EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 517 



forces of the system, and the share of these available for brain-work, 

 but other circumstances have to be taken into the account, and I do 

 not enter upon the question here. 



There are many details in the economy of the plastic power that 

 have a physical as well as a mental aspect. Such are those relating 

 to the strain and remission of the attention, to the pauses and alterna- 

 tions during the times of drill, to the moderating of the nervous ex- 

 citement, and other matters. These should all find a place under the 

 head of the Retentive function. It is expedient now to take up the 

 consideration of the subject from the purely mental side. 



2. The one circumstance that sums up all the mental aids to 

 plasticity is Concentration. A certain expenditure of nervous power 

 is involved in every adhesion, every act of impressing the memory, 

 every communicated bias; and the more the better. This supposes, 

 however, that we should withdraw the forces, for the time, from every 

 other competing exercise ; and, especially, that we should redeem all 

 wasting expenditure for the purpose in view. 



It is requisite, therefore, that the circumstances leading to the con- 

 centration of the mind should be well understood. We assume that 

 there is power available for the occasion, and we seek to turn it into 

 the proper channel. Now, there is no doubt that the will is the chief 

 intervening influence, and the chief stimulants of the will are, as we 

 know, pleasure and pain. This is the rough view of the case. A 

 little more precision is attainable through our psychological knowl- 

 edge. 



And first, the will itself as an operating or directing power, that 

 is to say, the moving of the organs in a given way under a motive, is 

 a growth or culture ; it is very imperfect at first, and improves by 

 usage. A child of twelve months cannot by any inducement be 

 prompted readily to clap its hands, to point with its forefinger, to 

 touch the tip of its nose, to move its left shoulder forward. The most 

 elementary acts of the will, the alphabet of all the higher acquisitions, 

 have first to be learned in a way of their own ; and until they have 

 attained a sufficient advancement, so as to be amenable to the spur of 

 a motive, the teacher has nothing to go upon. 



I have elsewhere described this early process, as I conceive it, 

 in giving an account of the development of the will. In the prac- 

 tice of education, it is a matter of importance as showing at what 

 time mechanical instruction is possible, and what impedes its j)i*ogress 

 at the outset, notwithstanding the abundance of plasticity in the 

 brain itself. The disciplining of the organs to follow directions would 

 seem to be the proper province of the infant school. 



Coming now to the influences of concentration, we assign the first 

 place to intrinsic charm, ox pleasure in the act itself. The law of the 

 will, in its side of greatest potency, is that pleasure sustains the 

 movement that brings it. The whole force of the mind at the moment 



