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If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: Essays on Educational Reformers - -Author: Robert Hebert Quick - -Release Date: December 2, 2019 [EBook #60832] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS *** - - - - -Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - -International Education Series - -EDITED BY - -WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D. - -_Volume XVII._ - - - - -THE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. - -12mo, cloth, uniform binding. - - -The International Education Series was projected for the purpose of -bringing together in orderly arrangement the best writings, new and old, -upon educational subjects, and presenting a complete course of reading -and training for teachers generally. It is edited by W. T. HARRIS, LL. -D., United States Commissioner of Education, who has contributed for the -different volumes in the way of introductions, analysis, and commentary. -The volumes are tastefully and substantially bound in uniform style. - - -_VOLUMES NOW READY._ - - Vol. I.—THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION. By JOHANN K. F. - ROSENKRANZ, Doctor of Theology and Professor of Philosophy, - University of Königsberg. Translated by ANNA C. BRACKETT. - Second edition, revised, with Commentary and complete Analysis. - $1.50. - - Vol. II.—A HISTORY OF EDUCATION. By F. V. N. PAINTER, A. 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Translated - from the French by MARY E. WILSON, B. L. Smith College, - Member of the Graduate Seminary in Child Study, University of - California. $1.50. - - Vol. XXXVI.—HERBART’S A B C OF SENSE-PERCEPTION, AND - INTRODUCTORY WORKS. By WILLIAM J. ECKOFF, Ph. D., Pd. D., - Professor of Pedagogy in the University of Illinois; Author of - “Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation.” $1.50. - - Vol. XXXVII.—PSYCHOLOGIC FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION. By WILLIAM - T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D. - - Vol. XXXVIII.—THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF ONTARIO. By the Hon. GEORGE - W. ROSS, LL. D., Minister of Education for the Province of - Ontario. $1.00 - - Vol. XXXIX.—PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF TEACHING. By JAMES - JOHONNOT. $1.50. - - Vol. XL.—SCHOOL MANAGEMENT AND SCHOOL METHODS. By JOSEPH - BALDWIN. - -OTHERS IN PREPARATION. - -New York: D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 72 Fifth Avenue. - - - - - _INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES_ - - ESSAYS ON - EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS - - BY - ROBERT HEBERT QUICK - M. A. TRIN. COLL., CAMBRIDGE - - FORMERLY ASSISTANT MASTER AT HARROW, AND LECTURER ON - THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION AT CAMBRIDGE - LATE VICAR OF SEDBERGH - - _ONLY AUTHORIZED EDITION OF THE WORK - AS REWRITTEN IN 1890_ - - NEW YORK - D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - 1896 - - COPYRIGHT, 1890, - BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. - - - - - To - - DR. HENRY BARNARD, - - _The first United States Commissioner of Education_, - - WHO IN A LONG LIFE OF - SELF-SACRIFICING LABOUR HAS GIVEN TO THE ENGLISH - LANGUAGE AN EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE, - THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, - - WITH THE ESTEEM AND ADMIRATION OF - - THE AUTHOR. - - - - - Οὺ γὰρ ἔστι περὶ ὅτου θειοτέρου ἄνθρωπος ἄν βουλεύσαιτο, ὴ - περὶ παιδείας καὶ τῶν αὑτοῦ και τῶν οἰκείων. _Plato in initio - Theagis_ (p. 122 B). - - Socrates saith plainlie, that “no man goeth about a more godlie - purpose, than he that is mindfull of the good bringing up both - of hys owne and other men’s children.”—_Ascham’s Scholemaster. - Preface._ - - _Fundamentum totius reipublicæ est recta juventutis educatio._ - - The very foundation of the whole commonwealth is the proper - bringing up of the young.—_Cic._ - - - - -EDITOR’S PREFACE. - - -Many years ago I proposed to my friend Mr. Quick to rewrite his -Educational Reformers, making some additions (Sturm and Froebel, for -example), and allow me to place it in this series of educational works. -I had read his essays when they first appeared, and noted their great -value as a contribution to the right kind of educational literature. -They showed admirable tact in the selection of the materials; the -“epoch-making” writers were chosen and the things that had been said and -done of permanent value were brought forward. Better than all was the -running commentary on these materials by Mr. Quick himself. His style -was popular, taking the reader, as it were, into confidential relations -with him from the start, and offering now and then a word of criticism in -the most judicial spirit, leaning neither to the extreme of destructive -radicalism, which seeks revolution rather than reform, nor, on the other -hand, to the extreme of blind conservatism, which wishes to preserve the -vesture of the past rather than its wisdom. - -I have called this book of Mr. Quick the most valuable history of -education in our mother-tongue, fit only to be compared with Karl von -Raumer’s Geschichte der Pädagogik for its presentation of essentials and -for the sanity of its verdicts. - -I made my proposal that he “rewrite” his book because I knew that he -considered his first edition hastily written and, in many respects, not -adequate to the ideal he had conceived of the book. I knew, moreover, -that years of continued thinking on a theme necessarily modifies one’s -views. He would wish to make some changes in matter presented, some in -judgments rendered, and many more in style of presentation. - -Hence it has come about that after this lapse of time Mr. Quick has -produced a substantially new book, which, retaining all or nearly all -of the admirable features of the first edition, has brought up to their -standard of excellence many others. - -The history of education is a vast field, and we are accustomed to demand -bulky treatises as the only adequate ones. But the obvious disadvantage -of such works has led to the clearly defined ideal of a book like Mr. -Quick’s, which separates the gold from the dross, and offers it small in -bulk but precious in value. - -The educational reformers are the men above all others who stimulate -us to think about education. Every one of these was an extremist, and -erred in his judgment as to the value of the methods which prevailed in -his time, and also overestimated the effects of the new education that -he proposed in the place of the old. But thought begins with negations, -and originality shows itself first not in creating something new, but in -removing the fettering limitations of its existing environment. The old -is attacked—its good and its bad are condemned alike. It has been imposed -on us by authority, and we have not been allowed to summon it before -the bar of our reason and ask of it its credentials. It informs us that -it presented these credentials ages ago to our ancestors—men older and -wiser than we are. Such imposition of authority leaves us no choice but -to revolt. We, too, have a right to think as well as our ancestors; we, -too, must clear up the ground of our belief and substitute insight for -blind faith in tradition. - -These educational reformers are prophets of the clearing-up period -(_Aufklärung_) of revolution against mere authority. - -While we are inspired to think for ourselves, however, we must not -neglect that more important matter of thinking the truth. Free-thinking, -if it does not reach the truth, is not of great value. It sets itself -as puny individual against the might of the race, which preserves its -experience in the forms of institutions—the family, the social organism, -the state, the Church. - -Hence our wiser and more scientific method studies everything that is, -or exists, in its history, and endeavors to discover how it came to be -what it is. It inquires into its evolution. The essential truth is not -the present fact, but the entire process by which the present fact grew -to be what it is. For the living force that made the present fact made -also the past facts antecedent to the present, and it will go on making -subsequent facts. The revelation of the living forces which make the -facts of existence is the object of science. It takes all these facts to -reveal the living force that is acting and producing them. - -Hence the scientific attitude is superior to the attitude of these -educational reformers, and we shall in our own minds weigh these men -in our scales, asking first of all: What is their view of the world? -How much do they value human institutions? How much do they know of -the substantial good that is wrought by those institutions? If they -know nothing of these things, if they see only incumbrance in these -institutions, if to them the individual is the measure of all things, we -can not do reverence to their proposed remedies, but must account their -value to us chiefly this, that they have stimulated us to thinking, and -helped us to discover what they have not discovered—namely, the positive -value of institutions. - -All education deals with the boundary between ignorance and knowledge and -between bad habits and good ones. The pupil as pupil brings with him the -ignorance and the bad habits, and is engaged in acquiring good habits and -correct knowledge. - -This situation gives us a general recipe for a frequently recurring type -of educational reformer. Any would-be reformer may take his stand on the -boundary mentioned, and, casting an angry look at the realm of ignorance -and bad habit not yet conquered, condemn in wholesale terms the system of -education that has not been efficient in removing this mental and moral -darkness. - -Such a reformer selects an examination paper written by a pupil whose -ignorance is not yet vanquished, and parades the same as a product of -the work of the school, taking great pains to avoid an accurate and -just admeasurement of the actual work done by the school. The reformer -critic assumes that there is one factor here, whereas there are three -factors—namely, (_a_) the pupil’s native and acquired powers of learning, -(_b_) his actual knowledge acquired, and (_c_) the instruction given -by the school. The school is not responsible for the first and second -of these factors, but it is responsible only for what increment has -grown under its tutelage. How much and what has the pupil increased his -knowledge, and how much his power of acquiring knowledge and of doing? - -The educational reformer is always telling us to leave words and take -up things. He dissuades from the study of language, and also undervalues -the knowledge of manners and customs and laws and usages. He dislikes -the study of institutions even. He “loves Nature,” as he informs us. -Herbert Spencer wants us to study the body, and to be more interested -in biology than in formal logic; more interested in natural history -than in literature. But I think he would be indignant if one were to -ask him whether he thought the study of the habits and social instincts -of bees and ants is less important than the study of insect anatomy and -physiology. Anatomy and physiology are, of course, important, but the -social organism is more important than the physiological organism, even -in bees and ants. - -So in man the social organism is transcendent as compared with human -physiology, and social hygiene compared with physiological hygiene is -supreme. - -To suppose that the habits of plants and insects are facts, and that the -structure of human languages, the logical structure of the mind itself as -revealed in the figures and modes of the syllogism and the manners and -customs of social life, the deep ethical principles which govern peoples -as revealed in works of literature—to suppose that these and the like -of these are not real facts and worthy of study is one of the strangest -delusions that has ever prevailed. - -But it is a worse delusion to suppose that the study of Nature is more -practical than the study of man, though this is often enough claimed by -the educational reformers. - -The knowledge of most worth is first and foremost the knowledge of how -to behave—a knowledge of social customs and usages. Any person totally -ignorant in this regard would not escape imprisonment—perhaps I should -say decapitation—for one day in any city of the world—say in London, -in Pekin, in Timbuctoo, or in a _pueblo_ of Arizona. A knowledge of -human customs and usages, next a knowledge of human views of Nature and -man—these are of primordial necessity to an individual, and are means of -direct self-preservation. - -The old trivium or threefold course of study at the university taught -grammar, logic, and rhetoric—namely, (1) the structure of language, (2) -the structure of mind and the art of reasoning, (3) the principles and -art of persuasion. These may be seen at once to be lofty subjects and -worthy objects of science. They will always remain such, but they are -not easy for the child. In the course of mastering them he must learn to -master himself and gain great intellectual stature. Pedagogy has wisely -graded the road to these heights, and placed much easier studies at the -beginning and also made the studies more various. Improvements in methods -and in grading—devices for interesting the pupil—so essential to his -self-activity, for these we have to thank the Educational Reformers. - - W. T. HARRIS. - - WASHINGTON, D. C., 1890. - - - - -PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1868. - - -“_It is clear that in whatever it is our duty to act, those matters -also it is our duty to study._” These words of Dr. Arnold’s seem to -me incontrovertible. So a sense of duty, as well as fondness for the -subject, has led me to devote a period of leisure to the study of -_Education_, in the practice of which I have been for some years engaged. - -There are countries where it would be considered a truism that a teacher -in order to exercise his profession intelligently should know something -about the chief authorities in it. Here, however, I suppose such an -assertion will seem paradoxical; but there is a good deal to be said -in defence of it. De Quincey has pointed out that a man who takes up -any pursuit without knowing what advances others have made in it works -at a great disadvantage. He does not apply his strength in the right -direction, he troubles himself about small matters and neglects great, -he falls into errors that have long since been exploded. An educator is, -I think, liable to these dangers if he brings to his task no knowledge -but that which he learnt for the tripos, and no skill but that which -he acquired in the cricket ground or on the river. If his pupils are -placed entirely in his hands, his work is one of great difficulty, with -heavy penalties attached to all blundering in it; though here, as in the -case of the ignorant doctor and the careless architect, the penalties, -unfortunately, are paid by his victims. If (as more commonly happens) -he has simply to give a class prescribed instruction, his smaller scope -of action limits proportionally the mischief that may ensue; but even -then it is obviously desirable that his teaching should be as good as -possible, and he is not likely to employ the best methods if he invents -as he goes along, or simply falls back on his remembrance of how he -was taught himself, perhaps in very different circumstances. I venture -to think, therefore, that practical men in education, as in most other -things, may derive benefit from the knowledge of what has already been -said and done by the leading men engaged in it, both past and present. - -All study of this kind, however, is very much impeded by want of books. -“Good books are in German,” says Professor Seeley. I have found that on -the history of Education, not only _good_ books but _all_ books are in -German or some other foreign language.[1] I have, therefore, thought -it worth while to publish a few such imperfect sketches as these, with -which the reader can hardly be less satisfied than the author. They may, -however, prove useful till they give place to a better book. - -Several of the following essays are nothing more than compilations. -Indeed, a hostile critic might assert that I had used the scissors with -the energy of Mr. Timbs and without his discretion. The reader, however, -will probably agree with me that I have done wisely in putting before -him the opinions of great writers in their own language. Where I am -simply acting as reporter, the author’s own way of expressing himself -is obviously the best; and if, following the example of the gipsies and -Sir Fretful Plagiary, I had disfigured other people’s offspring to make -them pass for my own, success would have been fatal to the purpose I have -steadily kept in view. The sources of original ideas in any subject, as -the student is well aware, are few, but for irrigation we require troughs -as well as water-springs, and these essays are intended to serve in the -humbler capacity. - -A word about the incomplete handling of my subjects. I have not attempted -to treat any subject completely, or even with anything like completeness. -In giving a sketch of the opinions of an author one of two methods -must be adopted; we may give an epitome of all that he has said, or by -confining ourselves to his more valuable and characteristic opinions, may -gain space to give these fully. As I detest epitomes, I have adopted the -latter method exclusively, but I may sometimes have failed in selecting -an author’s most characteristic principles; and probably no two readers -of a book would entirely agree as to what was most valuable in it: so -my account must remain, after all, but a poor substitute for the author -himself. - -For the part of a critic I have at least one qualification—practical -acquaintance with the subject. As boy or master, I have been connected -with no less than eleven schools, and my perception of the blunders of -other teachers is derived mainly from the remembrance of my own. Some of -my mistakes have been brought home to me by reading works on education, -even those with which I do not in the main agree. Perhaps there are -teachers who on looking through the following pages may meet with a -similar experience. - -Had the essays been written in the order in which they stand, a good deal -of repetition might have been avoided, but this repetition has at least -the advantage of bringing out points which seem to me important; and as -no one will read the book as carefully as I have done, I hope no one will -be so much alive to this and other blemishes in it. - -I much regret that in a work which is nothing if it is not practically -useful, I have so often neglected to mark the exact place from which -quotations are taken. I have myself paid the penalty of this carelessness -in the trouble it has cost me to verify passages which seemed inaccurate. - -The authority I have had recourse to most frequently is Raumer -(_Geschichte der Pädagogik_). In his first two volumes he gives an -account of the chief men connected with education, from Dante to -Pestalozzi. The third volume contains essays on various parts of -education, and the fourth is devoted to German Universities. There is an -English translation, published in America, of the fourth volume only. -I confess to a great partiality for Raumer—a partiality which is not -shared by a Saturday Reviewer and by other competent authorities in this -country. But surely a German author who is not profound, and is almost -perspicuous, has some claim on the gratitude of English readers, if he -gives information which we cannot get in our own language. To Raumer I am -indebted for all that I have written about Ratke, and almost all about -Basedow. Elsewhere his history has been used, though not to the same -extent. - -C. A. Schmid’s _Encyclopädie des Erziehungs-und-Unterrichtswesens_ is -a vast mine of information on everything connected with education. The -work is still in progress. The part containing _Rousseau_ has only just -reached me. I should have been glad of it when I was giving an account of -the Emile, as Raumer was of little use to me. - -Those for whom Schmid is too diffuse and expensive will find Carl Gottlob -Hergang’s _Pädagogische Realencyclopädie_ useful. This is in two thick -volumes, and costs, to the best of my memory, about eighteen shillings. -It was finished in 1847. - -The best sketch I have met with of the general history of education is in -the article on _Pädagogik_ in _Meyers Conversations-Lexicon_.[2] I wish -someone would translate this article; and I should be glad to draw the -attention of the editor of an educational periodical, say the _Museum_ or -the _Quarterly Journal of Education_, to it. - -I have come upon references to many other works on the history of -Education, but of these the only ones I have seen are Theodore Fritz’s -_Esquisse d’un Système complet d’instruction et d’éducation et de leur -histoire_ (3 vols., Strasburg, 1843), and Carl Schmidt’s _Geschichte -der Pädagogik_ (4 vols.). The first of these gives only the outline of -the subject. The second is, I believe, considered a standard work. It -does not seem to me so readable as Raumer’s history, but it is much more -complete, and comes down to quite recent times. - -For my account of the Jesuit schools and of Pestalozzi, the authorities -will be found elsewhere (pp. 34 and 383). In writing about Comenius -I have had much assistance from a life of him prefixed to an English -translation of his _School of Infancy_, by Daniel Benham (London, 1858). -For almost all the information given about Jacotot, I am indebted to -Mr. Payne’s papers, which I should not have ventured to extract from so -freely if they had been before the public in a more permanent form. - -I am sorry I cannot refer to any English works on the history of -Education, except the essays of Mr. Parker and Mr. Furnivall, and -_Christian Schools and Scholars_, which are mentioned above, but we have -a very good treatise on the principles of education in Marcel’s _Language -as a Means of Mental Culture_ (2 vols., London, 1853). Edgeworth’s -_Practical Education_ seems falling into undeserved neglect, and Mr. -Spencer’s recent work is not universally known even by schoolmasters. - -If the following pages attract but few readers, it will be some -consolation, though rather a melancholy one, that I share the fate of my -betters. - - R. H. Q. - - INGATESTONE, ESSEX, _May, 1868_. - - - - -PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1890. - - -When I was a young man (_i.e._, nearly forty years ago), I once did -what those who know the ground would declare a very risky, indeed, -a fool-hardy thing. I was at the highest point of the Gemmi Pass in -Switzerland, above the Rhone Valley; and being in a hurry to get down -and overtake my party I ran from the top to the bottom. The path in those -days was not so good as it is now, and it is so near the precipice that -a few years afterwards a lady in descending lost her head and fell over. -No doubt I was in great danger of a drop of a thousand feet or so. But -of this I was totally unconscious. I was in a thick mist, and saw the -path for a few yards in front of me _and nothing more_. When I think of -the way in which this book was written three and twenty years ago I can -compare it to nothing but my first descent of the Gemmi. I did a very -risky thing without knowing it. My path came into view little by little -as I went on. All else was hid from me by a thick mist of ignorance. When -I began the book I knew next to nothing of the Reformers, but I studied -hard and wrote hard, and I turned out the essays within the year. This -feat I now regard with amazement, almost with horror. Since that time -I have given more years of work to the subject than I had then given -months, and the consequence is I find I can write fast no longer. The -mist has in a measure cleared off, and I cannot jog along in comfort as -I did when I saw less. At the same time I have no reason to repent of -the adventure. Being fortunate in my plan and thoroughly interested by -my subject, I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations in getting others -to take an interest in it also. The small English edition of 500 copies -was, as soon as I reduced the price, sold off immediately, and the book -has been, in England, for twenty years “out of print.” But no less than -three publishing firms in the United States have reprinted it (one quite -recently) without my consent, and, except in the edition of Messrs. R. -Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, with omissions and additions made without my -knowledge. It seems then that the book will live for some years yet, -whether I like it or not; and while it lives I wish it to be in a form -somewhat less defective than at its first appearance. I have therefore -in a great measure re-written it, beside filling in a gap here and there -with an additional essay. Perhaps some critics will call it a new book -with an old title. If they do, they will I trust allow that the new book -has at least two merits which went far to secure the success of the old, -1st, a good title, and 2nd, a good plan. My plan in both editions has -been to select a few people who seemed specially worth knowing about, -and to tell concerning them in some detail just that which seemed to me -specially worth knowing. So I have given what I thought very valuable or -very interesting, and everything I thought not particularly valuable or -interesting I have ruthlessly omitted. I have not attempted a _complete_ -account of anybody or anything; and as for what the examiner may “set,” I -have not once given his questions a thought. - -As the book is likely to have more readers in the country of its adoption -than in the country of its birth, I have persuaded my friend Dr. William -T. Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, to put it -into “The International Education Series” which he edits. So the only -authorized editions of the book are the English edition, and the American -edition published by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. - - R. H. Q. - - EARLSWOOD COTTAGE, REDHILL, SURREY, ENGLAND, _28th July, 1890_. - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - - =Chapter I.—Effects of the Renascence= 1-21 - - No escape from the Past 2 - - “Discovery” of the Classics 3 - - Mark Pattison’s account of Renascence 4 - - Revival of taste for beauty in Literature 5 - - What is Literature? 6 - - Renascence loved beauty of expression 7 - - No translations. The “educated” 8 - - Spread of literature by printing 9 - - School course settled before Bacon 10 - - First defect: Learner above Doer 11 - - Second: Over-estimate of literature 12 - - Literary taste not common 13 - - Third: Literature banished from school 14 - - Translations would be literature 15 - - The classics not written for children 16 - - Language _versus_ Literature 17 - - Fourth: “Miss as good as a mile” 18 - - Fifth: Neglect of children 19 - - Child’s study of his surroundings 20 - - Aut Cæsar aut nihil 21 - - - =Chapter II.—Renascence Tendencies= 22-26 - - Reviving the Past. The Scholars 23 - - The _Scholars_: things for words 24 - - _Verbal Realists_: things through words 25 - - _Stylists_: words for themselves 26 - - - =Chapter III.—Sturmius. (1507-1589)= 27-32 - - His early life. Settles in Strassburg 28 - - His course of Latin. Dismissed 29 - - The Schoolmaster taught Latin mainly 30 - - Resulting verbalism 31 - - Some books about Sturm 32 - - - =Chapter IV.—Schools of the Jesuits= 33-62 - - Importance of the Jesuit Schools 34 - - The Society in part educational 35 - - “Ratio atque Institutio.” Societas Professa 36 - - The Jesuit teacher: his preparation, &c. 37 - - Supervision. Maintenance. Lower Schools 38 - - Free instruction. Equality. Boarders 39 - - Classes. Curriculum. Latin only used 40 - - Teacher Lectured. Exercises. Saying by heart 41 - - Emulation. “Æmuli.” Concertations 42 - - “Academies.” Expedients. School-hours 43 - - Method of teaching. An example 44 - - Attention. Extra work. “Repetitio” 45 - - Repetition. Thoroughness 46 - - Yearly examinations. Moral training 47 - - Care of health. Punishments 48 - - English want of system 49 - - Jesuit limitations 50 - - Gains from memorizing 51 - - Popularity. Kindness 52 - - Sympathy with each pupil 53 - - Work moderate in amount and difficulty 54 - - The Society the Army of the Church 55 - - Their pedagogy not disinterested 56 - - Practical 57 - - The forces: 1. Master’s influence. 2. Emulation 57-58 - - A pupil’s summing-up 59 - - Some books 60 - - Barbier’s advice to new master 61 - - Loyola and Montaigne. Port-Royal 62 - - - =Chapter V.—Rabelais. (1483-1553.)= 63-69 - - Rabelais’ ideal. A new start 64 - - Religion. Study of Things 65 - - “Anschauung.” Hand-work. Books and Life 66 - - Training the body 67 - - Rabelais’ Curriculum 68 - - Study of Scripture. Piety 69 - - - =Chapter VI.—Montaigne. (1533-1592.)= 70-79 - - Writers and doers. Montaigne _versus_ Renascence 71 - - Character before knowledge. True knowledge 72 - - Athens and Sparta. Wisdom before knowledge 73 - - Knowing, and knowing by heart 74 - - Learning necessary as employment 75 - - Montaigne and our Public Schools 76 - - Pressure from Science and Examinations 77 - - Danger from knowledge 78 - - Montaigne and Lord Armstrong 79 - - - =Chapter VII.—Ascham. (1515-1568.)= 80-89 - - Wolsey on teaching 81 - - History of Methods useful 82 - - Our three celebrities 83 - - Ascham’s method for Latin: first stage 84 - - Second stage. The six points 85 - - Value of double translating and writing 86 - - Study of a model book. Queen Elizabeth 87, 88 - - “A dozen times at the least” 88 - - “Impressionists” and “Retainers” 89 - - - =Chapter VIII.—Mulcaster. (1531(?)-1611.)= 90-102 - - Old books in English on education 91 - - Mulcaster’s wisdom hidden by his style 92 - - Education and “learning” 93 - - 1. Development 2. Child-study 94 - - 3. Groundwork by best workman 95 - - 4. No forcing of young plants 96 - - 5. The elementary course. English 97 - - 6. Girls as well as Boys 98 - - 7. Training of Teachers 99 - - Training college at the Universities 100 - - Mulcaster’s reasons for training teachers 101 - - Mulcaster’s Life and Writings 102 - - - =Chapter IX.—Ratichius. (1571-1635.)= 103-118 - - Principles of the Innovators 104 - - Ratke’s Address to the Diet 105 - - At Augsburg. At Koethen 106 - - Failure at Koethen 107 - - German in the school. Ratichius’s services 108 - - 1. Follow Nature. 2. One thing at a time 109 - - 3. Over and over again 110 - - 4. Everything through the mother-tongue 111 - - 5. Nothing on compulsion 112 - - 6. Nothing to be learnt by heart 113 - - 7. Uniformity. 8. Ne modus rei ante rem 114 - - 9. Per inductionem omnia 115 - - Ratke’s method for language 116 - - Ratke’s method and Ascham’s 117 - - Slow progress in methods 118 - - - =Chapter X.—Comenius. (1592-1671.)= 119-171 - - Early years. His first book 120 - - Troubles. Exile 121 - - Pedagogic studies at Leszna 122 - - Didactic written. _Janua_ published. Pansophy 123 - - Samuel Hartlib 124 - - The _Prodromus_ and _Dilucidatio_ 125 - - Comenius in London. Parliamentary schemes 126 - - Comenius driven away by Civil War 127 - - In Sweden. Interviews with Oxenstiern 128 - - Oxenstiern criticises 129 - - Comenius at Elbing 130 - - At Leszna again 131 - - Saros-Patak. Flight from Leszna 132 - - Last years at Amsterdam 133 - - Comenius sought true foundation 134 - - Threefold life. Seeds of learning, virtue, piety 135 - - Omnia sponte fluant. Analogies 136 - - Analogies of growth 137 - - Senses. Foster desire of knowledge 138 - - No punishments. Words and Things together 139 - - Languages. System of schools 140 - - Mother-tongue School. Girls 141 - - School teaching. Mother’s teaching 142 - - Comenius and the Kindergarten 143 - - Starting-points of the sciences 144 - - Beginnings in Geography, History, &c. 145 - - Drawing. Education for all 146 - - Scientific and Religious Agreement 147 - - Bishop Butler on Educating the Poor 148 - - Comenius and Bacon 149 - - “Everything Through the Senses” 150 - - Error of Neglecting the Senses 151 - - Insufficiency of the Senses 152 - - Comenius undervalued the Past 153 - - Literature and Science 154 - - Comenius’s use of Analogies 155 - - Thought-studies and Label-studies 156 - - Unity of Knowledges 157 - - Theory and the Practical Man 158 - - Mother-tongue. Words and Things together 159 - - Janua Linguarum 160 - - The Jesuits’ Janua 161 - - Comenius adapts Jesuits’ Janua 162 - - Anchoran’s edition of Comenius’s Janua 163 - - Change to be made by Janua 164 - - Popularity of Janua shortlived 165 - - Lubinus projector of Orbis Pictus 166 - - Orbis Pictus described 167 - - Why Comenius’s schoolbooks failed 168 - - “Compendia Dispendia” 169 - - Comenius and Science of Education 170 - - Books on Comenius 171 - - - =Chapter XI.—The Gentlemen of Port-Royal= 172-196 - - The Jesuits and the Arnaulds 173 - - Saint-Cyran and Port-Royal 174 - - Saint-Cyran an “Evangelical” 175 - - Short career of the Little Schools 176 - - Saint-Cyran and Locke on Public Schools 177 - - Shadow-side of Public Schools 178 - - The Little Schools for the few only 179 - - Advantages of great schools 180 - - Choice of masters and servants. Watch and pray 181 - - No rivalry or pressure. Freedom from routine 182 - - Study a delight. Reading French first 183 - - Literature. Mother-tongue first 184 - - Beginners’ difficulties lightened 185 - - Begin with Latin into Mother-tongue 186 - - Sense before sound. Reason must rule 187 - - Not Baconian. The body despised 188 - - Pedagogic writings of Port-Royalists 189 - - Arnauld. Nicole 190 - - Light from within. Teach by the Senses 191 - - Best teaching escapes common tests 192 - - Studying impossible without a will 193 - - Against making beginnings bitter 194 - - Port-Royal advance. Books on Port-Royal 195 - - Rollin, Compayré, &c. 196 - - - =Chapter XII.—Some English Writers before Locke= 197-218 - - Birth of Realism 198 - - Realist Leaders not schoolmasters 199 - - John Brinsley. Charles Hoole 200 - - Hoole’s Realism 201 - - Art of teaching. Abraham Cowley 202 - - Authors and schoolmasters. J. Dury 203 - - Disorderly use of our natural faculties 204 - - Dury’s watch simile 205 - - Senses, 1st; imagination, 2nd; memory, 3rd 206 - - Petty’s battlefield simile 207 - - Petty’s realism 208 - - Cultivate observation 209 - - Petty on children’s activities 210 - - Hand-work. Education for all. Bellers 211 - - Milton and School-Reform 212 - - Milton as spokesman of Christian Realists 213 - - Language an instrument. Object of education 214 - - Milton for barrack life and Verbal Realism 215 - - Milton succeeded as man not master 216 - - He did not advance Science of Education 217 - - Milton an educator of mankind 218 - - - =Chapter XIII.—Locke. (1632-1704.)= 219-238 - - Locke’s two main characteristics 220 - - 1st, Truth for itself. 2nd, Reason for Truth 221 - - Locke’s definition of knowledge 222 - - Knowing without seeing 223 - - “Discentem credere oportet” 224 - - Locke’s “Knowledge” and the schoolmaster’s 225 - - “Knowledge” in Geography 226 - - For children, health and habits 227 - - Everything educative forms habits 228 - - Confusion about special cases. Wax 229 - - Locke behind Comenius 230 - - Humanists, Realists, and Trainers 231 - - Caution against classifiers 232 - - Locke and development 233 - - Was Locke a utilitarian? 234 - - Utilitarianism defined 235 - - Locke not utilitarian in education 236 - - Locke’s Pisgah Vision 237 - - Science and education. Names of books 238 - - - =Chapter XIV.—Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (1712-1778.)= 239-272 - - Middle Age system fell in 18th century 240 - - Do the opposite to the usual 241 - - Family life. No education before reason 242 - - Rousseau “neglects” essentials. Lose time 243 - - Early education negative 244 - - Childhood the sleep of reason 245 - - Start from study of the child 246 - - Rousseau’s paradoxes un-English 247 - - Man the corrupter. The three educations 248 - - The aim, living thoroughly 249 - - Children not small men 250 - - Schoolmasters’ contempt for childhood 251 - - Schoolroom rubbish 252 - - Ideas before symbols 253 - - Right ideas for children 254 - - Child-gardening. Child’s activity 255 - - No sitting still or reading 256 - - Memory without books 257 - - Use of the senses in childhood 258 - - Intellect based on the senses 259 - - Cultivation of the senses 260 - - Music and drawing 261 - - Drawing from objects. Morals 262 - - Contradictory statements on morals 263 - - The material world and the moral 264 - - Shun over-directing 265 - - Lessons out of school. Questioning. At 12 266 - - No book-learning. Study of nature 267 - - Against didactic teaching 268 - - Rousseau exaggerates about self-teaching 269 - - Learn with effort 270 - - Hand-work. The “New Education” 271 - - The Teacher’s business 272 - - - =Chapter XV.—Basedow and the Philanthropinum= 273-289 - - Basedow tries to mend religion and teaching 274 - - Reform needed. Subscription for “Elementary” 275 - - A journey with Goethe 276 - - Goethe on Basedow 277 - - The Philanthropinum opened 278 - - Basedow’s “Elementary” and “Book of Method” 279 - - Subjects to be taught 280 - - French and Latin. Religion 281 - - “Fred’s Journey to Dessau” 282 - - At the Philanthropinum 283 - - Methods in the Philanthropinum 284 - - The Philanthropinum criticised 285 - - Basedow’s improvements in teaching children 286 - - Basedow’s successors 287 - - Kant on the Philanthropinum 288 - - Influence of Philanthropinists 289 - - - =Chapter XVI.—Pestalozzi. (1746-1827.)= 290-383 - - His childhood and student-life 291 - - A Radical Student 292 - - Turns farmer. Bluntschli’s warning 293 - - New ideas in farming. A love letter 294 - - Resolutions. Buys land and marries 295 - - Pestalozzi turns to education 296 - - Neuhof filled with children 297 - - Appeal for the new Institution 298 - - Bankruptcy. The children sent away 299 - - Eighteen years of poverty and distress 300 - - “Gertrude” to the rescue. Pestalozzi’s religion 301 - - He turns author. “E. H. of Hermit” 302 - - Pestalozzi’s belief 303 - - The “Hermit” a Christian 304 - - Success of “Leonard and Gertrude” 305 - - Gertrude’s patience tried 306 - - Being and doing before knowing 307 - - Pestalozzi’s severity. Women Commissioners 308 - - Pestalozzi’s seven years of authorship 309 - - “Citizen of French Republic.” Doubts 310 - - Waiting. Pestalozzi’s “Inquiry” 311 - - Pestalozzi’s “Fables” 312 - - Pestalozzi’s own principles 313 - - Pestalozzi’s return to action 314 - - The French at Stanz 315 - - Pestalozzi at Stanz 316 - - Success and expulsion 317 - - At Stanz: Pestalozzi’s own account 318-332 - - Value of the five months’ experience 333 - - Pestalozzi a strange Schoolmaster 334 - - At Burgdorf. First official approval 335 - - A child’s notion of Pestalozzi’s teaching 336 - - Pestalozzi engineering a new road 337 - - Psychologizing instruction 338 - - School course. Singing; and the beautiful 339 - - Pestalozzi’s poverty. Kruesi joins him 340 - - Pestalozzi’s assistants. The Burgdorf Institute 341 - - Success of the Burgdorf Institute 342 - - Reaction. Pestalozzi and Napoleon I 343 - - Fellenberg, Pestalozzi goes to Yverdun 344 - - A portrait of Pestalozzi 345 - - Prussia adopts Pestalozzianism 346 - - Ritter and others at Yverdun 347 - - Causes of failure at Yverdun 348 - - Report made by Father Girard 349 - - Girard’s mistake. Schmid in flight 350 - - Schmid’s return. Pestalozzi’s fame found useful 351 - - Dr. Bell’s visit. Death of Mrs. Pestalozzi 352 - - Works republished. Clindy. Yverdun left. Death 353, 354 - - New aim: develop organism 354 - - True dignity of man 355 - - Education for all. Mothers’ part. Jacob’s Ladder 356 - - Educator only superintends 357 - - First, moral development 358 - - Moral and religious the same 359 - - Second, intellectual development 360 - - Learning by “intuition” 361 - - Buisson and Jullien on intuition 362 - - Pestalozzi and Locke 363 - - Subjects for, and art of, teaching 364 - - “Mastery” 365 - - The body’s part in education 366 - - Learning must not be play 367 - - Singing and drawing 368 - - Morf’s summing-up 369 - - Joseph Payne’s summing-up 370 - - The “two nations.” Mother’s lessons 371 - - Mistakes in teaching children 372 - - Children and their teachers 373 - - “Preparatory” Schools 374 - - Young boys ill taught at school 375 - - English folk-schools not Pestalozzian 376 - - Schools judged by results 377 - - Pupil-teachers. Teaching not educating 378 - - Lowe or Pestalozzi? 379 - - Chief force, personality of the teacher 380 - - English care for unessentials 381 - - Aim at the ideal 382 - - Use of theorists. Books 383 - - - =Chapter XVII.—Friedrich Froebel. (1783-1852.)= 384-413 - - Difficulty in understanding Froebel 385 - - A lad’s quest of unity 386 - - Froebel wandering without rest 387 - - Finds his vocation. With Pestalozzi 388 - - Froebel at the Universities 389 - - Through the Freiheits-krieg. Mineralogy 390 - - The “New Education” started 391 - - At Keilhau. “Education of Man” published 392 - - Froebel fails in Switzerland 393 - - The first Kindergarten 394 - - Froebel’s last years. Prussian edict against him. His end 395 - - Author’s attitude towards Reformers 396 - - Difficulties with Froebel 397 - - “Cui omnia unum sunt” 398 - - Froebel’s ideal 399 - - Theory of development 400 - - Development through self-activity 401 - - True idea found in Nature 402 - - God acts and man acts 403 - - The formative and creative instinct 404 - - Rendering the inner outer 405 - - Care for “young plants.” Kindergarten 406 - - Child’s restlessness: how to use it 407 - - Employments in Kindergarten 408 - - No schoolwork in Kindergarten 409 - - Without the idea the “gifts” fail 410 - - The New Education and the old 411 - - The old still vigorous 412 - - Science the thought of God. Some Froebelians 413 - - - =Chapter XVIII.—Jacotot, a Methodizer. (1770-1840.)= 414-438 - - Self-teaching 415 - - 1. All can learn 416 - - 2. Everyone can teach 417 - - Can he teach facts he does not know? 418 - - Languages? Sciences? 419 - - Arts such as drawing and music? 420 - - True teacher within the learner 421 - - Training rather than teaching 422 - - 3. “Tout est dans tout.” Quidlibet ex quolibet 423 - - Connexion of knowledges 424 - - Connect with model book. Memorizing 425 - - Ways of studying the model book 426 - - Should the book be made or chosen? 427 - - Robertsonian plan 428 - - Hints for exercises 429 - - The good of having learnt 430 - - The old Cambridge “mathematical man” 431 - - Waste of memory at school 432 - - How to stop this waste 433 - - Multum, non multa. De Morgan. Helps. Stephen 434 - - Jacotot’s plan for reading and writing 435 - - For the mother-tongue 436 - - Method of investigation 437 - - Jacotot’s last days 438 - - - =Chapter XIX.—Herbert Spencer= 439-469 - - Same knowledge for discipline and use? 440 - - Different stages, different knowledges 441 - - Relative value of knowledges 442 - - Knowledge for self-preservation 443 - - Useful knowledge _versus_ the classics 444 - - Special instruction _versus_ education 445 - - Scientific knowledge and money-making 446 - - Knowledge about rearing offspring 447 - - Knowledge of history: its nature and use 448 - - Use of history 449 - - Employment of leisure hours 450 - - Poetry and the Arts 451 - - More than science needed for complete living 452 - - Objections to Spencer’s curriculum 453 - - Citizen’s duties. Things not to teach 454 - - Need of a science of education 455 - - Hope of a science 456 - - From simple to complex: known to unknown 457 - - Connecting schoolwork with life outside 458 - - Books and life 459 - - Mistakes in grammar teaching 460 - - From indefinite to definite: concrete to abstract 461 - - The Individual and the Race. Empirical beginning 462 - - Against “telling.” Effect of bad teaching 463 - - Learning should be pleasurable 464 - - Can learning be made interesting? 465 - - Apathy from bad teaching 466 - - Should learning be made interesting? 467 - - Difference between theory and practice 468 - - Importance of Herbert Spencer’s work 469 - - - =Chapter XX.—Thoughts and Suggestions= 470-491 - - Want of an ideal 471 - - Get pupils to work hard 472 - - For this arouse interest. Wordsworth 473 - - Interest needed for activity 474 - - Teaching young children 475 - - Value of pictures 476 - - Dr. Vater at Leipzig 477 - - Dr. Vogel and Dr. Vater 478 - - First knowledge of numbers. Grubé 479 - - Measuring and weighing. Reading-books 480 - - Respect for books. Grammar. Reading 481 - - Silent and Vocal Reading 482 - - Memorising poetry. Composition 483 - - Correcting exercises. Three kinds of books 484 - - No epitomes 485 - - Ascham, Bacon, Goldsmith, against them 486 - - Arouse interest. Dr. Arnold’s historical primer 487 - - A Macaulay, not Mangnall, wanted 488 - - Beginnings in history and geography 489 - - Tales of Travelers 490 - - Results positive and negative 491 - - - =Chapter XXI.—The Schoolmaster’s Moral and Religious Influence= 492-503 - - Master’s power, how gained and lost 493 - - Masters, the open and the reserved 494 - - Danger of excess either way 495 - - High ideal. Danger of low practice 496 - - Harm from overworking teachers 497 - - Refuge in routine work. Small schools 498 - - Influence through the Sixth. Day schools wanted 499 - - Teaching religion in England and Germany 500 - - Religious teaching connected with worship 501 - - Education to goodness and piety 502 - - How to avoid narrowmindedness 503 - - - =Chapter XXII.—Conclusion= 504-526 - - A growing science of education 505 - - Jesuits the first Reformers 506 - - The Jesuits cared for more than classics 507 - - Rabelais for “intuition” 508 - - Montaigne for educating mind and body 509 - - 17th century reaction against books 510 - - Reaction not felt in schools and the Universities 511 - - Comenius begins science of education 512 - - Locke’s teacher a disposer of influence 513 - - Locke and public schools. Escape from “idols” 514 - - Rousseau’s clean sweep 515 - - Benevolence of Nature. Man disturbs 516 - - We arrange sequences, capitalise ideas 517 - - Loss and gain from tradition 518 - - Rousseau for observing and following 519 - - Rousseau exposed “school-learning” 520 - - Function of “things” in education 521 - - “New Education” started by Rousseau 522 - - Drawing out. Man and the other animals 523 - - Intuition. Man an organism, a doer and creator 524 - - Antithesis of Old and New Education 525 - - Drill needed. What the Thinkers do for us 526 - - - =Appendix.= Class Matches. Words and Things. Books for - Teachers, &c. 527-547 - - - - -I - -EFFECTS OF THE RENASCENCE. - - -§ 1. The history of education, much as it has been hitherto neglected, -especially in England, must have a great future before it. If we ignore -the Past we cannot understand the Present, or forecast the Future. In -this book I am going to speak of Reformers or Innovators who aimed at -changing what was handed down to them; but the Radical can no more escape -from the Past, than the Conservative can stereotype it. It acts not by -attraction only, but no less by repulsion. There have been thinkers in -latter times who have announced themselves as the executioners of the -Past and laboured to destroy all it has bequeathed to us. They have -raised the ferocious cry, “_Vive la destruction! Vive la mort! Place à -l’avenir!_ Hurrah for destruction! Hurrah for death! Make room for the -world that is to be!” But their very hatred of the Past has brought -them under the influence of it. “Do just the opposite of what has been -done and you will do right,” said Rousseau; and this rule of negation -would make the Past regulate the Present and the Future no less than its -opposite, “Do always what is usual.” - -If we cannot get free from the Past in the domain of thought, still less -can we in action. Custom is to all our activities what the mainspring is -to the watch. We may bring forces into play to make the watch go faster -or slower, but if we took out the mainspring it would not go at all. For -_our_ mainspring we are indebted to the Past. - -§ 2. In studying the Past we must give our special attention to those -periods in which the course of ideas takes, as the French say, a new -bend.[3] Such a period was the Renascence. Then it was that the latest -bend was given to the educational ideal of the civilized world; and -though we seem now again to have arrived at a period of change, we are -still, perhaps far more than we are aware, affected by the ideas of the -great scholars who guided the intellect of Europe in the Revival of -Learning. - -§ 3. From the beginning to the end of the fifteenth century the balance -was trembling between two kinds of culture, and the fate of the schoolboy -depended on the result. In this century men first got a correct -conception of the globe they were inhabiting. Hitherto they had not even -professed to have any knowledge of geography; there is no mention of it -in the Trivium and Quadrivium which were then supposed to form the cycle -of things known, if not of things knowable. But Columbus and Vasco da -Gama were grand teachers of geography, and their lessons were learnt as -far as civilization extended. - -The impetus thus given to the study of the earth might, at the beginning -of the sixteenth century, have engrossed the mind of Europe with the -material world, had not the leaning to physical science been encountered -and overcome by an impulse derived from another discovery. About the -time of the discovery of America there also came to light the literatures -of Greece and Rome. - -§ 4. When I speak of the discovery of the ancient literatures as -rivalling that of America, this use of the word “discovery” may be -disputed. It may be urged that though the Greek language and literature -were unknown in the West of Europe till they were brought there by the -fugitives after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, yet the works of the -great Latin writers had always been known in Italy, and Dante declares -himself the disciple of Virgil. And yet I cannot give up the word -“discovery.” In the life of an individual it sometimes happens that he -suddenly acquires as it were a new sense. The world around him remains -the same as before, but it is not the same to him. A film passes from -his eyes, and what has been ordinary and unmeaning suddenly becomes a -source of wonder and delight to him. Something similar happens at times -in the history of the general mind; indeed our own century has seen a -remarkable instance of it. In reading the thoughts of great writers of -earlier times, we cannot but be struck, not only with their ignorance of -the material world, but also with their ignorance of their ignorance. -Little as they know, they often speak as if they knew everything. Newton -could see that he was like a child discovering a few shells while the -unexplored ocean lay before him; but in those days it required the -intellect of a Newton to understand this. To the other children the -ocean seemed to conceal nothing, and they innocently thought that all -the shells, or nearly all, had been picked up. It was reserved for the -people of our own century to become aware of the marvels which lie around -us in the material world, and to be fascinated by the discovery. If the -human race could live through several civilizations without opening its -eyes to the wonders of the earth it inhabits, and then could suddenly -become aware of them, we may well understand its retaining unheeded the -literatures of Greece and Rome for centuries, and at length as it were -discovering them, and turning to them with unbounded enthusiasm and -delight. - -As students of education we can hardly attach too much importance to -this great revolution. For nearly three centuries the curriculum in the -public schools of Europe remained what the Renascence had made it. We -have again entered on an age of change, but we are still much influenced -by the ideas of the Renascence, and the best way to understand the forces -now at work is to trace them where possible to their origin. Let us then -consider what the Renascence was, and how it affected the educational -system. - -§ 5. In endeavouring to understand the Renascence, we cannot do -better than listen to what Mark Pattison says of it in his “Life of -Casaubon”:—“In the fifteenth century was revealed to a world which had -hitherto been trained to logical analysis, the beauty of literary form. -The conception of style or finished expression had died out with the -pagan schools of rhetoric. It was not the despotic act of Justinian in -closing the schools of Athens which had suppressed it. The sense of art -in language decayed from the same general causes which had been fatal -to all artistic perception. Banished from the Roman Empire in the sixth -century or earlier, the classical conception of beauty of form re-entered -the circle of ideas after near a thousand years of oblivion and abeyance. -Cicero and Virgil, Livius and Ovid, had been there all along, but the -idea of composite harmony on which their works were constructed was -wanting. The restored conception, as if to recoup itself for its long -suppression, took entire possession of the mind of Europe. The first -period of the Renascence passed in adoration of the awakened beauty, and -in efforts to copy and multiply it.” - -§ 6. Here Mark Pattison speaks as if the conception of beauty of form -belonged exclusively to the ancients and those who learnt of them. This -seems to require some abatement. There are points in which mediæval -art far excelled the art of the Renascence. The thirteenth century, as -Archbishop Trench has said, was “rich in glorious creations of almost -every kind;” and in that century our great English architect, Street, -found the root of all that is best in modern art. (See “Dublin Afternoon -Lectures,” 1868.) - -But there are expressions of beauty to which the Greeks, and those who -caught their spirit, were keenly alive, and to which the people of the -Middle Age seem to have been blind. The first is beauty in the human -form; the second is beauty in literature. - -The old delight in beauty in the human form has never come back to us. -Mr. Ruskin tells us we are an ugly race, with ill-shapen limbs, and -well pleased with our ugliness and deformity, and in reply we only -mutter something about the necessity of clothing both for warmth and -decency. But as to the other expression of beauty, beauty in literature, -the mind of Europe again became conscious of it in the fifteenth and -sixteenth centuries. The re-awakening of this sense of beauty we call the -Renascence. - -§ 7. Before we consider the effect of this intellectual revolution on -education, let us be sure that we are not “paying ourselves with words,” -and that we know exactly what we mean by “literature.” - -When the conceptions of an individual mind are expressed in a permanent -form of words, we get literature. The sum total of all the permanent -forms of expression in one language make up the literature of that -language; and if no one has given his conceptions a form which has -been preserved, the language is without a literature. There are then -two things essential to a literary work: first, the conceptions of an -individual mind; second, a permanent form of expression. Hence it follows -that the domain of literature is distinct from the domain of natural or -mathematical science. Science does not give us the conceptions of an -individual mind, but it tells us what every rational person who studies -the subject must think. And science is entirely independent of any form -of words: a proposition of Euclid is science; a sonnet of Wordsworth’s -is literature. We learn from Euclid certain truths which we should -have learnt from some one else if Euclid had never existed, and the -propositions may be conveyed equally well in different forms of words -and in any language. But a sonnet of Wordsworth’s conveys thought and -feeling peculiar to the poet; and even if the same thought and feeling -were conveyed to us in other words, we should lose at least half of what -he has given us. Poetry is indeed only one kind of literature, but it is -the highest kind; and what is true of literary works in verse, is true -also in a measure of literary works in prose. So great is the difference -between science and literature, that in literature, as the first Lord -Lytton said, the best books are generally the oldest; in science they are -the newest. - -§ 8. At present we are concerned with literature only. There are two ways -in which a work of literature may excite our admiration and affect our -minds. These are, first, by the beauty of the conceptions it conveys to -us; and second, by the beauty of the language in which it conveys them. -In the greatest works the two excellences will be combined.[4] - -Now the literary taste proper fastens especially on the second of the -two, _i.e._, on beauty of expression; and the Renascence was the revival -of literary taste. “It was,” as Mark Pattison says, “the conception of -style or finished expression which had died out with the pagan schools -of rhetoric, and which re-entered the circle of ideas after a thousand -years of oblivion and abeyance.” If we lose sight of this, we shall be -perplexed by the unbounded enthusiasm which we find in the sixteenth -century for the old classics. What great evangel, we may ask, had Cicero -and Virgil and Ovid, or even Plato and the Greek dramatists, for men who -lived when Europe had experienced a thousand years of Christianity? The -answer is simple. They had none whatever. Their thoughts and conceptions -were not adapted to the wants of the new world. The civilization of the -Christian nations of the sixteenth century was a very different thing -from the civilization of Greece and Rome. It had its own thoughts, its -own problems, its own wants. The old-world thoughts could not be thought -over again by it. This indeed was felt though not admitted by the -Renascence scholars themselves. Had it been the thoughts of the ancients -which seemed to them so valuable they would have made some effort to -diffuse those thoughts in the languages of the modern world. Much as -a great literary work loses by translation, there may still be enough -left of it to be a source of instruction and delight. The thoughts of -Aristotle, conveyed in a Latin translation of an Arabic translation, -profoundly affected the mind of Europe in the Middle Ages. The Bible, or -Book _par excellence_, is known to few indeed in its original form. Some -great writers—Cervantes, and Shakespeare, and the author of the “Arabian -Nights”—please and instruct nations who know not the sound of the -languages wherein their works are composed. If then the great writers of -Greece and Rome had been valued for their matter, their works would have -been translated by the Renascence scholars as the Bible was translated -by the Reformers, and the history of modern education would have taken a -very different turn from that which awaited it. But it was not so. The -Renascence scholars did all they could to discourage translations. For -the grand discovery which we call the Revival of Learning was, not that -the ancients had something to say, but that whatever they had to say they -knew how to say it. - -§ 9. And thus it happens that in the period of change, when Europe was -re-arranging its institutions, developing new ideas and settling into new -grooves of habit, we find the men most influential in education entirely -fascinated by beauty of expression, and this in two ancient languages, so -that the one thing needful for the young seemed to them an introduction -to the study of ancient writings. The inevitable consequence was this: -education became a mere synonym for instruction in Latin and Greek. The -only ideal set up for the “educated” was the classical scholar. - -§ 10. Perhaps the absurdity of taking this ideal, an ideal which is -obviously fitted for a small class of men only, and proposing it for -general adoption, was partly concealed from the Renascence scholars -by the peculiar circumstances of their age. No doubt they thought -literature would in the future be a force capable of much wider -application than it had ever been before. True, literature had till -then affected a small class only. Literature meant books, books meant -MSS., and MSS. were rare and costly. Literature, the embodiment of grand -thoughts in grand words, had existed before letters, or at least without -letters. The Homeric poems, for example, had been known to thousands -who could not read or write. But beauty of expression naturally got -associated and indeed confounded with the art by which it was preserved; -so the creations of the mind, when embodied in particular combinations -of words, acquired the name of literature or letters, and became -almost exclusively the affair of those who had opportunities of study, -opportunities afforded only to the few. During the Middle Ages every -one who could read was allowed his “privilege of clergy;” that is, he -was assumed to be a clergyman. Literature then was not thought of as a -means of instruction. But at the very time that the beauty of the ancient -writings dawned on the mind of Europe, a mechanical invention seemed to -remove all hindrances to the spread of literature. The scholars seized on -the printing press and thought by means of it to give all “the educated” -a knowledge of classics. - -§ 11. We cannot help speculating what would have been the effect of the -discovery of printing if it had been made at another time. As there may -be literature without books, so there may be books without literature. If -at the time of the invention of printing there had been no literature, -no creations of individual minds embodied in permanent forms of speech, -books might have been used as apparatus in a mental gymnasium, or they -might have been made the means of conveying information. But just then -the intellect of Europe was tired of mental gymnastics. It had taken -exercise in the Trivium like a squirrel in its revolving cage, and was -vexed to find it made no progress.[5] As for information there was little -to be had. The age of observation and of physical science was not yet. -So the printing press was entirely at the service of the new passion for -literature and the scholars dreamed of the general diffusion of literary -culture by means of printed books. - -§ 12. For some two centuries the literary spirit had supreme control -over the intellect of Europe, and the literary spirit could then find -satisfaction nowhere but in the study of the ancient classics. The -natural consequence was that throughout this period the “educated man” -was supposed to be identified with the classical scholar. The great rival -of the literary spirit, the scientific spirit which cares for nothing -but sequences independent of the human mind, began to show itself early -in the seventeenth century: its first great champion was Francis Bacon. -But by this time the school course of study had been settled, and two -centuries had to elapse before the scientific spirit could unsettle it -again. Even now when we speak of a man as “well-educated” we are commonly -understood to mean that in his youth he was taught the two classical -languages. - -§ 13. The taking of the classical scholar as the only ideal of the -educated man has been a fruitful source of evil in the history of -education. - -I. This ideal exalted the learner above the doer. As far back as -Xenophon, we find a contest between the passive ideal and the active, -between the excellence which depends on a knowledge of what others have -thought and done and the excellence which comes of thinking and doing. -But the excellence derived from learning had never been highly esteemed. -To be able to repeat Homer’s poetry was regarded in Greece as we now -regard a pleasing accomplishment; but the dignity of the learned man as -such was not within the range of Greek ideas. Many of the Romans after -they began to study Greek literature certainly piqued themselves on being -good Greek scholars, and Cicero occasionally quotes with all the airs -of a pedant; but so thoroughly was the contrary ideal, the ideal of the -_doer_, established at Rome, that nobody ever dreamt of placing its rival -above it. In the decline of the Empire, especially at Alexandria, we -find for the first time honours paid to the learned man; but he was soon -lost sight of again. At the Renascence he burst into sudden blaze, and -it was then discovered that he was what every man would wish to be. Thus -the Renascence scholars, notwithstanding their admiration of the great -nations of antiquity, set up an ideal which those nations would heartily -have despised. The schoolmaster very readily adopted this ideal; and -schools have been places of learning, not training, ever since. - -§ 14. II. The next defect I observe in the Renascence ideal is this: -it attributes to literature more direct power over common life than -literature has ever had, or is ever likely to have. - -I say _direct_ power, for indirectly literature is one of the grand -forces which act on all of us; but it acts on us through others, its -most important function being to affect great intellects, the minds of -those who think out and act out important changes. Its direct action -on the mass of mankind is after all but insignificant. We have seen -that literature consists in permanent forms of words, expressing the -conceptions of individual minds; and these forms will be studied only by -those who are interested in the conceptions or find pleasure in the mode -in which they are expressed. Now the vast majority of ordinary people are -without these inducements to literary study. They take a keen interest -in everything connected with their relations and intimate friends, and -a weaker interest in the thinkings and sayings and doings of every one -else who is personally known to them; but as to the mental conceptions -of those who lived in other times, or if now alive are not known even -by sight, the ordinary person is profoundly indifferent to them; and -of course delight in expression, as such, is out of the question. The -natural consequence is that the habit of reading books is by no means -common. Mark Pattison observes that there are few books to be found in -most English middle-class homes, and he says: “The dearth of books is -only the outward and visible sign of the mental torpor which reigns in -those destitute regions” (see “Fortnightly Review,” November, 1877). -I much doubt if he would have found more books in the middle-class -homes of the Continent. There is only one kind of reading that is -nearly universal—the reading of newspapers; and the newspaper lacks the -element of permanence, and belongs to the domain of talk rather than of -literature. - -Even when we get among the so-called “educated,” we find that those who -care for literature form a very small minority. The rest _have_ of -course read Shakespeare and Milton and Walter Scott and Tennyson, but -_they do not read them_. The lion’s share of our time and thoughts and -interests must be given to our business or profession, whatever that may -be; and in few instances is this connected with literature. For the rest, -whatever time or thought a man can spare from his calling is mostly given -to his family, or to society, or to some hobby which is not literature. - -And love of literature is not shown in such reading as is common. The -literary spirit shows itself, as I said, in appreciating beauty of -expression, and how far beauty of expression is cared for we may estimate -from the fact that few people think of reading anything a second time. -The ordinary reader is profoundly indifferent about style, and will not -take the trouble to understand ideas. He keeps to periodicals or light -fiction, which enables the mind to loll in its easy chair (so to speak) -and see pass before it a series of pleasing images. An idea, as Mark -Pattison says, “is an excitant, comes from mind and calls forth mind; -an image is a sedative;” and most people when they take up a book are -seeking a sedative. - -So literature is after all a very small force in the lives of most men, -and perhaps even less in the lives of most women. Why then are the -employments of the school-room arranged on the supposition that it is -the grand force of all? The reason is, that we have inherited from the -Renascence a false notion of the function of literature. - -§ 15. III. I must now point out a fault in the Renascence ideal which is -perhaps the most remarkable of all. Those by whom this ideal was set up -were entirely possessed by an enthusiasm for literature, and they made -the mistake of attributing to literature a share in general culture -which literature seems incapable of taking. After this we could little -have expected that the new ideal would exclude literature from the -schoolroom, and yet so it has actually turned out. - -As a literary creation contains the conceptions of an individual mind -expressed in a permanent form of words, it exists only for those who can -understand the words or at least the conceptions. - -From this it follows that literature for the young must have its -expression in the vernacular. The instances are rare indeed in which any -one below the age of fifteen or sixteen (perhaps I might put the limit a -year or two higher) understands any but the mother tongue. In the mother -tongue indeed some forms of literature exercise a great influence over -young minds. Ballad literature seems especially to belong to youth, the -youth of nations and of individuals. Aristotle educated Alexander with -Homer; and we can easily imagine the effect which the _Iliad_ must have -had on the young Greeks. Although in the days of Plato instruction was -not confined to literature, he gives this account of part of the training -in the Athenian schools: “Placing the pupils on benches, the instructors -make them read and learn by heart the poems of good poets in which are -many moral lessons, many tales and eulogies and lays of the brave men of -old; that the boys may imitate them with emulation and strive to become -such themselves.” Here we see a very important function attributed to -literature in the bringing up of the young; but the literature so used -must obviously be in the language of the learners. - -The influence of a literary work may, however, extend itself far beyond -the limits of its own language. When our minds can receive and take -pleasure in the conceptions of a great writer, he may speak to us by an -interpreter. At the Renascence there were books in the world which might -have affected the minds of the young—Plutarch, Herodotus, and above all -Homer. But, as I have already said, it was not the conceptions, but the -literary form of the ancients, which seemed to the Renascence scholars -of such inestimable value, so they refused to give the conceptions in -any but the original words. “Studying the ancients in translations,” -says Melancthon, “is merely looking at the shadow.” He could not have -made a greater mistake. As far as the young are concerned the truth -is exactly the reverse. The translation would give the substance: the -original can give nothing but the shadow. Let us take the experience of -Mr. Kinglake, the author of “Eothen.” This distinguished Eton man, fired -by his remembrances of Homer, visited the Troad. He had, as he tells us, -“clasped the _Iliad_ line by line to his brain with reverence as well -as love.” Well done, Eton! we are tempted to exclaim when we read this -passage: here at least is proof that some _literature_ was taught in -those days of the dominion of the classics. But stop! It seems that this -clasping did not take place at Eton, but in happy days before Eton, when -Kinglake knew no Greek and read translations. “Heroic days are these,” -he writes, “but the Dark Ages of schoolboy life come closing over them. -I suppose it’s all right in the end: yet, by Jove! at first sight it -does seem a sad intellectual fall.... The dismal change is ordained and -thin meagre Latin (the same for everybody) with small shreds and patches -of Greek, is thrown like a pauper’s pall over all your early lore; -instead of sweet knowledge, vile monkish doggrel, grammars and graduses, -dictionaries and lexicons, horrible odds and ends of dead languages -are given you for your portion, and down you fall from Roman story to a -three-inch scrap of ‘Scriptores Romani’—from Greek poetry down, down, to -the cold rations of ‘Poetæ Græci,’ cut up by commentators and served out -by schoolmasters!” (“Eothen,” the Troad.) - -We see from this how the Renascence ideal had the extraordinary effect -of banishing literature from the school-room. Literature has indeed not -ceased to influence the young; it still counts for much more in their -lives than in the lives of their seniors; but we all know who are the -writers who affected our own minds in childhood and youth, and who affect -the minds of our pupils now—not Eutropius or Xenophon, or Cæsar or -Cicero, but Defoe and Swift and Marryatt and Walter Scott. The ancient -writings which were literature to Melancthon and Erasmus, as they are -still to many in our universities and elsewhere, can never be literature -to the young. Most of the classical authors read in the schoolroom could -not be made literature to young people even by means of translations, -for they were men who wrote for men and women only. We see that it -would be absurd to make an ordinary boy of twelve or fourteen study -Burke or Pope. And if we do not make him read Burke, whose language he -understands, why do we make him read Cicero whose language he does not -understand? If he cannot appreciate Pope, why do we teach him Horace? -The Renascence gives us the explanation of this singular anomaly. The -scholars of that age were so delighted with the “composite harmony” of -the ancient classics that the study of these classics seemed to them the -one thing worth living for. The main, if not the only object they kept -in view in bringing up the young was to gain for them admission to the -treasure house; and though young people could not understand the ancient -writings as literature, they might at least study them as language -and thus be ready to enjoy them as literature in after-life. Thus the -subject of instruction in the schoolroom came to be, not the classics -but, the classical languages. The classics were used as school books, -but the only meaning thought of was the meaning of the detached word or -at best of the detached sentence. You ask a child learning to read if he -understands what he is reading about, and he says, “I can’t think of the -meaning because I am thinking of the words.” The same thing happened in -the schoolboy’s study of the classics, and so it has come to pass that to -this day the great writers of antiquity discharge a humble function which -they certainly never contemplated. - - “Great Cæsar’s body dead and turned to clay - May stop a hole to keep the wind away.” - -And great Cæsar’s mind has been turned to uses almost as paltry. He -has in fact written for the schoolroom not a commentary on the Wars -of Gaul—nothing of the kind—but simply a book of exercises in Latin -construing; and an excellent book it would be if he had only graduated -the difficulties better. - -§ 16. IV. There is yet another weakness about the Renascence ideal—a -weakness from which most ideals are free. - -Most ideals have this merit at least, that he who makes even a feeble and -abortive attempt to reach them is benefited in proportion to his advance, -however small that advance may be. If he fails to seize the coat of gold, -he carries away, as the proverb tells us, at least one of the sleeves; -or, to use George Herbert’s metaphor— - - “ ... Who aimeth at the sky, - Shoots higher far than he who means a tree.” - -But the learned ideal has not even this advantage. The first stage, the -study of the ancient languages, is so totally different from the study of -the ancient literatures to which it is the preliminary, that the student -who never goes beyond this first stage either gets no benefit at all, or -a benefit which is not of the kind intended. Suppose I am within a walk, -though a long one, of the British Museum, and hearing of some valuable -books in the library, which I can see nowhere else, I set off to consult -them. In this case it makes no difference to me how valuable the books -are if I do not get as far as the Museum.[6] My friends may comfort me -with the assurance that the walk must have done me good. Perhaps so; -but I left home to get a knowledge of certain books, not to exercise my -legs. Had exercise been my object I should probably have chosen another -direction. - -Now schoolmasters, since the Renascence, have been in the habit of -leading all their pupils through the back slums of the Seven Dials and -Soho in the direction of the British Museum, with the avowed purpose of -taking them to the library, although they knew full well that not one -pupil in ten, not one in fifty, would ever reach the door. To produce -a few scholars able to appreciate the classics of Greece and Rome they -have sacrificed everybody else; and according to their own showing they -have condemned a large portion of the upper classes, nearly all the -middle classes, and quite all the poorer classes to remain “uneducated.” -And, according to the theory of the schoolroom, one-half of the human -race—the women—have not been supposed to need education. For them -“accomplishments” have been held sufficient. - -§ 17. V. In conclusion I must point out one effect of the Renascence -ideal which seems to me no less mischievous than those I have already -mentioned. This ideal led the schoolmasters to attach little importance -to the education of _children_. Directly their pupils were old enough for -Latin Grammar the schoolmasters were quite at home; but till then the -children’s time seemed to them of small value, and they neither knew nor -cared to know how to employ it. If the little ones could learn by heart -forms of words which would afterwards “come in useful,” the schoolmasters -were ready to assist such learning by unsparing application of the rod, -but no other learning seemed worthy even of a caning. Absorbed in the -world of books they overlooked the world of nature. Galileo complains -that he could not induce them to look through his telescope, for they -held that truth could be arrived at only by comparison of MSS. No wonder -then that they had so little sympathy with children, and did not know how -to teach them. It is by slow degrees that we are breaking away from the -bad tradition then established, are getting to understand children, and -with such leaders as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, are investigating -the best education for them. We no longer think of them as immature men -and women, but see that each stage has its own completeness, and that -there is a perfection in childhood which must precede the perfection of -manhood just as truly as the flower goes before the fruit. “Childhood,” -says Rousseau, “has its own ways of seeing, feeling, thinking;” and it -is by studying these that we find out how children should be educated. -Our connexion with the world of nature seems much closer in our early -years than ever afterwards. The child’s mind seems drawn out to its -surroundings. He is intensely interested in the new world in which he -finds himself, and whilst so many of us grown people need a flapper, -like the sages of Laputa, to call our attention from our own thoughts to -anything that meets the eye or ear, the child sees and hears everything, -and everything seen or heard becomes associated in his mind not so much -with thought as with feeling. Hence it is that we most of us look back -wistfully to our early days, and confess sorrowfully that though years -may have brought “the philosophic mind,” - - “ ... Nothing can bring back the hour - Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.” - -The material world then seems to supply just those objects, whether -birds, beasts, or flowers, by which the child is attracted, and on which -his faculties will therefore be most naturally and healthily employed. -But the Renascence schoolmasters had little notion of this. If you think -that the greatest scholar is the greatest man, you will, as a matter of -course, place at the other end of the scale those who are not scholars at -all. An English inspector, who seems to have thought children had been -created with due regard to the Revised Code of the Privy Council, spoke -of the infants who could not be classed by their performances in “the -three R’s” as “the fag end of the school;” and no doubt the Renascence -schoolmasters considered the children the fag end of humanity. The great -scholars were indeed far above the race of pedants; but the schoolmasters -who adopted their ideal were not. And what is a pedant? “A man who has -got rid of his brains to make room for his learning.”[7] The pedantic -schoolmasters of the Renascence wished the mind of the pupil to be -cleared of everything else, that it might have room for the languages -of Greece and Rome. But what if the mind failed to take in its destined -freight? In that case the schoolmasters had nothing else for it, and were -content that it should go empty. - - - - -II. - -RENASCENCE TENDENCIES. - - -§ 1. In considering and comparing the two great epochs of intellectual -activity and change in modern times, viz., the sixteenth century and -the nineteenth, we cannot but be struck with one fundamental difference -between them. - -§ 2. It will affect all our thoughts, as Sir Henry Maine has said, -whether we place the Golden Age in the Past or in the Future. In the -nineteenth century the “good time” is supposed to be “coming,” but in -the sixteenth century all thinkers looked backwards. The great Italian -scholars gazed with admiration and envy on the works of ancient Greece -and Rome, and longed to restore the old languages, and as much as -possible the old world, so that such works might be produced again. Many -were suspected, not altogether perhaps without reason, of wishing to -uproot Christianity itself,[8] that they might bring back the Golden Age -of Pericles. - -§ 3. At the same time another movement was going on, principally in -Germany. Here too, men were endeavouring to throw off the immediate past -in order to revive the remote past. The religious reformers, like the -scholars, wished to restore a golden age, only a different age, not the -age of the Antigone, but the age of the Apostles’ Creed. Thus it happened -that the scholars and the reformers joined in attaching the very highest -importance to the ancient languages. Through these languages, and, as -they thought, through them alone, was it possible to get a glimpse into -the bygone world in which their soul delighted. - -§ 4. But though all joined in extolling the ancient writings, we find at -the Renascence great differences in the way of regarding these writings -and in the objects for which they were employed. A consideration of these -differences will help us to understand the course of education when the -Renascence was a force no longer. - -§ 5. Very powerful in education were the great scholars, of whom Erasmus -was perhaps the greatest, certainly the most celebrated. In devoting -their lives to the study of the ancients their object was not merely to -appreciate literary style, though this was a source of boundless delight -to them, but also to _understand_ the classical writings and the ancient -world through them. These men, whom we may call _par excellence_ the -Scholars, cared indeed before all things for literature; but with all -their delight in the form they never lost sight of the substance. They -knew the truth that Milton afterwards expressed in these memorable words: -“Though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that -Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things -in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be -esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his -mother dialect only.” (Tractate to Hartlib, § 4). - -So Erasmus and the scholars would have all the educated _understand_ the -classical authors. But to understand words you must know the things to -which the words refer. Thus the Scholars were led to advocate a partial -study of things a kind of realism. But we must carefully observe a -peculiarity of this scholastic realism which distinguished it from the -realism of a later date—the realism of Bacon. The study of things was -undertaken not for its own sake, but simply in order to understand books. -Perhaps some of us are conscious that this kind of literary realism -has not wholly passed away. We may have observed wild flowers, or the -changes in tree or cloud, because we find that the best way to understand -some favourite author, as Wordsworth or Tennyson. This will help us to -understand the realism of the sixteenth century. The writings of great -authors have been compared to the plaster globes (“celestial globes” as -we call them), which assist us in understanding the configuration of the -stars (_Guesses at Truth_, j. 47). Adopting this simile we may say that -the Scholars loved to study the globe for its own sake, and when they -looked at stars they did so with the object of understanding the globe. -Thus we read of doctors who recommended their pupils to look at actual -cases of disease as the best commentary on the works of Hippocrates and -Galen. This kind of realism was good as far as it went, but it did not go -far. Of course the end in view limited the study, and the Scholars took -no interest in things except those which were mentioned in the classics. -They had no desire to investigate the material universe and make -discoveries for themselves. This is why Galileo could not induce them to -look through his telescope; for the ancients had no telescopes, and the -Scholars wished to see nothing that had not been seen by their favourite -authors. First then we have the Scholars, headed by Erasmus. - -§ 6. Next we find a party less numerous and for a time less influential, -who did care about things for the sake of the things themselves; but -carried away by the literary current of their age, they sought to learn -about them not directly, but only by reading. Here again we have a kind -of realism which is not yet extinct. Some years ago I was assured by a -Graduate of the University of London who had passed in chemistry, that, -as far as he knew, he had never seen a chemical in his life: he had got -all his knowledge from books. While such a thing is possible among us, -we need not wonder if those who in the sixteenth century prized the -knowledge of things, allowed books to come between the learner and the -object of his study, if they regarded Nature as a far-off country of -which we could know nothing but what great authors reported to us. - -As this party, unlike the Scholars, did not delight in literature as -such, but simply as a means of acquiring knowledge, literary form was -not valued by them, and they preferred Euclid to Sophocles, Columella -to Virgil. Seeking to learn about things, not immediately, but through -words, they have received from Raumer a name they are likely to -keep—Verbal Realists. In the sixteenth century the greatest of the Verbal -Realists also gave a hint of Realism proper; for he was no less a man -than Rabelais. - -§ 7. Lastly we come to those who, as it turned out, were to have more -influence in the schoolroom than the Scholars and the Verbal Realists -combined. I do not know that these have had any name given them, but for -distinction sake we may call them _Stylists_. In studying literature -the Scholars cared both for form and substance, the Verbal Realists for -substance only, and the Stylists for form only. The Stylists gave up -their lives, not, like the scholars, to gain a thorough understanding -of the ancient writings and of the old world, but to an attempted -reproduction of the ancient languages and of the classical literary form. - -§ 8. In marking these tendencies at the Renascence, we must remember -that though distinguished by their tendencies, these Scholars, Verbal -Realists, and Stylists, were not divided into clearly defined parties. -Categories like these no doubt assist us in gaining precision of thought, -but we must not gain precision at the expense of accuracy. The tendencies -we have been considering did not act in precisely opposite directions, -and all were to some extent affected by them. But one tendency was -predominant in one man and another in another; and this justifies us in -calling Sturm a Stylist, Erasmus a Scholar, and Rabelais a Verbal Realist. - -§ 9. In one respect they were all agreed. The world was to be regenerated -by means of books. Nothing pleased them more than to think of their age -as the Revival of Learning. - - - - -III. - -STURMIUS. - -1507-1589. - - -§ 1. The curriculum bequeathed by the Renascence and stereotyped in -the School Codes of Germany, in the _Ratio_ of the Jesuits, and in the -English public school system, was greatly influenced by the most famous -schoolmaster of the fifteen hundreds, John Sturm, who was for over forty -years Rector of the Strassburg Gymnasium. - -§ 2. Sturm was a fine specimen of the successful man: he knew what -his contemporaries wanted, and that was just what he wanted. “He was -a blessed fellow,” as Prince Hal says of Poins, “to think as every -man thought,” and he not only “kept the roadway” himself, but he also -“personally conducted” great bands of pupils over it, at one time “200 -noblemen, 24 counts and barons, and 3 princes.” What could schoolmaster -desire more? - -§ 3. But I frankly own that Sturm is no favourite of mine, and that I -think that he did much harm to education. However, his influence in the -schoolroom was so great that I must not leave him unnoticed; and I give -some information, taken mainly from Raumer’s account of him, which is -translated in Henry Barnard’s “German Teachers and Educators.” I have -also looked at the exhaustive article by Dr. Bossier in K. A. Schmid’s -_Encyklopädie_ (_sub v._) - -§ 4. John Sturm, born at Schleiden in the Eifel, not far from Cologne, -in 1507, was one of 15 children, and would not have had much teaching -had not his father been steward to a nobleman, with whose sons he was -brought up. He always spoke with reverence and affection of his early -teachers, and from them no doubt he acquired his thirst for learning. -With the nobleman’s sons and under the guidance of a tutor he was sent -to Liège, and there he attended a school of the “Brethren of the Life in -Common,” _alias_ Hieronymites. Many of the arrangements of this school he -afterwards reproduced in the Strassburg Gymnasium, and in this way the -good Brethren gained an influence over classical education throughout the -world. - -§ 5. Between the age of 15 and 20 Sturm was at Lyons, and before the end -of this period he was forced into teaching for a maintenance. He then, -like many other learned men of the time, turned printer. We next find -him at the University of Paris, where he thought of becoming a doctor -of medicine, but was finally carried away from natural science by the -Renascence devotion to literature, and he became a popular lecturer on -the classics. From Paris he was called to Strassburg (then, as now, in -Germany) in 1537. In 1538 he published his plan of a Gymnasium or Grammar -School, with the title, “The right way of opening schools of literature -(_De Literarum Ludis recte aperiendis_),” and some years afterwards -(1565) he published his Letters (_Classicæ Epistolæ_) to the different -form-masters in his school. - -§ 6. The object of teaching is three-fold, says Sturm, “piety, knowledge, -and the art of expression.” The student should be distinguished by -reasonable and neat speech (_ratione et oratione_). To attain this the -boys in his school had to give seven years to the acquirement of a pure -Latin style; then two years more were devoted to elegance; then five -years of collegiate life were to be given to the art of Latin speech. -This course is for ten years carefully mapped out by Sturm in his Letters -to the masters. The foundation is to be laid in the tenth class, which -the child enters at seven years old, and in which he learns to read, -and is turned on to the declensions and conjugations. We have for all -classes the exact “pensum,” and also specimens of the questions put in -examination by the _top boy of the next class above_, a hint which was -not thrown away upon the Jesuits. - -§ 7. Sturm cries over the superior advantages of the Roman children. -“Cicero was but twenty when he delivered his speeches in behalf of -Quintius and Roscius; but in these days where is there the man even of -eighty, who could make such speeches? Yet there are books enough and -intellect enough. What need we further? We need the Latin language and a -correct method of teaching. Both these we must have before we can arrive -at the summit of eloquence.” - -§ 8. Sturm did not, like Rabelais, put Greek on a level with Latin or -above it. The reading of Greek words is begun in the sixth class. Hebrew, -Sturm did not himself learn till he was nearly sixty. - -§ 9. With a thousand boys in his school, and carrying on correspondence -with the leading sovereigns of his age, Sturm was a model of the -successful man. But in the end “the religious difficulty” was too much -even for him, and he was dismissed from his post by his opponents “for -old age and other causes.” Surely the “other causes” need not have been -mentioned. Sturm was then eighty years old. - -§ 10. The successful man in every age is the man who chooses a popular -and attainable object, and shows tremendous energy in pursuit of it. -Most people don’t know precisely what they want; and among the few who -do, nine-tenths or more fail through lack of energy. But Sturm was quite -clear in his aim, and having settled the means, he showed immense energy -and strength of will in going through with them. He wanted to restore -the language of Cicero and Ovid and to give his pupils great power of -elegant expression in that language. Like all schoolmasters he professed -that piety and knowledge (which in more modern phrase would be wisdom and -knowledge) should come first, but like most schoolmasters he troubled -himself mainly, if not exclusively, about the art of expression. As -an abstract proposition the schoolmaster admits that to have in your -head something worth saying is more important than to have the power -of expression ready in case anything worth saying should “come along.” -But the schoolmaster’s art always has taken, and I suppose, in the -main, always will take for its material the means of expression; and -by preference it chooses a tongue not vulgar or “understanded of the -people.” Thus the schoolmasters with Sturm at their head set themselves -to teach _words_—foreign words, and allowed their pupils to study nothing -else, not even the mother tongue. The satirist who wrote Hudibras has -stated for us the result— - - “No sooner are the organs of the brain - Quick to receive and stedfast to retain - Best knowledges, but all’s laid out upon - Retrieving of the curse of Babylon. - ... - And he that is but able to express - No sense in several languages - Will pass for learneder than he that’s known - To speak the strongest reason in his own.”[9] - -§ 11. One of the scholars of the Renascence, Hieronymus Wolf, was wise -enough to see that there might be no small merit in a boy’s silence: -“Nec minima pueri virtus est tacere cum recte loqui nesciat” (Quoted by -Parker). But this virtue of silence was not encouraged by Sturm, and -he determined that by the age of sixteen his pupils should have a fair -command of expression in Latin and some knowledge of Greek.[10] Latin -indeed was to supplant the mother tongue, and boys were to be severely -punished for using their own language. By this we may judge of the -pernicious effects of following Sturm. And it is a mistake to suppose -that the unwisdom of tilting at the vernacular was not so much Sturm’s, -as of the age in which he lived. The typical English schoolmaster of the -century, Mulcaster, was in this and many other ways greatly in advance of -Sturm. To him it was plain that we should “care for that most which we -ever use most, because we need it most.”[11] The only need recognized by -Sturm was need of the classical languages. Thus he and his admirers led -the unlucky schoolboy straight into that “slough of Despond”—verbalism, -in which he has struggled ever since; - - “Plunged for some sense, but found no bottom there, - So learned and floundered on in mere despair.”[12] - - - - -IV. - -SCHOOLS OF THE JESUITS. - - -§ 1. Since the Revival of Learning, no body of men has played so -prominent a part in education as the Jesuits. With characteristic -sagacity and energy they soon seized on education as a stepping-stone -to power and influence; and with their talent for organization, they -framed a system of schools which drove all important competitors from the -field, and made Jesuits the instructors of Catholic, and even, to some -extent, of Protestant Europe. Their skill in this capacity is attested -by the highest authorities, by Bacon[13] and by Descartes, the latter of -whom had himself been their pupil; and it naturally met with its reward: -for more than one hundred years nearly all the foremost men throughout -Christendom, both among the clergy and laity, had received the Jesuit -training, and in most cases retained for life an attachment to their old -masters. - -§ 2. About these Jesuit schools—once so celebrated and so powerful, and -still existing in great numbers, though little remains of their original -importance—there does not seem to be much information accessible to the -English reader. I have, therefore, collected the following particulars -about them; and refer any one who is dissatisfied with so meagre an -account, to the works which I have consulted.[14] The Jesuit schools, as -I said, still exist, but they did their great work in other centuries; -and I therefore prefer to speak of them as things of the past.[15] - -§ 3. When the Jesuits were first formally recognized by a Bull of -Paul III in 1540, the Bull stated that the Order was formed, among -other things, “especially for the purpose of instructing boys and -ignorant persons in the Christian religion.” But the Society well -understood that secular was more in demand than religious learning; -and they offered the more valued instruction, that they might have the -opportunity of inculcating lessons which, to the Society at least, were -the more valuable. From various Popes they obtained powers for founding -schools and colleges, for giving degrees, and for lecturing publicly -at universities. Their foundations rapidly extended in the Romance -countries, except in France, where they were long in overcoming the -opposition of the Regular clergy and of the University of Paris. Over -the Teutonic and Slavonic countries they spread their influence first by -means of national colleges at Rome, where boys of the different nations -were trained as missionaries. But, in time, the Jesuits pushed their -camps forward, even into the heart of the enemy’s country. - -§ 4. The system of education to be adopted in all the Jesuit institutions -was settled during the Generalship of Aquaviva. In 1584 that General -appointed a School Commission, consisting of six distinguished Jesuits -from the various countries of Europe. These spent nearly a year in -Rome, in study and consultation; and the fruit of their labours was -the ground-work of the _Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis -Jesu_. This, however, did not take its final form till twelve other -commissioners had been at work upon it. It was then (1599) revised and -approved by Aquaviva and the Fifth and Sixth General Assemblies. By this -code the Jesuit schools were governed till 1832, when the curriculum was -enlarged so as to include physical science and modern languages. - -§ 5. The Jesuits who formed the _Societas Professa_, _i.e._, those who -had taken all the vows, had spent from fifteen to eighteen years in -preparation, viz., two years as novices and one as approved scholars, -during which they were engaged chiefly in religious exercises, three -years in the study of philosophy and mathematics, four years of theology, -and, in the case of the more distinguished students, two years more in -repetition and private theological study. At some point in this course, -mostly after the philosophy, the students were sent, for a while, to -teach the “lower studies” to boys.[16] The method of teaching was to be -learnt in the training schools, called Juvenats,[17] one of which was -founded in each province. - -Few, even of the most distinguished students, received dispensation from -giving elementary instruction. Salmeron and Bobadilla performed this duty -in Naples, Lainez in Florence, Borgia (who had been Viceroy of Catalonia) -in Cordova, Canisius in Cologne. - -§ 6. During the time the Jesuit held his post as teacher he was to give -himself up entirely to the work. His private studies were abandoned; his -religious exercises shortened. He began generally with the boys in the -lowest form, and that he might be able to study the character of his -pupils he went up the school with them, advancing a step every year, as -in the system now common in Scotland. But some forms were always taught, -as the highest is in Scotland, by the same master, who remained a teacher -for life. - -§ 7. Great care was to be taken that the frequent changes in the staff -of masters did not lead to alteration in the conduct of the school. -Each teacher was bound to carry on the established instruction by the -established methods. All his personal peculiarities and opinions were -to be as much as possible suppressed. To secure this a rigid system of -supervision was adopted, and reports were furnished by each officer to -his immediate superior. Over all stood the General of the Order. Next -came the Provincial, appointed by the General. Over each college was -the Rector, who was appointed (for three years) by the General, though -he was responsible to the Provincial, and made his reports to him. Next -came the Prefect of Studies, appointed, not by the Rector, but by the -Provincial. The teachers were carefully watched both by the Rector and -the Prefect of Studies, and it was the duty of the latter to visit each -teacher in his class at least once a fortnight, to hear him teach. The -other authorities, besides the masters of classes, were usually a House -Prefect, and Monitors selected from the boys, one in each form. - -§ 8. The school or college was to be built and maintained by gifts and -bequests which the Society might receive for this purpose only. Their -instruction was always given gratuitously. When sufficient funds were -raised to support the officers, teachers, and at least twelve scholars, -no effort was to be made to increase them; but if they fell short of -this, donations were to be sought by begging from house to house. Want of -money, however, was not a difficulty which the Jesuits often experienced. - -§ 9. The Jesuit education included two courses of study, _studia -superiora et inferiora_. In the smaller colleges only the _studia -inferiora_ were carried on; and it is to these _lower schools_ that the -following account mainly refers. The boys usually began this course at -ten years old and ended it at sixteen.[18] - -§ 10. The pupils in the Jesuit colleges were of two kinds: 1st, those -who were training for the Order, and had passed the Novitiate; 2nd, the -externs, who were pupils merely. When the building was not filled by the -first of these (the Scholastici, or _Nostri_, as they are called in the -Jesuit writings), other pupils were taken in to board, who had to pay -simply the cost of their living, and not even this unless they could -well afford it. Instruction, as I said, was gratuitous to all. “Gratis -receive, gratis give,” was the Society’s rule; so they would neither make -any charge for instruction, nor accept any gift that was burdened with -conditions. - -§ 11. Faithful to the tradition of the Catholic Church, the Society did -not estimate a man’s worth simply according to his birth and outward -circumstances. The Constitutions expressly laid down that poverty and -mean extraction were never to be any hindrance to a pupil’s admission; -and Sacchini says: “Do not let any favouring of the higher classes -interfere with the care of meaner pupils, since the birth of all is equal -in Adam, and the inheritance in Christ.”[19] - -§ 12. The externs who could not be received into the building were -boarded in licensed houses, which were always liable to an unexpected -visit from the Prefect of Studies. - -§ 13. The “lower school” was arranged in five classes (since increased to -eight), of which the lowest usually had two divisions. Parallel classes -were formed wherever the number of pupils was too great for five masters. -The names given to the several divisions were as follows: - - 1. Infima } - 2. Media } Classis Grammaticæ. - 3. Suprema } - 4. Humanitas. - 5. Rhetorica. - -Each was “absolved” in a year, except Rhetorica, which required two years -(Stöckl, p. 237). - -Jesuits and Protestants alike in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -thought of little but literary instruction, and that too connected -only with Latin and Greek. The subject-matter of the teaching in the -Jesuit schools was to be “præter Grammaticam, quod ad Rhetoricam, Poësim -et Historiam pertinet,” in addition to Grammar, whatever related to -Rhetoric, Poetry, and History. Reading and writing the mother-tongue -might not be taught without special leave from the Provincial. Latin was -as much as possible to supersede all other languages, even in speaking; -and nothing else might be used by the pupils in the higher forms on any -day but a holiday.[20] To gain a supply of Latin words for ordinary -use, the pupils committed to memory Latin conversations on general -topics, such as Francis Pomey’s “Indiculus Universalis” and “Colloquia -Scholastica.” - -§ 14. Although many good school-books were written by the Jesuits, a -great part of their teaching was given orally. The master was, in fact, -a lecturer, who expounded sometimes a piece of a Latin or Greek author, -sometimes the rules of grammar. The pupils were required to get up the -substance of these lectures, and to learn the grammar-rules and parts of -the classical authors by heart. The master for his part had to bestow -great pains on the preparation of his lectures.