application of the maxim to our efforts at learning to write, to talk,
to walk, to play on a musical instrument, or to handle the tools of some
handicraft. If questioned with reference to these and kindred activities,
the physiologist would answer that the repeated action of the nerves
and muscles in specific functions fits them the better to act in the
same functions, and that the effect of the exercise of any function may
be stored up so as to increase the facility of the nervous structure
to exercise again every similar function. The psychologist would say
that any normal act performed under the guidance of an intelligent
will leaves, as its enduring result, an increased power to act and a
tendency to act again in like manner. Common parlance, which is apt to
enshrine its wisdom in proverbs, simply says, Practice makes perfect.
Doing, when it engrosses the attention, exerts a reflex influence upon
thinking; after it sinks to the subconscious level it ceases to exert
a helpful influence. The methods adopted in our manual-training schools
are, in this respect, much superior to those pursued under the old
apprentice system. The master mechanic found it to his interest to keep
the apprentice upon one kind of work until a high degree of skill was
attained. He used the apprentice as a means to an end,—the end being the
production of things that would sell and thus reimburse the master for
the time and trouble of teaching his trade to another. The mysteries
of the trade were kept to the last for fear the apprentice would quit
before the expiration of the time for which he was indentured. No better
plan for crushing the intellectual life could have been conceived. The
manual-training school, on the other hand, makes the boy, and not the
product, the end of its training, the object of chief concern. It seeks
not merely to make the man a better workman, but the workman a better
man. No pupil is asked to go through the same movement, to do the same
piece of work, for the purpose of developing skill, until every trace of
interest is gone. Nothing is made for the purpose of selling; everything
prescribed is for the purpose of developing the pupil’s powers, to enable
him to express thought by the use of working-tools and instruments. The
working-drawing and the model are the symbols which come nearest to a
full representation of the thing to be made. The word, the clay, the
stone, the metal, the leather, the cloth, are the materials in which
thought finds its final expression. Nothing is carried so far as to
deaden the boy’s interest in what he is doing; the charm of novelty is
kept up from day to day. If the first product is defective, a new problem
is set, involving the same fundamental operations, or the use of the same
tools and instruments. The manual-training school and the trade school,
if properly conducted, thus become a most valuable means for developing
the power to think in things. It aims to create the power to think, as
well as the power to do; the two are made commensurate and mutually
helpful. The thinking is made to issue in doing, and the doing is kept
from sinking into the subconscious stage, where it tends to degrade the
individual to the mere level of a machine. Within these limitations we
can endorse Professor Wilson’s tribute to the hand, and subscribe to his
demand that, as in the days of Israel’s glory, it shall be trained in
some useful handicraft, not merely as a means of livelihood, but more
especially as a means of making the pupil a better thinker, a completer
man.
[Sidenote: Handicrafts.]
“When I think of all that man’s and woman’s hand has wrought,” says he,
“from the day that Eve put forth her erring hand to pluck the fruit
of the forbidden tree to that dark hour when the pierced hands of the
Saviour were nailed to the predicted tree of shame, and of all that
human hands have wrought of good and evil since, I lift up my hand and
gaze upon it with wonder and awe. What an instrument for good it is!
What an instrument for evil! And all day long it never is idle. There
is no implement which it cannot wield, and it should never in working
hours be without one. We unwisely restrict the term handicrafts-man or
hand-worker to the more laborious callings; but it belongs to all honest,
earnest men and women, and is a title which each should covet. For the
queen’s hand there is the sceptre, and for the soldier’s hand the sword;
for the carpenter’s hand the saw, and for the smith’s hand the hammer;
for the farmer’s hand the plough; for the miner’s hand the spade; for
the sailor’s hand the oar; for the painter’s hand the brush; for the
sculptor’s hand the chisel; for the poet’s hand the pen; and for woman’s
hand the needle. And if none of these, or the like, will fit us, the
felon’s chain should be round our wrist, and our hand on the prisoner’s
crank. But for each willing man or woman there is a tool they may learn
to handle; for all there is the command, ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with thy might.’”
XXI
THINKING IN THE ARTS
A meagre soul can never be made fat, nor a narrow soul large,
by studying rules of thinking.
PROFESSOR BLACKIE.
