Psychologic foundations of education, an attempt to show the genesis of the higher faculties of the mind

Front matter

Qass.

Book.

Intcmatioiral Axtnilan Btxm

Chapter I. — What is meant hy Educational Psychology Pp. 14-16

§ 8. All activities of man have an internal or mental side ; hence there is a psychology to all that man feels, knows, and wills ; the business of psychology to show this ; moreover, this inner reaction is educational ; hence educational psychology must investigate the inner reaction that accompanies the manifold activities of man.

Chapter II. — WJiat is Introspection 9 . . . Pp. 17-23

§ 9. Consciousness of the inward activity of the mind is a necessary factor in observation of the world in so far as self-activity is recognised in the life of plants and animals ; or activity according to design in any objects. § 10. Theory of evolution sees everywhere development from mechanical aggregates toward vital organisms ; Clifford's " ejects." § 11. Hence evolution recognises introspection in the objective world as the goal of its progress; Plotinus said, " Nature is greedy of beholding itself."

(^^KY'rm. \\\,— What is Self -activity f . . . Pp. 23-31.

§ 12. The great central fact in psychology is self-activity ; denied by Herbert Spencer in his First Principles ; also by Mansell. § 13. Mental pictures of self-activity impossible, but also motion, change, and energy unpicturable. § 14. Assimilation, sensation, volition, thought, are forms of self-activity, and its denial makes both physiology and psychology impossible. § 15. Phenomena that involve self-activity; plants have assimilation. § 16. Animals have assimilation, locomotion, and sensation. § 17. Feeling. § 18. Sensation. This chapter (III) to be expanded into Part II of this work.

Chapter lY.—The Three Stages of Thought . Pp. 32-37.

§ 19. Plato discovered the third stage and described all three ; the atomic stage, or "common sense." § 20. The category of relativity ; Isaac Newton a perpetual schoolmaster ; ancient scepticism ; Buddhism ; correlation of forces. § 21. Relativity presupposes self-relation. ^ 22. Each of the three stages a view of the world ; the third stage of knowing sees all in each or each in the light of all.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xiii

Chapter V. — A Concept not a Mental Picture . Pp. 37-43.

§ 23. Current doctrine of percepts and concepts not true ; a concept not a mental image, but a definition of the process that produces the individual object. § 24. Mental image a specimen illustrative of the definition or concept ; concepts correspond to deeper realities than mere percepts ; Hume and nominalism.

Chapter VI. — Time, Space, a7id Causality — three Ideas that make Experience possible Pp. 43-52.

§ 25. Kant's doctrine of the structure of mind ; how its a priori forms or categories make experience possible. § 26. Synthetic activity of the mind, using time, space, and causality ; reaction of mind upon its sense-impressions. § 27. Space thought as infinite. § 28. Infinite space a positive idea and not a negative idea as Hamilton supposed, for we see the necessity of space beyond any limit to space ; a limit to space requires space to exist in. § 29. Again, in order to know that a mental picture does not include all space, we must see that the boundaries of the picture require space to exist in, and therefore continue space rather than terminate it. § 30. Time also infinite, because a supposed beginning presupposes time before it. Importance to psychology of this fact — that we know the infinitude of space and time in an affirmative manner instead of negatively as Sir William Hamilton supposed.

Chapter VII. — Causality and the Absolute . . Pp. 52-58.

§ 31. Causality makes experience possible. If we had no idea of causality, we could not recognise ourselves as producers of our own deeds, nor recognise objects as causing our sense-impressions ; we should not distinguish what is subjective from what is objective ; and yet Hamilton supposed the idea of cause to be a " negative impotence " of the mind ; but it really is the basis of all our positive or affirmative knowledge of the not-me, the objective world. § 32. Cause involves the idea of producing something new ; it is the unity of identity and difference in a deeper idea — that of energy ; without it we should deny the possibility of origination of anything new. § 33. Analysis of the idea of cause finds that it consists in the production of a distinction within itself and the transfer of it to another, which is the effect ; self-separation accordingly is the basis of causality; this is self-activity ; this can not be imaged ; Kant's third antinomy solved ; causality the xiv ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

basis of the ideas of God and moral responsibility. § 34. Distinction between human and divine personalities ; potential and real.

