thought is brief and very worthless. In the long run mental vigor is
as essential to success as it is to a good life. The conception of
education as a form of drill, a means of producing unanimity through
slavishness, is very common, and is defended chiefly on the ground
that it leads to victory. Those who enjoy parallels from ancient
history will point to the victory of Sparta over Athens to enforce
their moral. But it is Athens that has had power over men’s thoughts
and imaginations, not Sparta: any one of us, if we could be born again
into some past epoch, would rather be born an Athenian than a Spartan.
And in the modern world so much intellect is required in practical
affairs that even the external victory is more likely to be won by
intelligence than by docility. Education in credulity leads by quick
stages to mental decay; it is only by keeping alive the spirit of free
inquiry that the indispensable minimum of progress can be achieved.
Certain mental habits are commonly instilled by those who are engaged
in educating: obedience and discipline, ruthlessness in the struggle
for worldly success, contempt towards opposing groups, and an
unquestioning credulity, a passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom.
All these habits are against life. Instead of obedience and discipline,
we ought to aim at preserving independence and impulse. Instead of
ruthlessness, education should try to develop justice in thought.
Instead of contempt, it ought to instil reverence, and the attempt at
understanding; towards the opinions of others it ought to produce, not
necessarily acquiescence, but only such opposition as is combined with
imaginative apprehension and a clear realization of the grounds for
opposition. Instead of credulity, the object should be to stimulate
constructive doubt, the love of mental adventure, the sense of worlds
to conquer by enterprise and boldness in thought. Contentment with the
_status quo_, and subordination of the individual pupil to political
aims, owing to the indifference to the things of the mind, are the
immediate causes of these evils; but beneath these causes there is one
more fundamental, the fact that education is treated as a means of
acquiring power over the pupil, not as a means of nourishing his own
growth. It is in this that lack of reverence shows itself; and it is
only by more reverence that a fundamental reform can be effected.
Obedience and discipline are supposed to be indispensable if order is
to be kept in a class, and if any instruction is to be given. To some
extent this is true; but the extent is much less than it is thought
to be by those who regard obedience and discipline as in themselves
desirable. Obedience, the yielding of one’s will to outside direction,
is the counterpart of authority. Both may be necessary in certain
cases. Refractory children, lunatics, and criminals may require
authority, and may need to be forced to obey. But in so far as this is
necessary it is a misfortune: what is to be desired is the free choice
of ends with which it is not necessary to interfere. And educational
reformers have shown that this is far more possible than our fathers
would ever have believed.[16]
What makes obedience seem necessary in schools is the large classes
and overworked teachers demanded by a false economy. Those who have no
experience of teaching are incapable of imagining the expense of spirit
entailed by any really living instruction. They think that teachers can
reasonably be expected to work as many hours as bank clerks. Intense
fatigue and irritable nerves are the result, and an absolute necessity
of performing the day’s task mechanically. But the task cannot be
performed mechanically except by exacting obedience.
If we took education seriously, and thought it as important to keep
alive the minds of children as to secure victory in war, we should
conduct education quite differently: we should make sure of achieving
the end, even if the expense were a hundredfold greater than it is. To
many men and women a small amount of teaching is a delight, and can be
done with a fresh zest and life which keeps most pupils interested
without any need of discipline. The few who do not become interested
might be separated from the rest, and given a different kind of
instruction. A teacher ought to have only as much teaching as can be
done, on most days, with actual pleasure in the work, and with an
awareness of the pupil’s mental needs. The result would be a relation
of friendliness instead of hostility between teacher and pupil, a
realization on the part of most pupils that education serves to develop
their own lives and is not merely an outside imposition, interfering
with play and demanding many hours of sitting still. All that is
necessary to this end is a (greater expenditure of money), to secure
teachers with more leisure and with a natural love of teaching.
Discipline, as it exists in schools, is very largely an evil. There is
a kind of discipline which is necessary to almost all achievement, and
which perhaps is not sufficiently valued by those who react against the
purely external discipline of traditional methods. The desirable kind
of discipline is the kind that comes from within, which consists in the
power of pursuing a distant object steadily, foregoing and suffering
many things on the way. This involves the subordination of impulse
to will, the power of a directing action by large creative desires
even at moments when they are not vividly alive. Without this, no
serious ambition, good or bad, can be realized, no consistent purpose
can dominate. This kind of discipline is very necessary, but can only
result from strong desires for ends not immediately attainable, and can
only be produced by education if education fosters such desires, which
it seldom does at present. Such discipline springs from one’s own will,
not from outside authority. It is not this kind which is sought in most
schools, and it is not this kind which seems to me an evil.
