region, but it is not so, for the relations of human beings with each
other appear to me to belong to this region. The strange affinities and
hostilities of temperament, the inexplicable and undeniable thing
called charm, the attraction and repulsion of character--all this is in
the mystical region of the spirit, the region of intuition and
instinct, which is a far stronger, more vital, and more general region
than the intellectual or the artistic. And further, there comes the
deepest intuition of all, the relation of the human spirit to its
Maker, its originating cause. Whether this relation can be a direct one
is a matter for each person to decide from his own experience; but
perhaps the only two things of which a human being can be said to be
absolutely conscious are his own identity, and the existence of a
controlling Power outside of him. And here lies the deepest danger of
all, that a man should attempt to limit or define his conception of the
Power that originated him, by his own preferences. The deepest mystery
of all lies in the conviction, which seems to be inextricably rooted in
the human spirit, namely, the instinct to distinguish between the
impulses which we believe emanate from God, and the impulses which we
believe emanate from ourselves. It is incontestable that the greater
part of the human race have the instinct that in following beneficent,
unselfish, noble impulses they are following the will of their Maker;
but that in yielding to cruel, sensual, low impulses they are acting
contrary to the will of the Creator. And this intuition is one which
many of us do not doubt, though it is a principle, which cannot be
scientifically proved. Indeed, it is incontestable that, though we
believe the will of God to be on the side of what is good, yet He puts
many obstacles, or permits them to be put, in the way of the man who
desires to act rightly.
The only way, I believe, in this last region, in which we can hope to
improve, to win victories, is the way of a quiet and sincere
submission. It is easy to submit to the Will of God when it sends us
joy and peace, when it makes us courageous, high-hearted, and just. The
difficulty is to acquiesce when He sends us adversity, ill-health,
suffering; when He permits us to sin, or if that is a faithless phrase,
does not grant us strength to resist. But we must try to be patient, we
must try to interpret the value of suffering, the meaning of failure,
the significance of shame. Perhaps it may be urged that this too is a
temptation of egotism in another guise, and that we grow thus to
conceive of ourselves as filling too large a space in the mind of God.
But unless we do this, we can only conceive of ourselves as the victims
of God's inattention or neglect, which is a wholly despairing thought.
In one sense we must be egotistic, if self-knowledge is egotism. We
must try to take the measure of our faculties, and we must try to use
them. But while we must wisely humiliate ourselves before the majesty
of God, the vast and profound scheme of the Universe, we must at the
same time believe that we have our place and our work; that God indeed
purposely set us where we find ourselves; and among the complicated
difficulties of sense, of temptation, of unhappiness, of failure, we
must try to fix our eyes humbly and faithfully upon the best, and seek
to be worthy of it. We must try not to be self-sufficient, but to be
humble and yet diligent.
I do not think that we practise this simple resignation often enough;
it is astonishing how the act of placing our own will as far as
possible in unison with the Will of God restores our tranquillity.
It was only a short time ago that I was walking alone among fields and
villages. It was one of those languid days of early spring, when the
frame and the mind alike seem unstrung and listless. The orchards were
white with flower, and the hedges were breaking into fresh green. I had
just returned to my work after a brief and delightful holiday, and was
overshadowed with the vague depression that the resumption of work
tends to bring to anxious minds. I entered a little ancient church that
stood open; it was full of sunlight, and had been tenderly decked with
an abundance of spring flowers. If I had been glad at heart it would
have seemed a sweet place, full of peace and beautiful mysteries. But
it had no voice, no message for me. I was overshadowed too by a sad
anxiety about one whom I loved, who was acting perversely and
unworthily. There came into my mind a sudden gracious thought to commit
myself to the heart of God, not to disguise my weakness and anxiety,
not to ask that the load should be lightened, but that I might endure
His will to the uttermost.
