Alexander Bain

“ The first emotional effect attendant on the process of generalizing facts, and serving to lighten the intellectual burden, is the flash of identity in diversity, an exhilarating charm that has been felt in every age by the searchers after truth. Many of the grandest discoveries in science have consisted, not in bringing to light any new individual fact, but in seeing a likeness between things formerly regarded as wholly unlike. ”

“ Disorder is the sure sequel of the teacher's failure in sight or in hearing; but, even with the senses good, there may be absent the watchful employment of them. This is itself a natural incapacity for the work of teaching; just as an orator is sure to fail if he is slow to discern the signs of the effect that he produces on his audience. A teacher must not merely be sensitive to incipient and marked disorder; he must read the result of his teaching in the pupils' eyes. ”

“ It will not be denied, as a matter of fact, that the perennial mode of insuring the moral conduct of mankind has been punishment and reward—pain and pleasure. This method has been found, generally speaking, to answer the purpose; it has reached the springs of action of human beings of every hue. No special endowment has been needed to make man dread the pains of the civil authority. ”

“ Constituted as we are to flee all sorts of pain, we are necessarily urged to avoid pain when it comes as punishment. Education is not essential to this effect any more than it is essential to our avoiding the pains of hunger, cold, or fatigue.
Those who demur to the existence of a special faculty, different from all the other recognized constituents of mind—feeling, will, or intellect—are not to be held as declaring that conscience is entirely a matter of education; for, without any education at all, man may be, to all intents and purposes, moral. ”

“ To the Greeks we are indebted for the earliest germ of the university. It was with them chiefly that education took that great leap, the greatest ever made, from the traditional teaching of the home, the shop, the social surroundings, to schoolmaster teaching properly so called. Nowadays, we schoolmasters think so much of ourselves, that we do not make full allowance for that other teaching which was, for unknown ages, the only teaching of mankind. ”

“ It is of some importance to understand that in play, fun, and humor, there is a delicate counterpoise of opposing sentiments, an attempt to make the most of both worlds—love and anger. The great masterpieces of humor in literature, the amenities of every-day society, the innocent joyousness of laughter—all attest the success of the hazardous combination. ”

“ Knowledge has such a wide compass, embraces such various ingredients, that, until we discriminate the kinds of it, we cannot speak precisely either of its charms or of its absence of charm. Some sorts of knowledge are interesting to everybody; some interest only a few. The serious part of the case is, that the most valuable kinds of knowledge are often the least interesting.
The important distinction to be drawn here is between individual or concrete knowledge and general or abstract knowledge. As a rule, particulars are interesting as well as easy; generals uninteresting and hard. ”

“ No law of the intellect appears to be more certain than the law that connects our discriminating power with our retentive power. In whatever class of subjects our discrimination is great—colors, forms, tunes, tastes—in that class our retention is great. Whenever the attention can be concentrated on a subject in such a way as to make us feel all its delicate lineaments, which is another way of stating the sense of differences, through that very circumstance a great impression is made on the memory ”

“ Coming now to the influences of concentration, we assign the first place to intrinsic charm, or pleasure in the act itself. The law of the will, in its side of greatest potency, is that pleasure sustains the movement that brings it. The whole force of the mind at the moment goes with the pleasure-giving exercise. The harvest of immediate pleasure stimulates our most intense exertions, if exertion serves to prolong the blessing. So it is with the deepening of an impression, the confirming of a bent or bias, the associating of a couple or a sequence of acts ”

“ When the terrors of the law are once thoroughly understood, it does not seem as if any education could add to the mind's own original repugnance to incur them; and, on the other hand, when something in the nature of reward is held forth to encourage certain kinds of conduct, we do not need special instruction to prompt us to secure it. There is, indeed, one obvious weakness that often nullifies the operation of these motives, namely, the giving way to some present and pressing solicitation, a weakness that education might do something for, but rarely does. ”

“ One man against a multitude is always in the post of danger. As units in a mass, every individual displays entirely new characters. The anti-social or malevolent passion—the delight in gaining a triumph—which is suppressed in the individual as against a more powerful individual, is reignited and inflamed in company with others. Whenever a simultaneous charge is possible, the authority of a single person is as naught in the balance.
It is often said that the teacher should get the collective opinion on his side—should, in short, create a good class-opinion. ”

