Part 16 (1/2)

Creation finds its expansion in _order_ We find this conception in the Genesis of Scripture God did not begin to create without preparation; and this preparation was the introduction of order into chaos ”And God divided the light froether into one place, and let the dry land appear” The consciousness may possess a rich and varied content; but when there is _ence does not appear

Its appearance is exactly like the kindling of a light which s clearly: ”Let there be light”

Thus we ence is to help to put the iht to think of the mental state of the little child of three years old, who has already looked upon a world How often he has fallen asleep utterly weary fros It has not occurred to any one that for hi, when the organs are not as yet acco the errors of his senses, and verifying with his hand what he cannot as yet appraise correctly with his eye, is a great exertion Hence the little one who is over-taxed by stimuli, in places where these abound, cries or falls asleep

The little child of three years old carries within him a heavy _chaos_

He is like a man who has accumulated an immense quantity of books, piled up without any order, and who asks himself ”What shall I do with thee them in such fashi+on as to enable him to say: ”I possess a library”?

By means of our so-called ”sensory exercises” we uish_ and to _classify_ Our sensory material, in fact, analyses and represents the attributes of things: dihness of surface, weight, temperature, flavor, noise, sounds It is the qualities of the objects, not the objects theh these qualities, isolated one from the other, are the, short, thick, thin, large, sh, smooth, scented, noisy, resonant, we have a like nuraduated series This gradation is important for the establishment of order; indeed, the attributes of the objects differ not only in quality, but also in quantity They h or more or less low, more or less thick or more or less thin; the sounds have various tones; the colors have various degrees of intensity; the shapes hness and smoothness are by no means absolute

The material for the education of the senses lends itself to the purpose of distinguishi+ng between these things First of all it enables the child to ascertain the _identity_ of two sti Afterwards _difference_ is appreciated when the lessons direct the child's attention to the external objects of a series: light, dark, long, short

At last he begins to distinguish the _degrees of the various attributes_, arranging a series of objects in gradation, such as the tablets which show the various degrees of intensity of the same chromatic tone; the bells which produce the notes of an octave, the objects which represent length in decimal proportions, or thickness in centimetric proportions, etc

These exercises, which are so attractive to children, are, as we have seen, repeated by them indefinitely The teacher puts the seal upon each acquisition with a word; thus the classification is complete, and finally has its schedule: that is, it becoe_ by a nauishi+ng things other than by their attributes, the classification of these entails a funda Henceforth the world is no longer a chaos for the child; his mind bears some resemblance to the orderly shelves of a library or a rich ory And each acquisition he er merely ”stored,” but duly ”allocated” This primitive order will never be disturbed, but only enriched by freshacquired the power of distinguishi+ng one thing froence It is unnecessary to repeat what an internal i after objects in the environnizes” the objects which surround him When he discovers with so much emotion that the sky is blue, that his hand is sular, he does not in reality discover sky, nor hand, nor , but he discovers their position in the order of his ement of his ideas And this determines a stable equilibriuth, and the possibility of fresh conquests, just as the muscles which have coordinated their functions enable the body to maintain its equilibrium, and to acquire that stability and security which facilitate all moveth; like a well-arranged th of inquirers The child can therefore perforue, and can react to stimuli in a briefer space of tiue external things on the basis of a secure order already established in the ence and culture This is, indeed, the popular conception; when an educated person can recognize an author by his style, or the characteristics of the literary coente_) in literature” In the sanize a painter by the manner in which he lays his colors on the canvas, or fix the period of a sculptor froente_) in art” The scientist is of the saive due value even to their minutest details; hence the differences between the characteristics of things are clearly perceived and classified The scientist distinguishes objects in accordance with the orderly content of his , a e to hieologist, the archaeologist

It is not the accus which forms the man of letters, the scientist, and the connoisseur; it is the prepared order established in the e On the other hand, the uncultivated person has only the direct knowledge of objects; such a personbooks, or a gardener who spends his life arden

The knowledge of such uncultured minds is not only disorderly, but it is confined to the objects hich it coe of the scientist is infinite, because, possessing the power of classifying the attributes of things, he can recognize them all, and deterins of each; facts s could of themselves reveal

Now our children, after the nize objects in the external world by means of their attributes and classify the possesses a value for them Uncultured children, on the other hand, pass blind and deaf close to things, just as an ignorant man passes by a work of art or listens to a perfornition or enjoyment

The educational methods now in use proceed on lines exactly the reverse of ours; having first abolished spontaneous activity, they present objects with their accu attention to each attribute, and hoping that from all this mass the mind of the child will be able to abstract the attributes theuidance or order Thus they create in a passive being an artificial chaos, more limited than that which the natural world would offer

