SALVATION THROUGH SELF-REALISATION
In Utopia the transition from _education_ to _salvation_, both in
theory and practice, is obvious and direct. The difference between
education and salvation is, indeed, purely nominal: in their essence
the two processes are one. As the education given in Utopia is, in
the main, self-education, there is no reason why it should not be
continued indefinitely after the child has left school; and as its
function is to foster the growth of the child's many-sided nature
(with its vast potentialities), there is every reason why it should
be continued as long as he lives. In other words, the path of
salvation is the path of self-realisation, the most important part of
which is traversed in childhood; and to attain to salvation (which is
in a sense unattainable) is to remain faithful to that path till it
passes beyond our thought.
Outside Utopia there is a widely different conception of the meaning
and purpose of education, and a correspondingly different conception
of the nature of salvation and the means by which it is to be
achieved. The idea of salvation, with the complementary idea of
perdition, may be regarded as the crown and completion of that scheme
of external rewards and punishments which plays so prominent a
part in Western education. Salvation, which is the highest of all
external rewards, just as perdition is the severest of all external
punishments, is not a path to be followed, but a state of happiness
to be won and enjoyed. It follows that the relation between education
and salvation is, in the main, one of analogy, rather than of
identity (as in Utopia), or even of vital connection. Or shall we say
that education is not so much the first act in the drama of salvation
as the first rehearsal of the play?
There are, of course, two conceptions of salvation in the West, just
as there are two worlds to be lived in,--the Supernatural world and
the world of Nature.
In what are called religious circles, to be saved is to have gained
admission to Heaven, and, in doing so, to have escaped the torment
and misery of Hell. There was a time when Hell was taken very
seriously; but the idea of never-ending torment and misery is found,
when steadily faced, to be so intolerable that popular thought, even
in religious circles, is now turning away from it; and so loosely do
men sit, in these "degenerate days," to the old doctrine of eternal
punishment, that "to die" and "to go to heaven" are becoming
interchangeable terms. But if all men are to be admitted to Heaven
(or to its ante-room, Purgatory) at the end of this, their one
earth-life, it is clear that there can be no causal connection
between conduct and salvation. For though there may be degrees of
happiness in Heaven to reward the varying degrees of virtue on
earth, all these are dwarfed to nothing by the unimaginable abyss
of difference which yawns between Heaven and Hell; and the
practical upshot of the current eschatology is that all men--the
self-sacrificing equally with the self-indulgent, the kind and
compassionate equally with the hard-hearted, the spiritually-minded
equally with the worldly, the aspiring equally with the
indifferent--are to reap the same reward. If a man is a notoriously
evil liver, those who have suffered at his hands or been violently
scandalised by his conduct may perhaps find a sombre pleasure in
consigning him to Hell, which, indeed, might otherwise have to put
up its shutters. But though the doors of Heaven may be closed against
a few exceptional scoundrels, they are nowadays thrown open to all
the rest of Mankind; and the maxim, "Live anyhow, and you will be
saved somehow," seems to sum up with tolerable accuracy the popular
attitude towards the twofold problem of duty and destiny.
I do not for a moment suggest that this happy-go-lucky eschatology is
formally countenanced by the Churches and Sects. They would doubtless
repudiate it with indignation; but the fact remains that their
own teaching is largely responsible for it. For not only is the
idea of _natural_ retribution wholly foreign to the genius of
supernaturalism, but also, in the two great schools of Western
theology, there is, and always has been, a strong tendency to
undervalue conduct (in the broad, human sense of the word), and to
make the means of salvation mechanical rather than vital. At any rate
the sacramental teaching of the Catholic Church, and the Calvinistic
doctrine of salvation through faith in the finished work of Christ,
readily lend themselves to such an interpretation.
So ineffective is the current eschatology, in its bearing on
conduct, that the latent energy of Man's nature--his latent desire to
have a central purpose in life--is compelling him to work out for
himself another and a more mundane conception of salvation, to set
before himself as the end of life the winning of certain temporal
prizes, and to keep this end steadily in view from day to day and
from year to year. Such a conception of salvation has always had a
strong attraction for him, though in his more orthodox days he found
it desirable to subordinate it to, or if possible harmonise it with,
the conception which his religion dictated to him; and of late its
attractiveness has been increased by the fact that he is beginning to
throw his eschatology (even in its present emasculated form) to the
winds.
So far, I have had in my mind those quarters of Western thought in
which the belief in the reality of the soul and the kindred belief
in immortality still survive. But in point of fact both beliefs
are dying before our eyes,--dying as a dumb protest against the
inadequacy of the popular philosophy, against the intrinsic
incredibility of its premises, against its fundamental misconception
of the meaning of life and the nature and conditions of salvation,
above all against the way in which the beliefs themselves have been
persistently misinterpreted and travestied. And where the beliefs are
dying, the latent externalism and materialism of Western thought and
Western life are able to assert themselves without let or hindrance.
"To be saved," as the phrase is now widely understood, means to get
on in life, to succeed in business or in a profession, to make money,
to rise in the social scale (if necessary, on the shoulders of
others), to force one's way to the front (if necessary, by trampling
down others), to be talked about in the daily papers, to make a
"splash" in some circle or coterie,--in these and in other ways to
achieve some measure of what is called "success."
And in proportion as this mundane conception of salvation tends to
establish itself, so does the drift towards social and political
anarchy, which is now beginning to alarm all the lovers of order and
"progress," tend to widen its range and accelerate its movement. For
though the current idea of achieving salvation through "success" is a
comfortable doctrine for the successful few, it is the reverse of
comfortable for the unsuccessful many, among whom the idea is gaining
ground that as salvation is the reward, not of virtue, but of a
judicious blend of cleverness, unscrupulousness, selfishness, and
greed, there is no reason, in the moral order of things, why it
should not be wrested from those who are enjoying it, either by
organised social warfare or by open violence and crime. And even if
an anarchical outbreak should result in perdition all round instead
of salvation all round, it would at least be some consolation to the
"lost" to feel that they had dragged the "saved" down into their own
bottomless pit. This would not be a lofty sentiment; yet I do not
see who is in a position to condemn it,--not the supporter of the
existing social order, which legalises a general scramble, first for
the "prizes" of life and then for the bare means of subsistence, and
is well content that in that scramble the weak, the ignorant, and
the unfortunate should go to the wall,--not the exponent of the
conventional theology, which has taught men to dream of a Heaven in
which the happiness of the "elect" will be unruffled by the knowledge
that an eternity of misery is the doom of perhaps a majority of their
fellow-men.
