Habit.
Fortunately, the law of habit here comes into play to lighten the conscious effort of the will. When the intellect, through the guidance of a conscious will, has acted according to the forms of thought in which the logician can find no fallacies, it tends to act again in that way, and the next time a less expenditure of conscious effort is required. The thinking of the teacher, if correct and logical, tends to beget correct and logical habits of thought on the part of the pupil. It is a piece of good fortune to fall under the dominating influence of a towering intellect. For a time the growing mind that is engaged in thinking the thoughts, and mastering the speculations, the reflections, the reasonings, of a master who is such not merely in name, but also in fact, may be in a subjection very like unto intellectual slavery. Sooner or later the day of emancipation arrives; and those who were not under the invigorating tuition of such an intellectual giant are surprised at the thought-power developed by the youth whose equal they hitherto fancied themselves to be.
Volitional control.
Those who expect to spend their days in teaching, lecturing,preaching, pleading, or writing have great reason to strive after the discipline which results in placing all the powers of mind and heart under the control of the will. The feelings which interfere with reflection should be repressed and expelled by strenuous effort. The emotions which stimulate thinking should be cherished and fostered. The inner nexus, which binds ideas in logical trains of thought, should be followed until the habit becomes second nature.
Thinking which goes forward according to some established habit requires less effort than intellectual work that is accompanied with much volitional effort. This fact serves as a valuable indication to men who must do intellectual work for the press or the pulpit or the lecture-room. Perhaps no one is better qualified to speak on this point than Dr. Carpenter, who studied mental action from the physiological point of view, and whose publications show the quality, as well as the quantity, of his intellectual labor. He says,—
Dr. Carpenter.
“To individuals of ordinary mental activity who have been trained in the habit of methodical and connected thinking, a very considerable amount ofworkis quite natural; and when such persons are in good bodily health, and the subject of their labor is congenial to them,—especially if it be one that has been chosen by themselves, as furnishing a centre of attraction around which their thoughts spontaneously tend to range themselves,—their intellectual operations require but little of the controlling or directing power of the will, and may be continued for long periods together without fatigue. But from the moment when an indisposition is experienced to keep the attention fixed upon the subject, and the thoughts wander from it unless coerced by the will, the mental activity loses its spontaneous or automatic character; and (as in the act of walking) moreeffort is required to maintain it volitionally during a brief period, and more fatigue is subsequently experienced from such exertion than would be involved in the continuance of an automatic operation through a period many times as long. Hence he has found it practically the greatest economy of mental labor to work vigorously when he feels disposed to do so, and to refrain from exertion, so far as possible,when it is felt to be an exertion. Of course, this rule is by no means universally applicable; for there are many individuals who would pass their whole time in listless inactivity if not actually spurred on by the feeling of necessity. But it holds good for those who are sufficiently attracted by objects of interest before them, or who have in their worldly position a sufficiently strong motive to exertion to make them feel that theymustwork; the question with them being,howthey can attain their desired results with the least expenditure of mental effort.”[55]
Jokes.
There is a danger to which public speakers are exposed, against which the efforts of a resolute will are not too potent. To capture a crowd that is more easily moved by jokes than by argument, the speaker resorts to sallies of wit and humor and turns the laugh upon an opponent. The temptation to cultivate one’s gifts in this direction is very strong, and when yielded to, it destroys the powers of logical reflection and consecutive thought. Wit is illogical, because it introduces into the current of thought what is foreign to the subject in hand, the incongruity giving rise to the laughter. Wit and humor serve a useful purpose in acting as a safety-valve to let off the discontent which accumulates in the human breast, and may be used for that purpose with great effect. But they should never be allowed todivert the stream of thought from its logical channel. The reputation for wit and humor may dispose people to laugh at everything a man says. It destroys their respect for his judgment and impairs his power to follow a line of thought to its legitimate conclusion. The ability to discuss a theme in all its bearings and details implies the power to investigate a subject in its essence and relations, to resolve an idea into its elements, and to present these in the form most easily understood,—an object which is as far from the purposes of the funny man as the poles are from the equator.
Forms of thought-expression.
Thinking in action.
