Chapter 3

And this is termed reasoning! And to train children, by forced and artificial processes, to go through such a rigmarole of words, is recommended as a means of cultivating their reasoning power and of improving their power of expression! It is not pretended that children by such a process become more expert in reckoning. On the contrary, their movements as ready reckoners are retarded by it. Instead of learning to jump at once to the conclusion, lightning-like, by a sort of intuitional process, which is of the very essence of an expert accountant, they learn laboriously to stay their march by a cumbersome and confusing circumlocution of words. And the expenditure of time and toil needed to acquire these formulas of expression, which nine times out of ten are to those young minds the mere _dicta magistri_, is justified on the ground that the children, if not learning arithmetic, are learning to reason.

Let me not be misunderstood. I do not advocate the disuse of explanations. Let teachers explain, let children give explanations. Let the rationale of the various processes through which the child goes, receive a certain amount of attention. But the extreme into which some are now going, in primary education, is that of giving too much time to explanation and to theory, and too little to practice. We reverse, too, the order of nature in this matter. What it now takes weeks and months to make clear to the immature understanding, is apprehended at a later day with ease and delight at the very first statement. There is a clear and consistent philosophy underlying this whole matter. It is simply this. In the healthy and natural order of development in educating a young mind, theory should follow practice, not precede it. Children learn the practice of arithmetic very young. They take to it naturally, and learn it easily, and become very rapidly expert practical accountants. But the science of arithmetic is quite another matter, and should not be forced upon them until a much later stage in their advancement.

To have a really correct apprehension of the principle of decimal notation, for instance, to understand that it is purely arbitrary, and that we might in the same way take any other number than ten as the base of a numerical scale,--that we might increase for instance by fives, or eights, or nines, or twelves, just as well as by tens--all this requires considerable maturity of intellect, and some subtlety of reasoning. Indeed I doubt whether many of the pretentious sciolists, who insist so much on young children giving the rationale of everything, have themselves ever yet made an ultimate analysis of the first step in arithmetical notation. Many of them would open their eyes were you to tell them, for instance, that the number of fingers on your two hands may be just as correctly expressed by the figures 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15, as by the figures 10,--a truism perfectly familiar to every one acquainted with the generalizations of higher arithmetic. Yet it is up-hill work to make the matter quite clear to a beginner. We may wisely therefore give our children at first an arbitrary rule for notation. We give them an equally arbitrary rule for addition. They accept these rules and work upon them, and learn thereby the practical operations of arithmetic. The theory will follow in due time. When perfectly familiar with the practice and the forms of arithmetic, and sufficiently mature in intellect, they awaken gradually and surely, and almost without an effort, to the beautiful logic which underlies the science.

How do we learn language in childhood? Is it not solely on authority and by example? A child who lives in a family where no language is used but that which is logically and grammatically correct, will learn to speak with logical and grammatical correctness long before it is able to give any account of the processes of its own mind in the matter, or indeed to understand those processes when explained by others. In other words, practice in language precedes theory. It should do so in other things. The parent who should take measures to prevent a child from speaking its mother tongue, except just so far and so fast as it could understand and explain the subtle logic which underlies all language, would be quite as wise as the teacher who refuses to let a child become expert in practical reckoning, until it can understand and explain at every step the rationale of the process,--who will not suffer a child to learn the multiplication table until it has mastered the metaphysics of the science of numbers, and can explain with the formalities of syllogism exactly how and why seven times nine make sixty-three.

These illustrations have carried me a little, perhaps, from my subject. But they seemed necessary to show that I am not beating the air. I have feared lest, in our very best schools, in the rebound from the exploded errors of the old system, we have unconsciously run into an error in the opposite extreme.

My positions on the particular point now under consideration may be summed up briefly, as follows:

1. In developing the faculties, we should follow the order of nature.

2. The faculties of memory and faith should be largely exercised and cultivated in childhood.

3. While the judgment and the reasoning faculty should be exercised during every stage of the intellectual development, the appropriate season for their main development and culture is near the close, rather than near the beginning, of an educational course.

4. The methods of reasoning used with children should be of a simple kind, dealing largely in direct intuitions, rather than formal and syllogistic.

