The illusion is that beginnings are hard. They are easy. Almost any mind can
advance a little way into almost any subject. The feeblest youth can push on
briskly in the beginning of a new subject, but he forgets, and so does the
examiner who marks him, that difficulties increase not in arithmetical but in
almost geometrical ratio as he advances. The fact, too, that all topics are taught
by all teachers and that we have no specialized teaching in elementary branches,
and that examinations are placed in the most debilitating part of our peculiarly
debilitating spring, these help us to solve the problem which China has solved so
well, viz., how to instruct and not to educate. A pass mark, say of fifty, should be
given not for mastery of the first half of the book, or for knowledge of half the
matter in it, but for that of three-fourths or more. Suppose one choose the easier
method of tattooing his mind by attaining the easy early stages of proficiency in
many subjects, as is possible and even encouraged in too many of our school and
college curricula, he weakens the will-quality of his mind. Smattering is
dissipation of energy. Only great, concentrated and prolonged efforts in one
direction really train the mind, because only they train the will beneath it. Many
little, heterogeneous efforts of different sorts leave the mind in a muddle of
heterogeneous impressions, and the will like a rubber band is stretched to
flaccidity around one after another bundle of objects too large for it to clasp into
unity. Here again, in der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister [The master shows
himself in self-limitation]; all-sidedness through one-sidedness; by stalking the
horse or cow out in the spring time, till he gnaws his small allotted circle of
grass to the ground, and not by roving and cropping at will, can he be taught that
the sweetest joint is nearest the root, are convenient symbols of will-culture in
the intellectual field. Even a long cram, if only on one subject, which brings out
the relations of the parts, or a "one-study college," as is already devised in the
West, or the combination of several subjects even in primary school grades into
a "concentration series," as devised by Ziller and Rein, the university purpose as
defined by Ziller of so combining studies that each shall stand in the course next
to that with which it is inherently closest connected by matter and method, or the
requirements of one central and two collateral branches for the doctorate
examination—all these devices no doubt tend to give a sense of efficiency,
which is one of the deepest and proudest joys of life, in the place of a sense of
possession so often attended by the exquisite misery of conscious weakness. The
unity of almost any even ideal purpose is better than none, if it tend to check the
superficial one of learning to repeat again or of boxing the whole compass of
sciences and liberal arts, as so many of our high schools or colleges attempt.
Finally, in the sphere of mental productivity and originality, a just