AUTOMATIC CONTRASTED WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION--_Continued_.
The Training of the Merchant, the Lawyer, the Judge, and the
Legislator contrasted with that of the Artisan. -- The Training of the
Merchant makes him Selfish, and Selfishness breeds Dishonesty. --
Professional Men become Speculative Philosophers, and test their
Speculations by Consciousness. -- The Artisan forgets Self in the
Study of Things. -- The Search after Truth. -- The Story of Palissy.
-- The Hero is the Normal Man; those who Marvel at his Acts are
abnormally Developed. -- Savonarola and John Brown. -- The New England
System of Education contrasted with that of the South. -- American
Statesmanship -- its Failure in an Educational Point of View. -- Why
the State Provides for Education; to protect Property. -- The British
Government and the Land Question. -- The Thoroughness of the Training
given by Schools of Mechanic Art and Institutes of Technology as shown
in Things. -- Story of the Emperor of Germany and the Needle-maker. --
The Iron Bridge lasts a Century, the Act of the Legislator wears out
in a Year. -- The Cause of the Failures of Justice and Legislation. --
The best Law is the Act that Repeals a Law; but the Act of the
Inventor is never Repealed. -- Things the Source and Issue of Ideas;
hence the Necessity of Training in the Arts.
There is a cause for the failure of the merchant, the lawyer, the judge,
and the legislator, as well as for the success of the artisan. And the
cause must be sought in the courses of training, respectively, of the
two classes. Let us assume that the artisan and the merchant, the
lawyer, the judge, and the legislator, graduate at the same time from
the public high school, or from Harvard or Yale. The merchant at once
begins to trade, to buy and sell. He concerns himself with things only
as they have a value, either naturally arising from the law of demand
and supply, or arbitrarily imposed by circumstances. His consideration
of the relations of things is confined to the single question of the
percentage of profit which may accrue to him from traffic in them. These
are subjective processes of thought, and the merchant becomes absorbed
in them to the exclusion of all other topics. It goes without saying
that he becomes intensely selfish. The struggle is one of mercantile
life or death--ninety-three to ninety-seven in a hundred die; three to
seven survive.
Among merchants there is, hence, very little thought of the subject of
justice, and no effort to discover truth. There must, at the end of the
year, be a favorable balance on the right side of the ledger, or the
balance on the wrong side unerringly points the way to ruin. This is the
post-school training of the merchant. That neither it nor his previous
education renders him skilful we know, since he fails ninety-three to
ninety-seven times in a hundred trials. That subjective training does
not and never can promote rectitude has been shown in a former chapter
of this work. That merchants who compromise with their creditors, and
subsequently accumulate fortunes, very rarely repay the debt formerly
forgiven is a notorious fact. A Chicago merchant who himself repaid such
a composition debt early in his career, states, at the end of
twenty-five years’ experience, that of compromises involving several
hundred thousand dollars, made by him in favor of debtors, not one
dollar has ever been repaid.
Upon leaving school or college the lawyer, the judge, and the legislator
at once apply themselves to books; their subsequent training is
exclusively subjective. Their ideas receive color from, and are verified
only by reference to, consciousness. Subjective truths have no
relations to things, and hence are susceptible of verification only
through consciousness. They are, therefore, mere speculations after all,
often ingenious but always problematical. The result of such training is
selfishness--selfishness of a very intense character; and, as has been
already shown, selfishness is merely another name for injustice.
On the other hand the artisan devotes himself to things. His training is
exclusively objective. His ideas flow outward; he studies the nature and
relations of things. In this investigation he forgets self because his
life becomes a grand struggle in search of truth; and the discovery of
truth in things, if not easy, is ultimately sure of attainment, since
harmony is its sign, and its opposite, the false, is certain of exposure
through its native deformity; for however alluring a lie may be made to
appear in the abstract, in the concrete it is a monster unmasked.
From the false the artisan intuitively shrinks. He can only succeed by
finding the truth, and embodying it in some useful or beautiful thing
which will contribute to the comfort or pleasure of man. Hence his
watchword is utility, or, beauty in utility. Of the engrossing character
of this struggle the story of Bernard Palissy affords a splendid
illustration. Palissy was an artist, a student, and a naturalist, but
poor, and compelled to follow the profession of surveying to support his
family. At the age of thirty he saw an enamelled cup, of Italian
manufacture, which fired his ambition. Ignorant of the nature of clays,
he nevertheless resolved to discover enamel, and entered upon a
laborious course of investigation and experiment with that end in view.