All thinking tends towards the expression of thought. “Every expression of thought,” says Tracy, “whether it be word, or mark, or gesture, is the result of an active will, and as such may be classed among the movements.” Word, mark, and gesture do not exhaust the list of movements by which the mind expresses thought. Every handicraft is a form of expressing thought quite as important as writing and speaking and gesticulating. The fine arts and the useful arts are so many ways through which the will passes into thinking and issues in the expression of thought. Movements for reform are the intense expressions of great thoughts which have their origin in the heart. The men who spend their lives in the atmosphere of colleges and universities are apt to be satisfied if they have expressed their thoughts in a lecture or on the printed page. They live in books, and their thinking terminates in books. The thinking which issues in getting things done, in deeds, actions, achievements, is undervalued and too often ignored. University men are waking up to this defect in their thinking. They are throwing themselves into movements for reform and giving the world splendid examples of the translation of thought into vigorous action. The effort to carry theoryinto practice reacts powerfully upon the mind, forces the individual to see things as they are, and saves him from the habit of looking only for things which the schools have taught him to expect. When thinking issues in doing, the process promotes intellectual honesty. This remark is especially applicable to exercises in which the hand makes in wood, metal, marble, or clay what the mind has conceived. The execution cannot be accurate unless the thinking has been accurate and satisfactory. Drawing is a universal language. It imposes upon the mind a degree of accuracy which is wanting in the fleeting spoken word or even in the more permanent printed or written sentences.
Thinking in business.
The movements in manual training are an excellent preparation for the movements in the handicrafts and the daily occupations by which men gain the necessaries and the comforts of life. Ten thousand men are active in supplying our breakfast-table, and many thousand more in providing clothing, shelter, light, heat, and the manifold necessities and luxuries of modern society. All these involve thinking quite as useful, as logical, and as effective as the thinking which ends in talk or printer’s ink. The relation of thinking to doing and the reflex influence which the latter exerts upon the former is seen in the solution of problems and in all exercises involving the application of knowledge. Manual training is really and primarily a training in thinking, but it is the kind of thinking most closely related to thinking in things, and its value in education is so great that it has led to the formulation of the maxim, We learn to do by doing,—a maxim which deserves separate consideration, because, as usually applied, it is taken to mean that doing by the hand necessarily and inevitably leads to thinking and knowing.
Growth of the will.
Another aspect of the relation of thinking to willingclaims our attention. Thinking is an important element in the growth of the will. The education of the will is coming to be recognized as a matter of supreme importance. The development of character is everywhere emphasized. No teacher in these days regards intellectual training as the sole or chief aim of the school. The philosopher is no longer regarded as the highest type of humanity. The age demands that thought shall pass into volition, and that volition shall manifest itself in action. The executive is not satisfied with the investigation of a subject in its essence and relations, with the elaboration of thought into a system; he must get things done. Mere thinking he despises. The philosopher he regards as a man troubled with ideas, the poet as a man troubled with fancies and rhymes; he hates men who let their minds “go astray into regions not peopled with real things, animate or inanimate, even idealized, but with personified shadows created by the illusions of metaphysics or by the mere entanglement of words, and think these shadows the proper objects of the highest, the most transcendental philosophy.” And the sympathies of the multitudes are on the side of the executive in his exaltation of the will as the chief element of utility and success.
The acts of the will should be guided by intelligence. The will is weak and vacillating if the ends to be accomplished are not clearly conceived, if the purposes to be accomplished are not definitely thought out. Thinking is the guide to willing. Thought gives direction to volition.
Self-gratification.
Self-denial.
The right.
