THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX AN ESSAY The Riddle of the Sphinx Sherratt & Hughes printers London and Manchester THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX oTL SVJV IN THl LOSoTHY. AN ESSAY BY GEORGE G. CAMPION Q. "What is Education?" Stanley Leathes. A. " The Riddle of the Sphinx ! " Michael E. Sadler. " If Education is the clue to the future it is also the Riddle of the Sphinx." Times Educational Supplement, 2 Dec, 1913. FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION LB l OSS' CONTENTS. Introduction 7 Education 9 Percept and Concept r 3 Sense Perception 3 2 Observation- ------- -45 Inference - - 48 Imagination ... - ■ 53 Reason ------- "5° Will or Conation 63 Spirit 66 Impulses - - 69 Genius - 86 The Work of Montessori, Chassevant and others - - - 90 Chassevant - 104 Memory Drawing - io 7 Manual Training io 9 Conclusion - no L'envoi - 112 788179 INTRODUCTION. For over twenty years the writer has studied, as an amateur, the subject of education and read during this time much of the work of Pestalozzi, Froebel, Spencer, Herbart, Newman, James, and many books, reports and papers of later date. During these years it has been one of his constant aims to search for and learn a real psychological definition of the word — a definition which should be at once brief and comprehensive, and yet sufficiently definite and concrete to be a really practical guide to every teacher. Not succeeding during many years in finding what he wanted he has been driven to try and gradually formulate for himself what he seemed to be in need of. The following pages may bring to the mind of the reader something of his thoughts on the subject — thoughts spread over many years and summarised in a single sentence. This sen- tence is also the growth of many years, built up slowly and laboriously, little by little, bit by bit, with a hint from here, an idea from there, until it now seems to have assumed something at any rate of the shape that he has been in search of for so long. Incidentally the work has led to the formation of what at the moment seems to the writer a more or less coherent theory of the way in which the con- ceptual or cognitive dispositions of the mind become gradually organised as the result of that part of experience which is acquired through the medium of sense-perception. At a time when the issue of printed matter is so great and when some authors are in the habit of putting two or three volumes into circulation a year, 8 it may perhaps be considered something of a virtue to have put ten or twelve years into a sentence. Such a sentence and an explanation of what it means to the writer are in the pages which follow. Whether these pages afford any contribution towards a solu- tion of one of the outstanding problems of human personality others must judge; but it may well be said that any outline treatment of a subject of such complexity can only be made clear by making it also at the same time in some ways false. In looking through the completed essay the writer feels that he has been engaged in little more than putting together a puzzle of which the different pieces have been provided for him by others, and that he can say quite truly in the words of Montaigne, " I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the string that binds them is mine own." To all those who have contributed these pieces, whether known and acknowledged, or unknown or forgotten and unacknowledged, he tenders his most grateful thanks. EDUCATION. Any psychological definition of the word which aims at setting forth the nature of the process in the individual must embrace and account for the best results attained in e.g. : i. The Home. 2. Pestalozzi's school. 3. Froebel's school. 4. Egeria's school in Utopia (" What is and what might be," by E. G. A. Holmes). 5. The Montessori schools. 6. The George Junior Republic, and similar institutions. 7. The Boy Scout Movement. 8. The Girl Guides' Movement. 9. The English Public Schools. 10. The Universities. 11. Other and subsequent Life and Experience. 10 eo • l-H z o < u D Q ■* J>> CO CD • a o ^O CO c o CO 4— > a, ,j3 CO •£« cj . . ^E bo co en .22 ~0 bo c ^D 4-> C/3 o • co § & — < N CO <^ Q CD CO bfi bo a CD 4— » a o o • — < ~0 health : habits ( uiring erentiatin relating 4—1 CO '— DO >* > a UJ *5 *- CD CO o Q- Q . • ~D a cO (U cO-^ with s of q CO ■i— ' CD no o CQ Mind 8 faculti Spirit h its 4— » CD u a U'l ^C ^5'~ ja — Ol en II >- r- ■ CO •/T "5 >^ selings o r in whicl >r objects s Ward. 3 _o 4-1 CJ co 13 £ US cS ^ £ 8 ha -5 o <— CJ 0) o 5 tsj 's o II b 6 O o s JO 4-1 3 .2 *o . • ~- c — i ^* g us us « s* CJ T3 5 4-> CJ ^. 3 ^ ^ > iomena in that eries of in emp 'do. Bri T3 CJ co 3 ~5 o 4-* IS t- CU US OJ us 4-» CO 3 — -faj co '— _ ^ * 9 o 4-* O o £ o 3 £ E CO -3 O o ^ r- CJ ;s or phe wo being e other a ind is use logy : -Z?«< -o > •^ 3 3 c C — i c ir. US o us i~ o C s 4-* S3 ' ■4—1 E «s 4— » u: o 1/5 i— o »« ir. 5« 3 •"'is ^-» 3 'u3 £ o 4-1 £ 3 O "o CO "S3 c m o o > c E V. Hi c CO to r" M <*- o co °n CO ii cj co CD US 4-» <*_ o cj uT 3 CD 1- ■*-» co CD US 4-» Cm o 4-» CO >- cj g S3 a? >-. S J3 ■j3 » w :£ " ~ = 3 fn i— i -*— » La 3 * ^ Ui ■- 2 *^ co 3 • t -' si i u CJ O ^^c^ - - .—. ^^ ^-i. en us us c n. ^ 4-1 1— 1 J3 . C l/.£.//o-is) " (d) The identification of self with the best means for the end." (irpoa.Lpe(Tis;\ Some Questions about the Will, from Essays Scientific and Philosophical, by Aubrey L. Moore, p. 137. ' The Science of Character will deal with the Intellect as with the Will. It will regard the one no more than the other as an independent existence ; but as organised in and subserving the system of some impulse, emotion, or sentiment." The Foundations of Character, by A. F. Shand, p. 67. 6 4 "Will." And the "will" of which this desire constitutes a part may be the " will " of an Ivan the Terrible, a Borgia, a Napoleon, a Shakespeare, a Dante, a Newton, a Darwin, an Alfred, a Gladstone, a Francis D'Assisi, a Vincent de Paul. Take as an example — Napoleon, 1 whose dominant desire was the personal ambition first of creating an empire for himself out of the chaos following the revolution, and secondly of founding a dynasty of his own, to rule this empire in succeeding times. If we analyse what we ordinarily call the " judgment ' : which he showed in such a matter as the choice of his officers and ministers, this may be said to have consisted of a highly developed faculty of rapidly " acquiring " a knowledge of men, of " differentiat- ing " accurately between their individual aptitudes and capacities, of successfully " correlating ' their capacities with the requirements of the various positions in which he placed them; and all these conceptions and actions when regarded as a whole, constitute a process of ' integration," by which he formed an entity, an integral whole, his complete executive to aid him in carrying out his desire. But however brilliant his genius in the wide and complex sphere of action in which he moved and worked it is difficult to see that the desire of self-assertive i. "We think of Napoleon Bonaparte as a colossal monster of will-power, and truly enough he was so. But from the point of view of the psycho- logical machinery it would be hard to say whether he or Gladstone was the larger volitional quantity ; for Napoleon disregarded all the usual inhibitions, and Gladstone, passionate as he was, scrupulously considered them in his statesmanship." Wm. James, Talks to Teachers, p. 181. 65 domination 1 which animated his whole career differed essentially from that of the primitive savage in Kipling's verses (v. ante p. 27). He was the creature of his instincts as surely as is the miser, the sensualist or the thief, and his great powers of mind were employed primarily and unceasingly in gratify- ine them; whereas in Alfred the Great or Gladstone, for example, the power of inhibiting the natural instincts had been so cultivated that altruism and high motive took the place of egoistic desire, and purely selfish action. The one is an example of the non-moral genius of action in whom the intellect is directed by the desire of gratifying the natural instincts. The others are examples of the moral genius of action in whom the intellect is directed by a desire of an immeasurably different order, by something which has been called and which we may still call " spirit." 2 1. " The finite self aims at dominion : it sees the world in concentric circles round the here and now, and itself as the God of that wished for heaven." "The Essence of Religion," by the Hon. Bertrand Russell, Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1912. 2. " What we find to be possible is the subservience of natural desires to a nobler set of thoughts and aims, till they are not destroyed, but caught and lifted up into a higher atmosphere, where for the first time their meaning becomes plain." The Corner-Stone of Education, by Ed. Lyttelton, p. 139. E 66 SPIRIT. What then is spirit? Who shall say? " From generation to generation men have been the sport of words," and the word is only a name label which men attach to profoundly different concepts or images. We talk of good spirits, of evil spirits, of animal spirits, of ghostly spirits, of rectified spirits, of spirits of salts, of spirits of wine, of the spirit of the law, of the spirit of the age, of the spirit of the constitution, of the spirit of mischief, of the spirit of truth, of the spirit of love, of the spirit of life. But what meaning are we to attach to the label when we use it to indicate that part of man's nature which we call spiritual ? Are we right in speaking of a man's " Spirit " as something different from what we call his " Mind "? or are they terms which we may use synonymously ? and if not, what relationship do they bear, the one to the other? We know that what we call man's " Body " is a complex of many parts and functions, we have seen that what we call man's " Mind ' is a complex of a few mental processes working with percepts and concepts; we have seen that what we call man's " Will " is also a complex of which the functions and content of mind form a part; that what we call " Imagination," and what we call " Reason," are not special " faculties," but only complex groupings of percepts and concepts 67 into mental images and forms. So too with what we call man's " Spirit." It also is likely to share this complex nature, 1 and may perhaps be regarded as an intimately blended complex of truth and ethical as distineuished from instinctive 2 love. But since human knowledge is merely conceptual and relative and never attains to absolute truth, and human love is mostly instinctive and rarely becomes consistently ethical, it follows that the complex of these two elements in man must participate in these limitations and will ever remain but a dim reflex of the transcen- dent and absolute Truth and Love which mankind has for ages embraced among the attributes which it has enshrined under the ancient name of God. It is only when men's impulses, thoughts and actions 3 are controlled and directed by such a complex that man comes nearest to the godlike. And the control i. " The spiritual life is not a product of a single psychical function, such as thought or feeling ; it would form a whole transcending the psychical functions, and from this whole determine the form of each function distinctively. The chief impulse of the spiritual life is that it wills to liberate us from the merely human. Seen from within, the history of humanity is primarily an increasing deliverance of life from bondage to the narrowly human, an emergence of something more than human, and an attempt "to shape our life from the point of view of others : it is an increasing conflict of man with himself." Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, by Rudolph Eucken, p. 135. 2. vide Note 1. 3. Morality must take up a definite attitude towards the sense nature of man ; that nature must be subordinated to the aims of the spirit." Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, by Rudolph Eucken, p. 341. " Knowledge is one of the forms and a necessary portion of morality, and just as without an enlightened understanding there can be no real and perfect morality, so a true and comprehensive knowledge can subsist onlv in a mind disciplined by morality. It is true that this love of wisdom, often as it is proclaimed and paraded, is as rare as it is precious, for he alone can claim to possess it who is able and willing to dedicate himself to truth with an absolute and unreserved devotion and to make even the most painful sacrifice on its behalf." Lecture on Error, Doubt and Truth, by J. J. I. von Dollinger. " Ignorance is not innocence but sin." Browning. 68 and direction of life by such a complex, to which we may attach the name of " spirit," becomes at once a high and perpetual warfare, a warfare of the higher self with the lower self, of the universal self with the particular self, of spirit in man with instinct in man; a warfare in which the interests of the higher self become ultimately merged with the interests of others, in which the highest individualism becomes to a large extent social service. 1 "Conceive for a moment what an infinitely better and happier world it would be if every action in it were directed by a reasonable desire for the agent's happi- ness ! Excess of all kinds, drunkenness and its attendant ills, would vanish, disease would be enor- mously mitigated ; nine-tenths of the petty vexations which embitter domestic life would be smoothed away ; the competition for wealth would be lessened, for wealth would be rated at no more than the quantity of pleasure which it is capable of purchasing for its possessor ; the sympathetic emotions would be sedu- louslv cultivated as those least subject to weariness and satiety ; whilst self-sacrifice itself would be prac- tised as the last refinement of a judicious luxury." 2 And action directed by the rare combination of complete knowledge and ethical love is justice. 3 i. "The development of the spiritual life within the human order involves a complete transformation of values. The course of historical development shows us sense-immediacy constantly yielding more and more of its supremacy to a spiritual immediacy ; the outward life is lived and viewed from the standpoint of the inward and not vice versa." The Meaning and Value of Life, by R. Eucken, p. 102. 2. "The Religion of Humanity," by A. J. Balfour, Essays and Addresses, p. 294. 3. " Sown into the womb of Nature (man) was sown a spiritual seed. And history, on the one side the record of man's entanglement in matter, on the other side is the epic of his self-deliverance." Justice and Liberty, by J. Lowes Dickinson, p. 202. 6 9 IMPULSES. Impulses are instinctive and emotional, intimately blended. Instinct. " We must remember that as things now are, no two writers use the term in quite the same sense." l Definitions. " The faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance." — James. 2 " Those complex groups of co-ordinated acts which, though they contribute to experience, are on their first occurrence, not determined by individual experience ; which are adaptive and tend to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the race ; which are due to the co-operation of external and internal stimuli ; which are similarly performed by all members of the same more or less restricted group of animals ; but which are subject to variation, and to subsequent modification under the guidance of ' individual expe- rience.' " — C. Lloyd Morgan? "An inherited reaction of the sensori-motor type, relatively complex and markedly adaptive in character, and common to a group of individuals." — Baldwin.* "An inherited psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive, and pay attention to, objects of a certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a peculiar quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act in regard to it in a particular 1. Instinct and Experience , by C. Lloyd Morgan, p. 239. 2. Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, ch. xxiv. 3. C. Lloyd Morgan, Encycl. Britann. 4. Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. 7o manner, or, at least, to experience an impulse to such action." — McDougall. 1 Marshall in " Instinct and Reason " uses the word in a wider sense, distinguishing throughout between Instinct-action and Instinct-feeling-, and including: also the so-called moral and religious instincts. In view of the evident difficulty experienced by- experts in framing a definition of "Instinct" which shall be applicable alike to insect, animal and human life, it may perhaps be permissible for the man in the street to strike a mean between those presented to him and use the term in a sense which seems suitable to the immediate purpose in hand. It is doubtless to some extent a question of words and, to that extent, like all questions of words a question of convenience. In reference to the writer's immediate subject — the education of man — it seems inconvenient to use the same word to denote both these impulses which man has in common with insects and the lower animals, and those higher " intuitions," 2 which Kant conceptualises as " the categorical imperative," Butler as " conscience," and others as " the inner 1. Social Psychology, sect, i, ch. ii. 2. The writer here refers to what he understands to be Intuition accord- ing to Kant rather than Intuition according to Bergson. The latter's Introduction to Metaphysics concludes : " Metaphysical intuition although it can only be obtained through material knowledge, is quite other than the mere summary or synthesis of that knowledge. It is distinct from these, we repeat, as the motor impulse is distinct from the path traversed by the moving body, as the tension of the spring is distinct from the visible movements of the pendulum. In this sense metaphysics has nothing in common with a generalisation of facts ; and nevertheless it might be defined as integral experience." This seems to indicate that Bergson includes under Intuition what the writer has tried to show in the preceding pages to be the part of the perceptual as distinguished from the conceptual functions of Mind. x r.jbjfq* 7i check," 1 or " the moral sense." These seem to him better accounted for by intuitional or super-sensuous perception. He accordingly uses the word "Instinct" in a more restricted sense than Marshall, a sense which, unlike Lloyd Morgan's definition, includes an emotional as well as a motor content, but an emotion centring in the individual and extending, at any rate for a time, as in the higher animals to other members of the family. In view of Long's obser- vations, which are referred to subsequently, it seems to the writer open to question how much of the communal behaviour of gregarious animals is due to instinct and how much to education. Instincts involve and imply certain arrangements of nerve cells in functional relation with one another and adequate in combination to provide the regulat- ing nervous mechanism necessary for the instinctive act. These groups of functionally related cells are, according to Lloyd Morgan, situated in the lower parts of the cerebro-spinal nervous system (sub- cortical) and form the physiological correlates of what are known psychologically as " dispositions." Instincts may be regarded as due to hereditary dispositions in the sub-cortical layers of the cerebro- spinal nervous system.' 2 i. P. E. More in The Drift of Romanticism. 2. " I restrict the term instinctive in its biological acceptation to con- genital modes of behaviour dependent upon inherited dispositions within the lower brain centres." Instinct and Experience, C. Lloyd Morgan, p. 32. " The outcome of physiological analysis of the kind we have been considering is that complex behaviour of the instinctive type is determined by the hereditary dispositions of the sub-cortical centres." Instinct and Experience, C. Lloyd Morgan, p. 81. 72 TWO HOURS' PLAY OF A FOUR YEARS' OLD BOY. By J. J. Webber, B.A. 1 "At 10.40 my four-year-old came to me and said, "Shall we dig ?" I assented, and we went forth. Pre- pared to abandon initiative and remain as neutral as possible, I had no sooner been armed with a trowel than he rushed off to a corner of the garden. "Look at those pretty flowers " was his cry as he pointed to a sage- bush. As he returned he pointed out some short sticks forming " a little fence," then " a pansy," and mentioned casually that the pea-sticks did not poke into his eye as he passed (a reference to an accident of three weeks ago). Digging then commenced, the earth being loaded into the toy cart, while I gave a minimum of help. Soon he shouted with a discoverer's glee, " fir-cone," picked up the cone, and apparently being reminded of "comb," tried to part his hair with it, and then threw it into his " house " (a large wooden packing-case, stood on one end) saying, " We'll keep that." By 10.58 he had filled and tipped the cart twice. He now took a deep pan and a small garden fork, and in answer to enquiry, said, "lam going to make pepper, salt and mustard, and this is my mixing fork." In order to avoid any jarring note, I also began the manufacture of pepper, etc., but was reminded that I must not attempt it until I had done cart-loading. Hastily I filled and tipped the cart once, and was hurrying on with the pepper, etc., when the boy whose attention was, I thought, fully occupied with his task, remarked that two loads ought to be tipped first. By 1 1.1 1, "pepper, salt and mustard" had been meta- 1. Child-Study, Oct. 1913. 73 morphosed into " dinner," and this was soon con- sidered as cooked, but suddenly he started to get " potatoes," picking up rounded stones and placing them in the cart. The intermittent nature of this work, and the different objects which he noticed as he searched the ground set his tongue going. He had been forbidden some days before to break off the small twigs on the pea-sticks, but as he was busily occupied I unconsciously snapped off a twig. He immediately glanced up from his " potato " gathering and said, " Why do you break off those twigs? " He chattered about the cool breeze, and the leaves on the tree ; noticed a piece of glass, which he threw away, and a shell which he picked up and exhibited before placing in the " house," then having gathered 43 " potatoes " he became a buyer, and negotiated with an imaginary greengrocer. The "potatoes" were placed in a box in imitation of the household custom, and then it appeared that we kept " birds in cages," and this food was for the "dickies." I may mention that vegetables chopped small, in water, was his idea of birds' food; and a cupful of this " soup " placed in a disused bird-cage, which is hung outside the house, is his method of "trying to catch birds." At 11.22 more potatoes were collected, and having noticed me counting the previous number, he invited me to count again. A pudding was now to be made, but the unsatisfactory nature of pebbles seemed to strike him, as they rattled into his small pail, and he threw them all out and began to pick up lumps of earth. In a moment he brought me a small brown withered bulb and said, " Look — a buttercup root! " It was sure enough Ranunculus acris, but before I had time to enquire about this alarming botanical erudition he ran into the house to show the find to his mother. He planted them it seems, and the flowers and leaves disappeared some weeks ago. 74 Continuing his search for " potatoes " he found little pears and placed them to cook on the " dinner." "There's a honey-bee," he says, as it flies past, and then enters into an explanation, with practical illustra- tions, of why as a rule he comes in from the garden with dirty knees. The lumps of earth are placed on the bottom of a box, and he goes to get an old knife " to cut up seeds for the dicky." 