After many years of Herculean effort and indescribable privation, which
beggared and estranged his family, and rendered him an object of
ridicule among his neighbors, he achieved a grand success. At a critical
period of his experiments, in the face of the indignant protests of his
almost starving family, having exhausted his credit to the last penny,
he consigned to the flames of his furnace the chairs, tables, and floors
of his humble cottage, and continued to watch his chemicals with
all-absorbing attention, while his wife in despair rushed through the
streets making loud proclamation of the scandal.
But Palissy was more than a potter; he was a Christian, a philosopher,
and an austere reformer. Notwithstanding he had been petted and
patronized as an ingenious artisan by the royal family of France, he was
finally cast into prison under charge of heresy. It was there that the
remarkable interview with King Henry III. occurred, which immortalized
Palissy as a hero. “My good man,” said the king, “you have been
forty-five years in the service of the queen, my mother, or in mine, and
we have suffered you to live in your own religion, amid all the
executions and the massacres. Now, however, I am so pressed by the Guise
party and my people that I have been compelled in spite of myself to
imprison these two poor women and you.” “Sire,” answered the old man,
“the count came yesterday on your part, promising life to these two
sisters upon condition of the sacrifice of their virtue. They replied
that they would now be martyrs to their own honor as well as for the
honor of God. You have said several times that you feel pity for me; but
it is I who pity you, who have said, ‘I am compelled!’ That is not
speaking like a king. These girls and I, who have part in the kingdom of
heaven--we will teach you to talk royally. The Guisarts, all your
people, and yourself, cannot compel a potter to bow down to images of
clay!”[63] And Palissy the potter and heretic, at the age of seventy,
died in the Bastile, proudly defying a king.
[63] “Palissy the Potter,” Vol. II., pp. 187, 188. By Henry Morley.
Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1853.
The more absorbing the struggle for the discovery of truth the less room
there is in the mind for selfishness; and as selfishness recedes,
justice assumes its appropriate place as the controlling element in
human conduct. The hero is an honest man, that’s all,--
“Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There comes a voice without reply;
’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.”
If all men were heroes--honest--there would be no occasion for heroism.
If all education can be made scientific, all men can be made honest. The
struggle to find truth is more natural than the struggle to succeed
regardless of, or against, truth. The reason why what we call heroism
appears so grand is this: the standards of public judgment have become
so perverted by long custom in the abuse of truth, that normal conduct
appears strange.
When Palissy burned his chairs and tables in the cause of art, his
family and his neighbors derided him, and denounced him as a madman, and
in prison the king urged him, as a friend, to save himself from death by
recanting his assertion of the right of freedom of religious opinion.
Palissy was a hero neither to his family, his friends, nor his king;[64]
but he was right, and his discovery and his firmness rendered him
immortal. We now know, three hundred years farther down the course of
time, that Palissy’s struggle over the furnace in the cause of art was
mentally and morally normal, while the opposition he encountered was
abnormal; and that his defiance of the king was mentally and morally
normal, while his persecution was abnormal and cruel.
[64] “I had nothing but reproaches in the house; in place of
consolation, they gave me maledictions. My neighbors, who had heard of
this affair [the failure of an experiment], said that I was nothing
but a fool, and that I might have had more than eight francs for the
things that I had broken; and all this talk was brought to mingle with
my grief.”--“Palissy the Potter,” Vol. I., p. 190. By Henry Morley.
Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1853.
Palissy’s mind was trained naturally in the direction of rectitude,
while the minds of the millions of men who permitted him to die
unfriended, a prisoner in the Bastile, were developed unnaturally. Their
education was unscientific, and their characters were hence deformed.
The one symmetrical character was that of Palissy, the lover of truth,
who was ready to starve, if need be, for his art, and ready to die for
his faith. The thin ranks of the so-called heroes of the ages of history
constitute the measure of the poverty of the systems of education that
have prevailed among mankind. These so-called heroes are merely normally
developed men--men who search for the truth, and having found it, honor
it always and everywhere. They are peculiar to no clime, to no country,
to no age. They are cosmopolitan, and the fact that they are honored,
after death, by succeeding ages is proof positive of the world’s
progress, or rather of the progress of moral ideas.
