EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM--HISTORIC.
_THE MIDDLE AGES._
The Trinity upon which Civilization Rests: Justice, the Arts, and
Labor; and these Depend upon Scientific Education. -- Reason of the
Failure of Theodoric and Charlemagne to Reconstruct the Pagan
Civilization. -- Contempt of Man. -- Serfdom. -- The Vices of the
Time: False Philosophy, an Odious Social Caste, and Ignorance. -- The
Splendid Career of the Moors in Spain, in Contrast. -- Effect upon
Spain of the Expulsion of the Moors. -- The Repressive Force of
Authority and the Atrocious Philosophy of Contempt of Man. -- The Rule
of Italy -- a Menace and a Sneer. -- The work of Regeneration. -- The
Crusades. -- The Destruction of Feudalism. -- The Invention of
Printing. -- The Discovery of America. -- Investigation. --
Discoveries in Science and Art.
Civilization languishes in an atmosphere of injustice, and if the
injustice is gross, as slavery, for example, and long continued, the
State perishes in the social convulsion which ensues. Thus perished the
nations of antiquity. Civilization depends upon the useful arts; in them
it had its origin, and with them it advances. The savage, in his most
primitive state, is ignorant of all the arts; the most highly civilized
man is familiar with, and under obligations to, all of them. The useful
arts depend upon labor. If the laborer is degraded, the useful arts
decline, as he sinks, in the social scale; if he is honored, they
advance, as he rises. The trinity upon which civilization rests is,
therefore, justice, the useful arts, and labor; and this trinity of
saving forces depends in turn upon the scientific education of man.
Rome held all these things in contempt, and Rome perished. Anarchy
ensued, and, from a state of governmental chaos, the feudal system was
evolved. A brief analysis of the history of the mediæval period will
show that education was unscientific, and consequently that justice was
scorned, the useful arts neglected, and labor despised.
Theodoric strove to stem the tide of demoralization which succeeded the
overthrow of the pagans in Italy. He was a semi-barbarian, but a man of
genius, and ten years of his youth, spent at Constantinople, taught him
the value of civilization. Under his reign there was a restoration of
the common industries, work on internal improvements was resumed, and
there was a revival of polite literature and the fine arts. But there
was no general prosperity because there was no general system of
education. Polite literature must rest upon a basis of general culture,
or it is valueless to the country in which it flourishes. So of the fine
arts; they can exist legitimately only as the natural outgrowth and
embellishment of the useful arts.[80] In the due order of development
the useful precede the fine arts. Theodoric began the reconstruction of
the exhausted Roman civilization from the top, and his work was a
complete failure, of course, because it had no foundation. It was like
the Greek and Roman philosophy, it had no basis of things to rest upon.
Hence the order evoked from chaos by the great Ostrogoth to chaos soon
returned.
[80] “But it is one thing to admit that æsthetic culture is in a high
degree conducive to human happiness, and another thing to admit that
it is a fundamental requisite to human happiness. However important it
may be, it must yield precedence to those kinds of culture which bear
more directly upon the duties of life. As before hinted, literature
and the fine arts are made possible by those activities which make
individual and social life possible; and manifestly that which is made
possible must be postponed to that which makes it
possible.”--“Education,” p. 72. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1883.
Charlemagne also attempted to reconstruct a worn-out civilization
through the revival of polite literature and the fine arts. He assembled
at his court distinguished _littérateurs_ from all parts of the world,
with the view of reviving classical learning. He established a normal
school called “The Palatine,” whence classically trained teachers were
sent into the provinces. He constructed gorgeous palaces, some of which
were ornamented with columns and sculptural fragments, the spoil of the
earlier architectural triumphs of Italy. But he did not found schools
for the education of the common people. The common people were serfs.
The theory of Plato still prevailed, namely, that the majority is always
dull, and always wrong; that wisdom and virtue reside in the minority.
In pursuance of this theory, which happens, curiously enough, to inure
to the exclusive benefit of its inventors and supporters, education was
confined to a small class. The training of the masses was wholly
neglected, and they were poor, ignorant, and brutal. The state of
mediæval society is graphically summarized by a modern historian:
“In the castle sits the baron, with his children on his lap, and his
wife leaning on his shoulder; the troubadour sings, and the page and the
demoiselle exchange a glance of love. The castle is the home of music
and chivalry and family affection; the convent is the home of religion
and of art. But the people cower in their wooden huts, half starved,
half frozen, and wolves sniff at them through the chinks in the walls.
The convent prays and the castle sings; the cottage hungers and groans
and dies.”[81]
[81] “The Martyrdom of Man.” By Winwood Reade. New York: Charles P.
Somerby, 1876.
Enterprise was the slave of superstition and ignorance. Some monks in
Germany desired to erect a corn-mill, but a neighboring lord objected,
declaring that the wind belonged to him. The useful arts were unknown
and unstudied except by the monks, and their practice of them was
confined chiefly to fashioning utensils for the use of the altar.
