THE LAST LECTURE
§ 1
Sanderson's propaganda of this idea of the possible reorganisation
of the world through schools came to an abrupt end in the summer of
1922. He died suddenly of heart failure in the Botanical Theatre of
University College, London, at the end of an address to the National
Union of Scientific Workers. He had chosen as the title of the
address, 'The Duty and Service of Science in the New Era,' and it
was in effect a recapitulation of his most characteristic views. He
attached considerable importance to the delivery and he made unusual
preparations for it.
Upon his desk after his death seven separate drafts, and they were
all very full drafts, of this address were found. In the margins of
the pages little sums have been worked out--so many pages at three
hundred words a page, four thousand, five thousand words; a full hour's
talking, and still so much to say! There are little notes framed in
a sort of Oxford frame of lines reminding him, for example, to 'say
more of bringing scientific method into _all_ parts of school.' On the
reverse of the pages of manuscript are trial restatements. He tried
back several times to a fresh beginning. There is a page headed 'The
New School,' and giving three headings: the first, which he afterwards
marked as second, is, 'The faculty of each member shall be developed';
the second, which became the first, is 'Community service--no
competition'; the third is, '_Outlook--aim_, more value than ability.
Service. All are equal. The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. Let all
that will, come.'
Then we find him trying over his ideas about science under a heading,
'What we claim for science.' Under that are a number of interesting
subheads:--
'Its own value in the great discoveries.
'That its spirit is that of life, giving, changing, searching.
(Marginal note:--without being deterred by any of the results
which may follow.)
'It is "natural" to the vast number of boys.
'Very directly applicable to needs.
'That it has a language and a message. (Marginal note:--it seeks
to test, to create new standards, to fearlessly rewrite knowledge.)
'The same spirit. (? as Christianity: Editor.)
Finally he produced a draft which was at least his eighth. This he had
printed and this he may have intended to read to the meeting. But he
did not do so. In the end he spoke from a fresh set of notes, which
must have been at least the ninth draft. That eighth draft is given in
full in the official Life.
His health had not been good for some time, and he kept this lecture
and his exceptional interest in it more or less secret from his wife.
He spent a long and interested morning at the experimental farm at
Rothamsted, and in the afternoon he went to the opticians to get a new
pair of spectacles and attended to other small businesses. He met a
small party of us at the London University Club in Gower Street to
take tea before lecturing. Sir Richard Gregory, the editor of _Nature_,
was present, Major Church, the secretary of the National Union of
Scientific Workers, and Dr. Charles Singer, the historian of classical
science. Sanderson was evidently hot and rather tired, but he did not
seem to be ill; he gossiped pleasantly with us and showed us his new
spectacles. They were made of a recently discovered glass, opaque to
ultra-violet rays and he betrayed the pride and interest of a boy in
possessing them.
University College was not very far away, but he asked for a cab
thither because he felt fagged. The audience was already assembled
and he went straight on to the platform. The present writer made a
few introductory remarks, and the lecture began. It is a matter of
keen regret to all of us that we allowed him to stand throughout his
discourse. It would have been so easy to have arranged for him to talk
from a chair; the Botanical Theatre is not a large one and it is quite
conceivable that he might be alive now, if one of us could have had
that much thoughtfulness for him. We had thought of it--ten minutes
after his death.
But we were all so used to the quality of effort in his voice, so
accustomed to its sudden fall into almost inaudible asides, that we
did not mark what hung over us until the very moment of catastrophe.
His sentences seemed to me a little more broken than usual; he was
rather more disconnected, he was leaving rather more than usual to
the intelligence of his audience, and as he talked I watched the
faces before me rather anxiously to see just how much they missed of
what he was trying to get over to them. He got over much more than I
supposed, for I have since talked with many who were present. A fairly
full shorthand note was made at the time, and on this the following
rendering of the last address is based. Like everything that has been
printed of his here, it has been clipped and shorn, little distracting
side glances have been eliminated and broken sentences filled in and
rounded off.
§ 2
'It is a great honour,' he began, 'to come and address scientific
workers (I have only recently discovered my claim to be a scientific
worker), and to describe to you what has turned out to be a scientific
experiment. I hope to show the results of an experiment carried on, not
in a scientific laboratory so-called--physical, chemical, biological,
or anthropological--but in a school for boys.
