OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IRRESPECTIVE OF CLASS-DISTINCTION. IT CONSISTS
ESSENTIALLY IN GIVING HABITS OF MERCY, AND HABITS OF TRUTH.
(GENTLENESS[A] AND JUSTICE.)
_March 30th, 1867._
87. Thank you for sending me the pamphlet containing the account of
the meeting of clergy and workmen, and of the reasonings which there
took place. I cannot promise you that I shall read much of them, for
the question to my mind most requiring discussion and explanation is
not, why workmen don't go to church, but--why other people do.
However, this I know, that if among our many spiritual teachers, there
are indeed any who heartily and literally believe that the wisdom they
have to teach "is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou
canst desire are not to be compared unto her," and if, so believing,
they will further dare to affront their congregations by the
assertion; and plainly tell them they are not to hunt for rubies or
gold any more, at their peril, till they have gained that which cannot
be gotten for gold, nor silver weighed for the price thereof,--such
believers, so preaching, and refusing to preach otherwise till they
are in that attended to, will never want congregations, both of
working men, and every other kind of men.
[A] "Mercy," in its full sense, means delight in perceiving
nobleness, or in doing kindness. Compare Sec. 50.
88. Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as the phantom
called the "Philosopher's Stone"? A talisman that shall turn base
metal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not; nor would any but
fools seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into noble
souls, nature has given us! and that is a "Philosopher's Stone"
indeed, but it is a stone which the builders refuse.
89. If there were two valleys in California or Australia, with two
different kinds of gravel in the bottom of them; and in the one stream
bed you could dig up, occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of
gold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you
could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of
days and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were
better than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes
to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would--I wonder in which of
the stream beds there would be most diggers?
90. "Time is money"--so say your practised merchants and economists.
None of them, however, I fancy, as they draw towards death, find that
the reverse is true, and that "money is time"? Perhaps it might be
better for them, in the end, if they did not turn so much of their
time into money, lest, perchance, they also turn Eternity into it!
There are other things, however, which in the same sense are money, or
can be changed into it, as well as time. Health is money, wit is
money, knowledge is money; and all your health, and wit, and knowledge
may be changed for gold; and the happy goal so reached, of a sick,
insane, and blind, auriferous old age; but the gold cannot be changed
in its turn back into health and wit.
91. "Time is money;" the words tingle in my ears so that I can't go on
writing. Is it nothing better, then? If we could thoroughly understand
that time was--_itself_,--would it not be more to the purpose? A thing
of which loss or gain was absolute loss, and perfect gain. And that it
was expedient also to buy health and knowledge with money, if so
purchasable; but not to buy money with _them_?
And purchasable they are at the beginning of life, though not at its
close. Purchasable, always, for others, if not for ourselves. You can
buy, and cheaply, life, endless life, according to your Christian's
creed--(there's a bargain for you!) but--long years of knowledge, and
peace, and power, and happiness of love--these assuredly and
irrespectively of any creed or question,--for all those desolate and
haggard children about your streets.
92. "That is not political economy, however." Pardon me; the
all-comfortable saying, "What he layeth out, it shall be paid him
again," is quite literally true in matters of education; no money seed
can be sown with so sure and large return at harvest-time as that;
only of this money-seed, more than of flesh-seed, it is utterly true,
"That which thou sowest is not quickened except it _die_." You must
forget your money, and every other material interest, and educate for
education's sake only! or the very good you try to bestow will become
venomous, and that and your money will be lost together.
93. And this has been the real cause of failure in our efforts for
education hitherto--whether from above or below. There is no honest
desire for the thing itself. The cry for it among the lower orders is
because they think that, when once they have got it, they must become
upper orders. There is a strange notion in the mob's mind now-a-days
(including all our popular economists and educators, as we most justly
may, under that brief term "mob"), that _everybody_ can be uppermost;
or at least, that a state of general scramble, in which everybody in
his turn should come to the top, is a proper Utopian constitution; and
that, once give every lad a good education, and he cannot but come to
ride in his carriage (the methods of supply of coachmen and footmen
not being contemplated). And very sternly I say to you--and say from
sure knowledge--that a man had better not know how to read and write,
than receive education on such terms.
94. The first condition under which it can be given usefully is, that
it should be clearly understood to be no means of getting on in the
world, but a means of staying pleasantly in your place there. And the
first elements of State education should be calculated equally for the
advantage of every order of person composing the State. From the
lowest to the highest class, every child born in this island should be
required by law to receive these general elements of human discipline,
and to be baptized--not with a drop of water on its forehead--but in
the cloud and sea of heavenly wisdom and of earthly power.
And the elements of this general State education should be briefly
these:
95. First--The body must be made as beautiful and perfect in its youth
as it can be, wholly irrespective of ulterior purpose. If you mean
afterwards to set the creature to business which will degrade its body
and shorten its life, first, I should say, simply,--you had better let
such business alone;--but if you must have it done, somehow, yet let
the living creature, whom you mean to kill, get the full strength of
its body first, and taste the joy, and bear the beauty of youth. After
that, poison it, if you will. Economically, the arrangement is a wiser
one, for it will take longer in the killing than if you began with it
younger; and you will get an excess of work out of it which will more
than pay for its training.
Therefore, first teach--as I have said in the preface to 'Unto this
Last'--"The Laws of Health, and exercises enjoined by them;" and, to
this end, your schools must be in fresh country, and amidst fresh air,
and have great extents of land attached to them in permanent estate.
