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NUMBER 4 FOUNDATIONS A STUDY OF "PSYCHOLOGIC FOundations of EDUCATION,” BY DR. W. T. HARRIS. IV. BY HOWARD SANDISON. A fourth insight is attempted in this chapter in order to render more clear the psychologic principle and its method. In opening the discussion the author calls. attention to this: That the three stages of knowing are the most important of psychological discoveries. There is an additional point of interest to every one in the thought that these three stages are possible to every human being through constant application and study. Usually it is accepted that the first and second stages belong to people in general, but here the encouraging thought is presented that the third stage, also, is open to every student. This seems to harmonize with the thought of Professor William James (Psychology, Briefer Course, page 150), that no young person need be discouraged in any undertaking that he enters upon if he should persist in it; because, as he says, "some fine morning he will awaken and find himself among the experts and authorities on that subject." It is significant that the author attributes this great thought in psychology -that every human being if he complete the round of activity will pass through three stages of thought-to Plato, who is on all hands acknowledged to be the greatest of the ideal thinkers. Aristotle excelled him, perhaps, as an analytic thinker, but never in the grasp of ideals. Plato was peculiarly the thinker of the world that distinguished himself as grasp ing things as totalities. His pupil and distinguished successor, Aristotle, gained his great reputation from analysis, division. It will be interesting to students to know that this thought of the three stages appears in Plato's Republic under the image of the divided line, and that there it seems to indicate four stages of thought. In the lowest stage the individual egards as real, shadows, reflections, images in water, etc. In the next higher stage he thinks that what are usually called the "solid realities" are the permanent things, such as stones, trees, mountains. Then he rises above the things of sense and grasps the invisible truths that underlie all realms, especially that of mathematics. At last he catches a vision of what Plato calls the "unhypothetical" principle, meaning by that a self-activity, a something which originates and directs its own activity, and in that activity returns to itself and is therefore a total. It is "unhypothetical" because it does not find its explanation or its cause in anything else. It appears that this is four stages, but such is not the case. The stage of shadows, reflections, images in water, etc., and the stage in which he regards such things as stones, trees, as "solid realities," constitute the stage in which the individual regards separate things as the truth of the world, the first stage; the second stage is that in which he grasps the invisible principles, and the third the one in which the unhypothetical principle is grasped. It is to be noticed, also, that in his celebrated Allegory of the Cave, Plato hints this same thought of the three stages. Down in the cave with the artificial fire they regard the shadows moving along the cave as the reality. At last they see more permanent truths, and finally a few of them pass up out of the cave and look straight into the face of the sun. They have a vision of the highest principle, symbolized by the sun. In the present chapter the author, after indicating these introductory thoughts, takes up the subject of the stages of knowing under three headings: 1. He attempts to set forth the characteristic mark of each stage. 2. He indicates the relation of these stages to philosophic systems. 3. He relates the stages of thought to religious systems. The writer does not take this second thought and the third in systematic order, but at various places in the chapter he calls attention to the relation of the three stages of knowing to philosophic effort and to religious endeavor. The first stage is spoken of as the stage of sense-perception. It is the stage in which the individual becomes aware of the things in the universe as if each were independent, but not as having self-activity. That kind of independence is grasped only in the third stage. The independence that is seen in this first stage is simply the independence of nonidentity. It does not occur to the thinker in this first stage of thought that the object he is examining has its beginning in some other object. If he is examining a stone or tree, he regards that stone or tree as complete in itself, depending in no way upon its environment, having its existence in no respect in any other object. The object is regarded as isolated from any other object. Otherness is characteristic of the thought in this first stage. Relations are frequently noticed in this beginning stage of thought, but no validity is given to them; they are not regarded as important. Relations are rather regarded as the abstract and artificial result of thinking. The separate objects are regarded as the truths of the universe. They are not seen to be transient, evanes cent. They are not seen to be mere exhibitions of something more more fundamental. The two categories, that is, the two ideas that are prevalent in this first stage are those of "thing" and "composition." Each thing is regarded as composed of smaller particles, and these of smaller particles, etc., until the atom is reached, and the atom is regarded as the only solid reality of the universe. The second stage is that of the understanding. While the category of the first stage is non-identity, that of the second is identity. When the individual passes out of the first stage and rises into the understanding, he is dissatisfied with appearances. He regards objects and all the various phenomena that are present to the mind and seem to be the permanent real things, as exhibitions of a more permanent something. The stage of understanding passes down below appearances, below transitory things, and beholds essential relations. It regards things as evanescent, as transient, and deems the invisible activity underlying them to be the permanent thing. But its weakness is this: It discovers only an arc of the process of thought. Looking over the various phenomena, the understanding pushes down through abstract generalization and classification until it sees the relation of cause and effect. That certainly is a very important advance. But mind as understanding goes even further. It discovers that the cause acting in any case has lying under it a permanent force, and that this cause is an exhibition of that force, and it finds that this force is the essential or permanent thing in the universe, but it traces it no further. The final thing that the understanding grasps under the form of law is the generic force of all these outward things, but it does not trace the generic force in its creative process. One may well ponder this because the American and English thought is generally in the fetters of the understanding. The understanding does not grasp this inner generic force as projecting itself To again into individuals, as moving out and permanently residing in these individuals so that each individual is universal as well as particular, and thereby complete in itself. If mind as understanding does not see this movement it never grasps the thought of permanent individuals. the mind the individual always disappears in the force unless this return movement is grasped. If the individual disappears then this generic force is a negative unity and the destiny of the individual is to disappear in the generic force. Therefore there is no permanence to any of the things that are around. They are vanishing, they are illusive. Such, also, is the nature of the human soul. The mind in the third stage of thought sees the generic force where the understanding leaves it and traces it on its outward journey, looking upon it as a creative activity, having its force in itself and of itself, and therefore able to introduce distinction into itself and by its own energy reveal itself in classes, species, varieties and individuals. Being universal and revealing itself in these particulars it posits universality in every particular. The particular is likewise universal potentially, and can never lose its universality. Therefore, in a sense it is a creative force in itself. If this is true, any one person is able by education to learn to take in a part of the universe, and then still more, and still more until at last, through his own activity, he becomes identical with the creative force which brought him into being, and yet this identity has been reached by the maintenance, nay, even the increase, of his individuality. The first stage of thinking, then, discovers particulars but goes no further. The second stage of thinking penetrates these particulars to their creative force and is lost there. The third stage of thinking takes this creative force and sees it reveal itself in all the variety of the outer world, carrying its universality down into every individual that it creates. This may be made more clear by the following: When the understanding penetrates from particular to cause, and from cause to the force, it regards the whole line as dependent. What is the effect, then, as to this creative force? It is just this: That creative force has no distinctions in itself, and is bare identity, or it has the distinctions in itself and gave them to itself, or there is something outside of it to give to it these distinctions. This The understanding does not sanction the second or third, and is left, therefore, to the thought that the universal is bare identity. What is meant by that? The meaning is that it has no distinction except this one-that it has no distinction. Therefore whenever any individual, as a tree, a mountain, an animal, or a person unites with this force it, too, loses every distinction. Hence, the human soul would lose the distinction of subject-object, and the instant this distinction is lost consciousness and every attribute of consciousness would disappear. would be a realization of the principle of the East Indian philosophy, which is portrayed by Emerson in his poem called "Brahma.” The East Indian first principle is personified in the poem and speaks. It is saying to the sun, moon, stars, and to every individual, "You are nothing; you will disappear; you will finally enter into me and lose every distinction that you now seem to have, just as a drop of water hanging upon a blade of grass: a distinct individual, will, when it enters into the ocean, lose its individuality and disappear." This is the thought in it. Thus Emerson images this first principle as coming to all the varieties in the world and talking to them. What is one of the particulars addressed by this first principle? The Red Slayer. If there is a slayer there must be a slain, and the announcement of the first principle to the Red Slayer and to the slain is that this distinction is transitory: "If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.” Why so? Because to the understanding individuality is an illusion. The true individual can be grasped only by the third stage of thinking, reason, which |