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Essays on Education AND KINDRED SUBJECTS
by HERBERT SPENCER
INTRODUCTION BY
CHARLES W. ELIOT
DENT: LONDON
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
DUTTON: NEW YORK
_EVERYMAN, I will go with thee,
and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side_
HERBERT SPENCER
Born at Derby in 1820, the son of a teacher,
from whom he received most of his education.
Obtained employment on the London and
Birmingham Railway. After the strike of 1846
he devoted himself to journalism, and in
1848 was sub-editor of _The Economist_.
He died in 1903.
_Made in Great Britain
at the
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J.M. DENT & SONS LTD
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First published in Everyman's Library 1911
Last reprinted 1963_
NO. _504_
INTRODUCTION
The four essays on education which Herbert Spencer published in a single
volume in 1861 were all written and separately published between 1854
and 1859. Their tone was aggressive and their proposals revolutionary;
although all the doctrines--with one important exception--had already
been vigorously preached by earlier writers on education, as Spencer
himself was at pains to point out. The doctrine which was comparatively
new ran through all four essays; but was most amply stated in the essay
first published in 1859 under the title "What Knowledge is of Most
Worth?" In this essay Spencer divided the leading kinds of human
activity into those which minister to self-preservation, those which
secure the necessaries of life, those whose end is the care of
offspring, those which make good citizens, and those which prepare
adults to enjoy nature, literature, and the fine arts; and he then
maintained that in each of these several classes, knowledge of science
was worth more than any other knowledge. He argued that everywhere
throughout creation faculties are developed through the performance of
the appropriate functions; so that it would be contrary to the whole
harmony of nature "if one kind of culture were needed for the gaining of
information, and another kind were needed as a mental gymnastic." He
then maintained that the sciences are superior in all respects to
languages as educational material; they train the memory better, and a
superior kind of memory; they cultivate the judgment, and they impart an
admirable moral and religious discipline. He concluded that "for
discipline, as well as for guidance, science is of chiefest value. In
all its effects, learning the meaning of things is better than learning
the meaning of words." He answered the question "what knowledge is of
most worth?" with the one word--science.
This doctrine was extremely repulsive to the established profession of
education in England, where Latin, Greek, and mathematics had been the
staples of education for many generations, and were believed to afford
the only suitable preparation for the learned professions, public life,
and cultivated society. In proclaiming this doctrine with ample
illustration, ingenious argument, and forcible reiteration, Spencer was
a true educational pioneer, although some of his scientific
contemporaries were really preaching similar doctrines, each in his own
field.
The profession of teaching has long been characterised by certain
habitual convictions, which Spencer undertook to shake rudely, and even
to deride. The first of these convictions is that all education,
physical, intellectual, and moral, must be authoritative, and need take
no account of the natural wishes, tendencies, and motives of the
ignorant and undeveloped child. The second dominating conviction is that
to teach means to tell, or show, children what they ought to see,
believe, and utter. Expositions by the teacher and books are therefore
the true means of education. The third and supreme conviction is that
the method of education which produced the teacher himself and the
contemporary or earlier scholars, authors, and publicists, must be the
righteous and sufficient method. Its fruits demonstrate its soundness,
and make it sacred. Herbert Spencer, in the essays included in the
present volume, assaulted all three of these firm convictions.
Accordingly, the ideas on education which he put forth more than fifty
years ago have penetrated educational practice very slowly--particularly
in England; but they are now coming to prevail in most civilised
countries, and they will prevail more and more. Through him, the
thoughts on education of Comenius, Montaigne, Locke, Milton, Rousseau,
Pestalozzi, and other noted writers on this neglected subject are at
last winning their way into practice, with the modifications or
adaptations which the immense gains of the human race in knowledge and
power since the nineteenth century opened have shown to be wise.
For teachers and educational administrators it is interesting to observe
the steps by which Spencer's doctrines--and especially his doctrine of
the supreme value of science--have advanced towards acceptance in
practice. In general, the advance has been brought about through the
indirect effects of the enormous industrial, social, and political
changes of the last fifty years. The first practical step was the
introduction of laboratory teaching of one or more of the sciences into
the secondary schools and colleges. Chemistry and physics were the
commonest subjects selected. These two subjects had been taught from
books even earlier; but memorising science out of books is far less
useful as training than memorising grammars and vocabularies. The
characteristic discipline of science can be imparted only through the
laboratory method. The schoolmasters and college faculties who took this
step by no means admitted Spencer's contention that science should be
the universal staple at all stages of child development. On the
contrary, they believed, as most people do to-day, that the mind of the
young child cannot grasp the processes and generalisations of science,
and that science is no more universally fitted to develop mental power
than the classics or mathematics. Indeed, experience during the past
fifty years seems to have proved that fewer minds are naturally inclined
to scientific study than to linguistic or historical study; so that if
some science is to be learnt by everybody, the amount of such study
should be limited to acquiring in one or two sciences knowledge of the
scientific method in general. So much scientific training is indeed
universally desirable; because good training of the senses to observe
accurately is universally desirable, and the collecting, comparing, and
grouping of many facts teach orderliness in thinking, and lead up to
something which Spencer valued highly in education--"a rational
explanation of phenomena."
Science having obtained a foothold in secondary schools and colleges, an
adequate development of science-teaching resulted from the introduction
of options or elections for the pupils among numerous different courses,
in place of a curriculum prescribed for all. The elaborate teaching of
many sciences was thus introduced. The pupil or student saw and recorded
for himself; used books only as helps and guides in seeing, recording,
and generalising; proceeded from the known to the unknown; and in short,
made numerous applications of the doctrines which pervade all Spencer's
writings on education. In the United States these methods were
introduced earlier and have been carried farther than in England; but
within the last few years the changes made in education have been more
extensive and rapid in England than in any other country;--witness the
announcements of the new high schools and the re-organised grammar
schools, of such colleges as South Kensington, Armstrong, King's, the
University College (London), and Goldsmiths', and of the new municipal
universities such as Victoria, Bristol, Sheffield, Birmingham,
Liverpool, and Leeds. The new technical schools also illustrate the
advent of instruction in applied science as an important element in
advanced education. Such institutions as the Seafield Park Engineering
College, the City Guilds of London Institute, the City of London
College, and the Battersea Polytechnic are instances of the same
development. Some endowed institutions for girls illustrate the same
tendencies, as, for example, the Bedford College for Women and the Royal
Holloway College. All these institutions teach sciences in considerable
variety, and in the way that Spencer advocated,--not so much because
they have distinctly accepted his views, as because modern industrial
and social conditions compel the preparation in science of young people
destined for various occupations and services indispensable to modern
society. The method of the preparation is essentially that which he
advocated.
Spencer's propositions to the effect that the study of science was
desirable for artisans, artists, and, in general, for people who were to
get their livings through various skills of hand and eye, were received
with great incredulity, not to say derision--particularly when he
maintained that some knowledge of the theory which underlies an art was
desirable for manual practitioners of the art; but the changes of the
last fifty years in the practice of the arts and trades may be said to
have demonstrated that his views were thoroughly sound. The applications
of science in the arts and trades have been so numerous and productive,
that widespread training in science has become indispensable to any
nation which means to excel in the manufacturing industries, whether of
large scale or small scale. The extraordinary popularity of evening
schools and correspondence schools in the United States rests on the
need which young people employed in the various industries of the
country feel of obtaining more theoretical knowledge about the physical
or chemical processes through which they are earning a livelihood. The
Young Men's Christian Associations in the American cities have become
great centres of evening instruction for just such young persons. The
correspondence schools are teaching hundreds of thousands of young
people at work in machine-shops, mills, mines, and factories, who
believe that they can advance themselves in their several occupations by
supplementing their elementary education with correspondence courses,
taken while they are at work earning a livelihood in industries that
rest ultimately on applications of science.
Spencer's objection to the constant exercise of authority and compulsion
in schools, families, and the State is felt to-day much more widely than
it was in 1858, when he wrote his essay on moral education. His proposal
that children should be allowed to suffer the natural consequences of
their foolish or wrong acts does not seem to the present generation--any
more than it did to him--to be applicable to very young children, who
need protection from the undue severity of many natural penalties; but
the soundness of his general doctrine that it is the true function of
parents and teachers to see that children habitually experience the
normal consequences of their conduct, without putting artificial
consequences in place of them, now commands the assent of most persons
whose minds have been freed from the theological dogmas of original sin
and total depravity. Spencer did not expect the immediate adoption of
this principle; because society as a whole was not yet humane enough. He
admitted that the uncontrollable child of ill-controlled adults might
sometimes have to be scolded or beaten, and that these barbarous methods
might be "perhaps the best preparation such children can have for the
barbarous society in which they are presently to play a part." He hoped,
however, that the civilised members of society would by and by
spontaneously use milder measures; and this hope has been realised in
good degree, with the result that happiness in childhood is much
commoner and more constant than it used to be. Parents and teachers are
beginning to realise that self-control is a prime object in moral
education, and that this self-control cannot be practised under a regime
of constant supervision, unexplained commands, and painful punishments,
but must be gained in freedom. Some large-scale experience with American
secondary schools which prepare boys for admission to college has been
edifying in this respect. The American colleges, as a rule, do not
undertake to exercise much supervision over their students, but leave
them free to regulate their own lives in regard to both work and play.
Now it is the boys who come from the secondary schools where the
closest supervision is maintained that are in most danger of falling
into evil ways when they first go to college.
Spencer put very forcibly a valuable doctrine for which many earlier
writers on the theory of education had failed to get a hearing--the
doctrine, namely, that all instruction should be pleasurable and
interesting. Fifty years ago almost all teachers believed that it was
impossible to make school-work interesting, or life-work either; so that
the child must be forced to grind without pleasure, in preparation for
life's grind; and the forcing was to be done by experience of the
teacher's displeasure and the infliction of pain. Through the slow
effects of Spencer's teaching and of the experience of practical
teachers who have demonstrated that instruction can be made pleasurable,
and that the very hardest work is done by interested pupils because they
are interested, it has gradually come to pass that his heresy has become
the prevailing judgment among sensible and humane teachers. The
experience of many adults, hard at work in the modern industrial,
commercial, and financial world, has taught them that human beings can
make their intensest application only to problems in which they are
personally interested for one reason or another, and that freemen work
much harder than slaves, because they feel within themselves strong
motives for exertion which slaves cannot possibly feel. So, many
intelligent adults, including many parents and teachers, have come to
believe it possible that children will learn to do hard work, both in
school and in after life, through the free play of interior motives
which appeal to them, and prompt them to persistent exertion.
The justice of Spencer's views about training through pleasurable
sensation and achievement in freedom rather than through uninterested
work and pain inflicted by despotic government, is well illustrated by
the recent improvements in the discipline of reformatories for boys and
girls and young men and women. It has been demonstrated that the only
useful reformatories are those which diminish the criminal's liberty of
action as little as possible, require him to perform productive labour,
educate him for a trade or other useful occupation, and offer him the
reward of an abridgment of sentence in return for industry and
self-control. Repression and compulsion under penalties however severe
fail to reform, and often make bad moral conditions worse. Instruction,
as much freedom as is consistent with the safety of society, and an
appeal to the ordinary motives of emulation, satisfaction in
achievement, and the desire to win credit, can, and do, reform.
Many schools, both public and private, have now adopted--in most cases
unconsciously--many of Spencer's more detailed suggestions. The
laboratory method of instruction, for example, now common for scientific
subjects in good schools, is an application of his doctrines of concrete
illustration, training in the accurate use of the senses, and
subordination of book-work. Many schools realise, too, that learning by
heart and, in general, memorising from books are not the only means of
storing the mind of a child. They should make parts of a sound
education, but should not be used to the exclusion of learning through
eye, ear, and hand. Spencer pointed out with much elaboration that
children acquire in their early years a vast amount of information
exclusively through the incessant use of their senses. To-day teachers
know this fact, and realise much better than the teachers of fifty years
ago did, that all through the school and college period the pupils
should be getting a large part of their new knowledge through the
careful application of their own powers of observation, aided, indeed,
by books and pictures which record the observations, old and new, of
other people. The young human being, unlike the puppy or the kitten, is
not confined to the use of his own senses as sources of information and
discovery; but can enjoy the fruits of a prodigious width and depth of
observation acquired by preceding generations and adult members of his
own generation. A recent illustration of this extension of the method of
observation in teaching to observations made by other people is the new
method of giving moral instruction to school children through
photographs of actual scenes which illustrate both good morals and bad,
the exhibition of the photographs being accompanied by a running oral
comment from the teacher. In this kind of moral instruction it seems to
be possible to interest all kinds of children, both civilised and
barbarous, both ill-bred and well-bred. The teaching comes through the
eye, for the children themselves observe intently the pictures which the
lantern throws on the screen; but the striking scenes thus put before
them probably lie in most instances quite outside the region of their
own experiences.
The essay on "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" contains a hot
denunciation of that kind of information which in most schools used to
usurp the name of history. It is enough to say of this part of Spencer's
educational doctrine that all the best historical writers since the
middle of the nineteenth century seem to have adopted the principles
which he declared should govern the writing of history. As a result, the
teaching of history in schools and colleges has undergone a profound
change. It now deals with the nature and action of government, central,
local, and ecclesiastical, with social observances, industrial systems,
and the customs which regulate popular life, out-of-doors and indoors.
It depicts also the intellectual condition of the nation and the
progress it has made in applied science, the fine arts, and legislation,
and includes descriptions of the peoples' food, shelters, and
amusements. To this result many authors and teachers have contributed;
but Spencer's violent denunciation of history as it was taught in his
time has greatly promoted this important reform.
Many twentieth-century teachers are sure to put in practice Spencer's
exhortation to teach children to draw with pen and pencil, and to use
paints and brush. He maintained that the common omission of drawing as
an important element in the training of children was in contempt of some
of the most obvious of nature's suggestions with regard to the natural
development of human faculties; and the better recent practice in some
English and American schools verifies his statement; nevertheless some
of the best secondary schools in both countries still fail to recognise
drawing and painting as important elements in liberal education.
Modern society as yet hardly approaches the putting into effective
practice of the sound views which Spencer set forth with great detail in
his essay on "Physical Education." The instruction given in schools and
colleges on the care of the body and the laws of health is still very
meagre; and in certain subjects of the utmost importance no instruction
whatever is given, as, for example, in the normal methods of
reproduction in plants and animals, in eugenics, and in the ruinous
consequences of disregarding sexual purity and honour. In one respect
his fundamental doctrine of freedom, carried into the domain of physical
exercise, has been extensively adopted in England, on the Continent,
and in America. He taught that although gymnastics, military drill, and
formal exercises of the limbs are better than nothing, they can never
serve in place of the plays prompted by nature. He maintained that "for
girls as well as boys the sportive activities to which the instincts
impel are essential to bodily welfare." This principle is now being
carried into practice not only for school-children, but for operatives
in factories, clerks, and other young persons whose occupations are
sedentary and monotonous. For all such persons, free plays are vastly
better than formal exercises of any sort.
The wide adoption of Spencer's educational ideas has had to await the
advent of the new educational administration and the new public interest
therein. It awaited the coming of the state university in the United
States and of the city university in England, the establishment of
numerous technical schools, the profound modifications made in grammar
schools and academies, and the multiplication in both countries of the
secondary schools called high schools. In other words, his ideas
gradually gained admission to a vast number of new institutions of
education, which were created and maintained because both the
governments and the nations felt a new sense of responsibility for the
training of the future generations. These new agencies have been created
in great variety, and the introduction of Spencer's ideas has been much
facilitated by this variety. These institutions were national, state, or
municipal. They were tax-supported or endowed. They charged tuition
fees, or were open to competent children or adults without fee. They
undertook to meet alike the needs of the individual and the needs of the
community; and this undertaking involved the introduction of many new
subjects of instruction and many new methods. Through their variety they
could be sympathetic with both individualism and collectivism. The
variety of instruction offered is best illustrated in the strongest
American universities, some of which are tax-supported and some endowed.
These universities maintain a great variety of courses of instruction in
subjects none of which was taught with the faintest approach to adequacy
in American universities sixty years ago; but in making these extensions
the universities have not found it necessary to reduce the instruction
offered in the classics and mathematics. The traditional cultural
studies are still provided; but they represent only one programme among
many, and no one is compelled to follow it. The domination of the
classics is at an end; but any student who prefers the traditional path
to culture, or whose parents choose that path for him, will find in
several American universities much richer provisions of classical
instruction than any university in the country offered sixty years ago.
The present proposals to widen the influence of Oxford University do not
mean, therefore, that the classics, history, and philosophy are to be
taught less there, but only that other subjects are to be taught more,
and that a greater number and variety of young men will be prepared
there for the service of the nation.
The new public interest in education as a necessary of modern industrial
and political life has gradually brought about a great increase in the
proportional number of young men and women whose education is prolonged
beyond the period of primary or elementary instruction; and this
multitude of young people is preparing for a great variety of callings,
many of which are new within sixty years, having been brought into being
by the extraordinary advances of applied science. The advent of these
new callings has favoured the spread of Spencer's educational ideas. The
recent agitation in favour of what is called vocational training is a
vivid illustration of the wide acceptance of his arguments. Even the
farmers, their farm-hands, and their children must nowadays be offered
free instruction in agriculture; because the public, and especially the
urban public, believes that by disseminating better methods of tillage,
better seed, and appropriate manures, the yield of the farms can be
improved in quality and multiplied in quantity. In regard to all
material interests, the free peoples are acting on the principle that
science is the knowledge of most worth. Spencer's doctrine of natural
consequences in place of artificial penalties, his view that all young
people should be taught how to be wise parents and good citizens, and
his advocacy of instruction in public and private hygiene, lie at the
roots of many of the philanthropic and reformatory movements of the day.
On the whole, Herbert Spencer has been fortunate among educational
philosophers. He has not had to wait so long for the acceptance of his
teachings as Comenius, Montaigne, or Rousseau waited. His ideas have
been floated on a prodigious tide of industrial and social change, which
necessarily involved wide-spread and profound educational reform.
This introduction deals with Spencer's four essays on education; but in
the present volume are included three other famous essays written by him
during the same period (1854-59) which produced the essays on education.
All three are germane to the educational essays, because they deal with
the general law of human progress, with the genesis of that science
which Spencer thought to be the knowledge of most worth, and with the
origin and function of music, a subject which he maintained should play
an important part in any scheme of education.
CHARLES W. ELIOT.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
WORKS. _The Proper Sphere of Government_, 1843; _Social Statics_, 1850;
_Theory of Population_ (_Westminster Review_), April 1852; _The
Development of Hypothesis_ (_The Leader_), 20th March 1852; _The
Ultimate Laws of Physiology_ (_National Review_), April 1857; _Essays,
Scientific, Political and Speculative_, 2 vols., 1858-63; _Education_,
1861; _A System of Synthetic Philosophy_ (12 vols., 1862-96), made up as
follows: _First Principles_, 1862; _Principles of Biology_, 2 vols.,
1864-7; _Principles of Psychology_, 2 vols., 1870-2; _Principles of
Sociology_, 3 vols., 1876-96; _Ceremonial Institutions_, 1879;
_Principles of Morality_, 2 vols., 1879-93 (vol. i, part I published as
_Data of Ethics_, 1879; part 4 as _Justice_, 1891); _Political
Institutions_, 1882. Meanwhile the following works were also published:
_The Classification of the Sciences_, 1864; _The Study of Sociology_,
1872; _Descriptive Sociology_, 1873; _The Man versus the State_, 1884;
_The Factors of Organic Evolution_, 1887; _The Inadequacy of Natural
Selection_, 1893. Spencer's _Autobiography_ appeared posthumously, 2
vols., 1904.
COLLECTED EDITION. Nineteen volumes, 1861-1902.
BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. T. Funk-Brentano, _Les Sophistes grecs et les
Sophistes contemporains_ (Mill and Spencer), 1879; F.H. Collins, _An
Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy_, 1889; H. Sidgwick, _Lectures on
the Ethics of Green, Spencer and Martineau_, 1902; 'The Philosophy of
Herbert Spencer' (in _The Philosophy of Kant and Other Lectures_, 1905);
D. Duncan, _An Introduction to the Philosophy of Spencer_, 1904; _Life
and Letters of Herbert Spencer_, 1908; J. Royce, _Herbert Spencer. An
Estimate and a Review_, 1904; J.A. Thomson, _Herbert Spencer_, 1906;
W.H. Hudson, _Herbert Spencer_, 1916; J. Rumney, _Herbert Spencer's
Sociology_, 1934; R.C.K. Ensor, _Some Reflections on Herbert Spencer's
Doctrine_, 1946.
CONTENTS
PAGE
_Introduction_ by Charles W. Eliot vii
PART I
EDUCATION: INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH? 1
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION 45
MORAL EDUCATION 84
PHYSICAL EDUCATION 116
PART II
ESSAYS ON KINDRED SUBJECTS
PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE 153
ON MANNERS AND FASHION 198
ON THE GENESIS OF SCIENCE 239
ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF LAUGHTER 298
ON THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF MUSIC 310
ORIGINAL PREFACE
TO
EDUCATION: INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
The four chapters of which this work consists, originally appeared as
four Review-articles: the first in the _Westminster Review_ for July
1859; the second in the _North British Review_ for May 1854; and the
remaining two in the _British Quarterly Review_ for April 1858 and for
April 1859. Severally treating different divisions of the subject, but
together forming a tolerably complete whole, I originally wrote them
with a view to their republication in a united form; and they would some
time since have thus been issued, had not a legal difficulty stood in
the way. This difficulty being now removed, I hasten to fulfil the
intention with which they were written.
That in their first shape these chapters were severally independent, is
the reason to be assigned for some slight repetitions which occur in
them: one leading idea, more especially, reappearing twice. As, however,
this idea is on each occasion presented under a new form, and as it can
scarcely be too much enforced, I have not thought well to omit any of
the passages embodying it.
Some additions of importance will be found in the chapter on
Intellectual Education; and in the one on Physical Education there are a
few minor alterations. But the chief changes which have been made, are
changes of expression: all of the essays having undergone a careful
verbal revision.
H.S.
LONDON, _May 1861_
SPENCER'S ESSAYS
PART I--ON EDUCATION
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
It has been truly remarked that, in order of time, decoration precedes
dress. Among people who submit to great physical suffering that they may
have themselves handsomely tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne
with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an Orinoco
Indian, though quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labour for a
fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and
that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a
fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of
decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers find that coloured beads and
trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or
broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts
and coats are given, savages turn them to some ludicrous display, show
how completely the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. Nay,
there are still more extreme illustrations: witness the fact narrated by
Capt. Speke of his African attendants, who strutted about in their
goat-skin mantles when the weather was fine, but when it was wet, took
them off, folded them up, and went about naked, shivering in the rain!
Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is
developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among
ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its
warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience--when we see that
the function is still in great measure subordinated to the
appearance--we have further reason for inferring such an origin.
It is curious that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental
as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful.
Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that
knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been postponed to
that which brings applause. In the Greek schools, music, poetry,
rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until Socrates taught, had but little
bearing upon action, were the dominant subjects; while knowledge aiding
the arts of life had a very subordinate place. And in our own
universities and schools at the present moment, the like antithesis
holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that
throughout his after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies
his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that
in his shop, or his office, in managing his estate or his family, in
playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little
aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire--so little,
that generally the greater part of it drops out of his memory; and if he
occasionally vents a Latin quotation, or alludes to some Greek myth, it
is less to throw light on the topic in hand than for the sake of effect.
If we inquire what is the real motive for giving boys a classical
education, we find it to be simply conformity to public opinion. Men
dress their children's minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing
fashion. As the Orinoco Indian puts on paint before leaving his hut, not
with a view to any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be
seen without it; so, a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on,
not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may not be disgraced
by being found ignorant of them--that he may have "the education of a
gentleman"--the badge marking a certain social position, and bringing a
consequent respect.
This parallel is still more clearly displayed in the case of the other
sex. In the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has
continued to predominate in a greater degree among women than among men.
Originally, personal adornment occupied the attention of both sexes
equally. In these latter days of civilisation, however, we see that in
the dress of men the regard for appearance has in a considerable degree
yielded to the regard for comfort; while in their education the useful
has of late been trenching on the ornamental. In neither direction has
this change gone so far with women. The wearing of earrings,
finger-rings, bracelets; the elaborate dressings of the hair; the still
occasional use of paint; the immense labour bestowed in making
habiliments sufficiently attractive; and the great discomfort that will
be submitted to for the sake of conformity; show how greatly, in the
attiring of women, the desire of approbation overrides the desire for
warmth and convenience. And similarly in their education, the immense
preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, too, use is
subordinated to display. Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing,
drawing--what a large space do these occupy! If you ask why Italian and
German are learnt, you will find that, under all the sham reasons given,
the real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is thought
ladylike. It is not that the books written in them may be utilised,
which they scarcely ever are; but that Italian and German songs may be
sung, and that the extent of attainment may bring whispered admiration.
The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic
trivialities, are committed to memory, not because of any direct
benefits that can possibly result from knowing them: but because society
considers them parts of a good education--because the absence of such
knowledge may bring the contempt of others. When we have named reading,
writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and sewing, we have named about
all the things a girl is taught with a view to their actual uses in
life; and even some of these have more reference to the good opinion of
others than to immediate personal welfare.
Thoroughly to realise the truth that with the mind as with the body the
ornamental precedes the useful, it is requisite to glance at its
rationale. This lies in the fact that, from the far past down even to
the present, social needs have subordinated individual needs, and that
the chief social need has been the control of individuals. It is not, as
we commonly suppose, that there are no governments but those of
monarchs, and parliaments, and constituted authorities. These
acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones,
that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives to be
king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get above some and be reverenced
by them, and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal
struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By the
accumulation of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, by
display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to subjugate others; and
so aids in weaving that ramified network of restraints by which society
is kept in order. It is not the savage chief only, who, in formidable
war-paint, with scalps at his belt, aims to strike awe into his
inferiors; it is not only the belle who, by elaborate toilet, polished
manners, and numerous accomplishments, strives to "make conquests;" but
the scholar, the historian, the philosopher, use their acquirements to
the same end. We are none of us content with quietly unfolding our own
individualities to the full in all directions; but have a restless
craving to impress our individualities upon others, and in some way
subordinate them. And this it is which determines the character of our
education. Not what knowledge is of most real worth, is the
consideration; but what will bring most applause, honour, respect--what
will most conduce to social position and influence--what will be most
imposing. As, throughout life, not what we are, but what we shall be
thought, is the question; so in education, the question is, not the
intrinsic value of knowledge, so much as its extrinsic effects on
others. And this being our dominant idea, direct utility is scarcely
more regarded than by the barbarian when filing his teeth and staining
his nails.
* * * * *
If there requires further evidence of the rude, undeveloped character of
our education, we have it in the fact that the comparative worths of
different kinds of knowledge have been as yet scarcely even
discussed--much less discussed in a methodic way with definite results.
Not only is it that no standard of relative values has yet been agreed
upon; but the existence of any such standard has not been conceived in a
clear manner. And not only is it that the existence of such a standard
has not been clearly conceived; but the need for it seems to have been
scarcely even felt. Men read books on this topic, and attend lectures on
that; decide that their children shall be instructed in these branches
of knowledge, and shall not be instructed in those; and all under the
guidance of mere custom, or liking, or prejudice; without ever
considering the enormous importance of determining in some rational way
what things are really most worth learning. It is true that in all
circles we hear occasional remarks on the importance of this or the
other order of information. But whether the degree of its importance
justifies the expenditure of the time needed to acquire it; and whether
there are not things of more importance to which such time might be
better devoted; are queries which, if raised at all, are disposed of
quite summarily, according to personal predilections. It is true also,
that now and then, we hear revived the standing controversy respecting
the comparative merits of classics and mathematics. This controversy,
however, is carried on in an empirical manner, with no reference to an
ascertained criterion; and the question at issue is insignificant when
compared with the general question of which it is part. To suppose that
deciding whether a mathematical or a classical education is the best is
deciding what is the proper _curriculum_, is much the same thing as to
suppose that the whole of dietetics lies in ascertaining whether or not
bread is more nutritive than potatoes!
The question which we contend is of such transcendent moment, is, not
whether such or such knowledge is of worth but what is its _relative_
worth? When they have named certain advantages which a given course of
study has secured them, persons are apt to assume that they have
justified themselves; quite forgetting that the adequateness of the
advantages is the point to be judged. There is, perhaps, not a subject
to which men devote attention that has not _some_ value. A year
diligently spent in getting up heraldry, would very possibly give a
little further insight into ancient manners and morals. Any one who
should learn the distances between all the towns in England, might, in
the course of his life, find one or two of the thousand facts he had
acquired of some slight service when arranging a journey. Gathering
together all the small gossip of a county, profitless occupation as it
would be, might yet occasionally help to establish some useful
fact--say, a good example of hereditary transmission. But in these
cases, every one would admit that there was no proportion between the
required labour and the probable benefit. No one would tolerate the
proposal to devote some years of a boy's time to getting such
information, at the cost of much more valuable information which he
might else have got. And if here the test of relative value is appealed
to and held conclusive, then should it be appealed to and held
conclusive throughout. Had we time to master all subjects we need not be
particular. To quote the old song:--
Could a man be secure
That his day would endure
As of old, for a thousand long years,
What things might he know!
What deeds might he do!
And all without hurry or care.
"But we that have but span-long lives" must ever bear in mind our
limited time for acquisition. And remembering how narrowly this time is
limited, not only by the shortness of life, but also still more by the
business of life, we ought to be especially solicitous to employ what
time we have to the greatest advantage. Before devoting years to some
subject which fashion or fancy suggests, it is surely wise to weigh
with great care the worth of the results, as compared with the worth of
various alternative results which the same years might bring if
otherwise applied.
In education, then, this is the question of questions, which it is high
time we discussed in some methodic way. The first in importance, though
the last to be considered, is the problem--how to decide among the
conflicting claims of various subjects on our attention. Before there
can be a rational _curriculum_, we must settle which things it most
concerns us to know; or, to use a word of Bacon's, now unfortunately
obsolete--we must determine the relative values of knowledges.
* * * * *
To this end, a measure of value is the first requisite. And happily,
respecting the true measure of value, as expressed in general terms,
there can be no dispute. Every one in contending for the worth of any
particular order of information, does so by showing its bearing upon
some part of life. In reply to the question--"Of what use is it?" the
mathematician, linguist, naturalist, or philosopher, explains the way in
which his learning beneficially influences action--saves from evil or
secures good--conduces to happiness. When the teacher of writing has
pointed out how great an aid writing is to success in business--that is,
to the obtainment of sustenance--that is, to satisfactory living; he is
held to have proved his case. And when the collector of dead facts (say
a numismatist) fails to make clear any appreciable effects which these
facts can produce on human welfare, he is obliged to admit that they are
comparatively valueless. All then, either directly or by implication,
appeal to this as the ultimate test.
How to live?--that is the essential question for us. Not how to live in
the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general
problem which comprehends every special problem is--the right ruling of
conduct in all directions under all circumstances. In what way to treat
the body; in what way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our
affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a
citizen; in what way to utilise those sources of happiness which nature
supplies--how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of
ourselves and others--how to live completely? And this being the great
thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the great thing which
education has to teach. To prepare us for complete living is the
function which education has to discharge; and the only rational mode
of judging of an educational course is, to judge in what degree it
discharges such function.
This test, never used in its entirety, but rarely even partially used,
and used then in a vague, half conscious way, has to be applied
consciously, methodically, and throughout all cases. It behoves us to
set before ourselves, and ever to keep clearly in view, complete living
as the end to be achieved; so that in bringing up our children we may
choose subjects and methods of instruction, with deliberate reference to
this end. Not only ought we to cease from the mere unthinking adoption
of the current fashion in education, which has no better warrant than
any other fashion; but we must also rise above that rude, empirical
style of judging displayed by those more intelligent people who do
bestow some care in overseeing the cultivation of their children's
minds. It must not suffice simply to _think_ that such or such
information will be useful in after life, or that this kind of knowledge
is of more practical value than that; but we must seek out some process
of estimating their respective values, so that as far as possible we may
positively _know_ which are most deserving of attention.
Doubtless the task is difficult--perhaps never to be more than
approximately achieved. But, considering the vastness of the interests
at stake, its difficulty is no reason for pusillanimously passing it by;
but rather for devoting every energy to its mastery. And if we only
proceed systematically, we may very soon get at results of no small
moment.
Our first step must obviously be to classify, in the order of their
importance, the leading kinds of activity which constitute human life.
They may be naturally arranged into:--1. those activities which directly
minister to self-preservation; 2. those activities which, by securing
the necessaries of life, indirectly minister to self-preservation; 3.
those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of
offspring; 4. those activities which are involved in the maintenance of
proper social and political relations; 5. those miscellaneous activities
which fill up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of
the tastes and feelings.
That these stand in something like their true order of subordination, it
needs no long consideration to show. The actions and precautions by
which, from moment to moment, we secure personal safety, must clearly
take precedence of all others. Could there be a man, ignorant as an
infant of surrounding objects and movements, or how to guide himself
among them, he would pretty certainly lose his life the first time he
went into the street; notwithstanding any amount of learning he might
have on other matters. And as entire ignorance in all other directions
would be less promptly fatal than entire ignorance in this direction, it
must be admitted that knowledge immediately conducive to
self-preservation is of primary importance.
That next after direct self-preservation comes the indirect
self-preservation which consists in acquiring the means of living, none
will question. That a man's industrial functions must be considered
before his parental ones, is manifest from the fact that, speaking
generally, the discharge of the parental functions is made possible only
by the previous discharge of the industrial ones. The power of
self-maintenance necessarily preceding the power of maintaining
offspring, it follows that knowledge needful for self-maintenance has
stronger claims than knowledge needful for family welfare--is second in
value to none save knowledge needful for immediate self-preservation.
As the family comes before the State in order of time--as the bringing
up of children is possible before the State exists, or when it has
ceased to be, whereas the State is rendered possible only by the
bringing up of children; it follows that the duties of the parent demand
closer attention than those of the citizen. Or, to use a further
argument--since the goodness of a society ultimately depends on the
nature of its citizens; and since the nature of its citizens is more
modifiable by early training than by anything else; we must conclude
that the welfare of the family underlies the welfare of society. And
hence knowledge directly conducing to the first, must take precedence of
knowledge directly conducing to the last.
Those various forms of pleasurable occupation which fill up the leisure
left by graver occupations--the enjoyments of music, poetry, painting,
etc.--manifestly imply a pre-existing society. Not only is a
considerable development of them impossible without a long-established
social union; but their very subject-matter consists in great part of
social sentiments and sympathies. Not only does society supply the
conditions to their growth; but also the ideas and sentiments they
express. And, consequently, that part of human conduct which constitutes
good citizenship, is of more moment than that which goes out in
accomplishments or exercise of the tastes; and, in education,
preparation for the one must rank before preparation for the other.
Such then, we repeat, is something like the rational order of
subordination:--That education which prepares for direct
self-preservation; that which prepares for indirect self-preservation;
that which prepares for parenthood; that which prepares for citizenship;
that which prepares for the miscellaneous refinements of life. We do not
mean to say that these divisions are definitely separable. We do not
deny that they are intricately entangled with each other, in such way
that there can be no training for any that is not in some measure a
training for all. Nor do we question that of each division there are
portions more important than certain portions of the preceding
divisions: that, for instance, a man of much skill in business but
little other faculty, may fall further below the standard of complete
living than one of but moderate ability in money-getting but great
judgment as a parent; or that exhaustive information bearing on right
social action, joined with entire want of general culture in literature
and the fine arts, is less desirable than a more moderate share of the
one joined with some of the other. But, after making due qualifications,
there still remain these broadly-marked divisions; and it still
continues substantially true that these divisions subordinate one
another in the foregoing order, because the corresponding divisions of
life make one another _possible_ in that order.
Of course the ideal of education is--complete preparation in all these
divisions. But failing this ideal, as in our phase of civilisation every
one must do more or less, the aim should be to maintain _a due
proportion_ between the degrees of preparation in each. Not exhaustive
cultivation in any one, supremely important though it may be--not even
an exclusive attention to the two, three, or four divisions of greatest
importance; but an attention to all:--greatest where the value is
greatest; less where the value is less; least where the value is least.
For the average man (not to forget the cases in which peculiar aptitude
for some one department of knowledge, rightly makes pursuit of that one
the bread-winning occupation)--for the average man, we say, the
desideratum is, a training that approaches nearest to perfection in the
things which most subserve complete living, and falls more and more
below perfection in the things that have more and more remote bearings
on complete living.
In regulating education by this standard, there are some general
considerations that should be ever present to us. The worth of any kind
of culture, as aiding complete living, may be either necessary or more
or less contingent. There is knowledge of intrinsic value; knowledge of
quasi-intrinsic value; and knowledge of conventional value. Such facts
as that sensations of numbness and tingling commonly precede paralysis,
that the resistance of water to a body moving through it varies as the
square of the velocity, that chlorine is a disinfectant,--these, and the
truths of Science in general, are of intrinsic value: they will bear on
human conduct ten thousand years hence as they do now. The extra
knowledge of our own language, which is given by an acquaintance with
Latin and Greek, may be considered to have a value that is
quasi-intrinsic: it must exist for us and for other races whose
languages owe much to these sources; but will last only as long as our
languages last. While that kind of information which, in our schools,
usurps the name History--the mere tissue of names and dates and dead
unmeaning events--has a conventional value only: it has not the remotest
bearing on any of our actions; and is of use only for the avoidance of
those unpleasant criticisms which current opinion passes upon its
absence. Of course, as those facts which concern all mankind throughout
all time must be held of greater moment than those which concern only a
portion of them during a limited era, and of far greater moment than
those which concern only a portion of them during the continuance of a
fashion; it follows that in a rational estimate, knowledge of intrinsic
worth must, other things equal, take precedence of knowledge that is of
quasi-intrinsic or conventional worth.
One further preliminary. Acquirement of every kind has two values--value
as _knowledge_ and value as _discipline_. Besides its use for guiding
conduct, the acquisition of each order of facts has also its use as
mental exercise; and its effects as a preparative for complete living
have to be considered under both these heads.
These, then, are the general ideas with which we must set out in
discussing a _curriculum_:--Life as divided into several kinds of
activity of successively decreasing importance; the worth of each order
of facts as regulating these several kinds of activity, intrinsically,
quasi-intrinsically, and conventionally; and their regulative influences
estimated both as knowledge and discipline.
* * * * *
Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure
direct self-preservation, is in great part already provided for. Too
momentous to be left to our blundering, Nature takes it into her own
hands. While yet in its nurse's arms, the infant, by hiding its face
and crying at the sight of a stranger, shows the dawning instinct to
attain safety by flying from that which is unknown and may be dangerous;
and when it can walk, the terror it manifests if an unfamiliar dog comes
near, or the screams with which it runs to its mother after any
startling sight or sound, shows this instinct further developed.
Moreover, knowledge subserving direct self-preservation is that which it
is chiefly busied in acquiring from hour to hour. How to balance its
body; how to control its movements so as to avoid collisions; what
objects are hard, and will hurt if struck; what objects are heavy, and
injure if they fall on the limbs; which things will bear the weight of
the body, and which not; the pains inflicted by fire, by missiles, by
sharp instruments--these, and various other pieces of information
needful for the avoidance of death or accident, it is ever learning. And
when, a few years later, the energies go out in running, climbing, and
jumping, in games of strength and games of skill, we see in all these
actions by which the muscles are developed, the perceptions sharpened,
and the judgment quickened, a preparation for the safe conduct of the
body among surrounding objects and movements; and for meeting those
greater dangers that occasionally occur in the lives of all. Being thus,
as we say, so well cared for by Nature, this fundamental education needs
comparatively little care from us. What we are chiefly called upon to
see, is, that there shall be free scope for gaining this experience and
receiving this discipline--that there shall be no such thwarting of
Nature as that by which stupid schoolmistresses commonly prevent the
girls in their charge from the spontaneous physical activities they
would indulge in; and so render them comparatively incapable of taking
care of themselves in circumstances of peril.
This, however, is by no means all that is comprehended in the education
that prepares for direct self-preservation. Besides guarding the body
against mechanical damage or destruction, it has to be guarded against
injury from other causes--against the disease and death that follow
breaches of physiologic law. For complete living it is necessary, not
only that sudden annihilations of life shall be warded off; but also
that there shall be escaped the incapacities and the slow annihilation
which unwise habits entail. As, without health and energy, the
industrial, the parental, the social, and all other activities become
more or less impossible; it is clear that this secondary kind of direct
self-preservation is only less important than the primary kind; and
that knowledge tending to secure it should rank very high.
It is true that here, too, guidance is in some measure ready supplied.
By our various physical sensations and desires, Nature has insured a
tolerable conformity to the chief requirements. Fortunately for us, want
of food, great heat, extreme cold, produce promptings too peremptory to
be disregarded. And would men habitually obey these and all like
promptings when less strong, comparatively few evils would arise. If
fatigue of body or brain were in every case followed by desistance; if
the oppression produced by a close atmosphere always led to ventilation;
if there were no eating without hunger, or drinking without thirst; then
would the system be but seldom out of working order. But so profound an
ignorance is there of the laws of life, that men do not even know that
their sensations are their natural guides, and (when not rendered morbid
by long--continued disobedience) their trustworthy guides. So that
though, to speak teleologically, Nature has provided efficient
safeguards to health, lack of knowledge makes them in a great measure
useless.
If any one doubts the importance of an acquaintance with the principles
of physiology, as a means to complete living, let him look around and
see how many men and women he can find in middle or later life who are
thoroughly well. Only occasionally do we meet with an example of
vigorous health continued to old age; hourly do we meet with examples of
acute disorder, chronic ailment, general debility, premature
decrepitude. Scarcely is there one to whom you put the question, who has
not, in the course of his life, brought upon himself illnesses which a
little information would have saved him from. Here is a case of
heart-disease consequent on a rheumatic fever that followed reckless
exposure. There is a case of eyes spoiled for life by over-study.
Yesterday the account was of one whose long-enduring lameness was
brought on by continuing, spite of the pain, to use a knee after it had
been slightly injured. And to-day we are told of another who has had to
lie by for years, because he did not know that the palpitation he
suffered under resulted from overtaxed brain. Now we hear of an
irremediable injury which followed some silly feat of strength; and,
again, of a constitution that has never recovered from the effects of
excessive work needlessly undertaken. While on every side we see the
perpetual minor ailments which accompany feebleness. Not to dwell on the
pain, the weariness, the gloom, the waste of time and money thus
entailed, only consider how greatly ill-health hinders the discharge of
all duties--makes business often impossible, and always more difficult;
produces an irritability fatal to the right management of children; puts
the functions of citizenship out of the question; and makes amusement a
bore. Is it not clear that the physical sins--partly our forefathers'
and partly our own--which produce this ill-health, deduct more from
complete living than anything else? and to a great extent make life a
failure and a burden instead of a benefaction and a pleasure?
