We recall the familiar caricature of the Chinese lack of original power. A merchant negotiated with a Chinaman for the manufacture of a few thousand plates of a certain pattern, and furnished a sample that by chance was cracked. The plates arrived in due season, admirably imitating the original—and every one was cracked. No need in this instance to employ the mandate given by a choleric superintendent to an employee, who on one occasion thought for himself—“I have told you repeatedly you have no business to think!” The Chinese character may be expressed by a parody on a familiar stanza:
For they are the same their fathers have been;
They see the same sights their fathers have seen,
They drink the same stream and view the same sun,
And run the same course their fathers have run.
A timorous cow gazing wistfully over the garden gate at the forbidden succulent vegetables, and nervously rubbing her nose by accident against the latch, may open the gate and gain an entrance, and afterward repeat the process. A new and peculiar fastening will prevent any further depredations. An ingenious boy will find the means to undo any kind of unique fastening to the gate that bars him from the watermelon patch. Charles Lamb humorously describes how the Chinese learned to eat roast pig. A house burned and the family pig perished in the flames; a disconsolate group of people stood around viewing the ruins, when by accident one touched the pig and, burning his finger, thrust it in his mouth to cool it; the taste was good, and he repeated the process. Soon there were marvellously frequent conflagrations—all the neighbors burned their houses to roast their pigs, that being the only method they had learned.
From these somewhat trivial illustrations, we may readily draw a few inferences: First, ingenuity of mind for novel conditions distinguishes man from the brutes; second, the Chinese method of education emphasizes too much the information side—it is not good; third, the human mind is ingenious when it is rightly educated and has a strong motive; fourth, ingenuity is the power that should grow from education. In this idea—ingenuity of mind—is the very essence of what we mean when we emphasize the power side of the soul.
The problem of education is to make men think. Tradition, authority, formalism have not the place in education which they formerly occupied. May it not be that we have so analyzed and formulated the work of the schools that formalism and method have somewhat taken the place of genuine work, full of the life and spirit that make power? We may discover that the criticisms from certain high sources have an element of truth in them. A certain routine may easily become a sacred code, a law of the tables, and any variation therefrom an impiety.
A person possesses power when his conception ploughs through the unfurrowed tissue of his brain to seek its proper affinity, and unites with it to form a correct judgment. A person who is merely instructed does not construct new lines of thought to bring ideas into novel relations; he does not originate or progress. An original thinker masses all congruous ideas around a dimly conceived notion and there is a new birth of an idea, a genuine child of the brain. His ingenuity will open a gate or construct a philosophical system.
Every student remembers well the stages in his education when there was a new awakening by methods that invited thought, when a power was gained to conceive and do something not stated in the books or imparted by the teacher. In the schools, even of to-day, teachers are not always found who can impart elementary science in the spirit of science, who can successfully invite speculation as to causes, who can teach accurate perception, who can interpret events in history, train pupils in the use of reference books, or invite original thought in mathematics. There is no high school which does not yearly receive pupils not trained in original power, no college which does not annually winnow out freshmen, because they have not gained the power to grapple with virile methods. The defect is sometimes innate, but it is oftener due to false methods of instruction. Our great problem is to make scholars who are not hopeless and helpless in the presence of what they have not learned.