The Story of the Mind Part 9

It is my aim in this chapter to indicate some of the variations which are shown by different children; and on the basis of such facts to endeavour to arrive at a more definite idea of what variations of treatment are called for in the several cla.s.ses into which the children are divided. I shall confine myself at first to those differences which are more hereditary and const.i.tutional.

_First Period--Early Childhood._--The first and most comprehensive distinction is that based on the division of the life of man into the two great spheres of reception and action. The "sensory" and the "motor" are becoming the most common descriptive terms of current psychology. We hear all the while of sensory processes, sensory contents, sensory centres, sensory attention, etc.; and, on the other hand, of motor processes, motor centres, motor ataxy, motor attention, motor consciousness, etc. And in the higher reaches of mental function, the same ant.i.thesis comes out in the contrast of sensory and motor aphasia, alexia, sensory and motor types of memory and imagination, etc. Indeed the tendency is now strong to think that when we have a.s.signed a given function of consciousness to one or other side of the nervous apparatus, making it either sensory or motor, then our duty to it is done. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the distinction is throwing great light on the questions of mind which involve also the correlative questions of the nervous system. This is true of all questions of educational psychology.

This first distinction between children--as having general application--is that which I may cover by saying that some are more active, or motile, while others are more pa.s.sive, or receptive. This is a common enough distinction; but possibly a word or two on its meaning in the const.i.tution of the child may give it more actual value.

The "active" person to the psychologist is one who is very responsive to what we have called Suggestions. Suggestions may be described in most general terms as any and all the influences from outside, from the environment, both physical and personal, which get a lodgment in consciousness and lead to action. A child who is "suggestible" to a high degree shows it in what we call "motility." The suggestions which take hold of him translate themselves very directly into action. He tends to act promptly, quickly, unreflectively, a.s.similating the newer elements of the suggestions of the environment to the ways of behaviour fixed by his earlier habits. Generally such a person, child or adult, is said to "jump" at conclusions; he is anxious to know in order to act; he acts in some way on all events or suggestions, even when no course of action is explicitly suggested, and even when one attempts to keep him from acting.

Psychologically such a person is dominated by habit. And this means that his nervous system sets, either by its hereditary tendencies or by the undue predominance of certain elements in his education, quickly in the direction of motor discharge. The great channels of readiest out-pouring from the brain into the muscles have become fixed and pervious; it is hard for the processes once started in the sense centres, such as those of sight, hearing, etc., to hold in their energies. They tend to unstable equilibrium in the direction of certain motor combinations, which in their turn represent certain cla.s.ses of acts. This is habit; and the person of the extreme motor type is always a creature of habit.

Now what is the line of treatment that such a child should have? The necessity for getting an answer to this question is evident from what was said above--i. e., that the very rise of the condition itself is due, apart from heredity, oftener than not to the fact that he has not had proper treatment from his teachers.

The main point for a teacher to have in mind in dealing with such a boy or girl--the impulsive, active one, always responsive, but almost always in error in what he says and does--is that here is a case of habit. Habit is good; indeed, if we should go a little further we should see that all education is the forming of habits; but here, in this case, what we have is not habits, but habit. This child shows a tendency to habit _as such_: to habits of any and every kind. The first care of the teacher in order to the control of the formation of habits is in some way to bring about a little inertia of habit, so to speak--a short period of organic hesitation, during which the reasons pro and con for each habit may be brought into the consciousness of the child.

The means by which this tendency to crude, inconsiderate action on the part of the child is to be controlled and regulated is one of the most typical questions for the intelligent teacher. Its answer must be different for children of different ages. The one thing to do, in general, however, from the psychologist's point of view, is in some way to bring about greater complications in the motor processes which the child uses most habitually, and with this complication to get greater inhibition along the undesirable lines of his activity.

Inhibition is the damming up of the processes for a period, causing some kind of a "setback" of the energies of movement into the sensory centres, or the redistribution of this energy in more varied and less habitual discharges. With older children a rational method is to a.n.a.lyze for them the mistakes they have made, showing the penalties they have brought upon themselves by hasty action. This requires great watchfulness. In cla.s.s work, the teacher may profitably point out the better results reached by the pupil who "stops to think." This will bring to the reform of the hasty scholar the added motive of semi-public comparison with the more deliberate members of the cla.s.s.

