राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा प्रणाली एवं भारतीय मानस (श्री अरविन्द - एकात्म शिक्षा दर्शन)

TRAINING MENTAL FACULTIES 61
the training of the faculties which
observe and compare outward things.
But I shall deal with it in a subsequent
chapter.
The mental faculties should first be
exercised on things, afterwards on
words and ideas. Our dealings with
language are much too perfunctory
and the absence of a fine sense for
words impoverishes the intellect and
limits the fineness and truth of its
operations. The mind should be
accustomed first to notice the word
thoroughly, its form, sound and sense ;
then to compare the form with other
similar forms in the points of simila-
rity and difference, thus forming the
foundation of the grammatical sense ;
then to distinguish between the fine
shades of sense of similar words and
the formtaion and rhythm of different
sentences; thus the formation of the

62 NATIONAL EDUCATION
liberty and the syntactical faculties.
All this should be done informally
drawing on the curiosity and interest,
avoiding set-teaching and memorising
of rules. The true knowledge takes
its base on things, arthas, and only
when it has mastered the thing, pro-
ceeds to formalize its information.

CHAPTER VIII
THE TRAINING OF THE LOGICAL
FACULTY
The training of the logical reason
but necessarily follows the training of
the faculties which collect the material
on which the logical reason must work.
Not only so but the mind must have
some development of the faculty of
dealing before it can deal successfully
with ideas. The question is, once this
preliminary work is done, what is the
best way of teaching the boy to think
correctly from premises. For the
logical reason cannot proceed without
premises. It either infers from facts
to a conclusion to a fresh one, or from
one fact to another. It either induces,
deduces or simply infers. I see the
Sun rise day after day, I conclude or
induce that it rises to a law daily

64 NATIONAL EDUCATION
after a varying interval of darkness. I
have already ascertained that wherever
there is smoke, there is fire. I have
induced that general rule from an
observation of facts. I deduce that
in a particular case of smoke, there is
a fire behind. I infer that a man
must have let it from the improbabi-
lity of any other cause under the
particular circumstances. I cannot
deduce it because fire is not always
created by human kindling ; it may be
volcanic or caused by a stroke of
lightening or the sparks from some
kind of friction in the neighbourhood.
There are three elements necessary
to correct reasoning: first, the correct-
ness of the facts or conclusions I start
from, secondly, the completeness as
well as the accuracy of the data I
start from, thirdly, the elimination of
other possible or impossible conclu-

TRAINING LOGICAL FACULTY. 65
sions from the same facts. The falli-
bility of the logical reason is due
partly to avoidable negligence and
looseness in securing these conditions,
partly to the difficulty of getting all
the facts correct, still more to the
difficulty of getting all the facts
complete, most of all, to the extreme
difficulty of eliminating all possible
conclusions except the one which
happens to be right. No fact is sup-
posed to be more perfectly established
than the universality of the Law of
Gravitation as an imperative rule, yet
a single new fact inconsistent with it
would upset this supposed universa-
lity. And such facts exist. Neverthe-
less by care and keenness the fallibility
may be reduced to its minimum.
The usual practice is to train the
logical reason by teaching the Science
of Logic. This is an instance of the

66 NATIONAL EDUCATION
prevalent error by which book know-
ledge of a thing is made the object of
the study instead of the thing itself.
The experience of reasoning and its
errors should be given to the mind
and it should be taught to observe
how these work for itself; it should
proceed from the example to the rule
and from the accumulating harmony
of rules to the formal science of the
subject, not from the formal science
to the rule, and from the rule to the
example.
The first step is to make the young
mind interest itself in drawing inferen-
ces from the facts, tracing cause and
effect. It should then be led on to
notice its successes and its failures and
the reason of the success and of the
failure ; the incorrectness of the fact
started from, the haste in drawing
conclusions from insufficient facts, the

TRAINING LOGICAL FACULTY 67
carlessness in accepting a conclusion
which is improbable, little supported
by the data or open to doubt, the in-
dolence or prejudice which does wish
to consider other possible explanations
or conclusions. In this way the mind
can be trained to reason as correctly
as the fallibility of the human logic
will allow, minimising the change of
error. The study of formal logic
should be postponed to a later period
when it can easily be mastered in a
very brief period, since it will be only
the systematising of the art perfectly
well-known to the student.

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