[21] - -§ 15. Written exercises, translations, &c., were given in on every day, -except Saturday; and the master had, if possible, to go over each one -with its writer and his appointed rival or _æmulus_. - -§ 16. The method of hearing the rules, &c., committed to memory was -this:—Certain boys in each class, who were called Decurions, repeated -their tasks to the master, and then in his presence heard the other boys -repeat theirs. The master meanwhile corrected the written exercises.[22] - -§ 17. One of the leading peculiarities in the Jesuits’ system was the -pains they took to foster emulation—“cotem ingenii puerilis, calcar -industriæ—the whetstone of talent, the spur of industry.” For this -purpose all the boys in the lower part of the school were arranged in -pairs, each pair being rivals (_æmuli_) to one another. Every boy was -to be constantly on the watch to catch his rival tripping, and was -immediately to correct him. Besides this individual rivalry, every class -was divided into two hostile camps, called Rome and Carthage, which had -frequent pitched battles of questions on set subjects. These were the -“Concertations,” in which the boys sometimes had to put questions to the -opposite camp, sometimes to expose erroneous answers when the questions -were asked by the master[23] (see Appendix: Class Matches, p. 529). -Emulation, indeed, was encouraged to a point where, as it seems to me, -it must have endangered the good feeling of the boys among themselves. -Jouvency mentions a practice of appointing mock defenders of any -particularly bad exercise, who should make the author of it ridiculous by -their excuses; and any boy whose work was very discreditable, was placed -on a form by himself, with a daily punishment, until he could show that -some one deserved to change places with him. - -§ 18. In the higher classes a better kind of rivalry was cultivated -by means of “Academies,” _i.e._, voluntary associations for study, -which met together, under the superintendence of a master, to read -themes, translations, &c., and to discuss passages from the classics. -The new members were elected by the old, and to be thus elected was a -much-coveted distinction. In these Academies the cleverer students got -practice for the disputations, which formed an important part of the -school work of the higher classes. - -§ 19. There was a vast number of other expedients by which the Jesuits -sought to work on their pupils’ _amour propre_, such as, on the one hand, -the weekly publication of offences _per præconem_, and, on the other, -besides prizes (which could be won only by the externs), titles and -badges of honour, and the like. “There are,” says Jouvency, “hundreds -of expedients of this sort, all tending to sharpen the boys’ wits, to -lighten the labour of the master, and to free him from the invidious and -troublesome necessity of punishing.” - -§ 20. The school-hours were remarkably short: two hours and a half in -the morning, and the same in the afternoon; with a whole holiday a week -in summer, and a half holiday in winter. The time was spent in the -first form after the following manner:—During the first half-hour the -master corrected the exercises of the previous day, while the Decurions -heard the lesson which had been learnt by heart. Then the master heard -the piece of Latin which he had explained on the previous day. With -this construing, was connected a great deal of parsing, conjugating, -declining, &c. The teacher then explained the piece for the following -day, which, in this form, was never to exceed four lines. The last -half-hour of the morning was spent in explaining grammar. This was done -very slowly and carefully: in the words of the _Ratio Studd._: “Pluribus -diebus fere singula præcepta inculcanda sunt”—“Generally take a single -rule and drive it in, several days.” For the first hour of the afternoon -the master corrected exercises, and the boys learnt grammar. If there -was time, the master put questions about the grammar he had explained -in the morning. The second hour was taken up with more explanations of -grammar, and the school closed with half an hour’s concertation, or the -master corrected the notes which the pupils had taken during the day. In -the other forms, the work was very similar to this, except that Greek was -added, and also in the higher classes a little mathematics. - -§ 21. It will be observed from the above account, that almost all -the strength of the Jesuit teaching was thrown into the study of the -Latin language, which was to be used, not only for reading, but also -in writing and speaking. But under the name of “erudition” some amount -of instruction in other subjects, especially in history and geography, -was given in explaining, or rather lecturing on, the classical authors. -Jouvency says that this lecture must consist of the following parts:—1st, -the general meaning of the whole passage; 2nd, the explanation of each -clause, both as to the meaning and construction; 3rd, any information, -such as accounts of historical events, or of ancient manners and customs, -which could be connected with the text; 4th, in the higher forms, -applications of the rules of rhetoric and poetry; 5th, an examination of -the Latinity; 6th, the inculcation of some moral lesson. This treatment -of a subject he illustrates by examples. Among these is an account of -a lesson for the first (_i.e._, lowest) class in the Fable of the Fox -and the Mask:—1st, comes the argument and the explanation of words; -2nd, the grammar and parsing, as _vulpes_, a substantive of the third -declension, &c., like _proles_, _clades_, &c. (here the master is always -to give among his examples some which the boys already know); 3rd, comes -the _eruditio_—something about foxes, about tragedy, about the brain, -and hence about other parts of the head; 4th, Latinity, the order of -the words, choice of the words, synonyms, &c. Then the sentences may be -parodied; other suitable substantives may be found for the adjectives and -_vice versâ_; and every method is to be adopted of showing the boys how -to _use_ the words they have learnt. Lastly, comes the moral. - -§ 22. The practical teacher will be tempted to ask, How is the attention -of the class to be kept up whilst all this information is given? This -the Jesuits did partly by punishing the inattentive. Every boy was -subsequently required to reproduce what the teacher had said, and to -show his written notes of it. But no doubt this matter of attention was -found a difficulty. Jouvency tells the teachers to break off from time to -time in their lectures, and to ask questions; and he adds: “Variæ sunt -artes excitandæ attentionis quas docebit usus et sua cuique industria -suggeret.—Very various are the devices for arousing attention. These will -occur with practice and pains.” - -For private study, besides written exercises and learning by heart, the -pupils were recommended subjects to get up in their own time; and in -this, and also as to the length of some of the regular lessons, they were -permitted to decide for themselves. Here, as everywhere, the Jesuits -trusted to the sense of honour and emulation—those who did extra work -were praised and rewarded. - -§ 23. One of the maxims of this system was: “Repetitio mater studiorum.” -Every lesson was connected with two repetitions—one before it began, -of preceding work, and the other at the close, of the work just done. -Besides this, one day a week was devoted entirely to repetition. In the -three lowest classes the desire of laying a solid foundation even led to -the second six months in the year being given to again going over the -work of the first six months.[24] By this means boys of extraordinary -ability could pass through these forms in eighteen months, instead of -three years. - -§ 23. _Thoroughness_ in work was the one thing insisted on. Sacchini says -that much time should be spent in going over the more important things, -which are “veluti multorum fontes et capita (as it were the sources and -starting points of many others)”; and that the master should prefer to -teach a few things perfectly, to giving indistinct impressions of many -things.[25] We should remember, however, that the pupils of the Jesuits -were not _children_. Subjects such as grammar cannot, by any expenditure -of time and trouble, be perfectly taught to children, because children -cannot perfectly understand them; so that the Jesuit thoroughness is not -always attainable. - -§ 24. The usual duration of the course in the lower schools was six -years—_i.e._, one year in each of the four lower classes, and two years -in the highest class. Every year closed with a very formal examination. -Before this examination took place, the pupils had lessons in the manner -of it, so that they might come prepared, not only with a knowledge of the -subjects, but also of the laws of writing for examination (“scribendi ad -examen leges”). The examination was conducted by a commission appointed -for the purpose, of which commission the Prefect of Studies was an _ex -officio_ member. The masters of the classes, though they were present, -and could make remarks, were not of the examining body. For the _vivâ -voce_ the boys were ushered in, three at a time, before the solemn -conclave. The results of the examination, both written and verbal, were -joined with the records of the work done in the past year; and the names -of those pupils who had distinguished themselves were then published in -order of merit, but the poll was arranged alphabetically, or according to -birthplace. - -§ 25. As might be expected, the Jesuits were to be very careful of the -moral and religious training of their pupils. “Quam maxime in vitæ -probitate ac bonis artibus doctrinaque proficiant ad Dei gloriam.” -(_Ratio Studd._, quoted by Schmid.) And Sacchini tells the master to -remember how honourable his office is; as it has to do, not with grammar -only, but also with the science and practice of a Christian and religious -life: “atque eo quidem ordine ut ipsa ingenii eruditio sit expolitio -morum, et humana literatura divinæ ancilletur sapientiæ.”[26] - -Each lesson was to begin with prayer or the sign of the Cross. The -pupils were to hear Mass every morning, and were to be urged to frequent -confession and receiving of the Holy Communion. The Father Confessor was -always a Jesuit, but he was not a master in the school. - -§ 26. The bodily health also was to be carefully attended to. The pupils -were not to study too much or too long at a time. Nothing was to be done -for a space of from one or two hours after dinner. On holidays excursions -were made to farms in the country.[27] - -§ 27. Punishments were to be as light as possible, and the master was to -shut his eyes to offences whenever he thought he might do so with safety. -Grave offences were to be visited with corporal punishment, performed by -a “corrector,” who was not a member of the Order. Where this chastisement -did not have a good effect, the pupil was to be expelled.[28] - -§ 28. The dry details into which I have been drawn by faithfully copying -the manner of the _Ratio Studiorum_ may seem to the reader to afford -no answer to the question which naturally suggests itself—To what did -the school-system of the Jesuits owe its enormous popularity? But in -part, at least, these details do afford an answer. They show us that the -Jesuits were intensely practical. The _Ratio Studiorum_ hardly contains -a single principle; but what it does is this—it points out a perfectly -attainable goal, and carefully defines the road by which that goal -is to be approached. For each class was prescribed not only the work -to be done, but also the end to be kept in view. Thus method reigned -throughout—perhaps not the best method, as the object to be attained was -assuredly not the highest object—but the method, such as it was, was -applied with undeviating exactness. In this particular the Jesuit schools -contrasted strongly with their rivals of old, as indeed with the ordinary -school of the present day. The Head Master, who is to the modern English -school what the General, Provincial, Rector, Prefect of Studies, and -_Ratio Studiorum_ combined were to a school of the Jesuits, has perhaps -no standard in view up to which the boy should have been brought when his -school course is completed.[29] The masters of forms teach just those -portion of their subject in which they themselves are interested, in any -way that occurs to them, with by no means uniform success; so that when -two forms are examined with the same examination paper, it is no very -uncommon occurrence for the lower to be found superior to the higher. It -is, perhaps, to be expected that a course in which uniform method tends -to a definite goal would on the whole be more successful than one in -which a boy has to accustom himself by turns to half-a-dozen different -methods, invented at haphazard by individual masters with different aims -in view, if indeed they have any aim at all. - -§ 29. I have said that the object which the Jesuits proposed in their -teaching was not the highest object. They did not aim at developing -_all_ the faculties of their pupils, but mainly the receptive and -reproductive faculties. When the young man had acquired a thorough -mastery of the Latin language for all purposes, when he was well versed -in the theological and philosophical opinions of his preceptors, when -he was skilful in dispute, and could make a brilliant display from the -resources of a well-stored memory, he had reached the highest point to -which the Jesuits sought to lead him.[30] Originality and independence of -mind, love of truth for its own sake, the power of reflecting, and of -forming correct judgments were not merely neglected—they were suppressed -in the Jesuits’ system. But in what they attempted they were eminently -successful, and their success went a long way towards securing their -popularity.[31] - -§ 30. Their popularity was due, moreover, to the means employed, as -well as to the result attained. The Jesuit teachers were to _lead_, not -drive their pupils, to make their learning, not merely endurable, but -even acceptable, “disciplinam non modo tolerabilem, sed etiam amabilem.” -Sacchini expresses himself very forcibly on this subject. “It is,” says -he, “the unvarying decision of wise men, whether in ancient or modern -times, that the instruction of youth will be always best when it is -pleasantest: whence this application of the word _ludus_. The tenderness -of youth requires of us that we should not overstrain it, its innocence -that we should abstain from harshness.... That which enters into willing -ears the mind as it were runs to welcome, seizes with avidity, carefully -stows away, and faithfully preserves.”[32] The pupils were therefore -to be encouraged in every way to take kindly to their learning. With -this end in view (and no doubt other objects also), the masters were -carefully to seek the boys’ affections. “When pupils love the master,” -says Sacchini, “they will soon love his teaching. Let him, therefore, -show an interest in everything that concerns them and not merely in -their studies. Let him rejoice with those that rejoice, and not disdain -to weep with those that weep. After the example of the Apostle let him -become a little one amongst little ones, that he may make them adult in -Christ, and Christ adult in them ... Let him unite the grave kindness and -authority of a father with a mother’s tenderness.”[33] - -§ 31. In order that learning might be pleasant to the pupils, it was -necessary that they should not be overtasked. To avoid this, the master -had to study the character and capacity of each boy in his class, and to -keep a book with all particulars about him, and marks from one to six -indicating proficiency. Thus the master formed an estimate of what should -be required, and the amount varied considerably with the pupil, though -the quality of the work was always to be good. - -§ 32. Not only was the work not to be excessive, it was never to be of -great difficulty. Even the grammar was to be made as easy and attractive -as possible. “I think it a mistake” says Sacchini, “to introduce at an -early stage the more thorny difficulties of grammar: ... for when the -pupils have become familiar with the earlier parts, use will, by degrees, -make the more difficult clear to them. His mind expanding and his -judgment ripening as he grows older the pupil will often see for himself -that which he could hardly be made to see by others. Moreover, in reading -an author, examples of grammatical difficulties will be more easily -observed in connection with the context, and will make more impression on -the mind, than if they are taught in an abstract form by themselves. Let -them then, be carefully explained whenever they occur.”[34] - -§ 33. Perhaps no body of men in Europe (the Thugs may, in this respect, -rival them in Asia) have been so hated as the Jesuits. I once heard -Frederick Denison Maurice say he thought Kingsley could find good in -every one except the Jesuits, and, he added, he thought _he_ could find -good even in them. But why should a devoted Christian find a difficulty -in seeing good in the Jesuits, a body of men whose devotion to their -idea of Christian duty has never been surpassed?[35] The difficulty -arose from differences in ideal. Both held that the ideal Christian -would do everything “to the greater glory of God,” or as the Jesuits -put it in their business-like fashion, “A.M.D.G.,” (_i.e._, _ad majorem -Dei gloriam_). But Maurice and Kingsley thought of a divine idea for -every man. The Jesuits’ idea lost sight of the individual. Like their -enemy, Carlyle, the Jesuits in effect worshipped strength, but Carlyle -thought of the strength of the individual, the Jesuits of the strength of -“the Catholic Church.” “The Catholic Church” was to them the manifested -kingdom of God. Everything therefore that gave power to the Church tended -“A.M.D.G.” The Company of Jesus was the regular army of the Church, so, -arguing logically from their premises, they made the glory of God and the -success of the Society convertible terms. - -§ 34. Thus their conception was a purely military conception. A -commander-in-chief, if he were an ardent patriot and a great general, -would do all he could to make the army powerful. He would care much -for the health, morals, and training of the soldiers, but always with -direct reference to the army. He would attend to everything that made a -man a better soldier; beyond this he would not concern himself. In his -eyes the army would be everything, and a soldier nothing but a part of -it, just as a link is only a part of a chain. Paulsen, speaking of the -Jesuits, says truly that no great organization can exist without a root -idea. The root idea of the army is the sacrifice and annihilation of the -individual, that the body may be fused together and so gain a strength -greater than that of any number of individuals. Formed on this idea the -army acts all together and in obedience to a single will, and no mob can -stand its charge. Ignatius Loyola and succeeding Generals took up this -idea and formed an army for the Church, an army that became the wonder -and the terror of all men. Never, as Compayré says, had a body been so -sagaciously organized, or had wielded so great resources for good and for -evil.[36] (_See_ Buisson, ij, 1419.) - -§ 35. To the English schoolmaster the Jesuits must always be interesting, -if for no other reason at least for this—that they were so intensely -practical. “_Les Jésuites ne sont pas des pédagogues assez desintéressés -pour nous plaire._—The Jesuits as schoolmasters,” says M. Compayré, “are -not disinterested enough for us.” (Buisson, sub v. _Jésuites_, ad f.). -But disinterested pedagogy is not much to the mind of the Englishman. -It does not seem to know quite what it would be after, and deals in -generalities, such as “Education is not a means but an end;” and the -end being somewhat indefinite, the means are still more wanting in -precision. This vagueness is what the English master hates. He prefers -not to trouble himself about the end. The wisdom of his ancestors has -settled that, and he can direct his attention to what really interests -him—the practical details. In this he resembles the Jesuits. The end -has been settled for them by their founder. They revel in practical -details, in which they are truly great, and here we may learn much -from them. “_Ratio_ applied to studies” says Father Eyre,[37] “more -naturally means _Method_ than _Principle_; and our _Ratio Studiorum_ -is essentially a Method or System of teaching and learning.” Here is -a method that has been worked uniformly and with singular success for -three centuries, and can still give a good account of its old rivals. But -will it hold its own against the late Reformers? As regards intellectual -training the new school seeks to draw out the faculties of the young -mind by employing them on subjects in which it is _interested_. The -Jesuits fixed a course of study which, as they frankly recognized, -could not be made interesting. So they endeavoured to secure accuracy -by constant repetition, and relied for industry on two motive powers: -1st, the personal influence of the master; and, 2nd, “the spur of -industry”—emulation. - -§ 36. To acquire “influence” has ever been the main object of the -Society, and his devotion to this object makes a great distinction -between the Jesuit and most other instructors. His notion of the task was -thus expressed by Father Gerard, S. J., at the Educational Conference -of 1884: “Teaching is an art amongst arts. To be worthy of the name it -must be the work of an individual upon individuals. The true teacher must -understand, appreciate, and sympathize with those who are committed to -him. He must be daily discovering what there is (and undoubtedly there -is something in each of them) capable of fruitful development, and -contriving how better to get at them and to evoke whatever possibilities -there are in them for good.” The Jesuit master, then, tried to gain -influence over the boys and to use that influence for many purposes; -to make them work well being one of these, but not perhaps the most -important. - -§ 37. As for emulation, no instructors have used it so elaborately as -the Jesuits. In most English schools the prizes have no effect whatever -except on the first three or four boys, and the marking is so arranged -that those who take the lead in the first few lessons can keep their -position without much effort. This clumsy system would not suit the -Jesuits. They often for prize-giving divide a class into a number of -small groups, the boys in each group being approximately equal, and a -prize is offered for each group. The class matches, too, stimulate the -weaker pupils even more than the strong. - -§ 38. In conclusion, I will give the chief points of the system in the -words of one of its advocates and admirers, who was himself educated at -Stonyhurst: - -“Let us now try to put together the various pieces of this school -machinery and study the effect. We have seen that the boys have masters -entirely at their disposition, not only at class time, but at recreation -time after supper in the night Reading Rooms. Each day they record -victory or defeat in the recurring exercises or themes upon various -matters. By the quarterly papers or examinations in composition, for -which nine hours are assigned, the order of merit is fixed, and this -order entails many little privileges and precedencies, in chapel, -refectory, class room, and elsewhere. Each master, if he prove a success -and his health permit, continues to be the instructor of the boys in -his class during the space of six years. ‘It is obvious’ says Sheil, -in his account of Stonyhurst, ‘that much of a boy’s acquirements, and -a good deal of the character of his taste, must have depended upon -the individual to whose instructions he was thus almost exclusively -confined.’ And in many cases the effects must be a greater interest -felt in the students by their teachers, a mutual attachment founded on -long acquaintance, and a more thorough knowledge, on the part of the -master, of the weak and strong points of his pupils. Add to the above, -the ‘rival’ and ‘side’ system, the effect of challenges and class -combats; of the wearing of decorations and medals by the Imperators -on Sundays, Festival Days, Concertation Days, and Examination Days; -of the extraordinary work—done much more as _private_ than as _class_ -work—helping to give individuality to the boy’s exertions, which might -otherwise be merged in the routine work of the class; and the ‘free -time’ given for improvement on wet evenings and after night prayers; -add the Honours Matter; the Reports read before the Rector and all -subordinate Superiors, the Professors, and whole body of Students; add -the competition in each class and between the various classes, and even -between the various colleges in England of the Society; and only one -conclusion can be arrived at. It is a system which everyone is free to -admire or think inferior to some other preferred by him; but it _is_ a -system.” (_Stonyhurst College, Present and Past_, by A. Hewitson, 2nd -edition, 1878, pp. 214, ff.) - -§ 39. Yes, it _is_ a system, a system built up by the united efforts -of many astute intellects and showing marvellous skill in selecting -means to attain a clearly conceived end. There is then in the history -of education little that should be more interesting or might be more -instructive to the master of an English public school than the chapter -about the Jesuits.[38] - - - - -V. - -RABELAIS. - -(1483-1553.) - - -§ 1. To great geniuses it is given to think themselves in a measure free -from the ordinary notions of their time and often to anticipate the -discoveries of a future age. In all literature there is perhaps hardly -a more striking instance of this “detached” thinking than we find in -Rabelais’ account of the education of Gargantua. - -§ 2. We see in Rabelais an enthusiasm for learning and a tendency to -verbal realism; that is, he turned to the old writers for instruction -about _things_. So far he was a child of the Renascence. But in other -respects he advanced far beyond it. - -§ 3. After a scornful account of the ordinary school books and methods by -which Gargantua “though he studied hard, did nevertheless profit nothing, -but only grew thereby foolish, simple, dolted, and blockish,” Rabelais -decides that “it were better for him to learn nothing at all than to -be taught suchlike books under suchlike schoolmasters.” All this old -lumber must be swept away, and in two years a youth may acquire a better -judgment, a better manner, and more command of language than could ever -have been obtained by the old method. - -We are then introduced to the model pupil. The end of education has been -declared to be _sapiens et eloquens pietas_; and we find that though -Rabelais might have substituted knowledge for piety, he did care for -piety, and valued very highly both wisdom and eloquence. The eloquent -Roman was the ideal of the Renascence, and Rabelais’ model pupil -expresses himself “with gestures so proper, pronunciation so distinct, a -voice so eloquent, language so well turned _and in such good Latin_ that -he seemed rather a Gracchus, a Cicero, an Æmilius of the time past than a -youth of the present age.” - -§ 4. So a Renascence tutor is appointed for Gargantua and administers to -him a potion that makes him forget all he has ever learned. He then puts -him through a very different course. Like all wise instructors he first -endeavours to secure the will of the pupil. He allows Gargantua to go -the accustomed road till he can convince him it is the wrong one. This -seems to me a remarkable proof of wisdom. How often does the “new master” -break abruptly with the past, and raise the opposition of the pupil by -dispraise of all he has already done! By degrees Ponocrates, the model -tutor, inspired in his pupil a great desire for improvement. This he did -by bringing him into the society of learned men, who filled him with -ambition to be like them. Thereupon Gargantua “put himself into such a -train of study that he lost not any hour in the day, but employed all his -time in learning and honest knowledge.” The day was to begin at 4 a.m., -with reading of “some chapter of the Holy Scripture, and oftentimes he -gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up his supplications to -that good God, whose word did show His majesty and marvellous judgments.” -This is the only hint we get in this part of the book on the subject of -religious or moral education: the training is directed to the intellect -and the body. - -§ 5. The remarkable feature in Rabelais’ curriculum is this, that it is -concerned mainly with _things_. Of the Seven Liberal Arts of the Middle -Ages, the first three were purely formal: grammar, logic, rhetoric; while -the following course: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, were -not. The effect of the Renascence was to cause increasing neglect of -the Quadrivium, but Rabelais cares for the Quadrivium only; Gargantua -studies arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, and the Trivium is -not mentioned. Great use is made of books and Gargantua learned them by -heart; but all that he learned he at once “applied to practical cases -concerning the estate of man.” It was the substance of the reading, not -the form, that was thought of. At dinner “if they thought good they -continued reading or began to discourse merrily together; speaking -first of the virtue, propriety, efficacy, and nature of all that was -served in at that table; of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, -fish, fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof he -learned in a little time all the passages that on these subjects are to -be found in Pliny, Athenæus, &c. Whilst they talked of these things, -many times to be more certain they caused the very books to be brought -to the table; and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the -things above said, that in that time there was not a physician that knew -half so much as he did.” Again, out of doors he was to observe trees and -plants, and “compare them with what is written of them in the books of -the ancients, such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides, &c.” Here again, actual -realism was to be joined with verbal realism, for Gargantua was to carry -home with him great handfuls for herborising. Rabelais even recommends -studying the face of the heavens at night, and then observing the change -that has taken place at 4 in the morning. So he seems to have been the -first writer on education (and the first by a long interval), who would -teach about things by observing the things themselves. It was this -_Anschauungs-prinzip_—use of sense-impressions—that Pestalozzi extended -and claimed as his invention two centuries and a half later. Rabelais -also gives a hint of the use of hand-work as well as head-work. Gargantua -and his fellows “did recreate themselves in bottling hay, in cleaving -and sawing wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn in the barn. They also -studied the art of painting or carving.” The course was further connected -with life by visits to the various handicraftsmen, in whose workshops -“they did learn and consider the industry and invention of the trader.” - -Thus, even in the time of the Renascence, Rabelais saw that the life of -the intellect might be nourished by many things besides books. But books -were still kept in the highest place. Even on a holiday, which occurred -on some fine and clear day once a month, “though spent without books or -lecture, yet was the day not without profit; for in the meadows they -repeated certain pleasant verses of Virgil’s _Agriculture_, of Hesiod, -of Politian’s _Husbandry_.” They also turned Latin epigrams into French -_rondeaux_. - -This course of study, “although at first it seemed difficult, yet soon -became so sweet, so easy, and so delightful, that it seemed rather the -recreation of a king than the study of a scholar.” - -In preferring the Quadrivial studies to the Trivial, and still more -in his use of actual things, Rabelais separates himself from all the -teachers of his time. - -§ 6. Very remarkable too is the attention he pays to physical education. -A day does not pass on which Gargantua does not gallantly exercise his -body as he has already exercised his mind. The exercises prescribed are -very various, and include running, jumping, swimming, with practice on -the horizontal bar and with dumb-bells, &c. But in one respect Rabelais -seems behind our own writer, Richard Mulcaster. Mulcaster trained the -body simply with a view to health. Rabelais is thinking of the gentleman, -and all his physical exercises are to prepare him for the gentleman’s -occupation, war. The constant preparation for war had a strong and in -some respects a very beneficial influence on the education of gentlemen -in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, as it has had on that of the Germans -in the eighteen hundreds. But to be ready to slaughter one’s fellow -creatures is not an ideal aim in education; and besides this, one half of -the human race can never (as far as we can judge at present) be affected -by it. We therefore prefer the physical training recommended by the -Englishman. - - Mr. Walter Besant by his _Readings in Rabelais_ (Blackwood, - 1883), has put Rabelais’ wit and wisdom where we can get at - most of it without searching in the dung-hill. But he has - unfortunately omitted Gargantua’s letter to Pantagruel at Paris - (book ij, chap. 8), where we get the curriculum as proposed by - Rabelais, a chapter in which no scavenger is needed. - - I will give some extracts from it:— - - “Although my deceased father of happy memory, Grangousier, had - bent his best endeavours to make me profit in all perfection - and political knowledge, and that my labour and study was fully - correspondent to, yea, went beyond his desire; nevertheless, - the time then was not so proper and fit for learning as it is - at present, neither had I plenty of such good masters as thou - hast had; for that time was darksome, obscured with clouds of - ignorance and savouring a little of the infelicity and calamity - of the Goths, who had, wherever they set footing, destroyed all - good literature, which in my age hath by the Divine Goodness - been restored unto its former light and dignity, and that - with such amendment and increase of knowledge that now hardly - should I be admitted unto the first form of the little grammar - school boys (_des petits grimaulx_): I say, I, who in my - youthful days was (and that justly) reputed the most learned - of that age. Now it is that the old knowledges (_disciplines_) - are restored, the languages revived. Greek (without which - it is a shame for any one to call himself learned), Hebrew, - Chaldee, Latin. Printing (_Des impressions_) too, so elegant - and exact, is in use, which in my day was invented by divine - inspiration, as cannon were by suggestion of the devil. All the - world is full of men of knowledge, of very learned teachers, - of large libraries; so that it seems to me that neither in the - age of Plato, nor of Cicero, nor of Papinian was there such - convenience for studying as there is now. I see the robbers, - hangmen, adventurers, ostlers of to-day more learned then the - doctors and the preachers of my youth. Why, women and girls - have aspired to the heavenly manna of good learning ... I mean - you to learn the languages perfectly first of all, the Greek - as Quintilian wishes, then the Latin, then Hebrew for the - Scriptures, and Chaldee and Arabic at the same time; and that - thou form thy style in Greek on Plato, in Latin on Cicero. Let - there be no history which thou hast not ready in thy memory, in - which cosmography will aid thee. Of the Liberal Arts, geometry, - arithmetic, music, I have given thee a taste when thou wast - still a child, at the age of five or six [Pantagruel was a - giant, we must remember]; carry them on; and know’st thou all - the rules of astronomy? Don’t touch astrology for divination - and the art of Lullius, which are mere vanity. In the civil law - thou must know the five texts by heart. - - “ ... As for knowledge of the works of Nature, I would have - thee devote thyself to them so that there may be no sea, river, - or spring of which thou knowest not the fishes; all the birds - of the air, all the trees, forest or orchard, all the herbs of - the field, all the metals hid in the bowels of the earth, all - the precious stones of the East and the South, let nothing be - unknown to thee. - - “Then turn again with diligence to the books of the Greek - physicians, and the Arabs, and the Latin, without despising - the Talmudists and the Cabalists; and by frequent dissections - acquire a perfect knowledge of the other world, which is Man. - And some hours a-day begin to read the Sacred Writings, first - in Greek the New Testament and Epistles of the Apostles; then - in Hebrew the Old Testament. In brief, let me see thee an - abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge, for from henceforth as - thou growest great and becomest a man thou must part from this - tranquillity and rest of study ... And because, as Solomon - saith, wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science - without conscience is but the ruin of the soul, thou shouldst - serve, love, and fear God, and in Him centre all thy thoughts, - all thy hope; and by faith rooted in charity be joined to Him, - so as never to be separated from Him by sin.” - - The influence of Rabelais on Montaigne, Locke, and Rousseau has - been well traced by Dr. F. A. Arnstädt. (_François Rabelais_, - Leipzig, Barth, 1872.) - - - - -VI. - -MONTAIGNE. - -(1533-1592.) - - -§ 1. The learned ideal established by the Renascence was accepted by -Rabelais, though he made some suggestions about _Realien_[39] that seem -to us much in advance of it. When he quotes the saying “Magis magnos -clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes” (“the greatest clerks are not -the greatest sages”), this singular piece of Latinity is appropriately -put into the mouth of a monk, who represents everything the Renascence -scholars despised. In Montaigne we strike into a new vein of thought, -and we find that what the monk alleges in defence of his ignorance the -cultured gentleman adopts as the expression of an important truth. - -§ 2. We ordinary people see truths indeed, but we see them indistinctly, -and are not completely guided by them. It is reserved for men of genius -to see truths, some truths that is, often a very few, with intense -clearness. Some of these men have no great talent for speech or writing, -and they try to express the truths they see, not so much by books as by -action. Such men in education were Comenius, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. But -sometimes the man of genius has a great power over language, and then -he finds for the truths he has seen, fitting expression, which becomes -almost as lasting as the truths themselves. Such men were Montaigne and -Rousseau. If the historian of education is asked “What did Montaigne do?” -he will answer “Nothing.” “What did Froebel say?” “He said a great deal, -but very few people can read him and still fewer understand him.” Both, -however, are and must remain forces in education. Montaigne has given to -some truths imperishable form in his _Essays_, and Froebel’s ideas come -home to all the world in the Kindergarten. - -§ 3. The ideal set up by the Renascence attached the highest importance -to learning. Montaigne maintained that the resulting training _even at -its best_ was not suited to a gentleman or man of action. Virtue, wisdom, -and intellectual activity should be thought of before learning. Education -should be first and foremost the development and exercise of faculties. -And even if the acquirement of knowledge is thought of, Montaigne -maintains that the pedants do not understand the first conditions of -knowledge and give a semblance not the true thing.—“_Il ne faut pas -attacher le savoir à l’âme, il faut l’incorporer._—Knowledge cannot be -fastened on to the mind; it must become part and parcel of the mind -itself.”[40] - -Here then we have two separate counts against the Renascence education: - -1st.—Knowledge is not the main thing. - -2nd.—True knowledge is something very different from knowing by heart. - -§ 4. It is a pity Montaigne’s utterances about education are to be found -in English only in the complete translation of his essays. Seeing that a -good many millions of people read English, and are most of them concerned -in education, one may hope that some day the sayings of the shrewd old -Frenchman may be offered them in a convenient form. - -§ 5. Here are some of them: “The evil comes of the foolish way in which -our [instructors] set to work; and on the plan on which we are taught no -wonder if neither scholars nor masters become more able, whatever they -may do in becoming more learned. In truth the trouble and expense of our -fathers are directed only to furnish our heads with knowledge: not a word -of judgment or virtue. Cry out to our people about a passer-by, ‘There’s -a learned man!’ and about another ‘There’s a good man!’ they will be all -agog after the learned man, and will not look at the good man. One might -fairly raise a third cry: ‘There’s a set of numskulls!’ We are ready -enough to ask ‘Does he know Greek or know Latin? Does he write verse or -write prose?’ But whether he has become wiser or better should be the -first question, and that is always the last. We ought to find out, not -who knows _most_ but who knows _best_.” (I, chap. 24, _Du Pédantisme_, -page or two beyond _Odi homines_.) - -§ 6. The true educators, according to Montaigne, were the Spartans, who -despised literature, and cared only for character and action. At Athens -they thought about words, at Sparta about things. At Athens boys learnt -to speak well, at Sparta to do well: at Athens to escape from sophistical -arguments, and to face all attempts to deceive them; at Sparta to escape -from the allurements of pleasure, and to face the slings and arrows -of outrageous fortune, even death itself. In the one system there was -constant exercise of the tongue, in the other of the soul. “So it is not -strange that when Antipater demanded of the Spartans fifty children as -hostages they replied they would sooner give twice as many grown men, -such store did they set by their country’s training.” (_Du Pédantisme_, -ad f.) - -§ 7. It is odd to find a man of the fifteen hundreds who quotes from -the old authors at every turn, and yet maintains that “we lean so much -on the arm of other people that we lose our own strength.” The thing a -boy should learn is not what the old authors say, but “what he himself -ought to do when he becomes a man.” Wisdom, not knowledge! “We may become -learned from the learning of others; wise we can never be except by our -own wisdom.” (Bk. j, chap. 24). - -§ 8. So entirely was Montaigne detached from the thought of the -Renascence that he scoffs at his own learning, and declares that true -learning has for its subject, not the past or the future, but the -present. “We are truly learned from knowing the present, not from knowing -the past any more than the future.” And yet “we toil only to stuff the -memory and leave the conscience and the understanding void. And like -birds who fly abroad to forage for grain bring it home in their beak, -without tasting it themselves, to feed their young, so our pedants go -picking knowledge here and there out of several authors, and hold it -at their tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it amongst -their pupils.” (_Du Pédantisme._) “We are all richer than we think, but -they drill us in borrowing and begging, and lead us to make more use of -other people’s goods than of our own.”[41] (Bk. iij, chap. 12, _De la -Physionomie_, beg. of 3rd paragraph). - -§ 9. So far Montaigne. What do we schoolmasters say to all this? If -we would be quite candid I think we must allow that, after reading -Montaigne’s essay, we put it down with the conviction that in the main he -was right, and that he had proved the error and absurdity of a vast deal -that goes on in the schoolroom. But from this first view we have had on -reflection to make several drawbacks. - -§ 10. Montaigne, like Locke and Rousseau, who followed in his steps, -arranges for every boy to have a tutor entirely devoted to him. We may -question whether this method of bringing up children is desirable, and -we may assert, without question, that in most cases it is impossible. -It seems ordained that at every stage of life we should require the -companionship of those of our own age. If we take two beings as little -alike as a man and a child and force them to be each other’s companions, -so great is the difference in their thoughts and interests that they -will fall into inevitable boredom and restraint. So we see that this -plan, even in the few cases in which it would be possible, would not -be desirable; and for the great majority of boys it would be out of -the question. We must then arrange for the young to be taught, not as -individuals, but in classes, and this greatly changes the conditions -of the problem. One of the first conditions is this, that we have to -employ each class regularly and uniformly for some hours every day. -Schoolmasters know what their non-scholastic mentors forget: we can make -a class learn, but, broadly speaking, we cannot make a class think, -still less can we make it judge. As a great deal of occupation has to be -provided, we are therefore forced to make our pupils learn. Whatever may -be the value of the learning in itself it is absolutely necessary _as -employment_. - -§ 11. No doubt it will make a vast difference whether we consider -the learning mainly as employment, as a means of taking up time and -preventing “sauntering,” as Locke boldly calls it, or whether we are -chiefly anxious to secure some special results. The knowledge of the -Latin and Greek languages and the Latin and Greek authors was a result -so highly prized by the Renascence scholars that they insisted on a -prodigious quantity of learning, not as employment, but simply as the -means of acquiring this knowledge. As the knowledge got to be less -esteemed the pressure was by degrees relaxed. In our public schools -fifty or sixty years ago the learning was to some extent retained as -employment, but there certainly was no pressure, and the majority of -the boys never learnt the ancient languages. So the masters of that -time had given up the Renascence enthusiasm for the classics, and on the -negative side of his teaching had come to an agreement with Montaigne. -Any one inclined to sarcasm might say that on the positive side they -were still totally opposed to him, for _he_ thought virtue and judgment -were the main things to be cared for, and _they_ did not care for these -things at all. But this is not a fair statement. The one thing gained, -or supposed to be gained, in the public schools was the art of living, -and this art, though it does not demand heroic virtue, requires at least -prudence and self-control. Montaigne’s system was a revolt against the -_bookishness_ of the Renascence. “In our studies,” says he, “whatever -presents itself before us is book enough; a roguish trick of a page, -a blunder of a servant, a jest at table, are so many new subjects.” -So the education _out of school_ was in his eyes of more value than -the education in school. And this was acknowledged also in our public -schools: “It is not the Latin and Greek they learn or don’t learn that -we consider so important,” the masters used to say, “but it is the tone -of the school and the discipline of the games.” But of late years this -virtual agreement with Montaigne has been broken up. School work is no -longer mere employment, but it is done under pressure, and with penalties -if the tale of brick turned out does not pass the inspector. - -§ 12. What has produced this great change? It is due mainly to two causes: - -1. The pressure put on the young to attain classical knowledge was -relaxed when it was thought that they could get through life very well -without this knowledge. But in these days new knowledge has awakened a -new enthusiasm. The knowledge of science promises such great advantages -that the latest reformers, headed by Mr. Herbert Spencer, seem to make -the well-being of the grown person depend mainly on the amount of -scientific knowledge he stored up in his youth. This is the first cause -of educational pressure. - -§ 13. 2. The second and more urgent cause is the rapid development -of our system of examinations. Everybody’s educational status is now -settled by the examiner, a potentate whose influence has brought back -in a very malignant form all the evils of which Montaigne complains. -Do what we will, the faculty chiefly exercised in preparing for -ordinary examinations is the “carrying memory.” So the acquisition of -knowledge—mere memory or examination knowledge—has again come to be -regarded as the one thing needful in education, and there is great danger -of everything else being neglected for it. Of the fourfold results of -education—virtue, wisdom, good manners, learning—the last alone can be -fairly tested in examinations; and as the schoolmaster’s very bread -depends nowadays first on his getting through examinations himself -and then on getting his pupils through, he would be more than human, -if with Locke he thought of learning “last and least.” A great change -has come over our public schools. The amount of work required from the -boys is far greater than it used to be and masters again measure their -success by the amount of knowledge the average boy takes away with him. -It seems to me high time that another Montaigne arose to protest that -a man’s intellectual life does not consist in the number of things he -remembers, and that his true life is not his intellectual life only, but -embraces his power of will and action and his love of what is noble and -right. “Wisdom cried of old, I am the mother of fair Love and Fear and -Knowledge and holy Hope” (_Ecclesiasticus_). In these days of science -and examinations does there not seem some danger lest knowledge should -prove the sole survivor? May not Knowledge, like another Cain, raise -its hand against its brethren “fair Love and Fear and holy Hope?” This -is perhaps the great danger of our time, a danger especially felt in -education. Every school parades its scholarships at the public schools or -at the universities, or its passes in the Oxford and Cambridge Locals, or -its percentage at the last Inspection, and asks to be judged by these. -And yet these are not the one thing or indeed the chief thing needful: -and it will be the ruin of true education if, as Mark Pattison said, the -master’s attention is concentrated on the least important part of his -duty.[42] - - - - -VII. - -ASCHAM. - -(1515-1568.) - - -§ 1. Masters and scholars who sigh over what seem to them the intricacies -and obscurities of modern grammars may find some consolation in thinking -that, after all, matters might have been worse, and that our fate is -enviable indeed compared with that of the students of Latin 400 years -ago. Did the reader ever open the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander de Villa Dei, -which was the grammar in general use from the middle of the thirteenth -to the end of the fifteenth century? (_v._ Appendix, p. 532). If so, he -is aware how great a step towards simplicity was made by our grammatical -reformers, Lily, Colet, and Erasmus. Indeed, those whom we now regard as -the forgers of our chains were, in their own opinion and that of their -contemporaries, the champions of freedom (Appendix, p. 533). - -§ 2. I have given elsewhere (Appendix, p. 533) a remarkable passage -from Colet, in which he recommends the leaving of rules, and the study -of examples in good Latin authors. Wolsey also, in his directions to -the masters of Ipswich School (dated 1528), proposes that the boys -should be exercised in the eight parts of speech in the first form, and -should begin to speak Latin and translate from English into Latin in -the second. If the masters think fit, they may also let the pupils read -Lily’s _Carmen Monitorium_, or Cato’s _Distichs_. From the third upwards -a regular course of classical authors was to be read, and Lily’s rules -were to be introduced by degrees. “Although I confess such things are -necessary,” writes Wolsey, “yet, as far as possible, we could wish them -so appointed as not to occupy the more valuable part of the day.” Only -in the sixth form, the highest but two, Lily’s syntax was to be begun. -In these schools the boys’ time was wholly taken up with Latin, and -the speaking of Latin was enforced even in play hours, so we see that -anomalies in the accidence as taught in the _As in præsenti_ were not -given till the boys had been some time using the language; and the syntax -was kept till they had a good practical knowledge of the usages to which -the rules referred.[43] - -§ 3. But although there was a great stir in education throughout this -century, and several English books were published about it, we come -to 1570 before we find anything that has lived till now. We then have -Roger Ascham’s _Scholemaster_, a posthumous work brought out by Ascham’s -widow, and republished in 1571 and 1589. The book was then lost sight -of, but reappeared, with James Upton as editor, in 1711,[44] and has -been regarded as an educational classic ever since. Dr. Johnson says “it -contains perhaps the best advice that was ever given for the study of -languages,” and Professor J. E. B. Mayor, who on this point is a higher -authority than Dr. Johnson, declares that “this book sets forth the only -sound method of acquiring a dead language.” - -§ 4. With all their contempt for theory, English schoolmasters might -have been expected to take an interest in one part of the history -of education, viz., the history of methods. There is a true saying -attributed by Marcel to Talleyrand, “_Les Méthodes sont les maîtres -des maîtres_—Method is the master’s master.” The history of education -shows us that every subject of instruction has been taught in various -ways, and further, that the contest of methods has not uniformly ended -in the survival of the fittest. Methods then might often teach the -teachers, if the teachers cared to be taught; but till within the last -half century or so an unintelligent traditional routine has sufficed for -them. There has no doubt been a great change since men now old were at -school, but in those days the main strength of the teaching was given -to Latin, and the masters knew of no better method of starting boys in -this language than making them learn by heart Lily’s, or as it was then -called, the Eton Latin Grammar. If reason had had anything to do with -teaching, this book would have been demolished by Richard Johnson’s -_Grammatical Commentaries_ published in 1706; but worthless as Johnson -proved it to be, the Grammar was for another 150 years treated by English -schoolmasters as the only introduction to the Latin tongue. The books -that have recently been published show a tendency to revert to methods -set forth in Elizabeth’s reign in Ascham’s _Scholemaster_ (1570) and -William Kempe’s _Education of Children_ (1588), but the innovators have -not as a rule been drawn to these methods by historical inquiry. - -§ 5. There seem to be only three English writers on education who have -caught the ear of other nations, and these are Ascham, Locke, and Herbert -Spencer. Of a contemporary we do well to speak with the same reserve as -of “present company,” but of the other two we may say that the choice -has been somewhat capricious. Locke’s _Thoughts_ perhaps deserves the -reputation and influence it has always had, but in it he hardly does -himself justice as a philosopher of the mind; and much of the advice -which has been considered his exclusively, is to be found in his English -predecessors whose very names are unknown except to the educational -antiquarian. Ascham wrote a few pages on method which entitle him to -mention in an account of methods of language-learning. He also wrote a -great many pages about things in general which would have shared the -fate of many more valuable but long forgotten books had he not had one -peculiarity in which the other writers were wanting, that indescribable -something which Matthew Arnold calls “charm.” - -§ 6. Ascham has been very fortunate in his editors, Professor Arber and -Professor Mayor, and the last editions[45] give everyone an opportunity -of reading the _Scholemaster_. I shall therefore speak of nothing but the -method. - -§ 7. Latin is to be taught as follows:—First, let the child learn -the eight parts of speech, and then the right joining together of -substantives with adjectives, the noun with the verb, the relative with -the antecedent. After the concords are learned, let the master take -Sturm’s selection of Cicero’s Epistles, and read them after this manner: -“first, let him teach the child, cheerfully and plainly, the cause and -matter of the letter; then, let him construe it into English so oft as -the child may easily carry away the understanding of it; lastly, parse -it over perfectly. This done, then let the child by and by both construe -and parse it over again; so that it may appear that the child doubteth in -nothing that his master has taught him before. After this, the child must -take a paper book, and, sitting in some place where no man shall prompt -him, by himself let him translate into English his former lesson. Then -showing it to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, -and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate his own -English into Latin again in another paper book. When the child bringeth -it turned into Latin, the master must compare it with Tully’s book, and -lay them both together, and where the child doth well, praise him,” where -amiss point out why Tully’s use is better. Thus the child will easily -acquire a knowledge of grammar, “and also the ground of almost all the -rules that are so busily taught by the master, and so hardly learned by -the scholar in all common schools.... We do not contemn rules, but we -gladly teach rules; and teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly, -than they be commonly taught in common schools. For when the master shall -compare Tully’s book with the scholar’s translation, let the master at -the first lead and teach the scholar to join the rules of his grammar -book with the examples of his present lesson, until the scholar by -himself be able to fetch out of his grammar every rule for every example; -and let the grammar book be ever in the scholars hand, and also used by -him as a dictionary for every present use. This is a lively and perfect -way of teaching of rules; where the common way used in common schools -to read the grammar alone by itself is tedious for the master, hard for -the scholar, cold and uncomfortable for them both.” And elsewhere Ascham -says: “Yea, I do wish that all rules for young scholars were shorter -than they be. For, without doubt, _grammatica_ itself is sooner and -surer learned by examples of good authors than by the naked rules of -grammarians.” - -§ 8. “As you perceive your scholar to go better on away, first, with -understanding his lesson more quickly, with parsing more readily, with -translating more speedily and perfectly than he was wont; after, give -him longer lessons to translate, and, withal, begin to teach him, both -in nouns and verbs, what is _proprium_ and what is _translatum_, what -_synonymum_, what _diversum_, which be _contraria_, and which be most -notable _phrases_, in all his lectures, as— - - Proprium Rex sepultus est magnifice. - - Translatum Cum illo principe, sepulta est et gloria et salus - reipublicæ. - - Synonyma Ensis, gladius: laudare, prædicare. - - Diversa Diligere, amare: calere, exardescere: inimicus, - hostis. - - Contraria Acerbum et luctuosum bellum, dulcis et læta pax. - - Phrases Dare verba, adjicere obedientiam.” - -Every lesson is to be thus carefully analysed, and entered under these -headings in a third MS. book. - -§ 9. Here Ascham leaves his method, and returns to it only at the -beginning of Book II. He there supposes the first stage to be finished -and “your scholar to have come indeed, first to a ready perfectness in -translating, then to a ripe and skilful choice in marking out his six -points.” He now recommends a course of Cicero, Terence, Cæsar, and Livy -which is to be read “a good deal at every lecture.” And the master is to -give passages “put into plain natural English.” These the scholar shall -“not know where to find” till he shall have tried his hand at putting -them into Latin; then the master shall “bring forth the place in Tully.” - -§ 10. In the Second Book of the _Scholemaster_, Ascham discusses the -various branches of the study then common, viz.: 1. Translatio linguarum; -2. Paraphrasis; 3. Metaphrasis; 4. Epitome; 5. Imitatio; 6. Declamatio. -He does not lay much stress on any of these, except _translatio_ and -_imitatio_. Of the last he says: “All languages, both learned and -mother-tongue, be gotten, and gotten only, by imitation. For, as ye use -to hear, so ye use to speak; if ye hear no other, ye speak not yourself; -and whom ye only hear, of them ye only learn.” But translation was -his great instrument for all kinds of learning. “The translation,” he -says, “is the most common and most commendable of all other exercises -for youth; most common, for all your constructions in grammar schools -be nothing else but translations, but because they be not _double_ -translations (as I do require) they bring forth but simple and single -commodity: and because also they lack the daily use of writing, which -is the only thing that breedeth deep root, both in the wit for good -understanding and in the memory for sure keeping of all that is learned; -most commendable also, and that by the judgment of all authors which -entreat of these exercises.” - -§ 11. After quoting Pliny,[46] he says: “You perceive how Pliny -teacheth that by this exercise of double translating is learned easily, -sensibly, by little and little, not only all the hard congruities of -grammar, the choice of ablest words, the right pronouncing of words and -sentences, comeliness of figures, and forms fit for every matter and -proper for every tongue: but, that which is greater also, in marking -daily and following diligently thus the footsteps of the best authors, -like invention of arguments, like order in disposition, like utterance -in elocution, is easily gathered up; and hereby your scholar shall be -brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true understanding -and rightful judgment, both for writing and speaking.” - -Again he says: “For speedy attaining, I durst venture a good wager if a -scholar in whom is aptness, love, diligence, and constancy, would but -translate after this sort some little book in Tully (as _De Senectute_, -with two Epistles, the first ‘Ad Quintum Fratrem,’ the other ‘Ad -Lentulum’), that scholar, I say, should come to a better knowledge in -the Latin tongue than the most part do that spend from five to six years -in tossing all the rules of grammar in common schools.” After quoting -the instance of Dion Prussæus, who came to great learning and utterance -by reading and following only two books, the _Phædo_, and _Demosthenes -de Falsa Legatione_, he goes on: “And a better and nearer example -herein may be our most noble Queen Elizabeth, who never took yet Greek -nor Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a -verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates -daily, without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully -every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such a -perfect understanding in both the tongues, and to such a ready utterance -of the Latin, and that with such a judgment, as there be few now in both -Universities or elsewhere in England that be in both tongues comparable -with Her Majesty.” Ascham’s authority is indeed not conclusive on this -point, as he, in praising the Queen’s attainments, was vaunting his -own success as a teacher, and, moreover, if he flattered her he could -plead prevailing custom. But we have, I believe, abundant evidence that -Elizabeth was an accomplished scholar. - -§ 12. Before I leave Ascham I must make one more quotation, to which I -shall more than once have occasion to refer. Speaking of the plan of -double translation, he says: “Ere the scholar have construed, parsed, -twice translated over by good advisement, marked out his six points by -skilful judgment, he shall have necessary occasion to read over every -lecture a _dozen times at the least_; which because he shall do always in -order, he shall do it always with pleasure. And pleasure allureth love: -love hath lust to labour; labour always obtaineth his purpose.” - -§ 13. A good deal has been said, and perhaps something learnt, about the -teaching of Latin since the days of Ascham. As far as I know the method -which Ascham denounced, and which most English schoolmasters stuck to for -more than two centuries longer, has now been abandoned. No one thinks -of making the beginner learn by heart all the Latin Grammar before he is -introduced to the Latin language. To understand the machinery of which -an account is given in the grammar, the learner must see it at work, and -must even endeavour in a small way to work it himself. So it seems pretty -well agreed that the information given in the grammar must be joined -with some construing and some exercises from the very first. But here -the agreement ends. Our teachers, consciously or in ignorance, follow -one or more of a number of methodizers who have examined the problem -of language-learning, such men as Ascham, Ratke, Comenius, Jacotot, -Hamilton, Robertson, and Prendergast. These naturally divide themselves -into two parties, which I have ventured to call “Rapid Impressionists,” -and “Complete Retainers.” The first of these plunge the beginner into the -language, and trust to the great mass of vague impressions clearing and -defining themselves as he goes along. The second insist on his learning -at the first a very small portion of the language, and mastering and -retaining everything he learns. It will be seen that in the first stage -of the course Ascham is a “Complete Retainer.” He does not talk, like -Prendergast, of “mastery,” nor, like Jacotot, does he require the learner -to begin every lesson at the beginning of the book: but he makes the -pupil go over each lesson “a dozen times at the least,” before he may -advance beyond it. As for his practice of double translation, for the -advanced pupil it is excellent, but if it is required from the beginner, -it leads to unintelligent memorizing. I think I shall be able to show -later on that other methodizers have advanced beyond Ascham. (_Infra_, -246 _n._) - - - - -VIII. - -MULCASTER. - -(1531(?)-1611.) - - -§ 1. The history of English thought on education has yet to be written. -In the literature of education the Germans have been the pioneers, and -have consequently settled the routes; and when a track has once been -established few travellers will face the risk and trouble of leaving it. -So up to the present time, writers on the history of European education -after the Renascence have occupied themselves chiefly with men who lived -in Germany, or wrote in German. But the French are at length exploring -the country for themselves; and in time, no doubt, the English-speaking -races will show an interest in the thoughts and doings of their common -ancestors. - -We know what toils and dangers men will encounter in getting to the -source of great rivers; and although, as Mr. Widgery truly says, “the -study of origins is not everybody’s business,”[47] we yet may hope that -students will be found ready to give time and trouble to an investigation -of great interest and perhaps some utility—the origin of the school -course which now affects the millions who have English for their -mother-tongue. - -§ 2. In the fifteen hundreds there were published several works on -education, three of which, Elyot’s _Governour_, Ascham’s _Scholemaster_, -and Mulcaster’s _Positions_, have been recently reprinted.[48] Others, -such as Edward Coote’s _English Schoolmaster_, and Mulcaster’s -_Elementarie_, are pretty sure to follow, without serious loss, let us -hope, to their editors, though neither Coote nor Mulcaster are likely to -become as well-known writers as Roger Ascham. - -§ 3. Henry Barnard, whose knowledge of our educational literature no -less than his labours in it, makes him the greatest living authority, -says that Mulcaster’s _Positions_ is “one of the earliest, and still one -of the best treatises in the English language.” (_English Pedagogy_, -2nd series, p. 177.) Mulcaster was one of the most famous of English -schoolmasters, and by his writings he proved that he was far in advance -of the schoolmasters of his own time, and of the times which succeeded. -But he paid the penalty of thinking of himself more highly than he -should have thought; and whether or no the conjecture is right that -Shakespeare had him in his mind when writing _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, -there is an affectation in Mulcaster’s style which is very irritating, -for it has caused even the master of Edmund Spenser to be forgotten. In -a curious and interesting allegory on the progress of language (in the -_Elementarie_, pp. 66, ff.), Mulcaster says that Art selects the best -age of a language to draw rules from, such as the age of Demosthenes -in Greece and of Tully in Rome; and he goes on: “Such a period in the -English tongue I take to be in our days for both the pen and the speech.” -And he suggests that the English language, having reached its zenith, -is seen to advantage, not in the writings of Shakespeare or Spenser, -but in those of Richard Mulcaster. After enumerating the excellencies -of the language, he adds: “I need no example in any of these, whereof -my own penning is a general pattern.” Here we feel tempted to exclaim -with Armado in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ (Act 5, sc. 2): “I protest the -schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical: too too vain, too too vain.” He -speaks elsewhere of his “so careful, I will not say so curious writing” -(_Elementarie_, p. 253), and says very truly: “Even some of reasonable -study can hardly understand the couching of my sentence, and the depth of -my conceit” (_ib._, 235). And this was the death-warrant of his literary -renown. - -§ 4. But there is good reason why Mulcaster should not be forgotten. -When we read his books we find that wisdom which we are importing in -the nineteenth century was in a great measure offered us by an English -schoolmaster in the sixteenth. The latest advances in pedagogy have -established (1) that the end and aim of education is to develop the -faculties of the mind and body; (2) that all teaching processes should -be carefully adapted to the mental constitution of the learner; (3) that -the first stage in learning is of immense importance and requires a very -high degree of skill in the teacher; (4) that the brain of children, -especially of clever children, should not be subjected to “pressure”; (5) -that childhood should not be spent in learning foreign languages, but -that its language should be the mother-tongue, and its exercises should -include handwork, especially drawing; (6) that girls’ education should -be cared for no less than boys’; (7) that the only hope of improving -our schools lies in providing training for our teachers. These are all -regarded as planks in the platform of “the new education,” and these were -all advocated by Mulcaster. - -§ 5. Before I point this out in detail I may remark how greatly education -has suffered from being confounded with learning. There are interesting -passages both in Ascham and Mulcaster which prove that the class-ideal -of the “scholar and gentleman” was of later growth. In the fifteen -hundreds learning was thought suitable, not for the rich, but for the -clever. Still, learning, and therefore education, was not for the many, -but the few. Mulcaster considers at some length how the number of the -educated is to be kept down (_Positions_, chapp. 36, 37, 39), though even -here he is in the van, and would have everyone taught to read and write -(_Positions_, chapp. 5, 36). But the true problem of education was not -faced till it was discovered that every human being was to be considered -in it. This was, I think, first seen by Comenius. - -With this abatement we find Mulcaster’s sixteenth-century notions not -much behind our nineteenth. - -§ 6. (1 & 2) “Why is it not good,” he asks, “to have every part of the -body and every power of the soul to be fined to his best?” (_PP._, -p. 34[49]). Elsewhere he says: “The end of education and train is to -help Nature to her perfection, which is, when all her abilities be -perfected in their habit, whereunto right elements be right great helps. -Consideration and judgment must wisely mark whereunto Nature is either -evidently given or secretly affectionate and must frame an education -consonant thereto.” (_El._, p. 28). - -Michelet has with justice claimed for Montaigne that he drew the -teacher’s attention from the thing to be learnt to the _learner_: “_Non -l’objet, le savoir, mais le sujet, c’est l’homme._” (_Nos Fils_, p. 170.) -Mulcaster has a claim to share this honour with his great contemporary. -He really laid the foundation of a science of education. Discussing our -natural abilities, he says: “We have a perceiving by outward sense to -feel, to hear, to see, to smell, to taste all sensible things; which -qualities of the outward, being received in by the _common sense_ and -examined by _fantsie_, are delivered to _remembrance_, and afterward -prove our great and only grounds unto further knowledge.”[50] (_El._, -p. 32.) Here we see Mulcaster endeavouring to base education, or as he -so well calls it, “train,” on what we receive from Nature. Elsewhere he -speaks of the three things which we “find peering out of the little young -souls,” viz: “wit to take, memory to keep, and discretion to discern.” -(_PP._, p. 27.) - -§ 7. (3) I have pointed out that the false ideal of the Renascence led -schoolmasters to neglect children. Mulcaster remarks that the ancients -considered the training of children should date from the birth; but he -himself begins with the school age. Here he has the boldness to propose -that those who teach the beginners should have the smallest number -of pupils, and should receive the highest pay. “The first groundwork -would be laid by the best workman,” says Mulcaster (_PP._, 130), -here expressing a truth which, like many truths that are not quite -convenient, is seldom denied but almost systematically ignored.[51] - -§ 8. (4) In the _Nineteenth Century_ Magazine for November, 1888, -appeared a vigorous protest with nearly 400 signatures, many of which -carried great weight with them, against our _sacrifice of education to -examination_. Our present system, whether good or bad, is the result -of accident. Winchester and Eton had large endowments, and naturally -endeavoured by means of these endowments to get hold of clever boys. At -first no doubt they succeeded fairly well; but other schools felt bound -to compete for juvenile brains, and as the number of prizes increased, -many of our preparatory schools became mere racing stables for children -destined at 12 or 14 to run for “scholarship stakes.” Thus, in the -scramble for the money all thought of education has been lost sight of; -injury has been done in many cases to those who have succeeded, still -greater injury to those who have failed or who have from the first been -considered “out of the running.” These very serious evils would have -been avoided had we taken counsel with Mulcaster: “Pity it were for so -petty a gain to forego a greater; to win an hour in the morning and lose -the whole day after; as those people most commonly do which start out -of their beds too early before they be well awaked or know what it is -o’clock; and be drowsy when they are up for want of their sleep.” (_PP._, -p. 19; see also _El._, xi., pp. 52 ff.) - -§ 9. (5) It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had -been followed instead of Sturm. He was one of the earliest advocates of -the use of English instead of Latin (see Appendix, p. 534), and good -reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. -His elementary course included these five things: English reading, -English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If the -first course were made to occupy the school-time up to the age of 12, -Mulcaster held that more would be done between 12 and 16 than between 7 -and 17 in the ordinary way. There would be the further gain that the -children would not be set against learning. “Because of the too timely -onset too little is done in too long a time, and the school is made a -torture, which as it brings forth delight in the end when learning is -held fast, so should it pass on very pleasantly by the way, while it is -in learning.”[52] (_PP._, 33.) - -§ 10. (6) Among the many changes brought about in the nineteenth century -we find little that can compare in importance with the advance in the -education of women. In the last century, whenever a woman exercised -her mental powers she had to do it by stealth,[53] and her position -was degraded indeed when compared not only with her descendants of the -nineteenth century, but also with her ancestors of the sixteenth. This I -know has been disputed by some authorities, _e.g._, by the late Professor -Brewer: but to others, _e.g._, to a man who, as regards honesty and -wisdom, has had few equals and no superiors in investigating the course -of education, I mean the late Joseph Payne, this educational superiority -of the women of Elizabeth’s time has seemed to be entirely beyond -question. On this point Mulcaster’s evidence is very valuable, and, to me -at least, conclusive. He not only “admits young maidens to learn,” but -says that “custom stands for him,” and that “the custom of my country ... -hath made the maidens’ train her own approved travail.” (_PP._, p. 167.) - -§ 11. (7) Of all the educational reforms of the nineteenth century by -far the most fruitful and most expansive is, in my opinion, the training -of teachers. In this, as in most educational matters, the English, -though advancing, are in the rear. Far more is made of “training” on -the Continent and in the United States than in England. And yet we -made a good start. Our early writers on education saw that the teacher -has immense influence, and that to turn this influence to good account -he must have made a study of his profession and have learnt “the best -that has been thought and done” in it. Every occupation in life has a -traditional capital of knowledge and experience, and those who intend -to follow the business, whatever it may be, are required to go through -some kind of training or apprenticeship before they earn wages. To this -rule there is but one exception. In English elementary schools children -are paid to “teach” children, and in the higher schools the beginner is -allowed to blunder at the expense of his first pupils into whatever skill -he may in the end manage to pick up. But our English practice received no -encouragement from the early English writers, Mulcaster, Brinsley,[54] -and Hoole. - -As far as I am aware the first suggestion of a training college for -teachers came from Mulcaster. He schemed seven special colleges at the -University; and of these one is for teachers. Some of his suggestions, -_e.g._, about “University Readers” have lately been adopted, though -without acknowledgment; and as the University of Cambridge has since -1879 acknowledged the existence of teachers, and appointed a “Teachers’ -Training Syndicate,” we may perhaps in a few centuries more carry out his -scheme, and have training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.[55] Some of -the reasons he gives us have not gone out of date with his English. They -are as follows:— - -“And why should not these men (the teachers) have both this sufficiency -in learning, and such room to rest in, thence to be chosen and set forth -for the common service? Be either children or schools so small a portion -of our multitude? or is the framing of young minds, and the training -of their bodies so mean a point of cunning? Be schoolmasters in this -Realm such a paucity, as they are not even in good sadness to be soundly -thought on? If the chancel have a minister, the belfry hath a master: -and where youth is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there -will be worse. He that will not allow of this careful provision for such -a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have had a good master -himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why should not teachers -be well provided for, to continue their whole life in the school, as -_Divines_, _Lawyers_, _Physicians_ do in their several professions? -Thereby judgment, cunning, and discretion will grow in them: and masters -would prove old men, and such as _Xenophon_ setteth over children in the -schooling of _Cyrus_. Whereas now, the school being used but for a shift, -afterward to pass thence to the other professions, though it send out -very sufficient men to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering -the necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this trade -requireth a particular college, for these four causes. 1. First, for the -subject being the mean to make or mar the whole fry of our State. 2. -Secondly, for the number, whether of them that are to learn, or of them -that are to teach. 3. Thirdly, for the necessity of the profession, which -may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the matter of their study, which is -comparable to the greatest professions, for language, for judgment, for -skill how to train, for variety in all points of learning, wherein the -framing of the mind, and the exercising of the body craveth exquisite -consideration, beside the staidness of the person.” (_PP._, 9 pp. 248, 9.) - -§ 12. Though once a celebrated man, and moreover the master of Edmund -Spenser, Mulcaster has been long forgotten; but when the history of -education in England comes to be written, the historian will show that -few schoolmasters in the fifteen hundreds or since were so enlightened as -the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors’.[56] - - - - -IX. - -RATICHIUS. - -(1571-1635.) - - -§ 1. The history of Education in the fifteen hundreds tells chiefly of -two very different classes of men. First we have the practical men, -who set themselves to supply the general demand for instruction in -the classical languages. This class includes most of the successful -schoolmasters, such as Sturm, Trotzendorf, Neander, and the Jesuits. -The other class were thinkers, who never attempted to teach, but merely -gave form to truths which would in the end affect teaching. These were -especially Rabelais and Montaigne. - -§ 2. With the sixteen hundreds we come to men who have earned for -themselves a name unpleasant in our ears, although it might fittingly be -applied to all the greatest benefactors of the human race. I mean the -name of _Innovators_. These men were not successful; at least they seemed -unsuccessful to their contemporaries, who contrasted the promised results -with the actual. But their efforts were by no means thrown away: and -posterity at least, has acknowledged its obligations to them. One sees -now that they could hardly have expected justice in their own time. It is -safe to adopt the customary plan; it is safe to speculate how that plan -may and should be altered; but it is dangerous to attempt to translate -new thought into new action, and boldly to advance without a track, -trusting to principles which may, like the compass, show you the right -direction, but, like the compass, will give you no hint of the obstacles -that lie before you. - -The chief demands made by the Innovators have been: 1st, that the study -of _things_ should precede, or be united with, the study of _words_ (_v._ -Appendix, p. 538); 2nd, that knowledge should be communicated, where -possible, by appeals to the senses; 3rd, that all linguistic study should -begin with that of the mother-tongue; 4th, that Latin and Greek should -be taught to such boys only as would be likely to complete a learned -education; 5th, that physical education should be attended to in all -classes of society for the sake of health, not simply with a view to -gentlemanly accomplishments; 6th, that a new method of teaching should be -adopted, framed “according to Nature.” - -Their notions of method have, of course, been very various; but their -systems mostly agree in these particulars:— - -1. They proceed from the concrete to the abstract, giving some knowledge -of the thing itself before the rules which refer to it. 2. They employ -the student in analysing matter put before him, rather than in working -synthetically according to precept. 3. They require the student to _teach -himself_ and investigate for himself under the superintendence and -guidance of the master, rather than be taught by the master and receive -anything on the master’s authority. 4. They rely on the interest excited -in the pupil by the acquisition of knowledge, and renounce coercion. 5. -Only that which is understood may be committed to memory (_v. supra, p. -74, n._) - -§ 3. The first of the Innovators was Wolfgang Ratichius, who, oddly -enough, is known to posterity by a name he and his contemporaries never -heard of. His father’s name was Radtké or Ratké, and the son having -received a University education, translated this into Ratichius. With -our usual impatience of redundant syllables, we have attempted to reduce -the word to its original dimensions, and in the process have hit upon -_Ratich_, which is a new name altogether. - -Ratke (to adopt the true form of the original) was connected, as Basedow -was a hundred and fifty years later, with Holstein and Hamburg. He was -born at Wilster in Holstein in 1571, and studied at Hamburg and at the -University of Rostock. He afterwards travelled to Amsterdam and to -England, and it was perhaps owing to his residence in this country that -he was acquainted with the new philosophy of Bacon. We next hear of him -at the Electoral Diet, held as usual in Frankfurt-on-Main, in 1612. He -was then over forty years old, and he had elaborated a new scheme for -teaching. Like all inventors, he was fully impressed with the importance -of his discovery, and he sent to the assembled Princes an address, in -which he undertook some startling performances. He was able, he said: (1) -to teach young or old Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or other languages, in -a very short time and without any difficulty; (2) to establish schools -in which all arts should be taught and extended; (3) to introduce and -peaceably establish throughout the German Empire a uniform speech, a -uniform government, and (still more wonderful) a uniform religion. - -§ 4. Naturally enough the address arrested the attention of the Princes. -The Landgraf Lewis of Darmstadt thought the matter worthy of examination, -and he deputed two learned men, Jung and Helwig, to confer with Ratke. -Their report was entirely favourable, and they did all they could to get -for Ratke the means of carrying his scheme into execution. “We are,” -writes Helwig, “in bondage to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens would -never have done so much for posterity if they had spent their youth in -acquiring a foreign tongue. We must study our own language, and then -sciences. Ratichius has discovered the art of teaching according to -Nature. By his method, languages will be quickly learned, so that we -shall have time for science; and science will be learned even better -still, as the natural system suits best with science, which is the study -of Nature.” Moved by this report the Town Council of Augsburg agreed to -give Ratke the necessary power over their schools, and accompanied by -Helwig, he accordingly went to Augsburg and set to work. But the good -folks of Augsburg were like children, who expect a plant as soon as they -have sown the seed. They were speedily dissatisfied, and Ratke and Helwig -left Augsburg, the latter much discouraged but still faithful to his -friend. Ratke went to Frankfurt again, and a Commission was appointed -to consider his proposals, but by its advice Ratke was “allowed to try -elsewhere.” - -§ 5. He would never have had a fair chance had he not had a firm friend -in the Duchess Dorothy of Weimar. Then, as now, we find women taking the -lead in everything which promises to improve education, and this good -Duchess sent for Ratke and tested his method by herself taking lessons -of him in Hebrew. With this adult pupil his plans seem to have answered -well, and she always continued his admirer and advocate. By her advice -her brother, Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Koethen, decided that the great -discovery should not be lost for want of a fair trial; so he called Ratke -to Koethen and complied with all his demands. A band of teachers sworn -to secrecy were first of all instructed in the art by Ratke himself. -Next, schools with very costly appliances were provided, and lastly some -500 little Koetheners—boys and girls—were collected and handed over to -Ratke to work his wonders with. - -§ 6. It never seems to have occurred either to Ratke or his friends or -the Prince that all the principles and methods that ever were or ever -will be established could not enable a man without experience to organize -a school of 500 children. A man who had never been in the water might -just as well plunge into the sea at once and trust to his knowledge of -the laws of fluid pressure to save him from drowning. There are endless -details to be settled which would bewilder any one without experience. -Some years ago school-buildings were provided for one of our county -schools, and the council consulted a master of great experience who -strongly urged them not to start as they had intended with 300 boys. -“_I_ would not undertake such a thing,” said he. When pressed for his -reason, he said quietly, “I would not be responsible for the _boots_.” -I have no doubt Ratke had to come down from his principles and his new -method to deal with numberless little questions of caps, bonnets, late -children, broken windows, and the like; and he was without the tact and -the experience which enable many ordinary men and women, who know nothing -of principles, to settle such matters satisfactorily. - -§ 7. Years afterwards there was another thinker much more profound and -influential than Ratke, who was quite as incompetent to organize. I -mean Pestalozzi. But Pestalozzi had one great advantage over Ratke. He -attached all his assistants to him by inspiring them with love and -reverence of himself. This made up for many deficiencies. But Ratke -was not like the fatherly, self-sacrificing Pestalozzi. He leads us to -suspect him of being an impostor by making a mystery of his invention, -and he never could keep the peace with his assistants. - -§ 8. So, as might have been expected, the grand experiment failed. The -Prince, exasperated at being placed in a somewhat ridiculous position, -and possibly at the serious loss of money into the bargain, revenged -himself on Ratke by throwing him into prison, nor would he release him -till he had made him sign a paper in which he admitted that he had -undertaken more than he was able to fulfil. - -§ 9. This was no doubt the case; and yet Ratke had done more for the -Prince than the Prince for Ratke. In Koethen had been opened the first -German school in which the children were taught to make a study of the -German language. - -Ratke never recovered from his failure at Koethen, and nothing memorable -is recorded of him afterwards. He died in 1635. - -§ 10. Much was written by Ratke; much has been written about him; and -those who wish to know more than the few particulars I have given may -find all they want in Raumer or Barnard. The Innovator failed in gaining -the applause of his contemporaries, and he does not seem to stand high in -the respect of posterity; but he was a pioneer in the art of didactics, -and the rules which Raumer has gathered from the _Methodus Institutionis -nova ... Ratichii et Ratichianorum_, published by Rhenius at Leipzig -in 1626, raise some of the most interesting points to which a teachers -attention can be directed. I will therefore state them, and say briefly -what I think of them. - -§ 11. I. _In everything we should follow the order of Nature. There is -a certain natural sequence along which the human intelligence moves in -acquiring knowledge. This sequence must be studied, and instruction must -be based on the knowledge of it._ - -Here, as in all teaching of the Reformers, we find “Nature” used as if -the word stood for some definite idea. From the time of the Stoics we -have been exhorted to “follow Nature.” In more modern times the demand -was well formulated by Picus of Mirandola: “Take no heed what thing -many men do, but what thing the _very law of Nature_, what thing _very -reason_, what thing _our Lord Himself_ showeth thee to be done.” (Trans. -by Sir Thomas More, quoted in Seebohm, _Oxford Reformers_.) - -Pope, always happy in expression but not always clear in thought, talks -of— - - “Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, - One clear, unchanged, and universal light.” - - (_Essay on C._, i, 70.) - -But as Dr. W. T. Harris has well pointed out (_St. Louis, Mo., School -Report, ’78, ’79_, p. 217), with this word “Nature” writers on education -do a great deal of juggling. Some times they use it for the external -world, including in it man’s _unconscious_ growth, sometimes they make it -stand for the ideal. What sense does Ratke attach to it? One might have -some difficulty in determining. Perhaps the best meaning we can nowadays -find for his rule is: _study Psychology_. - -§ 12. II. _One thing at a time._ Master one subject before you take up -another. For each language master a single book. Go over it again and -again till you have completely made it your own. - -In its crude form this rule could not be carried out. If the attempt were -made the results would be no better than from the six months’ course -of Terence under Ratke. It is “against all Nature” to go on hammering -away at one thing day after day without any change; and there is a point -beyond which any attempt at thoroughness must end in simple stagnation. -The rule then would have two fatal drawbacks: 1st, it would lead to -monotony; 2nd, it would require a completeness of learning which to -the young would be impossible. But in these days no one follows Ratke. -On the other hand, concentration in study is often neglected, and our -time-tables afford specimens of the most ingenious mosaic work, in which -everything has a place, but in so small a quantity that the learners -never find out what each thing really is. School subjects are like -the clubs of the eastern tale, which did not give out their medicinal -properties till the patient got warm in the use of them. - -When a good hold on a subject has once been secured, short study, with -considerable intervals between, may suffice to keep up and even increase -the knowledge already obtained; but in matters of any difficulty, _e.g._, -in a new language, no start is ever made without allotting to it much -more than two or three hours a week. It is perhaps a mistake to suppose -that if a good deal of the language may be learnt by giving it ten hours -a week, twice that amount might be acquired in twenty hours. It is a -much greater mistake if we think that one-fifth of the amount might be -acquired in two hours. - -§ 13. III. _The same thing should be repeated over and over again._ - -This is like the Jesuits’ _Repetitio Mater Studiorum_; and the same -notion was well developed 200 years later by Jacotot. - -By Ratke’s application of this rule some odd results were produced. The -little Koetheners were drilled for German in a book of the Bible (Genesis -was selected), and then for Latin in a play of Terence. - -Unlike many “theoretical notions” this precept of Ratke’s comes more and -more into favour as the schoolmaster increases in age and experience. But -we must be careful to take our pupils with us; and this repeating the -same thing over and over may seem to them what marking time would seem -to soldiers who wanted to march. Even more than the last rule this is -open to the objections that monotony is deadening, and perfect attainment -of anything but words impossible. In keeping to a subject then we must -not rely on simple repetition. The rule now accepted is thus stated by -Diesterweg:—“Every subject of instruction should be viewed from as many -sides as possible, and as varied exercises as possible should be set on -one and the same thing.” The art of the master is shown in disguising -repetition and bringing known things into new connection, so that they -may partially at least retain their freshness. - -§ 14. IV. _First let the mother-tongue be studied, and teach everything -through the mother-tongue, so that the learners attention may not be -diverted to the language._ - -We saw that Sturm, the leading schoolmaster of Renascence, tried to -suppress the mother-tongue and substitute Latin for it. Against this a -vigorous protest was made in this country by Mulcaster. And our language -was never conquered by a foreign language, as German was conquered first -by Latin and then by French. But “the tongues” have always had the -lion’s share of attention in the schoolroom, and though many have seen -and Milton has said that “our understanding cannot in this body found -itself but on sensible things,” this truth is only now making its way -into the schoolroom. Hitherto the foundation has hardly been laid before -“the schoolmaster has stept in and staid the building by confounding the -language.”[57] Ratke’s protest against this will always be put to his -credit in the history of education. - -§ 15. V. _Everything without constraint._ “The young should not be beaten -to make them learn or for not having learnt. It is compulsion and stripes -that set young people against studying. Boys are often beaten for not -having learnt, but they would have learnt had they been well taught. The -human understanding is so formed that it has pleasure in receiving what -it should retain: and this pleasure you destroy by your harshness. Where -the master is skilful and judicious, the boys will take to him and to -their lessons. Folly lurks indeed in the heart of the child and must be -driven out with the rod; but not by the _teacher_.” - -Here at least there is nothing original in Ratke’s precept. A goodly -array of authorities have condemned learning “upon compulsion.” This -array extends at least as far as from Plato to Bishop Dupanloup. “In the -case of the mind, no study pursued under compulsion remains rooted in -the memory,” says Plato.[58] “Everything depends,” says Dupanloup, “on -what the teacher induces his pupils to do _freely_: for authority is not -constraint—it ought to be inseparable from respect and devotion. I will -respect human liberty in the smallest child.” As far as I have observed -there is only one class of persons whom the authorities from Plato to -Dupanloup have failed to convince, and that is the schoolmasters. This -is the class to which I have belonged, and I should not be prepared -to take Plato’s counsel: “Bring up your boys in their studies without -constraint and in a playful manner.” (_Ib._) At the same time I see the -importance of self-activity, and there is no such thing as self-activity -upon compulsion. You can no more hurry thought with the cane than you -can hurry a snail with a pin. So without interest there can be no proper -learning. Interest must be aroused—even in Latin Grammar. But if they -could choose their own occupation, the boys, however interested in their -work, would probably find something else more interesting still. We -cannot get on, and never shall, without the _must_. - -§ 16. VI. _Nothing may be learnt by heart._ - -It has always been a common mistake in the schoolroom to confound the -power of running along a sequence of sounds with a mastery of the thought -with which those sounds should be connected. But, as I have remarked -elsewhere (_supra_, p. 74, note), the two things, though different, are -not opposed. Too much is likely to be made of learning by heart, for of -the two things the pupils find it the easier, and the teacher the more -easily tested. We may, however, guard against the abuse without giving up -the use. - -§ 17. VII.[59] _Uniformity in all things._ - -Both in the way of learning, and in the books, and the rules, a uniform -method should be observed, says Ratke. - -The right plan is for the learner to acquire familiar knowledge of one -subject or part of a subject, and then use this for comparison when he -learns beyond it. If the same method of learning is adopted throughout, -this will render comparison more easy and more striking.[60] - -§ 18. VIII. _The thing itself should come first, then whatever explains -it._ - -To those who do not with closed eyes cling to the method of their -predecessors, this rule may seem founded on common-sense. Would any -one but a “teacher,” or a writer of school books, ever think of making -children who do not know a word of French, learn about the French -accents? And yet what Ratke said 250 years ago has not been disproved -since: “Accidens rei priusquam rem ipsam quaerere prorsus absonum et -absurdum esse videtur,” which I take to mean: “Before the learner has a -notion of the thing itself, it is folly to worry him about its accidents -or even its properties, essential or unessential.” _Ne modus rei ante -rem._[61] - -This rule of Ratke’s warns teachers against a very common mistake. -The subject is _to them_ in full view, and they make the most minute -observations on it. But these things cannot be seen by their pupils; -and even if the beginner could see these minutiæ, he would find in them -neither interest nor advantage. But when we apply Ratke’s principle more -widely, we find ourselves involved in the great question whether our -method should be based on synthesis or analysis, a question which Ratke’s -method did not settle for us. - -§ 19. IX. _Everything by experience and examination of the parts._ Or as -he states the rule in Latin: _Per inductionem et experimentum omnia._ - -Nothing was to be received on authority, and this disciple of Bacon went -beyond his master and took for his motto: _Vetustas cessit, ratio vicit_ -(“Age has yielded, reason prevailed”); as if reason must be brand-new, -and truth might wax old and be ready to vanish away. - -§ 20. From these rules of his we see that Ratke did much to formulate the -main principles of Didactics. He also deserves to be remembered among the -methodizers who have tackled the problem—how to teach a language. - -At Köthen the instructor of the lowest class had to talk with the -children, and to take pains with their pronunciation. When they knew -their letters (Ickelsamer’s plan for reading Ratke seems to have -neglected) the teacher read the Book of Genesis through to them, each -chapter twice over, requiring the children to follow with eye and finger. -Then the teacher began the chapter again, and read about four lines -only, which the children read after him. When the book had been worked -over in this way, the children were required to read it through without -assistance. Reading once secured, the master proceeded to grammar. He -explained, say, what a substantive was, and then showed instances in -Genesis, and next required the children to point out others. In this way -the grammar was verified throughout from Genesis, and the pupils were -exercised in declining and conjugating words taken from the Book. - -When they advanced to the study of Latin, they were given a _translation_ -of a play of Terence, and worked over it several times before they were -shown the Latin. - -The master then translated the play to them, each half-hour’s work twice -over. At the next reading, the master translated the first half-hour, -and the boys translated the same piece the second. Having thus got -through the play, they began again, and only the boys translated. After -this there was a course of grammar, which was applied to the Terence, -as the grammar of the mother-tongue had been to Genesis. Finally, the -pupils were put through a course of exercises, in which they had to turn -into Latin sentences imitated from the Terence, and differing from the -original only in the number or person used. - -Raumer gives other particulars, and quotes largely from the almost -unreadable account of Kromayer, one of Ratke’s followers, in order that -we may have, as he says, a notion of the tediousness of the method. No -doubt anyone who has followed me hitherto, will consider that this point -has been brought out already with sufficient distinctness. - -§ 21. When we compare Ratke’s method with Ascham’s, we find several -points of agreement. Ratke would begin the study of a language by taking -a model book, and working through it with the pupil a great many times. -Ascham did the same. Each lecture according to his plan would be gone -over “a dozen times at the least.” Both construed to the pupil instead of -requiring him to make out the sense for himself. Both Ratke and Ascham -taught grammar not by itself, but in connection with the model book. - -But the points of difference are still more striking. In one respect -Ratke’s plan was weak. It gave the pupils little to do, and made no -use of the pen. Ascham’s was better in this and also as a training in -accuracy. Ascham was, as I have pointed out, a “complete retainer.” Ratke -was a “rapid impressionist.” His system was a good deal like that which -had great vogue in the early part of this century as the “Hamiltonian -System.” From the first the language was to be laid on “very thick,” in -the belief that “some of it was sure to stick.” The impressions would be -slight, and there would at first be much confusion between words which -had a superficial resemblance, but accuracy it was thought would come in -time. - -§ 22. The contest between the two schools of thought of which Ascham and -Ratke may be taken as representatives has continued till now, and within -the last few years both parties have made great advances in method. But -in nothing does progress seem slower than in education; and the plan of -grammar-teaching in vogue fifty years ago was inferior to the methods -advocated by the old writers.