is
a process whereby we reach the general judgment or
proposition through particular propositions or judg-
viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 149
ments. This is Inductive reasoning, and is the proc-
ess by which we formed the general concept, in the
formation of which inductive reasoning was implicit.
Thus reasoning (syllogistic) goes inductively from
particular to general, and also deductively from gen-
erals to particulars ; and the concluding judgment,
whether particular or general, is always mediated.
Thus by means of these general propositions as
induced from particular propositions, and by means of
particular propositions which may be deduced from
them, we acquire a kind of mental shorthand which
gives us great power over our materials of perception
and conception, and enables us to connect things
together in a reasoned whole. So strong is this
impulse of rational mind that its ideal aim is always
a reasoned system of things — a cosmic connected
whole.
But we have always to be on our guard, because our
general proposition may be on wrong lines. It may
be defective in its particulars, to begin with. Such
general propositions, in truth, are always provisional
in their character, and to that extent have an arbitrary
look.
[It is only when I am able to name the qualities which
a cow must have in itself to be a cow, the qualities " essen-
tial " to a cow, that I am entitled to say that I have truly a
right to a general proposition which is irrefragable. And
this "essence" I cannot get hold of. Yet enough is given
me for the ordinary purposes of life and knowledge.]
Now, at this point we might, as finite intelligences,
rest satisfied. We can reduce the multitude of objects
150 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
by which we are surrounded to percepts and concepts :
we can determine their relations, and gather these
together into general concepts and general proposi-
tions ; and further, we can move freely from one thing
to another, and arrange all our knowledge in a con-
venient way, as a connected rational system. But this
does not suffice: there still awaits us the final and
consummating movement of mind — the mediation of
the real; or Causal Induction.
Before considering this final reason-movement, let
me again impress on .you the bearing of these discus-
sions on educational method. The proposition, " Grass
is a living organism," in so far as it is the conclusion
of a deductive syllogism, is entirely dependent on
the prior general propositions, "all plants are living
organisms," and "grass is a plant." The proposition
is manifestly analytic, for it is already contained in
the general concept "Plant." If grass be an entirely
novel experience to me, all that I have to ascertain is
whether it is a plant or not, and then I know the rest.
This is, as we have seen, what is called a mediate
knowledge or mediate syllogistic judgment because it
is not direct but mediated through another knowledge,
viz. the general proposition. Now, the world and
human affairs and relations are excessively complex,
and, in order to save ourselves from over-pressure by
particulars, we are always taking refuge in general
concepts and general propositions. It is evident, then,
that if we are not excessively careful in forming our
general concepts and propositions, we shall fall into
endless error, — error, too, of a particularly fatal kind,
viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 151
because, the logical form being correct, we are apt to
stand by our erroneous conclusion as also really correct.
For, as I have endeavoured to show in the specific
educational reference, these general concepts, and the
general propositions issuing from them, are, in truth,
inductions. That is to say, they are the tying up in a
bundle and labelling of a large number of particular
percepts and concepts. The general concept and gen-
eral propositions, as such, thus give us no new knowl-
edge as regards the particulars (though they may seem
to do so), for each individual percept and concept is
presumed to have been seen by us ; they merely give
us this new knowledge, viz. that all the particular
things are the same, or similar, in certain respects.
Neither the inductive result, accordingly, which is a
general, nor the deductive result, which is a particular,
proposition, give us any new knowledge of things
beyond the fact that certain things not within our
immediate purview are alike in certain respects. The
syllogism, in truth, whether inductive or deductive,
is simply a way of first formulating and then utilising
knowledge already presumed to be gained by the
observation of particular things. Accordingly, the
truth of every judgment and proposition, whether it
be a general or a particular, depends, ultimately, on the
exactness or truth of our individual percepts, concepts,
and general concepts ; and it is, consequently, difficult
to exaggerate the educational importance of exactness
in percipience and concipience. There is a mediating
process of mind which is universally recognised as
adding to our knowledge, — a mediation not through
152 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
propositions, but through realities, — the mediation
of Cause ; but the truth is, that if we trace any propo-
sition whatsoever back to its origin, it too exhibits
real relations, and, only in so far as it does so, is it of
any value.
The formation of the habit of exact perceiving and
conceiving is necessary, not only as a foundation for
sound reasoning, but also to enable us to detect in a
complex presentation or statement the important vital
points. Our knowledge is advanced by bringing new
cases under already known generalisations. Accord-
ingly, in a new case, we have to detect in the object
before us those characteristics which, spite of its
apparent novelty, bring it under some general concept
or proposition through certain attributes of likeness.
This demands an active and penetrating observation
of its various features. A man who can see his way
to an accurate mediate judgment, by bringing the new
particulars before him under some general head, is
said to be a man of sound judgment. To judge soundly
is one of the highest functions of intellect, because it
involves accurate discrimination and perception of the
elements in the thing before us, the possession of
general concepts which are in their content clear and
distinct, and thereafter the power of relating the par-
ticular to the general with a true insight into simi-
larity. The man who can do this supremely well in
science, philosophy, or politics is the man of genius.
In the ordinary affairs of life, again, the man who
can readily detect the characters, more or less hidden,
of the particular case before him, and bring it under
viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 153
its solving universal, is the prince of practical men.
But it is not always an easy task. A man may culti-
vate a solemn expression, and have always the air of
pronouncing sound judgments, and may thus easily
acquire a reputation with undiscerning people as a
man of "common sense." But the reputation is con-
stantly ill-founded. The men who " look wiser than
any man ever was, " are often to be distrusted. Some-
times they are not truly in earnest in their desire to
get the truth, but merely to play the rdle of judicially-
minded men, and they will consequently, after due
shaking of the head, utter a common-place which
solves nothing. They are ambitious, not of truth,
but of a "reputation." Then, again we have men of
honest and truly sound judgment; but this within a
very limited range of principles. Their area of vision
is circumscribed, and they unconsciously hasten to
reduce the particular question before them to one or
other of the few formulas which constitute their stock-
in-trade. They are to be respected as the necessary
ballast of society. A judge on the bench is thus arti-
ficially limited, thoiigh, personally, he may see beyond
the law-inscribed horizon. The truly sound judgment
on the complex before a man will be found to be, for
the most part, predictive. It is justified by the sequel.
And this remark applies, not only to ordinary affairs,
to commerce, to politics, and ethics, but to scientific
investigations. For such a judgment there is needed
the greatest possible exactness in matters of fact,
truthfulness of purpose, and, above all, a regulated
imagination. The issues, both in the sphere of pure
154 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
knowledge and of action, are always present to the
supreme judgment.
Educationally, then, it is difficult, as I have said, to
exaggerate the importance of exactness of mind. It
is also clear that a man cannot be called educated in
the highest sense, unless his education has been di-
rected to this end of sound judgment. The education
must be not only intensive and exact, but extensive
in respect of the material of knowledge. But both
combined will fail to produce the educated man, if
there be not the ethical impulse and the ethical aim ;
so closely are the intellectual and the ethical inter-
woven. There must be a purpose of truth.
In teaching, then, the endless affirmations or judg-
ments current in ordinary intercourse and in literature
have to be traced to their general ground (or as it
is sometimes called " principle "), and not accepted
simply because they are as propositions clear and
intelligible. If a man does not carry on this process
while reading or conversing, he is the victim of end-
less fallacies. Accordingly, we have to call on the
mind we are educating to analyse what is before it,
to justify it, and to vindicate its truth by making
explicit its premisses, and so reconstituting the syn-
thesis for itself. Herein lies the training and disci-
plining of ratiocination; and, when we do this, we
find ourselves thrown back on percepts, and individual
concepts, and wholly at the mercy of these primary
acts of intelligence which lie at the foundation of the
general. Keality is truth, and truth is reality. All
viii.] Reasoning or Ratiocination. 155
reality is derivative, save the primary percepts. Thus,
let me repeat ad nauseam, there is forced upon us at
this stage, as at all stages of education, the supreme
value of exercise and discipline in accurate discrimi-
nation — not with a view to knowledge, but to a habit
of mind. And it is solely because certain studies pro-
mote this (e.g. object-lessons and science-lessons),
that their place in the school can be justified; not
because of the knowledge they give.
Principle of Method. — TEACH REASONINGS AS REA-
SONINGS ; THAT IS TO SAY, ANALYSE THE AFFIRMA-
TIONS BEFORE YOU, AND MAKE EXPLICIT THEIR
RATIONAL BASIS.
[Analysis and (syllogistic) synthesis.]
Anatytico- Synthetic.
LECTURE IX.
CAUSAL INDUCTION.
THE proposition or judgment, "Fire burns wood,"
is said to be a causal judgment. And so it is in a
sense. But as it is a mere observation of the sequence
of two events, the former of which controls the appear-
ance of the latter, I would prefer here (in view of
educational applications) to call it a dynamical judg-
ment.
Now, the whole range of statical and dynamical
judgments, even were it within our grasp, gives us
only a superficial and preliminary knowledge of things.
The central impulse of reason is towards the affirma-
tion of the ground or cause of things. The issue of
reason is an answer to the question, What is A, or B,
or C? and the "is" involves Cause.1 The dynamical
judgment does not satisfy us ; for it is a mere obser-
vation that one appearance always follows another.
The true causal knowledge of a thing is the compre-
1 When I see a thing in its identity of cause, process, and end, I
know it, and, so far as it is concerned, there is nothing more to be
done. I would fain rest : and, in point of fact, I would then lie down
and rest, were it not for the infinite relations of the said thing, and
the ultimate cosmic question which is always luring on Will-reason
in its free and unresting activity in search of an absolute synthesis.
156
LECT. ix.] Causal Induction. 157
hension of the how and why of the sequence; and to
this all other knowledge is merely preparatory. This
kind of knowledge is by way of pre-eminence called
Science, Scientia, or the knowledge. This search for
causes of visible existences, results, or effects, is the
task of the man of science in all the departments of
human experience and endeavour, and not in physics
alone.
We feel that we truly know a "thing," only when
we know it in its cause or causes.
That tree, for example, I perceive, conceive, con-
nect with its general concept " Tree " and its higher
concept "Plant," and, through generalised proposi-
tions within whose sphere it falls, I can reason to
this or that conclusion about it. For example, I do
not see its roots; but I know it has them. Why?
Because it is a tree. I do not see its fruit ; but I know
it has, or will have, it. But what I now want to know
is, what are the causes which underlie the visible, and
bring about stem, branch, leaf, and fruit? Until I
have ascertained this, I do not really know the tree.
I am not yet at the end of my quest. Why does that
branched object before me bring forth fruit? You
answer, "Because it is a tree." I reply, not so; that
is the reason why you say that it brings forth fruit.
The true cause lies somewhere in the reproductive
necessity of the tree's nature. Suppose I could name
this cause and call it A. A is the cause of the fruit-
bearing; but even of this as the true and necessary
cause of the fruit-bearing I cannot speak with confi-
dence until I have further ascertained how it does it.
158 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
It is necessary to see the process at work, and we shall
then see what the sequence which we call Cause and
Effect must be.
How do I proceed ?
There are many events that precede what I see. I
examine these, separate one from the other, and, carry-
ing my observation through a number of instances, and
excluding first this antecedent as the cause, and then
that and the other antecedent, I finally isolate the true
cause ; and, by further examination and experiment, I
confirm what I have detected. This is a process of
analysis resulting in the synthesis of cause and effect,
which synthesis now constitutes for me the true
knowledge of that particular thing. It is an analytico-
synthetic process ; but it is also a process of induction,
because I examine numerous " cases " in order to find
the truth. I pile " instance " upon " instance," and I
also conclude with a general proposition, saying, " All
things which are precisely similar to this experience
before me are caused in this particular way (uniform-
ity of nature)." And, at this point, enters my previous
generalisation of objects into trees, or more generally
still, plants ; and I say with confidence, " All plants
grow thus ; if they do not, they are not plants."
In ascertaining the cause of the visible thing called
fruit, you examine many trees which produce fruit, but
you do this simply because you thereby see similar
objects in differing circumstances. I take advantage
of the experiments (so to speak) which nature makes ;
and, if nature gives me no ready-made experiments, I
make them for myself, as in physics and chemistry:
ix.] Causal Induction. 159
but this, if I had clearer and subtler vision, would
probably not be necessary. One " case " would then
suffice. As a matter of fact, however, and as a sub-
stitute for ray limited vision, I go from tree to tree,
observing closely and applying my tests, in order to
discover the cause ; or to verify what I think I have
already discovered. At bottom, however, I have sim-
ply been analysing or taking to pieces the complex
system of antecedents which have for their invariable
sequent, fruit, eliminating what I ascertain not to be
the true efficient antecedent ; and this I do until I
have isolated the true antecedent or antecedents which
being present, the result or effect appears, and which
being absent, it does not appear.
Having done this I then (as has been said above)
take advantage of my previous operations in general-
isation, and say, " All fruit is produced by like causes."
Why ? Because " all fruit " is simply a gathering
together in thought of a great many individual things
which are already known to be repetitions (it may be
with slight differences) of the same thing.
I may now put the process in another way : —
We generalise the statical qualities of things. But
when we seek the cause of anything, we look at it not
only dynamically, but as grounded in its antecedent,
and necessarily arising out of that antecedent. Yoti
regard B as an event which is brought about by some
antecedent event. There is a sequence. The antece-
dent may be a, b, c, d, e, /, etc. You have the thing or
event B before you, and you p\it it into ever so many
different circumstances, and detect that antecedent
160 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
circumstance or event which never fails to appear,
while all the others are sometimes there, sometimes
not there. You fasten on this common permanent
antecedent among many variables, eliminating the
variables, and isolating the common antecedent as the
Cause, which we shall call a. You can then very
often test your results by putting a into operation,
and seeing whether B follows. But, although you
may be convinced of the necessity of the causal con-
nection, you can never see it, until you see how it is
that a must produce B. Your concept or synthesis of
B is now aB. There are a great many false causal
connections current in the world. The function of
Science is to reveal the true and necessary.
In ascertaining the necessary causal antecedent of
any thing or event, it would appear at first sight that
there is no inductive generalisation, and that the term
"induction" is incorrectly applied. And we can easily
understand that, if possessed of greater intellectual
power of perceptive discrimination than we actually
have, we should be able to separate or isolate the true
causal antecedent of any result by merely looking at
the single experience before us long enough. But,
even then, the process, however apparently intuitive,
would be as follows : the cause is not d nor e nor /, but
it is a. It is the function of genius to seize quickly,
and almost by a kind of intuition, the true cause.
But even genius, and still more manifestly the ordi-
nary investigator, is always generalising. For he
looks at a, c, d, e, /, etc., and sees how each behaves.
ix.] Causal Induction. 161
Now, this is equivalent to looking at a series of simi-
lar cases, and finding what is, among many variables,
the common antecedent fact present always. Isolating
that, he calls it a: a is the cause of B. The inves-
tigator has thus generalised from the observation
of instances the common invariable antecedent, and
causal event.
The process, then, whereby we find the cause of any
existence or change is, I think, rightly enough called
a process of induction and generalisation, although
the fundamental movement is one of analysis and
synthesis.
You will now see that the generalisation which
yields a general concept and general propositions, e.g.
"All horses neigh," is an induction of statical facts.
The induction which yields the causal antecedent of
an existence or event is an induction of dynamical
facts or sequent movements, which are determining
movements, e.g. "Heat consumes wood." We have
been seeking for a common cause of a great many like
particulars. Whenever there is a conjunction of heat
and wood we now know what is to happen. But,
further, we have not satisfied the causal impulse of
reason until we have ascertained how the antecedent
works so as to make necessary the sequent. We thus
get the true and final causal synthesis of the two
things.
Note. — This causal conception completes the knowledge
of a thing. In the mind-process, in so far as rational, it is
the primary form of knowing the particular in its most
elementary stage, and it is also the final and ultimate form
162 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
in which we grasp the total of things — a One Cause out of
which all differences emerge — the unity in all difference.
