M.L. Jacks - Total Education

First Published in 1946 by

Routledge, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd

Reprinted in 1998, 1999, 2001(twice by
Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1946 M. L. Jacks

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Total Education
ISBN 978-0-415-17777-4

The Sociology of Education: 28 Volumes
ISBN 978-0-415-17833-9

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 978-0-415-17777-1
ISBN 9781136273759 (ePub)

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

TOTAL EDUCATION

CHAPTER I
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS

Analysis has for its chief function to prepare the way for synthesis.

Herbert Spencer.

The human mind is more apt for analysis than for synthesis, and the process of investigation or dissection comes more easily to us than the process of construction or articulation. Many of our semi-proverbial cautions and injunctions, which have become current in common speech, bear witness to this. Think it outone of the schoolmasters favourite pieces of advice; let us get down to brass tacks; the bare bones of the problem; we cannot see the wood for the trees; look after the pence and the pounds with look after themselves these, and a score of similar phrases, which are constantly on our lips, are evidence for this natural tendency of our minds. Each in our own field, we analyse that which is presented to us, as a necessary step to its understanding; the scientist analyses light, sound, or chemical compounds; the literary critic a poem or a tale; the grammarian a sentence and its clauses; the philosopher an argument, a system of thought, or the sequence of cause and effect; the sociologist a social system; the man in the street his feelings, his mental processes, his motives, and the situations with which his daily life confronts him. The psycho-analyst analyses the unconscious; and the undiscriminating eagerness with which the processes of psycho-analysis have been accepted by the general public, even in their most experimental forms, is further evidence of how congenial the work of analysis is. This analysis is sometimes quantitative, sometimes qualitative, and often a confused medley of the two. On the other hand, the work of synthesis is much less congenial, and the faculty of integration a much less common phenomenon. To synthesize is a more formidable task than to analyse, and it can only be accomplished by the choicest spirits. It is they who, in the field of science, can attain to a synoptic view of the universe, which comprehends in one grasp not only the individual links in the causal chain, but the chain as a whole, linking together the full experiences of the human mind. The great physicians are not those who are most skilful at analysing a disease, but rather those who know that there is no such thing as a disease, but simply a sick human being, and who treat each patient as a whole, ministering to a mind and a character which are diseased in the diseases of the body. The literary critic who subjects the parables of Jesus to a detailed analysis will arrive at a result very different from the intention of their author : it is noteworthy that the analytical explanations of these parables to be found in the Gospels are of very doubtful authenticity, and they yield only fragments of the truth, and indeed obscure the meaning of the parable as a whole. Analysis , said Macaulay, is not the business of the poet : his office is to portray, not to dissect , and the poet is by derivation the maker , whose work represents the rarest creations of the human spirit. The man in the street for whom his daily experience is an ordered unity, who sees his life steadily and sees it whole, will find himself travelling with but few companions. It was only the philosopher-kings, rare spirits, who could grasp the idea of the Good.