TECHNICAL EDUCATION AND ITS RELATION TO SCIENCE AND LITERATURE
(_Presidential Address to the Mathematical Association, January,
1917_)
THE subject of this address is Technical Education. I wish to examine
its essential nature and also its relation to a liberal education. Such
an inquiry may help us to realise the conditions for the successful
working of a national system of technical training. It is also a very
burning question among mathematical teachers; for mathematics is
included in most technological courses.
Now it is unpractical to plunge into such a discussion without framing
in our own minds the best ideal towards which we desire to work,
however modestly we may frame our hopes as to the result which in the
near future is likely to be achieved.
People are shy of ideals; and accordingly we find a formulation of the
ideal state of mankind placed by a modern dramatist[1] in the mouth of
a mad priest: "In my dreams it is a country where the State is the
Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is
a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and
one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshipper and
the worshipper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a
godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in
one and one in three. It is, in short, the dream of a madman."
Now the part of this speech to which I would direct attention is
embodied in the phrase, "It is a commonwealth in which work is play
and play is life." This is the ideal of technical education. It sounds
very mystical when we confront it with the actual facts, the toiling
millions, tired, discontented, mentally indifferent, and then the
employers---- I am not undertaking a social analysis, but I shall carry
you with me when I admit that the present facts of society are a long
way off this ideal. Furthermore, we are agreed that an employer who
conducted his workshop on the principle that "work should be play"
would be ruined in a week.
The curse that has been laid on humanity, in fable and in fact, is,
that by the sweat of its brow shall it live. But reason and moral
intuition have seen in this curse the foundation for advance. The early
Benedictine monks rejoiced in their labours because they conceived
themselves as thereby made fellow-workers with Christ.
Stripped of its theological trappings, the essential idea remains,
that work should be transfused with intellectual and moral vision and
thereby turned into a joy, triumphing over its weariness and its pain.
Each of us will re-state this abstract formulation in a more concrete
shape in accordance with his private outlook. State it how you like,
so long as you do not lose the main point in your details. However you
phrase it, it remains the sole real hope of toiling humanity; and it
is in the hands of technical teachers, and of those who control their
spheres of activity, so to mould the nation that daily it may pass to
its labours in the spirit of the monks of old.
The immediate need of the nation is a large supply of skilled workmen,
of men with inventive genius, and of employers alert in the development
of new ideas.
There is one--and only one--way to obtain these admirable results.
It is by producing workmen, men of science, and employers who enjoy
their work. View the matter practically in the light of our knowledge
of average human nature. Is it likely that a tired, bored workman,
however skilful his hands, will produce a large output of first-class
work? He will limit his production, will scamp his work, and be an
adept at evading inspection; he will be slow in adapting himself to
new methods; he will be a focus of discontent, full of unpractical
revolutionary ideas, controlled by no sympathetic apprehension of the
real working of trade conditions. If, in the troubled times which may
be before us, you wish appreciably to increase the chance of some
savage upheaval, introduce widespread technical education and ignore
the Benedictine ideal. Society will then get what it deserves.
Again, inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a
condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of
invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile
dodges" is much nearer to the truth. The basis of the growth of modern
invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of
pleasurable intellectual curiosity.
The third class are the employers, who are to be enterprising. Now
it is to be observed that it is the successful employers who are the
important people to get at, the men with business connections all over
the world, men who are already rich. No doubt there will always be a
continuous process of rise and fall of businesses. But it is futile
to expect flourishing trade, if in the mass the successful houses of
business are suffering from atrophy. Now if these men conceive their
businesses as merely indifferent means for acquiring other disconnected
opportunities of life, they have no spur to alertness. They are
already doing very well, the mere momentum of their present business
engagements will carry them on for their time. They are not at all
likely to bother themselves with the doubtful chances of new methods.
Their real soul is in the other side of their life. Desire for money
will produce hard-fistedness and not enterprise. There is much more
hope for humanity from manufacturers who enjoy their work than from
those who continue in irksome business with the object of founding
hospitals.
