XXIITHINKING AND THE HIGHER LIFE

Woman in the arts.

In 1840 Harriet Martineau visited the United States and reported only seven occupations open to women,—teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, working in cotton factories, typesetting, bookbinding, and household service. The school has been blamed for causing the rising generation to underestimate the last named in comparison with the other occupations open to women. When anything goes wrong in American life the school is not only blamed, but also expected to supply the remedy. It must be admitted that there is much false thinking on the subject of household servicein so-called polite society. A woman may cook for herself and her own household without losing caste. As soon as she becomes the cook in another woman’s kitchen she is banished from the parlor of fashionable society. She can stand in a store or work in a factory without losing her place in the social scale; but if she works for hire in the kitchen, she is thenceforth treated as belonging to a lower caste. Is thinking in the culinary art less valuable or less difficult than the thinking involved in selling ribbons and laces? Does the preparation of a palatable meal require less brains and less skill than the setting of type or the making of yarn? Does good cooking add less to the welfare of the race than playing on the piano or painting in oil- or water-colors? The teaching of domestic science is calculated to change public opinion and to add to the sum of human happiness by emancipating the home from the tyranny and the caprices of the servant girl and by securing to deserving help a juster appreciation of efficient thinking in household service.

America the paradise of woman.

America has been aptly named the paradise of woman. The American woman is not expected to break stones upon the highway, to carry market-baskets on the top of her head, to pull the milk-cart alongside of the dog, to do all kinds of rough manual labor, whilst strong-armed and able-bodied men have charge of the elementary schools. Fully two-thirds of the teachers in America are women. Her sphere of activity has been greatly enlarged in other directions. She may be the inferior of the stronger sex in original and creative work,—time will settle that question,—but in ability to carry college work and to do practical thinking she has shown herself the equal of her brother and in every respect deserving of the exalted position assigned to her in the New World. She has attained her standingin America through her ability to think and to apply thought in the useful arts.

The liberal arts.

The liberal arts were subdivided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, sought to teach the art of thinking correctly, of expressing thought in correct language, and of presenting it in forceful, persuasive discourse.

Quadrivium.

Discovery.

The quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, was composed of thought-studies, and furnished material for the thinking of generations of the best men. The enlargement of the boundaries of human knowledge has increased the number of studies to such an extent that no student need weep like Alexander because there are no more worlds to conquer. Moreover, in many directions the human race is simply on the border-land of discovery. At the beginning of this century a professor lamented that the age of discovery had passed. The professor who quoted him in the middle of the century could point to the steam-engine, the electric telegraph, and the use of anæsthetics. In the closing year of the century we can point to a record of inventions and discoveries unsurpassed in the thought-achievements of the race. Man has learned to put thought into machines that do work with a speed and accuracy impossible of attainment by the human hand. His thought is changing the face of the earth and developing a civilization based upon a degree of physical well-being and comfort of which the man of the last century had not the faintest conception. To follow in thought the achievements of a single year in the improvement of machinery and the resulting additions to our material wealth is to fill the soul with wonder at the marvellous powers of the race. All is due primarily to the exercise of the power of thought, and secondarilyto the manifold ways of expressing and realizing thought. Never were there such magnificent opportunities for those who have learned to combine thought and action, intelligence and skill, brains and the handicrafts. The tradesman deserves honor and recognition with those who earn their bread by their wits. Both can live the higher life of thought and culture.

Trivium.

The relation of the trivium to the art of thinking is often misconceived. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric furnish valuable food for thought, excellent discipline for the mind, especially for the understanding; but they do not beget the power of thinking in new fields of investigation. Their function is corrective, not creative. Those who hope to learn the art of composition by the study of English grammar are sure to be disappointed. Grammar furnishes the tests and rules by which one may determine the correctness of sentences. It may furnish discipline for the understanding, and thus prove valuable as a means of culture. It utterly fails to produce thinkers beyond the thinking required in the interpretation of language. Parsing, analysis, and diagramming often become a mechanical iteration of set phrases, resulting in mental apathy. Questions in unexpected forms may then be needed to rouse the slumbering powers of the intellect.

Homer and Plato wrote good Greek, although neither of them had any knowledge of grammar as a science. Men used correct sentences long before there was a scientific treatment of the sentence.