Have your thinking first, and plenty to think about, and then
ask the logician to teach you to scrutinize with a nice eye the
process by which you have arrived at your conclusions.
PROFESSOR BLACKIE.
Invention, though it can be cultivated, cannot be reduced to
rule; there is no science which will enable a man to bethink
himself of that which will suit his purpose. But when he has
thought of something, science can tell him whether that which
he has thought of will suit his purpose or not. The inquirer
or arguer must be guided by his own knowledge and sagacity in
his choice of the inductions out of which he will construct his
argument. But the validity of the argument when constructed
depends upon principles, and must be tried by tests which are
the same for all descriptions of inquiries, whether the result
be to give A an estate, or to enrich science with a new general
truth.
J. S. MILL.
XXI
THINKING IN THE ARTS
For centuries men have been disposed to look with disdain upon the
occupations in which the hands and the body are more concerned than the
mind. The arts in which thought predominates were honored above the
handicrafts; and it is only in recent years that educators have begun to
recognize the educative value of thinking through the hand as we find it
exemplified in schools for manual training. A comparison of the various
arts will serve to dignify this kind of training and to set it in a
clearer light before teachers and boards of education.
Mediæval thinkers divided the arts into two classes, which they called
the mechanic and the liberal arts, and enumerated seven arts in each
class.
[Sidenote: Mechanic arts.]
The seven mechanic arts were Agriculture, Propagation of Trees,
Manufacture of Arms, Carpenter’s Work, Medicine, Weaving, and
Ship-building. The primary operations were mechanical, as the name
implies, and hence involved a genuine thinking in things. Their number
has been greatly multiplied; the operations have grown wonderfully
complex; thought upon the activities which they necessitate has led to
the discovery of guiding principles, and some have risen to the rank of
regular professions. The growth and the care of trees have given rise to
forestry. Ship-building and the manufacture of arms involve science of
the highest order. The practice of medicine and surgery requires skill
based upon kinds of knowledge and thinking that are rigidly scientific.
The thoughts which have been crystallized in modern inventions deserve
equal rank with the thoughts which philosophers have woven into systems.
The various trades of civilized society necessitate the expression of
thought through the hand. Manufactures and commerce involve transactions,
operations, and competition requiring the highest intelligence, the most
accurate thinking, the most vigorous effort. Any youth whose training has
fitted him to excel in these is sure of work and fair compensation.
[Sidenote: The useful occupations.]
Far too often the school has taught the pupil to undervalue and even to
despise useful occupations. Scientific research, philosophic speculation,
and literary productivity have been lauded as more honorable vocations.
Any honest occupation that furnishes adequate exercise for man’s
marvellous faculties is honorable in the sight of God. If two angels
should be sent from heaven, one to rule a kingdom, the other to break
stones upon the highway, each of them would be happy in the thought that
he was fulfilling his divinely appointed mission, and each would receive,
upon the completion of his task, the “well done” which will finally be
spoken to every good and faithful servant.
[Sidenote: Woman in the arts.]
In 1840 Harriet Martineau visited the United States and reported only
seven occupations open to women,—teaching, needlework, keeping boarders,
working in cotton factories, typesetting, bookbinding, and household
service. The school has been blamed for causing the rising generation to
underestimate the last named in comparison with the other occupations
open to women. When anything goes wrong in American life the school is
not only blamed, but also expected to supply the remedy. It must be
admitted that there is much false thinking on the subject of household
service in so-called polite society. A woman may cook for herself and
her own household without losing caste. As soon as she becomes the cook
in another woman’s kitchen she is banished from the parlor of fashionable
society. She can stand in a store or work in a factory without losing her
place in the social scale; but if she works for hire in the kitchen, she
is thenceforth treated as belonging to a lower caste. Is thinking in the
culinary art less valuable or less difficult than the thinking involved
in selling ribbons and laces? Does the preparation of a palatable meal
require less brains and less skill than the setting of type or the making
of yarn? Does good cooking add less to the welfare of the race than
playing on the piano or painting in oil- or water-colors? The teaching of
domestic science is calculated to change public opinion and to add to the
sum of human happiness by emancipating the home from the tyranny and the
caprices of the servant girl and by securing to deserving help a juster
appreciation of efficient thinking in household service.
[Sidenote: America the paradise of woman.]