'Before doing that, I should like to say that we scientific workers
do very much depend on having a number of us together. One scientific
worker placed in charge of any great work finds it difficult;
scientific workers do not get the chance of appointing men in sympathy
with themselves often enough; so it is frequently said that scientific
men placed in command of a factory in industry or a department of
state at home or in the colonies fail. Well, if so, they fail because
scientific men have not often got the opportunity of getting men of
like sympathy to work with them. I take it that the object of the
National Union of Scientific Workers is to get scientific men with
scientific views of life and experimental experience to join together
in some great work. When I speak of the duty and service of science in
the new era, I mean that I want scientific men to claim justly a larger
share in the work of the world, and not to confine themselves to what
is called purely scientific work. We want them to expand themselves
over a wider area. As a matter of fact, that is what two distinguished
writers have suggested: that the time has come when the ordinary
discoveries and inventions of science should be closed down in order to
enable scientific minds to do this simple thing. Practically everything
that exists now is the work of scientific men, their discoveries and
their inventions. The whole world teems with the results of the work
of science. The great machines we see used in industry--the industrial
machine itself--have been created by men of science. Now, I put it to
you that when motor cars came in, the nobility of the land found their
coachmen of little use. The scientific machine requires scientific men
to manage it. Our industrial life is imperfectly organised; all our
troubles are due to the fact that we have a process created by science,
but organised in the old way by men of a different outlook. The
discoveries of science have rushed into the world a considerable amount
of unexpected ability. Working men engaged in industrial pursuits have
had their intelligence discovered and brought out, and it is one thing
to control a mass of human beings who are not thus inspired with the
knowledge of their own possibilities, and another to control those who
are. It is like trying to control a set of live molecules. It is one
thing to control a hard atom and another to control a live electron.
'So that the duty and service of science would seem to lie in
scientific men bringing their ideal of life, their standards, their
vision, their outlook, and their methods to organise the great machine
that their inventions have created. You cannot have a world half
scientific and the other half nothing of the sort.
'That is to say, scientific workers will have to consider the whole
question, for instance, of economics. I heard yesterday a distinguished
member of the Government saying that we cannot change economics. Of
course, that is one thing scientific men have got to do, to change
economics so that the system of our industry shall be recreated. The
system of management by dual control of the master and the slave will
not work when the slave becomes an alive, active, intelligent, anarchic
being. He will not be governed by the rein but by a system which the
magnet can influence. However, the last hundred years has resulted in
a race between the changed conditions that science has brought about
and the organisation required to control them, in what has been called
by Mr. Wells a race between education and catastrophe. In scientific
language, it has produced a serious stress because of the hurrying
on of change of conditions and the lagging behind of the methods of
controlling them. It is this stress, I think, which has broken up the
system. You may even say that the war itself is no cause of anything,
but a result of the purely automatic action of shearing forces, as when
a testing machine breaks a metal bar.
'The end of the war has left us with a whole host of individuals set
free, and the business before science men is to organise this new body.
It is a big problem, and requires scientific thought, temperament, and
outlook to rewrite practically the whole of our knowledge. It reminds
me of the tremendous rush there was amongst scientific men to provide
workers to overhaul practically everything in biology (and theology)
and other parts of human knowledge after the doctrines of Darwin were
well established. I take it that all the departments of human life have
to be rewritten by men under the influence of the spirit of science.
Our books have to be rewritten, our very dictionaries. I have often
amused myself with the _Oxford Dictionary_, or found it necessary to
send a boy to that authority for a definition, and it has pretty nearly
always been false. Take such a simple case as the word "democracy."
The _Oxford Dictionary_ hasn't a thing to tell you about the meaning
of "democracy" as we use it to-day. It tells you nothing of the living
use of words. That is one of the terrible dangers of leaving our books
in the hands of men who have not got that outlook which experiment in
science brings to the individual. Consequently I say that the duty of
scientific men is to scour the whole area of knowledge and rewrite it
to bring out new standards, new values, by means of which labour and
industry itself, in the first instance, can be reorganised (the schools
first should be reorganised), and then you can extend it into the wider
area of international affairs.
'They tell us that economics cannot change our human nature. That
is the great duty and service of science--to change human nature.
