EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 55 



EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 



By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D., 



PEOFESSOB IK THE XJNIVEKSITY OF ABEEDEEN. 



VI.— THE EMOTIOI^S IN" EDUCATION" (continued). 



I NOW proceed with the review of the Emotions as motives in 

 education. 



Play of the Emotioxs of Activity. — Nothing is more frequently 

 prescribed in education than to foster the pupils' own activity, to put 

 them in the way of discovering facts and principles for themselves. 

 This position needs to be carefully surveyed. 



There is, in the human system, a certain spontaneity of action, the 

 result of central energy, independent of any ieelings that may accom- 

 pany the exercise. It is great in children ; and it marks special in- 

 dividuals, who are said to possess the active temperaiment. It distin- 

 guishes races and nationalities of human beings, and is illustrated in 

 the differences among the animal tribes; it also varies Avith general 

 bodily vigor. This activity would burst out and discharge itself in 

 some form of exertion, whether useful or useless, even if the result 

 were perfectly indifferent as regards pleasure or pain. We usually 

 endeavor to turn it to account by giving it a profitable direction, in- 

 stead of letting it run to waste or something worse. It expends itself 

 in a longer or shorter time, but while any portion remains, exertion is 

 not burdensome. 



Although the spontaneous flow of activity is best displayed and 

 most intelligible in the department of muscular exercise, it applies also 

 to the senses and the nerves, and comprises mental action as well as 

 bodily. The intellectual strain of attention, of volition, of memory, 

 and of thought, proceeds to a certain length by mere fullness of power, 

 after rest and renovation ; and may be counted on to this extent as 

 involving nothing essentially toilsome. Here, too, a good direction is 

 all that is wanted to make a profitable result. 



The activity thus assumed as independent of feeling is nevertheless 

 accompanied with feeling, and that feeling is essentially pleasurable : 

 the pleasure being greatest at first. The presence of pleasure is the 

 standing motive to action ; and all the natural activity of the system — 

 whether muscular or nervous — brings an effluence of pleasure, until a 

 certain point of depletion is arrived at. 



If, further, our activity is employed productively, or in yielding 

 any gratification beyond the mere exercise, this is so much added to 

 the pleasures of action. If, besides the delight of intellectual exercise, 

 we obtain for ourselves the gratification of fresh knowledge, we seem 

 to attain the full pleasure due to the employment of the intellect. 