Such procedure is quite un.o.bjectionable if made a recognised part of the cla.s.s method; yet care should be taken that no scholar suffer mortification from such comparisons. The matter may be "evened up" by dwelling also on the merit of promptness which the scholar in question will almost always be found to show.

For younger pupils as well as older more indirect methods of treatment are more effective. The teacher should study the scholar to find the general trend of his habits. Then oversight should be exercised over both his tasks and his sports with certain objects in view. His habitual actions should be made as complicated as his ability can cope with; this in order to educate his habits and keep them from working back into mere mechanism. If he shows his fondness for drawing by marking his desk, see that he has drawing materials at hand and some intelligent tasks in this line to do; not as tasks, but for himself.

Encourage him to make progress always, not simply to repeat himself.

If he has awkward habits of movement with his hands and feet, try to get him interested in games that exercise these members in regular and skilful ways.

Furthermore, in his intellectual tasks such a pupil should be trained, as far as may be, on the more abstract subjects, which do not give immediate openings for action. Mathematics is the best possible discipline for him. Grammar also is good; it serves at once to interest him, if it is well taught, in certain abstract relationships, and also to send out his motor energies in the exercise of speech, which is the function which always needs exercise, and which is always under the observation of the teacher. Grammar, in fact, is one of the very best of primary-school subjects, because instruction in it issues at once in the very motor functions which embody the relationships which the teacher seeks to impress. The teacher has in his ear, so to speak, the evidence as to whether his instruction is understood or not. This gives him a valuable opportunity to keep his instruction well ahead of its motor expression--thus leading the pupil to think rather than to act without thinking--and at the same time to point out the errors of performance which follow from haste in pa.s.sing from thought to action.

These indirect methods of reaching the impulsive pupil should never be cast aside for the direct effort to "control" such a scholar. The very worst thing that can be done to such a boy or girl is to command him or her to sit still or not to act; and a still worse thing--to make a comparative again on the head of the superlative--is to affix to the command painful penalties. This is a direct violation of the principle of Suggestion. Such a command only tends to empty the pupil's mind of other objects of thought and interest, and so to keep his attention upon his own movements. This, then, amounts to a continual suggestion to him to do just what you want to keep him from doing. On the contrary, unless you give him suggestions and interests which lead his thought away from his acts, it is impossible not to aggravate his bad tendencies by your very efforts. This is the way, as I intimated above, that many teachers create or confirm bad habits in their pupils, and so render any amount of well-intended positive instruction abortive. It seems well established that a suggestion of the negative--that is, not to do a thing--has no negative force; but, on the contrary, in the early period, it amounts only to a stronger suggestion in the positive sense, since it adds emphasis, to the thing which is forbidden. The "not" in a prohibition is no addition to the pictured course to which it is attached, and the physiological fact that the attention tends to set up action upon that which is attended to comes in to put a premium on disobedience. Indeed, the philosophy of all punishment rests in this consideration, i. e., that unless the penalty tends to fill the mind with some object other than the act punished, it does more harm than good. The punishment must be actual and its nature diverting; never a threat which terminates there, nor a penalty which fixes the thought of the offence more strongly in mind.

This is to say, that the permanent inhibition of a movement at this period is best secured by establishing some different movement.

The further consideration of the cases of great motility would lead to the examination of the kinds of memory and imagination and their treatment; to that we return below. We may now take up the instances of the sensory type considered with equal generality.

The sensory children are in the main those which seem more pa.s.sive, more troubled with physical inertia, more contemplative when a little older, less apt in learning to act out new movements, less quick at taking a hint, etc.

These children are generally further distinguished as being--and here the ant.i.thesis to the motor ones is very marked--much less suggestible. They seem duller when young. Boys often get credit for dulness compared with girls on this account. Even as early as the second year can this distinction among children be readily observed in many instances. The motor child will show sorrow by loud crying and vigorous action, while the sensory child will grieve in quiet, and continue to grieve when the other has forgotten the disagreeable occurrence altogether. The motor one it is that asks a great many questions and seems to learn little from the answers; while the sensory one learns simply from hearing the questions of the other and the answers given to them. The motor child, again, gets himself hurt a great many times in the same way, without developing enough self-control to restrain himself from the same mistake again and again; the sensory child tends to be timid in the presence of the unknown and uncertain, to learn from one or a few experiences, and to hold back until he gets satisfactory a.s.surances that danger is absent.