The civilization of Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century
presents the most violent possible contrast to that of America in the
last half of the nineteenth century. But the one produced Savonarola,
the hater of abuses in the Roman Catholic Church, and the other John
Brown, the stern, uncompromising hater of human bondage. Four hundred
years is a long period in the history of civilization; but the priest of
the fifteenth century, and the farmer of the nineteenth, are as near of
kin in spirit, as if they had been born of the same mother, and reared
in the same moral atmosphere.
The true hero is always inexorable--as Savonarola in the presence of the
majesty of a dying, remorse-stricken, half-repentant prince, and John
Brown in the presence of his exultant but half-terrified captors. When
Lorenzo di Medici lay terror-stricken, on his death-bed, Savonarola
demanded of the dying prince, as the price of absolution, a restoration
of the liberties of the people of Florence; and this being refused, the
priest departed without one word of peace.
When John Brown, wounded and bleeding, lay a captive at Harper’s Ferry,
listening to the taunts of angry Virginians, he said, calmly and firmly,
“You had better--all you people of the South--prepare yourselves for a
settlement of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner than
you are prepared for it, and the sooner you commence that preparation
the better for you. You may dispose of me very easily--I am nearly
disposed of now--but this question is still to be settled--this negro
question, I mean. The end of that is not yet.”[65]
[65] “The Public Life of Captain John Brown.” p. 283. By John Redpath.
Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, 1860.
There is nothing grander in history, whether real or mythological, than
the picture of the humble priest of the fifteenth century, with no power
except the justice of his cause, shaking thrones and making proud
prelates, and even the Pope himself, tremble with fear! And the exact
parallel of this picture is found, four hundred years down the stream of
time, in the person of the farmer, John Brown, defying the Constitution,
law, and public sentiment of his country in the interest simply of the
cause of justice.
It has been shown through citations from the Walton report, as well as
by the opinions of many competent witnesses, that the New England system
of education, whether correct in theory or not, is, in actual operation,
very defective. But at the time of its establishment it was the best
system in existence. To it this country owes the quality of its
civilization. The neglect of education by the Government of the United
States is the most astonishing fact of its history. It is
incomprehensible how, with a comparatively excellent educational system
in operation, and in full view in the New England, Middle, and Western
States, the National Government could calmly and inactively contemplate
the almost entire neglect of popular education in the States of the
South, and ignore, from year to year, the steadily accumulating horrors
of ignorance and vice which were destined to lead to such deplorable
political and social results.
The difference between the civilization of New England and that of South
Carolina, for example, is exactly measured by the difference between
their respective educational systems. New England undertook, at a very
early day, to educate every class of its citizens; South Carolina made a
monopoly of education, confining it to a single class.
It must be admitted that the American statesmanship of the whole period
of our history has been scarcely less short-sighted than that of England
under the Georges, which resulted in saddling upon her people a debt
that they can never pay. If England had provided a comprehensive and
scientific system of popular education at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, who doubts that the wars through which her debt was
incurred would have been averted? If the Government of the United States
had compelled the adoption of a scientific educational system by the
States of the South, who doubts that slavery would have peaceably passed
away, and the occasion for war passed away with it?
The conspicuous failure of American statesmanship consists in a failure
to appreciate the value of scientific education, it shows that good
citizenship is impossible without good education--for good education and
good citizenship are convertible terms. And it is easy to show, by the
past, that to hesitate on the subject of education is to be lost.[66]
[66] “If you examine into the history of rogues, you will find that
they are as truly manufactured articles as anything else, and it is
just because our present system of political economy gives so large a
stimulus to that manufacture that you may know it to be a false one.
We had better seek for a system which will develop honest men than for
one which will deal cunningly with vagabonds. Let us reform our
schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our
prisons.”--“Unto This Last,” p. 50. By John Ruskin. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 1883.
Why do we provide for popular education? Is it out of pure generosity
that the rich citizen consents to be taxed to pay for the education of
his poor neighbor’s children? Does the man who has no children willingly
surrender a portion of his estate for the education of the children of
others, as an act of benevolence? Not at all. There is no security for
property in a community devoid of education and consequent intelligence.
Intelligence alone confers upon property a sacred character. In one of
two ways only can property be rendered secure in the owner’s hands. It
may be protected by a hired soldiery, through the force of arms,[E13] or
through the force of public sentiment enlightened by education. The
reason why the poor but educated citizen would not lay violent hands on
the rich citizen’s property is the fact that he indulges the intelligent
hope of himself acquiring property. Besides, the morals of a community
are in the ratio of its intelligence. The indulgence of hope promotes
self-esteem, and self-respect, and these qualities react ethically.