The ”objective”an object and noting all its attributes--that is, describing it, is nothing but a ”sensory” variation on the custo an absent object, a present object is described; instead of the i to effect its reconstruction, the senses intervene; this is done so that the distinctive qualities of the object itself should be better rees, which are limited to the objects presented; and which are ”stored up” without any order As a fact, every object may have infinite attributes; and if, as often happens in object-lessons, the origins and ulti these attributes, the hout the universe If, for instance, in an object lesson on coffee, which I heard given in a Kindergarten school, the object is described and the attention of the children directed to its size, its color, its shape, its arooes on to describe the plant and the ht to Europe across the ocean, and, finally, lighting a spirit-larinds the berries and prepares the beverage, the mind has been led to wander in infinite spaces, but the subject has not been exhausted For it would be possible to go on to describe the exciting effects of coffee, caffeine, which is extracted fros Such an analysis would spread like spilt oil until finally dispersed, and the outcome would be of no use in any way If, indeed, we should ask a child so instructed: ”What is coffee, then?” hestory that I cannot reue (I cannot certainly say so coues and encumbers the mind and can never transform itself into a dynamic excitation of similar associations The efforts the child makes will be, at the most, efforts of memory to recall the history of coffee If associations are formed in his uity: histo the ocean that was traversed, to the dining-table at home on which coffee appears in cups every day; in other words, it will stray aimlessly as does the idle mind when it ”allows itself” to wander from the continuity of its passive associations

In this kind of _reverie_ to which the n of internal activity, far less of any individual difference Children subjected to the object-lesson systes; or, if we prefer to put it so, storehouses in which new objects are continually deposited

No activity is thus aroused and directed towards the object, in order to recognize its qualities in such a manner that the child himself for other objects with the first by their common characteristics arise in his mind For in what particular does any object resemble the others? In its use?

When we associate the ies of different objects by similarity, we should extract from the whole the qualities which the objects themselves have in coular tablets are alike, we have first extracted from the numerous qualities of these tablets such facts as that they are of wood, that they are polished, smooth, colored, of the sa to their _shape_ They are alike in _shape_ Thisseries of objects: the top of the table, the , etc; but before such a result as this can be achieved, it is necessary that thefrom the nuular shape_ The work of the mind in this quest must necessarily be _active_; it analyzes the object, extracts a deteruidance of this deter many objects by the sa of single attributes a all those proper to the object be not acquired, association by her work of the intelligence becomes impossible Moreover, this is intellectual work in reality, because the essential quality of the intelligence is not to ”photograph” objects, and ”keep thees of an album, or juxtaposed like the stones in a pavee on the intellectual nature The intelligence, with its characteristic orderliness and power of discri the dominant characteristics of objects, and it is upon these that it proceeds to build up its internal structures

Now our children, whose minds are thus ordered in relation to the classification of attributes by the pedagogic aid they have received, are led, not only to observe objects according to all the attributes they have analyzed, but also to distinguish identities, differences, and resemblances; and this work renders the extraction of one of the qualities corresponding to one of the sensory groups which have been considered apart, easy and spontaneous That is to say, it will be easy for the child thus to recognize the various qualities of an object, to note, for instance, that certain objects are alike in form, or alike in color; because ”forrouped into very distinctive categories, and they therefore recall series of objects by similarity This classification of attributes is a kind of loadstone; it is an attractive force of a deterroup of qualities; and the objects which have this quality are attracted thereto and united one with another; this is association by similitude, almost of a mechanical kind Books are of the shape of prisht say; and such a pronouncement would be the conclusion arrived at by a very complex mental process, were it not that prismatic forms already existed as a well-defined series in hisobjects which possess the same character Thus the whiteness of sheets of paper, interrupted by dark signs, may be attracted, by the colors systeht make the child say: Books are sheets of white printed paper

It is in this _active_ work that individual differences roup of attributes which will attract si characteristic chosen for the purpose of association by sireen; another that the saht; one will be struck by the whiteness of a hand, another by the smoothness of its skin For one child the ill be a rectangle; to another it is soh which the blue of the skycharacteristicswith their own innate tendencies

In like manner, a scientist will choose the characters _ist uish the huist e of the external characteristics ofa characteristic which will serve as a basis for classification: that is to say, a characteristic on which it will be possible to group numerous characteristics in the order of similitude Purely practical persons would consider man from the utilitarian rather than frole out the di other human characteristics; an orator would consider man from the point of view of his susceptibility to the spoken word But _selection_ is the fundae froue into the practical, from aimless conte in existence is characterized by the fact that it has _lianization is founded upon a selection What are the functions of the senses, but to respond to a determined series of vibrations and to no others? Thus the eye li the contents of the mind the first step is, therefore, a selection, necessarily and materially limited Nevertheless, the mind imposes still further li it upon the activity of internal choice Thus attention is fixed upon determined objects and not upon all objects; and the volition _chooses_ the actions which are really to be perfor a multitude of possible actions

It is in like fashi+on that the lofty work of the intelligence is accoous action of attention and internal will, it abstracts the dos, and thus succeeds in associating their iround of consciousness It ceases to consider an immense amount of ballast which would render its context foruishes the essential for the latter, and thus it is enabled to achieve its characteristic, clear, delicate, and vital activities It is capable of extracting that which is useful to its creative life, and thus finds in the cosmos the means of salvation Without this characteristic activity, the intelligence cannot construct itself; it would be like an attention that wanders fro upon any one of them, and like a will that can never decide upon any definite action

”It is possible to suppose,” says Ja his activity, simultaneously behold all the minutest portions of the world But if our human attention should be thus dissipated, we shouldoccasion to do any particular act”