The valour of her off-spring boasts,
Mindless that now on land and main
His heeded prayer is active brain.
These faithful prophets were not heeded, and we have had to learn our
lesson in the school of experience. She is a good teacher but her fees
are very high.
The author of _Friendship's Garland_ ended with a despairing appeal to
the democracy, when his jeremiads evoked no response from the upper
class, whom he called barbarians, or from the middle class, whom he
regarded as incurably vulgar. The middle classes are apt to receive
hard measure; they have few friends and many critics. We must go back
to Euripides to find the bold statement that they are the best part of
the community and "the salvation of the State"; but it is, on the
whole, true. And our middle class is only superficially vulgar.
Vulgarity, as Mr Robert Bridges has lately said, "is blindness to
values; it is spiritual death." The middle class in Matthew Arnold's
time was no doubt deplorably blind to artistic values; its productions
survive to convict it of what he called Philistinism; but it is no
longer devoid of taste or indifferent to beauty. And it has never been
a contemptible artist in life. Mr Bridges describes the progress of
vulgarity as an inverted Platonic progress. We descend, he says, from
ugly forms to ugly conduct, and from ugly conduct to ugly principles,
till we finally arrive at the absolute ugliness which is vulgarity.
This identification of insensibility to beauty with moral baseness was
something of a paradox even in Greece, and does not fit the English
character at all. Our towns are ugly enough; our public buildings
rouse no enthusiasm; and many of our monuments and stained glass
windows seem to shout for a friendly Zeppelin to obliterate them. But
we British have not descended to ugly conduct. Pericles and Plato
would have found the bearing of this people in its supreme trial more
"beautiful" than the Parthenon itself. The nation has shaken off its
vulgarity even more easily and completely than its slackness and
self-indulgence. We have borne ourselves with a courage, restraint,
and dignity which, a Greek would say, could have only been expected of
philosophers. And we certainly are not a nation of philosophers. We
must not then be too hasty in calling all contempt for intellect
vulgar. We have sinned by undervaluing the life of reason; but we are
not really a vulgar people. Our secular faith, the real religion of
the average Englishman, has its centre in the idea of a gentleman,
which has of course no essential connection with heraldry or property
in land. The upper classes, who live by it, are not vulgar, in spite
of the absence of ideas with which Matthew Arnold twits them; the
middle classes who also respect this ideal, are further protected by
sound moral traditions; and the lower classes have a cheery sense of
humour which is a great antiseptic against vulgarity. But though the
Poet Laureate has not, in my opinion, hit the mark in calling
vulgarity our national sin, he has done well in calling attention to
the danger which may beset educational reform from what we may call
democratism, the tendency to level down all superiorities in the name
of equality and good fellowship. It is the opposite fault to the
aristocraticism which beyond all else led to the decline of Greek
culture--the assumption that the lower classes must remain excluded
from intellectual and even from moral excellence. With us there is a
tendency to condemn ideals of self-culture which can be called
"aristocratic." But we need specialists in this as in every other
field, and the populace must learn that there is such a thing as real
superiority, which has the right and duty to claim a scope for its
full exercise.
The fashionable disparagement of reason, and exaltation of will,
feeling or instinct would be more dangerous in a less scientific age.
The Italian metaphysician Aliotta has lately brought together in one
survey the numerous leaders in the great "reaction against science,"
and they are a formidable band. Pragmatists, voluntarists, activists,
subjective idealists, emotional mystics, and religious conservatives,
have all joined in assaulting the fortress of science which half a
century ago seemed impregnable. But the besieged garrison continues to
use its own methods and to trust in its own hypotheses; and the
results justify the confidence with which the assaults of the
philosophers are ignored. We are told that the scientific method is
ultimately appropriate only to the abstractions of mathematics. But
nature herself seems to have a taste for mathematical methods. A sane
idealism believes that the eternal verities are adumbrated, not
travestied, in the phenomenal world, and does not forget how much of
what we call observation of nature is demonstrably the work of mind.
The world as known to science is itself a spiritual world from which
certain valuations are, for special purposes, excluded. To deny the
authority of the discursive reason, which has its proper province in
this sphere, is to destroy the possibility of all knowledge. Nor can
we, without loss and danger, or instinct or intuition above reason.
Instinct is a faculty which belongs to unprogressive species. It is
necessarily unadaptable and unable to deal with any new situation.
Consecrated custom may keep Chinese civilisation safe in a state of
torpid immobility for five thousand years; but fifty years of Europe
will achieve more, and will at last present Cathay with the
alternative of moving on or moving off. Instinct might lead us on if
progress were an automatic law of nature, but this belief, though
widely held, is sheer superstition.
