of education strictly so-called, it will be well to glance at his
influence in the more general aspects of learning and literature.
He must be credited with an important share in the movement towards
the dethronement of Latin in favour of the vernacular tongues, as
the medium of communication in subjects hitherto held to belong
exclusively to the domain of the learned class. The initiative
in this matter goes back, of course, to the time of Dante, but
even with the examples of Italy, France, and Spain to suggest the
change, it was a distinct and difficult task to work it out for
our own language. Mulcaster was not the first Englishman to write
a book in his native tongue which everyone would have expected to
be written in Latin. Sir Thomas More, in some of his historical
and controversial works, Roger Ascham, and a few other writers of
lesser note, had anticipated him in practice, and had been more
successful in attaining a lucid and graceful style, but it may
fairly be claimed that Mulcaster was the first to give a reasoned
justification of the course he followed and recommended, and to
further the end in view by taking definite steps to elaborate the
means. Nor is it only for his service in helping to establish a
canon of literary English, and show the way to others by using it
himself to the best of his ability, that acknowledgment is due. It
was a still more conspicuous merit to see clearly, and to enforce
by these means, the truth that the increase of learning, and the
methods by which it may be furthered, are subjects of interest not
to any limited class alone, but to every member of the community.
There may be comparatively little present value in his judgments
as to the proper content of the English vocabulary, and the forms
of spelling which he thought should be made authoritative, but at
least it is noteworthy that, at a time when linguistic science was
at a rudimentary stage, he had reached a singularly just conception
of the essential nature of a language, and the conditions of its
growth and decay. The interesting allegory where he traces the
process by which speech came to be represented by written symbols,
proves him to have grasped the idea, only in later times fully
understood, that language, as a product of human activity, shares
in all the features characteristic of organic development.
It is not only the more formal aspects of language, moreover, that
he treats with discrimination. On the still subtler question of its
relation to thought and knowledge he speaks with a discernment far
beyond his time. The usurping tyranny of _words_ over the minds
of men, in place of the lawful domination of the realities they
symbolised, had in the movement of the Renascence changed its form
without relaxing its severity. If they were no longer so frequently
used as mere counters in vain disputations, they were yet apt to
be regarded with unreasoning idolatry, as the sacred embodiment of
the thoughts and feelings of settled forms of civilisation in the
past, exempt from any enquiry as to the conceptions they expressed.
Mulcaster does not share this illusion. In his view language is
primarily a means of communication, and though the acquirement of
foreign tongues may be a necessity for the time, yet they “push
us one degree further off from knowledge.” He may not have fully
realised the degree in which language is to be reckoned with as a
form of artistic expression and as an instrument of thought, though
his appreciation of the possibilities of the English tongue shows
that he did not forget these invaluable uses; but in any case he
saw clearly, and he was one of the first to see, that the crying
need of his time was to be set free from the despotism of words,
which made them rather a hindrance than a help to real knowledge.
“We attribute too much to tongues, in paying more heed to them than
we do to matter.” The bearing of this opinion on educational theory
will be considered presently, but it deserves to be noted at the
outset in evidence of the advanced philosophical standpoint of a
writer who belonged to the generation preceding Francis Bacon.
Mulcaster’s independence of conventional practice is further
set beyond doubt by his conception of the place of authority in
argument. Anticipating Locke in deprecating the constant use of
great names in support of a writer’s thesis, he is of course
laying down a principle now so universally accepted that it seems
unnecessary to refer to it, but those who are acquainted with
the Renascence writers of any country know how widely a slavish
regard for the opinions of the classical authors took the place
of a direct appeal to the rational judgment of the reader. It was
no needless service to assign limits to this controversial habit,
to discriminate between superstitious servility and justifiable
deference to previous thinkers, to call for a fearless statement of
the truth as it appeared to each new enquiring spirit, and claim
that it should be tested wholly by its conformity to reason and
nature and experience. Especially valuable for his time was his
insistence on the difference of circumstance between the ancient
and the modern worlds, and between the characters of the various
nations. He may seem to us to carry these distinctions to an
excess when in considering ideal types of human nature he takes
account of the form of government under which each individual has
to live, holding certain qualities appropriate to a monarchy and
others to a republic, but at least he laid a useful emphasis on
the relativity of progress, and on the need for harmony in the
component institutions of a particular form of society.
