1^' -• "'^A ^^:=^ %:v-. ^*!2re-»rur2»^' ■jCif-P-:;ji^; A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HEKBAET'S PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL THEORY A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART'S PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL THEORY THROUGH THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNIZ BY JOHN DAVIDSON, M.A., D.Phil. (Edin.) FELLOW OF THE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SCOTLANB ; FORMERLY LKCTDREK ON PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL METHOD IN THE ^,^^,^^j;,g£g£AliijUyh^^HiArtMaMMnfKEDiNBUROE ; headmaster OF THE HIGH SCHOCt, STRANRAER LIBRAR JAN 23 1981 THE ONTARIO INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN EDUCATION WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MCMVI All Eights reserved JOZtD PREFACE. The following pages represent an attempt to give a general and, it is believed, a new interpretation of Herbart's psychological and educational theories so as to show the adequacy of his fundamental conceptions to meet at least some of the demands of a science of education. In particular, there is an attempt to show, first, that Herbart's psychological standpoint is the only intelligible and workable standpoint for the practical teacher ; and second, that from this standpoint such definite connotations can be given to the terms soul or mind, knowing, feeUng, desiring, will, interest, and habit, that the terms so connoted become scientific and guiding concepts for educational practice. N"o one can be more aware than the writer of the many imperfections of his interpretation. Thus, for example, in connection with the Leibnizian philosophy through which the interpretation of Herbart is reached, there are ultimate metaphysical questions which he has left severely alone, and which the philosophic critic may compel him to answer before allowing him to VI PREFACE. pass on. Yet he has excuse. Were the educator to wait on the solution of all ultimate metaphysical ques- tions for his educational concepts he would wait for ever, whilst all the time practical needs would be urging him to get forward somehow. With an eye therefore on practical issues, the writer has tried to steer a course through metaphysical difliculties by the way of least resistance, and has been led to conclusions, either Herbartian or implicit in Herbart, which on the whole seem to him to be in harmony with the results of long personal observation and experiment in the schoolroom. It would be a lengthy task for the writer to ac- knowledge his indebtedness to all those whose works have helped him towards his interpretation. Amongst those to whose writings he is more specially indebted should be mentioned his old chief Professor Laurie, and Professor Darroch — the philosophical antagonism of both to Herbart's educational theory forming a guide as well as an inspiration to the argument ; Professors Latta and Stout, whose masterly expositions of Leibniz and Herbart respectively were of constant service ; the late Professor Adamson of Glasgow ; Professor James ; and, of Herbartian educational writers, Professor Adams of London University, and Dr F. H. Hayward, whose enthusiastic work ' The Critics of Herbartianism ' is a veritable " vade-mecum " to a student of Herbart. Most of all the writer has 1)een dependent on the original works of Leibniz and Herbart, as well as on those of PREFACE. VU the Herbartiaii critics Ostermann, Natorp, Hubatsch, and others. In the numerous quotations from these writers ticlelity to the thought rather than elegance of translation has been rightly aimed at. In conclusion, it may be permissible to state that the treatise as now published is practically what was accepted by the Senatus of Edinburgh University in 1905 as a Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Phil- osophy. Whatever improvements have been made upon it since then are almost entirely due to the sympathetic and suggestive criticism of Professor Welton of Leeds University, the additional examiner for the degree of D.Phil. SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. PAGE Herbart's theory of education is recognised as of " practical " value so far as it goes, though inconsistent with his psychological and ethical theories , . 1-3 An educational theory that "works" in practice must be prepared to justify itself on philosophical grounds. The practical truth of the Herbartian theory justifies an attempt to interpret Herbart's philosophy in such a way as to reconcile the pedagogy with the philosophy . 3, 4 Herbart's philosophy, like every other philosophy, must be interpreted from its own standpoint. This standpoint is found, not in the Kantian, but in the Leibnizian philosophy ..... 5-7 CHAPTER II. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. Objections to the Cartesian theory that " extension " is the essence and explanation of " matter " 8-10 X SYNOPSIS. Hence the need of some other and higher conception to explain " matter." A non-material conception is the only kind of conception that will avoid the difficul- ties of the Cartesian and Atomistic explanations of "matter" 10-17 This non-material conception is found in the "monad." The monad is a spiritual force representative, in each of its moments, of the whole universe. Hence ai'ise the conceptions of '■^organism" and ^'functioning" . 17-19 Through " appetition " and " perception " the monad unfolds itself by an analytic process, and in this way knows more and more of the universe implicitly con- tained within itself. Hence the monad is a spiritual principle immanent in amdi constitutive of " m.diiiG.x " .... 19-26 Harmony between the independent knowledge (per- ceptions) of the several monads is secured by (the theory of) a " pre-established harmony " . . . . 26-29 Leibniz's theory of knowledge as found in the above principles . . . . . . . 29, 30 Is subjective idealism the inevitable outcome of Leibniz's psychological standpoint? . . . 30-37 CHAPTER III. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT IMPLICIT IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL PKINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. The external world, or "matter," is within the monad's own self : it is a mode of its own activity, and therefore constituted hy this activity. The " appetition " of the monad does not point to a soul antecedent to its mani- festation in activity, but is a principle postulated to ac- count fur this activity. Perceiving activity and object perceived are two inseparable factors of one and the same thing . . . . . . . 38, 39 SYNOPSIS. XI Hence, if the individuality of the monad is not in- compatible with its interaction with other monads, there arises the conception of a monad, mind, or soul that is immanent in and constitutive of a real external world. Hence the distinction hettoeen "subject per- ceiving" and "object perceived " is only abstract . 40, 41 The late Professor Adarason's interpretation of the Kantian "pure Ego" is in line with the above con- clusion 42-44 CHAPTER IV. Leibniz's theory of feeling and will. Feeling. Pleasure (non-bodily) is the feeling which accompanies free activity of soul. This free activity is clear and distinct perception. Pain is the feeling which accompanies hindered activity or confused perception. Since perceptive activity is the essence of soul-life, pleasure must be regarded, not so much as the aim, as the resultant of soul-activity. This conclusion proved by Leibniz's further definition of pleasure as the feeling resulting from the freeing ourselves from pain. Feel- ing is thus dependent on knoivledge (perception). Ob- jection to this conclusion considered . . . 45-48 Will. The evolution of will proceeds pari passu, with the evolution of perception. Freedom of will exists only in the sense that the soul-life can choose to follow one of several perceptions, whilst it is determined by, or must follow the lead of, some one previous perception. Willing therefore is the outcome of perception. This is the germ of the Herbartian theory that "will springs out of the circle of thought." A theory of habit is implicit in Leibniz, and is de- veloped in Herbart's doctrine of " interest " . . 48-54 XU SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER V. herbart's psychological standpoint. Herbart's definition of " soul " is intended to be a negative one. The " self-preservation " of Herbart, like the " ap- petition " of Leibniz, is a principle jMstulated to account for the soul-atitive. The first "self-preserving" act is not the act of a soul which, after thus acting, stands aside from the play of presentation. The act is the soul-life at the moment of acting. The real soul — the only soul that the psychologist and the educator can deal with — exif^ts onhj in and through its presentations or activities ....... .55-61 First objection : The positing of a metaphysical soul or pure ego is the only hypothesis that will account for (1) the unity and identity that we attribute to external things, and (2) the consciousness of the unity and identity of " self. " Eeply : Ajyassing activity or a passing state is capable, through the conception of "organic functioning," of accounting for both (1) and (2) 61-66 Second objection : Granted that the conception of "function" may ex- plain any other state than the first, it does not explain the first state. Reply : In positing a metaphysical entity as the ground of unity and identity, we have still to seek for the ground of this entity, and then the ground of this ground, and so on ad infinitum. Hence, in respect of accounting for the first soul state the one hypothesis is as good as the other ....... 66 SYNOPSIS. Xlll Further interpretation of the notions " self-preserva- tion," " presentation," and " clearness " . . . 67-71 CHAPTEE VI. herbart's theory of presentation. The apparently mechanical opposition, complication, and blending amongst the Herbartian presentations are interpretable in terms of soul-activity or soul-functioning 72-74 Metaphysical interpretation of the interaction of presentations . . . . . . . 74, 75 The interaction of presentations gives rise in course of time to a " circle of thought " or " apperception mass," whose constituent parts are connected in a living organic whole . . . . . . . 75, 76 Consideration of criticisms .... 76-79 CHAPTER YII. heebart's theory of feeling. Feelings are " changeable conditions of presenta- tions"— that is, in terms of our interpretation of Herbart's psychological standpoint, the soul-life function- ing in and through presentations at the same time ex- periences or has feelings. Pleasure is the feeling which accompanies the movement of a presentation, when this movement is helped or " favoured " by other presentations ; that is, the soul when freely active in presentations is ipso facto in a pleasurable state. Xiv SYNOPSIS. Interpretation of the notion of "favouring." Hence — (1) Feeling is dependent on presentations or knowledge 80-84 Consideration of the objection that the soul may function as feeling independent of knowledge 84 (2) Pleasure must be measured by a purely quantita- tive standard. Consideration of objections .... 85-95 CHAPTER VIIL hehbart's theory of desire. Desire is the " moving forward of a presentation to full clearness " — that is, desire is a soul-activity in and through some presentation which the soul wills to make clear or to fully realise. Desire, like feeling, is the outcome of, and therefore dependent on, presentations. The most important source of desire is that mental condition which is the resultant of the soul's being habituated to function in certain series of presenta- tions ; that is, the chief source of desire is a hahit of presentation, a hahit of knowing .... 96-102 Objection considered. Educational corollary , . 102-105 CHAPTEE IX. herbart's theory of will. " Will is desire accompanied by the supposition of the attainability of that which is desired." Analysis of definition ....... 106-109 SYNOPSIS. XV Through the soul's habit of living in certain series of presentations, the soul's desire to make a certain presentation clear no sooner appears than willing fol- lows as the natural outcome of the series to which the given presentation belongs. "Will is thus not a force separable from the presenta- tive activity of the soul, but is the soul present ativelij active and conscious of the attainability of the end it desires. Hence Herbart's dictum that " will springs out of the circle of thought" .... 109-112 Relation between the " will " and the first " soul- reaction" of Herbart's metaphysical theory . . 113 Analysis of Herbart's conceptions of "self-control" and "morality" 114-121 CHAPTER X. herbaet's concept of "inteeest." What is only indirectly or mediately interesting to the child is not organically connected with the soul- life of the child 122-124 Consideration of the educational value of the appeal to indirect interest. Conclusion : Psychologically there is no such thin;/ as indirect interest ...... 124-129 Analysis of Herbart's concept of " interest." 1. It implies (1) a concentration or absorption of the soul-life in several directions, (2) ability on the part of the soul-life to reflect on, and co- ordinate in its own unity, the several acts of concentration ..... 129-133 Herbartian method of instruction as determined by these psychological moments of "interest" 133, 134 XVI SYNOPSIS. 2. Further proof that "interest" \& a, psychological process or movement — that it is a different thing from the objects of "interest" . 135, 136 3. That the psychological movement — "interest" — is an automatiralhj unfolding one produced hy habit proved by (1) An analysis of Herbart's contrast be- tween "interest" and "desire, &c." 136-144 (2) Herbart's words : To the educator mor- ality is an occurrence — a natural occurrence . . . . .145 (3) An analysis of Herbart's conception, Memory of the Will . . . 145-148 4. Conclusion. Apperceptive, many-sided "interest" is a psychological organon or instrument of soul-life produced through habituated knowing activities. Hence " interest " is an educational end in itself 148, 149 Consideration of criticisms .... 149-157 CHAPTER XL THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION. The educational formalist maintains — and past edu- cational practice in school has been based on the assumption — that certain subjects of study impart to the mind a power that can be utilised in the acquisi- tion and use of any other kind of knowledge. But, First : The power of an instrument as that in- strument is non-transferable ; and the mental power developed say by grammatical study is not transfer- able to the study say of agriculture . . . 158-164 Second : It cannot be maintained that the presenta- SYNOPSIS. XVll tions of the formal subject call forth a hetter kind of discipline, for there is no common qualitative standard whereby to decide between the power that works in and through the concrete and that which operates in and through the abstract . . . . . 164 Third : The real ground of the formalist's argument seems to be the assumption that mind is an entity that stands outside of knowledge, and that the exercise- effect produced on it by working on one subject staijs with it and can be utilised in its working on a different subject. Practical test . . . . 165, 166 Fourth : The severe discipline of the abstract or formal studies is not necessarily the better discipline 166, 167 Conclusion : Currinda must he determined, not by the so-called formal disciplinary value of subjects, but by environment and j^'t'cictical interests . . . 167 Through a curriculum thus determined a natural and true culture is secured .... 168-170 CHAPTER XII. INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED " INTEEEST." The reconciliation between individuality and the Herbartian interestformed character . . .171-180 The theory of "concentration of studies" in its extreme form is not implied in Herbart's psychology 180, 181 Educational corollaries : 1. When the child is taken in hand by the teacher his mental content should be more or less ac- curately knoion. To secure this 2. There must be more systematic parental educa- tion than at present, and a correlation be- tween parental and school education. 3. Individuality must be encouraged and strength- XVlll SYNOPSIS. enecl by a state -regulated differentiation of the education suitable for diflerent individuals and comnninities in the state — this differentia- tion to be based on ivhat the pupil already is by birth and environment .... 182-186 CHAPTER XIII. (( INTEREST VERSUS "SELF-REALISATION AS THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. 1. Every educational concept should be sufficiently definite and scientific to afford practical guidance to the teacher. But in the concept " self-realisation " neither the " self " nor the " realising " has any definite con- notation. Herbart's concept of " interest " connotes definitely and with some scientific precision both the seZ/and the realisimj. Hence the principle of "self-realisation" cannot, as a working concept, have precedence of the principle of "interest" 187-189 2. The principle of " self-realisation," by leading the individual falsely to identify the direct interest in self with the moral life, is apt to be self-defeating. The concept of " interest," connoting a soul-life which is directly interested in something "other," constantly points away from the "self." Hence the ])rinciple of "interest," as pointing to the most definite and intelligible, and the highest kind of self-realisation, must take precedence of the principle of "self-realisation" . . . .189-191 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HEEBAET'S PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL THEOEY. C H A P T E E I. INTRODUCTION. The highest aim of education, whether this aim includes all lower aims or not, is the formation of character. The great problem is, How to form character. Answers to the problem are found in various educational the- ories, ancient and modern. Of modern answers none has been subjected to more adverse criticism than that of Herbart, viz., that character is formed through apperceptive many-sided interest. This many-sided interest, which, according to Herbart, will make men moral, is to be roused through " educative instruction," that is, an instruction in knowledge which shall be at the same time a training of heart and will. Herbart seeks to show that if a child is taught right knowledge in the right way he cannot but feel and will aright. With Herbart, as with Socrates, the ignorant man cannot be truly virtuous; and the work of the edu- A 2 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. cator is to impart knowledge in such a way that the knowledge passes over — how, we shall see later — into virtue. The peculiar, and at first sight somewhat per- plexing, character of the theory is that feeling, habit, and all else that we are accustomed to associate with the development of the moral life, seem to be ranked as secondary to knowing, and we are presented with an apparently easy solution of the problem that has baffled human thought and action — the conquest of evil. The theory is accepted by many, not because it is based on a sound psychology and ethics, but simply because as a whole, and particularly in its explanation of how mind grows, it is a theory that works in prac- tice.'^ By opponents the theory is condemned on the ground that the apperceptive process as expounded by Herbart is nothing but a psychological mechanism in which ah extra presentations, as the units of the mental life, become amalgamated into an apperceptive mass according to mechanical laws. Herbart, his critics say, has thus ehminated the " self " from the apperceptive process, which has thereby become a dead mechanism, and robbed his educational theory of the fundamental postulate of self-activity. The German critics Natorp, Ostermann, Vogel, Dittes, and others, as well as that Agamemnon of British education. Professor Laurie, has emphasised this elimination of the self as the crucial defect of Herbart's psychology and pedagogy. And even such redoubtable champions of Herbart as Dr F. H. Hayward admit the incompleteness if not erro- neousness of Herbart's metaphysics and psychology. ^ Dr F. H. Hayward's The Critics of Herbartianism, p. 214. INTRODUCTION. 3 Yet Dr Hayward and the class of Herbartians of whom he may fairly be reckoned as typical maintain that no sort of criticism of Herbart's philosophy mili- tates against the practical value of his educational doctrines ; that as these last were not deduced from the philosophy, all criticism of the philosophy which is intended as an indirect attack on the pedagogy is irrelevant and futile. Now, in the first place, granting there is or can be a science of education, it is unfortunate that any seeming divorce should be set up by Herbartians between Her- bart's educational theory and Herbart's philosophy. One may readily admit with Dr Hayward that " education is more an art than a science," and that " a system of education must be judged by its fruits." ^ But as every art implicitly contains an underlying science consciously or unconsciously apprehended, the art of education must be prepared to justify to thought the grounds of its procedure. Only thus can any art — the art of educa- tion included — hope to produce a rational and steady confidence in the minds of those who practise the art. But, in the second place, if the Herbartian theory of education " works," then this very fact implies that the practice of Herbartian education involves a psychological theory which must be true. In successful art right theory is and must be imbedded. Instead, therefore, of admitting that Herbart's psychological and ethical theories are false whilst his educational system is " practically " true, it might be better to ask if we have given the right interpretation to the Herbartian philosophy on which, according to some critics, the ^ The Critics of Herbartianism, p. 214. 4 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. educational theoiy is based. The contention of such a critic as Professor Darroch ^ that Herbart's theory of education must be judged alongside of the psychology, coupled with our presumption that Herbart as an enthusiastic practical teacher could not have ignored the self as a fundamental factor in education, should be further inducement to us to ask if we have inter- preted Herbart's psychological standpoint aright. The attempt to separate Herbart's educational theory from his philosophical principles would not, in our opinion, have found favour with Herbart himself. True, Her- bart did not deduce his educational theory from his psychological : the difficulties that met him in the daily experience of the schoolroom pointed him to the theory that underlay his successful struggle with those difficulties ; still, theory in turn pointed out to him the further lines along which the educator might look for successful practice. That the central positions of the Herbartian pedagogy are based on Herbart's psychology and ethics, and that the latter are in turn of such a character as to meet the demands of a science and art of education, it will be our task to attempt to prove as we proceed. We entertain the hope of being able to show that the conception of " mechanism," applied with such condemnatory signification against the Her- bartian psychology, must give place to such conceptions as " organism " and " function," as being the real cate- gories implied in the theory ; that these categories point far more definitely than the category of " self -activity " to that law of mental activity according to which the 1 Herbart and the Herbartian Theory of Education — a Criticism. Lecture I., passim. INTKODUCTION. 6 most highly efficient minds in any department of life work; and finally, that, instead of being at variance with or contradictory of the category of self-activity, they indicate the only way in which the self can find its highest and best realisation. It is almost a truism that to understand a theory — to see it whole — one must view it from the inside, that is, from its point of departure. In the light of Herbart's own language it can scarcely be said that Herbart's critics have viewed Herbart's presentation theory from the standpoint of Herbart. Herbart re- jects as meaningless for psychological procedure the Kantian doctrine of a transcendental ego and transcen- dental freedom ; and as this doctrine has been recognised as fundamental to the Kantian philosophy, it might be at least suspected that the Kantian philosophy was not the point of departure for Herbart's psychology. Starting from the Leibnizian principle of " appetition," Kant developed the idea of spontaneity, and concluded that " the conjunction of a manifold in intuition never can be given us by the senses ; it cannot therefore be contained in the pure form of sensuous intuition, for it is a spontaneous act of the faculty of representation." ^ Herbart says that this very plausible assertion is, from its nature, speculative, and that " everything like this Kantian assertion must completely disappear from the theorems of psychology." ^ And speaking of psychology generally, Herbart says, " In regard to this science Locke and Leibniz were both on a better path than that along which we have been farther led by Wolff ^ Critique of Pure Reason, Meiklejohn's trans., p. 80. ^ Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, Hartenstein's ed., p. 49. 6 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HEKBART, and Kant." ^ Hence it would appear that Herbart will find a better interpretation through Leibniz than through Kant. The less developed thought of Leibniz is the better starting-point for an interpretation of a psycho- logical theory which, in rejecting Kant, refers so often, as Herbart's does, to the principles of Leibniz. Any criticism therefore of Herbartian psychology which seems to be directed more from the Kantian than from the Leibnizian standpoint must be regarded, comparatively speaking, as a criticism directed from the outside ; and in so far as it is thus directed, in so far must it fall short of an adequate interpretation of the theory. Of the critics who have assailed Herbart from the standpoint of Kant, Professor Natorp of Marburg may be regarded as the foremost. In a course of eight lectures on " Herbart, Pestalozzi, and Modern Educational Prob- lems," " delivered in the Marburg Holiday Courses of 1897 and 1898, lie insisted on the inseparability of the Herbartian pedagogy and psychology, and tried to show, from an extreme Kantian or neo-Kantian view, that the theoretical foundations of Herbart's pedagogy are thoroughly unstable. In tlie first, fifth, sixth, and seventh lectures of the course Professor ISTatorp drew out in detail the contrast between Herbart and Herbart's predecessor, Pestalozzi ; and instead of agreeing with those critics who believe that " the best of Pestalozzi is also found in Herbart," he sought to show that Herbart adopted Pestalozzi's central thoughts and modi- fied them to suit his own psychological and ethical ' Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, Hartenstein'a ed., p. 13. ^ Herbart, Pestalozzi, und die heutigen Aufgaben der Erziehungs-lebre, p. 5. INTEODUCTION. 7 theories. Dr Hayward, in referring to this contrast, suggests that, in place of Natorp's illegitimate formula, " Herbart or Pestalozzi," we should adopt the formula " Herbart and Pestalozzi." ^ Now, whilst the latter formula may do more justice to Herbart than Natorp's, yet if it does not indicate a view of Herbartianism from Herbart's own standpoint it is insufficient. In place of the formula " Herbart or Pestalozzi," or the formula " Herbart and Pestalozzi," neither of which, in our opinion, points to the real source of the Herbartian psychology, we would employ the formula, " Leibniz and Herbart." This last formula is the one by which, as we shall try to show, the Herbartian theory of education can be viewed from the inside and estimated at its true value. In order to make good our contention that Herbart's theory finds an adequate interpretation through the philosophy of Leibniz, it is necessary to examine gener- ally the principles of the Leibnizian philosophy, and to indicate those that seem to have constituted the nucleus for the developments of Herbart. If our ex- amination of Leibniz's principles should seem to delay somewhat the discussion of Herbart's theory, we can only plead that in our view the connection between the two thinkers is fundamentally so close that to do justice to Herbart a more or less cursory examination of his predecessor's \dews is necessary. ^ The Critics of Herbartianism, p. 187. CHAPTER II. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PllINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. According to Descartes, the essential attribute of body or matter — that is, the something on which all its properties, such as colour, smell, taste, hardness, depend — is extension. As regards any piece of matter whatsoever, we can conceive of it deprived of all sensible qualities ; we cannot conceive of it as without extension or as not occupying space. But as extension consists in having parts, not in having qualities, it must be regarded as something homogeneous — a something whose parts are all alike. Hence if the endless variety of qualities ob- servable in matter is to be derived from the attribute " extension," this variety must be due to the various arrangements that the parts which constitute the exten- sion can assume. In other words, the movement amongst the parts will produce the various qualities. Extension and movement are thus the principles which account for " matter," and which, to use Descartes' own words, would enable him to construct the world. But this Cartesian world, whose essence was " extension," did not include mind, which Descartes regarded as unextended and outside of matter. Thus a gap was set up between extended matter and unextended mind ; and the philos- THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 9 ophic question arose how an imextended mind could come to know an extended matter. The answers of Descartes and his followers were unsatisfactory to Leibniz, who sought a solution through a reconsideration of the mean- ing of such terms as " substance," " essence," " reality." Leibniz first examines the Cartesian notion of " ex- tension." One objection to the Cartesian theory lies in this, that it fails to distinguish between " exten- sion " and the " extended " — between extension as the quality or attribute and the extended as that which has the quality or attribute. " Philosophers who are not Cartesians will not allow that it is enough to have extension in order to form body ; they will demand something else which the ancients called ' antitupia,' or what makes one body impenetrable to the other ; and according to them bare extension will be only the place or the space in which bodies are found." ^ " Extension is nothing else than an abstraction, and requires some- thing to be extended. It requires a subject, it is some- thing relative to this subject like duration. It even supposes something of a prior nature in this subject. It supposes some quality, some attribute, some nature in this subject which extends, which expands v/ith the subject and which continues itself. Extension is the diffusion of this quality or nature ; for example, in milk there is an extension or diffusion of whiteness, in the diamond an extension or diffusion of hardness ; in body in general an extension or diffusion of ' antitupia ' or materiality." " " Extension when it is the attribute of space is the diffusion or the continuation of the situa- 1 Examen des Principes du R. P. Malebranche, Erdmann's ed,, p. 691. 2 Ibid., p. 692. 10 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. tion or the locality, as the extension of body is the diffusion of ' antitupia ' or materiality."^ Thus, according to Leibniz, the repetition of mere points of space so as to make a continuum gives an abstract as opposed zo a concrete result ; and in order to reach a concrete result we must postulate some other attribute for the con- tinuum than mere repetition or extension. Again, " if the essence of bodies consisted in exten- sion alone, this extension ought to be capable of explain- ing all the properties of bodies. But extension does not explain that property in a body by which the body resists being moved, and which we call natural inertia. If body A in motion meets body B at rest, then if B were in- different to motion or rest it would allow itself to be pushed by A without resisting A and without diminish- ing the speed or changing the direction of A's motion. But this is not the case in nature ; for the larger B is, the more it will diminish the speed of A's motion." ^ If body B were purely passive or essentially extension it would not diminish A's motion. The fact that it does compels us to add to the notion of extension " some higher or metaphysical conception, namely, that of sub- stance, action, and force. These conceptions imply that everything which suffers must act reciprocally, and that everything which acts must suffer some reaction." ^ Here Leibniz draws a clear distinction between a mechanical and a non-mechanical, a material and an immaterial, explanation of matter. He does not, how- ever, refuse a place to mechanical explanations, for al- ^ Examen des Principes, p. 693. ^ Lettre sur la question si I'essence du corps consiste dans I'etendue, Erdmann, p. 112. ^ Ibid., p. 113. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PEINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 11 though he is " persuaded that everything in corporeal nature works mechanically, he cannot but believe that the principles even of mechanics, that is to say the first laws of motion, have a more sublime origin than the laws of pure mathematics." ^ The laws of space and number can explain matter in respect of its extension ; they do not account for the motion of matter. The new and higher conception of " force " which Leibniz recognises as the true " essence " of matter calls for some further consideration. Descartes main- tained that motion means simply a changing or trans- ference of parts, hence that motion is the property of body only so long as it is moving. In this way motion was set over against absolute rest or cessation of motion. Leibniz agrees with Descartes that motion is nothing else than changing of positions, but denies that it belongs to the body as a positive quality of the body. " Just as in astronomy the same phenomena can be explained by different hypotheses, so we may attribute real motion either to the one or the other of these things whose relative position changes." ^ Thus the phenomena of sunrise and sunset might be accounted for on the hypothesis that the sun moved round the earth or vice versa. The movement of A towards B amounts to the same result as the movement of B towards A. Motion and rest therefore are relative to one another, and are not properties inherent in bodies, any more than perpendicularity is inherent in a straight line. " Hence there is no real motion. "O* ^ Lettre sur la question si I'essence du corps consiste dans I'etendue, Erdmann, p. 113. ^ Animad. in p. g. Princip. Cartes, Gerhardt's ed., vol. iv. p. 369. 12 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. And SO in order that something may be said to be moNed, it is necessary that there should be not only a change of position relative to other bodies, but a cause of change, force, action, within itself." ^ Descartes admitted, or rather postulated, a cause of change, but sought for it outside matter, not within it. To Descartes God was the only cause : matter in itself was dead, and to produce movement amongst the parts of matter the active interference of God was necessary. To Leibniz matter was in itself, in its essence, alive ; and the movement or interaction amongst its parts was caused by the living principle at its heart — force, and not by any active and direct interference of God. But in the thought of Leibniz " life," " being," " existence," if these terms are to connote more than mere abstractions, must be regarded as synonymous with activity. That which is absolutely void of any degree of activity is dead, non-existent. Hence he argues that if matter is essentially alive, it can be so only if in some sense or other it is always active. In explaining this sense Leibniz has recourse to the Law of Continuity, which he maintains to be universally true. According to this Law there is no such thing as a gap or a leap in nature. The Law is stated thus : " When the differ- ence between two cases can be diminished below any magnitude given in datis or in that which is posited, it will necessarily also be diminished below any magni- tude given in qucesitis, or in that which results. Or to put it more simply : when the cases (or what is given) continually approach and at last lose themselves in one another, the consequences or results (or what is re- ^ Animad. in p. g. Princip. Cartes, p. 369. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PKINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 13 quired) must do so also." ^ Thus a geometrical line may be regarded as made up of an infinite number of points that approach one another so closely that they merge into and are lost in one another. The same can be said of all numbers and geometrical magni- tudes. " The same principle," Leibniz continues, " ap- plies to Physics ; for example, rest may be considered as an infinitely small velocity or as an infinite slowness. Hence whatever is true of slowness or velocity in general, ought also to be true of rest thus under- stood ; so that the law of rest ought to be considered as a particular case of the law of motion." ^ There is no such thing, therefore, as absolute rest or absolute motion. Wlien we say that a piece of matter is at rest, we must mean that its motion has been reduced to an infinitely small degree. In every piece of matter there is present a something that is constantly active to a greater or less degree ; and it is this constant activity, this ever active principle, that is the essence of the piece of matter, and which determines its various manifestations. This activity or force is the reality present in what we call a " thing." The difficulty that naturally presents itself is that this " force " or activity is not always evident, and when not in evidence may therefore be non-existent. The table on which I am writing is, in common language, quite stationary ; it is at rest. Is there then no " force " present ? The difficulty is met by Leibniz's description of " force." " Meanwhile I may say that the conception virium seu virtutis (which the Germans call Kraft, the French ^ Extrait d'une Lettre a M. Bayle, Erdmann, p. 105. 2 Ibid. 14 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. ' la force ') . . . contributes very considerably towards the understanding of the conception of substance. For active force differs from the bare potency commonly recognised by the schools, for the active potency or faculty of the scholastics is nothing else than the mere possibility of acting, which nevertheless requires an outer excitation and stimulus, as it were, in order to be turned into activity. But active force contains a certain activity or ' entelecheia,' and is a mean between the faculty of acting and action itself. It includes effort, and by itself passes into operation, re- quiring no aids but only the removal of any hindrance." ■^ Whilst therefore the table is at rest, the active force of the Leibnizian theory is in operation, for it is the effort implied in the pressure of the table upon the floor, which effort on the sudden sinking of the floor would pass over into the visible downward movement of the table. Leibniz illustrates the conception of " effort " by refer- ence to a stretched rope supporting some heavy hang- ing body. Force, then, is neither the bare capacity for being moved, nor is it actual visible motion. It is not the bare capacity for being moved, for it is the mover or producer of movement. It is not the motion itself, for it is in existence before and after the motion. It is a something between the two : it is an effort, a striv- ing, a straming to act, yet a straining that already in- volves activity. But if this " force " is a something that is in exist- ence before and after the sensible motion, it is evident that it cannot be described or explained in quantitative ^ De Primae Philosophiae emendatione et de Notione Substantiae, Erdmaun, p. 122. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 15 terms like the Cartesian motion. Hence Leibniz is led to seek for a non-quantitative or non-material inter- pretation of this "force" which to him is the "real" in matter. He finds this interpretation through a further criticism of the Cartesian and Atomistic inter- pretations of material substance. Cartesianism declares that the " real " in matter is extension. But extension is continuous, that is, it has no really separate parts, although we may speak of it as infinitely divisible. " There is no magnitude so small that we cannot con- ceive in it an infinity of divisions which will never be exhausted." ^ A line an inch long can be con- ceived as being divided into ten equal parts; each of these parts in turn can be conceived as being divided into ten equal parts, and so on ad infinitum. We can never in thought reach a physical part that is not com- posed of other parts. In other words, we never reach a physical or material part that is nothing but a part; hence we never reach a physical or material part that is real. The parts we speak of, therefore, be they ever so small, are only arbitrary : they are mentally ab- stracted from their physical or material context, and are therefore abstractions. Leibniz's argument, then, against the Cartesian definition of substance as essen- tially " extension " amounts to this, that if the whole of matter, the whole of the physical world, be really continuous, then the parts of this world are only ar- bitrary, not real. But such a conclusion, Leibniz im- plies, is at variance with the deliverance of thought that the whole of matter and each of its parts are equally real. ^ Lettre a M. Foucher, Erdmann, p. 115. 