IT was arranged, during our walk, that Ellesmere should come and stay a
day or two with me, and see the neighbouring cathedral, which is nearer
my house than Milverton’s. The visit over, I brought him back to
Worth-Ashton. Milverton saw us coming, walked down the hill to meet us,
and after the usual greetings, began to talk to Ellesmere.
_Milverton_. So you have been to see our cathedral. I say “our,” for
when a cathedral is within ten miles of us, we feel a property in it, and
are ready to battle for its architectural merits.
_Ellesmere_. You know I am not a man to rave about cathedrals.
_Milverton_. I certainly do not expect you to do so. To me a cathedral
is mostly somewhat of a sad sight. You have Grecian monuments, if
anything so misplaced can be called Grecian, imbedded against and cutting
into Gothic pillars; the doors shut for the greater part of the day; only
a little bit of the building used: beadledom predominant; the clink of
money here and there; white-wash in vigour; the singing indifferent; the
sermons not indifferent but bad; and some visitors from London forming,
perhaps, the most important part of the audience; in fact, the thing
having become a show. We look about, thinking when piety filled every
corner, and feel that the cathedral is too big for the Religion which is
a dried-up thing that rattles in this empty space.
_Ellesmere_. This is the boldest simile I have heard for a long time.
My theory about cathedrals is very different, I must confess.
_Dunsford_. Theory!
_Ellesmere_. Well, “theory” is not the word I ought to have used—feeling
then. My feeling is, how strong this creature was, this worship, how
beautiful, how alluring, how complete; but there was something
stronger—truth.
_Milverton_. And more beautiful?
_Ellesmere_. Yes, and far more beautiful.
_Milverton_. Doubtless, to the free spirits who brought truth forward.
_Ellesmere_. You are only saying this, Milverton, to try what I will
say; but, despite of all sentimentalities, you sympathise with any
emancipation of the human mind, as I do, however much the meagreness of
Protestantism may be at times distasteful to you.
_Milverton_. I did not say I was anxious to go back. Certainly not.
But what says Dunsford? Let us sit down on his stile and hear what he
has to say.
_Dunsford_. I cannot talk to you about this subject. If I tell you of
all the merits (as they seem to me) of the Church of England, you will
both pick what I say to pieces, whereas if I leave you to fight on, one
or the other will avail himself of those arguments on which our Church is
based.
_Milverton_. Well, Dunsford, you are very candid, and would make a
complete diplomatist: truth-telling being now pronounced (rather late in
the day) the very acme of diplomacy. But do you not own that our
cathedrals are sadly misused?
_Dunsford_. Now, very likely, if more were made of them, you, and men
who think like you, would begin to cry out “superstition”; and would
instantly turn round and inveigh against the uses which you now, perhaps,
imagine for cathedrals.
_Milverton_. Well, one never can answer for oneself; but at any rate, I
do not see what is the meaning of building new churches in neighbourhoods
where there are already the noblest buildings suitable for the same
purposes. Is there a church religion, and is there a cathedral religion?
_Ellesmere_. You cannot make the present fill the garb of the past,
Milverton, any more than you could make the past fill that of the
present. Now, as regards the very thing you are about to discuss to-day,
if it be the same you told us in our last walk—Education: if you are only
going to give us some institution for it, I daresay it may be very good
for to-day, or for this generation, but it will have its sere and yellow
leaf, and there will be a time when future Milvertons, in sentimental
mood, will moan over it, and wish they had it and all that has grown up
to take its place at the same time. But all this is what I have often
heard you say yourself in other words.
_Dunsford_. This is very hard doctrine, and not quite sound, I think.
In getting the new gain, we always sacrifice something, and we should
look with some pious regard to what was good in the things which are
past. That good is generally one which, though it may not be equal to
the present, would make a most valuable supplement to it.
_Milverton_. I would try and work in the old good thing with the new,
not as patchwork though, but making the new thing grow out in such a way
as to embrace the old advantage.
_Ellesmere_. Well, we must have the essay before we branch out into our
philosophy. Pleasure afterwards—I will not say what comes first.
EDUCATION.
The word education is so large, that one may almost as well put “world,”
or “the end and object of being,” at the head of an essay. It should,
therefore, soon be declared what such a heading does mean. The word
education suggests chiefly to some minds what the State can do for those
whom they consider its young people—the children of the poorer classes:
to others it presents the idea of all the training that can be got for
money at schools and colleges, and which can be fairly accomplished and
shut in at the age of one-and-twenty. This essay, however, will not be a
treatise on government education, or other school and college education,
but will only contain a few points in reference to the general subject,
which may escape more methodical and enlarged discussions.
* * * * *
In the first place, as regards government education, it must be kept in
mind that there is a danger of its being too interfering and formal, of
its overlying private enterprise, insisting upon too much uniformity, and
injuring local connections and regards. Education, even in the poorest
acceptance of the word, is a great thing: but the harmonious intercourse
of different ranks, if not a greater, is a more difficult one; and we
must not gain the former at any considerable sacrifice of the latter.
