VIII
THE STIMULUS TO THINKING

Whilst the distinction between thinking in things and thinking in symbols should never be ignored or lost sight of by the teacher, it need not be brought to the attention of the learner,—at least not in the elementary stages of instruction. It is more profitable for the learner to be absorbed in gathering the materials of thought and in learning by practice how the educated man uses the instruments of thought for drawing correct conclusions by the most effective methods. If the eye of consciousness is turned inward upon the mental processes too early, the flow of thought is interrupted and turned away from its logical trend. The teacher, on the other hand, is expected to watch the growth of the mind, to awaken its powers, and to rouse these into vigorous activity. It is essential not merely that he furnish the pupils with the proper materials and the best instruments of thought, but it is necessary also to stimulate and direct their thinking; otherwise that which is given them may overload the memory, lie undigested in the mind, exhaust the energy of the intellect in the effort at retention, and ultimately cause mental dyspepsia.

Men engaged in the struggle for existence or preferment usually find ample stimulus to their thinking faculties in the competition which real life affords. If the merchant does not think accurately and effectively, the consequences make themselves visible in his bank-account. The desire for gain is the stimulus to thought in the commercial world. An appeal to the same motive is often made through the offer of prizes and fellowships. The competition of maturer years finds an adumbration in the competition for class-standing and for superiority in field sports. The teacher who employs no higher stimulus to thought must be a stranger to the mysteries of the art which he professes to practise. The best device for stimulating thought has come down to us hallowed by the ages. It bears the name of the greatest teacher of ancient Athens. It is the question as employed in the Socratic method. Not every question is the Socratic question. A man who has lost his way may ask a question, but it is for the sake of getting information. The teacher may be striving to fix in the memory the salient points of the lesson: he asks questions, the answers to which the pupils are expected to have at their tongue’s or fingers’ end. A question thus used for purposes of drill is often called a categorical question. It is not the Socratic question. Yonder sits a boy who for half an hour has been wrestling with a problem. Unable to find a clue to the solution, he asks the teacher for help. Instead of telling him directly what he wishes to know, the Socrates behind the teacher’s desk asks a question which causes the pupil to put side by side in his mind two ideas never before linked together in his thought. Upon the learner’s face is seen an expression as if light had broken in from on high. He goes back to his seat, and ere five minutes have elapsed he is rejoicing in the glory of a triumph. The teacher did not do the pupil’s thinking; he simply asked the Socratic question, which aims to make the pupil think for himself.

This stimulus to thought is employed by every master in the art of teaching. The question may be used to badger and confuse a pupil, especially if the teacher is not fully acquainted with the ideas and thoughts already in the learner’s mind. To cause each pupil to place side by side in his mind ideas and concepts whose relation he had not before perceived, it is necessary that the teacher be familiar with the intellectual storehouse of every member of the class. At this point the substitutes who occasionally supply the places of regular teachers are at a serious disadvantage. Not knowing what the pupils have mastered, they must often waste time in finding out where the new should be linked to the old, and where it is necessary to clarify and develop ideas with which the members of the class are only partially familiar. Often these lose interest in the recitation while the new teacher quizzes them on things that have grown stale by repetition.

Back of the Socratic method must be a Socrates to ask the questions. Education results not from highly differentiated methods, but primarily from the play of mind upon mind, heart upon heart, will upon will. In the difficult art of making others think the most important factor is the teacher himself. Thinking begets thinking. In this connection one cannot forbear contrasting the living teacher with other educational forces. Treatises on education are in the habit of printing nature with a capital letter, whilst words like teacher, humanity, unless they stand at the beginning of the sentence, begin with a small letter. Are lifeless rocks, dead leaves, stuffed birds, and transfixed bugs more potent in begetting thought than the teacher himself? If nature were such a wonderful teacher, then the savage, who is in daily contact with nature, and who knows little or nothing of the artificial life of our great cities and great seats of learning, should be the best thinker. A teacher whose power to stimulate thought is not superior to dead leaves and bugs and butterflies must have reached the dead line. Teachers may be divided into two classes,—those who have ceased to grow and those who are still alive and growing. Under the tuition of the former the boy soon loses interest in study, and seldom acquires the power to think. From a dead tree you cannot propagate life. Ingraft a lifeless teacher upon the school; the most skilful devices of school management and recitation serve only to intensify the dull routine, the mechanical iteration and repetition which Bishop Spalding declares to be the most radical defect in our systems of education. It takes life to beget life. A growing mind is required to beget growth in other minds. A good thinker begets habits of close and careful thinking in those whom he moulds. Some minds are more gifted in this respect than others. Without doubt the reader can recall the difference between knowledge and teaching power which he felt while under several instructors at the same time. From those gifted with stimulating power he came away with a mind full of interrogation points, and with the attention riveted upon problems calling for investigation. Under their tuition the commonest things acquired new interest and became food for thought. The thinking seemed to spring out of that upon which the mind was feeding. Without the stimulating influence which comes from a live teacher, contact with nature, access to libraries and laboratories, may amount to very little. The chief trouble in our schools is not that the courses of study are too crowded, but the teachers are too empty. There is not enough fuel in their minds to keep alive the glow of thought. A course of study in the hands of a skilful instructor is like a good bill of fare under the direction of a skilful caterer. The latter does not expect every guest to eat his way through the entire bill of fare; he so manages the succession of dishes as to stimulate the appetite to the end of the feast; he sends the guests away without the feeling of satiety,—in fact, anxious for the next banquet. The wise teacher does not expect the pupils to assimilate everything in the course of study; he aims so to feed and stimulate their minds that they find genuine pleasure in thinking, and go away from him with a desire not only for more knowledge, but also for things that give suitable exercise to the reflective powers. Watch a boy at work upon a puzzle, and you will be convinced that he finds genuine delight in thinking that which is difficult. The most popular teachers are not they who smooth away every difficulty in the pathway of the student, but they who stimulate his thinking and help him to a sense of mastery over intellectual difficulties. The quickening, stimulative influence of the Socratic question lies in its content rather than its form; and both form and content derive their vivifying power from the personality of the teacher.

