MOTIVE, WILL, CONCENTRATION AND

ACQUISITION.*

181. When Instruction is a rational art it is a complex process having at least four distinct stages that occur in the following order:

This formula may be interpreted by the teacher as follows: "To instruct is to cause the pupil to gain some permanent mental acquisition; the immediate condition of this effect is a concentration of the mental powers on a specific subject; this withdrawal of the mind's activities from all competing exercises is to be accomplished by an act of the will; and to determine an act of the will I must supply some motive. Hence the success of my art depends upon a deft handling of motives."

182. The very possibility of education is dependent on the power of mental retentiveness; and the paramount question in educational science is how this power may be turned to the best account. Of this faculty Mr. Bain says: It is the one "that most of all concerns us in the work of education. On it rests the possibility of mental growth; in other words, capabilities not given by nature. All improvement in the art of teaching depends on the attention we give to the various circumstances that facilitate acquirement, or lessen the number of repetitions for a given effect.-(Education as a Science, pp. 20-21.)

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*This is scarcely more than a summary of Chapter III., Bain's Education as a Science.

From the abuse of the memorizing process in the old education, this faculty has fallen into discredit, and it has become fashionable to speak slightingly of this function of the intelligence.

Mr. Bain says "the plastic or retentive function is the very highest energy of the brain, the consummation of nervous activity. To drive home a new bent, to render an impression self-sustaining and recoverable, uses up (we may suppose) more brain force than any other kind of mental activity."

183. It is evident that for the highest exercise of this faculty certain physical conditions must be fulfilled. These are: A plentiful supply of food; exercise; time for digestion; rest; and turning the nutrition towards the brain.

The plastic power of the mind is at its best in the early part of the day, two or three hours after the first meal. After a rest and a second meal there is another period favorable to acquisition. "When the edge of this is worn off, there may, after a pause, be another bout of application, but far inferior to the first or even the second.". (p. 26.)

184. "The one circumstance that sums up all the mental aids to plasticity is CONCENTRATION. A certain expenditure of nervous power is involved in every adhesion, every act of impressing the memory ; and the more the better. This supposes, however, that we should withdraw the forces, for a time, from every other competing exercise." (p. 27.)

* *

Memory, then, is dependent on concentration. But concentration, in turn, depends on the will; and the will is stimulated by motive; so that in teaching, the skillful adjustment of motives becomes a fine art and the very turning point of success.

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185. "Coming to the influences of concentration, we assign the first place to intrinsic charm, or pleasure in the act itself. * A gentle pleasure that for a time contents us, there being no great temptation at hand, is the best foster mother of our efforts at learning. Still better, if it be a growing pleasure; a small beginning, with a steady in

crease, never too absorbing, is the best of all stimulants to mental power." (p. 29.)

As the heat of a flame keeps up the process of combustion; so the pleasure coming from intellectual activity becomes a motive to continue it.

Teachers may avail themselves of this important principle by bringing forward as early as possible the fruit-bearing stage of study, the period when the pupil begins to derive profit from his labor.

It is an error, however, to assume that all pupils may be made to employ their self-activities by virtue of this intrinsic charm, or that all studies will yield it. It is as unreasonable to assume that mental activity may always be pleasurable as that physical activity is so. In either case, pleasure will begin to abate when weariness sets in.

It is also an error to suppose that pleasure in general is conducive to intellectual activity. "The law of the mutual exclusion of great pleasure and great intellectual exertion. forbids the employment of too much excitement of any kind when we aim at the most exacting of all mental results-the forming of new adhesive growths. * The true excitement for the purpose in view is what grows out of the very subject itself, embracing and adhering to that subject." (pp. 29, 33.)

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186. "Next to pleasure in the actual, as a concentrating motive, is pleasure in prospect, the learning of what is to bring us some future gratification. This stimulus has the inferiority attaching to the idea of pleasure as compared with the reality." (p. 30.)

On this principle depends the action of prizes, scholarships, honors, promotions, etc.

187. Another motive to concentration is the spirit of rivalry, or the desire to excel. Competition gives a zest to toil and seems to gather up the energies for a determined effort. Class instruction affords an opportunity to employ this motive with good effect.

Up to this point, the motives to concentration have been attractive; the pupil has endured toil either for some pleasure mingled with it, or for some pleasure just beyond it.

188. We now cross the line separating pleasure from discomfort and come to motives that are impulsive. The pupil is here between two disagreeable alternatives, and he recoils from the more disagreeable and accepts the one he dislikes the least.

In Prussia, the student has his choice between maintaining himself with credit for one year in the highest class but one in the Gymnasium, with one year's military service in the town in which he lives; and serving as a common soldier for three years in a barrack. Mr. Latham remarks (p. 63) that by this means "the schoolmaster is supplied with a more powerful engine to enforce obedience than has ever been placed in the hands of any other scholastic body." But he adds: "The masters complain that seventy-five per cent. of the boys leave directly the desired exemption is obtained."

189. The motives that may be grouped under the head we are now considering are: Apprehensions of the results of impending examinations; fear of the loss of social or class standing; reproof in various forms and degrees.

It is an error to think that all pupils, or even the greater part of them, come within the range of the higher motives. Dr. Whewell says: "There can be no culture without some labor and effort; to some persons, all labor and effort are unwelcome; and such persons can not be educated at all without putting some constraint upon their inclinations." (p. 107.)

But it may reasonably be expected that by the operation of the lower motives, some of the pupils last described will come within the play of the higher motives.

190. There is another motive to concentration, of a higher order than any of those already mentioned, though I think it falls below the line just traced. I mean a sense of duty unaccompanied by any actual pleasure or even expectation of pleasure. In this case the choice seems to be between the doing of a thing in itself disagreeable and the unhappiness that would follow the non-performance of a duty. Such persons are said to act from the sense of "moral obligation."

ON MEMORY AS RELATED TO THE PROCESS OF ELABORATION.

191. A dominant conception in education is that of growth. The mind is not a capacity to be filled, but is rather a living organism that transforms aliment into structure and gains successive increments of power as a working instrument. Recollecting that mental phenomena can be described. only by the use of analogies, we may say that the mind is nourished by its appropriate food; that this food, in order to communicate growth and strength, must pass through a process of mental digestion; and that finally it must be actually incorporated into the living organism. The working up of crude aliment into the refined materials fit for mental growth is elaboration.*

192. Four distinct mental acts precede this process of elaboration, and are necessary preparations for it: (1) acquisition; (2) retention; (3) reproduction; (4) re-presentation.

Acquisition is the act by which an object is brought for the first time within the sphere of the mind's activities. The familiar type of this process is "acquiring knowledge" from observation, from teachers, or from books.

The act or power by which the mind holds, and thus preserves, the knowledge it has once acquired, is retention or memory. "What at any moment we really know, or are really conscious of, forms an almost infinitesimal fraction of what at any moment we are capable of knowing.”—(Hamilton.)

Reproduction is the "faculty of calling out of unconsciousness into living consciousness the materials laid up by the

*This conception of organic growth underlies Pestalozzianism. See Roger de Guimps, Histoire de Pestalozzi (Lausanne, 1874); and La Philosophie et la Pratique de l'Education (Paris, 1881).