There is another point connected with this branch of the subject which
requires, perhaps, to be noted. If government provision is made in any
case, might it not be combined with private payment in other cases, or
enter in the way of rewards, so as to do good throughout each step of the
social ladder? The lowest kind of school education is a power, and it is
desirable that the gradations of this power should correspond to other
influences which we know to be good. For instance, a hard-working man
saves something to educate his children; if he can get a little better
education for them than other parents of his own rank for theirs, it is
an incentive and a reward to him, and the child’s bringing up at home is
a thing which will correspond to this better education at school. In
this there are the elements at once of stability and progress.
These views may possibly seem too refined, but at any rate they require
consideration.
* * * * *
The next branch of the subject is the ordinary education of young persons
not of the poorest classes, with which the State has hitherto had little
or nothing to do. This may be considered under four heads: religious,
moral, intellectual, and physical education. With regard to the first,
there is not much that can be put into rules about it. Parents and
tutors will naturally be anxious to impress those under their charge with
the religious opinions which they themselves hold. In doing this,
however, they should not omit to lay a foundation for charity towards
people of other religious opinions. For this purpose, it may be
requisite to give a child a notion that there are other creeds besides
that in which it is brought up itself. And especially, let it not
suppose that all good and wise people are of its church or chapel.
However desirable it may appear to the person teaching that there should
be such a thing as unity of religion, yet as the facts of the world are
against his wishes, and as this is the world which the child is to enter,
it is well that the child should in reasonable time be informed of these
facts. It may be said in reply that history sufficiently informs
children on these points. But the world of the young is the domestic
circle; all beyond is fabulous, unless brought home to them by comment.
The fact, therefore, of different opinions in religious matters being
held by good people should sometimes be dwelt upon, instead of being
shunned, if we would secure a ground-work of tolerance in a child’s mind.
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.
In the intellectual part of education there is the absolute knowledge to
be acquired, and the ways of acquiring knowledge to be gained. The
latter of course form the most important branch. They can, in some
measure, be taught. Give children little to do, make much of its being
accurately done. This will give accuracy. Insist upon speed in
learning, with careful reference to the original powers of the pupil.
This speed gives the habit of concentrating attention, one of the most
valuable of mental habits. Then cultivate logic. Logic is not the hard
matter that is fancied. A young person, especially after a little
geometrical training, may soon be taught to perceive where a fallacy
exists, and whether an argument is well sustained. It is not, however,
sufficient for him to be able to examine sharply and to pull to pieces.
He must learn how to build. This is done by method. The higher branches
of method cannot be taught at first. But you may begin by teaching
orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting and weighing
facts, are some of the processes by which method is taught. When these
four things, accuracy, attention, logic, and method are attained, the
intellect is fairly furnished with its instruments.
As regards the things to be taught, they will vary to some extent in each
age. The general course of education pursued at any particular time may
not be the wisest by any means, and greatness will overleap it and
neglect it, but the mass of men may go more safely and comfortably, if
not with the stream, at least by the side of it.
In the choice of studies too much deference should not be paid to the
bent of a young person’s mind. Excellence in one or two things which may
have taken the fancy of a youth (or which really may suit his genius)
will ill compensate for a complete ignorance of those branches of study
which are very repugnant to him; and which are, therefore, not likely to
be learnt when he has freedom in the choice of his studies.
Amongst the first things to be aimed at in the intellectual part of
education is variety of pursuit. A human being, like a tree, if it is to
attain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to it from all
quarters. This may be done without making men superficial. Scientific
method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt. But one or
two great branches of science must be accurately known. So, too, the
choice works of antiquity may be thoroughly appreciated without extensive
reacting. And passing on from mere learning of any kind, a variety of
pursuits, even in what may be called accomplishments, is eminently
serviceable. Much may be said of the advantage of keeping a man to a few
pursuits, and of the great things done thereby in the making of pins and
needles. But in this matter we are not thinking of the things that are
to be done, but of the persons who are to do them. Not wealth but men.
A number of one-sided men may make a great nation, though I much incline
to doubt that; but such a nation will not contain a number of great men.
The very advantage that flows from division of labour, and the probable
consequences that men’s future bread-getting pursuits will be more and
more sub-divided, and therefore limited, make it the more necessary that
a man should begin life with a broad basis of interest in many things
which may cultivate his faculties and develop his nature. This
multifariousness of pursuit is needed also in the education of the poor.
Civilisation has made it easy for a man to brutalise himself: how is this
to be counteracted but by endowing him with many pursuits which may
distract him from vice? It is not that kind of education which leads to
no employment in after-life that will do battle with vice. But when
education enlarges the field of life-long good pursuits, it becomes
formidable to the soul’s worst enemies.
MORAL EDUCATION.
