Recent Discussions Concerning Liberal Education [pp. 585-616]

590 Recent l)iscussions concerning [OCTOBER
tive of all materialistic theories. And we still further concede
and maintain that educational studies must not be encyclope diac, but made up of such a selection as will best develope and
invigorate, instead of crushing, the mind. But all this does not
prove that the ancient languages should be left out of the curri culum, or that physical sciences taken alone would be equally
effective in informing and disciplining the intellect.
Another inference of Prof. Youmans, from the identity of
mind and body which he maintains, is the needful alternation
of rest and action, the equilibrium of the two being necessary
to support the latter. This is brought in aid of the argument
for curtailing or wholly eliminating classical studies. That the
mind cannot bear uninterrupted continuous action, without
ample and periodic intervals of rest, is undeniable. Although
this is true of body also, it by no means follows that body and
inind are one. And it determines nothing as to the place
which the ancient classics should occupy in liberal training.
lle also urges that the mind, being material, takes a perma nent impression and acquires an enduring bent, from repeated
exercises of any given kind,* and that hence, if we would
exercise it most effectively for intellectual discipline and
invigoration, it should be employed not upon the dead lan guages, but upon the living facts with which it has to do in the
work of life. Now the power of habit, and of repeated exer cises of any given kind in forming habits, is unquestioned and
unquestionable. But this is wholly independent of material ism. And it settles nothing with regard to the comparative
-utility of classical studies in liberal education. If the mind is
identical with the body, then the true way to study the mind
is through the body, and psychology is best mastered through
physiology. So Prof. Youmans confidently and strenuously
maintains, "that the bodily organism which was so long
neglected as of no account, is in reality the first and funda
* "The basis of educability, - and hence of mental discipline, is, therefore,
to be sought in the properties of that nervous substance ty which mind is
manifested. That basis is the law that cerebral effects are strengthened and
made lasting by repetition. ~hen an impression is produced upon the brain,
a change i prod~ced, and an effect remains in the nerve-substance; if it be
repeated, the change is deepened and the effect becomes more lasting." P. 15.