out much regard to controlling principles. A study is looked upon as a large accumulation of single facts, when it should be considered as a series of large topics, each containing a general truth.

If we can once get this idea of large units of instruction, each determined and organized by a central truth, we can more easily understand and apply a rational method of dealing with such units. The following chapters endeavor to bring this truth out more fully.

· CHAPTER V

DO GENERALIZATIONS PRECEDE OR FOLLOW INDI

VIDUAL NOTIONS?

IT has been shown that general truths are the central objects of interest in instruction. The process of acquiring knowledge consists in securing an insight into them and the ability to apply them easily in all possible directions. For instance, one has added much to his knowledge when he has come to see clearly the single general truth that the presence of a definite aim is the condition of effective work in any line; the teacher may apply this generalization first of all to the school, seeking out the great purpose of instruction; then to each branch of study, and to each recitation; finally, he may apply it to other spheres of activity, as to that of the lawyer, of the minister, and even to human life as a whole; one may never finish the application of such a broad truth, but knowledge grows as insight into it and ability to apply it are increased.

The inquiry next in place touches the manner in which generalizations should be reached. Should they precede or follow the study of individual no

tions? The first distinction between good and bad method, or the first test of method, is found in the answer to this question.

It is scarcely possible to conceive that primitive How the race man began work with an outfit of general notions.

began to acquire

On the contrary, he certainly had to discover the knowledge. simplest facts for himself.

By experiment in its childhood the race learned that flint makes good arrowheads, that meat spoils quickly in warm weather, that the deer has certain habits. Higher truths have been reached by more developed peoples, but by the same route. Very slowly have the laws been attained that pertain to falling bodies, to the properties of gases, the pressure of air, etc. The data for the same have been recorded one after another, and often centuries have elapsed between the time when the data for a great law were recorded and the time when the latter was

really brought to light. In other words, the progress of the race has been necessarily experimental and inductive; it has reached the abstract or general through the concrete or individual.

In many respects the child is an imitator of the race. It is asserted by numerous eminent authorities that the chief stages in his development correspond in a large way with those of the race. If he passes through the same great culture epochs as his ancestors, it is quite possible, then, that his approach to general truths is the same as theirs.

F

How the

child must

begin.

Another reason why concepts

percepts.

Herbert Spencer is of the opinion that this is the case. He says, in substance, that the mind of humanity, placed in the midst of phenomena and striving to comprehend them, has, after endless comparisons, speculations, experiments, and theories, reached its present knowledge of each subject by a specific route; that the relationship between mind and phenomena, it may rationally be inferred, is such as to prevent this knowledge from being reached by any other route; and that, as each child's mind stands in the same relationship to phenomena as that of humanity, they can be accessible to it only through the same route.1

Aside from this argument, the proper answer to the question whether the statement of generalizations should precede or follow the study of individual notions, seems almost self-evident from the discussion in the previous chapter.

Since concepts or general truths can be drawn only from percepts or individual instances, it seems should follow necessary that these latter should be presented and discussed before the former are deduced and worded. Just as the acorn must be present before the oak can be produced, so the concrete example must precede the abstract rule; in both cases growth is involved in the one instance it is a material growth, in the other a psychological one. One might as well expect noise without vibrations as generaliza1 "Education," Chapter II.

tions without particulars. And the order in which individual and general notions are produced should fully determine the order in which they should be studied by children. To think them out clearly means indeed to produce them.

General truths are not a finished product that can be handed about from person to person, examined and traced back to their origin. Each man, in order to have them really, must give birth to them within his own mind, and they must be born out of the individual notions that are already there present. "The general notion is not a new mental product existing apart from and outside of the concrete notions, but it is thought out each time, inasmuch as a person from among the numerous ideas of the same kind . . . lifts exclusively the essential characteristics into the centre of consciousness and endeavors to isolate them from the others which recede or withdraw." It is not, therefore, the business of the teacher to retail ready-made general notions. General truths should be taught after individuals; that is the proper sequence.

Yet the world has for ages allowed the other order, and probably to-day the great majority of teachers present first the rule, then the example. Almost all text-books were modelled after this plan until very recent years; gradually, now, books following the inductive method are being introduced into the schools. One explanation of this error is

Why general

truths are

often pre

sented first.