Jl'orks by 11-fLLIA .1/ J A Mf iS , MD., Ph. d L iiJt.D., LL .D. ; Corresjondent of the Indi- tuft of France; Professm of P?IiZoso$?Iy af IIaruard Uniuersify.

The Prlnclples of Psychology. z vols. 8v0. New York: IIenry IIolt & Co. 189.3.

Psychology : Driefer Course. rzmo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1892.

1 The Will to Believe, and Other Essays la Popular Philosophy. New York: Long- mans, Green t Co. 1$7.

I Is Life Worth Livlng ? r8mo. Philadelphia:

1 , S. B. Weston, 1305 Arch Street. 1896.

1 Human Immortality : Two Supposed Objec- tions to the Doctrine. 16mo. Boston:

1 Itoughton, Mifiin & Co. 1 5 8 .

! , The Literary Remains of Henry James. ! Edited, with an Introduction, by W I L L ~ A ~

Jabr~s . Wit11 Portrait. Crown avo. 1885.

TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND T O

STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S

IDEALS. By WILLIAM JAMES

NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1899

:OPYRIGI:I'

'599 r:u \ i II . I . IA?l JAMES

CEO. H.ELLI3, P R I N T E R , 112 CONGRESS ST.. ROSTOU.

lN 1892 1 was asked l ~ y tiic llarraril Col.l,oration

to give 2 few public lectures on psychology to tlic

Cambridge teachers. The talks non- ~)rintetl form the

substance of that course, which has since tlieli been

delivered a t various places to various teacher-nucli- ences. I have found hy experience that what my

hearers seen1 least to relish is analytical technicality,

and what they most care for is concrete practical

application. So I have gradually weeded out tllc

former, and left the latter rulreduced ; and, now that

I have a t last written out tho lccturcs, they contain

a minimum of what is deernetl 'scientific' in psy-

chology, and are prnc.tical n~ id popular i r i the es-

treme.

Some of my colleagues tiiiy possi1)ly shake their heads a t this; but in taking my cue fl-on~ what 11:ls

seemed to me to be the feeling of the nutliences 1 bc-

lieve that I am &aping my hook so as to satisfy the

more genuine public need. Teachers, of course, will miss the minute tlivieions,

subdivisions, and definitions, the lettered anti num-

bered headings, the variations of type, and all the

iv PREFACE PREFACE V

other mc1chanic:ll artifices on which they are accus-

tomed to pro]) tlieir ~ilinds. But my main desire has

been to makc them conceive, and, if possible, re-

produce sympathetically in their imagination, the

mental life of their pupil as the sort of active unity

which he himself feels it to be. H e doesn't chop

llimself into clistinct processes and compartments;

and it would have frustrated this deeper purpose of

nly book to inake i t look, when printed, like a Bae-

deker's handbook of travel or a text-book of arithme-

tic. So far as books printed like this book force the

fluidity of the facts npon the xoung teacher's atten-

tion, so far I aln sure they tend t o do his intellect

a service, even thongh they may leave unsatisfied

a craving (not altogether witl~out its legitimate

grounds) for inore nomenclaturc, head-lince, and

subdivisions.

Iteaders acquainted with 111~- larger books on Psy-

chology will meet much familiar l~hrascologv. In the

cl~npters on habit and memory I have even copied

several pages vcrb:itim, but I (10 not lrnow that

apology is needed for snch plagiarism :IS tllis.

Tlic talks to studilnts, ~vl~ic.li conclude tile volume,

wcre xoritte~i in rcsllonse to illvitations to deliver

'addresses' to students : ~ t women's colleges. Tlle

fi;.st one was to tlie gr:~<luating class of tlle Boston \;ol.mal School of G! mn:tstics. I'ro~erly, it contin-

ues the series of talks to teachers. The second and the third address belong together, and continue an-

other line of thought.

I wish I were able to make the second, ' 011 a Cer-

tain Blindness in Iluman Beings,' more impressive.

~t is more than the mere piece of sentimentalism which it may seem to some readers. It connects

ihelf with a definite view of the world and of our

moral relations to the same. Those who have done

me the houor of reading my volume of pllilosophic

essays will recognize that I mean the pluralistic or

individualistic philosophy. According to that philos- ophy, the truth is too great for any one actual mind,

even though that mind be dubbed the Absolute,' to

know the whole of it. The facts and wortlis of life

need many cognizers to take then1 in. There is no

point of view absolutely public and nniversal. Pri- vate and uncorumunicable perceptions always remaill

over, :tnd the worst of it is that tliose who look for

them from tlic outside never k n o ~ wzohere.

The practic:tl consequence of suc l~ :I 1,hilosophy is the well-known cleniocratic respect for the sacretiness

of individuality,-is, a t any rate, the outward tolerarlce

of whatever is not itself intolerant. These phrases are so familiar that they sourid now r;ither dead in

Our ears. Once they had n passionate inner meaning.

a passion:lte inner nlc:~ning they ,nay easily

vi PREFACE

ncqnire again if the pretension of our nation to inflict

its own inner ideals and institutions v i et armis upon

Orientals shonld meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far i t has been gallant and spirited. Religiously

and philos~ghical l~, our ancient national doctrine of

live and let live rnny prove to have a far deeper

meaning than our 1)rople now seem to imagine it to

~)ossesS.

TALKS TO 'L'EACHERS. PAGE

I. PSYCHOLOGY . tvn THE TEA(~HING A I L , ~ . . 3 The American educational organization, :: --

What teachers may expect from psychology, .i- Teaching methods must agree with psychology, but cannot be immediately deduced therefrom, 7 - The science of teaching and the science of war, 9 - The educational uses of psychology defined. 1 0 - Tlic tcaclier's duty toward child-stutly, 11'.

Our niental life is a suc:ccssion of conscious fields,' 1.5-They Ilave a fvcus and a margin,

18 -This description contrasted with the theory of ' ideas,' 20 - 1~'undt's conclnsiona. Yr), not(,.

111. THE CIIILI) .is A BEHAVIS,: ORC;ASISM . 22 Mind as pure reason ;tntl ~nirid as prsctienl

guide, 22 -The latter vic.w thc rnorc fasl~ionnblr one to-day, 2:i-It will be adopted in t!iis work, 24 - Wliy sn? 25 -The tcncher's function is to train pupils to bcl~arior, 2 s .

IV. EDUCA~~ION A N D I ~ E H ~ Y \ . I O ~ ~ . . . . . 29 Education defined, 29 - Conduct is alwaya its

outcome, 30 - Different national itleals : Germany and England, 31.

... Vlll CONTENTS

PAGE

V. THE NECESSITY OF I~EACTIONS . . . . 33 No impression without expression, 33 -Verbal

reproduction, 34 -Manual training, 35 - Pupils should know their ' marks,' 37.

VI. NATIVE AS^ ACQUIREL) REACTIONS . . 38 The acquired reactions must be preceded by

native ones, 38 -Illustration : teaching child to ask instead of snatching, 39 - Man has more in- stincts than other mammals, 4::.

VII. WHA~I. THE NATIVE REACTIONS A I ~ E . . 45 Pear and love, 45 - Curiosity, 45 - Imitation,

18 -Emulation, 49 -Forbidden by Kousseau, 51 -His error, 53 -Ambition, pugnacity, and pride. Soft pedagogics and the fighting impulse, 54- Ownership, 55 - I t s educational uses, 56 - Con- ~t-;uctiveness, 58 - Manual teaching, 5!1- Transi- torincss in instincts, 60 - Thcir order of succes- sion, 6 1.

THE LAWS OF IIAI:IT . . . . . . . 64 Good and bad habits, 6-C - Habit due to plasti-

city of organic tissucs, ri.5 - 'The aim of education is to make useful habits automatic, GG -Maxinis relative to habit-forming : 1. Strong initiative, G i - 2 . No exception, 6d - 3. Seize first opportunity to act, (;!) - 4 . Don't prcacl~, 71 - Darwin and poetry: without exerc i s~ onr capacities decay, 71 - Tlic habit of n~enta l and nluscular relaxation, ;C-Fifth maxim, keep the faculty of effort trained, 75 - Sudden conversions con~patible with i : ~ w s of habit, 7(i - Jiomentous influeuce of habits on character, 77.

TX. A case of habit, 79 -The two laws, contiguity

and similarity, 80 -The teacher has to build up useful systems of association, 83 - Habitual asso- ciations determine character, 84 -1ndeterminate- ness of our trains of association, 83 - W e can trace them backward, but not foretell them, AG - Interest deflects, 87 - Prepotent parts of the field, 98 -In teaching, IIIultiply cues, 8:).

The child's native interests, 91 -1Iow uninterest- ing things acquire an interest, 94 -Rules for the teacher, 95-'Preparation' of the mind for the lesson: the pupil must have something to attend with, 97 - All later interests are borrowed from original ones, 99.

XI. -4~~e-v.rroh- . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Interest ant1 attention are two aspects of one

fact, 100 -Voluntary attention comes in beats, 101 -Genius and attention, 102 -The subject must change to win attention, 103 --Mechanical aids, I04 - The physiological process, 106 -The new in the old is what excites interest, 108-In- terest and effort are con~patiblc, I10 - hIind-wan- dering, 112 - Not fatal to mental efficiency, 114.

XII. 3 1 ~ 3 1 0 ~ ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Due to association, Il(; - No recall without a

cue, 118 -Memory is due to brain-plasticity, 119 -Native retentiveness, 120 -Number of associa- tions niay practically be its equivalent, 122 -Re- tentiveness is a fixed property of the individual, 123 - J len~ory ce?.s?rs ~iicmorics, 124 - Scientific

CONTENTS xi CONTEXTS

PAGE

Bysten1 as help to memory, l2G - Technical mem- ories, 127 - Cramnling, 123 - Elementary menlory unimprovable, 130 -Utility of verbal memorizing, 131 -Measurements of immediate memory, 13:: - They throw little light. IS4 -Passion is the in]- portant factor in human efficiency, 137 - Eye- memory, ear-memory, etc., 137 -The rate of forgetting, Ebbinghaus's results, 139 -Influence of the unreproducible, 142 - T o remember, one must think and connect, 1 i:',.

XIII. TIIE I~CQUISITIOS OF IDEAS . . . . . 144 Education gives a stock of conceptions, 144 -

The order of their acquisition, 14(i-\Tv'nhrc of verbal material, 149-Abstractions of different orders : when are they assimilabl~, 1.i l - Falscl conceptions of childrkmn, I

Often a mystifying idea. 1.i; -The process de- fined, 157-The law of economy, 159-Old- fogyism, 160 -How many types of apperception ? 161 - New heads of classification must continually be invented, 163 - Alteration of the apperceiving mass, 163-Class-names are vhat we work by, 166 - Few new fundalnental conceptions acquired after twenty-five, If;;.

XV. THE WILL . . . . . . . . . . . 169 The word defined, lti9 - A11 consciousncss tends

to action, l i 0 - Ideo-motor action, 171 -1nliibi- tion, 172 - The process of deliberation, 174 - Why so few of our ideas result in acts, 176- The associationist account of the will, 177 - A balance of impulses and inhibitions, 178 -The

PAGE

over-impulsive and the over-obstructed type, 1711 --'I'lle perfect type, 180- T!ic balliy \rill, 181 - What character-building consists in, 164 - Iiight action depends on right apperception of the case, 1s; -Effort of will is effort of attention: thc drunkard's dilemma, 187 - Vital irnportarlce of voluntary attention, 189-Its amount may be it:- determinate, 191 - AiErnlation of f rm-n ill, I!):! - Two types of inhibition, 1113 - Spinozs on inhibi- tion by a h i ~ l l e r gooil, 1!)4 - Conclusion, I!);

i

T H E GOSPEL O V i.lELAASATIOX . . 199

111.

WHAT MAlilCS L I F E SIGNII{'ICAST :' . . . . 265

TALKS 'LO TEACHERS

PSYCI3OLOGY AND THE TEACHING ART

IN the general activity and uprising of ideal in-

terests which every one with an eye for fact can

discern all about us in American life, there is per-

haps no more promising feature than the ferinen- tatioil which for a dozen years or lnore has been going on among the teachers. In whatever sphere

of education their functions may lie, there is to

be seen among them a really inspiring arnouilt of

searching of the heart about the highest concerns of their profession. Tlie of nations

begins always at the top, among the reflective

members of the Stake, and spreads slowly outward

and downward. The teachers of this country,

one may say, have its future in their hands. The earnestness which they at present show in striving

to enlighten and strengthen themselves is an index

of the nation's probabilities of advance in all ideal

directions. The outward organization of educa- tion which we have in our United States is per-

4 TALKS TO TEACHERS pSpCHOLOGP AND THlC TEACHING ART 5

haps, on the whole, the best organization that exists in any country. Tlie State school systems

give a diversity and flexibility, all opportunity for

experiment and keenness of competition, nowhere else to be fouild on such an important scale. The

independence of so mairy of the colleges and uni-

versities; the give and take of students and in- structors between them all; tlieir emulation, and their happy organic relations to the lower schools ;

the traditions of instructioll i l l them, evolved from

the older Atnerican recitation-method (and so t~voiding on the one llt~nd the pure lecture-sys-

tein prevalent in Ciermany and Scotland, mhicll considers too little the individual student, ancl yet liot involvir~g the sacrifice of the instructor to the iilclividual student, ivhicli t,he English tutorial sys- tein mould seem too often to entail),-all these

things (to say nothing of that coeducation of the

.exes in whose beirefits so niany of us heartily helieve), all these things, I say, are most happy

features of our scholastic: life, and from them the

~uost sanguine auguries inay Le drawn. Havirlg so favorable an organization, all we

need is to impregnate i t with gcninses, to get

superior men and moinelr working nlore and morr abundantly in it :~nd for it and at it, and in ;I

or two Aiiierica lilay well lead the education of the world. I must say that 1 look forwsrtl with no little conficlence to the day wllell that shall be an accol~lplishecl fact.

N~ one has profited lilore I)y the i'ermentatiol~

of which I speak, in pedagogical circles, than nre

psychologists. Tlie desire of tlle sclloolteaclrers for a completer professional training, and their

toward the ' professio~lul ' spirit ill their. work, have lecl theni more alicl illore to turn to us

for light on fu~lcia~nelital l~rinoiples. And ill tliese few hours wl~icli ive are to speu(l together yoll look to me, I am sm.e, for illforli~iztion conceniil~g the mind's olreratiolls, wlricll l i~ay enable you t,! labor more easily and efyectively ill the sever;tl schoolrooms over mhiull you preside.

Far be it from me to discli~il~i for 1jsycholoM i l l ]

title to sucli hopes. l'syahology ought cer t~ in l?

to give the teacher radical llrll). And yet I con- fess that, scqoaillted I nlu ivitlr the height of

some of your expectations, 1 feel a little anxiou,<

lest, at the end of these siu11,la B~lIcs of mine, 11ot

a few of You may experience some dis:rppoi~it~llsllt at the net results. I n otlier \vonls, I arli ,lot sure that You may llot be i~lilulgiilll~ fallcies tllat are

i'lst a shade emgsewtell. T],;lr no,llil llot he

THE ' SE'blr ' PSYCHOLOGY ?.

1

altogether astonishing, for we have beell having

something like a 'boonl' in psychology in this

cxountry. Laboratories aiid professorships have heen founded, and reviews establislled. The air

lias been full of rumors. The editors of educa-

tiorla1 journals :tnci the arrangers of conventions

l~avc had to show tlie~llselves enterprising and on a level with the riovelties of the day. Some of the

i,rofessors l ~ v e riot been unwilling to co-operate,

aiici I am not sure eve11 that the publishers have beer1 entirely inert. . T l ~ e new psychology ' has

thns become :t tern1 to conju1.e up portentous ideas withal : and you teacliel.~, docile and receptive

and aspiring as Inally of you are, liave been

plungetl in all atmosphere of vague talli about our

science, whicll to a great ex te l~ t lias beell inore

lnystifying tliall enlightening. Altogether it does

seem as if there mere a certain fatality of mystifi- cation laid upon the teachers of our day. 'I'he mat-

ter of their profession, cornpact enough in itself,

has to be frothed up for tlle11i in journals and insti-

tutes, till its outlities often threatell to be lost in a kind of vast uncertainty. Where the disciples

are not independent and critical-minded enough (and I think that, if you teachers in the earlier

grades have ally defect - the slightest touch of i i

defect in the world -it is that yon a1.e a rnite too

docile), we are pretty sure to miss accuracy and balance and measure in those who get a license to

bity down the law to them frorn nborc. As regards this subject of psyc!iology, now, I

wish at the very tlireshold to do wh:tt I can to dis-

pel the mystification. SO I say at once that in my humble opinion there is no ' new psychology ' worthy of the name. There is nothil~g but the old psychology mllicli 'oepui ill Locke's time, plus

a little physiology of tlle braill auci senses a11(1

theory of evolution, and a few refinements of intro-

spective detail, for the lliost l ~ a r t without adaptn-

tion to the teacher's uso. I t is only the funda- mental conceptions of psycllology wllicll are of

real value to the teacher ; allri they, apa~.t from the aforesaid theory of evolution, are very far Erorrl being new.-I trust that you will see better what I mean by this a t the end of all these talks.

1 say moreover that you inithe a great, n rerJ-

great mistake, if you think that p ~ y c l ~ o l o g ~ , bei~lg the science of the milids laws, is sor~ietlring fro111

which you can deduce definite ;lroglammes and

schemes and methods of iristruction for irnnlediate

8 c h ~ ~ l r o o m use. Psyclrology is a science, and is an a r t ; arid scieiruus never generate

h TAIJIiS 'I'O TEACHERS SCIICSCBS A S ; ) ARTS 9

arts directly out of themselves. A n intermediary

inventive mind must lrlake the application, by

rising its originality.

The scieiice of logic lrever nradc ;L nlim reason

rightly, and the science of ethics (if there be suc l~

n thing) nevei. made :L 11ia11 behave rightly. The

most such scierrces can (lo is to hell) us to catcli

ourselves up niicl check ourselves, if me start to

reason or to beliave wrongly; and to criticise our-

selves Illore articulittely after we have made mis-

takes. A science only lays down lines within

which the rules of tlie art nrust fall, laws which

tlle follower of the art must iiot transgress; but

what pzrticular thing he shall positively do within

those lirles is left exclusively to his own genius.

One genius will (lo 11is work well and succeed iu

one way, while nrrothel. sueceecls as well quite dif-

ferently ; yet neither will trairsgress the lines.

The art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom,

out of inveritiveness arid sympathetic concrete ob-

servation. Even w1iel.e (as ill tlre case of Herbart)

the advancer of the art was also a psychologist,

the pedagogics ancl tlie psychology- rail side by

side, ancl tlre fornier was not derived i11 arry sense

from the latter. Tlie two were congruent, but

neither was subordinate. An11 so everyn~here the

teaching must a p e e witli the psychology, but need

necessarily be the otlly kiiitl of teaching that

would so agree; for l i~any diverse methods of

teaching may equally well agree with psychologi-

cal laws. TO know psycl~ology, therefore, is absolutely no

parantee that we shall be good teachers. To ad-

vance to that result, we must have an additional

endowment altogether, a happy tact and ingenuity to tell us what definite things to say and do when

the pupil is before us. That irigenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete

situation, though they are the alpha and omega of

the teacher's art, are things to which psychology

cannot help us in the least.

The science of psychology, and whatever science of general pedagogics may he basecl on it, are i n

fact much like the science of wale. Nothillg is simpler or more definite than tlle principles of either. In war, all you have to do is to work your

enemy illto a position from whiclr tlte natural ob-

stacles prevent hiin from escaping if Ile tries to ;

then to fall on him in irombei~s superior to his

Own# a t a monlerlt when you ]lave lecl lli111 to think

you far away ; and so, with a ~ l l i~ i imul i~ of expos- '" Your olf*ll troops, l o llnck lris force to pieces,

10 TALKS TO TEACHEKS HOW PSYCHOLOGY S BEI>S LIGHT 11

and take the remainder prisoners. Just so, in

teaching, you must simply work your pupil into

such a state of interest in what you are going to

teach hinl that every other object of attention is banished from his mind ; then reveal i t to him so

imlxessively that he will remember the occasion to his dy i~ lg day ; and firrally fill him with devour-

ing curiosity to know what the next steps in con-

nection with the subject are. The principles being

so plain, there would be nothing but victories for

the masters of the science, either on the battlefield

or in the schoolroom, if they did not both have to

make their applicatioil to an incalculable quantity in the shape of the iuilld of their opponent. The

mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working

away from yon as keenly and eagerly as is the

inind of the commallcler on the other side froin the

scientific general. Jus t what tlie respective ene-

mies warit and think, arid what they know and do

not know, are as hixrtl things for the teacher as for the general to filicl out. Divination and per-

ception, not psychological pedagogics or the<)retic

strategy, are the only helpers here.

But, if the use of psychological principles thus

be negative rather tliail positive, i t does not follow

tliat it may iiot be a great use, rill the same. It

certainly narrows the path for ex1)eriments and

trials. W e Icnow in advance, if we are psycholo- gists, that certain methods will be wrong, so our

saves us from iriistalces. It makes us, moreover, more clear as to what we are about.

We gain confidence ill respect to any metliod

which we are using as soon as we believe that

i t has theory as well as practice a t its back. Most of all, i t fructifies our independence, and

i t reanimates our interest, to see our subject a t

two different angles,- to get a stereosco1)ic view,

so to speak, of the youtlifiil organism who is our enemy, and, while handling lliiil with all our con-

crete tact and divination, to be able, a t the same

time, to represent to ourselves the curious inner

elements of his mental machine. Such a complete knowledge as this of the ljupil, a t once intuitive alld analytic, is surely the knowledge a t whicli

every teacher ought to aim.

Fortunately for you teachers, the elemeilts of

the rnental niachirie can Le clearly apprehended,

and their workings easily grasped. *%lid, as tlie most general elements rtricl workings are just those

parts of psychology which the teacher finds most

directly useful, i t follows that the amount of tliis

science which is necess:lry to all teacl~ers need lint

be very great. Those ~vllo find themselves loviiig

tlie subject may go 21s far as they please, and be-

come possibly none the worse teachers for the fact, even tllough in sorlle of them oilc might appre-

llend a little loss of balnllce from the tendency

observable in d l of us to overempliasize certaiil

special parts of a subject when Ire are studying

it intensely and abstractly. But for the great

majority of you a general view is enough, pro-

vided it be a true one; and such a general view,

one may say, mjglit almost be written on the palm

of one's llantl.

Least of all need you, iilerely ns teachers, deenl

it part of your duty to beconie contributors to

psycho1ogic:~l science or to make pgychoIogical observatiorls in a methodical or resporlsible man-

ner. I fear that solne of the enthusiasts for child-

study have thrown a certain burden oil you in this

way. I3y all means let child-study go on,- i t is refreshirig all our sense of the child's life. There

are teacllers nrlio take n spo~itnneous delight ill

filling syllabuses, illscril~iug observations, compil- i ~ ~ g statistics, and computil~g the per cent. Child-

study will certainly enrich their lives. And, if its

results, as treated statistically, would seem on the

whole to have but trifliiig d u e , yet the anecdotes

alld obser~-atioiis of Ivllicll it i l l 11art cniisists (lo certainly acquniilt us illore ii~tilr~atelp with olu

IlupiIs. Our eycs ant1 ears grow quickeiletl to

discern in t l ~ e cllilcl before 11s Irocesses similar to

those we 1ia1-e reatl of : ~ s ilotecl in the chilclren,-

processes of wllicll we might otllermise have re-

mained inobservai~t. Hut , for Heaven's salre, let

the rank and file of teachers be passive readers if

they so prefer, a i ~ d feel free not to contribute to

the accurnulatiou. Let not the prosecutioll of it

be preached as an iniperative duty or imposed by

regulation on those to ~vhoni i t proves an exter-

minating bore, or wlio in :my way whatever miss

in themselves tlie a1)propriate vocatioil for it. I cannot too strongly agree with rny colleague,

Professor Miiusterberg, wl~eil he says that the

teacher's attitude toward the child, being concrete

: ~ n d ethical, is positively opposed to the psycho-

logical observer's, which is abstract and analytic.

Althougli sonle of us iilay cor~joiil tlie attitudes

~uccessfully, in rnost of us they iilust conflict. The worst thing that call 11appell to a good

teacher is to get n bad conscient:~! about her pro-

fession because she feels herself llopeless as a psy-

chologist. Our teachers are over\~rorlie(l already. Every one who adds a jot or tittle o f urluecessary

14 TALKS TO TEACHERS

weight to their burden is a foe of education. A bad conscience illcreases the weight of every other burden; yet I know that child-study, and other pieces of psychology as well, have been productive oE bad conscience in Inany a really innocent pecl-

:igogic 111.cast. I should illdeed l)e glad iE this

1~assing word from me might tend to dispel such a bad conscience, if any of yo11 have i t ; for i t is certainly one of those fruits of more or less systenlatic mystification of wllicll I have alread-

cornplnined. The best teacher ]nay be the poorest contributor of child-study material, and the best contributor may be the poorest teacher. No fact is ruore ~~rtlpable than this.

So much for what seems the most reasonable general attitude of the teacher toward the sul~jject which is to occupy otir attention.

T H E STREAM OF COXSCIOUSNESS

I SAID s few lllinutes ago that the most general

elements and workings of the mind are a11 that the teacher absolutely needs to be acquainted with for his purposes.

Now the immediate fact which psychology, the science of mind, has to study is also the most general fact. I t is the fact that ill eacli of us, when awake (and often when asleep), some kind

of consciousness is always yoin!/ on. There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or of whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that con- stitute our inner life. The existence of this stream is the primal fact, the nature and origin of it form the essential problem, of our science. So far as we class the states or fields of consciousness, write down their several natures, analyze their contents into elements, or trace their habits of succession,

O U R STliEArYI O F C O X S C I O c S X E S s I 7

we arc on the descriptive or analytic level. So

far as we ask where they come from or why they are just what they are, we are olr the explanatory

level. In tllese talks with you, I shall entirely neglect

the questioils that conle ul) OII the cspla~iatory level. I t must be frankly corlfessetl tliat in no

fmdamental sense do me know where our succes- sive fields of consciousness co~ne from, or why they have tlie precise inner constitution which they do have. They certainly follow or acconl-

pnny o w b1.ai11 states, and of course their special

For~ns are deterininetl 1)y our past experiences and education. 13ut, if me ask just ho7~ the brain con-

clitions the~ll, we have not the remotest inkling of , ~ n answer to give; and, if we ask just how the educatio~i moulds the brain, we can speak but in the 111ost abstract, general, and conjectural terms. On the other hand, if we shoul~l say that they are

clue to a spiritual being called our Soul, wllich reacts on onr brain states by tliese peculiar forms of spiritual energy, our words would be familiar enough, i t is true; but I think you will agree that

they would offer little genuine explanatory mean- ing. The trntli is that we really do ,lot lcrzo?u the allswers to the proble~ns on the expla~latory level,

even though in some directioi~s of inquiry there

may be promising speculatiol~s to be found. For our present purposes I sliall therefore dismiss them

entirely, and turn to inere description. This state of things was what I had in 11lilld when, a nloment

ago, I said there was 110 new psychology ' worthy of the name.

