Pedagogics as a System Part 16

-- 71. (3) The third set of exercises, those of the trunk, differ from the other two, which should precede it, in that they bring the body into contact with an object in itself capable of active resistance, which it has to subdue. This object may be an element (water), an animal, or a human being; and thus we have (_a_) swimming, (_b_) riding, (_c_) fighting in single combat. In swimming we have the elastic fluid, water, to overcome by means of arm and leg movements. This may be made very difficult by a strong current, or by rough water, and yet we always have here to strive against an inanimate object. On the contrary, in horseback riding we have to deal with something that has a self of its own, and the contest challenges not our strength alone, but also our skill and courage. The motion is therefore very complex, and the rider must be able to exercise either or all of these qualities at need. But his attention must not be wholly given to his horse, for he has to observe also the road, and indeed every thing around him. One of the greatest advantages of horseback riding to the overworked student or the business man lies doubtlessly in the mental effort. It is impossible for him to go on revolving in his mind the problems or the thoughts which have so wearied or perplexed him. His whole attention is incessantly demanded for the management of his horse, for the observation of the road, which changes its character with every step, and with the objects, far or near, which are likely to attract the attention of the animal he rides. Much good, doubtless, results from the exercise of the muscles of the trunk, which are not in any other motion called into such active play, but much also from the unavoidable distraction of the mind from the ordinary routine of thought, which is the thing most needed. When the object which we are to subdue, instead of being an animal, is a man like ourselves, as in single combat, we have exercise both of body and mind pushed to its highest power. We have then to oppose an intelligence which is equal to our own, and no longer the intelligence of an unreasoning animal. Single combat is the truly chivalrous exercise; and this also, as in the old chivalry time, may be combined with horsemanship.

In single combat we find also a qualitative distinction, and this of three kinds: (_a_) boxing and wrestling, (_b_) fighting with canes or clubs, and (_c_) rapier and sword fencing. The Greeks carried wrestling to its highest pitch of excellence. Among the British, a nation of sailors, boxing is still retained as a national custom. Fencing with a cane or stick is much in use among the French artisan cla.s.s. The cane is a sort of refined club. When the sword or rapier makes its appearance, we come to mortal combat. The southern European excels in the use of the rapier; the Germans in that of the sword. The appearance of the pistol marks the degeneracy of the art of single combat, as it makes the weak man equal to the strong, and there is therefore no more incentive to train the body to strength in order to overcome an enemy. (The trained intelligence, the quick eye, the steady hand, the wary thought to perceive and to take advantage of an opportunity--these are the qualities which the invention of gunpowder set up above strength and brute force. The Greek nation, and we may say Greek mythology and art, would have been impossible with gunpowder; the American nation impossible without it.)

THIRD CHAPTER.

_s.e.xual Education._

[This chapter is designed for parents rather than for teachers, and is hence not paraphrased here. A few observations are, however, in place.]

Great care is necessary at the period of youth that a rational system of food and exercise be maintained. But the general fault is in the omission of this care in preceding years. One cannot neglect due precautions for many years, and then hope to repair the damage caused, by extreme care for one or two years.

Special care is necessary that the brain be not overworked in early years, and a morbid excitation of the whole nervous system thereby induced. We desire to repress any tendency to the rapid development of the nervous system. Above all, is the reading of the child to be carefully watched and guarded. Nothing can be worse food for a child than what are called sensational romances. That the reading of such tends to enfeeble and enervate the whole thinking power is a fact which properly belongs to the intellectual side of our question not yet reached, and may be here merely mentioned. But the effect on the physical condition of the youth, of such carelessly written sensational stories, mostly of the French type, and full of sensuous, if not sensual suggestions, is a point not often enough considered. The teacher cannot, perhaps, except indirectly, prevent the reading of such trash at home.

But every influence which he can bring to bear towards the formation of a purer and more correct taste, he should never omit. Where there is a public library in the town, he should make himself acquainted with its contents, and give the children direct help in their selection of books.

