METHODS OF SCHOLASTIC TEACHING 325 



practically speaking, his whole advance beyond the savage in 

 the past, and to them are due, also, his vast potentialities for 

 future advance. 



510. But the device by which he records his knowledge is 

 much more perfect than that by which he aids his thinking. 

 Any man to whom books are available commands all the 

 knowledge that has been garnered during thousands of years. 

 The mathematics, since they are applicable to only a limited 

 field of thought, aid his thinking to an extent far less than 

 books aid his memory. It follows that the principal aim of 

 that part of formal education, which is not especially intended 

 to supply the individual with useful knowledge, should be to 

 develop his reflective powers. Much scientific teaching as 

 practised at present does not fulfil this condition. For 

 example, the medical profession includes the largest number 

 of scientific men in the world. From first to last during his 

 career the medical student is loaded with a monstrous and 

 ever-increasing burden of facts, but no systematic effort is 

 made to increase the acuteness and range of his thinking 

 processes. A great deal of the burden on his memory is 

 necessary; but not all of it. Thus, since he treats the 

 ailments of an animal, man, largely by means of vegetable 

 drugs, he is taught botany and zoology. In botany he learns 

 such things as the peculiarities which distinguish various 

 natural orders of plants from other natural orders. In 

 zoology he acquires a more or less elaborate knowledge of 

 the structure of certain types of animals the vascular 

 system of the sea-urchin, the organs of generation of the 

 earthworm, the skeleton of the frog, the bones of the cod's 

 head, the dentition of the different species of mammals, and 

 so forth. 1 But no man is a better physician for knowing the 

 difference between a raceme and a rhizome, nor a better 

 surgeon because he has studied the anatomy of the cockchafer. 

 His subsequent experiences do not link up with these frag- 

 ments of knowledge, which though necessary to the equipment 

 of the professional botanist and naturalist, are so remote 

 from the labours and interests of the medical career that 

 presently they are forgotten. In the end the average doctor 



1 Teachers and examiners are always under the temptation of insisting 

 on such learning. If the student is made to commit a mass of data to 

 memory both teacher and examiner have a comparatively easy task, and 

 they need not be very competent nor strenuous men. But if the student 

 is made to follow a sustained train of thought, the task of the teacher 

 to make him understand and that of the examiner to ascertain if he has 

 understood is of much greater labour and difficulty. Only very energetic 

 and capable teachers and very patient examiners are fitted for this work. 



