Sometimes, however, a single new thought may have wide-reaching effects; it may even revolutionize one's previous modes of thinking and reorganize one's activities about a new center. With Luther, for instance, the idea of justification by faith was such a new and potent force, breaking up and rearranging his old forms of thought. St. Paul's vision on the way to Damascus is a still more striking illustration of the power of a new idea or conviction. And yet, even in such cases, the old ideas reassert themselves with great persistence and power. Luther and St. Paul remained, even after these great changes, in many respects the same kind of men as before. Their old habits of thinking were modified, not destroyed; the direction of their lives was changed, but many of their habits and characteristics remained almost unaltered.

Apperception, however, is not limited to the effects of external objects upon us, to the influence of ideas coming from without upon our old stores of knowledge. Old ideas, long since stored in the mind, may be freshly called up and brought into such contact with each other that new results follow, new apperceptions take place. In moments of reflection we are often surprised by conclusions that had not presented themselves to us before. A new light dawns upon us and we are surprised at not having seen it before. In fact, it makes little difference whether the idea suggested to the mind comes from within or from without if, when it once enters fairly into consciousness, it has power to stimulate other thoughts, to wake up whole thought complexes and bring about a process of action and reaction between itself and others. The result is new associations, new conclusions, new mental products—apperceptions.

This inner apperception, as it has been sometimes called, takes place constantly when we are occupied with our own thoughts, rather than with external impressions. With persons of deep, steady, reflective habits, it is the chief means of organizing their mental stores. The feelings and the will have much also to do with this process.

The laws of association draw the feelings as much as the intellectual states into apperceptive acts. I hear of a friend who has had disasters in business and has lost his whole fortune. If I have never experienced such difficulties myself, the chances are that the news will not make a deep impression upon me. But if I have once gone through the despondency of such a crushing defeat, sympathy for my friend will be awakened, and I may feel his trouble almost as my own. The meaning of such an item of news depends upon the response which it finds in my own feelings. It is well known that those friends can best sympathize with us in our trouble who have passed through the same troubles. Even enemies are not lacking in sympathy with each other when an appeal is made to deep feelings and experiences common to both.

The feeling of interest, which we have emphasized so much, is chiefly, if not wholly, dependent upon apperceptive conditions. Select a lesson adapted to the age and understanding of a child, present it in such a way as to recall and make use of his previous experience, and interest is certain to follow. The outcome of a successful act of apperception is always a feeling of pleasure, or at least of interest. When the principle of apperception is fully applied in teaching, the progress from one point to another is so gradual and clear that it gives pleasure. The clearness and understanding with which we receive knowledge adds greatly to our interest in it. On the contrary, when apperception is violated, and new knowledge is only half understood and assimilated there can be but little feeling of satisfaction. "The overcoming of certain difficulties, the accession of numerous ideas, the success of the act of knowledge or recognition, the greater clearness that the ideas have gained, awaken a feeling of pleasure. We become conscious of the growth of our knowledge and power of understanding. The significance of this new impression for our ego is now more strongly felt than at the beginning or during the course of the progress. To this pleasurable feeling is easily added the effort, at favorable opportunity, to reproduce the product of the apperception, to supplement and deepen it, to unite it to other ideas, and so further to extend certain chains of thought. The summit or sum of these states of mind we happily express with the word interest. For in reality the feeling of self appears between the various stages of the process of apperception (inter esse); with one's whole soul does one contemplate the object of attention. If we regard the acquired knowledge as the objective result of apperception, interest must be regarded as the subjective side." (Lange, Apperception, page 19.)

Finally, the will has much to do with conscious efforts at apperception. It holds the thought to certain groups; it excludes or pushes back irrelevant ideas that crowd in; it holds to a steady comparison of ideas, even where perplexity and obscurity trouble the thinker. When the process of reaching a conclusion takes much time, when conflict or contradiction have to be removed or adjusted, when reflection and reasoning are necessary, the will is of great importance in giving coherency and steadiness to the apperceptive effort. A conscious effort at apperception, therefore, may include many elements, sense perceptions, ideas recalled, feeling, will.

"Let us now sum up the essentials in the process of apperception. First of all, an external or internal perception, an idea, or idea-complex appears in consciousness, finding more or less response in the mind; that is, giving rise to greater or less stimulation to thought and feeling.

"In consequence of this, and in accordance with the psychical mechanism or an impulse of the will, one or more groups of thoughts arise, which enter into relation to the perception. While the two masses are compared with one another, they work upon one another with more or less of a transforming power. New thought-combinations are formed, until, finally, the perception is adjusted to the stronger and older thought combination. In this way all the factors concerned gain in value as to knowledge and feeling; especially, however, does the new idea gain a clearness and activity that it never would have gained for itself. Apperception is, therefore, that psychical activity by which individual perceptions, ideas, or idea-complexes are brought into relation to our previous intellectual and emotional life, assimilated with it, and thus raised to greater clearness, activity, and significance." (Lange, Apperception, page 41.)