Nor is this all. Life, besides being thus immensely deteriorated, is
also cut short. It is not true, as we commonly suppose, that after a
disorder or disease from which we have recovered, we are as before. No
disturbance of the normal course of the functions can pass away and
leave things exactly as they were. A permanent damage is done--not
immediately appreciable, it may be, but still there; and along with
other such items which Nature in her strict account-keeping never drops,
it will tell against us to the inevitable shortening of our days.
Through the accumulation of small injuries it is that constitutions are
commonly undermined, and break down, long before their time. And if we
call to mind how far the average duration of life falls below the
possible duration, we see how immense is the loss. When, to the numerous
partial deductions which bad health entails, we add this great final
deduction, it results that ordinarily one-half of life is thrown away.
Hence, knowledge which subserves direct self-preservation by preventing
this loss of health, is of primary importance. We do not contend that
possession of such knowledge would by any means wholly remedy the evil.
It is clear that in our present phase of civilisation, men's necessities
often compel them to transgress. And it is further clear that, even in
the absence of such compulsion, their inclinations would frequently lead
them, spite of their convictions, to sacrifice future good to present
gratification. But we _do_ contend that the right knowledge impressed in
the right way would effect much; and we further contend that as the laws
of health must be recognised before they can be fully conformed to, the
imparting of such knowledge must precede a more rational living--come
when that may. We infer that as vigorous health and its accompanying
high spirits are larger elements of happiness than any other things
whatever, the teaching how to maintain them is a teaching that yields in
moment to no other whatever. And therefore we assert that such a course
of physiology as is needful for the comprehension of its general truths,
and their bearings on daily conduct, is an all-essential part of a
rational education.
Strange that the assertion should need making! Stranger still that it
should need defending! Yet are there not a few by whom such a
proposition will be received with something approaching to derision. Men
who would blush if caught saying Iphigenia instead of Iphigenia, or
would resent as an insult any imputation of ignorance respecting the
fabled labours of a fabled demi-god, show not the slightest shame in
confessing that they do not know where the Eustachian tubes are, what
are the actions of the spinal cord, what is the normal rate of
pulsation, or how the lungs are inflated. While anxious that their sons
should be well up in the superstitions of two thousand years ago, they
care not that they should be taught anything about the structure and
functions of their own bodies--nay, even wish them not to be so taught.
So overwhelming is the influence of established routine! So terribly in
our education does the ornamental over-ride the useful!
* * * * *
We need not insist on the value of that knowledge which aids indirect
self-preservation by facilitating the gaining of a livelihood. This is
admitted by all; and, indeed, by the mass is perhaps too exclusively
regarded as the end of education. But while every one is ready to
endorse the abstract proposition that instruction fitting youths for the
business of life is of high importance, or even to consider it of
supreme importance; yet scarcely any inquire what instruction will so
fit them. It is true that reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught
with an intelligent appreciation of their uses. But when we have said
this we have said nearly all. While the great bulk of what else is
acquired has no bearing on the industrial activities, an immensity of
information that has a direct bearing on the industrial activities is
entirely passed over.
For, leaving out only some very small classes, what are all men employed
in? They are employed in the production, preparation, and distribution
of commodities. And on what does efficiency in the production,
preparation, and distribution of commodities depend? It depends on the
use of methods fitted to the respective natures of these commodities; it
depends on an adequate acquaintance with their physical, chemical, or
vital properties, as the case may be; that is, it depends on Science.
This order of knowledge which is in great part ignored in our
school-courses, is the order of knowledge underlying the right
performance of those processes by which civilised life is made possible.
Undeniable as is this truth, there seems to be no living consciousness
of it: its very familiarity makes it unregarded. To give due weight to
our argument, we must, therefore, realise this truth to the reader by a
rapid review of the facts.
Passing over the most abstract science, Logic, on the due guidance by
which, however, the large producer or distributor depends, knowingly or
unknowingly, for success in his business-forecasts, we come first to
Mathematics. Of this, the most general division, dealing with number,
guides all industrial activities; be they those by which processes are
adjusted, or estimates framed, or commodities bought and sold, or
accounts kept. No one needs to have the value of this division of
abstract science insisted upon.
For the higher arts of construction, some acquaintance with the more
special division of Mathematics is indispensable. The village carpenter,
who lays out his work by empirical rules, equally with the builder of a
Britannia Bridge, makes hourly reference to the laws of space-relations.
The surveyor who measures the land purchased; the architect in designing
a mansion to be built on it; the builder when laying out the
foundations; the masons in cutting the stones; and the various artizans
who put up the fittings; are all guided by geometrical truths.
Railway-making is regulated from beginning to end by geometry: alike in
the preparation of plans and sections; in staking out the line; in the
mensuration of cuttings and embankments; in the designing and building
of bridges, culverts, viaducts, tunnels, stations. Similarly with the
harbours, docks, piers, and various engineering and architectural works
that fringe the coasts and overspread the country, as well as the mines
that run underneath it. And now-a-days, even the farmer, for the correct
laying-out of his drains, has recourse to the level--that is, to
geometrical principles.
Turn next to the Abstract-Concrete sciences. On the application of the
simplest of these, Mechanics, depends the success of modern
manufactures. The properties of the lever, the wheel-and-axle, etc., are
recognised in every machine, and to machinery in these times we owe all
production. Trace the history of the breakfast-roll. The soil out of
which it came was drained with machine-made tiles; the surface was
turned over by a machine; the wheat was reaped, thrashed, and winnowed
by machines; by machinery it was ground and bolted; and had the flour
been sent to Gosport, it might have been made into biscuits by a
machine. Look round the room in which you sit. If modern, probably the
bricks in its walls were machine-made; and by machinery the flooring was
sawn and planed, the mantel-shelf sawn and polished, the paper-hangings
made and printed. The veneer on the table, the turned legs of the
chairs, the carpet, the curtains, are all products of machinery. Your
clothing--plain, figured, or printed--is it not wholly woven, nay,
perhaps even sewed, by machinery? And the volume you are reading--are
not its leaves fabricated by one machine and covered with these words by
another? Add to which that for the means of distribution over both land
and sea, we are similarly indebted. And then observe that according as
knowledge of mechanics is well or ill applied to these ends, comes
success or failure. The engineer who miscalculates the strength of
materials, builds a bridge that breaks down. The manufacturer who uses a
bad machine cannot compete with another whose machine wastes less in
friction and inertia. The ship-builder adhering to the old model is
out-sailed by one who builds on the mechanically-justified wave-line
principle. And as the ability of a nation to hold its own against other
nations, depends on the skilled activity of its units, we see that on
mechanical knowledge may turn the national fate.
On ascending from the divisions of Abstract-Concrete science dealing
with molar forces, to those divisions of it which deal with molecular
forces, we come to another vast series of applications. To this group of
sciences joined with the preceding groups we owe the steam-engine, which
does the work of millions of labourers. That section of physics which
formulates the laws of heat, has taught us how to economise fuel in
various industries; how to increase the produce of smelting furnaces by
substituting the hot for the cold blast; how to ventilate mines; how to
prevent explosions by using the safety-lamp; and, through the
thermometer, how to regulate innumerable processes. That section which
has the phenomena of light for its subject, gives eyes to the old and
the myopic; aids through the microscope in detecting diseases and
adulterations; and, by improved lighthouses, prevents shipwrecks.
Researches in electricity and magnetism have saved innumerable lives and
incalculable property through the compass; have subserved many arts by
the electrotype; and now, in the telegraph, have supplied us with an
agency by which for the future, mercantile transactions will be
regulated and political intercourse carried on. While in the details of
in-door life, from the improved kitchen-range up to the stereoscope on
the drawing-room table, the applications of advanced physics underlie
our comforts and gratifications.
Still more numerous are the applications of Chemistry. The bleacher, the
dyer, the calico-printer, are severally occupied in processes that are
well or ill done according as they do or do not conform to chemical
laws. Smelting of copper, tin, zinc, lead, silver, iron, must be guided
by chemistry. Sugar-refining, gas-making, soap-boiling,
gunpowder-manufacture, are operations all partly chemical; as are
likewise those which produce glass and porcelain. Whether the
distiller's wort stops at the alcoholic fermentation or passes into the
acetous, is a chemical question on which hangs his profit or loss; and
the brewer, if his business is extensive, finds it pay to keep a chemist
on his premises. Indeed, there is now scarcely any manufacture over some
part of which chemistry does not preside. Nay, in these times even
agriculture, to be profitably carried on, must have like guidance. The
analysis of manures and soils; the disclosure of their respective
adaptations; the use of gypsum or other substance for fixing ammonia;
the utilisation of coprolites; the production of artificial manures--all
these are boons of chemistry which it behoves the farmer to acquaint
himself with. Be it in the lucifer match, or in disinfected sewage, or
in photographs--in bread made without fermentation, or perfumes
extracted from refuse, we may perceive that chemistry affects all our
industries; and that, therefore, knowledge of it concerns every one who
is directly or indirectly connected with our industries.
Of the Concrete sciences, we come first to Astronomy. Out of this has
grown that art of navigation which has made possible the enormous
foreign commerce that supports a large part of our population, while
supplying us with many necessaries and most of our luxuries.
Geology, again, is a science knowledge of which greatly aids industrial
success. Now that iron ores are so large a source of wealth; now that
the duration of our coal-supply has become a question of great interest;
now that we have a College of Mines and a Geological Survey; it is
scarcely needful to enlarge on the truth that the study of the Earth's
crust is important to our material welfare.
And then the science of life--Biology: does not this, too, bear
fundamentally on these processes of indirect self-preservation? With
what we ordinarily call manufactures, it has, indeed, little connection;
but with the all-essential manufacture--that of food--it is inseparably
connected. As agriculture must conform its methods to the phenomena of
vegetal and animal life, it follows that the science of these phenomena
is the rational basis of agriculture. Various biological truths have
indeed been empirically established and acted upon by farmers, while yet
there has been no conception of them as science; such as that particular
manures are suited to particular plants; that crops of certain kinds
unfit the soil for other crops; that horses cannot do good work on poor
food; that such and such diseases of cattle and sheep are caused by such
and such conditions. These, and the every-day knowledge which the
agriculturist gains by experience respecting the management of plants
and animals, constitute his stock of biological facts; on the largeness
of which greatly depends his success. And as these biological facts,
scanty, indefinite, rudimentary, though they are, aid him so
essentially; judge what must be the value to him of such facts when they
become positive, definite, and exhaustive. Indeed, even now we may see
the benefits that rational biology is conferring on him. The truth that
the production of animal heat implies waste of substance, and that,
therefore, preventing loss of heat prevents the need for extra food--a
purely theoretical conclusion--now guides the fattening of cattle: it is
found that by keeping cattle warm, fodder is saved. Similarly with
respect to variety of food. The experiments of physiologists have shown
that not only is change of diet beneficial, but that digestion is
facilitated by a mixture of ingredients in each meal. The discovery that
a disorder known as "the staggers," of which many thousands of sheep
have died annually, is caused by an entozoon which presses on the brain,
and that if the creature is extracted through the softened place in the
skull which marks its position, the sheep usually recovers, is another
debt which agriculture owes to biology.
Yet one more science have we to note as bearing directly on industrial
success--the Science of Society. Men who daily look at the state of the
money-market glance over prices current; discuss the probable crops of
corn, cotton, sugar, wool, silk; weigh the chances of war; and from
these data decide on their mercantile operations; are students of social
science: empirical and blundering students it may be; but still,
students who gain the prizes or are plucked of their profits, according
as they do or do not reach the right conclusion. Not only the
manufacturer and the merchant must guide their transactions by
calculations of supply and demand, based on numerous facts, and tacitly
recognising sundry general principles of social action; but even the
retailer must do the like: his prosperity very greatly depending upon
the correctness of his judgments respecting the future wholesale prices
and the future rates of consumption. Manifestly, whoever takes part in
the entangled commercial activities of a community, is vitally
interested in understanding the laws according to which those activities
vary.
Thus, to all such as are occupied in the production, exchange, or
distribution of commodities, acquaintance with Science in some of its
departments, is of fundamental importance. Each man who is immediately
or remotely implicated in any form of industry (and few are not) has in
some way to deal with the mathematical, physical, and chemical
properties of things; perhaps, also, has a direct interest in biology;
and certainly has in sociology. Whether he does or does not succeed well
in that indirect self-preservation which we call getting a good
livelihood, depends in a great degree on his knowledge of one or more of
these sciences: not, it may be, a rational knowledge; but still a
knowledge, though empirical. For what we call learning a business,
really implies learning the science involved in it; though not perhaps
under the name of science. And hence a grounding in science is of great
importance, both because it prepares for all this, and because rational
knowledge has an immense superiority over empirical knowledge. Moreover,
not only is scientific culture requisite for each, that he may
understand the _how_ and the _why_ of the things and processes with
which he is concerned as maker or distributor; but it is often of much
moment that he should understand the _how_ and the _why_ of various
other things and processes. In this age of joint-stock undertakings,
nearly every man above the labourer is interested as capitalist in some
other occupation than his own; and, as thus interested, his profit or
loss often depends on his knowledge of the sciences bearing on this
other occupation. Here is a mine, in the sinking of which many
shareholders ruined themselves, from not knowing that a certain fossil
belonged to the old red sandstone, below which no coal is found.
Numerous attempts have been made to construct electromagnetic engines,
in the hope of superseding steam; but had those who supplied the money
understood the general law of the correlation and equivalence of
forces, they might have had better balances at their bankers. Daily are
men induced to aid in carrying out inventions which a mere tyro in
science could show to be futile. Scarcely a locality but has its history
of fortunes thrown away over some impossible project.
And if already the loss from want of science is so frequent and so
great, still greater and more frequent will it be to those who hereafter
lack science. Just as fast as productive processes become more
scientific, which competition will inevitably make them do; and just as
fast as joint-stock undertakings spread, which they certainly will; so
fast must scientific knowledge grow necessary to every one.
That which our school-courses leave almost entirely out, we thus find to
be that which most nearly concerns the business of life. Our industries
would cease, were it not for the information which men begin to acquire,
as they best may, after their education is said to be finished. And were
it not for this information, from age to age accumulated and spread by
unofficial means, these industries would never have existed. Had there
been no teaching but such as goes on in our public schools, England
would now be what it was in feudal times. That increasing acquaintance
with the laws of phenomena, which has through successive ages enabled us
to subjugate Nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common
labourer comforts which a few centuries ago kings could not purchase, is
scarcely in any degree owed to the appointed means of instructing our
youth. The vital knowledge--that by which we have grown as a nation to
what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence, is a knowledge
that has got itself taught in nooks and corners; while the ordained
agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else but dead formulas.
* * * * *
We come now to the third great division of human activities--a division
for which no preparation whatever is made. If by some strange chance not
a vestige of us descended to the remote future save a pile of our
school-books or some college examination papers, we may imagine how
puzzled an antiquary of the period would be on finding in them no sign
that the learners were ever likely to be parents. "This must have been
the _curriculum_ for their celibates," we may fancy him concluding. "I
perceive here an elaborate preparation for many things; especially for
reading the books of extinct nations and of co-existing nations (from
which indeed it seems clear that these people had very little worth
reading in their own tongue); but I find no reference whatever to the
bringing up of children. They could not have been so absurd as to omit
all training for this gravest of responsibilities. Evidently then, this
was the school-course of one of their monastic orders."
Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that though on the treatment
of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and their moral welfare or
ruin; yet not one word of instruction on the treatment of offspring is
ever given to those who will by and by be parents? Is it not monstrous
that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of
unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy--joined with the suggestions of
ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers? If a
merchant commenced business without any knowledge of arithmetic and
book-keeping, we should exclaim at his folly, and look for disastrous
consequences. Or if, before studying anatomy, a man set up as a surgical
operator, we should wonder at his audacity and pity his patients. But
that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children,
without ever having given a thought to the principles--physical, moral,
or intellectual--which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise at
the actors nor pity for their victims.
To tens of thousands that are killed, add hundreds of thousand that
survive with feeble constitutions, and millions that grow up with
constitutions not so strong as they should be; and you will have some
idea of the curse inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of
the laws of life. Do but consider for a moment that the regimen to which
children are subject, is hourly telling upon them to their life-long
injury or benefit; and that there are twenty ways of going wrong to one
way of going right; and you will get some idea of the enormous mischief
that is almost everywhere inflicted by the thoughtless, haphazard system
in common use. Is it decided that a boy shall be clothed in some flimsy
short dress, and be allowed to go playing about with limbs reddened by
cold? The decision will tell on his whole future existence--either in
illnesses; or in stunted growth; or in deficient energy; or in a
maturity less vigorous than it ought to have been, and in consequent
hindrances to success and happiness. Are children doomed to a monotonous
dietary, or a dietary that is deficient in nutritiveness? Their ultimate
physical power, and their efficiency as men and women, will inevitably
be more or less diminished by it. Are they forbidden vociferous play, or
(being too ill-clothed to bear exposure) are they kept indoors in cold
weather? They are certain to fall below that measure of health and
strength to which they would else have attained. When sons and daughters
grow up sickly and feeble, parents commonly regard the event as a
misfortune--as a visitation of Providence. Thinking after the prevalent
chaotic fashion, they assume that these evils come without causes; or
that the causes are supernatural. Nothing of the kind. In some cases the
causes are doubtless inherited; but in most cases foolish regulations
are the causes. Very generally, parents themselves are responsible for
all this pain, this debility, this depression, this misery. They have
undertaken to control the lives of their offspring from hour to hour;
with cruel carelessness they have neglected to learn anything about
these vital processes which they are unceasingly affecting by their
commands and prohibitions; in utter ignorance of the simplest
physiologic laws, they have been year by year undermining the
constitutions of their children; and have so inflicted disease and
premature death, not only on them but on their descendants.
Equally great are the ignorance and the consequent injury, when we turn
from physical training to moral training. Consider the young mother and
her nursery-legislation. But a few years ago she was at school, where
her memory was crammed with words, and names, and dates, and her
reflective faculties scarcely in the slightest degree exercised--where
not one idea was given her respecting the methods of dealing with the
opening mind of childhood; and where her discipline did not in the least
fit her for thinking out methods of her own. The intervening years have
been passed in practising music, in fancy-work, in novel-reading, and in
party-going: no thought having yet been given to the grave
responsibilities of maternity; and scarcely any of that solid
intellectual culture obtained which would be some preparation for such
responsibilities. And now see her with an unfolding human character
committed to her charge--see her profoundly ignorant of the phenomena
with which she has to deal, undertaking to do that which can be done but
imperfectly even with the aid of the profoundest knowledge. She knows
nothing about the nature of the emotions, their order of evolution,
their functions, or where use ends and abuse begins. She is under the
impression that some of the feelings are wholly bad, which is not true
of any one of them; and that others are good however far they may be
carried, which is also not true of any one of them. And then, ignorant
as she is of the structure she has to deal with, she is equally
ignorant of the effects produced on it by this or that treatment. What
can be more inevitable than the disastrous results we see hourly
arising? Lacking knowledge of mental phenomena, with their cause and
consequences, her interference is frequently more mischievous than
absolute passivity would have been. This and that kind of action, which
are quite normal and beneficial, she perpetually thwarts; and so
diminishes the child's happiness and profit, injures its temper and her
own, and produces estrangement. Deeds which she thinks it desirable to
encourage, she gets performed by threats and bribes, or by exciting a
desire for applause: considering little what the inward motive may be,
so long as the outward conduct conforms; and thus cultivating hypocrisy,
and fear, and selfishness, in place of good feeling. While insisting on
truthfulness, she constantly sets an example of untruth by threatening
penalties which she does not inflict. While inculcating self-control,
she hourly visits on her little ones angry scoldings for acts
undeserving of them. She has not the remotest idea that in the nursery,
as in the world, that alone is the truly salutary discipline which
visits on all conduct, good and bad, the natural consequences--the
consequences, pleasurable or painful, which in the nature of things such
conduct tends to bring. Being thus without theoretic guidance, and quite
incapable of guiding herself by tracing the mental processes going on in
her children, her rule is impulsive, inconsistent, mischievous; and
would indeed be generally ruinous were it not that the overwhelming
tendency of the growing mind to assume the moral type of the race
usually subordinates all minor influences.
And then the culture of the intellect--is not this, too, mismanaged in a
similar manner? Grant that the phenomena of intelligence conform to
laws; grant that the evolution of intelligence in a child also conforms
to laws; and it follows inevitably that education cannot be rightly
guided without a knowledge of these laws. To suppose that you can
properly regulate this process of forming and accumulating ideas,
without understanding the nature of the process, is absurd. How widely,
then, must teaching as it is differ from teaching as it should be; when
hardly any parents, and but few tutors, know anything about psychology.
As might be expected, the established system is grievously at fault,
alike in matter and in manner. While the right class of facts is
withheld, the wrong class is forcibly administered in the wrong way and
in the wrong order. Under that common limited idea of education which
confines it to knowledge gained from books, parents thrust primers into
the hands of their little ones years too soon, to their great injury.
Not recognising the truth that the function of books is
supplementary--that they form an indirect means to knowledge when direct
means fail--a means of seeing through other men what you cannot see for
yourself; teachers are eager to give second-hand facts in place of
first-hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous value of that spontaneous
education which goes on in early years--not perceiving that a child's
restless observation, instead of being ignored or checked, should be
diligently ministered to, and made as accurate and complete as possible;
they insist on occupying its eyes and thoughts with things that are, for
the time being, incomprehensible and repugnant. Possessed by a
superstition which worships the symbols of knowledge instead of the
knowledge itself, they do not see that only when his acquaintance with
the objects and processes of the household, the streets, and the fields,
is becoming tolerably exhaustive--only then should a child be introduced
to the new sources of information which books supply: and this, not only
because immediate cognition is of far greater value than mediate
cognition; but also, because the words contained in books can be rightly
interpreted into ideas, only in proportion to the antecedent experience
of things. Observe next, that this formal instruction, far too soon
commenced, is carried on with but little reference to the laws of mental
development. Intellectual progress is of necessity from the concrete to
the abstract. But regardless of this, highly abstract studies, such as
grammar, which should come quite late, are begun quite early. Political
geography, dead and uninteresting to a child, and which should be an
appendage of sociological studies, is commenced betimes; while physical
geography, comprehensible and comparatively attractive to a child, is in
great part passed over. Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in
abnormal order: definitions and rules and principles being put first,
instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of nature, through
the study of cases. And then, pervading the whole, is the vicious system
of rote learning--a system of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See
the results. What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early
thwarting, and a coerced attention to books--what with the mental
confusion produced by teaching subjects before they can be understood,
and in each of them giving generalisations before the facts of which
they are the generalisations--what with making the pupil a mere passive
recipient of other's ideas, and not in the least leading him to be an
active inquirer or self-instructor--and what with taxing the faculties
to excess; there are very few minds that become as efficient as they
might be. Examinations being once passed, books are laid aside; the
greater part of what has been acquired, being unorganised, soon drops
out of recollection; what remains is mostly inert--the art of applying
knowledge not having been cultivated; and there is but little power
either of accurate observation or independent thinking. To all which
add, that while much of the information gained is of relatively small
value, an immense mass of information of transcendent value is entirely
passed over.
Thus we find the facts to be such as might have been inferred _a
priori_. The training of children--physical, moral, and intellectual--is
dreadfully defective. And in great measure it is so because parents are
devoid of that knowledge by which this training can alone be rightly
guided. What is to be expected when one of the most intricate of
problems is undertaken by those who have given scarcely a thought to the
principles on which its solution depends? For shoe-making or
house-building, for the management of a ship or a locomotive engine, a
long apprenticeship is needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding of a
human being in body and mind is so comparatively simple a process that
any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever? If
not--if the process is, with one exception, more complex than any in
Nature, and the task of ministering to it one of surpassing difficulty;
is it not madness to make no provision for such a task? Better sacrifice
accomplishments than omit this all-essential instruction. When a father,
acting on false dogmas adopted without examination, has alienated his
sons, driven them into rebellion by his harsh treatment, ruined them,
and made himself miserable; he might reflect that the study of Ethology
would have been worth pursuing, even at the cost of knowing nothing
about AEschylus. When a mother is mourning over a first-born that has
sunk under the sequelae of scarlet-fever--when perhaps a candid medical
man has confirmed her suspicion that her child would have recovered had
not its system been enfeebled by over-study--when she is prostrate under
the pangs of combined grief and remorse; it is but a small consolation
that she can read Dante in the original.
Thus we see that for regulating the third great division of human
activities, a knowledge of the laws of life is the one thing needful.
Some acquaintance with the first principles of physiology and the
elementary truths of psychology, is indispensable for the right bringing
up of children. We doubt not that many will read this assertion with a
smile. That parents in general should be expected to acquire a knowledge
of subjects so abstruse will seem to them an absurdity. And if we
proposed that an exhaustive knowledge of these subjects should be
obtained by all fathers and mothers, the absurdity would indeed be
glaring enough. But we do not. General principles only, accompanied by
such illustrations as may be needed to make them understood, would
suffice. And these might be readily taught--if not rationally, then
dogmatically. Be this as it may, however, here are the indisputable
facts:--that the development of children in mind and body follows
certain laws; that unless these laws are in some degree conformed to by
parents, death is inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree
conformed to, there must result serious physical and mental defects; and
that only when they are completely conformed to, can a perfect maturity
be reached. Judge, then, whether all who may one day be parents, should
not strive with some anxiety to learn what these laws are.
* * * * *
From the parental functions let us pass now to the functions of the
citizen. We have here to inquire what knowledge fits a man for the
discharge of these functions. It cannot be alleged that the need for
knowledge fitting him for these functions is wholly overlooked; for our
school-courses contain certain studies, which, nominally at least, bear
upon political and social duties. Of these the only one that occupies a
prominent place is History.
But, as already hinted, the information commonly given under this head,
is almost valueless for purposes of guidance. Scarcely any of the facts
set down in our school-histories, and very few of those contained in the
more elaborate works written for adults, illustrate the right principles
of political action. The biographies of monarchs (and our children learn
little else) throw scarcely any light upon the science of society.
Familiarity with court intrigues, plots, usurpations, or the like, and
with all the personalities accompanying them, aids very little in
elucidating the causes of national progress. We read of some squabble
for power, that it led to a pitched battle; that such and such were the
names of the generals and their leading subordinates; that they had each
so many thousand infantry and cavalry, and so many cannon; that they
arranged their forces in this and that order; that they manoeuvred,
attacked, and fell back in certain ways; that at this part of the day
such disasters were sustained, and at that such advantages gained; that
in one particular movement some leading officer fell, while in another a
certain regiment was decimated; that after all the changing fortunes of
the fight, the victory was gained by this or that army; and that so many
were killed and wounded on each side, and so many captured by the
conquerors. And now, out of the accumulated details making up the
narrative, say which it is that helps you in deciding on your conduct as
a citizen. Supposing even that you had diligently read, not only _The
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World_, but accounts of all other
battles that history mentions; how much more judicious would your vote
be at the next election? "But these are facts--interesting facts," you
say. Without doubt they are facts (such, at least, as are not wholly or
partially fictions); and to many they may be interesting facts. But this
by no means implies that they are valuable. Factitious or morbid opinion
often gives seeming value to things that have scarcely any. A
tulipomaniac will not part with a choice bulb for its weight in gold. To
another man an ugly piece of cracked old china seems his most desirable
possession. And there are those who give high prices for the relics of
celebrated murderers. Will it be contended that these tastes are any
measures of value in the things that gratify them? If not, then it must
be admitted that the liking felt for certain classes of historical facts
is no proof of their worth; and that we must test their worth, as we
test the worth of other facts, by asking to what uses they are
applicable. Were some one to tell you that your neighbour's cat kittened
yesterday, you would say the information was valueless. Fact though it
might be, you would call it an utterly useless fact--a fact that could
in no way influence your actions in life--a fact that would not help you
in learning how to live completely. Well, apply the same test to the
great mass of historical facts, and you will get the same result. They
are facts from which no conclusions can be drawn--_unorganisable_ facts;
and therefore facts of no service in establishing principles of conduct,
which is the chief use of facts. Read them, if you like, for amusement;
but do not flatter your self they are instructive.
That which constitutes History, properly so called, is in great part
omitted from works on the subject. Only of late years have historians
commenced giving us, in any considerable quantity, the truly valuable
information. As in past ages the king was everything and the people
nothing; so, in past histories the doings of the king fill the entire
picture, to which the national life forms but an obscure background.
While only now, when the welfare of nations rather than of rulers is
becoming the dominant idea, are historians beginning to occupy
themselves with the phenomena of social progress. The thing it really
concerns us to know is the natural history of society. We want all facts
which help us to understand how a nation has grown and organised itself.
Among these, let us of course have an account of its government; with as
little as may be of gossip about the men who officered it, and as much
as possible about the structure, principles, methods, prejudices,
corruptions, etc., which it exhibited: and let this account include not
only the nature and actions of the central government, but also those of
local governments, down to their minutest ramifications. Let us of
course also have a parallel description of the ecclesiastical
government--its organisation, its conduct, its power, its relations to
the State; and accompanying this, the ceremonial, creed, and religious
ideas--not only those nominally believed, but those really believed and
acted upon. Let us at the same time be informed of the control exercised
by class over class, as displayed in social observances--in titles,
salutations, and forms of address. Let us know, too, what were all the
other customs which regulated the popular life out of doors and
in-doors: including those concerning the relations of the sexes, and the
relations of parents to children. The superstitions, also, from the more
important myths down to the charms in common use, should be indicated.
Next should come a delineation of the industrial system: showing to what
extent the division of labour was carried; how trades were regulated,
whether by caste, guilds, or otherwise; what was the connection between
employers and employed; what were the agencies for distributing
commodities; what were the means of communication; what was the
circulating medium. Accompanying all which should be given an account of
the industrial arts technically considered: stating the processes in
use, and the quality of the products. Further, the intellectual
condition of the nation in its various grades should be depicted; not
only with respect to the kind and amount of education, but with respect
to the progress made in science, and the prevailing manner of thinking.
The degree of aesthetic culture, as displayed in architecture, sculpture,
painting, dress, music, poetry, and fiction, should be described. Nor
should there be omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the
people--their food, their homes, and their amusements. And lastly, to
connect the whole, should be exhibited the morals, theoretical and
practical, of all classes: as indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs,
deeds. These facts, given with as much brevity as consists with
clearness and accuracy, should be so grouped and arranged that they may
be comprehended in their _ensemble_, and contemplated as
mutually-dependent parts of one great whole. The aim should be so to
present them that men may readily trace the _consensus_ subsisting among
them; with the view of learning what social phenomena co-exist with what
other. And then the corresponding delineations of succeeding ages should
be so managed as to show how each belief, institution, custom, and
arrangement was modified; and how the _consensus_ of preceding
structures and functions was developed into the _consensus_ of
succeeding ones. Such alone is the kind of information respecting past
times which can be of service to the citizen for the regulation of his
conduct. The only history that is of practical value is what may be
called Descriptive Sociology. And the highest office which the historian
can discharge, is that of so narrating the lives of nations, as to
furnish materials for a Comparative Sociology; and for the subsequent
determination of the ultimate laws to which social phenomena conform.
But now mark, that even supposing an adequate stock of this truly
valuable historical knowledge has been acquired, it is of comparatively
little use without the key. And the key is to be found only in Science.
In the absence of the generalisations of biology and psychology,
rational interpretation of social phenomena is impossible. Only in
proportion as men draw certain rude, empirical inferences respecting
human nature, are they enabled to understand even the simplest facts of
social life: as, for instance, the relation between supply and demand.
And if the most elementary truths of sociology cannot be reached until
some knowledge is obtained of how men generally think, feel, and act
under given circumstances; then it is manifest that there can be nothing
like a wide comprehension of sociology, unless through a competent
acquaintance with man in all his faculties, bodily, and mental. Consider
the matter in the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evident.
Thus:--Society is made up of individuals; all that is done in society is
done by the combined actions of individuals; and therefore, in
individual actions only can be found the solutions of social phenomena.
But the actions of individuals depend on the laws of their natures; and
their actions cannot be understood until these laws are understood.
These laws, however, when reduced to their simplest expressions, prove
to be corollaries from the laws of body and mind in general. Hence it
follows, that biology and psychology are indispensable as interpreters
of sociology. Or, to state the conclusions still more simply:--all
social phenomena are phenomena of life--are the most complex
manifestations of life--must conform to the laws of life--and can be
understood only when the laws of life are understood. Thus, then, for
the regulation of this fourth division of human activities, we are, as
before, dependent on Science. Of the knowledge commonly imparted in
educational courses, very little is of service for guiding a man in his
conduct as a citizen. Only a small part of the history he reads is of
practical value; and of this small part he is not prepared to make
proper use. He lacks not only the materials for, but the very conception
of, descriptive sociology; and he also lacks those generalisations of
the organic sciences, without which even descriptive sociology can give
him but small aid.
* * * * *
And now we come to that remaining division of human life which includes
the relaxations and amusements filling leisure hours. After considering
what training best fits for self-preservation, for the obtainment of
sustenance, for the discharge of parental duties, and for the regulation
of social and political conduct; we have now to consider what training
best fits for the miscellaneous ends not included in these--for the
enjoyment of Nature, of Literature, and of the Fine Arts, in all their
forms. Postponing them as we do to things that bear more vitally upon
human welfare; and bringing everything, as we have, to the test of
actual value; it will perhaps be inferred that we are inclined to slight
these less essential things. No greater mistake could be made, however.
We yield to none in the value we attach to aesthetic culture and its
pleasures. Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions
produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its
charm. So far from regarding the training and gratification of the
tastes as unimportant, we believe that in time to come they will occupy
a much larger share of human life than now. When the forces of Nature
have been fully conquered to man's use--when the means of production
have been brought to perfection--when labour has been economised to the
highest degree--when education has been so systematised that a
preparation for the more essential activities may be made with
comparative rapidity--and when, consequently, there is a great increase
of spare time; then will the beautiful, both in Art and Nature, rightly
fill a large space in the minds of all.
But it is one thing to approve of aesthetic culture as largely conducive
to human happiness; and another thing to admit that it is a fundamental
requisite to human happiness. However important it may be, it must yield
precedence to those kinds of culture which bear directly upon daily
duties. As before hinted, literature and the fine arts are made possible
by those activities which make individual and social life possible; and
manifestly, that which is made possible, must be postponed to that which
makes it possible. A florist cultivates a plant for the sake of its
flower; and regards the roots and leaves as of value, chiefly because
they are instrumental in producing the flower. But while, as an ultimate
product, the flower is the thing to which everything else is
subordinate, the florist has learnt that the root and leaves are
intrinsically of greater importance; because on them the evolution of
the flower depends. He bestows every care in rearing a healthy plant;
and knows it would be folly if, in his anxiety to obtain the flower, he
were to neglect the plant. Similarly in the case before us.
Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be
called the efflorescence of civilised life. But even supposing they are
of such transcendent worth as to subordinate the civilised life out of
which they grow (which can hardly be asserted), it will still be
admitted that the production of a healthy civilised life must be the
first consideration; and that culture subserving this must occupy the
highest place.
And here we see most distinctly the vice of our educational system. It
neglects the plant for the sake of the flower. In anxiety for elegance,
it forgets substance. While it gives no knowledge conducive to
self-preservation--while of knowledge that facilitates gaining a
livelihood it gives but the rudiments, and leaves the greater part to be
picked up any how in after life--while for the discharge of parental
functions it makes not the slightest provision--and while for the duties
of citizenship it prepares by imparting a mass of facts, most of which
are irrelevant, and the rest without a key; it is diligent in teaching
whatever adds to refinement, polish, eclat. Fully as we may admit that
extensive acquaintance with modern languages is a valuable
accomplishment, which, through reading, conversation, and travel, aids
in giving a certain finish; it by no means follows that this result is
rightly purchased at the cost of the vitally important knowledge
sacrificed to it. Supposing it true that classical education conduces
to elegance and correctness of style; it cannot be said that elegance
and correctness of style are comparable in importance to a familiarity
with the principles that should guide the rearing of children. Grant
that the taste may be improved by reading the poetry written in extinct
languages; yet it is not to be inferred that such improvement of taste
is equivalent in value to an acquaintance with the laws of health.
Accomplishments, the fine arts, _belles-lettres_, and all those things
which, as we say, constitute the efflorescence of civilisation, should
be wholly subordinate to that instruction and discipline in which
civilisation rests. _As they occupy the leisure part of life, so should
they occupy the leisure part of education._
Recognising thus the true position of aesthetics, and holding that while
the cultivation of them should form a part of education from its
commencement, such cultivation should be subsidiary; we have now to
inquire what knowledge is of most use to this end--what knowledge best
fits for this remaining sphere of activity? To this question the answer
is still the same as heretofore. Unexpected though the assertion may be,
it is nevertheless true, that the highest Art of every kind is based on
Science--that without Science there can be neither perfect production
nor full appreciation. Science, in that limited acceptation current in
society, may not have been possessed by various artists of high repute;
but acute observers as such artists have been, they have always
possessed a stock of those empirical generalisations which constitute
science in its lowest phase; and they have habitually fallen far below
perfection, partly because their generalisations were comparatively few
and inaccurate. That science necessarily underlies the fine arts,
becomes manifest, _a priori_, when we remember that art-products are all
more or less representative of objective or subjective phenomena; that
they can be good only in proportion as they conform to the laws of these
phenomena; and that before they can thus conform, the artist must know
what these laws are. That this _a priori_ conclusion tallies with
experience, we shall soon see.
Youths preparing for the practice of sculpture have to acquaint
themselves with the bones and muscles of the human frame in their
distribution, attachments, and movements. This is a portion of science;
and it has been found needful to impart it for the prevention of those
many errors which sculptors who do not possess it commit. A knowledge of
mechanical principles is also requisite; and such knowledge not being
usually possessed, grave mechanical mistakes are frequently made. Take
an instance. For the stability of a figure it is needful that the
perpendicular from the centre of gravity--"the line of direction," as it
is called--should fall within the base of support; and hence it happens,
that when a man assumes the attitude known as "standing at ease," in
which one leg is straightened and the other relaxed, the line of
direction falls within the foot of the straightened leg. But sculptors
unfamiliar with the theory of equilibrium, not uncommonly so represent
this attitude, that the line of direction falls midway between the feet.
Ignorance of the law of momentum leads to analogous blunders: as witness
the admired Discobolus, which, as it is posed, must inevitably fall
forward the moment the quoit is delivered.
In painting, the necessity for scientific information, empirical if not
rational, is still more conspicuous. What gives the grotesqueness of
Chinese pictures, unless their utter disregard of the laws of
appearances--their absurd linear perspective, and their want of aerial
perspective? In what are the drawings of a child so faulty, if not in a
similar absence of truth--an absence arising, in great part, from
ignorance of the way in which the aspects of things vary with the
conditions? Do but remember the books and lectures by which students are
instructed; or consider the criticisms of Ruskin; or look at the doings
of the Pre-Raffaelites; and you will see that progress in painting
implies increasing knowledge of how effects in Nature are produced. The
most diligent observation, if unaided by science, fails to preserve from
error. Every painter will endorse the assertion that unless it is known
what appearances must exist under given circumstances, they often will
not be perceived; and to know what appearances must exist, is, in so
far, to understand the science of appearances. From want of science Mr.
J. Lewis, careful painter as he is, casts the shadow of a lattice-window
in sharply-defined lines upon an opposite wall; which he would not have
done, had he been familiar with the phenomena of penumbrae. From want of
science, Mr. Rosetti, catching sight of a peculiar iridescence displayed
by certain hairy surfaces under particular lights (an iridescence caused
by the diffraction of light in passing the hairs), commits the error of
showing this iridescence on surfaces and in positions where it could not
occur.
To say that music, too, has need of scientific aid will cause still more
surprise. Yet it may be shown that music is but an idealisation of the
natural language of emotion; and that consequently, music must be good
or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this natural language.
The various inflections of voice which accompany feelings of different
kinds and intensities, are the germs out of which music is developed. It
is demonstrable that these inflections and cadences are not accidental
or arbitrary; but that they are determined by certain general principles
of vital action; and that their expressiveness depends on this. Whence
it follows that musical phrases and the melodies built of them, can be
effective only when they are in harmony with these general principles.
It is difficult here properly to illustrate this position. But perhaps
it will suffice to instance the swarms of worthless ballads that infest
drawing-rooms, as compositions which science would forbid. They sin
against science by setting to music ideas that are not emotional enough
to prompt musical expression; and they also sin against science by using
musical phrases that have no natural relations to the ideas expressed:
even where these are emotional. They are bad because they are untrue.
And to say they are untrue, is to say they are unscientific.
Even in poetry the same thing holds. Like music, poetry has its root in
those natural modes of expression which accompany deep feeling. Its
rhythm, its strong and numerous metaphors, its hyperboles, its violent
inversions, are simply exaggerations of the traits of excited speech. To
be good, therefore, poetry must pay attention to those laws of nervous
action which excited speech obeys. In intensifying and combining the
traits of excited speech, it must have due regard to proportion--must
not use its appliances without restriction; but, where the ideas are
least emotional, must use the forms of poetical expression sparingly;
must use them more freely as the emotion rises; and must carry them to
their greatest extent, only where the emotion reaches a climax. The
entire contravention of these principles results in bombast or doggerel.
The insufficient respect for them is seen in didactic poetry. And it is
because they are rarely fully obeyed, that so much poetry is inartistic.
Not only is it that the artist, of whatever kind, cannot produce a
truthful work without he understands the laws of the phenomena he
represents; but it is that he must also understand how the minds of
spectators or listeners will be affected by the several peculiarities of
his work--a question in psychology. What impression any art-product
generates, manifestly depends upon the mental natures of those to whom
it is presented; and as all mental natures have certain characteristics
in common, there must result certain corresponding general principles on
which alone art-products can be successfully framed. These general
principles cannot be fully understood and applied, unless the artist
sees how they follow from the laws of mind. To ask whether the
composition of a picture is good is really to ask how the perceptions
and feelings of observers will be affected by it. To ask whether a drama
is well constructed, is to ask whether its situations are so arranged as
duly to consult the power of attention of an audience, and duly to avoid
overtaxing any one class of feelings. Equally in arranging the leading
divisions of a poem or fiction, and in combining the words of a single
sentence, the goodness of the effect depends upon the skill with which
the mental energies and susceptibilities of the reader are economised.
