Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

axle may accelerate the velocity of one portion and retard that of another, and so on. Similar is the question, Can a man walk around a monkey when the monkey keeps turning so as to face the man? The only argument necessary is the determination of what is meant by "going around."

Enough has been said perhaps to impress the necessity of first of all clearly defining terms. This necessity is fully apparent in many of the larger questions of the day. In a current number of the Educational Review appears an article by Brander Matthews, entitled Can English Literature Be Taught? Much of the article is taken up with an exposition of the term teaching, and we quote from that portion as follows:

One thing more an American discovers in reading Mr. Collins's pages, and the discovery thus made is confirmed by reading the reviews which the book has had in the British journals — and this is that the custom of examining for honors has obtained so long in Great Britain, and has been carried to such extremes that a confusion has arisen between the end and the means. In other words, British writers on education, like Mr. Collins, and like Mr. Andrew Lang, who reviewed Mr. Collins's book in the Illustrated London News, seem no longer able to distinguish between teaching and examining. When Mr. Collins asks the question which stands at the head of this paper and answers it in the affirmative, and when Mr. Lang answers it in the negative, both of them interpret the question to mean "Can English literature be examined on?"

This insistence on examinations, this substitution of one of the instruments of teaching for the teaching itself, this exaltation of the means above the end, has apparently the same result in the universities of England that it has in the public schools of New York City. A strict application of the marking system is little likely to encourage culture either in a university

or in a public school. Narrowness is more easily produced than breadth.

Having in his mind the confusion between teaching and examining which has befogged the whole discussion of the question in England, Mr. E. A. Freeman, the historian, declared against any university teaching of English literature. Mr. Collins quotes Mr. Freeman as writing, "there are many things fit for a man's personal study which are not fit for university examinations. One of these is literature." That literature "cultivates the taste, educates the sympathies, enlarges the mind,” Mr. Freeman makes no attempt to deny; "only we cannot examine in tastes and sympathies," is his reply. Now, if this proves anything, it proves too much. It is an argument, not against teaching English literature only, but against teaching Latin literature and Greek literature. But Mr. Freeman and those who hold with him have not yet suggested that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge should give up the teaching of Greek literature.

There is indeed a difference between the teaching of English literature and the teaching of Greek literature. The texts of the great Greek authors, like the texts of the great English authors, may serve for grammatical instruction and for mere linguistic drill; or they may, the ancient as well as the modern, be used to cultivate the taste, educate the sympathy, and enlarge the mind.

[ocr errors]

Such exposition differs little from exposition pure and simple. Only, it may be made more forcible, considering that it is the handmaid of argument, that it is intended to clear away error as well as enlighten ignorance, that it deals not only with truth as concreted in isolated facts, but also with larger truths as expressive of complex relations between these facts.

It may be well to begin this exercise with the argument of some such simple questions as those alluded to above. The subject offered at the head of the exercise will entail a somewhat abstruse discussion of the term selfishness.

EXERCISE XLVIII.

INDUCTIVE REASONING.

Subjects:

Is the Love of Money the Root of All Evil?—1 Tim. vi: 10.
Still Waters Run Deep.

Heat Expands and Cold Contracts.

Undue Glorification of Self-made Men.

The Virtues of Cold Water as a Universal Beverage.
Whatever Is, Is Right.

The diffi

Allusion has been made to the fact that many errors are prevalent which a simple appeal to facts is sufficient to expose. If people examined facts in the first place, or at any rate examined large numbers of facts, before they ventured upon broad general statements, they would be saved from many of these errors. culty in the majority of cases is that the process of inductive reasoning has been too hasty or else there has been no such reasoning at all. Perhaps the appearance of a comet in the heavens is accompanied or followed by some great national or other catastrophe on earth. The thoughtless man does not stop to consider that this may be a mere chance coincidence, but assumes that there must be some vital connection between the two events, and immediately upon the appearance of another comet confidently predicts a similar disaster. The thoughtful man on the contrary is not so ready to assume this connection, but waits to see if the coincidence will be observed a second and a third and a tenth time before he will express even a

provisional opinion. He is the inductive reasoner. He recognizes that one instance is not sufficient to prove the existence of a law; that laws are arrived at only by long observation and careful comparison.

Perhaps on no subject are men so prone to generalize on the strength of a few instances as on the subject of weather, and so we have numberless "weather signs." If the sun shines on a certain day known as "ground-hog day," spring will not open for six weeks. If it rains on Easter Sunday it will rain every Sunday thereafter for seven weeks. "A green Christmas, a white Easter," etc., etc. But the majority of such statements express probabilities only, not laws. Many of them are even counter to probability. Some one has observed them to be true once or twice and taken the rest for demonstrated. To prove their unreliability as general statements we have only to extend the series of observations. A dozen concordant observations do not definitively prove; one discordant one disproves.

Bearing in mind this last truth, it is usually not very difficult to expose an error which has grown out of imperfect induction. It requires only the same appeal to facts upon which we relied in the last exercise but one. With this difference, however: the kind of error alluded to in that exercise was due to a thoughtless or willful disregard of facts; the kind of error alluded to here has a certain show of truth because it seems to be supported by facts, the only difficulty being that it is supported by too few of them. The refutation of this last may require an acuteness of perception or a patience in investigation not possessed by many, or it may depend on some fortunate discovery

of one invalidating instance among a host of corroborative ones.

Expose if you can any fallacy expressed or implied in the subjects for discussion offered at the head of this exercise.

EXERCISE XLIX.

INDUCTIVE REASONING (CONTINUED).

Subjects:

All Dream Images Derived Solely from Waking Sensations.
Some Relations between Animals and Plants in the Struggle for
Existence.

[ocr errors]

The kind of argument contemplated in the last exercise was destructive, not constructive. That is, it was devoted to the overthrow of errors that may have arisen from imperfect induction a matter, we found, often not difficult. The opposite process, like most constructive processes, is not so simple. But let us, if possible, get a clear idea of what induction is, before. we attempt to establish any truth by it.

We expose a piece of oak wood to a flame; it catches fire. We try a piece of hickory, with a similar result. We try ash, maple, pine, mahogany; in every case the same phenomenon results-ignition. We conclude that wood is ignitible. We subject gold, silver, iron, lead, bismuth, platinum, to heat; all melt at some temperature or other. We say, metals are fusible. This is inductive reasoning. Logical induction then is the process of discovering general laws — laws which will be found

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »