120 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
of opportunity ; and here opportunity seldom comes twice. Special 
studies have shown the sequence of children’s interests. This must be 
sonsidered in determining the course of study ; for, as Professor James 
puts it : ¢ To determine the moment of instinctive readiness for a subject 
is the supreme duty of every educator.” 
Psychological studies have also brought into prominence the active side 
of child nature, and one of the most important movements to-day is the 
tendency to emphasize the active side of education. Pedagogy based upon 
child study seeks to use all the light that comes from the various fields of 
psychology, and with that light to appropriate all that is best in all the 
various systems of education. It admits with Pestalozzi the fundamental 
importance of sense perception. Things before words, the concrete 
before the abstract, clear perceptions before the working over concepts. 
With Herbart it maintains also that sense perception is not enough. 
There must be mental assimilation and the study of causal relations, but 
also there must be the expression of thought ; and, more than Pestalozzi 
or Herbart, it places emphasis upon the active, the productive, the crea- 
tive processes in education. 
THE DOMINANT SEVENTH IN EDUCATION. 
BY MISS HATTIE E. HUNT, PD.D., HARTFORD, CONN. 
IT has been said that ‘“music is the harmonious voice of creation, an 
scho of the invisible world, one note of the divine concord which the 
>ntire universe is destined one day to sound.” (Mazzini.) 
Harmony is the one common and constant element which serves to link 
ill existence in one complete whole. 
Since harmony of sound, or music, is taken as the type, let us give it a 
moment’s consideration. 
The physical apparatus for hearing is such that auditory discrimina- 
ions approach the marvelous, and yet the laws of harmony from the 
artist’s point of view are comparatively simple. Let me mention two of 
shese laws. First, every perfect cadence must close with the tonic chord, 
she fundamental tone of which is the key of the cadence. The other law 
relates to a peculiar combination of tones forming a chord which produces 
In the mind of the hearer a feeling of unrest, of expectancy, a feeling of 
longing, which can be satisfied only by hearing the tonic chord. This 
combination of tones is known as the chord of the dominant seventh, and 
it must always be followed by the tonic chord. As its name implies, it is a 
ruling chord, and it determines the key. 
These then are the two most important rules of harmony in music—