11.40: The material being cut up is soon called "parsley," and then "suet" — the latter being sprinkled on the overdone " dinner," while the unused lumps of earth are put into the pail, which is carefully hung up in the " house." His attention was now roving. Catching sight of his mother, he asked for an apple or an orange, but hardly waiting for an answer, assured me that tail- boards of carts had to be made " strong," that some- body had to make " Tommy " (his wooden horse), and that Tommy had to eat his food " like this " — falling on his hands and knees and champing. The shell in the " house " now attracted his eye — " Could we find one without a hole in it? " At 1 145 he said, " Shall we dig now ? " and emptied the " dinner " on to the ground, but he made no attempt to dig, and soon suggested that we should " live in the little house and eat potatoes." The pail containing the latter was upset, as he was admiring a lady-bird in the " house " at 11.51, so he set to work with the knife, flattening the small heap of split earth, and calling it " cement." Looking at some nails he recalled the pictures tacked up in his " house " a couple of months ago, and then invited me to play, the game to be " going down the path with the horse and cart, as our mother allows us to do this." At 12.8 after a turn at the aforesaid game, he talked of digging, but hearing the voice of the little boy in the next garden he did nothing. At 75 12. io he asked for his wooden engine, on which he sat and shouted to the little boy. He filled the engine tender with earth at 12.14, but stopped to watch and talk to the other boy till 12.30, when he again sug- gested digging, but did nothing. A shower then came on, and he covered the horse and cart with sacking, but stood the pail containing some earth out in the rain " to make mud," and when the rain stopped, made an unsuccessful appeal for tap- water. 12.34 : We walked the path again with Tommy and the engine, but this was soon abandoned, and at 12.45 he began picking leaves and passing them through the chinks of his " house " from the inside to the outside. While doing this he says gravely, without turning his head "Skylark," and then I noticed one singing in the distance." This excellent piece of " experiential reconstruc- tion " shows the play and imitative instincts at work in various directions — " digging," making a "house," preparing " dinner," cooking " potatoes," negotia- ting with a greengrocer, " trying to catch birds," imitating "Tommy" eating — making "suet," "mud," etc. It also shows the child applying to the work in hand the conceptual contents of his mind as these have been formed by his previous experience. The impulse to action and speech must vent itself in the terms already stored and ready to hand in the cognitive dispositions of his mind, however inappro- priate they may be, and further we see throughout how the trains of speech and action are being con- tinually interrupted and diverted by streams of new percepts which his mind is unceasingly acquiring from the sense-data furnished by his eyes, his ears, j6 and his touch. The dynamic stream of percepts is constantly at work adding to his experience and recallinsf to the consciousness of the moment con- cepts previously formed and stored in the mind, recalling also past incidents, and past actions. The boy is reacting to his environment in response to this perceptual flow, and the mingling and interaction of inner impulse and outer impression is forming new experience which in its turn is creating new desires which are immediately craving for satisfac- tion and expression. But the talk and action throughout are seemingly chaotic and purposeless, and it is the business of education to reduce this chaos to order, to gradually form in the child the power to control and direct these and similar im- pulses, and ultimately the power if necessary to inhibit them altogether. 1 And this is of the very essence of discipline — self-discipline it may be and in later life must be, 2 but none the less discipline for i. " .... the modern authorities in physiology and psychology now believe that there are in the brain masses of cells whose duty it is to inhibit or control the action of other parts of the brain. The question is a most im- portant one in Mental Hygiene. Can those inhibitory centres be so developed in youth and so cultivated in mature life that they can act as antagonists to what is morbid? Can they in fact be used as directly curative agencies against tendencies towards foolish and hurtful impulses? If this is so, and ive could cultivate this power it would be an educational discovery the most valuable yet made by humanity." Hygiene of Mind, by Sir Thomas Clouston, p. 81. " The peculiar problem of the early grades is, of course, to get hold of the child's natural impulses and instincts, and to utilise them so that the child is carried on to a higher plain of perception and judgment, and equipped with more efficient habits : so that he has an enlarged and deepened consciousness, and increased control of powers of action. When- ever this result is not reached play results in mere amusement and not in educative growth." The School and the Child, by John Dewey, p. 58. 2. This internal or self-discipline may, under suitable conditions, be established when the discipline of external pressure has entirely failed. Its cultivation is the keynote of the George Junior Republic and similar institutions. Vide Note'll, "The Little Commonwealth." 77 t hat — self-expression it must be too, but a self- expression which involves self-transcendence, the transcendence of a higher and more ordered self over the lower self of instinct. This power of control and inhibition needs to be cultivated at an early stage of growth, for an impulse once controlled becomes easier to control a second time, but if successively left uncontrolled may ultimately become uncontrollable ; and this same control of the instinc- tive and emotional impulses is the physiological part of the raw material of all ethical conduct and an essential for the full fruition of religion itself. In the childhood of the individual, as in the childhood of the race, the instinctive impulse generated by a blow finds its reaction in another blow. In the child of a larger growth the answering blow may be given with the walking stick or the hunting-crop. ' In more sedate circles the same instinct may find expression in a lawsuit, while among the saints of the earth it may take the negative form of heaping coals of fire on the enemy's head." 1 If the instincts furnish the initial impulse in the development of human beings it is none the less the part of cultivated manhood and womanhood to control and direct them instead of being controlled and directed by them. 2 "Man who man would be Must rule the Empire of himself ! " — Shelley. i. The Psychology of Education, by J. Welton, p. 73. 2. " Social existence depends on certain abstensions. Society holds together by virtue of the inhibition, or control, or self-denial, that its members impose upon themselves, with respect to acts that are prompted by their self-preservation and reproductive instincts." Crime and Insanity, by C. A. Mercier, p. 20. 78 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INCREASED SIZE OF THE CEREBRUM IN RECENT AS COMPARED WITH EXTINCT MAMMALIA. 1 "It is well established that the extinct mammalia of the middle and lower tertiaries had — as compared with their nearest living congeners — an extremely small cerebrum. The exact figures are not important, but Titanotherium — a true rhinoceros — had certainly not more than one-fifth of the cerebral nervous substance which is possessed by living rhinoceros. Dinoceras, representing a distinct group of Ungulata, had even a smaller brain. Yet in bulk these animals were as large as, or larger than, the largest living rhinoceros. Further, it appears from the examination of the cranial cavities of extinct and recent reptiles, that the increase in the size of cerebrum is not peculiar to mammalia, but that we may assert as a general proposition that recent forms have a greatly increased bulk of cerebrum as compared with their early tertiary or mesozoic fore- bears. It appears also that the relative size of the cerebrum in man and the anthropoid apes may be cited here as a similar phenomenon ; the more recent genus Homo having an immensely increased mass of cerebral nerve- tissue as compared with the more ancient pithecoid genera. The significance of this striking fact — viz., that recent forms have a cerebral mass greatly larger than that of extinct forms (probably in every class of the animal kingdom) has not been discussed or considered as it deserves In what does the advantage of a larger cerebral mass consist ? What is it that the more recent mammalia have gained by their larger brains? Why has there been this selection in all lines of animal descent of increased cerebral tissue ? I think we gain a key to the answer to this question by a consideration of the differences of cerebral quality i. By Sir E. Ray Lankester, F.R.S., Nature, 26 April, 1900. 79 between man and apes. Man is born with fewer ready- made tricks of the nerve centres — those performances of an inherited nervous mechanism so often called by the ill-defined term "instincts" — than are the monkeys or any other animal. Correlated with this absence of inherited ready-made mechanism, man has a greater capacity for developing in the course of his individual growth similar nervous mechanisms (similar to but not identical with those of " instinct ") than any other animal. He has a greater capacity for " learning " and storing his individual experience, so as to take the place of the more general inherited brain-mechanisms of lower animals. Obviously such brain-mechanisms as the individual thus develops (habits, judgments, &c.) are of greater value in the struggle for existence than are the less specially-fitted instinctive inborn mechanisms of a race, species or genus. The power of being educated — " educability " as we may term it — is what man possesses in excess as compared with the apes. I think we are justified in forming the hypothesis that it is this " educability " which is the correlative of the increased size of the cerebrum. If this hypothesis be correct — then we may conclude that in all classes of vertebrata and even in many inverte- brata — there is and has been a continual tendency to substitute "educability" for mere inherited brain — mechanisms or instincts, and that this requires increased volume of cerebral substance. A mere spoonful of cerebral tissue is sufficient to carry abun- dant and highly efficient instinctive mechanisms from generation to generation ; but for the more valuable capacity of elaborating new brain-mechanisms in the individual as the result of the individual's experience of surrounding conditions, a very much larger volume of cerebral tissue is needed. Thus it seems probable that "educability" has increased in those mammalia which have survived. 