Important conclusions drawn from a study of apperception:

1. Value of previous knowledge. If knowledge once acquired is so valuable we are first of all urged to make the acquisition permanent. Thorough mastery and frequent reviews are necessary to make knowledge stick. Careless and superficial study is injurious. It is sometimes carelessly remarked by those who are supposed to be wise in educational matters that it makes no difference how much we forget if we only have proper drill and training to study. That is, how we study is more important than what we learn. But viewed in the light of apperception, acquired knowledge should be retained and used, for it unlocks the door to more knowledge. Thorough mastery and retention of the elements of knowledge in the different branches is the only solid road to progress. In this connection we can see the importance of learning only what is worth remembering, what will prove a valuable treasure in future study. In the selection of material for school studies, therefore, we must keep in mind knowledge which, as Comenius says, is of solid utility. Having once selected and acquired such materials, we are next impelled to make constant use of them. If the acquisition of new information depends so much upon the right use of previous knowledge, we are called upon to build constantly upon this foundation. This is true whether the child's knowledge has been acquired at school or at home. In order to make things clear and interesting to boys and girls we must refer every day to what they have before learned in school and out of school.

Again, if we accept the doctrine that old ideas are the materials out of which we constantly build bridges across into new fields of knowledge, we must know the children better and what store of knowledge they have already acquired. Just as an army marching into a new country must know well the country through which it has passed and must keep open the line of communication and the base of supplies, so the student must always have a safe retreat into his past, and a base of supplies to sustain him in his onward movements. The tendency is very strong for a grade teacher to think that she needs to know nothing except the facts to be acquired in her own grade. But she should remember that her grade is only a station on the highway to learning and life. In teaching we cannot by any shift dispense with the ideas children have gained at home, at play, in the school and outside of it. This, in connection with what the child has learned in the previous grades, constitutes a stock of ideas, a capital, upon which the teacher should freely draw in illustrating daily lessons.

2. The use of our acquired stock of ideas involves a constant working over of old ideas, and this working-over process not only reviews and strengthens past knowledge, keeping it from forgetfulness, but it throws new light upon it and exposes it to a many-sided criticism. In the first place familiar ideas should not be allowed to rest in the mind unused. Like tools for service they must be kept bright and sharp. One reason why so many of the valuable ideas we have acquired have gradually disappeared from the mind is because they remained so long unused that they faded out of sight. The old saying that "repetition is the mother of studies" needs to be recalled and emphasized. By being put in contact, with new ideas, old notions are seen and appreciated in new relations. Facts that have long lain unexplained in the mind, suddenly receive a new interpretation, a vivid and rational meaning. Or the old meaning is intensified and vivified by putting a new fact in conjunction with it.

Where the climate and products of the British Isles have been studied in political geography, and later on, in physical geography, the gulf stream is explained in its bearings on the climate of western Europe, the whole subject of the climate of England is viewed from a new and interesting standpoint. In arithmetic, where the sum of the squares of the two sides of a right-angled triangle is illustrated by an example and later on in geometry the same proposition is taken up in a different way and proved as a universal theorem, new and interesting light is thrown upon an old problem of arithmetic. In United States history, after the Revolution has been studied, the biography of a man like Samuel Adams throws much additional and vivid light upon the events and actors in Boston and Massachusetts. The life of John Adams would give a still different view of the same great events; just as a city, as seen from different standpoints, presents different aspects.

3. We have thus far shown that new ideas are more easily understood and assimilated when they are brought into close contact with what we already know; and secondly, that our old knowledge is often explained and illuminated by new facts brought to bear upon it. We may now observe the result of this double action—the welding of old and new into one piece, the close mingling and association of all our knowledge, i.e., its unity. Apperception, therefore, has the same final tendency that was observed in the inductive process, the unification of knowledge, the concentration of all experience by uniting its parts into groups and series. The smith, in welding together two pieces of iron, heats both and then hammers them together into one piece. The teacher has something similar to do. He must revive old ideas in the child's mind, then present the new facts and bring the two things together while they are still fresh, so as to cause them to coalesce. To prove this observe how long division may be best taught. Call up and review the method of short division, then proceed to work a problem in long division calling attention to the similar steps and processes in the two, and finally to the difference between them.

The defect of much teaching in children's classes is that the teacher does not properly provide for the welding together of the new and old. The important practical question after all is whether instructors see to it that children recall their previous knowledge. It is necessary to take special pains in this. Nothing is more common than to find children forgetting the very thing which, if remembered, would explain the difficult point in the lesson. Teachers are often surprised that children have forgotten things once learned. But, in an important sense, we encourage children to forget by not calling into use their acquisitions. Lessons are learned too much, each by itself, without reference to what precedes or what follows, or what effect this lesson of to-day may have upon things learned a year ago. Putting it briefly, children and teachers do not think enough, pondering things over in their minds, relating facts with each other, and bringing all knowledge into unity, and into a clear comprehension. The habit of thoughtfulness, engendered by a proper combining of old and new, is one of the valuable results of a good education. It gives the mind a disposition to glance backward or forward, to judge of all old ideas from a broader, more intelligent standpoint. Thinking everything over in the light of the best experience we can bring to bear upon it, prevents us from jumping at conclusions.

