Nor should these interesting, illustrative object lessons be limited to the lower grades. They contain the combustible material upon which an abiding interest in any subject is to be kindled. There are indeed other and perhaps higher sources of interest, but they are largely dependent upon these original springs that flow from the concrete beginnings.
In the second place, object lessons supply a stock of primary ideas which form the foundation of all later progress in knowledge. This is not a question of interest merely, but of understanding, of capacity to get at the meaning of an idea. Concepts are not the raw materials with which the mind works, but they are elaborated out of the raw products furnished by the senses and other forms of intuition. As cloth is manufactured out of the raw cotton and wool produced on the farm or in southern fields, so concepts are a manufactured article, into whose texture materials previously gathered enter. Concepts do not grow up directly from the soil of the mind any more than ready-made clothing grows on bushes or on the backs of the wearers. Concepts must be made out of stuff that is already in the mind, as woolen blankets are spun and woven out of fleeces. Our present contention is that the mind shall be filled up with the best quality of raw stuff, otherwise there will be defect and deficiency in its later products. The stuff out of which concepts are built is drawn from the varied experiences of life. On account of this intimate relation between the realities of life and school studies they cannot be separated. Every branch, especially in elementary studies, must be treated concretely and be built up out of sense materials. Every study has its concrete side, its illustrative materials, its colors of individual things taken from life. Every study has likewise its more general scientific truths and classifications. The prime mistake in nearly all teaching and in the text-book method is in supposing that the great truths are accessible in some other way than through the concrete materials that lie properly at the entrance. The text-books are full of the abstractions and general formulae of the sciences; but they can, in the very nature of the case, deal only in a meager way with the individual objects and facts upon which knowledge in different subjects is based. This necessary defect in a text-book method must be made good by excursions, by personal observation, by a constant reference of lessons to daily experience outside of school, by more direct study of our surroundings, by the teacher perfecting himself in this kind of knowledge and in its skillful use.
There was a current belief at one time that object lessons should form a special study for a particular period of school life, namely, the first years. It was thought that sufficient sense-materials could be collected in two or three years to supply the whole school curriculum. But this thought is now abandoned. Children in the earlier grades may properly spend more time in object study than in later grades, but there is no time in school life when we can afford to cut loose from the real world. There is scarcely a lesson in any subject that can not be clarified and strengthened by calling in the fresh experiences of daily life.
The discussion of the concept and of the inductive process has shown that concepts cannot be found at first hand. There must be observation of different objects, comparison, and grouping into a class. A person who has never seen an elephant nor a picture of one, can form no adequate notion of elephants in general. We can by no shift dispense with the illustrations. The more the memory is filled with vivid pictures of real things, the more easy and rapid will be the progress to general truths. Not only are general notions of classes of objects in nature, or of personal actions built up out of particulars, but the general laws and principles of nature and of human society must be observed in real life to be understood. We should have no faith in electricity if it were simply a scientific theory, if it had not demonstrated its power through material objects. The idea of cohesion would never have been dreamed of, if it had not become necessary to explain certain physical facts. The spherical form of the earth was not accepted by many even learned men until sailors with ships had gone around it. Political ideas of popular government which a few centuries ago were regarded as purely utopian are now accepted as facts because they have become matters of common observation. The circulation of the blood remained a secret for many centuries because of the difficulties of bringing it home to the knowledge of the senses. These examples will show how difficult it is to go beyond the reach of sense experience. Even those philosophers who have tried to construct theories without the safe foundation of facts have labored for naught. The more our thought is checked and guided by nature's realities the less danger of inflation with pretended knowledge. Bacon found that in this tendency to theorize loosely upon a slender basis of facts was the fundamental weakness of ancient philosophy. Nature if observed will reiterate her truths till they become convincing verities, while the study of words and books alone produces a quasi-knowledge which often mistakes the symbol for the thing.
Having this thought in mind, Comenius, more than two and a half centuries ago, said, "It is certain that there is nothing in the understanding which has not been previously in the senses, and consequently to exercise the senses carefully in discriminating the differences of natural objects is to lay the foundation of all wisdom, all eloquence, and of all good and prudent action. The right instruction of youth does not consist in cramming them with a mass of words, phrases, sentences, and opinions collected from authors. In this way the youth are taught, like Aesop's crow in the fable, to adorn themselves with strange feathers. Why should we not, instead of dead books, open the living book of nature? Not the shadows of things, but the things themselves, which make an impression upon the senses and imagination, are to be brought before the youth."
