Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/577

Rh and in its highest form, Mr. Spencer was drawn to its study in the aspect of growth, and as an endowment of growing organisms. Mind, as conditioned by a nervous substratum and unfolding with it—the genesis of the psychical faculties in all grades of organic manifestation—the law of mental progression from the lowest to the highest animate creatures—these were the problems that absorbed his attention. They were considered in various detached papers, but the subject was also dealt with elaborately and systematically in his treatise on the "Principles of Psychology," published in 1855. Mental phenomena were here first methodically elucidated from the evolution point of view. The development of intelligence was traced upward through the organic series from its lowest rudimental forms through successively higher complications, with the view of determining how the highest forms are produced and the highest intelligence constituted. Ascending from reflex action in the lowest types up through instinct, memory, reason, feelings, and the will, Mr. Spencer then reversed the course of inquiry, and showed by subjective analysis how the highest intelligence may be resolved, step by step, from its most complex into its simplest elements. The work was throughout so original and so closely reasoned as to make an epoch in the advance of mental science; and John Stuart Mill declared it to be "the finest example we possess of the psychological method in its full power."

Thus occupied in working out the laws of mental unfolding, it was impossible that Mr. Spencer's thoughts should not have been strongly attracted at this time to the subject of education. Descended from a race of schoolmasters, skillfully taught by his father and uncle on rational principles, and alive to the gross deficiencies of current teaching, he was predisposed to take an interest in all questions of mental cultivation. But the special direction of his studies now forced the subject upon him in a new and most important aspect. Education as a leading out of the faculties is essentially a problem of the growth of the faculties; and no new light could be thrown upon the processes and order of mental evolution without at once and powerfully affecting the practice of the art of education.

Spencer's "Education," produced at this period, was written from the point of view here indicated. It contains no formal statement of the evolution theory, but it conforms to the main doctrine throughout. The key-note and controlling idea of the book is, that Nature has a method of intellectual, moral, and physical development, which should afford the guiding principles of all teaching. The book is a plea for nature in education, and a protest against tutorial aggression, and meddlesome overdoing on the part of teachers and parents. The chapter on "Intellectual Education," which was written first and published in 1854, treats of school processes in relation to the law of development of the faculties as it takes place naturally. Education is regarded as rightly carried on only when it aids the process of self-development, and it is urged that the course of study in all cases followed should be from the simple to the complex, from the indefinite to the definite, from the concrete to the abstract, and from the empirical to the rational, in harmony with the course of evolution at large. In the chapter on "Moral Education" the subject is again regarded from the point of view of natural development. The general truth here insisted upon is, that the natural rewards and restraints of conduct are those which are most appropriate and effectual in modifying character. The principle contended for is that the moral education of every child should be regarded as an adaptation of its nature to the circumstances of life; and that, to become adapted to these circumstances, it must be allowed to come in contact with them; must be allowed to suffer the pains, and obtain the pleasures, which do, in the order of nature, follow certain kinds of action. "Physical Education" is again an argument from the biological side for the unhindered development of the bodily powers against the artificial restraints and repressions of school regulation; and it maintains that, during the earlier portion of life in which the main thing to be done is to grow and develop, our educational system is much too exacting. The last essay written, "What Knowledge is of Most Worth" (1859), is placed first in