Only to-day I had a most striking instance of sentiment come
beneath my notice. I was about to enter my house, when a
plain, simply dressed working man came up to me with a note in
his hand, and, touching his hat, he said: "I think this is for
you, Sir"; and then he added: "Will you give me the envelope,
Sir, as a great favour?" I looked at it, and, seeing it bore
the signature of Professor Huxley, I replied: "Certainly I
will; but why do you ask for it?" "Well," said he; "it's got
Professor Huxley's signature, and it will be something for me
to show my mates and keep for my children. He has done me and
my like a lot of good; no man more."
In these special lectures of his very best and in his other essays,
which, however far-reaching, were always intelligible to plain
readers, may be seen one side of his desire to spread clear thinking
among the less instructed masses; another was his work on the first
School Board. By 1870 his health was already shaken by the heavy work
which filled his days and nights; nevertheless, whatever the cost in
time and labour and health, he felt it imperative to try, with all his
power, to give rational shape to the new lines of universal education,
and to revivify it with the fresh breath of the new renascence in
aim and method. Science must be represented in the new Parliament
of Education, and there was no one else ready to undertake the part.
Moreover, he had already enjoyed some practical experience of the
workings of elementary education while examiner under the Science and
Art Department, the establishment of which he considered
a measure which came into existence unnoticed, but which will,
I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the welfare of
the people than many political changes over which the noise of
battle has rent the air.
On the proper working of the new Act depended the physical, moral, and
intellectual betterment of the nation; in particular, "book-learning"
needed to be tempered with not merely handcraft, but with something
of the direct knowledge of nature; for in itself, if properly applied,
this is an admirable instrument of education, and by its method
promotes an attitude of mind capable of understanding the reasons for
the vast changes at work in human thought.
Accordingly, he stood as a candidate for Marylebone, and, without
canvassing, for which he had neither time nor inclination, he was
elected second on the list. He had addressed several meetings, and,
as an amplification of his election address, he included extracts from
his forthcoming article, "The School Boards: What They Can Do, and
What They May Do," which were sent to the papers by the editor of
the _Contemporary Review_. (See _Coll. Ess._, iii, 374.) Here was
his programme, a great part of which he saw carried out:--Physical
training, for health and as a basis for further training; Domestic
training, especially for girls; Moral training, in a knowledge of
moral and social laws, and an engaging of the affections for what is
good instead of what is evil; Intellectual training, in knowledge and
the means of acquiring knowledge, alike for practical purposes and for
recreation.
The opponents of popular education raised their still familiar outcry
about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for
the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what
state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing
their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a
scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above
all, it set the interests of humanity above the mere development of
skill, which would simply turn the child of man into the subtlest
beast of the field.
True education, he declared, was impossible without "religion," the
unchanging essence of which lies in the love of some ethical ideal to
govern and guide conduct, "together with the awe and reverence which
have no kinship with base fear, but rise whenever one tries to pierce
below the surface of things, whether they be material or spiritual."
It was in this sense that he advocated Bible-reading in
schools--simple Bible-reading, without theological gloss. On the one
hand, this was the only workable plan under existing circumstances.
True, that he would not have employed the Bible as the agency for
introducing the religious and ethical idea in a system that could
begin with a clean slate. He believed that the principle of strict
secularity in State education is sound and must ultimately prevail.
But moral instruction must not be too rudely divorced from the system
of belief current among the generality; and the Bible had been the
instrument of the clergy of all denominations, to whose efforts the
mass of half-instructed people owed such redemption from ignorance and
barbarism as they possessed. Make all needful deductions, and there
remains a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur, interwoven with
three centuries of our history. The Bible, as English literature, as
old-world history, as moral teaching, as the Magna Charta of the poor
and of the oppressed, the most democratic book in the world, could not
be spared. The mass of the people should not be deprived of the
one great literature which is open to them; not shut out from the
perception of their relations with the whole past history of civilized
mankind, nor from an unpriestly view of Judaism and Jesus of Nazareth,
purged of the accretions of centuries. Accordingly, he supported Mr.
W.H. Smith's motion for Bible-reading, even against the champions of
immediate secularization; but for Bible-reading under such regulations
as would carry out for the children the intention of Mr. W.E.
Forster, the originator of the Education Act, that "in the reading and
explanation of the Bible... no efforts will be made to cram into their
poor little minds theological dogmas which their tender age prevents
them from understanding."
But the compromise was not permanently satisfactory. In 1893-94 the
clerical party on the School Board "denounced" the treaty agreed to
in 1871, and up till then undisputed, in the expectation of securing
a new one more favourable to themselves; and the _Times_, hurrying to
their support, did not hesitate to declare in a leading article that
"the persons who framed the rule" respecting religious instruction
intended to include definite teaching of such theological dogmas as
the Incarnation.