Until the intellect reaches to this conception of universal
causal law as explicitly present to consciousness, it has not
completed its education, for it does not know God in the
world. The religious idea is the final aim of the education
of the rational, as well as of the ethical, in man.
Principle of Method. — COMPLETE INSTRUCTION
THROUGH CAUSES; FOR THE KNOWLEDGE OF A THING
18 COMPLETE, AND INTELLECT CAN BE SATISFIED ONLY
IN THE APPREHENSION OF CAUSE.
Remember, however, that all educational method is
governed by the principle which requires us to follow
the order of the growth of mind (which is also the
order of the growth of brain) ; J and, consequently, that
the age at which a boy is to study things in their
causes is a question to be anxiously considered.
Mere dynamical relations of sequence, however, are
among the earliest experiences of mind, and the causal
in this superficial sense may be early introduced into
education. Again, one element in the causal concep-
tion is purpose — the use which any concrete thing
serves ; and this, being always concrete and obvious,
may also be early utilised for educational purposes.
The superficial aspect of cause I would call, for educa-
tional purposes, the relation of sequence. For example,
in an early object-lesson on tea, I speak of tea and its
uses ; but ere long I may extend these sequences back-
wards to the place which yields tea and the way it
comes to us, etc.
i See Lect. XI. seq.
ix.] Causal Induction. 163
Even when we have made up our minds as to the
age for beginning strictly causal or science studies, we
must bear in mind that sense and the concrete, and
percipience, and concipience comparison must always
have their claims satisfied before we proceed to abstract
conceptions. And, accordingly, all science teaching
which is not a series of experiments and essentially
heuristic, is simply word-teaching and charlatanism.
A so-called cause may be to a boy merely one more
fact, which is of no more significance for discipline
than a second aorist, and of little significance for
knowledge, save in so far as it is experimentally ascer-
tained. I should say that (setting aside exceptional
boys and exceptional teachers) a boy cannot begin to
study scientifically with advantage even the elements
of physiography and of plant-knowledge till his fif-
teenth year. The preparation for this will be found
in object-lessons which have to do with percepts and
concepts, and relations of an external and sequential
character merely. When he passes beyond the expla-
nation of the facts of everyday experience, he, even at
this age, wastes his time.
LECTURE X.
SURVEY OF THE PROCESSES OF REASON IN ORDER TO
SHOW THAT THEY ARE EACH AND ALL ANALYTICO-
SYNTHETIC IN THEIR CHARACTER.
Principle of Method. — TEACH ANALYTICO-SYXTHET-
ICALLY.
This, as resting on a generalisation of the nature of
each successive step in mind activity (the will-proc-
ess), is a governing principle.
See Appendix, Note D, for the materials of this lec-
ture. To introduce the argument here would weight
the text too much.
164
LECTURE XL
UNFOLDING OF INTELLIGENCE; OR ORDER OF INTEL-
LECTUAL GROWTH IN TIME.
THE successive stages or periods of mental develop-
ment from infancy to maturity have now to be con-
sidered. " V esprit, non phis que le corps, ne porte que
ce qu'il pent porter," says Rousseau. And again,
" Laissez mtirir Venfance dans les enfans" ; to which
we may add, " Let boyhood ripen in boys, youthhood
in youths, and manhood in men." Do not anticipate.
We shall find that these periods pass into each other,
and can only be roughly marked off. (See note at end
of this lecture.) Speaking generally, the fo'me-order
is indicated by the logical order of the successive move-
ments of intelligence in knowing, as these have been
exhibited in the preceding pages. If we regard the
logical movements of intelligence, as also the chrono-
logical, we, manifestly, simplify things very much.
The successive movements may be roughly arranged
thus : —
1. Babehood — The period of Sensation and Attui-
tion (one year).
2. Infancy — (a) Perception; (6) Sense- Conception
(from the second year, when speech begins, to the
165
166 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
eighth year, the period of second dentition) ; (c) Rela-
tional Conception, including superficial dynamical se-
quence, and involving crude Comparison and Judg-
ment. The whole of this period corresponds to the
duration of the Infant School.
3. Childhood — Conception (single and relational)
is now in full activity with Generalisation and Reason-
ing incipient (from the eighth to the fifteenth year, the
age of puberty). This period corresponds to the
duration of the Primary School, and is divided into
two parts — the Lower Primary, from the eighth to
the twelfth year, and the Upper Primary, from the
twelfth to the fifteenth year.
4. Boyhood and Girlhood, or the Juvenile Period —
Generalising and Reasoning Stage, when the perception
of true Cause and Effect becomes active (from the fif-
teenth to the eighteenth year). This period corre-
sponds to that of the Secondary or High School.
5. Adolescence — All the faculties in full operation,
and with the further tendency to form ideas, and to
co-ordinate knowledge into the unity of science (to
the twenty-second year). This period corresponds
to that of University life. Thereafter Manhood and
Womanhood.
The Physiological relations of this Development of Mind
have to be considered.
The principle has already been laid down that all
education and all instruction, — intellectual, moral,
xi.] Unfolding of Intelligence. 167
and religious alike, — if they are to be effective, are to
be carefully adapted to the stage of mental develop-
ment which the pupil may have reached.
Note. — Transition from one plane of Mind to another. —
Perhaps this is the place to point out, once for all, that as
all things in the universe are related and interrelated, and
one state of a thing passes into another state by insensible
degrees — degrees so infinitely small that they elude us ; so,
Mind is a complex one, in which every element and capacity
and possibility are present at once, and that all our analysis
is merely an attempt to discriminate phenomena that shade
off into each other, in so far as they can be detected to be
distinct and discriminable. But, all the while, the synthesis
of the whole is always present in each diverse mental mani-
festation. We speak of Feeling, Sensibility, Sensation, Per-
ception, Conception, General Conception, Reasoning; but at
what point and in what circumstances are these not all pres-
ent, and at what point does the one pass into the other in the
synthesis of the whole? No man, it seems to me, can say at
what point a mind that already senses, has entered on percipi-
ence, concipience, etc., any more than he can tell at what point
a bud is a flower. [And yet we are not entitled to say, " All
is becoming " ; but rather, if we are to be accurate, " All is
at once becoming and become."] By extensive observation
of minds, animal and rational, and much self-reflective vigi-
lance, a thinker may put his finger on distinctions ; but
when it comes to the actual working of the mind, we can
distinguish only in a very general way. Take, for example,
the state of " dispersed attention," as it is called. I should
call this state one of sensational or attuitional dreaming, in
which / am carried on from image to image by the play of
mind and the interactions of nerve-cells. But all the while
I am a man, and, consequently, Will is there lying at the
heart of the chaotic series, and ever and anon striving to
assert its own right to existence, and to mastery over the
objects that entrain me. At any moment this Will may
168 Institutes of Education. [LECT. XT.
press its way through, and my attuitional state become a
percipient and rational state. So with an infant. To the
age of nine months he may be regarded as an animal pure
and simple ; and yet he is something else, for Will lies con-
cealed there seeking its opportunity and gradually forcing
its way to the front. The eye and face of an infant already
reveal that, while he is a victim to sensation, he is yet grad-
ually bringing a reserve force into the field. Then, if Percip-
ience be elemental reasoning, it may be said that he reasons
even before he can talk. And so on. All the while, the
infant is undergoing the parturient labours of self-delivery.
He is bringing forth himself — he is not brought forth. The
conscious subject is gathering, in silence and in secret, the
energy which will soon proclaim itself as Will, and in full
Percipience take the first step in seZ/*-consciousness. [This
Percipience is the first movement to reduce the sensational
world to a cognitive world, and the process is a dialectic
process.]
LECTURE XII.
MATERIALS AND DYNAMICS OF THE BUILDING-UP OF
THE FABRIC OF MIND AS A REAL.
WHEN B is presented to A (the conscious subject),
and A is aware of it (I pass over rudimentary " feel-
ing," of which we can know little), we call A mind
and B the presentation. But, further, Mind being
the subject of the presentation, we call B the object.
Whether from within the body or from without the
body, the access of presentations is through nerve-
tissue, and the reactions are also through nerve-tissue.
The terminal of the impression is Consciousness, and
the reflex return starts in and from consciousness.
The nerve-tissue (which may be summed up in the
one word cerebrum^), inasmuch as it is matter, obeys
the laws of matter, and as vehicle of consciousness,
receptive or reactive or active, is probably the highest
department of physics. Whatever the laws be whereby
the nerve-cells transmit movements and maintain com-
munication with each other, and subsequently repeat
for themselves, under some inner stimulus, past move-
ments when the existing agent (the object) is absent, I
say whatever these laws may be, it cannot be doubted
that they exist. As a system these laws would be
169
170 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
called Cerebral Dynamics, or the Dynamics of cerebra-
tion.
As might be expected a priori, there is little doubt
that there is unceasing cerebration without conscious-
ness as a concomitant.1 At a certain point in the
process, and under certain conditions, cerebration
passes into consciousness.
That cerebrations exist and affect each other, and,
without the presence of fresh stimuli, set up in the
subject a consciousness which is neither the a of
primary impression nor the 6, but a resultant and com-
plex c, is not incredible. The dynamics of cerebration
we leave ; for little is known about it, and inferences
are unfortunately drawn from that little which fill the
" non-scientific " and merely metaphysical mind with
amazement.
It is with the action of the environment (including
the cerebrum as part of the environment) when it passes
into " consciousness " that we are concerned.
Here we find a mutual involvement and reciprocity
of mind and cerebrum. Cerebration sets up a con-
sciousness, and consciousness of mind sets up a
cerebration. It is not a molecular disturbance of
nerve-cells which causes a dog to seek water, but
the consciousness of thirst which results from that
molecular disturbance, and which sets in action the
whole motor system.
And yet, even in this region of mind, we are still
within the sphere of natural action and reaction.
1 Appendix B.
xii.] The Building-up of Mind as a Real. 171
Mind has as yet no inhibit! ve or regulative energy.
The appearances of this regulation in instinct are the
result of certain innate impulses, concrete aptitudes,
and reflex activity combined. If this be so, then
there is such a thing as the natural dynamics of con-
scious mind traversed by the dynamics of material
cerebration.
The next stage of Mind is distinguished by the
advance of will and consequent self-consciousness,
which profoundly modifies the dynamics of conscious
mind and of cerebration, and directs all to ends.
This is Keason.
Accordingly, I must ask you to go back to the lec-
ture on the intelligence of animals, in order that you
may there see how the instruments of mind, as not yet
a self-conscious mind, constructs -its own intelligent
life. We find in the animal the whole dynamic of
conscious mind; and having also found it in ourselves
as the platform on which Will and self -consciousness
stand, we have to note to what extent the natural
dynamic is modified by the intrusion of Will and
self-consciousness.
Natural Dynamics of Conscious Mind as Intelligence.
We found that the dynamical movements might
fairly be generalised under the following heads : —
Conscious Mind.
Attuition.
Sympathy of Intelligence.
172 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
Imitation.
Imagination.
Association.
Memory.
Comparison.
Sense of relations in Time and Space.
By means of operations dependent on these factors,
the animal mind builds itself up, and the man-mind
does the same, in so far as it is animal. As in infancy
and childhood the animal predominates, the considera-
tion of these connate capacities or faculties 1 ought to
yield much that will guide the teacher to principles
of method and rules of procedure.
I cannot, within the limits assigned to this book,
treat adequately ol these capacities; I shall only give
a single brief paragraph to each, chiefly that I may
engage your interest in the modification which the
emergence of Will effects. These paragraphs will be
more fully expounded in lectures.
Generally, it has to be observed that all the charac-
teristics of mind which we share with animals are
emphasised and accentuated by Will-reason, and by
the purpose of thinking and doing which belongs to
Will-reason alone.
(1) IMITATION.
Were it not for the sympathy of intelligence bind-
ing creatures of a like kind together, and giving rise
1 It seems to me to be quite unnecessary to abandon the use of
so useful a word.
xii.] The Building-up of Mind as a Heal. 173
to Imitation, each would have to begin from the begin-
ning for himself, and the growth of mind in each
would be slow.
The recognition of this fact gives us a very impor-
tant principle of method in education, viz. —
PKESENT A GOOD MODEL.
This principle is of wide and various application,
and touches the teacher's work in every subject, and
in all his relations to his pupils. The child naturally
imitates : but, he also wills to imitate. The action of
others supplies him with his concrete ideal. Note,
however, that imitation rests on sympathy of intelli-
gence; and, accordingly, the pupil who by bad man-
agement finds himself in antagonism to his teacher
will not imitate him, or, at best, he will confine his
imitation to mimicking.
(2) IMAGINATION.
This is simply the reproduction in sensation of the
impression made by an object which is now no longer
present. We thus repeat and revise our sensations,
and are not left entirely at the mercy of objects in
actual presentation.
(a) On the plane of sensation we have merely
Representative Imagination.
(6) When Will-reason enters, we have
Productive or Constructive Imagination.
174 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
Here the will seizes representations, or images
dynamically arising, and even searches for images
with a productive purpose.
The principle of method which this yields is —
CULTIVATE THE IMAGINATION.
And this we do by allowing free play to the repre-
sentative imagination (a child educates himself even
by dreaming), and by evoking the productive imagi-
nation,'through the furnishing of the child with pro-
ductive work, as in fairy tales, narratives of events,
simple poetry, and so forth. All this is necessary to
the rich growth of mind as a substantive reality; and
this quite apart from its ethical importance.
(3) ASSOCIATION.
1. Association as Condition of Knowing.
Sensations and sensates occur in experience either
together or in sequence, and they are thus linked
together. There is an external linking in time and
place, and there is also an inner or real linking of like-
ness and unlikeness. We desire to reproduce past
experience, and we have to take advantage of these
actually existing dynamical relations. They go on in
spite of ourselves, it is true ; but the introduction of
Will-reason enables us to take advantage of them
with a view to recall past experiences for purposes of
knowledge. Association as an instrument in the
building up of the fabric of knowledge is a subject
xii.] The Building-up of Mind as a Real. 175
demanding from the psychologist elaborate analysis.
One might say that just as all nature presents itself
to us as an extension of that which already exists, but,
in each sticcessive object in the rising scale, with a dif-
ference; so, knowledge of one thing after another is
essentially an extension of that which is already
known, to that which is like it, but with a difference.
There is no break or leap.
Hence, if we are to instruct with effect, we always
must build the new on the old, i.e. on what already is
known.
Principle of Method. — LINK THE TEACHING OF THE
NEW WITH FACTS ALREADY KNOWN WITH WHICH
THE NEW HAS A REAL RELATION OF LIKENESS OR
UNLIKENESS (i.e. LIKENESS IN UNLIKENESS), SO THAT
THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE MAY BE AN ORGANIC
GROWTH.
RULES : —
(a) When introducing a new subject or a new les-
son, go back upon what is already known.
(6) Prepare the mind for the lesson.
[I say likeness in unlikeness, for it seems to me
that the association of contrast does not exist (a midge
does not suggest an elephant), but that when carefully
analysed it is likeness in unlikeness, or unlikeness in
likeness, that really associates experiences.]
2. Association as aiding Memory. (Suggestion.)
The dynamical connection of experiences, which
brings it about that one suggests the other to con-
176 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
sciousness, is called the " Association of Ideas " (not
a good name), and takes the following forms : —
LAWS OR RULES OF ASSOCIATION.
(a) On the sensational plane —
1. Contiguity in time or place (co-existent or
in a series of sequence).
2. Likeness, and unlikeness in likeness.
3. The whole and the parts of a thing in a
vague sensational way.
(6) On the plane of Will-reason.
1. Whole and parts, viz. individual concepts
and their elements or parts, suggest each
other; general concepts and their parts
suggest each other; reasonings, i.e. the
three propositions of a syllogism, suggest
each other.
2. Cause and effect suggest each other.
Principle of Method. — ASSOCIATE TEACHINGS so AS
TO AID MEMORY.