This is an external means. But he should never forget that every influence which he can bring to bear in his daily work to make science pleasant and attractive, and every lesson which he gives in the use of pure, correct English, free from exaggeration, from slang, and from mannerism, goes far to render such miserable and pernicious trash distasteful even to the child himself.

Every example of thorough work, every pleasure that comes from the solving of a problem or the acquisition of a new fact, is so much fortification against the advances of the enemy; while all shallow half work, all pretence or show tend to create an appet.i.te in the child's mind which shall demand such food.

The true teacher should always have in his mind these far-away and subtle effects of his teaching; not present good or pleasure either for himself or his pupil, but the far-off good--the distant development.

That idea would free him from the notion, too common in our day, that the success or failure of his efforts is to be tested by any adroitly contrived system of examinations; or still worse, exhibitions. His success can alone be tested by the future lives of his pupils--by their love for, or dislike of, new knowledge. His success will be marked by their active growth through all their lives; his failure, by their early arrested development.

AN OUTLINE OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY.

BY WM. T. HARRIS.

[TO BE USED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO PARAGRAPHS 81 TO 102 OF ROSENKRANZ'S PEDAGOGICS.]

I.

What beings can be educated; the plant has reaction against its surroundings in the form of nutrition; the animal has reaction in the form of nutrition and feeling; Aristotle calls the life of the plant the "nutritive soul," and the life of the animal the "sensitive soul."

The life of the plant is a continual reproduction of new individuals--a process of going out of one individual into another--so that the particular individual loses its ident.i.ty, although the ident.i.ty of the species is preserved.

That which is dependent upon external circ.u.mstances, and is only a circ.u.mstance itself, is not capable of education. Only a "self" can be educated; and a "self" is a conscious unity--a "self-activity," a being which is through itself, and not one that is made by surrounding conditions.

Again, in order that a being possess a capacity for education, it must have the ability to realize within itself what belongs to its species or race.

If an acorn could develop itself so that it could realize, not only its own possibility as an oak, but its entire species, and all the varieties of oaks within itself, and without losing its particular individuality, it would possess the capacity for education. But an acorn, in reality, cannot develop its possibility without the destruction of its own individuality. The acorn vanishes in the oak tree, and the crop of acorns which succeeds is not again the same acorn, except in _kind_ or species. "The species lives, but the individual dies," in the vegetable world.

So it is in the animal world. The brute lives his particular life, unable to develop within himself the form of his entire species, and still less the form of all animal life. And yet the animal possesses self-activity in the powers of locomotion, sense-perception, feeling, emotion, and other elementary shapes. Both animal and plant react against surroundings, and possess more or less power to a.s.similate what is foreign to them. The plant takes moisture and elementary inorganic substances, and converts them into nutrition wherewith to build its cellular growth. The animal has not only this power of nutrition, which a.s.similates its surroundings, but also the power of _feeling_, which is a wonderful faculty. _Feeling_ reproduces within the organism of the animal the external condition; it is an ideal reproduction of the surroundings. The environment of the plant may be seized upon and appropriated in the form of sap, or in the form of carbonic acid, for the nourishment of that plant; but there is no ideal reproduction of the environment in the form of _feeling_, as in the animal.

In the activity of _feeling_, the animal transcends his material, corporeal limits--lives beyond his mere body, and partic.i.p.ates in the existence of all nature. He reproduces within himself the external. Such being the nature of the activity of _feeling_, which forms the distinguishing attribute that divides animals from plants, the question meets us at the outset, "Why is not the animal capable of education? Why can he not realize within himself his entire species or race, as man can?"

In order to settle this fundamental question, we must study carefully the scope and limits of this activity, which we have termed "Feeling,"

and which is known under many names--as, sensation, sensibility, sensitivity, sense-perception, intuition, and others.

Education aims to develop the mind as intellect and will. It must know what it is to develop, and learn to distinguish higher or more complete stages of intellect and will from those which are rudimentary.

Again, the discussion of mind begins properly with the first or most undeveloped manifestation--at the stage where it is common to brutes and human beings. Hence we may begin our study of educational psychology at this point where the distinction between animal and plant appears, and where the question of the capacity for education arises.