In the West, then, there are two conceptions of salvation,--a
selfish, worldly conception which is daily becoming more effective,
and a selfish other-worldly conception which is daily becoming more
ineffective, and is therefore less and less able to compete with or
control its rival. Out of the attempts that are made to realise
both these conceptions and to keep them on friendly terms with one
another, there is emerging a state of chaos--political, social,
moral, spiritual,--a weltering chaos of new and old ideals, new and
old theories of life, new and old standards of values, new and old
centres of authority, new and old ambitions and dreams. And in this
chaos there are only two principles of order, the first (which is
also the ultimate cause of all our disorder) being the pathetic fact
that nearly all the actors in the bewildering drama are still seeking
for happiness outside themselves, the second being the fundamental
goodness of man's heart.
I will now go back to Utopia. There a new conception of salvation is
implicit in the new theory of education which has revolutionised the
life of the school. Humble as is the sphere and small as is the scale
of Egeria's labours, her work is, I firmly believe, of world-wide
importance and lasting value, for she has provided an experimental
basis for the idea that salvation is to be achieved by growth, and
growth alone.
I will now try to interpret that idea.
The education of the child in school begins when he is four or five
years old, and lasts till he is thirteen or fourteen. But he enters
the path of salvation the day he is born. He comes into the world a
weak, helpless baby; but, like every other seedling, he has in him
all the potencies of perfection,--the perfection of his kind.
To realise those potencies, so far as they can be realised within
the limits of one earth-life, is to achieve salvation. Are those
potencies worth realising? To this question I can but answer: "Such
as they are, they are our all." We might ask the same question with
regard to an acorn or a grain of wheat; and in each case the answer
would be the same. There are, indeed, plants and animals which are
noxious _from our point of view_. But that is not the view which they
take of themselves. Each of them regards his own potencies in the
light of a sacred trust, and strives with untiring energy to realise
them. If the potencies of our nature are not worth realising we had
better give up the business of living. If they are, we had better
fall into line with other living things.
An unceasing pressure is being put upon us to do so. The perfect
manhood which is present in embryo in the new-born infant, just as
the oak-tree is present in embryo in the acorn, will struggle
unceasingly to evolve itself. With the dawn of self-consciousness, we
shall gradually acquire the power of either co-operating with, or
thwarting, the spontaneous energies that are welling up in us and
making for our growth. In this respect we stand, in some sort, apart
from the rest of living things. But the power to co-operate with
our own spontaneous energies is to the full as natural as are the
energies themselves. To fathom the mystery of self-consciousness is
beyond my power and beside my present purpose; but we may perhaps
regard our power of interfering, for good or ill, with the
spontaneous energies of our nature, as the outcome of a successful
effort which our nature has made both to widen the sphere of its own
life and to accelerate the process of its own growth. But just
because we possess that power, it is essential that we, above all
other living things, should believe in ourselves, should believe in
the intrinsic value of our natural potencies, with a whole-hearted
faith. For if we do not, we shall hinder instead of helping the
forces that are at work in us, and we shall retard instead of
accelerating the process of our growth.
We have seen that education in the West has hitherto been a failure
because, owing to the ascendency of the doctrine of original sin, it
has been based on distrust of human nature; and we have seen that in
Utopia, where Egeria's faith in human nature is so profound that she
has allowed the children to go far towards educating themselves, the
results achieved have gone beyond my wildest dream of what was
practicable, at any rate within the limits of the school life of
village children. What is true of education is true _a fortiori_ of
salvation. If it is impossible to construct a satisfactory scheme of
education on the basis of distrust of human nature, it is even more
impossible (if there are degrees in impossibility) to construct on
the same basis a satisfactory scheme of salvation. I have already
contended that if education is to be reformed, the doctrine of
original sin must go; and I now contend that if our philosophy of
life is to be reformed, we must abandon, not that doctrine only, but
the whole dualistic philosophy which centres in the opposition of
Nature to the Supernatural. For trust in human nature--the
microcosm--is impossible, so long as Nature--the macrocosm--is liable
to be disparaged and discredited (in our minds) by the visionary
splendours of the Supernatural world; and to devise a harmonious
scheme of life is impossible so long as an inharmonious conception
of the Universe dominates our thought,--a conception so inharmonious
that it divides the Universe, the All of Being, into two hostile
camps, and in doing so introduces the "war of the worlds" into each
individual life.
When a fruit-grower plants a fruit-tree, he does three things for it.
By choosing an appropriate soil and aspect, he brings adequate
supplies of _nourishment_ within reach of it. By manuring it at the
right season, he both adds to its store of nourishment and gives
it the _stimulus_ which will help it to absorb and assimilate the
nourishment that is immediately available for its use. And, by
pruning and training it judiciously, he gives it the _guidance_ which
will enable it to develop itself to the best advantage from the
fruit-bearing point of view (fruit-bearing being the end which he
sets it). He does these three things for it, but he does no more than
these. He realises that in all these operations he is only taking
advantage of the innate powers and tendencies of the tree, and
enabling these to deploy themselves under as favourable conditions
as possible; and he is therefore well content to leave the rest to
the tree itself, feeling sure that its own spontaneous effort to
achieve perfection will do all that is needed. His trust in the
ability and willingness of the tree to work out its salvation is
complete.
These are the lines on which the farmer and the fruit-grower conduct
their business,--lines, the neglect of which would involve them in
early disaster and in ultimate ruin. And these are the lines on which
human nature ought to be trained, in school and out of school, from
the day of birth to the day of death. But they are lines on which it
will never be trained so long as the doctrine of the depravity of
Nature in general and human nature in particular controls our
philosophy of life.
The doctrine of natural depravity, or original sin, is the outcome of
Man's attempt to explain to himself the glaring fact of his own
imperfection. The doctrine grew up in an age when men were ignorant
of the fundamental laws of Nature, and among a people who, though
otherwise richly gifted, had no turn for sustained thought. So long
as men were ignorant of Nature's master law of evolution, it was but
natural that they should account for their own imperfection by
looking back to a Golden Age,--a state of innocence and bliss from
which they had somehow fallen, and to which they could not, by any
effort or process of their corrupted nature, hope to return. While
this idea--half myth and half doctrine--was growing up in the mind
of Israel, the counter idea of the evolution or growth of the soul,
of its ascent from "weak beginnings" towards a state of spiritual
perfection, was growing up among the thinkers of India, and the
derivative doctrine of salvation through the natural process of
soul-growth was being gradually elaborated. But though the philosophy
of India produced some impression on the conscious thought, and a
far deeper impression on the subconscious thought, of the West, its
master idea of spiritual evolution--_through a long sequence of
lives_--was wholly foreign to the genius of Christendom, which had
borrowed its _ideas_ from the commonplace philosophy of Israel; and
it was not till the nineteenth century of our era that the idea of
evolution began to make its way, from the quarter of physical
science, into Western thought.
The doctrine of original sin must once have had a meaning and a
purpose. For one thing, it must have been generated by a sudden rise
in Man's moral standard; and as such it must have had a salutary
influence on his conduct and inward life. But it is now outstaying
its welcome. The Biblical story of the Fall, in virtue of which it
was once authoritatively taught, is ceasing to be regarded as serious
history; and the doctrine must therefore either justify itself to
critical thought or resign itself to rejection as inadequate and
unsound. But there is only one line of defence which its supporters
can take. As the doctrine was the outcome of Man's premature attempt
to explain the fact of his own imperfection, if it is to survive in
the world of ideas it must be able to show, first and foremost, that
the fact in question cannot be accounted for on other grounds. Will
it be able to do this, at a time when the idea of evolution is
beginning to impregnate our mental atmosphere, and in doing so is
making us realise that we are near of kin to all other living things,
and that our lives, like theirs, are dominated by the master-law of
_growth_?
That there is much moral evil in the world is undeniable. Are we
therefore to predicate original depravity of man's heart and soul?
But there is also much physical evil in the world,--pain, weakness,
disease, decay, and death. Are we therefore to predicate original
depravity of man's body? And this physical evil, this liability to
disease, is not confined to man, but also affects all other living
things. Are we therefore to predicate original depravity of a
new-born lamb, of a new-laid egg, of an acorn, of a grain of wheat?
Let us consider certain typical forms of moral evil, and see if we
can account for them, without having recourse to the hypothesis of
original sin. The vicious propensities which manifest themselves in
children and "young persons" may be divided into two main classes,
_apparent_ and _actual_.[25] Of the former class the chief cause is,
in a word, _immaturity_. Of the latter, _environment_.
Analogies drawn from plant life may help us to understand how these
causes operate.
_Immaturity._ If an Englishman who had never before tasted an apple
were to eat one in July, he would probably come to the conclusion
that it was a hard, sour, indigestible fruit, "conceived in sin and
shapen in iniquity," and fit only to be consigned to perdition (on a
dustheap, or elsewhere). But if the same man were to wait till
October and then eat an apple from the same tree, he would form a
wholly different conception of its value. He would find that the
sourness had ripened into wholesome and refreshing acidity; the
hardness into that firmness of fibre which, besides being pleasant to
the palate, makes the apple "keep" better than any other fruit; the
indigestibility into certain valuable dietetic qualities; and so on.
It is the same with the growing child. _Most of his vices are virtues
in the making_. During the first year or so of his life he is a
monster of selfishness; and selfishness is the most comprehensive and
far-reaching of all vicious tendencies. Does this mean that he has
been conceived in sin? Not in the least. It means that he is making a
whole-hearted effort to guard and unfold the potencies of life--in
the first instance, of physical life--which have been entrusted to
him. It means that he has entered the path of self-realisation, and
that if he will be as faithful to that path during the rest of his
life as he has been during those early months of uncompromising
selfishness, he will be able at last to scale the loftiest heights of
self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice.
_Environment._ The influences which environment exerts seem to fall
under three heads--
(1) General influences of a more or less permanent character, such as
home, neighbourhood, social grade, etc.
(2) General influences of a more or less variable character, such as
education, employment, friendship, etc.
(3) Particular influences, such as companionship (good or bad),
literature (wholesome or pernicious), places of amusement (elevating
or debasing), special opportunities for self-sacrifice or
self-indulgence, etc.
Corresponding to these in plant-life we have--
(1) Soil, situation, and climate:
(2) Cultivation and weather:
(3) The various insects and micro-organisms which are ready to
assail or protect growing life.
(1) If two acorns from the same tree were sown, the one in a deep
clay soil and a favourable situation, the other in a light sandy soil
and an unfavourable situation, the former would in time develop into
a large and shapely, the latter into a puny and misshapen oak-tree.
It would be the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with two human beings who
were exposed from their earliest days to widely different permanent
influences.
(2) If wheat of a certain strain were sown on the same day in two
adjoining fields, one of which was well farmed and the other badly
farmed, the resulting crops would differ widely in yield and value.
It would be the same with two human beings, one of whom (to take a
pertinent example) attended a school of Utopian tendencies, and the
other a school of a more conventional type. Of all moralising (or
demoralising) influences education is by far the most important,
owing to the fact that it can do more, and is in a position to do
more, than any other influence either to foster or to hinder growth.
