convinced that the doom is just, must see good grounds for repudiating
half the arguments which have been employed by the winning side; and
for doubting whether its ultimate results will embody the hopes of the
victors, though they may more than realise the fears of the vanquished.
It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men;
but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average
negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man.
And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his
disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field
and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete
successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a
contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The
highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be
within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means
necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest. But whatever
the position of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social
gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibility for the result will
henceforward lie between Nature and him. The white man may wash his
hands of it, and the Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for
evermore. And this, if we look to the bottom of the matter, is the real
justification for the abolition policy.
The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion;
emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a
pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton shirts; but
all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can
arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own
nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any
physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a
double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than
the freed-man.
The like considerations apply to all the other questions of
emancipation which are at present stirring the world--the multifarious
demands that classes of mankind shall be relieved from restrictions
imposed by the artifice of man, and not by the necessities of Nature.
One of the most important, if not the most important, of all these, is
that which daily threatens to become the "irrepressible" woman
question. What social and political rights have women? What ought they
to be allowed, or not allowed, to do, be, and suffer? And, as involved
in, and underlying all these questions, how ought they to be educated?
There are philogynists as fanatical as any "misogynists" who, reversing
our antiquated notions, bid the man look upon the woman as the higher
type of humanity; who ask us to regard the female intellect as the
clearer and the quicker, if not the stronger; who desire us to look up
to the feminine moral sense as the purer and the nobler; and bid man
abdicate his usurped sovereignty over Nature in favour of the female
line. On the other hand, there are persons not to be outdone in all
loyalty and just respect for womankind, but by nature hard of head and
haters of delusion, however charming, who not only repudiate the new
woman-worship which so many sentimentalists and some philosophers are
desirous of setting up, but, carrying their audacity further, deny even
the natural equality of the sexes. They assert, on the contrary, that
in every excellent character, whether mental or physical, the average
woman is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that
character less in quantity and lower in quality. Tell these persons of
the rapid perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of
women, and they reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which
pass under these names, are merely the outcome of a greater
impressibility to the superficial aspects of things, and of the absence
of that restraint upon expression which, in men, is imposed by
reflection and a sense of responsibility. Talk of the passive endurance
of the weaker sex, and opponents of this kind remind you that Job was a
man, and that, until quite recent times, patience and long-suffering
were not counted among the specially feminine virtues. Claim passionate
tenderness as especially feminine, and the inquiry is made whether all
the best love-poetry in existence (except, perhaps, the "Sonnets from
the Portuguese ") has not been written by men; whether the song which
embodies the ideal of pure and tender passion--"Adelaida "--was
written by _Frau_ Beethoven; whether it was the Fornarina, or
Raphael, who painted the Sistine Madonna. Nay, we have known one such
heretic go so far as to lay his hands upon the ark itself, so to speak,
and to defend the startling paradox that, even in physical beauty, man
is the superior. He admitted, indeed, that there was a brief period of
early youth when it might be hard to say whether the prize should be
awarded to the graceful undulations of the female figure, or the
perfect balance and supple vigour of the male frame. But while our new
Paris might hesitate between the youthful Bacchus and the Venus
emerging from the foam, he averred that, when Venus and Bacchus had
reached thirty, the point no longer admitted of a doubt; the male form
having then attained its greatest nobility, while the female is far
gone in decadence; and that, at this epoch, womanly beauty, so far as
it is independent of grace or expression, is a question of drapery and
accessories.
Supposing, however, that all these arguments have a certain foundation;
admitting, for a moment, that they are comparable to those by which the
inferiority of the negro to the white man may be demonstrated, are they
of any value as against woman-emancipation? Do they afford us the
smallest ground for refusing to educate women as well as men--to give
women the same civil and political rights as men? No mistake is so
commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad
because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent,
non-sensical. And we conceive that those who may laugh at the arguments
of the extreme philogynists, may yet feel bound to work heart and soul
towards the attainment of their practical ends.
As regards education, for example. Granting the alleged defects of
women, is it not somewhat absurd to sanction and maintain a system of
education which would seem to have been specially contrived to
exaggerate all these defects?
Naturally not so firmly strung, nor so well balanced as boys, girls are
in great measure debarred from the sports and physical exercises which
are justly thought absolutely necessary for the full development of the
vigour of the more favoured sex. Women are, by nature, more excitable
than men--prone to be swept by tides of emotion, proceeding from hidden
and inward, as well as from obvious and external causes; and female
education does its best to weaken every physical counterpoise to this
nervous mobility--tends in all ways to stimulate the emotional part of
the mind and stunt the rest. We find girls naturally timid, inclined to
dependence, born conservatives; and we teach them that independence is
unladylike; that blind faith is the right frame of mind; and that
whatever we may be permitted, and indeed encouraged, to do to our
brother, our sister is to be left to the tyranny of authority and
tradition. With few insignificant exceptions, girls have been educated
either to be drudges, or toys, beneath man; or a sort of angels above
him; the highest ideal aimed at oscillating between Clärchen and
Beatrice. The possibility that the ideal of womanhood lies neither in
the fair saint, nor in the fair sinner; that the female type of
character is neither better nor worse than the male, but only weaker;
that women are meant neither to be men's guides nor their play-things,
but their comrades, their fellows, and their equals, so far as Nature
puts no bar to that equality, does not seem to have entered into the
minds of those who have had the conduct of the education of girls.
