self-help of course, was that in mutual aid. We are establishing
schools of philanthropy in the modern time and we talk much about the
organization of charity and other phases of mutual aid. In this as in
everything else we map out, as George Eliot once said, our ignorance
of things, or at least our gropings after solutions of problems, in
long Greek names, which often serve to produce the idea that we know
ever so much more about these subjects than we really do. The training
in brotherly love and helpfulness in the old gilds was a fine school.
Those who think that it is only now that ideas of mutuality in sharing
responsibilities, of co-operation and co-ordination of effort for the
benefit of all, of community interests, are new, should study Toulmin
Smith's work on the gilds, or read Brentano on the foreign gilds.
There is not a phase of our organization of charity in the modern time
that was not well anticipated by the members of the gilds, and that,
too, in ways such as we cannot even hope to rival unless we change the
basis on which our helpfulness is founded. Theirs was not a stooping
down of supposed better, or so-called upper classes, to help the
lower, {187} but organization among the people to help themselves so
that there was in no sense a pauperization.
Every phase of human need was looked to. We are just beginning to
realize our obligations to care for the old, and the last twenty years
has seen various efforts on the part of governments to provide old-age
pensions. In the Middle Ages according to the laws of the gilds the
man who had paid his dues for seven years would then draw a weekly
pension equal to something more than five dollars now, for all the
rest of his life if he were disabled by injury, or had become
incapacitated from old age or illness. Then there were gilds to
provide insurance against loss by fire, loss by robbery on land and
also on sea, loss by shipwreck, loss even by imprisonment and all
other phases of human needs. If the workman were injured his family
nursed him during the day but a brother member of the gild, as we have
said, was sent to care for him at night, and a good portion of his
wages went on, paid to him out of the gild chest. If he died his widow
and orphans were cared for by a special pension. The widow did not
have to break up the family and send the children to orphan asylums.
There were practically no orphan asylums. The gilds cared for the
children of dead members. As the boys grew up special attention was
given them so as to provide a trade for them, and they were given
earlier opportunities than others to get on in life. {188} The orphans
were the favorite children of the gilds, and instead of a child being
handicapped by the loss of his parents when he was young, it sometimes
happened that he got better opportunities than if his parents lived.
These gilds provided opportunities for social entertainment and
friendly intercourse and for such acquaintanceship as would afford
mutual pleasure and give opportunities for the meeting of the young
folks,--sons and daughters of the members of the gild. They had their
yearly benefit at which the wives of the members and their sweethearts
were supposed by rule to come, and then they had other meetings and
social gatherings--picnics in the country in the summer, dances in the
winter time and all in a circle where every one knew every one else,
and all went well. These are some social features of these gilds
educational in the highest sense that we can well envy in the modern
time, when we find it so difficult to secure innocent, happy pleasures
for young people that will not leave a bad taste in the mouth
afterwards. When a member of the gild died his brother members
attended the Mass which was said for him and gave a certain amount in
charity that was meant to be applied for his benefit. The whole
outlook on life was eminently brotherly. There has never been such a
teaching of true fraternity, of the brotherhood of man, of the
necessity for mutual aid and then of such practice of it as makes it
easy, as among these old gilds.
{189}
The finest result of this teaching is to be seen in the democratic
spirit that gradually arose as a consequence of these gilds and their
teaching of self-government in all local affairs to the people. The
gilds were arranged and organized in the various parishes. These
parishes were independent communities for local affairs who had charge
of the police system, the health, the road-making, the path-keeping,
the boundary-guarding and, in general, the comfort and convenience of
the community. The gildsmen, more than any others, were the factors in
these parishes. They accumulated money for the various purposes and
had great influence in the development of the community life and the
solution of local government problems.
It would be very easy to think that the gilds could not have fulfilled
all these duties and subserved all these needs. If we recall, however,
that there were 80,000 gilds in England at the end of the fifteenth
century, when there were not more than 4,000,000 of people in the
whole country, then we can see how much could be accomplished. Alas,
at the beginning of the next century all their moneys were
confiscated, and because they were Church societies, every one of them
requiring attendance at Church duties and at Mass, as well as at the
Masses for the dead, but, above all, for the crime of having money in
their treasuries at a time when the King needed money and his appetite
had been whetted by the spoil of the {190} monasteries and the
churches, the gilds were obliterated. Only a few of them in London
that had powerful protectors and that escaped on the plea that they
were commercial organizations and not religious societies, were able
to preserve something of their old-time integrity. These are now so
rich that they are the wonder of those who know them. They give us a
good idea, however, of the deep foundations that had been established
out of the common chest in the purchase of property for these gilds.
