THE MORAL EFFECT OF MANUAL TRAINING.
Mental Impulses are often Vicious; but the Exertion of Physical Power
in the Arts is always Beneficent -- hence Manual Training tends to
correct vicious mental Impulses. -- Every mental Impression produces a
moral Effect. -- All Training is Moral as well as Mental. --
Selfishness is total Depravity; but Selfishness has been Deified under
the name of Prudence. -- Napoleon an Example of Selfishness. -- The
End of Selfishness is Disaster; but Prevailing Systems of Education
promote Selfishness. -- The Modern City an Illustration of
Selfishness. -- The Ancient City. -- Existing Systems of Education
Negatively Wrong. -- Manual Training supplies the lacking Element. --
The Objective must take the Place of the Subjective in Education. --
Words without Acts are as dead as Faith without Works.
Education, or training, has two immediate and continuous effects--the
development of innate mental qualities or aptitudes and the formation of
character. In an orderly logical system of training the development
would be harmonious, and the resulting formation of character
symmetrical. These are, however, ideal conditions requiring a perfect
system of training, and students free from the perversions and
deformities growing out of the law of heredity. But under any system of
training there is progress--development and character formation. The
aphorism, “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop,” expresses only a
half-truth. What it means is this: if the mind is not well employed it
will be ill employed; or if it is not occupied with good thoughts it
will be occupied with evil thoughts. The mind of man is never at rest,
in equilibrium, even in a state of barbarism. Indeed this is obvious,
since all civilizations are growths from states of savagery. But the
barbaric line once passed, development is greatly accelerated, assuming
with the evolution of the ages the form of a geometrical progression.
The distinguishing characteristic of modern civilization is action. In
so far as this action, which may be called the impulsive force of the
spirit of the age, is natural and orderly, it constitutes an aid to the
processes of education; if otherwise, it is obstructive, hindering them.
The law of mental development is not the exact correlative of the law of
physical development. The direct aim of physical training is muscular
power; of mental training the aim is mental power and rectitude.
Physical power is not intrinsically vicious; it becomes vicious only
when exerted under a vicious intellectual impulse. But this is not
necessarily true of mental power; for mental power may be gained quite
apart from the element of rectitude, in which event it is vicious, and
may be exerted in scorn of the accepted standards of right, truth, and
justice. As a matter of fact it is often so exerted, and the fact that
it is so exerted accounts for the crimes of individuals, the faults of
society, and the errors of governments. The constitution of mental power
is, then, complex, while that of physical power is simple. If mental
power consists of sense perception, or understanding, and moral
perception, or rectitude, in due proportion, the issue is a noble
character; but if rectitude is wanting, the issue is an evil character.
If, on the other hand, there is no interference with the orderly
development of physical power, the issue of its exertion is always
skill--skill applied in innumerable forms to the uses of man. Only
through a mental impulse rendered vicious by the absence of the element
of rectitude can physical power be diverted from its naturally
beneficent mission.
It follows that most of the evils of civilization flow from an
ill-balanced mental constitution--a mental constitution wanting the
essential element of rectitude. Since, then, mental development, under
certain widely prevailing conditions, is so prolific of evil, and
physical development or skill so universally prolific of good, it is
obvious that the beneficent influence of the latter should, if
practicable, be brought to bear upon the former in educational systems.
In a word, may not the two systems of training be so connected in the
schools as to cause the manual to react upon the mental, with the effect
of greatly stimulating the ethical side of the mind?
It is not essential to our purpose to inquire whether a perfect system
of education, and hence an ideal state of society, is possible. It will
be sufficient if we are able to show wherein prevailing systems of
education can be improved.
In a former chapter we sought to show that the use of mechanical tools
stimulates the intellect; in the present chapter it is our purpose to
endeavor to show that manual training tends to the promotion of
rectitude, to the up building of character.