The stimulating influences which go forth from a live teacher are partly conscious and partly unconscious. The latter are the more effective. Minds gifted with quickening power create about themselves an intellectual atmosphere that is like the invigorating atmosphere of the mountains or the tonic breezes which blow from the sea. The woman who touched the hem of the Saviour’s garment felt at once the vivifying influences which were all the time going forth from the Great Teacher. Here we stand face to face with the greatest mystery of the teacher’s art.

Some light is shed upon the mystery by the intimate relation which exists between the conscious and the subconscious life of the soul. The ideas upon any subject which the individual cherishes during his conscious moments, the train of logical thinking which he pursues when the will gives direction to reflection, the creative effort which he seeks to put forth in a given direction,—these shape the activities which go forward in the depths of the soul when perhaps the attention is directed to the discharge of routine duties. “Out of the heart are the issues of life.” “Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.” From the treasure-house of the heart come welling up thoughts, ideas, sentiments, and purposes which largely determine the influence exerted upon others when the individual is not aware of it. The teacher must make himself what he wishes his pupil to be. If foot-ball and base-ball and boating form the staple of his thinking, the centre of his affections, these athletic sports, in ways that are marvellous and often past finding out, become the objects of thought in which his students will delight. If the truths and principles of science absorb his interest and engage the best thought of his conscious hours, these will determine the moulding influence which he will unconsciously exert upon others. If he delights in germ-ideas, in seed-thoughts, these will emanate from him whenever he is thrown into contact with inquiring minds. Much, of course, is due to native ability, to inherited qualities. The circle of minds which one teacher can reach is further limited by the breadth or narrowness of his views, by the points which he has in common with others, by the amount of sympathetic interest which he manifests in their progress and welfare, by the sum total of the characteristics of generic humanity which he has taken up into himself. In other words, his stimulating power depends upon the extent to which his inner life is representative of the best thought and the best traits of the age in which he lives and of the people to whom he belongs.

A teacher may destroy his power to awaken and stimulate thought by developing every subject in all its bearings to its logical or final conclusion. He should send his classes away from the daily lecture or recitation to the library or the laboratory, to the study, the shop, or the field, with the sense of something to be achieved, with the feeling that there are fields of research for them to explore, fields that will amply repay careful study, investigation, and reflection. There is nothing that tires a boy so soon as the feeling that there is nothing for him to do, nothing that he can master, achieve, or conquer on his own account. The normal child is so constituted that it loves activity, looks into the future, and regards itself as an important factor in the world’s life. The advance from childhood to youth is marked by a transition into the period that is brimful of hope and ambition. The pampered son of a rich man may feel no longing of this sort; his opportunities for early travel and premature indulgence in every whim may have brought him to the point where the whole world seems like a sucked orange for which one has no further use. Unless the rich father and mother possess an extraordinary amount of good sense, their children do not have an even chance with the children of the middle classes whose outlook upon life supplies abundant motives for study and exertion.