In solving the problems of industrial insurance, of providing for the
widows and the orphans, of securing annuities when they would be
needed, these gilds set us an example that it would be well for us to
follow. The insurance money was not accumulated in such huge sums that
it would be a constant temptation for exploitation on the part of
officials. It was distributed in comparatively small sums in many
thousands of treasuries, and was under the surveillance of those most
interested in it. The old-age pensions were not governmental, issued
in large numbers and open to inevitable abuses, but were given by
those who knew, to those whose necessities were well known.
No wonder that we find democratic government developing co-ordinately
with these gilds. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Magna
Charta was signed. About the middle of it the first English Parliament
met, before the end of it the proper representation of the cities and
{191} towns which were mainly controlled by the gilds was secured and
during the last quarter of it the English Common Law came into effect
so as to secure the rights of all. Bracton's great "Digest of the
English Common Law" was written about 1280, and it is still the great
sourcebook of the principles of law in English-speaking countries. In
many of the States of our Union the Supreme Courts still make their
decisions on the basis of the English Common Law, and until a decade
or two ago all of them did. The people's rights were secured by the
education of the people and the property laws and those for the
guardianship of the person and for the prevention of autocratic
interference with liberty were all of them put into effect as a
consequence of this education in democracy.
This, then, was surely an ideal teaching of the masses, a teaching of
the arts and crafts, a teaching of mutual aid, a teaching of true
fraternity, a teaching of book-learning whenever that was considered
necessary or advisable, a teaching of the rights of man and a
wonderful development of laws as a consequence, and all of this
accomplished not by the upper classes, stooping to lift the lower
classes, but out of the conscious development of the lower classes
themselves, so that there came a true evolution and not merely a
superficial influence from without. If we want to know how to teach
the masses and to help them to contentment, happiness, occupation of
mind, {192} uplifting entertainment, cheerful amusement and, above
all, to conscious democratic government, here is the model of it as it
can be found nowhere else. I commend it to those who are teaching and
who, realizing the failure of our modern education in many ways, are
looking about for the remedies that will help to make our popular
education more efficient.
The soul of this ideal education of the masses was the training of
character. They had no illusions that the mere imparting of
information would make people better nor that the knowing of many
things would make them more desirable citizens. Probably they did not
consciously reason much about these subjects, but their instincts led
them straight. Mr. Edward O. Sisson, writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_
for July, 1910, says that the final question regarding education is
whether it avails to produce the type of character required by the
republic (nation) and the race. To accomplish this we need to fit our
practice to Herbart's great formula that, "the chief business of
education is the ethical revelation of the universe." Take any part of
this system of education that I have called the ideal education of the
masses and try it by that standard and see how high its mark will be.
Their handiwork is mainly an act of devotion to the God of the
universe and its products are the most beautiful gifts that ever were
offered to him. Cathedral stonework, glass-work, ironwork, beautiful
sacred vessels, handsomest {193} vestments ever made, needlework,
lacework, the beautiful setting of the cathedral; what an act of
worship it all was! When it was finished, it belonged to no class but
to the whole people. It was theirs to be proud of and to worship in.
Their very amusements were often acts of worship. Their plays
concerned the revelations of God to man, for they were all founded on
the Bible, and even for those who may not accept those revelations as
divine the fact that the men and women, the masses, the handworkmen
and the little traders, were for many months in each year engaged with
the high ethical thoughts that constitute the greatest contribution to
the ethical revelation of the universe that we have in literature,
must of itself be an eminently satisfying feature of this old-time
education. As regards the Creator, these people were constantly made
familiar with Him, His works and ways. Their holidays were holy-days.
They were anniversaries in the life of the God-Man or His chosen
servants. The men and women whom they celebrated on those days were
chosen characters who had devoted themselves unselfishly to others, so
that the after-time hailed them as saints because of their
forgetfulness of self. We know what this constantly recurring reminder
of the lives of great men and women may be, and then we must not
forget that on these days in their great cathedral they heard the
story of the life of the saint of the day, and often a discourse on
the qualities that {194} stamped him or her as worthy of admiration.
Let us remember, above all, that there were as many women saints as
men, and that these were held up for the admiration and emulation of
growing youth. This was ethical training at every turn in life.
