810 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A fitting conclusion to this presentation of the educative value 

 of children's questioning may be found in a brief mention of the 

 children's own thoughts concerning the subject. 



There having been no conversation or suggestions concerning 

 the matter, the pupils who averaged fifteen years of age were 

 asked to give their ideas of the advantages of questioning each 

 other, and they expressed themselves thus : " "We don't waste time, 

 because if our teacher is out of the room we can go on with our 

 recitation. Having to decide on the answers to our questions 

 makes us think. We have to know more about our lessons if we 

 ask questions than if we only answered them. We have more 

 questions than if our teacher made them all. We are all of about 

 the same age, and understand and misunderstand things in about 

 the same way, and can help each other out. Questioning helps us 

 to talk and obliges us to depend on ourselves. When thirty-eight 

 children are making questions, some one of them may think of 

 a question that the teacher may not think of. We look forward 

 to conducting our graduating exercises without help from our 

 teacher, and this work trains us for that." 



THE SELF AND ITS DERANGEMENTS. 



By Prof. WILLIAM KOMAINE NEWBOLD. 



IN this and my succeeding paper I intend to take up a group of 

 phenomena which involve some of the most perplexing of 

 psychological and metaphysical questions. There is no problem 

 that can be of greater interest to us as human beings than that 

 which concerns the nature of my self, my origin, and my destiny. 

 Of my origin and my destiny exact Science is not yet in a position 

 to say much, and of my nature and constitution she knows little 

 more. The greater interest therefore attaches to those cases in 

 which the consciousness of self seems to be disordered, and, 

 although we are far from a complete comprehension of them, we 

 can go far enough to show that they present phenomena which 

 are closely akin to those which we have been examining. 



We may set aside at the outset the notion that the real self is 

 an immaterial, invisible, indestructible something called mind or 

 soul in which my mental states inhere. Whether anything of 

 the kind exists or not I do not know ; if it does, we know nothing 

 of it, and it is not of the least significance except as a symbol for 

 the indestructibility of the conscious self. The only self in which 

 I have interest is the self that feels, endures, hopes, and the only 

 self I can know is the self that is manifested in consciousness. 



Setting aside, then, this notion of the self as mind or soul 