The general plan of all studies is based upon this notion of acquiring knowledge by the assistance of accumulated funds. In Arithmetic it would be folly to begin with long division before the multiplication table is learned. In Geometry, later propositions depend upon earlier principles and demonstrations. In Latin, vocabularies and inflections and syntactical relations must be mastered before readiness in the use of language is reached. And so it is to a large degree in the general plan of all studies. In spite of this no principle is more commonly violated in daily recitations than that of apperception. Its value is self-evident as a principle for the arrangement of topics in any branch of study, but it is overlooked in daily lessons. Instead of this new knowledge is acquired by a thoughtless memory drill.

In this welding process we desire to determine how far an actual concentration may take place between school studies and the home and outside life of children. The stock of ideas and feelings which a child from its infancy has gathered from its peculiar history and home surroundings is the primitive basis of its personality. Its thought, feeling, and individuality are deeply interwoven with home experience. No other set of ideas, later acquired, lies so close to its heart or is so abiding in its memory. The memory of work and play at home; of the house, yard, trees, and garden; of parents, brothers, and sisters, and in addition to this the experiences connected with neighbors and friends, the town and surrounding country, the church and its influence, the holidays, games, and celebrations, all these things lie deeper in the minds of children than the facts learned about grammar, geography, or history in school. Any plan of education that ignores these home-bred ideas, these events, memories, and sympathies of home and neighborhood life, will make a vital mistake. A concentration that keeps in mind only the school studies and disregards the rich funds of ideas that every child brings from his home, must be a failure, because it only includes the weaker half of his experience. Home knowledge itself does not need to be made a concentrating center, but all its best materials must be drawn into the concentrating center of the school. But children bring many faulty, mistaken, and even vicious ideas from their homes. It is well to know the actual situation. It is the work of the school, at every step, while receiving, to correct, enlarge, or arrange the faulty or disordered knowledge brought into the school by children. We unconsciously use these materials, and depend upon them for explaining new lessons, more constantly than we are aware of. In fact, if we were wise teachers, we would consciously make a more frequent use of them and, in order to render them more valuable, take special pains to review, correct, and arrange them. We would teach children to observe more closely and to remember better the things they daily see.

We shall appreciate better the value of home knowledge if we take note of the direct and constant dependence of the most important studies upon it. We usually think of history as something far away in New England, or France, or Egypt. History is mainly the study of the actions, customs, homes, and institutions of men in different countries. But what an abundance of similar facts and observations a child has gathered about home before he begins the study of history. From his infancy he has seen people of all sorts and conditions, rich and poor, ignorant and learned, honorable and mean. He has seen all sorts of human actions, learned to know their meaning and to pass judgment upon them. He has seen houses, churches, public buildings, trade and commerce, and a hundred human institutions. The child has been studying human actions and institutions in the concrete for a dozen years before he begins to read and recite history from books. Without the knowledge thus acquired out of school, society, government, and institutions would be worse than Greek. Geography as taught in the books would be totally foreign and strange but for the abundance of ideas the child has already picked up about hills, streams, roads, travel, storms, trees, animals, and people.

Natural science lessons must be based on a more careful study of things already seen about home—rocks and streams, flowers and plants, animals wild and tame. These with the forests, fields, brooks, seasons, tools, and inventions, are the necessary object lessons in natural science which can serve daily to illustrate other lessons. How near then do the natural science topics, geography and history, stand to the daily home life of a child! How intimate should be the relations which the school should establish between the parts of a child's experience! This is concentration in the broadest sense. A proper appreciation of this principle will save us from a number of common errors. Besides constantly associating home and school knowledge, we shall try to know the home and parents better, and the disposition and surroundings of each child. We shall be ready at any time to render home knowledge more clear and accurate, to correct faulty observation and opinion. While the children will be encouraged to illustrate lessons from their own experience, we shall fall into the excellent habit of explaining new and difficult points by a direct appeal to what the pupils have seen and understood. In short, there will be a disposition to draw into the concentrating work of the school all the deeper but outside life-experiences which form so important an element in the character of every person, which, however, teachers so often overlook. No other institution has such an opportunity or power to concentrate knowledge and experience as the school.

4. Another valuable educative result of apperception, cultivated in this manner, is a consciousness of power which springs from the ability to make a good use of our knowledge. The oftener children become aware that they have made a good use of acquired knowledge, the more they are encouraged. They see the treasure growing in their hands and feel conscious of their ability to use it. There is a mental exhilaration like that coming from abundant physical strength and health.