Mankind lay in a state of intellectual and moral paralysis. Feudalism
emasculated human energy. One art only flourished--the art of war. The
pursuit of any of the useful arts, beyond that of agriculture, by the
serfs, was impracticable, since sufficient time could not be spared from
feudal strife for the proper tillage of the soil. The vassal was always
subject to summary call to arms. If in the spring the noble wished to
fight, the fields remained unplanted; if he wished to fight in the fall,
the harvest remained ungathered. The serf, therefore, led a precarious
life. If he escaped death in battle, he was still quite likely to die of
starvation. In the fertile plains of Lombardy, in the first half of the
thirteenth century, there were five famines!
Nothing happens without due cause. The misfortunes suffered by the
people of Europe during the Middle Ages did not fall upon them from the
clouds. The moral darkness which veiled the face of justice, and the
intellectual stupor which prevented scientific and art researches, are
not inexplicable mysteries. The vices, the cruelties, the poverty, and
the pitiable superstitions of that time were the product of a false
philosophy, an odious social caste, and a state of general ignorance.
It happens that for hundreds of years of this period of wretchedness and
crime there was in the heart of Europe an industrious, cultured,
prosperous, and happy people. Their religion forbade the taking of
usurious interest under terrible moral penalties; it also forbade “all
distinctions of caste,” and enjoined full social equality. They were the
friends of education. “To every mosque was attached a public school, in
which the children of the poor were taught to read and write.” They
established libraries in their chief cities, and were the patrons of the
sciences and of the useful arts in all their forms. In a word, to the
general prevalence of superstition and ignorance in Europe the Moors in
Spain constituted a glowing exception.
Wherever the Saracen went he carried science and art. He honored labor,
and genius and learning followed in his footsteps. Taught by learned
Jews, he studied the works of the ancient philosophers, and preserved
and extended their knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, algebra, and
geography. Cordova was the abode of wealth, learning, refinement, and
the arts. Its mosques and palaces were models of architectural splendor,
and its industries employed 200,000 families. Seville contained 16,000
silk-looms, and employed 130,000 weavers. The banks of the Guadalquivir
were thickly studded with those gems of free labor, manufacturing
villages. The dyeing of silk and wool fabrics was carried to great
perfection, and the Moorish metal-workers were the most expert of the
time. The Saracen invented cotton paper, introduced into Spain cotton
and leather manufactures, and promoted the cultivation of sugar-cane,
rice, and the mulberry. Nor did he neglect agriculture in any of its
branches; he created a new era in husbandry. His kingdom in Spain was
the richest and most prosperous in the Western world; indeed, its
prosperity was in striking contrast with the poverty and misery of the
peoples by whom it was surrounded. Under the third caliph its revenue
reached £6,000,000 sterling, a sum, as Gibbon remarks, which in the
tenth century probably surpassed the united revenues of all the
Christian monarchs. But these industrious, cultured people were the
descendants of invaders, and the Spaniards, under the influence of a
blind and unreasoning impulse of religious and patriotic zeal, drove
them from the soil they had literally made to “blossom like the rose,”
and themselves relapsed into a state of indolence, ignorance, and
poverty.
From the effects of the persecution of a race of artificers, and the
proscription of the useful arts, Spain has never recovered. She has
since always been, and is to-day, a striking exemplification of the
verity of the proposition that stagnation in the useful arts is the
death of civilization. In the last half of the seventeenth century the
people of Madrid were threatened with starvation. To avert the impending
calamity the adjacent country was scoured by the military, and the
inhabitants compelled to yield supplies. There was danger that the Royal
family would go hungry to bed. The tax-gatherer sold houses and
furniture, and the inhabitants were forced to fly; the fields were left
uncultivated, and multitudes died from want and exposure. During the
seventeenth century Madrid lost half its population; the looms of
Seville were silenced; the woollen manufactures of Toledo were
transferred by the exiled Moriscoes to Tunis; Castile, Segovia, and
Burgos lost their manufactures, and their inhabitants were reduced to
poverty and despair.[82]
[82] “The Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. II., Chap. II. By
John William Draper, M.D., LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers; “History
of Civilization in England,” Vol. II., Chap. I. By Henry Thomas
Buckle. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1864.
Two leading causes contributed to reduce the people of Europe during the
Middle Ages to a state of moral obliquity, intellectual torpor, and
physical incapacity--the repressive force of authority and the atrocious
philosophy of contempt of man formulated by Machiavelli. The one forbade
scientific investigation, the other strangled the spirit of invention in
the grip of enforced ignorance. Authority chilled courage, and contempt
withered hope. Italy governed the world, and her rule consisted of a
menace and a sneer. Under this _régime_ of cruelty and cynicism man
shrunk into a state of moral cowardice and intellectual lethargy.
