thing among themselves; the soul is the mere magic-lantern screen upon which psychic phenomena are projected. When Herbart speaks of ideas acting upon one another he is guilty of as unwarrantable a hypostasis as is the faculty philosopher against whom he inveighs. It is the wearisome old story of that pendulum that will swing too far the other way. Moral development is possible only if ideas and the soul mutually react upon one another so as to produce an organism that works out its own development by generating and reconciling antagonisms. If we desire to find the incidence of moral responsibility in the neo-Herbartian position, we must seek it in the growing point. The necessity that makes the soul react upon a given stimulus is not a mechanical necessity. It is a necessity determined by the nature of the soul. The soul counts for something in the development, and that something involves the responsibility that every moral system demands. ness. Coming now to the classification of the school studies as a moral organon, we are prepared to find that they do not all rank alike. From what has gone before, we are led to classify them on a basis of abstractThe more abstract a subject the less its value in moral training. Mr. Spencer's law of parsimony as applied in this connection would lead us to expect that science, which he maintains is at the top both as to practical utility and value as a training, should prove the most valuable moral organon. Certain sciences do rank at the very top, but not merely as sciences, but because of the nature of the matter they treat of. We so far accept Mr. Spencer's position as to maintain that it is unnecessary to seek out special subjects on which to train the morals of our pupils. The subjects that lie in our hands are quite sufficient for the most exacting moralist. Yet all subjects are not of equal value. A rough classification might be : 1. Physical training, including not only drill, but such subjects as imply the training of voice or eye or ear merely as sense-organs. 2. Abstract subjects, including all the purely mechanical parts of an ordinary elementary education: mechanical reading, spelling, school (that is, rule-of-thumb) arithmetic, grammar, languages as such, mathematics and formal logic. 3. The applied sciences and the natural sciences, such as physics, botany, geology, physical geography. 4. The humanistic studies, including all subjects that deal with human relations, such as history, political geography, biography, art, poetry, religion. Physical training takes an extremely high place among the subjects that aid in moral training, not merely because of that tiresome "healthy mind in the healthy body;" nor even of the well-known efficacy of athletics in working off dangerous superfluous energy, but from the psychological connection between the bearing of the body and the attitude of the mind. Thring's Potency of Attitude is a more or less pious opinion, but Professor James has raised this view to the dignity of a serious theory. The moral value of the sense training is not so clear. There may be something in the fanciful argument in favor of the moral superiority of wind music as compared with string music, as set forth by Plato, but underlying his condemnation of the Ionian and Lydian music, as against the Phrygian and Dorian,' there were probably other and more cogent reasons. Not the more ornate music itself was immoral (it is Addison, I think, who says that music is the one sensual indulgence that cannot be carried to excess), but what it implied as its accompaniment. Here, as elsewhere, the matter took color from the environment. About the second class we have practically said already all that need be said, unless we are to go into details of individual subjects. The third class have a higher moral value than the second, simply because the ideas involved bring the soul into contact with the environment at a greater number of different points. The greater our knowledge of facts drawn from the natural sciences, the greater our chance to get near to the center of the Lotzian labyrinth whence we may see the things of life in their true relations. Whoso increaseth knowledge increaseth responsibility. But even the natural sciences have a more directly moral side. It is always profitable to consider the lilies. In an organic universe one is prepared to find the same principles working throughout, and no one should be surprised to observe the reign of natural law in the spiritual world. Analogy is no doubt frequently overstrained, notably by Froebel. He finds a sermon in every block and stick and softened pea in his complicated apparatus. It is quite in keeping with our principles to admit that lessons may be read into physical facts in this way. Indeed this is moral training this arrangement of facts in a 1 Repub., III, 398. 