The influence of weather on plant-life is, of course, enormous. In
one year the fruit-crop in a given neighbourhood is a failure: in
another year it gluts the market. One explanation of this fact,
which has its exact analogies in human life, will be given in the
next paragraph.
(3) All forms of life are exposed to the attacks of enemies of
various kinds. Whether they shall beat off those attacks or succumb
to them depends in large measure on the nature of the growth that
they are making; and this again depends, largely if not wholly, on
the nature of the general influences to which they have been exposed.
For many years I lived in a district in which hops were grown on a
large scale; and I naturally took an interest in the staple industry
of my adopted county. I noticed that whenever (during the summer
months) there came a spell of cold winds from the north-east--winds
which tend to arrest plant-growth--the hop-bines were at once
assailed by blight and other pests, and the safety of the growing
crop was imperilled. And I noticed further that when the wind got
round to the south-west, and warm showers began to stimulate the
growth of the flagging plants, the pests that had assailed them
disappeared as if by magic, and the anxieties of the growers were
relieved. As it is with plants, so it is with human beings. They too
have their enemies,--temptations of various kinds and other evil
influences that "war against the soul." And they too will be able to
beat off their assailants just so far as their own growth is vigorous
and healthy; and will succumb to their attacks, to their own serious
detriment, just so far as their own growth is feeble and sickly.
The bearing of this fact on the problem of the origin of moral evil
is obvious. That the evils which assail the organism, be it a plant
or a human being, are not inherent in its nature, is proved by the
fact that when the growth of the organism is normal and unimpeded,
the assailants are always beaten off. As it is the growth of the
organism--the development of its own nature--which enables it to
resist the evils that threaten it, we must assume that its nature is
good. Indeed the evils that threaten it are called evils for no other
reason than that they imperil its well-being; and it follows that in
calling them evils we imply that the organism is intrinsically good.
When we have eliminated from human nature the vicious tendencies
which are due either to immaturity or to the numberless influences
that come under the general head of environment, we shall find that a
very small percentage remain to be accounted for. We need not have
recourse to the doctrine of original sin in order to account for
these. So far I have said nothing about heredity, partly because its
influence on the moral development of the individual is, I think,
very small compared with that of environment, and partly because it
is impossible to consider the extent and character of its influence,
without going deeply into certain large and complicated problems. For
example, it would be impossible for me to say much about the current,
though gradually waning, belief in the force of heredity, without
saying something about its Far Eastern equivalent, the belief in
re-incarnation,--in other words, without asking whether a man
inherits from his parents and other ancestors, or from his former
selves. That different persona are born with widely different moral
tendencies and propensities, is as certain as that some strains of
wheat are hardier and more productive than others. And it is
possible, and even probable, that there are exceptional cases of
moral evil which point to congenital depravity, and cannot otherwise
be accounted for. But in these admissions I am making no concession
to the believer in original sin; for he regards human nature as such
as congenitally depraved, and therefore can take no cognisance of
exceptional cases of congenital depravity, cases which by breaking
the rule that the new-born child is morally and spiritually healthy,
may be said to prove it.
In fine, then, all moral evil can be accounted for on grounds which
are quite compatible with the assumption that the normal child is
healthy, on all the planes of his being, at the moment of his birth.
That he carries with him into the world the capacity for being
affected by adverse influences of various kinds, is undeniable; but
so does every other living thing; and if congenital depravity is to
be predicated of him for that reason, it must also be predicated of
every new-born animal and plant.
But the final proof that Man is by nature a child of God, is one
which has already been hinted at, and will presently be further
developed,--namely, that growth--the healthy, vigorous growth of the
whole human being, the harmonious development of his whole nature--is
in its essence a movement towards moral and spiritual perfection. And
the final proof that the doctrine of Man's congenital depravity is
false is the practical one that the doctrine is ever tending to
fulfil its own gloomy predictions, and to justify its own low
estimate of human nature,--in other words, that by making education
repressive and devitalising, by introducing externalism, with its
endless train of attendant evils, into Man's daily life, and by
making him disbelieve in and even despair of himself, it has done
more perhaps than all other influences added together to deprave his
heart and to wreck his life.
To one who has convinced himself that human nature is fundamentally
good, in the sense that the new-born child is as a rule sound and
healthy on all the planes of his being, it must be clear that the
path of soul-growth or self-realisation is the only way of salvation.
What salvation means, what the path of self-realisation will do for
him who enters it, is a theme to which I could not hope to do justice
within the limits of this work. I will therefore content myself
with indicating certain typical aspects of the process which I
have called self-realisation, and saying something about each of
these. Four aspects suggest themselves to me as worthy of special
consideration,--the _mental_, the _moral_, the _social_, and the
_religious_.[26]
_The Mental Aspect of Self-realisation._
There are two features of the process of self-realisation, on the
importance of which I cannot insist too often or too strongly. The
first is that the growth which the life of self-realisation fosters
is, in its essence, harmonious and many-sided. The second is that
the life of self-realisation is, from first to last, a life of
self-expression, and that self-expression and perception are the face
and obverse of the same mental effort.
If the life of self-realisation did not provide for the growth of the
self in its totality, the self as a living whole, it would not be
worthy of its name. One-sided growth, inharmonious growth, growth in
which some faculties are hypertrophied and others atrophied, is not
self-realisation. When trees are planted close together, as in the
beech-forests of the Continent, they climb to great heights in their
struggle for air and light, but they make no lateral growth. When
trees are pollarded, they make abundant lateral growth, but they
cease to climb upward. When trees are exposed to the prevailing winds
of an open sea-coast, they are blown over away from the sea, and make
all their growth, such as it is, on the landward side. When trees
are on the border of a thick plantation, they make all their growth
towards the open air, and are bare and leafless on the opposite side.