Chapter VIII. — The Psychological Meariirig of the hifinite and Absolute Pp. 58-62.

§ 35. The true ideas of infinitude and first cause lie at the basis of educational psychology, because they make possible the higher orders of knowing ; without them the ideas of education (God, freedom, and immortality) are not possible ; Herbert Spencer's self-contradiction in denying ultimate religious ideas while affirming the doctrine of the persistence of force. § 36. True insight into causality as originating distinctions and diiferences — as producing variations and modifications is necessary for any progress in understanding psychology ; Herbert Spencer's denial of free will.

Chapter IX. — The Logic of Sense-perception. What Figure of the Syllogism Apperception uses .... Pp. 62-70.

§ 37. The logical structure of the intellect an important part of rational psychology ; the syllogistic activity of the mind used not only in conscious reasoning, but also in the lower activities, such as sense-perception and even feeling. § 38. Sense-perception uses the second figure of the syllogism in recognising its object ; it is identified by perceiving some mark or quality in it that is remembered as belonging to an object formerly perceived, the common mark being the middle term. § 39. The four valid modes of the second figure ; the technical terms of logic ; definitions of figures.

Chapter X. — How Sense-perception uses the First Figure to re-enforce its first act which takes place in the Second Figure.

§ 40. The class or species of the object having been identified by the second figure, the first figure is used to anticipate other features of the object known to belong to the class, and these are identified one after another in the object, or, if not found, lead to a correction of the first act of recognition and a new classification. § 41. It is important to note that the so-called valid modes are not used in sense-perception ; certainty is reached by multiplied acts of verification. § 42. School instruction gives the pupil the stored-up results of human experience, and prepares him to anticipate experience by using the first figure to test the results of the second figure and revise its conclusions; hence, quick perception is taught not so much by repeated perceiving as by ap-

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

XV perceiving, and this made accurate and exhaustive by the re-enforcement of the second figure by the first figure, t^ 43. Hegel's modification of Aristotle's doctrine of the syllogism ; the valid modes of the first figure ; the symbolism of a, e, i, o, and s, m, p.

Chapter XI. — Roiv General Concepts arise. How Sense-perception uses the Third Figure of the Syllogism to store up its Experience in General Terms Pp. 78-89.

§ 44. In the third figure the object is the middle term ; two predicates are found in it and thus united, making a definition of a new subclass ; the valid modes of the third figure ; explanation of the words used to name the modes ; significance of the letters h, c, d, /, and s,p,ni; baroco and bocardo explained. § 45. How the third figure in sense-perception presupposes the action of the second figure, g 46. After the action of the third figure the first and second verify by new observations, and store up experience in ragard to the existence of few or many examples of the new class, t^ 47. Causality perceptions through third figure. § 48. Subjective and objective causal relations in the third figure suggest names for subclasses. § 49. Mistake of ordinary psychology in explaining the formation of general ideas ; formed by division of still more general ideas, which are vague and empty till they receive content by recognising their subclasses through the third figure. § 50. Natural system of mnemonics arises through the third figure; peculiarities observed, aid the memory. § 51. Examples of subjective and objective use of the causal idea in naming classes and subclasses. § 52. The third figure produces a definition ; experience may discover many or few individuals that fall under it ; summary statement of the three figures. § 53. How the subclasses arise by division from the more general classes ; the particular categories from the universal, and all from the self or ego as the summum genus; Hegel's logic.

Chapter XU.—Body and Ilind . . . .Pp. 90-93.

§ 54. The study of the nervous organism ; connection between mind and body always assumed ; what is it? centripetal and centrifugal nerve currents ; mechanical versus vital action ; it takes energy to guide energy; self-activity is at one extreme of nerve action and the mechanical activity at the other; the object in physiological psychology is to find where the one leaves oil and the other begins.

xvi ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

Chapter XIII. — Brain Centres of Sensation and 3Iotion.

