THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Or that the past will always win A glory from its being far. From art, from nature, from the schools Let random influences glance. THE SEVEN FACTORS OF EDUCATION BY HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN LL. D. TRINITY, LL. D. PRINCETON, D. Sc. CAMBRIDGE ; DA COSTA PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Reprinted from EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, New York, June, 1906. THE MEtSHON COMPANY PRESS RAHWAY, M. J. Ed. /Psych. Library L.& VI " Produce ! Produce ! " exclaims Teufelsdrockh in Sartor resartus, " Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it, in God's name ! Tis the utmost thou hast in thee : out with it, then." THE CONDITIONS Many years ago I was profoundly impressed in reading for the first time Ruskin's Seven lamps of architecture, as setting forth the universal illuminants of architecture, the architecture of all time and of every people. Am I too venturesome to enter an arena so warmly contested as that of modern teaching and endeavor to determine whether there are also universal illuminants which lighten the way to the perfect training of the mind? Is there in education, as in architecture, an absolute code derived from the intellectual experience of generations of thinkers, a code for every subject, for all time, and for every people? Or is the general revolt from authority, which is the most conspicuous tendency of our times, to leave education also without the sanction of experience ? I was drawn to these questions : first, by consciousness of somewhat cloudy thought in the matter, consoled only by signs of similar cloudiness in others; second, by rising indignation against the apparent infection of education in this country with certain material and experimental tendencies, as if from the contamination of a triumphantly successful commercial age. My inquiry has not resulted in the discovery of new laws. Separately, the illuminants of education are as near and familiar parts of our intellectual inheritance as collectively they 1353337 2 Educational Review [June are far from lighting the long and often obscure paths of the average teacher. Few perceive with the clear vision of post- humous critics and biographers that the over-cultivation of one or more of the factors distinguishes the ill-balanced from the well-balanced mind, the inefficient from the efficient student. From the broad standpoint of symmetry, many very learned men, as well as many great observers, are alike imperfectly educated, and for this their guides and masters, in part at least, may be held responsible. One work I have studied, by a man of high authority, omits all reference to what I regard as the supreme factor of education. My inquisitive route is one of observation, rather than of theory ; it follows the lives of men, rather than the ways of the books. Consider Huxley, altho not the most creative thinker, as the best pattern of the educated Englishman of the last century, and, carefully observing the gradual attainment of his perfect discipline, we find it arose less thru his teachers than thru his own discernment of the collective and cumulative value of several educational factors and his deliberate purpose to experi- ence them all, so far as lay in his power. Pasteur, guided by a similar instinct, actually resisted the advice of some of his professors. Similarly, we observe the superb education of Darwin and of Spencer as chiefly a self-schooling growing out of the consciousness of certain intellectual wants, such mental appetite, and the determination to satisfy it, being one of the symptoms of greatness. From such biographies, from the actual methods of the great teachers, it appears that there are universal illuminants, that there is an absolute code by which to develop the infinitesimal, as well as the almost infinite, powers of the human mind. The material and experimental spirit in America In contemporary American life there are two currents which are setting away from, rather than toward a clearer perception of the " universal " in education these are our materialism and our experimentalism. Much of the material spirit undeni- ably pervades our college halls and mars the otherwise splendid 1906] The seven factors of education 3 progress of educational idealism in this country; computers are heralding great gifts and statistical increases in which numbers are swelled by summer schools, by dental, veterinary, and mis- cellaneous departments, as if to maintain prestige on a dis- tinctively quantitative, rather than on a qualitative, basis. Experimentalism is partly an intruder from our material atmosphere, partly an offspring of the general revolt from authority. It is a truism of trade that our manufacturers owe a large measure of their supremacy to their readiness to abandon old machinerv and substitute new. It is as much an American J instinct to welcome change as it is an English instinct to shrink from it. Was not the manufacturers' spirit more or less per- vasive in the Boston meeting of the National Educational Association of 1903, x when the prolonged debate was sum- marized, with some irony and much truth, in the statement that from electives and courses we are to pass to experiments with curriculums as a whole, and with the period of studies on a grand scale; in other words, that the colleges shall compete in the cultivation of brains after different fashions, just as rival furnaces are competing and experimenting in the pro- duction of steel; that we are to witness the survival of the fittest institution, which shall turn out the largest quantity of the best product in the shortest possible time, and thus most thoroly exemplify the spirit of American trade. Confused by the tremendous inrush of new knowledge, we have already been experimenting for some years past. Perhaps our impulse for facile modification and adaptation is nowhere more conspicuous than in the rapid movements of these decades, prompted by the fallacy of regarding change as identical with progress, and ignoring the fundamental evolu- tionary law that change is as often retrogressive as progressive. It is quite possible, not to say probable, that many of the sweep- ing alterations which have taken place, and are now contem- 1 " The length of the college course and its relation to the professional schools." Papers read before the Department of Higher Education of the National Educa- tional Association at Boston, Mass., July 7, 1903, EuucATiOiNAL REVIEW, New York, September, 1903 4 Educational Review I June plated, are distinct retrogressions, and will remove us farther and farther from solid intellectual advance; that they conform to the commercial spirit, rather than transform it; that some of our ablest educators have been unwittingly contributing to a backward movement by failing to grasp clearly in their own minds, or to set clearly before the nation, the slow and difficult steps which are necessary to teach men how to think and how to produce. Consider the case of the college. It is generally, but not altogether, fairly alleged that it is a patient, that it is a sick organism, even that it has reached a condition which may be regarded as useless. Remedies are being administered, not from any very clear system of educational therapeutics, but on the rule that when one tonic fails another shall be given trial. A cupping process or drawing blood is suggested ; one presi- dential doctor prescribes four years of life, another allows three years, another two; another proposes to cut short life alto- gether, predicting the extinction of the college and the direct passage from the high school