the gratification of unworthy desires, if the increasing perfection of
manufacturing processes is to be accompanied by an increasing
debasement of those who carry them on, I do not see the good of
industry and prosperity.
Now it is perfectly true that men's views of what is desirable depend
upon their characters; and that the innate proclivities to which we
give that name are not touched by any amount of instruction. But it
does not follow that even mere intellectual education may not, to an
indefinite extent, modify the practical manifestation of the characters
of men in their actions, by supplying them with motives unknown to the
ignorant. A pleasure-loving character will have pleasure of some sort;
but, if you give him the choice, he may prefer pleasures which do not
degrade him to those which do. And this choice is offered to every man,
who possesses in literary or artistic culture a never-failing source of
pleasures, which are neither withered by age, nor staled by custom, nor
embittered in the recollection by the pangs of self-reproach.
If the Institution opened to-day fulfils the intention of its founder,
the picked intelligences among all classes of the population of this
district will pass through it. No child born in Birmingham,
henceforward, if he have the capacity to profit by the opportunities
offered to him, first in the primary and other schools, and afterwards
in the Scientific College, need fail to obtain, not merely the
instruction, but the culture most appropriate to the conditions of his
life.
Within these walls, the future employer and the future artisan may
sojourn together for a while, and carry, through all their lives, the
stamp of the influences then brought to bear upon them. Hence, it is
not beside the mark to remind you, that the prosperity of industry
depends not merely upon the improvement of manufacturing processes, not
merely upon the ennobling of the individual character, but upon a third
condition, namely, a clear understanding of the conditions of social
life, on the part of both the capitalist and the operative, and their
agreement upon common principles of social action. They must learn that
social phaenomena are as much the expression of natural laws as any
others; that no social arrangements can be permanent unless they
harmonise with the requirements of social statics and dynamics; and
that, in the nature of things, there is an arbiter whose decisions
execute themselves.
But this knowledge is only to be obtained by the application of the
methods of investigation adopted in physical researches to the
investigation of the phaenomena of society. Hence, I confess, I should
like to see one addition made to the excellent scheme of education
propounded for the College, in the shape of provision for the teaching
of Sociology. For though we are all agreed that party politics are to
have no place in the instruction of the College; yet in this country,
practically governed as it is now by universal suffrage, every man who
does his duty must exercise political functions. And, if the evils
which are inseparable from the good of political liberty are to be
checked, if the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and
despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining
freedom; it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal
with political, as they now deal with scientific questions; to be as
ashamed of undue haste and partisan prejudice in the one case as in the
other; and to believe that the machinery of society is at least as
delicate as that of a spinning-jenny, and as little likely to be
improved by the meddling of those who have not taken the trouble to
master the principles of its action.
In conclusion, I am sure that I make myself the mouthpiece of all
present in offering to the venerable founder of the Institution, which
now commences its beneficent career, our congratulations on the
completion of his work; and in expressing the conviction, that the
remotest posterity will point to it as a crucial instance of the wisdom
which natural piety leads all men to ascribe to their ancestors.
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[1] See the first essay in this volume.
[2] The advocacy of the introduction of physical science into general
education by George Combe and others commenced a good deal earlier; but
the movement had acquired hardly any practical force before the time to
which I refer.
[3] _Essays in Criticism_, p. 37.
VII
ON SCIENCE AND ART IN RELATION TO EDUCATION
[1882]
When a man is honoured by such a request as that which reached me from
the authorities of your institution some time ago, I think the first
thing that occurs to him is that which occurred to those who were
bidden to the feast in the Gospel--to begin to make an excuse; and
probably all the excuses suggested on that famous occasion crop up in
his mind one after the other, including his "having married a wife," as
reasons for not doing what he is asked to do. But, in my own case, and
on this particular occasion, there were other difficulties of a sort
peculiar to the time, and more or less personal to myself; because I
felt that, if I came amongst you, I should be expected, and, indeed,
morally compelled, to speak upon the subject of Scientific Education.