There has always been a strong tendency in the schools to teach words, definitions, and rules without a sufficient knowledge of the objects and experiences of life that put meaning into these abstractions. The result is that all the prominent educational reformers have pointedly condemned the practice of learning words, names, etc., without a knowledge of the things signified. The difference is like that between learning the names of a list of persons at a reception, and being present to enter into acquaintance and conversation with the guests. The oft-quoted dictum of Kant is a laconic summary of this argument. "General notions (concepts) without sense-percepts are empty." The general definition of composite flowers means little or nothing to a child; but after a familiar acquaintance with the sunflower, dandelion, thistle, etc., such a general statement has a clear meaning. Concepts without the content derived from objects are like a frame without a picture, or a cistern without water. The table is spread and the dishes placed, but no refreshments are supplied.
Having completed the discussion of intuition, including object lessons, that is, the preparatory step to the inductive process, we reach the second, reflection and survey. We are seeking for a general term that covers the several steps in the latter part of the inductive process. It includes comparison, classification, and abstraction. It may be discussed from the standpoint of "association of ideas," and contributes directly to concentration.
We have in mind, chiefly, that thoughtful habit which is not satisfied with simply acquiring a new fact or set of ideas, but is impelled to trace them out along their various connections. We have to do now not with the acquisition but with the elaboration and assimilation of knowledge. The acquisition of knowledge in the ordinary sense is one thing; its elaboration in a full sense sets up a standard of progress which will put life into all school work and reach far beyond it, and in fact is limited only by the individual capacity for thought. In school, in reading and study, we have been largely engaged in acquiring knowledge on the principle that "knowledge is power." But no practical man needs to be told that much so-called school knowledge is not power. Facts which have been simply stored in the memory are often of little ready use. It is like wheat in the bin, which must first pass through the mill and change its entire form before it will perform its function. Facts, in order to become the personal property of the owner, must be worked over, sifted, sorted, classified, and connected. The process of elaborating and assimilating knowledge is so important that it requires more time and pains than the first labor of acquisition. Philosophers will admit this at once, but it is hard for us to break loose from the traditions of the schoolmasters. The mind is not in all respects like a lumber-yard. It is, to be sure, a place for storing up knowledge, just as the yard is a deposit for lumber. But there the analogy ceases and the mind begins to resemble more the contractor and builder. There is planing, sawing, and hammering; the materials collected are prepared, fitted, and mortised together, and a building fit for use begins to rise. Knowledge also is for use, and not primarily for storage. That simple acquisition and quantity of knowledge are not enough is illustrated by the analogy of an army. Numbers do not make an army, but a rabble. A general first enlists raw recruits, drills and trains them through a long period, and finally combines them into an effective army. Many of our ideas when first received are like disorderly raw recruits. They need to be disciplined into proper action and to ready obedience.
In connection with assimilation the analogy between the stomach and the mind is of still greater interest. The food received into the stomach is taken up by the organs of digestion, assimilated and converted into blood. The process, however, takes its course without our conscious effort or co-operation. Knowledge likewise enters the mind, but how far will assimilation go on without conscious effort? If kept in a healthy state the organs of digestion are self active. Not so the mind. Ideas entering the mind are not so easily assimilated as the food materials that enter the stomach. A cow chews her cud once, but the ideas that enter our minds may be drawn from their receptacle in the memory and worked over again and again. Ideas have to be put side by side, separated, grouped, and arranged into connected series. There is, no doubt, some tendency in the mind toward involuntary assimilation, but it greatly needs culture and training. Many people never reach the thinking stage, never learn to survey and reflect. The tendency of the mind to work over and digest knowledge should receive ample culture in the schools. There is a mental inertia produced by pure memory exercise that is unfavorable to reflection. It requires an extra exertion to arrange and organize facts even after they are acquired. But when the habit of reflection has been inaugurated it adds much interest and value to all mental acquisitions.
There are also well-established principles which guide the mind in elaborating its facts. The laws of the association of ideas indicate clearly the natural trend of mental elaboration. The association of things because of contiguity in time and place is the simplest mode. The classification of objects or activities on the basis of resemblance, is the second form and that upon which the inductive process is principally founded. In the third case objects and series are easily retained in memory when the relation of cause and effect is perceived between them. These natural highways of association, especially the second and third, should be frequently traveled in linking the facts of school study with each other. Indeed the outcome of a rational survey of an object or fact in its different relations is an association of ideas which is one of the best results of study. Such connections of resemblance and difference or of cause and effect are abundant and interesting in the natural sciences and physical geography, also in history and languages.