The same remarks are applicable to the other studies of the trivium. Men’s minds obeyed the laws of thought and drew correct inferences long before the science of logic was formulated. He who studies logic in the hope that it will make him an original thinker is doomed to disappointment. Logic has a critical as well as a disciplinaryvalue. Its influence upon the intellectual life is like that of mathematics. It furnishes a test for one’s own thinking and provides the means for detecting fallacies in the reasoning of others. Logic can be taught with advantage to those who have learned to think; it fails to make creative spirits who have the power of gathering thoughts, weaving them into a system, and reaching trustworthy conclusions.

Rhetoric possesses great disciplinary value for the understanding. It deserves careful study on the part of those who express their thoughts in public discourse. The moment it becomes an end, instead of means to an end, it defeats its own purpose. To draw the attention to the figures of speech and other rhetorical devices of an oration is to divert the mind from the line of thought and to defeat the purpose for which rhetoric is taught. The studies of the trivium are like the handicrafts in that they serve as means to an end. From one point of view they deserve to be classed with the useful arts; from another it is apparent that they furnish material for thinking quite as valuable as the multitudinous branches of study into which the quadrivium has been expanded.

Fine arts.

The arts are sometimes divided upon the basis of use and beauty. From one point of view, as already indicated, the liberal arts may be regarded as belonging to the category of the useful, and thus as forming part of a class distinct from the fine arts. Yet the idea of beauty enters into all that man does. Sooner or later he seeks to adorn his home, his language, everything that he employs in giving expression to his inner life.

The thinking which lies at the basis of the fine arts has distinguishing qualities and characteristics. The mind may be so completely absorbed in poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and in the other things which make life beautiful that it ceases to be a fit instrument for usefulliving or for engaging in more advanced thinking. The element of feeling predominates in the appreciation of the beautiful. The two factors which enter into the beautiful are the idea and the form. By casting into the alembic of the imagination the materials which the mind gathers from the external world, there is evolved the ideal; as soon as this ideal is found embodied in any form of nature or art the object is called beautiful. The power to see the idea in the form, the ideal in the work of art, is a function of thinking, and deserves attention from those who are teaching others to think.

Æsthetic and scientific studies differ.

Vast is the difference between the æsthetic and the scientific appreciation of nature. The scientist pulls the flower to pieces, analyzes its parts, imposes hard names, and destroys that about the flower which is most attractive to the child and the poet. The student of beauty admires it as it is in its original surroundings. He cultivates it to adorn the garden, the yard, the home, the school-room.

Very much, therefore, depends upon the way in which nature is studied. The study may be pursued to beget habits of observation or to cultivate a sense of the beautiful. It may be studied for the sake of ascertaining the laws which govern the growth of plants, the changes of the seasons, the movements of the heavenly bodies, the forces which give us light, heat, and all else we need for body and mind. When it is studied for the sake of truth and beauty, the effort lifts us into the domain of the higher life.

The higher life.

Why should any portion of our life, as compared with another, be styled the higher life? Because a man’s life may abound in some of the activities which are essential to his existence and still fail to realize the end of his existence. Take life on the farm with all its splendid opportunities for the study of nature and ofall that is attractive in God’s universe. Which should be of most account in the education of the farmer’s sons and daughters,—mind or money, light or lucre, the soul or the soil, character or capacity for getting riches? The curse of wealth, fame, office, and the like is that, if they become the chief object of one’s ambition, they drag the soul into the dust of dishonor, if not the dust of the street.

The farmer boy.

“If the farmer boy has only been taught how to raise better stock, what will he do when that better stock ranges his farm? Will he be a happier father and a nobler citizen? Will his home life be any less coarse and dull? Will the possession of blooded stock make him any more honest than common stock? If that is all you have taught him, will he not still be a brute among his brutes? Indeed, just so far as you increase his money-making without increasing his true culture and manliness, you increase the probability that he will die a drunkard, his son a spendthrift, and his grandson a pauper. The supreme need is character to guide these resources.”[56]

The things of the mind.

Whilst it is worth while to dignify labor in all the handicrafts by showing the need for intelligent thought on the part of those who follow them, it is of vastly more importance to emphasize the things of the mind, and to show how the ability to think conditions the activities of the higher life and is essential to the full realization of man’s being. The relation of thinking to the higher life will claim our attention in the concluding chapter.

How vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating and of the thinking man! indeed, as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash. Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an active and prevailing thought,—a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the object, and refreshing the soul with new discoveries and images of things, and thereby extending the bounds of apprehension, and enlarging the territories of reason.Dr. South.What is more pleasant than to read of strong-hearted youths, who, in the midst of want and hardships of many kinds, have clung to books, feeding, like bees to flowers? By the light of pine-logs, in dim-lit garrets, in the fields following the plough, in early dawns when others are asleep, they ply their blessed task, seeking nourishment for the mind, athirst for truth, yearning for full sight of the high worlds of which they have caught faint glimpses; happier now, lacking everything save faith and a great purpose, than in after-years when success shall shower on them applause and gold.Bishop Spalding.

