Mind and Hand: Manual Training the Chief Factor in Education

by Charles H. Ham

[42] “Body and Mind,” p. 22. By Henry Maudsley, M.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1883.

[43] Ibid., p. 26.

Freedom of speech and freedom of thought are catch-penny phrases. There is much of the former, but very little of the latter. Speech is generally the result of automatic thought rather than of ratiocination. Independent thought is of all mental processes the most difficult and the most rare; habit, tradition, and reverence for antiquity unite to forbid it, and these combined influences are strengthened by the law of heredity. The tendency to automatic action of the mind is still further promoted by the environment of modern life. The crowding of populations into cities, and the division and subdivision of labor in the factory and the shop, and even in the so-called learned professions, have a tendency to increase the dependence of the individual upon the mass of society. And this interdependence of the units of society renders them more and more imitative, and hence more and more automatic both mentally and physically.

Another powerful influence contributes to the same end. The schools educate automatically. They train the absorbing powers of the brain, but fail to cultivate the faculties of assimilation and re-creation, and neglect almost wholly to develop the power of expression. Mr. John S. Clark, of Boston, has made this point of the failure of the schools to train the brain-power of expression to its utmost, so plain that it is here reproduced in full, as follows:

Five senses.

Tongue.

Hand.

Fig. 1.

“Studying the functions of the brain, we find that for educational purposes it may be likened to an organism with a threefold form of working, an organism with a power of absorption, a power of assimilation and re-creation, and a power of expressing or giving out. The force or character of a brain is measured entirely by its expressing power, by what comes out of it. Examining a little closer, we find that the brain absorbs through all the five senses, while for expressing purposes it makes use of but two of these senses, or rather of but two organs of these senses—the tongue and the hand. [Fig. 1] is a simple diagram representing a brain with the five senses placed on one side, as means of absorbing power, while on the other side the tongue and the hand are placed as organs of expressing power. The other function of the brain, that of assimilation and re-creation, cannot of course be graphically represented. It may, however, be said to be the result of the action of the other two functions. Now, the equipping of a brain, or the healthy education of a brain, consists in giving it expressing power through the tongue and the hand, coextensive with the power of absorption and the power of re-creation.