It should be borne in mind that while one of the main purposes of all
governments is to preserve property rights, nearly all the governments
of history have been shattered in pieces in the effort to fulfil this
function of their existence. It may be said that there is never anything
sacred about property unless it is honestly acquired. All the force of
our own government was exerted in a vain effort to protect property in
slaves. England has been compelled to disturb the property rights of the
Irish landlords, and this is only the prelude to an attack upon the
property rights of her own landlords. It was the ignorance of the
English people hundreds of years ago that permitted the establishment of
a land system which is now about to crumble in pieces, and in its fail
wreck certain property rights.
There is nothing sacred about property unless it is honestly acquired
and honestly held; and property can only be honestly acquired and
honestly held, in communities intelligent enough to guard its
acquisition, and continued possession, by just and adequate laws. It
follows that education is the sole bulwark of the State, and so of
property.
The question of the first consequence is, therefore, always, What is
the best system of education? It is obvious, also, that the subject of
cost should not enter into the discussion; that the best education is
the cheapest, is an indisputable proposition. We have seen that the New
England system of education, which has spread over the whole country, is
very much better than the system which prevailed in those States of the
Union where slavery continued to exist down to 1864. But we have seen,
also, that that system is very defective; that it is automatic, and
hence not natural, not practical, not scientific. It does not produce
great merchants, great lawyers, great judges, or great legislators. That
it does not, is abundantly shown by the fact that in mercantile life
there are ninety-three to ninety-seven failures in every one hundred
experiments; by the fact that there is notoriously a general failure of
justice; and by the fact that here, as in Great Britain, the chief
business of statesmen is the undoing of vicious legislation.
There is a system of training which produces a much higher average of
culture than that of the public schools and the universities. We allude
to the training received by the students of special mechanical and
technical institutions, and by the apprentices in trade-shops. The proof
of this is found in the world’s railways, ships, harbors, docks, canals,
bridges, telegraph and telephone lines, and in a thousand and one other
manifestations of skill in art. In the adaptation of means to an end,
and in nicety of construction, the mechanic and the civil engineer show,
in innumerable ways, with what thoroughness both their minds and their
hands have been trained. If mercantile operations were governed by such
excellent rules in projection, and by such precision in execution,
ninety-seven merchants in a hundred would not go to the wall.
A story has lately gone the round of the public prints to the effect
that, during a visit to a needle factory by the Emperor of Germany, a
workman begged a hair of his head, bored an eye in it, threaded it, and
handed it back to the monarch, who had expressed surprise that eyes
could be bored in the smaller sizes of needles. It does not matter
whether or not this story is literally true; it illustrates the delicacy
of modern mechanical operations. Hundreds of similar illustrations might
be given, showing how marvellously skilful the hand has become.
It is not claimed that the hand is a nicer instrument than the mind. As
a matter of fact, in drilling the hole in the hair the mind and the hand
work together--the mind directs the hand, we will say. The mind devises
or invents a watch--every wheel, pinion, screw, and spring--and directs
the hand how to make it, and how to set it up, and it ticks off the
time. Why does the mind succeed so admirably when it employs the hand to
execute its will, but so ill when it devises and attempts, itself, to
execute? How is it that the mind invents a watch which, being made by
the hand, records the hour to a second, ninety-nine times in a hundred,
but fails ninety-three to ninety-seven times in a hundred to devise and
carry into execution a mercantile venture? How is it that the mind
invents a steam-engine consisting of a hundred pieces, so that, each
piece being made by a different hand, the machine shall, when set up,
ninety-nine times in a hundred, at once perform the work of five hundred
horses without strain or friction, but when it grapples with law and
fact in the chair of lawyer or judge produces a most pitiable wreck of
justice? How is it that the mind devises and the hand executes with such
nice adaptation of means to the end in view, a bridge, that resembles a
spider’s web, and yet bears thousands of tons and endures for ages, but
when it undertakes to legislate evolves statutes that wear out in a
year? The first iron bridge constructed spanned the Severn, in England.