We have tl~usjfields of' (c~tlsciolrs/~e.~s,- that is the first general fact ; and the secollcl general fact is

that the concrete fields are always complex. They contain sensations of our bodies and of the ob- jects around us, memories of past experiences and thoughts of distant things, feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, desires ancl aversions, and other

emotional conditions, together with determin a t ' ions

of the will, in every variety of permutation and

combinatio~i. I11 most of our concrete states of consciousness

all these different classes of ingredients are found

simultaneously present to sonle degree, though the relative proportion they bear to one another is very shifting. One state will seem to be conl- posed of hardly anything but sensations, another

of hardly anything bnt memories, etc. But around the sensation, if one consider carefully, there will always be some fringe of thought or will, antl

18 TALKS TO TKACHEKS THE FIELDS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 19

around the memory some margin or of

emotion or sensation. Tn most of our fields of consciousness there is a

core of sensation that is very pronounced. You,

for example, now, although you are also thinking and feeling, are getting tl~rougll your eyes sensa- tions of my face and figure, and through your ears sensations of illy voice. The sensations are the

centre or focus, the t l~oughts and feelings the mar-

gin, of your actually present conscious field.

011 the other halid, some object of thought, some distant image, nlay llnve become the focus

of your inental attention even while I am speak- ing,- your mind, ill sl~ort , may have wandered

from the lecture ; and, in that case, the sensations of my face and voice, although not absolutely

vanishing from your conscious field, may have taken up there a very faint and n~argiiial place.

Again, to take allother sort of variation, some feeling connected with your own body may have passed from a marginal to a focal place, even

while I speak. The expressions focal object ' ancl ' marginal

object,' which we owe to Mr. Lloyd Morgan, re- quire, I think, no further explanation. The dis-

tinction they embody is a very important one, and

they are the first technical terms which I shall ask you to remember.

I n the successive mutations of our fields of con-

sciousness, the process by which one dissolves into

another is often very gradual, and all sorts of

inner rearrangements of contents occur. Some- times the focus remains but little changed, while

the margin alters rapidly. Sometimes the focus

alters, and the margin stays. Sometimes focus and margin change places. Sometimes, again, abrupt alterations of the whole field occur.

There can seldom be a sharp description. All we know is that, for the most part, each field has

a sort of practical unity for its possessor, and that from this practical point of view we can class a

field with other fields similar to it, by calling i t a state of emotion, of perplexity, of sensation, of

abstract thought, of volition, and the like. Vague and hazy as such an account of our

stream of consciousness may be, i t is a t least se- cure from positive error and free from admixture

of conjecture or hypothesis. An influential school of psychology, seeking to avoid haziness of out- line, has tried to make things appear more exact

and scientific by making the analysis more sharp.

2 (j TALKS TO TEACHERS

The various fields of consciousness, according to this school, result from a definite number of per-

fectly definite elementary mental states, mechani- cally associated into a mosaic or chemically com- bined. According to some thinkers,- Spencer,

for example, or Taine,- these resolve thenlselves at last into little elementary psychic particles or

atoms of Gmind-stuff,' out of which all the more

immediately kriowi~ mental states are said to be

built up. Locke ir~troduced this theory in a

solliewhat vague form. Simple ' ideas ' of sensa-

tioil and reflection, as he called theni, were for

hirn the bricks of which our mental architecture is built up. If I ever have to refer to this theory

again, I sllall refer to i t as the theory of 'ideas.' But 1 shall try to steer clear of i t altogether. Whether i t be true or false, i t is at any rate only conjectural ; and, for your practical purposes as teachers, the more unpretending coilception of the

stream of consciousness, with its total waves or

fields incessantly changing, ~vill amply sufice.*

*In the light of some of the expectasions that are abroad concern-

ing the ' new psychology,' i t is instructive to read the unusually can- did confession of its founder Wundt, after his thirty years of labora- tory-experience :

" The service which i t [the experimental method] can yield consists essentially in perfecting our inner observation, or rather, as I believe,

in making this really possible, in any exact sense. Well, has our self-observation, so understood, already accomplished

aught of importance? No general answer to this question can be dven , because in the unfinished state of our science, there is, even inside of the experimental lines of inquiry, no universally accepted body of psychologic doctrine. . . .

'6 In such a discord of opinions (comprehensible enough a t a time

of uncertain and groping development), the individual inquirer can only tell for what Views and insights he himself has to thank the

newer methods. And if 1 were asked in what for me the worth of ex- perimental observation in psychology has consisted, and still consists, should say that i t has given me an entirely new idea of the nature

and connection of our inner processes. I learned in the achievements of the sense of sight to apprehend the fact of creative mental synthe-

sis.. . . From my inquiry into time-relations, etc., . . . I attained an insight into the close union of all those psychic functions usually sepa-

rated by artificial abstractions and names, such as ideation, feeling, wlll; and I saw the indivisibility and inner homogeneity, in all its phases, of the mental life. The chronometric study of association- processes finally showed me that the notion of distinct mental ' images' [reproducirten Vorstellungen] was one of those numerous self-decep- tions which arc no sooner stamped in a verbal term than they forth- with thrust non-existent fictions into the place of the reality. I learned to understand an ' idea' as a process no less melting and flee& ing than a n act of feeling or of will, and I co~nprellended thc older doctrine of association of ' ideas' to be no longer tenable. . . . Besides

all this, experimental observation yielded much other information about the span of conscionsness, the rapidity of certain processes, the exact numerical value of certain psycho-physical data, and tile like. But I hold all those more special results to be relatively insignificant

by-products, and by no means the important thing."- Philosophische

Stwltm, x. 121-124. The whole passage shonld be read. As I interpret it, i t amounts to a complete espousal of the vaguer conception of the stream of thought, and a co~llplete renunciation of the whole buainess,

still so industriously carried on in text-books, of chopping up ' t he mind' into distinct nnits of coulposition or function, numbering these off, and labelling them by techn~cal names.

THE TWO VIEWS OE' OUR MIND 23

THE CHILD AS A BEHAVING ORGANISM

I WISH now to contiilue the description of the

peculiarities of the stream of consciousness by asking whether we can in any intelligible way

assign its functions.

It has two functions that are obvious: it leads to knowledge, and i t leads to action.

Can we say which of these functions is the

more essential ?

An old historic divergence of opinion comes in here. Popular belief has always tended to esti-

mate the worth of a man's mental processes by their effects upon his practical life. But philo-

sophers have usually cherished a different view. Man's supreme glory," they have said, 'L is to be

a rational being, to know absolute and eternal and universal truth. The uses of his intellect for practical affairs are therefore subordinate matters. ' The theoretic life ' is his soul's genuine concern." Nothing call be more different in its results for our personal attitude than to take sides with one

or the other of these views, and emphasize the

practical or the theoretical ideal. I n the latter case, abstraction from the emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of human affairs would be not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; and all that makes for quiet and contemplation

should be regarded as conducive to the highest

human perfection. I n the former, the man of con- templation would be treated as only half a human being, passion and practical resource would be-

come once more glories of our race, a concrete victory over this earth's outward powers of dark- ness would appear an equivalent for any amount of passive spiritual culture, and conduct would remain as the test of every education worthy of the name.

It is impossible to disguise the fact that in the psychology of our own day the emphasis is trans- ferred from the mind's purely rational function, where Plato and Aristotle, and what one may call the whole classic tradition in philosophy had placed it, to the so long neglected practical sicle. The theory of evolution is mainly respoilsible for this. Man, we now have reason to believe, has been evolved from infra-human ancestors, in whom pure reason hardly existed, if a t all, and whose

24 TAI~ICS TO TEACHERS THE DIOLOGICAL 171t21\7 25

mind, so far as i t can have had any function,

would appear to have been an organ for adapting their movements to the impressions received from the environment, so as to escape the better from destruction. Coilsciousness would thus seem in the first instailce to be nothing but a sort of super- adcled biological perfection,- useless unless i t prompted to useful conduct, ancl inexplicable

a ion. apart froin that consider t '

Deep in our own nature the biological founda- tions of our consciousness persist, undisguised and undiminished. Our sensations are here to attract

us or to deter us, our memories to warn or encour-

age us, our feelings to impel, and our thoughts to restrain our behavior, so that on the whole we may prosper and our days be long in the land. Whatever of transmundane inetaphysical insight or of practically inapplicable zsthetic perception

or ethical sentiment we may carry in our interiors might a t this rate be regarded as only part of the incidental excess of function that ilecessarily ac-

companies the working of every coinplex machine. I shall ask you now-not meaning at all

thereby to close the theoretic question, but merely because it seems to me the point of view likely to be of greatest practical use to you as teachers-

to aclopt with me, in this course of lectures, tlie

biological conception, as thus expressed, and to

lay your own emphasis on the fact that man, whatever else he nlay be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting

him to this \vorld's life, In the learning of all matters, we have to start

with some one deep aspect of the question, ab- stracting it as if i t mere the oilly aspect; and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding those

neglected other features which complete the case. No one believes more strongly than I do that what our senses know as 'this world ' is only one portion of our mind's total environment and ob-

ject. Pet, because it is the primal portion, it is

the s i m qua ?ion of all the rest. If you grasp the facts about it firnlly, you may proceed to higher regions undisturbed. As our time must be so

short together, I prefer being elementary and fundamental to being complete, so I propose to

you to hold fast to the ultra-simple point of view.

The reasons why I call it so fundamental can be easily told.

First, human and animal psychology thereby become less discontinuous. I know that to some

26 TALKS TO TEACHERS

of you this will hardly seem an attractive reason, but there are others whom i t will affect.

Second, mental action is conditioned by brain

action, and runs parallel therewith. But the brain, so far as we understand it, is given us for

practical behavior. Every current that runs into i t from skin or eye or ear runs out again into muscles, glands, or viscera, and helps to adapt the animal to the environment from which the current

came. I t therefore generalizes and simplifies our view to treat the brain life and the mental life as having one fundamental kind of purpose.

Third, those very functions of the mind that do not refer directly to this world's environment, the ethical utopias, zesthetic visions, insights into eternal truth, and fanciful logical combinations, could never be carried on a t all by a human indi- vidual, unless the mind that produced them in

hiin were also able to produce more practically useful products. The latter are thus the more essential, or a t least the Inore primordial results.

Fourtl~, the inessential ' unpractical ' activities are themselves far more connected with our be- havior and our adaptation to the environment than

a t first sight rnight appear. No truth, however abstract, is ever perceived, that will not probably

a t some time influence our earthly action. You must remember that, when I talk of action here,

I mean action in the widest sense. I mean speech, I mean writing, I mean yeses and noes, and ten-

dencies ' from ' things and tendencies ' toward ' things, and emotional determinations ; and I mean

them in the future as well as i11 the immediate

present. As I talk here, and you listen, i t might seem as if no action followed. You might call i t a purely theoretic process, with no practical

result. But i t must have a practical result. It cannot take place at all and leave your conduct

unaffected. If not to-day, then on some far future day, you will answer some question differently by

reason of what you are thinking now. Some of you will be led by my words into new veins of

inquiry, into reading special books. These will develop your opinion, whether for or against. That opinion will in turn be expressed, will re-

ceive criticism from others in your environment,

and will affect your standing in their eyes. W e cannot escape our destiny, which is practical ; and

even our most theoretic faculties contribute to its working out.

2 8 TALKS TO TEACHERS

These few reasons will smooth the way

for you to acquiescence in my proposal. As teachers, I sincerely think i t will be a sufficient conception for you to adopt of the youthful psy- chological phenomena handed over to your inspec- tion if you consider then1 froill the point of view of their relation to the future conduct of their

possessor. Sufficiellt a t any rate as a first con-

ception and as a main conception. You should regard your professional task as if i t consisted chiefly and essentially in training the pupil to be-

h a v i o ~ ; taking behavior, not in the narrow sense

of his manners, but in the very widest possible sense, as including every possible sort of fit re- action on the circumstances into which he may find himself brought by the vicissitudes of life.

The reaction may, indeed, often be a negative

reaction. Not to speak, not to move, is one of the most important of our duties, in certain practical

emergencies. ' iThou shalt refrain, renounce, ab- stain ! " This often requires a great effort of will power, and, physiologically considered, is just as positive a nerve function as is motor discharge.

IV.

EDUCATION AXD BEHAVIOR

IN our foregoing talk we were led to frame a very simple conception of what an education

means. I n the last analysis i t consists in the organizing of resources in the lruman being, of powers of conduct which shall fit hinl to his social

and pliysical world. An ' uneducated ' person is

one who is nonplussed by all but the most habitual situations. On the contrary, one who is educated

is able practically to extricate himself, by means of the examples with which his nlenlory is stored and of the abstract conceptions which he has

acquired, from circumstances in which he never was placed before. Education, in short, cannot

be better described than by calling it the organiza-

tion of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies

t o behavior.

To illustrate. You and T are each and all of us

educated, in our several ways; and we show our education at this present moment by different conduct. I t would be quite impossible for me,

30 TALKS TO TEACHERS GERMAN AND ENGLISH IDEALS 31

with iny mind technically and professionally or-

gicnized as i t is, and with the optical stimulus which your presence affords, to remain sitting here entirely silent and inactive. Something tells me

that I am expected to speak, and must speak;

something forces me to keep on speaking. My organs of articulation are continuously innervated by outgoing currents, which the currents passing inward a t my eyes and through my educated brain have set in motion ; and the particular movements

which they make have their form and order deter- mined altogether by the training of all my past years of lecturing and reading. Your conduct, on

the other hand, might seem at first sight purely receptive and inactive,- leaving out those among you who happen to be taking notes. But the

very listening which you are carrying on is itself a determinate kind of conduct. All the muscular

tensions of your body are distributed in a peculiar way as you listen. Your head, your eyes, are fixed characteristically. And, when the lecture is over, it will inevitably eventunte in some stroke of behavior, as I said on the previous occasion: you may be guidecl differently in some special emergency in the schoolroon~ by worcls which I IIOW let fall.- So it is with the inipressio~ls you

will make there on your pupil. You should get into the habit of regarding them all as leading to the acquisition by him of capacities for behavior, - emotional, social, bodily, vocal, technical, or

what not. And, this being the case, you ought to feel willing, in a general way, and without hair-splitting or farther ado, to take up for the

purposes of these lectures with the biological con- ception of the mind, as of something given us for

practical use. That conception will certainly cover the greater part of your own educational work.

If we reflect upon the various ideals of educa- tion that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize

capacities for conduct. This is most immediately obvious in Germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing scientific discov-

ery. The German universities are proud of the number of young specialists whom they turn out

every year,-not necessarily men of any original force of intellect, but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them an historical

or philological thesis to prepare, or a bit of labora- tory work to do, with a general indication as to the best method, they can go off by themselves

32 TALKS TO TEACHERS

and use apparatus and consult sources in such

a way as to grind out in the requisite number

of months some little pepper-corn of nen- truth

worthy of being added to the store of extant hu-

man information on that subject. Little else is

recognized in Gernlany as a man's title to academic

advancement than his ability thus to show llimself

an efficient instrument of research.

I n England, it might seem a t first sight as if

the higher education of tlie universities aimed at

the production of certain static types of character

rather than at the development of what one may

call this dynamic scientific efficiency. Professor

Jowett, when asked what Oxford could do for its

stucients, is said to have replied, " Oxford can

teach an Englisll gentleinan how to be an English

gentle~nan." But, if you asli what it means to 'be ' an English gentleman, the only reply is ill terms

of conduct and behavior. An English gentleman

is a bundle of specifically qualified reactions, a

creature who for all the emergencies of life has

his line of behavior clistiilctly marked out for him

in advance. Here, as elsewhere, England expects

every marl to do his duty.

T H E NECESSITY O F REACTIONS

IF all this be true, then immeciiately one general

aphorism emerges which ought by logical right to

dominate the entire conduct of the teacher in the

classroom.

No reception without reaction, no impression with-

out co~relative expression,- this is the great maxim

which the teacher ought never to forget.

An impression which simply flows in at the

pupil's eyes or ears, and in no way modifies his

active life, is an i~npressio~l gone to waste. I t is

physiologically incomplete. J t leaves no fruits

behind it in the way of capacity acquired. Even

as mere impression, i t fails to produce its proper ef-

fect upon the memory ; for, to relnain fully among

the acquisitions of this latter faculty, it must be

wrought into the whole cycle of our operations.

Its motor consequences are what clinch it. Some

effect due to i t in the way of an activity must re-

turn to the mind in the form of the sensation of

having acted, and connect itself with the impres-

sion. The most durable impressions are those on

34 TALKS TO TEACHERS

account of which we speak or act, or else are in-

wardly convulsed.

The older pedagogic method of learning things

by rote, and reciting them parrot-like in the schoolroom, rested on the truth that a thing

merely read or heard, and never verbally repro-

duced, contracts the weakest possible adhesion in

the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is

thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior

on our impressions; and it is to be feared that, in

the reaction against the old parrot-recitations as the beginning and end of instruction, the extreme

value of verbal recitation as an element of com-

plete training may nowadays be too much for- gotten.

When we turn to modern pedagogics, we see how enormously the field of reactive conduct has

been extended by the introduction of all those

methods of concrete object teaching which are the glory of our contemporary schools. Verbal reac-

tions, useful as they are, are insufficient. The

pupil's words may be right, but the conceptions

correspondillg to the111 are often direfully wrong. I11 a modern school, therefore, they form only a

small part of what the pupil is required to do.

He must keep notebooks, make drawings, plans,

alld maps, take ii~ens~~~.e:uents, e t i t ~ r t l ~ e l;t1);)1.;~-

tory and perfurn1 experi!nents, collsult autliorities,

and write essays. IIc ltlust CIO ill his f;xshioll

what is often laughed at by outsitlel.~ when it all-

p e a s in prospectuses uncler the title of & original

work,' but what is really the only possible train-

ing for the doing oE original worli thereafter.

The most colossal iml~rovernent whicll recent years

have seen in secondary educatioll lies in the in-

troduction of the nianual training schools; not

because they will give us a peoplc! more handy and practical for domestic life ancl better skilled

in trades, but because tliey will give us citizens

with an entirely different intellectual fibre. La- boratory work anc2 shop work engender n habit

of observation, a knowledge of the difference be-

tween accuracy ancl vagueness, and an insight into

nature's complexity arlcl into the inadequacy of

all abstract verbal aucourits of real phenomena,

which, once wrought illto the mind, rerrlaiil there

as lifelong possessions. They confer precisior~; because, if you are doing n thing, you must do it

definitely right or definitely wrong. They give honesty; for, when you express yourself by mak-

ing things, and not by using words, i t becomes

impossible to dissin~ulate your vagueness or igno-

ranee by ambiguity. TheJ. beget a habit of self-

reliance ; they keep the interest and attention always cheerf~l ly eiigagecl, niid reduce the teach-

er's disciplinary furictiorls to n milrimunl. Of tlie various systems of manual training, so

far as mooclmork is concerned, the Swedish Sloyd

system, if I may have an opinion on such matters,

seems to me by far the best, psychologically con-

sidered. Manual training nlethocls, fortunately,

:ire heing slowly but surely introduced into all our large cities. But there is still an immense

clistnnce to traverse before they shall have gained

the extension which they are desth~ed ultimately

to possess.

No impression without expression, then,- that

is the first pedagogic fruit of our evolutionary

conceptioil of the mind as something iilstrumental to adaptive behavior. But a word may be said

in continuation. The expression itself comes back

to us, as I intiruatecl a moment ago, in the form of

ti still farther inipression,-- the impression, namely, of what we have done. W e thus receive sensible news of our behavior and its results. ?Ve hear

the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as \\.e give it, or read in tlie bystander's ej7es the success or failure of onr contluct. Now tliis re-

turn wave of inlprcssion pertains to the complete-

ness of the whole experience, and a word about

its ilnportance in the s~hoolroo11i i~iny ]lot be o l ~ t

of place. I t nroultl seen1 only 11:~tul~al tu say that, sincch

after acting me nornlally get sorne return impres-

sion of result, i t milst Le ~ r e l l to let the i)ulJil get

such a return impressioll in evt:rj- l~ossible case.

Nevertheless, ill schools where examination mark>

and 'standing' and other returns of result are concealed, the pupil is frustrated of this natura!

termination of the cycle of his activities, and oftell

suffers from the sense of inconlpleteness and u ~ l -

certainty; and there are persons who defend this

system as encouraging the pupil to worlc for thrh

work's sake, and not for extra~ieous reward. 01' course, here as elsewhere, concrete experience

must prevail over psychological deduction. But, so far as our pspchological tleduction goes, it

would suggest that the pupil's cagei31iess to kilo\\ how well he does is in the line of his normal

completeness of functioli, and sllonlcl never be

balked except for very definite reasons indeed.

Acquaint them, tlierefol-e, wit11 tlieir marks n:ill stallding ant1 l)rospects, unless in tlie indix,ridual

case yo11 have some speci'd ;:rn;tioc~l reaL,on for

llot so doi~~g;.

sztbstitutiort or complicntiot~, rtnd success in tJLr. ~ , . f

pre.supposes n .~;ympatJletic nccl~cainta~~cc: ~t-itl, tI,r reactive tentfencies nativrZy t h p r p .

1-1. without an equipment of native reactions 011

NATIVE KEACTIOXS AN) ACQUIRED RE- the child's part, the teacher ~~roulcl have no holtl ACTIOSS whatever upon the child's attention or conduct.

WE are by this time fully launched upon the

1,iological conception. 3Lan is an organism for

reacting on ilnpressions: his mind is there to

lrcllr determine lris re:~ctiolrs, a ~ i d the purpose of

his educatioil is to make then1 numerous and per- fect. Ozrr v,lwoatio,z vzen?Ls, in short, little more

i i ~ n , ~ n mass oif'possibilitdes o f reaction, acquired a t home, at school. or in the training of affairs. The

teacher's task is that of supervising the acquiring

process. This being the case, I will ii~lmediately state a

~ ~ , i n c i p l o wlricl~ ullderlies the whole process of

i~cquisitiou and governs the entire activity of the teacher. It is this : -

Everg .rcquirid reaction is, as a ?ale, either a

~.on~plicntio~z yrafteil on a na tbr ~enction, or a sub- stitute jTor cr nrctioo retcction, toJ~ich the sanze otiect nriginally tended t o provoke.

The tencl~er'.~ art coi~si.3t.s in hri~~ging about the

You may take a horse to the water, but you call-

not make him drink ; and so you may take a chiltl

to the schoolroom, but yo11 cannot make him learil

the new things you wish to impart, except bJ-

soliciting him in the first instance by something

which natively makes him react. Ile must take the first stel) himself. H e must ($0 something

before you can get your purchase oil him. That something may be something good or something

bad. A bat1 reaction is better than no reactiorl a t al l ; for, if had, you call couple i t with conse-

quences which awake him to its badness. But

imagine a child so lifeless as to react in no way to the teacher's first appeals, and how can you

possibly take the first step in his education?

To make this abstract conception more con- crete, assume the case of a young child's training

in good manners. The child has a native ten- dency to snatill with his l~ands a t anything tkdt attracts his curiosity ; also to draw hacl: his harltls

when slapped, to cry uncler tliese latter oonditions,

to smile when gently spol;e:~ to, alid to imitate

one's gestures.

Suppose 1 1 0 ~ ~ you apl)enr befo1.e thc child with new toy irlte~lcletl as a 1)rasellt for 1;iril. No

sooner does Ile see the toy tl1;~11 11e seclis to snatc l~

it. Ton s la l ) tlle 11;tnd ; i t is witlltlr;~rv~i, and tlie child cries. Yo11 the11 l ~ o l d 111) the toy, smiling and saying, b b Reg for i t nicely,- so ! " The child

stops crying, in1it;ttes you, receives tlie toy, and

crows with pleasure ; nnd that little cycle of train-

ing is conlplete You have substituted the new

reaction of begging' for the native reaction of

snatching, when that 6ind of in~pression comes.

Now, if the cliilcl hati no memory, the process

would iiot be educative. No matter how often

you came in with :L toy, tlie same series of reac-

tions mould fatally occur, each called forth by i ts

ow11 i~npressio~i : see, snatch : slap, c ~ y ; hear,

ask; receive, sliiile But, wit11 Inemoq- there, the

child, a t the very instant of sn:ttchiiig, recalls tlie

rest o i the earlier exl)erience, thinks of tlie slap

a ~ t d thc frustmtion, recollects the begg~ng and the

reivarcl, irlliibits thc sliatchirig inlpulse, substitutes

the ' nice ' ~euctioll for it, and gets the toy immedi-

ately, by elirnillnting all the iiiterniedi~ry steps. If

;L child's first s~ia tc l l i~ig iln1)ulse be excessive or l l i h

memory poor, Inany repetitions of the clisciplint.

may he needed before tile i~cqui~ocl reaction collies

to be nli i ~ i g r a i ~ ~ c c ! IlalJit ; but ill ail enliilentl,.

educable chiltl a single expe~icllcr will suffice.

01ie can e a s i l ~ ~ * c ~ ) l s n e ~ i t tlla rrholc process by

brain-cIiagranl. Such n cliagrarn call be little more than a syn~bolic translatioll of the immediate ex-

perience into s l ~ a t ~ n l terms : yet i t may be useful,

so I subjoin it.

CENTitLS 01' JIC:\IORY A X l ) WILL.

see - snatch slap - <try Listen - beg r,et - slr,ile

FI(;URE 1. TEE HRAIS-I'ROCESSES B E F O R E EDUCATIOS.

Figure 1 shows the p a t l ~ s of the four successive

reflexes executed by the lower or instinctive

centres. The dotted lines tha t leaci from them to the h i g l ~ c ~ centres ant1 c o ~ ~ i i e c t tlie latter to-

gether, represent the processes of memory and as-

sociation which the reactions impress upon the

higher centres as they take place.

<:ENTRES 01; XEMORY AND WILL.

See- beg smile

FIGURE a. THE RRAIS-I 'ROCESS AFTER EDUCATION.