Scientific men have to collect a band of disciples and make a new
world. As far as I can gather, from a long connection with boys, the
only scientific quality which is constant is inertia in response to
change. The actual change itself, when it has arrived, no one objects
to, and every one says, "Why didn't we do that before?" Scientific
workers rarely have their opportunity in industry. To have their full
opportunity they are to set forth in the spirit of the Great Master to
found a new kingdom: not to manage industry by the standards and values
of the present, but to transform them. And they must do what our Master
Himself did--collect a faithful band of disciples imbued with the same
belief. I know it is freely said (I have been corresponding with some
of the leaders in industry) that scientific men cannot do this thing.
They can, if only they are true to themselves and their vision; they
can absolutely change the whole system under which industry is worked,
and change the world to their ideals.
'"Come, and I will make you fishers of men...." The great work that
lies before scientific workers to-day is to extend the area of their
labours, to become not fishers of facts but fishers of men. There will
always be a distinguished band of purely scientific men devoted to
pure science, who will abide devoted to pure science; but with the
present number trained in science, we claim them also to organise the
machinery that science has created. They must leave their ships and
nets and become fishers of men.... I dare-say even scientific workers
know that is from the Bible. One of the greatest tragedies scientific
men have allowed is for others to steal the Bible from them. The Old
and New Testaments, with their record of progressive revelation, form
the most scientific book ever seen. Yet scientific men have allowed a
certain type of men to steal it from them. Bible stealing is an old
thing, and one favourite method is to bind it in morocco and to put it
on a top shelf....
'But I must return to my scientific business. When I was at Cambridge
I was not regarded as scientific. I was amongst those who took
mathematics, and those who took mathematics and classics were
respectable and had to attend chapel. But if you inclined at all
towards science, or even ethics, you were not supposed to attend
chapel....
'I said that I have recently discovered I am a scientific worker,
that I have been working a scientific experiment, though not of the
kind accepted for report to the Royal Society. It has been worked by
being headmaster of a school for thirty years and by having taught
for forty years. When I became a headmaster I began by introducing
engineering into the school--applied science. The first effect was
that a large number of boys who could not do other things could do
that. They began to like their work in school. They began to like
school. That led on to introducing a large number of other sciences,
such as agricultural chemistry, horse-shoeing (if that is a science),
metallurgical chemistry, bio-chemistry, agriculture; and, of course,
these new sorts of work interested a large number of other boys of a
type different from the type interested in the old work, so we got an
exceptional number of boys, curiously enough, unexpectedly liking what
they had to do in school. Then I ventured to do something daring; it
is most daring to introduce the scientific method of finding out the
truth--a dangerous thing--by the process of experiment and research. We
began to replace explicit teaching by finding out. We did this first
with these newly introduced sciences. Then we began to impress the
aims and outlook of science on to other departments of school life.
History, for instance: we began to replace the old class-room teaching
and learning by a laboratory for history, full of books and other
things required in abundance, so that boys in all parts of the school
could, for some specific purpose (not to learn; to go into school to
learn was egotistical), find out the things we required for to-day. We
set them to find out things for the service of science, the service of
literature, modern languages, music.
'This began to change the whole organisation of the school, its aims
and methods. It was no use organising boys in forms by the ordinary
methods of promotion for this sort of work. You have to make up your
mind what you have to do, and then go about and collect anybody who
would be of service to that particular work. You would require boys of
one characteristic and boys of another. You make them up into teams for
the particular work they have to do. The boys who do not fit into this
or that particular work must have some other particular work found for
them. You begin to design the work of the school for them. You must
have all the apparatus you want for it, and you must organise for it,
but you begin by organising the work for the boys and what they need
to find out, and not by putting the boys into the organisation. Now,
presently you discover, when you do this, that not a single boy exists
who is not wanted for some particular work; to carry out your object
every boy is fundamentally equal. One does this, one does that. Each
boy has his place in the team, and in his place he is as important as
any other boy. Placing them in order of merit does not work any more.
The scientific method absolutely changed the position towards class
lists and order of merit. That was an astonishing result.
'Another astonishing result was that we could not have anybody who was
not working. If a boy was not working, you could see that he was not
working. You could see that he was doing nothing. He could not sit at
the back of a class-room and seem to be working. Everybody was working.