We have to convert the public mind in this country to faith in trained
and disciplined reason. We have to convince our fellow-citizens not
only that the duty of self-preservation requires us to be mentally as
well equipped as the French, Germans and Americans, but that a trained
intelligence is in itself "more precious than rubies." Blake said that
"a fool shall never get to Heaven, be he never so holy." It is at any
rate true that ignorance misses the best things in this life If
Englishmen would only believe this, the whole spirit of our education
would be changed, which is much more important than to change the
subjects taught. It does not matter very much what is taught; the
important question to ask is what is learnt. This is why the
controversy about religious education was mainly fatuous. The
"religious lesson" can hardly ever make a child religious; religion,
in point of fact, is seldom taught at all; it is caught, by contact
with someone who has it. Other subjects can be taught and can be
learnt; but the teaching will be stiff collar-work, and the learning
evanescent, if the pupil is not interested in the subject. And how
little encouragement the average boy gets at home to train his reason
and form intellectual tastes! He may probably be exhorted to "do well
in his examination," which means that he is to swallow carefully
prepared gobbets of crude information, to be presently disgorged in
the same state. The examination system flourishes best where there is
no genuine desire for mental cultivation. If there were any widespread
enthusiasm for knowledge as an integral part of life the revolt
against this mechanical and commercialised system of testing results
would be universal. As things are, a clever boy trains for an
examination as he trains for a race; and goes out of training as fast
as possible when it is over. Meanwhile the romance of his life is
centred in those more generous and less individual competitions in the
green fields, which our schools and universities have developed to
such perfection. In classes which have small opportunities for
physical exercises, vicarious athletics, with not a little betting,
are a disastrous substitute. But the soul is dyed the colour of its
leisure thoughts. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." This is
why no change in the curriculum can do much for education, as long as
the pupils imbibe no respect for intellectual values at home, and find
none among their school-fellows. And yet the capacity for real
intellectual interest is only latent in most boys. It can be kindled
in a whole class by a master who really loves and believes in his
subject. Some of the best public school teachers in the last century
were hot-tempered men whose disciplinary performances were ludicrous.
But they were enthusiastic humanists, and keen scholars passed year by
year out of their class-rooms.
The importance of a good curriculum is often exaggerated. But a bad
selection of subjects, and a bad method of teaching them, may condemn
even the best teacher to ineffectiveness. Nothing, for example, can
well be more unintelligent than the manner of teaching the classics in
our public schools. The portions of Greek and Latin authors construed
during a lesson are so short that the boys can get no idea of the book
as a whole; long before they finish it they are moved up into another
form. And over all the teaching hangs the menace of the impending
examination, the riddling Sphinx which, as Seeley said in a telling
quotation from Sophocles, forces us to attend to what is at our feet,
neglecting all else--all the imponderables in which the true value of
education consists. The tyranny of examinations has an important
influence upon the choice of subjects as well as upon the manner of
teaching them; for some subjects, which are remarkably stimulating to
the mind of the pupil, are neglected, because they are not well
adapted for examinations. Among these, unfortunately, are our own
literature and language.
It is therefore necessary, even in a short essay which professes to
deal only with generalities, to make some suggestions as to the main
subjects which our education should include. As has been indicated
already, I would divide them into main classes--science and humanism.
Every boy should be instructed in both branches up to a certain point.
We must firmly resist those who wish to make education purely
scientific, those who, in Bacon's words, "call upon men to sell their
books and build furnaces, quitting and forsaking Minerva and the Muses
and relying upon Vulcan." We want no young specialists of twelve years
old; and a youth without a tincture of humanism can never become
A man foursquare, withouten flaw ywrought.
Of the teaching of science I am not competent to speak. But as an
instrument of mind-training, and even of liberal education, it seems
to me to have a far higher value than is usually conceded to it by
humanists. To direct the imagination to the infinitely great and the
infinitely small, to vistas of time in which a thousand years are as
one day; to the tremendous forces imprisoned in minute particles of
matter; to the amazing complexity of the mechanism by which the organs
of the human body perform their work; to analyse the light which has
travelled for centuries from some distant star; to retrace the history
of the earth and the evolution of its inhabitants--such studies cannot
fail to elevate the mind, and only prejudice will disparage them. They
promote also a fine respect for truth and fact, for order and outline,
as the Greeks said, with a wholesome dislike of sophistry and
rhetoric. The air which blows about scientific studies is like the air
of a mountain top--thin, but pure and bracing. And as a subject of
education science has a further advantage which can hardly be
overestimated. It is in science that most of the new discoveries are
being made. "The rapture of the forward view" belongs to science more
than to any other study. We may take it as a well-established
principle in education that the most advanced teachers should be
researchers and discoverers as well as lecturers, and that the rank
and file should be learners as well as instructors. There is no
subject in which this ideal is so nearly attainable as in science.