In each of these cases the growth made is inharmonious and one-sided:
the balance between the two intersecting planes of growth, or between
the two opposite sides, has been lost. But when a tree is planted in
the open, and when all the other conditions of growth are favourable,
it grows harmoniously in all directions,--upward, outward, and all
around. In other words, it is growing as a whole, growing, as it
ought to grow, through every fibre of its being, and yet maintaining
a perfect symmetry of form and the harmony of true proportion among
its various parts.
This is the kind of growth which the soul makes in the life of
self-realisation; and if it falls appreciably short of this standard,
if it develops itself on this side or that, to the neglect of all
other sides, then we must say of it that, though it is realising this
or that faculty or group of faculties, it is not realising itself. I
have spoken of the six great expansive instincts which indicate the
main lines of the child's natural growth, and I have shown that in
Utopia the cultivation of all those instincts is duly provided for.
In the life of self-realisation the soul would continue to grow on
the lines which those instincts had marked out for it. I do not mean
that when the child goes out into the work-a-day world, he must give
to all six instincts the systematic training which they received, or
ought to have received, in school. The exigencies of the daily round
of life are such as to make that impossible, in all but the most
exceptional cases. But that is all the more reason why the expansive
instincts should be carefully and skilfully trained in school. For
where they are so trained, an impetus is given to each of them which
will keep it alive and active long after the direct influence of
the school has ceased, and will enable it to absorb and assimilate
whatever nutriment may come in its way. If the Utopian training
cannot be followed up, in its entirety, in the child's after-life, it
can at least initiate a movement which need never be arrested,--a
movement in the direction of the triune goal of Man's being, the goal
towards which his expansive instincts are ever tending to take him,
the goal of Love, Beauty, and Truth.
The life of many-sided growth is also a life of self-expression. This
means that the self-expression, like the growth which it fosters, is
many-sided; and this again means that the perceptive faculties, which
unfold themselves through the medium of self-expression, are not so
much separate faculties as a general capacity for getting on terms
with one's environment and gaining an insight into its laws and
properties. In a school which lays itself out to teach one or two
subjects thoroughly, to the neglect of others, a sense, or special
perceptive faculty, will gradually be evolved by the study of each
subject, provided, of course, that the path of self-expression is
followed,--a literary sense, a historical sense, a mathematical
sense, and so on. But while these special senses are being developed,
the remaining perceptive faculties are being starved, and no attempt
is being made to cultivate that general capacity of which I have just
spoken. The consequent loss to the child, both in his school-life and
in his after-life, is very great. For not only is his mental growth
one-sided and inharmonious, but even in the subjects in which he
specialises he will lose appreciably, owing to his special perceptive
faculties not having as their background any general capacity for
seeing things as they are.
I will try to explain what I mean. In what is known as "Society"
there is a valuable quality called "tact," in virtue of which the
man or woman who is endowed with it always says and does "the right
thing." This quality is compounded partly of sympathetic insight
into the feelings, actual and possible, of others, and partly of
a keen and subtle sense for all the _nuances_ of social propriety.
Like every other perceptive faculty, it is the outcome of
self-expression,--of years of self-expression on the plane of social
intercourse. That general perceptive faculty, or perceptive capacity,
which is the outcome of years of self-expression on many sides of
one's being, has so much in common with the _tact_ of the man of
society, that the epithet _tactful_ may perhaps be applied to it. The
larger, like the lesser, faculty is compounded, partly of sympathetic
insight into latent possibilities, and partly of a delicate sense for
_nuances_ of all kinds. But even this formula does less than justice
to its complex nature. Generated as it is by a life of many-sided
self-expression, it reflects its origin in its internal constitution.
Many elements of thought and feeling have woven themselves into it;
and it is ready to take a colour from each new environment or even
from each new situation. It can become emotional, for example, when
the matter in hand appeals, in any sort or degree, to the emotions;
and there are occasions when its latent sense of humour becomes an
invaluable antidote to that over-seriousness which so often leads men
astray. Above all, it is in its essence, imaginative, for it is ever
learning to picture things to itself as they are or as they might be;
and the higher the level and the wider the sphere of its activity,
the more boldly imaginative it becomes. A faculty so subtle and so
sympathetic must needs play a vitally important _rôle_, not only when
its possessor is studying "subjects" or handling concrete problems,
but also, and more especially, when he is dealing with the "affairs
of life"; and we can understand that when it is wholly or largely
lacking, each of the special faculties which specialising is supposed
to foster will suffer from not being tempered and yet vitalised by
its all-penetrating influence.
That we may the better understand this, and the better understand
what the path of self-realisation does for the mental development
of him who walks in it, let us ask ourselves what type of mind the
conventional type of education is likely to produce. And let us study
the conventional type of education on what is supposed to be its
highest level. Let us consider the education given to the sons of
the "upper classes." And let us take this highest level at its own
highest level. Let us take the case of those who go through that
tri-partite course of education which begins in a high-class
"Preparatory School," is continued in one of the "Great Public
Schools," and is completed at Oxford or Cambridge. A boy enters
a Preparatory School at the age of eight or nine, and is there
prepared, in general for entrance into one of the Great Public
Schools, and in particular for one of the competitive examinations on
the results of which the entrance scholarships of the Great Public
Schools are awarded. He enters one of the Great Public Schools at
the age of thirteen or fourteen, and is there prepared, in general
for admission to Oxford or Cambridge, and in particular for the
scholarship examinations of the various Oxford and Cambridge
Colleges. He enters Oxford or Cambridge at the age of eighteen
or nineteen, and is there prepared, directly for his degree
examination--"Pass" or "Honours" as the case may be--and indirectly
for the public examination which admits to the Indian and Colonial,
and the higher grades of the Home, Civil Service. This course of
education lasts about fourteen years, and costs from £1,500 to
£4,500.
