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materials of sense-perception and give them form and meaning. With
Herbart, the ideas gained through experience are the apperceiving power
in interpreting new things. Practically, the difference between Kant
and Herbart is important. For Kant gives controlling influence to
innate ideas in the process of acquisition. Our capacity for learning
depends not so much upon the results of experience and thought stored
in the mind, as upon original powers, unaided and unsupported by
experience. With Herbart, on the contrary, great stress is laid upon
the _acquired fund_ of empirical knowledge as a means of increasing
one's stores, of more rapidly receiving and assimilating new ideas.

Upon this is also based psychologically the whole educational plan of
Herbart and of his disciples. As fast as ideas are gained they are
used as means of further acquisition. The chief care is to supply the
mind of a child at any stage of his growth with materials of knowledge
suited to his previous stores, and to see that the new is properly
assimilated by the old and organized with it. This accumulated fund of
ideas, as it goes on collecting and arranging itself in the mind, is
not only a favorable condition but an active agency in our future
acquisition and progress. Moreover, it is the business of the teacher
to guide and, to some extent, to control the inflow of new ideas and
experiences into the mind of a child; to superintend the process of
acquiring and of building up those bodies of thought and feeling which
eventually are to influence and guide a child's voluntary action.

The critics therefore accuse Herbart of a sort of _architectural_
design or even of a _mechanical_ process in education. If our ability
and character depend to such an extent upon our acquirements, and if
the teacher is able to control the supply of ideas to a child and to
guide the process of arrangement, he can build up controlling centers
of thought which may strongly influence the action of the will. In
other words, he can construct a character by building the right
materials into it. This seems to leave small room for spontaneous
development toward self-activity and freedom.

Herbart, on the other hand, criticises Kant's idea of the
transcendental freedom of the will, on the ground that, if true, it
makes deliberate, systematic education impossible. If the will remains
absolutely free in spite of acquired knowledge, in spite of strongly
developed