aim is not to increase our knowledge but to guide our action. This difference involves many others into which I cannot enter here. I only wish to emphasize the fact that each science will be hindered in its proper work if it does not maintain its relative independence of the others. When, therefore, I speak of the psychological and sociological heresies in education, I am not venturing to criticise the methods of psychology and sociology as such. For such a task I am quite unqualified. My argument is directed against the introduction into educational theory of certain processes of reasoning which, as it seems to me, are alien to the educational point of view.
The educational doctrine which I have called the psychological heresy fixes our attention upon the various processes which go on in the boy's mind to the comparative neglect of his personality as a whole. A statement of this heresy in its most flagrant form is given by Professor Thorndike in his "Principles of Teaching." "If there existed," he says, "a perfect and complete knowledge of human nature—a complete science of psychology—it would tell the effect of every possible stimulus and the cause of every possible response in every possible human being. A teacher could then know just what the result of any act of his would be, could prophesy just what the effect of such and such a page read or punishment given or dress worn would be; just how to get any particular response or attention to this object, memory of this fact, or comprehension of that principle."[1] And
- ↑ p. 9.