Dr. South.

What is more pleasant than to read of strong-hearted youths, who, in the midst of want and hardships of many kinds, have clung to books, feeding, like bees to flowers? By the light of pine-logs, in dim-lit garrets, in the fields following the plough, in early dawns when others are asleep, they ply their blessed task, seeking nourishment for the mind, athirst for truth, yearning for full sight of the high worlds of which they have caught faint glimpses; happier now, lacking everything save faith and a great purpose, than in after-years when success shall shower on them applause and gold.

Bishop Spalding.

The Book of books.

The preceding chapter pointed out the function of thinking in the arts, and the reciprocal influence of these upon the power of thought. It remains to point out the relation of thinking to the higher life. The best point of departure for such a discussion is the book which has done more to foster the higher life of the soul than all other books combined. From some points of view the best book on teaching ever made is the Book of books. In it we find not only practical examples and marvellous illustrations of the art of the teacher, but also the most significant maxims and statements bearing upon the development of the inner life. In the account of the Temptation in the Wilderness, we have an utterance from the lips of the Great Teacher, directing our attention towards the higher life. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. iv. 4.)

Bread-studies.

The Great Teacher.

In the universities one hears a great deal about bread-studies. Knowledge for its own sake, culture for culture’s sake, education, not for the sake of its money-value, but for the mind’s sake, are the ideals held up before the minds of the students. A world-famous professor of mathematics demonstrated a new theorem, and closed the demonstration with the exclamation, “Now, that is true, and, thank God, nobody can use it!” Does knowledge increase in value as itsutility diminishes? This professor was drawing an annual salary of five thousand dollars, and could well afford to ignore the money-value of an education. Lifted above the struggle for bread, he had no sympathy with the multitudes in whose experience the struggle for bread is the all-absorbing problem of life. The theory of life propounded by the Great Teacher is very different. He did not despise the arts that make bread and win bread. Twice He miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes, in order to feed the multitudes. For many years He worked at the carpenter’s bench, and after the death of His father helped to support His mother. When hanging upon the cross, He intrusted His mother to the care of John, the “disciple whom Jesus loved.”

But when Satan came to him and suggested the making of bread by unlawful means, He repelled the tempter, saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Bread here stands for more than physical food. It is symbolic of the life that turns upon what we eat and drink, the garments we wear, and the houses we live in.

The French king.

Earning power.

The best of French kings cherished it as the ambition of his life to make every one of his subjects so well off as to be able on Sunday to have roast fowl for dinner. Had he lived in our day, he would have included among the objects of his ambition a new bonnet for every woman at least twice a year. Roast fowl and new bonnets cost money; and money indicates the plane from which very many people look at every question of government and education. Money stands for what we eat and drink, for the garments we wear and the houses we live in, for the thousands of creature comforts which we deem essential to our well-being and happiness. Perhaps the school has not done all it is destined to accomplish in fitting the pupils to win these, but thereis abundant evidence to show that a good school increases the earning power of the individual, and thereby makes possible the higher life of mind, or of the soul. The untutored red man eked out a scanty existence in spite of unparalleled advantages in soil and stream and climate; the intelligence begotten by the modern school has enabled our people to utilize and develop the material resources of the New World to such an extent that Carlyle sneeringly said, “America means roast turkey every day for everybody.” Let us accept the remark as an acknowledgment that the American people are better fed than those of England or Continental Europe; and yet Carlyle was right in hinting that there is a life higher than that which turns upon what we eat and drink and wear, for this is in accord with the view of life taught by the greatest Teacher of all the ages.

The basis of the higher life.

It is worth while to pause a moment for the purpose of pointing out the relation of the higher life to the side of life symbolized by bread. In a word, the higher life rests upon the other as a basis. Where the vital energies of a people are exhausted in the struggle for bread, the very mention of education is a mockery. The school lays the foundation for the higher life when it increases the average earning power of the industrial classes, and thereby makes it easier for them to gain a livelihood. Here is the first point of contact between the school and the higher life. There is no language sufficiently strong to condemn the spirit of the professor who, when he had demonstrated a new theorem in higher mathematics, thanked God that nobody could use it.

What money can and cannot buy.