Above all, there was constant training in that thoughtfulness for
others that means so much in any true system of education. When
members of the gilds fell ill, their families nursed them during the
day, but members of the gilds chosen for that purpose nursed them at
night. It was felt that the family did quite enough not to exhaust
itself by night watching. When brother members of the gild died their
fellows attended their funeral in a body, and, above all, took part in
the Mass for their souls. People who do not understand the Catholic
idea of Mass for the dead will not appreciate this in the way that
Catholics do, but at least they will understand the brotherliness of
the act and the beautiful purpose that prompted so many to gather, in
order that even after death they might do whatever they could for this
departed brother. Besides the death of a brother gildsman was the
signal for the giving of alms because the merit of these alms, it was
felt, could be transferred to his account, and so the bond of
fraternity continued even in the life beyond. The ethical effect of
all this on the minds of people who sincerely believed can scarcely be
exaggerated. Here is a training of the will and {195} of character,
and a teaching of the relationship of man to man and of man to the
Creator carried out into all the smallest details of life.
Above all, these generations had a training in personal service for
one another. Every one exercised charity. It was not a few of the very
wealthy who practised philanthropy. They had safeguards which, as far
as is possible, prevented abuse of this charity. The alms, for
instance, that was given on the occasion of a brother's funeral was
not distributed hit or miss and all at one time, but members of the
gild bought from the treasurer tokens which might be redeemed in bread
and meat or in cast-off clothing or in some other way. These were
distributed to the poor as they seemed to need them. If you met a poor
man who seemed really in want you could give him one or more of these
tokens and then be sure that while he would get whatever was necessary
to supply his absolute needs, he would not be able to abuse charity.
In our time we constantly have stories of large accumulations on the
part of street beggars who own valuable property and have accounts in
savings banks and the like. There was no possibility of this under the
mediaeval system and yet charity was widely exercised, every one took
some part in it, and there was that training, not only in effective
pity for affliction, but also in helpfulness for others, which means
so much more than the exercise of occasional charity, because, for the
moment, one is touched by the {196} sight of suffering or has remorse
because one feels that one has been indulging one's self and wants the
precious satisfaction that will come from a little making up for
luxurious extravagance.
In our time, when we have gradually excluded moral teaching and
training almost entirely from our schools and our methods of
education, this phase of the ideal education of the masses is
particularly interesting. Milton declared that "the main skill and
groundwork of education will be to temper the pupils with such
lectures and explanations as will draw them into willing obedience,
inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue,
stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy
patriots." Their great stone-books, the cathedrals, where all who came
could read the life of the Lord, the frequent reminders of the lives
of the saints, doers among men who forgot themselves and thought of
others, the fraternal obligations of the gilds and their intercourse
with each other, all these constituted the essence of an education as
nearly like that demanded by Milton as can well be imagined. It seems
far-fetched to go back five, six, even seven centuries to find such
ideals in practice, but the educator who is serious and candid with
himself will find it easy to discover the elements of a wonderful
intellectual and, above all, moral training of the people, that is the
whole people from the lowest to the highest, in these early days.
{197}
CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE
{198}
"And if I am right nothing can be more foolish than our modern
fashion of training men and women differently, whereby one-half of
the power of the city is lost. For reflect--if women are not to have
the education of men some other must be found for them, and what
other can we propose?"
--Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), p. 82. Scribner, 1902.
{199}
CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: The material for this was gathered for a lecture on
the History of Education delivered for the Academy of the Sacred
Heart, Kenwood, Albany, N. Y., and St. Joseph's College, Chestnut
Hill, Philadelphia, Pa. Very nearly in its present form the address
was delivered before the League for the Civic Education of Women, at
the Colony Club, New York City, in the winter of 1910.]
Nothing is commoner than to suppose that what we are doing at the
present day is an improvement over whatever they were doing at any
time in the past in the same line. We were rather proud during the
nineteenth century to talk of that century as the century of
evolution. Evolutionary terms of all kinds found their way even into
everyday speech and a very general impression was produced that we are
in the midst of progress so rapid and unerring, that even from decade
to decade it is possible to trace the wonderful advance that man is
making. We look back on the early nineteenth century as quite
hopelessly backward. They had no railroads, no street-car lines, no
public street lighting, no modes of heating buildings that gave any
comfort in the cold weather, no elevators, and when we compare our
present comfortable condition with the discomforts of that not so
distant period, we feel how much evolution has done for us, and
inevitably {200} conclude that just as much progress as has been made
in transportation and in comfort, has also been made in the things of
the mind, and, above all, in education, so that, while the millennium
is not yet here, it cannot surely be far off; and men are attaining at
last, with giant strides, the great purpose that runs through the
ages.