There are successive stages in the growth of the will as clearly defined as the activities of memory and imagination. In the first or lowest stage the aim is some form of happiness. In the second stage the will acts under the influence of some ethical idea, commonly finding expressionin a maxim like the command, Thou shalt not steal, or in some fixed occupation like a trade or farm work. In the third the will acts under the inspiration of the good or its opposite, and from motives grounded in right or wrong. In all these stages of growth thinking is a most important factor. Let us go into details for purposes of illustration. The human will in its process of development starts on a physical rather than a spiritual basis. On the one hand a want is felt and on the other an impulse towards the satisfaction of that want. In course of time this impulse or appetence assumes the form of intelligent or conscious purpose looking towards the gratification of felt wants, and then the will begins to show itself in the form of clear, definite volitions and actions. The strength of the will depends largely upon these impulses or appetences; and their strength in turn depends upon the health, the temperament, the organization (physical and psychical) of the individual. If by careful diet, exercise, or otherwise, we invigorate these, we thereby furnish capital that will in after years bear compound interest in the form of strong will-power. If the diet, exercise, play, sleep, and work are not properly regulated, first by the parent, the nurse, and the teacher, and later by the individual himself, the appetences develop into appetites that enslave the will and seriously interfere with its further growth. As the power to think is developed, the will passes over into a higher stage of activity. The very longing for happiness leads the child to impose restrictions upon itself. It feels happy if it can secure the approbation of those with whom it associates. If we show our displeasure at something it has done, the little philosopher begins to practise self-denial in certain directions for the purpose of regaining and retaining our good will. The second stage is now reached in which self-gratification gives place to self-denial,the will acting under the influence of one or more ethical ideas. The child at school is lifted upon this loftier plane by the circumstances which surround him; it must practise the school virtues,—punctuality, industry, obedience, and the like; it accepts certain forms of self-restraint in keeping quiet, in abstaining from play, in observing the rules of the school. Where the discipline is rigid and the instruction lacks interest, it may even conceive of the school as a mere place of self-denial and self-restraint. “Why do you come here?” asked a director. The little boy replied, “We come here to sit and wait for school to let out.” The hours at school can be sweetened by exercises in thinking and expressing thought to such an extent that the school becomes the place to which children best like to go. Some full-grown men have not advanced very far beyond this second stage in the growth of the will. They follow some regular occupation as the boy does in going to school; they practise certain forms of virtue,—say honesty, so that you could intrust to them your pocket-book with perfect safety,—but they break the Sabbath, use God’s name in vain, and commit daily many other sins and transgressions. Occasionally one finds a school in which no pupil would dare to be caught telling a lie, and yet the moral tone is low, there being vices which, like a cankerworm, eat out the moral life of the school. The teacher should not feel satisfied until he has raised the pupil to the third stage, where the will is brought under the inspiration of the good, and right becomes the law of life.
Upon this highest plane different phases of development can be detected. The law of right may brandish the avenging rod of conscience and drive the individual into paths of rectitude. The idea of duty thus operating alone may reduce him to the subservience of a slave andprevent him from reaching the high stature of perfect human freedom. This kind of slavery is apt to be followed by a struggle in which the lower nature seeks to assert itself against the higher, and if the latter conquers, the person is apt to be elated with the feeling of victory. Whenever you hear a man boast of the sacrifices he has made in his devotion to duty, you can rest assured he has not yet reached that lofty elevation in will-culture upon which the person does right spontaneously and without effort, and never dreams of having made a sacrifice in the performance of the hardest duties.
Evil.
Of course, the development from the first stage may move in the opposite direction. If the appetences are gratified beyond the requirements of self-preservation, or of the well-being of the child, they grow into uncontrollable desires and passions; the individual sinks deeper and deeper into selfishness. He may deny himself for the sake of some ambition, or vice, or wicked end which the soul cherishes; then, unless lifted up by the grace of God, he will ultimately land in a state bordering on that of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust, a character who found pleasure in human suffering, and whose will was constantly under the direction and inspiration of the principle of evil. He will at last become like Milton’s Satan, who exclaimed, “Evil, be thou my good.” College boys who delight in hazing innocent freshmen have gone far towards this loathsome stage of moral degradation, the lowest which the will can reach in its downward career.
Thought and volition.
Now, it is easy to see the relation of thinking to these several stages of will-development. Volition presupposes something to be done, an end to be sought and accomplished. If the will is to act steadily in the endeavor to realize this end, the end must be clearly thought and held before the soul in definiteform. To do the right implies that the right be known as the result of right thinking. A soul ignorant of right cannot be expected to practise the virtues which are grounded in the law of right. On the other hand, many forms of evil are never conceived by young people unless suggested to them by their superiors.
Volition issues in doing, and doing is a powerful stimulus to thinking. Making things out of wood, metal, marble, wax, papier-maché, or even out of paper is genuine thinking in things. It is a species of doing which flows from thinking through willing and reacts upon the process of thinking. To see how a thing is made is better than to be told how, but to make it by our own effort, skill, and thought is vastly more educative than seeing and hearing. Manual training tends to make the pupil intellectually honest. He cannot get away from a thought expressed in wood or other material as he can from a thought expressed in language which may suffice to suggest his idea, but not to give it adequate expression. This influence of doing upon thinking has led to the formulation of the maxim, We learn to do by doing,—a maxim whose limitations and legitimate meaning it will be necessary to discuss in a separate lecture.
