HERBART HERBART AND THE HERBARTIAN THEORY OF EDUCATION A CRITICISM BY ALEXANDER DARROCH, M.A. LECTURER ON EDUCATIONAL METHOD AND PSYCHOLOGY IN THE CHURCH OK SCOTLAND TRAINING COLLEGE, EDINBURGH ; FORMERLY ASSISTANT LECTURER ON EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF NORTH WALES ', AND HERIOT FELLOW IN PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH or UNIVERSITY f or . .■ ♦** LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1903 All rights reserved ciHtft^- PREFATORY tfOTE These Lectures were delivered in the University of Edinburgh during the past winter session, and with the exception of the last and concluding lecture, are pub- lished as delivered. To the student of psychology, I need hardly mention my indebtedness to Dr. Stout for his luminous and able articles in Mind on the Her- bartian Psychology, and also to his psycho- logical writings generally. To the Herbar- tian educationalists, named and unnamed, who have been criticised in the following pages I owe no apology, since the aim of every true student of education should be to follow the truth wheresoever it may lead. To my revered teachers and friends, Profes- sor Laurie and Professor Pringle-Pattison, I owe much more than can be expressed in a brief prefatory note, and the best JL.1l «. o vi PREFATORY NOTE evidence of this is that the spirit of their teaching will be evident to every critical reader of the following pages. The general nature of the theory advanced in these lectures is but an exemplification and enlargement of the contention of Mr. Haldane in his recent Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews, that "when you are trying to trace the genesis of the develop- ment of a child's consciousness, you are driven away from the point of view" — which is called Presentationism — and that "it is purposes or ends which organise our immediate experience and give to it its appearance of reality." The important thing for the education- alist is to become fully aware that instruc- tion is only a means to the realisation of the various purposes or ends of life, and that it is in the controlling and directing of education with a clear and explicit know- ledge of the relation of the various ends to the supreme end that the work of teaching essentially consists. It needs also to be emphasised at the present day that educa- PREFATORY NOTE vii tional practice is explicitly, but more often implicitly, based on educational theory, and that every educational theory is founded not merely on a psychology of mental development but on some philosophical theory as to the meaning and value of human life. ALEX. DARROCH. University of Edinburgh, March 1903. CONTENTS LECTURE I THE HERBARTIAN PSYCHOLOGY— THE FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS PAGE The Herbartian Psychology. The fundamental pre- suppositions. The two divisions of the Herbartian school — those who directly found their educational theory upon the psychology and ethic of Herbart ; those who follow the spirit rather than base their the ory on the H erbartian psychology. Criticism of the latter — and the critic's position defined. Her- bartian psychology opposed to the Faculty psycho- logy — the error upon which this system is based — due to the inherent faults of the introspective method in psychology. Opposed also to the Kantian concep- tion of mental development. The Herbartian con- ception of the soul — importance of clearly realising this in the understanding of the educational theory. Presentations or ideas the ultimate element of the mental life ; feeling and volition, secondary products of the interaction of ideas. • The threefold manner in which mental complexity arises — fusion, compli- cation, and mutual arrest — the educational conse- quences. The Herbartian account of feeling — its erroneousness. Volition and the doctrine of Atten- tion — confusion between passive and active attention. Criticism gfjh e Her bartian doctrine. It may be objected that some Herbartians do take account of the soul and its activity. Criticism of this position. The ambiguous use of the term "attention." Con- clusion 1-33 ix CONTENTS LECTURE II DOCTRINES OF APPERCEPTION ; OF INTEREST ; OF THE SELF The Doctrine of Apperception : — Meaning of the term — classification into outer and inner — into voluntary and involuntary — the meaning of this difference in the Herbartian theory — importance of the theory of ap- perception in education. Criticism of the Herbartian explanation of the process — real difference between passive and active apperception — the educational importance of the difference. The Doctrine of In- terest : — Meaning of the term — used in various senses — its meaning in this theory — interest as a method and an end in education. Criticism of the Herbartian theory. Interest in the psychological sense — a mark of the presence of self-activity. Classification of interests as ends — their place in education. The Doctrine of the Self : — The Herbartian account of the development of the self — the ultimate explanation reduces the self to a general abstraction or a bare identity of function — this is the only possible result of a mechanical psychology .... 34-64 LECTURE III THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC The Herbartian ethic— a subordinate part of the psycho- logical theory — opposed to the Kantian doctrine of a transcendental will and the negative or ascetic aspect of that theory — all action springs from "the circle of ideas." The five moral ideas — the second idea of most importance in educational theory — meaning of the idea — the place of many-sided interests in educa- tion — confusion of virtue with culture — moral re- sponsibility and personality explained away on the Herbartian theory. Individuality — the theory of initial equality — the relation of environment to life — the meaning of environment — Herbart fails to ac- count for individuality. But if Herbartianism is so full of errors, how are we to explain its popularity ? Explanation of this tendency — the erroneousness of this from the educational point of view . . 65-97 CONTENTS xi PAGE LECTURE IV THE EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION OF HERBARTIANISM The Doctrine of Method — apperception made a kind of fetish — the explanation of the processes of imagination and conception given by the theory — Ward and James give similar explanations. Criticism of this view. Relation of Logic to Psychology. Instruction — the only method of education in the Herbartian theory — " didactive materialism" the "Five formal steps" of Herbart — explanation aud criticism. Neglect of formal studies — Zillerian development — the place of nature and science studies in the theory — history and literature the chief subjects of study. The Herbar- tian misconceives the reason for their importance in education — their value lies in the fact that they give a training and discipline of a particular and peculiar kind. The distinction between real and formal one of degree or aspect, not of kind. Her- bartianism has no place logically for formal studies. The Herbartian psychology only gives us an account in terms of mechanical causation of the perceptual (Kant) or attuitional (Laurie) consciousness — but Herbartianism aims at a real error, viz. that there can be a mere training of power or faculty apart from knowledge. Conclusion 98-127 LECTURE V EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION OF HER- BARTIANISM — CONCENTRATION OF STUDIES The Doctrine of Concentration of Studies — The emphasis laid on the theory of concentration by the Herbartian follows logically from the psychology. Reasons ad- vanced for its importance — to promote the unity and consistency of the mental life — the limitations of the theory at the present stage of knowledge. Much of our instruction must be disjointed and unconnected, for we have not yet succeeded in unifying knowledge. Again much of our knowledge seems to be of a contin- gent character. History illustrates this. Further the nature of the connection between the natural and social world is not yet understood. Attempts to do so xii CONTENTS more or less fanciful and imaginary. Lastly— there is no connection between the facts of several sciences. The mathematical qualities of a thing not necessarily connected with its chemical or physical qualities. All these facts limit the application of the theory. The only safe rule for the teacher. The explana- tion of the unity of the mental life in the Herbar- tian theory — one of knowledge conceived mechani- cally and externally ; but the real unity is an unity of end or purpose to which the unity of knowledge is only a means. Correlation of studies a means to arousing present interest — but education is mainly concerned with creating future interests ; in fitting the pupil for his position in the social organism, while present " interest " should as far as possible be used to foster these — yet this must often be sacri- ficed to the development of the interests which should prevail. Again, since the main end of education lies in the training of the child to perceive the identities which pervade the various systems of knowledge, this is in many cases no easy and agree- able task, and therefore must at times prove uninter- esting. The danger in the Herbartian theory of making instruction easy — but present interest must be subordinate to a course of study which will corre- late the child with the civilisation into which he is born. A third reason is that only through concentra- tion of studies can we have consistency of conduct — but this is only true if we accept the Herbartian assumptions as to the nature of the mental life. Con- sistency of knowledge only a means to consistency of action — practical value of the theory. The attempt made to make one subject the centre of all in- struction — various subjects proposed as the centre — but such attempts must more or less fail as long as knowledge itself is not reduced to unity, But the theory points out a truth that some subjects are of more value in education than others — relative value of humanistic and naturalistic studies — the lessons for the teacher — other aspects of the Herbartian theory not examined in these lectures — Conclusion 128-148 HERBART AND THE HERBARTIAN THEORY OF EDUCATION LECTURE I THE HERBARTIAN PSYCHOLOGY — THE FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS Within recent years the theory of educa- tion set forth by Herbart and developed by his successors has received a consider- able amount of attention. To some extent in the land of its birth, but more par- ticularly in America, Herbartianism has become more or less of a craze, and work after work continues to be turned out ap-A^/ plying the Herbartian solvent to all edu- ■ cational difficulties. In our own country it has found a footing, and while Herbar- tians of the extreme type are few in num- ber, yet the theory underlies a good deal A 2 HERBART of our educational thought, and pervades a good deal of our educational literature. From the educationalist who adopts the theory on grounds which he can more or less justify (though often not seeing the full logical outcome of the implied presup- positions), we have all degrees, down to the well-meaning persons whose cry is that the one thing needful is to make all school work interesting to our pupils, and who have, as a rule, no clear con- ception of what interest means, nor of the conditions by which it is evoked. In general, however, the advocates of the theory may be divided into two main types. In the first place, in some quarters, the Herbartian ethic is loudly proclaimed as the only system which can afford the teacher real insight into the nature of the end towards which education should strive to form and fashion the pupil, and the Her- bartian psychology is declared to be the only psychology which can yield a practi- cal method for the guidance of the educa- tor, and the only sure and safe basis for any system of pedagogics which builds on the solid ground of fact ; and, in contrast, FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 3 opposing systems are supposed to have their foundations laid on grounds of a more or less vague and general nature. The Herbartian claims to deal with con- crete experience, with the actual modes by which human experience and human knowledge develop, and in particular op- poses the rational or transcendental psy- chologist on the ground that his method of looking at the human mind and its development yields results which are of no value for the use of the educational theorist, nor of any aid in the guidance of the practical teacher. 1 The rational psy- chologist is said to deal "with unchange- able presuppositions of mind," to take account of only the universal conditions of all knowing ; and, while the educationalist may conform his work to these condi- tions, he cannot modify them any more than he can alter a law of nature. On the other hand, the educationalist who bases his theory upon some scientific, empirical, and deterministic psychology 1 Cf. e.g. "Herbart's Outlines of Educational Doc- trine," trans, by Lange and De Garmo, Introduction, p. 6. 4 HERBART is supposed to be able, in some mysterious way, to control the actual growth of our concrete experience without taking into account those universal conditions, those unchangeable presuppositions of the human mind. With this contention we shall after- wards deal. It arises out of a confusion of ideas. If a knowledge of the universal conditions of all knowing, without some knowledge of the particular forms in which it is realised, is empty, and therefore of no use in the guidance of the educator, so in like manner the so-called empirical facts of the psychologist are blind and of no value without some knowledge of the universal modes of synthesis by which they become a part of our concrete ex- perience. Emphasis on the one aspect in educational theory leads to the identi- fication of education with mere instruction, as emphasis on the other leads to the confusion of education with a bare and empty discipline and training. In the second place, we have within the Herbartian camp another set of adherents who prefer to follow the spirit of their master rather than definitely pin their faith to his doctrines with their FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 5 metaphysical and psychological founda- tions. 1 For them, Herbartianism is rather a set of ethical convictions than a system of doctrines. They are convinced, e.g. that instruction is of supreme importance in the work of education, and in the formation of character ; that the line of demarcation usually drawn between secu- lar and sacred subjects is theoretically unsound and practically baneful in its consequences ; and, above all, they be- lieve that the moral regeneration of man- kind lies in the fostering of a many- sided interest, and that the kingdom of Heaven will be realised on this earth when we turn out our pupils with large, well- rounded, and internally coherent systems of ideas, or, to use the Herbartian tech- nical term, apperception- masses. With this particular section of the school, it is usual to have the assertion made that the psychology of Herbart is not so funda- mental to his theory of education as is com- monly supposed, and that the main thing for the educator is to enter into the spirit of its founder, and to be fully assured of 1 Cf. " Herbartian Psychology," by Adams, chap. iii. 6 HERBART the convictions enumerated above. 