442 l'UA( TUAL Al'PLICATIOXS OF MOD?:UX PSYCHOLOGY. 



at the expense ot the rest; for example, in the fanatic and the 

 narrow type of genius. 



While psychology is of proven use in removal of anomalies 

 and in the restoration of a " stable mentality," it is also employed 

 as a prophylactic ; and this by the correct application of educa- 

 tional processes. 



Education. 



As has just been hinted before, the value and purpose of true 

 education are to be realised in the development of a stable 

 mentality — at all times assimilative and progressive and withal 

 adaptable. People ai'e so apt nowadays to regard education as 

 simply the listening to lectures and trying to stuff into their brain- 

 boxes as much as they can in order to top the examination-lists. 

 I speak with all seriousness when I affirm that there is no greater 

 curse on true education than the examination system. By it 

 boys and girls, men and women, are encouraged to concentrate 

 their " volitional attention " on the assimilation of facts and 

 formulre — usually from but some few text-books; while only little, 

 if any, attention is paid to the scope, definition and place of the 

 subject in the affairs and philosophy of practical life. Obviously 

 this applies more to some subjects than to others; but I am 

 humbly of the opinion that there are but few which can claim 

 exemption from the objection. 



The old practice of demanding that children should " learn by 

 heart " huge passages of poetry and prose is now fortunately a 

 thing of the past in the best of schools ; but the reform has not 

 been carried consistently to the abolition of e\ery form of 

 mnemonics and crannning. The very word " education " means 

 " drawing-out," not cramming-in. When one reads a book, hears 

 an address, sees a vision or undergoes an experience, the objects 

 of those sensations are but the media by which the mind is in- 

 fluenced ; " they strike as it were some resonant chord of vital 

 memory, making one realise {i.e., to make real to one's self) 

 that that which one has seen, heard or experienced is real — true — 

 or otherwise. 



The metJiod of education is also' a department in which 

 psychology has caused, and will further cause, considerable revo- 

 lution. The old-fashioned method of teaching was synthetic. 

 iFor example, languages were taught from the grammar, through 

 rules of syntax, finally to conversation. This is fast dying out. 

 (Latin, of course, is an exception; for the purpose of learning 

 Latin is largely to understand what a grammar is ; but modem 

 languages are learned rather as languages.) So far as I know 

 grammar, in the development of languages, was pi-actically the 

 last stage before their fixation. The child is not introduced to 

 Mr. Nesfield before he begins to talk; but he becomes compara- 

 tively fluent — sometimes harassingly so — at an early age, and 

 long before he knows of the existence of grammars or their 

 -editors. He stai'ts from conversation, from " Kak-kak,'' " ack- 