When we turn to modern pedagogics, we see how enormously the field of reactive conduct has been extended by the introduction of all those methods of concrete object-teaching which are the glory of our contemporary schools. Verbal reactions, useful as they are, are insufficient. The pupil’s words may be right, but the concepts corresponding to them are often direfully wrong. In a modern school, therefore, they form only a small part of what the pupil is required to do. He must keep note-books, make drawings, plans, and maps, take measurements, enter the laboratory and perform experiments, consult authorities, and write essays. He must do, in his fashion, what is often laughed at by outsiders when it appears in prospectuses under the title of original work; but what is really the only possible training for the doing of original work thereafter. The most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of manual-training schools; not because they will give us a people more handy and practical for domestic life, and better skill in trades, but because they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual life. Laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the difference between accuracy and vagueness, and an insight into nature’s complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena, which once brought into the mind remain there as life-long possessions. They confer precision; because, if you aredoinga thing, you must do it definitely right or definitely wrong. They give honesty; for, when you express yourself by making things, and not by using words, it becomes impossible to dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity. They beget a habit of self-reliance; they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher’s disciplinary function to a minimum.William James.
When we turn to modern pedagogics, we see how enormously the field of reactive conduct has been extended by the introduction of all those methods of concrete object-teaching which are the glory of our contemporary schools. Verbal reactions, useful as they are, are insufficient. The pupil’s words may be right, but the concepts corresponding to them are often direfully wrong. In a modern school, therefore, they form only a small part of what the pupil is required to do. He must keep note-books, make drawings, plans, and maps, take measurements, enter the laboratory and perform experiments, consult authorities, and write essays. He must do, in his fashion, what is often laughed at by outsiders when it appears in prospectuses under the title of original work; but what is really the only possible training for the doing of original work thereafter. The most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of manual-training schools; not because they will give us a people more handy and practical for domestic life, and better skill in trades, but because they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual life. Laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the difference between accuracy and vagueness, and an insight into nature’s complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena, which once brought into the mind remain there as life-long possessions. They confer precision; because, if you aredoinga thing, you must do it definitely right or definitely wrong. They give honesty; for, when you express yourself by making things, and not by using words, it becomes impossible to dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity. They beget a habit of self-reliance; they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher’s disciplinary function to a minimum.
William James.
Saying and doing.
The best methods of instruction in the ordinary school aim at the expression of thought in language. If a thing has been well said, the teacher and the examiner are apt to make no further inquiries. Although the expression of thought in written or spoken language is a species of doing, there is often a wide chasm between getting a thing said and having it done. Many of the reforms and revolutions thought out by university professors never get beyond the room in which they lecture or the page on which they formulate their ideas. The freedom of speech in the universities never troubles a despotic government until the ideas of the professors and students show signs of passing into the life of the nation. The difference between speech and action, between the man of words and the man of deeds, has long been felt and emphasized. The favorite method of teaching by lectures, and requiring the pupil to take notes, fails utterly if it stops with mere telling how a thing is to be done, and is not followed by actual doing on the part of the learner. Work in the shop, in the field, and in the factory often proves more effective in fitting a boy to earn a living than the theoretical instruction of the schools. The advantage of doing over telling as a means of learning has led to the formulation of the maxim, “We learn to do by doing,” and some educational reformers have announced the maxim as a principle of education universal in its application. Hence it is worth while to clarify its meaning and toascertain its limitations. In so doing, we shall get a glimpse of the true relation between thinking and doing.
The maxim applied to medicine and surgery.
A young man possessed of unbounded faith in this maxim came to town for the purpose of practising medicine and surgery. He announced that if any persons got sick he proposed to give them medicine in the hope of learning the physiological and therapeutic effects of the various drugs. If any limbs were to be amputated, he was willing to try his hand, in the hope of ultimately learning how to perform surgical operations. He was too simple to succeed as a quack. He did not get a single patient; the people wisely gave him no opportunity of learning to do by doing.
The maxim in the other professions.