Finally, there can be no prospect of industrial peace so long as
masters and men in the mass conceive themselves as engaged in a
soulless operation of extracting money from the public. Enlarged views
of the work performed, and of the communal service thereby rendered,
can be the only basis on which to found sympathetic co-operation.
The conclusion to be drawn from this discussion is, that alike for
masters and for men a technical or technological education, which is to
have any chance of satisfying the practical needs of the nation, must
be conceived in a liberal spirit as a real intellectual enlightenment
in regard to principles applied and services rendered. In such an
education geometry and poetry are as essential as turning lathes.
The mythical figure of Plato may stand for modern liberal education
as does that of St. Benedict for technical education. We need not
entangle ourselves in the qualifications necessary for a balanced
representation of the actual thoughts of the actual men. They are used
here as symbolic figures typical of antithetical notions. We consider
Plato in the light of the type of culture he now inspires.
In its essence a liberal education is an education for thought and
for æsthetic appreciation. It proceeds by imparting a knowledge of
the masterpieces of thought, of imaginative literature, and of art.
The action which it contemplates is command. It is an aristocratic
education implying leisure. This Platonic ideal has rendered
imperishable services to European civilisation. It has encouraged art,
it has fostered that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the
origin of science, it has maintained the dignity of mind in the face of
material force, a dignity which claims freedom of thought. Plato did
not, like St. Benedict, bother himself to be a fellow-worker with his
slaves; but he must rank among the emancipators of mankind. His type
of culture is the peculiar inspiration of the liberal aristocrat, the
class from which Europe derives what ordered liberty it now possesses.
For centuries, from Pope Nicholas V to the schools of the Jesuits, and
from the Jesuits to the modern headmasters of English public schools,
this educational ideal has had the strenuous support of the clergy.
For certain people it is a very good education. It suits their type
of mind and the circumstances amid which their life is passed. But
more has been claimed for it than this. All education has been judged
adequate or defective according to its approximation to this sole type.
The essence of the type is a large discursive knowledge of the best
literature. The ideal product of the type is the man who is acquainted
with the best that has been written. He will have acquired the chief
languages, he will have considered the histories of the rise and fall
of nations, the poetic expression of human feeling, and have read the
great dramas and novels. He will also be well grounded in the chief
philosophies, and have attentively read those philosophic authors who
are distinguished for lucidity of style.
It is obvious that, except at the close of a long life, he will not
have much time for anything else if any approximation is to be made to
the fulfilment of this programme. One is reminded of the calculation
in a dialogue of Lucian that, before a man could be justified in
practising any one of the current ethical systems, he should have spent
a hundred and fifty years in examining their credentials.
Such ideals are not for human beings. What is meant by a liberal
culture is nothing so ambitious as a full acquaintance with the varied
literary expression of civilised mankind from Asia to Europe, and from
Europe to America. A small selection only is required; but then, as
we are told, it is a selection of the very best. I have my doubts of
a selection which includes Xenophon and omits Confucius, but then I
have read neither in the original. The ambitious programme of a liberal
education really shrinks to a study of some fragments of literature
included in a couple of important languages.
But the expression of the human spirit is not confined to literature.
There are the other arts, and there are the sciences. Also education
must pass beyond the passive reception of the ideas of others. Powers
of initiative must be strengthened. Unfortunately initiative does not
mean just one acquirement--there is initiative in thought, initiative
in action, and the imaginative initiative of art; and these three
categories require many subdivisions.
The field of acquirement is large, and the individual so fleeting and
so fragmentary: classical scholars, scientists, headmasters are alike
ignoramuses.
There is a curious illusion that a more complete culture was possible
when there was less to know. Surely the only gain was, that it was more
possible to remain unconscious of ignorance. It cannot have been a gain
to Plato to have read neither Shakespeare, nor Newton, nor Darwin.
The achievements of a liberal education have in recent times not been
worsened. The change is that its pretensions have been found out.
My point is, that no course of study can claim any position of ideal
completeness. Nor are the omitted factors of subordinate importance.
