416 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



who deal with relations of quantity. In short, our reason 

 has been aptly defined as "the power of using old facts in 

 new circumstances," and this is the secret of the production 

 of vast effects with limited resources.* 



Now this principle, as it affords the true key to intellec- 

 tual progress, must become the organizing law of education. 

 We find that extent of mental attainment depends, not 

 alone upon intellectual effort, but upon the order of rela- 

 tions among objects of thought. Of course, mental capa- 

 city is the first factor in acquisition, but that being given, 

 the scale of possible attainment depends absolutely upon 

 the order of the course of study. Education cannot make 

 capacity, but it controls the conditions by which the least 

 or the most can be made of it. If the methods of study 

 be such that the mind encounters broad breaks in its course, 

 and is abruptly shifted into new lines of effort, so that past 

 conceptions are not carried on to a progressive unfolding, 

 mental growth is checked and power lost. The extent to 

 which one fact or principle is a repetition or outgrowth of 

 another, in the serial relation of subjects, determines the 

 rate of mental movement, which can only become steady 

 and rapid in continuous ranges of effort. As in the out- 

 ward world, the past creates the future along unbroken 

 lines of dynamic sequence and causation, so in the mental 

 world, there must be a corresponding continuity of move- 

 ment by which the past creates the future in intellectual 

 evolution. 



We have here the touchstone of educational systems, 

 and the fatal condemnation of the current theory of disci- 

 pline. How grossly that theory violates the law of mental 

 economy, and, indeed, actually provides for waste of power, 

 will be apparent by glancing briefly at its origin. The 



* For a full working out of this doctrine, see Bain's Senses and Intel- 

 lect. 



