EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 423 



apart, in their own way, and with all attainable precision. The induc- 

 tions are the maxims of practice, purified, in the first instance, by 

 wide comparison and by the requisite precautions. 



I thus projDOse to remove from the science of education matters 

 belonging to much wider departments of human conduct, and to con- 

 centrate the view upon what exclusively pertains to education the 

 means of building up the acquired powers of human beings. The 

 communication of knowledge is the ready type of the process, but the 

 training operation enters into parts of the mind not intellectual the 

 activities, and the emotions; the same forces, however, being at work. 



Education does not embrace the employment of all our intellectual 

 functions. There is a different art for directing the faculties in pro- 

 ductive labor, as in the professions, in the original investigations of 

 the man of science, or the creations of the artist. The principles of 

 the human mind are applicable to both departments, but, although the 

 two come into occasional contact, they are so far distinct that there is 

 an advantage in viewing them separately. In the practical treatise of 

 Locke, entitled " The Conduct of the Understanding," acquisition, pro- 

 duction, and invention, are handled promiscuously. 



Bearings of Physiology. The science of physiology, coupled 

 with the accumulated empirical observations of past ages, is the ref- 

 erence in finding out how to rear living beings to the full maturity 

 of their physical powers. This, as we have said, is quite distinct 

 from the process of education. 



The art of education assumes a certain average physical health, 

 and does not inquire into the means of keeping up or increasing that 

 average. Its point of contact with physiology and hygiene is nar 

 l-owed to the plastic or acquisitive function of the brain the property 

 of fixing or connecting the nervous connections that underlie mem- 

 ory, habit and acquired power. 



But as physiology now stands, we soon come to the end of its 

 applications to the husbanding of the plastic faculty. The inquiry 

 must proceed upon our direct experience in the work of education, 

 with an occasional check or caution from the established physiologi 

 cal laws. Still, it would be a forgetting of mercies to undervalue the 

 results accruing to education from the physiological doctrine of the 

 physical basis of memory. 



On this subject, physiology teaches the general fact that memory 

 reposes upon a nervous property or power, sustained, like every othei 

 physical power, by nutrition, and having its alternations of exercise 

 and rest. It also informs us that, like every other function, the plas- 

 ticity may be stunted by inaction, and impaired by over-exertion. 



As far as pure physiology is concerned, I invite everybody to 

 reflect on one circumstance in particular. The human body is a great 

 aggregate of organs or interests muscles, digestion, respiration, 

 senses, brain. When fatigue overtakes it the organs generally suffer ; 



