Lecture method should arouse dynamic interest and a desire to master the problems of philosophy How to secure active participation by students through lecture method bewilder the student with too many details and digressions but present the broad outlines of the field, placing before him the essentials and leaving him to fill in the minutiæ by a study of the books of reference. Each lecture ought to constitute an organic whole, as it were, in which the different parts are held together by a central idea; and its connection with the subject matter of the preceding lectures should be kept before the hearer's mind. All this requires careful and conscientious preparation on the part of the teacher, who must understand the intellectual quality of his class and avoid " shooting over their heads as well as going to the other extreme of aiming below the level of their mental capacities. Lecturing that is more than mere entertainment is an art which young instructors sometimes look upon as an easy acquisition and which older heads, after long years of experience, often despair of ever mastering. The lecture aims to do what books seldom accomplish to infuse life and spirit into the subject; and this ideal a living personality may hope to realize where a dead book fails. In order, however, that the philosophical lecture may not fail of its purpose, the hearer must be more than a mere listener; he must bring with him an alert mind that grasps meanings and can follow thought-sequences. And he cannot keep his attention fixed upon the discourse and understand the relations of its parts unless other senses COoperate with the sense of hearing and unless the motor centers are called into play also. He should carefully cultivate the art of taking notes, an accomplishment in which the average student is sadly lacking and to acquire which he needs the assistance of the instructor, which he seldom receives. An examination of the student's notebook frequently reveals such a woeful lack of discrimination on the writer's part that one is led to doubt the wisdom of following this method at all; wholly unimportant things are set down in faithful detail and essential ones wholly ignored. The hour spent in the lecture room, however, can and should be made a fruitful means of instruction, one that will awaken processes of thought and leave its mark. But in order to get the best result, the student should be urged to study his notes and the books to which he has been referred while the matters discussed in the lecture are still fresh in his mind; he will be able to clear up points he did not fully grasp, see connections that have escaped him, understand the force of arguments which he missed; and he will assume a more independent and critical attitude toward what he has heard than was possible on the spur of the moment, when he was driven on and could not stop and reflect. At home, in the quiet of his study, he can organize the material, see the parts of the discourse in their relations to each other, and re-create the whole as it lived and moved in the mind of the teacher. In doing this work he is called on to exercise his thinking and takes an important step forward. It is for this reason that I am somewhat skeptical of the value of the syllabus prepared by the teacher for the use of classes in philosophy, it does for the student what he should do for himself. Whatever value the syllabus may have in other fields of study, its use in the philosophical branches ought to be discouraged. The great weakness of the lecture method lies in its tendency to relieve the hearer of the necessity of doing his own thinking, to leave him passive, to feed him with predigested food; and this defect is augmented by providing him with "helps which rob him of the benefit and pleasure of putting the pieces of the puzzle-picture together himself. However, even at its best, the lecture method, unless supplemented in the ways already indicated, runs the danger of making the student an intellectual sponge, a mere absorber of knowledge, or a kind of receptacle for professors to shoot ideas into. As was said before, the student must cultivate the art of reading books and of expressing his thoughts by means of the spoken and written word. At the early stages and in some fields of philosophical study, however, the reading of many books may confuse the beginner and leave his mind in a state of bewilderment. It is indispensable that he acquire the working concepts and Organiza tion of undergraduate courses in philosophy the terminology of the subject, and to this end it is generally wise to limit his reading until he has gained sufficient skill in handling his tools, as it were. In the elementary courses many members of the class will be unable to do more than follow the lectures and study the textbook; the more gifted ones, however, should be encouraged to extend the range of their reading under the guidance of the in structor. An answer to the question concerning the desired sequence of courses in philosophy will depend upon many considerations,— upon one's conception of philosophy and of the various subjects generally embraced under it, upon one's notion of the aims of philosophical instruction, upon one's estimate of the difficulties encountered by the student in the study of the different branches of it, and