You can manage that in school, but what about the world? All sorts of
people may seem to be working and not be working at all. The curate
may be doing nothing! (_Chuckle and something inaudible._) This seems
to land us into the extraordinary fact that no community if it is
scientifically organised can carry any one who does not do service. I
hope you will agree with me that that is scientific.
'A little farther on I turned round on the boys and the parents. (Both
are my business.) I said, "I have and the school has tried all it
could to see to it that your boy got the right kind of work to do. We
spared no trouble or expense to see to it that he might be able to
perform his service in the school and to the community.... When you go
forth to your father's works, keep in mind that it is your business
to see to it that every person that comes within your influence has a
like opportunity." That is totally different from your duty to your
neighbour as taught in the Church Catechism. We have landed ourselves
hopelessly in the position of having a practical community definition
of our duty towards our neighbour. You remember the rich young ruler
who came to ask what his duty was, and went away sorrowful because
he had great possessions. Some of these possessions were perhaps
intellectual. I like to think of Watts' picture of that man and I like
Watts' idea that he came back. I hope if any of our boys go away they
will come back.
'Another step. This actual love of work spreads, and ultimately every
one comes within its influence, and they begin to like the service they
are rendering. Finally, competition dwindles and passes away, so that
we have reached what appears to be a change in human nature. It is not
really a change, but by care and attention calling out what has always
been ready there in human nature, namely, a first instinctive love to
create. I have always held that competition is a secondary interest
and creation a primary instinct. Competition dwindles and passes away.
Competition is a very feeble incentive to live. It is cheap and easy to
arouse the motive, it is a swift motive and on the surface of things
ready for you, but it is not even a powerful motive. Half the boys it
dispirits and leaves idle and useless.
'The passing of competition leads on to another thing passing away,
which is this: you soon find that a body of workers that as a community
has attempted to provide for itself, as a community adapts itself to
the community spirit, and punishment is totally unnecessary. It was
a long time before that dawned on me. I have not, as a headmaster,
taken any part in any shape in punishing boys directly, either by the
easy methods supposed to train them for after life or by the other
methods that have sprung from the fertile brains of a dominant order.
Punishment, I declare from years of experience in this experiment, is
a crime: not only a crime but a blunder. Why? Because it is a cheap
and easy thing. If you punish it is easy, but if a community has so
to arrange itself and adapt itself as to produce the reaction on
the individual not to do objectionable things, that is hard. It is
complicated. It requires an abundance of real sacrifice. It demands
readjustment of everything upon a basis of service. I have been much
impressed recently by the effect of having punishment organised in
removing any activity on the part of the community itself towards
adjusting itself so that punishment should not be necessary. I used to
flatter myself, "I don't punish that boy, my prefects do; they keep me
right." But I have been convinced by my thirty years of experiment that
that was all wrong. These things come slowly. Now, without any action
on my part, the prefects have stopped punishing, and a good thing for
them. If they leave their boots about, the small boys will too, and
they will have to punish them for doing so. To leave your own boots
about like a lord is a fine thing, and to punish the small boy who does
so is also a fine thing! But it is easy. The hard thing is never to
leave your own boots about....
'The reactions that we have been taught to make in the world are weakly
static. What is the good of static methods? There is friction; we
are told how to overcome frictional resistance. We can put an end to
friction by stopping the machine. That is the static method of dealing
with friction. Or we can go on working the machine, with oil and care
... which is not so cheap and easy, but which gets somewhere.... If
we try to remove friction by the static methods of punishment we are
removing the incentive to live a dangerous life. "The secret of a
joyful life is to live dangerously." You only live dangerously if you
are perpetually trying to overcome your own inertia and trying to get
the capacity to do great things. If you are only defensive, static, it
is a waste of time. Yet those defences and resistances are securely
placed in the governance of the state. What a curious thing is the
form of government! Its characteristics include no repentance, no
regret, otherwise it would acknowledge itself less than the governed.
Its ideal is a perpetual static calm. _Suaviter in modo, fortiter in
re._ It is the method of people who perform the confidence trick. It is
the method of "If you want peace, prepare for war." ...'
For some minutes Mr. Sanderson paused. He looked at his notes. He was
obviously very fatigued, but very resolute to continue. He read:--
'Acquisitiveness leads to these glorified things: general science,
general knowledge, national history, scholarships, examinations,
advanced courses, "interesting" things (whoever wanted to be
interested?), the theological thing called "syncretism," tact,
swindling....'
