personality, however, has its dangers, also, for it may carry children through drills instead of letting them carry themselves. In the main, unless children furnish their own steam when they work with a teacher, they will have little steam to do work when left to themselves.

The healthiest provision for motive in drills is found in the recognition of a given drill as a necessary step toward the accomplishment of some already greatly desired end. A child will willingly practice mixing colors in order to obtain a certain shade, if he is much interested in painting a certain kind of calendar. And he will gladly drill upon the rendering of a poem, if he is anxious to surprise his mother with it on her birthday. Such subordination of uninteresting tasks to larger purposes is highly educative, and no one has found the limit to which it can be carried.

The second condition of successful drills is that they be short. Even under the most favorable circumstances children cannot long remain alert on subject-matter that lacks intrinsic interest. In brief, therefore, drills to be effective must be made sharp by the presence of motive, and must be short.

CHAPTER VIII

THE USING OF IDEAS, AS A SIXTH FACTOR IN STUDY

in study.

THE student has accomplished much when he has discovered some of the closer relations that a topic The indefi- bears to life; when he has supplemented the niteness of thought of the author; when he has deterthe endpoint mined the relative importance of different parts and given them a corresponding organization; when he has passed judgment on their soundness and general worth; and when, finally, he has gone through whatever drill is necessary to fix the ideas firmly in his memory. Is he then through with a topic, or is more work to be done? Digestion of food is likewise a long process, the food having to be acted upon in various ways in the mouth, the stomach, and the intestines. But with food there is always a certain end to be reached, called assimilation, which is the actual changing of its nutriment into the solids and liquids of our bodies. Is there a similarly definite end to be reached in the study process?

It must be admitted that while we can define this end somewhat sharply in words, it is very difficult to know when it has been actually reached. Many a business man has felt convinced that he understood a certain business project perfectly, until the outcome has proved the contrary. Business failures are largely due to such deception. Even highly educated men are often surprised at their want of mastery of questions that they had supposed to be fully within their grasp.

Socrates spent much of his time bringing such surprises to the promising but overconfident young men of Athens. Robert Y. Hayne, the distinguished champion of nullification, no doubt experienced such a surprise when Webster delivered his great speech on that subject. The actual mastery of subjects is perhaps never complete; it is only relative. Even a child may have as good a grasp of one subject as a philosopher has of another, and each may be deceived in regard to the extent of his understanding.

sary

The common ignorance as to how much study is necessary for the mastery of knowledge is suggested by the common ignorance as to how much work is necesfor the assimilation of food. It takes from three to five hours for food that has been eaten to get beyond the stomach, and people ordinarily assume that the assimilative process is pretty well completed by that time. The fact is, however, that it is then only well begun; for it requires from ten to twelve hours to dispose fully of a meal, and most of the work of digestion takes place after the food leaves the stomach. While the assimilation of knowledge is what the student is supposed to aim at, how much that involves is even less understood.

definiteness

In the digestion of food our organisms provide for themselves, so that we do not need to worry greatly over some ignorance of the process. But our Importance responsibility in the assimilation of knowl- of as great edge is much greater, for that does not go on uninterruptedly even while we sleep; it will possible. be carried only so far as we have the energy and insight to take it.

in the end

point as

That being the case, it is very easy for one to stop too soon in the study of a topic. For instance, when a lesson in history has been only memorized, the digestive process has been carried little further than physical digestion has been taken when food reaches the stomach. That is, it is barely begun. Yet very many young people stop near this point, and they sometimes even take credit to themselves for getting so far.

We might add comprehension of the thought to the work of memorizing and still be far from the end. We can have comprehended and memorized the Beatitudes, for example, and be as free from any effect from them as the proverbial duck's back is from the effect of water. We can pass good examinations in psychology and logic with the same absence of influence. That certainly does not signify assimilation. Assimilation means the spiritual nourishment that is received by making new thought homogeneous with one's own thought, by making it an integral part of one's self.

Remembering how young people generally study, it seems probable that many of them spend a large part of their time providing for nourishment that they never get. They do a lot of hard work collecting the raw materials of knowledge without working them over so as to reap either the pleasure or the profit intended. Here is where some of the waste in education lies.

It is highly important, therefore, that the student reach as definite as possible a conception of the endpoint to be attained in study. Although the meaning of assimilation may not be perfectly clear, a few of its characteristics at least may be distinguished, so that we can feel some certainty as to how far we have got

in the process, and have some notion as to how much more must be done in order to reach the approximate goal.

mastery of

arts.

Study of the useful arts, such as the various trades, consists of two distinct parts. On the one hand, facts must be mastered that pertain to the nature The endpoint of materials, to methods of using implements accepted in or tools, and to plans for construction. In the useful cabinet-making, for example, the qualities of woods and paints, the rules for using the saw, plane, and chisel, and the various ideas governing designs for household furniture must all receive attention. In other words, a considerable body of theory must be acquired.

On the other hand, this theory must find application under particular conditions; a table must be made out of certain materials, with certain tools, according to a certain design. This also involves much thinking; but, in addition to all that, there is execution of theory, called doing or practice.

There is, further, a definite relation between these two parts, for the theory is merely a means to an end. What is wanted is a good product, and the theory is valuable to the extent that it affects the product. The useful arts, as studies, stand, therefore, both for theory and for the application or use of theory, and the latter is the goal. No one thinks of pursuing any one of the trades without including the use of his knowledge in practice as the culminating part of his work.

To what extent should other branches of knowledge resemble the useful arts in their combination of knowl