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 FOUNDED EV JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 
 
 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 A DISSERTATION 
 
 SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTIES OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF ARTS, 
 
 LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE, IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 
 
 DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 (department of pedagogy) 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ARTHUR CLARK, A.M. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Chicago) 
 
 ^ OF THE 
 
 OF / 
 
 kLIFO^ 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 I goo 
 
|-Bi06'7 
 
 C6 
 
 " To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching." 
 
 — Amiers Journal. 
 
 PRINTED A T THE UNIVERSITY OF CHIC A GO PRESS 
 
 ill 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The publication of this thesis has been delayed in the hope that 
 opportunity would be found for a fuller statement of the application 
 of the fundamental principle of guidance through suggestion to prac- 
 tical school work ; but no time has been found for such revision, and 
 the dissertation is now given to the printer in the form in which it was 
 originally accepted by the Faculties. 
 
 W. A. Clark. 
 Nebraska State Normal School, 
 January, 1903. 
 
ANALYSIS OF C0NTP:NTS. 
 
 I. Problem Stated. rAcx 
 
 1. Nature and method of. the discussion 9 
 
 a) Constructive and expository, rather than research. 
 
 6) Formulation and discussion of a single law of pedagogy. 
 c) A view of the whole field from a definite standpoint. 
 
 2. Pedagogy and its laws -.--..... iq 
 a) The science of education. 
 
 6) What a science is. 
 
 c) Education as the subject-matter of pedagogy. 
 
 d) Accumulation of material for a science of education. 
 
 e) Pedagogy a normative science. 
 
 II. Mental Growth. 
 
 1. Nature of growth in general .-----.-12 
 a) Definition of growth. 
 
 6) "Enlargement " and "organization " as factors in growth. 
 
 c) All growth through functioning of the organism. 
 
 2. How mind grows -----..--.13 
 a) Analogy to the growth of the plant. 
 
 d) Increase in "mental volume" and reorganization of "mental struc- 
 
 ture." 
 c) Source of the materials. 
 (f) Rubbed into conscious life by the friction of the environment. 
 
 e) Saturation of the life by the content of common consciousness. 
 /) Making the race knowledge individual knowledge. 
 
 III. Guiding the Mental Life of Another. 
 
 1. A common assumption in all education 15 
 
 a) Each person builds his own life out of the available materials and 
 
 under the limitations of his environment. 
 i>) But one person may intentionally influence the life of another, 
 determining in a large measure its general trend and character, 
 without destroying its autonomy. 
 
 2. Means of guidance - IS 
 
 a) By ordering the materials. 
 
 3) By determining the functioning in expression. 
 
 IV. Nature of Suggestion and Reaction. 
 
 I. Two uses of the word " suggest " 16 
 
 ^ a) One idea suggests another. 
 
 (i) Use in the "association of psychology." 
 (2) Continuity of the life current. 
 
 5 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (3) Professor James's criticism. 
 b) One person suggests an idea to another, 
 (i; The introduction of an "image." 
 
 (2) Nature of "reaction." 
 
 (3) Suggestion and reaction not successive stages. 
 
 2. The two schools of hypnotic theory 18 
 
 a) The " neurosis theory." 
 
 b) The " suggestion theory." 
 
 c) Views of Bernheim, Wundt, Titchener, and James. 
 
 3. Two important facts in the suggestion theory of hypnotism - - - 19 
 
 a) The consciousness of the hypnotized person. 
 
 b) Self-determination in hypnotic action. 
 
 4. Suggestion in normal life .-..----- 20 
 
 a) Inoculating with an idea. 
 
 b) Compared with hypnotic suggestion. 
 
 c) Illustration : nature of a " conversation." 
 
 5. "/wtVaAow" is through suggestion ------- 21 
 
 a) Vagueness of the term. 
 
 b) Aristotle's use of it. 
 
 c) Baldwin, Harris, and Preyer. 
 
 d) Guyau's view of the process. 
 
 e) "Imitation" vs. "originality." 
 
 V. Suggestion in Educative Guidance. 
 
 1. Nature of education "- -24 
 
 a) Formal definition. 
 
 b) Explication of the definition. 
 
 (1) Demands two parties : teacher and pupil. 
 
 (2) Limited to " formal education." 
 
 (3) Psychological and sociological conceptions. 
 
 (4) Product and process conceptions. 
 
 (5) From the standpoint of the teacher or from that of the pupil. 
 
 (6) Critical summary. 
 
 2. Teaching - ^° 
 
 a) Definition. 
 
 b) No teaching without learning. 
 
 c) Nature of " instruction." 
 
 d) Nature of "discipline." 
 
 3. Affirmative character of all education -.-----" 3° 
 
 a) Encouraging and aiding growth. 
 
 b) Leading to life through life. 
 
 4. The law of educative guidance - - - - ■ • ■ "31 
 
 a) No education apart from suggestion. 
 
 b) The teacher guides from within. 
 
 c) Pedagogical suggestion a normal life process. 
 
 d) Humanity essentially good. 
 
 e) Examples of particular teaching acts. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 7 
 
 rAGK 
 
 5. Unintentional influencing - 34 
 
 a) Huntington's "unconscious tuition." 
 
 b) Educative guidance essentially intentional. 
 
 c) Employing life consciously to guide life. 
 
 6. Study - - - ■ - - - - • - - - - -36 
 
 a) What study is. 
 
 b) Teaching is inciting to study. 
 
 7. The " recitation" 37 
 
 a) Function of the recitation. 
 
 b) Importance in school work. 
 
 8. The "school" 38 
 
 a) What a school is. 
 
 b) The teacher's place in the school. 
 
 c) The " curriculum." 
 
 g. Punishment ------------39 
 
 a) Definition and explication. 
 b') The three ends of punishment. 
 
 f) Character of school punishment. 
 ^) Examples of educative punishment. 
 
 e) Punishment for neglect to do the right. 
 /) Punishment to be avoided. 
 
 g) Example in the Elmira Reformatory. 
 
 VI. Negative Implications of the Law. 
 
 1, No education apart from suggestion - - 46 
 
 a) Life cannot be controlled from without. 
 
 b) Teacher can only w<?(/»/i«- life. 
 
 2. No guidance without reaction .- - 47 
 
 a) Only active things can be guided. 
 
 h) No "suggestion" without reaction. 
 
 VII. Pedagogical Conclusions. 
 
 1. Education is an affirmative process - - 49 
 
 a) Its aim is affirmative. 
 
 b') Its means are affirmative. 
 
 c) Its methods are affirmative. 
 
 2. Education is a personal matter - - 5° 
 
 a) Attitude of the teacher toward his pupil. 
 
 b) Pedagogy an ethical science. 
 
 c) Individual character of teaching. 
 
 d) The teacher a fellow student. 
 
 3. Education seeks to form character - - 52 
 
 a) There is one unified aim. 
 
 b) The aim is an ideal one. 
 
 c) Education aims at present character. 
 
 - 54 
 Bibliography ------- 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION. 
 
 THE PROBLEM STATED. 
 
 The following study deals with a perfectly definite problem. It is 
 the purpose to state explicitly a single law of pedagogy, to discuss its 
 validity as a scientific proposition, and to show its significance in the 
 whole of educational theory. It is a work of formulating and 
 expounding rather than of establishing through scientific research. 
 The facts employed as data in the discussion are, in the main, common 
 property — an inheritance from centuries of thought upon educational 
 aims and practices. While no attempt has been made to verify them by 
 extended observation and experiment, the writer feels that his experi- 
 ence of more than a score of years in the class-room gives some war- 
 rant for their acceptance. Until experimental psychology advances 
 beyond its present stage of a too exclusive investigation of sense-phe- 
 nomena and deals with the facts of rational life in general, and until 
 the future pedagogical laboratory makes possible a like critical study 
 of educational phenomena, we must content ourselves to deal tenta- 
 tively with the facts found in common consciousness in such a manner 
 as seems most productive for the ends sought. Such a study as is 
 here presented, will not, however, prove unproductive for the purposes 
 of practical pedagogy, and it is certainly not without its more strictly 
 scientific value. It presents and explains a clearlv defined working 
 hypothesis for guidance in subsequent research, thus pre-empting a 
 field for future exploration. To gather and evaluate by true scientific 
 method the data necessary to establish or confute this law would be a 
 decisive step toward giving pedagogy a right to a place among the 
 modern sciences. But such a consecrated work demands an equip- 
 ment of resources and an opportunity for study which the writer 
 cannot at present command ; consequently he contents himself with 
 merely delimiting the field. 
 
 While dealing with but a single law of the science of education, 
 there is a degree of completeness in the discussion, in that it views 
 the whole field of educational thought from a definite standpoint. 
 It is, in fact, a study of educational aims, means, and processes in 
 their relation to one dominating principle. All the materials of edu- 
 
 9 
 
I o SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 
 
 cational science are thus organized about a central conception, and 
 all educational theory is developed from one germinant idea. There 
 are evidently other laws of co-ordinate rank which could be made the 
 centers of similar studies, but with these we are not at present con- 
 cerned. The cosmic process of formulating such laws and organizing 
 them into a consistent whole is truly the first stage of differentiating 
 and defining the science of education. But while we may not at present 
 undertake the organization of such a framework for our science, we 
 must preface our discussion of the chosen law by a general characteri- 
 zation of the nature of pedagogy, its subject-matter and its methods. 
 
 Pedagogy is the science of education. — The common denial that 
 there is a science of education, either in esse or in posse, is due chiefly 
 to three facts : a vagueness of conception regarding what constitutes a 
 science, a lack of precise definition of education, and ignorance of 
 what has already been accomplished in the formulation of funda- 
 mental educational principles. Our present purpose will not permit 
 the examination in detail of these three sources of error ; but the 
 lines along which such a vindication of the claims of pedagogy should 
 proceed may be indicated here. 
 
 A science is an organically related body of thought originating in a 
 specialization of interests. In the earlier stages of life, both of the race 
 and of the individual, experiences come and go in their complexity 
 without being evaluated from definite view-points, each experience 
 being for the time the whole of life viewed in its unbroken entirety. 
 Later certain experiences are objectified, correlated, and unified into a 
 class, viewed as having a common origin in a particular mode of contact 
 with the environment ; and thus centers of special interest are estab- 
 lished, and particular points of view become habitual. Through 
 analysis and classification experiences are broken up and the elements 
 segregated into groups, and by constructive thinking these groups are 
 organized into phases of life. These phases of life through elabora- 
 tion and systematization of their characteristic features become 
 sciences. Thus any mode or "way of looking at things" may become 
 a science, if the facts are so differentiated and organized as to consti- 
 tute a distinct phase of experience. Sciences are styles of thought, 
 fashions in experiencing that are born, run their courses, and die, 
 giving place to new sciences. The facts in common consciousness are 
 seen in endless variety of kaleidoscopic combinations as age succeeds 
 age, and the sciences of one generation become old-fashioned and 
 "false" to the succeeding generations. Nevertheless each science has 
 
SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 1 1 
 
 during its reign its own field, within which it is exclusive and beyond 
 which it cannot be extended. The mutability of the organic form of 
 a science does not necessarily render its knowledge-basis vague or its 
 boundaries indefinite. It is essentially one way of looking at the 
 facts, and such singleness of conception will not admit of uncertainty 
 as to subject-matter. Many of the facts and principles of one science 
 may by slight conversion be turned to useful account in building up 
 another science. It is merely a question of reconstructing the 
 elementary materials about a new center of interest; the view-point is 
 changed, and the truths are seen in new relations and altered per- 
 spective. One science in this way may become a propaedeutic to 
 another, contributing its facts as data for new generalizations. Its 
 principles are transplanted into the new field and subordinated to a 
 new cosmical view. It is in this way that the facts of psychology and 
 ethics become facts of pedagogy. Education, properly defined, pre- 
 sents a characteristic body of phenomena, which are the subject- 
 matter of a true science. 
 
 Education is the conscious direction which the more mature person 
 gives to the growth of the less mature, that he may lead him into a 
 larger enjoyment of the blessings of the physical environment, and a 
 fuller participation in the pleasures and duties of the social life. The 
 fundamental idea here is the conscious guidance of a life-process. It is 
 the bringing up of the young to such a stage of life-functioning as 
 enables them to participate in the blessings and responsibilities of life, 
 through a constructive guidance of their development. Both the 
 social and the individual aspects of education are recognized ; it is 
 the process of socializing the individual through maturing him. The 
 individual is to be "elevated into the race" through integrating into 
 his life experiences originating in the social environment. This restric- 
 tion of the term to what is commonly called "formal education," as 
 opposed to the vague conception of the whole process of development 
 of the individual during the period of youth under whatever influ- 
 ences, is essential to any clear discussion of pedagogical principles 
 and laws. There is no education apart from teaching, that is, apart from 
 "conscious guidance" of life toward a more or less clearly deter- 
 mined end. 
 
 It is neither possible nor desirable to exhibit here what has already 
 been accomplished by educators in accumulating materials for their 
 science. One who reads with discrimination our rapidly increasing 
 pedagogical literature cannot fail to find much of a truly scientific 
 
I a SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 
 
 character. To segregate these discovered principles and to give them 
 organic form as the laws of a science is a work of the highest value, 
 which awaits the masterhand of some educational leader. 
 
 As to matter and method sciences may be separated into two 
 groups : descriptive and normative. The descriptive sciences are 
 explanatory, dealing with that which is, without concern for what 
 ought to be. They are the "fact sciences" of the physical and psychi- 
 cal worlds, in which man simply sees and interprets the objects about 
 him unmoved by a desire to modify them with reference to subjective 
 relations. The normative sciences, on the other hand, are concerned 
 with subjective attitudes springing out of a sense of moral obligation. 
 They deal with what ought to be and are fundamentally concerned with 
 questions of duty. They are the "law sciences" of the social world. 
 The descriptive sciences are analytic and explanatory in their methods, 
 while the normative are constructive and directive; the former deal 
 with facts, and the latter with norms. Psychology is a descriptive 
 science; pedagogy, a normative science. The laws of pedagogy are 
 formal enunciations of principles of conduct of one moral personality 
 toward another in aiding him to his highest development. They 
 should not be confounded, on the one hand, with the mere laws of 
 mental development which belong to psychology, nor, on the other, 
 with the general laws of conduct in social life which belong to ethics. 
 Their characteristic element is the recognition of the ethical attitude 
 of the teacher toward his pupil. 
 
 MENTAL GROWTH. 
 
