What beings can be educated; the plant has reaction
against its surroundings in the form of nutrition; the
animal has reaction in the form of nutrition and feeling;
Aristotle calls the life of the plant the "nutritive
soul," and the life of the animal the "sensitive soul."
The life of the plant is a continual reproduction of new
individuals--a process of going out of one individual into
another--so that the particular individual loses its
identity, although the identity of the species is
preserved.
That which is dependent upon external circumstances, and is only a
circumstance itself, is not capable of education. Only a "self" can be
educated; and a "self" is a conscious unity--a "self-activity," a being
which is through itself, and not one that is made by surrounding
conditions.
Again, in order that a being possess a capacity for education, it must
have the ability to realize within itself what belongs to its species or
race.
If an acorn could develop itself so that it could realize, not only its
own possibility as an oak, but its entire species, and all the varieties
of oaks within itself, and without losing its particular individuality,
it would possess the capacity for education. But an acorn, in reality,
cannot develop its possibility without the destruction of its own
individuality. The acorn vanishes in the oak tree, and the crop of
acorns which succeeds is not again the same acorn, except in _kind_ or
species. "The species lives, but the individual dies," in the vegetable
world.
So it is in the animal world. The brute lives his particular life,
unable to develop within himself the form of his entire species, and
still less the form of all animal life. And yet the animal possesses
self-activity in the powers of locomotion, sense-perception, feeling,
emotion, and other elementary shapes. Both animal and plant react
against surroundings, and possess more or less power to assimilate what
is foreign to them. The plant takes moisture and elementary inorganic
substances, and converts them into nutrition wherewith to build its
cellular growth. The animal has not only this power of nutrition, which
assimilates its surroundings, but also the power of _feeling_, which is
a wonderful faculty. _Feeling_ reproduces within the organism of the
animal the external condition; it is an ideal reproduction of the
surroundings. The environment of the plant may be seized upon and
appropriated in the form of sap, or in the form of carbonic acid, for
the nourishment of that plant; but there is no ideal reproduction of the
environment in the form of _feeling_, as in the animal.
In the activity of _feeling_, the animal transcends his material,
corporeal limits--lives beyond his mere body, and participates in the
existence of all nature. He reproduces within himself the external. Such
being the nature of the activity of _feeling_, which forms the
distinguishing attribute that divides animals from plants, the question
meets us at the outset, "Why is not the animal capable of education? Why
can he not realize within himself his entire species or race, as man
can?"
In order to settle this fundamental question, we must study carefully
the scope and limits of this activity, which we have termed "Feeling,"
and which is known under many names--as, sensation, sensibility,
sensitivity, sense-perception, intuition, and others.
Education aims to develop the mind as intellect and will. It must know
what it is to develop, and learn to distinguish higher or more complete
stages of intellect and will from those which are rudimentary.
Again, the discussion of mind begins properly with the first or most
undeveloped manifestation--at the stage where it is common to brutes and
human beings. Hence we may begin our study of educational psychology at
this point where the distinction between animal and plant appears, and
where the question of the capacity for education arises.
When we understand the relation of feeling or sensibility to the higher
manifestations of mind, we shall see in what consists a capacity for
education, and we shall learn many essentials in regard to the matter
and method, the _what_ and the _how_ of education.
A general survey of the world discovers that there is inter-action
among its parts. This is the verdict of science, as the systematic form
of human experience. In the form of gravitation we understand that each
body depends upon every other body, and the annihilation of a particle
of matter in a body would cause a change in that body which would affect
every other body in the physical universe. Even gravitation, therefore,
is a manifestation of the whole universe in each part of it, although it
is not a manifestation which exists _for_ that part, because the part
does not _know_ it.
There are other forms wherein the whole manifests itself in each part of
it--as, for example, in the phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in
magnetism and electricity. These forms of manifestation of the external
world upon an individual object are destructive to the individuality of
the object. If the nature of a thing is stamped upon it from without, it
is an element only, and not a self; it is dependent, and belongs to that
on which it depends. It does not possess itself, but belongs to that
which _makes_ it, and which gives evidence of ownership by continually
modifying it.
But the plant, as we just now said, has some degree of self-activity,
and is not altogether made by the totality of external conditions. The
growth of the plant is through assimilation of external substances. It
reacts against its surroundings and digests them, and grows through the
nutrition thus formed.
All beings that cannot react against surroundings and modify them, lack
individuality. Individuality begins with this power of reaction and
modification of external surroundings. Even the power of cohesion is a
rudimentary form of reaction and of special individuality.
In the case of the plant, the reaction is _real_, but not also _ideal_.
The plant acts upon its food, and digests it, or assimilates it, and
imposes its _form_ on that which it draws within its organism. It does
not, however, reproduce within itself the externality as that external
exists for itself. It does not form within itself an idea, or even a
feeling of that which is external to it. Its participation in the
external world is only that of _real_ modification of it or through it;
either the plant digests the external, or the external limits _it_, and
prevents its growth, so that where one begins the other ceases. Hence it
is that the elements--the matter of which the plant is composed, that
which it has assimilated even--still retain a large degree of foreign
power or force--a large degree of externality which the plant has not
been able to annul or to digest. The plant-activity subdues its food,
changes its shape and its place, subordinates it to its use; but what
the matter brings with it, and still retains of the world beyond the
plant, does not exist for the plant; the plant cannot read or interpret
the rest of the universe from that small portion of it which it has
taken up within its own organism. And yet the history of the universe is
impressed on each particle of matter, as well within the plant as
outside of it, and it could be understood were there capacities for
recognizing it.
The reaction of the life of the plant upon the external world is not
sufficient to constitute a fixed, abiding individuality. With each
accretion there is some change of particular individuality. Every growth
to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals--new plants--a
ceaseless multiplication of individuals, and not the preservation of the
same individual. The species is preserved, but not the particular
individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual,
which grows out from the previous growth as the first sprout grew from
the seed. Each part furnishes a soil for the next. When a plant no
longer sends out new individuals, we say it is dead. The life of the
plant is only a life of nutrition.
Aristotle called vegetable life "the nutritive soul," and the life of
the animal the "feeling," or _sensitive_ soul. Nutrition is only an
activity of preservation of the general form in new individuals, it is
only the life of the species, and not the life of the permanent
individual.
Therefore we see that in the vegetable world we do not possess a being
that can be educated--for no individual of it can realize _within_
itself the species; its realization of the species is a continual
process of going out of itself in new individuals, but no activity of
_return_ to itself, so as to preserve _the identity_ of an individual.