I n Figure 2 we have the final result. The im-

pression see awakens the chain of memories, and

the only reactions that take place are the be,g and smi le . The thought of the rltrp, connected with

the activity of Centre 2, inhibits the .~natch, and

iuakes i t abortive, so i t is represented only by

a dotted line of discharge not reaclling the termi-

nus. Ditto of the cry reaction. These iLre, as

i t were, short-circuited by tlie cul.rent sweeping through the higher centres from see to smi le .

Bv,q ant1 S I ) L ~ ~ P , tllus substi t ~ l t e(1 for the original

reaction hntrtcl~, become at litst the immediate re-

sponses when the child sees n snatchable object in

some one's hands.

The first thing, then, for the teacher to under-

stand is the native reactive tendencies,- the im-

pulses and instincts of childhood,-so as to be

able to substitute one for another, and turn then1

on to artificial objects.

It is often said that inan is distinguished from

the lower animals by having a much smaller as-

sortment of native instiilcts and impulses than

they, but this is a great mistake. Man, of course, has not the nlarvellous egg-laying instincts which

some articulates have ; but, if we compare him

with the mammalia, we are forced to confess that

he is appealed to by a much larger array of objects

than any other mammal, that his reactions on

these objects are characteristic and determinate in

a very high degree. The monkeys, and especially the anthropoids, are the only beings t l~n t approach

him in their analytic curiosity itnd width of imi-

tativeness. His instinctive impulses, it is true,

get overlaid by the secondary reactions due to his

superior reasoning power; and thus man loses the

r i ~ n p l y instinctive deme;t~lo~.. ]jut tlie life of in-

44 TrlLI<S '1'0 TEACHERS

stinct is only disguised in him, not lost; and

wlien tlie higher brain-functions are in abeyance,

as happens in imbecility or dementia, his instincts

sometimes show their presence i l l truly brutish

\trays.

I will therefore say a few words about those

instinctive tendencies which are the most impor-

tant froin tlle teacller's point of T iew. i s of a l l I . k'c<n* of l)uilishment lias

xlw;zys bee11 tlie great we:tl)oii of the teacher, and

will always, of courv, 1.etaiii soine 1,lace i11 the

conditions of the schoolrooiii. The subject is so

familiar that ilothil~g inore need be said about it.

The same is true of Lo(v, and the instinctive

desire to please those whoill \ve love. The teacher

who succeeds in getting helself loved by the

pupils mill obtain results which one of a more

forbidding tenlperainent finds it impossible to

secure.

Next, a word might 1,e said about Curiosity.

This is perhaps a rather poor tern1 by which to

desigilate the i n y u l s r t o~u~~r (E 6attr.r cognition in its

full extent ; but you will readily understand what

I mean. Novelties in the way of sensible objects,

especially if their seiisational quality is bright,

vivid, startling, invariably arrest the attention of the young and hold it mltil tlie desire to know

more about the object is assuaged. 111 its higher,

more intellectual form, the i~llpulse toward com-

pleter knowledge talies the character of scientific or philosophic curiosity. I11 1)otll its sensational anti

its ilitellectual form the illsti~ict is Inore vivacious tiuring cllildhood and yout l~ than in after life.

Young children are possesseci by curiosity about

every new iinpressioil that assails them. It mould

be quite impossible for a young child to listen to

a lecture for more tllail a few minutes, as you are

now listening to nie. The outsicle sights and

sounds mould inevitably carry his attention off.

And, for most people in middle life, the sort of

intellectual effort required of the average school-

boy in mastering his Greek or Latin lesson, his

algebra or physics, would be out of the question.

The middle-aged citizen attends exclusively to tlie

routine details of his business ; and iiew truths,

especially when they require involved trains of

close reasoni~~g, are no longer within the scope of

his capacity.

The sensational curiosity of childhood is ap-

pealed to more particularly by certain determinate

kinds oi objects. Material things, things that

move, living things, human actions nnci accounts

of hurlian action, will win tllc attention better than

anything that is 111o1.e abst~nct . Here again comes

ill the advantage of tlie object-teaclliilg and mnnunl-

training methods. Tlie pupil's ;~ttention is s l~on-

trtneously lielcl by ariy problelii that i~lvolves tlie

presentation of a new material object or of

activity 011 any one's part. Tlie teacher's earliest appeal:;, Illerefore, must be tlirougli 01)jccts shornll

or acts yerfor~ned or described. Tlieol*etic curios- ity, cuiaiosity about the rational relatioils between

thillgs, call hardly be said to awake a t all until

adolescence is reached. Tlie sporaclic metaphysical inquiries of cliilclren as to who made God, aiid why

they have five fingers, tieecl liardlp be counted

here. But, when the theoretic instinct is once

alive in the pupil, ail entirely new order of peda-

gogic relations begins for him. Reasons, causes,

abstract conceptions, suddenly grow full of zest, a

fact with which all teachers are familiar. Ancl.

both in its sensible and in its rational developments,

disinterested curiosity inay be successfully appealed

to in the child with rnucli inore certainty than ill

the adult, ill who111 this intellectual instinct has

grown so torpid as usually never to awake unless

i t enters into association with soiile selfish personal

interest. Of tliis latter point I will say more

anon.

IMITATION AND E~IGLATIOX 40

J i~ i tn t io t~ . Man llas alxvays I~eeii 1.ecognizeel as

the iinitative animal p a r exce l l~ncc . Ancl there is

11xrdl~- a book on psychology, lio~vever oltl, which has not devoted a t least one lmragraph to this

fact. Tt is strange, hoxvever, tlint the full scope

ancl pregnancy of the imitative iml~ulse in marl

has had to wait till tlie last doze11 years to become adequately recognizecl. M. T:lrde lee1 tlle way in

his admirably original ~vorl;, " Les Lois tle 1'Imita-

tion " ; and iri our own couiitry Professors Iioyce

itlicl Baldwill have kept the ball rolling with all the energy that coul(1 be desired. Each of us is

in fact what he is t~huost exclusively by virtue of liis imitativeness. W e become conscious of what

we ourselves are by imitating others -the con-

sciousness of wliat the others are I~reeedes - the

sense of self grows by the sense of pattern.

The entire accumulated we:~ltli of lilankinci - languages, arts, institutions, and scienccs - is

passeel on from one generation to another by what

Baldwin has called social heredity, eacli genera-

tion simply imitating the last. Into the particu-

lars of this most fascinating o1lal)ter of psychology T have no time to go. 'J'lie inornent one hears

Tarde's 11ropositioli uttered, l~owever, one feels

how supremely true i t is. Iliveritiorr, using the

term most broadly, anel inlitation, are the two

legs, so to call them, on which the human race

historically has walked.

Imitation shades imperceptibly into emu la ti or^. Emulation is the impulse to imitate what you see

another doing, in order not to appear inferior; and

i t is hard to dram a sharp h i e l~etmeeii the mani-

festations of the two impulses, so inextricably do

they mix their effects. Emulati011 is the very

nerve of human society. W h y are you, lny hear-

ers, sitting here before me? If no one whom yon

ever heard of hacl attended a summer school ' or

teachers' institute, woulci i t have occurrecl to a n j

one of you to break out independently and do a

thing so uiiprescribecl 1)y fashion ? Probably not.

Nor would your pnpils come to xou unless the

children of their parents' neighbors were all simul-

taneously being sent to school. W e wish not to

be lonely or eccentrio, ant1 we wish not to be cut

off from our share in things which to our neigh-

bors seem desirable privileges.

I n the scl~oolroonl, imitation and emulation play

absolutely vital parts. Every teacher knows tlie

advantage of having certain things performed by

whole bancls of children a t a time. The teacher who meets with most success is the teacher whose

50 TALKS 'CO TEACHERS

o w n ways are the most imitable. A teacher

sllould never try to nlalre the pupils do a thing mhicll slle caullot do herself. Come and let me

show you how " is an inconlparably better stimu-

lus than " Go and do it as the book directs." Childre11 adinire a teacher who has skill. What

he does see~lls easy, and they wish to emulate it.

I t is useless for a dull and devitalized teacher to

exhort her pupils to wake up and take an interest.

She must first take one herself; then her example

is effective as no exhortation can possibly be.

Every school has its tone, moral and intellect-

ual. And this tone is a mere tradition kept up by

imitation, due in the first instance to the example

set by teachers and by previous pupils of an ag-

gressive and dominating type, copied by the

others, and passed on from year to year, so that

the new pupils take the cue almost immediately.

Snch a tone changes very slowly, if at all ; and

then always under the modifying influence of new

personalities aggressive enough in character to set

new patterns and not merely to copy the old.

The classic example of this sort of toile is the

often quoted case of Rugby under Dr. Arnold's

administration. He impressed his own character

as a model on the imagination of the oldest boys,

who in turn were expected and required to im-

press theirs upon the younger set. The conta- giousness of Arnold's genius was such that a

Rugby man was said to be recognizable all

through life by a peculiar turn of character which

he acquired at school. I t is obvious that psychol- ogy as such can give in this field no precepts of

detail. As in so many other fields of teaching, success depends mainly on the native genius of

the teacher, the sympathy, tact, and perception

which enable him to seize the right moment and

to set the right example.

Among the recent modern reforms of teaching

methods, a certain disparagement of emulation, as

a laudable spring of action in the schoolroom, has

often made itself hearcl. More than a century /

ago, Rousseau, in his ' Emile,' branded rivalry be-

tween one pupil and another as too base a pas-

sion to play a part in an ideal education. "Let dmile," he said, 6 6 never be led to compare himself

to other children. No rivalries, not even in run- ning, as soon as he begins to have the power of

reason. It were a hundred t i~nes better that he

should not learn at all what he could only learn

through jealousy or vanity. But I would mark out every year the progress he may have made,

5 2 TALKS TO TEACHERS ITS USEFULNESS I N T H E SCHOOTAROO~I 53

and 1 would compare it with the progress of the

following years. I would say to him : ' You are

now grown so many inches taller; there is the

ditch which you jumped over, there is the burden

which you raised. There is the distance to which you could throw a pebble, there the distance you

could ruli over without losing breath. See how

much more you can do now ! ' Thus I should ex-

cite him without making him jealous of any one.

He ~vould wish to surpass himself. I can see no inconvenience in this emulation with his former

self."

Unquestionably, emulation with one's former

self is a noble form of the passion of rivalry, and

has a wide scope in the training of the young.

But to veto and taboo all possible rivalry of one

youth with another, because such rivalry may

degenerate into greedy and selfish excess, does

seem to savor somewhat of sentimentality, or even

of fanaticism. The feeling of rivalry lies a t the

very basis of our being, all social improvement

being largely due to it. There is a noble and

generous kind of rivalry, as well as a spiteful and

greedy kind ; and the noble ancl generous form is

particularly common in childhood. All games owe

the zest which they bring with thein to the fact

that they are rooted in the emulous passion, yet

they are the chief means of training in fairness and

magnanimity. Can the teacher afford to throw

such an ally away? Ought we seriously to hope that marks, distinctions, prizes, and other goals of

effort, based on the pursuit of recognized superior-

ity, should be forever banished from our schools ? As a psychologist, obliged to notice the deep and

pervasive character of the emulous passion, I must

confess my doubts.

The wise teacher will use this instinct as he

uses others, reaping its advantages, and appealing

to i t in such a way as to reap a maximum of

benefit with a minimum of harm; for, after all, we

must confess, with a French critic of Rousseau's

doctrine, that the deepest spring of action in us i:;

the sight of action in another. The spectacle of

effort is what awakens and sustains our own ef-

fort. No runner running all alone on a race-track

will find in his own will the power of stimulatiorl

which his rivalry with other runners incites, when

he feels them a t his heels, about to pass. When :t

trotting horse is 'speeded,' a running horse must

go beside liim to keep him to the pace.

54 TALICS TO TEACHERS

As irnitatio~l slicles illto enlulation, so eillulation

slides into Awrbitio?~; and ambition coililects itself closely \ ~ i t l i P r ~ g s a c i t y m~il Pr ide . Consequently,

these five instinctive tenclencies form an inter- col~nectecl group of factors, hard to separate in the (lete~mination of a great deal of our conduct. The Ambitious InzpuZses would perhaps be the

best name for the whole group. Pride ailcl pugnacity have often been considered

uilworthy passions to appeal to in the young. But in their more refined and noble forms they

play a great part in the schoolroom and in educa- tion generally, being in some characters most po- tent spurs to effort. Pugnacity need not be

thought of merely in the form of physical com- bativeness. I t can be taken in the sense of a gen-

eral ~uiwillillgness to be beaten by any kind of difficulty. I t is what makes us feel 'stumped'

and challenged by arduous achievements, and is essential to a spirited and enterprising character.

W e have of late been hearing nlucli of the philosophy of tenderness i11 education ; interest ' must be assicluously awakened in everything, diffi- culties must be smootl~ecl away. So f t pedagogics

have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But from this lukewarm air the

bracing oxygen of effort is left out. I t is nonse~lse to suppose that every stell in education can be in-

teresting. The fighting impulse inust often be ap- pealed to. Make the pupil feel ashamed of being scared at fractions, of being ' downed ' by the lam

of falling bodies; rouse his pugnacity and pride,

and he will rush at the difficult places with a sort of inner wrath a t himself that is one of his best

moral faculties. A victory scored under such con- ditions becomes a turning-point and crisis of his

character. It represents the high-water mark of his powers, and serves thereafter as an ideal pat-

tern for his self-imitation. The teacher who never rouses this sort of pugnacious excitement in his pupils falls short of one of his best forms of use-

fulness. b

The next instinct which I shall mention is that of OwnersT~ip, also one of the radical endomnients of the race. I t often is the antagonist of imita- tion. Whether social progress is due more to

the passion for keeping old tl~iilgs ancl habits or to the passion of imitating and acquiring nenT cjiles

may in some cases be a difficult tlliilg to decide. The sense of ownershil~ begins ill the secoild year

of life. Anlong the first words ~vhich an infant

56 TALKS TO TEACHERS

UTILITY O F THE COLLECTIXG IMPULSE 57

learns to utter are the words my' and t mine,'

and Tyoe to the parents of twins who fail to pro- ~ i d e their gifts in duplicate. The depth and

ljriniitiveness of this instinct would seem to cast a sort of psychological discredit in advance upon all radical forms of communistic utopia. Private

proprietorship caililot be practically abolished un- til hulnan nature is changed. It seems essential

to mental health that the individual should have something beyond the bare clothes on his back to

which he can assert exclusive possession, and

which he may defend adversely against the world. Even those religious orders who make the most stringent vows of poverty have found i t necessary to relax the rule a little in favor of the human Ileart made unhappy by reduction to too disinter- estecl terms. The monk must have his books: the nun must have her little garden, and the images and pictures in her room.

111 education, the instinct of ownership is fun- clamental, ancl can be appealed to in many ways. I11 the house, training in order and neatness be- gills with the arrangement of the child's own b

pe~sonal possessions. 111 the school, ownership

is particularly important in connection with one of its specin1 fornls of activity, the collecting im-

pulse. An object possibly not very interesting in itself, like a shell, a postage stamp, or a single map or drami~lg, mill acquire an interest if it fills a gap in a collection or helps to complete a series.

Much of the scholarly work of the worlcl, so far as i t is inere bibliography, memory, and erudition (ancl this lies at the basis of all our human scholar-

ship), ~vould seen1 to owe its interest rather to the way in which it gratifies the accumulating and col-

lecting instinct thail to any special appeal which

it makes to our cravings after rationality. A mail wishes a complete collection of information,

wishes to know more about a subject than any-

body else, much as another may wish to own more dollars or more early editions or more en-

gravings before the letter than anybody else. The teacher who can work this impulse into

the school tasks is fortunate. Almost all children collect something. A tactful teacher may get thein to take pleasure in collecting books; in keeping a neat and orderly collection of notes ; in starting, when they are mature enough, a. card catalogue; in preserving every drawing or inap which they may make. Neatness, order, and method are thus instinctively gained, along with the other benefits wliich the possession of the

5 8 TALKS TO TEACHERS CONSTRUCTIVENESS 5 9

collection entails. Even such a noisome thing as

:: collection of postage stamps may be used by the ~encher as an inciter of interest in the geographi- cal arid historical information which she desires to impart. Sloyd successfully avails itself of this instinct in causing the pupil to make a collection of woodell implements fit for his own private use

at home. Collecting is, of course, the basis of all

natural history study; and probably nobody ever became a good naturalist who was not an unusu-

ally active collector when a boy.

Constrt~ctiveness is another great instinctive ten-

dency with which the schoolroom has to contract an alliance. Up to the eighth or ninth year of childhood one may say that the child does hardly anything else than handle objects, explore things with his hands, doing and undoing, setting up

and knocking down, putting together and pulling apart; for, from tlie psychological point of view, construction and destruction are two names for tlie same manual activity. Both signify the pro- cluctioil of change, and the working of effects, in outward things. The result of all this is that in- tiinate fanliliarity with the physical environn~ent, that acquaintance with the properties of riiaterinl

things, which is really the foundation of huma~l consciousness. To the very last, in most of us,

the conceptioils of objects and their properties are limited to the notion of what we can do with

thew. A 'stick' meails something we can lean

upoil or strike wit11 ; ' fire,' somethiiig to cook, or warm ourselves, or burl1 things up withal;

'string,' something with which to tie things to-

gether. For most people these objects have no other meaning. I n geometry, the cylinder, circle, sphere, are defined as what you get by going through certain processes of construction, revolv- ing a parallelogram upon one of its sides, etc. The more different kinds of things a child thus gets to know by treating and handling them, the more confident grows his sense of kinship with the world in which he lives. An nnsympathetic adult will wonder at the fascinated hours which a child will spend in putting his blocks together and rearranging them. But the wise education takes the tide at the flood, and from the kinder- garten upward devotes the first years of educa- tion to training in construction ancl to object- teaching. I need not recapitulate here what I said awhile back about the superiority of the objective and experimental methods. They oc-

THE TRANSITOIZIXESS O F ISSTINCTS 61

cupy t l ~ e pupil in a way lnost congruous with the spontaneous interests of his age. They absorb

lliill, and leave impressions durable and profound.

Coillparecl with the youth taught by these methods,

one brougllt up exclusively by books carries

through life a certain renloteness froill reality :

he stands, as i t were, out of the pale, and feels

that he stands so ; and often suffers a kind of

melancholy from which he might have been res-

cuecl by a more real education.

There are other impulses, such as love of appro-

bation or vanity, shyness and secretiveness, of

which a word might be said; but they are too

familiar to need it. You can easily pursue the

subject by your ornil reflection. There is one

general lam, however, that relates to many of our

instinctive tendencies, and that has no little irnpor-

tance in education ; and I must refer to i t briefly

before I leave the subject. I t has been called the

law of transitoi,iness in instincts. Many of our

iinp):llsive tendencies ripen at a certain period ;

and, if the appropriate objects be then and there

provided, habits of coilduct toward them are ac-

quired whiclt last. But, if the objects be not forth-

coming then, the impulse may die out before a

habit is formed ; and later i t may be hard to teach

the creature to react appropriately in those direc-

tions. The sucking instincts in mammals, the

following instinct in certain birds and quadrupeds,

are es,tnlples of this : they fade away shortly after

birth.

In children we observe a lipening of impulses

and interests in a, certain determinate order.

Creeping, walking, clinibing, imitating vocal

sounds, constructing, drawing, calculating, pos-

sess the child in succession; and in some chil-

dren the possession, while it lasts, may be of a semi-frantic anci exclusive sort. Later, the inter-

est in any one of these things may wholly fade

away. Of course, the proper pedagogic moment

to work skill in, and to clench the useful habit, is

when the native impulse is rrlost acutely present.

Crowd oil the athletic opportunities, the mental

arithmetic, the verse-learning, the drawing, the

botany, or what not, the moment you have reason to think the hour is ripe. The hour nlay not last

long, and while i t continues you may safely let

all the child's other occupations take a second

place. I n this way you economize time and

deepen skill ; for many an infant prodigy, artis-

tic or mathematical, has a flowering epoch of but

a few montlts.

6 2 TALICS TO TEAC:HERS I;AD AND GOOD BEHAVIOR 63

Olie can draw no specific rules for all this. I t

depends on close observation in the articular case, and parents here have a great advantage over teachers. I n fact, the law of transitoriness has little chance of individualized application in

the schools.

Such is the little interested and impulsive psy-

chophysical organism whose springs of action the teacher must divine, and to whose ways he must

become accustomed. He must start with the na- tive tendencies, and enlarge the pupil's entire pas- sive and active experience. He must ply him with new objects ancl stimuli, and make him taste the fruits of his behavior, so that now that whole context of remembered experience is what shall determine his conduct when he gets the stimulus, and not the bare immediate impression. As the pupil's life thus enlarges, i t gets fuller and fuller

of all sorts of memories and associations and sub- stitutions ; but the eye accustomed to psychologi- cal analysis will discern, underneath i t all, the outlines of our simple psychophysical scheme.

Respect then, I beg you, always the original reactions, even when you are seeking to overcome their connection with certain objects, and to sup-

plalit them with others that you wish to make the

rule. Bad behavior, from the point of view of the teacher's art, is as good a starting-point as

good behavior. I11 fact, l~nradoxical as i t may sound to say so, i t is ofteri a better starting-point than good behavior woulcl be.

The acquired reactions must be made habitual

whenever they are appropriate. Therefore Habit is the next subject to which your attention is invited.

H A I ~ I T A SECOXD NATURE 65

VIII.

THE LAWS OF HABIT

IT is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit, and psychology helps

us greatly a t this point. We speak, it is true, of

good habits and of bad habits; but, when people

use the word ' habit,' in the majority of instances i t is a bad hitbit which they have in mind. They

talk of the smoking-habit and the swearing-habit

nncl the drinking-habit, but not of the abstention-

Iiitbit or the moderation-habit or the courage- habit. But the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices. All our life, so far as i t

has definite form, is but a mass of habits,-prac- tical, emotional, and intellectual,- systematically

organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the lat-

ter inay be.

Since pupils can understand this a t a compara-

tively early age, and since to urlderstalld it con-

tributes in no sinall measure to their feeling of

responsibility, it would be well if the teacher were

able himself to talk to theill of the philosophy of

habit in some sucli abstract terms as I an1 now about to talk of i t to you.

I believr that we we subject to the law of habit

in consequence of the fact that we have bodies.

The plasticity of the living matter of our nervous

system, in short, is the reason why we clo a tliing I ~ i t h difficulty the first time, but soon do i t more

and more easily, and finally, with sufficient prac-

I tice, do i t semi-mechanically, or with hardly any

consciousness a t all. Our nervous systems have ( in Dr. Carpenter's words) yrozun to the way in

1 which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of I

I paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to I

fall forever afterward into the same identical

1 folds.

Habit is thus a second nature, or rather, as the

Duke of Wellington said, it is 'ten times nature,'

-at any rate as regards its importance in adult

life ; for the acquired liabits of our training have

by that time inhibited or strangled most of the

natural impulsive tendencies which were origi-

nally there. Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our

activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our

rising in the morning to our lying down each

TALKS TO TEACHERS

night. Our dressiilg and undressing, our eating 1 arid tlrinking, our greetings and partings, our hat-

raisillgs and giving way for ladies to precede, nay,

eve11 most of the forills of our conlinon speech, are 1 tliings of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to I

be classed as reflex actions. To each sort of ini- I

pression we have an automatic, ready-made re-

sponse. My very words to you now are an exam-

ple of what I mean ; for having already lectured I I

upon habit and printed a chapter about i t in a

book, and read tlie latter when in print, I find my

tongue inevitably falling into its old phrases and

repeating almost literally what I said before.

So far as we are thus mere bundles of habit, we

are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves. And since this, under ally cir-

c~unstances, is what we always tend to become, it follows first of all that the teacher's prime con-

cern should be to ingrain into the pupil that as-

sortment of habits that shall be most useful to hiin throughout life. Education is for behavior,

and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.

To quote my earlier book directly, the great

thing in all education is to malce ou,r rLerv0u.s sys- tem orcr ally instead of 0167' enemy. I t is to fund

and capitalize our accyuisitioils, and live at ease

up011 the interest of the fund. POT this zue 7122~sl

make nutonlafie rlnd habitual, as early as possible,

as mully lcsefi~l trctio~~r as W P C(Z?L, and :IS carefully

guard against the growilig illto way.; that nlc

likely to be tlist~dvantageons. The Inore of tlic details of our daily life we call lmnd over to the

effortless custody of automatism, the more our

higher powers of mind will I)e set free for their

own proper work. 'I'hel-e is no n1ol.e miserable human being than one in ~ ~ 1 1 0 1 1 1 iiotliing is habit-

ual but indecision, and for ~vhoni t?le lighting of

every cigar, the clrinkiilg of every cup, tlie time

of rising allcl going to bed every clay, and the

beginning of every bit of worlc are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of snch a nian goes to the deciding or regretting

of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him

as practicallj- not to exist for his conscions~~ess a t

all. If there be sucll daily cluties not yet ill-

grained in any one of my hearers, let hiin begin

this very hour to set the inatter right.

In Professor Bain's c11al)ter on 'The Moral

Habits' there are some admirable practical re-

marks laid down. Two great ni:txims emerge from the treatment. The first is that in the ac-

quisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of rill

6 8 TALKS TO TEACHECS 1 old one, we n ~ u s t take care to lazcnch o~irse lve*

wit?' a s s t yor~y a ) ~ d tlecitletl arb in i t i a t i ve as p o s s i b l ~ .

Accumulate all the possible circunlstances which

shall reinforce the right motives ; put yourself assiduously ill conditions that encourage the new I

way; make engagements illcompatiblc wit11 the

old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelope your resolut io~~ witli every nici

you know. This will give your new beginnii~g

such a ~ i~omen tum tliat the temptation to break

down will not occur as soon as i t otherwise rnight ;

and every clay during which n breakdown is post-

poned adds to t l ~ c chances of its not occurring

a t all.

I reirlelnber long ago reading in an Austrian paper the advertisement of a certain Rudolph

Somebody, who pronliseci fifty gulden reward to

ally one who xfter t1i;lt date should find hinl a t the wine-shop of Xmbrosius So-and-so. ' This I do,' the: advertisement continued, ' in consequence of a promise which I have made my wife.' With

such a wife, ailci such all understallding of the

way in mhicli to start new habits, it would t)e

safe to stake o~le's nloiiey on Ituciolph's ultimate

success.

The seconcl nlasi111 is, N e oer s t~ j 'er tr11, cl.ct.ceptiorr

fo occlo' t i l l tho 11rw kts6it i x sr'(:~ir.cly rooted in your

l f i . Each lapse is lilic the letting fall of a ball ( f string which one is carefully wintliag up : ;L singlc

slip undoes more tli:tn n great many turns will

wind again. Coiitiuuity O F tl-;lining is the great nleai~s of malci~ig the nervous systein act infallibly

right. As I'rofessor Iiaiil says : - " Tlie peculiarity of tlie inoi-a1 Ilabits, coutradis-

tinguishing tllelil frorn the ii~tellectual acquisi-

tions, is tlie presence of two hostile powers, one

to be graclually nrised into the ascendant over the

other. I t is llecessary above all things, in such a

situation, never to lose a battle. Every gain 011

the wrong side uncioes tlie effect of many COIL-

quests O I I the right. The essential 1)1.ecautioil. therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing

powers that the n~ le inay have ir serie:, of uniil-

terrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it

to such n degree as to enable i t to cope with the

opposition, under ally circumstn~ices. This is the theoretically best career of 1ne11tal pvogress."

A third niaxirn inay I)e atltled to the preceding

pair : LS'eiz~ the L1er!/ st 2)os.~i711~ ~ ~ , ~ o i . t i t n l t y t ~ , act

o n P w r y r ~ o s o l z ~ t i o ~ ~ y o u ~riake. tlrt,ci O ) L P U P ~ J r z i i l n -

t ional p r o ~ i / p t i ~ / g yo11 vzc(y e . r p e r i ~ ~ / c ~ it1 t?t,o (!ire(.-

/ f ? k t , / r to . It is not ill

tlicl tnoment of their forrning, but in tlle 11lolne11t of their producing noto or effects, that resolves and a:spirations communicate the new ' set ' to the lxain.

No matter 11ow full a reservoir of lnaxirns one

Iilnj- possess. aiicl no matter horn goocl one's senti- lnents may be, if one have not taken advantage of

every coiicrete opportuuity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for tlle better.

With goocl intentions, hell proverbially is paved. This is au obvious consequence of the principles I have laid down. il cl-iaracter,' as J. S. Mill says,

is a completelj- f:sshionecl will ' ; and a will, in the sense in whicli he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a fir111 and prompt and defi- nite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us iu proportion to the utlinterrupted frequency wit11 which the actions actually occur, ancl the brain grows ' to their use. When a re-

solve or a fiue glow of feeling is allowecl to evap- orate ~vitllout bearing practical fruit, it is worse than a chance lost: it worlis so as positively to llinder future resolutions and emotions from tak- i l ~ g the norlual path of discharge. There is no

more contemptible tyl)e of hulllali character thi~ll

that of the nerveless scntime:ltalist ;sntl tlreainer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibil- ity, but never does ;I conc~ete 111;u11~- deed.

This leads to :L hurt11 luiixinl. Don't preach

too much to your. 1~~21il.v 0 7 . (ib0,[7r,~ ; I / !/oo(i trtlil" L / L

thu obstruct. Tie ill wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as the:- pus , :u~cl thus a t one operation get your pupils

both to think, to feel, a l~t l to do. T l ~ e strokes of bel~trvior are what give the new set to the charac- ter, and ~ o r l i tllc gootl habits into its organic tissue. I'~*e;iclling ant1 t:slliing too soon becoine an ineffectual bore.

There is a passage ill I ) ; L I ' R ~ ~ I ~ ' s sliort auto-

biography which has been often quoted, and which, for t,he sake of its bearing 011 our subject

of habit, I 1ll11st now quote again. 1)arwin says : " Up to the age of tliirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure : and even as

a schoolboy I tooli intense delight ill Shakesl)eare, especially in the historical plays. I liave also saitl that pictures formerly gave nle cotlsiderable, and

music very great delight. I3ut ]low for Inany years

1 cannot endure to read n line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so

'7 2 TALKS TO TE:ACHERS

illtolerably dull that i t nauseated nle. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. . . . My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grindil~g general laws out of large collections of f:~cts ; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. . . . If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to

read some poetry and listen to some music a t least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been

kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happirless, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

We all intelitl whe~i young to be all that may become a man, before the destroyer cuts us down. We wish alld expect to enjoy poetry always, to grow more alld more intelligent about pictures and music, to keep irl toucll with spiritual and religious ideas, and eve11 not to let the greater philosophic thvughts of our time develop quite

beyond our \.iew. We lueml all this in youth, I say; and yet ill ho~v many middle-aged lllell ant1 women is snch all l~onest ancl s:tngnilie e~pectation

fulfilled ? Surely, in comparatively few ; and the laws of habit show us why. Some interest in each

of these things arises in everybody a t the proper age ; but, if not persistently fed with the appropri- ate matter, instead of growing into a powerful and necessary habit, it atrophies and dies, choked by the rival interests to which the daily food is

given. We make ourselves into Darwiils in this negative respect by persistently ignoring the es-

sential practical conditions of our case. W e say abstractly: " T mean to enjoy poetry, and to ab- sorb a lot of it, of course. I fully intend to keep

up my love of music, to read the books that shall give new turns to the thought of my time, to keep my higher spiritual side alive, etc." But we do

not attack these things concretely, and we do not begin to-day. W e forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities are dead: Whereas ten minutes a day of poetry, of spiritual reading or meditation, ant1 311 hour or two a week a t music, pictures, or philosophy, provided we began now

and suffered no remission, would infallibly give

us in due time the fulness of all me desire. By ueglecting tlle l~rcessarp concrete labor, by sparing

ourselves the little rlaily tax, we ;Ire positilely

digging the graves of our higher possibilities. Thi.: i i a poilit co i~cer i~ i~ lg \:hid you teachers t:lig!lt we11 give a little timely information to your oltler axid more aspiring pupils.

According as :L function r~ceivr:.; daily exercise or lint, the ma11 become.; :t clitfel-ellt kind of being

i r ~ later life. ha\rc 1aiel.r llittl a number of accomplished Hincloo visito1.s : ~ t Cambridge, who

talked freely of life slit1 l~hilosophy. More tha11 onr of them has confided t o me that the sight of

our faces, all contracted as thry are with the habit- ual American over-intensity allcl :~nxiety of expres- sion, and our ungraceful and distorted attitudes mhen sitting, made on him a very painful impreh-

sion. " I do not see," said one, L b how i t is possible for you to live as you clo, without a single millute in your day deliberately given to tranquillity alicl

meditation. Tt is all invariable part of our Hil~doo life to retire for a t least half an hour tlaily into silence, to relax our muscles, govern our breathing,

and meditate 011 eternal thiilgs. Every Hindoo cliild is trained to this f1.0111 :t very early age." The good fruits of such a discipline were obvious in the physical repose and lack of tension, and the wol~tlerf~ll srt~ootl~ness ;111tl cnlm~iess oE facial

expression, ancl i~npe~~tilz.bal~iXt~- of manner of these Orientals. I felt tllst lily cou~ltrymeii were

depriving themselves of an essential grace of char- acter. HOW many American childre11 ever heal. i b said, by parent or teacher, that they should moder- ate their piercing voices, tlrst t11t.1- sliolild relax their unused muscles, and as far as possible, when sitting, sit quite still? Not olle ixi ;t thousand, not one in five thousand ! Yet, fro111 its reflex influence on tlie inner mental states, tliis ceaseless over-tension, over-motion, and over-expression are working on us grievous ilatioi~al harm.

I beg you teachers to thil~lc a little seriously of this matter. Perhaps you can help our rising gen- eration of Ainericans toward the beginning of a

better set of personal ideals.*

To go back ]low to our general maxims, I may a t last, as a fifth and final practical maxiin about habits, offer something like this : Keep the faculty

of e$ort alive in you by a little grat?slto?cs exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its tliEculty, SO that, mhen the hour of dire need draws nish, it

See the Addres~ ou t l ~ e Gospel of Re:arcat:(~n, later i l l this volume.

]nay find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insur-

ance which a inttri pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good a t the time, and possi- My may never bring him a return. But, if the fire

rloes come, his haviilg paid it will be his salvatiorl from ruin. So with the man who llas daily inured

liimself to habits of concentrated attention, ener-

getic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things.

IIe will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and liiri softer fellow-mortals are win- nowed like chaff ill the blast.

I have been accused, JvIlen talking of the sub-

ject of habit, of making olcl habits appear so strong that the acquiring of new ones, and partic- nlarly anything like a sudden reform or conver- sion, would be made impossible by my doctrine. Of course, this would suffice to conde~nli the lat-

ter; for sudden conversions, however infrequent they may be, uricyuestionably do occur. But there

is no incompatibility betweell the general 1an.s I !lave laid down and tht: rnost startling sudden ;~lterations in the Ji7ajr of character. New Iinbits

,*un be 1;~unched. I 11;~ve expressly saici, on coi~di- tion of t11el.e lwi~tg 11cw stimuli allti lienr excite-

lnents. Now life abounds in these, and sometimes they are such critical and revolutioriary experi- ences that they change ;L man's whole scale of

values arid system of ideas. I n such cases, the old order of his habits will be ruptured; and, if

the new motives are lasting, new habits will be formed, and build up in hini a new or regener-

ate ' nature.'

All this kind of fact I fully allow. But the general laws of habit are no wise altered thereby, and the physiological study of mental coilditions still remains on the whole the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The lie11 to be endured here-

after, of which theology tells, is no worse than the

hell we make for ourselves in this world by habit- ually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the you~lg but realize how soon they will become mere walking bunciles of habits, they

mould give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We art: spirinirig our own fates, good or evil, and never to be ulidone. Every

smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Win-

kle, in Jefferson's play, excuses liimself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this

time!" Well, he may not count it, and killci Heaven may not count i t ; but i t is I ~ e i ~ l g counted

nolie the less. Dow11 among ]!is ~~el,ve-cells ant1

fibres the rnolecules are counting it, registering

and storing it I I ~ to be nsed against hini when the

liest temptatioli comes. Xothiilg we ever do is, i11 strict scielitiiic literallless, mipetl out.

Of course, tliis has its good side as well as its

bad one. As we l~ecome perinaneut drunkards 1)y

so Inany separate clrial;~, so we become saints ill

the moral, and anthorities ant1 exl7erts in tlie

practical and scientific spheres, by so r~lany se1)i-L-

rate acts antl hours of work. Let ilo youth have ally anxiety about the upshot of his educ a t ' 1011.

whatever the line of i t may bc. Tf he keep faitll- fully busy each liour c ~ f the murlcing day, he nlay

safely leave the final result to itself. He can wit11 perfect certainty collrlt 011 ~v:~lcing up some fi11cl

morning t o find him3elf o:le of the competent

ones of his gel~el.ation, ill ~vhntever lrursuit hc.

may ]lave singled ont. Silently, between all the details of his business, the polrfet- c!f judging ill

all that C!~LSS of lilatter will have built itself ui)

within liini as a 1)ossessio:1 t h i ~ t will never pass

away. Yoling people sllould 1~1:on- this truth ill.

advance. Tlle ignorance of i t has probably en- gendered more discouragement ancl faint-hearted-

ness in youths embarking on arduous careers

tharl all othel, causes put together.

THE: , ISSOCIXTlOS OF IDEAS

1~ my Inst talk, in treating of Habit, I chiefly

had in mind our motor habits,-habits of external

conduct. But our thinking and feeling processes

are also largely subject to the law of habit, and

one result of this is n pbeilomenon wliich you all

know under the name of ' the associatioil of ideas.'

To that phenomenon I ask you now to tu1.n. You remember that consciousness is all ever-

flowing strean1 of objects, feelings, and il~lpulsive tendencies. W e saw already that its phases or

pulses are like so many fields or waves, each

field or wave having usually its central point of

liveliest attention, in the shape of tlie most promi-

nent object in our thought, while all around this

lies a margin of other objects more dimly realized,

together with the lllargill of emotional and active tendencies which the whole entails. De-

scribing the mind thus in fluid terms, we cling as close as possible to nature. A t first sight, it might

seem as if, in the fluidity of these sllccessive waves,

everything is incletenninate. But inspectio~~

shows that each wave has a constitution wllicl~

can be to some degree explained by the constitu- tion of the waves just passed ;twity. 14i1d this

relation of the wave to its pretlecessors is expressed

by the two funclamental ' laws of association,' so-

cillled, of which the first is named the T , i t ~ of

Contiguity, the second that of Similarity.

The Law of Contiguify tells 11s that objects tllougllt of in the coming wave are such as in some

previous experience mere ~he.ct to the objects repre-

sented in the wave that is passing away. Tlle

varlishing objects were once formerly tlzeir neigh-

bors in the mind. When you recite the alphabet

or you^ prayers, or when the sight of an object

reminds you of its name, or the name reminds you

of the ol~ject, it is thro~lgll the 1arv of contiguity

that the terins are suggestetl to the milltl. 'l'lle Law of Similnritg says tllat, when contigu-

ity fails to describe what happens, the coming

objects will prove to resemble the going objects.

clven tllougll the two were never experienced

together before. In our fliglits of fancy,' this i y

frequently tlle case. If, arresting ourselves in the Aow of reverie,

we a& t l ~ e question, b' IIow came we to l)c think-

T H E TWO LAWS OF ASS0CIATIC)N 81

ilig of just this object ~ i o w ? " we can almost al-

ways trace its presence to some previous object

which has introduced it to the mind, according to

one or the other of these 1 : ~ ~ s . The entire rou-

tine of our memorized acquisitions, for example,

is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Con-

tiguity. The words of :t poem, the formulas of trigonometry, the facts of history, the properties

of material things, are all known to us as definite

systems or groups of objects which cohere in an

order fixed by innnmerable iterations, and of

which any one part reminds us of the others. 111

dry and prosaic minds, almost all tlle mental se-

quences flow along these lines of habitual rou-

tine repetition and suggestion.

I n witty, imaginative minds, 011 the other hancl,

the routine is broken through with ease a t any

moment ; and one field of mental objects will sug-

gest another with which perhaps in the whole his-

tory of human thinking i t hat1 never once before

been coupled. The link here is usually some atral-

ogy between the objects successively thought of,-

an analogy often so subtle tllat, although we fee1

it, we can with difficulty analyzz its ground; as

where, for example, we find something masculine

in the color red and something feminine in the

TALKS TO TEACHERS

color ~ m l e blue, or where, of three human beings' characters, one will remind us of a cat, another of a dog, the third perhaps of a cow.

Psychologists have of course gone very deeply into the question of what the causes of association may be ; and some of them have tried to show that contiguity a i d similarity are not two radically diverse lams, but that either presupposes the pres- ence of the other. I myself an1 disposecl to think

that the phenomelia of association depend on our cerebral constitution, and are not immediate con- sequences of our being rational beings. In other

words, when we &all have become disembodied spirits, i t may be that our trains of consciousness will follow different laws. These questions are discussed in the books on psychology, and I hope that some of you will be interested in follomiiig them there. B u t I will, on the present occasion,

ignore them entirely ; for, as teachers, it is the fac t

of associatioll that practically concerns you, let its grounds be spiritual or cerebral or what they may, and let its laws be reducible, or non-reduci- ble, to one. Your pupils, whatever else they are, are a t any rate little pieces of associating machin- ery. Their etlucation consists in the organizing

THEIR GREAT SCOPE 83

within them of deterrr~inate tendencies to associate one thing wit11 wnotl~er,- impressions with conse-

quences, these with reactions, those with results,

and so on indefinitely. The more copious tlle associative systems, the completer the individnal': :tdaptations to the 1vor.ld.

The teacher can forn~ulrtt e his fu~lctivn to him- self therefore ill ternls of . associatior1 ' as well as

irk terms of ' ilixtive and ;~cclui~ed reaction.' It is mainly that of b u i l t l i ? ~ u p usrfrtl sy..y.\.te~~;s qf ~ s s o -

c in t io?~ in the pupil's niincl. This c1esi+ription souncls wider than tile one I began by giving. But, when one thinks that our trains of associa- tion, whatever they inay be, normally isslie in nc-

cluirecl reactions or behavior, one sees that in n

ge~iesal way the same Illass of facts is covered by both formnlas.

I t is astonishing horn 111ally niental operatio~ls we can explain when Jve have once grasped the

principles of associntion. The great problenl which association undertakes to solve is, T V J L ~ d o e s j u s t

th is particlriur JielcZ of co~~sciozc.v~~ess, corzatittcted ~ I L

this yarlicztltrr (cay, ~ i u z u appear l)i'i'fol-c. rn y milz J ?

It m:Ly be a field of objects iniagilietl ; it inay be of objects renlemberecl or uf objects pel.ceived; i t

may inclucle an action resolvecl on. JJI either case,

84 TALKS TO TEACHERS I '

when tlie field is analyzed into its parts, those payts car1 be sllowll to have yrcxeeded froin parts

of fields previously before consciousness, in con-

sequence of one or other of the laws of associatiori just laid down. Those laws run the mind : int,er-

est, shifting hither and thither, deflects it ; and

attention, as we shall later see, steers i t and keeps

i t from too zigzag a course.

T o grasp thcsc f;rctors clearly gives one a solid

and simple unde~staniling oC the psychological machinery. Tlie ' liature,' tlie . cliaracter,' of an

illdividual means really rlothiug but tlie habitual form oE his associations. To brealc up bad associa-

tions or wrong ones, to build others in, to guide

tlle associative tendencies into the most fruitful channels, is the educator's principal task. 13ut

here, as wit11 all other sirllple ~)ri~lciples, the clif- ficulty lies ill the application. PsychoIog,y can

state the lams : collcrete tact and talelit alone can

work them to useful results. &Ieanwliile i t is :t iuattcr of the commollest expe-

rience that our minds may pass fro111 one object to

another by various intermedicdry fields of conscious- ness. The indetermillateness of our paths of asso-

ciaLioll 1~ co?~creto is thus a,ll~iost ;LS striking a feat-

ure of them as the unilorlnity of their abstract

ISDETERMINATENESS OF' ASSOCIATIONS 85

form. Start fl-orn any itlea whatever, ancl the elltire range of your ideas is potentially a t your

disposd. If we take :IS the associ;ttive startirig- point, or cue, some simple word which I pronounce

before you, theye is no limit to the possible tliver-

sity of suggestions which i t may set up ill your

minds. Suppose 1 say ' blue,' for example : some of you inay think of the blue sky and hot weather

froin which we now are suffering, then go off on

thoughts of summer clothing, or possibly of nleteo-

rology a t large ; others may think of the spectruln

and the physiology of color-vision, ancl glide illto

X-rays allil recent physical speculations; others

inay think of blue ribbons, or of the blue flowers

on a friend's hat, and proceeJ on lines of personal

reminiscence. To others, again, etymology and

linguistic t l~oughts may be suggested; or blue

may be &apperceived' as a syllollyln for nielan- choly, and a train of associates cou~lected with

morbid psychology m;ty proceed to uuroll tllenl-

selves.

I n the same person, the sanie word Ileal-ci a t differeut times mill provoke, in consequence of

the varying marginal preoccupations, either o!le of

a number of diverse possible associative secyuelices.

Professor Munsterherg perfo~~nr~cl this experiment;

SOXE CUES ARE PItEPOTENT 8 7 methodically, using the sarue words four times

over, a t three-month intervals, as 'cues ' for four different persons who were the snbjects of obser-

vation. H e found almost no constancy in their associ;ttions taken a t these different times. I n

s con- short, the entire potential content of onc'

sciousness is accessible from ally one of its points.

This is why we can never work the laws of asso- ciation forward: starting from the present field

as a cuc, me can never cipher orrt in advance just

what the person will be thinking of five minutes

later. The elements which may become prepo-

tent in the process, the parts of each successive

field round whicli the associations shall elliefly

turn, the possible bifurcations of suggestioll, are

so numerous and ambiguous as to be indetermilla-

ble before the fact. But, although we cannot

work the laws of association forward, tve can always work them backwards. W e callnot say

now what we sllall find ourselves thinking of

five minutes hence ; but, whatever i t iuay be, we

shall then be able to trace i t through intermediary

links of contiguity or sin1ila1-ity to what we are

thinking now. What so bnfaes our prevision is

the shifting part played by the margin and focus - in fact, by each element by itself of the margin or

focus -- in calling up the next ideas.

For example, I am reciting ' Locksley Hall,' in

order to divert my ininci from a state of suspense

that I am in concerning the will of a relative that

is dead. The will still remains in the mental

background as an extremely marginal or ultra-

marginal portioii of my field of conscionslless ; but

the poem fairly keeps my i~ttention from it, until

I come to the line, ' l I, the heir of all the ages, in

the foremost files of ti:ne." The words ' I , the heir,' ilnmediately malie a11 electric connection

with the marginal thought of the will; that, in

turn, makes my heart beat with anticipation of

my possible legacy, so that I lhrow down the book

and pace the floor excitedly with visions of my

future fortune pouring through my mind. Any portion of the field of consciousness that has more

potentialities of emotional excitement than an-

other may thus be roused to predominant activ-

ity ; and the shifting play of interest now in one

portion, now in another, deflects the currents in

all sorts of zigzag ways, the luental activity run-

ning hither and thither as the sparks run in 1)urnt-up paper..

One more point, anti I shall have said as much

to you as seems necessary about the process of

association.

88 TALKS TO TEACHERS

You just saw how a single exciting word may

call up its own associates prepotently, and deflect our ~~ rho l e train of thinking from the previous

track. The fact is tliat every portion of the field

t e w l s to call up its ornil associates; but, if these

associates be severally different, there is rivalry,

and as sooil as one or a few begin to be effective

the others seein to get siphoned out, as i t were, and left behind. Seldom, however, as in our ex-

ample, does the process seen1 to turn round a

single iten1 in the lnental field, or eveii round tlle

entire field that is i~ninediately in tlie act of pass-

i i~g . It is a matter of ronat~77trtio~z, into which

portions of fields that are already past especially seein to enter nrld linve their say. Thus, to go

bacli to ' lockslcS II;tll,' cacli word as L recite it

ill its due order is suggested not solely by the

previous wor(1 ~ O T V expiring on my lips, but it is

rather tlie effect of all the previous words, taken

togell~er, of tlie verse. '. Ages," for example, calls

up "in the foremost files of time," when precedeci

by " I, the heir of all the "- ; but, when preceded

by, " for I doubt not through the,"- it calls up

"one increasing purpose runs." Similarly, if 1 write on the 1)l:~cliboard the letters A R C D E F, . . . they probnhlg snggest to you G H I. . . .

But, if I write A 13 A 1) 1) E I?, if they suggest

anything, they suggest as their complement E C 7' or E I? I C I E N C Y. The result depending on the total constellation, even though most of the

single items be the same.

My practical reason for mzntioning this law is

this, that i t follon~s from i t that, in working asso-

ciations into your pupils' minds, you must not rely

on single cues, but nlultiply the cues as much as

possible. Couple the desired reaction with nl1mel.- ous constellations of antecedents,- don't always

ask the question, for example, in the same way;

don't use the same kind of data in numerical

problems ; vary your illustrations, etc., as much as

you can. When we come to the subject of mem- ory, we shall learn still more about this.

So much, then, for the general subject of asso-

ciation. In leaving it for other topics (in which,

however, we shall abundantly find i t involved again), I cannot too strorlgly urge you to acquire

a habit of thinking of your pupils in associative

terms. All governors of mankind, from doctors

and jail-wardens to demagogues and statesmen, instinctively come so to conceive their charges.

If you do the same, thinking of then] (however

else you may think of them besides) as so many

90 TAI~RS TO TEACHERS

little systems of associating inacliinery, you will

be astonished a t the intimacy of insight into their

oper;ttions and a t the practicality of the results

which you will gain. W e think of our acquain-

tarlces, for example, as cliaracterized by certain

'tendencies.' These tendencies will i11 almost

every instance prove to he tendencies to associa-

tion. Certain ideas in them are always followed

by celbtain other ideas, these by certai~l feelings

and impulses to approve or disapprove, assent

or decline. If the topic arouse one of those first

ideas, the practical outcome can be pretty well

foreseen. ' Types of character ' in sllort are

largely types of asuuciation.

TNTERRST

AT our last meeting I treated of tlle native ten-

dencies of the pupil to react ill clln~~itcteristically

definite ways ul,on different stimilli or exciting

c.irc~unst,tnces. 111 f:rut, I treated of thc pupil's in-

stincts. ?Tow sonle situatiorls appeal to special

instincts from the very outset, arlci others fail to

do so until the proper connections hare been or-

ganized ill the course of the I)erao~l's trai~lirlg.

W e say of the former set of objects or situations

that they are i ,~tr~rest i~tg in themselves and origi- nally. Of the latter we say that they arr natively

unintel,estillg, allti that interest ill illen) 11as first

to be acquired.

No topic has received more attellti011 from peda- gogical writer.; than that of interest. I t is the

natural sequel to the iilstincts we so lately dis-

cussed, a1lr1 it is therefore well fitted to l ~ e tlle

next subject nrhich we take up.

Since some objects are ilatively interesting alld

iu others interest is artificially zroquirecl, the

NATIVELY INTERESTIS(; THINGS 9 3

teacller must know mrhicli the natively interesting ones are ; for, as we shall see iinmediately, other objects can artificially acquire an interest only through first becoir~ing associated with some of these natively interesting things.

The native interests of children lie altogether in

the sphere of sensation. Novel things to look a t or novel sounds to hear, especially when they in- volve the spectacle of action of a violeilt sort, will always divert tlie attenti011 from abstract concep-

tions of objects verbally taken in. The grimace that Johnny is making, the spitballs that Tommy is ready to tlirow, the dog-fight in the street, or the distalit fii-ebells ringing,- these :ire the rivals witli wliicli tlie teacher's powers of being inter-

csting have ir~cessantly to cope. The child will always attend more to what a teacher does than

to what the same teacher says. During the per- forinance of experiments or while the teacher is drawing on the blackboarcl, the children are tran-

quil and absorbed. I have seen a roomful of col- lege students suddenly become perfectly still, to look a t their professor of physics tie a piece of string around a stick wllicli he was going to use in an experiment, but ininiecliately grow restless

when he begail to e x p l a i ~ ~ the experiment. A

lady told i l ~ e that one day, cluri~ig a lesson, she W;LS delighted a t having ca1)tured so conlpletely the attention of one of 11er young charges. I-Ee

did not remove his eyes from ller face; but lie said to her after tlie lesson was over, "I looked a t you all the tinie, and your upper jaw did not

move once ! " That was the only fact that he had

taken in. 1 . -. ~ i t i n g things, then, ~noving t l~ings, or things

that savor of danger or of Lloocl, that have :t dm-

inatic quality,- these are tlie objects natively in-

teresting to cllildhood, to the e sc lu s io~~ of allnost everything else; and t l ~ e teaclier of young chil-

dren, until nlore artificial interests llave grown up, will keep in toucli mitli her pu1)ils by consta~lt appeal to such matters as these. Instruction niust

be carried on objectively, experimentally, anec-

dotally. The blackboard-drawing and story-tell- ing must c o n s t a ~ l t l ~ come ill. But of course these

methods cover only tlle first steps, and carry one but a little may.