5. It is a mistake to spend a large amount of time and effort in requiring young children formally to explain the rationale of their intellectual processes, and especially in requiring them to give such explanations before they have become by practice thoroughly familiar with the processes themselves.

VI.

TEACHING CHILDREN WHAT THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

It is not uncommon to hear persons declaim against teaching children what they do not understand. If by this is meant that children should not learn a set of words as parrots do, merely by the ear, and without attaching any idea to what they utter, no one will dissent from the propriety of the rule. But if the meaning is that they should learn nothing except what they fully comprehend, the rule certainly needs to be hedged in by some grave precautions.

There are indeed few things which any one, the oldest or the wisest, fully comprehends. Who knows what matter is? Certainly not the most eminent of philosophers. They do not pretend to know. We pick up a pebble. Who can tell what it is, absolutely? We say that it is something which has certain qualities. But even these we know mainly by negations. The pebble is hard, that is, it does _not_ yield to pressure. It is opaque, that is, it does _not_ transmit light. It is heavy, that is, it does _not_ remain still, but goes towards the centre of the earth unless intercepted by some interposing body.

Who knows the meaning, absolutely, of a single article of the Creed? Certainly not the most eminent of divines. We know certain things about the great mysteries of the Godhead, and even these things we know, not directly, but by certain faint, distant analogies, and we express our knowledge in terms chosen mainly from Scripture and arranged with care by wise and learned men. These venerable formularies, containing the most exact verbal expression which the Church has been able to frame, of what the Scriptures teach about God and his ways, we commit to memory, and we repeat them with comfort and edification. But we do not pretend to penetrate the very essence of their meaning. Who by searching can find out God? One must be God himself to understand him.

We read that Christ was tempted of the devil in the wilderness. There are many things in this transaction which we may be said, in a certain sense, to know. But a man will not proceed far in analyzing this knowledge before he will discover that there are mysteries underlying the whole, which he cannot penetrate. He knows some of the surface relations. But the things themselves, in their essence, are unknown. Was Christ tempted, as the devil tempts us, by suggesting thoughts in the mind? Was the devil present in a bodily shape? Did he utter an audible voice, by undulating the air, as we do? Has he direct relations to matter, as we have? How could his offer of worldly power and riches be any real temptation to the Saviour, when Jesus knew that Satan had no power to make his offer good?

There are indeed few things, in revelation or out of revelation, in mind or in matter, which we really and fully comprehend. If, therefore, we are to teach children nothing but what they understand, we must either teach them nothing at all, or our rule must be materially qualified. No one knows absolutely but God. Among created beings, there are almost infinite gradations of intelligence, although the highest created intelligence begins its range infinitely below that of the Divine mind. A given formula of words, therefore, may express very different degrees of truth according to the degree of intelligence of the party using it.

A catechism or a creed may convey twenty different degrees of meaning to twenty successive persons, varying in age, character, and culture. Yet the very youngest and feeblest shall understand something of its meaning, while the wisest and oldest shall not have exhausted it. The young and feeble intellect, receiving a formula of truth with suitable explanations of its terms, takes in at once a portion of its meaning and gradually grows into a fuller comprehension of what it has received. A statement of doctrine received by a child at the age of five, conveys to him a few feeble rays of light. The same statement at the age of ten, means to him far more than it did before, while at twenty it is all luminous with knowledge.

The mind itself grows and expands, and with every addition to its own vigor and stature, does it find new truths in those expressive and pregnant formulas of doctrine with which it has from childhood been familiar. It is like looking at a material object, first with the naked eye, and then with glasses of continually increased magnifying power. The more we increase the power, the more we see in the same bit of matter. Yet no glass will ever reveal to us the very interior essence of even the smallest particle of dust. God only knows fully either any single thing or the sum of things. Because, however, we cannot see into the essence of a pebble or a grain of sand, shall we shut our eyes to it altogether? Shall we not look at it, first as an infant does, then as a child, then as a youth, then as a man, then as a philosopher? We can never see it as God does. But we shall see it with ever-growing powers of vision, until that which was to us at first only a rude mass becomes an exhaustless organized microcosm of wonders.