8o The ancient forms with small brains though excellent "automata" had to give place, by natural selection in the struggle for existence, to the gradually increased brains with their greater power of mental adaptation to the changing and varied conditions of life : until in man an organism has been developed which, though differing but little in bodily structure from the monkey, has an amount of cerebral tissue and a capacity for education which indicates an enormous period of gradual development during which, not the general structure, but the organ of " educability," the cere- brum, was almost solely the objective of selection. • • • • • To a large extent the two series of brain-mechanisms, the "instinctive" and' the "individually acquired," are in opposition to one another The loss of instinct is what permits and necessitates the education of the receptive brain. • • • • • The fact is that there is no community between the mechanisms of instinct and the mechanisms of intelli- gence, and that the latter are later in the history of the development of the brain than the former, and can only develop in proportion as the former become feeble and defective." When Sir E. Ray Lancaster wrote these words the studies had been made of how this increased " educability," — the result of a larger cerebrum — is utilised by the higher animals, and three years later — in 1902 — Long published his fascinating book giving detailed accounts of the animal Kindergar- tens. 1 i. School of the Woods, by William J. Long. 8i " That animal education is like our own, and so depends chiefly upon teaching, may possibly be a new suggestion in the field of natural history. Most people think that the life of a wild animal is governed wholly by instinct. They are of the same class who hold that the character of a child is largely pre- determined by heredity. 1 Personally, after many years of watching animals in their native haunts, I am convinced that instinct plays a much smaller part than we have supposed ; that an animal's success or failure in the ceaseless struggle for life depends, not upon instinct, but upon the kind of training: which the animal receives from its mother. . . Those young birds and animals that are left by sad accident, or sadder wilfulness, without their mothers' training profit little by their instincts. They are always first to fall in the battle with the strong. Those alone that follow their natural leaders till they learn wisdom live to grow up in the big woods. Sometime, in the course of a long summer, birds and animals that see their offspring well trained produce a second brood or litter. The latter are generally abandoned, at the approach of winter, before their simple education is half completed. Left with their instincts and their imperfect training, they go to feed nature's hungry prowlers; while the better trained broods live and thrive in the same woods, amid the same dangers. . . . Again, you find a little fawn hidden in the woods, as described in the next chapter, and are much surprised that, instead of running away, he comes to you fear- lessly, licks your hand and follows you, calling wistfully as you go away. You have yet to learn that fear is not instinctive; the most wild creatures, if found early, i. " There is abundant evidence that a child of normal capacity may be trained to a degree of stupidity resembling innate feeble-mindedness, or to a degree of wrong-headedness resembling insanity, or, on the other hand, to a degree of intelligence which, relatively speaking, resembles genius." The Laws of Heredity, by Archdall Reid, p. 477. 82 before they have been taught, have no fear, but only bright curiosity for one who approaches them gently. A few weeks later, while prowling through the woods, you hear a sudden blast, and see the same fawn bounding away as if for his life. You have not changed; your gentleness is the same, your heart is kind to every creature. What then has come over the son of Kish? Simply this; that one day, while the fawn was following his mother, a scent that was not of the woods stole in through the underbrush. At the first sniff the doe threw up her head, thrust her nose into the wind, snorted, and bounded away with a sharp call for the fawn to follow. Such a lesson rarely needs to be repeated. From that moment a certain scent means danger to the fawn, and when the friendly wind brings it to his nostrils again he will bound away, as he was taught to do. And of all deer that flee at our approach in the wilderness, not one in ten has ever seen a man or suffered any harm ; they are simply obeying one of their early lessons The summer wilderness is just one vast schoolhouse, of many rooms, in which a multitude of wise, patient mothers are teaching their little ones, and of which our kindergartens are crude and second-rate imitations. Here are practical schools, technical schools. No superficial polish of French or literature will do here. Obedience is life; that is the first great lesson. Pity we men have not learned it better ! Every wild mother knows it, lives by it, hammers it into her little ones. And then come other secondary lessons, — when to hide and when to run ; how to swoop and how to strike ; how to sift and remember the many sights and sounds and smells of the world, and to suit action always and instantaneous to knowledge, — all of which, I repeat, are not so much matters of instinct as of careful training and imitation. Life itself is the issue at stake in this forest education 83 therefore is the discipline stern as death. One who watches long over any of the wood-folk broods must catch his breath in times at the savage earnestness underlying even the simplest lesson." And if in the cosmic struggle for existence among the higher animals instinct proves so ineffective a guide for life and has to be overcome and brought under control by conscious and laborious teaching, how much more true is this of man himself — man, regarded not as an individual subsisting by himself, but as a unit in a large and complex social organisa- tion. To the writer it has long seemed that in Huxley's Romanes Lecture, delivered only two years before his death, there is a strange blending of triumph and pathos. Of triumph in his strenuous assertion of the supremacy of moral law as against any conclu- sions to be derived from Darwin's theory; of pathos in his confession that in the view of evolution which he had so long championed he finds : " No school of virtue but the headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature." x " That the cosmos works through the lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it." 2 " Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the i. Evolution and Ethics, T. H. Huxley, Romanes Lecture, 1893, p. 27. 2. Ibid., p. 28. 8 4 conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best." "As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best — what we call goodness or virtue — involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self- assertion it demands self-restraint ; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows ; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it ; and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a brutal savage." 1 " Let us understand once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it. It may seem an audacious proposal thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm and to set man to subdue nature to his higher ends ; but, I venture to think that the great intellectual difference between the ancient times with which we have been occupied and our day, lies in the solid foundation we have acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a certain measure of success." 2 i. Evolution and Ethics, T. H. Huxley, Romanes Lecture, 1893, p. 33. 2. Ibid., p. 34. 8 5 "I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided by sound principles of investigation, and organized in common effort, may modify the condi- tions of existence, for a period longer than that now covered by history. And much may be done to change the nature of man himself. The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men." l " We are grown men, and must play the man strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield, cherishing the good that falls in our way and bearing the evil, in and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it. So far, we all may strive in one faith towards one hope : It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be ^Hat we shall touch the happy Isles, but something ere the end, Some work of noble note may yet be done." 2 i. Evolution and Ethics, T. H. Huxley, Romanes Lecture, 1893, p. 36. 2. Ibid., p. 37. 86 GENIUS. Genius is perhaps the whole or parts of the combination contained in the definition raised to the power of G. But is to be found only where the potentialities are innate. Just as the co-ordinated activities involved in instinctive acts may be explained by the hypothesis of inherited dispositions of functionally correlated nerve cells in the sub-cortical layers of the cerebro- spinal nervous system, so the innate precocities of genius may be explained by the hypothesis of inherited dispositions of more or less functionally cor- related nerve cells in the cortical layers of the brain. 1 Such an hypothesis seems adequate to explain, e.g., the calculating aptitude of G. P. Bidder the engineer, whose father, a stonemason, used to add to his week's wages by taking his son round the country as " the calculating boy." Of Pascal, who " completed before he was sixteen years of age a work on the conic sections, in which he had laid down a series of propositions, discovered by himself, of such importance that they may be said to form the founda- tions of the modern treatment of that subject." 2 i. " Why do I thus distinguish so sharply innate tendency from instinct? Because I regard it as due to congenital dispositions of the cortex. And this brings me back to the physiological side of my doctrine of instinct. My thesis is that, in its strictly biological aspect, instinctive behaviour is as such, wholly due to congenital dispositions in the subcortical centres. " Instinct and Experience, C. Lloyd Morgan, p. 104. 2. George Chrystal, Encycl. Britann. : Art. " Pascal." 87 Of Mozart, who at the age of fourteen conducted the largest orchestra in Europe in La Scala theatre at Milan, during the performance of an opera of his own composition. Frederick Myers (" Human Personality ") con- sidered that the essence of genius is the occurrence of sudden and periodic uprushes of the subliminal to the conscious mind. But it has yet to be shown that the subconscious mind takes the lead and is not supplementary to the conscious mind. If, however, we take the mental processes afforded by the defini- tion; if we also consider the subconscious mind as using the same psychic processes to supplement the working of the conscious mind and apply this view to individuals characterised by the different types of imagery found in the psychological text-books the result is at least interesting. Thus we have individuals who habitually and most easily form — i. Visual images. (a) These may be dominated by and expressed for the most part in colour, and we have Raphael, Tintoretto, Titian, Turner, etc., etc. (b) Or may be dominated by and expressed in form; and we have Pheidias, Michel- angelo, Rodin, etc., etc., and the great handicraftsmen. 88 2. Auditory or audito-motor images'; which find expression in sound; and we have Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., etc. 3. Images of motion and muscular sensation; and we have Genee, Pavlova, etc., etc. 4. Abstract images expressed in words. (a) In the domain of Literature; and we have Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, etc., etc. (b) In the domain of Philosophy; and we have Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, etc., etc. (c) In the domain of Science (theories, laws); and we have Galileo, Newton, Darwin, etc., etc. 5. The genius in affairs. (a) The non-moral genius of action, e.g., Napoleon. (b) The moral genius of action, e.g., Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Gladstone, etc., etc. We may set aside Lombroso's conception of genius as a morbid degenerative condition, and in place of it we may say with Baldwin : ' Given a philosophy that brings the great into touch with the commonplace, that delineates the forces which arise to their highest grandeur only in a man here and there, that enables us to contrast the best in us with the poverty of him, and then we may do intelligent 89 homage. To know that the greatest men of earth are men who think as I do, but deeper, and see as I do, but clearer, who work to the goal that I do, but faster, and serve humanity as I do, but better — that may be an incitement to my humility, but it is also an inspiration to my life." * i. The Story of the Mind, by J. M. Baldwin, pp. 259-260. go THE WORK OF MONTESSORI, CHASSE- VANT AND OTHERS, AS ILLUSTRATING THE FOREGOING. When the generalization set forth in the previous pages had been brought nearly to its final form a friend of the writer 1 made him acquainted with the article in Maclure's Magazine in which appeared the first account in English of the work of Dra. Mon- tessori, and a careful perusal of this article showed that the Dottoressa had not only forestalled most of the present writer's conclusions, probably by many years, but had also accomplished the infinitely greater task of translating them into action of the most fruitful kind. Here in the most brilliant fashion had been carried out laborious experiments in " differentiating " the " percepts " acquired from the different senses — a perceptual differentiation based upon an exact and ever-extending conceptual knowledge of the same order. Here was to be seen how these experiments had resulted in the develop- ment of a technique applied to most of the senses. Here can be seen actually at work the process of " differentiating concepts " by correlating them with new percepts and new concepts, and here too in the most perfect adaptation to the impulses and feelings i. The Rev. Cecil Grant, Headmaster of S. George's, Harpenden. 9i of the youngest and most gentle were effectively systematized methods of developing and training the power of mental inhibition or self-control, of which Sir Thomas Clouston says: 'If we could cultivate this power, it would be an educa- tional discovery the most valuable yet made by humanity." l It is one of the misfortunes of Science that she often contrives to enshrine her discoveries in por- tentous and polysyllabic phraseology, which acts on the ordinary mortal much as trespass notices on lands adjoining a highway are supposed to act on the ordinary passers by. No better example of this can perhaps be found than the phrase ' psycho- neural parallelism," 2 in which she has embodied her expansion of the old nursery dictum that it is unwise to try and run before you can walk. Let us call this theory or doctrine for short P.N. P., and having thus done our best to rob it of one of its terrors let us see in brief what it means. P.N. P. represents one of the fundamental scien- tific generalizations on which all successful education must be based. It represents the parallelism between mind and brain. It " means that every mental fact, and faculty, and every potentiality of acquiring knowledge necessarily imply certain phy- i. The Hygiene of Mind, p. 81. 2. Psycho-neural-parallelism — Professor Ward's term, used by him in preference to psycho-physical-parallelism since the latter connotes a nega- tion of interaction between the psychical and physical elements, v. Art. "Psychology," Enclyc. Britann. ; v. also Mr. W. McDougall's Body and Mind for accounts of different theories of psycho-physical-parallelism as contrasted with psycho-physical-interaction. 92 sical and physiological facts and potentialities in the human brain." (Sir Thomas Clouston.) It brings Mind and Brain into the closest relationship and asserts that the development of the one can only go more or less step by step with the development of the other. It is necessary to emphasize the limitation implied by the words " more or less." That there is a parallelism is clear. But its exact nature and whether it is strictly equivalent are both disputable and disputed. Now it is obvious that a fact such as this must in the long run pro- foundly modify educational methods. It is a merit of " Dottoressa ' Maria Montessori that she has been perhaps the first to apply systematically the new knowledge of the development of the nerve centres to educational technique, by supplying such environment and contriving such exercises for the earliest periods of child life as shall employ most prominently, both in games and studies, just those nerve centres which are first developed and matured. Some of the results of her methods are sufficiently striking to have earned her indiscriminately the titles both of genius and quack. " Child study " we know with its patient, laborious, and often perhaps profit- less investigations, searching after facts and general- izations from facts on all aspects of child life. Montessori too is a child student, but one of another kind — of the kind which aims not so much at the acquisition of more knowledge, but at applying in practice the knowledge already acquired. 93 As it was of the essence of Stephenson's work that he applied steam to locomotion ; of Wheatston's work that he applied electricity to transmitting words; of Marconi's work that he applied the Hertsian Waves in " Wireless " ; so it is of the essence of Montessori's work that she is applying the facts of P.N. P. in education. 1 Take an example. Helmholtz found out years ago that it needs two years steady practice for an adult to acquire the power of keeping the eye fixed immovably on a single point. If this be so with the adult, how much more with the ever-restless eye of the child. P.N. P. tells us 2 that the nerve centres for the sense of touch and the muscular sense reach maturity earlier than those of the sense of sight, and can, therefore, be used earlier without risk of over-work — Montessori applies these facts to educational technique by con- triving for example to teach the alphabet by touch instead of by sight. She cuts cursive letters of sandpaper and pastes them on smooth pieces of card, so that they can be learned when the child is blind- fold; for the letters are large in size so that the curvature of each has to be followed by the finger, and in doing so the child is acquiring many of the complex nervous and muscular co-ordinations neces- i. " I have already learned, from my work with deficient children, that amongst the various forms of sense memory that of the muscular sense is the most precocious, indeed many children who have not arrived at the point of recognising a figure by looking at it, could recognise it by touching it, that is, by computing the movements necessary to the follow- ing of its contour." The Montessori Method, p. 198. 2. Perhaps it doesn't really! But then even the dictionaries have told us wrong before now, and they may again. 94 sary for reproducing the letter in writing. They learn to write without knowing it. " Pot-hooks ' : and " hangers " are gone in the Montessori schools, gone with all their accompanying tears into the limbo of the chequered past, and the children believe, like Topsy, that they can write merely because they have " growed " to the proper age. We in these days are all of us on the look out for labour-saving devices. Here is one in educational technique, which is based on the soundest science. Yet though one of the most striking to the ordinary man or woman, this apparent miracle is in reality merely incidental. It is the outcome of steady work in devising exercises to suit the ascertained sequence of development of the various nerve centres. But Montessori is no mere technician. She is emphatically an educationist. Saturated as our atmosphere is at present with the idea of ' self- expression " as a wholesome factor in education, some of us have failed to realize that some portions of man's nature need not " self-expression ' but self-control, and that it is at least as great a function of education to impart this control over both the instinctive and emotional impulses — " Those very mobile but not very trusty parts of man," — as it is to afford opportunity and means for the expression of the better part of man's nature. And here too, Montessori is applying to the early stages of life the dicta of science, of society, of religion. ' Look- ing," says Sir Thomas Clouston, " over the list of 95 brain faculties that are of most essential importance to life, no physiological psychologist can have any hesitation in selecting, not the power of reasoning, nor that of feeling, nor even that of memory, but the power of inhibition, that is, of control." Darwin found that the child first exhibits mental inhibition at about the age of 13 months. This power of inhibition or self-control may at an early age be so developed " that control, altruism, and high motive take the place of hurtful egoistic desire, purely selfish action, and anti-social practice." The early cultiva- tion of this power is a dominant note of the Mon- tessori scale; and in the games and exercises for mental inhibition she has introduced to teachers just that necessary correlative to what goes by the name of " self-expression," which is essential for the full growth and fruition of the spiritual part of man's nature. In substance this training is no new thing. It has been practised for ages on individuals through countless families in our country. It was practised on children in masses in the heroic days of Greece. It is new only in the methods employed, but it has come to some of us with all the force of a long forgotten tale, and let us hope that it has come to stay. Games for Cultivating Inhibitory Power. As a preliminary towards tests for acuteness of hearing it became necessary to teach the children the real meaning of silence. 