Only professors filling well-endowed chairs at our universities can afford to speak disparagingly of Brot-studien and to advocate theories of education which would sunder the school from practical life. An educationthat unfits the pupil for bread-winning in case of necessity cannot be too severely condemned; among other reasons, because it fails to lay a proper foundation for the higher life. On the other hand, the school that does not aim at something higher than dollars and cents deserves equally severe condemnation; for that which makes life worth living cannot be bought with money. If you are rich, you may buy a fine house, but you cannot buy a happy home; that must be made,—madeby you and by those who occupy it with you. With money you may rent a pew in some fashionable church, but you cannot rent a good conscience,—that depends upon your manner of living and dealing with others. Money will enable you to buy a fine copy of Shakespeare, but it cannot purchase for you the ability to appreciate a play of Shakespeare,—that is the result of education. Wealth will enable you to cover the walls of your costly mansion with beautiful pictures; and the sewing-girl, if she has been properly taught in a public school, will get more enjoyment out of them than can possibly be gotten by the sons and daughters of wealth and luxury whose proper education has been neglected.

Thinking God’s thoughts.

The objection.

True contentment.

Plato wrote above the door of the academy, “Let no one enter here who is destitute of geometry.” Why did he value geometry so highly? Not merely as an introduction to the study of philosophy, for in one of his dialogues he says, “God geometrizes.” He had an idea that a youth in thinking the theorems of geometry is thinking divine thoughts. When Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion, he exclaimed, in ecstasy, “O God, I think thy thoughts after thee!” When a pupil learns to think the thoughts which the Creator has put into the starry heavens above us and into all nature about us, he isthinking God’s thoughts and tasting the enjoyments of the higher life. When he is taught the right use of books, and given access to a public library, he may acquire the power to think the best thoughts of the best men at their best moments. In nature study, in the reading lesson, in the teaching of science and literature, the school fosters the higher life of the pupil by enabling him to think God’s thoughts and man’s best thoughts as these are enshrined in creation and in the humanities. The objection is sometimes heard that the school makes the working-classes discontented with their lot. “Teach a man to think,” says the opponent of universal education, “and you make him dissatisfied with what he has and knows.” If the school fixes the eye upon wealth, fame, glory, official position, and other things which can be attained only by a few, and which, when sought as the chief end of life, resemble the apples of the Dead Sea, turning to ashes on the lips as soon as they are tasted, then, indeed, the school may doom its pupils to a life of discontent and disappointment. But if the school fixes the eye upon the things of the higher life, things which are within the reach of every boy and girl at school, it lays the foundation for a contentment far transcending the possibilities of a life that turns upon feasting, office-holding, and the things that can be bought with money.

It must be admitted that the exercise of the higher powers carries with it a certain feeling of discontent, but it is a feeling that conditions true progress and is not doomed to ultimate disappointment. The true test of what is preferable is the testimony of those who have knowledge of both modes of existence. Who that knows both does not value the pleasures of thinking above those of eating? Who would exchange the joy of doing right for anything attainable by the man who, for thesake of success, banishes ethics from his business or his politics? “Few human creatures,” says Mill, “would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.” “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is only because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.” Who would not rather be an intelligent workingman seeking to better his condition, than an ignoramus contented with little because he knows nothing of the joys of the higher life?

Life’s contradictions.

Tragedy and comedy.

Beauty.

Life is full of contradictions and incongruities and disappointments. Over against these, the school, in its relation to the higher life, has a duty to perform. For the discontent which springs from life’s contradictions and incongruities a safety-valve has been given to man in his ability to laugh. The person who never laughs is as one-sided and abnormal as the person who never prays. The comic is now recognized as one form of the beautiful, and the beautiful is closely allied to the true and the good. Without going into the philosophy of this matter, attention may be drawn to the fact that beauty has a home in the domain of art, as well as of nature; that the queen of the fine arts is poetry; that the greatest poet of all the ages was Shakespeare; that Shakespeare’s literary genius reached its highest flights in tragedies and comedies; that whilsttragedy and comedy are two forms of the beautiful in art, comedy is the highest form of the comic, whilst tragedy is the highest form of the sublime. In teaching us to appreciate the plays of Shakespeare, the school not merely teaches us when to laugh and when to weep, thereby furnishing the safety-valve to let off our discontent and to reconcile us anew to our lot, but puts us in possession of that which money cannot buy,—namely, the ability to appreciate the beautiful in its subtlest and sublimest forms. Who owns the moonlit skies, the millionaire or the poet? Who owns the hills and the valleys, the streams and the mountains; he in whose name the deeds and mortgages are recorded, or he whose soul can appreciate beauty and sublimity? Beauty has a home in nature and in art. It is the province of the school to put us in possession of the beautiful, the sublime, and the comic, for these quite as much as the true and the good belong to the things of the higher life.