1 But we may ask : Are the convictions mere convictions ? If so, for the old empiricism in educational theory and in educational practice which Herbartianism seeks to remove, we are offered an empiricism newer and perhaps better, but still an empiricism. If, on the other hand, the convictions are not mere convictions — for they can hardly, so to speak, hang in the air — but claim to have a foundation in the nature of human experience and human thought, then it is incumbent upon their advocates to state the nature of the ethical and psychological grounds upon which they base their assertions that knowledge and the formation of a many-sided "interest" are the chief things to be considered in the work of education and in the formation of char- acter. At any rate, until they reject the ethical and psychological grounds upon which their educational convictions are ostensibly founded, it is quite within the right of the critic to point out that the basis will not support the superstructure, and that the new elements introduced are 1 Cf. e.g. M The Student's Herbart," by Hayward, p. 8. FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 7 of an alien nature, and not consistent with the original assumptions. And that, if these convictions are to be justified, we must seek to base them upon an ethic and psychology different in nature from that of Herbart. Now, in order to understand the nature of the educational theory of Herbart, it is necessary to know the main principles of his psychology and ethics, and to com- prehend clearly the point of departure from which the system starts. In the first place, it will be our aim to state the essential doctrines of the system in so far as they bear on educational theory, and in particular to state exactly and definitely the meaning and limitations of such con- ceptions as apperception and many-sided interest, which are the dominating educa- tional categories in the Herbartian theory. Much harm is done, both in educational theory and in educational practice, by the loose and inaccurate use of terms such as 11 interest " ; and it is important that we should understand clearly what these and similar terms connote. The Herbartian psychology, on its negative side, was mainly directed against : 8 HERBART the old faculty psychology. Just as Locke had thought that the doctrine of innate ideas was the great stumbling-block in the way of the clear understanding of things, so, in like manner, Herbart considered hat a similar charge could be laid at the door of the theory which supposed the mind to be possessed of various powers or activities. Such a conception, carried over into the educational field, gives rise to the belief that certain subjects are specially suited for training the memory, while others are supposed to be best fitted for cultivating the imagination ; while still others exercise and discipline the intellect. Now, it is against this error that the attack of Herbart is mainly directed, and in this respect he is at one with the English Associationist school, who at- tempt to explain the mental life as gradually built up from certain elemen- tary atomic states, and to show that all mental connection is ultimately reducible to mere association. But Herbart goes further, and lays his finger definitely on the nature of the error on which the assumption of separate faculties is founded. This is to be traced to the FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 9 fallacy of supposing that the introspective method is the only valid method in psy- chology, and to the inherent inaccuracy in the nature of that method. In in- trospection we note the prominent and outstanding characteristics of our men- tal states. " Self-observation," he says, "mutilates the facts of consciousness in the very act of apprehending them, tears them from their context, and hands them over to a disorderly abstraction which finds no resting-place until it has arrived at the highest genera." 1 The process of classification being completed, it is found that these generalisations are of no use in the explanation of particular pheno- mena, and the tendency arises to treat them as real forces active in the produc- tion of the particular effects. Instead of explaining the mental life, the faculty psychology leads to the belief that the unity of the mental life is ultimately inexplicable, and that we must be con- tent with the conception of the mind as exercising different functions. But a second objection may be urged against the method of introspection. Not only 1 Cf. Prof. Stout in Mtnd, No. 51, p. 324 et seq. io HERBART does it tend to mutilate the facts and to take note only of the prominent characteristics in our mental states, but it also fails to notice those dim and obscure manifestations of consciousness which in many cases are the differen- tiating elements in determining mental change. The method of introspection alone, accordingly, is not sufficient ; and this insufficiency is evident in another direction. By introspection we become aware of certain facts of a self-contradic- tory character due to their detachment from the connections which alone make them intelligible. In particular, the fact of an Ego or self is given in conscious- ness, and yet the conception of an Ego is loaded with contradictions. The self cannot be identified with any of its particular states, since it is the centre to which they are all referred. And again, apart from its manifestation in such or such a particular state, it is nothing — it possesses no mark by which it can be distinguished except its own self-aware- ness, and this for Herbart involved an inner contradiction. It is this contra- diction which forces him to distinguish FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS n afterwards between " apperceiving " and 11 apperceived " masses of ideas in self- consciousness. Now the method of Herbart, here as elsewhere, is to frame such hypotheses as will remove the contradictions and inco- herences revealed by introspection ; and if, further, these hypotheses, while removing the contradictions, do no great violence to the evidence which introspection furnishes, and, moreover, can be applied in the ex- planation of further facts and be justified on grounds independent of psychology, then Herbart supposes that this will justify the validity of the method adopted. Equally with the rejection of the theory of the soul as manifesting a plurality of activities does Herbart reject the Kantian idea of an Ego and a synthetic activity of Reason which is active throughout in the construction or reconstruction of experience. According to Herbart the soul is intrinsi- cally a simple, unchanging being, originally without any plurality of states, activities, or powers. It is at first a distinctionless unity with the bare power of reacting^ upon impressions, but the original reactions 12 HERBART having taken -place it, so to speak, be- comes passive, and as Lotze points out, " everything further that happens in it, the formation of its conceptions, the de- velopment of its faculties, the settlement of the principles upon which it acts," 1 all follow as mechanical results from the initial reactions. It is important clearly to understand the starting-point of Herbart, for on the definite apprehension of this depends the understanding of the remainder of his psychological system, and it is only by keeping the initial assumptions before us, that we can fully realise where this theory would lead us in our educational theory and practice. From the theory of a plurality of ac- tivities Herbart goes to the other ex- treme, and denies all activity to the soul except this bare power of reacting upon the occurrence of the original stimuli from without : thereafter the soul is simply the arena in which certain mechanical results effect themselves, and the development of the mental life is throughout explained as due to one single kind of process — 1 Lotze, " Metaphysics," vol. ii. p. 238 (Eng. Trans.). FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 13 a process of assimilation, association, or * apperception between the varying mental contents. From the position that there is no wholly unconditioned activity of the soul, Herbart passes to the other extreme, that there is no act of the soul which is not wholly conditioned by the previously existing mental content : everything fol- lows necessarily from the reactions set up by the attractions and repulsions of the various ideas. As Lotze 1 rather happily puts it : The soul never again shows itself irritable or volcanic enough to interfere with the further course of its development, but is content to remain passive, and view its inevitable determination along the destined lines. The proposition then which forms the basis of the Herbartian psychology is that \ presentations or " ideas " are the ultimate 1 elements of the mental life, and that the ' unity and complexity which subsequently occur, arise from the interaction and com- bination of these primary elements. So far, Herbart is at one with the doctrines of the English Associationist school. But he differs from them in the way in which he 1 Lotze, " Metaphysics," p. 238. H HERBART conceived and explained the ultimate prin- ciples of combination and interaction among presentations, and in the fact that he applies the category of mechanical causation in a more thorough-going and systematic way to the explanation of the facts of the mental life. For Locke and Hume the question is : How, starting from simple atomic sensations, do these combine to form the unity of the mental life? For Herbart the question rather is : How is it that the soul, which is originally a distinctionless unity, takes on the character of plurality and distinction ? That is, starting from the soul as characterless, as bare, having only this mere power of reacting against the original stimuli received by means of the senses, how can we explain the distinctions and differences which arise in the nature of the soul ? and, at the same time, what is the nature of the identity which pervades the whole ? For, however we may explain the phenomenon, there is a self which in some way or other remains identical throughout its various manifesta- tions ; or, in Herbartian terms, there must be some one apperception mass which is appercipient to every other apperceived FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 15 mass. This is a problem which our educational Herbartians seem to think of little consequence, for, as a rule, they ne- glect the consideration of this aspect of the theory. But it is important not only from the point of view of psychological theory, but also important, and much more so, from the point of view of educational practice. For if the self is nothing, or reduced (as we shall afterwards see) to a mere general abstraction, then individuality, and per- sonality and moral responsibility become fictions ; and these, although they may for methodological purposes be neglected in the working out of an abstract and mechanical account of the mental life, cannot be left out of educational theory, for they are the most important of educa- tional categories. But not only does Herbartianism reduce the elements of the mental life to presen- tations, and explain mental development and mental complexity by their interac- tion, but it reduces feeling and volition to \ secondary products formed by the inter- | action of presentation masses. And here it is well to remember in our educational reference, that, although the Herbartian 1 6 HERBART often speaks of the efficiency of the will and of the necessity of training our pupils to act vigorously, for him the will is nothing but a general name for certain movements among the presentation masses, and " freedom of the will is but the assured supremacy of the strongest masses of ideas over single affections or impres- sions." * Instead of volition being regarded as due to the activity of a self or subject which identifies itself with and seeks to realise its various ends, we in its place are offered certain interac- tions in the psychological mechanism. All action, all conduct is thus conceived to be reflex in its character, and feeling, instead of being regarded as a coefficient of the success or non-success of the subject in the realisation of its own purposive ends, is regarded as a mere product of the in- teraction among the presentation masses. It is interesting as showing the thorough- going mechanical explanation of the mental life furnished by Herbart to con- sider the manner in which he explains the various degrees of difference between our feeling-tones. We may notice three 1 Cf. Ueberweg's " History of Philosophy," p. 237. FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 17 grades. In the first place, we may have a merely neutral state, which on the emergence of other conditions may pass, on the one hand, into the state of pleasure or into the state of pain. But, in order to understand this, we must first of all give an account of the principles by which, starting from certain elementary presentations, the process of combining them into presenta- tion masses is performed. Presentations differ from each other in quality in three distinct ways. In the first place, they may be exactly similar, as e.g. my sensation of red is the same as the idea of my sensation of the same colour yesterday. In this case we have a fusion of the two ideas. They attract one another and combine to form one total presenta- tion, but the important point for us to notice in our educational reference is that, here as elsewhere, there is no identifying nor relating activity of the subject pre- sent : the ideas simply rush together on account of their inherent and inexplicable attraction for each other. The ideas are supposed to be active forces mutually at- tracting each other. On the other hand, two co-presented ideas may be contrary to B 1 8 HERBART each other ; they may belong to the same qualitative continuum, as e.g. two shades of colour or two tastes. In this case we have not attraction but a process of re- pulsion set up between the two presenta- tions, or, to make use of the Herbartian technical term, we have mutual arrest, and this may finally result in the total exclusion of one of the elements from consciousness, or in their partial fusion, as when one shade of colour combines with another and thus forms a colour presentation different in kind from both. Mutual arrest may vary in the result produced, from total exclu- sion on the one hand to almost complete fusion on the other. Here again it is well to note that this result is not