 Growth is the process by which a living organism builds its own 
 structure through the functioning of its organs. It involves both the 
 acquisition of material and the organization of structure. While growth, 
 at least in the earlier stages of the life of the organism, includes enlarge- 
 ment, mere enlargement without a simultaneous organic development is 
 not growth. The rolling snowball increases in volume, but it does not 
 "grow;" nor can the forming crystal be said to grow in the biological 
 sense in which we are here using the word. The living tree grows by 
 appropriating material from its environment and assimilating it into its 
 own organized substance, employing in the process its organs — roots, 
 leaves, etc. — in their normal functioning. In the lowest forms of ani- 
 mal and plant life the vital movement is merely a simplification of this 
 process, and in the most perfect form of the human organism the 
 growth is still through the normal action of the living mechanism ; 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 13 
 
 hence it may be broadly stated that all growth, in the biological sense, 
 is through the functioning of the organism. 
 
 The growth of the human mind is analogous to the growth of the 
 tree, making due allowance for the non-spatial character of the mind. 
 It is not necessary to raise here the question of the existence of a sub- 
 stantial mental entity, hypostatized as a substratum for the mental phe- 
 nomena; it is enough to know that 7nati's mental life is a self-directed 
 growth. The individual human personality develops naturally to 
 perfection of structure and functioning through self-directed experien- 
 cing. This does not mean that the mind grows apart from the body in 
 which it manifests itself; it is the man that grows, body and soul in 
 their vital union. We are, however, concerned at present with the 
 mental aspect of the man in his life-movement, /. e., with the growth 
 of the mind. This growth, like that of the vegetable organism, is not 
 a mere enlargement through accretion and molding by environment ; 
 it is a vital process, consciously directed by the man himself. What- 
 ever life the man has — all that he lives is thus a matter of self-directed 
 development. Each day's life is built upon that which is past, and is 
 in turn the foundation and the condition of that which is to come. 
 Nothing belongs to the life except that which it grows into itself, and 
 all that it does grow into itself is permanently a part of it. 
 
 In this mental growth it is important to distinguish with jirecision 
 the two phases, of increase in "mental volume" and reorganization of 
 "mental structure." They are not two successive stages, but two 
 aspects of the same process; the acquisition of material and the con- 
 structive employment of it are but the life movement seen from differ- 
 ent standpoints. When we speak of "increase in mental volume," we 
 need to guard ourselves against the implication of the space concep- 
 tion involved in the term "volume," which we borrow from the 
 physicists. A "larger life" does not, of course, mean one of greater 
 magnitude, but merely one of greater experience content. To 
 "increase the mental volume" is to add to the knowledge-posses- 
 sions, to swell the current of the life-movement by wider and fuller 
 experiences. Similarly by the "organization of mental structure" is 
 not meant the distribution of the "mental substance" into particular 
 organs, or " faculties," but the securing of such integrity of the mental 
 life as will give effectiveness and facility to functioning. Clearly 
 determined expression is both the means and the result of this organ- 
 ization of life. It is only the effort to produce that can give the 
 ability to produce ; and one learns to live artistically by living artisti- 
 
1 4 SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 
 
 cally. In the effort to know one lives more; in the effort to do he 
 lives better. But these cannot be separated; one knows truly only in 
 doing, and does only in knowing. 
 
 The materials for man's growth are found in his physical and social 
 environment. All growth is by incorporating into the structure of the 
 organism materials taken from the environment. Plants feed upon that 
 which they find in the soil and air; and man nourishes his life from 
 his environment. Man has two environments, or rather his environ- 
 ment is double in its character. From the physical universe about him he 
 appropriates the materials of his bodily structure; and this same physi- 
 cal universe impinging upon his nervous mechanism stimulates him into 
 conscious life-activities — "rubs him into conscious life." But his 
 experiencing of the environment, his interpretation of its irritating 
 contact, is mediated by his social environment. He sees the "green- 
 ness" of the grass through the eyes of his race-fellows. His life is 
 saturated with the content of common consciousness, the accumulated 
 race-experiences, so that he cannot reach the physical world except 
 through the medium of the social atmosphere in which he lives. In 
 addition to mediating the physical environment for man, this social 
 atmosphere is itself a true environment. Man acknowledges his 
 fellows as subjects with whom he agrees or disagrees, to whom he 
 takes attitudes. His relations to them nourish and condition his indi- 
 vidual life. Just as in his experiences with his physical environment 
 he builds up certain concepts, or "types" of existence, that are to him 
 in their recurrence in thought a sort of sense-impression stimulating 
 to life, so in the recognized "characters" of his fellows and in the 
 social institutions as they exist in common consciousness, he finds 
 stimulation and materials for his own development. Thus in his 
 experiences with nature and in his intercourse with his fellow men the 
 individual man finds the materials of his normal growth. We desig- 
 nate as "environment" the general storehouse of life's supplies; but 
 environment is only so much of "circumstances" as is related actively 
 to the life of the individual ; it is circumstances as they are grasped 
 by the individual and made a part of his own structure. What we call 
 "knowledge," the accumulated race-experiences that we embody in 
 books, becomes material for the growth of the individual only as he 
 appropriates it. He must psychologize it into his very soul-substance 
 through true apperception. The "arithmetic" of the school text-book 
 becomes John's arithmetic by being incorporated into John's life in 
 normal growth. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION i 5 
 
 GUIDING THE MENTAL LIFE OF ANOTHER. 
 
 That one person may intentionally guide and stimulate the growth 
 of another is a fundamental postulate in all educational science. It is 
 a common assumption in all teaching, and is not likely to be called in 
 question by the practical teacher or the more philosophical expounder 
 of pedagogical principles. It is, however, important to know its rela- 
 tions to the principle set forth in the preceding section, namely, that 
 each person's life is a self-directed growth. It is an essential condition 
 of rational life that it builds itself out of the available materials and 
 under the limitations of its environment. To take from a person, even 
 for the most benevolent motives, this right of self-making would, were 
 it possible to do so, be destructive of all moral responsibility, would 
 degrade iho. person into the thing. Fortunately it is psychologically 
 impossible to rob man wholly of this power, though the supply of life- 
 materials may be so limited and the opportunities for constructive 
 expression may be so controlled as to make the life a poor, dwarfed, 
 sickly shadow of what it would be under normal conditions. On the 
 other hand, it is possible to so enrich the environment and to so 
 accelerate the movement as to make the life of another much more 
 than it would be unguided. Upon this possibility of aiding the life- 
 movement of another depends the whole theory of education. The 
 teacher claims the power and the right to co-operate in determining 
 the development of his pupil toward some ideal end, which he as a 
 more mature student of life's purposes and processes more or less 
 clearly perceives; and pedagogy has for its province the principles and 
 laws of this intentional influencing of one person by another. 
 
 The teacher has chiefly two means of influencing the life-movement 
 of his pupil: he may so order the environment as to secure a larger 
 appropriation of such materials as contribute to development in a cer- 
 tain direction ; or he may suggest images about which the successive 
 experiences may be developed, thus shaping by gentlest touch the 
 progressive building. These two are not so easily distinguished as 
 might appear at the first glance ; they are really fundamentally the 
 same, differing only as to whether our attention is directed to the 
 material used or the use that is made of it. We may for the present 
 drop from view the first aspect, returning to it in a later part of the 
 discussion. The nature of the second means is comprehensively 
 presented in the following statement : Images may be suggested about 
 which the life-experiences may be organized, and even the larger ideals 
 of the whole life -movement may be biased by the intentional influence of 
 
1 6 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 
 
 the more mature mind. We must now devote ourselves to a somewhat 
 exhaustive study of this proposition, seeking to determine first its 
 psychological validity and then its pedagogical significance. 
 
 NATURE OF SUGGESTION AND REACTION. 
 
 The word "suggest" has, in both philosophy and in common 
 speech, two pretty clearly distinguished meanings : one idea may sug- 
 gest another, and one person may suggest an idea to another person. 
 The first is the common use in the " association psychology; " it denotes 
 the operation by which one idea calls up another through some form 
 of association with it. Doubtless there is much justification for the 
 claim that "all mental life falls under the principle of suggestion," 
 and that " the existence of an idea in consciousness at a particular 
 time is due to the fact that such another idea has preceded it in con- 
 sciousness;" but we need not on this account look upon life as a mere 
 chain of linked ideas. It is the whole life-current that moves on; or, 
 as Ladd states it in his Descriptive and Explanatory Psychology, p. 264, 
 " It is our total states or fields of consciousness which follow each 
 other in the succession of time." It is enough for our present pur- 
 poses to recognize that there is a continuity of experience without 
 attempting to trace the connections between its successive phases. We 
 must leave to the psychologist the formulation and defense of his 
 "laws of association," with the humble petition that we may be spared 
 from any attempt to deal in pedagogy with discrete "psychic atoms" 
 joined by some form of hypothetical linkages " in the mind " or " in the 
 brain." We cannot forbear, however, to quote Professor James 
 against his brethren : "Asociation, so far as the word stands for an 
 effect, is between things thought of — it is things, not ideas, which are 
 associated in the mind. We ought to talk of the association of objects, 
 not of the association of ideas. And so far as association stands for a 
 cause, it is httvittn processes in the brain — it is these which, by being 
 associated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be 
 thought."' 
 
 To suggest, in the second meaning of the term, is to impart 
 an idea unobtrusively to another. It is to excite an idea in the 
 mind of another, to start an experience by indirect prompting, to 
 introduce an image into the mind in such a manner as to cause a 
 reconstruction of the life-materials about it as a determining center. 
 Baldwin characterizes it as "the abrupt entrance from without into 
 
 ' Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, p. 554. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION I 7 
 
 consciousness of an idea or image which becomes a part of the stream 
 of thought and tends to produce the muscular and volitional effects 
 which ordinarily follow upon its presence.'" The word "abrupt " in 
 this statement is liable to be misunderstood. The idea does not, 
 even in the hypnotic state, break into the mind ; there is always a wel- 
 coming, however coy and resisting the receiving mind may be. It is 
 a life-movement \.\idX is influenced, and it cannot passively suffer the 
 introduction into it of something wholly foreign to it. " Suggestion 
 is an operation producing a given effect on a subject by acting on his 
 intelligence. Every suggestion essentially consists in acting on a per- 
 son by means of an idea ; every effect suggested is the result of a phe- 
 nomenon of ideation."' This "ideation" is the essential fact of the 
 suggestion as seen from the side of the influenced life. It is the reac- 
 tion of the receiving mind. When we speak of the " reaction to a 
 suggestion " we do not, however, mean adverse action, as we do in 
 physics, but the active reception of the suggestion as a factor in the 
 life-movement. To react in this sense is to accept and to utilize con- 
 structively in a normal process of experiencing that which is placed 
 before the mind. In his Outlines of Psychology Vxai^^'iox '\\\.c\\<zx\t.x, 
 speaking of the experimental process of applying sensory stimuli to 
 another person and noting his response to them, says : "A reaction is 
 an artificial action." The term "artificial" used here must be care- 
 fully guarded. The action is a perfectly natural one so far as its pro- 
 cedure is concerned ; it is only artificial in that it originates in the 
 conscious purpose of another, that is another furnishes the stimulus to 
 an experience that otherwise would not have come naturally into the 
 life-current. The suggestion comes as a hint or insinuation to a self- 
 determining movement, which may accept it or reject it with more or 
 less vigor according to the integrity of the whole movement. This is 
 as true for the hypnotic subject as it is for the person in the normal 
 state. Further, " suggestion " and " reaction " are not successive 
 stages in the progress of the influencing of one life by another ; they 
 are two aspects of the same movement. There can be no suggestion 
 without reaction. The two minds participate in a common process, the 
 one as suggester and the other as reacter. The one mind communi- 
 cates to the other from its own life-movement, and the other actively 
 receives the communication into its own vital current. It is merely 
 the impinging of one life upon another, gently yet effectively modify- 
 ing its course. For the purposes of the present discussion emphasis 
 
 I Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 297. » Binet and F6r£, Animal Magnttitm, p. 173. 
 
1 8 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 must be laid upon the ufwbtrusiveness of this influencing. The idea 
 is not thrust before the mind as sonaething wholly foreign to it, inter- 
 rupting forcibly its current of experiencing with the demand for the 
 taking up of a new element. The "communicated image" finds its 
 place in the life because of a feeling of kinship of the present content 
 for the factor. The new idea is created in the mind of the receiver 
 under the most gentle touch of the influencing mind, and the experi- 
 ence is determined in volume and form by the " mere suggestion " of 
 what it may become. 
 
 There are two clearly distinguished schools of hypnotic theory, 
 commonly known as the " Paris School " and the " Nancy School." 
 According to the first, hypnotism is a peculiar pathological state into 
 which certain predisposed people may be brought, and in which their 
 actions may be automatically controlled by another person without 
 their own consciousness or volition. In the cataleptic trance the body 
 becomes merely an ingenious machine to be played upon by the 
 hypnotizer. According to the second theory, hypnotism is an abnor- 
 mal condition of the mental life in which images work themselves out 
 more readily into expression, and in which the hypnotized person con- 
 trols his own life under the suggestions of the hypnotizer. The first 
 has been called the " neurosis theory," and the second the " sugges- 
 tion theory." In the one, personal life is for the time wholly destroyed ; 
 in the other, it is only warped and distorted. Without attempting to 
 enter into this controversy, it need only be said, as is probably suf- 
 ficiently evident from the context, that the claims of the Nancy people, 
 led by Bernheim, are accepted in the present essay, Bernheim char- 
 acterizes the process of hypnotism as " the induction of a peculiar 
 psychical condition which increases the susceptibility to suggestion;" 
 also he says : "It is suggestion that rules hypnotism." Wundt' says : 
 " Die hauptsachlichste Entstehungsursache der Hypnose ist d\t. Sugges- 
 tion, d. h. die Mittheilung einer gefuhlsstarken Vorstellung." Profes- 
 sor Titchener tersely says : "All the phenomena of hypnosis can be 
 summed up in the single word suggestion. The operator suggests to 
 the subject what he is to see and do ; the subject suggests to himself 
 that he shall enter the hypnotic state."' Hypnotic suggestion is only 
 a simplified and intensified form of the influence which one person 
 exerts over another in the normal state. In this view the trance-state 
 itself is the effect of suggestion. Bernheim, in Suggtstive Therapeutics, 
 p. 179, says: "Hypnotism does not really create a new condition ; 
 
 « Grundriss der Psychologies p. 321. ^Primer 0/ Psychology, p. 375. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 19 
 
 K 
 
 there is nothing in induced sleep which may not occur in the waking 
 condition, in a rudimentary degree in many cases, but in some to an 
 equal extent." Again on page 190 he says: "The induced sleep does 
 not depend upon the hypnotizer, but upon the subject ; it is his own 
 faith which puts him to sleep. No one can be hypnotized against his 
 will, if he resists the command. Baldwin in the Nation, August 11, 
 1892, writes: "According to the Nancy view, there is nothing abnor- 
 mal about hypnotic sleep. It is normal sleep artificially produced, and 
 the method of producing sleep artificially — suggestion — is nothing 
 more than a skilful and professional use of the hitherto unrecognized 
 fact that our normal life is full of responses suggested to us by our 
 surroundings. Of our usual surroundings, persons are the most 
 important elements; in other words, our social environment, our living 
 milieu, gives constant tone and support to our lives and aids our devel- 
 opment." Professor James judiciously sums up the argument for this 
 position in his Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 601, as follows: 
 " The suggestion theory may therefore be approved as correct, provided 7ve 
 grant the trance-state as its prerequisite. The three states of Charcot, 
 the strange reflexes of Heidenhain, and all other bodily phenomena 
 which have been called direct consequences of the trance-state itself, 
 are not such. They are products of suggestion, the trance-state having 
 no particular outward symptoms of its own ; but without the trance- 
 state there, those particular suggestions could never have been suc- 
 cessfully made." 
 
