SULLY'S HAND-BOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. 257 



to have been born later, and to share the more enlightened instruction 

 that awaits the next generation ? 



If I were to take exception to anything in the scientific aspect of 

 this book, it would be chiefly to the treatment of conception, judg- 

 ment, and reasoning, which seems to me too much under the influence 

 of ordinary logic. But even here what seems to me questionable lies 

 more in the expression than in the thought ; and there is, after all, in 

 this part of the exposition some advantage in availing one's self of the 

 terms and distinctions of logic : since many readers will partly under- 

 stand them to begin with, and will thereby be more readily familiar- 

 ized with the abstrUser ideas of psychology. Still, this advantage may 

 be bought too dear. In the practical aspect of the book, I am inclined 

 to say that it lays too much stress upon the importance of authority 

 in moral training. But probably few of those for whom the book is 

 intended will think the author's doctrine of discipline overstrict. His 

 treatment of the emotions and sentiments in relation to education, a 

 particularly difficult and important part of the work, seems to me 

 especially good. 



It is a striking fact, the sudden turning of so many first-rate minds 

 to the subject of education ; and a great revolution in scholastic affairs, 

 however gradual, will certainly result from it. No subject ought to be 

 so universally interesting. If none seem so tedious to us, it may be 

 because our own education was so bad ; or that we have reflected so 

 little about it that new suggestions find in our minds no soil to strike' 

 root in ; or that the complexity and practical difficulties of it paralyze 

 our faculties : in any case, the more reason for spurring ourselves to- 

 the study. There is no subject more beset with popular errors, none 

 in which science is more useful, explanatory, and suggestive. Not only 

 every professional educator, but every father and mother (amateur edu- 

 cators !), ought to have some acquaintance with psychology. However 

 absurd this seems, I defend it on the ground that nothing else enables 

 one to interpret the faint and fragmentary recollections of having been 

 one's self a child : without which how can other children be known, and, 

 if unknown, how trained ? At school I often used to wonder whether 

 the masters had ever been to school, they knew so little of what we 

 boys were thinking, feeling, and about to do. I have heard an edu- 

 cated woman say of her baby, squalling of course at six months old, 

 " I believe he knows he's doing wrong." Heautomorphism, in default 

 of science, is ever the first resource of explanation ; i. e., we judge of 

 others by ourselves. Discipline without knowledge, and therefore 

 without sympathy, an outside wooden machinery, hampering and 

 crushing, is the same in schools, in homes, and in prisons. 



Science is certainly useful ; yet it may be perverted by an ingen- 

 ious mind. It has been urged that, according to the theory of evolu- 

 tion, education must with each generation become less necessary : I 

 suppose, because the amount of inherited faculty grows greater. But 

 vol. xxx. — 17 



