tions, is radically opposed to much prevailing custom. Habitually a dozen fragments of knowledge are presented to the child in as many different text-books, and are liable to remain in his mind as isolated, fragmentary, and lifeless, as are the scattered bones in the valley of Jehoshaphat. How often is a child expected to study separately, reading, writing, spelling, composition, definitions, elocution, synonyms, rhetoric, etymology, Latin, French, and English grammar, mythology, history, and geography! The essentials of these subjects,indeed for many of them, all that the child needs to know,— might be obtained from the penetrating study of a page of Livy or of Cornelius Nepos.2 In such a study, these different

* While these pages are passing through the press, I am informed that the suggestion in the text is very similar to a fundamental principle of the Herbartian school

subjects would fall into place as the naturally related parts of a complex whole, the whole being the narrative given by the Latin author. The processes of distinct mental perception are closely modeled upon those of visual perception. An idea, like an object, must be apprehended either as an independent whole, or as a part occupying a relative position in a whole. The cube is perceived by the child as an independent whole. object: the surfaces and angles of the cube are seen as its parts, and as such are comprehensible and interesting. Should we, however, attempt to abstract the surfaces and angles from the individual cube, and present these to the child to be studied, we should probably entirely fail to awaken in him any mental reaction whatever. A cube is a solid object; before looking at the cube, he had previously accumulated a stock of experience about solid objects, and to this the new experience of the cube can be referred. But of isolated surfaces and angles, he has no glimmer of previous experience; he has never been conscious of such things apart from solid bodies, and for a long time it would be useless to try to call his attention to them. When we apparently do so by drawing lines on paper, we simply transfer the attention to another whole object, this time a flat piece of paper, which can then be compared with the cube.

There is a similar waste of effort in directing a child to the mass of details, which must seem unrelated to each other until some whole is understood. The aspect of the case entirely changes when the spelling, grammar, etc., are taken up as merely subsidiary to a comprehensible purpose, that namely of understanding the Latin narrative. Something happened, that is history. It necessarily occurred in a definite locality, which can only be appreciated by geographical notions. The narrative cannot be understood except by understanding the words, grammatical construction, and style of the Latin language. This involves an incessant, though incidental, comparison with

of pedagogics. Never having had an opportunity to study this system, the fact that the same idea has occurred to me independently, shows how naturally it arises from the unbiased consideration of the nature of things.

at least two other languages, English and French. Spelling, writing, so-called etymology and pretended synonyms of these words, the art of composition, the ethical and even religious ideas incidentally touched upon in the narrative, can similarly be studied under the stimulus of a distinct definite purpose, that, namely, of making the narrative clear in all its partsof transforming it into an internal perception.

The process of unifying such a mass of details into a single thought is attended by generation of mental force. This is shown in several ways. In the first place, as any one may be convinced who examines his own consciousness, the work of combining several ideas into one is always attended by a sense of invigorating effort. Even such elementary combinations of ideas as are needed to make a single verbal statement is attended by a sense of some degree of exerted power, which increases with the complexity of the combination and with the terseness of its verbal expression. The feeling closely resembles that which is experienced after effective muscular exercise.

The generation of force is also shown by the fact that all acquisitions of ideas, as all processes of combination of ideas into higher concepts, involve acts of conscious volition. We have seen that the first step in acquiring knowledge about the cube was an act of voluntary attention, in which the child. fixed the object with his eyes. Each successive step in the process of learning demanded a new act of attention, new adjustments of the eyes and hands, by means of which the different properties of the cube might be seen and handled more minutely. Through these successive acts of attention, the senses become sensitive to more delicate degrees of difference. The relation between the stimulus and the sensation is removed to a different scale. For the same degree of stimulus there is an increasing quantum of sensation; or there is the same quantum of sensation for a diminished degree of stimulus. The trained or attentive eye perceives details entirely overlooked by the unprepared or inattentive observer.

What is this mysterious act of attention, which thus changes

the whole relations of the child to the external world? Mr. Sully will have it that there is no mystery in the case. "Attention," he says, "is simply detention in consciousness." But what is it that commands and effects the detention, that says to the idea, "Stay!" and it stays, instead of passing at once to be lost in the stream of thought? The detention is always determined by the condition of the previous consciousness.

Thus, in a being previously only conscious of sensations, as a baby, or a dog, it is necessary, in order to call attention, to increase the strength of the sensory stimulus. A bright or moving object will be perceived where a dull or motionless one will not. So we move a bright colored ball before the eyes of the baby, or throw a stone before a dog. In the child, older and accustomed to obey, the command of the teacher is suffi cient; the expectant idea of something to happen suffices to dominate consciousness, and to inhibit trains of thought irrelevant to the matter demanding attention—that is, the cube. In two other cases, the child's attention may be fixed spontane. ously, and in a way identical with that which must be followed in adult life. The child may wish to use the cube as a building block, and will then attentively examine its shape and angles, to see if these will suit his own purpose; or, knowledge of a wooden cube having been previously acquired, he may examine a glass cube from simple curiosity to see how far the properties of the new, and generally resembling object, may agree with those of the one previously known. In the first case the idea of an expectant purpose detains the cube perception in consciousness. A more extensive volition directs. the voluntary act of attention. In the second case the attention is commanded by a feeling, the feeling of intellectual curiosity about the relations of things. This feeling serves to detain in consciousness the perception of the cube. Thus either desire or will are essential to the acts of voluntary attention, by which alone the simplest definite knowledge can be acquired. The reason that so many people fail to learn anything after they have left school, is because they are incapable of initiating the deliberate or sustained attention

which is necessary, and this incapacity is due to lack either of the characteristic feeling which should command attention,that is, intellectual curiosity, or to the lack of any purpose which the knowledge could be made to serve, were this purpose only the further continuations of ideas. This is why, for the majority of adult human beings, no ideas enter the mind, except such as are revived in the repetition of cerebro-mental processes which have already been carried on. Such people can only think what they already know, and have neither desire nor power to learn anything new.

Since the acquisition of ideas is so closely dependent upon feeling and volition, it becomes necessary for the instructor in ideas to use every means to arouse the feelings of the child and to encourage the performance of voluntary acts.

Empirically, emotion is constantly appealed to in education. Fear, affection, vanity, ambition, self-love, these have been played upon by pedagogues for centuries. They cannot be entirely neglected. Yet to the extent to which these feelings operate, they cannot but tend to increase the area of that personal nucleus, whose relative diminution is a principal aim of education. It is little use to acquire knowledge of impersonal things and relations, if this knowledge only serves to feed the cravings of personal vanity, and afford no satisfaction unless these be gratified.

The feeling which should accompany ideas is that of disinterested curiosity. Of this children are far more susceptible than is often supposed; indeed, far more so than is the average adult, whose indifference to new knowledge is frequently exasperating. But there is no prettier sight in the world than the flushed cheeks and kindling eyes of children upon whom a new idea has just dawned. The task of engaging the volition of children during the excitation of ideas is more complex. In the most simple way it is often profitable to set the child to work at something which interests him, in order that he may incidentally acquire certain information which is in itself distasteful or tedious, and yet which it is desirable that he should know. Thus Miss Edgeworth, in one of her charming stories,