16 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF IIERBART. The Atomistic philosophy, again, declares that the essence of matter is found in physical atoms whose in- finite hardness renders them indivisible and real. But, in the first place, if the parts are real and indivisible, then the whole which is made up of these separate and indivisible parts must be a mere aggregate, not a con- tinuum ; that is, there can be no real whole. Hence, whilst in tlie Cartesian theory the whole is real and the parts unreal, in the Atomistic theory the parts are real and the whole is unreal. In the second place, the Law of Continuity implies that there is no absolute hard- ness any more than there is absolute motion. Hardness is entirely relative ; hence, if hardness is to be taken as the ground on which the atom rests its claim to in- divisibility, there can be no real indivisibility. Leibniz cannot conceive of " physical indivisibles without miracle, and I think that nature can reduce bodies to that smallness which geometry can consider." ^ And again, " atoms of matter are contrary to reason ; besides that they are still composed of parts, since the invincible attachment of one part to the other (when that could be rationally conceived or supposed) would not do away with the difference of the parts." ^ If, then, there is no such thing as a physical indivisible atom, the reality of the atom will depend on its being not indivisible. Hence, so long as we confine our consideration to physical atoms, we can never reach a unity that is indivisible. But, according to Leibniz, we want a unit of substance whose reality shall be consistent with its indivisibility ; that is, a unit whose whole and parts shall be equally ^ Lettre a M. Foucher, Erdmann, p. 115. 2 Syst6me Nouveau, Gerhardt, vol. iv. p. 482. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PEINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 17 real. And this brings us once more to the higher thought of Leibniz, that the " force " which he claims to be the essence of " matter " is a spiritual principle. Only through such a principle, he argues, can we avoid the dilemma of Cartesianism and Atomism and secure reality to the whole and to every part of " matter." His use of the term " entelecheia " points us back to the Aristotelian " form." This " form " is the principle of a thing, in virtue of which the thing becomes what it is. Whether Aristotle really regarded this " form " as some- thing dead or not, Leibniz in his use of the principle regards it as an active, living principle, whose activity determines all the future states of the thing. " It is a certain striving or primitive force of action which itself is an inborn law impressed by a divine decree." ^ In view of our later interpretation of Herbart's theory, it is important to note several points regard- ing this principle of force as above defined by Leibniz. The force is primitive in the sense that its Jlrst mani- festation is due, not to a preceding force, but to a divine decree, or a divine creative act. The first manifestation of this " force " or " monad " is its coming into being. Then the " force " or " monad " is said to be " impressed." This cannot mean impressed on matter, for this would imply that there was a matter existing previous to the impression on it of the " force," and so the problem of finding the essence would have to be carried back to this previously existing matter. Besides, if the " force " is the essence of matter, then matter must follow on the impression of the law as determined by the divine decree. And the impression " inborn " ^ De ipsa natura, Eidmann, p. 158, 12. B 18 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERB ART. (insiia) may seem to imply that there must be a some- thing antecedent to the " force " ; that there must be a something, call it matter or aught else, into which the " force " may be put by the " divine decree." But Leibniz regarded " matter " and " force " as starting even, and the expression " inborn " means no more than this, that the " force," the monad, is embedded in matter with which in some sense or other it comes into beingr. This relationship between "matter" and the monad, which to Leibniz is so close that one is " inborn " with the other, follows, as will be seen, from his new interpreta- tion of whole and part — an interpretation which, by means of a spiritual principle, secures reality to both whole and part. Now a spiritual, that is a non-material or non-spatial principle, whilst it may determine the whole, cannot give us the whole in its full or actual completeness. Thus a geometrical point, which is non-spatial, may be said to determine the whole of a line, although it does not give us the line in its full completeness. Yet with- out the point there could be no line, and the line there- fore may be said to be implicitly contained in the point. From one point of view the point has in it the line : the point as developed will become the line. From another point of view the line is the point developed. The Kne is the growth of a point and not a simple sum total of points. It is a growth in which the whole is determined by and dependent on the parts, and the parts determined by and dependent on the whole. We may illustrate the idea by the modern conception of organism. The living body, in discharging the various functions of eating, drinking, walking, &c., is really ex- THE PHILOSOPHICAL PEINGIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 19 pressing itself, representing itself, in different aspects. Just as the whole line may be said to be expressing itself in points, so the organic body may be said to be expressing itself in some function ; or just as the point is inseparable from the line, so the function of a part of the body is inseparable from the functioning of the body as a whole. The whole being of the body expresses itself at one time in the lifting of an arm, at another time in the winking of an eye. In either case the whole body is functioning. To look at the conception of functioning from another point of view, we may say that the lifting of the arm, for example, is so connected with the body as a whole that a complete analysis or explanation of the movement would involve a reference to every part of the body. In the lifting of the arm may be seen, by an analytic process, the whole body, which therefore may be said to be expressed, represented, or, to use Leibniz's expression, " mirrored," in the move- ment of the arm. Whole and part therefore are equally real, not through a mere mechanical but through a dynamical connection. Such is the interpretation which, according to Leibniz, must be given to the whole and to the parts of the universe, if the whole and the parts are to be real. The unit of substance therefore must be this " force " or " monad " which, as a real non-spatial indi- visible part, can yet express or represent the whole world. These monads or immaterial unities are " the true atoms of nature, and, in a word, the elements of things." ^ They are the only reals in the world, or rather the totality of these monads constitutes the world. ^ La Monadologie, Erdmann, p. 705, 3. 20 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. But if the only realities are these apparently meta- physical entities or monads that have no extended parts or extension, what is the meaning and purpose of the extended things of our experience ? What is the re- lation between the monads and the phenomena of the world ? The answer is given by Leibniz in ' The Monadology ' or ' Principles of Philosophy,' and in the ' Principles of Nature and Grace.' The following is the line of argument. As the monad is a simple indivisible substance without parts, it cannot come into being ex- cept by some creative act ; for that which comes into being nahorally must do so by a composition, or the adding of part to part. For a similar reason no monad can come to an end except by annihilation. In con- sequence of the simple nature of the monad " there is no way of explaining how a monad can be altered or changed in its interior by any other created thing, since it is impossible to transpose anything in it or to con- ceive in it any internal motion which could be produced, directed, increased, or diminished therein, as can happen in the case of compounds in which there is change among the parts. The monads have no windows by which anything could go in or out." ^ Now, since the monads are simple, and unchanging so far as quantity is concerned, they would be indistinguishable from one another unless they possessed some qualities. With- out a difference either in quantity or quality there would be no means of perceiving change in things as we actually do. Leibniz " takes it for granted that every created being, and consequently the created monad, is subject to change, and further, that this ^ La Monadologie, Erdmann, p. 705, 7. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 21 change is continuous in each." ^ But, since no external cause can intiuence the monad, " the natural changes of the monad come from an internal principle." ^ This internal principle he calls " appetition." But besides this principle of change " there must be a particular series of changes (in the changing being) in order to make, so to speak, the specific nature and variety of the simple substances. This series should involve a multiplicity in the unit or what is simple. For as every natural change takes place by degrees, something changes and something remains unchanged ; and conse- quently in a simple substance there must be a plurality of affections and relations although there are no parts (that is, quantitative parts) in it. The passing condi- tion which involves and represents a multiplicity in the unity or simple substance is nothing but what is called Perception." And that this theory of perception is no mere hypothesis, framed to get over the difficulty of reconciling a real whole and real parts, seems to be proved by the fact that " we find that the least thought of which we are conscious involves variety in the object (of that thought)." '^ " I believe that one may say that these ideas sensible (sensations of sight, &c.) are simple in appearance because, being confused, they do not afford the mind the means of distinguishing (from one another) those things of which they are composed. It is some- thing like the round appearance which distant objects present because we cannot discern the angles although we receive some confused impression. It is clear, for example, that green is a product of blue and yellow, ^ La Monad ologie, Erdmann, p. 705, 10. 2 Ibid., 11. 3 Ibid., 16. 22 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBAKT. mixed together ; and hence we may believe that the idea of green is made up of those two ideas (of green and yellow)." ^ " And so all those who admit that the soul is a simple substance should admit this multiplicity in the monad." "" If this theory does not account for perception, perception " is inexplicable on mechanical grounds, tliat is to say, by means of figures and mo- tions. And supposing there were a machine whose structure enabled it to think, feel, and have percep- tion, it might be conceived as increased in size whilst keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. And that being granted, we should, on examining its interior, find nothing but parts work- ing upon one another, and never anything whereby to explain a perception." ^ Simple substances or monads, therefore, alone have perception. The full definition of the monad is thus a simple, self-sufficient or independ- ent, appetitive, percipient being. Leibniz distinguishes between different kinds of monads. Eecognising that feeling (probably = con- sciousness in general) is something more than mere perception, he thinks " that the general name of monads or entelechies should suffice for simple substances which have nothing but perception, and that the name of Soul should be given only to those substances whose percep- tion is more distinct and accompanied by memory." * The third and highest class he refers to in the follow- ing terms. " It is also through the knowledge of neces- sary truths and through their abstractions that we rise 1 Nouveaux Essais, Erdmann, p. 227, cap. ii. '^ La Monadologie, § 16. ■' Ibid., § 17. " Ibid., § 19. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 23 to axis of rejlection which make us think of that which is called /, and observe that this or that is within us." ^ Thus the series of monads whose totality composes the world includes first,, monads percipient but without consciousness of what is perceived ; second, monads percipient and conscious of what is perceived ; third, monads percipient and conscious both of what is per- ceived and of themselves as perceiving, that is, self- conscious monads. The perception of the monad is continuous, " for one perception can come in a natural way (that is, without a creative ab extra act) only from another perception, as one motion can come in a natural way only from another motion." " This continuity of the monad's perception necessarily involves an infinite number of different perceptions more or less perfect. According to Leibniz, the marks of a perfect perception are clear- ness and distinctness. But as the continuity of per- ception implies a totality of perceptions varying infin- itely in their degrees of clearness and distinctness, there is no essential separation between distinctness and con- fusedness, confusedness being simply a low degree of distinctness. Now perception is the activity of the monad ; it is the monad's life ; only in perception does the monad live. Perfect perception then means per- fect activity, that is, absolutely unhindered activity. No monad, except the highest monad God, has this perfect perception or absolutely free activity. The imperfect perception of all other monads means a hindered activity or incomplete living. This imperfect perception or hindered activity of the monad expresses 1 La Monadologie, § 30. ^ jbid., § 23. 24 A NEW INTEKPKETATION OF HERBART. itself in the form of " matter." " Matter," then, is the imperfect mode in which the monad, as a real, per- ceives the universe or the totality of other reals. To the extent the monad perceives the real whole of the universe, to that extent it has a clear and distinct per- ception of the universe. But if the only reals are the monads, and if each monad is absolutely separate from and independent of all other monads, how can the monad ever perceive in any degree the real universe which is composed of the totality of monads ? Leaving Leibniz's answer aside in the meantime, we must note how he definitely relates extended matter to the monad's perception. All matter is not equally related to this perception at any one moment. " The whole universe is a plenum (and thus all matter is Ijound together), and, as in the plenum every motion has some effect upon distant bodies in pro- portion to their distance, so that each body is not only affected by those which touch it and in some way feels the effect of all that happens to them, but also through their means is affected by bodies adjoining those which touch the first ones with which it is itself in immediate contact, it follows that this intercommunication of things extends to any distance however great." " Hence, al- though each created monad represents the whole universe, it represents more distinctly the body which specially belongs to it and of which it forms the ' entelechy ' ; and as this body expresses the whole universe through the connection of all matter in the plenum, the soul also represents the whole universe in representing this body which belongs to it in a special manner." ^ Just as from 1 La Monadologie, §§ 61, 62. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 25 the physical point of view eveiy movement or change in the material world affects the whole, so that the whole at a given moment may be said to be read in the part though very imperfectly, so in every perception of the monad the whole world may be read imperfectly. The perception of the moment is, in Leibniz's language, " Ijig with the future." ^ The part of the whole which is near- est, if we may use the expression, and w^hich more specially belongs to the monad, is the body, through which the monad interprets to itself the rest of the universe. This body, whilst it is better known or more distinctly represented or perceived than the rest of the universe, is still " matter." Everything, then, which the monad perceives, including its own body, in an imperfect way, is perceived in the form of " matter " ; and so, the more clearly the monad perceives, or, which is the same thing, the more freely it acts, the less does it perceive things in the form of matter or the less is it encumbered with matter. But whilst " matter " is a form or mode of perception, and is thus of a phenomenal character, it indicates the presence of a real, for it is a phenomenon " hcnc fundatum " ; it is the real world confusedly perceived. Now this real world which the monad imperfectly per- ceives is not a world external to the monad's self : the simplicity and indivisibility of the monad renders this impossible. The monad can know absolutely nothing of all the other monads, and therefore Leibniz concludes that it must perceive and know the universe through an internal unfolding or analytic process. The first percep- tion of the monad is a confused perception of the ivhole ^ La Monadologie, § '22. 26 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART, universe, and the life progress of the monad consists in making this perception clearer and clearer, in filling out the details of which it is confusedly percipient. In this way does Leibniz seek to fill up the gap between the Cartesian extended something and the unextended mind. The extended and the unextended are in reality inseparable : the former is the mode in which the latter perceives, and only by abstraction can we think of an activity and the mode of an activity as being really separated. But such a theory seems to idealise matter and strip it of all externality. At least we cannot apply to the Leibnizian " matter " the term externality in the sense of something separated from and independ- ent of the monad. The full import of this conclusion will perhaps be evident as we proceed. One great objection to the theory of the independence of the monad was fully evident to Leibniz. The diffi- culty may be stated thus. The totality of the reals or monads, or, to put it in another way, the totality of all the perceptions of all the monads, constitutes the universe. All these perceptions differ from one another by infinitely small degrees, and form a plenum or con- tinuum. But each monad is independent of all other monads, and perceives the universe independently of the perceptions of the other monads. If, then, at any one moment the infinite totality of the perceptions of the monads makes the continuum of the universe, the change in a simple monad from one perception to another would destroy the continuum. If in a line one point is supposed to change its position, the continuum of the line will be broken unless some other point changes places with the first point, for continuity implies that THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 27 there is no vacant space where the changing point could take up a new position. Again, if one atom of a gas in a closed vessel changes its place the vacated place is simply occupied by some other atom, and by a process of readjustment which affects every atom in the vessel the continuity is preserved. In the case, then, of a quantitative continuum change takes place by a simple readjustment of the parts. But in the case of percep- tion the continuum is non-spatial, so that there can be no action and reaction in the ordinary sense of these terms. Hence the only supposition under which a per- ception can be thought to change so as to preserve the continuum of the universe is that there is a qualitative change, that is, a change in the qualities of clearness and distinctness. Thus, if at a particular moment the per- ception of one monad increases in distinctness, then the continuity of the universe can only be preserved by a change in the distinctness of the perceptions of all other monads at that moment. Such a change Leibniz postulates in his theory of a pre-established harmony, according to which the monads are pre-determined by the Divine Will to act in harmony. Descartes had explained the harmony between soul and body by the theory that both are under the ceaseless direction of God, who from moment to moment adjusts the movements of the one to those of the other. Leibniz rejects this hypothesis of " occasionalism," and holds that it is " to introduce a deAis ex machind in a natural and ordinary matter, in which it is reasonable that God should intervene only in the way in which He sustains all other things in nature." ^ That is, if all things, ex- ^ Troisieme Eclaircissement du Nouveau Systeme, Erdmaun, p. 135. 28 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERB ART. cepting soul and body, work harmoniously according to laws imposed upon them from the beginning, why should not soul and body also work under similar conditions ? Leibniz describes his own hypothesis as " the way of the harmony pre-established by a divinely fore-seeing con- trivance, which from the beginning has formed each of these substances (soul and matter) in a manner so perfect and regulated with so much exactness that, by merely following its own laws which it received on coming into being, each substance is yet in harmony with the other, just as if there were a mutual influence between them, or as if God were always putting His hand upon them in addition to His general support." ^ This ideal nature of action and reaction is emphasised by Leibniz. " It is true that in my opinion there are forces in all substances ; but these forces are, properly speaking, only in the substance itself, and what follows from them in other substances is only in \drtue of a harmony pre-established, if I may be permitted to use the word, and not in any way by a real [ — natural, physical] influence or by a transmission of some species or quality." ^ Again, " the created thing is said to act outwardly in so far as it has perfection, and to be passive in relation to another in so far as it is imperfect. Thus activity is attributed to the monad in so far as it has distinct perceptions, and passivity in so far as it has confused perceptions. And one created thing is more perfect than another in this, that there is found in it that which serves to explain a priori what takes place in the other, and it is on that account that we say the former acts on the 1 Erdmann, p. 135. - Gerhardt, iv. p. 496, § 18. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 29 latter. But in simple substances this is only an ideal influence of one monad on the other." ^ If our account of the principles of the Leibnizian metaphysic is in the main true, then the theory of mental growth as embodied in the metaphysic may be summarised as follows : — First: The mind is a monad — a non- spatial, im- material, or spiritual entity whose life consists in " appetition " and " perception." Second : The object of this perception is the uni- verse implicitly contained within the monad's own life. Third : The monad mirrors, represents, or perceives, from the very beginning of its existence, the whole universe, but in a very confused manner ; and progress in knowledge means that the mind makes its first perception of the universe clearer and clearer through a more and more detailed analysis of this first perception which implicitly contains the whole of knowledge. Fourth : What is known as external matter is nothing but the confused mode in which the monad per- ceives the universe. Matter and mind are thus inextricably bound together. Fifth : Interaction between the monad and other monads is only seemingly real, being produced by a pre-established harmony. This independence of the moDPd constitutes its individuality. From the point of view of our interpretation of Herbart, what is of chief importance in this theory 1 La Monadologie, Erdmann, p. 709, §§ 49, 50, 51. 30 A NEW INTERPEETATION OF HERB ART. of knowledge is the psychological standpoint implicit in the theory. The standpoint is this, that " subject " and " object " stand over against each other only in the sense of being two inseparables, neither of which has meaning by itself. This standpoint is apt to be obscured in the atmosphere of subjective idealism into which the Leibnizian monadology leads us. Yet the standpoint is there, as we shall try to show, in spite of the absolute subjectivity of the theory. At the same time, it will strengthen our faith in the stand- point if it can be shown that the Leibnizian meta- pliysic whicli is evolved from it, and which squares with the convictions of common-sense only through the deus ex machind of a " pre-established harmony," is not the inevitable consequence of adopting such a stand- point. This we shall attempt to show briefly and then proceed to the elucidation of the psychological stand- point itself. The independent and ideal nature of the monad Leibniz deduces from his definition of the monad as a simple and indivisible being. According to him interaction could take place only by an interchange of quantitative parts. But the monad has no such parts ; hence " it is impossible to transpose anything in it or to conceive in it any internal motion which could be produced, directed, increased, or diminished therein, as can happen in the case of compounds in which there is change among the parts. The monads have no windows by which anything could go in or out." To Leibniz it is evident that no other kind of interaction than a quantitative one is conceivable, and hence the inconceivability of a qualitative one neces- THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 31 sitated the theory of the pre-established harmony in order to explain the a'p'parent interaction. Now, in the first place, is it a necessity of thought that the inconceivable should be regarded as impossible ? We can conceive of quantitative interaction, for such interaction is presented to us in our experience of physical phenomena. Or, rather, we interpret the movements amongst physical phenomena as interaction. Here conceivability follows on and seems to be de- pendent on experience. The experience determines or renders possible the conceivability, not conceivability the experience. In the second place, the inability of Leibniz to conceive how interaction can take place seems to follow from his separation of the mechanical and the spiritual aspects of the universe. If the mechanical aspect as quantitative and the spiritual aspect as qualitative are regarded as independent of each other, the lioxi: of their interaction, if there is interaction, cannot well be conceived in terms of the understanding. But, as Professor Busse argues, is it a necessity of thought that every physical event should be physically explicable ? ^ We may be compelled to read our experience through the category of cause ; but so long as human action cannot be inter- preted in terms of mechanism, the hypothesis that every physical event is physically caused cannot be admitted to be universally valid. If every action of man could be calculated in terms of magnitude and anticipated with the same precision as any natural phenomenon is anticipated, then the hypothesis would be universally valid. Up till now no such calculation can be made. 1 Geist und Korper, Seele und Leib, p. 386, &c. (Leipzig, 1903). 32 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. But if we admit the possibility of interaction between minds, which involves interaction between physical and psychical elements, it seems that we must also admit the possibility of the doctrine of the conservation of energy being untrue. For, if there is an exchange of activities between physical and psychical elements, the sum total of the energy in the physical world will be at one time a " constant " plus so much psychical energy, at another time the same constant minus so much psychical energy. Xow the doctrine of the conservation of energy is ostensibly based on the assumption that nature, or the sum total of physical phenomena, con- stitutes a closed system that neither expands nor con- tracts. And it is further asserted that, without this assumption, the quantitative methods of science would lack a fixed standard and would therefore be valueless. But quantity is not something absolute — it is entirely relative ; and if the closed system of the physicist were assumed to expand or contract by the addition or sub- traction of physical energy the quantitative method would still apply, if we take account of the conception of equivalence or equilibrium which was held equally by Leibniz as by the modern physicists. The increment of energy would affect the whole system proportionally ; and thus, while the whole system might change as to absolute quantum, the relationship between the units would remain the same. But so long as the relation- ships remain constant, the quantitative methods of the physicist — which are based not on absolutely fixed but on relative standards — will hold good, although the system measured may vary in c^uantum. It may be objected to such a reconcilement of the THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 33 physical and the psychical, that it tacitly assumes that (the) physical energy and (the) psychical energy are of the same kind, for otherwise the sum total of the two energies would be neither a physical nor a psychical re- sult. Quantitative methods which are applicable only to physical energy would not apply to a totality of energy which is neither physical nor psychical. But it has yet to be proved that physical energy and psychical energy are, in an ultimate analysis, essentially different kinds of energy. I am conscious of and know my own energy, and I have more or less secure ground on which to base my inference as to the existence of energy like to, and other than, my own ; but as to any othei' kind of energy, I know it only as hypothetical. Moreover, science seeks and is seeking not unsuccessfully to reduce all the forms of physical energy to a single form, and the ultimate unity of physical energy and psychical energy is at least not demonstrably false. Again, if we give up the con- ception of the closed system of the physicist and retain the conceptions of continuity and equivalence, then the identity of physical and psychical energy — that is, the reduction of all energy to one form — is quite compatible wich all the quantitative results of physical science. From the point of view of the Leibnizian theory of perception these results are true as far as they go — they are the records of the manifestations of a central force which is real — they are the records of the " phenomena bene fwndata." If, then, a real divorce cannot be set up between the physical and the psychical, the conceivability of how the monad can know anything or be affected by anything outside itself without losing its individuality is not so impossible. G 3i A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. In the third place, conceivability in Leibniz's sense is not the only test of what is. Conceivability, according to Leibniz, is evidently equivalent to the power of per- ceiving. But this perceiving is always more or less imperfect — that is, no perception is ever entirely free of encumbering matter. If, therefore, we limit the in- dividual's power to perceive or to know to this kind of conceivability, we may have to admit that there can be no proof that there is interaction between mind and " matter." But if we extend the definition of conceiv- ability, we may believe that in certain cases of ex- perience what we call intuition (the feeling, intuition or immediate knowledge of the " self," for example) may be a true test of reality, even though we may be unable to explain by a ratiocinative process the how of our ex- perience. It may be that the common intuition that there is a something different from and in a sense external to ourselves, is the perfect or clear perception of the Leibnizian theory. Into such a perception no matter enters : it is the perception of another real as real, and not as " sicklied o'er " with matter. AVhat we call the understanding is in the last analysis a method of know- ing through the medium of matter ; and so, following out the thought of Leibniz, we may say that the method of cognition through the understanding is only a stage on the way to the method whereby we " clearly " perceive. Hence, though we may not be able to conceive of inter- action in the narrower meaning of the term conceive, we may know it as a fact in a higher and more perfect way than through the medium of an intellectual perception. When " matter " has disappeared, we are in contact with reality ; we knoiv reality then, we do not understand it, THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 35 for as there is no necessity for " understanding " it there is no meaning in understanding it. In the fourth place, the Monadology itself seems to point to a solution of the difficulty. In accordance with the Law of Continuity and the analytic character of the monad's progress, every perception is determined by some previous perception. Hence to account for the percep- tions that are in consciousness Leibniz postulates the ex- istence of unperceived "petites perceptions" which, whilst outside the sphere of consciousness, are yet operative in producing what is in consciousness. " It is also by the unconscious perceptions that I explain that wonderful pre-established harmony of soul and body, and indeed of all monads or simple substances, which takes the place of the untenable theory of the influence of one upon another." And again, " After this I should add little if I were to say that it is these ' petites perceptions ' which determine us on many occasions without our thinking it, and which deceive people by the appearance of an indif- ference of eqicilihrium as if, for instance, we were indiffer- ent whether to turn to the right or to the left. It is also unnecessary for me to point out . . . that they cause that uneasiness which I show to consist in some- thing which differs from pain only as the small from the great, and which, nevertheless, often constitutes our de- sire and even our pleasure, giving to it a kind of stimu- lating relish." ^ From the above it seems that Leibniz thinks that two perceptions in the same individual monad determine or influence each other in a way other than by a pre-estabhshed harmony. The " petites perceptions" " determine us " and " they cause uneasiness." This ^ Nouveaux Essais, Erdmann, p. 197. 36 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. seems to imply more than a harmony between a " petite perception," which is a very confused perception, and the perception of uneasiness, which as uneasiness is clear. Uneasiness is a third something superimposed on the merely intellectual perception. It is as if the deter- mined perception luul two sides — an intellectual and an emotional ; or, to express the idea more in accordance with the thought of Leibniz, it is as if the determined perception instantaneously rose from a more or less con- fused degree of clearness to one of perfect clearness. But such a transition is not explicable by the theory of a pre-established harmony. Hence it would seem that in the same monad one perception really influences the other. If, then, in the same monad one perception can influence another, is it impossible that the same kind of influence could operate between two different monads ? The life of every monad is one of perceptive activity. The differences between perceptions are differences of de- gree, not of kind. And so if one perception really influ- ences or determines another perception in the same monad, it is not impossible that the perception of one monad should really influence the perception of another monad. From the point of view of Leibniz it may be objected that the conclusion we have just suggested destroys the indivisibility and individuality of the monad. Now, in influencing one another through their perceptions, the monads are not being added to or taken from in the sense in which Leibniz urged the objection to inter- action. Or let us suppose that something is being added or subtracted. This something cannot l)e anything but perceptive activity, perceptive energy. If we represent the monad's activity at any given moment as x, then the THE PHILOSOPHICAL PKINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. 37 next moment, through the interaction of some other monad, it may be x + a or x — a, where a represents the activity added or subtracted. In the case of x + a it is evident that x persists, and if the monad knows itself as an individual unity in x, it will still know itself as an individual unity in x + a. The x which was still persists ; and this, as we shall try to show later on,^ is all that can be claimed for the idea of individuality. In the case of x — a, x determines the difference ; it enters into the result as part and parcel of it, and thus persists in the change implied in the form x — a. In both cases X functions through a series of changes which may tend to disguise it but cannot destroy it. And we are con- scious in some measure of such change. We speak of fuller and more abundant life, and we are conscious of gains and losses to our soul-life. When the x diminishes almost to vanishing point, it is still conscious of itself in the form of loss ; from a certain point of view it functions largely as a minus quantity. But what is minus or loss in one set of conditions may be plus or gain in another set of conditions. When x apparently sinks to zero, it may be really rising anew ; when x — a becomes x — x then x — x has become 0, or x has become x. From the foregoing considerations it would appear that the simplicity, indivisibility, and individuality of the monad is not incompatible with a real interaction between itself and other monads ; that there is a real interaction in some way not accounted for solely by a theory of pre-established harmony ; and that Leibniz's own principles are capable of being enlisted in support of the theory of real, as opposed to ideal, interaction. 1 Cap. V. CHAPTER III. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT IMPLICIT IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF LEIBNIZ. ACCORDIXG to Leibniz, the real is spiritual. But the spiritual with him is not the antithesis of matter. Matter is not a something set over against the " force " called " monad." Matter is simply an imperfect or confused perception ; and the clearer and more distinct the monad's perception becomes, the less does it perceive the universe in the guise of matter. But even with Leibniz's admission that what we call external matter is " phenomena bene fundaia," the theory still seems to be one of subjective idealism, whereby the universe is re- solved into a series of perceptions which, being evolved from each monad hy itself, have nothing about them v/hich could be called objective or at least " external." The perceptions are operations or activities of the monad ; and if matter is simply a name for the im- perfect modes of these activities, we seem to be pre- sented with a theory that explains the meaning of " external " by denying that there is externality. Now, according to the theory, the life of the monad consists in its perceptions. But these are not abstract perceptions ; they are perceptions of the universe, even THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT OF LEIBNIZ. 39 though it is a universe within the monad itself. There is, first, a perceiving activity of the monad ; and second, an object perceived. But the perceiving activity is not an activity that stands over against and may be separated from a something acted upon. The very essence of the so-called individualism of Leibniz is that the perceiving activity is meaningless apart from the result of that activity. Leibniz does not consider the question as to what the monad is previous to its mani- festation in perceptive activity ; to him the monad is activity. In a remarkable passage which seems to antici- pate the modern conception of a functional psychology, and in particular the functional theory of Professor James, Leibniz clearly indicates that monad, force, activity, perception, are synonymous terms ; and that a monad, a mind, a soul apart from activity, is an abstraction. " These unfelt perceptions," he says, " still mark and constitute the same individual who is characterised by the traces which these perceptions preserve of the preceding states of this individual, whilst they make the connection between his past and present state." ^ That is, the essence, reality, substratum which previous philosophies had been in quest of, is the activity named " monad." The perceiving activity is not the activity of a mind that might perceive or not perceive just as it pleased; it is not a soul that can somehow or other live apart from its manifesting perceptive activity. It may be objected that the " appetition " of the naonad points to a something existing before its manifest- ation as perceptive activity. But the " appetition " is simply a principle postulated to account for the activity. 1 Nouveaux Essais, Erdmann, p. 197. 