On Education

V

MENTAL EDUCATION

Of all education, that of the mind is the best known and the most in use; yet except in a few rare cases, there are lacunae which make of it something very incomplete and, in the end, quite insufficient.

    Generally speaking, education is taken to mean the required mental education. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a course of severe training, which is more like stuffing the brain than educating it, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental growth has been done. But in reality nothing of the kind has been done. Even when the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not impair the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to make a good and useful instrument. The education that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a gymnastic exercise to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulae used in each of these branches constitute, in each case, a special and well-defined language.

    A true education of the mind, that which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases come one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may come alternately or even simultaneously. The five phases, in brief, are:

    (I) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.

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    (2) Development of the capacities of expansion, wideness, complexity and richness.

    (3) Organisation of ideas around a central idea or a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.

    (4) Thought control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, so that one may, in the end, think only what one wants and when one wants it.

    (5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.

    It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these phases of education to different individuals. Still some explanatory indications can be given.

    It cannot be gainsaid that what most impedes mental progress in the child is the constant dispersion of his thoughts. His thought Qutters hither and thither like a butterfly and a great effort is required on his part to fix it. Yet the capacity is latent in him for when you succeed in making him interested, he is capable of a good deal of attention. It is therefore the skill of the educator that will gradually make the child capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work while it is being done. All means . are good that can develop this faculty of attention; they can all be utilised according to need and circumstances, from games up to rewards. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign means is to rouse in the child interest in the thing that one wishes to teach, the taste for work, the will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can make to a child: to love to

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learn always and everywhere. Let all circumstances, all happenings in life be occasions, constantly renewed, for learning more and ever more.

    For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precision of recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by various and spontaneous exercises, making use of all opportunities that help to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert, quick. The growth of the understanding much more than that of memory should be insisted upon. One knows only what one understands. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, get blurred little by little and finally fade away: you never forget what you understand. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those qualified to answer him or to books dealing with the question, It is in this way that you will progressively awake in the child the taste for real study and the habit of a persistent effort to know.

    This will take us naturally to the second phase of growth in which the mind has to be enlarged and enriched.

    As the child progresses you will show him how everything can become an interesting subject for study, provided the question is approached in the right manner. The life of every day, of every moment is the best of all schools, varied, complex, rich in unforeseen experiences, in problems awaiting solution, in clear and striking examples and in evident consequences. It is so easy to rouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numberless questions they put. An interesting reply brings in its train others and the child, his attention attracted, learns without effort much more than what he usuaHy does on the

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school bench. A careful and intelligent selection should also give him a taste for healthy reading which is at once instructive and attractive. Fear nothing that awakes and satisfies his imagination; it is imagination that develops the creative mental faculty and it is through that that study becomes a living thing and the mind grows in joy.

    In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should not only look to the number and variety of subjects for study, but particularly to the diverse approaches to the same subject; by this means the child will be made to understand in a practical way that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, dealing with it and solving it. The brain will thus be free from all rigidity and, at the same time, thought will gain in richness and suppleness and be made ready for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental knowledge and, little by little, an aspiration will be, awakened in him for a truer source of knowledge.

    Indeed, as the child progresses in his studies and grows in age, his mind too ripens and is more and more capable of general ideas; and along with this, there always comes the need for certitude, for a knowledge stable enough to be made the basis of a mental construction which will permit all diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in the brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictories can be transformed into complementaries, but for that one must discover a higher idea that will be able to harmonise them. It is good to consider all problems from all possible standpoints to avoid partiality and exclusiveness, but if the thought is

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to be active and creative it must, in each case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view taken in. And if you are to make of the totality of your thoughts a dynamic and constructive force, you must take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of your synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.

    It goes without saying that the work of organisation cannot be done all at once, The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of all new knowledge, enlarge its frame to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each one of them may find its proper place in relation to others and the whole thus stand harmonious and orderly.

    All that has just been said, however, concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, at least as important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to give form and therefore prepare for action. This part of mental activity, although very important, has rarely been the subject of any special study and discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; even so, as soon as they try it, they find themselves faced with such great difficulties that they appear almost insurmountable.

    And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education: one

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can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. On the side of study, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but, on the side of action, it is quite the contrary. A strict control should be put on ideas that are accepted for translation into action and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be placed before the central idea; if it finds a right place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be thrown out, so that it cannot have any inAuence upon the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly to secure a complete control over one's actions.

    For that purpose, it is good to set apart every day some time when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put order into one's synthesis. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain your control over thoughts even during work and action and you will be able not to let any come to the fore that is not useful to the thing undertaken. Particularly if the power of concentration and attention is continuously cultivated, the active external consciousness will allow only those thoughts that are needed and then they become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it is necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stopped and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can open gradually to the higher mental regions and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.

    But even before arriving at this point, silence in itself is

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supremely useful because in most people who have a some what developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is put under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in excessive and often incoherent activities. This creates a great tension ending in fatigue and diminution of mental faculties.

    The fact is that, like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and this rest it will not have unless we know how to give it. The art of giving rest to one's mind is a thing to be acquired. Changing mental activity is a way of rest; but the greatest possible rest lies in silence. And in the case of mental faculties, a few minutes passed in the calm of silence mean a more effective rest than hours of sleep.

    When one will have learnt to silence the mind at will and concentrate it in the receptive silence, then there will be no problem that one cannot solve, no mental difficulty to which a solution will not be found. Thought, while in agitation, becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open new horizons to man's capacity.

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