The former tends to be more restless in sitting, standing, etc., more demonstrative in affection, more impulsive in action, more forgiving in disposition.

As to the treatment of the sensory child, it is a problem of even greater difficulty and danger than that of his motor brother. The very nature of the distinction makes it evident that while the motor individual "gives himself away," so to speak, by constantly acting out his impressions, and so revealing his progress and his errors, with the other it is not so. All knowledge that we are ever able to get of the mental condition of another individual is through his movements, expressive, in a technical sense, or of other kinds, such as his actions, att.i.tudes, lines of conduct, etc. We have no way to read thought directly. So just in so far as the sensory individual is less active, to that degree he is less expressive, less self-revealing. To the teacher, therefore, he is more of an enigma. It is harder to tell in his case what instruction he has appreciated and made his own; and what, on the other hand, has been too hard for him; what wise, and what unwise. Where the child of movement speaks out his impulsive interpretations, this one sinks into himself and gives no answer. So we are deprived of the best way of interpreting him--that afforded by his own interpretation of himself.

A general policy of caution is therefore strongly to be recommended.

Let the teacher wait in every case for some positive indication of the child's real state of mind. Even the directions given the child may not have been understood, or the quick word of admonition may have wounded him, or a duty which is so elementary as to be a commonplace in the mental life of the motor child may yet be so vaguely apprehended that to insist upon its direct performance may cost the teacher all his influence with the pupil of this type. It is better to wait even at the apparent risk of losing valuable days than to proceed a single step upon a mistaken estimate of the child's measure of a.s.similation. And, further, the effect of wrong treatment upon this boy or girl is very different from that of a similar mistake in the other case. He becomes more silent, retired, even secretive, when once an unsympathetic relationship is suggested between him and his elder.

Then more positively--his instruction should be well differentiated.

He should in every possible case be given inducements to express himself. Let him recite a great deal. Give him simple verses to repeat. Keep him talking all you can. Show him his mistakes with the utmost deliberation and kindliness of manner; and induce him to repeat his performances in your hearing after the correction has been suggested. Cultivate the imitative tendency in him; it is the handmaid to the formation of facile habits of action. In arranging the children's games, see that he gets the very active parts, even though he be backward and hesitating about a.s.suming them. Make him as far as possible a leader, in order to cultivate his sense of responsibility for the doing of things, and to lead to the expression of his understanding of arrangements, etc. In it all, the essential thing is to bring him out in some kind of expression; both for the sake of the improved balance it gives himself, and as an indication to the observant teacher of his progress and of the next step to be taken in his development.

It is for the sensory child, I think, that the kindergarten has its great utility. It gives him facility in movement and expression, and also some degree of personal and social confidence. But for the same reasons the kindergarten over-stimulates the motor scholars at the corresponding age. There should really be two kindergarten methods--one based on the idea of deliberation, the other on that of expression.

The task of the educator here, it is evident, is to help nature correct a tendency to one-sided development; just as the task is this also in the former case; but here the variation is on the side of idiosyncrasy ultimately, and of genius immediately. For genius, I think, is the more often developed from the contemplative mind, with the relatively dammed-up brain, of this child, than from the smooth-working machine of the motor one. But just for this reason, if the damming-up be liberated, not in the channels of healthy a.s.similation, and duly correlated growth, but in the forced discharges of violent emotion, followed by conditions of melancholy and by certain unsocial tendencies, then the promise of genius ripens into eccentricity, and the blame is possibly ours.

It seems true--although great caution is necessary in drawing inferences--that here a certain distinction may be found to hold also between the s.e.xes. It is possible that the apparent precocious alertness of girls in their school years, and earlier, may be simply a predominance among them of the motor individuals. This is borne out by the examination of the kinds of performance in which they seem to be more forward than boys. It resolves itself, so far as my observation goes, into greater quickness of response and greater agility in performance; not greater constructiveness, nor greater power of concentrated attention. The boys seem to need more instruction because they do not learn as much for themselves by acting upon what they already know. In later years, the distinction gets levelled off by the common agencies of education, and by the setting of tasks requiring more thought than the mere spontaneities of either type avail to furnish. Yet all the way through, I think there is something in the ordinary belief that woman is relatively more impulsive and more p.r.o.ne to the less reflective forms of action.

What has now been said may be sufficient to give some concrete force to the common opinion that education should take account of the individual character at this earliest stage. The general distinction between sensory and motor has, however, a higher application in the matter of memory and imagination at later stages of growth, to which we may now turn.