I do not advocate the overloading of children with verbal statements of abstruse doctrines, whether of religion or of science. Much less would I turn them into parrots, to repeat phrases to which they attach no meaning at all. But when it is demanded, on the other hand, that they shall learn nothing but what they understand, I demur. I ask for explanation of the rule. I insist that, every statement of truth which they learn, even the most elementary, contains depths which neither they nor their teachers can fathom. I insist that, both in science and religion, there are certain great, admitted elementary truths, reduced to forms of sound words with which the whole world is familiar; and that while these formularies contain many things which a child cannot understand, they yet contain many things of which even the youngest child has a fair comprehension. I insist that a carefully prepared religious creed or catechism, even though it contains many things beyond a child's present comprehension, is a fit subject for study. Memory in childhood is quick and tenacious. The treasures first laid away in that great storehouse are the last to be removed. They may be overlaid by subsequent accumulations, but they are still ready for use. Forms of sound words are certainly among the things which parents and teachers should store away in the young minds of which they have charge. If the child does not understand all that he thus places in his memory, he understands portions of it just as he sees certain qualities of the pebble which he holds in his hand, and he will see and understand more, as his mind expands and his powers of spiritual vision increase.

VII.

CULTIVATING THE MEMORY IN YOUTH.

Many educators now-a-days are accustomed to speak slightly of the old-fashioned plan of committing to memory verses of Scripture, hymns, catechisms, creeds, and other formulas of doctrine and sentiment in religion and science. Many speak disparagingly even of memory itself, and profess to think it a faculty of minor importance, regarding its cultivation as savoring of old-fogyism, and sneering at all memoriter exercises among children as the chattering of parrots. It is never without amazement that I hear such utterances. Memory is God's gift, by which alone we are able to retain our intellectual acquisitions. Without it, study is useless, and education simply an impossibility. Without it, there could be no such thing as growth in knowledge. We could know no more to-day than we knew yesterday, or last week, or last year. The man would be no wiser than the boy. Without this faculty, the mind would be, not as now like the prepared plate which the photographer puts in his camera, and which retains indelibly on its surface the impressions of whatever objects pass before it; but would rather be like the window pane, before which passes from day to day the gorgeous panorama of nature, transmitting with equal and crystalline clearness the golden glory of the sun, the pale rays of the moon and stars, the soft green of meadow and woodland, images of beauty and loveliness, of light and shade, from every object on the earth and in the heavens; but retaining on its own surface not a line or a tint of the millions of rays that have passed through its substance, and remaining to the end the same bit of transparent glass, unchanged, unprofited by the countless changes it has received and transmitted.

Memory alone gives value to the products of every other faculty, stamping them with the seal of possessorship, and making them truly ours. In vain reason forges its bolts, in vain imagination paints its scenes, in vain the senses give us a knowledge of the shapes and forms of external nature, in vain ideas of any sort or from any source come into our minds, unless we have the power to retain and fix them there, and make them a part of our accumulated intellectual wealth. To do this is the office of memory, and whatever increases the activity and power of the memory, gives at once value and growth to every other power.

Memory has been well called the store-house of our ideas. The illustration is true not only in its main feature, but in many of the minor details. The value of what a man puts away in a store-house depends much upon the order and system with which the objects are stored. The wise and thrifty merchant has bins and boxes and compartments and pigeon-holes, all arranged with due order and symmetry, and every item of goods, as it is added to his stock, is put away at once in its appropriate place, where he can lay his hands upon it whenever it is wanted. There should be a like method and system in our mental accumulations. The remembrance of facts and truths is of little value to us unless we can remember them in their connections, and can so remember them as to be able to lay our hands upon any particular thought or fact just when and where it is wanted. Many persons read and study voraciously, filling their minds most industriously with knowledge, but such a confusion of ideas prevails throughout their intellectual store-house, that their very wealth is only an embarrassment to them. The very first rule to be observed, therefore, in cultivating the memory, is to reduce our knowledge to some system. Those who are charged with the training of the young should seek not only to store their minds with ideas, but to present these ideas to them in well ordered shapes and forms, and in due logical order and coherence. Hence the peculiar value of requiring children at the proper age to commit to memory the grand formulas of Christian doctrine, on which, in every church, its wisest and ablest men have expended their strength in placing great truths in connected and logical order and dependence. The creeds and catechisms of the Christian church are among the best products of the human intellect as mere specimens of verbal statement, and are valuable, if for nothing else, as a means for exercising the memory. A child who has thoroughly mastered a good catechism has his intellectual store-house already reduced to some order and system. His mind is not the chaos that we so often find in those children who are gathered into our mission schools.