 The two important facts in this view of hypnotism are the con- 
 sciousness of the hypnotized person and the self-determination of his 
 actions. Upon the first point Bernheim ' says : " The impressions 
 produced by artificial or induced sleep are always conscious at the 
 time they are produced." With even greater definiteness Moll' says : 
 
 "There is no suggestion without consciousness A suggestion 
 
 without consciousness is to me inconceivable." The same conception 
 is also implied in the definition of suggestion in hypnotism by Sidis : ' 
 'Suggestion is the intrusion into the mind of an idea ; met with more 
 or less opposition by the person ; accepted uncritically at last ; and 
 realized unreflectively, almost automatically." Of similar tenor is 
 Fouill^e's statement* that " What is called hypnotic suggestion is 
 nothing but the artificial selection of one idea to the exclusion of all 
 others, so that it passes into action." To ascribe to the hypnotic 
 
 1 Suggestive Therapeutics, p. 157. 2 Hypnotism, p. 267. 3 PsychoUgy of Suggestion, p. 15. 
 ^ Education from a National Standpoint, Greenstreet's translation, p. \i. 
 
20 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 subject personality, however modified and distorted, is to grant that 
 all his mental processes are conscious to that personality. Conscious- 
 ness, as the mind's awareness of its own states, is the one abiding 
 characteristic of all mental life. It is not necessary here to deal with 
 the theory of " unconscious mind," or of varying " degrees of con- 
 sciousness." The mind that reacts upon a suggestion, whether in a nor- 
 mal or an abnormal state, is necessarily conscious of its own processes. 
 
 The hypnotized subject reacts upon the suggestions of his hypno- 
 tizer, that is, all of his acts are self-determined, however much his nor- 
 mal mental life may be abridged and constrained. His life shorn of 
 its full normal play of ideas is none the less his life, concerning itself 
 with its own materials and developing its own experiences. The sug- 
 gestion and reaction are essentially the same as in the normal state, 
 differing only in the unbalanced state of the subject. " Physiological 
 and neuropathic suggestion is nothing but the exaggeration of facts 
 which occur in the normal state."' Self-directed personal life still 
 exists, though narrowed in its field and biased in its movement. In 
 this fragment of normal personality there are still reflection, judgment, 
 volition — operating in the whole field of the abridged and distorted 
 life. This is clearly seen in the refusal of a hypnotic subject, who has 
 readily yielded himself to suggestive guidance in numberless minor 
 acts, to perform under the most strenuous demand an immoral or 
 criminal act at total variance with the integrity of his character. The 
 man is still there, and "pulls himself together" for a successful 
 struggle against a wrong to himself. May we not conclude that action 
 under hypnotic suggestion is as truly conscious and voluntary as that of 
 normal life ? 
 
 Much that has been said of suggestion in abnormal life — in the 
 hypnotic state — applies equally to suggestion in normal life. Here, 
 as in the former case, to suggest an idea to another is to excite in him 
 a notion upon which he proceeds to build up an experience. The 
 chief difference, probably the only one, is that in the normal life the 
 suggested image comes into the midst of an active play of a multitude 
 of mental systems, each ready to claim the field of consciousness and 
 to determine an experience. It must win its way to the life-center, 
 establish its right to rule as the dominant factor in the life-movement 
 in open, free competition with numberless other possible images. 
 Stout finds the " suggestibility " of the hypnotic subject, or of the 
 mentally weak in general, to consist essentially in the absence of the 
 
 iGuYAU, tlducatioH ei hiriditi, p. 8, 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 2 I 
 
 normal conflict of apperceptive systems for dominance. The possible 
 mental field is narrowed by inhibition to one system, which is the 
 whole of life, even to monomania. "A healthy condition of mind is 
 characterized by a general excitability of all the mental systems com- 
 posing the empirical Ego, which enables them to co-operate, com- 
 pete, and conflict, with a comparative strength simultaneously 
 determined by conditions both external and internal to the particular 
 systems.'" Coming into such a complex of psychic life, the suggested 
 image must so touch that life as to be welcomed as its organic center 
 in a true psychosis. It must by its intrinsic interest focus the whole 
 movement in itself. "The first condition of normal suggestion is 
 fixation of attention.'"' Starting with the centering of the life about 
 the suggested image in " attention," the experience moves on to a 
 motor discharge in some form of expression. Touched from without 
 by a fact which the life recognizes as belonging to itself, it reacts by 
 welcoming that fact as a temporary sovereign to whose feet it brings 
 all its treasures. 
 
 No better examples of the nature and process of mental suggestion 
 can be found than in a social conversation between two friends upon 
 the ordinary concerns of life. In such a conversation each remark is 
 in its turn the completion of an experience of the speaker and the 
 occasion of an experience for the hearer. The two lines of life are 
 approximately parallel, bending now this way, now that under the 
 influence of their reciprocal interaction. Since their apperceptive 
 systems are different, no two experiences can be identical ; yet as each 
 life impinges upon the other, it modifies its course by suf;gfstifi^^ to it 
 an image center. While the thoughts of the two persons have in gen- 
 eral a common trend, each life moves forward in a continuous recon- 
 structing of its own experience about constantly changing images. 
 Each by expressing his own experience contributes to the life of the 
 other in the only way in which one life can affect another, /. e., by 
 suggestion. 
 
 Imitation has become a word to conjure with in dealing with the 
 early development of the child under the influence of his associates. 
 Psychologists and sociologists have in the past decade written much 
 about "imitation in the child and in the race," the "imitative func- 
 tion," the "laws of imitation," the "imitative faculty," the "imitative 
 impulse," etc.; and much that has been written is very vague, lacking 
 in true psychological definition. The term is used with all shades of 
 
 ^Analytical Psychology, Vol. II, p. 156. 2S1DIS, Psychology of Suggtstion, p. 45. 
 
2 2 SUGGESTION IN EDUCA T20N 
 
 meaning, from "mechanical repetition of the actions of another per- 
 son " up to the great creative work of the true artist. It will doubtless 
 help to clear up some of this indefiniteness if we return, as we so often 
 do in our wanderings in philosophic thinking, to Aristotle. In the 
 well-known definition of tragedy the major genus is " imitation," used 
 in a sense that is clearly defined in the context. Imitation for Aristotle 
 is not a mere reflection of a product ; it is a genuine creative act, not 
 the mirroring of the product of the creative act of another. As an 
 artist his poet is employed in "imitating things as they ought to be." 
 In spite of all that has been said of late about "organic imitation" 
 apart from consciousness, it is by no means established that there is 
 any such thing as mere reflex action in the psychic world. One reads 
 Professor Baldwin's very interesting and instructive discussion of 
 "circular activity" with a constantly growing query as to whether he 
 might not have said without qualification, on page 266 of the first volume 
 of Mental Development, that "imitation is an instance of suggestive 
 reaction,^^ implying in his predicate term a conscious response to an 
 external stimulus. Is it not a rather forced classification of mental 
 phenomena that assigns "volition to the man," "suggestion to the 
 infant," "reflex action to the mocking-bird," and "instinct to the 
 beaver?" Is it not mind that acts in each case, in essentially the same 
 manner? Dr. Harris has stated the whole case so far as the "infant" 
 is concerned in Psychologic Foundations of Education, p. 301 : 
 
 To see the significance of imitation in the child-mind, we must look upon 
 it not as a comparatively feeble and mechanical effort, as something deter- 
 mined by outside influences, but as a phase of self-activity which is engaged 
 in emancipating the self from heredity and natural impulse. We must not 
 lose sight of this essential fact, that shows itself even in the most rudimentary 
 of the phenomena of imitation. There can be no imitation whatever except 
 on the part of self-active beings — in other words, only souls can imitate. 
 " Imitation," says M. Compayr^, "is the reproduction of what one has seen 
 another do." It is therefore always to some extent an act of assimilation. 
 Even if we extend the meaning of imitation so as to include unconscious 
 mimicry and all phenomena akin to hypnotic suggestion, still it is self- 
 activity that does the imitating. What is beheld as an act of another is 
 converted by adoption into an act of self. The pride and pleasure that the 
 infant exhibits on the occasion of his first conscious imitation has its root in 
 this, that he has made something his own — has proved himself equal to 
 imitating in himself a movement by his will — he has revealed his selfhood 
 to some extent. This is the significance of play, which is chiefly imitation, 
 that the undeveloped human being is learning to know himself by seeing 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 23 
 
 what he can do. He is revealing himself to others and to himself, and getting 
 strength in his individuality. Thus we see that there is an element of origin- 
 ality in the most mechanical phase of imitation. The self is active and 
 assimilative. It sees an external deed which it proceeds to make its own 
 deed by imitation. The child proves itself to possess a human nature identi- 
 cal with the one whom it imitates. 
 
 To these very significant words of Dr. Harris should be added 
 Preyer's statement in Mifid of the Child: The Senses and the Will:' 
 
 In order to imitate one must first perceive through the senses ; secondly, 
 have an idea what has been perceived ; thirdly, execute a movement corre- 
 sponding to this idea However often imitation has the appearance of 
 
 an involuntary movement, yet when it was executed the first time, it must 
 have been executed with intention — /. e., voluntarily. When a child imi- 
 tates, it has already a will. 
 
 These quotations express with such clearness and fulness my own 
 conception of the nature of imitation that little more needs to be said 
 here. Imitation is essentially, in all its phases, a matter of reaction to 
 suggestion. It is the common process of all manifestation of life. All 
 organic development proceeds in this way: the outer world impinges 
 upon the nervous mechanism, and the sensuous life moves out to meet 
 it in a more or less rationally ordered reaction. The effort to deter- 
 mine when the infant "begins to imitate" the life of those about him 
 must in the end prove as fruitless as the speculations of the theologians 
 as to the origin of the individual human soul. The child begins to 
 imitate when it begins lo perceive the world about it. 
 
 Toute perception se ramfene plus ou moins k une imitation, \ la creation 
 en nous d'un etat correspondant k celui que nous percevons chez autrui ; 
 toute perception est une sorte de suggestion qui commence et (jui, chcz cer- 
 tains individus, n'^tant pas neutralis^e par d'autres, s'ach^ve en actions.' 
 
 To the artificial opposition between "imitation" and "originality" 
 — between "copying" and "creating" — are to be traced numberless 
 evils of educational procedure. The assumption is that certain expe- 
 riences may be had mediately or vicariously, that one may receive 
 into his life the result of the experiencing of another done up in the 
 "original package," without any true creative movement on his own 
 part. On the other hand, it is assumed that in some experiences one 
 creates ad initio, t\en exnihilo, wholly "original products." The error 
 here consists in the idea that there are two distinct modes of experien- 
 cing, rather than varying degrees of activity and self-direction. It is 
 the same misconception that lies at the bottom of the neurotic theory 
 
 1 Brown's translation, p. 282. = GirvAU, Education et hiriditt, p. lo. 
 
 ■ or T- 
 UNIVEF 
 
2 4 SUGGESTION IN ED VGA TJON 
 
 of hypnosis. All life is self-directed life, and all acts of organic being 
 originate in self-activity. 
 
 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATIVE GUIDANCE. 
 
 In the preceding pages we have discussed at some length the nature 
 of "suggestion" in both abnormal and normal life, seeking to free 
 the term from its common limitation to certain manifestations in the 
 hypnotic state and to show that it is a factor in all psychic move- 
 ments. Before treating of its use in the processes of education, it is 
 necessary to perform a somewhat similar service for the term "educa- 
 tion," supplementing the brief discussion given on page 1 1. 
 
 The term "education" is often used loosely to designate the whole 
 process of development of the individual during the period of youth. 
 Properly, however, it denotes the development which takes place 
 under the intentional guidance of more mature persons. While 
 immediate contact with the physical environment furnishes materials 
 for enlarged life and stimulates to self-directed growth, there is no 
 education in such self-ordered development. Environment cannot 
 educate a man, nor can he "educate himself." He may systematically 
 guide his own life in its constructive movement so as to reach a high 
 degree of development, by availing himself fully of the materials in 
 his physical and social environment ; but such unaided maturing of 
 oneself lacks the characteristic element of education, namely, directive 
 guidance by another. The teacher intentionally guides his pupil in the 
 appropriation of life-materials and in the organization of the life- 
 content so as to make the development more rapid, consistent and per- 
 manent. The term " teacher," as used here, designates anyone who 
 gives conscious guidance to the life of another. It may be the parent, 
 the minister, the school-teacher, the editor, the author — whoever 
 intentionally directs the experiences of another. Education belongs 
 peculiarly to the period of youth, though it is properly continued in 
 varying degrees throughout life. It aims by the right ordering of the 
 environment to secure a more healthy and more complete life. It is 
 to the human infant what the gardener's cultivation is to the plant ; and 
 just as the apple developed by the horticulturalists' art differs from the 
 fruit of the wild tree, so the educated man differs from " nature's 
 product." 
 
 This limiting of the term "education" to what is often called 
 " formal education " is not at all arbitrary. The narrower meaning is 
 that of common speech. When we speak of a man's "education," we 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 25 
 
 mean that development that he has received through the instruction 
 and discipline of some form of school life ; and of a man who has 
 made himself a place among his fellows unaided, as far as that is pos- 
 sible, by such sympathetic guidance, we say "he has accomplished 
 much for a man lacking education." But we need not confine our 
 claim for justification of our use of the term to common speech; 
 those who attempt a scientific discussion of the aims and processes of 
 education — even those who formally define the term in the broader 
 sense — treat the whole matter from the standpoint of the teacher and 
 constantly limit the meaning of the word to the guided maturing of 
 the individual. It would certainly be an interesting study to consider 
 critically the formal definitions of "education" in the more scientific 
 treatises on that subject against the backgrounds of the respective 
 treatises themselves ; but such an investigation is apart from our 
 present purpose, and we must content ourselves with a somewhat dog- 
 matic statement of what is believed to be, not only the true, but also 
 the common, use of the term. It will, however, contribute to clear- 
 ness in our discussion to notice briefly the various forms under which 
 this definition may occur — forms determined by the different stand- 
 points from which the definition is formulated, but all embodying 
 substantially the same fundamental conception. 
 