Mr. Sanderson stopped and smiled in a breathless manner, half panting,
half laughing, very characteristic of him. His glasses gleamed at the
audience. His smile meant: 'We are going a little too fast, boys. Where
are we getting to? Where are we getting to?' He affected to refer to
his notes and then broke away upon a new line.
'Out of all these things I have been telling you, out of all these
considerations, evolves the modern school. The modern school is
not made by the very simple and easy method of abandoning Greek.
(Laughter.) Nor is it made by introducing science or engineering. The
modern school's business is to impress into the service of man every
branch of human knowledge we can get hold of. The modern method in the
modern school does not depend on any method of teaching. We hear a
great deal about methods of teaching languages, mathematics, science;
they are all trivial. The great purpose is to enlist the boys or girls
in the service of man to-day and man to-morrow. The method which makes
learning easy is waste of time. What boy will succumb to the entreaty:
"Come, I will make you clever; it will be so easy for you; you will be
able to learn it without an effort"? What they succumb to is service
for the community. I have tested that in the workshops. They don't want
to make things for themselves; they soon cease to have any longing
desire to make anything even for their mothers. What they love to do is
to take part in some great work that must be done for the community;
some work that goes on beyond them, some great spacious work. You can
spread them out into all sorts of spacious things, in all departments,
such things as taking part in investigating the truth. The truth,
for instance, of the actual condition of the coal-miners or of any
miners. An important question which we have been concerned with for at
least three years is "_What is China?_ What is it like?" You may say,
"Methods of teaching geography." But who ever learned anything from
geography--as geography? Who wants to know geography--as geography?
Books exist for it, maps, plasticine exists for it. We want to know
about China. If we are going to see to it that every one of our working
men has the same opportunities that in our school we give to our boys
we shall have some difficulty with China. We shall never be able to
give our working people these opportunities unless the Chinese give
them too. Scientific men must find themselves dominant in the Foreign
Office and Colonial Service so as to know what is the nature of the
people in these distant places, how we can bring to them what we are
able to give to our sons--the opportunity of making the highest and
best use of their faculties. We shall not get that sort of thing from
geography books. You will have to take the boys and let them find out
what men have done who have been in China: to get products from China;
to know its geology, and whether, after all, the Chinese do so deeply
love rice that they want to live on a very little a day. Do the Chinese
love rice? Do they love underselling white labour? Do they want to?
That is real geography, but not class-room geography. That extension
of interest, until China is brought into the class-room and the boys
are finding out about it, is, I claim, one of the deepest and greatest
tasks to be undertaken. China--India--the Durham miners--spacious
undertakings....
'Schools must be equipped spaciously, _spaciously_, and they must have
a spacious staff. I have the list of our staff here. We have masters
for mathematics, physics, chemistry, mechanics, biology, zoology,
anthropology, botany, geology, architecture, classics, history,
literature, geography, archaeology, economics, French, German, Spanish,
Italian, Russian, Eastern languages, art, applied art, handicrafts, and
music.
'"Impossible," some people say. There is no great school in the land
but could quite well afford it....
'We must send out workers imbued with the determination to seek and
investigate truth--truth that will make them free--and to take great
care that in the search for truth they will never take part in or
sympathise with those methods by which the edge of truth is blunted.'
§ 3
The voice beside me stopped. Some one pushed up a chair for Sanderson
and he sat down. There was applause. I stood up and then struck by a
thought, whispered: 'Would you like to answer a few questions?'
'Yes, yes. Certainly,' he said.
'Not too tired to answer them?'
'No--no.'
I had a little strip of notes in my hand and I thought of underlining
one or two points in this tremendous project of a school he had spread
before his audience before I let in the questioners. I began by saying
that the lecture had been a little hard to follow but that it would
repay following into the remotest corners of its meaning. Then I heard
a little commotion behind me and turned round to see what was the
matter. Sanderson had slipped from his chair on to the platform and was
lying on his back breathing hoarsely. His collar and tie were removed
forthwith. There were several doctors on the platform with us and
they set to work upon him. I hesitated for a moment and then declared
the meeting at an end, and asked the audience to disperse as speedily
as possible. I thought it was an epileptic fit and I had no sense of
Sanderson's impending death. I had never seen anything of the sort
before. I could not believe it when they told me he was dead.
