Chapter I

What beings can be educated; the plant has reaction
against its surroundings in the form of nutrition; the
animal has reaction in the form of nutrition and feeling;
Aristotle calls the life of the plant the "nutritive
soul," and the life of the animal the "sensitive soul."

The life of the plant is a continual reproduction of new
individuals--a process of going out of one individual into
another--so that the particular individual loses its
identity, although the identity of the species is
preserved.

That which is dependent upon external circumstances, and is only a circumstance itself, is not capable of education. Only a "self" can be educated; and a "self" is a conscious unity--a "self-activity," a being which is through itself, and not one that is made by surrounding conditions.

Again, in order that a being possess a capacity for education, it must have the ability to realize within itself what belongs to its species or race.

If an acorn could develop itself so that it could realize, not only its own possibility as an oak, but its entire species, and all the varieties of oaks within itself, and without losing its particular individuality, it would possess the capacity for education. But an acorn, in reality, cannot develop its possibility without the destruction of its own individuality. The acorn vanishes in the oak tree, and the crop of acorns which succeeds is not again the same acorn, except in _kind_ or species. "The species lives, but the individual dies," in the vegetable world.

So it is in the animal world. The brute lives his particular life, unable to develop within himself the form of his entire species, and still less the form of all animal life. And yet the animal possesses self-activity in the powers of locomotion, sense-perception, feeling, emotion, and other elementary shapes. Both animal and plant react against surroundings, and possess more or less power to assimilate what is foreign to them. The plant takes moisture and elementary inorganic substances, and converts them into nutrition wherewith to build its cellular growth. The animal has not only this power of nutrition, which assimilates its surroundings, but also the power of _feeling_, which is a wonderful faculty. _Feeling_ reproduces within the organism of the animal the external condition; it is an ideal reproduction of the surroundings. The environment of the plant may be seized upon and appropriated in the form of sap, or in the form of carbonic acid, for the nourishment of that plant; but there is no ideal reproduction of the environment in the form of _feeling_, as in the animal.

In the activity of _feeling_, the animal transcends his material, corporeal limits--lives beyond his mere body, and participates in the existence of all nature. He reproduces within himself the external. Such being the nature of the activity of _feeling_, which forms the distinguishing attribute that divides animals from plants, the question meets us at the outset, "Why is not the animal capable of education? Why can he not realize within himself his entire species or race, as man can?"

In order to settle this fundamental question, we must study carefully the scope and limits of this activity, which we have termed "Feeling," and which is known under many names--as, sensation, sensibility, sensitivity, sense-perception, intuition, and others.

Education aims to develop the mind as intellect and will. It must know what it is to develop, and learn to distinguish higher or more complete stages of intellect and will from those which are rudimentary.

Again, the discussion of mind begins properly with the first or most undeveloped manifestation--at the stage where it is common to brutes and human beings. Hence we may begin our study of educational psychology at this point where the distinction between animal and plant appears, and where the question of the capacity for education arises.

When we understand the relation of feeling or sensibility to the higher manifestations of mind, we shall see in what consists a capacity for education, and we shall learn many essentials in regard to the matter and method, the _what_ and the _how_ of education.

A general survey of the world discovers that there is inter-action among its parts. This is the verdict of science, as the systematic form of human experience. In the form of gravitation we understand that each body depends upon every other body, and the annihilation of a particle of matter in a body would cause a change in that body which would affect every other body in the physical universe. Even gravitation, therefore, is a manifestation of the whole universe in each part of it, although it is not a manifestation which exists _for_ that part, because the part does not _know_ it.

There are other forms wherein the whole manifests itself in each part of it--as, for example, in the phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in magnetism and electricity. These forms of manifestation of the external world upon an individual object are destructive to the individuality of the object. If the nature of a thing is stamped upon it from without, it is an element only, and not a self; it is dependent, and belongs to that on which it depends. It does not possess itself, but belongs to that which _makes_ it, and which gives evidence of ownership by continually modifying it.

But the plant, as we just now said, has some degree of self-activity, and is not altogether made by the totality of external conditions. The growth of the plant is through assimilation of external substances. It reacts against its surroundings and digests them, and grows through the nutrition thus formed.

All beings that cannot react against surroundings and modify them, lack individuality. Individuality begins with this power of reaction and modification of external surroundings. Even the power of cohesion is a rudimentary form of reaction and of special individuality.

In the case of the plant, the reaction is _real_, but not also _ideal_. The plant acts upon its food, and digests it, or assimilates it, and imposes its _form_ on that which it draws within its organism. It does not, however, reproduce within itself the externality as that external exists for itself. It does not form within itself an idea, or even a feeling of that which is external to it. Its participation in the external world is only that of _real_ modification of it or through it; either the plant digests the external, or the external limits _it_, and prevents its growth, so that where one begins the other ceases. Hence it is that the elements--the matter of which the plant is composed, that which it has assimilated even--still retain a large degree of foreign power or force--a large degree of externality which the plant has not been able to annul or to digest. The plant-activity subdues its food, changes its shape and its place, subordinates it to its use; but what the matter brings with it, and still retains of the world beyond the plant, does not exist for the plant; the plant cannot read or interpret the rest of the universe from that small portion of it which it has taken up within its own organism. And yet the history of the universe is impressed on each particle of matter, as well within the plant as outside of it, and it could be understood were there capacities for recognizing it.

The reaction of the life of the plant upon the external world is not sufficient to constitute a fixed, abiding individuality. With each accretion there is some change of particular individuality. Every growth to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals--new plants--a ceaseless multiplication of individuals, and not the preservation of the same individual. The species is preserved, but not the particular individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual, which grows out from the previous growth as the first sprout grew from the seed. Each part furnishes a soil for the next. When a plant no longer sends out new individuals, we say it is dead. The life of the plant is only a life of nutrition.

Aristotle called vegetable life "the nutritive soul," and the life of the animal the "feeling," or _sensitive_ soul. Nutrition is only an activity of preservation of the general form in new individuals, it is only the life of the species, and not the life of the permanent individual.

Therefore we see that in the vegetable world we do not possess a being that can be educated--for no individual of it can realize _within_ itself the species; its realization of the species is a continual process of going out of itself in new individuals, but no activity of _return_ to itself, so as to preserve _the identity_ of an individual.