Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/151

Rh the effect and the evidence of operations limited to the sensorial ganglia; and that such operations have no tendency, however they may be complicated or prolonged, to excite those functions of the cerebrum which are the peculiar attributes of humanity.

Our brief remaining space must be devoted to an examination of the effects of sensational learning, both as it exists in most schools for the poor, and also in the form, more or less modified, which may be found in other institutions.

Physiologically speaking, the effect of purely sensational learning will be to stimulate the nutrition and increase the vigor of the sensorial tract at the expense of neighboring and related organs. As we have seen, the sensorium has a natural tendency to predominance in the encephalon; and this tendency will be increased in every way, absolutely by direct excitation, and relatively by neglect of the intellect and volition. The sensations by which the stimulus has been given will not be long remembered, being superseded by fresh ones arising out of events, as the apparatus of the gymnasium would be superseded by the instruments of actual conflict. With the exception of being, perhaps, able to read with labor, and to write with difficulty, the pupils must not be expected, six months after leaving school, to possess any traces of their "education" beyond an invigorated sensorium and a stunted intelligence.

Now, when it is remembered that present sensations are the source of the least exalted kinds of animal gratification, and that sensations, either present, or remembered, or conceived, when combined with a feeling of pleasure or pain, constitute the emotions which so powerfully influence human conduct, it must be admitted that the sensorium is at least the seat of development of those passions and propensities which society, for its own good, is compelled to keep in check, and which every consideration of right teaches individuals to subdue. When, therefore, we reflect upon the operation of predominant emotions in producing, among other evils, chorea, hysteria, epilepsy, and insanity, or when we consider the aggregate of misery produced, especially among the lower orders, by the unbridled indulgence of various appetites, we cannot altogether concur in the propriety of a system of education which has a direct tendency to raise the source of these emotions and appetites to an undue and unnatural prominence in the organism. In our own experience we have met with so many examples of what may be called habitual non-reflection in young people who had been six months before among the most glib and fluent pupils at a sensational school, that we fancy that we can recognize a kind of stupidity thus induced, and that we can readily distinguish it from any thing at all similar that is purely natural.

We should be disposed, on the whole, to seek the rationale of many educational failures rather in a partial and misdirected training of the intelligence, than in its complete suppression. The pupils