Although elementary education encourages the undesirable discipline
that consists in passive obedience, and although hardly any existing
education encourages the moral discipline of consistent self-direction,
there is a certain kind of purely mental discipline which is produced
by the traditional higher education. The kind I mean is that which
enables a man to concentrate his thoughts at will upon any matter
that he has occasion to consider, regardless of preoccupations or
boredom or intellectual difficulty. This quality, though it has no
important intrinsic excellence, greatly enhances the efficiency of
the mind as an instrument. It is this that enables a lawyer to master
the scientific details of a patent case which he forgets as soon as
judgment has been given, or a civil servant to deal quickly with
many different administrative questions in succession. It is this
that enables men to forget private cares during business hours. In a
complicated world it is a very necessary faculty for those whose work
requires mental concentration.
Success in producing mental discipline is the chief merit of
traditional higher education. I doubt whether it can be achieved except
by compelling or persuading active attention to a prescribed task. It
is for this reason chiefly that I do not believe methods such as Madame
Montessori’s applicable when the age of childhood has been passed.
The essence of her method consists in giving a choice of occupations,
any one of which is interesting to most children, and all of which
are instructive. The child’s attention is wholly spontaneous, as in
play; it enjoys acquiring knowledge in this way, and does not acquire
any knowledge which it does not desire. I am convinced that this is
the best method of education with young children: the actual results
make it almost impossible to think otherwise. But it is difficult
to see how this method can lead to control of attention by the will.
Many things which must be thought about are uninteresting, and even
those that are interesting at first often become very wearisome before
they have been considered as long as is necessary. The power of giving
prolonged attention is very important, and it is hardly to be widely
acquired except as a habit induced originally by outside pressure. Some
few boys, it is true, have sufficiently strong intellectual desires to
be willing to undergo all that is necessary by their own initiative
and free will; but for all others an external inducement is required
in order to make them learn any subject thoroughly. There is among
educational reformers a certain fear of demanding great efforts, and
in the world at large a growing unwillingness to be bored. Both these
tendencies have their good sides, but both also have their dangers. The
mental discipline which is jeopardized can be preserved by mere advice
without external compulsion whenever a boy’s intellectual interest and
ambition can be sufficiently stimulated. A good teacher ought to be
able to do this for any boy who is capable of much mental achievement;
and for many of the others the present purely bookish education is
probably not the best. In this way, so long as the importance of mental
discipline is realized, it can probably be attained, whenever it is
attainable, by appealing to the pupil’s consciousness of his own needs.
So long as teachers are not expected to succeed by this method, it is
easy for them to slip into a slothful dullness, and blame their pupils
when the fault is really their own.
Ruthlessness in the economic struggle will almost unavoidably be
taught in schools so long as the economic structure of society remains
unchanged. This must be particularly the case in middle-class schools,
which depend for their numbers upon the good opinion of parents, and
secure the good opinion of parents by advertising the successes of
pupils. This is one of many ways in which the competitive organization
of the State is harmful. Spontaneous and disinterested desire for
knowledge is not at all uncommon in the young, and might be easily
aroused in many in whom it remains latent. But it is remorselessly
checked by teachers who think only of examinations, diplomas, and
degrees. For the abler boys there is no time for thought, no time
for the indulgence of intellectual taste, from the moment of first
going to school until the moment of leaving the university. From first
to last there is nothing but one long drudgery of examination tips
and textbook facts. The most intelligent, at the end, are disgusted
with learning, longing only to forget it and to escape into a life
of action. Yet there, as before, the economic machine holds them
prisoners, and all their spontaneous desires are bruised and thwarted.
The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly
as training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge, from
a purely utilitarian point of view, as the road to money, not as the
gateway to wisdom. This would not matter so much if it affected only
those who have no genuine intellectual interests. But unfortunately it
affects most those whose intellectual interests are strongest, since
it is upon them that the pressure of examinations falls with most
severity. To them most, but to all in some degree, education appears as
a means of acquiring superiority over others; it is infected through
and through with ruthlessness and glorification of social inequality.