1 1. The Montessori Method, pp. 209 and seq. 96 " Toward this end I have several games of silence, which help in a surprising way to strengthen the remarkable discipline of our children. I call the children's attention to myself, telling them to see how silent I can be. I assume different posi- tions; standing, sitting, and maintain each pose silently, without movement. A finger moving can • produce a noise, even though it be imperceptible. We may breathe so that we may be heard. But I maintain absolute silence, which is not an easy thing to do. I call a child, and ask him to do as I am doing. He adjusts his feet to a better position and this makes a noise ! He moves an arm, stretching it out upon the arm of his chair; it is a noise. His breathing is not altogether silent, it is not tranquil, absolutely unheard as mine is. During these manoeuvres on the part of the child, and while my brief comments are followed by intervals of immobility and silence, the other children are watching and listening. Many of them are interested in the fact, which they have never noticed before; namely, that we make so many noises of which we are not conscious, and that there are degrees of silence. There is an absolute silence where nothing, absolutely nothing, moves. They watch me in amazement when I stand in the middle of the room, so quietly that it is really as if " I were not." Then they strive to imitate me, and to do even better. I call attention here and there to a foot that moves, almost inadvertently. The attention of the child is called to every part of his body in an anxious eagerness to attain immobility. When the children are trying in this way, there is established a silence very different from that which we carelessly call by that name. It seems as if life gradually vanishes, and that the room becomes, little by little, empty, as if there were no longer anyone in it. Then we begin to hear the 97 tick-tock of the clock, and this sound seems to grow in intensity as the silence becomes absolute. From without, from the court which before seemed silent, there come varied noises, a bird chirps, a child passes. The children sit fascinated by that silence as if by some conquest of their own. Having arrived at that point, we darken the win- dows and tell the children to close their eyes resting their heads upon their hands. They assume this position, and in the darkness the absolute silence returns They are called out one by one and each one as he is called, lifts his head, opens his eyes as if altogether happy, then rises, silently seeking not to move the chair, and walks on the tips of his toes, so quietlv that he is scarcely heard. Nevertheless his step resounds in silence, and amid the immobility which persists The one who is called feels that he is privileged, that he has received a gift, a prize. And yet they know that all will be called, " beginning with the most silent one in all the room." So each one tries to merit bv his perfect silence the certain call. I once saw a little one of three years try to suffocate a sneeze, and succeed ! She held her breath in her little breast, and resisted, coming out victorious. A most surprising effort ! This game delights the little ones beyond measure. Their intent faces, their patient immobility, reveal the enjoyment of a great pleasure I saw, with surprise, that the game became constantly more perfect, until even children of three years of age remained immovable in the silence throughout the time required to call the entire forty children out of the room ! " G 9 s ■ Exercises in Numbers. 1 "When the children recognise the written figure, and when this figure signifies to them the numerical value, I give them the following exercise : — I cut the figures from old calendars and mount them upon slips of paper which are then folded and dropped into a box. The children draw out the slips, carry them still folded to their seats, where they look at them and refold them, conserving the secret. Then, one by one, or in groups, these children go to the large table of the directress where groups of various small objects have been placed. Each one selects the quan- tity of objects corresponding to the number he has drawn. The number, meanwhile, has been left at the child's place, a slip of paper mysteriously folded. The child, therefore, must remember his number not onl; during the movements which he makes in coming and going, but while he collects his pieces counting them one by one Having arranged his objects, the child awaits the verification. The directress comes, opens the slip, the number and counts the pieces. When we first played this game it often happened that the children took more objects than were called for upon the card, and this was not always because they did not remember the number, but arose from a mania for having the greatest number of objects. A little of that instinctive greediness which is common to primitive and uncultured man. The directress seeks to explain to the children that it is useless to have all those things upon the desk, and that the point of the game lies in taking the exact number of objects called for. Little bv little they enter into this idea, but not so easily as one might suppose. It is a real effort of self-denial which holds the child within the set limit, i. The Montessori Method, pp. 330 and seq. 99 and makes him take, for example, only two of the objects placed at his disposal, while he sees others taking more. / therefore consider this game more an exercise of will power than of numeration. The child who has the zero should not move from his place when he sees all his companions rising and taking freely of the objects which are inaccessible to him. Many times zero falls to the lot of a child who knows how to count perfectly, and who would experience great pleasure in accumulating and arranging a fine group of objects in the proper order upon his table, and in awaiting with security the teacher's verification. It is most interesting to study the expressions upon the faces of those who possess zero. The individual differences which result are almost a revelation of the "character" of each one. Some remain impassive, assuming a bold front in order to hide the pain of the disappointment; others show this disappointment by involuntarv gestures. Still others cannot hide the smile which is called forth by the singular situation in which thev find themselves, and which will make their friends curious. There are little ones who follow every movement of their companions with a look of desire, almost of envy, while others show instant acceptance of the situation. No less interesting are the expres- sions with which they confess to the holding of the zero, when asked during the verification, " and you, you haven't taken anything? " " I have zero." " It is zero." These are the usual words, but the expres- sive face, the tone of the voice, show widely varying sentiments. Rare, indeed, are those who seem to give with pleasure the explanation of an extraordinary fact. The greater number either look unhappy or merely resigned. We therefore give lessons upon the meaning of the game, saying, " It is hard to keep the zero secret. Fold the paper tightly and don't let it slip away. It IOO is the most difficult of all." Indeed, after a while, the very difficulty of remaining- quiet appeals to the children, and when they open the slip marked zero it can be seen that they are content to keep the secret." In his report on the Montessori Schools, published by the Board of Education (Educational Pamphlets No. 24), Mr. E. G. A. Holmes writes : " The truth is that the discipline of a Montessori school is of so high an order that its apparent defects are found, when carefully studied, to be transcendent merits. It is the discipline of self-control — a type of discipline which cannot be evolved except in an atmosphere of freedom, and which is of lasting value for the reason that the children instinctively impose it on themselves." And in the form of an explanatory footnote he appends to the same page the following : " It sometimes happens that a newly-admitted child disturbs the other children, and pays no heed to what the teacher says. But such cases easily yield to Dottoressa Montessori 's judicious treatment. She tells us in her book how she treats them." " We have many times come in contact with children who dis- turbed the others without paying any attention to our corrections. Such children were at once examined by the physician. When the case proved to be that of a normal child, we placed one of the little tables in a corner of the room, and in this way isolated the child; having him sit in a comfortable little armchair, so placed that he might see his companions at work, and giving him those games and toys to which he was most attracted. This isolation almost always sue- IOI ceeded in calming the child ; from his position he could see the entire assembly of his companions, and the way in which they carried on their work was an object lesson much more efficacious than any words of the teacher could possibly have been. Little by little, he would come to see the advantages of being one of the company working so busily before his eyes, and he would really wish to go back and do as the others did. We have in this way led back again to discipline all the children who at first seemed to rebel against it. The isolated child was always made the object of special care, almost as if he were ill. I myself, when I entered the room, went first of all directly to him, caressing him, as if he were a very little child. Then I turned my attention to the others, interesting myself in their work, asking questions about it as if they had been little men. I do not know what happened in the soul of these children whom we found it necessary to discipline, but certainly the conversion was always verv complete and lasting. They showed great pride in learning how to work and how to conduct them- selves, and always showed a very tender affection for the teacher and for me." (Op. cit., pp. 103 and 104.) In the instance quoted above from the text of Mr. Holmes' report, the word " instinctively ' (" the children instinctively impose it on themselves ") is used in a sense which would not be permissible to the present writer. For him the " instinct " would be the impulse prompting and causing the child to be unruly and disobedient, and to him the rationale of the procedure detailed by the Dottoressa is that the gradual pressure of the social environment induces and helps the child to inhibit the instinct for its own advantage and that of the other children. The 102 procedure is exactly parallel to that adopted by Froebel as explained in Superintendent Zech's report on Froebel's Institution (v. translator's pre- face, in Froebel's " Education of Man," edited by W. T. Harris), and — to express what is happening in physiological terms and according to the views of Professor Lloyd Morgan — the nerve cells of the cerebral cortex are engaged in controlling the instinctive behaviour due to nerve cells in lower parts of the cerebro-spinal nervous system. It is no part of the writer's wish to take part in the detailed discussion which is now going on over the Montessori methods. This discussion is in the hands of others who are far more qualified for the task. He is content to emphasize one feature which seems to him to have received less notice than it merits, and yet which he takes to be a very essential element in her technique. Criticism has, no doubt rightly, found its mark in the insufficient range of subject-matter 1 in this technique, but within its range it seems to embrace in approximate philosophic union : i. The facts of psycho-neural parallelism (James Ward). 2. The studied differentiation of percepts as a means of forming, differentiating and corre- lating concepts. i. V. From Locke to Montessori, by Wm. Boyd, Chapter 12, on " The Omission of the Humanistic Subjects," and compare with "The Dramatic Method of Teaching," by H. Finlay-Johnson. 103 3. The heuristic method. (Auto-education.) 4. The studied development of mental inhibition or self-control. 