All this literature which our forefathers excluded has come back
upon us: and concurrently we have to deal with the more serious
difficulty (let us give thanks for it) of a multitude of millions
insurgent to handsel their long-deferred heritage. I shall waste
no time in arguing that we ought not to wish to withhold it,
because we cannot if we would. And thus the problem becomes a
double one, of _distribution_ as well as of _selection._
Now in the first place I submit that this _distribution_ should
be free: which implies that our _selection_ must be confined to
books and methods of teaching. There must be no picking and
choosing among the recipients, no appropriation of certain forms
of culture to certain 'stations of life' with a tendency,
conscious or unconscious, to keep those stations as stationary as
possible.
Merely by clearing our purpose to this extent we shall have made
no inconsiderable advance. For even the last century never quite
got rid of its predecessor's fixed idea that certain degrees of
culture were appropriate to certain stations of life. With what
gentle persistence it prevails, for example, in Jane Austen's
novels; with what complacent rhetoric in Tennyson (and in spite
of Lady Clara Vere de Vere)! Let me remind you that by allowing
an idea to take hold of our animosity we may be as truly
`possessed' by it as though it claimed our allegiance. The notion
that culture may be drilled to march in step with a trade or
calling endured through the Victorian age of competition and
possessed the mind not only of Samuel Smiles who taught by
instances how a bright and industrious boy might earn money and
lift himself out of his 'station,' but of Ruskin himself, who in
the first half of "Sesame and Lilies," in the lecture "Of Kings'
Treasuries," discussing the choice of books, starts vehemently
and proceeds at length to denounce the prevalent passion for
self-advancement--of rising above one's station in life--quite as
if it were the most important thing, willy-nilly, in talking of
the choice of books. Which means that, to Ruskin, just then, it
was the most formidable obstacle. Can we, at this time of day, do
better by simply turning the notion out of doors? Yes, I believe
that we can: and upon this _credo_:
_I believe that while it may grow--and grow infinitely--with
increase of learning, the grace of a liberal education, like the
grace of Christianity, is so catholic a thing--so absolutely
above being trafficked, retailed, apportioned, among `stations in
life'--that the humblest child may claim it by indefeasible
right, having a soul._
_Further, I believe that Humanism is, or should he, no decorative
appanage, purchased late in the process of education, within the
means of a few: but a quality, rather, which should, and can,
condition all teaching, from a child's first lesson in Reading:
that its unmistakable hall-mark can be impressed upon the
earliest task set in an Elementary School._