derived from the vision of the eye or of the mind, is not the only
knowledge the young require. Every learner must take things on trust, as
even Lord Bacon admits. _Discentem credere oportet._ To use Locke’s own
words:—“I do not say, to be a good geographer that a man should visit
every mountain, river, promontory, and creek upon the face of the earth,
view the buildings and survey the land everywhere as if he were going
to make a purchase” (C. of U., iij, _ad f._). So that even according to
Locke’s own shewing we must use the eyes of others as well as our own,
and this is true not in geography only, but in all other branches of
knowledge.
§ 10. But are we driven to the alternative of agreeing either with Locke
or with the schoolmaster? I do not see that we are. The thought which
underlies Locke’s system of education is this: true knowledge can be
acquired only by the exercise of the reason: in childhood the reasoning
power is not strong enough for the pursuit of knowledge: knowledge,
therefore, is out of the question at that age, and the only thing to
be thought of is the formation of habits. Opposed to this we have the
schoolmaster’s ideal which is governed by examinations. According to this
ideal the object of the school course is to give certain “knowledge,”
linguistic and other, and to fix it in the memory in such a manner that
it can be displayed on the day of examination. “Knowledge” of this kind
often makes no demand whatever on the reasoning faculty, or indeed on any
faculty but that of remembering and reproducing what the learner has been
told; in extreme cases the memory of mere sounds or symbols suffices.
But after all we are not compelled to choose between these two theories.
Take, _e.g._, the subject which Locke has mentioned, geography. The
schoolmasters of the olden time began with the use of the globes, a plan
which, by the way, Locke himself seems to have winked at. His disciple
Molyneux tells him of the performances of the small Molyneux. When he was
but just turned five he could read perfectly well, and on the globe could
have traced out and pointed at all the noted ports, countries, and cities
of the world, both land and sea; by five and a half could perform many
of the plainest problems on the globe, as the longitude and latitude,
the Antipodes, the time with them and other countries, &c. (Molyneux to
L., 24th August, 1695.) Here we find a child brought up, without any
protest from Locke, on mere examination knowledge, which according to
Locke himself is not knowledge at all. It is strange that Locke did not
at once point out to Molyneux that the child was not really learning what
the father supposed him to be learning. When the child turned over the
plaster ball and found the word “Paris,” the father no doubt attributed
to the child much that was in his own mind only. To the child “the Globe”
(as Rousseau afterwards said), was nothing but a plaster ball; “Paris”
was nothing but some letters marked on that ball. Comenius had already
got a notion how children may be given some knowledge of geography.
“Children begin geography,” said he, “when they get to understand what
a hill, a valley, a field, a river, a village, a town is.” (_Supra_, p.
145.) When this beginning has been made, geographical knowledge is at
once possible to the child, and not before.
Perfect knowledge in geography, as in most other things, is out of every
one’s reach. Nobody knows, _e.g._, all that could be known about Paris.
The knowledge its inhabitants have of it is very various, but in all
cases this knowledge is far greater than that of a visitor. The visitor’s
knowledge again is far greater than that of strangers who have never
seen Paris. Nobody, then, can know everything even about Paris; but a
child who knows what a large town is, and can fancy to himself a big town
called Paris, which is the biggest and most important town in France has
some knowledge about it. This must be maintained against Locke. Against
the schoolmaster it may be pointed out that making an Eskimo say the
words:—“Paris is the capital of France,” would not be giving him any
knowledge at all; and the same may be said of many “lessons” in the
school-room. If a common sailor were to teach an Eskimo English, he
would very likely suppose that when he had taught the sounds “Paris is
the capital of France,” he had conveyed to his pupil all the ideas which
those sounds suggested to his own mind. A common schoolmaster may fall
into a similar error.
§ 11. In the most celebrated work which has been affected by the
_Thoughts_ of Locke, Rousseau’s _Emile_, we find childhood treated in a
manner altogether different from youth: the child’s education is mainly
physical, and instruction is not given till the age of twelve. Locke’s
system on first sight seems very different to this, but there is a
deeper connection between the two than is usually observed. We have seen
that Locke allowed nothing to be knowledge that was not acquired by the
perception of the intellect. But in children the intellectual power is
not yet developed; so according to Locke knowledge properly so-called is
not within their reach. What then can the educator do for them? He can
prepare them for the age of reason in two ways, by caring first for their
physical health, second for the formation of good habits.
§ 12. 1st. On the Continent Locke has always been considered one of the
first advocates of physical education, and he does, it is true, give
physical education the first place, a feature in his system, which we
naturally connect with his study of medicine, and also with the trouble
he had all his life with his own health. But care of the body, and
especially bodily exercises, were always much thought of in this country,
and the main writers on education before Locke, _e.g._, Sir Thos. Elyot,
Mulcaster, Milton, were very emphatic about physical training.
In the autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, we may see what
attention was paid in Locke’s own century to this part of education.[114]
§ 13. 2nd. “That, and that only, is educative which moulds forms or
modifies the soul or mind.” (Mark Pattison in _New Quarterly Magazine_,
January, 1880.)
Here we have a proposition which is perhaps seldom denied, but very
commonly ignored by those who bring up the young. But Locke seems to
have been entirely possessed with this notion, and the greater part of
the _Thoughts_ is nothing but a long application of it. The principle
which lies at the root of most of his advice, he has himself expressed as
follows: “That which I cannot too often inculcate is, that whatever the
matter be about which it is conversant whether great or small, the main,
I had almost said only thing, to be considered in every action of a child
is what influence it will have upon his mind; what habit it tends to, and
is likely to settle in him: how it will become him when he is bigger,
and if it be encouraged, whither it will lead him when he is grown up.”
(_Thoughts_, § 107, p. 86.)
Here we see that Locke differed widely from the schoolmasters of his
time, perhaps of all time. A man must be a philosopher indeed if he can
spend his life in teaching boys, and yet always think more about what
they will _be_ and what they will _do_ when their schooling is over than
what they will _know_. And in these days if we stopped to think at all we
should be trodden on by the examiner.[115]
In this respect Locke has not been surpassed. Like his predecessor
Montaigne he took for his centre not the object, knowledge, but the
subject, man.[116]
§ 14. In some other respects he does not seem so happy. He makes little
attempt to reach a scientific standpoint and to establish general
truths about our common human nature. He thinks not so much of the man
as the gentleman, not so much of the common laws of the mind as of the
peculiarities of the individual child. He even hints that differences of
disposition in children render treatises on education defective if not
useless. “There are a thousand other things that may need consideration”
he writes “especially if one should take in the various tempers,
different inclinations, and particular defaults that are to be found in
children and prescribe proper remedies. The variety is so great that it
would require a volume, nor would that reach it. Each man’s mind has
some peculiarity as well as his face, that distinguishes him from all
others; and there are possibly scarce two children who can be conducted
by exactly the same method: besides that I think a prince, a nobleman, or
an ordinary gentleman’s son should have different ways of breeding. But
having had here only some general views in reference to the main end and
aims in education, and those designed for a gentleman’s son, whom being
then very little I considered only as white paper or wax to be moulded
and fashioned as one pleases, I have touched little more than those
heads which I judged necessary for the breeding of a young gentleman of
his condition in general.” (_Thoughts_, § 217, p. 187.)
No language could bring out more clearly the inferiority of Locke’s
standpoint to that of later thinkers. He makes little account of our
common nature and wishes education to be based upon an estimate of the
peculiarities of the individual pupil and of his social needs. And no
one with an adequate notion of education could ever compare the young
child to “white paper or wax.” Perhaps the development of an organism
was a conception that could not have been formed without a great advance
in physical science. Froebel who makes most of it learnt it from the
scientific study of trees and from mineralogy. We need not then be
surprised that Locke does not say, as Pestalozzi said a hundred years
later, “Education instead of merely considering what is to be imparted
to children ought to consider first what they already possess.” But if
he had read Comenius he would have been saved from comparing the child
to wax or white paper in the hands of the educator. Comenius had said:
“Nature has implanted within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of
piety. The object of education is to bring these seeds to perfection.”
(_Supra_, p. 135.) This seems to me a higher conception than any that I
meet with in Locke.
§ 15. But if our philosopher did not learn from Comenius he certainly
learnt from Montaigne.[117] Indeed Dr. Arnstädt (_v. supra_, p. 69)
has put him into a series of thinkers who have much in common. This
succession is as follows: Rabelais, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau; and,
according to Mr. Browning’s division, they form a school by themselves.
“Thinkers on education,” says Mr. Browning,[118] “are 1st those who wish
to educate through the study of the classics, or 2nd those who wish to
educate through the study of the works of Nature, or 3rd those who aim
at an education independent of study and knowledge, and think rather
of the training of character and the attaining to the Greek ideal, the
man beautiful and good.” To the three schools Mr. Browning gives the
names Humanist, Realist, and Naturalist, (“nos autres naturalistes,”
Montaigne says). Locke he considers one of the principal writers of the
“naturalistic” school, and says, Locke “has given a powerful bias to
naturalistic education both in England and on the Continent for the last
200 years.” (_Ed. Theories_, p. 85.)
This use of the word “naturalistic” seems to me somewhat misleading, or
at best vague, and it is a word overworked already: so I should prefer to
speak of the “developing” or “training” school. The classification itself
certainly has its uses but it must be employed with caution. If caught
up by those who have only an elementary acquaintance with the subject a
class of persons apt to delight in such arrangements as an aid to memory,
these divisions may easily prove a hindrance to light.