And then there arose in my mind the recollection of a fact, which
probably no one here but myself remembers; namely, that some fourteen
years ago I was the guest of a citizen of yours, who bears the honoured
name of Rathbone, at a very charming and pleasant dinner given by the
Philomathic Society; and I there and then, and in this very city, made
a speech upon the topic of Scientific Education. Under these
circumstances, you see, one runs two dangers--the first, of repeating
one's self, although I may fairly hope that everybody has forgotten the
fact I have just now mentioned, except myself; and the second, and even
greater difficulty, is the danger of saying something different from
what one said before, because then, however forgotten your previous
speech may be, somebody finds out its existence, and there goes on that
process so hateful to members of Parliament, which may be denoted by
the term "Hansardisation." Under these circumstances, I came to the
conclusion that the best thing I could do was to take the bull by the
horns, and to "Hansardise" myself,--to put before you, in the briefest
possible way, the three or four propositions which I endeavoured to
support on the occasion of the speech to which I have referred; and
then to ask myself, supposing you were asking me, whether I had
anything to retract, or to modify, in them, in virtue of the increased
experience, and, let us charitably hope, the increased wisdom of an
added fourteen years.
Now, the points to which I directed particular attention on that
occasion were these: in the first place, that instruction in physical
science supplies information of a character of especial value, both in
a practical and a speculative point of view--information which cannot
be obtained otherwise; and, in the second place, that, as educational
discipline, it supplies, in a better form than any other study can
supply, exercise in a special form of logic, and a peculiar method of
testing the validity of our processes of inquiry. I said further, that,
even at that time, a great and increasing attention was being paid to
physical science in our schools and colleges, and that, most assuredly,
such attention must go on growing and increasing, until education in
these matters occupied a very much larger share of the time which is
given to teaching and training, than had been the case heretofore. And
I threw all the strength of argumentation of which I was possessed into
the support of these propositions. But I venture to remind you, also,
of some other words I used at that time, and which I ask permission to
read to you. They were these:--"There are other forms of culture
besides physical science, and I should be profoundly sorry to see the
fact forgotten, or even to observe a tendency to starve or cripple
literary or aesthetic culture for the sake of science. Such a narrow
view of the nature of education has nothing to do with my firm
conclusion that a complete and thorough scientific culture ought to be
introduced into all schools."
I say I desire, in commenting upon these various points, and judging
them as fairly as I can by the light of increased experience, to
particularly emphasise this last, because I am told, although I
assuredly do not know it of my own knowledge--though I think if the
fact were so I ought to know it, being tolerably well acquainted with
that which goes on in the scientific world, and which has gone on there
for the last thirty years--that there is a kind of sect, or horde, of
scientific Goths and Vandals, who think it would be proper and
desirable to sweep away all other forms of culture and instruction,
except those in physical science, and to make them the universal and
exclusive, or, at any rate, the dominant training of the human mind of
the future generation. This is not my view--I do not believe that it is
anybody's view,--but it is attributed to those who, like myself,
advocate scientific education. I therefore dwell strongly upon the
point, and I beg you to believe that the words I have just now read
were by no means intended by me as a sop to the Cerberus of culture. I
have not been in the habit of offering sops to any kind of Cerberus;
but it was an expression of profound conviction on my own part--a
conviction forced upon me not only by my mental constitution, but by
the lessons of what is now becoming a somewhat long experience of
varied conditions of life.
I am not about to trouble you with my autobiography; the omens are
hardly favourable, at present, for work of that kind. But I should like
if I may do so without appearing, what I earnestly desire not to be,
egotistical,--I should like to make it clear to you, that such notions
as these, which are sometimes attributed to me, are, as I have said,
inconsistent with my mental constitution, and still more inconsistent
with the upshot of the teaching of my experience. For I can certainly
claim for myself that sort of mental temperament which can say that
nothing human comes amiss to it. I have never yet met with any branch
of human knowledge which I have found unattractive--which it would not
have been pleasant to me to follow, so far as I could go; and I have
yet to meet with any form of art in which it has not been possible for
me to take as acute a pleasure as, I believe, it is possible for men to
take.
And with respect to the circumstances of life, it so happens that it
has been my fate to know many lands and many climates, and to be
familiar, by personal experience, with almost every form of society,
from the uncivilised savage of Papua and Australia and the civilised
savages of the slums and dens of the poverty-stricken parts of
great cities, to those who perhaps, are occasionally the somewhat
over-civilised members of our upper ten thousand. And I have never
found, in any of these conditions of life, a deficiency of something
which was attractive. Savagery has its pleasures, I assure you, as well
as civilisation, and I may even venture to confess--if you will not let
a whisper of the matter get back to London, where I am known--I am even
fain to confess, that sometimes in the din and throng of what is called
"a brilliant reception" the vision crosses my mind of waking up from
the soft plank which had afforded me satisfactory sleep during the
hours of the night, in the bright dawn of a tropical morning, when my
comrades were yet asleep, when every sound was hushed, except the
little lap-lap of the ripples against the sides of the boat, and the
distant twitter of the sea-bird on the reef. And when that vision
crosses my mind, I am free to confess I desire to be back in the boat
again. So that, if I share with those strange persons to whose
asserted, but still hypothetical existence I have referred, the want of
appreciation of forms of culture other than the pursuit of physical
science, all I can say is, that it is, in spite of my constitution, and
in spite of my experience, that such should be my fate.