to the university. Extinction is the reductio ad absiirdum. Such an end to experimentalism would be a national calamity, because schools can never equal colleges, either in resources or in fitting for citizenship; because the longer period of the education of the larger number would fall into the hands of women teachers, who are constantly multiplying in the public schools; because the democratic social spirit, so vital to the college, is fatal to the university, the future triumph of which depends chiefly upon the enforcement of the idea that here belong exclusively the young intellectual aristocracy of the country. Even abbreviation may be another instance of failure to dis- tinguish between progressive and retrogressive evolution. If a year be cut from the college to adjust the year which has been added to the school by belated entrance or advancing standards of admission, the net result is to substitute a year or two of school life for a year of college life. Is this a progressive change? Is not a college year rich in historical associations, teaching capacity, libraries, laboratories, museums, and all the other products of generous endowment of more value than a 1906] The seven factors of education 5 school year? Similarly, if learning or the acquisition of gen- eral knowledge remains in fashion even by apology as a specific function of the college, does not the prodigious intellectual advance of the nineteenth century tend to lengthen, rather than shorten, the college course of the twentieth century ? If the col- lege period is to be changed, would not a consistent movement be the opposite of an abbreviation? Would it not be for the more effective school, the earlier admission to college ? I do not pretend to settle 2 this very difficult question, but only to put it in the light of an evolution problem. The friends of the patient advance the traditional plea that the college is to be preserved as the home of " liberal culture " a laudable reason for prolonged life, which, however, con- tains an element of indefiniteness. Here we approach a more rational diagnosis of the disorder, which, in itself, suggests a remedy. Liberal culture, for what end or purpose, one may ask? Is not this lack of purpose, this dysteleology, to borrow an Haeckelism, the internal disorder which has bred the patho- logical condition of the college during the very years when the university and the technical school have flourished like green bay trees? Refreshing definiteness of purpose in training for material production is the invigorating principle of the technical schools which show no signs of internal disorder or degeneration, and as to the utility of which there is no question. No one proposes to cut their periods from four years to three, or to two, or to * My personal opinion may, however, be stated that economy and careful adjust- ment of time should begin in the school years where the vista of life seems so long that the value of time is not appreciated ; that early waste of time should not be compensated for by the abbreviation of the real preliminary culture period of college life. If we are to experiment, therefore, let us try the experiment of thoro- ness of education. If one student is so clever as to acquire in two or three years what another does in four, let him profit by making his work broader and more intense. We shall at least be on the side of the method which has led to the best creative work in all time. If the American college disappears in the struggle for existence between the high school, the technical scientific school, and the uni- versity, it will not be because it deserves to disappear, but because the men at the helm of college education have no clear conception of what they are aiming to accomplish and are trying fortuitous experiments in quantitative matters of sub- jects, hours, days, and months, instead of reforming the quality and standard of the work accomplished. 6 Educational Review [June eliminate these schools altogether; they have their weaknesses, but no one charges them with dysteleology. Similarly, produc- tion in the form of original research is the definite ideal of the American universities. This ideal was first embodied among us in the early years of the Johns Hopkins University, when, with an assemblage of gifted teachers, and with the flower of American students, the average results thruout all the depart- ments were commensurate with the best attained anywhere, and at once spread thruout the world the new and momentous fact that America could establish and maintain a university. Such an ideal is, however, not maintained, chiefly because the Ameri- can university at present rests upon the insecure foundation sands of superficial college work. It was my privilege recently, in one of the most imposing of academic processions, to walk beside a profound student of international law. I could not help feeling the lack of propor- tion between the form and the substance, the flowery display of hoods and gowns, and the productive scholarship actually represented. " How can we live up to these brilliant colors? " I observed to my companion. " How can we be as learned as we appear?" Raising his hand above his head, he jokingly replied, " By putting the dollars up there, by making the teaching profession more of an object." This partly jesting and partly truthful answer did not include all the reasons why American intellectual production has not reached the general grade of that of the old world, and if I have spoken of the college, of the school, of the university as separate, I have misled there can be no discontinuity. A serious answer to this jesting question would be that we shall be as learned as we appear in America when, not only in university, but in school and college, we reach a perfectly clear understanding of and unite our energies in the chief object of education, namely: the inculcation of those factors which, according to the several abilities and predispositions of men, culminate in the several forms of productive activity. Production is conceived, with Carlyle, as a man's output, as the utmost he has in him, his resourcefulness, his centrifugal, rather than centripetal life; in its highest form his creative 1906] The seven factors of education 7 power. If training for production vitalizes the technical schools, if it is the ideal of our universities, is it not evident that such training, in the broader sense, is the restorative prin- ciple of the American college ; that the collegiate antidote is not to be found in further experimentation, in lengthening or shortening periods, in eliminating Greek or mathematics, or any other difficult subjects, in a rigid required system, or in a universal elective system, nor even in inducing men to think and study by means of a preceptoral system, admirable as it may prove to be; but that the elusive remedy is rather to be sought in the application of a basal or universal working theory of education ? In such a theory, we are first to substitute the newer centrifu- gal ideal of production for the older centripetal ideal of liberal culture. Liberal culture, that indefinable quality imparted by learning multiplied by the sense of beauty, is to be the stepping stone ; it is to be the obligato or running accompaniment, rather than the solo ; it is to be the stage, rather than the summation. Second, we are to ascertain in what sense, in what measure, and by what means the college may range itself with the polytechni- cum and the university as a school for training producers. Such training is a very serious undertaking; if there is any field of human activity in which it is light or easy, I do not know of it, but