pro- duced by the relating activity of the sub- ject. It is not because the subject cannot, in the furtherance of its end of making knowledge consistent, bring together, as the predicates of a single object, two con- trary predicates at the same time that this mutual arrest takes place, but the ideas in themselves are conceived as the sole agents in the realisation of all mental combination. In the third and final case, we may have two presentations or ideas FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 19 belonging to different qualitative con- tinua, as e.g. the sweetness of an orange may co-exist with the presentation of its colour. In this case the presentations show themselves manifestly indifferent to each other's charms — they are said to be disparate, and meekly and quietly be- come complicated in each other's further existence. By this three-fold process of fusion, arrest, and complication, the soul; gradually becomes differentiated into dis-| tinct and different groups of presentation- masses. And these presentation-masses thus formed act as a total force in the fusion with, or the repelling of, further presentations. Let us pause for a moment here and ask ourselves by what process of thought did Herbart reach this remarkable result. How does he come to think of ideas or presentations as being possessed of ac- tivity, and of manifesting this in vari- ous directions. The answer is obvious ; the synthetic activity of the Ego is trans- ferred and read into the nature of the particular ideas. The identifying and combining activity of the self is thought to be resident in each particular idea, 20 HERBART and we must not only conceive of them as active, but as in some way or other aware of their activity and its purpose or end, if we are to put any intelligible meaning upon the process ; or, on the other hand, we must conceive of the whole process as a blind, mechanical result effected on the soul and not by the soul. In short, the differences in the context or meaning of ideas is thought to indicate corresponding differences in the nature of the presentative activities ; and in our educational theory and in our educational practice, this logi- cally leads to the idea that education is a mere mechanical joining of idea to idea, and that it is a process effected with- out the activity of the pupil. The one aim of the educator accordingly is to en- deavour to perform this mechanical build- ing up in the simplest and easiest manner possible, and thus he will make education interesting to the child — if indeed there be a child at all in this theory, and not a mere receptacle of ideas. In the sequel, I hope to be able to show that, among the more extreme and more consistent upholders of the theory, this result has actually been reached. For we have the denial FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 21 of the value of formal studies and the glorification of mere instruction until, in some cases, - the whole aim of education has been considered to be the widening or extending of the circle of ideas effected by the sole agency of the teacher, and such a view of education has not inaptly been called " Didactive Materialism." Didactive, be- cause it implicitly denies what Rousseau so strongly insisted on, the self-teaching of the pupil ; materialistic, because it denies the presence of any spiritual activity in the building up of knowledge or in the work of education. Having seen that Herbart reduces the ultimate elements of the mental life to presentations, and that he explains the complexity and differentiation which subse- quently arise in the soul as due solely to the mechanical connections that obtain be- tween the single ideas or presentations, let us now consider the account which he gives of the other constituents of the mental life. For if the Herbartian dictum be true, that knowledge is primary and feeling and \ ' volition but secondary products of the interaction of ideas, then this must have important bearings on the theory and 22 HERBART practice of education. We shall then cease to speak of training the will or of \ cultivating the emotions, but shall rather \ \ direct our energies to the instilling into the mind appropriate ideas, confident that when this is done, every other result will follow. Let us consider the account of Feeling. An arrested presentation, produced either by the working of the physiological mechanism or aroused by the inner working of the psychological mechanism on the removal of the arresting condi- tions, emerges into consciousness, and no further modification of consciousness is involved in the process, that is to say, the feeling-tone is neither of a pleasant nor of a painful kind ; it simply is neutral. The other constituents of consciousness for the time being, the existing presenta- tion masses, are simply indifferent to the presence of the new-comer ; and, while they do not extend the hand of welcome, they are not so uncourteous as to be actually hostile to his presence. But if the new presentation not merely appears or emerges into consciousness in the manner described above, but is acted on FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 23 by allied presentations ; if it is warmly welcomed as a friend, and if the total force is more than is actually necessary to produce the result of bringing it into clear and distinct consciousness, this manifests itself as pleasurable feeling. Similarly, painful feeling arises in so far as the mutual arrest of presentations has a counterpart in consciousness which does not affect the nature and distinctness of the content presented ; or more simply, we have the painful feeling when the mechanical energy of the apperceiving system, while sufficient to raise the new presentate to clear and distinct conscious- ness, is insufficient to bring about complete fusion. One remark I should like to make here in order to avoid misapprehension and misunderstanding. The facts are as Her- bart describes them. We are conscious of this pleasurable feeling when a new idea coalesces easily and without hin- 1 drance with our previously existing system of ideas. We have a pleasant process as long as the identification of the new with the old is easily effected, and in the opposite case we have the feeling of tension or pain when this process of V 24 HERBART identification is hindered or obstructed. But what must be considered is the ex- planation of the process. This is what is important both in psychological theory and in educational practice. Must we accept Herbart's explanation, or must we rather consider that we have here not the mere mechanical action of pre- sentations, but rather the activity of a self whose pleasure it is whose pain it is ; and that the feeling of pleasure on the one hand is the resultant of the subject realising its end or purpose, and, on the other hand, that the feeling of pain arises from the thwarting of the ends which the self sets before it as ends which it would realise. If this is so, then not knowledge but self-activity must be the fundamental educational category ; and while paying attention to the means by which our various ends are realised, we shall consider the ends and their nature to be of fundamental importance. The same difficulty in the Herbartian theory is brought out if we consider his account of Attention. This is explained as a process due wholly to the interaction of presentations, and the teleological FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 25 aspect of the attention process fails to receive any notice. According to Herbart, when we say that we have directed our attention to an idea, e.g. to b, what has happened is merely that b through an in- crease in its own strength, due either to the intensity of the physiological stimulus or to its alliance with other presentations, has raised itself into con- sciousness above the rest of the other presentates, i.e. it has either through its original or derived intensity forced its way into the focus of consciousness and expelled the previous occupant. That is, here again attention is a function of the ideas and not a function of the self or subject. But when we attend to an ob- ject we do not desire thereby to increase its presentative effect, the heightening of its mere intensity in consciousness ; but what we seek is a growth in clearness, in distinctness, and this, as Lotze points out, rests in all cases on the perception of the relations which exist between its individual constituents. That is to say, attention has a teleological aspect ; it is motived \ by the end of clearly understanding the > object presented. Even when a presen- 26 HERBART tation succeeds in entering the focus of consciousness through its own intensity, whether original or due to its connection with the existing contents of conscious- ness, it fails to receive attention, unless we make attention equivalent to mere awareness, or being conscious generally. It only becomes attended to when there is aroused the active attitude of the sub- ject. As Mr. Bradley points out : " We may will and may attend actively, because we have first of all been compelled to * attend ' passively, because we have somehow been impressed or laid hold of by an idea. And if attention is used in this improper sense, we often will because we have attended, and do not attend in the least because we will." * On the Her- bartian theory we have mere arrestment, mere detention, of the subject, and accord- ing to the resultant effect of this deten- tion the subject acts in this or in that way. From the well-known fact that ideas often lay hold of us in this passive way — entering the focus of conscious- ness through the intensity of the original 1 Mind, No. 41 (new series), p. 29 : see also Laurie's " Institutes of Education," Lecture XVII. FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 27 presentations or through alliance with others — it is assumed that this is not only true in all cases of attention but is a complete explanation of the process. But active attention is present and only present wherever an end, external or in- ternal, practical, imaginative, or theoretical, involves in and for its realisation the main- tenance and support of an ideal object before me and in me. 1 I wish to solve a problem or to construct a diagram. The end desired forces me to attend to and keep in consciousness the idea of the means necessary for the realisation of the particular end. It is not a function of the ideas, but of the self or will, and involves the realisation of an end or purpose in, by, and for the satisfaction of the self, or, as Mr. Bradley has insisted, we have only active attention when there is the realisation of an idea with which the self identifies itself. But while wishing clearly to distinguish between active and passive attention, or between mere detention and attention, I have no desire to minimise the importance of the truth of the Her- bartian doctrine that in education we 1 Cf.Mind, No. 41 (new series), p. 8. 28 HERBART must endeavour to present our subject so as to arouse this passive attention or pre- occupation ; but let me add that we have not begun the work of education, either in our pupils or in ourselves, until we have passed beyond this stage, and evoked the active attention of the child. And this is not effected merely by presenting the new ideas in such a manner that their entrance into the focus of consciousness may be effected in the easiest manner possible. However, in the insistence that any and every attention-process can only be main- tained in so far as there is involved the operation or evolution of a system of ideas, or, in Herbartian phraseology, in so far as an apperceptive process is set up in the mind, the theory points out an undeniable truth for the guidance of the teacher. The duration of the process depends upon this factor ; but the error lies in supposing that the attention-pro- cesses are mechanically effected in the soul — that they arise and are solely to be explained by the reaction set up be- tween particular ideas or systems of ideas and other systems. On the contrary, it must be maintained that in every case FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 29 of active attention there is present an end or purpose, theoretical or practical, and that the idea or purpose is the active agent in determining the evolution of the apperceptive system, and the in- tensity of the attention-process depends upon the intensity with which we seek to realise any particular end. If neglect of the means by which attention operates is to be avoided, so in a similar manner we must not forget that the mere account of the means is not sufficient, and that, as Professor Mlinsterberg has so strongly in- sisted, " carelessness in the teleological part makes the synthesis just as dilettantic and useless as ignorance about the causal material." l We must fully grasp that here, Ca ° r ■' DOCTRINE OF APPERCEPTION 45 cess. Now in the Herbartian theory- there is no place for the synthetic activity of the Ego. We have the process con- ceived as throughout determined by the nature of the ideas themselves — and if we are to be in earnest with the doctrine that training and discipline form essential parts of the educative process, then we shall have to reject the Herbartian psy- chology as a basis upon which to found our educational principles, and realise that some other foundation is necessary. And here I may take up the contention made at the introduction of the series of lectures. The Herbartian claims to deal with concrete experience, with the actual modes by which knowledge develops, and asserts that the rational psychologist deals with the universal conditions present in every mind. But all that seems to be seriously meant by such a statement is that the Herbartian takes account of the fact that apperceptive processes take different forms according to the differing mental contents of the individual. The Herbartian lays stress upon the differ- ences between the mental contents while the rational psychologist lays emphasis 46 HERBART on the identity throughout the process, and seeks to determine the various forms in which this identity manifests itself in the development of knowledge. And surely the Herbartian admits and claims that apperception is a universal condition — an unchangeable presupposi- tion of the human mind. You cannot get along without some kind of bond, although you may reduce the bond to one single type, and in fact, as we shall see in the sequel, the activity of the self, nay the very self itself, is reduced to, and made identical with, the universal condition of psychological relationship in general. In concluding this part of the subject, I must emphasise the fact that mere easy assimilation of the material, the making of school work interesting in this sense to the child, is erroneous. The funda- . mental educational aim should be to -^ 1 arouse the self-activity of the pupil, to J call forth the active functioning of the Ego ; and let me add here again, this cannot be done by the