EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 519 



distinction, after a long interval of years, have seldom much influence 

 in concentrating the mind toward a particular study. 



Let us now view the operation of pain. By the law of the will, 

 pain repels us from the thing that causes it. A painful study repels 

 us, just as an agreeable one attracts and detains us. The only way 

 that pain can operate is when it is attached to neglect, or to the want 

 of mental concentration in a given subject; we then find pleasure, by 

 comparison, in sticking to our task. This is the theory of punishing 

 the want of application. It is in every way inferior to the other 

 motives; and this inferiority should be always kept in view in em- 

 ploying it, as every teacher often must with the generality of scholars. 

 Pain is a waste of brain-power; while the work of the learner needs 

 the very highest form of this power. Punishment works at a heavy 

 percentage of deduction, which is still greater as it passes into the 

 well-defined form of terror. Every one has experienced cases where 

 severity has rendered a pupil utterly incapable of the work prescribed. 



Discarding all a priori theories as to whether the human mind can 

 be led on to study by an ingenious system of pleasurable attractions, 

 we are safe in affirming that if the physical conditions are properly re- 

 garded, if the work is within the compass of the pupil's faculties, and 

 if a fair amount of assistance is rendered in the way of intelligible 

 direction, althdugh some sort of pain will frequently be necessary, it 

 ought not to be so great as to damp the spirits and waste the plastic 

 energy. 



The line of remark is exactly the same for pain in prospect, with 

 allowance for the difference between reality and the idea. It is well 

 when prospective pain has the power of a motive, because the future 

 bad consequences of neglect are so various and so considerable as to 

 save the resort to any other. But since the young mind in general is 

 weak in the sense of futurity, whether for good or for evil, only very 

 near, very intelligible, and very certain pains, can take the place of 

 presently-acting deterrents. 



In the study of the human mind, we need, for many purposes, to 

 draw a subtile distinction between feeling as pleasure or pain, and 

 feeling as excitement not necessarily pleasurable or painful. This 

 subtilty cannot be dispensed with in our present subject. There is a 

 form of mental concentration that is properly termed excitement, and 

 is not properly termed pleasurable or painful excitement. A loud or 

 sudden shock, a rapid whirling movement, stirs, wakens, or excites 

 us ; it may also give us pleasure or pain, but it may be perfectly neu- 

 tral ; and even when there is pleasure or pain, there is an influence 

 apart from what would belong to pleasure or pain, as such. A state 

 of excitement seizes hold of the mind for the time beingr an d shuts out 

 other mental occupations ; we are engrossed with the subject that 

 brought on the state, and are not amenable to extraneous influences, 

 until that has subsided. Hence, excitement is preeminently a means 



