especially in England, must have a great future before it. If we ignore
the Past we cannot understand the Present, or forecast the Future. In
this book I am going to speak of Reformers or Innovators who aimed at
changing what was handed down to them; but the Radical can no more escape
from the Past, than the Conservative can stereotype it. It acts not by
attraction only, but no less by repulsion. There have been thinkers in
latter times who have announced themselves as the executioners of the
Past and laboured to destroy all it has bequeathed to us. They have
raised the ferocious cry, “_Vive la destruction! Vive la mort! Place à
l’avenir!_ Hurrah for destruction! Hurrah for death! Make room for the
world that is to be!” But their very hatred of the Past has brought
them under the influence of it. “Do just the opposite of what has been
done and you will do right,” said Rousseau; and this rule of negation
would make the Past regulate the Present and the Future no less than its
opposite, “Do always what is usual.”
If we cannot get free from the Past in the domain of thought, still less
can we in action. Custom is to all our activities what the mainspring is
to the watch. We may bring forces into play to make the watch go faster
or slower, but if we took out the mainspring it would not go at all. For
_our_ mainspring we are indebted to the Past.
§ 2. In studying the Past we must give our special attention to those
periods in which the course of ideas takes, as the French say, a new
bend.[3] Such a period was the Renascence. Then it was that the latest
bend was given to the educational ideal of the civilized world; and
though we seem now again to have arrived at a period of change, we are
still, perhaps far more than we are aware, affected by the ideas of the
great scholars who guided the intellect of Europe in the Revival of
Learning.
§ 3. From the beginning to the end of the fifteenth century the balance
was trembling between two kinds of culture, and the fate of the schoolboy
depended on the result. In this century men first got a correct
conception of the globe they were inhabiting. Hitherto they had not even
professed to have any knowledge of geography; there is no mention of it
in the Trivium and Quadrivium which were then supposed to form the cycle
of things known, if not of things knowable. But Columbus and Vasco da
Gama were grand teachers of geography, and their lessons were learnt as
far as civilization extended.
The impetus thus given to the study of the earth might, at the beginning
of the sixteenth century, have engrossed the mind of Europe with the
material world, had not the leaning to physical science been encountered
and overcome by an impulse derived from another discovery. About the
time of the discovery of America there also came to light the literatures
of Greece and Rome.
§ 4. When I speak of the discovery of the ancient literatures as
rivalling that of America, this use of the word “discovery” may be
disputed. It may be urged that though the Greek language and literature
were unknown in the West of Europe till they were brought there by the
fugitives after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, yet the works of the
great Latin writers had always been known in Italy, and Dante declares
himself the disciple of Virgil. And yet I cannot give up the word
“discovery.” In the life of an individual it sometimes happens that he
suddenly acquires as it were a new sense. The world around him remains
the same as before, but it is not the same to him. A film passes from
his eyes, and what has been ordinary and unmeaning suddenly becomes a
source of wonder and delight to him. Something similar happens at times
in the history of the general mind; indeed our own century has seen a
remarkable instance of it. In reading the thoughts of great writers of
earlier times, we cannot but be struck, not only with their ignorance of
the material world, but also with their ignorance of their ignorance.
Little as they know, they often speak as if they knew everything. Newton
could see that he was like a child discovering a few shells while the
unexplored ocean lay before him; but in those days it required the
intellect of a Newton to understand this. To the other children the
ocean seemed to conceal nothing, and they innocently thought that all
the shells, or nearly all, had been picked up. It was reserved for the
people of our own century to become aware of the marvels which lie around
us in the material world, and to be fascinated by the discovery. If the
human race could live through several civilizations without opening its
eyes to the wonders of the earth it inhabits, and then could suddenly
become aware of them, we may well understand its retaining unheeded the
literatures of Greece and Rome for centuries, and at length as it were
discovering them, and turning to them with unbounded enthusiasm and
delight.
As students of education we can hardly attach too much importance to
this great revolution. For nearly three centuries the curriculum in the
public schools of Europe remained what the Renascence had made it. We
have again entered on an age of change, but we are still much influenced
by the ideas of the Renascence, and the best way to understand the forces
now at work is to trace them where possible to their origin. Let us then
consider what the Renascence was, and how it affected the educational
system.
§ 5. In endeavouring to understand the Renascence, we cannot do
better than listen to what Mark Pattison says of it in his “Life of
Casaubon”:—“In the fifteenth century was revealed to a world which had
hitherto been trained to logical analysis, the beauty of literary form.
