Psychology is the programme for the development of the power of self-observation. As such we may repeat for it the claims we made for Logic to a place in schemes of education. It should intervene before literary study narrows itself upon more exclusive areas; and it should bridge the gulf between the study of humanity in books and the stern and life-long perplexities which await a student after he shall have entered on social, commercial, and professional business. When literature has been interpreted in the light of formed habits of psychological observation, and of ideas abstracted from a wider area of mental manifestations than is found within itself, and when it is consequently alive with expectation of new analogues in daily experience, literary learning has been converted into practical wisdom.

But it is the fate of most schemes for the direct and systematic cultivation of a faculty that they find themselves in rivalry with schemes for distributing all available energy among useful applications of the faculty and cultivating it only indirectly. The musician whom we have already referred to is only a specimen of many artists who may be tempted

to forego technique. And the student of Science or of Literature is often encouraged to press forward into the studious dissipation of problem after problem or of book after book without waiting to secure his grasp of underlying methods or conceptions. The pleas for specialism and expertness grow more importunate and offer themselves earlier in student life. Yet in spite of this there are signs that in our contemporary culture as a whole is a trend against the overhaste to be wise. Discipline is here or there gaining on mere Practice, and Theory on mere Empiricism. And even as regards the strictly liberal studies in Science and Literature, the reflective conviction of educationists must surely come to be in favour of a discipline whose function is to perfect these disciplines themselves, and students will learn besides Science to watch the process of Science, and besides Literature to centre within themselves the reference of Literature. And woe be to any over-conventional educationists who shall have taken away the key of this culture, who shall have entered not in themselves, and them that were entering in have hindered.

I

LECTURE II

THE INDEPENDENT VALUE OF LOGIC

N the Lecture preceding we have discussed

Logic and Psychology as studies ancillary to other educational studies, contributing a perfection of method and result in these which would not come otherwise. We may now propose the problem whether they have not also a more direct usefulness, whether they can take their place side by side with other sciences and with Literature, claiming values of the same kind, either as qualifications for special spheres of professional duty or as gymnastics for the development of general mental energy. Gold and silver, we mentioned, do not rest in their more formal function as the medium of commerce. Gold may become a circlet, and by the side of ebony or ivory display a richer lustre; silver may become a flute, and compared with cocoa-wood or ebonite may

produce a crisper tone. Can Logic and Psychology smooth the path of social converse, like Grammar, or strengthen the sinews of attention, like Mathematics?

That we should be effective in the exposition of whatever thoughts we may wish to bring home to the understanding of other people, and that we should issue victorious from our controversies with them, form an aim that may rank side by side with many other of the acknowledged aims of education, and may have an independent value of its own. Exposition and Controversy may in their manner help us to food and comfort, as well as may Engineering or Trade or Languages. Indeed, it is said to have been the emergencies of Exposition and Controversy that first set a value upon Logic and prepared a cradle for the new science at the hearth of ancient culture. And although ours are more hurried days, and the family of sciences has multiplied into a crowded people crying for room to breathe, there is still something of life's good that can only be gained through lucidity and argumentative vigour. Trebatius may justify his professional counsels by the Topics which

Cicero bequeathed him from out of his own despair and overshadowing death; Hampden's advocate may syllogise the limits of Charles's prerogative before the judges; Falstaff may "dispute the major" of Prince Henry's wit; De Morgan may distinguish "Moods" in his demonstration of Science to the people; Herbert Spencer may swing from "Hypothesis" to "Verification" or from "Data" to "Induction" in his philosophic paragraphs; and all may gain hearing and speed conviction by means of these technicalities. And at such a moment as when Hampden stood before England's Justice, and the liberties of an Empire seemed to be staked on the cogency of analogies and dilemmas, we logicians might excusably be betrayed into boasts like those of the Athenian Sophists, that we can teach the power of the tongue, and on occasion could make even the worse appear the better cause.

We might be so betrayed, yet a self-betrayal the boasting would certainly be. If there are any teachers of Rhetoric, and if these should take the trouble to spread the praise of logical formulæ, and should borrow from us what goods of our making may please them, we, too, shall