Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals
amount of passive spiritual culture, and conduct would remain as the
test of every education worthy of the name.
It is impossible to disguise the fact that in the psychology of our own
day the emphasis is transferred from the mind's purely rational
function, where Plato and Aristotle, and what one may call the whole
classic tradition in philosophy had placed it, to the so long neglected
practical side. The theory of evolution is mainly responsible for this.
Man, we now have reason to believe, has been evolved from infra-human
ancestors, in whom pure reason hardly existed, if at all, and whose
mind, so far as it can have had any function, would appear to have been
an organ for adapting their movements to the impressions received from
the environment, so as to escape the better from destruction.
Consciousness would thus seem in the first instance to be nothing but a
sort of super-added biological perfection,--useless unless it prompted
to useful conduct, and inexplicable apart from that consideration.
Deep in our own nature the biological foundations of our consciousness
persist, undisguised and undiminished. Our sensations are here to
attract us or to deter us, our memories to warn or encourage us, our
feelings to impel, and our thoughts to restrain our behavior, so that on
the whole we may prosper and our days be long in the land. Whatever of
transmundane metaphysical insight or of practically inapplicable
aesthetic perception or ethical sentiment we may carry in our interiors
might at this rate be regarded as only part of the incidental excess of
function that necessarily accompanies the working of every complex
machine.
I shall ask you now--not meaning at all thereby to close the theoretic
question, but merely because it seems to me the point of view likely to
be of greatest practical use to you as teachers--to adopt with me, in
this course of lectures, the biological conception, as thus expressed,
and to lay your own emphasis on the fact that man, whatever else he may
be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in
adapting him to this world's life.
In the learning of all matters, we have to start with some one deep
aspect of the question, abstracting it as if it were the only aspect;
and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding those neglected other
features which complete the case. No one believes more strongly than I
do that what our senses know as 'this world' is only one portion of our
mind's total environment and object. Yet, because it is the primal
portion, it is the _sine qua non_ of all the rest. If you grasp the facts
about it firmly, you may proceed to higher regions undisturbed. As our
time must be so short together, I prefer being elementary and
fundamental to being complete, so I propose to you to hold fast to the
ultra-simple point of view.
The reasons why I call it so fundamental can be easily told.
First, human and animal psychology thereby become less discontinuous. I
know that to some of you this will hardly seem an attractive reason,
but there are others whom it will affect.
Second, mental action is conditioned by brain action, and runs parallel
therewith. But the brain, so far as we understand it, is given us for
practical behavior. Every current that runs into it from skin or eye or
ear runs out again into muscles, glands, or viscera, and helps to adapt
the animal to the environment from which the current came. It therefore
generalizes and simplifies our view to treat the brain life and the
mental life as having one fundamental kind of purpose.
Third, those very functions of the mind that do not refer directly to
this world's environment, the ethical utopias, aesthetic visions,
insights into eternal truth, and fanciful logical combinations, could
never be carried on at all by a human individual, unless the mind that
produced them in him were also able to produce more practically useful
products. The latter are thus the more essential, or at least the more
primordial results.
Fourth, the inessential 'unpractical' activities are themselves far more
connected with our behavior and our adaptation to the environment than
at first sight might appear. No truth, however abstract, is ever
perceived, that will not probably at some time influence our earthly
action. You must remember that, when I talk of action here, I mean
action in the widest sense. I mean speech, I mean writing, I mean yeses
and noes, and tendencies 'from' things and tendencies 'toward' things,
and emotional determinations; and I mean them in the future as well as
in the immediate present. As I talk here, and you listen, it might seem
as if no action followed. You might call it a purely theoretic process,
with no practical result. But it _must_ have a practical result. It
cannot take place at all and leave your conduct unaffected. If not
to-day, then on some far future day, you will answer some question
differently by reason of what you are thinking now. Some of you will be
led by my words into new veins of inquiry, into reading special books.
These will develop your opinion, whether for or against. That opinion
will in turn be expressed, will receive criticism from others in your
environment, and will affect your standing in their eyes. We cannot
escape our destiny, which is practical; and even our most theoretic
faculties contribute to its working out.
These few reasons will perhaps smooth the way for you to acquiescence
in my proposal. As teachers, I sincerely think it will be a sufficient
conception for you to adopt of the youthful psychological phenomena
handed over to your inspection if you consider them from the point of
view of their relation to the future conduct of their possessor.