The insistence in the Platonic culture on disinterested intellectual
appreciation is a psychological error. Action and our implication in
the transition of events amid the evitable bond of cause to effect
are fundamental. An education which strives to divorce intellectual
or æsthetic life from these fundamental facts carries with it the
decadence of civilisation. Essentially culture should be for action,
and its effect should be to divest labour from the associations of
aimless toil. Art exists that we may know the deliverances of our
senses as good. It heightens the sense-world.
Disinterested scientific curiosity is a passion for an ordered
intellectual vision of the connection of events. But the goal of
such curiosity is the marriage of action to thought. This essential
intervention of action even in abstract science is often overlooked. No
man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease
his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he
knows in order to discover. The pleasure which art and science can
give to toil is the enjoyment which arises from successfully directed
intention. Also it is the same pleasure which is yielded to the
scientist and to the artist.
The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is
fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not
liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical: that is, no
education which does not impart both technique and intellectual vision.
In simpler language, education should turn out the pupil with something
he knows well and something he can do well. This intimate union of
practice and theory aids both. The intellect does not work best in a
vacuum. The stimulation of creative impulse requires, especially in
the case of a child, the quick transition to practice. Geometry and
mechanics, followed by workshop practice, gain that reality without
which mathematics is verbiage.
There are three main methods which are required in a national system of
education, namely, the literary curriculum, the scientific curriculum,
the technical curriculum. But each of these curricula should include
the other two. What I mean is, that every form of education should give
the pupil a technique, a science, an assortment of general ideas, and
æsthetic appreciation, and that each of these sides of his training
should be illuminated by the others. Lack of time, even for the most
favoured pupil, makes it impossible to develop fully each curriculum.
Always there must be a dominant emphasis. The most direct æsthetic
training naturally falls in the technical curriculum in those cases
when the training is that requisite for some art or artistic craft. But
it is of high importance in both a literary and a scientific education.
The educational method of the literary curriculum is the study of
language, that is, the study of our most habitual method of conveying
to others our states of mind. The technique which should be acquired
is the technique of verbal expression, the science is the study of the
structure of language and the analysis of the relations of language
to the states of mind conveyed. Furthermore, the subtle relations of
language to feeling, and the high development of the sense organs
to which written and spoken words appeal, lead to keen æsthetic
appreciations being aroused by the successful employment of language.
Finally, the wisdom of the world is preserved in the masterpieces of
linguistic composition.
This curriculum has the merit of homogeneity. All its various parts
are co-ordinated and play into each other's hands. We can hardly be
surprised that such a curriculum, when once broadly established, should
have claimed the position of the sole perfect type of education. Its
defect is unduly to emphasise the importance of language. Indeed the
varied importance of verbal expression is so overwhelming that its
sober estimation is difficult. Recent generations have been witnessing
the retreat of literature, and of literary forms of expression, from
their position of unique importance in intellectual life. In order
truly to become a servant and a minister of nature something more is
required than literary aptitudes.
A scientific education is primarily a training in the art of observing
natural phenomena, and in the knowledge and deduction of laws
concerning the sequence of such phenomena. But here, as in the case of
a liberal education, we are met by the limitations imposed by shortness
of time. There are many types of natural phenomena, and to each type
there corresponds a science with its peculiar modes of observation,
and its peculiar types of thought employed in the deduction of laws. A
study of science in general is impossible in education, all that can be
achieved is the study of two or three allied sciences. Hence the charge
of narrow specialism urged against any education which is primarily
scientific. It is obvious that the charge is apt to be well-founded;
and it is worth considering how, within the limits of a scientific
education and to the advantage of such an education, the danger can be
avoided.
Such a discussion requires the consideration of technical education. A
technical education is in the main a training in the art of utilising
knowledge for the manufacture of material products. Such a training
emphasises manual skill, and the co-ordinated action of hand and
eye, and judgment in the control of the process of construction. But
judgment necessitates knowledge of those natural processes of which the
manufacture is the utilisation. Thus somewhere in technical training
an education in scientific knowledge is required. If you minimise
the scientific side, you will confine it to the scientific experts;
if you maximise it, you will impart it in some measure to the men,
and--what is of no less importance--to the directors and managers of
the businesses.