The conception of style or finished expression had died out with the
pagan schools of rhetoric. It was not the despotic act of Justinian in
closing the schools of Athens which had suppressed it. The sense of art
in language decayed from the same general causes which had been fatal
to all artistic perception. Banished from the Roman Empire in the sixth
century or earlier, the classical conception of beauty of form re-entered
the circle of ideas after near a thousand years of oblivion and abeyance.
Cicero and Virgil, Livius and Ovid, had been there all along, but the
idea of composite harmony on which their works were constructed was
wanting. The restored conception, as if to recoup itself for its long
suppression, took entire possession of the mind of Europe. The first
period of the Renascence passed in adoration of the awakened beauty, and
in efforts to copy and multiply it.”
§ 6. Here Mark Pattison speaks as if the conception of beauty of form
belonged exclusively to the ancients and those who learnt of them. This
seems to require some abatement. There are points in which mediæval
art far excelled the art of the Renascence. The thirteenth century, as
Archbishop Trench has said, was “rich in glorious creations of almost
every kind;” and in that century our great English architect, Street,
found the root of all that is best in modern art. (See “Dublin Afternoon
Lectures,” 1868.)
But there are expressions of beauty to which the Greeks, and those who
caught their spirit, were keenly alive, and to which the people of the
Middle Age seem to have been blind. The first is beauty in the human
form; the second is beauty in literature.
The old delight in beauty in the human form has never come back to us.
Mr. Ruskin tells us we are an ugly race, with ill-shapen limbs, and
well pleased with our ugliness and deformity, and in reply we only
mutter something about the necessity of clothing both for warmth and
decency. But as to the other expression of beauty, beauty in literature,
the mind of Europe again became conscious of it in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. The re-awakening of this sense of beauty we call the
Renascence.
§ 7. Before we consider the effect of this intellectual revolution on
education, let us be sure that we are not “paying ourselves with words,”
and that we know exactly what we mean by “literature.”
When the conceptions of an individual mind are expressed in a permanent
form of words, we get literature. The sum total of all the permanent
forms of expression in one language make up the literature of that
language; and if no one has given his conceptions a form which has
been preserved, the language is without a literature. There are then
two things essential to a literary work: first, the conceptions of an
individual mind; second, a permanent form of expression. Hence it follows
that the domain of literature is distinct from the domain of natural or
mathematical science. Science does not give us the conceptions of an
individual mind, but it tells us what every rational person who studies
the subject must think. And science is entirely independent of any form
of words: a proposition of Euclid is science; a sonnet of Wordsworth’s
is literature. We learn from Euclid certain truths which we should
have learnt from some one else if Euclid had never existed, and the
propositions may be conveyed equally well in different forms of words
and in any language. But a sonnet of Wordsworth’s conveys thought and
feeling peculiar to the poet; and even if the same thought and feeling
were conveyed to us in other words, we should lose at least half of what
he has given us. Poetry is indeed only one kind of literature, but it is
the highest kind; and what is true of literary works in verse, is true
also in a measure of literary works in prose. So great is the difference
between science and literature, that in literature, as the first Lord
Lytton said, the best books are generally the oldest; in science they are
the newest.
§ 8. At present we are concerned with literature only. There are two ways
in which a work of literature may excite our admiration and affect our
minds. These are, first, by the beauty of the conceptions it conveys to
us; and second, by the beauty of the language in which it conveys them.
In the greatest works the two excellences will be combined.[4]
Now the literary taste proper fastens especially on the second of the
two, _i.e._, on beauty of expression; and the Renascence was the revival
of literary taste. “It was,” as Mark Pattison says, “the conception of
style or finished expression which had died out with the pagan schools
of rhetoric, and which re-entered the circle of ideas after a thousand
years of oblivion and abeyance.” If we lose sight of this, we shall be
perplexed by the unbounded enthusiasm which we find in the sixteenth
century for the old classics. What great evangel, we may ask, had Cicero
and Virgil and Ovid, or even Plato and the Greek dramatists, for men who
lived when Europe had experienced a thousand years of Christianity? The
answer is simple. They had none whatever. Their thoughts and conceptions
were not adapted to the wants of the new world. The civilization of the
Christian nations of the sixteenth century was a very different thing
from the civilization of Greece and Rome. It had its own thoughts, its
own problems, its own wants. The old-world thoughts could not be thought
over again by it. This indeed was felt though not admitted by the
Renascence scholars themselves. Had it been the thoughts of the ancients
which seemed to them so valuable they would have made some effort to
diffuse those thoughts in the languages of the modern world. Much as
a great literary work loses by translation, there may still be enough
left of it to be a source of instruction and delight. The thoughts of
Aristotle, conveyed in a Latin translation of an Arabic translation,
profoundly affected the mind of Europe in the Middle Ages. The Bible, or
Book _par excellence_, is known to few indeed in its original form. Some
great writers—Cervantes, and Shakespeare, and the author of the “Arabian
Nights”—please and instruct nations who know not the sound of the
languages wherein their works are composed. If then the great writers of
Greece and Rome had been valued for their matter, their works would have
been translated by the Renascence scholars as the Bible was translated
by the Reformers, and the history of modern education would have taken a
very different turn from that which awaited it. But it was not so. The
Renascence scholars did all they could to discourage translations. For
the grand discovery which we call the Revival of Learning was, not that
the ancients had something to say, but that whatever they had to say they
knew how to say it.