Sufficient at any rate as a first conception and as a main conception.
You should regard your professional task as if it consisted chiefly and
essentially in _training the pupil to behavior_; taking behavior, not in
the narrow sense of his manners, but in the very widest possible sense,
as including every possible sort of fit reaction on the circumstances
into which he may find himself brought by the vicissitudes of life.
The reaction may, indeed, often be a negative reaction. _Not_ to speak,
_not_ to move, is one of the most important of our duties, in certain
practical emergencies. "Thou shalt refrain, renounce, abstain"! This
often requires a great effort of will power, and, physiologically
considered, is just as positive a nerve function as is motor discharge.
IV. EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR
In our foregoing talk we were led to frame a very simple conception of
what an education means. In the last analysis it consists in the
organizing of _resources_ in the human being, of powers of conduct which
shall fit him to his social and physical world. An 'uneducated' person
is one who is nonplussed by all but the most habitual situations. On the
contrary, one who is educated is able practically to extricate himself,
by means of the examples with which his memory is stored and of the
abstract conceptions which he has acquired, from circumstances in which
he never was placed before. Education, in short, cannot be better
described than by calling it _the organization of acquired habits of
conduct and tendencies to behavior_.
To illustrate. You and I are each and all of us educated, in our several
ways; and we show our education at this present moment by different
conduct. It would be quite impossible for me, with my mind technically
and professionally organized as it is, and with the optical stimulus
which your presence affords, to remain sitting here entirely silent and
inactive. Something tells me that I am expected to speak, and must
speak; something forces me to keep on speaking. My organs of
articulation are continuously innervated by outgoing currents, which the
currents passing inward at my eyes and through my educated brain have
set in motion; and the particular movements which they make have their
form and order determined altogether by the training of all my past
years of lecturing and reading. Your conduct, on the other hand, might
seem at first sight purely receptive and inactive,--leaving out those
among you who happen to be taking notes. But the very listening which
you are carrying on is itself a determinate kind of conduct. All the
muscular tensions of your body are distributed in a peculiar way as you
listen. Your head, your eyes, are fixed characteristically. And, when
the lecture is over, it will inevitably eventuate in some stroke of
behavior, as I said on the previous occasion: you may be guided
differently in some special emergency in the schoolroom by words
which I now let fall.--So it is with the impressions you will make
there on your pupil. You should get into the habit of regarding them
all as leading to the acquisition by him of capacities for
behavior,--emotional, social, bodily, vocal, technical, or what not.
And, this being the case, you ought to feel willing, in a general way,
and without hair-splitting or farther ado, to take up for the purposes
of these lectures with the biological conception of the mind, as of
something given us for practical use. That conception will certainly
cover the greater part of your own educational work.
If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in
the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize
capacities for conduct. This is most immediately obvious in Germany,
where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the
student into an instrument for advancing scientific discovery. The
German universities are proud of the number of young specialists whom
they turn out every year,--not necessarily men of any original force of
intellect, but men so trained to research that when their professor
gives them an historical or philological thesis to prepare, or a bit of
laboratory work to do, with a general indication as to the best method,
they can go off by themselves and use apparatus and consult sources in
such a way as to grind out in the requisite number of months some little
pepper-corn of new truth worthy of being added to the store of extant
human information on that subject. Little else is recognized in Germany
as a man's title to academic advancement than his ability thus to show
himself an efficient instrument of research.
In England, it might seem at first sight as if the higher education of
the universities aimed at the production of certain static types of
character rather than at the development of what one may call this
dynamic scientific efficiency. Professor Jowett, when asked what Oxford
could do for its students, is said to have replied, "Oxford can teach an
English gentleman how to _be_ an English gentleman." But, if you ask
what it means to 'be' an English gentleman, the only reply is in terms
of conduct and behavior. An English gentleman is a bundle of
specifically qualified reactions, a creature who for all the emergencies
of life has his line of behavior distinctly marked out for him in
advance. Here, as elsewhere, England expects every man to do his duty.
V. THE NECESSITY OF REACTIONS
If all this be true, then immediately one general aphorism emerges which
ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct of the teacher in
the classroom.
_No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative
expression_,--this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to
forget.
An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears, and in
no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is
physiologically incomplete. It leaves no fruits behind it in the way of
capacity acquired. Even as mere impression, it fails to produce its