Part 3 (1/2)

MENTAL EDUCATION,

or,

THE CULTURE OF THE INTELLECT

”Now, as refusal to satisfy the cravings of the digestive faculty is productive of suffering, so is the refusal to satisfy the craving of any other faculty productive of suffering, to an extent proportioned to the importance of that faculty But, as God wills man's happiness, that line of conduct which produces unhappiness is contrary to his will”--FRANCIS BACON

If one is to educate the body, she would be presumptuous in the extre in soy With asthe subject of mental education--that one third of education which with too many persons stands for the whole--we must pause a moment for a few reflections on the nature of mind and the necessary results thereof

”_Mind is essentially self-activity_” In this, as we have been taught, lies its essential difference from mere matter, whose most essential property is inertia--_ie_, absolute inability to move itself or to stop itself[16]

When, therefore, mind acts at all, it iven will be of the slightest concern to it, unless by its own activity the mind reach forth, draw it in, and assimilate it to itself This voluntary activity, directed towards any subject, is Attention, and so great is the power of mind when in this state, that it dissolves and draws in all food, no matter how abstruse, that may present itself Thus the problem of mental education, which had seemed so complex, resolves itself very simply We have first to educate the attention of the child, so that she shall be able to use it at will, and to turn it towards any object desired; and secondly, we sie which the past centuries have created and accumulated, and to present this in such quantity and in such order as the experience of the sarowth

To begin with, then, we must educate the child fro her naturally drifting and capricious attention by the will The power of the child is very limited in this respect Her eyes, the index of her attention, wander easily from one external object to another, and consequently our work radual, for, if we atteer than the th for, the tense bow snaps, and the overstrained activity lapses into inanity We must ask her attention for very short intervals at first, and during many years; for every ti that the attention gives e have weakened, and not strengthened the power Exercise, to be judicious, we ular, and increase steadily in its de should, therefore, be the steady and methodical cultivation of the faculty of attention, and not the acquisition of knowledge Our first work ive such judicious exercise that the mind shall acquire a habit of exercise and an appetite for it, and not to spoil at the outset theonce created, we have then only to spread the table and place the courses one after another, at proper intervals, and within convenient reach, in regular order, and the work is done

But the child, as she grows fro three different directions which are successively taken by the intelligent activity First, she is occupied in perceiving objects She then passes into the years doe froht, but, through the fault of a defective education, she often never passes beyond the second stage Thus dwarfed and crippled she re her whole life, physically a wo, though the sun be but one hour high

Again, serious errors are made in education, froirl passes inevitably froes When, for example, authors of text-books on Natural Science, History and Reading, designed for pupils of fifteen and sixteen years of age, cover nize the fact that they forget that at that age, the first or intuitional stage is past; and when publishers endeavor to reco them specimens of the pictures in the books, instead of specimens of the explanations and statements, the teachers know that they are supposed to be equally admirers of fine wood-cuts

In the first, or intuitional stage, when the child is chiefly employed with perceptions, there is little to be done but to train the eye, the ear, the hand and the voice, and to teach the correct use of distinctly spoken language

It is clearly iate the subject of mental education in detail in the present essay; I estions and statements

First, is it not evident that it is all-iirl receives in the first years of her school life, while she is yet in the intuitional or perceptive stage? A failure to properly train her attention here, and the whole of her after-work is invalidated Her school work becoreeable, fro from the want of a trained power of attention She is found fault with for restlessness and want of interest, as if that were her fault, and not her e is at best but ”a thing of shreds and patches,” till, when all is done and the result exhibited, we ask, with a sigh, ”whether it be really worth while to go through so uardians take to secure the best advantages for their daughters at fifteen and seventeen, and of how little i they place theht and fifteen! The error is all the sairls We are continually carefully locking the stable-door after the horse is stolen; we are continually allowing things to go wrong, and thenthat it is far easier to keep out of trouble than to get out of it If a girl must be trusted to inco half her school life, let that half be the last, and not the first, and incompetency will be shorn of half its power to injure Not only directly in the interest of the girls, but in the interest of h the two are one--I ask this, for in that case, our profession would soon be elevated in its general tone by the eliht never to have entered it