But now let me turn to another point, or rather to two other points,
with which I propose to occupy myself. How far does the experience of
the last fourteen years justify the estimate which I ventured to put
forward of the value of scientific culture, and of the share--the
increasing share--which it must take in ordinary education? Happily, in
respect to that matter, you need not rely upon my testimony. In the
last half-dozen numbers of the "Journal of Education," you will find a
series of very interesting and remarkable papers, by gentlemen who are
practically engaged in the business of education in our great public
and other schools, telling us what is doing in these schools, and what
is their experience of the results of scientific education there, so
far as it has gone. I am not going to trouble you with an abstract of
those papers, which are well worth your study in their fulness and
completeness, but I have copied out one remarkable passage, because it
seems to me so entirely to bear out what I have formerly ventured to
say about the value of science, both as to its subject-matter and as to
the discipline which the learning of science involves. It is from a
paper by Mr. Worthington--one of the masters at Clifton, the reputation
of which school you know well, and at the head of which is an old
friend of mine, the Rev. Mr. Wilson--to whom much credit is due for
being one of the first, as I can say from my own knowledge, to take up
this question and work it into practical shape. What Mr. Worthington
says is this:--
"It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of the information
imparted by certain branches of science; it modifies the
whole criticism of life made in maturer years. The study has
often, on a mass of boys, a certain influence which, I think, was
hardly anticipated, and to which a good deal of value must be
attached--an influence as much moral as intellectual, which is
shown in the increased and increasing respect for precision of
statement, and for that form of veracity which consists in the
acknowledgment of difficulties. It produces a real effect to find
that Nature cannot be imposed upon, and the attention given
to experimental lectures, at first superficial and curious only,
soon becomes minute, serious, and practical."
Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen better words to
express--in fact, I have, in other words, expressed the same conviction
in former days--what the influence of scientific teaching, if properly
carried out, must be.
But now comes the question of properly carrying it out, because, when I
hear the value of school teaching in physical science disputed, my
first impulse is to ask the disputer, "What have you known about it?"
and he generally tells me some lamentable case of failure. Then I ask,
"What are the circumstances of the case, and how was the teaching
carried out?" I remember, some few years ago, hearing of the head
master of a large school, who had expressed great dissatisfaction with
the adoption of the teaching of physical science--and that after
experiment. But the experiment consisted in this--in asking one of the
junior masters in the school to get up science, in order to teach it;
and the young gentleman went away for a year and got up science and
taught it. Well, I have no doubt that the result was as disappointing
as the head-master said it was, and I have no doubt that it ought to
have been as disappointing, and far more disappointing too; for, if
this kind of instruction is to be of any good at all, if it is not to
be less than no good, if it is to take the place of that which is
already of some good, then there are several points which must be
attended to.
And the first of these is the proper selection of topics, the second is
practical teaching, the third is practical teachers, and the fourth is
sufficiency of time. If these four points are not carefully attended to
by anybody who undertakes the teaching of physical science in schools,
my advice to him is, to let it alone. I will not dwell at any length
upon the first point, because there is a general consensus of opinion
as to the nature of the topics which should be chosen. The second
point--practical teaching--is one of great importance, because it
requires more capital to set it agoing, demands more time, and, last,
but by no means least, it requires much more personal exertion and
trouble on the part of those professing to teach, than is the case with
other kinds of instruction.
When I accepted the invitation to be here this evening, your secretary
was good enough to send me the addresses which have been given by
distinguished persons who have previously occupied this chair. I don't
know whether he had a malicious desire to alarm me; but, however that
may be, I read the addresses, and derived the greatest pleasure and
profit from some of them, and from none more than from the one given by
the great historian, Mr. Freeman, which delighted me most of all; and,
if I had not been ashamed of plagiarising, and if I had not been sure
of being found out, I should have been glad to have copied very much of
what Mr. Freeman said, simply putting in the word science for history.
