Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/660

642 factors in the upward world-movement which saves us from the stagnation of the relentless law of habit.

But habits, like systems, have their good side. They enable us to do a vast number of actions with the minimum of attention and the least expenditure of nervous energy. Education consists largely, as has been said, in making habitual as many good actions as possible. The training of domestic animals is purely the formation of good habits; the training of children is largely so. Every time we form a good association and send it down into the region of the unconscious, we practice mental economy. Habits, therefore, are at the same time our salvation and our damnation. This is the great dilemma in education. Extremists like Rousseau, impressed with the danger of habits, condemned them all outright. Perhaps we may say that it is the abuse of habits, the falling into fatal ruts, that constitutes our prevailing sin.

The laws of prejudice that we have examined naturally suggest one or two questions. Is there any escape from this narrowing of mind that accompanies the hardening of the brain? If not, are there any pedagogical principles the application of which in educational systems may retard the involution and hasten the evolution movement? It is not my purpose to attempt to answer these questions here; but, if the first one must be answered in the negative, the latter may certainly be answered in the affirmative. Our psychological principles have already shown us the direction in which the solution of this problem must be sought. There must be persistent emphasis of the objective factor of knowledge. The senses, the primal source of all our. knowledge, must be kept open and alert. This is vastly more difficult than at first appears. The man prejudiced by his interests has his eyes and ears open, and yet, being open, they are shut. More than twenty centuries ago an old Greek philosopher said, "Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men having rude souls." To escape mental bias, we must not only have our senses open to the outer world, but we must apperceive this world as it is, not as warped by our receptive faculties. But, however excellent this advice, it is as impossible for us with minds already formed to follow it as to see the ultra red or violet colors with our eyes constituted as they are. The remedy is to be found in education, especially of the young. Fortunately, we live in an epoch of objective education. The training of the senses, thanks to the labors of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and their disciples, and thanks to the retroactive influence of the physical sciences, is now the great central thought in pedagogical systems. Unfortunately, it is still too largely theory and too little practice. In our primary as well as in our secondary schools we slip back too easily into the lazy scholastic, deductive methods. The tendency, however, is the other way.