Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1877 — Quickening the Discriminating Aptitude of Scholars. [ARTICLE]

Quickening the Discriminating Aptitude of Scholars.

Bearing in mind the fact that until a difference is felt between two things intelligence has not yet made the first step, the teacher is bound to consider the circumstances or conditions favorable and unfavorable to the exerche: First, It is not peculiar to discrimination, but is common to every mental function, to lay down, aa a first condition, mental vigor, freshness and wakefulness. In a low state of the mental forces, in languor or drowsiness, differences cannot be felt. Hat the mind should be alive, awake, in full force and exercise is necessary for every kind of mental work. The teacher needs toqtiiekea ibenkntalaleTtnew'by artificial means, when there is a dormancy of mere indolence. He has to

awaken the pupil from the state significantly named indifference, the state where differing Impressions fall to be reeortylzed as distinct. Second, The mind msy he fresh and alive, but it* energies may be taking the wrong direction. There ia a well-known antithesis or opposition between the emotional and the Intellectaal activities, leading to a certain incompatibility of the two. Under emotional excitement, the Intellectual energies are : enfeebled In amount, and enslaved to to the reigning emotion. It ia in the quieter states of mind that discrimination, in common with other intellectual powers, works to advantage.—r Bain, in Popular Science Monthly.