Can we now formulate ally general principle by which the later and Inore artificial interests con- nect themselves with these early ones that the child brings ~ ~ i t h liim to the school ?

Fortunately, we earl : there is a very si~llple law

94 TALKS TO TEACHERS

r "' HOW INTF,I<EST IS A(:fc)lJIHED 95

that relates the acquired and the native interests

with each other. A.rzy object not interesting in i t s ev may become

interesting throzcyh becoming associated with atz

ohj-ject i n which at2 interest already exists. The two associated objects grozo, as it were, together : tlze

interesting portion sheds its quality over the ~clhole ;

and thus things not interrstlnj in their own right

borroto n n intrrest Z L ~ ? L ~ C ~ bec*on~es cis real and as

strony as that qf any nativrly interesting thing.

The odd circumstance is that the borrowi~ig does

not impoverish the source, the objects taken to-

gether being more interesting, perhaps, than tho originally interesting portion was by itself.

This is one of the most striking proofs of the

mnge of application of the principle of association

of ideas iu psychology. A n idea will infect an- other with its ow11 emotional interest when they

have become both associated together into any

~ o r t of a mental total. As there is no limit to the various associations into which an interest-

ing idea Inay enter, one sees in how many waye

an interest rilay be derived.

You will understand this abstract statement

easily if I take the most frequent of concrete ex-

amples,- the interest which things borrow from

their connectiorl with our own personal welfare.

The most natively interesting object to a man js his own personal self and its fortunes. W e ac-

cordingly see that the moment a th i r~g becornes

cor~necteti \vith t l ~ e fot,tunes of the self, i t forthwith

becomes an jnteresting thi~ig. Jlerid thc child his

books, lentils, a,nti other apparatus: then give

then1 t'o him, make tllem his owrl, and notice thc

new light with wllich they i11stil;ltly shine ill his

eyes. IIe t;tlres n nen- 1i i11cl of ciirc of t l i~l i l alto-

get he^,. 111 rnature life, all tlie i l rudge~y of a

m;~n's business or profession, iilto1er:tble ill itself,

is sliot through with er~grossing significalice be-

cause Iie ki~ows i t t o be associate(.l with I-11s per-

sonal fortni~es. 1Vh;it nlort: deaclly u~~interestir!g

object call tl~clre be than a railroa(1 time-t;~ble?

Yet m l ~ e r e will yon find a more ititeresting ubjcct

if you ale going on a jou~xey, and Ly its iilealis car1 iincl your train ? A t such tirnes the time-tahlc.

will absurh ;t 1~1ar:'s entire a t t e i i t io~~ , its i~iterest

being horrowecl solely f1.o111 its relat'ior~ -to his l)er-

sonal life. fionz ~ l l l the.9~ J;ict.s ( / L P I ' ( ? Y ? I ' L ~ T ; / C S c i

very siolple abstrac~ p.r.o!,1r,7rnl,ze ,for ; I r e i ~ , r c ? ~ e ~ ( 0

follozu in keeping tlze a l t e j~ t io ,~ (if' il:e c;lil(-i : ll~</ii;,

with the l i z e ,!f his )tutive int~rmta, nv,l ~ j h '!:::!12

o&ccl.r t h ~ r t / l c r r ~ polne .l;7zlnerJin!r? ,~!;~:7tr~r:tl.o)?. ?/'itli

9 6 TALKS T O TEACHERS

these . The kindergarten methods, the object-

teaching routine, the blackboarcl and manuxl-train- ing wurk,- ,ill recognize this feature. Schools

i r ~ wl~icli tllese methods preyroritlerate are schools

where discipline is easy, and wliere the voicc of , the inaster claiming order and attellti011 irl tllreat-

elling tones need never be heaitl.

iVext, step b,y stel), connrct wit11 these ./irst o1,J'ects

and rzyerienccs the Inter. oljocts anti itletrs trfhic?:

Y ~ I L Z I ) ~ S J L to iustill. ij usociilie t?~c uetci zclith the old

i n ~ 1 , i o ) ~ u t u r ~ ~ l uttd tellin!/ way, so that the ir~tere8t,

brir~g ahed ulotzy.li.otn poijlt io l~uirlt, j ir~ulty s~!fltse.u

the I t~ t i r v xystrrl~ tf' ohjot ts of thought.

Ttiis is the abstract st;ttenieiit ; aiitl, abstr:tctly,

iiotlii~ig can be easier to uriderstancl. I t is ill the fulfilment of the rule that the clifficnlty lies; for

the (1itYerence between an interesting and a tedious

teacher consists ill little more than the inventive-

ness by wliich tlie orie is able to nlediate tlicse

nssoci~ttions arid colinections, alicl ill the dulness ill

tliscovering such transitions which tlie other shows.

One teacher's lllind will fi~irly cor~scil te with

points of conliection between the new lesson ancl

tlie circumstances of the children's other experi-

ence. Aliecdotes and reminiscences will abound in lier talk ; : ~ n d tllc sliuttle of interest will shoot

backward and forward, weaving the new and the

old together in a lively and entertaining way.

Another teacher 11;~s no such inventive fertility,

and his lesson \\rill :tln7ays be a deitd and heavy

thing. This is the psychological meaning of tlie

Herbal tidn principle of ' preparation ' for e2tcli

lesson, and of correlatirig the ilcw with tlie old.

It is tlie psychological meaniiig of that wliole

method of conceiltration ill studies of wliich you

have been recently liearir~g so much. IVlien tllc

geogl.a,pliv and l ir~glish ancl liistory aiid arithmetic

sili~ultalieously make cross-relerences to oiie a11-

otlier, you get an interesting set of processes all

along tlie line.

If, then, yo11 wish to i i~sure the iriterest of your

pupils, there is only one way to do i t ; arid that is

to make ccrtaili thitt they have sometliil~g in tlieir

minds tu attend with, when you begin to talk.

Tha t sonletlliilg cii11 consist ill llotiling but a

previous lot of i(leas ;~lready interesti~lg ill them-

selves, and of sucll n nature t l l i~t the ilicviuilig

novel objects which you present call dovetail into

them ant1 form with tlienl sorrle 1;incl of a logically

associated or systenlatic whole. lcortunately, al-

most any k i n d of a connection is sufficieilt to

98 TALKS TO TEACHERS

carry the interest along. What a help is our

Philippine war at present in teaching geography ! But before the war you coulcl i~sk the children if they ate pepper with their eggs, and where they supposed the pelper came from. Or asli them if

glass is ;L stone, and, if iiot, why not; ant1 tlleii let them know how sto~les are formed atid glass mailu-

facturecl. IJxternal links will serve as well as those that ;ire deeper and Inore 1ogic;tl. I3ut in-

terest, once sllecl upon n subject, is liable to re- rllrtiii always with that subject. Our acyuisitio~ls

become in a measure portions of our l~erso~lal self; and little by little, as cross-associations multiply

and hal~its of fa1nili;~rity and practice grow, the entire system of our objects of thought consoli- dates, most of i t I)ecomi~lg interesting for somc purposes and in sonle degree.

A11 aclult man's interests are almost every one of

them ir-rtenselj. ;tr-tificial : the37 have slowly bee11 ]milt up. Tl~c ol~jects of professional interest are

most of then], in their original nature, repulsive; but by their co~lnection with sucll ~liitively excit- jr~g objects a; olie's personal fortune, one's soci;tl rcsponsil)ilities, :~nrl ~~peci i t l ly by the force of in- veteratc habit, they grow to be the oilly things for which in mi(ldle lire a Inan l,rofo~lndly (:;ires.

I THE SPSTERI OF OUR INTERESTS 99

But in all these the spread and consolidation have followed nothing but the principles first laic1

down. If we coulci recall for a moment our whole

individual history, we should see that our pro- fessional ideals and the zeal they inspire are due

to nothing but the slow accretion of one mental object to another, traceable backward from point to point till we reach the moment when, in the

nursery or in the schoolroom, some little story

told, some little object ~hown, some little opera-

tion witnessed, brought the first new object and new interest withiri our ken by associating it with some one of those primitively there. The interest now suffusing the whole system took its rise in that little event, so insignificant to us now as to be entirely forgotten. As the bees in swarming cling to one another in layers till the few are reached whose feet grapple the bough from which

the swarm depends; so with the objects of our thinking,- they hang to each other by associated links, but the o~iginal source of interest in all of them is the native interest which the earliest one

once possessed.

ATTENTION AXI) GENIUS 101

ATTENTION 1

WHOEVER treats of interest inevitably treats of I attention, for to say that an object is interesting ,

is only another way of saying that it excites atten-

tion. But in addition to the attelltioil which I any object already interesting or just becoming

interesting claims -passive attention or sponta-

neous attention, we inay call it - there is a more

deliberate attention,- voluntary attention or atten-

tion with effort, as it is called,- which we can give

to objects less interesting or uninteresting in them- selves. The distinctiou between active and pas-

sive attention is made in all books on psychology,

and connects itself with the deeper aspects of the

topic. From our present purely practical point of

view, however, it is not necessary to be intricate ;

and passive attention to natively interesting ma- terial requires 110 further eluciclatiou on this occa-

sion. All that n7e need explicitly to note is that,

the more the passive attentior1 is relied on, by

keeping the ir~aterial interesting ; arid the less the

kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to ;

the more smoothly and pleasantly the class-room

work goes on. I must say a few more words,

however, about this latter process of voluntary and deliberate attention.

One often hears it said that genius is nothing

but a power of sustained attention, and the popu-

lar impression probably prevails that men of

genius are remarkable for their voluntary powers

in this direction. B u t a l i t f le introspective obser-

vation will show any one that voluntary attention

cannot be continuously sustained,- that i t comes in

heats. When we are studying an uninteresting

subject, if our mind tends to wander, we have to

bring back our attention every now and then by

using distinct pulses of effort, which revivify the

topic for a moment, the mind then running on for

a certain number of seconds or minutes with spon-

taneous interest, until again some intercurrent

idea captures it and takes it off. Then the proc-

esses of volitional recall must be repeated once

more. Voluiltary attention, ill short, is only a

momentary affair. The process, whatever it is,

exhausts itself in the single act; and, unless the

matter is then taken in hand Gy some trace of

interest in l~ere i~ t in the subject, the mind fails to

follow it a t all. The sustained attenti011 of tlle

genius, sticking to his subject for hours together, is for the most part of the passive sort. The

i~linds of geniuses are full of copious arid originit1 I I

associations. The subject of thought, once started, I

develops a11 sorts of fascinating consequences. The attention is led along one of these to another in the most interesting manner, and the attention never once tends to stray away.

In a commoilplace mind, on the other hand, a

subject develops much less numerous associates : i t dies out then quickly; and, if the rnan is to keep up thinking of i t at all, he must bring his I

attention back to it by n violent wrench. I n him,

therefore, the faculty of voluntary attention re- ceives abuildant opportunity for cultivation in daily life. It is your despised business man, your common man of affairs, (so looked down on by the literary awarders of fame) whose virtue in this regard is likely to be most developed ; for he has to listen to the concerns of so many uninteresting people, and to transact so much drudging detail, that the faculty in question is always kept i11

training. A genius on the contrary, is the mall in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anythilig insipid or distasteful in

(:ONDZTIONS O F VOLUNTARY ATTENTION 103

itself. I-re breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unansnrere(l, neglects his famlly duties in- corrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his at- tention down and back from those more interest- ing trains of imagery with which his genius con- stantly occupies his mind.

Voluntary attention is thus an essentially in-

stantaneous affair, You can claim it, for your purposes in the schoolroom, by commanding it in loud, imperious tones ; and you can easily get it

in this way. But, unless the subject to which you thus recall their attention has inherent power to interest the pupils, you will have got i t for only a brief moment; and their minds will soon be wandering again. To keep them where you have called them, you must make the subject too inter-

esting for them to wander again. And for that there is one prescription; but the prescription, like all our prescriptions, is abstract, and, to get practical results from it, you must couple it with mother-wit.

The prescription is that thp suhject must be 9r)ntZe

to show new aspects ~?f i t s e l f ; to prompt new y7ce.s-

tions ; in a word, to cql~anye. Froill an nnchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders timay. You can test this by the simplest possible case of

104 TALKS TO TEACHERS

sensorial attention. Try to attend steadfastly to

a dot on the paper or on the wall. You pres-

elltly find that one or the other of two tlzings has happened: either your field of vision has become blurred, so that you now see nothing distinct a t

all, or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in question, and are looking a t some-

thing else. But, if you ask yourself successive questions about the dot,- how big it is, how far,

of what shape, what shade of color, etc. ; in other

words, if you turn i t over, if you think of it in

various ways, and along with various kinds of asso-

ciates,- you can keep your mind on it for a com-

paratively long time. This is what the genius

does, in whose hands a given topic coruscates and

grows. And this is what the teacher must do for every topic if he wishes to avoid too frequent ap- peals to voluntary attention of the coerced sort. I n all respects, reliance upon such attention as

this is a wasteful method, bringing bad temper

and nervous wear and tear as well as imperfect

results. The teacher who can get along by keep- ing spontaneous interest excited niust be regarded

as the teacher with the greatest skill. There is, however, in all schoolroom worli a

large nlass of material that must be dull and un-

exciting, and to which i t is impossible in any con-

tinous way to contribute an interest associatively derived. There are, therefore, certain external

methods, which every teacher knows, of volun-

tarily arousing the attention from time to tinle

and keeping i t upoil the subject. Mr. Fitch llas

a lecture on the art of securing attention, and he

briefly passes these methods in review : the post-

ure lnust be changed; places can be changed.

Questions, after being answered sii~gly, rnay occa-

sionally be answered in concert. Elliptical ques-

tions may be asked, the pupil supplying the miss-

ing word. The teacher must pounce upon the

most listless child, and wake him up. The habit

of prompt and ready response must be kept up.

Recapitulations, illustrations, examples, novelty of

order, and ruptures of routine,- all these are

means for keeping the attention alive and con- tributing a little interest to a, dull subject. Above

all, the teacher must himself be alive and ready, and rnust use the contagion of his own example.

But, when a.11 is said and clone, the fact renlains that some teachers have :L 1latura11y inspiring pres- ence and can nlal;e their exercises interesting, while others siiilply cannot. Arid psychology and

general l ~ e d a ~ o ~ y here confess their failure, and

106 TALKS TO TEACHERS ATTENTION, P H P S IOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 107

hallcl things over to the deeper springs of human

personality to conduct the task.

A brief reference to the physiological theory of

the attentive process may serve still further to

elucidate these practical remarks, and confirm them by showing them from a slightly different

point of view.

What is the attentive process, psychologically

considered? Attention to an object is what takes

place whenever that object most completely oc-

cupies the mind. For simplicity's sake suppose

the object to be an object of sensation,-a figure approaching us a t a distance on the road. I t is

far off, barely perceptible, and hardly moving : we

do not know with certainty whether i t is a man

or not. Such an object as this, if carelessly looked

at, may hardly catch our attention a t all. The opti- cal impressioil may affect solely the marginal con-

sciousness, while the mental focus keeps engaged

with rival things. W e may indeed not 'see' i t

till some one points i t out. But, if so, how does he point i t ou t? By his finger, and by describing

its appearance,- by creating a premonitory image of where to look and of what to expect to see.

This prenionitol.y iinage is already an excitement

of the same nerve-centres that are to be concerned

wit11 the impression. The impression comes, and excites them still further ; and now the object en-

ters the focus of the field, consciousness being sus-

tained both by impressioil and by preliminary idea.

But the mrtxirnun~ of attention to i t is not yet

reached. Although we see it, we may not care for i t ; i t may suggest nothing important to us ;

and a rival strea~n of objects or of thoughts may

quickly take our mind away. If, however, our

companion defines i t in a significant way, arouses in the mind a set of experiences to be apprehended

from it,-names i t an enemy or as a messenger of important tidings,- the residual and marginal

ideas now aroused, so far from being its rivals, become its associates and allies. They shoot to-

gether into one system with i t ; they converge

upon it ; they keep i t steadily in focus ; the mind attends to i t with maximum power.

The attentive process, therefore, a t its maximum

may be physiologically symbolized by a brain-cell

played 011 in two ways, from without and from

within. Incoming currents from the periphery

arouse it, and collateral currents from the centres

of memory and imagination re-enforce these.

I n this process the incoming impression is the

108 TALICS TO TEACHERS INTEREST AND EFFORT ARE COMPATIBLES 109

newer element ; the ideas ~vhich re-enforce anci sus-

tain i t are among the older possessions of the

mind. And the inaximunl of attentioil may theii

be said to be found whenever we have a systeina-

tic harmony or unificatio~i between the novel and the old. I t is an odd circumstance that neither

the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting : tlie

absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new

makes no appeal at all. ~ h k old in the nen- is what claims the attention,- the old with a slightly

new turn. No one wants to hear a lecture on a

subject completely disconilected with his previous

knowledge, but we all like lectures on subjects of

which we know a little already, just as, in the

fashions, every year must bring its slight modifi-

cation of last year's suit, but an abrupt jump from the fashion of one decade into another would be distasteful to the eye.

The genius of the interesting teacher coilsists

in sympathetic diviilation of the sort of material with which the pupil's mind is likely to be already

spontaneously engaged, and in the ingenuity which

discovers paths of connection from that inaterial

to the matters to be newly learned. The priiicilde is easy to grasp, but the accomplishinent is

difficult in the extreme. And a knowledge of

such psychology as this which I am recalling can

no more make a good teacher than a knowledge

of the laws of perspective can inake a landscape

painter of effective skill,

A ce~ta in doubt may now occur to some of

you. A while ago, apropos of the pugnacious

instinct, I spoke of our modern pedagogy as being

possibly too 'soft.' You may perhaps here face

me with my own words, and ask whether the

exclusive effort on the teacher's part to keep the

pupil's spontaneous interest going, and to avoid

the more strenuous path of voluntary attention to

repulsive work, does not savor also of sentimea-

talism. The greater part of schoolroom work, you

say, must, in the nature of things, always be repul-

sive. To face uninteresting drudgery is a good

part of life's work. Why seek to eliminate it from the school-room or minimize the sterner law?

A word or two will obviate what might perhaps

become a serious misunderstanding here. It is certain that most schoolroom work, till i t

has become habitual anci automatic, is repulsive,

anci cannot be done without voluiltarily jerking

back the attention to i t every now and then. This is ixevitable, let the teacher cio what he will.

110 TALKS TO TEACHERS

I t flows from the inherent nature of the subjects and of the learning mind. The repulsive proc-

esses of verbal memorizing, of discovering steps

of mathematical identity, and the like, must borrow their interest a t first from purely external sources, mainly from the personal interests with

which success in mastering them is associated, such as gaining of rank, avoiding punishment, not being beaten by a difficulty, and the like. With-

out such borrowed interest, the child could not

attend to them a t all. But in these processes

what becomes interesting enough to be attended to is not thereby attended to without efort.

Effort always has to go on, derived interest, for

the most part, not awakening attention that is easy, however spontaneous it may now have to be

called. The interest which the teacher, by his utnlost skill, can lend to the subject, proves over and over again to be only an interest sufficient to

let loose the efort. The teacher, therefore, need

never concern himself about inventing occasions where effort must be called into play. Let him

still awaken whatever sources of interest in the

subject he can by stirring up connectio~ls betwcen i t and the pupil's nature, ~vhetller in the line of theoretic curiosity, of personal interest, or of pug-

INTEREST AND EFFORT ARE COMPATIBLES 111

nacious impulse. The laws of mind will then

bring eiiough pulses of effort into play to keep the

pupil exercised in the direction of the subject. There is, in fact, no greater school of effort than

the steady struggle to attend to immediately re-

pulsive or difficult objects of thought which have grown to interest us tlirough their association as

means, with some remote ideal end.

The Herbartian doctrine of interest ought not,

therefore, in principle to be reproached with mak- ing pedagogy soft. If i t do so, i t is because i t is unintelligently carried on. Do not, then, for the

inere sake of discipline, command attention from your pupils in thundering tones. Do not too

often beg it from them as a favor, nor claim it as a right, nor try habitually to excite it by preach- ing the importance of the subject. Sometimes,

indeed, you must do these things ; but, the more you have to do them, the less skilful teacher you will show yourself to be. Elicit interest from

within, by the warmth with which you care for the topic yourself, and by following the laws I have laid down.

If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples. If i t be unfamiliar, trace

some 1,oint of analogy in it with the known. If

112 TAJ,RS TO TEACHERS

i t be inhuman, make i t figure as part of a story.

If i t be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain. Above all things, make

snre that i t shall run through certain inner

changes, since no unvarying object call possibly hold the mental field for long. Let your pupil

wander from one aspect to another of your sub-

ject, if you do not wish him to wander from it

altogether to something else, variety in unity be-

ing the secret of all interesting talk and thought.

The relation of all these things to the native

genius of the instructor is too obvious to need

comment again.

One more point, and I am done with the subject

of attention. There is unquestionably a great

native variety among individuals in the type of their attention. Some of us are naturally scatter-

brained, and others follow easily a train of con-

nected thoughts without temptation to swerve aside to other subjects. This seems to depend on

a difference between individuals in the type of their field of consciousness. I n some persons this

is highly focalized and concentrated, and the focal ideas predominate in determining association. I n

others we must suppose the margin to be brighter,

and to be filled with something like meteoric showers of images, which strike into i t a t random,

displacing the focal ideas, and carrying association

in their own direction. Persons of the latter type find their attentioil wandering every minute, and

must bring it back by a voluntary pull. The others sink into a subject of meditation deeply,

and, when interrupted, are ' lost ' for a moment

1 before they come back to the outer world.

The possession of such a steady faculty of at-

tention is unquestionably a great boon. Those

who have i t can work more rapidly, and with less

nervous wear and tear. I am inclined to think

that no one who is without i t naturally can by

1 any amount of drill or discipline attain i t in a very

I high degree. I t s amount is probably a fixed char- acteristic of the individual. But I wish to make

a remark here which I shall have occasion to

make again in other connections. I t is that no one need deplore unduly the inferiority in himself

of any one elenlentary faculty. This concentrated type of attention is an elementary faculty: it is

one of the things that might be ascertained and

measured by exercises in the laboratory. But, having ascertained i t in a number of persons, we

could never rank them in a scale of actual and

114 TALKS T ~ J ' x f i ~ b n n f i ~

practical mental efficiency based on its degrees. The total mental efficierlcy of a man is the result-

ant of the working together of all his faculties.

H e is too complex a beiilg for any one of them to

have the casting vote. If any one of them do

have the casting vote, i t is more likely to be the

strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. Con-

centration, memory, reasoning power, inventive-

ness, excellence of the senses,-all are subsidiary to this. No matter how scatter-brained the type

of a man's successive fields of consciousness may

be, if he really care for a subject, he will return to

i t incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and

first and last do more with it, and get more 1.esults

from it, than another person whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but

whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent sort. Some of the most effi-

cient workers I know are of the ultra-scatter- brained type. One friend, who does a prodigious

quantity of work, has in fact confessed to me that,

if he wants to get ideas on any subject, he sits

down to work at something else, his best results coruing through his mind-wanderings. This is

perhaps a11 epigrammatic exaggeration on his part ;

but I seriously think that no one of us need he too much distressed a t llis own shortcomings in this

! regard. Our mind may enjoy but little comfort, I may be reetless and feel confused; hut i t may be

I extremely efficient all the same. I

XTT.

JIEMORY

WE are following a somewhat arbitrary order. Since each and every faculty we possess is either in whole or in part a resultant of the play of our

associations, i t would have been as natural, after

treating of association, to treat of memory as to treat of interest and attention next. But, since

tve did take the latter operations first, we must take memory now without farther delay; for the

phenomena of memory are among the simplest and most immediate consequences of the fact that our mind is essentially an associating machine. There is no more pre-eminent example for exhib- iting the fertility of the laws of association as principles of psychological analysis. Memory,

moreover, is so important a faculty in the school- room that you are probably waiting with some

eagerness to know what psychology has to say about it for your lielp.

In old times, if you asked a person to explain

why he came to be remembering a t that moment

SHAIAT, XVE CALL 3LEMORY FACULTY 1 1 7

some particular irlcideilt in his previous life, tll(.

only reply 11e coulcl make was that his soul i.,

endowed with a faculty called iilei~iory ; that i t is

the inalienable functiorl of this faculty to recol-

lect ; an(1 that, therefore, lie necessarily :it that moment nlust have a cognition of that portion of

the past. This explanation by a faculty ' is one thing wliicll expl;lnatioi~ by association h i~s super-

seded altogether. If, by saying we have a faculty of memory, you mean nothing more tl.lan the fact

that we call remember, nothirig inore than at,

abstract name for our power inwardly to recall the past, there is no harm cloiie : we do have the faculty ; for we ~ulquestionably have such a power.

But if, by faculty, you nleari a principle of erpltr-

nut io t~ tf o w pneral yozoer to rc.cctll, your psychol-

ogy is empty. The associationist psycl~ologg, on the other hand, gives an explanatioil of each 1~ar- ticular fact of recollection ; and, in so doing, it also gives an explanation of the general faculty. The 'faculty' of nlemory ih thus no or real ulti- mate explanation ; for it is itself explsinecl as a

result of the associatioli of ideas.

Nothing is easier than to sllotv j uu just nllat 1 mean by this. Suppose I am silent for a moment, and then sily, in commanriing accents : " Remenl-

118 TALKS TO TEACHERS

her ! Recollect ! " noes your faculty of memory obey tile order, and reprotluce any definite image

f1.om your past? Certainly not. It stands star-

ing into vacancy, and asking, " Wliat kind of a thing do you ~vish me to remember:' " I t needs,

i i l short, a cue. But, if 1 say, remember the date

of your birth, or remember what you had for breakfast, or reinember the succession of iiotes in

the musical scale ; then your faculty of memory inl- nlediately produces the required result : the ' cue'

determines its vast set of potentialities toward a particular point. And if you now look to see how

this happens, you ilnmediately perceive that the cue is somethiiig co?ttiguously axsociatecl with the

thing recalled. The words, ' date of 111y birth,' have an ingrained association with a particular number, month, and year ; the words, ' breakfast this morning,' cut off all other lines of recall ex-

cept those which lead to coffee ancl bacon and

eggs; the words, 'musical scale,' are inveterate mental neighbors of do, rB, mi, fa, sol, la, etc. The

laws of association govern, in fact, all the trains of our thinking which are not interrupted hy sen- sations breaking on us from without. Whatever

appears in the mind must be introducecl; and,

when introduced, it is as the associate of some-

PHYSIOLOGICAL 1:ASIS O F MElMOliY 119

thiiig already there. This is as true of what you are recollecting as it is of everything else yon think of.