so on. There is wide divergence of opinion among thinkers on all these points. Philosophy is variously conceived as metaphysics, as theory of knowledge, as the science of mind (Geisteswissenschaft), as the science of values (Werttheorie), or as all of these together. Logic is conceived by some thinkers as dependent upon psychology, by others as the presupposition of all the sciences, including psychology. Ethics is regarded both as a branch of psychology, or as dependent upon psychology, and as an independent study having nothing whatever to do with psychology. Psychology itself is treated both as a natural science, its connection with philosophy being explained as a historical survival, and as the fundamental study upon which all the other subjects of the philosophical department must rest. Where there is such a lack of agreement, it will not be easy to map out a sequential course of study that will satisfy everybody. Even when philosophy is defined in the old historic sense as an attempt to reach a theory of the world and of life, men may differ as to the exact order in which the basal studies should be pursued. By many the history of philosophy is considered the best introduction to the entire field, while others would place it at the end of the series of fundamentals (psychology, logic, ethics), holding that a student who has studied these will be best equipped for a study that includes the history of their development. As a matter of fact, given students of mature mind and the necessary general preparation, either order may be justified. The average underclassman is, however, too immature to plunge at once into the study of the history of philosophy, and the present writer would recommend that it be preceded by courses in general psychology, logic and ethics. The average sophomore will have little difficulty in following courses in psychology and logic; and it is immaterial which of these he takes up first. The course in the theory of ethics should come in the junior or senior year and after the student has gained some knowledge of psychology (preferably from a book like Stout's Manual of Psychology). And it would be an advantage if the course in ethics could be preceded by a study of the development of moral ideas, of the kind, let us say, presented in Hobhouse's Morals in Evolution. For reasons already stated, the entire course in philosophy should be inaugurated by the Introduction to Philosophy. Advanced courses in metaphysics and the theory of knowledge should come at the end and follow the history of philosophy. The ideal sequence would, therefore, be in the view of the present writer: Introduction to Philosophy, Psychology or Logic, the Development of Moral Ideas, Theory of Ethics, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Theory of Knowledge. It must be admitted, however, that a rigorous insistence upon this scheme in the American college, in which freedom of election is the rule, would impair the usefulness of the department of philosophy. Few students will be willing to take all these subjects, and there is no reason why an intelligent junior or senior should not be admitted to a course in ethics or the history of philosophy without having first studied the other branches. A person possessing sufficient maturity of mind to pursue these studies will be greatly benefited by them even when he comes to them without previous preparation; and it would be a pity to deprive him of the opportunity to become acquainted with Moot questions: con troversy between philosopher and psychologist a field in which some of the ablest thinkers have exercised It would not be possible, of course, to prescribe all the fundamental philosophical courses, even if it were desirable,— few faculties would go so far,- but it would be wise to require every candidate for the bachelor's degree to give at least six hours of his time (three hours a term, on the two-term basis) to one or two of the elementary courses, preferably in the sophomore year. Ethics and the history of philosophy could then be chosen as electives and be followed by the more advanced and specialized courses. We have already touched upon some of the debatable questions in the sphere of philosophical education. The dispute concerning the place of psychology in the scheme of philosophical instruction has its cause in differences of view concerning the aims, nature, and methods of that subject. Philosophers ask for an introductory course in psy chology which shall serve as a propaedeutic to the philosophical studies, while teachers of education wish to have it treated in a way to throw light upon educational methods and theory. "Some biologists treat mental phenomena as mere correlates of physiological processes. . . . Others, including a number of psychologists also, regard psychological phenomena as fully explicable in terms of behavior, and as constituting therefore a phase of biological science." The Committee of the American Psychological Association on the Academic Status of Psychology recommends "that the Association adopt the principle that the undergraduate psychological curriculum in every college or university, great or small, should be planned from the standpoint of psychology and in accordance with psychological ideals, rather than to fit the needs and meet the demands of some |