The growth of the fabric of mind, both in the dy-
namical sphere of sensation and in the self-conscious
or purely active sphere of will, is always, as I have
said above, through association of some kind. It is
an organic growth. Hence the importance of the
principle which we laid down, viz. Link teachings, so
that the new shall grow out of the old (that which is
xii.] The Building-up of Mind as a Real. 177
already known). This cannot be done if we start a
new subject or a new lesson without bringing into
activity the existing material in the memory of the
child, which is the natural basis for the next step.
Psychologists treat Association too exclusively under
its second and secondary head of Suggestion. The
two aspects of Association taken together yield the
following : —
Principle of Method. — ENRICH YOUR TEACHING
WITH AS MANY RELEVANT ASSOCIATIONS AS POSSIBLE.1
(4) MEMORY.
The first condition of memory, speaking generally,
is the retention of what has once been present in con-
sciousness.
It may be defined as the identifying a present con-
sciousness with a consciousness formerly experienced.
1. On the plane of sensation.
Presentations and representations (images of pres-
entations) are felt to be similar to prior presentations
and representations. This we see in animals. They
have, however, to wait for the action of their environ-
ment on them, or the dynamical movements in their
cerebrum. This passivo-active memory may be called
Reminiscence.
2. On the plane of reason.
Here Will has entered, and the self-conscious sub-
ject seeks purposely to recover and reinstate past
1 Education is an extensive as well as an intensive process.
178 Institutes of Education. [LECT. xn.
experiences with a view to knowledge. This activo-
active memory is to be called
Recollection,
and is, of course, peculiar to the man or rational mind
alone.
It is manifest that in Reminiscence we are wholly
in the hands of environment and Association, and
that in Recollection we have to follow the track of
Association in order to recover the past.
Principle of Method. — MEMORY SHOULD BE CULTI-
VATED —
(a) As an act of Will, and therefore a discipline.
(6) As alone conserving the materials of knowledge,
(c) As an exercise facilitating the acquisition of
new knowledge.
The conditions of remembering are —
Vividness of impression (and accentuation by
an act of Will) ;
Duration of impression;
Repetition of impression ; but, above all,
Association of the thing to be remembered with
other things.
Principle of Method. — IN TEACHING REPEAT AND
RE-REPEAT, REVISE AND RE-REVISE; AND BE ALWAYS
FALLING BACK ON ELEMENTARY PACTS AND PRINCI-
PLES RELATIVE TO THE SUBJECT OF INSTRUCTION,
SO AS TO MAINTAIN THE SERIES OF ASSOCIATIONS.
Note. — The restrictions connected with the cultivation
of memory, as such, demand consideration.
PART III.
METHODOLOGY.
METHODOLOGY.
THE doctrine of Method is the last chapter in the
theory or science of the education of a mind, and the
first chapter of the Art or practice of education. It
stands by itself, and consists simply of a gathering
together of the principles which the discussion of
mind as a growing or evolving organism has yielded.
In so far as the theoretical argument is unsound, the
principles of education deduced from it are unsound.
This chapter, accordingly, merely brings together
results already ascertained.
It is true that the human race, by the combined
operation of inner tendency, self-evolved will, and
pressure of environment, has somehow educated itself
without the knowledge of these principles ; also that
successive generations of men have applied many of
these principles in the form of empirical rules with
more or less of mental confusion and more or less of
success. The same remark, however, is applicable to
political economy, political philosophy, and indeed
to all science. None the less do we study the science
of all subjects ; and this both for the sake of knowl-
edge in itself and for the improvement of practice.
If we can by any possibility attain to a wise prac-
181
182 Institutes of Education.
tice in the education of the human mind, we cannot
doubt that it will be of vital importance to future
generations of men.
SUMMARY OF PRINCIPLES.
The supreme End of the education of mind being
ethical, that is to say, the expression of each person in
self-directed daily conduct, we fairly enough deduce
from this the principle —
1. TURN EVERYTHING TO USE.
RULES : —
(a) Teach nothing that is useless.
(6) Connect all that is taught with the ordi-
nary and everyday life of the pupil.
(c) Call for the reproduction and application
of what you teach. The ultimate test
of exact knowledge is the power of
applying it.
(d) Turn what is known to use for yielding
new knowledge.
2. FOLLOW THE ORDER OF MIND-GROWTH (which,
speaking generally, is also the order of brain-growth).
RULES : —
(a) In teaching every subject, and every
successive lesson on the same sub-
ject, build it up in the mind of the
child in accordance with the order of
mind-growth.
(6) Proceed step by step, and step after step.
3. ENCOURAGE CONTACT WITH ALL FORMS OF
EXISTENCE, AND PROMOTE ALL FORMS OK NATURAL
ACTIVITY.
Methodology. 183
This, in order that there may be a rich sub-
stance of mind. (Education is an extensive
as well as an intensive process.)
4. PRESENT TO SENSE.
RULE. — Never teach anything that can be
seen, touched, heard, etc., without the
presence of the object, or a vivid
representation, of it ; l and appeal to
every sense, wherever practicable, in
the teaching of every subject.
5. EVOKE THE WILL OF THE PUPIL.
Note. — Except in so far as a boy applies him-
self he knows nothing, but is a merely
passivo-active creature of sensation.
The child attains to knowledge, not by
receiving it, but by taking it. He
instructs himself. The teacher is the
guide, co-operator, and remover of
obstructions only.
This mode of teaching by throwing the
work on the pupil gives him a pleas-
ing sense of power and self-achieve-
ment which are in the highest degree
stimulating.
6. TEACH ALL THAT is COMPLEX ANALYTICO-SYN-
THETICALLY, i.e. REDUCE AN OBJECT TO ITS ELEMENTS,
AND THEN BUILD IT UP AGAIN.
7. PERCIPIENCE is OF THE SINGLE, AND PERCEPTS
LIE AT THE BASIS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE; THEREFORE,
1 1 should expect that magic lanterns would, ere long, be added
to school apparatus.
184 Institutes of Education.
TEACH ONE THING AT A TIME, WHETHER IT BE A
WHOLE OB AN ELEMENT IN A WHOLE.
KULES : —
(a) In object-lessons, etc., do not proceed to
the elements or properties of a thing
until the mind is accustomed to dis-
criminate and name things as wholes.
(6) Dwell long over the simple elements of a
subject. Confusion in the beginning viti-
ates the whole after-process of learning.
8. IN CONCIPIENCE PRACTISE PUPILS IN THE ANALY-
SIS OF COMPLEX THINGS AND THE SYNTHESIS OF MANY
PARTICULARS IN ONE WHOLE, IN ORDER TO TRAIN TO
EXACTNESS OF CONCEPTION (analytico-synthetic prin-
ciple).
Note. — This applies, first of all, to object-
lessons of every stage of difficulty up
to science instruction; but also to all
other subjects.
9. TEACH FIRST THE PROMINENT OR SALIENT CHAR-
ACTERISTICS OR ELEMENTS OF A THING (OR SUBJECT),
AND THEN PROCEED TO OTHER ELEMENTS.
RULE. — Confine yourself for a time to the
leading outlines of a subject, and then
fill in gradually (Geography, Gram-
mar, History, etc.).
10. TEACH GENERALISATIONS AS GENERALISATIONS,
i.e. ADVANCE FROM THE PARTICULAR TO THE GENERAL,
FROM THE CONCRETE TO THE ABSTRACT.
Note. — When you encounter a generalisation
in the course of reading, analyse it
Methodology. 185
into its particulars, and put it to-
gether again (analytico -synthetic prin-
ciple).
11. TEACH REASONINGS AS REASONINGS, i.e. GET
THE PUPIL TO MAKE EXPLICIT ALL IMPLICIT REASON-
INGS (analytico-synthetic principle).
12. COMPLETE YOUR INSTRUCTION IN A SUBJECT BY
TEACHING THROUGH CAUSES (analytico-synthetic prin-
ciple).
13. PRESENT A GOOD MODEL or WHAT YOU WISH
THE PUPIL TO DO (Writing, Drawing, Carpentering,
Composition, etc.).
Grown men are imitative, but children most of
all; they do what they see you do.
14. CULTIVATE THE IMAGINATION.
15. ASSOCIATE TEACHINGS, i.e. ALWAYS LINK THE
NEW WITH WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN. THIS IS ESSEN-
TIAL TO THE ORGANIC GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE AND
TO INTELLECTUAL INTEREST ; AND, CONSEQUENTLY, TO
SUCCESSFUL TEACHING.
RULE. — Prepare the mind of the pupil for a
lesson, so that there may be no abrupt
transition. The mind does not take
leaps.
16. ASSOCIATE TEACHINGS IN ORDER TO AID THE
MEMORY.
The Association should be a real association; but
failing this the external associations of conti-
guity in time and place may be taken advan-
tage of.
17. As TO ASSOCIATION GENERALLY.
186 Institutes of Education.
RULES : —
(a) Support and enrich your teaching of
a subject with as many illustrative
and relevant associations as possible.
(This not only helps the memory, but
gives breadth and pliancy to mind.)
(6) Let all associations with your teaching be
pleasing, so that there may be no
physical or moral obstruction to the
natural growth of knowledge.
18. CULTIVATE THE MEMORY.
RULE. — Repeat and re-repeat, revise and re-
revise, always falling back on the
elementary facts and principles of the
subject taught. Thus the memory of
a subject is the memory of real rela-
tions, and not of mere words and
formulae, which is rote instruction or
cram. Repetitio mater Studiorum.
Our survey of elementary physiology
taught us the great fact of physio-
logical habit and its relation to all
intellectual and moral activity. All
functions of mind, intellectual and
ethical, are strengthened and made
easy by use.
19. THEREFORE, REPEAT AND RE-REPEAT THE SAME
INTELLECTUAL OPERATIONS IN CONNECTION WITH A
CONTINUOUS SUBJECT, WITH A VIEW TO THE FORMA-
TION OF A GOOD INTELLECTUAL HABIT.
Methodology. 187
This alone is true training and discipline, for this
alone is permanent in its effects.
" Use almost can change the stamp of nature."
Hamlet, iii. 4.
The above scheme of Method is a summarised state-
ment of the Art of education, in so far as intelligence
is concerned, and it is applicable to all possible sub-
jects of instruction (including the ethical, as we shall
see).
To instruct well is to instruct (consciously or uncon-
sciously) in accordance with these principles and rules,
i.e. in accordance with Method. It is necessary to
instruct according to Method, if our instruction is to
be sound and sure, and, above all, if we are to train
and discipline (i.e. educate) mind. And this is the
point to emphasise, that training and discipline is
greater than knowledge, and that only by sound method
can we train and discipline faculty. Method derives
its chief importance from this.1
The point chiefly to note in connection with these
rules of the Art is that they are ascertained, not
empirically (though many of them had been found
out long before psychology was applied to education),
but scientifically. That is to say, they flow by neces-
sary deduction from the science of Mind.
Thus it is that we vindicate for the art of education
1 Strange that classical teachers, who are most of all identified
with the theory that discipline is all in all, have been most active
in the defence of " No method."
188 Institutes of Education.
a prior and governing science. Take any of these rules
you choose, and go back on our statement of the pro-
cesses of intelligence, and you will see for yourselves
its scientific basis. If we can ascertain (as we can)
how it is that mind knows and grows, how it is that
intelligence intelligises, it is clear as noonday that
we have also got the how of teaching, because teaching
is simply helping the mind to perform its function of
knowing and growing.
These principles and rules, I would repeat, as the
issue of scientific analysis, form the last chapter of
the Science of education, and at the same time the
first chapter of the Art. All the subsequent chapters
of the Art are merely the application of this chapter
to the various subjects which we wish boys and girls
to learn. We have nothing to add to them except
this, that their practical application from day to day
is modified by two considerations, viz., First, the cir-
cumstances (by which I mean mental rather than
physical circumstances) of the pupil. Secondly, the
subject we are teaching. Not that the principles do
not apply to all subjects, but that each subject will
suggest its own expedients, if not also rules.
I shall explain these two points : —
As regards the first: if the pupils to whom I am
giving object-lessons or any other lessons are of the
more educated classes of society, it is absurd to make
oneself a slave to the rule of " little by little " and
" step by step " to the extent to which we subject our-
selves to it when dealing with poor children whose
minds receive no home cultivation. In the case of
Methodology. 189
the former, we can take much for granted and advance
more rapidly than with the latter. This considera-
tion is of greater weight in some subjects than in
others, e.g. in examining on the reading-lesson. You
can yourselves, after a little reflection, supply all
that I omit saying in this connection. The age of
the pupils, too, is one of the most important of the
conditions under which we teach. Setting aside the
question of the age at which a natural science can be
taught scientifically, all will at once see that with
boys of fourteen we must proceed much more slowly
than with boys of sixteen or seventeen. The lecture
on the periods or stages of mental growth will sug-
gest to the thoughtful reader all that has to be said
on the question of rapidity of progress.
As regards the second point : — additions to the
rules, or modifications of them, are naturally suggested
to anybody's common sense by the nature of the sub-
ject he happens to be teaching. For example, the
mode of procedure in teaching the English language
is fundamentally the same as that to be followed in
teaching French or Latin. But the fact that English
is the native tongue admits of a procedure which is
impossible in the case of a foreign tongue. The most
important difference of procedure is suggested by the
fact that English grammar is, in the mind of the child,
implicit. We are merely making explicit, and reduc-
ing to order and rule, what is already there. It is
plain that we cannot do this in the case of French or
Latin. On the other hand, presuming that all will
agree with me in thinking that the native grammar
190 Institutes of Education.
must be the basis of foreign grammars (in order that
the new may grow out of the old and knowledge be an
organic growth), then it is absurd not to take advan-
tage of English grammar in teaching French or Latin,
and not to assume that a good deal of the grammatical
work is already done to my hand. And so on, as
when we pass from Latin to Greek. Here common
sense comes in ; and though it be " the rarest gift of
Heaven," we must take it for certain that all teachers
are endowed with it.
And this allusion to common sense suggests that I
must still make one remark before I conclude this part
of my subject.
It is possible to overdo method.
You may be giving a lesson quite in accordance with
sound method, but you may be pedantically taking
step after step with too exclusive an eye on method of
procedure, and too little regard to the subject you are
teaching, the mental condition of the pupil you are
teaching, and the proposed end of your teaching. You
may forget entirely that the prime condition of all suc-
cessful method is the sympathetic movement of the
mind before you with your mind, and your mind with
his. Indeed, without this sympathy, subtle and deli-
cate in its nature, your method becomes wooden and
lifeless. This, now, is to be a slave to method,
whereas method ought to be your servant, not your
master. Sympathy cannot be taught by any professor
of education. It is a thing of native growth, but its
germs may be cultivated. The greatest stimulus to a
young mind, you may be sure, is your sympathy with
Methodology. 191
it, for this is always accompanied with a genuine
desire to lead the pupil into the subject; and that
desire will in all, save a few cases, be reciprocated by
the pupil. There is no device for commanding atten-
tion and no methodology which can be a substitute for
interest in your subject and sympathy with the mind
before you. In fact, one might almost supersede all
study of method if one could only secure this, that the
teacher was able sympathetically to place himself in
the mental attitude of the pupil towards the lesson,
and advance along with him step by step to the full
comprehension of it.
It has also, I think, to be noted that it is above all
that philosophy of mind which regards mind as being,
under more or less disguise, a process of sense-agglut-
ination, which will generate a method in the forming
of mind as pedantic in practice as it is unsound in
theory. The growth of a mind, even if we regard it
as a mere fabric of stones and cement, is not depend-
ent on the educator. It fulfils its own life in its own
way. We merely fix the end, give direction, supply
defects, remove obstructions, and, generally, lend a
hand. Some would build up mind as if they were
laying a tessellated pavement. Method which does
not confine itself to the order of studies and the dis-
cipline and development of faculty generally, but con-
descends to the minutest details of the order of
questions to be put even in a simple narrative lesson,
is method run to seed. The human mind, as a living
energy, is always arranging its own material for itself,
and children are not so dull as some method-mongers
192 Institutes of Education.
seem to imagine. Still more clearly shall we see the
fallacy of the pedantic extremist in method, if we
recognise reason as at root a will-energy ever seeking,
by the necessity of its own nature, to correlate presen-
tations and representations under the stimulus of the
native form of End. To stimulate and direct this,
taking care to keep to the highway of mind-process, is
more than half our task.
In short, one great advantage accruing to the study
of the science of education, as distinguished from the
art as a dogmatic system, is, that it makes the student-
teacher master of method, and prevents method, in
the sense of rules, being master of him. He sees the
ultimate ground and significance of the rules, and feels
free and unencumbered in his use of them. His obedi-
ence is the obedience of a freeman, not of a slave. He
is the subject of a constitutional monarch, not of a
despot. We rightly despise " rule of thumb " ; but let
us remember that there is such a thing as a pedantic
system of rules which becomes a kind of organised
" rule of thumb " — perhaps a more dangerous enemy
of true method than the traditionary practices which
make no pretensions.
Note. — There ought to follow Methodology, a discussion
of the art of examining and a consideration of manner in
the teacher as distinguished from method. On these subjects
much might be said. As to the art of examining, I would
say generally, that the moment it departs from the type of
an intelligent conversation conducted with perfect natural-
ness, it goes wrong.
PART IV.
APPLIED METHODOLOGY, OR THE ART OF
EDUCATION.
APPLIED METHODOLOGY, OR THE ART
OF EDUCATION.
METHOD OF INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, i.e. OF IN-
STRUCTION AND DISCIPLINE.1
I DO not say methods of instruction, but of " intel-
lectual education," because it has been already shown
that all sound instruction of the intelligence involves
training and discipline, and all sound training and
discipline of the intelligence can be secured through
sound instruction alone. The two taken together
constitute the education of mind as intelligence.
We divided subjects of instruction into two classes,
the Meal, which specially feed the mind, and the
Formal or Abstract, which specially discipline. The
Real comprised Naturalistic and Humanistic subjects ;
and so with the Formal. We shall take the Real
first.2
1 The practical application of Method to the various subjects of
instruction would naturally extend to about twenty-five lectures.
2 There is also, doubtless, a reality of fact and relation in the
abstract.
195
196 Institutes of Education.
A. — Application of Method to Instruction in the HEAL,.
The Naturalistic. — (1) Object-lessons and Nature-
knowledge. Elementary service generally.
(2) Knowledge of the Human Body.
(3) Geography (as defined in Lecture V.,
Part I.).1
(4) Physiography.
The Humanistic.
Introductory. — Reading as a merely instrumental
art. Writing as a subsidiary instrument.
(1) Language,2 i.e. —
(a) The Vernacular language as the expres-
sion of the thought of others — Liter-
ature.
(6) The Vernacular language as a synthetic
exercise — the expression of one's own
thought — Imitative Composition.
(2) Foreign Languages as Literature.
(3) Economics.
(4) History with Civil Relations.
(5) Moral Sentiments and Precepts [Minor
Morals] .
1 For a paper on "Method in Teaching Geography," see Occa-
sional Addresses.
2 The substance of my lectures on Language and Literature will
be found in the book entitled Language and Linguistic Method in
the School (Cambridge University Press). The student is also re-
ferred to "Theory and the Curriculum of the Secondary School,"
in Teachers' Guild Addresses (Percival & Co.), and to "Liberal
Education in the Primary School," in Occasional Addresses (Cam-
bridge University Press).
Applied Methodology. 197
(6) Spiritual Ideas (including the Beautiful)
and Religion.
B. — Application of Method to Instruction in the FORMAL.
Drawing. Language as Grammar (native
Arithmetic. and foreign languages).
Geometry. Rhetoric.
Logic.
The lecturer on education will treat all the above
subjects in detail. I merely name them here.
Note. — The inclusion of drawing among " Formal " sub-
jects may give rise to question. I regard outline drawing
(including geometrical) as belonging to the formal of sense,
and as an essential element in all education" of the intelli-
gence. Apart from numerous other advantages, the practice
of drawing must tend to give a definiteness of outline to all
mental operations : these have a tendency to visualisation as
they become absolutely clear and distinct. The effort also
to copy a line or curve so that it shall be a true copy, is an
effort of self-directed will which is of disciplinary benefit,
and yet within the capacity of the youngest.
As to materials of education generally, I would here lay
down two propositions which ought to be constantly pres-
ent to the teacher as governing all that can be said as to
" materials."
I. The child of six or seven may, without exaggeration,
be said to come to school from the home, the fields, and the
streets with his mind full of the elements of every department
of knowledge included in the above classification. He is
already a walking miniature encyclopaedia. We are much
mistaken if we think his mind is waiting for us before it
begins to work. It is chockful of judgments. The subjects
included above under the heads Real and Formal are (with
198 Institutes of Education.
the exception of foreign tongues), if closely examined, merely
a generalisation and classification of the materials in and
through which the life of each is being carried on as a
matter of course.
II. The teacher's main business is to take the chaotic
child-synthesis to pieces, make clear what is confused, and
build on the foundations thus laid. But the teacher never
leaves behind him the ordinary experiences of child-life ; he
simply interprets and extends them. It is daily life which
gives material, and the school which gives interpretation,
direction, and form. Life and the school should be in a
continual reciprocity — never disjoined. Vitce non scholce
discendum est.
We have now come to the end of that portion of
the Institutes of Education which deals with EIGHT
JUDGMENT, including as elements of right judgment,
and therefore as materials of instruction, moral and
spiritual ideas. But knowledge, and even wisdom,
which issue in judging knowingly and wisely, are of
little avail, save in so far as they express themselves
in " Good action under a sense of Duty," and find their
completion in a " comprehension of the spiritual sig-
nificance of nature and life" (p. 33). Thus alone do
we achieve the Ethical End; and we must now indi-
cate the lines and method of instruction, training, and
discipline in respect of this the ultimate aim of all
our endeavours.
PART V.
ETHICAL EDUCATION— SPECIALLY
CONSIDERED.
LECTURE I.
ETHICAL IDEAS AS THE REAL, OR SUBSTANCE, OF LIFE.
NOTE. — The following lectures consist of summaries
and paragraphs only. It is presumed that the student
now turns back and re-peruses Lectures IV. and V.
Part I.
THE problem of education may be summarised, as
we have seen, under the three heads of the end, the
means (which comprehends materials and process),
and the agency, which sets the whole in motion and
carries it out to its completion. The agency is the
teacher, who passes into the higher category of " edu-
cator " only when he works under the inspiration of
an ethical purpose. On his personality so much
depends that the determination of ends and the dis-
cussion of materials and processes seem to sink into
comparative insignificance. But were we to consider
this personality itself (which lies outside our plan in
this book), we should find that in the teacher, as in
education generally, it is the ethical which is of
supreme moment. No system of training can guar-
antee ethical fitness ; but it can shape to an excellent
issue the ethical predisposition, and constrain those
endowed by natiire with this predisposition seriously
201
202 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
to ponder the best ways of fulfilling their obligations
to their own educational ideal and to the national life.
The teacher who is ethically endowed will see that
the materials which he uses for knowledge, and the
discipline which he gives by means of these materials
have for their ultimate object the fitting of the young
to interpret their daily experience, subduing all to the
service of an ethical ideal. But knowledge and intel-
lectual discipline alone, he is well aware, even when
animated by an ethical purpose, will not of themselves
suffice; instruction must be given in ethical ideas
themselves as the true and ultimate realities of life,
and direct discipline must also be given in ethical
habit.
We find, as the last result of human experience,
certain moral ideas ready made for us. This is ethical
tradition. Ethical Education consists in training the
young so as to put them in possession of these ideas
as motives of conduct, and as necessary to their ethical
completeness. Thus we build up Conscience in them.
Left to his own individual experience, a man's knowl-
edge would be small, his conception of human rela-
tions restricted, and his interpretation of them false
or inadequate.
The moral " ideas " are high generalisations, and (as
we now know) we can introduce children effectively
to generalisations only through the particulars of con-
duct. We build up the idea through particular thoughts
and acts. Children are our modern instances of prim-
itive man. Their minds have to repeat the mental
i.j Ethical Ideas as the Real of Life. 203
history of the past, in their conceptions of duty as
well as in their knowledge of things.
How do we proceed with a view to put them in pos-
session of their inheritance?
First, We take care to instruct them in so much of
the accumulated materials of knowledge — knowledge
of things — as will enable them to form right judg-
ments, and give fulness to life by multiplying inter-
ests. The subjects we select and the method of giving
instruction in them, with a view to the attainment of
our ultimate ethical purpose, constitute that part of
educational theory and method which has to do with
the intellect primarily ; that is to say, the mere under-
standing of things and their relations. All this we
have considered in the previous lectures; and as we
enter on the specific consideration of the ethical, we see
that a liberal and generous course of instruction is
necessary, if the circle of thought and interests is to
be so widened as to give materials for sound ethical
conclusions. The width, no less than the intensity,
of a man's intellectual and ethical life is the measure
of his education.
Secondly, We regulate the conduct of the young in
accordance with moral ideas and the sentiment of duty.
Thirdly, We instruct them in moral ideas themselves,
and their spiritual significance.
Our object in these processes is one and the same
— to produce in each human being an ethical state of
mind; but this again with a view to expression and
action, which alone give value to the ethical state : in
other words, we aim at producing a certain state of
204 Institutes of Education. [LKCT. i.
being, and effective virtue as sole guarantee of the
reality of that state.
Now as to the third step, it has to be noted gen-
erally that no one can get a knowledge of moral or
spiritual ideas by merely acquiescing in propositions
regarding them. All moral ideas which can-constitute
motives of action arise primarily out of feelings —
"inner sense," and, consequently, we get possession
of them only by feeling them — feeling, and so seeing,
their truth, and the law that is inherent in them. In
the same way we do- not get a knowledge of anything
of external sense by reading statements about it, but
only by feeling it, that is to say, having it present to
the senses. There is this difference, however, between
the intellectual and the ethical, that knowledge of sub-
jects completes itself simply as knowledge (although
until we can tt.se it, it is not wholly ours), whereas
ethical ideas do not truly live at all, save in action.
We never, consequently, can be said even to know
them (feel them), until we have carried them into
action ; or, at least, realised them imaginatively, if not
in our own activity, then in the activity of another.
LECTURE II.
BRIEF ANALYSIS OF MIND AS AN ETHICAL ACTIVITY.
WHEN dealing with the philosophy of mind as an
intellectual or reason-activity, we first exhibited the
characteristics of the sensational intelligence of the
animal ; and we thus gained a clearer comprehension
of the distinctive characteristics of the intelligence of
man, who alone is a reason. The same mode of pro-
cedure will be followed now in the ethical sphere.
Animal and Infant Ethics.
The result of our analysis (p. 73) was that the
simple feelings which are inherent in a fully developed
animal organism are the following : —
1. The Feeling of Life-activity.
2. The natural appetites (impulses, instincts) work-
ing from within.
3. Sympathy of being and of natural feelings in
living creatures.
4. The feeling of kindness to other living creatures,
especially among those of a like kind (good-
will).
5. The feeling of pleasure in kindness received from
others (love of approbation).
205
206 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
6. The feeling of a superior power (with the con-
sequent feeling of dependence).
7. The feeling of resistance to anything which may
hurt (animal courage).
8. The feeling of fear, or of evasion, of anything
which may hurt (animal cowardice).
9. The feeling of rivalry.
All these insist on manifesting themselves as occa-
sion arises.
Man shares all these feelings, as instincts, desires,
impulses, with animals; and they form the basis of
his ethical nature. As basis of his nature, they are
in evidence from the first; indeed they constitute the
whole ethical apparatus of the infant. There is no
harm in them; but, on the contrary, good: and the
young must be allowed to pursue their desires and
exercise their activities in every direction. We grad-
ually mould these to law, but we must not be in too
great haste.
In man, reason (as Will) enters for the purpose of
rationalising all these impulses and directing them to
ends, which ends are, in their ultimate form, ethical
ideas ; and these, taken together, constitute the ideal
of conduct for each man.
The business of the teacher and parent is to
train and discipline this Will and to build up this
Ideal.
The animal is a mere victim of the dynamic of feel-
ing. It yields to that which is strongest or upper-
most at the moment. Man, on the contrary, directs
feeling and emotion in certain special lines of activ-
ii.] Analysis of Mind as an Ethical Activity. 207
ity, i.e. towards certain specific ends, by virtue of the
reason in him. These ends are, as I have said, ethical
ideas, and they constitute motives of action as gen-
eralised.
Further, when this Will-reason enters into the
sphere of feeling, it brings with it new material to
Consciousness — (1) A consciousness of Will as a
determining power, energy, or force. (2) A con-
sciousness of personality or self. (3) A conscious-
ness of duty to moral law as inherent in the ideas and
the ideal constituted by Will-reason.
With education these rational elements of man's
distinctive ethical nature grow in strength.
The sum of the ethical ideas of conduct in a man,
taken along with the perception of law in these ideas,
and of consequent duty to that law as supreme, con-
stitute, taken together, what we call Conscience. The
function of the educator, accordingly, may be said to
be to build up Conscience in the young: and Con-
science, I repeat, may be succinctly denned as the
ideal system of motives, along with the sentiment of
law and duty to law as inherent in that ideal system.
As to these Ideas themselves : they are ascertained
thus : Reason dealing with the feelings and emotions
which we have in common with animals (though in
more ample measure) determines the relations of a
person to himself and to other persons, and so consti-
tutes the moral ideas (ends and motives) . These ideas
are all complex.
208 Institutes of Education. [LKCT.
The most common of them are —
Humanity (which is good- Courage.
will to others, and love Integrity.
of goodwill of others). Resoluteness and Perse-
Justice, verance.
Truthfulness. Purity.
Honesty. Reverence (for that which
Honour. is greater than our-
Fidelity. selves).
Self-control and Self-respect or self- worth.
The analysis of these complex ideas into their ele-
ments of emotion and reason must throw light on the
method of educating the young, so that the ideas sluill
be to them a permanent possession as knowledge.
I do not attempt this analysis here, but content
myself with saying that the teacher should ahv;iys
have present to himself, as dominating aim, the cul-
tivation in the pupil of self-control and self-respect,
and of those more generic and supreme ethical ideas
which comprehend others, viz. the idea of HUMANITY,
which expands and enriches the soul, while at the
same time determining conduct, and the spiritual idea
of GOD as universal Father, which at once humbles
and exalts the personality, and Whose best service is
the service of mankind. The pupil should early know
that a continuous struggle is appointed for man, not
only with his animal nature and material interests,
but with the very self-conscious ego, which, just
because it lifts him above nature, is too apt to rest
content with self-worship.
ii.] Analysis of Mind as an Ethical Activity. 209
I have spoken elsewhere, in detail, of specific Relig-
ious teaching.1 Accordingly, I would confine myself
here to saying that where there is a breach between
ethical and religious teaching, we have neither the
one nor the other in its fulness of significance. With-
out religious teaching, the education of a human being
is (on purely psychological grounds) demonstrably
incomplete.
Law and Duty. — I have referred to Law and Duty
as residing in the ideas. We may put it otherwise
thus : the abstract sentiment of law and duty inherent
in the reason of man is a mere empty Form, and has
to be filled with the substance of real or ethical ideas
which are to regulate life and conduct. This senti-
ment of law, implying reverence for, and duty to, law,
accompanies all our training and instruction, and is
taken for granted as an ever-present inner fact dis-
tinguishing the man-child from the animal. Through
this sentiment of law and duty, in truth, we must
mainly work, although we do not always make our
procedure apparent to the child.
The educator may be assured that the child is ever
in search of law. Were there no ideal and law for
man there could be no morality; one act would be as
good as another.
The discipline of duty to law is essentially a calling
forth of effort to will the good and right in the face of
difficulties.
1 Occasional Addresses and Teachers' Guild Addresses.
210 Institutes of .Education. [LECT. n.
In this connection, again, the recognition of God as
source of law, and of the world as a moral order, is to
be continually fostered (by being assumed rather than
inculcated), until it reaches that clearness of vision,
possible only to the maturing or matured mind, which
contemplates God as not only the true and ever-
abiding life of the spirit of man, but the ever-during
law of that spirit.
