Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/749

Rh by the training. But it is not needful to multiply examples; the proposition will be granted to be true, in a general way at any rate, although it has been pointed out by many that it does not hold absolutely, in the sense that the power developed by one special line of work can be used as well to perform other kinds as the particular kind by which the power is accumulated. That is, to illustrate, a blacksmith can not use his strength so advantageously in farming or carpentry as in making horseshoes, or performing other kinds of labor common to the forge and anvil.

This reference to physical things is important for us here only in illustration of certain theories that have been, and are still perhaps, extensively held concerning the development of the mind, and that have been largely influential in determining the material and method of elementary education. Reasoning from analogy, which seems to have been the principal method followed by early psychologists, it would appear that exercising any part or faculty of the mind in a given direction would create a power in the part exercised that could be employed with equal advantage in all directions. Thus if memory were employed in recalling and retaining any kind of facts—whether in language, in science, in mathematics, or in history—there would result a general power which in later life could be profitably used to remember anything and everything that was desired. It would follow, then, that if a pupil should master the vocabulary of a language so that it could be recalled readily, he would because of the power thus generated more easily remember legal matters after he left the school if he became a lawyer, medical matters if he became a physician, commercial matters if he became a merchant, or theological matters if he became a minister of the gospel. In the same way, and perhaps in a more serious sense even, if a pupil should pass some time in reasoning upon any kind of material in the schoolroom, he would thereby be prepared to reason accurately and readily upon all sorts of things after he left the school, just to the degree that he reasoned accurately and keenly upon the special thing in the school. The conclusion rushes upon us that if you wish men and women to be reflective beings, judging wisely upon all matters with which they may be concerned in daily life, you should require boys and girls to reason much in school; and that kind of material of instruction should be chosen that gives the greatest opportunity for the exercise of the ratiocinative faculty. Until recently—perhaps we ought to include our own time—this material was supposed to have been most largely comprised in mathematics; and as reason has been regarded as the highest faculty