MENTAL HABITS 483 



men who have achieved distinction in any important branch of 

 study, and who have, as is often the case, made considerable 

 additions to knowledge, to acquire in middle or old age the sort 

 of skill that is considered essential in good pupil teachers. More- 

 over, students who adopt a professional career must acquire the data 

 on which practice is founded ; and the array of facts which have to 

 be committed to memory is often so vast that little time is left for 

 thinking about them. Many of the subjects in the curricula are 

 such that the best of tutors are forced to restrict themselves to 

 teaching facts and habits of close observation. Nevertheless, a good 

 deal might be done to awaken science teachers to a conviction that 

 the function of higher education is to impart more than knowledge 

 and habits of observation. Some of the facts and subjects on which 

 students must pass examinations have no bearing on practice and 

 might be exchanged for others which place a greater strain on the 

 reflective faculties; or, at least, the teaching of them might be so 

 modified that the reflective faculties are more exercised than at 

 present. 



795. If we train a man well in any department of ' physical ' 

 activity, such as penmanship or cycling, he tends to become 

 particularly dexterous in it. But the influence of special training 

 does not altogether end with the acquisition of special dexterity. 

 Thus an individual who has learned to co-ordinate his muscles for 

 walking has made a step towards learning to co-ordinate them for 

 cycling. So, also, if we train an individual to think well in any 

 sphere of 'mental' activity, for example, chess, mathematics, or 

 physics, he will not only become especially skilful in it, but his 

 acquirement will tend to colour his whole mental state by exerting 

 a greater or lesser influence in other departments of thought a 

 greater influence in kindred departments, a lesser influence in 

 departments that are psychologically more remote. By themselves 

 facts are isolated things ; each fact must be acquired separately, and, 

 unless linked by thoughts to others, held separately. But mental 

 dexterities, habits, attitudes, link together inevitably ; one furnishes 

 a stepping-stone to another. Nevertheless, just as we cannot 

 make a man a good cyclist by teaching him to walk, nor even by 

 providing him with plenty of bicycles, so we cannot insure that he 

 will be a good thinker in any department (e.g. the ordinary affairs 

 of life) by training him in another department (e.g. mathematics), 

 nor even by providing him with the materials of thought, the facts, 

 in the chosen department. To insure the best results our teaching 

 must be direct ; that is, we must not only provide the right facts, 



