_The Psychological Presupposition._
§ 81. If we would have a sound condition of Philosophy, it must, in
intellectual Education, refer to the conception of mind which has been
unfolded in Psychology; and it must appear as a defect in scientific
method if Psychology, or at least the conception of the theoretical
mind, is treated again as within Pedagogics. We must take something for
granted. Psychology, then, will be consulted no further than is
requisite to place on a sure basis the pedagogical function which
relates to it.
§ 82. The conception of _attention_ is the most important to Pedagogics
of all those derived from Psychology. Mind is essentially self-activity.
Nothing exists for it which it does not itself posit as its own. We hear
it not seldom implied that something from outside conditions must make
an impression on the mind, but this is an error. Mind lets nothing act
upon it unless it has rendered itself receptive to it. Without this
preparatory self-excitation the object does not really penetrate it, and
it passes by the object unconsciously or indifferently. The horizon of
perception changes for each person with his peculiarities and culture.
Attention is the adjusting of the observer to the object in order to
seize it in its unity and diversity. Relatively, the observer allows,
for a moment, his relation to all other surroundings to cease, so that
he may establish a relation with this one. Without this essentially
spontaneous activity, nothing exists for the mind. All result in
teaching and learning depends upon the clearness and strength with which
distinctions are made, and the saying, _bene qui distinguit bene docit_,
applies as well to the pupil.
§ 83. Attention, depending as it does on the self-determination of the
observer, can therefore be improved, and the pupil made attentive, by
the educator. Education must accustom him to an exact, rapid, and
many-sided attention, so that at the first contact with an object he may
grasp it sufficiently and truly, and that it shall not be necessary for
him always to be adding to his acquisitions concerning it. The twilight
and partialness of intelligence which forces us always to new
corrections because a pupil at the very commencement did not give entire
attention, must not be tolerated.
[Sidenote: _Psychological Faculties._]
§ 84. We learn from Psychology that mind does not consist of distinct
faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only different
activities of the same power. Each one is just as essential as the
other, on which account Education must grant to each faculty its claim
to the same fostering care. If we would construe correctly the axiom _a
potiori fit denominatio_ to mean that man is distinguished from animals
by thought, and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must
not forget that feeling and representing are not less necessary to a
truly complete human being. The special direction which the activity of
apprehending intelligence takes are (1) Perception, (2) Conception, (3)
Thinking. Dialectically, they pass over into each other; not that
Perception rises into Conception, and Conception into Thinking, but that
Thinking goes back into Conception, and this again into Perception. In
the development of the young, the Perceptive faculty is most active in
the infant, the Conceptive in the child, and the Thinking in the youth;
and thus we may distinguish an intuitive, an imaginative, and a logical
epoch.
--Great errors arise from the misapprehension of these different phases
and of their dialectic, since the different forms which are suitable to
the different grades of youth are mingled. The infant certainly thinks
while he perceives, but this thinking is to him unconscious. Or, if he
has acquired perceptions, he makes them into conceptions, and
demonstrates his freedom in playing with them. This play must not be
taken as mere amusement; it also signifies that he takes care to
preserve his self-determination, and his power of idealizing, in
opposition to the pleasant filling of his consciousness with material.
Herein the delight of the child for fairy tales finds its reason. The
fairy tale constantly destroys the limits of common actuality. The
abstract understanding cannot endure this arbitrariness and want of
fixed conditions, and thus would prefer that children should read,
instead, home-made stories of the "Charitable Ann," of the "Heedless
Frederick," of the "Inquisitive Wilhelmine," &c. Above all, it praises
"Robinson Crusoe," which contains much heterogeneous matter, but nothing
improbable. When the youth and maiden of necessity pass over into the
earnestness of real life, the drying up of the imagination and the
domination of the understanding presses in.--