Equally foolish were it thus to apply the maxim to any of the other professions. Would you, with life or property at stake, allow a novice to plead your cause at court in order that he might learn to plead by pleading? Who would waste the golden Sabbath hours in listening to one who was trying to learn to preach by preaching? The civilized world regards knowledge, which is the product of the act of learning, as the indispensable guide of those who offer their services at the bar, from the pulpit, or in the sick-room. When a Yale professor was asked whether study was required of those divinely called to preach, he replied that he had read of but one instance in which the Lord condescended to speak through the mouth of an ass.
Comenius.
Even an ass may learn to do some things by continually doing them in a blind way, and that, too, in spite of his proverbial stubbornness; but such learning by blind practice is unworthy of the school-life of a being gifted with human intelligence, and capable, it may be, of filling a profession. Instinct may guide a bee or a beaver: but knowledge should guide man in the artsand habits which he acquires. This fact is not ignored in the maxim as originally given by Comenius. “Things to be done should be learned by doing them. Mechanics understand this well: they do not give the apprentice a lecture upon their trade, but they will let him see how they, as masters, do; then they place the tool in his hands, teach him to use it and imitate them. Doing can be learned only by doing, writing by writing, painting by painting, and so on.” There is in this statement a clear recognition, on the one hand, of the knowledge-getting which precedes and accompanies all intelligent doing, and, on the other, of the practice which is needful for the attainment of skill. The master mechanic seeks first to give his apprentice a clear concept of what is to be done; and the knowledge thus acquired through the eye, and perhaps partly through hearing directions and explanations, is afterwards put into practice by the actual manipulation of tools and materials. If the maxim had been allowed to stand in this, its original form and meaning, no one could have objected to its use and application. But when the attempt was made to elevate it into a principle of binding force for all teaching; when, furthermore, the form was shortened so as to widen the meaning, and the maxim was then applied to regulate the acquisition of every form of human activity, both physical and mental, it is not surprising that protests were heard, and the necessity was felt of investigating the maxim for the purpose of ascertaining its limitations and defining its meaning.
Value of the maxim.
Yet we must not fail to make grateful acknowledgment of the services to education rendered by those who lifted the maxim into prominence. How often were pupils expected to learn one thing by doing another. Drawing was advocated because it would improve the penmanship. Silent reading or thought-gettingwas to be learned by oral reading or thought-giving. The alphabet was taught as if the names of the letters would make the child familiar with the sounds. The idea of number was to be gotten by naming the numbers or imitating the Arabic notation. Facility and accuracy in the use of language were to be acquired from exercises in parsing and analysis. Familiarity with birds, flowers, minerals, chemicals, etc., was to be gained from the learned phraseology of the text-books. Sometimes even the teachers knew very little more than the technical terms. When the great ornithologist, Wilson, visited Princeton College, the professor of natural history scarcely knew a sparrow from a woodpecker. A great change has come over Princeton and all other higher institutions of learning; and the new influence has been felt in our high schools, and even in the grades below.
Maxims, principles.
Whilst cheerfully acknowledging the value of the maxim of Comenius, we should, nevertheless, insist on the difference between a maxim which may regulate our conduct in specific cases and a principle which is an all-controlling guide in operations. Coleridge says, “A maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is speculative; a principle has truth in itself, and is prospective.” It is always dangerous to generalize upon facts observed in one realm of investigation, and then to allow others to apply these general statements to realms as diverse from the original field of observation as mind or spirit is from matter. The disciples in such cases always manifest the hidden weaknesses in the system of their master. They rush in where he would have feared to tread. They push his language to extremes, from which his deeper insight, broader vision, and larger experience would have caused him to shrink. Comenius framed the maxim from the observation of bodily acts; some seek to apply it to everyform of human activity. The original language has been twisted into a statement that sounds paradoxical. “We learn to do by doing.” What can these words mean? If wecando a given thing, what need is there of learning to do that thing. If we cannot do the thing to be learned by the doing of it, how can any doing on our part issue in learning? Evidently the maxim in its modern form, if it is at all valid, must partake of the nature of a paradox, which, though seemingly absurd, is yet true in essence or fact. For the purpose of testing the validity of a paradoxical statement, there is no better way than to ascertain its possible meanings, to eliminate those evidently not intended, and finally to investigate the one or more senses or interpretations that may legitimately be put upon the language. The investigation will, in this instance, reveal the relation existing between doing and the act of learning.
Analysis of the maxim.