America has been aptly named the paradise of woman. The American woman is
not expected to break stones upon the highway, to carry market-baskets on
the top of her head, to pull the milk-cart alongside of the dog, to do
all kinds of rough manual labor, whilst strong-armed and able-bodied men
have charge of the elementary schools. Fully two-thirds of the teachers
in America are women. Her sphere of activity has been greatly enlarged in
other directions. She may be the inferior of the stronger sex in original
and creative work,—time will settle that question,—but in ability to
carry college work and to do practical thinking she has shown herself
the equal of her brother and in every respect deserving of the exalted
position assigned to her in the New World. She has attained her standing
in America through her ability to think and to apply thought in the
useful arts.
[Sidenote: The liberal arts.]
The liberal arts were subdivided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The
trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, sought to teach the
art of thinking correctly, of expressing thought in correct language, and
of presenting it in forceful, persuasive discourse.
[Sidenote: Quadrivium.]
[Sidenote: Discovery.]
The quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music,
was composed of thought-studies, and furnished material for the thinking
of generations of the best men. The enlargement of the boundaries of
human knowledge has increased the number of studies to such an extent
that no student need weep like Alexander because there are no more worlds
to conquer. Moreover, in many directions the human race is simply on the
border-land of discovery. At the beginning of this century a professor
lamented that the age of discovery had passed. The professor who quoted
him in the middle of the century could point to the steam-engine, the
electric telegraph, and the use of anæsthetics. In the closing year
of the century we can point to a record of inventions and discoveries
unsurpassed in the thought-achievements of the race. Man has learned
to put thought into machines that do work with a speed and accuracy
impossible of attainment by the human hand. His thought is changing the
face of the earth and developing a civilization based upon a degree of
physical well-being and comfort of which the man of the last century had
not the faintest conception. To follow in thought the achievements of a
single year in the improvement of machinery and the resulting additions
to our material wealth is to fill the soul with wonder at the marvellous
powers of the race. All is due primarily to the exercise of the power
of thought, and secondarily to the manifold ways of expressing and
realizing thought. Never were there such magnificent opportunities for
those who have learned to combine thought and action, intelligence and
skill, brains and the handicrafts. The tradesman deserves honor and
recognition with those who earn their bread by their wits. Both can live
the higher life of thought and culture.
[Sidenote: Trivium.]
The relation of the trivium to the art of thinking is often misconceived.
Grammar, logic, and rhetoric furnish valuable food for thought, excellent
discipline for the mind, especially for the understanding; but they
do not beget the power of thinking in new fields of investigation.
Their function is corrective, not creative. Those who hope to learn
the art of composition by the study of English grammar are sure to be
disappointed. Grammar furnishes the tests and rules by which one may
determine the correctness of sentences. It may furnish discipline for
the understanding, and thus prove valuable as a means of culture. It
utterly fails to produce thinkers beyond the thinking required in the
interpretation of language. Parsing, analysis, and diagramming often
become a mechanical iteration of set phrases, resulting in mental apathy.
Questions in unexpected forms may then be needed to rouse the slumbering
powers of the intellect.
Homer and Plato wrote good Greek, although neither of them had any
knowledge of grammar as a science. Men used correct sentences long before
there was a scientific treatment of the sentence.
The same remarks are applicable to the other studies of the trivium.
Men’s minds obeyed the laws of thought and drew correct inferences
long before the science of logic was formulated. He who studies logic
in the hope that it will make him an original thinker is doomed to
disappointment. Logic has a critical as well as a disciplinary value.
Its influence upon the intellectual life is like that of mathematics.
It furnishes a test for one’s own thinking and provides the means for
detecting fallacies in the reasoning of others. Logic can be taught with
advantage to those who have learned to think; it fails to make creative
spirits who have the power of gathering thoughts, weaving them into a
system, and reaching trustworthy conclusions.
Rhetoric possesses great disciplinary value for the understanding. It
deserves careful study on the part of those who express their thoughts in
public discourse. The moment it becomes an end, instead of means to an
end, it defeats its own purpose. To draw the attention to the figures of
speech and other rhetorical devices of an oration is to divert the mind
from the line of thought and to defeat the purpose for which rhetoric
is taught. The studies of the trivium are like the handicrafts in that
they serve as means to an end. From one point of view they deserve to
be classed with the useful arts; from another it is apparent that they
furnish material for thinking quite as valuable as the multitudinous
branches of study into which the quadrivium has been expanded.
