October 21, 1915] 



NATURE 



And yet the intimate relation of education to indus- 

 iiv is obvious enough. Of all that goes to make 

 industry possible, let alone prosperous, the human 

 "lement is the most important. We are careful to 



lect suitable land, we know that capital or credit 

 ^ essential to us, and we take pains to see that our 

 capital is represented by the most suitable works, 

 machinery, and material. But we commonly take 

 little interest in producing the necessary men to under- 

 take, design, direct, and manipulate the work. 



It is true that industry exists for men, not men 

 for industry ; and it follows that to train men for 

 industry cannot be the whole end of education. How 

 far the specific training of hien for their particular 

 occupations is legitimate can only be decided when 

 we know what the true aim of education really is. 

 Ipon the answer to this fundamental question 



lucators are not agreed. 



But agreement should not be altogether out of 

 i< ach if only we would treat education as a natural 

 science. We should then endeavour to keep our 

 thought about education in the closet possible touch 

 with facts, especially physiological facts ; we should 

 think and speak, not only of the mind or soul, but 

 also of the cortex of the cerebrum, through which 

 alone the soul can be reached by human educators. 

 When facts are available we should use them, and 

 follow George Eliot's advice not to replace them by 

 metaphors, or mi.xed metaphors like that of the broad 

 foundation of general culture. When facts are not 

 available we should, if possible, ascertain them by 

 direct experiment; and, if that is not possible, we 

 should have faith — that is, w^e should ascertain the 

 facts indirectly by acting on an hypothesis with a view 

 to its verification or modification by subsequent experi- 

 ence. That is how progress has been made in other 

 branches of knowledge, and that is how the advance- 

 ment of the science of education must also be effected. 

 Moreover, the ground so won must be consolidated by 

 the use of some esoteric or symbolic language; for at 

 Ijresent our most precise conceptions, being expressed 

 m words that are used every day with many different 

 meanings, receive from each of our hearers or readers 

 a different interpretation. 



Consider, for example, the word "character." Per- 

 haps the most generally accepted statement of the 

 aim of education is that of the opening sentence of the 

 introduction to the public elementary school code: 

 "The purpose ... is to form and strengthen the 

 character. . . ." But this statement fails to produce 

 any clear conception, because it does not define 

 "character," a word which means different things to 

 different people, and which to most people, perhaps, 

 conveys no clear meaning at all. If, however, we 

 reflect that since two men who, when placed in the 

 same circumstances, always did the same thing, would, 

 for practical purposes, be indistinguishable, we realise 

 that men are characterised by their actions : by their 

 fruits they are known. If then we inquire what it i* 

 that determines an individual's actions we find — a? 

 I have attempted to show in a recent paper ^ — that 

 i'i addition to the sensory stimuli arising" from the 

 nvironment of the moment, the determining factors 

 ..re interest, instinct, and will, toe^ether with the 

 habits they have helped to form. These, then, are 

 the foundations of character. A further inquiry shows 

 tliat, if character is to be strong, two conditions must 

 he fulfilled : in the first place, interest must be single 

 and wide, combining the whole range of the indi- 

 \iduars experience into one group of inter-associated 

 i.jas and including central ideas which stronglv move 

 le emotions (Instincts); and secondly, the will must 



.-operate with this single wide interest and its central 

 ;roup of instincts in guiding thought and action. 



" Published in Manual Training \ox May, 1915. 



NO. 2399, VOL. 96] 



It follows that if the purpose of education is to form 

 and strengthen character, the proximate aim of educa- 

 tion must be to develop a single wide interest — a single 

 complex of inter-connected neurograms. 



If the citizens we are educating are to have charac- 

 ters that are not only strong, but also good — that is, 

 if each citizen is to be anxious to serve his neighbours 

 — the emotional element at the heart of his wide 

 interest must be rich in brotherly love. Education 

 without religion is impossible. 



If the individual citizens are to be not only anxious, 

 but also able, to serve each other, they must be pre- 

 pared to divide labour among themselves so as to 

 minister to Ihe economic well-being of the community. 

 The more a man's knowledge or skill differs from 

 that of other people the better in general can he serve 

 his fellow-men. As the occupations of different indi- 

 viduals must differ, and as all the ideas that come to 

 each in the course of his daily work are to form part 

 of his single wide interest, it follows that the single 

 wide interests of different individuals must differ 

 according to their different occupations ; and the great 

 interest which each man will then take in his work 

 will incidentally make for his economic efficiency. It 

 is true that these single wide interests must also over- 

 lap, so that different individuals may share as far as 

 possible each other's interests and have at least their 

 interest in the State in common. The extent of this 

 overlapping of interests should be limited only by the 

 consideration that during the educand's last two or 

 three years at school — or, if he proceeds to college, 

 then during his university course — his education should 

 have the specific aim of preparing him for his par- 

 ticular work in life, including not only the work for 

 which he is paid, but the whole of what Kim would 

 call his " great game." The need for this applica- 

 tion to education of the principle of continuity, so 

 familiar in other branches of natural science, has been 

 thus expressed by the Board of Education's Consulta- 

 tive Committee : "The nearer a pupil is to his entrance 

 into life, the more steadily must the actual practical 

 needs of his occupation be kept in view, and the more 

 decided, therefore, must be the bent of his education 

 to that end." •' 



Finally, education must train the will. The power 

 of the will to focus attention — to direct nerve impulses 

 into a particular system of nervous arcs — is the 

 supreme intellectual faculty, and the only faculty that 

 can be trained. Whoever is to have most creative or 

 abstract thinking to do, most needs this skill in 

 thinking. 



II. 



These conclusions have been separately proclaimed 

 by several high authorities. 



" Milton," said Prof. Perry last year from the 

 presidential chair of this section, "taught me the true 

 notion of education, that the greatest mistake is in 

 teaching subjects in water-tight compartments "*; in 

 fact, education must aim at building up a single wide 

 interest. 



"Thorough knowledge of one subject and practice 

 in it," said Goethe, "produces higher culture than 

 incomplete knowledge of a hundred subjects."* 



Ruskin had no doubt about the need for specific 

 education. "The idea," he wrote, "of a general edu- 

 cation that is to fit everybody to be Emperor of 

 Russia ... is the most entirely and directly diabolical 

 of all the countless stupidities into which the British 

 nation has of late been betrayed." ' 



"The whole evolution of educational theory," 

 according to Prof. Adams, "may be said to be a 



S Report on Higher Elementary Schools (1906), p. 11. 



* Nature, Ociober 1, 1914. 



5 Quoted ny Or. Kerschensteiner, " Schools and the Nation," p. 256. 



« " Fors Clavigeni," p. 354. 



