lyric, and dramatic forms; comedy and tragedy; the personages of the great poems types of human character; the education of the people chiefly through the vicarious experiences of literary CHAPTER XXXIX.—The Psychology of Science and Philoso- § 235. Science systematized results of observation; particular objects having the form of time reveal only a portion of their poten- tialities at a given moment; experience gradually gathers all the phases together in the definition of the object: (a) science learns to see each thing in the perspective of its history; (b) education in science gives directive power to the labourer. § 236. The three stages of science: (1) inventorying; (2) study of interrelations; (3) comparative history of the science; (a) and (b) the nature of a fact; it is a relative synthesis, including less or more according to the intelligence of the thinker who thinks it; (c) the entire fact to Aristotle would be the entirety of all facts. § 237. Philosophy investigates the presuppositions of existence; it seeks a first prin- ciple. § 238. Natural science points toward philosophy as a sort of science of sciences. § 239. Philosophy finds the principle of causality transcendent―i. e., it contains as its nucleus origination or self-activity; philosophy does not inventory anything, it as- sumes the inventory already made, and tries to explain it by the first principle. § 240. Philosophy not a science of things in gen- eral, but a special kind of knowledge—namely, of the general forms found in the world by the several sciences, and the relation of these general forms of existence to the first principle. § 241. All philos- ophies imply the same first principle, no matter what name is given to it; call it X, and it is assumed as originating all that exists through its own activity, and hence must be self-active: (a) the evolution theory in its positive aspect; (b) in its negative aspect. § 242. To pass from intellect to will-i. e., from theory to practice-requires a philosophic activity of the mind, because deliberation must be arrested, the case must be closed before the will acts; the philo- sophic activity is one which closes the inventory and assumes that all the facts are in, and then passes judgment regarding their bearing on the question; if the mind kept always in the scientific attitude, it would never act; (a) the bearing of the facts as a whole is seen by a survey which is taken by the philosophic attitude of the mind; (b), (c) science in its third stage becomes philosoph- Price, $1.50, postpaid. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK, .. BOSTON, ... CHICAGO. PSYCHOLOGIC FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION. INTRODUCTION. 81. It is said that the teacher needs to know psychology because it is his business to educate the mind. And it is true that in his vocation he is constantly occupied with a critical observation of the mind in a few of its aspects. For this is necessary in order to manage a school successfully. The teacher must observe the pupil's grasp of the topic of his lesson. He must interpret the pupil's behaviour by such knowledge as he can attain of his disposition and the spirit of his intentions; he must assign lessons of a length suited to the mental capacities which he knows his pupils to possess; he must grade them in classes according to his knowledge of those capacities; he must arrange a course of study in accordance with the laws of mental development. § 2. If the teacher knows nothing of psychology 1 as a science, he must copy in detail the methods of others, and rely on his general knowledge of human nature derived from experience. Like all uneducated workmen, he may succeed after a sort by following tradition unaided by science, but he will not develop beyond a narrow degree of perfection in details. He will have no insight into the general relations of his work. He can not safely deviate from routine, nor venture to criticise his own work or the work of others. If he has learned good models, he may pass for a good teacher; if he has learned bad ones, he is unable to perceive their defects. Possessing no scientific knowledge of the mind, he can not lift himself above the details of his art to the principles which govern them, and become himself an original source of directive energy. Some knowledge of the mind every successful teacher must have, although in so many cases it is unsystematic, and consequently unscientific. Ordinary experience differs from science through its lack of completeness and consistency. It is fragmentary and disconnected. Science compensates the inequalities of individual experience by re-enforcing it with the aggregate of all other experiences. § 3. Psychology is of two kinds: empirical and rational. |