The political maxims which bear the name of Machiavelli were not
invented by him. When he formulated them, in 1513, they had been in
force in Italy a thousand years. These maxims explain the fact of the
existence of a period of the world’s history known as “the Dark Ages.”
The chief of them divides the human race into three classes, the members
of the first of which understand things by their own natural powers; the
second when they are explained to them; the third not at all. The third
class embraces a vast majority of men; the second only a small number;
the first a very small number. The first class is to rule both the other
classes, the second by craft and duplicity, the third by authority, and,
that failing, by force. Other maxims assume the despicable character of
all men, and justify falsehood, duplicity, cruelty, and murder, in the
ruling class. A single proposition shows the infamy of the whole system,
namely, “There are three ways of deciding any contest--by fraud, by
force, or by law, and a wise man will make the most suitable
choice.”[83] These are maxims not of civilization but of barbarism. They
involve a state of slavery, and where slavery exists the useful arts
decline, and ultimately perish. And so it was in the Middle Ages.
[83] “The Prince,” Chap. XVIII. By Niccolo Machiavelli.
Several great events led to the emancipation of the people of Europe
from the joint reign of authority and contempt. The learning of the Jews
and Saracens--their knowledge of the arts and sciences--gradually
spread, and occupied the minds of cloistered students, giving to them an
intellectual impulse. The Crusades, pitiful and prolific of horrors as
they were, shed a great light upon Europe. They brought the men of the
West face to face with a practical progressive civilization--a
civilization that “filled the earth with prodigies of human skill.” The
Crusaders were told that they would be led against hordes of barbarians.
What astonishment must have seized them when they stood under the walls
of Constantinople and beheld its splendors! Nor was their surprise less,
doubtless, in the character of the foe they encountered. They had
expected to meet with treachery and cruelty; they found chivalry,
courtesy, and high culture.[84]
[84] “The Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. II., pp. 135, 136.
By John William Draper, M.D., LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers.
These surprises and contrasts profoundly impressed the Crusaders, and
they returned to Europe relieved of many illusions, and notably of the
fallacy that the wealth of Eastern princes was destined to supply the
waste of their own squandered estates. They returned, too, to find a new
civilization in process of development. Two hundred years of comparative
freedom from the repressive force of feudalism changed the face of the
country and the character of its people. During the absence of the
nobles, in the Holy Land, a middle class sprung into existence,
possessing the qualities which always distinguish that class--thrift and
prudence. The mortgaged estates of the Crusaders had fallen partly into
their hands, and partly into the hands of the Crown. Towns had sprung
up, and a commercial class and a manufacturing class had been formed.
The artisan became a factor in the social problem. He offered his wares
to the lords and ladies of the castles, and they bought themselves poor.
As Emerson says, “The banker with his seven per cent. drove the earl out
of his castle.” In the eleventh century nobility was above price, in the
thirteenth it was for sale, and soon afterwards it was offered as a
gift.
The invention of printing, the art preservative of all arts, removed the
seal from the lips of learning. The desire to conceal is no match for
the desire to print. Thenceforth, through the medium of types, the voice
of genius was destined to reach to the ends of the earth; and, more
important still, every discovery in science, and every invention in art,
became the sure heritage of future ages.
The discovery of America was the crowning act of man’s emancipation. In
sweeping away the last vestige of the theory on which patristic
geography was based, Columbus freed mankind. In the cry of “land ho!”
with which he greeted the new continent, he sounded the death-knell of
intellectual slavery. His was the last act in a series of acts which
struck off the shackles of thought, and let in upon the long night of
the Middle Ages the clear light of day. Leonardo da Vinci took up the
interrupted work of Archimedes, and the science of mechanics made rapid
progress. At last it was correctly observed that “experiment is the only
interpreter of nature,” and the development of natural philosophy began.
Bruno was still to be burned, and Galileo imprisoned. But the
persecutors of those great men were no longer moved by mere blind zeal.
They believed and trembled, and in seeking to drown the truth in the
blood of the votaries of science, they rendered it more conspicuous. By
the light of the flames which consumed the body of the too daring
philosopher a thousand scientists studied the stars, the earth, and the
air.
The invention of printing paralyzed authority, and the discovery of
America gave wings to hope. A few manuscripts could be locked in vaults
or burned, but millions of books must inevitably, ultimately, find their
way to the people. Books were, therefore, the sure promise of universal
culture--the precursor of the common school. The discovery of another
continent startled the people of Europe from the deep sleep of a
thousand years, and sent a fresh current of blood surging through their
veins. It seemed like a sort of new creation, and appealed powerfully to
the imagination. And it is always the imagination that “blazes” the path
to glorious achievements. It is through the imagination that men are
moved to “crave after the unseen,” and through the imagination that the
human mind becomes big with “bold and lofty conceptions.” A new world
having been discovered by one man, it was natural that all men should
be put upon inquiry. Hence the era of investigation, the resulting
discoveries of science, and their innumerable applications, through the
useful arts, to the fast multiplying needs of man.