He is not like a private soldier in an army, expected merely to obey, or like a cog in a wheel, expected merely to respond to and transmit external energy; he must be an intelligent medium of action. But only confusion can result from trying to get principles or devices to do what they are not intended to do-to adapt them to purposes for which they have no fitness.

In other words, the existing evils in pedagogy, the prevalence of merely vague principles upon one side and of altogether too specific and detailed methods (expedients) upon the other, are really due to failure to ask what psychology is called upon to do, and upon failure to present it in such a form as will give it undoubted value in practical applications.

III. This brings us to the positive question: In what forms can psychology best do the work which it ought to do?

1. The Psychical Functions Mature in a certain Order. When development is normal the appearance of a certain impulse or instinct, the ripening of a certain interest, always prepares the way for another. A child spends the first six months of his life in learning a few simple adjustments; his instincts to reach, to see, to sit erect assert themselves, and are worked out. These at once become tools for further activities; the child has now to use these acquired powers as means for further acquisitions. Being able, in a rough way, to control the eye, the arm, the hand, and the body in certain positions in relation to one another, he now inspects, touches, handles, throws what comes within reach; and thus getting a certain amount of physical control, he builds up for himself a simple world of objects.

But his instinctive bodily control goes on asserting itself; he continues to gain in ability to balance himself, to co-ordinate, and thus control, the movements of his body. He learns to manage the body, not only at rest, but also in motion-to creep and to walk. Thus he gets a further means of growth; he extends his acquaintance with things, daily widening his little world. He also, through moving about, goes from one thing to another that is, makes simple and crude connections of objects, which become the basis of subsequent relating and generalizing activities. This carries the child to the age of twelve or fifteen months. Then another instinct, already in occasional operation, ripens and takes the lead-that of imitation. In other words, there is now the attempt to adjust the activities which the child has already mastered to the activities which he sees exercised by others. He now endeavours to make the simple movements of hand, of vocal organs, etc., already in his possession the instruments of reproducing what his eye and his ear report to him of the world about him. Thus he learns to talk and to repeat many of the simple acts of others. This period lasts (roughly) till about the thirtieth month. These attainments, in turn, become the instruments of others. The child has now control of all his organs, motor and sensory. The next step, therefore, is to relate these activities to one another consciously, and not simply unconsciously as he has hitherto done. When, for example, he sees a block, he now sees in it the possibility of a whole series of activities, of throwing, building a house, etc. The head of a broken doll is no longer to him the mere thing directly before his senses. It symbolizes "some fragment of

his dream of human life.” It arouses in consciousness an entire group of related actions; the child strokes it, talks to it, sings it to sleep, treats it, in a word, as if it were the perfect doll. When this stage is reached, that of ability to see in a partial activity or in a single perception, a whole system or circuit of relevant actions and qualities, the imagination is in active operation; the period of symbolism, of recognition of meaning, of significance, has dawned.

But the same general process continues. Each function as it matures, and is vigorously exercised, prepares the way for a more comprehensive and a deeper conscious activity. All education consists in seizing upon the dawning activity and in presenting the material, the conditions, for promoting its best growth-in making it work freely and fully towards its proper end. Now, even in the first stages, the wise foresight and direction of the parent accomplish much, far more indeed than most parents are ever conscious of; yet the activities at this stage are so simple and so imperious that, given any chance at all, they work themselves out in some fashion or other. But when the stage of conscious recognition of meaning, of conscious direction of action, is reached, the process of development is much more complicated; many more possibilities are opened to the parent and the teacher, and so the demand for proper conditions and direction becomes indefinitely greater. Unless the right conditions and direction are supplied, the activities do not freely express themselves; the weaker are thwarted and die out; among the stronger an unhappy conflict wages and results in abnormal growth; some one impulse, naturally

stronger than others, asserts itself out of all proportion, and the person "runs wild," becomes wilful, capricious, irresponsible in action, and unbalanced and irregular in his intellectual operations.

Only knowledge of the order and connection of the stages in the development of the psychical functions can, negatively, guard against these evils, or, positively, insure the full meaning and free, yet orderly or lawabiding, exercise of the psychical powers. In a word, education itself is precisely the work of supplying the conditions which will enable the psychical functions, as they successively arise, to mature and pass into higher functions in the freest and fullest manner, and this result can be secured only by knowledge of the process -that is, only by a knowledge of psychology.

The so-called psychology, or pedagogical psychology, which fails to give this insight, evidently fails of its value for educational purposes. This failure is apt to occur for one or the other of two reasons: either because the psychology is too vague and general, not bearing directly upon the actual evolution of psychical life, or because, at the other extreme, it gives a mass of crude, particular, undigested facts, with no indicated bearing or interpretations:

1. The psychology based upon a doctrine of "faculties" of the soul is a typical representative of the first sort, and educational applications based upon it are necessarily mechanical and formal; they are generally but plausible abstractions, having little or no direct application to the practical work of the classroom. The mind having been considered as split up into a number of independent powers, pedagogy is reduced to a set

of precepts about the "cultivation" of these powers. These precepts are useless, in the first place, because the teacher is confronted not with abstract faculties, but with living individuals. Even when the psychology teaches that there is a unity binding together the various faculties, and that they are not really separate, this unity is presented in a purely external way. It is not shown in what way the various so-called faculties are the expressions of one and the same fundamental process. But, in the second place, this "faculty" psychology is not merely negatively useless for the educator, it is positively false, and therefore harmful in its effects. The psychical reality is that continuous growth, that unfolding of a single functional principle already referred to. While perception, memory, imagination and judgment are not present in complete form from the first, one psychical activity is present, which, as it becomes more developed and complex, manifests itself in these processes as stages of its growth. What the educator requires, therefore, is not vague information about these mental powers in general, but a clear knowledge of the underlying single activity and of the conditions under which it differentiates into these powers.

2. The value for educational purposes of the mere presentation of unrelated facts, of anecdotes of child life, or even of particular investigations into certain details, may be greatly exaggerated. A great deal of material which, even if intelligently collected, is simply data for the scientific specialist, is often presented as if educational practice could be guided by it. Only interpreted material, that which reveals general principles or suggests the lines of growth to which the educator