40 A NEAV INTERPRETATION OF HEKBAllT. To say that the nature of the monad is appetitive is to say that the Divine being has created a " force " that must he force. The nature is not a something separable from the activity. To separate the principle of appeti- tion from the perceiving activity, and to hypostatise it as an entity antecedent to the perceiving activity, is as meaningless as to separate law from its exemplifications. God " impressed " or created the monad — a spiritual per- ceiving activity that may be said to desire or seek after further activity because it is always doing so. To urge, then, that " appetition " points to a monad, mind, soul, antecedent to its manifestation, is to urge that the monad exists before it is created. Hence, if the monad as perceiving activity cannot be separated from the result of that activity, it follows that the life of the monad at anj one moment is the unity made up of the two inseparable factors perceiving activity and thing perceived. We have, then, the suggestion that mental activity is not so much an activity that operates on " things " as an activity that constitutes, and is constituted by, " things." Further, if we pass beyond the limits of the Leibnizian conceptions of independence and individuality, and assume, what we have already tried to show, that the monad's individuality is not incompatible with its interaction with other monads, we secure for the object of the monad's perception that concreteness and externality which seem to be denied it by the limitations of Leibniz. Assuming, then, the compatibility of independence and interaction, we may interpret " externality " in the terms of Leibniz's theory. The world is a world of monads in various stages of development. When one monad per- ceives other monads it is perceiving realities. But it THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT OF LEIBNIZ. 41 perceives these reals more or less indistinctly or con- fusedly ; and these confusedly perceived reals are the things of sense which we term " concrete." One monad never does perceive another monad except clothed, as it were, in matter. And the self-conscious monad knows this. But the matter through which monad A perceives another monad B is niade hy A : it is A's imperfect perception of monad B. And if the various perceptive activities and their results are just the monad at various stages of its existence, then the world of matter is such a thought-process as the theory of Leibniz suggests it to be. Such a thought-process, so far from destroying the concreteness and externality of things, is really responsible for the existence of such concreteness and externality. It is a concreteness which, while phen- omenal, has yet behind it the reality of the imperfectly perceived reals or monads. Thus whilst the theory directly leads to the destruction or at least the idealising of the external world, it seems capable, under a wider interpretation of individuality, of contributing to such a view of externality as seems to secure for that ex- ternality all the reality that each of us is cognisant of when we make use of the expression " myself." The psychological standpoint which we have tried to show is implicit in the Leibnizian philosophy seems to us to be the standpoint of the late Professor Adamson, and to be closely akin to the functional view of Professor James. We shall return to Professor James's theory when we come to a consideration of Herbart. Meanwhile, in order to strengthen our position as far as we have gone, we shall briefly indicate the line of reasoning by which Professor Adamson seeks to establish his psychological 42 A NEW INTEKPKETA'JION OF HERB ART. Wew. The Kantian conception of a " pure Ego " is credited with setting up a distinction and a separation between subject and object. Professor Adamson thinks that Kant intended no such separation. " I do not myself believe that in the term ' pure Ego ' we have more than Kant's peculiar and unhappy way of naming the fundamental characteristic of experience, that it is expressible only in terms of consciousness, of mind." ^ Professor Adamson proceeds to develop this interpreta- tion of the " pure Ego " as follows. " Wherever there is a fact of mind, as we shall call it for the moment, there is a mode of what, for want of a better expression, I term heing for self. There is implied therefore a duality of nature, which is not, however, to be conceived as a combination of two isolated or independent existences. The simplest phase of inner life, the first dim obscure stirrings of feeling, are ways in which there is apprehen- sion, awareness of a certain content. The content may be as indefinite as one pleases, it is probably (almost certainly) never simple, but it is there as defining the phase of mind or fact of consciousness. And the general character of facts of mind remains the same, however complicated or developed they may be. It is a totally false abstraction, based on the analogy of our conception of external things, to give to the content of these modes of apprehension a fictitious independence, and to identify the act of apprehending which makes them, with a kind of inner vision directed upon them." That is to say, there is no ego existing apart from that which is to become a fact to it. The ego and the fact of mind are inseparable. The fact of mind, if it is to be dis- ^ The Development of Modern Philosophy, vol. ii. pp. 56, 57. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT OF LEIBNIZ. 43 tinguished from a physical fact, can mean nothing bnt a mental, psychical, or soul state or mode. But a psychical state cannot mean a state in mind but a state of mind. And a mental fact must mean not a fact in mind but a fact of mind. Hence the state or the fact cannot have an existence apart from that of which it is the state or the fact. Hence, too, we must not speak of the mind being conscious of a state, liut conscious through a state. The fact or state is that in and through which the ego works. The ego's activity makes the fact or state, and yet, apart from the facts or the states the ego is as meaningless as an activity that does nothing. But whilst the mind activity or apprehending act is inseparable from the state or fact of mind, the state is not the object of which the mind is aware ; otherwise, as Professor Adamson evidently implies, we shall be in- volved in a theory of subjective idealism. " An act of apprehension has not its own content as the object to which reference is made." ^ Again, " a presentation or idea is not to be regarded as an act of inner knowing which has for its object the presentation or idea itself. Kegarded from the side of their existence, these acts or modes of consciousness are not objects of which the finite subject is aware ; they are successive modes of his own inner life, of which inner life as such the subject in turn becomes aware through the help of distinctions that are given in the content of the presentations and ideas." " In the first quotation a distinction is made between three things : (1) the act of apprehension, (2) the ^ The Development of Modern Philosophy, vol. i. p. 187. 2 Ibid., p. 288. 44: A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. content of that act, (3) the object to which the act of apprehension refers or points. Now the apprehending activity and the content or fact of mind form an in- dissoluble unity or act of consciousness. This act of consciousness does not set before itself as object one of the inseparable factors of which it itself is composed. The object apprehended through the act of consciousness is that something which " helps " to make the content of the apprehending act. This act, whilst it is in- separably imited to its content, does not yet wholly make that content. Distinctions are " given " in the content of the presentations and ideas ; that is, the distinctions do not arise from the apprehending activity itself, but outwith that act. The distinction that is " given " is not to be thought of as taken up and changed somehow into part of the act of consciousness. This would mean idealism once more. The " given " is present as one indispensable condition of the act of conscious- ness, but is not absorbed into it. It helps to make up the act of consciousness, yet is not of that act. Now the act of consciousness is simply a " mode of the inner life " ; hence the given stands outside of that life and yet helps to make or constitute it. If this is a true interpretation of Professor Adamson's meaning, then the theory is just that which we have shown to be implicit in the monadology of Leibniz. CHAPTER IV. Leibniz's theory of feeling and will. We have now to consider the ethical theory of Leibniz to find whether it can be interpreted in harmony with our interpretation of his theory of knowledge. If we can arrive at such an interpretation, we shall be emboldened to regard this as so much further support for tiie inter- pretation we hope to give of Herbart's psychology. First, as to the motives of action. Accordino; to Leibniz all perception is motived or at least accom- panied by feelings, although we are not always conscious of the feeling. " I believe there are no perceptions which are quite indifferent to us, but it is enough that their effect is not noticed by us to allow us to call them indifferent." Feelings imply pleasure or pain, and " pleasure and pain seem to consist in an observable help or hindrance [of the monad's activity]." This definition of pleasure and pain Leibniz does not put forward as a strict one. He further defines them as follows : " I believe that at bottom pleasure is a feeling of perfection, and pain a feeling of imperfection, pro- vided it is sufficiently observable to make us aware of it." ^ These two definitions indicate two aspects of the 1 Erdmann, p. 261. 46 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. same thing. In the first form of definition the monad's aim or end, implied in the expression " observable help or hindrance," is defined as free or unimpeded activity in the realisation of some result. In the second, the result aimed at is defined as perfection of activity. But per- fection of activity is clear and distinct perception, and clear and distinct perception is pure activity — activity that has in it no element of passivity ; hence a feeling of perfection is a feeling of full and unrestrained per- ceptive activity. And since pleasure is this feeling of perfection or unrestrained activity, it would appear that the monad's development consists in the pursuit of pleasure. The end of conduct therefore would seem to be at once the highest degree of freedom and the highest degree of pleasure. But, if activity is the essence of the monad, we must regard pleasure not so much as the aim as the accompaniment of the monad's activity. And that this is the thought of Leibniz is proved by the fact that pleasure, according to him, is not so much something positive as the absence of pain. " Most frequently the goad [to action] is those little unfelt perceptions which we might call imperceptible pains were it not that the notion of pain implies apperception [awareness ?]. These little impulses consist in the continual freeing of ourselves from little hindrances at which our nature works without thinking of it. In this really consists that uneasiness which we feel without knowing it, and which makes us act in passion as well as when we appear most tranquil, for we are never without some activity and motion, which comes merely from this, that nature is always working so as to put herself more at her ease." ^ Thus the prime ^ Erdmann, p. 258. Leibniz's theory of feeling and will. 47 motive to activity is the desire to get rid of the infini- tesimal degrees of pain, pleasure being the resultant of the freed activity. The monad on account of its nature strives towards unimpeded activity. The moment it feels its activity hindered it feels pain, it strives to get rid of the impeding agency, and if the result is successful feels pleasure. The steps of the process are — free activity, restraint, pain, freedom, pleasure. This negative view of pleasure is at one with Herbart's, as will be seen later. The objection to the Leibnizian view of feeling that at once presents itself is that feeling is made to depend on perception — on knowledge. The same objection is urged against the theory of Herbart. One must know before he can feel. The ignorant man cannot feel. The ignor- ant man cannot be virtuous. When expressed in these and similar forms, the theory certainly seems to stand condemned by experience. The objection is tacitly based on the assumption that the knower, and the knowledge, are separate distinct things. But if we adopt the view already advanced of the identity of the monad with its activity, of the knower with his knowledge, feeling will then secure as fundamental a position in the Leibnizian theory as the objection claims for it. Under any theory of mind feeling can only be at the very most an accom- paniment of the life activity, unless we are prepared to admit that this life activity may consist of feeling, with- out our knowing that we have the feeling. At any one moment the perceiving activity or life activity of the monad has a value to the monad's self as feeling ; and to say that the monad can function as feeling independent of its functioning as perceptive activity is to say that feeling can exist apart from a life that feels. But if this 48 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERB ART. view of feeling contains any truth, then we may be pre- pared to see some truth in the Socratic identification of knowledge and virtue. The development of this idea, implicit in Leibniz, is found in the Herbartian theory of education. In Leibniz's theory of will we have the genesis of the most contentious doctrine of the Herbartian philosophy, that " will springs out of the circle of thought." In accordance with his threefold division of the monads, Leibniz classifies the monad's appetitions into three principal varieties, " There are inclinations unfelt and unperceived ; there are inclinations felt whose existence and object we know but whose formation we are not aware of, and there are confused inclinations which we attribute to the body, although there is always in the mind something corresponding to them ; finally there are distinct inclinations which reason gives us, and of whose force and formation we are aware." ^ Here there is a rough distinction between blind impulse which accompanies unconscious perception ; irrational desire which accompanies conscious but confused perception ; and rational desire, self-conscious desire or will, which accompanies relatively clear and distinct perception. All the degrees are found in the nature of man, and progress means a continuous passing from confused per- ception and blind impulse to clear and distinct percep- tion and rational will. To Leibniz the evolution of the soul's appetition is the evolution of will ; the evolution of will proceeds pari passu with the evolution of percep- tion ; and alongside of this evolution of perception and will there is a corresponding evolution of feeling de- 1 Erdmann, p. 261 . LEIBNIZ'S THEORY OF FEELING AND WILL. 49 pendent on the evolution of the other two factors which with feehng constitute the totality of the monad's life. The theory of the monad's progress may be represented by the following diagram, in which perception, feeling, and will, as different functions of the one indivisible life, are shown as advancing pari passu with, and de- pendent on, each other : — MONAD'S EVOLUTION. Perception (Knowledge) from obscure and confused to clear and distinct (the ideal). Appetition. Will from low degree of freedom to Feeling from low form of pleasure to highest degree of freedom highest form of pleasure (the ideal). (the ideal). Ideal of Willing or Morality. According to the theory of Leibniz, then, the end of conduct is to be able to act with the highest degree of freedom, and this implies the highest degree of perception or knowledge and the highest degree of pleasure. The question as to what we are to understand by the highest degree of pleasure will be considered in connection with Herbart's development of the Leibnizian theory. The question which calls for treatment here as bearing closely on the Herbartian ethics is the close relationship of perception and will in the theory of Leibniz. In the first place, Leibniz draws the distinction between willing D 50 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HEKBART. and action. " When one reasons about freedom of will or free choice, one does not ask if a man can do that which he wishes, but if there is sufficient independence in his will itself. One does not ask if a man has free legs or free arms, but if he has a free mind, and in what this consists." ^ That is, will is an internal, mental, or soul movement ; action is a bodily or physi- cal movement. To will a thing does not necessarily imply that action will follow. " I can believe that one can suspend his choice, and that that is often done, especially when other thoughts interrupt deliberation. Thus, though it is necessary that the action on which one deliberates should exist or nut, it docs not follow that w^e must necessarily determine its existence or non- existence, for the non-existence may happen in spite of the determination." ^ The only thing, then, that can be called morally good or morally bad is the will, not the external action, which may be dependent on some- thing beyond the control of the individual willing the action. In the second place, Leibniz does not believe in that freedom which means an absolutely undetermined choice. Such a definition of freedom is in direct opposition to his theory of the continuity of soul life through an endless series of perceptions. The supporters of the theory of what, through Kant's work, is now called transcendental freedom maintain "that after having known and considered everything, it is still in their power to will not only what pleases them most, but also the entire opposite, just to show their freedom."^ But " this very caprice or obstinacy, or at least this reason 1 Erdmann, p. 255. ^ jbi^. s xbid., pp. 255, 256. LEIBNIZ'S THEORY OF FEELING AND WILL. 51 which prevents them from obeying other reasons, enters into the balance and makes pleasing to them that which would not otherwise please them at all, and thus their choice is always determined by perception. Thus we do not will only what we will but what pleases us, although the will may contribute indirectly and, as it were, from afar to make a thing pleasing or not." ^ For Leibniz, then, rational will is determined by intelligence ; and freedom of will consists in the being able to make choice between two or more perceptions. He who chooses to follow the clearest and most distinct of these perceptions is the freest. More freedom of will no man can have. This " determined " character of the will is further ex- plained through the conception of the " petites percep- tions." " Several perceptions and inclinations conspire towards complete volition, which is the result of their conflict. There are perceptions and inclinations which are individually imperceptible, but the sum of which causes an inquietude which impels us without our seeing the ground of it ; several of these when joined together lead us towards some object or away from it and then we have desire or fear, accompanied also by an uneasi- ness which does not always amount to pleasure [or pain]. Finally, there are impulses actually accompanied by pleasure and pain, and all these perceptions are either new sensations or images remaining from some past sensation, accompanied or unaccompanied by memory. . . . From all these impulses there finally results the prevail- ing effort which constitutes the full volition." "^ In these words are found the suggestions of the later Herbartian theory of apperception and apperceptive interest, accord- 1 Erdinann, p. 256. ^ Ibid., p. 260. 52 A XEAV IXTEKPRETATION OF HERBART. ing to which the sum-total of the soul's past experiences determines the present activity of the soul. Leibniz further explains, in accordance with his view of freedom, how the determination works. " As the result of weigh- ing constitutes the final determination, I should think that it may happen that the most pressing uneasiness does not prevail, for even though it might prevail over each of the opposite inclinations taken singly, it may be that the others in combination overcome it. The mind may even make use of the method of dichotomy to make now one now another set of inclinations prevail, as in an assembly w^e can make one or another part prevail by a majority of votes, according to the order in which we put the questions." ^ If the meaning which we have attachef" to the monad is correct, Leibniz's reference to the mind's use of the principle of dichotomy does not point to any meta- physical entity standing apart from and between two sets of motives. We may anticipate what we shall have to say in connection with Herbart's theory of will, and express in the language of Herbart what is implicit in the theory of Leibniz, that " the reason to which a man gives heed and the desire which rouses and allures him are not in reality outside him but in him, and he himself is no third standing beside the other two, but his own spiritual life lies and works in both. When, therefore, he at length chooses, this choice is nothing but a co-operation of just those factors, reason and desire, between which he thought himself standing free. But, adds Herbart, whilst " the mind may make use ^ Erdmann, p. 260. "^ Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, p. 118. LEIBNIZS THEORY OF FEELING AND WILL. 53 of the method of ' dichotomy,' the mind ought to make provision for this in advance ; for at the moment of struggle there is no time for these artifices." ^ Leibniz, too, recognises the need of some kind of preparation. In accordance with his analytic view of the growth of knowledge he insists that men have the right knowledge [for action] in their minds, but will not analyse their ideas so as to make them clear and distinct. " It is not that they cannot have them, since they are in their mind. But they do not give themselves the trouble to analyse them. Sometimes they have ideas of an absent good or evil, but very feeble. It is not therefore strange that these ideas scarcely affect them. So, if we prefer the worse, it is because we know the good which is therein without realising either the evil that is in it or the good that is on the opposite side." "^ The prepara- tion needed is apparently an intellectual preparation — a preparation in knowledge. Yet there is more than a merely intellectual preparation implied in the language of Leibniz. " Men do not give themselves the trouble to analyse their ideas " — that is, to know the right ; in which case, Leibniz implies, they would do the right. The place of hahit in moral progress is here indirectly indi- cated, but it is the habit of analysing one's ideas so as to know the right — it is a habit of knowing the right which is bound to be followed by the doing of the right. But will right action follow such clear and distinct per- ception ? Granted that the same perceptions of right may be present to the mind over and over again, will the individual thereby acquire the habit of both knowing the right and doing it ? The answer depends on what is ^ Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, p. 118. " Erdmann, p. 257. 54 A NEW INTEKPKETATION OF HERBAKT. meant by the expressions " habit of knowing " and " habit of doing," We have tried to show that even on Leibniz's own principles the growth of mind is organic, and that the perceiving activity of mind is mind. If this is so, then a habit of knowing will be at the same time a habit of life, a habit which the organic whole of mind may grow into and acquire. The more the mind, as organic, functions in the direction of clear and distinct perception, the more will it tend so to function. But if willing is simply the conscious " appetitus," advancing, or pushing forward of the mind in and through percep- tive activity, then willing the right perception will in time become a halnt of mind, and the " good will " will flow out of and be determined by the perception. The full development of this argument will be found in connec- tion with the theory of Herbart, which we are now in a position to examine. CHAPTER V. herbart's psychological standpoint. According to Herbart, " the soul is a simple essence or being ; not only without parts but also without any multiplicity in its quality. The soul has no innate or inborn talents and powers, either for the purpose of re- ceiving or for the purpose of producing. It is therefore no tabula rasa in the sense that impressions from the outside might be made upon it ; further, it is not a sub- stance in Leibniz's sense which includes in itself original self-activity. It has originally neither representations, nor feelings, nor desires ; it knows nothing of itself and nothing of other things ; also in it lie no forms of per- ception and thought, no laws of willing and doing, and not even a remote predisposition to these." " The simple nature of the soul is wholly unknown and remains so always ; it is an object neither of speculative nor of empirical psychology." ^ Herbart's definition of " soul " is thus almost, if not wholly, negative. Assuming that what Leibniz calls the monad is the same thing as the " soul " thus defined, Herbart accepts the simplicity and indivisibility of the monad, but denies to it appetition and perception, and along with these the multiplicity ^ Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, p. 108, § 150. 56 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. in quality. Yet multiplicity must be accounted for. Leibniz accounted for it by the change that takes place in the monad itself through its own spontaneous unfold- ing activity, and not through any interaction between itself and other monads. Herbart accounts for it thus : " Between several dissimilar simple essences there exists a relation which, with the help of a comparison from the physical world, may be described as pressure and resist- ance. For as pressure is [implies ?J a retarded move- ment, the relation mentioned consists in this, that in the simple quality of each existence something is capable of being changed through another existence, if each did not resist and maintain itself against the disturbance. Self- preservations of this kind are the only events which really occur in nature : and this is the combination of event with being." ^ Now if Herbart will not allow that the " soul " has any power corresponding to the " appetition " of the monad, what meanings are we to attach to the ap- parently positive attribute " self -preserving" and the correlative expression " capable of being changed " ? Capability of being changed must be present in some sense or other in the simple essence at the moment when, or even before, the simple essence manifests itself in a self-preservation. The difference between the two thinkers as regards this question of original activity is really only seeming. Just as the " appeti- tion " of the monad is fundamentally a principle postu- lated as inherent in the beginning and continuance of perceptive activity, so the capability of being changed or not being changed is equally postulated as a prin- ^ Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, p. 109, § 154. herbart's psychological standpoint. 57 ciple inherent in the self-preservative act of soul. The true essence of a thing, as Lotze argues, must lie in what the thing has become. If a thing has come into being we are justified in saying that the thing had the capacity for coming into being; and when mind comes into being we are equally justified in saying that it had the capacity for coming into being. Farther we cannot go. And this is in reality Her- bart's position. He does not ask how that which was absolutely at rest can pass into activity ; he begins at the point at which the thing is in manifest being, and sets aside as insoluble the problem whether the thing was in being or not before its manifestation. As to the cause of a simple essence, how it comes into being, we know not ; hence a belief that it must be caused, which is a totally different thing from the knowledge of the cause, tells us nothing of the essence. iVnd hence from this standpoint Herbart's refusal to admit capacity in the sense of something previous to mani- festation involves no loss to his argument, whilst it practically fixes his point of departure as the same as that of Leibniz. To the question, What is the soul in itself ? — in the sense of what it is previous to and apart from any one of its particular manifestations in activity — Her- bart practically answers, Nobody knows or can know. But in framing his negative definition of soul, Herbart does not imply that there is no soul, nor that the soul functioning in the first self-preservative act thereafter stands apart from all future movement amongst the presentations. What he means is, that if there is to be a scientific psychology capable of practical applica- 58 A NEW IXTERPKETATION OF HERBAHT. tioii in such a sphere as education, we must start with the first appearance of the mental life — viz., with the first presentation. The moment the soul appears " in nature," or under time and space conditions, we are presented with the " combination of event and being." As to the being or non-being of soul antecedent to this we can say nothing. Our meaning may be rendered a little fuller through the following diagram — Soul. Soul as Mixd or in manifestation. B Let us suppose that from some finite or infinite (it does not matter which) point X soul has lived or existed. At point A it enters time and space con- ditions. Its manifestation at A, then, whether it has been a changing or unchanging essence, is the expres- sion of its life up to that point and at that point, just in the same way as my bodily activity at the present moment is in a very real sense the expression of my whole bodily life up to the present. At A the soul comes into being as far as psychology is concerned, and hence so far as educational theory and practice are concerned. At A there is an activity, call it monad, soul, or mind ; and this activity is just as real as any soul can intelligibly be. This manifestation, then, to which Herbart gives the name of presentation, is simply the Leibnizian perceptive activity. Herbart grasped the true psychological and educational import of the Leib- nizian " monad " when he drew the distinction between the soul as known to us through its manifested activity and the soul as unknown to us previous to this activity, hekbart's psychologicaj. standpoint. 59 and started with what w^e may call the " known mo- ment" in the soul-life. Herbart designates the soul as unknown to us previous to its manifestation as a " simple essence." It may be objected that such an essence is a mere abstraction. But this does not militate against the argument ; for, from Herbart's point of view, the objec- tion if true would mean, that as there is no X A or soul as pure being, the soul has always or from its creation manifested itself as activity. The first mani- festation of the soul is the soul -life at a particular moment, and a step — whether the first or any sub- sequent step matters not — in development. In either case, whether the soul-life begins at X or at A, the theory preserves the soul's existence from A onwards, and no other theory does more. Herbart's own words seem to point conclusively to this interpretation. In treating of self -consciousness he says that " the con- fusions of Idealism must be removed by the distinction of the mere subject as a time-existence from the ' I, although the latter is necessarily connected with the former inasmuch as, when thought of separately, it leads to absurdities." ^ That is, the soul as a time-existence finds itself as an " I," which " I " acquires its meaning only through the time-existence. Such an objection, then, as that of Professor Dittes, that the Herbartian soul is incapable of development, is apparently based on the erroneous supposition that Herbart, through his abstract definition of soul as a simple essence, has separated the soul entirely from its presentations. But abstraction is not separation ; and so far is Herbart from separating the two that the 1 Lehrbuch, p. 138, § 199. 60 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF HERBART. essence of his contention is that the soul lives in and through and inseparable from its presentations. So far is experience from being reduced to a fiction, as Dittes argues, that it is made all the more real through its being an experience not of a metaphysical soul or pure ego holding itself aloof from manifestation, but of a soul manifesting itself as real in and through presentations. Professor Adams's description of the " soul " of Herbart's criticism as beino- " no more a real soul than it is a real crater of a volcano " ^ seems to us to be perfectly apt ; and if the further statement that " what Herbart has taken from the soul he has transferred to the ideas " means that the real soul of the Herbartian theory lives in and through its presentations, then the statement essentially contains the interpretation for which we are contending. That the conception of a soul that lives only in and through its presentations was present to Herbart's thought, is evidenced by his description of a purely moral self-control. " A purely moral self-control which uni- formly pervades every act of commission and omission and is most careful to protect subordinate interests and wishes, is an ideal to which the name psychical organism may be given. For to it belong such a union and sub- ordination of presentations as is not only thoroughly adapted to the smallest and the largest combinations, but is also capable of appropriating to good purpose all additional new external impressions." '" It is true that it is the ideal self-control to which Herbart gives the name " psychical organism " ; but the life of presen- tation whose ideal is an organism must itself be of the ^ The Herbartian Psychology applied to Education, p. 46. 2 Lehrbuch, § 238. herbaht's psychological standpoint. 61 nature of organism, and besides, the " interaction " of presentations by which Herbart seeks to explain the psychical life is interpretable in the same terms as he has used to explain the ideal of that life. Against this interpretation of Herbart's psychological standpoint one standing objection will be urged. It will be said that the conception of functioning may be sufficiently adequate to explain the succession of soul states, but that it is insufficient to explain their co- ordination into the unity of experience. Besides, it is not a conception of functioning alone, but of the func- tioning of an organism that we are employing. Appar- ently, then, there must be an organism both to function and to co-ordinate the various acts of functioning. And if we speak of an organism that functions and co- ordinates, so must we speak of a soul that functions and co-ordinates. Granting that we cannot possibly know the metaphysical soul even to the extent of a single attribute, yet without the positing of such an original entity or essence there could be no explanation of two such facts of experience as the unity of know- ledge and personal identity. If we cannot define the soul, it is at least the only and indispensable hypothesis which will account for the two facts. It may be said that the Herbartian soul, even according to our inter- pretation, is a soul manifesting itself, and that after all this must mean that there is a soul to manifest itself — a soul in the heart of the manifestations and experiences unifying these into the unity of which we are conscious. The manifestations which constitute for us a stream of consciousness require at least a permanent channel to run in and to hold them together in a continuity. We 62 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF HERBART. may dispense with the old " substratum " of external things as unnecessary, seeing that mind renders the same service, but we cannot dispense with a substratum for soul manifestations without annihilating knowledge and personal identity. And even when we say that the soul lives m and throur/h its presentations, with the emphasis on the presentations, we are still positing some perma- nent entity that manifests itself in a passing activity. Now it may be at once admitted that, if the notions of permanence, unity, identity, sameness — implicate in the conception of organism— cannot be reconciled with the notion of change, then the hypothesis of a meta- physical soul, transcendental, or pure ego as a unifying agency, must be accepted as the only hypothesis that will account for our experience. But, as Professor James argues, if the notion of change essentially contains all that is necessary to explain experience, then the resort to the notion of an absolutely unchangeable entity is unnecessary. The question then is. Can a passing mani- festing activity, or, to employ Professor James's term, can a passing state perform the same unifying function as the metaphysical soul or pure ego which is postulated to perform such a function ? Now " common sense, and psychologists of almost every school, have agreed that whenever an object of thought contains many elements, the thought itself must be made up of just as many ideas, one idea for each element, all fused together in appearance, but really separate." ^ That is, to express it in Herbartian terms, my presentation of a complex (1 + 1 is equal to presentation a and presentation h blended together. The presentation of the complex ' James's Psychologj', small ed., p. 196. HERBARTS PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 63 a + 6 is really equal, so it is said, to two distinct present- ations. Thus my presentation of a tree is made up of the presentations roots, trunk, branches, leaves, and may be fruit. My thought of the tree therefore, it is said, is made up of my separate ideas of the root, trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit. But is this really the case ? I do not know the root, then the trunk, then the branches, then the leaves, and then the fruit. I know all these as com- bined into a simple fact of knowledge — viz., tree. Or again, to borrow an illustration from Leibniz. I know the roar of the sea. This totality of sound is made up of a countless number of small sounds, each one of which I must in some measure be cognisant of, other- wise I could not be cognisant of the total. But I do not cognise each and all of these in turn, but as a total. My presentation or idea of the totality or combination of all the small sounds is not a combination of presenta- tions or ideas of all these sounds. That is, I have not an idea of ideas, but an idea of external things combined into a unity. Now the units that compose the combina- tion of which I have a presentation or idea cannot of themselves unite to form the combination, and therefore must depend on that which precedes their combination — that is, the soul state immediately previous to the unification of the units in a single presentation or idea. The intelligible entity, then, that performs the unifying function is the soul state or activity which cognises the many as a unity in one single presentation. It is a passing soul state or activity which, after the analogy of the bodily organism, expresses the totahty of soul- activity at the time, in and through a particular activity. To adopt Professor James's metaphor of the " stream of 64 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. consciousness," ^ we may say that, just as every pulse of that stream expresses at its own point the totality of stream activity up to that point, so the passing soul state or activity expresses at a given time the totality of soul activity or life up to that time. And when Professor James sums up by saying that " the know- ing of many things together is just as well accounted for when we call it a functioning of a soul state as when we call it a reaction of the soul," he is only expressing in positive terms what we have tried to show is implicit in Herbart's theory of the " reaction of soul." The second fact which seems to call for the hypothesis of a metaphysical entity is the consciousness of personal identity. We speak of ourselves as being the same individuals to-day as we were yesterday. The " I " of to-day remembers itself as the " I " of yesterday. Seem- ingly the " I " of to-day cognises to-day's empirical ego of passing thoughts, feelings, and volitions, and at the same time recognises that yesterday it was also present in the midst of, and cognising, a different empirical ego. But in light of what has been already said in connec- tion with the unity of knowledge, is it necessary to postulate such an absolutely identical " I " in order that the " I " of to-day may be recognised as the " I " of yesterday ? The answer depends on what we mean by " identity " or " sameness." The term " sameness " can be intelligibly applied to anything, soul included, only in so far as our experience has led us to define the term. Now, when we speak of any material object, — for example, the pen I am writing with, — being the ^ James's Psychology, p. 200. herbart's psychological standpoint. 