TRIAL AND ERROR.

43

in hopeless perplexity. To point out to us where, how, and why we are wrong, is the teacher's most indispensable function.

3. The only mode of arriving at a new constructive combination is to try and try again. The will initiates some movements; these are found not to answer, and are suppressed; others are tried, and so on, until the requisite combination has been struck out. The way to new powers is by trial and error. In proportion as the first and second conditions above given are realized, the unsuccessful trials are fewer. If we have been well led up to the combination required, and if we have before us a very clear idea of what is to be done, we do not need many tentatives; the prompt suppression of the wrong movements ultimately lands us in the right.

The mastering of a new manual combination, as in writing, in learning to swim, in the mechanical arts,-is a very trying moment to the human powers; success involves all those favourable circumstances indicated in discussing the retentive or receptive faculty. Vigour, freshness, freedom from distraction, no strong or extraneous emotions, motives to succeed,—are all most desirable in realizing a difficult combination. Fatigue, fear, flurry, or other wasting excitement, do away with the chances of success.

Very often we have to give up the attempt for a time; yet the ineffectual struggles are not entirely lost. We have at least learnt to avoid a certain number of positions, and have narrowed the round of tentatives for the next occasion. If after two or three repetitions, with rest intervals, the desired combination does not emerge, it is a proof that some preparatory movement

is wanting, and we should be made to retrace the approaches. Perhaps we may have learnt the pre-requisite movements in a way, but not with sufficient firmness and certainty for securing their being performed in combination.

ALTERNATION AND REMISSION OF ACTIVITY.

In the accustomed routine of Education, a number of separate studies and acquirements are prosecuted together; so that, for each day, a pupil may have to engage in as many as three, four, or more, different kinds of lessons.

The principles that guide the alternation and remission of our modes of exercise and application are ap parently these:

I. Sleep is the only entire and absolute cessation of the mental and bodily expenditure; and perfect or dreamless sleep is the greatest cessation of all. Whatever shortens the due allowance of sleep, or renders it fitful and disturbed, or promotes dreaming, is so much force wasted.

In the waking hours, there may be cessation from a given exercise, with more or less of inaction over the whole system. The greatest diversion of the working forces is made by our meals: during these the trains of thought are changed, while the body is rested.

Bodily or muscular exercise, when alternated with sedentary mental labour, is really a mode of remission accompanied with an expenditure requisite to redress the balance of the physical functions. The blood has unduly flowed to the brain; muscular exercise draws it off. The oxidation of the tissues has been retarded;

FAVOURABLE ALTERNATIONS.

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muscular exercise is the most direct mode of increasing it. But definite observations teach us that these two beneficial effects are arrested at the fatigue-point; so that the exercise at last contributes not to the refreshment, but to the farther exhaustion of the system.

2. The real matter before us is, what do we gain by dropping one form of activity and taking up another? This involves a variety of considerations.

It is clear that the first exercise must not have been pushed so far as to induce general exhaustion. The raw recruit, at the end of his morning drill, is not in a good state to improve his arithmetic in the military schoolThe musical training for the stage is at times so severe as to preclude every other study. The importance of a particular training may be such that we desire for it the whole available plasticity of the system.

room.

It is only another form of exhaustion when the currents of the brain continue in their set channels and refuse any proposed diversion.

There are certain stages' in every new and difficult study, wherein it might be well to concentrate for a time the highest energy of the day. Generally, it is at the commencement; but whatever be the point of special difficulty, there might be a remission of all other serious or arduous studies, till this is got over. Not that we need actually to lay aside everything else; but there are, in most studies, many long tracts where we seem in point of form to be moving on, but are really repeating substantially the same familiar efforts. It would be a felicitous ideal adjustment, if the moments of strain in one of the parallel courses were to coincide with the moments of ease in the rest.

Hardly any kind of study or exercise is so complicated and many-sided as to press alike upon all the energies of the system; hence there is an obvious propriety in making such variations as would leave unused as few of our faculties as possible. This principle necessarily applies to every mental process-acquirement, production, enjoyment. The working out of the principle supposes that we are not led away by the mere semblance of variety.

Let us endeavour to assign the differences of subject that afford relief by transition.

There are many kinds of change that are merely another name for simple remission of the intellectual strain. When a severe and difficult exercise is exchanged for an easy one, the agreeable effect is due, not to what we engage in, but to what we are relieved from. For letting down the strain of the faculties, it is sometimes better to take up a light occupation for a time than to be totally idle.

The exchange of study for sport has the twofold advantage of muscular exercise and agreeable play. To pass from anything that is simply laborious to the indulgence of a taste or liking, is the fruition of life. To emerge from constraint to liberty, from the dark to the light, from monotony to variety, from giving to receiving is the exchanging of pain for pleasure. This, which is the substantial reward of labour, is also the condition of renovating the powers for further labour and endurance.

To come closer to the difficulty in hand. The kind of change that may take place within the field of study itself, and that may operate both as a relief from strain

ment.

OBSERVING AND DOING.

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and as the reclamation of waste ground, is best exemplified in such matters as these :-In the act of learning generally there is a twofold attitude-observing what is to be done, and doing it. In verbal exercises we first listen and then repeat; in handicraft, we look at the model, and then reproduce it. Now, the proportioning of the two attitudes is a matter of economical adjustIf we are kept too long on the observing stretch, we lose the energy for acting; not to mention that more has been given us than we are able to realize. On the other hand, we should observe long enough to be quite saturated with the impression; we should have enough given us to be worthy of our reproducing energy. Anyone working from a model at command learns the suitable proportion between observing and doing. The living teacher may err on either side. He may give too much at one dose; this is the common error. Or he may dole out insignificantly small portions, such as do not evoke the sense of power in the pupils.

When an arduous combination is once struck out, the worst is over, but the acquisition is not completed. There is the farther stage of repetition and practice, to give facility and to ensure permanence. This is comparatively easy. It is the occupation of the soldier after his first year. There is a plastic process still going on, but it is not the same draft upon the forces as the original struggles. At this stage, other acquirements are possible and should be made. Now, in the course of training, it is a relief to pass from the exercises that are entirely new and strange to those that have been practised and need only to be continued and confirmed.

Before considering the alternations of departments