LECTURE III.
UNITY OF THE INTELLECTUAL AND ETHICAL IN
EDUCATION.
Nutrition and Discipline : Real and Formal.
WILL in so far as, in its reason-process, it affirms
or posits real ethical ends or ideas as also abstract law,
is, as we now may see, the Formal element in ethics.
In other words, Will, engaging itself with abstract
duty to law, and acting for the sake of duty to law as
such, is Formal. The ethical ideal, on the other hand,
which is " constituted law " for us, is the substance or
matter, in other words, the Real in the ethical act.
We have spoken in past pages x of the unity of
reason ; but we now farther see that the human mind
as a whole is a rational unity. There is no true
separation of the intellectual and the ethical. The
ethical is within the sphere of the rational, not outside
it or somehow added on to . it. The rational affirma-
tion of end in the sphere of inner feeling and emotion,
which affirmation determines conduct, is identical in
its nature with rational affirmation regarding anything
whatsoever.
1 Vide also Appendix D.
211
212 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
Note. — Within the limits of mere knowledge, the affirma-
tion has its final issue in knowledge simply ; the moment it
goes beyond this, and involves the effecting of a particular
knowledge in the world of action or conduct, the knowledge,
it will be found, is, ipso facto, instinct with some feeling or
emotion, and becomes ethical. The abstract love of pure
knowledge itself, for its own sake, is, however, ethical,
because it is the pursuit of an idea and an ideal. This
involves emotion.
In the purely intellectual sphere we distinguished
between the Real and the Formal or Abstract in
instruction. So, in the distinctively Ethical sphere
— the ethical side of reason — there is a Real and a
Formal or Abstract.
Accordingly, just as we found Will in the conscious
subject to be root and nerve of reason in man, we now
find the same Will to be root and nerve of all ethical
life and activity. The ethical end, — always an idea
of reason, — which is affirmed as right and law, is car-
ried, by the sustained energy of the same Will that
affirmed it, into action; and thus we become ethical
beings, and not knowing beings only.
It will be at once seen that this analysis of the
essential nature of mind not only gives to us, as stu-
dents of philosophy, a unity of view, but as students
of education a unity of theory and system. For in
the education of both the rational and ethical nature,
Will is the distinguishing characteristic of man —
that whereby he is man; and it is this, conse-
quently, that we have specially to train, and disci-
pline, viz. Will as at once a rational and an ethical
energy.
in.] Unity of the Intellectual and Ethical. 213
But, inasmuch as rational mind, as pure Will and
its Reason-process (or, as I prefer to call it, Will-
reason), is merely formal, we have to provide food,
reality, nutrition for the moral, just as we do for the
intellectual, nature. This material is, we now know,
ethical ideas. We must never, however, lose sight of
the fact that it is the command which Will has over
its materials, and the ends for which it uses them,
that are alone of value in life. A purpose of Duty
is demanded of us. This, indeed, is what we mean
when we say that the end of education, as of life, is
ethical.
Intellectual discipline, we found, involves a self-
initiated energy of Will in the face of difficulties
under a sense of Law — that is to say, the fulfilment
of law as imposed by another or oneself with a view
to the fulfilment of a purpose : Ethical discipline also
may be defined in the same terms. Thus, intellectual
discipline is, in truth, a moral discipline.
The above remarks justify the traditionary attitude
of the classical humanists to discipline of intellect as
of supreme importance; but it also shows that they
have erred in making it all-important. The intellect
must be fed, and the ethical nature must be fed. So
essential is this, that we might also justify the real-
istic attitude" of mind to education as of supreme
importance.
The true conclusion is that to which we formerly
came. Will-reason can be trained and disciplined only
in and through the Real : and the Real can be effec-
tively taught only when it is so taught as to be a
214 Institutes of Education. [LECT. in.
training and discipline of the Formal in mind. How?
To this scientific methodology is the answer; and
as regards intellect we have nothing more to say.
But methodology is equally potent in the ethical
sphere.
PART VI.
APPLIED METHODOLOGY AS ART OF
ETHICAL EDUCATION.
LECTURE I.
THE REAL AND THE FORMAL.
Instruction, Training, and Discipline generally.
ETHICAL Education, I have just said, comprises (like
intellectual education) two elements, the Real and the
Formal — nutrition and training with discipline.
I pointed out (p. 41) the distinction between the
" training " and " discipline " of the intelligence. Dis-
cipline, we found, could not be distinguished from
training except in this, that it was dependent on spon-
taneous, unaided, and self-directed effort on the part
of the pupil, with a view to the effecting of a self-
conscious purpose ; while training was the carrying of
the pupil through certain intellectual processes by a
stronger will — his master's. Hence we found that
formal or abstract studies were in themselves more
disciplinary, if rightly taught, than realistic studies,
because they involved greater initial energy and more
sustained application of that Will which, as a power
and process, is the distinguishing differentia of man.
The same distinction is apparent in ethical education.
In the case of very young children we train to right
action, i.e. we guide, lead, and help them to do the
217
218 Institutes of Education. [LECT. i.
right, in obedience to their teacher as a moral in-
structor : we do not appeal to abstract law, or lay a
burden on their wills. We rely on imitation and on
their affection for us. As they grow older, however,
we call upon them to do the right of themselves in the
face of temptation, in obedience to the moral law in
them, and as an act of self -directing will in the service
of bare duty : this is formal discipline.
Thus far, the method of intellectual and the method
of moral education run on parallel lines. In both
alike training is the guidance and helping of the
unformed will in the fulfilment of ends, and discipline
is the spontaneous, free energising of that will in the
fulfilment of self-conscious ends, to which, as law, it
owes Duty.
LECTURE II.
METHOD OF ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE REAL —
INSTRUCTION.
THE ethical differs from the intellectual as regards
the method of instruction only in so far as we are now
instructing in the emotions and ideas which constitute
the inner substance or matter of our ethical life. The
**
difference is caused by this : in the sphere of intellec-
tual education we have to do with presentation and
acquisition, whereas in the sphere of ethical education
•we have directly to do with action or conduct; for, as
we pointed out, an emotion is not ours till it is felt,
and an ethical idea is not truly ours till it is used.
An ethical emotion or idea truly lives only in action,
and, accordingly, can be realised as a fact of conscious-
ness by the child, and so truly Jcnoivn, only as an act.
The distinction is, fundamentally, the distinction
between outer sense and inner feeling respectively as
yielding materials for knowledge.
Consequently, we instruct in the real of ethics chiefly
by training.
That is to say, (a) we do not bring the ethical before
the child's mind as a series of perceptive facts or
reasoned conclusions, but let the child contemplate
ethical emotions and ideas in action in ourselves or in
219
220 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
others (either actually or in narratives). Perception
is here perception of a, feeling in activity, (b) Above
all, we lead him to imitate and do the good instead of
the bad by letting him feel its inherent attractiveness,
which he does instinctively ; and, further, by associat-
ing the good with his regard for us.
Hence it is, that while the principle of method —
" present a good model " — is of general application
in the instruction of the intelligence, it is absolutely
indispensable in ethical instruction. In fact, it may
be said that abstract instruction in emotions or in
moral ideas or precepts is to the young nothing but
words — verba sine rebus. The res in this sphere are
actions resting on emotions and ideals. The process
of acquisition is the imitative adoption of what the
child approves in others, especially his Teacher. Only
then does he truly know the ethical emotion. So with,
himself; he must do that he may know. Logically, it
is true, the virtuous state of being must always precede
" effective virtue " ; but, as a matter of fact, the two
are so indissolubly united in the life of mind, that we
would seem to bring about the virtuous state of being
by first securing in the young the doing of the right;
and so we work backwards.
These remarks apply also to specifically religious
instruction. I build up the reverential frame of mind,
for example, by means of the habitual act of prayer
and the exhibition in my own conduct of a conscious-
ness of the Divine presence. This is sympathetically
adopted by the child, and he knows it in the moment
of doing it and seeing me do it.
ii.] Ethical Education in the Real. 221
The feelings, again, which lie at the root of minor
morals (which Locke calls good breeding) are all taught
by imitation and a training in acts. Far too little
importance, I would here point out, is attached by
teachers to minor morals in their reactive influence on
character in its deeper sense. No verbal instruction
is here of much avail. Good breeding, acquired after
a youth is grown up, is always alien to him. His
manners and "form " are self-conscious. He is wear-
ing somebody else's clothes, and they never quite fit.
The general conclusion is that ethical instruction,
is through training, i.e. by evoking in the child the
sympathetic approval and imitation of good acts.
Coercion would defeat our purpose. The child has to
adopt our point of view through imitation, and imita-
tion rests, as we have seen, psychologically on sym-
pathy : how can there be sympathy with that which a
child fears? It would be a contradiction in terms.
At the same time, I do not admit that cold precept
is always out of place with the young. It sums up
the character of actions, and has a function in the
sphere of the emotions similar to formulated state-
ments in the sphere of knowledge. Still less is it to
be held that the poetic or other eloquent expression of
moral sentiment is ever out of place. On the contrary,
so long as a poem or rhetorical prose expresses ethical
sentiments or ideas which are fairly well understood,
they are powerful agents in building up the ethical
ideal at every stage of education ; especially when, as
in the case of poetry, the words are allied with music
222 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
in the school. For, all that has to do with the expres-
sion of the ideal, in words or in beautiful forms, is
moralising, simply because it is ideal.
Precepts and dogmas, however, are generalisations,
and no generalisation, as I have so often said, has any
meaning except in so far as it sums up particular
experiences. In the intellectual sphere, particular
experiences are percepts and concepts (individual) of
things; in the ethical sphere they are the acts of the
learner himself, or of his teacher and companions, or
the imaginative realising of the acts of others as
narrated in prose or poetry.
If this distinction be clearly understood, it will be
found that, as regards all else, ethical instruction is
subject to the same Principles of method as intellec-
tual instruction, and we do not require to start in
search of a specific ethical methodology. To show this
in detail would encumber this book, but the mere quot-
ing of a few of the Principles will show what I mean.
Present to Sense : — that is to say, evoke the moral
feeling or emotion so that it shall be clearly present
to consciousness. No preaching will do this any more
than preaching about a banana will convey to con-
sciousness the sense-concept of a banana. Emotions,
etc., must be presented to inner sense as acts.
Present a good model.
Evoke the Will.
Turn to Use : i.e. Help the child in his daily acts to
put into practice what he has seen and approved in
your acts and the acts of others. Without supervision,
moral training is impossible; but the supervision
should be sympathetic and easy.
ii.] Ethical Education in the Real. 223
Let the instruction be analytico- synthetic : that is to
say, in historical and biographical readings, and in
poetical reading, the complex of conduct exhibited has
to be analysed, and its elements, moral and immoral,
to be brought into light with a view to a correct syn-
thesis of the whole. Only so is the lesson of any use
at all. But do not overdo this. If you are to pro-
duce a flame easily with Bryant & May's matches,
attend to the direction on the box, ".Rub lightly."
Associate ethical teachings : — that is to say, not only
so as to exhibit their unity in Will, etc., but associate
them also with pleasant surroundings; above all, a
pleasant countenance.
The other principles and rules of Method I leave
you to apply for yourselves.
But in leaving this subject I cannot forego one
remark suggested by the master principle, " Evoke the
Will." The child must do the work of his own moral
education under your guidance simply, just as he does
the work of instruction under your guidance. Do not
emphasise and drive home moral teachings too much
as if the child were an unwilling recipient of them.
Assume that the young mind is ready for them, nay,
eager for them; and while you handle moral and
spiritual things gravely, let all austerity be absent.
LECTURE III.
METHOD OF ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE FORMAL —
DISCIPLINE.
BY the formal or abstract in ethics we mean Law,
and Duty to Law as such; and here the principles
"Evoke the Will" and "Turn to Use" are specially
applicable.
The ethical ideas which constitute the real or sub-
stance of morality cannot be trusted to determine
a man's conduct, still less a boy's, save in ordinary
cases. Outside the ordinary and usual, the sense of
duty to abstract Law, and that as Law of God, is
indispensable.
It is the Law in ethical ideas, consequently, and
obedience to that Law, which we must constantly keep
before the young if we are to educate them so as to
give them power over their own actions — capacity for
free self-regulation as they grow in years. This evok-
ing of moral energy in the face of difficulties, is what
is meant by moral discipline. Our aim is a " Habit
of good action under a sense of Duty."
Will, as reason, knows and realises in consciousness
the ethical idea; and it is the same Will which real-
ises the knowledge in action. The continued suprem-
224
LECT. in.] Ethical Education in the Formal. 225
acy of tliis Will, as serving moral Law, is the Habit
of Virtue.
But the child knows nothing of inner Law, and the
boy knows little. It is abstract, and in germ only as
yet. The young are concrete beings of sense and feel-
ing. The educator (parent, teacher, the state) is to
them Law — Law in its concrete and visible form.
This is their Conscience, as yet external to them, and
preceding, evoking, and guiding the natural growth
of inner Law in them.
For the securing of the habitual recognition of Law
as Law, and as an end in itself for the free energy of
Will (the essential characteristic of man as a good
citizen and as a person), a great deal depends on the
behaviour of this external Conscience — viz. Authority
or Law as embodied in the parent, the state, and the
teacher. The method of Moral Discipline, then, is
through Authority.
It might be asked at this point, What Right has a
schoolmaster thus to impose himself, as Law, on the
young ? The answer is, The right of the mature mind
to direct the immature mind, the right conferred by a
man's being the holder of the tradition of Law which
is accumulated wisdom, and the right inherent in the
parent and the State, — all which are embodied in the
Teacher for the time being.
This is his Eight. Right may ultimately have to
be supported by Might. But Might, in so far as it is
not used in the service of Right, has no right, and is
226 Institutes of Education. [LECT. m.
immoral; consequently, ineffective and demoralising.
Nay, even in the service of Eight, it is ineffective and
demoralising when employed without absolute neces-
sity. For Might as such (mere physical force) can
never moralise. Through sympathy alone the child
imitatively adopts the Law in you and from you.
Doubtless, Might can deter from certain external acts
and protect law-abiding citizens from their internal
enemies ; and, consequently, in a State it is indispen-
sable as a protective police. In the school, too, Might
can deter; but inasmuch as the purpose of the school
is education, it is an ethical purpose — the attainment
of certain positive ethical results in the pupils of self-
directing wills — and the merely deterrent, conse-
quently, cannot educate. In truth, we might almost
go so far as to say that, except in so far as the young
acquiesce in the law of their elders, the effect of law
is demoralising. You cannot form character outside
the will of the child. It is a miserable result of edu-
cation, which can be identified with the merely nega-
tive result of a State police.
We conclude that the Authority which demands and
commands obedience to Law, in the family and school,
is MORAL AUTHORITY, not Coercive Might. The
whole subject of Discipline to Law and Duty, then,
centres round this question of moral authority.
LECTURE IV.
MORAL AUTHORITY AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS.
THE immature mind is not capable of apprehending
the conception of abstract Law and Duty, as I have
already said. This conception is there in germ and
becomes explicit gradually through the discipline of
young minds, which by nature are seeking for Law and
going out to meet it. Discipline, it might be said, is
attained when we have formed the habit of obedience
to the external Law — the Moral Authority of the
teacher. Not so : the habit must be so formed as to
be a habit of free obedience to inner Law, and a per-
petual recognition of its majesty. It is a slow proc-
ess, and the teacher must pursue his aim deliberately,
calmly, and persistently. If the young were capable
of realising the abstract conception of formal law, we
should content ourselves with saying that sympathy
with the teacher and imitation of him and of other good
examples would suffice, as is the case of instruction.
But they are not capable. The abstract has here, as
everywhere, to be learned through the concrete. The
teacher is the concrete. Now, since the teacher
embodies moral authority for the purpose of regulat-
ing the acts of the pupil and so disciplining him in
227
228 Institutes of Education. [LECT. iv.
duty to law, he himself must make sure that he is a
true and worthy moral authority. So far as he is this,
he will succeed: so far as he is not this, he will fail.