65 s same thing at present as it was yesterday, all we mean, all we can mean, if we are not to contradict the fact of ceaseless change in matter, is that all the pen phenom- ena of to-day are continuotts with the pen phenomena of yesterday. We know that the pen, in accordance with the law of the dissolution of matter, has changed since yesterday, and that the pen phenomena of yester- day must have changed correspondingly. To-day's phe- nomena have taken up and absorbed yesterday's phe- nomena, which are thus carried forward through the absorption. To resort once more to the figure of the stream, we say it is the same stream, whether we gaze on its source or its mouth ; and just as truly as the water of the lower reaches carries forward the water of the upper reaches, as truly do the river phenomena of to-day carry forward the river phenomena of yesterday. Whatever explanation may be adopted, we cannot avoid an explanation in physical terms. By help, then, of the analogy of the bodily organism or of the running stream w^e can explain, not how the " I " was originally produced, but how the " I " of to-day recognises itself as the "I" of yesterday. The "I" of yesterday, like the bodily organism or the running stream, has moved forward, and, whilst conscious of itself as changed by the movement, yet recognises itself as the " I " of yester- day modified into the " I " of to-day. If this is all that we can intelligibly say of soul progress, then we may agree with Professor James that " the logical conclu- sion seems to be that the states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Meta- physics or theology may prove the soul to exist ; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial prin- E 66 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. ciple of unity is superliuoiis." ^ Herbart, as we have tried to show, considered it superfluous ; and any theory of education that bases on such a principle is not en- titled to rank as scientific. But a difficulty may still present itself in connection with the above. The essence of the functional theory is that each state or activity is the outcome of the func- tioning of a previous state or activity. This may ex- plain any other state than the first, but how can it account for the first state, without which no other states would be possible ? In our reference to Lotze ^ the answer has already been indicated. What we have to deal with in psychology is the soul as known, the soul in existence, the soul i7i a state, not the soul in no state. The ground of the first state is the creative act out of which the soul as an existence springs. Now, when we postulate a metaphysical soul as ground, we have still to ask for the ground of this soul. As far, then, as regards the claim of any entity or essence to act as a substratum of soul experiences, a metaphysical soul is not a whit superior to a soul state. And if the latter can serve the same purpose as that for which the former is postulated, then there is no use for the former. In employing it we seem to be simply deluding ourselves into the belief that, by postulating such an indescribable entity as metaphysical soul, we are pushing our inquiry back to the very farthest point we can go. In reality, we are no nearer the ground of soul -activity, perhaps farther from it. If the preceding argument is conclusive, we must admit that the theory of Herbart provides for an abiding 1 James's Psychology, p. 203. ^ p_ 57^ HERBAKT S PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 67 and unifying agency, even though it is not of the nature of a Kantian transcendental ego, and thus supplies the essential condition for the growth of knowledge. But what knowledge ? The first manifestation of the soul is for Herbart the soul's first experience, at least in the only intelligible sense in which the term experience can be used. This experience is rendered possible through, or rather consists of, the soul's recognition or awareness of a something not itself. This something is another " real " clothed, as in the case of the monad, in " matter." The soul's first experience, then, consists in meeting another " real," and when it has this experience, in the language of Herbart, it " preserves itself." Were we to suppose that the soul as an activity did not per- sist alongside all other activities, we should have to admit the contradiction that a " real " could be destroyed. This preservative act of the soul shows itself in a presentation, or rather the presentation is the preserving activity. The term " presentation " ( Vorstellung) is almost in- variably associated with the idea of a "something pre- sented," that is, a something that stands apart from, and is relatively independent of, a perceiving subject. But just as in the Leibnizian theory of perception, perception is inextricably bound up with the thing perceived, so the Herbartian " presentation " is inextric- ably bound up with the " presentative activity." Accord- ing to Leibniz, the soul perceives all other monads in the form of " matter," — a form which is, in Leibniz's theory, of the monad's own making. According to Herbart, the soul preserves itself against other reals in and through a presentation. This soul that preserves itself is the real soul, and its realness is constituted by its preserv- 68 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. ing act. This preserving act implies the awareness, on the part of the real soul, of another real. And this awareness, like the Leibnizian perception, is an aware- ness of " matter." But unlike the " matter " of the monad's perception, this matter is constituted by the two factors — the jpi^eserving act and the other real. Hence in Herbart's theory, whilst the preserving act involves the two inseparable factors— presentative ac- tivity and presentation — the act is partly constituted by interaction with another real. To employ Professor Adamson's language, the subject becomes aware of his inner life through the help of distinctions that are given in the content of the presentations. Without these given distinctions it is difficult to conceive how one real could ever advance to the knowledge of another real. Herbart's language is to the same effect. " It was an error of Idealism powerfully produced and just as strongly adhered to that the ' I ' sets itself over against a not /, as if objects were originally bound up with [dependent on] the negation of the ' I.' In this way [the conceptions of] a tliou and a he would never arise, — another personality besides one's own would never be recognised. Much more is it the case that what has been inwardly perceived is, wherever possible, transferred to the external object. Hence with the ' I ' the ' thou ' is formed at the same tmie, and almost simultaneously with the two the we which Idealism forgot." ^ This inseparable connection between the presentative activity and its content further determines for us the exact meaning which is to be attached to the Herbartian term " presentation." Activity implies movement, non- ^ Lehrbuch, p. 137, § 198, note. herbart's psychological standpoint. 69 stationariness. " Presentative activity " therefore implies that the presentation, as being inseparable from the presentative activity, is also in movement. That is, it is not a fixed and constant " something " presented to and apprehended by the presentative activity, but a changing " something," or a " something " changing 'pari passu with the movement of the presentative activity, and imparting concreteness to that movement, which otherwise would be purely abstract. The presentation of some external object at the distance of a hundred yards is not exactly the same presentation which the observer has at the distance of a yard. Similarly, the presentation of the memory image of some object pre- viously seen is not the same presentation all through the time that memory is at work on the image : the presentative activity is moving in and through a fuller and fuller content. Similarly, the presentation of an action to be accomplished but not yet accomplished is not the same presentation as the presentation of the action in progress. And it is in reference to external action, in so far as this is the outcome of moral char- acter, that the term " clearness," employed by Herbart to describe presentations, has special significance. To Herbart the presentation " good action " is perfectly clear either when the action is in progress, that is, when the presentative activity is operating in and through the action, or when the presentative activity has ivilled the action, for the actual carrying out of the action may be prevented by some external influence beyond the control of the wilier. This meaning attaching to the term " presentation " follows logically from our inter- pretation of Herbart's psychological standpoint. The 70 A NKW INTERPRETATION OF IlEKBART. " clearness " of the presentation is dependent on the presentative activity more than upon the content of that activity. It is a term descriptive of that activity. At this point we shall ask to he allowed to drop the use of the expression " presentative activity," and to employ instead the expressions " soul-activity " and " soul-life." Presentative activity apart from the presentation is an ahstraction ; hence the term " presentative activity " fails to connote the totality of life which Herbart means by the term. As to the term " presentation " itself, such an interpretation as we have given it can- not save it from being too suggestive of a something standing over against presentative activity and on which the presentative activity is to operate. In the expres- sion " soul-activity," the term " soul " will be used to de- note, not anything of a transcendental nature, but simply the permanence, unity, or identity, as already interpreted, that pervades and binds together the successive pre- sentative activities. Our purpose demands the use of an expression suggestive of the unifying bond present in Herbart's " presentation " as we have interpreted it, and " soul-activity " or " soul-life " seems to us the most serviceable. We are fully encouraged and warranted to use this expression by Herbart's own words. Speak- ing of the way in which we become conscious of a permanent self, he pointedly refers to the existence of the real soul of experience. " The unity of the soul itself is the deep source from which that unity enters into our presentative activity, and which we afterwards lose in the objects presented." ^ With the adoption of this term, then, our interpretation of " clearness of ^ Lehrbuch, § 196, note. HERB art's psychological STANDPOINT. 71 presentation " may be continued as follows. The soul- life moving towards the accomplishment of some ex- ternal action moves through a series of states or phases, each of which brings nearer the accomplishment of the action. Each state in the series is nearer the accom- plishment than the preceding state. But each state is a moment in the soul-activity. And the soul-activity is in and through presentations. Hence, to say that the presentation is increasing in clearness means that the soul-activity is bringing nearer the accomplishment of the action. To put it in another way, each success- ive moment of the activity is a " presentation." But the activity as a whole is centring round some " real " ; and the successive moments of the activity, or the presentations, are getting nearer the real. When, there- fore, the action is willed, that is, when soul-activity has reached and indeed carried through the first moment of the action, then soul-activity may be said to be oper- ating in and through the action itself, and the present- ation is clear. The fact that the soul -activity may not be allowed to carry through any but the first mo- ment of the action does not affect the " clearness " of the presentation. Without this interpretation of the term " clearness " as applied to the " presentation," Herbart's theory that " will springs from the circle of thought " is unintel- ligible ; with this interpretation the theory, in spite of the mechanical terms employed by Herbart, seems es- sentially true. But this we have still to make good. CHAPTER Yl. iieubaet's theory of presentation. " Presentations become forces when they resist one another. This resistance occurs when two or more opposed presentations encounter one another." ^ " Pres- entations which are not opposed or contrasted with one another, as a tone and a colour, so far as they meet unhindered, form a comidex ; contrasted present- ations {e.g., black and grey), in so far as in meeting they are affected neither by accidental foreign present- ations nor by unavoidable opposition, become fused.'' ^ Here three different ways are mentioned in which presentations act towards each other. Leaving aside the question whether these three ways are not funda- mentally one, let us first interpret the " opposition " amongst presentations. First, " the easily conceivable metaphysical reason why opposed presentations resist one another is the unity of the soul whose self-preservations they are." ^ That is, the soul functioning in a certain presentational activity tends to persist in that activity, for a real without activity is a contradiction. " Destroyed presentations are the same as none at all." That is, the destruction of 1 Lehrbuch, cap. 1, § 10. ^ i^id., § 22. » Ibid. hekbart's theory of presentation, 73 the soul-activity — which constitutes the soul-life — would mean the destruction of the soul itself. Hence, in whatever way we may describe the result of opposition amongst the presentations, we cannot describe it as the destruction of either or of both presentations. Second, if we were to say that, " notwithstanding the mutual attack, presentations remain unchanged, then one could not be removed or suppressed by another as we see every moment that they are." That is, the soul cannot function in two opposite directions at the same time. The presentational activity in direction A is pos- sible only by the non-functioning in direction not- A. Third, " if, finally, all that is presented in each pres- entation were changed by the contest, then this would mean nothing more than that, at the beginning, another presentation had been present." i That is, if the original real or soul, functioning in a particular presentation, were to be completely changed by the opposition of some other real, this could only mean that the original real became in the end another real. Or, the life of the first real or soul would become, or pass over into being, a different real. Hence, Fourth, " the presentation must yield without being destroyed ; that is, the real presentation is changed into an effort to present itself." ^ That is, the soul-activity which at one moment is relatively free and effortless is the next moment hampered by some presentation activity not in line with the original activity. The soul functions in a certain direction, say to make the presentation of a game of golf perfectly clear, and this presentation will only be clear w^hen the individual is 1 Lehrbuch, § 11. ^ jbid. 74: A NEW INTEKPKETATION OF HERBART. actually playing the game. But whilst functioning in this direction the soul (or mind) suddenly finds that it has to function in some other direction, it may be in the finishing of some piece of work. The making clear of the former presentation is evidently incompatible witli the making clear of the latter at one and the same time. But each presentation represents, or rather is, soul-Hfe ; and so, while there is yielding, there is no destruction. The " real presentation," or the soul functioning in the direction of the clear presentation " game of golf," is " aware of effort." All this is evidently implied in Herbart's statement that " when a presentation becomes not entirely, but only in part, transformed into an effort, we must guard against con- sidering this part as a severed portion of the whole presentation. It has certainly a definite magnitude (upon the knowledge of which very much depends), but this magnitude indicates only a degree of the obscuration of the whole presentation." ^ In spite, then, of the seemingly mechanical conceptions and terminology by which Herbart describes the ebb and flow of mental life, such terms as " resistance," " force," " effort," are in keeping with our interpretation of the Herbartian " presentation." The soul functioning in some particular presentation is aware of an " other." But the " others " of wliich tlie soul gradually becomes cognisant are the " reals " of the universe. The aware- ness on the part of one real — the soul — of the presence of another real implies an awareness of limitation. The two reals, being two and not one, must both be limited. And the conception of limitation, when applied to living 1 Lehrbuch, § 12. herbart's theory of presentation. 75 entities, implies restraint, pressure, force. At least, these terms contain perhaps the most definite metaphors that can be employed to express the conception. Whether presentations are in opposition, or form a complex, or fuse, limitation is present and hence opposition. Neither a complex of presentations nor a fusion of presentations can ever get rid of an underlying opposition. Each involves a diversity of presentational elements. The difference, and the opposition implied in difference, may be obscured or softened down ; it cannot be anni- hilated. When Herbart speaks of the complicating and blending of presentations he means nothing more than a relative non- opposition. And from a funda- mental point of view life is just what Herbart de- scribes it to be. In part as well as in whole it is a persisting — a persisting amidst the limitations of environment, which persisting, as we have already seen, really goes to constitute soul-life. In course of time the opposition, complication, and blending amongst presentations, not one of which is ever annihilated, gives rise to a " circle of thought " or an " apperception mass." How the elements of this mass or circle are associated, loosely or closely, depends on how knowledge is acquired. Knowledge may be so presented to the child that its parts are, to the child's mind, unrelated to one another, so that the unity and strength which each element would derive from its inter- connection with the whole are lost. But if new presenta- tions are linked on to allied and previously experienced presentations, we may expect the new presentation to become a real unity with the already existing unity of soul-Hfe. And it becomes this, not through a me- 76 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART, chanical process, but tlirougli an organic growth. The destructibility of a presentation means for Herbart the destructibiUty of soul -life. Every presentation is an inseparable and indestructible part of that life ; and just as the physical organism functions in and through all and every part of itself, so soul (or mind) at any given moment is functioning in and through all its present and past presentations which constitute its organic life. Just as the physical organism through all its general and special activities constitutes a living concrete real, so the Herbartian apperceiving soul through the sum total of its past and present presentative activi- ties constitutes a living reality — a mind, and not a life- less " presentation-mechanism." Ostermann, who is perhaps the most minute critic of Herbart's presentation theory, advances several ob- jections to the theory. They are apparently founded on some misconception of the meaning of the term " presentation " as employed l^y Herbart. " The present- ative activity," says Ostermann, " is itself in no way the same as the content at which it aims ; the present- ation of the good is itself not good, the presentation of the bad not itself bad, &c." ^ Ostermann here draws the distinction between the presentative activity and the presented content. Such a distinction, however, is for Herbart, as we have tried to prove, an abstract one. Herbartian presentative activity is an activity only in and through some content. Content is present all along the line of the activity. At the start certainly " the presentative activity is itself in no way the same as the content at which it aims." But there is a con- ^ Die hauptsiichlichslen Irrtiimer der Herbartschen Psychologic, p. 45. herbart's theory of presentation. 77 tent at the start — the content implied in aiming at a content ; and this content is inseparable from the pres- entative activity. The same argument applies at any point along the line of activity issuing in the attain- ment of the object originally aimed at. I wish to get a book from the adjoining room. I form the presenta- tion " getting the book," which presentation is absolutely meaningless apart from my presentative activity. My presentative activity continues operating in and through the A'arious presentations that I must have between my thinking of getting the book and actually having it. When I have the 1)Ook in my hands, this presentation is just the presentation I loished to have, but not the presentation I had at the time of wishing; and in having the presentation I am presentatively active in the very way I wished to be. If my presentative activity at that moment is not the same as the content at which I aimed, yet the two are so inseparable that each makes the other. That Ostermann fails to realise the full import of Herbart's " presentation " is further evidenced by his criticism of Herbart's doctrine that all presentations have definite intensities. By way of dis- proof of this doctrine Ostermann points to the difference in intensity between the memory image of a thunder- clap and the sound itself of the same thunder -clap. But the memory image of a thunder -clap is not the same presentation as the presentation " sound of the thunder-clap." The presentation of an elapsed event is different from the presentation of the event in progress. Again, he asks, " How can presentations persist after the ceasing of the conjunction which brought them forth ? " ^ ^ Ostermann, p. 49. 78 A NEW INTERrKETATlON OF HEKI5ART. The answer is that they cannot conceivably persist, if the presentations are separable from the conjoining process. But such a separation is not admitted by Herbart, for tliis implies the postulating of that metaphysical ego that can stand apart from presentations, and which Herbart dismisses as an unnecessary hypothesis. How the presentations can persist without this metaphysical ego has been already shown by means of the conceptions of organism and function. Again, since Herbart rejected the notion of capacities or faculties, no other way of explaining the reproduction of presentations was left him than by assuming that the presentations continue to exist even in unconsciousness. But, Ostermann argues, there is no necessity for such an assumption any more than that the note produced by a musical string should always be sounding. So long as the condition of its reproduction (the matter, length, tension, &c., of the string) exists, the note itself need not be always existing.^ Now the note itself, that is, the sound of the note, in one sense does not always exist. It exists only when it is being heard. But the con- ditions of its reproduction exist, and therefore ^xtr^ of its reproduction exists. Or, to express it otherwise, the presentative activity of soul implied in the presentation " sounding note " is part of the organic soul-life, and the soul is ready on occasion to function again along that same line of activity, and, in and through that activity, to make the presentation fully clear. Nay, the theory goes further. The conditions of reproduction are not something dead : they are active all the time, only they do not bear fruition until occasion gives them their ^ Ostermann, p. 49. HERBARTS THEORY OF PRESENTATION, 79 chance. What the organism has once operated in becomes corporate with the organism, and never ceases henceforth to operate either above or below the " thresh- old of consciousness." Vogel ■^ objects to the analogy which Herbart institutes between psychology and physi- ology and to the comparability of soul-life to the life of a physical organism ; l)ut what more intelligible and, to the educator, more fruitful conception can be formed of the mental life than the conception of it as organic ? And, if our general interpretation of Herbart's stand- point is true, so far is the Herbartian theory from rendering the evolution of man impossible, as Vogel urges, that it holds out the greatest hopes of that evolu- tion through the conception of the organic growth of soul as apperceptive mind. ^ Vogel's 'Herbart oder Pestalozzi.' CHAPTER VII. herbart's theory of feeung. " So far as it represents, the soul is called intellect ; so far as it feels and desires, it is called disposition. The disposition, however, has its sent in the intellect, or feeling and desiring are, above all, conditions of presentations, and certainly, for the most part, changeable conditions of presentations." ' Thus, according to Herbart, the soul can function as intellect and it can function as feeling ; yet the latter function is evidently dependent on the former. Witliout presentation, that is, without know- ledge, there can be no feeling. He who knows not feels not. The uneducated man is less capable of feeling than the educated man. Education of feeling is possible only through the education in knowledge. Such is the doctrine of Herbart, and it is a doctrine that is apt to be scouted no less by the Herbartian critic than by the " plain man." The ground of the doctrine is found in Herbart's ex- planation of how feeling, and especially the feeling of pleasure, arises. " A presentation comes forward [into consciousness] through its own strength, at the same time being called forward by several helping presenta- tions. Since each of these helps has its own measure ' Lehrbuch, p. 29, § 33. hekbart's theory of feeling. 81 of time in which it acts, the helps may strengthen one another against a possible resistance, hut they cannot increase their own velocity. The movement in advancing takes place only with that velocity which is the greatest amongst several presentations meeting together ; hut it is at the same time favoured hy all the rest. This favouring is a determination or aspect (Bestimmnng) of what takes place in consciousness, but in no way a determination or aspect of a something presented ; it can only be called feeling — without doubt a feeling of pleasure." ^ Now, in the first place, this favouring is clearly different from the movement, for the movement in advancing is " favoured." The terms whereby Herbart describes the movement do not apply to the same thing as the term " favouring " does. The " favouring " is an aspect of the movement. In the second place, the favouring is in no way a determination or an aspect of something presented. That is, there is not a something presented which is separable from the presentative activity and which is accompanied by a feeling of " favouring." The favouring is a determination neither of the movement, as move- ment, of presentations, nor of an object presented : it is simply a determination of that which is moving. That is, it is a determination, aspect, or state of the presenta- tion as we have interpreted it. It is a state of the soul active, of the life of the soul at a particular moment, a state in which the soul as an organic unity finds itself in and through a special phase of its development. We may consider the notion of " favouring " in terms of Herbart's own explanation. Let A represent the presentation that is coming forward into consciousness 1 Lehrbuch, p. 31, § 37. F 82 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. through its own strength, and a the force which would ultimately bring it into consciousness. Let B, C, D represent the helping presentations, and h, c, d their respective forces. Then, whilst A could rise into consci- ousness through the force a, it is actually pushed forward by forces a, h, c, and d. Thus the actual force at work is represented by « + & + c + r/. Hence h + c + d repre- sents the excess of the force actually required to bring presentation A into consciousness. The force b + c-\-d, therefore, attaching to the presentation A, exists for con- sciousness as a ijleasant feeling. Such an explanation, in spite of the forbidding mathematical nomenclature, does not altogether fail to correspond to or to interpret our actual experience. On reflection we do find ourselves conscious of the Herbartian " favouring " or excess of force. We have an immediacy of feeling which pro- claims that in successful activity ^ we have done more, spent more force, than was necessary to accomplish the result, or at least that we could have done more with the surplus force of whose possession we were somehow conscious. Language itself may be unconsciously testify- ing to this when we say that we have surmounted a difficulty. Following Herbart's example, we may try to illustrate the point in mathematical terms. In every state of mental activity there is present a certain amount of restraint and a corresponding effort. No presentative activity is perfectly free except when it has brought the presentation to full clearness, and at that very moment the soul ceases to be active in that particular direction. Let us suppose then that, in trying to bring forward a certain presentation into full consciousness, 1 Lehrbuch, p. 32, § 37. HERBARTS THEORY OF FEELING. 83 the amount of restraint at a given moment is — 'ip and the amount of free activity +2$'. Numerical co-efficients are adopted for simplicity. Then, on the supposition that the presentation is gradually becoming clearer, we may further assume that at some succeeding moment the amount of restraint has been reduced to — ly and the amount of free activity increased to + Sg-. On this assumption, then, we have a transition from —3^ + 2^ to — 2^ + ?>c[. Similarly, let other moments be represented by the series — ^ + 4^^, 0 + 5?, the last representing the full presentational activity that makes the presentation clear. Xow the presentational activity implied in pass- ing from —2? + 4? to O-f-5? does more than simply prove itself equal to the restraint —ig. The free activity -f 5§' has not only proved itself equal to the amount of the restraint — p, in which case there would only be tension, but it has got rid of the j), as represented in the expression 0 + 05'. The acti\aty 0 -|- 5^- is thus greater than the restraint —p. But the disappearance of —-p means that the presentation is clear ; hence the activity represented by the form 0 + og- implies an amount of activity greater than is necessary to make the presenta- tion clear. To say, then, that feelings are conditions of presenta- tions is to say that the soul functioning in certain pres- entations has feelings. The soul functioning as intellect functions also as feeling. What Herbart means or im- plies when he calls feelings " changeable conditions of presentations " is, that as soul activity changes feeling changes. " Feeling and desiring are conditions of pres- entations," or the soul in living its life of presentative activity experiences the feelings of pleasure and pain. 84 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. Feeling, then, is dependent on knowledge, but not on knowledge as something separable from a knower. The sonl lives in its presentations, and to say that presenta- tions or knowledge must precede feeling simply means that the soul must live before it can feel, or — which is the truer interpretation of Herbart's " changeable con- ditions " — the soul must live in order that it may feel. It may be objected that the soul can function as feeling independent of presentation. Thus it may be said that in the case of bodily pleasure or pain we do not first knoio the pain, then feel it ; we feel the pain, and in feeling it are aware of it, or know it. But this very awareness or knowledge of the soul cannot be regarded as separate from the pain which the soul experiences ; the pain and the knowledge of the pain are constitutive of an indissoluble unity of experience. The pain is not present without the knowing nor the knowing without the pain. Neither is first. The soul functions as knower and feeler in one and the same activity, and only by abstraction can we speak of the knowing aspect of soul-life as apart from the feeling aspect. If either is first it would seem that knowledge of a change must precede knowledge of the effect of the change. Thus it would seem that I first know that my bodily organism is not what it was, and that consequent on this I feel the change, or the change as known has a certain value for my consciousness. But the question as regards the feelings of bodily pleasure and pain is of little consequence here. Such feelings, as Herbart states, arise from the nature of that which is felt, and are therefore not amenable to the direction of presenta- tions or knowledge. From the point of view of char- hekbart's theory of feeling. 85 acter development it is those feelings that are due to the interaction of jiresentations or to the mental conditions ^ that are the chief concern of the Herbartian theory of feeling, and hence of the Herbartian theory of education. Since the feeling of mental pleasure depends on the excess of force over the force necessary to bring a present- ation into consciousness, pleasure depends on the effici- ency, to us, of our mental activity. Hence pleasure, as being dependent on the degree of efficiency of activity, must be measured by a purely quantitative standard. Pain will be measured by the same standard. Is there then no qualitative distinction between feelings except the general and sometimes very indefinite one of pleas- ure - pain ? Ostermann, in his lengthy criticism of Herbart's theory of feeling, says that the theory fails to distinguish between the intensity and the quality of feeling. "It is a well-known experience that feelings differ from one another, not only with respect to their intensity but also with respect to their colouring (Far- bung). The pleasure feeling of an sesthetical enjoyment bears quite a different character to the pleasure feehng say of satisfied covetousness, the pain of weariness quite a different character to that of sorrow, &c." . . . "If feeling, according to Herbart, were really only based on the co-operation and opposition of presentation powers, . . . then the distinctions of feeling could only be expressed in terms of the intensity of pleasure or pain ; . . . the distinguishable quality of the presenta- tion content relative to feeling is considered by Herbart only in so far as this same qualitative difference deter- mines the greater or the less amount of furthering and 1 Lehrbuch, § 101. 86 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. checking." ^ But what is meant by quality as opposed to quantity or intensity of feehng ? Is the quality really in the feeling ? Every feeling has a stimulus, but we can hardly say that the subject feels the stimu- lus : he feels the result or the effect of the stimulus. Now in the case of " an a3sthetical enjoyment " and a " satisfied covetousness " the feeling is connected with presentations, and the content of each presentation is the stimulus to the feeling. But it is only of the content or the colouring of anything that we can in- telligibly use the term quality. Hence if we do not feel the stimulus or the content it is difficult to see how we can ascribe any qualitative attribute to the feeling other than the general one of pleasure. It may be said, however, that the soul-activity and the stimulus are so inseparably connected that the activity takes a " colouring " from the character of the stimulus. But it may be said with equal force that it is only the inter-activity of the two inseparable factors that is felt, in wliich case we must still speak of the quality of the stimulus and the quantity of the feeling. Again, when we speak of pleasure, we mean pleasure without reference to the stimulus ; when we speak of pleasures, we mean pleasure with our eye on the stimulus.^ When we say that one pleasure differs from another, we are looking not so much at the subjective condition as at the stimu- lus, and we differentiate the subjective conditions ac- cording to the differences amongst the stimuli. ' Die liauptsaclilichsten Irrtiimer der Herbartschen Psychologic, 2nd ed., p. 104. - Professor Ward's Article on Psychology in the Ency. Britt., 9 th ed., vol. XX. herbart's theory of feeling. 87 Further corroboration of the Herbartian position is found in the fact which Professor Ward points out, that before the period of reflection the individual estimates pleasure not by a qualitative but by a quantitative standard. He seeks to retain that state of consciousness which is pleasurable, and to rid himself of that state of consciousness which is painful, whatever be the sources of the pleasure and pain. If this is true before the period of reflection, why should there be a change of attitude towards pleasure and a different standard for its measurement after reflection ? But it will be urged, if there is only a quantitative standard, then the so-called higher pleasure should be resolvable into terms of greater pleasure. And yet it does not seem that the pleasure of the man who enjoys Shakespeare is greater than that of the man who reads a " shilling shocker." Nay, if one were to judge by appearances we should be induced to believe that the reverse is true. Professor "Ward's solution of the dif- ficulty seems to be adequate, and is at every point capable of being expressed in Herbart's terminology and in consonance with Herbart's thought. The life of the educated man is larger, fuller, and better than the life of the uneducated man. Or to express it in Herbart's language, the apperceptive system of the educated man is larger, more complex, and more perfectly correlated in all its parts than the apperceptive system of the uneducated man. Now suppose the uneducated man gradually to advance to the state in which he will be recognised as an educated man. The advance may and does involve effort, pain ; but at no point along the whole line of advance does the man seek pain but 88 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. pleasure, or, to put it in Leibniz's negative form, the avoidance or throwing off of pain. He knows, however, that any pleasure he can experience is only relative, and that when confronted with several possible pleasures he has to make a choice between theui, Now his in- creasing knowledge and experience, or his new and ever- increasing number of presentations, have their corres- ponding feelings. The individual, tlierefore, still pursu- ing pleasure, makes the calculation that there is more pleasure to be had at the new and higher point in his life than at an earlier stage ; and as he advances still farther he realises that more pleasure is to be had by continuing the advance than by remaining stilL If we could have an absolute standard of intensity we might be led to think that, measured by such a standard, the pleasure attendant on a lower activity is greater than that attendant on a higher activity. The pleasure of the vicious man often seems to be more intense than that of the virtuous man. But the seeming only means that we are measuring the intensity in terms of some outward bodily manifestation. We are measuring the intensity of the pleasure by the intensity of the sensa- tion— that is, the intensity of nervous action. But if we are to measure the psychological phenomenon of pleasure by physiological phenomena, the conclusion would be foregone that the vicious man has the greatest pleasure. Granted, then, that the feeling of pleasure is a purely psychological phenomenon and must have a psychological explanation, there can be no absolute standard of inten- sity. The pleasure is experienced by and relative to the individual ; and hence, when he advances from a lower to a higher plane of life, the pleasure which he herbaet's theory of feeling. 89 experiences as the result of any single activity may quite easily be regarded by him as greater than the pleasure he previously experienced in connection with a lower activity. If we designate the pleasure as deeper, we mean that the " higher " pleasure having connected with it less of that physical disturbance associated with the " lower " pleasure is regarded as more inner to our being; but we still estimate the pleasure itself as greater — we find greater pleasure in the activity that is more inner. And if we employ the category of dura- tion as being more applicable to the higher pleasures, we are clearly still estimating pleasure quantitatively. Another criticism advanced by Ostermann against the Herbartian theory of feeling is worthy of some considera- tion, as it further illustrates the somewhat confused in- terpretation which Herbart's " presentation " conception is apt to receive. The criticism is as follows : " Since favourings and checkings signify a corresponding addition or subtraction of presentation, it follows that with the change in clearness of the relative presentations the change of feeling must go hand in hand. Of course, according to this theory, those presentations which are raised to the fullest clearness must always be the bearers of the liveliest feelings of pleasure. . . . Granted I busy myself in thought with a dear friend from whom I have been separated. His image rises quite clear and unchecked in my memory ; but it awakens in me a poignant feeling of melancholy. Then I receive from my absent friend a letter in which, quite unexpectedly to me, he intimates that he will soon be with me. Forthwith my sorrow is changed into lively joy, but not for the reason that through the news the presenta- 90 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF HEEBART. tion, or if you prefer it the whole ' complex ' of presenta- tions connected with him, reached perfect clearness — for its clearness is neither something added to nor some- thing taken away through the news — but only because I am assured through the letter that I shall soon be once more united to my friend. . . . The more the thought [absence of a dear friend] presses into the fore- ground of consciousness — that is, the more it raises itself over all other presentations to an unrestrained clearness — the greater the pain." ^ According to Osterman, the fact that the clear presentation " dear friend " is accompanied by a feeling of pain proves that clear presentations are not always the bearers of the liveliest feelings of pleasure, as they ought to be according to the Herbartian theory. But the presentation " dear friend " is not the presenta- tion that is awaking the feeling of pain. The presenta- tion " dear friend " cannot, from the very meaning of the expression, have anything but a pleasurable condition of consciousness attached to it. The painful feeling is awakened, not by this presentation, but by another though associated presentation — viz., "absent dear friend." Now this last presentation is, on Ostermann's own show- ing, bound up with the presentation " present dear friend." But the latter presentation cannot in the cii'cumstances be brought to anv degree of clearness, simply because the friend is not present or not yet known to be on his way. It is this presentation follow- ing immediately on the first presentation that awakens the painful feeling, and it awakens this feeling because it is not a clear presentation. The presentation that struggles in vain for clearness is "presence of my friend"; ^ Ostermann, p. 106. herbart's theory of feeling. 