[62] - - - - -X. - -COMENIUS. - -(1592-1671). - - -§ 1. One of the most hopeful signs of the improvement of education is the -rapid advance in the last thirty years of the fame of Comenius, and the -growth of a large literature about the man and his ideas. Twenty-three -years ago, when I first became interested in him, his name was hardly -known beyond Germany. In English there was indeed an excellent life of -him prefixed to a translation of his _School of Infancy_; but this work, -by Daniel Benham (London, 1858), had not then, and has not now, anything -like the circulation it deserves. A much more successful book has been -Professor S. S. Laurie’s _John Amos Comenius_ (Cambridge University -Press), and this is known to most, and should be to all, English students -of education. By the Germans and French Comenius is now recognised as -the man who first treated education in a scientific spirit, and who -bequeathed the rudiments of a science to later ages. On this account the -great library of pedagogy at Leipzig has been named in his honour the -“Comenius Stiftung.” - -§ 2. John Amos Komensky or Comenius, the son of a miller, who belonged -to the Moravian Brethren, was born, at the Moravian village of Niwnic, -in 1592. Of his early life we know nothing but what he himself tells -us in the following passage:—“Losing both my parents while I was yet a -child, I began, through the neglect of my guardians, but at sixteen years -of age to taste of the Latin tongue. Yet by the goodness of God, that -taste bred such a thirst in me, that I ceased not from that time, by all -means and endeavours, to labour for the repairing of my lost years; and -now not only for myself, but for the good of others also. For I could -not but pity others also in this respect, especially in my own nation, -which is too slothful and careless in matter of learning. Thereupon -I was continually full of thoughts for the finding out of some means -whereby more might be inflamed with the love of learning, and whereby -learning itself might be made more compendious, both in matter of the -charge and cost, and of the labour belonging thereto, that so the youth -might be brought by a more easy method, unto some notable proficiency in -learning.”[63] With these thoughts in his head, he pursued his studies in -several German towns, especially at Herborn in Nassau. Here he saw the -Report on Ratke’s method published in 1612 for the Universities of Jena -and Giessen; and we find him shortly afterwards writing his first book, -_Grammaticæ facilioris Præcepta_, which was published at Prag in 1616. -On his return to Moravia, he was appointed to the Brethren’s school at -Prerau, but (to use his own words) “being shortly after at the age of -twenty-four called to the service of the Church, because _that divine -function_ challenged all my endeavours (divinumque HOC AGE præ oculis -erat) these scholastic cares were laid aside.”[64] His pastoral charge -was at Fulneck, the headquarters of the Brethren. As such it soon felt -the effects of the Battle of Prag, being in the following year (1621) -taken and plundered by the Spaniards. On this occasion Comenius lost his -MSS. and almost everything he possessed. The year after his wife died, -and then his only child. In 1624 all Protestant ministers were banished, -and in 1627 a new decree extended the banishment to Protestants of every -description. Comenius bore up against wave after wave of calamity with -Christian courage and resignation, and his writings at this period were -of great value to his fellow-sufferers. - -§ 3. For a time he found a hiding-place in the family of a Bohemian -nobleman, Baron Sadowsky, at Slaupna, in the Bohemian mountains, and -in this retirement, his attention was again directed to the science -of teaching. The Baron had engaged Stadius, one of the proscribed, to -educate his three sons, and, at Stadius’ request, Comenius wrote “some -canons of a better method,” for his use. We find him, too, endeavouring -to enrich the literature of his mother-tongue, making a metrical -translation of the Psalms of David, and even writing imitations of -Virgil, Ovid, and Cato’s _Distichs_. - -In 1627, however, the persecution waxed so hot, that Comenius, with most -of the Brethren, had to flee their country, never to return. On crossing -the border, Comenius and the exiles who accompanied him knelt down, and -prayed that God would not suffer His truth to fail out of their native -land. - -§ 4. Comenius had now, as Michelet says, lost his country and found his -country, which was the world. Many of the banished, and Comenius among -them, settled at the Polish town of Leszna, or, as the Germans call it, -Lissa, near the Silesian frontier. Here there was an old-established -school of the Brethren, in which Comenius found employment. Once more -engaged in education, he earnestly set about improving the traditional -methods. As he himself says,[65] “Being by God’s permission banished -my country with divers others, and forced for my sustenance to apply -myself to the instruction of youth, I gave my mind to the perusal of -divers authors, and lighted upon many which in this age have made a -beginning in reforming the method of studies, as Ratichius, Helvicus, -Rhenius, Ritterus, Glaumius, Cæcilius, and who indeed should have had -the first place, Joannes Valentinus Andreæ, a man of a nimble and clear -brain; as also Campanella and the Lord Verulam, those famous restorers -of philosophy;—by reading of whom I was raised in good hope, that at -last those so many various sparks would conspire into a flame; yet -observing here and there some defects and gaps as it were, I could -not contain myself from attempting something that might rest upon an -immovable foundation, and which, if it could be once found out, should -not be subject to any ruin. Therefore, after many workings and tossings -of my thoughts, by reducing everything to the immovable laws of Nature, -I lighted upon my _Didactica Magna_, which shows the art of readily and -solidly teaching all men all things.” - -§ 5. This work did not immediately see the light, but in 1631 Comenius -published a book which made him and the little Polish town where he lived -known throughout Europe and beyond it. This was the _Janua Linguarum -Reserata_, or “Gate of Tongues unlocked.” Writing about it many years -afterwards he says that he never could have imagined that that little -work, fitted only for children (_puerile istud opusculum_), would -have been received with applause by all the learned world. Letters -of congratulation came to him from every quarter; and the work was -translated not only into Greek, Bohemian, Polish, Swedish, Belgian, -English, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, but also into Turkish, -Arabic, Persian, and even “Mongolian, which is familiar to all the East -Indies.” (Dedication of _Schola Ludus_ in vol. i. of collected works.) - -§ 6. Incited by the applause of the learned, Comenius now planned a -scheme of universal knowledge, to impart which a series of works would -have to be written, far exceeding what the resources and industry of -one man, however great a scholar, could produce. He therefore looked -about for a patron to supply money for the support of himself and his -assistants, whilst these works were in progress. “The vastness of the -labours I contemplate,” he writes to a Polish nobleman, “demands that I -should have a wealthy patron, whether we look at their extent, or at the -necessity of securing assistants, or at the expenses generally.” - -§ 7. At Leszna there seemed no prospect of his obtaining the aid he -required; but his fame now procured him invitations from distant -countries. First he received a call to improve the schools of Sweden. -After declining this he was induced by his English friends to undertake a -journey to London, where Parliament had shown its interest in the matter -of education, and had employed Hartlib,[66] an enthusiastic admirer of -Comenius, to attempt a reform. Probably through his family connections, -Hartlib was on intimate terms with Comenius, and he had much influence -on his career. It would seem that Comenius, though never tired of forming -magnificent schemes, hung back from putting anything into a definite -shape. After the appearance of the _Janua Linguarum Reserata_, he -planned a _Janua Rerum_, and even allowed that title to appear in “the -list of new books to come forth at the next Mart at Frankford.”[67] But -again he hesitated, and withdrew the announcement. Here Hartlib came -in, and forced him into print without his intending or even knowing it -(“præter meam spem et me inconsulto”; preface to _Conatuum Pansophicorum -Dilucidatio_, 1638). Hartlib begged of Comenius a sketch of his great -scheme, and with apologies to the author for not awaiting his consent, -he published it at Oxford in 1637, under the title of _Conatuum -Comenianorum Præludia_. Comenius accepted the _fait accompli_ with the -best grace he could—pleased at the stir the book made in the learned -world, but galled by criticisms, especially by doubts of his orthodoxy. -To refute the cavillers, he wrote a tract called _Conatuum Pansophicorum -Dilucidatio_ which was published in 1638. In 1639 Hartlib issued in -London a new duodecimo edition of the _Præludia_ (or as he then called -it, _Prodromus_) and the _Dilucidatio_, adding a dissertation by Comenius -on the study of Latin. Now, when everything seemed ripe for a change -in education, and Comenius himself was on his way to England, Hartlib -translated the _Prodromus_, and when Comenius had come he published it -with the title, _A Reformation of Schools_, 1642.[68] - -§ 8. It was no doubt by Hartlib’s influence that Parliament had been led -to summon Comenius, and at any other time the visit might have been “the -occasion of great good to this island,” but _inter arma silent magistri_, -and Comenius went away again. This is the account he himself has left us:— - -“When seriously proposing to abandon the thorny studies of Didactics, -and pass on to the pleasing studies of philosophical truth, I find -myself again among the same thorns.... After the _Pansophiæ Prodromus_ -had been published and dispersed through various kingdoms of Europe, -many of the learned approved of the object and plan of the work, but -despaired of its ever being accomplished by one man alone, and therefore -advised that a college of learned men should be instituted to carry it -into effect. Mr. S. Hartlib, who had forwarded the publication of the -_Pansophiæ Prodromus_ in England, laboured earnestly in this matter, -and endeavoured, by every possible means, to bring together for this -purpose a number of men of intellectual activity. And at length, having -found one or two, he invited me also, with many very strong entreaties. -My people having consented to the journey, I came to London on the very -day of the autumnal equinox (September 22, 1641), and there at last -learnt that I had been invited by the order of the Parliament. But as -the Parliament, the King having then gone to Scotland [August 10], was -dismissed for a three months’ recess [not quite three months, but from -September 9 to October 20], I was detained there through the winter, -my friends mustering what pansophic apparatus they could, though it -was but slender.... The Parliament meanwhile, having re assembled, and -our presence being known, I had orders to wait until they should have -sufficient leisure from other business to appoint a Commission of -learned and wise men from their body for hearing us and considering the -grounds of our design. They communicated also beforehand their thoughts -of assigning to us some college with its revenues, whereby a certain -number of learned and industrious men called from all nations might be -honourably maintained, either for a term of years or in perpetuity. -There was even named for the purpose _The Savoy_ in London; _Winchester -College_ out of London was named; and again nearer the city, _Chelsea -College_, inventories of which and of its revenues were communicated to -us, so that nothing seemed more certain than that the design of the great -Verulam, concerning the opening somewhere of a Universal College, devoted -to the advancement of the Sciences could be carried out. But the rumour -of the Insurrection in Ireland, and of the massacre in one night of more -than 200,000 English [October, November], and the sudden departure of the -King from London [January 10, 1641-2], and the plentiful signs of the -bloody war about to break out disturbed these plans, and obliged me to -hasten my return to my own people.”[69] - -§ 9. While Comenius was in England, where he stayed till August, 1642, -he received an invitation to France. This invitation, which he did not -accept, came perhaps through his correspondent Mersenne, a man of great -learning, who is said to have been highly esteemed and often consulted -by Descartes. It is characteristic of the state of opinion in such -matters in those days, that Mersenne tells Comenius of a certain Le -Maire, by whose method a boy of six years old, might, with nine months’ -instruction, acquire a perfect knowledge of three languages. Mersenne -also had dreams of a universal alphabet, and even of a universal language. - -§ 10. Comenius’ hopes of assistance in England being at an end, he -thought of returning to Leszna; but a letter now reached him from a -rich Dutch merchant, Lewis de Geer, who offered him a home and means -for carrying out his plans. This Lewis de Geer, “the Grand Almoner of -Europe,” as Comenius calls him, displayed a princely munificence in the -assistance he gave the exiled Protestants. At this time he was living at -Nordcoping in Sweden. Comenius having now found such a patron as he was -seeking, set out from England and joined him there. - -§ 11. Soon after the arrival of Comenius in Sweden, the great Oxenstiern -sent for him to Stockholm, and with John Skyte, the Chancellor of Upsal -University, examined him and his system. “These two,” as Comenius says, -“exercised me in colloquy for four days, and chiefly the most illustrious -Oxenstiern, that eagle of the North (_Aquila Aquilonius_). He inquired -into the foundations of both my schemes, the Didactic and the Pansophic, -so searchingly, that it was unlike anything that had been done before -by any of my learned critics. In the first two days he examined the -Didactics, and finally said: ‘From an early age I perceived that our -Method of Studies generally in use is a harsh and crude one (_violentum -quiddam_), but where the thing stuck I could not find out. At length, -having been sent by my King of glorious memory [_i.e._, by Gustavus -Adolphus], as ambassador into Germany, I conversed on the subject with -various learned men. And when I had heard that Wolfgang Ratichius was -toiling at an amended Method I had no rest of mind till I had him before -me, but instead of talking on the subject, he put into my hands a big -quarto volume. I swallowed this trouble, and having turned over the whole -book, I saw that he had detected well enough the maladies of our schools -but the remedies he proposed did not seem to me sufficient. Yours, Mr. -Comenius, rest on firmer foundations. Go on with the work.’ I answered -that I had done all I could in those matters, and must now go on to -others. ‘I know,’ said he, ‘that you are toiling at greater affairs, for -I have read your _Prodromus Pansophiæ_. That we will discuss to-morrow, I -must now to public business.’ Next day he began on my Pansophic attempts, -and examined them with still greater severity. ‘Are you a man,’ he asked, -‘who can bear contradiction?’ ‘I can,’ said I, ‘and for that reason my -_Prodromus_ or preliminary sketch was sent out first (not indeed that I -sent it out myself, this was done by friends), that it might meet with -criticism. And if we seek the criticism of all and sundry, how much -more from men of mature wisdom and heroic reason?’ He began accordingly -to discourse against the hope of a better state of things arising from -a rightly instituted study of Pansophia; first, objecting political -reasons, then what was said in Scripture about ‘the last times.’ All -which objections I so answered that he ended with these words: ‘Into no -one’s mind do I think such things have come before. Stand upon these -grounds of yours; so shall we some time come to agreement, or there -will be no way left. My advice, however,’ added he, ‘is that you first -do something for the schools, and bring the study of the Latin tongue -to a greater facility; thus you will prepare the way for those greater -matters.’” As Skyte and afterwards De Geer gave the same advice, Comenius -felt himself constrained to follow it; so he agreed to settle at Elbing, -in Prussia, and there write a work on teaching, in which the principles -of the _Didactica Magna_ should be worked out with especial reference -to teaching languages. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of his English -friends, to which Comenius would gladly have listened, he was kept by -Oxenstiern and De Geer strictly to his agreement, and thus, much against -his will, he was held fast for eight years in what he calls the “miry -entanglements of logomachy.” - -§ 12. Elbing, where, after a journey to Leszna to fetch his family -(for he had married again), Comenius now settled, is in West Prussia, -thirty-six miles south-east of Dantzic. From 1577 to 1660 an English -trading company was settled here, with which the family of Hartlib was -connected. This perhaps was one reason why Comenius chose this town -for his residence. But although he had a grant of £300 a year from -Parliament, Hartlib, instead of assisting with money, seems at this time -to have himself needed assistance, for in October, 1642, Comenius writes -to De Geer that he fears Fundanius and Hartlib are suffering from want, -and that he intends for them £200 promised by the London booksellers; he -suggests that De Geer shall give them £30 each meanwhile. (Benham, p. 63.) - -§ 13. The relation between Comenius and his patron naturally proved -a difficult one. The Dutchman thought that as he supported Comenius, -and contributed something more for the assistants, he might expect of -Comenius that he would devote all his time to the scholastic treatise -he had undertaken. Comenius, however, was a man of immense energy and -of widely extended sympathies and connections. He was a “Bishop” of the -religious body to which he belonged, and in this capacity he engaged -in controversy, and attended some religious conferences. Then again, -pupils were pressed upon him, and as money to pay five writers whom -he kept at work was always running short, he did not decline them. De -Geer complained of this, and supplies were not furnished with wonted -regularity. In 1647 Comenius writes to Hartlib that he is almost -overwhelmed with cares, and sick to death of writing begging-letters. -Yet in this year he found means to publish a book _On the Causes of -this_ (_i.e._, the Thirty Years) _War_, in which the Roman Catholics are -attacked with great bitterness—a bitterness for which the position of the -writer affords too good an excuse. - -§ 14. The year 1648 brought with it the downfall of all Comenius’ hopes -of returning to his native land. The Peace of Westphalia was concluded -without any provision being made for the restoration of the exiles. But -though thus doomed to pass the remaining years of his life in banishment, -Comenius, in this year, seemed to have found an escape from all his -pecuniary difficulties. The Senior Bishop, the head of the Moravian -Brethren, died, and Comenius was chosen to succeed him. In consequence -of this, Comenius returned to Leszna, where due provision was made for -him by the Brethren. Before he left Elbing, however, the fruit of his -residence there, the _Methodus Linguarum Novissima_, had been submitted -to a commission of learned Swedes, and approved of by them. The MS. went -with him to Leszna, where it was published. - -§ 15. As head of the Moravian Church, there now devolved upon Comenius -the care of all the exiles, and his widespread reputation enabled him to -get situations for many of them in all Protestant countries. But he was -now so much connected with the science of education, that even his post -at Leszna did not prevent his receiving and accepting a call to reform -the schools in Transylvania. A model school was formed at Saros-Patak, -where there was a settlement of the banished Brethren, and in this school -Comenius laboured from 1650 till 1654. At this time he wrote his most -celebrated book, which is indeed only an abridgment of his _Janua_ with -the important addition of pictures, and sent it to Nürnberg, where it -appeared three years later (1657). This was the famous _Orbis Pictus_. - -§ 16. Full of trouble as Comenius’ life had hitherto been, its greatest -calamity was still before him. After he was again settled at Leszna, -Poland was invaded by the Swedes, on which occasion the sympathies of the -Brethren were with their fellow-Protestants, and Comenius was imprudent -enough to write a congratulatory address to the Swedish King. A peace -followed, by the terms of which, several towns, and Leszna among them, -were made over to Sweden; but when the King withdrew, the Poles took up -arms again, and Leszna, the headquarters of the Protestants, the town -in which the chief of the Moravian Brethren had written his address -welcoming the enemy, was taken and plundered. - -Comenius and his family escaped, but his house was marked for special -violence, and nothing was preserved. His sole remaining possessions were -the clothes in which he and his family travelled. All his books and -manuscripts were burnt, among them his valued work on Pansophia, and a -Latin-Bohemian and Bohemian-Latin Dictionary, giving words, phrases, -idioms, adages, and aphorisms—a book on which he had been labouring for -forty years. “This loss,” he writes, “I shall cease to lament only when I -cease to breathe.” - -§ 17. After wandering for some time about Germany, and being prostrated -by fever at Hamburg, he at length came to Amsterdam, where Lawrence De -Geer, the son of his deceased patron, gave him an asylum. Here were spent -the remaining years of his life in ease and dignity. Compassion for -his misfortunes was united with veneration for his learning and piety. -He earned a sufficient income by giving instruction in the families -of the wealthy; and by the liberality of De Geer he was enabled to -publish a fine folio edition of all his writings on Education (1657). -His political works, however, were to the last a source of trouble to -him. His hostility to the Pope and the House of Hapsburg made him the -dupe of certain “prophets” whose soothsayings he published as _Lux in -Tenebris_. One of these prophets, who had announced that the Turk was -to take Vienna, was executed at Pressburg, and the _Lux in Tenebris_ at -the same time burnt by the hangman. Before the news of this disgrace -reached Amsterdam, Comenius was no more. He died in the year 1671, at -the advanced age of eighty, and with him terminated the office of Chief -Bishop among the Moravian Brethren. - -§ 18. His long life had been full of trouble, and he saw little of the -improvements he so earnestly desired and laboured after, but he continued -the struggle hopefully to the end. In his seventy-seventh year he wrote -these memorable words: “I thank God that I have all my life been a man -of aspirations.... For the longing after good, however it spring up in -the heart, is always a rill flowing from the Fountain of all good—from -God.”[70] Labouring in this spirit he did not toil in vain, and the -historians of education have agreed in ranking him among the most -influential as well as the most noble-minded of the Reformers. - -§ 19. Before Comenius, no one had brought the mind of a philosopher to -bear practically on the subject of education. Montaigne and Bacon had -advanced principles, leaving others to see to their application. A few -able schoolmasters, Ascham, _e.g._, had investigated new methods, but had -made success in teaching the test to which they appealed, rather than any -abstract principle. Comenius was at once a philosopher who had learnt -of Bacon, and a schoolmaster who had earned his livelihood by teaching -the rudiments. Dissatisfied with the state of education as he found it, -he sought for a better system by an examination of the laws of Nature. -Whatever is thus established is indeed on an immovable foundation, and, -as Comenius himself says, “not liable to any ruin.” It will hardly be -disputed, when broadly stated, that there are laws of Nature which must -be obeyed in dealing with the mind, as with the body. No doubt these laws -are not so easily established in the first case as in the second, nor can -we find them without much “groping” and some mistakes; but whoever in -any way assists or even tries to assist in the discovery, deserves our -gratitude; and greatly are we indebted to him who first boldly set about -the task, and devoted to it years of patient labour. - -§ 20. Comenius has left voluminous Latin writings. Professor Laurie -gives us the titles of the books connected with education, and they -are in number forty-two: so there must be much repetition and indeed -retractation; for Comenius was always learning, and one of his last books -was _Ventilabrum Sapientiæ, sive sapienter sua retractandi Ars_—_i.e._, -“Wisdom’s Winnowing-machine, or the Art of wisely withdrawing one’s -own assertions.” We owe much to Professor Laurie, who has served as a -_ventilabrum_ and left us a succinct and clear account of the Reformer’s -teaching. I have read little of the writings of Comenius except the -German translation of the “Great Didactic,” from which the following is -taken. - -§ 21. We live, says Comenius, a threefold life—a vegetative, an animal, -and an intellectual or spiritual. Of these, the first is perfect in the -womb, the last in heaven. He is happy who comes with healthy body into -the world, much more he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. According -to the heavenly idea, man should (1) know all things; (2) should be -master of all things, and of himself; (3) should refer everything to God. -So that within us Nature has implanted the seeds of (1) learning, (2) -virtue, and (3) piety. To bring these seeds to maturity is the object of -education. All men require education, and God has made children unfit for -other employments that they may have leisure to learn. - -§ 22. But schools have failed, and instead of keeping to the true object -of education, and teaching the foundations, relations, and intentions -of all the most important things, they have neglected even the mother -tongue, and confined the teaching to Latin; and yet that has been so -badly taught, and so much time has been wasted over grammar rules and -dictionaries, that from ten to twenty years are spent in acquiring as -much knowledge of Latin as is speedily acquired of any modern tongue. - -§ 23. The cause of this want of success is that the system does not -follow Nature. Everything natural goes smoothly and easily. There must -therefore be no pressure. Learning should come to children as swimming to -fish, flying to birds, running to animals. As Aristotle says, the desire -of knowledge is implanted in man: and the mind grows as the body does—by -taking proper nourishment, not by being stretched on the rack. - -§ 24. If we would ascertain how teaching and learning are to have good -results, we must look to the known processes of Nature and Art. A man -sows seed, and it comes up he knows not how, but in sowing it he must -attend to the requirements of Nature. Let us then look to Nature to -find out how knowledge takes root in young minds. We find that Nature -waits for the fit time. Then, too, she has prepared the material before -she gives it form. In our teaching we constantly run counter to these -principles of hers. We give instruction before the young minds are ready -to receive it. We give the form before the material. Words are taught -before the things to which they refer. When a foreign tongue is to be -taught, we commonly give the form, _i.e._, the grammatical rules, before -we give the material, _i.e._, the language, to which the rules apply. We -should begin with an author, or properly prepared translation-book, and -abstract rules should never come before the examples. - -§ 25. Again, Nature begins each of her works with its inmost part. -Moreover, the crude form comes first, then the elaboration of the parts. -The architect, acting on this principle, first makes a rough plan or -model, and then by degrees designs the details; last of all he attends to -the ornamentation. In teaching, then, let the inmost part, _i.e._, the -understanding of the subject, come first; then let the thing understood -be used to exercise the memory, the speech, and the hands; and let every -language, science, and art be taught first in its rudimentary outline; -then more completely with examples and rules; finally, with exceptions -and anomalies. Instead of this, some teachers are foolish enough to -require beginners to get up all the anomalies in Latin Grammar, and the -dialects in Greek. - -§ 26. Again, as Nature does nothing _per saltum_, nor halts when she -has begun, the whole course of studies should be arranged in strict -order, so that the earlier studies prepare the way for the later. Every -year, every month, every day and hour even, should have its task marked -out beforehand, and the plan should be rigidly carried out. Much loss -is occasioned by absence of boys from school, and by changes in the -instruction. Iron that might be wrought with one heating should not be -allowed to get cold, and be heated over and over again. - -§ 27. Nature protects her work from injurious influences, so boys should -be kept from injurious companionships and books. - -§ 28. In a chapter devoted to the principles of easy teaching, Comenius -lays down, among rules similar to the foregoing, that children will -learn if they are taught only what they have a desire to learn, with due -regard to their age and the method of instruction, and especially when -everything is first taught by means of the senses. On this point Comenius -laid great stress, and he was the first who did so. Education should -proceed, he said, in the following order: first, educate the senses, then -the memory, then the intellect; last of all the critical faculty. This -is the order of Nature. The child first perceives through the senses. -“_Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu._ Everything in -the intellect must have come through the senses.” These perceptions are -stored in the memory, and called up by the imagination.[71] By comparing -one with another, the understanding forms general ideas, and at length -the judgment decides between the false and the true. By keeping to this -order, Comenius believed it would be possible to make learning entirely -pleasant to the pupils, however young. Here Comenius went even further -than the Jesuits. They wished to make learning pleasant, but despaired -of doing this except by external influences, emulation and the like. -Comenius did not neglect external means to make the road to learning -agreeable. Like the Jesuits, he would have short school-hours, and would -make great use of praise and blame, but he did not depend, as they did -almost exclusively, on emulation. He would have the desire of learning -fostered in every possible way—by parents, by teachers, by school -buildings and apparatus, by the subjects themselves, by the method of -teaching them, and lastly, by the public authorities. (1) The parents -must praise learning and learned men, must show children beautiful books, -&c., must treat the teachers with great respect. (2) The teacher must be -kind and fatherly, he must distribute praise and reward, and must always, -where it is possible, give the children something to look at. (3) The -school buildings must be light, airy, and cheerful, and well furnished -with apparatus, as pictures, maps, models, collections of specimens. (4) -The subjects taught must not be too hard for the learner’s comprehension, -and the more entertaining parts of them must be especially dwelt upon. -(5) The method must be natural, and everything that is not essential to -the subject or is beyond the pupil must be omitted. Fables and allegories -should be introduced, and enigmas given for the pupils to guess. (6) The -authorities must appoint public examinations and reward merit. - -§ 29. Nature helps herself in various ways, so the pupils should have -every assistance given them. It should especially be made clear what the -pupils are to learn, and how they should learn it. - -§ 30. The pupils should be punished for offences against morals only. If -they do not learn, the fault is with the teacher. - -§ 31. One of Comenius’s most distinctive principles was that there should -no longer be “_infelix divortium rerum et verborum_, the wretched divorce -of words from things” (the phrase, I think, is Campanella’s), but that -knowledge of _things_ and words should go together. This, together with -his desire of submitting everything to the pupil’s senses, would have -introduced a great change into the course of instruction, which was then, -as it has for the most part continued, purely literary. We should learn, -says Comenius, as much as possible, not from books, but from the great -book of Nature, from heaven and earth, from oaks and beeches. - -§ 32. When languages are to be learnt, he would have them taught -separately. Till the pupil is from eight to ten years old, he should -be instructed only in the mother-tongue, and about things. Then other -languages can be acquired in about a year each; Latin (which is to be -studied more thoroughly) in about two years. Every language must be -learnt by use rather than by rules, _i.e._, it must be learnt by hearing, -reading and re-reading, transcribing, attempting imitations in writing -and orally, and by using the language in conversation. Rules assist and -confirm practice, but they must come after, not before it. The first -exercises in a language should take for their subject something of which -the sense is already known, so that the mind may be fixed on the words -and their connections.[72] The Catechism and Bible History may be used -for this purpose. - -§ 33. Considering the classical authors not suited to boys’ -understanding, and not fit for the education of Christians, Comenius -proposed writing a set of Latin manuals for the different stages between -childhood and manhood: these were to be called “Vestibulum,” “Janua,” -“Palatium” or “Atrium,” “Thesaurus.” The “Vestibulum,” “Janua,” and -“Atrium” were really carried out. - -§ 34. In Comenius’s scheme there were to be four kinds of schools for a -perfect educational course:—1st, the mother’s breast for infancy; 2nd, -the public vernacular school for children, to which all should be sent -from six years old till twelve; 3rd, the Latin school or Gymnasium; 4th, -residence at a University and travelling, to complete the course. The -public schools were to be for all classes alike, and for girls[73] as -well as boys. - -§ 35. Most boys and girls in every community would stop at the vernacular -school; and as this school is a very distinctive feature in Comenius’s -plan, it may be worth while to give his programme of studies. In this -school the children should learn—1st, to read and write the mother-tongue -_well_, both with writing and printing letters; 2nd, to compose -grammatically; 3rd, to cipher; 4th, to measure and weigh; 5th, to sing, -at first popular airs, then from music; 6th, to say by heart, sacred -psalms and hymns; 7th, Catechism, Bible History, and texts; 8th, moral -rules, with examples; 9th, economics and politics, as far as they could -be understood; 10th, general history of the world; 11th, figure of the -earth and motion of stars, &c., physics and geography, especially of -native land; 12th, general knowledge of arts and handicrafts. - -§ 36. Each school was to be divided into six classes, corresponding to -the six years the pupil should spend in it. The hours of work were to be, -in school, two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, with nearly -the same amount of private study. In the morning the mind and memory were -to be exercised, in the afternoon the hands and voice. Each class was to -have its proper lesson-book written expressly for it, so as to contain -everything that class had to learn. When a lesson was to be got by heart -from the book, the teacher was first to read it to the class, explain it, -and re-read it; the boys then to read it aloud by turns till one of them -offered to repeat it without book; the others were to do the same as soon -as they were able, till all had repeated it. This lesson was then to be -worked over again as a writing lesson, &c. In the higher forms of the -vernacular school a modern language was to be taught and duly practised. - -§ 37. Here we see a regular school course projected which differed -essentially from the only complete school course still earlier, that of -the Jesuits. In education Comenius was immeasurably in advance of Loyola -and Aquaviva. Like the great thinkers, Pestalozzi and Froebel, who most -resemble him, he thought of the development of the child from its birth; -and in a singularly wise little book, called _Schola materni gremii_, -or “School of the Mother’s Breast,” he has given advice for bringing up -children to the age of six.[74] - -§ 38. Very interesting are the hints here given, in which we get the -first approaches to Kindergarten training. Comenius saw that, much -as their elders might do to develop children’s powers of thought and -expression, “yet children of the same age and the same manners and -habits are of greater service still. When they talk or play together, -they sharpen each other more effectually; for the one does not surpass -the other in depth of invention, and there is among them no assumption -of superiority of the one over the other, only love, candour, free -questionings and answers” (_School of Infancy_, vi, 12, p. 38).[75] The -constant activity of children must be provided for. “It is better to play -than to be idle, for during play the mind is intent on some object which -often sharpens the abilities. In this way children may be early exercised -to an active life without any difficulty, since Nature herself stirs them -up to be doing something” (_Ib._ ix, 15, p. 55). “In the second, third, -fourth years, &c., let their spirits be stirred up by means of agreeable -play with them or their playing among themselves.... Nay, if some little -occupation can be conveniently provided for the child’s eyes, ears, or -other senses, these will contribute to its vigour of mind and body” -(_Ib._ vi, 21, p. 31). - -§ 39. We have the usual cautions against forcing. “Early fruit is useful -for the day, but will not keep; whereas late fruit may be kept all the -year. As some natural capacities would fly, as it were, before the sixth, -the fifth, or even the fourth year, yet it will be beneficial rather to -restrain than permit this; but very much worse to enforce it.” “It is -safer that the brain be rightly consolidated before it begin to sustain -labours: in a little child the whole _bregma_ is scarcely closed and the -brain consolidated within the fifth or sixth year. It is sufficient, -therefore, for this age to comprehend spontaneously, imperceptibly and as -it were in play, so much as is employed in the domestic circle” (_Ib._ -chap. xi). - -§ 40. One disastrous tendency has always shown itself in the -schoolroom—the tendency to sever all connection between studies in the -schoolroom and life outside. The young pack away their knowledge as it -were in water-tight compartments, where it may lie conveniently till the -scholastic voyage is over and it can be again unshipped.[76] Against -this tendency many great teachers have striven, and none more vigorously -than Comenius. Like Pestalozzi he sought to resolve everything into its -simplest elements, and he finds the commencements before the school -age. In the _School of Infancy_ he says (speaking of rhetoric), “My aim -is to shew, although this is not generally attended to, that the roots -of all sciences and arts in every instance arise as early as in the -tender age, and that on these foundations it is neither impossible nor -difficult for the whole superstructure to be laid; provided always that -we act reasonably with a reasonable creature” (viij, 6, p. 46). This -principle he applies in his chapter, “How children ought to be accustomed -to an active life and perpetual employment” (chap. vij). In the fourth -and fifth year their powers are to be drawn out in mechanical or -architectural efforts, in drawing and writing, in music, in arithmetic, -geometry, and dialectics. For arithmetic in the fourth, fifth, or sixth -year, it will be sufficient if they count up to twenty; and they may -be taught to play at “odd and even.” In geometry they may learn in the -fourth year what are lines, what are squares, what are circles; also -the usual measures—foot, pint, quart, &c., and soon they should try to -measure and weigh for themselves. Similar beginnings are found for other -sciences such as physics, astronomy, geography, history, economics, and -politics. “The elements of _geography_ will be during the course of -the first year and thenceforward, when children begin to distinguish -between their cradles and their mother’s bosom” (vj, 6, p. 34). As this -geographical knowledge extends, they discover “what a field is, what -a mountain, forest, meadow, river” (iv, 9, p. 17). “The beginning of -_history_ will be, to be able to remember what was done yesterday, what -recently, what a year ago.”[77] (_Ib._) - -§ 41. In this book Comenius is careful to provide children with -occupation for “_mind and hand_” (iv, 10, p. 18). Drawing is to be -practised by all. “It matters not,” says Comenius, “whether the objects -be correctly drawn or otherwise _provided that they afford delight to the -mind_.”[78] - -§ 42. We see then that this restless thinker considered the entire course -of a child’s bringing-up from the cradle to maturity; and we cannot doubt -that Raumer is right in saying, “The influence of Comenius on subsequent -thinkers and workers in education, especially on the Methodizers, is -incalculable.” (_Gesch. d. P._, ij, “Comenius,” § 10.) - -Before we think of his methods and school books, let us inquire what he -did for education that has proved to be on a solid foundation and “not -liable to any ruin.” - -§ 43. He was the first to reach a standpoint which was and perhaps always -will be above the heads of “the practical men,” and demand _education -for all_. “We design for all who have been born human beings, general -instruction to fit them for everything human. They must, therefore, as -far as possible be taught together, so that they may mutually draw each -other out, enliven and stimulate. Of the ‘mother-tongue school’ the end -and aim will be, that all the youth of both sexes between the sixth and -the twelfth or thirteenth years be taught those things which will be -useful to them all their life long.”[79] - -In these days we often hear controversies between the men of science and -the ministers of religion. It is as far beyond my intention as it is -beyond my abilities to discuss how far the antithesis between religion -and science is a true one; but our subject sometimes forces us to observe -that religion and science often bring thinkers by different paths to the -same result; _e.g._, they both refuse to recognise class distinctions -and make us see an essential unity underlying superficial variations. -In Comenius we have an earnest Christian minister who was also an -enthusiast for science. Moreover he was without social and virtually -without national restrictions, and he was thus in a good position for -expressing freely and without bias what both his science and his religion -taught him. “Not only are the children of the rich and noble to be drawn -to the school, but all alike, gentle and simple, rich and poor, boys -and girls, in great towns and small, down to the country villages. And -for this reason. Every one who is born a human being is born with this -intent—that he should be a human being, that is, a reasonable creature -ruling over the other creatures and bearing the likeness of his Maker.” -(_Didactica M._ ix, § 1.) This sounds to me nobler than the utterances -of Rousseau and the French Revolutionists, not to mention Locke who fell -back on considering merely “the gentleman’s calling.” Even Bishop Butler -a century after Comenius hardly takes so firm a ground, though he lays it -down that “children have as much right to some proper education as to -have their lives preserved.”[80] - -§ 44. The first man who demanded training for every human being _because -he or she was a human being_ must always be thought of with respect and -gratitude by all who care either for science or religion. It has taken -us 250 years to reach the standpoint of Comenius; but we have reached -it, or almost reached it at last, and when we have once got hold of the -idea we are not likely to lose it again. The only question is whether -we shall not go on and in the end agree with Comenius that the primary -school shall be for rich and poor alike. At present the practical -men, in England especially, have things all their own way; but their -horizon is and must be very limited. They have already had to adjust -themselves to many things which their predecessors declared to be “quite -impracticable—indeed impossible.” May not their successors in like manner -get accustomed to other “impossible” things, this scheme of Comenius -among them? - -§ 45. The champions of realism have always recognised Comenius as one -of their earliest leaders. Bacon had just given voice to the scientific -spirit which had at length rebelled against the literary spirit dominant -at the Renascence, and had begun to turn from all that had been thought -and said about Nature, straight to Nature herself. Comenius was the -professed disciple of “the noble Verulam, who,” said he, “has given -us the true key of Nature.” Furnished with this key, Comenius would -unlock the door of the treasure-house for himself. “It grieved me,” he -says, “that I saw most noble Verulam present us indeed with a true key -of Nature, but not to open the secrets of Nature, only shewing us by a -few examples how they were to be opened, and leave [_i.e._, leaving] -the rest to depend on observations and inductions continued for several -ages.” Comenius thought that by the light of the senses, of reason, and -of the Bible, he might advance faster. “For what? Are not we as well as -the old philosophers placed in Nature’s garden? Why then do we not cast -about our eyes, nostrils, and ears as well as they? Why should we learn -the works of Nature of any other master rather than of these our senses? -Why do we not, I say, turn over the living book of the world instead -of dead papers? In it we may contemplate more things and with greater -delight and profit than any one can tell us. If we have anywhere need of -an interpreter, the Maker of Nature is the best interpreter Himself.” -(Preface to _Naturall Philosophie reformed_. English trans., 1651.) - -§ 46. Several things are involved in this so-called “realism.” First, -Comenius would fix the mind of learners on material objects. Secondly, -he would have them acquire their notions of these for themselves through -the senses. From these two principles he drew the corollary that the -vast accumulation of traditional learning and literature must be thrown -overboard. - -§ 47. The demand for the study of things has been best formulated by one -of the greatest masters of words, by Milton. “Because our understanding -cannot in the body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so -clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly -conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is -necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching.” (_To Hartlib._) Its -material surroundings then are to be the subjects on which the mind of -the child must be fixed. This being settled, Comenius demands that the -child’s knowledge shall not be _verbal_ but _real_ realism, knowledge -derived at first hand through the senses.[81] - -§ 48. On this subject Comenius may speak for himself: “The ground of -this business is, that sensual objects [we now say _sensible_: why not -_sensuous_?] be rightly presented to the senses, for fear they may not be -received. I say, and say it again aloud, that this last is the foundation -of all the rest: because we can neither act nor speak wisely, unless we -first rightly understand all the things which are to be done and whereof -we have to speak. Now there is nothing in the understanding which was not -before in the sense. And therefore to exercise the senses well about the -right perceiving the differences of things will be to lay the grounds -for all wisdom and all wise discourse and all discreet actions in one’s -course of life. Which, because it is commonly neglected in Schools, and -the things that are to be learned are offered to scholars without their -being understood or being rightly presented to the senses, it cometh to -pass that the work of teaching and learning goeth heavily onward and -affordeth little benefit.” (Preface to _Orbis Pictus_, Hoole’s trans. -A.D. 1658.) - -§ 49. Without going into any metaphysical discussion, we must all -agree that a vast amount of impressions come to children through the -senses, and that it is by the exercise of the senses that they learn -most readily. As Comenius says: “The senses (being the main guides of -childhood, because therein the mind doth not as yet raise up it self to -an abstracted contemplation of things) evermore seek their own objects; -and if these be away, they grow dull, and wry themselves hither and -thither out of a weariness of themselves: but when their objects are -present, they grow merry, wax lively, and willingly suffer themselves -to be fastened upon them till the thing be sufficiently discerned.” -(P. to _Orbis._) This truth lay at the root of most of the methods of -Pestalozzi; and though it has had little effect on teaching in England -(where for the word _anschaulich_ there is no equivalent), everything -that goes on in a German Folkschool has reference to it. - -§ 50. For children then Comenius gave good counsel when he would have -their senses exercised on the world about them. But after all, whatever -may be thought of the proposition that all knowledge comes through the -senses, we must not ignore what is bequeathed to us, both in science -and in literature. Comenius says: “And now I beseech you let this be -our business that the schools may cease to _persuade_ and begin to -_demonstrate_; cease to _dispute_ and begin to _look_; cease lastly to -_believe_ and begin to _know_. For that Aristotellical maxim ‘_Discentem -oportet credere_, A learner must believe,’ is as tyrannical as it is -dangerous; so also is that same Pythagorean ‘_Ipse dixit_, The Master has -said it.’ Let no man be compelled to swear to his Masters words, but let -the things themselves constrain the intellect.” (P. to _Nat. Phil. R._) -But the things themselves will not take us far. Even in Natural Science -we need teachers, for Science is not reached through the senses but -through the intellectual grasp of knowledge which has been accumulating -for centuries. If the education of times past has neglected the senses, -we must not demand that the education of the future should care for the -senses only. There is as yet little danger of our thinking too much of -physical education; but we sometimes hear reformers talking as if the -true ideal were sketched in “Locksley Hall:” - - “Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run, - Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun, - Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks; - Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.” - -There seems, however, still some reason for counting “the gray barbarian -lower than the Christian child.” And the reason is that we are “the heirs -of all the ages.” Our education must enable every child to enter in some -measure on his inheritance; and not a few of our most precious heirlooms -will be found not only in scientific discoveries but also in those great -works of literature which the votaries of science are apt to despise as -“miserable books.” This truth was not duly appreciated by Comenius. As -Professor Laurie well says, “he accepted only in a half-hearted way the -products of the genius of past ages.” (Laurie’s _C._, p. 22.) In his day -there was a violent reaction from the Renascence passion for literature, -and Comenius would entirely banish from education the only literatures -which were then important, the “heathen” literatures of Greece and Rome. -“Our most learned men,” says he, “even among the theologians take from -Christ only the mask: the blood and life they draw from Aristotle and a -crowd of other heathens.” (See Paulsen’s _Gesch._, pp. 312, ff.) So for -Cicero and Virgil he would substitute, and his contemporaries at first -seemed willing to accept, the _Janua Linguarum_. But though there may be -much more “real” knowledge in the _Janua_, the classics have survived -it.[82] In these days there is a passion for the study of things which -in its intensity resembles the Renascence passion for literature. There -is a craving for knowledge, and we know only the truths we can verify; so -this craving must be satisfied, not by words, but things. And yet that -domain which the physicists contemptuously describe as the study of words -must not be lost sight of, indeed cannot be, either by young or old. As -Matthew Arnold has said, “those who are for giving to natural knowledge -the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind leave one -important thing out of their account—the constitution of human nature.” - - “We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love, - And e’en as these are well and wisely fixed, - In dignity of being we ascend.” - -So says Wordsworth, and if this assertion cannot be verified, no more -can it be disproved; that the words have become almost proverbial shows -that it commends itself to the general consciousness. Whatever knowledge -we may acquire, it will have little effect on our lives unless we can -“relate it” (again to use Matthew Arnold’s words), “to our sense of -conduct and our sense of beauty.” (_Discourses in America._ “Literature -and Science.”) So long as we retain our sense for these, “the humanities” -are safe. Like Milton we may have no inclination to study “modern -Januas,” but we shall not cease to value many of the works which the -Janua of Comenius was supposed to have supplanted.[83] - -§ 51. “Analogies are good for illustration, not for proof.” If Comenius -had accepted this caution, he would have escaped much useless labour, -and might have had a better foundation for his rules than fanciful -applications of what he observed in the external world. “Comenius” -as August Vogel has said, “is unquestionably right in wishing to draw -his principles of education from Nature; but instead of examining the -proper constitution and nature of man, and taking that as the basis -of his theory, he watches the life of birds, the growth of trees, or -the quiet influence of the sun, and thus substitutes for the nature of -man nature _without_ man (_die objective Natur_). And yet by Nature he -understands that first and primordial state to which as to our original -[idea] we should be restored, and by the voice of Nature he understands -the universal Providence of God or the ceaseless influence of the -Divine Goodness working all in all, that is, leading every creature to -the state ordained for it. The vegetative and animal life in Nature is -according to Comenius himself not life at all in its highest sense, but -the only true life is the intellectual or spiritual life of Man. No doubt -in the two lower kinds of life certain analogies may be found for the -higher; but nothing can be less worthy of reliance and less scientific -than a method which draws its principles for the higher life from what -has been observed in the lower.” (A. Vogel’s _Gesch. d. Pädagogik als -Wissenschaft_, p. 94.) - -§ 52. This seems to me judicious criticism; but whatever mistakes he may -have made, Comenius, like Froebel long after him, strove after a higher -unity which should embrace knowledge of every kind. The connexion of -knowledges (so constantly overlooked in the schoolroom) was always in his -thoughts. “We see that the branches of a tree cannot live unless they -all alike suck their juices from a common trunk with common roots. And -can we hope that the branches of Wisdom can be torn asunder with safety -to their life, that is to truth? Can one be a Natural Philosopher who -is not also a Metaphysician? or an Ethical Thinker who does not know -something of Physical Science? or a Logician who has no knowledge of real -matters? or a Theologian, a jurisconsult, or a Physician, who is not -first a Philosopher? or an Orator or Poet, who is not all these at once? -He deprives himself of light, of hand, and of regulation, who pushes away -from him any shred of the knowable.” (Quoted in Masson’s _L. of Milton_ -vol. iij., p. 213 from the Delineatio, [i.e., _Pansophiæ Prodromus_]. -Conf. J. H. Newman, _Idea of a University_, Disc. iij.) - -§ 53. We see then that on the side of theory, Comenius was truly great. -But the practical man who has always been the tyrant of the schoolroom -cared nothing for theory and held, with a modern English minister -responsible for education, who proved his ignorance of theory by his “New -Code,” that there was, and could be no such thing. So the reputation of -Comenius became pretty much what our great authority Hallam has recorded, -that he was a person of some ingenuity and little judgment who invented -a new way of learning Latin. This estimate of him enables us to follow -some windings in the stream of thought about education. Comenius faced -the whole problem in its double bearing, theory and practice: he asked, -What is the educator’s task? How can he best accomplish it? But his -contemporaries had not yet recovered from the idolatry of Latin which -had been bequeathed to them by their fathers from the Renascence, and -they too saw in Comenius chiefly an inventor of a new way of learning -Latin. He sought to train up children for this world and the next; they -supposed, as Oxenstiern himself said, that the main thing to be remedied -was the clumsy way of teaching Latin. So Comenius was little understood. -His books were seized upon as affording at once an introduction to the -knowledge of _things_ and a short way of learning Latin. But in the -long run they were found more tiresome than the old classics: so they -went out of fashion, and their author was forgotten with them. Now that -schoolmasters are forming a more worthy conception of their office, they -are beginning to do justice to Comenius. - -§ 54. As the Jesuits kept to Latin as the common language of the Church, -so Comenius thought to use it as a means of inter-communication for -the instructed of every nationality. But he was singularly free from -over-estimating the value of Latin, and he demanded that all nations -should be taught in their own language wherein they were born. On this -subject he expresses himself with great emphasis. “We desire and protest -that studies of wisdom be no longer committed to Latin alone, and kept -shut up in the schools, as has hitherto been done, to the greatest -contempt and injury of the people at large, and the popular tongues. Let -all things be delivered to each nation in its own speech.” (_Delineatio_ -[_Prodromus_] in Masson _ut supra_.) - -§ 55. Comenius was then neither a verbalist nor a classicist, and yet his -contemporaries were not entirely wrong in thinking of him as “a man who -had invented a new way of learning Latin.” His great principle was that -instruction in words and things should go together.[84] The young were to -learn about things, and _at the same time_ were to acquire both in the -vernacular and also in Latin, the international tongue, the words which -were connected with the things. Having settled on this plan of concurrent -instruction in words and things, Comenius determined to write a book -for carrying it out. Just then there fell into his hands a book which a -less open-minded man might have thrown aside on account of its origin, -for it was written by the bitter foes and persecutors of the Bohemian -Protestants, by the Jesuits. But Comenius says truly, “I care not whether -I teach or whether I learn,” and he gave a marvellous proof of this by -adopting the linguistic method of the Jesuits’ _Janua Linguarum_.[85] -This “Noah’s Ark for words,” treated in a series of proverbs of all kinds -of subjects, in such a way as to introduce in a natural connection every -common word in the Latin language. “The idea,” says Comenius, “was better -than the execution. Nevertheless, inasmuch as they (the Jesuits) were -the prime inventors, we thankfully acknowledge it, nor will we upbraid -them with those errors they have committed.” (Preface to Anchoran’s -trans. of _Janua_.) - -§ 56. The plan commended itself to Comenius on various grounds. First, he -had a notion of giving an outline of all knowledge before anything was -taught in detail. Next, he could by such a book connect the teaching -about simple things with instruction in the Latin words which applied -to them. And thirdly, he hoped by this means to give such a complete -Latin vocabulary as to render the use of Latin easy for all requirements -of modern society. He accordingly wrote a short account of things in -general, which he put in the form of a dialogue, and this he published in -Latin and German at Leszna in 1531. The success of this work, as we have -already seen, was prodigious. No doubt the spirit which animated Bacon -was largely diffused among educated men in all countries, and they hailed -the appearance of a book which called the youth from the study of old -philosophical ideas to observe the facts around them. - -§ 57. The countrymen of Bacon were not backward in adopting the new -work, as the following, from the title-page of a volume in the British -Museum, will show: “The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened; or else, -a Seminary or Seed-plot of all Tongues and Sciences. That is, a short -way of teaching and thoroughly learning, within a yeare and a half at -the furthest, the Latine, English, French and any other tongue, with -the ground and foundation of arts and sciences, comprised under a -hundred titles and 1058 periods. In Latin first, and now, as a token of -thankfulness, brought to light in Latine, English and French, in the -behalfe of the most illustrious Prince Charles, and of British, French, -and Irish youth. The 4th edition, much enlarged, by the labour and -industry of John Anchoran, Licentiate in Divinity, London. Printed by -Edward Griffin for Michael Sparke, dwelling at the Blew Bible in Green -Arbor, 1639.” The first edition must have been some years earlier, and -the work contains a letter to Anchoran from Comenius dated “Lessivæ -polonorum (Leszna) 11th Oct, 1632.” So we see that, however the connexion -arose, it was Anchoran not Hartlib who first made Comenius known in -England. - -§ 58. In the preface to the volume (signed by Anchoran and Comenius) we -read of the complaints of “Ascam, Vives, Erasmus, Sturmius, Frisclinus, -Dornavius and others.” The Scaligers and Lipsius did climb but left no -track. “Hence it is that the greater number of schools (howsoever some -boast the happinesse of the age and the splendour of learning) have not -as yet shaked off their ataxies. The youth was held off, nay distracted, -and is yet in many places delayed with grammar precepts infinitely -tedious, perplexed, obscure, and (for the most part) unprofitable, and -that for many years.” The names of things were taught to those who were -in total ignorance of the things themselves. - -§ 59. From this barren region the pupil was to escape to become -acquainted with things. “Come on,” says the teacher in the opening -dialogue, “let us go forth into the open air. There you shall view -whatsoever God produced from the beginning, and doth yet effect by -nature. Afterwards we will go into towns, shops, schools, where you shall -see how men do both apply those Divine works to their uses, and also -instruct themselves in arts, manners, tongues. Then we will enter into -houses, courts, and palaces of princes, to see in what manner communities -of men are governed. At last we will visit temples, where you shall -observe how diversely mortals seek to worship their Creator and to be -spiritually united unto Him, and how He by His Almightiness disposeth all -things.” (This is from the 1656 edition, by “W.D.”) - -The book is still amusing, but only from the quaint manner in which the -mode of life two hundred years ago is described in it.[86] - -§ 60. But though parts of the book may on first reading have gratified -the youth of the seventeenth century, a great deal of it gave scanty -information about difficult subjects, such as physiology, geometry, -logic, rhetoric, and that too in the driest and dullest way. Moreover, -in his first version (much modified at Saros-Patak) Comenius following -the Jesuit boasts that no important word occurs twice; so that the book, -to attain the end of giving a perfect stock of Latin words, would have -to be read and re-read till it was almost known by heart; and however -amusing boys might find an account of their toys written in Latin the -first time of reading, the interest would somewhat wear away by the -fifth or sixth time. We cannot then feel much surprised on reading this -“general verdict,” written some years later, touching those earlier works -of Comenius: “They are of singular use, and very advantageous to those -of more discretion (especially to such as have already got a smattering -in Latin), to help their memories to retain what they have scatteringly -gotten here and there, and to furnish them with many words which perhaps -they had not formerly read or so well observed; but to young children -(whom we have chiefly to instruct, as those that are ignorant altogether -of most things and words), they prove rather a mere toil and burden than -a delight and furtherance.” (Chas. Hoole’s preface to his trans. of -_Orbis Pictus_, dated “From my school in _Lothbury_, London, Jan. 25, -1658.”) - -§ 61. The “_Janua_” would, therefore, have had but a short-lived -popularity with teachers, and a still shorter with learners, if Comenius -had not carried out his principle of appealing to the senses, and adopted -a plan which had been suggested, nearly 50 years earlier, by a Protestant -divine, Lubinus,[87] of Rostock. The artist was called in, and with -Endter at Nürnberg in 1657 was published the first edition of a book -which long outlived the _Janua_. This was the famous _Orbis Sensualium -Pictus_, which was used for a century at least in many a schoolroom, -and lives in imitations to the present day. Comenius wrote this book on -the same lines as the _Janua_, but he goes into less detail, and every -subject is illustrated by a small engraving. The text is mostly on the -opposite page to the picture, and is connected with it by a series of -corresponding numbers. Everything named in the text is numbered as -in the picture. The artist employed must have been a bold man, as he -sticks at nothing; but in skill he was not the equal of many of his -contemporaries; witness the pictures in the Schaffhausen _Janua_ (Editio -secunda, SchaffhusI, 1658), in Daniel’s edition of the _Janua_, 1562, -and the very small but beautiful illustrations in the _Vestibulum_ of -“Jacob Redinger and J. S.” (Amsterdam, 1673). However, the _Orbis Pictus_ -gives such a quaint delineation of life 200 years ago that copies with -the original engravings keep rising in value, and an American publisher -(Bardeen of Syracuse, New York), has lately reproduced the old book with -the help of photography. - -§ 62. And yet as instruments of teaching, these books, _i.e._ the -_Vestibulum_ and the _Janua_ and even the _Orbis Pictus_ which in a great -measure superseded both, proved a failure. How shall we account for this? - -Comenius immensely over-estimated the importance of knowledge and -the power of the human mind to acquire knowledge. He took it for the -heavenly idea that _man should know all things_. This notion started him -on the wrong road for forming a scheme of instruction, and it needed -many years and much experience to show him his error. When he wrote the -_Orbis Pictus_ he said of it: “It is _a little book_, as you see, of -no great bulk, yet a brief of the whole world and a whole language;” -(Hoole’s trans. Preface); and he afterwards speaks of “this our _little -encyclopædia_ of things subject to the senses.” But in his old age he saw -that his text-books were too condensed and attempted too much (Laurie, -p. 59); and he admitted that after all Seneca was right: “Melius est -scire pauca et iis recté uti quam scire multa, quorum ignores usum. It is -better to know a few things and have the right use of them than to know -many things which you cannot use at all.” - -§ 63. The attempt to give “information” has been the ruin of a vast -number of professing educators since Comenius. Masters “of the old -school” whom some of us can still remember made boys learn Latin and -Greek Grammar and _nothing else_. Their successors seem to think that -boys should not learn Latin and Greek Grammar but _everything else_: and -the last error I take to be much worse than the first. As Ruskin has -neatly said, education is not teaching people to know what they do not -know, but to behave as they do not behave. It is to be judged not by the -knowledge acquired, but the habits, powers, interests: knowledge must be -thought of “last and least.” - -§ 64. So the attempt to teach about everything was unwise. The means -adopted were unwise also. It is a great mistake to suppose that -a “general view” should come first; this is not the right way to -give knowledge in any subject. “A child begins by seeing bits of -everything—here a little and there a little; it makes up its wholes out -of its own littles, and is long in reaching the fulness of a whole; and -in this we are children all our lives in much.” (Dr. John Brown in _Horæ -Subsecivæ_, p. 5.) So nothing could have been much more unfortunate than -an attempt to give the young “a brief of the whole world.” _Compendia, -dispendia._ - -§ 65. Corresponding to “a brief of the whole world,” Comenius offers “a -brief of a whole language.” The two mistakes were well matched. In “the -whole world” there are a vast number of things of which we must, and -a good number of which we very advantageously _may_ be ignorant. In a -language there are many words which we cannot know and many more which we -do not want to know. The language lives for us in a small vocabulary of -essential words, and our hold upon the language depends upon the power -we have in receiving and expressing thought by means of those words. But -the Jesuit Bath, and after him Comenius, made the tremendous mistake of -treating all Latin words as of equal value, and took credit for using -each word once and once only! Moreover, Comenius wrote not simply to -teach the Latin language, but also to stretch the Latin language till it -covered the whole area of modern life. He aimed at two things and missed -them both. - -§ 66. We see then that Comenius was not what Hallam calls him, “a man who -invented a new way of learning Latin.” He did not do this, but he did -much more than this. He saw that every human creature should be trained -up to become a reasonable being, and that the training should be such -as to draw out God-given faculties. Thus he struck the key-note of the -science of education. - - The quantity and the diffuseness of the writings of Comenius - are truly bewildering. In these days eminent men, Carlyle, - _e.g._, sometimes find it difficult to get into print; but - printing-presses all over Europe seemed to be at the service - of Comenius. An account of the various editions of the _Janua_ - would be an interesting piece of bibliography, but the task of - making it would not be a light one. The earliest copy of which - I can find a trace is entered in the catalogue of the Bodleian: - “Comenius J. A. _Janua Linguarum_, 8vo, Lips (Leipzig) 1632.” I - also find there another copy entered “per Anchoranum, cum clave - per W. Saltonstall, London, 1633.” - - The fame of Comenius is increasing and many interesting works - have now been written about him. I have already mentioned - the English books of Benham and Laurie. In German I have the - following books, but not the time to read them all:— - - Daniel, H. A. _Zerstreute Blätter._ Halle, 1866. - - Free, H. _Pädagogik d. Comenius._ Bernburg, 1884. - - Hiller, R. _Latein Methode d. J. A. Comenius._ Zschopau, 1883. - (v. g. and terse; only 46 pp.) - - Müller, Walter. _Comenius ein Systematiker in d. Päd._ Dresden, - 1887. - - Pappenheim, E. _Amos Comenius._ Berlin, 1871. - - Seyffarth, L. W. _J. A. Comenius._ Leipzig, 2nd edition, 1871. - (A careful and, as far as I can judge in haste, an excellent - piece of work.) - - Zoubek, Fr. J. _J. A. Comenius._ _Eine quellenmässige - Lebensskizze_, (Prefixed to trans. of _Didac. M._ in Richter’s - _Päd. Bibliothek_.) - - For a Port-Royalist’s criticism of the _Janua_, see infra. (p. - 185 _note_.) - - - - -XI. - -THE GENTLEMEN OF PORT-ROYAL.[88] - - -§ 1. In the sixteen-hundreds by far the most successful schoolmasters -were the Jesuits. In spite of their exclusion from the University, they -had in the Province of Paris some 14,000 pupils, and in Paris itself at -the Collège de Clermont, 1,800. Might they not have neglected “the Little -Schools,” which were organized by the friends and disciples of the Abbé -de Saint-Cyran, schools in which the numbers were always small, about -twenty or twenty-five, and only once increasing to fifty? And yet the -Jesuits left no stone unturned, no weapon unemployed, in their attack on -“the Little Schools.” The conflict seems to us like an engagement between -a man-of-war and a fishing-boat. That the poor fishing-boat would soon -be beneath the waves, was clear enough from the beginning, and she did -indeed speedily disappear; but the victors have never recovered from -their victory and never will. Whenever we think of Jesuitism we are not -more forcibly reminded of Loyola than of Pascal. All educated Frenchmen, -most educated people everywhere, get their best remembered impressions of -the Society of Loyola from the Provincial Letters.[89] - -§ 2. The Society had a long standing rivalry with the University of -Paris, and the University not only refused to admit the Jesuits, but -several times petitioned the Parliament to chase them out of France. On -one of these occasions the advocate who was retained by the University -was Antoine Arnauld, a man of renowned eloquence; and he threw himself -into the attack with all his heart. From that time the Jesuits had a -standing feud with the house of Arnauld. - -§ 3. But it was no mere personal dislike that separated the -Port-Royalists and the Jesuits. Port-Royal with which the Arnauld -family was so closely united, became the stronghold of a theology which -was unlike that of the Jesuits, and was denounced by them as heresy. -The daughter of Antoine Arnauld was made, at the age of eleven years, -Abbess of Port-Royal, a Cistercian convent not far from Versailles. -This position was obtained for her by a fraud of Marion, Henry IV’s -advocate-general, who thought only of providing comfortably for one of -the twenty children to whom his daughter, Made. Arnauld, had made him -grandfather. Never was a nomination more scandalously obtained or used to -better purpose. The Mère Angélique is one of the saints of the universal -church, and she soon became the restorer of the religious life first in -her own and then by her influence and example in other convents of her -Order. - -§ 4. In these reforms she had nothing to fear from her hereditary foes -the Jesuits; but she soon came under the influence of a man whose theory -of life was as much opposed to the Jesuits’ theory as to that of the -world which found in the Jesuits the most accommodating father confessors. - -Duvergier de Hauranne (1581-1643) better known by the name of his -“abbaye,” Saint-Cyran, was one of those commanding spirits who seem born -to direct others and form a distinct society. In vain Richelieu offered -him the posts most likely to tempt him. The prize that Saint-Cyran had -set his heart upon was not of this world, and Richelieu could assist him -in one way only—by persecution. This assistance the Cardinal readily -granted, and by his orders Saint-Cyran was imprisoned at Vincennes, and -not set at liberty till Richelieu was himself summoned before a higher -tribunal. - -§ 5. Driven by prevailing sickness from Port-Royal des Champs, the Mère -Angélique transported her community (in 1626) to a house purchased for -them in Paris by her mother who in her widowhood became one of the -Sisters. In Paris Angélique sought for herself and her convent the -spiritual direction of Saint-Cyran (not yet a prisoner), and from that -time Saint-Cyran added the Abbess and Sisters of Port-Royal to the number -of those who looked up to him as their pattern and guide in all things. - -Port-Royal des Champs was in course of time occupied by a band of -solitaries who at the bidding of Saint-Cyran renounced the world and -devoted themselves to prayer and study. To them we owe the works of “the -Gentlemen of Port-Royal.” - -§ 6. It is then to Saint-Cyran we must look for the ideas which became -the distinctive mark of the Port-Royalists. - -Saint-Cyran was before all things a theologian. In his early days -at Bayonne his studies had been shared by a friend who afterwards -was professor of theology at Louvain, and then Bishop of Ypres. This -friend was Jansenius. Their searches after truth had brought them to -opinions which in the England of the nineteenth century are known as -“Evangelical.” According to “Catholic” teaching all those who receive -the creed and the sacraments of the Church and do not commit “mortal” -sin are in a “state of salvation,” that is to say the great majority -of Christians are saved. This teaching is rejected by those of another -school of thought who hold that only a few “elect” are saved and that the -great body even of Christians are doomed to perdition. - -§ 7. Such a belief as this would seem to be associated of necessity with -harshness and gloom; but from whatever cause, there has been found in -many, even in most, cases no such connexion. Those who have held that the -great mass of their fellow-creatures had no hope in a future world, have -thrown themselves lovingly into all attempts to improve their condition -in this world. Still, their main effort has always been to increase -the number of the converted and to preserve them from the wiles of the -enemy. This Saint-Cyran sought to do by selecting a few children and -bringing them up in their tender years like hot-house plants, in the hope -that they would be prepared when older and stronger, to resist the evil -influences of the world. - -§ 8. His first plan was to choose out of all Paris six children and -to confide them to the care of a priest appointed to direct their -consciences, and a tutor of not more than twenty-five years old, to teach -them Latin. “I should think,” says he, “it was doing a good deal if I -did not advance them far in Latin before the age of twelve, and made -them pass their first years confined to one house or a monastery in the -country where they might be allowed all the pastimes suited to their age -and where they might see only the example of a good life set by those -about them.” (Letter quoted by Carré, p. 20.) - -§ 9. His imprisonment put a stop to this plan, “but,” says Saint-Cyran, -“I do not lightly break off what I undertake for God;” so when intrusted -with the disposal of 2,000 francs by M. Bignon, he started the first -“Little School,” in which two small sons of M. Bignon’s were taken as -pupils. The name of “Little Schools,” was given partly perhaps because -according to their design the numbers in any school could never be large, -partly no doubt to deprecate any suspicion of rivalry with the schools of -the University. The children were to be taken at an early age, nine or -ten, before they could have any guilty knowledge of evil, and Saint-Cyran -made in all cases a stipulation that at any time a child might be -returned to his friends; but in cases where the master’s care seemed -successful, the pupils were to be kept under it till they were grown up. - -§ 10. The Little Schools had a short and troubled career of hardly more -than fifteen years. They were not fully organized till 1646; they were -proscribed a few years later and in 1661 were finally broken up by Louis -XIV, who was under the influence of their enemies the Jesuits. But in -that time the Gentlemen of Port-Royal had introduced new ideas which have -been a force in French education and indeed in all literary education -ever since. - -To Saint-Cyran then we trace the attempt at a particular kind of school, -and to his followers some new departures in the training of the intellect. - -§ 11. Basing his system on the Fall of Man, Saint-Cyran came to a -conclusion which was also reached by Locke though by a different road. -To both of them it seemed that children require much more individual care -and watching than they can possibly get in a public school. Saint-Cyran -would have said what Locke said: “The difference is great between two or -three pupils in the same house and three or four score boys lodged up -and down: for let the master’s industry and skill be never so great, it -is impossible he should have fifty or one hundred scholars under his eye -any longer than they are in school together: Nor can it be expected that -he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books; the -forming of their minds and manners [preserving them from the danger of -the enemy, Saint-Cyran would have said] requiring a constant attention -and particular application to every single boy, which is impossible in a -numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study -and correct everyone’s peculiar defects and wrong inclinations) when the -lad was to be left to himself or the prevailing infection of his fellows -the greater part of the four-and-twenty hours.” (_Thoughts c. Ed._ § 70.) - -§ 12. An English public schoolmaster told the Commission on Public -Schools, that he stood _in loco parentis_ to fifty boys. “Rather a large -family,” observed one of the Commissioners drily. The truth is that in -the bringing up of the young there is the place of the schoolmaster and -of the school-fellows, as well as that of the parents; and of these -several forces one cannot fulfil the functions of the others. - -§ 13. According to the theory or at least the practice of English public -schools, boys are left in their leisure hours to organize their life for -themselves, and they form a community from which the masters are, partly -by their own over-work, partly by the traditions of the school, utterly -excluded. From this the intellectual education of the boys no doubt -suffers. “Engage them in conversation with men of parts and breeding,” -says Locke; and this was the old notion of training when boys of good -family grew up as pages in the household of some nobleman. But, except -in the holidays, the young aristocrats of the present day talk only with -other boys, and servants, and tradesmen. Hence the amount of thought and -conversation given to school topics, especially the games, is out of -all proportion to the importance of such things; and this does much to -increase what Matthew Arnold calls “the barbarians’” inaptitude for ideas. - -§ 14. What are we to say about the effects of the system on the morals -of the boys? If we were to start like Saint-Cyran from the doctrine -of human depravity, we should entirely condemn the system and predict -from it the most disastrous results;[90] but from experience we come to -a very different conclusion. Bishop Dupanloup, indeed, spoke of the -public schools of France as “_ces gouffres_.” This is not what is said -or thought of the English schools, and they are filled with boys whose -fathers and grandfathers were brought up in them, and desire above all -things to maintain the old traditions. - -§ 15. The Little Schools of Port-Royal aimed at training a few boys very -differently; each master had the charge of five or six only, and these -were never to be out of his presence day or night.[91] - -§ 16. It may reasonably be objected that such schools would be -possible only for a few children of well-to-do parents, and that men -who would thus devote themselves could be found only at seasons of -great enthusiasm. Under ordinary circumstances small schools have most -of the drawbacks and few of the advantages which are to be found in -large schools. As I have already said, parents, schoolmasters, and -school-fellows have separate functions in education; and even in the -smallest school the master can never take the place of the parent, or the -school become the home. Children at home enter into the world of their -father and mother; the family friends are _their_ friends, the family -events affect them as a matter of course. But in the school, however -small, the children’s interests are unconnected with the master and the -master’s family. The boys may be on the most intimate, even affectionate -terms with the grown people who have charge of them; but the mental -horizon of the two parties is very different, and their common area of -vision but small. In such cases the young do not rise into the world of -the adults, and it is almost impossible for the adults to descend into -theirs. They are “no company” the one for the other, and to be constantly -in each other’s presence would subject both to very irksome restraint. -When left to themselves, boys in small numbers are far more likely to get -into harm than boys in large numbers. In large communities even of boys, -“the common sense of most” is a check on the badly disposed. So as it -seems to me if from any cause the young cannot live at home and attend -a day-school, they will be far better off in a large boarding school -than in one that would better fulfil the requirements of Erasmus,[92] -Saint-Cyran, and Locke. - -§ 17. As Saint-Cyran attributed immense importance to the part of the -master in education, he was not easily satisfied with his qualifications. -“There is no occupation in the Church that is more worthy of a Christian; -next to giving up one’s life there is no greater charity.... The charge -of the soul of one of these little ones is a higher employment than the -government of all the world.” (Cadet, 2.) So thought Saint-Cyran, and he -was ready to go to the ends of the earth to find the sort of teacher he -wanted. - -§ 18. He was so anxious that the children should see only that which was -good that the servants were chosen with peculiar care. - -§ 19. For the masters his favourite rule was: “Speak little; put up -with much; pray still more.” Piety was not to be instilled so much by -precepts as by the atmosphere in which the children grew up. “Do not -spend so much time in speaking to them about God as to God about them:” -so formal instruction was never to be made wearisome. But there was to be -an incessant watch against evil influences and for good. “In guarding the -citadel,” says Lancelot, “we fail if we leave open a single gateway by -which the enemy might enter.” - -§ 20. Though anxious, like the Jesuits, to make their boys’ studies -“not only endurable, but even delightful,” the Gentlemen of Port-Royal -banished every form of rivalry. Each pupil was to think of one whom -he should try to catch up, but this was not a school-fellow, but his -own higher self, his ideal. Here Pascal admits that the exclusion -of competition had its drawbacks and that the boys sometimes became -indifferent—“tombent dans la nonchalance,” as he says. - -§ 21. As for the instruction it was founded on this principle: the object -of schools being piety rather than knowledge there was to be no pressure -in studying, but the children were to be taught what was sound and -enduring. - -§ 22. In all occupations there is of necessity a tradition. In the higher -callings the tradition may be of several kinds. First there may be a -tradition of noble thoughts and high ideals, which will be conveyed in -the words of the greatest men who have been engaged in that calling, -or have thought out the theory of it. Next there will be the tradition -of the very best workers in it. And lastly there is the tradition of -the common man who learns and passes on just the ordinary views of his -class and the ordinary expedients for getting through ordinary work. Of -these different kinds of tradition, the school-room has always shown -a tendency to keep to this last, and the common man is supreme. Young -teachers are mostly required to fulfil their daily tasks without the -smallest preparation for them; so they have to get through as best they -can, and have no time to think of any high ideal, or of any way of doing -their work except that which gives them least trouble. “Practice makes -perfect,” says the proverb, but it would be truer to say that practice in -doing work badly soon makes perfect in contentment with bad workmanship. -Thus it is that the tradition of the school-room settles down for the -most part into a deadly routine, and teachers who have long been engaged -in carrying it on seem to lose their powers of vision like horses who -turn mills in the dark. - -The Gentlemen of Port-Royal worked free from school-room tradition. -“If the want of emulation was a drawback,” says Sainte-Beuve, “it was a -clear gain to escape from all routine, from all pedantry. _La crasse et -la morgue des régents n’en approchaient pas._” (_P.R._ vol. iij, p. 414) -Piety as we have seen was their main object. Next to it they wished to -“carry the intellects of their pupils to the highest point they could -attain to.” - -§ 23. In doing this they profited by their freedom from routine to try -experiments. They used their own judgments and sought to train the -judgment of their pupils. Themselves knowing the delights of literature, -they resolved that their pupils should know them also. They would banish -all useless difficulties and do what they could to “help the young and -make study even more pleasant to them than play and pastime.” (Preface to -Cic.’s _Billets_, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, vol. iij, p. 423.) - -§ 24. One of their innovations, though startling to their contemporaries, -does not seem to us very surprising. It was the custom to begin reading -with a three or four years’ course of reading Latin, because in that -language all the letters were pronounced. The connexion between sound -and sense is in our days not always thought of, but even among teachers -no advocates would now be found for the old method which kept young -people for the first three or four years uttering sounds they could by no -possibility understand. The French language might have some disadvantage -from its silent letters, but this was small compared with the -disadvantage felt in Latin from its silent sense. So the Port-Royalists -began reading with French. - -§ 25. Further than this, they objected to reading through spelling, -and pointed out that as consonants cannot be pronounced by themselves -they should be taken only in connexion with the adjacent vowel. Pascal -applied himself to the subject and invented the method described in the -6th chap. of the General Grammar (Carré, p. xxiij) and introduced by his -sister Jacqueline at Port-Royal des Champs. - -§ 26. When the child could read French, the Gentlemen of Port-Royal -sought for him books within the range of his intelligence. There was -nothing suitable in French, so they set to work to produce translations -in good French of the most readable Latin books, “altering them just a -little—_en y changeant fort peu de chose_,” as said the chief translator -De Saci, for the sake of purity. In this way they gallicised the -Fables of Phædrus, three Comedies of Terence, and the Familiar Letters -(_Billets_) of Cicero. - -§ 27. In this we see an important innovation. As I have tried to explain -(_supra_ pp. 14 ff.) the effect of the Renascence was to banish both the -mother-tongue and literature proper from the school-room; for no language -was tolerated but Latin, and no literature was thought possible except -in Latin or Greek. Before any literature could be known, or indeed, -instruction in any subject could be given, the pupils had to learn Latin. -This neglect of the mother-tongue was one of the traditional mistakes -pointed out and abandoned by the Port-Royalists. “People of quality -complain,” says De Saci, “and complain with reason, that in giving their -children Latin we take away French, and to turn them into citizens of -ancient Rome we make them strangers in their native land. After learning -Latin and Greek for 10 or 12 years, we are often obliged at the age of 30 -to learn French.” (Cadet, 10.) So Port-Royal proposed breaking through -this bondage to Latin, and laid down the principle, new in France, though -not in the country of Mulcaster or of Ratke, that everything should be -taught through the mother-tongue. - -Next, the Port-Royalists sought to give their pupils an early and a -pleasing introduction to literature. The best literature in those days -was the classical; and suitable works from that literature might be made -intelligible _by means of translations_. In this way the Port-Royalists -led their pupils to look upon some of the classical authors not as -inventors of examples in syntax, but as writers of books that _meant_ -something. And thus both the mother-tongue and literature were brought -into the school-room. - -§ 28. When the boys had by this means got some feeling for literature -and some acquaintance with the world of the ancients, they began the -study of Latin. Here again all needless difficulties were taken out of -their way. No attempt indeed was made to teach language without grammar, -the rationale of language, but the science of grammar was reduced to -first principles (set forth in the _Grammaire Générale et Raisonnée_ of -Arnauld and Lancelot), and the special grammar of the Latin language was -no longer taught by means of the work established in the University, -the _Latin_ Latin Grammar of Despautère, but by a “New Method” written -in French which gave essentials only and had for its motto: “Mihi inter -virtutes grammatici habebitur aliqua nescire—To me it will be among the -grammarian’s good points not to know everything.” (Quintil.)[93] - -§ 29. With this minimum of the essentials of the grammar and with -a previous acquaintance with the sense of the book the pupils were -introduced to the Latin language and were taught to translate a Latin -author into French. This was a departure from the ordinary route, which -after a course of learning grammar-rules in Latin went to the “theme,” -_i.e._, to composition in Latin. - -The art of translating into the mother-tongue was made much of. School -“construes,” which consist in substituting a word for a word, were -entirely forbidden, and the pupils had to produce the old writer’s -thoughts _in French_.[94] - -§30. From this we see that the training was literary. But in the study of -form the Port-Royalists did not neglect the inward for the outward. Their -great work, which still stands the attacks of time, is the Port-Royal -_Logic, or the Art of Thinking_ (see Trans, by T. Spencer Baynes, 1850). -This was substantially the work of Arnauld; and it was Arnauld who led -the Port-Royalists in their rupture with the philosophy of the Middle -Age, and who openly followed Descartes. In the _Logic_ we find the claims -of reason asserted as if in defiance of the Jesuits. “It is a heavy -bondage to think oneself forced to agree in everything with Aristotle and -to take him as the standard of truth in philosophy.... The world cannot -long continue in this restraint, and is recovering by degrees its natural -and reasonable liberty, which consists in accepting that which we judge -to be true and rejecting that which we judge to be false.” (Quoted by -Cadet, p. 31.)[95] - -§ 31. To mark the change, the Port-Royalists called their book not “the -Art of Reasoning,” but “the Art of Thinking,” and it was in this art -of thinking that they endeavoured to train their scholars. They paid -great attention to geometry, and Arnauld wrote a book (“New Elements of -Geometry”) which so well satisfied Pascal that after reading the MS. he -burnt a similar work of his own. - -§ 32. The Port-Royalists then sought to introduce into the school-room a -“sweet reasonableness.” They were not touched, as Comenius was, by the -spirit of Bacon, and knew nothing of a key for opening the secrets of -Nature. They loved literature and resolved that their pupils should love -it also; and with this end they would give the first notions of it in the -mother-tongue; but the love of literature still bound them to the past, -and they aimed simply at making the best of the Old Education without any -thought of a New. - -§ 33. In one respect they seem less wise than Rabelais and Mulcaster, -less wise perhaps than their foes the Jesuits. They gave little heed to -training the body, and thought of the soul and the mind only; or if they -thought of the body they were concerned merely that it should do no harm. -“Not only must we form the minds of our pupils to virtue,” says Nicole, -“we must also bend their bodies to it, that is, we must endeavour that -the body do not prove a hindrance to their leading a well-regulated life -or draw them by its weight to any disorder. For we should know that as -men are made up of mind and body, a wrong turn given to the body in youth -is often in after life a great hindrance to piety.” (_Vues p. bien élever -un prince_, quoted by Cadet, p. 206.) - -§ 34. But let us not underrate the good effect produced by this united -effort of Christian toil and Christian thought. “Nothing should be -more highly esteemed than good sense,” (Preface to the _Logique_), and -Port-Royal did a great work in bringing good sense and reason to bear on -the practice of the school-room. When the Little Schools were dispersed -the Gentlemen still continued to teach, but the lessons they gave were -now in the “art of thinking” and in the art of teaching; and all the -world might learn of them, for they taught in the only way left open to -them; they published books. - -§ 35. Of these writers on pedagogy the most distinguished was “the great -Arnauld,” _i.e._, Antoine Arnauld, (1612-1694) brother of the Mère -Angélique. His “_Règlement des Études_” shows us how literary instruction -was given at Port-Royal. In these directions we have not so much the -rules observed in the Little Schools as the experience of the Little -Schools rendered available for the schools of the University. On this -account Sainte-Beuve speaks of the _Règlement_ of Arnauld as forming a -preface to the _Treatise on Studies_ (_Traité des Études_) of Rollin. -In the _Règlement_ we see Arnauld yielding to what seems a practical -necessity and admitting competition and prizes. Some excellent advice is -given, especially on practice in the use of the mother-tongue. The young -people are to question and answer each other about the substance of what -they have read, about the more remarkable thoughts in their author or the -more beautiful expressions. Each day two of the boys are to narrate a -story which they themselves have selected from a classical author.[96] - -§ 36. With the notable exception of Pascal, Arnauld was the most -distinguished writer among the Gentlemen of Port-Royal. A writer less -devoted to controversy than Arnauld, less attached to the thought of -Saint-Cyran and of Descartes, but of wider popularity, was Nicole, who -had Made. de Sévigné for an admirer, and Locke for one of his translators. - -Nicole has given us a valuable contribution to pedagogy in his essay on -the right bringing-up of a prince. (_Vues générales pour bien élever un -prince._) In this essay he shows us with what thought and care he had -applied himself to the art of instruction, and he gives us hints that all -teachers may profit by. Take the following:— - -§ 37. “Properly speaking it is not the masters, it is no instruction -from without, that makes things understood; at the best the masters do -nothing but expose the things to the interior light of the mind, by which -alone they can be understood. It follows that where this light is wanting -instruction is as useless as trying to shew pictures in the dark. The -very greatest minds are nothing but lights in confinement, and they have -always sombre and shady spots; but in children the mind is nearly full -of shade and emits but little rays of light. So everything depends on -making the most of these rays, on increasing them and exposing to them -what one wishes to have understood. For this reason it is hard to give -general rules for instructing anyone, because the instruction must be -adapted to the mixture of light and darkness, which differs widely in -different minds, especially with children. We must look where the day -is breaking and bring to it what we wish them to understand; and to do -this we must try a variety of ways for getting at their minds and must -persevere with such as we find have most success. - -“But generally speaking we may say that, as in children the light depends -greatly on their senses, we should as far as possible attach to the -senses the instruction we give them, and make it enter not only by the -ear but also by the sight, as there is no sense which makes so lively an -impression on the mind and forms such sharp and clear ideas.” - -This is excellent. There is a wise proverb that warns us that “however -soon we get up in the morning the sunrise comes never the earlier.” A -vast amount of instruction is thrown away because the instructors will -not wait for the day-break. - -§ 38. For the moral training of the young there is one qualification -in the teacher which is absolutely indispensable—goodness. -Similarly for the intellectual training, there is an indispensable -qualification—intelligence. This is the qualification required by the -system of Port-Royal, but not required in working the ordinary machinery -of the school-room either in those days or in ours. When Nicole has -described how instruction should be given so as to train the judgment and -cultivate the taste, he continues: - -“As this kind of instruction comes without observation, so is the profit -derived from it likely to escape observation also; that is, it will not -announce itself by anything on the surface and palpable to the common -man. And on this account persons of small intelligence are mistaken -about it and think that a boy thus instructed is no better than another, -because he cannot make a better translation from Latin into French, or -beat him in saying his Virgil. Thus judging of the instruction by these -trifles only, they often make less account of a really able teacher than -of one of little science and of a mind without light.” (Nicole in Cadet, -p. 204; Carré, p. 187.) - -In these days of marks and percentages we seem agreed that it must be -all right if the children can stand the tests of the examiner or the -inspector. Something may no doubt be got at by these tests; but we cannot -hope for any genuine care for education while everything is estimated -“_par des signes grossiers et extérieurs_.” - -§ 39. Whatever was required to adapt the thought of Port-Royal to the -needs of classical schools, especially the schools of the University -of Paris was supplied by Rollin (1661-1741) whose _Traité des Études_ -or “Way of teaching and studying Literature,” united the lessons of -Port-Royal with much material drawn from his own experience and from his -acquaintance with the writings of other authors, especially Quintilian -and Seneca. Having been twice Rector of the University (in 1694 and -1695) Rollin had managed to bring into the schools much that was due to -Port-Royal; and in his _Traité_ he has the tact to give the improved -methods as the ordinary practice of his colleagues. - -§ 40. Much that Rollin has said applies only to classical or at most -to literary instruction; but some of his advice will be good for all -teachers as long as the human mind needs instruction. I have met with -nothing that seems to me to go more truly to the very foundation of the -art of teaching than the following: - -“We should never lose sight of this grand principle that STUDY DEPENDS -ON THE WILL, and the will does not endure constraint: ‘_Studium discendi -voluntate quæ cogi non potest constat._’ (Quint. j, 1, cap. 3.)[97] We -can, to be sure, put constraint on the body and make a pupil, however -unwilling, stick to his desk, can double his toil by punishment, compel -him to finish a task imposed upon him, and with this object we can -deprive him of play and recreation. But is this work of the galley-slave -studying? And what remains to the pupil from this kind of study but a -hatred of books, of learning, and of masters, often till the end of his -days? It is then the will that we must draw on our side, and this we -must do by gentleness, by friendliness, by persuasion, and above all by -the allurement of pleasure.” (_Traité_, 8th Bk. _Du Gouvernement des -Classes_, 1re Partie, Art. x.) - -§ 41. The passage I have quoted is from the _Article_ “on giving a taste -for study (_rendre l’étude aimable_);” and if some masters do not agree -that this is “one of the most important points concerning education,” -they will not deny that “it is at the same time one of the most -difficult.” As Rollin truly says, “among a very great number of masters -who in other respects are highly meritorious there will be found very few -who manage to get their pupils to like their work.” - -§ 42. One of the great causes of the disinclination for school work is -to be found according to Rollin and Quintilian, in the repulsive form in -which children first become acquainted with the elements of learning. “In -this matter success depends very much on first impressions; and the main -effort of the masters who teach the first rudiments should be so to do -this, that the child who cannot as yet love study should at least not get -an aversion for it from that time forward, for fear lest the bitter taste -once acquired should still be in his mouth when he grows older.”