We must now, therefore, consider those character-
istics and elements of a true moral authority which
must be found in the teacher, if the young are to be
so disciplined by it as to grow up willing servants of
the inner Law, and ultimately identify it with their
own personalities as free personalities:
LECTURE V.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EXERCISE OF MORAL
AUTHORITY.
THE characteristics of a true Authority make them-
selves known in the exercise of authority from day to
day and hour to hour. It is assumed that the master
always maintains the aspect and bearing of authority.
This is quite compatible with kindliness and sym-
pathy, and is always self -controlled.1
Summary of characteristics : —
1. The commands of the master are always in accord-
ance with right reason. They are rational.
This does not mean that he is to convince, or try to
convince, his pupils that his commands are rational;
but only that in quiet moments he should be able to
justify his commands to himself, or to other adults,
on rational grounds. His commands must thus never
be arbitrary, if they are to exhibit true authority. In
other words, they must never be an utterance of his
own wilful will, but have a rational justification.
2. The same commands are given in all similar cir-
cumstances. They are sure, steady, and consistent
1 For an Essay on Authority in the Schoolmaster, see my book,
The Training of Teachers, and other Educational Papers.
229
230 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
with themselves. The pupil always knows where to
find the master, so to speak.
The master must not, therefore, allow his commands
to be influenced —
(a) By regard for personal ease, or by indolence
(selfishness).
(6) By variations of moods or temper (caprice).
(c) By personal likes or dislikes (passion).
(d) By indifference or frivolity — showing that
he himself does not, at the bottom of his
heart, much respect the law.
(e) By self-esteem or pride — showing that he
places himself and his own personality
above the law as more worthy than it.
(/) By love of popularity.
3. The master's commands are always instinct with
a moral purpose.
This means that they would be found, if examined,
to have a moral aim.
4. Great liberty of thought and action is consistent
with the observance of law; and all things are right
which do not conflict with the law.
Therefore —
The master's commands do not hover round every
part of the boy's life; they do not harass him; they
are few but strong, strong but few. Liberty of action,
freedom of thought and life, are carefully protected
within certain easily understood and well-marked
limits.
5. The master's commands and requirements are
clear and unmistakable.
v.] Exercise of Moral Authority. 231
6. The Moral Law does not require of us the
impossible. The master who is a true moral author-
ity gives no commands and imposes no tasks which
cannot, with a moderate effort, be fulfilled.
By excessive exactions you justify disobedience.
"Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath."
7. The Moral Law is not equally imperative in
respect of all rules of conduct. The master, there-
fore, lets it appear that there is a distinction, and a
difference of degree, in his commands ; that some are
truly Laws of imperative force, others mere rules or
orders of expediency. There are the "bye-laws," so
to speak, of the family or school.
It is well sometimes even to suspend (by way of
reward) rules of expediency, when they restrict the
freedom of the pupil. The very suspension enforces
the distinction between the Good and the merely Ex-
pedient ; and so far from weakening the sense of Law
in the boy and the school, tends to strengthen it.
8. The commands and demands of the master are
just.
The young are exceedingly sensitive on the subject of
justice. If you are just, you strengthen the inner Law
by the outward manifestation of its own all-pervading
characteristics. There is much that might be said on
this question of Justice, but I shall make only three
remarks —
(a) The teacher's commands must apply to all
equally. This does not preclude relaxa-
tions in the case of children of native
weakness or sensitiveness, provided that
232 Institutes of Education. [LECT.
the other pupils recognise the existence of
the reasons for exemption, which they are
sure to do.
(6) Make very sure of your facts before you
approve or disapprove. If there be any
doubt, always give the pupil the benefit
of it.
(c) Never remember a fault against a boy when
it has been atoned for. Start afresh every
morning with a clean sheet. A new day,
a new life. Let each day be a day of
regeneration.
9. The master makes use of the feeling of awe and
reverence, which is native to every human soul, and
which finds its supreme object in the absolute all-
pervading thought of God, to strengthen the authority
of moral law; but only in grave cases.
If the teacher consistently exhibit the above charac-
teristics of Moral Authority, his own personal author-
ity, as the external conscience of the pupil, is then
justified in him: and it will be found that the pupil
will gain such trust and confidence that, should the
teacher at any time demand or command the ap-
parently capricious or unreasonable, the pupil will
accept the command without question, as capable of
explanation and as right, simply because the teacher
requires it.
What ground have we for selecting these charac-
teristics of the external moral authority? This, that
they are the characteristics of the internal moral
authority. It is only when Moral Law thus clothes
v.] Exercise of Moral Authority. 233
itself that it wears the purple, and commands the
reverence of a rational being as over all supreme.
As the boy grows in years, you relax the pressure
of authority as an external agency. You take him
into moral partnership, so to speak.
LECTURE VI.
THE MORAL SANCTIONS OF AUTHORITY.
THESE may be summed as the Approbation and Dis-
approbation of the educator. They are moral in their
character and effect, because they appeal to native
emotions of a moral, and not of a material and conse-
quential kind.
There is so much to be said here on Disapprobation
that I prefer to say nothing save to repeat the words
of Herbart, that we must never so censure as to cause
a boy to lose all self-respect. It is clear that blame
is not felt at all unless there is self-respect to lose.
The great task of the Church with the hopelessly fallen
may be said to be to restore their self-respect. Appro-
bation, again, is to be frank and generous, but with a
certain reserve. You should not approve as if you
were agreeably surprised that the boy should do right.
234
LECTURE VII.
THE MATERIAL SANCTIONS OF AUTHORITY, OR THE
ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY.
THESE sanctions are Rewards which emphasise Ap-
probation, and Punishments which emphasise Disap-
probation. The moment we carry material rewards
and punishments farther than is necessary to empha-
sise the moral sanctions, we pass into the sphere of
the non-moral — the purely coercive. School disci-
pline, in its vulgar sense, always appeals to material
or bodily considerations alone, and as deterrent is
non-moral, if not also demoralising.
As to Rewards. — These are almost wholly unneces-
sary.
Punishments. — These may be classified thus : —
(1) Positive punishments: (a) bodily castigation,
(6) impositions, (c) confinement, (d) expulsion.
(2) Negative or privative punishments.
A question to be considered here is the gradation of
punishments. Never punish if you can attain your
end without it. When you do punish, let the punish-
ment be the minimum which will attain your end.
The precise psychological effect of material punish-
ments, such as flogging, confinement, etc., is an inter-
esting question for the Analyst.
235
LECTURE VIII.
NATURAL AUXILIARIES OF AUTHORITY.
THE skilled teacher gets these on his side. Woe to
the Headmaster who finds them against him.
They are so potent that the teacher is generally to
blame when he has to resort to physical castigation.
The natural auxiliaries may be summed under the
following heads — (1) Sympathy of members of the
school with each other ; (2) Esprit de coiys; (3) Emu-
lation. But the chief auxiliary, without which all the
ethical work of the teacher would be wholly vain, is
this, that reason is always in search of law, and rejoices
in it. Attention to the ordinary fixed rules of the
family and the school, though trivial in themselves,
yet promote the general habit of recognising Law.
The result of instruction in ends or ideas, and of
discipline of Will, is, that at the end of the secondary
school-period the youth is (speaking generally) a Will
which has been fashioned by those set over him, and
with tendencies in a definite and traditional direction.
He cannot, however, be as yet said to act under a
system of self -constituted ideals, i.e. a conscience of
his own making. But he has been so wisely trained
236
LECT. vm.] Natural Auxiliaries of Authority. 237
that he has acquiesced willingly in ethical ideas, in
the reasonableness of law and the obligation of duty,
and has acquired certain moral and religious convic-
tions. Inasmuch as there has been intelligent acquies-
cence, his conscience cannot be said to be imposed from
without, but to be free. The effort, now weak, now
strong, after conduct in harmony with his acquired
ideal, continues for life.
In the case of the thinking few, however, all moral
convictions and ends are, during the period of adoles-
cence, subjected to a new and self-initiated analysis.
This stage of mental growth corresponds to the uni-
versity period of a man's education. Beginning with
doubts and negation, it is resolved, ere long, into a
self-convinced and self-directed affirmation of ethical
truth, which, though it may not wholly harmonise
with the tradition in which the youth has been edu-
cated, will not very far depart from it. The best work
a university can do is to afford guidance to this philo-
sophic movement of mind.
It may be said that those youths, who do not think,
often go astray at this period of their lives, however
well educated they may have been. But this straying
from the right path is merely a lapse in conduct owing
to the powerful impulses of nature which emerge into
a feverish activity during adolescence, and not to any
weakening of personal conviction as to law and duty.
Allowing for certain exceptions, their recovery and
restoration may be safely calculated on. There is
much truth in the old Calvinistic doctrine of the
"perseverance of the saints."
238 Institutes of Education. [LECT. vm.
In conclusion, let me say that the sum of the matter
is this: As the aim of intellectual instruction and
discipline is to form a free rational self -activity which
seeks Knowledge as Truth; so, the aim of ethical
instruction and discipline is to form a free rational
self-directing activity which seeks the Good as Law.
These two together (and they cannot be separated)
constitute the aim of Education; and if they are
accompanied and sustained by a comprehension of the
spiritual significance of the Truth and the Law, the
Ethical End is achieved.
PART VII.
SCHOOL-MANA GEMENT.
SCHOOL-MANAGEMENT.
Questions for Consideration and Discussion.
WE have throughout assumed, in the preceding
Course, that we have been speaking of the education
of the human mind in general. But the advantages
and disadvantages of congregating boys and girls
for purposes of instruction and education demand
special consideration. The questions to be considered
are —
1. To what extent are the ends, subjects, and
methods of education modified when there are large
numbers to deal with?
2. What is the maximum number which should be
placed under one Headmaster?
3. How many can be taught together in one
class?
4. How is the difficulty of large numbers to be
overcome when the pupils are of different ages and
various stages of progress ? The general answer, of
course, is — By Organisation. What do we mean by
this? We mean —
(1.) The Organisation of the Instruction. The In~
struction-scheme is presumed to have fixed regard to
the educational aim of the School. It must be devised
241
242 Institutes of Education.
with a view to the work, not only of successive years,
but of successive terms, and even of successive weeks.
Length and difficulty of daily lessons have to receive
careful attention ; they must be adapted to the average
pupil.
The curriculum of instruction to be laid down for
different kinds of schools has to be discussed with
reference to the general scope and purpose of all
education.
It may appear impossible to give such instruction
in all the subjects enumerated under the head of Mate-
rials (p. 35) as to give an exact basis for further
progress and, above all, intellectual interest in making
further progress. But it is quite possible to do so, if
we begin betimes and build up gradually from the
foundation, falling back at every stage on previous
stages and connecting the earlier with the later. We
have always to think of quality rather than quantity.
The actual amount to be acquired is, in truth, not
great.
The difficulty which meets us in carrying out an
ideal Instruction-plan is the Time-table.
The Instruction-plan compels us to consider the
respective claims of the Real-naturalistic and Real-
humanistic in a school curriculum. The latter is the
centre round which all education must revolve.
This does not to any extent affect the position taken
up in dealing with the materials of education 1 — viz.
that the Real-naturalistic should run through the
1 In the Class Lectures.
School-Management. 243
whole curriculum of instruction from infancy to man-
hood, being especially prominent up to the fifteenth
year.
Encyclopsedism — its advantages and disadvantages.
Education is an extensive as well as intensive process.
Breadth of basis. Specialisation in Schools : is this
permissible? or, is it a characteristic of the Univer-
sity alone?
As a guide in the arrangement of the succession of
lessons daily, Bacon's words may be adapted to the
school, viz. : " Interchange of contraries with a ten-
dency to the more benign extreme." Formal and Real
subjects should be interchanged with a tendency
towards the " more benign " Eeal.
(2.) The Organisation of the Pupils, i.e. the fitting
them into the Instruction-scheme; in other words,
Classification. In connection with Organisation of
pupils, Examinations, written and oral, Removes,
Leaving Certificates, etc. etc., have to be discussed.
In this connection, too, Class Manipulation, Place-
taking, Prizes, Expedients and Devices in Teaching, as
distinguished from Methods, demand consideration.
Thereafter, School-Eooms, School Furniture, Light
and Ventilation, Apparatus for teaching, Text-Books,
Manual Work in Schools.
In every question the Ethical End must always be
present to us, as governing all practical questions of
detail.
244 Institutes of Education.
ORGANISATION OF A STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM.
Relation of the State to the School.
The different grades of Schools are to be determined
by the periods of Mental Development. They are —
From 3rd till 6th year, KINDERGARTEN SCHOOLS, or Infant
Asylums.
" 6th " 8th " INFANT SCHOOLS.
" 8th " 15th " PRIMARY SCHOOLS (Lower-Primary
to 12th, Upper-Primary to 16th
year1).
From 15th till 18th year, SECONDARY OR HIGH SCHOOLS.
Above 18th year, UNIVERSITIES.
NOTE. — These might be all under one roof; but in that case
the line of demarcation between each would have to be strongly
drawn, because each has its own idea by which its work must be
governed.
TECHNICAL SCHOOLS are schools intended to prepare
for some specific industrial function, as opposed to
schools whose end is purely the education of the man.
The place of Technical Schools in an industrial nation.
To what extent they can be so moulded as to give
education as well as instruction.
GIRLS' SCHOOLS. — The question, "To what extent
difference of sex affects the education of Girls," has
to be discussed. Mixed Schools. Teaching by Women,
etc.
1 The Upper-Primary may belong to the Secondary Schools, and
usually does.
School-Management. 245
CONTINUATION AND EVENING SCHOOLS.
THE TEACHER.
Is he an Educator or a mere retailer of so much
knowledge for so much money? His true vocation,
and its precise social significance as an ethical func-
tion. Intellectual and moral qualifications.
Professional training. The general education of the
Teacher should, like that of other Professions, be in
the line of the higher education of the country, but
demands more breadth. His professional training is
a matter to be determined in its details by time, place,
and circumstance. (Training Colleges and Normal
Schools. The Universities as Schools of Education.)
The Headmaster's relation to his Assistants, Powers
and position of Assistants, etc. etc. Relation of Head-
masters to Governing Bodies.
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
THE History of education in various countries is
part of the philosophy of History ; for, to understand
the education of a country, we must first understand
its characteristics, its social system, and its ideal of
human life. We thereby ascertain the standard of
attainment which it places before itself, and are only
then prepared intelligently to contemplate its educa-
tional machinery and methods. The History of edu-
cation, adequately treated, thus contains much of those
materials of culture which belong to the philosophic
study of history. A day spent in an Athenian school
would give us more archaeological light than all the
tombs.
As regards education, in its narrower sense as the
education of the school, the History of education is
rather to be called Comparative Education, and is very
instructive. To go over the whole of so rich a field
in one university course is impossible. Those por-
tions are to be specially selected which best exhibit
the progress of educational ideas, and national ideals,
and also those which extend our practical acquaintance
with methods of instruction and school-keeping, e.g.
Chinese Education, Hellenic Education, Roman Edu-
246
History of Education. 247
cation, Church Education, and among Writers, Quin-
tilian, Ascham, Comenius, Milton, Locke, Rousseau,
Pestalozzi.
The Contents of a Course.
I. EDUCATION IN CHINA: — The home of the
Chinese and its physical characteristics.
The characteristics of their social system.
Their inner life as that may be ascertained
from their philosophy, sacred books, and
other literature. Their educational aims
and machinery. Their methods. The re-
sults of their system, morally and intellec-
tually. Criticism of the Chinese educational
ideas and methods., and lessons to be drawn
for ourselves.
II. Following the same method we proceed to
consider briefly the EDUCATION OF THE
ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
III. THE EDUCATION OF THE HINDUS.
IV. THE EDUCATION OF THE ANCIENT PERSIANS
— its general aim and methods in connec-
tion with their life and character in so far
as we have records.