_Second Period._--The research is of course more difficult as the pupil grows older, since the influences of heredity tend to become blurred by the more constant elements of the child's home, school, and general social environment. The child whom I described just above as sensory in his type is constantly open to influences from the stimulating behaviour of his motor companion, as well as from the direct measures which parent and teacher take to overcome his too-decided tendencies and to prevent one-sided development. So, too, the motor child tends to find correctives in his environment.

The a.n.a.logy, however, between the more organic and hereditary differences in individuals, and the intellectual and moral variations which they tend to develop with advance in school age, is very marked; and we find a similar series of distinctions in the later period. The reason that there is a correspondence between the variations given in heredity and those due in the main to the educative influences of the single child's social environment is in itself very suggestive, but s.p.a.ce does not permit its exposition here.

The fact is this: the child tends, under the influence of his home, school, social surroundings, etc., to develop a marked character either in the sensory or in the motor direction, in his memory, imagination, and general type of mind.

Taking up the "motor" child first, as before, we find that his psychological growth tends to confirm him in his hereditary type. In all his social dealing with other children he is more or less domineering and self-a.s.sertive; or at least his conduct leads one to form that opinion of him. He seems to be constantly impelled to act so as to show himself off. He "performs" before people, shows less modesty than may be thought desirable in one of his tender years, impresses the forms of his own activity upon the other children, who come to stand about him with minds constrained to follow him. He is an object lesson in both the advantages and the risks of an aggressive life policy. He has a suggestion to make in every emergency, a line of conduct for each of his company, all marked out or supplied on the spur of the moment by his own quick sense of appropriate action; and for him, as for no one else, to hesitate is to be lost.

Now what this general policy or method of growth means to his consciousness is becoming more and more clear in the light of the theory of mental types. The reason a person is motor is that his mind tends always to be filled up most easily with memories or revived images of the twitchings, tensions, contractions, expansions, of the activities of the muscular system. He is a motor because the means of his thought generally, the mental coins which pa.s.s current in his thought exchange, are muscular sensations or the traces which such sensations have left in his memory. The very means by which he thinks of a situation, an event, a duty, is not the way it looked, or the way it sounded, or the way it smelt, tasted, or felt to the touch--in any of the experiences to which these senses are involved--but the means, the representatives, the instruments of his thought, are the feelings of the way he has acted. He has a tendency--and he comes to have it more and more--to get a muscular representation of everything; and his gauge of the value of this or that is this muscular measure of it, in terms of the action which it is calculated to draw out.

It is then this preference for one particular kind of mental imagery, and that the motor, or muscular kind, which gives this type of child his peculiarity in this more psychological period. When we pa.s.s from the mere outward and organic description of his peculiarities, attempted above in the case of very young children, and aim to ascertain the mental peculiarity which accompanies it and carries on the type through the individual's maturer years, we see our way to its meaning. The fact is that a peculiar kind of mental imagery tends to swell up in consciousness and monopolize the theatre of thought. This is only another way of saying that the attention is more or less educated in the direction represented by this sort of imagery. Every time a movement is thought of, in preference to a sound or a sight which is also available, the habit of giving the attention to the muscular equivalents of things becomes more firmly fixed. This continues until the motor habit of attention becomes the only easy and normal way of attending; and then the person is fixed in his type for one, many, or all of his activities of thinking and action.

So now it is no longer difficult to see, I trust, why it is that the child or youth of this sort has the characteristics which he has. It is a familiar principle that attention to the thought of a movement tends to start that very movement. I defy any of my readers to think hard and long of winking the left eye and not have an almost irresistible impulse to wink that eye. There is no better way to make it difficult for a child to sit still than to tell him to sit still; for your words fill up his attention, as I had occasion to say above, with the thought of movements, and these thoughts bring on the movements, despite the best intentions of the child in the way of obedience. Watch an audience of little children--and children of an older growth will also do--when an excited speaker harangues them with many gestures, and see the comical reproduction of the gestures by the children's hands. They picture the movements, the attention is fixed on them, and appropriate actions follow.

It is only the generalizing of these phenomena that we find realized in the boy or girl of the motor type. Such a child is constantly thinking of things by their movement equivalents. Muscular sensations throng up in consciousness at every possible signal and by every train of a.s.sociation; so it is not at all surprising that all informations, instructions, warnings, reproofs, suggestions, pa.s.s right through such a child's consciousness and express themselves by the channels of movement. Hence the impulsive, restless, domineering, unmeditative character of the child. We may now endeavour to describe a little more closely his higher mental traits.