For purposes of culture the mind consists of divisions, as the body
consists of members. It is susceptible of development in the line of the
application of mental training, as any member of the body is susceptible
of development through physical training or use. For example, the memory
may be invigorated by the constant application of certain kinds of
mental training, as the arm is strengthened by the constant use of the
sledge-hammer. But if the mental training which stimulates the memory
is applied to the neglect of other lines of training, the memory will be
strengthened at the expense of some other faculty of the mind, as the
excessive use of the sledge-hammer strengthens the arm at the cost of
other members of the body. In the one case the mind, and in the other
the body will be deformed. In the case of the sledge-hammer training the
muscles of the arm will stand out like whip-cords, while those of the
legs will shrivel and become attenuated. In the case of the training of
the memory that faculty will show an abnormal development, while some
other faculty, as the power of ratiocination, probably, will become
weak.
It is not necessary in this connection to inquire into the origin of
moral sentiments, or to consider the rival theories on the subject.
However men may differ as between the two schools of moral
philosophers--the sentimentalists and the utilitarians--they will agree
that the moral side of the mind, so to speak, consists of divisions like
the mental side; that these divisions are the source, respectively, of
good and evil tendencies, and that these tendencies are susceptible of
cultivation; that the evil may be restrained and the good developed, and
_vice versa_. Nor will it be disputed that there is such a blending of
the moral with the mental nature in the mind of man as to render any
consideration of the subject irrational and incomplete which does not
comprehend both, and treat them, practically, as one and the same. Man
is so constituted, and his relations to society are such, that every
mental impression he receives produces a moral effect, the character of
which is, of course, largely dependent upon the accepted standards of
right, truth, and justice. Hence all scholastic training is both mental
and moral. It is moral as well as mental, whether the instructor will
it so or not; and that it is moral is well, since it is obviously true,
as Galton pertinently remarks, that “Great men have usually high moral
natures, and are affectionate and reverential, inasmuch as mere brain
without heart is insufficient to achieve eminence.”
Selfishness is the arch enemy of virtue; from it all forms of immorality
spring, and its last analysis is total depravity. But literature, which
is the fruitage of education, is full of maxims in honor of selfishness.
Said the Dauphin to the French king, “Self-love, my liege, is not so
vile a sin as self-neglecting.” Said Herbert, “Help thyself and God will
help thee.” “A penny saved is as good as a penny earned,” said Franklin;
and the grasping “Yankee” stretches the maxim a point in saying to his
son, “Make money honestly if you can, but make money.”
The following, also, are current maxims: “Every man is the architect of
his own fortune;” “Every tub must stand upon its own bottom;” “In the
race of life the devil takes the hindmost;” “Look to the main chance;”
and, “Keep what you have got, and catch what you can.” To the same
purpose is the famous old aphorism of which Napoleon the First was so
fond, “God always favors the heaviest battalions.” Emerson declared that
Napoleon represented “the spirit of modern commerce, of money, and
material power,” and he certainly was the very incarnation of
selfishness.[10] He had a hand of iron, and he laid it heavily on all
who opposed him. If it became necessary to imprison his enemies he
imprisoned them; if it became necessary to kill them he cut off their
heads. When charged with the commission of great crimes, he retorted,
“Men of my stamp do not commit crimes!” “I have always marched with the
opinion of great masses and events,” he exclaimed, with the insolence of
a butcher exhibiting his bloody hands. Old-fashioned codes of morals
were for those who opposed his plans, not for him. But the end of
selfishness is disaster. It is as dangerous to assume to rise above
moral laws as to sink below them; in the one case they crush, and in the
other they undermine. “The half” is, after all, “more than the whole,”
for “the half” may be retained, but “the whole” is sure to slip from the
fingers of grasping avarice. Napoleon, who defied all mankind, expiated
his crimes on a rock in mid-ocean. There, whining, protesting, and
prating of injustice, he died miserably, a colossal example of the folly
of selfishness.
[10] “‘God has granted,’ says the Koran, ‘to every people a prophet in
its own tongue.’ Paris, and London, and New York, the spirit of
commerce, of money, and material power, were also to have their
prophet; and Bonaparte was qualified and sent. Every one of the
million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, or lives of Napoleon
delights in the page, because he studies in it his own
history.”--“Representative Men,” p. 221. Boston: Phillips, Sampson &
Co., 1858.
It would be impossible more severely to arraign existing educational
methods; for men are what education makes them.
Selfishness seeks to wring from society a support without giving to it
an equivalent return. What industry creates and saves to society,
selfishness seeks to misappropriate to its own use; hence selfishness is
in conflict with the true spirit of civilization, which is the compact
of all to protect each in his rights. Selfishness caused the destruction
of all the governments of ancient times, and it has been the cause of
all the revolutions of modern times. There can be no stability in
government until altruism takes the place of selfishness in the world’s
code of ethics. The sole condition of the stability of the State is a
disposition on the part of its people to conform to justice and correct
moral principles in all social relations.
Any system of education that does not tend to produce a state of morals
conformable to this high standard is not merely defective; it is
radically wrong, and therefore positively vicious. The true purpose of
education is the harmonious development of all the powers of the
man--mental, moral, and physical. But harmony in a selfish character is
impossible, for selfishness is blind of one eye, so to speak; it
considers only one side of a cause--the side that relates to its
interest, regardless of all other interests. Let not prudence be
confounded with selfishness. Prudence and selfishness are as wide apart
as the poles. Extreme prudence is perfectly consistent with entire
rectitude, while extreme selfishness is the synonym of depravity; hence
the first step in education is to eliminate selfishness from the mind,
and the next step is to put rectitude in its place.
Prevailing systems of education no doubt promote the spirit of
selfishness:[11] witness the character of the struggle for
self-aggrandizement. It is more intense and more widely extended than at
any period of the world’s history. That it is more intense is shown by
the more and more rapid concentration of populations in cities, where
the struggle assumes its most intense form, and exhibits itself in its
most threatening aspect.
[11] “In small, undeveloped societies, where for ages complete peace
has continued, there exists nothing like what we call Government; no
coercive agency, but mere honorary headship, if any headship at all.
In these exceptional communities, unaggressive, and from special
causes unaggressed upon, there is so little deviation from the virtues
of truthfulness, honesty, justice, and generosity, that nothing beyond
an occasional expression of public opinion by informally assembled
elders is needful.”--“Political Institutions,” ¶¶ 437, 573; “The Sins
of Legislators,” in “The Man _versus_ the State,” p. 44. By Herbert
Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Cities have always been plague-spots on the body politic, and they are
not less so now than in ancient times. It is in cities that all dangers
to the State originate; and the sole, fundamental reason why cities are
a standing menace to the integrity of the social compact is the fact
that they are dominated by selfishness. It is in cities that the
unnatural, unwholesome desire to live without labor, to live by
speculative enterprises, becomes a consuming passion, inoculating with a
deeper and darker degree of selfishness an ever-widening circle of
people; and selfishness at last inevitably leads to anarchy. It leads to
anarchy and chaos because both classes of society become depraved--the
rich and powerful through indolence and sensual indulgence, and the poor
and wretched through ignorance and privation and their attendant mean
vices.
The modern city is the despair of the political economist. It grows
relatively faster in population than the rural district, and it would be
the extreme of optimism to declare that it grows better.[E4] It does not
matter that the city is the centre of learning, the nursery of all the
active intelligences which are achieving fresh triumphs daily in every
department of science, literature, and art. It is also the centre of
vice, and the nursery of every variety of crime.
The difficulty--nay, the despair--of the situation is not relieved or
mitigated by the undisputed fact that the ancient city was much worse
morally and politically than the modern city, and hence that as between
Rome and Chicago there is an immense moral and political advantage in
favor of the latter. If Chicago is retrograding morally and politically,
what is to prevent it from sinking to the moral and political status of
Rome under the infamous emperors of the period of its decadence? If the
modern American city is rapidly degenerating, both as a moral force and
a political institution, what is to arrest its downward progress? What
influence is to intervene to reverse the order and nature of its
development?
Rome, in the very agonies of political dissolution, possessed all the
then known arts, a splendid literature, and a school of philosophy whose
ethical code was more lofty, if less human, than that of the new system
which was struggling to replace the old. That the inconceivably
atrocious gladiatorial games should have developed into such huge
proportions in conjunction with the sublime moral teachings of Seneca,
Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and a score of others, is the despair of
students of Roman history. While they taught, emperors and people alike
feasted their eyes on bloody orgies of men and beasts, on scenes of the
most horrible barbarity. Caligula took special delight in watching the
countenances of the dying, “for he had learned to take an artistic
pleasure in observing the variations of their agony.” Criminals dressed
in the skins of wild beasts were thrown to bulls which were maddened
with red-hot irons. “Four hundred bears were killed in a single day
under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under Nero,
four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred bears
and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single
day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals
perished. Under Trajan the games continued for one hundred and
twenty-three successive days. Lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, hippopotami,
giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were employed to
give novelty to the spectacle.”