"Let us look back again at the results of our investigation. We observed first what essential services apperception performs for the human mind in the acquisition of new ideas, and for what an extraordinary easement and unburdening the acquiring soul is indebted to it. Should apperception once fail, or were it not implied in the very nature of our minds, we should, in the reception of sense-impressions, daily expend as much power as the child in its earliest years, since the perpetually changing objects of the external world would nearly always appear strange and new. We should gain the mastery of external things more slowly and painfully, and arrive much later at a certain conclusion of our external experience than we do now, and thereby remain perceptibly behind in our mental development. Like children with their A B C, we should be forced to take careful note of each word, and not, as now, allow ourselves actually to perceive only a few words in each sentence. In a word, without apperception our minds, with strikingly greater and more exhaustive labor, would attain relatively smaller results. Indeed, we are seldom conscious of the extent to which our perception is supported by apperception; of how it releases the senses from a large part of their labor, so that in reality we listen usually with half an ear or with a divided attention; nor, on the other hand, do we ordinarily reflect that apperception lends the sense organs a greater degree of energy, so that they perceive with greater sharpness and penetration than were otherwise possible. We do not consider that apperception spares us the trouble of examining ever anew and in small detail all the objects and phenomena that present themselves to us, so as to get their meaning, or that it thus prevents our mental power from scattering and from being worn out with wearisome, fruitless detail labors. The secret of its extraordinary success lies in the fact that it refers the new to the old, the strange to the familiar, the unknown to the known, that which is not comprehended to what is already understood and thus constitutes a part of our mental furniture; that it transforms the difficult and unaccustomed into the accustomed and causes us to grasp everything new by means of old-time, well-known, ideas. Since, then, it accomplishes great and unusual results by small means, in so far as it reserves for the soul the greatest amount of power for other purposes, it agrees with the general principle of the least expenditure of force, or with that of the best adaptability of means to ends.

"As in the reception of new impressions, so also in working over and developing the previously acquired content of the mind, the helpful work of apperception shows itself. By connecting isolated things with mental groups already formed, and by assigning to the new its proper place among them, apperception not only increases the clearness and definiteness of ideas, but knits them more firmly to our consciousness. Apperceiving ideas are the best aids to memory. Again, so often as it subordinates new impressions to older ones, it labors at the association and articulation of the manifold materials of perception and thought. By condensing the content of observation and thinking into concepts and rules, or general experiences and principles, or ideals and general notions, apperception produces connection and order in our knowledge and volition. With its assistance there spring up those universal thought complexes, which, distributed to the various fields to which they belong, appear as logical, linguistic, aesthetic, moral, and religious norms or principles. If these acquire a higher degree of value for our feelings, if we find ourselves heartily attached to them, so that we prefer them to all those things which are contradictory, if we bind them to our own self, they will thus become powerful mental groups, which spring up independent of the psychical mechanism as often as kindred ideas appear in the mind. In the presence of these they now make manifest their apperceiving power. We measure and estimate them now according to universal laws. They are, so to speak, the eyes and hand of the will, with which, regulating and supplementing, rejecting and correcting, it lays a grasp upon the content as well as upon the succession of ideas. They hinder the purely mechanical flow of thought and desire, and our involuntary absorption in external impressions and in the varied play of fancy. We learn how to control religious impulses by laws, to rule thoughts by thoughts. In the place of the mechanical, appears the regulated course of thinking; in the place of the psychical rule of caprice, the monarchical control of higher laws and principles, and the spontaneity of the ego as the kernel of the personality. By the aid of apperception, therefore, we are lifted gradually from psychical bondage to mental and moral freedom. And now when ideal norms are apperceivingly active in the field of knowledge and thought, of feeling and will, when they give laws to the psychical mechanism, true culture is attained." (Lange's Apperception, edited by DeGarmo, p. 99, etc.)

NOTE.—The freedom with which we quote extensively from Lange is an acknowledgement of the importance of his treatise. We are indebted to it throughout for many of the ideas treated.



CHAPTER VII.

THE WILL.

We have now completed the discussion of the concept-bearing or inductive process in learning and apperception, and find that they both tend to the unifying of knowledge and to the awakening of interest.

It remains to be seen how the will may be brought into activity and placed in command of the resources of the mind.

The will is that power of the mind which chooses, decides, and controls action.

According to psychology there are three distinct activities of the mind, knowing, feeling, and willing. These three powers are related to one another on a basis of equality, and yet the will should become the monarch of the mind. It is expected that all the other activities of the mind will be brought into subjection to the will. For strong character resides in the will. Strength of character depends entirely upon the mastery which the will has acquired over the life; and the formation of character, as shown in a strong moral will, is the highest aim of education.

The great problem for us to solve is: 1. How far can teaching stimulate and develop such a will?

There is an apparent contradiction in saying that the will is the monarch of the mind, the power which must control and subject all the other powers; and yet that it can be trained, educated, moulded, and chiefly too by a proper cultivation of the other powers, feeling and knowing. Knowledge and feeling, while they are subject to the will, still constitute its strength, just as the soldiers and officers of an army are subject to a commander and yet make him powerful.

