The efficiency expert would be quick to seize
upon this disparity in the rate of progress as the starting point in his
critical examination. In a factory a like disparity would lead to
unpleasant consequences. The workman who consumes thirty minutes in
accomplishing a piece of work that another does in ten minutes would be
admonished to accelerate his progress or else give way to a more
efficient man. If we had instruments of sufficient delicacy to test the
results of teaching, we should probably discover that the output of the
ten-minute teacher is superior in quality to that of the thirty-minute
teacher. For we must all have observed in our own experience that the
clarity of our thinking depends upon its intensity.
=Examples.=--A young man who won distinction as a college student had a
wide shelf fitted up on one side of his room at which he stood in the
preparation of all his lessons. His theory was that the attitude of the
body conditions the attitude of the mind. Professor James gives assent
to this theory and avers that an attitude of mind may be generated by
placing the body in such an attitude as would naturally accompany this
mental attitude. This theory proclaims that, if the body is slouching,
the mind will slouch; but that, if the body is alert, the mind will be
equally so. Another college student always walked to and fro in his room
when preparing his history lesson.
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