[Sidenote: Fine arts.]
The arts are sometimes divided upon the basis of use and beauty. From one
point of view, as already indicated, the liberal arts may be regarded as
belonging to the category of the useful, and thus as forming part of a
class distinct from the fine arts. Yet the idea of beauty enters into all
that man does. Sooner or later he seeks to adorn his home, his language,
everything that he employs in giving expression to his inner life.
The thinking which lies at the basis of the fine arts has distinguishing
qualities and characteristics. The mind may be so completely absorbed
in poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and in the other things which
make life beautiful that it ceases to be a fit instrument for useful
living or for engaging in more advanced thinking. The element of feeling
predominates in the appreciation of the beautiful. The two factors which
enter into the beautiful are the idea and the form. By casting into the
alembic of the imagination the materials which the mind gathers from
the external world, there is evolved the ideal; as soon as this ideal
is found embodied in any form of nature or art the object is called
beautiful. The power to see the idea in the form, the ideal in the work
of art, is a function of thinking, and deserves attention from those who
are teaching others to think.
[Sidenote: Æsthetic and scientific studies differ.]
Vast is the difference between the æsthetic and the scientific
appreciation of nature. The scientist pulls the flower to pieces,
analyzes its parts, imposes hard names, and destroys that about the
flower which is most attractive to the child and the poet. The student of
beauty admires it as it is in its original surroundings. He cultivates it
to adorn the garden, the yard, the home, the school-room.
Very much, therefore, depends upon the way in which nature is studied.
The study may be pursued to beget habits of observation or to cultivate
a sense of the beautiful. It may be studied for the sake of ascertaining
the laws which govern the growth of plants, the changes of the seasons,
the movements of the heavenly bodies, the forces which give us light,
heat, and all else we need for body and mind. When it is studied for the
sake of truth and beauty, the effort lifts us into the domain of the
higher life.
[Sidenote: The higher life.]
Why should any portion of our life, as compared with another, be
styled the higher life? Because a man’s life may abound in some of the
activities which are essential to his existence and still fail to realize
the end of his existence. Take life on the farm with all its splendid
opportunities for the study of nature and of all that is attractive in
God’s universe. Which should be of most account in the education of the
farmer’s sons and daughters,—mind or money, light or lucre, the soul or
the soil, character or capacity for getting riches? The curse of wealth,
fame, office, and the like is that, if they become the chief object of
one’s ambition, they drag the soul into the dust of dishonor, if not the
dust of the street.
[Sidenote: The farmer boy.]
“If the farmer boy has only been taught how to raise better stock, what
will he do when that better stock ranges his farm? Will he be a happier
father and a nobler citizen? Will his home life be any less coarse and
dull? Will the possession of blooded stock make him any more honest
than common stock? If that is all you have taught him, will he not
still be a brute among his brutes? Indeed, just so far as you increase
his money-making without increasing his true culture and manliness,
you increase the probability that he will die a drunkard, his son a
spendthrift, and his grandson a pauper. The supreme need is character to
guide these resources.”[56]
[Sidenote: The things of the mind.]
Whilst it is worth while to dignify labor in all the handicrafts by
showing the need for intelligent thought on the part of those who follow
them, it is of vastly more importance to emphasize the things of the
mind, and to show how the ability to think conditions the activities of
the higher life and is essential to the full realization of man’s being.
The relation of thinking to the higher life will claim our attention in
the concluding chapter.
XXII
THINKING AND THE HIGHER LIFE
How vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating
and of the thinking man! indeed, as different as the silence
of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness
of a sow at her wash. Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of
an active and prevailing thought,—a thought prevailing over
the difficulty and obscurity of the object, and refreshing the
soul with new discoveries and images of things, and thereby
extending the bounds of apprehension, and enlarging the
territories of reason.
DR. SOUTH.
What is more pleasant than to read of strong-hearted youths,
who, in the midst of want and hardships of many kinds, have
clung to books, feeding, like bees to flowers? By the light
of pine-logs, in dim-lit garrets, in the fields following the
plough, in early dawns when others are asleep, they ply their
blessed task, seeking nourishment for the mind, athirst for
truth, yearning for full sight of the high worlds of which they
have caught faint glimpses; happier now, lacking everything
save faith and a great purpose, than in after-years when
success shall shower on them applause and gold.