§ 9. And thus it happens that in the period of change, when Europe was
re-arranging its institutions, developing new ideas and settling into new
grooves of habit, we find the men most influential in education entirely
fascinated by beauty of expression, and this in two ancient languages, so
that the one thing needful for the young seemed to them an introduction
to the study of ancient writings. The inevitable consequence was this:
education became a mere synonym for instruction in Latin and Greek. The
only ideal set up for the “educated” was the classical scholar.
§ 10. Perhaps the absurdity of taking this ideal, an ideal which is
obviously fitted for a small class of men only, and proposing it for
general adoption, was partly concealed from the Renascence scholars
by the peculiar circumstances of their age. No doubt they thought
literature would in the future be a force capable of much wider
application than it had ever been before. True, literature had till
then affected a small class only. Literature meant books, books meant
MSS., and MSS. were rare and costly. Literature, the embodiment of grand
thoughts in grand words, had existed before letters, or at least without
letters. The Homeric poems, for example, had been known to thousands
who could not read or write. But beauty of expression naturally got
associated and indeed confounded with the art by which it was preserved;
so the creations of the mind, when embodied in particular combinations
of words, acquired the name of literature or letters, and became
almost exclusively the affair of those who had opportunities of study,
opportunities afforded only to the few. During the Middle Ages every
one who could read was allowed his “privilege of clergy;” that is, he
was assumed to be a clergyman. Literature then was not thought of as a
means of instruction. But at the very time that the beauty of the ancient
writings dawned on the mind of Europe, a mechanical invention seemed to
remove all hindrances to the spread of literature. The scholars seized on
the printing press and thought by means of it to give all “the educated”
a knowledge of classics.
§ 11. We cannot help speculating what would have been the effect of the
discovery of printing if it had been made at another time. As there may
be literature without books, so there may be books without literature. If
at the time of the invention of printing there had been no literature,
no creations of individual minds embodied in permanent forms of speech,
books might have been used as apparatus in a mental gymnasium, or they
might have been made the means of conveying information. But just then
the intellect of Europe was tired of mental gymnastics. It had taken
exercise in the Trivium like a squirrel in its revolving cage, and was
vexed to find it made no progress.[5] As for information there was little
to be had. The age of observation and of physical science was not yet.
So the printing press was entirely at the service of the new passion for
literature and the scholars dreamed of the general diffusion of literary
culture by means of printed books.
§ 12. For some two centuries the literary spirit had supreme control
over the intellect of Europe, and the literary spirit could then find
satisfaction nowhere but in the study of the ancient classics. The
natural consequence was that throughout this period the “educated man”
was supposed to be identified with the classical scholar. The great rival
of the literary spirit, the scientific spirit which cares for nothing
but sequences independent of the human mind, began to show itself early
in the seventeenth century: its first great champion was Francis Bacon.
But by this time the school course of study had been settled, and two
centuries had to elapse before the scientific spirit could unsettle it
again. Even now when we speak of a man as “well-educated” we are commonly
understood to mean that in his youth he was taught the two classical
languages.
§ 13. The taking of the classical scholar as the only ideal of the
educated man has been a fruitful source of evil in the history of
education.
I. This ideal exalted the learner above the doer. As far back as
Xenophon, we find a contest between the passive ideal and the active,
between the excellence which depends on a knowledge of what others have
thought and done and the excellence which comes of thinking and doing.
But the excellence derived from learning had never been highly esteemed.
To be able to repeat Homer’s poetry was regarded in Greece as we now
regard a pleasing accomplishment; but the dignity of the learned man as
such was not within the range of Greek ideas. Many of the Romans after
they began to study Greek literature certainly piqued themselves on being
good Greek scholars, and Cicero occasionally quotes with all the airs
of a pedant; but so thoroughly was the contrary ideal, the ideal of the
_doer_, established at Rome, that nobody ever dreamt of placing its rival
above it. In the decline of the Empire, especially at Alexandria, we
find for the first time honours paid to the learned man; but he was soon
lost sight of again. At the Renascence he burst into sudden blaze, and
it was then discovered that he was what every man would wish to be. Thus
the Renascence scholars, notwithstanding their admiration of the great
nations of antiquity, set up an ideal which those nations would heartily
have despised. The schoolmaster very readily adopted this ideal; and
schools have been places of learning, not training, ever since.