V. History of Education among the Semitic Races
of the Mesopotamia Basin.
248 Institutes of Education.
VI. EDUCATION AMONG THE HELLENIC RACES : —
This is to be treated in full detail. The
educational views of Plato, Xenophon, Aris-
totle, and Plutarch in this connection.
VII. EDUCATION AMONG THE ROMANS. Hellenic
influence ; Cato ; Cicero de Oratore.
VIII. Detailed analysis and exposition of the Insti-
tutions of Quintilian.
IX. Survey of the History of Education from
Quintilian to the time of the Keformation.
Monastery and Cathedral Schools. Rise of
Universities.
X. The Renaissance and Humanism, as repre-
sented by the literary and theological re-
vival. Erasmus and Colet, Luther and
Melanchthon. Rabelais and Montaigne.
Roger Ascham, and John Sturm of Stras-
burg. Mulcaster.
[Jesuit Education.]
XI. Bacon and the Inductive study of Nature : —
The rise of Realism and Utilitarianism in
Education as opposed to Humanism and
Culture. In connection with this, the advo-
cacy of " natural " methods.
XII. Analysis and exposition of the Baconians,
Ratichius and Comenius.
History of Education. 249
XIII. Milton's Educational views.
XIV. Exposition of John Locke's "Thoughts on
Education," and the relevant parts of the
"Essay on the Conduct of the Under-
standing."
XV. Rousseau, Basedow, and Campe.
XVI. Exposition of Pestalozzi and his school.
XVII. Jacotot.
XVIII. Dr. Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster.
XIX. Jean Paul Kichter.
XX. More recent opinion, as represented by Frobel,
Diesterweg, Dr. Arnold, Herbert Spencer,
and Professor Bain (contemporary Realism,
so called).
APPENDIX
ON
CERTAIN PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS SUG-
GESTED BY THE PRECEDING PAGES.
A. — PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS.
B. — DUALISM, MATERIALISM (CEREBRATION, ETC.).
C. — BRIEF SYNTHETIC STATEMENT.
D. — UNITY OF REASON.
May be omitted by the Student of Education.
251
A. — PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS.
WHEN I say in the text that the human mind is a one
self-conscious entity, I am far from meaning that it is a
mere x of departure for a series of phenomena. I mean that
in man, as in all else, Being-universal individuates itself.
This is effected in man, not only as a specific form of or-
ganic Life, but, further, of a living consciousness (or potency
of consciousness) of existences which are not itself; and
this consciousness, as a self-consciousness, contains in it cer-
tain activities and ends for its own fulfilment as a being or
entity.
This individuated being or conscious entity is, I say,
" one : " it is not made up of parts any more than " life "
in the plant or animal is made up of parts.
Though the peculiar sensibility and activity which we
call consciousness is specially allied with a specific part of
body as its instrument, viz. the brain, it itself is not to be
confounded with the physical conditions of its manifesta-
tion, any more than life in a plant is to be confounded with
certain molecular movements in the matter of the plant.
Mind and matter act and react on each other : they are
mutually involved. But matter is not mind, and mind is
not matter. I stand by this dualism. To attempt to local-
ise mind is to materialise it. It is a diffused and interfused
" somewhat," whose characteristics we may feel and know ;
it is, as the schoolmen said, "all in the whole and all in
every part."
Through se(/"-consciousness I become more intimately
aware of the mind-entity than I can ever be of matter.
253
254 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
Matter presents itself to consciousness as ultimately reduci-
ble into Space plus Motion. The ultimate affirmation of the
monistic materialist is that Space plus motion in certain
complexities of relation is mind. This is manifestly a con-
tradiction in terms, unless we first insinuate into matter
what, by our own showing, is not in its concept or notion.
[What has been called Mind-stuff is matter, so far as I can
see.]
Men become too much enamoured of inquiries into what
they can see and weigh and measure. There is a kind of
stability and certitude about such investigations. True,
they find in many of the objects which yield their secrets
(so far) to physical inquiries, an alien and disturbing factor.
Life, feeling, consciousness, rational activity, purpose, voli-
tion, are all admittedly there before them, as certainly as
the sun and moon (to say the least). Can these facts of
consciousness, as sensory and active, not be reduced to sim-
ple matter-terms ? If it were possible (which it is not until
we alter our concept of matter), we should still feel and
think and will, but we, i.e. that which feels and thinks and
wills, and the feelings and thinkings and willings, would all
alike be matter and its motions ; and, thus, the morbid
desire for a monistic view of experience would be gratified.
If such phenomena were only matter and its motions, it is
manifest that they would then be subject to the laws, and
characterised by the behaviour, of matter. These laws are
(speaking generally) dynamical : stone and iron are knocked
about by them, so to speak, without knowing why or
whither; and "minds" would be in the same predicament,
with this difference, that, to begin with, they, at first, think
that they are not knocked about ; but after being " scientifi-
cally" instructed, they know that they are verily knocked
about. Matter, it would appear, has taken, at a certain
stage of evolution, the disease of questioning itself and
affirming that it is not matter, and even inventing the word
" mind." It thinks it thinks ; it suffers in its most perfect
evolution from illusions as to its own being : it even fancies
Psychological Basis. 255
it is an Ego that wills. I hope I do not state the case too
crudely.
It is admitted that the " mind " phenomena, even as simple
states of consciousness, are different from the other known
phenomena called matter. But this seems to present no
difficulty to the " scientific " mind (I should say, complex of
matter). Quantity plus quality plus motion, feel and think
themselves .' The atom, as the ultimate of the physical, feels
and thinks, or, at least, it can, after a certain evolution, feel
and think; and, consequently, feeling and thinking must
always be implicitly in the atom itself. But it is always
only matter : that is to say, it is always quantity plus motion,
or, let us say, energy. We should then (accepting this view)
have to say that man's mind is a combination of matter and
motion, such that it feels and thinks all less complex com-
binations, and also itself. Such a combination must, of
course, have locality (for it must have all the conditions of
matter), arid thus we should have mind defined as a separate
or individualised one material organic complex, with a certain
relation of feeling and knowing to other atomic and organic
combinations, which are like itself in all respects save in the
manner of their combination. Can it be said that our
presupposition, that mind is a " one feeling entity " (not-
matter), demands more from the "scientific" mind than
such a conclusion does ?
Accordingly, I feel that I have a good title to say that
there is, within certain organic beings, a one, self-identical
potency of consciousness with inner determinations, and a
specific activity — an entity not matter nor caused by matter.
Note, I say there is. It is or be's; consequently, it is a
being, i.e., entity. When I say " you are a conscious entity,"
I merely say " you are a conscious being : " do you doubt it V
Why so coy? When I say you are "one," do you really
think you are two or twenty ? Any difficulty in the appre-
hension of a one conscious entity arises from the illegitimate
extension of the concept of matter into being and mind,
even to the extent of asking, WHERE is mind localised ?
256 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
All such questions can be met by another, Where is the
" life " of a plant localised — the principium vita;, as it used
to be called? Did you ever see it? There is, assuredly,
such a phenomenal difference between a stone and a tree,
that you find yourself in presence of a new fact — life.
You can trace the material conditions of life ; but what
about life itself ? So also a new fact is presented to you in
the phenomenon, a conscious subject, which fact we call
mind. Where is this metaphysical fiction (as some would
call it) ? Precisely where the life-fiction is. Again, the
most intimate of all consciousnesses is Being. Can you
make an image of it? And yet, Does Being not be? If
not, then what be's? The prime condition of philosophical
capacity is, it seems to me, annihilation of the material
imagination, except for illustrative purposes.
Further, the conscious one entity we call the human
mind is not only a self-identity, but a permanent self-identity
or self-sameness — two questions constantly confounded.
Were there only a single flash of consciousness, and then
darkness and the inane, the moment of that flash would
be a moment of self-identity. This self-sameness remains
through all the experiences of a mind. I do not understand
that this consciousness of the permanent sameness of the
Subject (whatever the subject may be or not be) is ques-
tioned in these days. Fresh attempts are, doubtless, made
to explain it — attempts which, I believe, will be for ever
hopeless. The mind of a man is " for-itself," not by any
sudden freak or saltus of nature, but just as every atom and
every organic thing is "for-itself." Its peculiarity is that
it is mind, that is to say, a potency of receiving and reflecting
the rest of the world, first as a feeling-syn thesis or collocation
(synopsis), and, thereafter, as a rational or self-regulated
synthesis, — containing certain determinations within itself
which constitute it as a complex one.
The most recent attempt to explain the permanent iden-
tity of the conscious entity is that of Professor James.
Unfortunately his argument is involved in some confusion,
Psychological Basis. 257
because of his confining himself to se(/"-consciousness, so that
the term used by him for manifestation of mind is "thought."
This complicates things. Hume, in using " ideas," used a
better, because more generic, word. Professor James regards
the life of consciousness under the metaphor of a "stream."
The mind is composed of a, 6, c, d, etc., in succession, or
collected. If this were all there could be no identity, much
less permanent identity, as Professor James sees clearly
enough. But he says : when there is a consciousness of
the presentation a, there is with it a consciousness of the
Ego (which I would prefer to call in this connection the
"conscious subject"). Consequently, he does not redargue
Hume, but simply affirms self-identity in this form. No
one, I imagine, will care to question Professor James's way
of putting the bare fact of self-identity in each successive
consciousness. But this conscious subject has next to be
carried on from one consciousness to another, as always a
permanent same subject in the midst of incessant change,
and it is here that Professor James contributes a view of
his own.
The successive consciousnesses b, c, d, etc., also contain ego
or conscious subject just as a did, and we are aware of ego
in b, c, d as the same subject which appeared in a, because
a passes on itself with its implicit conscious subject to b, and
c, and d, which, one after the other, inherit a as well as its
other predecessors ; and so make up a stream which is a
continuous stream. There are two things to be considered
here : there is a, the " state " of consciousness, and there is
the " conscious subject." Let us separate them. The state
b inherits and appropriates the state a, and consequently has
memory of it. How is this possible? As a graphic way of
talking, there can be no objection to this inheritance and
appropriation ; but it affords no explanation. The state 6,
as such, can have no possible connection with the state
a other than that of atomistic succession. I cannot pass
on a to b in such a way as to constitute ab by simply draw-
ing up a will in b's favour. There is no bridging of the
258 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
bottomless gulf, the infinite inane, between a and b which
would make the memory of a possible. The "common
sense" position that the same one subject receives, holds,
and synthesises the experiences a, 6, c, d, etc., is certainly
an explanation ; James's inheritance and appropriation of
a by b, etc., is simply a figurative way of talking.
This is not all, however; for in b there is "conscious
subject " just as there was in a, according to James. How,
now, do I feel it to be the same conscious subject as was in
a f Thus : a has executed a will, so to speak, in favour of
b, and made b sole legatee of all his worldly goods, including,
consequently, the " conscious subject " in a which conscious
subject possesses these goods. Where, I would ask, does the
consciousness of continuity come in — the continuity of sub-
ject in a with subject in b, c, d, etc. ? It is not in a, and it
is not in b as such, as I have shown : does it lie between a
and b then ? It passes on, says James, from a to b. Is this
not simply another way of saying that what was in a con-
tinues in b — the common doctrine ? Why, then, all this
pother ? Must we be " scientific " at all hazards ? If there
is any true interval between a and b, it certainly is a chasm
deep enough to engulf all knowledge, and the doubt would
for ever remain, whether the process whereby the dying a
bequeathed his possessions to b (including in these posses-
sions the ego which possessed a /) would hold good in the
courts, and be held to be an effective transference. The
ego in b might, after all, be an illegitimate descendant of
the ego in a. The father of the bastard might be — who or
what ? If, on the other hand, the ego or subject in a hands
itself on without break; what is this but the perduring con-
tinuity of ego or subject, as " common sense " holds it ?
This "stream" of consciousness should rather be called a
corduroy road.
James either grants the continuum, and his argument is
mere ingenious metaphor ; superfluous as it is unsound even
as a metaphor, for it may mislead the unwary. It seems to
induce him even to dispense with a " thinker " in the inter-
Psychological Basis. 259
ests of "thought," just as America might be said to have
been discovered without a discoverer. Under the influence
of this point of view, he seems to regard the " state " a as
playing the chief role, and as handing on the subject or ego
as in it. Why should it not be the other way round if there
is to be handing on at all ? Why should not the subject or
ego in a hand on iteelf with a on its shoulders. Or is it a
that generates the ego ? I presume Professor James prefers
a as the chief actor in the drama, because he wishes to
escape from that fearful thing a metaphysical entity. Is he
not here making friends with the mammon of unrighteous-
ness— the physical investigator who cannot apprehend an
entity which has not a shape at least as solid as a vortex
ring? Certainly a metaphysical entity is a ghost. But why
this superstitious dread of ghosts in so illuminated an age —
the age of spooks? And does he not see that all that meta-
physicians mean by entity is conceded whe'n he admits
" I " ? Hume knew better what he was about than to admit
so much.
I shall conclude by quoting, from the sober philosopher of
Common Sense, a sentence which expresses a "scientific"
phenomenal truth of more certitude than the existence of
the sun as an objective reality : " I am not thought, I am
not action, I am not feeling ; I am something ' that thinks
and acts and feels.' The self or I is permanent, and has
the same relation to all the succeeding thoughts, acts, and
feelings which I call mine." *
In fine, there is an interplay between the physical and
metaphysical in man and his brain. Consciousness affects
and effects physical conditions, and vice versa. But if con-
sciousness be not the physical, nor a product of the physical,
then mind may correctly be called an entity and identity in
whatever way it may be implicated in the physical, whether
by pre-established parallelism (concomitance) or by a double
action and reaction. In short, my Ego is not my body,
1 Reid's Intel!. Powers, iv.
260 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
though Ego and body are mutually conditioned and condi-
tioning.
Let me add :
I hold it for true, that if man be not a one self-identical
conscious entity, having within it certain capacities, desires,
emotions, and faculties (which it is the business of psychol-
ogy to explain), in the fulfilment and harmonious regulation
of which the Ego finds the purpose of its existence, there is
not even " matter" for Ethics, much less Ethics. The only
alternative seems to me to be that man is simply a cunningly
devised material organism of a peculiarly sagacious kind,
living for the conservation of itself and the species to which
it belongs: Appetite, more or less disguised, sums him up;
and spiritual ideas and ideals are only painted fictions which
colour, while they conceal, gross material aims.
B. — DUALISM, THE UNCONSCIOUS, AND
CEREBRATION.
GRANT the dualism of Mind and Matter, with their
mutual implications, it follows, from what we know of the
former by personal experience, that we must posit mind as
the prius, and matter as its vehicle or expression.
The two being in combination, must act and react on
each other : if a molecular change is produced in the cere-
brum, it must affect mind ; and if mind, when it has once
emerged, works out its own activities by means of nerve,
these mind-originated activities, again, must make their
record in the cerebrum. This being so. we should not be
surprised to learn that a change might be made in the
cerebrum by an outer or inner stimulus which did not then
and there emerge as a consciousness, because consciousness
as a one whole was too busy with some other occupation to
admit of the nerve-stimulus fulfilling itself in mind. But if
the scar (so to call it) in the nerve- tissue remains, there is
no reason why it should not take other opportunities of
forcing itself to the front when the original stimulus had
spent itself and was withdrawn. If it be, as we opine, then
we should have mere dynamical cerebration, which can be
arrested at the threshold of consciousness and stand there
waiting for an open door. This would be " unconscious
cerebration," and can be conceived as going on ceaselessly
in our brains as a merely dynamical process. But if any
one asks us to believe in "unconscious consciousness" we
decline, just as as we should decline believing in " Yes-No."