mere presenta- tion of the right material. This alone is not sufficient. There must be present DOCTRINE OF APPERCEPTION 47 an idea of purpose or end, and it is the subjective value of the idea or end which is the motive power in setting and keeping in active operation every attention process. The placing of feeling in a secondary and subordinate position is responsible for the neglect of this factor. The presence of the mere idea of end or purpose is not alone suffi- cient, it must also have this emotional accompaniment. The doctrine of apperception naturally leads us next to consider the account of interest which is given in the Herbartian theory, and since this is the dominating category in the method of the school, and also occupies an important place in their ethical theory, it requires careful consi- deration. But, before entering on the discussion, it is well to note that no word in educational literature is used so ambiguously, and with so many varied meanings, as this. In the first place, in- terest may be applied to, and may mean the feeling-tone which is subsequent to or accompanies the apperceptive or atten- tion process. This feeling may be either pleasant or painful. It is painful when 48 HERBART there is an apperceptive process set up, which we would, but cannot, banish from the mind. We are drawn, so to speak, towards the object against our will. Now, in the strict psychological sense, interest is simply the feeling-tone which accom- panies the process of active attention. It is not a coefficient of the process qua process, but of the subject self. But, secondly, in- terest may be identified with the process by which a presentate is easily assimilated into a previously existing system, and it is in this sense that the word is most frequently used by Herbartian writers, and it is this which is often implied in the current use of the term in educational circles. We are to make the acquisition of knowledge an easy, pleasant, and agreeable task to the child. Everything is to be so prepared that it may be easily assimilated, and the child is to be relieved as far as possible J of the irksomeness of learning. It is quite a different thing to say that we ought to present our matter so that it can be assimilated with the old, and to assert that it is the duty of the teacher to make the process an easy and agreeable one. Again, interest may be used to include DOCTRINE OF INTEREST 49 both the attention-process and the feeling- tone which accompanies it. And since in the Herbartian theory the feeling- tone is a secondary and derived product of the apperceptive process, interest comes to be identified with apperception. We find in- terest used in still another and quite diffe- rent sense by Herbartians. When they affirm that the aim of education, or rather that the only means by which we can realise the ethical end of education, is by the formation of a many-sided interest, what they mean is that we should endea- vour to form as many and as varied apper- ceptive systems as possible in the mind of the child — to give him an ever-widening circle of ideas ; for ideas, as we have already more than once been told, are of primary importance in the building up of the mind. Again, there is another usage of the term, as when we say that a man has various interests or is inte- rested in a particular subject, and here we mean that on the presentation of any- thing connected with the subject active interest is likely to be aroused, i.e. an active attention-process of a pleasant kind is likely to ensue. D 50 HERBART Now what is to be noted is that in these different usages each and all apply to particular psychological processes : in- terest is either identified wholly with the process of apperception, or refers merely to the feeling-tone accompanying the process, or is another name for the result obtained by the process, viz. the extending and widening of the circle of ideas. That is, we are to conceive of interest both as a means and as an end : as a method for securing attention, and as a result of our educational activity. And the contention of the Herbartian is, that in the fostering of "many-sided interests" we have the best guarantee for the future moral life of the pupil. "Ina many-sided interest," one writer remarks, " the pupil should find a moral support and protection against the servitude that springs from the rule of desire and passion. It should arm him against the fitful chances of fortune. It should enable him to find a new calling when driven from the old. It should ele- vate him to a standpoint from which the goods and successes of earthly life appear as accidental, and above which the moral DOCTRINE OF INTEREST 51 character stands free and sublime." ' Now whether this result can be effected by the method of the Herbartian is the point in question — whether the one kind of interest is the right means to the attainment of the other ; and this is a matter which will require further consideration. But besides this psychological account of interest, there is the well-known classifica- tion of interests into those arising from knowledge and those arising from associa- tion with others. It is difficult to determine on what basis this classification is made. But a consideration in some detail of the various classes may aid us in the elucida- tion of the matter. In the interests arising, from Knowledge we have the empirical inte-l rest, or the pleasure excited in the mind by « new objects and new sources of sensation. This, of course, is simply one way in which in early life we may succeed in arous- ing involuntary apperceptive processes. The speculative interest and aesthetic inte- rest are the two others mentioned under this head. The speculative interest is defined as the search into the causal explanation of things, and the aesthetic as the pleasure 1 Kern ; cf. De Garmo, " Herbart," p. 60. 52 HERBART manifested in the perception of beauty. But the objection that may be urged here is : How are we to account for the pres- ence of these in the Herbartian theory? The speculative interest implies a will or self directed to the attainment of an end for its own sake, and although "interest," in the sense of a system of ideas, may be a necessary condition for enlightened specu- lative interest, it is only a means and not the end itself. The desire to know is the condition for the creation of a many- sided interest, and the latter may be built up in the mind and yet not create the former, and my contention is that "in- terest," in the sense of the easy and pleasant assimilation of knowledge, is not the right method by which to acquire interest in the ethical sense. It is only when we have aroused the desire to know for its own sake, that we can have the speculative interest, and if we leave no difficulties, no problems for the child to solve, we shall end by destroying that interest. Only when we have aroused the active attention of the child have we pre- sent interest in this teleological sense. The same criticism applies to the second DOCTRINE OF INTEREST 53 great division of interests — the sympathetic, the social, and the religious. They imply ends sought for their own sake. The wise following out of those ends implies a wide and comprehensive knowledge, but the desiring of the end is not the resultant of the knowledge. And just as we saw in the case of attention and appercep- tion, that the teleological aspect involved in these processes is neglected in the Herbartian theory, so, in like manner, the Herbartian doctrine of interest is erroneous, because it neglects the teleo- logical aspect. It is neglected in the psy- chological account of the mental life, which teaches us that interest is solely a matter of the pleasant and agreeable coming to- gether of apperceptive systems. Moreover, its ethical and teleological account of the various ends and interests will not fit in with its psychological ex- planation. For example, you must con- ceive the speculative interest as due solely to the working of an apperceptive process, set in motion mechanically by the ap- pearance in consciousness of a presentate which does not easily assimilate or fuse with the operative system of ideas. Strictly 54 HERBART on Herbartian lines, which admit of only one kind of process, you must explain the speculative interest as a variety of the process, as a case of the one function, as a particular and peculiar kind of fusion and antagonism. In our educational theory we must re- ject any doctrine of interest which makes it a mere function of the ideas and neglects it as a function of the active subject. Ideas are the means by which interest is evoked, and by means of which it works its ends. And we have interest in the psychological sense only when we are actively employed in the practical, imaginative, or theoretical con- struction or reconstruction of the material supplied by sense, or by the inner work- ings of the psychological mechanism ; and this again implies the idea of an end active and dominant throughout the process, and it is in the realisation of the end that the phenomenon of interest manifests itself. Interest is the mark and presence of self- activity in the mental life ; and the motive power which drives it on is the value of the end, its subjective worth to the individual. True, the process only works through DOCTRINE OF INTEREST 55 the medium of ideas, through the active operation of a system of ideas, and, until there is a system, interest in this con- structive sense cannot be present. This can be easily verified in our own ex- perience. The artist is interested in the realisation of the end of depicting upon the canvas the ideal which he conceives ; the child in his working with a set of picture blocks is interested in the success- ful issue of piecing them together. The parts must fit in both cases, but this is only the means, a necessary means, the mechanism by which interest works, and not the interest itself. The teacher may furnish us with all the materials for the process of construction, but, unless we feel the value of realising the end, the process of active attention will never be aroused. And to emphasise this position more clearly, let me give you an example from another sphere. It is not because a man may have a great knowledge of philosophy and of philosophical theories that he has an interest in that subject. The knowledge may be there and not the interest. It is because certain problems, certain questions, demand an answer for his soul's satisfaction that 56 HERBART interest arises. Interest creates the de- sire for knowledge, and not knowledge interest. It is then the feeling-tone which accom- panies the process of active attention which is the characteristic mark of the presence of interest in the psychological sense. Whenever active attention is absent, in- terest is absent ; and what we have to try and not confuse is the mechanism by which interest manifests itself, and the end to which it is directed. Ethically, our classification of inte- rests falls into two main classes — indirect interest and direct interest. In indirect interest we seek an end not for its own sake, but for the sake of something else. We may acquire knowledge, and thus create a many-sided interest in the Herbartian sense, because we wish to pass an exa- mination, or to gain a prize, or to stand well in the estimation of our compeers, or to gain a living ; and in all these cases the end desired may fall outside of the object desired. In these instances the creation of knowledge is not necessarily a means for the creation of interest in its strictly ethical signification. On the other DOCTRINE OF INTEREST $7 hand, we have direct interest when there is no object desired beyond the thing itself, or rather, to avoid misapprehension, when the object desired is primary and fundamental, and not secondary and de- rivative. Even the mechanic may desire to know primarily and fundamentally for the sake of knowing, and only secondarily \ for the sake of earning a living. The j particular sphere of knowledge, the parti- cular object may interest for its own sake — it is the one way in which the self seeks its realisation, its satisfaction. The in- terest is in the problem and its solution, not in the thing to which it is a means. It is the having interest in this sense \ that has throughout the ages been the driving force of the world. It is this that spurs on the reformer ; it is this that cheers and supports the worker in every sphere of action who works for the sake of the work ; and in each and every case this interest is not a function of the ideas or knowledge of the particular subject, but derives its working force from the subjective worth of the end desired. This subjective worth may be objectively wrong, as e.g. in the case of the fanatic ; 58 HERBART but without its presence there will not be, and cannot be, interest in the true sense of seeking an end for its own sake. In education, however, we must rely to a great extent upon the working of indirect interest. By indirect means we strive to arouse the active attention of the child, but the aim of all good teaching should be to make less and less use of these means. Indirect interest accomplishes its end and aim only when it passes into direct interest. We may begin the study of a subject, or engage in a particular pursuit, for the sake of some other end than the subject or pursuit itself, but we shall succeed in attaining our result of founding a per- manent and stable interest only when we have been successful in establishing some end, theoretical or practical, which is fol- lowed out for its own sake. Knowledge, or many-sided interest, in the Herbar- tian sense, is a means, a necessary means, for the wise following out of these ends whatever they may be, high or low, base or ignoble, but the real active agent in the futherance and pursuit of the end is the more or less stable value or worth DOCTRINE OF INTEREST 59 which the end has, or seems to have, for the self-realisation of the life of the parti- cular individual. On the contrary, interest in the Herbal tian sense is actually present or aroused when a process of assimilation or apper- ception is in active operation, and accord- ing to this theory two things are necessary for the successful evoking of the process : (1) a system of ideas to which the new idea can be incorporated ; and (2) the presenta- tion of the new in such a manner that this incorporation may be easily and readily effected. Given these two conditions, the process is conceived as taking place with- out the activity of the Ego or self. In the theory laid down in these lectures, it is maintained that, while these two con- ditions are necessary, interest is present only when we have active attention, and is the mark or index of the activity of the self, i.e. we have interest present only when we have a process of active recon- struction, theoretical, imaginative, or prac- tical, of the data supplied by means of the psycho-physical organism. In order that this may be evoked, there must be present the idea of an