[98] -(Begin. of Art. x, as above.) - -§ 43. In this matter Rollin was more truly the disciple of the -Port-Royalists than of Quintilian. They it was who protested against the -dismal “grind” of learning to read first in an unknown tongue, and of -studying the rules of Latin in Latin with no knowledge of Latin, a course -which professed to lead, as Sainte-Beuve puts it, “to the unknown through -the unintelligible.” They directed their highly-trained intellects to -the teaching of the elements, and succeeded in proving that the ordinary -difficulties were due not to the dulness of the learners, but to the -stupidity of the masters. They showed how much might be done to remove -these difficulties by following not routine but the dictates of thought, -and study and love of the little ones. - - There is an excellent though condensed account of the - Port-Royalists under “Jansenists” in Sonnenschein’s _Cyclopædia - of Education_. In vol. ij, of Charles Beard’s Port-Royal, (2 - vols., 1861) there is a chapter on the Little Schools. The most - pleasing account I have seen in English of the Port-Royalists - (without reference to education) is in Sir Jas. Stephen’s - _Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography_. In French the great work - on the subject is Sainte-Beuve’s _Port-Royal_, 5 vols. (71 ed., - 6 vols.) The account of the Schools is in 4th bk., in vol. iij, - of 1st ed. Very useful for studying the pedagogy of Port-Royal - are _L’Education à Port-Royal_ by Félix Cadet (Hachette, 1887) - and _Les Pédagogues de Port-Royal_, by I. Carré (Delagrave, - 1887). These last give extracts from the main writings on - education by Arnauld, Nicole, Lancelot, Coustel, &c. The - article, _Port-Royal_, in Buisson’s _D._, is the “Introduction” - to Carré’s book. A 3-vol. ed. of Rollin’s _Traité_ was - published (Paris, Didot) in 1872. The more interesting parts - of this book are contained in F. Cadet’s _Rollin: Traité - des Études_ (Delagrave, 1882). Rollin’s work was at one time - well-known in the English trans., and copies of it are often - to be found “second-hand.” The best part comes last; which may - account for the neglect into which the book has fallen. The - accounts of Port-Royal and of Rollin in G. Compayré’s _Histoire - Critique_ are very good parts of a very good book. Vérin’s - _Étude sur Lancelot_ I have not seen, and it is only too - probable that I have not given to Lancelot the attention due to - him. - - - - -XII. - -SOME ENGLISH WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. - - -§ 1. The beginning of the 17th century brought with it a change in -the main direction of thought and interest. As we have seen, the 16th -century adored literature and was thrown back on the remote past. Some -of the great scholars like Sturm had indeed visions of literary works -to be written, that would rival the old models on which they were -fashioned; but whether they hoped or not to bring back the Golden Age -all the scholars of the Renascence thought of it as _having been_. With -the change of century, however, a new conception came into men’s minds. -Might not this worship of the old writers after all be somewhat of a -superstition? The languages in which they wrote were beautiful languages, -no doubt, but they were ill adapted to express the ideas and wants of -the modern world. As for the substance of these old writings, this did -not satisfy the cravings of men’s minds. It left unsolved all the main -problems of existence, and offered for knowledge mere speculations -or poetic fancies or polished rhetoric. Man needed to understand his -position with regard to God and to Nature; but on both of these topics -the classics were either silent or misleading. Revelation had supplied -what the classics could not give concerning man’s relation to God; -but nothing had as yet thrown light on his relation to Nature. And yet -with his material body and animal life he could not but see how close -that relation was, and could not but wish that something about it might -be _known_, not simply guessed or feigned. Hence the demand for _real_ -knowledge, that is, a knowledge of the facts of the universe as distinct -from the knowledge of what men have thought and said. We have heard of -the mathematician who put down Paradise Lost with the remark that it -seemed to him a poor book, for it did not prove anything; and it was just -in this spirit that the new school of thinkers, the Realists, looked upon -the classics. They wanted to know Nature’s laws: and words which did not -convey such knowledge seemed to them of little value. - -§ 2. Here was a tremendous revolution from the mode of thought prevalent -in the Renascence. No longer was the Golden Age in the past. In science -the Golden Age must always be in the future. Scientific men start with -what has been discovered and add to it. Every discovery passes into the -common stock of knowledge, and becomes the property of everyone who knows -it just as much as of the discoverer. Harvey had no more property in the -circulation of the blood, Newton and Leibnitz no more property in the -Differential Calculus than Columbus in the Continent of America; indeed -not so much, for Columbus gained some exclusive rights in America, but -Harvey gained none over the blood. - -So we see that whereas the literary spirit made the dominant minds -reverence the past, the scientific spirit led them to despise the past; -and whereas the literary spirit raised the value of words and led to -the study of celebrated writings, the scientific spirit was totally -careless about words and prized only physical truths which were entirely -independent of words. Again, the literary spirit naturally favoured -the principle of authority, for its oracles had already spoken: the -scientific spirit set aside all authority and accepted nothing that did -not of itself satisfy the reason. (Compare Comenius, _supra_ p. 152.) - -§ 3. The first great leader in this revolution was an Englishman, Francis -Bacon. But the school-room felt his influence only through those who -learnt from him; and among educational reformers, the chief advocates of -realism have been found on the Continent, _e.g._, Ratke and Comenius.[99] -But the desire to learn by “things, not words” affected the minds of many -English writers on education, and we find this spirit showing itself even -in Milton and Locke, and far more clearly in some writers less known to -fame. - -§ 4. There is a wide distinction in educational writers between those who -were schoolmasters and those who were not. Schoolmasters have to come -to terms with what exists and to make a livelihood by it. So they are -conservatives by position, and rarely get beyond an attempt at showing -how that which is now done badly might be done well. Suggestions of -radical change usually come from those who never belonged to the class of -teachers, or who, not without disgust, have left it. - -Among English schoolmasters of the olden times the chief writers I have -met with besides Mulcaster are John Brinsley the elder, and Charles -Hoole. - -§ 5. John Brinsley the elder, a Puritan schoolmaster at -Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a brother-in-law of Bishop Hall’s, and father of John -Brinsley the younger who became a leading Puritan minister and author, -was a veritable reformer, but only with reference to methods. His most -interesting books are _Ludus Literarius or the Grammar Schoole_, 1612 -(written after 20 years’ experience in teaching, as we learn from the -_Consolation_, p. 45), and _A Consolation for our Grammar Schooles: or -a faithfull and most comfortable incouragement for laying of a sure -foundation of all good learning in our schooles and for prosperous -building thereupon_, 1622. The first of these, when reprinted, as it -is sure to be, will always secure for its author the notice and the -gratitude of students of the history of our education; for in this -book he tells us not only what should be done in the school-room, but -also what was done. In a dialogue with the ordinary schoolmaster the -reformer draws to light the usual practice, criticizes it, and suggests -improvements. - -§ 6. In Brinsley we get no hint of realism; but by the middle of -the sixteen hundreds we find the realistic spirit is felt even by a -schoolmaster, Charles Hoole,[100] who was a kinsman of Bishop Sanderson, -the Casuist, and was master first of the Grammar School at Rotherham, -then of a private Grammar School in London, published besides a number -of school books, a translation of the _Orbis Pictus_ (date of preface, -January, 1658), and also “A New Discovery of the old art of teaching -schoole ... published for the general profit, especially of young -Schoolemasters” (date of preface, December, 1659). In these books we find -that Hoole succeeded even in the school-room in keeping his mind open. -He complains of the neglect of English, and evidently in theory at least -went a long way with the realistic reformers. “Comenius,” he says, “hath -proceeded (as Nature itself doth) in an orderly way, first to exercise -the senses well by presenting their objects to them, and then to fasten -upon the intellect by impressing the first notions of things upon it and -linking them one to another by a rational discourse; whereas indeed we -generally, missing this way, do teach children as we do parrots to speak -they know not what, nay, which is worse, we taking the way of teaching -little ones by grammar only, at the first do puzzle their imaginations -with abstractive terms and secondary intentions, which, till they be -somewhat acquainted with things, and the words belonging to them in the -language which they learn, they cannot apprehend what they mean. And this -I guess to be the reason why many greater persons do resolve sometimes -not to put a child to school till he be at least eleven or twelve years -of age.... You then, that have the care of little children, do not too -much trouble their thoughts and clog their memories with bare grammar -rudiments, which to them are harsh in getting, and fluid in retaining; -because indeed to them they signifie nothing but a meer swimming notion -of a general term, which they know not what it meaneth till they -comprehend all particulars: but by this [_i.e._, the _Orbis P._] or the -like subsidiarie inform them first with some knowledge of things and -words wherewith to express them; and then their rules of speaking will be -better understood and more firmly kept in mind. Else how should a child -conceive what a rule meaneth when he neither knoweth what the Latine -word importeth, nor what manner of thing it is which is signified to -him in his own native language which is given him thereby to understand -the rule? for rules consisting of generalities are delivered (as I may -say) at a third hand, presuming first the things and then the words to -be already apprehended touching which they are made.” This subject Hoole -wisely commends to the consideration of teachers, “it being _the very -basis of our profession to search into the way of children’s taking -hold by little and little of what we teach them_, that so we may apply -ourselves to their reach.” (Preface to trans. of _Orbis Pictus_.) - -§ 7. “Good Lord! how many good and clear wits of children be now-a-days -perished by ignorant schoolmasters!” So said Sir Thomas Elyot in his -_Governor_ in 1531, and the complaint would not have been out of date in -the 17th century, possibly not in the 19th. In the sixteen hundreds we -certainly find little advance in practice, though in theory many bold -projects were advanced, some of which pointed to the study of things, to -the training of the hand, and even to observation of the “educands.” - -§ 8. The poet Cowley’s “proposition for the advancement of experimental -philosophy” is a scheme of a college near London to which is to be -attached a school of 200 boys. “And because it is deplorable to consider -the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing -or rather casting away six or seven years in the learning of words -only, and that too very imperfectly; that a method be here established -for the infusing knowledge and language at the same time, [Is this an -echo of Comenius?] and that this may be their apprenticeship in Natural -Philosophy.”[101] - -§ 9. Rarely indeed have those who either theoretically or practically -have made a study of education ever acquired sufficient literary skill -to catch the ear of the public or (what is at least as difficult) the -ear of the teaching body. And among the eminent writers who have spoken -on education, as Rabelais, Montaigne, Milton, Locke, Rousseau, Herbert -Spencer, we cannot find one who has given to it more than passing, if not -accidental, attention. Schoolmasters are, as I said, conservative, at -least in the school-room; and moreover, they seldom find the necessary -time, money, or inclination for publishing on the work of their calling. -The current thought at any period must then be gathered from books only -to be found in our great libraries, books in which writers now long -forgotten give hints of what was wanted out of the school-room and -grumble at what went on in it. - -§ 10. One of the most original of these writers that have come in my way -is John Dury, a Puritan, who was at one time Chaplain to the English -Company of Merchants at Elbing, and laboured with Comenius and Hartlib to -promote unity among the various Christian bodies of the reformed faith -(see Masson’s _Life of Milton_, vol. iii). About 1649 Dury published -_The Reformed Schoole_ which gives the scheme of an association for the -purpose of educating a number of boys and girls “in a Christian way.” - -§ 11. That Dury was not himself a schoolmaster is plain from the first -of his “rules of education.” “The chief rule of the whole work is that -nothing be made tedious and grievous to the children, but all the -toilsomeness of their business the Governor and Ushers are to take upon -themselves; that by diligence and industry all things may be so prepared, -methodized and ordered for their apprehension, that this work may unto -them be as a delightful recreation by the variety and easiness thereof.” - -§ 12. “The things to be looked unto in the care of their education,” he -enumerates in the order of importance: “1. Their advancement in piety; -2. The preservation of their health; 3. The forming of their manners; -4. Their proficiency in learning” (p. 24). “Godliness and bodily health -are absolutely necessary,” says Dury; “the one for spiritual and the -other for their temporal felicitie” (p. 31): so great care is to be taken -in “exercising their bodies in husbandry or manufactures or military -employments.”[102] - -§ 13. About instruction we find the usual complaints which like “mother’s -truth keep constant youth.” “Children,” says Dury, “are taught to read -authors and learn words and sentences before they can have any notion -of the things signified by those words and sentences or of the author’s -strain and wit in setting them together; and they are made to learn by -heart the generall rules, sentences and precepts of Arts before they are -furnished with any matter whereunto to apply those rules and precepts” -(p. 38). Dury would entirely sweep away the old routine, and in all -instruction he would keep in view the following end: “the true end of all -human learning is to supply in ourselves and others the defects which -proceed from our ignorance of the nature and use of the creatures, and -the disorderliness of our natural faculties in using them and reflecting -upon them” (p. 41). - -§ 14. “Our natural faculties”—here Dury struck a new note, which has now -become the keynote in the science of education. He enforces his point -with the following ingenious illustration:—“As in a watch one wheel -rightly set doth with its teeth take hold of another and sets that a-work -towards a third; and so all move one by another when they are in their -right places for the end for which the watch is made; so is it with the -faculties of the human nature being rightly ordered to the ends for which -God hath created them. But contrariwise, if the wheels be not rightly -set, or the watch not duly wound up, it is useless to him that hath it. -And so it is with the faculties of Man; if his wheels be not rightly -ordered and wound up by the ends of sciences in their subordination -leading him to employ the same according to his capacity to make use of -the creatures for that whereunto God hath made them, he becomes not only -useless, but even a burthen and hurtful unto himself and others by the -misusing of them” (p. 43). - -§ 15. “As in Nature sense is the servant of imagination; imagination of -memory; memory of reason; so in teaching arts and sciences we must set -these faculties a-work in this order towards their proper objects in -everything which is to be taught. Whence this will follow, that as the -faculties of Man’s soul naturally perfect each other by their mutual -subordination; so the Arts which perfect those faculties should be -gradually suggested: and the objects wherewith the faculties are to be -conversant according to the rules of Art should be offered in that order -which is answerable to their proper ends and uses and not otherwise.” - -§ 16. In this and much else that Dury says we see a firm grasp of -the principle that the instruction given should be regulated by the -gradual development of the learner’s faculties. The three sources of our -knowledge, says he, are—1. Sense; 2. Tradition; 3. Reason; and Sense -comes first. “Art or sciences which may be learnt by mere sense should -not be learnt any other way.” “As children’s faculties break forth in -them by degrees to be vigorous with their years and the growth of their -bodies, so they are to be filled with objects whereof they are capable, -and plied with arts; whence followeth that while children are not -capable of the acts of reasoning, the method of filling their senses and -imaginations with outward objects should be plied. Nor is their memory at -this time to be charged further with any objects than their imagination -rightly ordered and fixed doth of itself impress the same upon them.” -After speaking of the common abuse of general rules, he says: “So far as -those faculties (viz., sense, imagination, and memory) are started with -matters of observation, so far rules may be given to direct the mind in -the use of the same, and no further.” “The arts and sciences which lead -us to reflect upon the use of our own faculties are not to be taught till -we are fully acquainted with their proper objects, and the direct acts -of the faculties about them.” So “it is a very absurd and preposterous -course to teach Logick and Metaphysicks before or with other Humane -Sciences which depend more upon Sense and Imagination than reasoning” (p. -46). - -§ 17. In all this it seems to me that the worthy Puritan, of whom -nobody but Dr. Barnard and Professor Masson has ever heard, has truly -done more to lay a foundation for the art of teaching than his famous -contemporaries Milton and Locke. - -§ 18. Another writer of that day better known than Dury and with far -more power of expression was Sir William Petty. He is the “W.P.,” who -in an Epistle “to his honoured friend Master Samuel Hartlib,” set down -his “thoughts concerning the advancement of real learning” (1647). This -letter is to be shown only “to those few that are Reall Friends to the -Designe of Realities.”[103] - -§ 19. Petty sees the need of intercommunication of those who wish to -advance any art or science. He complains that “the wits and endeavours of -the world are as so many scattered coals or fire-brands, which for want -of union are soon quenched, whereas being but laid together they would -yield a comfortable light and heat.” This is a thought which may well -be applied to the bringing up of the young; and the following passage -might have been written to secure a training for teachers: “Methinks -the present condition of men is like a field where a battle hath been -lately fought, where we may see many legs and arms and eyes lying here -and there, which for want of a union and a soul to quicken and enliven -them are good for nothing but to feed ravens and infect the air. So we -see many wits and ingenuities lying scattered up and down the world, -whereof some are now labouring to do what is already done, and puzzling -themselves to re-invent what is already invented. Others we see quite -stuck fast in difficulties for want of a few directions which some other -man (might he be met withal) both could and would most easily give him.” -I wonder how many young teachers are now wasting their own and their -pupils’ time in this awkward predicament. - -§ 20. “As for ... education,” says Petty, “we cannot but hope that those -who make it their trade will supply it and render the idea thereof much -more perfect.” His own contributions to the more perfect idea consist -mainly in making the study of “realities” precede literature, and thus -announcing the principle which in later times has led to the introduction -of “object lessons.” The Baconians thought that the good time was at -hand, and that they had found the right road at last. By experiments they -would learn to interpret Nature. After scheming a “Gymnasium, Mechanicum, -or College of Tradesmen,” Petty says, “What experiments and stuff would -all those shops and operations afford to active and philosophical heads, -out of which to extract that interpretation of nature whereof there is so -little, and that so bad, as yet extant in the world!”[104] And this study -of things was to affect the work of the school-room, and redeem it from -the dismal state into which it was fallen. “As for the studies to which -children are now-a-days put,” says Petty, “they are altogether unfit for -want of judgment which is but weak in them, and also for want of will, -which is sufficiently seen ... by the difficulty of keeping them at -schools and the punishment they will endure rather than be altogether -debarred from the pleasure which they take in things.” - -§ 21. The grand reform required is thus set forth; “Since few children -have need of reading before they know or can be acquainted with the -things they read of; or of writing before their thoughts are worth the -recording or they are able to put them into any form (which we call -inditing); much less of learning languages when there be books enough -for their present use in their own mother-tongue; our opinion is that -those things being withal somewhat above their capacity (as being to be -attained by judgment which is weakest in children) be deferred awhile, -and others more needful for them, such as are in the order of Nature -before those afore-mentioned, and are attainable by the help of memory -which is either most strong or unpreoccupied in children, be studied -before them. We wish, therefore, that the educands be taught to observe -and remember all sensible objects and actions, whether they be natural -or artificial, which the educators must upon all occasions expound unto -them.” - -§ 22. In proposing this great change Petty was influenced not merely -by his own delight in the study of things but by something far more -important for education, by observation of the children themselves. This -study of things instead of “a rabble of words” would be “more easy and -pleasant to the young as the more suitable to the natural propensions we -observe in them. For we see children do delight in drums, pipes, fiddles, -guns made of elder sticks, and bellows’ noses, piped keys, &c., painting -flags and ensigns with elderberries and cornpoppy, making ships with -paper, and setting even nut-shells a-swimming, handling the tools of -workmen as soon as they turn their backs and trying to work themselves; -fishing, fowling, hunting, setting springes and traps for birds and other -animals, making pictures in their writing-books, making tops, gigs and -whirligigs, gilting balls, practising divers juggling tricks upon the -cards, &c., with a million more besides. And for the females they will -be making pies with clay, making their babies’ clothes and dressing them -therewith; they will spit leaves on sticks as if they were roasting meat; -they will imitate all the talk and actions which they observe in their -mother and her gossips, and punctually act the comedy or the tragedy (I -know not whether to call it) of a woman’s lying-in. By all which it is -most evident that children do most naturally delight in things and are -most capable of learning them, having quick senses to receive them and -unpreoccupied memories to retain them” (_ad f._). - -§ 23. In these writers, Dury and Petty, we find a wonderful advance in -the theory of instruction. Children are to be taught about _things_ and -this because their inward constitution determines them towards things. -Moreover the subjects of instruction are to be graduated to accord with -the development of the learner’s faculties. The giving of rules and -incomprehensible statements that will come in useful at a future stage -is entirely forbidden. All this is excellent, and greatly have children -suffered, greatly do they suffer still, from their teachers’ neglect of -it. There seems to me to have been no important advance on the thought of -these men till Pestalozzi and Froebel fixed their attention on the mind -of the child, and valued things not in themselves but simply as the means -best fitted for drawing out the child’s self-activity. - -§ 24. In several other matters we find Sir William Petty’s -recommendations in advance of the practice of his own time and ours. He -advises “that the business of education be not (as now) committed to the -worst and unworthiest of men [here at least we have improved] but that -it be seriously studied and practised by the best and abler persons.” To -this standard we have not yet attained. - -§ 25. Handwork is to be practised, but its educational value is not -clearly perceived. “All children, though of the highest rank, are to be -taught some gentle manufacture in their minority.” _Ergastula Literaria_, -literary workhouses, are to be instituted where children may be taught as -well to do something towards their living as to read and write.[105] - -§ 26. Education was to be universal, but chiefly with the object of -bringing to the front the clever sons of poor parents. The rule he would -lay down is “that all children of above seven years old may be presented -to this kind of education, none being to be excluded by reason of the -poverty and unability of their parents, for hereby it hath come to pass -that many are now holding the plough which might have been made fit to -steer the state.”[106] - -§ 27. From these enthusiasts for realities we find a change when we turn -to their contemporary, a schoolmaster and author of a Latin Accidence, -who was perhaps the most notable Englishman who ever kept a school or -published a school-book. - -§ 28. Milton was not only a great poet: he was also a great scholar. -Everything he said or wrote bore traces of his learning. The world of -books then rather than the world of the senses is his world. He has -benefited as he says “among old renowned authors” and “his inclination -leads him not” to read modern _Januas_ and _Didactics_, or apparently -the writings of any of his contemporaries including those of his great -countryman, Bacon. But, as Professor Laurie reminds us, no man, not even -a Milton, however he may ignore the originators of ideas can keep himself -outside the influence of the ideas themselves when they are in the air; -and so we find Milton using his incomparable power of expression in the -service of the Realists. - -§ 29. But brief he endeavours to be, and paying the Horatian penalty he -becomes obscure. In the “few observations which flowered off and were the -burnishing of many studious and contemplative years,” Milton touches only -on the bringing up of gentlemen’s sons between the ages of 12 and 21, and -his suggestions do not, like those of Comenius, deal with the education -of the people, or of both sexes.[107] This limit of age, sex, and station -deprives Milton’s plan of much of its interest, as the absence of detail -deprives it of much of its value. - -§ 30. Still, we find in the _Tractate_ a very great advance on the ideas -current at the Renascence. Learning is no longer the aim of education but -is regarded simply as a means. No finer expression has been given in our -literature to the main thesis of the Christian and of the Realist and to -the Realist’s contempt of verbalism, than this: “The end of learning is -to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, -and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, as -we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being -united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. -But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on -sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things -invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, -the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. -And seeing every Nation affords not experience and tradition enough for -all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of -those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so -that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be -known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues -that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid -things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much -to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise -in his mother-dialect only.” - -§ 31. The several propositions here implied have thus been “disentangled” -by Professor Laurie (_John Milton_ in _Addresses_, &c., p. 167). - -1. The aim of education is the _knowledge_ of God and _likeness_ to God. - -2. _Likeness_ to God we attain by possessing our souls of true virtue and -by the Heavenly Grace of Faith. - -3. _Knowledge_ of God we attain by the study of the visible things of God. - -4. Teaching then has for its aim _this_ knowledge. - -5. Language is merely an instrument or vehicle for the knowledge of -things. - -6. The linguist may be less _learned_ (_i.e._, educated) in the true -sense than a man who can make good use of his mother-tongue though he -knows no other. - -§ 32. Elsewhere, Milton gives his idea of “a complete and generous -education;” it “fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and -magnanimously all the offices both private and public of Peace and -War.” (Browning’s edition, p. 8.) Here and indeed in all that Milton -says we feel that “the noble moral glow that pervades the _Tractate -on Education_, the mood of magnanimity in which it is conceived and -written, and the faith it inculcates in the powers of the young human -spirit, if rightly nurtured and directed, are merits everlasting.” -(Masson iij, p. 252.) - -§ 33. But in this moral glow and in an intense hatred of verbalism -lie as it seems to me the chief merits of the Tractate. The practical -suggestions are either incomprehensible or of doubtful wisdom. The -reforming of education was, as Milton says, one of the greatest and -noblest designs that could be thought on, but he does not take the -right road when he proposes for every city in England a joint school -and university for about 120 boarders. The advice to keep boys between -12 and 21 in this barrack life I consider, with Professor Laurie, to be -“fundamentally unsound;” and the project of uniting the military training -of Sparta with the humanistic training of Athens seems to me a pure -chimæra. - -§ 34. When we come to instruction we find that Milton after announcing -the distinctive principle of the Realists proves to be himself the last -survivor of the Verbal Realists. (See _supra_, p. 25.) No doubt - - “His daily teachers had been woods and rills,” - -but his thoughts had been even more in his books; and for the young he -sketches out a purely bookish curriculum. The young are to learn about -things, but they are to learn through books; and the only books to which -Milton attaches importance are written in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. He -held, probably with good reason, that far too much time “is now bestowed -in pure trifling at grammar and sophistry.” “We do amiss,” he says, “to -spend 7 or 8 years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin -and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one -year.” Without an explanation of the “otherwise” this statement is a -truism, and what Milton says further hardly amounts to an explanation. -His plan, if plan it can be called, is as follows: “If after some -preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, the -boys were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned -thoroughly to them, they might then proceed to learn the substance of -good things and arts in due order, which would bring the whole language -quickly into their power. This,” adds Milton, “I take to be the most -rational and most profitable way of learning languages.” It is, however, -not the most intelligible. - -§ 35. “I doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and -laziest youth, our stocks and stubbs, from the infinite desire of such -a happy nurture than we have now to hale and drag our choicest and -hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sow thistles and brambles which -is commonly set before them as all the food and entertainment of their -tenderest and most docible age.” We cannot but wonder whether this belief -survived the experience of “the pretty garden-house in Aldersgate.” From -the little we are told by his nephew and old pupil Edward Phillips we -should infer that Milton was not unsuccessful as a schoolmaster. In this -we have a striking proof how much more important is the teacher than the -teaching. A character such as Milton’s in which we find the noblest aims -united with untiring energy in pursuit of them could not but dominate the -impressionable minds of young people brought under its influence. But -whatever success he met with could not have been due to the things he -taught nor to his method in teaching them. In spite of the “moral glow” -about his recommendations they are “not a bow for every [or any] man to -shoot in that counts himself a teacher.” - -§ 36. Nor did he do much for the science of education. His scheme is -vitiated, as Mark Pattison says, by “the information fallacy.” In the -literary instruction there is no thought of training the faculties of all -or the special faculties of the individual. “It requires much observation -of young minds to discover that the rapid inculcation of unassimilable -information stupefies the faculties instead of training them,” says -Pattison; and Milton absorbed by his own thoughts and the thoughts of the -ancients did not observe the minds of the young, and knew little of the -powers of any mind but his own. - -For information the youths are not required to observe for themselves -but are to be taught “a general compact of physicks.” “Also in course -might be read to them out of some not tedious writer the Institution of -Physick; that they may know the tempers, the humours, the seasons, and -how to manage a crudity.” - -§ 37. Even the study of the classics is advocated by Milton on false -grounds. If, like the Port-Royalists, he had recommended the study of -the classical authors for the sake of pure Latin and Greek or as models -of literary style, the means would have been suited to the end; but it -was very different when he directed boys to study Virgil and Columella -in order to learn about bees and farming. In after-life they would find -these authorities a little out of date; and if they ever attempted to -improve tillage, “to recover the bad soil and to remedy the waste that is -made of good, which was one of Hercules’s praises,” they would have found -a knowledge of the methods of Hercules about as useful as of the methods -of the Romans. - -§ 38. Milton was then a reformer “for his own hand;” and notwithstanding -his moral and intellectual elevation and his superb power of rhetoric, he -seems to me a less useful writer on education than the humble Puritans -whom he probably would not deign to read. In his haughty self-reliance, -he, like Carlyle with whom Seeley has well compared him (_Lectures and -Addresses: Milton_), addressed his contemporaries _de haut en bas_, and -though ready to teach could learn only among the old renowned authors -with whom he associated himself and we associate him. - -§ 39. Judged from our present standpoint the Tractate is found with many -weaknesses to be strong in this, that it co-ordinates physical, moral, -mental and æsthetic training. - -§ 40. But nothing of Milton’s can be judged by our ordinary canons. He -soars far above them and raises us with him “to mysterious altitudes -above the earth” (_supra_, p. 153, _note_). Whatever we little people may -say about the suggestions of the Tractate, Milton will remain one of the -great educators of mankind.[108] - - - - -XIII. - -LOCKE. - -(1632-1704). - - -§ 1. When an English University established an examination for future -teachers,[109] the “special subjects” first set were “Locke and Dr. -Arnold.” The selection seems to me a very happy one. Arnold greatly -affected the spirit and even the organization of our public schools at -a time when the old schools were about to have new life infused into -them, and when new schools were to be started on the model of the old. -He is perhaps the greatest educator of the English type, _i.e._, the -greatest educator who had accepted the system handed down to him and -tried to make the best of it. Locke on the other hand, whose reputation -is more European than English, belongs rather to the continental type. -Like his disciple Rousseau and like Rousseau’s disciples the French -Revolutionists, Locke refused the traditional system and appealed from -tradition and authority to reason. We English revere Arnold, but so long -as the history of education continues to be written, as it has been -written hitherto, on the Continent, the only Englishman celebrated in it -will be as now not the great schoolmaster but the great philosopher. - -§ 2. In order to understand Locke we must always bear in mind what I may -call his two main characteristics; 1st, his craving to know and to speak -the truth and the whole truth in everything, truth not for a purpose but -for itself[110]; 2nd, his perfect trust in the reason as the guide, the -only guide, to truth.[111] - -§ 3. 1st. Those who have not reflected much on the subject will naturally -suppose that the desire to know the truth is common to all men, and the -desire to speak the truth common to most. But this is very far from being -the case. If we had any earnest desire for truth we should examine things -carefully before we admitted them as truths; in other words our opinions -would be the growth of long and energetic thought. But instead of this -they are formed for the most part quite carelessly and at haphazard, and -we value them not on account of their supposed agreement with fact but -because though “poor things” they are “our own” or those of our sect or -party. Locke on the other hand was always endeavouring to get at the -truth for its own sake. This separated him from men in general. And he -brought great powers of mind to bear on the investigation. This raised -him above them. - -§ 4. 2nd. Locke’s second characteristic was his entire reliance on the -guidance of reason. “The faculty of reasoning,” says he, “seldom or -never deceives those who trust to it.” Elsewhere, borrowing a metaphor -from Solomon (Prov. xx, 27), he speaks of this faculty as “the candle of -the Lord set up by Himself in men’s minds.” (F. B. ij., 129). In a fine -passage in the _Conduct of the Understanding_ he calls it “the touchstone -of truth” (§ iij, Fowler’s edition, p. 10). He even goes so far in his -correspondence with Molyneux as to maintain that intelligent honest men -cannot possibly differ.[112] - -But if we consider it from one point of view the treatise on the _Conduct -of the Understanding_ is itself a witness that human reason is a compass -liable to incalculable variations and likely enough to shipwreck those -who steer by it alone. In this book Locke shows us that to come to a -true result the understanding (1) must be perfectly trained, (2) must -not be affected by any feeling in favour of or against any particular -result, and (3) must have before it all the data necessary for forming a -judgment. In practice these conditions are seldom (if ever) fulfilled; -and Locke himself, when he wants an instance of a mind that can acquiesce -in the certainty of its conclusions, takes it from “angels and separate -spirits who may be endowed with more comprehensive faculties” than we are -(C. of U. § iij, 3). - -§ 5. It seems to me then that Locke much exaggerates the power of -the individual reason for getting at the truth. And to exaggerate -the importance of one function of the mind is to unduly diminish the -importance of the rest. Thus we find that in Locke’s scheme of education -little thought is taken for the play of the affections and feelings; and -as for the imagination it is treated merely as a source of mischief. - -§ 6. Locke, as it has often been pointed out, differs from the -schoolmaster in making small account of the knowledge to be acquired -by those under education. But it has not been so often remarked that -the fundamental difference is much deeper than this and lies in the -conception of knowledge itself. With the ordinary schoolmaster the test -of knowledge is the power of reproduction. Whatever pupils can reproduce -with difficulty they know imperfectly; whatever they can reproduce with -ease they know thoroughly. But Locke’s definition of knowledge confines -it to a much smaller area. According to him knowledge is “the internal -perception of the mind” (Locke to Stillingfleet _v._ F. B. ij, 432). -“Knowing is seeing; and if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves -we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use never so many words to tell -us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with -our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much -in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any -learned authors as much as we will” (C. of U. § 24).[113] - -§ 7. Here Locke makes no distinction between different classes of truths. -But surely very important differences exist. - -About some physical facts our knowledge is at once most certain and -most definite when we derive it through the evidence of our own senses. -“Seeing is believing,” says the proverb. It may be believing, but it is -not knowing. That certainty which we call knowledge we often arrive at -better by the testimony of others than by that of our own senses. - -Miss Martineau in her Autobiography tells us that as a child of ten she -entirely and unaccountably failed to see a comet which was visible to all -other people; but, although her own senses were at fault, the evidence -for the comet was so conclusive that she may be said to have _known_ -there was a comet in the sky. - -On sufficient evidence we can know anything, just as we know there is -a great water-fall at Niagara though we may never have crossed the -Atlantic. But we cannot be so certain simply on the evidence of our -senses. If we trusted entirely to them we might take the earth for a -plane and “know” that the sun moved round it. - -§ 8. But Locke probably considers as the subject of knowledge not so much -physical facts as the great body of truths which are ascertained by the -intellect. It is the eye of the mind by which alone knowledge is to be -gained. Of these truths the purest specimens are the truths of geometry. -It may be said that only those who have followed the proofs _know_ -that the area of the square on the side opposite the right angle in a -right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other -sides. But even in pure reasoning like this, the tiro often seems to see -what he does not really see; and where his own reason brings him to a -conclusion different from the one established he _knows_ only that he is -mistaken. - -§ 9. It must be admitted then that first-hand knowledge, knowledge -derived from the vision of the eye or of the mind, is not the only -knowledge the young require. Every learner must take things on trust, as -even Lord Bacon admits. _Discentem credere oportet._ To use Locke’s own -words:—“I do not say, to be a good geographer that a man should visit -every mountain, river, promontory, and creek upon the face of the earth, -view the buildings and survey the land everywhere as if he were going -to make a purchase” (C. of U., iij, _ad f._). So that even according to -Locke’s own shewing we must use the eyes of others as well as our own, -and this is true not in geography only, but in all other branches of -knowledge. - -§ 10. But are we driven to the alternative of agreeing either with Locke -or with the schoolmaster? I do not see that we are. The thought which -underlies Locke’s system of education is this: true knowledge can be -acquired only by the exercise of the reason: in childhood the reasoning -power is not strong enough for the pursuit of knowledge: knowledge, -therefore, is out of the question at that age, and the only thing to -be thought of is the formation of habits. Opposed to this we have the -schoolmaster’s ideal which is governed by examinations. According to this -ideal the object of the school course is to give certain “knowledge,” -linguistic and other, and to fix it in the memory in such a manner that -it can be displayed on the day of examination. “Knowledge” of this kind -often makes no demand whatever on the reasoning faculty, or indeed on any -faculty but that of remembering and reproducing what the learner has been -told; in extreme cases the memory of mere sounds or symbols suffices. - -But after all we are not compelled to choose between these two theories. -Take, _e.g._, the subject which Locke has mentioned, geography. The -schoolmasters of the olden time began with the use of the globes, a plan -which, by the way, Locke himself seems to have winked at. His disciple -Molyneux tells him of the performances of the small Molyneux. When he was -but just turned five he could read perfectly well, and on the globe could -have traced out and pointed at all the noted ports, countries, and cities -of the world, both land and sea; by five and a half could perform many -of the plainest problems on the globe, as the longitude and latitude, -the Antipodes, the time with them and other countries, &c. (Molyneux to -L., 24th August, 1695.) Here we find a child brought up, without any -protest from Locke, on mere examination knowledge, which according to -Locke himself is not knowledge at all. It is strange that Locke did not -at once point out to Molyneux that the child was not really learning what -the father supposed him to be learning. When the child turned over the -plaster ball and found the word “Paris,” the father no doubt attributed -to the child much that was in his own mind only. To the child “the Globe” -(as Rousseau afterwards said), was nothing but a plaster ball; “Paris” -was nothing but some letters marked on that ball. Comenius had already -got a notion how children may be given some knowledge of geography. -“Children begin geography,” said he, “when they get to understand what -a hill, a valley, a field, a river, a village, a town is.” (_Supra_, p. -145.) When this beginning has been made, geographical knowledge is at -once possible to the child, and not before. - -Perfect knowledge in geography, as in most other things, is out of every -one’s reach. Nobody knows, _e.g._, all that could be known about Paris. -The knowledge its inhabitants have of it is very various, but in all -cases this knowledge is far greater than that of a visitor. The visitor’s -knowledge again is far greater than that of strangers who have never -seen Paris. Nobody, then, can know everything even about Paris; but a -child who knows what a large town is, and can fancy to himself a big town -called Paris, which is the biggest and most important town in France has -some knowledge about it. This must be maintained against Locke. Against -the schoolmaster it may be pointed out that making an Eskimo say the -words:—“Paris is the capital of France,” would not be giving him any -knowledge at all; and the same may be said of many “lessons” in the -school-room. If a common sailor were to teach an Eskimo English, he -would very likely suppose that when he had taught the sounds “Paris is -the capital of France,” he had conveyed to his pupil all the ideas which -those sounds suggested to his own mind. A common schoolmaster may fall -into a similar error. - -§ 11. In the most celebrated work which has been affected by the -_Thoughts_ of Locke, Rousseau’s _Emile_, we find childhood treated in a -manner altogether different from youth: the child’s education is mainly -physical, and instruction is not given till the age of twelve. Locke’s -system on first sight seems very different to this, but there is a -deeper connection between the two than is usually observed. We have seen -that Locke allowed nothing to be knowledge that was not acquired by the -perception of the intellect. But in children the intellectual power is -not yet developed; so according to Locke knowledge properly so-called is -not within their reach. What then can the educator do for them? He can -prepare them for the age of reason in two ways, by caring first for their -physical health, second for the formation of good habits. - -§ 12. 1st. On the Continent Locke has always been considered one of the -first advocates of physical education, and he does, it is true, give -physical education the first place, a feature in his system, which we -naturally connect with his study of medicine, and also with the trouble -he had all his life with his own health. But care of the body, and -especially bodily exercises, were always much thought of in this country, -and the main writers on education before Locke, _e.g._, Sir Thos. Elyot, -Mulcaster, Milton, were very emphatic about physical training. - -In the autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, we may see what -attention was paid in Locke’s own century to this part of education.[114] - -§ 13. 2nd. “That, and that only, is educative which moulds forms or -modifies the soul or mind.” (Mark Pattison in _New Quarterly Magazine_, -January, 1880.) - -Here we have a proposition which is perhaps seldom denied, but very -commonly ignored by those who bring up the young. But Locke seems to -have been entirely possessed with this notion, and the greater part of -the _Thoughts_ is nothing but a long application of it. The principle -which lies at the root of most of his advice, he has himself expressed as -follows: “That which I cannot too often inculcate is, that whatever the -matter be about which it is conversant whether great or small, the main, -I had almost said only thing, to be considered in every action of a child -is what influence it will have upon his mind; what habit it tends to, and -is likely to settle in him: how it will become him when he is bigger, -and if it be encouraged, whither it will lead him when he is grown up.” -(_Thoughts_, § 107, p. 86.) - -Here we see that Locke differed widely from the schoolmasters of his -time, perhaps of all time. A man must be a philosopher indeed if he can -spend his life in teaching boys, and yet always think more about what -they will _be_ and what they will _do_ when their schooling is over than -what they will _know_. And in these days if we stopped to think at all we -should be trodden on by the examiner.[115] - -In this respect Locke has not been surpassed. Like his predecessor -Montaigne he took for his centre not the object, knowledge, but the -subject, man.[116] - -§ 14. In some other respects he does not seem so happy. He makes little -attempt to reach a scientific standpoint and to establish general -truths about our common human nature. He thinks not so much of the man -as the gentleman, not so much of the common laws of the mind as of the -peculiarities of the individual child. He even hints that differences of -disposition in children render treatises on education defective if not -useless. “There are a thousand other things that may need consideration” -he writes “especially if one should take in the various tempers, -different inclinations, and particular defaults that are to be found in -children and prescribe proper remedies. The variety is so great that it -would require a volume, nor would that reach it. Each man’s mind has -some peculiarity as well as his face, that distinguishes him from all -others; and there are possibly scarce two children who can be conducted -by exactly the same method: besides that I think a prince, a nobleman, or -an ordinary gentleman’s son should have different ways of breeding. But -having had here only some general views in reference to the main end and -aims in education, and those designed for a gentleman’s son, whom being -then very little I considered only as white paper or wax to be moulded -and fashioned as one pleases, I have touched little more than those -heads which I judged necessary for the breeding of a young gentleman of -his condition in general.” (_Thoughts_, § 217, p. 187.) - -No language could bring out more clearly the inferiority of Locke’s -standpoint to that of later thinkers. He makes little account of our -common nature and wishes education to be based upon an estimate of the -peculiarities of the individual pupil and of his social needs. And no -one with an adequate notion of education could ever compare the young -child to “white paper or wax.” Perhaps the development of an organism -was a conception that could not have been formed without a great advance -in physical science. Froebel who makes most of it learnt it from the -scientific study of trees and from mineralogy. We need not then be -surprised that Locke does not say, as Pestalozzi said a hundred years -later, “Education instead of merely considering what is to be imparted -to children ought to consider first what they already possess.” But if -he had read Comenius he would have been saved from comparing the child -to wax or white paper in the hands of the educator. Comenius had said: -“Nature has implanted within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of -piety. The object of education is to bring these seeds to perfection.” -(_Supra_, p. 135.) This seems to me a higher conception than any that I -meet with in Locke. - -§ 15. But if our philosopher did not learn from Comenius he certainly -learnt from Montaigne.[117] Indeed Dr. Arnstädt (_v. supra_, p. 69) -has put him into a series of thinkers who have much in common. This -succession is as follows: Rabelais, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau; and, -according to Mr. Browning’s division, they form a school by themselves. -“Thinkers on education,” says Mr. Browning,[118] “are 1st those who wish -to educate through the study of the classics, or 2nd those who wish to -educate through the study of the works of Nature, or 3rd those who aim -at an education independent of study and knowledge, and think rather -of the training of character and the attaining to the Greek ideal, the -man beautiful and good.” To the three schools Mr. Browning gives the -names Humanist, Realist, and Naturalist, (“nos autres naturalistes,” -Montaigne says). Locke he considers one of the principal writers of the -“naturalistic” school, and says, Locke “has given a powerful bias to -naturalistic education both in England and on the Continent for the last -200 years.” (_Ed. Theories_, p. 85.) - -This use of the word “naturalistic” seems to me somewhat misleading, or -at best vague, and it is a word overworked already: so I should prefer to -speak of the “developing” or “training” school. The classification itself -certainly has its uses but it must be employed with caution. If caught -up by those who have only an elementary acquaintance with the subject a -class of persons apt to delight in such arrangements as an aid to memory, -these divisions may easily prove a hindrance to light. - -§ 16. This subject of classification is so important to students that -it may be worth while to make a few remarks upon it. The only thoroughly -consistent people are the people of fiction. We can know all about -_them_. Directly we understand their central thought or peculiarity -we may be sure that everything they say and do will be strictly in -accordance with it, will indeed be explainable by it. To take a bald and -simple instance, directly we know that Mrs. Jellaby in _Bleak House_ -is absorbed by her interest in an African Mission, we know all that is -to be known about her; and everything she does or omits to do has some -reference to Borrioboola Ghar. But in real life not only are people much -less easily understood, but when we actually have seized their main -idea or peculiarity or interest we must not expect to find them always -consistent: and they will say and do much which if not inconsistent with -the main idea or peculiarity or interest has at least no connection with -it. Suppose, _e.g._, you can make out with some certainty that Locke -belonged to the developing school, you must not expect him to pay little -heed to instruction as such. Again, suppose you find that his philosophy -was utilitarian; you must not suppose that in everything he says he will -be thinking of utility. - -Now the historian is tempted to treat real men and women as the writer -of fiction treats his puppets. Having fastened, quite correctly let us -suppose, on their main peculiarity he considers it necessary to square -everything with his theory of them, and whatever will not fall in with -it he, if he is unscrupulous, misrepresents, or if he is scrupulous, -suppresses. - -Again, we are too apt to read into words meanings derived from -controversies unknown at the time when the words were uttered. This is -a well-known fact in the history of religious thought. We must always -consider not merely the words used but the time when they were used. -What a man might say quite naturally and orthodoxly at one period would -be sufficient to convict him of sympathizing with some terrible heresy if -uttered half a century later. We find something like this in the history -of education. If anyone nowadays speaks of the pleasure with which as a -young man he read Tacitus, he is understood to mean that he is opposed -to the introduction of “modern studies” into the school-room. If on the -other hand he extols botany, or regrets that he never learned chemistry, -this is taken for an assault on classical instruction. But, of course, -no such inference could be drawn if we went back to a time when the -antithesis between classics and natural science had not been accentuated. -In many other instances we have to be on our guard against forcing into -language meaning which belongs rather to a later date. - -§ 17. With these cautions in mind let us see how far Locke may be said -(1) to be a trainer, and (2) how far a utilitarian. - -§ 18. I. Mr. Browning attributes to Rabelais, Montaigne, and Locke the -desire to bring up a well-developed man rather than a good scholar. But -Rabelais certainly craved for the knowledge of _things_; and if he is -to be classed at all I should put him rather with the Realists, albeit -he lived before the realistic spirit became powerful. Montaigne went -more on the lines of developing rather than teaching, and, shrewd man of -the world as he was, he thought a great deal about the art of living. -But his ideal was not so much the man as the gentleman. This was true -also of Locke; and here we see some explanation why both Montaigne and -Locke do not value classical learning.[119] On the Continent classical -learning has never been associated with the character of an accomplished -gentleman; and, as far as I know, the conception that the highest type -of excellence is found in the union of “the scholar and the gentleman” -is peculiar to this country. In the society of Locke’s day this union -does not seem to have been recognized, and Locke observes: “A great part -of the learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe, and that goes -ordinarily into the round of education, a gentleman may in a good measure -be unfurnished with, without any great disparagement to himself or -prejudice to his affairs.” (_Thoughts_, § 94, p. 74.) So Locke sought as -the true essential for the young gentleman “prudence and good breeding.” -He puts his requisites in the following order of importance:—1, virtue; -2, wisdom; 3, manners; 4, learning; and so “places learning last and -least.” Here he shews himself far ahead of those who still held to -the learned ideal; but his notions of development were cramped by his -thinking only of the gentleman and what was requisite for him. - -§ 19. II. Was Locke a utilitarian in education? It is the fashion (and -in history as in other things fashion is a powerful force), it is the -fashion to treat of Locke as a great champion of utilitarianism. We -might expect this in the ordinary historians, for “when they do agree -their unanimity is” not perhaps very wonderful. But there is one great -English authority quite uninfluenced by them who has said the same -thing, viz.—Cardinal Newman. The Cardinal, as the champion of authority, -is perhaps prejudiced against Locke, who holds that “the faculty of -reasoning seldom or never deceived those who trusted to it.” Be this as -it may, Newman asserts that “the tone of Locke’s remarks is condemnatory -of any teaching which tends to the general cultivation of the mind.” -(_Idea of a University._ Discourse vij., § 4; see also § 6.) A very -interesting point for us to consider is then, Is this reputation of -Locke’s for utilitarianism well deserved? - -§ 20. First let us be quite certain of our definition. - -In learning anything there are two points to be considered; 1st, the -advantage we shall find from knowing that subject or having that skill, -and 2nd, the effect which the study of that subject or practising for -that skill will have on the mind or the body. - -These two points are in themselves distinct, though it is open to anyone -to maintain that they need not be considered separately. Nature has -provided that the bodies of most animals should get the exercise best for -them in procuring food. So Mr. Herbert Spencer has come to the conclusion -that it would be contrary to “the economy of nature” if one set of -occupations were needed as gymnastics and another for utility. In other -words he considers that it is in learning the most useful things we get -the best training. - -The utilitarian view of instruction is that we should teach things useful -in themselves and either neglect the result on the mind and body of the -learner or assume Mr. Spencer’s law of “the economy of nature.” - -Again, when the subjects are settled the utilitarian thinks how the -knowledge or skill may be most speedily acquired, and not how this -method or that method of acquisition will affect the faculties. - -§ 21. This being utilitarianism in education the question is how far was -Locke the utilitarian he is generally considered? - -If we take by itself what he says under the head of “Learning” in the -_Thoughts concerning Education_ no doubt we should pronounce him a -utilitarian. He considers each subject of instruction and pronounces -for or against it according as it seems likely or unlikely to be useful -to a gentleman. And in the methods he suggests he simply points out the -quickest route, as if the knowledge were the only thing to be thought of. -Hence his utilitarian reputation. - -But two very important considerations have been lost sight of. - -1st. Learning is with him “the last and least part” in education. - -2nd. Intellectual education was not for childhood but for the age when -we can teach ourselves. “When a man has got an entrance into any of the -sciences,” says he, “it will be time then to depend on himself and rely -upon his own understanding and exercise his own faculties, which is the -only way to improvement and mastery.” (L. to Peterborough, quoted in -Camb. edition of _Thoughts_, p. 229.) “So,” he says, “the business of -education is not, as I think, to make the young perfect in any one of the -sciences but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them -capable of any when they shall apply themselves to it.” The studies he -proposes in the _Conduct of the Understanding_ (which is his treatise on -intellectual education) have for their object “an increase of the powers -and activity of the mind, not an enlargement of its possessions” (_C. of -U._ § 19, _ad f._). - -Thus strange to say the supposed leader of the Utilitarians has actually -propounded in so many words the doctrine of their opponents. - -§ 22. When Locke is more studied it will be found that the _Thoughts_ are -misleading if we neglect his other works, more particularly the _Conduct -of the Understanding_. - -§ 23. Towards the end of his days, Locke was conscious of gleams of the -“untravelled world” which lay before the generations to come. With great -pathos he writes to a friend: “When I consider how much of my life has -been trifled away in beaten tracks where I vamped on with others only to -follow those who went before me, I cannot but think I have just as much -reason to be proud as if I had travelled all England and, if you will, -all France too, only to acquaint myself with the roads, and be able to -tell how the highways lie wherein those of equipage, and even the common -herd too, travel. Now, methinks—and these are often old men’s dreams—I -see openings to truth and direct paths leading to it, wherein a little -application and industry would settle one’s mind with satisfaction and -leave no darkness or doubt. But this is the end of my day when my sun is -setting: and though the prospect it has given me be what I would not for -anything be without—there is so much truth, beauty, and consistency in -it—yet it is for one of your age, I think I ought to say for yourself, to -set about” (L. to Bolde, quoted by Fowler, _Locke_, p. 120). But another -200 years have not sufficed to put us in possession of the Promised Land -of which Locke had these Pisgah visions. We still “vamp on,” following -those who went before us and getting small help from expounders of -“Education as a Science.” But as it would seem the days of vamping on -blindly in the beaten track are drawing to a close. We cannot doubt that -if Locke had known the wonderful advance which various sciences have -made since his day he would have seen in them “openings to truth and -direct paths leading to it” for many purposes, certainly for education. -It is for our age and ages to come to set about applying our scientific -knowledge to the bringing up of children; and thinkers such as Froebel -will shew us how. - - Locke’s _Thoughts concerning Education_ and his _Conduct of - the Understanding_ should be in the hands of all students of - education who know the English language. I have therefore not - attempted to epitomise what he has said, but have endeavoured - to get at the main thoughts which are, so to speak, the - taproot of his system. Of the _Thoughts_ there is an edition - published by the National Society and another by the Pitt - Press, Cambridge. The Cambridge edition gives from Fox-Bourne’s - Life Locke’s scheme of “Working Schools” and from Lord King’s - the essay “Of Study.” Of the _Conduct_ there is an edition - published by the Clarendon Press. “F.B.” in the references - above stands for Fox-Bourne’s _Life of Locke_. - - In the above essay I have not treated of Locke as a methodizer; - but he advocated teaching foreign languages _without grammar_, - and he published “Æsop’s Fables in English and Latin, - interlineary. For the benefit of those, who not having a - master would learn either of these Tongues.” When I edited the - _Thoughts_ for Pitt Press I did not know of this book or I - should have mentioned it. - - - - -XIV. - -JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU. - -(1712-1778). - - -§ 1. The great men whom we meet with in the history of education may -be divided into two classes, thinkers and doers. There would seem -no good reason why the thinker should not be great as a doer or the -doer as a thinker; and yet we hardly find any records of men who have -been successful both in investigating theory and directing practice. -History tells us of first-rate practical schoolmasters like Sturm and -the Jesuits; but they did not think out their own theory of their -task: they accepted the current theory of their time. On the other -hand, men who like Montaigne and Locke rejected the current theory and -sought to establish a better by an appeal to reason were not practical -schoolmasters. Whenever the thinker tries to turn his thought into action -he has cause to be disappointed with the result. We saw this in the -disastrous failure of Ratke; and even the books in which Comenius tried -to work out his principles, the _Vestibulum, Janua_ and the rest, with -the exception of the _Orbis Pictus_, were speedily forgotten. In the -world of education as elsewhere it takes time to find for great thoughts -the practice which gives effect to them. The course of great thoughts is -in some ways like the course of great rivers. Most romantic and beautiful -near their source, they are not most useful. They must leave the -mountains in which they first appeared, and must flow not in cataracts -but smoothly along the plain among the dwellings of common men before -they can be turned to account in the every-day business of life. - -§ 2. The eighteenth century was soon distinguished by boundless activity -of thought; and this thought was directed mainly to a great work of -destruction. Europe had outgrown the ideas of the Middle Age, and the -framework of Society, which the Middle Age had bequeathed, had waxed old -and was ready to vanish as soon as any strong force could be found to -push it out of the way. As Matthew Arnold has described it— - - “It’s frame yet stood without a breach - “When blood and warmth were fled; - “And still it spake it’s wonted speech— - “But every word was dead.” - -Here then there was need of some destructive power that should remove and -burn up much that had become mere obstacle and incumbrance. This power -was found in the writings which appeared in France about the middle of -the century; and among the authors of them none spoke with more effect -than one who differed from all the rest, a vagabond without family -ties or social position of any kind, with no literary training, with -little knowledge and in conduct at least, with no morals. The writings -of Rousseau and the results produced by them are among the strangest -things in history; and especially in matters of education it is more -than doubtful if the wise man of the world Montaigne, the Christian -philanthropist Comenius, or that “slave of truth and reason” the -philosopher Locke, had half as much influence as this depraved serving -man. - -§ 3. The work by which Rousseau became famous was a prize essay in which -he maintained that civilization, the arts and all human institutions were -from first to last pernicious in their effects, and that no happiness -was possible for the human race without giving them all up and returning -to what he called the state of Nature. He glorified the “noble savage.” -If man had brought himself to a state of misery bordering on despair by -following his own many inventions, take away all these inventions and you -will have man in his proper condition. The argument seems something of -this kind: Man was once happy: Man is now miserable: undo everything that -has been done and Man will be happy again. - -§ 4. This principle of a so-called “natural” state existing before man’s -many inventions, Rousseau applied boldly to education, and he deduced -this general rule: “Do precisely the opposite to what is usually done, -and you will have hit on the right plan.” Not reform but revolution -was his advice. He took the ordinary school teaching and held it up to -ridicule, and certainly he did prove its absurdity. And a most valuable -service he thus rendered to teachers. Every employment while it makes us -see some things clearly, also provides us with blinkers, so to speak, -which prevent our seeing other things at all. The school teacher’s -blinkers often prevent his seeing much that is plain enough to other -people; and when a writer like Rousseau takes off our blinkers for us and -makes us look about us, he does us a great deal of good. But we need more -than this: if we have children entrusted to us we must do something with -them, and Rousseau’s rule of doing the opposite to what is usual will not -be found universally applicable. So we consult Rousseau again, and what -is his advice? - -§ 5. Rousseau would bring everything back to the “natural” state, and -unfortunately he never pauses to settle whether he means by this a state -of ideal perfection, or of simply savagery. The savage, he says, gets his -education without any one’s troubling about it, and so he infers that all -the trouble taken by the civilized is worse than thrown away. (Girardin’s -_Rousseau_, ij., 85.) But he does not fall back on _laisser faire_. He -urges on parents the duty of _themselves_ attending to the bringing up of -their children. “Point de mère, point d’enfant—no mother, no child,” says -he; and he would have the father see to the training of the child whom -the mother has suckled. - -§ 6. Rousseau’s picture of family life is given us where few Englishmen -are likely to find it, enveloped in the _Nouvelle Héloïse_. Here we read -how Julie always has her children with her, and while seeming to let -them do as they like, conceals with the air of apparent carelessness the -most vigilant observation. Possessed by the notion that there can be -no intellectual education before the age of reason, she proclaims: “La -fonction dont je suis chargée n’est pas d’élever mes fils, mais de les -préparer pour être élevés: My business is not to educate my sons, but to -prepare them for being educated.” (_N. Héloïse_, 5th P., Lett. 3.)[120] - -§ 7. There is much that is very pleasing in this picture of ideal -family life; but when Rousseau comes formally to propound his ideas on -education, he gives up family life to attain greater simplicity. “Je m’en -tiens à ce qui est plus simple,” says he: “What I stick to is the more -_simple_.” He tries to state everything in its lowest terms, so to speak; -and this method is excellent so long as he puts on one side only what -is accidental, and retains all the essentials of the problem. But his -rage for simplicity sometimes carried him beyond this. There is an old -Cambridge story of a problem introducing an elephant “whose weight may -be neglected.” This is after the manner of Rousseau. In the bringing up -of the model child, he “neglects” parents, brothers and sisters, young -companions; and though he says that the needful qualities of a master -may be expected only in “un homme de génie,” he hands over Émile to a -governor to live an isolated life in the country. - -§ 8. This governor is to devote himself, for some years, entirely to -imparting to his pupil these difficult arts—the art of being ignorant and -of losing time. Till he is twelve years old, Émile is to have no direct -instruction whatever. “At that age he shall not know what a book is,” -says Rousseau; though elsewhere we are told that he will learn to read of -his own accord by the time he is ten, if no attempt is made to teach him. -He is to be under no restraint, and is to do nothing but what he sees to -be useful. - -§ 9. Freedom from restraint is, however, to be apparent, not real. As -in ordinary education the child employs all its faculties in duping -the master, so in education “according to Nature” the master is to -devote himself to duping the child. “Let him always be his own master -in appearance, and do you take care to be so in reality. There is no -subjection so complete as that which preserves the appearance of liberty; -it is by this means even the will is led captive.” - -§ 10. “The most critical interval of human nature is that between the -hour of our birth and twelve years of age. This is the time wherein vice -and error take root without our being possessed of any instrument to -destroy them.” (_Ém._ ij., 79.) Throughout this season, the governor is -to be at work training the pupil in the art of being ignorant and losing -time. “The first education should be purely negative. It consists by no -means in teaching virtue or truth, but in securing the heart from vice -and the intellect from error. If you could do nothing and let nothing be -done, if you could bring on your pupil healthy and strong to the age of -12 without his being able to tell his right hand from his left, from your -very first lessons the eyes of his understanding would open to reason. -Being without prejudices and without habits he would have nothing in him -to thwart the effect of your care; and by beginning with doing nothing -you would have made an educational prodigy.”[121] - -“Exercise his body, his organs, his senses, his powers; but keep his mind -passive as long as possible. Mistrust all his sentiments formed before -the judgment which determines their value. Restrain, avoid all foreign -impressions, and to prevent the birth of evil be in no hurry to cause -good; for good is good only in the light of reason. Look on all delays -as so many advantages: it is a great gain to advance towards the goal -without loss: let childhood ripen in children. In short, whatever lesson -they may need, be sure not to give it them to-day if you can safely put -it off till to-morrow.”[122] - -“Do not, then, alarm yourself much about this apparent idleness. What -would you say of the man, who, in order to make the most of life, should -determine never to go to sleep? You would say, The man is mad: he is not -enjoying the time; he is depriving himself of it: to avoid sleep he is -hurrying towards death. Consider, then, that it is the same here, and -that childhood is the sleep of reason.”[123] - -§ 11. We have now reached the climax (or shall we say the nadir?) in -negation. Rousseau has given the _coup de grâce_ to the ideal of the -Renascence. Comenius was the first to take a comprehensive view of the -educator’s task and to connect it with man’s nature and destiny; but he -could not get clear from an over-estimate of the importance of knowledge. -According to his ideal, man should know all things; so in practice he -thought too much of imparting knowledge. Then came Locke and treated the -imparting of knowledge as of trifling importance when compared with the -formation of character; but he too in practice hardly went so far as this -principle might have led him. He was much under the influence of social -distinctions, and could not help thinking of what it was necessary for a -gentleman to know. So that Rousseau was the very first to shake himself -entirely free from the notion which the Renascence had handed down that -man was mainly a _learning_ animal. Rousseau has the courage to deny this -in the most emphatic manner possible, and to say: “For the first 12 years -the educator must teach the child _nothing_.” - -§ 12. In this reaction against the Renascence Rousseau puts the truth -in the form of such a violent paradox that we start back in terror. But -it was perhaps necessary thus to sweep away the ordinary schoolroom -rubbish before the true nature of the educator’s task could be fairly -considered. The rubbish having been cleared away what was to take its -place? No longer having his mind engrossed by the knowledge he wished -to communicate, the educator had now an eye for something else not less -worthy of his attention, viz., the child itself. Rousseau was the first -to base education entirely on a study of the child to be educated; and by -doing this he became, as I believe, one of the greatest of educational -Reformers. - -§ 13. It was, however, purely as a thinker, or rather as a _voice_ -giving expression to the general discontent that Rousseau became such a -tremendous force in Europe. He has indeed often been called the father -of the first French Revolution which he did not live to see. But, as -Macaulay has well said, a good deal besides eloquent writing is needed -to cause such a convulsion; and we can no more attribute the French -Revolution to the writings of Rousseau than we can attribute the shock -of an explosion of gunpowder to the lucifer match without which it might -never have happened (_v._ Macaulay’s _Barrère_). Rousseau did in the -world of ideas what the French Revolutionists afterwards did in the world -of politics; he made a clean sweep and endeavoured to start afresh. - -§ 14. I have already said that as regards education I think his labours -in destruction were of very great value. But what shall we say of his -efforts at construction? There would not be the least difficulty in -showing that most of his proposals are impracticable. It is no more -“natural” to treat as a typical case a child brought up in solitude than -it would be to write a treatise on the rearing of a bee cut off from the -hive.[124] Rousseau requires impossibilities, _e.g._, he postulates that -the child is never to be brought into contact with anyone who might set -a bad example. Modern science has shown us that the young are liable to -take diseases from impurities in the air they breathe: but as yet no -one has proposed that all children should be kept at an elevation of -5,000 feet above the level of the sea. Yet the advice would be about -as practicable as the advice of Rousseau. A method which always starts -with paradox and not infrequently ends with platitude might seem to have -little in its favour; and Rousseau has had far less influence since (in -the words of Herman Merivale) “he was dethroned with the fall of his -extravagant child, the [First] Republic.” No doubt the great exponent -of English opinion was right in calling Rousseau “the most un-English -stranger who ever landed on our shores” (_Times_, 29 Aug., 1873); and the -torch of his eloquence will never cause a conflagration, still less an -explosion, here. His disregard for “appearances”—or rather his evident -purpose of making an impression by defying “appearances” and saying just -the opposite of what is expected, is simply distressing to us. But there -is no denying Rousseau’s genius. His was one of the original voices -that go on sounding and awakening echoes in all lands. Willingly or -unwillingly, at first hand or from imperfect echoes, everyone who studies -education must study Rousseau. - -§ 15. As specimens of Rousseau’s teaching I will give a few -characteristic passages from the Émile. - -“Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Creator: everything -degenerates in the hands of man.”[125] These are the first words of the -“Émile,” and the key-note of Rousseau’s philosophy. - -§ 16. “We are born weak, we have need of strength; we are born destitute -of everything, we have need of assistance; we are born stupid, we have -need of understanding. All that we have not at our birth, and which we -require when grown up, is bestowed on us by education. This education we -receive from nature, from men, or from things. The internal development -of our organs and faculties is the education of nature: the use we are -taught to make of that development is the education given us by men; -and in the acquisitions made by our own experience on the objects that -surround us, consists our education from things.”[126] “Since the -concurrence of these three kinds of education is necessary to their -perfection, it is by that one which is entirely independent of us, we -must regulate the two others.”[127] - -§ 17. Now “to live is not merely to breathe; it is to act, it is to make -use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, and of all those parts of -ourselves which give us the feeling of our existence. The man who has -lived most, is not he who has counted the greatest number of years, but -he who has most thoroughly felt life.”[128] - -§ 18. The aim of education, then, must be complete living. - -But ordinary education, instead of seeking to develop the life of the -child, sacrifices childhood to the acquirement of knowledge, or rather -the semblance of knowledge, which it is thought will prove useful to the -youth or the man. Rousseau’s great merit lies in his having exposed this -fundamental error. He says, very truly, “We do not understand childhood, -and pursuing false ideas of it our every step takes us further astray. -The wisest among us fix upon what it concerns men to know without ever -considering what children are capable of learning. They always expect to -find the man in the child without thinking of what the child is before -it is a man. And this is the study to which I have especially devoted -myself, in order that should my entire method be false and visionary, my -observations might always turn to account. I may not have seen aright -what ought to be done: but I believe I have seen aright the subject on -which we have to act. Begin then by studying your pupils better, for -most certainly you do not understand them.”[129] “Nature wills that -children should be _children_ before they are _men_. If we seek to -pervert this order we shall produce forward fruits without ripeness or -flavour, and tho’ not ripe, soon rotten: we shall have young _savans_ and -old children. Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, feeling peculiar -to itself; nothing is more absurd than to wish to substitute ours in -their place.”[130] “We never know how to put ourselves in the place of -children; we do not enter into their ideas, we attribute to them our own; -and following always our own train of thought, even with syllogisms we -manage to fill their heads with nothing but extravagance and error.”[131] -“I wish some discreet person would give us a treatise on the art of -observing children—an art which would be of immense value to us, but of -which fathers and schoolmasters have not as yet learnt the very first -rudiments.”[132] - -§ 19. In these passages, Rousseau strikes the key-note of true education. -The first thing necessary for us is to see aright the subject on which -we have to act. Unfortunately, however, this subject has often been the -subject most neglected in the schoolroom. Children have been treated as -if they were made for their school books, not their school books for -them. As education has been thought of as learning, childhood has been -treated as unimportant, a necessary stage in existence no doubt, but -far more troublesome and hardly more interesting than the state of the -chrysalis. If some forms of words, tables, declensions, county towns, and -the like can be drummed into children, this is, say educators of the old -school, a clear gain. For the rest nothing can be done with them except -teaching them to read, write, and say the multiplication table. - -But since the publication of the Émile, there has been in the world a -very different view of education. According to this view, the importance -of childhood is not to be measured by the amount of _our_ knowledge, or -even the number of _our_ words, we can force it to remember. According to -this view, in dealing with children we must not think of our knowledge -or of our notions at all. We must think not of our own minds, but of the -minds of the little ones.[133] - -§ 20. The absurd results in which the opposite course has ended, Rousseau -exposes with great severity. “All the studies demanded from the poor -unfortunates lead to such things as are entirely beyond the range of -their ideas, so you may judge what amount of attention they can give to -them. Schoolmasters who make a great display of the instruction they -give their pupils are paid to differ from me; but we see from what they -do that they are entirely of my opinion. For what do they really teach? -Words, words, for ever words. Among the various knowledges which they -boast of giving, they are careful not to include such as would be of use; -because these would involve a knowledge of things, and there they would -be sure to fail; but they choose subjects that seem to be known when the -terms are known such as heraldry, geography, chronology, languages and -the like; all of them studies so foreign to a man, and still more to a -child, that it is a great chance if anything of the whole lot ever proves -useful to him on a single occasion in his whole life.”[134] “Whatever -the study may be, without the idea of the things represented the signs -representing them go for nothing. And yet the child is always kept to -these signs without our being able to make him comprehend any of the -things they represent.”[135] What does a child understand by “the globe”? -An old geography book says candidly, that it is a round thing made of -plaster; and this is the only notion children have of it. What a fearful -waste, and worse than waste, it is to make them learn the signs without -the things, when if they ever learn the things, they must at the same -time acquire the signs! (Conf. Ruskin _supra_ p. 159, _note_.) “No! if -Nature gives to the child’s brain this pliability which makes it capable -of receiving impressions of every kind, this is not that we may engrave -on it the names of kings, dates, the technical words of heraldry, of -astronomy, of geography, and all those words meaningless at his age and -useless at any age, with which we oppress his sad and sterile childhood; -but that all the ideas which he can conceive and which are useful to -him, all those which relate to his happiness and will one day make his -duty plain to him, may trace themselves there in characters never to -be effaced, and may assist him in conducting himself through life in a -manner appropriate to his nature and his faculties.”[136] - -§ 21. With Rousseau, as afterwards with Froebel, education was a kind -of “child-gardening.” “Plants are developed by cultivation,” says he, -“men by education: On façonne les plantes par la culture, et les hommes -par l’éducation” (_Ém._ j., 6). The governor, who is the child-gardener, -is to aim at three things: first, he is to shield the child from all -corrupting influences; second, he is to devote himself to developing -in the child a healthy and strong body in which the senses are to be -rendered acute by exercise; third, he is, by practice not precept, to -cultivate the child’s sense of duty. - -§ 22. In his study of children Rousseau fixed on their never-resting -activity. “The failing energy concentrates itself in the heart of the -old man; in the heart of the child energy is overflowing and spreads -outwards; he feels in him life enough to animate all his surroundings. -Whether he makes or mars it is all one to him: it is enough that he has -changed the state of things, and every change is an action. If he seems -by preference to destroy, this is not from mischief; but the act of -construction is always slow, and the act of destruction being quicker is -more suited to his vivacity.”[137] - -One of the first requisites in the care of the young is then to provide -for the expansion of their activity. All restraints such as swaddling -clothes for infants and “school” and “lessons” for children are to be -entirely done away with.[138] Literary instruction must not be thought -of. “There must be no other book than the world,” says Rousseau, “no -other instruction than facts. The child who reads does not think, he does -nothing but read, he gets no instruction; he learns words: Point d’autre -livre que le monde, point d’autre instruction que les faits. L’enfant qui -lit ne pense pas, il ne fait que lire; il ne s’instruit pas, il apprend -les mots.” (_Ém._ iij., 181.)[139] - -§ 23. If it be objected that, according to Rousseau’s plan, there would -be a neglect of memory, he replies: “Without the study of books the kind -of memory that a child should have will not remain inactive; all he sees, -all he hears, strikes him, and he remembers it; he keeps a record in -himself of people’s actions and people’s talk; and all around him makes -the book by which without thinking of it he is constantly enriching -his memory against the time that his judgment may benefit by it: Sans -étudier dans les livres, l’espèce de mémoire que peut avoir un enfant ne -reste pas pour cela oisive; tout ce qu’il voit, tout ce qu’il entend le -frappe, et il s’en souvient; il tient registre en lui-même des actions, -des discours des hommes; et tout ce qui l’environne est le livre, dans -lequel, sans y songer, il enrichit continuellement sa mémoire, en -attendant que son jugement puisse en profiter.” (_Ém._ ij., 106.) We -should be most careful not to commit to our memory anything we do not -understand, for if we do, we can never tell what part of our stores -really belong to us. (_Ém._ iij., 236.) - -§ 24. On the positive side the most striking part of Rousseau’s advice -relates to the training of the senses. “The first faculties which become -strong in us,” says he, “are our senses. These then are the first that -should be cultivated; they are in fact the only faculties we forget -or at least those which we neglect most completely.” We find that the -young child “wants to touch and handle everything. By no means check -this restlessness; it points to a very necessary apprenticeship. Thus -it is that the child gets to be conscious of the hotness or coldness, -the hardness or softness, the heaviness or lightness of bodies, to -judge of their size and shape and all their sensible properties by -looking, feeling, listening, especially by comparing sight and touch, -and combining the sensations of the eye with those of the fingers.”[140] -“See a cat enter a room for the first time; she examines round and stares -and sniffs about without a moment’s rest, she is satisfied with nothing -before she has tried it and made it out. This is just what a child does -when he begins to walk, and enters, so to say, the chamber of the world. -The only difference is that to the sight which is common to the child -and the cat the first joins in his observations the hands which nature -has given him, and the other animal that subtle sense of smell which has -been bestowed upon her. It is this tendency, according as it is well -cultivated or the reverse, that makes children either sharp or dull, -active or slow, giddy or thoughtful. - -“The first natural movements of the child being then to measure himself -with his surroundings and to test in everything he sees all its -sensible properties which may concern him, his first study is a kind of -experimental physics relating to his own preservation; and from this we -divert him to speculative studies before he feels himself at home here -below. So long as his delicate and flexible organs can adjust themselves -to the bodies on which they ought to act, so long as his senses as yet -uncorrupted are free from illusion, this is the time to exercise them all -in their proper functions; this is the time to learn to understand the -sensuous relations which things have with us. As everything that enters -the mind finds its way through the senses, the first reason of a human -being is a reason of sensations; this it is which forms the basis of the -intellectual reason; our first masters in philosophy are our feet, our -hands, our eyes. Substituting books for all this is not teaching us to -reason, but simply to use the reason of other people; it teaches us to -take a great deal on trust and never to know anything. - -“In order to practise an art we must begin by getting the proper -implements; and that we may have good use of these implements they must -be made strong enough to stand wear and tear. That we may learn to think -we must then exercise our members, our senses, our organs, as these are -the implements of our intelligence; and that we may make the most of -these implements the body which supplies them must be strong and healthy. -We see then that far from man’s true reason forming itself independently -of his body, it is the sound constitution of the body that makes the -operations of the mind easy and certain.”[141] - -§ 25. Rousseau does not confine himself to advising that the senses -should be cultivated; he also gives some hints of the _way_ in which -they should be cultivated, and many modern experiments, such as “object -lessons” and the use of actual weights and measures, may be directly -traced to him. “As soon as a child begins to distinguish objects, a -proper choice should be made in those which are presented to him.” -Elsewhere he says, “To exercise the senses is not simply to make use of -them; it is to learn to judge aright by means of them; it is to learn, -so to say, to perceive; for we can only touch and see and hear according -as we have learnt how. There is a kind of exercise perfectly natural and -mechanical which serves to make the body strong without giving anything -for the judgment to lay hold of: swimming, running, jumping, whip-top, -stone throwing; all this is capital; but have we nothing but arms and -legs? have we not also eyes and ears? and are these organs not needed -in our use of the others? Do not then merely exercise the strength but -exercise all the senses which direct it; get all you can out of each -of them, and then check the impressions of one by the impressions of -another. Measure, reckon, weigh, compare.”[142] - -§ 26. Two subjects there were in which Émile was to receive instruction, -viz.: music and drawing. Rousseau’s advice about drawing is well worth -considering. He says: “Children who are great imitators all try to -draw. I should wish my child to cultivate this art, not exactly for -the art itself, but to make his eye correct and his hand supple: Les -enfants, grands imitateurs, essayent tous de dessiner: je voudrais que -le mien cultivât cet art, non précisément pour l’art même, mais pour se -rendre l’œil juste et la main flexible.” (_Ém._ ij., 149). But Émile is -to be kept clear of the ordinary drawing-master who would put him to -imitate imitations; and there is a striking contrast between Rousseau’s -suggestions and those of the authorities at South Kensington. Technical -skill he cares for less than the training of the eye; so Émile is always -to draw _from the object_, and, says Rousseau, “my intention is not -so much that he should get to _imitate_ the objects, as get to _know_ -them: mon intention n’est pas tant qu’il sache imiter les objets que les -connaître.” (_Ém._ ij., 150). - -§ 27. Before we pass the age of twelve years, at which point, as someone -says, Rousseau substitutes another Émile for the one he has hitherto -spoken of, let us look at his proposals for moral training. Rousseau -is right, beyond question, in desiring that children should be treated -as children. But what are children? What can they understand? What is -the world in which they live? Is it the material world only, or is the -moral world also open to them? (Girardin’s _R._, vol. ij., 136). On the -subject of morals Rousseau seems to have admirable instincts,[143] but -no principles, and moral as he is “on instinct,” there is always some -confusion in what he Says. At one time he asserts that “there is only -one knowledge to give children, and that is a knowledge of duty: Il n’y -a qu’une science à enseigner aux enfants: c’est celle des devoirs de -l’homme.” (_Ém._ j., 26). Elsewhere he says: “To know right from wrong, -to be conscious of the reason of duty is not the business of a child: -Connaître le bien et le mal, sentir la raison des devoirs de l’homme, -n’est pas l’affaire d’un enfant.” (_Ém._ ij., 75).[144] In another place -he mounts his hobby that “the most sublime virtues are negative” (_Ém._ -ij., 95), and that about the best man who ever lived (till he found -Friday?) was Robinson Crusoe. The outcome of all Rousseau’s teaching -on this subject seems that we should in every way develop the child’s -animal or physical life, retard his intellectual life, and ignore his -life as a spiritual and moral being. - -§ 28. A variety of influences had combined, as they combine still, to -draw attention away from the importance of physical training; and by -placing the child’s bodily organs and senses as the first things to -be thought of in education, Rousseau did much to save us from the bad -tradition of the Renascence. But there were more things in heaven and -earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy, and whatever Rousseau might -say, Émile could never be restrained from inquiring after them. Every boy -will _think_; _i.e._, he will think _for himself_, however unable he may -seem to think in the direction in which his instructors try to urge him. -The wise elders who have charge of him must take this into account, and -must endeavour to guide him into thinking modestly and thinking right. -Then again, as soon as the child can speak, or before, the world of -sensation becomes for him a world, not of sensations only, but also of -sentiments, of sympathies, of affections, of consciousness of right and -wrong, good and evil. All these feelings, it is true, may be affected by -traditional prejudices. The air the child breathes may also contain much -that is noxious; but we have no more power to exclude the atmosphere of -the moral world than of the physical. All we can do is to take thought -for fresh air in both cases. As for Rousseau’s notion that we can -withdraw the child from the moral atmosphere, we see in it nothing but a -proof how little he understood the problems he professed to solve.[145] - -§ 29. Although the governor is to devote himself to a single child, -Rousseau is careful to protest against over-direction. “You would stupify -the child,” says he, “if you were constantly directing him, if you -were always saying to him, ‘Come here! Go there! Stop! Do this! Don’t -do that!’ If your head always directs his arms, his own head becomes -useless to him.” (_Ém._, ij., 114). Here we have a warning which should -not be neglected by those who maintain the _Lycées_ in France, and the -ordinary private boarding-schools in England. In these schools a boy -is hardly called upon to exercise his will all day long. He rises in -the morning when he must; at meals he eats till he is obliged to stop; -he is taken out for exercise like a horse; he has all his indoor work -prescribed for him both as to time and quantity. In this kind of life he -never has occasion to think or act for himself. He is therefore without -self-reliance. So much care is taken to prevent his doing wrong, that -he gets to think only of checks from without. He is therefore incapable -of self-restraint. In the English public schools boys have much less -supervision from their elders, and organise a great portion of their -lives for themselves. This proves a better preparation for life after -the school age; and most public schoolmasters would agree with Rousseau -that “the lessons the boys get from each other in the playground are a -hundred times more useful to them than the lessons given them in school: -les leçons que les écoliers prennent entre eux dans la cour du collège -leur sont cent fois plus utiles que tout ce qu’on leur dira jamais dans -la classe.” (_Ém._ ij., 123.) - -§ 30. On questions put by children, Rousseau says: “The art of -questioning is not so easy as it may be thought; it is rather the art of -the master than of the pupil. We must have learnt a good deal of a thing -to be able to ask what we do not know. The learned know and inquire, says -an Indian proverb, but the ignorant know not what to inquire about.” And -from this he infers that children learn less from asking than from being -asked questions. (_N. H._, 5th p. 490.) - -§ 31. At twelve years old Émile is said to be fit for instruction. “Now -is the time for labour, for instruction, for study; and observe that it -is not I who arbitrarily make this choice; it is pointed out to us by -Nature herself.” - -§ 32. What novelties await us here? As we have seen Rousseau was -determined to recommend nothing that would harmonise with ordinary -educational practice; but even a genius, though he may abandon previous -practice, cannot keep clear of previous thought, and Rousseau’s plan for -instruction is obviously connected with the thoughts of Montaigne and of -Locke. But while on the same lines with these great writers Rousseau goes -beyond them and is both clearer and bolder than they are. - -§ 33. Rousseau’s proposals for instruction have the following main -features. - -1st. Instruction is to be no longer literary or linguistic. The teaching -about words is to disappear, and the young are not to learn by books or -about books. - -2nd. The subjects to be studied are to be mathematics and physical -science. - -3rd. The method to be adopted is not the didactic but the method of -_self-teaching_. - -4th. The hands are to be called into play as a means of learning. - -§ 34. 1st. Till quite recently the only learning ever given in schools -was book-learning, a fact to which the language of the people still bears -witness: when a child does not profit by school instruction he is always -said to be “no good at his book.” Now-a-days the tendency is to change -the character of the schools so that they may become less and less mere -“Ludi Literarii.” In this Rousseau seems to have been a century and -more in advance of us; and yet we cannot credit him with any remarkable -wisdom or insight about literature. He himself used books as a means of -“collecting a store of ideas, true or false, but at any rate clear” (J. -Morley’s _Rousseau_, j. chap. 3, p. 85), and he has recorded for us his -opinion that “the sensible and interesting conversations of a young woman -of merit are more proper to form a young man than all the pedantical -philosophy of books” (_Confessions_, quoted by Morley j., 87). After -this, whatever we may think of the merit of his suggestions we can sit at -the Sage’s feet no longer. - -§ 35. 2nd. Rousseau had himself little knowledge of mathematics and -natural science, but he was strongly in favour of the “study of Nature”; -and in his last years his devotion to botany became a passion. His -curriculum for Émile is in the air, but the chief thing is to get him to -attend to the phenomena of nature, and “to foster his curiosity by being -in no hurry to satisfy it.” - -§ 36. 