In a word, if I may be allowed the expression, some affect

a subjective pedagogy, and others an objective pedagogy.

Bacon is of the latter number. That which preoccupies the

great English logician above everything else is the exten-

sion of observations and experiments. " To reason without

knowing anything of that which we reason upon," he says,

"is as if we were to weigh or measure the wind." Des-

cartes, however, who has never neglected the study of facts,

esteems them less as material to be accumulated in the mind,

than as instruments for training the mind itself. He would

have repudiated those teachers of our day who seem to

think the whole thing is done when there has been made to

pass before the mental vision of the child an interminable

series of object-lessons, without the thought of developing

that intelligence itself.

205. Malebranche (1638-1715). ВЂ” We must not expect

great pedagogical wisdom from a mystical dreamer and reso-

lute idealist, who has imagined the vision of all things in

God. Besides, Malebranche has given only a passing atten-

tion to things relating to education. The member of a

teaching congregation, the Oratoiy, he has not taught; and

the whole effort of his mind was spent in the search for

metaphysical truth. Nevertheless, it is interesting to stop

PHILOSOPHERS OP THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 193

for a moment this visionary who traverses the earth with

eyes fixed on the heavens, and inquire of him what he

thinks of the very practical question, education.

206. Sense Instruction condemned. — Malebranche will

reply to us, with the prejudices of a metaphysician of the

idealist type, that the first thing to do is to nourish the child

on abstract truths. In his view, souls have no age, so to

speak, and the infant is already capable of ideal contempla-

tion. Then let sense instruction be abandoned, " for this

is the reason why children leave metaphysical thoughts, to

apply themselves to sensations." Is it objected that the

child does not seem very well adapted to meditation on

abstract truths? It is not so much the fault of nature,

Malebranche will reply, as of the bad habits he has con-

tracted. There is a means of remedying this ordinary inca-

pacity of the child.

" If we kept children from fear, from desires, and from

hope, if we did not make them suffer pain, if we removed

them as far as possible from their little pleasures, then we

might teach them, from the moment they knew how to speak,

the most difficult and the most abstract things, or at least the

concrete mathematics, mechanics."

Does Malebranche hope, then, to suppress, in the life of

the child, pleasure and pain, and triumph over the tendencies

whicrt ordinary education has developed?

"As an ambitious man who had just lost his fortune and

his credit would not be in a condition to resolve questions in

metaphysics or equations in algebra, so children, on whose

brains apples and sugar-plums make as profound impressions

as are made on those of men of forty years by offices and

titles, are not in a condition to hear the abstract truths that

arc taught them."

Consequently, we must declare war against the senses, and

194 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

exclude, for example, all sorts of sensible rewards. Only,

by a singular contradiction, Malebranche upholds material

punishments in the education of children. The only thing

of sense he retains is the rod. 1

207. Influence of Material Environment. — Another

contradiction more worthy of note is, that, notwithstanding his

idealism, Malebranche believes in the influence of physical

conditions on the development of the soul. He does not go

so far as to say with the materialists of our time, that ' ; man

is what he eats " ; but he accords a certain amount of influ-

ence to nourishment. He speaks cheerfully of wine and of

" those wild spirits who do not willingly submit to the orders

of the will." He never applied himself to work without hav-

ing partaken of coffee. The soul, in his view, is not a force

absolutely independent and isolated, which develops through

an internal activity: " we are bound," he says, "to every-

thing, and stand in relations to all that surrounds us."

208. Locke (1632-1704). -- Locke is above all else a

psychologist, an accomplished master in the art of analyzing

the origin of ideas and the elements of the mental life. He

is the head of that school of empirical psychology that rallies

around its standard, Condillac in France, Herbart in Ger-

many, and in Great Britain Hume and other Scotchmen, and

1 Is not the antagonism pointed out by Malebranche more serious than

M. Compayre seems to think? If the current of mental activity sets

strongly towards the feelings, emotions, or senses, it is thereby diverted

from the purely intellectual processes, such as reflection and judgment.

The mind of the savage is an example of what comes from " following the

order of nature " in an extreme training of the senses. On the nature and

extent of this antagonism, the following authorities may be consulted:

Hamilton, Metaphysics, p. 330 ; Mansel, Metaphysics, pp. 08, 70, 77 ; Bain,

The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 392-394 ; Bain, Education as a Science)

pp. 17, 29, 37 ; Spencer, Principles of Psychology, pp. 98-99. (P.)

PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 195

the most of modern philosophers. But from psychology to

pedagogy the transition is easy, and Locke had to make no

great effort to become an authority in education after having

been an accomplished philosopher.