 Education may be defined as to its aim from two distinct points of 
 view: the psychological and the sociological. Psychologically educa- 
 tion is "the harmonious development of all the human powers" 
 through their proper exercise ; sociologically, it is the " adaptation of 
 the individual to the civilization into which he is born." These 
 definitions are complemental, emphasizing different aspects of the 
 same general conception. The psychological looks to the means ; the 
 sociological to the end. It is in the latter sense that Dr. Harris has 
 defined education as "the elevation of the individual into the race." 
 It is the preparing of the individual for future social functioning, for 
 sharing in the duties and privileges of social life, through participation 
 in a simplified form of that life. Most of the classical definitions in 
 educational literature can be arranged under the one or the other of 
 these two classes ; and much that is unsatisfactory in educational 
 theory and practice is due to such partial one-sided conceptions. Any 
 adequate statement of the aim of education must recognize both the 
 individual and the social factors. The "harmonious development of 
 powers" requires as material means the facts of social life found in the 
 common consciousness ; and the process of " socializing the individual " 
 
2 6 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 
 
 is by giving greater individual efficiency in the enjoyment and pro- 
 ductive use of the facts of his social environment. The "individual 
 man" and the "social man" are not two beings capable of separate 
 development; the highest individual life involves the widest social 
 life, and the richest social life demands the most perfect individual 
 life. 
 
 Education may also be defined as a product or as a process. As a 
 product, education is a state of mental development and equipment 
 fitting for mature life-functioning ; as a process, it is self-making 
 through the progressive reconstruction of experiences under the stimu- 
 lation of the physical and social environment. There is truth in each 
 of these conceptions, though the latter is far more productive than the 
 former. To emphasize the product-conception, to regard education as 
 an equipment that can be quantitatively measured, encourages procras- 
 tination of real life-functioning and makes school life artificial. Thus 
 to make the final cause in educational procedure /w/wrif having instead 
 of present being is to make much of life barren and meaningless. To 
 be "educated" is not to have acquired a certain knowledge-content 
 and to have developed a certain skill and grace in self-direction ; all 
 this is a valuable accompaniment and result of education, but educa- 
 tion itself is a matter of present growth for its own sake. It is a 
 normal life-process, finding its meaning and value within the process 
 itself. It is ordered and directed present life in its relation to the 
 whole of life. 
 
 Nevertheless the product-conception has value in educational 
 theory. Each stage of life is preparation for the next stage, and the 
 whole is a progressive development. All educational endeavor should 
 recognize this continuity of life, and there should always be the for- 
 ward look of anticipation of the fuller life to come. Thus the teacher 
 at every stage of his guiding work should keep in mind the possibili- 
 ties of future functioning; but he should not degrade the "school" 
 into an artificial mechanism designed to prepare for a hypothetical 
 future social state. Just as in the theological world man has suffered 
 untold miseries from regarding the present life as a mere "proba- 
 tionary state," preparation for a "heaven" after death, so in the educa- 
 tional world the school life is vitiated by "preparing to live" in the 
 " real life" of the business and social world. 
 
 Again education may be defined from the standpoint of the teacher 
 or from that of the pupil. From the side of the teacher, education is 
 " the conscious direction which the more mature mind gives to the 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 27 
 
 less mature in its efforts to develop, elevate, and inform itself;" from 
 that of the pupil, it is self-directed activity in progressive self-develop- 
 ment under the guidance and stimulation of more mature leaders. 
 These two definitions express but two aspects of the same process; 
 and one or the other is to be preferred in view of the particular pur- 
 pose of the definer. The central idea in both is that there can be no 
 education without conscious guidance of one person by another. 
 While it is conceivable that an individual could develop in direct 
 contact with his physical environment, without the mediation and 
 assistance of social life and institutions, such " rubbing into conscious 
 life " by the friction of the physical world is not education, though the 
 term is often used uncritically to include this so-called " informal 
 education." 
 
 We may now summarize critically the ideas involved in these 
 various phases of our definition and gather the results into a formal 
 enunciation of an explicit and comprehensive definition. First, as to 
 its content, education is both social and individual. It is the process 
 of socializing the individual through maturing him. The aim, as *' a 
 rationalized endeavor," is both social and psychological — social as it 
 looks to functioning in society, and psychological as it looks to self-real- 
 ization through normal life-processes. The materials of education are 
 social ; the process is psychological. Individuals are " elevated into 
 the race " by integrating into their lives experiences originating in the 
 social environment. Second, as to its form, education is a process 
 rather than a product — more, it is a process that is not merely a 
 means to some external end, but a process that finds its end within 
 itself. Present character, not future, is the end of the reconstruction 
 of self in education. It deals with what the child now is as seen in 
 relation to the whole of his life. It is a directing of his growth by 
 intensifying, emphasizing, and classifying his passing experiences so as 
 to enrich and strengthen his life. Education views life in its present 
 phase as a continuous process building constructively toward an ideal 
 end. Third, as to its scope, education must be restricted rigorously 
 to what has been called " formal education," that is, to the intentional 
 guidance of the maturing mind by the more mature mind. The 
 source of the present confusion regarding the relation of psychology to 
 pedagogy is due, so far as the pedagogists are to be blamed for it, to 
 not restricting the field of pedagogy to what is strictly educational. 
 The development of the human being considered apart from the 
 rational guidance of his more mature associates is a proper subject of 
 
2 8 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 
 
 psychology, but not of pedagogy. Thus our discussion leads us to 
 regard education as a psychological process to be viewed from the 
 standpoint of the teacher. This conception is embodied in the 
 definition given on page 1 1. More briefly it may be said that education 
 is the guidance of the life of another toward the complete realization of its 
 possibilities. 
 
 Teaching is the process of educating as seen from the stand- 
 point of the educator. To teach another is to determine his devel- 
 opment by controlling the circumstances, ordering the materials, 
 and stimulating the activity of his growth. Teaching is the art of 
 education, as pedagogy is the science. As an art its product is ful- 
 ness and vigor of life in the individual taught. The teacher forms the 
 character of his pupil by determining his experiences. Probably no 
 better definition of teaching has been formulated than that of Arnold 
 Tompkins : " Teaching is the process by which one mind, from set 
 purpose, produces the life-unfolding process in another;" or as he 
 also states it: "Teaching is the conscious process of producing 
 mental experiences [in another] for the purpose of life-development." 
 In its extent the term " teaching " is identical with the term " educa- 
 tion," though an effort is often made to limit it to a narrower field. 
 A good example of this error in restricting the meaning of the term 
 is to be found in a late teacher's manual:' "The teacher's work is of 
 a threefold character : he has in the first place to organize his school; 
 secondly, to govern his children ; and thirdly, to teach." Since to teach 
 is to present the best conditions for complete living and to incite to 
 such living, it includes the organization of the school and the govern- 
 ment of the children as well as the " teaching of knowledge." As a 
 helper toward complete living, toward the realization of a rich, full 
 life, the teacher's art embraces all that contributes directly to this end. 
 
 There is no teaching without learning. The two processes are 
 complemental ; or, rather, they are the two aspects of the same edu- 
 cative process. The educator /^a<r-^^j / his y>\xy>'\\ learns. If the pupil 
 does not learn simultaneously with the teaching effort of the educator, 
 then there is no true teaching. Learning is the effect of which teach- 
 ing is the cause; and since no cause can exist, as a cause, apart from 
 its effect, there can be no teaching without learning. Jacotot's defini- 
 tion of "teaching" is significant here : "Teaching is causing another 
 to learn." 
 
 Teaching has two {doctors, instruction and discipline — the first as the 
 
 « Landon, Principles and Practices of Teaching and Class Managtment, p. 4. 
 
I UNIVcRSIT*. 
 V /N or 
 
 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 29 
 
 adding of knowledge-material to the soul-substance, and the second 
 as the organization of the soul-content through its functional expres- 
 sion. In instruction the teacher is employed in so ordering the 
 available life-materials as to secure on the part of his pupil such an 
 appropriation, both as to kind and quantity, as will contribute to the 
 most healthful and vigorous growth. He seeks to enlarge the life 
 through chosen experiences. From his wider view of life's possibili- 
 ties and more definite conception of the highest good, he is enabled 
 to select from the residue of race-experiencing the most nourishing 
 materials and so to prepare and serve them as to secure their incor- 
 poration into the individual life which he seeks to influence. Thus he 
 needs to combine the qualifications of a good marketer, a good cook, 
 and a good server of mental viands. He aims at mental growth by 
 building into {in-strud) the life of his pupil materials taken from com- 
 mon consciousness. Just as the gardener carefully places about the 
 roots of the plant chosen food-materials and seeks to stimulate it to 
 their appropriation and assimilation by controlling the circumstances 
 of heat, light, and moisture, so the teacher, as instructor, controls the 
 physical and social environment of his pupil with a definite view to 
 the determining of the volume and form of the soul-content. 
 
 In discipline the teacher is concerned with expression. .Ml com- 
 pleted experiencing eventuates in some form of expression. Every 
 psychosis tends to an outgoing motor discharge. No life-movement 
 is complete until it has expressed itself in and through the bodily 
 structure. Expression is an element in all thinking. Language is 
 more than "a means of expressing thought ;" it is a means of think- 
 ing. We do not think thoughts completely and then select verbal 
 clothing for them ; we think in words. All constructive thought is in 
 language. The volitional movement to express gives definite form to 
 the thought ; and all life culminates in expression. The soul expresses 
 itself in the body which it builds about it, expression being merely the 
 culmination of the organizing psychic movements. This disciplinary 
 side of education has not been recognized as a vital part of the acquisi- 
 tive process itself. Expression is commonly treated as a means of 
 exhibiting results already acquired, the teacher demanding formal 
 expression of his pupils merely as a means of determining the existence 
 of a completed mental state. It is not commonly regarded as an 
 essential fact in the psychosis itself, but as a separable evidence that 
 the psychosis has been. Thus the common "recitation" in the ele- 
 mentary school is a barren performance upon dead forms of verbal 
 
3° SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 utterance, instead of a constructive thinking exercise culminating in 
 normal expression of a present life-movement. In it the teacher, 
 instead of guiding actual life, endeavors to discover what a past move- 
 ment has been, thus attempting a psychological impossibility. What 
 is true in the elementary school is true in slightly varied form in sec- 
 ondary and higher education. Nowhere have teachers grasped the 
 idea of the psychological nature of expression, and consequently we 
 have the unnatural divorcing of instruction and discipline. 
 
 The fallacy of "discipline" apart from knowledge-content is even 
 more destructive of true education than that of securing the mechanical 
 acquisition of knowledge through " instruction " that does not involve 
 expression. One cannot be trained to live by any sort of intellectual 
 gymnastics. Living is a growth, involving both the acquisition of 
 materials and the organization of the structure. There is no training 
 apart from the content on which we train ; and no work of the teacher 
 can have any possible educational value that does not enrich the con- 
 tent of life through true growth. All education involves both instruc- 
 tion and discipline ; there must be both increase in the volume of life 
 and more perfect organization of its structure. 
 
 It follows from our definition of " education " and the subsequent 
 explication that all educative guidance must be affirmative in its char- 
 acter. Education is a constructive guidance of life, conserving, 
 organizing, and directing its good elements toward perfection of 
 development and functioning. It consists essentially in encouraging 
 and aiding the process of self-making along the natural line of normal 
 growth. The educator must believe in humanity, must incorporate 
 into his pedagogical creed the proposition that " man naturally grows 
 right." He must recognize his powerlessness to originate in his 
 pupil's life a movement or a state wholly foreign to the character of 
 that life. If man were " born faced hellward," no human power could 
 "convert him," whatever may be the possibilities on the divine side. 
 Just as the plant builds up its plant life, under circumstances more or 
 less favorable to a perfect realization of its planthood, so the human 
 being builds up his humanity, more or less dwarfed and distorted by 
 his environment, but still his humanity in its struggle toward perfect 
 realization. It is not the teacher's business to change the "nature" 
 with which he deals, but only to recognize it, foster it, and strengthen 
 it. In so doing he can deal with the present life only, finding prepa- 
 ration for the future in enriching the present. All life prepares for 
 life, and there is no preparation for life but life itself. He who would 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 3 1 
 
 live tomorrow must live today — not today as today merely, but today 
 as a stage of the whole development. The teacher's work is necessarily 
 limited to the directing of actually existent forces, that their resultant 
 shall have a desired character ; and he must see the resultant in the 
 actual present play of the forces. It is present character, not future 
 character, that is the true object of education. Not to become a good 
 man, but to be a good boy, is the highest ideal for the pupil. If the 
 teacher is able to see that his pupil lives today as he ought to live for 
 today's needs and opportunities, the life of tomorrow will be easy and 
 natural, and a progressive development will be secured. 
 
 One does not become essentially better by "quitting his meanness." 
 Negative goodness is at best "good-for-nothingness." The secret of 
 all goodness is in being good. One does not develop strength by deal- 
 ing with his weakness; but all genuine curative treatn)ent is by direct- 
 ing and strengthening "nature's powers." It is the teacher's business, 
 like that of the true physician, to discover, guide, and encourage the 
 life which the pupil actually has, treating all defects and weaknesses 
 negatively only. His work is constructive, using nature's materials, in 
 nature's way, and for nature's end. A full comprehension of this 
 great truth would eliminate from our schools by far the greater part of 
 all punishment, drill-work, and barren tasks that are now so destructive 
 of normal child-life. 
 
 ALL EDUCATIVE GUIDANCE IS THROUGH SUGGESTION AND REACTION. 
 
 This fundamental law of pedagogy has been foreshadowed in all 
 the preceding discussion on the nature of education ; and it now only 
 remains to show as definitely and as concretely as possible its applica- 
 tion in the teaching process. It is not a question of when to employ 
 suggestion in teaching, but of how to employ it. The law is not a 
 statement of what ought to be or what is best in educational practice, 
 but rather of what everywhere is and has always been in all true edu- 
 cational procedure. Teachers have always accomplished their work by 
 suggestion, even when most unconscious of the real nature of their 
 actions. The word "all" in the statement of the law above indicates 
 the writer's answer as to when to employ suggestion. The claim is 
 that there can be no education apart from suggestion. This will be 
 established by answering the practical question : How does the teacher 
 quicken and enlarge the mental life of his pupil by suggestion ? Of 
 course, to prescribe definite rules for the practice of pedagogical sug- 
 gestion is absurd quackery ; the procedure here, as in all true art, is by 
 
32 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 the rational use of materials in reaching an ideal end under the actual 
 concrete conditions. In the article on "Suggestion " in the sixth vol- 
 ume of Rein's Encyclopiidisches Hatidbuch der Fddagogik, Wendt says : 
 " Die Anwendung der padagogischen Suggestion kann nicht durch 
 Regeln erlautert und geordnet werden. Diese Anwendung erfordert 
 Takt." Still it is possible to indicate in a general way and to illus- 
 trate by examples the place of suggestion in teaching. 
 
