The close connection between thinking and feeling cannot be ignored without serious detriment to the intellectual development of the pupil. Some teachers play upon the feelings in ways that prevent accurate and effective thinking. The tones of voice in which they speak, their manner of putting questions and administering discipline, their lack of self-control, and their frantic efforts to get and keep order cause the pupils to feel ill at ease and destroy the calmness of soul, which is the first condition of logical thinking. The skilful teacher calls into play feelings like joy, hope, patriotism, that stimulate and invigorate the whole intellectual life; he is extremely careful not to stir emotions like fear, anger, and hate, which hinder clear and vigorous thinking.

Feeling plays an important part in the examinations by superintendents for the promotion of pupils, or by State boards whose function it is to license persons to teach or preach, to practise law, medicine, or dentistry, or to test the fitness of applicants for some branch of civil or military service. Examiners are often responsible for the failure of those whom they examine. If the first questions arouse the fear of failure, causing the mind to picture the disappointment and displeasure of parents and teachers and friends, and the other evils which result from a loss of class standing, the resulting emotions hinder effective thinking and thus prevent the pupil from doing justice to himself and his teachers. The expert seeks to lift those whom he examines above all feelings of embarrassment. With a friendly smile, a kind word, and a few easy questions he puts the mind at ease, dissipates the dread of failure, and gets results which are an agreeable surprise to all concerned. If he cannot otherwise make those before him work to the best advantage, he will even sacrifice his dignity by the use of a good-natured joke which turns the laugh upon himself or upon some other member of the board of examiners. Jokes at the expense of any one of those examined are a species of cruelty which cannot be too severely condemned, to say nothing of the effect upon the results of the examination.

Within certain limits thinking begets feeling, and feeling stimulates thinking. Beyond these limits each interferes with the other. When feeling rises to the height of passion it beclouds the judgment and prevents reflection. Certain kinds of speculative thinking leave the heart cold and ultimately destroy the better emotions and the warmer affections. “It is terrible,” said the daughter of a voluminous writer on theology, “when a man feels a perpetual impulse to write. It makes him a stranger in his own house, and deprives wife and children of their husband and father.” Abstract thinking may be indulged in to the exclusion of the tastes and emotions which help to make life worth living. The oft-quoted experience of Darwin is a case in point. In his autobiography he gives his experience, showing the effect of his exclusive devotion to scientific pursuits upon his ability to enjoy poetry, music, and pictures. “Up to the age of thirty and beyond it poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure…​. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive…​. If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”[53]

Every teacher has both felt and witnessed the effect of embarrassment upon ability to think. To face an audience of a thousand people was embarrassing to some excellent thinkers like Melanchthon and Washington. On the other hand, the sight of a multitude of listening, upturned faces stimulates natures and temperaments like that of Martin Luther and Patrick Henry, causing them to think more vigorously and to feel more deeply.

Great thoughts spring from the heart. This is certainly true of thoughts which have lifted men to higher planes of effort. And it is true of the best thoughts and volitions which a pupil puts forth. The desire for knowledge may develop into the love of truth. The student is half made as soon as he seeks knowledge for its own sake and values the possession of truth above all other worldly possessions.

The Herbartians deserve praise for the attention they have given the doctrine of interest. The older text-books on psychology seldom refer to interest as an important element in the education of the child. The greatest boon which can come to a child is happiness, and this was impossible in the days when fear of the rod held sway in the school-room. Then children looked forward to the school with feelings of dread; they went with fear and trembling. From the day that the children became interested in their lessons the rod was no longer required. Instead of crying because they must go to school, they now cry because they cannot go. Through interest the school becomes the place to which children best like to go.

A boy who was pronounced incorrigible, and who had been transferred from school to school because he could not get along with his teachers, at last met a teacher who discovered that he could take apart and put together watches and clocks. She allowed him to fix her clock, and thus won his heart. She asked him to explain to the school the mechanism of instruments for keeping time. His interest in clocks she connected with the numbers twelve and sixty, then with the time-table, with denominate numbers, and finally with the whole subject of arithmetic. Interest in the exercises of the school converted the incorrigible boy into an obedient and studious pupil.[54]

There is no more important element of emotion for teachers to cultivate than that which enters into the feeling of interest. Interest sustains the power of thought, diminishes the need of effort in the direction of voluntary attention, and lies at the basis of all successful teaching, book-making, and public speaking. The teacher, the writer, the speaker who wearies us has lost his power over us. The lesson, the book, the sermon that interests us has found an entrance to our minds; the greater the interest the more potent and profound the influence upon the inner life.

The moment a teacher begins to lose interest in a subject, that moment he begins to lose his ability to teach that subject. From this point of view the recent graduate has a manifest advantage over the old pedagogue whose interest in the subjects of instruction has been dulled by frequent repetition. The latter can keep himself from reaching the dead-line by keeping up his studies in the allied departments of knowledge, and by watching the growth of mind and heart in his pupils,—a growth that always reveals something new and interesting by reason of the boundless possibilities that slumber in every human being. The interest in the growing mind is spontaneously transferred to the branches of knowledge which stimulate that growth, and, in ways that no one can explain, the interest which the teacher feels is communicated to the pupils whose minds are prepared to grasp his instruction.

By far the larger proportion of books taken from our free libraries are books of fiction,—books which appeal to our emotional life. It shows that even those who are habitual readers can be best reached through the emotions. Of course, the act of reading proves that their feelings are reached through the intellect; yet it cannot be denied that emotion is the element of their inner life which sustains the interest in the novel. Appeals to the intellect which do not touch the heart fail to reach the deepest depths of our being, and hence fail to stimulate in others the productive powers of the soul. Only thoughts which come from the heart can reach the heart. This is true of the child and the adult, of the reader and the listener, of the scientist and the man of affairs, of the author and the editor, of the orator and the philosopher, of the teacher, and, in short, of all whose duty it is to stimulate the thinking and to influence the conduct of their fellow-men.

XIX

THINKING AND WILLING

Strong reasons make strong actions.

SHAKESPEARE.

Bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions.

BISHOP PORTENS.