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MENTAL WASTE AND ECONOMY. 
25 
BY PROFESSOR G. T. W. PATRICK, STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. 
[ sHALL try to show in this paper that there is among our school chil- 
dren, and older students as well, a large amount of mental waste ; that 
this waste is in part preventable by proper education in early years ; that 
.t is one of the functions of experimental psychology to determine the 
causes and amount of waste and the means of preventing it; that our 
schools give the matter little or no attention ; that they ought to give it 
she most careful attention. Furthermore, I shall give some examples of 
mental waste, and propose some means of teaching the practice of mental 
zconomy. 
In the study of cerebral physiology the first great fact that presents 
itself 1s that the brain is a machine, doing work and using up material. 
The material used is the chemically complex nervous substance itself, con- 
stantly built up and replaced by a rich supply of oxygenated blood. The 
work done on the mental side is in the form of conscious ard unconscious 
thought, feeling, memory, volition, etc. Now some of this work is effect- 
ive ; some of it is useless. Could we examine a theoretically perfect 
mind, one using up as little material as possible and turning out the 
greatest amount of effective work, and could we compare such a mind 
with that of the average brain-worker, we should be astonished, I think, 
at the amount of mental dissipation in the latter. 
The art of mental economy must take account not only of the nervous 
energy consumed, but also of time. Never before have we realized so fully 
the need of economy of time in mental work. Never before have we felt 
so much the truth of Ruskin’s remark, ¢¢ Life is too disgustingly short.” 
Our school curricula are crowded with things that the pupil must know, 
and there is no time for all. To meet this difficulty, we hear much talk 
about the unification and coordination of studies. Thisis well. Since so 
enormous an amount of mental food must be administered to the young 
student, let it be prepared for easy assimilation, to be sure. But I think 
oetter results would be obtained if half this care were given to the study 
of child psychology, to the end that his mental digestive processes might 
Je carried on with greater economy. 
When I speak of mental economy as that condition in which, with 
a limited amount of time and nervous energy, the largest amount of 
affective mental work may be accomplished, I do not speak from a utili- 
sarian standpoint. I do not count as useless any mental activity which 
contributes in any way to culture, whether intellectual, esthetic, or 
moral, or in any way promotes the mental health of the individual, or 
1dds to the sum of his pleasure. All such mental activity let us encourage 
fully as much as that effective work which wins bread. advances science.