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NOTES OF LESSONS

ON

THE HERBARTIAN METHOD

ON THE

HERBARTIAN METHOD

(BASED ON HERBART'S PLAN)

BY

M. FENNELL

AND

MEMBERS OF A TEACHING STAFF

WITH A PREFACE BY

M. FENNELL

LECTURER ON EDUCATION

LONGMANS,

GREEN, AND CO,

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

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PREFACE.

THE main idea in the Herbartian system of psychology is that the mind is built up of its own contents. Herbart, following Locke, not only denies the existence of " innate ideas," but puts contemptuously aside the doctrine of inborn faculties or capacities for acquiring knowledge. According to him, and others of his school, the mind possesses but one single original power: that of entering into relation with externals. Given this power, the mind at certain points of contact receives into itself "presentations" (sense percepts), each reception causing growth or, as he would put it, “widening the circle of thought". But these mental contents are not often merely passive, they most frequently become "presentative activities," their force and suggestiveness being increased every time one returns to the surface of consciousness. By a process of selection and assimilation new "presentations" are joined to old, while the earliest and most simple by their interaction produce others of varying complexity.

When a child comes for the first time to a teacher a certain number of these "presentations," with more or less cohesion among themselves, are already to be counted as its mental furniture and equipment, having entered partly by way of experience and partly by way

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