We shall first notice the dependence of the will upon the knowing faculty. It is an old saying "that knowledge is power." But it is power only as a strong will is able to convert knowledge into action. Before the will can decide to do any given act it must see its way clearly. It must at least believe in the possibility. In trying to get across a stream, for example, if one can not swim and there is no bridge nor boat nor means of making one, the will can not act. It is helpless. The will must be shown the way to its aims or they are impossible. The more clear and distinct our knowledge, the better we can lay our plans and will to carry them out. It would be impossible for one of us to will to run a steam engine from Chicago to St. Paul to-day. We don't know how, and we should not be permitted to try. In every field of action we must have knowledge, and clear knowledge, before the will can act to good advantage. It is only knowledge, or at least faith in the possibility of accomplishing an undertaking, that opens the way to will. Much successful experience in any line of work brings increasing confidence and the will is greatly strengthened, because one knows that certain actions are possible. The simple acquisition of facts therefore, the increase of knowledge so long as it is well digested, makes it possible for the will to act with greater energy in various directions. The more clear this knowledge is, the more thoroughly it is cemented, together in its parts and subject to control, the greater and more effective can be the will action. All the knowledge we may acquire can be used by the will in planning and carrying out its purposes. Knowledge, therefore, derived from all sources, is a means used by the will, and increases the possibilities of its action.

But, secondly, there are found still more immediate means of stimulating and strengthening the will, namely, in the feelings. The feelings are more closely related to will than knowledge, at least in the sense of cause and effect. There is a gradual transition from the feelings up to will, as follows: interest in an object, inclination, desire and purpose, or will to secure it. We might say that will is only the final link in the chain, and the feelings and desires lead up to and produce the act of willing. Even will itself has been called a feeling by some psychologists and classed with the feelings. But the thing in which we are now most concerned is how to reach and strengthen the will through the feelings. Some of the feelings which powerfully influence the will are desire of approbation, ambition, love of knowledge, appreciation of the beautiful and the good; or, on the other side, rivalry, envy, hate, and ill-will. Now, it is clear that a cultivation of the feelings and emotions is possible which may strongly influence the purposes and decisions of the will, either in the right or wrong direction. It is just at this point that education is capable of a vigorous influence in moulding the character of a child. The cultivation of the six interests already mentioned is little else than a cultivation of the great classes of feeling, for interest always contains a strong element of feeling. It is certain in any case that a child's, and eventually a man's will, is to be guided largely by his feelings. Whether any care is taken in education or not, feeling, good or bad, is destined to guide the will. Most people, as we know, are too much influenced by their feelings. This is apparent in the adage, "Think twice before you speak." Feelings of malice and ill-will, of revenge and envy, of dislike and jealously, get the control in many lives, because they have been permitted to grow and nothing better has been put in their place. The teacher by selecting the proper materials of study is able to cultivate and strengthen such feelings as sympathy and kindliness toward others; appreciation of brave, unselfish acts in others; the feeling of generosity, charity, and a forgiving spirit; a love for honesty and uprightness; a desire and ambition for knowledge in many directions. On the other hand, the teacher may gently instill a dislike for cowardice, meanness, selfishness, laziness, and envy, and bring the child to master and control these evil dispositions. Not only is it possible to cultivate those feelings which we may summarize as the love of the virtues and develop a dislike and turning away from vices, but this work of cultivating the feelings may be carried on so systematically that great habits of feeling are formed, and these habits become the very strongholds of character. They are the forces acting upon the will and guiding its choice.

It is freedom of the will to chose the best that we are after. We desire to limit the choice of the will if possible to good things. We desire to make the character so strong and so noble and consistent in its desires that it will not be strongly tempted by evil. The will in the end, while it controls all the life and action, is itself under the guidance of those habits of thought and feeling that have been gradually formed. Sully says, "Thus it is feeling that ultimately supplies the stimulus or force to volition and intellect which guides or illumines it."

A study of the will in its relation to knowledge and feeling reveals that the training and development of the will depend upon exercise and upon instruction. There are two ways of exercising will power. First, by requiring it to obey authority promptly and to control the body and the mind at the direction of another. The discipline of a school may exert a strong influence upon pupils in teaching them concentration and will power under the direction of another. Especially is this true in lower grades. Children in the first grade have but little power or habit of concentrating the attention. The will of the teacher, combined with her tact, must aid in developing the energies of the will in these little ones. The primary value of quick obedience in school, of exact discipline in marching, rising, etc., is twofold. It secures the necessary orderliness and it trains the will. Even in higher and normal schools such a perfect discipline has a great value in training to alertness and quickness of apprehension associated with action.

Secondly, by the training of the mind to freedom of action, to self-activity, to independence. As soon as children begin to develop the power of thought and action their self-activity should be encouraged. Even in the lowest grades the beginnings may be made. An aim may be set before them which they are to reach by their own efforts. For example, let a class in the first reader be asked to make a list of all the words in the last two lessons containing th, or oi, or some other combination. Activity rather than repose is the nature of children, and even in the kindergarten this activity is directed to the attainment of definite ends. With number work in the first grade the objects should be handled by the children, the letters made, rude drawings sketched, so as to give play to their active powers as well as to lead them on to confidence in doing, to an increase of self-activity. As children grow older, the problems set before them, the aims held out, should be more difficult. Of course they should be of interest to the child, so that it will have an impulse and desire of its own to reach them.

There are few things so valuable as setting up definite aims before children and then supplying them with incentives to reach them through their own efforts. It has been often supposed that the only way to do this is to use reference books, to study up the lesson or some topics of it outside of the regular order. But self-activity is by no means limited to such outside work. A child's self-activity may be often aroused by the manner of studying a simple lesson from a text-book. When a reading or geography lesson is so studied that the pupil thoroughly sifts the piece, hunts down the thought till he is certain of its meaning; when all the previous knowledge the pupil can command is brought to bear upon this, to throw light upon it; when the dictionary and any other books familiar to the child are studied for the sake of reference and explanation, self-activity is developed. Whenever the disposition can be stimulated to look at a fact or statement from more than one standpoint, to criticise it even, to see how true it is, or if there are exceptions, self-activity is cultivated.

The pursuit of definite aims always calls out the will and their satisfactory attainment strengthens one's confidence in his ability to succeed. Every step should be toward a clearly seen aim. At least this is our ideal in working with children. They should not be led on blindly from one point to another, but try to reach definite results.

There is a gradual transition in the course of a child's schooling from training of the will under guidance to its independent exercise. Throughout the school course there must be much obedience and will effort under the guidance of one in authority. But there should be a gradual increase of self-activity and self-determination. When the pupil leaves school he should be prepared to launch out and pursue his own aims with success.

Will effort, however, to be valuable, must have its roots in those moral convictions which it is the chief aim of the school to foster and strengthen. We have attempted to show in the preceding chapters how the central subject matter of the school could be chosen, and the other studies concentrated about it with a view to accomplishing this result. In concluding our discussion of general principles of education, and in summing up the results, basing our reasoning upon psychology, we are always forced to the conclusion that education aims at the will, and more particularly at the will as influenced and guided by moral ideas. This is the same as saying that we have completed the circle and come around to our starting point, that moral character is the chief aim of education.

Teachers who are interested in this phase of pedagogy will do well to study the science of ethics. Not that it will much aid them directly in school work, but it will at least give them a more comprehensive and definite notion of the field of morals and perhaps indicate more clearly where the materials of moral education are to be sought, and the leading ideas to be emphasized.

Herbart projected a system of ethics, based on psychology, with the intention of classifying the chief moral notions and of showing their relation to each other. He also developed a theory of the origin of moral ideas and their best means of cultivation, and then based his system of pedagogy upon it.

The chief classes of ethical ideas of Herbart are briefly explained as follows:

1. Good will. It is manifested in the sympathy we feel for the sorrow or joy of another person. It is illustrated by the example of Sidney and Howard already cited.

2. Legal right. It serves to avoid strife by some agreement or established rule; e.g., the government of the United States fixes the law for pre-empting land and for homestead claims so that no two persons can lay claim to the same piece of land.

3. Justice, as expressed by reward or punishment. When a person purposely does an injury to another, all men unite in the judgment, "He must be punished." Likewise, if a kind act is done to anyone, we insist upon a return of gratitude at least.

4. Perfection of will. This implies that the will is strong enough to resist all opposition. David's will to go out and meet Goliath was perfect. A boy desires to get his lesson, but indolence and the love of play are too strong for his will. There is nothing which goes so far to make up the character of the hero as strength of will which yields to no difficulties.

5. Inner freedom. This is the obedience of the will to its highest moral incentive. It is ability to set the will free from all selfish or wrong desires and to yield implicit obedience to moral ideas. This of course depends upon the cultivation of the other ideas and their proper subordination, one to another.

The five moral ideas just given indicate the lines along which strength of moral character is shown. They are of some interest to the teacher as a systematic arrangement of morals, but they are of no direct value in teaching. They are the most abstract and general classes of moral ideas and are of no interest whatever to children.

In morals the only thing that interests children is moral action. Whether it be in actual life or in a story or history, the child is aroused by a deed of kindness or courage. But all talk of kindness or goodness in general, disconnected from particular persons and actions, is dry and uninteresting. This gives us the key to the child's mind in morals. Not moralizing, not preaching, not lecturing, not reproof, can ever be the original source of moral ideas with the young, but the actions of people they see, and of those about whom they read or hear. Moral judgments and feelings spring up originally only in connection with human action in the concrete. If we propose then to adapt moral teaching to youthful minds, we must make use of concrete materials, observations of people taken from what the children have seen, stories and biographies of historical characters. A story of a man's life is interesting because it brings out his particular motives and actions. This is the field in which instruction has its conquests to make over youthful minds.