Faith, hope, and love.

How about life’s disappointments? Higher than the life of thought is the life of faith and hope and love,—higher, because these are rooted and grounded in the life of thought, ripen above it as its highest fruitage and efflorescence. The nineteenth century has been an age of faith. Every scientific mind has profound faith in nature’s laws, in the universal efficacy of truth; and, like Agassiz and Gray and Drummond, multitudes of the best minds have made the step from faith in natural laws to faith in the laws which govern the spiritual world.

The common people evince a faith almost bordering on credulity in the readiness with which they accept the results of scientific research and investigation. Faith lies at the basis of great achievements. Bismarck declared that if he did not believe in the divine governmentof the world, he would not serve his country another day. “Take away my faith,” he exclaimed, “and you take away my country, too.” Whilst no religious test can he applied to those who teach in our public schools, our best people prefer teachers who have faith in the unseen to teachers who lack faith in the truths of revelation. In ways that escape observation, the spirit of faith passes from teacher to pupil, and gives the latter a sense of something to live for and something to be achieved.

Immortality.

Faith begets hope. The hope of glory, of rewards in civil and military life, of immortality on the pages of history, has stimulated to deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice, and will continue to do so to the end of time. The higher life knows of higher objects of hope than these. Immortality on the pages of history is only an immortality in printer’s ink. The true teacher wishes his pupils to cherish the hope of an immortality far more real than an immortality in printer’s ink; he seeks to implant in their hearts the hope of an immortal life in a world where the soul shall be robed in a body like unto Christ’s risen body, which Stephen saw in a vision of glory and Paul beheld in a manifestation of overwhelming splendor.

Love makes life worth living.

That which makes life worth living is the life of love. In the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, which is a poem, though lacking metre and rhyme, Paul speaks of faith, hope, and charity, and says that, of these three, the greatest is charity, or love, as the Revised Version translates it. Faith shall be changed to sight, and hope to glad fruition, but love shall abide forever. Throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity, love of the truth, as it is, in Jesus,—yea, man’s love for his Maker and his Saviour, and for the whole glorious company of the redeemed,—willcontinue to glow and to grow, lifting the soul to ever loftier heights of ecstasy and bliss. A foretaste of this ecstatic bliss is possible in this life. Love of home and country, of kindred and friends, of truth and righteousness, of beauty in all its forms, of goodness of every kind, up to the highest forms of the good, gives life on earth a heavenly charm. Even in this world, the love that binds human hearts, that makes homes and brotherhoods, that issues in deeds of kindness, friendship, and charity, is bringing more happiness to the race than all other agencies combined.

“The night has a thousand eyes,And the day but one;Yet the light of the whole world diesWith the setting sun.“The mind has a thousand eyes,And the heart but one;But the light of a whole life diesWhen love is done.”

“The night has a thousand eyes,And the day but one;Yet the light of the whole world diesWith the setting sun.

“The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the whole world dies

With the setting sun.

“The mind has a thousand eyes,And the heart but one;But the light of a whole life diesWhen love is done.”

“The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

But the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.”

Thinking and living.