 "Education, in my opinion, is nothing else than a totality of 
 co-ordinated and reasoned-out suggestions." ' In education the 
 teacher brings into the life of his pupil through suggestion a succes- 
 sion of images, which, operating as germinant centers of experien- 
 cing, determine progressively the line of his life-development. He 
 seeks to guide the life from within, that is, to influence the develop- 
 ment by the communication of a factor that is spontaneously wrought 
 out in the activity of the life itself. In all true teaching no effort is 
 made to constrain the life of the pupil from without, to force its cur- 
 rent by external pressure. »The pupil's life is modified by presenting 
 to him a conception of what he may be or do and an incentive for its 
 realization. In this consists the whole art of teaching. The teacher 
 initiates the experience and provides for its motor discharge. 
 
 Pedagogical suggestion, it must be insisted, is a normal life-process; 
 it is not hypnotic influence. In Wendt's article, quoted above, he says: 
 
 Mit dieser [Suggestion im Zustand der Hypnose] hat die padagogische 
 Suggestion nur ausnahmsweise etwas gemein, denn nur in wenigen speziel- 
 len Fallen darf die Hypnose in der Erziehung Anwendung finden und kann 
 von einer Verbindung der padagogischen Suggestion mit der Hypnose die 
 Rede sein. 
 
 In an earlier part of this discussion an effort was made to show 
 that suggestion in hypnosis is essentially the same as suggestion in 
 the normal state; but this does not signify that the conditions are the 
 same. In the hypnotic state the life-current is narrowed to a mere 
 rill, easily deflected in any desired direction. Doubtless hypnotic 
 suggestion could be employed for educational purposes — in fact, that 
 is just what is done in the curative treatment of various diseased states. 
 But a Heilmittel is not a true type of a Lehrmittel. The teacher's work 
 is not essentially curative or corrective, but constructive and directive. 
 The " health-pedagogy " of the teacher is affirmative in character, sub- 
 stituting health for disease. Drastic counteractive treatment has no 
 place in education. Though a child might be "cured" of an evil 
 
 ' GuYAU, ilducation et hfriditi, p. xv. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 33 
 
 habit through post-hypnotic suggestion, the possible evil consequences 
 are too great to be risked. Whatever may be the final verdict of the 
 medical world upon degrading free personality to a neurotic state for 
 even the most benevolent ends, it may be safely asserted that this is 
 not the field for the teacher. He must deal with life as he finds it, 
 with the most reverent attitude toward the personalities of his pupils. 
 
 Since all normal growth is right growth, it is only necessary for 
 the teacher to show the child how he can experience the best, how he 
 can live the most completely. A healthy life inspired by good moral 
 instincts is easily guided toward the " highest good," not only as an 
 ultimate aim, but in each separate act of experiencing. We lead 
 people to better life by suggesting the conception that they are />/ 
 reality better than they appear; to assign to them right motives is to 
 induce them to justify the assumption, on the other hand, to consider 
 them base is to strongly urge them to be so. One makes himself moral 
 by believing that he is moral in his true inner manhood. 'i"o make 
 one conscious of his goodness is the true secret of all moral education. 
 It is a fundamental postulate of all pedagogy that humanity is essen- 
 tially good; and this is applied to the individual case by presupposing 
 in the individual the germs of the life we would have him live. Good- 
 ness is more than the mere negation of badness; it is life itself in its 
 true development; " it is the natural way of living." 
 
 Guyau' says: 
 
 All education should be directed to this end, namely, to convince the 
 child that he is capable 0/ good and incapable of evil, in order to give him 
 this ability and this inability; to persuade him that he has a strong will, in 
 order to communicate to him force of will; to make him believe that be is 
 morally free, master of himself, in order that "the idea of moral freedom," 
 may tend to realize itself progressively. 
 
 To clearly conceive the possible in normal life-functioning is to 
 proceed at once to make it actual. The ideal is thus the formative 
 real. 
 
 In the particular teaching act the teacher directs attention by sug- 
 gestion to a phase of life and provides for the culmination of the 
 experience in a definite expressive movement. For example, suppose 
 the teacher desires to secure from his pupils more strenuous effort in 
 their study. He says, on the proper occasion: "How well we have 
 done our work today! We really have understood it all, and have dis- 
 cussed it clearly. The lesson for tomorrow will lead us a little farther 
 
 I op. ctt,, p. 17. 
 
34 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 into the same subject, but there is also a new discovery which I know 
 we shall all enjoy." The suggestion of the ability to do good work 
 made here, carrying with it the less definite suggestion of the obliga- 
 tion, will in the natural course of things work out the desired result. 
 Again, suppose the teacher wishes to teach the value of the accurate 
 measurement of space dimensions, or more immediately to teach the 
 use of the graduated measuring scale, having supplied his pupils with 
 such rulers, he will in their presence use one of the rulers in determin- 
 ing the length and width of his desk or of a book, and then leave 
 them free to measure such objects as present themselves to their 
 convenience or fancy. A suggestive question as to the use that a car- 
 penter can make of such a ruler will start a variety of exploring 
 expeditions about the room. The composition by the pupils in the 
 University Elementary School of simple songs, both words and music, 
 is accomplished wholly through suggestion. The season of the year 
 or the lesson in history furnishes the theme, and the tactful teacher 
 guides by stimulating touch the creative work. The song is the 
 expression of the life of the pupils themselves, felt by them to be so 
 both in matter and form. It is the expression of genuine experien- 
 cing under the most unobtrusive guidance. In teaching various forms 
 of inventional drawing, such as industrial designing, the motif pre- 
 sented by the teacher suggests a figure to be elaborated by the pupil. 
 In elaborating the design the pupil feels the pleasure of creating and 
 is scarcely conscious that he does not originate the entire work. The 
 proper "assigning of a lesson" in any subject is a suggestion of 
 possible ordered experiencing by the pupil. The judicious teacher 
 starts a movement which the pupil completes in the natural function- 
 ing of his own powers. The life is touched suggestively, and interests 
 are aroused which lead on to active endeavor in the subsequent private 
 study. By a suitable " preliminary drill " the way is opened for ear- 
 nest living in a new and wider field. In all true teaching the impetus 
 to master the task set is found in the spontaneous life of the pupil, 
 who simply lives out the suggestion given by the teacher. 
 
 What is known as " the power of example" is a mighty force in 
 determining the life of the child. In the very simplicity of his life he 
 is more open to suggestion than the adult person ; and the circum- 
 stances of his life readily influence his actions. Some years ago Bishop 
 Huntington, of New York, emphasized in a forcible manner the value 
 of "unconscious tuition " in school work. In the opening sentences 
 of the address he says : 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 3 5 
 
 By unconscious tuition I mean that part of a teacher's work which he 
 does when he seems not to be doing anything at his work at all. It has 
 appeared to me that some of the most nutritive and effective functions of an 
 instructor are really performed while he seems least to be instructing. To 
 apprehend these fugitive, subtile forces, playing through the business of edu- 
 cation with such fine energy, and if possible to bring them within the range 
 of practical dealing, is the scope of my present design.' 
 
 Again on page 5 he says : 
 
 My main propositions are these three: first, that there is an educating 
 power issuing from the teacher, not by voice or by immediate design, but 
 silent and involuntary, as indispensable to his true function as any clement 
 in it; second, that this unconscious tuition is yet no product of caprice or of 
 accident, but takes its quality from the undermost substance of the teacher's 
 character; and, third, that, as it is an emanation flowing from the very spirit 
 of his own life, so it is also an influence acting insensibly to form the life of 
 the scholar. 
 
 To the fundamental conception of this address we can give most hearty 
 assent. The teacher's work is most effective when he obtrudes him- 
 self least upon the personality of his pupil. It is what he gently sug- 
 gests that is most fruitful in the lives of those whom he would guide. 
 It is also true that the pupil learns much from suggestions originating 
 in the example of his teacher, in which there is no intentional guidance 
 at all. Thus strong belief and active life in the teacher beget like 
 states in his pupils. The pupils imitate the tones, the gestures — all 
 mannerisms — of the teacher, reproducing in their own lives, without 
 conscious intention, the good and the bad alike of the teacher's life. 
 It is not the external expression alone that they "copy;" the moral 
 qualities of the teacher's life affect in a silent way their lives. As 
 truly as masses of matter act upon each other by unseen forces, moral 
 beings influence each other constantly through equally intangible means. 
 The teacher who lives in the presence of the child lives into his life 
 powerful factors for good or evil. 
 
 But the title chosen by Dr. Huntington seems a most unfortunate 
 one for any strictly pedagogical interpretation of his thoughts. He 
 designates the unintentional influence as "unconscious tuition," thus 
 saying that a teacher can teach without " teaching." His expression 
 is a contradiction. There cannot be unconscious " tuition." The word 
 "tuition" is a word of essentially active signification, meaning to 
 " care for," to "watch over" as a protector, hence actively to instruct 
 in that which is most beneficial for the guarded life. All tuition must 
 
 I Unconscious Tuition, p. 3. 
 
36 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 be conscious and intentional, however vague the aim be. It is the 
 teacher's duty so to order his own life that all his actions may speak 
 to his pupils for their good. Conscious that " like begets like," he 
 must live as he would have his pupils live. He must participate sym- 
 pathetically in their lives, so that his own stronger life may incite in 
 them the impulses to higher living. We demand of the pastor not 
 only that he shall teach his people by formal utterance how they ought 
 to live, but also that his own life shall be a daily example of good 
 living. Equally we demand of the teacher in our schools that his 
 "walk and conversation" be consciously included in his means of 
 teaching. Froebel's, " Come let us live with the children," has a 
 deeper meaning than is usually found in it. It is in living with his 
 pupils that the teacher teaches them to live. He takes them into 
 partnership with him in this business of directing life's affairs. The 
 true teacher is a senior partner in a firm whose business is living; and 
 he shares equitably with his fellows the responsibilities and the profits. 
 With Rousseau, though in a far higher sense than he ever conceived of, 
 he can say, " To live is the trade I wish to teach my pupil ; " and he can 
 realize his desires by securing participation in the duties and pleasures 
 of the life he wishes pupils to lead, thus leading them into life through 
 life. 
 
 Study is consciously intensified mental activity directed toward a 
 definite cognitive end. In its etymology, the word "study" means 
 " to pursue eagerly." In study one pursues with more or less eagerness 
 an experience which he seeks to realize. For example, the student of 
 the declension oipenna endeavors to intensify his mental life and to 
 direct it toward the realization in his own consciousness of the formal 
 succession of case forms. One may study without guidance, determin- 
 ing by reflection a phase of life upon which to fix persistently the 
 attention and about which to concentrate his constructive abilities; 
 but in childhood study is usually under the guidance of a teacher. 
 Without study there can be no vigorous growth. It is only intense 
 life that is healthy and that leads to strong character. To teach well 
 is to incite to study, to intensify attention, and to secure the formation 
 of habits of strenuous life. It is not enough merely to direct by sug- 
 gestive touch a lazy current; true teaching accelerates the movement, 
 converting the passive suffering of experiences into active seeking for 
 them. The suggestive touch must be made so as not only to deter- 
 mine the direction of the life, but also to lead it to greater effort for 
 self-realization. 
 
SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 3 7 
 
 The chief means of guiding study is the recitation. There is 
 probably no word in the pedagogical terminology more abused than 
 the word " recitation ; " certainly there is no word whose current use is 
 more at variance with the central conception of this thesis. The so- 
 called "recitation" is too often artificially divorced from the vital 
 movement of the acquisition of knowledge. It is conducted as a 
 testing for the results of experiences already completed. Pupils are 
 " examined " upon what they are supposed to have " learned " in pre- 
 vious " study. " This inquisition degenerates into a barren perform- 
 ance upon the husks of knowledge, which is utterly devoid of any 
 educational value. The "recitation period," instead of being a time 
 of true experiencing under the stimulation and guidance of the 
 teacher, is d, post mortem examination into the facts of past life. In the 
 true recitation, however, the teacher guides the life of his pupil to a 
 more vigorous growth through suggesting materials and demanding 
 expression. Such a recitation is related both to the previous " private 
 study" and to that which is to follow. As a true life-epoch it supple- 
 ments and corrects that which has taken place under the less immediate 
 direction of the teacher ; and, looking forward, it suggests image cen- 
 ters and starts processes of experiencing which may be carried on to 
 completion by the pupil in his subsequent study alone. The recitation 
 is thus, on the one side, a sort of intellectual clearing-house, and, on 
 the other, a general " office hour" for the more immediate supervision 
 of the study. In guiding his pupils in their study, which is the chief 
 business of the teacher, the assigning of tasks and the examining of 
 results are only incidental. The teacher is the guider of this eager 
 endeavoring after complete living ; and the recitation is the time when 
 he can most effectually direct the zealous seeking for that which gives 
 most life. The recitation is essentially the study period of the particu- 
 lar subject discussed, the time to be especially devoted to directing the 
 study in that subject. Thus in the "geography recitation " geography 
 should be studied under the immediate guidance and stimulation of the 
 teacher, and all private study should be held subsidiary to the work of 
 this more intense period. The preliminary questioning on the results 
 of the preceding private study should be merely preparatory to the new 
 advance now to be made ; and by far more attention should be given 
 to indicating fields to explore, /. <?., to " assigning the lesson," than to 
 examining for results of the previous exploration. The expression of 
 the recitation should always be the natural completion of/>r^J<r«/ experi- 
 ences ; and even in " review " the experiences must be new. There is 
 
38 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 no more serious error in all educational procedure than the attempt to 
 warm into life the corpse of a past experience — to bring back again 
 an experience that we have had. There should never be expression for 
 expression's sake, but always as a manifestation of growth in its normal 
 movement. So conducted the recitation becomes the true center of all 
 school work, a real means of suggestive guidance. 
 
 Just as in the case of the word "recitation," the word "school'''' 
 needs to be freed from a false connotation to reconcile it to the univer- 
 sality of our law of suggestion. A school, as the chief educational 
 instrumentality, is commonly regarded as a place where immature per- 
 sons are equipped for later life-functioning by gathering a certain fund 
 of useful knowledge and acquiring a certain power of self-direction — 
 in short, a place where persons prepare to live. No value is assigned to 
 the school life as such ; it finds its significance solely in the preparation 
 which it affords for a future hypothetical stage of existence. In such a 
 view, one does not live in the school, but simply gets ready to live. 
 