Technical education is not necessarily allied exclusively to science
on its mental side. It may be an education for an artist or for
apprentices to an artistic craft. In that case æsthetic appreciation
will have to be cultivated in connection with it.
An evil side of the Platonic culture has been its total neglect of
technical education as an ingredient in the complete development
of ideal human beings. This neglect has arisen from two disastrous
antitheses, namely, that between mind and body, and that between
thought and action. I will here interject, solely to avoid criticism,
that I am well aware that the Greeks highly valued physical beauty and
physical activity. They had, however, that perverted sense of values
which is the nemesis of slave-owning.
I lay it down as an educational axiom that in teaching you will come
to grief as soon as you forget that your pupils have bodies. This is
exactly the mistake of the post-renaissance Platonic curriculum. But
nature can be kept at bay by no pitchfork; so in English education,
being expelled from the classroom, she returned with a cap and bells in
the form of all-conquering athleticism.
The connections between intellectual activity and the body, though
diffused in every bodily feeling, are focussed in the eyes, the ears,
the voice, and the hands. There is a co-ordination of senses and
thought, and also a reciprocal influence between brain activity and
material creative activity. In this reaction the hands are peculiarly
important. It is a moot point whether the human hand created the human
brain, or the brain created the hand. Certainly the connection is
intimate and reciprocal. Such deep-seated relations are not widely
atrophied by a few hundred years of disuse in exceptional families.
The disuse of hand-craft is a contributory cause to the brain-lethargy
of aristocracies, which is only mitigated by sport where the concurrent
brain-activity is reduced to a minimum and the hand-craft lacks
subtlety. The necessity for constant writing and vocal exposition is
some slight stimulus to the thought-power of the professional classes.
Great readers, who exclude other activities, are not distinguished by
subtlety of brain. They tend to be timid conventional thinkers. No
doubt this is partly due to their excessive knowledge outrunning their
powers of thought; but it is partly due to the lack of brain-stimulus
from the productive activities of hand or voice.
In estimating the importance of technical education we must rise above
the exclusive association of learning with book-learning. First-hand
knowledge is the ultimate basis of intellectual life. To a large
extent book-learning conveys second-hand information, and as such can
never rise to the importance of immediate practice. Our goal is to see
the immediate event of our lives as instances of our general ideas.
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of
information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap
of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the
secret of its mediocrity. It is tame because it has never been scared
by facts. The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not
lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to
express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he
was a leader.
The peculiar merit of a scientific education should be, that it bases
thought upon first-hand observation; and the corresponding merit of a
technical education is, that it follows our deep natural instinct to
translate thought into manual skill, and manual activity into thought.
We are a Mathematical Association, and it is natural to ask: Where do
we come in? We come in just at this point.
The thought which science evokes is logical thought. Now logic is of
two kinds: the logic of discovery and the logic of the discovered.
The logic of discovery consists in the weighing of probabilities, in
discarding details deemed to be irrelevant, in divining the general
rules according to which events occur, and in testing hypotheses by
devising suitable experiments. This is inductive logic.
The logic of the discovered is the deduction of the special events
which, under certain circumstances, would happen in obedience to the
assumed laws of nature. Thus when the laws are discovered or assumed,
their utilisation entirely depends on deductive logic. Without
deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a
barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless
afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to
the particular, ascending and descending like the angels on Jacob's
ladder. When Newton had divined the law of gravitation he at once
proceeded to calculate the earth's attractions on an apple at its
surface and on the moon. We may note in passing that inductive logic
would be impossible without deductive logic. Thus Newton's calculations
were an essential step in his inductive verification of the great law.
Now mathematics is nothing else than the more complicated parts of
the art of deductive reasoning, especially where it concerns number,
quantity, and space.
In the teaching of science, the art of thought should be taught:
namely, the art of forming clear conceptions applying to first-hand
experience, the art of divining the general truths which apply, the
art of testing divinations, and the art of utilising general truths
by reasoning to more particular cases of some peculiar importance.
