MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



173 



" My duty toads God is to bleed in him to 

 fering and to loaf withold your arts withold my 

 mine withold my sold and with my seruth to 

 whirehp and to give thinks to put my old trastin 

 him to call upon him to onner his old name and 

 his world and to save him truly all the days of my 

 life's end." 



"Mydooty tords my Nahers to love him as 

 thyself and to do to all men as I wed thou shall 

 do and to me to love onner and suke my farther 

 and mother to onner and to bay the queen and all 

 that are pet in a forty under her to smit myself to 

 all my goones teaches sportial pastures and mars- 

 ters to oughten mysilf lordly and every to all my 

 betters to hut no body by would nor deed to be 

 trew in jest in all my deelins to beer no malis nor 

 ated in your arts to kep my ands from pecking 

 and steel my turn from evil speak and lawiug and 

 slanders not to civet or desar otherniansgood but 

 to lern labour trewly to get my own leaving and 

 to do my dooty in that state if life and to each it 

 his please God to call men." 



It will be observed that these written answers, 

 if recited with sufficient rapidity in the custom- 

 ary school-room patter, really bear a horrible 

 likeness to the sounds of the genuine ones; and 

 there can be little doubt that the writers and 

 their classmates had so recited thera for years, to 

 the entire satisfaction of all who were "pet in a 

 forty " over them. Even in Mr. Brookfield's re- 

 port, from which the examples are taken, there is 

 no evidence of any perception that they repre- 

 sent a nervous action which, as a result of teach- 

 ing, is wholly wrong iu kind, and not only in 

 degree, and which, so far as it is permitted to 

 continue, is not merely an expression of waste 

 of time, but of the growth of habits directly 

 antagonistic to, and incompatible with, those 

 which it. should be the chief object of instruction 

 to encourage. Until this is recognized and acted 

 upon, and until teachers have some knowledge 

 of the profound difference between the two kinds 

 of action as modes of mental operation, it is 

 hopeless to expect from schools an amount of 

 cultivation of the intelligence at all commensurate 

 with the magnitude and costliness of the ma- 

 chinery which is employed. Nay, more, as the 

 brain " grows to " its habitual methods of activity, 

 the habits which are to lay the foundation of any 

 real intellectual growth must be established early 

 in life. It is vain to expect the best results as 

 long as it is practically held that the junior classes 

 may be handed over to pupil-teachers or other 

 imperfectly-skilled persons. It should be the 

 special work of the master to guide the minds of 

 the youngest children through the recognition of 



sensations to the formation of ideas; and, if this 

 foundation were well laid, the subsequent care of 

 I the same pupils might be safely left to inferior 

 hands. In schools lor the poor this division of 

 labor is especially important ; because, as a rule, 

 the children who attend these schools are almost 

 entirely dependent upon them for such culture as 

 they receive. In their homes there is no floating 

 information, there are no stimuli to arouse the 

 dormant intelligence. 



Supposing that the stimulus of an external 

 impression has been restrained from being re- 

 flected as motor-force through the sensorium, 

 that it has been carried upward to the cerebrum, 

 and has there given rise to the formation of an 

 " idea," this idea may either go out at once in 

 instinctive or purely automatic action, or it may 

 be detained by the volition and considered in 

 various aspects before action is determined upon. 

 The former course of events is that which is 

 natural, the latter is a result of education. For 

 example, a child sees some delicacy within its 

 reach. The visual sensation excites ideas of the 

 pleasures which would be afforded by possessing 

 and consuming the delicacy. The untaught child 

 at once endeavors to seize the tempting object. 

 The educated child, on the contrary, detains its 

 idea, thinks before acting, remembers that it has 

 been forbidden to take what is not offered, and 

 refrains. There are many ideas which have no 

 very powerful tendency to produce action, and 

 which it is easy to restrain. There are others 

 which are in their nature acutely pleasurable, or 

 acutely painful ; and these, together with the 

 pleasure or pain which is associated with them, 

 are called emotions, and their tendency to pro- 

 duce instinctive action can only be restrained 

 with difficulty. When the teacher has guided 

 his pupils to the formation of ideas, he should 

 next guide them to a knowledge of the way in 

 which ideas should be employed, and to the rudi- 

 ments of the art of restraining them. 



Apart from certain emergencies in which in- 

 stinctive and appropriate action upon an idea 

 (which is then very incorrectly called "presence 

 of mind") is immediately necessary for the 

 avoidance of some injury or danger, it may be 

 broadly said that almost the only desirable form 

 of ideo-motor action, the only form of it which 

 should be cultivated by educators, is the conver- 

 sion of thought into language. A person who 

 has decided upon giving utterance to his thoughts 

 on any given subject should be able to surrender 

 the choice of words and the formation of sentences 

 entirely to automatic action; and, thinking about 