rather contend from the precept and example of my chief masters, McCosh, Huxley, and Balfour, and from the much more exacting master, experience, that the road from nothing to culture, and from culture to the point where man produces anything of the least value, is an extremely long and hard one. I contend that some of our leading educators in the Boston convention of 1903 were hastening the tide of American haste and superficiality, instead of sternly telling that great assem- blage of teachers of the nation some unpalatable truths as to our still subordinate position among the thinking producers of the world. If we are to direct education thruout into the original, the creative, rather than into the receptive, the absorbent, the critical temper of medievalism, I do not know how we can more clearly introduce its relation to our school and college life 8 Educational Review [June and to the further elevation of our university life than by a series of contrasts, which will lead the way back to the main question : as to what are the factors of education, which culmi- nate in production? Modern mediccvalism and true modernism ' " The mediaeval university," observed one of the greatest teachers of the last century, " looked backwards ; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge, and except in the way of dialectic cobweb-spinning, its pro- fessors had nothing to do with novelties. Of the historical and physical (natural) sciences, of criticism and laboratory practice it knew nothing. Oral teaching was of supreme importance on account of the cost and rarity of manuscripts. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge ; its professors have to be at the top of the wave of progress. Research and criticism must be in the breath of their nostrils ; laboratory work the main business of the scientific student ; books his main helpers. . . The cardinal fact in the university question appears to me to be this : That the student to whose wants the mediaeval university was adjusted looked to the past and sought book learning, while the modern looks to the future and seeks the knowledge of things." HUXLEY. What is medievalism ? Is it not surviving in the methods proposed and continued in some of the most modern profes- sional systems? I am inclined to answer the second question in the affirmative. We should not, for a moment, fall into the almost universal error of confusing mediaeval ism in education with classicism, an error which has been widely disseminated by such brilliant and effective essays as Adams's A college fetish. Greece and Rome illustrate the distinction. The relatively non-productive Romans were partially mediaeval. Rome, eco- nomically, and, in a large measure, intellectually and artistic- ally a parasitic or centripetal state, \vas supported by phenom- enal military genius and genuine centrifugal or constructive powers in law and government. Not so with highly centrifugal Greece. Greek supremacy was no accident : it was due to great educational conceptions applied to a people purified by race culture and selection. 1 The main ideas of the present article were worked out and privately printed in 1002 under the title " The mediaeval and the true modern spirit of education." 1906] The seven factors of education 9 In education, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle were eminently men of their period, or moderns, as we learn from their frequently reiterated views. It will be recalled that the Socratic solution of the educational problem was that the new state of society was to be based on knowledge, that the germs of knowledge were inherent in every human being, by virtue of his own experience, and that these germs could be developed by the dialectic process. The whole bent of Socrates as a teacher was the cultivation of originality. His rule that, to educate a youth, the less we think for him and the more he thinks for himself, the better, is the root of the true modern spirit, because it is the first step toward production. Louis Agassiz professedly adopted the Socratic method in teaching zoology, and Huxley's method was largely Socratic. Plato observed : " We next come to arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy ... all citizens shall learn the rudiments of these sciences, not because of the necessities of practical life [a word for our most prac- tical schools], but because these are endowments belonging to the divine nature. By a good method, the teaching of these sciences may be made attractive and interesting, so that no force may be required to compel youth to learn." Inspiration, sequence in the development of body, mind, and soul were Plato's modes of training the young citizen, while his curricu- lum was surprisingly similar to that of our older colleges. Unfortunately, there is preserved only a fragment of Aris- totle's writings on the art of teaching, our knowledge of his opinions on the development of the mind being largely infer- ential from his works and from his intellectual ideals. If these great Greeks had recommended the youth of their country to devote ten of the formative years of their lives, first, to the Mycenaean language and culture, and, second, to the Egyptian and Mesopotamian languages and cultures, then the few who still maintain that our modern youth should largely devote the formative period of their minds to ancient languages might rightfully claim to be classicists. If there is such classical authority for the anticlassical move- ment, it does not follow that the elimination of the substance has eliminated the spirit of medisevalism from among the anti- io Educational Review [June classicists. The true classicist may be one who follows most closely the highest classical models, and these were certainly the models of the Greeks, both in their methods and in their achievements. The Greeks will be modern for all time, and are still to be studied for the truest modern ideals, for ideals which resulted in the most remarkable achievements in the way of centrifugal life that the world has known, considering always the period and the infantile state of knowledge. While antici- pating us in the sciences, in the extraordinary development of mathematics, in the discovery of the evolution theory, they gave ethics, philosophy, literature, and science their foundation stones. The destruction of the Greek intellectual movement by political, moral, and social decay, and by the loss of numerical and military supremacy, set the intellectual progress of the world back two thousand years. With the centrifugal Greek spirit, contrast the centripetalism of the old educators in their renaissance of classical learning, impelled partly by the extraordinary intrinsic or inherent force in such fragments of this learning as remained; consider their sedentary life, absorbed in poring over and discussing what Aristotle and Pliny had to say about the world, rather than in travel and exploration of their own; contrast their scrutiny of the books of the ancients, rather than the book of Nature her- self; their compilations in natural history with their dearth of observation of the objects about them, of the birds, the fishes, flowers, and even of human society. This very over-valuation of classical literature and science inevitably brought the reaction of the great " observing cen- tury " which has just passed; a reaction partly ending in a false modernism, however, which may have exceeded the Ifrnits prescribed by the truest modern spirit. While we may abandon the claims for the classics of " superior mind-training value," or of " best conducing to a pure English style," we may adhere to them as our most highly perfected disciplinary