LIPPINCOTT’S
EDUCATIONAL SERIES

EDITED BY
MARTIN G. BRUMBAUGH, Ph.D. LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF PEDAGOGY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, AND COMMISSIONER
OF EDUCATION FOR PUERTO RICO

VOLUME I

Lippincott’s Educational Series

THINKING
AND
LEARNING TO THINK

BY
NATHAN C. SCHAEFFER, Ph.D., LL.D.
SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION FOR
THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1906

Copyright, 1900
by
J. B. Lippincott Company

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.

EDITOR’S PREFACE

The progress of educational thought during the closing years of this century has been marvellous. Professional schools have created a demand for professional teaching by giving an increasing group of skilled instructors to our schools. This professional activity has caused our leading cities to provide training-schools, as integral parts of the city system of education. Finally, our great universities have established departments of pedagogy for the higher training in education. As a result, the leading positions in higher schools and in supervision are more and more demanding professionally trained leaders.

In this auspicious awakening for professional leadership there has come an increasing demand for standard treatises upon the fundamental problems of education. Treatises upon the history, methods, principles, and systems of education have appeared with astonishing frequency. That many of these are commercial treatises—made to sell—is doubtless true. There is always a great temptation to profit by an active demand. Well-disposed but not always widely trained and broadly cultured teachers, who have achieved a local success with a method that owed its virtue to the personality of its author and not to its intrinsic worth, have been tempted into authorship. The wiser and nobler minds in the profession wait. The days of unrest and experimentation, breeding discord and confusion, have in part passed away, and the time has come when the products of all this divergent activity may be put to the test of clear analysis and adequate experience. This is especially true in the domains of historic and philosophic inquiry. In experimental activity, touching the problems of psychic life as related to its sensorium, much has been done in a tentative way. Much must yet be done to produce results of enduring significance.

This series of educational treatises is projected to give inquiring minds the best thought of our present professional life. Fundamental problems in education will be exhibited in the series from time to time by thoroughly trained leaders of extended experience. Teachers may confidently accept these as authoritative discussions of the cardinal questions of their profession.

The highest endowment of the human spirit on the intellectual side is the power to think. Learning to think is an essential process and end in all school work. Thinking is the intellect’s regal activity. In a vague way, all teaching appeals to the thought-activity of the pupil; but vagueness in teaching is as pernicious as it is common. To exhibit the value, scope, and process of thought is of inestimable service to the teacher. It gives specific direction to teaching processes, and saves the child from a thousand fanciful expedients.

In the craze of the passing decade for novelty in teaching, there has resulted an undue emphasis upon forms of so-called expressional activity. It has been, in many quarters, forgotten that education is noblest when it produces reflective activity. The power to analyze and synthetize thought-complexes is the most fruitful endowment of the intellectual life. Expression without adequate reflection is productive of superficiality.

We have been living a life of educational expedients. The path of educational advance is strewn with countless cast-off practices which once claimed attention largely because of the feeling among too many that the newest theory is the best. There has come, let us hope, the more rational resolve to test all new and loudly heralded theories by fundamental laws of mental activity. To emphasize the significance of this reaction, and to afford helpful criteria of educational processes, this volume will be found most stimulating, suggestive, and sensible.

For the purposes of the teacher thinking may be distinguished as follows:

(a) Clear thinking, by which one is to understand thinking the thing, and not some other thing in its stead. Much thinking is not clear. The power of recall is not fully developed. The mind acts, but is not able to assert confidently the accuracy of what it acts upon. Much needless criticism is heaped upon schools because pupils cannot spell correctly, solve problems accurately, recite a lesson in history or in geography properly,—in short, because the pupil’s knowledge is not clear. The first step in all true teaching is the step that makes clear to the pupil the thing he is to think.

(b) Distinct thinking, by which one is to understand thinking the thing in its relations. This phase of thinking is sometimes called apperception. It is the second, and not the first step in thinking. There is no value in teaching relations until the things to be related are first clearly apprehended. Perception must precede apperception. The pupil in the elementary school has been well taught if he has been taught to think clearly and distinctly.