We will gather up the fruits of our discussion in the preceding chapters. Having fixed the chief aim in the effort to influence and strengthen moral character, we find concentration to be the central principle in which all others unite. It is the focusing of life and school experiences in the unity of the personality. The worth and choice of studies is determined by this. Interest unites knowledge, feeling, and will. The culture epochs supply the nucleus of materials for moral-educative purposes. Apperception assimilates new ideas by bringing each into the bond of its kindred and friends, spinning threads of connection in every direction. The inductive process collects, classifies, and organizes knowledge, everywhere tending toward unity.



CHAPTER VIII.

HERBART AND HIS DISCIPLES.

"Then, only, can a person be said to draw education under his control, when he has the wisdom to bring forth in the youthful soul a great circle or body of ideas, well knit together in its inmost parts—a body of ideas which is able to outweigh what is unfavorable in environment and to absorb and combine with itself the favorable elements of the same." (Herbart.)

Herbart was an empirical psychologist, and believed that the mind grows with what it feeds upon; that is, that it develops its powers slowly by experience. We are dependent not only upon our habits, upon the established trends of mental action produced by exercise and discipline, but also upon our acquired ideas, upon the thought materials stored up and organized in the mind. These thought-materials seem to possess a kind of vitality, an energy, an attractive or repulsive power. When ideas once gain real significance in the mind, they become active agents. They are not the blocks with which the mind builds. They are a part of the mind itself. They are the conscious reaction of the mind upon external things. The conscious ego itself is a product of experience. In thus referring all mental action and growth to experience, in the narrow limits he draws for the original powers of the mind, Herbart stands opposed to the older and to many more recent psychologists. He has been called the father of empirical psychology.

Kant, with many other psychologists, gives greater prominence to the original powers of the mind, to the innate ideas, by means of which it receives and works over the crude materials furnished by the senses. The difference between Kant and Herbart in interpreting the process of apperception is an index of a radical difference in their pedagogical standpoints. With Kant, apperception is the assimilation of the raw materials of knowledge through the fundamental categories of thought (quality, quantity, relation, modality, etc.) Kant's categories of thought are original properties of the mind; they receive the crude materials of sense-perception and give them form and meaning. With Herbart, the ideas gained through experience are the apperceiving power in interpreting new things. Practically, the difference between Kant and Herbart is important. For Kant gives controlling influence to innate ideas in the process of acquisition. Our capacity for learning depends not so much upon the results of experience and thought stored in the mind, as upon original powers, unaided and unsupported by experience. With Herbart, on the contrary, great stress is laid upon the acquired fund of empirical knowledge as a means of increasing one's stores, of more rapidly receiving and assimilating new ideas.

Upon this is also based psychologically the whole educational plan of Herbart and of his disciples. As fast as ideas are gained they are used as means of further acquisition. The chief care is to supply the mind of a child at any stage of his growth with materials of knowledge suited to his previous stores, and to see that the new is properly assimilated by the old and organized with it. This accumulated fund of ideas, as it goes on collecting and arranging itself in the mind, is not only a favorable condition but an active agency in our future acquisition and progress. Moreover, it is the business of the teacher to guide and, to some extent, to control the inflow of new ideas and experiences into the mind of a child; to superintend the process of acquiring and of building up those bodies of thought and feeling which eventually are to influence and guide a child's voluntary action.

The critics therefore accuse Herbart of a sort of architectural design or even of a mechanical process in education. If our ability and character depend to such an extent upon our acquirements, and if the teacher is able to control the supply of ideas to a child and to guide the process of arrangement, he can build up controlling centers of thought which may strongly influence the action of the will. In other words, he can construct a character by building the right materials into it. This seems to leave small room for spontaneous development toward self-activity and freedom.

Herbart, on the other hand, criticises Kant's idea of the transcendental freedom of the will, on the ground that, if true, it makes deliberate, systematic education impossible. If the will remains absolutely free in spite of acquired knowledge, in spite of strongly developed tendencies of thought and feeling; if the child or youth, at any moment, even in later years, is able to retire into his trancendental ego and arrive at decisions without regard to the effect of previously acquired ideas and habits, any well-planned, intentional effort at education is empty and without effect.

John Friedrich Herbart, the founder of this movement in education, was born at Oldenburg in 1776, and died at Goettingen in 1811 [Transcriber's note: this should be 1841]. He labored seven years at Goettingen at the beginning of his career as professor, and a similar period at its close. But the longest period of his university teaching was at Koenigsberg, where, for twenty-five years, he occupied the chair of philosophy made famous before him by Kant. His writings and lectures were devoted chiefly to philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy. Previous to beginning his career as professor at the university, he had spent three years as private tutor to three boys in a Swiss family of patrician rank. In the letters and reports made to the father of these boys, we have strong proof of the practical wisdom and earnestness with which he met his duties as a teacher. The deep pedagogical interest thus developed in him remained throughout his life a quickening influence. One of his earliest courses of lectures at the university resulted in the publication, in 1806, of his Allgemeine Paedagogik, his leading work on education, and to-day one of the classics of German educational literature. His vigorous philosophical thinking in psychology and ethics gave him the firm basis for his pedagogical system. At Koenigsberg, so strong was his interest in educational problems that he established a training-school for boys, where teachers, chosen by him and under his direction, could make practical application of his decided views on education. Though small, this school continued to furnish proof of the correctness of his educational ideas till he left Koenigsberg in 1833. This, we believe, was the first practice-school of its kind established in connection with pedagogical lectures in any German university. It should be remembered that, while Herbart was a philosopher of the first rank, even among the eminent thinkers of Germany and of the world, he attested his profound interest in education, not only by systematic lectures and extensive writings on education, but by maintaining for nearly a quarter of a century a practice-school at the university, for the purpose of testing and illustrating his educational convictions. Lectures on pedagogy are more or less common-place, and often nearly worthless. The lecturer on pedagogy who shuns the life of the school room is not half a man in his profession. The example thus set by Herbart of bringing the maturest fruit of philosophical study into the school room, and testing it day by day and month by month upon children has been followed by several eminent disciples of Herbart at important universities.