5. The studied employment of the play and imitative instincts as means towards educa- tional ends. io4 CHASSEVANT. It has been noted as one of the deficiencies of Montessori's methods that she has found little place in her system for music as means of education, and that the sense of hearing is not cultivated with nearly the same thoroughness as is e.g., the sense of touch. But long before Dottoressa Montessori was at work applying to mental defectives methods suggested by prolonged study of the work of Seguin, Itard and her own experience, Mile. Chassevant at the Geneva conservatoire and Mrs. Curwen in this country were engaged in working out methods of teaching music which are based on precisely the same principle ; the principle namely of a cultivated power of differential perception of sense-data, based upon an exact and gradually ex- tending conceptual knowledge in the same sphere of cognition. And in Mile. Chassevant's method of applying this principle in the teaching of music she makes use of the added power of appeal to children which comes from the elements of romance and story with which her teaching is interwoven. "It is a fundamental principle of the method that ear training should be begun before any instrumental music is attempted." l "In the earliest stage, the study of time, which is taken up apart from pitch, is invested with a picturesque I. Guide to the Chassevant Method, by Marion R. Gibb, p. 4. 105 aspect which fascinates the child mind. The notes, or time values, are supposed to be birds, which fly from pavilions to trees and vice versa, each bird leaving a special mark to reserve its place. This, of course, being the appropriate rest. Each bird has its own rate of speed in flying, indicated by taps on the table, and the children soon gain an exact idea of the relative value of the notes and their corresponding rests." l Her first writing on the subject was published in 1872, and in the succeeding years the essentials of the method have been largely adopted by musical teachers as may be seen in "Aural Culture based on Musical Appreciation," by S. Macpherson and E. Read. Of the details of her fully developed technique with its successful teaching of absolute pitch, of relative pitch (as in the musical ' intervals "), of time and rhythm, melody and harmony, a full account may be seen in "A Guide to the Chassevant method of musical Education," by Miss Gibb, and some idea obtained of the results achieved by its aid in an article in the " World's Work ' for January 1914, entitled "A Musical Montessori," by Josephine Tozier. " The chief objects are to enable the children to distinguish accurately pitch, rhythm, expression and beauty of tone; to give them facility in reading at sight; to cultivate their memory, and to train their fingers by a series of simple gymnastic exercises. The musical faculties are developed separately, and their combination left until a certain facility is acquired in each ; and the results so obtained, in children between 1. Guide to the Chassevant Method, by Marion R. Gibb, p. 5. io6 five and ten, appear to the educated musician little short of miraculous." * "The habit thus acquired will be of inestimable value not only in their school life, but through all their future years. Mothers tell extraordinary tales of the benefits in this particular received by children whom Miss Gibb has trained. Not only do they listen attentively to the sounds (never before noticed) of the wind in the chimney, the music of rippling water, the songs of birds, and the tones of bells, but their ears are also sharpened to the fine gradations in the speech of their mother-tongue." 2 i. "A Musical Montessori," by Josephine Tozier, The World's Work, January 1914, p. 161. 2. Ibid., p. 165. IO/ MEMORY DRAWING. Memory drawing has proved itself a valuable method in educational technique, and this value is perhaps due to the fact that it is pre-eminently an exercise in acquiring and differentiating both per- cepts and concepts. A child is shown for a short period of time a certain object which he is required to draw. The object is then withdrawn and the child has to draw it without the object being in view. In practice it is found desirable to distribute the periods of examining and drawing in some such fashion as the following : One minute to look and four to draw. A second minute to look and four to draw. A third minute to look and four to draw. In all three minutes of the fifteen are devoted to looking fixedly at the object and twelve in drawing. In the three intervals of one minute each the child is engaged in differential perception of two different kinds, first in differentiating its percept of the par- ticular object which it has to draw from all the other objects depicted among the retinal sense-data, and secondly in differentiating the percepts of different parts of the object from one another. And this concentration of the perceptual powers on this particular part of the sense-continuum is forming io8 gradually a differentiated concept of the object which is in turn being transferred to paper in the three periods of four minutes each which are allowed in the entire fifteen for this purpose. "Actual experiment has shown that the most aston- ishing results can be obtained by the mere effort of the will to memorise, quite apart from all tricks and memory systems .... It has often been noticed that things may be read or repeated an indefinite number of times without being committed to memory, if only the attention is directed at each repetition to some other end than that of learning. One experimenter on memory, for instance, had occasion, in the course of his work, to make those persons, on whom he was experimenting, learn series of words and meaningless syllables by reading these aloud from his note-book, till they could repeat them by heart. Even after accomplishing this with a number of persons, he found that he himself was unable to repeat any of the series by heart, although he had read them aloud so often. His attention had, of course, been directed towards careful, even, and correct reading, and not towards memorising." l i. Economy and Training of Memory, by H. J. Watt, pp. 75, 76. io9 MANUAL TRAINING. 1 Among the special merits of manual training are that : i. It develops the faculties of differentiating, correlating, integrating percepts and concepts. 2. It helps to develop the will to act as distin- guished from the will to know and the will to talk, by satisfying the creative instinct and producing the creative joy. 3. Its concreteness involving as it does co- ordinated precision of thought and action makes it disciplinary all through, in as much as a lapse in the involved thought or action makes itself at once apparent and gives opportunity for immediate correction. Blurred concepts may be made to at once disclose themselves. 1. See Woodward, Manual Training. J. G. Legge, " Practical Educa- tion in Elementary Schools," Imperial Education Conference, 191 1, etc. I IO CONCLUSION. The real philosophy of education has yet to be constructed. The materials for it do not at present seem to exist. Nor is it likely that much progress will be made with such a work until psychology shall have resolved the " states ' and " complexes ' of consciousness, with which it professes to deal, into more elementary data of experience — until it shall have differentiated our concept of consciousness l more exactly into its various elements, as Cavendish differentiated our concept of water into the two con- cepts of hydrogen and oxygen, and as physicists are engaged to-day in differentiating our concept of the atom. But when the time comes at which mankind shall have attained to some coherent method of testing the value of the various new methods of educational technique which are from time to time introduced, the writer hazards the guess that if such methods aspire to deal with the whole of man's complex nature, they will at any rate for young children, and after due provision for physique, 2 be i. This is true even if the theory here put forward should prove adequate to explain how our cognitive dispositions become organised, forthe emotional (including aesthetic) content of consciousness would still remain to be resolved. Since the above was written Prof. E. Holt's book entitled The Concept of Consciousness has been published, and Mr. Shand's treatise on the emotions, The Foundations of Character. 2. The writer is of course fully conscious that physique comes first in importance and that the relations between body and mind are insepar- able and interdependent. But an ommision to treat this point which would be inexcusable in a systematic treatise may, he hopes, be condoned in an essay which only attempts to touch in outline a few of the elements of an immense subject. 1 1 1 largely based on the differentiation of percepts and concepts, and the cultivation of the power of mental inhibition and its application in the control of the natural instincts. " It is the fate and the glory of human life to be a restless search for rest." 1 It is one of the paradoxes of infant education that we must use some of the child's natural or animal instincts in order to start the process which aims at ultimately endowing him with the power to control them all, and it is only when this aim is achieved that spiritual man can be free from the trammels of, and find a true delisrht in the glories of his animal encasement. i. J. W. Scott, "The Pessimism of Bergson," Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1912. I 12 L'ENVOI. 1 When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an aeon or two Till the Master of all good workmen shall put us to work anew ! And those that were good shall be happy : they shall sit in a golden chair. They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair; They shall find real saints to draw from — Magda- lene, Peter, and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all ! And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame ; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees it for the God of Things as They Are ! The writer has tried in these pages to " draw the thing as he sees it." May those who see deeper and clearer draw it better. i. The Seven Seas, by Rudvard Kipling. H3 NOTE I. "The soul of man is a strange mixture of God and brute, a battle-ground of two natures, the one particular, finite, self-centred, the other universal, infinite, and impartial. The finite life, which man shares with the brutes, is tied to the body, and views the world from the standpoint of the here and now. All those loves and hatreds which are based upon some service to the self belong to the finite life. The love of man and woman, and the love of parents and children, when they do not go beyond the promptings of instinct, are still part of the animal nature : they do not pass into the infinite life until they overcome instinct and cease to be subservient only to the purposes of the finite self. The hatred of enemies and the love of allies in battle are part of what man shares with other gregarious animals : they view the universe as grouped about one point, the single strug- gling self. Thus the finite part of our life contains all that makes the individual man essentially separate from other men and from the rest of the universe, all those thoughts and desires that cannot, in their nature, be shared by the inhabitant of a different body, all the distortions that make error, and all the insistent claims that lead to strife. The infinite part of our life does not see the world from one point of view : it shines impartially, like the diffused light on a cloudy sea. Distant ages and remote regions of space are as real to it as what is present and near. In thought, it rises above the life of the senses, seeking always what is general and open to all men. In desire and will, it aims simply at the good, without regarding the good as mine or yours. In feeling, it gives love to all, not only to those who further the purposes of self. Unlike the finite life, it is impartial : H H4 its impartiality leads to truth in thought, justice in action and universal love in feeling. Unlike the nature which man shares with the brutes, it has a life without barriers, embracing in its survey the whole universe of existence and essence; nothing in it is essentially private, but its thoughts and desires are such as all may share, since none depend upon the exclusiveness of here and now and me The finite self, impelled by the desire for self-preserva- tion, builds prison-walls round the infinite part of our nature, and endeavours to restrain it from that free life in the whole which constitutes its being. The finite self aims at dominion : it sees the world in concentric circles round the here and now, and itself as the God of that wished-for heaven. The universal soul mocks at this vision, but the finite self hopes always to make it true, and thus to quiet its troublesome critic. In many men, the finite self remains always the gaoler of the universal soul ; in others, there is a rare and momentary escape ; in a few, the prison-walls are demolished wholly, and the universal soul remains free through life." * NOTE II. " The Little Commonwealth." 