(c) Adequate thinking, by which one is to understand thinking the thing in its essential parts. This is the analytic form of thought. The child at first cannot think adequately. His mind thinks things as wholes. He has not the power to think the whole and its parts, as parts of the whole, simultaneously. He must rise to adequate thinking only after clear and distinct thinking have become habits of mind. The fuller phase of this activity, by which these analyzed parts are synthetically wrought into an organic unity, is the process of concept-making,—the essential prerequisite of all high orders of thought. This power every teacher should possess. It is his surplus of knowledge, the possession of which makes him easily master in the teaching process.

(d) Exhaustive thinking, by which one is to understand thinking the thing in its causes. This is the highest form of thinking the thing. It gives perspective to thought-processes, and eliminates all accidental and misleading elements from the categories of thought. To achieve this, one must specialize. The teaching of the future must be more and more intensive in scope. The day of the encyclopædist is gone. The teacher of to-morrow must be a teacher who knows one order of truth exhaustively, and who possesses the skill to incite in others a permanent enthusiasm for that order of truth. Scientific progress is conditioned by such teaching.

The author has brought to this discussion the matured convictions of broad training in American and European systems of schools, and a wide and successful experience in teaching pupils and directing systems of education. The discussion takes on the modest but stimulating style of the public speaker. The author has for many years been among our foremost lecturers upon education. The temper of the discussion is moderate and constructive. There will be found here no wild excess, no straining after fanciful effect, no advocacy of sensational and ephemeral methods; nor is there a trace of pessimistic and destructive criticism of the earnest teachers who are conscious of limitations and are reaching hopefully for help. On the contrary, the discussion is full of real sympathy, founded upon personal experience with teaching in all its phases, and abounds in stimulating suggestion.

M. G. B.

October 1, 1900.

PREFACE

For a number of years it has been the author’s duty as well as privilege to lecture at county institutes on the difficult art of teaching pupils to think. This led to the request that the lectures be thrown into permanent form for publication. The lecturer who never publishes has no pet theories to defend; he can change his views as often as he sees fit; yet, in spite of this advantage, he cannot always escape or ignore the art of printing. One who gives his thoughts to the public without the use of manuscript and under the limitations of extemporaneous speech, made necessary by the large audiences which gather at teachers’ institutes, especially in Pennsylvania, runs the risk of being misquoted and misunderstood; he pays the penalty of being reported in fragmentary if not distorted forms. This ultimately drives him, in justice to himself and others, to write out his theories on education and to give them to his coworkers in print.

Portions of these lectures were delivered at the annual meeting of the superintendents of New England, before the State teachers’ associations of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Florida, before the Connecticut Council of Education, before the summer schools held under the auspices of the Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin, and at several of the meetings of the National Educational Association. The favorable hearing accorded on these occasions induces the hope that the lectures will be kindly received by many who teach outside of Pennsylvania, and by some who give instruction in our higher institutions of learning.

Although no one can hope, on so difficult a theme, to say much that will be entirely satisfactory to leading educators, surely no apology is needed from any one who, after spending his best years in educational work, attempts to contribute his mite towards the solution of any of the problems which confront the teacher.

It is assumed that there is a body of educational doctrine well established in the minds of teachers, and that on many school questions we have advanced beyond the border line of first discovery. Those who assert that our educational practice is radically wrong and in need of thorough reformation should hasten to clarify their own views and ideas, to substitute constructive for destructive criticism, and to give definite shape to their reforms; otherwise a whole generation will grow to maturity and the reformers themselves will pass away before any of their reforms will have been accomplished. To give teachers the feeling that what they are doing is all wrong, and to leave them without anything better in place of what is condemned, robs them of joy in their work, makes them victims of worry and neurasthenia, and unfits them for the care of children. It is hoped that these lectures will be found to suggest a better way whenever criticism is bestowed upon existing methods of instruction.

No attempt is made to ridicule the arm-chair psychologists, or the advocates of child study, or those patient and painstaking workers who are honestly seeking to establish the facts of mind through experiments in the laboratory. He who has carefully reflected upon the art of making pupils think will not hesitate to admit that thus far he has received more light from the standard psychology than from the labors of those who claim to be the exponents of the new psychology. The latter can hardly write or talk without using the terms coined by the older students of mind; this shows their indebtedness to those who taught and speculated before laboratories of psychology were established. Sometimes the experiments have only served to test and give a reason for what was already accepted. Often they have brought to our knowledge facts of mind which could never have been discovered by the method of introspection. In either case the experiments have resulted in clear gain. Let the facts of brain and mind, of nervous and mental action, of human growth, maturity, and decay be gathered, questioned, tested, and classified; let their bearing upon educational practice be set forth in the clearest possible light: every resulting step of progress and reform will be hailed with delight by all who have no pet theories to defend.

The lecturer is limited by time, by the kind of audience which he addresses, and by circumstances largely beyond his control. These limitations drop out when he reduces his thoughts to writing, and a rearrangement at many points becomes possible as well as desirable. The expedients for relieving the strain of attention and winning back the listless can be omitted; and omissions that become necessary through the exigencies of the programme must be supplied for the sake of logical sequence. Moreover, the aims which those who engage the lecturer set before him frequently require a modification of the line of discussion, so that a course of lectures on a specific theme cannot always follow the same order of treatment, although substantially the same in content and scope. Hence the division into chapters has been adopted as preferable to the original sequence of lectures. Nevertheless, the style of the rostrum has not been altogether eliminated, because when oral discourse is thrown into new forms, and the phraseology is changed for the sake of publication, the loss in vividness, directness, and simplicity is greater than the gain in diction and fulness of statement.

Lecturing, as well as book-making, has its peculiar temptations. The lecturer must interest his hearers in order to hold them; he is tempted to play to the galleries, and to omit what is beyond the comprehension of the average audience. The book-maker, on the other hand, is tempted to display his learning, to make a show of depth and erudition. The student of pedagogy is supposed to be in search of profound wisdom. Those who write for him often dive so deep that their style becomes muddy. Unfortunately, some of the best treatises on education have been written in the style of the philosopher and wrought out on the plane of the university professor, although intended for undergraduates at normal schools, and for teachers whose meagre salaries do not enable them to pursue courses of study at institutions of higher learning. The lucid style of Spencer’s treatise on “Education” has done much to counteract this tendency. Yet many of the authors of our treatises on pedagogy seem to be haunted by a feeling similar to that of the German professor, who, on reading the opening chapters of a new book, and finding them to be intelligible to his colleagues, exclaimed, “Then I must rewrite these chapters; otherwise nobody will read my book through.”

Huxley has well described the penalty which must be paid by those who speak or write for the purpose of being understood. These are his words:

“At the same time it must be admitted that the popularization of science, whether by lecture or essay, has its drawbacks. Success in this department has its perils for those who succeed. The ‘people who fail’ take their revenge, as we have recently had occasion to observe, by ignoring all the rest of a man’s work and glibly labelling him a mere popularizer. If the falsehood were not too glaring, they would say the same of Faraday and Helmholtz and Kelvin.”

One who can never hope to rival the style of Spencer and Huxley and those to whom the latter refers, will nevertheless do well to emulate their skill in making difficult things plain to people who are not specialists or experts. He who writes for the teachers in our public schools should put aside his ambition to be considered erudite or profound, and endeavor above all things to be understood. Vague theories are apt to beget a bad conscience in those who teach and to destroy the joy which every one has a right to feel while doing honest and faithful work. Hence the writer offers no apology for heaping illustration upon illustration in the effort to make his meaning plain to those whom he aims to help.

There is at present great need for clear thinking and luminous presentation of facts on the part of all who write on education for the people or for teachers in our public schools. By a process similar to that by which the mediæval imagination swelled the murder of the innocents at Bethlehem into a slaughter of thousands of children (there cannot have been many male children two years old and under in a small Judean village), the harm which some pupils suffer is magnified into a national crime at the feet of American parents; the evils which result from “Bob White” societies, from children’s parties, from church sociables for young boys and girls, are all ascribed to the school curriculum; and reforms in home study are proposed which never fail to provoke a smile on the face of a healthy boy.

The hygienic conditions of the average school are quite equal to those of the average home. The health of many children improves during their attendance at school. The pupils who are born with a sound mind in a sound body, who get healthful diet, enough sleep, and treatment from their elders which is not calculated to make them nervous or unhappy, show none of the illness from overwork, the dulness of brain from fatigue, and the exhaustion of nervous energy which are made to furnish the narrow basis of fact for vague and broad generalizations. The haze in which those who must furnish the printer a given amount of copy in a given time are apt to envelop whatever they write has an effect like that of misty air upon the size of visible objects. Travellers who have come into a cloud while ascending a mountain report that a small wood-pile then looks like a barn, a cow seems larger than an elephant, men appear as giants, and the surrounding heights assume threatening proportions. As soon as sunlight clears the atmosphere, objects are again seen in their true dimensions. The moment the light of common sense penetrates the haze and mist and fog and cloud which are used to heighten the effect of essays upon school work, the need of radical reform seems far less urgent; and teachers, instead of wasting their time in worry and uncertainty, begin with cheerful heart to impart that which modern civilization requires every child to know as a condition of bread-winning and complete living.

