schools still continue in the main to adhere to ancient ruts.

Application, then, is the final step in a Section of knowledge the pupil "applies " the knowledge he has gained. His mind has risen to the conception of some new general truth. He will not rest there, but will find delight in using this new doctrine. We can discriminate the directions in which his activity will be exercised.

(1) Obviously the Application of one Section is to be found in the Preparation of the next. You have learnt the properties of parallel lines: very good, you may look forward to the application of this knowledge in your study of figures bounded by pairs of parallel lines.

(2) Or, you may apply your knowledge to Riders," i.e., to miscellaneous problems suggested by the fancy of teachers or pupils.

(3) Or, you may apply your knowledge to natural phenomena: the Parallelogram of Forces perhaps. In all this work you are once more revising or reviewing the ground covered in the Section, but this review is not mechanical repetition, for it is associated with a novel situation. You have returned from the "General," the abstract, to the “Particular," the concrete: the novelty of the situation lies in the suggestion of a new concrete topic.

Thus Application recalls some features of Preparation. We saw that the First Step is often commenced by a question arising out of some correlated study so with the last Step. It answers problems arising out of correlated studies. The Preparation is commonly a sequel to the previous Section: the Application often suggests the aim for the succeeding Section.

(4) And just as the motive idea in the Preparation may be gathered from some familiar outof-school experience, so the Application will not have fulfilled its purpose completely unless it be adapted (wherever possible) to the practical needs of daily life. The boy who has spent some hours on hero-worship of Simon de Montfort, ought to be the better for it. It ought to be harder for him to be cowardly, easier to be righteous. He ought to love his country the better because Simon died in the people's cause. He need not say that he will do these things; nor need his teacher point the moral, but the application, based on implicit formulæ of conduct, as well as on sympathy, should not fail to hit its mark.

Here, again, let us not be misunderstood. Some teachers find themselves entirely out of sympathy with the deeper human elements in story and song, because they themselves are leading dreary lives, and have not sought to enlarge their experiences by the study of imaginative_literature. Such a man" cannot see the use" of teaching the Humanities, and he may be inclined to regard himself as absolved from considering this Fourth Step because we do not require him to point the moral." But if he has no sympathy, no true apperception of the story, he will fail, not only in the last Step, but in the First and Second! Pupils can do much without the intervention of the teacher, but they cannot learn the Humanities except from a teacher possessed of genuine human sympathies. They cannot learn truly; nor can they apply the lessons so mislearned.

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(5) Finally, this Fourth Step, Application, brings us close to the topic of the following chapter, for Application is self-activity. Knowledge is to be used, not only in the acquirement of further knowledge, but in action. We may decline to discuss the problem of speculative philosophy as to whether knowledge or action constitutes " our being's end and aim": we are content to notice that the two are intimately associated in the progress of mankind, and

therefore in teaching: knowledge is only made perfect when its value is appreciated in the practice of the arts they, in turn, can only be made "fine when they are conducted with intelligence.

There are, indeed, some pupils who can only be properly tested as to their success in gaining knowledge, by witnessing their achievement in work. They have a poor gift of expression: they cannot write or speak glibly they cannot answer good examination papers. But when it comes to active exercise, then it often appears that they have apperceived and thought : such pupils are made little of by teachers who judge only by the standard of "words," but they must not be written down as failures, until they have been tested by experience.

Note on technical terms for the Steps in Method.-Most of the books on Method written in recent years reveal their obligations to the Herbartian pedagogy, even where they make no direct reference to it. Hence the technical terms used in the above paragraphs-Preparation, Presentation, Abstraction, etc.,-are coming to be more familiar every year to teachers in Great Britain. But as technical terms, they are not quite satisfactory-at least to the present writer. Thus, Preparation is easily confused with the teacher's Preparation "2 of his Lesson Notes. It has, therefore, been suggested to use "Introduction" as the name for Step I.; in this volume Construction of Lesson Notes is spoken of, in order to avoid confusion in any reader's mind with Step I.

or

"Presentation "3 is also an unsatisfactory term. It suggests to the English reader that the teacher has to "present give instruction-quite contrary to the intention of the theory, which regards the teacher as standing aside wherever possible, letting the new material "present" itself. Hence "Reception" has been proposed as an alternative title, but this is not wholly suitable either.

1 Vorbereitung.

2 Präparationen (cp. p. 339, title of pamphlet published at Marburg.

3 Darbietung.

CHAPTER XIV

SECOND TYPE OF LESSONS-THE ACQUIREMENT OF SKILL

Now a great deal of early education is concerned with the imparting of skill. And I think that it is no exaggeration to say that, so far as this is concerned, an ounce of demonstration is worth many pounds of description. We build here upon the natural faculty of imitation. We must show the child how a skilled action is to be performed, and get him to imitate what to do.-Psychology for Teachers, pp. 67, 68, by Professor Lloyd Morgan.

Could the young but realise how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. -William James, Talks to Teachers, p. 77.

Die Fähigkeit des Lesens ist bei uns viel verbreiteter wie in England und Frankreich; die Fähigkeit des praktischen Urteils über das Gelesene vielleicht minder verbreitet als in den beiden Ländern.-From a speech by Bismarck in the Reichstag, 1878 (quoted by Rein, Das Erste Schuljahr, p. 19).

§ 1.-IN the last two chapters we were engaged upon topics which were comparatively easy to handle, not only because they were based upon well-worn ground in psychology, but because the followers of Herbart in Germany have here achieved results which cannot be assailed except on minor points.

But now we approach a field where (cf. Chap. XII, 3) little guidance can be expected from professional teachers. The branches of study now to be handled are not all of them modern, but they

have not yet been subjected to the careful psychological treatment which has been accorded to other branches of Instruction. Indeed, the chief error of the strict Herbartians seems to lie in their attempt to regard the Arts as subservient to the same laws of method which apply to branches of knowledge. Music, Drawing, Reading, are all brought by Ziller and Rein under the scheme of the Five Steps.

At this point we must break away from them. Knowledge is one thing: skill another. Just as in Chapter XII we commenced by inquiring into the nature of knowledge, so now we must seek for our Method for Lessons in Arts, by asking, What is skill in an Art? There we inquired of a neighbour, Do you know Eastbourne? Now we must ask, Can you paint a picture of Eastbourne? Can you play a sonata? Can you speak French? Our search must be for the psychological processes involved in the performance of these acts, as a basis for our Method in acquiring or in teaching pupils to acquire them. These phenomena will lead us to "laws of Performance in the Arts, and on these we shall venture to suggest "steps" in Method, illustrated, as before, by examples of Lesson Notes, treating this second "type" of Teaching as we have just treated the first type.

§ 2. In considering the acquirement of arts as taught in school, we are able to set on one side all the powers and habits of the child acquired involuntarily or gained by instinct apart from teaching. These powers are full of interest to the psychologist, and the observation of their growth is helpful to the teacher in his study of Child-Nature, but they lie outside the scope of our present inquiry. Our child at school age commences, under direction, to deliberately acquire some new power