studies, as developing systematic thinking, as familiarizing us with the marvelous classic spirit, as giving us a sense of perspective and proportion for our own lives and times, as fundamentally asso- ciated with the technical language of biology and other sciences, 1906] The sev eti factors of education u with all discoveries or centrifugal work in classical history, art, archaeology, and philosophy. The question is not as to the value of the classics, but as to the part they shall play in the educational period. Old Montaigne's epigram even to-day most truly expresses the real essence of the classical question : " No doubt both Greek and Latin are very great ornaments and of very great use, but we buy them too dear." There is also the reaction to the " modern subject." In the artillery fire against Latin and Greek, in the smoke and con- fusion about elective and required courses, the impression is abroad that the modern subject constitutes the essence of mod- ernism as opposed to medisevalism. This is a dangerous half- truth, for, considering the diversity of subjects upon which the minds of great men have been bred down the ages, is it not apparent that the essence of the matter must lie less in the subject than in the intellectual objective of the teacher and of the student? Do we not often observe the modern languages taught in a most intensely mediaeval fashion, and the ancient languages under a different type of teacher as sources of a most modern spirit? May not the classics be taught in such a way as to rapidly develop all the forces of education, altho such forces may be still more rapidly and readily developed thru the sciences ? It is not a matter of fancy, but of fact, that, despite clear perception of its special objective value, the very teaching of science itself is still largely after the mediaeval, dogmatic fashion; and that even the "verification of anatomical fact" method of Huxley has its dangers. Asymmetry and superficiality are the two words which sum up my criticism of our present American education from bottom to top. Swinging like a pendulum, it has lost some of the merits of mediaevalism, without attaining the full advantages of modernism. Accepting the general truth of Huxley's brilliant, if some- what extreme, contrast between the mediaeval and the modern spirit, as quoted above, we see that professed modernism in education still contains a large admixture of medievalism in its failure to develop the centrifugal forces of the mind. Such development was the essence of the Greek spirit in education, 12 Educational Review [June yet the modern spirit emphasizes even more than the Greek the relation to the fellovvman, not merely in the political, but in every aspect. In fact, the essence of this spirit is service; in matters of the mind, it is intellectual altruism ; in education, it is the training of the productive mind. II THE ART OF THE TEACHER What are the forces which are essential to the productive mind, and what educational theory is most apt to develop them? So far as intellectual progress is concerned, and I am not now discussing religious, moral, or physical progress, the first and most fundamental of these forces are in the nature of canons, or standards; they lie in the distinction of truth from error, in the appreciation of beauty and fitness, and in the application of these standards to thought. Together with our standards come our sources of knowledge, and there arises, as the first, that of learning from the stores of tradition, from books, and the experience of man in our own and previous generations; there follows close, as the distinctively nineteenth- century source of knowledge, that of direct observation of men and of nature. Then, for the testing of our knowledge, there is applied the triumphant crucible of human reason. Then our standards, our knowledge, and our reason seek expression in spoken and written language. Finally, as the supreme human, most closely approaching the superhuman power, the six preceding forces lead to the production of new ideas and to all the forms of original activity. This is the epitome at once of the " universal," both in intellect and in education. Truth, beauty, learning, observation, reason, expression, and production, in their most comprehensive forms, are the seven forces of progress, and the factors of education are the proc- esses of storage of these forces by cooperation of teacher and student, the former with his constantly diminishing, the latter with his constantly increasing responsibility. The batteries become ready to discharge, the potential intellectual energies 1906] The seven factors of education 13 ready to be liberated; and the cunning business or art of the teacher consists in patience and alertness in ways, means, and methods, in repairing or supplying deficiencies, and discovering powers which are never actually to be idle. As Eduard Suess, the distinguished Austrian geologist, recently observed in his farewell lecture : "And now I have reached the comma. When I became a teacher, I did not cease to be a student ; and now that I cease to be a teacher, I shall not cease to be a student, as long as my eyes see, my ears hear, and my hands can grasp. With this wish, I do not step out, but take up my former position." Looking for a moment to our social obligations, it would appear possible to cultivate the first five of these forces in a monastic existence totally without benefit to one's fellowmen; to acquire " liberal culture " without effect or result, except for its possessor; to attain an individual mastery of truth and beauty, of learning, of observation, and of reasoning as purely receptive or centripetal powers. In contrast, the last two forces of expression and production are the centrifugal applications of knowledge, by their very terms altruistic and marking the purpose of education, the service of our fellows in commerce, in art, in politics, in literature, in scientific discovery, in every form of human activity. To learn to produce, to be of service, we must, with Huxley, discern to the full the special role of each factor and, at the same time, secure a balance. The balanced enforcement of the heptalogue is as essential to the perfectly educated man as the balanced working of the great system of organs is to the ideal bodily development. The attainment of symmetry will always baffle us, because of the generally inborn or constitutional asymmetry of mind; because of the limitations and predispositions of pupils and students, one having the gift for truth, another for beauty, another for learning, another for observation, another for reason, another for expression, another for creative production, and the many having no special gifts whatsoever. Only rarely are the largest number of these gifts in the largest measure combined in what we call the youth of genius, and only that 14 Educational Review [June educator will rightly serve his calling who holds in his chari- table heart this law of the mental variability of the race, who suspects the existence of talents out of the direct line of his own sympathies, who hopefully foresees that the dunce in mathe- matics may become the brilliant biologist, that the defective memory may be housed in the same brain with the keen reason- ing power, that the deficient linguist may metamorphose into the brilliant observer, that the listless youth of eighteen may exhibit the spirit of the daring explorer at thirty, that the Rowland who leaves the small New England college in disgust may become the leading American physicist, that the Darwin who loiters thru Cambridge may revolutionize the thought of the world. Even my own experience with