beyond its influence. Direct search for causes on the part of the pupil himself is the best exercise in this, but a strict adherence to chains of causation by the teacher in his teaching is invaluable. In this, as in moral training, experience has demonstrated that more may be accomplished by the power of example than by direct instruction. As a matter of fact, this teaching by example is now recognized as the most efficient means of imparting elementary instruction in morals. It takes advantage of the imitative instinct, which, all-powerful in some of the lower animals, is still very strong in man, and especially in children.

Having acquired a habit of close and intelligent observation, the child must next be encouraged to describe what he'sees and hears, and to do so with thorough accuracy. This is a difficult thing to induce a young child to do, because of his vivid imagination and his fondness for exaggeration. These tendencies can be held in check, however, by keeping before him the object of which he is giving an account, and comparing each statement as it is made with the object. It is also desirable that his account be clear, concise, grammatical, and coherent. Verbal correction is, of course, useful, but nothing will develop the above desirable characteristics so rapidly and effectually as composition writing, when the child is old enough to begin this, under careful supervision.

That this early exercise in careful observation and its accurate expression is of genuine importance to the subsequent mental development receives additional proof from the study of the early training of men who have afterward made their mark in the exact sciences. Very' positive testimony may be found in the life of Agassiz (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1886, Vol. I, p. 3, et seq.). We read there that that love of natural history which marked the great naturalist showed itself in very early life, and that while yet a small boy he had his collections of fishes, birds, rabbits, and other animals, whose families he raised with the greatest care. "His pet animals suggested questions, to answer which was the task of his life, and his intimate study of the fresh-water fishes of Europe, later the subject of one of his important works, began with his first collection from the lake of Morat" (p. 4). Agassiz was also given to amusing himself with all manner of handicrafts when a little fellow.

While yet young he could cut and put together a well-fitting pair of shoes for his sisters' dolls, was no bad tailor, and could make a miniature barrel that was perfectly water tight. He remembered these trivial facts as a valuable part of his incidental education. He said he owed much of his dexterity in manipulating to the training of eye and hand gained in these childish plays. (Pp. 4,5.)

The several intellectual processes, it must be remembered, present themselves in infinite complexity, and they are intimately connected. No state of consciousness, even in the pupil, is absolutely simple. It contains an admixture of two or more processes of knowledge. And this fact makes the teacher's work more difficult than ever. It would be comparatively easy to lay down rules first for the training of the at tention, then for the training of the sense-perception, and so on, if we

could presuppose their individual and unimpeded development. Some writers on pedagogics express themselves as if this was the case. But the facts are very different. Mind develops as a whole, though various phases of it predominate at various times, and it is not pulled out like a telescope, each section of which takes its proper place before its successor is set in motion. The teacher has therefore to thread his way cautiously through the ways of mental phenomena presented to him and make provision for all the separate influences which he finds at work. Since the development of mind is gradual no date can be set at which the power of conception or judgment will emerge from some fancied prison and begin its course. The more complex phenomena appear very gradually and quietly from the simpler. Yet experience shows that certain periods may be roughly determined, during which some one mental operation with its peculiar capacities and impulses is in the fore-ground. One of the most suggestive of these mappings out of periods in the pupils is that of Beneke. He finds four periods. The first extends to the end of the third year; during this time instinct and the sense activity are prominent. The second period extends from the end of the third to the end of the seventh year; during this time the internal, mental activity asserts itself and increases until it about balances the activity of sense-memory, and imagination develops and conscious design takes the place of instructive impulse. The third period extends from the end of the seventh to that of the fourteenth year; now the purely mental activity increases rapidly, it frees itself more and more from sense, and develops a tendency to abstraction and thought. The fourth period extends from the end of the fourteenth year to the close of school life, and sees the completer development of the higher powers and forms the transition to adult life and independent intellectual and moral activity. Pfisterer, in his Pädogogische Psychologie, proceeds on a division of mental life somewhat more elaborate than that of Beneke. He distinguishes the suckling age, the age of childhood, the age of boyhood and girlhood, and the period of youth. The suckling age embraces the first year of life, and is characterized by the ascendency of instinct, bodily life, and sense. The age of childhood ends at seven, and in the beginnings of self-consciousness are manifest though the outer world is still engrossing. The period of boyhood and girlhood closes with the fourteenth year, and is the period of elementary instruction. The period of youth, corresponding closely with the fourth period of Beneke, follows. Brief experience or a moment's reflection will show that these schemes are valuable, not for what they assert, but for what they suggest. They are based on psychology, but a theoretical psychology. They approximate the truth, but laws to which no exception is allowed must not be founded upon them. The thoughtful teacher will use and not abuse the suggestions which they