end or purpose, and 60 HERBART this end or purpose is active and operative because of its emotional value, tempor- ary or permanent, to the individual self. In other words, interest is not the mere mechanical result of the easy coming together of a presentate and an appercep- tive system. It is the feeling-tone which accompanies the process of active atten- tion ; it is the index or mark which accom- panies the active realisation of an end or idea in, by, and for the satisfaction of the self. And the chief thing to note is, that unless the end appeals by its emotional worth to the self, the process of active attention and interest will not be evoked. Again, many-sided interest in the Her- bartian theory means the formation of many and varied apperceptive systems, and the contention is that this is the only or chief condition for the formation of permanent or stable interests. On the contrary, we maintain that while know- ledge is a means to the wise following out of any end, the permanency and sta- bility of interest depend upon the stable worth or value which the end or ends have for the realisation of the particular DOCTRINE OF THE SELF 61 life. Knowledge is a function of the end, the end is not a function of the knowledge. Further, " interests" imply a subject or self as their bearer ; they exist only as the interests of a self and not as a mere collection of systems of ideas. What ac- count does Herbart give of the Self, of the permanent subject to which each and every "interest" must belong; or, in Her- bartian terms, what is the nature of the presentation-mass which is appercipient, or at least capable of being so to every pre- sentation? The self or Ego has three characteristic marks: (i) It is the centre to which all experience is referred ; (2) It is somehow permanent and one throughout the whole process ; (3) It is aware of itself and of all else. Now, the problem for Herbart is to determine the nature of the apperceptive system which has these three characteristic marks. In early life the body-complex is the more or less permanent centre to which the various experiences are referred ; but as we pro- gress in mental development, other systems of ideas, and in particular those connected with our inner world of emotions and feel- 62 HERBART ings, displace the body from its position of honour ; but these are not able to satisfy the required condition of being the apperci- pient in all apperception. The only thing which is permanent and identical through- out the whole Herbartian process of mental development is the fact of associative or apperceptive function. Individual presen- tations, individual systems, may change and alter their character, but the one thing constant throughout the process is the assimilative function — " the inter- connection of presentations which is im- plied in their union in one consciousness ; " and in so far as the self becomes aware of this ever-constant function, it may be said to be aware of itself, and the unity of consciousness becomes an object of con- sciousness. Such a view need scarcely be criticised. If we start with elementary ideas and only one kind of process, there can, of course, be no other result. But we may point out that the self as so con- ceived is but a mere general and abstract name for assimilative or apperceptive function in general, and that an apper- ceptive system, in which it is possible for every constituent element to change DOCTRINE OF THE SELF 63 and which yet remains the same system on account of this bare identity of function, is a myth and a fiction. Indeed, if we are to take such a conception seriously, then there can be no difference between particular selves, for we, one and all, are mere machines ; poor even then, for we can only perform the one function, the ever and never-ceasing connecting of presentate with presentate. And there can be no other result so long as we endeavour to frame our explanation of the mental life upon the analogy of physical mechanics, and to construe "the perfectly unique sphere of mental life after a pattern foreign to it." It is obvious that in education such a theory leads logically to a conceiving of the process of education as a mere mechanical building up of knowledge ; to the idea that knowledge is an end in itself, and not a means for the realisa- tion of the ends of life ; to the neglect of the fact that the unity of the mental life is a unity of purpose — a teleological and not a mere mechanical unity, and that we can succeed only in so far as we bind together the various aims and purposes of 64 HERBART life to the realisation of the one compre- hensive ethical aim. The unity of the self is not an abstract and mechanical unity, but a concrete and teleological unity. LECTURE III THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC Having pointed out the main principles of the Herbartian psychology, and having in a more or less inadequate way indi- cated their bearings on educational theory and educational practice, let us now con- sider the more important elements of the Herbartian Ethic. It may be asked why the discussion of the end of education, as set forth by Herbart, should follow and not precede the discussion of his psychology. And the answer is that his ethical theory is a subordinate part of the wider psychological theory, and that with- out a knowledge of the latter it is im- possible to understand the former. But before doing so, let me mention that Herbart, like most modern educationalists, strongly insists upon the fact that the end of education is ethical. I am afraid that this is often maintained in theory but for- E 66 HERBART gotten in practice. But no one has urged more keenly or more vigorously than Herbart that "the one and the whole work of education " is morality ; and he also, as it seems to me rightly, extends the conception to include more than mere goodness. But for us, meanwhile, the chief thing of importance is to try to understand clearly what is implied in the use of the term. Does the explanation of the moral life given by the Herbartian take into account the whole of the facts, or does it tend to emphasise one particular aspect to the neglect of others ? And what I shall endeavour to show in the present lecture is that the Herbartian doctrine of morality is simply the Socratic doctrine, that virtue is knowledge, dressed up in a new garb and explained in a less satis- factory manner. Looked at from another aspect, the theory of virtue reduces itself to a species of aesthetic intuitionism, which, like the intuitionism of our earlier Scottish philosophy, is of a purely formal nature, and is unable to give us definite guidance except in a purely abstract manner. Like every species of intuitionism, it has the defect that its principles must be taken THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 67 to be of equal value under all possible circumstances ; for we cannot, on such a theory, have a governing principle which determines the relative value of each with- out giving up the theory. Again we shall see that it is an attempt to found ethics on J a psychological basis, and that basis a de- f terministic and fatalistic one. This point is to be particularly insisted on, because Herbart himself and many of his followers would have us believe that in this theory we escape, on the one hand, that theory of the moral life which regards any change as possible, and, on the other hand, that which regards as impossible all changes not arising out of pre-existing mental con- tents: i.e. the theory is supposed to mediate between a mere indeterministic account of the moral life and a deterministic. Finally, we shall see that virtue in the Herbartian theory may be anything at all ; and, in the words of a recent writer, the one, only, and great moral rule is, "Know what you want, and see that you get it." Or as Herbart himself says, in terms reminiscent of our new English Hegelian school, 1 " Each individual in his own way 1 Cf. eg. Taylor's " Problem of Conduct" 68 HERBART seeks consistency. The ambitious man and the egoist complete themselves in victory over the better traits of individu- ality. The hero of vice and the hero of virtue alike complete themselves in vic- tory over self." 1 In the Herbartian theory the sole test of "betterness" is the width and inner consistency of the active and dominant apperceptive system. The only sin is that of weakness, and weakness is stupidity. The Herbartian ethic is, on its negative side, opposed to the Kantian doctrine of a transcendental will, or a will which is above and independent of every particular im- pulse and desire. The psychology and ethic of Herbart is the swing back from the transcendental psychology and tran- scendental ethic of Kant. The latter had insisted on the activity of the Ego and its synthetic unities, the categories, in the construction or reconstruction of ex- perience, and had declared that the only moral act was that which was freed from every trace of the nature of the empirical self and motived only by the pure ego. Herbart, on the other hand, finds not only 1 " Science of Education " (trans, by Felkin), p. 118. THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 69 the materials of knowledge, but the prin- ciple of unity in the nature of the particular ideas. The ideas being given, and on the hypothesis of these ideas being the centres of forces, everything can be explained with- out reference to the Ego or its synthetic activity. In a similar manner, ethical con- duct can be explained from a survey of the empirical facts, and from noting certain relations that come to pass between the apperceiving mass, which for the time is identified with the self, and other apper- ceived masses. Now we may admit that the Kantian way of looking at the moral life, and, in particular, the doctrine of a tran- scendental will which sits aloft and descends upon and identifies itself with this or that particular motive, for no obvious reason, is erroneous, and further, that such a conception is of no use in the work of education. For as Herbart strongly urges, if such a will can interfere, without our knowledge and without our interposition, in the work of building up the mind, then the task of the educator ceases to have that vigour which it has when he becomes aware that his work counts for much in the development of the pupil's mind. 70 HERBART And although the tendency of the Her- bartian theory is to exaggerate the im- portance of the teacher in the work of education, yet this is an error which leans to virtue's side. In the second place, the ethic of Her- bart is opposed to that of Kant in another way. Kant had emphasised and made supreme the ascetic or negative aspect of the moral life. For Kant freedom means, in one aspect at least, freedom from the mere life of the senses, and to be fully free in this sense would be not to be at all. In education this leads us to think that the giving of mere negative com- mands is the principal part in the work of Moral Education. Herbart, on the other hand, insists on the positive aspect of virtue ; it is not a mere not - doing but a doing ; and his chief insistence is that it is a knowledge of the particular acts of right and wrong which is of im- portance in education, and that know- ledge of what is right and wrong is of primary importance. All action arises from and springs out of the circle of ideas, or as "our own Locke " puts it in his quainter and truer THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 71 way, "The man which is the agent deter- mines himself to this or that voluntary action upon some precedent knowledge, or appearance of knowledge, in the under- standing. The understanding, with such light as it has, well or ill-informed, con- stantly leads." And this truth, for it is a truth, that all action springs from the circle of ideas, is fundamental in the Her- bartian theory ; but the fallacy, as we shall see, is in supposing that since action is idea -motor action, this is all and of supreme importance. Coming to the details of the ethical system, we must first note that, for Her- bart, ethics is a subordinate branch of the wider science of aesthetics. In such a science we have an account given of the directly perceived harmonies that exist in nature and in art. Now ethical laws are perceptions of the harmonies existing between volitional relations; and Herbart enumerates five such aesthetic intuitions or direct perceptions of har- monious will-relations. The first of these moral ideas is that of inner freedom, and this arises from the satisfaction or pleasure felt in the 72 HERBART harmony between a projected action and our judgment upon it. That is, from the psychological standpoint we must con- ceive of a harmony between the apper- ception mass with which our moral selves are identified and the idea of the pro- jected action as it appears to the con- sciousness of the individual. In per- forming such an action we feel that we are acting conscientiously, and that the act is our own. As an account of psy- chological freedom this is correct, and it is important in education that we should aim at making our pupils act always in accordance with their ideas of what is right. If they err, then it is the duty of the educator to correct and widen the child's ideas of right and wrong, and so lead him to see the erroneousness of his previous standpoint. But it is well to note that the guidance furnished by this rule is purely formal, and may be- long equally to what we should call an immoral as to a moral act. This psy- chological or subjective freedom is the old intuitionalist doctrine, that we should always act in accordance with the dic- tates of our conscience. And from such THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 73 a purely formal and subjective self-con- sciousness bitter waters are likely to flow as well as sweet. The subjective will, claiming the right to act in accord- ance with its insight into what is right, may open the door to hypocrisy, to caprice, to the performance of evil, and may claim even that evil is its good. And more generally, in the abstract way in which the principle is arrived at in the Herbartian theory, it is difficult to distin- guish between purely moral action and any class of action in which the means are perfectly adjusted for the realisation of an end, whatever the nature of the end may be. But in the second moral idea, Herbart endeavours to get beyond this bare for- mality, and to emphasise that insight is also necessary for right moral activity ; but here again we shall see that the insight is of a purely subjective character, and that this is inevitable so long as we attempt to found our ethical convictions upon a purely psychological or subjective basis. It is somewhat difficult to understand this second moral idea of Herbart's, owing to the mathematical way in which he states 74 HERBART it. The idea is that of " perfection" or "greatness" or "strength of character." Of any two actions, that which is greater in extent, i.e. in the multiplicity of the results attained