 A school, defined with reference to the ideal of this essay, is a 
 simplified form of social life — simplified by eliminating all that is nega- 
 tive and destructive, and by conserving and organizing all that is affirm- 
 ative and constructive. In the school specially equipped and trained 
 guides determine minds toward such "normal growth as gives the fullest 
 and most symmetrically organized life. The teacher, dealing with the 
 actual present phase of the life, directs it in accordance with the con- 
 tinuous whole. Beginning in the possible present, he builds toward an 
 ideal future, without, however, losing sight of the fact that this present 
 is real life of value for itself. Whatever of life he desires for his pupils 
 in the future he leads them to participate in under the simplified con- 
 ditions of the present. Considering life as a continuous growth, he 
 sees that the only preparation for any stage of it is to be found in the 
 activities of the preceding stages. One stage prepares for another by 
 furnishing the material basis and the motive for it ; and each stage is a 
 cross-section of the whole life-current, concerned solely with its own 
 experiences. In it the acquisition of materials and the organization of 
 structure is for its own purposes, nothing being gathered that does not 
 belong to the immediate present. The school is then a social organi- 
 zation for mutual assistance in the prosecution of studies under the 
 leadership of a more mature member of the organization. It affords 
 the best possible means of effective guidance through suggestion of 
 desirable modes of functioning. In the true school the children live 
 under the unobtrusive direction and stimulation of the teacher. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 39 
 
 The curricula oi the school, the organized body of available educa- 
 tive material, constitute a current in which the pupil's life is persistently 
 confined by his teacher. The " branches of siudv " are so many 
 phases of possible experiencing to be employed by the teacher in 
 broadening and intensifying the life that he guides. .Vrithmetic, if 
 employed rationally at all, is thought to afford definitely selected 
 materials for suggesting certain desirable forms of experience. In the 
 residua of race-experiencing preserved in the text-books the teacher has 
 a mine of wealth for his educative needs. He selects the matter and 
 presents it to his pupil with a view to influencing his life both in the 
 immediate present and throughout its continued development. He 
 does not attempt to " store up" «////m/ life-materials, but only to guide 
 in the appropriation from the content of common consciousness of that 
 which contributes to the individual life. The curriculum is thus a 
 mediation of the environment designed for use in educative guidance. 
 
 It is in "■punishment" that we find that function of the teacher, if 
 indeed it be a function of the teacher, most at variance, both in theo- 
 retical conception and in current practice, with true educational guid- 
 ance. In order to reconcile this negative element of educational 
 procedure to our conception of guidance by suggestion, it will be 
 necessary to discuss briefly three points : first, the general nature and 
 function of punishment in the bettering of humanity ; second, the 
 common aims and methods of school punishments ; and, third, the 
 sense in which punishment may be made to contribute affirmatively to 
 education. 
 
 Punishment is the intentional infliction of pain on a wrongdoer in 
 recognition of his wrong acts. The essential element in punishment 
 is pain, physical or mental. It must come as an opposing or disturb- 
 ing element into the pleasure of life, temporarily interrupting and 
 modifying its normal movement. It must also be intentionally applied. 
 Pain unintentionally given to another is not punishment, however 
 much it may appear to be retribution for wrong done. " Nature " 
 does not punish, though we often speak of the suffering which one 
 undergoes in consequence of an improper use of his physical environ- 
 ment as "nature's punishment." In such an expression there is doubt- 
 less always a more or less clearly defined personification of " nature," 
 in which we regard //«fr as intentiotially inflicting a penalty for a wrong 
 done. One person may, however, employ " natural consequences " as 
 means of inflicting punishment on another, that is he may control 
 natural reactions rationally for his own ends. Also a person may pun- 
 
40 , SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 
 
 ish himself, by bringing about intentionally states of pain in himself 
 in recognition of his own wrong acts and as a self-inflicted retribution. 
 In all cases the sufferer of punishment must be recognized as a wrong- 
 doer. Pain inflicted upon another is not punishment unless in recog- 
 nition of wrong done. The sufferer may not actually be a wrongdoer, 
 but he must be recognized as such by the inflictor of the punishment. 
 Further, the pain must be considered to be in some sense a suitable 
 reward for the wrong acts, a just return for specific evil deeds. The 
 penalty is proportioned by the punisher to the extent of the wrong as 
 seen by him — so much wrong, so much pain. 
 
 Writers upon ethics generally recognize three distinguishable ends 
 of punishment : first, to prevent others from committing like offenses ; 
 second, to vindicate the law ; and third, to educate or reform the 
 offender. Sometimes the emphasis is laid upon one, sometimes upon 
 another of these ends ; but usually the first and second receive the 
 stress, though the third is probably never Avholly wanting in the doc- 
 trine of any modern writer. Paulsen states the prevalent view :' "The 
 reform of the convict by education is not included in the purpose of 
 punishment as such." On the other hand, Seth says :" " The end of 
 punishment is to bring home to the man such a sense of guilt as shall 
 work in him a deep repentance for the evil past, and a new obedience 
 for the time to come." Also Plato, in Protagoras, Jowett's translation, 
 324 B, forcibly presents the educative end : 
 
 No one punishes an evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he 
 has done wrong — only the unreasonable fury of the beast acts in that man- 
 ner. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for 
 a past wrong which cannot be undone ; he has regard to the future, and is 
 desirous that the man who is punished may be deterred from wrong again. 
 He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue 
 is capable of being taught. 
 
 This conception of Plato's is becoming more and more that of the 
 best modern political and ethical thought. Vindictiveness and brutal 
 revenge are giving place to a desire to make men better, both in the 
 social body and in the individual man upon whom the punishment falls. 
 It is no longer literally " an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," 
 though it still lacks much of " turning the other cheek to the smiter." 
 The dominant ideas in punishment are still the " protection of society " 
 and the " maintaining of the majesty of the law," with but little regard 
 to reformation of the individual offender. 
 
 • System of Ethics, Thilly's translation, p. 611. ■'A Study of Ethical Principles, p. 337. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCA TION 4 i 
 
 In school punishments we have the same diversity of conception 
 regarding the ends to be attained. For one teacher all his punish- 
 ments are concerned primarily with " vindicating the majesty of the 
 law ;" for another, with securing the best conditions for his teaching 
 through an arbitrarily superimposed government ; and for still another, 
 with correcting the wrong life through repentance following upon a 
 realization of the evil done. One teacher is always watchful for infrac- 
 tions of "rules "for school behavior, either explicit formulations or 
 implicit conventionalities ; and on the discovery of such wrongs 
 against authority he visits upon the offender punishment sufficient to 
 heal the wounded dignity. Another, impressed with the idea that a cer- 
 tain degree of " order " is necessary for efficient work in " instructing in 
 knowledge," employs punishment as a means of securing such an 
 orderly state of his school, with little concern about its effect upon the 
 lives of the individuals punished ; the individual is, in fact, punished 
 for the good of the community, as "an example." A third conceives 
 punishment to be a sort of " counter-irritant," valuable as a means of 
 relieving an internal congestion of " badness," a means of purging the 
 moral life of its impurities. In schoolroom practice the punishment is 
 too often a " squaring of the account." Offenses accumulate until, the 
 patience of the teacher being exhausted, he endeavors at one fell swoop 
 to deal out retribution "on general principles." In zealously "guard- 
 ing the law" and in anxiously "keeping order" the teacher makes 
 unnecessary issues with his pupils, in which the mastery is often won 
 by brute force alone. This same artificial "governing" of the pupils 
 gives rise to threats of punishment to be inflicted for anticipated wrong 
 acts. 
 
 It should not be inferred that this is a true picture, either in theory 
 or practice, of the punishment inflicted by a// teachers ; there is one 
 here and there who in the spirit of true teaching has apprehended the 
 real nature of this negative force in teaching and has learned to 
 employ it in the building of character. 
 
 Whatever may be the theory of punishment in the state, or of 
 divine punishment of disobedient man, "school punishment" is, by 
 the very circumstances of its use, essentially educational. Every act of 
 punishment in the school must be an educational act ; its only excuse 
 for being is that it may serve as a means of guiding the growing life 
 of the child. Just as the nurseryman in the pruning of a tree cuts off 
 a branch, not merely that he may remove it from the tree, but that he 
 may thereby foster and accelerate the growth of the tree as a whole, so 
 
42 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 the teacher uses punishment, a negative means, for an affirmative result 
 in the life of his pupil. This can be accomplished only by making the 
 state of pain in some way the starting-point for a healthy, pleasurable 
 experience, that is, the punishment must be made to suggest an image 
 for a constructive life-movement. This cannot be done by dwelling 
 upon the wrong and its consequent painful results. Prolonged " sor- 
 row for sin " is not a fruitful source of right living. Wood, in his 
 Studies in the Thought World, page i68, puts this matter very clearly: 
 
 One cannot afford to think much about evil, even for the well-intentioned 
 purpose of its suppression. The true remedy is its displacement. Thought- 
 space given to it confers realism, familiarity, and finally dominion. To 
 silence discordant strings in ourselves or others we must vibrate their oppo- 
 sites. To truly sympathize with a friend who is quivering with trouble or 
 sorrow is not to drop into his rhythm and intensify it — as is usual — but to 
 lift his consciousness by striking a higher chord in unison. The road to men- 
 tal and physical invigoration lies through a dynamics of formative thought. 
 Our way to elevate other lives is also through their creative mental energies. 
 
 It is difficult to formulate in definite statement the conception of 
 punishment as a means of suggestive guidance to right living, not 
 because of the uncertainty of the principle, but because the common 
 thought of the race is thoroughly saturated by a totally different con- 
 ception of the nature and use of punishment. What is contended for 
 is that all school punishment shall lead over directly to the affirmative 
 side, that the very pain itself shall blossom into the happiness attend- 
 ant upon right living. No act of punishment can have a place in the 
 school that is not definitely designed to lead to an experience of nor- 
 mal life-functioning. It is the teacher's business to form life, not to 
 reform it, and every corrective measure must be essentially that of dis- 
 placing the evil by the good. A simple example will help us see how 
 this can be done. 
 
 A mother who was much distressed by a growing caprice and petu- 
 lance in her little daughter watched for an opportunity to strengthen 
 in her a habit of rational choice and patient consideration of possible 
 lines of conduct. One day in the early spring, when some little 
 friends were going for a short walk, the little girl was eager to join 
 them. Her mother gave her consent, with the provision that she should 
 put on a light jacket as protection against the cool air. The little 
 maiden promptly said: "Then I will not go!" At which her mother 
 stepped to the open window and said to the little friends waiting out- 
 side: "Jennie says she will not go today." The little girls went off 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 43 
 
 without Jennie, who pleaded in vain with her mother to be permitted 
 to reconsider her hasty decision. The mother, though firm, was very 
 gentle and carefully avoided any. crimination or intensifying of the 
 sense of loss. Her whole attitude indicated confidence in her little 
 daughter's ability to order her life more rationally; and she carefully 
 watched for an immediate opportunity to direct this aroused sense of a 
 better nature to a constructive expression. This she found in a sim- 
 ple act of service. A magazine was to be carried to the grandmother 
 in another room ; the opportunity to do this for her was presented by 
 the mother to her child; and an encouraging smile caused the awak- 
 ened sense of ability and obligation to express itself in a definite act 
 of rational self-determination. Thus the disappointment in itself was 
 the image center out of which under gentle guidance a genuine expe- 
 rience of right living was built. The conception of wrong to self was 
 the suggestion of a right line of future action. The mother so 
 applied the punishment that its pain was chiefly in the feeling of self- 
 inflicted injury to the true nature, to the better self, the selfish regret 
 for the pleasure lost being a mere incident. The punishment was 
 made simply the occasion of the beginning of a more vigorous life- 
 movement. The wrong act was seen in contrast to the fulness of the 
 true normal life, a discordant note in its harmony; and a right expe- 
 rience was suggested, which the mother wisely led to its comple- 
 tion in rationally determined expression. 
 
 In the example just given the punishment belongs to the class 
 known as " natural consequences," as distinguished from " arbitrary 
 punishments" in which the penalty has no causal connection with the 
 wrong act. But even in this latter class it is possible to get affirmative 
 results, though certainly it is more difficult to do. Suppose a little boy 
 has persisted in disobedience until his father says: "Joe, you have not 
 tried to do what I asked you to do. Now, tomorrow afternoon when 
 we all go to the lake you cannot go with us. You must stay at home." 
 Here the punishment has no immediate connection with the offense ; 
 and in order that it be educational in its effect, the child must have 
 loving confidence in his father's benevolent attitude toward him and 
 in his knowledge of what is just in penalty for wrong acts. With these 
 conditions this wholly artificial penalty may be made to contribute to 
 right living. It is here, as in the former example, merely a question 
 of promptly leading the thought to the ability and the obligation to act 
 in accordance with a newly recognized better nature. All punishment, 
 to have any educational value, must be made to suggest indirectly 
 
 ...•i%/c(: 
 
44 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 images for the affirmative reconstruction of experiences ; and in the 
 infliction of punishment the teacher must guide the pupil's thought 
 immediately into normal channels. Punishment, like all true educa- 
 tional procedure, \oo\% forward, not backward, and deals with present 
 life with a view to its complete realization. 
 
 Should punishment be inflicted for the mere tieglect to do right, 
 where there is no overt act of "wrong"? In some cases it certainly 
 should, being employed as a means of quickening the life-movement. 
 The greater part of what is called "wrong" is only the negative of 
 right life, due chiefly to ignorance of how one ought to live. The 
 fundamental error in our attempts at " moral education" is demand- 
 ing of children that they know on authority and accept without 
 question our standards of right conduct, canons that we have realized 
 in our own consciousness only through years of progressive experien- 
 cing. All educative punishment is instructive, giving clearer knowl- 
 edge of the nature of right life. In punishment the teacher is to teach 
 his pupil, in the dual sense of that word; that is, he is both to enlarge 
 and to organize his pupil's life. 
 
 A still deeper question is : Is punishment a necessary means of 
 education ? Doubtless there are cases in which we must answer this 
 in the affirmative; but in the great majority of cases in which punishment 
 is inflicted in the school and in the home it is not necessary, and leads to 
 destructive experiences. Its pain too often but further disturbs the life- 
 current, which might otherwise be easily directed into a normal flow 
 by immediate constructive guidance. Often the child's apparent stub- 
 bornness is only the lack of a proper center for right action. Dr. 
 Carpenter' says: 
 
 A suggestion kindly and skilfully adapted to its [the child's] automatic 
 nature, by directing the turbid current of thought and feeling into a smoother 
 channel, and guiding the activity which it does not attempt to oppose, shall 
 bring about the desired result, to the surprise alike of the baffled teacher, the 
 passionate pupil and the perplexed bystanders. 
 