In a moment came the strength I sought; no lightening of the load, but
a deeper serenity, a desire to bear it faithfully. The very fragrance
of the flowers seemed to mingle like a sweet incense with my vow. The
old walls whispered of patience and hope. I do not know where the peace
that then settled upon me came from, but not, it seemed, out of the
slender resources of my own vexed spirit.
But after all, the wonder is, in this mysterious world, not that there
is so much egotism abroad, but that there is so little! Considering the
narrow space, the little cage of bones and skin, in which our spirit is
confined, like a fluttering bird, it often astonished me to find how
much of how many people's thoughts is not given to themselves, but to
their work, their friends, their families.
The simplest and most practical cure for egotism, after all, is
resolutely to suppress public manifestations of it; and it is best to
overcome it as a matter of good manners, rather than as a matter of
religious principle. One does not want people to be impersonal; all one
desires to feel is that their interest and sympathy is not, so to
speak, tethered by the leg, and only able to hobble in a small and
trodden circle. One does not want people to suppress their personality,
but to be ready to compare it with the personalities of others, rather
than to refer other personalities to the standard of their own; to be
generous and expansive, if possible, and if that is not possible, or
not easy, to be prepared, at least, to take such deliberate steps as
all can take, in the right direction. We can all force ourselves to
express interest in the tastes and idiosyncrasies of others, we can ask
questions, we can cultivate relations. The one way in which we can all
of us improve, is to commit ourselves to a course of action from which
we shall be ashamed to draw back. Many people who would otherwise drift
into self-regarding ways do this when they marry. They may marry for
egotistical reasons; but once inside the fence, affection and duty and
the amazing experience of having children of their own give them the
stimulus they need. But even the most helpless celibate has only to
embark upon relations with others, to find them multiply and increase.
After all, egotism has little to do with the forming or holding of
strong opinions, or even with the intentness with which we pursue our
aims. The dog is the intentest of all animals, and throws himself most
eagerly into his pursuits, but he is also the least egotistical and the
most sympathetic of creatures. Egotism resides more in a kind of proud
isolation, in a species of contempt for the opinions and aims of
others. It is not, as a rule, the most successful men who are the most
egotistical. The most uncompromisingly egotist I know is a would-be
literary man, who has the most pathetic belief in the interest and
significance of his own very halting performances, a belief which no
amount of rejection or indifference can shake, and who has hardly a
good word for the books of other writers. I have sometimes thought that
it is in his case a species of mental disease, because he is an acute
critic of all work except his own. Doctors will indeed tell one that
transcendent egotism is very nearly allied to insanity; but in ordinary
cases a little common sense and a little courtesy will soon suppress
the manifestations of the tendency, if a man can only realize that the
forming of decided opinions is the cheapest luxury in the world, while
a licence to express them uncompromisingly is one of the most
expensive. Perhaps the hardest kind of egotism to cure, is the egotism
that is combined with a deferential courtesy, and the power of
displaying a superficial sympathy, because an egotist of this type so
seldom encounters any checks which would convince him of his fault.
Such people, if they have natural ability, often achieve great success,
because they pursue their own ambitions with relentless perseverance,
and have the tact to do it without appearing to interfere with the
designs of others. They bide their time; they are all consideration and
delicacy; they are never importunate or tiresome; if they fail, they
accept the failure as though it were a piece of undeserved good
fortune; they never have a grievance; they simply wipe up the spilt
milk, and say no more about it; baffled at one point, they go quietly
round the corner, and continue their quest. They never for a moment
really consider any one's interests except their own; even their
generous impulses are deliberately calculated for the sake of the
artistic effect. Such people make it hard to believe in disinterested
virtue; yet they join with the meek in inheriting the earth, and their
prosperity seems the sign of Divine approval.