BISHOP SPALDING.
XXII
THINKING AND THE HIGHER LIFE
[Sidenote: The Book of books.]
The preceding chapter pointed out the function of thinking in the arts,
and the reciprocal influence of these upon the power of thought. It
remains to point out the relation of thinking to the higher life. The
best point of departure for such a discussion is the book which has done
more to foster the higher life of the soul than all other books combined.
From some points of view the best book on teaching ever made is the
Book of books. In it we find not only practical examples and marvellous
illustrations of the art of the teacher, but also the most significant
maxims and statements bearing upon the development of the inner life. In
the account of the Temptation in the Wilderness, we have an utterance
from the lips of the Great Teacher, directing our attention towards the
higher life. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. iv. 4.)
[Sidenote: Bread-studies.]
[Sidenote: The Great Teacher.]
In the universities one hears a great deal about bread-studies. Knowledge
for its own sake, culture for culture’s sake, education, not for the
sake of its money-value, but for the mind’s sake, are the ideals held
up before the minds of the students. A world-famous professor of
mathematics demonstrated a new theorem, and closed the demonstration
with the exclamation, “Now, that is true, and, thank God, nobody can use
it!” Does knowledge increase in value as its utility diminishes? This
professor was drawing an annual salary of five thousand dollars, and
could well afford to ignore the money-value of an education. Lifted above
the struggle for bread, he had no sympathy with the multitudes in whose
experience the struggle for bread is the all-absorbing problem of life.
The theory of life propounded by the Great Teacher is very different.
He did not despise the arts that make bread and win bread. Twice He
miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes, in order to feed the
multitudes. For many years He worked at the carpenter’s bench, and after
the death of His father helped to support His mother. When hanging upon
the cross, He intrusted His mother to the care of John, the “disciple
whom Jesus loved.”
But when Satan came to him and suggested the making of bread by unlawful
means, He repelled the tempter, saying, “Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Bread
here stands for more than physical food. It is symbolic of the life that
turns upon what we eat and drink, the garments we wear, and the houses we
live in.
[Sidenote: The French king.]
[Sidenote: Earning power.]
The best of French kings cherished it as the ambition of his life to
make every one of his subjects so well off as to be able on Sunday to
have roast fowl for dinner. Had he lived in our day, he would have
included among the objects of his ambition a new bonnet for every woman
at least twice a year. Roast fowl and new bonnets cost money; and money
indicates the plane from which very many people look at every question of
government and education. Money stands for what we eat and drink, for the
garments we wear and the houses we live in, for the thousands of creature
comforts which we deem essential to our well-being and happiness. Perhaps
the school has not done all it is destined to accomplish in fitting the
pupils to win these, but there is abundant evidence to show that a good
school increases the earning power of the individual, and thereby makes
possible the higher life of mind, or of the soul. The untutored red man
eked out a scanty existence in spite of unparalleled advantages in soil
and stream and climate; the intelligence begotten by the modern school
has enabled our people to utilize and develop the material resources of
the New World to such an extent that Carlyle sneeringly said, “America
means roast turkey every day for everybody.” Let us accept the remark
as an acknowledgment that the American people are better fed than those
of England or Continental Europe; and yet Carlyle was right in hinting
that there is a life higher than that which turns upon what we eat and
drink and wear, for this is in accord with the view of life taught by the
greatest Teacher of all the ages.
[Sidenote: The basis of the higher life.]
It is worth while to pause a moment for the purpose of pointing out the
relation of the higher life to the side of life symbolized by bread. In
a word, the higher life rests upon the other as a basis. Where the vital
energies of a people are exhausted in the struggle for bread, the very
mention of education is a mockery. The school lays the foundation for the
higher life when it increases the average earning power of the industrial
classes, and thereby makes it easier for them to gain a livelihood.
Here is the first point of contact between the school and the higher
life. There is no language sufficiently strong to condemn the spirit
of the professor who, when he had demonstrated a new theorem in higher
mathematics, thanked God that nobody could use it.
[Sidenote: What money can and cannot buy.]