April 12, 1888] 



NATURE 



563 



It is the giving them the faculty to collect material to 

 employ thought. Quickness of perception is the next 

 stage of the building. It awakens a sense of the relations 

 which things remembered bear to one another. But the 

 most illiterate man would not deny that a boy with a 

 good memory, who is " sharp to notice everything," is not 

 far off from being clever. Does not this, indeed, consti- 

 tute about all the cleverness which practical life requires.'' 

 But it is most unfair that any man, who has not examined 

 the evidence, or read the facts which have been accumu- 

 lated to show that extraordinary quickness of perception 

 of every kind can be induced by proper training, should 

 at once declare it to be impossible. It is a question not 

 for metaphysical a priori assumption, but for scientific 

 research, experiment, and test. 



To render what I have said clearer, I would add that, 

 if we begin by memorizing mere words, and nothing else, 

 without any special effort to attach meaning to them, or 

 only just so much as will aid in the work, the pupil will, 

 in a short time, acquire a mechanical faculty for remem- 

 bering. As soon as this becomes habitual, easy lessons 

 which, so to speak, explain themselves, are introduced, 

 and so, step by step, with great care the learner is led to 

 acquire that which involves intelligence. Now, the whole 

 system lies in this : that what a boy or girl perfectly re- 

 members is easier to understand than when it is only half 

 grasped. As it is, we begin in teaching a language by 

 requiring a child to learn all at once to remember words, 

 to pronounce them, and to master their grammatical 

 structure and relations. I never knew of but one instance 

 in my life in which anybody over twenty-five years of age 

 ever learned to speak P'rench like a native. This was a 

 lady, who, before learning the meaning of a word, passed 

 several months in mastering the pronunciation. Schlie- 

 mann, the excavator of Hissarlik, who for many years 

 learned a language every six months, advocates this sys- 

 tem. By learning one thing at a time, at first, we are far 

 better able to acquire several things at once in a more 

 advanced stage. In acquiring quickness of perception, 

 as in memorizing, the processes are identical — they begin 

 by the simplest mechanical methods, and advance to the 

 most refined. 



The same development in a commensurate manner is ob- 

 served in teaching industrial art. To give a child, or even a 

 dull adult, some idea of design, I would allow him or her 

 to group cardboard leaves into a pattern, and trace round 

 them with a pencil till the fingers became familiar with 

 the implement. There are not many cases in which this 

 is advisable, but, having tried it many times, I can assure 

 those who have not that it does not in the least degree 

 prevent beginners from acquiring the boldest freehand 

 practice. The more pains we take with the rudiments of 

 every kind of culture, the easier is the acquisition of 

 advanced branches. 



The age is now being called on to face a great prob- 

 lem. It is that of over- pressure. From every side we 

 hear in every newspaper of a thousand things which 

 everybody is assumed to know. A certain great thinker 

 — or writer — was said to have tested in vain " the Ameri- 

 can mind," by asking everyone he met in the United 

 States, " Have you read Obermann?" It was not true, 

 but it was truthful because it might have been, and 

 because it truly represents the current pedantry of re- 

 quiring, as a proof of culture, a knowledge of every 

 German, Swiss, or French introversial- transcendental- or 

 sentimental-ist. It is as true of society as of the school. 

 *' Shall the meeting-house be moved away from the 

 growing dung-hill, or the dung-hill from the meeting- 

 house?" Such was the great problem which was dis- 

 cussed by a Yankee town council. Shall we go on 

 increasing the branches of popular education, or reduce 

 them ? Why not try the experiment of ascertaining 

 whether the pupil will not learn more by first acquiring 

 the art of learning .'' That is the problem which we are 



all bound to discuss sooner or later. It cannot be evaded. 

 It is forcing itself upon us from every side. A perusal 

 of all the London reviews or magazines for a month is 

 enough to make any polyhistor — if such a man exists — 

 feel like an ignoramus. It is becoming a clear case of 

 non possumus, as the Chicago Professor declared when 

 he recognized the impossibility of shooting two 'possums 

 with only one ball. Either the capacities must be in- 

 creased, or the contents diminished. And that the 

 powers of memory, perceptiveness, and construction can, 

 by a very easy system of rudimentary culture, be deve- 

 loped to what would seem to be miraculous, is in accord- 

 ance with the teachings of the most advanced men of 

 science, and is established by innumerable facts. All that 

 is needed now is to combine into a single system the 

 truths which have hitherto been scattered, and to make 

 that a subject of general education which has been 

 illustrated only by separate examples. 



It was seriously objected, when I for the first time 

 undertook to make industrial art a regular branch of 

 instruction in public schools, that the number of children 

 who had any capacity or gi/l for such a study, or enough 

 to make it advantageous, was so limited that it would 

 not be worth while to try the experiment. The result of 

 several years' teaching was that while among nearly two 

 thousand pupils only one or two were found who had this 

 " gift," there was not one single child who was not abund- 

 antly capable of learning decorative design, and master- 

 ing the minor arts. Precisely the same thing is being said 

 as regards teaching memory and perception. " It will suc- 

 ceed with geniuses, but not with all." Now, it is an extra- 

 ordinary thing, and one to be specially noted, that the 

 antecedent proofs and probabilities that every child can 

 become a clever artistic artisan were very few and far 

 between compared to those which illustrate the truth that 

 the other faculties in question may be as generally ac- 

 quired. Secondly, it was urged against the one, as it is 

 now being urged against the other, " Where will you find 

 teachers ? " They were speedily found in the art school, 

 for we soon developed them from among our pupils, while 

 I had in addition a class of grown-up ladies who were 

 specially educated as instructors. But the great objection, 

 and the one which to this day perplexes the majority of 

 people, is, " What profit is there in teaching pattern draw- 

 ing, modelling shoes or leaves, carving patterns or 

 hammering brass ? Will it pay ? Can a boy make a 

 living by it ?" This is precisely the problem proposed by 

 Sam Welter's school-boy, who had indeed learned the 

 alphabet, but doubted whether it was worth while going 

 through so much to learn so little. " Is it not better to 

 teach boys a trade .? " is heard on every side in answer to 

 the assertion that boys and girls of tender age should 

 be prepared to begin to study one. In exactly the 

 same spirit a reviewer declares that " we shall do 

 well to ask ourselves whether it is not more important 

 to teach our children to think than to remember, and 

 whether a great deal of the matter with which children are 

 expected to load their memories is not lumber." This is 

 quite equivalent to declaring that it is much more sen- 

 sible to teach boys algebra than have them waste time in 

 learning the numerals or simple arithmetic. If the writer 

 in question had ever read even a little in physiology, he 

 might have learned that it is estimated that there are from 

 600,000,000 to 1,200,000,000 of nerve-cells in the brain for 

 the generation of nerve force, and the moulding and storing 

 up of our ideas, each having a separate existence, while 

 Prof Baingives the number of fibres which transmit impres- 

 sions at about 5,000,000,000. Now, if any of the objectors 

 to " overloading " the memory do so because they find 

 they are themselves already perilously near to possessing 

 one thousand two hundred million ideas, and really can- 

 not hold any more, nothing remains to be said. Truly, it 

 has been carefully calculated that for the most retentive 

 and richly endowed minds there are only about 200,000 