Reflection will show you t l ~ s t there are peculi- arities in your nienlory ~vhicli moulcl be quite

whimsical and unaccountable if we were forced

to regard the111 as the product of a purely spir-

itual faculty. Were memory such a faculty,

granted to us solely for its 1)ractical use, me

ought to remember easiest whatever we most

needed to remember; and frequency of repeti- tion, recency, and the like, would play no part

in the matter. That we should best remember frequent things ancl recent things, and forget things that are ancient or were expel.ienced only

once, could only be regarcled as an incomprehen-

sible anomaly on such a view. Hut if we remem- ber because of our associatio~ls, ant1 if tl~ese are, (as tlie phy:;iologieal psychologists believe) clue to our organizecl bmin-paths, we easily see how the law of recency and rer~etition should prevail. Paths frequently and recently 1)lolagked are tho:+e that lie most open, those which ]nay be expected

most easily to lead to results. The laws of our

memory, as we fillti them, therefore, are incidents of our associational constitution ; and, when we

130 TALKS TO T~:ACHERS

are clnancipated froin the flesh, it is conceivable

that they may no longer continue to obtain. W e rnay assume. then, that recollection is a

resultant of our associative processes, these them-

selves in the last analysis being most probably due

to the workings of our brain.

Descending more particularly into the faculty

of memory, we have to distinguish between its

potential aspect as a magazine or storehouse and

its actual aspect as recollectiorl iiow of a partic-

ular event. Our nlemory contains all sorts of items wliicll we do not TIOW recall, but which we

may recall, providecl n sufficient cue Le offered.

130th the general 1.etention and the special recall

are explained by itssociation. An educated menl- ory depends 011 an organized system of associa-

tions ; and its goodness depends 011 two of their

peculiarities : first, or1 the persistency of the asso-

ciations ; and, secontl, on their number.

Let us consider each of these points in turn.

First, tlie persistency of the associatiol~s.- This

gives what may be called the rluality c?f' t ~ t z t i v ~

re tent iue~zess to the indivitlual. If, as I think

we are forced to, we consider the brain to be the

organic corldition by which the vestiges of our

experience are associated with each other, me

may suppose that some brains are 'wax to receive and marble to retain.' The slightest impressions

made on them abiclc. Names, dates, prices, ail-

ecdotes, quotations, are iilclelibly retained, their

several elements fixedly cohering together, so that

the individual soon becomes a, walking cyclopadia

of informatioil. All this may occur with no philo-

sophic tende~lcy in the mind, rlo impulse to weave

the materials acquired into anything like a logical

system. In tlle books of anecdotes, and, more re-

cently, in the 1,sychology-books, me find recorded

instances of monstrosities, as we may call them, of

this desultory memory ; alid they are often other-

wise very stupicl men. I t is, of course, by no

means illcompatible with a philosophic mind; for

mental characteristics have infinite capacities for permutation. And, when both memory and phi-

losophy combine together ill one persou, then in-

deed me have the highest sort of intellectual efficiency. Your 1V:~lter Scotts, your Leibnitzes,

your Gladstones, and your Goetlles, all your folio

copies of manltind, belong to tllis type. EE- ciency on a colossal scale would indeed seem to

require it. For, although your philosophic or systematic rnilld without good desultory memory

may know how to work out results and recc,liect

where in tlie books to find them, the time lost

in the searching process ha,ndicaps the thinker, ; I IK~ gives to the more ready type of iiidividual

the economical advantage.

The extrenie of the contrasted type, the type with associations of snlall persistelicy, is found ill

those who have almost no clesultory memory at

all. If they are also deficient irk logical and syv-

teni2ttizirig power, me call tllelil simply feeble i~ I -

tellects ; and no more iieecl to be said about then1

here. Tlieir brain-matter, we i l~ay imagine, is like

a fluid jelly, in which iliipressioils inay be easily

macle, but are soon c1ost:d over again, so that the

brain reverts to its origillal indifferent state. But i t inay occur here, just as ill other gelati-

nous substances, that all iinpression will vibratc:

throughout the hrain, arltl selid waves into other

parts of it. 111 cases of this sort, althougll tlie immediate irnpressiorl niay fade out quickly, i t

does nrodify the cerebral mass ; for the 1);iths it

rnakes there niay remain, anil 1)econie so mall?-

avenues tllrougll whicli tlie in1 1)ression ])lay I)e re-

produced if they ever get excitecl again. Arid its liability to reproduction will depend of cou~st:

npon tlie x ~ r i r t y of these paths ;111(1 11ljon t11r f~ ,.-

I" THE SECRKT 0 1 " A GOOD 31E:JIOET 123

quency with which they :ire usecl. Each path i:; in fact an associated process, tlie number of these

associates becoming thus to a great degree a sub-

stitute for tlie independent tenacity of the original

impressioll. As I have elsewliere written: Each of the associates is :t hook to which it hangs, :I

means to fish i t ul) when suilk below the surface.

Together they form a network of attachments by

which it is woven iiito the entire tissue of our

thought. The ' secret of a good menlory ' is thus

the secret of forming diverse and multiple associa-

tions with every fact we care to retain. But this

forming of associatioils with a fact,-what is i t

but thinking trhout the fact as nluclr as possible?

Briefly, then, of two men wit11 the same outmarcl

experiences, tAf> orLe zul~o iltinlcs over. hla exper i e~zccs

mos t , and weaves then1 into the most systematic relations with each other, mill 1)e the one with the

best memory. But, if olu. ability to recollect ;L thing be so

largely a matter of its associatiuns with other

things whicl~ thus becomes its cues, all important p~dagog ic consecjuence follows. T l ~ e r r tun be n o

k q r o z f e m e n t o f the get~e~.ct l or rZenaonfny/J^ircuZfy qt'

m e m o r y : t he re crrn on7y 6e i m p r o z ~ e ? n e ~ z t oj' o u r m e w

o r y .for .qI7ecitll s ? / s t ~ ~ n ~ q f trs.so~lntet7 things; and

124 TALKS T O TEhC1IEBS !.IE,\X( )BIES lLArL'IIEI; TIIA :i 3IEMOILY 125

this latter improvement is due to the way ill

\vhich the things in cluestion are woven illto asso- ciation with eacl~ other in the mind. Intricately

or p r o f ~ ~ l l d l y woven, they are held : disconnected, they tend to drop out just in proportion as the native braill retelltivencss is poor. Ancl no amount of training, drilling, repeaiing, 2nd re-

citing employed upon t l ~ e matter of one system of objects, the history-system, for example, will in the least improve either the facility or the

durability with which objects belonging to n

wholly disparate systelil -the s y s t e ~ ~ i of facts of chemistry, for instance - teiitl to be retained. Tllat systeln must be separately worked into the mind by itself, --a cheillical fact which is thought bout in colillection with the other cllenlical facts, tending the11 to stay, but otherwise eitsily drop- ping out.

W e have, then, not so lllucli it fitclllty of 1ile11l- ory as many faculties of memory. We have as

many as we have systems of objects liabituallj~ thought of ill connectioil wit11 e:~cll other. A give11

object is llel(1 in thc Inenlory by the associates it Iias acquired within its own system exclusivel~. Learning the facts of another systeln will in no

wise 1lell1 it to stay in the nlir~d, for tllc simple

reaison that it has no cues ' n-i t l~i~i that other

systen~.

W e see examples of this on every hand. Most inen have n goocl memory for facts con-

nected with their own pursuits. A college ath- lete, who remains n dul~ce at his boolts, may amaze you by his kuomledge of tlle ' recorcls ' a t various

feats and games, and prove himself a walking

dictionary of sporting statistics. The reason is that he is co~lstantly going over these tlliligs in his mind, 2nd conlparing ancl making series of then:. They for111 for llinl, not so inany o(.ld facts, but a concept-system, so they stick. So the merchant remembers prices, the politiciali other politicians' speeches and votes, mitli a copionsness which astonishes outsiders, but which the itrnount of thinking tliry bestow on these subjects easily explains.

The great inelllory for facts wl~ich a Darwin or ;I Spencer reveal irl theil- books is not incompati- I~le with the possession on their part of a mind with only a luiddling degree of physiological re- tentiveness. Let a mar; early in life set himself the task of verifying suc l~ n theol-y as that of evo- lution, arid facts will soon cluster ant1 clirig to llim

like grapes to their stem. Their relations to the

TECHNICAL MNEMONICS 127

theory will hold them fast; and, t l ~ e Inore of these the mind is able to discern, tlie greater the erudi- tion will become. Meanrvhile the theorist may

have little, if any, desultory memor-. U~lutiliza- ble facts may be unnotecl by him, anci forgotten

as soon as hearcl. ,4n ignorance allnost as ency- clopedic as his erudition nlay coexist with the

latter, and hide, as i t were, within the intel-stices

of its web. Those of you who have had much to do with scholars and snvuuts will readily think of

examples of the class of mind I nleali.

The best possible sort of system into which to

weave an object, mentally, is a, rationnl system, 01.

what is called a ' science.' Place the thing in its pigeon-hole ill a classificatory series; explai~t it

logically by its causes, and deduce from I t its necessary effects ; filid out of what natural Inw i t

is an insta~ice,--2nd you the11 lc1iow it in the best

of all possible mays. A 'science' is thus the

greatest of labor-saving contrivances. I t relieves the memory of an immense number of details, re- placing, as it does, merely contiguous nssociations

by the logical ones of iclenlity, siniilarity, or alial-

ogy. If you kr~olv n ' law,' yon may discllnrge your memory of masses of particular instances,

for the law will reproduce them for you whenever

you require them. The law of refraction, for ex-

ample : If you know that, you can with a pencil

and I? bit of paper immediately discern how n con-

vex lens, a coilcave lens, or a prism, must sever- ally alter tlie appearance of an object. 13ut, if

vou don't know the general law, you illust charge

your memory separately with each of tlie three

Iiinds of effect.

A 'philosophic' system, in which all things

fonlid their rational explanation and were con-

nected together as causes arid effects, would be

the perfect mnemonic system, in which the great-

est econonly of means would bring about the greatest richness of results. So that, if we have

poor desultory memories, we can save ourselves

by cultivating the philosophic turn of mind. There are many artificial systems of nlneruonics,

some public, sollie sold as secrets. They are all

so many devices for training us into certain rue-

thodical and stereotyped ways of th i7 tk i~~y about the facts we seek to retain. Even were I competent,

T could rlot here go into these systenls in any de- tail. But a single example, from a popular sys- tem, will sElow what I mean. I take the number-

alphabet, the great mnemonic device for recollect- ing numbers and dates. I n this system each digit

128 TAIAICS TO TEACHERS

is represented by a consonant, thus: 1 is t or (2;

2, ~ 7 ; 3, m; 4, r ; 5 , 1; 6, sh,.i, ch, o r g ; 7, c , k , y,

or ~ L L ; 8, f or v ; 9, b or p; 0, s, I., or 2. Suppose, now, you wish to remember the velocity of sound, 1,142 feet a second: t, t, r, 11, are the letters you

must use. They niake the coilsonants of tight run, and it \\~ould be a 'tight run ' for you to

keep up such a speed. So 1649, the date of the execution of Charles I., nlay be remembered by the word sharp, which recalls the headsman's

axe.

Apart from tlle extreme difliculty of finding words that are appropriate in this exercise, it is clearly an excessively poor, trivial, and silly way of 'thinking ' about dates; and tlle way of the

historian is much better. He has a lot of laud-

mark-dates already i11 his mind. He knows the llistoric concatenation of events, and can usually place at1 event a t its riglit date in the chronology- table, by thinking of it in a rational way, referring

it to its antecedents, tracing its corlcomitants and conseqnences, and thus ciphering out its date by

connectiilg i t with theirs. The artificial memory- systems, recommending, as they do, such irrational methods of thinking, are only to be recommer~ded for the first lr~ntlmarks in a system, or for such

? WHY CRAJIMINC; IS nA1) 129

I I purely detached facts as enjoy no rational conneu- I I

tion with the rest of our ideas. Thus the student

I of physics may remember the ortler of the spectral colours by the word vibgyo~. which their initial

letters make. The student of anatomy may re-

member the position of the Mitral valve on the Left side of the heart by thinlcing that L. M.

I stands also for 'long meter ' in the hymn-books. You now see why ' craniming ' must be so poor

a mode of study. C1.amming seeks to stamp things

in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but

few associations. On the other hand, the same

thing recurring on different days, in different coil- texts, read, recited on, referred to again ancl agaill,

related to other things and reviewed, gets well I

wrought into the mental strnctnre. This is the

reason why you should enfol-ce on your pupils habits of contiiluous application. There is no moral turpitude in cramming. It would be the

best, because the most ecoi~omicsl, mode of studv if i t led to the results desired. But it cloes not,

I and your older pupils call readily be macle to see

the reason why. I t follows also, from what has beell said, that

the popular idra that ' the Memory,' in t h e sense qf'

,I, yeneyal elementary faculty, can be improved by

training, i s o gretsf mistuka. Tour memory for facts of a certain class call be improved very much

by training in that class of facts, because the in-

coming new fact will then find all sorts of ana-

logues and associates already there, and these

mill keep i t liable to recall. But other kinds of fact will reap none of that benefit, and, unless one

have been also trained and versed in their class,

will be at the mercy of the mere crude retentive-

ness of the individual, which, as we have seen, is

practically a fixed quantity. Nevertheless, one

often hears people say: &' A great sin was com-

mitted against me in my youth: my teachers

entirely failed to exercise my memory. If they had only made ine learn a lot of things by heart

a t school, I should not be, as I am now, forgetful

of everything I read and hear." This is a great mistake: learning poetry by heart will make i t

easier to learn and remember other poetry, but

nothing else; and so of dates; and so of chemis-

try and geography.

But, after what I have said, I am sure you will need no farther argument on this point; and I therefore pass i t by.

VERBAL MEMORIZING 131

Eut, since it has brought me to speak of learn-

ing things by heart, I thinli that a general prac-

tical remark about verbal memorizing may now

not be out of place. The excesses of old-fash-

ioned verbal memorizing, and the immense ad-

vantages of object-teaching in the earlier stages

of culture, have perhaps led those who philoso-

phize about teaching to an unduly strong reaction ;

and learning things by heart is now probably solnewhat too inuch despised. For, when all is

said and done, the fact remains that verbal ma-

terial is, on the whole, the handiest and nlost use-

ful material in n~ l~ ich thinking can be cztrriecl on.

Abstract conceptiolls are far a i d away the most

econoinical instruments of thought, and abstract

conceptions are iixed and incarnated for us in words. Statistical inquiry ~vould, seen1 to show

that, as nlen advance in life, they tencl to nlnke

less and less use of visual images, niicl inore ancl more use of words. Oiic of the first things that

Mr. Galton discovered was that this appeared to

be the case with the members of the Royal Society

whom he questioned as to their mental images.

I sllould say, therefore, that constant exercise in

verbal memorizing must still be an indispensable feature in all sound education. Nothing is more

132 TALKS TO TEACEIERS 1 deplorable than that inarticulate and helpless sort

of mind that is reminded by everything of some

quotation, case, or anecdote, which i t callnot now exactly recollect. Nothing, on the other hand, is

more convenient to its possessor, or more delight-

ful to his comrades, than a mind able, in telling

;t story, to give the exact words of the dialogue

or to furnish a quotation accurate and complete.

I n every branch of study there are happily turned,

concise, and handy fornlulas which in an incom- parable way sun1 up results. The mind that can

retain such formulas is in so far a superior mind,

and the communicatioll of them to the pupil

ought always to be one of the teacher's favorite

tasks.

In learning 'by heart,' there are, however, efficient and inefficient methods ; and, by making

the pupil slcilful in the best method, the teacher

can both interest hi111 arlcl abridge the task. The

best method is of course not to 'hammer in ' the

sentences, by mere reiteration, but to analyze them,

and think. For example, if the pupil should have

to learn this last sentence, let hiill first strip out

its grammatical core, and learn, (' The best method

is not to hammer in, but to analyze," and then adcl

the amplificative ant1 restrictive clauses, bit by bit,

thus: " The besb method is of course not to ham-

mer in the sentences, but to analyze them ur~d

fhink." Then finally insert the words ' 6y mere

rciteratio~z,' and tlie sentence is complete, ancl

both better understood and quicker remembered

than by a more purely nlecharlieal method.

In conclusion, I must say word itbout the coil- tributions to our Bnomledge of illenlory which have

recently coine from the laboratory-psychologists.

JIany of the enthusiasts for scientific or brass-in-

strument child-study are taking accurate measure-

ments of children's elementary faculties, and

;Lmong these what we may call il)~~)lotliate rnemo}*y

admits of easy measurement. ,111 we lleed do is

to exhibit to the child a. series of letters, syllables,

iigures, pictures, or what-not, at intervals of one,

two, three, or more seconds, or to sound a similar

series of names at the same intervals, within his

hearing, and then see how completely he can re-

produce the list, either directly, or ai'ter ail inter-

val of ten, twenty, or sixty scconds, v~ some l o n g e ~

space of time. Liceording to the results of this

exercise, the pupils inay be rated in a memory-

scale ; ancl some persons go so far as to thinlr that

the teacher should moclify I ~ c r treatment of the

13; TALKS TO TI'ACHERS ELEMESTACY DEFECTS KOT FATAL 135

child according to the strength or feebleness of

its fmulty as thus made known.

Now I can only repeat here what I said to you when treating of attention : mail is too conlplex a

being for light to be thrown 011 his real efficiency

by nleasuring any one mental faculty taken apart

froin its consensus in the worlcirig whole. Such an exercise as this, dealing with incoherent and

insipid objects, with no logical connection with

each other, or practical significance outside of the

'test,' is an exercise the like of which in real

life we are hardly ever called upon to perform.

In real life, our memory is always used in the ser-

vice of some interest : we remember things which

we care for 01. which are associated with things

:ve care for : and the child wlio stands at the bot- toin of the scale thus expel-imentally established

might, b- dint of the strength of his passion for

a subject, anci in coilsequerlce of the logical asso-

ciittion into which he weaves the actual material^ of his exi,erience, be a very effective memorizer

indeed, and do llis school-taslrs on the whole much

Letter than an imineiliate parrot who might stancl

at the top of the 'scientifically accurate ' list.

This prel~onclerance of interest, of passion, in cieterminiug the results of a human being's mork-

ing life, obtains throughout. No elementary

measurement, capable of being performed in n

laboratory, call throw ally light on the actual

efficiency of the subject ; for the vital thing aboct

him, his e~notional and moral energy and dogged-

ness, can be measllrecl by no single experiment,

and becomes know~l only by the total results in the

long run. .4 blind nlan like Huber, with his pas-

sion for bees and ants, can observe tllelll tlirougll

other people's eyes better than these can through

their own. A man born with neither arms Iloi.

legs, like the late ICavanagh, 14. P. -and what

an icy heart liis inother must have l l ~ i about him

in his babyhood, and how 'negative ' would the

laboratory-measurelllents of his motor-functions

have been ! - can be an ndventurous traveller, an

equestrian and sportsmarl, i ~ n d lead an athletic outdoor life. Mr. Roillanes studied the element-

ary rate of appercel,tion in a large number of

persons by making them read a pnragral)ll as fast

as they could take it in, and then immediately

write down all they could reproduce of its con- tents. He found astonishing differences in the

rapidity, some taking four times as long as others

to absorb the paragraph, and the swiftest readers

being, as a rule, the best immediate recollecters,

136 I ' "

TALIIS TCJ TEACHE1:S

too. But not,-and this is my point,- not the

most intel lrrtunll~ ccxpahle subjects, as tested by the results of what XIr. Komailes rightly names 'genuine ' intellectual work ; for he tried the ex-

periment with several highly distinguished me11

in science ant1 literature, and most of them turned

out to be slow leaders.

In the light oE all such facts one inay well be-

lieve that the total impression which a perceptive

teacher will get of the pupil's condition, as indi- cated by his general temper and manner, by the

listlessness or alertness, by the ease or painfulness

with \vllicll his school work is done, will be of

much more \ -due than those ullrenl experimental

tests, those pedantic elementary lueasureme~lts of fatigue, memory, association, :~ntl nttention, etc.,

which are urged upon us as the only basis of a genuinely scieiitific peclagogy. Such measure-

ments call give a s useful inforination only wheli we combine them with observations made without brass instruments, upon the total demeanor of the

measured individual, by teachers with eyes ill their heads ailtl common sense, ant1 some feeling

for the concrete facts of hnm;~n ilatllre in their hearts.

Depend upon it, no one need be too ii~nch cast

down by the discovery of his deficiency in any ele-

mentary faculty of the mind. What tells in life is the whole mind working together, and the de-

ficiencies of any one faculty can be compensated

by the efforts of the rest. You call be an artist without visual images, a reader without eyes, a

mass of erudition with a bad elementary memory.

In allnost any subject your passion for the subject

will save you. If you only care enough for a

result, you will almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be learned, you will be learned ; if you wish to be

good, you will be good. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wisli them with ex-

clusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hun- dred other incompatible things just as strongly.

One of the most important discoveries of the ' scientific ' sort that have recently been made in

~~sychology is that of Rlr. Galton and others con- cerning the great variations among iiidividuals in the type of their i~~ltlgination. Every one is now

familiar with the fact that human beings vary

erlormously in the brilliancy, completeness, defi-

niteness, and extent of their visual images. These are singularly perfect in a large number of indi-

viduals, ancl ill a few are so ru~limentary as hardly

138 TALKS TO TEACHERS

to exist. The snnle is true of the auditory and motor images, and probabIy of those of every kind; and the recent discovery of distinct brain- areas for the various orders of serisation would seem to provide a physical basis for such varia- tions and discrepancies. The facts, as I said, are riowadays so popularly known that I need only remind you of their existence. They might

seem a t first sight of practical importance to the teacher ; and, indeed, teachers have been reconl-

mendecl to sort their pupils in this may, ailci treat thern as the result falls out. You should inter- rogate them as to their inlagery, it is saicl, or exhibit lists of written words to their eyes, a i d then sound similar lists in their ears, and see by which channel a child retains most words. Then,

in dealing with that child, make your appeals predominantly through that channel. If the class were very small, results of some distinct- ness might doubtless thus be obtained by a pains- taking teacher. But i t is obvious that in the usual school-room no sucll differentiation of appeal is possible; and the only really useful practical lesson that emerges from this analytic psychology in the conduct of large schools is the lesson al- ready reached in a purely empirical way, that

the teacher ought always to irnl~ress the class through as many sensible channels as he can. Talk and write and draw on blackboard, permit the pupils to talk, and make them write and draw, exhibit pictures, plans, and curves, have your dia- grams colored differently in their different parts, etc. ; and out of the whole variety of impressions the individual child will find the most lasting

ones for himself. I11 all primary school work this principle of multiple impressioils is well recog- nized, so I neecl say no more about i t here.

This principle of multiplyiilg channels and varying associations and appeals is important, not only for teaching pupils to remember, but for teaching them to understand. It runs, in fact, through the whole teaching art.

One word about the unconscious and unrepro- ducible part of our acquisitions, and I shall have done with the topic of memory.

Professor Ebbinghaus, in a heroic little investi- gation into the laws of menlory mhicll he per- formed a doze11 or more years ago 113' the method of learning lists of nonsense sj~llables, devised a method of measuring the rate of our forgetfulness, which lays bare an inlportant law of the mind.

140 TALICS TO TEACHERS

His method was to reacl over his list until Ile could repeat i t once by heart unhesitatingly.

The number of repetitions required for this was

a nleasure of the difficulty of tlle learning in each particular case. Now, after having once learned a

piece in this way, if we wait five minutes, nre fincl

i t impossible to yepeat i t again in tlle same unhes- itating manner. W e must read i t over again to

revive some of t l ~ e syllables, which have already dropped out or got transposed. Ebhinghaus nonr

systematically stucliecl the number of ~eadings-

over which were necessary to revive the unhesi-

tating recollectioli of tlle piece after five minutes. lialf an hour, an hour, a day, a week, a month,

had elapsed. The number of rereadings requir-

ed he tool< to be a measure of the arnolcnt of for-

getting that had occurred ill the elal~secl interval. And he found some rernarliable facts. The proc-

ess of forgetting, namely, is vastly niore rapid

a t first than later 011. Thus full half of the piece

Aeems to be forgotten within tlie first half-hour,

two-thirds of it are forgottell a t the elid of eight hours, but only four-fifths a t the end of a ~nontll.

He made no trials beyond one month of interval ;

but, if we ourselves prolong ideally the curve of remembrance, whose beginning his experiments

THE 1:dTE OE' FORGETTING 141

thus obtain, it is ~latural to suppose that, IIO

matter how long a time inigllt elapse, the curve

mould never descend quite so low as to touch the

zero-line. In other words, no matter how long

ago me may have learned a poem, and no niatter

how complete our inability to reproduce i t now

nlay be, yet t l ~ e first learnilig will still show its

lingering effects ill tlle abridgment of the time

required for learnillg it again. 111 short, I'ro- fessor Ebbingllaus's experiments show that things

which we are quite unable clefinitely to recall have

lievertheless impressed themselves, in some way,

upon the structure of the mind. W e are different

for having once learned them. The resistances

in our systenis of brain-paths are altered. Our ap- prehensions are quickened. Our corlclusions from

certain premises are probably not just what they

would be if those moclificatioils mere not there. The latter iililuence the whole margill of our con-

sciousness, even though their l)roducts, not being

distinctly reproducible, do not directly figure a t the focus of the field.

The teacher s l ~ o u l ( ~ draw a lesson fro111 these

facts. W e are all too apt to measure the gains of

oui. pupils by their proficiency in directly repro- clucing in a recitation or an examination such

142 TALKS TO TEACHERS

matters as they niay have learned, and inarticu- late power i n them is something of which we always underestimate the value. The boy who

tells us, " I know the answer, but I can't say what

i t is," we treat as practically identical with liini

who knows absolutely nothing about the answer

a t all. B u t this is a great mistake. I t is bu t a

small part of our experience in life that me are

ever able articulately to recall. And yet the

whole of it has had i ts influence in shaping our

character ant1 defining our tendencies to judge

and act. Altliough the ready memory is a great

blessing to i ts possessor, the vaguer memory of a

subject, of having once had to clo with it, of its

neighborhood, and of where we may go to recover

it again, constitutes in inost men and women the

chief fruit of their education. This is true even

in professional education. The doctor, the lawye1 , are seldoni able to decide upou a case off-hand.

