[143] Reference may be made to the first number of the Revue mensuelle de l'Ecole d'Anthropologie de Paris, published by the Professors at the Librairie Alcan. In this number will be found a lecture by M. André Lefèvre, under this interesting title: Du Cri à la Parole.
LUCIEN ARRÉAT.
II.
THE SCIENCE OF PEDAGOGICS IN GERMANY.
In view of the great care with which The Monist cultivates psychology, I may be permitted in my first letter, consistently I judge, to speak of the most important application of this science—its application namely to pedagogics.
Psychological pedagogics, in the true sense of the word, exists with us in Germany only since the days of J. F. Herbart who abandoned the ancient psychological theory of the faculties and discovered in ideas the sole component elements of all psychical activity, derived feelings and volitions from the interrelation and interoperation of ideas, thus denied the absolute freedom which the possibility of formation of will, or education, excludes, and upheld the determinability of the will by the ideas.
Although Herbart himself applied his system of psychology pedagogically, yet it bore in the life-time of its author only scanty fruit in this direction. Psychological pedagogics was not developed beyond its original generality and unprofitableness of character until Professor STOY of Jena and especially Professor ZILLER of Leipsic took up, with an energy that equalled their tact, the practical construction of psychological pedagogics.
Pedagogics now exerted a reactive promotive influence, if not on the further development of psychology, yet on its study. After the psychological writings of Herbart, it was eminently the Empirical Psychology[144] of M. W. DROBISCH, sustained in the Herbartian spirit but written more in agreement with "scientific" (i. e. inductive) methods, that supplied psychological pedagogists with nourishment. The last-named work, which in many respects possesses value even to-day, was received with especial favor, since it avoided happily the metaphysical tendencies which Herbart rather assiduously employed. A like excellence and a like favorable reception were the merit and reward of the large work, later appearing, of LAZARUS: Das Leben der Seele in Monographien. Subsequently, were effective two little books by I. DRBAL and by LINDNER: Lehrbuch der empirischen Psychologie and Handbuch der empirischen Psychologie. Lindner's treatise has recently appeared in an English translation, published by Heath of Boston, under the title of "A Manual of Empirical Psychology as an Inductive Science. A Text-book for High Schools and Colleges. By Dr. G. A. Lindner, of Prague. Translated by Chas. de Garmo." The English edition of this book received an unfavorable review in the London Academy (Nov. 1, 1891); yet in one respect the criticism was in our opinion justified. Too little use, namely, has been made of the results of experimental psychology.
[144] Leipsic, 1842.
This is, moreover, not only true of Lindner's book but holds for all the psychological books that have exerted any considerable influence in pedagogical circles, is true in fact of the great Lehrbuch der Psychologie by VOLKMANN, the latest edition of which, prepared by Cornelius, is not in this respect abreast of the position of the times.