§ 16. This subject of classification is so important to students that
it may be worth while to make a few remarks upon it. The only thoroughly
consistent people are the people of fiction. We can know all about
_them_. Directly we understand their central thought or peculiarity
we may be sure that everything they say and do will be strictly in
accordance with it, will indeed be explainable by it. To take a bald and
simple instance, directly we know that Mrs. Jellaby in _Bleak House_
is absorbed by her interest in an African Mission, we know all that is
to be known about her; and everything she does or omits to do has some
reference to Borrioboola Ghar. But in real life not only are people much
less easily understood, but when we actually have seized their main
idea or peculiarity or interest we must not expect to find them always
consistent: and they will say and do much which if not inconsistent with
the main idea or peculiarity or interest has at least no connection with
it. Suppose, _e.g._, you can make out with some certainty that Locke
belonged to the developing school, you must not expect him to pay little
heed to instruction as such. Again, suppose you find that his philosophy
was utilitarian; you must not suppose that in everything he says he will
be thinking of utility.
Now the historian is tempted to treat real men and women as the writer
of fiction treats his puppets. Having fastened, quite correctly let us
suppose, on their main peculiarity he considers it necessary to square
everything with his theory of them, and whatever will not fall in with
it he, if he is unscrupulous, misrepresents, or if he is scrupulous,
suppresses.
Again, we are too apt to read into words meanings derived from
controversies unknown at the time when the words were uttered. This is
a well-known fact in the history of religious thought. We must always
consider not merely the words used but the time when they were used.
What a man might say quite naturally and orthodoxly at one period would
be sufficient to convict him of sympathizing with some terrible heresy if
uttered half a century later. We find something like this in the history
of education. If anyone nowadays speaks of the pleasure with which as a
young man he read Tacitus, he is understood to mean that he is opposed
to the introduction of “modern studies” into the school-room. If on the
other hand he extols botany, or regrets that he never learned chemistry,
this is taken for an assault on classical instruction. But, of course,
no such inference could be drawn if we went back to a time when the
antithesis between classics and natural science had not been accentuated.
In many other instances we have to be on our guard against forcing into
language meaning which belongs rather to a later date.
§ 17. With these cautions in mind let us see how far Locke may be said
(1) to be a trainer, and (2) how far a utilitarian.
§ 18. I. Mr. Browning attributes to Rabelais, Montaigne, and Locke the
desire to bring up a well-developed man rather than a good scholar. But
Rabelais certainly craved for the knowledge of _things_; and if he is
to be classed at all I should put him rather with the Realists, albeit
he lived before the realistic spirit became powerful. Montaigne went
more on the lines of developing rather than teaching, and, shrewd man of
the world as he was, he thought a great deal about the art of living.
But his ideal was not so much the man as the gentleman. This was true
also of Locke; and here we see some explanation why both Montaigne and
Locke do not value classical learning.[119] On the Continent classical
learning has never been associated with the character of an accomplished
gentleman; and, as far as I know, the conception that the highest type
of excellence is found in the union of “the scholar and the gentleman”
is peculiar to this country. In the society of Locke’s day this union
does not seem to have been recognized, and Locke observes: “A great part
of the learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe, and that goes
ordinarily into the round of education, a gentleman may in a good measure
be unfurnished with, without any great disparagement to himself or
prejudice to his affairs.” (_Thoughts_, § 94, p. 74.) So Locke sought as
the true essential for the young gentleman “prudence and good breeding.”
He puts his requisites in the following order of importance:—1, virtue;
2, wisdom; 3, manners; 4, learning; and so “places learning last and
least.” Here he shews himself far ahead of those who still held to
the learned ideal; but his notions of development were cramped by his
thinking only of the gentleman and what was requisite for him.
§ 19. II. Was Locke a utilitarian in education? It is the fashion (and
in history as in other things fashion is a powerful force), it is the
fashion to treat of Locke as a great champion of utilitarianism. We
might expect this in the ordinary historians, for “when they do agree
their unanimity is” not perhaps very wonderful. But there is one great
English authority quite uninfluenced by them who has said the same
thing, viz.—Cardinal Newman. The Cardinal, as the champion of authority,
is perhaps prejudiced against Locke, who holds that “the faculty of
reasoning seldom or never deceived those who trusted to it.” Be this as
it may, Newman asserts that “the tone of Locke’s remarks is condemnatory
of any teaching which tends to the general cultivation of the mind.”
(_Idea of a University._ Discourse vij., § 4; see also § 6.) A very
interesting point for us to consider is then, Is this reputation of
Locke’s for utilitarianism well deserved?
§ 20. First let us be quite certain of our definition.
In learning anything there are two points to be considered; 1st, the
advantage we shall find from knowing that subject or having that skill,
and 2nd, the effect which the study of that subject or practising for
that skill will have on the mind or the body.