3rd. About teaching and learning, there is one point on which we -find a consensus of great authorities extending from the least learned of -writers who was probably Rousseau to the most learned who was probably -Friedrich August Wolf. In one form or other these assert that there is no -true teaching but _self_-teaching. - -Past a doubt the besetting weakness of teachers is “telling.” They can -hardly resist the tendency to be didactic. They have the knowledge which -they desire to find in their pupils, and they cannot help expressing -it and endeavouring to pass it on to those who need it, “like wealthy -men who care not how they give.” But true “teaching,” as Jacotot and -his disciple Joseph Payne were never tired of testifying, is “causing -to learn,” and it is seldom that “didactic” teaching has this effect. -Rousseau saw this clearly, and clearly pointed out the danger of -didacticism. As usual he by exaggeration laid himself open to an answer -that seems to refute him, but in spite of this we feel that there is -valuable truth underlying what he says. “I like not explanations given -in long discourses,” says he; “young people pay little attention to -them and retain little from them. The things themselves! The things -themselves! I shall never repeat often enough that we attach too much -importance to words: with our chattering education we make nothing but -chatterers.”[146] Accordingly Rousseau lays down the rule that Émile is -not to learn science but to invent it (qu’il n’apprenne pas la science; -qu’il l’invente); and he even expects him to invent geometry. As Émile -is not supposed to be a young Pascal but only an ordinary boy with -extraordinary _physical_ development such a requirement is obviously -absurd, and Herbart has reckoned it among Rousseau’s _Hauptfehler_ (_Päd. -Schriften_, ij., 242). The training prescribed is in fact the training -of the intellectual athlete; and the trainer may put the body through -its exercises much more easily than the mind. Of this the practical -teacher is only too conscious, and he will accept Rousseau’s advice, if -at all, only as “counsels of perfection.” Rousseau says: “Émile, obliged -to learn of himself, makes use of his own reason and not that of others; -for to give no weight to opinion, none must be given to authority; and -the more part of our mistakes come less from ourselves than from other -people. From this constant exercise there should result a vigour of mind -like that which the body gets from labour and fatigue. Another advantage -is that we advance only in proportion to our strength. The mind like -the body carries that only which it can carry. When the understanding -makes things its own before they are committed to memory, whatever it -afterwards draws forth belongs to it; but if the memory is burdened with -what the understanding knows nothing about we are in danger of bringing -from it things which the understanding declines to acknowledge.”[147] -Again he writes: “Beyond contradiction we get much more clear and certain -notions of the things we learn thus of ourselves than of those we derive -from other people’s instruction, and besides not accustoming our reason -to bow as a slave before authority, we become more ingenious in finding -connexions, in uniting ideas, and in inventing our implements, than when -we take all that is given us and let our minds sink into indifference, -like the body of a man who always has his clothes put on for him, is -waited on by his servants and drawn about by his horses till at length he -loses the strength and use of his limbs. Boileau boasted of having taught -Racine to find difficulty in rhyming. Among all the admirable methods of -shortening the study of the sciences we might have need that some one -should give us a way of learning them _with effort_.”[148] - -§ 37. 4th. However highly we may value our gains from the use of books we -must admit that in some ways the use of books tends to the neglect of -powers that should not be neglected. As Rousseau wished to see the young -brought up without books he naturally looked to other means of learning, -especially to learning by the eye and by the hand. Much is now said -about using the hand for education, and many will agree with Rousseau: -“If instead of making a child stick to his books I employ him in a -workshop, his hands work to the advantage of his intellect: he becomes -a philosopher while he thinks he is becoming simply an artisan: Au lieu -de coller un enfant sur des livres, si je l’occupe dans un atelier, ses -mains travaillent au profit de son esprit: il devient philosophe, et -croît n’être qu’un ouvrier.” (_Ém._ iij., 193). - -§ 38. In these essays I have done what I could to shew the best that each -reformer has left us. In Rousseau’s case I have been obliged to confine -myself to his words. “We attach far too much importance to words,” said -Rousseau, and yet it is by words and words only that Rousseau still -lives; and for the sake of his words we forget his deeds. Of the _Émile_ -Mr. Morley says: “It is one of the seminal books in the history of -literature. It cleared away the accumulation of clogging prejudices and -obscure inveterate usage which made education one of the dark formalistic -arts; and it admitted floods of light and air into tightly-closed -nurseries and schoolrooms” (_Rousseau_, ij., 248). In the region of -thought it set us free from the Renascence; and it did more than this, it -announced the true nature of the teacher’s calling, “_Study the subject -you have to act upon._” In these words we have the starting point of -the “New Education.” From them the educator gets a fresh conception of -his task. We grown people have received innumerable impressions which, -forgotten as they are, have left their mark behind in our way of looking -at things; and as we advance in life these experiences and associations -cluster around everything to which we direct our attention, till in the -end the past seems to dominate the present and to us “nothing is but -what is not.” But to the child the present with its revelations and the -future which will be “something more, a bringer of new things,” are all -engrossing. It is our business as teachers to try to realize how the -world looks from the child’s point of view. We may know a great many -things and be ready to teach them, but we shall have little success -unless we get another knowledge which we cannot teach and can learn only -by patient observation, a knowledge of “the subject to be acted on,” of -the mind of our pupils and what goes on there. When we set out on this -path, which was first clearly pointed out by Rousseau, teaching becomes a -new occupation with boundless possibilities and unceasing interest in it. -Every teacher becomes a learner, for we have to study the minds of the -young, their way of looking at things, their habits, their difficulties, -their likes and dislikes, how they are stimulated to exertion, how they -are discouraged, how one mood succeeds another. What we need we may well -devote a lifetime to acquiring; it is a knowledge of the human mind with -the object of influencing it. - - - - -XV. - -BASEDOW AND THE PHILANTHROPINUM. - - -§ 1. One of the most famous movements ever made in educational reform -was started in the last century by John Bernard Basedow. Basedow was -born at Hamburg in 1723, the son of a wigmaker. His early years were not -spent in the ordinary happiness of childhood. His mother he describes -as melancholy, almost to madness, and his father was severe almost to -brutality. It was the father’s intention to bring up his son to his own -business, but the lad ran away, and engaged himself as servant to a -gentleman in Holstein. The master soon perceived what had never occurred -to the father, viz., that the youth had very extraordinary abilities. -Sent home with a letter from his master pointing out this notable -discovery, Basedow was allowed to renounce the paternal calling, and -to go to the Hamburg Grammar School (_Gymnasium_), where he was under -Reimarus, the author of the “Wolfenbüttel Fragment.” In due course his -friends managed to send him to the University of Leipzig to prepare -himself for the least expensive of the learned professions—the clerical. -Basedow, however, was not a man to follow the beaten tracks. After an -irregular life he left the university too unorthodox to think of being -ordained, and in 1749 became private tutor to the children of Herr von -Quaalen in Holstein. In this situation his talent for inventing new -methods of teaching first showed itself. He knew how to adapt himself to -the capacity of the children, and he taught them much by conversation, -and in the way of play, connecting his instruction with surrounding -objects in the house, garden, and fields. Through Quaalen’s influence, he -next obtained a professorship at Soroe, in Denmark, where he lectured for -eight years, but his unorthodox writings raised a storm of opposition, -and the Government finally removed him to the Gymnasium at Altona. Here -he still continued his efforts to change the prevailing opinions in -religious matters; and so great a stir was made by the publication of -his “Philalethia,” and his “Methodical Instruction in both Natural and -Biblical Religion,” that he and his family were refused the Communion at -Altona, and his books were excluded, under a heavy penalty, from Lübeck. - -§ 2. About this time Basedow, incited by Rousseau’s “Emile,” turned -his attention to a fresh field of activity, in which he was to make -as many friends as in theology he had found enemies. A very general -dissatisfaction was then felt with the condition of the schools. Physical -education was not attempted in them. The mother-tongue was neglected. -Instruction in Latin and Greek, which was the only instruction given, -was carried on in a mechanical way, without any thought of improvement. -The education of the poor and of the middle classes received but little -attention. “Youth,” says Raumer, “was in those days, for most children, -a sadly harassed period. Instruction was hard and heartlessly severe. -Grammar was caned into the memory, so were portions of Scripture and -poetry. A common school punishment was to learn by heart Psalm cxix. -School-rooms were dismally dark. No one conceived it possible that the -young could find pleasure in any kind of work, or that they had eyes for -aught besides reading and writing. The pernicious age of Louis XIV. had -inflicted on the poor children of the upper class, hair curled by the -barber and messed with powder and pomade, braided coats, knee breeches, -silk stockings, and a dagger by the side—for active, lively children a -perfect torture” (_Gesch. d. Pädagogik_, ii. 297). Kant gave expression -to a very wide-spread feeling when he said that what was wanted in -education was no longer a reform but a revolution. Here, then, was a good -scope offered for innovators, and Basedow was a prince of innovators. - -§ 3. Having succeeded in interesting the Danish minister, Bernstorff, -in his plans, he was permitted to devote himself entirely to a work on -the subject of education whilst retaining his income from the Altona -Gymnasium. The result was his “Address to Philanthropists and Men of -Property on Schools and Studies and their Influence on the Public Weal” -(1766), in which he announces the plan of his “Elementary.”[149] In this -address he calls upon princes, governments, town-councils, dignitaries -of the Church, freemasons’ lodges, &c., &c., if they loved their -fellow-creatures, to come to his assistance in bringing out his book. Nor -did he call in vain. When the “Elementary” at length appeared (in 1774), -he had to acknowledge contributions from the Emperor Joseph II., from -Catherine II. of Russia, from Christian VII. of Denmark, from the Grand -Prince Paul, and many other celebrities, the total sum received being -over 2,000_l._ - -§ 4. While Basedow was travelling about (in 1774) to get subscriptions, -he spent some time in Frankfurt, and thence made an excursion to Ems -with two distinguished companions, one of them Lavater, and the other a -young man of five-and-twenty, already celebrated as the author of “Götz -von Berlichingen,” and the “Sorrows of Werther.” Of Basedow’s personal -peculiarities at this time Goethe has left us an amusing description -in the “Wahrheit und Dichtung;” but we must accept the portrait with -caution: the sketch was thrown in as an artistic contrast with that of -Lavater, and no doubt exaggerates those features in which the antithesis -could be brought out with best effect. - -“One could not see,” writes Goethe, “a more marked contrast than between -Lavater and Basedow. As the lines of Lavater’s countenance were free -and open to the beholder, so were Basedow’s contracted, and as it were -drawn inwards, Lavater’s eye, clear and benign, under a very wide -eye-lid; Basedow’s, on the other hand, deep in his head, small, black, -sharp, gleaming out from under shaggy eyebrows, whilst Lavater’s frontal -bone seemed bounded by two arches of the softest brown hair. Basedow’s -impetuous rough voice, his rapid and sharp utterances, a certain derisive -laugh, an abrupt changing of the topic of conversation, and whatever -else distinguished him, all were opposed to the peculiarities and the -behaviour by which Lavater had been making us over-fastidious.” - -§ 5. Goethe approved of Basedow’s desire to make all instruction lively -and natural, and thought that his system would promote mental activity -and give the young a fresher view of the world: but he finds fault with -the “Elementary,” and prefers the “Orbis Pictus” of Comenius, in which -subjects are presented in their natural connection. Basedow himself, -says Goethe, was not a man either to edify or to lead other people. -Although the object of his journey was to interest the public in his -philanthropic enterprise, and to open not only hearts but purses, -and he was able to speak eloquently and convincingly on the subject -of education, he spoilt everything by his tirades against prevalent -religious belief, especially on the subject of the Trinity. - -§ 6. Goethe found in Basedow’s society an opportunity of “exercising, if -not enlightening,” his mind, so he bore with his personal peculiarities, -though apparently with great difficulty. Basedow seems to have delighted -in worrying his associates. “He would never see anyone quiet but he -provoked him with mocking irony, in a hoarse voice, or put him to -confusion by an unexpected question, and laughed bitterly when he had -gained his end; yet he was pleased when the object of his jests was quick -enough to collect himself, and answer in the same strain.” So far Goethe -was his match; but he was nearly routed by Basedow’s use of bad tobacco, -and of some tinder still worse with which he was constantly lighting his -pipe and poisoning the air insufferably. He soon discovered Goethe’s -dislike to this preparation of his, so he took a malicious pleasure in -using it and dilating upon its merits. - -§ 7. Here is an odd account of their intercourse. During their stay at -Ems Goethe went a great deal into fashionable society. “To make up for -these dissipations,” he writes, “I always passed a part of the night -with Basedow. He never went to bed, but dictated without cessation. -Occasionally he cast himself on the couch and slumbered, while his -amanuensis sat quietly, pen in hand, ready to continue his work when the -half-awakened author should once more give free course to his thoughts. -All this took place in a close confined chamber, filled with the fumes of -tobacco and the odious tinder. As often as I was disengaged from a dance -I hastened up to Basedow, who was ready at once to speak and dispute on -any question; and when after a time I hurried again to the ball-room, -before I had closed the door behind me he would resume the thread of his -essay as composedly as if he had been engaged with nothing else.” - -§ 8. It was through a friend of Goethe’s, Behrisch, whose acquaintance we -make in the “Wahrheit und Dichtung,” that Basedow became connected with -Prince Leopold of Dessau. Behrisch was tutor to the Prince’s son, and by -him the Prince was so interested in Basedow’s plans that he determined -to found an Institute in which they should be realised. Basedow was -therefore called to Dessau, and under his direction was opened the famous -Philanthropinum. Then for the first, and probably for the last time, -a school was started in which use and wont were entirely set aside, -and everything done on “improved principles.” Such a bold enterprise -attracted the attention of all interested in education, far and near: -but it would seem that few parents considered their own children _vilia -corpora_ on whom experiments might be made for the public good. When, in -May 1776, a number of schoolmasters and others collected from different -parts of Germany, and even from beyond Germany, to be present by -Basedow’s invitation at an examination of the children, they found only -thirteen pupils in the Philanthropinum, including Basedow’s own son and -daughter. - -§ 9. Before we investigate how Basedow’s principles were embodied in the -Philanthropinum, let us see the form in which he had already announced -them. The great work from which all children were to be taught was the -“Elementary.” As a companion to this was published the “Book of Method” -(_Methodenbuch_) for parents and teachers. The “Elementary” is a work in -which a great deal of information about things in general is given in -the form of dialogue, interspersed with tales and easy poetry. Except -in bulk, it does not seem to me to differ very materially from many of -the reading-books, which, in late years, have been published in this -country. It had the advantage, however, of being accompanied by a set -of engravings to which the text referred, though they were too large to -be bound up with it. The root-ideas of Basedow put forth in his “Book -of Method,” and other writings, are those of Rousseau. For example, -“You should attend to nature in your children far more than to art. The -elegant manners and usages of the world are for the most part unnatural -(_Unnatur_). These come of themselves in later years. Treat children -like children, that they may remain the longer uncorrupted. A boy whose -acutest faculties are his senses, and who has no perception of anything -abstract, must first of all be made acquainted with the world as it -presents itself to the senses. Let this be shown him in nature herself, -or where this is impossible, in faithful drawings or models. Thereby -can he, even in play, learn how the various objects are to be named. -Comenius alone has pointed out the right road in this matter. By all -means reduce the wretched exercises of the memory.” Elsewhere he gives -instances of the sort of things to which this method should be applied. -1st. Man. Here he would use pictures of foreigners and wild men, also a -skeleton, a hand in spirits, and other objects still more appropriate -to a surgical museum. 2nd. Animals. Only such animals are to be depicted -as it is useful to know about, because there is much that ought to be -known, and a good method of instruction must shorten rather than increase -the hours of study. Articles of commerce made from the animals may also -be exhibited. 3rd. Trees and plants. Only the most important are to be -selected. Of these the seeds also must be shown, and cubes formed of the -different woods. Gardeners’ and farmers’ implements are to be explained. -4th. Minerals and chemical substances. 5th. Mathematical instruments for -weighing and measuring; also the air-pump, siphon, and the like. The form -and motion of the earth are to be explained with globes and maps. 6th. -Trades. The use of various tools is to be taught. 7th. History. This is -to be illustrated by engravings of historical events. 8th. Commerce. -Samples of commodities may be produced. 9th. The younger children -should be shown pictures of familiar objects about the house and its -surroundings. - -§ 10. We see from this list that Basedow contemplated giving his -educational course the charm of variety. Indeed, with that candour in -acknowledging mistakes which partly makes amends for the effrontery too -common in the trumpetings of his own performances, past, present, and to -come, he confesses that when he began the “Elementary” he had exaggerated -notions of the amount boys were capable of learning, and that he had -subsequently very much contracted his proposed curriculum. And even -“the Revolution,” which was to introduce so much new learning into the -schools, could not afford entirely to neglect the old. However pleased -parents might be with the novel acquirements of their children, they were -not likely to be satisfied without the usual knowledge of Latin, and -still less would they tolerate the neglect of French, which in German -polite society of the eighteenth century was the recognised substitute -for the vulgar tongue. These, then, must be taught. But the old methods -might be abandoned, if not the old subjects. Basedow proposed to teach -both French and Latin by _conversation_. Let a cabinet of models, or -something of the kind, be shown the children; let them learn the names of -the different objects in Latin or French; then let questions be asked in -those languages, and the right answers at first put into the children’s -mouths. When they have in this way acquired some knowledge of the -language, they may apply it to the translating of an easy book. Basedow -does not claim originality for the conversational method. He appeals -to the success with which it had been already used in teaching French. -“Are the French governesses,” he asks, “who, without vocabularies and -grammars, first by conversation, then by reading, teach their language -very successfully and very rapidly in schools of from thirty to forty -children, better teachers than most masters in our Latin schools?” - -§ 11. On the subject of religion the instruction was to be quite as -original as in matters of less importance. The teachers were to give an -impartial account of all religions, and nothing but “natural religion” -was to be inculcated. - -§ 12. The key-note of the whole system was to be—_everything according to -nature_. The natural desires and inclinations of the children were to be -educated and directed aright, but in no case to be suppressed. - -§ 13. These, then, were the principles and the methods which, as Basedow -believed, were to revolutionise education through the success of the -Philanthropinum. Basedow himself, as we might infer from Goethe’s -description of him, was by no means a model director for the model -Institution, but he was fortunate in his assistants. Of these he had -three at the time of the public examination, of whom Wolke is said to -have been the ablest. - -§ 14. A lively description of the examination was afterwards published -by Herr Schummel of Magdeburg, under the title of “Fred’s Journey to -Dessau.” It purports to be written by a boy of twelve years old, and to -describe what took place without attempting criticism. A few extracts -will give us a notion of the instruction carried on in the Philanthropin. - -“I have just come from a visit with my father to the Philanthropinum, -where I saw Herr Basedow, Herr Wolke, Herr Simon, Herr Schweighäuser, -and the little Philanthropinists. I am delighted with all that I have -seen, and hardly know where to begin my description of it. There are -two large white houses, and near them a field with trees. A pupil—not -one of the regular scholars, but of those they call Famulants (a poorer -class, who were servitors)—received us at the door, and asked if we -wished to see Herr Basedow. We said ‘Yes,’ and he took us into the -other house, where we found Herr Basedow in a dressing-gown, writing at -a desk. We came at an inconvenient time, and Herr Basedow said he was -very busy. He was very friendly, however, and promised to visit us in -the evening. We then went into the other house, and enquired for Herr -Wolke.” By him they were taken to the scholars. “They have,” says Fred, -“their hair cut very short, and no wig-maker is employed. Their throats -are quite open, and their shirt-collars fall back over their coats.” -Further on he describes the examination. “The little ones have gone -through the oddest performances. They play at ‘word of command.’ Eight or -ten stand in a line like soldiers, and Herr Wolke is officer. He gives -the word in Latin, and they must do whatever he says. For instance, -when he says _Claudite oculos_, they all shut their eyes; when he says -_Circumspicite_, they look about them; _Imitamini sartorem_, they all sew -like tailors; _Imitamini sutorem_, they draw the waxed thread like the -cobblers. Herr Wolke gives a thousand different commands in the drollest -fashion. Another game, ‘the hiding game,’ I will also teach you. Some -one writes a name, and hides it from the children—the name of some part -of the body, or of a plant, or animal, or metal—and the children guess -what it is. Whoever guesses right gets an apple or a piece of cake. One -of the visitors wrote _Intestina_, and told the children it was a part of -the body. Then the guessing began. One guessed _caput_, another _nasus_, -another _os_, another _manus_, _pes_, _digiti_, _pectus_, and so forth, -for a long time; but one of them hit it at last. Next Herr Wolke wrote -the name of a beast, a quadruped. Then came the guesses: _leo_, _ursus_, -_camelus_, _elephas_, and so on, till one guessed right—it was _mus_. -Then a town was written, and they guessed Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, -till a child won with St. Petersburg. They had another game, which was -this: Herr Wolke gave the command in Latin, and they imitated the noises -of different animals, and made us laugh till we were tired. They roared -like lions, crowed like cocks, mewed like cats, just as they were bid.” - -§ 15. The subject that was next handled had also the effect of making the -strangers laugh, till a severe reproof from Herr Wolke restored their -gravity. A picture was brought, in which was represented a sad-looking -woman, whose person indicated the approaching arrival of another subject -for education. From one part of the picture it also appeared that the -prospective mother, with a prodigality of forethought, had got ready -clothing for both a boy and a girl. After a warning from Herr Wolke, -that this was a most serious and important subject, the children were -questioned on the topics the picture suggested. They were further taught -the debt of gratitude they owed to their mothers, and the German fiction -about the stork was dismissed with due contempt. - -§ 16. Next came the examination in arithmetic. Here there seems to have -been nothing remarkable, except that all the rules were worked _vivâ -voce_. From the arithmetic Herr Wolke went on to an “Attempt at various -small drawings.” He asked the children what he should draw. Some one -answered _leonem_. He then pretended he was drawing a lion, but put a -beak to it; whereupon the children shouted _Non est Leo—leones non habent -rostrum!_ He went on to other subjects, as the children directed him, -sometimes going wrong that the children might put him right. In the next -exercise dice were introduced, and the children threw to see who should -give an account of an engraving. The engravings represented workmen at -their different trades, and the child had to explain the process, the -tools, &c. A lesson on ploughing and harrowing was given in French, and -another, on Alexander’s expedition to India, in Latin. Four of the pupils -translated passages from Curtius and from Castalio’s Bible, which were -read to them. “These children,” said the teacher, “knew not a word of -Latin a year ago.” “The listeners were well pleased with the Latin,” -writes Fred, “except two or three, whom I heard grumbling that this was -all child’s play, and that if Cicero, Livy, and Horace were introduced, -it would soon be seen what was the value of Philanthropinist Latin.” -After the examination, two comedies were acted by the children, one in -French, the other in German. - -Most of the strangers seem to have left Dessau with a favourable -impression of the Philanthropin. They were especially struck with the -brightness and animation of the children. - -§ 17. How far did the Philanthropinum really deserve their good opinion? -The conclusion to which we are driven by Fred’s narrative is, that -Basedow carried to excess his principle—“Treat children as children, that -they may remain the longer uncorrupted;” and that the Philanthropinum -was, in fact, nothing but a good infant-school. Surely none of the -thirteen children who were the subjects of Basedow’s experiments could -have been more than ten years old. But if we consider Basedow’s system -to have been intended for _children_, say between the ages of six and -ten, we must allow that it possessed great merits. At the very beginning -of a boy’s learning, it has always been too much the custom to make -him hate the sight of a book, and escape at every opportunity from -school-work, by giving him difficult tasks, and neglecting his acutest -faculties. “Children love motion and noise,” says Basedow: “here is -a hint from nature.” Yet the youngest children in most schools are -expected to keep quiet and to sit at their books for as many hours as -the youths of seventeen or eighteen. Their vivacity is repressed with -the cane. Their delight in exercising their hands and eyes and ears -is taken no notice of; and they are required to keep their attention -fixed on subjects often beyond their comprehension, and almost always -beyond the range of their interests. Everyone who has had experience -in teaching boys knows how hard it is to get them to throw themselves -heartily into any task whatever; and probably this difficulty arises in -many cases, from the habits of inattention and of shirking school-work, -which the boys have acquired almost necessarily from the dreariness of -their earliest lessons.[150] Basedow determined to change all this; and -in the Philanthropin no doubt he succeeded. We have already seen some of -the expedients by which he sought to render school-work pleasurable. He -appealed, wherever it was possible, to the children’s senses; and these, -especially the sight, were trained with great care by exercises, such -as drawing, shooting at a mark, &c. One of these exercises, intended -to give quick perception, bears a curious likeness to what has since -been practised in a very different educational system. A picture, with -a somewhat varied subject, was exhibited for a short time and removed. -The boys had then, either verbally or on paper, to give an account of -it, naming the different objects in proper order. Houdin, if I rightly -remember, tells us that the young thieves of Paris are required by their -masters to make a mental inventory of the contents of a shop window, -which they see only as they walk rapidly by. Other exercises of the -Philanthropinum connected the pupils with more honourable callings. -They became acquainted with both skilled and unskilled manual labour. -Every boy was taught a handicraft, such as carpentering and turning, -and was put to such tasks as threshing corn. Basedow’s division of the -twenty-four hours was the following: Eight hours for sleep, eight for -food and amusement, and, for the children of the rich, six hours of -school-work, and two of manual labour. In the case of the children of -the poor, he would have the division of the last eight hours inverted, -and would give for school-work two, and for manual labour six. The -development of the body was specially cared for in the Philanthropinum. -Gymnastics were now first introduced into modern schools; and the boys -were taken long expeditions on foot—the commencement, I believe, of a -practice now common throughout Germany. - -§ 18. As I have already said, Basedow proved a very unfit person to be -at the head of the model Institution. Many of his friends agreed with -Herder, that he was not fit to have calves entrusted to him, much less -children. He soon resigned his post; and was succeeded by Campe, who had -been one of the visitors at the public examination. Campe did not remain -long at the Philanthropinum; but left it to set up a school, on like -principles, at Hamburg. His fame now rests on his writings for the young; -one of which—“Robinson Crusoe the Younger”—is still a general favourite. - -Other distinguished men became connected with the Philanthropin—among -them Salzmann, and Matthison the poet—and the number of pupils rose -to over fifty; gathered we are told, from all parts of Europe between -Riga and Lisbon. But this number is by no means a fair measure of the -interest, nay, enthusiasm, which the experiment excited. We find Pastor -Oberlin raising money on his wife’s earrings to send a donation. We find -the philosopher Kant prophesying that quite another race of men would -grow up, now that education according to Nature had been introduced. - -§ 19. These hopes were disappointed. Kant confesses as much in the -following passage in his treatise “On Pædagogy”:— - -“One fancies, indeed, that experiments in education would not be -necessary; and that we might judge by the understanding whether any plan -would turn out well or ill. But this is a great mistake. Experience shows -that often in our experiments we get quite opposite results from what we -had anticipated. We see, too, that since experiments are necessary, it is -not in the power of one generation to form a complete plan of education. -The only experimental school which, to some extent, made a beginning in -clearing the road, was the Institute at Dessau. This praise at least must -be allowed it, notwithstanding the many faults which could be brought up -against it—faults which are sure to show themselves when we come to the -results of our experiments, and which merely prove that fresh experiments -are necessary. It was the only School in which the teachers had liberty -to work according to their own methods and schemes, and where they were -in free communication both among themselves and with all learned men -throughout Germany.” - -§ 20. We observe here, that Kant speaks of the Philanthropinum as a -thing of the past. It was finally closed in 1793. But even from Kant -we learn that the experiment had been by no means a useless one. The -conservatives, of course, did not neglect to point out that young -Philanthropinists, when they left school, were not in all respects -the superiors of their fellow-creatures. But, although no one could -pretend that the Philanthropinum had effected a tithe of what Basedow -promised, and the “friends of humanity” throughout Europe expected, it -had introduced many new ideas, which in time had their influence, even -in the schools of the opposite party. Moreover, teachers who had been -connected with the Philanthropinum founded schools on similar principles -in different parts of Germany and Switzerland, as Bahrd’s at Heidesheim, -and Salzmann’s celebrated school at Schnepfenthal, which is, I believe, -still thriving. Their doctrines, too, made converts among other masters, -the most celebrated of whom was Meierotto of Berlin. - -§ 21. Little remains to be said of Basedow. He lived chiefly at Dessau, -earning his subsistence by private tuition, but giving offence by his -irregularities. In 1790, when visiting Magdeburg, he died, after a short -illness, in his sixty-seventh year. His last words were, “I wish my body -to be dissected for the good of my fellow-creatures.” - - Basedow has a posthumous connexion with this country as the - great-grandfather of Professor Max Müller. Basedow’s son became - “Regierungs Präsident,” in Dessau. The President’s daughter, - born in 1800, became the wife of the poet Wilhelm Müller, and - the mother of Max Müller. Max Müller has contributed a life of - his great-grandfather to the _Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie_. - - Those who read German and care about either Basedow or Comenius - should get _Die Didaktik Basedows im Vergleiche zur Didaktik - des Comenius von_ Dr. Petru Garbovicianu (Bucarest, C. Gobl), - 1887. This is a very good piece of work; it is printed in roman - type, and the price is only 1_s._ 6_d._ - - Since the above was in type I have got an important book, - _L’Education en Allemagne au Dix-huitième Siècle: Basedow et le - Philanthropinisme_, by A. Pinloche (Paris, A. Colin, 1889.) - - - - -XVI. - -PESTALOZZI. - -1746-1827. - - -§ 1. _Qui facit per alium facit per se._ It is thus the law holds us -accountable for the action of others which we direct. By the extension -of this rule we immensely increase the personality of great writers and -may credit them with vast spheres of action which never come within their -consciousness. No man gains and suffers more from this consideration -than Rousseau. On the one hand, we may attribute to him the crimes of -Robespierre and Saint-Just; on the other Pestalozzi was instigated by him -to turn to farming and—education. - -In treating of Rousseau as an educational reformer I passed over a life -in which almost every incident tends to weaken the effect of his words. -With Pestalozzi we must turn to his life for the true source of his -writings and the best comment on them. - -§ 2. John Henry Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746. His father dying -when he was five years old, he was brought up with a brother and sister -by a pious and self-denying mother and by a faithful servant “Babeli,” -who had comforted the father in his last hours by promising to stay -with his family. Thus Pestalozzi had an advantage denied to Rousseau -and denied as it would seem to Locke; there was scope for his home -affections, and the head was not developed before the heart. When he was -sent to a day-school he became to some extent the laughing stock of his -companions who dubbed him Harry Oddity of Foolborough; but he gained -their good-will by his unselfishness. It was remembered that on the shock -of an earthquake when teachers and taught fled from the school building -Harry Oddity was induced to go back and bring away what his companions -considered precious. His holidays he spent with his grandfather the -pastor of a village some three miles from Zurich, where the lad learnt -the condition of the rural poor and saw what a good man could do for -them. He always looked back to these visits as an important element in -his education. “The best way for a child to acquire the fear of God,” he -wrote, “is for him to see and hear a true Christian.” The grandfather’s -example so affected him that he wished to follow in his steps, and he -became a student of theology.[151] - -§ 3. Even as a student Pestalozzi proved that he was no ordinary man. -In his time there was great intellectual and moral enthusiasm among the -students of the little Swiss University. Some distinguished professors, -especially Bodmer, had awakened a craving for the old Swiss virtues -of plain living and high thinking; and a band of students, among whom -Lavater was leader and Pestalozzi played a prominent part, became eager -reformers. The citizens of the great towns like Geneva and Zurich had -become in effect privileged classes; and as their spokesmen the Geneva -magistrates condemned the _Contrat Social_ and the _Emile_. This raised -the indignation of the reforming students at Zurich; and though their -organ, a periodical called the _Memorial_, kept clear of politics, one -Muller wrote a paper which contained some strong language, and this -was held to be proof of a conspiracy. Muller fled and was banished. -Pestalozzi and some other of his friends were imprisoned. The _Memorial_ -was suppressed. - -§ 4. It is in this _Memorial_, a weekly paper edited by Lavater who -was five years Pestalozzi’s senior that we have Pestalozzi’s earliest -writing. We find him coming forward as “a man of aspirations.” No one -he says can object to his expressing his wishes. And “wishes” with a -man of 19 are usually hopes. Among other wishes he says: “I would that -some one would draw up in a simple manner a few principles of education -intelligible to everybody; that some generous people would then share the -expense of printing, so that the pamphlet might be given to the public -for nothing or next to nothing. I would then have clergymen distribute it -to all fathers and mothers, so that they might bring up their children in -a rational and Christian manner. But,” he adds, “perhaps this is asking -too much at a time.” - -The _Memorial_ was suppressed because “the privileged classes” knew that -it was in the hands of their opponents. Pestalozzi then and always felt -keenly the oppression to which the peasants were exposed; and he spoke -of “the privileged” as men on stilts who must descend among the people -before they could secure a natural and firm position. He also satirises -them in some of his fables, as, _e.g._, that of the “Fishes and the -Pike.” “The fishes in a pond brought an accusation against the pike who -were making great ravages among them. The judge, an old pike, said -that their complaint was well founded, and that the defendants, to make -amends, should allow two ordinary fish every year to become pike.” - -§ 5. By this time Pestalozzi had given up theology and had taken to the -law. Now under the influence of Rousseau, or rather of the craving for -a simple “natural” life which found its most eloquent expression in -Rousseau’s writing, Pestalozzi made a bonfire of his MSS. and decided on -becoming a farmer. - -§ 6. There was another person concerned in this decision. In his -childhood he had one day ventured into the shop of one of the leading -tradesmen, Herr Schulthess, bent on procuring for his farthings some -object of delight; but he found there a little shop-keeper, Anna -Schulthess, seven years his senior, who discouraged his extravagance and -persuaded him to keep his money. Anna and he since those days had become -engaged—not at all to the satisfaction of her parents. Their intimacy -had been strengthened by their concern for a common friend, a young man -named Bluntschli, who died of consumption. This friend, three years -older than Pestalozzi, seems to have understood him thoroughly; and in -the parting advice he gave him there was a warning which happily for the -general good was in after years neglected. “I am going,” said Bluntschli, -“and you will be left alone. Avoid any career in which you might become -the victim of your own goodness and trust, and choose some quiet life in -which you will run no risk. Above all, do not take part in any important -undertaking without having at your side a man who by his cool judgment, -knowledge of men and things, and unshakable fidelity may be able to -protect you from the dangers to which you will be exposed.” - -§ 7. When the friendship with Anna Schulthess had ripened into a -betrothal Pestalozzi spent a year in the neighbourhood of Bern learning -farming under a man then famous for his innovations. His new ideas -Pestalozzi absorbed very readily. “I had come to him,” he says, “a -political visionary, though with many profound and correct attainments, -views, and anticipations in matters political. I went away from him just -as great an agricultural visionary, though with many enlarged and correct -ideas and intentions with regard to agriculture.” - -§ 8. During his “learning year” he kept up a correspondence with his -betrothed, and the letters of both, which have been preserved, differ -very widely from love-letters in general. Of himself Pestalozzi gives an -account which shows that in part at least he could see himself as others -saw him. “Dearest,” he writes, “those of my faults which appear to me -most important in relation to the situation in which I may be placed in -after-life are improvidence, incautiousness, and a want of presence of -mind to meet unexpected changes in my prospects.... Of my great, and -indeed very reprehensible negligence in all matters of etiquette, and -generally in all matters which are not in themselves of importance, I -need not speak; anyone may see them at first sight of me. I also owe you -the open confession, my dear, that I shall always consider my duties -toward my beloved partner subordinate to my duties towards my country; -and that, although I shall be the tenderest husband, nevertheless, I -hold myself bound to be inexorable to the tears of my wife if she should -ever attempt to restrain me by them from the direct performance of my -duties as a citizen, whatever this must lead to. My wife shall be the -confidante of my heart, the partner of all my most secret counsels. A -great and honest simplicity shall reign in my house. And one thing more. -My life will not pass without important and very critical undertakings. -I shall not forget ... my first resolutions to devote myself wholly to -my country. I shall never, from fear of man, refrain from speaking when -I see that the good of my country calls upon me to speak. My whole heart -is my country’s: I will risk all to alleviate the need and misery of -my fellow-countrymen. What consequences may the undertakings to which -I feel myself urged on draw after them! how unequal to them am I! and -how imperative is my duty to show you the possibility of the great -dangers which they may bring upon me! My dear, my beloved friend, I have -now spoken candidly of my character and my aspirations. Reflect upon -everything. If the traits which it was my duty to mention diminish your -respect for me, you will still esteem my sincerity, and you will not -think less highly of me, that I did not take advantage of your want of -acquaintance with my character for the attainment of my inmost wishes.” - -§ 9. The young lady addressed was worthy of her lover. “Such nobleness, -such elevation of character, reach my very soul,” said she. With -equal nobleness she encouraged Pestalozzi in his schemes and took the -consequences without a murmur during their long married life of 46 years. - -§ 10. Full of new ideas about farming Pestalozzi now thought he saw his -way to making a fortune. He took some poor land near Birr not far from -Zurich, and persuaded a banking firm to advance money with which he -proposed to cultivate vegetables and madder. In September, 1769, he was -married, and six months later the pair settled in a new house, “Neuhof,” -which Pestalozzi had built on his land. - -§ 11. But in spite of his excellent ideas and great industry, his -speculation failed. The bankers soon withdrew their money. Pestalozzi was -not cautious enough for them. However, his wife’s friends prevented an -immediate collapse. - -§ 12. But before he had any reason to doubt the success of his -speculation Pestalozzi had begun to reproach himself with being engrossed -by it. What had become of all his thoughts for the people? Was he not -spending his strength entirely to gain the prosperity of himself and his -household? These thoughts came to him with all the more force when a son -was born to him; and at this time they naturally connected themselves -with education. He had now seen a good deal of the degraded state of the -peasantry. How were they to be raised out of it? - -§ 13. To Pestalozzi there seemed one answer and one only. This was -_by education_. To many people in the present day it might seem that -“education,” when quite successful, would qualify labourers to become -clerks. This was not the notion of Pestalozzi. Rousseau had completely -freed him from bondage to the Renascence, and education did not mean to -him a training in the use of books. He looked at the children of the -lowest class of the peasants and asked himself what they needed to raise -them. Knowledge would not do it. “The thing was not that they should -know what they did not know, but that they should behave as they did -not behave” (_supra_, p. 169); and the road to right action lay through -right feeling. If they could be made conscious that they were loved and -cared for, their hearts would open and give back love and respect in -return. More than this, they must be taught not only to respect their -elders but also themselves. They must be taught to help themselves and -contribute to their own maintenance. So Pestalozzi resolved to take into -his own house some of the very poorest children, to bring them up in -an atmosphere of love, and to instruct them in field-work and spinning -which would soon partly (as Pestalozzi hoped, wholly) pay for their keep. -Thus, just at the time when the experiment for himself failed he began -for others an experiment that seemed likely to add indefinitely to his -difficulties. - -§ 14. In the winter of 1774 the first children were taken into Neuhof. -The consequences to his wife and to his little son only four years old -might have vanquished the courage of a less ardent philanthropist. “Our -position entailed much suffering on my wife;” he writes, “but nothing -could shake us in our resolve to devote our time, strength and remaining -fortune to the simplification of the instruction and domestic education -of the people.” - -§ 15. These children, at first not more than 20 in number, Pestalozzi -treated as his own. They worked with him in the summer in the garden and -fields, in winter in the house. Very little time was given to separate -lessons, the children often learning while they worked with their hands. -Pestalozzi held that talking should come before reading and writing; and -he practised them in conversation on subjects taken from their every day -life. They also repeated passages from the Bible till they knew them by -heart. - -§ 16. In a few months, as we are told, the appearance of these poor -little creatures had entirely changed; though fed only on bread and -vegetables they looked strong and hearty, and their faces gained an -expression of cheerfulness, frankness and intelligence which till then -had been totally wanting. They made good progress with their manual work -as well as with the associated lessons, and took pleasure in both. In -all they said and did, they seemed to show their consciousness of their -benefactor’s kind care of them. - -§ 17. This experiment naturally drew much attention to it, and when it -had gone on over a year Pestalozzi was induced by his friend Iselin -of Basel to insert in the _Ephemerides_ (a paper of which Iselin was -editor), an “appeal ... for an institution intended to provide education -and work for poor country children.” In this appeal Pestalozzi narrates -his experience. “I have proved,” says he, “that it is not regular work -that stops the development of so many poor children, but the turmoil and -irregularity of their lives, the privations they endure, the excesses -they indulge in when opportunity offers, the wild rebellious passions -so seldom restrained, and the hopelessness to which they are so often -a prey. I have proved that children after having lost health, strength -and courage in a life of idleness and mendicity have, when once set -to regular work quickly recovered their health and spirits and grown -rapidly. I have found that when taken out of their abject condition they -soon become kindly, trustful and sympathetic; that even the most degraded -of them are touched by kindness, and that the eyes of the child who has -been steeped in misery, grow bright with pleasure and surprise, when, -after years of hardship, he sees a gentle friendly hand stretched out to -help him; and I am convinced that _when a child’s heart has been touched -the consequences will be great for his development and entire moral -character_.” - -Pestalozzi therefore would have the very poorest children brought up in -private establishments where agriculture and industry were combined, and -where they would learn to work steadily and carefully with their hands, -the chief part of their time being devoted to this manual work, and their -instruction and education being associated with it. And he asks for -support in greatly increasing the establishment he has already begun. - -§ 18. Encouraged by the support he received and still more by his love -for the children and his own too sanguine disposition Pestalozzi enlarged -his undertaking. The consequence was bankruptcy. Several causes conspired -to bring about this result. Whatever he might do for the children, he -could not educate the parents, and these were many of them beggars with -the ordinary vices of their class. With the usual discernment of such -people they soon came to the conclusion that Pestalozzi was making a -fortune out of their children’s labour; so they haunted Neuhof, treated -Pestalozzi with the greatest insolence, and often induced their children -to run away in their new clothes. This would account for much, but there -was another cause of failure that accounted for a great deal more. -This was Pestalozzi’s extreme incapacity as an administrator. Even his -industrial experiment he carried on in such a way that it proved a source -of expense rather than of profit. He says himself, that, contrary to his -own principles, which should have led him to begin at the beginning and -lay a good foundation in teaching, he put the children to work that was -too difficult for them, wanted them to spin fine thread before their -hands got steadiness and skill by exercise on the coarser kind, and to -manufacture muslin before they could turn out well-made cotton goods. -“Before I was aware of it,” he adds, “I was deeply involved in debt, and -the greater part of my dear wife’s property and expectations had, as it -were, in an instant gone up in smoke.” - -§ 19. The precise arrangement made with the creditors we do not know. The -bare facts remain that the children were sent away, and that the land was -let for the creditors’ benefit; but Pestalozzi remained in the house. -This was settled in 1780. - -§ 20. We have now come to the most gloomy period in Pestalozzi’s history, -a period of eighteen years, and those the best years in a man’s life, -which Pestalozzi spent in great distress from poverty without and doubt -and despondency within. When he got into difficulties, his friends, he -tells us, loved him without hope: “in the whole surrounding district it -was everywhere said that I was a lost man, that nothing more could be -done for me.” “In his only too elegant country house,” we are told, “he -often wanted money, bread, fuel, to protect himself against hunger and -cold.” “Eighteen years!—what a time for a soul like his to wait! History -passes lightly over such a period. Ten, twenty, thirty years—it makes but -a cipher difference if nothing great happens in them. But with what agony -must he have seen day after day, year after year gliding by, who in his -fervent soul longed to labour for the good of mankind and yet looked in -vain for the opportunity!” (Palmer.) - -§ 21. But he who was always ready to sacrifice himself for others now -found someone, and that a stranger, ready to make a great sacrifice for -him. A servant, named Elizabeth Naef, heard of the disaster and distress -at Neuhof, and her master having just died she resolved to go to the -rescue. At first Pestalozzi refused her help. He did not wish her to -share the poverty of his household, and he felt himself out of sympathy -with her “evangelical” form of piety. But Elizabeth declared she had come -to stay, and when Pestalozzi found he could not shake her determination -he consented, saying, “Well, you will find after all that God is in our -house also.” - -§ 22. To this pious sensible but illiterate peasant woman Pestalozzi -was fond of tracing many of his ideas. She was the original of his -_Gertrude_, and it was of her he wrote: “God’s sun pursues its path -from morning to evening; yet your eye detects no movement, your ear no -sound. Even when it goes down, you know that it will rise again and -continue to ripen the fruits of the earth. Extreme as it may seem, I am -not ashamed to say that this is an image of Gertrude as of every woman -who makes her house a temple of the living God and wins heaven for her -husband and children.” (_Leonard and Gertrude_). She was invaluable at -Neuhof and restored comfort to the household. In after years she managed -the establishment at Yverdun and married one of the Krüsis who were -Pestalozzi’s assistants. - -§ 23. Writing of the gloomy years at Neuhof Pestalozzi afterwards said; -“My head was grey, yet I was still a child. With a heart in which all -the foundations of life were shaken, I still pursued in those stormy -times my favourite object, but my way was one of prejudice, of passion -and of error.” But with Pestalozzi self-depreciation had “almost grown -the habit of his soul,” and in his writings at Neuhof at this period -we find no traces of this prejudice, passion and error from which he -supposes himself to have suffered. He certainly did not abandon his love -of humanity; and in his sacrifice for it he sought a religious basis. -In these Neuhof days he wrote: “Christ teaches us by His example and -doctrine to sacrifice not only our possessions but ourselves for the -good of others, and shews us that nothing we have received is absolutely -ours but is merely entrusted to us by God to be piously employed in the -service of charity.” (Quoted by Guimps. R’s trans. 72.) Whatever were his -doubts and difficulties, he never swerved from pursuing the great object -of his life, and nothing could cloud his mind as to the true method of -attaining that object. As he afterwards wrote to Gessner (_Wie Gertrud_ -u.s.w.), “Even while I was the sport of men who condemned me I never lost -sight for a moment of the object I had in view, which was the removal of -the causes of the misery that I saw on all sides of me. My strength too -kept on increasing, and my own misfortunes taught me valuable truths. -I knew the people as no one else did. What deceived no one else always -deceived me, but what deceived everybody else deceived me no longer.... -My own sufferings have enabled me to understand the sufferings of the -people and their causes as no man without suffering can understand them. -I suffered what the people suffered and saw them as no one else saw them; -and strange as it may seem, I was never more profoundly convinced of the -fundamental truths on which I had based my undertaking than when I saw -that I had failed.” (R’s. Guimps 74.) - -§ 24. Pestalozzi still had a few friends who did not despise the dreamer -of dreams. Among them was the editor of the _Ephemerides_, Iselin. -This friend encouraged him to write, and there soon appeared in the -_Ephemerides_ a series of reflexions under the title of “The Evening Hour -of a Hermit.” Not many editors would have printed these aphorisms, and -they attracted little or no attention at the time, but they have proved -worth attending to. “The fruit of Pestalozzi’s past years, they are,” -says Raumer, “at the same time the seed-corn of the years that were to -come, the plan and key to his action in pedagogy.... The drawing of the -architect of genius contains his work, even though the architect himself -has not skill enough to carry out his own design.” (Quoted by Otto -Fischer).[152] - -§ 25. What was the connexion between Pestalozzi’s belief at this season -and complete belief in dogmatic Christianity? The question is one that -will always be asked and can never, I think, be fully answered. In the -days preceding the French Revolution it was a proof of wisdom to “Cleave -ever to the sunnier side of doubt, and cling to Faith,” even though the -Faith were “beyond the forms of Faith” (see Tennyson’s _Ancient Sage_). -But Pestalozzi did far more than this. He traced all virtue and strength -in the people to belief in the Fatherhood of God; and he saw in unbelief -the severance of all the bonds of society. The “Hermit” does not indeed -use the phrases common among “evangelical” Christians, but that he was -indeed a Christian is established not only by the general tone of his -aphorisms but still more clearly by his last words: “The Man of God, who -with his sufferings and death has restored to humanity the lost feeling -of the child’s disposition towards God is the Redeemer of the world; he -is the sacrificed Priest of the Lord; he is the Mediator between God -and God-forgetting mankind. His teaching is pure justice, educating -philosophy of the people; it is the revelation of God the Father to the -lost race of his children.” - -§ 26. The “Evening Hour” remaining almost unnoticed, Pestalozzi’s friends -urged him to write something in a more popular form. So he set to work on -a tale which should depict the life of the peasantry and shew the causes -of their degradation and the cure. With extraordinary rapidity he wrote -between the lines of an old account book the first part of his “Leonard -and Gertrude.” The book, which was complete in itself, and through the -good offices of Iselin (of the _Ephemerides_), soon found a publisher, -suddenly sprang into immense popularity, a popularity of which nothing -but the “continuations” could ever have deprived it. In the works of a -great artist we see natural objects represented with perfect fidelity -and yet with a life breathed into them by genius, which is wanting or -at least is not visible to common eyes in the originals. Just so do -we find Swiss peasant life depicted by Pestalozzi. The delineation is -evidently true to nature; and, at the same time, shows Nature as she -reveals herself to genius. But for this work something more than genius -was necessary, viz., sympathy and love. In the preface to the first -edition, he says, “In that which I here relate, and which I have, for the -most part, seen and heard myself in the course of an active life, I have -taken care not once to add my own opinion to what I saw and heard the -people themselves saying, feeling; believing, judging, and attempting.” -In a later edition (1800) he says, “I desired nothing then, and I desire -nothing else now, as the object of my life, but the welfare of the -people, whom I love, and whom I feel to be miserable as few feel them to -be miserable, because I have with them borne their sufferings as few have -borne them.” - -§ 27. Wherever German was read this book excited vast interest, and -though it seemed to most people only a good tale, it met with some more -discerning readers. The Bern Agricultural Society sent the author their -thanks and a gold medal, and Pestalozzi was at once recognised as a man -who understood the peasantry and had good ideas for raising them. The -book is and must remain a classic, but Pestalozzi in his zeal to spread -the truth added again and again “continuations,” and these became less -and less popular in the method of exposition.[153] - -§ 28. Here and there we get glimpses of the trials Pestalozzi had gone -through in his industrial experiment. “The love and patience,” he writes, -“with which Gertrude bore with the disorderly and untrained little ones -was almost past belief. Their eyes were often anywhere but on their yarn, -so that this would now be too thick, and now too thin. When they had -spoiled it, they would watch for a moment when Gertrude was not looking, -and throw it out of the window by the handful, until they found that she -discovered the trick when she weighed their work at night.” (E. C’s. -trans., p. 122.) And in this connexion Pestalozzi preached his doctrine -of perfect attainment. “‘What you can’t do blindfold,’” said Harry, “‘you -can’t do at all.’” (_ib._) - -§ 29. “Gertrude,” we are told, “seemed quite unable to explain her method -in words;” and here no doubt Pestalozzi was speaking of himself; but like -Gertrude he “would let fall some significant remark which went to the -root of the whole matter of education.” As an instance we may take what -Gertrude said to the schoolmaster: “You should do for the children what -their parents fail to do for them. The reading, writing, and arithmetic -are not after all what they most need. It is all well and good for them -to learn something, but the really important thing for them is to _be_ -something.” When this truth is fully realized by teachers and school -managers there will be some hope for national education. - -§ 30. “Although Gertrude exerted herself to develop very early the manual -dexterity of her children, she was in no haste for them to learn to read -and write; but she took pains to teach them early how to speak: for, as -she said, ‘Of what use is it for a person to be able to read and write if -he cannot speak, since reading and writing are only an artificial sort -of speech.’ ... She did not adopt the tone of an instructor towards the -children ... and her verbal instruction seemed to vanish in the spirit of -her real activity, in which it always had its source. The result of her -system was that each child was skilful, intelligent, and active to the -full extent that its age and development allowed.” (_Ib._ p. 130.) - -§ 31. In this book we see that knowledge is treated as valueless unless -it has a basis in action. “The pastor was soon convinced that all -verbal instruction in so far as it aims at true human wisdom and at the -highest goal of this wisdom, true religion, ought to be subordinated -to a constant training in practical domestic labour.... So he strove -to lead the children without many words to a quiet industrious life, -and thus to lay the foundations of a silent worship of God and love of -humanity. To this end he connected every word of his brief religious -teachings with their actual every-day experience, so that when he spoke -of God and eternity, it seemed to them as if he were speaking of father -and mother, house and home; in short of the things with which they were -most familiar” (p. 156). Thus he built on the foundation laid by the -schoolmaster, who “cared for the children’s heads as he did for their -hearts, and demanded that whatever entered them should be plain and clear -as the silent moon in the sky. To insure this he taught them to see and -hear with accuracy, and cultivated their powers of attention” (p. 157). - -§ 32. With all his love for the children, an element of severity was -not wanting. Pestalozzi maintained that “love was only useful in the -education of men when in conjunction with fear: for they must learn to -root out thorns and thistles, which they never do of their own accord, -but only under compulsion and in consequence of training” (p. 157). - -§ 33. Just at the end of the book “the Duke” appoints a commission to -report on the success of the Bonal experiment, and Pestalozzi makes him -give the following order: “To insure thoroughness there must be among -the examiners men skilled in law and finance, merchants, clergymen, -government officials, schoolmasters, and physicians, _besides women -of different ranks and conditions of life_ who shall view the matter -with their woman’s eyes and be sure there is nothing visionary in the -background” (p. 180). In this respect Pestalozzi is in advance of us -still. No woman has yet sat on an educational commission. - -§ 34. Thus we find Pestalozzi at the age of thirty-five turning author, -and for the next six or seven years he worked indefatigably with his -pen. Most men of genius have some leading purpose which unites their -varied activities, and this was specially true of Pestalozzi. He never -lost sight of his one object, which was the elevation of the people; -and this he held to be attainable only by means of education properly so -called. The success of the first part of _Leonard and Gertrude_ he now -endeavoured to turn to account in spreading true ideas of education. With -this intent he published _Christopher and Eliza: My Second Book for the -People_ (1782), which was a kind of commentary on _Leonard and Gertrude_. -But the public wished to be amused, not taught; and the book was a -failure. He was thus driven into the attempt already mentioned to catch -the public ear by continuing _Leonard and Gertrude_, thus endangering his -first and, as it proved, his only great success in literature. - -§ 35. To gain circulation for his ideas he also started a weekly paper -called the _Swiss Journal_, and issued it regularly throughout the year -1782; but the subscribers were so few that he was then obliged to give it -up. I have not the smallest doubt that it was, as Guimps says, full of -wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that readers of periodicals are likely -to care for.[154] - -§ 36. In the _Swiss Journal_ we get a hint of the analogy between the -development of the plant and of the man. This analogy, often as it had -been observed before, was never before so fruitful as it became in the -hands of Pestalozzi and Froebel. The passage quoted by Guimps is this: -“Teach me, summer day, that man formed from the dust of the earth, grows -and ripens like the plant rooted in the soil.” - -§ 37. Between the close of the year 1787 and 1797 Pestalozzi did not -publish anything. Though he had become famous, had made the acquaintance -of the greatest men in Germany, such as Goethe, Wieland, Herder, and -Fichte, and had been declared a “Citizen of the French Republic,” -together with Bentham, Tom Payne, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, -Madison, Klopstock, Kozciusko, &c., he was nearly starving, and, -naturally enough in that state of affairs both private and public, he -was in great despondency. As we have seen, his whole life and work -were founded on religion and on the only religion possible for us, the -Christian religion; but carried away by his political radicalism he seems -at this time to have doubted whether Christianity was more than the -highest human wisdom. In October, 1793, he wrote to a friend in Berlin: -“I doubt, not because I look on doubt as the truth, but because the sum -of the impressions of my life has driven faith with its blessings from my -soul. Thus impelled by my fate I see nothing more in Christianity but -the purest and noblest teaching of the victory of the spirit over the -flesh, the one possible means of raising our nature to its true nobility, -or in other words of establishing the empire of the reason over the -senses by the development of the purest feelings of the heart.” If this -was the lowest point to which Pestalozzi’s faith sank in the days of the -Revolution, it remained for practical purposes higher than the faith of -most professing Christians then and since. - -§ 38. At this time we find him complaining: “My agriculture swallows up -all my time. I am longing for winter with its leisure. My time passes -like a shadow.” He was then forty-six years of age and seemed to himself -to have done nothing. - -§ 39. Another five years he had to wait before he found an opportunity -for action. During this time, impelled by Fichte, he endeavoured to give -his ideas philosophic completeness, and after labouring for three years -with almost incredible toil he published in 1797 his “Inquiry into the -Course of Nature in the Development of the Human Race.” This book is -pronounced even by his biographer Guimps to be “prolix and obscure,” and, -says Pestalozzi, “nobody understood me.” But even in this book there was -much wisdom, had the world cared to learn; but the world had then no -place for Pestalozzi, and as he says at the end of this book, “without -even asking whether the fault was his or another’s, it crushed him with -its iron hammer as the mason crushes a useless stone.” He was, however, -not actually crushed, and a place was in time found for him. - -§ 40. The world might be pardoned for neglecting an _Inquiry_ which even -a biographer finds “prolix and obscure.” But why could it see nothing -in another book which Pestalozzi published in the same year, “Figures -to my ABC Book,” or according to its later title, “Fables,” a series of -apologues as witty and wise as those of Lessing.[155] - -§ 41. As I have said already (_supra_ p. 239) there seems a marked -distinction between thinkers and doers, at least in education, and we -seldom find a man great in both. But with all his weakness as a practical -man Pestalozzi proved great both as a thinker and a doer. He not only -thought out what should be done, but he also made splendid efforts to -do it. His first attempt at Neuhof was, as we have seen, all his own; -so was the next at Stanz; but afterwards he had to work with others, -and the work would have come to a standstill if he had not gained the -co-operation of the magistrates, the parents of the children, and his -own assistants. So he never again had the free hand, or at least the -free thought which bore such good fruit in his enforced cessation -from practice in the years between 1780 and 1798. It is well then to -ask, as his biographer Guimps has asked, what was the main outcome of -Pestalozzi’s thought before he plunged into action a second time in 1798. - -§ 42. Pestalozzi set himself to find a means of rescuing the people from -their poverty and degradation. This he held would last as long as their -moral and intellectual poverty lasted; so there was no hope except in an -education that should make them better and more intelligent. In studying -the children even of the most degraded parents he found the seeds, as it -were, of a wealth of faculties, sentiments, tastes, and capabilities, -which, if developed, might make them reasonable and upright human -beings. But what was called education did nothing of the kind. Instead -of developing the noblest part of the child’s nature it neglected this -entirely, and bringing to the child the knowledge, ideas, and feelings -of others, it tried to make him “learn” them. So “education” did little -beyond stifling the child’s individuality under a mass of borrowed -ideas. The schoolmaster worked, as it were, from without to within. This -Pestalozzi would change, and make education begin in the child and work -from within outwards. Acting on this principle he sought for some means -of developing the child’s inborn faculties, and he found as he says: -“Nature develops all the powers of humanity by exercising them; they -increase with use.” (_Evening Hour_, Aph. 22.) No means can be found of -exercising the higher faculties which can be compared with the actual -relations of daily life; so Pestalozzi declares: “The pure sentiment of -truth and wisdom is formed in the narrow circle of the relationships -which affect us, the circumstances which suggest our actions, and -the common knowledge which we cannot do without.” And taking as his -starting-point the needs, desires, and connexions of actual life he was -naturally led to associate the work of the body with that of the mind, -to develop industry and study side by side, to combine the workshop and -the school. With regard to instruction he was never tired of insisting -on the importance of thorough mastery in the first elements, and there -was to be no advance till this mastery was attained. (See what “Harry” -says, _supra_ p. 306.) “The schools,” he says (_E. H._, No. 28), “hastily -substitute an artificial method of words for the truer method of Nature -which knows no hurry but waits.” - -§ 43. In this account of Pestalozzi’s doctrine before 1798 I have as -usual followed M. Guimps. According to him Pestalozzi had discovered -“a principle which settles the law of man’s development, and is the -fundamental principle of education.” This principle M. Guimps briefly -states as follows: “All the real knowledge, useful powers, and noble -sentiments that a man can acquire are but the extension of his -individuality by the development of the powers and faculties that God -has put in him, and by their assimilation of the elements supplied by -the outer world. There exists for this development and the work of -assimilation a natural and necessary order, an order which the school -mostly sets at nought.” - -§ 44. Now we come to the period of Pestalozzi’s practical activity. In -1798 Switzerland was overrun by the French. Everything was remodelled -after the French pattern; and in conformity with the existing phase in -the model country the government of Switzerland was declared to be in the -hands of five “Directors.” Pestalozzi was a Radical, and he at once set -to work to serve the new government with his pen. The Directors gladly -welcomed such an ally as the author of _Leonard and Gertrude_, and they -made him editor of a newspaper intended to diffuse the revolutionary -principles among the people. Naturally enough they supposed that he, -like other people, “wanted” something; but when asked what he wanted -he replied simply that he wished to be a schoolmaster. The Directors, -especially Le Grand, took a genuine interest in education, and were -quite willing that Pestalozzi should be allowed a free hand in his “new -departure.” They therefore agreed to find the funds with which Pestalozzi -might open a new Institution in Aargau. - -§ 45. But the editorship and the plans for the new Institution came to an -abrupt ending. The Catholic cantons did not acquiesce in giving up their -local liberties and being subjected to a new government in the hands of -men whom they regarded as heretics and even atheists. Consequently those -missionaries of enlightenment, the French troops, at once fell upon them -and slaughtered many without distinction of age or sex. The French, we -are told, did not expect to meet with resistance; so their light became -lightning and struck dead the stupid people who could not or would not -see. “Our soldiers” (it is Michelet who speaks) “were ferocious at -Stanz.” (_Nos Fils_, 217). This ferocity at Stanz in September, 1798, was -in secret disapproved of by the Directors, who were nominally responsible -for it. But all they could do was to provide in a measure for the “111 -infirm old people, the 169 orphans, and 237 other children,” who were -left totally destitute. Le Grand proposed to Pestalozzi that he should, -for the present, give up his other plans and go to Stanz (which is on -the Lake of Lucerne) to take charge of the orphan and destitute children. -Pestalozzi was not the man to refuse such a task as this. He at once set -out. Some buildings connected with an Ursuline convent were, without the -consent of the nuns, made over to him. Workmen were employed upon them, -and as soon as a single room could be inhabited Pestalozzi received -forty children into it. This was in January, 1799, in the middle of a -remarkably cold winter. - -§ 46. Thus under circumstances perhaps less unfavourable than they seemed -began the five months’ trial of pure Pestalozzianism. The physical -difficulties were immense. At first Pestalozzi and all the children were -shut up day and night in a single room. He had throughout no helper of -any kind but one female servant, and he had to do everything for the -children, even what was most menial and disgusting. As soon as possible -the number was increased, and before long was nearly eighty, some of -the children having to go out to sleep. But great as were the material -difficulties, those arising from the opposition and hatred of the people -he came to succour were still worse. To them he seemed no philanthropist, -but only a servant of the devil, an agent of the wicked government which -had sent its ferocious soldiers and slaughtered the parents of these -poor children, a Protestant who came to complete the work by destroying -their souls. Pestalozzi, who was making heroic efforts in their behalf, -seems to have wondered at the animosity shown him by the people of Stanz; -but on looking back we must admit that in the circumstances it was only -natural. - -§ 47. And yet in spite of enormous difficulties of every kind Pestalozzi -triumphed. Within the five months he spent with them he attached to -him the hearts of the children, and produced in them a marvellous -physical, intellectual, and moral change. “If ever there was a miracle,” -says Michelet, “it was here. It was the reward of a strong faith, of a -wonderful expansion of heart. He believed, he willed, he succeeded.” -(_Nos Fils_ 223.) - -What was the great act of faith by which Pestalozzi triumphed? According -to M. Michelet he stood before these vicious and degraded children -and said, “Man is good.” Pestalozzi does not tell us this himself; -and as a benighted believer in Christianity, I venture to differ from -the enlightened Michelet. As far as I can judge from Pestalozzi’s own -teaching the source of his strength was his belief in the goodness not of -Man but of God. - -§ 48. But encouraged and rewarded as he was by the result, Pestalozzi -could not long have maintained this fearful exertion. He was over fifty -years of age, and he must soon have succumbed; indeed he was already -spitting blood when in June, 1799, the French soldiers, whose action -had brought him to Stanz, drove him away again. Falling back before -the Austrians they had need of a hospital in Stanz, and demanded the -buildings occupied by Pestalozzi and the children. So almost all the -children had to be sent away, and then at last Pestalozzi took thought -for his own health and retired to some baths in the mountains. But most -of his peculiarities in teaching may be said to date from the experience -at Stanz; and I will therefore give this experience in his own words. - -§ 49. The following is the account given in his letter to his friend -Gessner. (I have in part availed myself of Mr. Russell’s translation of -Guimps, pp. 149 _ff._) - - “My friend, once more I awake from a dream; once more I see my - work destroyed, and my failing strength wasted. - - “But, however weak and unfortunate my attempt, a friend of - humanity will not grudge a few moments to consider the reasons - which convince me that some day a more fortunate posterity will - certainly take up the thread of my hopes at the place where it - is now broken.... - - “I once more made known, as well as I could, my old wishes - for the education of the people. In particular, I laid my - whole scheme before Legrand (then one of the Directors), - who not only took a warm interest in it, but agreed with me - that the Republic stood in urgent need of a reform of public - education. He also agreed with me that much might be done for - the regeneration of the people by giving a certain number of - the poorest children an education which should be complete, but - which, far from lifting them out of their proper sphere, would - but attach them the more strongly to it. - - “I limited my desires to this one point, Legrand helping me in - every possible way. He even thought my views so important that - he once said to me: ‘I shall not willingly give up my present - post till you have begun your work.’ ... - - “It was my intention to try to find near Zurich or in Aargau a - place where I should be able to join industry and agriculture - to the other means of instruction, and so give my establishment - all the development necessary to its complete success. But - the Unterwalden disaster (September, 1798) left me no further - choice in the matter. The Government felt the urgent need of - sending help to this unfortunate district, and begged me for - this once to make an attempt to put my plans into execution - in a place where almost everything that could have made it a - success was wanting. - - “I went there gladly. I felt that the innocence of the people - would make up for what was wanting, and that their distress - would, at any rate, make them grateful. - - “My eagerness to realise at last the great dream of my life - would have led me to work on the very highest peaks of the - Alps, and, so to speak, without fire or water. - - “For a house, the Government made over to me the new part of - the Ursuline convent at Stanz, but when I arrived it was still - uncompleted, and not in any way fitted to receive a large - number of children. Before anything else could be done, then, - the house itself had to be got ready. The Government gave the - necessary orders, and Rengger pushed on the work with much zeal - and useful activity. I was never indeed allowed to want for - money. - - “In spite, however, of the admirable support I received, all - this preparation took time, and time was precisely what we - could least afford, since it was of the highest importance - that a number of children, whom the war had left homeless and - destitute, should be received at once. - - “I was still without everything but money when the children - crowded in; neither kitchen, rooms, nor beds were ready to - receive them. At first this was a source of inconceivable - confusion. For the first few weeks I was shut up in a very - small room; the weather was bad, and the alterations, which - made a great dust and filled the corridors with rubbish, - rendered the air very unhealthy. - - “The want of beds compelled me at first to send some of the - poor children home at night; these children generally came - back the next day covered with vermin. Most of them on their - arrival were very degenerated specimens of humanity. Many of - them had a sort of chronic skin-disease, which almost prevented - their walking, or sores on their heads, or rags full of vermin; - many were almost skeletons, with haggard, careworn faces, and - shrinking looks; some brazen, accustomed to begging, hypocrisy, - and all sorts of deceit; others broken by misfortune, patient, - suspicious, timid, and entirely devoid of affection. There were - also some spoilt children amongst them who had known the sweets - of comfort, and were therefore full of pretensions. These kept - to themselves, affected to despise the little beggars their - comrades, and to suffer from this equality, and seemed to find - it impossible to adapt themselves to the ways of the house, - which differed too much from their old habits. But what was - common to them all was a persistent idleness, resulting from - their want of physical and mental activity. Out of every ten - children there was hardly one who knew his A B C; as for any - other knowledge, it was, of course, out of the question. - - “The entire absence of school learning was what troubled me - least, for I trusted in the natural powers that God bestows on - even the poorest and most neglected children. I had observed - for a long time that behind their coarseness, shyness, and - apparent incapacity, are hidden the finest faculties, the most - precious powers; and now, even amongst these poor creatures by - whom I was surrounded at Stanz, marked natural abilities soon - began to show themselves. I knew how useful the common needs of - life are in teaching men the relations of things, in bringing - out their natural intelligence, in forming their judgment, and - in arousing faculties which, buried, as it were, beneath the - coarser elements of their nature, cannot become active and - useful till they are set free. It was my object then to set - free these faculties, and bring them to bear on the pure and - simple circumstances of domestic life, for I was convinced this - was all that was wanting, and these natural faculties would - shew themselves capable of raising the hearts and minds of my - pupils to all that I could desire. - - “I saw then how my wishes might be carried out; and I was - persuaded that my affection would change the state of my - children just as quickly as the spring sun would awake to new - life the earth that winter had benumbed. I was not deceiving - myself: before the spring sun melted the snow of our mountains - my children were hardly to be recognised. - - “But I must not anticipate. Just as in the evening I often mark - the quick growth of the gourd by the side of the house, so I - want you to mark the growth of my plant; and, my friend, I - will not hide from you the worm which sometimes fastens on the - leaves, sometimes even on the heart. - - “I opened the establishment with no other helper but a - woman-servant. I had not only to teach the children, but to - look after their physical needs. I preferred being alone, and, - unfortunately, it was the only way to reach my end. No one - in the world would have cared to enter into my views for the - education of children, and at that time I knew scarcely any one - even capable of it. - - “In proportion as the men whom I might have called to my aid - were highly educated just so far they failed to understand - me, and were incapable of confining themselves even in theory - to the simple starting-points which I sought to come back to. - All their views about the organisation and requirements of the - enterprise differed entirely from mine. What they specially - objected to was the notion that the enterprise might be carried - out without the aid of any artificial means, and simply by the - influence of nature in the environment of the children, and by - the activity aroused in them by the needs of their daily life. - - “And yet it was precisely upon this idea that I based all my - hope of success; it was, as it were, a basis for innumerable - other points of view. - - “Experienced teachers, then, could not help me; still less - boorish, ignorant men. I had nothing to put into the hands of - assistants to guide them, nor any results or apparatus by which - I could make my ideas clearer to them. Thus, whether I would - or no, I had first to make my experiment alone, and collect - facts to illustrate the essential features of my system before - I could venture to look for outside help. Indeed, in my then - position, nobody could help me. I knew that I must help myself - and shaped my plans accordingly. - - “I wanted to prove by my experiment that if public education - is to have any real value for humanity, it must imitate the - means which make the merit of domestic education; for it - is my opinion that if school teaching does not take into - consideration the circumstances of family life, and everything - else that bears on a man’s general education, it can only lead - to an artificial and methodical dwarfing of humanity. - - “In any good education, the mother must be able to judge - daily, nay hourly, from the child’s eyes, lips, and face, of - the slightest change in his soul. The power of the educator, - too, must be that of a father, quickened by the general - circumstances of domestic life. - - “Such was the foundation upon which I built. I determined that - there should not be a minute in the day when my children should - not be aware from my face and my lips that my heart was theirs, - that their happiness was my happiness, and their pleasures my - pleasures. - - “Man readily accepts what is good, and the child readily - listens to it; but it is not for you that he wants it, master - and educator, but for himself. The good to which you would lead - him must not depend on your capricious humour or passion; it - must be a good which is good in itself and by the nature of - things, and which the child can recognize as good. He must feel - the necessity of your will in things which concern his comfort - before he can be expected to obey it. - - “Whatever he does gladly, whatever gains him credit, whatever - tends to accomplish his great hopes, whatever awakens his - powers and enables him truly to say _I can_, all this he - _wills_. - - “But this will is not aroused by words; it is aroused only by a - kind of complete culture which gives feelings and powers. Words - do not give the thing itself, but only an expression, a clear - picture, of the thing which we already have in our minds. - - “Before all things I was bound to gain the confidence and the - love of the children. I was sure that if I succeeded in this - all the rest would come of itself. Friend, only think how I - was placed, and how great were the prejudices of the people - and of the children themselves, and you will comprehend what - difficulties I had to overcome.” - -After narrating what we already know he goes on: - - “Think, my friend, of this temper of the people, of my - weakness, of my poor appearance, of the ill-will to which I - was almost publicly exposed, and then judge how much I had to - endure for the sake of carrying on my work. - - “And yet, however painful this want of help and support was to - me, it was favourable to the success of my undertaking, for it - compelled me to be always everything for my children. I was - alone with them from morning till night. It was from me that - they received all that could do them good, soul and body. All - needful help, consolation, and instruction they received direct - from me. Their hands were in mine, my eyes were fixed on theirs. - - “We wept and smiled together. They forgot the world and Stanz; - they only knew that they were with me and I with them. We - shared our food and drink. I had about me neither family, - friends, nor servants; nothing but them. I was with them in - sickness, and in health, and when they slept. I was the last - to go to bed, and the first to get up. In the bedroom I prayed - with them, and, at their own request, taught them till they - fell asleep. Their clothes and bodies were intolerably filthy, - but I looked after both myself, and was thus constantly exposed - to the risk of contagion. - - “This is how it was that these children gradually became so - attached to me, some indeed so deeply that they contradicted - their parents and friends when they heard evil things said - about me. They felt that I was being treated unfairly, and - loved me, I think, the more for it. But of what avail is it for - the young nestlings to love their mother when the bird of prey - that is bent on destroying them is constantly hovering near? - - “However, the first results of these principles and of this - line of action were not always satisfactory, nor, indeed, could - they be so. The children did not always understand my love. - Accustomed to idleness, unbounded liberty, and the fortuitous - and lawless pleasures of an almost wild life, they had come - to the convent in the expectation of being well fed, and of - having nothing to do. Some of them soon discovered that they - had been there long enough, and wanted to go away again; they - talked of the school fever that attacks children when they are - kept employed all day long. This dissatisfaction, which showed - itself during the first months, resulted principally from the - fact that many of them were ill, the consequence either of the - sudden change of diet and habits, or of the severity of the - weather and the dampness of the building in which we lived. We - all coughed a great deal, and several children were seized with - a peculiar sort of fever. This fever, which always began with - sickness, was very general in the district. Cases of sickness, - however, not followed by fever, were not at all rare, and were - an almost natural consequence of the change of food. Many - people attributed the fever to bad food, but the facts soon - showed them to be wrong, for not a single child succumbed. - - “On the return of spring it was evident to everybody that the - children were all doing well, growing rapidly, and gaining - colour. Certain magistrates and ecclesiastics, who saw them - some time afterwards, stated that they had improved almost - beyond recognition.... - - “Months passed before I had the satisfaction of having my hand - grasped by a single grateful parent. But the children were won - over much sooner. They even wept sometimes when their parents - met me or left me without a word of salutation. Many of them - were perfectly happy, and used to say to their mothers: ‘I am - better here than at home.’ At home, indeed, as they readily - told me when we talked alone, they had been ill-used and - beaten, and had often had neither bread to eat nor bed to lie - down upon. And yet these same children would sometimes go off - with their mothers the very next morning. - - “A good many others, however, soon saw that by staying with me - they might both learn something and become something, and these - never failed in their zeal and attachment. Before very long - their conduct was imitated by others who had not altogether the - same feelings. - - “Those who ran away were the worst in character and the least - capable. But they were not incited to go till they were free of - their vermin and their rags. Several were sent to me with no - other purpose than that of being taken away again as soon as - they were clean and well clothed. - - “But after a time their better judgment overcame the defiant - hostility with which they arrived. In 1799[156] I had nearly - eighty children. Most of them were bright and intelligent, some - even remarkably so. - - “For most of them study was something entirely new. As soon as - they found that they could learn, their zeal was indefatigable, - and in a few weeks children who had never before opened a - book, and could hardly repeat a _Pater Noster_ or an _Ave_, - would study the whole day long with the keenest interest. Even - after supper, when I used to say to them, ‘Children, will you - go to bed, or learn something?’ they would generally answer, - especially in the first month or two, ‘Learn something.’ It is - true that afterwards, when they had to get up very early, it - was not quite the same. - - “But this first eagerness did much towards starting the - establishment on the right lines, and making the studies the - success they ultimately were, a success indeed, which far - surpassed my expectations. And yet great beyond expression were - my difficulties. I did not as yet find it possible to organise - the studies properly. - - “Neither my trust nor my zeal had been able to overcome either - the intractability of individuals or the want of coherence in - the whole experiment. The general order of the establishment, I - felt, must be based upon order of a higher character. As this - higher order did not yet exist, I had to attempt to create - it; for without this foundation I could not hope to organise - properly either the teaching or the general management of the - place, nor should I have wished to do so. I wanted everything - to result not from a preconceived plan, but from my relations - with the children. The high principles and educating forces I - was seeking, I looked for from the harmonious common life of - my children, from their common attention, activity, and needs. - It was not, then, from any external organisation that I looked - for the regeneration of which they stood so much in need. If I - had employed constraint, regulations, and lectures, I should, - instead of winning and ennobling my children’s hearts, have - repelled them and made them bitter, and thus been farther than - ever from my aim. First of all, I had to arouse in them pure, - moral, and noble feelings, so that afterwards, in external - things, I might be sure of their ready attention, activity, and - obedience. I had, in short, to follow the high precept of Jesus - Christ, ‘Cleanse first that which is within, that the outside - may be clean also; and if ever the truth of this precept was - made manifest, it was made manifest then. - - “My one aim was to make their new life in common, and their new - powers, awaken a feeling of brotherhood amongst the children, - and make them affectionate, just, and considerate. - - “I was successful in gaining my aims. Amongst these seventy - wild beggar-children there soon existed such peace, friendship, - and cordial relations as are rare even between actual brothers - and sisters. - - “The principle to which I endeavoured to conform all my conduct - was as follows: Endeavour, first, to broaden your children’s - sympathies, and, by satisfying their daily needs, to bring love - and kindness into such unceasing contact with their impressions - and their activity, that these sentiments may be engrafted in - their hearts; then try to give them such judgment and tact as - will enable them to make a wise, sure, and abundant use of - these virtues in the circle which surrounds them. In the last - place, do not hesitate to touch on the difficult questions of - good and evil, and the words connected with them. And you must - do this especially in connection with the ordinary events of - every day, upon which your whole teaching in these matters must - be founded, so that the children may be reminded of their own - feelings, and supplied, as it were, with solid facts upon which - to base their conception of the beauty and justice of the moral - life. Even though you should have to spend whole nights in - trying to express in two words what others say in twenty, never - regret the loss of sleep. - - “I gave my children very few explanations; I taught them - neither morality nor religion. But sometimes, when they were - perfectly quiet, I used to say to them, ‘Do you not think that - you are better and more reasonable when you are like this than - when you are making a noise?’ When they clung round my neck and - called me their father, I used to say, ‘My children, would it - be right to deceive your father? After kissing me like this, - would you like to do anything behind my back to vex me?’ When - our talk turned on the misery of the country, and they were - feeling glad at the thought of their own happier lot, I would - say, ‘How good God is to have given man a compassionate heart!’ - ... They perfectly understood that all they did was but a - preparation for their future activity, and they looked forward - to happiness as the certain result of their perseverance. That - is why steady application soon became easy to them, its object - being in perfect accordance with their wishes and their hopes. - Virtue, my friend, is developed by this agreement, just as - the young plant thrives when the soil suits its nature, and - supplies the needs of its tender shoots. - - “I witnessed the growth of an inward strength in my children, - which, in its general development, far surpassed my - expectations, and in its particular manifestations not only - often surprised me, but touched me deeply. - - “When the neighbouring town of Altdorf was burnt down, I - gathered the children round me, and said, ‘Altdorf has been - burnt down; perhaps, at this very moment, there are a hundred - children there without home, food, or clothes; will you not ask - our good Government to let twenty of them come and live with - us?’ I still seem to see the emotion with which they answered, - ‘Oh, yes, yes!’ ‘But, my children,’ I said, ‘think well of what - you are asking! Even now we have scarcely money enough, and it - is not at all certain that if these poor children came to us, - the Government would give us any more than they do at present, - so that you might have to work harder, and share your clothes - with these children, and sometimes perhaps go without food. Do - not say, then, that you would like them to come unless you are - quite prepared for all these consequences.’ After having spoken - to them in this way as seriously as I could, I made them repeat - all I had said, to be quite sure that they had thoroughly - understood what the consequences of their request would be. But - they were not in the least shaken in their decision, and all - repeated, ‘Yes, yes, we are quite ready to work harder, eat - less, and share our clothes, for we want them to come.’ - - “Some refugees from the Grisons having given me a few crowns - for my poor children, I at once called them and said, ‘These - men are obliged to leave their country; they hardly know - where they will find a home to-morrow, yet, in spite of their - trouble, they have given me this for you. Come and thank them.’ - And the emotion of the children brought tears to the eyes of - the refugees. - - “It was in this way that I strove to awaken the feeling of each - virtue before talking about it, for I thought it unwise to - talk to children on subjects which would compel them to speak - without thoroughly understanding what they were saying. - - “I followed up this awakening of the sentiments by exercises - intended to teach the children self-control, so that all that - was good in them might be applied to the practical questions of - every-day life. - - “It will easily be understood that, in this respect, it was - not possible to organise any system of discipline for the - establishment; that could only come slowly, as the general work - developed. - - “Silence, as an aid to application, is perhaps the great secret - of such an institution. I found it very useful to insist - on silence when I was teaching, and also to pay particular - attention to the attitude of my children. I succeeded so well - that the moment I asked for silence, I could teach in quite a - low voice. The children repeated my words all together; and as - there was no other sound, I was able to detect the slightest - mistakes of pronunciation. It is true that this was not always - so. Sometimes, whilst they repeated sentences after me, I would - ask them as if in fun to keep their eyes fixed on their middle - fingers. It is hardly credible how useful simple things of this - sort sometimes are as means to the very highest ends. - - “One young girl, for instance, who had been little better than - a savage, by keeping her head and body upright, and not looking - about, made more progress in her moral education than any one - would have believed possible. - - “These experiences have shown me that the mere habit of - carrying oneself well does much more for the education of the - moral sentiments than any amount of teaching and lectures in - which this simple fact is ignored. - - “Thanks to the application of these principles, my children - soon became more open, more contented and more susceptible to - every good and noble influence than any one could possibly - have foreseen when they first came to me, so utterly devoid - were they of ideas, good feelings, and moral principles. As a - matter of fact, this lack of previous instruction was not a - serious obstacle to me; indeed, it hardly troubled me at all. - I am inclined even to say that, in the simple method I was - following, it was often an advantage, for I had incomparably - less trouble to develop those children whose minds were still - blank, than those who had already acquired inaccurate ideas. - The former, too, were much more open than the latter to the - influence of all pure and simple sentiments. - - “But when the children were obdurate and churlish, then I was - severe, and made use of corporal punishment. - - “My dear friend, the pedagogical principle which says that - we must win the hearts and minds of our children by words - alone without having recourse to corporal punishment, is - certainly good, and applicable under favourable conditions and - circumstances; but with children of such widely different ages - as mine, children for the most part beggars, and all full of - deeply-rooted faults, a certain amount of corporal punishment - was inevitable, especially as I was anxious to arrive surely, - speedily, and by the simplest means, at gaining an influence - over them all, for the sake of putting them all in the right - road. I was compelled to punish them, but it would be a mistake - to suppose that I thereby, in any way, lost the confidence of - my pupils. - - “It is not the rare and isolated actions that form the opinions - and feelings of children, but the impressions of every day and - every hour. From such impressions they judge whether we are - kindly disposed towards them or not, and this settles their - general attitude towards us. Their judgment of isolated actions - depends upon this general attitude. - - “This is how it is that punishments inflicted by parents - rarely make a bad impression. But it is quite different with - schoolmasters and teachers who are not with their children - night and day, and have none of those relations with them which - result from life in common. - - “My punishments never produced obstinacy; the children I - had beaten were quite satisfied if a moment afterwards I - gave them my hand and kissed them, and I could read in their - eyes that the final effect of my blows was really joy. The - following is a striking instance of the effect this sort of - punishment sometimes had. One day one of the children I liked - best, taking advantage of my affection, unjustly threatened - one of his companions. I was very indignant, and my hand did - not spare him. He seemed at first almost broken-hearted, and - cried bitterly for at least a quarter of an hour. When I had - gone out, however, he got up, and going to the boy he had - ill-treated, begged his pardon, and thanked him for having - spoken about his bad conduct. My friend, this was no comedy; - the child had never seen anything like it before. - - “It was impossible that this sort of treatment should produce - a bad impression on my children, because all day long I was - giving them proofs of my affection and devotion. They could - not misread my heart, and so they did not misjudge my actions. - It was not the same with the parents, friends, strangers, - and teachers who visited us; but that was natural. But I - cared nothing for the opinion of the whole world, provided my - children understood me. - - “I always did my best, therefore, to make them clearly - understand the motives of my actions in all matters likely to - excite their attention and interest. This, my friend, brings - me to the consideration of the moral means to be employed in a - truly domestic education. - - “Elementary moral education, considered as a whole, includes - three distinct parts: the children’s moral sense must first - be aroused by their feelings being made active and pure; then - they must be exercised in self-control, so that they may give - themselves to that which is right and good; finally they - must be brought to form for themselves, by reflection and - comparison, a just notion of the moral rights and duties which - are theirs by reason of their position and surroundings. - - “So far, I have pointed out some of the means I employed to - reach the first two of these ends. They were just as simple - for the third; for I still made use of the impressions and - experiences of their daily life to give my children a true and - exact idea of right and duty. When, for instance, they made - a noise, I appealed to their own judgment, and asked them if - it was possible to learn under such conditions. I shall never - forget how strong and true I generally found their sense of - justice and reason, and how this sense increased and, as it - were, established their good will. - - “I appealed to them in all matters that concerned the - establishment. It was generally in the quiet evening hours that - I appealed to their free judgment. When, for instance, it was - reported in the village that they had not enough to eat, I said - to them, ‘Tell me, my children, if you are not better fed than - you were at home? Think, and tell me yourselves, whether it - would be well to keep you here in such a way as would make it - impossible for you afterwards, in spite of all your application - and hard work, to procure what you had become accustomed to. Do - you lack anything that is really necessary? Do you think that I - could reasonably and justly do more for you? Would you have me - spend all the money that is entrusted to me on thirty or forty - children instead of on eighty as at present? Would that be - just?’ - - “In the same way, when I heard that it was reported that I - punished them too severely, I said to them: ‘You know how I - love you, my children; but tell me would you like me to stop - punishing you? Do you think that in any other way I can free - you from your deeply-rooted bad habits, or make you always mind - what I say?’ You were there, my friend, and saw with your own - eyes the sincere emotion with which they answered, ‘We don’t - complain about your hitting us. We wish we never deserved it. - But we want to be punished when we do wrong.’ - - “Many things that make no difference in a small household could - not be tolerated where the numbers were so great. I tried to - make my children feel this, always leaving them to decide - what could or could not be allowed. It is true that in my - intercourse with them I never spoke of liberty or equality; - but, at the same time, I encouraged them as far as possible to - be free and unconstrained in my presence, with the result that - every day I marked more and more that clear open look in their - eyes which, in my experience, is the sign of a really liberal - education. I could not bear the thought of betraying the trust - in me which I saw shining in their eyes; I strove constantly to - strengthen it and at the same time their free individuality, - that nothing might happen to trouble those angel-eyes, the - sight of which caused me the most intense delight. But I could - not endure frowns and anxious looks; I myself smoothed away the - frowns; then the children smiled, and even among themselves - they took care not to shew frowning faces. - - “By reason of their great number, I had occasion nearly every - day to point out the difference between good and evil, justice - and injustice. Good and evil are equally contagious amongst so - many children, so that, according as the good or bad sentiments - spread, the establishment was likely to become either much - better or much worse than if it had only contained a smaller - number. About this, too, I talked to them frankly. I shall - never forget the impression that my words produced when, in - speaking of a certain disturbance that had taken place among - them, I said, ‘My children, it is the same with us as with - every other household; when the children are numerous, and each - gives way to his bad habits, the disorder becomes such that the - weakest mother is driven to take sensible measures in bringing - up her children, and make them submit to what is just and - right. And that is what I must do now. If you do not willingly - assist in the maintenance of order, our establishment cannot - go on, you will fall back into your former condition, and your - misery—now that you have been accustomed to a good home, clean - clothes, and regular food—will be greater than ever. In this - world, my children, necessity and conviction alone can teach - a man to behave; when both fail him, he is hateful. Think for - a moment what you would become if you were safe from want and - cared nothing for right, justice, or goodness. At home there - was always some one who looked after you, and poverty itself - forced you to many a right action; but with convictions and - reason to guide you, you will rise far higher than by following - necessity alone.’ - - “I often spoke to them in this way without troubling in the - least whether they each understood every word, feeling quite - sure that they all caught the general sense of what I said.... - - “Here are a few more thoughts which produced a great impression - on my children: ‘Do you know anything greater or nobler than - to give counsel to the poor, and comfort to the unfortunate? - But if you remain ignorant and incapable, you will be obliged, - in spite of your good heart, to let things take their course; - whereas, if you acquire knowledge and power, you will be able - to give good advice, and save many a man from misery.’ - - “I have generally found that great, noble, and high thoughts - are indispensable for developing wisdom and firmness of - character. - - “Such an instruction must be complete in the sense that it must - take account of all our aptitudes and all our circumstances; it - must be conducted, too, in a truly psychological spirit, that - is to say, simply, lovingly, energetically, and calmly. Then, - by its very nature, it produces an enlightened and delicate - feeling for everything true and good, and brings to light a - number of accessory and dependent truths, which are forthwith - accepted and assimilated by the human soul, even in the case of - those who could not express these truths in words. - - “I believe that the first development of thought in the child - is very much disturbed by a wordy system of teaching, which - is not adapted either to his faculties or the circumstances - of his life. According to my experience, success depends upon - whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as - true through being closely connected with their own personal - observation and experience.... - - “I knew no other order, method, or art, but that which resulted - naturally from my children’s conviction of my love for them, - nor did I care to know any other. - - “Thus I subordinated the instruction of my children to a higher - aim, which was to arouse and strengthen their best sentiments - by the relations of every-day life as they existed between - themselves and me.... - - “As a general rule I attached little importance to the study - of words, even when explanations of the ideas they represented - were given. - - “I tried to connect study with manual labour, the school with - the workshop, and make one thing of them. But I was the less - able to do this as staff, material, and tools were all wanting. - A short time only before the close of the establishment, a few - children had begun to spin; and I saw clearly that, before - any fusion could be effected, the two parts must be firmly - established separately—study, that is, on the one hand, and - labour on the other. - - “But in the work of the children I was already inclined to care - less for the immediate gain than for the physical training - which, by developing their strength and skill, was bound to - supply them later with a means of livelihood. In the same way - I considered that what is generally called the instruction of - children should be merely an exercise of the faculties, and - I felt it important to exercise the attention, observation, - and memory first, so as to strengthen these faculties before - calling into play the art of judging and reasoning; this, in - my opinion, was the best way to avoid turning out that sort of - superficial and presumptuous talker, whose false judgments are - often more fatal to the happiness and progress of humanity than - the ignorance of simple people of good sense. - - “Guided by these principles, I sought less at first to teach my - children to spell, read, and write than to make use of these - exercises for the purpose of giving their minds as full and as - varied a development as possible.... - - “In natural history they were very quick in corroborating what - I taught them by their own personal observations on plants and - animals. I am quite sure that, by continuing in this way, I - should soon have been able not only to give them such a general - acquaintance with the subject as would have been useful in any - vocation, but also to put them in a position to carry on their - education themselves by means of their daily observations and - experiences; and I should have been able to do all this without - going outside the very restricted sphere to which they were - confined by the actual circumstances of their lives. I hold - it to be extremely important that men should be encouraged - to learn by themselves and allowed to develop freely. It is - in this way alone that the diversity of individual talent is - produced and made evident. - - “I always made the children learn perfectly even the least - important things, and I never allowed them to lose ground; a - word once learnt, for instance, was never to be forgotten, and - a letter once well written never to be written badly again. - I was very patient with all who were weak or slow, but very - severe with those who did anything less well than they had done - it before. - - “The number and inequality of my children rendered my task - easier. Just as in a family the eldest and cleverest child - readily shows what he knows to his younger brothers and - sisters, and feels proud and happy to be able to take his - mother’s place for a moment, so my children were delighted when - they knew something that they could teach others. A sentiment - of honour awoke in them, and they learned twice as well by - making the younger ones repeat their words. In this way I soon - had helpers and collaborators amongst the children themselves. - When I was teaching them to spell difficult words by heart, I - used to allow any child who succeeded in saying one properly to - teach it to the others. These child-helpers, whom I had formed - from the very outset, and who had followed my method step by - step, were certainly much more useful to me than any regular - schoolmasters could have been. - - “I myself learned with the children. Our whole system was so - simple and so natural that I should have had difficulty in - finding a master who would not have thought it undignified to - learn and teach as I was doing.... - - “You will hardly believe that it was the Capuchin friars and - the nuns of the convent that showed the greatest sympathy with - my work. Few people, except Truttman, took any active interest - in it. Those from whom I had hoped most were too deeply - engrossed with their high political affairs to think of our - little institution as having the least degree of importance. - - “Such were my dreams; but at the very moment that I seemed to - be on the point of realizing them, I had to leave Stanz.” - -§ 50. Heroic efforts rise above the measurement of time. As Byron has -said, “A thought is capable of years,” and it seldom happens that the -nobleness of any human action depends on the time it lasts. Pestalozzi’s -five months’ experiment at Stanz proved one of the most memorable events -in the history of education. He was now completely satisfied that he -saw his way to giving children a right education and “thus raising the -beggar out of the dung-hill”; and seeing the right course he was urged -by his love of the people into taking it. But how was he to set to work? -His notions of school instruction differed entirely from those of the -teaching profession; and even in the revolutionary age they had some -reason for looking askance at this revolutionist. “He had everything -against him,” we read, “thick, indistinct speech, bad writing, ignorance -of drawing, scorn of grammatical learning. He had studied various -branches of natural history, but without any particular attention either -to classification or terminology. He was conversant with the ordinary -operations in arithmetic, but he would have had difficulty in getting -through a really long sum in multiplication or division; and he probably -had never tried to work out a problem in geometry. For years this dreamer -had read no books. But instead of the usual knowledge that any young man -of ordinary talent can acquire in a year or two, he understood thoroughly -what most masters were entirely ignorant of—the mind of man and the -laws of its development, human affections and the art of arousing and -ennobling them. He seemed to have almost an intuitive insight into the -development of human nature, and was never tired of contemplating it.” -(C. Monnard in R.’s Guimps, p. 174.)[157] - -§ 51. This man wished to be a schoolmaster, but who would venture to -entrust him with a school? No one seemed willing to do this; and he would -have been at a loss where to turn had he not had influential friends -at Burgdorf, a town not far from Bern. These got for him permission -to teach, not indeed the children of burgesses but the children of -non-burgesses, seventy-three of whom used to assemble under a shoemaker -in his house in the suburbs. With this arrangement, however, the -shoemaker and the parents of the children were by no means satisfied. “If -the burgesses like the new method,” they said very reasonably, “let them -try it on their own children.” Their grumbling was heard, and permission -to teach was withdrawn from Pestalozzi. - -§ 52. The check, however, was only temporary. His friends were wiser than -the shoemaker, and they procured for him admission into the lowest class -of the school for burghers’ children. In this class there were about 25 -children, boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 8. Here he proved -that he was vastly different from a mere dreamer. After teaching these -children in his own way for eight months he received the first official -recognition of the merits of his system. The Burgdorf School Commission -after the usual examination, wrote a public letter to Pestalozzi, in -which they said: “The surprising progress of your little scholars of -various capacities shews plainly that every one is good for something, if -the teacher knows how to get at his abilities and develop them according -to the laws of psychology. By your method of teaching you have proved how -to lay the groundwork of instruction in such a way that it may afterwards -support what is built on it.... Between the ages of 5 and 8, a period -in which according to the system of torture enforced hitherto, children -have learnt to know their letters, to spell and read, your scholars have -not only accomplished all this with a success as yet unknown, but the -best of them have already distinguished themselves by their good writing, -drawing, and calculating. In them all you have been able so to arouse and -excite a liking for history, natural history, mensuration, geography, -&c., that thus future teachers must find their task a far easier one if -they only know how to make good use of the preparatory stage the children -have gone through with you” (Morf, Pt. I, p. 223). - -§ 53. In consequence of this report, Pestalozzi in June 1800 was made -master of the second school of Burgdorf, a school numbering about -70 boys and girls from 10 to 16 years old. With them Pestalozzi did -not get on so well. Ramsauer, a poor boy of 10 who afterwards helped -Pestalozzi at Yverdun and became one of his best teachers, has left us -his remembrances. Two things seemed clear to the child’s mind: 1st, -that their teacher was very kind but very unhappy; 2nd, that the pupils -did not learn anything and behaved very badly. Many schoolmasters have -smiled in derision at this account of Pestalozzi’s actual teaching; but -in reading it several things should be borne in mind. First Ramsauer -as a child would have a keen eye and good memory for the master’s -eccentricities; but how far the teaching succeeded he could not judge, -for he did not know what it aimed at. Then again he saw that Pestalozzi’s -zeal was for the whole school, not for individual scholars. But the -child who knew of nothing beyond Burgdorf could not tell that Pestalozzi -was thinking not so much of the children of Burgdorf as of the children -of Europe. For Burgdorf—whether it was pleased to honour or to dismiss -Pestalozzi—could not contain him. His aims extended beyond the town, -beyond canton Bern, beyond Switzerland even; and he was consumed with -zeal to bring about a radical change in elementary education throughout -Europe. The truth which was burning within him he has himself expressed -as follows: - -“If we desire to aid the poor man, the very lowest among the people, this -can be done in one way only, that is, _by changing his schools into -true places of education, in which the moral, intellectual, and physical -powers which God has put into our nature may be drawn out_, so that the -man may be enabled to live a life such as a man should live, contented -in himself and satisfying other people. Thus and only thus does the man, -whom in God’s wide world nobody helps and nobody can help, learn to help -himself.” “The public common school-coach throughout Europe must not -simply be better horsed, but still more it must be _turned round and be -brought on to an entirely new road_.” (Quoted by Morf, P. I, p. 211.) - -§ 54. Pestalozzi was now working heart and soul at the engineering of -this “new road.” His grand successes hitherto had been gained more by -the heart than by the head; but the school course must draw out the -faculties of the head as well as of the heart. Pestalozzi made all -instruction start from what children observed for themselves. “I laid -special stress,” he says, “on just what usually affected their senses. -And as I dwelt much on elementary knowledge, I wanted to know when the -child receives its first lesson, and I soon came to the conviction that -the first hour of learning dates from birth. From the very moment that -the child’s senses open to the impressions of nature, nature teaches -it. Its new life is but the faculty, now come to maturity, of receiving -impressions; it is the awakening of the germs now perfect which will -go on using all their forces and energies to secure the development of -their proper organisation; it is the awakening of the animal now complete -which will and shall become a man. So the sole instruction given to the -human being consists merely in the art of giving a helping hand to this -natural tendency towards its proper development; and this art consists -essentially in the means of putting the child’s impressions in connexion -and harmony with the precise degree of development the child has reached. -There must be then in the impressions to be given him by instruction, -a regular gradation; and the beginning and the progress of his various -knowledges must exactly correspond with the beginning and increase in his -powers as they are developed. From this I soon saw that this gradation -must be ascertained for all the branches of human knowledge, especially -for those fundamental notions from which our thinking power takes its -rise. On such principles and no others is it possible to construct real -school books and books about teaching” (_Wie Gertrud_, &c., Letter I.). - -§ 55. In endeavouring to put teaching, as he said, “on a psychological -basis,” Pestalozzi compared it to a mechanism. On one occasion when -expounding his views, he was interrupted by the exclamation, “Vous voulez -mécaniser l’éducation!” Pestalozzi was weak in French, and he took these -words to mean, “You wish to get at the mechanism of education.” He -accordingly assented, and was in his turn misunderstood. Soon afterwards -he endeavoured to express the new thing by a new word and said, “Ich will -den menschlichen Unterricht psychologisieren; I wish to psychologise -instruction,” and this he explains to mean that he sought to make -instruction fall in with the eternal laws which govern the development -of the human intellect (Morf, I, p. 227). But this was a task which no -one man could accomplish, not even Pestalozzi. The eternal laws which -govern the development of mind have not been completely ascertained even -after investigations carried on during thousands of years; and Pestalozzi -did not know what had been established by previous thinkers. He made a -gigantic effort to find both the laws and their application, but if -he had continued to stand alone he could have done but little. Happily -he attracted to him some young and vigorous assistants, who caught his -enthusiasm and worked in his spirit. They did much, but there was one -thing the Master could not communicate—his genius. - -§ 56. Just at this time, before Pestalozzi found associates in his -work, he drew up for a “Society of Friends of Education” an account of -his method; and this begins with the words I have already quoted, “I -want to psychologise education.” Basing all instruction on _Anschauung_ -(which is nearly equivalent to the child’s own observation), he explains -how this may be used for a series of exercises, and he takes as the -general elements of culture the following: language, drawing, writing, -arithmetic, and the art of measuring. In the education of the poor he -would lay special stress on the importance of two things, then and -since much neglected, viz., singing and the sense of the beautiful. -The mother’s cradle song should begin a series leading up to hymns of -praise to God. Education should develop in all a sense of the beauties -of Nature. “Nature is full of lovely sights, yet Europe has done nothing -either to awaken in the poor a sense for these beauties, or to arrange -them in such a way as to produce a series of impressions capable of -developing this sense.... If ever popular education should cease to be -the barbarous absurdity it now is, and put itself into harmony with the -real needs of our nature, this want will be supplied.” (R.’s Guimps, 186.) - -§ 57. In the last year of the eighteenth century (1800) Pestalozzi was -toiling away, constant to his purpose but not clearly seeing the road -before him. In March, 1800, he wrote to Zschokke: “For thirty years my -life has been a well-nigh hopeless struggle against the most frightful -poverty.... For thirty years I have had to forego many of the barest -necessaries of life, and have had to shun the society of my fellow-men -from sheer lack of decent clothes. Many and many a time have I gone -without a dinner and eaten in bitterness a dry crust of bread on the -road at a time when even the poorest were seated round a table. All this -I have suffered and am still suffering to-day, and with no other object -than the realization of my plans for helping the poor” (R.’s Guimps, -189). It was clear that he could not help others till he himself got -help; and he now did get just the help he wanted, an assistant who though -a schoolmaster was, strange to say, perfectly ready to learn, and to -throw himself into carrying out another man’s ideas. This was Hermann -Kruesi, a man twenty-five years old, who from the age of 18 had been -master of the village school at Gais in Appenzell. In consequence of -the war between the French and Austrians, Appenzell was now reduced to -a state of famine, and bands of children were sent off to other cantons -to escape starvation. Fischer, a friend of Pestalozzi’s, and himself an -educationist taught by Salzmann (_supra_ 289), wrote from Burgdorf to the -pastor of Gais, offering to get thirty children taken in by the people of -Burgdorf, and asking that they might be sent with some one who would look -after them in the day-time and teach them. In answer to this invitation -Kruesi, after a week’s march, entered Burgdorf with a troop of little -ones. The children were drawn up in an open place, and benevolent people -chose which they would adopt. Kruesi was taken into the Castle which the -Government had made over partly to Fischer, partly to Pestalozzi. In it -Kruesi opened a day-school. Fischer soon afterwards died; and Pestalozzi -proposed to Kruesi, who had become entirely converted to his views, that -they should unite and together carry on the school in the Castle. By a -decree of 23rd July, 1800, the Executive Council granted to Pestalozzi -the gratuitous use of as much of the Castle and garden as he needed, and -thus was established Pestalozzi’s celebrated Institute at Burgdorf. - -§ 58. Very soon Kruesi enlisted other helpers who had read _Leonard -and Gertrude_, viz., Tobler and Buss, and this is his account of the -party: “Our society thus consisted of four very different men ... the -founder, whose chief reputation was that of a dreamy writer, incapable -in practical life, and three young men, one [Tobler] a private tutor -whose youth had been much neglected, who had begun to study late, and -whose pedagogic efforts had never produced the results his character and -talents seemed to promise; another [Buss], a bookbinder, who devoted his -leisure to singing and drawing; and a third [Kruesi himself], a village -schoolmaster who carried out the duties of his office as best he could -without having been in any way prepared for them. Those who looked on -this group of men, scarce one of them with a home of his own, naturally -formed but a small opinion of their capabilities. And yet our work -succeeded, and won the public confidence beyond the expectations of those -who knew us, and even beyond our own” (R.’s Guimps, 304). - -§ 59. With assistance from the Government there was added to the united -schools of Pestalozzi and Kruesi a training class for teachers; and -elementary teachers were sent to spend a month at Burgdorf and learn of -Pestalozzi, as years afterwards they were sent to the same town to learn -of Froebel. This Institute opened in January, 1801, and had nearly three -years of complete success. In it was carried out Pestalozzi’s notion -that there should be “no gulf between the home and the school.” On one -occasion a parent visiting the establishment exclaimed, “Why, this is -not a school but a family!” and Pestalozzi declared that this was the -highest praise he could give it. The bond which united them all, both -teachers and scholars, was love of “Father Pestalozzi.” Want of space -kept the number of children below a hundred, and these enjoyed great -freedom and worked away without rewards and almost without punishments. -Both public reports and private speak very highly of the results. In -June, 1802, the President of the Council of Public Education in Bern -declares: “Pestalozzi has discovered the real and universal laws of all -elementary teaching.” A visitor, Charles Victor von Bonstetten, writes: -“The children know little, but what they know, they know well.... They -are very happy and evidently take great pleasure in their lessons, which -says a great deal for the method.... As it will be long before there is -another Pestalozzi, I fear that the rich harvest his discovery seems to -promise will be reserved for future ages.” - -The success of the method was specially conspicuous in arithmetic. -A Nürnberg merchant who came prejudiced against Pestalozzi was much -impressed and has acknowledged: “I was amazed when I saw these children -treating the most complicated calculations of fractions as the simplest -thing in the world.” - -§ 60. Up to this point Pestalozzi may be said to have gained by the -disposition to “reform” or revolutionise everything, which had prevailed -in Switzerland since 1798. But from the reaction which now set in he -suffered more than he had gained. Switzerland sent deputies to Paris to -discuss under the direction of the First Consul Bonaparte what should -be their future form of Government. Among these deputies Pestalozzi was -elected, and he set off thinking more of the future of the schools than -of the future of the Government. At Paris he asked for an interview -with Bonaparte, but destruction being in his opinion a much higher art -than instruction, the First Consul said he could not be bothered about -questions of A, B, C. He, however, deputed Monge to hear what Pestalozzi -had to say, but the mathematician seems to have agreed with some English -authorities that “there was nothing in Pestalozzi.”[158] On his return -to Switzerland Pestalozzi was asked by Buss, “Did you see Bonaparte?” -“No,” replied Pestalozzi, “I did not see Bonaparte and Bonaparte did -not see me.” His presumption in thus putting himself on an equality -with the great conqueror seems to have taken away the breath of his -contemporaries: but “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,” and -before the close of the century Europe already thinks more in amount, and -immeasurably more in respect, of Pestalozzi than of Bonaparte. - -§ 61. As a result of the reaction the Government of United Switzerland -ceased to exist, and the Cantons were restored. This destroyed -Pestalozzi’s hopes of Government support, and even turned his Institute -out of doors. The Castle of Burgdorf was at once demanded for the -Prefect of the District; but Pestalozzi was offered an old convent at -Münchenbuchsee near Bern, and thither he was forced to migrate. - -§ 62. Close to Münchenbuchsee was Hofwyl where was the agricultural -institution of Emmanuel Fellenberg. Fellenberg and Pestalozzi were old -friends and correspondents, and as they had much regard for each other -and Fellenberg was as great in administration as Pestalozzi in ideas, -there seemed a chance of their benefiting by co-operation; but this could -not be. The teachers desired that the administration should be put into -the hands of Fellenberg, and this was done accordingly, “not without my -consent,” says Pestalozzi, “but to my profound mortification.” He could -not work with this “man of iron,” as he calls Fellenberg; so he left -Münchenbuchsee and accepting one of several invitations he settled in the -Castle of Yverdun near the lake of Neuchatel. Within a twelvemonth he was -followed by his old assistants, who had found government by Fellenberg -less to their taste than no-government by Pestalozzi. - -§ 63. Thus arose the most celebrated Institute of which we read in the -history of education. For some years its success seemed prodigious. -Teachers came from all quarters, many of them sent by the Governments of -the countries to which they belonged, that they might get initiated into -the Pestalozzian system. Children too were sent from great distances, -some of them being intrusted to Pestalozzi, some of them living with -their own tutor in Yverdun and only attending the Institute during -the day. The wave of enthusiasm for the new ideas seemed to carry -everything before it; but there is nothing stable in a wave, and when -the enthusiasm has subsided disappointment follows. This was the case at -Yverdun, and Pestalozzi outlived his Institute. But the principles on -which he worked and the spirit in which he worked could not pass away; -and, at least in Germany, all elementary schoolmasters acknowledge how -much they are indebted to his teaching. - -§ 64. Of the state of things in the early days of the Institute we have a -very lively account written for his own children by Professor Vuillemin, -who entered it in 1805 as a child of eight, and was in it for two years. -From this I extract the following portrait of Pestalozzi: “Imagine, my -children, a very ugly man with rough bristling hair, his face scarred -with small-pox and covered with freckles, an untidy beard, no neck-tie, -his breeches not properly buttoned and coming down to his stockings, -which in their turn descended on to his great thick shoes; fancy him -panting and jerking as he walked; then his eyes which at one time opened -wide to send a flash of lightning, at another were half closed as if -engaged on what was going on within; his features now expressing a -profound sadness and now again the most peaceful happiness; his speech -either slow or hurried, either soft and melodious or bursting forth like -thunder; imagine the man and you have him whom we used to call our Father -Pestalozzi. Such as I have sketched him for you we loved him; we all -loved him, for he loved us all; we loved him so warmly that when some -time passed without our seeing him, we were quite troubled about it, and -when he again appeared we could not take our eyes off him” (Guimps, 315). - -§ 65. At this time he was no less loved by his assistants, who put up -with any quarters that could be found for them, and received no salary. -We read that the money paid by the scholars was kept in the room of -“the head of the family”; every master could get the key, and when they -required clothes they took from these funds just the sum requisite. -This system, or want of system, went on for some time without abuse. As -Vuillemin says, it was like a return to the early days of the Christian -Church. - -§ 66. We have seen that the first Emperor Napoleon “could not be bothered -about questions of A, B, C.” His was the pride that goes before a fall. -On the other hand the Prussian Government which he brought to the dust in -the battle of Jena (1806) had the wisdom to perceive that children will -become men, and that the nature of the instruction they receive will in a -great measure determine what kind of men they turn out. How was Prussia -again to raise its head? Its rulers decided that it was by the education -of the people. “We have lost in territory,” said the king; “our power and -our credit abroad have fallen; but we must and will go to work to gain in -power and in credit at home. It is for this reason that I desire above -everything that the greatest attention be paid to the education of the -people” (Guimps, 319). About the same time the Queen (Louisa) wrote in -her private diary, “I am reading _Leonard and Gertrude_, and I delight -in being transported into the Swiss village. If I could do as I liked I -should take a carriage and start for Switzerland to see Pestalozzi; I -should warmly shake him by the hand, and my eyes filled with tears would -speak my gratitude.... With what goodness, with what zeal, he labours -for the welfare of his fellow-creatures! Yes, in the name of humanity, I -thank him with my whole heart.” - -So in the day of humiliation Prussia seriously went to work at the -education of the people, and this she did on the lines pointed out by -Pestalozzi. To him they were directed by their philosopher Fichte, who -in his _Addresses to the German Nation_ (delivered at Berlin 1807-8) -declared that education was the only means of raising a nation, and that -all sound reform of public instruction must be based on the principles of -Pestalozzi. - -To bring these principles to bear on popular education, the Prussian -Government sent seventeen young men for a three years’ course to -Pestalozzi’s Institute, “where,” as the Minister said in a letter to -Pestalozzi, “they will be prepared not only in mind and judgment, but -also in heart, for the noble vocation which they are to follow, and will -be filled with a sense of the holiness of their task, and with new zeal -for the work to which you have devoted your life.” - -§ 67. Among the eminent men who were drawn to Yverdun were some who -afterwards did great things in education, as _e.g._, Karl Ritter, Karl -von Raumer the historian of education, the philosopher Herbart, and a -man who was destined to have more influence than anyone, except perhaps -Pestalozzi himself—I mean Friedrich Froebel. Ritter’s testimony is -especially striking. “I have seen,” says he, “more than the Paradise of -Switzerland, for I have seen Pestalozzi, and recognised how great his -heart is, and how great his genius; never have I been so filled with a -sense of the sacredness of my vocation and the dignity of human nature -as in the days I spent with this noble man.... Pestalozzi knew less -geography than a child in one of our primary schools, yet it was from him -that I gained my chief knowledge of this science; for it was in listening -to him that I first conceived the idea of the natural method. It was he -who opened the way to me, and I take pleasure in attributing whatever -value my work may have entirely to him.” - -§ 68. At this time we read glowing accounts of the healthy and happy life -of the children; and throughout Pestalozzi never lost a single pupil by -illness. With a body of very able assistants, instruction was carried -on for ten hours out of the twenty-four; but in these hours there was -reckoned the time spent in drill, gymnastics, hand-work, and singing. The -monotony of school-life was also broken by frequent “festivals.” - -§ 69. And yet the Institute had taken into it the seeds of its own ruin. -There were several causes of failure, though these were not visible till -the house was divided against itself. - -§ 70. First, Pestalozzi based the morality and discipline of the school -on the relations of family life. He would be the “father” of all the -children. At Burgdorf this relation seemed a reality, but it completely -failed at Yverdun when the Institute became, from the number of the -pupils and their differences in language, habits, and antecedents, a -little world. The pupils still called him “Father Pestalozzi,” but he -could no longer know them as a father should know his children. Thus -the discipline of affection slowly disappeared, and there was no school -discipline to take its place. - -§ 71. Next, we can see that even at Burgdorf, and still more at Yverdun, -Pestalozzi was attempting to do impossibilities. According to his system, -the faculties of the child were to be developed in a natural unbroken -order, and the first exercises were to give the child the power of -surmounting later difficulties by its own exertions. But this education -could not be started at any age, and yet children of every age and every -country were received into the Institution. It was not likely that the -fresh comers could be made to understand that they “knew nothing,” and -must start over again on a totally different road. The teachers might -take such pupils to the water of “sense-impressions,” but they could not -inspire the inclination to drink, nor induce the lad to learn what he -supposed himself to know already. (_Cfr. supra_ p. 64, § 4.) - -§ 72. But there was a greater mischief at work than either of these. In -his discourse to the members of the Institution on New Year’s Day, 1808, -Pestalozzi surprised them all by his gloom. He had had a coffin brought -in, and he stood beside it. “This work,” said he, “was founded by love, -but love has disappeared from our midst.” This was only too true, and the -discord was more deeply rooted than at first appeared. Among the brood -of Pestalozzians there was a Catholic shepherd lad from Tyrol, Joseph -Schmid by name, and he, in the end, proved a veritable cuckoo. As he -shewed very marked ability in mathematics, he became one of the assistant -masters; and a good deal of the fame of the Institution rested on the -performances of his pupils. But his ideas differed totally from those of -his colleagues, especially from those of Niederer, a clergyman with a -turn for philosophy, who had become Pestalozzi’s chief exponent. - -§ 73. After Pestalozzi’s gloomy speech, the masters, with the exception -of Schmid, urged Pestalozzi to apply for a Government inquiry into the -state of the Institution. This Pestalozzi did, and Commissioners were -appointed, among them an educationist, Père Girard of Freiburg, by whom -the Report was drawn up. The Report was not favourable. Père Girard -was by no means inclined to sit at the feet of Pestalozzi, as he had -principles of his own. Pestalozzi, he thought, laid far too much stress -on mathematics, and he drew from him a statement that everything taught -to a child should seem as certain as that two and two made four. “Then,” -said Girard, “if I had thirty children I would not intrust you with one -of them. You could not teach him that I was his father.” Thus the Report, -though very friendly in tone, was by no means friendly in spirit. The -Commissioners simply compared the performances of the scholars with what -pupils of the same age could do in good schools of the ordinary type, and -Père Girard stated, though not in the Report, that the Institution was -inferior to the Cantonal School of Aargau. But the comparison of these -incommensurables only shews that Girard was not capable of understanding -what was going on at Yverdun. Indeed, he asserts “not only that the -mother-tongue was neglected,” but also that the children, “though they -had reached a high pitch of excellence in abstract mathematics, were -inconceivably weak in all ordinary practical calculations.” This is -absurd. In Pestalozzian teaching the abstract never went before ordinary -practical calculations. The good Father evidently blunders, and takes -“head-reckoning” for abstract, and pen or pencil arithmetic for practical -work. Reckoning with slate or paper is no doubt “ordinary,” but a -distinction has often to be drawn between what is ordinary and what is -practical. - -§ 74. Soon after this the disputes between Schmid and his colleagues -waxed so fierce that Schmid was virtually driven away. In 1810 he left -Yverdun, and declared the Institution “a disgrace to humanity.” Great -was the disorder into which the Institution now fell from having over it -only a genius with “an unrivalled incapacity to govern.” The days which -“remind us of the early Church” were no more, and financial difficulties -naturally followed them. For the next five years things went from bad -to worse, and the masters were then driven to the desperate, and, as it -proved, the fatal step of inviting the able and strong-willed Schmid -back again. He came in 1815, he acquired entire control over Pestalozzi, -and drove from him all his most faithful adherents, among them not only -Niederer, who had invited the return of his rival, but even Kruesi and -the faithful servant, Elizabeth Naef, now Mrs. Kruesi, the widow of -Kruesi’s brother. Pestalozzi’s grandson married Schmid’s sister, and thus -united with him by family ties, Schmid took entire possession of the old -man and kept it till the end. His former colleagues seem to have been -deceived in their estimate both of Schmid’s integrity and ability. He -completed the ruin of the Institution, and he was finally expelled from -Yverdun by the Magistrates. - -§ 75. But while Pestalozzi seemed falling lower and lower to the eyes of -the inhabitants of Yverdun, and so had little honour in his own country, -his fame was spreading all over Europe. Of this Yverdun was to reap the -benefit. In 1813-14, Austrian troops marched across Switzerland to invade -France. In January, 1814, the Castle and other buildings in Yverdun were -“requisitioned” for a military hospital, many of the Austrian soldiers -being down with typhus fever. In a great fright the Municipality sent -off two deputies to headquarters, then at Basel, to petition that this -order might be withdrawn. As the order threatened the destruction of -his Institution, Pestalozzi went with them, and it was entirely to him -they owed their success. On their return they reported that “no military -hospital would be established at Yverdun, and that M. Pestalozzi had been -received with most extraordinary favour.” - -§ 75. On this occasion Pestalozzi took the opportunity of preaching to -the Emperor Alexander on the necessity of establishing good schools and -of emancipating the serfs. The Emperor took the lecture in good part, and -allowed the philanthropist to drive him into a corner and “button-hole” -him. - -§ 76. In 1815 Pestalozzi received a visit from an Englishman, or more -accurately Scotsman—Dr. Bell, who, however, like most of our compatriots, -could find nothing in Pestalozzi. Whatever we may think of Bell as an -educationist, he was certainly a poor prophet. On leaving Yverdun he -said, “In another twelve years mutual instruction will be adopted by the -whole world and Pestalozzi’s method will be forgotten.”[159] - -§ 77. In December, 1815, Pestalozzi was thrown more completely into the -power of Schmid by losing the only companion from whom nothing but death -could separate him—his wife. At the funeral Pestalozzi, standing by the -coffin, and as if heard by her whose earthly remains were in it, ran -over the disasters and trials they had passed through together, and the -sacrifices she had made for him. “What in those days of affliction,” said -he, “gave us strength to bear our troubles and recover hope?” and taking -up a Bible he went on, “_This_ is the source whence you drew, whence we -both drew courage, strength, and peace.” - -§ 78. The “death agony of the Institution,” as Guimps calls it, lasted -for some years, but in this gloomy period there are only two incidents I -will mention. The first is the publication of Pestalozzi’s writings, for -which Schmid and Pestalozzi sought subscriptions; and the appeal was so -cordially answered that Pestalozzi received £2,000. This sum he wished -to devote to the carrying out of a plan he had always cherished of an -orphanage at Neuhof; but the money seems to have melted we do not know -how. - -§ 79. The other incident is that of Pestalozzi’s last success. In -spite of Schmid he would open a school for twelve neglected children -at Clindy, a hamlet near Yverdun. Here he produced results like those -which had crowned his first efforts at Neuhof, Stanz, and Burgdorf. Old, -absent-minded, and incapable as he seemed in ordinary affairs, he, as -though by enchantment, gained the attention and the affection of the -children, and bent them entirely to his will. In a few months the number -of children had risen to thirty, and wonderful progress had been made. -Clindy at once became celebrated. Pestalozzi was induced to admit some -children whose friends paid for them, and Schmid then persuaded the old -man to remove the school into the Castle. - -§ 80. In 1824 the Institution, which had lasted for twenty years, was -finally closed, and Pestalozzi went to spend his remaining days (nearly -three years as it proved) at Neuhof, which was then in the hands of his -grandson. The year before his death he visited an orphanage conducted on -his principles by Zeller at Beuggen near Rheinfelden. The children sang -a poem of Goethe’s quoted in _Leonard and Gertrude_, and had a crown of -oak ready to put on the old man’s head; but this he declined. “I am not -worthy of it,” said he, “keep it for innocence.” - -§ 81. On 17th February, 1827, at the age of eighty-one, Pestalozzi fell -asleep. - -§ 82. “The reform needed,” said Pestalozzi, “is not that the school-coach -should be better horsed, but that it should be turned right round and -started on a new track.” This may seem a violent metaphor, but perhaps -it is not more violent than the change that was (and in this country -still is) necessary. Let us try to ascertain what is the right road -according to Pestalozzi, and then see on what road the school-coach is -now travelling. - -§ 83. The grand change advocated by Pestalozzi was a change of _object_. -The main object of the school should not be to _teach_ but to _develop_. - -§ 84. This change of object naturally brings many changes with it. -Measured by their capacity for acquiring school knowledge and skill young -children may be considered, as one of H.M. Inspectors considered them, -“the fag-end of the school.” But if the school exists not to teach but to -develop, young children, instead of being the “fag-end,” become the most -important part of all. In the development of all organisms more depends -on the earlier than on the later stages; and there is no reason to doubt -that this law holds in the case of human beings. On this account, from -the days of Pestalozzi educational science has been greatly, I may say -mainly, concerned with young children. For the dominating thought has -been that the young human being is an undeveloped organism, and that in -education that organism is developed. So the essence of Pestalozzianism -lies not so much in its method as in its aim, not more in what it does -than in what it endeavours to do. - -§ 85. And thus it was that Pestalozzi (in Raumer’s words) “compelled -the scholastic world to revise the whole of their task, to reflect on -the nature and destiny of man, and also on the proper way of leading -him from his youth towards that destiny.” And it was his love of his -fellow-creatures that raised him to this standpoint. He was moved by “the -enthusiasm of humanity.” Consumed with grief for the degradation of the -Swiss peasantry, he never lost faith in their true dignity as men, and -in the possibility of raising them to a condition worthy of it. He cast -about for the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it could -be effected, not by any improvement in their outward circumstances, but -by an education which should make them what their Creator intended them -to be, and should give them the use and the consciousness of all their -inborn faculties. “From my youth up,” he says, “I felt what a high and -indispensable human duty it is to labour for the poor and miserable; -... that he may attain to a consciousness of his own dignity through -his feeling of the universal powers and endowments which he possesses -awakened within him; that he may not only learn to gabble over by rote -the religious maxim that ‘man is created in the image of God, and is -bound to live and die as a child of God,’ but may himself experience its -truth by virtue of the Divine power within him, so that he may be raised, -not only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in purple and -silk who lives unworthily of his high destiny” (Quoted in Barnard, p. 13). - -Again he says (and I quote at length on the point, as it is indeed the -key to Pestalozzianism), “Why have I insisted so strongly on attention to -early physical and intellectual education? Because I consider these as -merely leading to a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free -and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct -all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of man, -that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument -of that All-wise and Almighty Power that has called him into life” (To -Greaves, p. 160). - -§ 86. Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi required a -proper early training for all alike. “Every human being,” said he, “has -a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the -care of his infancy is confided” (_Ib._ p. 163). - -§ 87. Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself to mothers, -to convince them of the power placed in their hands, and to teach them -how to use it. “The mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator -Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; -... and what is demanded of her is—a _thinking love_.... God has given to -thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains -undecided—how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to -whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which -involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee.... -It is recorded that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and -showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every -descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he must be taught -to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the -head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine, -and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are -already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in calling -them forth” (To Greaves, p. 21). “Maternal love is the first agent in -education.... Through it the child is led to love and trust his Creator -and his Redeemer.” - -§ 88. From the theory of development which lay at the root of -Pestalozzi’s views of education, it followed that the imparting of -knowledge and the training for special pursuits held only a subordinate -position in his scheme. “Education, instead of merely considering what -is to be imparted to children, ought to consider first what they may be -said already to possess, if not as a developed, at least as an involved -faculty capable of development. Or if, instead of speaking thus in -the abstract, we will but recollect that it is to the great Author of -life that man owes the possession, and is responsible for the use, of -his innate faculties, education should not simply decide what is to be -made of a child, but rather inquire what it was intended that he should -become. What is his destiny as a created and responsible being? What -are his faculties as a rational and moral being? What are the means for -their perfection, and the end held out as the highest object of their -efforts by the Almighty Father of all, both in creation and in the page -of revelation?” - -§ 89. Education, then, must consist “in _a continual benevolent -superintendence_, with the object of calling forth all the faculties -which Providence has implanted; and its province, thus enlarged, will -yet be with less difficulty surveyed from one point of view, and will -have more of a systematic and truly philosophical character, than an -incoherent mass of ‘lessons’—arranged without unity of principle, and -gone through without interest—which too often usurps its name.” - -The educator’s task then is to superintend and promote the child’s -development, morally, intellectually, and physically. - -§ 90. “The essential principle of education is not teaching,” said -Pestalozzi; “it is love” (R.’s G., 289). Again he says, “The child -loves and believes before it thinks and acts” (_Ib._ 378). And in a -very striking passage (_Ib._ 329), where he compares the development of -the various powers of a human being to the development of a tree, he -says, “These forces of the heart—faith and love—are in the formation of -immortal man what the root is for the tree.” So, according to Pestalozzi, -a child without faith and love can no more grow up to be what he should -be than a tree can grow without a root. Apart from this vital truth there -can be no such thing as Pestalozzianism. - - “Ah yet when all is thought and said - The heart still overrules the head.” - -It is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong far more than -our intellects. In advocating the training of the minds of the people, -Lord Derby once remarked that as Chairman of Quarter Sessions he had -found most of the culprits brought before him were stupid and ignorant. -It certainly cannot be denied that the commonest kind of criminal is -bad in every way. He has his body ruined by debauchery, his intellect -almost in abeyance, and his heart and affections set on what is vile and -degrading. If you could cultivate his intellect you would certainly raise -him out of the lowest and by far the largest of the criminal classes. -But he might become a criminal of a type less disgusting in externals, -but in reality far more dangerous. The most atrocious miscreant of our -time, if not of all time, was a man who contrived a machine to sink ships -in mid-ocean, his only object being to gain a sum of money on a false -insurance. This man was a type of the _élite_ of criminals, had received -an intellectual training, and could not have been described by Lord Derby -as ignorant or stupid. - -§ 91. Pestalozzi then, much as he valued the development of the -intellect, put first the moral and religious influence of education; and -with him moral and religious were one and the same. He protested against -the ordinary routine of elementary education, because “everywhere in it -the flesh predominated over the spirit, everywhere the divine element was -cast into the shade, everywhere selfishness and the passions were taken -as the motives of action, everywhere mechanical habits usurped the place -of intelligent spontaneity” (R.’s G., 470). Education for the people -must be different to this. “Man does not live by bread alone; every -child needs a religious development; every child needs to know how to -pray to God in all simplicity, but with faith and love” (R.’s G., 378). -“If the religious element does not run through the whole of education, -this element will have little influence on the life; it remains formal -or isolated”[160] (_Ib._ 381). And Pestalozzi sums up the essentials of -popular education in the words: “The child accustomed from his earliest -years to pray, to think, and to work, is already more than half educated” -(_Ib._ 381). - -§ 92. Here we see the main requisites. First the child must pray with -faith and love. Next he must _think_. - -“The child must think!” exclaims the schoolmaster: “Must he not learn?” -To which Pestalozzi would have replied, “Most certainly he must.” -Learning was not in Pestalozzi’s estimation as in Locke’s, the “last and -least” thing, but learning was with him something very different from -the learning imparted by the ordinary schoolmaster. Pestalozzi was very -imperfectly acquainted with the thoughts and efforts of his predecessors, -but the one book on education which he had studied had freed him from the -“idols” of the schoolroom. This book was the _Emile_ of Rousseau, and -from it he came no less than Rousseau himself to despise the learning -of the schoolmaster. But when he had to face the problem of organizing -a course of education for the people, Pestalozzi did not agree with -Rousseau that the first twelve years should be spent in “losing time.” -No, the children must learn, but they must learn in such a way as to -develop all the powers of the mind. And so Pestalozzi was led to what he -considered his great discovery, viz., that all instruction must be based -on “Anschauung.” - -§ 93. The Germans, who have devoted so much thought and care and effort -to education, greatly honour Pestalozzi,[161] and as his disciples aim -at making all elementary instruction “anschaulich.” We English have -troubled ourselves so little about Pestalozzi, or, I might say, about -the theory of education, that we have not cared to get equivalent words -for _Anschauung_ and _anschaulich_. For _Anschauung_ “sense-impression” -has lately been tried; but this is in two ways defective; for (1) there -may be “Anschauungen” beyond the range of the senses, and (2) there is -in an “Anschauung” an active as well as a passive element, and this the -word “impression” does not convey. The active part is brought out better -by “observation”—the word used by Joseph Payne and James MacAlister; but -this seems hardly wide enough. Other writers of English borrow words -straight from the French, and talk about “intuition” and “intuitive,” -words which were taken (first I believe by Kant) from the Latin -_intueri_, “to look at _with attention and reflection_.” - -§ 94. I think we shall be wise in following these writers. On good -authority I have heard of a German professor who when asked if he had -read some large work recently published in the distressing type of his -nation, replied that he had not; he was waiting for a French translation. -If the Germans find that the French express their thoughts more clearly -than they can themselves, we may think ourselves fortunate when the -French will act as interpreters. I therefore gladly turn to M. Buisson -and translate what he says about “intuition.” - -“Intuition is just the most natural and most spontaneous action of human -intelligence, the action by which the mind seizes a reality without -effort, hesitation, or go-between. It is a ‘direct apperception,’ made as -it were at a glance. If it has to do with some matter within the province -of the senses, the senses perceive it at once. Here we have the simplest -case of all, the most common, the most easily noted. If the thing -concerned is an idea, a reality, that is, beyond the reach of the senses, -we still say that we seize it by intuition when all that is necessary is -that it present itself to the mind, and the mind at once grasps it and is -satisfied with it without any need of proof or investigation. We advance -by intuition whenever our mind, acting by the senses, or by the judgment, -or by the conscience, knows things with the same amount of evidence and -the same amount of speed that a distinct view of an object affords the -eye. So intuition is no separate faculty; it is nothing strange or new -in the mind of man. It is just the mind itself ‘intuitively’ recognising -what exists in it or around it” (_Les Conférences Péd. faites aux -Instituteurs_, Delagrave, 1879, p. 331). So the “intuitive method” (to -keep the French name for it) is of very wide application. “It appeals to -this force _sui generis_, to this glance of the mind, to this spontaneous -spring of the intelligence towards truth.” It sets the pupil’s mind to -work in following his own intellectual instincts. If in our teaching we -can use it, we shall have gained, as M. Buisson says, the best helper in -the world, viz., the pupil. If he can be got to take an active part in -the instruction all difficulty vanishes at once. Instead of having to -drag him along, you will see him delighted to keep you company. - -§ 95. According to M. Buisson there are three kinds of -intuition—sensuous, intellectual, and moral. Similarly M. Jullien -(_Esprit de Pestalozzi_, 1812, vol. j, p. 152) says that there are -“intuitions” of the “internal senses” as well as of the external: the -“internal senses” are four in number: first, the sense for the true; -second, the sense for the beautiful; third, the sense for the good; -fourth, the sense for the infinite. - -§ 96. Without settling whether this analysis is complete we shall have -no difficulty in admitting that both body and mind have faculties by -means of which we apprehend, lay hold of, what is true and right; and it -is on the use of these faculties that Pestalozzi bases instruction. No -Englishman may have found a good word to indicate _Anschauung_, but one -Englishman at least had the idea of it long before Pestalozzi. More than -a century earlier Locke had called knowledge “the internal perception of -the mind.” “Knowing is seeing,” said he; “and if it be so, it is madness -to persuade ourselves we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use never -so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible” (_Supra_ -p. 222). - -§ 97. Thus in theory Pestalozzi was, however unconsciously, a follower -of Locke. But in practice they went far asunder. Locke’s thoughts were -constantly occupied with philosophical investigations, and he seems to -have made small account of the intellectual power of children, and to -have supposed that they cannot “see” anything at all. So he cared little -what was taught them, and till they reached the age of reason the tutor -might give such lessons as would be useful to “young gentlemen,” the -avowed object being to “keep them from sauntering.” His follower Rousseau -preferred that the child’s mind should not be filled with the traditional -lore of the schoolroom, and that the instructor, when the youth reached -the age of twelve, should find “an unfurnished apartment to let.” Then -came Pestalozzi, and he saw that at whatever age the instructor began -to teach the child, he would not find an unfurnished apartment, seeing -that every child learns continuously from the hour of its birth. And -how does the child learn? Not by repeating words which express the -thoughts, feelings, and experiences of other people,[162] but by his own -experiences and feelings, and by the thoughts which these suggest to him. - -§ 98. Elementary education then on its intellectual side is teaching the -child to think. The proper subjects of thought for children Pestalozzi -held to be the children’s surroundings, the realities of their own lives, -the things that affect them and arouse their feelings and interests. -Perhaps he did not emphasize _interest_ as much as Herbart has done -since; but clearly an _Anschauung_ or “intuition” is only possible when -the child is interested in the thing observed. - -§ 99. The art of teaching in Pestalozzi’s system consists in analyzing -the knowledge that the children should acquire about their surroundings, -arranging it in a regular sequence, and bringing it to the children’s -consciousness gradually and in the way in which their minds will act upon -it. In this way they learn slowly, but all they learn is their own. They -are not like the crow drest up in peacock’s feathers, for they have -not appropriated any _dead_ knowledge (“_angelernte todte Begriffe_,” -as Diesterweg has it), and it cannot be said of them, “They know about -much, but _know_ nothing (_Sie kennen viel und wissen nichts_).” Their -knowledge is actual knowledge, for they are taught not _what_ to think -but _to think_, and to exercise their powers of observation and draw -conclusions from their own experience. The teacher simply furnishes -materials and occasions for this exercise in observing, and as it goes on -gives his benevolent superintendence. - -§ 100. They learn slowly for another reason. According to Pestalozzi the -first conceptions must be dwelt upon till they are distinct and firmly -fixed. Buss tells us that when he first joined Pestalozzi at Burgdorf the -delay over the prime elements seemed to him a waste of time, but that -afterwards he was convinced of its being the right plan, and felt that -the failure of his own education was due to its incoherent and desultory -character. “Not only,” says Pestalozzi, “have the first elements of -knowledge in every subject the most important bearing on its complete -outline, but the child’s confidence and interest are gained by perfect -attainment even in the lowest stage of instruction.”[163] - -§ 101. We have seen that Pestalozzi would have children learn to pray, -to think, and to _work_. In schools for the _soi-disant_ “upper classes” -the parents or friends of a boy sometimes say, “There is no need for -him to work he will be very well off.” From this kind of demoralization -Pestalozzi’s pupils were free. They would have to work, and Pestalozzi -wished them to learn to work as soon as possible. In this way he sought -to increase their self-respect, and to unite their school-life with their -life beyond it.[164] - -§ 102. Pestalozzi was tremendously in earnest, and he wished the children -also to take instruction seriously. He was totally opposed to the notion -which had found favour with many great authorities as _e.g._, Locke -and Basedow, that instruction should always be given in the guise of -amusement. “I am convinced,” says he, “that such a notion will for ever -preclude solidity of knowledge, and, for want of sufficient exertions on -the part of the pupils, will lead to that very result which I wish to -avoid by my principle of a constant employment of the thinking powers. -A child must very early in life be taught the lesson that exertion is -indispensable for the attainment of knowledge”[165] (To G., xxiv, p. -117). But he should be taught at the same time that exertion is not an -evil, and he should be encouraged, not frightened, into it. Healthy -exertion, whether of body or mind, is always attended with a feeling of -satisfaction amounting to pleasure, and where this pleasure is absent -the instructor has failed in producing proper exertion. As Pestalozzi -says, “Whenever children are inattentive and apparently take no interest -in a lesson, the teacher should always first look to himself for the -reason”[166] (_Ib._). - -§ 103. But though he took so serious a view of instruction, he made -instruction include and indeed give a prominent place to the arts of -singing and drawing. In the Pestalozzian schools singing found immense -favour with both the masters and the pupils, and the collection of songs -by Nägeli, a master at Yverdun, became famous. Drawing too was practised -by all. As Pestalozzi writes to Greaves (xxiv, 117), “A person who is -in the habit of drawing, especially from nature, will easily perceive -many circumstances which are commonly overlooked, and will form a much -more correct impression even of such objects as he does not stop to -examine minutely, than one who has never been taught to look upon what -he sees with an intention of reproducing a likeness of it. The attention -to the exact shape of the whole and the proportion of the parts, which -is requisite for the taking of an adequate sketch, is converted into a -habit, and becomes productive both of instruction and amusement.” - -§ 104. I have now endeavoured to point out the main features of -Pestalozzianism. The following is the summing up of these features given -by Morf in his Contribution to Pestalozzi’s Biography:— - - 1. Instruction must be based on the learner’s own experience. - (Das Fundament des Unterrichts ist die Anschauung.) - - 2. What the learner experiences and observes must be connected - with language. - - 3. The time for learning is not the time for judging, not the - time for criticism. - - 4. In every department instruction must begin with the simplest - elements, and starting from these must be carried on step by - step according to the development of the child, that is, it - must be brought into psychological sequence. - - 5. At each point the instructor shall not go forward till - that part of the subject has become the proper intellectual - possession of the learner. - - 6. Instruction must follow the path of development, not the - path of lecturing, teaching, or telling. - - 7. To the educator the individuality of the child must be - sacred. - - 8. Not the acquisition of knowledge or skill is the main - object of elementary instruction, but the development and - strengthening of the powers of the mind. - - 9. With knowledge (_Wissen_) must come power (_Können_), with - information (_Kenntniss_) skill (_Fertigkeit_). - - 10. Intercourse between educator and pupil, and school - discipline especially, must be based on and controlled by love. - - 11. Instruction shall be subordinated to the aim of _education_. - - 12. The ground of moral-religious bringing up lies in the - relation of mother and child.[167] - -§ 105. Having now seen in which direction Pestalozzi would start the -school-coach, let us examine (with reference to England only) the -direction in which it is travelling at present. - -§ 106. For educational purposes we may, with Lord Beaconsfield, regard -the English as composed of two nations, the rich and the poor. Let us -consider these separately. - -In the case of the rich we find that the worst part of our educational -course—the part most wrong in theory and pernicious in practice—is the -schooling of young children, say between six and twelve years old. -Before the age of six some few are fortunate enough to attend a good -Kindergarten; but the opportunity of doing this is at present rare, and -for most children of well-to-do parents there is, up to six years old, -little or no organised instruction. Pestalozzi would have every mother -made capable of giving such instruction. Froebel would have every child -sent to a skilled “Kindergärtnerin.” It seems to me beyond question that -children gain immensely from joining a properly-managed Kindergarten; but -where this is impossible, perhaps the mother may leave the child to the -series of impressions which come to its senses without any regular order. -According to the first Lord Lytton, the mother’s interference might -remind us of the man who thought his bees would make honey faster if, -instead of going in search of flowers, they were shut up and had flowers -brought to them. The way in which young children turn from object to -object, like the bees from flower to flower, seems to show that at this -stage their intellectual training goes on whether we help it or not. -There is no doubt an education for children however young, and the mother -is the teacher, but the lessons have more to do with the heart than the -head. - -§ 107. But the time for regular teaching comes at last, and what is to be -done then? Let us consider briefly what _is_ done. - -Hitherto, the only defence ever made of our school-course leading up to -residence at a University, has been that it aims not at giving knowledge -but at training the mind. Youths then are supposed to be engaged, not in -gaining knowledge, but in training their faculties for adult life. But -when we come to provide for the “education” of children, we never think -of training their faculties for youth, but endeavour solely to inculcate -what will then come in useful. We see clearly enough that it would -be absurd to cram the mind of a youth with laws of science or art or -commerce which he could not understand, on the ground that the getting-up -of these things might save him trouble in after-life. But we do not -hesitate to sacrifice childhood to the learning by heart of grammar -rules, Latin declensions, historical dates, and the like, with no thought -whatever of the child’s faculties, but simply with a view of giving -him knowledge (so-called) that will come in useful five or six years -afterwards. We do not treat youths thus, probably because we have more -sympathy with them, or at least understand them better. The intellectual -life to which the senses and the imagination are subordinated in the man -has already begun in the youth. In an inferior degree he can do what the -man can do, and understand what the man can understand. He has already -some notion of reasoning, and abstraction, and generalisation. But with -the child it is very different. His active faculties may be said almost -to differ in kind from a man’s. He has a feeling for the sensuous world -which he will lose as he grows up. His strong imagination, under no -control of the reason, is constantly at work building castles in the air, -and investing the doll or the puppet-show with all the properties of the -things they represent. His feelings and affections, easily excited, find -an object to love or dislike in every person and thing he meets with. On -the other hand, he has only vague notions of the abstract, and has no -interest except in actual known persons, animals, and things. - -§ 108. There is, then, between the child of eight or nine and the youth -of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than between the youth and -the man of twenty; and this demands a corresponding difference in their -studies. And yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often -kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections of hard words, -perhaps, too, in a foreign language: and absorbed in the present, he -is not much comforted by the teacher’s assurance that “some day” these -things will come in useful. - -§ 109. How to educate the child is doubtless the most difficult problem -of all, and it is generally allotted to those who are the least likely to -find a satisfactory solution. - -The earliest educator of the children of many rich parents is the -nursemaid—a person not usually distinguished by either intellectual or -moral excellence.[168] At an early age this educator is superseded -by the Preparatory School. Taken as a body, the ladies who open -“establishments for young gentlemen” cannot be said to hold enlarged -views, or, indeed, any views whatever, on the subject of education. Their -intention is not so much to cultivate the children’s faculties as to make -a livelihood, and to hear no complaints that pupils who have left them -have been found deficient in the expected knowledge by the master of the -next school. If anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is -considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage, let him -look into a standard work still in vogue (“Mangnall’s Questions”), from -which the young of both sexes acquire a great quantity and variety of -learning; the whole of ancient and modern history and biography, together -with the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names of all -the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300 pages.[169] - -Unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these ladies, their -scholars’ bodies are often treated in preparatory schools no less -injuriously than their minds. It may be natural in a child to use his -lungs and delight in noise, but this can hardly be considered _genteel_, -so the tendency is, as far as possible, suppressed. It is found, too, -that if children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil their -clothes, and do not look like “young gentlemen,” so they are made to take -exercise in a much more genteel fashion, walking slowly two-and-two, -_with gloves on_.[170] - -§ 110. At nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put to a school taught -by masters. Here they lose sight of their gloves, and learn the use of -their limbs; but their minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. The -studies of the school have been arranged without any thought of their -peculiar needs. The youngest class is generally the largest, often much -the largest, and it is handed over to the least competent and worst paid -master on the staff of teachers. The reason is, that little boys are -found to learn the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. A youth or a man -who came fresh to the Latin grammar would learn in a morning as much as -the master, with great labour, can get into children in a week. It is -thought, therefore, that the best teaching should be applied where it -will have the most obvious results. If anyone were to say to the manager -of a school, “The master who takes the lowest form teaches badly, and -the children learn nothing”; he would perhaps say, “Very likely; but if -I paid a much higher salary, and got a better man, they would learn but -little.” The only thing the school-manager thinks of is, How much do -the little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms? How their -faculties are being developed, or whether they have any faculties except -for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for getting grammar-rules, &c. -by heart, he is not so “unpractical” as to enquire. - -§ 111. With reference to the education of the first of our “two -nations,” it seems then pretty clear that Pestalozzi would require that -the school-coach should be turned and started in a totally different -direction. - -§ 112. What about the education of the other “nation,” a nation of which -the verb “to rule” has for many centuries been used in the passive -voice, but can be used in that voice no longer? A century ago, with -the partial exception of Scotland and Massachusetts, there was no such -thing as school education for the people to be found anywhere in Europe -or America. But from 1789 onwards power has been passing more and more -from the few to the many; and as a natural consequence folk-schools -(for which we have not yet found a name) have become of vast importance -everywhere. The Germans, as we have seen, have been the disciples of -Pestalozzi, and their elementary education in everything bears traces -of his ideas. The English have organised a great system of elementary -education in total ignorance of Pestalozzi. As usual, we seem to have -supposed that the right system would come to us “in sleep.” But has it -come? The children of the poor are now compelled by the law to attend an -elementary school. What sort of an education has the law there provided -for them? The Education Department professes to measure everything by -results. Let us do the same. Suppose that on his leaving school we -wished to forecast a lad’s future. What should we try to find out about -him? No doubt we should ask what he knew; but this would not be by any -means the main thing. His skill would interest us, and still more would -his state of health. But what we should ask first and foremost is this, -Whom does he love? Whom does he admire and imitate? What does he care -about? What interests him? It is only when the answers to these questions -are satisfactory, that we can think hopefully of his future; and it -is only in so far as the school-course has tended to make the answers -satisfactory, that it deserves our approval. Schools such as Pestalozzi -designed would have thus deserved our approval; but we cannot say this -of the schools into which the children of the English poor are now -driven. In these schools the heart and the affections are not thought of, -the powers of neither mind nor body are developed by exercise, and the -children do not acquire any interests that will raise or benefit them. - -§ 113. An advocate of our system would not deny this, but would probably -say, “The question for us to consider is, not what is the best that in -the most favourable circumstances might be attempted, but what is the -best that in very restricted and by no means favourable circumstances, -we are likely to get. The teachers in our schools are not self-devoting -Pestalozzis, but only ordinary men and women, and still worse, ordinary -boys and girls.[171] It would be of no use talking to our teachers -(still less our pupil-teachers) about developing the affections and -the mental or bodily powers of the children. All such talk could end -in nothing but silly cant. As for character, we expect the school to -cultivate in the children habits of order, neatness, industry. Beyond -this we cannot go.” - -And yet, though this seems reasonable, we feel that it is not quite -satisfactory. If so much depends in all of us on “admiration, hope, and -love,” we can hardly consider a system of education that entirely ignores -them to be well adapted to the needs of human nature. If Pestalozzi -was right, we must be wrong. We have never supposed the object of the -school to be the development of the faculties of heart, of head, and -of hand, but we have thought of nothing but learning—learning first of -all to read, write, and cipher, and then in “good” schools, one or more -“extra subjects” may be taken up, and a grant obtained for them. The sole -object, both of managers and teachers, is to prepare for the Inspector, -who comes once a year, and from an examination of five hours or so, -pronounces on what the children have learnt. - -§ 114. The engineer most concerned in the construction of this machine, -the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, announced that there could be “no such thing -as a science of education;” and as when we have no opinion of our own -we always adopt the opinion of some positive person, we took his word -for it. But what if the confident Mr. Lowe was mistaken? What if there -_is_ such a science, and the aim of it is that children should grow up -not so much to _know_ something as to _be_ something? In this case we -shall be obliged sooner or later to give up Mr. Lowe and to come round to -Pestalozzi.[172] Science is correct inferences drawn from the facts of -the universe; and where such science exists, confident assertions that -it does not and cannot exist are dangerous for the confident persons and -for those who follow them. Even if “there is no such thing as a science -of education,” such a thing as _education_ there is; and this is just -what Mr. Lowe, and we may say the English, practically deny. They make -arrangements for instruction and mete out “the grant” according to the -results obtained, but they totally fail to conceive of the existence of -_education_, education which has instruction among its various agents. - -§ 115. In one respect the analogy between the educator and child and -the gardener and plant, an analogy in which Pestalozzi no less than -Froebel delighted, entirely breaks down. The gardener has to study the -conditions necessary for the health and development of the plant, but -these conditions lie outside his own life and are independent of it. With -the educator it is different. Like the gardener he can create nothing -in the child, but unlike the gardener he can further the development -only of that which exists in himself. He _draws out_ in the young -the intelligence and the sense of what is just, the love of what is -beautiful, the admiration of what is noble, but this he can do only -by his own intelligence and his own enthusiasm for what is just and -beautiful and noble. Even industry is in many cases _caught_ from the -teacher. In a volume of essays (originally published in the _Forum_), -in which some men, distinguished as scholars or in literature in the -United States, have given an account of their early years, we find that -almost in every case they date their intellectual industry and growth -from the time when they came under the influence of some inspiring -teacher. Thus even for instruction and still more for education, the -great force is _the teacher_. This is a truth which all our “parties” -overlook. They wage their controversies and have their triumphs and -defeats about unessentials, and leave the essentials to “crotchety -educationists.” In such questions as whether the Church Catechism shall -or shall not be taught, whether natural science shall or shall not figure -in the time-table (without scientific teachers it can figure nowhere -else), whether the parents or the Government shall pay for each child -twopence or threepence a week, whether the ratepayers shall or shall -not be “represented” among the Managers in “voluntary” schools, in all -questions of this kind _education_ is not concerned; and yet these are -the only questions that we think about. In the end it will perhaps dawn -upon us that in every school what is important for education is not -the time-table but the teacher, and that so far as pupil-teachers are -employed education is impossible. Elsewhere (_infra_ p. 476) I have told -of a man in the prime of life (he seemed between 40 and 50 years old) -whose time was entirely taken up in teaching a large class of children, -boys and girls, of six or seven years. He most certainly could and did -educate them both in heart and mind. He made their lessons a delightful -occupation to them, and he exercised over them the influence of a good -and wise father. Here was the right system seen at its best. I do not -say that all or even most adult teachers would have exercised so good -an influence as this gentleman; but so far as they come up to what they -ought to be and might be they do exercise such an influence. And this of -course can be said of no _pupil_-teacher. - -§ 116. As regards schools then, schools for the rich and schools for the -poor, the great educating force is the personality of the teacher. Before -we can have Pestalozzian schools we must have Pestalozzian teachers. -Teachers must catch something of Pestalozzi’s spirit and enter into his -conception of their task. Perhaps some of them will feel inclined to -say: “Fine words, no doubt, and in a sense very true, that education -should be the unfolding of the faculties according to the Divine idea; -but between this high poetical theory and the dull prose of actual -school-teaching, there is a great gulf fixed, and we cannot attend to -both at the same time.” I know full well the difference there is between -theories and plans of education as they seem to us when we are at leisure -and can think of them without reference to particular pupils, and when -all our energy is taxed to get through our day’s teaching, and our -animal spirits jaded by having to keep order and exact attention among -veritable schoolboys who do not answer in all respects to “the young” -of the theorists. But whilst admitting most heartily the difference -here, as elsewhere, between the actual and the ideal, I think that -the dull prose of school-teaching would be less dull and less prosaic -if our aim was higher, and if we did not contentedly assume that our -present performances are as good as the nature of the case will admit -of. Many teachers (perhaps I may say most) are discontented with the -greater number of their pupils, but it is not so usual for teachers to be -discontented with themselves. And yet even those who are most averse from -theoretical views, which they call unpractical, would admit, as practical -men, that their methods are probably susceptible of improvement, and that -even if their methods are right, they themselves are by no means perfect -teachers. Only let the _desire_ of improvement once exist, and the -teacher will find a new interest in his work. In part, the treadmill-like -monotony so wearing to the spirits will be done away, and he will at -times have the encouragement of conscious progress. To a man thus -minded, theorists may be of great assistance. His practical knowledge -may, indeed, often show him the absurdity of some pompously enunciated -principle, and even where the principles seem sound, he may smile at -the applications. But the theorists will show him many aspects of his -profession, and will lead him to make many observations in it, which -would otherwise have escaped him. They will save him from a danger caused -by the difficulty of getting anything done in the school-room, the danger -of thinking more of means than ends. They will teach him to examine what -his aim really is, and then whether he is using the most suitable methods -to accomplish it. - -Such a theorist is Pestalozzi. He points to a high ideal, and bids us -measure our modes of education by it. Let us not forget that if we are -practical men we are Christians, and as such the ideal set before us is -the highest of all. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is -perfect.” - - The Pestalozzian literature in German and even in French is now - considerable, but it is still small in English. The book I have - made most use of is _Histoire de Pestalozzi par R. de Guimps_ - (Lausanne, Bridel), with its translation by John Russell - (London: Sonnenschein. Appleton’s: N. Yk.). In Henry Barnard’s - _Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism_ are collected some good - papers, among them Tilleard’s trans. from Raumer. We also have - H. Kruesi’s _Pestalozzi_ (Cincinatti: Wilson, Hinkle, & Co.). I - have already mentioned Miss Channing’s _Leonard and Gertrude_. - The _Letters to Greaves_ are now out of print. A complete - account of Pestalozzi and everything connected with him, - bibliography included, is given in M. J. Guillaume’s article - _Pestalozzi_, in Buisson’s _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_. (See - also _Pestalozzi_ par J. Guillaume (Hachette) just published.) - - - - -XVII. - -FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. - -(1783-1852.) - - -§ 1. I now approach the most difficult part of my subject. I have -endeavoured to give some account of the lessons taught us by the chief -Educational Reformers. No doubt my selection of these has been made in a -fashion somewhat arbitrary, and there are names which do not appear and -yet might reasonably be looked for if all the chief Educational Reformers -were supposed to be included. But the plan of my book has restricted -me to a few, and I am by no means sure that some to whom I have given -a chapter are as worthy of it as some to whom I have not. I have in a -measure been guided by fancy and even by chance. One man, however, I dare -not leave out. All the best tendencies of modern thought on education -seem to me to culminate in what was said and done by Friedrich Froebel, -and I have little doubt that he has shown the right road for further -advance. Of what he said and did I therefore feel bound to give the -best account I can, but I am well aware that I shall fail, even more -conspicuously than in other cases, to do him justice. There are some -great men who seem to have access to a world from which we ordinary -mortals are shut out. Like Moses “they go up into the Mount,” and the -directions they give us are based upon what they have seen in it. But we -cannot go up with them; so we feel that we very imperfectly understand -them; and when there can be not the smallest doubt of their sincerity -we at times hesitate about the nature of their visions. For myself I -must admit that I very imperfectly understand Froebel. I am convinced, -as I said, that he has pointed out the right road for our advance in -education; but he was perhaps right in saying: “Centuries may yet pass -before my view of the human creature as manifested in the child, and of -the educational treatment it requires, are universally received.” It -has already taken centuries to recover from the mistakes made at the -Renascence. For the full attainment of Froebel’s standpoint perhaps a few -additional centuries may be necessary. - -§ 2. Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel[173] was born at Oberweissbach, a -village of the Thuringian Forest, on the 21st April, 1783. He completed -his seventieth year, and died at Marienthal, near Bad-Liebenstein, on the -21st June, 1852. Like Comenius, with whom he had much in common, he was -neglected in his youth; and the remembrance of his own early sufferings -made him in after life the more eager in promoting the happiness of -children. His mother he lost in his infancy, and his father, the pastor -of Oberweissbach and the surrounding district, attended to his parish -but not to his family. Friedrich soon had a stepmother, and neglect was -succeeded by stepmotherly attention; but a maternal uncle took pity on -him, and for some years gave him a home a few miles off at Stadt-Ilm. -Here he went to the village school, but like many thoughtful boys he -passed for a dunce. Throughout life he was always seeking for hidden -connexions and an underlying unity in all things. In his own words: “Man, -particularly in boyhood, should become intimate with nature—not so much -with reference to the details and the outer forms of her phenomena as -with reference to the Spirit of God that lives in her and rules over -her. Indeed, the boy feels this deeply and demands it” (_Ed. of M._, -Hailmann’s trans., p. 162). But nothing of this unity was to be perceived -in the piecemeal studies of the school; so Froebel’s mind, busy as it -was for itself, would not work for the masters. His half-brother was -therefore thought more worthy of a university education, and Friedrich -was apprenticed for two years to a forester (1797-1799). Left to himself -in the Thuringian Forest, Froebel now began to “become intimate with -nature;” and without scientific instruction he obtained a profound -insight into the uniformity and essential unity of nature’s laws. -Years afterwards the celebrated Jahn (the “Father Jahn” of the German -gymnasts) told a Berlin student of a queer fellow he had met, who made -out all sorts of wonderful things from stones and cobwebs. This “queer -fellow” was Froebel; and the habit of making out general truths from the -observation of nature, especially of plants and trees, dated from his -solitary rambles in the Forest. No training could have been better suited -to strengthen his inborn tendency to mysticism; and when he left the -Forest at the early age of seventeen, he seems to have been possessed by -the main ideas which influenced him all his life. The conception which -in him dominated all others was the _unity of nature_; and he longed to -study natural sciences that he might find in them various applications -of nature’s universal laws. With great difficulty he got leave to join -his elder brother at the university of Jena; and there for a year he -went from lecture-room to lecture-room hoping to grasp that connexion of -the sciences which had for him far more attraction than any particular -science in itself. But Froebel’s allowance of money was very small, and -his skill in the management of money was never great; so his university -career ended in an imprisonment of nine weeks for a debt of thirty -shillings. He then returned home with very poor prospects, but much more -intent on what he calls the course of “self-completion” (_Vervollkommnung -meines selbst_) than on “getting on” in a worldly point of view. He -was soon sent to learn farming, but was recalled in consequence of the -failing health of his father. In 1802 the father died, and Froebel, now -twenty years old, had to shift for himself. It was some time before he -found his true vocation, and for the next three-and-a half years we -find him at work now in one part of Germany now in another,—sometimes -land-surveying, sometimes acting as accountant, sometimes as private -secretary. - -§ 3. But in all this his “outer life was far removed from his inner -life.” “I carried my own world within me,” he tells us, “and this it -was for which I cared and which I cherished.” In spite of his outward -circumstances he became more and more conscious that a great task lay -before him for the good of humanity; and this consciousness proved fatal -to his “settling down.” “To thee may Fate soon give a settled hearth and -a loving wife” (thus he wrote in a friend’s album in 1805); “me let it -keep wandering without rest, and allow only time to learn aright my true -relation to the world and to my own inner being. Do thou give bread to -men; be it my effort to give men to themselves” (K. Schmidt’s _Gesch. d. -Päd._, 3rd ed. by Lange, vol. iv, p. 277). - -§ 4. As yet the nature of the task was not clear to him, and it -seemed determined by accident. While studying architecture in -Frankfort-on-the-Main, he became acquainted with the director of a model -school who had caught some of the enthusiasm of Pestalozzi. This friend -saw that Froebel’s true field was education, and he persuaded him to give -up architecture and take a post in the model school. “The very first -time,” he says, “that I found myself before thirty or forty boys, I felt -thoroughly at home. In fact, I perceived that I had at last found my -long-missed life-element; and I wrote to my brother that I was as well -pleased as the fish in the water: I was inexpressibly happy.” - -§ 5. In this school Froebel worked for two years with remarkable success; -but he felt more and more his need of preparation, so he then retired -and undertook the education of three lads of one family. Even in this he -could not satisfy himself, and he obtained the parents’ consent to his -taking the boys to Yverdun, and there forming with them a part of the -celebrated institution of Pestalozzi. Thus from 1807 till 1809 Froebel -was drinking in Pestalozzianism at the fountain head, and qualifying -himself to carry on the work which Pestalozzi had begun. For the science -of education had to deduce from Pestalozzi’s experience principles -which Pestalozzi himself could not deduce; and “Froebel, the pupil of -Pestalozzi, and a genius like his master, completed the reformer’s -system; taking the results at which Pestalozzi had arrived through the -necessities of his position, Froebel developed the ideas involved in -them, not by further experience but by deduction from the nature of man, -and thus he attained to the conception of true human development and to -the requirements of true education” (Schmidt’s _Gesch. d. Päd._). - -§ 6. Holding that man and nature, inasmuch as they proceed from the -same Source, must be governed by the same laws, Froebel longed for more -knowledge of natural science. Even Pestalozzi seemed to him not to -“honour science in her divinity.” He therefore determined to continue -the university course which had been so rudely interrupted eleven years -before, and in 1811 he began studying at Göttingen, whence he proceeded -to Berlin. In his Autobiography he tells us: “The lectures for which I -had so longed really came up to the needs of my mind and soul, and made -me feel more fervently than ever the certainty of the demonstrable inner -connexion of the whole cosmical development of the universe. I saw also -the possibility of man’s becoming conscious of this absolute unity of the -universe, as well as of the diversity of things and appearances which is -perpetually unfolding itself within that unity; and then when I had made -clear to myself, and brought fully home to my consciousness the view that -the infinitely varied phenomena in man’s life, work, thought, feeling, -and position were all summed up in the unity of his personal existence I -felt myself able to turn my thoughts once more to educational problems” -(_Autob._ trans. by Michaelis and Moore, p. 89). - -But again his studies were interrupted, this time by the king of -Prussia’s celebrated call “To my people.” Though not a Prussian, Froebel -was heart and soul a German. He therefore responded to the call, enlisted -in Lützow’s corps, and went through the campaign of 1813. His military -ardour, however, did not take his mind off education. “Everywhere,” he -writes, “as far as the fatigues I underwent allowed, I carried in my -thoughts my future calling as educator; yes, even in the few engagements -in which I had to take part. Even in these I could gather experience -for the task I proposed to myself.” Froebel’s soldiering showed him the -value of discipline and united action, how the individual belongs not -to himself but to the whole body, and how the whole body supports the -individual. - -Froebel was rewarded for his patriotism by the friendship of two -men whose names will always be associated with his, Langethal and -Middendorff. These young men, ten years younger than Froebel, became -attached to him in the field, and were ever afterwards his devoted -followers, sacrificing all their prospects in life for the sake of -carrying out his ideas. - -§ 7. At the peace of Fontainebleau (signed in May, 1814) Froebel -returned to Berlin, and became curator of the Museum of Mineralogy under -Professor Weiss. In accepting this appointment from the Government he -seemed to turn aside from his work as educator; but if not teaching he -was learning. The unity of nature and human nature seemed more and more -to reveal itself to him. Of the days past in the museum he afterwards -wrote: “Here was I at the central point of my life and strife, where -inner working and law, where life, nature, and mathematics were united -in the fixed crystaline form, where a world of symbols lay open to the -inner eye.” Again he says: “The stones in my hand and under my eye became -speaking forms. The world of crystals declared to me the life and laws of -life of man, and in still but real and sensible speech taught the true -life of humanity.” “Geology and crystallography not only opened for me -a higher circle of knowledge and insight, but also showed me a higher -goal for my inquiry, my speculation, and my endeavour. Nature and man now -seemed to me mutually to explain each other through all their numberless -various stages of development. Man, as I saw, receives from a knowledge -of natural objects, even because of their immense deep-seated diversity, -a foundation for and a guidance towards a knowledge of himself and life, -and a preparation for the manifestation of that knowledge” (_Autob._ -_ut supra_, p. 97). More and more the thought possessed him that the -one thing needful for man was unity of development, perfect evolution -in accordance with the laws of his being, such evolution as science -discovers in the other organisms of nature. - -§ 8. He at first intended to become a teacher of natural science, but -before long wider views dawned upon him. Langethal and Middendorff were -in Berlin, engaged in tuition. Froebel gave them regular instruction in -his theory, and at length, counting on their support, he resolved to -set about realising his own idea of “the new education.” This was in -1816. Three years before one of his brothers, a clergyman, had died of -fever caught from the French prisoners. His widow was still living in -the parsonage at Griesheim, a village on the Ilm. Froebel gave up his -post in Berlin, and set out for Griesheim on foot, spending his very -last groschen on the way for bread. Here he undertook the education of -his orphan niece and nephews, and also of two more nephews sent him by -another brother. With these he opened a school, and wrote to Middendorff -and Langethal to come and help in the experiment. Middendorff came at -once, Langethal a year or two later, when the school had been moved to -Keilhau, another of the Thuringian villages, which became the Mecca of -the new faith. In Keilhau, Froebel, Langethal, Middendorff, and Barop, -a relation of Middendorff’s, all married and formed an educational -community. Such zeal could not be fruitless, and the school gradually -increased, though for many years its teachers, with Froebel at their -head, were in the greatest straits for money, and at times even for -food. Karl Froebel, who was brought up in the school, tells how, on one -occasion, he and the other children were sent to ramble in the woods -till some of the seed-corn provided for the coming year had been turned -into bread for them. Besides these difficulties the community suffered -from the panic and reaction after the murder of Kotzebue (1819), and -were persecuted as a nest of demagogues. But “the New Education” was -sufficiently successful to attract notice from all quarters; and when he -had been ten years at Keilhau (1826) Froebel published his great work, -_The Education of Man_. - -§ 9. Four years later he determined to start other institutions in -connexion with the parent institution at Keilhau; and being offered by -a private friend the use of a castle on the Wartensee, in the canton of -Lucerne, he left Keilhau under the direction of Barop, and with Langethal -made a settlement in Switzerland. The ground, however, was very ill -chosen. The Catholic clergy resisted what they considered as a Protestant -invasion, and the experiment on the Wartensee and at Willisau in the -same canton, to which the institution was moved in 1833, never had a -fair chance. It was in vain that Middendorff at Froebel’s call left his -wife and family at Keilhau, and laboured for four years in Switzerland -without once seeing them. The Swiss institution never flourished. But -the Swiss Government wished to turn to account the presence of the great -educator; so young teachers were sent to Froebel for instruction, and -finally he removed to Burgdorf (a town already famous from Pestalozzi’s -labours there thirty years earlier) to undertake the establishment of -a public orphanage, and also to superintend a course of teaching for -schoolmasters. The elementary teachers of the canton were to spend three -months every alternate year at Burgdorf, and there compare experiences, -and learn of distinguished men such as Froebel and Bitzius. - -§ 10. In his conferences with these teachers Froebel found that the -schools suffered from the state of the raw material brought into them. -Till the school age was reached the children were entirely neglected. -Froebel’s conception of harmonious development naturally led him to -attach much importance to the earliest years, and his great work on _The -Education of Man_, published as early as 1826, deals chiefly with the -education of children. At Burgdorf his thoughts were much occupied with -the proper treatment of _young_ children, and in scheming for them a -graduated course of exercises modelled on the games in which he observed -them to be most interested. In his eagerness to carry out his new plans -he grew impatient of official restraints; and partly from this reason, -partly on account of his wife’s ill health, he left Burgdorf without even -actually becoming “Waisenvater” (father of the orphans).