62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



velopment in students of this important mental trait. There is a very 

 specious form of individualism which is frequently mistaken for inde- 

 pendence and originality in thinking. The former is characterized by 

 lawlessness and an assumed disregard for the ordinary laws of thought 

 and conduct. In the events of ordinary life such fools rush in where 

 angels fear to tread, whereas the initiative developed by a sane and 

 effective process of education is analogous to the strong man's desire to 

 run a race, reasonably conscious of his power to vanquish his competi- 

 tors. But unfortunately in most of our universities real originality is 

 repressed, or often killed by the curriculum, conventionalities and petty 

 criticism. Students are easily forced into the class of people described 

 by Mill as liking things in crowds. They are seldom compelled to exer- 

 cise their own senses, and a mass of ready-made judgments upon liter- 

 ary and historical subjects is heaped upon them before they can stand 

 straight, their own ideas being dwarfed and eradicated in order to make 

 room for the borrowed knowledge. It would be as novel as instructive 

 to hear a professor address his students as follows : 



Young Gentlemen, I advise most of you not to attend my course in history, 

 but to substitute for it some form of instruction where you will be compelled 

 to exercise your own eyes. Take a course in drawing, or of nature study, learn 

 to see things, to form your own judgments, and when you have shown your 

 ability to collect data and to form an independent opinion as to the relation 

 and value of particulars, I will then give you my own and the views of others- 

 upon historical questions. 



Students are very frequently so impressed by their instructors with 

 the importance of imbibing knowledge that they fail to scrutinize the 

 information given them and thus readily lapse into a condition in 

 which no resistance is offered to the forced feeding. And if the process 

 is continued, a positive distaste for knowledge is developed. Leonardo 

 da Vinci clearly recognized this plethoric state of mind, for he ad- 

 monished his readers that " just as food eaten without appetite is a 

 tedioms nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by 

 not assimilating what it absorbs." 



Payot in his " Education of the "Will " affirms that the more bril- 

 liant a professor is and the more he enjoys hearing himself talk and 

 argue, the less desirable does it become to confide young people to him 

 for instruction, for he gives as little aid in assisting them to acquire the 

 art of working or in making true progress in scientific work as one 

 would bring about a gain in muscle and skill in gymnastics by watch- 

 ing the strong man at a circus. 



Closely associated with the question of the choice of methods for 

 the development of the individuality and the capacity of adapting the 

 mental focus so as to include more objects within the field of vision is 

 the removal of all influences tending to limit the horizon and to breed 

 those disorders of personality popularly described as narrow-minded- 



