328 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 270. 



known part and the elements upon whicli 

 he is playing. What is needed to correct 

 his errors is not to inform him that he gets 

 only misleading from taking the psychical 

 point of view ; but to reveal to him tl\e scope 

 and intricate interactions of the mechanism 

 as a whole. Then he will realize that while 

 he is gaining apparent efi&cacy in some 

 superficial part of the mechanism, he is 

 disarranging, dislocating and disintegrating 

 much more fundamental factors in it. In 

 a word he is operating not as a psycholo- 

 gist, but as a poor psychologist, and the 

 only cure for a partial psychology is a fuller 

 one. He is gaining the momentary atten- 

 tion of the child through an appeal to pleas- 

 ant color, or exciting tone, or agreeable as- 

 sociation, but at the expense of isolating 

 one cog and ratchet in the machinery, and 

 making it operate independently of the 

 rest. In theory, it is as possible to demon- 

 strate this to a teacher, showing how the 

 faulty method reacts unhappily into the 

 personality, as it is to locate the points of 

 wrong construction, and of ineffective trans- 

 fer of energy in a physical apparatus. 



This suggests the admission made by 

 writers in many respects as far apart as Dr. 

 Harris and Dr. Miinsterberg — that scientific 

 psychology is of use on the pathological 

 side — where questions of ' physical and 

 mental health ' are concerned. But is there 

 anything with which the teacher has con- 

 cern that is not included in the ideal of 

 physical and mental health ? Does health 

 define to us anything less than the teacher's 

 whole end and aim ? Where does pathol- 

 ogy leave oE in the scale and series of 

 vicious aims and defective means ? I see 

 no line between the more obvious methods 

 and materials which result in nervous ir- 

 ritation and fatigue; in weakening the 

 power of vision, in establishing spinal curva- 

 tures ; and others which, in more remote 

 and subtle, but equally real ways, leave the 

 child with, say, a muscular system which 



is only partially at the service of his ideas, 

 with blocked and inert brain paths between 

 eye and ear, and with a partial and discon- 

 nected development of the cerebral paths of 

 visual imagery. What error in instruction 

 is there which could not, with proper psycho- 

 logical theory, be stated in just such terms as 

 these ? A wrong method of teaching read- 

 ing, wrong I mean in the full educational 

 and ethical sense, is also a case of patholog- 

 ical use of the psycho-physical mechanism. 

 A method is ethically defective that, while 

 giving the child a glibness in the mechan- 

 ical facility of reading, leaves him at the 

 mercy of suggestion and chance environ- 

 ment to decide whether he reads the ' yel- 

 low journal,' the trashy novel, or the liter- 

 ture which inspires and makes more valid 

 his whole life. Is it any less certain that 

 this failure on the ethical side is repeated in 

 some lack of adequate growth and connec- 

 tion in the psychical and physiological fac- 

 tors involved? If a knowledge of psychol- 

 ogy is important to the teacher in the 

 grosser and more overt cases of mental pa- 

 thology is it not even more important in 

 these hidden and indirect matters — just be- 

 cause they are less evident and more cir- 

 cuitous in their operation and manifesta- 

 tion? 



The argument may be summarized by 

 saying that there is controversy neither as 

 to the ethical character of education, nor 

 as to the abstraction which psychology per- 

 forms in reducing personality to an object. 

 The teacher is, indeed, a person occupied 

 with other persons. He lives in a social 

 sphere — he is a member and an organ of 

 a social life. His aims are social aims ; 

 the development of individuals taking ever 

 more responsible positions in a circle of 

 social activities continually increasing in 

 radius and complexity. Whatever he as a 

 teacher effectively does, he does as a per- 

 son ; and he does with and towards per- 

 sons. His methods, like his aims, when 