students yields instances of an inborn predilection for a certain subject work- ing a marvelous metempsychosis. A careless student, in the search for an elective involving the irreducible minimum of effort, perhaps by the toss of a coin, elects a subject which, because of an atavistic, tho previously unsuspected, impulse, fascinates and transforms him for life. Herein lies often the failure of the more rigid and restricted curriculum, and the success of the miscellaneous fire of many electives or aimless discontinuity of studies, that among the repeated shots one may hit the bull's-eye of intellectual predisposition, and thus discover the man. By focusing our attention upon each in turn in the light of the wisdom of our own and preceding centuries, we may best discover the special parts played by each of the seven factors of education, individually ineffective, collectively an irresistible power. Factors of truth and beauty " Again, many of you think it is not only a waste of time but a positive sin to read novels and poetry and general literature, to cultivate in any way the imagination, to take an interest in painting or sculpture or music. You have yet to learn that altho parrots and other imitative animals can get on without imagination, there is no such thing in existence as an un- imaginative scientific man. That you have some imagination and individu- ality is evidenced by your differentiation from all other students of science classes; but have you these well developed, and have you those other 1906] The seven factors of education 15 qualities which are absolutely necessary for the success of a scientific worker? Imagination is far and away the most important ; but there are also judgment and common sense, and the love of truth and the power of self-sacrifice, which seem always to accompany the pursuit of science." 4 The divine order of truth and beauty, as conceived by Plato, is at the foundation of all things and forms the soul of educa- tion, for a truthless education is fruitless, and an education without the sense of beauty and harmony fails, both of its imaginative elements and of its full effect on other men. The inspiration of these standards and basal guiding qualities is thru religion, the study of the beauty and harmony of nature, of classical and modern literature, of art, led by the personal influence of men of culture and productive capacity. Intellectual virtue, the truth canon, the first ingredient of education, must be derived from some source or other. Virtue and knowledge do not necessarily run on all fours, many con- spicuous instances could be cited of their absolute divorce, and, with Huxley in his Romanes lecture, I am not hopeful of deriving moral qualities from the study of pure science. Such virtues are often derivable from religious ideals, but this is certainly not universally the case, because of the large ingre- dient of faith in religion. It is aside from our present path to consider whether the aesthetic factor was more, or less, appreciated by medisevalists than by moderns. The art spirit has certainly suffered a decline since the Renaissance; the spirit of the Florentines was most nearly a revival of the Greek spirit which the world has seen. The sense of the beautiful, combined with the appreciation of natural law, as manifested in Leonardo da Vinci, enters into scientific, no less than into artistic education, and the cultivation of the imagination is as much the constructive basis of the physical sciences as of literature. In the relative spheres of the essential union or separateness of ethical and aesthetic cultivation, we are again on debatable ground, as will be readily seen from the comparison of the Latin environment, abounding from childhood in aesthetic cul- tivation, while, perhaps, less insistent upon the element of 4 Inaugural address of Professor John Perry, Nature, October 23, 1902, p. 645. 16 Educational Review truth, with the German, English, and American, in short, with Teutonic environment relatively deficient in the sense of beauty, while, perhaps more insistent on the element of truth. The factor of learning " With this close hold upon practical life and this constant interest in the politics of the world, especially of England and the United States, no one could be less like that cloistered student who is commonly taken as the typical man of learning. But Lord Acton was a miracle of learning. Of the sciences of nature and their practical applications in the arts he had indeed no more knowledge than any cultivated man of the world is expected to possess. But of all the so-called ' human subjects ' his mastery was unequaled. Learning was the business of his life. He was gifted with a singularly tenacious memory . . . the passion for acquiring knowledge which his German education had fostered ended by becoming a snare for him, because it checked his productive powers. It absorbed so much of his time that little was left for literary composition. It made him think that he could not write on a subject till he had read everything, or nearly everything, that others had written about it." 6 The middle centuries were distinctively the period of learn- ing ; the great and enduring contribution of mediaevalism to the world and to modern education was its insatiable thirst for information, for knowledge of the achievements of man, as set forth in books and book lore; for literature, and for the tradi- tional science of the Greeks and Romans. As Harris aptly expressed it, " thru learning, we stand on the shoulders of all previous generations," and, figuratively speaking, the survival of mediaevalism is only to be deplored in the one great feature of its faith, that a secure position on other men's shoulders is of paramount importance and constitutes an end, rather than a beginning and an accompaniment, of education. The learned attitude is naturally the historian's attitude toward education. We have cited above the late Lord Acton as a modern medievalist of the highest type, of vast learning, of limited production, as a storage battery which rarely dis- charged, as a life illuminating our present contention. By way of contrast to Acton may be instanced, among historians, our own Fiske, Browning, Tennyson, Victor Hugo, and, above 'Special correspondence of the Evening post, London, June 23, 1902; the Evening post, Friday, July 18, 1903. 1906] The seven factors of education 17 all, Balzac, as pouring the forces of learning into expression, into the conversations, debates, and discussions of their men and women, or into the pages of history. In his brief, but great, preface to Pere Goriot, in which Balzac lays bare the whole philosophy of la comedie humaine, he shows thoro con- versance with the whole biological movement of his times, beginning with Buffon of the middle of the eighteenth century and ending with the famous discussions between Cuvier and St. Hilaire of the early nineteenth all a matter of pure and well-digested learning. It may be said that his works fairly bristle with learning and knowledge, and that acquisition was one of the great elements of his genius. Similarly, Tennyson's In memoriam shows a remarkable comprehension of modern biology, in its many more open and more subtle allusions to evolution and heredity. Our shelves are loaded with the books of unlearned men. I have in mind two remarkably original works of recent times ; they have justly brought their authors great renown, yet they both fail at the critical point, where the authors extend from their specialties and attempt to reach out for broader conclu- sions in neighboring fields of knowledge conclusions which are rendered totally invalid, almost