“ Now, it is one of the delicate arts of an accomplished instructor to lay before his pupils a set of facts pointing to a conclusion, and leave them to draw the conclusion for themselves. Exactly to hit the mean between a leap too small to have any merit, and one too wide for the ordinary pupil, is a fine adjustment and a great success. All this, however, belongs to the occasional luxuries, the bonbons, of teaching, and cannot be included under the daily routine. ”

“ I thus propose to remove from the science of education matters belonging to much wider departments of human conduct, and to concentrate the view upon what exclusively pertains to education—the means of building up the acquired powers of human beings. The communication of knowledge is the ready type of the process, but the training operation enters into parts of the mind not intellectual—the activities, and the emotions; the same forces, however, being at work.
Education does not embrace the employment of all our intellectual functions. ”

“ Those that begin work at thirteen, and those that are born not to work at all, are alike his inferiors. He should be able to spread light all around. He it is that may stand forth before the world as the model man.
All this supposes that you realize the position; that you fill up the measure of the opportunities; that you keep in view at once the professional life, the citizen life, and the life of intellectual tastes. The mere professional man, however prosperous, can not be a power in society, as the Arts' graduate may become. ”

“ Much of the curiosity of children, and of others besides children, is a sham article. Frequently it is a mere display of egotism, the delight in giving trouble, in being pandered to and served. Questions are put, not from the desire of rational information, but for the love of excitement. Occasionally the inquisitiveness of a child provides an opportunity for imparting a piece of real information; but far oftener not. By ingeniously circumventing a scientific fact, one not too high for a child's comprehension, we may awaken curiosity and succeed in impressing the fact. ”

“ We may at once face the problem of general knowledge. The most troublesome half of the education of the intellect is the getting possession of generalities. A general fact, notion, or truth, is a fact recurring under various circumstances or accompaniments: "heat" is the name for such a generality; there are many individual facts greatly differing among themselves, but all agreeing in the impression called heat—the sun, a fire, a lamp, a living animal. The intellect discerns, or is struck with, the agreement, notwithstanding the differences ”

“ We can from the outset discriminate, more or less delicately, sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes; and, in each sense, some persons much more than others. This is the deepest foundation of disparity of intellectual character, as well as of variety in likings and pursuits. If, from the beginning, one man can interpolate five shades of discrimination of color where another can feel but one transition, the careers of the two men are foreshadowed and will be widely apart.
To observe this native inequality is important in predestining the child to this or that line of special training. ”

“ The Social Motives.—This is perhaps the most extensive and the least involved of all the emotional influences at work in education.
The pleasures of love, affection, mutual regard, sympathy, or sociability, make up the foremost satisfaction of human life; and as such are a standing object of desire, pursuit, and fruition. Sociability is a wholly distinct fact from the prime supports of existence and the pleasures of the five senses, and is not, in my opinion, resolvable into those, however deeply we may analyze it, or however far back we may trace the historical evolution of the mind. ”

“ Mill was now well acquainted with Carlyle, and knew how his peculiarities affected people, and how easily a prejudice might be created that would retard his fame for years. A judicious boldness was the only chance, and the article opens thus: "This is not so much a history, as an epic poem; and notwithstanding, or even in consequence of this, the truest of histories. It is the history of the French Revolution, and the poetry of it, both in one; and, on the whole, no work of greater genius, either historical or poetical, has been produced in this country for many years." ”

“ Unless a man is of fiendish nature throughout, he cannot maintain a consistent course, if he gives way to temper. Indignation under control is a mighty weapon. Yet it is mere impotence to utter threats when the power of execution is known to be wanting. There is nothing worse for authority than to over vaunt itself; this is the fatal step to the ridiculous.
Whoever occupies a position of authority ought to be familiar with the general principles and conditions of punishment, as they may be found set forth in the penal code of Bentham. ”

“ When anything goes wrong, the child has the wish to set it right, and is anxious to know what will answer the purpose; this is the inlet of practice, and, by this, correct knowledge may find its way to the mind, provided the power of comprehension is sufficiently matured. Still the radical obstacle remains—the impossibility of approaching science at random, or taking it in any order; we must begin at the proper beginning, and we may not always contrive to tickle the curiosity at the exact stage of the pupil's understanding. ”

