482 EDUCATION 



practice of some lucrative profession, for example, medicine. 

 They have knowledge, but they are seldom young, and, consequently, 

 in many cases they are not very capable of learning such a new 

 thing as how to teach. Indeed they rarely have any notion that 

 there is anything to learn. Doubtless there are amongst them 

 many ' natural ' teachers whose processes of thought, through 

 constant, if unconscious, self-training, combined perhaps with 

 superior capacity to learn to think well, have become so clear and 

 logical that they are able to present the objects of study interest- 

 ingly and suggestively to their pupils. But probably every 

 student of a profession hears lectures, attendance at which, though 

 compulsory, is not only a waste of time but is also positively 

 harmful to a developing and imitative mind. The method too 

 often adopted is, not the Socratic plan of teaching the student, 

 whenever possible, how to think in order that he may discover 

 what to think, but that of the Catechism which asks only stereo- 

 typed answers to stereotyped questions. Among the pupils are 

 future teachers, and in science, as in religion and other human 

 affairs, evil as well as good traditions tend to be perpetuated. 



793. Except as regards a supply of facts, some professional 

 courses, for example the medical, hardly attempt to continue 

 intellectual development. It is not reasonable to suppose, however, 

 that the preparatory schools have already accomplished all that is 

 possible to stimulate the reflective powers, or that mere accumula- 

 tion of knowledge will do it. Men who have continued their 

 formal education for some years after leaving school, usually 

 possess much greater knowledge than their less fortunate fellows ; 

 but it is not equally obvious that their skill in thinking has 

 developed a corresponding superiority. In brief, the teachers who 

 direct the concluding stages of professional education, having been 

 trained by an imperfect method, are usually unable to do other 

 than train their pupils by it. They are compelled thereto, not only 

 by the requirements of examinations which have been framed by 

 men like themselves, but by their own attitudes of mind. When, 

 as is not unusual, they exclaim that they are able to supply their 

 pupils with knowledge but not with brains, they condemn their own 

 methods. On the average they deal with normal human beings ; 

 and since 'brains' grow under the stimulus of use, it should be a 

 main part of their business to develop them. 



794. It is, of course, out of the question to select as teachers 

 to young men about to enter a profession any but its most 

 eminent practitioners. It is equally out of the question to expect 