In considering moral education we must recollect that there are three
agents in this matter—the child himself, the influence of his grown-up
friends, and that of his contemporaries. All that his grown-up friends
tell him in the way of experience goes for very little, except in
palpable matters. They talk of abstractions which he cannot comprehend:
and the “Arabian Nights” is a truer world to him than that they talk of.
Still, though they cannot furnish experience, they can give motives.
Indeed, in their daily intercourse with the child, they are always doing
so. For instance, truth, courage, and kindness are the great moral
qualities to be instilled. Take courage, in its highest form—moral
courage. If a child perpetually hears such phrases (and especially if
they are applied to his own conduct), as, “What people will say,” “How
they will look at you,” “What they will think,” and the like, it tends to
destroy all just self-reliance in that child’s mind, and to set up
instead an exaggerated notion of public opinion, the greatest tyrant of
these times. People can see this in such an obvious thing as animal
courage. They will avoid over-cautioning children against physical
dangers, knowing that the danger they talk much about will become a
bug-bear to the child which it may never get rid of. But a similar peril
lurks in the application of moral motives. Truth, courage, and kindness
are likely to be learnt, or not, by children, according as they hear and
receive encouragement in the direction of these pre-eminent qualities.
When attempt is made to frighten a child with these worldly maxims, “What
will be said of you?” “Are you like such a one?” and such things, it is
meant to draw him under the rule of grown-up respectability. The last
thing thought of by the parent or teacher is, that such maxims will bring
the child under the especial guidance of the most unscrupulous of his
contemporaries. They will use ridicule and appeal to their little world,
which will be his world, and ask, “What will be said” of him. There
should be some stuff in him of his own to meet these awful generalities.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
The physical education of children is a very simple matter, too simple to
be much attended to without great perseverance and resolution on the part
of those who care for the children. It consists, as we all know, in good
air, simple diet, sufficient exercise, and judicious clothing. The first
requisite is the most important, and by far the most frequently
neglected. This neglect is not so unreasonable as it seems. It arises
from pure ignorance. If the mass of mankind knew what scientific men
know about the functions of the air, they would be as careful in getting
a good supply of it as of their other food. All the people that ever
were supposed to die of poison in the middle ages, and that means nearly
everybody whose death was worth speculating about, are not so many as
those who die poisoned by bad air in the course of any given year. Even
a slightly noxious thing, which is constant, affecting us every moment of
the day, must have considerable influence; but the air we breathe is not
a thing that slightly affects us, but one of the most important elements
of life. Moreover, children are the most affected by impurity of air.
We need not weary ourselves with much statistics to ascertain this. One
or two broad facts will assure us of it. In Nottingham there is a
district called Byron Ward, “the densest and worst-conditioned quarter of
the town.” A table has been made by Mr. William Hawksley of the
mortality of equal populations in different parts of the town:
“On comparing the diagram No. 1, relating to Park Ward, with the
diagram No. 7, relating to Byron Ward, it will be seen that the
heavier pressure of the causes of mortality occasions in the latter
district such an undue destruction of early life, that towards 100
deaths, however occurring, Byron Ward contributes fifty per cent.
more of children under five years of age than the Park Ward, for the
former sends sixty children to an early grave, while the latter sends
only forty.” {116a}
Mr. Hawksley, the former witness alluded to, goes on to say—
“It has been long known that, with increase of years, up to that
period of life which has been denominated the second childhood, the
human constitution becomes gradually more resistful, and as it were
slowly hardened against the repeated attacks of those more acute
disorders, incident to an inferior degree of sanitary civilisation,
by which large portions of an infant population are continually
overcome and rapidly swept away. From the operation of these and
more extraneous influences of a disturbing character, an infant
population is almost entirely exempted; and on this account it is
considered that an infant population constitutes, as it were, a
delicate barometer, from which we may derive more early and more
certain indications of the presence and comparative force of local
causes of mortality and disease than can be obtained from the more
general methods of investigation usually pursued.”
The above evidence is confirmed by Mr. Toynbee:—
“The disease of hydrocephalus, of water in the brain, so fatal to
children, I find associated with symptoms of scrofula, and arising in
abundance in these close rooms. I believe water in the brain, in the
class of patients whom I visit, to be almost wholly a scrofulous
affection.” {116b}
But supposing people aware of the necessity for good air, and therefore
for ventilation, what is to be done? In houses in great towns certainly,
and I should say in all houses, some of the care and expense that are
devoted to ornamental work, which when done is often a care, a trouble,
an eyesore, and a mischief, should be given to modes of ventilation,
{117a} sound building, abundant access of light, largeness of
sleeping-rooms, and such useful things. Less ormolu and tinsel of all
kinds in the drawing-rooms, and sweeter air in the regions above.
Similar things may be done for and by the poor. {117b} And it need
hardly be said that those people who care for their children, if of any
enlightenment at all, will care greatly for the sanitary condition of
their neighbourhood generally. At present you will find at many a rich
man’s door {117c} a nuisance which is poisoning the atmosphere that his
children are to breathe, but which he could entirely cure for less than
one day’s ordinary expenses.
