AN OUTLINE OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY.
BY WM. T. HARRIS.
[TO BE USED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO PARAGRAPHS 81 TO 102 OF ROSENKRANZ'S PEDAGOGICS.]
I.
What beings can be educated; the plant has reaction against its surroundings in the form of nutrition; the animal has reaction in the form of nutrition and feeling; Aristotle calls the life of the plant the "nutritive soul," and the life of the animal the "sensitive soul."
The life of the plant is a continual reproduction of new individuals—a process of going out of one individual into another—so that the particular individual loses its identity, although the identity of the species is preserved.
That which is dependent upon external circumstances, and is only a circumstance itself, is not capable of education. Only a "self" can be educated; and a "self" is a conscious unity—a "self-activity," a being which is through itself, and not one that is made by surrounding conditions.