§ 55. Early observations of sensor and motor nerves. § 56. The spinal cord thickens to form the medulla oblongata, the pons Varolii, the optic thalami, and the corpora striata ; the use of analogy by Luys ; action of the great ganglia described in language adapted to explain the digestion of food in the stomach. § 57. Difference between reflex and deliberative movements ; sensory impulses converted into motor impulses ; automatic actions do not need outside stimuli.

Chapter XIV. — The Localization of Fundioiis of the Brain.

§ 58. Early conjectures as to the bodily seat of the mind and its several functions. § 59. Gall and Spurzheim's phrenology. § 60. Defect of Spurzheim's definitions of faculties ; his omission of the higher faculties (of the third order) of knowing. § 61. Phrenological organs do not correspond to the convolutions, nor take account of the convolutions at the base of the brain or between the two hemispheres. § 62. The fissures of Sylvius and Rolando; other fissures. § 63. Boundaries of the lobes. § 64. Report of the anatomists negative to the claims of phrenology ; first positive discovery made by Broca in 1861 connecting loss of speech with disease of lower frontal convolution ; Eckhard and Meynert's discoveries; connection between the cortex and convulsive movements. § 65. Hitzig and Fritsch ; centres of movement near the fissure of Rolando ; David Ferrier's experiments on monkeys. § 66. The results do not support the phrenological theory as to the motor areas of the brain ; Munk's theory as to mental images and motor centres. § 67. Goltz agrees with Munk that the cerebrum has to do with mental images ; Ferrier's view ; the second figure of the syllogism does not enable the mind to form motives, but the first figure is necessary for this because it brings the conception of potentialities different from those realized in the object before the senses. § 68. Exner's lines of investigation ; cases of lesion of brain and their mental effects; mutual criticisms of the investigators. § 69, Results negative as to showing the real nature of the mind, but very useful in pathology. § 70. Self-activity perceptible only in introspection, and transferred by inference and analogy to objects of external observation. § 71. The nerves and

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xvii

brain are instruments for learning and controlling the external world ; the body organic, but the soul something higher — namely, a builder of organisms ; knowing and willing not biological but psychological.

' Chapter XV.— The Will Pp. 114-119.

§ 72. What physiological psychology may be expected to discover, in view of its methods and means — namely, a stock of pathological knowledge regarding the proper care of the nervous system and the cure of its diseases ; the study of special organs can not reach metaphysical or moral results, because these relate to universal conditions of being and therefore transcend all organs ; the conclusions of physiological psychology would therefore be only negative ; unless organism can be transcended, there can be no universal conclusions, or, indeed, conclusions of any sort ; for each conclusion is a subsumption of a particular under a universal. § 73. The will lies entirely within the field of introspection ; its existence is a fact of consciousness ; its inconceivability is simply unpicturability ; the difference between the consciousness of the child or savage and that of the man cultured in reflection. § 74. Freedom of will seems impossible to minds on the first stage of reflection, or^n the doctrine of relativity; the two difficulties: first, to see beyond the doctrine of relativity ; secondly, to explain the fatalistic doctrine of the strongest motive and its alleged constraint over the will.

Chapter XVI. — The Fallacy of the Doctrine that the Strongest Motive governs the Will, and therefore the Will is not Free.

§ 75. Psychology must show why a false doctrine seems to be true^ by the three stages of knowing ; the motive seems to control the will only when it is regarded as an external reality existing independently of the will ; but a motive is not an existing thing any more than is a mental image ; it is a purpose or ideal of something that does not yet exist, but will require an act of will to make it exist ; to say that a motive constrains the will is to say that something acts before it exists ; I must think away the conditions of existence in order to conceive a motive, for a motive is an ideal of a state of existence different from the actuality. § 76. The will is thus creative in two ways in acting according to motive : First, it makes the motive by thinking an ideal that may xviii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