Another proof of Mulcaster’s general enlightenment may be found
in the fact that he was the first of his countrymen to affirm
seriously that education was the birthright of every child born
into the community. It is not intended to suggest by this that
he anticipated the full assumption by the State of the duty of
providing and enforcing universal education, but rather that he
desired to foster a public sentiment and social conditions which
would be favourable to the idea that the rudiments of learning
should by one means or another be distributed throughout the whole
body of the nation. Efforts in this direction had been made in
other countries under the levelling influence of the reforming
spirit in religion, but in England, where the change of faith
had been less associated with a democratic impulse, nothing had
as yet been done to popularise education in the proper sense
of the term, and public opinion had still to be prepared for
the movement. It is true that the sharp distinctions of rank
which the sixteenth century inherited from the Middle Ages were
never so absolutely marked in the sphere of learning as in other
departments of life. Though the child of lowly birth could never
become a gentleman, he could become a scholar. The helping hand
extended by the Church to the promising boy of low degree did
not, however, imply any relaxation of caste feeling so far as the
general supply of educational facilities was concerned. The humble
scholar was raised out of his own class, and was always regarded
as an exception. Taken in the mass, the gentry and the commonalty
were clearly separated, and no kind of training was thought in
any way due to the latter except such as might make them directly
serviceable to their betters. For the first notable attack on this
fundamental article of medieval faith, apart from the indirect
and interested claims of the Reformation leaders to the means of
influencing the young, credit is generally given to Comenius. But
it must be remembered that half a century before his time, and in
a country where the _régime_ of social status has always held a
firm position, a strong protest against educational exclusiveness
was raised by Richard Mulcaster, who maintained that the elements
of knowledge and training should be recognised as the privilege
of all, irrespective of rank or sex, and without regard to their
future economic functions. “As for the education of gentlemen,”
he writes, “at what age shall I suggest that they should begin to
learn? Their minds are the same as those of the common people, and
their bodies are often worse. The same considerations in regard to
time must apply to all ranks. What should they learn? I know of
nothing else, nor can I suggest anything better, than what I have
already suggested for all.” And his unwillingness to recognise any
kind of disability in matters of education, except what was proved
by the test of experience to be natural, is further shown in his
insistence that, as far as may be possible, girls should have the
same advantages as boys. Though, as he says, in deference to the
general feeling of his time and country he will not go so far as
to propose that girls should be admitted to the grammar schools
and universities, he not only wishes them to share in all the
opportunities of elementary education, but he wholly approves of
the ideal of higher culture for women, which was represented in the
attainments of Queen Elizabeth herself.
We may now turn to matters that are less the concern of the
philosophic thinker and social observer than of the expert in
educational practice. Let us first examine Mulcaster’s conception
of the content of a liberal education, from the two points of view,
as to how far it should embrace a culture of the whole nature,
and as to the proper range of distinctively mental studies. It is
a matter of history that in both these respects the Renascence
ideal had fallen away from the example of the Greeks. Intellectual
culture had to a large extent been dissociated from physical and
moral training. The life of the scholar was a thing apart from the
conception of chivalry, which encouraged the physical prowess and
regard to a code of honour that were developed by the military
class. The formal profession of a religious end in learning took
the place of a genuine cultivation of character, and while this
restricted path was open to the more gifted of the poorer classes,
the alternative ideal was reserved for the upper social ranks.
It is true that in our own country in the Elizabethan era there
was some reconciliation of these diverse aims in the persons of
such men as Walter Raleigh and Philip Sidney, but the type they
represented was quite exceptional, and had no apparent influence on
general educational methods. There was great need for Mulcaster’s
plea that in the upbringing of children we should return to the
ideal expressed in Juvenal’s familiar phrase, “mens sana in
corpore sano.” No stress need be laid on the particular forms of
physical exercise which he recommended. His suggestions here were
not original, and the present time has little to learn from the
physiological conceptions of the sixteenth century. But what was
really instructive in his own day, and is scarcely less so in
ours, is the intimate relation he conceived to exist between the
body and the mind--a relation that demanded a harmonious training
of the whole nature. “The soul and the body being co-partners in
good will, in sweet and sour, in mirth and mourning, and having
generally a common sympathy and mutual feeling, how can they be,
or rather why should they be, severed in education?... As the
disposition of the soul will resemble that of the body, if the
soul be influenced for good, it will affect the body also.” His
use of the term _soul_, moreover, is significant of the conviction
which underlies all his writing, that the end of all physical
intellectual training is the development of the feelings that
prompt to right conduct. He was not carried away by the current
craze for book-learning into accepting as a legitimate end of
education the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; in his view
the teacher must always have regard to the unfolding of the whole
character that would bear fruit in the discharge of the duties of
citizenship and other activities of a complete life. Not that he
wished the school to assume any preponderating control over the
child, either in the direction of opinion or in moral ascendency.