The windows of the hot and sultry room were opened and most of the
people made their way out, but the reporters remained and one or two
persons of the curious type who hung about vaguely with an affectation
of decorous sympathy. The lecture had been a very difficult one for
the newspaper men, and they came now with a certain eagerness to
ask questions about Oundle and Sanderson's career. I answered them
as well as I could. Sanderson lay across the back of the platform,
bare-chested and still. It became evident that I had to seek out Mrs.
Sanderson and tell her of this disaster.
There was a little difficulty in ascertaining at which hotel Mr. and
Mrs. Sanderson had been staying, and when I got there I found she was
out shopping, and I waited some time for her return. Meanwhile her
daughter and her daughter-in-law at Oundle were called up by telephone
to come to her at once in London. I told her at first that her husband
was ill, and then, as we went together in a cab to University College,
dangerously ill. She was fully prepared to hear from the doctors at the
hospital that the end had come. The poor lady took the news very simply
and bravely.
In the Mortuary Chapel of University College Hospital I saw my friend's
face for the last time, in all the irresponsive dignity of death. We
took Mrs. Sanderson to him and left her for a time alone with him. Four
years before in the same London hotel at which she was now solitary,
he and she had shared the bitter grief of their eldest son's death
together.
§ 4
An event of this sort produces the most various reactions in people,
and I recall with a distressful amusement two unknown persons who
accosted me as I went out from University College to find a taxi to
take me to Mrs. Sanderson. One was a young woman who came up to me and
said: 'Don't be grieved for your friend, Mr. Wells. It was a splendid
thing to die like that in the midst of life, after giving his message.'
I did not accept these congratulations and I made no reply to her.
I was thinking that a little acute observation, a little more
consideration on my part, a finer sense of the labour I was putting
upon my friend, might have averted his death altogether. And I was by
no means convinced that his message was delivered, that it had reached
the people I had hoped it would reach and awaken. I had counted on much
more from Sanderson. This death seemed to me and still seems far more
like frustration than release.
Then presently as I gesticulated for a cab near Gower Street Station, I
found a pale-faced, earnest-looking man beside me asking for a moment's
speech. 'Mr. Wells,' he said, 'does not this sudden event give you new
views of immortality, new lights upon spiritual realities?'
I stared at a sort of greedy excitement in his face. 'None whatever!' I
said at last and got into my taxi.
I must confess that to this day I can find in Sanderson's death nothing
but irreparable loss. He left much of his work in a state so incomplete
that I cannot see how his successors can carry it on. In matters
educational he was before all things a practical artist, and education
is altogether too much the prey of theories. He filled me--a mere
writer, with envious admiration when I saw how he could control and
shape things to his will, how he could experiment and learn and how he
could use his boys, his governors, his staff, to try out and shape his
creative dreams.
He was a strong man and in a very profound and simple way a good man,
and it was a very helpful thing to feel oneself his ally. But now that
he is gone, now that all his later projects and intentions shrivel and
fade and his great school recedes visibly towards the commonplace, I do
not know where to turn to do an effective stroke for education. It is
only schoolmasters and schoolmistresses and educational authorities
and school governors and school promoters and university teachers who
can really carry on the work that he began. In this book I have tried
to set out as clearly as possible, and largely in his own words, his
fundamental ideas of the supersession of competition by co-operation,
of the return of schools to real service and of a House of Vision, a
Temple of History and the Future, as the brain and centre of community
life. This present book is, as it were, a simplified diagram of the
teachings less luminously and more fully set out in the official Life.
One thing I shared with Sanderson altogether, and that was our
conviction that the present common life of men, at once dull and
disorderly, competitive, uncreative, cruelly stupid and stupidly
cruel, unless it is to be regarded merely as a necessary phase in the
development of a nobler existence, is a thing not worth having, that
it does not matter who drops dead or how soon we drop dead out of such
a world. Unless there is a more abundant life before mankind, this
scheme of space and time is a bad joke beyond our understanding, a
flare of vulgarity, an empty laugh, braying across the mysteries. But
we two shared the belief that latent in men and perceptible in men is a
greater mankind, great enough to make every effort to realise it fully
worth while, and to make the whole business of living worth while.
And the way to that realisation lies, we both believed, through thought
and through creative effort, through science and art and the school.