There is, of course, a worse fault than obscurity of style,—namely, dearth of ideas. The danger to which the lecturer is always exposed, that of losing his hearers and failing to be recalled (their minds may leave while they are bodily present), spurs to effort in two directions. Either he will try to say something worth listening to, or he will strive to entertain by amusing stories and incidents. If he be conscious of a lack of talent for humor, he will try to stuff his lectures full of sense. If the lectures here published lack in this respect, the writer is willing to acknowledge failure.

In preparing a course of lectures it is proper to bear in mind the difference between the lecturer, the orator, the poet, and the philosopher. The philosopher investigates ideas and truths, explores their essence and relations, and unfolds them in their deepest unity and in their greatest possible compass. When this has been done throughout the whole domain of thought, his mission is accomplished. The poet seeks to clothe his ideas in beautiful forms. When the idea is perfectly suited to the form and the form to the idea, his mission is accomplished. The orator aims to move the will; he quotes authorities, uses ideas, appeals to the feelings, and subordinates everything to the one end of gaining a verdict, winning a vote, or getting a response in the conduct of those whom he addresses. The lecturer seeks to impart information. He aims to get a response in the thinking of those whom he addresses. He tries to reach the intellect rather than the will. Beautiful language and exhaustive treatment are not essential parts of his mission. It is his province to elucidate the theme under consideration, to guide the efforts and inquiries of those who come to him for instruction, to direct them to the sources of information, and to furnish such incentives as he can towards independent study and investigation.

Since the data for pedagogy are derived mainly from kindred fields of investigation, the lecturer on the science and art of education has frequent occasion to cite authorities and to utilize the labors and conclusions of the men eminent in the sciences which throw light upon the growth of the child, more especially upon the development of mind and character. The most original writers quote very little, and those who are anxious to establish a reputation for originality refrain from quoting others. It is the business of the lecturer to lead the hearer to the sources of information. When anything has been so well said that he cannot improve upon the form of statement it is proper that he should quote the language, carefully giving the source whence it is derived. Without doubt, when the genius appears who will do for pedagogy what Aristotle did for logic and Euclid for geometry, he will so polish every gem he gets from others and give it a setting so unique and appropriate that the world will recognize the touch of the master and acknowledge the contribution as peculiarly his own handiwork. In painting and sculpture we look to the past for the greatest works of art. In music the century now closing has rivalled, if not surpassed, its predecessors. In the science and art of education the greatest achievements belong to the future. It is currently reported and sometimes believed that when the president of a celebrated university was asked why he had transferred a certain professor from the department of geology to that of pedagogy, he replied, “I thought the fellow would do less harm in that department.” If the story is not a myth, he probably meant less harm to the reputation of the university. When in our day a course in geology or logic or geometry is announced, one can foretell the ground that will be covered. No such prediction can be made with reference to a course of lectures on teaching. The prophet is yet to come who will fix the scope of the science of education and give it something like definite and abiding shape.

This volume is not designed to supplant systematic treatises on psychology and logic. Its aim is to throw light upon one important phase of the art of teaching. If it contributes but two mites to the treasury of information on the science and art of education, the labor bestowed upon it has not been in vain. Should any critic hint that two mites are all one has to give, it may be said in reply that it is better to give something than to give nothing at all, and that according to Holy Writ the smallest contributions are not to be despised if made in the right spirit. And it may add to the critic’s stock of ideas to be informed that a small English weight, called mite, outweighs very many of the current criticisms upon modern education, that of this small weight it takes twenty to make a grain, and that to a faithful teacher a tenth of a grain of helpful suggestion is worth more than many tons of destructive criticism.

CONTENTS

I
MAKE THE PUPILS THINK

I
MAKE THE PUPILS THINK

For the purpose of testing the quality of gold alloy jewellers formerly used a fine-grained dark stone, called the touchstone. In the eyes of an educator good instruction is more precious than pure gold. The touchstone by which he tests the quality of instruction, so as to distinguish genuine teaching from its counterfeit, rote teaching, is thinking. The schoolmaster who teaches by rote is satisfied if the pupils repeat his words or those of the book; the true teacher sees to it that the pupils think the thoughts which the words convey.