These two points are in themselves distinct, though it is open to anyone
to maintain that they need not be considered separately. Nature has
provided that the bodies of most animals should get the exercise best for
them in procuring food. So Mr. Herbert Spencer has come to the conclusion
that it would be contrary to “the economy of nature” if one set of
occupations were needed as gymnastics and another for utility. In other
words he considers that it is in learning the most useful things we get
the best training.
The utilitarian view of instruction is that we should teach things useful
in themselves and either neglect the result on the mind and body of the
learner or assume Mr. Spencer’s law of “the economy of nature.”
Again, when the subjects are settled the utilitarian thinks how the
knowledge or skill may be most speedily acquired, and not how this
method or that method of acquisition will affect the faculties.
§ 21. This being utilitarianism in education the question is how far was
Locke the utilitarian he is generally considered?
If we take by itself what he says under the head of “Learning” in the
_Thoughts concerning Education_ no doubt we should pronounce him a
utilitarian. He considers each subject of instruction and pronounces
for or against it according as it seems likely or unlikely to be useful
to a gentleman. And in the methods he suggests he simply points out the
quickest route, as if the knowledge were the only thing to be thought of.
Hence his utilitarian reputation.
But two very important considerations have been lost sight of.
1st. Learning is with him “the last and least part” in education.
2nd. Intellectual education was not for childhood but for the age when
we can teach ourselves. “When a man has got an entrance into any of the
sciences,” says he, “it will be time then to depend on himself and rely
upon his own understanding and exercise his own faculties, which is the
only way to improvement and mastery.” (L. to Peterborough, quoted in
Camb. edition of _Thoughts_, p. 229.) “So,” he says, “the business of
education is not, as I think, to make the young perfect in any one of the
sciences but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them
capable of any when they shall apply themselves to it.” The studies he
proposes in the _Conduct of the Understanding_ (which is his treatise on
intellectual education) have for their object “an increase of the powers
and activity of the mind, not an enlargement of its possessions” (_C. of
U._ § 19, _ad f._).
Thus strange to say the supposed leader of the Utilitarians has actually
propounded in so many words the doctrine of their opponents.
§ 22. When Locke is more studied it will be found that the _Thoughts_ are
misleading if we neglect his other works, more particularly the _Conduct
of the Understanding_.
§ 23. Towards the end of his days, Locke was conscious of gleams of the
“untravelled world” which lay before the generations to come. With great
pathos he writes to a friend: “When I consider how much of my life has
been trifled away in beaten tracks where I vamped on with others only to
follow those who went before me, I cannot but think I have just as much
reason to be proud as if I had travelled all England and, if you will,
all France too, only to acquaint myself with the roads, and be able to
tell how the highways lie wherein those of equipage, and even the common
herd too, travel. Now, methinks—and these are often old men’s dreams—I
see openings to truth and direct paths leading to it, wherein a little
application and industry would settle one’s mind with satisfaction and
leave no darkness or doubt. But this is the end of my day when my sun is
setting: and though the prospect it has given me be what I would not for
anything be without—there is so much truth, beauty, and consistency in
it—yet it is for one of your age, I think I ought to say for yourself, to
set about” (L. to Bolde, quoted by Fowler, _Locke_, p. 120). But another
200 years have not sufficed to put us in possession of the Promised Land
of which Locke had these Pisgah visions. We still “vamp on,” following
those who went before us and getting small help from expounders of
“Education as a Science.” But as it would seem the days of vamping on
blindly in the beaten track are drawing to a close. We cannot doubt that
if Locke had known the wonderful advance which various sciences have
made since his day he would have seen in them “openings to truth and
direct paths leading to it” for many purposes, certainly for education.
It is for our age and ages to come to set about applying our scientific
knowledge to the bringing up of children; and thinkers such as Froebel
will shew us how.
Locke’s _Thoughts concerning Education_ and his _Conduct of
the Understanding_ should be in the hands of all students of
education who know the English language. I have therefore not
attempted to epitomise what he has said, but have endeavoured
to get at the main thoughts which are, so to speak, the
taproot of his system. Of the _Thoughts_ there is an edition
published by the National Society and another by the Pitt
Press, Cambridge. The Cambridge edition gives from Fox-Bourne’s
Life Locke’s scheme of “Working Schools” and from Lord King’s
the essay “Of Study.” Of the _Conduct_ there is an edition
published by the Clarendon Press. “F.B.” in the references
above stands for Fox-Bourne’s _Life of Locke_.
In the above essay I have not treated of Locke as a methodizer;
but he advocated teaching foreign languages _without grammar_,
and he published “Æsop’s Fables in English and Latin,
interlineary. For the benefit of those, who not having a
master would learn either of these Tongues.” When I edited the
_Thoughts_ for Pitt Press I did not know of this book or I
should have mentioned it.
XIV.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU.
(1712-1778).