as the effect of the voli- tion, in the concentration or combination of these results to one total end, and in the energy or intension with which the volition is carried out, over another less in magnitude as regards these three di- mensions, yields the greater aesthetic satis- faction, and is on that account of greater moral worth. In simpler language, the enlightened man who carefully calculates all the possible results of his projected volition and then carries it out with all the energy at his disposal, is the morally better man. It is the contention of Her- bart here, as throughout his moral theory, that knowledge is of primary importance in the moral life, and that the moral man is the man whose action springs from an apperceptive system wide in extent, in- ternally coherent in its organisation, and which on that account is dominant in the direction of his conduct. Napoleon and Bacon are sometimes put forward as ex- amples in the concrete of persons who THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 75 possessed this characteristic of "great- ness" or "strength of character." But the conception may equally be applied to the life and conduct of the successful swindler and cracksman. The rule is purely formal. Because your morality cannot be an enlightened morality with- out a full and complete knowledge of the means and of the probable consequences likely to ensue, or, more generally, because you cannot follow any end intelligently without a full knowledge of the means necessary for its realisation, therefore virtue is knowledge ; and if not know- ledge, then greatness, and greatness is simply knowledge considered in its ex- tent and intent or internal coherency. But if it is true, as Herbart so strongly insists upon, that the stupid man cannot be virtuous in the sense that his con- duct can never be enlightened, it is no less true that mere enlightenment is not in itself virtue. And experience daily proves that mere enlightenment or mere culture is not virtue nor the effec- tive condition of virtue. Virtue is not virtue irrespective of the nature of the ends which the will or self seeks to realise ; 76 HERBART and while knowledge is a means to the enlightened pursuit of these ends, it is only a means and not the end itself. And to the insistence on the supremacy of knowledge, and on the subordinate part which feeling and emotion play in the direction of our conduct, is to be traced the fundamental fallacy of the Herbartian school. Against the criticism of Herbart, it has been more than once advanced that we must .take into account the other moral ideas, and that to lay the emphasis on the two already named ideas is to give a biassed and one-sided account of the theory ; for Herbart also laid down, that we should aim at Benevolence, at Justice, at Equity. But these ideas, no less than the two which are placed in the forefront, are formal. We are still in the region of subjective morality, still at the mercy of the individual conscience ; for to take Benevolence as an example, it is defined as the perception of the harmony between my projected volition and the imagined or supposed will of another. But the real question — the question of objective Bene- volence — is as to the real will of another, THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 77 and not to what I suppose or imagine will be the effect of the reciprocity be- tween my will and the real will of another. If I imagine that such and such an act will be pleasing to another, then this is said to guarantee its Tightness. If we begin in this subjective way, then there can be no passage to a purely objective standard of morality. Inner harmony, inner satisfaction, become the only test of right conduct. The other two ideas are of a similar nature ; and at this time of day there is no need to slay the already slain, and to argue against an aesthetic intuitionism which results in making ethical conduct a matter of purely subjective feeling, guaranteed only by the harmony between an apperceptive system, which the individual identifies with his moral self, and a projected volition. Like Mill's conscience, which he declared to be the ultimate sanction of conduct, and which also at the same time varies with the varying training and environment of the individual, so in like manner the apperceptive system, which functions in each of us, as our moral conscience and./ our moral self, may be, on the Herbartian 78 HERBART theory, anything we please. The soul is nothing ; we count for nothing in the pro- cess of development, but are wholly de- termined by the nature of our environment and by our education. The child is mere potter's clay in the hands of the teacher. His conscience, his moral ideal, all that he shall ever become or hope to become lies in our hands; for when he passes from under our charge, his intellectual cast, his moral bent, has already received that form and shape which determines all the succeeding course of his life. We may be free at our birth, but, from the moment we open our eyes and become aware of the world in which we live, our whole after-life is in- evitably determined, and thereafter we are at the mercy of our environment, and become the mere sport of circumstances. " Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows He sees it in his joy : The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended ; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day." THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 79 And in like manner in the Herbartian theory we must conceive of our lives as being gradually hedged in and limited by the circle of ideas, with the difference that the light has been but an illusion through- out. The more our action springs from the circle of thought the more determined we are ; and since the whole process is one in which we have no part, we can hardly be held responsible, and if blame there be, it must rest upon our educators, who have not framed and selected the appropriate environment, but have left us at the mercy of influences of an evil nature. The tendency to make knowledge of primary importance in the work of edu- cation, to look upon mere instruction, the ever widening of the circle of ideas as the effective agent in the guidance and determination of conduct, is mani- fested in the development of the educa- tional theory. The ethical ideas which have to do with our relations to others become less and less important, and what is now placed in the forefront is the second idea. "In the work of education," writes 80 HERBART Herbart, "the foremost of all other ideas, not as of greater importance, but because it is continually applicable, is the idea of perfection." And the reason for placing it in such a prominent position is obvious, for " perfection " is simply another name for many-sided interest, for a wide circle of ideas. Morality is to be measured by the width and depth and height of our knowledge about morality. In other words, the Herbartian theory of virtue is simply the Socratic doctrine that virtue is knowledge stated in terms of a me- chanical psychology. It is assumed that the only thing necessary for moral action is to know what is moral, and since feeling is a subordinate result of knowledge, our emotional life is wholly guided, directed, and dependent on our knowledge, and the relations between its different parts. We may readily admit that knowledge, or insight into what is right, is an essential element in or condition of virtue, and at the same time deny that it is the only thing to be taken account of in the train- ing up of the pupil. We must again insist that it is the teleological aspect of conduct THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 81 that is important in education, and for this aspect there is no place in the Herbartian theory. Education is the training up of- the child to act in accordance with an ideal of right, and this ideal, whatever it may be, high or low, must make its ap- peal to the emotional side of his nature, otherwise it will remain ineffective. Cha- , racter-making is not will-building in the sense of building up certain apperception masses which act of themselves (and this is what will-building means in the theory of Herbart). It is the training up of the child to act always in accordance with his ideal of what is right. Knowledge or insight is necessary, here as elsewhere, for well-acting, but it is the means and not the end. And just as we become pro- ficient in the arts not by knowing about the particular subject but by practice, so likewise virtue is the result of activity guided, directed, and controlled by the ideal of an end or purpose. A recent advocate of Herbartianism, with more zeal than philosophical knowledge, declares that " those persons who hold \ with the Greeks that self-development, culture, vigour of character are essential F 82 HERBART elements in virtue will warmly welcome Herbartianism ; " x and those, on the other hand, who take an ascetic view of life will as warmly reject it. But a con- ception of life and mental development such as that of Herbart's is altogether foreign to the Greek way of thinking. How can we speak of self-development if there is no self throughout the process, if the self, as we have seen, has been re- duced to a mere abstraction, to a mere name for the repetition of an identical function. Culture, no doubt, is an element in the Greek conception of virtue, but it is a culture won by the energy and direction of the individual self. It is not something poured into us, but won by the sweat of our brow, by the labour of our own hands. And between the two ex- tremes of a purely determined life and a purely undetermined, there is the theory which maintains that our life is self- determined, and that it is this self-deter- mined life which should be the end and aim of our educational efforts. Our aim in education is to train up our pupils in such a way that from the stage 1 Cf. u The Student's Herbart," Introduction. THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 83 of mere obedience to external authority they shall pass to the stage of self-de- termination ; guiding their conduct not merely in the practical, but also in the theoretical affairs of life, by a self-imposed ideal ; and to the attainment of this end we must throughout the whole process evoke the self-activity of the child. No mere appeal to the head, no mere stuff- ing of the child with knowledge, with ideas of what is right or wrong, will suffice to produce the result. He must be habituated to act in accordance with an ideal of what is right. The ideal may be, nay, must be at first, an externally imposed ideal ; but our ethical result is attained in education only in so far as the ideal gradually loses its character of mere externality, and becomes an internal and self-imposed ideal. And we children of a larger growth have also need to realise that all ethical and political obligation is essentially of the same nature. All gov- ernment which is ethical is self-govern- ment — government of our lower selves by our higher. Not onlydoes the Herbartian theory tend to identify virtue with culture, but in its f 84 HERBART denial of a self that is active throughout the process of knowing and doing, it explains away personality and moral responsibility, and with these, virtue itself is explained away. For if we are nothing but ever- changing apperceptive systems which mutually act, react, and cause by their interaction internal changes in us which, according to their nature and direction, may manifest themselves in outward action, and if the identity throughout the whole process is nothing but the bare and empty identity of apperceptive or associative function, then even if our lives become moral and prudential, or immoral and in- consistent, we cannot be held responsible. As we can hardly attribute responsibility to mere apperceptive systems, personality becomes a myth and a fiction. The psy- chological agents in the drama of human life are nothing but the ideas themselves, and the soul, the will, the character are nothing but general names for the ideas, or for the movements amongst these ideas. And with Hume we must think of the soul as " a kind of theatre where several percep- tions successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 85 infinite variety of postures and situations." If in our educational work we keep strictly to the tenets of the Herbartian theory, we shall cease blaming the child for this or that fault (as we are so prone to do through want of that insight furnished by this philo- sophy alone), and shall look upon him rather as a piece of apparatus, an imperfect organisation of apperceptive systems, which we must endeavour to patch up. This conception of moral evil as a form of disease or an imperfection for which the individual is in no way responsible, is a familiar one in our home-bred utilitarian philosophy, but it also belongs to the Her- bartian conception of the human mind and its method of development. An eclectic u Herbartian educationalist — the breed, I may parenthetically remark, which flour- ishes most abundantly in our own country — has lately told us that the criminal, the abnormal, the defective, and the insane are all on the same footing as regards education as the child. 1 And since we are all more or less defective, he might have added that we are all in the same 1 Findlay, " Principles of Class Teaching," p. 4. 