 Here we have the secret of all guidance, to lead from the evil by lead- 
 ing toward the good. What does it matter whether we leave unrequited 
 the wrong acts, if we can secure the right life? It is not the wrong 
 corrected, but the right done, that is the measure of the moral life. The 
 physician does not labor to destroy the disease, but to make the man 
 well. His motto, like that of the true teacher, is: Seize upon life 
 wherever it may be found, and strengthen and develop it, thus leaving 
 
 ^Mental Physiology, p. 135. 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 45 
 
 the weakness and the wrong to drop away under the accelerated move- 
 ment of the healthy life. 
 
 A good example of this mode of treating wrong life is given in a 
 story told by a matron of the reformatory at Elmira, N. Y. A woman 
 who became an inmate of the institution appeared to be so indurated in 
 her evil nature and malevolence as to care for no one and to have no 
 healthy interest in anything about her. She seemed to be a veritable 
 Ishmaelite in the loving atmosphere of that home, and no sympathetic 
 advance met with any other response than the growl of an animal at 
 bay. Her life had been so poisoned by man's inhumanity that she saw 
 good in no one, and neither recognized nor expressed sympathy. For 
 many days she lived — rather existed — in the midst of her physical and 
 social environment without manifesting any normal life-interest that 
 could be made a starting-point for a healthy growth. Without chiding 
 or attempting to intrude into this barricaded, barren field, the matron 
 waited patiently, watching for a sign of the real life which she had 
 learned to expect somewhere in even the most warped and stunted 
 characters. At last the door was found. The matron placed trays, in 
 which some silkworms were at work in various stages of development, 
 where the woman must pass them in the meaningless round of her 
 daily life. For two or three days she passed indifferently by the active 
 little workers and their loving friend. Then she stopped and con- 
 temptuously watched the matron tending to the wants of her little 
 pets. At last curiosity forced her to ask what they were. To which 
 the wise teacher, carefully concealing the hope which was aroused by 
 this question, replied : "Oh they are only silkworms." Each day the 
 woman came to watch the worms fed and cared for, with a growing 
 interest that broke out from time to time in half-suppressed questions. 
 The watchful teacher, biding her time, at last seizing the right oppor- 
 tunity, said one morning suddenly to her watcher: " Mary, I must go on 
 an errand for a moment, to speak to a man about some work. Will you 
 please take care of the worms while I am gone?" The ready assent 
 and the sympathetic flash of light in Mary's eyes told the teacher that 
 the victory had been won. Life was found, and it only remained to 
 guide it. From this slender beginning Mary grew under loving guid- 
 ance to true womanhood, a marked example of what affirmative teach- 
 ing will accomplish where punishment in any form would only have 
 intensified the existing evils. The first suggestion to better living came 
 doubtless in seeing the earnest industry of the little worms. In them 
 at least life appeared to be real and to have some meaning in its activi- 
 
46 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 ties. Then the loving care of the matron for her helpless little charges 
 suggested that one life is in some sense responsible for happiness in 
 another and that all is not selfishness. Then there came, in the request 
 for the slight service, a suggestion of personal worth recognized by 
 another. Thus unobtrusively did one life kindle to a glow the dying 
 embers of another. This is what may take place — what must take 
 place; there is no other way — in the moral guidance of the schoolroom. 
 The "bad boy" is made good hy leading out to self-realization the ger- 
 minant goodness of his normal humanity. Human beings are born to 
 live right, and the guiding touch of the teacher may aid in living. 
 
 NEGATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF THE LAW. 
 
 The law of educative guidance, as formulated on page 3 1 , carries with 
 it two important negative implications : first, that there can be no 
 education apart from suggestion; second, that there can be no educa- 
 tion where there is no conscious reaction on the part of the pupil to 
 the stimulation applied by the teacher. While the discussion of these 
 two implied propositions is in effect a restatement from the negative 
 side of the thought already presented in explanation and vindication 
 of the law itself, such further defining and explication seems to be 
 demanded in view of the muddy thought in vogue regarding educa- 
 tional principles. 
 
 One person cannot exert educative influence upon the life of 
 another mechanically; that is, he cannot manipulate the factors of the 
 life as he handles things in his material environment. He cannot dis- 
 solve a state of consciousness by the introduction of a reaction agent 
 with the definiteness and certainty of a chemist. He cannot force 
 into the life of another an element wholly foreign to it, and hence he 
 cannot control that Wit from without. All his control must be exer- 
 cised through elements found within the life itself and by means of 
 the life's own normal activities. One may knock at the door, but he 
 cannot force an entrance ; it is only as the life itself gives him welcome 
 that he can participate in it. The teacher cannot give his "knowl- 
 edge" to his pupil; he can only express what he knows, /. e., what he 
 is, in the hope that his pupil may be induced to know, i. e., to be, 
 something similar in general content and form. A man's knowledge 
 is himself, and it cannot be transferred, either en masse or in its ele- 
 ments, to another; also the pupil's knowledge is his own creation, the 
 manifestation of his own life, and cannot be appropriated mechanically 
 from the experiences of another. Each person's character is unique 
 
SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 4 7 
 
 in its individuality. It groivs naturally through simple life-functioning 
 and cannot be made by external manipulation. Our law, then, on 
 the negative side means this : There can be no change wrought in the 
 life of another by any other means than the suggestion of image centers to 
 be realized in cotnplete experiencing by the self-determined action of the life 
 itself. 
 
 Even by suggestion we cannot make of the life of another anything 
 we will to make. We can at most only modify the life in an indirect 
 and partial manner. The teacher does not deal with the life of his 
 pupil as a potter with his clay, but more as a machinist with the force 
 of gravity. He accepts and utilizes forces that he cannot create or 
 destroy. He is powerless to do more than to direct in a general way 
 the character-forming process. Into the contending n)ultitude of 
 experience centers he brings by suggestion his mite of life-value, and 
 can only watch hopefully that it may not be wholly smothered in the 
 surging mass. He does not begin his work with a tabula rasa of an 
 absolutely unformed life-structure, to educate ab initio in the life- 
 process. Hereditary bias has already determined, in large measure, 
 what the life shall be, and his work as an educator is merely to modify 
 as rationally as he can that which he cannot successfully oppose or 
 re-create. The tendencies and habitual states which the pupil has 
 inherited from his ancestors constitute already at birth a certain char- 
 acter which stubbornly resists the teacher's interference. He must 
 reckon with this, and content himself with improving it by gentle 
 guidance. The environment of the pupil's life is also a powerful force 
 to which the teacher must adapt his educational ideals and methods. 
 The child's physical and social environment touches his life at a thou- 
 sand points, starting myriads of experiences that are wholly beyond 
 the teacher's knowledge and ability to control for educational ends. 
 It is, besides, from this same environment that he is to take the educa- 
 tive materials which he employs in his intentional enriching and direct- 
 ing of his pupil's life. He is limited to the use of the materials at 
 hand, and cannot at will import from other fields of life that which 
 his ideal would indicate to be the most desirable. Hence we see again 
 that the teacher's function, while noble in its conception, is in its real- 
 ization narrowed to a comparatively small field. He can only guide the 
 existing life by unobtrusive suggestive touch. 
 
 There can be no educative guidance without reaction by the pupil. 
 This idea is involved in the very term "educative guidance." Only 
 that which has independent motion can be "guided." To guide is to 
 
48 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 
 
 point out the way to a moving body, to direct in a determined course; 
 and that which is so piloted and directed must have motion, given to 
 it by some power which can be distinguished from the directing power. 
 A shuttle can be guided through the warp ; a horse may be guided 
 along the highway; or a bicycle may be guided by a force clearly dis- 
 tinguishable from the propelling force. A merely inert thing, in a 
 state of rest, cannot be guided; there is nothing to guide. The per- 
 fectly passive object may be propelled, but it cannot while passive be 
 guided. That which is guided must not only be in action, but it must 
 also be possible to modify that action by the new force applied. In 
 the case of the self-active mind, this modifiability must of necessity 
 consist in the conscious adaptation of the mind itself to the new cir- 
 cumstance. To direct the development of the life of another person 
 is to determine an internal state by external touch ; it is to cause the 
 conscious propelling force to manifest itself in a new direction. Hence 
 the educative guidance is accomplished through the conscious response 
 which the pupil's life makes to the suggestive touch. The teacher 
 brings to the self-active and self-determined life an interesting fact; 
 and the life reacts upon it by modifying its own movement so as to 
 incorporate the new element. Life in all its forms progresses chiefly 
 by responding to stimulation from without. In education the stimulus 
 is rationally applied by another for the purpose of securing the 
 response. It is the response, not the stimulus, that contributes to the 
 development. To guide educationally is to secure such reactions to 
 the chosen stimuli as will lead to fuller and more vigorous life. 
 
 There can be no "suggestion" without a "reaction," that is, a fact 
 becomes a suggestion only through the reaction which it stimulates. 
 To suggest to another is to so touch his life with the chosen materials 
 as to cause him to accept it actively as something desired in his life, 
 to cause him to react upon it. It is not the food selected in the market, 
 or prepared in the kitchen, that nourishes the man ; it is what he 
 appropriates at the table. While good "service" has much to do with 
 feeding the body, it is, after all, the appetite and digestion of the 
 eater that gives the desired growth. Though this idea of active appro- 
 priation is implicit in all educational theory, it has seldom received 
 the emphasis which its importance demands, and in practice it is often 
 wholly forgotten. Even in this day in which "apperception" has 
 become a familiar term in our pedagogical literature, we are still far 
 from recognizing its real significance in the teaching process. The 
 great majority of teachers in all grades of instruction — elementary, 
 
UNIVERSn 
 
 ^CALIFq2>i>' 
 SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION ^^^9 
 
 secondary, and higher — act as if to teach were to dispose of certain 
 educational materials by a systematic and forceful presentation to the 
 pupils. The current conception, however vaguely held, appears to be 
 that to know clearly the "knowledge" to be imparted and have certain 
 acquaintance with devices of "method" is to be fully equipped for 
 success in teaching. So qualified, the teacher needs but to j)rcscnt the 
 knowledge according to the recognized rules of his art ; the desired 
 result is sure to follow. Teaching is thus viewed solely from the side 
 of the teacher, who is thought to be able to introduce into the life of a 
 tractable pupil elements at will. But our law negatively implies that 
 this cannot be the case ; in it the words "and reaction" were added to 
 emphasize the pupil's part in the act of suggestion. In teaching the 
 teacher's eye should be upon the life-movement of his pupil, watching 
 for the reaction. To teach is to instruct through the nornial reactions 
 of the pupil. 
 
 PEDAGOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 There are three important pedagogical truths that may be deduced 
 directly from this law of education through suggestion : first, educa- 
 tion is strictly an affirmative process ; second, it is purely a personal 
 matter; and, third, its goal is character, not mere "knowledge" or 
 "ability." These three formal propositions are basal articles of an 
 educational creed, a warp of fundamental truths into which one may 
 weave his whole pedagogical theory. To accept them as "a living 
 faith" is to establish rational character as a teacher, and to transform 
 spasmodic action into systematic procedure. Each proposition has 
 its own distinctive value and importance, which we must now briefly 
 set forth. 
 
 Education is affirmative in its aim, in its means, and in its methods. 
 The teacher seeks to secure a positive result in the life of his pupil. It 
 is his wish to guide the child to the realization of the possibilities of 
 his humanity. "To prepare us for complete living is the function 
 which education has to discharge.'" While the child would naturally 
 attain to a degree of life unaided, it is possible by right guidance to 
 lead him into a fuller life. The aim of education is to give more life. 
 The world's greatest Teacher spoke of his work thus : "I am come 
 that they might have life, and that they might have it more abun- 
 dantly" (John lo : lo). 
 
 The means of education are positive life-factors. It is the function 
 of the teacher to stimulate the child to more vigorous and more 
 
 I Spencer, Education, p. 31, first edition. 
 
5 o SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 
 
 rationally ordered living. This he does by employing the materials 
 of life itself, materials found in the child's contact with the physical 
 and social environment. The accumulated results of race-experiences 
 found in the social consciousness are a ready fund for the teacher's 
 use. What man has lived through in constructive growth is available 
 material for enhancing the growth of this "heir of all the ages." The 
 various "branches of study," the differentiated sciences, are food for 
 human life. Their preserved and logically organized truths are to be 
 experienced anew by the pupil under the stimulative guidance of his 
 teacher. Thus from the actual experiences of man, from his normal 
 life-movements, are to be selected the educative materials for the 
 teacher's use. He uses life to form life. 
 
 All true educative method is affirmative. It consists essentially in 
 guiding existing life, seeking to reach fulness of life by developing 
 the life that already is in germ at least. Just as it is no part of the 
 teacher's work to create life, so it is not at all his business to check 
 life or to destroy it. To "convert" one, intellectually at least, is not 
 to reverse the current of his life, but to guide it in a more rational 
 flow. The teacher is to aid his pupil in living. He is to make life 
 easier for him, to assist him in appropriating life-materials and in 
 building his life-structure. It is not enough that the teacher shall 
 point out where the materials lie and later "test" to see whether they 
 have been appropriated. Such general supervision lacks an essential 
 element of true teaching; it furnishes no immediate aid to the builder. 
 There is an unreasonable opposition among teachers, in their theoreti- 
 cal utterances at least, to "aiding pupils in their work," evidently 
 born of a fear that "the teacher may do the pupil's work for him." 
 There is underneath this the absurd assumption that the teacher may 
 experience for his pupil and present to him in some form the results. 
 This is manifestly false from any rational psychological conception of 
 the cognitive process. All the "results" of life that anyone can have 
 are simply what he himself has lived through. It is the teacher's sole 
 function to aid the pupil in living', that is all that he can do. This 
 aiding is always in the last analysis positive direction of the life-forces 
 through affirmative suggestion. The true teacher gives freely to the 
 life, struggling for self-realization, the ideals and the material for a 
 noble structure and sympathetically aids the architect. 
 
 Education is purely a personal matter. It is the influence of one 
 person upon another with a view to improving his life. The teacher 
 acknowledges his pupil's personality ; that is, he treats him as a peer 
 
SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 5 i 
 
 in the realm of self-determined living. His attitude toward him is 
 that toward a subject to be acknowledged and reckoned with, not 
 toward a thing to be manipulated ; consequently his work is that of 
 sympathetic co-operation, not of external control. 
 
 Pedagogy is essentially an ethical science, dealing with right conduct 
 of the teacher in his relation to his pupil. It is normative, treating of 
 how the teacher as such ought to act toward his pupil in order to secure 
 for him the most complete life. The teacher, with a high ideal of what 
 his pupil's life ought to be and a clear conception of the possibility of 
 guiding that life toward such ideal end, seeks ethically to order his 
 own life for educational purposes. The fundamental question is one 
 of ideal conduct by the teacher with specific reference to its influence on 
 his pupil. It is with the rightness or wrongness of the teacher's lifeaj 
 a teacher that the norms of educational science have to do. Also the 
 pupil's conduct as a pupil must be ethically ri^ht. The two parties 
 are to live right with each other under the peculiar relations of teacher 
 and taught, each recognizing the personality of the other and accom- 
 modating his own life to it. Pedagogy is a "practical science" in the 
 sense which Mackenzie' gives to that term: "A science, it is said, 
 teaches us to know, and an art to do; but a practical science teaches us 
 to know how to do." Pedagogy is the practical science of the teacher's 
 conduct as a teacher. 
 