And yet the civilization that produced these games gave to the world,
forever, the moral precepts of the stoics and philosophers. Cicero had
maintained the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man. “Nature
ordains,” he says, “that a man should wish the good of every man,
whoever he may be, for this very reason: that he is a man.” Menander
maintained that “man should deem nothing human foreign to his interest.”
Lucan looked forward to the time when “the human race will cast aside
its weapons, and all nations learn to love.” In a letter on the death of
his slaves Pliny exhibited feelings of strong human affection, and
Plutarch, in a letter of consolation to his wife on the death of his
daughter, left a touching record of the tenderness of his heart in the
recital of a simple trait of the child: “She desired her nurse to press
even her dolls to the breast. She was so loving that she wished
everything that gave her pleasure to share in the best that she had.”
Says Seneca, “The whole universe which you see around you, comprising
all things both divine and human, is one. We are members of one great
body.” And Epictetus, “You are a citizen and a part of the world. The
duty of a citizen is in nothing to consider his own interest distinct
from that of others.”
The contrast between these noble moral sentiments and the actual life of
the Roman people is truly startling.[E5] It is plain that the profession
of lofty moral sentiments by a class, the possession of high literary
attainments, and an extensive acquaintance with the arts, do not always
afford protection against national degradation and decay. Nor is it by
any means certain that the Christian religion is destined to effect more
in this regard than the pagan code of morals. Rome embraced religion,
but its conversion was powerless to avert political and commercial
destruction.
The modern city has for guides the example of all the ancient
civilizations and political and moral systems, and in addition it has,
in its most vital form, the Christian system of morals and faith. But
notwithstanding all these helps it is politically corrupt and morally
depraved. Its streets are the scenes of vice scarcely less revolting
than those of ancient Rome. It harbors an army of criminals which grows
with its growth, and is without any systematized effort either to reform
or abolish it. Indeed this army of criminals is constantly reinforced in
an increasing ratio to the whole population from the ranks of the rising
generation, which is to a degree enforced to ignorance by the inadequacy
of educational facilities.[12] Its power to accumulate wealth is
increasing, but this power is confined to relatively fewer hands, and
this is one of the most alarming features of the situation. For the
increase of ignorance, vice, and crime is sure to keep pace with the
abnormal growth of estates, stimulated to the highest degree by
dishonest business practices and gigantic schemes of speculation.
[12] In support of the truth of these propositions it is sufficient
merely to allude to the late disclosures by the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of
the prevalence of revolting crimes in London, England. It is also
pertinent to remark the attitude of hostility maintained by the higher
classes (so called) of the English people towards the editor of the
journal in which the disclosures were made, as significant of an
alarming degeneration of the moral sense of the British public.
It does not follow because prevailing methods of education promote the
spirit of selfishness, and hence contain the seeds of social and moral
decay, that they are wholly vicious; but it does follow, if they are not
positively wrong, that they are negatively wrong. Let us assume that
they are only negatively wrong, that they lack an essential element in
all mental and moral training--the manual element; and let us try to
discover what would be the effect of the incorporation of this element
into the curriculum of the schools.
A system of education consisting exclusively of mental exercises
promotes selfishness because such training is subjective. Its effects
flow inward; they relate to self. All mental acquirements become a part
of self, and so remain forever, unless they are transmuted into things
through the agency of the hand.
It is through the hand alone that the mind finally impresses itself upon
matter. In other words, thought and speech must be incarnate in things
or they are dead. The orator appeals to the people to strike for their
rights; the people rend the air with shouts and subside into silence.
The orator cries, “To Arms!” Again the people shout, and again subside
into silence. The orator’s thoughts are of carnage, his words of flames,
but they are as dead as if never uttered because no hand is raised to
embody them in deeds.