Every artist, in the course of his education and after-life, accumulates
a stock of maxims by which his practice is regulated. Trace such maxims
to their roots, and they inevitably lead you down to psychological
principles. And only when the artist understands these psychological
principles and their various corollaries can he work in harmony with
them.
We do not for a moment believe that science will make an artist. While
we contend that the leading laws both of objective and subjective
phenomena must be understood by him, we by no means contend that
knowledge of such laws will serve in place of natural perception. Not
the poet only, but the artist of every type, is born, not made. What we
assert is, that innate faculty cannot dispense with the aid of organised
knowledge. Intuition will do much, but it will not do all. Only when
Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
As we have above asserted, Science is necessary not only for the most
successful production, but also for the full appreciation, of the fine
arts. In what consists the greater ability of a man than of a child to
perceive the beauties of a picture; unless it is in his more extended
knowledge of those truths in nature or life which the picture renders?
How happens the cultivated gentleman to enjoy a fine poem so much more
than a boor does; if it is not because his wider acquaintance with
objects and actions enables him to see in the poem much that the boor
cannot see? And if, as is here so obvious, there must be some
familiarity with the things represented, before the representation can
be appreciated, then, the representation can be completely appreciated
only when the things represented are completely understood. The fact is,
that every additional truth which a word of art expresses, gives an
additional pleasure to the percipient mind--a pleasure that is missed by
those ignorant of this truth. The more realities an artist indicates in
any given amount of work, the more faculties does he appeal to; the more
numerous ideas does he suggest; the more gratification does he afford.
But to receive this gratification the spectator, listener, or reader,
must know the realities which the artist has indicated; and to know
these realities is to have that much science.
And now let us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does
science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is
itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed,
is a delusion. It is doubtless true that as states of consciousness,
cognition and emotion tend to exclude each other. And it is doubtless
also true that an extreme activity of the reflective powers tends to
deaden the feelings; while an extreme activity of the feelings tends to
deaden the reflective powers: in which sense, indeed, all orders of
activity are antagonistic to each other. But it is not true that the
facts of science are unpoetical; or that the cultivation of science is
necessarily unfriendly to the exercise of imagination and the love of
the beautiful. On the contrary, science opens up realms of poetry where
to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific
researches constantly show us that they realise not less vividly, but
more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoso will dip
into Hugh Miller's works of geology, or read Mr. Lewes's _Sea-side
Studies_, will perceive that science excites poetry rather than
extinguishes it. And he who contemplates the life of Goethe, must see
that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is
it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief, that the
more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop
of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything
in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held
together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash
of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the
uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations
to one who had seen through a microscope the wondrously-varied and
elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked
with parallel scratches, calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as
in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid
a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered
upon scientific pursuits are blind to most of the poetry by which they
are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects,
knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can
assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the
poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures
were found. Whoever at the sea-side has not had a microscope and
aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the sea-side
are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with
trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena--care not to
understand the architecture of the Heavens, but are deeply interested in
some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of
Scots!--are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a
glance that grand epic written by the finger of God upon the strata of
the Earth!
We find, then, that even for this remaining division of human
activities, scientific culture is the proper preparation. We find that
aesthetics in general are necessarily based upon scientific principles;
and can be pursued with complete success only through an acquaintance
with these principles. We find that for the criticism and due
appreciation of works of art, a knowledge of the constitution of things,
or in other words, a knowledge of science, is requisite. And we not only
find that science is the handmaid to all forms of art and poetry, but
that, rightly regarded, science is itself poetic.
* * * * *
Thus far our question has been, the worth of knowledge of this or that
kind for purposes of guidance. We have now to judge the relative value
of different kinds of knowledge for purposes of discipline. This
division of our subject we are obliged to treat with comparative
brevity; and happily, no very lengthened treatment of it is needed.
Having found what is best for the one end, we have by implication found
what is best for the other. We may be quite sure that the acquirement of
those classes of facts which are most useful for regulating conduct,
involves a mental exercise best fitted for strengthening the faculties.
It would be utterly contrary to the beautiful economy of Nature, if one
kind of culture were needed for the gaining of information and another
kind were needed as a mental gymnastic. Everywhere throughout creation
we find faculties developed through the performance of those functions
which it is their office to perform; not through the performance of
artificial exercises devised to fit them for those functions. The Red
Indian acquires the swiftness and agility which make him a successful
hunter, by the actual pursuit of animals; and through the miscellaneous
activities of his life, he gains a better balance of physical powers
than gymnastics ever give. That skill in tracking enemies and prey which
he had reached after long practice, implies a subtlety of perception far
exceeding anything produced by artificial training. And similarly in all
cases. From the Bushman whose eye, habitually employed in identifying
distant objects that are to be pursued or fled from, has acquired a
telescopic range, to the accountant whose daily practice enables him to
add up several columns of figures simultaneously; we find that the
highest power of a faculty results from the discharge of those duties
which the conditions of life require it to discharge. And we may be
certain, _a priori_, that the same law holds throughout education. The
education of most value for guidance, must at the same time be the
education of most value for discipline. Let us consider the evidence.
One advantage claimed for that devotion to language-learning which forms
so prominent a feature in the ordinary _curriculum_, is, that the memory
is thereby strengthened. This is assumed to be an advantage peculiar to
the study of words. But the truth is, that the sciences afford far wider
fields for the exercise of memory. It is no slight task to remember
everything about our solar system; much more to remember all that is
known concerning the structure of our galaxy. The number of compound
substances, to which chemistry daily adds, is so great that few, save
professors, can enumerate them; and to recollect the atomic
constitutions and affinities of all these compounds, is scarcely
possible without making chemistry the occupation of life. In the
enormous mass of phenomena presented by the Earth's crust, and in the
still more enormous mass of phenomena presented by the fossils it
contains, there is matter which it takes the geological student years of
application to master. Each leading division of physics--sound, heat,
light, electricity--includes facts numerous enough to alarm any one
proposing to learn them all. And when we pass to the organic sciences,
the effort of memory required becomes still greater. In human anatomy
alone, the quantity of detail is so great, that the young surgeon has
commonly to get it up half-a-dozen times before he can permanently
retain it. The number of species of plants which botanists distinguish,
amounts to some 320,000; while the varied forms of animal life with
which the zoologist deals, are estimated at some 2,000,000. So vast is
the accumulation of facts which men of science have before them, that
only by dividing and subdividing their labours can they deal with it. To
a detailed knowledge of his own division, each adds but a general
knowledge of the allied ones; joined perhaps to a rudimentary
acquaintance with some others. Surely, then, science, cultivated even to
a very moderate extent, affords adequate exercise for memory. To say the
very least, it involves quite as good a discipline for this faculty as
language does.
But now mark that while, for the training of mere memory, science is as
good as, if not better than, language; it has an immense superiority in
the kind of memory it trains. In the acquirement of a language, the
connections of ideas to be established in the mind correspond to facts
that are in great measure accidental; whereas, in the acquirement of
science, the connections of ideas to be established in the mind
correspond to facts that are mostly necessary. It is true that the
relations of words to their meanings are in one sense natural; that the
genesis of these relations may be traced back a certain distance, though
rarely to the beginning; and that the laws of this genesis form a branch
of mental science--the science of philology. But since it will not be
contended that in the acquisition of languages, as ordinarily carried
on, these natural relations between words and their meanings are
habitually traced, and their laws explained; it must be admitted that
they are commonly learned as fortuitous relations. On the other hand,
the relations which science presents are causal relations; and, when
properly taught, are understood as such. While language familiarises
with non-rational relations, science familiarises with rational
relations. While the one exercises memory only, the other exercises both
memory and understanding.
Observe next, that a great superiority of science over language as a
means of discipline, is, that it cultivates the judgment. As, in a
lecture on mental education delivered at the Royal Institution,
Professor Faraday well remarks, the most common intellectual fault is
deficiency of judgment. "Society, speaking generally," he says, "is not
only ignorant as respects education of the judgment, but it is also
ignorant of its ignorance." And the cause to which he ascribes this
state, is want of scientific culture. The truth of his conclusion is
obvious. Correct judgment with regard to surrounding objects, events,
and consequences, becomes possible only through knowledge of the way in
which surrounding phenomena depend on each other. No extent of
acquaintance with the meanings of words, will guarantee correct
inferences respecting causes and effects. The habit of drawing
conclusions from data, and then of verifying those conclusions by
observation and experiment, can alone give the power of judging
correctly. And that it necessitates this habit is one of the immense
advantages of science.
Not only, however, for intellectual discipline is science the best; but
also for _moral_ discipline. The learning of languages tends, if
anything, further to increase the already undue respect for authority.
Such and such are the meanings of these words, says the teacher of the
dictionary. So and so is the rule in this case, says the grammar. By the
pupil these dicta are received as unquestionable. His constant attitude
of mind is that of submission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary
result is a tendency to accept without inquiry whatever is established.
Quite opposite is the mental tone generated by the cultivation of
science. Science makes constant appeal to individual reason. Its truths
are not accepted on authority alone; but all are at liberty to test
them--nay, in many cases, the pupil is required to think out his own
conclusions. Every step in a scientific investigation is submitted to
his judgment. He is not asked to admit it without seeing it to be true.
And the trust in his own powers thus produced is further increased by
the uniformity with which Nature justifies his inferences when they are
correctly drawn. From all which there flows that independence which is a
most valuable element in character. Nor is this the only moral benefit
bequeathed by scientific culture. When carried on, as it should always
be, as much as possible under the form of original research, it
exercises perseverance and sincerity. As says Professor Tyndall of
inductive inquiry, "It requires patient industry, and an humble and
conscientious acceptance of what Nature reveals. The first condition of
success is an honest receptivity and a willingness to abandon all
preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict
the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation which has something noble in
it, and of which the world never hears, is often enacted in the private
experience of the true votary of science."
Lastly we have to assert--and the assertion will, we doubt not, cause
extreme surprise--that the discipline of science is superior to that of
our ordinary education, because of the _religious_ culture that it
gives. Of course we do not here use the words scientific and religious
in their ordinary limited acceptations; but in their widest and highest
acceptations. Doubtless, to the superstitions that pass under the name
of religion, science is antagonistic; but not to the essential religion
which these superstitions merely hide. Doubtless, too, in much of the
science that is current, there is a pervading spirit of irreligion; but
not in that true science which had passed beyond the superficial into
the profound.
"True science and true religion," says Professor Huxley at the
close of a recent course of lectures, "are twin-sisters, and the
separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of
both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious;
and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth
and firmness of its basis. The great deeds of philosophers have
been less the fruit of their intellect than of the direction of
that intellect by an eminently religious tone of mind. Truth has
yielded herself rather to their patience, their love, their
single-heartedness, and their self-denial, than to their logical
acumen."
So far from science being irreligious, as many think, it is the neglect
of science that is irreligious--it is the refusal to study the
surrounding creation that is irreligious. Take a humble simile. Suppose
a writer were daily saluted with praises couched in superlative
language. Suppose the wisdom, the grandeur, the beauty of his works,
were the constant topics of the eulogies addressed to him. Suppose those
who unceasingly uttered these eulogies on his works were content with
looking at the outsides of them; and had never opened them, much less
tried to understand them. What value should we put upon their praises?
What should we think of their sincerity? Yet, comparing small things to
great, such is the conduct of mankind in general, in reference to the
Universe and its Cause. Nay, it is worse. Not only do they pass by
without study, these things which they daily proclaim to be so
wonderful; but very frequently they condemn as mere triflers those who
give time to the observation of Nature--they actually scorn those who
show any active interest in these marvels. We repeat, then, that not
science, but the neglect of science, is irreligious. Devotion to
science, is a tacit worship--a tacit recognition of worth in the things
studied; and by implication in their Cause. It is not a mere lip-homage,
but a homage expressed in actions--not a mere professed respect, but a
respect proved by the sacrifice of time, thought, and labour.
Nor is it thus only that true science is essentially religious. It is
religious, too, inasmuch as it generates a profound respect for, and an
implicit faith in, those uniformities of action which all things
disclose. By accumulated experiences the man of science acquires a
thorough belief in the unchanging relations of phenomena--in the
invariable connection of cause and consequence--in the necessity of good
or evil results. Instead of the rewards and punishments of traditional
belief, which people vaguely hope they may gain, or escape, spite of
their disobedience; he finds that there are rewards and punishments in
the ordained constitution of things; and that the evil results of
disobedience are inevitable. He sees that the laws to which we must
submit are both inexorable and beneficent. He sees that in conforming to
them, the process of things is ever towards a greater perfection and a
higher happiness. Hence he is led constantly to insist on them, and is
indignant when they are disregarded. And thus does he, by asserting the
eternal principles of things and the necessity of obeying them, prove
himself intrinsically religious.
Add lastly the further religious aspect of science, that it alone can
give us true conceptions of ourselves and our relation to the mysteries
of existence. At the same time that it shows us all which can be known,
it shows us the limits beyond which we can know nothing. Not by dogmatic
assertion, does it teach the impossibility of comprehending the Ultimate
Cause of things; but it leads us clearly to recognise this impossibility
by bringing us in every direction to boundaries we cannot cross. It
realises to us in a way which nothing else can, the littleness of human
intelligence in the face of that which transcends human intelligence.
While towards the traditions and authorities of men its attitude may be
proud, before the impenetrable veil which hides the Absolute its
attitude is humble--a true pride and a true humility. Only the sincere
man of science (and by this title we do not mean the mere calculator of
distances, or analyser of compounds, or labeller of species; but him who
through lower truths seeks higher, and eventually the highest)--only the
genuine man of science, we say, can truly know how utterly beyond, not
only human knowledge but human conception, is the Universal Power of
which Nature, and Life, and Thought are manifestations.
We conclude, then, that for discipline, as well as for guidance, science
is of chiefest value. In all its effects, learning the meanings of
things, is better than learning the meanings of words. Whether for
intellectual, moral, or religious training, the study of surrounding
phenomena is immensely superior to the study of grammars and lexicons.
* * * * *
Thus to the question we set out with--What knowledge is of most
worth?--the uniform reply is--Science. This is the verdict on all the
counts. For direct self-preservation, or the maintenance of life and
health, the all-important knowledge is--Science. For that indirect
self-preservation which we call gaining a livelihood, the knowledge of
greatest value is--Science. For the due discharge of parental functions,
the proper guidance is to be found only in--Science. For that
interpretation of national life, past and present, without which the
citizen cannot rightly regulate his conduct, the indispensable key
is--Science. Alike for the most perfect production and highest enjoyment
of art in all its forms, the needful preparation is still--Science. And
for purposes of discipline--intellectual, moral, religious--the most
efficient study is, once more--Science. The question which at first
seemed so perplexed, has become, in the course of our inquiry,
comparatively simple. We have not to estimate the degrees of importance
of different orders of human activity, and different studies as
severally fitting us for them; since we find that the study of Science,
in its most comprehensive meaning, is the best preparation for all these
orders of activity. We have not to decide between the claims of
knowledge of great though conventional value, and knowledge of less
though intrinsic value; seeing that the knowledge which proves to be of
most value in all other respects, is intrinsically most valuable: its
worth is not dependent upon opinion, but is as fixed as is the relation
of man to the surrounding world. Necessary and eternal as are its
truths, all Science concerns all mankind for all time. Equally at
present and in the remotest future, must it be of incalculable
importance for the regulation of their conduct, that men should
understand the science of life, physical, mental, and social; and that
they should understand all other science as a key to the science of
life.
And yet this study, immensely transcending all other in importance, is
that which, in an age of boasted education, receives the least
attention. While what we call civilisation could never have arisen had
it not been for science, science forms scarcely an appreciable element
in our so-called civilised training. Though to the progress of science
we owe it, that millions find support where once there was food only for
thousands; yet of these millions but a few thousands pay any respect to
that which has made their existence possible. Though increasing
knowledge of the properties and relations of things has not only enabled
wandering tribes to grow into populous nations, but has given to the
countless members of these populous nations, comforts and pleasures
which their few naked ancestors never even conceived, or could have
believed, yet is this kind of knowledge only now receiving a grudging
recognition in our highest educational institutions. To the slowly
growing acquaintance with the uniform co-existences and sequences of
phenomena--to the establishment of invariable laws, we owe our
emancipation from the grossest superstitions. But for science we should
be still worshipping fetishes; or, with hecatombs of victims,
propitiating diabolical deities. And yet this science, which, in place
of the most degrading conceptions of things, has given us some insight
into the grandeurs of creation, is written against in our theologies and
frowned upon from our pulpits.
Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we may say that in the family of
knowledges, Science is the household drudge, who, in obscurity, hides
unrecognised perfections. To her has been committed all the works; by
her skill, intelligence, and devotion, have all conveniences and
gratifications been obtained; and while ceaselessly ministering to the
rest, she has been kept in the background, that her haughty sisters
might flaunt their fripperies in the eyes of the world. The parallel
holds yet further. For we are fast coming to the _denouement_, when the
positions will be changed; and while these haughty sisters sink into
merited neglect, Science, proclaimed as highest alike in worth and
beauty, will reign supreme.
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
There cannot fail to be a relationship between the successive systems of
education, and the successive social states with which they have
co-existed. Having a common origin in the national mind, the
institutions of each epoch, whatever be their special functions, must
have a family likeness. When men received their creed and its
interpretations from an infallible authority deigning no explanations,
it was natural that the teaching of children should be purely dogmatic.
While "believe and ask no questions" was the maxim of the Church, it was
fitly the maxim of the school. Conversely, now that Protestantism has
gained for adults a right of private judgment and established the
practice of appealing to reason, there is harmony in the change that has
made juvenile instruction a process of exposition addressed to the
understanding. Along with political despotism, stern in its commands,
ruling by force of terror, visiting trifling crimes with death, and
implacable in its vengeance on the disloyal, there necessarily grew up
an academic discipline similarly harsh--a discipline of multiplied
injunctions and blows for every breach of them--a discipline of
unlimited autocracy upheld by rods, and ferules, and the black-hole. On
the other hand, the increase of political liberty, the abolition of laws
restricting individual action, and the amelioration of the criminal
code, have been accompanied by a kindred progress towards non-coercive
education: the pupil is hampered by fewer restraints, and other means
than punishments are used to govern him. In those ascetic days when men,
acting on the greatest-misery principle, held that the more
gratifications they denied themselves the more virtuous they were, they,
as a matter of course, considered that the best education which most
thwarted the wishes of their children, and cut short all spontaneous
activity with--"You mustn't do so." While, on the contrary, now that
happiness is coming to be regarded as a legitimate aim--now that hours
of labour are being shortened and popular recreations provided--parents
and teachers are beginning to see that most childish desires may rightly
be gratified, that childish sports should be encouraged, and that the
tendencies of the growing mind are not altogether so diabolical as was
supposed. The age in which all believed that trades must be established
by bounties and prohibitions; that manufacturers needed their materials
and qualities and prices to be prescribed; and that the value of money
could be determined by law; was an age which unavoidably cherished the
notions that a child's mind could be made to order; that its powers were
to be imparted by the schoolmaster; that it was a receptacle into which
knowledge was to be put, and there built up after the teacher's ideal.
In this free-trade era, however, when we are learning that there is much
more self-regulation in things than was supposed; that labour, and
commerce, and agriculture, and navigation, can do better without
management than with it; that political governments, to be efficient,
must grow up from within and not be imposed from without; we are also
being taught that there is a natural process of mental evolution which
is not to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force on the
unfolding mind our artificial forms; but that psychology, also,
discloses to us a law of supply and demand to which, if we would not do
harm, we must conform. Thus, alike in its oracular dogmatism, in its
harsh discipline, in its multiplied restrictions, in its professed
asceticism, and in its faith in the devices of men, the old educational
regime was akin to the social systems with which it was contemporaneous;
and similarly, in the reverse of these characteristics, our modern modes
of culture correspond to our more liberal religious and political
institutions.
But there remain further parallelisms to which we have not yet adverted:
that, namely, between the processes by which these respective changes
have been wrought out; and that between the several states of
heterogeneous opinion to which they have led. Some centuries ago there
was uniformity of belief--religious, political, and educational. All men
were Romanists, all were Monarchists, all were disciples of Aristotle;
and no one thought of calling in question that grammar-school routine
under which all were brought up. The same agency has in each case
replaced this uniformity by a constantly-increasing diversity. That
tendency towards assertion of the individuality, which, after
contributing to produce the great Protestant movement, has since gone on
to produce an ever-increasing number of sects--that tendency which
initiated political parties, and out of the two primary ones has, in
these modern days, evolved a multiplicity to which every year adds--that
tendency which led to the Baconian rebellion against the schools, and
has since originated here and abroad, sundry new systems of thought--is
a tendency which, in education also, has caused divisions and the
accumulation of methods. As external consequences of the same internal
change, these processes have necessarily been more or less simultaneous.
The decline of authority, whether papal, philosophic, kingly, or
tutorial, is essentially one phenomenon; in each of its aspects a
leaning towards free action is seen alike in the working out of the
change itself, and in the new forms of theory and practice to which the
change has given birth.
While many will regret this multiplication of schemes of juvenile
culture, the catholic observer will discern in it a means of ensuring
the final establishment of a rational system. Whatever may be thought of
theological dissent, it is clear that dissent in education results in
facilitating inquiry by the division in labour. Were we in possession of
the true method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial;
but the true method having to be found, the efforts of numerous
independent seekers carrying out their researches in different
directions, constitute a better agency for finding it than any that
could be devised. Each of them struck by some new thought which probably
contains more or less of basis in facts--each of them zealous on behalf
of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring
in his efforts to make known its success--each of them merciless in his
criticism on the rest; there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to
be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever
portion of the normal method any one has discovered, must, by the
constant exhibition of its results, force itself into adoption; whatever
wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated experiment and
failure, be exploded. And by this aggregation of truths and elimination
of errors, there must eventually be developed a correct and complete
body of doctrine. Of the three phases through which human opinion
passes--the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the
inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise--it is manifest that the second
is the parent of the third. They are not sequences in time only, they
are sequences in causation. However impatiently, therefore, we may
witness the present conflict of educational systems, and however much we
may regret its accompanying evils, we must recognise it as a transition
stage needful to be passed through, and beneficent in its ultimate
effects.
Meanwhile, may we not advantageously take stock of our progress? After
fifty years of discussion, experiment, and comparison of results, may
we not expect a few steps towards the goal to be already made good? Some
old methods must by this time have fallen out of use; some new ones must
have become established; and many others must be in process of general
abandonment or adoption. Probably we may see in these various changes,
when put side by side, similar characteristics--may find in them a
common tendency; and so, by inference, may get a clue to the direction
in which experience is leading us, and gather hints how we may achieve
yet further improvements. Let us then, as a preliminary to a deeper
consideration of the matter, glance at the leading contrasts between the
education of the past and that of the present.
* * * * *
The suppression of every error is commonly followed by a temporary
ascendency of the contrary one; and so it happened, that after the ages
when physical development alone was aimed at, there came an age when
culture of the mind was the sole solicitude--when children had
lesson-books put before them at between two and three years old, and the
getting of knowledge was thought the one thing needful. As, further, it
usually happens that after one of these reactions the next advance is
achieved by co-ordinating the antagonist errors, and perceiving that
they are opposite sides of one truth; so, we are now coming to the
conviction that body and mind must both be cared for, and the whole
thing being unfolded. The forcing-system has been, by many, given up;
and precocity is discouraged. People are beginning to see that the first
requisite to success in life, is to be a good animal. The best brain is
found of little service, if there be not enough vital energy to work it;
and hence to obtain the one by sacrificing the source of the other, is
now considered a folly--a folly which the eventual failure of juvenile
prodigies constantly illustrates. Thus we are discovering the wisdom of
the saying, that one secret in education is "to know how wisely to lose
time."
The once universal practice of learning by rote, is daily falling more
into discredit. All modern authorities condemn the old mechanical way of
teaching the alphabet. The multiplication table is now frequently taught
experimentally. In the acquirement of languages, the grammar-school plan
is being superseded by plans based on the spontaneous process followed
by the child in gaining its mother tongue. Describing the methods there
used, the "Reports on the Training School at Battersea" say:--"The
instruction in the whole preparatory course is chiefly oral, and is
illustrated as much as possible by appeals to nature." And so
throughout. The rote-system, like ether systems of its age, made more of
the forms and symbols than of the things symbolised. To repeat the words
correctly was everything; to understand their meaning nothing; and thus
the spirit was sacrificed to the letter. It is at length perceived that,
in this case as in others, such a result is not accidental but
necessary--that in proportion as there is attention to the signs, there
must be inattention to the things signified; or that, as Montaigne long
ago said--_Scavoir par coeur n'est pas scavoir_.
Along with rote-teaching, is declining also the nearly-allied teaching
by rules. The particulars first, and then the generalisation, is the new
method--a method, as the Battersea School Reports remarks, which, though
"the reverse of the method usually followed, which consists in giving
the pupil the rule first," is yet proved by experience to be the right
one. Rule-teaching is now condemned as imparting a merely empirical
knowledge--as producing an appearance of understanding without the
reality. To give the net product of inquiry, without the inquiry that
leads to it, is found to be both enervating and inefficient. General
truths to be of due and permanent use, must be earned. "Easy come easy
go," is a saying as applicable to knowledge as to wealth. While rules,
lying isolated in the mind--not joined to its other contents as
out-growths from them--are continually forgotten; the principles which
those rules express piecemeal, become, when once reached by the
understanding, enduring possessions. While the rule-taught youth is at
sea when beyond his rules, the youth instructed in principles solves a
new case as readily as an old one. Between a mind of rules and a mind of
principles, there exists a difference such as that between a confused
heap of materials, and the same materials organised into a complete
whole, with all its parts bound together. Of which types this last has
not only the advantage that its constituent parts are better retained,
but the much greater advantage that it forms an efficient agent for
inquiry, for independent thought, for discovery--ends for which the
first is useless. Nor let it be supposed that this is a simile only: it
is the literal truth. The union of facts into generalisations _is_ the
organisation of knowledge, whether considered as an objective phenomenon
or a subjective one; and the mental grasp may be measured by the extent
to which this organisation is carried.
From the substitution of principles for rules, and the necessarily
co-ordinate practice of leaving abstractions untaught till the mind has
been familiarised with the facts from which they are abstracted, has
resulted the postponement of some once early studies to a late period.
This is exemplified in the abandonment of that intensely stupid custom,
the teaching of grammar to children. As M. Marcel says:--"It may without
hesitation be affirmed that grammar is not the stepping-stone, but the
finishing instrument." As Mr. Wyse argues:--"Grammar and Syntax are a
collection of laws and rules. Rules are gathered from practice; they are
the results of induction to which we come by long observation and
comparison of facts. It is, in fine, the science, the philosophy of
language. In following the process of nature, neither individuals nor
nations ever arrive at the science _first_. A language is spoken, and
poetry written, many years before either a grammar or prosody is even
thought of. Men did not wait till Aristotle had constructed his logic,
to reason." In short, as grammar was made after language, so ought it to
be taught after language: an inference which all who recognise the
relationship between the evolution of the race and that of the
individual, will see to be unavoidable.
Of new practices that have grown up during the decline of these old
ones, the most important is the systematic culture of the powers of
observation. After long ages of blindness, men are at last seeing that
the spontaneous activity of the observing faculties in children has a
meaning and a use. What was once thought mere purposeless action, or
play, or mischief, as the case might be, is now recognised as the
process of acquiring a knowledge on which all after-knowledge is based.
Hence the well-conceived but ill-conducted system of _object-lessons_.
The saying of Bacon, that physics is the mother of the sciences, has
come to have a meaning in education. Without an accurate acquaintance
with the visible and tangible properties of things, our conceptions must
be erroneous, our inferences fallacious, and our operations
unsuccessful. "The education of the senses neglected, all after
education partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, an insufficiency, which
it is impossible to cure." Indeed, if we consider it, we shall find that
exhaustive observation is an element in all great success. It is not to
artists, naturalists, and men of science only, that it is needful; it is
not only that the physician depends on it for the correctness of his
diagnosis, and that to the engineer it is so important that some years
in the workshop are prescribed for him; but we may see that the
philosopher, also, is fundamentally one who _observes_ relationships of
things which others had overlooked, and that the poet, too, is one who
_sees_ the fine facts in nature which all recognise when pointed out,
but did not before remark. Nothing requires more to be insisted on than
that vivid and complete impressions are all-essential. No sound fabric
of wisdom can be woven out of a rotten raw-material.
While the old method of presenting truths in the abstract has been
falling out of use, there has been a corresponding adoption of the new
method of presenting them in the concrete. The rudimentary facts of
exact science are now being learnt by direct intuition, as textures, and
tastes, and colours are learnt. Employing the ball-frame for first
lessons in arithmetic exemplifies this. It is well illustrated, too, in
Professor De Morgan's mode of explaining the decimal notation. M.
Marcel, rightly repudiating the old system of tables, teaches weights
and measures by referring to the actual yard and foot, pound and ounce,
gallon and quart; and lets the discovery of their relationships be
experimental. The use of geographical models and models of the regular
bodies, etc., as introductory to geography and geometry respectively,
are facts of the same class. Manifestly, a common trait of these methods
is, that they carry each child's mind through a process like that which
the mind of humanity at large has gone through. The truths of number, of
form, of relationship in position, were all originally drawn from
objects; and to present these truths to the child in the concrete is to
let him learn them as the race learnt them. By and by, perhaps, it will
be seen that he cannot possibly learn them in any other way; for that if
he is made to repeat them as abstractions, the abstractions can have no
meaning for him, until he finds that they are simply statements of what
he intuitively discerns.
But of all the changes taking place, the most significant is the growing
desire to make the acquirement of knowledge pleasurable rather than
painful--a desire based on the more or less distinct perception, that at
each age the intellectual action which a child likes is a healthful one
for it; and conversely. There is a spreading opinion that the rise of an
appetite for any kind of information implies that the unfolding mind has
become fit to assimilate it, and needs it for purposes of growth; and
that, on the other hand, the disgust felt towards such information is a
sign either that it is prematurely presented, or that it is presented in
an indigestible form. Hence the efforts to make early education amusing,
and all education interesting. Hence the lectures on the value of play.
Hence the defence of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Daily we more and
more conform our plans to juvenile opinion. Does the child like this or
that kind of teaching?--does he take to it? we constantly ask. "His
natural desire of variety should be indulged," says M. Marcel; "and the
gratification of his curiosity should be combined with his improvement."
"Lessons," he again remarks, "should cease before the child evinces
symptoms of weariness." And so with later education. Short breaks during
school-hours, excursions into the country, amusing lectures, choral
songs--in these and many like traits the change may be discerned.
Asceticism is disappearing out of education as out of life; and the
usual test of political legislation--its tendency to promote
happiness--is beginning to be, in a great degree, the test of
legislation for the school and the nursery.
What now is the common characteristic of these several changes? Is it
not an increasing conformity to the methods of Nature? The
relinquishment of early forcing, against which Nature rebels, and the
leaving of the first years for exercise of the limbs and senses, show
this. The superseding of rote-learnt lessons by lessons orally and
experimentally given, like those of the field and play-ground, shows
this. The disuse of rule-teaching, and the adoption of teaching by
principles--that is, the leaving of generalisations until there are
particulars to base them on--show this. The system of object-lessons
shows this. The teaching of the rudiments of science in the concrete
instead of the abstract, shows this. And above all, this tendency is
shown in the variously-directed efforts to present knowledge in
attractive forms, and so to make the acquirement of it pleasurable. For,
as it is the order of Nature in all creatures that the gratification
accompanying the fulfilment of needful functions serves as a stimulus to
their fulfilment--as, during the self-education of the young child, the
delight taken in the biting of corals and the pulling to pieces of toys,
becomes the prompter to actions which teach it the properties of matter;
it follows that, in choosing the succession of subjects and the modes of
instruction which most interest the pupil, we are fulfilling Nature's
behests, and adjusting our proceedings to the laws of life.
Thus, then, we are on the highway towards the doctrine long ago
enunciated by Pestalozzi, that alike in its order and its methods,
education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution--that
there is a certain sequence in which the faculties spontaneously
develop, and a certain kind of knowledge which each requires during its
development; and that it is for us to ascertain this sequence, and
supply this knowledge. All the improvements above alluded to are partial
applications of this general principle. A nebulous perception of it now
prevails among teachers; and it is daily more insisted on in educational
works. "The method of nature is the archetype of all methods," says M.
Marcel. "The vital principle in the pursuit is to enable the pupil
rightly to instruct himself," writes Mr. Wyse. The more science
familiarises us with the constitution of things, the more do we see in
them an inherent self-sufficingness. A higher knowledge tends
continually to limit our interference with the processes of life. As in
medicine the old "heroic treatment" has given place to mild treatment,
and often no treatment save a normal regimen--as we have found that it
is not needful to mould the bodies of babes by bandaging them in
papoose-fashion or otherwise--as in gaols it is being discovered that no
cunningly-devised discipline of ours is so efficient in producing
reformation as the natural discipline of self-maintenance by productive
labour; so in education, we are finding that success is to be achieved
only by making our measures subservient to that spontaneous unfolding
which all minds go through in their progress to maturity.
Of course, this fundamental principle of tuition, that the arrangement
of matter and method must correspond with the order of evolution and
mode of activity of the faculties--a principle so obviously true, that
once stated it seems almost self-evident--has never been wholly
disregarded. Teachers have unavoidably made their school-courses
coincide with it in some degree, for the simple reason that education is
possible only on that condition. Boys were never taught the
rule-of-three until after they had learnt addition. They were not set to
write exercises before they had got into their copybooks. Conic sections
have always been preceded by Euclid. But the error of the old methods
consists in this, that they do not recognise in detail what they are
obliged to recognise in general. Yet the principle applies throughout.
If from the time when a child is able to conceive two things as related
in position, years must elapse before it can form a true concept of the
Earth, as a sphere made up of land and sea, covered with mountains,
forests, rivers, and cities, revolving on its axis, and sweeping round
the Sun--if it gets from the one concept to the other by degrees--if the
intermediate concepts which it forms are consecutively larger and more
complicated; is it not manifest that there is a general succession
through which alone it can pass; that each larger concept is made by the
combination of smaller ones, and presupposes them; and that to present
any of these compound concepts before the child is in possession of its
constituent ones, is only less absurd than to present the final concept
of the series before the initial one? In the mastering of every subject
some course of increasingly complex ideas has to be gone through. The
evolution of the corresponding faculties consists in the assimilation of
these; which, in any true sense, is impossible without they are put into
the mind in the normal order. And when this order is not followed, the
result is, that they are received with apathy or disgust; and that
unless the pupil is intelligent enough eventually to fill up the gaps
himself, they lie in his memory as dead facts, capable of being turned
to little or no use.
"But why trouble ourselves about any _curriculum_ at all?" it may be
asked. "If it be true that the mind like the body has a predetermined
course of evolution--if it unfolds spontaneously--if its successive
desires for this or that kind of information arise when these are
severally required for its nutrition--if there thus exists in itself a
prompter to the right species of activity at the right time; why
interfere in any way? Why not leave children _wholly_ to the discipline
of nature?--why not remain quite passive and let them get knowledge as
they best can?--why not be consistent throughout?" This is an
awkward-looking question. Plausibly implying as it does, that a system
of complete _laissez-faire_ is the logical outcome of the doctrines set
forth, it seems to furnish a disproof of them by _reductio ad absurdum_.
In truth, however, they do not, when rightly understood, commit us to
any such untenable position. A glance at the physical analogies will
clearly show this. It is a general law of life that the more complex the
organism to be produced, the longer the period during which it is
dependent on a parent organism for food and protection. The difference
between the minute, rapidly-formed, and self-moving spore of a conferva,
and the slowly-developed seed of a tree, with its multiplied envelopes
and large stock of nutriment laid by to nourish the germ during its
first stages of growth, illustrates this law in its application to the
vegetal world. Among animals we may trace it in a series of contrasts
from the monad whose spontaneously-divided halves are as self-sufficing
the moment after their separation as was the original whole; up to man,
whose offspring not only passes through a protracted gestation, and
subsequently long depends on the breast for sustenance; but after that
must have its food artificially administered; must, when it has learned
to feed itself, continue to have bread, clothing, and shelter provided;
and does not acquire the power of complete self-support until a time
varying from fifteen to twenty years after its birth. Now this law
applies to the mind as to the body. For mental pabulum also, every
higher creature, and especially man, is at first dependent on adult aid.
Lacking the ability to move about, the babe is almost as powerless to
get materials on which to exercise its perceptions as it is to get
supplies for its stomach. Unable to prepare its own food, it is in like
manner unable to reduce many kinds of knowledge to a fit form for
assimilation. The language through which all higher truths are to be
gained, it wholly derives from those surrounding it. And we see in such
an example as the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the arrest of development that
results when no help is received from parents and nurses. Thus, in
providing from day to day the right kind of facts, prepared in the right
manner, and giving them in due abundance at appropriate intervals, there
is as much scope for active ministration to a child's mind as to its
body. In either case, it is the chief function of parents to see that
the _conditions_ requisite to growth are maintained. And as, in
supplying aliment, and clothing, and shelter, they may fulfil this
function without at all interfering with the spontaneous development of
the limbs and viscera, either in their order or mode; so, they may
supply sounds for imitation, objects for examination, books for reading,
problems for solution, and, if they use neither direct nor indirect
coercion, may do this without in any way disturbing the normal process
of mental evolution; or rather, may greatly facilitate that process.
Hence the admission of the doctrines enunciated does not, as some might
argue, involve the abandonment of teaching; but leaves ample room for an
active and elaborate course of culture.
* * * * *
Passing from generalities to special considerations, it is to be
remarked that in practice the Pestalozzian system seems scarcely to have
fulfilled the promise of its theory. We hear of children not at all
interested in its lessons,--disgusted with them rather; and, so far as
we can gather, the Pestalozzian school have not turned out any unusual
proportion of distinguished men: if even they have reached the average.
We are not surprised at this. The success of every appliance depends
mainly upon the intelligence with which it is used. It is a trite
remark that, having the choicest tools, an unskilful artisan will botch
his work; and bad teachers will fail even with the best methods. Indeed,
the goodness of the method becomes in such case a cause of failure; as,
to continue the simile, the perfection of the tool becomes in
undisciplined hands a source of imperfection in results. A simple,
unchanging, almost mechanical routine of tuition, may be carried out by
the commonest intellects, with such small beneficial effect as it is
capable of producing; but a complete system--a system as heterogeneous
in its appliances as the mind in its faculties--a system proposing a
special means for each special end, demands for its right employment
powers such as few teachers possess. The mistress of a dame-school can
hear spelling-lessons; and any hedge-schoolmaster can drill boys in the
multiplication-table. But to teach spelling rightly by using the powers
of the letters instead of their names, or to instruct in numerical
combinations by experimental synthesis, a modicum of understanding is
needful; and to pursue a like rational course throughout the entire
range of studies, asks an amount of judgment, of invention, of
intellectual sympathy, of analytical faculty, which we shall never see
applied to it while the tutorial official is held in such small esteem.
True education is practicable only by a true philosopher. Judge, then,
what prospect a philosophical method now has of being acted out! Knowing
so little as we yet do of psychology, and ignorant as our teachers are
of that little, what chance has a system which requires psychology for
its basis?
Further hindrance and discouragement has arisen from confounding the
Pestalozzian principle with the forms in which it has been embodied.
Because particular plans have not answered expectation, discredit has
been cast upon the doctrine associated with them: no inquiry being made
whether these plans truly conform to the doctrine. Judging as usual by
the concrete rather than the abstract, men have blamed the theory for
the bunglings of the practice. It is as though the first futile attempt
to construct a steam-engine had been held to prove that steam could not
be used as a motive power. Let it be constantly borne in mind that while
right in his fundamental ideas, Pestalozzi was not therefore right in
all his applications of them. As described even by his admirers,
Pestalozzi was a man of partial intuitions--a man who had occasional
flashes of insight rather than a man of systematic thought. His first
great success at Stantz was achieved when he had no books or appliances
of ordinary teaching, and when "the only object of his attention was to
find out at each moment what instruction his children stood peculiarly
in need of, and what was the best manner of connecting it with the
knowledge they already possessed." Much of his power was due, not to
calmly reasoned-out plans of culture, but to his profound sympathy,
which gave him a quick perception of childish needs and difficulties. He
lacked the ability logically to co-ordinate and develop the truths which
he thus from time to time laid hold of; and had in great measure to
leave this to his assistants, Kruesi, Tobler, Buss, Niederer, and
Schmid. The result is, that in their details his own plans, and those
vicariously devised, contain numerous crudities and inconsistencies. His
nursery-method, described in _The Mother's Manual_, beginning as it does
with a nomenclature of the different parts of the body, and proceeding
next to specify their relative positions, and next their connections,
may be proved not at all in accordance with the initial stages of mental
evolution. His process of teaching the mother-tongue by formal exercises
in the meanings of words and in the construction of sentences, is quite
needless, and must entail on the pupil loss of time, labour, and
happiness. His proposed lessons in geography are utterly unpestalozzian.
And often where his plans are essentially sound, they are either
incomplete or vitiated by some remnant of the old regime. While,
therefore, we would defend in its entire extent the general doctrine
which Pestalozzi inaugurated, we think great evil likely to result from
an uncritical reception of his specific methods. That tendency,
constantly exhibited by mankind, to canonise the forms and practices
along with which any great truth has been bequeathed to them--their
liability to prostrate their intellects before the prophet, and swear by
his every word--their proneness to mistake the clothing of the idea for
the idea itself; renders it needful to insist strongly upon the
distinction between the fundamental principle of the Pestalozzian
system, and the set of expedients devised for its practice; and to
suggest that while the one may be considered as established, the other
is probably nothing but an adumbration of the normal course. Indeed, on
looking at the state of our knowledge, we may be quite sure that is the
case. Before educational methods can be made to harmonise in character
and arrangement with the faculties in their mode and order of unfolding,
it is first needful that we ascertain with some completeness how the
faculties _do_ unfold. At present we have acquired, on this point, only
a few general notions. These general notions must be developed in
detail--must be transformed into a multitude of specific propositions,
before we can be said to possess that _science_ on which the _art_ of
education must be based. And then, when we have definitely made out in
what succession and in what combinations the mental powers become
active, it remains to choose out of the many possible ways of exercising
each of them, that which best conforms to its natural mode of action.
Evidently, therefore, it is not to be supposed that even our most
advanced modes of teaching are the right ones, or nearly the right ones.