86 HERBART condition, and that the difference between each and all of us is simply a difference in the extent and degree of complexity of our systems of ideas. Mechanical con- sistency is the only test of virtue or of vice. The vicious man is a man with loosely arranged and narrow apperception masses. You may condemn him on the same grounds as you would condemn a badly constructed machine, but on no other. He may be either a useless bolt in the social machine, or a fly-wheel which occasionally gets out of order and hinders its effective working, but that is all ; you must attach your blame to the right centre of responsibility, and that must be to the power which manifests itself in the universe. The work of the edu- cator on such a theory consists in the strengthening or rectifying of the opera- tive and active apperception masses, and in nothing else. You may add here, endeavour to substitute there, but this is your whole function, and there is nothing else that you can do. Such a conception of course leads, not only in the smaller society of the school but also in THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 87 the larger society of the State, to the » / theory that punishment is justifiable only | when its sole end is that of the reformation of the ill-doer. No account is taken of the fact that the child and the criminal can deliberately and with full intent set up their private wills against the common or moral will of the community, that their action, if allowed to go on unchecked and unpunished, would tend to the dis- solution of society, and that punishment in its essence is simply evil inflicted for evil done. Again, Herbartianism fails to explain, or explains away, individuality ; for though there is, in some Herbartian circles, much / v talk about individuality, and of the duty of, the teacher carefully to take into account* this factor in his work, there is logically no place for it in the system. According to this theory, we all are initially equal at birth, and the differences among us are not nine-tenths, as Locke said, but wholly due to our education and environment ; for the educational influences, in strict Her- bartian terms, are simply specially arranged and selected environments, and the success of our educational efforts depends wholly 88 HERBART on the care with which we environ the child from infancy onwards. But however we may neglect indivi- duality in our working out of some em- pirical and abstract conception of the mental life, it cannot be neglected in our educational reference, nor when we con- sider man's life as a whole. Let us take first the wider question, in which there are two things to be considered. In the first place, there is no such thing as a mere environment apart from the nature of the life which is environed. Each in- dividual thing has a nature specifically its own, and it is this nature, in reciprocity with external nature, which determines what is or what is not its particular environ- ment. There is no such thing, either in the animal world or in the life of man, as this bare power of reacting upon the presentation of an object in response to an outward excitation, which Herbart pos- tulates at the outset of his theory. Given two species, each placed under the same physical and natural conditions, then the environment of each will differ accord- ing to the differing nature of each ; there will be no competition, no struggle for THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 89 existence, except in so far as their natures and wants are identical in kind. In the same way, man is never the mere result of his environment in the sense that his nature and character are wholly- determined by the external influences brought to bear upon him. He reacts according to his specific nature, accord- ing to the nature of that which dis- tinguishes him from all else in nature. And since man is Reason, is a being not determined from without, but self-deter- mining, who acts, as Kant has pointed out, not in accordance with law but in ac- cordance with the idea or conception of law, he can take and mould these conditions to his own ends and purposes. Environ- ment then is in every case the resultant of a mutual determination, of a reciprocity between the active nature of the agent and that of external influences ; and it is through this power of going out to, of understanding these external conditions, and of subduing them to his own ends that man is able to constitute himself a person. In the second place, not only does man thus differ essentially from all else, but each of us is empirically different from the 90 HERBART other, and our reactions originally differ in degree, i.e. while there is an identity in the nature of the reactions set up in each case, the difference is due to differences in the natures of the particular individuals. We are all initially equal in one respect ; we are all initially different in another. But the initial equality of the Herbartians is a bare, barren, and empty conception, a mere abstract power of reacting; it is a mere fiction, and only postulated for the sake of a theory. One can only gaze in astonishment when our Herbartian educationalists gravely discuss the effects of such a fiction, and fondly declare that, by postulating individual differences in this bare power of reacting, 1 we save individuality, and reconcile it with the doctrine of many-sided interest— with the doctrine that our character depends wholly on the knowledge we acquire, on the num- ber and strength of the apperceptive sys- tems which are gradually formed in us. And we may ask them, how a theory which has been so long ago rejected as of no use in biological explanation can be 1 Cf. Felkin, Introduction to the " Science of Educa- tion," p. 34. THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 91 of so much importance in the explanation of the mental life ? On this theory man's whole character and the differences which ultimately arise amongst men can be fully explained by differences of mere energy in relation to external circumstances. But mere energy, whether in physics or psy- chology, is an empty nothing, and so we are left with but the one factor ; and, since all action is the resultant of mutual interaction, this in itself is insufficient to account for differences in individuality. And besides these differences, due to the initial differences with which we essentially react upon the presence of external con- ditions, there are psychological differences due to physiological differences in the bodily and nervous organisation of each of us, so that, as a consequence, the ex- ternal conditions are never the same in any two cases. The Herbartian, I repeat, reduces in- dividuality to mere differences in this bare power of reacting ; and since this is a fiction, then the differences must be of a like nature, or if not, then the differences must be explained as due solely to physio- logical causes, so that the final differences 92 HERBART between two children, placed under the same external conditions, must be due to differences in their physiological structure. Now this would be sufficient to explain the diversities of character which ultimately manifest themselves, if our reactions were purely physiological reactions ; and this leads logically (as actually has happened in the development of the Herbartian psycho- logy), to the conception of the mental life as a mere epiphenomenon of the physio- logical reactions set up in the brain. If we reject this view, we must also reject the view that differences in mental re- action are solely due to physiological differ- ences, and hold, on the contrary, that in every reaction there is a psychological as well as a physiological aspect, and that the latter, taken apart and by itself, is an abstraction. But the angry and impatient Herbartian will retort : — If this theory of the moral life is so erroneous, so absurd, so full of contradictions, such a massing together of fallacies ; if, as you say, it explains away personality and responsibility, and leaves us with not a shred of individuality except that which is due to our conditions THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 93 in life ; if, further, it makes virtue anything we please, so that a Borgia no less than a Howard must be considered virtuous, how can you account for its widespread adop- tion, for the enthusiasm which it arouses in certain educational circles, for the pre- valence of so much Herbartian heat ? In reply, I can only repeat what Professor James has said in a similar reference : 1 " Nothing is so easy to understand as this mechanical conception of the mental life. Man's conduct appears as the mere resul- tant of all his various impulses and inhibi- tions. One object by its presence makes us act ; another checks our action. Feel- ings aroused and ideas suggested by the objects sway us one way or another ; emotions complicate the game by their mutually inhibitive effects, the higher abo- lishing the lower, or perhaps being itself swept away. . . . Like all conceptions, when they become clear and lively enough, this conception has a strong tendency to impose itself upon belief." It is the sim- plicity of the theory, the apparent clearness and definiteness with which it seems to 1 " Talks to Teachers," p. 177 et seq. ■\ 94 HERBART explain the mental life, that is the reason of its popularity. It is so easy to under- stand, it imbues the teacher with the idea that his power in the work of education is almost absolute, and in this way it is pleasing to his self-conceit. But it is erroneous if taken for other than what it is — an abstract way of look- ing at the mental life, a way which may be adopted for certain methodological purposes, but which is neither a full nor true account of that life and its method of development. It is doubly erroneous when made the basis of a theory of edu- cational practice. It is erroneous because, in theories of this nature, the moral life is looked at from the outside, from the point of view of the mere spectator, and not from the inside as it appears to the individual appercipient. From his point of view it never appears as this mere mechanical process, as an ever -flowing stream of which he is a mere passive spectator : he knows and feels himself to be a real agent, ever determining, ever interfering with the direction of the stream of con- sciousness, ever using it for the realisa- THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 95 tion of his ends. It is the nature of the ends, accordingly, which the child seeks to realise, and not the means by which they are realised, which it is the primary business of the teacher to know and to direct. It is also erroneous in so far as an attempt is made to found the prin- ciples of education upon an abstract account of the mental life. We take the results of an abstract and empirical psychology, heedless of the fact that the assumptions made in the theoretical working out of the science affect the nature and value of the results attained, and straightway we make them the basis of an educational theory, and apply the principles so obtained to educational practice. With an easy jaunti- ness we sometimes take for granted that the metaphysical assumptions underlying our psychological theory may be safely neglected without affecting in any way the practical guidance which the science affords. According to some educational writers of the Herbartian school, meta- physical assumptions as to the nature of the soul, and as to the part which it plays in the building up of our concrete experi- ence, have no effect upon the results at- 96 HERBART tained. For all practical purposes, the soul may be safely neglected ; the assumption of such an entity is of no value for an empiri- cal science of the mind. Give us, say these writers, the presentations and certain laws or supposed laws of reaction among these so-called entities, and the concrete mind can be fully explained, and its mode of development clearly set forth ; and having thus reduced the mind to atomistic ele- ments with mechanical relationships, they work out certain theoretical results on this basis. Forthwith they rear on this ab- stract foundation an all-embracing method- ology of education. They forget the fact that assumptions made as to the nature of the soul and the character of its contents affect the nature of the results obtained, and limit the practical guidance which the science furnishes to the educationalist. Not only is the guidance afforded by the science limited by the abstractness of its view and the presuppositions in- volved in its method, but the very ele- ments omitted in the theoretical working out of the science may be of supreme importance from the practical point of view. If we simplify or alter the facts, so THE HERBARTIAN ETHIC 97 that instead of dealing with the concrete contents of mind we are engaged with abstracta, with factitious elements, then we shall have to take this into account before converting our theoretical results into the practical principles of education. The elements omitted in our scientific inquiry- may be of vital importance from the prac- tical point of view, and the re-insertion of the omitted elements may alter the entire nature of the guidance afforded by the theoretical science. LECTURE IV EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION OF HERBARTIANISM In considering the Herbartian theory in its educational aspect, in so far as it yields us an insight into the nature of mental development, and consequently as a guide to the laying down of an educational method, the first and the most important thing to note is that it reduces all mental process to one particular kind, viz. to a process of assimilation or apperception, and explains this process in a purely mechanical manner. Now, there is no doubt that the Herbartian literature has thrown a flood of light upon the various ways in which this process is actually realised in our concrete experience. It has done much good in affirming that in all developed perception there is a process of apperception, and that by means of this the new presentate acquires meaning and significance. Also in the warning that 9 8 EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION 99 it furnishes to teachers that the interpre- tations, which children and adults give when a new object is presented, depend upon their previously existing store of ideas, and that we must keep this con- stantly in mind, it has been of great ser- vice. Further, in its insistence that know- ledge is not a mere collection of facts lying loosely side by side, or connected only by their casual, temporal, and spatial relations, but a system, and that one aim of teaching is to build up in our pupils' minds sys- tems of ideas internally coherent and con- nected, and as comprehensive as possible, it is a valuable contribution to educational method. One of the lessons which the Herbartian theory enforces has not yet been learned by many educators, namely, that the accuracy and power of observa-\ tion which we wish to foster in our pupils can only be realised in so far as we have created in their minds systems of ideas. There is no such thing as the training of the senses : there is such a thing as training to accurate perception and accurate concep- tion, but our concepts must be bound to- gether by an identity of content if we are really to attain our aim of making our pupils ioo HERBART accurate observers along one or more different lines. This truth needs to be emphasised at the present day when there is so much teaching of nature-knowledge and of elementary science of a purely de- sultory kind. For example, the trained botanist is an accurate observer of plant life because he brings to bear upon the interpretation of a new specimen a well- arranged, internally coherent, and compre- hensive system of ideas, and not because he brings a keener or more acute organ of sight to the examination of the specimen. True, accuracy in discrimination, gained in one sphere, may help in other spheres of knowledge, in so far as the identifying pro- cesses are similar in kind, but they will not aid the interpretation of further facts, unless there be also present an interpreting system. But while giving due credit to the good in the Herbartian doctrine of Method, it is well to note its defects. It tends, in the first place, to make the process of apperception a kind of fetish, and to for- get that it is only one of the innumerable results of the psychological process of association, and means nothing more than the act of taking a thing into the mind — EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION 101 of apprehending it ; and, since all appre- hension is through identity, it is, as I have already said, an aspect from which we can view every mental act. Now, some of the Herbartians seem to repeat in another form the doctrine in opposi- tion to which the theory was founded. We have the apperceptive processes divided and subdivided into various forms, such as subsumptive apperception, as- similative apperception, and so on, until there is a danger of again committing the fallacy of thinking that there are different activities of the mind employed in each kind of association. All such classifica- tions, however great a parade they may make of scientific exactitude, are merely artificial. As Professor James has pointed out, " there are as many types of apper- ception as there are possible ways in which an incoming experience may be reacted on by an individual mind." * The descrip- tion of particular and strange cases of the apperceptive process, such as some writers are so fond of relating, may be interesting and furnish good descriptive material, but it does not aid us much in the further under- standing of the subject. In fact, the only 1 James, " Talks to Teachers," p. 162. 