possibly exist in place of the actual ; secondly, it realizes the motive or ideal and annuls the actuality that was ; here it proves its freedom and superiority over the actuality, because it can conceive an ideal in place of the actual, and then proceed to make it take the place of the actual. § 77. The moral motive contains the ideal self — the perfectly independent ego — as its object, or end and aim ; it is therefore transcendent of all reality and outweighs death ; the moral motive is therefore the strongest and at the same time the arrival at perfect freedom of the will, because the will makes its independent self the sole object in willing according to the moral motive ; in sacrificing its life for another, it weighs in the balances all the motives of empirical reality and outbalances them with its transcendent self; the moral is the form of consistent self -activity ; that self-activity which would deny its own independence by nullifying the freedom of others is immoral. § 78. Spontaneity distinguished from moral freedom ; co-operation of the individual will with the will of the social whole ; Kant's " categorical imperative " : act so that the deed will not contradict itself if it is made the universal act of all intelligent beings ; act so that if the social whole acted as you do, it would not reduce your action to a zero. § 79. The moral the highest motive, because it re-enforces the individual will by the will of the community, and thereby consolidates all intelligent will power into one ; Hegel's thought on this point.

Chapter XVII. — Freedom versus Fate , . Pp. 127-134.

§ 80. Self-activity is presupposed as belonging to independent being ; dependent beings therefore presuppose it also. § 81. Freedom does not presuppose fate as its ground, but, on the contrary, fate presupposes freedom as more fundamental ; fate is phenomenal and freedom is noumenal. § 83. Dialectic of fate or necessity shows it to be a part or side of the more comprehensive category of self-activity or freedom : assuming that all things are necessitated to be just as they are by the totality of conditions, it follows that each thing is derivative from the environment or totality, and hence there has been change ; in change something new begins and something old ceases to be; but the old was necessitated to be as it was by the totality of conditions. § 83. The new also is necessitated by the totality ; hence there must be two totalities of conditions, one for the old and one for the new, and therefore

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

yix the totality must have changed ; but there is nothing outside the totality to necessitate it ; if it is necessitated it necessitates itself ; if it changes it changes itself; hence the totality must be self-active. § 85. Necessity, therefore, must be of a part and never of the whole ; fate is partial, self-activity total ; necessity belongs to the realm of effects, to dependent beings, self-activity and freedom to independent being. § 86. Fatalistic necessity is a different thing from logical necessity, which is an internal necessity of being and not an external necessity ; a dialectic circle in which necessity is used in two senses.

Chapter XVIII. — Old and New Psychologies compared as to their Provinces and their Results for Education ; a Review.

§ 87. The so-called " new psychology " taken to include physiological psychology and " child study." § 88. The " old psychology " had discovered and described the rational structure of the soul, (a) its syllogisms in three figures, {h) its stages of ascent; (1) nutritive as plant, (2) sensation and locomotion as animal, (3) rational in man who has sense-perception, imagination, memory, reflection, and pure thought; the active and passive intellects were discriminated and the doctrines of theism, freedom of will, and immortality were demonstrated by it. § 89. New explication of self-activity as object of introspection. § 90. German (Kantian) distinction of universality and necessity as the criterion of a priori knowledsre which transcends experience ; space, time, causality, and many other ideas transcend experience and yet make experience possible. § 91. Bodily conditions and how to rise out of the lower stages of mind to the higher, need physiological psychology and child study for their elucidation, and here is a great field for new psychology. § 92. The long period of helpless infancy. §93. Arrested development occasioned by overcultivatioii and too " thorough " drill in mechanical studies at this epoclio § 94. The gamin of Victor Hugo.

SECOND PART. Psychologic System. . Pp. 147-250

Chapter XIX. — llethod and System in Psychology. Pp. 147-150.

§ 95. System arises from the application of method ; method is the mode of activity of a principle ; its activity produces an organic whole or system. § 97. Part I gave glimpses of the method, discussing self-activity, the infinite, the absolute, mental pictures

XX ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

and concepts, figures of the syllogism as showing mental structures, the physiological psychology as counterpart to logic, the freedom of the will as the acme of self-activity. § 98. Method now applied to produce a system ; a growth or progressive realization of the principle (self-activity) through its method ; all facts should be seen as illustrations of the principle, or else the science is not yet perfect.

Chapter XX. — The Individuality of Organic Beings.

§ 99. Discrimination of inorganic from organic. § 100. Individuality of inorganic, g 101. Individuality of atoms. § 102. Mere aggregates not individuals. § 103. Individuality not a thing but an energy that transforms, orders, and arranges things for its purpose. Feeling a reproduction of the environment with and for the self.