He had too clear an insight into the springs of conduct to ignore
the potency of the earliest influences of the home, and so far
from seeking to usurp the authority of parents in determining
their children’s lives, he urges the closest co-operation and
good feeling among all who have the pupil’s welfare at heart.
Some further insight will be gained into his comprehensive ideal
of upbringing when we come to consider his appreciation of home
influence more closely, but it may first be asked what his
conception was of the mental cultivation that should be aimed at in
a liberal curriculum. In regard to the secondary or grammar school
period of education, with which he was most intimately acquainted,
though he has many acute criticisms and luminous suggestions to
offer, his expressed intention of supplying a systematic treatment
was unfortunately left unfulfilled; and of his ideas as to
university teaching we have little more than a sketch of proposed
reforms. On these points something may presently be said, but we
may turn first to his contributions towards the establishment of
a sound elementary system, which he held to be the most important
stage of all, because it was the only form of education that could
be brought within the reach of every child, and was the foundation
of all further progress in learning. Even this part of the task
that he imposed on himself remains incomplete, but there is
material enough for a judgment of his point of view. It would seem
that in England, up to the Elizabethan era at least, no provision
had ever been made for rudimentary instruction for any except those
who were destined to proceed to the higher stages of learning,
and that the elementary training given to these select few was
limited to the barest preparation for the traditional study of the
classics. The reading and writing of the vernacular must have been
acquired up to a certain point before the Latin grammar could be
attacked, but it is clear that no adequate justice was done even to
these preliminary subjects, and that no attempt was made to include
a deliberate training of the senses and activities of the child.
Mulcaster’s proposals as to an elementary course certainly do not
sound revolutionary. His subjects coincide pretty nearly with our
familiar “three R’s,” and he is himself careful to show that he is
merely “reviving” what is commended by the precepts of the wise
men of old, and by the practice of the greatest States. But it was
no small merit to be the first to perceive that such a revival was
possible and desirable in his own time and country, and when his
proposals are examined it will be found that in the spirit in which
he conceived them they were far in advance alike of contemporary,
and of much later, thought and practice. It is a well-known
criticism of his contemporary, Montaigne, that teachers were apt to
think too much of the matter that was to be taught, and too little
of the nature of the learner. That this remark was just in relation
to these times we can well believe when we consider how recently
the traditional bearing of the schoolmaster has been associated
rather with the harsh enforcement of uncongenial tasks under the
threat of penalties than with the sympathetic encouragement of
willing and interested labours. Ascham had protested against the
short-sighted severity of teachers, but failed to see that its
root lay in the fact that the studies presented were generally
ill-adapted to the capacities and inclinations of the scholars.
Mulcaster, on the other hand, recognised that the remedy must be
sought in the discovery of a more reasonable method, towards which
he had definite constructive proposals to offer. He may even be
said to have anticipated by a couple of centuries the doctrine
of Rousseau, afterwards utilised by Pestalozzi and Froebel, that
the paramount aim of the teacher is not to communicate knowledge,
but to stimulate and guide the natural activity of the child. It
is to be noted that every one of the five subjects he proposed to
teach in the elementary school is of the nature of an art, calling
for independent action on the part of the learner, and giving
pleasurable exercise to the senses and bodily organs as well as
to the intelligence. It was more than a happy intuition that led
him to give so honourable a place to drawing and music; it was a
consistent application of his doctrine that the minds of young
children must be fed through the channels of sense perception, and
that faculty is to be developed by placing the outlets of energy
in immediate contact with the powers of acquisition. Drawing
was intended to give a direct and practical knowledge of space
relations and of the forms of natural objects, by combining the
activities of eye and hand, while at the same time it favoured
the cultivation of artistic expression. Music, being based on
varied arrangements of number in pitch and time, was counted on
to supply the ground-work of arithmetic, while in accordance with
the persuasion of the Greeks it was held to exercise a definite
æsthetic and moral influence on character. That Mulcaster had not
only thought out his theories on the matter, but had verified
them by individual child-study, is clear from the terms of his
recommendations. “We must seek for natural inclinations in the
soul, which seem to crave the help of education and nurture, and
by means of these may be cultivated to advantage.... The best way
to secure good progress, so that the intelligence may conceive
clearly, memory may hold fast, and judgment may choose and discern
the best, is so to ply them all that they may proceed voluntarily
and not with violence.”