ridiculous, thru deficiency in biological and anthropological learning. Learning necessarily occupies a vast amount of time, and it is a false modernism which depreciates its place in education. How near-sighted are certain reactions against it ; how absurd the fads of certain ultra-modern schools; how out of time the premature exclusive specialization ; how inadequate the extreme laboratory system ; even in the university, how futile to attempt to educate exclusively thru research. As Emerson observes : Whatever force may have compelled us to education, we are always gravitating back to learning, to the accumulated knowledge of our subject, and this is one of the most striking phases in the self-education of men. We recall that Aristotle opens every disquisition with a review of all that was known and said by his predecessors, that this is the well-known method of introducing the doctorate thesis in Germany. We recall that Darwin, altho eventually more 1 8 Educational Review [June learned in books than any scientific man of his generation, neglected book knowledge while at Cambridge, and, after be- coming attracted to science by observation and discovering how largely it is necessary to draw from the recorded observations of others, was fairly forced back to book knowledge. Fine proofs these, that the teacher should fairly "stoop to conquer," that he should fascinate the student with the spirit of some principal subject, that interest once enlisted, the value and necessity of book knowledge become apparent. The factor of observation "You know much of what has been done, but have you the power to discover, to add to the world's knowledge ? Your knowledge has been derived from books and lectures ; you have now to learn that a week in the laboratory, during which you seem to crawl, during which for examination purposes you do less than in reading ten lines of a text-book, is really of more value to your scientific education than a month's hard reading. This is almost unbelievable to you who are such adepts in passing examinations, yet it is quite true. Lectures and lessons have spoon-fed you until now ; lectures and lessons will in future teach you to feed yourselves."' " But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this slumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, for some experience of life and man." * Schopenhauer's premiss that " All truth and wisdom lie ulti- mately in observation," we find reflected in the lives of men of science and of letters a very thirst for transition from book learning to original and direct observation of men, of facts and things, of nature, as inexhaustible sources of new knowledge. The reciprocal relations, or the actions and reactions, between learning and observation are wonderfully illustrated in the life of Pasteur the noblest scientific life recorded. Again, when young Ramon y Cajal, while a medical student, found in works of reference no citations from his own countrymen, he resolved that, if it lay in his power, at least one Spanish name should appear in the history of medicine of the future and remove the reproach of Spain. He threw himself with ardor, not into deeper and more extensive learning, but into the observation ' From abstract of inaugural address of Professor John Perry, Naturt, October 23, 1902, p. 645. 7 Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Robert Browning, March 20, 1845. 1906] The seven factors of education 19 of the nervous system by means of a method which had just been discovered by the Italian histologist Golgi, and with such success that in the course of a few years every anatomical treatise quoted the brilliant discoveries of Cajal from the ancient University of Cordova. This truism, that the world holds its own by learning, that it moves forward by observation, is the distinctive gift of the scientific spirit to education. It has not yet become a truism of educational practice. Quick and keen in children, undoubtedly inherited from our very remote ancestral life, where powers of observation were factors in survival, this faculty was unrec- ognized in the mediaeval system of education, and is also unknown to the college which ignores the element of observa- tion in its requirements, both for admission and for honors at graduation. It is, therefore, largely ignored in the school which prepares for the college a condition of things which, however, is widely perceived and rapidly being remedied in the public secondary schools of this country. Here I may quote from a noteworthy recent address by the headmaster of one of the most successful colleges of England : "A school preparation should be of a kind which will foster the desire and develop the power to overcome difficulties ; it should give self-reliance and sufficient knowledge of scientific principles to enable the pupil in after life to understand changing conditions and see their trend. Above all, school work should encourage the spirit of inquiry, which finds delight in making new observations and experiments with whatever resources are available. The principle upon which Humboldt constructed Prussian education a century ago was : whatever we wish to see characteristic of our nation we must first implant in our schools. Assuredly, if we would prepare our scholars for life, the supreme intellectual preparation is found in methods which evoke the faculty, the originality, the mental resourcefulness of our pupils. It is for us to see that the subjects and methods of teaching in our schools are such as to promote the development of these qualities, for national progress depends upon them." School and college should, from the outset, foster this most fertile of natural faculties. Postponement of observation to the graduate school, where it naturally enjoys its maximum cultivation, is a hazardous experiment, because of the law of degeneration of unused mental powers. What we observe is 2O Educational Review [June less vital than that we do observe, and the introduction of science in the school should be less for knowledge and learning than for facility in vision and elementary reasoning. Observ- able material is what is called for ; not always the same material, neither is it necessarily in the scientific ; it may be in the poeti- cal, literary, classical sphere. In the social world, the young observer is most admirably advised by Montaigne : " This great world, which some do yet multiply as several species under one genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves ; to be able to know ourselves as we ought to do in true bias. In short, I would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most attention ... so the several fragments he borrows from others, he will transform and shuffle together to compile work that shall be absolutely his own ; that is to say, his judgment, his instruction, labor and study, tend to nothing else but to form that. He is not obliged to discover whence he got the materials, that have assisted him, but only to produce what he has himself done with them." The factor of reason " That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of ; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order ; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind ; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender con- science; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself." HUXLEY. Reason is the great asset of man. Granted the impulses of beauty, of truth, of knowledge, and of observation, there is still to be trained the efficient " logic engine " of thought, so wonderfully pictured by Huxley. George Meredith also speaks in inimitable style of the relation of observation to reason and discrimination : " Observers of a gathering complication and a character in action com- monly resemble gleaners who are intent only on picking up the ears of grain and huddling their store. Disinterestedly or interestedly they wax over-eager for the little trifles, and make too much of them. Observers should begin upon the precept, that not all we see is worth hoarding, and 1906] The seven factors of education 21 that the things we see are to be weighed in the scale with what we know of the situation, before we commit ourselves to a measurement. And they may be accurate observers without being good judges. They do not think so, and their bent is to glean hurriedly and form conclusions as hasty, when their business should be sift at each step, and question." 