Any free, disinterested consideration shows that, whatever inequalities
might remain in a Utopia, the actual inequalities are almost all
contrary to justice. But our educational system tends to conceal this
from all except the failures, since those who succeed are on the way to
profit by the inequalities, with every encouragement from the men who
have directed their education.
Passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom is easy to most boys and
girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational
because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the
way to win the favor of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional
man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later
life. It causes men to seek a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever
is established in that position. It makes the power of Churches,
Governments, party caucuses, and all the other organizations by which
plain men are misled into supporting old systems which are harmful
to the nation and to themselves. It is possible that there would not
be much independence of thought even if education did everything
to promote it; but there would certainly be more than there is at
present. If the object were to make pupils think, rather than to make
them accept certain conclusions, education would be conducted quite
differently: there would be less rapidity of instruction and more
discussion, more occasions when pupils were encouraged to express
themselves, more attempt to make education concern itself with matters
in which the pupils felt some interest.
Above all, there would be an endeavor to rouse and stimulate the
love of mental adventure. The world in which we live is various and
astonishing: some of the things that seem plainest grow more and more
difficult the more they are considered; other things, which might have
been thought quite impossible to discover, have nevertheless been laid
bare by genius and industry. The powers of thought, the vast regions
which it can master, the much more vast regions which it can only dimly
suggest to imagination, give to those whose minds have traveled beyond
the daily round an amazing richness of material, an escape from the
triviality and wearisomeness of familiar routine, by which the whole of
life is filled with interest, and the prison walls of the commonplace
are broken down. The same love of adventure which takes men to the
South Pole, the same passion for a conclusive trial of strength which
leads some men to welcome war, can find in creative thought an outlet
which is neither wasteful nor cruel, but increases the dignity of man
by incarnating in life some of that shining splendor which the human
spirit is bringing down out of the unknown. To give this joy, in a
greater or less measure, to all who are capable of it, is the supreme
end for which the education of the mind is to be valued.
It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that
there are few who can appreciate it, and that ordinary education can
take no account of so aristocratic a good. I do not believe this. The
joy of mental adventure is far commoner in the young than in grown
men and women. Among children it is very common, and grows naturally
out of the period of make-believe and fancy. It is rare in later life
because everything is done to kill it during education. Men fear
thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin, more even
than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and
terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions,
and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent
to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought
looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble
speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears
itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought
is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief
glory of man.
But if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege
of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men
back—fear lest their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear
lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear
lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they
have supposed themselves to be. “Should the working man think freely
about property? Then what will become of us, the rich? Should young
men and young women think freely about sex? Then what will become
of morality? Should soldiers think freely about war? Then what will
become of military discipline? Away with thought! Back into the shades
of prejudice, lest property, morals, and war should be endangered!
Better men should be stupid, slothful, and oppressive than that their
thoughts should be free. For if their thoughts were free they might
not think as we do. And at all costs this disaster must be averted.”
So the opponents of thought argue in the unconscious depths of their
souls. And so they act in their churches, their schools, and their
universities.
No institution inspired by fear can further life. Hope, not fear, is
the creative principle in human affairs. All that has made man great
has sprung from the attempt to secure what is good, not from the
struggle to avert what was thought evil. It is because modern education
is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves a
great result. The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of
creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the
teaching of the young. Education should not aim at a passive awareness
of dead facts, but at an activity directed towards the world that
our efforts are to create. It should be inspired, not by a regretful
hankering after the extinct beauties of Greece and the Renaissance,
but by a shining vision of the society that is to be, of the triumphs
that thought will achieve in the time to come, and of the ever-widening
horizon of man’s survey over the universe. Those who are taught in this
spirit will be filled with life and hope and joy, able to bear their
part in bringing to mankind a future less somber than the past, with
faith in the glory that human effort can create.
VI
MARRIAGE AND THE POPULATION QUESTION
The influence of the Christian religion on daily life has decayed very
rapidly throughout Europe during the last hundred years. Not only has
the proportion of nominal believers declined, but even among those who
believe the intensity and dogmatism of belief is enormously diminished.