The same insight into the heart of the educational process appears
in his treatment of the grammar-school curriculum. When we remember
the absorbing pre-occupation with classical learning that was the
distinctive mark of the Renascence scholars, and the prominence
given in consequence to linguistic study in education, we should
not wonder if Mulcaster were found acquiescing in some degree in
the narrow ideal that exalted knowledge at the expense of faculty,
and laid more stress on the interpretation of words than of things.
What will rather excite our surprise and admiration is the extent
to which he was able to rise above the contemporary estimate of the
value of Latin and Greek as instruments of culture. It is from the
pen of one whose reputation in his own day was based on his mastery
of ancient languages and his success as a teacher of the classics,
that we have the clearest statement of the contrast between the
indirect, incidental value of linguistic training, and the direct,
formative influences of scientific study. “In time all learning may
be brought into one tongue, and that naturally understood by all,
so that schooling for tongues may prove needless, just as once they
were not needed; but it can never fall out that arts and sciences
in their essential nature shall be anything but most necessary for
every commonwealth that is not utterly barbarous.... The sciences
that we term ‘mathematical’ from their very nature always achieve
something good, intelligible even to the unlearned, by number,
figure, sound, or motion. In the manner of their teaching also
they plant in the mind of the learners a habit of resisting the
influence of bare probabilities, of refusing to believe in light
conjectures, of being moved only by infallible demonstrations.”
It has been stated above that Mulcaster had reached a conception
distinctly in advance of his time in regard to the true
significance of words, as the signs of realities in the outer
world and of the impressions these realities make upon the mind.
We may here notice the influence of this conception on his
treatment of linguistic study as a means of education. While fully
admitting the necessity for acquiring the classical languages
as long as these continued to be the only vehicles of learning,
he never fails to regret the loss of time absorbed in studying
them, and he anticipates with satisfaction the time when modern
tongues, and especially his own, will be sufficiently developed
and refined to replace Latin and Greek, believing as he does that
“all that bravery may be had at home that makes us gaze so much
at the fine stranger.” Not that he ever forgets that words are
something more than mere symbols, that indeed they come to have a
certain objective reality of their own, which must be apprehended
as directly as that of any other natural phenomenon. “Do we not
learn from words?” he asks. “No marvel if it is so, for a word is
a metaphor, a learned translation, something carried over from
its original sense to serve in some place where it is even more
properly used, and where it may be most significant, if it is
properly understood. Take pains to learn from it; you have there
a means of gaining knowledge.” But this appreciation of the inner
significance of language does not blind him to the fact, apparently
unperceived by all his contemporaries, that the unfortunate need
for devoting so much time and energy to linguistic study was a very
serious hindrance to the natural unfolding of the mental faculties
through a reasonable education. In his own words, “we were forced
... to deal with the tongues, ere we pass to the substance of
learning; and this help from the tongues, though it is most
necessary, as our study is now arranged, yet hinders us in time,
which is a thing of great price--nay, it hinders us in knowledge,
a thing of greater price. For in lingering over language, we are
removed and kept back one degree further from sound knowledge, and
this hindrance comes in our best learning time.” And in another
passage he bewails the “loss of time over tongues, while you are
pilgrims to learning,” and the “lack of sound skill, while language
distracts the mind from the sense.” Where could we find a stronger
indictment of the Public School tradition that banishes every form
of nature study during the “best learning time,” the years when the
powers of observation are in their first freshness, for the sake of
a premature initiation into the subtleties of Latin Grammar?