1 moral setting. But it is to be remembered that we put the moral there; we do not find it. From the point of view of natural science the cricket is quite as moral as the ant that La Fontaine makes deliver such an excellent, if cold-blooded, sermon. The rat that destroys our grain is as moral a rat as the bee that makes our honey is a moral bee. Everything depends upon the point of view- our point of view. The stick insect, that escapes untimely death by simulating the twigs among which he conceals himself, is guilty of the most objectionable form of deception if we take the opinion of the hungry bird whom he disappoints. As disinterested on-lookers we may pity the bird, yet we cannot blame the insect. Direct moral applications of facts from this class of subject are always attended with an element of danger. The worm might have some criticism to offer on the popular argument in favor of early rising. The fourth class of subjects opens out for us the legitimate field for direct moral training. Even here, however, analogy ranks very high. Every good example, to be fruitful, must lead to a moral precept which broadens out the individual action into a general principle. It is not, Go and do so-and-so, but, Go thou and do likewise. Not the mere action, but the action considered in its special environment, determines the moral force of example. When we find Froebel in his Mutter- und Koselieder pointing out the moral danger of playing at hide-and-seek with young children, we feel that he is unreasonable. No doubt the child will imitate the mother and will try to deceive, but can this be called a moral act in itself any more than learning to walk? Froebel does not discriminate among the elements that constitute morality. Deception, even intentional deception, is not necessarily immoral. If artists are not generally regarded as patterns of morality it is not because they try to deceive us into believing that their foregrounds are nearer than are their backgrounds. Deception is only raw material, and may be worked up to either moral or immoral issues. If Froebel's principle were applied throughout, all teaching by means of bad examples would be discredited, and the Prodigal Son would have to take its place on the teacher's Index Expurgatorius. Not the action and not the setting, but the action in the setting making a concrete whole, a unity not absolutely complete, it is true, but complete within itself, must be taken as the unit in moral training. The more units of this kind that are formed by the teacher in the experience of the pupil, the easier it is for the masses in the pupil's mind to react upon new ideas presented to them, and so produce similar units. To give point to the discussion the following list of positions is appended, as embodying the chief conclusions to which I have been led: 1. No school study is merely a means or an end; all school studies are both. 2. Accepting self-realization as the highest moral aim, moral training is still possible; and there is still a place for the teacher in the process without loss to the independence of the developing ego. 3. That the idealism on which Froebel founded his system forms a groundwork upon which the Herbartian mechanism may be consistently built up. 4. That the organon of moral training is the idea as found in life, and that while all ideas, as isolated ideas, are of equal moral value, i. e., of no moral value, their moral force increases directly as the number of combinations they form. Therefore the more concrete a school study is the greater its value as a moral organon. 5. That formal education is as impossible in moral as in intellectual matters, and the virtues have been hypostatized into a mythology in much the same way as the faculties have been. 6. That while the ultimate standard of morality is the Hegelian idea, the teacher must fall back upon the highest available standard, that is, the idea as it appears to him at his present stage of develop ment. 7. The teacher's work in moral training consists practically in building up a conscience out of ideas supplied by the various school subjects. SUPPLEMENT TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP. By E. J. JAMES, PH.D., In my opinion there is little to which anyone can object in the discussion of this subject by Professor Jenks in the paper which he has presented. The views of the writer are in substance so sound and healthful that they must command in general the assent of everyone who has thought about this particular problem. I should be inclined, however, to go further than Professor Jenks in the direction of introducing positive instruction in our lower grades of schools, with the view of developing the attitude, the temper, and the expert knowledge which ought to characterize, if not all citizens, certainly the voting citizens of the modern free state. If I understand Professor Jenks' position correctly, it is in substance tnat the education of the citizen is a highly complex resultant of all the forces at work at any given time and place to produce the concrete product to which we give a name, indicating that the person to whom it is given belongs to a particular time, place, and country. The education or training which the American Indian gives to his boy in the use of the bow and arrow, in swimming and running, in stealthily stalking his prey, whether man or beast, combined with the external influences of the conditions under which the Indian lives, along with the family and tribal relations which characterize his state of society, constitute, taken together, the entire education or training for citizenship in that particular type of human society. It was not the specific education which was given in the ancient Roman state in the way of instructing a youth as to the nature and functions and organization of the Roman state which made him a Roman, but it was the resultant of the countless 'Paper of Dr. J. W. Jerks on "Training for Citizenship, " discussed at the Indianapolis meeting of the National Herbart Society, and contained in the Supplement to the Second Yearbook. |