Bearing in mind then this distinction between the principle and the
practice of Pestalozzi, and inferring from the grounds assigned that the
last must necessarily be very defective, the reader will rate at its
true worth the dissatisfaction with the system which some have
expressed; and will see that the realisation of the Pestalozzian idea
remains to be achieved. Should he argue, however, from what has just
been said, that no such realisation is at present practicable, and that
all effort ought to be devoted to the preliminary inquiry; we reply,
that though it is not possible for a scheme of culture to be perfected
either in matter or form until a rational psychology has been
established, it is possible, with the aid of certain guiding principles,
to make empirical approximations towards a perfect scheme. To prepare
the way for further research we will now specify these principles. Some
of them have been more or less distinctly implied in the foregoing
pages; but it will be well here to state them all in logical order.
1. That in education we should proceed from the simple to the complex,
is a truth which has always been to some extent acted upon: not
professedly, indeed, nor by any means consistently. The mind develops.
Like all things that develop it progresses from the homogeneous to the
heterogeneous; and a normal training system, being an objective
counterpart of this subjective process, must exhibit a like progression.
Moreover, thus interpreting it, we may see that this formula has much
wider application than at first appears. For its _rationale_ involves,
not only that we should proceed from the single to the combined in the
teaching of each branch of knowledge; but that we should do the like
with knowledge as a whole. As the mind, consisting at first of but few
active faculties, has its later-completed faculties successively brought
into play, and ultimately comes to have all its faculties in
simultaneous action; it follows that our teaching should begin with but
few subjects at once, and successively adding to these, should finally
carry on all subjects abreast. Not only in its details should education
proceed from the simple to the complex, but in its _ensemble_ also.
2. The development of the mind, as all other development, is an advance
from the indefinite to the definite. In common with the rest of the
organism, the brain reaches its finished structure only at maturity; and
in proportion as its structure is unfinished, its actions are wanting in
precision. Hence like the first movements and the first attempts at
speech, the first perceptions and thoughts are extremely vague. As from
a rudimentary eye, discerning only the difference between light and
darkness, the progress is to an eye that distinguishes kinds and
gradations of colour, and details of form, with the greatest exactness;
so, the intellect as a whole and in each faculty, beginning with the
rudest discriminations among objects and actions, advances towards
discriminations of increasing nicety and distinctness. To this general
law our educational course and methods must conform. It is not
practicable, nor would it be desirable if practicable, to put precise
ideas into the undeveloped mind. We may indeed at an early age
communicate the verbal forms in which such ideas are wrapped up; and
teachers, who habitually do this, suppose that when the verbal forms
have been correctly learnt, the ideas which should fill them have been
acquired. But a brief cross-examination of the pupil proves the
contrary. It turns out either that the words have been committed to
memory with little or no thought about their meaning, or else that the
perception of their meaning which has been gained is a very cloudy one.
Only as the multiplication of experiences gives materials for definite
conceptions--only as observation year by year discloses the less
conspicuous attributes which distinguish things and processes previously
confounded together--only as each class of co-existences and sequences
becomes familiar through the recurrence of cases coming under it--only
as the various classes of relations get accurately marked off from each
other by mutual limitation, can the exact definitions of advanced
knowledge become truly comprehensible. Thus in education we must be
content to set out with crude notions. These we must aim to make
gradually clearer by facilitating the acquisition of experiences such as
will correct, first their greatest errors, and afterwards their
successively less marked errors. And the scientific formulae must be
given only as fast as the conceptions are perfected.
3. To say that our lessons ought to start from the concrete and end in
the abstract, may be considered as in part a repetition of the first of
the foregoing principles. Nevertheless it is a maxim that must be
stated: if with no other view, then with the view of showing in certain
cases what are truly the simple and the complex. For unfortunately there
has been much misunderstanding on this point. General formulas which men
have devised to express groups of details, and which have severally
simplified their conceptions by uniting many facts into one fact, they
have supposed must simplify the conceptions of a child also. They have
forgotten that a generalisation is simple only in comparison with the
whole mass of particular truths it comprehends--that it is more complex
than any one of these truths taken singly--that only after many of these
single truths have been acquired does the generalisation ease the memory
and help the reason--and that to a mind not possessing these single
truths it is necessarily a mystery. Thus confounding two kinds of
simplification, teachers have constantly erred by setting out with
"first principles": a proceeding essentially, though not apparently, at
variance with the primary rule; which implies that the mind should be
introduced to principles through the medium of examples, and so should
be led from the particular to the general--from the concrete to the
abstract.
4. The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement
with the education of mankind, considered historically. In other words,
the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course
as the genesis of knowledge in the race. In strictness, this principle
may be considered as already expressed by implication; since both, being
processes of evolution, must conform to those same general laws of
evolution above insisted on, and must therefore agree with each other.
Nevertheless this particular parallelism is of value for the specific
guidance it affords. To M. Comte we believe society owes the enunciation
of it; and we may accept this item of his philosophy without at all
committing ourselves to the rest. This doctrine may be upheld by two
reasons, quite independent of any abstract theory; and either of them
sufficient to establish it. One is deducible from the law of hereditary
transmission as considered in its wider consequences. For if it be true
that men exhibit likeness to ancestry, both in aspect and character--if
it be true that certain mental manifestations, as insanity, occur in
successive members of the same family at the same age--if, passing from
individual cases in which the traits of many dead ancestors mixing with
those of a few living ones greatly obscure the law, we turn to national
types, and remark how the contrasts between them are persistent from age
to age--if we remember that these respective types came from a common
stock, and that hence the present marked differences between them must
have arisen from the action of modifying circumstances upon successive
generations who severally transmitted the accumulated effects to their
descendants--if we find the differences to be now organic, so that a
French child grows into a French man even when brought up among
strangers--and if the general fact thus illustrated is true of the whole
nature, intellect inclusive; then it follows that if there be an order
in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge,
there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of
knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically
indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind
through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is _not_
intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why
education should be a repetition of civilisation in little. It is
provable both that the historical sequence was, in its main outlines, a
necessary one; and that the causes which determined it apply to the
child as to the race. Not to specify these causes in detail, it will
suffice here to point out that as the mind of humanity placed in the
midst of phenomena and striving to comprehend them, has, after endless
comparisons, speculations, experiments, and theories, reached its
present knowledge of each subject by a specific route; it may rationally
be inferred that the relationship between mind and phenomena is such as
to prevent this knowledge from being reached by any other route; and
that as each child's mind stands in this same relationship to phenomena,
they can be accessible to it only through the same route. Hence in
deciding upon the right method of education, an inquiry into the method
of civilisation will help to guide us.
5. One of the conclusions to which such an inquiry leads, is, that in
each branch of instruction we should proceed from the empirical to the
rational. During human progress, every science is evolved out of its
corresponding art. It results from the necessity we are under, both
individually and as a race, of reaching the abstract by way of the
concrete, that there must be practice and an accruing experience with
its empirical generalisation, before there can be science. Science is
organised knowledge; and before knowledge can be organised, some of it
must be possessed. Every study, therefore, should have a purely
experimental introduction; and only after an ample fund of observations
has been accumulated, should reasoning begin. As illustrative
applications of this rule, we may instance the modern course of placing
grammar, not before language, but after it; or the ordinary custom of
prefacing perspective by practical drawing. By and by further
applications of it will be indicated.
6. A second corollary from the foregoing general principle, and one
which cannot be too strenuously insisted on, is, that in education the
process of self-development should be encouraged to the uttermost.
Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw
their own inferences. They should be _told_ as little as possible, and
induced to _discover_ as much as possible. Humanity has progressed
solely by self-instruction; and that to achieve the best results, each
mind must progress somewhat after the same fashion, is continually
proved by the marked success of self-made men. Those who have been
brought up under the ordinary school-drill, and have carried away with
them the idea that education is practicable only in that style, will
think it hopeless to make children their own teachers. If, however, they
will consider that the all-important knowledge of surrounding objects
which a child gets in its early years is got without help--if they will
remember that the child is self-taught in the use of its mother
tongue--if they will estimate the amount of that experience of life,
that out-of-school wisdom, which every boy gathers for himself--if they
will mark the unusual intelligence of the uncared-for London _gamin_, as
shown in whatever directions his faculties have been tasked--if,
further, they will think how many minds have struggled up unaided, not
only through the mysteries of our irrationally-planned _curriculum_, but
through hosts of other obstacles besides; they will find it a not
unreasonable conclusion that if the subjects be put before him in right
order and right form, any pupil of ordinary capacity will surmount his
successive difficulties with but little assistance. Who indeed can watch
the ceaseless observation, and inquiry, and inference going on in a
child's mind, or listen to its acute remarks on matters within the range
of its faculties, without perceiving that these powers it manifests, if
brought to bear systematically upon studies _within the same range_,
would readily master them without help? This need for perpetual telling
results from our stupidity, not from the child's. We drag it away from
the facts in which it is interested, and which it is actively
assimilating of itself. We put before it facts far too complex for it to
understand; and therefore distasteful to it. Finding that it will not
voluntarily acquire these facts, we thrust them into its mind by force
of threats and punishment. By thus denying the knowledge it craves, and
cramming it with knowledge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid state
of its faculties; and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general. And
when, as a result partly of the stolid indolence we have brought on, and
partly of still-continued unfitness in its studies, the child can
understand nothing without explanation, and becomes a mere passive
recipient of our instruction, we infer that education must necessarily
be carried on thus. Having by our method induced helplessness, we make
the helplessness a reason for our method. Clearly then, the experience
of pedagogues cannot rationally be quoted against the system we are
advocating. And whoever sees this, will see that we may safely follow
the discipline of Nature throughout--may, by a skilful ministration,
make the mind as self-developing in its later stages as it is in its
earlier ones; and that only by doing this can we produce the highest
power and activity.
7. As a final test by which to judge any plan of culture, should come
the question,--Does it create a pleasurable excitement in the pupils?
When in doubt whether a particular mode or arrangement is or is not more
in harmony with the foregoing principles than some other, we may safely
abide by this criterion. Even when, as considered theoretically, the
proposed course seems the best, yet if it produces no interest, or less
interest than some other course, we should relinquish it; for a child's
intellectual instincts are more trustworthy than our reasonings. In
respect to the knowing-faculties, we may confidently trust in the
general law, that under normal conditions, healthful action is
pleasurable, while action which gives pain is not healthful. Though at
present very incompletely conformed to by the emotional nature, yet by
the intellectual nature, or at least by those parts of it which the
child exhibits, this law is almost wholly conformed to. The repugnances
to this and that study which vex the ordinary teacher, are not innate,
but result from his unwise system. Fellenberg says, "Experience has
taught me that _indolence_ in young persons is so directly opposite to
their natural disposition to activity, that unless it is the consequence
of bad education, it is almost invariably connected with some
constitutional defect." And the spontaneous activity to which children
are thus prone, is simply the pursuit of those pleasures which the
healthful exercise of the faculties gives. It is true that some of the
higher mental powers, as yet but little developed in the race, and
congenitally possessed in any considerable degree only by the most
advanced, are indisposed to the amount of exertion required of them. But
these, in virtue of their very complexity, will, in a normal course of
culture, come last into exercise; and will therefore have no demands
made on them until the pupil has arrived at an age when ulterior motives
can be brought into play, and an indirect pleasure made to
counterbalance a direct displeasure. With all faculties lower than
these, however, the immediate gratification consequent on activity, is
the normal stimulus; and under good management the only needful
stimulus. When we have to fall back on some other, we must take the fact
as evidence that we are on the wrong track. Experience is daily showing
with greater clearness, that there is always a method to be found
productive of interest--even of delight; and it ever turns out that this
is the method proved by all other tests to be the right one.
With most, these guiding principles will weigh but little if left in
this abstract form. Partly, therefore, to exemplify their application,
and partly with a view of making sundry specific suggestions, we propose
now to pass from the theory of education to the practice of it.
* * * * *
It was the opinion of Pestalozzi, and one which has ever since his day
been gaining ground, that education of some kind should begin from the
cradle. Whoever has watched, with any discernment, the wide-eyed gaze of
the infant at surrounding objects knows very well that education _does_
begin thus early, whether we intend it or not; and that these fingerings
and suckings of everything it can lay hold of, these open-mouthed
listenings to every sound, are first steps in the series which ends in
the discovery of unseen planets, the invention of calculating engines,
the production of great paintings, or the composition of symphonies and
operas. This activity of the faculties from the very first, being
spontaneous and inevitable, the question is whether we shall supply in
due variety the materials on which they may exercise themselves; and to
the question so put, none but an affirmative answer can be given. As
before said, however, agreement with Pestalozzi's theory does not
involve agreement with his practice; and here occurs a case in point.
Treating of instruction in spelling he says:--
"The spelling-book ought, therefore, to contain all the sounds of
the language, and these ought to be taught in every family from the
earliest infancy. The child who learns his spelling book ought to
repeat them to the infant in the cradle, before it is able to
pronounce even one of them, so that they may be deeply impressed
upon its mind by frequent repetition."
Joining this with the suggestions for "a nursery method," set down in
his _Mother's Manual_, in which he makes the names, positions,
connections, numbers, properties, and uses of the limbs and body his
first lessons, it becomes clear that Pestalozzi's notions on early
mental development were too crude to enable him to devise judicious
plans. Let us consider the course which Psychology dictates.
The earliest impressions which the mind can assimilate are the
undecomposable sensations produced by resistance, light, sound, etc.
Manifestly, decomposable states of consciousness cannot exist before the
states of consciousness out of which they are composed. There can be no
idea of form until some familiarity with light in its gradations and
qualities, or resistance in its different intensities, has been
acquired; for, as has been long known, we recognise visible form by
means of varieties of light, and tangible form by means of varieties of
resistance. Similarly, no articulate sound is cognisable until the
inarticulate sounds which go to make it up have been learned. And thus
must it be in every other case. Following, therefore, the necessary law
of progression from the simple to the complex, we should provide for the
infant a sufficiency of objects presenting different degrees and kinds
of resistance, a sufficiency of objects reflecting different amounts and
qualities of light, and a sufficiency of sounds contrasted in their
loudness, their pitch and their _timbre_. How fully this _a priori_
conclusion is confirmed by infantile instincts, all will see on being
reminded of the delight which every young child has in biting its toys,
in feeling its brother's bright jacket-buttons, and pulling papa's
whiskers--how absorbed it becomes in gazing at any gaudily-painted
object, to which it applies the word "pretty," when it can pronounce it,
wholly because of the bright colours--and how its face broadens into a
laugh at the tattlings of its nurse, the snapping of a visitor's
fingers, or any sound which it has not before heard. Fortunately, the
ordinary practices of the nursery fulfil these early requirements of
education to a considerable degree. Much, however, remains to be done;
and it is of more importance that it should be done than at first
appears. Every faculty during that spontaneous activity which
accompanies its evolution is capable of receiving more vivid impressions
than at any other period. Moreover, as these simplest elements have to
be mastered, and as the mastery of them whenever achieved must take
time, it becomes an economy of time to occupy this first stage of
childhood, during which no other intellectual action is possible, in
gaining a complete familiarity with them in all their modifications. Nor
let us omit the fact, that both temper and health will be improved by
the continual gratification resulting from a due supply of these
impressions which every child so greedily assimilates. Space, could it
be spared, might here be well filled by some suggestions towards a more
systematic ministration to these simplest of the perceptions. But it
must suffice to point out that any such ministration, recognising the
general law of evolution from the indefinite to the definite, should
proceed upon the corollary that in the development of every faculty,
markedly contrasted impressions are the first to be distinguished; that
hence sounds greatly differing in loudness and pitch, colours very
remote from each other, and substances widely unlike in hardness or
texture, should be the first supplied; and that in each case the
progression must be by slow degrees to impressions more nearly allied.
Passing on to object-lessons, which manifestly form a natural
continuation of this primary culture of the senses, it is to be
remarked, that the system commonly pursued is wholly at variance with
the method of Nature, as exhibited alike in infancy, in adult life, and
in the course of civilisation. "The child," says M. Marcel, "must be
_shown_ how all the parts of an object are connected, etc.;" and the
various manuals of these object-lessons severally contain lists of the
facts which the child is to be _told_ respecting each of the things put
before it. Now it needs but a glance at the daily life of the infant to
see that all the knowledge of things which is gained before the
acquirement of speech, is self-gained--that the qualities of hardness
and weight associated with certain appearances, the possession of
particular forms and colours by particular persons, the production of
special sounds by animals of special aspects, are phenomena which it
observes for itself. In manhood too, when there are no longer teachers
at hand, the observations and inferences hourly required for guidance
must be made unhelped; and success in life depends upon the accuracy and
completeness with which they are made. Is it probable, then, that while
the process displayed in the evolution of humanity at large is repeated
alike by the infant and the man, a reverse process must be followed
during the period between infancy and manhood? and that too, even in so
simple a thing as learning the properties of objects? Is it not obvious,
on the contrary, that one method must be pursued throughout? And is not
Nature perpetually thrusting this method upon us, if we had but the wit
to see it, and the humility to adopt it? What can be more manifest than
the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant
sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you
too may look at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the
table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at
you; thus saying as clearly as it can--"Hear this new sound." Watch the
elder children coming into the room exclaiming--"Mamma, see what a
curious thing," "Mamma, look at this," "Mamma, look at that:" a habit
which they would continue, did not the silly mamma tell them not to
tease her. Observe that, when out with the nurse-maid, each little one
runs up to her with the new flower it has gathered, to show her how
pretty it is, and to get her also to say it is pretty. Listen to the
eager volubility with which every urchin describes any novelty he has
been to see, if only he can find some one who will attend with any
interest. Does not the induction lie on the surface? Is it not clear
that we must conform our course to these intellectual instincts--that we
must just systematise the natural process--that we must listen to all
the child has to tell us about each object; must induce it to say
everything it can think of about such object; must occasionally draw its
attention to facts it has not yet observed, with the view of leading it
to notice them itself whenever they recur; and must go on by and by to
indicate or supply new series of things for a like exhaustive
examination? Note the way in which, on this method, the intelligent
mother conducts her lessons. Step by step she familiarises her little
boy with the names of the simpler attributes, hardness, softness,
colour, taste, size: in doing which she finds him eagerly help by
bringing this to show her that it is red, and the other to make her feel
that it is hard, as fast as she gives him words for these properties.
Each additional property, as she draws his attention to it in some fresh
thing which he brings her, she takes care to mention in connection with
those he already knows; so that by the natural tendency to imitate, he
may get into the habit of repeating them one after another. Gradually as
there occur cases in which he omits to name one or more of the
properties he has become acquainted with, she introduces the practice
of asking him whether there is not something more that he can tell her
about the thing he has got. Probably he does not understand. After
letting him puzzle awhile she tells him; perhaps laughing at him a
little for his failure. A few recurrences of this and he perceives what
is to be done. When next she says she knows something more about the
object than he has told her, his pride is roused; he looks at it
intently; he thinks over all that he has heard; and the problem being
easy, presently finds it out. He is full of glee at his success, and she
sympathises with him. In common with every child, he delights in the
discovery of his powers. He wishes for more victories, and goes in quest
of more things about which to tell her. As his faculties unfold she adds
quality after quality to his list: progressing from hardness and
softness to roughness and smoothness, from colour to polish, from simple
bodies to composite ones--thus constantly complicating the problem as he
gains competence, constantly taxing his attention and memory to a
greater extent, constantly maintaining his interest by supplying him
with new impressions such as his mind can assimilate, and constantly
gratifying him by conquests over such small difficulties as he can
master. In doing this she is manifestly but following out that
spontaneous process which was going on during a still earlier
period--simply aiding self-evolution; and is aiding it in the mode
suggested by the boy's instinctive behaviour to her. Manifestly, too,
the course she is adopting is the one best calculated to establish a
habit of exhaustive observation; which is the professed aim of these
lessons. To _tell_ a child this and to _show_ it the other, is not to
teach it how to observe, but to make it a mere recipient of another's
observations: a proceeding which weakens rather than strengthens its
powers of self-instruction--which deprives it of the pleasures resulting
from successful activity--which presents this all-attractive knowledge
under the aspect of formal tuition--and which thus generates that
indifference and even disgust not unfrequently felt towards these
object-lessons. On the other hand, to pursue the course above described
is simply to guide the intellect to its appropriate food; to join with
the intellectual appetites their natural adjuncts--_amour propre_ and
the desire for sympathy; to induce by the union of all these an
intensity of attention which insures perceptions both vivid and
complete; and to habituate the mind from the beginning to that practice
of self-help which it must ultimately follow.
Object-lessons should not only be carried on after quite a different
fashion from that commonly pursued, but should be extended to a range of
things far wider, and continued to a period far later, than now. They
should not be limited to the contents of the house; but should include
those of the fields and the hedges, the quarry and the sea-shore. They
should not cease with early childhood; but should be so kept up during
youth, as insensibly to merge into the investigations of the naturalist
and the man of science. Here again we have but to follow Nature's
leadings. Where can be seen an intenser delight than that of children
picking up new flowers and watching new insects; or hoarding pebbles and
shells? And who is there but perceives that by sympathising with them
they may be led on to any extent of inquiry into the qualities and
structures of these things? Every botanist who has had children with him
in the woods and lanes must have noticed how eagerly they joined in his
pursuits, how keenly they searched out plants for him, how intently they
watched while he examined them, how they overwhelmed him with questions.
The consistent follower of Bacon--the "servant and interpreter of
nature," will see that we ought modestly to adopt the course of culture
thus indicated. Having become familiar with the simpler properties of
inorganic objects, the child should by the same process be led on to an
exhaustive examination of the things it picks up in its daily walks--the
less complex facts they present being alone noticed at first: in plants,
the colours, numbers, and forms of the petals, and shapes of the stalks
and leaves; in insects, the numbers of the wings, legs, and antennae, and
their colours. As these become fully appreciated and invariably
observed, further facts may be successively introduced: in the one case,
the numbers of stamens and pistils, the forms of the flowers, whether
radial or bilateral in symmetry, the arrangement and character of the
leaves, whether opposite or alternate, stalked or sessile, smooth or
hairy, serrated, toothed, or crenate; in the other, the divisions of the
body, the segments of the abdomen, the markings of the wings, the number
of joints in the legs, and the forms of the smaller organs--the system
pursued throughout being that of making it the child's ambition to say
respecting everything it finds all that can be said. Then when a fit age
has been reached, the means of preserving these plants, which have
become so interesting in virtue of the knowledge obtained of them, may
as a great favour be supplied; and eventually, as a still greater
favour, may also be supplied the apparatus needful for keeping the larvae
of our common butterflies and moths through their transformations--a
practice which, as we can personally testify, yields the highest
gratification; is continued with ardour for years; when joined with the
formation of an entomological collection, adds immense interest to
Saturday-afternoon rambles; and forms an admirable introduction to the
study of physiology.
We are quite prepared to hear from many that all this is throwing away
time and energy; and that children would be much better occupied in
writing their copies or learning their pence-tables, and so fitting
themselves for the business of life. We regret that such crude ideas of
what constitutes education, and such a narrow conception of utility,
should still be prevalent. Saying nothing on the need for a systematic
culture of the perceptions and the value of the practices above
inculcated as subserving that need, we are prepared to defend them even
on the score of the knowledge gained. If men are to be mere cits, mere
porers over ledgers, with no ideas beyond their trades--if it is well
that they should be as the cockney whose conception of rural pleasures
extends no further than sitting in a tea-garden smoking pipes and
drinking porter; or as the squire who thinks of woods as places for
shooting in, of uncultivated plants as nothing but weeds, and who
classifies animals into game, vermin, and stock--then indeed it is
needless to learn anything that does not directly help to replenish the
till and fill the larder. But if there is a more worthy aim for us than
to be drudges--if there are other uses in the things around than their
power to bring money--if there are higher faculties to be exercised than
acquisitive and sensual ones--if the pleasures which poetry and art and
science and philosophy can bring are of any moment; then is it desirable
that the instinctive inclination which every child shows to observe
natural beauties and investigate natural phenomena, should be
encouraged. But this gross utilitarianism which is content to come into
the world and quit it again without knowing what kind of a world it is
or what it contains, may be met on its own ground. It will by and by be
found that a knowledge of the laws of life is more important than any
other knowledge whatever--that the laws of life underlie not only all
bodily and mental processes, but by implication all the transactions of
the house and the street, all commerce, all politics, all morals--and
that therefore without a comprehension of them, neither personal nor
social conduct can be rightly regulated. It will eventually be seen too,
that the laws of life are essentially the same throughout the whole
organic creation; and further, that they cannot be properly understood
in their complex manifestations until they have been studied in their
simpler ones. And when this is seen, it will be also seen that in aiding
the child to acquire the out-of-door information for which it shows so
great an avidity, and in encouraging the acquisition of such information
throughout youth, we are simply inducing it to store up the raw material
for future organisation--the facts that will one day bring home to it
with due force, those great generalisations of science by which actions
may be rightly guided.
The spreading recognition of drawing as an element of education is one
among many signs of the more rational views on mental culture now
beginning to prevail. Once more it may be remarked that teachers are at
length adopting the course which Nature has perpetually been pressing on
their notice. The spontaneous attempts made by children to represent the
men, houses, trees, and animals around them--on a slate if they can get
nothing better, or with lead-pencil on paper if they can beg them--are
familiar to all. To be shown through a picture-book is one of their
highest gratifications; and as usual, their strong imitative tendency
presently generates in them the ambition to make pictures themselves
also. This effort to depict the striking things they see is a further
instinctive exercise of the perceptions--a means whereby still greater
accuracy and completeness of observation are induced. And alike by
trying to interest us in their discoveries of the sensible properties of
things, and by their endeavours to draw, they solicit from us just that
kind of culture which they most need.
Had teachers been guided by Nature's hints, not only in making drawing a
part of education but in choosing modes of teaching it, they would have
done still better than they have done. What is that the child first
tries to represent? Things that are large, things that are attractive in
colour, things round which its pleasurable associations most
cluster--human beings from whom it has received so many emotions; cows
and dogs which interest by the many phenomena they present; houses that
are hourly visible and strike by their size and contrast of parts. And
which of the processes of representation gives it most delight?
Colouring. Paper and pencil are good in default of something better; but
a box of paints and a brush--these are the treasures. The drawing of
outlines immediately becomes secondary to colouring--is gone through
mainly with a view to the colouring; and if leave can be got to colour a
book of prints, how great is the favour! Now, ridiculous as such a
position will seem to drawing-masters who postpone colouring and who
teach form by a dreary discipline of copying lines, we believe that the
course of culture thus indicated is the right one. The priority of
colour to form, which, as already pointed out, has a psychological
basis, should be recognised from the beginning; and from the beginning
also, the things imitated should be real. That greater delight in colour
which is not only conspicuous in children but persists in most persons
throughout life, should be continuously employed as the natural stimulus
to the mastery of the comparatively difficult and unattractive form: the
pleasure of the subsequent tinting should be the prospective reward for
the labour of delineation. And these efforts to represent interesting
actualities should be encouraged; in the conviction that as, by a
widening experience, simpler and more practicable objects become
interesting, they too will be attempted; and that so a gradual
approximation will be made towards imitations having some resemblance to
the realities. The extreme indefiniteness which, in conformity with the
law of evolution, these first attempts exhibit, is anything but a reason
for ignoring them. No matter how grotesque the shapes produced; no
matter how daubed and glaring the colours. The question is not whether
the child is producing good drawings. The question is, whether it is
developing its faculties. It has first to gain some command over its
fingers, some crude notions of likeness; and this practice is better
than any other for these ends, since it is the spontaneous and
interesting one. During early childhood no formal drawing-lessons are
possible. Shall we therefore repress, or neglect to aid, these efforts
at self-culture? or shall we encourage and guide them as normal
exercises of the perceptions and the powers of manipulation? If by
furnishing cheap woodcuts to be painted, and simple contour-maps to have
their boundary lines tinted, we can not only pleasurably draw out the
faculty of colour, but can incidentally produce some familiarity with
the outlines of things and countries, and some ability to move the brush
steadily; and if by the supply of tempting objects we can keep up the
instinctive practice of making representations, however rough; it must
happen that when the age for lessons in drawing is reached, there will
exist a facility that would else have been absent. Time will have been
gained; and trouble, both to teacher and pupil, saved.
From what has been said, it may be readily inferred that we condemn the
practice of drawing from copies; and still more so that formal
discipline in making straight lines and curved lines and compound lines,
with which it is the fashion of some teachers to begin. We regret that
the Society of Arts has recently, in its series of manuals on
"Rudimentary Art Instruction," given its countenance to an elementary
drawing-book, which is the most vicious in principle that we have seen.
We refer to the _Outline from Outline, or from the Flat_, by John Bell,
sculptor. As explained in the prefatory note, this publication proposes
"to place before the student a simple, yet logical mode of instruction;"
and to this end sets out with a number of definitions thus:--
"A simple line in drawing is a thin mark drawn from one point to
another.
"Lines may be divided, as to their nature in drawing, into two
classes:--
"1. _Straight_, which are marks that go the shortest road between
two points, as A B.
"2. Or _Curved_, which are marks which do not go the shortest road
between two points, as C D."
And so the introduction progresses to horizontal lines, perpendicular
lines, oblique lines, angles of the several kinds, and the various
figures which lines and angles make up. The work is, in short, a grammar
of form, with exercises. And thus the system of commencing with a dry
analysis of elements, which, in the teaching of language, has been
exploded, is to be re-instituted in the teaching of drawing. We are to
set out with the definite, instead of with the indefinite. The abstract
is to be preliminary to the concrete. Scientific conceptions are to
precede empirical experiences. That this is an inversion of the normal
order, we need scarcely repeat. It has been well said concerning the
custom of prefacing the art of speaking any tongue by a drilling in the
parts of speech and their functions, that it is about as reasonable as
prefacing the art of walking by a course of lessons on the bones,
muscles, and nerves of the legs; and much the same thing may be said of
the proposal to preface the art of representing objects, by a
nomenclature and definitions of the lines which they yield on analysis.
These technicalities are alike repulsive and needless. They render the
study distasteful at the very outset; and all with the view of teaching
that which, in the course of practice, will be learnt unconsciously.
Just as the child incidentally gathers the meanings of ordinary words
from the conversations going on around it, without the help of
dictionaries; so, from the remarks on objects, pictures, and its own
drawings, will it presently acquire, not only without effort but even
pleasurably, those same scientific terms which, when taught at first,
are a mystery and a weariness.
If any dependence is to be placed on the general principles of education
that have been laid down, the process of learning to draw should be
throughout continuous with those efforts of early childhood, described
above as so worthy of encouragement. By the time that the voluntary
practice thus initiated has given some steadiness of hand, and some
tolerable ideas of proportion, there will have arisen a vague notion of
body as presenting its three dimensions in perspective. And when, after
sundry abortive, Chinese-like attempts to render this appearance on
paper, there has grown up a pretty clear perception of the thing to be
done, and a desire to do it, a first lesson in empirical perspective may
be given by means of the apparatus occasionally used in explaining
perspective as a science. This sounds alarming; but the experiment is
both comprehensible and interesting to any boy or girl of ordinary
intelligence. A plate of glass so framed as to stand vertically on the
table, being placed before the pupil, and a book or like simple object
laid on the other side of it, he is requested, while keeping the eye in
one position, to make ink-dots on the glass so that they may coincide
with, or hide, the corners of this object. He is next told to join these
dots by lines; on doing which he perceives that the lines he makes hide,
or coincide with, the outlines of the object. And then by putting a
sheet of paper on the other side of the glass, it is made manifest to
him that the lines he has thus drawn represent the object as he saw it.
They not only look like it, but he perceives that they must be like it,
because he made them agree with its outlines; and by removing the paper
he can convince himself that they do agree with its outlines. The fact
is new and striking; and serves him as an experimental demonstration,
that lines of certain lengths, placed in certain directions on a plane,
can represent lines of other lengths, and having other directions, in
space. By gradually changing the position of the object, he may be led
to observe how some lines shorten and disappear, while others come into
sight and lengthen. The convergence of parallel lines, and, indeed, all
the leading facts of perspective, may, from time to time, be similarly
illustrated to him. If he has been duly accustomed to self-help, he will
gladly, when it is suggested, attempt to draw one of these outlines on
paper, by the eye only; and it may soon be made an exciting aim to
produce, unassisted, a representation as like as he can to one
subsequently sketched on the glass. Thus, without the unintelligent,
mechanical practice of copying other drawings, but by a method at once
simple and attractive--rational, yet not abstract--a familiarity with
the linear appearances of things, and a faculty of rendering them, may
be step by step acquired. To which advantages add these:--that even thus
early the pupil learns, almost unconsciously, the true theory of a
picture (namely, that it is a delineation of objects as they appear when
projected on a plane placed between them and the eye); and that when he
reaches a fit age for commencing scientific perspective, he is already
thoroughly acquainted with the facts which form its logical basis.
As exhibiting a rational mode of conveying primary conceptions in
geometry, we cannot do better than quote the following passage from Mr.
Wyse:--
"A child has been in the habit of using cubes for arithmetic; let
him use them also for the elements of geometry. I would begin with
solids, the reverse of the usual plan. It saves all the difficulty
of absurd definitions, and bad explanations on points, lines, and
surfaces, which are nothing but abstractions.... A cube presents
many of the principal elements of geometry; it at once exhibits
points, straight lines, parallel lines, angles, parallelograms,
etc., etc. These cubes are divisible into various parts. The pupil
has already been familiarised with such divisions in numeration,
and he now proceeds to a comparison of their several parts, and of
the relation of these parts to each other.... From thence he
advances to globes, which furnish him with elementary notions of
the circle, of curves generally, etc., etc.
"Being tolerably familiar with solids, he may now substitute
planes. The transition may be made very easy. Let the cube, for
instance, be cut into thin divisions, and placed on paper; he will
then see as many plane rectangles as he has divisions; so with all
the others. Globes may be treated in the same manner; he will thus
see how surfaces really are generated, and be enabled to abstract
them with facility in every solid.
"He has thus acquired the alphabet and reading of geometry. He now
proceeds to write it.
"The simplest operation, and therefore the first, is merely to
place these planes on a piece of paper, and pass the pencil round
them. When this has been frequently done, the plane may be put at a
little distance, and the child required to copy it, and so on."
A stock of geometrical conceptions having been obtained, in some such
manner as this recommended by Mr. Wyse, a further step may be taken, by
introducing the practice of testing the correctness of figures drawn by
eye: thus both exciting an ambition to make them exact, and continually
illustrating the difficulty of fulfilling that ambition. There can be
little doubt that geometry had its origin (as, indeed, the word implies)
in the methods discovered by artizans and others, of making accurate
measurements for the foundations of buildings, areas of inclosures, and
the like; and that its truths came to be treasured up, merely with a
view to their immediate utility. They would be introduced to the pupil
under analogous relationships. In cutting out pieces for his
card-houses, in drawing ornamental diagrams for colouring, and in those
various instructive occupations which an inventive teacher will lead him
into, he may for a length of time be advantageously left, like the
primitive builder, to tentative processes; and so will learn through
experience the difficulty of achieving his aims by the unaided senses.
When, having meanwhile undergone a valuable discipline of the
perceptions, he has reached a fit age for using a pair of compasses, he
will, while duly appreciating these as enabling him to verify his ocular
guesses, be still hindered by the imperfections of the approximative
method. In this stage he may be left for a further period: partly as
being yet too young for anything higher; partly because it is desirable
that he should be made to feel still more strongly the want of
systematic contrivances. If the acquisition of knowledge is to be made
continuously interesting; and if, in the early civilisation of the
child, as in the early civilisation of the race, science is valued only
as ministering to art; it is manifest that the proper preliminary to
geometry, is a long practice in those constructive processes which
geometry will facilitate. Observe that here, too, Nature points the way.
Children show a strong propensity to cut out things in paper, to make,
to build--a propensity which, if encouraged and directed, will not only
prepare the way for scientific conceptions, but will develop those
powers of manipulation in which most people are so deficient.
When the observing and inventive faculties have attained the requisite
power, the pupil may be introduced to empirical geometry; that
is--geometry dealing with methodical solutions, but not with the
demonstrations of them. Like all other transitions in education, this
should be made not formally but incidentally; and the relationship to
constructive art should still be maintained. To make, out of cardboard,
a tetrahedron like one given to him, is a problem which will interest
the pupil and serve as a convenient starting-point. In attempting this,
he finds it needful to draw four equilateral triangles arranged in
special positions. Being unable in the absence of an exact method to do
this accurately, he discovers on putting the triangles into their
respective positions, that he cannot make their sides fit; and that
their angles do not meet at the apex. He may now be shown how, by
describing a couple of circles, each of these triangles may be drawn
with perfect correctness and without guessing; and after his failure he
will value the information. Having thus helped him to the solution of
his first problem, with the view of illustrating the nature of
geometrical methods, he is in future to be left to solve the questions
put to him as best he can. To bisect a line, to erect a perpendicular,
to describe a square, to bisect an angle, to draw a line parallel to a
given line, to describe a hexagon, are problems which a little patience
will enable him to find out. And from these he may be led on step by
step to more complex questions: all of which, under judicious
management, he will puzzle through unhelped. Doubtless, many of those
brought up under the old regime, will look upon this assertion
sceptically. We speak from facts, however; and those neither few nor
special. We have seen a class of boys become so interested in making out
solutions to such problems, as to look forward to their geometry-lesson
as a chief event of the week. Within the last month, we have heard of
one girl's school, in which some of the young ladies voluntarily occupy
themselves with geometrical questions out of school-hours; and of
another, where they not only do this, but where one of them is begging
for problems to find out during the holidays: both which facts we state
on the authority of the teacher. Strong proofs, these, of the
practicability and the immense advantage of self-development! A branch
of knowledge which, as commonly taught, is dry and even repulsive, is
thus, by following the method of Nature, made extremely interesting and
profoundly beneficial. We say profoundly beneficial, because the effects
are not confined to the gaining of geometrical facts, but often
revolutionise the whole state of mind. It has repeatedly occurred that
those who have been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill--by its
abstract formulas, its wearisome tasks, its cramming--have suddenly had
their intellects roused by thus ceasing to make them passive recipients,
and inducing them to become active discoverers. The discouragement
caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, and
sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises
a revulsion of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find
themselves incompetent; they, too, can do something. And gradually as
success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they
attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage insuring
conquest.
A few weeks after the foregoing remarks were originally published,
Professor Tyndall in a lecture at the Royal Institution "On the
Importance of the Study of Physics as a Branch of Education," gave some
conclusive evidence to the same effect. His testimony, based on personal
observation, is of such great value that we cannot refrain from quoting
it. Here it is.
"One of the duties which fell to my share, during the period to
which I have referred, was the instruction of a class in
mathematics, and I usually found that Euclid and the ancient
geometry generally, when addressed to the understanding, formed a
very attractive study for youth. But it was my habitual practice to
withdraw the boys from the routine of the book, and to appeal to
their self-power in the treatment of questions not comprehended in
that routine. At first, the change from the beaten track usually
excited a little aversion: the youth felt like a child amid
strangers; but in no single instance have I found this aversion to
continue. When utterly disheartened, I have encouraged the boy by
that anecdote of Newton, where he attributes the difference between
him and other men, mainly to his own patience; or of Mirabeau, when
he ordered his servant, who had stated something to be impossible,
never to use that stupid word again. Thus cheered, he has returned
to his task with a smile, which perhaps had something of doubt in
it, but which, nevertheless, evinced a resolution to try again. I
have seen the boy's eye brighten, and at length, with a pleasure of
which the ecstasy of Archimedes was but a simple expansion, heard
him exclaim, 'I have it, sir.' The consciousness of self-power,
thus awakened, was of immense value; and animated by it, the
progress of the class was truly astonishing. It was often my custom
to give the boys their choice of pursuing their propositions in the
book, or of trying their strength at others not to be found there.
Never in a single instance have I known the book to be chosen. I
was ever ready to assist when I deemed help needful, but my offers
of assistance were habitually declined. The boys had tasted the
sweets of intellectual conquest and demanded victories of their
own. I have seen their diagrams scratched on the walls, cut into
the beams upon the play ground, and numberless other illustrations
of the living interest they took in the subject. For my own part,
as far as experience in teaching goes, I was a mere fledgling: I
knew nothing of the rules of pedagogics, as the Germans name it;
but I adhered to the spirit indicated at the commencement of this
discourse, and endeavoured to make geometry a _means_ and not a
_branch_ of education. The experiment was successful, and some of
the most delightful hours of my existence have been spent in
marking the vigorous and cheerful expansion of mental power, when
appealed to in the manner I have described."
This empirical geometry which presents an endless series of problems,
should be continued along with other studies for years; and may
throughout be advantageously accompanied by those concrete applications
of its principles which serve as its preliminary. After the cube, the
octahedron, and the various forms of pyramid and prism have been
mastered, may come the more complex regular bodies--the dodecahedron and
icosahedron--to construct which out of single pieces of cardboard,
requires considerable ingenuity. From these, the transition may
naturally be made to such modified forms of the regular bodies as are
met with in crystals--the truncated cube, the cube with its dihedral as
well as its solid angles truncated, the octahedron and the various
prisms as similarly modified: in imitating which numerous forms assumed
by different metals and salts, an acquaintance with the leading facts of
mineralogy will be incidentally gained.[1]
After long continuance in exercises of this kind, rational geometry, as
may be supposed, presents no obstacles. Habituated to contemplate
relationships of form and quantity, and vaguely perceiving from time to
time the necessity of certain results as reached by certain means, the
pupil comes to regard the demonstrations of Euclid as the missing
supplements to his familiar problems. His well-disciplined faculties
enable him easily to master its successive propositions, and to
appreciate their value; and he has the occasional gratification of
finding some of his own methods proved to be true. Thus he enjoys what
is to the unprepared a dreary task. It only remains to add, that his
mind will presently arrive at a fit condition for that most valuable of
all exercises for the reflective faculties--the making of original
demonstrations. Such theorems as those appended to the successive books
of the Messrs. Chambers's Euclid, will soon become practicable to him;
and in proving them, the process of self-development will be not
intellectual only, but moral.
To continue these suggestions much further, would be to write a detailed
treatise on education, which we do not purpose. The foregoing outlines
of plans for exercising the perceptions in early childhood, for
conducting object-lessons, for teaching drawing and geometry, must be
considered simply as illustrations of the method dictated by the general
principles previously specified. We believe that on examination they
will be found not only to progress from the simple to the complex, from
the indefinite to the definite, from the concrete to the abstract, from
the empirical to the rational; but to satisfy the further requirements,
that education shall be a repetition of civilisation in little, that it
shall be as much as possible a process of self-evolution, and that it
shall be pleasurable. The fulfilment of all these conditions by one type
of method, tends alike to verify the conditions, and to prove that type
of the method the right one. Mark too, that this method is the logical
outcome of the tendency characterising all modern improvements in
tuition--that it is but an adoption in full of the natural system which
they adopt partially--that it displays this complete adoption of the
natural system, both by conforming to the above principles, and by
following the suggestions which the unfolding mind itself gives:
facilitating its spontaneous activities, and so aiding the developments
which Nature is busy with. Thus there seems abundant reason to conclude,
that the mode of procedure above exemplified, closely approximates to
the true one.