It was opened to traffic a hundred years ago, but it is still a stanch
structure likely to stand for centuries. Where are the English statutes
of that time? Repealed to give place to a long line of others which in
turn have been repealed. When the famous iron bridge across the Severn
was constructed, English legislators were passing bills to compel the
American colonies to trade only with the mother country, and to tax them
without their consent. Lord Sheffield said, with charming frankness,
that the colonies were founded with the sole view of securing to England
a monopoly of their trade; and Lord Chatham declared that they would not
be permitted to make even a nail or a horseshoe.
In 1516 Sir Thomas More denounced the criminal law of England, declaring
that “the loss of money should not cause the loss of man’s life.”[67]
But this humane and enlightened sentiment had so little weight that
during the reign of Henry VIII. seventy-two thousand thieves were
hanged--at the rate of two thousand a year. In 1785 twenty men were
executed in London at one time for thefts of five shillings. The Lord
Chief-justice and the Lord Chancellor agreed that it would be dangerous
to repeal the law punishing pilfering by youths. In 1816 the Commons
passed a bill abolishing capital punishment for shoplifting--stealing
the value of five shillings--but the Lords defeated it, Lord
Ellenborough, Chief-justice, observing, peevishly, “They want to alter
these laws which a century has proved to be necessary, and which are now
to be overturned by speculation and modern philosophy.”[68]
[67] “The History of England,” Vol. II., p. 83. By Harriet Martineau.
Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.
[68] “The History of England,” Vol. II., p. 85. By Harriet Martineau.
Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.
The cause of these failures--of mercantile ventures, of justice, and of
legislation--is this: Subjective mental processes are automatic, and
hence they neither generate power nor promote rectitude; they enfeeble
rather than energize the brain. Men whose characters are formed by such
educational processes never originate anything. They become selfish,
they venerate the past, their eyes are turned backward; hence, if they
sometimes make a feeble effort to move forward they stumble. The lawyer,
the judge, and the legislator are examples of this class. Their
guide-books are musty folios in a dead language; they look for
“precedents” in an age whose civilization perished with its language,
and whose maxims and rules of life were long ago exploded. Such men can
be compelled to move forward only by the lash of public opinion. Buckle,
speaking of the reforms extorted from the legislators of England, says,
“But it is a mere matter of history that our legislators, even to the
last moment, were so terrified by the idea of innovation that they
refused every reform until the voice of the people rose high enough to
awe them into submission, and forced them to grant what without such
pressure they would by no means have conceded.”[69]
[69] “History of Civilization,” Vol. I., p. 361. By Henry Thomas
Buckle. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1864.
On the other hand, the inventor, the discoverer, and the artisan are
always in the advance, and always moving forward. They never look back
except to catch the vital principle of the invention or discovery of
yesterday for utilization in the improved machine of to-day. Their acts
are never repealed because they never become odious. They never become
odious because they contain the germs of imperishable truth. They are
never false; they are suitable to their time and the stage of
development; they constitute links in the chain of progress. While the
legislator is horrified at the thought of innovation, the inventor, the
discoverer, and the artisan are electrified by the discovery of a new
principle in physics, and delighted at its application in a new
invention, and its practical operation in a new and useful machine.
The difference in effects upon the mental and moral nature, between
purely mental training and mental and manual training combined, is
susceptible of logical explanation. It is only in things that the truth
stands clearly revealed, and only in things that the false is sure of
exposure.[70] Hence exclusively mental training stops far short of the
objective point of true education. For if it be true that the last
analysis of education is art, progress can find expression only in
things--in the work of men’s hands. And it is true; for ideas are mere
vain speculations until they are embodied in things. Nor is this
materialism unless all civilization is material; for the prime
difference between barbarism and civilization consists in the presence,
in a state of civilization, of more things of use and beauty than are
found in a state of barbarism. To exalt things is not materialistic;
they are both the source and issue of ideas, and the measure of
civilization. Ideas and things are hence indissolubly connected; and it
follows that any system of education which separates them is radically
defective.[71] Exclusively mental training does not produce a
symmetrical character, because at best it merely teaches the student how
to think, and the complement of thinking is acting. Before thoughts can
have any influence whatever upon the world of mind and matter external
to the mind originating them they must be expressed. They may be
expressed feebly, through the voice, in words; more durably, and
therefore more forcibly, with the pen, on paper; more forcibly still in
drawing--pictures of things; and, with the superlative degree of force,
in real things.
[70] “To know the truth it is necessary to do the truth.”...
