might very well be left to themselves. There would be no need of educating or even governing them. It is the purpose of instruction to give the right direction to their thoughts and impulses, to incline these toward the morally good and true. Children are thus in a measure passive. But this passivity should by no means involve a suppression of self-activity. It should, on the contrary, imply a stimulation of all that is best in the child. (4: §71.)

Herbart, Pestalozzi, and Rousseau on many-sidedness. Herbart rejected Pestalozzian development of faculties. Herbart's formulation of many-sided training in terms of interests avoids many of the difficulties of Pestalozzi's “harmonious development of all the faculties" which has been criticized and rejected by many psychologists. One of Herbart's greatest contributions to educational psychology was his rejection of the "faculty psychology" and the “formal-disciplinary" conception of education based on it. Recent discussions (notably the next to the last chapter in E. L. Thorndike's Principles of Teaching," 1906) have revived the criticism of the disciplinary theory of education which was dominant during the nineteenth century under the influence of the Pestalozzians. The problem is so involved that we shall not try to present the criticisms here, but shall quote a brief paragraph from Herbart to suggest his position. The statement is so abstract, however, that the student need not worry if he cannot understand it.

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It is an error, indeed, to look upon the human soul as an aggregate of all sorts of faculties; but this error only becomes worse when, as is usually done, the statement is added that faculties are at bottom one and the same active principle. The traditional terms should rather be employed to distinguish mental phenomena that present themselves to experience as successively predominant. (4: § 20.)

Herbart's formulation a guide to subject matter, Rousseau's a guide to method. When we compare Rousseau's formulation of many-sided culture, in terms of the cultivation of instincts and capacities, with Herbart's formulation in terms of abiding interests, we find that each one has its advantages.

Rousseau's formulation has the advantage of focusing the attention on the actual inborn tendencies in the child, saying, "Here is a wealth of raw material, from it we will build our many-sided individual." Herbart did not emphasize so clearly these inborn starting points. He examined, rather, the complex social life in which the adult must participate, and said, "We find that these are the interests which are appropriate for the cultivated man, let us make them the ends in education." While this point of view does not furnish so clearly defined a starting point for instruction as does Rousseau's analysis of the child's inborn tendencies to activity, it furnishes a more valid basis for the selection and rejection of subject matter. Herbart's formulation furnishes a better criterion for determining what the final product of education should be— what are the activities for which the educated man should be trained. Rousseau's formulation furnishes a better psychological basis for determining the methods to be used in attaining these ends.

Subject matter. Herbart's analysis in terms of interests.— Herbart applied his formulation of the aim of instruction to outlining the subject matter of instruction in terms of interests. Most educational theorists have made some such analysis of experience to obtain the fundamentally different kinds of material. For example, Pestalozzi's classification was into language, number, and form as including the essential elements in elementary education. Herbert Spencer furnishes another example in his essay entitled "What Knowledge is most Worth" (1859), where he enters into an analysis of life's activities and divides them into the following classes: (1) those related to preserving life and health; (2) vocational activities, or those related to earning a living; (3) domestic activities, or those related to family duties and care of children; (4) social and political activities; (5) leisure activities, art, etc. Education, according to Spencer, should prepare for these various lines of activity.

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Herbart's analysis of subject matter in terms of typical human interests is shown in the following classification:

Interests related to

experiences with things.

1. Empirical interest; observation of things.

2. Speculative interest; reflection about natural laws.

3. Esthetic interest; contemplation of and feeling for the beautiful.

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Herbart in his Outlines

Interests related to

experiences with people.

4. Sympathetic interest; kindly disposition toward people.

5. Social interest; participation in public affairs.

6. Religious interest; contemplation of human destiny.

introduces these six types of

interest in the following paragraph:

Instruction is to be linked to the knowledge that experience provides, and to the ethical sentiments that arise from social intercourse. Empirical interest relates directly to experience [with things], sympathetic interest to human association. Discursive reflection on the objects of experience involves the development of speculative interest, reflection on the wider relations of society [involves the development] of social interest. With these we group, on the one hand æsthetic, on the other religious interest, both of which have their origin not so much in discursive thought as in a non-progressive contemplation of things and human destiny. (4: §83.)

