Practical Essays by Alexander Bain (best electronic book reader TXT) 📕

PREFACE.

The present volume is in great part a reprint of articles contributed to Reviews. The principal bond of union among them is their practical character. Beyond that, there is little to connect them apart from the individuality of the author and the range of his studies.

That there is a certain amount of novelty in the various suggestions here embodied, will be admitted on the most cursory perusal. The farther question of their worth is necessarily left open.

The first two essays are applications of the laws of mind to some prevailing Errors.

The next two have an educational bearing: the one is on the subjects proper for Competitive Examinations; the other, on the present position of the much vexed Classical controversy.

The fifth considers the range of Philosophical or Metaphysical Study, and the mode of conducting this study in Debating Societies.

The sixth contains a retrospect of the growth of the Universities, with more especial reference to those of Scotland; and also a discussion of the University Ideal, as something more than professional teaching.

The seventh is a chapter omitted from the author's "Science of Education"; it is mainly devoted to the methods of self-education by means of books. The situation thus assumed has peculiarities that admit of being handled apart from the general theory of Education.

The eighth contends for the extension of liberty of thought, as regards Sectarian Creeds and Subscription to Articles. The total emancipation of the clerical body from the thraldom of subscription, is here advocated without reservation.

The concluding essay discusses the Procedure of Deliberative Bodies. Its novelty lies chiefly in proposing to carry out, more thoroughly than has yet been done, a few devices already familiar. But for an extraordinary reluctance in all quarters to adapt simple and obvious remedies to a growing evil, the article need never have appeared. It so happens, that the case principally before the public mind at present, is the deadlock in the House of Commons; yet, had that stood alone, the author would not have ventured to meddle with the subject. The difficulty, however, is widely felt: and the principles here put forward are perfectly general; being applicable wherever deliberative bodies are numerously constituted and heavily laden with business.

ABERDEEN, _March_, 1884.


CONTENTS.

I.

COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND.


Error regarding Mind as a whole--that Mind can be exerted without bodily expenditure.


Errors with regard to the FEELINGS.

I. Advice to take on cheerfulness.

Authorities for this prescription.

Presumptions against our ability to comply with it.

Concurrence of the cheerful temperament with youth and health.

With special corporeal vigour. With absence of care and anxiety.

Limitation of Force applies to the mind.

The only means of rescuing from dulness--to increase the supports and diminish the burdens of life.

Difficulties In the choice of amusements

II. Prescribing certain tastes, or pursuits, to persons indiscriminately.

Tastes must repose as natural endowment, or else in prolonged education.

III. Inverted relationship of Feelings and Imagination.

Imagination does not determine Feeling, but the reverse.

Examples:--Bacon, Shelley, Byron, Burke, Chalmers, the Orientals, the Chinese, the Celt, and the Saxon.

IV. Fallaciousness of the view, that happiness is best gained by not being aimed at.

Seemingly a self-contradiction.

Butler's view of the disinterestedness of Appetite.

Apart from pleasure and pain, Appetite would not move us.

Parallel from other ends of pursuit--Health.

Life has two aims--Happiness and Virtue--each to be sought directly on its own account.


Errors connected with the WILL.

I. Cost of energy, of Will. Need of a suitable physical confirmation.

Courage, Prudence, Belief.

II. Free-will a centre of various fallacies.

Doctrines repudiated from the offence given to personal dignity. Operation of this on the history of Free-will.

III. Departing from the usual rendering of a fact, treated as denying the fact.

Metaphysical and Ethical examples.

Alliance of Mind and Matter.

Perception of a Material World.

IV. The terms Freedom and Necessity miss the real point of the human will.

V. Moral Ability and Inability.--Fallacy of seizing a question by the wrong end.

Proper signification of Moral Inability--insufficiency of the ordinary motives, but not of all motives.

* * * * *


II.

ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES.


Meanings of Relativity--intellectual and emotional.

All impressions greatest at first. Law of Accommodation and habit.

The pleasure of rest presupposes toil.

Knowledge has its charm from previous ignorance.

Silence is of value, after excess of speech.

Previous pain not, in all cases, necessary to pleasure.

Simplicity of Style praiseworthy only under prevailing artificiality. To extol Knowledge is to reprobate Ignorance.

Authority appealed to, when in our favour, repudiated when against us.

Fallacy of declaring all labour honourable alike.

The happiness of Justice supposes reciprocity.

Love and Benevolence need to be reciprocated.

The _moral nature_ of God--a fallacy of suppressed correlative

A perpetual miracle--a self-contradiction.

Fallacy that, in the world, everything is mysterious.

Proper meaning of Mystery.

