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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



education was made gratuitous as well 

 as compulsory. We have, therefore, now 

 two great classes of elementary schools 

 — school-board schools, in which educa- 

 tion is free, and voluntary schools, in 

 which a fee may be charged. Both alike 

 receive Government aid under certain 

 conditions. As a rule the voluntary 

 schools are connected with the Church 

 of England or with one or other of 

 the nonconfonnist bodies. The boards 

 which control the board schools are 

 elected bodies, and the teaching is un- 

 denominational. 



Genius and Habit. — W. L. Bryan 

 and N. Harter are the authors of an in- 

 teresting monograph in the Psychologi- 

 cal lieview for July, from which the 

 following paragraphs are taken: "There 

 is scarcely any diti'erence between one 

 man and another of greater practical 

 importance than that of efTective speed. 

 In war, business, scientific work, manual 

 labor, and what not, we have at the one 

 extreme the man who defeats all ordi- 

 nary calculations by the vast quantity of 

 work he gets done, and at the other ex- 

 treme the man who no less defeats ordi- 

 nary calculations by the little all his 

 busyness achieves. The former is al- 

 ways arriving with an unexpected vic- 

 tory, the latter with an unanswerable 

 excuse for failure. It has seemed to 

 many psychologists strongly probable 

 that the swift man should be distin- 

 guishable from the slow by reaction time 

 tests. For («), granting that the per- 

 formances demanded in practical aflairs 

 are far more complicated than those re- 

 quired in the laboratory tests, it seems 

 likely that one who is tuned for a rapid 

 rate in the latter will be tuned for a 

 rapid rate in the former, when he has 

 mastered them. Moreover (ft), a rapid 

 rate in elementary processes is favorable 

 to their fusion into higher unitary pro- 

 cesses, each including several of the 

 lower. Finally (c), a rapid rate in ele- 

 mentary processes is favorable to prompt 

 voluntary combinations in presence of 

 new emergencies. In face of these a 

 priori probabilities, eleven years' experi- 

 ence in this laboratory (the first three 

 being spent mainly on reaction times) 

 has brought the conviction that no reac- 

 tion time test will surely show whether 

 a given individual has or has not effect- 

 ive speed in his work. Very slow rates. 



especially in complicated reactions, are 

 strongly indicative of a mind slow and 

 inell'ective at all things. But experience 

 proves that rapid rates by no means 

 show that the subject has efi'ective speed 

 in the ordinary, let alone extraordina- 

 ry, tasks of life. How is this to be ex- 

 plained? The following answer is pro- 

 posed: The rate at which one makes 

 practical headway depends partly upon 

 the rate of the mental and nervous pro- 

 cesses involved; but far more upon how 

 much is included in each process. If A, 

 li, and C add the same columns of fig- 

 ures, one using readily the method of 

 the lightning adder, another the ordi- 

 nary addition table, while the thii'd 

 makes each addition by counting on his 

 lingers, the three are presently out of 

 sight of one another, whatever the rates 

 at which the processes involved are per- 

 formed. Ihe lightning adder may pro- 

 ceed more leisurely than either of the 

 others. He steps a league while they 

 are bustling over furlongs or inches. 

 Now, the ability to take league steps in 

 receiving telegraphic messages, in read- 

 ing, in addition, in mathematical rea- 

 soning, and in many other fields, plainly 

 depends upon the acquisition of league- 

 stepping habits. No possible proficiency 

 and rapidity in elementary processes 

 will serve. The learner must come to do 

 with one stroke of attention what now 

 requires half a dozen, and presently, in 

 one still more inclusive stroke, what 

 now requires thirty-six. He must sys- 

 tematize the work to be done, and must 

 acquire a system of automatic habits 

 corresponding to the system of tasks. 

 When he has done this he is master of 

 the situation in his field. He can, if he 

 chooses, deal accurately with minute de- 

 tails. He can swiftly overlook great 

 areas with an accurate sense of what 

 the details involved amount to — indeed, 

 with far greater justice to details than is 

 pofisible for one who knows nothing else. 

 Finally, his whole array of habits is 

 swiftly obedient to serve in the solution 

 of new problems. Automatism is not 

 genius, but it is the hands and feet 

 of genius." 



" A vague Impression of Beauty." 

 — The following sentences occur in an 

 article on The Real purpose of Univer- 

 sities in a recent issue of the London 

 Spectator. They give so strange a pic- 