The many-sided aim of education is stated by Herbart in relation to these six classes of interests as follows:

We cannot expect to see all of these interests unfold equally in every individual; but among a number of pupils we may confidently look for them all. The demand for many-sidedness will accordingly be satisfied the better, the nearer the single individual likewise approaches a state of mental culture in which all these kinds of interest are active with equal energy. When observation, reflection, the sense of beauty, sympathy, public spirit, and religious aspiration have once been awakened, although perhaps only within a small range of objects, the farther extension over a greater number and variety of objects must be left largely to the individual and to opportunity. (4: §§ 84, 89.)

Herbart emphasized the humanistic aim of historical studies. Herbart divided the subject matter of instruction into two main groups, corresponding to the two main classes of interests. Thus he said:

Ideas spring from two main sources, experience [with things ] and social intercourse. Knowledge of nature — incomplete and crude - is derived from the former; the latter furnishes the sentiments entertained toward our fellow-man, which, far from being praiseworthy, are on the contrary often very reprehensible. To improve these is the more urgent task, but neither ought we to neglect the knowledge of nature. . . .

...

Hence we have two main branches of instruction, — the historical and the scientific. The former embraces not only history proper, but language study as well; the latter includes besides natural science, mathematics.

Other reasons aside, the need alone of counteracting selfishness renders it necessary for every school that undertakes the education of the whole man to place human conditions and relations in the foreground of instruction. This humanistic aim should underlie the studies of the historical subjects, and only with reference to this aim may they be allowed to preponderate. (4: §§ 36-38.)

Thus we find Herbart placing the two main lines of subject matter, scientific and historical (or social), almost on a par, but assigning an especial importance to the historical studies when human conditions and relations are emphasized in order to secure moral ends, that is, to counteract selfishness. The Pestalozzians on the other hand, as we noted above, emphasized the scientific group of studies.

Method of instruction. The previous discussion summarized Herbart's formulation of the aim of education in terms of virtue and abiding many-sidedness of interest, and his analysis of subject matter in terms of interests with especial emphasis on the historical studies. It remains to summarize his discussion of the principles of method in teaching. The main topics to be considered under this head are: (1) interests as means; (2) apperception, or adaptation of instruction to the child's past experience and present frame of mind; (3) the methodical treatment of facts; (4) correlation, or the interrelating of subjects.

Interest. Advocated as a means by Rousseau and Herbart. In Chapter IX Rousseau's theory of utilizing the child's present interests to accomplish educational ends was

presented. Herbart maintained the same theory, emphasizing the utilization of present interests as the surest means of developing abiding interests. The discussion of present interests is bound up by Herbart with the discussion of attention. He distinguishes between spontaneous attention, which the child gives freely, and voluntary or forced attention, which he gives because compelled to, or because he makes a resolution to attend. Herbart's belief in the superiority of spontaneous attention is expressed as follows:

It is the teacher's business to observe whether the ideas of his pupils arise spontaneously or not. If they do, the pupils are said to be attentive, the lesson has won their interest. If not, attention is, indeed, not always wholly gone. It may, moreover, be enforced for a time before actual fatigue sets in. But doubt arises whether instruction can effect a future interest in the same subjects.

[Voluntary attention] depends on a resolution; the teacher frequently secures this through admonition or threats. Far more desirable and fruitful is spontaneous attention. It is this attention that the art of teaching must seek to induce. Herein lies the kind of interest to be sought by the teacher. (4: §§ 72-73.)

Herbart did not believe in sugar coating for interest.— It was noted above that interest, as Herbart conceived it, is not a matter of passive amusement, but an active reaching out for more of an experience. The Herbartian theory of interest is sometimes criticized as involving a pampering of children, a 'sugar coating" of unpalatable morsels to get children to swallow them. It is instructive to note that Herbart specifically rejected this type of interest and criticized Basedow's methods of teaching foreign languages by means of games. He said;

The whole matter has been made worse by the practice of some of the older generation of teachers [Basedow and followers] who, in order to make the prescribed studies more palatable, descended to all kinds of amusements and play, instead of laying stress on abiding and growing interest. A view that regards the end as a necessary evil to be rendered endurable by means of sweetmeats, implies an utter confusion of ideas; and if pupils are not given serious tasks to perform, they will not find out what they are able to do. (4: $99.)