When we understand the relation of feeling or sensibility to the higher manifestations of mind, we shall see in what consists a capacity for education, and we shall learn many essentials in regard to the matter and method, the _what_ and the _how_ of education.

A general survey of the world discovers that there is inter-action among its parts. This is the verdict of science, as the systematic form of human experience. In the form of gravitation we understand that each body depends upon every other body, and the annihilation of a particle of matter in a body would cause a change in that body which would affect every other body in the physical universe. Even gravitation, therefore, is a manifestation of the whole universe in each part of it, although it is not a manifestation which exists _for_ that part, because the part does not _know_ it.

There are other forms wherein the whole manifests itself in each part of it--as, for example, in the phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in magnetism and electricity. These forms of manifestation of the external world upon an individual object are destructive to the individuality of the object. If the nature of a thing is stamped upon it from without, it is an element only, and not a self; it is dependent, and belongs to that on which it depends. It does not possess itself, but belongs to that which _makes_ it, and which gives evidence of ownership by continually modifying it.

But the plant, as we just now said, has some degree of self-activity, and is not altogether made by the totality of external conditions. The growth of the plant is through a.s.similation of external substances. It reacts against its surroundings and digests them, and grows through the nutrition thus formed.

All beings that cannot react against surroundings and modify them, lack individuality. Individuality begins with this power of reaction and modification of external surroundings. Even the power of cohesion is a rudimentary form of reaction and of special individuality.

In the case of the plant, the reaction is _real_, but not also _ideal_.

The plant acts upon its food, and digests it, or a.s.similates it, and imposes its _form_ on that which it draws within its organism. It does not, however, reproduce within itself the externality as that external exists for itself. It does not form within itself an idea, or even a feeling of that which is external to it. Its partic.i.p.ation in the external world is only that of _real_ modification of it or through it; either the plant digests the external, or the external limits _it_, and prevents its growth, so that where one begins the other ceases. Hence it is that the elements--the matter of which the plant is composed, that which it has a.s.similated even--still retain a large degree of foreign power or force--a large degree of externality which the plant has not been able to annul or to digest. The plant-activity subdues its food, changes its shape and its place, subordinates it to its use; but what the matter brings with it, and still retains of the world beyond the plant, does not exist for the plant; the plant cannot read or interpret the rest of the universe from that small portion of it which it has taken up within its own organism. And yet the history of the universe is impressed on each particle of matter, as well within the plant as outside of it, and it could be understood were there capacities for recognizing it.

The reaction of the life of the plant upon the external world is not sufficient to const.i.tute a fixed, abiding individuality. With each accretion there is some change of particular individuality. Every growth to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals--new plants--a ceaseless multiplication of individuals, and not the preservation of the same individual. The species is preserved, but not the particular individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual, which grows out from the previous growth as the first sprout grew from the seed. Each part furnishes a soil for the next. When a plant no longer sends out new individuals, we say it is dead. The life of the plant is only a life of nutrition.

Aristotle called vegetable life "the nutritive soul," and the life of the animal the "feeling," or _sensitive_ soul. Nutrition is only an activity of preservation of the general form in new individuals, it is only the life of the species, and not the life of the permanent individual.

Therefore we see that in the vegetable world we do not possess a being that can be educated--for no individual of it can realize _within_ itself the species; its realization of the species is a continual process of going out of itself in new individuals, but no activity of _return_ to itself, so as to preserve _the ident.i.ty_ of an individual.

II.

Feeling is a unity of the parts of an organism everywhere present in it; feeling is also an ideal reproduction of the external surroundings; feeling is therefore a synthesis of the internal and external. Aristotle joins locomotion and desire to feeling, as correlates; how desire is a more explicit recognition of the unity of the external and internal than the first form of feeling is; feeling reproduces the external without destroying its externality, while nutrition receives the external only after it has destroyed its individuality and a.s.similated it; desire is the side of feeling that unfolds into will.

With feeling or sensibility we come to a being that reacts on the external world in a far higher manner, and realizes a more wonderful form of individuality.

