e trivial and
unimportant to their proper level. Not to train one's self to think in
this discriminating way is much like learning to play a piano by
striking each key with equal force!

3. TRAINING IN ASSOCIATION

Since association is at bottom nothing but habit at work in the mental
processes, it follows that it, like other forms of habit, can be
encouraged or suppressed by training. Certainly, no part of one's
education is of greater importance than the character of his
associations. For upon these will largely depend not alone the _content_
of his mental stream, the stuff of his thinking, but also its
_organization_, or the use made of the thought material at hand. In
fact, the whole science of education rests on the laws and principles
involved in setting up right systems of associative connections in the
individual.

THE PLEASURE-PAIN MOTIVE IN ASSOCIATION.--A general law seems to obtain
throughout the animal world that associative responses accompanied by
pleasure tend to persist and grow stronger, while those accompanied by
pain tend to weaken and fall away. The little child of two years may not
understand the gravity of the offense in tearing the leaves out of
books, but if its hands are sharply spatted whenever they tear a book,
the association between the sight of books and tearing them will soon
cease. In fact, all punishment should have for its object the use of
pain in the breaking of associative bonds between certain situations and
wrong responses to them.

On the other hand, the dog that is being trained to perform his tricks
is rewarded with a tidbit or a pat when the right response has been
made. In this way the bond for this particular act is strengthened
through the use of pleasure. All matter studied and learned under the
stimulus of good feeling, enthusiasm, or a pleasurable sense of victory
and achievement not only tends to set up more permanent and valuable
associations than if learned under opposite conditions, but it also
exerts a stronger appeal to our interest and appreciation.

The influence of mental attitude on the matter we study raises a
question as to the wisdom of assigning the committing of poetry, or
Bible verses, or the reading of so many pages of a literary masterpiece
as a punishment for some offense. How many of us have carried away
associations of dislike and bitterness toward some gem of verse or prose
or Scripture because of having our learning of it linked up with the