“We rightly seek the meaning of the abstract in the concrete, because
we cannot _act_ in relation to the abstract, which is only a
representative sign; we must give it a concrete form in order to make
it a clear and distinct idea; until we have done so we do not know
that we really believe--only believe that we believe it. A truth is
best certified to be a truth when we live it and have ceased to talk
about it.”--“Body and Will,” p. 49. By Henry Maudsley, M.D. New York:
D. Appleton & Co., 1884.
[71] “Prof. Huxley seems to hold that zoology cannot be learned with
any degree of sufficiency unless the student practises dissection. In
support of this position there are strong reasons. In the first place,
the impression made on the mind by the actual objects, as seen,
handled, and operated upon, is far beyond the efficacy of words or
description. And not only is it greater, but it is more faithful to
the fact. While diagrams have a special value in bringing out links of
connection that are disguised in the actual objects, they can never
show the things exactly as they appear to our senses; and this full
and precise conception of actuality is the most desirable form of
knowledge; it is truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Moreover, it enables the student to exercise a free and independent
judgment upon the dicta of the teacher.”--“Education as a Science,” p.
303. By Alexander Bain, LL.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1884.
The object of education is the generation of power. But to generate and
store up power, whether mental or physical, or both, is a waste of
effort, unless the power is to be exerted. Why generate steam if there
is no engine to be operated? Steam may be likened to an idea which finds
expression through the engine--a thing. Why store the mind with
facts--historical, philosophical, or mathematical--which are useless
until applied to things, if they are not to be applied to things? And if
they are to be applied to things, why not teach the art of so applying
them? As a matter of fact, the system of education which does not do
this is one-sided, incomplete, unscientific. Rousseau says, “Education
itself is certainly nothing but habit.” If this be true, it will be
conceded that the habit of expressing ideas in things should be formed
in the schools, because the chief way in which man is benefited is
through the expression of ideas in things. The system of education which
tends to form this habit is that of the kindergarten and that of the
manual training school. These systems are one in principle. They are not
new; they at least date back to Bacon, who declared that he would
“employ his utmost endeavors towards restoring or cultivating a just and
legitimate familiarity betwixt the mind and things.” The kindergarten
and the manual training school exactly realize Bacon’s idea. The idea of
the manual training school was in the mind of Comenius when he said,
“Let things that have to be done be learned by doing them.” It was in
the mind of Pestalozzi when he said, “Education is the generation of
power.” It was in the mind of Froebel, not less than the kindergarten,
when he said, “The end and aim of all our work should be the harmonious
growth of the whole being.”
These are excellent definitions of education, and they are sequential.
If things that have to be done are learned by doing them, there will be
in the course of the process a wholesome exercise of both body and mind,
and this exercise will result in the generation of power--power to think
well, and to do well; and the process being continued, the result cannot
fail to be the harmonious growth of the whole being. This is scientific,
as opposed to automatic, education.[72]
[72] “Intellectual progress is of necessity from the concrete to the
abstract. But regardless of this, highly abstract subjects such as
grammar, which should come quite late, are begun quite early.
Political geography, dead and uninteresting to a child, and which
should be an appendage of sociological studies, is commenced betimes,
while physical geography, comprehensible and comparatively attractive
to a child, is in great part passed over. Nearly every subject dealt
with is arranged in abnormal order--definitions and rules and
principles being put first, instead of being disclosed, as they are in
the order of nature, through the study of cases. And then, pervading
the whole, is the vicious system of rote learning--a system of
sacrificing the spirit to the letter....
“A leading fact in human progress is that every science is evolved out
of its corresponding art. It results from the necessity we are under,
both individually and as a race, of reaching the abstract by way of
the concrete, that there must be practice and an accruing experience
with its empirical generalizations before there can be
science.”--“Education,” pp. 61, 124. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1883.
[E13] But the protection to property afforded by arms is only
temporary. An increase of the standing army involves an increase of
ignorance and poverty, and the last analysis of ignorance and poverty
is anarchy. The anarchists of Chicago [1886] were of foreign birth.
They came to the United States from the standing-army-ridden countries
of Europe. They were the product, the victims, of the European
governmental system. Hence, the proposal to adopt arms as a remedy for
anarchy is a proposal to abandon the American idea of government for
that of Europe. To preserve the society of to-day from violent
dissolution, it is necessary to shoot the anarchist. But to assure the
permanence of society it is necessary to educate the child of the
anarchist.