Besides these things, a well-trained mind gets more thoughts from a
subject than an untrained mind. Some day you will see this more
clearly by observing how much better you will be able to understand
your own language by possessing a knowledge of Greek and Latin.
All the school studies have a use, to be sure--a direct use--in giving
us something to help us in life in one way and another. But besides
this, we get another help from study; namely, the employment of the
mind in the right way. For the right way of doing things which are
worthy of the heart, gives power and good. It is the wrong way of
doing things that causes us trouble. Some studies demand exactness
above all this,--like the study of Arithmetic--others a good
memory,--like History--others tax many faculties, as we have seen in
our Talk about School Music.
Some of the studies are particularly valuable to us at once because
they make us _do_. They may be called _doing_ studies. In Arithmetic
there is a result, and only one result, to be sought. In Grammar every
rule we learn is to be applied in our speech. Manual training demands
judgment and the careful use of the hands. Penmanship is a test for
the hand, but History is a study touching the memory more than the
doing faculty.
School music, you see at once, is a doing study. Not only that, it is
full of life, attractive, appealing to the thoughts in many ways, and
yet it is a hearty study--by that I mean a study for the heart.
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