Maech 2, 1900.] 



SCIENGE. 



327 



hibition of others — habits intellectual, habits 

 emotional, habits in overt action. 



Moreover, all the instruments and ma- 

 terials with which the teacher deals must 

 be considered as psychical stimuli. Such 

 consideration involves of necessity, a knowl- 

 edge of their reciprocal reactions — of what 

 goes by the name of causal mechanism. 

 The introduction of certain changes into a 

 net-work of associations, the reinforcement 

 of certain sensori-motor connections, the 

 weakening or displacing of others — this is the 

 psychological rendering of thegreater part of 

 the teacher's actual business. It is not that 

 one teacher employs mechanical consider- 

 ations, and that the other does not, appeal- 

 ing to higher ends ; it is that one does not 

 know his mechanism, and consequently acts 

 servilely, superstitiously and blindly, while 

 the other, knowing what he is about, acts 

 freely, clearly and effectively.* 



The same thing is true on the side of 

 materials of instruction — the school studies. 

 N"o amount of exaltation of teleological per- 

 sonality (however true, and however neces- 

 sary the emphasis) , can disguise from us the 

 fact that instruction is an affair of bring- 

 ing a child into intimate relations with 

 concrete objects, positive facts, definite 

 ideas and specific symbols. The symbols 

 are objective things in arithmetic, reading 

 and writing. The ideas are truths of his- 

 tory and of science. The facts are derived 

 from such specific disciplines as geography 

 and language, botany and astronomy. To 

 suppose that by some influence of pure per- 

 sonality upon pure personality, conjoined 

 with a knowledge of rules formulated by an 

 educational theorist, an effective interplay 

 of this body of physical and ideal objects 



* That some teachers get their psychology by in- 

 stinct more effectirely than others by any amonnt of 

 reflective stndy may be nnreservedly stated. It is 

 not a question of mannfacturing teachers, but of rein- 

 forcing and enlightening those -who have a right to 

 teach. 



with the life of the child can be effective, is, 

 I submit, nothing but an appeal to magic, 

 plus dependence upon servile routine. Sym- 

 bols in reading and writing and number, 

 are both in themselves, and in the way in 

 which they stand for ideas, elements in a 

 mechanism which has to be rendered opera- 

 tive within the child. To bring about this 

 influence in the most helpful and econom- 

 ical way, in the most fruitful and liberating 

 way, is absolutely impossible save as the 

 teacher has some power to transmute sym- 

 bols and contents into their working psych- 

 ical equivalents : and save as he also has 

 the power to see what it is in the child, as 

 a psychical mechanism, that affords maxi- 

 mum leverage. 



Probably I shall now hear that at pres- 

 ent the danger is not of dealing with acts 

 and persons in a gross, arbitrary way, but 

 (so far as what is called new education 

 is concerned) in treating the children too 

 much as mechanism, and consequently seek- 

 ing for all kinds of stimuli to stir and 

 attract — that, in a word, the tendency to 

 reduce instruction to a merely agreeable 

 thing, weakening the child's personality 

 and indulging his mere love of excitement 

 and pleasure, is precisely the result of tak- 

 ing the psycho-mechanical point of view. 

 I welcome the objection for it serves to 

 clear up the precise point. It is through a 

 partial and defective psychology that the 

 teacher, in his reaction from dead routine 

 and arbitrary moral and intellectual dis- 

 cipline, has substituted an appeal to the sat- 

 isfaction of momentary impulse. It is not 

 because the teacher has a knowledge of the 

 psycho-physical mechanism, but because he 

 has a partial knowledge of it. He has come 

 to consciousness of certain sensations, and 

 certain impulses, and of the ways in which 

 these may be stimulated and directed, but 

 he is in ignorance of the larger mechanism 

 (just as a mechanism), and of the causal 

 relations which subsist between the un- 