And yet science, even for its own sake, must not claim to occupy the
whole of education. The mere _Naturforscher_ is apt to be a poor
philosopher himself, and his pupils may turn out very poor
philosophers indeed. The laws of psychical and spiritual life are not
the same as the laws of chemistry or biology; and the besetting sin of
the scientist is to try to explain everything in terms of its origin
instead of in terms of its full development: "by their roots," he
says, "and not by their fruits, ye shall know them." This is a
contradiction of Aristotle [Greek: (_hê physis telos hestin_)],
and of a greater than Aristotle. The training of the reason must
include the study of the human mind, "the throne of the Deity," in its
most characteristic products. Besides science, we must have humanism,
as the other main branch of our curriculum.
The advocates of the old classical education have been gallantly
fighting a losing battle for over half a century; they are now
preparing to accept inevitable defeat. But their cause is not lost, if
they will face the situation fairly. It is only lost if they persist
in identifying classical education with linguistic proficiency. The
study of foreign languages is a fairly good mental discipline for the
majority; for the minority it may be either more or less than a fair
discipline. But only a small fraction of mankind is capable of
enthusiasm for language, for its own sake. The art of expressing ideas
in appropriate and beautiful forms is one of the noblest of human
achievements, and the two classical languages contain many of the
finest examples of good writing that humanity has produced. But the
average boy is incapable of appreciating these values, and the waste
of time which might have been profitably spent is, under our present
system, most deplorable. It may also be maintained that the
conscientious editor and the conscientious tutor have between them
ruined the classics as a mental discipline. Fifty years ago, English
commentatorship was so poor that the pupil had to use his wits in
reading the classics; now if one goes into an undergraduate's room,
one finds him reading the text with the help of a translation, two
editions with notes, and a lecture note-book. No faculty is being used
except the memory, which Bishop Creighton calls "the most worthless of
our mental powers." The practice of prose and verse composition, often
ignorantly decried, has far more educational value; but it belongs to
the linguistic art which, if we are right, is not to be demanded of
all students. Are we then to restrict the study of the classics to
those who have a pretty taste for style? If so, the cause of classical
education is indeed lost. But I can see no reason why some of the
great Greek and Latin authors should not be read, _in translations_,
as part of the normal training in history, philosophy and literature.
I am well aware of the loss which a great author necessarily suffers
by translation; but I have no hesitation in saying that the average
boy would learn far more of Greek literature, and would imbibe far
more of the Greek spirit, by reading the whole of Herodotus,
Thucydides, the _Republic_ of Plato, and some of the plays in good
translations, than he now acquires by going through the classical mill
at a public school. The classics, like almost all other literature,
must be read in masses to be appreciated. Boys think them dull mainly
because of the absurd way in which they are made to study them.
I shall not make any ambitious attempt to sketch out a scheme of
literary studies. My subject is the training of the reason. But two
principles seem to me to be of primary importance. The first is that
we should study the psychology of the developing reason at different
ages, and adapt our method of teaching accordingly. The memory is at
its best from the age of ten to fifteen, or thereabouts. Facts and
dates, and even long pieces of poetry, which have been committed to
memory in early boyhood, remain with us as a possession for life. We
would most of us give a great deal in middle age to recover that
astonishingly retentive memory which we possessed as little boys. On
the other hand, ratiocination at that age is difficult and irksome. A
young boy would rather learn twenty rules than apply one principle.
Accordingly the first years of boyhood are the time for learning by
heart. Quantities of good poetry, and useful facts of all kinds should
be entrusted to the boy's memory to keep: will assimilate them
readily, and without any mental overstrain. But eight or ten years
later, "cramming" is injurious both to the health and to the
intellect. Years have brought, if not the philosophic mind, yet at any
rate a mind which can think and argue. The memory is weaker and the
process of loading it with facts is more unpleasant. At this stage the
whole system of teaching should be different. One great evil of
examinations is that they prolong the stage of mere memorising to an
age at which it is not only useless but hurtful. Another valuable
guide is furnished by observing what authors the intelligent boy likes
and dislikes. His taste ought certainly to be consulted, if our main
object is to interest him in the things of the mind. The average
intelligent boy likes Homer and does not like Virgil; he is interested
by Tacitus and bored by Cicero; he loves Shakespeare and revels in
Macaulay, who has a special affinity for the eternal schoolboy.