The objects that are put away for safe-keeping differ in one respect from those things which are stored away in the memory. The material object is the same, whether we visit and inspect it from day to day or not. The banker's dollars are not increased in fineness or value by his handling them over carefully every day. Not so with intellectual coin. The more frequently we re-examine our knowledge and pass it under review, the more does it become fixed in its character, the more full and exact in its proportions. Handling it does not wear it out. Even giving it away does not diminish it. In short, so far as the cultivation of the memory is concerned, the next best thing we can do, after reducing our knowledge to due order, is to give it a frequent and thorough re-examination. Constant, almost endless repetition is the inexorable price of sound mental accumulation.

A distinction is to be made between memory as a power of the mind and the remembrance of particular facts. One or two examples will illustrate this difference. The late Dr. Addison Alexander, of the Theological Seminary at Princeton, had memory as an intellectual power to a degree almost marvellous. The following instance may be cited. On one occasion, a large class of forty or fifty were to be matriculated in the Seminary in the presence of the Faculty. The ceremony of matriculation was very simple. The professors and the new students being all assembled, in a large hall, each student in turn presented himself before the professors, had his credentials examined by them, and if the same proved satisfactory, entered his name in full and his residence, in the register. When the matriculation was complete and the students had retired, there was some bantering among the professors as to which of them should take the register home and prepare from it an alphabetical roll,--a work always considered rather tedious and irksome. After a little hesitation, Dr. Alexander said, "There is no need of taking the register home; I will make the roll for you;" and, taking a sheet of paper, at once, from memory, without referring to the register, and merely from having heard the names as they were recorded, he proceeded to make out the roll, giving the names in full and giving them in their alphabetical order. This was a prodigious feat of pure memory; for in order to make the alphabetical arrangement in his mind, before committing it to paper, he must have had the entire mass of names present in his mind by a single act of the will. Some of the wonderful games of chess performed by Paul Morphy are dependent in part upon a similar power of memory, by which the player is enabled to keep present in his mind, without seeing the board, a long series of complicated evolutions, past as well as prospective and possible. The same is true of every great military strategist.

In all these cases, there is an act of pure memory, a direct and positive power of summoning into the mind its past experiences, such as can only take place where, either by natural gift or by special training, the memory as a faculty of the mind is in a high state of vigor. But there are other cases, in which a man is enabled to recall a great number of particular facts by a species of artifice or trick, which does not imply any special mental power, and the study of which does not tend, in any marked degree, to develop such power. More than thirty years ago, the late Professor Dod, of Princeton College, in lecturing to a class on the subject of light, was explaining the solar spectrum, and after exhibiting the solar ray, divided into its seven primary colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, said, "If you will form a mnemonic word of the first letters of each of these words, you will be able, without further effort, to remember the order of the prismatic colors the rest of your lives," and he accordingly wrote upon the board and pronounced the uncouth and almost unpronounceable word, _Vibgyor_, which probably not one of us has ever forgotten. An ingenious Frenchman some years ago traversed the country and collected large audiences by his exhibitions of skill in this species of artifice, and by undertaking to initiate his hearers in the method of remembering prodigious numbers of historical facts by means of such artificial contrivances. Mnemotechny, the name which he gave to his invention, is merely a trick of the memory. It is a means of remembering a particular set of facts or things by the aid of contrivances purely artificial and arbitrary. Its possession does not imply, and its cultivation does not produce, real mnemonic power. It undoubtedly has its uses. But it is rather wealth gained by a lottery ticket than a wealth-producing power acquired by wise habits of business.

In teaching the young, it is well not to neglect either of these principles. We should give our children from time to time ingenious and interesting contrivances for remembering important facts. These contrivances, if judicious in plan and execution, will be great helps to them. We may in this way bridge over the difficulty of remembering many of the important facts and dates in history.