91 and, because of the fi'uitless struggle, pain follows in strict accordance with the Herbartian theory. Next, I receive a letter to the effect that my friend will soon be with me. That is, 1 now know through the letter that the presentation " presence of my friend " is gradually coming into perfect clearness. It will be perfectly clear when I actually see and have personal intercourse with my friend, hut not fill then. The clear presentation "dear friend " affords me pleasure ; the clear presentation " ab- sent dear friend " and its correlative presentation "wished- for presence of the friend " — for the moment repressed — gives me pain ; and the presentation " assured presence of my friend " and the perfectly clear presentation of " my present friend " gives me pleasure. Ostermann seems to assume that there is one presentation throughout the whole mental experience : there are at least three differ- ent presentations. It is true that there is " neither something added to nor taken away from " the presenta- tion " dear friend " by the news of the letter, but then the presentation " dear friend " is not the presentation that persists throughout the experience. The first presentation " dear friend " is not altered by the news, but the associated presentation " presence of dear friend " is certainly brought nearer realisation or, in Herbart's language, made clearer. Such criticism as Ostermann's is partly founded on the assumption that the Herbartian theory separates the presentations from any central unifying agency, and thus does away with the notion of " worth " through which the soul decides as to what are the presentations that, in harmony with its own life, should become clear. But if we admit that the Herbartian " presentation " im- 92 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBAKT. plies a liviug presentatively active soul, then, from the point of view of this soul-life, " those presentations which are raised to the fullest clearness must always be (and are) the bearers of the liveliest feelings of pleasure." Some form of physical punishment undergone at a given time is a perfectly clear presentation only in the sense that the individual is actually suffering. But such a presentation is not sought for by his soul-life : it is a something foreign to and opposed to his organic apper- ceptive soul-life which seeks to avoid pain. It is not Ms presentation. Whatever presentation can truly be called his, will, when brought to fullest clearness, be accompanied by the feeling of pleasure. This, if our interpretation is correct, is all that the theory of Herbart implies. A not uncommon though somewhat trivial objection to the theory that feeling is dependent on knowledge is, that if the theory be true, then the educated man should feel more than the imeducated man, whereas the opposite often seems to be the case. The objection evidently bears on the question as to whether knowledge is, or at least conduces to, virtue ; for, if feeling is the motive to action, it would seem that under the Herbartian theory the ignorant man is at a disadvantage in his efforts to be virtuous. The objection is due to the failure to distinguish between the term " educated " and the term " presentation." The educated man may have a very large and complex apperceptive system as compared with his ignorant neighbour, but he may lack some one or more presentations which the ignorant man has ; conse- quently he may fail to manifest feeling on occasions when the ignorant man, having the necessary presentations, at hekbakt's theory of feeling. '93 once responds. The unlearned poor we have always with us ; and we are apt to be struck with the undoubted sympathy which they show in word and act towards each other in times of stress. But this proves nothing as to the truth or falseness of the Herbartian theory. The real test could only be secured by placing the two men in exactly the same circumstances, and by assuming that the educated man has exactly the same presentations as, in the case of the poor ignorant man, are associated with the feeling. A poor uneducated man, say, experiences the pangs of hunger. Suddenly he is relieved by the gift of some kindly benefactor. Tliereupon he shares his good fortune with a fellow-sufferer. In such a case the presentation " hunger " is followed by the presentations " means of relief " and " relief itself." But alongside these presentations is the other presentation " fellow- sufferer." Now the presentation of the suffering of his fellow is just about as clear as the presentation of his own suffering — both men are suffering the pangs of hunger ; consequently the same or nearly the same feel- ing is roused in both cases. To the well-off educated man, on the other hand, the presentation " hunger " may never have had anything like the same clearness ; and consequently in his case the resulting feeling could not be the same as in the case of the poor man. Even though he knows and sees that the poor man is suffering, this knowledge is far from being as clear as the presenta- tions that the two poor men have in common. In order that he should have something like the same presentations he must actually experience or have experienced the same degree of hunger that the poor men are experiencing. If, after repeated experiences of the same presentations 94 A NEW INTKllPKETATION OF HERBART. as the poor men have, he still fails to feel and respond as the first man does, then we may begin to doubt the truth of the theory that feeling is dependent on presenta- tions. Ijiit the test just mentioned is only partial. The necessary complement would be to place the poor man in the environment of the educated man, and compare the effect on each of presentations that are much clearer to the educated than to the uneducated man. Let them both, for example, listen to a declamation of Portia's plea for mercy in Shakespeare's " Merchant of Venice." Both hear the same words, and both doubtless have presenta- tions that have something in common ; but the presenta- tions of the educated man are necessarily far clearer than those of the uneducated listener, and experience testifies to the fact that the feeling response of the educated man is greater than that of the uneducated. In both parts of the test the man who has the clearer presentation has the larger amount of feeling. And Herbart points par- ticularly to the caution that must be observed in decid- ing as to the amount of feeling displayed in such cases when he says that " feelings and desires have not their source in the process or act of presentation in general hut ahvays in certain particular presentations." ^ If the theory of the dependence of feeling on presenta- tion is true, the inevitable educational corollary is that' there can be no education of the feelings per se. The meaninglessness of an appeal to the feelings per se is un- consciously shown by Ostermann. "Whilst admitting the close connection between feeling and presentation, he yet urges the importance of a direct appeal to the feel- ings per se through the medium of literature sacred and 1 Lehrbuch. § 38. herbart's theory of feeling. 95 secular that appeals to the child's feelings.^ But if an appeal is made through literature, then this literature must be either not understood, or partly or wholly understood. If it is not understood, it is difficult to see how there can be any response of feeling ; if it is even partly understood, then the appeal is rendered effective through presentations. Ostermann's view that the feelings should be appealed to per se seems to be founded on the idea, not uncommonly held by the practical teacher, that the effect of good literature on a child's feeling is rendered nugatory by explanation. But whether the effect is rendered nugatory or not depends on the character of the explanation. If the explanation is such that the knowledge presented does not fit in to the child's apperceptive system, the ex- planation is futile. But if the explanation is given in and through presentations that can be assimilated by the child's circle of thought, the result is bound to be a greater appreciation of the literature, and consequently a greater amount of feeling response. And it is part of the merit of Herbart's educational theory that the child is not artificially forced into an insincere appreciation of anything until his knowledge has grown up organicall}' to that point where appreciation and feeling will naturally follow. ^ Ostermann, p. 239. CHAPTER VIII. herbakt's theory of desire. Whilst feeling is closely related to presentation, desire is more closely linked to will activity. So close is the relationship, according to Herbart, that " the faculty of desire taken in conjunction with that of presentation and feeling should furnish a complete classification [of the mental powers or activities]. It must therefore include wishes, instincts, and every kind of longing, inasmuch as all these cannot be reckoned amongst either feelings or presentations." ^ That is, the activities of mind may be summed up under the three heads of presentations, feel- ings, and desires. Now, even if we include under the class desire, " wishes, instinct, and every kind of longing," we may still ask where " will " comes in ? The answer may be reached through an examination of what Herbart means by desire. The meaning is found in his explana- tion of how desire arises. " A complex a + a is repro- duced by means of a new presentation which is similar to a. Now when a, on account of its combination with a, comes forward, it meets in consciousness a presentation /3 opposed to it. Then a will be at the same time driven forward and held back : in this dilemma it is the source 1 Lehrbuch, § 107. herbart's theory of desire. 97 of an unpleasant feeling which may pass over into desire (namely, for the object presented through a), in so far as the opposition through /3 is weaker than the force with which a comes forward." ^ Let us illustrate by an ex- ample. On a lovely day in July, whilst sitting indoors in the city working, I receive a present of trout from my friend X in the country. The presentation " trout " calls up the presentations of fresh air, hills, heather, stream, &c., along with the presentation of my own former fish- ing amidst the same or similar surroundings. This last presentation — the a of the complex a + a — is connected, through my past experience, with pleasurable feelings. Xow, if this presentation could at once leap into full clearness — that is, if at the very moment the presenta- tion came into consciousness I could suddenly be trans- ported to the stream and could find myself actually fish- ing— there would be no need on my part to desire, as there would be no time to do so. But when the pres- entation " fishing " comes forward into consciousness with all the force of the complex of which it is a part, it is met by the presentation " work to be done," which also has a certain force. Now, if I give up neither the idea of my fishing nor the idea of my work, but try to keep both before me, the result is an unpleasant feeling. The moment that this unpleasant feeling is experienced is the moment when the force of presentation a is equal to the force of presentation |3. If this state of tension — which after all is more of the nature of a backward and forward movement — is to be got rid of, it can only be either by leaving off work or by dismissing the presentation " fish- ing " from its prominent place in my consciousness. But ' Lehrbuch, § 36. G 98 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. if the presentation " fishing " rises more clearly than the presentation " work," then the moment that this happens desire begins. The moment I begin to think more, in however small a degree, of the fishing than of my work, desire rises ; and it will continue to rise either till it has been satisfied— that is, when the presentation "fishing" is clear and I am actually engaged in fishing — or till the force of the presentation is overcome by that of some other presentation. If the illustration is adequate to Herbart's own statement of his theory, then the following are the elements which, in accordance with our general interpretation, enter into the activity called " desire." First, it is not a dead mechanical presentation that is moving forward towards full clearness, but the soul- activity manifesting itself in and through the complex a + a. Second, when this soul-activity is met by an opposing activity — that is, when the one soul-activity seeks to move forward in two opposite directions — there is a momentary feeling of being thwarted, which exists for the soul as unpleasant feeling. Third, the soul, by the force of its own life momentum, — a complex of pres- entations organised into a living apperceptive system, — tends to push on towards the full and clear re-presenta- tion of the previously experienced presentation. This pushing implies effort to free activity from its impedi- ments, and, consequently, some degree of pain. This pain continues so long as the pushing forward continues, though in a diminishing degree as the desired presenta- tion is gradually reached. Alongside the decreasing pain feeling there is an increasing pleasure feeling, which reaches its maximum when the presentation is clear. Fourth, and this is the most important element as regards herbakt's theory of desire. 99 the question of " will," whilst the soul is conscious of the struggle of its own presentative activity, it is also conscious of the pleasure-pain throughout the struggle. That is, the consciousness of the struggle is in a sense different from the consciousness of the feeling accom- panying the struggle. To express the experience by the figure of a line, we might say that the soul is conscious of its progress along the line, and at the same time feels the effect of progress at every successive point of the line. The movement of the soul-life along the line con- stitutes the desire ; the consciousness, on the part of the soul, of the effect of its own movement on itself at every point of the line, constitutes the feeling. Fifth, as the desire increases — that is, as the soul continues to move forward along the line leading to the dea7' presentation, say of fishing — all other obstructing presentations are gradually weakened in force. The moment that the presentation " fishing " reaches such a degree of clearness that the opposing presentation " work " is completely ob- scured, in that moment external action takes place, and a first step is taken to arrange for a fishing holiday and to make the presentation " fishing " perfectly clear. From the point of view of the educator, the question as to the source of this soul movement called desire is an all-important one ; for, if desire passes over into will, the regulation of the will can be accomplished only through regulation, in so far as this is possible, of the source of desire. In explaining the source of desire Herbart distinguishes between the lower and higher faculties of desire. In treating of the lower faculties of desire he classifies the sources of desire as (1) animal instincts, of which man has only a small share ; (2) im- 100 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. pulses, particularly those in which bodily movement and change and the restless activity of children originates ; (3) " inclinations, or those lasting mental conditions which are favourable to the rise of certain kinds of desires. . . . They are for the most part results of habit (Gewohnheit), which seems to pass over from the faculty of presentation into the faculty of desire. For there are first the thoughts which follow the accustomed direction, and which, if no hindrance intervenes, pass over at once into action before there is any perceptible feeling and desire." ^ It is the third class with which we are most concerned, as being those which, according to Herbart, seem most capable of being controlled ab extra. According to Herbart, their source is in a habit. But it is not a habit of external action, but a hahit of presentation, a habit of knowing, which passes into desire. That is, the soul habituated to function as presentative activity along certain lines, becomes thereby habitu- ated to bring certain presentations to clearness more than others. " The thoughts follow the accustomed direction, and if no hindrance intervene pass over into action." ^ Herbart recognises the power of habit, but it is a power in and through the content of knowledge. Hence, if a child is trained to know aright in the full Herbartian sense of knowing, he will desire aright. The organic nature of his apperceptive system will in time become such that, like the physical organism, it will respond automatically in the right direction. But this automatism that follows on training is not the auto- matism that precedes training. Through training in knowing the individual is led from the lower plane of 1 Lehrbuch, §§ 110, 111, 112. ^ jbij. herbakt's theory of desire. 101 blind desiring to the higher plane of deliberate desiring, where he weighs the relative values of " ends," or where he aims and wills one course of action rather than another. But it may be objected that, since the soul is aiming at the possession of happiness, or at being in a pleasurable state of consciousness, therefore in the last analysis feeling and not presentation determines the desire. For answer let us revert to our former illustration. The presentation " trout " called up the other presentations, including that of " fishing " and its accompanying pleasurable state. Now, the presentation " fishing " and the accompanying presented or recollected pleasurable state are not at first at all " clear." The presentation " fishing " is certainly much clearer than the pleasurable state. Indeed the pleasurable state cannot be remembered except through the presentation " fishing." I can have this presentation without neces- sarily having any remembrance of the accompanying feeling, but not vice versa. But suppose it is the re- membrance of the pleasurable state that rouses the desire. In the first place, this remembrance owes its origin to the presentation " trout." In the second place, my desire to experience the pleasurable state of con- sciousness can only be realised through a series of presentations. The last of this series is the presenta- tion " fishing," which I must bring to perfect clearness before I can he in the pleasurable state desired. When the presentation is " clear," and I am actually engaged in fishing, the desire ceases. Further, it would have been futile to desire the state without knowing the means that would produce the state. Bather, I desire the -presentation, the attainment of which will inevitably 102 A KEW INTERPRETATION OF HERB ART. be accompanied by the state. The desire starts from a presentation and ends with a presentation. It may still be urged that the presentative activity has been operating all along the line with its eye, as it were, fixed on the outcome of its activity — the pleasurable state — and that thus it has really been determined by feeling. But when the movement of desire begins, the feeling is not present. All we can say is, that the remembrance of the feeling is present. It is question- able if we can say even so much. The state of feeling does not precede, nor does it start alongside of, but is at the end of, the movement of desire. At the moment preceding this movement we know that our having a certain presentation will result in our being in a pleasurable state ; and whilst we desire to te in the state, we desire even more to have that presentation without which we know we cannot be in the state, but with which we know we must be in the state. The general criticism advanced against the theory that desire is, like feeling, dependent on and deter- mined by presentation is, that the child has desires and inclinations long before he has presentations, and that Herbart's theory does not fit in with biological facts. Both Dittes and Hubatsch, for example, advance this criticism. Hubatsch maintains that we must accept the doctrine of inborn activities that are other than merely " formal." ^ But what does this doctrine amount to ? According to our interpretation of Herbart, we must regard the presentation as the expression of the organic soul-life and not an abstract activity or activity in vaciw. Now the " formal " inborn activity which ^ Gespriiche iiber der Herbart-Ziller'sche Piidagogik, pp. 56, 57, &c. HEKBARTS THEORY OF DESIKE. 103 Hubatsch rejects is just the same kind of activity which Herbart regards as meaningless and valueless from the point of view of a pedagogical psychology. In what sense then are we to interpret Hubatsch's idea of inborn activities or inclinations ? The terms must refer to the soul either before it enters space and time conditions — that is, as a metaphysical soul, or after it enters those conditions — that is, as a soul united to matter. If activities are meant to be applicable to the metaphysical soul, then on Hubatsch's own demands these activities, in order to be other than formal, must be acting in and through something, or acting out something. But we have already tried to show that a real activity such as Hubatsch insists on is constituted by two inseparable factors — the activity, and the thing that is being pro- duced pari 2MSSU with the activity. Now the only conceivable way in which soul can act in this way is in and through a something which, while inextricably bound up with and partly constitutive of its own life, is at the same time an " other," which in some sense or other it must first be aware of and then gather up into and make part of its life. Unless the term " metaphysical soul" is to be interpreted as something even less than zero, we must postulate, alongside of any activities attrib- uted to it, its possession of the attribute of avjareness. And the presence of this awareness, in however small a degree, implies presentation. If, then, the expression " inborn activities " means that the soul has these activ- ities before it appears united to matter, these activities must imply some degree of presentation. But suppose we grant that the expression "inborn activity " means a readiness of soul to desire in one 104 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. direction more than in another the moment the soul is linked to matter, it does not seem impossible to reconcile the position of Herbart with biological facts. Biological facts are facts relating to the phenomenal, to matter; and if matter is not only the mode of soul- apprehension or soul-activity, but that inseparable factor which with soul-acti\dty helps to constitute an intelligible real, then the moment that the soul begins to live in the midst of matter — be it a protoplasmic cell or anything more primal — its life is first and foremost one of pres- entation. If the first presentations are of a semi-lifeless nature, so too are the first desires and inclinations. If it could l)e proved that the infant's first vague inclina- tions and desires exist apart from any corresponding presentations, then the Herbartian position might be held to be false. In the absence of this proof we are justified in regarding the position as true that not only can no desire exist apart from presentation, but that desire exists in and through a presentation. In other words, the movement of soul known as desire is deter- mined by knowledge and not by feeling. Hence the educational importance of right knowledge. Hence, too, the partial responsibility of the educator, — partial, for it is simply stating a corollary of the Herbartian theory as we have interpreted it, to say, that the child through heredity is in possession of a circle of thought, including vague inclinations and desires, long before the parent, and certainly long before the teacher, has the chance of influencing that circle. And the truism that Hubatsch points out, that character cannot be altered so easily (that is, through the circle of thought), is a proof, not that Herbart is wrong, but that an already existent HERBARTS THEOEY OF DESIRE. 105 apperceptive mass of presentations which leads its possessor to do wrong can be combated only through a similar but opposing circle of thought — that the organic soul-life functioning strongly in one direction can and must be habituated to function more strongly in an opposing direction. CHAPTER IX. IIERBART S THEORY OF WILL. " Will is desire combined with the supposition of the attainment of that which is desired." ^ I desire to stir my study fire, and, assuming I can rise from my chair, cross the room, take up the poker, and use it in the manner desired, I immediately go and fulfil my desire. The willing is not in any sense part of the external actions rising, crossing the tloor, lifting the poker, and stirring the fire. Suppose that at the very moment I thought the external action of rising was to take place I was prevented from rising by some sudden pain which kept me fixed to my chair, I would still have willed the action of stirring the fire. And the same would be true as regards the other intermediate actions. But suppose I desire to propel myself through the air after the manner of a bird. I know that I cannot do any such thing, and so I do not will, I cannot indeed will, to do it. I am conscious of the unattainability of my desire, at least at present ; and much as I may desire to fly, I do not and cannot will to fly. In this case there is no movement of mind, no inner activity, corresponding to that which takes place between the rise of the presenta- 1 Lehrbuch, § 223. herbart's theory of will. 107 tion " stirring the fire " and the external action of rising from my chair. The soul movement of desire, then, passes over into willing when the desire is accompanied by a presentation of the attainability of the thing desired, even though some ab extra influence may inter- vene to prevent the desire being realised. There are two ways of looking at the "willing" in the case. From one point of view the willing to stir the fire may be regarded as made up of several acts of willing. From this point of view the willing is that inner or soul activity which (1) follows on the pres- entation " stirring the fire " and precedes my rising, (2) follows on the presentation " crossing the floor " and precedes the external act of my crossing, (3) follows on the presentation " lifting the poker " and precedes the act of lifting, (4) follows on the presentation " stirring the fire " and precedes the act of stirring. I will to stir the fire, but, in order that this my first act of willing may bear fruition, I must also will to rise, to cross the floor, and to lift the poker. From another point of view — and the more important view as regards the full interpretation and value of Herbart's psychology — the presentation "stirring the fire," the willing to stir the fire, and all the acts lead- ing up to and including the act of stirring the fire, tend with repetition to become, and ultimately do become, one single organic act of functioning activity. This point of view is expressed by Herbart as follows : " Will is desire accompanied with the supposition of the attain- ability of that which is desired. This presentation becomes united with the desire so soon as in like cases the effort of action has had a result. For then with 108 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF HEKBART. the beginning of a new similar action there is associated the presentation of a period of time in which the grati- fication of the desire may be accomphshed. From this arises a glance into the future, which glance gets more and more extensive in proportion as man learns to pro- vide more numerous means towards his end. Let a series a, /3, 7, S be formed in a previous perception of the course of an event. Xow let the presentation S be in the condition of desire. Although as such it strives against an arrest, yet the helps which it sends to the presentations 7, /3, a may act unhindered in the event of those presentations just indicated meeting no arrest in consciousness. Then 7, /3, a will be re- produced in proper gradation, and pro\dded one of these presentations is bound up with an activity, then an action occurs through wliich, under favourable external conditions, tlie previous course of the event may be actually renewed in such a manner tliat a, /3, 7 act as means towards the end S." ^ To take our former illustration, we may regard a, j3, 7, 0 as representing the presentation series — rising, crossing, lifting, stir- ring— which once constituted the course of the event, stirring the fire. The presentation S — stirring the fire — arises in consciousness. I as presentatively active desire to make the presentation clear. Now the pres- entation S, being previously associated with the pres- entations 7, j3, a, tends to reproduce these presentations, along with itself, in their original order. But the first presentation a — viz., rising — was, in a former experience, connected with an actual rising ; and so the revival of this presentation in consciousness is followed by the 1 Lehrbuch, § 223. HERBARTS THEORY OF WILL. 109 presentation in its clear form — viz., the act of rising. Similarly with regard to the other presentations. The several presentations of the series are, through repetition, so closely connected with the external acts corresponding to them and with one another that, imder the rising power of S, the activities connected with the presenta- tions a, j3, 7 follow on spontaneously, and without any special willing, on my part, of those activities. So spontaneous indeed may the process become, that at last I am unable to detect myself conscious of willing even the first presentation of rising. The presentation " stirring the fire " will ultimately come to be so bound up with the means necessary to make the presentation clear, that the moment the presentation appears in consciousness action will follow. If this is a true interpretation of Herbart's language, then his theory does not, as is urged by some critics, overlook the place of hahit in education. Further, if presentations and the external activities corresponding to them could be as closely linked together as those of our illustration, then we might justifiably expect that right knowledge would be followed by right action. And it is the claim of Herbart that knowledge and action can be so welded together that he who knows the right will not fail to do the right. It still remains to show the full grounds of such a claim. His treatment of the question of freedom of the will helps toward this, and at the same time affords additional support to our interpretation of the central point of his psychology.^ In the first place, Herbart rejects the Kantian trans- cendental freedom of will, according to which the will ^ Cap. V. 110 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. is assumed to stand outside of, and in opposition to, the causality of nature. If the word transcendental is taken in this sense, then, as Herbart argues, " the natural power of the passions would be altogether powerless against such a freedom. P)Ut the relation which nothing (im- plied in powerlessness) bears to something is as something to infinite magnitude, so that if the power of passion be considered as something, transcendental freedom must be regarded as infinitely strong." ^ The notion of such a transcendental freedom is, according to Herbart, a " psychological illusion." How the illusion arises Herbart explains as follows, and the explanation is of considerable value in the way of showing what Herbart's psychology really is. " When a decision, springing out of the com- pleted reflecting act, is on the point of presenting itself (that is, of being made), it often happens that a desire arises and opposes that decision. In such a case the man does not know what he is willing : he regards himself as standing in the middle between two forces which draw him towards opposite sides. In this act of self - consideration he places reason and desire over against each other as if they were foreign [outside] counsellors, whilst he himself as a third listens to the other two and then decides. He believes himself to be free to decide as he will." But " the reason to which he gives heed and the desire which rouses and allures him are not in reality outside him but in him, and he himself is no third standing beside the other two, but his own spiritual life lies and works in both. When, therefore, he at length chooses, this choice is nothing other than a co-operation of just those [factors], reason 1 Lehrbuch, § 235, note 1. herbart's theory of will. 111 and desire, between which he thought himself standing free." Again, " When a man finds that reason and desire are nothing outside him, and he nothing outside them, the decision which arises from their co-operation is not an outside one but his own. Only with self -activity has he chosen, yet not with a force which is different from his reason and desire, and which could give a result different from the result of the co-operation of reason and desire." ^ The explanation is in line with Herbart's psychological standpoint as we have interpreted it. When Herbart says that a man's " own spiritual life lies and works in both reason and desire," and that " only with self-activity has he chosen," he means, not a presen- tation-activity apart from soul, nor a soul-activity that comes in as it were on occasion and operates on presen- tations, but a soul-activity that manifests itself in and through presentations — a life-activity which apart from presentations is an abstraction — an activity that is the presentations in their rising and falling. If it be ob- jected that the " I " can think of itself as directing the activity of reason or desire, and in this way seems to point to an existence separable from and above presenta- tions, the answer is, that this thinking on the part of the " I " is not outside itself but is part of its own life. The soul's presentation to itself of itself, whatever be the explanation of how this can take place, is never any- thing but a presentation of its own, belonging to it as part of its life-activity. The soul never transcends its own thought. Whatever its thought may be, whether thought of itself or thought of an " other," it still lives in and through thought, which thought is constitutive of 1 Lehrbuch, § 118. 112 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. its life. The soul is thought, not, however, thought in the idealistic sense of mere representation, but thought in the sense in which we have interpreted it as a com- ponent of two inseparable factors — presentative activity and presentation content.^ If, then, the self-activity with which a man chooses is nothing standing outside the choosing, but is the soul presentatively active, then will is not a force that is separable from tlie activity of presentation ; it is that activity when the activity is associated with (1) a con- sciousness on the part of the soul of an end desired, and (2) the assumption that it can reach its end. Here, then, we seem to be in sight of the full meaning of the central position of Herbart's psychological theory that " will springs out of the circle of thought." If our in- terpretation up to this point holds good, then " will " may be defined as the soul 'presentatively active and con- scious that it can attain to a desired end. Now if desire, as we have already concluded,^ is a soul movement in and through presentations, and if " will " is simply this soul movement accompanied by the soul's assumption that it can attain the object of its movement, then " will " is a soul movement in and through presentations, and therefore may be truly said to spring out of and to be determined by presentations — that is, by knowledge, or, to use Herbart's own language, hy the circle of thought. Let us, even at the risk of repetition, consider the definition of will given above in light of our former in- terpretation of Herbart's " soul reaction " theory. So far as psychology is concerned, the first moment of soul- life consists in a becoming aware of an " other," and ^ Caps, iii., v. ^ Cap. viii. HEKB art's theory OF WILL. 113 this is followed by a " reaction." This awareness of an " other " involves the sense of limitation, and this is followed by effort on the part of the soul to maintain itself against the limitation by taking up and absorbing as it were the limitation, and making it part of its own developing life. The awareness of an " other " precedes the effort to persist in face of that " other " ; and so it may be said that, even at the beginning of soul-life, " will," or the presentatively active soul conscious of its attainable desire, springs out of a circle of thought. At this stage, however, — if after all such a starting-point has any meaning to us, — the circle is only at its c&ntrc, or rather is only a centre. Looking at the point at a later stage, we find it has become a group of presenta- tions welded together into a more or less complete ap- perceptive system. The soul, starting a time and space life as a presentative activity in and through awareness or knowledge, has become more of an organic complex. In consequence of this organic unity its functioning at any one moment is determined by the soul-activity as a whole. But each of its life moments or function- ings consists of presentative activity. This presentative activity is simply the will power looked at in ab- straction from the presentations in which it manifests itself. Hence the soul, as a presentatively active essence conscious of attaining the object of its own activity, is determined by all its previous life of presentations, or in Herbart's language, by the " circle of thought." Right thinking then should issue in right willing : the soul that thinks the right in Herbart's sense of a truly organic process of thinking must ipso facto ivill the right. H 114 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF IlERBART. But granting that to know the right in such a way is to will the right, how does such right knowing come about ? How is a child to be led so to know the riglit, that in knowing it lie will at the same time " will " it ? Herbart answers, through self-control. But it is objected by critics that, for this self-control, Herbart by his neglect of the concept of hahit has made no provision. This objection has already been partly considered, Herbart's treatment of this question of self-control is in harmony with the interpretation already given of his will theory. He distinguishes between three kinds or rather stages of self-control. First, there is the adval self-control — that is, the control as it is actually going on, as when a man is actually repressing an outburst of temper. Second, there is the 'prospective or anticipated self-control which a man in a present moment demands of himself at a future moment, as when I demand of myself to-day that I shall go and help a neighbour to-morrow. Third, there is the obligatory self-control, the control which a man ought to exact from himself.^ If a man had freedom in the transcendental sense, then this third species of self- control would always be possible. Actual self-control and prospective self-control are exemplified in the case of a child who " almost unobserved and without being ac- quainted with the difficulties of the matter controls him- self in drawing back from an action which serves as a means to an end, and in resolving to do it at a future time." "' Here the actual self-control consists in the child's turning aside from the action. The presentatively active soul in its forward movement to make the pres- entation of the action clear is suddenly confronted with 1 Lehrbuch, § 228. ^ j^jj^ § 229. HERBARTS THEORY OF WILL. 115 some circumstance which leads it, for the time being, to make some other presentation clear. The very fact that it turns aside to make this presentation clear means, in the language of our interpretation, that, at the particular moment, the functioning activity in this apparently erratic path is really the direct outcome of the soul-life as an organic unity at that particular moment. To use Herbart's language, the child has been faithful to him- self. And he has been faithful simply because in and through his presentatively active mass or circle of past presentations he has willed the next and most closely organically connected step in his developing soul-life. Such a trueness to self is what the truly virtuous man must have. The difference between the child's faithful- ness and that of the virtuous man is, that the virtuous man is conscious of moral ideas, and wills his development in and through these ideas. Thus, after all, his highest virtue is dependent on his liecoming, in the sense just indicated, " as a little child." In the prospective self-control which the child exacts of himself there are, if the action contemplated is after- wards willed, two acts of williug. First, the child wills the future doing of the action. Second, when the period of delay is at an end he wills the delayed action. But — and this is a highly significant point — "it is a question whether the present willing is the same as the former willing." ^ That is, if the soul-life is an organic develop- ment in presentations, its functioning at one moment is not the same as its functioning at a future moment, any more than the functioning of the physical organism, say holding a pen to-day, is the same as the functioning of 1 Lehrbuch, § 229. 116 A NEW INTEKPRETATION OF HERBART. the organism in holding the pen yesterday. During the interval the totality of soul-life has undergone modifica- tion, and the change in the totality must involve change in the particular functionings, even though these function- ings be in the same direction. The case of some simple promise may illustrate the ground for differentiating between the two wills. I promised a friend yesterday to play a game of golf with him to-day. Yesterday I willed my to-day's playing with my friend. To-day comes, and I will to implement my promise ; and forth- with start off to the golf-course. But when I now will to go and play the game, I am no longer presentatively active exactly in the same way in which I was yesterday, when I willed my to-day's playing. Even supposing I have had no other presentations in the interval, I yet have one presentation which I had not yesterday — viz., the presentation of yesterday's willing. Even in this extreme and practically impossible case I, as the pres- entatively active being, am different from what I was yesterday. Hence my willing of to-day is distinctly different from my willing of yesterday. Only on the assumption that the " I " is an absolutely changeless entity, and that it is this entity which wills, can we say that the willing of to-day is the same as the willing of yesterday ? And this supposition we have already tried to show to be unnecessary and useless. Moreover, experi- ence too well testifies that at the moment when the action has to be done we do not always will it so spontaneously as when we merely willed that we would do it. My will- ing of to-day does not spring so naturally from my present soul-life. Other presentations occupy my consciousness to-day, and I may feel disposed to continue the series of herbart's tiiiory of will. 117 these presentations as being more organically connected with my soul-life of to-day, and in continuing which I may feel I would be more faithful to myself. But whilst I am in this mental state, a new presentation appears — the presentation of " oughtness," — I ought to implement my promise of yesterday. Now if this presentation gains the ascendancy, that is, if I do implement my promise, it cannot be because the implementing of my promise springs organically from my present soul-life which, on the supposition, is preferring some other presentation. It must gain its ascendancy through some other presenta- tions that are organically connected with that soul-life. Amongst such presentations may be my friend's disap- probation, and the thought of being considered unreliable. And until this presentation of " oughtness " prevails through its own strength, my willing is not really determined by it, but by those presentations which are more closely connected with my present soul-life. In following the lead of such a presentation I am not faith- ful to myself, or rather I am only apparently faithful to some externally imposed law by being really faithful to myself. Herbart's dictum that " the man only gradually learns how easily he can be unfaithful to himself"^ cuts two ways. The man who acts in accordance with an externally imposed law which has not yet as a presenta- tion become naturally and organically connected with the man's soul-life or apperception mass, is as unfaithful to his real self as the man who, knowing the law as a reasonable law, yet falls away from acting in accordance with its dictates. This is the inconsistency of will which it is the task of education to remove. The interval, how- 1 Lehrbuch, § 229. 118 A NEW INTEErRETATION OF HERBAET. ever short it may be, between willing the control and the actual control, between will and performance, must be filled up with life moments so organically connected with the soul-life in its willing, that performance will, unless prevented by ah extra influences, ultimately and inevit- ably follow the willing. The ideal self-control, then, is attained when the soul, as presentatively active, wills in accordance with some moral idea involving " oughtness," which has so much become part of its own life of pres- entation that it could not will otherwise. When the soul wills the right in and through its own organic or apperceptive life so often that the willing becomes spon- taneous and control as an effort disappears, then self- control is greatest, and knowledge in the true sense of the term becomes power. In regard to the standard by which the rightness of willing is determined, Herbart rejects the Kantian theory that the good will determines itself by fixing its own standard, and that consistency with itself must be its fundamental principle. It is unnecessary here to repeat the well-worn argument that such a principle of willing is only a formal one, and that under such a principle there can be no real distinction between the good and the bad will, inasmuch as the bad man can be quite as consistent in his willing as the good man. It is more to our argument to note that Her- bart's rejection of an absolutely undetermined will is in harmony with, and indeed necessitated by, his theory of the soul. The absolutely undetermined will, or the will that can stand out of all organic relation to soul- life, is as useless an abstraction as a metaphysical soul that can stand above and apart from manifestations. herbaut's theory of will. 119 Just as the soul is known in its activity, so will is known in its activity. Eather, from Herbart's point of view as we have interpreted it, we must say that, the soul being known in its activity, " will," which is a soul movement, can only be known in its activity and not apart from activity. Whilst Herbart defines the good will as " the steady resolution of a man to consider himself as an individual under the law which is universally binding," ^ this universally binding law is not the universal law of Kant. It is such a law as is found by experience to be immanent in the world. A physical organism grows from point to point in ac- cordance with laws which, in a sense, are made by its interaction with other organisms and with its environ- ment in general. The organic growth is determined by such interaction, and therefore by the laws which are exemplified in the interaction, but which do not and cannot intelligibly stand apart from the interaction in which they find exemplification. And just as these laws are immanent in the interaction, so from Her- bart's point of view the laws of good willing, or what he calls the " moral ideas," are experienced by, and intuitively approved by, the soul-life in its interaction with other soul-lives. The experience of certain interac- tions reveals or rouses the ideas, which are seen to have a binding force on all men.^ The will that wills action 1 Die Aesthetische Darstellung der Welt. Sallwiirk's ed., p. 202. - How these moral ideas or ideals are formed iu our rainds and in advance of conduct is another question. In dealing with the principles of Leibniz (p. 34) we have hazarded an answer. Our experience is not confined to what can be brought under the laws of the understanding. In our human relationships we seem to understand up to the limit of a finite experience ; and after that to have, in Leibniz's language, a " clear perception " of the ideal which is ever in advance of our conduct. 120 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. in accordance with these moral ideas is the " good will." This is morality. From this conception of morality it follows that an action, regarded by others as good, but not willed with knowledge that it is good, has no ethical value. The " good will " wills what it knows to be good universally. Hence Herbart's dictum that the ignorant man cannot be virtuous. Since right action, unless prevented by outside influences beyond the in- dividual's control, will follow good willing, good will- ing is justly regarded as the highest attainable end of soul-life, and therefore the highest end of moral educa- tion. " Since morality has its place singly and only in individual volition based on right insight, it follows of itself first and foremost that moral education has by no means to develop a certain external mode of action, but rather insight together with proportionate volition in the mind of the pupil." ^ In these words Herbart pointedly declares against that one-sided view of moral education which makes such education to consist in the training of the child, through frequent repetition, to do certain things. If there is right " in- sight together with proportionate volition in the mind of the pupil," external action need not concern the educator, for right knowledge, in Herbart's sense, will be accompanied by right willing, aiid right willing by right action. Such a morality, and such an educational aim, is by no means merely contemplative. With Her- bart there is no sharp line between virtue as a state and virtue as expressed in outward action. The virtue which is a mere state of right thinking and feeling, but which may or may not pass over into action when ^ Allgemeine Piidagogik. Bk. I. ch. ii. 2. herbakt's theory of will. 121 outward conditions allow of this, is not virtue. From the point of view of Herbart's psychology, the real meaning of such a state is, that the soul-life as a •'' psychical organism " ^ has not been sufficiently habit- uated in so living in a certain series of presentations that its inner activity will on occasion necessarily ex- press itself in external action. If the aim of moral education, according to Herbart, concerns itself wholly and exclusively with the inner activity of the pupil, it does so because thereby alone is secured the only safe guarantee of a morality that shall be practical and real. 1 Lehrbuch, § 238. CHAPTER X. herbart's concept of interest. Granted that right knowledge in Herbart's sense is bound to be followed by right willing, the question, How can the individual be brought to such a stage of knowledge, has to be considered more definitely than by the general reference to " habit," which we have claimed to be implicit in the psychology. The full answer is found in Herbart's ' Science of Education,' ^ and the fact that it is found in connection with his educational writings seems to show that he was look- ing at the problem more from the point of view of facts than from that of any preconceived metaphysical or psychological theory.^ With his eye on the child, Herbart declares that the final aim of education is morality or the formation of character. This aim is to be reached through the nearer aim of a "many-sided interest," which in turn is to be secured through an " educative instruction." ^ Allgemeine Piidagogik aus dem Zweck der Erziehung abgeleitet. ^ Cf. ' An Introduction to Herbart's Science and Practice of Education,' by H.M. and E. Felkin, p. 9 : "The psychology of the author was worked out and written down during many years of educational activity, and rose in great part out of the experiences acquired thereby" — a quotation from Herbart's announcement of his ' Outlines of Educational Lectures' (1835). herbart's concept of interest. 123 The theory of " educative -instruction," taken in con- nection with the concept of interest, may indeed be regarded as implicitly containing Herbart's theory of hahii. That Herbart makes comparatively little refer- ence to habit means, not that he overlooks the educa- tional significance of habit, hut that his whole system of educative instruction, leading to a many-sided interest, essentially and necessarily implies the presence of habit all along the line of that instruction. That this is so we hope will be evident from an examination of the mean- ing which Herbart attached to the term " interest " as employed by him. The meaning and educational significance of Herbart's " interest " may best be understood by first considering that so-called interest known as indirect or mediate interest. A child, say, is led to do a good action, not because it recognises any moral law in the case binding on himself as on all others, but simply because the doing of the action will save him from punishment. What the child is interested in is the presentation " punish- ment " with its correlative presentation " absence tjf punishment " ; and so long as he fails to see how the action is wrong, no amount of punishment will lead him to regard the action as interesting in itself. In the same way, when any part of knowledge is acquired by the child for the sake of some other gain than the knowledge itself, the child is interested, not so much in the knowledge as in that which the acquisition of the knowledge will enable him to secure. It may and often does happen, that after the pursuit of this knowledge has begun, the knowledge becomes interesting in itself apart from the ulterior gain ; but, in the case supposed, 124 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBAR'I". the beginning of the pursuit is not directly interesting. Whether in doing the action or in acquiring the know- ledge, the second and ulterior aim is that which, at the start at least, the child tiuds to be part and parcel of his true self, that is, his natural self. Neither the action nor the learning liows from the child's soul -life as it is ; neither is the organic outcome of his apperceptive system ; and hence his apperceptive system or soul-life cannot be said to be directly interested in doing the action or in acquiring the knowledge. In the case of the action, if he were certain that the clear presentation " punishment " was not to follow, he would be instan- taneously faithful to liimself, and would will the pres- entation that is most closely allied to his already exist- ing presentations, and the presentation therefore that is most interesting to him — viz., the non- doing of the action. If the end " avoidance of punishment," for which the means " doing of the action " is employed, falls out of the child's view, either the means is seen to be unnecessary and is therefore unemployed ; or, if the means is still employed, that is, if the child does the action without knowing it as a right action, such doing is mechanical and of no moral worth. But, it will be objected, if an appeal is not to be made to indirect interest, how is the child ever to be induced to acquire knowledge or to act in accordance with moral law ? The best answer to this objection is to ask what is gained by an appeal to indirect interest. AVhen certain presentations are really wanted by the child, that is, when the child's natural self as an organic soul-life requires certain knowledge of presentations as necessary to its development then these presentations are interesting in themselves, and do not require the hekbaut's concept of interest. 125 support of an appeal to indirect interest in order to secure their appropriation by the child. If the soul- life at a particular moment is complete without these presentations — if these presentations have no point of connection with the soul-life at the moment they are thrust before it — no appeal to indirect interest can change the uninteresting character of the presentations. The rote learning, by a child, of the multiplication- table, in so far as there is no interest in the exercise itself, is absolutely uninteresting, meaningless, and premature. To the common objection that it is better that the child should, under the motive force of some indirect interest, acquire such knowledge at a time when his memory is more acquisitive, the answer is that it has not yet been proved that under a true system of education the child will not acquire this knowledge more readily and more surely when his organic soul -life needs it. Professor Laurie admits that " knowledge acquired under extraneous motives is of a formal, memorial, and rote character," but adds that " it must be admitted that this kind of knowledge — which is not knowledge properly so-called, because it is not assimilated to the living organism of mind — may yet pass at some future time into know- ledge, that is to say, may find its true connections and relations, and be finally assimilated." ^ But what if it does not pass into knowledge properly so-called ? Is it scientific procedure to impart any knowledge on the chance of its being at some future time " assimilated to the living organism of mind " ? How will such know- ledge " find its true connections and relations " to the other constituents of soul -life unless the mind goes through the series of presentations once more and sees ^ Institutes of Education. Second ed., p. 252. 126 A ^'E\V INTERPRKTATION OF HERBART. these one by one in their true connections and relations ? If we are to employ the concept of organism to explain psychological growth we must be faithful to the concept throughout. Are we faithful to it when we speak of a growth of unassimilated knowledge that will be assimi- lated at some future time :* The growth must be in the living mind or not in it. If it is not in it, it is diffi- cult to understand how such a growth can link itself later on to the living organism so as to be incorporate with it. If it be urged that at the assimilation stage the soul-life needs not to go through every part of the previously acquired but unassimilated knowledge, then the necessary " connections and relations " must have been made in the interval between the first acquisition of the knowledge and its proper assimilation to the living organism. They have been made slowly and by means of a continuous series of more living presentations ; which only proves the prematureness and uselessness of the " formal, memorial, and rote knowledge." If it be urged that such exercises in learning may be made interesting in themselves even while the remoter interest is still present, then it is the immediate and direct interest, and not the remote or indirect interest, that is really appealing to the child. Again, it may be claimed that the appeal to indirect interest secures a re- sult ultimately helpful to the soul development of the child. It is urged that the constant repetition of the good action, even though not recognised as a good action by the child, enables the child to perform the action more easily when he does come to recognise the moral worth of the action. In other words, the child is trained to do what to him is meaningless actions, on the ground that later on he will do these actions easily and hekbaet's concept of intekest. 127 intelligently. But Herbart claims that under his theory the child will come to do these same actions as easily and as intelligently as under the other theory, and without having his soul-life subjected to long aiid, to him, meaningless restrictions. According to the theory knowledge and will proceed pari 'passu, and the organic advance of soul-life in and through presentations is or ought to be such that the moment the child knows the rightness of an action he will spontaneously will the action. And further, the habituation involved in the Herbartian training has meaning and therefore interest to the child all along the course of development. The appeal to indirect interest, therefore, cannot well be justified from the point of view of the individual soul, for any such appeal does not in itself greatly conduce to organic development. The appeal must be justified on the ground that the interests of others — of society — must be considered, and that the child must be com- pelled, if need be, through indirect interest to attend to and to obey what to him are the meaningless and therefore only indirectly interesting laws of society. Herbart practically admits this. At the same time, he places little reliance on such interest as a formative factor in character development ; and whilst some would ascribe to indirect interest a necessarily important place in education, it has yet to be shown that a system of education is impossible in which the appeal to indirect interest is reduced to comparatively insignificant limits. In the early stages of education the appeal to indirect interest is generally regarded as inevitable, and that Herbart's counsel to appeal to nothing but direct interest is a counsel of perfection. It may be so ; but if our in- terpretation of Herbart's psychology is in the main true. 128 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF HERBART. Herbart is nearer the truth than his critics. As an instance of the easy sort of criticism with which Her- bart's doctrine is rejected we may cite Hubatsch, who asks, " How can one awaken interest in Latin declensions unless one rouses the desire to learn through the presentation that it is something fine, mighty, and worth a struggle, to know Latin ? But naturally this is a mediate interest." ^ Now the question as to whether a pupil can take an immediate interest in Latin declensions or only an indirect one, depends on the way in which the declensions are taught and learned. Herbart would claim that even a Latin declension can be made directly interesting if its acquisition is made to proceed organically from knowledge already known to the learner. Cer- tainly the learner may be asked to look forward to an end interesting in itself, but this need not prevent the several steps towards that end from being each directly interesting. Again, " we must take men as we find them, and be contented if we can awaken even mediate interest." True, we must take men as we find them ; but Herbart's, as every other educator's, contention is, that we shall take children as we find them, and by a timely interference secure a truly organic soul develop- ment with a minimum appeal to indirect interest. The absolutely uninteresting is the absolutely unknown, and never can be known. The uninteresting, therefore, that can be known by the child through indirect interest must contain a nucleus of direct interest ; and this being granted, the truth of Herbart's position is admitted. The difficulty — and it is a great one — that confronts the educator is to find that nucleus from which he is to ' Gesprache iiber der Herbart-Ziller'sche Piidagogik, p. 149. HEKBARTS CONCEPT OF INTEREST. 129 guide the soul-life of the child along a neutral line of development. If such a nucleus can be found, Herbart's theory is true in practice ; if such a nucleus cannot be found, then it is difficult to see how there can be any real science of education. That such nuclei of direct interest can be found is at once the implication and motive force of the modern pursuit of Child Study. The conclusion to which these considerations lead us is that psychologically there is no such thing as in- direct interest. The expression may be a useful one for ordinary non- scientific purposes, but is a contra- dictory and misleading one for the purposes of educa- tional theory, which is in urgent need of well-defined working concepts. We now turn to the elucidation of Herbart's concept of " interest." In employing the term " apperceptive " Herbart does not intend to distinguish between his " interest " and any other kind of interest. The term simply indicates the medium in and through which " interest " works. " Interest " works in and through apperception, and without the apperceptive process there is no " interest " in any definitely intelligible sense. We shall follow Herbart's development of his concept by means of a diagram suggested by Herbart's own language. Here it may be remarked that at present at least there is little danger of educational science suffering from an excessive diagrammatising of its concepts. Indeed, until we can reduce our concepts to some more or less well-defined representative forms, we shall never escape either in theory or in practice from the incubus of those vague quasi-scientific general- ities that inspire the practical teacher with so little I 130 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF IIERBART. confidence. If an educational concept is to be of any real practical service to the teacher, then, just as in every other applied science, the essence of the concept should be hovering before the tocher's mind as a sort of visual sign-post indicating the way. It is one merit of Herbart's educational theory that its funda- mental concepts are such like sign-posts. His concept of " interest " is an illustration of this. Let the small circle in the diagram represent the totality of soul-life at some early stage of its existence. Let a, h, c, d, represent some of the presentations forming part of the soul-life, and let lines a A, &B, &c., repre- sent the directions in which presentations a, h, &c., tend to develop — that is, the directions in which the several constituents, a, h, c, of the soul-life are most interested to go. Each of these lines, then, represents a certain con- centration, absorption, or burying of the soul-hfe in a particular series of presentations, to the exclusion of all other presentations. This concentration {Vertie- funy) is the very essence of the conception " being il HERBART S CONCEPT OF INTEREST. 131 interested." In Herbart's language, " As a suitable light is necessary to every picture, as judgment requires a fitting frame of mind in the observer of every work of art, so a suitable attention is required for every- thing worthy of being observed, thought, or felt, in order to understand it wholly and correctly and to transport oneself into it." ^ In the so-called indirect interest there is no such transporting of oneself. Yet the soul -life, which for the time may have lent its whole force to the support of its own constitu- ent presentation a and its concentration effort repre- sented by the line OA, may forget that there are other presentations in its life than a, each of whose par- ticular concentration lines will have to receive atten- tion. " The individual grasps rightly what is more suitable to his bent, but the more he cultivates him- self in that direction the more certainly does he falsify, through his habitual frame of mind, every other im- pression " ^ that may be made upon any other present- ation or presentations of his soul -life. The result is one-sidedness. But " from the many-sided man many acts of concentration are expected. He must grasp everything with clean hands ; he must give himself wholly up to each one." " What is wanted, therefore, is that the central soul-life should, after accompanying and assisting one of its members on a concentration quest, be able to recall itself to the centre 0, there to take stock of its new acquisitions, to co-ordinate them to the soul-life in general, and to repeat the process as often as may be required in the case of the other constituent members of the soul -life, b, c, &c. This ^ Allgemeiue Piidagogik, Bk. II. cap. i. 1. - Ibid. * Ibid, 132 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF IIERBART. recalling of itself on the part of the soul-life to the base 0 and co-ordinating the results is what Herbart means by the term " Bcsinnung" and which we may translate by the word " Reilection." The possibility, therefore, of the development of an interest which shall be many-sided, and therefore complete, depends on the ability of the central agency of soul - life to summon back the various units of soul-life before they stray too far on their concentration journeys. In Her- bart's words, then, " the concept of interest takes its origin for us in this, that we break off, as it were, something from the growths of human activity, whilst we in no way deny to inner vitality its manifold developments but certainly deny their extreme ex- pression. What is broken off or denied is action, and that which immediately impels thereto, desire." ^ The play of presentation below the threshold of conscious- ness cannot be controlled by the educator ; but above the threshold this can be regulated by an opposing system of presentations. But it is not enough for the production of a many- sided interest that there should be concentration and co-ordination. The results of the different concentra- tions may, when placed alongside each other in the act of reflection, refuse to harmonise. That is to say, the knowledge acquired at one time and in one direc- tion may be contradictory of the knowledge acquired at another time and in another direction. And yet we assume that all knowledge is a unity, and that the results gathered in by the soul-life from A, B, C, &c., should at least not contradict each other, but should ^ Allgemeine Piidagogik, Bk. II. cap. ii. Introd. heebart's concept of interest. 133 form a harmonious addition to the previous sonl-life. If for some reason they do not harmonise with each other and with the previous soul-life, then the devel- opment of a many-sided " interest " is not proceeding as it ought. Now, whilst the acts of concentration aA, &B, &c., exclude each other, yet thought can pass from one line to the other by intermediate presenta- tions ; and if the gap between the lines or the number of the intermediate presentations is not too great, the transition is made in the act of co-ordination. If, however, the distance between the lines aA, cC is so great that the soul-life fails to see nothing but contra- dictoriness between the knowledge brought in from A and that brought in from C, then we say that method has been at fault, and that the development of interest in the direction A should not have been followed by the development of interest in the direction C but in some other and more closely-allied direction. Herbart's concept of " interest " thus includes — First, a concentration or absorption of the soul-life in several directions. Second, ability on the part of the soul-life to reflect on and co-ordinate in its own unity the several acts of concentration. In this act of reflection the results of the different concentration acts are seen to run together and become a unity with each other and with the previously at- tained soul-life. These well-defined psychological moments that con- stitute the concept " interest " determine, for the edu- cator, the general method of procedure to be followed in presenting knowledge to the pupil. 134 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF IlEHBART. First, presentation must be clear at every point of the instruction ; for, if the concentration act is to be perfect, no extraneous presentation must be allowed to enter into the particular concentration series so as to blur the definiteness of any member of the series. Such clearness is secured through Analysis and Syn- thesis— that is, through a separation of the component parts of any one presentation so as to see the difference between it and every other presentation, and a re- combining of the separated parts into their original unity. Second, since the co-ordinating and blending of the results of the ditferent acts of concentration are effected through that associating power of soul-life to which is given the name imagination, and which, viewing the different results together, sees one concentration series running into another, knowledge must be so imparted to the pupil that the new knowledge shall follow naturally on the old through its association with the old. Third, when the reflecting and co-ordinating acts are carried on in such a way that the mind sees each particular part of knowledge in its right relationship to every other part, the result is system ; and hence system must be the aim of the educator. Fourth, in order to produce this ultimate result in the individual mind, the educator must follow the method which he sees or ought to see running through system and which " produces new members of it and watches over the result in its application." ^ Herbart's " interest," then, is a psychological process ^ Allgemeine Piidagogik, Bk. II. cap. ii. 2. herbakt's concept of interest. 135 or movement comprising what we have called the two moments of concentration and reflection. We do not think we can too strongly emphasise the point that Herbart's " interest " is a different thing from the ohjects of " interest." It is true that Herbart, struggling, as we believe, with a new conception, falls occasionally into language that might lead us to suppose that there is no such marked distinction as we are insisting on. But in other passages he is quite clear as to the dis- tinction. Thus, in speaking of the " objects of many- sided interest," he says : " It is the interesting which the concentrations ought to pursue, and the reflections collect."^ Now it is the concentrations and the reflections that constitute, as we have seen, the concept " interest " ; and the " interesting which the concentrations ought to pursue and the reflections collect " cannot be the same thing as the " interest " itself. Again, in the expression, " Shall we undertake to enumerate the sum of interesting things ? " ^ there is an implied distinction between "interest" and "interesting things." And again, " Do not amongst interesting things forget interest." ^ True, he admits that " interest " apart from its object is a formal concept; but this is in perfect accord with his psychological standpoint as we have interpreted it. With Herbart the psychological subject and the external object constitute one indivisible unity of soul-life. Yet the one is not the other. There is the " interest," and there is the object in and through which interest works. Hence it is misleading to say that Herbart divides " interest " into six classes of interest. It is more correct to say that the same psychological process or ^ Allgemeine Padagogik, Bk. II. cap. iii. Introd. 13G A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. movement of concentration and reflection — that is, the same " interest " process works in and throitgh six differ- ent classes of objects. The confounding^ of the subjective and the objective aspects of the concept of " interest " only conceals the true inwardness of Herbart's thought and aim, and is, we believe, the foundation of the mistaken criticism that interest cannot be the end of educational practice. Truly, if " interest " is to be identified with the objects of interest, then, since these objects may be altogether immoral, we cannot un- reservedly subscribe to Herbart's dictum, " Educate so as to interest." What Herbart found, and what every educational reformer finds, to he the difficult thing to deal with in formulating an educational science, is the subjective — by far the more important — aspect of know- ledge. With his eye on the prime end of education as the formation of character, Herbart was in search of a definite concept of a soul-life that worked easily and freely in and through moral ideas — a concept which, whilst it would hold up an ideal or model for imitation to the pupil, would at the same time be a guiding and therefore ivorking concept to the educator. And such a working concept Herbart found in what he calls the fornial concept of " interest," but which he might with greater truth and with greater justice to his own thought have ventured to call the psychological concept of " interest." The most conclusive proof as to the meaning and educational significance of Herbart's " interest " is to be found, we think, from an analysis of his contrast between " interest " on the one hand and desire, cfcc, on the other. He says : " Interest which, in common with desire, will, herbart's concept of interest, 137 and the aesthetic judgment, is opposed to indifference, is distinguished from those three things in that it does not go beyond its object, but depends on it. We are certainly, indeed, inwardly active whilst we are inter- ested, but outwardly we are inactive until interest passes over into desire or will. Interest stands mid -way between the first observation and attainment. This remark helps to make clear a distinction which must not be overlooked — viz., that the object of interest can never be the same as that which is desired. For desire, in liking to seize hold of, strives after something in the future which it does not yet possess ; whilst interest unfolds itself in the act of observation and as yet adheres to the contemplated present. Interest rises beyond mere perception only in this, that in interest the thing perceived has a special attraction for the mind and asserts itself amongst the other presentations by reason of a certain causality [causal power]." ^ It will help us to a clearer interpretation of this " interest " if we enumerate the points of Herbart's description. Negatively, " interest " is (1) not desire, will, or the aesthetic judgment. (2) not indifference. Positively, " interest " is an inner activity which (1) is due to the causality of so7ne presentation. (2) hegins at the point where the thing perceived begins to exercise an attractive influence. (3) goes on in the interval between the moment when we become simply perceptive and the moment when we attain some end. (4) attaches itself to the contemplated present, and ^ Allgemeine Piidagogik, p. 72. 138 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. (5) depends upon its object alone without going be- yond it. This object is different from the object of desire. (6) unfolds itself in the act of presentation. If we consider the above characteristics of " interest," we find we can describe them, and indeed are compelled to describe them, in the same terms which we employ to describe organic habit, and that as " habit " is meaning- less apart from something habituated, so " interest " is meaningless apart from a something habituated. First, interest is not desire, will, or the {esthetic judgment, but is an inner activity unfolding itself in the act of presentation. That is, interest is an imfold- ing activity of the soul-life, which unfolding takes place without the soul-life consciously directing the unfolding movement. Now the meaning of the concept of habit as applied to an organism is, that repeated organic activity in a certain direction has resulted, as it were, in the formation of a groove or rut which tends to become deeper and deeper and more and more deter- minative of activity along that groove. That is, once let the organic activity be started at any point of the groove — it may be the first — and it tends to continue to the end of the groove, uninterfered with by any such ab extra directing agency as " will." Substitute the term " interest " for organic activity, and what has been said of the latter can be equally well said of the former. Second, the start or the beginning of the " interest " movement is made or caused by some presentation which, from its past repeated connection with the existing apperception mass of the soul-life, exerts an attractive influence on that mass. That is, the moment herbart's concept of interest. '139 the -apperceptive mass begins to incorporate the presen- tation into its own life, at that moment the unfolding activity or " interest " begins. The soul-life begins the movement when it desires to make clear the presenta- tion which attracts it, but after the start the movement continues of its own accord. It is the same with any organic activity external or internal that has become habitual. Any bodily movement, such as walking or cycling, is started by the presentation of the movement which we at the time desire and will to make clear or to realise. After the conscious start, the movement continues to unfold itself automatically. Third, " interest " attaches itself to a contemplated present object, and depends on this object alone without going beyond it. That is, the automatically unfolding movement is determined, not by its consciousness of the " end " to which it is going, but simply by the character of the point of the groove where it is. The soul-life, as an automatically unfolding activity, does not see beyond itself, any more than the automatically unfolding move- ment of my pen in writing the word " activity " is deter- mined at any point, say the letter " v," by the next letter " i." Whilst in this respect we may call it a blind movement, yet it is not a chance or indifferent movement : it follows one groove more than another, and in its perfect development through repetition cannot but keep to that groove. Fourth, the " interest " movement goes on in the interval between the moment when we become simply perceptive and the moment when we attain the object of the movement. This end, as we have seen, is not an end to the soul as an automatically unfolding activity. 140 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. Tlie notion of " ond " is applicable to the soul only at the moment when it desires or wills to make a certain presentation clear. Whilst, therefore, the unfolding movement of " interest " is going on automatically in the soul-life, the soul-life is more or less conscious of a desired or willed end. When the "interest" move- ment is perfect, that is when hal)it is thoroughly in- grained, then after the first conscious start of the movement, that is after the end has been desired or willed, the " interest " movement proceeds without any apparent further consciousness on the part of the soul of the end desired or willed. It is important to note that Herbart recognises that the soul may start the movement of interesting itself in a presentation — say the presentation of speaking the truth on some occasion — without, however, allowing the movement to reach its conclusion. We may go a certain distance on the way towards realising a presentation, and suddenly turn aside at the call of another presentation. We may go so far as to think and know what we should do in a particular case, but we may refuse to give the presentation such clearness that we actually do the action. This simply proves that the soul-life is not yet completely habituated to this line of activity : it is not completely " interested " in it. The " interest " movement has not been sufficiently often repeated to ensure that, when it once begins, it will continue unfolding till it reaches its end in the external action. Let us explain a little further along Herbart's line of thought. What starts the " interest " movement, as we have seen, is some presentation of the soul-life that has been roused into prominence by the presence of some herbart's concept of interest. 