Furthermore, a power of scientific exposition is necessary, so that the
relevant issues from a confused mass of ideas can be stated clearly,
with due emphasis on important points.
By the time a science, or a small group of sciences, has been taught
thus amply, with due regard to the general art of thought, we have gone
a long way towards correcting the specialism of science. The worst
of a scientific education based, as necessarily must be the case, on
one or two particular branches of science, is that the teachers under
the influence of the examination system are apt merely to stuff
their pupils with the narrow results of these special sciences. It is
essential that the generality of the method be continually brought to
light and contrasted with the speciality of the particular application.
A man who only knows his own science, as a routine peculiar to that
science, does not even know that. He has no fertility of thought, no
power of quickly seizing the bearing of alien ideas. He will discover
nothing, and be stupid in practical applications.
This exhibition of the general in the particular is extremely difficult
to effect, especially in the case of younger pupils. The art of
education is never easy. To surmount its difficulties, especially those
of elementary education, is a task worthy of the highest genius. It is
the training of human souls.
Mathematics, well taught, should be the most powerful instrument
in gradually implanting this generality of idea. The essence of
mathematics is perpetually to be discarding more special ideas in
favour of more general ideas, and special methods in favour of general
methods. We express the conditions of a special problem in the form of
an equation, but that equation will serve for a hundred other problems,
scattered through diverse sciences. The general reasoning is always
the powerful reasoning, because deductive cogency is the property of
abstract form.
Here, again, we must be careful. We shall ruin mathematical education
if we use it merely to impress general truths. The general ideas are
the means of connecting particular results. After all, it is the
concrete special cases which are important. Thus in the handling of
mathematics in your results you cannot be too concrete, and in your
methods you cannot be too general. The essential course of reasoning
is to generalise what is particular, and then to particularise what is
general. Without generality there is no reasoning, without concreteness
there is no importance.
Concreteness is the strength of technical education. I would
remind you that truths which lack the highest generality are not
necessarily concrete facts. For example, _x_ + _y_ = _y_ + _x_ is an
algebraic truth more general than 2 + 2 = 4. But "two and two make
four" is itself a highly general proposition lacking any element of
concreteness. To obtain a concrete proposition immediate intuition of a
truth concerning particular objects is requisite; for example, "these
two apples and those apples together make four apples" is a concrete
proposition, if you have direct perception or immediate memory of the
apples.
In order to obtain the full realisation of truths as applying, and not
as empty formulæ, there is no alternative to technical education. Mere
passive observation is not sufficient. In creation only is there vivid
insight into the properties of the object thereby produced. If you
want to understand anything, make it yourself, is a sound rule. Your
faculties will be alive, your thoughts gain vividness by an immediate
translation into acts. Your ideas gain that reality which comes from
seeing the limits of their application.
In elementary education this doctrine has long been put into practice.
Young children are taught to familiarise themselves with shapes and
colours by simple manual operations of cutting out and of sorting. But
good though this is, it is not quite what I mean. That is practical
experience before you think, experience antecedent to thought in order
to create ideas, a very excellent discipline. But technical education
should be much more than that: it is creative experience while you
think, experience which realises your thought, experience which teaches
you to co-ordinate act and thought, experience leading you to associate
thought with foresight and foresight with achievement. Technical
education gives theory, and a shrewd insight as to where theory fails.
A technical education is not to be conceived as a maimed alternative
to the perfect Platonic culture: namely, as a defective training
unfortunately made necessary by cramped conditions of life. No
human being can attain to anything but fragmentary knowledge and a
fragmentary training of his capacities. There are, however, three main
roads along which we can proceed with good hope of advancing towards
the best balance of intellect and character: these are the way of
literary culture, the way of scientific culture, the way of technical
culture. No one of these methods can be exclusively followed without
grave loss of intellectual activity and of character. But a mere
mechanical mixture of the three curricula will produce bad results in
the shape of scraps of information never interconnected or utilised.
We have already noted as one of the strong points of the traditional
literary culture that all its parts are co-ordinated. The problem
of education is to retain the dominant emphasis, whether literary,
scientific, or technical, and without loss of co-ordination to infuse
into each way of education something of the other two.