But apart from the definite steps that the ordinary, moderately
interesting, moderately successful man may take, in the direction of a
cure for egotism, the best cure, after all, for all faults, is a humble
desire to be different. That is the most transforming power in the
world; we may fail a thousand times, but as long as we are ashamed of
our failure, as long as we do not helplessly acquiesce, as long as we
do not try to comfort ourselves for it by a careful parade of our other
virtues, we are in the pilgrim's road. It is a childish fault, after
all. I watched to-day a party of children at play. One detestable
little boy, the clumsiest and most incapable of the party, spent the
whole time in climbing up a step and jumping from it, while he
entreated all the others to see how far he could project himself. There
was not a child there who could not have jumped twice as far, but they
were angelically patient and sympathetic with the odious little wretch.
It seemed to me a sad, small parable of what we so many of us are
engaged all our lives long in doing. The child had no eyes for and no
thoughts of the rest; he simply reiterated his ridiculous performance,
and claimed admiration. There came into my mind that exquisite and
beautiful ode, the work too, strange to say, of a transcendent egotist,
Coventry Patmore, and the prayer he made:
"Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
Nor vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
'I will be sorry for their childishness.'"
This is where we may leave our problem; leave it, that is to say, if we
have faithfully struggled with it, if we have tried to amend ourselves
and to encourage others; if we have done all this, and reached a point
beyond which progress seems impossible. But we must not fling our
problems and perplexities, as we are apt to do, upon the knees of God,
the very instant they begin to bewilder us, as children bring a tangled
skein, or a toy bent crooked, to a nurse. We must not, I say; and yet,
after all, I am not sure that it is not the best and simplest way of
all!
IX
EDUCATION
I said that I was a public-school master for nearly twenty years; and
now that it is over I sometimes sit and wonder, rather sadly, I am
afraid, what we were all about.
We were a strictly classical school; that is to say, all the boys in
the school were practically specialists in classics, whether they had
any aptitude for them or not. We shoved and rammed in a good many other
subjects into the tightly packed budget we called the curriculum. But
it was not a sincere attempt to widen our education, or to give boys a
real chance to work at the things they cared for; it was only a
compromise with the supposed claims of the public, in order that we
might try to believe that we taught things we did not really teach. We
had an enormous and elaborate machine; the boys worked hard, and the
masters were horribly overworked. The whole thing whizzed, banged,
grumbled, and hummed like a factory; but very little education was the
result. It used to go to my heart to see a sparkling stream of bright,
keen, lively little boys arrive, half after half, ready to work, full
of interest, ready to listen breathlessly to anything that struck their
fancy, ready to ask questions--such excellent material, I used to
think. At the other end used to depart a slow river of cheerful and
conventional boys, well-dressed, well-mannered, thoroughly nice,
reasonable, sensible, and good-humoured creatures, but knowing next to
nothing, without intellectual interests, and, indeed, honestly
despising them. I do not want to exaggerate; and I will frankly confess
that there were always a few well-educated boys among them; but these
were boys of real ability, with an aptitude for classics. And as
providing a classical education, the system was effective, though
cumbrous; hampered and congested by the other subjects, which were well
enough taught, but which had no adequate time given to them, and
intruded upon the classics without having opportunity to develop
themselves. It is a melancholy picture, but the result certainly was
that intellectual cynicism was the note of the place.
The pity of it is that the machinery was all there; cheerful industry
among masters and boys alike; but the whole thing frozen and chilled,
partly by the congestion of subjects, partly by antiquated methods.
Moreover, to provide a classical education for the best boys,
everything else was sacrificed. The boys were taught classics, not on
the literary method, but on the academic method, as if they were all to
enter for triposes and scholarships, and to end by becoming professors.
Instead of simply reading away at interesting and beautiful books, and
trying, to cover some ground, a great quantity of pedantic grammar was
taught; time was wasted in trying to make the boys compose in both
Latin and Greek, when they had no vocabulary, and no knowledge of the
languages. It was like setting children of six and seven to write
English in the style of Milton and Carlyle.
The solution is a very obvious one; it is, at all costs to simplify,
and to relieve pressure. The staple of education should be French, easy
mathematics, history, geography, and popular science. I would not even
begin Latin or Greek at first. Then, when the first stages were over, I
would have every boy with any special gift put to a single subject, in
which he should try to make real progress, but so that there would be
time to keep up the simpler subjects as well. The result would be that
when a boy had finished his course, he would have some one subject
which he could reasonably be expected to have mastered up to a certain
point. He would have learnt classics, or mathematics, or history, or
modern languages, or science, thoroughly; while all might hope to have
a competent knowledge of French, English, history, easy mathematics,
and easy science. Boys who had obviously no special aptitude would be
kept on at the simple subjects. And if the result was only that a
school sent out boys who could read French easily, and write simple
French grammatically, who knew something of modern history and
geography, could work out sums in arithmetic, and had some conception
of elementary science--well, they would, I believe, be very fairly
educated boys.
The reason why intellectual cynicism sets in, is because the boys, as
they go on, feel that they have mastered nothing. They have been set to
compose in Greek and Latin and French; the result is that they have no
power of composing in any of these languages, when they might have
learnt to compose in one. Meanwhile, they have not had time to read any
English to speak of, or to be practised in writing it. They know
nothing of their own history or of modern geography; and the blame is
not with them if they find all knowledge arid and unattractive.
I would try all sorts of experiments. I would make boys do easy
precis-writing; to give a set of boys a simple printed correspondence
and tell them to analyse it, would be to give them a task in which the
dullest would find some amusement. I should read a story aloud, or a
short episode of history, and require them to re-tell it in their own
words. Or I would relate a simple incident, and make them write it in
French; make them write letters in French. And it would be easy thus to
make one subject play into another, because they could be made to give
an account in French of something that they had done in science or
history.
At present each of the roads--Latin, Greek, French, mathematics,
science--leads off in a separate direction, and seems to lead nowhere
in particular.
The defenders of the classical system say that it fortifies the mind
and makes it a strong and vigorous instrument. Where is the proof of
it? It is true that it fortifies and invigorates minds which have, to
start with, plenty of grip and interest; but pure classics are, as the
results abundantly prove, too hard a subject for ordinary minds, and
they are taught in too abstruse and elaborate a way. If it were
determined by the united good sense of educational authorities that
Latin and Greek must be retained at all costs, then the only thing to
do would be to sacrifice all other subjects, and to alter all the
methods of teaching the classics. I do not think it would be a good
solution; but it would be better than the present system of
intellectual starvation.
The truth is that the present results are so poor that any experiments
are justified. The one quality which you can depend upon in boys is
interest, and interest is ruthlessly sacrificed. When I used to press
this fact upon my sterner colleagues, they would say that I only wanted
to make things amusing, and that the result would be that we should
only turn out amateurs. But amateurs are at least better than
barbarians; and my complaint is that the majority of the boys are not
turned out even professionally equipped in the elaborate subjects they
are supposed to have been taught.
The same melancholy thing goes on in the older Universities. The
classics are retained as a subject in which all must qualify; and the
education provided for the ordinary passman is of a contemptible,
smattering kind; it is really no education at all. It gives no grip, or
vigour, or stimulus. Here again no one takes any interest in the
average man. If the more liberal residents try to get rid of the
intolerable tyranny of compulsory classics, a band of earnest,
conventional people streams up from the country and outvotes them,
saying solemnly, and obviously believing, that education is in danger.
The truth is that the intellectual education of the average Englishman
is sacrificed to an antiquated humanist system, administered by
unimaginative and pedantic people.
The saddest part of it all is that we have, most of us, so little idea
of what we want to effect by education. My own theory is a simple one.