Chapter XXI. — Psychologic Functions of Plants and Animals compared Pp. 155-160.

§ 104. Plant an aggregate of individualities building according to a type but lacking feeling or central unity. § 105. Animal individuality. § 106. Sense-perception as contrasted with assimilation or digestion ; feeling not a passivity of the soul. § 107. Feeling a reaction of the soul against environment. § 108. Of ascent from nutrition to feeling. § 109. Nutrition the destruction of the environment, feeling the reproduction of it. § 110. Perception objective, transforming the subject into the object ; nutrition subjective, transmuting object into subject.

Chapter XXU.— Peelings and Emotions . . Pp. 160-166.

§ 111. Feeling a higher mode of reaction on the external world than assimilation or digestion ; desire a more developed form of feeling, not merely a reproduction of the external, but a perception of mutual limits of subject and object that makes their unity its object. § 112. Classification of feelings : (a) those that tend toward intellect ; (b) those that tend toward will ; (a) sensations, emotions, affections ; (?*) instincts, appetites, desires. §113. How to educate the feelings, not immediately but through intellect and will ; first give a correct intellectual view, and then make conformity to it a habit ; then the correct view and correct habit become a second nature and the old feeling is gradually replaced by a new feeling, and the heart has been educated. § 114. Sense-

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xxi

perception not only receptive of impressions but an act of introspection ; the scale of the senses ; touch, taste, smell, a more or less violent attack on the individuality of the environment; hearing and seeing, ideal senses in that they do not involve the destruction of the object perceived.

Chapter XXIU.— The Five Senses . . . Pp. 166-170.

§ 115. Feeling a sort of digestive activity not directed on its food but turned inward and acting upon itself and for itself ; touch, taste, smell, hearing, and seeing considered more in detail.

Chapter XXIV. — EecoUection and Ilemory . Pp. 170-190.

§ 116. Recollection can recall at pleasure the ideal object formed in the act of perception ; memory is systematized recollection ; it generates the faculty of perceiving things and events as individuals of species or members of classes, and this makes possible language and the specially human form of mind ; it looks behind the object to its producing causes ; it sees in each object many other possibilities, a sort of halo of potentiality. § 117. This is a further activity of introspection ; it is an attention to the activity of recollection ; for it re-enforces the present perception of the object by adding to it its past perceptions, hence completing the present object by adding to it its variations and thus seeing it in the perspective of its history ; it thus transmutes the transient into the permanent and sees each individual in its universal ; the act of attention here' makes its appearance, since the mind in collecting its experience around one individual must needs neglect other objects. § 118. Generalization thus goes on in the swift unnoticed process of sense-perception and memory. §119. Mnemonic systems usually attempt to strengthen the memory by attention to accidental associations instead of essential relations ; cultivate the memory directly where it is weak, but do not train the mind to notice accidental relations, for this ■yveakens the power of thought. § 120. The scale of ascent from limitation of the subject by the object in sense-perception to free reproduction of the object in memory. § 121. Memory a double self-activity as compared with sense-perception. § 122. Overcultivation of sense-perception arrests development in memory and thought ; overcultivation of memory likewise arrests or deadens the power of thought and also of imagination ; the will also settles into passive obedience through too much cultivation of the memory. § 124. Cases in which memory xxii ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

should be cultivated ; associations that assist the power of thought and strengthen the memory at the same time. § 125. Memory not a simple faculty, but an entire series of activities; return to childish memory of trivial circumstances not desirable. § 126. Attention strengthens one kind of memory while it weakens other kinds, and thereby makes the memory uneven. § 127. Memory less important when the higher faculties grow strong ; how the memory and sense-perception grow less and less important through the results of specialization ; Goethe's Homunculus ; Aristotle's observation that the lower faculties, the passive intellect, are moribund.

Chapter XXV. — From Perception to Conception ; each Object seen in its Class Pp. 190-197.