Thring, who, next to Arnold, was perhaps the greatest teacher England ever had, laid much stress upon thinking. Sometimes he would startle a dull lad, in the midst of an exercise, by asking, “What have you got sticking up between your shoulders?” “My head,” was the reply. “How does it differ from a turnip?” And by questioning he would elicit the answer, “The head thinks; the turnip does not.”

So important is thinking in all teaching that at the World’s Educational Congress, in 1893, one educator after another rose in his place to emphasize the maxim, “Make the pupils think.” One of the most advanced of the reformers shouted in almost frantic tones, “Yes, make even the very babies think.” After the wise men had returned to their homes, a Chicago periodical raised the query, “How can you stop a pupil from thinking?” And the conclusion it announced was that neither the teacher behind the desk nor the tyrant upon his throne can stop a pupil from thinking. Evidently, if that which sticks up between a boy’s shoulders is a head and not a turnip, if the pupil is rational and not an imbecile or an idiot, he does some thinking for himself; and the maxim, “Make the pupils think,” requires further analysis before it can be helpful in the art of teaching.

We who teach are very apt to overestimate thinking in our own line of work and to undervalue thinking outside of the school. There is, perhaps, as much good thought in a lady’s bonnet as in the solution of a quadratic equation. A sewing-machine embodies as much genuine thought as the demonstration of a geometrical theorem. The construction of a locomotive or a railway bridge displays as much effective thinking as Hegel’s “Philosophy of History,” or Kant’s “Critique of the Pure Reason.” Most men think very well in doing their own kind of work; in many other spheres of activity they must let other people think for them. When the professor of astronomy discusses a problem connected with his science, he thinks for himself; but when he buys a piece of land, he gets a lawyer to think for him in the examination of the title and the preparation of the deed. The lawyer thinks for himself in the court-house; but when he goes home to dine, he expects his wife, or the cook, to have done the thinking for him in the preparation of the dinner. Grover Cleveland had the reputation of thinking for himself: many a politician found out that this reputation was founded on fact; but when the ex-President is sick, or has the toothache, he is willing to let a physician or a dentist think for him. In like manner, a pupil may think very well upon the play-ground; but if the teacher, whose very name indicates the function of guiding, fails to guide the pupil aright, the latter may become a mere parrot in the class-room. What, then, is involved in making a pupil think?

The difficulty in answering this question is increased by the diversity of meanings of the word thinking. The teacher who is not clear in his use of the term may employ exercises calculated to develop one kind of mental activity, and then accuse the pupils of dulness because they do not show facility in some other intellectual process. When a text-book on mental science defines the intellect as the power by which we think, the term thinking is used to designate every form of intellectual activity. The Century Dictionary defines thinking as an exercise of the cognitive faculties in any way not involving outward observation, or the passive reception of ideas from other minds. The logician defines thinking as the process of comparing two ideas through their relation to a third. Many exercises of the school are supposed to cultivate thinking in the last sense of the word, when in reality they cultivate thinking only in the widest acceptation of the term.

The writer saw a normal school principal conduct an exercise in thinking, as the latter called it. Turning to one of the pupils, he said, “Charley, will you please think of something?” As soon as the boy raised his hand the principal asked, “Does it belong to the animal, the vegetable, or the mineral kingdom?” Then turning to the other members of the class, he said, “Who of you can think of the vegetable in Charley’s mind?” The names of at least forty different vegetables were given and spelled and written upon the black-board. At last a pupil succeeded in naming what was in Charley’s mind. Then there was a look of triumph upon the faces of the principal and the class, as much as to say, “Isn’t that splendid thinking?” At least one person felt like burying his face in his hands for very shame; for here was resurrected from the dead an old exercise of philanthropinism which was buried more than a hundred years ago. What should one call that kind of mental activity? Guessing. That is all it is. The exercise tended to beget a habit very difficult to break up after it has been formed.