To make definite the problem of technical education fix attention on
two ages: one thirteen, when elementary education ends; and the other
seventeen, when technical education ends so far as it is compressed
within a school curriculum. I am aware that for artisans in junior
technical schools a three-years' course would be more usual. On the
other hand, for naval officers, and for directing classes generally,
a longer time can be afforded. We want to consider the principles
to govern a curriculum which shall land these children at the age of
seventeen in the position of having technical skill useful to the
community.
Their technical manual training should start at thirteen, bearing a
modest proportion to the rest of their work, and should increase in
each year finally to attain to a substantial proportion. Above all
things it should not be too specialised. Workshop finish and workshop
dodges, adapted to one particular job, should be taught in the
commercial workshop, and should form no essential part of the school
course. A properly trained worker would pick them up in no time. In all
education the main cause of failure is staleness. Technical education
is doomed if we conceive it as a system for catching children young and
for giving them one highly specialised manual aptitude. The nation has
need of a fluidity of labour, not merely from place to place, but also
within reasonable limits of allied aptitudes, from one special type of
work to another special type. I know that here I am on delicate ground,
and I am not claiming that men while they are specialising on one sort
of work should spasmodically be set to other kinds. That is a question
of trade organisation with which educationalists have no concern. I am
only asserting the principles that training should be broader than the
ultimate specialisation, and that the resulting power of adaptation to
varying demands is advantageous to the workers, to the employers, and
to the nation.
In considering the intellectual side of the curriculum we must be
guided by the principle of the co-ordination of studies. In general,
the intellectual studies most immediately related to manual training
will be some branches of science. More than one branch will, in fact,
be concerned; and even if that be not the case, it is impossible to
narrow down scientific study to a single thin line of thought. It is
possible, however, provided that we do not press the classification
too far, roughly to classify technical pursuits according to the
dominant science involved. We thus find a sixfold division, namely,
(1) Geometrical techniques, (2) Mechanical techniques, (3) Physical
techniques, (4) Chemical techniques, (5) Biological techniques, (6)
Techniques of commerce and of social service.
By this division, it is meant that apart from auxiliary sciences
some particular science requires emphasis in the training for most
occupations. We can, for example, reckon carpentry, ironmongery,
and many artistic crafts among geometrical techniques. Similarly
agriculture is a biological technique. Probably cookery, if it includes
food catering, would fall midway between biological, physical, and
chemical sciences, though of this I am not sure.
The sciences associated with commerce and social service would be
partly algebra, including arithmetic and statistics, and partly
geography and history. But this section is somewhat heterogeneous in
its scientific affinities. Anyhow the exact way in which technical
pursuits are classified in relation to science is a detail. The
essential point is, that with some thought it is possible to find
scientific courses which illuminate most occupations. Furthermore, the
problem is well understood, and has been brilliantly solved in many of
the schools of technology and junior technical schools throughout the
country.
In passing from science to literature, in our review of the
intellectual elements of technical education, we note that many studies
hover between the two: for example, history and geography. They are
both of them very essential in education, provided that they are the
right history and the right geography. Also books giving descriptive
accounts of general results, and trains of thought in various sciences
fall in the same category. Such books should be partly historical
and partly expository of the main ideas which have finally arisen.
Prof. R. A. Gregory's recent book, _Discovery_, and the _Home
University Library_ series illustrate my meaning. Their value in
education depends on their quality as mental stimulants. They must not
be inflated with gas on the wonders of science, and must be informed
with a broad outlook.
It is unfortunate that the literary element in education has rarely
been considered apart from grammatical study. The historical reason is,
that when the modern Platonic curriculum was being formed Latin and
Greek were the sole keys which rendered great literature accessible.
But there is no necessary connection between literature and grammar.
The great age of Greek literature was already past before the arrival
of the grammarians of Alexandria. Of all types of men to-day existing,
classical scholars are the most remote from the Greeks of the Periclean
times.
