IN TROD UCTION 1 9 



organization that can be applied under the proper motive in dealing 

 with psychic results or images. 



Mental images, although bearing no resemblance to each other, 

 may be considered as related when they can be referred to the 

 same external source. The sound of the hammer striking the nail, 

 the appearance of its falling through the air, the sinking of the 

 nail into the wood, all give rise to images, that it is impossible to 

 compare with each other ; yet they are related, since they are referred 

 to a common cause. When the psychic results of the sight giving 

 color, and of the sight giving the effect of the blow upon the nail, 

 and of the sound giving the nature of the substance, are interpreted 

 as belonging to the same thing, the hammer, they become organized 

 at once as the related parts of the image of the hammer, which has 

 a certain form, weight, and substance. Psychic results may be pro- 

 duced from outside occurrences which follow in immediate sequence 

 in time, or which may take place simultaneously ; yet this time- 

 relationship alone will not admit of their being organized into an 

 image in the educative sense. As the hammer falls, a bird may 

 fly across the field of vision ; but the psychic result of the latter 

 bears no educative relation to those derived from the hammer. 



In nature-study, the landscape, embodying the entire field of 

 observation, presents itself to the beginner as a great composite of 

 confused parts ; and to most people, perhaps, it always remains so. 

 It should be the aim of instruction to assist the pupil to refer the 

 separate and more or less confused mental impressions to the appro- 

 priate source, and, as this is done, to organize those referred to the 

 same source into a clear and definite image. The landscape is 

 revealed to the observer through its color, the initial interest being 

 roused through the aesthetic sense. Everything, therefore, which 

 involves color can be referred to a common external source, namely, 

 light. All color-impressions, consequently, become organized in 

 the mind, since they are related to a common cause. Whether it 

 is the foliage of a tree or the decorative colors of a room, the 

 questions arising in both are solved by this relation to the one thing 

 — light. Still further, in plants many of the myriad varieties in 

 form are nothing but inextricable confusion until their relationship 

 to light is recognized ; then the seeming confusion of forms becomes 

 an orderly array. Even two structures so extreme in their unlike- 

 ness to each other as a leaf and the human eye become related, 