The animal possesses, in common with the plant, a process of a.s.similation and nutrition. Moreover, he possesses a capacity to _feel_.

Through _feeling_, or sensation, all of the parts of his extended organism are united in one centre. He is one individual, and not a bundle of separate individuals, as a plant is. With feeling, likewise, are joined _locomotion_ and _desire_. For these are counterparts of feeling. He feels--_i.e._, lives as one indivisible unity throughout his organism and controls it, and moves the parts of his body. Desire is more than mere feeling. Mere feeling alone is the perception of the external within the being, hence an ideal reproduction of the external world. In feeling, the animal exists not only within himself, but also pa.s.ses over his limit, and has for object the reality of the external world that limits him. Hence it is the perception of his finiteness--his limits are his defects, his needs, wants, inadequateness--his separation from the world as a whole. In feeling, the animal perceives his separation from the rest of the world, and also his union with it.

Feeling expands into desire when the external world, or some portion of it, is seen as ideally belonging to the limited unity of the animal being. It is beyond the limit, and ought to be a.s.similated within the limited individuality of the animal.

Mere _feeling_, when attentively considered, is found to contain these wonderful features of self-activity: it reproduces for itself the external world that limits it; it makes for itself an ideal object, which includes its own self and its not-self at the same time. It is a higher form than mere nutrition; for nutrition destroys the nature of such externality as it receives into itself, while feeling preserves the external in its foreign individuality.

But through _feeling_ the animal ascends to _desire_, and sees the independent externality as an object for its acquisition, and through locomotion it is enabled to seize and appropriate it in a degree which the plant did not possess.

III.

The various forms of feeling--its specialization: (_a_) touch, the feeling of mere limits, the indifferent external independence of the organism and its surroundings; (_b_) taste, feeling of the external object when it is undergoing dissolution by a.s.similation; (_c_) smell, the feeling of chemical dissolution in general; (_d_) hearing, the feeling of the resistance of bodies against attacks: sound being vibration caused by elastic reaction against attacks on cohesion; (_e_) seeing, the feeling of objects in their independence, without dissolution or attack; plant life, nutrition, a process in which the individuality is not preserved either in time or in s.p.a.ce; animal life, as feeling, preserves its individuality as regards s.p.a.ce, but not as regards time.

Having noted these important characteristics of the lower orders of life, and found that _reaction_ from the part against the whole--from the internal against the external--belongs to plant life and animal life, we may now briefly mention the ways in which feeling is particularized. In the lower animals it is only the feeling of touch; in higher organisms it becomes also localized as seeing, hearing, taste, and smell. These forms of sense-perception const.i.tute a scale (as it were) of feeling. With touch, there is reproduction of externality, but the ideality of the reproduction is not so complete as in the other forms. With taste, the feeling cognizes the external object as undergoing dissolution, and a.s.similation within its own organism. We taste only what we are beginning to destroy by the first process of a.s.similation--that of eating. In smell, we perceive chemical dissolution of bodies. In seeing and hearing, we have the forms of _ideal_ sensibility. Hearing perceives the attack made on the individuality of an external thing, and its reaction in vibrations, which reveal to us its internal nature--its cohesion, etc. In seeing, we have the highest form of sense-perception as the perception of things in their external independence--not as being destroyed chemically, like the objects of taste and smell; not as being attacked and resisting, like the objects which are known through the ear; not as mere limits to our organism, as in the sense of touch.

Sense-perception, as the developed realization of the activity of feeling, belongs to the animal creation, including man as an animal.

We have not yet, therefore, answered the question of capacity for education, so far as it concerns a discrimination between man and the brute. We have only arrived at the conclusion that the vegetable world does not possess the capacity for education, because its individual specimens are no complete individuals, but only transitory phases manifesting the species by continual reproduction of new individuals which are as incomplete as the old ones. Plant life does not possess that self-activity which returns into itself in the same individual--if we may so express it; it goes out of one individual into another perpetually. Its ident.i.ty is that of the _species_, but not of the _individual_.