If a boy has not made a mistake in selecting his parents, if the atmosphere of the home in which his first six years are spent is normal, he comes to school with a sense of something to be achieved. Should this feeling be lacking, the true teacher will aim to beget it by the instruction he gives and by appeals to the innate desire for knowledge. As the intelligence dawns, the interrogation points on the boy’s face multiply; his appetite for knowledge grows by what it feeds on. If the branches of study do not become more interesting than any occupation by which the boy can earn coppers, there is something wrong either with the boy or his teacher, or with both. In the ascent of the hill of science every step upward widens the horizon, increases the field of vision, and stimulates to new effort. Every field explored beckons to new fields of investigation. It is the prerogative of the teacher to point out what is in store for the aspiring youth. Take, for instance, the domain of pure mathematics. A pupil had learned in his geometry that parallel lines never meet. The teacher told him that his geometrical studies would after a while acquaint him with lines that are not parallel and yet never meet. No sooner had he met lines of this kind, situated in different planes, than his teacher told him of lines that continually approach but never meet. The appeal to his curiosity helped to stimulate the desire for knowledge and kept him thinking earnestly and seriously until he met the asymptote and its curve. The study of asymptotes soon grew more interesting than chess or any sports upon the athletic field.

The aim of the teacher should be to make himself useless. In other words, the school should aim to lift the pupil to the plane of an independent thinker, capable of giving conscious direction to his intellectual life and of concentrating all his powers upon anything that is to be mastered. It is to be reckoned a piece of good fortune for a bright and talented youth to fall under the dominating influence of a master mind. In endeavoring to walk in the footsteps of an intellectual giant, to comprehend his theories and speculations, and to carry the burden of his thoughts, unexpected strength and power are developed, and when the day of emancipation comes—as it always does come in the case of gifted youth—the learner will find that he has entered a higher sphere of intellectual activity, and will henceforth rank among the world’s productive thinkers.

As was said at the beginning of the chapter, the competition of men in mature life is usually sufficient to stimulate their thinking. The men whose duties make a constant drain upon their productivity need other forms of thought-stimulation. Reference is not here made to the narcotics, alcoholic stimulants, and other drugs which brain-workers use in periods of reaction and fatigue: these stimulate only for a short time, and leave the nervous system and the brain weaker than before; they shorten life by burning the candle at both ends; they cannot supply the need of sleep, rest, and recreation. To take rational exercise, to eat proper food, and to obey all the laws of health is the sacred duty of every person who teaches by word of mouth or pen. Every effort should be made to keep vitality at its maximum. Often the mind resembles the soil which yields a richer harvest if permitted to lie fallow for a time. If at the close of a period of rest or a summer vacation the mind refuses to work, what shall then be done to stimulate mental activity? Different men derive stimulus from different sources. One finds help from taking a pen in hand, another by facing a sea of upturned faces. A clergyman of considerable repute uses an Indian story to start his mental machinery. Henry Ward Beecher declared that the greatest kindness which could be shown him was to oppose his public utterances. Opposition roused all his powers and helped him to think vigorously and to the best advantage. Schiller is said to have kept rotten apples in his desk, because he believed that the odor stimulated his mind. Some men find help in solitude, from the singing of birds, from the sound of rustling leaves and falling waters, from the noise of ocean waves, or from the glimpse of distant waters or far-off mountains. An eminent theologian is stimulated by the playing of a piano in the next room. The stimulus from books is reserved for discussion in a separate chapter on the Right Use of Books.

As there are helps, so there are hinderances to good thinking. Petty cares, executive duties, noises in the same room, or in the next room, or upon the street, are well-known examples. Their name is legion, and their cost is enormous if they come from manufacturing establishments near the school. A word about the extra-mural music which emanates from vile machinery on the streets is not out of place in this connection. An English writer asserts that the organ-grinders of London have done more in the last twenty years to detract from the quality and quantity of the higher mental work of the nation than any two or three colleges at Oxford have effected to increase it. A mathematician estimates the cost of the increased mental labor these street-musicians have imposed upon him and his clerks at several thousand pounds’ worth of first-class work, for which the government actually paid in added length of the time needed for his calculations.

In matters of this kind every man must be a law unto himself. Since no two human beings are exactly alike, but each is a new creation fresh from the hands of the Creator, it follows that each person must study his own peculiarities, form his own habits of work, and acquire the power to think in the midst of the circumstances in which he is placed. By resolute effort the mind can ignore many a hinderance and distraction. The best stimulus from without comes from our fellow-men. “Our minds need the stimulus of other minds, as our lungs need oxygen to perform their functions.” At school the stimulus comes from classmates, from those in the higher and lower classes, but above all else, from the best books and the best teachers. In the life beyond the school the stimulus comes from the daily contact and competition with others, from conversation and discussions with those who think, from communion with the best books, with nature, and with nature’s God.

After the powers of the mind have been awakened and disciplined, stimulus and inspiration may come from ten thousand sources. Silence and solitude, city and country, business and pleasure, observation and travel, observatories and laboratories, libraries and museums, nature and art, poetry and prose, fiction and history, may each in turn serve as a spur to creative, inventive, and productive thinking, as an incentive to original research, fruitful investigation, and profitable reasoning. Among all the sources of stimulation, the good teacher and the good book take superlative rank.