Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/413

Rh is simply laborious to the indulgence of a taste or liking, is the fruition of life. To emerge from constraint to liberty, from the dark to the light, from monotony to variety, from giving to receiving, is the exchanging of pain for pleasure. This, which is the substantial reward of labor, is also the condition of renovating the powers for further labor and endurance.

To come closer to the difficulty in hand. The kind of change that may take place within the field of study itself, and that may operate both as a relief from strain and as the reclamation of waste ground, is best exemplified in such matters as these: In the act of learning generally there is a twofold attitude—observing what is to be done, and doing it. In verbal exercises, we first listen and then repeat; in handicraft, we look at the model, and then reproduce it. Now, the proportioning of the two attitudes is a matter of economical adjustment. If we are kept too long on the observing stretch, we lose the energy for acting; not to mention that more has been given us than we are able to realize. On the other hand, we should observe long enough to be quite saturated with the impression; we should have enough given us to be worthy of our reproducing energy. Any one working from a model at command learns the suitable proportion between observing and doing. The living teacher may err on either side. He may give too much at one dose; this is the common error. He may also dole out insignificantly small portions, which do not evoke the sense of power in the pupils.

When an arduous combination is once struck out, the worst is over, but the acquisition is not completed. There is the further stage of repetition and practice, to give facility, and insure permanence. This is comparatively easy. It is the occupation of the soldier after his first year. There is a plastic process still going on, but it is not the same draft upon the forces as the original struggles. At this stage, other acquirements are possible, and should be made. Now, in the course of training, it is a relief to pass from the exercises that are entirely new and strange, to those that have been practised and need only to be continued and confirmed.

Before considering the alternations of departments of acquisition, we may advert to the two different intellectual energies called, respectively, Memory and Judgment. These are in every way distinct, and in passing from the one to the other there is a real, and not merely an apparent, transition. Memory is nearly identical with the retentive, adhesive, or plastic faculty, which I have assumed to be perhaps the most costly employment of the powers of the mind and brain. Judgment, again, may be simply an exercise of discrimination; it may also involve similarity and identification; it may further contain a constructive operation. It is the aspect of our intellectual power that turns to account our existing impressions, as contrasted with the power that adds to our accumulated stores. The most