My other principle is that since we are training young Englishmen,
whom we hope to turn into true and loyal citizens, we shall presumably
find them most responsive to the language, literature, and history of
their own country. This would be a commonplace, not worth uttering, in
any other country; in England it is, unfortunately, far from being
generally accepted Nothing sets in a stronger light the inertia and
thoughtlessness, not to say stupidity, of the British character in all
matters outside the domain of material and moral interests, than our
neglect of the magnificent spiritual heritage which we possess in our
own history and literature. Wordsworth, in one of those noble sonnets
which are now, we are glad to hear, being read by thousands in the
trenches and by myriads at home, proclaims his faith in the victory of
his country over Napoleon because he thinks of her glorious past.
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold
That Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of Earth's best blood, have titles manifold.
It is a high boast, but it is true. But what have we done to fire the
imagination of our boys and girls with the vision of our great and
ancient nation, now struggling for its existence? What have we taught
them of Shakespeare and Milton, of Elizabeth and Cromwell, of Nelson
and Wellington? Have we ever tried to make them understand that they
are called to be the temporary custodians of very glorious traditions,
and the trustees of a spiritual wealth compared with which the gold
mines of the Rand are but dross? Do we even teach them, in any
rational manner, the fine old language which has been slowly perfected
for centuries, and which is now being used up and debased by the
rubbishy newspapers which form almost the sole reading of the
majority? We have marvelled at the slowness with which the masses
realised that the country was in danger, and at the stubbornness with
which some of the working class clung to their sectional interests and
ambitions when the very life of England was at stake. In France the
whole people saw at once what was upon them; the single word _patrie_
was enough to unite them in a common enthusiasm and stern
determination. With us it was hardly so; many good judges think that
but for the "Lusitania" outrage and the Zeppelins, part of the
population would have been half-hearted about the war, and we should
have failed to give adequate support to our allies. The cause is not
selfishness but ignorance and want of imagination; and what have we
done to tap the sources of an intelligent patriotism? We are being
saved not by the reasoned conviction of the populace, but by its
native pugnacity and bull-dog courage. This is not the place to go
into details about English studies; but can anyone doubt that they
could be made the basis of a far better education than we now give in
our schools? We have especially to remember that there is a real
danger of the modern Englishman being cut off from the living past.
Scientific studies include the earlier phases of the earth, but not
the past of the human race and the British people. Christianity has
been a valuable educator in this way, especially when it includes an
intelligent knowledge the Bible. But the secular education of the
masses is now so much severed from the stream of tradition and
sentiment which unites us with the older civilisations, that the very
language of the Churches is becoming unintelligible to them, and the
influence of organised religion touches only a dwindling minority.
And yet the past lives in us all; lives inevitably in its dangers,
which the accumulated experience of civilisation, valued so slightly
by us on its spiritual side, can alone help us to surmount. A nation
like an individual, must "wish his days to be bound each to each by
natural piety." It too must strive to keep its memory green, to
remember the days of old and the years that are past. The Jews have
always had, in their sacred books, a magnificent embodiment of the
spirit of their race; and who can say how much of their incomparable
tenacity and ineradicable hopefulness has been due to the education
thus imparted to every Jewish child? We need a Bible of the English
race, which shall be hardly less sacred to each succeeding generation
of young Britons than the Old Testament is to the Jews. England ought
to be, and may be, the spiritual home of one quarter of the human
race, for ages after our task as a world-power shall have been brought
to a successful issue, and after we in this little island have
accepted the position of mother to nations greater than ourselves. But
England's future is precious only to those to whom her past is dear.
I am not suggesting that the history and literatures of other
countries should be neglected, or that foreign languages should form
no part of education. But the main object is to turn out good
Englishmen, who may continue worthily and even develop further a
glorious national tradition. To do this, we must appeal constantly to
the imagination, which Wordsworth has boldly called "reason in her
most exalted mood." We may thus bring a little poetry and romance into
the monotonous lives of our hand-workers. It may well be that their
discontent has more to do with the starving of their spiritual nature
than we suppose. For the intellectual life, like divine philosophy, is
not dull and crabbed, as fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's
lute.
Can we end with a definition of the happiness and well-being, which is
the goal of education, as of all else that we try to do? Probably we
cannot do better than accept the famous definition of Aristotle, which
however we must be careful to translate rightly. "Happiness, or
well-being, is an activity of the soul directed towards excellence, in
an unhampered life." Happiness consists in doing rather than being;
the activity must be that of the soul--the whole man acting as a
person; it must be directed towards excellence--not exclusively moral
virtue, but the best work that we can do, of whatever kind; and it
must be unhampered--we must be given the opportunity of doing the best
that is in us to do. To awaken the soul; to hold up before it the
images of whatsoever things are true, lovely, noble, pure, and of good
report; and to remove the obstacles which stunt and cripple the mind;
this is the work which we have called the Training of the Reason.
III
THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION
BY A. C. BENSON
Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge