room, to ignore the boys that are walking about, the singing of the birds, the rattle of the street-cars, the bright sunshine, and the marbles in their pockets. We wish the pupil, for the time being, to be entirely absorbed in one thing. That is good training in observation, but few teachers would call such occupation an observation lesson. They think of observation lessons only in connection with flowers, trees, animals, birds' nests, and other material realities. The usual directions for observing would lead to dissipation of attention-"scatteration"-rather than concentration.

Institute conductors used to talk much about training the observation. Frequently they asked such questions as "How many upper teeth has a cow? On which side of the cow's horns are the ears? When a cow lies down does she get down with her fore feet or hind feet first?" The same question was asked about the horse. "How many steps in the stairs coming into the building?" In country institutes the teachers could seldom answer the questions concerning the farm animals and after the conductor discoursed learnedly (at least at great length) upon training the observation and the teachers' poorly developed powers of observation, the teachers, who had lived all their lives among farm scenes, felt much chagrined and very green. Had some of the institute members politely requested the conductor to describe the lining of his coat or his hat, to tell the number of buttons on his coat, the colors of his neck-tie, the length of his shoes, the number of eyelets in his shoes, whether his shoe tips were plain or foxed, the number of windows in his house, etc., it would then have been a time for exultation on the part of the rustics and of chagrin on the part of the professor.

Effects Special, Rather than General.-Training in observation is special in its effects rather than general. It has been currently taught that training to observe in one direction or in one field will make one a more skilled observer in all others, but this view is coming to be discredited. Training in observing zoological specimens, for example, will not give increased skill in observing music or spring fashions. If you were to meet two

acquaintances on the street, the one a skilled botanist and the other an uneducated person, the latter would be more apt to see you than your biological friend. Now, it must be conceded that the biologist is, in general, the more skilled observer, although the unlettered person does just what some pedagogues advise for the cultivation of the powers of observation, i. e., he sees everything about him. But in reality he sees nothing, that is, he sees nothing well. Seeing, as explained above, is a mental act and is not true seeing at all when the act ends with the identification of a retinal image. Dr. Harris says that "The acute seeing of the hawk or greyhound does not lead to a scientific knowledge, and persons with excellent seeing and hearing capacity in general, but without scientific training, are always poor observers. More than this, an education in science, although it fits a person to observe in the line of his own specialty, does not fit him to observe in the line of another science which he has not investigated. On the contrary, the training in one particular line rather tends to dull the general power of observation in other provinces of facts. The archæologist Winckelmann

. . could recognize a work of art by a small fragment of it, but it does not follow that he could observe a fish's scale and recognize the fish to which it belonged. On the other hand, Agassiz could recognize a fish from one of its scales, but could not, like Winckelmann, recognize a work of art from one of its fragments.

Methods of Training in Observation.-From what has been said above, it will be seen that no special means for training are necessary. There is no class of objects nor group of subjects which form a monopoly for the training in observation. It is very evident that if we wish to become good observers in any direction we must observe much and carefully in that direction. We must "store" in the mind a vast fund of information which will form an "apperception mass" in the light of which the new material is to be observed.

All exercises or occupations that require close attention, careful discrimination of small differences, exhaustive comparison

1

1 Preface to E. G. Howe's Advanced Elementary Science.

of factors, and identification of similarities contribute to the general qualities of good observation. Though the training in observation is special, yet the habits and tendencies of mind engendered by accurate observation in a given field, will undoubtedly contribute to the possibility of better observation in other lines. However, if one becomes proficient in one line it is no guaranty that he will observe everything in every other line entirely unrelated. It merely means that he may if he becomes interested in that direction and sets about to accumulate exhaustive acquaintanceship in that direction. It also follows that whatever exercise is attempted the complete and undivided attention should be given to it. An attempt should be made to marshal quickly and carefully all the related experiences that will enable one to obtain a clearer understanding of the object in hand.

Pupils need careful training in observing in each branch of study with which they deal. Geography and natural science have usually been thought of as affording special training in observation. Because they reveal the world of objects which have hitherto been unseen by children and thus enlarge their horizon they are very important and perhaps seem to have contributed exceptionally to the powers of observation. They undoubtedly have contributed to the range of the child's observation, but they have not contributed any more to the strength of attention nor to fineness of discrimination than Latin or any other foreign language would have done. The study of history may also contribute very largely to the power of discernment of fine differences of opinion. If studied comparatively, as it should be, it induces careful discrimination among facts. Geometry aids in visual discrimination, while all mathematics increases the discrimination among logical processes. The reading lessons demand careful attention to certain details and the detection of fine shades of differences. There is necessity for discrimination of letters and words, of various tones and modulations of the voice and the exact positions of the vocal organs in producing them. Then there are fine shades of meaning that require close

attention and a careful weighing of factors in order that they may be determined with exactness.

Thus we see that no subject can be shown to monopolize the opportunities for training in observation, but that any and all may contribute in special directions. Moreover, since all training is special it follows that in order to become an "all-round" observer, the training must be so comprehensive as to create a many-sided interest and to afford exercise in observation in many of the fields of human learning. It should be conceded probably that in early childhood when the child is in the presentative stage material things should be sought which offer the child tangible data for comparison. But it is a false doctrine of development which would maintain that sense-perceptions should constitute the sole psychic experiences of the child. Because the sensory centres are the best developed it does not follow that no abstract processes enter into the mental life. Early in life generic images or recepts form an important medium for thought. A stage higher and we have thinking by means of finer instruments-words; and at last conceptual thinking, carried on in so purely an abstract way that almost all traceable evidence of the symbols disappears beneath the threshold of consciousness. The child, therefore, needs for his proper development to be early exercised with things appealing to sense perception, and also to be trained to compare sense images with revived images. Not only should he compare perceptions and images, but also the recepts or generic images, which are perfectly familiar, and his concepts should be continually compared with each other. Now in this last process we have reasoning. Those who advocate excluding from the first school years all work demanding reasoning do not understand psychology. There are all degrees of reasoning from the simplest inferences of the dog (or of other lower animals) up to the complex abstractions evolved by a Kant or a Newton. Providing that the concepts with which the child deals are not too complex in their origin for him to grasp their significance the child will in no wise be injured by higher mental processes.

CHAPTER XVIII

NATURE OF IMAGINATION

Popular Meaning.-In popular parlance the term imagination is applied exclusively to those products of fancy akin to the aircastles of day-dreams and to certain illusions caused through fright or great exaltation of mind. Imaginative ideas are regarded by the unlettered as mere figments of the mind not corresponding to any existing or possible realities. By others the imagination is considered as dealing solely with the rearrangement of memory ideas, combining them into new, but as yet unexperienced, products. The loose definition "Memory is that faculty which represents things as they were, but imagination represents things as they might be," has dominated the thought of those untrained in psychology. Even many of the psychologists have dealt with the subject in the same very loose way. Teachers ask pupils to take imaginary journeys to distant lands to see the manifold things which a traveller to that country would be apt to see. They say they are training the imagination by this means. When questioned they reveal that they regard the journey as imaginative, probably because of annihilating so completely space and time and because so Jules Verne-like all natural laws are disregarded in the imaginary flight.

Again, teachers believe they are encouraging the imagination in the study of literature when they cause pupils to follow in thought some extravagant play of fancy or when they allow them to let their thoughts go unrestricted in depicting chaotic, impossible, and often inconsistent and senseless trains of ideas. The training of the imagination in each case is assumed to come through the transcendence of reality and through the wild play of ideas. As will be shown later, whatever training of the