2 " In a pleasant valley near the village of Batcombe, in Dorsetshire, on a 200-acre farm which lies happily remote from the riot and rush of modern urban life, a newly- formed fellowship of human beings is engaged in carry- ing out an experiment in self-government which shows a quite remarkable understanding of psychology and the science of education. At present the community, which calls itself " The Little Commonwealth," is little in fact as well as in name. The bulk of its citizens, a baker's 1. "The Essence of Religion," by the Hon. Bertrand Russell, The Ilibhert Journal, Oct. 1912. 2. The Times, 6 January, 1014. n5 dozen in number, are boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 17. They come from various parts of the country, including the slums of London, and belong to the class officially labelled (and branded) as juvenile delinquents. Some of them have known the insides of prisons and reformatories; all of them have made the acquaintance of Mr. Bumble and the police, and, to speak generally, they have the kind of fingers that would have ensured them ready admission to the school of Fagin the Jew. Left to their own devices, in their familiar home surroundings of discomfort, squalor, and drink, they would have had an excellent chance of acquiring the prison habit and of developing by the regulation stages first into "hardened young ruffians" and then into accomplished and unabashed criminals. Now, with the help of Mr. Lane, the American architect and teacher, whose marked personality, despite his principles of equality and self-effacement, make him the chief citizen and head of the community, they are being reformed and made ready to take their places some day as happy and useful citizens of the larger world outside. Or rather, they are reforming themselves. For that is the whole secret. They are not visibly controlled by their elders and betters. They are their own law-makers, their own judges, their own police, and the chief influence in their lives is the force of public opinion which they them- selves create. The Principle of Liberty. The central idea of the Little Commonwealth is not new. In America, the land of its birth, it has long been practised in the Junior Republic founded by Mr. George, and other places run on similar lines. Its English variant — for the Little Commonwealth is distinctly English and even Anglo-Saxon, in spite of Mr. Lane's nationality — differs, however, from the prototype in one important respect. It goes much farther in carrying out n6 the fundamental principle of liberty. There is, for instance, no prison in the Commonwealth, and, except on the upper floor of the cottages in which the children sleep, no sort of line is drawn between the sexes. Their freedom is as nearly as possible absolute. That, with the doubts which it inevitably suggests to some minds of the danger of liberty degenerating into licence, is the first consideration which occurs to the visitor from the outside. The next is that the community is an illustra- tion in being of the evolution of society. Step by step the Commonwealth is finding and making itself as it goes along. It started, like the human race, with no laws (except the law of freedom), and consequently with no one to see that the law was kept and the law-breaker punished. Like the race, it had its equivalent of original sin — for those who believe in the doctrine — in the shape of the shady past of most of its citizens; and, again like the race, it had the primitive need for food, clothing and shelter, and in order to satisfy those needs was obliged, in spite of its freedom or free-will, to work. For though these needs were provided for by others in the first instance, the continuance of the supply depends, as in the larger world, either on the labour of the individual or the charity of his fellows. Life and the Community. We start then — " we " being Mr. Lane, his wife and family, two or three adult helpers, and our little flock of black sheep — with food to eat, clothes to wear, and rooms to live in, in an old two-storeyed farmhouse ; at the back of this there is an open quadrangle enclosed by the sheds and other farm buildings, which in due time will form our workshops and laundry, and theatre and class-rooms. We are free to do anything which does not offend the convenience or the conscience of the community. We may even, if we like, run away. One or two of us have already availed ourselves of this privilege, though so ii7 far we have always come back again. We are free to work or to loaf as we choose. Our work is paid for, in a currency of our own, equal in value to the coin of the realm, at the rate of threepence an hour. The diligent citizen earns something over ios. a week; this pays for his board, food lodging, and clothing, and leaves him a little sum over, which he either spends on luxuries or banks against his return to the outer world. At present the work consists chiefly of cooking, housework, digging, building, carpentering, carting, and other primitive employments. If the free citizen slacks or refuses to work at all he gets no wages, and so cannot pay his way. But, as he is still supplied with the necessaries of life, somebody has to pay, and somebody in this case is everybody. He is supported, like the unemployed without, by the rates and taxes. But not for long. The rest of the community, who are mulcted of their spare earnings to pay his weekly bill, soon let him know that he is not behaving as a citizen should, and in the short history of the Commonwealth the pressure of public opinion has never yet failed to produce the desired effect. Once a week the whole community meet together to hold a legislative court, at which anyone may propose a new law and equally anyone may vote against it. But only those enactments which are carried unanimously have the force of law, and it is not necessary to write them down. Every one has had a hand in framing them, as the need for each addition to the Code was realized, and therefore everyone knows what they are. They become part of the general consciousness of the community. But it is one thing to make laws and another to keep them and get them kept. How then are they enforced ? In this way. Twice a week the citizens meet in a judicial court, presided over by a Judge, a boy or a girl, elected by the whole body of his fellows. At these courts written complaints, tendered by any citizen against any n8 other, are handed to the judge, who reads them out, calls upon accuser and accused for an explanation, and acquits or passes sentence entirely on his own initiation and with surprising rapidity and justice. The accused may appeal to the whole court against the sentence, which is con- firmed or annulled by the majority on a show of hands. The punishments are chiefly small fines, early bed-time or early rising, and confinement to the open-air quad- rangle, except during working hours, for a limited number of days. They are enforced simply and solely by public opinion. In this brief sketch of the Commonwealth it is only possible to give a bare outline of the principal details of the scheme, without any illustrative comment. But this much may be said with confidence. The results are amazing. Under the perfect law of liberty and happi- ness these young transgressors of the law of the land are becoming different creatures. Boys and girls (with- out any boy and girl nonsense between them), they are learning the lesson of true citizenship, and developing a progressive conscience, both as individuals and as a community. They do the work of men and of women, and they do it with a will and a growing regard for each other's feelings and convenience, though of course it would be absurd to say that there are no lapses. The girls also find an outlet for their mothering instincts in helping to care for a separate little family of fatherless and motherless babies who are being brought up on the Montessori system in one of the farm cottages. What- ever difficulties and failures the future may have in store, the Commonwealth as it stands to-day is a wonderful success." ii9 " Sense-data " or " sense-continuum," v. p. 23. If it be one of the functions of what we call our " Minds " to bring us in touch with what we call " Matter " the point of contact must embrace on the one side physical and on the other side meta-physical elements. The physical or sense elements are in these pages referred to as " sense-data " or the " sense- continuum " ; the meta-physical elements as " percepts ' and " concepts." The writer seems to recall from student days a legend, said to have originated with a physiologist, which whether true or not may serve usefully as an illustration. It was to the effect that if a butcher led a cow into a dark room with one small window, made the cow gaze fixedlv at the window, and then executed the functions of his deadly office, the cow's eye if imme- diately cut out and opened would disclose on the retina an image of the window at which it had been looking at the moment of its unhappy decease. This image, entirely physical, would constitute the sense-data which it would be the business of the cow's mind to perceive. Similarly the vibrations of the fibres of Corti in the internal ear, also entirely physical, would constitute the sense-data in the sense of hearing. " Games of intellectual jugglery," v. p. 62. The paradoxes of Zeno are excellent examples of these games. They have interested and even at times per- plexed philosophers for 2,500 years, but from the stand- point of this essay they are merely illustrations of the inadequacy of words for expressing thought and their entire adequacy for confusing it. 11 Instinct," v. p. 70. If the writer be challenged for his own definition of instinct he fears that in order to be in keeping with the general tenour of the essay it would have to run some- what as follows : — Instinct — A word frequently mas- querading as an idea and ingeniously contrived by the middle ages to induce us moderns to make ourselves look foolish bv attaching it indiscriminately to a number of quite different groups of concepts. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. I II I III! II III III II !l!i I III lllll II III' AA 000 640 700 1