1. In the first place the motor mind tends to _very quick generalization_. Every teacher knows the boys in school who antic.i.p.ate their conclusions, on the basis of a single ill.u.s.tration. They reach the general notion which is most broad in extent, in application, but most shallow in intent, in richness, in real explaining or descriptive meaning. For example, such a boy will hear the story of Napoleon, proceed to define heroism in terms of military success, and then go out and try the Napoleon act upon his playfellows. This tendency to generalize is the mental counterpart of the tendency to act seen in his conduct. The reason he generalizes is that the brain energies are not held back in the channels of perception, but pour themselves right out toward the motor equivalents of former perceptions which were in any way similar; then the present perceptions are lost in the old ones toward which attention is held by habit, and action follows. To the child all heroes are Napoleons because Napoleon was the first hero, and the channels of action inspired by him suffice now for the appropriate conduct.

2. Such a scholar is very _poor at noting and remembering distinctions_. This follows naturally from the hasty generalizations which he makes. Having once identified a new fact as the same as an old one, and having so reached a defective sense of the general cla.s.s, it is then more and more hard for him to retrace his steps and sort out the experiences more carefully. Even when he discovers his mistake, his old impulse to act seizes him again, and he rushes to some new generalization wherewith to replace the old, again falling into error by his stumbling haste to act. The teacher is oftener perhaps brought to the verge of impatience by scholars of this cla.s.s than by any others.

3. Following, again, from these characteristics, there is a third remark to be made about the youth of this type; and it bears upon a peculiarity which it is very hard for the teacher to estimate and control. These motor boys and girls have what I may characterize as _fluidity of the attention_. By this is meant a peculiar quality of mind which all experienced teachers are in some degree familiar with, and which they find baffling and unmanageable.

By "fluidity" of the attention I mean the state of hurry, rush, inadequate inspection, quick transition, all-too-ready-a.s.similation, hear-but-not-heed, in-one-ear-and-out-the-other habit of mind. The best way to get an adequate sense of the state is to recall the pupil who has it to the most marked degree, and picture his mode of dealing with your instructions. Such a pupil hears your words, says "yes,"

even acts appropriately so far as your immediate instructions go; but when he comes to the same situation again, he is as virginly innocent of your lesson as if his teacher had never been born. Psychologically, the state differs from preoccupation, which characterizes quite a different type of mind. The motor boy is not preoccupied. Far from that, he is quite ready to attend to you. But when he attends, it is with a momentary concentration--with a rush like the flow of a mountain stream past the point of the bank on which you sit. His attention is flowing, always in transition, leaping from "it to that,"

with superb agility and restlessness. But the exercise it gains from its movements is its only reward. Its acquisitions are slender in the extreme. It ill.u.s.trates, on the mental plane, the truth of the "rolling stone." It corresponds, as a mental character, to the muscular restlessness which the same type of child shows in the earlier period previously spoken of.

The psychological explanation of this "fluid attention" is more or less plain, but I can not take s.p.a.ce to expound it. Suffice it to say that the attention is itself, probably, in its brain seat, a matter of the motor centres; its physical seat both "gives and takes" in co-operation with the processes which shed energy out into the muscles. So it follows that, in the ready muscular revivals, discharges, transitions, which we have seen to be prominent in the motor temperament the attention is carried along, and its "fluidity"

is only an incident to the fluidity of the motor symbols of which this sort of a mind continually makes use.

Coming a little closer to the pedagogical problems which this type of pupil raises before us, we find, in the first place, that it is excessively difficult for this scholar to give continuous or adequate attention to anything of any complexity. The movements of attention are so easy, the outlets of energy, to use the physical figure, so large and well used, that the minor relationships of the thing are pa.s.sed over. The variations of the object from its cla.s.s are swept away in the onrush of his motor tendencies. He a.s.sumes the facts which he does not understand, and goes right on to express himself in action on these a.s.sumptions. So while he seems to take in what is told him, with an intuition that is surprisingly swift, and a personal adaptation no less surprising, the disappointment is only the more keen when the instructor finds the next day that he has not penetrated at all into the inner current of this scholar's mental processes.