If the present system of female education stands self-condemned, as
inherently absurd; and if that which we have just indicated is the true
position of woman, what is the first step towards a better state of
things? We reply, emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they share
the senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, emotions, of boys,
and that the mind of the average girl is less different from that of
the average boy, than the mind of one boy is from that of another; so
that whatever argument justifies a given education for all boys,
justifies its application to girls as well. So far from imposing
artificial restrictions upon the acquirement of knowledge by women,
throw every facility in their way. Let our Faustinas, if they will,
toil through the whole round of
"Juristerei und Medizin,
Und leider! auch Philosophie."
Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the
less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl
less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains
within. Nay, if obvious practical difficulties can be overcome, let
those women who feel inclined to do so descend into the gladiatorial
arena of life, not merely in the guise of _retiariae_, as
heretofore, but as bold _sicariae_, breasting the open fray. Let
them, if they so please, become merchants, barristers, politicians. Let
them have a fair field, but let them understand, as the necessary
correlative, that they are to have no favour. Let Nature alone sit high
above the lists, "rain influence and judge the prize."
And the result? For our parts, though loth to prophesy, we believe it
will be that of other emancipations. Women will find their place, and
it will neither be that in which they have been held, nor that to which
some of them aspire. Nature's old salique law will not be repealed, and
no change of dynasty will be effected. The big chests, the massive
brains, the vigorous muscles and stout frames of the best men will
carry the day, whenever it is worth their while to contest the prizes
of life with the best women. And the hardship of it is, that the very
improvement of the women will lessen their chances. Better mothers will
bring forth better sons, and the impetus gained by the one sex will be
transmitted, in the next generation, to the other. The most Darwinian
of theorists will not venture to propound the doctrine, that the
physical disabilities under which women have hitherto laboured in the
struggle for existence with men are likely to be removed by even the
most skilfully conducted process of educational selection.
We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that the bearing of children
may, and ought, to become as free from danger and long disability to
the civilised woman as it is to the savage; nor is it improbable that,
as society advances towards its right organisation, motherhood will
occupy a less space of woman's life than it has hitherto done. But
still, unless the human species is to come to an end altogether--a
consummation which can hardly be desired by even the most ardent
advocate of "women's rights"--somebody must be good enough to take the
trouble and responsibility of annually adding to the world exactly as
many people as die out of it. In consequence of some domestic
difficulties, Sydney Smith is said to have suggested that it would have
been good for the human race had the model offered by the hive been
followed, and had all the working part of the female community been
neuters. Failing any thorough-going reform of this kind, we see nothing
for it but the old division of humanity into men potentially, or
actually, fathers, and women potentially, if not actually, mothers. And
we fear that so long as this potential motherhood is her lot, woman
will be found to be fearfully weighted in the race of life.
The duty of man is to see that not a grain is piled upon that load
beyond what Nature imposes; that injustice is not added to inequality.
IV
A LIBERAL EDUCATION; AND WHERE TO FIND IT
[1868.]
The business which the South London Working Men's College has
undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with
which that college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all
those which lie ready to a man's hand just at present.
And, at length, this fact is becoming generally recognised. You cannot
go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and
contradictory talk on this subject--nor can you fail to notice that, in
one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like
discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest
now dares to say that education is a bad thing. If any representative
of the once large and powerful party, which, in former days, proclaimed
this opinion, still exists in a semi-fossil state, he keeps his
thoughts to himself. In fact, there is a chorus of voices, almost
distressing in their harmony, raised in favour of the doctrine that
education is the great panacea for human troubles, and that, if the
country is not shortly to go to the dogs, everybody must be educated.
The politicians tells us, "You must educate the masses because they are
going to be masters." The clergy join in the cry for education, for
they affirm that the people are drifting away from church and chapel
into the broadest infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists
swell the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad
workmen; that England will soon be unable to turn out cotton goods, or
steam engines, cheaper than other people; and then, Ichabod! Ichabod!
the glory will be departed from us. And a few voices are lifted up in
favour of the doctrine that the masses should be educated because they
are men and women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and
suffering, and that it is as true now, as ever it was, that the people
perish for lack of knowledge.
These members of the minority, with whom I confess I have a good deal
of sympathy, are doubtful whether any of the other reasons urged in
favour of the education of the people are of much value--whether,
indeed, some of them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of
action. They question if it be wise to tell people that you will do for
them, out of fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as
your only motive was compassion for their weakness and their sorrows.
