II.-EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE.

(IV.)*

I NOw proceed with the review of the Emotions, as motives in Education.

Play of the Emotions of Activity.

Nothing is more frequently prescribed in education than to foster the pupils' own activity, to put them in the way of discovering facts and principles for themselves. This position needs to be carefully surveyed.

There is, in the human system, a certain spontaneity of action, the result of central energy, independent of any feelings that may accompany the exercise. It is great in children; and it marks special individuals, who are said to possess the active temperament. It distinguishes races and nationalities of human beings, and is illustrated in the differences among the animal tribes; it also varies with general bodily vigour. This activity would burst out and discharge itself in some form of exertion, whether useful or useless, even if the result were perfectly indifferent as regards pleasure or pain. We usually endeavour to turn it to account by giving it a profitable direction, instead of letting it run to waste or something worse. It expends itself in a longer or shorter time, but while any portion remains, exertion is not burdensome.

Although the spontaneous flow of activity is best displayed and most intelligible in the department of muscular exercise, it applies also to the senses and the nerves, and comprises mental action as well as bodily. The intellectual strain of attention, of volition, of memory, and of thought, proceeds to a certain length by mere fulness of power, after rest and renovation; and may be counted on to this extent as involving nothing essentially toilsome. Here, too, a good direction is all that is wanted to make a profitable result.

The activity thus assumed as independent of feeling is nevertheless accompanied with feeling, and that feeling is essentially pleasurable: the pleasure being greatest at first. The presence of pleasure is the standing motive to action; and all the natural activity of the system-whether muscular or nervous brings an effluence of pleasure, until a certain point of depletion is arrived at.

If, further, our activity is employed productively, or in yielding any gratification beyond the mere exercise, this is so much added to the pleasures of action. If, besides the delight of intellectual exercise, we obtain for ourselves the gratification of fresh knowledge, we seem to attain the full pleasure due to the employment of the intellect.

* Continued from MIND, No. XI.

Much more, however, is meant by the gratification of the self-activity of the learner. That expression points to the acquiring of knowledge, as little as possible by direct communication, and as much as possible by the mind's own exertion in working it out from the raw materials. We are to place the pupil as nearly as may be in the track of the first discoverer, and thus impart the stimulus of invention, with the accompanying outburst of self-gratulation and triumph. This bold fiction is sometimes put forward as one of the regular arts of the teacher; but I should prefer to consider it as an extraordinary device admissible only on peculiar occasions.

It is an obvious defect in teaching to keep continually lecturing pupils, without asking them in turn to reproduce and apply what is said. This is no doubt a sin against the pupil's self-activity, but rather in the manner than in the fact. Listening and imbibing constitute a mode of activity; only it may be overdone in being out of proportion to the other exercises requisite for fixing our knowledge. When these other activities are fairly plied, the pupil may have a certain complacent satisfaction in his or her own efficiency as a learner, and this is a fair and legitimate reward to an apt pupil. It does not assume any independent self-sufficiency; it merely supposes an adequate comprehension and a faithful reproduction of the knowledge communicated. The praise or approbation of the master, and of others interested, is a superadded reward.

Notwithstanding, there still remains, if we could command it, a tenfold power in the feeling of origination, invention, or creation; but as this can hardly ever be actual, the suggestion is to give it in fiction or imagination. Now, it is one of the delicate arts of an accomplished instructor to lay before his pupils a set of facts pointing to a conclusion, and leave them to draw the conclusion for themselves. Exactly to hit the mean between a leap too small to have any merit, and one too wide for the ordinary pupil, is a fine adjustment and a great success. All this, however, belongs to the occasional luxuries, the bon-bons of teaching, and cannot be included under the daily routine.

It is to be borne in mind that although the pride of origination is a motive of extraordinary power, and in some minds surpasses every other motive, and has a great charm even in a fictitious example, yet it is not in all minds the only extraneous motive that may aid the teacher. There is a counter motive of sympathy, affection and admiration for superior wisdom, that operates in the other direction; giving a zest in receiving and imbibing to the letter what is imparted, and jealously restraining any independent exercise of judgment such as would share the credit with the instructor. This tendency is no doubt liable to

run into slavishness and to favour the perpetuation of error and the stagnation of the human mind; but a certain measure of it is only becoming the attitude of a learner. It accompanies a proper sense of what is the fact, namely, that the learner is a learner and not teacher or a discoverer, and has to receive a great deal wis mere passive acquiescence, before venturing to suggest any thprovements. Unreasoning blind faith is indispensable ir beginning any art or science; the pupil has to lay up a stock of notions before having any materials for discovery or origiretion. There is a right moment for relaxing this attitude and assuming the exercise of independence; but it has scarcely arrived while the schoolmaster is still at work. Even in the higher walks of university teaching, independence is prernature, unless in some exceptional minds, and the attempt to proceed upon it, and to invite the free criticism of pupils, does not appear ever to have been very fruitful.*

Play of the Emotions of Fine Art.

This is necessarily a wide subject, but for our purpose a few select points will be enough. The proper and principal end of Art is enjoyment; now whatever is able to contribute on the great scale to our pleasure, is a power over all that we do. The bearings on education are to be seen.

The Art Emotions are seldom looked upon as a mere source of enjoyment. They are apt to be regarded in preference as a moral power, and an aid to education at every point. Nevertheless, we should commence with recognising in them a means of pleasure as such, a pure hedonic factor, in which capacity they are a final end. Their function in intellectual education is the function of all pleasure when not too great, namely, to cheer, refresh, and encourage us in our work.

There are certain general effects of Art that come in well at the very beginning. Such are symmetry, order, rhythm,

*It would lead us too far, although it might not be uninstructive, to reflect upon the evil side of this fondness for giving a new and self-suggested cast to all received knowledge. It introduces change for the mere sake of change and never lets well alone. It multiplies variations of form and phraseology for expressing the same facts, and so renders all subjects more perplexed than they need be ; not to speak of controverting what is established, because it is established, and allowing nothing ever to settle. Owing to a dread of the feverish love of change, certain works that have accidentally received an ascendancy, such as the Elements of Euclid, are retained notwithstanding their imperfections. The acquiescent multitude of minds regard this as a less evil than letting loose the men of action and revolution to vie with each other in distracting alterations, while there is no judicial power to hold the balance. It is a received maxim in the tactics of legislation that no scheme, however well matured, can pass a popular body without amendment; it is not in collective human nature to accept anything simpliciter, without having a finger in the pie.

and simple design and proportion; which tification of t school, just as they should be the adjuncts points to th portion, simple design, a certain amount by direc suitable elements of the school interior; to mind's owL tidiness, neatness, and arrangement, among the

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only this must not be worrying and oppressive of the first In the exercises suited to infants, Time an largely employed. Of all the fine arts, the most available, uarts of linary influential is Music. This is perhaps the most unex as well as the cheapest of human pleasures. It has be upon with avidity by the human race in all times; so i that we wonder how life could ever have been passed it. In the earlier stages, it was united with Poetry, poetical element was of equal, if not of greater power th musical accompaniment. As the ethical instructors of ma have always disavowed the pursuit of pleasure as such, allowed it only as subsidiary to morality and social d the question with legislators has been what form of music best calculated to educe the moral virtues and the noble characteristics of the mind. It was this view that entered int the speculative social constructions of Plato and Aristotle Now, undoubtedly the various modes of music operate very differently on the mind; everyone knows the extremes of martial and ecclesiastical music; and fancy can insert many intermediate grades.*

For the moment, a musical strain exerts immense power over the mind, to animate, to encourage, to soothe and to console. But the facts do not bear us out in attributing to it any permaner moral influence; nothing is more fugitive than the exciteme of a musical performance. Excepting its value as a substant contribution to the enjoyment of life, I am not able to affi that it has any influence on education, whether moral intellectual. Certainly, if it has any effect in the moral sphd it has none that I can trace in the sphere of intellect. As recreative variety in the midst of toil, it deserves every encomiu In those exercises that are half recreative, half educational, į drill and gymnastic, the accompaniment of a band is mos

Plato, in the Republic, wishing to train a vigorous and hardy race. interdicted not simply the unfavourable musical strains, but the instruments most adapted to these. He permits only the lyre and the harp, with the panspipe for shepherds attending their flocks; forbidding both the flute and all complicated stringed instruments. Disallowing the lugubrious, passionate, soft, and convivial modes of music, he tolerates none but the Dorian and the Phrygian, suitable to a sober, resolute, courageous frame of mind; to which also the rhythm and movement of the body is to be adapted. (Grote's Pluto, III. 196.)

stimulating. In the Kindergarten it is well brought in, as the wind-up to the morning's work. But music during ordinary lessons, or any sort of intellectual work, is mere distraction, as everyone knows from the experience of street bands and organs. Excess in the pleasures of music, like every other excess, is unfavourable to mental culture. But some of the most intellectual men that ever lived have been devotees of music. In the case of Luther it seems to have been incorporated with his whole being; Milton invoked it as an aid in poetic inspiration. These were men whose genius largely involved their emotions. But the musical enthusiasm of Jeremy Bentham could have no bearing on his work, farther than as so much enjoyment.

Poetry is Music and a great deal more. Its bearings are more numerous and complicated. In the ruder stages of music, when it accompanied poetry, the main effects lay in the poetry. The poetic form-the rhythm and the metre-impresses the ear, and is an aid to memory; whence it has been transferred from the proper themes of poetry to very prosaic subjects by way of a mnemonic device. The subject-matter of poetry comprises the stirring narrative, which is an enormous power in human life, and the earliest intellectual stimulus in education.

Play of the Ethical Emotions.

The feelings called Ethical, or Moral, from their very meaning are the support of all good and right conduct. The other emotions may be made to point to this end, but they may also work in the opposite direction.

When the educator describes these in more precise and equivalent phraseology, he generally singles out regard to the pleasure and displeasure of parents and superiors, together with habits or dispositions towards obedience; all which is the result of culture and growth.

Any primitive feelings conspiring towards good conduct must be of the nature of the sympathies or social yearnings; which are called into exercise in definite ways, well known to all students of human nature. By far the most powerful stimulus to acts of goodness towards others, is good conduct on their side; whoever can resist this, is a fit subject for the government of fear and nothing else. The law says 'Do unto others, as ye would that they should do unto you'. The lower ground of practice is 'Do unto others as they do unto you'. This is as far as the very young can reach in moral virtue.

It is too much to expect in early years generous and disinterested impulses, unreciprocated. The young have little to call their own; they have no means. Their fortune is their free, unrestrained vivacity, their elation, and their hopes. If they