I am afraid that ventilation is very little attended to in school-rooms,
either for rich or poor. Now it may be deliberately said that there is
very little learned in any school-room that can compensate for the
mischief of its being learned in the midst of impure air. This is a
thing which parents must look to, for the grown-up people in the
school-rooms, though suffering grievously themselves from insufficient
ventilation, will be unobservant of it. {118} In every system of
government inspection, ventilation must occupy a prominent part.
The advantage of simple food for children is a thing that people have
found out. And as regards exercise, children happily make great efforts
to provide a sufficiency of this for themselves. In clothing, the folly
and conformity of grown-up people enter again. Loving mothers, in
various parts of the world, carry about at present, I believe, and
certainly in times past, carried their little children strapped to a
board, with nearly as little power of motion as the board itself. Could
we get the returns of stunted miserable beings, or of deaths, from this
cause, they would be something portentous. Less in degree, but not less
fatally absurd in principle, are many of the strappings, bandages, and
incipient stays for children amongst us. They are all mischievous.
Allow children, at any rate, some freedom of limbs, some opportunity of
being graceful and healthy. Give Nature—dear motherly, much-abused
Nature—some chance of forming these little ones according to the
beneficent intentions of Providence, and not according to the angular
designs of ill-educated men and women.
I do not say that attention to the above matters of good air, judicious
clothing, and freedom from bandages, will absolutely secure health,
because these very things may have been so ill attended to in the parents
or in the parental stock as to have introduced special maladies; but at
least they are the most important objects to be minded now; and, perhaps,
the more to be minded in the children of those who have suffered most
from neglect in these particulars.
When we are considering the health of children, it is imperative not to
omit the importance of keeping their brains fallow, as it were, for
several of the first years of their existence. The mischief perpetrated
by a contrary course in the shape of bad health, peevish temper, and
developed vanity, is incalculable. It would not be just to attribute
this altogether to the vanity of parents; they are influenced by a
natural fear lest their children should not have all the advantages of
other children. Some infant prodigy which is a standard of mischief
throughout its neighbourhood misleads them. But parents may be assured
that this early work is not by any means all gain, even in the way of
work. I suspect it is a loss; and that children who begin their
education late, as it would be called, will rapidly overtake those who
have been in harness long before them. And what advantage can it be that
the child knows more at six years old than its compeers, especially if
this is to be gained by a sacrifice of health which may never be
regained? There may be some excuse for this early book-work in the case
of those children who are to live by manual labour. It is worth while,
perhaps, to run the risk of some physical injury to them, having only
their early years in which we can teach them book-knowledge. The chance
of mischief, too, will be less, being more likely to be counteracted by
their after-life. But for a child who has to be at book-work for the
first twenty-one years of its life, what folly it is to exhaust in the
least the mental energy, which, after all, is its surest implement.
A similar course of argument applies to taking children early to church,
and to over-developing their minds in any way. There is no knowing,
moreover, the disgust and weariness that may grow up in the minds of
young persons from their attention being prematurely claimed. We are
now, however, looking at early study as a matter of health; and we may
certainly put it down in the same class with impure air, stimulating
diet, unnecessary bandages, and other manifest physical disadvantages.
Civilised life, as it advances, does not seem to have so much repose in
it, that we need begin early in exciting the mind, for fear of the man
being too lethargical hereafter.
EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
It seems needful that something should be said specially about the
education of women. As regards their intellects they have been unkindly
treated—too much flattered, too little respected. They are shut up in a
world of conventionalities, and naturally believe that to be the only
world. The theory of their education seems to be, that they should not
be made companions to men, and some would say, they certainly are not.
These critics, however, in the high imaginations they justly form of what
women’s society might be to men, forget, perhaps, how excellent a thing
it is already. Still the criticism is not by any means wholly unjust.
It appears rather as if there had been a falling off since the olden
times in the education of women. A writer of modern days, arguing on the
other side, has said, that though we may talk of the Latin and Greek of
Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth, yet we are to consider that that was
the only learning of the time, and that many a modern lady may be far
better instructed, although she knew nothing of Latin and Greek. Certain
it is, she may know more facts, have read more books: but this does not
assure us that she may not be less conversable, less companionable.
Wherein does the cultivated and thoughtful man differ from the common
man? In the method of his discourse. His questions upon a subject in
which he is ignorant are full of interest. His talk has a groundwork of
reason. This rationality must not be supposed to be dulness. Folly is
dull. Now, would women be less charming if they had more power, or at
least more appreciation, of reasoning? Their flatterers tell them that
their intuition is such that they need not man’s slow processes of
thought. One would be very sorry to have a grave question of law that
concerned oneself decided upon by intuitive judges, or a question of fact
by intuitive jurymen. And so of all human things that have to be
canvassed, it is better, and more amusing too, that they should be
discussed according to reason. Moreover, the exercise of the reasoning
faculties gives much of the pleasure which there is in solid
acquirements; so that the obvious facts in life and history will hardly
be acquired by those who are not in the habit of reasoning upon them.