But there is one social institution which is still profoundly affected
by the Christian tradition—I mean the institution of marriage. The
law and public opinion as regards marriage are dominated even now to
a very great extent by the teachings of the Church, which continue to
influence in this way the lives of men, women, and children in their
most intimate concerns.
It is marriage as a political institution that I wish to consider,
not marriage as a matter for the private morality of each individual.
Marriage is regulated by law, and is regarded as a matter in which
the community has a right to interfere. It is only the action of the
community in regard to marriage that I am concerned to discuss: whether
the present action furthers the life of the community, and if not, in
what ways it ought to be changed.
There are two questions to be asked in regard to any marriage system:
first, how it affects the development and character of the men and
women concerned; secondly, what is its influence on the propagation and
education of children. These two questions are entirely distinct, and
a system may well be desirable from one of these two points of view
when it is very undesirable from the other. I propose first to describe
the present English law and public opinion and practice in regard to
the relations of the sexes, then to consider their effects as regards
children, and finally to consider how these effects, which are bad,
could be obviated by a system which would also have a better influence
on the character and development of men and women.
The law in England is based upon the expectation that the great
majority of marriages will be lifelong. A marriage can only be
dissolved if either the wife or the husband, but not both, can be
proved to have committed adultery. In case the husband is the “guilty
party,” he must also be guilty of cruelty or desertion. Even when
these conditions are fulfilled, in practice only the well-to-do can be
divorced, because the expense is very great.[17] A marriage cannot be
dissolved for insanity or crime, or for cruelty, however abominable,
or for desertion, or for adultery by both parties; and it cannot be
dissolved for any cause whatever if both husband and wife have agreed
that they wish it dissolved. In all these cases the law regards the man
and woman as bound together for life. A special official, the King’s
Proctor, is employed to prevent divorce when there is collusion and
when both parties have committed adultery.[18]
This interesting system embodies the opinions held by the Church of
England some fifty years ago, and by most Nonconformists then and now.
It rests upon the assumption that adultery is sin, and that when this
sin has been committed by one party to the marriage, the other is
entitled to revenge if he is rich. But when both have committed the
same sin, or when the one who has not committed it feels no righteous
anger, the right to revenge does not exist. As soon as this point of
view is understood, the law, which at first seems somewhat strange, is
seen to be perfectly consistent. It rests, broadly speaking, upon four
propositions: (1) that sexual intercourse outside marriage is sin; (2)
that resentment of adultery by the “innocent” party is a righteous
horror of wrong-doing; (3) that his resentment, but nothing else, may
be rightly regarded as making a common life impossible; (4) that the
poor have no right to fine feelings. The Church of England, under the
influence of the High Church, has ceased to believe the third of these
propositions, but it still believes the first and second, and does
nothing actively to show that it disbelieves the fourth.
The penalty for infringing the marriage law is partly financial, but
depends mainly upon public opinion. A rather small section of the
public genuinely believes that sexual relations outside marriage are
wicked; those who believe this are naturally kept in ignorance of the
conduct of friends who feel otherwise, and are able to go through life
not knowing how others live or what others think. This small section of
the public regards as depraved not only actions, but opinions, which
are contrary to its principles. It is able to control the professions
of politicians through its influence on elections, and the votes of
the House of Lords through the presence of the Bishops. By these
means it governs legislation, and makes any change in the marriage
law almost impossible. It is able, also, to secure in most cases that
a man who openly infringes the marriage law shall be dismissed from
his employment or ruined by the defection of his customers or clients.
A doctor or lawyer, or a tradesman in a country town, cannot make a
living, nor can a politician be in Parliament, if he is publicly known
to be “immoral.” Whatever a man’s own conduct may be, he is not likely
to defend publicly those who have been branded, lest some of the odium
should fall on him. Yet so long as a man has not been branded, few men
will object to him, whatever they may know privately of his behavior in
these respects.
Owing to the nature of the penalty, it falls very unequally upon
different professions. An actor or journalist usually escapes all
punishment. An urban workingman can almost always do as he likes. A man
of private means, unless he wishes to take part in public life, need
not suffer at all if he has chosen his friends suitably. Women, who
formerly suffered more than men, now suffer less, since there are large
circles in which no social penalty is inflicted, and a very rapidly
increasing number of women who do not believe the conventional code.
But for the majority of men outside the working classes the penalty is
still sufficiently severe to be prohibitive.