What will it do for the boy who goes through it? The education given
in the Preparatory School is completely dominated by the scholarship
and entrance examinations at the Great Public Schools. The lines on
which those examinations are conducted are the lines on which the
Preparatory Schoolmaster must educate his pupils. He has no choice in
the matter. The title "Preparatory" seals his doom. His business is,
not to give his pupils the education that is best suited to their
capacities and their years, but to prepare them for admission to a
more advanced school. The more scholarships he can win at Eton,
Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, and the rest, the higher will be the
repute of his school; and as the competition between school and
school is fierce and unintermittent, he cannot afford to throw away a
single chance. In other words, he cannot afford to make a single
serious experiment. The education given in the Great Public Schools
is similarly dominated by the scholarship and entrance examinations
held by the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. The lines on which those
examinations are conducted are in the main the lines on which the
boys must be educated. It is possible that the Great Public Schools
are freer to go their own ways than are the Preparatory Schools; but
if they are, they make but little use of their freedom.
So far as the rank and file of the boys are concerned, it may be
doubted if the word "educative" is applicable, in any sense or
degree, to the daily round of their work. Of the six great expansive
instincts which are struggling to evolve themselves in every healthy
child, not one can be said to find a congenial soil or a stimulating
atmosphere in the ordinary classroom either of the Preparatory or of
the Public School. Four of the six--the _dramatic_, the _artistic_,
the _musical_, and the _constructive_--are entirely or almost
entirely neglected. Music and Handwork[27] are "extras" (a fatally
significant word); the teaching of Drawing is, as a rule, quite
perfunctory; and Acting is not a recognised part of the school
curriculum. The truth is that marks are not given for these
"subjects"--for in the eyes of the schoolmaster they are all
"subjects"--in any entrance or scholarship examination, and that
therefore it does not _pay_ to teach them. There remain two
instincts,--the _communicative_ and the _inquisitive_. The study of
the "Humanities"--History and Literature, ancient and modern--ought
to train the former; and the study of Science ought to train the
latter. But in the case of the average boy, the study of the
Humanities resolves itself, in the main, into a prolonged and
unsuccessful tussle with the difficulties of the Greek and Latin
languages, the mastering of which is regarded as an end in itself
instead of as the gateway to the wonder-worlds of ancient life and
thought; and the study of Science is, as a rule, a pure farce.[28]
Not one, then, of the expansive instincts of the average boy receives
any training during the nine or ten years of his school life; and as,
in his struggle for the "Pass" degree of his University, he will
follow the lines on which he has been accustomed to work in both his
schools, he will go out into the world at the age of twenty-two or
twenty-three, the victim of a course of education which has lasted
for fourteen years and cost thousands of pounds, and which has done
nothing whatever to foster his mental or spiritual growth. It is true
that in all the Public Schools a certain amount of informal education
is done through the medium of Musical Societies, Natural History
Societies, Debating Societies, School Magazines, and the like; that
the discipline of a Public School, with its system of School and
House prefects, has considerable educational value; that the playing
fields do something towards the formation of character; that the
boys, by exchanging experiences and discussing things freely among
themselves, help to educate one another; and that during the four
months of each year which the schoolboy spends away from school, he
is, or may be, exposed to educative influences of various kinds.[29]
But the broad fact remains that the _studies_ of the youthful
graduate, whether in school classroom or college lecture-room, have
been wholly unformative and therefore wholly uneducative.
But let us consider the education given in our Public Schools and
Universities, at what is presumably the highest of all its levels.
Let us see what is done for the boys who have sufficient ability to
win Scholarships and read for Honours at Oxford and Cambridge. It is
to the supposed interests of these brighter boys that the vital
interests of their duller schoolfellows are perforce sacrificed. Are
the results worth the sacrifice? The brighter boys fall into two main
groups,--those who have a turn for the "Humanities," and those who
have a turn for Mathematics and Science. Where the "Humanities" are
effectively taught,--where, for example, the scholar is allowed to
pass through the portals of Latin and Greek grammar and composition
into the wonder-world that lies beyond them,--the _communicative_
instinct receives a valuable training. It is, unfortunately, quite
possible for a boy, or even for a man, to be what is called a "good
scholar," and yet to take no interest whatever in the history or
literature of Greece and Rome; and the examination system undoubtedly
tends to foster this bastard type of humanism. But when, as a result
of his school and University training, a scholar has passed the
linguistic portals and found pleasure in the worlds beyond, we may
say of him that his education has fostered the growth of one of his
expansive instincts,--perhaps the most important of all, but still
only one. When Science is effectively taught, the growth of the
_inquisitive_ instinct is similarly fostered; but the inquisitive
instinct, though of great value, when trained in conjunction with
other instincts, has but little value as a "formative" when trained
by itself. From this point of view it compares unfavourably with the
communicative instinct, being as much less formative than the latter,
as the mysteries of the material world are less significant and less
able to inspire and vitalise their interpreter than the mysteries of
human life; and a purely (or mainly) scientific training is therefore
worth far less as an instrument of education than a purely (or
mainly) humanistic training.
But why should the boys at our Great Public Schools and the young
men at our Universities have to choose between a scientific and a
humanistic training? Why should these ancient and famous institutions
be content to train one only of the six expansive instincts instead
of at least _two_? Here, as elsewhere, the scholarship system blocks
the way. Some scholarships are given for Classics, others for
History, others for Mathematics, others for Natural Science. Not
a single scholarship is given, at either University, for general
capacity, as measured by the results of a many-sided examination.
Why should this be? The answer is that under any system of formal
examination many-sidedness in education necessarily means
_smattering_; and that against smattering the Universities have, very
properly, set their faces. But, after all, there is no necessary
connection between many-sidedness and smattering. In Utopia, where
the concentric rings of growth are formed by the gradual evolution of
an inner life, whatever feeds that inner life is a contribution,
however humble, to the growth of the whole tree; and many-sidedness,
far from being a defect, is one of the first conditions of success
in education. But in the Great Public Schools, where veneers of
information are being assiduously laid on the surface of the boy's
mind with a view to his passing some impending examination, the
greater the number and variety of such veneers, the more certain they
all are to split and waste and perish. Indeed the real reason why
specialising has to be resorted to in the case of the brighter boys,
is that in no other way can provision be made for the fatal process
of veneering being dispensed with, and for faculty being evolved by
growth from within.