They differ from other men only through the fact

that they know how to get a t tlie materials for

decision in five minutes or half an hour: whereas

the layman is unable to get a t the materials a t all,

not knowing in what books and indexes to look

or not understanding the techl~ical terms.

Be patient, then, ancl sympathetic with tlie type

of nlincl that cuts a poor figure in examill t ' n ions. I t may, i n the long examination which life sets

us, come out in the end i n better shape tlian

the glib and ready reproducer, lts passions being

deeper, its purposes illore worthy, its combiiiirig

power less commonplace, ancl its total il~eiltal

output consequently more important.

Such are the chef points which i t has seemed

n~oi.ill while for ine to call to your iiotice uiider

the l l e i ~ ~ l of nien~orj-. W e c ~ i sum the111 up for

practical purposes by saying that the ar t of re-

membering is the ar t of tl~C,1;, ii/!/ ; aucl by adding,

wit!] Dr. I'icli, that, m l i e ~ ~ \vl: wish to iix i L new

th i i~g in either our owl1 niiiid or a pupil's, our

conscious effort slio~lld not be so mucli to iitl-

press and retniil i i ah to c o ~ l i z e c t i t witli soiiie-

thing else already tlierc. The counectii~g i a the

thinking; and, if we nttencl clearly to tlie con-

iiection, tlle coiliiectetl tliing will certnirllj- be

likely to remain witliiri recall.

I sliall next ~ s l ; you to consider tilt: process by

which we acquire new 1;non iec!g:.c,- tlie process of

' Apperception,' as i t is called, by which we re-

ceive and deal with iiew experiences, ancl revise

our stock of ideas so as to foriii iiew or improved

conceptions.

THE STOCIi OF IDEAS 145

XIII.

THE ACQUISITION O F IDEAS

Tarn: images of our p i ~ t experiences, of what-

ever r~ature they may he, visual or verbal, blurred

and dim, vivid and distinct, abstract or concrete.

need not be nlernorx images, ill tlie strict seiise of the word. That is, they need i ~ o t rise before the

mi11.1 in a marginal fringe or context of concomi-

tant circumstances, which mean for us their date.

They mnj- be inere conceptions, floating pictures of an object, or of its type or claw. I n this u11-

dated condition, we call them products of 'im- ginat at ion ' or ' conceptioll.' Imagination is the

term commonly used wliere tlle object represent- ecl is thought of as all individual thing. Concep-

tioil is the term where we think of i t as a type or

class. For our 1,resent purpose the distinction

is not important ; and I will permit myself to use either tlie word conception,' or the still vaguer

word 'idea,' to clesignate the innel- objects of co11-

templation, whether these be individual tllings.

like ' the sun ' or ' Julius Clkesar,' or classes of

things, like animal Bingcloni,' or, finally, elltirely abstract attributes, like ' rationality ' or ' rect-

itude.'

The result of our education is to fill the mind

little by little, as experiences accrete, with a stock

of such ideas. I n the illustration I used a t our first meeting, of tlie cliilcl snatching the toy atlci

getting slapped, tlie vestiges left 1)y the first experi-

ence answered. to so inany ideas which lie ;tcquiretl

thereby,- ideas that remained with 11im associ-

ated in a certain order, and from the last one of

which tlie child eveiltually proceetlecl to act. The sciences of grainmar and of logic itre little more

than attenlpts methodically t c ) classify all such acquired itleas and to trace certain laws of relatioil-

ship among them. The forms of relation betweell them, becoming thenlselves in turn noticed by the

mind, are treated as collceptioiis of a higher and

more abstract order, as when we speak of a ' syl-

logistic relation ' between propositions, or of four

quantities making a. ' proportion,' or of the incon- sistency ' of two conceptions, or the implication ' of one in the other.

So you see that the process o l e~lucation, taken

in a large way, may be described as nothing but

the process of acquiring ideas or conceptions,

1% TALKS TO TEACHERS IDEAS OF PHYSICAL THINGS 147

tlle best educated inind being the mind which

has the largest stock of thein, ready to meet the

largest possible variety of the emergerlcies of life. The lack of education lilealis only the failure to

have acquired them, and the corlsequent liability

to be flool.ed ' and ' rattled ' in the vicissitudes

of experience.

In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a

certain instinctive order is followed. Tliere is a

native tendency to assimilate certain kincls of con-

ception a t one age, and other kinds of conce1)tion

at a later age. During the first seven or eight

years of childliood the nliiici is inost interested

ill the seilsible properties of material things.

Co~zstructiucn~.ss is the instinct most active; and

by the ilicessailt haniinerirlg and sawing, and

dressing and undi.essing dolls, putting of things

together and talring them apart, the child not

only trains the muscles to co-ordinate action, but

accunlulates a store of physical conceptions which

are the basis of his knowledge of the material

world through life. Oljject-teaching and manual

training wisely extend tile sphere of this order

of acquisition. Clay, wood, metals, and the vari-

ous kirids of tools are made to contribute to the

store. A youth brought up with a sufficiently

broad basis of this kind is always at home in the

world. He stands within the pale. He is ac-

quainted with Nature, and Nature in a certain

sense is acquainted with him. Whereas the

youth brought up alone at home, with no ac-

quaintance with anything but the printed page,

is always afflicted with a certain remoteness from

the material facts of life, and a correlative inse-

curity of consciousrless which make of him a kind

of alien on the earth in which he ought to feel

himself perfectly a t home.

I already said something of this in speaking

of the constructive impulse, and I must not re-

peat myself. Moreover, you fully realize, I am

sure, how important for life,- for the moral

tone of life, quite apart from definite practical pnr-

suits,-is this sense of readiness for emergencies

which a man gains through early familiarity and

acquaintance wit11 the world of material things.

To have grown up on a farm, to have haunted

a carpenter's and blacksmith's shop, to have

handled horses and cows and boats and guns, and

to have ideas and abilities connected with such

objects are ail iilestirnable part of youthful ac-

quisition. After adolescence i t is rare to be able to get into familiar touch with any of these

148 TALKS TO TEACHERS

primitive things. The instinctive propensions

have faded, and the habits are hard to acquire.

Accordingly, one of the best fruits of the ' child-

study ' movement has been to reinstate all these

activities to their proper place in a sound system of education. Feed the growing human being,

feed him with the sort of experience for which from

year to year he shows a natural craving, and he

will develop in adult life a souilder sort of mental

tissue, even though he may seem to be ' vasting ' a great deal of his growing time, in the eyes of

those for whom the only channels of learning are

books and verbally communicated information.

It is not till adolescence is reached that the

mind grows able to take in the more abstract as-

pects of experience, the hidden similarities and

distinctions be tween things, and especially their

causal sequences. Rational knowledge of such

things as mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, and

biology, is now possible . and the acquisition of

coilceptions of this order forin the next phase of

eclucation. Later still, not till adolescellce is well

advanced, does the mind awaken to a systematic

interest in abstract human relations - moral rela-

tions, properly so called,- to sociological ideas

and to metaphysical abstractions.

This general order of sequence is followed tra-

ditionally of course in the schoolroom. I t is for- eign to my purpose to do more than indicate that

general psychological principle of the successive

order of awakening of the faculties on which the

whole thing rests. I have spoken of i t already,

apropos of the transitoriness of instincts. Jus t as many a youth has to go permanently without an

adequate stock of conceptions of a certain order,

because experiences of that order were not yielded

a t the time when new curiosity was most acute,

so it will conversely happen that many another youth is spoiled for a certain subject of study

(although he mould have enjoyed i t well if led

into i t a t a later age) through having had i t

thrust upon him so preillaturely that disgust was

created, and the bloom quite taken off from fut-

ure trials. I think I have seen college students

unfitted forever for 'philosophy' from having

taken that study up a year too soon.

In all these later studies, verbal material is the

vehicle by which the mind thinks. The abstract conceptions of physics ancl sociology may, i t is true, be embodied in visual or other images of

phenomena, but they need not be so; and the truth remains that, after aclolescence has begun,

150 TALIiS TO TEACHERS

" words, words, words," must coilstitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn. This is so even in the natural sciences, so far as these are

causal and rational, and not merely confined to description. So I go back to what I said awhile

ago apropos of verbal memorizing. The more ac- curately words are learned, the better, if only the

teacher make sure that what they signify is also understood. I t is the failure of this latter condi-

tion, in so much of the old-fashioned recitation, that has caused that reaction against ' parrot-like reproduction' that we are so familiar with to-day. A friend of mine, visiting n school, was asked to

examine a young class ill geography. Glancing a t the book, she said : & ' Suppose you should dig a hole i l l the ground, huiidreds of feet deep, how should yon find it at the bottom,-warmer or colder than on top? " None of the class replying, the teacher said : " I'm sure they know, but I think

you don't ask the question quite rightly. Let me try." So, taking the book, she asked : " In what conditioii is the interior of the globe?" and re- ceived the immediate answer from half the class at once : "The interior of the globe is in a conditior~

of iyneoz~s fusion." Better exclusive object-teach-

E.?C €1 AGE C14N APPREHEND ABSTRACTIONS 151

ing than such verbal recitations as tha t ; and yet verbal reproduction, intelligently connected with more objective work, must always play a leading,

and surely the leading, part in education. Our modern reformers, in their books, write too ex-

clusively of the earliest years of the pupil. These lend themselves better to explicit treatment; and I myself, in dwelling so much upon the native

impulses, and object-teaching, and anecdotes, and all that, have paid my tribute to the line of

least resistance in describing. Yet away back in childhood we find the beginnings of purely intel- lectual curiosity, and the intelligence of abstract terms. The object-teaching is mainly to launch

the pupils, with some concrete conceptions of the facts concerned, upon the more abstract ideas.

To hear some authorities on teaching, however,

you would suppose that geography not orlly began, but ended with the school-yard and neighboring hill, that physics was one endless rouncl of repeat- ing the same sort of tedious weighing and meas- uring operation: nrhereas a very few examples are usually sufficiellt to set the imagination free on genuine lines, and then what the miid craves is more rapid, general, and abstract treatment. I heard a lady say that she had taker1 her child to

‘152 TALKS TO TEACHERS

the kindergarten, "but he is so bright that he

saw through it in~mediately." Too many school

children 'see ' as immediately ' through' the

namby-pamby attempts of the softer pedagogy to lubricnte things for them, and make them in-

teresting. Even they can enjoy abstractions, pro-

vided they be of the proper order ; and i t is a poor

compliment to their rational appetite to think that

anecdotes about little Tommies and little Jennies

are the only kind of things their minds can digest.

But here, as elsewhere, i t is a matter of more

or less; and, in the last resort, the teacher's own

tact is the only thing that can bring out the right

effect. The great dif'liculty with abstractions is

that of knowing just what meaning the pupil at-

taches to the terms he uses. The words may sound all right, but the meaning remains the

child's own secret. So varied forms of words

must be insisted on, to bring the secret out. And

a strange secret does i t often prove. A relative

of mine was trying to explain to a little girl what

was meant by ' the passive voice' : " Suppose that you kill me: you w11o do the killing are in

the active voice, and I, who an1 killed, an1 in the passive voice." "But how can you speak

if you're killed?" said the child. " Oh, well,

you may suppose that I am not yet quite dead ! " The next day the child was asked, in class, to ex-

plain the passive voice, and said, " It's the kind of

voice you speak with when you ain't quite dead."

In such a case as this the illustration ought to

have been more varied. Every one's memory will

probably furnish examples of the fantastic mean-

ing which their childhood attached to certain

verbal statements (in poetry often), and which

their elders, not having any reason to suspect,

never corrected. I remember being greatly moved

emotionally a t the age of eight by the ballad of Lord Ullin's Daughter. Yet I thought that the

staining of the heather by the blood was the evil chiefly dreaded, and that, when the boatman said,

" I'll row you o'er the ferry.

It is not for your silver bright,

But for your winsome lady,"

he was to receive the lady for his pay. Similarly,

I recently found that one of my own children mas reading (and accepting) a verse of Tennyson's

In Memoriam as

"Ring out the food of rich and poor,

Ring in redness to all mankind,"

and finding no inward difficulty.

154 TALKS TO TEACHERS

The only safeguard against this sort of miscon- ceiving is to insist on varied statement, and to bring the child's conceptions, wherever i t be pos- sible, to some sort of practical test.

Let us next pass to the subject of Appercep- tion.

APPERCEPTION

' APPERCEPTIOX ' is a word which cuts a great

figure in the pedagogics of the present day. Read, for example, this advertisement of a certain texbbook, which I take from an educational journal : -

WHAT IS APPERCEPTION ? For an explanation of Apperception see

Blank's PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. ---- of the - Education Series, just published.

The difference between Perception and Apperception is explained for the teacher in the preface to Blank's PSYCHOLOGY.

Many teachers are inquiring, "What is the meaning of Apperception in educational psychology?" Just the book for them is Blank's PSYCHOLOGY, in which the idea was first expounded

The most important idea in educational psychology is Apperception. The teacher may find this expounded in Blank's PSY- CHOLOGY. The idea of Apperception is making a revolution in educational methods in Germany. I t is explained in Blank's PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. - of the- Education Series, just published.

Blank's PSYCHOLOGY will be mailed prepaid to any address on receipt of $1.00.

APPEECEPTION DEFINED 157

Such an advertisement is in sober earnest a disgrace to all concerned; and such talk as it

indulges-in is the sort of thing I had in view when I said a t our first meeting that the teachers mere suffering at the present day from a certain

industrious mystificatiorr on the part of editors and publishers. Perhaps the word appercep-

tion,' flourished in their eyes and ears as it

nowadays often is, embodies as much of this mystification as any other single thing. The

conscientious young teacher is led to believe that

it contains a recondite and portentous secret, by losing the true inwardness of which her whole

career may be shattered. And yet, when she

turns to the books and reads about it, i t seems so trivial and commonplace a matter,- meaning nothing more than the manner in which we re-

ceive n thing into our minds,- that she fears she must have missed the point through the shallow- ness of her intelligence, and goes about thereafter

afflicted with a sense either of uncertainty or of stupidity, and in each case remaining mortified at being so inadequate to her mission.

Now apperception is an extremely useful vord

in pedagogics, and offers a convenient name for a process to which every teacher must frequently

refer. But i t verily means nothing more than the

act of taking a thing into the mind. I t corre-

sponds to nothing peculiar or elementary in psy- chology, being only one of the innumerable re-

sults of the psychological process of association of ideas ; and psychology itself can easily dispense with the word, useful as i t may be in pedagogics.

The gist of the matter is this : Every impression that comes in from without, be i t a sentence which

we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which

assails our nose, no sooner enters our conscious- ness than it is drafted off in some determinate direc-

tion or other, making connection with the other

materials already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular connections

it strikes into are determined by our past experi- ences and the 'associations' of the presellt sort of impression with them. If, for instance, you

hear me call out A, B, C, i t is ten to one that you will react on the impression by inwardly or out- wardly articulating D, E, F. The impression

arouses its old associates ; they gc; out to meet i t ; it is received by them, recog~lizetl by the mind as ' the beginning of the alphabet.' It is the fate of

every impression thus to fall into a mind pre-

158 TAL1CS TO TEACHERS

occupied with memories, ideas, and interests, and by these it is taken in. Educated as we already are, we never get an experience that remains for us completely nondescript: i t always reminds of something similar in quality, or of some context that might have surrounded i t before, and which

it now in some way suggests. This mental escort which the mind supplies is drawn, of course, from the mind's ready-made stock. We conceive the impression in some definite way. We dispose of it according to our acquired possibilities, be they few or many, in the way of 'ideas.' This way of taking in the object is the process of a p perception. The conceptions which meet and assimilate it are called by Herbart the ' apperceiv- ing mass.' The apperceived impression is en- gulfed in this, and the result is a new field of consciousness, of which one part (and often a very small part) comes from the outer world, and another part (sometimes by far the largest) comes from the previous contents of the mind.

I think that you see plainly enough now that the process of apperception is what I called it a

moment ago, a resultant of the association of ideas. The product is a sort of fusion of the new with the old, in which i t is often impossible to

distinguish the share of the two factors. For

example, when we listen to a person speaking or read a page of print, much of what we think we see or hear is supplied from our memory. We

overlook misprints, imagining the right letters, though we see the wrong ones ; and how little we actually hear, when we listen to speech, we realize when we go to a foreign theatre ; for there what troubles us is not so much that we cannot under- stand what the actors say as that we cannot hear their words. The fact is that we hear quite as

little under similar conditions at home, only our mind, being fuller of English verbal associations, supplies the requisite material for coinprehension upon a much slighter auditory hint.

I n all the apperceptive operations of the mind,

a certain general law makes itself felt,- the law of economy. I n admitting a new body of expe-

rience, we instinctively seek to disturb as little as possible our pre-existing stock of ideas. We

always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know. We hate anything absolutely new, any-

thing without any name, and for which a new name must be forged. So we take the nearest name, even though it be inappropriate. A child

will call snow, when he sees i t for the first time, sugar or white butterflies. The sail of a boat he calls a curtain ; an egg in its shell, seen for the

first time, he calls a pretty potato ; an orange, a

ball; a folding corkscrew, a pair of bad scissors. Caspar Hauser called the first geese he saw horses, and the Polynesians called Captain Cook's

liorses pigs. Mr. Rooper has written a little book on apperception, to which he gives the title of

A Pot of Green Feathers," that being the name applied to a pot of ferns by a child who had never

seen ferns before. In later life this economical tendency to leave

the old undisturbeci leads to what we know as .old fogyism.' A new idea or a fact which would entail extensive rearrangement of the pre- vious system of beliefs is always ignored or ex- truded from the mind in case i t cannot be sophis- tically reinterpreted so as to tally harmoniously with the system. W e have all conducted discus- sions with middle-aged people, overpowered them with our reasons, forced them to admit our con-

tention, and a week later found them back as secure and constant in their old opinion as if they had never conversed with us a t all. W e call them old fogies; but there are young fogies, too. Old

fogyisrn begins a t a younger age than we think. I am almost afraid to say so, but I believe that

in the majority of human beings i t begins a t about twenty-five.

I n some of the books we find the various forms

of apperception codified, arid their subdivisions numbered and ticketed in tabular form in the way

so delightful to the pedagogic eye. In one book which I remember reading there were sixteen dif- ferent, types of apperception discriminated from

each other. There was associative apperception, subsumptive apperception, assimilative appercep-

tion, and others up to sixteen. It is needless to say that this is nothing but an exhibition of the crass artificiality which has always haunted psy- chology, and which perpetuates itself by lingering along, especially in these works which are adver- tised as 'written for the use of teachers.' The flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentatioil in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes ' with long Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence.

There is no reason, if we are classing the dif- ferent types of apperception, why we should stop at sixteen rather than sixteen hundred. There

162 TALKS TO TEACHERS

are as many types of apperception as there are pos- sible ways in, which an incoming experience may be reacted on by an individual mind. A little while ago, at Buffalo, I was the guest of a lady who, a fortnight before, had taken her seven-year

old boy for the first time to Niagara Falls. The child silently glared a t the phenomenon until his mother, supposing him struck speechless by its

sublimity, said, "Well, my boy, what do you think of i t ? " to which, " Is that the kind of spray I spray my nose with?" was the boy's only

reply. That was his mode of apperceiving the spectacle. You may claim this as a particular type, alld call it by the greek name of rhinothera- peutical apperception, if you like ; and, if you do, you will hardly be more trivial or artificial than are some of the authors of the books.

M. Perez, in one of his books on childhood, gives a good example of the different modes of apper- ception of the same phenomenon which are pos- sible at different stages of individual experience. A dwelling-house took fire, and an infant in the family, witnessing the conflagration from the

arnls of his nurse, standing outside, expressed nothing but the liveliest delight at its brilliailcy. But, when the bell of the fire-engine was heard

approaching, the child was thrown by the sound

into tt paroxysm of fear, strange sounds being, as you know, very alarming to young children. In

what opposite ways must the child's parents have apperceived the burning house and the engine re- spectively !

The self-same person, according to the line of thought he may be in or to his emotional mood, will apperceive the same impression quite dif- ferently on different occasions. A medical or en- gineering expert retained on one side of a case will not apperceive the facts in the same way as if the other side had retained him. When people are a t loggerheads about the interpretation of a fact, i t usually shows that they have too few heads of classification to apperceive by; for, as a gen- eral thing, the fact of such a dispute is enough to show that neither one of their rival interpreta- tions is a perfect fit. Both sides deal with the matter by approximation, squeezing it under the handiest or least disturbing conceptioil : whereas i t would, nine times out of ten, be better to en- large their stock of ideas or invent some altogether new title for the phenomenon.

Thus, in biology, we used to have interminable discussion as to whether certain single-celled or-

164 TALKS TO TEACHERS THE APPERCEIVING IDEA 165

ganisms were animals or vegetables, until Haeckel

illtroduced the new apperceptive name of Protista,

which ended the disputes. I n law courts no tertium quid is recognized between insanity and

sanity. If sane, a man is punished: if insane, acquitted; and i t is seldom hard to find two experts who will take opposite views of his

case. All the while, nature is more subtle than

our doctors. Just as a roonl is neither dark nor light absolutely, but might be dark for a watch-

maker's uses, and yet light enough to eat in or

play in, so a man may be sane for some purposes

and insane for others,- sane enough to be left a t

large, yet not sane enough to take care of his

financial affairs. The word ' crank,' which be- came familiar a t the time of Guiteau7s trial, ful-

filled the need of a tertium quid. The foreign terms ' d6s6quilib1-6,' ' hereditary degenerate,' and

'psychopathic' subject, have arisen in response

to the same need. The whole progress of our sciences goes on by

the invention of newly forged technical names whereby to designate the newl- remarked aspects of phenome~la,- phenomena which could only be

squeezed with violence into the pigeonholes of

the earlier stock of conceptions. As time goes

on, our vocabulary becomes thus ever more and

more voluminous, having to keep up with the

ever-growing nlultitude of our stock of apperceiv- ing ideas.

In this gradual process of interaction between

the new and the old, not only is the new modified

and determined by the particular sort of old

which apperceives it, but the apperceiving mass,

the old itself, is modified by the particular kind of new which i t assimilates. Thus, to take the

stock German example of the child brought up in a house where there are no tables but square ones,

table ' means for him a thing in which square

corners are essential. But, if he goes to a house

where there are round tables and still calls them

tables, his apperceiving notion ' table ' acquires immediately a wider inward content. I n this

way, our conceptions are constantly dropping characters once supposed essential, and including others once supposed inadmissible. The exten-

sion of the notion ' beast ' to porpoises and whales, of the notion organism' to society, are familiar

examples of what I mean. But be our conceptions adequate or inadequate,

and be our stock of them large or small, they are all we have to work with. If an educated man is,

as I said, a group of organized tendencies to con-

duct, what prompts the conduct is in every case

the man's conception of the way in which to name ancl classify tht: actual emergency. The more

adequate the stock of ideas, the more ' able ' is the

man, the more uniformly appropriate is his be-

havior likely to be. When later we take up the subject of the will, we shall see that the essential

preliminary to every decision is the finding of the

right names under which to class the proposed

alternatives of conduct. He who has few names

is in so far forth an incompetent deliberator. The names-and each name stands for a conception or idea -are our instruments for handling our

problems and solving our dilemmas. Now, when we think of this, we are too apt to forget an im- portant fact, which is that in most human beings

the stock of names and concepts is mostly ac-

quired during the years of adolescence and the

earliest years of adult life. I probably shocked

you a moment ago by saying that most men begin

to be old fogies at the age of twenty-five. It is true that a grown-up adult lreeps gaining well into middle age a great knowledge of details, and

a great acquaintance with individual cases con-

nected with llis profession or business life. In

I OLD FOGT~SJZ SETS IN EARLY 167

this sense, his conceptions increase during a very

long period ; for his knowledge grows more exten- sive and minute. But the larger categories of

conception, the sorts of thing, and wider classes

of relation between things, of which we take cog-

nizance, are all got into the mind a t a compara-

tively youthful date. Few men ever do acquaint

themselves with the principles of a new science

after even twenty-five. If you do not study politi-

c l~ l economy in college, it is a thousand to one

that its main conceptions will remain unknown to you through life. Similarly with biology, similarly with electricity. What percentage of

persons now fifty years old have any definite

conception whatever of a dynamo, or how the trolley-cars are made to run? Surely, a small

fraction of one per cent. But the boys in colleges

are all acquiring these conceptions. There is a sense of infinite potentiality in us all,

when young, which makes some of us draw up lists of books we intend to read hereafter, and

makes most of us think that we can easily ac-

quaint ourselves with all sorts of things which me are now neglectillg by studying then] out

hereafter in the intervals of leisure of our busi~less lives. Such good intelltiorls are hardly ever car-

168 TUKS TO TEACHERS

ried out. The conceptions acquired before thirty remain usually the only ones we ever gain. Such exceptional cases of perpetually self-renovating youth as Mr. Gladstone's only prove, by the admiration they awaken, the universality of the

rule. And it may well solemnize a teacher, and confirm in him a healthy sense of the importance of his mission, to feel how exclusively dependent upon his present ministrations in the way of im- parting conceptions the pupil's future life is pro- bably bound to be.

xv.

THE WILL

SINCE mentality terminates naturally in out- ward conduct, the final chapter in psychology has to be the chapter on the will. But the word

'will ' can be used in a broader and in a narrower sense. I n the broader sense, it designates our entire capacity for impulsive and active life, including our instinctive reactions and those forms of behavior that have become secondarily automatic and semi-unconscious through frequent repetition. In the narrower sense, acts of will are

such acts only as cannot be inattentively per- formed. A distinct idea of what they are, and

a deliberate jint on the mind's part, must precede their execution.

Such acts are often characterized by hesitation, and accompanied by a feeling, altogether peculiar, of resolve, :L feeling which may or may not carry with it 2% further feeling of effort. I n my earlier

talks, I said so much of our impulsive tendencies that I will restrict inyself in what follows to voli- tion in this narrower sense of the term.

170 TALKS TO TEACHERS

All our deeds were considered by the early psychologists to be due to a peculiar faculty called

the will, without whose fiat action coulcl not occur. Thoughts aiid impressions, being intrinsi- cally inactive, were supposed to produce co~iduct

olily through the ilitermediation of this superior

agent. Until they twitched its coat-tails, so to

speak, no outward behavior could occur. This doctrine was long ago exploded by the discovery

of the phenomena of reflex action, in which sen- sible impressions, as you know, produce movement

immediately and of themselves. The doctrine

inay also be considered exploded as far as ideas

go.

