78 EDUCATIONAL THEORY 



stead of being inferred from the showing of different individuals 

 of different ages at one given time; and that the whole range of 

 variation be noted, whereas common practice neglects the extremes 

 and concentrates attention on the median line. 



The motor-psychology, if the term may be permitted, or let us say 

 the situation-psychology, of which we have heard so much in recent 

 years, is highly significant in the theory of education. Its bearing 

 on the relation of general to vocational studies in particular is far- 

 reaching and intimate. Still more significant in its bearings on 

 such problems as are here proposed is the special study of imitation 

 and suggestion, which we associate with the names of M. Tarde 

 and Professor Baldwin, and which other psychologists have carried 

 far in other directions. Further researches in this fascinating 

 field are needed for the clearing-up of our problem of studies and 

 the method of dealing with studies. To what extent is the real 

 and _ permanent result of studies and methods, in the mind of many 

 a learner, obscured by the very fact that as an imitator he seems to 

 share in the good that his fellows get from them? Can we not, in 

 the spirit of our finer scientific and ethical realism, separate the 

 actual from that which arises through conscious or unconscious 

 mimicry? Yet it is to be remembered that pupils in the schools 

 not only live under a constant play of suggestion-influences, but are 

 preparing for a life which is to be lived under similar influences. 

 Such influences are to be reckoned with accordingly as a constant 

 factor in human life, but incalculably variable in kind, direction, 

 and amount. These facts call for further psychological study in 

 order that we may know more accurately how they enter into the 

 problem of school-training, and particularly what bearing they have 

 on the momentous transition which the learner sooner or later must 

 make from the little life and much training of the school to the larger 

 life and more diffused culture of the great world beyond the school. 

 If the solution of these psychological problems one by one will 

 do much toward the clearing-up of the problems of education with 

 which we have set out, much more will the organization of the results 

 of such psychological studies in a system of psychological or educa- 

 tional diagnosis. For it will give us a vastly better understanding of 

 the common nature and the individual characteristics of pupils, and 

 of the relation of these one to another. It is such an understanding 

 that we need in order to deal wisely, on the psychological side, with 

 the questions under discussion. 



And the study of these psychological doctrines not only has a 

 direct bearing on our doctrine of education, but affects it indirectly 

 through its bearing on the study of institutions. For our history 

 and social science are undoubtedly becoming more psychological. 

 A study of the mental processes of individuals reveals in new guise 