And, if ignorance of everything which it is needful a ruler should know
is likely to do so much harm in the governing classes of the future,
why is it, they ask reasonably enough, that such ignorance in the
governing classes of the past has not been viewed with equal horror?
Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it may
be doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point of
ignorance, class feeling, or prejudice. It is true that the ignorance
is of a different sort--that the class feeling is in favour of a
different class--and that the prejudice has a distinct savour of
wrong-headedness in each case--but it is questionable if the one is
either a bit better, or a bit worse, than the other. The old
protectionist theory is the doctrine of trades unions as applied by the
squires, and the modern trades unionism is the doctrine of the squires
applied by the artisans. Why should we be worse off under one _régime_
than under the other?
Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy to think whether it is
really want of education which keeps the masses away from their
ministrations--whether the most completely educated men are not as open
to reproach on this score as the workmen; and whether, perchance, this
may not indicate that it is not education which lies at the bottom of
the matter?
Once more, these people, whom there is no pleasing, venture to doubt
whether the glory, which rests upon being able to undersell all the
rest of the world, is a very safe kind of glory--whether we may not
purchase it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to
be directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of
manufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some
technical industry, but good for nothing else.
And, finally, these people inquire whether it is the masses alone who
need a reformed and improved education. They ask whether the richest of
our public schools might not well be made to supply knowledge, as well
as gentlemanly habits, a strong class feeling, and eminent proficiency
in cricket. They seem to think that the noble foundations of our old
universities are hardly fulfilling their functions in their present
posture of half-clerical seminaries, half racecourses, where men are
trained to win a senior wranglership, or a double-first, as horses
are trained to win a cup, with as little reference to the needs of
after-life in the case of the man as in that of the racer. And, while
as zealous for education as the rest, they affirm that, if the
education of the richer classes were such as to fit them to be the
leaders and the governors of the poorer; and, if the education of the
poorer classes were such as to enable them to appreciate really wise
guidance and good governance, the politicians need not fear mob-law,
nor the clergy lament their want of flocks, nor the capitalists
prognosticate the annihilation of the prosperity of the country.
Such is the diversity of opinion upon the why and the wherefore of
education. And my hearers will be prepared to expect that the practical
recommendations which are put forward are not less discordant. There is
a loud cry for compulsory education. We English, in spite of constant
experience to the contrary, preserve a touching faith in the efficacy
of acts of Parliament; and I believe we should have compulsory
education in the course of next session, if there were the least
probability that half a dozen leading statesmen of different parties
would agree what that education should be.
Some hold that education without theology is worse than none. Others
maintain, quite as strongly, that education with theology is in the
same predicament. But this is certain, that those who hold the first
opinion can by no means agree what theology should be taught; and that
those who maintain the second are in a small minority.
At any rate "make people learn to read, write, and cipher," say a great
many; and the advice is undoubtedly sensible as far as it goes. But, as
has happened to me in former days, those who, in despair of getting
anything better, advocate this measure, are met with the objection that
it is very like making a child practise the use of a knife, fork, and
spoon, without giving it a particle of meat. I really don't know what
reply is to be made to such an objection.
But it would be unprofitable to spend more time in disentangling, or
rather in showing up the knots in, the ravelled skeins of our
neighbours. Much more to the purpose is it to ask if we possess any
clue of our own which may guide us among these entanglements. And by
way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves--What is education? Above all
things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?--of that
education which, if we could begin life again, we would give
ourselves--of that education which, if we could mould the fates to our
own will, we would give our children? Well, I know not what may be your
conceptions upon this matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I
shall find that our views are not very discrepant.
* * * * *
Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every
one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a
game at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a
primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces;
to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of
giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look
with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed
his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without
knowing a pawn from a knight?
Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the
fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of
those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something
of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than
chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man
and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her
own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the
universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.
The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play
is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that
he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for
ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with
that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight
in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but
without remorse.
My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which
Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul.
Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel
who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win--and
I should accept it us an image of human life.
Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty
game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in
the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and
their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the
affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in
harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less
than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be
tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not
call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of
numbers, upon the other side.
It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing
as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man,
in the full vigour of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the
world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best
might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature
would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the
properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling
him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would
receive an education which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and
adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very
few accomplishments.
And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still, an
Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, would
be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seem
but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and
sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain;
but conduct would still be shaped by the observation of the natural
consequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature
of man.
To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And
then, long before we were susceptible of any other mode of instruction,
Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its
educational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with
Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross
disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past
for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as
fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for
him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her
patient education of us in that great university, the universe, of
which we are all members--Nature having no Test-Acts.
Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the laws which
govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and
successful men in this world. The great mass of mankind are the
"Poll," who pick up just enough to get through without much discredit.
Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you can't come up
again. Nature's pluck means extermination.
Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as Nature
is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago.
But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and
wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful
disobedience--incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime.
Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first;
but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your
ears are boxed.