It is only by verification that the learner should come to a feeling of certainty and security in his own inductive conclusions. He should also learn to weigh, test, and verify statements furnished him by his teachers and his books. There is no certainty that when a pupil has reproduced correctly a demonstration in geometry which he has been set to learn that he has really gone through a process of deduction. He may have approached it deductively and learned the forms, but real deduction means reasoning, in which the individual derives the conclusions for himself. To follow another's deductive discussion is not to reason deductively; it is not necessarily reasoning at all. High-school geometry furnishes the best illustration of the deductive method. The learner starts with the theorem and is asked to prove the truth or falsity of it. If he works out the course of reasoning for himself he reasons deductively. If he memorizes the printed discussion he follows a deductive method, but he does not necessarily reason. The fact that the discussions are fully written out in most text-books on geometry militates against securing the most efficient work in reasoning. The plan of the books fosters pure verbal memorizing. If only a few hints were given much better thinking would be stimulated. The "original exercises” are usually the best part of the books, but too often omitted. Although deductive methods are more easily apparent in geometry than in other subjects, yet they are continually being employed elsewhere. Whenever definitions, laws, and principles are stated and then tested, or when applications are made of the laws and principles the deductive method is used. Grammar has most usually been taught by this method. Latin and Greek are quite universally taught deductively. In American schools the modern, foreign languages have generally been taught by the translation method, which is deductive in its approach. The pupil learns his definitions and rules, and then applies them to the particular words. Algebra and arithmetic have been taught more deductively than inductively, but even more as a matter of memory and by rule-of-thumb methods. Both of the subjects are excellent instruments for utilizing reasoning processes, but when a rule is followed blindly, reasoning is used only meagrely. Neither induction nor deduction should be followed exclusively in any subject. The foundations should always be laid inductively. Induction is a method of discovery, of investigation; deduction a method of testing, of proof, of application. After principles, laws, hypotheses, conclusions have been derived through a personal examination of particulars, they should be carefully tested and proven either valid or incorrect. It is a mistake to teach sciences by inductive methods alone. Induction without deduction tends to lead learners to jump to conclusions. They develop a commendable habit of making independent observations, but the observations are apt to be loose and inaccurate. When deductive methods only are employed, the learner is apt to become absorbed in logical abstractions, too much inclined to reason out conclusions from insufficient data. The middle-age scholasticism was characterized by the excessive use of the deductive methods and a meagreness of investigation. The reasoning was correct and fine-spun, but often based on unsound premises. The combined use of both methods characterizes all good teaching and all effective study. In advanced classes the deductive approach often seems to characterize most of the work, while in reality the approach is also inductive because the students have formerly gathered so many individual ideas that they need but to form or perfect their generalizations from the individual data. This is true in such subjects as economics, institutional history, and psychology.1 1 For further discussion of induction and deduction, see, De Garmo, Principles of Secondary Education, vol. II; Bagley, The Educative Process; McMurry, The Elements of General Method; McMurry, The Method of the Recitation. CHAPTER XXV EMOTIONAL LIFE AND EDUCATION --- Meaning of Feeling. The word feeling is used in a popular sense and in a technical sense. We must distinguish carefully between the two meanings. When one says, "I feel cold"; "I feel the wind blowing upon me"; "I feel the contact of my pen upon my skin"; "I feel the weight pressing down upon me," etc., he does not use the term feeling in a strict psychological sense. He means rather that he has experienced sensations, of cold, contact, touch, weight, etc. "I sense it" or "I perceive it" would be more accurate expressions. But the expression "I · feel," much like the expression "learning by heart," has come to us traditionally, and like many traditions it is difficult of dislodgment. When one says, "It feels painful," "It feels pleasant," "I feel sad," "I feel happy," "His heart throbs with patriotic feelings," etc., the expressions are being used to denote a different mental state from the ones indicated in the beginning of this paragraph. The