THE MAJESTY OF TOOLS.
Tools the Highest Text-books. -- How to Use them the Test of
Scholarship. -- They are the Gauge of Civilization. -- Carlyle’s
Apostrophe to them. -- The Typical Hand-tools. -- The Automata of the
Machine-shop. -- Through Tools Science and Art are United. -- The
Power of Tools. -- Their Educational Value. -- Without Tools Man is
Nothing; with Tools he is All. -- It is through the Arts alone that
Education touches Human Life.
Sacred to the majesty of tools might be appropriately inscribed over the
entrance to this Ideal school; for its highest text-books are tools, and
how to use them most intelligently is the test of scholarship. To
realize the potency of tools it is only necessary to contrast the two
states of man--the one without tools, the other with tools. See him in
the first state, naked, shivering with cold, now hiding away from the
beasts in caves, and now, famished and despairing, gaunt and
hollow-eyed, creeping stealthily like a panther upon his prey. Then see
him in the poetic, graphic apostrophe of Carlyle:--“Man is a tool-using
animal. He can use tools, can devise tools; with these the granite
mountains melt into light dust before him; he kneads iron as if it were
soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying
steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is
nothing, with tools he is all!”
What a picture of the influence of tools upon civilization! It is
through the use of tools that man has reached the place of absolute
supremacy among animals. As he increases his stock of tools he recedes
from the state of savagery. The great gulf between the aboriginal savage
and the civilized man is spanned by the seven hand-tools--the axe, the
saw, the plane, the hammer, the square, the chisel, and the file. These
are the universal tools of the arts, and the modern machine-shop is an
aggregation of them rendered automatic and driven by steam.
The ancients constructed automata which were exceedingly ingenious. In
the statues that could walk and talk, the Chinese puppets and the
marionettes of the Greeks there was a hint of the modern automatic
tools, which, driven by steam, fashion with equal accuracy the delicate
parts of the watch and the huge segments of the marine engine. The
ancients knew more of science than of art. They were familiar with the
power of steam, but knew not how to apply it to the wants of man. They
knew that steam would turn a spit, but they had not a sufficient
knowledge of art to convert the power they had discovered into a monster
of force, and train it to bear the burdens of commerce. They never
thought to apply the jet of steam used to turn a spit to great automatic
machines, and to fit into them saws and files, and needles and drills,
and gimlets and planes, and compel them to do the work of thousands of
men. But this is precisely what the modern mechanic has accomplished. In
making a slave of steam, science and art have combined to free mankind.
We marvel at the dulness of the ancients as shown in their failure to
utilize in the useful arts the discoveries of science. That they should
have studied the stars over their heads to the neglect of the earth
under their feet is incomprehensible to the modern mind. But will not
future generations marvel at us? Is it not an astounding fact that, with
a knowledge of the tremendous influence of tools upon the destiny of the
human race so graphically depicted by Carlyle, the nations have been so
slow in incorporating tool-practice into educational methods? The
distinguishing features of modern civilization sprang as definitively
from cunningly devised and skilfully handled tools as any effect from
its cause. And yet the world’s statesmen have failed to discover the
value of tool-practice as an educational agency. The face of the globe
has been transformed by the union of art and science, but the world’s
statesmen have not discerned the importance of uniting them in the
curriculum of the schools. If the ancients could see us as we see them,
they would doubtless laugh at us as we laugh at them.
We might take a lesson from the savage. He is taught to fight, to hunt,
and to fish, and in these arts the brain, the hand, and the eye are
trained simultaneously. He is first given object-lessons, as the pupil
of the kindergarten is taught. Then the tomahawk, the spear, and the bow
and arrow are placed in his hands, and he fights for his life, or fishes
or hunts for his dinner. The young Indian is taught all that it is
necessary for him to know, and he is educated, practically, in the
savage’s three workshops--the battle-field, the forest and plain, the
sea and lake. Thus the young savage enters upon the duties of his life
with an exact practical knowledge of them. He has not been taught a
theory of fighting, he has used the weapons of warfare; he has not
studied the arts of fishing and hunting, he has handled the spear and
the bow and arrow, and their use is as familiar to him as the
multiplication table is to the boy in the public school.
We have more and better tools than the savage possesses. With the aid of
science and art we harness steam to our chariot and compel it to draw us
whither we will. We steal fire from the clouds and make it serve us as a
messenger. We imprison the air, and with it stop the flying railway
train; with the aid of science and art we reduce the most subtile forces
of nature to servitude. But we neither teach our youth how to master
their elements nor how to use them.
