Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/89

 first present mental science in clear groupings! We may call the world one, but it has many phases; the mind is one, but it has many phases; these are more or less correlated, and our theory of educational values stands. We know that interest is the sine qua non of success in education, and nothing is more beneficent than the emphasis given this fact to-day. We also know that pleasure is not the only, not even the most valuable, interest; and that the disagreeable character of a study is not always a criterion for its rejection. The pleasure theory will hardly overcome the importance of a symmetrical education.

In regard to some things, however, some of us must be permitted to move slowly. We must use the principle of "apperception," and interpret the new in the light of that which has for a long time been familiar—attach it to the "apperception mass"; we must be indulged in our right to use the "culture-epoch" theory and advance by degrees from the barbaric stage to that of deeper insight; we must "concentrate" (concentre) with established doctrines other doctrines that present large claims, and learn their "correlations" and "coördinations."

A new object or idea must be related to and explained by the knowledge already in mind; it must be so placed and known, or it is not an idea for us. If "apperception" means the act of explaining a new idea by the whole conscious content of the child's mind, then it is the recognized process of all mental growth. In a given study, topics must be arranged in logical order, facts must be so organized as to constitute a consistent whole; important relations with other studies must be noted, and one subject must