141 object (it may be an object of reflection or an external object). Now if the " interest " movement were perfect, this roused presentation would be followed by a series of allied presentations which would succeed each other quietly and inevitably. But more commonly the roused presentation is accompanied by some other presentation which is outside the above series, and which has been roused by the object observed. We shall illustrate in the case of an external object. The sight of a poor, dirty, crippled dog lying helpless in the middle of the street rouses in my soul apperception mass the idea or the presentation of lifting him aside. Now, if the soul move- ment is completely absorbed in this presentation, there will follow inevitably the series of presentations which will ultimately issue in my actually lifting the dog aside. But no sooner has the presentation " lifting aside " been roused than it is prevented from becoming " clear " by the springing up of a rival presentation, " disagreeable business," also connected with the object observed. There are thus two presentations in the field — " lifting aside " and " disagreeable business." So long as the former presentation is alone in the field the apperceiving soul is in an attitude of waiting — waiting the inevitable evolution of the presentation series. But the other presentation, " disagreeable business," being outside the former series, has hurried the soul movement out of its " waiting " attitude into one of looking forward and stretching out as it were to a something expected. The change from the waiting attitude to the hurrying forward movement has been caused by the sa^ne object viewed in two different aspects. The fresh presentation " disagree- able business " attached itself to the dog, and made the U2 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF IIERBART. object " move or change in a certain manner." The dog was no longer a poor, dirty, crippled dog in need of help, but a disagreeable object to handle. The original " con- dition of mind has changed to such an extent that the mind has lost itself more in the future than in the present, and the patience which lies in ' waiting ' is exhausted." ^ In place of the fully evolved " interest " movement which would have ended in the lifting aside of the dog there has sprung up a desire to escape ex- pected disagreeable business. And the implication of course is, that if the desire is not to rise up and sup- plant the original presentation and its evolution, this presentation must be so attached through repetition to its proper series that extraneous presentations and the desires roused by them shall have no chance to interrupt the series. In other words, the soul-life, not as a life of mere external action, but first as a life of presentation or knowledge, must become habituated to living in and through certain presentation series on every occasion when it functions in the first member of the series. That " interest " movement in which soul-life lives the right presentation series is well described by Herbart as a " patient interest in which the character possesses a facility in accomplishing its resolves, and which accom- panies it [the character] everywhere without frustrating its plans by \ab extra] claims " ^ — that is, the claims of extraneous presentations. Than the terms "patient" and " facile " none can be more expressive of the character- istics of an activity that has become habit. Every habituated activity, we may say, is sure of reaching the end of its accustomed groove, and hence need not at any ^ Allgemeine Padagogik, p. 73. ^ Ibid., p. 74. HERBAKTS CONCEPT OF INTEREST. 143 stage of its course concern itself about the future stages. So, too, a soul-activity which has become habitual is sure of reaching the end or purpose of its activity, and need not concern itself about the future. Again, every habitu- ated activity, from the very fact of its being habituated, possesses a facility in reaching the end of its accustomed groove. So, too, an habituated soul-activity easily reaches its end, its object, " its resolves." But character is just the sum total of soul-activities ; and so, in and through the habituated soul-activity named " interest," character is rightly said to possess at all times a facility in accom- plishing its resolves. When this " interest " movement in any particular direction is so perfect that right doing is bound to follow on the presentation of what ought to be done, the indi- vidual is said to be perfectly moral in that particular direction. In other words, he has reached that stage of moral self-control at which, in Herbart's language, he is a " psychical organism " — an ideal which in truth he never reaches, but which, nevertheless, is the " aim of education and of self -development." And character would be perfect when in every case right doing followed, through the automatically unfolding Tnovement of apperceptive interest, the presentation of what ought to be done. When soul-life has reached such a stage that on the mere presentation of the right it inevitably desires and wills the right through its perfect apper- ceptive interest in the right, the need for effort seems to have almost disappeared. At such a stage the effort or strain implied in the state called voluntary attention is not needed to continue the series. " The first caus- ality which a presentation more prominent than others 144 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. exercises over the rest is that it (invohmtarily) represses and obscures the rest. Whilst it exercises its power to bring about what we previously called concentration, we may designate the mind so occupied by the word " attention." This involuntary attention, which is im- mediately and invariably followed by a successful result, is that involuntarij apperceptive attention which Herbart recognises as the hisrhest form of attention, since it leads to that kind of pure morality "where there is no calcu- lation of consequences." In proportion as a man ap- proaches this state of pure morality, in that proportion has he attained to perfect freedom or control of self. At this stage the " good will " flows from the right circle of thought. Hubatsch objects ^ that Herbart wrongly places the will at the very end of the series — attention, interest, will ; and that " will " is the presupposition, not the result, of education. The criticism is apparently based on the failure to distinguish between the " will " as mere capricious self -activity and the "will" as that same self-activity disciplined through " interest." Now, will, as we have throughout tried to show, is recognised by Herbart as the presupposition and the postulate of educational practice ; it is " interest " that he rightly regards as the aim and the ideal result of education. When the soul-life, through repeated functioning along certain lines of presentative activity, reaches that state where the effort at first required to start the function- ing has been reduced almost to zero, then by an ab- straction " will " may be said to be at the end of the series — attention, interest, will ; but in reality the ' Gespriiche iiber der Herbart-Ziller'sche Ptidagogik, pp. 145-147. HERBARTS CONCEPT OF INTEREST. 145 three members of the series constitute an indissohible unity of soul-willing in and through the organically connected presentations and their accompanying feelings which constitute the soul-life. That our interpretation of Herbart's " interest " is essentially true seems to be borne out by Herbart's own description of the aspect which the pupil's morality should present to the educator. " To the educator," he says, " morality is an occurrence — a natural occurrence which we may assume has already partly appeared in isolated moments in his pupil's soul, but which should act and continue to act in the whole circuit of the character, and must absorb and change into parts of itself all the other occurrences — thoughts, fancies, in- clinations, and desires. In this complete form the natural occurrence [of good willing] should take place with the whole quantum of the pupil's spiritual power ; in the incomplete form in which it actually takes place the good will has each time — or rather every act of good willing is — a definite quantity of activity, a definite part of the whole, and indeed appears thus defined and of such a degree only for the particular moment. In time, however, the quantum grows, diminishes, disappears, becomes negative (as in a crooked line), grows again, and all this we can observe in so far as the pupil reveals himself." ^ This description clearly points to the con- ceptions of an organic soul-life, of a functioning of a part through the whole, and of the repeated functioning of each and every part growing into firmly-rooted habit. That the conception of a habituated knowing and willing is implicit in the concept of " interest " is further ^ Die Aesthetische Darstellung, p. 203. K 146 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF IIERBAKT. evidenced by a consideration of Herbart's conception. Memory of the Will — a conception which is indeed employed to account for the growth of habituated will- ing. Herbart expresses the conception as follows : " There is a native or original endowment that con- tributes towards the stability of character, which in some instances is noticeable quite early, and which I know not how to express better than by the expression, Memory of the Will. I here avoid all psychological explanation of the phenomena stamped with the names, memory, power of recollection, &c., as if they presupposed a special activity or even power of the mind." ^ The will memory is a something that the will possesses. Yet it is not a formal power ; it is not a power which the mind somehow or other has, and which is to be conceived as different and separable from the presentations in and through which it operates. It is a power belonging to will, and meaningless apart from will. But will, as we have already interpreted it, is the soul presentatively active and conscious of the attainability of its aim. Hence memory is something attached to and belonging to the soul-activity. Further, it is not a memory in the same sense as the memory that remembers ideas. " So much is certain, that a man whose will does not, like presentations in the memory, sjjontanemisly reappear as the same as often as the occasion recurs — a man who is obliged to carry himself back by reflection to his former resolution — will have great trouble in acquiring char- acter." " This comparison between the spontaneous reappearance of will as the same will and the spon- taneous reappearance of ideas held in the memory ^ Allgemeine Padagogik, Bk. III. cap. i. 2. ^ Ibid. herbakt's concept of interest. 147 implies that the Memory of the Will is not the same thing as what we ordinarily understand by memory. The references to spontaneity and reflection point to the interpretation. The Will Memory is that tendency 07' power lohich the Will 'process has to repeat a series of presentations lohich it has gone through heforc. It is the tendency which the will has to re-live, again and again and in and through the same presentations, with ever- lessening reflection and a corresponding ever-increasing spontaneity. It is the power which may be assumed to exist as the explanation of the growth of that invaria- bility of activity which is implied in the " interest " process or movement, and which therefore renders possible an acquired habit of knowing and willing. That this is so is proved by Herbart's further references to the conception. Thus, " Where there is memory of the will, choice also will decide by itself. The power of the wishes will involuntarily place these same wishes in their relative order. Without any theoretical consider- ations (for only by an original choice can the connected motives acquire practical significance or worth) the man becomes conscious of what he prefers and of what he will rather sacrifice, of what he shuns more and of what he shuns less : he will experience it in himself." ^ That is, the individual who has at first to consider and " will " each step of a series will, through the memory power or tendency of " will," sooner or later " will " the whole spontaneously and without theoretical consider- ations, and will only be conscious of, or will experience, an inner activity that seems to be directing itself of its own accord. In other words, he will be experiencing ^ Allgemeine Pjidagogik, Bk. III. cap. ii. 2. 148 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. the acti'S'ity of an acquired habit produced by " memory of the will." If we are right in our analysis of Herbart's concept of " interest," then this " interest " rightly lays claim to be an educational end in itself. It is the instru- ment or organon which it is the aim of educative in- struction to produce, and which shall be ever at the disposal of the soul-life for effectively living the moral life.^ Without this trustworthy organon — made trust- worthy through habituated knowing activities in and through the presentations of the moral ideas — no cate- gorical imperative, no watchword of duty for duty's sake, no summons to an abstract transcendental will-power, can avail to make soul-life moral. The only will that has educational meaning and that can prove effective in the formation of character is the will that operates in and through the functioning of the organon of " interest." To say that " interest " is the educational end, and that we must " instruct in order to interest," is simply to say that the end and work of education is to form character. And Herbart's concept of " interest " is his contribution to the supreme educational question, How to form char- acter, and is the culminating point of his whole argument that character can only be formed through knowledge. The main points of this argument we may now summarise as follows. Soul-life is life in and through presentations or knowledge. Will is the movement of presentations or knowledge, and meaningless when regarded as separable from knowledge. Hence right knowledge in movement will imply right willing. But ^ Expressed less abstractly : it is the instrument or organon into which the sovi-Ufe is to be rjraduaUy converted. HERBARTS CONCEPT OF INTEREST, 149 the soul - life can be habituated to move in right presentations or knowledge by the " educative instruc- tion" of the educator, which secures that the right presentations are sufficiently often repeated in the soul- life as to become habituated soul-activities. The con- ception of the " Memory of the Will " is adopted by Herbart to account for the growth of this habituated soul -activity. The various habituated activities ulti- mately form the soul-life into an organised instrument — an organon called " interest " — which wills, in the truest and highest sense of willing, the moral life of thought and action. Had Herbart been sure of ffetting rid of all the preconceptions attached to the term " will," he would no doubt have been quite willing to substitute for the term " interest " the expression " trained will." In the concept of " interest " Herbart has defined the " trained will," and given to the expression a practi cality of meaning that the practical teacher who runs may read. On the assumption that Herbart's " interest " is an organon of soul-life, a good deal of the criticism, Her- bartian and non-Herbartian, directed against the concept is irrelevant. Professor Laurie, for example, seems to direct his shaft against Herbart when he maintains that the concept of interest must not be placed above that of duty.^ But the two concepts are not comparable. The one is the concept of an organon or instrument, the other is the concept of a law which the organon is to enable the soul-life to obey. Herbart is not so much concerned with pointing to the law as with showing how the law is to be gradually understood and followed. ^ Institutes of Education, p. 249. 150 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. Even if we admit that " the categorical imperative must dominate the school as it must dominate the life," ^ is not the end of the educational art to equip the child with that which will enable him to obey the imperative, and the Herbartian " interest " points the way to that end. Again, it is held by modern Herbartians that in- terest must be regarded as subordinate to the pw^ose of education. Those who draw a contrast between " in- terest" and purpose by the way of criticism of the Herbartian theory, evidently mean by "interest" that which is interesting, and this may certainly be at vari- ance with the purpose of education. But it is the object of Herbart's method to lead the soul-life of the pupil to be " interested " in the purpose : from Herbart's point of view — that is, from the educator's point of view — the " interest " is all - important. The purpose is the law fixing the goal of educational practice ; " interest " is the psychological organon which has to be evolved in the soul-life to enable it to reach the goal. If our interpretation of Herbart's doctrine of " inter- est " holds, then the criticism of such writers as Professor Darroch woidd seem to be based on a misconception of what Herbart means by " knowledge " and " interest." " It is assumed," says Professor Darroch in criticising the fundamental position of Herbart, " that the only thing necessary for moral action is to know what is moral ; and since feeling is a subordinate result of knowledge, our emotional life is wholly guided, directed [by], and dependent on our knowledge and the relations between its different parts," And again, " The child must be habituated to act in accordance with an ideal ' Institutes of Education, p. 249. HERBARTS CONCEPT OF INTEREST. 151 of what is right." ^ From Professor Darroch's insistence on " habit " as a factor in moral education, it is evident that he credits Herbart's theory with the neglect of that factor. And from his own point of \'iew he is right ; for " to know " with him is not the same thing as Herbart's " knowing." He speaks of a habituation to act. But there is a habituation in knowing. Herbart's " knowing," as we have tried to show, is a habituated knoioing — a knowing and a knowledge that cannot be separated except in abstraction from soul-activity. Professor Darroch from his own critical standpoint will admit that the " good will " has as much moral worth as the external action, which may or may not be in the power of the " wilier." And if this is so, then the habituation in knowing is as important as, if not more important than, the habituation in external action. That Professor Darroch takes Herbart's " know- ledge " as an ab extra something that has to be known by the soul-life, instead of an experience rather that has to be lived into and by the soul-life, is evident from what he says in regard to culture. Culture, he urges, " is not something poured into us, but won by the sweat of our brow, by the labour of our own hands." ^ Now if culture here implies knowledge and trained powers, including those of feeling, then Herbart's theory provides for culture ; and so far is Herbartian cultm-e from being a " something poured into us " that the critic's own language, metaphorical though it is, not inadequately describes the process whereby, according to Herbart, the soul does become cultured. At least ^ Herbart and the Herbartian Theory of Education, p. 80. 2 Ibid., p. 82. 152 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. if the soul does not win culture " by the sweat of the brow, by the labour of the hands," it does more when it wins it through an organic growing into and living in it. To the reply that, according to the Herbartian metaphysic, there is no soul to grow into and live in such experiences, the answer is the interpretation of Her bar t given in the preceding pages. Professor Darroch's seeming failure to recognise the significance of Herbart's " knowing " and " interest " in the formation of character is further evident in his ex- planation of how an externally imposed ideal becomes a self-determined law. The child, says Professor Darroch, " must be habituated to act in accordance with an ideal of what is right. The ideal may be, nay, must be, at first an externally imposed ideal ; but our ethical result is attained in education only in so far as the ideal gradu- ally loses its character of mere externality, and becomes an internal and self-imposed ideal." ^ But how is the ideal to gradually lose its character of " mere exter- nality " ? How can that which is " merely external " ever be recognised as internally imposed ? We must attach some definite meaning to the terms " external " and " internal." " External " law must mean here that the law is operative in society, and indeed made by or exemplified in the relationships of men. The external law, then, when it becomes " internal," must fit in to the individual's life, or rather his individual life must fit in to the law in the same way as society does when it is recognising its laws as self-imposed. And this result can only be attained through knowledge, not habit. The " habituation " to act in accordance with the ideal of what is right may be looked upon as that ^ Darroch's Herbart, p. 83. herbart's concept of interest. 153 which is internally determined — that is, self-determined ; but the action itself does not thereby assume any different character. A child will, through the repeated doing of a right action, become habituated to perform that action ; but without insight into what he is doing he cannot be said to be following a self-imposed ideal of conduct. The habituation activity either stands apart from or is inseparable from the material in and through which it works. In the former case it is a meaning- less abstraction, and, to the educator, as useless as the transcendental will. In the latter case it is not the repetition of the activity as pure activity that changes the character of the external law, but the repetition of the activity in and through a gradually advancing organi- cally connected system of presentations — of knowledge. In other words, it is a habit of knowing rightly rather than a habit of acting rightly that will lead the child to recognise laws as self-imposed and to exemplify them in his own external action.^ Such criticism as that of Professor Darroch suggests the source of one objection to Herbart's " interest " theory — the objection which Professor James has crystal- lised in the term " soft pedagogics." " Ostermann, too, speaks of the theory in a like strain. " A philosophic instruction which is concerned on principle with sparing the child all vigorous effort and in resolving all work into easy play cannot therefore be recognised as in- struction which gives training or forms character." ^ ^ Cf. Professor James's Talks to Teachers, pp. 186, 187. Also Rous- seau's Emile, Bk. II., § 106, or Payne's trans., p. 67. "II faut regaider ii I'habitude de I'ame plutot qu'a celle des mains." 2 Talks to Teachers, p. 54. ' Die hauptsachlichsten Irrtiimer der Herbartschen Psychologic, 2nd ed., p. 227. 154 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HEKBART. The apparent assiuuption underlying this idea of " soft pedagogies " is that the interesting activity is easy and the uninteresting difficult to carry on, and that a theory of education which proposes to instruct the child wholly through interest will only result in depriving him of all will-power and of all moral fibre. But this is to mis- conceive Herbart's " apperceptive interest." The " ap- perceptive interest " is a living process or movement of soul ; and wliilst this forward movement, as we have seen, is determined from point to point by its own nature, this does not necessarily mean that the movement is an easy one. At first the soul-life has to seek along several possible lines of movement for that one line along which it will function faithful to its own nature — that is, in which it will find itself " interested." In the acquisition of knowledge tlie soul-life has in most cases to live through a series of presentations before it can reach a given presentation. If the given presentation has suffici- ent attractive power for the soul-life, then the effort in- volving more or less of pain will be pleasantly endured. And it will be all the more pleasurably endured if each step taken in overcoming the difficulty is in itself a natural movement of the apperceptive life. Even in the case of the most moral lives the working of the psychological organon of interest is far from being a smooth one ; but in what proportion it becomes smoother, in that proportion, paradoxical as it may seem, the so- called " will-power " and " moral fibre " of the Herbartian critics disappear. And this brings us to the considera- tion of a last and somewhat shallow objection to the Herbartian doctrine of interest. It is urged that an interest movement whose outcome HERB art's concept OF INTEREST. 155 is to make it almost impossible for a man to take pleasure in anything but the good is at variance with the conception of Christian self-denial. If an individual is so educated along Herbartian lines that virtue comes easy and is a pleasure to him, how can we speak of self-denial in his case ? Any such objection is based on the identification of self-denial with effort, pain, and what is iminteresting. ISTow, if we are agreed that the self is the soul as it lives in and through its ap- perceptive activity, then in whatever direction the self functions it will, like every other organism, function in the direction which it thinks hest for itself at the time. No individual denies himself at any moment of his ex- istence. The child who refrains from eating forbidden fruit, from whatever motive, does not deny himself as he is at the time of his abstinence. If the motive is fear of punishment, his abstinence is due to the fact that he considers this abstinence better for his " self " than the punishment. If the motive is reverence for moral law, his abstinence is due to the fact that he deems observ- ance of moral law is better for his "self" than disobedi- ence. The emphasis is to be laid, not on the denying, but on " himself." The busy man who voluntarily gives up two hours of his valuable time to go and read to an invalid stranger is not a whit more self-denying than the child who eats forbidden fruit. Each is true to his own self. But the two selves are of different kinds, and the difference consists in the content of their activities. In the one case the reading, in the other the eating, consti- tutes the functioning activity which is considered the best for the soul-life at the time. The only meaning that can be attached to the term self-denial is, that the individual 156 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. at a higher stage of development functions differently from what he did at a lower, and thus repudiates his functioning at the lower stage. It is easier for him now, or at least he thinks it is better for him now, to function on the higher plane than on the lower, and so he is no more and no less self-denying than before. Any credit which the individual may receive as a self- denying being is to be given, not because he has denied " himself," but because he has advanced from a lower stage of activity to a higher. And the more involuntary is the activity at the higher stage, the greater the proof of struggle and advance from the lower. With increas- ing knowledge, and through the habit of apperceptively living into this knowledge, the external law becomes transformed into the internal self-imposed law ; struggle becomes less and less ; and self-denial ultimately comes to partake of that Christian character in which the in- dividual iinds his life by losing it. This is the Leibnizian perfection of activity which means complete freedom — a freedom secured through the habit of right knoioing. Certainly to the individual it seems as if self-sacrifice were the rule of his life ; but so long as he is conscious of such self-sacrifice it is only a spurious sacrifice, ex- torted from him by outside influences, and essentially not involving the slightest sacrifice of " self." Such a spurious sacrifice undoubtedly involves effort and pain ; but the true self-denial is only reached when effort and pain have disappeared. Maeterlinck, in his own poetical way, well expresses this conception of self-denial which logically flows from Herbart's theory. " It is not by self-sacrifice that loftiness comes to the soul ; but as the soul becomes loftier, sacrifice fades out of sight, as the heebakt's concept of interest. 157 flowers in the valley disappear from the vision of him who toils up the mountain. Sacrifice is a beautiful token of imrest ; but unrest should not be nurtured within us for the sake of itself. To the soul that is slowly awakening all appears sacrifice ; but few things indeed are so called by the soul that at last lives the life whereof self-denial, pity, devotion, are no longer indispensable roots, but only invisible flowers." ^ 1 Maeterlinck's Wisdom and Destiny, trans, by Sutro, p. 177. CHAPTER XL THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION. From the point of view of the Herbartian psychology as we have interpreted it, the distinction between the real and the formal in education is meaningless. Were the distinction merely an academic one and confined to the realm of theory, its truth or falseness need not con- cern the practical teacher ; but more perhaps than any other conception, the distinction has in the past mainly determined school curricula, if not school methods. The old lengthy and weary classical grind of the public schools was almost wholly determined by the belief in formal discipline — a discipline that would stand the schoolboy in good stead even though the whole of his classical knowledge should afterwards go by the board. And even yet, when the increasing many-sidedness and complexity of modern life are leading to changes in the curricula, the distinction is being insisted on in some quarters, and is therefore still determining to some ex- tent the lohat and the hovj of educational practice. In the opinion of not a few educational leaders, education, in the true sense of the term, is in danger of being sup- planted by mere book knowledge or information ; and this opinion fortifies them all the more strongly in their THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION. 159 belief in such dicta as that training and discipline are more important than instruction. Now, whilst the increasing number of subjects in the school curriculum must have the tendency to produce a mere smattering of book knowledge, may not the remedy for such a state of matters be found, not in a return to the old idea of formal discipline, but in making, as regards different classes of pupils, a wiser and more limited selection of subjects, instruction in and through which will at the same time give all the intellectual discipline necessary to the particular classes ? If, in the case of certain pupils, all the necessary discipline can be secured through a study of English grammar, language, and literature, why burden their curriculum with subjects which are in the very least degree likely to be of any service in enabling them to fit into their particular environment ? Let us consider the dictum that discipline is more important than instruction, with its implication that discipline is a something separable from instruction and available for use even when the particular knowledge through which it was developed has disappeared. The distinction between " training," " discipline," and " in- struction " is clearly set forth in Professor Laurie's well- known ' Institutes of Education.' " Eeal subjects of instruction have to do with the nutrition, and, to a large extent, with the training of mind ; formal or ab- stract subjects with the discipline of mind. The former may be distinguished as nutritive subjects ; the latter as disciplinary instruments." ^ Again, " The formal or ab- stract chiefly discipline the mind and give power ; the ^ Institutes of Education, p. 58. 160 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF HERB ART. real feed the mind and give nutrition." ^ In the class of real subjects are placed nature knowledge, physiology and the laws of health, school geography, languages as literature, history and spiritual ideas, including religious truth. In the class of formal subjects he places drawing, arithmetic, mathematics, science as an abstract or formal study, and grammar. As regards the conception of training, there will be general agreement that such subjects of study as nature knowledge, physiology and the laws of health, &c., ac- custom the mind to deal with certain facts and the laws and practical applications connected with them. Further, in saying that real subjects have largely to do with training, it is virtually admitted that training is to be got only in and through various materials. It is one of the commonplaces of modern educational writings that the method of instruction is at the same time the method of training, — that the one cannot be dissociated from the other except in abstraction and with an eye more on the materials of instruction than the process of instruction. Xow such an admission on the part of those who believe in the distinction between real instruction or training and formal discipline is an im- portant one. Its importance will be seen when we consider the conception of discipline, which conception applies to the so-called " formal " subjects, and is sup- posed to mark them off more or less definitely from the " real " subjects. In Professor Laurie's language, the formal subjects are called disciplinary instruments that give power. We have tried to show how Herbart's concept of " interest " ^ Institutes of Education, p. 54. THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION. 161 is that of a living organon or instrument enabling the soul-life to carry out its purposes ; and, in like fashion, we must know exactly what is meant by the eApression " disciplinary instrument " when employed in the sense in which the formalist in education uses it. The only meaning that we can attach to the term " instrument " is that which manipulates or works on ana modifies some- thing other than itself. In the case of the Herbartian organon of interest, the something other we found to be presentations. The chisel, as a chisel instrument, chisels something ; the hammer, as a hammer instrument, hammers something; the doer, as a doer, does some- thing; and the wilier, as a wilier, wills something. Further, each instrument is itself only through its oper- ations along certain specific lines of work. The chisel performs its function as chisel only in so far as it chisels ; the hammer performs its function as hammer only in so far as it hammers ; and so on. The chisel may be put to do the work of the hammer, and vice versd ; but each instrument in being put to function as the other is, qua that instrument, non-existent. Again, whilst any instrument may be turned from its proper use and made to attempt some other function, the practice it has had in the exercise of its proper function will not enable it to discharge the new function one whit better than if it had never exercised its original function. No amount of chisel work will enable the chisel to hammer one whit better than if it had never chiselled ; and no amount of movement, say, of my pen over the paper will enable it to open the door one whit better than if it had never written. An instrument, then, in the hands of a worker using it has limitations. L 162 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. It is not something absolute. It must have something on which to operate ; it works only along certain specific lines of work ; and its povjer as a particular instrument cannot he transferred to any other instriiment?- If, then, grammar, say, is to be called a formal subject because it is a disciplinary instrument, the analogy of a physical instrument seems to compel us to the follow- ing conclusions. As a disciplinary instrument grammar must have something to operate on — the mind ; it must operate along certain specific lines — grammatical rules, composition, &c. ; its power as grammatical power cannot be transferred to any other subject — such as history or economics. The subject grammar, as an instrument, will work on and modify in some way the object — mind ; but it will do so only as a grammatical instrument, and the result will be a grammatical result. If it does pro- duce any other than a grammatical result, then, by the analogy we have been drawing, the result will be inferior to that which is produced by the instrument assigned for the latter result. But it will be said that we are omitting to take account of the self-activity of mind. The mind, it is urged, in and through its activity on the formal subject, makes the subject all along the line of study a disciplinary instrument. That is, the mind, through ^ Professor Laurie admits that the " Will-energy and Will-process can be disciplined by directing itself to fighting, to hunting, or carpentering, but the result would be a man v7hose judgment was of value in these departments of human activity alone." Yet he draws the distinction between the training and discipline of Will as a power, and the training and discipline of the Will-movement as a process whereby the conscious subject takes the world to itself as knowledge (' Institutes of Education,' p. 125). If the first statement is true — and it is Herbart's position — then the distinction between training of Will as power and training of Will as pro- cess seems to be psychologically meaningless and educationally misleading. THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION. 163 a subject like mathematics or grammar, disciplines itself. What, then, is to be understood by this self- discipline ? The mind cannot alter the facts of the subject nor the laws that co-ordinate the facts. It must accept these as given, and in getting to know them in a systematic way it receives training. But the mind, it is said, receives -power. Here we have a transition from the conception of instrument to that of power. The formal subject is the subject which, in being acquired by the self -activity of the Will-Eeason, becomes an instrument by which the mind, in employing the instrument, receives power, or rather gives power to itself. If we say that the mind receives power from the subject, we are confronted again with the objection that the only power it can receive from the subject as an instrument is the particular instrument's power, but not power in the abstract. Let us say, then, that the mind, in and through the pursiut of a formal study, develops power. But power in what direction ? The power of doing what ? Even granted that Will is the power of powers, it is still only the power of controlling the other powers. Power as power absolute and without any relation whatsoever to a something in and through which it operates is a useless abstraction for practical purposes, and does not justifiably find a place in educa- tional theory which is to determine educational practice. There may be such a thing as a logical concept of power, but the theory of education needs concepts that cor- respond to the living conditions of mind. If, then, there is no such thing as power absolute, it is for the formalist in education to show what other kind of power than mathematical power the mind develops in studying 161 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF IlERBART. the formal subject of luatheinatics, and how such a power can be switched off, as it were, from the formal subject to deal with another subject whose facts and co-ordinating laws are of a different order from those of the first. It may be urged that the presentations of the formal subject are of a kind or quality that calls forth a better kind of discipline. But such a comparison as is hereby implied can be made only if there is a fixed qualitative standard of discipline or power by which the resultant effects of the two classes of subjects can be compared. The two kinds of presentations in the question are presentations of the concrete and presentations of the abstract. Now if the presentations of the concrete are totally different from the presentations of the abstract, and if the quality of the power developed is affected by the nature of the presentations — as by hypothesis it is — then the powers acquired or developed through the two kinds of presentations are totally different, and hence not comparable. In such a case one power can- not be said to be of better quality than the other. If the presentations of the concrete have some points in common with those of the abstract, then it seems logical to look to these common elements for a common standard. But by such a standard it is difficult to see how the one kind of presentations is to be adjudged superior to the other in giving discipline and power. And if we pass outside of these common elements and bring in other elements taken from the presentations of the abstract and so form a standard, we are simply assuming that the abstract rather than the concrete should fix the standard, — which is the point to be proved. In spite of what we have already said, the formalist may still maintain that somehow or other the mind as THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION. 165 mind receives a special discipline, a special power of application, concentration, &c., that is not so much due to the presentations as to the mind's activity in dealing with the presentations. The real basis of this contention seems to be the assumption that, the mind is an entity that can stand apart from all presentations, and that as such an entity it can acquire more and better exercise in operating on presentations of the abstract than on presentations of the concrete. Professor Laurie says, "The highest energy, and therefore the highest dis- cipline of the Will -energy and process, is when it is directed to the complex and abstract of thought." ^ Now, whatever interpretation Professor Laurie may have of this statement, it quite adequately expresses the view of the educational formalist — that will as an entity separate from knowledge can receive its greatest and best discipline by being put to operate on the complex and abstract of thought ; and hence, as an educational corollary, that purely formal instruction without any regard whatsoever to utility must form a necessary part of school and other education. Now, the Will- movement must be either separable or inseparable from the knowledge - process. If it is separable, then the claims of scientific procedure must be met and some more definite connotation given of Will than simply will-power. The will is the power and the power is the will, so that the expression "Will-power" is no more definite than " AYill," which the formalist has yet to define. Like Professor Lamie, he may choose to employ the expression Will-Eeason. If this expression is equivalent to Will-Knowing, then the Will derives its connotation from being linked to knowledge — which 1 Institutes of Education, p. 125. 