Locke and Newton on the true nature of Explanation

The Understanding cannot transcend its own experience.--Time and Space, their Infinity.

We can assimilate facts, and generalise the many into one. This alone constitutes Explanation.

Example from Gravity: not now mysterious.

Body and Mind. In what ways the mysteriousness of their union might be done away with.

* * * * *


III.

THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS.


I. HISTORICAL SKETCH.

First official recommendation of Competitive Examinations.

Successive steps towards their adoption.

First absolutely open Competition--in the India Service.

Macaulay's Report on the subjects for examination and their values.

Table of Subjects. Innovations of Lord Salisbury.

An amended Table.

II. THE SCIENCE CONSIDERED.

Doubts expressed as to the expediency of the competitive system.

Criticism of the present prescription for the higher Services.

The Commissioners' Scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science objectionable.

Classification of the Sciences into Abstract or fundamental, and Concrete or derivative.

Those of the first class have a fixed order, the order of dependence.

The other class is represented by the Natural History Sciences, which bring into play the Logic of Classification.

Each of these is allied to one or other members of the primary Sciences.

The Commissioners' Table misstates the relationships of the various Sciences.

The London University Scheme a better model.

The choice allowed by the Commissioners not founded on a proper principle.

The higher Mathematics encouraged to excess.

Amended scheme of comparative values.

Position of Languages in the examinations.

The place in education of Language generally.

Purposes of Language acquisition.

Altered position of the Classical, languages.

Alleged benefits of these languages, after ceasing to be valuable in their original use.

The teaching of the languages does not correspond to these secondary values.

Languages are not a proper subject for competition with a view to appointments.

For foreign service, there should be a pass examination in the languages needful.

The training powers attributed to languages should be tested in its own character.

Instead of the Languages of Greece, Rome, &c., substitute the History and Literature.

Allocation of marks under this view.

Objections answered.

Certain subjects should be obligatory.

* * * * *


IV.

THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY.

ITS PRESENT ASPECT.


Attack on Classics by Combe, fifty years ago.

Alternative proposals at the present day:--

1. The existing system Attempts at extending the Science course under this system.

2. Remitting Greek in favour of a modern language. A defective arrangement.

3. Remitting both Latin and Greek in favour of French and German.

4. Complete bifurcation of the Classical and the Modern sides.

The Universities must be prepared to admit a thorough modern alternative course.

Latin should not be compulsory in the modern side.

Defences of Classics.

The argument from the Greeks knowing only their own language--never answered.

Admission that the teaching of classics needs improvement.

Alleged results of contact with the great authors of Greece and Rome--unsupported by facts.

Amount of benefit attainable without knowledge of originals.

The element of training may be obtained from modern languages.

The classics said to keep the mind free from party bias.

Canon Liddon's argument in favour of Greek as a study.

* * * * *


V.

METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES.


Metaphysics here taken as comprising Psychology, Logic, and their dependent sciences.

Importance of the two fundamental departments.

The great problems, such as Free-will and External Perception should be run up into systematic Psychology.

Logic also requires to be followed out systematically.

Slender connection of Logic and Psychology.

Derivative Sciences:--Education.

Aesthetics--a corner of the larger field of Human Happiness

The treatment of Happiness should be dissevered from Ethics

Adam Smith's loose rendering of the conditions of happiness

Sociology--treated, partly in its own field, and partly as a derivative of Psychology.

Through it lies the way to Ethics.

The sociological and the ethical ends compared.

Factitious applications of Metaphysical study.

Bearings on Theology, as regards both attack and defence.

Incapable of supplying the place of Theology.

Polemical handling of Metaphysics.

Methodised Debate in the Greek Schools.

Much must always be done by the solitary thinker.

Best openings for Polemic:--Settling' the meanings of terms.

Discussing the broader generalities.

The Debate a light for mastery, and ill-suited for nice adjustments.

The Essay should be a centre of amicable co-operation, which would have special advantages.

Avoidance of such debates as are from their very nature interminable.

* * * * *


VI.

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL--PAST AND PRESENT.


The Higher Teaching in Greece.

The Middle Age and Boethius.

Eve of the University.

Separation of Philosophy from Theology.

The Universities of Scotland founded--their history.

First Period.--The Teaching Body.

The Subjects taught and manner of teaching.

Second Period.--The Reformation.

Modified Curriculum--Andrew Melville.

Attempted reforms in teaching.

System of Disputation.

Improvements constituting the transition to the Third Period.

The Universities and the political revolutions.

How far the Universities are essential to professional teaching: perennial alternative of Apprenticeship.

The Ideal Graduate.