In the first place, the maxim cannot mean that we learn to do by every kind of doing. The kind of doing by which the young man hoped to learn medicine and surgery was ridiculed centuries ago; no one in our day would advocate mere blind doing as a means of learning. The maxim must refer to doing guided by an intelligent will. The doing must be guided by thinking that is based upon correct and reliable data or premises.
Again, the maxim cannot mean that we learn one thing by doing another. The maxim was emphasized in protest against the absurdity of some of our methods of teaching. It may happen that the learner accidentally discovers one thing while seeking to find out some other thing; to expect that this shall always be the case is to invite disappointment. For instance, pupils do not learn to spell while studying books if attention is absorbed in the meaning, and is not drawn, in separate exercises, tothe correct orthography of words that are apt to be misspelled.
Fatigue.
There is a third limitation to the maxim on the side of attention. How, for instance, is the art of writing acquired? It is undoubtedly true that a boy cannot learn to write without himself writing; it is equally true that he is not always learning or improving in penmanship while he is practising with his pen upon paper. From the teacher or the copy he gets a concept of the letters to be made. The first efforts at imitation are fraught with defects. The pupil must clearly recognize wherein he failed, and earnestly strive to remedy the defects, if the next attempt is to be an improvement. The maxim, if here applied, must mean that the pupil learns to do by continually doing, as nearly as he can, the thing to be done. With each step of progress, his concept of the form of the letters and how to make them becomes more accurate; or, in other words, his power and skill keep pace with his knowledge. Finally, after much practice, the nerves and muscles which control the act of writing are properly co-ordinated; the habit of writing with ease is acquired; the process becomes largely subconscious, if not altogether automatic. The learner has at length reached the stage in which his attention is no longer concentrated upon the form and beauty of the letters, but rather upon the thought to be expressed, and it is quite possible that henceforth his chirography will grow more illegible the more he writes. Of course, he is now learning the art of composing by composing; but he has ceased to learn in the direction of his handwriting by writing, because the attention is riveted upon something else. Even before the subconscious stage is reached, practice, if too long continued, may exhaust the powers of attention, and doing can no longer issue in learning by reason of fatigue.
On the score of attention there is a limit to the application of the maxim in another direction. Talking, oral reading, and public speaking may be spoiled by too much attention. Practice in these, under the guidance of an injudicious teacher, may serve to make the gestures too studied, the pronunciation too precise, and the tones of the voice too artificial, defects by which the hearer’s mind is drawn from the thought to the delivery.
Injudicious criticism.
The lack of good elocutionary drill in youth is a serious misfortune, yet the writer cannot help blaming the elocutionists for ruining one public speaker among his acquaintances. Under their tuition the gestures and articulation of this friend have become almost faultless; but there is such a self-conscious air about his platform utterances that the audience can think of nothing except the delivery. By his efforts at doing he has learned most emphatically not to do. The same thing may happen in elementary instruction, and in the practice-schools connected with our State normal schools. Injudicious criticism by the teacher may so rivet the attention upon the utterance that the pupils lose sight of the thought to be expressed, and the more they practise under his guidance the worse their reading becomes. The vocal and physical elements, in the act of oral reading or speaking, should spring spontaneously out of the thought and sentiment to be conveyed. Any drill which interferes with this natural connection between the mental and the physical is indescribably bad, and should never be regarded as a means of learning. Equally severe must be the sentence of condemnation upon much of the criticism to which pupil teachers are subjected by their fellow-students and their critic-teachers at our normal schools, and upon the comments made by candidates for the ministry and their professors upon the efforts of the embryo preacher duringthe so-called homiletical exercises. Injudicious fault-finding leads to a kind of doing which cannot issue in learning.
Application.
The arm and hand.