Riding, running, all the honest, personal exercises of offense and
defense, and music, should be the primal heads of this bodily
education.
96. Next to these bodily accomplishments, the two great mental graces
should be taught, Reverence and Compassion: not that these are in a
literal sense to be "taught," for they are innate in every well-born
human creature, but they have to be developed exactly as the strength
of the body must be, by deliberate and constant exercise. I never
understood why Goethe (in the plan of education in 'Wilhelm Meister')
says that reverence is not innate, but must be taught from without; it
seems to me so fixedly a function of the human spirit, that if men can
get nothing else to reverence they will worship a fool, or a stone, or
a vegetable.[A] But to teach reverence rightly is to attach it to the
right persons and things; first, by setting over your youth masters
whom they cannot but love and respect; next, by gathering for them,
out of past history, whatever has been most worthy in human deeds and
human passion; and leading them continually to dwell upon such
instances, making this the principal element of emotional excitement
to them; and, lastly, by letting them justly feel, as far as may be,
the smallness of their own powers and knowledge, as compared with the
attainments of others.
[A] By steady preaching against it, one may quench reverence,
and bring insolence to its height; but the instinct cannot be
wholly uprooted.
97. Compassion, on the other hand, is to be taught chiefly by making
it a point of honor, collaterally with courage, and in the same rank
(as indeed the complement and evidence of courage), so that, in the
code of unwritten school law, it shall be held as shameful to have
done a cruel thing as a cowardly one. All infliction of pain on weaker
creatures is to be stigmatized as unmanly crime; and every possible
opportunity taken to exercise the youths in offices of some practical
help, and to acquaint them with the realities of the distress which,
in the joyfulness of entering into life, it is so difficult, for those
who have not seen home suffering, to conceive.
98. Reverence, then, and compassion, we are to teach primarily, and
with these, as the bond and guardian of them, truth of spirit and
word, of thought and sight. Truth, earnest and passionate, sought for
like a treasure, and kept like a crown.
This teaching of truth as a habit will be the chief work the master
has to do; and it will enter into all parts of education. First, you
must accustom the children to close accuracy of statement; this both
as a principle of honor, and as an accomplishment of language, making
them try always who shall speak truest, both as regards the fact he
has to relate or express (not concealing or exaggerating), and as
regards the precision of the words he expresses it in, thus making
truth (which, indeed, it is) the test of perfect language, and giving
the intensity of a moral purpose to the study and art of words: then
carrying this accuracy into all habits of thought and observation
also, so as always to _think_ of things as they truly are, and to see
them as they truly are, as far as in us rests. And it does rest much
in our power, for all false thoughts and seeings come mainly of our
thinking of what we have no business with, and looking for things we
want to see, instead of things that ought to be seen.
99. "Do not talk but of what you know; do not think but of what you
have materials to think justly upon; and do not look for things only
that you like, when there are others to be seen"--this is the lesson
to be taught to our youth, and inbred in them; and that mainly by our
own example and continence. Never teach a child anything of which you
are not yourself sure; and, above all, if you feel anxious to force
anything into its mind in tender years, that the virtue of youth and
early association may fasten it there, be sure it is no lie which you
thus sanctify. There is always more to be taught of absolute,
incontrovertible knowledge, open to its capacity, than any child can
learn; there is no need to teach it anything doubtful. Better that it
should be ignorant of a thousand truths, than have consecrated in its
heart a single lie.
100. And for this, as well as for many other reasons, the principal
subjects of education, after history, ought to be natural science and
mathematics; but with respect to these studies, your schools will
require to be divided into three groups: one for children who will
probably have to live in cities, one for those who will live in the
country, and one for those who will live at sea; the schools for these
last, of course, being always placed on the coast. And for children
whose life is to be in cities, the subjects of study should be, as
far as their disposition will allow of it, mathematics and the arts;
for children who are to live in the country, natural history of birds,
insects, and plants, together with agriculture taught practically; and
for children who are to be seamen, physical geography, astronomy, and
the natural history of sea-fish and sea-birds.
101. This, then, being the general course and material of education
for all children, observe farther, that in the preface to 'Unto this
Last' I said that every child, besides passing through this course,
was at school to learn "the calling by which it was to live." And it
may perhaps appear to you that after, or even in the early stages of
education such as this above described, there are many callings which,
however much called to them, the children might not willingly
determine to learn or live by. "Probably," you may say, "after they
have learned to ride, and fence, and sing, and know birds and flowers,
it will be little to their liking to make themselves into tailors,
carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and the like." And I cannot but
agree with you as to the exceeding probability of some such reluctance
on their part, which will be a very awkward state of things indeed,
(since we can by no means get on without tailoring and shoemaking,)
and one to be meditated upon very seriously in next letter.
102. P.S.--Thank you for sending me your friend's letter about Gustave
Dore; he is wrong, however, in thinking there is any good in those
illustrations of 'Elaine.' I had intended to speak of them afterwards,
for it is to my mind quite as significant--almost as awful--a sign of
what is going on in the midst of us, that our great English poet
should have suffered his work to be thus contaminated, as that the
lower Evangelicals, never notable for sense in the arts, should have
got their Bibles dishonored. Those 'Elaine' illustrations are just as
impure as anything else that Dore has done; but they are also vapid,
and without any one merit whatever in point of art. The illustrations
to the 'Contes Drolatiques' are full of power and invention; but those
to 'Elaine' are merely and simply stupid; theatrical betises, with
the taint of the charnel-house on them besides.