drop the High School course and take up the Common Branches now, how soon could he qualify himself for the teachers' examination?

T. In about ninety-nine years unless he should happen to go to work.

P. Now be honest. Don't you believe that Skim would succeed in Law? He has a loud voice.

T. No. A voice is of little account unless you have something to say. However, I should advise him to keep his voice, as it might come handy to hollow "fire" with, but he will never have any use for it in Law.

P. How about the girls? I shall soon have one in the High School.

T. No better than the boys. When a girl goes to the post office five times a day and stands around there an hour each time; has errands down town every evening; reciprocates the advances of the dough-faced sensualists that frequent the post office, or sit in shop. windows as girls go to and from school, or loaf around the hotels;I say it is then she soon learns to

P.

What is the remedy?

T. Carry the mail for your family, keep your daughter off the street, and quit patronizing shops that employ things, sometimes called men, that aim to make a showing by falsely declaring their intimacy with the daughters of respectability.

P. Why will she care for a 70percent Diploma if it is worth nothing?

T. It is her method of inducing you to go in debt for a graduating dress that will make her look "too sweet for anything" at Commence

ment.

P. You seem to have a grudge at 70 percent.

T. No. If a pupil work diligently and earn 70 percent, you need have no fears about his future. "Work" is the word.

GETTING NEW IDEAS.

BY J. J. BLISS.

Ohio teachers are studying Halleck's Psychology and Psychic culture this year with interest and profit. No book has been placed on the course that has proven more stimulating and helpful. Prof. Halleck has happily begun with the physical basis and treated the subject from the standpoint of modern neurological research. He has been conservative in this and has not incorporated theories that are only half suspected to be true. Nor has he found it necessary like Prof. Scripture of Yale to sneer at and cast aside the best thought of the psychologists of the past. Psychology and Psychic Culture is a rational blending of the best in both the old and the new lines of research. This book with the author's companion work Education of the Central Nervous System should become the vade mecum of teachers.

But a care must be exercised in the use of the book that the attention be not given too much to the tangible, physiological side of the subject. Mr. Halleck has freely. used physical illustrations and has kept our attention pretty closely to cells and neural functions, as is wise, no doubt. The tendency of

the young student will be to think of cellular activity as mind activity. The result will be substituted for the cause. The free, independent, originating mind will be lost sight of in attending to the activities of the dependent, passive neural cells. and fibres. To one trained under the old psychology there is little danger of this; while studying the brain and nerve action as recently ascertained he has the real psychic action constantly in mind. But the tyro is not so fortified against materialistic views and ere he is aware may find that matter has become identified with mind. The author has pointed out the fact that the activities remain the same whatever view we may take of the nature of mind. But the facts above stated need emphasizing.

The telegrapher need only know of the properties of zinc and carbon as displayed when immersed in acid; the scientist will not confuse those properties with the primary energy which underlies all molecular activity. So our teachers must not come to think of cellular action to the exclusion of real mental action: they must not put the effect for the cause, nor the medium for force transmitted. They must know that action is not energy; that matter is not mind

however nicely it may be organized to convey stimulus to or from the mind.

I have suspected that the physiological aspect of the subject has too strongly influenced the author when he states that few persons far into the thirties can get an entirely new idea, and bases the statement on the decrease of plasticity of the brain. The statement is true. It is also true of persons at the age of ten or even earlier. After the primary perceptions of color, form, taste, smell, hearing, and touch are gained, and the elementary notions of time, space, cause and effect, etc., are developed, it seems impossible that the mind should gain entirely new ideas unless new avenues be opened to it by means of new senses. All new ideas will by the apperceptive process grow out of the old ones: a cathedral is an extension of a church, a church a modification of a dwelling. The cathedral is but a combination of known colors, lines and materials; the symphony a combination of known sounds, or modifications of such sounds. Even modern psychology has no entirely new ideas. Our author emphasizes the word "entirely"; thus it is evident that he is not speaking of what we commonly term new ideas, but those wholly new. After the period of normal infancy such ideas are impossible, however plastic the brain.

But suppose new ideas in the

ordinary meaning of the term is meant, is it true that average persons far into the thirties can not get them into their heads? Will some one send the MONTHLY a list of such ideas that the teachers of Ohio of that age can not get and assimilate. Perhaps Prof. James whom the author quotes can furnish a list that you of even sixty years can not apprehend. I am skeptical on that point.

That the climax of mental and muscular activity is reached at about the age of forty years even we of past that age must admit. But that persons of that age are wholly past gaining new ideas the experience and observation of the great majority will testify against. Memory is less tenacious; curiosity is tired of spending its strength on so many new ideas and finding most of them useless; imagination delights in building with the material which memory delights to recall; the eye grows dim: the ear dull. But the mind is still ready to accept any idea which it feels will be of use to it, or which it finds to be true. Judgment is active but cautious; the new must be tested and approved before it is accepted.

Long before this age men have formed their general views of life, doctrines, and principles; they have adopted those that seemed most reasonable or most politic, just as they have formed friendships; and as they would drop an

old friend who was found false, so they would change an old idea found false for a new one, however rigid the brain tissue may have become. True that they would be reluctant to believe a long tried friend false, and it is just as much to be expected that they should hesitate to relinquish a long held idea or doctrine. Ideas, belief, opinion, knowledge, judgment, will, are of the mind, not of neural tissue. Observation of of brains may show that they do not grow after thirty years and begin to decrease at forty; but the common observation of the receptivity of mind is that it continues long after the senses begin to grow dull and other physical powers to lose their vigor.

We need not go to geniuses for examples. We may test the matter by observing our silver-haired neighbors and friends. Go to them and get their attention; then propose some new idea in which you are interested. Are you afraid they can not get it into their heads? Not at all; you only fear that with their ripened judgment and experience they will be able to show clearly that your idea is neither true nor practical.

Perhaps some day the scalpel will disclose cells whose peculiar function is to accept new ideas, then we shall say that the grooves of activity of these cells become. fixed by the age of forty and we

can not do otherwise than accept such ideas.

Suppose it to be said that the old ideas in the mind block the way entirely to new ideas. This is just what we claim. Or rather we hold that the old ideas block the way to entire newness of ideas. This is not obstructive to the acquisition of ideas, but helpful on apperceptive principles: the old aids in perceiving and interpreting the new: It would be strange if a psychologist should urge us to acquire as many ideas as possible at an early age, and then turn upon us and say that our stock of ideas is so great as to block the way to further acquisition.

Let us make a test case of this matter by a list of ideas which we could have gotten into our heads at twenty years of age but can not get in at past forty.

The new ideas may not have as molding an influence on us at the riper age; for then there is a larger number of ideas and stronger habits for them to operate against.

The mind is not a wall of masonry into which no new material. may enter except at the top of all that has been unchangeably fixed. The human mind is rather like an endogenous tree to every part of which new nutriment is constantly carried for its sustenance and growth.

I repeat that with the above exceptions Psychology and Psychic

Culture is a most wholesome and helpful work and worthy of the serious study of every earnest teacher.

LITERATURE.

BY THE LOCAL SECRETARY.

The Tennyson Reading Circle is composed of twenty members. They have been reading the Princess and at the last meeting tried to put into practice a suggestion of the author of their text upon Psychic Culture. They spent a lively hour in reporting the sensory images which seemed the fairest; and their secretary was instructed to copy and send them in, with the thought that they might be worth a place in the O. T. R. C. department of our excellent magazine, the EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY.