The human intellect is said to be so constituted that _general ideas_
arise by abstraction from _particular observations_, and therefore
come after them in point of time. If this is what actually occurs, as
happens in the case of a man who has to depend solely upon his own
experience for what he learns--who has no teacher and no book,--such
a man knows quite well which of his particular observations belong to
and are represented by each of his general ideas. He has a perfect
acquaintance with both sides of his experience, and accordingly, he
treats everything that comes in his way from a right standpoint. This
might be called the _natural_ method of education.
Contrarily, the _artificial_ method is to hear what other people say,
to learn and to read, and so to get your head crammed full of general
ideas before you have any sort of extended acquaintance with the world
as it is, and as you may see it for yourself. You will be told that
the particular observations which go to make these general ideas will
come to you later on in the course of experience; but until that time
arrives, you apply your general ideas wrongly, you judge men and
things from a wrong standpoint, you see them in a wrong light, and
treat them in a wrong way. So it is that education perverts the mind.
This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a long course
of learning and reading, we enter upon the world in our youth, partly
with an artless ignorance of things, partly with wrong notions about
them; so that our demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety,
at another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is simply that
our head is full of general ideas which we are now trying to turn to
some use, but which we hardly ever apply rightly. This is the result
of acting in direct opposition to the natural development of the mind
by obtaining general ideas first, and particular observations last:
it is putting the cart before the horse. Instead of developing the
child's own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and
think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head
full of the ready-made thoughts of other people. The mistaken views
of life, which spring from a false application of general ideas, have
afterwards to be corrected by long years of experience; and it is
seldom that they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of
learning are possessed of common-sense, such as is often to be met
with in people who have had no instruction at all.
_To acquire a knowledge of the world_ might be defined as the aim
of all education; and it follows from what I have said that special
stress should be laid upon beginning to acquire this knowledge _at
the right end_. As I have shown, this means, in the main, that the
particular observation of a thing shall precede the general idea of
it; further, that narrow and circumscribed ideas shall come before
ideas of a wide range. It means, therefore, that the whole system of
education shall follow in the steps that must have been taken by the
ideas themselves in the course of their formation. But whenever any of
these steps are skipped or left out, the instruction is defective, and
the ideas obtained are false; and finally, a distorted view of the
world arises, peculiar to the individual himself--a view such as
almost everyone entertains for some time, and most men for as long as
they live. No one can look into his own mind without seeing that it
was only after reaching a very mature age, and in some cases when he
least expected it, that he came to a right understanding or a clear
view of many matters in his life, that, after all, were not very
difficult or complicated. Up till then, they were points in his
knowledge of the world which were still obscure, due to his having
skipped some particular lesson in those early days of his education,
whatever it may have been like--whether artificial and conventional,
or of that natural kind which is based upon individual experience.
It follows that an attempt should be made to find out the strictly
natural course of knowledge, so that education may proceed
methodically by keeping to it; and that children may become acquainted
with the ways of the world, without getting wrong ideas into their
heads, which very often cannot be got out again. If this plan were
adopted, special care would have to be taken to prevent children
from using words without clearly understanding their meaning and
application. The fatal tendency to be satisfied with words instead of
trying to understand things--to learn phrases by heart, so that
they may prove a refuge in time of need, exists, as a rule, even in
children; and the tendency lasts on into manhood, making the knowledge
of many learned persons to consist in mere verbiage.
However, the main endeavor must always be to let particular
observations precede general ideas, and not _vice versa_, as is
usually and unfortunately the case; as though a child should come
feet foremost into the world, or a verse be begun by writing down the
rhyme! The ordinary method is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the
strict sense of the word, _prejudices_, on the mind of the child,
before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is
thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience
through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his
ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they
ought to be.
A man sees a great many things when he looks at the world for himself,
and he sees them from many sides; but this method of learning is not
nearly so short or so quick as the method which employs abstract
ideas and makes hasty generalizations about everything. Experience,
therefore, will be a long time in correcting preconceived ideas, or
perhaps never bring its task to an end; for wherever a man finds that
the aspect of things seems to contradict the general ideas he has
formed, he will begin by rejecting the evidence it offers as partial
and one-sided; nay, he will shut his eyes to it altogether and deny
that it stands in any contradiction at all with his preconceived
notions, in order that he may thus preserve them uninjured. So it is
that many a man carries about a burden of wrong notions all his life
long--crotchets, whims, fancies, prejudices, which at last become
fixed ideas. The fact is that he has never tried to form his
fundamental ideas for himself out of his own experience of life, his
own way of looking at the world, because he has taken over his ideas
ready-made from other people; and this it is that makes him--as it
makes how many others!--so shallow and superficial.
Instead of that method of instruction, care should be taken to educate
children on the natural lines. No idea should ever be established in a
child's mind otherwise than by what the child can see for itself, or
at any rate it should be verified by the same means; and the result of
this would be that the child's ideas, if few, would be well-grounded
and accurate. It would learn how to measure things by its own standard
rather than by another's; and so it would escape a thousand strange
fancies and prejudices, and not need to have them eradicated by the
lessons it will subsequently be taught in the school of life. The
child would, in this way, have its mind once for all habituated
to clear views and thorough-going knowledge; it would use its own
judgment and take an unbiased estimate of things.
And, in general, children should not form their notions of what life
is like from the copy before they have learned it from the original,
to whatever aspect of it their attention may be directed. Instead,
therefore, of hastening to place _books_, and books alone, in their
hands, let them be made acquainted, step by step, with _things_--with
the actual circumstances of human life. And above all let care be
taken to bring them to a clear and objective view of the world as it
is, to educate them always to derive their ideas directly from real
life, and to shape them in conformity with it--not to fetch them from
other sources, such as books, fairy tales, or what people say--then
to apply them ready-made to real life. For this will mean that their
heads are full of wrong notions, and that they will either see things
in a false light or try in vain to _remodel the world_ to suit their
views, and so enter upon false paths; and that, too, whether they are
only constructing theories of life or engaged in the actual business
of it. It is incredible how much harm is done when the seeds of wrong
notions are laid in the mind in those early years, later on to bear a
crop of prejudice; for the subsequent lessons, which are learned from
real life in the world have to be devoted mainly to their extirpation.
_To unlearn the evil_ was the answer, according to Diogenes
Laertius,[1] Antisthenes gave, when he was asked what branch of
knowledge was most necessary; and we can see what he meant.
[Footnote 1: vi. 7.]
No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in
subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as
philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is
necessary to take large views; because wrong notions imbibed early can
seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment
is the last to arrive at maturity. The child should give its attention
either to subjects where no error is possible at all, such as
mathematics, or to those in which there is no particular danger in
making a mistake, such as languages, natural science, history and so
on. And in general, the branches of knowledge which are to be studied
at any period of life should be such as the mind is equal to at that
period and can perfectly understand. Childhood and youth form the time
for collecting materials, for getting a special and thorough knowledge
of the individual and particular things. In those years it is too
early to form views on a large scale; and ultimate explanations must
be put off to a later date. The faculty of judgment, which cannot come
into play without mature experience, should be left to itself; and
care should be taken not to anticipate its action by inculcating
prejudice, which will paralyze it for ever.
On the other hand, the memory should be specially taxed in youth,
since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in
choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care
and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are
never forgotten. This precious soil must therefore be cultivated so as
to bear as much fruit as possible. If you think how deeply rooted in
your memory are those persons whom you knew in the first twelve years
of your life, how indelible the impression made upon you by the events
of those years, how clear your recollection of most of the things that
happened to you then, most of what was told or taught you, it will
seem a natural thing to take the susceptibility and tenacity of the
mind at that period as the ground-work of education. This may be done
by a strict observance of method, and a systematic regulation of the
impressions which the mind is to receive.
But the years of youth allotted to a man are short, and memory is, in
general, bound within narrow limits; still more so, the memory of any
one individual. Since this is the case, it is all-important to fill
the memory with what is essential and material in any branch of
knowledge, to the exclusion of everything else. The decision as to
what is essential and material should rest with the masterminds in
every department of thought; their choice should be made after the
most mature deliberation, and the outcome of it fixed and determined.
Such a choice would have to proceed by sifting the things which it
is necessary and important for a man to know in general, and then,
necessary and important for him to know in any particular business
or calling. Knowledge of the first kind would have to be classified,
after an encyclopaedic fashion, in graduated courses, adapted to the
degree of general culture which a man may be expected to have in the
circumstances in which he is placed; beginning with a course limited
to the necessary requirements of primary education, and extending
upwards to the subjects treated of in all the branches of
philosophical thought. The regulation of the second kind of knowledge
would be left to those who had shown genuine mastery in the several
departments into which it is divided; and the whole system would
provide an elaborate rule or canon for intellectual education, which
would, of course, have to be revised every ten years. Some such
arrangement as this would employ the youthful power of the memory to
best advantage, and supply excellent working material to the faculty
of judgment, when it made its appearance later on.
A man's knowledge may be said to be mature, in other words, it has
reached the most complete state of perfection to which he, as an
individual, is capable of bringing it, when an exact correspondence is
established between the whole of his abstract ideas and the things he
has actually perceived for himself. This will mean that each of
his abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of
observation, which alone endows it with any real value; and also
that he is able to place every observation he makes under the right
abstract idea which belongs to it. Maturity is the work of experience
alone; and therefore it requires time. The knowledge we derive from
our own observation is usually distinct from that which we acquire
through the medium of abstract ideas; the one coming to us in the
natural way, the other by what people tell us, and the course of
instruction we receive, whether it is good or bad. The result is, that
in youth there is generally very little agreement or correspondence
between our abstract ideas, which are merely phrases in the mind, and
that real knowledge which we have obtained by our own observation. It
is only later on that a gradual approach takes place between these two
kinds of knowledge, accompanied by a mutual correction of error; and
knowledge is not mature until this coalition is accomplished. This
maturity or perfection of knowledge is something quite independent of
another kind of perfection, which may be of a high or a low order--the
perfection, I mean, to which a man may bring his own individual
faculties; which is measured, not by any correspondence between the
two kinds of knowledge, but by the degree of intensity which each kind
attains.
For the practical man the most needful thing is to acquire an accurate
and profound knowledge of _the ways of the world_. But this, though
the most needful, is also the most wearisome of all studies, as a man
may reach a great age without coming to the end of his task; whereas,
in the domain of the sciences, he masters the more important facts
when he is still young. In acquiring that knowledge of the world, it
is while he is a novice, namely, in boyhood and in youth, that the
first and hardest lessons are put before him; but it often happens
that even in later years there is still a great deal to be learned.
The study is difficult enough in itself; but the difficulty is doubled
by _novels_, which represent a state of things in life and the world,
such as, in fact, does not exist. Youth is credulous, and accepts
these views of life, which then become part and parcel of the mind; so
that, instead of a merely negative condition of ignorance, you have
positive error--a whole tissue of false notions to start with; and at
a later date these actually spoil the schooling of experience, and put
a wrong construction on the lessons it teaches. If, before this,
the youth had no light at all to guide him, he is now misled by a
will-o'-the-wisp; still more often is this the case with a girl.
They have both had a false view of things foisted on them by reading
novels; and expectations have been aroused which can never be
fulfilled. This generally exercises a baneful influence on their whole
life. In this respect those whose youth has allowed them no time or
opportunity for reading novels--those who work with their hands and
the like--are in a position of decided advantage. There are a few
novels to which this reproach cannot be addressed--nay, which have an
effect the contrary of bad. First and foremost, to give an example,
_Gil Blas_, and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their Spanish
originals); further, _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and, to some extent Sir
Walter Scott's novels. _Don Quixote_ may be regarded as a satirical
exhibition of the error to which I am referring.