 Teaching is necessarily individual in its character. The teacher 
 cannot teach a "class" en masse; the class as such has no personal life 
 to guide. While it must be admitted that the best teaching is done 
 with pupils associated in classes, the true teacher does not on that 
 account overlook the characteristic feature of his own function, namely, 
 to guide the life of the individual pupil to its highest realization ; he 
 simply individualizes his teaching ; that is, he guides individual life in 
 the social class relation. In all teaching there are but two parties 
 immediately concerned ; a teacher and a pupil. The social atmosphere 
 of the class and the educative material employed are alike incidents of 
 the work of the guiding of one life by the sympathetic participation of 
 another. 
 
 The teacher is ipso facto a fellow-student. He guides his pupil in 
 living by living himself. He cannot direct his pupil's experience 
 except through his own immediate experience. It is his life-current 
 that touches the life-current of his pupil, flowing into it and modifying 
 it by its very vital force itself. He " lives with his pupil," participating 
 
 ^ Manual of Ethics, p. 11. 
 
5 2 SUGGESTION IN ED UCA TION 
 
 in his life and contributing to it from his own fuller life. The pupil 
 returns life for life, entering in a very important way into the daily 
 experiences of his teacher, so that it may be truly said that not only 
 does the teacher live on an ever-widening life in the lives of his pupils, 
 but also the pupils live in the life of the teacher. The contact of the 
 two lives in the schoolroom is characterized by a reciprocal interaction 
 that should contribute to the bettering of both lives. The teacher as 
 the stronger force, however, may intentionally determine the general 
 character of the resultant — not only the character of his influence upon 
 his pupil, but also indirectly the influence of his pupil upon himself. 
 He may so order his own experiences and so control his pupil's experi- 
 ences as to enrich and strengthen both lives ; but he cannot direct his 
 pupil's life educationally without participating in that life. He cannot 
 show another how to live without living himself. 
 
 Not mere " knowledge" or " ability," but character is the final goal 
 of all true educational effort. Education has a definite unified aim, 
 which is the same for all children. If the aim were knowledge as such, 
 it would be diversified ; for there are many knowledges, many forms of 
 knowing arising in the various circumstances of human life. One 
 would seek one knowledge as essential for a mercantile life ; another, 
 for a military life ; another, for a professional life ; and so on, each 
 avocation demanding its peculiar "knowledge," and hence giving a 
 separate educational aim. Similarly, if the aim were " ability," grant- 
 ing that it can be distinguished from knowledge, there would still be 
 as many separate aims as there are abilities to do particular works, 
 each skill furnishing for its craftsman a definite educational aim. In 
 the naive view this would seem to be the natural and desirable function 
 of education ; each man should be prepared by special development 
 for the particular part which he is to perform in the social body. In 
 this way not only the best social service would be secured, but also 
 the greatest enjoyment of life for the individual. But this is only a 
 superficial view of the matter ; education is essentially one in its aim. 
 It may be directed to a definitely conceived common end for all men, 
 and yet be applicable to all forms of human activity, and even to all 
 shades of individual personality. In fact, it is only such a unified aim 
 that can give to all education serious purpose and make the teacher's 
 work most fruitful in his pupil's life. It is the high ideal that lifts the 
 imperfect and commonplace into perfect realization. 
 
 Laurie has said that: "The aim of education is always an ideal 
 aim, for it contemplates the completion of a man — the realization in 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 53 
 
 each man of what each has in him to become." Herbart defined such 
 an aim more definitely as " the development of moral character." 
 "Good character" in the Herbartian sense may be defined as such an 
 integrity of life as enables the person wisely to direct all his experiences 
 for his own good and the blessing of his fellow-man — a life fitted for 
 "every good word and work." With such an aim the teacher would 
 endeavor, not only to develop each pupil in accordance with his life- 
 needs and capacities, but — what is far higher — would strive to secure 
 in him a realization of true manhood. "Let him first be a man,'' should 
 be the watchword of the teacher. The aim of education is thus organic, 
 not acquisitive ; it seeks to help one to be, not to have. Its end is not 
 only integrity, but fulness of life — not only a well-organized and 
 definitely centered life, but " a many-sided life." Such an education 
 produces what President Thwing has characterized as " not narrow 
 specialists, but broad men sharpened to a point." 
 
 The immediate aim of education is present character for present 
 life. It seeks to actualize the potentialities of the present stage of life 
 as a means of realizing the whole possibilities of the life. Complete 
 living in the whole life is to be attained to by daily approximations in 
 the actual present of that life. By guiding suggestively the growth of' 
 the present the perfect stature of the whole is secured. 
 
 UNIVER- 
 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Explanatory Note. — In selecting from the mass of " references " accumulated 
 during the preparatory reading for this thesis such bibliography as will be helpful to 
 another who cares to investigate the subject, it has not been the aim to restrict the 
 list rigorously to books and articles that support the position taken by the writer. 
 The publications in the first division show the current views of the function of sugges- 
 tion in the development of human life, though by no means all of those enumerated 
 definitely treat of normal suggestion. The presence of so many titles concerning 
 suggestion in abnormal life shows how little the real field of the thesis has been 
 worked. The conception of affirmative guidance in education characterizes the 
 writings of the second division, though in general they contain little explicit reference 
 to suggestion as the means of such guidance. The list could be much extended, but 
 the books and articles named are fairly typical. In the third list are cited the few 
 sources in which there is some definite statement regarding education through sug- 
 gestion. There are doubtless more, but only these were accessible to the writer. 
 The order of the titles has no significance. 
 
 SUGGESTION IN NORMAL AND ABNORMAL LIFE. 
 
 S\d\s, Psychology of Suggestion. Appleton, 1898. 
 
 Bernheim, Suggestive Therapeutics, Herter's translation. Putnam, 1889. 
 
 Schmidkunz, Psychologic der Suggestion. Stuttgart, 1891. 
 
 Waldstein, Sub-Conscious Self. Scribner. 
 
 Binet and F6re, Animal Magnetism. Appleton, 1892, 
 
 MoW, Hypnotism. London: Scott, 1899. 
 
 Tarde, Les lois de F imitation. Paris, 1890. 
 
 'Qdiid-wm, Handbook of Psychology. Holt, 189 1. 
 
 ]2imts, Principles of Psychology. Holt, 1890. 
 
 Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory. Scribner, 1894. 
 
 Titchener, A Primer of Psychology. Macmillan, 1898. 
 
 Yo\x\\\€&, La psychologic des idies-forces. Paris, 1893. 
 
 'Qen&dxVx, Hypnotisfnus und Suggestion. Leipzig, 1894. 
 
 (ZdiVpenXtT, Principles of Mental Physiology, to\iri\\ edition, Appleton, 1876. 
 
 'QxntX., Alterations of Personality, Baldwin's translation. Appleton, 1896. 
 
 Kiilpe, Outlines of Psychology, Titchener's translation. Macmillan, 1893. 
 
 Sioni, Analytic Psychology. London: Sonnenschein, 1896. 
 
 Wundt, Grinidriss der Psychologic. Leipzig, 1896. 
 
 Royce, Studies of Good and Evil. Appleton, 1898. 
 
 Lehmann, Die Hypnose und die damit verwandten normalen Zustdnde. Leip- 
 zig, 1890. 
 
 Tvikt, Sleep-Walking and Hypnotism. London, 1884. 
 
 Hart, Hypnotisfn, Alesmeristn, and the New Witchcraft. London, 1893. 
 
 Binet, On Double Conscioicsness. Open Court Pub. Co., 1894. 
 
 De Manac^Tne, Sleep; its Physiology, Pathology, Hygiene, and Psychology. 
 Scribner, 1897. 
 
 Janet, L'automatisme psychologique. Paris, 1893. 
 
 SioW, Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Volkerpsychologie. Leipzig, 1894. 
 
 Prayer, The Mind of the Child {2 vols.). Appleton, 1888-89. 
 
 54 
 
SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION 55 
 
 Yx^yt,x, Mental Development of the Child. Appleton, 1893. 
 
 Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and in the Race. Macmillan, 
 i8g4. 
 
 Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development. Mac- 
 millan, 1897. 
 
 Hudson, The Law of Psychic Phenomena. McClurg, 1893. 
 
 Newbold, "Suggestion in Therapeutics." Dental Cosmos, February, 1894. 
 
 Hudson, "Suggestion as a Factor in Human Life." Medico-Legal Journal, 
 December, 1896. 
 
 Barrows, " Suggestion without Hypnotism." Proceedings of the Society for 
 Psychical Research, Vol. XII, London, 1897. 
 
 Sidis, "A Study of Mental Epidemics." Century, October, i8g6. 
 
 Binet and Henri, "De la suggestibility naturelle chez les enfants." Revue 
 philosophique. Vol. XXXVIII, Paris, 1894. 
 
 Newbold, " Normal and Heightened Suggestibility, etc." Popular Science 
 Monthly, December, 1895; January, 1896; March, 1896; April, 1896; 
 June, 1896 ; July, 1896; and other articles by the same writer. 
 
 Mason, " Educational Uses of Hypnotism." North American Review, Octo- 
 ber, 1896. 
 
 Baldwin, "Imitation: A Chapter in the Natural History of Consciousness." 
 Mind, January, 1894. 
 
 Royce, "Preliminary Report on Imitation." Psychological Review, May, 1895. 
 
 Royce, "The Imitative Functions and Their Place in Human Nature." 
 Centtiry, May, 1894. 
 
 Baldwin, "A Further Word on Imitation." Century, December, 1894. 
 
 Ross, " Social Control — Suggestion." American Journal of Sociology, Sep- 
 tember, 1896. 
 
 Carus, " Suggestion and Suggestibility." Open Court, January 9, 1900. 
 
 Fry, "Imitation as a Factor in Human Progress." Littelfs Living Age, June 
 22, 1889. 
 
 Small, "The Suggestibility of Children." Pedagogic Seminary, Vol. IV, 
 1896-97. 
 
 Fillebrown, " Hypnotic Suggestion as an Obtudent and Sedative ; " paper with 
 discussion in World's Columbian Dental Congress. Dental Cosmos, Sep- 
 tember, 1893. 
 
 EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 
 
 Ha-rxxs, Psychologic Foundations of Education. Appleton, 1898. 
 Spencer, Education : Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. Appleton, 1861. 
 Dewey, The School and Society. University of Chicago Press, 1899. 
 Hopkins, The Spirit of the New Education. Lee & Shepard, 1892. 
 Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Quick's edition. London, 
 
 1880-84. 
 Pestalozzi, Leonard and Gertrude, Channing's translation. Heath, 1888. 
 Froebel, The Education of Man, Hailmann's translation. Appleton, 1887. 
 Parker, Talks on Pedagogics. Kellogg, 1894. 
 Bryant, Short Studies in Character. London. 
 Bryant, The Teaching of Morality. London, 1897. 
 Willmann, Didactik als Bildungslehre nach ihren Beziehungen zur Social- 
 
 forschung und zur Geschichte der Bildung. Braunschweig, 1 895 . 
 Tompkins, The Philosophy of Teaching. Ginn, 1894. 
 Hughes, FroebeFs Educational Laws. Appleton, 1 897. 
 
5 6 SUGGES TION IN ED UCA TION 
 
 Spalding, Thoughts and Theories of Life and Education. McClurg, 1897. 
 
 Spalding, Things of the Mind. McClurg, 1894. 
 
 Spalding, Education and the Higher Life. McClurg, 1890. 
 
 Hanus, Educational Aims and Educational Values. Macmillan, 1899. 
 
 Vincent, The Social Mind and Education. Macmillan, 1897. 
 
 Hailmann, "The Place and Development of Purpose in Education." Pro- 
 ceedings ofN. E. A., 1889. 
 
 Wiggin, Children's Rights ; A Book of Nursery Logic. Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co., 1892. 
 
 Harrison, A Study of Child- Nature frotn the Kindergarten Standpoint. Chi- 
 cago Kindergarten College, 1895. 
 
 Abbott, Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young. 
 Harper, 1871. 
 
 "D^^Q^', My Pedagogical Creed. Kellogg, 1897. 
 
 Small, Demands of Sociology upon Pedagogy. Bound with the lastnamed 
 
 McMurry, The Elements of General Method. Public-School Publishing Co., 
 1893. 
 
 Wood, Studies in the Thought World; or Practical Mind Art. Lee & 
 Shepard, 1896. 
 
 Tompkins, "The Implications and Applications of the Principle of Self- 
 Activity in Education." Proceedings of N. E. A., 1899. 
 
 Fouill^e, Education from a National Standpoint, Greenstreet's translation. 
 Appleton, 1892. 
 
 WoVaxoo\i, School Managetnent. Barnes, 1872. 
 
 James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life's 
 Ideals. Holt, 1899. 
 
 Rosenkranz, The Philosophy of Education, Brackett's translation. Appleton, 
 1887. 
 
 Laurie, Lectures on Language and Linguistic Method in the School (Lecture 
 I). Edinburgh, 1890. 
 
 Butler, The Meaning of Education. Macmillan, 1898. 
 
 Dewey, "Ethical Principles Underlying Education." Third Yearbook of the 
 
 National Herbart Society, 1 897. 
 Briggs, "The Transition from School to College." Atlantic, March, 1900. 
 Thayer, "Judicious Aid to Pupils," paper read before the Harvard Teachers' 
 
 Association. Educational Review, May, 1900. 
 Howerth, "The Social End of Education." Fifth Yearbook of the National 
 
 Herbart Socic *v, 1899. 
 
 EDUCATION THROUGH SUGGESTION, 
 
 Guyau, Education et hirSditi. Paris, 1892. There is also a good English 
 
 translation of this valuable book by Greenstreet, Scribner. 
 Halleck, The Education of the Central Nervous System. Macmillan, 1896. 
 Thomas, La suggestion ; son role dans P education. Paris, 1895. 
 Wendt, " Suggestion, padagogische." Rein's Encyklopddisches Handbuch der 
 
 Pddagogik, Vol. VI, 1899. 
 Huntington, Unconscious Tuition. Kellogg, 1888. 
 Queyrat, Les caractires et T education morale. Paris, 1896. 
 Blow, Symbolic Education; A Commentary on Froebel's "Mother Play." 
 
 Appleton, 1894. 
 Harris and others, Psychological Tendencies — The Study of Imitation. 
 
 Report of National Commissioner of Education for 1896-97. 
 
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OVERDUE. 
 
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