'Nature is not over-liberal with this asset; she often richly endows with all other forces while most parsimonious with this. Two of my older scientific colleagues, most learned, most gifted observers, profound students, able writers, and prolific producers, were yet almost devoid of the power of sound logic. On one occasion, after examining their joint advocacy of a certain theory, which I myself strongly entertained at the time, I could not help remarking, " Heaven preserve us from our friends ! " Scientific common sense, or the absence of it, is congenital; it comes from our forebears or from that strange benefactress the saltation in heredity. If not inborn, this break in the ranks must be perceived and, so far as possible, repaired by the teacher, certainly one of the most difficult, if not most hopeless, of tasks. The induction into correct thinking is not only in formal logic, in philosophy, in the history of the sciences more especially where taught by personal contact and discussion between master and student but in the continuous exercise or practice of reasoning by the student himself, guided by kindly, but expert, criticism of the master in every branch of original thinking. Here is where mathematics and the natural sciences make their most effective contributions to education, in affording the data for reasoning from problem to solution, or from cause to effect, in its simpler forms. There is no abbreviated formula for reading nature or men at sight: the invention of the guesses that make an hypothesis, the trials of the hypotheses that make a theory, and the discarding of the theories that fall for a truth ; in brief, the unerring scent on the track of new truth can only be acquired by the method of trial and error, guided by skillful and inge- nious advice. The factor of expression " For my part, I venture to doubt the wisdom of attempting to mold one's style by any other process than that of striving after the clear and 22 Educational Review [June forcible expression of definite conceptions, in which the Glassian precept. ' First catch your definite conceptions.' is probably the most ^difficult to obey. Bufc still, I mark among distinguished contemporary speakers and writers of English, saturated with antiquity, not a few of whom, it seems to me, the study of Hobbes might have taught dignity, of Swift concision and clearness, of Goldsmith and Defoe simplicity." HUXLEY. " All men stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression." EMERSON. Why, with Lycidas, " shun delights and live laborious days " ; why acquire the canons of truth and taste, the famili- arity with achievement, if you cannot bring forth discoveries and ideas which may have cost you an infinite amount of labor, if you have not the power of expression in language, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, or other forms of design? While considering expression as covering every form of the conveyance of ideas to others here we may speak only of the written form. The gist of Huxley's famous sentence, quoted above, is that ideas, practice, and the native literature are the three chief factors in the cultivation of style. In language, look to the best lay writers of England, to Huxley himself, as well as to the uniformly fine style developed in France, and avoid Ger- many as you would avoid a labyrinth or a quicksand. The mediaeval spirit instilled in prejudice to the mother tongue, was manifested in the writing of the Bible and all works of science in Latin; it survives in over-reliance upon Latin and Greek in the cultivation of the art of expression. In this day, when two great exponents of English style, Huxley, with little early classical training, and Tyndall, chiefly of scientific education, stand shoulder to shoulder with two other masters of prose, Maurice and Goldwin Smith, both of classical education; when Darwin and Galton are models of simplicity and clearness, we cannot believe that there can survive a classi- cal monopoly for the acquisition of style. Latin is said to be enjoying a great revival in the secondary schools of America, but the classics, as generally taught with us, fail to have the productive and constructive value in expression which is enforced in England, where style is cultivated and developed 1906] Tlie seven factors of education 23 by a constant interchange of classical and English expression. At Eton, for example, the training culminates in the ability to put a Times editorial into Greek or Latin. With us, the chief regime of classical preparation consists in translation, parsing, translation; and in truly mediaeval spirit some of the most progressive colleges have been piling up " reading " require- ments, in raising the standard of admission. As the entrance examination approaches, translation increases in quantity and intensity, for two years there is a long and arduous cram, until the average student becomes fairly surfeited with the very masterpieces of literature and as thoroly cured of any taste for the classics as the Israelites were of any partiality for manna. The transfer of a large proportion, if not of the entire classical training from the culture period of college life to the more purely disciplinary period of school life, is also one of the most conspicuous illustrations of what has been spoken of above as retrogression in the guise of progress. Happily, however, expression is the one direction in which a substantial advance has been made in American college edu- cation in the last two decades. Under wise leadership, in this art we far outclass the Germans, but still lag behind the French. If we are gaining expression, all the more need to follow more ardently the " Glassian precept " to gather our ideas and harvest our observations, so that we may bring them forth into the final stage of original production. The factor of production " I do not propose for a moment to invite you to blink the fact that our huge Anglo-Saxon array of producers and readers and especially our vast cis-Atlantic multitude presents production uncontrolled, production un- touched by criticism, unguided, unlighted, uninstructed, unashamed on a scale that is really a new thing in the world. It is all a complete reversal of any proportion, between the elements, that was ever seeivbefore." The Lesson of Balzac, HENRY JAMES. The stirring appeal and command of Carlyle for production should be carved in stone over the portals of every school, college, and university, and embodied in the precepts of every teacher, because production, as our foremost intellectual service 24 Educational Review [June to God and to man, and as the end of the whole educational system, should be prepared for by instilling the true modern spirit into every course in school and college. The word is used advisedly for all activities of the artisan, as well as of the artist, because there are as many who can produce in some form as there are