blue and green, or something of that sort. Occasionally it is found in serious proportions, so that the patient sees nothing in its proper color, but all objects appear to him in a sort of grey. Evidently color-blindness, especially if it exists to any serious extent, must interfere very greatly with all lessons that involve color. To test for this disorder, take a large number of cards, or skeins of wool, representing all the principal colors, as well as a good many of the shades of each color. Place these before the pupil in an indiscriminate heap, and ask him to assort them into groups, i.e., putting all the reds in one place, the blues in another, etc. If he does this without error, or with no serious error, he is not color-blind.

If you suspect any pupil of defective hearing, take him into a quiet room, ask him to close his eyes, then hold your watch opposite his right ear, a couple of feet away. If he hears it tick at that distance, remove it further away until you have determined the greatest distance at which he can hear the sound. Repeat the test on the left ear, and compare the results with those obtained from similar tests applied to several pupils whom you have no reason to suspect of defective hearing. If you find him defective, give him a seat where he may have every possible advantage in the way of hearing.

Adenoid growths and catarrh not only interfere with the senses of hearing, smell and taste, but lower the child's general vigor and acuteness, and thus handicap him in every direction. The same may be said of decayed teeth, through their influence on the digestive organs. The parents should be urged to consult a physician, and have such things remedied.

Not only should the teacher keep a sharp lookout for disorders and defects in the sense organs of his pupils; it is no less important that he should understand what I may call their peculiarities of sense-perception. To explain more fully: There are striking differences in the relative contribu

tions of the different senses to the material of thought; and these differences seem to depend entirely on some original peculiarities in the nature of the person, for which perhaps no explanation can be given. In some persons the eye furnishes so large a part of the material of knowledge as to overshadow all the other senses; while in others the sense of hearing plays, comparatively, a far more prominent rôle. The former are said to be eye-minded, or to belong to the visual type. In all their thinking, whether it be memory work, creations of the imagination, or abstract thought, as in mathematics, they constantly help themselves out by means of visual images of the objects concerned. In performing arithmetical calculations, each figure takes its place in an imaginary line, in spatial relation to the other numbers.* The other class is said to be ear-minded, or of the auditory type. Objects are habitually associated with the sound of their name, instead of with their appearance or spatial location. Will not the teacher be far more likely to succeed with his pupils, if he understands the type to which each child belongs in regard to sense-perception, especially in the case of those who belong in any pronounced way to some one type? On the one hand he will avoid the mistake of appealing solely to the ear in dealing with the difficulties of a pupil who is strongly of the visual type; and vice versa, of confining himself to illustrations of the visual sort, in the case of a pupil of a strongly auditory habit of mind. And on the other hand, he will recognize the necessity of training those pupils who are of the visual type, in ear-mindedness, and those who are of the auditory type, in eye-mindedness; in order that his pupil may be trained in every direction, so far as possible, and on all sides of his being. Of course, what has just been said of hearing and vision is equally true of the other senses, especially of the

*See Galton's Inquiry into Human Faculty, Appendix on Number-forms.

muscular sense, which plays so prominent a part in the education of every child.

It may be admitted that there are difficulties in the way of determining this question of the sense-types. But to an observant teacher, these difficulties are not insuperable. He may take it for granted, in the first place, that the children who show unusual proficiency in drawing, are not deficient in visualizing power; that those who have a good ear for music, and sing well, are probably auditory (though, of course, they may be also good visualizers); and that those who are particularly active, and much inclined to emphasize and punctuate what they say by gestures, are not devoid of images connected with the muscular sense. But he may do more than this. In explaining difficulties for his pupils, he may observe that some children in the class are evidently greatly aided by an illustration that appeals especially to the eye; others, again, by such as appeal to the ear. The former should be noted as belonging to the visual type, the latter as belonging to the auditory. Or again, if the teacher himself be of the visual type, he may say to his pupils: "When I count up to a hundred, the numbers seem to arrange themselves before my eyes in a line, thus": (drawing on the blackboard a representation of his own "number-form"), "how do they arrange themselves with you, when you count?" Those who have number-forms will understand at once what he means, and will make drawings of those forms; while the rest will fail to understand what he means by "numbers arranging themselves in a line." The former are visualizers, the latter probably not so; at least, not so much so. Again, ask a pupil to describe Niagara; it will be evident from his description which of the senses has played the most prominent part in his observation of the scene.

To prevent misapprehension it should be added that in all normal children, all the senses contribute to the activities

of knowledge. This question of the sense-types is one of degree, not of kind. It is a question merely of the relative prominence of the senses in the elaboration of knowledge. In some children visual ideas are relatively more prominent; in others, auditory ideas; but probably in no normal child does any one order of images dominate knowledge to the exclusion of the other orders. All children are absorbed in the impressions coming in through their senses. Introspection, self-consciousness, and abstract thinking are, roughly speaking, in direct proportion to the age of the individual; while passive submission to the bombardment of the senseworld, is in inverse proportion.

VII. PERCEPTION:

In dealing with the senses, we have of necessity had something to say of perception and representation. These may therefore be the more quickly disposed of here.

Perception is the active side of sense-experience. It is the mind's interpretation of sensations, as signs of a present reality. In other words, the child's mind receives a sensation of color by way of the eye, a sensation of taste by way of the palate, one of smell by way of the nostrils, and one of touch by the skin of the fingers. In themselves these sensations do not constitute the reality of an orange; but the child's mind interprets them as signs of such present reality, and perceives the orange as "now and here." Now suppose it were possible for you to present to the pupil an object absolutely new to him; absolutely different from anything he has ever known. How much knowledge would he obtain from a first view of it? Of course, such a thing is not possible; for every object you present to him must have some color, and so link itself to that whole realm of color-ideas which even the youngest school child already possesses; it

must have some form, some weight, etc.; and in respect of each of these qualities it is already, to a certain extent, familiar. But suppose you present an object that differs as widely as possible from anything previously known to him. Let him merely see this object at a distance as great as the whole length of the school-room. Ask him to tell all that he can about it. Then let him come closer, touch the object, handle it, bring as many of his senses as possible to bear upon the examination of it. Then ask him to tell you what he can about it. Note whether, in his description, he makes the largest possible use of other knowledge already in his possession. Note also that, in telling you what he has learned about the object, all the terms he employs are general terms, and not particular terms.; e.g., he may say the object is "small," "round," "smooth," "dark green," "sour," "like an olive." Are any of these terms particular? No; they are general. If your pupil were devoid of general notions, could he ever gain a knowledge of a new object through sense-perception ? But whence come these general notions? Are they conveyed into the child's mind by the senses? No; the senses can convey nothing but the particular impression. The general notion is constructed by the mind itself, which instantly brings each new sensation under these categories of thought, and so makes knowledge of it. If this be true, does it not follow, on the one hand, that objects should be constantly brought, in the fullest possible way, within the range of sense activity; and on the other, that every encouragement should be given to the child to exercise his own self-activity of thought in the acquisition of a knowledge of those objects? And if it be true that in learning to know a new thing, your pupil is constantly going back and drawing upon that knowledge which is already his, will it not be greatly to your advantage to know, approximately at least, how much knowledge he possesses when he comes under instruction? your

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