Passing froination and e powers, we next arrive at the time at which it becoood reading is provided for the eager child It makes not so much difference what kind of books she reads, but they should always be the very best of their kind, for this is the time in which the formation of a correct taste becomes, perhaps, the most important duty of the educator To poetry, either in verse or not, each child inclines naturally, as did the race in its childhood, and the stories of the Old Testament and Homer are never wearisome Generally, ”the proper classical works for youth are those which nations have produced in the earliest stages of their culture”

Now is the season for fairy stories, and the Germans, who, of all nations best understand the needs of children, have them ready furnished to our hand I do not less fairy tales hich modern writers endeavor to supplant the fairy classics, and which, for the most part, the instinct of a child at once condemns

I doubt very seriously whether it is possible at the present time, and in A in it, any enuine epic poem The circumstances favorable to the production of both have passed aith acy of delight and charet that the childin order to arrive at maturity And perhaps Americans are ht as well expect the full bloom of the rose to burst from the root without the intervention of steht that the children should devour fairy stories, and she, who, at this period of life, fails to read the _Arabian Nights_, must miss forever a most valuable part of her mental education: for this period, once past, never returns Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels may be also mentioned here It is true that they were not written for children, but so true and genuine are they, that the child enjoys thehly, while the most mature find thees belongs to all the genuineHans Christian Andersen It is the royal sign and seal of authority in stories Ballad poetry belongs too to the beginning of this stage Scott co in it at all These exa

It would be a very valuable aid in the education of our girls at this time, if so, give us a list, with publishers' naht to be read by every child; a list to which any irl's taste, and yet ignorant of the best ht refer with perfect confidence

We must not, as has been well said, deprive books for children of the ”shadow-side” of life, because in that case they become artificial and untrue, and the child rejects them ”For the very reason that in the stories of the Old Testaratitude, craftiness and deceit a the fathers of the Jewish race, and the leaders of God's chosen people, have they so great an educational value,” and e have purged the narrations of all these characteristics, and present to the child an expurgated edition, we find that they no longer charusts a child sooner than _childishness_ in stories written for her, and it is because very few people can rightly draw the line bethat is childish and what is child-like, that we find so feho are able to write stories which are really adapted to children, and that so many who address Sunday-schools fail to interest Every woman who has proved her power in this direction may be said, in the dearth of valuable books for children, to owe a duty to her country by giving theedy will take the place of the epic poem and ballad, and will lead, itof the sense of responsibility

The question what the girl shall read belongs not at all to herself, but to those who know the world better than she, and who, through the fact that they are educated while she is not, knohat and when to select

Hence the iirl herself, but to the whole country, of the thorough intellectual education of our girls[17]

But enough has been said on the subject of reading, and of the distinctions which should be made I may add, however, that the line before alluded to is to be drawn in novels As, for instance, the girl is ready for dickens before she ought to read Thackeray, as dickens dwells ion of the simple emotions, while Thackeray has moved on into the sphere of e and critical understanding

Supposing now that the girl has passed beyond the psychical stage of the Iht, it is ie also she should not miss a systematic education If this should be the case, she is defrauded of the key which alone can render intelligible the scattered work of the previous epoch The work of education in the first, or intuitional epoch is general; in the second, or iain to the general; and thus only can it constitute a whole In the first, the child picks up facts and general principles froirl pursues, each for itself, different branches of study; in the third, she should be led to see the connection and interdependence of these branches, to weave together the loose ends If she is not so led, if her education stops with the work of the second stage--the only hich it is possible to do in the second stage, on account of the laws of the development of the intellectual power--her education reh to endure the stress of tih to bear a h to fetter and trip feet that endeavor to ress by its aid

And yet this is e are in the ent and energetic Airls Does it ever occur to us to ask what becoy, deprived thus of its natural outlet? We have only to turn to the records of our insane asylums or to the note-books of the physician and we are partially answered This is irls had had real work for which they were responsible, and felt themselves able rationally to utilize the power of which they were blindly conscious, they would not be found to-day in the wards of asylums, or condelorious days” Or, thirdly, we may find another and quite different developy,[18] this closing of the top of the chionistic, is combative, because she is forced into such a position, not because she herself desires it The smoke starts for the top of the chi whirls against the bricks, till, driven by the necessity of an outlet so what the trouble is, but only di in its passage the fire, and revenging itself on the author of the repression

Men and women are wonderfully alike after all The same motives move theirl is assured that, being half-educated, half-educated she must remain, she will not, unless driven by the internal fire of irrepressible genius, try very earnestly to fit herself for the higher plane which she can never reach