PROBLEMS IN EDUCATIONAL THEORY 77 



group. An improvement in "memory" or "discrimination" or 

 " attention," for example, usually turns out on examination to be 

 improvement in memory or discrimination or attention as applied 

 to some single class of impressions or some particular set of ideas, 

 with much less evidence, or none at all, of improvement in the same 

 function as directed toward different objects. This fact has led 

 numerous theorists in education to an opposite extreme. They 

 have concluded that no general improvement of the mind through 

 training is possible - - that any such improvement which may be 

 apparent is simply the reappearance in new situations of some 

 elements of a situation in which an educative process was originally 

 carried on. According to this view, general culture, except in so 

 far as it consists of habits and conceptions that are in general use, 

 is a delusion and nothing more, and all discipline and training must 

 be narrowly specific. 



Some recent studies, however, seem to point to relationships 

 among mental traits and functions which would call for a more 

 moderate statement than this. It seems clear enough that the 

 spreading or transference in the mind of the good effects of any 

 course of training is much more narrowly circumscribed than has 

 commonly been supposed, but it may still be doubted whether such 

 spreading influence is altogether wanting or is limited to the trans- 

 ference of definite ideas. Moreover, it seems not improbable that 

 the freedom with which the gains of culture circulate among our 

 mental functions and contents may differ greatly in different indi- 

 viduals and may increase in the same individual as he matures in 

 life and advances in his course of training. So the psychological 

 determination of the possibility and the range of formal discipline 

 is necessary to render the discussion of elective studies more precise 

 and true to fact, and the scientific study of this question may even 

 yet yield vital and unexpected results. 



Very much has been done already in the more general blocking-out 

 of the stages of our mental development. Such investigations, of 

 which we have notable examples in the work of Preyer and Hall 

 and Sully and Miss Shinn, have provided working hypotheses that 

 are of extreme interest, but these, for the most part, have not been 

 critically and adequately tested, and have not been organized into a 

 complete system of developmental psychology. When we have more 

 definite knowledge of the relation of different functions one to another, 

 not only in cross-section, but also in their successive unfolding, we shall 

 be able to replace many of the subjective opinions expressed in discus- 

 sions of prescription and election, with ascertained facts set in their 

 rightful relations. To this end it is extremely desirable, as Thorndike 

 has pointed out, that the cases studied be adequately representative; 

 that the actual development of individuals be directly studied in- 



