Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/415

Rh The introduction of narratives, stirring incidents, and topics of human interest generally, is chiefly a mode of pleasurable recreation. If taken in any other view, it falls under some of the leading studies, and engages the memory, the judgment, or the constructive power, and must be estimated accordingly.

Bodily training, fine art (itself an aggregate of alternations), language, science, do not exhaust all the varieties of acquirement, but they indicate the chief departments whose alternation gives relief to the mental strain, and economizes power in the whole. Under these, as already hinted, there are variations of attitude and exercise; from listening to repeating, from learning a rule, to the application of it in new cases, from knowledge generally to practice.

The transition from one language to another, being a variation in the nature of the impressions, is a relief of an inferior kind, yet real. It is the more so, if we are not engaged in parallel exercises; learning strings of Latin words in the morning, and of German in the evening, does not constitute any relief.

From one science to another, the transition may be great, as already shown, or it may be small. From botany to zoölogy affords a transition of material, with similarity in form. Pure and mixed mathematics are the very same thing. The change from algebra to geometry is but slightly refreshing; from geometry to trigonometry, and geometrical conic sections, is no relief to any faculty.

There are minor incidents of relief and alternation that are not to be despised. Passing from one master to another (both being supposed competent) is a very sensible and grateful change; even the change of room, of seat, of posture, is an antidote against weariness, and helps us in making a fresh start. The jaded student relishes a change of books even in the same subject, the alteration from solitude to company.

Some subjects are in themselves so mixed, that they would appear to contain the elements of a sufficiently various occupation of the mind; such are geography, history, and what is called literature, when studied both for expression and for subject-matter. This variety, however, is not altogether a desirable thing. The analytic branch of the science of education would have to resolve those aggregates into their constituent parts, and consider not only their respective contributions to our mental culture, but also the advantages and disadvantages attending the mixture.

—The laws attainable in the departments of emotion and volition are the immediate prelude to moral education, in which all the highest difficulties culminate. There are emotional and volitional forces prior to any cultivation, and there are new forces that arise through cultivation; yet from the vagueness attaching to the measured intensity of feelings and emotions, it is not easy to value the separate results.