The Herbartians draw an important distinction between psychical and logical concepts or general notions. The psychical concept is worked out naturally by a child or an adult as a result of the chance experiences of life. It is usually a work of accident; is incomplete, faulty, and often misleading. The logical concept, on the other hand, is scientifically correct and complete. It includes all the common characteristics of the group and excludes all that are not essential. It is a product of accurate and mature thinking. We all possess an abundance of psychical concepts drawn from the miscellaneous experiences of life. It is a large share of the school work, as we have seen, to develop logical concepts out of these immature and faulty psychical concepts. A child is disposed to call tadpoles fishes; and later porpoises and whales are faultily classed with the fishes in the same way. Nearly all our psychical concepts are subject to such loose and faulty judgments. Even where one is accurate in his observations, the conclusions naturally drawn are often wrong. For example, a child that has seen none but red squirrels would naturally think all squirrels red, and include the quality red in his general notion. Most of our empirically derived general notions are spotted with such defects. What relation have these facts to induction? We claim that general notions should be experimentally formed; that is, by a gradual collection of concrete or illustrative materials, and that the logical concepts are the final outcome of comparison and reasoning toward conclusions. In other words, we must begin with psychical concepts with all their faults; we must make mistakes and correct them as our experience enlarges, and gradually work out of psychical into logical methods and results. Our text-books usually give us the logical concept first, the rule, definition, principle, in its most complete and accurate statement. This does violence to the child's natural mental movement.
The final stage of induction is the formulation of the general truths, the concepts, principles, and laws which constitute the science of any branch of knowledge. These truths should be well formulated in clear and expressive language and mastered in this form. Moreover, the results reached, when reduced to the strict scientific form, are the same in the inductive methods as in the deductive or common text-book method. Not that the effect on the mind of the learner is the same but the body of truth is unaltered. The general truths of every subject can be easily found well arranged in text-books. But we are more anxious to know how the youth may best approach and appreciate these truths than simply to see them stored in the mind in a well-classified form.
A rich man in leaving a fortune to his son would more than double the value of the inheritance if he could teach him properly to appreciate wealth and form in him the disposition and ability to use it wisely. In the same way the best part of knowledge is not simply its possession, but an appreciation of its value. The method of reaching scientific knowledge through the inductive process, that is by the collection and comparison of data with a view to positive insight, will give greater meaning to the results. Interest is awakened and self-activity exercised at every step in the progress toward general truths. By the reflective habit these truths will be seen in their origin and causal connection, and the line of similarity, contrast, causal relation, analogy and coincidence will be thoughtfully traced.
Possibly the progress toward formulated knowledge will be less rapid by induction, but it will be real progress with no backward steps. It may well be doubted whether, with average minds, real scientific knowledge is attainable except by a strong admixture of inductive processes. Perfection in the form and structure of our concepts is not to be attained by children nor by adults, but the ideal of scientific accuracy in general notions is to be kept constantly in view and approximated to the extent of our ability.
After all, deduction performs a much more important part in the work of building up concepts than the previous discussion would indicate. As fast as psychical concepts are formed we clamber upon them and try to get a better view of the field around us. Like captured guns, we turn them at once upon the enemy and make them perform service in new fields of conquest. If a new case or object appears we judge of it in the light of our acquired concepts, no matter whether they are complete and accurate or not. This is deduction. We are glad to gain any vantage ground in judging the objects and phenomena constantly presenting themselves. In fact, it is inevitable that inductive and deductive processes will be constantly dovetailed into each other. The faulty concepts arrived at are brought persistently into contact with new individual cases. They are thus corrected, enlarged, and more accurately grasped. This is the series of mental stepping-stones that leads up gradually to logical concepts. The inductive process is the fundamental one and deduction comes in at every step to brace it up. This is only another illustration that mental processes are intimately interwoven, and, except in thought, not to be separated. In the discussion of apperception in the following chapter we shall see that, in the process of gaining knowledge, our acquired ideas and concepts play a most important role. They are really the chief assimilating agencies. But in spite of all this we shall scarcely be led again to the standpoint that logical or scientific concepts should be the starting point in the study of any subject.
[1] Intuition is popularly used in a sense different from the above. We are in need of a word which has the same meaning as the German word, Anschauung, for which there is no popular equivalent in English. Intuition, as defined by Webster, is nearly the same: "direct apprehension, or cognition; immediate knowledge, as in perception or consciousness."
For a discussion of this term, see Quick's Educational Reformers, p. 361, Appleton's edition.
CHAPTER VI.
APPERCEPTION.
We have now to deal with a principle of pedagogy upon which all the leading ideas thus far discussed largely depend for their realization. Interest, concentration, and induction set up requirements relative to the matter, spirit and method of school studies. Apperception is a practical principle, obedience to which will contribute daily and hourly to making real in school exercises the ideas of interest, concentration and induction.