Karl Volkmar Stoy (1815-1885) in 1843 began his career of more than forty years as professor of pedagogy and leader of a teachers' seminary and practice-school at Jena. (A part of this time was spent at Heidelberg.) During these years more than six hundred university students received a spirited introduction to the theory and practice of education under Stoy's guidance and inspiration. His seminary for discussion and his practice-school became famous throughout Germany and sent out many men who gained eminence in educational labors.

Tuiskon Ziller, in 1862, set up at Leipzig, in connection with his lectures on teaching, a pedagogical seminary and practice-school, which, for twenty years, continued to develop and extend the application of Herbart's ideas. Ziller and several of his disciples have attained much prominence as educational writers and leaders.

A year after the death of Stoy, 1886, Dr. Wilhelm Rein was called to the chair of pedagogy at Jena. He had studied both with Stoy and Ziller, and had added to this an extensive experience as a teacher and as principal of a normal school. His lectures on pedagogy, both theoretical and practical, in connection with his seminary for discussion and his practice school for application of theory, furnish an admirable introduction to the most progressive educational ideas of Germany.

The Herbart school stands for certain progressive ideas which, while not exactly new, have, however, received such a new infusion of life-giving blood that the vague formulae of theorists have been changed into the definite, mandatory requirements and suggestions of real teachers. The fact that a pedagogical truth has been vaguely or even clearly stated a dozen times by prominent writers, is no reason for supposing that it has ever had any vital influence upon educators. The history of education shows conclusively that important educational ideas can be written about and talked about for centuries without finding their way to any great extent into school rooms. What we now need in education is definite and well-grounded theories and plans, backed up by honest and practical execution.

The Herbartians have patiently submitted themselves to thorough-going tests in both theory and practice. After years of experiment and discussion, they come forward with certain propositions of reform which are designed to infuse new life and meaning into educational labors.

The first proposition is to make the foundation of education immovable by resting it upon growth in moral character, as the purpose which serious teachers must put first. The selection of studies and the organization of the school course follow this guiding principle.

The second is permanent, many-sided interest. The life-giving power which springs from the awakening of the best interests in the two great realms of real knowledge should be felt by every teacher. Though not entirely new, this idea is better than new, because its deeper meaning is clearly brought out, and it is rationally provided for by the selection of interesting materials and by marking out an appropriate method of treatment. All knowledge must be infused with feelings of interest, if it is to reach the heart and work its influence upon character by giving impulse to the will.

Thirdly, the idea of organized unity, or concentration, in the mental stores gathered by children, in all their knowledge and experience, is a thought of such vital meaning in the effort to establish unity of character, that, when a teacher once realizes its import, his effort is toned up to great undertakings.

Fourthly, the culture epochs give a suggestive bird's-eye view of the historical meaning of education, and of the rich materials of history and literature for supplying suitable mental food to children. They help to realize the ideas of interest, concentration, and apperception.

Apperception is the practical key to the most important problems of education, because it compels us to keep a sympathetic eye upon the child in his moods, mental states, and changing phases of growth; to build hourly upon the only foundation he has, his previous acquirements and habits.

Finally, the Herbartians have grappled seriously with that great and comprehensive problem the common school course. The obligation rests upon them to select the materials and to lay out a course of study which embodies all their leading principles in a form suited to children and to our school conditions.

Some of the principal books published in English bearing on Herbart are as follows:

De Garmo, Charles. Essentials of Method. D. C. Heath, Boston.

Felkin. The Science of Education; a translation of some of Herbart's most important writings on education, with a short biography of Herbart. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston.

Lange. Ueber Apperception, translated by the Herbart Club and edited by Dr. De Garmo. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston.

Lindner's Psychology, translated by Dr. De Garmo. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston.

Smith, Miss M. K. Herbart's Psychology, translated. International Ed. series. Appleton.

Van Liew. Outlines of Pedagogics, by Rein and Van Liew. C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.

The latter book contains a full bibliography of the German works of the Herbart school as well as of those thus far published in English.

THE END