But a heavy price has to be paid for the growth of these specialised
faculties. If Science is to be seriously studied the student must
give the whole of his time to it. This means that he must give up the
idea of educating himself. It is only by turning his back on history,
on literature, on philosophy, on music, on art, that he can hope to
meet the exacting and ever-growing demands which Science makes on
those who desire to be initiated into its mysteries. To say that when
he has "taken his degree" he is only half-educated, is greatly to
over-estimate the formative influence of his highly specialised
training. A sense has undoubtedly been developed in him, an instinct
has been awakened, one or two of his mental faculties have been
vigorously cultivated; but his training has been the reverse of
humanising; and as his studies and his consequent attitude towards
Nature have been essentially _analytical_, he may, in the absence of
those correctives which his compulsory specialising has withheld from
him, have learned to regard the dead side of things as the real
side,--a conception which, if it mastered him, would materialise his
whole outlook on life.
The case of the "humanist" is different. The subjects which he
studies appeal to many sides of his being; and if he could respond
to their appeal, they might do much for his mental and spiritual
development. That he should be able to respond to their appeal is of
vital importance. When he has become a decent "scholar," a chance
is given to him, which if he neglects he will probably lose for
ever,--the chance of making good, in part at least, the deficiencies
of his early education. Had he lived in Utopia, his life of
many-sided self-expression would have given a general training to his
perceptive faculties, in which the twin faculties of imagination and
sympathy would have had their share. But neither in his Preparatory
School nor in the lower classes of his Public School has any serious
attempt been made during school hours to ripen either of those mighty
faculties, whereas much has been done in both schools to retard their
growth. He is doomed, then, to begin his study of the history and
literature of the Ancient World with a considerable knowledge of
the Latin and Greek languages, but (in too many cases) with an
unimaginative mind and an unsympathetic heart. There is, however,
much in that history and that literature,--not to speak of
the history and the literature of his own and other modern
countries,--which, if it could but have its way, would appeal
strongly to his imagination and his sympathy, dormant and undeveloped
as these faculties are,--appeal to them so strongly as to awaken them
at last from their slumber and quicken them into active life. But
alas! the shadow of an impending examination is always falling on his
humanistic studies, nullifying the appeal that they make to him, and
compelling him to look at them from a sordidly utilitarian point of
view. For to give marks for the response that he might make to their
appeal, or even to set questions which would afford free scope for
the play of his imagination or the flow of his sympathy, is beyond
the power of any examiner. There are two things, and two only, which
"pay" on the examination day,--the possession of information and the
power to make use of it; and the humanist who would win prizes at his
school or gain high honours at his University, must therefore regard
the memorable doings and the imperishable sayings of his fellow-men,
not as things to be imagined and felt, admired and loved, wondered at
and pondered over, but as things to be pigeon-holed in his memory, to
be taken out and arranged under headings, to be dissected and
commented on and criticised.[30]
Of the part that memory plays in the education of our humanist, I
need not speak. An undue burden is probably laid upon it; but that is
a matter of minor importance. What is of supreme importance is that
in cultivating his critical faculty with an almost intensive culture,
while they starve, or at any rate leave untended, his more vital and
more emancipative faculties of imagination and sympathy, our Great
Public Schools and Universities are doing him a serious and lasting
injury. Let us take the case of a young man of energy and ability who
has just left Oxford or Cambridge, having won high honours in one of
the humanistic "schools." Let us assume that, like so many of his
kind, he has a keenly critical mind, but is deficient in imagination
and sympathy; and let us then try to forecast his future. That the
faith of his childhood, undermined by his criticism, has already
fallen to pieces or will shortly do so, is more than probable. That
he will be too unimaginative to attempt to construct a new faith out
of the ruins of the old, is practically certain. His lack of faith,
in the broader sense of the word, will incapacitate him for high
seriousness (which he will regard as "bad form"), and _a fortiori_
for enthusiasm (which he will shun like the plague), and will
therefore predispose him to frivolity. Being fully persuaded, owing
to his lack of imaginative sympathy, that his own outlook on life is
alone compatible with mental sanity, and yet being too clear-sighted
to accept that outlook as satisfactory, he will mingle with his
frivolity a strain of bitterness and discontent,--the bitterness of
self-corroding scepticism, and the discontent which grows apace
through its very effort to ignore its own existence. In a word, his
attitude towards life will be one of _cynicism_,--that blend of
hardness and bitterness with frivolity which exactly inverts the
ideal of the modern poet, when he dreams of an age in the far-off
future,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.[31]
And the bitterness of his cynicism will be made bitterer still by
the fact that, owing to his being (in all probability) unmusical,
inartistic, and unable to amuse himself with any form of handwork, he
will have no taste or hobby to distract him from himself. For a time,
indeed, the "genial sense of youth" will keep his sinister tendencies
in check; and in the middle period of life, his struggle to achieve
"success"--for of course he will be an externalist to the core--will
tend to keep them in the background. But in his later years, when he
will have either failed to achieve "success" or discovered--too
late--that it was not worth achieving, his cynicism will assert
itself without let or hindrance, and, with his growing incapacity for
frivolity, will become harder and bitterer, till at last the dark
shadow of incurable pessimism will fall on him and involve his
declining years in ever deepening gloom. I do not say that many of
our University humanists will conform to this type; but I do say that
the type is easily recognisable and is becoming increasingly
familiar.
Even the intellectual development of our humanist, who is nothing if
not intellectual, will be adversely affected by the one-sidedness of
his education. Well-informed and acutely critical he will probably
be; but he will lack the saving grace of that "tactful" faculty which
years of many-sided self-expression can alone evolve,--a faculty
which (as we have seen) is subtly adaptive when it deals with small
matters, boldly imaginative when it deals with great matters, and
delicately sympathetic along the whole range of its activity.