* * * * *
A few paragraphs must be added in further inculcation of the two general
principles, that are alike the most important and the least attended to;
namely, the principle that throughout youth, as in early childhood and
in maturity, the process shall be one of self-instruction; and the
obverse principle, that the mental action induced shall be throughout
intrinsically grateful. If progression from simple to complex, from
indefinite to definite, and from concrete to abstract, be considered the
essential requirements as dictated by abstract psychology; then do the
requirements that knowledge shall be self-mastered, and pleasurably
mastered, become tests by which we may judge whether the dictates of
abstract psychology are being obeyed. If the first embody the leading
generalisations of the _science_ of mental growth, the last are the
chief canons of the _art_ of fostering mental growth. For manifestly, if
the steps in our _curriculum_ are so arranged that they can be
successively ascended by the pupil himself with little or no help, they
must correspond with the stages of evolution in his faculties; and
manifestly, if the successive achievements of these steps are
intrinsically gratifying to him, it follows that they require no more
than a normal exercise of his powers.
But making education a process of self-evolution, has other advantages
than this of keeping our lessons in the right order. In the first place,
it guarantees a vividness and permanency of impression which the usual
methods can never produce. Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has
himself acquired--any problem which he has himself solved, becomes, by
virtue of the conquest, much more thoroughly his than it could else be.
The preliminary activity of mind which his success implies, the
concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent
on his triumph, conspire to register the facts in his memory in a way
that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a school-book,
can be registered. Even if he fails, the tension to which his faculties
have been wound up, insures his remembrance of the solution when given
to him, better than half-a-dozen repetitions would. Observe, again, that
this discipline necessitates a continuous organisation of the knowledge
he acquires. It is in the very nature of facts and inferences
assimilated in this normal manner, that they successively become the
premises of further conclusions--the means of solving further questions.
The solution of yesterday's problem helps the pupil in mastering
to-day's. Thus the knowledge is turned into faculty as soon as it is
taken in, and forthwith aids in the general function of thinking--does
not lie merely written on the pages of an internal library, as when
rote-learnt. Mark further, the moral culture which this constant
self-help involves. Courage in attacking difficulties, patient
concentration of the attention, perseverance through failures--these are
characteristics which after-life specially requires; and these are
characteristics which this system of making the mind work for its food
specially produces. That it is thoroughly practicable to carry out
instruction after this fashion, we can ourselves testify; having been in
youth thus led to solve the comparatively complex problems of
perspective. And that leading teachers have been tending in this
direction, is indicated alike in the saying of Fellenberg, that "the
individual, independent activity of the pupil is of much greater
importance than the ordinary busy officiousness of many who assume the
office of educators;" in the opinion of Horace Mann, that "unfortunately
education amongst us at present consists too much in _telling_, not in
_training_;" and in the remark of M. Marcel, that "what the learner
discovers by mental exertion is better known than what is told to him."
Similarly with the correlative requirement, that the method of culture
pursued shall be one productive of an intrinsically happy activity,--an
activity not happy because of extrinsic rewards to be obtained, but
because of its own healthfulness. Conformity to this requirement,
besides preventing us from thwarting the normal process of evolution,
incidentally secures positive benefits of importance. Unless we are to
return to an ascetic morality (or rather _im_-morality) the maintenance
of youthful happiness must be considered as in itself a worthy aim. Not
to dwell upon this, however, we go on to remark that a pleasurable state
of feeling is far more favourable to intellectual action than a state of
indifference or disgust. Every one knows that things read, heard, or
seen with interest, are better remembered than things read, heard, or
seen with apathy. In the one case the faculties appealed to are actively
occupied with the subject presented; in the other they are inactively
occupied with it, and the attention is continually drawn away by more
attractive thoughts. Hence the impressions are respectively strong and
weak. Moreover, to the intellectual listlessness which a pupil's lack of
interest in any study involves, must be added the paralysing fear of
consequences. This, by distracting his attention, increases the
difficulty he finds in bringing his faculties to bear upon facts that
are repugnant to them. Clearly, therefore, the efficiency of tuition
will, other things equal, be proportionate to the gratification with
which tasks are performed.
It should be considered also, that grave moral consequences depend upon
the habitual pleasure or pain which daily lessons produce. No one can
compare the faces and manners of two boys--the one made happy by
mastering interesting subjects, and the other made miserable by disgust
with his studies, by consequent inability, by cold looks, by threats, by
punishment--without seeing that the disposition of the one is being
benefited and that of the other injured. Whoever has marked the effects
of success and failure upon the mind, and the power of the mind over the
body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are
favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent
moroseness, or permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional
depression. There remains yet another indirect result of no small
moment. The relationship between teachers and their pupils is, other
things equal, rendered friendly and influential, or antagonistic and
powerless, according as the system of culture produces happiness or
misery. Human beings are at the mercy of their associated ideas. A daily
minister of pain cannot fail to be regarded with secret dislike; and if
he causes no emotions but painful ones, will inevitably be hated.
Conversely, he who constantly aids children to their ends, hourly
provides them with the satisfactions of conquest, hourly encourages them
through their difficulties and sympathises in their successes, will be
liked; nay, if his behaviour is consistent throughout, must be loved.
And when we remember how efficient and benign is the control of a master
who is felt to be a friend, when compared with the control of one who is
looked upon with aversion, or at best indifference, we may infer that
the indirect advantages of conducting education on the happiness
principle do not fall far short of the direct ones. To all who question
the possibility of acting out the system here advocated, we reply as
before, that not only does theory point to it, but experience commends
it. To the many verdicts of distinguished teachers who since
Pestalozzi's time have testified this, may be here added that of
Professor Pillans, who asserts that "where young people are taught as
they ought to be, they are quite as happy in school as at play, seldom
less delighted, nay, often more, with the well-directed exercise of
their mental energies than with that of their muscular powers."
As suggesting a final reason for making education a process of
self-instruction, and by consequence a process of pleasurable
instruction, we may advert to the fact that, in proportion as it is made
so, is there a probability that it will not cease when schooldays end.
As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually
repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it
when free from the coercion of parents and masters. And when the
acquisition of knowledge has been rendered habitually gratifying, then
will there be as prevailing a tendency to continue, without
superintendence, that self-culture previously carried on under
superintendence. These results are inevitable. While the laws of mental
association remain true--while men dislike the things and places that
suggest painful recollections, and delight in those which call to mind
by-gone pleasures--painful lessons will make knowledge repulsive, and
pleasurable lessons will make it attractive. The men to whom in boyhood
information came in dreary tasks along with threats of punishment, and
who were never led into habits of independent inquiry, are unlikely to
be students in after years; while those to whom it came in the natural
forms, at the proper times, and who remember its facts as not only
interesting in themselves, but as the occasions of a long series of
gratifying successes, are likely to continue through life that
self-instruction commenced in youth.
[1] Those who seek aid in carrying out the system of culture above
described, will find it in a little work entitled _Inventional
Geometry_; published by J. and C. Mozley, Paternoster Row, London.
MORAL EDUCATION
The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely
overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improvement of our
systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing
desideratum has not yet been even recognised as a desideratum. To
prepare the young for the duties of life is tacitly admitted to be the
end which parents and schoolmasters should have in view; and happily,
the value of the things taught, and the goodness of the methods followed
in teaching them, are now ostensibly judged by their fitness to this
end. The propriety of substituting for an exclusively classical
training, a training in which the modern languages shall have a share,
is argued on this ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of
science is urged for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit
youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is
taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that for
the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed,
it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children, no
preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in
gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes "the
education of a gentleman;" and while many years are spent by a girl in
those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties; not an
hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all
responsibilities--the management of a family. Is it that this
responsibility is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure
to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy?
Certainly not: of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is
the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction
to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No: not only is
the need for such self-instruction unrecognised, but the complexity of
the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction
is least likely to succeed. No rational plea can be put forward for
leaving the Art of Education out of our _curriculum_. Whether as bearing
on the happiness of parents themselves, or whether as affecting the
characters and lives of their children and remote descendants, we must
admit that a knowledge of the right methods of juvenile culture,
physical, intellectual, and moral, is a knowledge of extreme importance.
This topic should be the final one in the course of instruction passed
through by each man and woman. As physical maturity is marked by the
ability to produce offspring, so mental maturity is marked by the
ability to train those offspring. _The subject which involves all other
subjects, and therefore the subject in which education should culminate,
is the Theory and Practice of Education._
In the absence of this preparation, the management of children, and more
especially the moral management, is lamentably bad. Parents either never
think about the matter at all, or else their conclusions are crude and
inconsistent. In most cases, and especially on the part of mothers, the
treatment adopted on every occasion is that which the impulse of the
moment prompts: it springs not from any reasoned-out conviction as to
what will most benefit the child, but merely expresses the dominant
parental feelings, whether good or ill; and varies from hour to hour as
these feelings vary. Or if the dictates of passion are supplemented by
any definite doctrines and methods, they are those handed down from the
past, or those suggested by the remembrances of childhood, or those
adopted from nurses and servants--methods devised not by the
enlightenment, but by the ignorance, of the time. Commenting on the
chaotic state of opinion and practice relative to family government,
Richter writes:--
"If the secret variances of a large class of ordinary fathers were
brought to light, and laid down as a plan of studies and reading,
catalogued for a moral education, they would run somewhat after
this fashion:--In the first hour 'pure morality must be read to the
child, either by myself or the tutor;' in the second, 'mixed
morality, or that which may be applied to one's own advantage;' in
the third, 'do you not see that your father does so and so?' in the
fourth, 'you are little, and this is only fit for grown-up people;'
in the fifth, 'the chief matter is that you should succeed in the
world, and become something in the state;' in the sixth, 'not the
temporary, but the eternal, determines the worth of a man;' in the
seventh, 'therefore rather suffer injustice, and be kind;' in the
eighth, 'but defend yourself bravely if any one attack you;' in the
ninth, 'do not make a noise, dear child;' in the tenth, 'a boy must
not sit so quiet;' in the eleventh, 'you must obey your parents
better;' in the twelfth, 'and educate yourself.' So by the hourly
change of his principles, the father conceals their untenableness
and onesidedness. As for his wife, she is neither like him, nor yet
like that harlequin who came on to the stage with a bundle of
papers under each arm, and answered to the inquiry, what he had
under his right arm, 'orders,' and to what he had under his left
arm, 'counter-orders.' But the mother might be much better compared
to a giant Briareus, who had a hundred arms, and a bundle of papers
under each."
This state of things is not to be readily changed. Generations must
pass before a great amelioration of it can be expected. Like political
constitutions, educational systems are not made, but grow; and within
brief periods growth is insensible. Slow, however, as must be any
improvement, even that improvement implies the use of means; and among
the means is discussion.
* * * * *
We are not among those who believe in Lord Palmerston's dogma, that "all
children are born good." On the whole, the opposite dogma, untenable as
it is, seems to us less wide of the truth. Nor do we agree with those
who think that, by skilful discipline, children may be made altogether
what they should be. Contrariwise, we are satisfied that though
imperfections of nature may be diminished by wise management, they
cannot be removed by it. The notion that an ideal humanity might be
forthwith produced by a perfect system of education, is near akin to
that implied in the poems of Shelley, that would mankind give up their
old institutions and prejudices, all the evils in the world would at
once disappear: neither notion being acceptable to such as have
dispassionately studied human affairs.
Nevertheless, we may fitly sympathise with those who entertain these too
sanguine hopes. Enthusiasm, pushed even to fanaticism, is a useful
motive-power--perhaps an indispensable one. It is clear that the ardent
politician would never undergo the labours and make the sacrifices he
does, did he not believe that the reform he fights for is the one thing
needful. But for his conviction that drunkenness is the root of all
social evils, the teetotaler would agitate far less energetically. In
philanthropy, as in other things, great advantage results from division
of labour; and that there may be division of labour, each class of
philanthropists must be more or less subordinated to its function--must
have an exaggerated faith in its work. Hence, of those who regard
education, intellectual or moral, as the panacea, we may say that their
undue expectations are not without use; and that perhaps it is part of
the beneficent order of things that their confidence cannot be shaken.
Even were it true, however, that by some possible system of moral
control, children could be moulded into the desired form; and even could
every parent be indoctrinated with this system, we should still be far
from achieving the object in view. It is forgotten that the carrying out
of any such system presupposes, on the part of adults, a degree of
intelligence, of goodness, of self-control, possessed by no one. The
error made by those who discuss questions of domestic discipline, lies
in ascribing all the faults and difficulties to the children, and none
to the parents. The current assumption respecting family government, as
respecting national government, is, that the virtues are with the rulers
and the vices with the ruled. Judging by educational theories, men and
women are entirely transfigured in their relations to offspring. The
citizens we do business with, the people we meet in the world, we know
to be very imperfect creatures. In the daily scandals, in the quarrels
of friends, in bankruptcy disclosures, in lawsuits, in police reports,
we have constantly thrust before us the pervading selfishness,
dishonesty, brutality. Yet when we criticise nursery-management and
canvass the misbehaviour of juveniles, we habitually take for granted
that these culpable persons are free from moral delinquency in the
treatment of their boys and girls! So far is this from the truth, that
we do not hesitate to blame parental misconduct for a great part of the
domestic disorder commonly ascribed to the perversity of children. We do
not assert this of the more sympathetic and self-restrained, among whom
we hope most of our readers may be classed; but we assert it of the
mass. What kind of moral culture is to be expected from a mother who,
time after time, angrily shakes her infant because it will not suck;
which we once saw a mother do? How much sense of justice is likely to be
instilled by a father who, on having his attention drawn by a scream to
the fact that his child's finger is jammed between the window-sash and
sill, begins to beat the child instead of releasing it? Yet that there
are such fathers is testified to us by an eye-witness. Or, to take a
still stronger case, also vouched for by direct testimony--what are the
educational prospects of the boy who, on being taken home with a
dislocated thigh, is saluted with a castigation? It is true that these
are extreme instances--instances exhibiting in human beings that blind
instinct which impels brutes to destroy the weakly and injured of their
own race. But extreme though they are, they typify feelings and conduct
daily observable in many families. Who has not repeatedly seen a child
slapped by nurse or parent for a fretfulness probably resulting from
bodily derangement? Who, when watching a mother snatch up a fallen
little one, has not often traced, both in the rough manner and in the
sharply-uttered exclamation--"You stupid little thing!"--an irascibility
foretelling endless future squabbles? Is there not in the harsh tones in
which a father bids his children be quiet, evidence of a deficient
fellow-feeling with them? Are not the constant, and often quite
needless, thwartings that the young experience--the injunctions to sit
still, which an active child cannot obey without suffering great nervous
irritation, the commands not to look out of the window when travelling
by railway, which on a child of any intelligence entails serious
deprivation--are not these thwartings, we ask, signs of a terrible lack
of sympathy? The truth is, that the difficulties of moral education are
necessarily of dual origin--necessarily result from the combined faults
of parents and children. If hereditary transmission is a law of nature,
as every naturalist knows it to be, and as our daily remarks and current
proverbs admit it to be; then, on the average of cases, the defects of
children mirror the defects of their parents;--on the average of cases,
we say, because, complicated as the results are by the transmitted
traits of remoter ancestors, the correspondence is not special but only
general. And if, on the average of cases, this inheritance of defects
exists, then the evil passions which parents have to check in their
children, imply like evil passions in themselves: hidden, it may be,
from the public eye, or perhaps obscured by other feelings, but still
there. Evidently, therefore, the general practice of any ideal system of
discipline is hopeless: parents are not good enough.
Moreover, even were there methods by which the desired end could be at
once effected; and even had fathers and mothers sufficient insight,
sympathy, and self-command to employ these methods consistently; it
might still be contended that it would be of no use to reform
family-government faster than other things are reformed. What is it that
we aim to do? Is it not that education of whatever kind has for its
proximate end to prepare a child for the business of life--to produce a
citizen who, while he is well conducted, is also able to make his way in
the world? And does not making his way in the world (by which we mean,
not the acquirement of wealth, but of the funds requisite for bringing
up a family)--does not this imply a certain fitness for the world as it
now is? And if by any system of culture an ideal human being could be
produced, is it not doubtful whether he would be fit for the world as it
now is? May we not, on the contrary, suspect that his too keen sense of
rectitude, and too elevated standard of conduct, would make life
intolerable or even impossible? And however admirable the result might
be, considered individually, would it not be self-defeating in so far as
society and posterity are concerned? There is much reason for thinking
that as in a nation so in a family, the kind of government is, on the
whole, about as good as the general state of human nature permits it to
be. We may argue that in the one case, as in the other, the average
character of the people determines the quality of the control exercised.
In both cases it may be inferred that amelioration of the average
character leads to an amelioration of system; and further, that were it
possible to ameliorate the system without the average character being
first ameliorated, evil rather than good would follow. Such degree of
harshness as children now experience from their parents and teachers,
may be regarded as but a preparation for that greater harshness which
they will meet on entering the world. And it may be urged that were it
possible for parents and teachers to treat them with perfect equity and
entire sympathy, it would but intensify the sufferings which the
selfishness of men must, in after life, inflict on them.[1]
"But does not this prove too much?" some one will ask. "If no system of
moral training can forthwith make children what they should be; if, even
were there a system that would do this, existing parents are too
imperfect to carry it out; and if even could such a system be
successfully carried out, its results would be disastrously incongruous
with the present state of society; does it not follow that to reform the
system now in use is neither practicable nor desirable?" No. It merely
follows that reform in domestic government must go on, _pari passu_,
with other reforms. It merely follows that methods of discipline neither
can be nor should be ameliorated, except by instalments. It merely
follows that the dictates of abstract rectitude will, in practice,
inevitably be subordinated by the present state of human nature--by the
imperfections alike of children, of parents, and of society; and can
only be better fulfilled as the general character becomes better.
"At any rate, then," may rejoin our critic, "it is clearly useless to
set up any ideal standard of family discipline. There can be no
advantage in elaborating and recommending methods that are in advance of
the time." Again we contend for the contrary. Just as in the case of
political government, though pure rectitude may be at present
impracticable, it is requisite to know where the right lies, in order
that the changes we make may be _towards_ the right instead of _away_
from it; so, in the case of domestic government, an ideal must be
upheld, that there may be gradual approximations to it. We need fear no
evil consequences from the maintenance of such an ideal. On the average
the constitutional conservatism of mankind is strong enough to prevent
too rapid a change. Things are so organised that until men have grown up
to the level of a higher belief, they cannot receive it: nominally, they
may hold it, but not virtually. And even when the truth gets recognised,
the obstacles to conformity with it are so persistent as to outlive the
patience of philanthropists and even of philosophers. We may be sure,
therefore, that the difficulties in the way of a normal government of
children, will always put an adequate check upon the efforts to realise
it.
With these preliminary explanations, let us go on to consider the true
aims and methods of moral education. After a few pages devoted to the
settlement of general principles, during the perusal of which we bespeak
the reader's patience, we shall aim by illustrations to make clear the
right methods of parental behaviour in the hourly occurring difficulties
of family government.
* * * * *
When a child falls, or runs its head against the table, it suffers a
pain, the remembrance of which tends to make it more careful; and by
repetition of such experiences, it is eventually disciplined into proper
guidance of its movements. If it lays hold of the fire-bars, thrusts its
hand into a candle-flame, or spills boiling water on any part of its
skin, the resulting burn or scald is a lesson not easily forgotten. So
deep an impression is produced by one or two events of this kind, that
no persuasion will afterwards induce it thus to disregard the laws of
its constitution.
Now in these cases, Nature illustrates to us in the simplest way, the
true theory and practice of moral discipline--a theory and practice
which, however much they may seem to the superficial like those commonly
received, we shall find on examination to differ from them very widely.
Observe, first, that in bodily injuries and their penalties we have
misconduct and its consequences reduced to their simplest forms. Though,
according to their popular acceptations, _right_ and _wrong_ are words
scarcely applicable to actions that have none but direct bodily effects;
yet whoever considers the matter will see that such actions must be as
much classifiable under these heads as any other actions. From whatever
assumption they start, all theories of morality agree that conduct whose
total results, immediate and remote, are beneficial, is good conduct;
while conduct whose total results, immediate and remote, are injurious,
is bad conduct. The _ultimate_ standards by which all men judge of
behaviour, are the resulting happiness or misery. We consider
drunkenness wrong because of the physical degeneracy and accompanying
moral evils entailed on the drunkard and his dependents. Did theft give
pleasure both to taker and loser, we should not find it in our catalogue
of sins. Were it conceivable that kind actions multiplied human
sufferings, we should condemn them--should not consider them kind. It
needs but to read the first newspaper-leader, or listen to any
conversation on social affairs, to see that acts of parliament,
political movements, philanthropic agitations, in common with the doings
of individuals are judged by their anticipated results in augmenting the
pleasures or pains of men. And if on analysing all secondary
superinduced ideas, we find these to be our final tests of right and
wrong, we cannot refuse to class bodily conduct as right or wrong
according to the beneficial or detrimental results produced.
Note, in the second place, the character of the punishments by which
these physical transgressions are prevented. Punishments, we call them,
in the absence of a better word; for they are not punishments in the
literal sense. They are not artificial and unnecessary inflictions of
pain; but are simply the beneficent checks to actions that are
essentially at variance with bodily welfare--checks in the absence of
which life would be quickly destroyed by bodily injuries. It is the
peculiarity of these penalties, if we must so call them, that they are
simply the _unavoidable consequences_ of the deeds which they follow:
they are nothing more than the _inevitable reactions_ entailed by the
child's actions.
Let it be further borne in mind that these painful reactions are
proportionate to the transgressions. A slight accident brings a slight
pain; a more serious one, a severer pain. It is not ordained that an
urchin who tumbles over the doorstep, shall suffer in excess of the
amount necessary; with the view of making it still more cautious than
the necessary suffering will make it. But from its daily experience it
is left to learn the greater or less penalties of greater or less
errors; and to behave accordingly.
And then mark, lastly, that these natural reactions which follow the
child's wrong actions, are constant, direct, unhesitating, and not to be
escaped. No threats; but a silent, rigorous performance. If a child runs
a pin into its finger, pain follows. If it does it again, there is again
the same result: and so on perpetually. In all its dealing with
inorganic Nature it finds this unswerving persistence, which listens to
no excuse, and from which there is no appeal; and very soon recognising
this stern though beneficent discipline, it becomes extremely careful
not to transgress.
Still more significant will these general truths appear, when we
remember that they hold throughout adult life as well as throughout
infantine life. It is by an experimentally-gained knowledge of the
natural consequences, that men and women are checked when they go wrong.
After home-education has ceased, and when there are no longer parents
and teachers to forbid this or that kind of conduct, there comes into
play a discipline like that by which the young child is trained to
self-guidance. If the youth entering on the business of life idles away
his time and fulfils slowly or unskilfully the duties entrusted to him,
there by and by follows the natural penalty: he is discharged, and left
to suffer for awhile the evils of a relative poverty. On the unpunctual
man, ever missing his appointments of business and pleasure, there
continually fall the consequent inconveniences, losses, and
deprivations. The tradesmen who charges too high a rate of profit, loses
his customers, and so is checked in his greediness. Diminishing practice
teaches the inattentive doctor to bestow more trouble on his patients.
The too credulous creditor and the over-sanguine speculator, alike learn
by the difficulties which rashness entails on them, the necessity of
being more cautious in their engagements. And so throughout the life of
every citizen. In the quotation so often made _apropos_ of such
cases--"The burnt child dreads the fire"--we see not only that the
analogy between this social discipline and Nature's early discipline of
infants is universally recognised; but we also see an implied conviction
that this discipline is of the most efficient kind. Nay indeed, this
conviction is more than implied; it is distinctly stated. Every one has
heard others confess that only by "dearly bought experience" had they
been induced to give up some bad or foolish course of conduct formerly
pursued. Every one has heard, in the criticism passed on the doings of
this spendthrift or the other schemer, the remark that advice was
useless, and that nothing but "bitter experience" would produce any
effect: nothing, that is, but suffering the unavoidable consequences.
And if further proof be needed that the natural reaction is not only the
most efficient penalty, but that no humanly-devised penalty can replace
it, we have such further proof in the notorious ill-success of our
various penal systems. Out of the many methods of criminal discipline
that have been proposed and legally enforced, none have answered the
expectations of their advocates. Artificial punishments have failed to
produce reformation; and have in many cases increased the criminality.
The only successful reformatories are those privately-established ones
which approximate their regime to the method of Nature--which do little
more than administer the natural consequences of criminal conduct:
diminishing the criminal's liberty of action as much as is needful for
the safety of society, and requiring him to maintain himself while
living under this restraint. Thus we see, both that the discipline by
which the young child is taught to regulate its movements is the
discipline by which the great mass of adults are kept in order, and more
or less improved; and that the discipline humanly-devised for the worst
adults, fails when it diverges from this divinely-ordained discipline,
and begins to succeed on approximating to it.
* * * * *
Have we not here, then, the guiding principle of moral education? Must
we not infer that the system so beneficent in its effects during infancy
and maturity, will be equally beneficent throughout youth? Can any one
believe that the method which answers so well in the first and the last
divisions of life, will not answer in the intermediate division? Is it
not manifest that as "ministers and interpreters of Nature" it is the
function of parents to see that their children habitually experience the
true consequences of their conduct--the natural reactions: neither
warding them off, nor intensifying them, nor putting artificial
consequences in place of them? No unprejudiced reader will hesitate in
his assent.
Probably, however, not a few will contend that already most parents do
this--that the punishments they inflict are, in the majority of cases,
the true consequences of ill-conduct--that parental anger, venting
itself in harsh words and deeds, is the result of a child's
transgression--and that, in the suffering, physical or moral, which the
child is subject to, it experiences the natural reaction of its
misbehaviour. Along with much error this assertion contains some truth.
It is unquestionable that the displeasure of fathers and mothers is a
true consequence of juvenile delinquency; and that the manifestation of
it is a normal check upon such delinquency. The scoldings, and threats,
and blows, which a passionate parent visits on offending little ones,
are doubtless effects actually drawn from such a parent by their
offences; and so are, in some sort, to be considered as among the
natural reactions of their wrong actions. Nor are we prepared to say
that these modes of treatment are not relatively right--right, that is,
in relation to the uncontrollable children of ill-controlled adults; and
right in relation to a state of society in which such ill-controlled
adults make up the mass of the people. As already suggested, educational
systems, like political and other institutions, are generally as good as
the state of human nature permits. The barbarous children of barbarous
parents are probably only to be restrained by the barbarous methods
which such parents spontaneously employ; while submission to these
barbarous methods is perhaps the best preparation such children can have
for the barbarous society in which they are presently to play a part.
Conversely, the civilised members of a civilised society will
spontaneously manifest their displeasure in less violent ways--will
spontaneously use milder measures--measures strong enough for their
better-natured children. Thus it is true that, in so far as the
expression of parental feeling is concerned, the principle of the
natural reaction is always more or less followed. The system of domestic
government ever gravitates towards its right form.
But now observe two important facts. The first fact is that, in states
of rapid transition like ours, which witness a continuous battle between
old and new theories and old and new practices, the educational methods
in use are apt to be considerably out of harmony with the times. In
deference to dogmas fit only for the ages that uttered them, many
parents inflict punishments that do violence to their own feelings, and
so visit on their children _un_natural reactions; while other parents,
enthusiastic in their hopes of immediate perfection, rush to the
opposite extreme. The second fact is, that the discipline of chief value
is not the experience of parental approbation or disapprobation; but it
is the experience of those results which would ultimately flow from the
conduct in the absence of parental opinion or interference. The truly
instructive and salutary consequences are not those inflicted by
parents when they take upon themselves to be Nature's proxies; but they
are those inflicted by Nature herself. We will endeavour to make this
distinction clear by a few illustrations, which, while they show what we
mean by natural reactions as contrasted with artificial ones, will
afford some practical suggestions.
In every family where there are young children there daily occur cases
of what mothers and servants call "making a litter." A child has had out
its box of toys, and leaves them scattered about the floor. Or a handful
of flowers, brought in from a morning walk, is presently seen dispersed
over tables and chairs. Or a little girl, making doll's-clothes,
disfigures the room with shreds. In most cases the trouble of rectifying
this disorder falls anywhere but where it should. Occurring in the
nursery, the nurse herself, with many grumblings about "tiresome little
things," undertakes the task; if below-stairs, the task usually devolves
either on one of the elder children or on the housemaid: the
transgressor being visited with nothing more than a scolding. In this
very simple case, however, there are many parents wise enough to follow
out, more or less consistently, the normal course--that of making the
child itself collect the toys or shreds. The labour of putting things in
order is the true consequence of having put them in disorder. Every
trader in his office, every wife in her household, has daily experience
of this fact. And if education be a preparation for the business of
life, then every child should also, from the beginning, have daily
experience of this fact. If the natural penalty be met by refractory
behaviour (which it may perhaps be where the system of moral discipline
previously pursued has been bad), then the proper course is to let the
child feel the ulterior reaction caused by its disobedience. Having
refused or neglected to pick up and put away the things it has scattered
about, and having thereby entailed the trouble of doing this on some one
else, the child should, on subsequent occasions, be denied the means of
giving this trouble. When next it petitions for its toy-box, the reply
of its mamma should be--"The last time you had your toys you left them
lying on the floor, and Jane had to pick them up. Jane is too busy to
pick up every day the things you leave about; and I cannot do it myself.
So that, as you will not put away your toys when you have done with
them, I cannot let you have them." This is obviously a natural
consequence, neither increased nor lessened; and must be so recognised
by a child. The penalty comes, too, at the moment when it is most keenly
felt. A new-born desire is balked at the moment of anticipated
gratification; and the strong impression so produced can scarcely fail
to have an effect on the future conduct: an effect which, by consistent
repetition, will do whatever can be done in curing the fault. Add to
which, that, by this method, a child is early taught the lesson which
cannot be learnt too soon, that in this world of ours pleasures are
rightly to be obtained only by labour.
Take another case. Not long since we had frequently to hear the
reprimands visited on a little girl who was scarcely ever ready in time
for the daily walk. Of eager disposition, and apt to become absorbed in
the occupation of the moment, Constance never thought of putting on her
things till the rest were ready. The governess and the other children
had almost invariably to wait; and from the mamma there almost
invariably came the same scolding. Utterly as this system failed, it
never occurred to the mamma to let Constance experience the natural
penalty. Nor, indeed, would she try it when it was suggested to her. In
the world, unreadiness entails the loss of some advantage that would
else have been gained: the train is gone; or the steam-boat is just
leaving its moorings; or the best things in the market are sold; or all
the good seats in the concert-room are filled. And every one, in cases
perpetually occurring, may see that it is the prospective deprivations
which prevent people from being too late. Is not the inference obvious?
Should not the prospective deprivations control a child's conduct also?
If Constance is not ready at the appointed time, the natural result is
that of being left behind, and losing her walk. And after having once or
twice remained at home while the rest were enjoying themselves in the
fields--after having felt that this loss of a much-prized gratification
was solely due to want of promptitude; amendment would in all
probability take place. At any rate, the measure would be more effective
than that perpetual scolding which ends only in producing callousness.
Again, when children, with more than usual carelessness, break or lose
the things given to them, the natural penalty--the penalty which makes
grown-up persons more careful--is the consequent inconvenience. The lack
of the lost or damaged article, and the cost of replacing it, are the
experiences by which men and women are disciplined in these matters; and
the experiences of children should be as much as possible assimilated to
theirs. We do not refer to that early period at which toys are pulled to
pieces in the process of learning their physical properties, and at
which the results of carelessness cannot be understood; but to a later
period, when the meaning and advantages of property are perceived. When
a boy, old enough to possess a penknife, uses it so roughly as to snap
the blade, or leaves it in the grass by some hedge-side where he was
cutting a stick, a thoughtless parent, or some indulgent relative, will
commonly forthwith buy him another, not seeing that, by doing this, a
valuable lesson is prevented. In such a case, a father may properly
explain that penknives cost money, and that to get money requires
labour; that he cannot afford to purchase new penknives for one who
loses or breaks them; and that until he sees evidence of greater
carefulness he must decline to make good the loss. A parallel discipline
will serve to check extravagance.
These few familiar instances, here chosen because of the simplicity with
which they illustrate our point, will make clear to every one the
distinction between those natural penalties which we contend are the
truly efficient ones, and those artificial penalties commonly
substituted for them. Before going on to exhibit the higher and subtler
applications of the principle exemplified, let us note its many and
great superiorities over the principle, or rather the empirical
practice, which prevails in most families.
One superiority is that the pursuance of it generates right conceptions
of cause and effect; which by frequent and consistent experience are
eventually rendered definite and complete. Proper conduct in life is
much better guaranteed when the good and evil consequences of actions
are understood, than when they are merely believed on authority. A child
who finds that disorderliness entails the trouble of putting things in
order, or who misses a gratification from dilatoriness, or whose
carelessness is followed by the want of some much-prized possession, not
only suffers a keenly-felt consequence, but gains a knowledge of
causation: both the one and the other being just like those which adult
life will bring. Whereas a child who in such cases receives a reprimand,
or some factitious penalty, not only experiences a consequence for which
it often cares very little, but misses that instruction respecting the
essential natures of good and evil conduct, which it would else have
gathered. It is a vice of the common system of artificial rewards and
punishments, long since noticed by the clear-sighted, that by
substituting for the natural results of misbehaviour certain tasks or
castigations, it produces a radically wrong moral standard. Having
throughout infancy and boyhood always regarded parental or tutorial
displeasure as the chief result of a forbidden action, the youth has
gained an established association of ideas between such action and such
displeasure, as cause and effect. Hence when parents and tutors have
abdicated, and their displeasure is not to be feared, the restraints on
forbidden actions are in great measure removed: the true restraints, the
natural reactions, having yet to be learnt by sad experience. As writes
one who has had personal knowledge of this short-sighted system:--"Young
men let loose from school, particularly those whose parents have
neglected to exert their influence, plunge into every description of
extravagance; they know no rule of action--they are ignorant of the
reasons for moral conduct--they have no foundation to rest upon--and
until they have been severely disciplined by the world are extremely
dangerous members of society."
Another great advantage of this natural discipline is, that it is a
discipline of pure justice; and will be recognised as such by every
child. Whoso suffers nothing more than the evil which in the order of
nature results from his own misbehaviour, is much less likely to think
himself wrongly treated than if he suffers an artificially inflicted
evil; and this will hold of children as of men. Take the case of a boy
who is habitually reckless of his clothes--scrambles through hedges
without caution, or is utterly regardless of mud. If he is beaten, or
sent to bed, he is apt to consider himself ill-used; and is more likely
to brood over his injuries than to repent of his transgressions. But
suppose he is required to rectify as far as possible the harm he has
done--to clean off the mud with which he has covered himself, or to mend
the tear as well as he can. Will he not feel that the evil is one of his
own producing? Will he not while paying this penalty be continuously
conscious of the connection between it and its cause? And will he not,
spite his irritation, recognise more or less clearly the justice of the
arrangement? If several lessons of this kind fail to produce
amendment--if suits of clothes are prematurely spoiled--if the father,
pursuing this same system of discipline, declines to spend money for new
ones until the ordinary time has elapsed--and if meanwhile, there occur
occasions on which, having no decent clothes to go in, the boy is
debarred from joining the rest of the family on holiday excursions and
_fete_ days, it is manifest that while he will keenly feel the
punishment, he can scarcely fail to trace the chain of causation, and to
perceive that his own carelessness is the origin of it. And seeing this,
he will not have any such sense of injustice as if there were no obvious
connection between the transgression and its penalty.
Again, the tempers both of parents and children are much less liable to
be ruffled under this system than under the ordinary system. When
instead of letting children experience the painful results which
naturally follow from wrong conduct, parents themselves inflict certain
other painful results, they produce double mischief. Making, as they do,
multiplied family laws; and identifying their own supremacy and dignity
with the maintenance of these laws; every transgression is regarded as
an offence against themselves, and a cause of anger on their part. And
then come the further vexations which result from taking upon
themselves, in the shape of extra labour or cost, those evil
consequences which should have been allowed to fall on the wrong-doers.
Similarly with the children. Penalties which the necessary reaction of
things brings round upon them--penalties which are inflicted by
impersonal agency, produce an irritation that is comparatively slight
and transient; whereas, penalties voluntarily inflicted by a parent, and
afterwards thought of as caused by him or her, produce an irritation
both greater and more continued. Just consider how disastrous would be
the result if this empirical method were pursued from the beginning.
Suppose it were possible for parents to take upon themselves the
physical sufferings entailed on their children by ignorance and
awkwardness; and that while bearing these evil consequences they visited
on their children certain other evil consequences, with the view of
teaching them the impropriety of their conduct. Suppose that when a
child, who had been forbidden to meddle with the kettle, spilt boiling
water on its foot, the mother vicariously assumed the scald and gave a
blow in place of it; and similarly in all other cases. Would not the
daily mishaps be sources of far more anger than now? Would there not be
chronic ill-temper on both sides? Yet an exactly parallel policy is
pursued in after-years. A father who beats his boy for carelessly or
wilfully breaking a sister's toy, and then himself pays for a new toy,
does substantially this same thing--inflicts an artificial penalty on
the transgressor, and takes the natural penalty on himself: his own
feelings and those of the transgressor being alike needlessly irritated.
Did he simply require restitution to be made, he would produce far less
heart-burning. If he told the boy that a new toy must be bought at his,
the boy's, cost; and that his supply of pocket-money must be withheld to
the needful extent; there would be much less disturbance of temper on
either side: while in the deprivation afterwards felt, the boy would
experience the equitable and salutary consequence. In brief, the system
of discipline by natural reactions is less injurious to temper, both
because it is perceived to be nothing more than pure justice, and
because it in great part substitutes the impersonal agency of Nature for
the personal agency of parents.
Whence also follows the manifest corollary, that under this system the
parental and filial relation, being a more friendly, will be a more
influential one. Whether in parent or child, anger, however caused, and
to whomsoever directed, is detrimental. But anger in a parent towards a
child, and in a child towards a parent, is especially detrimental;
because it weakens that bond of sympathy which is essential to
beneficent control. From the law of association of ideas, it inevitably
results, both in young and old, that dislike is contracted towards
things which in experience are habitually connected with disagreeable
feelings. Or where attachment originally existed, it is diminished, or
turned into repugnance, according to the quantity of painful impressions
received. Parental wrath, venting itself in reprimands and castigations,
cannot fail, if often repeated, to produce filial alienation; while the
resentment and sulkiness of children cannot fail to weaken the affection
felt for them, and may even end in destroying it. Hence the numerous
cases in which parents (and especially fathers, who are commonly deputed
to inflict the punishment) are regarded with indifference, if not with
aversion; and hence the equally numerous cases in which children are
looked upon as inflictions. Seeing then, as all must do, that
estrangement of this kind is fatal to a salutary moral culture, it
follows that parents cannot be too solicitous in avoiding occasions of
direct antagonism with their children. And therefore they cannot too
anxiously avail themselves of this discipline of natural consequences;
which, by relieving them from penal functions, prevents mutual
exasperations and estrangements.
The method of moral culture by experience of the normal reactions, which
is the divinely-ordained method alike for infancy and for adult life, we
thus find to be equally applicable during the intermediate childhood and
youth. Among the advantages of this method we see:--First: that it gives
that rational knowledge of right and wrong conduct which results from
personal experience of their good and bad consequences. Second: that the
child, suffering nothing more than the painful effects of its own wrong
actions, must recognise more or less clearly the justice of the
penalties. Third: that recognising the justice of the penalties, and
receiving them through the working of things rather than at the hands
of an individual, its temper is less disturbed; while the parent
fulfilling the comparatively passive duty of letting the natural
penalties be felt, preserves a comparative equanimity. Fourth: that
mutual exasperations being thus prevented, a much happier, and a more
influential relation, will exist between parent and child.
* * * * *
"But what is to be done in cases of more serious misconduct?" some will
ask. "How is this plan to be carried out when a petty theft has been
committed? or when a lie has been told? or when some younger brother or
sister has been ill-used?"
Before replying to these questions, let us consider the bearings of a
few illustrative facts.
Living in the family of his brother-in-law, a friend of ours had
undertaken the education of his little nephew and niece. This he had
conducted, more perhaps from natural sympathy than from reasoned-out
conclusions, in the spirit of the method above set forth. The two
children were in doors his pupils and out of doors his companions. They
daily joined him in walks and botanising excursions, eagerly sought
plants for him, looked on while he examined and identified them, and in
this and other ways were ever gaining pleasure and instruction in his
society. In short, morally considered, he stood to them much more in the
position of parent than either their father or mother did. Describing to
us the results of this policy, he gave, among other instances, the
following. One evening, having need for some article lying in another
part of the house, he asked his nephew to fetch it. Interested as the
boy was in some amusement of the moment, he, contrary to his wont,
either exhibited great reluctance or refused, we forget which. His
uncle, disapproving of a coercive course, went himself for that which he
wanted: merely exhibiting by his manner the annoyance this ill-behaviour
gave him. And when, later in the evening, the boy made overtures for the
usual play, they were gravely repelled--the uncle manifested just that
coldness naturally produced in him; and so let the boy feel the
necessary consequences of his conduct. Next morning at the usual time
for rising, our friend heard a new voice outside the door, and in walked
his little nephew with the hot water. Peering about the room to see what
else could be done, the boy then exclaimed, "Oh! you want your boots;"
and forthwith rushed downstairs to fetch them. In this and other ways he
showed a true penitence for his misconduct. He endeavoured by unusual
services to make up for the service he had refused. His better feelings
had made a real conquest over his lower ones; and acquired strength by
the victory. And having felt what it was to be without it, he valued
more than before the friendship he thus regained.
This gentleman is now himself a father; acts on the same system; and
finds it answer completely. He makes himself thoroughly his children's
friend. The evening is longed for by them because he will be at home;
and they especially enjoy Sunday because he is with them all day. Thus
possessing their perfect confidence and affection, he finds that the
simple display of his approbation or disapprobation gives him abundant
power of control. If, on his return home, he hears that one of his boys
has been naughty, he behaves towards him with that coolness which the
consciousness of the boy's misconduct naturally produces; and he finds
this a most efficient punishment. The mere withholding of the usual
caresses, is a source of much distress--produces a more prolonged fit of
crying than a beating would do. And the dread of this purely moral
penalty is, he says, ever present during his absence: so much so, that
frequently during the day his children ask their mamma how they have
behaved, and whether the report will be good. Recently, the eldest, an
active urchin of five, in one of those bursts of animal spirits common
in healthy children, committed sundry extravagances during his mamma's
absence--cut off part of his brother's hair and wounded himself with a
razor taken from his father's dressing-case. Hearing of these
occurrences on his return, the father did not speak to the boy either
that night or next morning. Besides the immediate tribulation the effect
was, that when, a few days after, the mamma was about to go out, she was
entreated by the boy not to do so; and on inquiry, it appeared his fear
was that he might again transgress in her absence.