The school makes possible the higher life when it teaches the pupil to think. Right thinking puts intelligence into the labor of his hands, increases his earning-power, lays the foundation for his physical well-being, and lifts him above an existence that is a mere struggle for bread. It promotes the higher life by teaching him to think God’s thoughts, as enshrined in all His works, and the best thoughts of the best men, as embodied in literature and the humanities. It fits the pupil for complete living by developing in him the power to appreciate the beautiful in nature and art, power to think the true and to will the good, power to live the life of thought, and faith, and hope, and love.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES[1]For brevity’s sake the phrase, thinking in things, is preferred to the more accurate but less convenient expression, thinking in the images of things.[2]Psychopannychism denotes the doctrine that the soul falls asleep at death, not to awaken until the resurrection.[3]For this incident the writer is indebted to Superintendent L. H. Jones, of Cleveland, Ohio.[4]“Lessons in Psychology,” pages 260-267.[5]See “How London Lives,” Thomas Nelson & Sons, London.[6]“Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was at one time in Prague assistant to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Unlike Tycho, Kepler had no talent for observation and experimentation. But he was a great thinker, and excelled as a mathematician. He absorbed Copernican ideas, and early grappled with the problem of determining the real paths of the planets. In his first attempts he worked on the dreams of the Pythagoreans concerning figure and number. Intercourse with Tycho led him to reject such mysticism and to study on the planets recorded by his master. He took the planet Mars, and found that no combinations of circles would give a path which could be reconciled with the observations. In one case the difference between the observed and his computed values was eight minutes, and he knew that so accurate an observer as Tycho could not make an error so great. He tried an oval orbit for Mars, and rejected it; he tried an ellipse, and it fitted. Thus, after more than four years of assiduous computation, and after trying nineteen imaginary paths, and rejecting each because it was inconsistent with observation, Kepler in 1618 discovered the truth. An ellipse! Why did he not think of it before? What a simple matter—after the puzzle is once solved! He worked out what are known as Kepler’s laws, which accorded with observation, but conflicted with the Ptolemaic hypothesis. Thus the old system was logically overthrown. But not until after a bitter struggle between science and theology did the new system find general acceptation.”—Cajori’s “History of Physics,” pages 29, 30.[7]Young’s “The Sun,” pages 43, 44, second edition.[8]Young’s “Astronomy,” page 174.[9]Now the well-known Lord Kelvin.[10]“Actinism,” by Professor Charles F. Himes, pages 18, 19.[11]Dr. Morrell’s “Elements of Psychology,” quoted by Galloway in “Education, Scientific and Technical,” page 165.[12]Quoted by Galloway in “Education, Scientific and Technical,” pages 116, 117.[13]Hinsdale’s “The Language Arts,” pages 17, 18.[14]Mr. Smiles, “Life of Stephenson,” third edition, page 474, tells how George Stephenson, arguing one evening on the coal question with Dr. Buckland, was quite unable to make good his case. The next morning he talked over the matter with Sir W. Follett, and that illustrious advocate, from the materials supplied by the practical knowledge of Stephenson, was able easily to discomfit the learned dean. Quoted by A. S. Wilkins’s “Cicero de Oratore,” page 105, second edition.[15]Phelps’s “Men and Books,” page 303.[16]Lowell’s “Books and Libraries,” pages 88-90, vol. vi.,Riverside Edition.[17]Phelps’s “Men and Books,” pages 105, 106.[18]Ibid., page 124.[19]N. Porter’s “Books and Reading,” page 57.[20]Charles F. Himes’s “Actinism,” pages 5, 6.[21]Jevons’s “Principles of Science,” pages 399, 400.[22]“Talks on Psychology,” page 34.[23]“Psychologic Foundations of Education,” pages 177, 178.[24]Latham, “Action of Examinations,” pages 229, 230.[25]Maudsley’s “Physiology of the Mind,” page 518.[26]Annotations on Bacon’s Essay “Of Studies.”[27]Hamerton’s “Intellectual Life,” page 125.[28]John xii. 24, Revised Version.[29]F. Galton’s “Inquiries into Human Faculty,” pages 100, 101.[30]F. Galton’s “Inquiries into Human Faculty,” pages 113, 114.[31]James Freeman Clarke’s “Self-Culture,” page 183.[32]Bain’s “The Emotion and the Will,” page 29.[33]James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., pages 243, 244.[34]James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., page 253[35]Huxley’s “Discourses, Biological and Geological Essays,” pages vi, vii.[36]James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., page 264. Of Charles Darwin’s habits of reading, his son says, “I have often heard him say that he got a kind of satisfaction in reading articles which (according to himself) he could not understand. I wish I could reproduce the manner in which he would laugh at himself for it.” Of his scientific reading, this son writes as follows: “Much of his scientific reading was in German, and this was a great labor to him; in reading a book after him, I was often struck at seeing, from the pencil-marks made each day where he left off, how little he could read at a time. He used to call German the ‘Verdammte,’ pronounced as if in English. He was especially indignant with Germans, because he was convinced that they could write simply if they chose, and often praised Dr. F. Hildebrand for writing German which was as clear as French.”—“Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,” vol. i., page 103.[37]Locke’s “Human Understanding,” vol. ii., page 85.[38]Lewes’s “Problems of Life and Mind,” Fourth Problem, pages 474, 475.[39]Lewes’s “Problems of Life and Mind,” Fourth Problem, pages 475-477.[40]Bautain’s “Art of Extempore Speaking,” pages 68, 69.[41]“Autobiography,” page 80.[42]“Men and Books,” pages 221, 222.[43]“In the name, then, of a sound condition of mind and body, and in the confident hope of obtaining both for France, I call on our people to imitate the people of the United States of North America by making the art of reading aloud the very corner-stone of public education.”—Legouvé’s “Art of Reading,” page 145.[44]Clifford’s “Essays,” page 88.[45]Clifford’s “Essays,” page 87. Thus the movements of Sirius led astronomers (Peters and Auwers) to infer the existence of a satellite, which was subsequently discovered by Alvan Clark & Son through the eighteen-inch glass which they were completing for the Chicago Observatory. Similarly, Professor Wright, of Oberlin, carefully studied the Trenton deposits and their relations to the terrace and gravel deposits to the westward, and predicted that similar paleolithic implements would be found in Ohio. Two years afterwards Dr. Mertz found, eight feet below the surface, a true paleolith of black flint at Madisonville, in the Little Miami Valley. Other instances of scientific prediction will occur to the reader.[46]“Essay on the Human Understanding,” Book IV., Chapter I.[47]Compayre’s “History of Pedagogy,” page 437, American translation.[48]“There can be no doubt that Newton was an alchemist, and that he often labored night and day at alchemical experiments. But in trying to discover the secret by which gross metals might be rendered noble his lofty powers of deductive investigation were wholly useless. Deprived of all guiding clues, his experiments were like those of all the alchemists, purely haphazard and tentative. While his hypothetical and deductive investigations have given us a true system of the universe, and opened the way for almost all the great branches of natural philosophy, the whole results of his tentative experiments are comprehended in a few happy guesses, given in his celebrated ‘Queries.’”—Jevons’s “Principles of Science,” pages 505, 506.[49]“The Senses and the Intellect,” pages 488-524.[50]Max Müller’s “Science of Thought,” page 605.[51]Page 402.[52]Page 6.[53]Darwin’s “Autobiography,” page 81.[54]For this incident the writer is indebted to Dr. A. E. Winship.[55]“Mental Physiology,” page 389.[56]Crooker’s “Student in American Life,” pages 23, 28.