Tools represent the steps of human progress--in architecture, from the
mud hut to the modern mansion; in agriculture, from the pointed stick
used to tear the turf to a thousand and one ingenious instruments of
husbandry; in ship-building, from the rudderless, sailless boat to the
ocean steamer; in fabrics, from the matted fleece of the shepherd to the
varied products of countless looms; in pottery, from the first rude
Egyptian cup to the exquisite vase of the Sevres factory. And so of
every art that contributes to the comfort and pleasure of man; the
development of each has been accomplished by tools in the hands of the
laborer.
Since, then, man owes so much to labor, he has doubtless educated the
laborer and showered honors upon him (?). On the contrary, the labor of
the world has been performed by the most ignorant classes, by bondmen,
by helots and captives, by serfs and slaves. The laborer has been held
in such contempt, and been so debased by ignorance, that he has often
violently protested against improvements in the tools of the trades, and
with vandal hands destroyed the mill, the factory, and the forge erected
to ameliorate his condition. At the top of the social scale the sage has
studied the stars and invented systems of abstract philosophy; at the
bottom ignorance has deified itself and starved. This divorce of
science from art has resulted in such incongruities as the Pyramids of
Egypt and periodical famines; as the hanging gardens of Babylon and the
horrors of Jewish captivity; as the Greek Parthenon and dwellings
without chimneys; as the statues of Phidias and Praxiteles, and royal
banquets without knives, forks, or spoons; as the Roman Forum and the
Roman populace crying for bread and circuses; as Socrates, Plato, Seneca
and Aurelius, and Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Domitian.
On the other hand the union of science with art tunnels the mountain,
bridges the river, dams the torrent, and converts the wilderness into a
fruitful field.
Science discovers and art appropriates and utilizes; and as science is
helpless without the aid of art, so art is dead without the help of
tools. Tools then constitute the great civilizing agency of the world;
for civilization is the art of rendering life agreeable. The savage may
own a continent, but if he possesses only the savage’s tools--the spear
and the bow and arrow--he will be ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, and
poorly protected both against cold and heat. He might be familiar with
all the known sciences, but if he were ignorant of the arts his state,
instead of being improved, would be rendered more deplorable; for with
the thoughts, emotions, sensibilities, and aspirations of a sage he
would still be powerless to steal from heaven a single spark of fire
with which to warm his miserable hut.
In the light of this analysis Carlyle’s rhapsody on tools becomes a
prosaic fact, and his conclusion--that man without tools is nothing,
with tools all--points the way to the discovery of the philosopher’s
stone in education. For if man without tools is nothing, to be unable to
use tools is to be destitute of power; and if with tools he is all, to
be able to use tools is to be all-powerful. And this power in the
concrete, the power to do some useful thing for man--this is the last
analysis of educational truth.
There is no better definition of education than that of Pestalozzi--“the
generation of power.” But what kind of power? Not merely power to think
abstractly, to speculate, to moralize, to philosophize, but power to act
intelligently. And the power to act intelligently involves the exertion,
in greater or less degree, of all the powers, both mental and physical.
Education, then, is the development of all the powers of man to the
culminating point of action. What kind of action? Action in art. What is
art? “The power of doing something not taught by nature or instinct;
power or skill in the use of knowledge; the practical application of the
rules or principles of science.” Again we have the last analysis of
education--“skill in the use of knowledge; the application of the rules
or principles of science.” And this is tool practice.
It is unnecessary, in an educational view, to divide the arts by the
employment of the terms “useful” and “fine;” for the fine arts can only
exist legitimately where the useful arts have paved the way. In a
harmonious development the artist will enter on the heels of the
artisan. Art is cosmopolitan. It is not less worthily represented by the
carpenter with his square, saw, and plane, and the smith with his
sledge, than by the sculptor with his mallet and chisel, and the painter
with his easel and brush; both classes contribute to the comfort and
pleasure of man; for comfort is enhanced by pleasure, and pleasure is
intensified by comfort. It follows that the ultimate object of education
is the attainment of skill in the arts. To this end the speculations
and investigations of philosophy and the experiments of chemistry lead.
At the door of the study of the philosopher and of the laboratory of the
chemist stands the artisan, listening for the newest hint that
philosophy can impart, waiting for the result of the latest chemical
analysis. In his hands these suggestions take form; through his skilful
manipulation the faint indications of science become real things, suited
to the exigencies of human life.
It is the most astounding fact of history that education has been
confined to abstractions. The schools have taught history, mathematics,
language and literature, and the sciences, to the utter exclusion of the
arts, notwithstanding the obvious fact that it is through the arts alone
that other branches of learning touch human life. As Bacon has so aptly
expressed it, “The real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the
endowment of human life with new inventions and riches.” In a word,
public education stops at the exact point where it should begin to apply
the theories it has imparted. At this point the school of mental and
manual training combined--the Ideal School--begins; not only books but
tools are put into the hands of the pupil, with this injunction of
Comenius; “Let those things that have to be done be learned by doing
them.”