few who can create. The vast majority of men are born consumers ; there are few who are either instinct with the desire to produce or who have had the vast hiatus between consumption and production impressed upon them. Many clever people fail to grasp the distinction ; in the metropolis of America, for instance, we consume vast quantities of the foreign intellectual product, the music, the art, the literature; and the metropolitan, in his heart, thinks that we are a musical, an artistic, or a literary people; whereas, we may lay small claim to any one of these attributes until, in these commodities of the mind, our exports equal or exceed in quality our imports. There is in America at large, outside of the great field of mechanical endeavor, a singular blindness to the supreme importance of productive and creative work, to the fact, as Henry James observes, that the quality of our production in philosophy, politics, political administration, in law, medicine, literature, in pure or applied science, in whatever you will, is the one absolute criterion of the nation's intellectual standing. As a recent writer has said, invention abounds, discovery is rare; the inventor enjoys a national reputation and a niche in the Hall of Fame; the discoverer often enjoys an undisturbed obscurity, and looks for his recognition, not in his own country, but in the older countries of Europe, where the value of dis- covery is appreciated. There is a similar blindness, even where there is less excuse for it, in our schools, colleges, and universities, as to the pro- longed, broad, and profound training which must precede and accompany production in any branch of human endeavor. Again, we may quote from Suess's farewell address : "In the course of the years I have seen and experienced much. In the beginning a man has honestly to endeavor with zeal, and with certain re- strictions upon himself, to learn the detail ; and sometimes the hair whitens 1906] The seven factors of education 25 before he is in a position to obtain a general view and to risk a first syn- thetic attempt. This first step to synthesis is, however, the deciding step in the life of the inquirer. Soon he notes that his judgment obtains more consideration among his colaborers ; he becomes more careful and con- servative with the same ; and finally the hour arrives in which his soul is filled with the highest satisfaction, because he has been able to add to human knowledge some new view or a new fact a feeling over against which everything naturally vanishes that the outer world is able to offer in acknowledgment. " The initial step in the schooling for production is what is familiarly known as the original exercise, which may begin in the kindergarten and terminate in the most advanced laboratory the whole centrifugal process is the same in kind, while it differs infinitely in degree. In classics, it is the turning of English into Latin and Greek ; in mathematics, it is the original problem; in English, it is the theme; in science, the induction from the observed experiment, however simple; in brief, it is the outflow from the mind, rather than the inflow to the mind ; the acquisition of the centrifugal, rather than the centripetal power. Thus are taken the rudimentary, the intermediate, as well as all the successive steps from the simplest to the very highest grades of production. I fancy the instinct that this is the real purpose and end of education has been the more or less unconscious inspiration of every great teacher of all time. It is the most difficult part of education. It is the point where students rebel most. It is the point where the largest number of teachers fail. It is the method which is most diffi- cult to prescribe. It is the fine memory bringing the highest collegiate honors and standing, combined with the inability to produce, which results in the barren after-life and wonder as to the worth of the first diploma. It is far easier to compel a student to read six books of Homer than to train him to turn one page of English properly into Greek; it is far easier to learn by rote Tennyson's In memoriain than to produce one line worthy of a place in that great poem; it is far easier to memorize Darwin's entire Origin of species than to devise a single new biological experiment of real value. Efficiency, constructiveness, productiveness are the ascending- democratic species of the aristocratic genus creation. There 26 Educational Review [June are corresponding gradations in the training of the efficient man, of the constructive man, of the productive man, leading to that of the creative man the same in kind, but of great difference in degree. The grade is always determined by the nature and response of the mind itself to the opportunities or intellectual and social environment which is offered to the mind. Even the centripetal system of education cannot crush out the passion for creative work which is born in some men and women, but since the mission of education is itself production, it must produce the producers, it must discover them and train them to the highest, as well as to the intermediate or the lower, planes of creative work. Once inoculated with this virus, education enjoys a new vitality, an immunity to ennui; the centrifugal power, inborn or instilled, turns into those channels which taste and opportunity unfold; into science, literature, theology, law, medicine, commerce, manufacture, politics. Conceit is checked and humility engendered by learning what has been achieved, and the supreme difficulty attending achievement. What I am contending for is that the one absolute essential in all education is to hold out the centrifugal life of originality, of efficiency, of construction, of production, of creation, as the chief end of education, rather than to make any of the- subsidiary factors, such as intellectual morality, or learning, or reasoning, or the cultivation of taste, or the power of expression, ends in themselves. Let master and student be impatient of the systems which postpone production until after years of learning and acqui- sition thru brilliancy of memory give a false sense of power. Rather from the outset learn and think to do. Be not impa- tient of the slowness of the process of acquiring either the power of production or of the many complex factors which enter into it. This is an outline of the universal principles which illumi- nate the largest, as well as the most detailed, problems of education. 1906] The seven factors of education 27 Whatever the grade of instruction, whatever the subject, whether in science or literature ; whatever the choice of profes- sion, we may always find our path lighted by the same signals, and ask whether a symmetrical development of the seven factors is being brought about. Every great subject has within it the possibility of developing the seven factors, but a combination of subjects, selected with reference to their special influences, may bring about this development to the greatest advantage, for there are studies to stimulate the imagination, others to develop the memory and power of learning, others to facilitate observation, others reason, and so on. The universal illuminants remain both as the guide and the single basis of criticism of the teacher, of the course, of the curriculum, of the institution, of the student himself, of his most elementary thoughts, and of his most advanced original contributions. HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES EDUCATION AND PSYCHOLOGY LIBRARY This book* is DUE on the last date stamped below. JUL 26 1966 f.0.1 PSYCH. I.IBRARY; Form L9-10m-8,'65(F6230s8)4939A UCLA-ED/PSYCH Library LB 875 081s L 005 625 015 2