The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker — John Shaqi
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinkerLloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Philosophy
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker
Lloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Belief and doubt; Philosophy -- Introductions
[2] Let me add, that if certain people, struggling in the present maze
of educational theory, and objecting, with a zest and a combativeness
that fairly belie their contentions, to the use of interest as the
primal educational motive, if these people would only recognize change
as always a part of interest, their greatest trouble would be removed.
They refuse to have education easy or pleasant; interest, they insist,
must make it so; and doubtless the advocates of interest are in part to
blame for this view; but change, which to my mind is involved in all
interest, includes resistance and struggle; change is ever a challenge
to effort; and, such being the case, an education led by interest is not
necessarily easy or idly pleasant. The real meaning of the interest
theory, at least as I have to understand it, is simply (1) that the
natural child or the natural man always has something to do, and (2)
that education should promote that something. It is far from meaning
that there should be no compulsion or discipline, no pain or
self-denial. Whoever honestly over expected to do, or ever did any thing
without these? The interest theory, then, would not eliminate hardship
or discipline, but, to my understanding, by making education serve
actual life, would substitute a natural for an artificial and externally
imposed hardship. Not hardship, but real achievement makes the educated
man.
[p.029]
III.
DIFFICULTIES IN OUR ORDINARY VIEWS OF THINGS.
If the doubter were brought into court under indictment for his offences
against common sense, against ordinary experience and belief, and the
jury of his peers sitting upon the case were composed, as of course it
would be likely to be, of faithful believers chosen at random from the
different walks of practical life, no better defence could possibly be
offered than a simple statement of the incongruities which the
consciousness of ordinary life is constantly addicted to. True, for some
reason lying deep in human nature, a defence that ends by convicting the
jury of error, is hardly likely to lead to the immediate discharge of
the prisoner; judges or jurymen are not in the habit of taking a rebuff
in that way; but in course of time the prisoner will be justified, and
his justification, however tardy, is all that now concerns us. To his
defence, therefore, and the discomfiture of his judges, but to the
latter without any malice, we turn at once.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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