Hence it comes, that women have less interest in great topics, and less
knowledge of them, than they might have.
Again, if either sex requires logical education, it is theirs. The sharp
practice of the world drives some logic into the most vague of men; women
are not so schooled.
But, supposing the deficiency we have been considering to be admitted,
how is it to be remedied? Women’s education must be made such as to
ensure some accuracy and reasoning. This may be done with any subject of
education, and is done with men, whatever they learn, because they are
expected to produce and use their requirements. But the greatest object
of intellectual education, the improvement of the mental powers, is as
needful for one sex as the other, and requires the same means in both
sexes. The same accuracy, attention, logic, and method that are
attempted in the education of men should be aimed at in that of women.
This will never be sufficiently attended to, as there are no immediate
and obvious fruits from it. And, therefore, as it is probable, from the
different career of women to that of men, that whatever women study will
not be studied with the same method and earnestness as it would be by
men, what a peculiar advantage there is in any study for them, in which
no proficiency whatever can be made without some use of most of the
qualities we desire for them. Geometry, for instance, is such a study.
It may appear pedantic, but I must confess that Euclid seems to me a book
for the young of both sexes. The severe rules upon which the acquisition
of the dead languages is built would of course be a great means for
attaining the logical habits in question. But Latin and Greek is a
deeper pedantry for women than geometry, and much less desirable on many
accounts: and geometry would, perhaps, suffice to teach them what
reasoning is. I daresay, too, there are accomplishments which might be
taught scientifically; and so even the prejudice against the manifest
study of science by women be conciliated. But the appreciation of
reasoning must be got somehow.
It is a narrow view of things to suppose that a just cultivation of
women’s mental powers will take them out of their sphere: it will only
enlarge that sphere. The most cultivated women perform their common
duties best. They see more in those duties. They can do more. Lady
Jane Grey would, I daresay, have bound up a wound, or managed a
household, with any unlearned woman of her day. Queen Elizabeth did
manage a kingdom: and we find no pedantry in her way of doing it.
People who advocate a better training for women must not, necessarily, be
supposed to imagine that men and women are by education to be made alike,
and are intended to fulfil most of the same offices. There seems reason
for thinking that a boundary line exists between the intellects of men
and women which, perhaps, cannot be passed over from either side. But,
at any rate, taking the whole nature of both sexes, and the inevitable
circumstances which cause them to differ, there must be such a difference
between men and women that the same intellectual training applied to both
would produce most dissimilar results. It has not, however, been
proposed in these pages to adopt the same training: and would have been
still less likely to be proposed if it could be shown that such training
would tend to make men and women unpleasantly similar to each other. The
utmost that has been thought of here is to make more of women’s
faculties, not by any means to translate them into men’s—if such a thing
were possible, which, we may venture to say, is not. There are some
things that are good for all trees—light, air, room—but no one expects by
affording some similar advantages of this kind to an oak and a beech, to
find them assimilate, though by such means the best of each may be
produced.
Moreover, it should be recollected that the purpose of education is not
always to foster natural gifts, but sometimes to bring out faculties that
might otherwise remain dormant; and especially so far as to make the
persons educated cognisant of excellence in those faculties in others. A
certain tact and refinement belong to women, in which they have little to
learn from the first: men, too, who attain some portion of these
qualities, are greatly the better for them, and I should imagine not less
acceptable on that account to women. So, on the other side, there may be
an intellectual cultivation for women which may seem a little against the
grain, which would not, however, injure any of their peculiar
gifts—would, in fact, carry those gifts to the highest, and would
increase withal, both to men and women, the pleasure of each other’s
society.
There is a branch of general education which is not thought at all
necessary for women; as regards which, indeed, it is well if they are not
brought up to cultivate the opposite. Women are not taught to be
courageous. Indeed, to some persons courage may seem as unnecessary for
women as Latin and Greek. Yet there are few things that would tend to
make women happier in themselves, and more acceptable to those with whom
they live, than courage. There are many women of the present day,
sensible women in other things, whose panic-terrors are a frequent source
of discomfort to themselves and those around them. Now, it is a great
mistake to imagine that harshness must go with courage; and that the
bloom of gentleness and sympathy must all be rubbed off by that vigour of
mind which gives presence of mind, enables a person to be useful in
peril, and makes the desire to assist overcome that sickliness of
sensibility which can only contemplate distress and difficulty. So far
from courage being unfeminine, there is a peculiar grace and dignity in
those beings who have little active power of attack or defence, passing
through danger with a moral courage which is equal to that of the
strongest. We see this in great things. We perfectly appreciate the
sweet and noble dignity of an Anne Bullen, a Mary Queen of Scots, or a
Marie Antoinette. We see that it is grand for these delicately-bred,
high-nurtured, helpless personages to meet Death with a silence and a
confidence like his own. But there would be a similar dignity in women’s
bearing small terrors with fortitude. There is no beauty in fear. It is
a mean, ugly, dishevelled creature. No statue can be made of it that a
woman would like to see herself like.
Women are pre-eminent in steady endurance of tiresome suffering: they
need not be far behind men in a becoming courage to meet that which is
sudden and sharp. The dangers and the troubles, too, which we may
venture to say they now start at unreasonably, are many of them mere
creatures of the imagination—such as, in their way, disturb high-mettled
animals brought up to see too little, and therefore frightened at any
leaf blown across the road.
We may be quite sure that, without losing any of the most delicate and
refined of feminine graces, women may be taught not to give way to
unreasonable fears, which should belong no more to the fragile than to
the robust.
There is no doubt that courage may in some measure be taught. We agree
that the lower kinds of courage are matter of habit, therefore of
teaching: and the same thing holds good to some extent of all courage.
Courage is as contagious as fear. The saying is, that the brave are the
sons and daughters of the brave; but we might as truly say that they must
be brought up by the brave. The great novelist, when he wants a coward
descended from a valorous race, does well to take him from his clan and
bring him up in an unwarlike home. {126} Indeed, the heroic example of
other days is in great part the source of courage of each generation; and
men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards
by the shades of the brave that were. In civil courage, moral courage,
or courage shown in the minute circumstances of everyday life, the same
law is true. Courage may be taught by precept, enforced by example, and
is good to be taught to men, women, and children.
EDUCATION TO HAPPINESS.
It is a curious phenomenon in human affairs, that some of those matters
in which education is most potent should have been amongst the least
thought of as branches of it. What you teach a boy of Latin and Greek
may be good; but these things are with him but a little time of each day
in his after-life. What you teach him of direct moral precepts may be
very good seed: it may grow up, especially if it have sufficient moisture
from experience; but then, again, a man is, happily, not doing obvious
right or wrong all day long. What you teach him of any bread-getting art
may be of some import to him, as to the quantity and quality of bread he
will get; but he is not always with his art. With himself he is always.
How important, then, it is, whether you have given him a happy or a
morbid turn of mind; whether the current of his life is a clear wholesome
stream, or bitter as Marah. The education to happiness is a possible
thing—not to a happiness supposed to rest upon enjoyments of any kind,
but to one built upon content and resignation. This is the best part of
philosophy. This enters into the “wisdom” spoken of in the Scriptures.
Now it can be taught. The converse is taught every day and all day long.
To take an example. A sensitive disposition may descend to a child; but
it is also very commonly increased, and often created. Captiousness,
sensitiveness, and a Martha-like care for the things of this world, are
often the direct fruits of education. All these faults of the character,
and they are amongst the greatest, may be summed up in a disproportionate
care for little things. This is rather a growing evil. The painful
neatness and exactness of modern life foster it. Long peace favours it.
Trifles become more important, great evils being kept away. And so, the
tide of small wishes and requirements gains upon us fully as fast as we
can get out of its way by our improved means of satisfying them. Now the
unwholesome concern that many parents and governors manifest as to small
things must have a great influence on the governed. You hear a child
reprimanded about a point of dress, or some trivial thing, as if it had
committed a treachery. The criticisms, too, which it hears upon others
are often of the same kind. Small omissions, small commissions, false
shame, little stumbling-blocks of offence, trifling grievances of the
kind that Dr. Johnson, who had known hunger, stormed at Mrs. Thrale for
talking about, are made much of; general dissatisfaction is expressed
that things are not complete, and that everything in life is not turned
out as neat as a Long-Acre carriage; commands are expected to be
fulfilled by agents, upon very rapid and incomplete orders, exactly to
the mind of the person ordering;—these ways, to which children are very
attentive, teach them in their turn to be querulous, sensitive, and full
of small cares and wishes. And when you have made a child like this, can
you make a world for him that will satisfy him? Tax your civilisation to
the uttermost: a punctilious, tiresome disposition expects more. Indeed,
Nature, with her vague and flowing ways, cannot at all fit in with a
right-angled person. Besides, there are other precise, angular
creatures, and these sharp-edged persons wound each other terribly. Of
all the things which you can teach people, after teaching them to trust
in God, the most important is, to put out of their hearts any expectation
of perfection, according to their notions, in this world. This
expectation is at the bottom of a great deal of the worldliness we hear
so much reprehended, and necessarily gives to little things a most
irrational importance.
Observe the effect of this disproportionate care for little things in the
disputes of men. A man who does so care, has a garment embroidered with
hooks which catch at everything that passes by. He finds many more
causes of offence than other men; and each offence is a more bitter thing
to him than to others. He does not expect to be offended. Poor man! He
goes through life wondering that he is the subject of general attack, and
that the world is so quarrelsome.