Within these limitations we find a wide field for the application of the maxim to our efforts at learning to think and to express thought. The hand performs a very important function in aiding the mind to perfect its concepts. The metric system remains a dark, confused mass of names so long as the pupil does not actually handle and use the metric units of weights and measures. A few days of manual training, during which the learner is compelled to measure accurately, are of immense account in developing accurate ideas and accurate thinking. Of all the ways of expressing thought, those by the hand and the tongue are more perfect than those by the eye, the face, the gesture, the bodily movement. The latter are well adapted to express feeling; the former, to express thought. Few have ever thought of the marvellous mechanism given to a human being in the arm and hand. A glimpse from the mathematician’s point of view is here very interesting. A pencil fastened to the end of a ruler revolving around a fixed point will describe a circle. If the pencil be fastened to the end of a second ruler revolving around the end of the first, while the first revolves around the original centre, the pencil will describe a very complicated curve. If three radii, revolving in this way, be joined together, the pencil at the end of the third can be made to describe the cycles and epicycles by which the ancient astronomers explained the movements of the planets. The modern mathematician has shown that, by annexing a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth radius, each revolving around the preceding, while the first is moving around the original centre, all curves of the fifth and sixth orders can bedescribed. Let any one examine his right arm, starting from the shoulder and ending with the fingers, and he will find that since infancy he has had this mechanism for executing curves and movements, has been using this wonderful system of revolving radii to express thought, and that it has been to him a source of skill in thinking and doing. When viewed in their anatomical and physiological aspects, human arms and hands are seen to be a still more wonderful mechanism, rivalled only by the tongue in capability for describing any curve and uttering any kind of thought. Whilst the tongue may speak many oral languages, the hand writes them all, and supplies additional methods for expressing thought in drawing, painting, sculpture, instrumental music, in the various handicrafts, and in the machines which act like man’s hand made bigger, more powerful, more tireless.
Apprentices.
Manual training.
From this point of view one can see a wide field for the intelligent application of the maxim to our efforts at learning to write, to talk, to walk, to play on a musical instrument, or to handle the tools of some handicraft. If questioned with reference to these and kindred activities, the physiologist would answer that the repeated action of the nerves and muscles in specific functions fits them the better to act in the same functions, and that the effect of the exercise of any function may be stored up so as to increase the facility of the nervous structure to exercise again every similar function. The psychologist would say that any normal act performed under the guidance of an intelligent will leaves, as its enduring result, an increased power to act and a tendency to act again in like manner. Common parlance, which is apt to enshrine its wisdom in proverbs, simply says, Practice makes perfect. Doing, when it engrosses the attention, exerts a reflex influence upon thinking; after it sinks to the subconscious level itceases to exert a helpful influence. The methods adopted in our manual-training schools are, in this respect, much superior to those pursued under the old apprentice system. The master mechanic found it to his interest to keep the apprentice upon one kind of work until a high degree of skill was attained. He used the apprentice as a means to an end,—the end being the production of things that would sell and thus reimburse the master for the time and trouble of teaching his trade to another. The mysteries of the trade were kept to the last for fear the apprentice would quit before the expiration of the time for which he was indentured. No better plan for crushing the intellectual life could have been conceived. The manual-training school, on the other hand, makes the boy, and not the product, the end of its training, the object of chief concern. It seeks not merely to make the man a better workman, but the workman a better man. No pupil is asked to go through the same movement, to do the same piece of work, for the purpose of developing skill, until every trace of interest is gone. Nothing is made for the purpose of selling; everything prescribed is for the purpose of developing the pupil’s powers, to enable him to express thought by the use of working-tools and instruments. The working-drawing and the model are the symbols which come nearest to a full representation of the thing to be made. The word, the clay, the stone, the metal, the leather, the cloth, are the materials in which thought finds its final expression. Nothing is carried so far as to deaden the boy’s interest in what he is doing; the charm of novelty is kept up from day to day. If the first product is defective, a new problem is set, involving the same fundamental operations, or the use of the same tools and instruments. The manual-training school and the trade school, if properly conducted, thus become amost valuable means for developing the power to think in things. It aims to create the power to think, as well as the power to do; the two are made commensurate and mutually helpful. The thinking is made to issue in doing, and the doing is kept from sinking into the subconscious stage, where it tends to degrade the individual to the mere level of a machine. Within these limitations we can endorse Professor Wilson’s tribute to the hand, and subscribe to his demand that, as in the days of Israel’s glory, it shall be trained in some useful handicraft, not merely as a means of livelihood, but more especially as a means of making the pupil a better thinker, a completer man.
Handicrafts.