Manual training, on the other hand, promotes altruism because it is
objective. Its effects flow outward; they relate not to self but to the
human race. The skilled hand confers benefits upon man, and each benefit
so conferred exerts the natural reflex moral influence of a good act
upon the mind of the benefactor.[E6]
Morality is not a mere sentiment, a barren ideality. It is true there is
a negative morality which consists in refraining from the commission of
wrongful acts. But the morality of the great ethical teachers is
positive; it consists in doing. Christ said, “Inasmuch as ye have done
_it_ unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done _it_ unto
me.” Words without acts are as dead as faith without works. Paul said,
“Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not
charity, I am nothing.”
Morality is a vital principle whose exemplification consists in doing
justice; and justice is that virtue “which consists in giving to every
one what is his due; practical conformity to the laws and to principles
of rectitude in the dealings of men with each other; honesty, integrity
in commerce or mutual intercourse.” It follows that morality can no more
be acquired by memorizing a series of maxims than the art of using tools
can be acquired by studying the laws of mechanics and of mechanism.
[E4] “No city was ever so deeply disgraced by its municipal government
as the city of New York. Fourteen years ago the exposure of the Tweed
Ring revealed a corruption in that government which had mastered
Legislatures and courts, and was plotting to control the national
administration; and as we write, all of the living ex-members of the
late Board of Aldermen, except two, are held for trial for bribery and
corruption, or are in hiding.
“Such a shame is unprecedented. It is in itself a sharp satire upon
popular elections, as well as upon the character and public spirit of
New York; and the worst of it is that, bad as it is, no citizen
probably feels himself to be humiliated, or is conscious of any
personal responsibility. To the most stupid man, however, such facts
forecast a constant deterioration of the situation.”--“Harper’s
Weekly,” April 24, 1886.
[E5] The morality of the present age, like that of the Romans, is a
mere theory, entirely destitute of vital force. Selfishness is still,
as it always has been, the controlling element in human conduct, and
selfishness and morality are utterly incompatible. Moral precepts are
inculcated in a perfunctory way, as Greek is taught because it is the
fashion, but with no more idea that they will be adopted as the rule
of life, than that the language of Homer will again be used as the
instrument of speech. The contempt in which morality is commonly held
is well shown by the remark of a popular lecturer, who said of Peter
the Great, that, “viewed morally he was a monster, and by the gauge of
decency, a brute, but a giant from the lofty heights of statesmanship
and civilization.” How vain is the hope of reform while leaders of men
deem it possible for statesmanship to be rendered lofty by a moral
monster, or that the cause of civilization may be advanced by a brute!
[E6] “The artisan stands between every man, woman, and child and the
crude materials embodied in the three kingdoms of Nature, and by the
magic of his skill they are transformed into means serviceable for
use. The wood in the forest, the marble in the quarry, the clay in the
bank, the metal in the mine pass through his hands, take on the form
of his thought, become arranged by his intelligence, and the product
is the modern dwelling. Is there any fancy in fairy tale more
wonderful than this? By the skill of the tanner and the shoemaker the
raw skin is transformed into the useful shoe. Do you ever think of
your indebtedness to these humble toilers for your protection and
comfort? Do they ever think of the service they are rendering you?--a
service which cannot be compensated by dollars and cents. The jewels
which sparkle in royal crowns and add lustre to queenly beauty, the
silks and precious stuffs which clothe and give new charms to the
loveliness of women, owe their beauty, their lustre, their value to
the artisan. He stands between the worm, the mine, and the wearer; and
by the transforming power of his skill and patient labor they become
robes of beauty and gems of light. But of far greater importance is
the service he is rendering to our common humanity. He takes the
material which our Heavenly Father has provided in such abundance,
puts his thought, his intelligence, and he has every conceivable
motive for putting his love and good-will toward men, into them and
passing them on as tokens of his love and fidelity to human good.
Everything he touches becomes a message not only of his knowledge and
his skill but a fit embodiment of his regard for his
fellow-men.”--“Mechanical Employments as Means of Human Culture.” Rev.
Chauncey Giles. Eleventh Series Tracts, p. 15. Philadelphia: New
Church Tract and Publication Society.