Institutes of education, comprising an introduction to rational psychology;

Introduction To Rational Psychology

DESIGNED (PARTLY) AS A TEXT-BOOK FOR UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES

BY

S. S. LAUKIE, M.A., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF THE INSTITUTES AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

15106 gcrft MACMILLAN AND CO,

AND LONDON

1892 All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY MACMILLAN AND CO.

TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. GUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON, U.S.A.

Educatiom Library

Preface

I BEGA.N this book as a Handbook for the students of my own class. It grew in the course of production. I felt that I could be of most service to students, and perhaps also to Lecturers on Education, if I printed in full the more abstract portions of my argument — those, namely, which dealt with the philosophy of method. The result is that the volume is more than a Handbook and less than a Treatise.

I have used the term on the title-page, " rational psychology," to distinguish my point of view. Doubtless it might be maintained that no one should in these days attempt any philosophy of mind until empirical psychology has completed its microscopic task, and psycho-physics has said its last word. This would be to strike dumb all but the devotees of physical experimentation, while they themselves do not hesitate to travel outside their peculiar field, and commit themselves to speculative opinions {e.g. freedom of the Will) which contain implicit in them a whole metaphysical system. It will be granted that the uncorrelated phenomena of consciousness, which empirical psychology offers us, cannot in itself yield a theory of knowledge, much less a philosophy of life. There must be some principle, idea (call it what you will), which correlates and unifies. And until that principle emerges out of the laboratory (if that is to be its birthplace), we may be allowed our own thoughts as vi Preface.

to its probable whereabouts. Ill any case a writer on the theory of Education is really writing at once a theory of life and a treatise De emendatione intellectus, and he cannot dispense with a rational and rationalised scheme of mind, be it right or wrong. He will be thankful for all that physiology and physics can give him; but meanwhile, and until better advised, he must follow his own course. What I have to say is a practical application of my books on Metaphysics and Ethics.

After all, psycho-physics can never be more than physics, though it may throw some light on the characteristics, as well as the conditions, of sensational elements.

The notes at the end of some of the lectures, and the whole of the Appendix, are to be omitted by students of Education. They are written chiefly for my own satisfaction, to justify and supplement the text; but they are not needed for the understanding of it. To the general student of philosophy they may be interesting.

It is quite unnecessary, in my opinion, to carry students of Education into all the details of Logic, Psychology, Ethics, and Physiology. It is necessary, however, that the philosophy which they study should be seen to be truly the Science of the Art. Accordingly, students have to get a firm hold, by the help of their instructors, of the fundamental principles which exhibit the nature and growth of mind. Everything which diverts their attention from this is useless, so far as the science and art of Education are concerned.

S. S. LAURIE.

r\IVER8ITY OF

October 1892.

Table Of Contents

PAET I.

THE END, PHYSIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS, MATE- RIALS, AND METHOD OF EDUCATION GENERALLY.

PAGE

Part II

THE PHILOSOPHY OF INTELLIGENCE AS YIELD- ING THE METHODOLOGY OF EDUCATION, . 53

II. The Man-Mind. Will : Percipience. Self-Consciousness, .75

III. Concipience and the Sense-Concept of the Individual, 90

vii viii Contents.

LECTURE PAGE

IV. Unity of the Rational Mind : in its Educational

Reference, 99

V. Summing up and Definitions (thus far), . . . 103 VI. Application of the preceding Analysis to Educational Method, 109

VIII. Reasoning or Ratiocination — Mediate Affirmation, 138

IX. Causal Induction, 150

X. Survey of the Processes of Reason in order to show that they are each and all Analytico-Synthetic

in their character, 164

XI. Unfolding of Intelligence ; or Order of Intellectual

Growth in Time, 166

XII. Materials and Dynamics of the building-up of Mind

as a Real, 1(59

Part IV. Applied Methodology, Or The Art Of

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION, . . lie;

Part V. Ethical Education— Specially

CONSIDERED, .... 199

I. Ethical Ideas as the Real, or Substance, of Life, . 201

II. Brief Analysis of Mind as an Ethical Activity, . 205

III. Unity of the Intellectual and Ethical in Education, 211 (\utrition and Discipline: Real and Formal.')

Contents. ix

Part VI. Applied Methodology As Art Of *'

ETHICAL EDUCATION, . .215

LECTURE

I. The Real and the Formal, 217

(Instruction, Training, and Discipline generally.) II. Method of Ethical Education in the Real — Instruction, 219

III. Method of Ethical Education in the Formal — Dis-

cipline, 224

IV. Moral Authority and its Characteristics, . . . 227 V. Characteristics of the Exercise of Moral Authority, 229

VI. The Moral Sanctions of Authority, .... 234 VII. The Material Sanctions of Authority, i.e. the Enforcement of Authority, 235

VIII. Natural Auxiliaries of Authority, .... 236

Part VII. School-management, Organisation, Etc., 239

HISTORY OF EDUCATION, . . 246

APPENDIX ON CERTAIN PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE PRE- CEDING PAGES, .251

A. PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS, 253

B. DUALISM, THE UNCONSCIOUS, AND CEREBRATION, . 261

C. BRIEF SYNTHETIC STATEMENT, 266

D. UNITY OF REASON, ....... 269

Part I. The End, Physiological Conditions

MATERIALS, AND METHOD OF

EDUCATION GENERALLY.