convey.

But is intellect all of mind? Are there no other sides of psychical

activity? Psychology answers: You have taken no notice of feeling and willing, of the emotional and the active sides of mind; you have spoken only of the cognitive. Of course, feeling and activity exist, and indeed far surpass in importance the cognitive powers, during the early years of babyhood and childhood. They enter into every fibre of our being. No cognitive act is without its pleasure or pain, nor without its influence, remote it may be, on some future activity. The training of the will is the forming of character, the chief end of all education. It occupies the first and foremost place in all pedagogy. The training of the emotions is only less important. The sense feelings, the egoistic and altruistic sentiments, the intellectual, moral and religious sentiments, the aesthetic emotions, the cultivation of taste, fall under this head, and the mere mention of these topics is sufficient to indicate how impossible it would be to treat them in our present compass.

It remains, then, to ask what hint psychology gives as to the ideal in education. What is the aim of it all? What is its deepest significance? To this question psychology gives a two-fold answer, one direct, the other indirect. The first reply is that man must be developed as an end in himself and to participate in the fullest life of the race. The second reply is indirect and comes through ethics, for which psychology furnishes the foundation-sound judgment, proper feeling, right action. But the same psychology that places this same goal before us all, tells us unmistakably that we can not all reach it in the same degree. Our endowments are qualitatively alike, quantitatively different. No perfect human mind is without the power to know, to feel, and to will, but no two minds have these powers in equal degree. Mathematics takes four elements and proves conclusively that the number of their permutations and combinations are limited. Each one of them can be determined. Nature's methods are far different. The four influences of the original capacity, hereditary tendency, natural environment, and social environment combine to form countless millions of minds, no two alike. We may be born free and equa before the law, but we are not born free and equal mentally. Each has his own talents and each his own corresponding duties and responsibilities. That each is accountable for his abilities and for no more and no less than his abilities the parable of the talents illustrates. He who had five talents was not required to return the product of ten, nor was he who had two punished because he returned less than he who had five. Each was accountable for his own. And this is the teaching of psychology, and of ethics through psychology, as to the aim in education. It is the best, alike for all, and yet to no two the same. We are not to envy others, not to despair because we cannot reach their level. Our proportionate ideal is within reach of each of us.

When we are hearing so much of the power of reason and mind, and when the one goal of perfect knowledge and absolute command over nature is being emphasized by some philosophers as that which is to be

reached by all men alike, it were well to remember that there are limits to what the mind can accomplish. It were well to recall the fact that in the eighteenth century the extreme claims made for the reason resulted in exposing the whole fabric of knowledge to the bitter attack of the most thorough-going skepticism that the world has ever seen, and that in consequence the most powerful thinker of modern times made it his chief aim to demonstrate, not the power, but the weakness of human reason; for in this way could he perform the greatest service alike to philosophy and to science. Amiel, whose mysticism is remarkable for its subtle psychological analysis and its profound philosophic insight, emphasizes the moral and religious aspects of this truth in his Journal Intime (p. 83). These are his words:

We must learn to look upon life as an apprenticeship to a progressive renunciation, a perpetual diminution of our pretensions, our hopes, our powers, and our liberty. The circle grows narrower aud narrower; we begin with being eager to learn everything, to see everything, to tame and conquer everything, and in all directions we reach our limit, non plus ultra. Fortune, glory, love, power, wealth, happiness, long life, all these blessings which have been possessed by other men seem at first promised and accessible to us, and then we have to put away one dream after another to make ourselves small and humble, to submit to feel ourselves limited, feeble, dependent, ignorant, and poor, and to throw ourselves upon God for all, recognizing our own worthlessness, and that we have no right to anything. It is in this nothingness that we recover something of life; the divine spark is there at the bottom of it. Resignation comes to us, and, in believing love, we reconquer the true greatness.

Psychology is Amiel's warrant for this beautiful passage. It teaches a lesson too little incorporated in education. But no education can be complete which, dwelling on the strength and power and capacity of mind, fails to point out its weakness, its dependence, and its limitations. The well-trained intellect, and the well-moulded character are no longer dogmatic, and they are no longer skeptical. Least of all, are they positive. The truest strength of mind is found in the recognition of its limitations.

DISCUSSION.

D. L. KIEHLE. Ladies and Gentlemen: If I were to fulfil the appointment made for me on this programme, I would feel bound to ask the president to make a supplementary explanation, and that I be allowed to discuss a question that has not been presented in the paper. However, I shall not insist upon that; Ishall merely say that I will not discuss the subject as assigned to me on the paper. I shall only take occasion to make a few remarks suggested by the paper and by such experience as I have had in the department of education. I agree with and heartily approve the doctrine laid down in this paper. I believe no system of education worthy the name unless it be based in intelligent and learned psychology.

Now, with regard to the application of this doctrine, I observe first, that we are undertaking a discussion in the subject of education some

what like that in medicine, for there have been those who question whether there is a science of medicine. Yet we agree, that while there is some empiricism there is a science. So in the subject of education, while there is empiricism, there is more and more a re ulation of the laws of education. We have observed this in the laws of medicine, that a man may be well informed in the department of anatomy and medicine, and yet be a miserably poor doctor. He may know all about the anatomy of the patient, and when called doesn't know what to do. It is equally true with regard to the subject of psychology. There is such a thing as knowing all about the science of psychology, and yet when the learned psychologist is brought into the presence of the children, he doesn't know what to do with it any more than he would with a sick baby.

I have known of teachers who, when discoursing upon the subject of psychology, before a class of students, showed themselves utterly oblivious to the forty or fifty boys who were listening to the maxim under discussion. What is true of medicine and true of a man who may be learned in the subject of psychology may be also true of a teacher. He may have learned a vast amount of psychological science, and yet know nothing about teaching or the application of it. The psychologist who will know something about the psychology of a boy must look a boy over and not a book about a boy. Therefore I urge this point, that our normal schools, or whoever else has anything to do with the training of teachers must see to it that they must instruct in the thing itself and not in the book about the thing. Our young teachers in our normal schools who are receiving instruction must be trained in the alphabet at least in the subject of psychology. I have seen the work done in normal schools in such a way from a text-book, that it never occurred to those teachers that there was any object that corresponded to the word "lesson" and "recite."

Now in regard to the work to be done: the leaders of education certainly ought to be psychologists; they ought to lay out the lines broad and see that the training is in the right direction. With regard to our elementary teachers, the rank and file, I don't think I would make psychologists of them. I would have them given some good commonschool ideas, such as has been suggested in the paper, in the alphabet objectively, in the alphabet of psychology, so that they will teach intelligently and yet not professionally. I expect some day we shall have a science of hygiene, which every mother and every boardinghouse keeper will be required to understand. I suppose that they ought to understand what the tendency of food is, and just about how much food a person should have, but in the mean time Providence has so arranged it, in order to continue the race at all, that the body itself assimilates about as much as it wants, and throws off the remainder. And it is also provided in the home, that the mother, without very much scientific knowledge, has a spiritual instinct when the baby has