102 HERBART useful distinction is between active and passive apperception, and in this classifica- tion the basis of the distinction is, whether the new presentate or the apperceiving system is the greater force in the uniting process. I have already criticised this, and pointed out that in active apperception we have the gradual realisation of an ex- plicit end or purpose, and the presence of an Ego active throughout the whole process. Again, in the Herbartian theory we must conceive of the processes of imagi- nation and conception as being effected in a purely mechanical manner, and of our images and concepts as being gradu- ally formed through the fusing together of like elements and the dropping out of unlike. Such a method of explaining mental development is not peculiar to Herbartian psychology, but runs through most of our empirical psychologies, and is especially to be noted in Ward's doctrine of continua. 1 We have in Ward's theory, first, a presentation continuum, then an imagination continuum formed by the coagulation of like to like and the dis- appearance of dissimilar elements, and at 1 Ward on Psychology, " Encyclopaedia Britannica." EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION 103 a further stage we have a further refine- ment of this process in the production of an ideational or conceptual continuum. Not only does it seem to me that such a method of looking at the mental life is of little scientific value, but it is of comparatively little importance for the practical educationalist. He seeks to guide and control the various processes of perception, imagination, and concep- tion, and desires to know how they actu- ally do take place, how the processes actually go on from the point of view of the individual experient, and not how they appear when we abstract from the synthetic activity of the ego, and view them from the outside as a mere spectator and in their completed results. Active perception, active imagination, active conception are all teleological processes, and it is only from this standpoint that they become thoroughly intelligible. Our mental life is not built up either by the stringing together of atomistic elements or by the gradual differentiation of a pre- sentation continuum into discrete and distinct objects. It is not more enlight- ening to conceive of mental growth as 104 HERBART a gradual segregation and integration of like elements than it is to conceive of originally discrete elements fusing to- gether through their identity of nature. " And just as a conscious series must be more than a series, so a conscious continuum must be more than a continuum. Con- sciousness is a unity, not a continuum." ' All mental process has a teleological aspect ; it is throughout a self-determin- ing as well as an externally determined process, and either aspect looked at by itself is an abstraction. In educa- tional theory, if we are to be true to the facts, we must ever keep in mind this double aspect of all mental pro- cess. In active interpretation, in active construction, in the adoption of means for the attainment of some practical end, there is present, throughout, the idea of an end which determines the whole pro- cess, choosing here, rejecting there, the material supplied by the working of the psycho-physical organism ; and it is this aspect of the mental life which is of importance to the educationalist. Nor is activity a mere activity, a mere power 1 " Hegel," by Professor Mackintosh, p. 164. EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION 105 or energy of voluntary attention, as Professor James 1 would have us believe. Either this energy or power of attention is a function of the ideas and their inter- connections, and we have again restated in other terms the contention of the Herbartian school, or it is a variable of the activity of the subject or self, a mere bare activity or energy, and such a con- ception is a mere fiction. If this is all that can be given us in order to save us from a deterministic and fatalistic con- ception of the mental life, then the gift is too small to effect the purpose. This, however, is too large a question, and for its full discussion would require a separate lec- ture ; but I may say that what seems to me the fundamental fallacy of a good deal of our present-day psychological in- vestigation is to be traced to the method of looking at the mental life from one aspect — from the outside — and forgetting the other. Even when the self-deter- mining aspect is taken account of, it is usually brought in towards the end of the investigation as an adjunct, e.g. by James, 2 which makes little or no difference 1 "Talks to Teachers," p. 184. 2 Ibid., ch. xv. 1 06 HERBART in the results already obtained in the mechanical working out of the various processes. But if Reason as process and end is ever active in the elaboration of the materials supplied by the psycho- physical organism, then the final results cannot be effected in the manner in which our empirical psychologists would have us believe. Reason is operative and active throughout the whole process : it may either, in the theoretical or practical sphere, misconceive the nature of the ends or take the wrong means to attain the ends even when the latter are rightly con- ceived ; but whether the result be truth or error, right or wrong conduct, there is this activity of Reason involved in all active mental process. The only differ- ence between Logic and Psychology is, that in the former science we make ex- plicit and conscious the conditions of right and wrong thinking. There is not one kind of thought with which psychology deals, and which is in its nature non- teleological, and another with which logic deals which is guided by the ideal of consistency, and therefore is teleological in its nature. All thought is teleologi- EDUCATIONAL T^feUCA^TION 107 cal. Psychology deals with the thought which fails to attain its end or attains ends inconsistent with each other, as well as with thoughts which are consistent in the means adopted and in the end attained. It is the business of logic to critically investigate the latter characteristic of the psychological life, and to make explicit the conditions realised and operative in the processes of correct reasoning. Further, the reduction of mental de- velopment to one single type or kind of process tends to lay the whole emphasis upon instruction in educational method, and to conceive of the end of education as a building up and cementing together of various separate and discrete facts. Nay, it must do so, if it keep strictly to its presuppositions ; for training and dis- cipline of the mind can find no place in the Herbartian theory, and are terms which do not strictly belong to the Herbartian vocabulary. The Herbartian may, if he will, speak of regulating the movements among the various presentation masses, but not of training or discipline. And why? Because, apart from its content of single ideas and complexes of ideas, 108 HERBART the soul is nothing ; there is no activity except the activity manifested by the actions and reactions set up among the presentation masses. There are volitional movements, but no will. The latter is a mere abstract term for the particular movements. By one section of the school, as I have already mentioned, the above result has been 'logically reached ; and, if you keep strictly within the presup- positions of the theory, there can be no other result. The theory of didactive materialism lays the sole emphasis upon instruction in its educational method. It looks to the quantity of knowledge ac- quired rather than to its quality. It neglects the part which the child plays in education, and lays the whole re- sponsibility upon the shoulders of the teacher for the ultimate result. And if education is a mere storing up of know- ledge ; — of facts, however skilfully prepared and however skilfully assimilated (and this is the conception and the only con- ception of Education which can be logically built up on a system of psy- chology such as Herbart's), this is the only possible outcome. The chief and EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION 109 only function of the teacher becomes to impart the right knowledge at the right time, and the practical rules of method for his guidance reduce them- selves to two : ( 1 ) Find out the ideas which the child already possesses ; and (2) Present the new material in the manner and form in which it can be most readily assimilated and fused with the previously existing store. But the Herbartian may reply : What about the five formal steps of method which form an integral and fundamental part in the theory ? There we have the various stages of a method laid down which not only includes instruction but also takes account of the training and dis- cipline of the mind. In the associating and systematising and applying of the know- ledge gained the Herbartian takes into account more than mere instruction. There can be no education without instruction, but instruction is not alone sufficient, and this the Herbartian admits. That is true ; but the question is, How are we to explain this training and disciplinary process? Herbart has done away with reason, with faculties, and has left us with nothing but no HERBART the bare ideas to work with. What is to be trained? What are we to apply? If the soul is nothing, if there is no reason- process, there can be nothing to train, nothing to discipline. All that the third and fourth steps ; — the stages of associating and systematising the knowledge given, can mean is that they are further stages in the preparation of the materials to be assimilated. We have first a process of rude and crude assimilation, followed by a more refined and delicate process of the same nature ; and application can only mean the method by which you set this or that piece of the self-acting machinery in motion. A monomaniac is a good example of this. Introduce, directly or indirectly, any allusion to, say, bimetall- ism, and the machinery is set in motion. He will talk wisely and at length upon the subject, but the whole process has been set up and goes on independently of his control. This is no exaggeration, it is simply the logical outcome of any theory which makes ideas, their combina- tion and their inter-action the sole elements of the mental life ; the stream of conscious- ness is a stream over which we have no EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION in control ; it may divert this way or that, bifurcate at this or that point, but it moves on without our regulation, and its diverting or bifurcating are determined wholly by external influences. We may grant with Herbart that the child has at first no will, that he is swayed hither and thither by every given impulse, that he acts upon the presentation of any new object or idea in this mechanical way ; but the mere adding on of idea to idea, the making more and more extensive the circle of ideas only perfects the machinery along certain directed lines. If you begin by conceiving the mental life in this mechanical way, mental progress can only mean the making more perfect and more complete the machinery, and we must con- ceive of the educators function as one of skilfully building up the fabric of know- ledge, and that is all. The child's will is weak in early youth, because the means necessary for the at- tainment of its ends is relatively weak. His curiosity is boundless, but his stock of ideas by which to interpret this world of wonder is insufficient for the purpose. The teacher's function is not merely to -J 112 HERBART add to the knowledge of the child, but to direct and control this purposed activity. Strength of will is strength of purpose, and this is not a function varying with / the varying width and extent of our system of ideas. In fact, the opposite is more truly the case in actual experience. Singleness of aim and strength of purpose depend on the narrowing of our aims and the limiting of our knowledge to one particular sphere. Along with this over-valuing of instruc- tion we have the under-estimation, and, in some cases, the almost total neglect of formal studies in the work of education, and the denial of the worth of such studies in the training of the mind and in the formation of character. This is the only logical outcome of a theory which holds that knowledge is a mere collection of facts bound together by one single kind of bond. It is best exemplified in the development of the theory by Ziller. Insisting on the fact that the aim of education is ethical, and following out the presupposition of the Herbartian psy- chology that the one and only way to reach this result is by means of instruc- EDUCATIONAL APPLICATION 113 tion, by adding knowledge to know- ledge, the question comes to be for Ziller, what subject or subjects have most moral content, and are on that account best suited for character- building? History and literature, of course, answer these tests, and so become the core round which all other instruction is centred. Hence also it follows that since a knowledge of nature is not directly or intrinsically moral, science and nature-studies are relegated to a sub- ordinate place in the school curriculum. Moreover, since abstract science, and mathematics in particular, besides having no direct moral content as regards their subject-matter, do not increase our store of knowledge to any great extent, this furnishes an additional reason for regard- ing these subjects as of only secondary importance in the work of Education. Now, in this contention of the Herbar- tians that humanistic subjects, dealing as they do with the thoughts and actions of men and women, have greater educational value in the work of forming moral charac- ter than naturalistic studies, there is much truth intermingled with much error. And the truth is the truth for reasons of a kind H