Far better was an exercise which the writer witnessed in a graded school. The teacher had called the class in the second reader. As soon as all the pupils were seated she said, “You may read the first paragraph.” Instead of reading orally, the class became so quiet that one might have heard a pin drop. After most of the hands were raised she called upon one pupil to tell what the paragraph said. The second paragraph was read and the substance of it stated in the pupil’s own words. An omission was supplied by another pupil; an incorrect phrase was modified by giving the correct words for conveying the thought. In the course of the lesson it became necessary to clarify the ideas of some. This was accomplished by a few pertinent questions which made the pupils think for themselves. After the entire lesson had been read in this way she dismissed the class without assigning a lesson. Every member of the class went to his seat, took out his slate, and began to write out the lesson in his own language. The interest and pleasure depicted on their faces showed that it was not a task but a joy to express thought by the pencil. The teacher had given them something to think about; she had taught them to express their thoughts in spoken and written language; her questions had stimulated their thinking, and when, later in the day, the lesson in oral reading was given, the vocal utterance showed that every pupil understood what he was reading. There was no parrot-like utterance of vocables, but an expression of thought based upon a thorough understanding and appreciation of what was read. The silent reading was an exercise in thought-getting and thought-begetting, the language lesson upon the slate was an exercise in active thinking through written words, and the oral expression furnished a test by which the teacher could ascertain what she had accomplished in getting her pupils to think.

The first thing necessary in making the pupil think is best shown by relating another incident. The catalogue of a well-known school announced that the teachers were aiming to get their pupils to read Latin at sight and to think in more tongues than one. A captious superintendent wrote to the principal, saying, “I envy you. How do you do it? We would be satisfied if we could make pupils think in English.” The reply was equally sharp and suggestive: “You ask how we make pupils think. I answer, By giving them something to think about. If you ask how we make them think in more tongues than one, I answer, By giving them, in addition to the materials of thought, the instruments of thought as found in two or more languages.”

The first step in training a pupil to think is to furnish him proper materials of thought, to develop in his mind the concepts which lie at the basis of a branch of study, and which must be analyzed, compared, and combined in new forms during the prosecution of that study. Just as little as a boy can draw fish from an empty pond, so little can he draw ideas, thoughts, and conclusions from an empty head. If the fundamental ideas are not carefully developed when the study of a new science is begun, all subsequent thinking on the part of the pupil is necessarily hazy, uncertain, unsatisfactory. How can a pupil compare two ideas or concepts and join them in a correct judgment if there is nothing in his mind except the technical terms by which the scientist denotes these ideas? The idea of number lies at the basis of arithmetic. How often are beginners expected to think in figures without having a clear idea of what figures denote! What teacher has not seen children wrestling with fractions who had no idea of a fraction save that of two figures, one above the other, with a line between them! How many of our arithmetics are full of problems involving business transactions of which the pupil cannot possibly have an adequate idea! Not having clear ideas of the things to be compared, how can the learner form clear and accurate judgments and conclusions?

So essential to correct thinking is the development of the concepts and ideas which lie at the basis of each science, that we may designate the giving to the pupil of something to think about as the first and most important step in the solution of the educational problem before us. In other words, the furnishing of the proper materials of thought is the first step in teaching others to think. The force and the validity of this proposition are easily seen if we reflect upon the essential oneness of the manifold diversities of thinking as they appear at school and in subsequent years.

It is universally conceded that education should be a preparation for life. The thinking at school should be an adumbration of the thinking beyond the school. The possession of enough data, or thought-materials, for reaching trustworthy conclusions, which is the indispensable requisite of successful thinking at school, is likewise a necessary requisite of successful thinking in practical life. It behooves us to inquire into the nature and foundation of the thinking of men in the professions, and in other vocations, for the purpose of gaining further light upon the problem before us. Let us, then, inquire into the nature and foundation of the thinking of men eminent in a profession or prominent in some other vocation. The professional man may have less native ability, less general knowledge, less culture and education, less mental power than the client whom he advises or the patient for whom he prescribes; and yet his inferences and conclusions are accepted as more trustworthy than those of men outside of the given profession, because he has a knowledge of facts and data which they do not possess. If he be a physician, special training and professional experience have taught him how to observe the symptoms of different diseases; how to eliminate sources of doubt and error; how to reach a correct diagnosis of difficult cases, and how to apply the proper remedies. If he be a lawyer, he has been taught how to examine court records; how to detect and guard against flaws in legal documents; how to find and interpret the law in specific cases; how to protect the life and property of his client. The judge on the bench is learned in the law, though he may be ignorant of science, literature, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures. He is aided in arriving at correct conclusions by thought-materials which are not in the possession of laymen.