16G A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. is exactly Herbart's theory. If the expression is not the same as Will-Knowing, then educational science, and still more educational practice, require a definition of Eeason. But let us suppose there is such an entity : the only fair way to test whether the power acquired by it in dealing with the abstract is greater than that acquired in dealing with the concrete, would be to set the two kinds of minds to deal with some problem hitherto equally unknown to both. Such a problem cannot be found, for every problem leans either more to the con- crete or more to the abstract ; and according as the problem partakes more of the nature of the one than of the other, will one mind have a handicap over the other in its attempt to solve the problem. No two men trained in different directions will ever be found to agree as to the absolute fairness of any common test of their respective powers. And even within the sphere of the formal subjects, there are no two subjects that can furnish a common standard acceptable to two men each trained in one of these subjects. The classical man refuses to have his power tested by the same problem as is set the mathematician. Each man knows that his own power cannot be compared quantitatively or qualitatively with his opponent's. But it will once more be objected that, in spite of all theoretical arguments against the distinction, experience is against us, and that the abstract being admittedly more difficult to deal with than the concrete, the exer- cise which the mind receives in dealing with the abstract must be of a severer and therefore better kind than the exercise which the same or another mind receives in deal- ing with the concrete. Now we must grant that some parts of human knowledge are more difficult to deal THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION, 167 with than others, and that the mind in tackUng these receives a severer discipline than it does in the case of other parts. But it does not follow that because one disciphne is more severe than another, it is therefore better. This we have just tried to elucidate. It may be and is claimed for formal subjects that they are to be taught for the sake of their difficulty and the more severe discipline they give the mind. But this is simply another way of claiming that the severe discipline is the best discipline absolutely. Now, the most difficult subjects may not be the best or most necessary subjects to teach certain pupils. The easiest subject may be the most suitable. It will be a waste of time, for example, to teach classics, simply because they are difficult, to a boy who is to follow farming. If our conclusion is correct, any power acquired through his classical study — whether of application, perseverance, &c. — will not assist him one whit, nay, on Herbartian principles, will prove a hindrance to him. But we can- not arrange a curriculum for each individual pupil. The question, then, is, what should be known by all pupils irrespective of what they are going to be ? — the very same question as is put by the formalists in educa- tion. The answer is got by considering, not the dis- ciplinary value of subjects, but the general environment which encompasses every pupil, be he living in the country or in the town. And it is safe to say that the standard of a general education evolved from this will be accepted by a much larger proportion of thinking people than the standard which has hitherto been con- noted by such vague conceptions as " formal discipline of mind." And what is of more importance — the standard will be accepted by the individual most con- 168 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. cerned, the pupil ; for it is his environment alone that interests and therefore truly educates him. Environ- ment, not in the narrow sense of that which is near and around him, which may be very vicious, but in the wider sense of that which is connected directly or indirectly with his whole life, and which he recognises as so connected. But then it will be asked, What of culture ? what of a liberal education ? It is there. Its elements are there, and only require development. The only true culture is the culture that comes from knowing and appreciating one's environment in as wide a sense as possible, and recognising the value of its constituents, relative to one another as well as to higher, more uni- versal, and more ideal elements which these constituents suggest. It is a continuous passing upward — for there can be no finality to culture — from the more material aspects of our environment to the less material. Now, in and by itself no subject of study can be said to give more cultm-e than another. The mere ability to trans- late with ease and felicity of expression a Ciceronian oration does no more imply that a man is cultured than that a builder is cultured because he can build a good house. No amount of Latin reading and no amount of building will in themselves give culture. The one occupation as occupation is as material as the other. Indeed, we can imagine cases where the former is more " material " than the latter. To get at the culture associated with either, we must pass beyond the mere occupations. Let it be granted that such a subject as Latin is farther removed from the " material " interests of life than, say, book-keeping or geography, this does not prove that the latter subjects have no THE FALLACY OF FORMAL EDUCATION. 169 spiritual or ideal aspects. Latin, studied purely with the view of passing an examination, is a very material interest indeed to the examinee; and book-keeping, studied with an ever-growing appreciation of the value of such minor virtues as carefulness, accuracy, and punctuality, and of the larger virtues of straightfor- wardness and honesty, and of their significance to human progress, is book-keeping lifted up from its narrow and more material, to its wider and more ideal, aspects. No subject of study in the school curriculum may ever, so far as the pupil is concerned, get beyond its narrow utilitarian or " material " stage ; and any subject may be lifted from this stage into a higher and more ideal one. That the Modern Side of our Secondary schools has long been looked on as the receptacle for " duffers " is due to the assumption that only certain subjects can and do give discipline and culture, — an assumption that is being more and more called upon to justify itself. On the principles of Herbart it is a false assumption. It will be readily admitted that the old educational ideals aspired to through the avenues of classical and other learning are noble ones ; but now that man's en- vironment is demanding an ever -increasing variety of knowledge, it behoves the educator to see that whilst the old avenues are outworn and forsaken, the other departments of human knowledge shall open up fresh avenues to the old ideals. And the possibility of this depends on the ability of the educator to link up the most " material " subjects of study to the spiritual interests that are inherent in them.^ If such a linking- 1 Cf. Professor Laurie's 'Institutes of Education,' p. 57 : "Naturalistic subjects, I admit, might be so taught as to be humanised, and thus brought within the sphere of the humanistic. All depends on the purpose and method of the educator." 170 A NEW interprp:tation of iierbart. up can be effected in regard to the various parts of knowledge, the epithet " utiUtarian," as applied to the bread-and-butter studies of school, will lose its slighting import. Then each individual's culture, be it reached through technical, commercial, scientific, or classical studies, will be a true culture, because it will be an intelligent growth from out the individual's own mental world. A culture which, by its aloofness from the in- dividual's practical life -interests, fails to irradiate and idealise these interests in some measure, is no culture. The individual is necessarily compelled to hold fast by the practical interests of life ; and if the culture that any educational system has imposed on him is at vari- ance with these interests, the culture goes to the wall, or rather was never existent so far as the individual is concerned. There is a kind and minimum of culture which all agree is necessary to every truly educated man — the culture implied in knowing something of what Professor Laurie aptly calls the Eeal-humanistic materials of instruction ; but in so far as the pursuit of this culture is carried beyond the demands of the pupil's environment, in so far is the culture useless and wasteful. The question of culture, then, is in a sense secondary to that of the environment and the practical interests of each pupil. If the curriculum is well devised in accordance with the claims of the pupil's environment and his practical interests, all that is intelligibly meant by discipline and culture will inevitably follow. This is the logical outcome of Herbart's theory. CHAPTER XII. INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. It is outwith the object of thesft pages to describe in de- tail the method of instruction by which Herbart seeks to show how the child's soul can be trained through know- ledge to desire and will the right. The method, which he calls " educative-instruction " {Erziehung- Unterrichts), seeks to reach its end by developing in the pupil a "many-sided interest." In light of our previous dis- cussion of " interest," we may say that Herbart seeks, through educative-instruction, to develop in the pupil habituated knowing activities in as many right directions as possible. Such instruction is to be given and received through the medium of the apperceptive process, which at every step should not only enable the pupil to in- corporate presentations into his organic soul -life, but should at the same time habituate him to desire and will right presentations in all their clearness of external action. But if the already existent organic soul-life of the child is to be broken in upon by the educator with presentations, many of which will assuredly be foreign to that life as it is, what becomes of the individuality of the child ? 172 A NEAV INTERrRETATION OF HERBART. This question of individuality has been a stumbling- block even to those wlio accept Herbart's theory of knowledge. The question is twofold. First, is there a place for individuality in Herbart's psychological theory ? Second, if there is, how can individuality be preserved alongside of an ah extra system of educative- instruction whose aim is to form character through the development of many-sided interest ? The first question is put by those critics who see in Herbart's theory nothing but a soulless " presentationism." To this ques- tion and the inqilied objection we have attempted to make answer. It is the second question which here calls for consideration — viz., how can the pupil's in- dividuality be preserved alongside of tlie Herbartian educative -instruction with its aim of forming, through many-sided interest, a character or state of mind which shall inevitably lead to certain kinds of action ? Whether individuality is separate and distinct from the interest- formed character, or is in some way connected with it, we must ask, How do the two stand related to one another in the same individual ? First, if the individu- ality is separate from the character, are we to suppose (1) that the individuality is an entity that remains a fixed constant in the midst of the changes which the formation of character implies, or (2) that, like character, it is a changing entity ? Second, if the individuality is somehow interlocked with the character, do the two modify and determine each other without the destruc- tion of either ? First, let us suppose that individuality is an entity that springs into existence at the moment of natural birth and remains a fixed quantity throughout INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. 173 the process of character forming. That it is so taken by some is evident. Hubatsch, for example, argues that because Herbart admitted that natural capacity cannot be created, therefore many-sided interest, which Herbart makes to depend partly on natural capacity, must be unnatural. Here the apparent implication of Hubatsch is that natural capacity is a something which cannot incorporate anything into itself so as to make that which is incorporated natural. And that this is Hubatsch's view of individuality is more evident from his further criticism of Herbart's reconciling attempt. Herbart illustrates the method of modification of in- dividuality by the figure of an angular body which approximates more and more to the spherical form [that is, to the interest -formed character] under the excita- tion of many-sided interest. But, Hubatsch argues, the figure is not clear. Mathematical comparisons must be exactly to the point if they are to be of any worth. The angular body of the individuality is either a change- able or an unchangeable mass. There is no third alternative. If it is alterable, then the sphere [interest- formed character] can only be superimposed upon it, and so the many-sidedness has no influence on the individuality. If it is alterable, then, under favourable conditions, the sphere can so expand that the angular projections disappear. But this leads again to the destruction of the individuality." ^ According to Hu- batsch, then, alterability is inconsistent with individu- ality. This conception of a fixed entity that can never be modified to any degree by instruction without being 1 GesprJiche iiber die Herbart-Ziller'sche Piidagogik, p. 153. 174 A NEW INTERPKETATION OF HERBART. destroyed, is on a par with, and doubtless owes its origin to, the conception of a pure ego that someliow or other persists without change in the midst of the changes of an empirical ego. But if, as we have previously shown, individuality is as well preserved through the notion of a, functioning ego as through that of a pure ego, then we may interpret individuality in a way that admits of its alterability without its destruction. If we regard individuality as something fixed and separate from the interest-formed character of Herbart, and if it is to be untouched whilst the formation of character proceeds, we may well ask, what is the meaning and purpose of the duality, and what is the use of character-forming in education ? Next, let us suppose that the individuality is an entity that changes somehow, and yet stands apart from the interest-formed character. How does it change ? The fact that it changes implies that it is an activity. But activity pure and simple is an abstraction. It must be an activity of some kind ; it must be an activity that derives its colour or quale from that which it produces. The only intelligible colouring is that derived from presentations and their accompanying feelings, Now, if the individuality changes in and through these, it must change either in harmony with or in opposition to the interest -formed character which is dependent on presentations and their accompanying feelings. If it changes in harmony with the changes in interest-formed character, then either the individuality, or the educa- tion that produces the interest-formed character, seems to be superfluous. But, according to the critics, the INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. 175 individuality must be preserved at all hazards. Hence education, whose highest aim is to form character, is unnecessary. If individuality changes in opposition to the changes leading to interest-formed character, edu- cation is even more unnecessary, nay, it is positively harmful. We seem, therefore, to be driven to seek a conception under which individuality and interest-formed character can be connected in the way of mutual in- fluence. Such a conception is Herbart's. This conception we now proceed to consider. Herbart draws a clear distinction between individuality and character. " Willing, determination, takes place in consciousness. Individuality, on the other hand, is un- conscious. It is the dark root to which, as a psycho- logical hypothesis, we refer everything which, according to circumstances, always comes out differently in [dif- ferent] men. . . . Character almost inevitably expresses itself in opposition to individuality through conflict. For character is simple and steadfast; whilst individu- ality is continuously sending forth from its depths new fancies and desires ; and even if its activity is conquered it still weakens the execution of resolutions through its manifold passivity and susceptibility." ^ This description of individuality follows logically from Herbart's concep- tion of soul-life as essentially an organically functioning process. His references to the unconscious and mysteri- ous nature of individuality and its incalculable move- ments show that the doctrine of heredity may quite well find a place in his psychology, and that individuality is not a fixed entity like the metaphysical soul, but a ^ Allgemeine Padagogik, Ek. I. cap. ii. 5. 176 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. nucleus or root that tends to grow and spread. From Herbart's point of view, individuality is the soul-life functioning as it pleases in fancies and desires, heed- less of any external interference or regulation. It is a phase of soul-life whose activity may be " conquered but not annihilated." The activity, though conquered, has " manifold passivity and susceptibility " which weakens the execution of resolutions. To speak in terms of our interpretation, the soul -life up to a certain point has functioned in several (Urections, and the sum total of these functionings thus constitutes the soul -life up to that point. This soul -life tends to function along the old lines and also along new ones. But although the soul-life of the past cannot be annihilated, its tendency to continue in the old paths may, according to Herbart, be to a certain extent " conquered." Such a result is possible simply because the individuality is not a fixed unalterable entity, but an entity that can preserve its unity and identity whilst undergoing change. Indi- viduality, then, is an organic nucleus which, because it is organic, can be so modified by education as to be led more and more along the line of an interest -formed character. Its absolutely natural development would be just along the lines of its first " fancies and desires " ; and if this development exactly coincided with the development of moral character there would be no need for education. But, just because " character almost in- evitably expresses itself in opposition to individuality," there arises the need of modifying the individuality in such a way that character shall not be a growth super- imposed on the individuality, but a growth springing from the individuality. And the conception of the soul as a INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. 177 functioning organic activity, and not as a pure unchange- able ego, is the only conception under which we can think of a harmony between individuality and character as the outcome of a many-sided interest developed through instruction. The possibility of correlating the two activities of individuality and interest, and the general method of procedure in this correlating, are indicated by Herbart as follows : " Before the teacher many-sidedness in its entirety constantly floats, now diminished, now enlarged. His task is to increase the quantity without altering the outlines, the froportioii, the form. But this work under- taken with the individuality does always change its outline, as if from a certain central point on an irregular angular body a sphere gradually grew out, which sphere, however, was never able to cover the outermost projec- tions. The projections — the strength of individuality — may remain in so far as they do not spoil the character ; and through them the entire outline may take this or that form." " We must not picture this enlargement as if to the already existent parts other parts were to be gradually attached." And again, " Although, however, the various directions into which interest branches out are as numerous as the manifold forms and colours of its objects, yet all must start from the same point ; or, the many sides should represent sides of the same person, like different surfaces of one body. All the interests of a single consciousness must find their place in him : this unity we must never lose." ^ The conception which Herbart seeks to unfold in the above may be represented by the following diagram, ^ Allgemeiue Padagogik, Bk. II. cap. ii. 6. M ITS A NEW INTEKPRETATION OF HERBART. a consideration of which may help towards a fuller appreciation of Herbart's reconciling effort. Let the figure ABCDEFG represent the individu- ality of the child before it has been subjected to any external regulation whatsoever. The projections A, B, C, D, E, F, G, represent the strength of the individuality or the directions and extent of the soul- activities from its starting-point 0. The soul-activity left entirely to itself will naturally continue to function in the old directions, even though it will also doubtless function in new directions — that is, the projections A, B, C, &c., will tend to extend more and more. Next, INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. 179 suppose that the projections A, G, F, I) represent activ- ities of the individuality in the right direction, whilst B, C, E represent activities opposed to the formation of moral character. What the educator has to do, then, is to foster further development in the directions A, G, F, D, through the lines of interest Oa, Og, Of, Od, radiating from some central point, 0, of presentation or knowledge. The child will follow these lines simply because they are in the direction in which he himself (his individuality) wishes to go : the series of presenta- tions which the educator will rouse in him will be interesting to him ; or rather he, as an apperceiving soul, will interest himself in the series because it is going his way. Here, at any rate, the child's individuality and the development of an interest -formed character will be in harmony : the educator enlists the individu- ality in the service of character. And here, too, the development for the child is comparatively easy. But the child's individuality is also manifesting itself in the directions B, C, E, The educator cannot destroy these phases of individuality. What he can do is to draw off the child from activity in those directions by persist- ently keeping before him those series of presentations represented by the lines Oa, 0^, 0/, Od, in which the child is through his own individuality interested. The oftener the soul-activity of the child interests itself along those lines, the less frequently, and consequently the less powerfully, will it function in the wrong directions B, C, E, And this, Herbart says, is accomplished " through conflict." The projections in the wrong directions will never disappear, but they will be more or less " conquered." Moreover, as the lines of interest 180 A NE^V INTEUPRETATION OF UERBAllT. Oa, Og, &c., extend, the more will the sphere, of which they form parts, expand and absorh the projections of individuality. It will never completely absorb them, for projections B, C, E, because they are not coinciding with any of the lines of interest Oa, &c., do not really belong to the sphere : they form the breaks in its con- tinuity,— they are the flaws in an otherwise whole and rounded character. But as through " educative instruc- tion " the lines of interest increase in number as well as in strength, the flaws or breaks will become relatively less important. Whilst the " dark root " of individuality will now and then manifest itself in opposition to the interest-formed character, it will largely manifest itself along the lines of many-sided interest. In this way does Herbart try to reconcile the apparent antagonism between the conceptions of individuality and many- sided interest — by means of a conception which is perhaps as adequate as any conception could be to meet the demands of the educator. On this conception and its allied one of " a circle of thought " has been founded the doctrine of " concen- tration of studies." According to this doctrine, first, the knowledge of the pupil should, through educative- instruction, be made an organically connected whole • second, the instruction should start from some central study, to which all other studies should be linked. As regards the latter and more prominent claim, viz., that instruction should proceed from some one central study, it is very questionable if Herbart's concept of interest implies that such a central study can be found. The point 0 of our diagram, representative of the heart of the soul-nucleus, is an abstraction, and only employed INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. 181 for purposes of explanation. To regard it otherwise is contrary to the whole spirit of the Herbartian psychology, which from the very start seeks to shun abstractions. Such a point, indeed, might represent the soul before it could be considered an object of psychological study. When psychology deals with it, it has already become an " irregular angular body," and instruction may pro- ceed to operate on the individuality, and so to form character only " as if from a certain central point . . . a sphere gradually grew out." If in the diagram we suppose the lines Oa, Og, &c., instead of meeting at the point, to start from the angles of a very small irregular figure round the point, we shall have the conception of the real Herbartian starting-point so far as psychology and education are concerned. The irregular figure, let it be ever so small, yet so long as it has sides, points to the fact that there are several starting-points or centres, and hence that knowledge as a unity is yet to seek, and that instruction from a single central subject is not possible. No amount of instruction along the line, say of mathematical interest, will develop what is implied in a moral character. Mathematical knowledge never passes over or merges into knowledge of moral ideas, nor does knowledge of moral ideas ever pass over into a knowledge of mathematics. What is of real con- sequence in the theory of " concentration " is just what is of real consequence in the theory of " interest " — viz., that each branch of knowledge and subject of instruction should be so presented to the pupil that every step in acquisition — be it in mathematics or morals — should be the natural development of the preceding step. And if it is so, then each branch of knowledge will find its cor- 182 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERB ART. relation to all others in the unity of the growing and functioning ego. But this, it may be said, is nothing new : it is just what every educationist has insisted on — viz., the neces- sity of proceeding " from the known to the unknown." The theory of Herbart is certainly this ; but it is some- thing more. Through his conception of individuality, as we have interpreted it, Herbart imposes on the educator the necessity of knowing what the child is and knows when he is taken in hand to be educated. The idea, however crude and mechanical it may seem, is, that before the teacher can take up the threads of a child's soul-life at the age of five or six and develop those that are worth developing, he must first know what the threads are and their constituents. To put it in an apparently cruder way, he must have an inventory of the presentational and other elements that as a sum total constitute the soul -activity of the child at the time when he essays to develop that life in a truly natural and scientific manner. And the comparatively recent appearance of what is styled Child Study is a tacit admission on the part of educationists that Herbart is right, and that before we can hope to bring education as a science to bear on the child, we must first know the child in a much more complete and scientific way than we at present do. The all too common experience of the schoolroom, that there are pupils who seem to be incapable of being taught, may after all be witness against us that such pupils have never been truly known. It is no exaggeration to say that, in the case of the average child of five or six years of age ushered into our schoolrooms, the indi'''iduality, the base from INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. 183 which the teacher must start to develop knowledge and to form character, is almost unknown. Assumption after assumption is made, and under present conditions has to be made, as to what the child knows, how he feels, and how he is inclined to act. Now, if we insist upon the apparently logical outcome of Herbart's theory, that the teacher should first get to knoio the child in the way suggested before seeking to educate him, then the theory points us to what is impracticable. But, in truth, the theory makes no such demands on the teacher. What it really demands is systematic parental education^ and a correlation between this education and the teacher's scheme of education. The theory points us to the real educa- tional starting - point • — that is, the cradle. Other thinkers have voiced the need of an education that shall begin at the cradle. Herbart, through his conceptions of " interest " and " individuality " and his theory of their interaction, has shown the ground for insisting on such an education, and has suggested the general line of procedure whereby true development may be secured. The problem of educational science is twofold : to find the known, and to find how to proceed to the unknown. The latter part of the problem has always faced us, and has received more than its share of consideration. To shirk the former part of the problem, as involving a Utopian revolution in the relations between the parent, the child, the schoolmaster, and the state, is to declare, either that Herbart's theory is false, or that there can be no Science of Education. ^ This of course implies that parents should know something of the Art of Education. Why not ? See Herbert Spencer's ' Education,' cap. iii., " No rational plea can be put forward for leaving the Art of Education out of our curriculum," &c. 181 A iS'EW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. Amoniist shrewd observers of our national life there is a rising consensus of opinion that alongside the in- creasing educational developments of recent years there has been an undoubted decrease of originality, which is simply another name for individuality. Knowledge has increased, but whilst it has developed general excellences in every department of life, these excellences are mostly all of a uniform pattern of mediocrity. There has been a general levelling up of the whole at the expense of the individuality of the members of the whole. If one were to seek for the cause, it might be found in the fact that a certain superstructure of knowledge has been superimposed, mechanical- wise, upon a basis of soul-life assumed to be the same for the individual as for the mass. If the disappearance of originality is to be attributed to the incubus of a uniform state -imposed education, then the theory of Herbart seems to point to a remedy. The remedy consists, not in the policy of laissez-faire, under which individuality has undoubtedly thriven in the past, but in the encouragement OAid strengthening of individuality by a state-regulated differ- entiation of the education suitable for different individuals and communities in the state. And the basis of such a differentiation is to be found, not so much in what the individual himself may fancy to be and do in the state, as in what he is already by birth and environment. To employ the Herbartian conception, we would say that the individual must be encouraged to travel along the lines of interest already known to him, in so far as these tend in the right direction. These are the lines of his individ- uality ; and to encourage him to transfer his interest from these to others is to diminish the effective value INDIVIDUALITY AND MANY-SIDED INTEREST. 185 of the individual as a whole. Thus, to bring the argu- ment close down to the practical, there is no reason why the child of the country should be encouraged to transfer his interest to the city. Other things being equal, his activity will be more effective in the direction of country interests than in that of city interests. In this way his individuality will be strengthened even at the same time that his interests in other directions are being roused and developed. Besides, each individual has a duty to his environment. This duty consists, not in getting out of the environment, but in raising it along with himself and through his own personal advance in knowledge. If such a differentiation can be fostered by the state alongside of an increased systematic correlat- ing of parental and school education, then it will be easier to arrive at a more definite knowledge of what the individual is when he is taken in hand by the schoolmaster, and the first and more important part of the educational problem will be nearer solution. Those who object to such a differentiation of indi- viduals and communities in the matter of education may be asked to ponder Euskin's words. " It has been too long boasted as the pride of England, that out of a vast multitude of men confessed to be in evil case, it was possible for individuals, by strenuous efforts and singular good fortune, occasionally to emerge into the light, and look back with self-congratulatory scorn upon the occu- pations of their parents, and the circumstances of their infancy : ought we not rather to aim at an ideal of national life, when, of the employments of Englishmen, though each shall be distinct, none shall be unhappy or ignoble ; when mechanical operations, acknowledged to 186 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. be debasing in their tendency, shall be deputed to less fortunate and more covetous races ; when advance from rank to rank, though possible to all men, may be rather shunned than desired by the best; and the chief object in the mind of every citizen may not be extraction from a condition admitted to be disgraceful, but fulfilment of a duty which shall also be a birthright." CHAPTER XIII. INTEREST VI:RSVS SELF-REALISATION AS THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION. There is one final question connected with our inter- pretation of Herbart's psychological and educational theories which we consider of some importance, even though it does not add to nor subtract from the weight of our argument. Modern followers of Herbart's theory, whilst recognising the great import of the " interest " doctrine, are nevertheless inclined to set up " self- realisation " as the first principle of education. They are led to this, presumably, through the feeling en- gendered by hostile criticism of Herbart that the " self " seems to have no place in his theory. Now the ques- tion which our interpretation suggests is, what superi- ority has the principle of " self-realisation " over that of " interest." Herbartian " interest," as v/e have tried to show, is as much a self-realisation as anything can be. Both principles imply a " self," and the same aim for that " self," viz., morality or the ethical life. The operation of each is meant to issue in morality. In this respect, at least, " self-realisation " has no claim to be ranked first whilst " interest " is ranked second. The term " self-realisation," by its explicit reference to 188 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERBART. the " self," has a seeming advantage over the term " interest." But as each of the terms is, or ought to he, expressive of a working concept for the educator, the chiim to priority must be settled according to the value of each as a working concept. This much must be granted, so long as we assume that there is such a thing as educational science. Now such a concept should give some indication as to how the end, in view of which the concept is employed, is to be reached. But all the direction which the concept " self-realisa- tion " gives the educator is an injunction to realise the "self;' to make the "self" of the child real. And if we attach to the term real the specific meaning of moral, we are arbitrarily and unwarrantably restricting the meaning of the term self-realisation. The " self " can be as completely realised along the line of vice as along that of virtue. The term has acquired pres- tige through its connection with some of the best and highest thoughts of men, but all along it has secured this prestige through its being tacitly understood as higher self-realisation or the realisation of a higher and better self. But until both terms, " self " and " realise," connote something less vague and more scien- tific than what they connote in the writings of the poet or the theologian, it is difficult to see how the reference to self renders the one concept superior to the other from the point of view of the educator. It may be objected, however, that every educator, Herbartian and non-Herbartian, does actually accept " self-realisation " as the first principle of education ; and that, whilst the principle may not enlighten us as to the general method of reaching our educational end, INTEREST VERSUS SELF-REALISATION. 189 yet we can find the necessary direction in the doctrine of " interest." Now, if Herbart's " interest " were merely a term expressive of the method which the educator must follow in his practice, we might be disposed to allow " self-realisation " to stand as the first principle of educa- tion. But in the first place, "interest," as we have inter- preted it, is not an abstract laiv of the movement of soul- life, but is the soul process, and therefore, in a sense, the soul-life itself. The term " interest " definitely connotes a soul, a self, a mind, a living essence— the terms are quite indifferent to the argument — which interests itself or lives in and through presentations and feelings. Even whilst it does not profess to be an all-embracing term, it yet presents to the educator a definite and intelligible object which he can deal with in a more or less scientific manner. The expression " self-realisation " has no such definite connotation, and affords no guidance for educa- tional practice. If, then, Herbart's definition of the " self " in and through the term " interest " is as ade- quate as his method, then, so far as the Science and Art of education are concerned, the vaguely connotative prin- ciple of " self-realisation " cannot be allowed to have pre- cedence of the more definite and more scientific principle of " interest." It has been said by one that " education is not yet a science, and that the art of teaching is in a pre-Eaphaelitic stage." ^ If education is to throw off such a reproach and claim to be ranked amongst the sciences, it must conform to the first requirements of science, and adopt, both as regards its ends and methods, only those categories that have some well-defined mean- ing. The Herbartian term " interest " is one such cate- ^ J. H. Yoxall, M.P., in ' Cornhill Magazine,' May 1904, p. 674. 190 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF HERB ART. gory : it implicitly contains a whole educational theory, whose fundamental postulate is that very self-activity whose absence the Herbartian critic so much deplores. But in the second place, in spite of the noble associa- tions of the term " self-realisation," like many similar terms it is apt to become in practice a dangerously mis- leading one. Tlie expression, even though by its very vagueness it may include within it all the modern forms of culture, nay, by its very inclusion of all these, draws far too much attention to the " self." It is not with the image of self, even the higher self, before his eyes, that the teacher will best help the pupil to "realise himself" ; and it is not with the watchword of self-realisation that any man is best led towards the moral life. The ob- trusion of the " self " in the expression of a working base principle of ethical life is only too apt to be self-defeat- ing, as leading the individual falsely to identify the direct interest in self with the moral life. What is wanted in national, social, and individual life is an out- look away from the self — a Herbartian interest, which is an interest in anything but the self; and when a man through education reaches the stage where he forgets himself in his absorption in a something " other," then in thus losing his life he truly finds it. Such a soul-life that functions easily and wholly outwardly is the apper- ceptively interested life of the Herbartian theory. Such a soul-life, when apperceptively interested in the practical realisation of the moral ideas, constitutes both the most definite and therefore most intelligible and the highest kind of self-realisation. To quote again from Maeter- linck, whose attitude to the " self " and to knowledge is virtually the same as Herbart's, " Truly to act well INTEREST VERSUS SELF-REALISATION. 191 we must do good because of our craving for good, a more intimate knowledge of goodness being all we expect in return." ^ Such a conclusion draws wonderfully near to and indicates a truth present in that Buddhist Law of Eighteousness which enjoins on men the duty of de- stroying the illusion of selfhood. Ignorance, according to the Buddhist creed, is the source of all moral wrong : and when the individual at last rids himself of the final and greatest error of belief in a self, which he does through right comprehension, the self as a self dis- appears, and righteousness in the universe is increased. We may shrink from such a pantheistic conclusion, but there is in it a truth, which is more or less experienced and revealed in every Christ-like life ; and our general interpretation of Herbart's theory, and in particular of his theory of " interest," seems to justify the view that the Herbartian principle of " interest " and the Buddhist Law of Eighteousness are nearly allied, and offer to the educator a more definite, more practical, truer, and nobler first principle of education than that of " self-realisation." Maeterlinck's Wisdom and Destiny, p. 194. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SO] I 370.15 H534 D252N cl Davidson / A new - interpretation of lJ' 3 0005 00018271 0 370.15 H534 D252N Davidcon A new interpretation of Herba- rt's psychology and educational theory through the philosophy of Leibniz Date Due / . FORM J09