Mere literary knowledge is of slight importance. The only thing that
matters is, how it is known. The facts related are nothing. Literature
only exists to express and develop that imaginative world which is our
life, the kingdom which is within us. It follows that the literary side
of a technical education should consist in an effort to make the pupils
enjoy literature. It does not matter what they know, but the enjoyment
is vital. The great English Universities, under whose direct authority
school-children are examined in plays of Shakespeare, to the certain
destruction of their enjoyment, should be prosecuted for soul-murder.
Now there are two kinds of intellectual enjoyment: the enjoyment of
creation, and the enjoyment of relaxation. They are not necessarily
separated. A change of occupation may give the full tide of happiness
which comes from the concurrence of both forms of pleasure. The
appreciation of literature is really creation. The written word, its
music, and its associations, are only the stimuli. The vision which
they evoke is our own doing. No one, no genius other than our own,
can make our own life live. But except for those engaged in literary
occupations, literature is also a relaxation. It gives exercise to that
other side which any occupation must suppress during the working hours.
Art also has the same function in life as has literature.
To obtain the pleasure of relaxation requires no help. The pleasure
is merely to cease doing. Some such pure relaxation is a necessary
condition of health. Its dangers are notorious, and to the greater
part of the necessary relaxation nature has affixed, not enjoyment,
but the oblivion of sleep. Creative enjoyment is the outcome of
successful effort and requires help for its initiation. Such enjoyment
is necessary for high-speed work and for original achievement.
To speed up production with unrefreshed workmen is a disastrous
economic policy. Temporary success will be at the expense of the
nation, which, for long years of their lives, will have to support
worn-out artisans--unemployables. Equally disastrous is the
alternation of spasms of effort with periods of pure relaxation.
Such periods are the seed-times of degeneration, unless rigorously
curtailed. The normal recreation should be change of activity,
satisfying the cravings of instincts. Games afford such activity. Their
disconnection emphasises the relaxation, but their excess leaves us
empty.
It is here that literature and art should play an essential part in
a healthily organised nation. Their services to economic production
would be only second to those of sleep or of food. I am not now talking
of the training of an artist, but of the use of art as a condition of
healthy life. It is analogous to sunshine in the physical world.
When we have once rid our minds of the idea that knowledge is to
be exacted, there is no especial difficulty or expense involved in
helping the growth of artistic enjoyment. All school-children could
be sent at regular intervals to neighbouring theatres where suitable
plays could be subsidised. Similarly for concerts and cinema films.
Pictures are more doubtful in their popular attraction; but interesting
representations of scenes or ideas which the children have read about
would probably appeal. The pupils themselves should be encouraged
in artistic efforts. Above all the art of reading aloud should be
cultivated. The Roger de Coverley essays of Addison are perfect
examples of readable prose.
Art and literature have not merely an indirect effect on the main
energies of life. Directly, they give vision. The world spreads wide
beyond the deliverances of material sense, with subtleties of reaction
and with pulses of emotion. Vision is the necessary antecedent to
control and to direction. In the contest of races which in its final
issues will be decided in the workshops and not on the battle-field,
the victory will belong to those who are masters of stores of trained
nervous energy, working under conditions favourable to growth. One such
essential condition is Art.
If there had been time, there are other things which I should like
to have said: for example, to advocate the inclusion of one foreign
language in all education. From direct observation I know this to be
possible for artisan children. But enough has been put before you,
to make plain the principles with which we should undertake national
education.
In conclusion, I recur to the thought of the Benedictines, who
saved for mankind the vanishing civilisation of the ancient world
by linking together knowledge, labour, and moral energy. Our danger
is to conceive practical affairs as the kingdom of evil, in which
success is only possible by the extrusion of ideal aims. I believe
that such a conception is a fallacy directly negatived by practical
experience. In education this error takes the form of a mean view of
technical training. Our forefathers in the dark ages saved themselves
by embodying high ideals in great organisations. It is our task,
without servile imitation, boldly to exercise our creative energies,
remembering amid discouragements that the coldest hour immediately
precedes the dawn.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _Cf._ BERNARD SHAW: _John Bull's Other
Island_.]