THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION 48 1 



scientific study of psychology should be noted. The older 

 psychology that was in the intellectual air and that was 

 definitely taught in training schools for teachers, was a 

 psychology of the reception of sensations and impressions 

 from without, and of faculties inhering in the mind by which 

 the material thus received was worked over. The entire 

 development of psychology has been to reverse both these 

 conceptions. On the one hand, the motor side of hfe has been 

 brought to attention and the connection of sensory impres- 

 sions with active motor adaptations. On the other side the 

 whole hierarchy of ready-made faculties has been relegated 

 to the scientific scrap-basket. With it has gone the vogue of 

 the notion of "formal discipline" which was the theoretical 

 foundation of the old idea of mental training by means of 

 mechanical exercises constantly repeated. If attention and 

 memories were "faculties," it was logical to hold that they 

 would be developed and strengthened by a series of gymnas- 

 tic exercises. What was attended to or memorized made 

 httle difference. If the mind was only kept at it, the inherent 

 faculties of attention and memory would be built up. 

 Moreover as mental faculties, they had an existence and 

 mode of operation quite independent of any bodily activity, 

 which indeed was thought of as hostile to their manifesta- 

 tion. The quieter the child was kept, the more prospect was 

 there that his mental faculties would come into play as he 

 was kept pouring over his text-books. It is hardly too much 

 to say that every teacher in every training school is now 

 taught a radically different psychology. He learns that 

 the young child is primarily a sensory-motor being, and that 

 his intellectual development, corresponding to the function 

 of his cerebral structures, is brought about as coordinations 

 and cross-connections are built up among sensory-motor 

 activities. Psychology has been so revolutionized, in a 

 biological direction, that the significance of the body and 

 of organic activity is coming into its own. For the idea of 

 faculties capable of separate training, obtained by means of 

 set and uniformly repeated exercise, has been substituted 

 the idea of the total engagement and response of the whole 

 being in effective learning. Teachers indeed meet with^many 

 obstructions and embarrassments when they try to put their 