Probably in nothing is the assumption that we are doing something far
beyond what was ever accomplished before, more emphatically expressed
than in the ordinary opinions as to what is being done by and for
women in our generation. We have come to think that at last in the
course of evolution woman is beginning to come into something of her
rights, she is at last getting her opportunity for the higher
education and for professional education so far as she wants it, and
as a consequence is securing that influence which, as the equal of
man, she should have in the world. Now there is just one thing with
regard to this very general impression which deserves to be called
particularly to attention. This is not the first time in the world's
history, nor the first by many times, that woman has had the
opportunity for the higher education and has taken it very well.
Neither is it the first time that she has insisted on having an
influence in public affairs, but on the contrary, we can readily find
a very curious series of cycles of feminine education and of the
exercise of public influence by women, with intervals of almost
negative phases in these matters that {201} are rather difficult to
explain. Let us before trying to understand what the feministic
movement means in our own time and, above all, before trying to sum up
its ultimate significance for the race, study some of the
corresponding movements in former times.
The most interesting phase of the woman movement in history is that
which occurred at the time of the Renaissance. Because it is typical
of the phases of the feministic movement at all times, and then, too,
because it is closer to us and the records of it are more complete, it
will be extremely interesting to follow out some of the details of it.
It may be necessary for that to make a little excursion into the
history of the period. During the early fifteenth century the Turks
were bothering Constantinople so much, that Greek scholars, rendered
uncomfortable at home, began making their way over into Italy rather
frequently, bringing with them precious manuscripts and remains of old
Greek art. Besides commerce aroused by the Crusades was making the
intercourse between East and West much more intimate than it had been
and, as a result, a taste for Greek letters and art was beginning to
be felt in certain portions of Italy. When Constantinople fell, about
the middle of the fifteenth century, the prestige of the old capital
of the Greek empire was lost, and scholars abandoned it for Italy in
large numbers. This is the time of the Renaissance. The rebirth that
the word {202} signifies, is not a rebirth of art and architecture and
literature into the modern world, as if there had been nothing before,
for Gothic art and architecture and literature is quite as wonderful,
if not more so, than anything that came after, and there are good
authorities who insist that the Renaissance hurt, rather than helped,
Europe. The Renaissance was a rebirth of Greek ideas and ideals in
aesthetics into the European world, and while we may not agree with
Sir Henry Maine that whatever lives and moves in the intellectual
world is Greek in origin, there is no doubt that Greek can be the
source of most wonderful incentive and such it proved to be during the
fifteenth century.
Men and women began to study Greek and they paid much more attention
as a consequence to the Latin classics modelled on the Greek, and so
the New Learning, the so-called humanities, became the centre of
intellectual interest. They were studied first in private schools, but
before long a place for these new studies was demanded in the
curriculum of the universities. The universities, however, were
occupied with the so-called seven liberal arts, which were really
scientific studies. There was geometry, astronomy, music, grammar,
rhetoric, logic and metaphysics, with considerable ethics and
political science, so that they resembled in many ways our modern
universities as they have been transformed since the re-introduction
of scientific studies into them. {203} The university faculties were
content and conservative after the fashion of universities ever, and
they quite naturally refused to entertain the notion of such a radical
change as the introduction of classical studies into the curriculum.
This is just exactly what the classical universities of the early
nineteenth century did when they were asked by scientific enthusiasts
to re-introduce scientific studies into the curriculum, which in the
course of 800 years had come to be made up almost exclusively of
classical studies. In this curious way does history repeat itself.
Unable to obtain a place for the studies in humanism in the
universities, ruling princes and wealthy members of the nobility
proceeded to found special schools for these subjects. In these
schools without the traditions of the past, the women asked and
obtained the privilege of studying. There had come a noteworthy change
in intellectual interest, a novelty was introduced into education.
Whenever that happens woman always asks and always obtains the
privilege of the higher education. During the Renaissance period she
proceeded to show her intellectual power. Many of the women of the
Renaissance became distinguished for scholarship. Perhaps one thing
should be noted with regard to that. Their reputation for scholarship
was largely confined to their younger years. They were more
precocious, or applied themselves better to their studies, and
accordingly knew more of the classics {204} at twenty than their male
relatives who had the same opportunities. Indeed we hear of them as
brilliant scholars at sixteen and seventeen and eighteen. They took
part in Latin plays that were brilliantly performed before the
nobility, higher ecclesiastics, cardinals and even the Popes. They
were brilliant in music, in the languages and in their taste for art.
Later on in life we do not hear so much of them. They evidently were
ready to leave the serious work of scholarship to the men and content
themselves with being enlightened patrons of literature, beneficent
advocates of the arts, liberal customers of the artistic geniuses of
the time. Above all, we find no great original works from them. They
are charming appreciators but not good inventors--at this time, of
course.