The second characteristic pertains to their narrowness and consequent definiteness. They call in each case for an investigation of a relatively small and definite topic. This can be further seen from the following topics in Biology: What household plants are most desirable? How can these plants be raised? What are their principal enemies, and how can these best be overcome? Whether we be working on one or more of such problems at a time, they are so specific that we need never be confused as to what we are attempting.
The nature of these aims in study can be made still clearer by contrasting them with others that are very common. The "harmonious development of all the faculties," or mental discipline, for instance, has long been lauded by educators as one chief purpose in study. Agassiz was one such educator, and in his desire to cultivate the power of observation, he is said to have set students at work upon the study of fishes without directions, to struggle as they might. Many teachers of science before and since his time have followed a similar method. Truth for truth's sake, or the idea that one should study merely for the sake of knowing, has often been associated with mental discipline as a worthy end. Culture is a third common purpose.
Each of these aims, instead of originating in the particular interests of the individual, is reached by consideration of life as a whole, and of the final purposes of education. They are too general in nature to recognize individual preferences, and they are also too general to cause much discrimination in the selection of topics and of particular facts within topics. Strange to say, however, they have discriminated against the one kind of knowledge that the aforementioned specific aims emphasize as especially desirable. Under their exclusive influence, for example, students of biology have generally made an extensive study of wild plants and have paid little attention to house plants. Such subjects as physics, fine art, and biology cannot help but impart much information that relates to man; but that relationship has generally been the last part reached in the treatment of each topic, and the part most neglected. Under the influence of these general aims any useful purpose, whether involving service to the individual or to society at large, has somehow been eschewed or thought too sordid to be worthy of the scholar.
The relation of specific purposes to those that are more general
Nevertheless, these two kinds of aims are not necessarily opposed to each other. If a person can increase his mental power, or his love of knowledge, or his culture, at the same time that he is accomplishing specific purposes, why should he not do so? The gain is so much the greater.
Not only are the two kinds not mutually opposed, but they are really necessary to each other. General purposes when rightly conceived are of the greatest importance as the final goals to be reached by study. But they are too remote of attainment to act as immediate guides. Others more detailed must perform that office and mark off the minor steps to be taken in the accomplishment of the larger purposes. Thus the narrower purposes are related to the larger ones as means to ends.
Ways in which specific purposes are valuable 1. As a source of motive power
Specific purposes are necessary in the first place, because they help to supply motive power both for study and for life in general. Proper study requires abundant energy, for it is hard work; and young people cannot be expected to engage in it heartily without good reason. In particular, it requires very close and sustained attention, which it is most difficult to give. Threats and punishments can, at the best, secure it only in part; for young people who thus suffer habitually reserve a portion of their energy to imagine the full meanness of their persecutors and, not seldom, to devise ways of getting even. Neither can direct exercise of will insure undivided attention. How often have all of us, conscious that we ought fully to concentrate attention upon some task, determined to do so in vain.
The best single guarantee of close and continuous attention is a deep, direct interest in the work in hand, an interest similar in kind to that which children have in play. Such interest serves the same purpose with man as steam does in manufacturing,—it is motive power, and it is as necessary to provide for it in the one case as in the other.
Broad, general aims cannot generate this interest, for abstractions do not arouse enthusiasm. It is the concrete, the detailed, that arouses interest, particularly that detail that is closely related to life. We all remember how, in the midst of listless reading, we have sometimes awakened with a start, when we realized that what we were reading bore directly upon some vital interest. Specific purposes of the kind described insure the interest, and therefore the energy, necessary for full and sustained attention. "For remember," says Lowell, "that there is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship, nor anything more wearisome in the attainment. But the moment you have a definite aim, attention is quickened, the mother of memory, and all that you acquire groups and arranges itself in an order that is lucid, because everywhere and always it is in intelligent relation to a central object of constant and growing interest." [Footnote: Lowell, Books and Libraries.] If eminent scholars thus value and actually make use of concrete purposes, certainly immature students, whose attention is much less "trained," can follow their example with profit.