“ At present, if I were to look only at the cowardice and imbecility of the existing generation of public men, with scarcely a single exception, I should expect very little good; but when I consider the spirit and intelligence of the young men and of the people, the immense influence of the journals, and the strength of the public voice, I am encouraged to hope that as there has been an excellent revolution without leaders, leaders will not be required in order to establish a good government. ”

“ But in rewarding, as in punishing, we cannot help looking beyond the present; we have in our eye merits that are yet to be achieved. The fame that attends intellectual eminence is an incentive to study, and the educator has this great instrument at his command.
Praise, to be effectual and safe, has to be carefully apportioned, so as to approve itself to all concerned. As the act of praising does not terminate with the moment, but establishes claims for the future, thoughtless profusion of compliment defeats itself. Praise may operate in the form of warm, kindly expression, and no more ”

“ Genius will work on even a narrow basis, but imperfect preparatory study leaves marks of imperfection in the product.
The same considerations that determine your voluntary studies determine also the university ideal. A university, in my view, stands or falls with its Arts' faculty. Without debating the details, we may say that this faculty should always be representative of the needs of our intelligence, both for the professional and for the extra-professional life; it should not be of the shop, shoppy. The university exists because the professions would stagnate without it ”

“ The intense pleasure of victory contains the sweetness of malevolence, heightened by some other ingredients. The prostration and destruction of an enemy or a rival is, no doubt, the primary situation where malevolent impulses had their rise; and it continues to be, perhaps, the very strongest stimulant of the human energies. Notwithstanding its several drawbacks, we are obliged to give it a place among motives to study and mental advancement. In the fight and struggle of party contests the pleasure of victory enters in full flavor ”

“ So self-asserting were these new-born teachers of the sophist class, that Plato thought it necessary to recall attention to the good old perennial source of instruction—the home, the trade, and the society. He pointed out that the pretenders to teach virtue by moral lecturing were as yet completely outrivaled by the influence of the family and the social pressure of the community. In like manner the arts of life were all originally handed down by apprenticeship and imitation. The greatest statesmen and generals of early times had simply the education of the actual work. ”

“ Might not, I say, seven years of the actual work, in the susceptible period of life, make a preacher of no mean power, without the grammar-school, without the Arts classes, without the Divinity Hall?
What, then, do we gain by taking such a roundabout approach to our professional work? The answer is twofold:
First, as regards the profession itself. Nearly every skilled occupation, in our time, involves principles and facts that have been investigated, and are taught, outside the profession; to the medical man are given courses of chemistry, physiology, and so on. ”

“ Whoever knows most about education is best able to say how far its appliances can cope with such aims as softening the manners, securing self-renunciation, bringing about the balanced action of all the powers, training the whole man, etc.
We shall see that one part of the science of education consists in giving the ultimate analysis of all complex growths. It is on such an analysis that the cost can be calculated; and, by means of this, we can best observe whether contradictory demands are made upon the educator. ”

“ This is the parallel of the much-quoted love of money for itself; but is not so facile in its growth. For one thing, the mind must not treat authority as an enemy to be counted with, and to be obeyed only when we can't do better. There must be a cordial acquiescence in the social system as working by penalties; and this needs the concurrence of good impulses together with reflection on the evils that mankind are saved from. ”

“ What makes a general notion difficult is that it represents a large number of objects that, while agreeing in some respects, differ in others. This difficulty is the price that we pay for an enormous saving in intellectual labor.
The overcoming of isolation in the multitude of particulars, by flashes of identity, is the progress of our knowledge in one direction; it is the satisfaction that we express when we say we understand or can account for a thing. ”

“ In the widest sense of the word a man is educated, either for good or for evil, by everything that he experiences from the cradle to the grave [say, rather, 'formed,' 'made,' 'influenced'] . But, in the more limited and usual sense, the term education is confined to the efforts made, of set purpose, to train men in a particular way—the efforts of the grown-up part of the community to inform the intellect and mould the character of the young [rather too much stress on the fact of influence from without] ”