§ 128. Memory versus recollection as a process of collecting about an object its variations and seeing it in its history ; nutrition, sense-perception, and representation reviewed. § 129. The seeing of an individual in its class is a consciousness of the freedom of the ego to recall or represent to itself a former perception at pleasure ; as the ego can reproduce its percepts, it is a generating activity. § 130. Here perception becomes conception, for the ego transfers its generating activity to the objective world, and sees everything as a product of a combination of causes, and as only one specimen out of an infinite number that the causal complex might produce. § 131. Universals not derived from particulars by analysis and abstraction, but rather by synthesis — the seeing of the individual object in its producing cause ; how the infant uses the third figure of the syllogism and brings out his ideas from emptiness and vagueness to definiteness and fulness of content. § 132. Concepts arise when the child can compare his recollection with reality. § 133. Human sense-perception differs from that of animals by the fact that it perceives all objects as specimens of classes; each is a particular in a universal; man perceives by means of concepts ; apperceives as well as perceives. § 134. The rise of self-consciousness, the perception of the ego is therefore joined to the rise from perception to conception. § 135. Imagination and fancy freer than memory, but not with a rational freedom.

Chapter XXVI. — Language the Distinguishing Characteristic of the Human Being Pp. 198-206.

§ 136. The word fixes the concept ; language distinguishes the man from the animal. § 137. Language an evidence of immortal

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

xxm individuality. § 138. Continuity of individuality not immortality unless conscious. § 189. The energies of the soul in reaction against the energy of the environment. § 140. Recognition of the self coetaneous with recognition of the universal. § 141. How the self is a universal. § 142. The individual self an entire sphere of particularity ; Plato's *' reminiscence " explained.

Chapter XXVII. — TJiinking as the Activity of the Understanding, including '• Common Sense " and Reflection.

§ 143. Common sense uses the principle of contradiction in an abstract way, and does not admit relativity and dependent being ; can not solve the paradox involved in motion or becoming ; Herbert Spencer's denial of self-consciousness. § 144. Explanation of the conviction of common sense that all things are complete, independent totalities ; it deals with universals without being aware that all its percepts are likewise concepts. § 145. It figures to itself an abstract world of self-existent, atomic beings. § 146. To refute common sense with its abstract law of contradiction, show the object's relations of dependence and the significance of becoming and change. § 147. The stage of reflection follows that of common sense when the idea of the necessary relativity of things is seized ; the correlation of forces belongs as a doctrine to the stage of reflection ; scale of ideas : (a) sensuous ideas perceive things, (h) abstract ideas perceive forces, (c) concrete idea perceives persistent force, {d) absolute idea perceives self-determination; Hume's psychology the reductio ad ahsurdum of Locke ; Herbert Spencer's " symbolic ideas." § 148. The understanding dogmatical (common sense) and sceptical (reflection). § 149. The understanding holds to the finite, taking the perishable for the imperishable and the noumenal for the phenomenal. § 150. Deduction of the phenomenal. § 151. Deductions of negative unity as transcendent-, the Sankya philosophy, a doctrine of the negative unity transcendent. § 152. The Aufklarung, or period of scepticism : it is the advent o the idea of negative unity in reflection. § 152. Negative unity the summit of the understanding.

Chapter XXVIIL— ^e Reason . . .Pp. 220-227. . § 153. The highest thought of the understanding is that of negative unity wherein all individuality is swallowed up, as a sea swallows up its waves ; but the negative unity must also cause xxiv ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

the individuals which it absorbs again into itself, and cause them through its own energy or self-activity; hence self-activity is the basis of a negative unity. § 154. Self-activity is therefore presupposed by pantheism to make its negative unity possible ; but self-activity establishes theism rather than pantheism ; analysis of self-determination finds in it the substance or negative unity of pantheism, and, besides it, also the causal creative energy of theism. § 155. Causa sui ; the negative unity the ultimatum of analysis and the beginning of synthesis. § 156. The affirmative function of the understanding ; the significance of naming things for the child. § 157. Language makes both phases of the understanding possible, for it is a process of taking up into consciousness the results of the unconscious action of the concept-forming stage, which have been preserved by words. § 158. The doctrine of persistent force as negative unity of things and forces when grasped fully reveals personality underlying it as the true form of being ; the four forms of ideas — (1) sensuous, (2) abstract, (3) concrete, (4) absolute — correspond to four views of the world ( Weltanschauung en).