I think that we ought first of all to equip boys, as, far as we can, to
play a useful part in the world. Such a theory is decried by
educational theorists as being utilitarian; but if education is not to
be useful, we had better close our schools at once. The idealist says,
"Never mind the use; get the best educational instrument for the
training of the mind, and, when you have finished your work, the mind
will be bright and strong, and capable of discharging any labour." That
is a beautiful theory; but it is not borne out by results; and one of
the reasons of the profound disbelief which is rapidly spreading in the
country with regard to our public schools, is that we send out so many
boys, not only without intellectual life, but not even capable of
humble usefulness. These theorists continue to talk of classics as a
splendid gymnastic, but in their hands it becomes a rack; instead of
leaving the limbs supple and well knit, they are strained, disjointed,
and feeble. Even the flower of our classical system are too often left
without any original power of expression; critical, fastidious minds,
admiring erudition, preferring the elucidation of second-rate authors
to the study of the best. A man who reads Virgil for pleasure is a
better result of a system of education than one who re-edits Tibullus.
Instead of having original thoughts, and a style of their own to
express them in, these high classicists are left with a profound
knowledge of the style and usage of ancient authors, a thing not to be
undervalued as a step in a progress, but still essentially an anteroom
of the mind.
The further task that lies before us educators, when we have trained a
mind to be useful, consists in the awakening, in whatever regions may
be possible, of the soul. By this I do not mean the ethical soul, but
the spirit of fine perception of beauty, of generous admiration for
what is noble and true and high. And here I am sure that we fail, and
fail miserably. For one thing, these great classicists make the mistake
of thinking that only through literature, and, what is more, the
austere literature of Greece and Rome, can this sense be developed. I
myself have a deep admiration for Greek literature. I think it one of
the brightest flowers of the human spirit, and I think it well that any
boy with a real literary sense should be brought into contact with it.
I do not think highly of Latin literature. There are very few writers
of the first rank. Virgil is, of course, one; and Horace is a splendid
craftsman, but not a high master of literature. There is hardly any
prose in Latin fit for boys to read. Cicero is diffuse, and often
affords little more than small-talk on abstract topics; Tacitus a
brilliant but affected prosateur, Caesar a dull and uninspiring author.
But to many boys the path to literary appreciation cannot lie through
Latin, or even Greek, because the old language hangs like a veil
between them and the thought within. To some boys the enkindling of the
intellectual soul comes through English literature, to some through
history, to some through a knowledge of other lands, which can be
approached by geography. To some through art and music; and of these
two things we trifle with the latter and hardly touch upon the former.
I cannot see that a knowledge of the lives, the motives, the
performances of artists is in itself a less valuable instrument of
education than a knowledge of the lives, motives, and performances of
writers, even though they be Greek.
What our teachers fail in--and the most enthusiastic often fail most
hopelessly--is sympathy and imagination. They cannot conceive that what
moves, touches, and inspires themselves may have no meaning for boys
with a different type of mind.
The result of our education can be well reviewed by one who, like
myself, after wrestling, often very sorrowfully, with the problems of
school education, comes up to a university and gets to know something
of these boys at a later stage. Many of them are fine, vigorous
fellows; but they often tend to look upon their work as a disagreeable
necessity, which they do conscientiously, expecting nothing in
particular from it. They play games ardently, and fill their hours of
leisure with talk about them. Yet one discerns in mind after mind the
germs of intellectual things, undeveloped and bewildered. Many of them
have an interest in something, but they are often ashamed to talk about
it. They have a deep horror of being supposed to be superior; they
listen politely to talk about books and pictures, conscious of
ignorance, not ill-disposed to listen; but it is all an unreal world to
them.
I am all for hard and strenuous work. I do not at all wish to make work
slipshod and dilettante. I would raise the standards of simple
education, and force boys to show that they are working honestly. I
want energy and zeal above everything. But my honest belief is that you
cannot get strenuous and zealous work unless you also have interest and
belief in work. At present, education as conducted in our public-school
and university system appears to me to be neither utilitarian nor
intellectual. It aims at being intellectual first and utilitarian
afterwards, and it misses both.