§ 14. II. The next defect I observe in the Renascence ideal is this:
it attributes to literature more direct power over common life than
literature has ever had, or is ever likely to have.
I say _direct_ power, for indirectly literature is one of the grand
forces which act on all of us; but it acts on us through others, its
most important function being to affect great intellects, the minds of
those who think out and act out important changes. Its direct action
on the mass of mankind is after all but insignificant. We have seen
that literature consists in permanent forms of words, expressing the
conceptions of individual minds; and these forms will be studied only by
those who are interested in the conceptions or find pleasure in the mode
in which they are expressed. Now the vast majority of ordinary people are
without these inducements to literary study. They take a keen interest
in everything connected with their relations and intimate friends, and
a weaker interest in the thinkings and sayings and doings of every one
else who is personally known to them; but as to the mental conceptions
of those who lived in other times, or if now alive are not known even
by sight, the ordinary person is profoundly indifferent to them; and
of course delight in expression, as such, is out of the question. The
natural consequence is that the habit of reading books is by no means
common. Mark Pattison observes that there are few books to be found in
most English middle-class homes, and he says: “The dearth of books is
only the outward and visible sign of the mental torpor which reigns in
those destitute regions” (see “Fortnightly Review,” November, 1877).
I much doubt if he would have found more books in the middle-class
homes of the Continent. There is only one kind of reading that is
nearly universal—the reading of newspapers; and the newspaper lacks the
element of permanence, and belongs to the domain of talk rather than of
literature.
Even when we get among the so-called “educated,” we find that those who
care for literature form a very small minority. The rest _have_ of
course read Shakespeare and Milton and Walter Scott and Tennyson, but
_they do not read them_. The lion’s share of our time and thoughts and
interests must be given to our business or profession, whatever that may
be; and in few instances is this connected with literature. For the rest,
whatever time or thought a man can spare from his calling is mostly given
to his family, or to society, or to some hobby which is not literature.
And love of literature is not shown in such reading as is common. The
literary spirit shows itself, as I said, in appreciating beauty of
expression, and how far beauty of expression is cared for we may estimate
from the fact that few people think of reading anything a second time.
The ordinary reader is profoundly indifferent about style, and will not
take the trouble to understand ideas. He keeps to periodicals or light
fiction, which enables the mind to loll in its easy chair (so to speak)
and see pass before it a series of pleasing images. An idea, as Mark
Pattison says, “is an excitant, comes from mind and calls forth mind;
an image is a sedative;” and most people when they take up a book are
seeking a sedative.
So literature is after all a very small force in the lives of most men,
and perhaps even less in the lives of most women. Why then are the
employments of the school-room arranged on the supposition that it is
the grand force of all? The reason is, that we have inherited from the
Renascence a false notion of the function of literature.
§ 15. III. I must now point out a fault in the Renascence ideal which is
perhaps the most remarkable of all. Those by whom this ideal was set up
were entirely possessed by an enthusiasm for literature, and they made
the mistake of attributing to literature a share in general culture
which literature seems incapable of taking. After this we could little
have expected that the new ideal would exclude literature from the
schoolroom, and yet so it has actually turned out.
As a literary creation contains the conceptions of an individual mind
expressed in a permanent form of words, it exists only for those who can
understand the words or at least the conceptions.
From this it follows that literature for the young must have its
expression in the vernacular. The instances are rare indeed in which any
one below the age of fifteen or sixteen (perhaps I might put the limit a
year or two higher) understands any but the mother tongue. In the mother
tongue indeed some forms of literature exercise a great influence over
young minds. Ballad literature seems especially to belong to youth, the
youth of nations and of individuals. Aristotle educated Alexander with
Homer; and we can easily imagine the effect which the _Iliad_ must have
had on the young Greeks. Although in the days of Plato instruction was
not confined to literature, he gives this account of part of the training
in the Athenian schools: “Placing the pupils on benches, the instructors
make them read and learn by heart the poems of good poets in which are
many moral lessons, many tales and eulogies and lays of the brave men of
old; that the boys may imitate them with emulation and strive to become
such themselves.” Here we see a very important function attributed to
literature in the bringing up of the young; but the literature so used
must obviously be in the language of the learners.