Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/868

846 relations of things—in other words, treating something or other as if it stood apart, in no kind of dependence on anything else. How many such acts would be avoided by the simple reflection that such and such a thing must have had a cause, or that it is sure to have a consequence! How many, by no more profound or acute exercise of thought than is involved in recognizing that a thing can not both be and not be at the same time! How many, by some simple consideration of time, place, or quantity! How many, by a mere question as to the meaning of a word!

One of the main points in education, therefore, ought to be, as it seems to us, to form the habit of treating everything as the possible subject of a great number of questions, some of which at least must be asked and answered before the thing can be, in any true sense, understood. Habit is everything, and if the habit of asking questions, arranged under certain categories, could once be formed, the victory of intelligence over mental inertia would be secured. It is probable that not a little harm is done in the education of the young by unduly appealing to the sense of wonder. Wonder is essentially a stupid emotion; it certainly is the one that stupid people are most eager to gratify. The object of wonder stands alone, challenging attention as being something out of the ordinary course of things. But just in proportion as wonder is excited is rational inquiry discouraged. People do not want to have the marvelous so explained as to bring it into the category of natural and necessary phenomena. From the days of Anaxagoras, who got into trouble for propounding a physical theory of the sun, down to our own time, men have resented explanations of what they have chosen to consider beyond or above explanation. In lieu of wonder, however, we may very usefully stimulate curiosity; and this may be done in a general way by representing everything as leading us on, if properly considered, to views and truths beyond itself—as having its own "aura," as the physicists sometimes say, of force or influence, and certain related objects with which it maintains constant communication.

The successful teacher will be he who, whatever his subject may be, knows best how to present things in their relations; who deals not with unconnected units, but with the vitally connected parts of some organic system of knowledge; and who himself is penetrated by a sense of the interdependence of the truths or propositions that form the matter of his teaching. It ought to be possible to make all instruction subserve the purpose of stimulating thought, of giving to every mind a free activity of its own. The thinking that is required for an intelligent direction of the ordinary concerns of life is not abstruse thinking; it is, on the contrary, in nine cases out of ten, if not in a much larger proportion still, essentially commonplace thinking. We hear from time to time much foolish disparagement of theory as opposed to practice; but there is just this much foundation for the popular prejudice on the subject, that brilliant theoricianstheoreticians [sic] are occasionally apt to overlook the simpler and more ordinary aspects of the matters with which they deal; while plain, plodding men, if intent on business, will at least guard the points that most commonly present themselves, and will thus, in the majority of cases, bring things to a successful issue. Educational effort should be most distinctly bent upon giving every human being the habit of asking questions as a preparation for action. The questions need not in most cases be asked of others: it is often enough to raise and distinctly face them; then the answer comes of itself. We have had too many examinations in which the mind is put to a strain, and too little work of the kind involving no strain, but simply tending to keep the mind in a healthy condition of activity