The fact is that there is no sort of consciousness whatever, be i t sensation, feeling, or idea, which does not directly and of itself tend to discharge

into some motor effect. The motor effect need

not always be an outward stroke of behavior. It may be only an alteration of the heart-beats or

breathing, or a modification in the distributioli of blood, such as blushing or turning pale ; or else a

secretion of tears, or what not. But, in any case, i t is there in some shape when any consciousness

is there; and a belief as fundamental as any in modern psychology is the belief a t last attained

IDEO-MOTOR ACTION 171

+&at conscious processes of any sort, conscious

processes merely as such, must pass over into motion, open or concealed.

The least complicated case of this tendency is

tlie case of a mind possessed by only a single idea. If that idea be of an object connected with a native impulse, the impulse will immediately pro- ceed to discharge. If i t be the idea of a move-

ment, the movement will occur. Such a case

of action from a single idea has been distinguished from more complex cases by the name of ' ideo-

motor' action, meaning action without express decision or effort. Most of the habitual actions

to which we are trained are of this ideo-motor sort. We perceive, for instance, that the door is

open, and we rise and shut i t ; we perceive soiiie raisins in a dish before us, and extend our hand and carry one of them to our ~iiouth without in-

terrupting the conversation; or, when lying in bed, we suddenly think that we shall be late for

breakfast, and instantly we get up with no par- ticular exertion or resolve. All the ingrained

procedures by which life is carried on -the nian- ners and customs, dressing and undressing, acts

of salutation, etc.- are executed in this semi-auto- matic way unhesitatingly and efficiently, tlie very

172 TALKS TO TEACHERS THE FUNCTION OF INHIBITION 173

outermost margin of consciousness seemi~lg to be concerned in them, while the focus may be occu- pied with widely different things.

But now turn to a more conlplicated case. Suppose two thoughts to be in the mind together, of which one, A, taken alone, would discharge itself in a certain action, but of which the other, B, suggests an action of a different sort, or a consequence of the first action calculated to make us shrink. The psychologists now say that the second idea, B, mill probably arrest or inhihit the motor effects of the first idea, A. One word, then, about ' inhibition ' in general, to make this particular case more clear.

One of the most interesting discoveries of phys- iology was the discovery, made simultaneously in France and Germany fifty years ago, that nerve currents do not only start muscles into action, but may check action already going on or keep i t from occurring as i t otherwise might. Nerves of arrest

were thus distinguished alongside of motor nerves. The pneuinogastric nerve, for example, if stimu-

lated, arrests the movements of the heart: the splailchnic nerve arrests those of the intestines, if

already begrul, But i t soon appeared that this

was too narrow a way of looking a t the matter, and that arrest is not so much the specific function of certain nerves as a general function which any part of the nervous system may exert upon other parts under the appropriate conditions. The higher centres, for example, seem to exert a con- stant inhibitive influence on the excitability of

those below. The reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated. You all know that common reflex in dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresporlding hind leg will begin to make scratching movements, usually in the air. NOTV

in dogs with mutilated hemispheres this scratch-

ing reflex is so incessant that, as Goltz first de- scribed them, the hair gets all worn off their sides. I n idiots, the functions of the hemispheres being largely in abeyance, the lower impulses, not inhibited, as they would be in normal human beings, often express themselves in most odious ways. You know also how any higher emotional tendency will quench a lower one. Fear arrests

appetite, maternal love annuls fear, respect checks sensuality, and the like; and in the more subtile manifestations of the moral life, whenever an ideal stirring is suddenly quickened into inten-

174 TALKS TO TEACHERS AXY IDEA MAY BE INHIBITORY 175

sity, it is as if the whole scale of values of our

motives changed its equilibrium. The force of old temptations vanishes, and what a moment

ago was impossible is now not only possible, but

easy, because of their inhibition. This has been well called the 'expulsive power of the higher

emotion.'

I t is easy to apply this i~otion of inhibition to

the case of our ideational processes. I am lying in bed, for example, and think it is time to get up ; but alongside of this thought there is present

to my mind a realizat,ion of the extreme coldness

of the morning and the pleasantness of the warm

bed. I n such a situation the motor consequences of the first idea are blocked ; and I may remain for half an hour or more with the two ideas oscillat-

ing before me in a kind of deadlock, which is

what we call the state of hesitation or delibera-

tion. I n a case like this the deliberation can be resolved and the decision reached in either of two

ways : - (1) I may forget for a moment the thermomet-

ric conditions, and then the idea of getting up will immediately discharge into act: I shall sud-

denly find that I have got up - or (2) Still miildflll of the freezing temperature,

the thought of the duty of rising may become so

pungent that it determines action in spite of in- hibition. In the latter case, I have a sense of

energetic moral effort, and collsider that I have

done a virtuous act.

All cases of wilful action properly so called, of

choice after hesitation ancl deliberation, may be conceived after one of these latter patterns. So

you see that volition, in the narrower sense, takes

place only when there are a number of conflicting

systenls of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness. The interesting

thing to note is the extreme delicacy of the inhibi- tive machinery. A strong and urgent motor idea

in the focus may be neutralized and made inopera-

tive by the presence of the very faintest contradic- tory idea in the margin. For instance, I hold out

my forefinger, and with closed eyes try to realize as vividly as possible that I hold a revolver in my hand and am pulling the trigger. I can even now

fairly feel my finger quiveri~lg with the tendency

to contract; and, if i t were hitched to a recording apparatus, it would certainly betray its state of tension by registerillg incipient nlovements. Yet

it does not actually crook, and the movement of pulling the trigger is not performed. Why not?

TALIiS TO TEACHERS i "

176 MAX'S CONDUCT AS A RESULTANT 177

Simply because, all concentrated though I am upon the idea of the movement, I nevertheless also realize the total conditions of the experiment, and in the back of my mind, so to speak, or in its fringe and margin, have the simultaneous idea that the movement is not to take place. The

mere presence of that marginal intention, without effort, urgency, or emphasis, or ally special rein-

forcement from my attention, suffices to the in-

hibitive effect. And this is why so few of the ideas that flit

through our minds do, in point of fact, produce their motor consequences. Life would be a curse

and a care for us if every fleeting fancy were to do so. Abstractly, the law of ideo-motor action is t rue; but in the concrete our fields of con-

sciousness are always so complex that the inhibit- ing margin keeps the centre inoperative most of the time, In all this, you see, I speak as if ideas

by their mere presence or absence determined be- havior, and as if betmeell the ideas themselves on the one band and the conduct on the other there were no room for any third intermediate principle of activity, like that called 'the will.'

If you are struck by the materialistic or fatal- istic doctrines which seeill to follow this concep-

tion, I beg you to suspend your judgment for a moment, as I shall soon have somethiilg more to

say about the illatter. But, meailwhile yielding one's self to the mechanical coilceptioil of the psychophysical organism, nothing is easier than to indulge in a picture of the fatalistic character

of human life. Man's conduct appears as the mere resultant of all his various impulsions and

inhibitions. One object, by its presence, makes

us act: another object checks our action. Feel- ings aroused and ideas suggested by objects sway

us one way and another: emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive effects, the higher abolishing the lower or perhaps being it-

self swept away. The life in all this becomes pru- dential and moral ; but the psychologic agents in the drama may be described, you see, as nothing but the ' ideas' themselves,-ideas for the whole system of which what me call the 'soul ' or ' char- acter ' or ' will ' of the person is nothing but a collective name. As Hume said, the ideas are themselves the actors, the stage, the theatre, the

spectators, and the play. This is the so-called 'as sociationist ' psychology, brought down to its rsd

"

178 TALKS TO TEACHERS 1 I

ical expression: it is useless to ignore its power as a conception. Like all conceptions, when they

become clear and lively enough, this conception llss a strong tendency to impose itself upon be- lief; and psychologists trained on biological lines

usually adopt it as the last word of science on the

subject. No one can have an adequate notion of

modern psychological theory unless he has a t I

some time apprehended this view in the full force

of its simplicity. Let us humor it for a while, for i t has advan-

I

tages in the way of exposition.

Voluntary action, then, is at all times a resultant of the compounding of our impulsions with our inhi- bitions.

From this i t immediately follows that there will I

be two types of will, in one of which impulsions will predominate, in the other inhibitions. W e

may speak of them, if you like, as the precipitate and the obstructed will, respectively. When fully

pronounced, they are familiar to everybody. The

extreme example of the precipitate will is the maniac: his ideas discharge into action so rap-

idly, his associative processes are so extravagantly lively, that inhibitions have 110 time to arrive, and

he says and does whatever pops into his head witllout a ~noment of hesitation.

C~rtai l l inelancl~oliacs furnish tlle extreme ex-

ample of the over-inhibited type. Tlleir mind:,

are cramped in a fixed elnotioil of fear or helpless-

ness, their ideas confined to the one thought t l ~ a t

for them life is impossible. So they shorn a con- dition of perfect 'abulia,' 01- inability to will or

act. They cannot change their posture or speech or execute tlle siml~lest command.

The different races of inen show different tem-

perameilts in this regard. The souther11 races are commonly accounted the more inlpulsive and

precipitate : the English race, especially our New England branch of it, is supposed to be all sicklied

over with repressive forms of self-consciousness, and condemned to express itself through a jungle

of scruples and checks.

The highest forill of character, however, ab- stractly considered, inust be full of scruples and

inhibitions. But action, ill such a character, far

from being paralyzed, will succeed in energet- ically keeping on its may, sometimes overpowering

the resistances, sometimes steering along the line

where they lie thinnest.

Just as our flexor muscles act most firmly when

180 TALKS TO TEACHERS T H E BALKY \\'ILL 181

a siillultaneous contraction of the flexors guides

ancl steadies them ; so the mind of hiin whose fields

of consciouslless are complex, and who, mith the

reasons for the action, sees the reasons against it,

and yet, instead of being palsied, acts in the way

that takes the wliole field into consideration,-

so, I say, is such n mind the ideal sort of mind

that we should seek to reproduce in our pupils.

Purely impulsive action, or action that proceeds

to extreillities regardless of consequences, on the

other hand, is the easiest action in the world, and

the lomest in type. Any one can show energy, when made quite reckless. A11 Oriental despot

requires but little ability : as long as he lives, he

succeeds, for lle has absolutely his om11 way; and,

when the world can no longer endure the horror of him, he is assassinatecl. But not to proceed

immediately to extremities, to be still able to act

energetically uiider an array of inhibitions,- that indeed is rare and diecul t . Cnvour, when urged

to proclaim martial law i11 1859, refused to do so,

sayiilg : Any one can govern in that way. I will

be constitutional ." Your parliamentary rulers,

your Lincoln, your Gladstone, are the strongest

type of man, because they accomplish results under the most intricate possible conditiolls. We

think of Napoleon T3oiiaParte as n colossal inonster

of will-l)omer, and truly enough he mas so. But, from the ~ ~ o i i i t of vie\\. of the psycllo1ogic:tl mu-

chinery, i t would be llilrcl to say whether he or

Gladstone was tlie larger volitioilal cluailtity ; for

Napoleon disregal.ded all the usual inhibitions,

and Gladstone, 1)assionate as lit: was, scrupulously

consiclerecl then1 in his statesm;~~isllip.

A familiar exnnlple of the paralyzing power of

scruples is the inhibitive effect of conscientious-

ness upon conversation. Nowhere cloes conversa- tion seem to have flourished ils brilliantly as in

France during the last century. But, if me read old Frencl-I memoirs, we see how many brakes

of scrupulosity mhich tie our tongues to-day mere

then removed. Where mendacity, treachery, ol* scenity, and malignity find unhampered expression,

talk call be brilliant indeed. But its flame waxcb dim where the mind is stitched all over with cow

scieritious fear of violating the moral and social

proprieties.

'I'he teacher often is coilfronted in the school- I

room with an abnormal type oE will, which we

may call the 'balky will.' Certain cliildreil, if they

1 (lo not succeecl in doil~g ;i tllil~g irninediately,

THE TEACHERS' IDErlL IS3

relllaill conlpletelg iilllibited ill regard to it : it becomes literally impossible for then1 to under- htalid i t if i t be an illtellectual problem, or to do it

ii i t be an outward operation, as long :IS tliis par- ticnlar inhibited condition lasts. Such cliildrel~ arc usually treatetl as sinful, and are pullislied ; or

vise tlle teacller pits his or her will against the cliild's ~vill, considering that the latter must be broken.' Break your child's will, in order that

it may iiot perish," wrote John Wesley. " Breali

its will as sooil as it can speak plainly - or eve11 before i t can speak at all. I t should be forced to

do as i t is told, even if you have to whip i t tell tiines runlling. Break its will, in order that its soul nlay live." Such will-breaking is always a

scene with a great deal of nervous wear and tear 011 both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, and the victdry iiot always with the would-be will-breaker.

Wheu a situation of the kiricl is once fairly de- veloped, a r ~ d the child is all tense and excited

inwardly, ~iineteeu times out of twenty i t is best for the teacher to apperceive the case as one of

ileural pathology rather than as one of moral culpability. So long as the inhibiting sellse of

inlpossibility remains ill the child's mind, he will

continue unable to get beyond the obstacle. Thr aim of the teacher sho~lld tllel~ be to make 11irn

simply forget. Drop the subject for the time, divert the mind to something else : then, leading the pupil back by some circuitons line of associn-

tion, spring it on him again before he has time to

recognize it, and as likely as not he will go over

i t now without any difficult!-. Tt is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in n horse: we

divert his altention, ilo something to his nose or

ear, lead him round in n circle, and thus get him over a place where flogging ~ ~ ~ o u l c ~ only have

made him more invincible. A tactful teacher will never let these strained situations come up a t all.

You perceive now, my friends, what your gen- eral or abstract duty is as teachers. Althougll you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet

you must also see to i t that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the mill ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action. Psy- chology can state your problem in these terms, but you see how impotent she is to furnish the

elements of its practical solution. When all is

I said and done, and your best efforts are made. it

184 TALKS TO TE:ACHEIZ.F;

will probabl~- l.elnain true that the result will depend more 011 a certain native tone or temper in the pupil's psyc~~ological constitution than 011

anything else. Some persons appear to have a naturally poor focalizatioli of the field of con- sciousness: :uld in such persolls actions hang slack, and inhibitions seein to exert peculiarly easy sway.

But let us now close ill a little Illore closely on this ~nat ter of the educatioil of the will. Your task is to build up :t character in your pupils ; and a character, :ts I have so ofteii said, consists in an

o~ganized set of habits of reaction. Now of what do such habits of reaction themselves consist? They co~isist of tendencies to act characteris- tically when certain ideas possess us, and to refrain characteristically when possessed by other ideas.

Our volitio~ial habits depellcl. then, first. on what the stock of ideas is I\-llicli we Ilave; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several

ideas with action or inaction respectively. How is i t when an alternative is presented to you for choice, and you are uncertai~i what you ought to do ? You first hesitate, and then you deliberate.

And in what does your deliheratioil consist? I t

consists in trying to apperceive the case succes- sively by a number of different ideas, wllicll seem to fit it more or less, until at last you hit on one which seems to fit it exactly. If that be an idea which is a customary forerunner of action in you, which enters into one of your maxims of positive behavior, your hesitation ceases, and you act im- mediately. If, on the other hand, it be an idea which carries inaction as its habitual result, if it ally itself with pro/~ibition, then you unhesitat- ingly refrain. The problem is, you see, to find the right idea or coilception for the case. This search for the right conception may take days or weeks.

1 spoke as if the action were easy when the conception once is found. Often i t is so, but it nlay be otherwise ; and, wheli i t is otherwise, we find ourselves a t the very centre of a moral sit- uation, into which I should now like you to look with me a little nearer.

The proper conceptioll, the true head of clas- sification, lllay be hard to attain ; or i t ]nay be one with whicll we have contracted no settled habits of action. Or, again, the action to which it would prompt may be dangerous and difficult; or else illactioil may appear deadly cold and negative

i $6 TALKS TO TEACJIERS

when our impulsive feeling is hot. In either of

these latter cases i t is 11ard to hold the right idea

steadily enough before the attention to let i t exert

its adequate effects. TVhether i t be stinlulative

or inhibitive, i t is too rrusonable for us; and the Inore instinctive passional proy~ensity then tend-.

to extrude it froni our corisideration. W e sh;-

away from the thongllt of it. It twiltkles and goes out the moment i t appears in the margin of

our consciousliess; and n-e need a resolute effort

of voluntary attention to clrag i t into the focus

of the field, and to keep i t there long enough for

its associative and motor effects to be exerted.

Every one knows only too well how the mind

flinches from looking a t considerations hostile to

the reigning mood of feeling. Once brought, however, in this way to the cen-

tre of the field of co~isciousness, and held there,

the reasonable idea will exert these effects inevi-

tably; for the laws of co1111ection between oul.

consciousness ant1 our nervous system provide for

the action then taking place. Our moral effort,

properly so called, terminates i11 our holding fast

to the appropriate idea. If, then, jou arc asked, ''At what does u ?no1.(r7

act con.ri.ct when rcdncerl to its simplest and nloat

TO T H I N J ~ IS T E I I ~ MORAI, ACT 187

fornl?" -you c.;111 make only one rep])-.

You can say that it consists in tlic fort of attesl-

tiolt by which v10 hold fasf to an idea which but for

that effort of attention would be driven out of the

mind bj- the other psychological tendencies that

are there. To think, in short, is the secret of will, just as i t is the secret of memory.

This comes out very clearly i l l the kind of

excuse which we most frequently hear from per-

sons who find themselves confronted by the sin-

fulness or llnrmfulness of some part of their

behavior. " I never tho21ght," they say. " I never

thought how n~ean the action was, I never thought

of these abominable consequences." And what

clo we retort when they say this ? TVe say : '. Why

tiidn'f you think ? What were you there for but

to think ? " And we rencl them t t moral lecture

on their irreflectiveness.

The hackneyed exanlple of moral deliberation is the case of an habitual drunkard under tempta-

tion. H e has made i t resolve to reforln, but he is

now solicited again by the bottle. His moral tri-

umph or failure literally consists in his finding

the right name for the case. If he says that i t i.,

a case of not wasting good liquor already pou~c~ct

out, or a case of not hcing cllurlish and unsoci,t! :e

when in the midst of friends, or a case of learilil~g something at last about a brand of whiskey whicl~ he never met before, or a case of celebrating a

public holiday, or a, case of stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in favor of abstinence than any he has ever yet made, then he is lost. His choice of the wrong name seals his doom. T;ut if, in spite of all the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously furnishes

him, he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name, and apperceives tlie case as that of '6being :L drunkard, being a drunkard, being a drunkard," his feet are planted 011 the road to salvation. He saves himself by thinking riglitly.

Thus are your 1)upils to Ire saved: first, by the stock of ideas with wliich you furnish them; sec- ond, by the nmoulit of voluntary attention tliat they car1 evert ill llolding to tlie right ones, bow-

elver unpalatable ; and, third, Iry t l ~ e several liabits of acting definitely on these latter to which they have bcen successfully trained.

In all this the power of voluntarily attendiilg is the point of the whole procedure. Just as i~

balance turns on its knife-edges, so 011 i t our inorill

clestiny turns. You remember that, when we were talking of t l ~ e sn1)ject of :~ttention, we discovei.ed

bow much illore interinittent. arld brief our acts

of voluntary attention are than is commollly sup-

~ J S " . If they were all suinirled together, the time that they occupy would corer an allnost incredibly small l~ortion of our lives. But I also said, you

will remember, that their: brevity was iiot in pro- portion to tlieir sig~iificance, and that I should re- turn to the subject again. So I return to it now.

I t is not the mere size of a thing which constitutes

its importance: it is its positioll in the organism to which i t belongs. Our acts of voluntary atten-

tioil, brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless inomentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies. Tlle exercise of

voluntary attentior1 in tlie schoolroom must tliere- fore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first- rate teacher, by the Beenness of the remoter in- terests which he is able to awake~l, will provide i~bundant opportulrities for its occurrence. I hope

that you appreciate this now without any further explanation.

I have been sucused of holdiilg up before you, in the course of these tallrs, a niechanical and even a materialistic: view of the niind. I have

called i t an organism ancl a machine. I hale spoken of its reaction on the environmellt as the

essential thing about i t ; and I have referred this, either openly or implicitly, to the colistructioli of

the nervous system. I have, in consequence, re- ceived notes from some of you, begging me to be more explicit on this point ; and to let you kno~y

frankly whether I am a complete materialist,

or not.

Now in these lectures I wish to be strictly prac- tical and useful, and Lo keep free from all specu-

lative complications. Nevertheless, I do not wish to leave ally ambiguity about my own position; ancl I will therefore say, in order to avoid all mis- understanding, that in no sense clo I count n~yself

a materialist. I cannot s rc how such a thing ;IS

our consciousness call 1,o~sibly be produced 1)y ;I

nervous iliachinery, tlrough I can perfectly well see how, if ' ideas ' do accompany the workings

of the machinery, the order of the ideas migllt very well follow exactly tlie ol'rj~r of the 111:1-

chine's operations. Our habitual associations of ideas, trains of thonglrt. alld sequences of actiou,

might thus be coilsequer~ces of tlle succession of

currents in our nervous system:;: And the pos- sible stock of ideas wliicll n man's free spirit would

THE ' PUEEUO1\C ' O F THE \\'LL[I 191

]lave to choose from might depend exclusively on the native and acquired powers of his brain. If

this were all, we migl~t indeed adopt the fatalist conception which 1 sketcliecl for you but a short

while ago. Our itleas would be determined by

brain currents, and these bj- purely mechanical

laws. Zut, after ~vliat we have just seen,-namely, the

part played by voluiltary attelltioil in volition,- a belief in free will and purely spiritual causation is still open to us. Tlie clurntion aiid aniouiit of

this attention seem withill certain limits illdeter- minate. We jkel as iE we could make it really

more or less, and as if our free action ill this re- gard were a geuui~ie critical point in nature,-- a point on whicli our destiny and that of others might hinge. The whole question of free will

coilcentrates itself, then, a t this san~e small point :

"Is or is not the appearance of illdetermination a t this point an illusion ? "

It is plain that such a question can be decided

only by general analogies, and not by accurate observations. The free-willist believes the appear-

ance to be a reality : the determinist believes that it is an illusion. I myself hold with the free-will-

ists,-not because I cannot corlceive the fatalist

192 TALKS TO 'J'EACTIERS TWO TYPES olil INHIBITION 193

theory clearly, or because I fail to understand its plausibility, but sinlply because, if free will were

true, i t would be absurd to have the belief in it

fatally forced on our acceptance. Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather thinli that the very first act of a will endowed with freedoill should be to sustain the belief in the

freedom itself. I accordingly believe freely in illy freedom ; I do so with the best of scientific con- sciences, knowing that the predeter~ninatioil of the amount of my effort of attentioil can never receive objective proof, and hoping that, whether you follow iny example in this respect or not, it

will at least make you see that such psychological and psychophysical theories as I hold do not llecessarily force a mall to become a fatalist or ;I, materialist.

Let me say one rnore final word now about the will, and therewith co~iclude both that im- I

portant subject nncl these lectures. There are two types of will. There are also

Iwo types of inhibitio~i. W e lnay call them inhibi- tion by repression or by ilegition, and inhibition

by substitution, respectively. The difference btb- tnreen them is that, in the case o f inhibition 1)y

repression. both the inhibited icle;~ and the iiilli- biting idea, the impulsive idea and tlre idea that negates it, remain along with each other in con- sciousness, producing a certain inward strain or tension there : whereas, ill inhibition by substitu- tion, the inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits, and the latter quickly vanishes from the field.

For instance, your pupils are wandering i l l

mind, are listening to a sound outside the will- dow, which presently grows interesting enough to claim all their at ten ti or^. You can call the lat-

ter back again by bellowing a t them not to listell to those sounds, but to keep their minds on their books or on what you are saying. And, by thus

keeping them conscious that your eye is stern1~- on them, you may produce a good effect. But i t

will be a wasteful effect and an inferior effect ; for the moment you relax your supervision the at- tractive distnrbance, always there soliciting their curiosity, will overpower them, and they will be just as they were before : whereas, if, without say- ing anything about the street distul*bances, you open a counter-attraction by starting some very interesting talk or demonstratiorl yonrself, they will altogether forget tlre distracting incident, and

without any effort follow you along. There are many interests that can never be inhibited by the

way of negatioli. To a man in love, for example, i t is literally impossible, by ally effort of will, to

annul his passion. But let ' some new planet swim into his ken,' and the former idol will immediately

cease to engross his mind.

I t is clear that in general we ought, whenever

we can, to employ the method of inhibition by

substitution. He whose life is based upon the word ' no,' who tells the truth because a lie is

wicked, and wlio has constantly to grapple with

his envious and cowardly and mean propensities,

is in an inferior situation in every respect to what he would be if the love of truth and magnanimity

positively possessed him from the outset, and lle

felt no inferior temptations. Your born gentle- man is certainly, for this world's purposes, a more

valuable being than your '' Cruinp, with his grunt- ing resistance to his native devils," even though

in God's sight the latter may, as the Catholic

theologians say, be rolling up great stores of merit.'

Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that any- thing that a man can avoid under the notion that

it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that

something else is goocl. IIe who habitually acts

sub . ~ p e c i e n~a l i , under tlie negative notion, the no- tion of the bad, is called a slave by Spinoza. To

him who acts habitually under the notion of good

he gives tlie name of freeman. See to i t now, I

beg you, that you make freenlen of your pupils

by habituating thein to act, whenever possible, under the notiou of a good. Get them habitually

to tell the truth, not so much through showing

them the mickediless of lying as by arousil~g tlieir enthusiasm for honor and veracity. ?Vesn them

from their native cruelty by imparting to t l~em

some of your own positive syn~pathy with an ani- mal's inner springs of joy. And, ill the lessons

which you may be legally obliged to condnct upon

the bad effects of alcohol, lay less stress than the

books do on the drunkard's stomach, kidneys,

nerves, and social miseries, and nlore on the bless-

ings of having an organism kept in lifelong pos- session of its full youthful elasticity by :L sweet, sound blood, to which stimulants and uarcotics

are unknown, and to which the morning sun and

air and clew will daily come as sufficiently power- ful intoxicants.

I have now ended these talks. If to some of

you the things I have said seem obvious or trivial,

it is possible that they may appear less so when, in the course of a year or two, you find yourselves

noticing and apperceiving events in the school-

room a little differently, in consequence of some

of the conceptions I have tried to make more clear. I cannot but think that to apperceive your

pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative,

and reactive organism, partly fated and partly

free, will lead to a better intelligence of all llis

ways. Understaild him, then, as such a subtle

little piece of machinery. And if, in addition, you

can also see him s t ~ h specie honi, and love him as

well, you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers.

TALES TO STUDENTS