Again, as marked as this is in its early stages, the continuance of it leads to results which are nothing short of deplorable. When such a student has gone through a preparatory school without overcoming this tendency to "fluid attention" and comes to college, the instructors in the higher inst.i.tutions are practically helpless before him. We say of him that "he has never learned to study," that he does not know "how to apply himself," that he has no "power of a.s.similation." All of which simply means that his channels of reaction are so formed already that no instruction can get sufficient lodgment in him to bring about any modification of his "apperceptive systems." The embarra.s.sment is the more marked because such a youth, all through his education period, is willing, ready, evidently receptive, prompt, and punctual in all his tasks.

Now what shall be done with such a student in his early school years?

This is a question for the secondary teacher especially, apart from the more primary measures recommended above. It is in the years between eight and fifteen that this type of mind has its rapid development; before that the treatment is mainly preventive, and consists largely in suggestions which aim to make the muscular discharges more deliberate and the general tone less explosive. But when the boy or girl comes to school with the dawning capacity for independent self-direction and personal application, then it is that the problem of the motor scholar becomes critical. The "let-alone"

method puts a premium upon the development of his tendencies and the eventual playing out of his mental possibilities in mere motion.

Certain positive ways of giving some indirect discipline to the mind of this type may be suggested.

Give this student relatively difficult and complex tasks. There is no way to hinder his exuberant self-discharges except by measures which embarra.s.s and baffle him. We can not "lead him into all truth"; we have to drive him back from all error. The lessons of psychology are to the effect that the normal way to teach caution and deliberation is the way of failure, repulse, and unfortunate, even painful, consequences. Personal appeals to him do little good, since it is a part of his complaint that he is too ready to hear all appeals; and also, since he is not aware of his own lack nor able to carry what he hears into effect. So keep him in company of scholars a little more advanced than he is. Keep him out of the concert recitations, where his tendency to haste would work both personal and social harm.

Refrain from giving him a.s.sistance in his tasks until he has learned from them something of the real lesson of discouragement, and then help him only by degrees, and by showing him one step at a time, with constant renewals of his own efforts. Shield him with the greatest pains from distractions of all kinds, for even the things and events about him may carry his attention off at the most critical moments.

Give him usually the secondary parts in the games of the school, except when real planning, complex execution, and more or less generalship are required; then give him the leading parts: they exercise his activities in new ways not covered by habit, and if he do not rise to their complexity, then the other party to the sport will, and his haste will have its own punishment, and so be a lesson to him.

Besides these general checks and regulations, there remains the very important question as to what studies are most available for this type of mind. I have intimated already the general answer that ought to be given to this question. The aim of the studies of the motor student should be discipline in the direction of correct generalization, and, as helpful to this, discipline in careful observation of concrete facts. On the other hand, the studies which involve principles simply of a descriptive kind should have little place in his daily study.

They call out largely the more mechanical operations of memory, and their command can be secured for the most part by mere repet.i.tion of details all similar in character and of equal value. The measure of the utility to him of the different studies of the schoolroom is found in the relative demand they make upon him to modify his hasty personal reactions, to suspend his thoughtless rush to general results, and back of it all, to hold the attention long enough upon the facts as they arise to get some sense of the logical relationships which bind them together. Studies which do not afford any logical relationships, and which tend, on the contrary, to foster the habit of learning by repet.i.tion, only tend to fix the student in the quality of attention which I have called "fluidity."

In particular, therefore: give this student all the mathematics he can absorb, and pa.s.s him from arithmetic into geometry, leaving his algebra till later. Give him plenty of grammar, taught inductively.

Start him early in the elements of physics and chemistry. And as opposed to this, keep him out of the cla.s.ses of descriptive botany and zoology. Rather let him join exploring parties for the study of plants, stones, and animals. A few pet animals are a valuable adjunct to any school museum. If there be an industrial school or machine shop near at hand, try to get him interested in the way things are made, and encourage him to join in such employments. A false generalization in the wheels of a cart supplies its own corrective very quickly, or in the rigging and sails of a toy boat. Drawing from models is a fine exercise for such a youth, and drawing from life, as soon as he gets a little advanced in the control of his pencil. All this, it is easy to see, trains his impulsive movements into some degree of subjection to the deliberative processes.

With this general line of treatment in mind, the details of which the reader will work out in the light of the boy's type, s.p.a.ce allows me only two more points before I pa.s.s to the sensory scholar.