This sinuous and penetrative sense is to the more logically
critical faculty what equity is to law; and in its absence the
intellectuality of our young "intellectual" will be as incomplete as
would be the legal system of a country which knew nothing of equity
and tried to bring all legal problems under the direct control of
positive law. For it will be his business, as he goes through life,
to deal in and with words and phrases; and as words and phrases are
ever tending to change their force, and even their meaning, under our
hands, and as his use and treatment of them will be logical and
"legal" rather than tactful and "equitable," he will again and again
misinterpret and misuse them, and will so do badly the very thing
which he is expected to do well. The man who, though endowed with an
acute and vigorous intellect, can neither think imaginatively nor
reason tactfully, has grave intellectual defects; and the blinder he
is to the existence of these defects the more pronounced will they
become.
The pity of it is that when these unimaginative "intellectuals" go
out into the world, they will fill posts in which they will have
unrivalled opportunities for establishing and disseminating their
unwholesome influence. A section of them will go into the teaching
profession, the higher grades of which are almost entirely recruited
from Oxford and Cambridge. Another section will go into the legal
profession, and through it will enter Parliament in considerable
numbers, where, being trained advocates, they will exercise an
influence out of all proportion to their numerical strength. And a
third section will man the higher grades of the Home, Colonial, and
Indian Civil Services. Teachers, legislators, administrators,--if
there are any walks in life in which cynicism and a capacity for
merely destructive criticism are out of place, and in which
imagination and sympathy are imperatively demanded, they are these
three; and it is nothing short of a national calamity that these
great and commanding professions should be manned, in part at least,
by men whose mission in life is to paralyse rather than to vitalise,
to fetter rather than to set free.
The further pity of it is that the training of these "intellectuals"
might easily have taken an entirely different course. Much of the
specialising which goes on in our Great Public Schools and
Universities, and which is so destructive of mental and spiritual
vitality, is wholly unnecessary. The course of education which the
sons of the "upper classes" go through has this in common with
elementary education, that in neither case need "utilitarian"
considerations weigh with the teachers. The parents of a large
proportion of our Public School boys can afford to give their sons a
_liberal_ education (in the truest and fullest sense of the word) up
to the age of twenty-two or twenty-three; and in the case of these
boys, at any rate, the excessive specialisation which makes their
education so illiberal is done, not in response to the demands
of professions (such as the medical or the engineering) which
necessitate early specialising, but solely in response to the demands
of an examination system which we adopted before we had begun to ask
ourselves what education meant, and which, partly from the force of
habit and partly because it is in keeping with our general attitude
towards life, we still bow down before with a devotion as ardent and
as irrational as that which inspired the cry of "Great is Diana of
the Ephesians."[32]
At its best, then, the education given by the Great Public Schools
and Universities fosters the growth of one of the expansive
instincts,--the _communicative_, a mighty instinct which opens up to
imagination and sympathy the whole wide world of human life; but
because it leaves all the other expansive instincts untended, it
gives that one instinct an inadequate and unsymmetrical training, a
training which checks the growth of the very faculties--imagination
and sympathy--of which the instinct is largely compounded and for the
sake of which it may almost be said to exist. At its second best,
this costly education fosters the growth of the _inquisitive_
instinct,--a grandly expansive instinct when trained in conjunction
with the others, but one which is constrictive rather than expansive
when trained by itself and for its own sake. At its ordinary level,
it trains no instinct whatever, and is therefore unworthy of the name
of education. Why should this be so? Why should a course of education
which lasts so long and costs so much do so little for its victims,
and do that little so badly or, at any rate, so inadequately? Because
from first to last it has looked outward instead of inward; because
it has laboured unceasingly to produce "results," and has never given
a thought to growth.[33]
Let us now go to the other end of the social scale. What the path of
self-realisation might do for the children of the "upper classes" if
they were allowed to follow it, we may roughly calculate, partly by
measuring what the alternative scheme of education has failed to do
for them, partly by reminding ourselves of what the path has done for
the village children of Utopia. The children of the "upper classes"
have such an advantage over the children of Utopia in the matter of
environment,--to say nothing of inherited capacity,--that one would
expect the path to do much more for their mental development than
it has done for the mental development of the Utopians, especially
as they could afford to remain much longer in the first and most
important of its stages, the stage of self-education (in the more
limited sense of the word). The gain to the whole nation if the
mental development of the highest social stratum could be raised as
much above its normal level as the mental development of youthful
Utopia has been raised above the normal level of an English rural
village, would be incalculably great. But greater still--incalculably
greater--would be the gain to the nation if the rank and file of its
children could be led into the path of self-realisation, and therein
rise to the high level of brightness, intelligence, and
resourcefulness which has been reached in Utopia.
Nor is this dream so wildly impracticable as some might imagine. So
far as the natural capacity of the average child is concerned, there
is no bar to its realisation. Egeria has taught me that the mental
capacity of the average child, even in a rustic village belonging to
a county which is proverbial for the slow wits of its rustics, is
very great. It is sometimes said that of the children who have been
trained in our elementary schools, not one in twenty is fit to profit
by the education given in a secondary school: and if by this is
meant that in nineteen cases out of twenty the elementary scholar,
_educated as he has probably been_, is unlikely to profit by the
education given in a secondary school, _conducted as those schools
usually are_, I am not prepared to say offhand that the statement
is untrue. But if it means that the average mental capacity of the
children of our "lower orders" is hopelessly inferior to that of
the children of our middle and upper classes, I can say without
hesitation that it is a slander and a lie. Whether there is any
difference, in respect of innate mental capacity, between level
and level of our social scale, may be doubted; but the Utopian
experiment has proved to demonstration that in the lowest level of
all the innate mental capacity is so great that we cannot well expect
to find any considerable advance on it even in the highest level of
all.