Accept, however, two planes of mind — the conscious
(animal) and the self-conscious (man), and we can readily
261
262 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
admit that much may be in a man's consciousness of which
he is not at all se//"-conscious ; that is to say, self-consciousness
(which also has its degrees like everything else) is at so low
a potency (e.g. in reverie) that we may call such experiences
unself-conscious consciousness, or rather sub-self-conscious-
ness. In fact, is not the greater part of each man's mental
life of this sub-self-conscious kind ? Is it desirable that we
should be for ever sifting out and binding down our vague
experiences and interrupting the beneficent inflow of gracious
nature? Knowledge may be too much with us. " The time
of life is short ; " better to live at once, then, than to spend
all our time in learning what life may be, and how to live.
In the conscious or attuitional stage the nerve-dynamical
(cerebration) and the mind-dynamical would seem to be in
counterpoise ; in the self-conscious stage the tables are
turned by the emergence of Will ; and while the nerve-
dynamical and the mind-dynamical still, of course, remain
inter-active, they are now overpowered and regulated by the
Ego as self-conscious subject, which Ego has itself been
effected by the free functioning of the new phenomenon —
Will — determining all to ends and to law.
It does not follow from this that mind ever operates, even
in its highest self-conscious activities, independently of a
physical vehicle, and, therefore, of physical conditions. The
world seems to be constructed on this plan — Mind using
matter and at the same time being restricted by matter.
This is Dualism.
When, however, we accept the involvement of every state
of consciousness with brain (as of all mind with all matter
in the universe), we are not therefore committed to a theory
that every state of consciousness even in an animal, is pro-
duced by an antecedent molecular movement of matter.
That such molecular movement gives rise to states of con-
sciousness is patent enough ; but, vice versa, we may hold
that states of consciousness are the antecedent causes of
certain molecular movements of brain. When a fox sees or
Dualism, the Unconscious, and Cerebration. 263
smells a hound, a consciousness of a certain specific kind is
set up in him by means of certain physical processes, and
the running to cover for concealment is also effected through
certain physical processes ; but the latter were set in operation
by the consciousness of fear. When we come to Man giving
external effect after deliberation to a formed purpose under
the domination of an idea, we have a series of movements or
processes each one of which may be admitted to involve
physical or molecular nerve-movement or disturbance ; but
the successive units of the process, viz. consciousness, and
purpose, and will are not caused by these molecular move-
ments. It is not denied that when any particular conscious-
ness arises, it involves the nerve-tissue ; and it may further
be admitted, I think, that the molecular movements in the
cells have a purely material relation to past activities in other
cells and revive these activities, thus forcing a fresh con-
sciousness on us to which we assign its proper place in the
complex which constitutes mental life and action. But, I
repeat, it does not at all follow that a consciousness as stick
does not also antecede a molecular movement and set it
up, and also give rise by association or otherwise to other
consciousnesses as such.
If the Dualistic conception is incorrect, monistic material-
ism holds the field, then Mind is nothing real ; it is at best
a mere glow on the surface of the material organism suffering
a series of necessary mechanical movements : these mechani-
cal movements constitute the sole reality. This position
seems to me to be so unscientific in the face of the actual
phenomena, as to be scarcely worth arguing against. If it
were true, every conscious thing would find its apotheosis
in being a stone in order that the purely mechanical, being
in that event undisturbed by the intrusion of consciousness,
the conscious thing might be safely and finally put to sleep,
and rid of all illusions.
The whole question lies deeper down, and the mind of
man is only a single "case." Does matter (which is only
space plus motion) think itself, and produce the illusion of
264 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
its antithesis, mind ? In the cosmic whole is Mind, Thought,
Reason, first or second? I do not mean first or second in
time ; for we have present to us matter and mind in a syn-
thesis from the first, and always. But, given the dualism of
the synthesis, is Mind logically and necessarily the prius of
Space plus motion, or is it the other way about ? If matter
be first in the scheme of things, then not only is it first in
what is called the human mind, but mind itself is non-exist-
ent, save as a series of matter-negating phenomena following
in the wake of the fatalistic series of matter-phenomena.
From beginning to end all things and minds are merely
dynamical and automatic; and the term " mind " demands
a new definition.
P.S. — "Impressions." — There are some who object to
the use of the words " impressions " and " reflexive " in con-
nection with the conscious subject as such ; but these words,
like all words used to denote spiritual facts, are figurative.
We are told also that a reflexive activity in response to
impressions must impart to these impressions or recepts the
" nature " of the reacting subject, and that even to this
extent that they ai-e constituted by the reacting subject.
Which amounts ultimately to this, that certain pin-pricks,
coming from Heaven alone knows where, give to the subject
an impulse reflexively to create the object. At the same
time it would not be denied that these pin-pricks give
the cue to the subject, and so tell it when it is to constitute
a cabbage and when a dog. This ultra-Kantism is to be
justified, it would seem, by the fact that all our knowledge
of the external of sense goes on "within the skull"! It
does not seem to occur to these writers that the conscious-
ness of hunger and thirst, of love and hate, of the beautiful,
and of the right and the wrong, also all go on "within the
skull"; and consequently all things we feel and desire and
think and know must be constituted by the nature of the
reacting subject. The argument, with many at least, rests
on the vast number of physical processes that go on in the
Dualism, the Unconscious, and Cerebration. 265
brain before we can be conscious of anything, as if the
external " somewhat " could not tell its true tale to the sub-
ject because of this intervention ! It would then follow that
the reader of this sentence could not by possibility receive
what it truly contained as it left me. Before it reaches the
page there is an infinite series of physical processes ; it has
then to be printed and be locked in the arms of a further
series of physical laws and processes before the reader begins
to be the theatre of another infinite series which result in —
What? — constituting a meaning for himself which is not
my meaning.
Perhaps it is unnecessary to continue the consideration of
this subject ; but I would put this question to these writers,
Does it not occur to you that these physical and physiological
processes (brain and all) must themselves, when you come
to be aware of them, also be, on your own showing, consti-
tuted by the reacting subject? If so, is it not just possible
that the resultant consciousness is a true reflex of the pin-
pricks (for you begin with a pin-pricking outer), inasmuch
as the subject constitutes for itself all the processes as well as
their resultant, and so probably knows what it is about?
The universe after all may be found not to be an infinite
chaos of potential pin-pricks, or, to put it otherwise, a con-
fused jelly poured into tin moulds called minds.
C.— BRIEF SYNTHETIC STATEMENT.
MIND-UNIVERSAL externalises itself as matter — the (to
us) phenomena of recipience generally. This, however, would,
if it went no farther, be an inadequate expression of Mind-
universal. For Mind would have still to externalise itself
as life and finally as finite minds; always, however, under
conditions of externalisation, and, therefore, necessarily ma-
terialised, i.e. in Space, Motion, and Time, which are the
fundamental forms of all externalisation — which, in short,
is what externalisation means.
All is by infinitely small degrees ; and, accordingly, to fix
definitely the point at which any manifestation of the Uni-
versal differentiates itself into another is for ever impossible;
and this by the very nature of sense and of the act of finite
reason, as I have shown elsewhere. None the less is each
thing (or movement, if you please so to call it) different
from another — that which precedes from that which follows.
It is only at a certain stage, that is to say, after a certain
accumulation of subtle and silent differences, that finite
mind, under conditions of space and time, can become aware
of distinct and differentiated presentations. These are then
and there received as complex totals in their complex totality,
as "things." An egg is an egg and a chicken is a chicken,
but at every stage of the process from egg to chicken there
is a "thing" self-identical — a total complex in the universe
of things.
It will be said that if all is mind-universal externalising
itself, the very primordial atom contains mind, — fa mind.
And it is so. It is monad, not atom. By which I do not
mean that mind is attached to atom, but that the being and
266
Brief Synthetic Statement. 267
the determination of the material externalisation is mind
dwelling in and with the atom, as it dwells in and with the
universe. The dynamical, however, at this stage of the
cosmic synthesis, and for long, seems to play the leading
role (how we know not) until we reach the thing called
conscious entity, where there is an equal reciprocation ; and
this reciprocity becomes, at the moment of the emergence
of Will and self-consciousness, supremacy over the matter-
form.
Difficult as it is to affirm the point of differentiation, we
may yet venture to say that the moment at which a mate-
rialised thing feels is also the moment of primordial mind as
a specific mind entity.
From mere vague feeling, which is a state of indifference
in which subject and object are lost in each other, the indi-
vidual mind rises to sensation in which subject and object,
i.e. the feeling-thing and that which stimulates feeling in
the thing, are separated, and the object reflexly placed out-
side. There is now repeated in the individual as a conscious-
ness the duality which already constitutes the universe.
What follows in the evolution of finite mind is sufficiently
indicated in the preceding book.
Just as Sense finds the a posteriori categories in mere
reflex sensation, so Reason finds all a priori categories in
and through its own pure activity : the two together consti-
tute the universe for the subject-self.
Matter can have no reality by itself : its reality is Mind,
the sole Substance. And yet it is externality. If we part
from this Dualism, we are driven into the arms of Monism
— materialistic or spiritualistic. The rose of Monism smells
sweeter under the latter name ; but that is all. If All is
Mind, then the dynamics of what we call " matter " and the
dynamics of cerebration are the dynamics of Mind, and not
merely of the externalised expression or vehicle of Mind ;
268 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
for there is no externalised expression — no matter. If
matter, again, is Mind, and all is Matter, then this is simply
to say that Mind is matter. There is nothing to choose
between the two positions.
In reply to the dualistic position that the universal object
exists so, that is to say, as beent and inreasoned matter,
because we necessarily take it up so in sense and reason, it
may be said that it may not after all be so. To which the
rejoinder is, How else, since that is how we know it? We
cannot know it otherwise. It is as futile to suggest that it
is not so as to raise the question whether the thing I call a
poker be not truly after all a cat. To use knowledge as a
knife to cut the throat of knowledge is a kind of suicide by
anticipation, a self-contradiction, which cannot effect itself.
To say that we do not and cannot know save in part, is, on
the other hand, tenable and true ; but this does not affect
the validity of what we do know. But we must make sure
that this last is in very truth knowledge.
D. — UNITY OF REASON.
WHEN the conscious subject functions Will for purposes
of knowledge and consequent conduct, it asks of the thing
before it, and of all things in their relations, what they pre-
cisely are. The answer must ultimately be the purified
record of the sensate plus the satisfaction of the dialectic
form of the reason-movement in its specific reference to that
sensate. It is this end towards which Will-reason is always
striving; and to accomplish it, it has to take successive
steps. It stands face to face with a synthesis given, and it
has to understand that synthesis, to categorise it : and then
only does it fulfil its purpose, which is knowledge. The
rudimentary act of Percipience contains in itself the mode
of procedure, for it is a separating of a one complex from
other complexes, and synthesising it with the conscious
subject. This process of taking things, and then the ele-
ments of things, apart, and then synthesising them, thus
converting sense-synthesis or synopsis into rational synthesis,
is always going on. We can imagine a rational being so
endowed as to analyse and synthesise in a single flash of
intuition ; but if it did so, it would still have to go through
the necessary steps (with whatever celerity) whereby the
rational synthesis was attained. These steps are all con-
tained in the final complex act, which alone is true knowing ;
but when we separate this final complex act into its con-
stituents, the logical order of these steps becomes also a
time-order; because all is in Time. As separated we call
them Attuition, Discrimination, Perception, Comparison,
Conception of the individual, General Conception, Reasoned
or Causal ground; and these movements, with their auxiliary
269
270 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
conditions in sense, e.g. Imagination, Memory, and Associa-
tion, constitute the substance of Rational Psychology. But
the various steps are all elements in or moments of the final
complex act of Reason in knowing : Reason or the rational
act is to be regarded as a One in many moments.
Xot only is the unity of Reason, as a one Will-movement
in many moments towards an end, thus vindicated, but it is
seen that the idea and the ideal themselves emerge out of
reason as so conceived. What we have to render an account
of are complexes, and finally the one total complex, the uni-
verse of things. Will being, by virtue of its essential nature
a free activity, is for ever restless and for ever pushing on,
even to the transcending of the limits of Time and Space.
It is the total individual thing which it has to explain in its
whole notion, and also in the idea within the notion, this
idea being the true differentiation of the thing — at once its
essence, cause, and reA.os relatively to itself. It thus insists
on pushing on till it grasps this true isness of the thing, to
which, however, it can never attain even in a physical sense ;
and which, if attained, would still leave for our solution the
true " isness " of that ultimate physical " isness." This true
"isness " is the idea and the "one " which explains the parts.
The ideal, again, as distinguished from the idea, is of the
complex ; it is the perfected complex : and it is Will, as a
necessary pursuer of ends, which makes the ideal (no less
than the idea) a possible fact of consciousness, both in the
sphere of knowledge, of ethics, of aesthetics, and of educa-
tion.
It would be out of place to prosecute this subject further
here. All I wish to do is to emphasise the unity of Reason
and the Reason-movement as that is brought to light by
regarding Will as root of reason and nerve of reason from
first to last ; the various steps in the process which psychology
lays bare being only the logical moments of a one act, though
presenting themselves to us in a time-order, because we
exist in Time.
Further, the reason act is not only a one act in several
Unity of Reason. 271
moments according to a certain logical order, but in each
separate moment the whole reason-/orm is present, and is
repeating itself. In Percipience I discriminate and isolate
a, and synthesise it with itself in consciousness ; in Concipi-
ence I isolate the parts in the conceived thing, and synthe-
sise them as a one thing (in many) ; in the general concept
I isolate like characters in a plurality of objects, and synthe-
sise them in a one rational thing or entity ; and this process
is also the process of inductive reasoning (many in one).
In deductive reasoning, again, as when I say, " That beast
is ferocious ; because it is a tiger ; and all tigers are fero-
cious," I have isolated the beast before me from other objects,
and synthesised it with the general concept "tiger," and all
that is implicit in " tiger." In affirming the cause of an
effect, I isolate particular antecedent and sequent, and syu-
thesise them in a causal unity : the one always contains the
other. The simple act of percipience of the single, with
which we began, becomes, it is true, more complex as expe-
rience presses plurality more and more upon me and demands
rationalisation ; but that is all. Thus the central Will,
whose "end" is the causal rationalisation of all experience
as an ultimate one in many and many in one, behaves itself
always in the same way. Each step is rationally grounded,
from the dialectic process in simple percipience upwards ;
and each step is also a synthesis or judgment. [Judgment
and thought-affirmation are the same : the judgment-/or/n
exists only when articulated into subject and predicate :
when expressed in words it is a proposition.]
Even the Attuit in the animal mind is, as being a result-
ant synopsis, an anticipation of judgment — a judgment
within the domain of Sensation pure and simple, which,
with the advent of Reason, is transformed into a synthesis.
If we wish to generalise in one word the way or form of the
reason-movement, it is to be called the Analytico-synthetic
way — the search for identity in difference. The ultimate
result is that Will-reason, in its necessary dialectic, insists
272 Appendix on Philosophical Questions.
on grasping the cosmic whole of identity in difference as a
synthesis of Phenomenon and primal perduring One Reason.
As a system of Reason, however, the world is outside,
and remote from, mere feeling in the individual subject,
even in its highest attuitional form. It is only when the
conscious or feeling subject evolves itself as Will moving as
a dialectic process, that it becomes aware of the universe as a
reasoned system. That reasoned system, or system of rea-
son, is outside there all the while ; but until 7 have reason,
how can I see the reason in it? It is not my reason that
reveals the reason of the universe to that universe ; the
function of my reason is to make explicit the reason in the
universe of sensation to me, a self-conscious subject. Prior
to the emergence of reason in Man, the universal Reason is
there in things and in man's sensation of things. The man
born blind cannot see light ; the conscious subject cannot
see Reason-universal until it grows within itself the eye of
reason. And when it grows, it does not say, "Light is there
because I have an eye," but rather, " I having an eye can
now see the light which all the while was there." I cannot,
as a matter of fact, know the universe except as a reasoned
system ; the seeming chaos of sensation, from the initial
to the final act of the self-conscious subject, is necessarily
gripped as a reasoned world. Finite reason itself might be
briefly denned as a conscious being freely moving to the
reduction of all to itself in the form of Causality ; which is
the Form of the initial act of Percipience and of the last act
of completed knowledge.
THE INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION:
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