We have introduced these facts before replying to the question--"What is
to be done with the graver offences?" for the purpose of first
exhibiting the relation that may and ought to be established between
parents and children; for on the existence of this relation depends the
successful treatment of these graver offences. And as a further
preliminary, we must now point out that the establishment of this
relation will result from adopting the system here advocated. Already we
have shown that by simply letting a child experience the painful
reactions of its own wrong actions, a parent avoids antagonism and
escapes being regarded as an enemy; but it remains to be shown that
where this course has been consistently pursued from the beginning, a
feeling of active friendship will be generated.
At present, mothers and fathers are mostly considered by their offspring
as friend enemies. Determined as the impressions of children inevitably
are by the treatment they receive; and oscillating as that treatment
does between bribery and thwarting, between petting and scolding,
between gentleness and castigation; they necessarily acquire conflicting
beliefs respecting the parental character. A mother commonly thinks it
sufficient to tell her little boy that she is his best friend; and
assuming that he ought to believe her, concludes that he will do so. "It
is all for your good;" "I know what is proper for you better than you do
yourself;" "You are not old enough to understand it now, but when you
grow up you will thank me for doing what I do;"--these, and like
assertions, are daily reiterated. Meanwhile the boy is daily suffering
positive penalties; and is hourly forbidden to do this, that, and the
other, which he wishes to do. By words he hears that his happiness is
the end in view; but from the accompanying deeds he habitually receives
more or less pain. Incompetent as he is to understand that future which
his mother has in view, or how this treatment conduces to the happiness
of that future, he judges by the results he feels; and finding such
results anything but pleasurable, he becomes sceptical respecting her
professions of friendship. And is it not folly to expect any other
issue? Must not the child reason from the evidence he has got? and does
not this evidence seem to warrant his conclusion? The mother would
reason in just the same way if similarly placed. If, among her
acquaintance, she found some one who was constantly thwarting her
wishes, uttering sharp reprimands, and occasionally inflicting actual
penalties on her, she would pay small attention to any professions of
anxiety for her welfare which accompanied these acts. Why, then, does
she suppose that her boy will do otherwise?
But now observe how different will be the results if the system we
contend for be consistently pursued--if the mother not only avoids
becoming the instrument of punishment, but plays the part of a friend,
by warning her boy of the punishments which Nature will inflict. Take a
case; and that it may illustrate the mode in which this policy is to be
early initiated, let it be one of the simplest cases. Suppose that,
prompted by the experimental spirit so conspicuous in children, whose
proceedings instinctively conform to the inductive method of
inquiry--suppose that so prompted, the boy is amusing himself by
lighting pieces of paper in the candle and watching them burn. A mother
of the ordinary unreflective stamp, will either, on the plea of keeping
him "out of mischief," or from fear that he will burn himself, command
him to desist; and in case of non-compliance will snatch the paper from
him. But, should he be fortunate enough to have a mother of some
rationality, who knows that this interest with which he is watching the
paper burn, results from a healthy inquisitiveness, and who has also the
wisdom to consider the results of interference, she will reason
thus:--"If I put a stop to this I shall prevent the acquirement of a
certain amount of knowledge. It is true that I may save the child from a
burn; but what then? He is sure to burn himself sometime; and it is
quite essential to his safety in life that he should learn by experience
the properties of flame. If I forbid him from running this present risk,
he will certainly hereafter run the same or a greater risk when no one
is present to prevent him; whereas, should he have an accident now that
I am by, I can save him from any great injury. Moreover, were I to make
him desist, I should thwart him in the pursuit of what is in itself a
purely harmless, and indeed, instructive gratification; and he would
regard me with more or less ill-feeling. Ignorant as he is of the pain
from which I would save him, and feeling only the pain of a balked
desire, he could not fail to look on me as the cause of that pain. To
save him from a hurt which he cannot conceive, and which has therefore
no existence for him, I hurt him in a way which he feels keenly enough;
and so become, from his point of view, a minister of evil. My best
course then, is simply to warn him of the danger, and to be ready to
prevent any serious damage." And following out this conclusion, she says
to the child--"I fear you will hurt yourself if you do that." Suppose,
now, that the boy, persevering as he will probably do, ends by burning
his hand. What are the results? In the first place he has gained an
experience which he must gain eventually, and which, for his own safety,
he cannot gain too soon. And in the second place, he has found that his
mother's disapproval or warning was meant for his welfare: he has a
further positive experience of her benevolence--a further reason for
placing confidence in her judgment and kindness--a further reason for
loving her.
Of course, in those occasional hazards where there is a risk of broken
limbs or other serious injury, forcible prevention is called for. But
leaving out extreme cases, the system pursued should be, not that of
guarding a child from the small risks which it daily runs, but that of
advising and warning it against them. And by pursuing this course, a
much stronger filial affection will be generated than commonly exists.
If here, as elsewhere, the discipline of the natural reactions is
allowed to come into play--if in those out-door scramblings and in-door
experiments, by which children are liable to injure themselves, they are
allowed to persist, subject only to dissuasion more or less earnest
according to the danger, there cannot fail to arise an ever-increasing
faith in the parental friendship and guidance. Not only, as before
shown, does the adoption of this course enable fathers and mothers to
avoid the odium which attaches to the infliction of positive punishment;
but, as we here see, it enables them to avoid the odium which attaches
to constant thwartings; and even to turn those incidents that commonly
cause squabbles, into a means of strengthening the mutual good feeling.
Instead of being told in words, which deeds seem to contradict, that
their parents are their best friends, children will learn this truth by
a consistent daily experience; and so learning it, will acquire a degree
of trust and attachment which nothing else can give.
And now, having indicated the more sympathetic relation which must
result from the habitual use of this method, let us return to the
question above put--How is this method to be applied to the graver
offences?
Note, in the first place, that these graver offences are likely to be
both less frequent and less grave under the regime we have described
than under the ordinary regime. The ill-behaviour of many children is
itself a consequence of that chronic irritation in which they are kept
by bad management. The state of isolation and antagonism produced by
frequent punishment, necessarily deadens the sympathies; necessarily,
therefore, opens the way to those transgressions which the sympathies
check. That harsh treatment which children of the same family inflict on
each other, is often, in great measure, a reflex of the harsh treatment
they receive from adults--partly suggested by direct example, and partly
generated by the ill-temper and the tendency to vicarious retaliation,
which follow chastisements and scoldings. It cannot be questioned that
the greater activity of the affections and happier state of feeling,
maintained in children by the discipline we have described, must prevent
them from sinning against each other so gravely and so frequently. The
still more reprehensible offences, as lies and petty thefts, will, by
the same causes, be diminished. Domestic estrangement is a fruitful
source of such transgressions. It is a law of human nature, visible
enough to all who observe, that those who are debarred the higher
gratifications fall back upon the lower; those who have no sympathetic
pleasures seek selfish ones; and hence, conversely, the maintenance of
happier relations between parents and children is calculated to diminish
the number of those offences of which selfishness is the origin.
When, however, such offences are committed, as they will occasionally be
even under the best system, the discipline of consequences may still be
resorted to; and if there exists that bond of confidence and affection
above described, this discipline will be efficient. For what are the
natural consequences, say, of a theft? They are of two kinds--direct and
indirect. The direct consequence, as dictated by pure equity, is that of
making restitution. A just ruler (and every parent should aim to be one)
will demand that, when possible, a wrong act shall be undone by a right
one; and in the case of theft this implies either the restoration of the
thing stolen, or, if it is consumed, the giving of an equivalent: which,
in the case of a child, may be effected out of its pocket-money. The
indirect and more serious consequence is the grave displeasure of
parents--a consequence which inevitably follows among all peoples
civilised enough to regard theft as a crime. "But," it will be said,
"the manifestation of parental displeasure, either in words or blows, is
the ordinary course in these cases: the method leads here to nothing
new." Very true. Already we have admitted that, in some directions, this
method is spontaneously pursued. Already we have shown that there is a
tendency for educational systems to gravitate towards the true system.
And here we may remark, as before, that the intensity of this natural
reaction will, in the beneficent order of things, adjust itself to the
requirements--that this parental displeasure will vent itself in violent
measures during comparatively barbarous times, when children are also
comparatively barbarous; and will express itself less cruelly in those
more advanced social states in which, by implication, the children are
amenable to milder treatment. But what it chiefly concerns us here to
observe is, that the manifestation of strong parental displeasure,
produced by one of these graver offences, will be potent for good, just
in proportion to the warmth of the attachment existing between parent
and child. Just in proportion as the discipline of natural consequences
has been consistently pursued in other cases, will it be efficient in
this case. Proof is within the experience of all, if they will look for
it.
For does not every one know that when he has offended another, the
amount of regret he feels (of course, leaving worldly considerations out
of the question) varies with the degree of sympathy he has for that
other? Is he not conscious that when the person offended is an enemy,
the having given him annoyance is apt to be a source rather of secret
satisfaction than of sorrow? Does he not remember that where umbrage has
been taken by some total stranger, he has felt much less concern than he
would have done had such umbrage been taken by one with whom he was
intimate? While, conversely, has not the anger of an admired and
cherished friend been regarded by him as a serious misfortune, long and
keenly regretted? Well, the effects of parental displeasure on children
must similarly vary with the pre-existing relationship. Where there is
an established alienation, the feeling of a child who has transgressed
is a purely selfish fear of the impending physical penalties or
deprivations; and after these have been inflicted, the injurious
antagonism and dislike which result, add to the alienation. On the
contrary, where there exists a warm filial affection produced by a
consistent parental friendship, the state of mind caused by parental
displeasure is not only a salutary check to future misconduct of like
kind, but is intrinsically salutary. The moral pain consequent on
having, for the time being, lost so loved a friend, stands in place of
the physical pain usually inflicted; and proves equally, if not more,
efficient. While instead of the fear and vindictiveness excited by the
one course, there are excited by the other a sympathy with parental
sorrow, a genuine regret for having caused it, and a desire, by some
atonement, to reestablish the friendly relationship. Instead of bringing
into play those egotistic feelings whose predominance is the cause of
criminal acts, there are brought into play those altruistic feelings
which check criminal acts. Thus the discipline of natural consequences
is applicable to grave as well as trivial faults; and the practice of it
conduces not simply to the repression, but to the eradication of such
faults.
In brief, the truth is that savageness begets savageness, and gentleness
begets gentleness. Children who are unsympathetically treated become
unsympathetic; whereas treating them with due fellow-feeling is a means
of cultivating their fellow-feeling. With family governments as with
political ones, a harsh despotism itself generates a great part of the
crimes it has to repress; while on the other hand a mild and liberal
rule both avoids many causes of dissension, and so ameliorates the tone
of feeling as to diminish the tendency to transgression. As John Locke
long since remarked, "Great severity of punishment does but very little
good, nay, great harm, in education; and I believe it will be found
that, _caeteris paribus_, those children who have been most chastised
seldom make the best men." In confirmation of which opinion we may cite
the fact not long since made public by Mr. Rogers, Chaplain of the
Pentonville Prison, that those juvenile criminals who have been whipped
are those who most frequently return to prison. Conversely, the
beneficial effects of a kinder treatment are well illustrated in a fact
stated to us by a French lady, in whose house we recently stayed in
Paris. Apologising for the disturbance daily caused by a little boy who
was unmanageable both at home and at school, she expressed her fear that
there was no remedy save that which had succeeded in the case of an
elder brother; namely, sending him to an English school. She explained
that at various schools in Paris this elder brother had proved utterly
untractable; that in despair they had followed the advice to send him to
England; and that on his return home he was as good as he had before
been bad. This remarkable change she ascribed entirely to the
comparative mildness of the English discipline.
* * * * *
After the foregoing exposition of principles, our remaining space may
best be occupied by a few of the chief maxims and rules deducible from
them; and with a view to brevity we will put these in a hortatory form.
Do not expect from a child any great amount of moral goodness. During
early years every civilised man passes through that phase of character
exhibited by the barbarous race from which he is descended. As the
child's features--flat nose, forward-opening nostrils, large lips,
wide-apart eyes, absent frontal sinus, etc.--resemble for a time those
of the savage, so, too, do his instincts. Hence the tendencies to
cruelty, to thieving, to lying, so general among children--tendencies
which, even without the aid of discipline, will become more or less
modified just as the features do. The popular idea that children are
"innocent," while it is true with respect to evil _knowledge_, is
totally false with respect to evil _impulses_; as half an hour's
observation in the nursery will prove to any one. Boys when left to
themselves, as at public schools, treat each other more brutally than
men do; and were they left to themselves at an earlier age their
brutality would be still more conspicuous.
Not only is it unwise to set up a high standard of good conduct for
children, but it is even unwise to use very urgent incitements to good
conduct. Already most people recognise the detrimental results of
intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognised the fact that
_moral precocity_ also has detrimental results. Our higher moral
faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively complex.
By consequence, both are comparatively late in their evolution. And with
the one as with the other, an early activity produced by stimulation
will be at the expense of the future character. Hence the not uncommon
anomaly that those who during childhood were models of juvenile
goodness, by and by undergo a seemingly inexplicable change for the
worse, and end by being not above but below par; while relatively
exemplary men are often the issue of a childhood by no means promising.
Be content, therefore, with moderate measures and moderate results. Bear
in mind that a higher morality, like a higher intelligence, must be
reached by slow growth; and you will then have patience with those
imperfections which your child hourly displays. You will be less prone
to that constant scolding, and threatening, and forbidding, by which
many parents induce a chronic domestic irritation, in the foolish hope
that they will thus make their children what they should be.
This liberal form of domestic government, which does not seek
despotically to regulate all the details of a child's conduct,
necessarily results from the system we advocate. Satisfy yourself with
seeing that your child always suffers the natural consequences of his
actions, and you will avoid that excess of control in which so many
parents err. Leave him wherever you can to the discipline of experience,
and you will save him from that hot-house virtue which over-regulation
produces in yielding natures, or that demoralising antagonism which it
produces in independent ones.
By aiming in all cases to insure the natural reactions to your child's
actions, you will put an advantageous check on your own temper. The
method of moral education pursued by many, we fear by most, parents, is
little else than that of venting their anger in the way that first
suggests itself. The slaps, and rough shakings and sharp words, with
which a mother commonly visits her offspring's small offences (many of
them not offences considered intrinsically), are generally but the
manifestations of her ill-controlled feelings--result much more from the
promptings of those feelings than from a wish to benefit the offenders.
But by pausing in each case of transgression to consider what is the
normal consequence, and how it may best be brought home to the
transgressor, some little time is obtained for the mastery of yourself;
the mere blind anger first aroused settles down into a less vehement
feeling, and one not so likely to mislead you.
Do not, however, seek to behave as a passionless instrument. Remember
that besides the natural reactions to your child's actions which the
working of things tends to bring round on him, your own approbation or
disapprobation is also a natural reaction, and one of the ordained
agencies for guiding him. The error we have been combating is that of
_substituting_ parental displeasure and its artificial penalties, for
the penalties which Nature has established. But while it should not be
_substituted_ for these natural penalties, we by no means argue that it
should not, in some form, _accompany_ them. Though the _secondary_ kind
of punishment should not usurp the place of the _primary_ kind; it may,
in moderation, rightly supplement the primary kind. Such amount of
sorrow or indignation as you feel, should be expressed in words or
manner; subject, of course, to the approval of your judgment. The kind
and degree of feeling produced in you will necessarily depend on your
own character; and it is therefore useless to say it should be this or
that. Nevertheless, you may endeavour to modify the feeling into that
which you believe ought to be entertained. Beware, however, of the two
extremes; not only in respect of the intensity, but in respect of the
duration, of your displeasure. On the one hand, avoid that weak
impulsiveness, so general among mothers, which scolds and forgives
almost in the same breath. On the other hand, do not unduly continue to
show estrangement of feeling, lest you accustom your child to do without
your friendship, and so lose your influence over him. The moral
reactions called forth from you by your child's actions, you should as
much as possible assimilate to those which you conceive would be called
forth from a parent of perfect nature.
Be sparing of commands. Command only when other means are inapplicable,
or have failed. "In frequent orders the parents' advantage is more
considered than the child's," says Richter. As in primitive societies a
breach of law is punished, not so much because it is intrinsically wrong
as because it is a disregard of the king's authority--a rebellion
against him; so in many families, the penalty visited on a transgressor
is prompted less by reprobation of the offence than by anger at the
disobedience. Listen to the ordinary speeches--"How _dare_ you disobey
me?" "I tell you I'll _make_ you do it, sir." "I'll soon teach you who
is _master_"--and then consider what the words, the tone, and the manner
imply. A determination to subjugate is far more conspicuous in them,
than anxiety for the child's welfare. For the time being the attitude of
mind differs but little from that of a despot bent on punishing a
recalcitrant subject. The right-feeling parent, however, like the
philanthropic legislator, will rejoice not in coercion, but in
dispensing with coercion. He will do without law wherever other modes of
regulating conduct can be successfully employed; and he will regret the
having recourse to law when law is necessary. As Richter remarks--"The
best rule in politics is said to be '_pas trop gouverner_:' it is also
true in education." And in spontaneous conformity with this maxim,
parents whose lust of dominion is restrained by a true sense of duty,
will aim to make their children control themselves as much as possible,
and will fall back upon absolutism only as a last resort.
But whenever you _do_ command, command with decision and consistency. If
the case is one which really cannot be otherwise dealt with, then issue
your fiat, and having issued it, never afterwards swerve from it.
Consider well what you are going to do; weigh all the consequences;
think whether you have adequate firmness of purpose; and then, if you
finally make the law, enforce obedience at whatever cost. Let your
penalties be like the penalties inflicted by inanimate
Nature--inevitable. The hot cinder burns a child the first time he
seizes it; it burns him the second time; it burns him the third time; it
burns him every time; and he very soon learns not to touch the hot
cinder. If you are equally consistent--if the consequences which you
tell your child will follow specified acts, follow with like uniformity,
he will soon come to respect your laws as he does those of Nature. And
this respect once established, will prevent endless domestic evils. Of
errors in education one of the worst is inconsistency. As in a
community, crimes multiply when there is no certain administration of
justice; so in a family, an immense increase of transgressions results
from a hesitating or irregular infliction of punishments. A weak mother,
who perpetually threatens and rarely performs--who makes rules in haste
and repents of them at leisure--who treats the same offence now with
severity and now with leniency, as the passing humour dictates, is
laying up miseries for herself and her children. She is making herself
contemptible in their eyes; she is setting them an example of
uncontrolled feelings; she is encouraging them to transgress by the
prospect of probable impunity: she is entailing endless squabbles and
accompanying damage to her own temper and the tempers of her little
ones; she is reducing their minds to a moral chaos, which after years of
bitter experience will with difficulty bring into order. Better even a
barbarous form of domestic government carried out consistently, than a
humane one inconsistently carried out. Again we say, avoid coercive
measures whenever it is possible to do so; but when you find despotism
really necessary, be despotic in good earnest.
Remember that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a
_self-governing_ being; not to produce a being to be _governed by
others_. Were your children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you
could not too much accustom them to slavery during their childhood; but
as they are by and by to be free men, with no one to control their daily
conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they
are still under your eye. This it is which makes the system of
discipline by natural consequences so especially appropriate to the
social state which we in England have now reached. In feudal times, when
one of the chief evils the citizen had to fear was the anger of his
superiors, it was well that during childhood, parental vengeance should
be a chief means of government. But now that the citizen has little to
fear from any one--now that the good or evil which he experiences is
mainly that which in the order of things results from his own conduct,
he should from his first years begin to learn, experimentally, the good
or evil consequences which naturally follow this or that conduct. Aim,
therefore, to diminish the parental government, as fast as you can
substitute for it in your child's mind that self-government arising from
a foresight of results. During infancy a considerable amount of
absolutism is necessary. A three-year old urchin playing with an open
razor, cannot be allowed to learn by this discipline of consequences;
for the consequences may be too serious. But as intelligence increases,
the number of peremptory interferences may be, and should be,
diminished, with the view of gradually ending them as maturity is
approached. All transitions are dangerous; and the most dangerous is the
transition from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint
of the world. Hence the importance of pursuing the policy we advocate;
which, by cultivating a boy's faculty of self-restraint, by continually
increasing the degree in which he is left to his self-restraint, and by
so bringing him, step by step, to a state of unaided self-restraint,
obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazardous change from
externally-governed youth to internally-governed maturity. Let the
history of your domestic rule typify, in little, the history of our
political rule: at the outset, autocratic control, where control is
really needful; by and by an incipient constitutionalism, in which the
liberty of the subject gains some express recognition; successive
extensions of this liberty of the subject; gradually ending in parental
abdication.
Do not regret the display of considerable self-will on the part of your
children. It is the correlative of that diminished coerciveness so
conspicuous in modern education. The greater tendency to assert freedom
of action on the one side, corresponds to the smaller tendency to
tyrannise on the other. They both indicate an approach to the system of
discipline we contend for, under which children will be more and more
led to rule themselves by the experience of natural consequences; and
they are both accompaniments of our more advanced social state. The
independent English boy is the father of the independent English man;
and you cannot have the last without the first. German teachers say that
they had rather manage a dozen German boys than one English one. Shall
we, therefore, wish that our boys had the manageableness of German ones,
and with it the submissiveness and political serfdom of adult Germans?
Or shall we not rather tolerate in our boys those feelings which make
them free men, and modify our methods accordingly?
Lastly, always recollect that to educate rightly is not a simple and
easy thing, but a complex and extremely difficult thing, the hardest
task which devolves on adult life. The rough-and-ready style of domestic
government is indeed practicable by the meanest and most uncultivated
intellects. Slaps and sharp words are penalties that suggest themselves
alike to the least reclaimed barbarian and the stolidest peasant. Even
brutes can use this method of discipline; as you may see in the growl
and half-bite with which a bitch will check a too-exigeant puppy. But if
you would carry out with success a rational and civilised system, you
must be prepared for considerable mental exertion--for some study, some
ingenuity, some patience, some self-control. You will have habitually to
consider what are the results which in adult life follow certain kinds
of acts; and you must then devise methods by which parallel results
shall be entailed on the parallel acts of your children. It will daily
be needful to analyse the motives of juvenile conduct--to distinguish
between acts that are really good and those which, though simulating
them, proceed from inferior impulses; while you will have to be ever on
your guard against the cruel mistake not unfrequently made, of
translating neutral acts into transgressions, or ascribing worse
feelings than were entertained. You must more or less modify your method
to suit the disposition of each child; and must be prepared to make
further modifications as each child's disposition enters on a new phase.
Your faith will often be taxed to maintain the requisite perseverance in
a course which seems to produce little or no effect. Especially if you
are dealing with children who have been wrongly treated, you must be
prepared for a lengthened trial of patience before succeeding with
better methods; since that which is not easy even where a right state of
feeling has been established from the beginning, becomes doubly
difficult when a wrong state of feeling has to be set right. Not only
will you have constantly to analyse the motives of your children, but
you will have to analyse your own motives--to discriminate between those
internal suggestions springing from a true parental solicitude and those
which spring from your own selfishness, your love of ease, your lust of
dominion. And then, more trying still, you will have not only to detect,
but to curb these baser impulses. In brief, you will have to carry on
your own higher education at the same time that you are educating your
children. Intellectually you must cultivate to good purpose that most
complex of subjects--human nature and its laws, as exhibited in your
children, in yourself, and in the world. Morally, you must keep in
constant exercise your higher feelings, and restrain your lower. It is a
truth yet remaining to be recognised, that the last stage in the mental
development of each man and woman is to be reached only through a proper
discharge of the parental duties. And when this truth is recognised, it
will be seen how admirable is the arrangement through which human beings
are led by their strongest affections to subject themselves to a
discipline that they would else elude.
While some will regard this conception of education as it should be with
doubt and discouragement, others will, we think, perceive in the exalted
ideal which it involves, evidence of its truth. That it cannot be
realised by the impulsive, the unsympathetic, and the short-sighted,
but demands the higher attributes of human nature, they will see to be
evidence of its fitness for the more advanced states of humanity. Though
it calls for much labour and self-sacrifice, they will see that it
promises an abundant return of happiness, immediate and remote. They
will see that while in its injurious effects on both parent and child a
bad system is twice cursed, a good system is twice blessed--it blesses
him that trains and him that's trained.
[1] Of this nature is the plea put in by some for the rough treatment
experienced by boys at our public schools; where, as it is said, they
are introduced to a miniature world whose hardships prepare them for
those of the real world. It must be admitted that the plea has some
force; but it is a very insufficient plea. For whereas domestic and
school discipline, though they should not be much better than the
discipline of adult life, should be somewhat better; the discipline
which boys meet with at Eton, Winchester, Harrow, etc., is worse than
that of adult life--more unjust and cruel. Instead of being an aid to
human progress, which all culture should be, the culture of our public
schools, by accustoming boys to a despotic form of government and an
intercourse regulated by brute force, tends to fit them for a lower
state of society than that which exists. And chiefly recruited as our
legislature is from among those who are brought up at such schools, this
barbarising influence becomes a hindrance to national progress.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Equally at the squire's table after the withdrawal of the ladies, at the
farmers' market-ordinary, and at the village ale-house, the topic which,
after the political question of the day, excites the most general
interest, is the management of animals. Riding home from hunting, the
conversation usually gravitates towards horse-breeding, and pedigrees,
and comments on this or that "good point;" while a day on the moors is
very unlikely to end without something being said on the treatment of
dogs. When crossing the fields together from church, the tenants of
adjacent farms are apt to pass from criticisms on the sermon to
criticisms on the weather, the crops, and the stock; and thence to slide
into discussions on the various kinds of fodder and their feeding
qualities. Hodge and Giles, after comparing notes over their respective
pig-styes, show by their remarks that they have been observant of their
masters' beasts and sheep; and of the effects produced on them by this
or that kind of treatment. Nor is it only among the rural population
that the regulations of the kennel, the stable, the cow-shed, and the
sheep-pen, are favourite subjects. In towns, too, the numerous artisans
who keep dogs, the young men who are rich enough to now and then indulge
their sporting tendencies, and their more staid seniors who talk over
agricultural progress or read Mr. Mechi's annual reports and Mr. Caird's
letters to the _Times_, form, when added together, a large portion of
the inhabitants. Take the adult males throughout the kingdom, and a
great majority will be found to show some interest in the breeding,
rearing, or training of animals, of one kind or other.
But, during after-dinner conversations, or at other times of like
intercourse, who hears anything said about the rearing of children? When
the country gentleman has paid his daily visit to the stable, and
personally inspected the condition and treatment of his horses; when he
has glanced at his minor live stock, and given directions about them;
how often does he go up to the nursery and examine into its dietary, its
hours, its ventilation? On his library-shelves may be found White's
_Farriery_, Stephens's _Book of the Farm_, Nimrod _on the Condition of
Hunters_; and with the contents of these he is more or less familiar;
but how many books has he read on the management of infancy and
childhood? The fattening properties of oil-cake, the relative values of
hay and chopped straw, the dangers of unlimited clover, are points on
which every landlord, farmer, and peasant has some knowledge; but what
percentage of them inquire whether the food they give their children is
adapted to the constitutional needs of growing boys and girls? Perhaps
the business-interests of these classes will be assigned as accounting
for this anomaly. The explanation is inadequate, however; seeing that
the same contrast holds among other classes. Of a score of townspeople,
few, if any, would prove ignorant of the fact that it is undesirable to
work a horse soon after it has eaten; and yet, of this same score,
supposing them all to be fathers, probably not one would be found who
had considered whether the time elapsing between his children's dinner
and their resumption of lessons was sufficient. Indeed, on
cross-examination, nearly every man would disclose the latent opinion
that the regimen of the nursery was no concern of his. "Oh, I leave all
those things to the women," would probably be the reply. And in most
cases the tone of this reply would convey the implication, that such
cares are not consistent with masculine dignity.
Regarded from any but a conventional point of view, the fact seems
strange that while the raising of first-rate bullocks is an occupation
on which educated men willingly bestow much time and thought, the
bringing up of fine human beings is an occupation tacitly voted unworthy
of their attention. Mammas who have been taught little but languages,
music, and accomplishments, aided by nurses full of antiquated
prejudices, are held competent regulators of the food, clothing, and
exercise of children. Meanwhile the fathers read books and periodicals,
attend agricultural meetings, try experiments, and engage in
discussions, all with the view of discovering how to fatten prize pigs!
We see infinite pains taken to produce a racer that shall win the Derby:
none to produce a modern athlete. Had Gulliver narrated of the Laputans
that the men vied with each other in learning how best to rear the
offspring of other creatures, and were careless of learning how best to
rear their own offspring, he would have paralleled any of the other
absurdities he ascribes to them.
The matter is a serious one, however. Ludicrous as is the antithesis,
the fact it expresses is not less disastrous. As remarks a suggestive
writer, the first requisite to success in life is "to be a good animal;"
and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition to national
prosperity. Not only is it that the event of a war often turns on the
strength and hardiness of soldiers; but it is that the contests of
commerce are in part determined by the bodily endurance of producers.
Thus far we have found no reason to fear trials of strength with other
races in either of these fields. But there are not wanting signs that
our powers will presently be taxed to the uttermost. The competition of
modern life is so keen, that few can bear the required application
without injury. Already thousands break down under the high pressure
they are subject to. If this pressure continues to increase, as it seems
likely to do, it will try severely even the soundest constitutions.
Hence it is becoming of especial importance that the training of
children should be so carried on, as not only to fit them mentally for
the struggle before them, but also to make them physically fit to bear
its excessive wear and tear.
Happily the matter is beginning to attract attention. The writings of
Mr. Kingsley indicate a reaction against over-culture; carried perhaps,
as reactions usually are, somewhat too far. Occasional letters and
leaders in the newspapers have shown an awakening interest in physical
training. And the formation of a school, significantly nicknamed that of
"muscular Christianity," implies a growing opinion that our present
methods of bringing up children do not sufficiently regard the welfare
of the body. The topic is evidently ripe for discussion.
To conform the regimen of the nursery and the school to the established
truths of modern science--this is the desideratum. It is time that the
benefits which our sheep and oxen are deriving from the investigations
of the laboratory, should be participated in by our children. Without
calling in question the great importance of horse-training and
pig-feeding, we would suggest that, as the rearing of well-grown men and
women is also of some moment, these conclusions which theory indicates
and practice indorses, ought to be acted on in the last case as in the
first. Probably not a few will be startled--perhaps offended--by this
collocation of ideas. But it is a fact not to be disputed, and to which
we must reconcile ourselves, that man is subject to the same organic
laws as inferior creatures. No anatomist, no physiologist, no chemist,
will for a moment hesitate to assert, that the general principles which
are true of the vital processes in animals are equally true of the vital
processes in man. And a candid admission of this fact is not without its
reward: namely, that the generalisations established by observation and
experiment on brutes, become available for human guidance. Rudimentary
as is the Science of Life, it has already attained to certain
fundamental principles underlying the development of all organisms, the
human included. That which has now to be done, and that which we shall
endeavour in some measure to do, is to trace the bearings of these
fundamental principles on the physical training of childhood and youth.
* * * * *
The rhythmical tendency which is traceable in all departments of social
life--which is illustrated in the access of despotism after revolution,
or, among ourselves, in the alternation of reforming epochs and
conservative epochs--which, after a dissolute age, brings an age of
asceticism, and conversely,--which, in commerce, produces the recurring
inflations and panics--which carries the devotees of fashion from one
absurd extreme to the opposite one;--this rhythmical tendency affects
also our table-habits, and by implication, the dietary of the young.
After a period distinguished by hard drinking and hard eating, has come
a period of comparative sobriety, which, in teetotalism and
vegetarianism, exhibits extreme forms of protest against the riotous
living of the past. And along with this change in the regimen of adults,
has come a parallel change in the regimen for boys and girls. In past
generations the belief was, that the more a child could be induced to
eat, the better; and even now, among farmers and in remote districts,
where traditional ideas most linger, parents may be found who tempt
their children into repletion. But among the educated classes, who
chiefly display this reaction towards abstemiousness, there may be seen
a decided leaning to the under-feeding, rather than the over-feeding, of
children. Indeed their disgust for by-gone animalism, is more clearly
shown in the treatment of their offspring than in the treatment of
themselves; for while their disguised asceticism is, in so far as their
personal conduct is concerned, kept in check by their appetites, it has
full play in legislating for juveniles.
That over-feeding and under-feeding are both bad, is a truism. Of the
two, however, the last is the worst. As writes a high authority, "the
effects of casual repletion are less prejudicial, and more easily
corrected, than those of inanition."[1] Besides, where there has been no
injudicious interference, repletion seldom occurs. "Excess is the vice
rather of adults than of the young, who are rarely either gourmands or
epicures, unless through the fault of those who rear them."[2] This
system of restriction which many parents think so necessary, is based
upon inadequate observation, and erroneous reasoning. There is an
over-legislation in the nursery, as well as an over-legislation in the
State; and one of the most injurious forms of it is this limitation in
the quantity of food.
"But are children to be allowed to surfeit themselves? Shall they be
suffered to take their fill of dainties and make themselves ill, as they
certainly will do?" As thus put, the question admits of but one reply.
But as thus put, it assumes the point at issue. We contend that, as
appetite is a good guide to all the lower creation--as it is a good
guide to the infant--as it is a good guide to the invalid--as it is a
good guide to the differently-placed races of men--and as it is a good
guide for every adult who leads a healthful life; it may safely be
inferred that it is a good guide for childhood. It would be strange
indeed were it here alone untrustworthy.
Perhaps some will read this reply with impatience; being able, as they
think, to cite facts totally at variance with it. It may appear absurd
if we deny the relevancy of these facts. And yet the paradox is quite
defensible. The truth is, that the instances of excess which such
persons have in mind, are usually the _consequences_ of the restrictive
system they seem to justify. They are the sensual reactions caused by an
ascetic regimen. They illustrate on a small scale that commonly-remarked
truth, that those who during youth have been subject to the most
rigorous discipline, are apt afterwards to rush into the wildest
extravagances. They are analogous to those frightful phenomena, once not
uncommon in convents, where nuns suddenly lapsed from the extremest
austerities into an almost demoniac wickedness. They simply exhibit the
uncontrollable vehemence of long-denied desires. Consider the ordinary
tastes and the ordinary treatment of children. The love of sweets is
conspicuous and almost universal among them. Probably ninety-nine people
in a hundred presume that there is nothing more in this than
gratification of the palate; and that, in common with other sensual
desires, it should be discouraged. The physiologist, however, whose
discoveries lead him to an ever-increasing reverence for the
arrangements of things, suspects something more in this love of sweets
than is currently supposed; and inquiry confirms the suspicion. He finds
that sugar plays an important part in the vital processes. Both
saccharine and fatty matters are eventually oxidised in the body; and
there is an accompanying evolution of heat. Sugar is the form to which
sundry other compounds have to be reduced before they are available as
heat-making food; and this _formation_ of sugar is carried on in the
body. Not only is starch changed into sugar in the course of digestion,
but it has been proved by M. Claude Bernard that the liver is a factory
in which other constituents of food are transformed into sugar: the need
for sugar being so imperative that it is even thus produced from
nitrogenous substances when no others are given. Now, when to the fact
that children have a marked desire for this valuable heat-food, we join
the fact that they have usually a marked dislike to that food which
gives out the greatest amount of heat during oxidation (namely, fat), we
have reason for thinking that excess of the one compensates for defect
of the other--that the organism demands more sugar because it cannot
deal with much fat. Again, children are fond of vegetable acids. Fruits
of all kinds are their delight; and, in the absence of anything better,
they will devour unripe gooseberries and the sourest of crabs. Now not
only are vegetable acids, in common with mineral ones, very good tonics,
and beneficial as such when taken in moderation; but they have, when
administered in their natural forms, other advantages. "Ripe fruit,"
says Dr. Andrew Combe, "is more freely given on the Continent than in
this country; and, particularly when the bowels act imperfectly, it is
often very useful." See, then, the discord between the instinctive wants
of children and their habitual treatment. Here are two dominant desires,
which in all probability express certain needs of the child's
constitution; and not only are they ignored in the nursery-regimen, but
there is a general tendency to forbid the gratification of them.
Bread-and-milk in the morning, tea and bread-and-butter at night, or
some dietary equally insipid, is rigidly adhered to; and any
ministration to the palate is thought needless, or rather, wrong. What
is the consequence? When, on fete-days, there is unlimited access to
good things--when a gift of pocket-money brings the contents of the
confectioner's window within reach, or when by some accident the free
run of a fruit-garden is obtained; then the long-denied, and therefore
intense, desires lead to great excesses. There is an impromptu carnival,
due partly to release from past restraints, and partly to the
consciousness that a long Lent will begin on the morrow. And then, when
the evils of repletion display themselves, it is argued that children
must not be left to the guidance of their appetites! These disastrous
results of artificial restrictions, are themselves cited as proving the
need for further restrictions! We contend, therefore, that the reasoning
used to justify this system of interference is vicious. We contend that,
were children allowed daily to partake of these more sapid edibles, for
which there is a physiological requirement, they would rarely exceed, as
they now mostly do when they have the opportunity: were fruit, as Dr.
Combe recommends, "to constitute a part of the regular food" (given, as
he advises, not between meals, but along with them), there would be none
of that craving which prompts the devouring of crabs and sloes. And
similarly in other cases.
Not only is it that the _a priori_ reasons for trusting the appetites of
children are strong; and that the reasons assigned for distrusting them
are invalid; but it is that no other guidance is worthy of confidence.
What is the value of this parental judgment, set up as an alternative
regulator? When to "Oliver asking for more," the mamma or governess says
"No," on what data does she proceed? She _thinks_ he has had enough. But
where are her grounds for so thinking? Has she some secret understanding
with the boy's stomach--some _clairvoyant_ power enabling her to discern
the needs of his body? If not, how can she safely decide? Does she not
know that the demand of the system for food is determined by numerous
and involved causes--varies with the temperature, with the hygrometric
state of the air, with the electric state of the air--varies also
according to the exercise taken, according to the kind and quantity of
food eaten at the last meal, and according to the rapidity with which
the last meal was digested? How can she calculate the result of such a
combination of causes? As we heard said by the father of a
five-years-old boy, who stands a head taller than most of his age, and
is proportionately robust, rosy, and active:--"I can see no artificial
standard by which to mete out his food. If I say, 'this much is enough,'
it is a mere guess; and the guess is as likely to be wrong as right.
Consequently, having no faith in guesses, I let him eat his fill." And
certainly, any one judging of his policy by its effects, would be
constrained to admit its wisdom. In truth, this confidence, with which
most parents legislate for the stomachs of their children, proves their
unacquaintance with physiology: if they knew more, they would be more
modest. "The pride of science is humble when compared with the pride of
ignorance." If any one would learn how little faith is to be placed in
human judgments, and how much in the pre-established arrangements of
things, let him compare the rashness of the inexperienced physician with
the caution of the most advanced; or let him dip into Sir John Forbes's
work, _On Nature and Art in the Cure of Disease_; and he will see that,
in proportion as men gain knowledge of the laws of life, they come to
have less confidence in themselves, and more in Nature.
Turning from the question of _quantity_ of food to that of _quality_, we
may discern the same ascetic tendency. Not simply a restricted diet, but
a comparatively low diet, is thought proper for children. The current
opinion is, that they should have but little animal food. Among the less
wealthy classes, economy seems to have dictated this opinion--the wish
has been father to the thought. Parents not affording to buy much meat,
answer the petitions of juveniles with--"Meat is not good for little
boys and girls;" and this, at first probably nothing but a convenient
excuse, has by repetition grown into an article of faith. While the
classes with whom cost is no consideration, have been swayed partly by
the example of the majority, partly by the influence of nurses drawn
from the lower classes, and in some measure by the reaction against past
animalism.
If, however, we inquire for the basis of this opinion, we find little or
none. It is a dogma repeated and received without proof, like that
which, for thousands of years, insisted on swaddling-clothes. Very
probably for the infant's stomach, not yet endowed with much muscular
power, meat, which requires considerable trituration before it can be
made into chyme, is an unfit aliment. But this objection does not tell
against animal food from which the fibrous part has been extracted; nor
does it apply when, after the lapse of two or three years, considerable
muscular vigour has been acquired. And while the evidence in support of
this dogma, partially valid in the case of very young children, is not
valid in the case of older children, who are, nevertheless, ordinarily
treated in conformity with it, the adverse evidence is abundant and
conclusive. The verdict of science is exactly opposite to the popular
opinion. We have put the question to two of our leading physicians, and
to several of the most distinguished physiologists, and they uniformly
agree in the conclusion, that children should have a diet not _less_
nutritive, but, if anything, _more_ nutritive than that of adults.
The grounds for this conclusion are obvious, and the reasoning simple.
It needs but to compare the vital processes of a man with those of a
boy, to see that the demand for sustenance is relatively greater in the
boy than in the man. What are the ends for which a man requires food?
Each day his body undergoes more or less wear--wear through muscular
exertion, wear of the nervous system through mental actions, wear of the
viscera in carrying on the functions of life; and the tissue thus wasted
has to be renewed. Each day, too, by radiation, his body loses a large
amount of heat; and as, for the continuance of the vital actions, the
temperature of the body must be maintained, this loss has to be
compensated by a constant production of heat: to which end certain
constituents of the body are ever undergoing oxidation. To make up for
the day's waste, and to supply fuel for the day's expenditure of heat,
are, then, the sole purposes for which the adult requires food. Consider
now the case of the boy. He, too, wastes the substance of his body by
action; and it needs but to note his restless activity to see that, in
proportion to his bulk, he probably wastes as much as a man. He, too,
loses heat by radiation; and, as his body exposes a greater surface in
proportion to its mass than does that of a man, and therefore loses heat
more rapidly, the quantity of heat-food he requires is, bulk for bulk,
greater than that required by a man. So that even had the boy no other
vital processes to carry on than the man has, he would need, relatively
to his size, a somewhat larger supply of nutriment. But, besides
repairing his body and maintaining its heat, the boy has to make new
tissue--to grow. After waste and thermal loss have been provided for,
such surplus of nutriment as remains goes to the further building up of
the frame; and only in virtue of this surplus is normal growth possible;
the growth that sometimes takes place in the absence of it, causing a
manifest prostration consequent upon defective repair. It is true that
because of a certain mechanical law which cannot be here explained, a
small organism has an advantage over a large one in the ratio between
the sustaining and destroying forces--an advantage, indeed, to which the
very possibility of growth is owing. But this admission only makes it
the more obvious that though much adverse treatment may be borne without
this excess of vitality being quite out-balanced; yet any adverse
treatment, by diminishing it, must diminish the size or structural
perfection reached. How peremptory is the demand of the unfolding
organism for materials, is seen alike in that "schoolboy hunger," which
after-life rarely parallels in intensity, and in the comparatively quick
return of appetite. And if there needs further evidence of this extra
necessity for nutriment, we have it in the fact that, during the famines
following shipwrecks and other disasters, the children are the first to
die.