The result of a bad education in developing undue care for trifles may be
seen in its effect on domestic government and government in general. If
those in power have this fault, they will make the persons under them
miserable by petty, constant blame; or they will make them indifferent to
all blame. If this fault is in the governed, they will captiously object
to all the ways and plans of their superiors, not knowing the difficulty
of doing anything; they will expect miracles of attention, justice, and
temper, which the rough-hewed ways of men do not admit of; and they will
repine and tease the life out of those in authority. Sometimes both
superiors and inferiors, governors and governed, have this fault. This
must often happen in a family, and is a fearful punishment to the elders
of it. Scarcely any goodness of disposition, and what are called great
qualities, can make such difficult materials work well together.
But I end with somewhat of the same argument as I began with, namely,
that as a man lives more with himself than with art, science, or even
with his fellows, a wise teacher, having before him the intent to make a
happy-minded man of his pupil, will try to lay a groundwork of divine
contentment in him. If he cannot make him easily pleased, he will at
least try and prevent him from being easily disconcerted. Why, even the
self-conceit that makes people indifferent to small things, wrapping them
in an atmosphere of self-satisfaction, is welcome in a man compared to
that querulousness which makes him an enemy to all around. But most
commendable is that easiness of mind which is easy because it is
tolerant, because it does not look to have everything its own way,
because it expects anything but smooth usage in its course here, because
it has resolved to manufacture as few miseries out of small evils as can
be.
Most of us know what it is to vex our minds because we cannot recall some
name or trivial thing which has escaped our memory for the moment. But
then we think how foolish this is, what little concern it is to us. We
are right in that; yet any defect of memory is a great concern compared
to many of the trifling niceties, comforts, offences, and
rectangularities which, perhaps, we do not think it an ignoble use of
heart and time to waste ourselves upon. It would be well enough to
entertain the rabble of small troubles and offences, if we could lay them
aside with the delightful facility of children, who, after an agony of
tears, are soon found laughing or asleep. But the chagrin and vexation
of grown-up people are grown-up too; and, however childish in their
origin, are not to be laughed or danced or slept away in childlike
simple-heartedness.
We must not imagine that too much stress can well be laid upon the
importance of an education to contentment, for it comes under the head of
those things which are not adjuncts or acquisitions for a man, but which
form the texture of his being. What a man has learnt is of importance;
but what he is, what he can do, what he will become, are more significant
things. Finally, it may be remarked, that, to make education a great
work, we must have the educators great; that book-learning is mainly good
as it gives us a chance of coming into the company of greater and better
minds than the average of men around us; and that individual greatness
and goodness are the things to be aimed at rather than the successful
cultivation of those talents which go to form some eminent membership of
society. Each man is a drama in himself—has to play all the parts in it;
is to be king and rebel, successful and vanquished, free and slave; and
needs a bringing-up fit for the universal creature that he is.
* * * * *
_Ellesmere_. You have been unexpectedly merciful to us. The moment I
heard the head of the essay given out, there flitted before my frightened
mind volumes of reports, Battersea schools, Bell, Wilderspin, normal
farms, National Society, British Schools, interminable questions about
how religion might be separated altogether from secular education, or so
much religion taught as all religious sects could agree in. These are
all very good things and people to discuss, I daresay; but, to tell the
truth, the whole subject sits heavy on my soul. I meet a man of
inexhaustible dulness, and he talks to me for three hours about some
great subject—this very one of education, for instance—till I sit
entranced by stupidity, thinking the while, “And this is what we are to
become by education—to be like you.” Then I see a man like D—, a
judicious, reasonable, conversable being, knowing how to be silent too—a
man to go through a campaign with—and I find he cannot read or write.
_Milverton_. This sort of contrast is just the thing to strike you,
Ellesmere: and yet you know as well as any of us that to bring forward
such contrasts by way of depreciating education would be most
unreasonable. There are three things that go to make a man—the education
that most people mean by education; then the education that goes deeper,
the education of the soul; and, thirdly, a man’s gifts of Nature. I
agree with all you say about D—; he never says a foolish thing, and does
a great many judicious ones. But look what a clever face he has. There
are gifts of Nature for you. Then, again, although he cannot read or
write, he may have been most judiciously brought up in other respects.
He may have had two, therefore, out of the three elements of education.
What such instances would show, I believe, if narrowly looked into, is
the immense importance of the education of heart and temper.
I feel with you in some measure about the dulness of the subject of
education. But then it extends to all things of the institution kind.
Men must have a great deal of pedantry, routine, and folly of all sorts,
in any large matter they undertake. I had had this feeling for a long
time (you know the way in which you have a thing in your mind, although
you have never said it out exactly even to yourself)—well, I came upon a
passage of Emerson’s which I will try to quote, and then I knew what it
was that I had felt.
“We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle, and have
things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are
odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our
Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper societies, are yokes to the
neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of
arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why
should all virtue work in one and the same way?” . . . “And why drag this
dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole of Christendom? It is
natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should
teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do
not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the
children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.”
