the consequent abuse may let one question the usefulness or even justifiability of any methods of teaching. Such a question, however, can arise only from abuses of methods; yet didactic empiricists are quick to answer it in the negative and to condemn all methods of teaching. They argue that the subjectmatter of teaching, combined with the teacher's native gifts, will ensure correct teaching, a statement that ill accords with well-known facts and that is false also on logical grounds: for the neglect of logical methodology has never been known to go unpunished, and even philosophical empiricism is forced to employ it as an organon of speculation. The cult of method is born of thoughtlessness, and the horror of method is born of mental indolence.

III.

DIDACTIC FORMATION: COURSES OF STUDY.

CHAPTER XLII.

The Organico-Genetic Course of Study.

1. The psychological elements in assimilating knowledge, viz., reception, comprehension, and application, as well as the logical elements of the elaboration of the content of teaching, i. e., analysis and synthesis, suggest a series of rules for the didactic formation of the material of instruction. For the purpose of the reception it is best to present the material in such units as correspond to the respective pupil's range of mental vision; i. e., they should be small enough to be taken in at a glance, yet withal large enough to enkindle his interest. For the purpose of the comprehension the teacher should present the material in due order so that everything may, as far as possible, be clear in the light of what preceded, and that the relations of cause and effect, reason and conclusion, end and means, be recognized as the inner bond connecting the single materials. In this way the material of instruction will also be more readily fixed in the mind, for what is internally connected is remembered more easily than what is disjointed. However, there must also be established smaller groups and series, whose members will refer, through certain striking features, to one another as well as to different other materials. But the application calls for groups composed of such elements as admit in practice of diverse combinations. The analysis calls for units with well-defined limits of operation so that all foreign elements be barred. The synthesis, on the contrary, calls for such series as radiate from given points and branch out in different directions.

If we let these rules and others that may be derived from them, be the foundation upon which to arrange the subjectmatter of teaching, we shall be preparing directly for actual teaching, i. e., for the didactic technique; and the viewpoint of this arrangement can be called the didactico-technical one. This viewpoint must, indeed, be considered in the theory of didactic

technique, but we must first look at the subject from the viewpoint offered by the nature of the teaching content. To treat this content according to the rules outlined above, would savor of the formalism which regards the materials of instruction as a mere quarry (ch. X, 2) to be utilized to the greatest possible extent, and would also fail to co-ordinate the materials and to meet the demand that the didactic formation bring out the educative content of the school subjects.

The educative content of a subject consists, as we have proved elsewhere,' in those parts and elements of it that are responsible for its taking root and influencing the pupil's mind. Consequently the value of learning and practice depends essentially upon fixing these parts and elements in the mind. Hence the course of study must be so arranged as to provide light and air for these fertile elements and to infuse into the whole that life-giving spirit of the respective branch which should make the mind grow. We can not do this, however, unless we pay due regard to the structure peculiar to the material of instruction, which is organic, for the content of a branch is, as Plato says in his dialogue, a (@ov. The science of education is akin to the art which Plato demands and which, as he says, "while it looks on a ground-form, directs to it what is scattered here and there," and also "divides the members according to their natural growth and not as does an unskilful cook who simply breaks a part.

2

In this inquiry we shall receive no assistance from psychology, which furnished the elements in the assimilation of knowledge, nor from logic, which contributed the terms of analysis and synthesis. The systems with a nominalistic tendency do not reach even the borderland of this domain, for if the universal is held to be naught other than "an abbreviation for convenience' sake, without any meaning of its own," it is impossible to treat thought as a generating force and the development of its works as a genesis.

3

That world-view alone will assist us which claims not only a similarity, but even an inner relationship between the spiritual and the organic-which is the world-view held by Plato and Aristotle and revived by Trendelenburg under the name of the

1 Ch. X, 4, p. 52.

2 Phædr., pp. 264, 265; cf. Aristotle, Poet., c. 23.

3 Herbart, Metaphysik, § 329; Werke, herausg. von Hartenstein, Vol. IV, p. 321.

In

organic. The organic world-view maintains that all development proceeds from a whole-the seed and germ-and "while the power of the whole remains in supreme control, the parts develop into members which serve and reflect the whole." the field of intellectual work there is the idea which, so long as it remains isolated, remains closed up, but once it is exposed to the mutual relationship incident upon connection with other ideas, it will "display the strength of its law in multitudinous forms of knowledge.'

1

An impetus to this view has come from the Hegelian school also. Though we do not accept the absolute idealism of the Hegelians, we acknowledge gratefully that their attempt to reinstate the ideal principles has deepened our studies of the subject: witness Karl Mager's brilliant book, Die genetische Methode des Unterrichts, Zürich, 1846. For want of a better foundation for our further inquiry, which could be supplied solely by what has not yet been forthcoming-a theory of science. and art from the organic viewpoint-we must be content with utilizing what is at hand, and this will suffice at least for pointing out the right way.

2. The co-ordination of the materials of instruction must be more than didactico-technical: it must have the character of an organico-genetic formation. To obtain this character, it must, first, show in the whole, amid the diversity of its materials, the force of that generating principle which has produced the respective science or art, which controls its development, and which should, for this reason, be recognized in its transmission also. The co-ordination of the instruction materials must, secondly, bring out in its details those parts in which a whole appears as supreme and as reflected in the parts, and which permit survey of an origin, growth, and development. Briefly, the school subjects will possess an organico-genetic character if the organic units and the genetic sequences are brought into view and made the centres of all the rest.

Since the terms organism and genesis are taken from nature, it is proper to turn first to nature to ascertain their significance. In the first place we must study the living beings themselves and, to a certain extent, their origin. But our inquiry must go beyond the individuals and examine into their connections with other beings, and thus we shall arrive at the life units, produced in nature partly independently of man and partly through his

1 Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, II, pp. 374, 375.

efforts and which culminate, for our present purpose, in the telluric life unit.

Even the life of the brutes reveals associations formed for the sake of self-preservation. But among men, these associations are raised to social organisms, of which the individual man is a member. Family and tribe, common life and community, peoples and states, mankind and the Church these are the various associations which hold together organically, in larger and larger circles, the life of man and raise it to a historical life.

In the sphere of human activities it is the productions of art that reveal the greatest resemblance to the organic beings of nature. This should not surprise us, as art largely consists in imitating nature and in continuing and perfecting what the latter has begun. In a work of art, whether of poetry, music, painting, or sculpture, there is a ground motif, which unifies the mediums of expression and which is variously reflected in them. The subconscious development, in the mind, of such a work of art is analogous, in divers ways, to a plant's growth from its

germ.

The matter assimilated by living beings is partly organic and partly inorganic. The elements, however, of the social organisms, viz., the human individuals, are themselves organic units and are therefore themselves ends, so that they may never be treated purely as means to attain a social end. The organisms of the fine arts occupy, in regard to their matter, a middle position between the natural and the social organisms. On the one hand, they elaborate inorganic matter, such as stone, marble, paints, and sounding bodies. But, on the other hand, they employ the spiritual, such as words and thoughts, numerical quantities and space forms, which are obviously more than materials. These spiritual elements are at all events systems of mediums: language is a system of mediums of thought used to express the inner world; numerical quantities and space forms are a system of mediums for elaborating the sensuous picture of the world; and concepts, finally, are a system of mediums for comprehending the given in general. But we must take a further step: these spiritual elements are not only systems but organisms.

After the truth that language is an organism had once been admitted, it should never have been questioned again. The

1 Vol. I, Introduction, II, 9.