word in the former referred to perception, to intellectual processes. That is, it was incorrectly used to designate ideas gained through the sensation of touch. In the latter cases it refers not to sensations or perceptions, but to the pleasure or repugnance connected with those intellectual states. Hence we may define feeling as the simple, pleasurable or painful side of any simple mental state; or, as Sully has expressed it, "feeling marks off the pleasure-and-pain 'tone' or aspect of experience." The lower forms of feeling are difficult to distinguish from sensations. For example, in hunger just what is sensation and what is feeling? The distinction must be personally experienced, "felt," in order to be appreciated. No formal word definition will make it clear. In the realm of the higher feelings or emo tions it is easy to distinguish between feelings and sensations proper. For example, a feeling of patriotism or even of fear or anger would never be confused with a sensation. It is only when we come to the lower feelings or those which are largely physical that they can scarcely be distinguished from sensations. But certain selected examples will probably bring out a distinction which may be appreciated. Suppose we listen to a saw being filed, or that we draw a rusty nail through our teeth, or touch a slimy snake, or allow an insect to crawl over the skin. We experience the sensation of contact, but over and above and distinct from the sensation is a feeling of disagreeableness. This something is more than knowledge giving, it is affective, it is repugnant. I look at a beautiful picture, or witness a noble deed, and I experience a something not merely knowledge giving or intellectual, I am pleased. This affective state is a complex feeling, really an emotion, which is later defined. Professor Titchener has given us one of the clearest discussions that we have of the distinction between feelings and sensations and which I venture to reproduce. He writes: "Let us introspect a true feeling, say, the feeling of drowsiness-and convince ourselves that it is made up of sensation and affection. Drowsiness begins, on the sensation side, with a sensation of pressure on the upper eyelids, with a tickling in the throat that leads to yawning and so brings a complex of muscular sensations, and with a sensation of pressure at the back of the neck (the head droops). The lids grow constantly heavier; breathing gets slower and deeper, so that its sensations change; the lower jaw becomes heavy, so that the mouth opens and the chin falls forward on the breast (pressure sensations); the neck sensations become stronger, the head heavier; and lastly the limbs grow heavy, and arrange themselves by their own weight. Sensations of temperature come from the surface of the skin, thrills of warmth running their course at different parts of limbs and trunk. Over all this mass of sensation is spread an affection; an easy, comfortable pleasantness. And the affection outweighs the sensation; we know better that we 'feel comfortable' than that sensations are coming in from this or that organ. The total process then has all the marks of a true feeling." " 1 In each of the cases the feeling seems to be a physical process, though of course mental. These states seem altogether different from those represented by the expressions "I remember," "I know," "I judge," or "I comprehend." All comparatively simple affective states seem closely associated with physical processes. They also seem quite definitely localizable. But when I say I remember, I do not localize it; in fact I dissociate it from my body. The same is true of the states represented by the expressions, "I feel sad," "I feel remorse,” “I feel hatred," "I feel pity," etc. For the simple, elementary, affective states we will reserve the name feelings, and to the more complex and seemingly "more mental" ones we will apply the term emotions. Meaning of Emotion.-An emotion is the complex, agreeable or painful side of any mental state. This correctly implies that emotions are not different in kind from feelings, but merely different in degree. As sense feelings are concomitants of sensations and simple perceptions, likewise emotions arise in connection with higher and more complex intellection. Mere sensations or perceptions, such as looking at colors or symbols or being cut by a knife, cannot arouse concomitant emotions. They may arouse feelings of pain. When we apperceive the import of symbols which convey some associational knowledge, such as a telegram might bring, we may be aroused to the deepest emotion of grief or the highest ecstasy of joy. A good dinner, warm clothing, a good fire, produce sensations and pleasurable bodily feelings, but in themselves they cannot arouse emotions. They may suggest higher thoughts and these in turn may be accompanied by emotions. Titchener has expressed these relations in a very convenient formula, which I shall slightly modify:2 Sensations Feelings :: A Primer of Psychology, p. 61. Complex : Emotions 2 Op. cit., p 141. |