[1]For brevity’s sake the phrase, thinking in things, is preferred to the more accurate but less convenient expression, thinking in the images of things.

[2]Psychopannychism denotes the doctrine that the soul falls asleep at death, not to awaken until the resurrection.

[3]For this incident the writer is indebted to Superintendent L. H. Jones, of Cleveland, Ohio.

[4]“Lessons in Psychology,” pages 260-267.

[5]See “How London Lives,” Thomas Nelson & Sons, London.

[6]“Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was at one time in Prague assistant to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Unlike Tycho, Kepler had no talent for observation and experimentation. But he was a great thinker, and excelled as a mathematician. He absorbed Copernican ideas, and early grappled with the problem of determining the real paths of the planets. In his first attempts he worked on the dreams of the Pythagoreans concerning figure and number. Intercourse with Tycho led him to reject such mysticism and to study on the planets recorded by his master. He took the planet Mars, and found that no combinations of circles would give a path which could be reconciled with the observations. In one case the difference between the observed and his computed values was eight minutes, and he knew that so accurate an observer as Tycho could not make an error so great. He tried an oval orbit for Mars, and rejected it; he tried an ellipse, and it fitted. Thus, after more than four years of assiduous computation, and after trying nineteen imaginary paths, and rejecting each because it was inconsistent with observation, Kepler in 1618 discovered the truth. An ellipse! Why did he not think of it before? What a simple matter—after the puzzle is once solved! He worked out what are known as Kepler’s laws, which accorded with observation, but conflicted with the Ptolemaic hypothesis. Thus the old system was logically overthrown. But not until after a bitter struggle between science and theology did the new system find general acceptation.”—Cajori’s “History of Physics,” pages 29, 30.

[7]Young’s “The Sun,” pages 43, 44, second edition.

[8]Young’s “Astronomy,” page 174.

[9]Now the well-known Lord Kelvin.

[10]“Actinism,” by Professor Charles F. Himes, pages 18, 19.

[11]Dr. Morrell’s “Elements of Psychology,” quoted by Galloway in “Education, Scientific and Technical,” page 165.

[12]Quoted by Galloway in “Education, Scientific and Technical,” pages 116, 117.

[13]Hinsdale’s “The Language Arts,” pages 17, 18.

[14]Mr. Smiles, “Life of Stephenson,” third edition, page 474, tells how George Stephenson, arguing one evening on the coal question with Dr. Buckland, was quite unable to make good his case. The next morning he talked over the matter with Sir W. Follett, and that illustrious advocate, from the materials supplied by the practical knowledge of Stephenson, was able easily to discomfit the learned dean. Quoted by A. S. Wilkins’s “Cicero de Oratore,” page 105, second edition.

[15]Phelps’s “Men and Books,” page 303.

[16]Lowell’s “Books and Libraries,” pages 88-90, vol. vi.,Riverside Edition.

[17]Phelps’s “Men and Books,” pages 105, 106.

[18]Ibid., page 124.

[19]N. Porter’s “Books and Reading,” page 57.

[20]Charles F. Himes’s “Actinism,” pages 5, 6.

[21]Jevons’s “Principles of Science,” pages 399, 400.

[22]“Talks on Psychology,” page 34.

[23]“Psychologic Foundations of Education,” pages 177, 178.

[24]Latham, “Action of Examinations,” pages 229, 230.

[25]Maudsley’s “Physiology of the Mind,” page 518.

[26]Annotations on Bacon’s Essay “Of Studies.”

[27]Hamerton’s “Intellectual Life,” page 125.

[28]John xii. 24, Revised Version.

[29]F. Galton’s “Inquiries into Human Faculty,” pages 100, 101.

[30]F. Galton’s “Inquiries into Human Faculty,” pages 113, 114.

[31]James Freeman Clarke’s “Self-Culture,” page 183.

[32]Bain’s “The Emotion and the Will,” page 29.

[33]James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., pages 243, 244.

[34]James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., page 253

[35]Huxley’s “Discourses, Biological and Geological Essays,” pages vi, vii.

[36]James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., page 264. Of Charles Darwin’s habits of reading, his son says, “I have often heard him say that he got a kind of satisfaction in reading articles which (according to himself) he could not understand. I wish I could reproduce the manner in which he would laugh at himself for it.” Of his scientific reading, this son writes as follows: “Much of his scientific reading was in German, and this was a great labor to him; in reading a book after him, I was often struck at seeing, from the pencil-marks made each day where he left off, how little he could read at a time. He used to call German the ‘Verdammte,’ pronounced as if in English. He was especially indignant with Germans, because he was convinced that they could write simply if they chose, and often praised Dr. F. Hildebrand for writing German which was as clear as French.”—“Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,” vol. i., page 103.

[37]Locke’s “Human Understanding,” vol. ii., page 85.

[38]Lewes’s “Problems of Life and Mind,” Fourth Problem, pages 474, 475.

[39]Lewes’s “Problems of Life and Mind,” Fourth Problem, pages 475-477.

[40]Bautain’s “Art of Extempore Speaking,” pages 68, 69.

[41]“Autobiography,” page 80.

[42]“Men and Books,” pages 221, 222.

[43]“In the name, then, of a sound condition of mind and body, and in the confident hope of obtaining both for France, I call on our people to imitate the people of the United States of North America by making the art of reading aloud the very corner-stone of public education.”—Legouvé’s “Art of Reading,” page 145.

[44]Clifford’s “Essays,” page 88.

[45]Clifford’s “Essays,” page 87. Thus the movements of Sirius led astronomers (Peters and Auwers) to infer the existence of a satellite, which was subsequently discovered by Alvan Clark & Son through the eighteen-inch glass which they were completing for the Chicago Observatory. Similarly, Professor Wright, of Oberlin, carefully studied the Trenton deposits and their relations to the terrace and gravel deposits to the westward, and predicted that similar paleolithic implements would be found in Ohio. Two years afterwards Dr. Mertz found, eight feet below the surface, a true paleolith of black flint at Madisonville, in the Little Miami Valley. Other instances of scientific prediction will occur to the reader.

[46]“Essay on the Human Understanding,” Book IV., Chapter I.

[47]Compayre’s “History of Pedagogy,” page 437, American translation.

[48]“There can be no doubt that Newton was an alchemist, and that he often labored night and day at alchemical experiments. But in trying to discover the secret by which gross metals might be rendered noble his lofty powers of deductive investigation were wholly useless. Deprived of all guiding clues, his experiments were like those of all the alchemists, purely haphazard and tentative. While his hypothetical and deductive investigations have given us a true system of the universe, and opened the way for almost all the great branches of natural philosophy, the whole results of his tentative experiments are comprehended in a few happy guesses, given in his celebrated ‘Queries.’”—Jevons’s “Principles of Science,” pages 505, 506.

[49]“The Senses and the Intellect,” pages 488-524.

[50]Max Müller’s “Science of Thought,” page 605.

[51]Page 402.

[52]Page 6.

[53]Darwin’s “Autobiography,” page 81.

[54]For this incident the writer is indebted to Dr. A. E. Winship.

[55]“Mental Physiology,” page 389.

[56]Crooker’s “Student in American Life,” pages 23, 28.

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