“When I think of all that man’s and woman’s hand has wrought,” says he, “from the day that Eve put forth her erring hand to pluck the fruit of the forbidden tree to that dark hour when the pierced hands of the Saviour were nailed to the predicted tree of shame, and of all that human hands have wrought of good and evil since, I lift up my hand and gaze upon it with wonder and awe. What an instrument for good it is! What an instrument for evil! And all day long it never is idle. There is no implement which it cannot wield, and it should never in working hours be without one. We unwisely restrict the term handicrafts-man or hand-worker to the more laborious callings; but it belongs to all honest, earnest men and women, and is a title which each should covet. For the queen’s hand there is the sceptre, and for the soldier’s hand the sword; for the carpenter’s hand the saw, and for the smith’s hand the hammer; for the farmer’s hand the plough; for the miner’s hand the spade; for the sailor’s hand the oar; for the painter’s hand the brush; for the sculptor’s hand the chisel; for the poet’s hand the pen; and for woman’s hand the needle. And if none of these, or the like, willfit us, the felon’s chain should be round our wrist, and our hand on the prisoner’s crank. But for each willing man or woman there is a tool they may learn to handle; for all there is the command, ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’”
A meagre soul can never be made fat, nor a narrow soul large, by studying rules of thinking.Professor Blackie.Have your thinking first, and plenty to think about, and then ask the logician to teach you to scrutinize with a nice eye the process by which you have arrived at your conclusions.Professor Blackie.Invention, though it can be cultivated, cannot be reduced to rule; there is no science which will enable a man to bethink himself of that which will suit his purpose. But when he has thought of something, science can tell him whether that which he has thought of will suit his purpose or not. The inquirer or arguer must be guided by his own knowledge and sagacity in his choice of the inductions out of which he will construct his argument. But the validity of the argument when constructed depends upon principles, and must be tried by tests which are the same for all descriptions of inquiries, whether the result be to give A an estate, or to enrich science with a new general truth.J. S. Mill.
A meagre soul can never be made fat, nor a narrow soul large, by studying rules of thinking.
Professor Blackie.
Have your thinking first, and plenty to think about, and then ask the logician to teach you to scrutinize with a nice eye the process by which you have arrived at your conclusions.
Professor Blackie.
Invention, though it can be cultivated, cannot be reduced to rule; there is no science which will enable a man to bethink himself of that which will suit his purpose. But when he has thought of something, science can tell him whether that which he has thought of will suit his purpose or not. The inquirer or arguer must be guided by his own knowledge and sagacity in his choice of the inductions out of which he will construct his argument. But the validity of the argument when constructed depends upon principles, and must be tried by tests which are the same for all descriptions of inquiries, whether the result be to give A an estate, or to enrich science with a new general truth.
J. S. Mill.
For centuries men have been disposed to look with disdain upon the occupations in which the hands and the body are more concerned than the mind. The arts in which thought predominates were honored above the handicrafts; and it is only in recent years that educators have begun to recognize the educative value of thinking through the hand as we find it exemplified in schools for manual training. A comparison of the various arts will serve to dignify this kind of training and to set it in a clearer light before teachers and boards of education.
Mediæval thinkers divided the arts into two classes, which they called the mechanic and the liberal arts, and enumerated seven arts in each class.
Mechanic arts.
The seven mechanic arts were Agriculture, Propagation of Trees, Manufacture of Arms, Carpenter’s Work, Medicine, Weaving, and Ship-building. The primary operations were mechanical, as the name implies, and hence involved a genuine thinking in things. Their number has been greatly multiplied; the operations have grown wonderfully complex; thought upon the activities which they necessitate has led to the discovery of guiding principles, and some have risen to the rank of regular professions. The growth and the care of trees have given rise to forestry. Ship-building and the manufacture of arms involve science of the highest order. The practice of medicine and surgeryrequires skill based upon kinds of knowledge and thinking that are rigidly scientific. The thoughts which have been crystallized in modern inventions deserve equal rank with the thoughts which philosophers have woven into systems. The various trades of civilized society necessitate the expression of thought through the hand. Manufactures and commerce involve transactions, operations, and competition requiring the highest intelligence, the most accurate thinking, the most vigorous effort. Any youth whose training has fitted him to excel in these is sure of work and fair compensation.
The useful occupations.
Far too often the school has taught the pupil to undervalue and even to despise useful occupations. Scientific research, philosophic speculation, and literary productivity have been lauded as more honorable vocations. Any honest occupation that furnishes adequate exercise for man’s marvellous faculties is honorable in the sight of God. If two angels should be sent from heaven, one to rule a kingdom, the other to break stones upon the highway, each of them would be happy in the thought that he was fulfilling his divinely appointed mission, and each would receive, upon the completion of his task, the “well done” which will finally be spoken to every good and faithful servant.