426 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one transition, the careers of the two men are foreshadowed and will 

 be widely apart. 



To observe this native inequality is important in predestining the 

 child to this or that line of special training. For the actual work of 

 teaching, it is of more consequence to note the ways and means of 

 quickening and increasing the discriminating aptitude. Bearing in 

 mind the fact that until a difference is felt between two things intelli- 

 gence has not yet made the first step, the teacher is bound to consider 

 the circumstances or conditions favorable and unfavorable to the 

 exercise. 



1. It is not peculiar to discrimination, but is common to every 

 mental function, to lay down, as a first condition, mental vigor, fresh- 

 ness, and wakefulness. In a low state of the mental forces, in languor, 

 or drowsiness, differences cannot be felt. That the mind should be 

 alive, awake, in full force and exercise, is necessary for every kind of 

 mental work. The teacher needs to quicken the mental alertness by 

 artificial means, when there is a dormancy of mere indolence. He has 

 to waken the pupil from the state significantly named indifference, the 

 state where differing impressions fail to be recognized as distinct. 



2. The mind may be fresh and alive, but its energies may be 

 taking the wrong direction. There is a well-known antithesis or op- 

 position between the emotional and the intellectual activities, leading 

 to a certain incompatibility of the two. Under emotional excitement 

 the intellectual energies are enfeebled in amount, and enslaved to the 

 reigning emotion. It is in the quieter states of mind that discrimi- 

 nation, in common with other intellectual powers, works to advan- 

 tage. I will afterward discuss more minutely the very delicate 

 matter of the management of the various emotions in the work of 

 teaching. 



3. It must not be forgotten that intellectual exercises are in 

 themselves essentially insipid, unattractive, indifferent. As exertion, 

 they impart a certain small degree of the delight that always attends 

 the healthy action of an exuberant faculty; but this supposes their 

 later developments, and is not a marked peculiarity in the child's 

 commencing career. The first circumstance that gives an interest to 

 discrimination is pleasurable or painful stimulus. Something must 

 hang on a difference before the mind is made energetically awake to 

 it. A thoroughly disinterested difference is not an object of atten- 

 tion to any one. 



The transitions from cold to hot, dark to light, strain to relief, hun- 

 ger to repletion, silence to sound, are all more or less interesting, and 

 all more or less impressive. But then they are vehement and sensa- 

 tional. It is necessary, in order to the furnishing of the intelligence, 

 that smaller and less sensational transitions should be felt ; the intel- 

 lectual nature is characterized by requiring the least amount of emo- 

 tional flash in order to impress a difference. A loud and furious 