There was one notable passage,--"The difference between good and bad
teaching mainly consists in this, whether the words used are really
clothed with a meaning or not." And Mr. Freeman gives a remarkable
example of this. He says, when a little girl was asked where Turkey
was, she answered that it was in the yard with the other fowls, and
that showed she had a definite idea connected with the word Turkey, and
was, so far, worthy of praise. I quite agree with that commendation;
but what a curious thing it is that one should now find it necessary to
urge that this is the be-all and end-all of scientific instruction--the
_sine quâ non_, the absolutely necessary condition,--and yet that
it was insisted upon more than two hundred years ago by one of the
greatest men science ever possessed in this country, William Harvey.
Harvey wrote, or at least published, only two small books, one of which
is the well-known treatise on the circulation of the blood. The other,
the "Exercitationes de Generatione," is less known, but not less
remarkable. And not the least valuable part of it is the preface, in
which there occurs this passage: "Those who, reading the words of
authors, do not form sensible images of the things referred to, obtain
no true ideas, but conceive false imaginations and inane phantasms."
You see, William Harvey's words are just the same in substance as those
of Mr. Freeman, only they happen to be rather more than two centuries
older. So that what I am now saying has its application elsewhere than
in science; but assuredly in science the condition of knowing, of your
own knowledge, things which you talk about, is absolutely imperative.
I remember, in my youth, there were detestable books which ought to
have been burned by the hands of the common hangman, for they contained
questions and answers to be learned by heart, of this sort, "What is a
horse? The horse is termed _Equus caballus_; belongs to the class
Mammalia; order, Pachydermata; family, Solidungula." Was any human
being wiser for learning that magic formula? Was he not more foolish,
inasmuch as he was deluded into taking words for knowledge? It is that
kind of teaching that one wants to get rid of, and banished out of
science. Make it as little as you like, but, unless that which is
taught is based on actual observation and familiarity with facts, it is
better left alone.
There are a great many people who imagine that elementary teaching
might be properly carried out by teachers provided with only elementary
knowledge. Let me assure you that that is the profoundest mistake in
the world. There is nothing so difficult to do as to write a good
elementary book, and there is nobody so hard to teach properly and well
as people who know nothing about a subject, and I will tell you why. If
I address an audience of persons who are occupied in the same line of
work as myself, I can assume that they know a vast deal, and that they
can find out the blunders I make. If they don't, it is their fault and
not mine; but when I appear before a body of people who know nothing
about the matter, who take for gospel whatever I say, surely it becomes
needful that I consider what I say, make sure that it will bear
examination, and that I do not impose upon the credulity of those who
have faith in me. In the second place, it involves that difficult
process of knowing what you know so well that you can talk about it as
you can talk about your ordinary business. A man can always talk about
his own business. He can always make it plain; but, if his knowledge is
hearsay, he is afraid to go beyond what he has recollected, and put it
before those that are ignorant in such a shape that they shall
comprehend it. That is why, to be a good elementary teacher, to teach
the elements of any subject, requires most careful consideration, if
you are a master of the subject; and, if you are not a master of it, it
is needful you should familiarise yourself with so much as you are
called upon to teach--soak yourself in it, so to speak--until you know
it as part of your daily life and daily knowledge, and then you will be
able to teach anybody. That is what I mean by practical teachers, and,
although the deficiency of such teachers is being remedied to a large
extent, I think it is one which has long existed, and which has existed
from no fault of those who undertook to teach, but because, until the
last score of years, it absolutely was not possible for any one in a
great many branches of science, whatever his desire might be, to get
instruction which would enable him to be a good teacher of elementary
things. All that is being rapidly altered, and I hope it will soon
become a thing of the past.
The last point I have referred to is the question of the sufficiency of
time. And here comes the rub. The teaching of science needs time, as
any other subject; but it needs more time proportionally than other
subjects, for the amount of work obviously done, if the teaching is to
be, as I have said, practical. Work done in a laboratory involves a
good deal of expenditure of time without always an obvious result,
because we do not see anything of that quiet process of soaking the
facts into the mind, which takes place through the organs of the
senses. On this ground there must be ample time given to science
teaching. What that amount of time should be is a point which I need
not discuss now; in fact, it is a point which cannot be settled until
one has made up one's mind about various other questions.
All, then, that I have to ask for, on behalf of the scientific people,
if I may venture to speak for more than myself, is that you should put
scientific teaching into what statesmen call the condition of "the most
favoured nation"; that is to say, that it shall have as large a share
of the time given to education as any other principal subject. You may
say that that is a very vague statement, because the value of the
allotment of time, under those circumstances, depends upon the number
of principal subjects. It is _x_ the time, and an unknown quantity
of principal subjects dividing that, and science taking shares with the
rest. That shows that we cannot deal with this question fully until we
have made up our minds as to what the principal subjects of education
ought to be.