This relatively greater need for nutriment being admitted, as it must
be, the question that remains is--shall we meet it by giving an
excessive quantity of what may be called dilute food, or a more moderate
quantity of concentrated food? The nutriment obtainable from a given
weight of meat is obtainable only from a larger weight of bread, or from
a still larger weight of potatoes, and so on. To fulfil the requirement,
the quantity must be increased as the nutritiveness is diminished.
Shall, we, then, respond to the extra wants of the growing child by
giving an adequate quantity of food as good as that of adults? Or,
regardless of the fact that its stomach has to dispose of a relatively
larger quantity even of this good food, shall we further tax it by
giving an inferior food in still greater quantity?
The answer is tolerably obvious. The more the labour of digestion is
economised, the more energy is left for the purposes of growth and
action. The functions of the stomach and intestines cannot be performed
without a large supply of blood and nervous power; and in the
comparative lassitude that follows a hearty meal, every adult has proof
that this supply of blood and nervous power is at the expense of the
system at large. If the requisite nutriment is obtained from a great
quantity of innutritious food, more work is entailed on the viscera than
when it is obtained from a moderate quantity of nutritious food. This
extra work is so much loss--a loss which in children shows itself either
in diminished energy, or in smaller growth, or in both. The inference
is, then, that they should have a diet which combines, as much as
possible, nutritiveness and digestibility.
It is doubtless true that boys and girls may be reared upon an
exclusively, or almost exclusively, vegetable diet. Among the upper
classes are to be found children to whom comparatively little meat is
given; and who, nevertheless, grow and appear in good health. Animal
food is scarcely tasted by the offspring of labouring people; and yet
they reach a healthy maturity. But these seemingly adverse facts have by
no means the weight commonly supposed. In the first place, it does not
follow that those who in early years flourish on bread and potatoes,
will eventually reach a fine development; and a comparison between the
agricultural labourers and the gentry, in England, or between the middle
and lower classes in France is by no means in favour of vegetable
feeders. In the second place, the question is not simply a question of
_bulk_, but also a question of _quality_. A soft, flabby flesh makes as
good a show as a firm one; but though to the careless eye, a child of
full, flaccid tissue may appear the equal of one whose fibres are well
toned, a trial of strength will prove the difference. Obesity in adults
is often a sign of feebleness. Men lose weight in training. Hence the
appearance of these low-fed children is far from conclusive. In the
third place, besides _size_, we have to consider _energy_. Between
children of the meat-eating classes and those of the
bread-and-potato-eating classes, there is a marked contrast in this
respect. Both in mental and physical vivacity the peasant-boy is greatly
inferior to the son of a gentleman.
If we compare different kinds of animals, or different races of men, or
the same animals or men when differently fed, we find still more
distinct proof that _the degree of energy essentially depends on the
nutritiveness of the food_.
In a cow, subsisting on so innutritive a food as grass, we see that the
immense quantity required necessitates an enormous digestive system;
that the limbs, small in comparison with the body, are burdened by its
weight; that in carrying about this heavy body and digesting this
excessive quantity of food, much force is expended; and that, having but
little remaining, the creature is sluggish. Compare with the cow a
horse--an animal of nearly allied structure, but habituated to a more
concentrated diet. Here the body, and more especially its abdominal
region, bears a smaller ratio to the limbs; the powers are not taxed by
the support of such massive viscera, nor the digestion of so bulky a
food; and, as a consequence, there is greater locomotive energy and
considerable vivacity. If, again, we contrast the stolid inactivity of
the graminivorous sheep with the liveliness of the dog, subsisting on
flesh or farinaceous matters, or a mixture of the two, we see a
difference similar in kind, but still greater in degree. And after
walking through the Zoological Gardens, and noting the restlessness with
which the carnivorous animals pace up and down their cages, it needs but
to remember that none of the herbivorous animals habitually display this
superfluous energy, to see how clear is the relation between
concentration of food and degree of activity.
That these differences are not directly consequent on differences of
constitution, as some may argue; but are directly consequent on
differences in the food which the creatures are constituted to subsist
on; is proved by the fact, that they are observable between different
divisions of the same species. The varieties of the horse furnish an
illustration. Compare the big-bellied, inactive, spiritless cart-horse
with a racer or hunter, small in the flanks and full of energy; and then
call to mind how much less nutritive is the diet of the one than that of
the other. Or take the case of mankind. Australians, Bushmen, and others
of the lowest savages who live on roots and berries, varied by larvae of
insects and the like meagre fare, are comparatively puny in stature,
have large abdomens, soft and undeveloped muscles, and are quite unable
to cope with Europeans, either in a struggle or in prolonged exertion.
Count up the wild races who are well grown, strong and active, as the
Kaffirs, North-American Indians, and Patagonians, and you find them
large consumers of flesh. The ill-fed Hindoo goes down before the
Englishman fed on more nutritive food; to whom he is as inferior in
mental as in physical energy. And generally, we think, the history of
the world shows that the well-fed races have been the energetic and
dominant races.
Still stronger, however, becomes the argument, when we find that the
same individual animal is capable of more or less exertion according as
its food is more or less nutritious. This has been demonstrated in the
case of the horse. Though flesh may be gained by a grazing horse,
strength is lost; as putting him to hard work proves. "The consequence
of turning horses out to grass is relaxation of the muscular system."
"Grass is a very good preparation for a bullock for Smithfield market,
but a very bad one for a hunter." It was well known of old that, after
passing the summer in the fields, hunters required some months of
stable-feeding before becoming able to follow the hounds; and that they
did not get into good condition till the beginning of the next spring.
And the modern practice is that insisted on by Mr. Apperley--"Never to
give a hunter what is called 'a summer's run at grass,' and, except
under particular and very favourable circumstances, never to turn him
out at all." That is to say, never give him poor food: great energy and
endurance are to be obtained only by the continued use of nutritive
food. So true is this that, as proved by Mr. Apperley, prolonged
high-feeding enables a middling horse to equal, in his performances, a
first-rate horse fed in the ordinary way. To which various evidences add
the familiar fact that, when a horse is required to do double duty, it
is the practice to give him beans--a food containing a larger proportion
of nitrogenous, or flesh-making material, than his habitual oats.
Once more, in the case of individual men the truth has been illustrated
with equal, or still greater, clearness. We do not refer to men in
training for feats of strength, whose regimen, however, thoroughly
conforms to the doctrine. We refer to the experience of
railway-contractors and their labourers. It has been for years a
well-established fact that an English navvy, eating largely of flesh, is
far more efficient than a Continental navvy living on farinaceous food:
so much more efficient, that English contractors for Continental
railways found it pay to take their labourers with them. That difference
of diet and not difference of race caused this superiority, has been of
late distinctly shown. For it has turned out, that when the Continental
navvies live in the same style as their English competitors, they
presently rise, more or less nearly, to a par with them in efficiency.
And to this fact let us here add the converse one, to which we can give
personal testimony based upon six months' experience of vegetarianism,
that abstinence from meat entails diminished energy of both body and
mind.
Do not these various evidences endorse our argument respecting the
feeding of children? Do they not imply that, even supposing the same
stature and bulk to be attained on an innutritive as on a nutritive
diet, the quality of tissue is greatly inferior? Do they not establish
the position that, where energy as well as growth has to be maintained,
it can only be done by high feeding? Do they not confirm the _a priori_
conclusion that, though a child of whom little is expected in the way of
bodily or mental activity, may thrive tolerably well on farinaceous
substances, a child who is daily required, not only to form the due
amount of new tissue, but to supply the waste consequent on great
muscular action, and the further waste consequent on hard exercise of
brain, must live on substances containing a larger ratio of nutritive
matter? And is it not an obvious corollary, that denial of this better
food will be at the expense either of growth, or of bodily activity, or
of mental activity; as constitution and circumstances determine? We
believe no logical intellect will question it. To think otherwise is to
entertain in a disguised form the old fallacy of the perpetual-motion
schemers--that it is possible to get power out of nothing.
Before leaving the question of food, a few words must be said on another
requisite--_variety_. In this respect the dietary of the young is very
faulty. If not, like our soldiers, condemned to "twenty years of boiled
beef," our children have mostly to bear a monotony which, though less
extreme and less lasting, is quite as clearly at variance with the laws
of health. At dinner, it is true, they usually have food that is more or
less mixed, and that is changed day by day. But week after week, month
after month, year after year, comes the same breakfast of
bread-and-milk, or, it may be, oatmeal-porridge. And with like
persistence the day is closed, perhaps with a second edition of the
bread-and-milk, perhaps with tea and bread-and-butter.
This practice is opposed to the dictates of physiology. The satiety
produced by an often-repeated dish, and the gratification caused by one
long a stranger to the palate, are _not_ meaningless, as people
carelessly assume; but they are the incentives to a wholesome diversity
of diet. It is a fact, established by numerous experiments, that there
is scarcely any one food, however good, which supplies in due
proportions or right forms all the elements required for carrying on the
vital processes in a normal manner: whence it follows that frequent
change of food is desirable to balance the supplies of all the elements.
It is a further fact, known to physiologists, that the enjoyment given
by a much-liked food is a nervous stimulus, which, by increasing the
action of the heart and so propelling the blood with increased vigour,
aids in the subsequent digestion. And these truths are in harmony with
the maxims of modern cattle-feeding, which dictate a rotation of diet.
Not only, however, is periodic change of food very desirable; but, for
the same reasons, it is very desirable that a mixture of food should be
taken at each meal. The better balance of ingredients, and the greater
nervous stimulation, are advantages which hold here as before. If facts
are asked for, we may name as one, the comparative ease with which the
stomach disposes of a French dinner, enormous in quantity but extremely
varied in materials. Few will contend that an equal weight of one kind
of food, however well cooked, could be digested with as much facility.
If any desire further facts, they may find them in every modern book on
the management of animals. Animals thrive best when each meal is made up
of several things. The experiments of Goss and Stark "afford the most
decisive proof of the advantage, or rather the necessity, of a mixture
of substances, in order to produce the compound which is the best
adapted for the action of the stomach."[3]
Should any object, as probably many will, that a rotating dietary for
children, and one which also requires a mixture of food at each meal,
would entail too much trouble; we reply, that no trouble is thought too
great which conduces to the mental development of children, and that for
their future welfare, good bodily development is of still higher
importance. Moreover, it seems alike sad and strange that a trouble
which is cheerfully taken in the fattening of pigs, should be thought
too great in the rearing of children.
One more paragraph, with the view of warning those who may propose to
adopt the regimen indicated. The change must not be made suddenly; for
continued low-feeding so enfeebles the system, as to disable it from at
once dealing with a high diet. Deficient nutrition is itself a cause of
dyspepsia. This is true even of animals. "When calves are fed with
skimmed milk, or whey, or other poor food, they are liable to
indigestion."[4] Hence, therefore, where the energies are low, the
transition to a generous diet must be gradual: each increment of
strength gained, justifying a fresh addition of nutriment. Further, it
should be borne in mind that the concentration of nutriment may be
carried too far. A bulk sufficient to fill the stomach is one requisite
of a proper meal; and this requisite negatives a diet deficient in those
matters which give adequate mass. Though the size of the digestive
organs is less in the well-fed civilised races than in the ill-fed
savage ones, and though their size may eventually diminish still
further, yet, for the time being, the bulk of the ingesta must be
determined by the existing capacity. But, paying due regard to these two
qualifications, our conclusions are--that the food of children should be
highly nutritive; that it should be varied at each meal and at
successive meals; and that it should be abundant.
* * * * *
With clothing as with food, the usual tendency is towards an improper
scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory,
vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the
sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance,
but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its naked
form. It is a grave error: we are much more beneficently constituted. It
is not obedience to the sensations, but disobedience to them, which is
the habitual cause of bodily evils. It is not the eating when hungry,
but the eating in the absence of hunger, which is bad. It is not
drinking when thirsty, but continuing to drink when thirst has ceased,
that is the vice. Harm does not result from breathing that fresh air
which every healthy person enjoys; but from breathing foul air, spite of
the protest of the lungs. Harm does not result from taking that active
exercise which, as every child shows us, Nature strongly prompts; but
from a persistent disregard of Nature's promptings. Not that mental
activity which is spontaneous and enjoyable does the mischief; but that
which is persevered in after a hot or aching head commands desistance.
Not that bodily exertion which is pleasant or indifferent, does injury;
but that which is continued when exhaustion forbids. It is true that, in
those who have long led unhealthy lives, the sensations are not
trustworthy guides. People who have for years been almost constantly
in-doors, who have exercised their brains very much and their bodies
scarcely at all, who in eating have obeyed their clocks without
consulting their stomachs, may very likely be misled by their vitiated
feelings. But their abnormal state is itself the result of transgressing
their feelings. Had they from childhood never disobeyed what we may term
the physical conscience, it would not have been seared, but would have
remained a faithful monitor.
Among the sensations serving for our guidance are those of heat and
cold; and a clothing for children which does not carefully consult these
sensations, is to be condemned. The common notion about "hardening" is a
grievous delusion. Not a few children are "hardened" out of the world;
and those who survive, permanently suffer either in growth or
constitution. "Their delicate appearance furnishes ample indication of
the mischief thus produced, and their frequent attacks of illness might
prove a warning even to unreflecting parents," says Dr. Combe. The
reasoning on which this hardening-theory rests is extremely superficial.
Wealthy parents, seeing little peasant boys and girls playing about in
the open air only half-clothed, and joining with this fact the general
healthiness of labouring people, draw the unwarrantable conclusion that
the healthiness is the result of the exposure, and resolve to keep their
own offspring scantily covered! It is forgotten that these urchins who
gambol upon village-greens are in many respects favourably
circumstanced--that their lives are spent in almost perpetual play; that
they are all day breathing fresh air; and that their systems are not
disturbed by over-taxed brains. For aught that appears to the contrary,
their good health may be maintained, not in consequence of, but in spite
of, their deficient clothing. This alternative conclusion we believe to
be the true one; and that an inevitable detriment results from the loss
of animal heat to which they are subject.
For when, the constitution being sound enough to bear it, exposure does
produce hardness, it does so at the expense of growth. This truth is
displayed alike in animals and in man. Shetland ponies bear greater
inclemencies than the horses of the south, but are dwarfed. Highland
sheep and cattle, living in a colder climate, are stunted in comparison
with English breeds. In both the arctic and antarctic regions the human
race falls much below its ordinary height: the Laplander and Esquimaux
are very short; and the Terra del Fuegians, who go naked in a wintry
land, are described by Darwin as so stunted and hideous, that "one can
hardly make one's-self believe they are fellow-creatures."
Science explains this dwarfishness produced by great abstraction of
heat; showing that, food and other things being equal, it unavoidably
results. For, as before pointed out, to make up for that cooling by
radiation which the body is ever undergoing, there must be a constant
oxidation of certain matters forming part of the food. And in proportion
as the thermal loss is great, must the quantity of these matters
required for oxidation be great. But the power of the digestive organs
is limited. Consequently, when they have to prepare a large quantity of
this material needful for maintaining the temperature, they can prepare
but a small quantity of the material which goes to build up the frame.
Excessive expenditure for fuel entails diminished means for other
purposes. Wherefore there necessarily results a body small in size, or
inferior in texture, or both.
Hence the great importance of clothing. As Liebig says:--"Our clothing
is, in reference to the temperature of the body, merely an equivalent
for a certain amount of food." By diminishing the loss of heat, it
diminishes the amount of fuel needful for maintaining the heat; and when
the stomach has less to do in preparing fuel, it can do more in
preparing other materials. This deduction is confirmed by the experience
of those who manage animals. Cold can be borne by animals only at an
expense of fat, or muscle, or growth, as the case may be. "If fattening
cattle are exposed to a low temperature, either their progress must be
retarded, or a great additional expenditure of food incurred."[5] Mr.
Apperley insists strongly that, to bring hunters into good condition, it
is necessary that the stable should be kept warm. And among those who
rear racers, it is an established doctrine that exposure is to be
avoided.
The scientific truth thus illustrated by ethnology, and recognised by
agriculturists and sportsmen, applies with double force to children. In
proportion to their smallness and the rapidity of their growth is the
injury from cold great. In France, new-born infants often die in winter
from being carried to the office of the _maire_ for registration. "M.
Quetelet has pointed out, that in Belgium two infants die in January for
one that dies in July." And in Russia the infant mortality is something
enormous. Even when near maturity, the undeveloped frame is
comparatively unable to bear exposure: as witness the quickness with
which young soldiers succumb in a trying campaign. The _rationale_ is
obvious. We have already adverted to the fact that, in consequence of
the varying relation between surface and bulk, a child loses a
relatively larger amount of heat than an adult; and here we must point
out that the disadvantage under which the child thus labours is very
great. Lehmann says:--"If the carbonic acid excreted by children or
young animals is calculated for an equal bodily weight, it results that
children produce nearly twice as much acid as adults." Now the quantity
of carbonic acid given off varies with tolerable accuracy as the
quantity of heat produced. And thus we see that in children the system,
even when not placed at a disadvantage, is called upon to provide nearly
double the proportion of material for generating heat.
See, then, the extreme folly of clothing the young scantily. What
father, full-grown though he is, losing heat less rapidly as he does,
and having no physiological necessity but to supply the waste of each
day--what father, we ask, would think it salutary to go about with bare
legs, bare arms, and bare neck? Yet this tax on the system, from which
he would shrink, he inflicts on his little ones, who are so much less
able to bear it! or, if he does not inflict it, sees it inflicted
without protest. Let him remember that every ounce of nutriment
needlessly expended for the maintenance of temperature, is so much
deducted from the nutriment going to build up the frame; and that even
when colds, congestions, or other consequent disorders are escaped,
diminished growth or less perfect structure is inevitable.
"The rule is, therefore, not to dress in an invariable way in all cases,
but to put on clothing in kind and quantity _sufficient in the
individual case to protect the body effectually from an abiding
sensation of cold, however slight_." This rule, the importance of which
Dr. Combe indicates by the italics, is one in which men of science and
practitioners agree. We have met with none competent to form a judgment
on the matter, who do not strongly condemn the exposure of children's
limbs. If there is one point above others in which "pestilent custom"
should be ignored, it is this.
Lamentable, indeed, is it to see mothers seriously damaging the
constitutions of their children out of compliance with an irrational
fashion. It is bad enough that they should themselves conform to every
folly which our Gallic neighbours please to initiate; but that they
should clothe their children in any mountebank dress which _Le petit
Courrier des Dames_ indicates, regardless of its insufficiency and
unfitness, is monstrous. Discomfort, more or less great, is inflicted;
frequent disorders are entailed; growth is checked or stamina
undermined; premature death not uncommonly caused; and all because it is
thought needful to make frocks of a size and material dictated by French
caprice. Not only is it that for the sake of conformity, mothers thus
punish and injure their little ones by scantiness of covering; but it is
that from an allied motive they impose a style of dress which forbids
healthful activity. To please the eye, colours and fabrics are chosen
totally unfit to bear that rough usage which unrestrained play involves;
and then to prevent damage the unrestrained play is interdicted. "Get up
this moment: you will soil your clean frock," is the mandate issued to
some urchin creeping about on the floor. "Come back: you will dirty your
stockings," calls out the governess to one of her charges, who has left
the footpath to scramble up a bank. Thus is the evil doubled. That they
may come up to their mamma's standard of prettiness, and be admired by
her visitors, children must have habiliments deficient in quantity and
unfit in texture; and that these easily-damaged habiliments may be kept
clean and uninjured, the restless activity so natural and needful for
the young is restrained. The exercise which becomes doubly requisite
when the clothing is insufficient, is cut short, lest it should deface
the clothing. Would that the terrible cruelty of this system could be
seen by those who maintain it! We do not hesitate to say that, through
enfeebled health, defective energies, and consequent non-success in
life, thousands are annually doomed to unhappiness by this unscrupulous
regard for appearances: even when they are not, by early death,
literally sacrificed to the Moloch of maternal vanity. We are reluctant
to counsel strong measures, but really the evils are so great as to
justify, or even to demand, a peremptory interference on the part of
fathers.
Our conclusions are, then--that, while the clothing of children should
never be in such excess as to create oppressive warmth, it should always
be sufficient to prevent any general feeling of cold;[6] that, instead
of the flimsy cotton, linen, or mixed fabrics commonly used, it should
be made of some good non-conductor, such as coarse woollen cloth; that
it should be so strong as to receive little damage from the hard wear
and tear which childish sports will give it; and that its colours should
be such as will not soon suffer from use and exposure.
* * * * *
To the importance of bodily exercise most people are in some degree
awake. Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite of physical education
than on most others: at any rate, in so far as boys are concerned.
Public schools and private schools alike furnish tolerably adequate
play-grounds; and there is usually a fair share of time for out-door
games, and a recognition of them as needful. In this, if in no other
direction, it seems admitted that the promptings of boyish instinct may
advantageously be followed; and, indeed, in the modern practice of
breaking the prolonged morning's and afternoon's lessons by a few
minutes' open-air recreation, we see an increasing tendency to conform
school-regulations to the bodily sensations of the pupils. Here, then,
little needs be said in the way of expostulation or suggestion.
But we have been obliged to qualify this admission by inserting the
clause "in so far as boys are concerned." Unfortunately the fact is
quite otherwise with girls. It chances, somewhat strangely, that we have
daily opportunity of drawing a comparison. We have both a boys' school
and a girls' school within view; and the contrast between them is
remarkable. In the one case, nearly the whole of a large garden is
turned into an open, gravelled space, affording ample scope for games,
and supplied with poles and horizontal bars for gymnastic exercises.
Every day before breakfast, again towards eleven o'clock, again at
mid-day, again in the afternoon, and once more after school is over, the
neighbourhood is awakened by a chorus of shouts and laughter as the boys
rush out to play; and for as long as they remain, both eyes and ears
give proof that they are absorbed in that enjoyable activity which makes
the pulse bound and ensures the healthful activity of every organ. How
unlike is the picture offered by the "Establishment for Young Ladies!"
Until the fact was pointed out, we actually did not know that we had a
girl's school as close to us as the school for boys. The garden, equally
large with the other, affords no sign whatever of any provision for
juvenile recreation; but is entirely laid out with prim grass-plots,
gravel-walks, shrubs, and flowers, after the usual suburban style.
During five months we have not once had our attention drawn to the
premises by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally girls may be observed
sauntering along the paths with lesson-books in their hands, or else
walking arm-in-arm. Once indeed, we saw one chase another round the
garden; but, with this exception, nothing like vigorous exertion has
been visible.
Why this astounding difference? Is it that the constitution of a girl
differs so entirely from that of a boy as not to need these active
exercises? Is it that a girl has none of the promptings to vociferous
play by which boys are impelled? Or is it that, while in boys these
promptings are to be regarded as stimuli to a bodily activity without
which there cannot be adequate development, to their sisters, Nature has
given them for no purpose whatever--unless it be for the vexation of
school-mistresses? Perhaps, however, we mistake the aim of those who
train the gentler sex. We have a vague suspicion that to produce a
robust _physique_ is thought undesirable; that rude health and abundant
vigour are considered somewhat plebeian; that a certain delicacy, a
strength not competent to more than a mile or two's walk, an appetite
fastidious and easily satisfied, joined with that timidity which
commonly accompanies feebleness, are held more lady-like. We do not
expect that any would distinctly avow this; but we fancy the
governess-mind is haunted by an ideal young lady bearing not a little
resemblance to this type. If so, it must be admitted that the
established system is admirably calculated to realise this ideal. But to
suppose that such is the ideal of the opposite sex is a profound
mistake. That men are not commonly drawn towards masculine women, is
doubtless true. That such relative weakness as asks the protection of
superior strength, is an element of attraction, we quite admit. But the
difference thus responded to by the feelings of men, is the natural,
pre-established difference, which will assert itself without artificial
appliances. And when, by artificial appliances, the degree of this
difference is increased, it becomes an element of repulsion rather than
of attraction.
"Then girls should be allowed to run wild--to become as rude as boys,
and grow up into romps and hoydens!" exclaims some defender of the
proprieties. This, we presume, is the ever-present dread of
school-mistresses. It appears, on inquiry, that at "Establishments for
Young Ladies" noisy play like that daily indulged in by boys, is a
punishable offence; and we infer that it is forbidden, lest unlady-like
habits should be formed. The fear is quite groundless, however. For if
the sportive activity allowed to boys does not prevent them from growing
up into gentlemen; why should a like sportive activity prevent girls
from growing up into ladies? Rough as may have been their play-ground
frolics, youths who have left school do not indulge in leap-frog in the
street, or marbles in the drawing-room. Abandoning their jackets, they
abandon at the same time boyish games; and display an anxiety--often a
ludicrous anxiety--to avoid whatever is not manly. If now, on arriving
at the due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so efficient a
restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of feminine
modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is approached, put an
efficient restraint on the like sports of girlhood? Have not women even
a greater regard for appearances than men? and will there not
consequently arise in them even a stronger check to whatever is rough or
boisterous? How absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts
would not assert themselves but for the rigorous discipline of
school-mistresses!
In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one artificiality,
another artificiality has been introduced. The natural, spontaneous
exercise having been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise
having become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious
exercise--gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit; but
that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny. The defects are both
positive and negative. In the first place, these formal, muscular
motions, necessarily less varied than those accompanying juvenile
sports, do not secure so equable a distribution of action to all parts
of the body; whence it results that the exertion, falling on special
parts, produces fatigue sooner than it would else have done: to which,
in passing, let us add, that, if constantly repeated, this exertion of
special parts leads to a disproportionate development. Again, the
quantity of exercise thus taken will be deficient, not only in
consequence of uneven distribution; but there will be a further
deficiency in consequence of lack of interest. Even when not made
repulsive, as they sometimes are by assuming the shape of appointed
lessons, these monotonous movements are sure to become wearisome from
the absence of amusement. Competition, it is true, serves as a stimulus;
but it is not a lasting stimulus, like that enjoyment which accompanies
varied play. The weightiest objection, however, still remains. Besides
being inferior in respect of the _quantity_ of muscular exertion which
they secure, gymnastics are still more inferior in respect of the
_quality_. This comparative want of enjoyment which we have named as a
cause of early desistance from artificial exercises, is also a cause of
inferiority in the effects they produce on the system. The common
assumption that, so long as the amount of bodily action is the same, it
matters not whether it be pleasurable or otherwise, is a grave mistake.
An agreeable mental excitement has a highly invigorating influence. See
the effect produced upon an invalid by good news, or by the visit of an
old friend. Mark how careful medical men are to recommend lively society
to debilitated patients. Remember how beneficial to health is the
gratification produced by change of scene. The truth is that happiness
is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the circulation of the
blood, it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends
alike to increase health when it exists, and to restore it when it has
been lost. Hence the intrinsic superiority of play to gymnastics. The
extreme interest felt by children in their games, and the riotous glee
with which they carry on their rougher frolics, are of as much
importance as the accompanying exertion. And as not supplying these
mental stimuli, gymnastics must be radically defective.
Granting then, as we do, that formal exercises of the limbs are better
than nothing--granting, further, that they may be used with advantage as
supplementary aids; we yet contend that they can never serve in place of
the exercises prompted by Nature. For girls, as well as boys, the
sportive activities to which the instincts impel, are essential to
bodily welfare. Whoever forbids them, forbids the divinely-appointed
means to physical development.
* * * * *
A topic still remains--one perhaps more urgently demanding consideration
than any of the foregoing. It is asserted by not a few, that among the
educated classes the younger adults and those who are verging on
maturity, are neither so well grown nor so strong as their seniors. On
first hearing this assertion, we were inclined to class it as one of
the many manifestations of the old tendency to exalt the past at the
expense of the present. Calling to mind the facts that, as measured by
ancient armour, modern men are proved to be larger than ancient men; and
that the tables of mortality show no diminution, but rather an increase,
in the duration of life, we paid little attention to what seemed a
groundless belief. Detailed observation, however, has shaken our
opinion. Omitting from the comparison the labouring classes, we have
noticed a majority of cases in which the children do not reach the
stature of their parents; and, in massiveness, making due allowance for
difference of age, there seems a like inferiority. Medical men say that
now-a-days people cannot bear nearly so much depletion as in times gone
by. Premature baldness is far more common than it used to be. And an
early decay of teeth occurs in the rising generation with startling
frequency. In general vigour the contrast appears equally striking. Men
of past generations, living riotously as they did, could bear more than
men of the present generation, who live soberly, can bear. Though they
drank hard, kept irregular hours, were regardless of fresh air, and
thought little of cleanliness, our recent ancestors were capable of
prolonged application without injury, even to a ripe old age: witness
the annals of the bench and the bar. Yet we who think much about our
bodily welfare; who eat with moderation, and do not drink to excess; who
attend to ventilation, and use frequent ablutions; who make annual
excursions, and have the benefit of greater medical knowledge;--we are
continually breaking down under our work. Paying considerable attention
to the laws of health, we seem to be weaker than our grandfathers who,
in many respects, defied the laws of health. And, judging from the
appearance and frequent ailments of the rising generation, they are
likely to be even less robust than ourselves.
What is the meaning of this? Is it that past over-feeding, alike of
adults and children, was less injurious than the under-feeding to which
we have adverted as now so general? Is it that the deficient clothing
which this delusive hardening-theory has encouraged, is to blame? Is it
that the greater or less discouragement of juvenile sports, in deference
to a false refinement is the cause? From our reasonings it may be
inferred that each of these has probably had a share in producing the
evil.[7] But there has been yet another detrimental influence at work,
perhaps more potent than any of the others: we mean--excess of mental
application.
On old and young, the pressure of modern life puts a still-increasing
strain. In all businesses and professions, intenser competition taxes
the energies and abilities of every adult; and, to fit the young to hold
their places under this intenser competition, they are subject to
severer discipline than heretofore. The damage is thus doubled. Fathers,
who find themselves run hard by their multiplying competitors, and,
while labouring under this disadvantage, have to maintain a more
expensive style of living, are all the year round obliged to work early
and late, taking little exercise and getting but short holidays. The
constitutions shaken by this continued over-application, they bequeath
to their children. And then these comparatively feeble children,
predisposed to break down even under ordinary strains on their energies,
are required to go through a _curriculum_ much more extended than that
prescribed for the unenfeebled children of past generations.
The disastrous consequences that might be anticipated, are everywhere
visible. Go where you will, and before long there come under your notice
cases of children or youths, of either sex, more or less injured by
undue study. Here, to recover from a state of debility thus produced, a
year's rustication has been found necessary. There you find a chronic
congestion of the brain, that has already lasted many months, and
threatens to last much longer. Now you hear of a fever that resulted
from the over-excitement in some way brought on at school. And again,
the instance is that of a youth who has already had once to desist from
his studies, and who, since his return to them, is frequently taken out
of his class in a fainting fit. We state facts--facts not sought for,
but which have been thrust on our observation during the last two years;
and that, too, within a very limited range. Nor have we by any means
exhausted the list. Quite recently we had the opportunity of marking how
the evil becomes hereditary: the case being that of a lady of robust
parentage, whose system was so injured by the _regime_ of a Scotch
boarding-school, where she was under-fed and over-worked, that she
invariably suffers from vertigo on rising in the morning; and whose
children, inheriting this enfeebled brain, are several of them unable to
bear even a moderate amount of study without headache or giddiness. At
the present time we have daily under our eyes, a young lady whose system
has been damaged for life by the college-course through which she has
passed. Taxed as she was to such an extent that she had no energy left
for exercise, she is, now that she has finished her education, a
constant complainant. Appetite small and very capricious, mostly
refusing meat; extremities perpetually cold, even when the weather is
warm; a feebleness which forbids anything but the slowest walking, and
that only for a short time; palpitation on going upstairs; greatly
impaired vision--these, joined with checked growth and lax tissue, are
among the results entailed. And to her case we may add that of her
friend and fellow-student; who is similarly weak; who is liable to faint
even under the excitement of a quiet party of friends; and who has at
length been obliged by her medical attendant to desist from study
entirely.
If injuries so conspicuous are thus frequent, how very general must be
the smaller, and inconspicuous injuries! To one case where positive
illness is traceable to over-application, there are probably at least
half-a-dozen cases where the evil is unobtrusive and slowly
accumulating--cases where there is frequent derangement of the
functions, attributed to this or that special cause, or to
constitutional delicacy; cases where there is retardation and premature
arrest of bodily growth; cases where a latent tendency to consumption is
brought out and established; cases where a predisposition is given to
that now common cerebral disorder brought on by the labour of adult
life. How commonly health is thus undermined, will be clear to all who,
after noting the frequent ailments of hard-worked professional and
mercantile men, will reflect on the much worse effects which undue
application must produce on the undeveloped systems of children. The
young can bear neither so much hardship, nor so much physical exertion,
nor so much mental exertion, as the full grown. Judge, then, if the full
grown manifestly suffer from the excessive mental exertion required of
them, how great must be the damage which a mental exertion, often
equally excessive, inflicts on the young!
Indeed, when we examine the merciless school drill frequently enforced,
the wonder is, not that it does extreme injury, but that it can be
borne at all. Take the instance given by Sir John Forbes, from personal
knowledge; and which he asserts, after much inquiry, to be an average
sample of the middle-class girls'-school system throughout England.
Omitting detailed divisions of time, we quote the summary of the
twenty-four hours.
In bed 9 hours (the younger 10)
In school, at their studies and tasks 9 "
In school, or in the house, the elder at
optional studies or work, the younger at
play 31/2 " (the younger 21/2)
At meals 11/2 "
Exercise in the open air, in the shape of a
formal walk, often with lesson-books in
hand, and even this only when the weather
is fine at the appointed time. 1 "
----
24
And what are the results of this "astounding regimen," as Sir John
Forbes terms it? Of course feebleness, pallor, want of spirits, general
ill-health. But he describes something more. This utter disregard of
physical welfare, out of extreme anxiety to cultivate the mind--this
prolonged exercise of brain and deficient exercise of limbs,--he found
to be habitually followed, not only by disordered functions but by
malformation. He says:--"We lately visited, in a large town, a
boarding-school containing forty girls; and we learnt, on close and
accurate inquiry, that there was _not one_ of the girl who had been at
the school two years (and the majority had been as long) that was not
more or less _crooked_!"[8]
It may be that since 1833, when this was written, some improvement has
taken place. We hope it has. But that the system is still common--nay,
that it is in some cases carried to a greater extreme than ever; we can
personally testify. We recently went over a training-college for young
men: one of those instituted of late years for the purpose of supplying
schools with well-disciplined teachers. Here, under official
supervision, where something better than the judgment of private
school-mistresses might have been looked for, we found the daily routine
to be as follows:--
At 6 o'clock the students are called,
" 7 to 8 studies,
" 8 to 9 scripture-reading, prayers, and breakfast,
" 9 to 12 studies,
" 12 to 11/4 leisure, nominally devoted to walking or other exercise, but
often spent in study,
" 11/4 to 2 dinner, the meal commonly occupying twenty minutes,
" 2 to 5 studies,
" 5 to 6 tea and relaxation,
" 6 to 81/2 studies,
" 81/2 to 91/2 private studies in preparing lessons for the next day,
" 10 to bed.
Thus, out of the twenty-four hours, eight are devoted to sleep; four and
a quarter are occupied in dressing, prayers, meals, and the brief
periods of rest accompanying them; ten and a half are given to study;
and one and a quarter to exercise, which is optional and often avoided.
Not only, however, are the ten-and-a-half hours of recognised study
frequently increased to eleven-and-a-half by devoting to books the time
set apart for exercise; but some of the students get up at four o'clock
in the morning to prepare their lessons; and are actually encouraged by
their teachers to do this! The course to be passed through in a given
time is so extensive, and the teachers, whose credit is at stake in
getting their pupils well through the examinations, are so urgent, that
pupils are not uncommonly induced to spend twelve and thirteen hours a
day in mental labour!
It needs no prophet to see that the bodily injury inflicted must be
great. As we were told by one of the inmates, those who arrive with
fresh complexions quickly become blanched. Illness is frequent: there
are always some on the sick-list. Failure of appetite and indigestion
are very common. Diarrhoea is a prevalent disorder: not uncommonly a
third of the whole number of students suffering under it at the same
time. Headache is generally complained of; and by some is borne almost
daily for months. While a certain percentage break down entirely and go
away.
That this should be the regimen of what is in some sort a model
institution, established and superintended by the embodied enlightenment
of the age, is a startling fact. That the severe examinations, joined
with the short period assigned for preparation, should compel recourse
to a system which inevitably undermines the health of all who pass
through it, is proof, if not of cruelty, then of woeful ignorance.
The case is no doubt in a great degree exceptional--perhaps to be
paralleled only in other institutions of the same class. But that cases
so extreme should exist at all, goes far to show that the minds of the
rising generation are greatly over-tasked. Expressing as they do the
ideas of the educated community, the requirements of these training
colleges, even in the absence of other evidence, would imply a
prevailing tendency to an unduly urgent system of culture.
It seems strange that there should be so little consciousness of the
dangers of over-education during youth, when there is so general a
consciousness of the dangers of over-education during childhood. Most
parents are partially aware of the evil consequences that follow
infant-precocity. In every society may be heard reprobation of those who
too early stimulate the minds of their little ones. And the dread of
this early stimulation is great in proportion as there is adequate
knowledge of the effects: witness the implied opinion of one of our most
distinguished professors of physiology, who told us that he did not
intend his little boy to learn any lessons until he was eight years old.
But while to all it is a familiar truth that a forced development of
intelligence in childhood, entails either physical feebleness, or
ultimate stupidity, or early death; it appears not to be perceived that
throughout youth the same truth holds. Yet it unquestionably does so.
There is a given order in which, and a given rate at which, the
faculties unfold. If the course of education conforms itself to that
order and rate, well. If not--if the higher faculties are early taxed by
presenting an order of knowledge more complex and abstract than can be
readily assimilated; or if, by excess of culture, the intellect in
general is developed to a degree beyond that which is natural to its
age; the abnormal advantage gained will inevitably be accompanied by
some equivalent, or more than equivalent, evil.
For Nature is a strict accountant; and if you demand of her in one
direction more than she is prepared to lay out, she balances the account
by making a deduction elsewhere. If you will let her follow her own
course, taking care to supply, in right quantities and kinds, the raw
materials of bodily and mental growth required at each age, she will
eventually produce an individual more or less evenly developed. If,
however, you insist on premature or undue growth of any one part, she
will, with more or less protest, concede the point; but that she may do
your extra work, she must leave some of her more important work undone.
Let it never be forgotten that the amount of vital energy which the body
at any moment possesses, is limited; and that, being limited, it is
impossible to get from it more than a fixed quantity of results. In a
child or youth the demands upon this vital energy are various and
urgent. As before pointed out, the waste consequent on the day's bodily
exercise has to be met; the wear of brain entailed by the day's study
has to be made good; a certain additional growth of body has to be
provided for; and also a certain additional growth of brain: to which
must be added the amount of energy absorbed in digesting the large
quantity of food required for meeting these many demands. Now, that to
divert an excess of energy into any one of these channels is to abstract
it from the others, is both manifest _a priori_, and proved _a
posteriori_, by the experience of every one. Every one knows, for
instance, that the digestion of a heavy meal makes such a demand on the
system as to produce lassitude of mind and body, frequently ending in
sleep. Every one knows, too, that excess of bodily exercise diminishes
the power of thought--that the temporary prostration following any
sudden exertion, or the fatigue produced by a thirty miles' walk, is
accompanied by a disinclination to mental effort; that, after a month's
pedestrian tour, the mental inertia is such that some days are required
to overcome it; and that in peasants who spend their lives in muscular
labour the activity of mind is very small. Again, it is a familiar truth
that during those fits of rapid growth which sometimes occur in
childhood, the great abstraction of energy is shown in an attendant
prostration, bodily and mental. Once more, the facts that violent
muscular exertion after eating, will stop digestion; and that children
who are early put to hard labour become stunted; similarly exhibit the
antagonism--similarly imply that excess of activity in one direction
involves deficiency of it in other directions. Now, the law which is
thus manifest in extreme cases, holds in all cases. These injurious
abstractions of energy as certainly take place when the undue demands
are slight and constant, as when they are great and sudden. Hence, if
during youth the expenditure in mental labour exceeds that which Nature
has provided for; the expenditure for other purposes falls below what it
should have been; and evils of one kind or other are inevitably
entailed. Let us briefly consider these evils.
Supposing the over-activity of brain to exceed the normal activity only
in a moderate degree, there will be nothing more than some slight
reaction on the development of the body: the stature falling a little
below that which it would else have reached; or the bulk being less than
it would have been; or the quality of tissue not being so good. One or
more of these effects must necessarily occur. The extra quantity of
blood supplied to the brain during mental exertion, and during the
subsequent period in which the waste of cerebral substance is being made
good, is blood that would else have been circulating through the limbs
and viscera; and the growth or repair for which that blood would have
supplied materials, is lost. The physical reaction being certain, the
question is, whether the gain resulting from the extra culture is
equivalent to the loss?--whether defect of bodily growth, or the want of
that structural perfection which gives vigour and endurance, is
compensated by the additional knowledge acquired?