Now, without agreeing with him in all points, we may sympathise with him.
_Ellesmere_. I agree with him.
_Dunsford_. I knew you would. You love an extreme.
_Milverton_. But look now. It is well to say, “It is natural and
beautiful that the young should ask and the old should teach”; but then
the old should be capable of teaching, which is not the case we have to
deal with. Institutions are often only to meet individual failings. Let
there be more instructed elders, and the “dead weight” of Sunday-schools
would be less needed.
I think the result of our thoughts would be, that there should be as much
life, joy, and Nature put into teaching as can be; but I, for one, am not
prepared to say that the most mechanical process is not better than none.
_Ellesmere_. Well, you have now shut up the subject, according to your
fashion, in a rounded sentence; and you think after that there is nothing
more to be said. But I say it goes to my heart—
_Dunsford_. What is that?
_Ellesmere_. To my heart to see the unmerciful quantity of instruction
that little children go through on a Sunday. I suppose I am a very
wicked man; but I know how wearied I should have been, at any time of my
life, if so much virtuous precept and good doctrine had been poured into
me.
_Milverton_. Well, I will not fight certainly for anything that is to
make Sunday a wearisome day for children. Indeed, what I meant by
putting more joy and life into teaching was, that in such a thing as this
Sunday-schooling, for instance, a judicious man, far from being anxious
to get a certain quantity of routine done about it, would do with the
least—would endeavour to connect it with something interesting—would, in
a word, love children, and not Sunday-schools.
_Ellesmere_. Ah, we will have no more about Sunday-schools. I know we
all agree in reality, although Dunsford has been looking very grave and
has not said a word. I wanted to tell you that I think you are quite
right, Milverton, in saying a good deal about multifariousness of
pursuit. You see a wretch of a pedant who knows all about tetrameters or
statutes of uses, but who, as you hinted an essay or two ago, can hardly
answer his child a question as they walk about the garden together. The
man has never given a good thought or look to Nature. Well then, again,
what a stupid thing it is that we are not all taught music. Why learn
the language of many portions of mankind, and leave the universal
language of the feelings, as you would call it, unlearnt?
_Milverton_. I quite agree with you; but I thought you always set your
face, or rather your ears, against music.
_Dunsford_. So did I.
_Ellesmere_. I should like to know all about it. It is not to my mind
that a cultivated man should be quite thrown out by any topic of
conversation, or that there should be any form of human endeavour or
accomplishment which he has no conception of.
_Dunsford_. I liked what you said, Milverton, about the philosophy of
making light of many things, and the way of looking at life that may thus
be given to those we educate. I rather doubted at first, though, whether
you were not going to assign too much power to education in the
modification of temper. But, certainly, the mode of looking at the daily
events of life, little or great, and the consequent habits of
captiousness or magnanimity, are just the matters which the young
especially imitate their elders in.
_Milverton_. You see, the very worst kind of tempers are established
upon the fretting care for trifles that I want to make war upon in the
essay. A man is choleric. Well, it is a very bad thing; it tends to
frighten those about him into falseness. He has outrageous bursts of
temper. He is humble for days afterwards. His dependants rather like
him after all. They know that “his bark is worse than his bite.” Then
there is your gloomy man, often a man who punishes himself most—perhaps a
large-hearted, humorous, but sad man, at the same time liveable with. He
does not care for trifles. But it is your acid-sensitive (I must join
words like Mirabeau’s Grandison-Cromwell, to get what I mean), and your
cold, querulous people that need to have angels to live with them. Now
education has often had a great deal to do with the making of these
choice tempers. They are somewhat artificial productions. And they are
the worst.
_Dunsford_. You know a saying attributed to the Bishop of — about
temper. No? Somebody, I suppose, was excusing something on the score of
temper, to which the Bishop replied, “Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity.”
_Milverton_. There is an appearance we see in Nature, not far from here,
by the way, that has often put me in mind of the effect of temper upon
men. It is in the lowlands near the sea, where, when the tide is not up
(the man out of temper), there is a slimy, patchy, diseased-looking
surface of mud and sick seaweed. You pass by in a few hours, there is a
beautiful lake, water up to the green grass (the man in temper again),
and the whole landscape brilliant with reflected light.
_Ellesmere_. And to complete the likeness, the good temper and the full
tide last about the same time—with some men at least. It is so like you,
Milverton, to have that simile in your mind. There is nothing you see in
Nature, but you must instantly find a parallel for it in man. Sermons in
stones you will not see, else I am sure you might. Here is a good hard
flint for you to see your next essay in.
_Milverton_. It will do very well, as my next will be on the subject of
population.
_Ellesmere_. What day are we to have it? I think I have a particular
engagement for that day.
_Milverton_. I must come upon you unawares.
_Ellesmere_. After the essay you certainly might. Let us decamp now and
do something great in the way of education—teach Rollo, though he is but
a short-haired dog, to go into the water. That will be a feat.