When the excess of mental exertion is greater, there follow results far
more serious; telling not only against bodily perfection, but against
the perfection of the brain itself. It is a physiological law, first
pointed out by M. Isidore St. Hilaire, and to which attention has been
drawn by Mr. Lewes in his essay on "Dwarfs and Giants," that there is an
antagonism between _growth_ and _development_. By growth, as used in
this antithetical sense, is to be understood _increase of size_; by
development, _increase of structure_. And the law is, that great
activity in either of these processes involves retardation or arrest of
the other. A familiar example is furnished by the cases of the
caterpillar and the chrysalis. In the caterpillar there is extremely
rapid augmentation of bulk; but the structure is scarcely at all more
complex when the caterpillar is full-grown than when it is small. In the
chrysalis the bulk does not increase; on the contrary, weight is lost
during this stage of the creature's life; but the elaboration of a more
complex structure goes on with great activity. The antagonism, here so
clear, is less traceable in higher creatures, because the two processes
are carried on together. But we see it pretty well illustrated among
ourselves when we contrast the sexes. A girl develops in body and mind
rapidly, and ceases to grow comparatively early. A boy's bodily and
mental development is slower, and his growth greater. At the age when
the one is mature, finished, and having all faculties in full play, the
other, whose vital energies have been more directed towards increase of
size, is relatively incomplete in structure; and shows it in a
comparative awkwardness, bodily and mental. Now this law is true of each
separate part of the organism, as well as of the whole. The abnormally
rapid advance of any organ in respect of structure, involves premature
arrest of its growth; and this happens with the organ of the mind as
certainly as with any other organ. The brain, which during early years
is relatively large in mass but imperfect in structure, will, if
required to perform its functions with undue activity, undergo a
structural advance greater than is appropriate to its age; but the
ultimate effect will be a falling short of the size and power that would
else have been attained. And this is a part-cause--probably the chief
cause--why precocious children, and youths who up to a certain time were
carrying all before them, so often stop short and disappoint the high
hopes of their parents.
But these results of over-education, disastrous as they are, are perhaps
less disastrous than the effects produced on the health--the undermined
constitution, the enfeebled energies, the morbid feelings. Recent
discoveries in physiology have shown how immense is the influence of the
brain over the functions of the body. Digestion, circulation, and
through these all other organic processes, are profoundly affected by
cerebral excitement. Whoever has seen repeated, as we have, the
experiment first performed by Weber, showing the consequence of
irritating the _vagus_ nerve, which connects the brain with the
viscera--whoever has seen the action of the heart suddenly arrested by
irritating this nerve; slowly recommencing when the irritation is
suspended; and again arrested the moment it is renewed; will have a
vivid conception of the depressing influence which an over-wrought brain
exercises on the body. The effects thus physiologically explained, are
indeed exemplified in ordinary experience. There is no one but has felt
the palpitation accompanying hope, fear, anger, joy--no one but has
observed how laboured becomes the action of the heart when these
feelings are violent. And though there are many who have never suffered
that extreme emotional excitement which is followed by arrest of the
heart's action and fainting; yet every one knows these to be cause and
effect. It is a familiar fact, too, that disturbance of the stomach
results from mental excitement exceeding a certain intensity. Loss of
appetite is a common consequence alike of very pleasurable and very
painful states of mind. When the event producing a pleasurable or
painful state of mind occurs shortly after a meal, it not unfrequently
happens either that the stomach rejects what has been eaten, or digests
it with great difficulty and under protest. And as every one who taxes
his brain much can testify, even purely intellectual action will, when
excessive, produce analogous effects. Now the relation between brain and
body which is so manifest in these extreme cases, holds equally in
ordinary, less-marked cases. Just as these violent but temporary
cerebral excitements produce violent but temporary disturbances of the
viscera; so do the less violent but chronic cerebral excitements produce
less violent but chronic visceral disturbances. This is not simply an
inference:--it is a truth to which every medical man can bear witness;
and it is one to which a long and sad experience enables us to give
personal testimony. Various degrees and forms of bodily derangement,
often taking years of enforced idleness to set partially right, result
from this prolonged over-exertion of mind. Sometimes the heart is
chiefly affected: habitual palpitations; a pulse much enfeebled; and
very generally a diminution in the number of beats from seventy-two to
sixty, or even fewer. Sometimes the conspicuous disorder is of the
stomach: a dyspepsia which makes life a burden, and is amenable to no
remedy but time. In many cases both heart and stomach are implicated.
Mostly the sleep is short and broken. And very generally there is more
or less mental depression.
Consider, then, how great must be the damage inflicted by undue mental
excitement on children and youths. More or less of this constitutional
disturbance will inevitably follow an exertion of brain beyond the
normal amount; and when not so excessive as to produce absolute illness,
is sure to entail a slowly accumulating degeneracy of _physique_. With a
small and fastidious appetite, an imperfect digestion, and an enfeebled
circulation, how can the developing body flourish? The due performance
of every vital process depends on an adequate supply of good blood.
Without enough good blood, no gland can secrete properly, no viscus can
fully discharge its office. Without enough good blood, no nerve, muscle,
membrane, or other tissue can be efficiently repaired. Without enough
good blood, growth will neither be sound nor sufficient. Judge, then,
how bad must be the consequences when to a growing body the weakened
stomach supplies blood that is deficient in quantity and poor in
quality; while the debilitated heart propels this poor and scanty blood
with unnatural slowness.
And if, as all who investigate the matter must admit, physical
degeneracy is a consequence of excessive study, how grave is the
condemnation to be passed on this cramming-system above exemplified. It
is a terrible mistake, from whatever point of view regarded. It is a
mistake in so far as the mere acquirement of knowledge is concerned. For
the mind, like the body, cannot assimilate beyond a certain rate; and if
you ply it with facts faster than it can assimilate them, they are soon
rejected again: instead of being built into the intellectual fabric,
they fall out of recollection after the passing of the examination for
which they were got up. It is a mistake, too, because it tends to make
study distasteful. Either through the painful associations produced by
ceaseless mental toil, or through the abnormal state of brain it leaves
behind, it often generates an aversion to books; and, instead of that
subsequent self-culture induced by rational education, there comes
continued retrogression. It is a mistake, also, inasmuch as it assumes
that the acquisition of knowledge is everything; and forgets that a much
more important thing is the organisation of knowledge, for which time
and spontaneous thinking are requisite. As Humboldt remarks respecting
the progress of intelligence in general, that "the interpretation of
Nature is obscured when the description languishes under too great an
accumulation of insulated facts;" so, it may be remarked respecting the
progress of individual intelligence, that the mind is over-burdened and
hampered by an excess of ill-digested information. It is not the
knowledge stored up as intellectual fat which is of value; but that
which is turned into intellectual muscle. The mistake goes still deeper
however. Even were the system good as producing intellectual efficiency,
which it is not, it would still be bad, because, as we have shown, it is
fatal to that vigour of _physique_ needful to make intellectual training
available in the struggle of life. Those who, in eagerness to cultivate
their pupils' minds, are reckless of their bodies, do not remember that
success in the world depends more on energy than on information; and
that a policy which in cramming with information undermines energy, is
self-defeating. The strong will and untiring activity due to abundant
animal vigour, go far to compensate even great defects of education; and
when joined with that quite adequate education which may be obtained
without sacrificing health, they ensure an easy victory over competitors
enfeebled by excessive study: prodigies of learning though they may be.
A comparatively small and ill-made engine, worked at high pressure, will
do more than a large and well-finished one worked at low-pressure. What
folly is it, then, while finishing the engine, so to damage the boiler
that it will not generate steam! Once more, the system is a mistake, as
involving a false estimate of welfare in life. Even supposing it were a
means to worldly success, instead of a means to worldly failure, yet, in
the entailed ill-health, it would inflict a more than equivalent curse.
What boots it to have attained wealth, if the wealth is accompanied by
ceaseless ailments? What is the worth of distinction, if it has brought
hypochondria with it? Surely no one needs telling that a good digestion,
a bounding pulse, and high spirits, are elements of happiness which no
external advantages can out-balance. Chronic bodily disorder casts a
gloom over the brightest prospects; while the vivacity of strong health
gilds even misfortune. We contend, then, that this over-education is
vicious in every way--vicious, as giving knowledge that will soon be
forgotten; vicious, as producing a disgust for knowledge; vicious, as
neglecting that organisation of knowledge which is more important than
its acquisition; vicious, as weakening or destroying that energy without
which a trained intellect is useless; vicious, as entailing that
ill-health for which even success would not compensate, and which makes
failure doubly bitter. On women the effects of this forcing system are,
if possible, even more injurious than on men. Being in great measure
debarred from those vigorous and enjoyable exercises of body by which
boys mitigate the evils of excessive study, girls feel these evils in
their full intensity. Hence, the much smaller proportion of them who
grow up well-made and healthy. In the pale, angular, flat-chested young
ladies, so abundant in London drawing-rooms, we see the effect of
merciless application, unrelieved by youthful sports; and this physical
degeneracy hinders their welfare far more than their many
accomplishments aid it. Mammas anxious to make their daughters
attractive, could scarcely choose a course more fatal than this, which
sacrifices the body to the mind. Either they disregard the tastes of the
opposite sex, or else their conception of those tastes is erroneous. Men
care little for erudition in women; but very much for physical beauty,
good nature, and sound sense. How many conquests does the blue-stocking
make through her extensive knowledge of history? What man ever fell in
love with a woman because she understood Italian? Where is the Edwin who
was brought to Angelina's feet by her German? But rosy cheeks and
laughing eyes are great attractions. A finely rounded figure draws
admiring glances. The liveliness and good humour that overflowing health
produces, go a great way towards establishing attachments. Every one
knows cases where bodily perfections, in the absence of all other
recommendations, have incited a passion that carried all before it; but
scarcely any one can point to a case where intellectual acquirements,
apart from moral or physical attributes, have aroused such a feeling.
The truth is that, out of the many elements uniting in various
proportions to produce in a man's breast the complex emotion we call
love, the strongest are those produced by physical attractions; the next
in order of strength are those produced by moral attractions; the
weakest are those produced by intellectual attractions; and even these
are dependent less on acquired knowledge than on natural
faculty--quickness, wit, insight. If any think the assertion a
derogatory one, and inveigh against the masculine character for being
thus swayed; we reply that they little know what they say when they thus
call in question the Divine ordinations. Even were there no obvious
meaning in the arrangement, we might be sure that some important end was
subserved. But the meaning is quite obvious to those who examine. When
we remember that one of Nature's ends, or rather her supreme end, is the
welfare of posterity; further that, in so far as posterity are
concerned, a cultivated intelligence based on a bad _physique_ is of
little worth, since its descendants will die out in a generation or two;
and conversely that a good _physique_, however poor the accompanying
mental endowments, is worth preserving, because, throughout future
generations, the mental endowments may be indefinitely developed; we
perceive how important is the balance of instincts above described. But,
advantage apart, the instincts being thus balanced, it is folly to
persist in a system which undermines a girl's constitution that it may
overload her memory. Educate as highly as possible--the higher the
better--providing no bodily injury is entailed (and we may remark, in
passing, that a sufficiently high standard might be reached were the
parrot-faculty cultivated less, and the human faculty more, and were the
discipline extended over that now wasted period between leaving school
and being married). But to educate in such manner, or to such extent, as
to produce physical degeneracy, is to defeat the chief end for which the
toil and cost and anxiety are submitted to. By subjecting their
daughters to this high-pressure system, parents frequently ruin their
prospects in life. Besides inflicting on them enfeebled health, with all
its pains and disabilities and gloom; they not unfrequently doom them to
celibacy.
* * * * *
The physical education of children is thus, in various ways, seriously
faulty. It errs in deficient feeding; in deficient clothing; in
deficient exercise (among girls at least); and in excessive mental
application. Considering the regime as a whole, its tendency is too
exacting: it asks too much and gives too little. In the extent to which
it taxes the vital energies, it makes the juvenile life far more like
the adult life than it should be. It overlooks the truth that, as in the
foetus the entire vitality is expended in growth--as in the infant,
the expenditure of vitality in growth is so great as to leave extremely
little for either physical or mental action; so throughout childhood and
youth, growth is the dominant requirement to which all others must be
subordinated: a requirement which dictates the giving of much and the
taking away of little--a requirement which, therefore, restricts the
exertion of body and mind in proportion to the rapidity of growth--a
requirement which permits the mental and physical activities to increase
only as fast as the rate of growth diminishes.
The _rationale_ of this high-pressure education is that it results from
our passing phase of civilisation. In primitive times, when aggression
and defence were the leading social activities, bodily vigour with its
accompanying courage were the desiderata; and then education was almost
wholly physical: mental cultivation was little cared for, and indeed, as
in feudal ages, was often treated with contempt. But now that our state
is relatively peaceful--now that muscular power is of use for little
else than manual labour, while social success of nearly every kind
depends very much on mental power; our education has become almost
exclusively mental. Instead of respecting the body and ignoring the
mind, we now respect the mind and ignore the body. Both these attitudes
are wrong. We do not yet realise the truth that as, in this life of
ours, the physical underlies the mental, the mental must not be
developed at the expense of the physical. The ancient and modern
conceptions must be combined.
Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will
both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the
preservation of health is a _duty_. Few seem conscious that there is
such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply
the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please.
Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates, they regard
simply as grievances: not as the effects of a conduct more or less
flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents,
and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime;
yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true
that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily
transgression is recognised; but none appear to infer that, if this
bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression.
The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are _physical
sins_. When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till then,
will the physical training of the young receive the attention it
deserves.
[1] _Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine._
[2] _Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine._
[3] _Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology._
[4] Morton's _Cyclopaedia of Agriculture_.
[5] Morton's _Cyclopaedia of Agriculture_.
[6] It is needful to remark that children whose legs and arms have been
from the beginning habitually without covering, cease to be conscious
that the exposed surfaces are cold; just as by use we have all ceased to
be conscious that our faces are cold, even when out of doors. But though
in such children the sensations no longer protest, it does not follow
that the system escapes injury, any more than it follows that the
Fuegian is undamaged by exposure, because he bears with indifference the
melting of the falling snow on his naked body.
[7] We are not certain that the propagation of subdued forms of
constitutional disease through the agency of vaccination is not a part
cause. Sundry facts in pathology suggest the inference, that when the
system of a vaccinated child is excreting the vaccine virus by means of
pustules, it will tend also to excrete through such pustules other
morbific matters; especially if these morbific matters are of a kind
ordinarily got rid of by the skin, as are some of the worst of them.
Hence it is very possible--probable even--that a child with a
constitutional taint, too slight to show itself in visible disease, may,
through the medium of vitiated vaccine lymph taken from it, convey a
like constitutional taint to other children, and these to others.
[8] _Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine_, vol. i. pp. 697, 698.
PART II
PROGRESS: ITS LAW AND CAUSE[1]
The current conception of Progress is somewhat shifting and indefinite.
Sometimes it comprehends little more than simple growth--as of a nation
in the number of its members and the extent of territory over which it
has spread. Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material
products--as when the advance of agriculture and manufactures is the
topic. Sometimes the superior quality of these products is contemplated:
and sometimes the new or improved appliances by which they are produced.
When, again, we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to the
state of the individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the
progress of Knowledge, of Science, of Art, is commented upon, we have in
view certain abstract results of human thought and action. Not only,
however, is the current conception of Progress more or less vague, but
it is in great measure erroneous. It takes in not so much the reality of
Progress as its accompaniments--not so much the substance as the shadow.
That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the child into
the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded as
consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws understood:
whereas the actual progress consists in those internal modifications of
which this increased knowledge is the expression. Social progress is
supposed to consist in the produce of a greater quantity and variety of
the articles required for satisfying men's wants; in the increasing
security of person and property; in widening freedom of action: whereas,
rightly understood, social progress consists in those changes of
structure in the social organism which have entailed these consequences.
The current conception is a teleological one. The phenomena are
contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those changes
are held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly tend to
heighten human happiness. And they are thought to constitute progress
simply _because_ they tend to heighten human happiness. But rightly to
understand progress, we must inquire what is the nature of these
changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing, for example, to
regard the successive geological modifications that have taken place in
the Earth, as modifications that have gradually fitted it for the
habitation of Man, and as _therefore_ a geological progress, we must
seek to determine the character common to the modifications--the law to
which they all conform. And similarly in every other case. Leaving out
of sight concomitants and beneficial consequences, let us ask what
Progress is in itself.
In respect to that progress which individual organisms display in the
course of their evolution, this question has been answered by the
Germans. The investigations of Wolff, Goethe, and Von Baer, have
established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the
development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute
an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure.
In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is uniform
throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first step is
the appearance of a difference between two parts of this substance; or,
as the phenomenon is called in physiological language, a
differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins
itself to exhibit some contrast of parts; and by and by these secondary
differentiations become as definite as the original one. This process is
continuously repeated--is simultaneously going on in all parts of the
growing embryo; and by endless such differentiations there is finally
produced that complex combination of tissues and organs constituting the
adult animal or plant. This is the history of all organisms whatever. It
is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change
from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic
progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of
the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the
development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of
Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple
into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout.
From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results
of civilisation, we shall find that the transformation of the
homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress
essentially consists.
With the view of showing that _if_ the Nebular Hypothesis be true, the
genesis of the solar system supplies one illustration of this law, let
us assume that the matter of which the sun and planets consist was once
in a diffused form; and that from the gravitation of its atoms there
resulted a gradual concentration. By the hypothesis, the solar system in
its nascent state existed as an indefinitely extended and nearly
homogeneous medium--a medium almost homogeneous in density, in
temperature, and in other physical attributes. The first advance towards
consolidation resulted in a differentiation between the occupied space
which the nebulous mass still filled, and the unoccupied space which it
previously filled. There simultaneously resulted a contrast in density
and a contrast in temperature, between the interior and the exterior of
this mass. And at the same time there arose throughout it rotatory
movements, whose velocities varied according to their distances from its
centre. These differentiations increased in number and degree until
there was the organised group of sun, planets, and satellites, which we
now know--a group which represents numerous contrasts of structure and
action among its members. There are the immense contrasts between the
sun and planets, in bulk and in weight; as well as the subordinate
contrasts between one planet and another, and between the planets and
their satellites. There is the similarly marked contrast between the sun
as almost stationary, and the planets as moving round him with great
velocity; while there are the secondary contrasts between the velocities
and periods of the several planets, and between their simple revolutions
and the double ones of their satellites, which have to move round their
primaries while moving round the sun. There is the yet further strong
contrast between the sun and the planets in respect of temperature; and
there is reason to suppose that the planets and satellites differ from
each other in their proper heat, as well as in the heat they receive
from the sun.
When we bear in mind that, in addition to these various contrasts, the
planets and satellites also differ in respect to their distances from
each other and their primary; in respect to the inclinations of their
orbits, the inclinations of their axes, their times of rotation on their
axes, their specific gravities, and their physical constitutions; we see
what a high degree of heterogeneity the solar system exhibits, when
compared with the almost complete homogeneity of the nebulous mass out
of which it is supposed to have originated.
Passing from this hypothetical illustration, which must be taken for
what it is worth, without prejudice to the general argument, let us
descend to a more certain order of evidence. It is now generally agreed
among geologists that the Earth was at first a mass of molten matter;
and that it is still fluid and incandescent at the distance of a few
miles beneath its surface. Originally, then, it was homogeneous in
consistence, and, in virtue of the circulation that takes place in
heated fluids, must have been comparatively homogeneous in temperature;
and it must have been surrounded by an atmosphere consisting partly of
the elements of air and water, and partly of those various other
elements which assume a gaseous form at high temperatures. That slow
cooling by radiation which is still going on at an inappreciable rate,
and which, though originally far more rapid than now, necessarily
required an immense time to produce any decided change, must ultimately
have resulted in the solidification of the portion most able to part
with its heat--namely, the surface. In the thin crust thus formed we
have the first marked differentiation. A still further cooling, a
consequent thickening of this crust, and an accompanying deposition of
all solidifiable elements contained in the atmosphere, must finally have
been followed by the condensation of the water previously existing as
vapour. A second marked differentiation must thus have arisen: and as
the condensation must have taken place on the coolest parts of the
surface--namely, about the poles--there must thus have resulted the
first geographical distinction of parts. To these illustrations of
growing heterogeneity, which, though deduced from the known laws of
matter, may be regarded as more or less hypothetical, Geology adds an
extensive series that have been inductively established. Its
investigations show that the Earth has been continually becoming more
heterogeneous in virtue of the multiplication of the strata which form
its crust; further, that it has been becoming more heterogeneous in
respect of the composition of these strata, the latter of which, being
made from the detritus of the older ones, are many of them rendered
highly complex by the mixture of materials they contain; and that this
heterogeneity has been vastly increased by the action of the Earth's
still molten nucleus upon its envelope, whence have resulted not only a
great variety of igneous rocks, but the tilting up of sedimentary strata
at all angles, the formation of faults and metallic veins, the
production of endless dislocations and irregularities. Yet again,
geologists teach us that the Earth's surface has been growing more
varied in elevation--that the most ancient mountain systems are the
smallest, and the Andes and Himalayas the most modern; while in all
probability there have been corresponding changes in the bed of the
ocean. As a consequence of these ceaseless differentiations, we now find
that no considerable portion of the Earth's exposed surface is like any
other portion, either in contour, in geologic structure, or in chemical
composition; and that in most parts it changes from mile to mile in all
these characteristics.
Moreover, it must not be forgotten that there has been simultaneously
going on a gradual differentiation of climates. As fast as the Earth
cooled and its crust solidified, there arose appreciable differences in
temperature between those parts of its surface most exposed to the sun
and those less exposed. Gradually, as the cooling progressed, these
differences became more pronounced; until there finally resulted those
marked contrasts between regions of perpetual ice and snow, regions
where winter and summer alternately reign for periods varying according
to the latitude, and regions where summer follows summer with scarcely
an appreciable variation. At the same time the successive elevations and
subsidences of different portions of the Earth's crust, tending as they
have done to the present irregular distribution of land and sea, have
entailed various modifications of climate beyond those dependent on
latitude; while a yet further series of such modifications have been
produced by increasing differences of elevation in the land, which have
in sundry places brought arctic, temperate, and tropical climates to
within a few miles of each other. And the general result of these
changes is, that not only has every extensive region its own
meteorologic conditions, but that every locality in each region differs
more or less from others in those conditions, as in its structure, its
contour, its soil. Thus, between our existing Earth, the phenomena of
whose varied crust neither geographers, geologists, mineralogists, nor
meteorologists have yet enumerated, and the molten globe out of which it
was evolved, the contrast in heterogeneity is sufficiently striking.
When from the Earth itself we turn to the plants and animals that have
lived, or still live, upon its surface, we find ourselves in some
difficulty from lack of facts. That every existing organism has been
developed out of the simple into the complex, is indeed the first
established truth of all; and that every organism that has existed was
similarly developed, is an inference which no physiologist will hesitate
to draw. But when we pass from individual forms of life to Life in
general, and inquire whether the same law is seen in the _ensemble_ of
its manifestations,--whether modern plants and animals are of more
heterogeneous structure than ancient ones, and whether the earth's
present Flora and Fauna are more heterogeneous than the Flora and Fauna
of the past,--we find the evidence so fragmentary, that every conclusion
is open to dispute. Two-thirds of the Earth's surface being covered by
water; a great part of the exposed land being inaccessible to, or
untravelled by, the geologist; the greater part of the remainder having
been scarcely more than glanced at; and even the most familiar portions,
as England, having been so imperfectly explored that a new series of
strata has been added within these four years,--it is manifestly
impossible for us to say with any certainty what creatures have, and
what have not, existed at any particular period. Considering the
perishable nature of many of the lower organic forms, the metamorphosis
of many sedimentary strata, and the gaps that occur among the rest, we
shall see further reason for distrusting our deductions. On the one
hand, the repeated discovery of vertebrate remains in strata previously
supposed to contain none,--of reptiles where only fish were thought to
exist,--of mammals where it was believed there were no creatures higher
than reptiles,--renders it daily more manifest how small is the value of
negative evidence.
On the other hand, the worthlessness of the assumption that we have
discovered the earliest, or anything like the earliest, organic remains,
is becoming equally clear. That the oldest known sedimentary rocks have
been greatly changed by igneous action, and that still older ones have
been totally transformed by it, is becoming undeniable. And the fact
that sedimentary strata earlier than any we know, have been melted up,
being admitted, it must also be admitted that we cannot say how far back
in time this destruction of sedimentary strata has been going on. Thus
it is manifest that the title, _Palaeozoic_, as applied to the earliest
known fossiliferous strata, involves a _petitio principii_; and that,
for aught we know to the contrary, only the last few chapters of the
Earth's biological history may have come down to us. On neither side,
therefore, is the evidence conclusive. Nevertheless we cannot but think
that, scanty as they are, the facts, taken altogether, tend to show both
that the more heterogeneous organisms have been evolved in the later
geologic periods, and that Life in general has been more heterogeneously
manifested as time has advanced. Let us cite, in illustration, the one
case of the _vertebrata_. The earliest known vertebrate remains are
those of Fishes; and Fishes are the most homogeneous of the vertebrata.
Later and more heterogeneous are Reptiles. Later still, and more
heterogeneous still, are Mammals and Birds. If it be said, as it may
fairly be said, that the Palaeozoic deposits, not being estuary deposits,
are not likely to contain the remains of terrestrial vertebrata, which
may nevertheless have existed at that era, we reply that we are merely
pointing to the leading facts, _such as they are_.
But to avoid any such criticism, let us take the mammalian subdivision
only. The earliest known remains of mammals are those of small
marsupials, which are the lowest of the mammalian type; while,
conversely, the highest of the mammalian type--Man--is the most recent.
The evidence that the vertebrate fauna, as a whole, has become more
heterogeneous, is considerably stronger. To the argument that the
vertebrate fauna of the Palaeozoic period, consisting, so far as we know,
entirely of Fishes, was less heterogeneous than the modern vertebrate
fauna, which includes Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals, of multitudinous
genera, it may be replied, as before, that estuary deposits of the
Palaeozoic period, could we find them, might contain other orders of
vertebrata. But no such reply can be made to the argument that whereas
the marine vertebrata of the Palaeozoic period consisted entirely of
cartilaginous fishes, the marine vertebrata of later periods include
numerous genera of osseous fishes; and that, therefore, the later marine
vertebrate faunas are more heterogeneous than the oldest known one. Nor,
again, can any such reply be made to the fact that there are far more
numerous orders and genera of mammalian remains in the tertiary
formations than in the secondary formations. Did we wish merely to make
out the best case, we might dwell upon the opinion of Dr. Carpenter, who
says that "the general facts of Palaeontology appear to sanction the
belief, that _the same plan_ may be traced out in what may be called
_the general life of the globe_, as in _the individual life_ of every
one of the forms of organised being which now people it." Or we might
quote, as decisive, the judgment of Professor Owen, who holds that the
earlier examples of each group of creatures severally departed less
widely from archetypal generality than the later ones--were severally
less unlike the fundamental form common to the group as a whole; that is
to say--constituted a less heterogeneous group of creatures; and who
further upholds the doctrine of a biological progression. But in
deference to an authority for whom we have the highest respect, who
considers that the evidence at present obtained does not justify a
verdict either way, we are content to leave the question open.
Whether an advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is or is
not displayed in the biological history of the globe, it is clearly
enough displayed in the progress of the latest and most heterogeneous
creature--Man. It is alike true that, during the period in which the
Earth has been peopled, the human organism has grown more heterogeneous
among the civilised divisions of the species; and that the species, as a
whole, has been growing more heterogeneous in virtue of the
multiplication of races and the differentiation of these races from each
other.
In proof of the first of these positions, we may cite the fact that, in
the relative development of the limbs, the civilised man departs more
widely from the general type of the placental mammalia than do the lower
human races. While often possessing well-developed body and arms, the
Papuan has extremely small legs: thus reminding us of the quadrumana, in
which there is no great contrast in size between the hind and fore
limbs. But in the European, the greater length and massiveness of the
legs has become very marked--the fore and hind limbs are relatively more
heterogeneous. Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones bear to
the facial bones illustrates the same truth. Among the vertebrata in
general, progress is marked by an increasing heterogeneity in the
vertebral column, and more especially in the vertebrae constituting the
skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the relatively larger
size of the bones which cover the brain, and the relatively smaller size
of those which form the jaw, etc. Now, this characteristic, which is
stronger in Man than in any other creature, is stronger in the European
than in the savage. Moreover, judging from the greater extent and
variety of faculty he exhibits, we may infer that the civilised man has
also a more complex or heterogeneous nervous system than the uncivilised
man: and indeed the fact is in part visible in the increased ratio which
his cerebrum bears to the subjacent ganglia.
If further elucidation be needed, we may find it in every nursery. The
infant European has sundry marked points of resemblance to the lower
human races; as in the flatness of the alae of the nose, the depression
of its bridge, the divergence and forward opening of the nostrils, the
form of the lips, the absence of a frontal sinus, the width between the
eyes, the smallness of the legs. Now, as the development process by
which these traits are turned into those of the adult European, is a
continuation of that change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
displayed during the previous evolution of the embryo, which every
physiologist will admit; it follows that the parallel developmental
process by which the like traits of the barbarous races have been turned
into those of the civilised races, has also been a continuation of the
change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The truth of the
second position--that Mankind, as a whole, have become more
heterogeneous--is so obvious as scarcely to need illustration. Every
work on Ethnology, by its divisions and subdivisions of races, bears
testimony to it. Even were we to admit the hypothesis that Mankind
originated from several separate stocks, it would still remain true,
that as, from each of these stocks, there have sprung many now widely
different tribes, which are proved by philological evidence to have had
a common origin, the race as a whole is far less homogeneous than it
once was. Add to which, that we have, in the Anglo-Americans, an example
of a new variety arising within these few generations; and that, if we
may trust to the description of observers, we are likely soon to have
another such example in Australia.
On passing from Humanity under its individual form, to Humanity as
socially embodied, we find the general law still more variously
exemplified. The change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is
displayed equally in the progress of civilisation as a whole, and in the
progress of every tribe or nation; and is still going on with increasing
rapidity. As we see in existing barbarous tribes, society in its first
and lowest form is a homogeneous aggregation of individuals having like
powers and like functions: the only marked difference of function being
that which accompanies difference of sex. Every man is warrior, hunter,
fisherman, tool-maker, builder; every woman performs the same
drudgeries; every family is self-sufficing, and save for purposes of
aggression and defence, might as well live apart from the rest. Very
early, however, in the process of social evolution, we find an incipient
differentiation between the governing and the governed. Some kind of
chieftainship seems coeval with the first advance from the state of
separate wandering families to that of a nomadic tribe. The authority of
the strongest makes itself felt among a body of savages as in a herd of
animals, or a posse of schoolboys. At first, however, it is indefinite,
uncertain; is shared by others of scarcely inferior power; and is
unaccompanied by any difference in occupation or style of living: the
first ruler kills his own game, makes his own weapons, builds his own
hut, and economically considered, does not differ from others of his
tribe. Gradually, as the tribe progresses, the contrast between the
governing and the governed grows more decided. Supreme power becomes
hereditary in one family; the head of that family, ceasing to provide
for his own wants, is served by others; and he begins to assume the sole
office of ruling.
At the same time there has been arising a co-ordinate species of
government--that of Religion. As all ancient records and traditions
prove, the earliest rulers are regarded as divine personages. The maxims
and commands they uttered during their lives are held sacred after their
deaths, and are enforced by their divinely-descended successors; who in
their turns are promoted to the pantheon of the race, there to be
worshipped and propitiated along with their predecessors: the most
ancient of whom is the supreme god, and the rest subordinate gods. For a
long time these connate forms of government--civil and
religious--continue closely associated. For many generations the king
continues to be the chief priest, and the priesthood to be members of
the royal race. For many ages religious law continues to contain more or
less of civil regulation, and civil law to possess more or less of
religious sanction; and even among the most advanced nations these two
controlling agencies are by no means completely differentiated from each
other.
Having a common root with these, and gradually diverging from them, we
find yet another controlling agency--that of Manners or ceremonial
usages. All titles of honour are originally the names of the god-king;
afterwards of God and the king; still later of persons of high rank; and
finally come, some of them, to be used between man and man. All forms of
complimentary address were at first the expressions of submission from
prisoners to their conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either
human or divine--expressions that were afterwards used to propitiate
subordinate authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse.
All modes of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and
used in worship of him after his death. Presently others of the
god-descended race were similarly saluted; and by degrees some of the
salutations have become the due of all.[2] Thus, no sooner does the
originally homogeneous social mass differentiate into the governed and
the governing parts, than this last exhibits an incipient
differentiation into religious and secular--Church and State; while at
the same time there begins to be differentiated from both, that less
definite species of government which rules our daily intercourse--a
species of government which, as we may see in heralds' colleges, in
books of the peerage, in masters of ceremonies, is not without a certain
embodiment of its own. Each of these is itself subject to successive
differentiations. In the course of ages, there arises, as among
ourselves, a highly complex political organisation of monarch,
ministers, lords and commons, with their subordinate administrative
departments, courts of justice, revenue offices, etc., supplemented in
the provinces by municipal governments, county governments, parish or
union governments--all of them more or less elaborated. By its side
there grows up a highly complex religious organisation, with its various
grades of officials, from archbishops down to sextons, its colleges,
convocations, ecclesiastical courts, etc.; to all which must be added
the ever multiplying independent sects, each with its general and local
authorities. And at the same time there is developed a highly complex
aggregation of customs, manners, and temporary fashions, enforced by
society at large, and serving to control those minor transactions
between man and man which are not regulated by civil and religious law.
Moreover it is to be observed that this ever increasing heterogeneity in
the governmental appliances of each nation, has been accompanied by an
increasing heterogeneity in the governmental appliances of different
nations; all of which are more or less unlike in their political systems
and legislation, in their creeds and religious institutions, in their
customs and ceremonial usages.
Simultaneously there has been going on a second differentiation of a
more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has
been segregated into distinct classes and orders of workers. While the
governing part has undergone the complex development above detailed, the
governed part has undergone an equally complex development, which has
resulted in that minute division of labour characterising advanced
nations. It is needless to trace out this progress from its first
stages, up through the caste divisions of the East and the incorporated
guilds of Europe, to the elaborate producing and distributing
organisation existing among ourselves. Political economists have long
since described the evolution which, beginning with a tribe whose
members severally perform the same actions each for himself, ends with a
civilised community whose members severally perform different actions
for each other; and they have further pointed out the changes through
which the solitary producer of any one commodity is transformed into a
combination of producers who, united under a master, take separate parts
in the manufacture of such commodity. But there are yet other and higher
phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the
industrial organisation of society.
Long after considerable progress has been made in the division of labour
among different classes of workers, there is still little or no division
of labour among the widely separated parts of the community; the nation
continues comparatively homogeneous in the respect that in each district
the same occupations are pursued. But when roads and other means of
transit become numerous and good, the different districts begin to
assume different functions, and to become mutually dependent. The calico
manufacture locates itself in this county, the woollen-cloth manufacture
in that; silks are produced here, lace there; stockings in one place,
shoes in another; pottery, hardware, cutlery, come to have their special
towns; and ultimately every locality becomes more or less distinguished
from the rest by the leading occupation carried on in it. Nay, more,
this subdivision of functions shows itself not only among the different
parts of the same nation, but among different nations. That exchange of
commodities which free-trade promises so greatly to increase, will
ultimately have the effect of specialising, in a greater or less degree,
the industry of each people. So that beginning with a barbarous tribe,
almost if not quite homogeneous in the functions of its members, the
progress has been, and still is, towards an economic aggregation of the
whole human race; growing ever more heterogeneous in respect of the
separate functions assumed by separate nations, the separate functions
assumed by the local sections of each nation, the separate functions
assumed by the many kinds of makers and traders in each town, and the
separate functions assumed by the workers united in producing each
commodity.
Not only is the law thus clearly exemplified in the evolution of the
social organism, but it is exemplified with equal clearness in the
evolution of all products of human thought and action, whether concrete
or abstract, real or ideal. Let us take Language as our first
illustration.
The lowest form of language is the exclamation, by which an entire idea
is vaguely conveyed through a single sound; as among the lower animals.
That human language ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was
strictly homogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no
evidence. But that language can be traced down to a form in which nouns
and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact. In the gradual
multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones--in the
differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract
and concrete--in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of
number and case--in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives,
adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles--in the divergence of those
orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which
civilised races express minute modifications of meaning--we see a change
from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. And it may be remarked, in
passing, that it is more especially in virtue of having carried this
subdivision of function to a greater extent and completeness, that the
English language is superior to all others.
Another aspect under which we may trace the development of language is
the differentiation of words of allied meanings. Philology early
disclosed the truth that in all languages words may be grouped into
families having a common ancestry. An aboriginal name applied
indiscriminately to each of an extensive and ill-defined class of things
or actions, presently undergoes modifications by which the chief
divisions of the class are expressed. These several names springing from
the primitive root, themselves become the parents of other names still
further modified. And by the aid of those systematic modes which
presently arise, of making derivations and forming compound terms
expressing still smaller distinctions, there is finally developed a
tribe of words so heterogeneous in sound and meaning, that to the
uninitiated it seems incredible that they should have had a common
origin. Meanwhile from other roots there are being evolved other such
tribes, until there results a language of some sixty thousand or more
unlike words, signifying as many unlike objects, qualities, acts.
Yet another way in which language in general advances from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is in the multiplication of languages.
Whether as Max Mueller and Bunsen think, all languages have grown from
one stock, or whether, as some philologists say, they have grown from
two or more stocks, it is clear that since large families of languages,
as the Indo-European, are of one parentage, they have become distinct
through a process of continuous divergence. The same diffusion over the
Earth's surface which has led to the differentiation of the race, has
simultaneously led to a differentiation of their speech: a truth which
we see further illustrated in each nation by the peculiarities of
dialect found in several districts. Thus the progress of Language
conforms to the general law, alike in the evolution of languages, in the
evolution of families of words, and in the evolution of parts of speech.
On passing from spoken to written language, we come upon several classes
of facts, all having similar implications. Written language is connate
with Painting and Sculpture; and at first all three are appendages of
Architecture, and have a direct connection with the primary form of all
Government--the theocratic. Merely noting by the way the fact that
sundry wild races, as for example the Australians and the tribes of
South Africa, are given to depicting personages and events upon the
walls of caves, which are probably regarded as sacred places, let us
pass to the case of the Egyptians. Among them, as also among the
Assyrians, we find mural paintings used to decorate the temple of the
god and the palace of the king (which were, indeed, originally
identical); and as such they were governmental appliances in the same
sense that state-pageants and religious feasts were. Further, they were
governmental appliances in virtue of representing the worship of the
god, the triumphs of the god-king, the submission of his subjects, and
the punishment of the rebellious. And yet again they were governmental,
as being the products of an art reverenced by the people as a sacred
mystery. From the habitual use of this pictorial representations there
naturally grew up the but slightly-modified practice of
picture-writing--a practice which was found still extant among the
Mexicans at the time they were discovered. By abbreviations analogous to
those still going on in our own written and spoken language, the most
familiar of these pictured figures were successively simplified; and
ultimately there grew up a system of symbols, most of which had but a
distant resemblance to the things for which they stood. The inference
that the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were thus produced, is confirmed
by the fact that the picture-writing of the Mexicans was found to have
given birth to a like family of ideographic forms; and among them, as
among the Egyptians, these had been partially differentiated into the
_kuriological_ or imitative, and the _tropical_ or symbolic: which were,
however, used together in the same record. In Egypt, written language
underwent a further differentiation: whence resulted the _hieratic_ and
the _epistolographic_ or _enchorial_: both of which are derived from the
original hieroglyphic. At the same time we find that for the expression
of proper names which could not be otherwise conveyed, phonetic symbols
were employed; and though it is alleged that the Egyptians never
actually achieved complete alphabetic writing, yet it can scarcely be
doubted that these phonetic symbols occasionally used in aid of their
ideographic ones, were the germs out of which alphabetic writing grew.
Once having become separate from hieroglyphics, alphabetic writing
itself underwent numerous differentiations--multiplied alphabets were
produced; between most of which, however, more or less connection can
still be traced. And in each civilised nation there has now grown up,
for the representation of one set of sounds, several sets of written
signs used for distinct purposes. Finally, through a yet more important
differentiation came printing; which, uniform in kind as it was at
first, has since become multiform.
While written language was passing through its earlier stages of
development, the mural decoration which formed its root was being
differentiated into Painting and Sculpture. The gods, kings, men, and
animals represented, were originally marked by indented outlines and
coloured. In most cases these outlines were of such depth, and the
object they circumscribed so far rounded and marked out in its leading
parts, as to form a species of work intermediate between intaglio and
bas-relief. In other cases we see an advance upon this: the raised
spaces between the figures being chiselled off, and the figures
themselves appropriately tinted, a painted bas-relief was produced. The
restored Assyrian architecture at Sydenham exhibits this style of art
carried to greater perfection--the persons and things represented,
though still barbarously coloured, are carved out with more truth and in
greater detail: and in the winged lions and bulls used for the angles of
gateways, we may see a considerable advance towards a completely
sculptured figure; which, nevertheless, is still coloured, and still
forms part of the building. But while in Assyria the production of a
statue proper seems to have been little, if at all, attempted, we may
trace in Egyptian art the gradual separation of the sculptured figure
from the wall. A walk through the collection in the British Museum will
clearly show this; while it will at the same time afford an opportunity
of observing the evident traces which the independent statues bear of
their derivation from bas-relief: seeing that nearly all of them not
only display that union of the limbs with the body which is the
characteristic of bas-relief, but have the back of the statue united
from head to foot with a block which stands in place of the original
wall. Greece repeated the leading stages of this progress. As in Egypt
and Assyria, these twin arts were at first united with each other and
with their parent, Architecture, and were the aids of Religion and
Government. On the friezes of Greek temples, we see coloured bas-reliefs
representing sacrifices, battles, processions, games--all in some sort
religious. On the pediments we see painted sculptures more or less
united with the tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods
or heroes. Even when we come to statues that are definitely separated
from the buildings to which they pertain, we still find them coloured;
and only in the later periods of Greek civilisation does the
differentiation of sculpture from painting appear to have become
complete.
In Christian art we may clearly trace a parallel re-genesis. All early
paintings and sculptures throughout Europe were religious in
subject--represented Christs, crucifixions, virgins, holy families,
apostles, saints. They formed integral parts of church architecture, and
were among the means of exciting worship; as in Roman Catholic countries
they still are. Moreover, the early sculptures of Christ on the cross,
of virgins, of saints, were coloured: and it needs but to call to mind
the painted madonnas and crucifixes still abundant in continental
churches and highways, to perceive the significant fact that painting
and sculpture continue in closest connection with each other where they
continue in closest connection with their parent. Even when Christian
sculpture was pretty clearly differentiated from painting, it was still
religious and governmental in its subjects--was used for tombs in
churches and statues of kings: while, at the same time, painting, where
not purely ecclesiastical, was applied to the decoration of palaces, and
besides representing royal personages, was almost wholly devoted to
sacred legends. Only in quite recent times have painting and sculpture
become entirely secular arts. Only within these few centuries has
painting been divided into historical, landscape, marine, architectural,
genre, animal, still-life, etc., and sculpture grown heterogeneous in
respect of the variety of real and ideal subjects with which it occupies
itself.
Strange |