[174] After a -sojourn of some months in Berlin, where he was detained through family -affairs, but used the opportunities thus afforded of examining the -recently founded infant schools, Froebel returned to Keilhau, and soon -afterwards opened the first _Kindergarten_, or “Garden of Children,” -in the neighbouring village of Blankenburg (A.D. 1837). Not only the -thing but the name seemed to Froebel a happy inspiration, and it has -now become inseparably connected with his own. Perhaps we can hardly -understand the pleasure he took in it unless we know its predecessor, -_Kleinkinderbeschäftigungsanstalt_. - -§ 11. Firmly convinced of the importance of the Kindergarten for the -whole human race, Froebel described his system in a weekly paper (his -_Sonntagsblatt_) which appeared from the middle of 1837 till 1840. He -also lectured in great towns; and he gave a regular course of instruction -to young teachers at Blankenburg. - -§ 12. But although the principles of the Kindergarten were gradually -making their way, the first Kindergarten was failing for want of funds. -It had to be given up; and Froebel, now a widower (he had lost his wife -in 1839), carried on his course for teachers first at Keilhau, and from -1848, for the last four years of his life, at or near Liebenstein, in -the Thuringian Forest, and in the duchy of Meiningen. It is in these -last years that the man Froebel will be best known to posterity; for in -1849 be attracted within the circle of his influence a woman of great -intellectual power, the Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow, who has given us -in her _Recollections of Friedrich Froebel_ the only life-like portrait -we possess. In these records of personal intercourse we see the truth -of Deinhardt’s words: “The living perception of universal and ideal -truth which his talk revealed to us, his unbounded enthusiasm for the -education and happiness of the human race, his willingness to offer up -everything he possessed for the sake of his idea, the stream of thoughts -which flowed from his enthusiasm for the ideal as from an inexhaustible -fountain, all these made Froebel a wonderful appearance in the world, by -whom no unprejudiced spectator could fail to be attracted and elevated.” - -§ 13. These seemed likely to be Froebel’s most peaceful days. He married -again; and having now devoted himself to the training of women as -educators, he spent his time in instructing his class of young female -teachers. But trouble came upon him from a quarter whence he least -expected it. In the great year of revolutions, 1848, Froebel had hoped to -turn to account the general eagerness for improvement, and Middendorff -had presented an address on Kindergartens to the German Parliament. -Besides this a nephew of Froebel’s published books which were supposed -to teach socialism. True the uncle and nephew differed so widely that -“the New Froebelians” were the enemies of the “Old.” But the distinction -was overlooked, and Friedrich and Karl Froebel were regarded as the -united advocates of “some new thing.” In the reaction which soon set -in, Froebel found himself suspected of socialism and irreligion; and -in 1851 the _Cultus-minister_ Raumer issued an edict forbidding the -establishment of schools “after Friedrich and Karl Froebel’s principles” -in Prussia. It was in vain that Froebel proved that his principles -differed fundamentally from his nephew’s. It was in vain that a congress -of schoolmasters, presided over by the celebrated Diesterweg, protested -against the calumnious decree. The Minister turned a deaf ear, and the -decree remained in force ten years after the death of Froebel (_i.e._, -till 1862). But the edict was a heavy blow to the old man, who looked to -the Government of the “_Cultus-staat_” Prussia for support, and was met -with denunciation. Of the justice of the charge brought by the Minister -against Froebel the reader may judge from the account of his principles -given below. - -Whether from the worry of this new controversy, or from whatever cause, -Froebel did not long survive the decree. His seventieth birthday was -celebrated with great rejoicings in May, 1852, but he died in the -following month, and lies buried at Schweina, a village near his last -abode, Marienthal. - -§ 14. Throughout these essays my object has been to collect what seemed -to me the most valuable lessons of various Reformers. In doing this I -have had to judge and decide what was most valuable, and at times to -criticise and differ from my authorities. This may perhaps give rise -to the question, Do you then think yourself the superior or at least -the equal of the great men you criticise? and I could only reply in all -sincerity, I most certainly do not. If I am asked further, what then is -my attitude towards them? I reply, it differs very much with different -individuals. I cannot say I am prepared to sit at the feet of Mulcaster, -or Dury, or Petty. In writing of these men I simply point out very early -expression of ideas that following generations have developed partially -and we are developing still. When we come to the great leaders we see -among them men like Comenius who unite a thorough study of what has -already been thought and done with a genius for original thinking, men -like Locke with splendid intellectual gifts and a power of happy and -clear expression, men like Rousseau with a talent for shaking themselves -free from “custom”—custom which “lies upon us with a weight, Heavy as -frost and deep almost as life,” and besides this (in his case at least) -endowed with a voice to be heard throughout the world. Then again we -have men like Pestalozzi who with a genius for investigating, devote -their lives to the investigation, and men like Froebel who seem to -penetrate to a region above us or at least beyond us, and to talk about -it in language which at times only partially conveys a meaning. From all -these men we have much to learn; and that we may do this we must come as -learners to them. When we thus come we find that the great lessons they -teach become clearer and clearer as each takes up wholly or in part what -has been taught by his predecessors and adds to it. Some of these lessons -we may now receive as established truths and seek to conform our practice -to them. But in following our leaders we dare not close our eyes. Before -we can know anything we must see it, as Locke says, with our mind’s eye. -The great thing is to keep the eye of the mind wide open and always on -the lookout for truth. Acting on this conviction I have not blindly -accepted the dicta even of the greatest men but have selected those of -their lessons which are taught if not by all at least by most of them, -and which also seem to evoke “the spontaneous spring of the intelligence -towards truth” (see p. 362, _supra_). - -§ 15. In reading Froebel however I am conscious that this “spring” is -wanting. Before one can accept teaching one must at least understand it, -and this preliminary is not always possible when we would learn from -Froebel. At times he goes entirely out of sight, and whether the words -we hear are the expression of deep truth or have absolutely no meaning -at all, I for my part am at times totally unable to determine. But where -I can understand him he seems to me singularly wise; and working in the -same lines as Pestalozzi he in some respects advances far beyond his -great predecessor. - -§ 16. Both these men were devotees of science; but instead of finding -in science anything antagonistic to religion they looked upon science -as the expression of the mind of God. Their belief was just that which -Sir Thomas Browne had uttered more than 200 years before in the _Religio -Medici_: “Though we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest -causes yet is God the true and infallible cause of all, whose concourse -[_i.e._, concurrence, co-operation] though it be general, yet doth it -subdivide itself into the particular actions of everything, and is that -spirit by which each singular essence not only subsists but performs its -operation.”[175] With this belief Froebel sought to trace everything back -to the central Unity, to God. The author of the _De Imitatione Christi_ -has said: “The man to whom all things are one, who refers all things to -one and sees all things in one, he can stand firm and be at peace in -God. Cui omnia unum sunt, et qui omnia ad unum trahit, et omnia in uno -videt, potest stabilis esse et in Deo pacificus permanere” (_De Im. Xti._ -lib. i; cap. 3, § 2). So thought Froebel, and his great longing was to -refer all things to one and see all things in one. However little we may -share this longing we must admit that it is a natural outcome from the -Christian religion. If there is One in Whom all “live and move and have -their being,” everything should be referred to Him. As Froebel says, “In -Allem wirkt und schafft _Ein_ Leben, Weil das Leben All’ ein einz’ger -Gott gegeben. (In everything there works and stirs _one_ life, because -to all One God has given life.)” So long then as we remain Christians we -must agree with Froebel that all true education is founded on Religion. -Perhaps in the end we may adopt his high ideal and say with him, -“Education should lead and guide man to clearness concerning himself and -in himself, to peace with nature, and to unity with God; hence, it should -lift him to a knowledge of himself and of mankind, to a knowledge of God -and of Nature, and to the pure and holy life to which such knowledge -leads.” (_E. of M._, Hailmann’s t., 5.) “The object of education is the -realization of a faithful, pure, inviolate, and hence holy life” (_Ib._ -4). - -§ 17. This is indeed a high ideal: and we naturally ask, If we would work -towards it what road would Froebel point out to us? This brings us to his -theory of development or, as it has been called since Darwin, evolution. -The idea of organic growth was first definitely applied to the young by -Pestalozzi, but it was more clearly and consistently applied by Froebel. -It has gone forth conquering and to conquer; and though far indeed from -being accepted by the teaching profession of this age, it is likely -to have a vast influence on the practice of those who will come after -them. I therefore give the following statement of it, which seems to me -excellent:— - -“The first thing to note in the idea of development is that it indicates, -not an increase in bulk or quantity (though it may include this), but -an increase in complexity of structure, an improvement in power, skill, -and variety in the performance of natural functions. We say that a thing -is fully developed when its internal organisation is perfect in every -detail, and when it can perform all its natural actions or functions -perfectly. If we apply this distinction to mind, an increase in bulk -will be represented by an increase in the amount of material retained -in the mind, in the memory; development will be a perfecting of the -structure of the mind itself, an increase of power and skill and variety -in dealing with knowledge, and in putting knowledge to all its natural -uses. The next thing to consider is how this development is produced. -How can we aid in promoting this change from germ to complete organism, -from partially developed thing to more highly developed thing? The -answer comes from every part of creation with ever-increasing clearness -and emphasis—development is produced by exercise of function, use of -faculty. Neglect or disuse of any part of an organism leads to the -dwindling, and sometimes even to the disappearance, of that part. And -this applies not only to individuals, but stretches also from parent to -child, from generation to generation, constituting then what we call -heredity, or what Froebel calls the connectedness of humanity. Slowly -through successive generations a faculty or organ may dwindle and decay, -or may be brought to greater and greater perfection. As Froebel puts -it, humanity past, present, and future is one continuous whole. The -_amount_ of development, then, possible in any particular case plainly -depends partly on the original outfit, and partly (and as a rule in a -greater measure) on the opportunities there have been for exercise, and -the use made of those opportunities. If we wish to develop the hand, we -must exercise the hand. If we wish to develop the body, we must exercise -the body. If we wish to develop the mind, we must exercise the mind. -If we wish to develop the _whole_ human being, we must _exercise the -whole_ human being. But will _any_ exercise suffice? Again the answer -is clear. Only that exercise which is always in harmony with the nature -of the thing, and which is always proportioned to the strength of the -thing, produces true development. All other exercise is partially or -wholly hurtful. And another condition, evident in every case, becomes -still more evident when we apply these laws to the mind. To produce -development most truly and effectively, the exercise must arise from -and be sustained by the thing’s own activity—its own natural powers, -and all of them (as far as these are in _any_ sense connected with the -activity proposed) should be awakened and become naturally active. If, -for instance, we desire to further the development of a plant, what we -have to do is to induce the plant (and the whole of it) to become active -in its own natural way, and to help it to sustain that activity. We may -abridge the time; we may modify the result; but we must act through and -by the plant’s own activity. This activity of a thing’s own self we call -_self-activity_ (_E. of M._, § 9). We generally consider the mind in the -light of its three activities of _knowing, feeling, and willing_. The -exercise which aims at producing mental development must be in harmony -with the nature of _knowing_, _feeling_, and _willing_, and continually -in proportion to their strength. And, further, it is found that the more -the activity is that of the _whole_ mind, the more it is the mind’s _own_ -activity—self-produced, and self-maintained, and self-directed—the better -is the result. In other words, knowing, feeling, and willing must _all_ -take their rightful share in the exercise; and, in particular, feeling -and willing—the mind’s powers of prompting and nourishing, of maintaining -and directing its own activities—must never be neglected” (H. C. Bowen on -_Ed. of M._). - -§ 18. “A divine message or eternal regulation of the Universe there -verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man; -faithfully following this, said procedure or affair will prosper ... not -following this ... destruction and wreck are certain for every affair.” -These words of Carlyle’s express Froebel’s thought about education. -Before attempting to educate we must do all we can to ascertain the -divine message and must then direct our proceedings by it. The divine -message must be learnt according to Froebel by studying the nature of the -organism we have to assist in developing. Each human being must “develop -from within, self-active and free, in accordance with the eternal law. -This is the problem and the aim of all education in instruction and -training; there can be and should be no other” (_Ed. of M._, 13). For -“all has come forth from the Divine, from God, and is through God alone -conditioned. To this it is that all things owe their existence—to the -Divine working in them. The Divine element that works in each thing is -the true idea (_das Wesen_) of the thing.” Therefore “the destiny and -calling of all things is to develop their true idea, and in so doing to -reveal God in outward and through passing forms.” - -§19. What we must think of then is the “true idea” which each child -should develop. How is this idea to be ascertained? In other words, how -are we to learn the Divine Message about the bringing up of children? -This Message is given us through the works of God. “In the creation, -in nature and the order of the material world, and in the progress of -mankind, God has given us the true type (_Urbild_) of education.” - -§ 20. So Froebel would have all educators lay to heart the great -principle of the Baconian philosophy: We command Nature only by obeying -her. They are to be very cautious how they interfere, and the education -they give is to be “passive, following.” Even in teaching they must bear -in mind, that “the purpose of teaching is to bring ever more _out of_ -man rather than to put more and more _into_ him.” (_Ed. of M._, 279.) -Froebel in fact taught the Pestalozzian doctrine that the function of the -educator was that of “benevolent superintendence.”[176] - -§21. But if Froebel would thus limit the action of the educator he would -greatly extend the action of those educated; and here we see the great -principle with which the name of Froebel is likely to be permanently -associated. “The starting-point of all that appears, of all that exists, -and therefore of all intellectual conception, is act, action. From -the act, from action, must therefore start true human education, the -developing education of the man; in action, in acting, it must be rooted -and must spring up.... Living, acting, conceiving,—these must form a -triple chord within every child of man, though the sound now of this -string, now of that, may preponderate, and then again of two together.” - -§ 22. Many thinkers before Froebel had seen the transcendent importance -of action; but Froebel not only based everything upon it, but he based -it upon God. “God creates and works productively in uninterrupted -continuity. Each thought of God is a work, a deed” (_Ed. of M._, § 23). -As Jesus has said: “My Father worketh hitherto and I work” (St. John v, -17). From this it follows that, since God created man in his own image, -“man should create and bring forth like God” (_Ed. of M._, _ib._). “He -who will early learn to recognise the Creator must early exercise his own -power of action with the consciousness that he is bringing about what -is good; for the doing good is the link between the creature and the -Creator, and the conscious doing of it the conscious connexion, the true -living union of the man with God, of the individual man as of the human -race, and is therefore at once the starting point and the eternal aim of -all education.” Elsewhere he says: “We become truly God-like in diligence -and industry, in working and doing, which are accompanied by the clear -perception or even by the vaguest feeling that thereby we represent the -inner in the outer; that we give body to spirit, and form to thought; -that we render visible the invisible; that we impart an outward, finite, -transient being to life in the spirit. Through this God-likeness we rise -more and more to a true knowledge of God, to insight into His Spirit; -and thus, inwardly and outwardly, God comes ever nearer to us. Therefore -Jesus says of the poor, ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ if they -could but see and know it and practice it in diligence and industry, in -productive and creative work. Of children too is the kingdom of heaven; -for unchecked by the presumption and conceit of adults they yield -themselves in child-like trust and cheerfulness to their formative and -creative instinct” (_Ed. of M._, § 23. P. 31). - -§ 23. This “formative and creative instinct” which as we must suppose -has existed in all children in all nations and in all ages of the world, -Froebel was the first to take duly into account for education. Pestalozzi -saw the importance of getting children to _think_, and to think about -their material surroundings. These the child can observe and search into; -and in doing this he may discover what is not at first obvious to sight -or touch and may even ascertain relations between the several parts of -the same thing or connexions between different things compared together. -All these discoveries may be made by the child’s self-activity, but -only on one condition, viz.: that the child is interested. But in the -search interest soon flags and then observation comes to an end. Besides, -even while it lasts in full vigour the activity is mental only; it is -concerned with perceiving, taking in; and for development something more -is needed; the organism must not only take in, it must also _give out_. -And so we find in children a restless eagerness to touch, pull about, -and change the condition of things around them. When this activity of -theirs, instead of being checked is properly directed, the children are -delighted in recognising desirable results which they themselves have -brought about; especially those which give expression to what is their -own thought. In this way the child “renders the inner outer;” and in thus -satisfying his creative instinct he is led to exercise some faculties -both of mind and body. - -§ 24. The prominence which Froebel gave to action, his doctrine that -man is primarily a doer and even a creator, and that he learns only -through “self-activity,” may produce great changes in educational methods -generally, and not simply in the treatment of children too young for -schooling. But it was to the first stage of life that Froebel paid the -greatest attention, and it is over this stage that his influence is -gradually extending. Froebel held that each age has a completeness of -its own (“First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the -ear”), and that the perfection of the later stage can be attained only -through the perfection of the earlier. If the infant is what he should -be as an infant, and the child as a child, he will become what he should -be as a boy, just as naturally as new shoots spring from the healthy -plant. Every stage, then, must be cared for and tended in such a way -that it may attain its own perfection. But as Bacon says with reference -to education, the gardener bestows most care on the young plants, and it -was “the young plants” for whom Froebel designed his Kindergarten. Like -Pestalozzi he attached the very highest importance to giving instruction -to mothers. But he would not like Pestalozzi leave young children -entirely in the mother’s hands. There was something to be done for them -which even the ideal mother in the ideal family could not do. Pestalozzi -held that the child belonged to the family. Fichte on the other hand -claimed it for society and the state. Froebel, whose mind, like that of -our own theologian Frederick Maurice, delighted in harmonising apparent -contradictions, and who taught that “all progress lay through opposites -to their reconciliation,” maintained that the child belongs both to the -family and to society; and he would therefore have children prepare -for society by spending some hours of the day in a common life and in -well-organised common employments. - -§ 25. His study of children showed him that one of their most striking -characteristics was restlessness. This was, first, restlessness of body, -delight in mere motion of the limbs; and, secondly, restlessness of -mind, a constant curiosity about whatever came within the range of the -senses, and especially a desire to examine with the hand every unknown -object within reach.[177] Children’s fondness for using their hands -was especially noted by Froebel; and he found that they delighted, not -merely in examining by touch, but also in altering whatever they could -alter, and further that they endeavoured to imitate known forms whether -by drawing or whenever they could get any kind of plastic material by -modelling. Besides remarking in them these various activities, he saw -that children were sociable and needed the sympathy of companions. There -was, too, in them a growing moral nature, passions, affections, and -conscience, which needed to be controlled, responded to, cultivated. -Both the restraints and the opportunities incident to a well-organised -community would be beneficial to their moral nature, and prove a cure for -selfishness. - -§ 26. As all education was to be sought in rightly directed but -spontaneous action, Froebel considered how the children in this community -should be employed. At that age their most natural employment is play, -especially as Wordsworth has pointed out, games in which they imitate -and “con the parts” they themselves will have to fill in after years. -Froebel agreed with Montaigne that the games of children were “their most -serious occupations,” and with Locke that “all the plays and diversions -of children should be directed towards good and useful habits, or else -they will introduce ill ones” (_Th. c. Ed._, § 130). So he invented a -course of occupations, a great part of which consisted in social games. -Many of the names are connected with the “Gifts,” as he called the series -of simple playthings provided for the children, the first being the ball, -“the type of unity.” The “gifts” are chiefly not mere playthings but -materials which the children work up in their own way, thus gaining scope -for their power of doing and inventing and creating. The artistic faculty -was much thought of by Froebel, and, as in the education of the ancients, -the sense of rhythm in sound and motion was cultivated by music and -poetry introduced in the games. Much care was to be given to the training -of the senses, especially those of sight, sound, and touch. Intuition -(_Anschauung_) was to be recognised as the true basis of knowledge, and -though stories were to be told, and there was to be much intercourse in -the way of social chat, instruction of the imparting and “learning-up” -kind was to be excluded. There was to be no “dead knowledge;” in fact -Froebel like Pestalozzi endeavoured to do for the child what Bacon -nearly 200 years before had done for the philosopher. Bacon showed the -philosopher that the way to study Nature was not to learn what others had -surmised but to go straight to Nature and use his own senses and his own -powers of observation. Pestalozzi and Froebel wished children to learn in -this way as well as philosophers. - -§ 27. Schools for very young children existed before Froebel’s -Kindergarten, but they had been thought of more in the interest of the -mothers than of the children. It was for the sake of the mothers that -Oberlin established them in the Vosges more than a century ago, his -first _Conductrices de l’Enfance_ being peasant women, Sara Banzet and -Louise Scheppler. In the early part of this century the notion was taken -up by James Buchanan and Samuel Wilderspin in this country (see James -Leitch’s _Practical Educationists_) and by J. M. D. Cochin in France. -But Froebel’s conception differed from that of the “Infant School.” -His object was purely educational but he would have no “schooling.” He -called these communities of children _Kindergarten_, Gardens of children, -_i.e._, enclosures in which young human plants are nurtured.[178] -The children’s employment is to be play. But any occupation in which -children delight is _play_ to them; and Froebel’s series of employments, -while they are in this sense play to the children, have nevertheless, -as seen from the adult point of view, a distinctly educational object. -This object, as Froebel himself describes it, is “to give the children -employment in agreement with their whole nature, to strengthen their -bodies, to exercise their senses, to engage their awakening mind, and -through their senses to bring them acquainted with nature and their -fellow-creatures; it is especially to guide aright the heart and the -affections, and to lead them to the original ground of all life, to unity -with themselves.” - -§ 28. No less than six-and-thirty years ago Henry Barnard (in his -Report to Governor of Connecticut, 1854) declared the Kindergarten to -be “by far the most original, attractive, and philosophical form of -infant development the world has yet seen.” Since then it has spread -in all civilised lands, and in many of them there are now _public_ -Kindergartens, the first I believe having been established in 1873 by Dr. -William T. Harris in St. Louis, Mo. But Froebel’s ideas are not so easily -got hold of as his “Gifts,” and the real extension of his system may be -by no means so great as it seems. “The Kindergarten system in the hands -of one who understands it,” says Dr. James Ward, “produces admirable -results; but it is apt to be too mechanical and formal. There does not -seem room for the individuality of a child, to which all free play -possible should be given in the earliest years.” (In _Parents’ Review_ -Ap. 1890.) And Mr. Courthope Bowen has well said: “Kindergarten work -without the Kindergarten idea, like a body without a soul, is subject to -rapid degeneration and decay.” So perhaps it will in the end prove that -Froebel in his _Education of Man_ which is “a book with seven seals” has -left us a more precious legacy than in his “Gifts” and Occupations which -are so popular and so easily adopted. - -§ 29. It has been well said that “the essence of stupidity is in the -demand for final opinions.” How our thoughts have widened about education -since a man like Dr. Johnson could assert, “Education is as well known, -and has long been as well known, as ever it can be!”[179] (Hill’s -_Boswell’s J._ ij, 407.) The astronomers of the Middle Ages might as well -have asserted that nothing more could ever be known about astronomy. - -Was Froebel what he believed himself to be, the Kepler or the Newton -of the educational system? Whoso is wise will not during the nineteenth -century lay claim to a “final opinion” on this point. But the “New -Education” seems gaining ground. F. W. Parker emphatically declares “the -Kindergarten” (by which he probably means Froebel’s encouragement of -self-activity) to be “the most important far-reaching educational reform -of the nineteenth century.” We sometimes see it questioned whether the -“New Education” has any proper claim to its title; but the education -which Dr. Johnson considered final and which seems to us old aimed at -learning; and the education which aims not at learning, but at developing -through self-activity is so different from this that it may well be -called New. If we consider the platform of the New Educationists as it -stands, _e.g._, in the New York _School Journal_, we shall find that if -it is not all new in theory it would be substantially new in practice. - -§ 30. Let us look at a brief statement of what the “New Education” -requires:— - -1. Each study must be valued in proportion as it develops _power_; and -power is developed by self-activity. - -2. The memory must be employed in strict subservience to the higher -faculties of the mind. - -3. Whatever instruction is given, it must be adapted to the actual state -of the pupil, and not ruled by the wants of the future boy or man. - -4. More time must be given to the study of nature and to modern language -and literature; less to the ancient languages. - -5. The body must be educated as well as the mind. - -6. Rich and poor alike must be taught to use their eyes and hands. 7. -The higher education of women must be cared for no less than that of men. - -8. Teachers, no less than doctors, must go through a course of -professional training. - -To these there must in time be added another: - -9. All methods shall have a scientific foundation, _i.e._, they shall be -based on the laws of the mind, or shall have been tested by those laws. - -§ 31. When this program is adopted, even as the object of our efforts, -we shall, indeed, have a New Education. At present the encouragement -of self-activity is thought of, if at all, only as a “counsel of -perfection.” Our school work is chiefly mechanical and will long -remain so. “From the primary school to the college productive creative -doing is almost wholly excluded. Knowledge in its barrenest form is -communicated, and tested in the barrenest, wordiest way possible. Never -is the learner taught or permitted to apply his knowledge to even -second-hand life-purpose.... So inveterate is the habit of the school -that the Kindergarten itself, although invented by the deep-feeling and -far-seeing Froebel for the very purpose of correcting this fault, has -in most cases fallen a victim to its influence.” So says W. H. Hailmann -(_Kindergarten_, May, 1888) and those who best know what usually goes on -in the school-room are the least likely to differ from him. - -§ 32. During the last thirty years I have spent the greatest part of my -working hours in a variety of school-rooms; and if my school experience -has shown me that our advance is slow, my study of the Reformers -convinces me that it is sure. - - “Ring out the old, ring in the new!” - -It has been well said that to study science is to study the thoughts -of God; and thus it is that all true educational Reformers declare the -thoughts of God to us. “A divine message, of eternal regulation of the -Universe, there verily is in regard to every conceivable procedure and -affair of man;” and it behoves us to ascertain what that message is in -regard to the immensely important procedure and affair of bringing up -children. After innumerable mistakes we seem by degrees to be getting -some notion of it; and such insight as we have we owe to those who have -contributed to the science of education. Among these there are probably -no greater names than the names of Pestalozzi and Froebel. - - Froebel’s _Education of Man_, trans. by W. N. Hailmann, is - a vol. of Appleton’s Series, ed. by Dr. W. T. Harris. The - _Autobiography_ trans., by Michaelis and Moore, is published - by Sonnenschein. The _Mutter-u-K.-lieder_ have been trans. - by Miss Lord (London, Rice). _Reminiscences of Froebel_ by - the Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow, is trans. by Mr. Horace Mann. - _The Child and Child Nature_ is trans. from the Baroness by - Miss A. M. Christie. The Froebel lit. is now immense. I will - simply mention some of those who have expounded Froebel in - _English_: Miss Shirreff, Miss E. A. Manning, Miss Lyschinska, - Miss Heerwart, Mdme. De Portugall, Miss Peabody, H. G Bowen, - F. W. Parker, W. N. Hailmann, Joseph Payne, W. T. Harris, - are the names that first suggest themselves. Henry Barnard’s - _Kindergarten and Child Culture_ is a valuable collection of - papers. - - - - -XVIII. - -JACOTOT, A METHODIZER. - -1770-1840. - - -§ 1. We are now by degrees becoming convinced that teachers, like -everyone else who undertakes skilled labour, should be trained before -they seek an engagement. This has led to a great increase in the -number of Normal Schools. In some of these schools it has already been -discovered that while the study of principles requires much time and -the application of much intellectual force, the study of methods is a -far simpler matter and can be knocked off in a short time and with no -intellectual force at all. Methods are special ways of doing things, and -when it has been settled what is to be done and why, a knowledge of the -methods available adds greatly to a teacher’s power; but the what and -the why demand our attention before the how, and the study of methods -disconnected from principles leads straight to the prison-house of all -the teachers’ higher faculties—routine. - -§ 2. I have called Jacotot a methodizer because he invented a special -method and wished everything to be taught by it. But in advocating this -method he appeals to principles; and his principles are so important that -at least one man great in educational science, Joseph Payne, always -spoke of him as his master. - -§ 3. In the following summary of Jacotot’s system I am largely indebted -to Joseph Payne’s Lectures, which he published in the _Educational Times_ -in 1867, and which I believe Dr. J. F. Payne has lately reprinted in a -volume of his father’s collected papers. - -§ 4. Jacotot was born at Dijon, of humble parentage, in 1770. Even as -a boy he showed his preference for “self-teaching.” We are told that -he rejoiced greatly in the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge that -could be gained by his own efforts, while he steadily resisted what was -imposed on him by authority. He was, however, early distinguished by his -acquirements, and at the age of twenty-five was appointed sub-director -of the Polytechnic School. Some years afterwards he became Professor -of “the Method of Sciences” at Dijon, and it was here that his method -of instruction first attracted attention. “Instead of pouring forth a -flood of information on the subject under attention from his own ample -stores—explaining everything, and thus too frequently superseding in a -great degree the pupil’s own investigation of it—Jacotot, after a simple -statement of the subject, with its leading divisions, boldly started it -as a quarry for the class to hunt down, and invited every member of it -to take part in the chase.” All were free to ask questions, to raise -objections, to suggest answers. The Professor himself did little more -than by leading questions put them on the right scent. He was afterwards -Professor of Ancient and Oriental Languages, of Mathematics, and of -Roman Law; and he pursued the same method, we are told, with uniform -success. Being compelled to leave France as an enemy of the Bourbons, -he was appointed, in 1818, when he was forty-eight years old, to the -Professorship of the French Language and Literature at the University -of Louvain. The celebrated teacher was received with enthusiasm, but he -soon met with an unexpected difficulty. Many members of his large class -knew no language but the Flemish and Dutch, and of these he himself was -totally ignorant. He was, therefore, forced to consider how to teach -without talking to his pupils. The plan he adopted was as follows:—He -gave the young Flemings copies of Fénelon’s “Télémaque,” with the French -on one side, and a Dutch translation on the other. This they had to study -for themselves, comparing the two languages, and learning the French by -heart. They were to go over the same ground again and again, and as soon -as possible they were to give in French, however bad, the substance of -those parts which they had not yet committed to memory. This method was -found to succeed marvellously. Jacotot attributed its success to the -fact that the students had learnt _entirely by the efforts of their own -minds_, and that, though working under his superintendence, they had -been, in fact, their own teachers. Hence he proceeded to generalise, and -by degrees arrived at a series of astounding paradoxes. These paradoxes -at first did their work well, and made noise enough in the world; but -Jacotot seems to me like a captain who in his eagerness to astonish his -opponents takes on board guns much too heavy for his own safety. - -§ 5. “_All human beings are equally capable of learning_,” said Jacotot. - -The truth which Jacotot chose to throw into this more than doubtful form, -may perhaps be expressed by saying that the student’s power of learning -depends, in a great measure, on his _will_, and that where there is no -will there is no capacity. - -§ 6. “_Everyone can teach; and, moreover, can teach that which he does -not know himself._” - -Let us ask ourselves what is the meaning of this. First of all, we -have to get rid of some ambiguity in the meaning of the word _teach_. -To teach, according to Jacotot’s idea, is to cause to learn. Teaching -and learning are therefore correlatives: where there is no learning -there can be no teaching. But this meaning of the word only coincides -partially with the ordinary meaning. We speak of the lecturer or preacher -as teaching when he gives his hearers an opportunity of learning, and -do not say that his teaching ceases the instant they cease to attend. -On the other hand, we do not call a parent a teacher because he sends -his boy to school, and so causes him to learn. The notion of teaching, -then, in the minds of most of us, includes giving information, or showing -how an art is to be performed, and we look upon Jacotot’s assertion as -absurd, because we feel that no one can give information which he does -not possess, or show how anything is to be done if he does not himself -know. But let us take the Jacototian definition of teaching—causing to -learn—and then see how far a person can cause another to learn that of -which he himself is ignorant. - -§ 7. Subjects which are _taught_ may be divided into three great -classes:—1, Facts; 2, reasonings, or generalisation from facts, _i.e._, -science; 3, actions which have to be performed by the learner, _i.e._, -arts. - -1. We learn some facts by “intuition,” _i.e._, by direct experience. -It may be as well to make the number of them as large as possible. No -doubt there are no facts which are _known_ so perfectly as these. For -instance, a boy who has tried to smoke knows the fact that tobacco is -apt to produce nausea much better than another who has picked up the -information second-hand. An intelligent master may suggest experiments, -even in matters about which he himself is ignorant, and thus, in -Jacotot’s sense, he teaches things which he does not know. But some facts -cannot be learnt in this way, and then a Newton is helpless either to -find them out for himself, or to teach them to others without knowing -them. If the teacher does not know in what county Tavistock is, he can -only learn from those who do, and the pupils will be no cleverer than -their master. Here, then, I consider that Jacotot’s pretensions utterly -break down. “No,” the answer is; “the teacher may give his pupil an -atlas, and direct the boy to find out for himself: thus the master will -teach what he does not know.” But, in this case, he is a teacher only -so far as he knows. For what he does not know, he hands over the pupil -to the maker of the map, who communicates with him, not orally, but by -ink and paper. The master’s ignorance is simply an obstacle to the boy’s -learning; for the boy would learn sooner the position of Tavistock if it -were shown him on the map. “That’s the very point,” says the disciple of -Jacotot. “If the boy gets the knowledge without any trouble, he is likely -to forget it again directly. ‘Lightly come, lightly go.’ Moreover, his -faculty of observation will not have been exercised.” It is indeed well -not to allow the knowledge even of facts to come too easily; though the -difficulties which arise from the master’s ignorance will not be found -the most advantageous. Still there is obviously a limit. If we gave boys -their lessons in cipher, and offered a prize to the first decipherer, -one would probably be found at last, and meantime all the boys’ powers -of observation, &c., would have been cultivated by comparing like signs -in different positions, and guessing at their meaning; but the boys’ -time might have been better employed. Jacotot’s plan of teaching a -language which the master did not know, was to put a book with, say, -“Arma virumque cano,” &c., on one side, and “I sing arms and the man, -&c.” on the other, and to require the pupil to puzzle over it till he -found out which word answered to which. In this case the teacher was the -translator; and though from the roundabout way in which the knowledge -was communicated the pupil derived some benefit, the benefit was hardly -sufficient to make up for the expenditure of time involved. - -Jacotot, then, did not teach facts of which he was ignorant, except in -the sense in which the parent who sends his boy to school may be said to -teach him. All Jacotot did was to direct the pupil to learn, sometimes in -a very awkward fashion, from somebody else.[180] - -§ 8. 2. When we come to science, we find all the best authorities agree -that the pupil should be led to principles if possible, and not have the -principles brought to him. Men like Tyndall, Huxley, H. Spencer, J. M. -Wilson have spoken eloquently on this subject, and shown how valuable -scientific teaching is, when thus conducted, in drawing out the faculties -of the mind. But although a schoolboy may be led to great scientific -discoveries by anyone who knows the road, he will have no more chance -of making them with an ignorant teacher than he would have had in the -days of the Ptolemies. Here again, then, I cannot understand how the -teacher can teach what he does not know. He may, indeed, join his pupil -in investigating principles, but he must either keep with the pupil or -go in advance of him. In the first case he is only a fellow-pupil; in the -second, he teaches only that which he knows. - -§ 9. Finally, we come to arts, and we are told that Jacotot taught -drawing and music, without being either a draughtsman or a musician. -In art everything depends on _rightly directed practice_. The most -consummate artist cannot communicate his skill, and, except for -inspiration may be inferior as a teacher to one whose attention is -more concentrated on the mechanism of the art. Perhaps it is not even -necessary that the teacher should be able to do the exercises himself, -if only he knows how they should be done; but he seldom gets credit for -this knowledge, unless he can show that he knows how the thing should -be done, by doing it. Lessing tells us that Raphael would have been a -great painter even if he had been born without hands. He would not, -however, have succeeded in getting mankind to believe it. I grant, then, -that the teacher of art need not be a first-rate artist, and, in some -very exceptional cases, need not be an artist at all; but, if he cannot -perform the exercises he gives his pupil, he must at least _know how they -should be done_. But Jacotot claims perfect ignorance. We are told that -he “taught” drawing by setting objects before his pupils, and making them -imitate them on paper as best they could. Of course the art originated -in this way, and a person with great perseverance, and (I must say, in -spite of Jacotot) with more than average ability, would make considerable -progress with no proper instruction; but he would lose much by the -ignorance of the person calling himself his teacher. An awkward habit of -holding the pencil will make skill doubly difficult to acquire, and thus -half his time might be wasted. Then, again, he would hardly have a better -eye than the early painters, so the drawing of his landscape would not -be less faulty than theirs. To consider music I am told that a person -who is ignorant of music can teach, say, the piano or the violin. This -seems to go beyond the region of paradox into that of utter nonsense. -Talent often surmounts all kinds of difficulties; but in the case of -self-taught, and ill-taught musicians, it is often painful to see what -time and talent have been wasted for want of proper instruction. - -I have thus carefully examined Jacotot’s pretensions to teach what he did -not know, because I am anxious that what seems to me the rubbish should -be cleared away from his principles, and should no longer conceal those -parts of his system which are worthy of general attention. - -§ 10. At the root of Jacotot’s paradox lay a truth of very great -importance. The highest and best teaching is not that which makes the -pupils passive recipients of other peoples’ ideas (not to speak of the -teaching which conveys mere words without any ideas at all), but that -which guides and encourages the pupils in working for themselves and -thinking for themselves. The master, as Joseph Payne well says, can no -more think, or practise, or see for his pupil, than he can digest for -him, or walk for him. The pupil must owe everything to his own exertions, -which it is the function of the master to encourage and direct. Perhaps -this may seem very obvious truth, but obvious or not it has been very -generally neglected. The old system of lecturing which found favour with -the Jesuits, has indeed now passed away, and boys are left to acquire -facts from school-books instead of from the master. But this change -is merely accidental. The essence of the teaching still remains. Even -where the master does not confine himself to hearing what the scholars -have learnt by heart, he seldom does more than offer explanations. He -measures the teaching rather by the amount which has been put before -the scholars—by what he has done for them and shown them—than by what -they have learned. But this is not teaching of the highest type. When -the votary of Dulness in the “Dunciad” is rendering an account of his -services, he arrives at this climax, - - “For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, - And write about it, Goddess, and about it.” - -And in the same spirit Mr. J. M. Wilson stigmatises as synonymous “the -most stupid and most _didactic_ teaching.” - -§ 11. All the eminent authorities on education have a very different -theory of the teachers function. According to them the master’s attention -is not to be fixed on his own mind and his own store of knowledge, but -on his pupil’s mind and on its gradual expansion. He must, in fact, be -not so much a _teacher_ as a _trainer_. Here we have the view which -Jacotot intended to enforce by his paradox; for we may possibly train -faculties which we do not ourselves possess, just as the sportsman trains -his pointer and his hunter to perform feats which are altogether out -of the range of his own capacities. Now, “training is the cultivation -bestowed on any set of faculties with the object of developing them” (J. -M. Wilson), and to train any faculty, you must set it to work. Hence it -follows, that as boys’ minds are not simply their memories, the master -must aim at something more than causing his pupils to remember facts. -Jacotot has done good service to education by giving prominence to this -truth, and by showing in his method how other faculties may be cultivated -besides the memory. - -§ 12. “_Tout est dans tout_” (“All is in all”), is another of Jacotot’s -paradoxes. I do not propose discussing it as the philosophical thesis -which takes other forms, as “Every man is a microcosm,” &c., but merely -to inquire into its meaning as applied to didactics. - -If you asked an ordinary French schoolmaster who Jacotot was, he -would probably answer, Jacotot was a man who thought you could learn -everything by getting up Fénelon’s “Télémaque” by heart. By carrying your -investigation further, you would find that this account of him required -modification, that the learning by heart was only part, and a very small -part, of what Jacotot demanded from his pupils, but you would also find -that entire mastery of “Télémaque” was the first requisite, and that -he managed to connect everything he taught with that “model-book.” Of -course, if “tout est dans tout,” everything is in “Télémaque;” and, said -an objector, also in the first book of “Télémaque” and in _the first -word_. Jacotot went through a variety of subtilties to show that all -“Télémaque” is contained in the word _Calypso_, and perhaps he would -have been equally successful, if he had been required to take only the -first letter instead of the first word. His maxim indeed becomes by his -treatment of it a mere paraphrase of “_Quidlibet ex quolibet_.” The -reader is amused rather than convinced by these discussions, but he finds -them not without fruit. They bring to his mind very forcibly a truth -to which he has hitherto probably not paid sufficient attention. He -sees that all knowledge is connected together, or (what will do equally -well for our present purpose) that there are a thousand links by which -we may bring into connexion the different subjects of knowledge. If by -means of these links we can attach in our minds the knowledge we acquire -to the knowledge we already possess, we shall learn faster and more -intelligently, and at the same time we shall have a much better chance of -retaining our new acquisitions. The memory, as we all know, is assisted -even by artificial association of ideas, much more by natural. Hence the -value of “tout est dans tout,” or, to adopt a modification suggested by -Joseph Payne, of the connexion of knowledges. Suppose we know only one -subject, but know that thoroughly, our knowledge, if I may express myself -algebraically, cannot be represented by ignorance plus the knowledge of -that subject. We have acquired a great deal more than that. When other -subjects come before us, they may prove to be so connected with what we -had before, that we may also seem to know them already. In other words -when we know a little thoroughly, though our actual possession is small, -we have potentially a great deal more.[181] - -§ 13. Jacotot’s practical application of his “tout est dans tout” was -as follows:—“_Il faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout -le reste._” (“The pupil must learn something thoroughly, and refer -everything to that.”) For language he must take a model book, and become -thoroughly master of it. His knowledge must not be a verbal knowledge -only, but he must enter into the sense and spirit of the writer. Here we -find that Jacotot’s practical advice coincides with that of many other -great authorities, who do not base it on the same principle. The Jesuits’ -maxim was, that their pupils should always learn something thoroughly, -however little it might be. Pestalozzi insisted on the children going -over the elements again and again till they were completely master of -them. Ascham, Ratke, and Comenius all required a model-book to be read -and re-read till words and thoughts were firmly fixed in the pupil’s -memory. Jacotot probably never read Ascham’s “Schoolmaster.” If he had -done so he might have appropriated some of Ascham’s words as exactly -conveying his own thoughts. Ascham, as we saw, recommended that a short -book should be thoroughly mastered, each lesson being worked over in -different ways a dozen times at the least, and in this way “your scholar -shall be brought not only to like eloquence, but also to all true -understanding and right judgment, both for writing and speaking.” In this -the Englishman and the Frenchman are in perfect accord. - -§ 14. But if Jacotot agrees so far with earlier authorities, there is -one point in which he seems to differ from them. He makes great demands -on the memory, and requires six books of “Télémaque” to be learned by -heart. On the other hand, Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau, H. Spencer, and -other great writers would be opposed to this. Ratke insisted that nothing -should be learnt by heart. Protests against “loading the memory,” “saying -without book,” &c., are everywhere to be met with, and nowhere more -vigorously expressed than in Ascham. He says of the grammar-school boys -of his time, that “their whole knowledge, by learning without the book, -was tied only to their tongue and lips, and never ascended up to the -brain and head, and therefore was soon spit out of the mouth again. They -learnt without book everything, they understood within the book little or -nothing.” But these protests were really directed at verbal knowledge, -when it is made to take the place of knowledge of the thing signified. -We are always too ready to suppose that words are connected with ideas, -though both old and young are constantly exposing themselves to the -sarcasm of Mephistopheles:— - - ... eben wo Begriffe fehlen, - Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein. - - ... just where meaning fails, a word - Comes patly in to serve your turn. - -Against this danger Jacotot took special precautions. The pupil was to -undergo an examination in everything connected with the lesson learnt, -and the master’s share in the work was to convince himself, from the -answers he received, that the pupil thoroughly grasped the meaning, as -well as remembered the words, of the author. Still the six books of -“Télémaque,” which Jacotot gave to be learnt by heart, was a very large -dose, and he would have been more faithful to his own principles, says -Joseph Payne, if he had given the first book only. - -§ 15. There are three ways in which the model-book may be studied. 1st, -it may be read through rapidly again and again, which was Ratke’s plan -and Hamilton’s; or, 2nd, each lesson may be thoroughly mastered, read in -various ways a dozen times at the least, which was Ascham’s plan; or, -3rd, the pupil may begin always at the beginning, and advance a little -further each time, which was Jacotot’s plan.[182] This last, could not, -of course, be carried very far The repetitions, when the pupil had -got on some way in the book, could not always be from the beginning; -still every part was to be repeated so frequently that _nothing could -be forgotten_. Jacotot did not wish his pupils to learn simply in -order to forget, but to learn in order to remember for ever. “We are -learned,” said he, “not so far as we have learned, but only so far as -we remember.” He seems, indeed, almost to ignore the fact that the act -of learning serves other purposes than that of making learned, and to -assert that to forget is the same as never to have learned, which is -a palpable error. We necessarily forget much that passes through our -minds, and yet its effect remains. All grown people have arrived at some -opinions, convictions, knowledge, but they cannot call to mind every spot -they trod on in the road thither. When we have read a great history, -say, or travelled through a fresh country, we have gained more than the -number of facts we happen to remember. The mind seems to have formed -an acquaintance with that history or that country, which is something -different from the mere acquisition of facts. Moreover, our interests, -as well as our ideas, may long survive the memory of the facts which -originally started them. We are told that one of the old judges, when a -barrister objected to some dictum of his, put him down by the assertion, -“Sir, I have forgotten more law than ever you read.” If he wished to -make the amount forgotten a measure of the amount remembered, this was -certainly fallacious, as the ratio between the two is not a constant -quantity. But he may have meant that this extensive reading had left its -result, and that he could see things from more points of view than the -less travelled legal vision of his opponent. That _power_ acquired by -learning may also last longer than the knowledge of the thing learned -is sufficiently obvious. So the advantages derived from having learnt a -thing are not entirely lost when the thing itself is forgotten.[183] - -§ 16. But the reflection by no means justifies the disgraceful waste of -memory which goes on in most school-rooms. Much is learnt which, for -want of the necessary repetition, will soon be lost again, besides much -that would be valueless if remembered. The thing to aim at is not giving -“useful knowledge,” but making the memory a store house of such facts -as are good material for the other powers of the mind to work with; and -that the facts may serve this purpose they must be such as the mind can -thoroughly grasp and handle, and such as can be connected together. To -_instruct is instruere_, “to put together in order, to build;” it is not -cramming the memory with facts without connexion, and, as Herbert Spencer -calls them, _unorganisable_. And yet a great deal of our children’s -memory is wasted in storing facts of this kind, which can never form -part of any organism. We do not teach them geography (_earth knowledge_, -as the Germans call it), but the names of places. Our “history” is a -similar, though disconnected study. We leave our children ignorant of the -land, but insist on their getting up the “landmarks.” And, perhaps, from -a latent perception of the uselessness of such work, neither teachers -nor scholars ever think of these things as learnt to be remembered. They -are indeed got up, as Schuppius says of the Logic of his day, _in spem -futuræ oblivionis_. Latin grammar is gone through again and again, and a -boy feels that the sooner he gets it into his head, the better it will be -for him; but who expects that the lists of geographical and historical -names which are learnt one half-year, will be remembered the next? I have -seen it asserted, that when a boy leaves school, he has already forgotten -nine-tenths of what he has been taught, and I dare say that estimate is -quite within the mark. - -§ 17. By adopting the principles of Jacotot, we avoid a great deal of -this waste. We give some thorough knowledge, with which fresh knowledge -may be connected. And it will then be found that perfect familiarity -with a subject is something beyond the mere understanding it and being -able, with difficulty, to reproduce what we have learned. By thus going -over the same thing again and again, we acquire a thorough command over -our knowledge; and the feeling perfectly at home, even within narrow -borders, gives a consciousness of strength. An old adage tells us that -the Jack-of-all-trades is master of none; but the master of one trade -will have no difficulty in extending his insight and capacity beyond -it. To use an illustration, which is of course an illustration merely, -we should kindle knowledge in children, like fire in a grate. A stupid -servant, with a small quantity of wood, spreads it over the whole grate. -It blazes away, goes out, and is simply wasted. Another, who is wiser -or more experienced, kindles the whole of the wood at one spot, and the -fire, thus concentrated, extends in all directions. Similarly we should -concentrate the beginnings of knowledge, and although we could not expect -to make much show for a time, we might be sure that after a bit the fire -would extend, almost of its own accord.[184] - -§ 18. From Joseph Payne I take Jacotot’s directions for carrying out the -rule, “II faut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout le reste.” - -1. LEARN—_i.e._, learn so as to know thoroughly, perfectly, immovably -(_imperturbablement_), as well six months or twelve months hence, -as now—SOMETHING—something which fairly represents the subject to be -acquired, which contains its essential characteristics. 2. REPEAT that -“something” incessantly (_sans cesse_), _i.e._, every day, or very -frequently, from the beginning, without any omission, so that no part -may be forgotten. 3. REFLECT upon the matter thus acquired, so as, by -degrees, to make it a possession of the mind as well as of the memory, -so that, being appreciated as a whole, and appreciated in its minutest -parts, what is as yet unknown, may be _referred to_ it and interpreted by -it. 4. VERIFY, or test, general remarks, _e.g._, grammatical rules, &c., -made by others, by comparing them with the facts (_i.e._, the words and -phraseology) which you have learnt yourself. - -§ 19. In conclusion, I will give some account of the way in which -reading, writing, and the mother-tongue were taught on the Jacototian -system. - -The teacher takes a book, say Edgeworth’s “Early Lessons,” points to the -first word, and names it, “Frank.” The child looks at the word and also -pronounces it. Then the teacher does the same with the first two words, -“Frank and”; then with the three first, “Frank and Robert,” &c. When -a line or so has been thus gone over, the teacher asks which word is -Robert? What word is that (pointing to one)? “Find me the same word in -this line” (pointing to another part of the book). When a sentence has -been thus acquired, the words already known are analysed into syllables, -and these syllables the child must pick out elsewhere. Finally, the -same thing is done with letters. When the child can read a sentence, -that sentence is put before him written in small-hand, and the child is -required to copy it. When he has copied the first word, he is led, by the -questions of the teacher, to see how it differs from the original, and -then he tries again. The pupil must always correct himself, guided only -by questions. This sentence must be worked at till the pupil can write -it pretty well from memory. He then tries it in larger characters. By -carrying out this plan, the children’s powers of observation and making -comparisons are strengthened, and the arts of reading and writing are -said to be very readily acquired. - -§ 20. For the mother-tongue, a model book is chosen and thoroughly -learned. Suppose “Rasselas” is selected. “The pupil learns by heart -a sentence, or a few sentences, and to-morrow adds a few more, still -repeating from the beginning. The teacher, after two or three lessons of -learning and repeating, takes portions—any portion—of the matter, and -submits it to the crucible of the pupil’s mind:—Who was Rasselas? Who was -his father? What is the father of waters? Where does it begin its course? -Where is Abyssinia? Where is Egypt? Where was Rasselas placed? What sort -of a person was Rasselas? What is ‘credulity’? What are the ‘whispers of -fancy,’ the ‘promises of youth,’ &c., &c.?” - -A great variety of written exercises is soon joined with the learning by -heart. Pieces must be written from memory, and the spelling, pointing, -&c., corrected by the pupil himself from the book. The same piece must -be written again and again, till there are no more mistakes to correct. -“This,” said Joseph Payne, who had himself taught in this way, “is the -best plan for spelling that has been devised.” Then the pupil may -write an analysis, may define words, distinguish between synonyms, -explain metaphors, imitate descriptions, write imaginary dialogues or -correspondence between the characters, &c. Besides these, a great variety -of grammatical exercises may be given, and the force of prefixes and -affixes may be found out by the pupils themselves by collection and -comparison. “The resources even of such a book as “Rasselas” will be -found all but exhaustless, while the training which the mind undergoes in -the process of thoroughly mastering it, the acts of analysis, comparison, -induction, and deduction, performed so frequently as to become a sort -of second nature, cannot but serve as an excellent preparation for the -subsequent study of English literature” (Payne). - -§ 21. We see, from these instances, how Jacotot sought to imitate the -method by which young children and self-taught men teach themselves. All -such proceed from objects to definitions, from facts to reflections and -theories, from examples to rules, from particular observations to general -principles. They pursue, in fact, however unconsciously, the _method of -investigation_, the advantages of which are thus set out in a passage -from Burke’s treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful:—“I am convinced,” -says he, “that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to -the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content -with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock -on which they grew; it tends to set the reader [or learner] himself in -the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the -author has made his own discoveries.” “For Jacotot, I think the claim -may, without presumption, be maintained that he has, beyond all other -teachers, succeeded in co-ordinating the method of elementary teaching -with the method of investigation” (Payne). - -§ 22. The latter part of his life, which did not end till 1840, Jacotot -spent in his native country—first at Valenciennes, and then at Paris. To -the last he laboured indefatigably, and with a noble disinterestedness, -for what he believed to be the “intellectual emancipation” of his -fellow-creatures. For a time, his system made great way in France, but we -now hear little of it. Jacotot has, however, lately found an advocate in -M. Bernard Perez, who has written a book about him and also a very good -article in Buisson’s _Dictionnaire_. - - - - -XIX. - -HERBERT SPENCER.[185] - - -§ 1. I once heard it said by a teacher of great ability that no one -without practical acquaintance with the subject could write anything -worth reading on Education. My own opinion differs very widely from this. -I am not, indeed, prepared to agree with another authority, much given -to paradox, that the actual work of education unfits a man for forming -enlightened views about it, but I think that the outsider, coming fresh -to the subject, and unencumbered by tradition and prejudice, may hit upon -truths which the teacher, whose attention is too much engrossed with -practical difficulties, would fail to perceive without assistance, and -that, consequently, the theories of intelligent men, unconnected with the -work of education, deserve our careful, and, if possible, our impartial -consideration. - -§ 2. One of the most important works of this kind which has lately -appeared, is the treatise of Mr. Herbert Spencer. So eminent a writer -has every claim to be listened to with respect, and in this book he -speaks with more than his individual authority. The views he has very -vigorously propounded are shared by a number of distinguished scientific -men; and not a few of the unscientific believe that in them is shadowed -forth the education of the future. - -§ 3. It is perhaps to be regretted that Mr. Spencer has not kept the -tone of one who investigates the truth in a subject of great difficulty, -but lays about him right and left, after the manner of a spirited -controversialist. This, no doubt, makes his book much more entertaining -reading than such treatises usually are, but, on the other hand, it has -the disadvantage of arousing the antagonism of those whom he would most -wish to influence. When the man who has no practical acquaintance with -education, lays down the law _ex cathedrâ_, garnished with sarcasms at -all that is now going on, the schoolmaster, offended by the assumed tone -of authority, sets himself to show where these theories would not work, -instead of examining what basis of truth there is in them, and how far -they should influence his own practice. - -I shall proceed to examine Mr. Spencer’s proposals with all the -impartiality I am master of. - -§ 4. The great question, whether the teaching which gives the most -valuable knowledge is the same as that which best disciplines the -faculties of the mind, Mr. Spencer dismisses briefly. “It would be -utterly contrary to the beautiful economy of nature,” he says, “if one -kind of culture were needed for the gaining of information, and another -kind were needed as a mental gymnastic.”[186] But it seems to me that -different subjects must be used to train the faculties at different -stages of development. The processes of science, which form the staple -of education in Mr. Spencer’s system cannot be grasped by the intellect -of a child. “The scientific discoverer does the work, and when it is -done the schoolboy is called in to witness the result, to learn its -chief features by heart, and to repeat them when called upon, just as -he is called on to name the mothers of the patriarchs, or to give an -account of the Eastern campaigns of Alexander the Great.”—(_Pall Mall -G._). This, however, affords but scanty training for the mind. We want -to draw out the child’s interests, and to direct them to worthy objects. -We want not only to teach him, but to enable and encourage him to teach -himself; and, if following Mr. Spencer’s advice, we make him get up the -species of plants, “which amount to some 320,000,” and the varied forms -of animal life, which are “estimated at some 2,000,000,” we may, as Mr. -Spencer tells us, have strengthened his memory as effectually as by -teaching him languages; but the pupil will, perhaps have no great reason -to rejoice over his escape from the horrors of the “As in Præsenti,” and -“Propria quæ Maribus.” The consequences will be the same in both cases. -We shall disgust the great majority of our scholars with the acquisition -of knowledge, and with the use of the powers of their mind. Whether, -therefore, we adopt or reject Mr. Spencer’s conclusion, that there is -one sort of knowledge which is universally the most valuable, I think we -must deny that there is one sort of knowledge which is universally and at -every stage in education, the best adapted to develop the intellectual -faculties. Mr. Spencer himself acknowledges this elsewhere. “There -is,” says he, “a certain sequence in which the faculties spontaneously -develop, and a certain kind of knowledge, which each requires during its -development.” It is for us to ascertain this sequence, and supply this -knowledge. - -§ 5. Mr. Spencer discusses more fully “the relative value of knowledges,” -and this is a subject which has hitherto not met with the attention it -deserves. It is not sufficient for us to prove of any subject taught in -our schools that the knowledge or the learning of it is valuable. We -must also show that the knowledge or the learning of it is of at least -as great value as that of anything else that might be taught in the same -time. “Had we time to master all subjects we need not be particular. To -quote the old song— - - Could a man be secure - That his life would endure, - As of old, for a thousand long years, - What things he might know! - What deeds he might do! - And all without hurry or care! - -But we that have but span-long lives must ever bear in mind our limited -time for acquisition.” - -§ 6. To test the value of the learning imparted in education we must -look to the end of education. This Mr. Spencer defines as follows: “To -prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to -discharge, and the only rational mode of judging of an educational course -is to judge in what degree it discharges such function.” For complete -living we must know “in what way to treat the body; in what way to treat -the mind; in what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a -family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilise those -sources of happiness which nature supplies—how to use all our faculties -to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others.” There are a number -of sciences, says Mr. Spencer, which throw light on these subjects. It -should, therefore, be the business of education to impart these sciences. - -But if there were (which is far from being the case) a well-defined and -well-established science in each of these departments, those sciences -would not be understandable by children, nor would any individual have -time to master the whole of them, or even “a due proportion of each.” -The utmost that could be attempted would be to give young people some -knowledge of the _results_ of such sciences and the rules derived from -them. But to this Mr. Spencer would object that it would tend, like -the learning of languages, “to increase the already undue respect for -authority.” - -§ 7. To consider Mr. Spencer’s divisions in detail, we come first to -knowledge that leads to self-preservation. - -“Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure -direct self-preservation is, in part, already provided for. Too momentous -to be left to our blundering, Nature takes it into her own hands.” But -Mr. Spencer warns us against such thwartings of Nature as that by which -“stupid schoolmistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge -from the spontaneous physical activities they would indulge in, and so -render them comparatively incapable of taking care of themselves in -circumstances of peril.” - -§ 8. Indirect self-preservation, Mr. Spencer believes, may be much -assisted by a knowledge of physiology. “Diseases are often contracted, -our members are often injured, by causes which superior knowledge would -avoid.” I believe these are not the only grounds on which the advocates -of physiology urge its claim to be admitted into the curriculum; but -these, if they can be established, are no doubt very important. Is it -true, however, that doctors preserve their own life and health or that -of their children by their knowledge of physiology? I think the matter -is open to dispute. Mr. Spencer does not. He says very truly that many -a man would blush if convicted of ignorance about the pronunciation of -Iphigenia, or about the labours of Hercules who, nevertheless, would not -scruple to acknowledge that he had never heard of the Eustachian tubes, -and could not tell the normal rate of pulsation. “So terribly,” adds Mr. -Spencer, “in our education does the ornamental override the useful!” -But this is begging the question. At present classics form part of the -instruction given to every gentleman, and physiology does not. This is -the simpler form of Mr. Spencer’s assertion about the labours of Hercules -and the Eustachian tubes, and no one denies it. But we are not so well -agreed on the comparative value of these subjects. In his Address at -St. Andrews, J. S. Mill showed that he at least was not convinced of -the uselessness of classics, and Mr. Spencer does not tell us how the -knowledge of the normal state of pulsation is useful; how, to use his -own test, it “influences action.” However, whether we admit the claims -of physiology or not, we shall probably allow that there are certain -physiological facts and rules of health, the knowledge of which would be -of great practical value, and should therefore be imparted to everyone. -Here the doctor should come to the schoolmaster’s assistance, and give -him a manual from which to teach them. - -§ 9. Next in order of importance, according to Mr. Spencer, comes the -knowledge which aids indirect self-preservation by facilitating the -gaining of a livelihood. Here Mr. Spencer thinks it necessary to prove -to us that such sciences as mathematics and physics and biology underlie -all the practical arts and business of life. No one would think of -joining issue with him on this point; but the question still remains, -what influence should this have on education? “Teach science,” says Mr. -Spencer. “A grounding in science is of great importance, both because -it prepares for all this [business of life], and because rational -knowledge has an immense superiority over empirical knowledge.” Should -we teach all sciences to everybody? This is clearly impossible. Should -we, then, decide for each child what is to be his particular means of -money-getting, and instruct him in those sciences which will be most -useful in that business or profession? In other words, should we have a -separate school for each calling? The only attempt of this kind which has -been made is, I believe, the institution of _Handelschulen_ (commercial -schools) in Germany. In them, youths of fifteen or sixteen enter for -a course of two or three years’ instruction which aims exclusively at -fitting them for commerce. But, in this case, their general education -is already finished. With us, the lad commonly goes to work at the -business itself quite as soon as he has the faculties for learning the -sciences connected with it. If the school sends him to it with a love of -knowledge, and with a mind well disciplined to acquire knowledge, this -will be of more value to him than any special information. - -§ 10. As Mr. Spencer is here considering science merely with reference to -its importance in earning a livelihood, it is not beside the question to -remark, that in a great number of instances, the knowledge of the science -which underlies an operation confers no practical ability whatever. No -one sees the better for understanding the structure of the eye and the -undulatory theory of light. In swimming or rowing, a senior wrangler -has no advantage over a man who is entirely ignorant about the laws of -fluid pressure. As far as money-getting is concerned then, science will -not be found to be universally serviceable. Mr. Spencer gives instances -indeed, where science would prevent very expensive blundering; but the -true inference is, not that the blunderers should learn science, but that -they should mind their own business, and take the opinion of scientific -men about theirs. “Here is a mine,” says he, “in the sinking of which -many shareholders ruined themselves, from not knowing that a certain -fossil belonged to the old red sandstone, below which no coal is found.” -Perhaps they were misled by the little knowledge which Pope tells us is -a dangerous thing. If they had been entirely ignorant, they would surely -have called in a professional geologist, whose opinion would have been -more valuable than their own, even though geology had taken the place of -classics in their schooling. “Daily are men induced to aid in carrying -out inventions which a mere tyro in science could show to be futile.” But -these are men whose function it would always be to lose money, not make -it, whatever you might teach them.[187] I have great doubt, therefore, -whether the learning of sciences will ever be found a ready way of making -a fortune. But directly we get beyond the region of pounds, shillings, -and pence, I agree most cordially with Mr. Spencer that a rational -knowledge has an immense superiority over empirical knowledge. And, as -a part of their education, boys should be taught to distinguish the one -from the other, and to desire rational knowledge. Much might be done in -this way by teaching, not all the sciences and nothing else, but the main -principles of some one science, which would enable the more intelligent -boys to understand and appreciate the value of “a rational explanation -of phenomena.” I believe this addition to what was before a literary -education has already been made in some of our leading schools, as -Harrow, Rugby, and the City of London.[188] - -§ 11. Next, Mr. Spencer would have instruction in the proper way of -rearing offspring form a part of his curriculum. There can be no question -of the importance of this knowledge, and all that Mr. Spencer says of the -lamentable ignorance of parents is, unfortunately, no less undeniable. -But could this knowledge be imparted early in life? Young people would -naturally take but little interest in it. It is by parents, or at least -by those who have some notion of the parental responsibility, that this -knowledge should be sought. The best way in which we can teach the young -will be so to bring them up that when they themselves have to rear -children the remembrance of their own youth may be a guide and not a -beacon to them. But more knowledge than this is necessary, and I differ -from Mr. Spencer only as to the proper time for acquiring it. - -§ 12. Next comes the knowledge which fits a man for the discharge of his -functions as a citizen, a subject to which Dr. Arnold attached great -importance at the time of the first Reform Bill, and which deserves our -attention all the more in consequence of the second and third. But -what knowledge are we to give for this purpose? One of the subjects -which seem especially suitable is history. But history, as it is now -written, is, according to Mr. Spencer, useless. “It does not illustrate -the right principles of political action.” “The great mass of historical -facts are facts from which no conclusions can be drawn—unorganisable -facts, and, therefore, facts of no service in establishing principles -of conduct, which is the chief use of facts. Read them if you like for -amusement, but do not flatter yourself they are instructive.” About the -right principles of political action we seem so completely at sea that, -perhaps, the main thing we can do for the young is to point out to them -the responsibilities which will hereafter devolve upon them, and the -danger, both to the state and the individual, of just echoing the popular -cry without the least reflection, according to our present usage. But -history, as it is now written by great historians, may be of some use -in training the young both to be citizens and men. “Reading about the -fifteen decisive battles, or all the battles in history, would not make a -man a more judicious voter at the next election,” says Mr. Spencer. But -is this true? The knowledge of what has been done in other times, even -by those whose coronation renders them so distasteful to Mr. Spencer, is -knowledge which influences a man’s whole character, and may, therefore, -affect particular acts, even when we are unable to trace the connexion. -As it has been often said, the effect of reading history is, in some -respects, the same as that of travelling. Anyone in Mr. Spencer’s vein -might ask, “If a man has seen the Alps, of what use will that be to -him in weighing out groceries?” Directly, none at all; but indirectly, -much. The travelled man will not be such a slave to the petty views -and customs of his trade as the man who looks on his county town as the -centre of the universe. The study of history, like travelling, widens the -student’s mental vision, frees him to some extent from the bondage of the -present, and prevents his mistaking conventionalities for laws of nature. -It brings home to him, in all its force, the truth that “there are also -people beyond the mountain” (_Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute_), that -there are higher interests in the world than his own business concerns, -and nobler men than himself or the best of his acquaintance. It teaches -him what men are capable of, and thus gives him juster views of his race. -And to have all this truth worked into the mind contributes perhaps as -largely to “complete living” as knowledge of the Eustachian tubes or of -the normal rate of pulsation.[189] I think, therefore, that the works -of great historians and biographers, which we already possess, may be -usefully employed in education. It is difficult to estimate the value of -history according to Mr. Spencer’s idea, as it has yet to be written; but -I venture to predict that if boys, instead of reading about the history -of nations in connection with their leading men, are required to study -only “the progress of society,” the subject will at once lose all its -interest for them; and, perhaps, many of the facts communicated will -prove, after all, no less unorganisable than the fifteen decisive battles. - -§ 13. Lastly, we come to that “remaining division of human life which -includes the relaxations and amusements filling leisure hours.” Mr. -Spencer assures us that he will yield to none in the value he attaches -to æsthetic culture and its pleasures; but if he does not value the fine -arts less, he values science more; and painting, music, and poetry would -receive as little encouragement under his dictatorship as in the days of -the Commonwealth. “As the fine arts and belles-lettres occupy the leisure -part of life, so should they occupy the leisure part of education.” This -language is rather obscure; but the only meaning I can attach to it is, -that music, drawing, poetry, &c., may be taught if time can be found when -all other knowledges are provided for. This reminds me of the author -whose works are so valuable that they will be studied when Shakspeare -is forgotten—but not before. Any one of the sciences which Mr. Spencer -considers so necessary might employ a lifetime. Where then shall we look -for the leisure part of education when education includes them all?[190] - -§ 14. But, if adopting Mr. Spencer’s own measure, we estimate the -value of knowledge by its influence on action, we shall probably rank -“accomplishments” much higher than they have hitherto been placed -in the schemes of educationists. Knowledge and skill connected with -the business of life, are of necessity acquired in the discharge of -business. But the knowledge and skill which make our leisure valuable -to ourselves and a source of pleasure to others, can seldom be gained -after the work of life has begun. And yet every day a man may benefit -by possessing such an ability, or may suffer from the want of it. One -whose eyesight has been trained by drawing and painting finds objects of -interest all around him, to which other people are blind. A primrose by -a river’s brim is, perhaps, more to him who has a feeling for its form -and colour than even to the scientific student, who can tell all about -its classification and component parts. A knowledge of music is often -of the greatest practical service, as by virtue of it, its possessor -is valuable to his associates, to say nothing of his having a constant -source of pleasure and a means of recreation which is most precious as a -relief from the cares of life. Of far greater importance is the knowledge -of our best poetry. One of the first reforms in our school course would -have been, I should have thought, to give this knowledge a much more -prominent place; but Mr. Spencer consigns it, with music and drawing, -to “the leisure part of education.” Whether a man who was engrossed by -science, who had no knowledge of the fine arts except as they illustrated -scientific laws, no acquaintance with the lives of great men, or with -any history but sociology, and who studied the thoughts and emotions -expressed by our great poets merely with a view to their psychological -classification—whether such a man could be said to “live completely” is -a question to which every one, not excepting Mr. Spencer himself, would -probably return the same answer. And yet this is the kind of man which -Mr. Spencer’s system would produce where it was most successful. - -§ 15. Let me now briefly sum up the conclusions arrived at, and consider -how far I differ from Mr. Spencer. I believe that there is no one study -which is suited to train the faculties of the mind at every stage of -its development, and that when we have decided on the necessity of this -or that knowledge, we must consider further what is the right time for -acquiring it. I believe that intellectual education should aim, not so -much at communicating facts, however valuable, as at showing the boy -what true knowledge is, and giving him the power and the _disposition_ -to acquire it. I believe that the exclusively scientific teaching which -Mr. Spencer approves would not effect this. It would lead at best to -a very one-sided development of the mind. It might fail to engage the -pupil’s interest sufficiently to draw out his faculties, and in this -case the net outcome of his school-days would be no larger than at -present. Of the knowledges which Mr. Spencer recommends for special -objects, some, I think, would not conduce to the object, and some could -not be communicated early in life, (1.) For indirect self-preservation -we do not require to know physiology, but the results of physiology. -(2.) The science which bears on special pursuits in life has not, in -many cases, any pecuniary value, and although it is most desirable that -every one should study the science which makes his work intelligible to -him, this must usually be done when his schooling is over. The school -will have done its part if it has accustomed him to the intellectual -processes by which sciences are learned, and has given him an intelligent -appreciation of their value.[191] (3.) The right way of rearing and -training children should be studied, but not by the children themselves. -(4.) The knowledge which fits a man to discharge his duties as a citizen -is of great importance, and, as Dr. Arnold pointed out, is likely to be -entirely neglected by those who have to struggle for a livelihood. The -schoolmaster should, therefore, by no means neglect this subject with -those of his pupils whose school-days will soon be over, but, probably, -all that he can do is to cultivate in them a sense of the citizen’s -duty, and a capacity for being their own teachers. (5.) The knowledge -of poetry, belles-lettres, and the fine arts, which Mr. Spencer hands -over to the leisure part of education, is the only knowledge in his -program which I think should most certainly form a prominent part in the -curriculum of every school. - -§ 16. I therefore differ, though with great respect, from the conclusions -at which Mr. Spencer has arrived. But I heartily agree with him that we -are bound to inquire into the relative value of knowledges, and if we -take, as I should willingly do, Mr. Spencer’s test, and ask how does -this or that knowledge influence action (including in our inquiry its -influence on mind and character, through which it bears upon action), -I think we should banish from our schools much that has hitherto been -taught in them, besides those old tormentors of youth (laid, I fancy, at -last—_requiescant in pace_)—the _Propria quæ Maribus_ and its kindred -absurdities. What we _should_ teach is, of course, not so easily decided -as what we _should not_. - -§ 17. I now come to consider Mr. Spencer’s second chapter, in which, -under the heading of “Intellectual Education,” he gives an admirable -summing up of the main principles in which the great writers on the -subject have agreed, from Comenius downwards. These principles are, -perhaps, not all of them unassailable, and even where they are true, -many mistakes must be expected before we arrive at the best method of -applying them; but the only reason that can be assigned for the small -amount of influence they have hitherto exercised is, that most teachers -are as ignorant of them as of the abstrusest doctrines of Kant and Hegel. - -§ 18. In stating these principles Mr. Spencer points out that they merely -form a commencement for a science of education. “Before educational -methods can be made to harmonise in character and arrangement with the -faculties in the mode and order of unfolding, it is first needful that -we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties _do_ unfold. At -present we have acquired on this point only a few general notions. These -general notions must be developed in detail—must be transformed into -a multitude of specific propositions before we can be said to possess -that _science_ on which the _art_ of education must be based. And -then, when we have definitely made out in what succession and in what -combinations the mental powers become active, it remains to choose out -of the many possible ways of exercising each of them, that which best -conforms to its natural mode of action. Evidently, therefore, it is not -to be supposed that even our most advanced modes of teaching are the -right ones, or nearly the right ones.” It is not to be wondered at that -we have no science of education. Those who have been able to observe -the phenomena have had no interest in generalising from them. Up to -the present time the schoolmaster has been a person to whom boys were -sent to learn Latin and Greek. He has had, therefore, no more need of -a science than the dancing-master.[192] But the present century, which -has brought in so many changes, will not leave the state of education -as it found it. Latin and Greek, if they are not dethroned in our higher -schools, will have their despotism changed for a very limited monarchy. A -course of instruction certainly without Greek and perhaps without Latin -will have to be provided for middle schools. Juster views are beginning -to prevail of the schoolmaster’s function. It is at length perceived -that he has to assist the development of the human mind, and perhaps, -by-and-bye, he may think it as well to learn all he can of that which he -is employed in developing. When matters have advanced as far as this, we -may begin to hope for a science of education. In Locke’s day he could -say of physical science that there was no such science in existence. For -thousands of years the human race had lived in ignorance of the simplest -laws of the world it inhabited. But the true method of inquiring once -introduced, science has made such rapid conquests, and acquired so great -importance, that some of our ablest men seem inclined to deny, if not the -existence, at least the value, of any other kind of knowledge. So, too, -when teachers seek by actual observation to discover the laws of mental -development, a science may be arrived at, which, in its influence on -mankind, would perhaps rank before any we now possess. - -§ 19. Those who have read the previous Essays will have seen in various -forms most of the principles which Mr. Spencer enumerates, but I gladly -avail myself of his assistance in summing them up. - -1. We should proceed from the simple to the complex, both in our choice -of subjects and in the way in which each subject is taught. We should -begin with but few subjects at once, and, successively adding to these, -should finally carry on all subjects abreast. - -Each larger concept is made by a combination of smaller ones, and -presupposes them. If this order is not attended to in communicating -knowledge, the pupil can learn nothing but words, and will speedily sink -into apathy and disgust. - -§ 20. That we must proceed from the known to the unknown is something -more than a corollary to the above;[193] because not only are new -concepts formed by the combination of old, but the mind has a liking -for what it knows, and this liking extends itself to all that can be -connected with its object. The principle of using the known in teaching -the unknown is so simple, that all teachers who really endeavour to make -anything understood, naturally adopt it. The traveller who is describing -what he has seen and what we have not seen tells us that it is in one -particular like this object, and in another like that object, with which -we are already familiar. We combine these different concepts we possess, -and so get some notion of things about which we were previously ignorant. -What is required in our teaching is that the use of the known should -be employed more systematically. Most teachers think of boys who have -no school learning as entirely ignorant. The least reflection shows, -however, that they know already much more than schools can ever teach -them. A sarcastic examiner is said to have handed a small piece of paper -to a student and told him to write _all he knew_ on it. Perhaps many -boys would have no difficulty in stating the sum of their school-learning -within very narrow limits, but with other knowledge a child of five years -old, could he write, might soon fill a volume.[194] Our aim should be to -connect the knowledge boys bring with them to the schoolroom with that -which they are to acquire there.[195] I suppose all will allow, whether -they think it a matter of regret or otherwise, that hardly anything -of the kind has hitherto been attempted. Against this state of things -I cannot refrain from borrowing Mr. Spencer’s eloquent protest. “Not -recognising the truth that the function of books is supplementary—that -they form an indirect means to knowledge when direct means fail, a -means of seeing through other men what you cannot see for yourself, -teachers are eager to give second-hand facts in place of first-hand -facts. Not perceiving the enormous value of that spontaneous education -which goes on in early years, not perceiving that a child’s restless -observation, instead of being ignored or checked, should be diligently -ministered to, and made as accurate and complete as possible, they insist -on occupying its eyes and thoughts with things that are, for the time -being, incomprehensible and repugnant. Possessed by a superstition which -worships the symbols of knowledge instead of the knowledge itself, -they do not see that only when his acquaintance with the objects and -processes of the household, the street, and the fields, is becoming -tolerably exhaustive, only then should a child be introduced to the new -sources of information which books supply, and this not only because -immediate cognition is of far greater value than mediate cognition, but -also because the words contained in books can be rightly interpreted into -ideas only in proportion to the antecedent experience of things.”[196] -While agreeing heartily in the spirit of this protest, I doubt whether we -should wait till the child’s acquaintance with the objects and processes -of the household, the streets, and the fields, is becoming tolerably -exhaustive before we give him instruction from books. The point of time -which Mr. Spencer indicates is, at all events, rather hard to fix, and -I should wish to connect book-learning as soon as possible with the -learning that is being acquired in other ways. Thus might both the books, -and the acts and objects of daily life, win an additional interest. If, -_e.g._, the first reading-books were about the animals, and later on -about the trees and flowers which the children constantly meet with, -and their attention was kept up by large coloured pictures, to which -the text might refer, the children would soon find both pleasure and -advantage in reading, and they would look at the animals and trees with -a keener interest from the additional knowledge of them they had derived -from books. This is, of course, only one small application of a very -influential principle. - -§ 21. One marvellous instance of the neglect of this principle is found -in the practice of teaching Latin grammar before English grammar. As -Professor Seeley has so well pointed out, children bring with them to -school the knowledge of language in its concrete form. They may soon be -taught to observe the language they already know, and to find, almost -for themselves, some of the main divisions of words in it. But, instead -of availing himself of the child’s previous knowledge, the schoolmaster -takes a new and difficult language, differing as much as possible from -English, a new and difficult science, that of grammar, conveyed, too, -in a new and difficult terminology, and all this he tries to teach at -the same time. The consequence is that the science is destroyed, the -terminology is either misunderstood, or, more probably, associated with -no ideas, and even the language for which every sacrifice is made, is -found, in nine cases out of ten, never to be acquired at all.[197] - -§ 22. 2. “All development is an advance from the indefinite to the -definite.” I do not feel very certain of the truth of this principle, -or of its application, if true. Of course, a child’s intellectual -conceptions are at first vague, and we should not forget this; but it is -rather a fact than a principle. - -§ 23. 3. “Our lessons ought to start from the concrete, and end in the -abstract.” What Mr. Spencer says under this head well deserves the -attention of all teachers. “General formulas which men have devised to -express groups of details, and which have severally simplified their -conceptions by uniting many facts into one fact, they have supposed -must simplify the conceptions of a child also. They have forgotten that -a generalisation is simple only in comparison with the whole mass of -particular truths it comprehends; that it is more complex than any one of -these truths taken simply; that only, after many of these single truths -have been acquired, does the generalisation ease the memory and help the -reason; and that, to a mind not possessing these single truths, it is -necessarily a mystery. Thus, confounding two kinds of simplification, -teachers have constantly erred by setting out with “first principles,” -a proceeding essentially, though not apparently, at variance with the -primary rule [of proceeding from the simple to the complex], which -implies that the mind should be introduced to principles through the -medium of examples, and so should be led from the particular to the -general, from the concrete to the abstract.” In conformity with this -principle, Pestalozzi made the actual counting of things precede the -teaching of abstract rules in arithmetic. Basedow introduced weights -and measures into the school, and Mr. Spencer describes some exercise -in cutting out geometrical figures in cardboard, as a preparation for -geometry. The difficulty about such instruction is that it requires -apparatus, and apparatus is apt to get lost or out of order. But if -apparatus is good for anything at all, it is worth a little trouble. -There is a tendency in the minds of many teachers to depreciate -“mechanical appliances.” Even a decent black-board is not always to be -found in our higher schools. But, though such appliances will not enable -a bad master to teach well, nevertheless, other things being equal, the -master will teach better with them than without them. There is little -credit due to him for managing to dispense with apparatus. An author -might as well pride himself on being saving in pens and paper. - -§ 24. 4. “The genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same -course as the genesis of knowledge in the race.” This is the thesis on -which I have no opinion to offer. - -§ 25. 5. From the above principle Mr. Spencer infers that every study -should have a purely experimental introduction, thus proceeding through -an empirical stage to a rational. - -§ 26. 6. A second conclusion which Mr. Spencer draws is that, in -education, the process of self-development should be encouraged to the -utmost. Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to -draw their own inferences. They should be told as little as possible, -and induced to discover as much as possible. I quite agree with Mr. -Spencer that this principle cannot be too strenuously insisted on, though -it obviously demands a high amount of intelligence in the teacher. But -if education is to be a training of the faculties, if it is to prepare -the pupil to teach himself, something more is needed than simply to -pour in knowledge and make the pupil reproduce it. The receptive and -reproductive faculties form but a small portion of a child’s powers, -and yet the only portion which many schoolmasters seek to cultivate. -It is indeed, not easy to get beyond this point; but the impediment -is in us, not in the children. “Who can watch,” ask Mr. Spencer, “the -ceaseless observation, and inquiry, and inference, going on in a child’s -mind, or listen to its acute remarks in matters within the range of -its faculties, without perceiving that these powers it manifests, if -brought to bear systematically upon studies _within the same range_, -would readily master them without help? This need for perpetual telling -results from our stupidity, not from the child’s. We drag it away -from the facts in which it is interested, and which it is actively -assimilating of itself. We put before it facts far too complex for it to -understand, and therefore distasteful to it. Finding that it will not -voluntarily acquire these facts, we thrust them into its mind by force -of threats and punishment. By thus denying the knowledge it craves, and -cramming it with knowledge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid state -of its faculties, and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general. -And when, as a result, partly of the stolid indolence we have brought -on, and partly of still-continued unfitness in its studies, the child -can understand nothing without explanation, and becomes a mere passive -recipient of our instruction, we infer that education must necessarily -be carried on thus. Having by our method induced helplessness, we make -the helplessness a reason for our method.” It is, of course, much easier -to point out defects than to remedy them: but every one who has observed -the usual indifference of schoolboys to their work, and the waste of time -consequent on their inattention or only half-hearted attention to the -matter before them, and then thinks of the eagerness with which the same -boys throw themselves into the pursuits of their play-hours, will feel a -desire to get at the cause of this difference; and, perhaps, it may seem -to him partly accounted for by the fact that their school-work makes a -monotonous demand on a single faculty—the memory. - -§ 27. 7. This brings me to the last of Mr. Spencer’s principles of -intellectual education. Instruction must excite the interest of the -pupils and therefore be pleasurable to them. “Nature has made the -healthful exercise of our faculties both of mind and body pleasurable. -It is true that some of the highest mental powers as yet but little -developed in the race, and congenitally possessed in any considerable -degree only by the most advanced, are indisposed to the amount of -exertion required of them. But these, in virtue of their very complexity -will in a normal course of culture come last into exercise, and will, -therefore, have no demands made on them until the pupil has arrived at -an age when ulterior motives can be brought into play, and an indirect -pleasure made to counterbalance a direct displeasure. With all faculties -lower than these, however, the immediate gratification consequent on -activity is the normal stimulus, and under good management the only -needful stimulus. When we have to fall back on some other, we must take -the fact as evidence that we are on the wrong track. Experience is daily -showing with greater clearness that there is always a method to be found -productive of interest—even of delight—and it ever turns out that this is -the method proved by all other tests to be the right one.” - -§ 28. As far as I have had the means of judging, I have found that the -majority of teachers reject this principle. If you ask them why, most of -them will tell you that it is impossible to make school-work interesting -to children. A large number also hold that it is not desirable. Let us -consider these two points separately. - -Of course, if it is not possible to get children to take interest in -anything they could be taught in school, there is an end of the matter. -But no one really goes as far as this. Every teacher finds that some of -the things boys are taught they like better than others, and perhaps -that one boy takes to one subject and another to another; and he also -finds, both of classes and individuals, that they always get on best -with what they like best. The utmost that can be maintained is, then, -that some subjects which must be taught will not interest the majority -of the learners. And if it be once admitted that it is desirable to make -learning pleasant and interesting to our pupils, this principle will -influence us to some extent in the subjects we select for teaching, and -still more in the methods by which we endeavour to teach them. I say we -shall be guided _to some extent_ in the selection of subjects. There -are theorists who assert that nature gives to young minds a craving for -their proper aliment, so that they should be taught only what they show -an inclination for. But surely our natural inclinations in this matter, -as in others, are neither on the one hand to be ignored, nor on the -other to be uncontrolled by such motives as our reason dictates to us. -We at length perceive this in the physical nurture of our children. -Locke directs that children are to have very little sugar or salt. -“Sweetmeats of all kinds are to be avoided,” says he, “which, whether -they do more harm to the maker or eater is not easy to tell.” (Ed. § -20.) Now, however, doctors have found out that young people’s taste for -sweets should in moderation be gratified, that they require sugar as -much as they require any other kind of nutriment. But no one would think -of feeding his children entirely on sweetmeats, or even of letting them -have an unlimited supply of plum puddings and hardbake. If we follow out -this analogy in nourishing the mind, we shall, to some extent, gratify -a child’s taste for “stories,” whilst we also provide a large amount -of more solid fare. But although we should certainly not ignore our -children’s likes and dislikes in learning, or in anything else, it is -easy to attach too much importance to them. Dislike very often proceeds -from mere want of insight into the subject. When a boy has “done” the -First Book of Euclid without knowing how to judge of the size of an -angle, or the Second Book without forming any conception of a rectangle, -no one can be surprised at his not liking Euclid. And then the failure -which is really due to bad teaching is attributed by the master to the -stupidity of his pupil, and by the pupil to the dulness of the subject. -If masters really desired to make learning a pleasure to their pupils, I -think they would find that much might be done to effect this without any -alteration in the subjects taught. - -But the present dulness of school-work is not without its defenders. They -insist on the importance of breaking in the mind to hard work. This can -only be done, they say, by tasks which are repulsive to it. The schoolboy -does not like, and ought not to like, learning Latin grammar any more -than the colt should find pleasure in running round in a circle: the very -fact that these things are not pleasant makes them beneficial. Perhaps -a certain amount of such training may train _down_ the mind and qualify -it for some drudgery from which it might otherwise revolt; but if this -result is attained, it is attained at the sacrifice of the intellectual -activity which is necessary for any higher function. As Carlyle says, -(_Latter-Day PP._, No. iij), when speaking of routine work generally, you -want nothing but a sorry nag to draw your sand-cart; your high-spirited -Arab will be dangerous in such a capacity. But who would advocate for all -colts a training which should render them fit for nothing but such humble -toil? I shall say more about this further on (_v._ pp. 472 _ff._); here I -will merely express my strong conviction that boys’ minds are frequently -dwarfed, and their interest in intellectual pursuits blighted, by the -practice of employing the first years of their school-life in learning -by heart things which it is quite impossible for them to understand or -care for. Teachers set out by assuming that little boys cannot understand -anything, and that all we can do with them is to keep them quiet and cram -them with forms which will come in useful at a later age. When the boys -have been taught on this system for two or three years, their teacher -complains that they are stupid and inattentive, and that so long as they -can say a thing by heart they never trouble themselves to understand it. -In other words, the teacher grumbles at them for doing precisely what -they have been taught to do, for repeating words without any thought of -their meaning. - -§ 29. In this very important matter I am fully alive to the difference -between theory and practice. It is so easy to recommend that boys should -be got to understand and take an interest in their work—so difficult to -carry out the recommendation! Grown people can hardly conceive that words -which have in their minds been associated with familiar ideas from time -immemorial, are mere sounds in the mouths of their pupils. The teacher -thinks he is beginning at the beginning if he says that a transitive verb -must govern an accusative, or that all the angles of a square are right -angles. He gives his pupils credit for innate ideas up to this point, at -all events, and advancing on this supposition he finds that he can get -nothing out of them but memory-work; so he insists on this that his time -and theirs may seem not to be wholly wasted. The great difficulty of -teaching well, however, is after all but a poor excuse for contentedly -teaching badly, and it would be a great step in advance if teachers in -general were as dissatisfied with themselves as they usually are with -their pupils.[198] - -§ 30. I do not purpose following Mr. Spencer through his chapters on -moral and physical education. In practice I find I can draw no line -between moral and religious education; so the discussion of one without -the other has not for me much interest. Mr. Spencer has some very -valuable remarks on physical education which I could do little more than -extract, and I have already made too many quotations from a work which -will be in the hands of most of my readers. - -§ 31. Mr. Spencer differs very widely from the great body of our -schoolmasters. I have ventured in turn to differ on some points from Mr. -Spencer; but I have failed to give any adequate notion of the work I -have been discussing if the reader has not perceived that it is not only -one of the most readable, but also one of the most important books on -education in the English language. - - - - -XX. - -THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. - - -$ 1. One of the great wants of middle-class education at present, is -an ideal to work towards. Our old public schools have such an ideal. -The model public school-man is a gentleman who is an elegant Latin and -Greek scholar. True, this may not be a very good ideal, and some of our -ablest men, both literary and scientific, are profoundly dissatisfied -with it. But, so long as it is maintained, all questions of reform are -comparatively simple. In middle-class schools, on the other hand, there -is no _terminus ad quem_. A number of boys are got together, and the -question arises, not simply _how_ to teach, but _what_ to teach. Where -the masters are not university men, they are, it may be, not men of -broad views or high culture. Of course no one will suppose me ignorant -of the fact that a great number of teachers who have never been at a -university, are both enlightened and highly cultivated; and also that -many teachers who have taken degrees, even in honours, are neither. -But, speaking broadly of the two classes, I may fairly assume that the -non-university men are inferior in these respects to the graduates. -If not, our universities should be reformed on Carlyle’s “live-coal” -principle without further loss of time. Many non-university masters -have been engaged in teaching ever since they were boys themselves, -and teaching is a very narrowing occupation. They are apt therefore to -be careless of general principles, and to aim merely at storing their -pupils’ memory with _facts_—facts about language, about history, about -geography, without troubling themselves to consider what is and what is -not worth knowing, or what faculties the boys have, and how they should -be developed. The consequence is their boys get up, for the purpose of -forgetting with all convenient speed, quantities of details about as -instructive and entertaining as the _Propria quæ maribus_, such as the -division of England under the Heptarchy, the battles in the wars of the -Roses, and lists of geographical names. Where the masters are university -men, they have rather a contempt for this kind of cramming, which makes -them do it badly, if they attempt it at all; but they are driven to this -teaching in many cases because they do not know what to substitute in -its place. In their own school-education they were taught classics and -mathematics and nothing else. Their pupils are too young to have much -capacity for mathematics, and they will leave school too soon to get -any sound knowledge of classics; so the strength of the teaching ought -clearly not to be thrown into these subjects. But the master really -knows no other. He soon finds that he is not much his pupils’ superior -in acquaintance with the theory of the English language or with history -and geography. There are not many men with sufficient strength of will to -study whilst their energies are taxed by teaching; and standard books are -not always within reach: so the master is forced to content himself with -hearing lessons in a perfunctory way out of dreary school-books. Hence it -comes to pass that he goes on teaching subjects of which he himself is -ignorant, subjects, too, of which he does not recognise the importance, -with an enlightened disbelief in his own method of tuition. He finds it -uphill work, to be sure, and is conscious that his pupils do not get on, -however hard he may try to drive them; but he never hoped for success in -his teaching, so the want of it does not distress him. I may be suspected -of caricature, but not, I think, by university men who have themselves -had to teach anything besides classics and mathematics. - -§ 2. If there is any truth in what I have been saying, school-teaching, -in subjects other than classics and mathematics (which I am not now -considering), is very commonly a failure. And a failure it must remain -until boys can be got to work with a will, in other words, to feel -interest in the subject taught. I know there is a strong prejudice in -some people’s minds against the notion of making learning pleasant. They -remind us that school should be a preparation for after-life. After-life -will bring with it an immense amount of drudgery. If, they say, things -at school are made too easy and pleasant (words, by the way, very often -and very erroneously confounded), school will cease to give the proper -discipline: boys will be turned out not knowing what hard work is, which, -after all, is the most important lesson that can be taught them. In these -views I sincerely concur, so far as this at least, that we want boys to -work hard, and vigorously to go through the necessary drudgery, _i.e._, -labour in itself disagreeable. But this result is not attained by such a -system as I have described. Boys do not learn to work _hard_, but in a -dull stupid way, with most of their faculties lying dormant, and though -they are put through a vast quantity of drudgery, they seem as incapable -of throwing any energy into it as prisoners on the tread-mill. I think -we shall find on consideration, that no one succeeds in any occupation -unless that occupation is interesting, either in itself or from some -object that is to be obtained by means of it. Only when such an interest -is aroused is energy possible. No one will deny that, as a rule, the -most successful men are those for whom their employment has the greatest -attractions. We should be sorry to give ourselves up to the treatment of -a doctor who thought the study of disease mere drudgery, or a dentist who -felt a strong repugnance to operating on teeth. No doubt the successful -man in every pursuit has to go through a great deal of drudgery, but he -has a general interest in the subject, which extends, partially at least, -to its most wearisome details; his energy, too, is excited by the desire -of what the drudgery will gain for him.[199] - -§ 3. Observe, that although I would have boys take pleasure in their -work, I regard the pleasure as a _means_, not an end. If it could be -proved that the mind was best trained by the most repulsive exercises, I -should most certainly enforce them. But I do not think that the mind _is_ -benefited by galley-slave labour; indeed, hardly any of its faculties are -capable of such labour. We can compel a boy to learn a thing by heart, -but we cannot compel him to wish to understand it; and the intellect -does not act without the will (_v. supra_ p. 193). Hence, when anything -is required which cannot be performed by the memory alone, the driving -system utterly breaks down; and even the memory, as I hope to show -presently, works much more effectually in matters about which the mind -feels an interest. Indeed, the mind without sympathy and interest is like -the sea-anemone when the tide is down, an unlovely thing, closed against -external influences, enduring existence as best it can. But let it find -itself in a more congenial element, and it opens out at once, shows -altogether unexpected capacities, and eagerly assimilates all the proper -food that comes within its reach. Our school teaching is often little -better than an attempt to get sea-anemones to flourish on dry land. - -§ 4. We see then, that a boy, before he can throw energy into a study, -must find that study _interesting in itself, or in its results_. - -Some subjects, properly taught, are interesting in themselves. - -Some subjects may be interesting to older and more thoughtful boys, from -a perception of their usefulness. - -All subjects may be made interesting by emulation. - -§ 5. Hardly any effort is made in some schools to interest the younger -children in their work, and yet no effort can be, as the Germans say, -more “rewarding.” The teacher of children has this advantage, that his -pupils are never dull and listless, as youths are apt to be. If they are -not attending to him, they very soon give him notice of it; and if he has -the sense to see that their inattention is his fault, not theirs, this -will save him much annoyance and them much misery. He has, too, another -advantage, which gives him the power of gaining their attention—their -emulation is easily excited. In the Waisenhaus at Halle I once heard a -class of very young children, none of them much above six years old, -perform feats of mental arithmetic quite, as I should have said, beyond -their age, and I well remember the pretty eagerness with which each -child held out a little hand and shouted, “_Mich! Bitte!_” to gain the -privilege of answering. - -§ 6. Then again, there are many subjects in which children take an -interest. Indeed, all visible things, especially animals, are much more -to them than to us. A child has made acquaintance with all the animals -in the neighbourhood, and can tell you much more about the house and its -surroundings than you know yourself. But all this knowledge and interest -you would wish forgotten directly he comes into school. Reading, writing, -and figures are taught in the driest manner. The two first are in -themselves not uninteresting to the child, as he has something to do, and -young people are much more ready to do anything than to learn anything. -But when lessons are given the child to learn, they are not about things -concerning which he has ideas and feels an interest, but you teach him -mere sounds—_e.g._, that Alfred (to him only a name) came to the throne -in 871, though he has no notion what the throne is, or what 871 means. -The child learns the lesson with much trouble and small profit, bearing -the infliction with what patience he can, till he escapes out of school -and begins to learn much faster on a very different system. - -§ 7. We cannot often introduce into the school the thing, much less the -animal, which children would care to see, but we can introduce what will -please them as well, in some cases even better, viz., good pictures. A -teacher who could draw boldly on the blackboard, would have no difficulty -in arresting the children’s attention. But, at present, few can do this, -and pictures must be provided. A good deal has been done of late years -in the way of illustrating children’s books, and even childhood must be -the happier for such pictures as those of Tenniel and Harrison Weir. But -it seems well understood that these gentlemen are incapable of doing -anything for children beyond affording them innocent amusement, and we -should be as much surprised at seeing their works introduced into that -region of asceticism, the English school-room, as if we ran across one of -Raphael’s Madonnas in a Baptist chapel.[200] - -§ 8. I had the good fortune, many years ago, to be present at the lessons -given by a very excellent teacher to the youngest class, consisting both -of boys and girls, at the first _Bürger-schule_ of Leipzig. In Saxony the -schooling which the state demands for each child, begins at six years -old, and lasts till fourteen. These children were, therefore, between six -and seven. In one year, a certain Dr. Vater taught them to read, write, -and reckon. His method of teaching was as follows:—Each child had a book -with pictures of objects, such as a hat, a slate, &c. Under the picture -was the name of the object in printing and writing characters, and also -a couplet about the object. The children having opened their books, and -found the picture of a hat, the teacher showed them a hat, and told them -a tale connected with one. He then asked the children questions about -his story, and about the hat he had in his hand—What was the colour of -it? &c. He then drew a hat on the blackboard, and made the children copy -it on their slates. Next he wrote the word “hat” and told them that for -people who could read this did as well as the picture. The children then -copied the word on their slates. The teacher proceeded to analyse the -word “hat, (_hut_).” “It is made up,” said he, “of three sounds, the -most important of which is the _a_ (_u_), which comes in the middle.” In -all cases the vowel sound was first ascertained in every syllable, and -then was given an approximation to consonantal sounds before and after. -The couplet was now read by the teacher, and the children repeated it -after him. In this way the book had to be worked over and over till the -children were perfectly familiar with everything in it. They had been -already six months thus employed when I visited the school, and knew the -book pretty thoroughly. To test their knowledge, Dr. Vater first wrote a -number of capitals at random on the board, and called out a boy to tell -him words having these capitals as initials. This boy had to call out a -girl to do something of the kind, she a boy, and so forth. Everything was -done very smartly, both by master and children. The best proof I saw of -their accuracy and quickness was this: the master traced words from the -book very rapidly with a stick on the blackboard, and the children always -called out the right word, though I could not follow him. He also wrote -with chalk words which the children had never seen, and made them name -first the vowel sounds, then the consonantal, then combine them. - -I have been thus minute in my description of this lesson, because it -seems to me an admirable example of the way in which children between -six and eight years of age should be taught. The method (see Rüegg’s -_Pädagogik_, p. 360; also _Die Normalwörtermethode_, published by Orell, -Füssli, Zürich, 1876), was arranged and the book prepared by the late Dr. -Vogel, who was then Director of the school. Its merits, as its author -pointed out to me, are:—1. That it connects the instruction with objects -of which the child has already an idea in his mind, and so associates -new knowledge with old; 2. That it gives the children plenty to _do_ as -well as to learn, a point on which the Doctor was very emphatic; 3. That -it makes the children go over the same matter in various ways till they -have _learnt a little thoroughly_, and then applies their knowledge to -the acquirement of more. Here the Doctor seems to have followed Jacotot. -But though the method was no doubt a good one, I must say its success -at Leipzig was due at least as much to Dr. Vater as to Dr. Vogel. This -gentleman had been taking the youngest class in this school for twenty -years, and, whether by practice or natural talent, he had acquired -precisely the right manner for keeping children’s attention. He was -energetic without bustle and excitement, and quiet without a suspicion of -dulness or apathy. By frequently changing the employment of the class, -and requiring smartness in everything that was done, he kept them all on -the alert. The lesson I have described was followed without pause by one -in arithmetic, the two together occupying an hour and three quarters, and -the interest of the children never flagged throughout. - -§ 9. Dr. Vater’s method for arithmetic I cannot now recall; but I do -not doubt that, as a German teacher who had studied his profession, he -understood what English teachers and pupil-teachers do not understand, -viz., how children should get their first knowledge of numbers. -Pestalozzi and Froebel insisted that children should learn about numbers -from _things_ which they actually counted; and, according to Grubé’s -method, which I found in Germany over 30 years ago, and which is now -extending to the United States, the whole of the first year is given to -the relations of numbers not exceeding ten (see _Grubé’s Method_ by L. -Seeley, New York, Kellogg, and F. L. Soldan’s _Grubé’s M._, Chicago). -In arithmetic everything depends on these relations becoming thoroughly -familiar. The decimal scale is possibly not so good as the scale of eight -or of twelve, but the human race has adopted it; and even the French -Revolutionists, with all their belief in “reason,” and their hatred of -the past, recoiled from any attempt to change it. But in accepting it, -they endeavoured to remove anomalies, and so should we. Everything must -be based on groups of ten; and with children we should do well, as Mr. -W. Wooding suggests, to avoid the great anomaly in our nomenclature, and -call the numbers between ten and twenty (_i.e._, twain-tens or two-tens), -“ten-one, ten-two, &c.” Numeration should by a long way precede any -kind of notation, and the main truths about numbers should be got -at experimentally with counters or coins. In these truths should be -included all that we usually separate under the “First Four Rules,” and -with integers we may even from the first give a clear conception of the -fractional parts of whole numbers, _e.g._, that one third of 6 is 2.[201] - -Actual measuring and weighing, besides actual counting, go towards actual -arithmetic for children. - -All this teaching, if conducted as Dr. Vater would have conducted it, -would not give children any distaste for learning or make them dread the -sound of the school bell. - -§ 10. I will suppose a child to have passed through such a course as this -by the time he is eight or nine years old. Besides having some clear -notions of number and form, he can now read and copy easy words. What -we next want for him is a series of good reading-books, about things in -which he takes an interest. The language must of course be simple, but -the matter so good that neither master nor pupils will be disgusted by -its frequent repetition. - -The first volume may very well be about animals—dogs, horses, &c., of -which large pictures should be provided, illustrating the text. The first -cost of these pictures would be considerable, but as they would last for -years, the expense to the friends of each child taught from them would be -a mere trifle. - -§ 11. The books placed in the hands of the children should be well -printed and strongly bound. In the present penny-wise system, -school-books are given out in cloth, and the leaves are loose at the end -of a fortnight, so that children get accustomed to their destruction and -treat it as a matter of course. This ruins their respect for books, which -is not so unimportant a matter as it may at first appear. - -§ 12. After each reading lesson, which should contain at least one -interesting anecdote, there should be columns of all the words which -occurred for the first time in that lesson. These should be arranged -according to their grammatical classification, not that the child should -be taught grammar, but this order is as good as any other, and by it -the child would learn to observe certain differences in words almost -unconsciously.[202] - -Here I cannot resist quoting an excellent remark from Helps’s _Brevia_ -(p. 125). “We should make the greatest progress in art, science, -politics, and morals, if we could train up our minds to look straight -and steadfastly and uninterruptedly at the thing in question that we -are observing. This seems a very slight thing to do; but practically -it is hardly ever done. Between you and the object rises a mist of -technicalities, of prejudices, of previous knowledge, and, above all, -of terrible familiarity.” Perhaps it is this “terrible familiarity” -that has prevented our seeing till quite lately that reading is the art -of getting meaning by signs that appeal to the eye, _not_ the art of -reporting to others the meaning we have thus arrived at. “Accustoming -boys to read aloud what they do not first understand,” says Benjamin -Franklin, “is the cause of those even set tones so common among readers, -which, when they have once got a habit of using [them], they find so -difficult to correct; by which means, among fifty readers we scarcely -find a good one.” (_Essays, Sk. of English Sch._) It seems to have -escaped even Franklin’s sagacity that reading aloud is a different art -to the art of reading, and a much harder one. The two should be studied -separately, and most time and attention should be given to silent -reading, which is by far the more important of the two. Colonel F. W. -Parker, who has successfully cultivated the power of “looking straight -at” things, gives us in his _Talks on Teaching_ the right rule for -reading. “Changing,” says he, “the beautiful power of expression, full -of melody, harmony, and correct emphasis and inflection, to the slow, -painful, almost agonising pronunciation that we have heard so many times -in the school-room, is a terrible sin that we should never be guilty of. -There is, indeed, not the slightest need of changing a good habit to a -miserable one if we would follow the rule that the child has naturally -followed all his life. _Never allow a child to give a thought till he -gets it_” (p. 37). Now that the existence of a thought in children is -allowed for, we may expect all sorts of improvements. Reading, as a means -of ascertaining thought, is second only to hearing, and this art should -be cultivated by giving children books of questions (_e.g._, Horace -Grant’s _Arithmetic for Young Children_), and requiring the learner -silently to get at the question and then give the answer aloud. - -§ 13. Easy descriptive and narrative poetry should be learnt by heart at -this stage. That the children may repeat it well, they should get their -first notions of it from the master _vivâ voce_. According to the usual -plan, they get it up with false emphasis and false stops, and the more -thoroughly they have learnt the piece, the more difficulty the master has -in making them say it properly. - -§ 14. Every lesson should be worked over in various ways. The columns -of words at the end of the reading lessons may be printed with writing -characters, and used for copies. To write an upright column either of -words or figures is an excellent exercise in neatness. The columns will -also be used as spelling lessons, and the children may be questioned -about the meaning of the words. The poetry, when thoroughly learned, -may sometimes be written from memory. Sentences from the book may be -copied either directly or from the black-board, and afterwards used for -dictation. - -§ 15. Boys should, as soon as possible, be accustomed to write out -fables, or the substance of other reading lessons, in their own words. -They may also write descriptions of things with which they are familiar, -or any event which has recently happened, such as a country excursion. -Every one feels the necessity, on grounds of practical utility at all -events, of boys being taught to express their thoughts neatly on paper, -in good English and with correct spelling. Yet this is a point rarely -reached before the age of fifteen or sixteen, often never reached at -all. The reason is, that written exercises must be carefully looked over -by the master, or they are done in a slovenly manner. Anyone who has -never taught in a school will say, “Then let the master carefully look -them over.” But the expenditure of time and trouble this involves on the -master is so great, that in the end he is pretty sure either to have few -exercises written, or to neglect to look them over. The only remedy is -for the master not to have many boys to teach, and not to be many hours -in school. Even then, unless he set apart a special time every day for -correcting exercises, he is likely to find them “increase upon him.” - -§ 16. The course of reading-books, accompanied by large illustrations, -may go on to many other things which the children see around them, such -as trees and plants, and so lead up to instruction in natural history and -physiology. But in imparting all knowledge of this kind, we should aim, -not at getting the children to remember a number of facts, but at opening -their eyes, and extending the range of their interests. - -§ 17. I should suggest, then, for children, three books to be used -concurrently, viz., a reading book about animals and things, a poetry -book, and a prose narrative or Æsop’s Fables. With the first commences a -series culminating in works of science; with the second, a series that -should lead up to Milton and Shakespeare; the third should be succeeded -by some of our best writers in prose. - -§ 18. But many schoolmasters will shudder at the thought of a child’s -spending a year or two at school without ever hearing of the Heptarchy -or Magna Charta, and without knowing the names of the great towns in -any country of Europe. I confess I regard this ignorance with great -equanimity. If the child, or the youth even, takes no interest in the -Heptarchy and Magna Charta, and knows nothing of the towns but their -names, I think him quite as well off without this knowledge as with -it—perhaps better, as such knowledge turns the lad into a “wind-bag,” as -Carlyle might say, and gives him the appearance of being well-informed -without the reality. But I neither despise a knowledge of history and -geography; nor do I think that these studies should be neglected for -foreign languages or science: and it is because I should wish a pupil -of mine to become, in the end, thoroughly conversant in history and -geography, that I should, if possible, conceal from him the existence of -the numerous school manuals on these subjects. - -We will suppose that a parent meets with a book which he thinks will -be both instructive and entertaining to his children. But the book is -a large one, and would take a long time to get through; so instead of -reading any part of it to them or letting them read it for themselves, he -makes them _learn by heart the table of contents_. The children do _not_ -find it entertaining; they get a horror of the book, which prevents their -ever looking at it afterwards, and they forget what they have learnt -as soon as they possibly can. Just such is the sagacious plan adopted -in teaching history and geography in schools, and such are the natural -consequences. Every student knows that the use of an epitome is to -_systematise_ knowledge, not to communicate it, and yet, in teaching, we -give the epitome first, and allow it to precede, or rather to supplant, -the knowledge epitomised. The children are disgusted, and no wonder. The -subjects, indeed, are interesting, but not so the epitomes. I suppose if -we could see the skeletons of the Gunnings, we should not find them more -fascinating than any other skeletons.[203] - -§ 19. The first thing to be aimed at, then, is to excite the children’s -interest. Even if we thought of nothing but the acquiring of information, -this is clearly the true method. What are the facts which we remember? -Those in which we feel an interest. If we are told that So-and-so has met -with an accident, or failed in business, we forget it directly, unless we -know the person spoken of. Similarly, if I read anything about Addison -or Goldsmith, it interests me, and I remember it because they are, so -to speak, friends of mine; but the same information about Sir Richard -Blackmore or Cumberland would not stay in my head for four-and-twenty -hours. So, again, we naturally retain anything we learn about a foreign -country in which a relation has settled, but it would require some little -trouble to commit to memory the same facts about a place in which we -had no concern. All this proceeds from two causes. First, that the mind -retains that in which it takes an interest; and, secondly, that one of -the principal helps to memory is the association of ideas. These were, -no doubt, the ground reasons which influenced Dr. Arnold in framing his -plan of a child’s first history book. This book, he says, should be -a picture-book of the memorable deeds which would best appeal to the -child’s imagination. They should be arranged in order of time, but with -no other connection. The letter-press should simply, but fully, tell -the _story_ of the action depicted. These would form starting-points -of interest. The child would be curious to know more about the great -men whose acquaintance he had made, and would associate with them the -scenes of their exploits; and thus we might actually find our children -anxious to learn history and geography! I am sorry that even the great -authority of Dr. Arnold has not availed to bring this method into use. -Such a book would, of course, be dear. Bad pictures are worse than none -at all: and Goethe tells us that his appreciation of Homer was for years -destroyed by his having been shown, when a child, absurd pictures of the -Homeric heroes. The book would, therefore, cost six or eight shillings at -least; and who would give this sum for an account of single actions of -a few great men, when he might buy the lives of all great men, together -with ancient and modern history, the names of the planets, and a great -amount of miscellaneous information, all for a shilling in “Mangnall’s -Questions”? - -However, if the saving of a few shillings is more to be thought of than -the best method of instruction, the subject hardly deserves our serious -consideration. - -§ 20. It is much to be regretted that books for the young are so seldom -written by distinguished authors. I suppose that of the three things -which the author seeks, money, reputation, influence, the first is not -often despised, nor the last considered the least valuable. And yet both -money and influence are more certainly gained by a good book for the -young than by any other. The influence of “Tom Brown,” however different -in kind, is probably not smaller in amount than that of “Sartor Resartus.” - -§ 21. What we want is a Macaulay for boys, who shall handle historical -subjects with that wonderful art displayed in the “Essays,”—the art of -elaborating all the more telling portions of the subject, outlining the -rest, and suppressing everything that does not conduce to heighten the -general effect. Some of these essays, such as the “Hastings” and “Clive,” -will be read with avidity by the elder boys; but Macaulay did not write -for children, and he abounds in words to them unintelligible. Had he been -a married man, we might perhaps have had such a volume of historical -sketches for boys as now we must wish for in vain. But there are good -story-tellers left among us, and we might soon expect such books as we -desiderate, if it were clearly understood what is the right sort of book, -and if men of literary ability and experience would condescend to write -them. - -§ 22. If, in these latter days, “the individual withers, and the world -is more and more,” we must not expect our children to enter into this. -Their sympathy and their imagination can be aroused, not for nations, -but for individuals; and this is the reason why some biographies of -great men should precede any history. These should be written after -Macaulay’s method. There should be no attempt at completeness, but what -is most important and interesting about the man should be narrated in -detail, and the rest lightly sketched, or omitted altogether. Painters -understand this principle, and, in taking a portrait, very often depict a -man’s features minutely without telling all the truth about the buttons -on his waistcoat. But, because in a literary picture each touch takes up -additional space, writers seem to fear that the picture will be distorted -unless every particular is expanded or condensed in the same ratio. - -§ 23. At the risk of wearisome repetition, I must again say that I -care as little about driving “useful knowledge” into a boy as the most -ultra Cambridge man could wish; but I want to get the boy to have wide -sympathies, and to teach himself; and I should therefore select the great -men from very different periods and countries, that his net of interest -(so to speak) may be spread in all waters. - -§ 24. When we have thus got our boys to form the acquaintance of great -men, they will have certain associations connected with many towns and -countries. Constant reference should be made to the map, and the boys’ -knowledge and interest will thus make settlements in different parts of -the globe. These may be extended by a good book of travels, especially -of voyages of discovery. There are now many such books suitable for the -purpose, but I am still partial to a book which has been a delight to -me and to my own children from our earliest years:—Miss Hack’s “Winter -Evenings; or, Tales of Travelers”; or, as Routledge now calls a part of -it, “Travels in Hot and Cold Lands.” In studying such travels, the map -should, of course, be always in sight; and outline maps may be filled -up by the boys as they learn about the places in the traveller’s route. -Anyone who has had the management of a school library knows how popular -“voyage and venture” is with the boys who have passed the stage in which -the picture-books of animals were the main attraction. Captain Cook, -Mungo Park, and Admiral Byron are heroes without whom boyhood would -be incomplete; but as boys are engrossed by the adventures, and never -trouble themselves about the map, they often remember the incidents -without knowing where they happened. - -Of course, school geographies never mention such people as celebrated -travellers; if they did, it would be impossible to give all the principal -geographical names in the world within the compass of 200 pages. - -§ 25. What might we fairly expect from such a course of teaching as I -have here suggested? - -At the end of a year and a half, or two years, from the age, say, of -nine, the boy would read to himself intelligently; he would write fairly; -he would spell all common English words correctly; he would be thoroughly -familiar with the relations of all common numbers, that is, of all -numbers below 100; he would have had his interest aroused, or, to speak -more accurately, not stifled but increased in common objects, such as -animals, trees, and plants; he would have made the acquaintance of some -great men, and traced the voyages of some great travellers; he would be -able to say by heart and to write from memory some of the best simple -English poetry, and his ear would be familiar with the sound of good -English prose. So much, at least, on the positive side. On the negative -there might also be results of considerable value. He would _not_ have -learned to look upon books and school-time as the torment of his life, -nor have fallen into the habit of giving them as little of his attention -as he could reconcile with immunity from the cane. The benefit of the -negative result might outweigh a very glib knowledge of “tables” and -Latin Grammar. - - - - -XXI. - -THE SCHOOLMASTER’S MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. - - -§ 1. All who are acquainted with the standard treatises on the theory of -education, and also with the management of schools, will have observed -that moral and religious training occupies a larger and more prominent -space in theory than in practice. On consideration, we shall find perhaps -that this might naturally be expected. Of course we are all agreed that -morality is more important than learning, and masters who are many of -them clergymen, will hardly be accused of under-estimating the value -of religion. Why then, does not moral and religious training receive a -larger share of the master’s attention? The reason I take to be this. -Experience shows that it depends directly on the master whether a boy -acquires knowledge, but only indirectly, and in a much less degree, -whether he grows up a good and religious man. The aim which engrosses -most of our time is likely to absorb an equal share of our interest; and -thus it happens that masters, especially those who never associate on -terms of intimacy with their pupils out of school, throw energy enough -into making boys _learn_, but seldom think at all of the development -of their character, or about their thoughts and feelings in matters of -religion. This statement may indeed be exaggerated, but no one who -has the means of judging will assert that it is altogether without -foundation. And yet, although a master can be more certain of sending -out his pupils well-taught than well-principled, his influence on their -character is much greater than it might appear to a superficial observer. -I am not speaking of formal religious instruction. I refer now to the -teacher’s indirect influence. The results of his formal teaching vary -as its amount, but he can apply no such gauge to his informal teaching. -A few words of earnest advice or remonstrance, which a boy hears at the -right time from a man whom he respects, may affect that boy’s character -for life. Here everything depends, not on the words used, but on the -feeling with which they are spoken, and on the way in which the speaker -is regarded by the hearer. In such matters the master has a much more -delicate and difficult task than in mere instruction. The words, indeed, -are soon spoken, but that which gives them their influence is not soon -or easily acquired. Here, as in so many other instances, we may in a -few minutes throw down what it has cost us days—perhaps years—to build -up. An unkind word will destroy the effects of long-continued kindness. -Boys always form their opinion of a man from the worst they know of him. -Experience has not yet taught them that good people have their failings, -and bad people their virtues. If the scholars find the master at times -harsh and testy, they cannot believe in his kindness of heart and care -for their welfare. They do not see that he may have an ideal before him -to which he is partly, though not wholly true. They judge him by his -demeanour in his least guarded moments—at times when he is jaded and -dissatisfied with the result of his labours. At such times he is no -longer “in touch” with his pupils. He is conscious only of his own power -and mental superiority. Feeling almost a contempt for the boys’ weakness, -he does not care for their opinion of him or think for an instant what -impression he is making by his words and conduct. He gives full play to -his _arbitrium_, and says or does something which seems to the boys to -reveal him in his true character, and which causes them ever after to -distrust his kindness. - -§ 2. When we consider the way in which masters endeavour to gain -influence, we shall find that they may be divided roughly into two -parties, whom I will call the open and the reserved. A teacher of the -_open_ party endeavours to appear to his pupils precisely as he is. -He will hear of no restraint except that of decorum. He believes that -if he is as much the superior of his pupils as he ought to be, his -authority will take care of itself without his casting round it a wall -of artificial reserve. “Be natural,” he says; “get rid of affectations -and shams of all kinds; and then, if there is any good in you, it will -tell on those around you. Whatever is bad, would be felt just as surely -in disguise; and the disguise would only be an additional source of -mischief.” The _reserved_, on the other hand, wish their pupils to think -of them as they ought to be rather than as they are. Against the other -party they urge that our words and actions cannot always be in harmony -with our thoughts and feelings, however much we may desire to make them -so. We must, therefore, they say, reconcile ourselves to this; and since -our words and actions are more under our control than our thoughts and -feelings, we must make them as nearly as possible what they should be, -instead of debasing them to involuntary thoughts and feelings which are -not worthy of us. Then again, a teacher who is an idealist may say, -“The young require some one to look up to. In my better moments I am not -altogether unworthy of their respect; but if they knew all my weaknesses, -they would naturally, and perhaps justly, despise me. For their sakes, -therefore, I must keep my weaknesses out of sight, and the effort to do -this demands a certain reserve in all our intercourse.” - -§ 3. I suppose an excess in either direction might lead to mischievous -results. The “open” man might be wanting in self-restraint, and might say -and do things which, though not wrong in themselves, might have a bad -effect on the young. Then, again, the lower and more worldly side of his -character might show itself in too strong relief; and his pupils seeing -this mainly, and supposing that they understood him entirely, might -disbelieve in his higher motives and religious feeling. On the other -hand, those who set up for being better than they really are, are, as it -were, walking on stilts. They gain no real influence by their separation -from their pupils, and they are always liable to an accident which may -expose them to their ridicule.[204] - -§ 4. I am, therefore, though with some limitation, in favour of the -_open_ school. I am well aware, however, what an immense demand this -system makes on the master who desires to exercise a good influence on -the moral and religious character of his pupils. If he would have his -pupils know him as he is, if he would have them think as he thinks, -feel as he feels, and believe as he believes, he must be, at least in -heart and aim, worthy of their imitation. He must (with reverence be -it spoken) enter, in his humble way, into the spirit of the perfect -Teacher, who said, “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also -may be sanctified in truth.” Are we prepared to look upon our calling in -this light? I believe that the school-teachers of this country need not -fear comparison with any other body of men, in point of morality, and -religious earnestness; but I dare say many have found, as I have, that -the occupation is a very _narrowing_ one, that the teacher soon gets to -work in a groove, and from having his thoughts so much occupied with -routine work, especially with small fault-findings and small corrections, -he is apt to settle down insensibly into a kind of moral and intellectual -stagnation—Philistinism, as Matthew Arnold has taught us to call it—in -which he cares as little for high aims and general principles as his -most commonplace pupil. Thus it happens sometimes that a man who set -out with the notion of developing all the powers of his pupils’ minds, -thinks in the end of nothing but getting them to work out equations and -do Latin exercises without false concords; and the clergyman even, who -began with a strong sense of his responsibility and a confident hope of -influencing the boys’ belief and character, at length is quite content if -they conform to discipline and give him no trouble out of school-hours. -We may say of a really good teacher what Wordsworth says of the poet; in -his work he must neither - - lack that first great gift, the vital soul, - Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort - Of elements and agents, under-powers, - Subordinate helpers of the living mind.—_Prelude_, i. 9. - -But the “vital soul” is too often crushed by excessive routine labour, -and then when general truths, both moral and intellectual, have ceased -to interest us, our own education stops, and we become incapable of -fulfilling the highest and most important part of our duty in educating -others. - -§ 5. It is, then, the duty of the teacher to resist gravitating into this -state, no less for his pupils’ sake than for his own. The ways and means -of doing this I am by no means competent to point out; so I will merely -insist on the importance of teachers not being overworked—a matter which -has not, I think, hitherto received due attention. - -We cannot expect intellectual activity of men whose minds are compelled -“with pack-horse constancy to keep the road” hour after hour, till they -are too jaded for exertion of any kind. The man himself suffers, and -his work, even his easiest work, suffers also. It may be laid down as a -general rule, that no one can teach long and teach well. All satisfactory -teaching and management of boys absolutely requires that the master -should be _in good spirits_. When the “genial spirits fail,” as they must -from an overdose of monotonous work, everything goes wrong directly. The -master has no longer the power of keeping the boys’ attention, and has to -resort to punishments even to preserve order. His gloom quenches their -interest and mental activity, just as fire goes out before carbonic acid; -and in the end teacher and taught acquire, not without cause, a feeling -of mutual aversion. - -§ 6. And another reason why the master should not spend the greater -part of his time in formal teaching is this—his doing so compels him to -neglect the informal but very important teaching he may both give and -receive by making his pupils his companions. - -§ 7. I fear I shall be met here by an objection which has only too much -force in it. Most Englishmen are at a loss how to make any use of -leisure. If a man has no turn for thinking, no fondness for reading, and -is without a hobby, what good shall his leisure do him? he will only pass -it in insipid gossip, from which any easy work would be a relief. That -this is so in many cases, is a proof to my mind of the utter failure of -our ordinary education: and perhaps an improved education may some day -alter what now seems a national peculiarity. Meantime the mind, even of -Englishmen, is more than a “succedaneum for salt;”[205] and its tendency -to bury its sight, ostrich-fashion, under a heap of routine work must be -strenuously resisted, if it is to escape its deadly enemies, stupidity -and ignorance. - -§ 8. I have elsewhere expressed what I believe is the common conviction -of those who have seen something both of large schools and of small, -viz., that the moral atmosphere of the former is, as a rule, by far the -more wholesome;[206] and also that each boy is more influenced by his -companions than by his master. More than this, I believe that in many, -perhaps in most, schools, one or two boys affect the tone of the whole -body more than any master.[207] What are called Preparatory Schools -labour under this immense disadvantage, that their ruling spirits are -mere children without reflection or sense of responsibility.[208] But -where the leading boys are virtually young men, these may be made a -medium through which the mind of the master may act upon the whole -school. They can enter into the thoughts, feelings, and aims of the -master on the one hand, and they know what is said and done among the -boys on the other. The master must, therefore, know the elder boys -intimately, and they must know him. This consummation, however, will -not be arrived at without great tact and self-denial on the part of the -master. The youth who is “neither man nor boy” is apt to be shy and -awkward, and is not by any means so easy to entertain as the lad who -chatters freely of the school’s cricket or football, past, present, and -to come. But the master who feels how all-important is the _tone_ of the -school, will not grudge any pains to influence those on whom it chiefly -depends. - -§ 9. But, allowing the value of all these indirect influences, can we -afford to neglect direct formal religious instruction? We have most of us -the greatest horror of what we call a secular education, meaning thereby -an education without formal religious teaching. But this horror seems to -affect our theory more than our practice. Few parents ever enquire what -religious instruction their sons get at Eton, Harrow, or Westminster. At -Harrow when I was in the Fourth Form there (nearly fifty years ago by the -way) we had no religious instruction except a weekly lesson in Watts’s -Scripture History; and when I was a master some twenty years ago my form -had only a Sunday lesson in a portion of the Old Testament, and a lesson -in French Testament at “First School” on Monday. Even in some “Voluntary -Schools” we do not find “religious instruction” made so much of as the -arithmetic. - -§ 10. In this matter we differ very widely from the Germans. All their -classes have a “religion-lesson” (_Religionstunde_) nearly every day, the -younger children in the German Bible, the elder in the Greek Testament -or Church History; and in all cases the teacher is careful to instruct -his pupils in the tenets of Luther or Calvin. The Germans may urge that -if we believe a set of doctrines to be a fitting expression of Divine -revelation, it is our first duty to make the young familiar with those -doctrines. I cannot say, however, that I have been favourably impressed -by the religion-lessons I have heard given in German schools. I do -not deny that dogmatic teaching is necessary, but the first thing to -cultivate in the young is reverence; and reverence is surely in danger -if you take a class in “religion” just as you take a class in grammar. -Emerson says somewhere, that to the poet, the saint, and the philosopher, -all distinction of sacred and profane ceases to exist, all things become -alike sacred. As the schoolboy, however, does not as yet come under any -one of these denominations, if the distinction ceases to exist for him, -all things will become alike profane. - -§ 11. I believe that religious instruction is conveyed in the most -impressive way when it is connected with worship. Where the prayers -are joined with the reading of Scripture and with occasional simple -addresses, and where the congregation have responses to repeat, and -psalms and hymns to sing, there is reason to hope that boys will -increase, not only in knowledge, but in wisdom and reverence too. Without -asserting that the Church of England service is the best possible for -the young, I hold that any form for them should at least resemble it -in its main features, should be as varied as possible, should require -frequent change of posture, and should give the congregation much to say -and sing. Much use might be made as in the Church of Rome, of litanies. -The service, whatever its form, should be conducted with great solemnity, -and the boys should not sit or kneel so close together that the badly -disposed may disturb their neighbours who try to join in the act of -worship. If good hymns are sung, these may be taken occasionally as the -subject of an address, so that attention may be drawn to their meaning. -Music should be carefully attended to, and the danger of irreverence -at practices guarded against by never using sacred words more than is -necessary, and by impressing on the singers the sacredness of everything -connected with Divine worship. Questions combined with instruction may -sometimes keep up boys’ attention better than a formal sermon. Though -common prayer should be frequent, this should not be supposed to take the -place of private prayer. In many schools boys have hardly an opportunity -for private prayer. They kneel down, perhaps, with all the talk and play -of their schoolfellows going on around them, and sometimes fear of public -opinion prevents their kneeling down at all. A schoolmaster cannot teach -private prayer, but he can at least see that there is opportunity for it. - -Education to goodness and piety, as far as it lies in human hands, must -consist almost entirely in the influence of the good and pious superior -over his inferiors, and as this influence is independent of rules, these -remarks of mine cannot do more than touch the surface of this most -important subject.[209] - -§ 12. In conclusion, I wish to say a word on the education of opinion. -Sir Arthur Helps lays great stress on preparing the way to moderation -and open-mindedness by teaching boys that all good men are not of the -same way of thinking. It is indeed a miserable error to lead a young -person to suppose that his small ideas are a measure of the universe, -and that all who do not accept his formularies are less enlightened than -himself. If a young man is so brought up, he either carries intellectual -blinkers all his life, or, what is far more probable, he finds that -something he has been taught is false, and forthwith begins to doubt -everything. On the other hand, it is a necessity with the young to -believe, and we could not, even if we would, bring a youth into such a -state of mind as to regard everything about which there is any variety of -opinion as an open question. But he may be taught reverence and humility; -he may be taught to reflect how infinitely greater the facts of the -universe must be than our poor thoughts about them, and how inadequate -are words to express even our imperfect thoughts. Then he will not -suppose that all truth has been taught him in his formularies, nor that -he understands even all the truth of which those formularies are the -imperfect expression.[210] - - - - -XXII. - -CONCLUSION. - - -§ 1. When I originally published these essays (more than 22 years ago) -the critic of the _Nonconformist_ in one of the best, though by no -means most complimentary, of the many notices with which the book was -favoured, took me to task for being in such a hurry to publish. I had -confessed incompleteness. What need was there for me to publish before I -had completed my work? Since that time I have spent years on my subject -and at least two years on these essays themselves; but they now seem to -me even further from completeness than they seemed then. However, I have -reason to believe that the old book, incomplete as it was, proved useful -to teachers; and in its altered form it will, I hope, be found useful -still. - -§ 2. It may be useful I think in two ways. - -First: it may lead some teachers to the study of the great thinkers on -education. There are some vital truths which remain in the books which -time cannot destroy. In the world as Goethe says are few voices, many -echoes; and the echoes often prevent our hearing the voices distinctly. -Perhaps most people had a better chance of hearing the voices when there -were fewer books and no periodicals. Speakers properly so called cannot -now be heard for the hubbub of the talkers; and as literature is becoming -more and more periodical our writers seem mostly employed like children -on card pagodas or like the recumbent artists of the London streets who -produce on the stones of the pavement gaudy chalk drawings which the next -shower washes out. - -But if I would have fewer books what business have I to add to the -number? I may be told that— - - “He who in quest of quiet, ‘Silence!’ hoots, - Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes.” - -My answer is that I do not write to expound my own thought, but to draw -attention to the thoughts of the men who are best worth hearing. It is -not given to us small people to think strongly and clearly like the great -people; we, however, gain in strength and clearness by contact with them; -and this contact I seek to promote. So long as this book is used, it will -I hope be used only as an _introduction_ to the great thinkers whose -names are found in it. - -§ 3. There is another way in which the book may be of use. By considering -the great thinkers in chronological order we see that each adds to the -treasure which he finds already accumulated, and thus by degrees we are -arriving in education, as in most departments of human endeavour, at a -_science_. In this science lies our hope for the future. Teachers must -endeavour to obtain more and more knowledge of the laws to which their -art has to conform itself. - -§ 4. It may be of advantage to some readers if I point out briefly what -seems to me the course of the main stream of thought as it has flowed -down to us from the Renascence. - -§ 5. As I endeavoured to show at the beginning of this book, the Scholars -of the Renascence fell into a great mistake, a mistake which perhaps -could not have been avoided at a time when literature was rediscovered -and the printing press had just been invented. This mistake was the -idolatry of books, and, still worse, of books in Latin and Greek. So the -schoolmaster fell into a bad theory or conception of his task, for he -supposed that his function was to teach Latin and Greek; and his practice -or way of going to work was not much better, for his chief implements -were grammar and the cane. - -§ 6. The first who made a great advance were the Jesuits. They were -indeed far too much bent on being popular to be “Innovators.” They -endeavoured to do well what most schoolmasters did badly. They taught -Latin and Greek, and they made great use of grammar, but they gave up the -cane. Boys were to be made happy. School-hours were to be reduced from 10 -hours a day to 5 hours, and in those 5 hours learning was to be made “not -only endurable but even pleasurable.” - -But the pupils were to find this pleasure not in the exercise of their -mental powers but in other ways. As Mr. Eve has said, young teachers -are inclined to think mainly of stimulating their pupils’ minds and so -neglect the repetition needed for accuracy. Old teachers on the other -hand care so much for accuracy that they require the same thing over and -over till the pupils lose zest and mental activity. The Jesuits frankly -adopted the maxim “Repetition is the mother of studies,” and worked over -the same ground again and again. The two forces on which they relied for -making the work pleasant were one good—the personal influence of the -master (“boys will soon love learning when they love the teacher,”) and -one bad or at least doubtful—the spur of emulation. - -However, the attempt to lead, not drive, was a great step in the right -direction. Moreover as they did not hold with the Sturms and Trotzendorfs -that the classics in and for themselves were the object of education -the Jesuits were able to think of other things as well. They were very -careful of the health of the body. And they also enlarged the task of -the schoolmaster in another and still more important way. To the best of -their lights they attended to the moral and religious training of their -pupils. It is much to the credit of the Fathers that though Plautus -and Terence were considered very valuable for giving a knowledge of -colloquial Latin and were studied and learnt by heart in the Protestant -schools, the Jesuits rejected them on account of their impurity. The -Jesuits wished the whole boy, not his memory only, to be affected by the -master; so the master was to make a study of each of his pupils and to go -on with the same pupils through the greater part of their school course. - -The Jesuit system stands out in the history of education as a remarkable -instance of a school system elaborately thought out and worked as a -whole. In it the individual schoolmaster withered, but the system grew, -and was, I may say _is_, a mighty organism. The single Jesuit teacher -might not be the superior of the average teacher in good Protestant -schools, but by their unity of action the Jesuits triumphed over their -rivals as easily as a regiment of soldiers scatters a mob. - -§ 7. The schoolmaster’s theory of the human mind made of it, to use -Bartle Massey’s simile, a kind of bladder fit only to hold what was -poured into it. This pouring-in theory of education was first called in -question by that strange genius who seems to have stood outside all the -traditions and opinions of his age, - - “holding no form of creed, - But contemplating all.” - -I mean Rabelais. - -Like most reformers, Rabelais begins with denunciations of the system -established by use and wont. After an account of the school-teaching and -school-books of the day, he says—“It would be better for a boy to learn -nothing at all than to be taught such-like books by such-like masters.” -He then proposes a training in which, though the boy is to study books, -he is not to do this mainly, but is to be led to look about him, and -to use both his senses and his limbs. For instance, he is to examine -the stars when he goes to bed, and then to be called up at four in the -morning to find the change that has taken place. Here we see a training -of the powers of observation. These powers are also to be exercised on -the trees and plants which are met with out-of-doors, and on objects -within the house, as well as on the food placed on the table. The study -of books is to be joined with this study of things, for the old authors -are to be consulted for their accounts of whatever has been met with. -The study of trades, too, and the practice of some of them, such as -wood-cutting, and carving in stone, makes a very interesting feature -in this system. On the whole, I think we may say that Rabelais was the -first to advocate training as distinguished from teaching; and he was the -father of _Anschauungs-unterricht_, teaching by _intuition_, _i.e._, by -the pupil’s own senses and the spring of his own intelligence. Rabelais -would bestow much care on the body too. Not only was the pupil to ride -and fence; we find him even shouting for the benefit of his lungs. - -§ 8. Rabelais had now started an entirely new theory of the educator’s -task, and fifty years afterwards his thought was taken up and put forward -with incomparable vigour by the great essayist, Montaigne. Montaigne -starts with a quotation from Rabelais—“The greatest clerks are not the -wisest men,” and then he makes one of the most effective onslaughts -on the pouring-in theory that is to be found in all literature. His -accusation against the schoolmasters of his time is twofold. First, he -says, they aim only at giving knowledge, whereas they should first think -of judgment and virtue. Secondly, in their method of teaching they do -not exercise the pupils’ own minds. The sum and substance of the charge -is contained in these words—“We labour to stuff the memory and in the -meantime leave the conscience and understanding impoverished and void.” -His notion of education embraced the whole man. “Our very exercises and -recreations,” says he, “running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, -riding, fencing, will prove to be a good part of our study. I would have -the pupil’s outward fashion and mien and the disposition of his limbs -formed at the same time with his mind. ’Tis not a soul, ’tis not a body, -that we are training up, but a _man_, and we ought not to divide him.” - -§ 9. Before the end of the fifteen hundreds then we see in the best -thought of the time a great improvement in the conception of the task of -the schoolmaster. Learning is not the only thing to be thought of. Moral -and religious training are recognised as of no less importance. And as -“both soul and body have been created by the hand of God” (the words -are Ignatius Loyola’s), both must be thought of in education. When we -come to instruction we find Rabelais recommending that at least part of -it should be “intuitive,” and Montaigne requiring that the instruction -should involve an exercise of the intellectual powers of the learner. But -the escape even in thought from the Renascence ideal was but partial. -Some of Rabelais’ directions seem to come from a “Verbal Realist,” and -Montaigne was far from saying as Joseph Payne has said, “every act of -teaching is a mode of dealing with mind and will be successful only in -proportion as this is recognised,” “teaching is only another name for -mental training.” But if Rabelais and Montaigne did not reach the best -thought of our time they were much in advance of a great deal of our -_practice_. - -§ 10. The opening of the sixteen hundreds saw a great revolt from the -literary spirit of the Renascence. The exclusive devotion to books was -followed by a reaction. There might after all be something worth knowing -that books would not teach. Why give so much time to the study of words -and so little to the observation of things? “Youth,” says a writer of the -time, “is deluged with grammar precepts infinitely tedious, perplexed, -obscure, and for the most part unprofitable, and that for many years.” -Why not escape from this barren region? “Come forth, my son,” says -Comenius. “Let us go into the open air. There you shall view whatsoever -God produced from the beginning and doth yet effect by nature.” -And Milton thus expresses the conviction of his day: “Because our -understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, -nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible as by -orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method -is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching.” - -This great revolution which was involved in the Baconian philosophy may -be described as a turning from fancy to fact. All the creations of the -human mind seemed to have lost their value. The only things that seemed -worth studying were the material universe and the laws or sequences which -were gradually ascertained by patient induction and experiment. - -§ 11. Till the present century this revolution did not extend to our -schools and universities. It is only within the last fifty years that -natural science has been studied even in the University of Bacon and -Newton. The Public School Commission of 1862 found that the curriculum -was just as it had been settled at the Renascence. But if the walls of -these educational Jerichos were still standing this was not from any -remissness on the part of “the children of light” in shouting and blowing -with the trumpet. They raised the war-cry “Not words, but things!” and -the cry has been continued by a succession of eminent men against the -schools of the 17th and 18th centuries and has at length begun to tell -on the schools of the 19th. Perhaps the change demanded is best shown in -the words of John Dury about 1649: “The true end of all human learning -is to supply in ourselves and others the defects which proceed from our -ignorance of the nature and use of the creatures and the disorderliness -of our natural faculties in using them and reflecting upon them.” So the -Innovators required teachers to devote themselves to natural science and -to the science of the human mind. - -§ 12. The first Innovators, like the people of the fifteen hundreds, -thought mainly of the acquisition of knowledge, only the knowledge -was to be not of the classics but of the material world. In this they -seem inferior to Montaigne who had given the first place to virtue and -judgment. - -§ 13. But towards the middle of the sixteen hundreds a very eminent -Innovator took a comprehensive view of education, and reduced instruction -to its proper place, that is, he treated it as a part of education -merely. This man, Comenius, was at once a philosopher, a philanthropist, -and a schoolmaster; and in his writings we find the first attempt at a -science of education. The outline of his science is as follows:— - -“We live a threefold life—a vegetative, an animal, and an intellectual -or spiritual. Of these, the first is perfect in the womb, the last in -heaven. He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world, much more -he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. According to the heavenly idea -a man should—1st, Know all things; 2nd, He should be master of things and -of himself; 3rd, He should refer everything to God. So that within us -Nature has implanted the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety. To -bring these seeds to maturity is the object of education. All men require -education, and God has made children unfit for other employment that they -may have time to learn.” - -Here we have quite a new theory of the educator’s task. He is to bring -to maturity the seeds of learning, virtue, and piety, which are already -sown by Nature in his pupils. This is quite different from the pouring-in -theory, and seems to anticipate the notion of Froebel, that the educator -should be called not _teacher_ but _gardener_. But Comenius evidently -made too much of knowledge. Had he lived two centuries later he would -have seen the area of possible knowledge extending to infinity in all -directions, and he would no longer have made it his ideal that “man -should know all things.” - -§ 14. The next great thinker about education—I mean Locke—seems to me -chiefly important from his having taken up the principles of Montaigne -and treated the giving of knowledge as of very small importance. -Montaigne, as we have seen, was the first to bring out clearly that -education was much more than instruction, as the whole was greater than -its part, and that instruction was of far less importance than some other -parts of education. And this lies at the root of Locke’s theory also. -The great function of the educator, according to him, is not to _teach_, -but to _dispose_ the pupil to virtue first, industry next, and then -knowledge; but he thinks where the first two have been properly cared for -knowledge will come of itself. The following are Locke’s own words:—“The -great work of a governor is to fashion the carriage and to form the mind, -to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and -wisdom, to give him little by little a view of mankind and work him into -a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the -prosecution of it to give him vigour, activity, and industry. The studies -which he sets him upon are but, as it were, the exercise of his faculties -and employment of his time; to keep him from sauntering and idleness; to -teach him application and accustom him to take pains, and to give him -some little taste of what his own industry must perfect.”[211] So we see -that Locke agrees with Comenius in his enlarged view of the educator’s -task, and that he thought much less than Comenius of the importance of -the knowledge to be given. - -§ 15. We already see a gradual escape from the “idols” of the Renascence. -Locke, instead of accepting the learned ideal, declares that learning -is the last and least thing to be thought of. He cares little about the -ordinary literary instruction given to children, though he thinks they -must be taught something and does not know what to put in its place. He -provides for the education of those who are to remain ignorant of Greek, -but only when they are “gentlemen.” In this respect the van is led by -Comenius, who thought of education for _all_, boys and girls, rich and -poor, alike. Comenius also gave the first hint of the true nature of our -task—to bring to perfection the seeds implanted by Nature. He also cared -for the little ones whom the schoolmaster had despised. Locke does not -escape from a certain intellectual disdain of “my young masters,” as he -calls them; but in one respect he advanced as far as the best thinkers -among his successors have advanced. Knowledge, he says, must come by the -action of the learner’s own mind. The true teacher is within. - -§ 16. We now come to the least practical and at the same time the most -influential of all the writers on education—I mean Rousseau. He, like -Rabelais, Montaigne, and Locke, was (to use Matthew Arnold’s expression) -a “child of the idea.” He attacked scholastic use and wont not in the -name of expedience, but in the name of reason; and such an attack—so -eloquent, so vehement, so uncompromising—had never been made before. - -Still there remained even in theory, and far more in practice, effects -produced by the false ideal of the Renascence. This ideal Rousseau -entirely rejected. He proposed making a clean sweep and returning to what -he called the state of Nature. - -§ 17. Rousseau was by no means the first of the Reformers who advocated -a return to Nature. There has been a constant conviction in men’s -minds from the time of the Stoics onwards that most of the evils which -afflict humanity have come from our not following “Nature.” The cry of -“Everything according to Nature” was soon raised by educationists. Ratke -announced it as one of his principles. Comenius would base all action -on the analogy of Nature. Indeed, there has hardly ever been a system -of education which did not lay claim to be the “natural” system. And by -“natural” has been always understood something different from what is -usual. What is the notion that produces this antithesis? - -§ 18. When we come to trace back things to their cause we are wont to -attribute them to God, to Nature, or to Man. According to the general -belief, God works in and through Nature, and therefore the tendency -of things apart from human agency must be to good. This faith which -underlies all our thoughts and modes of speech, has been beautifully -expressed by Wordsworth— - - “A gracious spirit o’er this earth presides, - And in the heart of man; invisibly - It comes to works of unreproved delight - And tendency benign; directing those - Who care not, know not, think not, what they do.” - - _Prelude_, v, _ad f._ - -But if the tendency of things is to good, why should the usual be in such -strong contrast with “the natural”? Here again we may turn to Wordsworth. -After pointing to the harmony of the visible world, and declaring his -faith that “every flower enjoys the air it breathes,” he goes on— - - “If this belief from heaven be sent, - If this be Nature’s holy plan, - Have I not reason to lament, - What Man has made of Man?” - -This passage might be taken as the motto of Rousseauism. According to -that philosophy man is the great disturber and perverter of the natural -order. Other animals simply follow nature, but man has no instinct, -and is thus left to find his own way. What is the consequence? A very -different authority from Rousseau, the poet Cowper, tells us in language -which Rousseau might have adopted— - - “Reasoning at every step he treads, - Man yet mistakes his way: - While meaner things whom instinct leads, - Are seldom known to stray.” - -Man has to investigate the sequences of Nature, and to arrange them for -himself. In this way he brings about a great number of foreseen results, -but in doing this he also brings about perhaps even a greater number of -unforeseen results; and alas! it turns out that many, if not most, of -these unforeseen results are the reverse of beneficial. - -§ 19. Another thing is observable. Other animals are guided by instinct; -we, for the most part, are guided by tradition. Man, it has been said, -is the only animal that capitalises his discoveries. If we capitalised -nothing but our discoveries, this accumulation would be an immense -advantage to us; but we capitalise also our conjectures, our ideals, our -habits, and unhappily, in many cases, our blunders.[212] So a great deal -of action which is purely mischievous in its effects, comes not from our -own mistakes, but from those of our ancestors. The consequence is, that -what with our own mistakes and the mistakes we inherit, we sometimes go -far indeed out of the course which “Nature” has prescribed for us. - -§ 20. The generation which found a mouthpiece in Rousseau had become -firmly convinced, not indeed of its own stupidity, but of the stupidity -of all its predecessors; and the vast patrimony bequeathed to it seemed -nothing but lumber or worse. So Rousseau found an eager and enthusiastic -audience when he proposed a return to Nature, in other words, to give -up all existing customs, and for the most part to do nothing and “give -Nature a chance.” His boy of twelve years old was to have been taught -_nothing_. Up to that age the great art of education, says Rousseau, is -to do everything by doing nothing. The first part of education should be -purely negative. - -§ 21. Rousseau then was the first who escaped completely from the notion -of the Renascence, that man was mainly a _learning_ and _remembering_ -animal. But if he is not this, what is he? We must ascertain, said -Rousseau, not _a priori_, but by observation. We need a new art, the art -of observing children. - -§ 22. Now at length there was hope for the Science of Education. This -science must be based on a study of the subject on whom we have to act. -According to Locke there is such variation not only in the circumstances, -but also in the personal peculiarities of individuals, that general laws -either do not exist or can never be ascertained. But this variation is -no less observable in the human body, and the art of the physician has -to conform itself to a science which is still very far from perfect. The -physician, however, does not despair. He carefully avails himself of such -science as we now have, and he makes a study of the human body in order -to increase that science. When a few more generations have passed away, -the medical profession will very likely smile at mistakes made by the old -Victorian doctors. But, meantime, we profit by the science of medicine -in its present state, and we find that this science has considerably -increased the average duration of human life. We therefore require every -practitioner to have made a scientific study of his calling, and to -have had a training in both the theory and practice of it. The science -of education cannot be said to have done much for us at present, but -it will do more in the future, and might do more now if no one were -allowed to teach before he or she had been trained in the best theory and -practice we have. Since the appearance of the Emile the best educators -have studied the subject on whom they had to act, and they have been -learning more and more of the laws or sequences which affect the human -mind and the human body. The marvellous strides of science in every other -department encourages us to hope that it will make great advances in the -field of education where it is still so greatly needed. Perhaps the day -may come when a Pestalozzi may be considered even by his contemporaries -on an equality with a Napoleon, and the human race may be willing to -give to the art of instruction the same amount of time, money, thought, -and energy, which in our day have been devoted with such tremendous -success to the art of destruction. It is already dawning on the general -consciousness that in education as in physical science “we conquer Nature -by obeying her,” and we are learning more and more how to obey her. - -§ 23. Rousseau’s great work was first, to expose the absurdities of the -school-room, and second, to set the educator on studying the laws of -nature in the human mind and body. He also drew attention to the child’s -restless activity. He would also (like Locke before him), make the young -learner his own teacher. - -§ 24. There is another way in which the appearance of the Emile was, -as the Germans say, “epoch-making.” From the time of the earliest -Innovators, we have seen that “Things not Words,” had been the war-cry of -a strong party of Reformers. But _things_ had been considered merely as -a superior means of instruction. Rousseau first pointed out the intimate -relation that exists between children and the material world around them. -Children had till then been thought of only as immature and inferior men. -Since his day an English poet has taught us that in some ways the man is -far inferior to the child, “the things which we have seen we now can see -no more,” and that - - “nothing can bring back the hour - “Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.” - -Rousseau had not Wordsworth’s gifts, but he, too, observed that childhood -is the age of strong impressions from without and that its material -surroundings affect it much more acutely than they will in after life. -Which of us knows as much about our own house and furniture as our -children know? Still more remarkable is the sympathy children have with -animals. If a cat comes into a room where there are grown people and also -a child, which sees the cat first? which observes it most accurately? -Now, this intimate relation of the child with its surroundings plays a -most important part in its education. The educator may, if so minded, -ignore this altogether, and stick to grammar, dates, and county towns, -but if he does so the child’s real education will not be much affected -by him. Rousseau saw this clearly, and wished to use “things” not for -instruction but for education. Their special function was to train the -senses. - -§ 25. Perhaps it is not too much to say of Rousseau that he was the first -who gave up thinking of the child as a being whose chief faculty was the -faculty of remembering, and thought of him rather as a being who feels -and reflects, acts and invents. - -§ 26. But if the thought may be traced back to Rousseau, it was, as left -by him, quite crude or rather embryonic. Since his time this conception -of the young has been taken up and moulded into a fair commencement of a -science of education. This commencement is now occupying the attention -of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, and much may be expected from it -even in the immediate future. For the science so far as it exists we are -indebted mainly to the two Reformers with whom I will conclude—Pestalozzi -and Froebel. - -§ 27. Pestalozzi, like Comenius more than 100 years before him, conceived -of education for all. “Every human being,” said he, “has a claim to a -judicious development of his faculties.” Every child must go to school. - -But the word _school_ includes a great variety of institutions. The -object these have in view differs immensely. With us the main object in -some schools seems to be to prepare boys to compete at an early age for -entrance scholarships awarded to the greatest proficients in Latin and -Greek. In other schools the object is to turn the children out “good -scholars” in another sense; that is, the school is held to be successful -when the boys and girls acquire skill in the arts of reading, writing, -and arithmetic, and can remember a number of facts—facts of history, of -geography, and even of natural science. So the common notion is that what -is wanted in the way of education depends entirely on the child’s social -position. There still linger among us notions derived from the literary -men of the Renascence. We still measure all children by their literary -and mnemonic attainments. We still consider knowledge of Latin and Greek -the highest kind of knowledge. Children are sent to school that they may -not be ignorant.[213] Pestalozzi, who had studied Rousseau, entirely -denied all this. He required that the school-coach should be turned and -started in a new direction. The main object of the school was not to -teach, but to develop, not to _put in_ but to _draw out_. - -§ 28. The study of nature shows us that every animal comes into the world -with certain faculties or capabilities. There are a set of circumstances -which will develop these capabilities and make the most of them. There -are other circumstances which would impede this development, decrease it, -or even prevent it altogether. All other animals have this development -secured for them by their ordinary environment: but Man, with far higher -capacities, and with immeasurably greater faculties both for good and -evil, is left far more to his own resources than the other animals. -Placed in an almost endless variety of circumstances we have to ascertain -how the development of our offspring may best be brought about. We have -to consider what are the inborn faculties of our children, and also what -aids and what hinders their development. When we have arrived at this -knowledge we must educate them by placing them in the best circumstances -in our power, and then superintending, judiciously and lovingly, the -development of their faculties and of their higher nature. - -§ 29. There is, said Pestalozzi, only one way in which faculty can be -developed, and that is by exercise; so his system sought to encourage the -activities of children, and in this respect he was surpassed, as we shall -see, by Froebel. “Dead” knowledge, as it has been called—the knowledge -commonly acquired for examinations, our school-knowledge, in fact—was -despised by Pestalozzi as it had been by Locke and Rousseau before him. -In its place he would put knowledge acquired by “intuition,” by the -spring of the learner’s own intelligence. - -§ 30. The conception of every child as an organism and of education as -the process by which the development of that organism is promoted is -found first in Pestalozzi, but it was more consistently thought out by -Froebel. There is, said Froebel, a divine idea for every human being, -for we are all God’s offspring. The object of the education of a human -being is to further the development of his divine idea. This development -is attainable only through action; for the development of every organism -depends on its self-activity. Self-activity then, activity “with a will,” -is the main thing to be cared for in education. The educator has to -direct the children’s activity in such a way that it may satisfy their -instincts, especially the formative and creative instincts. The child -from his earliest years is to be treated as a _doer_ and even a _creator_. - -§ 31. Now, at last, we have arrived at the complete antithesis between -the old education and the New. The old education had one object, and that -was learning. Man was a being who learnt and remembered. Education was -a process by which he _learnt_, at first the languages and literatures -of Rome and Greece only; but as time went on the curriculum was greatly -extended. The New Education treats the human being not so much a learner -as a doer and creator. The educator no longer fixes his eyes on the -object—the knowledge, but on the subject—the being to be educated. The -success of the education is not determined by what the educated _know_, -but by what they _do_ and what they _are_. They are well educated when -they love what is good, and have had all their faculties of mind and body -properly developed to do it. - -§ 32. The New Education then is “passive, following,” and must be based -on the study of human nature. When we have ascertained what are the -faculties to be developed we must consider further how to foster the -self-activity that will develop them. - -§ 33. We have travelled far from Dr. Johnson, who asserted that education -was as well known as it ever could be. Some of us are more inclined to -assert that in his day education was not invented. On the other hand, -there are those who belittle the New Education and endeavour to show -that in it there is nothing new at all. As it seems to me a revolution -of the most salutary kind was made by the thinkers who proposed basing -education on a study of the subject to be educated, and, more than this, -making the process a “following” process with the object of drawing out -self-activity. - -§ 34. This change of object must in the end be fruitful in changes -of every kind. But as yet we are only groping our way; and, if I may -give a caution which, in this country at least, is quite superfluous, -we should be cautious, and till we see our way clearly we should try -no great experiment that would destroy our connexion with the past. -Most of our predecessors thought only of knowledge. By a reaction some -of our New Educationists seem to despise knowledge. But knowledge is -necessary, and without some knowledge development would be impossible. -We probably cannot do too much to assist development and encourage -“intuition,” but there is, perhaps, some danger of our losing sight of -truths which schoolroom experience would bring home to us. Even the -clearest “concepts” get hazy again and totally unfit for use, unless they -are permanently fixed in the mind by repetition, which to be effective -must to some extent take the form of _drill_. The practical man, even -the crammer, has here mastered a truth of the teaching art which the -educationist is prone to overlook. And there are, no doubt, other things -which the practical man can teach. But the great thinkers would raise us -to a higher standing-point from which we may see much that will make the -right road clearer to us, and lead us to press forward in it with good -heart and hope. - - -FINIS. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] When the greater part of this volume was already written, Mr. Parker -published his sketch of the history of Classical Education (_Essays on -a Liberal Education_, edited by Farrar). He seems to me to have been -very successful in bringing out the most important features of his -subject, but his essay necessarily shows marks of over-compression. Two -volumes have also lately appeared on _Christian Schools and Scholars_ -(Longmans, 1867). Here we have a good deal of information which we want, -and also, it seems to me, a good deal which we do not want. The work -characteristically opens with a 10th century description of the personal -appearance of St. Mark when he landed at Alexandria. The author treats -only of the times which preceded the Council of Trent. A very interesting -account of early English education has been given by Mr. Furnivall, in -the 2nd and 3rd numbers of the _Quarterly Journal of Education_ (1867). -[I did not then know of Dr. Barnard’s works.] - -[2] This article is omitted in the last edition. - -[3] The rest of this chapter was published in the September, 1880 number -of _Education_. Boston, U.S.A. - -[4] On the nature of literature see Cardinal Newman’s “Lectures on the -Nature of a University. University Subjects. II. Literature.” - -[5] I see Carlyle has used a similar metaphor in the same connexion: -“Consider the old schoolmen and their pilgrimage towards Truth! the -faithfullest endeavour, incessant unwearied motion; often great natural -vigour, only no progress; nothing but antic feats of one limb poised -against the other; there they balanced, somerseted, and made postures; at -best gyrated swiftly with some pleasure like spinning dervishes and ended -where they began.”—_Characteristics_, Misc., vol. iii, 5. - -[6] This illustration was suggested by a similar one in Prof. J. R. -Seeley’s essay “On the teaching of English” in his _Lectures and Essays_, -1870. - -[7] Miss J. D. Potter, in “Journal of Education.” London, June, 1879 - -[8] See Erasmus’s _Ciceronianus_, or account of it, in Henry Barnard’s -_German Teachers_. - -[9] “On Abuse of Human Learning,” by Samuel Butler. - -[10] Multum ilium profecisse arbitror, qui ante sextum decimum ætatis -annum facultatem duarum linguarum mediocrem assecutus est. (Quoted by -Parker.) - -[11] R. Mulcaster’s _Positions_, 1581, p. 30. I have reprinted this book -(Longmans, 1888, price 10_s._). - -[12] Sturm’s school “had an European reputation: there were Poles and -Portuguese, Spaniards, Danes, Italians, French and English. But besides -this, it was the model and mother school of a numerous progeny. Sturm -himself organized schools for several towns which applied to him. His -disciples became organizers, rectors, and professors. In short, if -Melanchthon was the instructor, Sturm was the schoolmaster of Germany. -Together with his method, his school-books were spread broadcast over -the land. Both were adopted by Ascham in England, and by Buchanan in -Scotland. Sturm himself was a great man at the imperial court. No -diplomatist passed through Strasburg without stopping to converse with -him. He drew a pension from the King of Denmark, another from the King -of France, a third from the Queen of England, collected political -information for Cardinal Granvella, and was ennobled by Charles V. He -helped to negotiate peace between France and England, and was appointed -to confer with a commission of Cardinals on reunion of the Church. In -short, Sturm knew what he was about as well as most men of his time. Yet -few will be disposed to accept his theory of education, even for the -sixteenth century, as the best. Wherein then lay the mistake?... Sturm -asserted that the proper end of school education is eloquence, or in -modern phrase, a masterly command of language, and that the knowledge of -things mainly belongs to a later stage ... Sturm assumed that Latin is -the language in which eloquence is to be acquired.” - -This is from Mr. Charles Stuart Parker’s excellent account of Sturm in -_Essays on a Liberal Education_, edited by Farrar, Essay I., _On History -of Classical Education_, p. 39. - -I find from Herbart (_Päd. Schriften_, O. Wilmann’s edition, vol. ij, -229 ff; Beyer’s edition, ij, 321) that the historian, F. H. Ch. Schwarz, -took a very favourable view of Sturm’s work; and both he and Karl Schmidt -give Sturm credit for introducing the two ways of studying an author that -may be carried on at the same time—1st, _statarisch_, _i.e._, reading a -small quantity accurately, and 2nd, _cursorisch_, _i.e._, getting over -the ground. These two kinds, of reading were made much of by J. M. Gesner -(1691-1761). Ernst Laas has written _Die Pädagogik J. Sturms_ which no -doubt does him justice, but I have not seen the book. - -[13] Why did Bacon, who spoke slightingly of Sturm (see Parker, in -_Essays on Lib. Ed._), rate the Jesuits so highly? “Consule scholas -Jesuitarum: nihil enim quod in usum venit his melius,” _De Aug._, lib. -iv, cap. iv. See, too, a longer passage in first book of _De Aug._ (about -end of first 1/4), “Quæ nobilissima pars priscæ disciplinæ revocata est -aliquatenus, quasi postliminio, in Jesuitarum collegiis; quorum cum -intueor industriam solertiamque tam in doctrina excolenda quam in moribus -informandis, illud occurrit Agesilai de Pharnabazo, ‘Talis cum sis, -utinam noster esses.’” - -[14] (1) Joseph Anton Schmid’s “Niedere Schulen der Jesuiten:” -Regensburg, 1852. (2) Article by Wagenmann in K. A. Schmid’s -“Encyclopädie des Erziehungs-und Unterrichtswesens.” (3) “Ratio atque -Institutio Studiorum Soc. Jesu.” The first edition of this work, -published at Rome in 1585, was suppressed as heretical, because it -contemplated the possibility of differing from St. Thomas Aquinas. The -book is now very scarce. There is a copy in the British Museum. On -comparing it with the folio edition (“Constitutiones,” &c., published -at Prag in 1632), I find many omissions in the latter, some of which -are curious, _e.g._, under “De Matrimonio:”—“Matremne an uxorem -occidere sit gravius, non est hujus loci.” (4) “Parænesis ad Magistros -Scholarum Inferiorum Soc. Jesu, scripta a P. Francisco Sacchino, ex -eâdem Societate.” (5) “Juvencius de Ratione Discendi et Docendi.” -Crétineau-Joly’s “Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus” (Paris, 1844), I -have not made much use of. Sacchini and Jouvency were both historians of -the Order. The former died in 1625, the latter in 1719. There is a good -sketch of the Jesuit schools, by Andrewes, in Barnard’s _American Journal -of Education_, vol. xiv, 1864, reprinted in the best book I know of in -English on the History of Education, Barnard’s _German Teachers_. - -[15] “L’exécution des décrets de 1880 a eu pour résultat la fermeture de -leurs collèges. Mais malgré leur dispersion apparente ils sont encore -plus puissants qu’on ne le croit, et ce serait une erreur de penser que -le dernier mot est dit avec eux.”—_Compayré, in Buisson_, ij, p. 1420. - -[16] According to the article in K. A. Schmid’s “Encyclopädie,” the usual -course was this—the two years’ novitiate was over by the time the youth -was between fifteen and seventeen. He then entered a Jesuit college as -Scholasticus. Here he learnt literature and rhetoric for two years, and -then philosophy (with mathematics) for three more. He then entered on -his Regency, _i.e._, he went over the same ground as a _teacher_, for -from four to six years. Then followed a period of theological study, -ending with a year of trial, called the _Tertiorat_. The candidate was -now admitted to Priest’s Orders, and took the vows either as _professus -quatuor votorum_, professed father of four vows, or as a _coadjutor_. If -he was then sent back to teach, he gave only the higher instruction. The -_fourth_ vow placed him at the disposal of the Pope. - -[17] Karl Schmidt (Gesch. d. Päd., iij. 199, 200), says that however much -teachers were wanted, a two years’ course of preparation was considered -indispensable. When the Novitiate was over the candidate became a -“Junior” (_Gallicè_ “Juveniste”). He then continued his studies _in -literis humanioribus_, preparatory to teaching. When in the “Juvenat” or -“Juniorate” he had rubbed up his classics and mathematics, he entered -the “Seminary,” and two or three times a week he expounded to a class -the matter of the previous lecture, and answered questions, &c. For this -information I am indebted to the courtesy of Father Eyre (S. J.), of -Stonyhurst. - -[18] So says Andrewes (_American Journal of Education_), but other -authorities put the age of entrance as high as fourteen. The _studia -superiora_ were begun before twenty-four. - -[19] “Non gratia nobilium officiat culturæ vulgarium: cum sint natales -omnium pares in Adam et hæreditates quoque pares in Christo.” - -[20] Even junior masters were not to be much addicted to their own -language. “Illud cavendum imprimis juniori magistro ne vernaculis nimium -libris indulgeat, præsertim poetis, in quibus maximam temporis ac -fortasse morum jacturam faceret.”—_Jouvency._ - -[21] “Multum proderit si magister non tumultuario ac subito dicat, sed -quæ domi cogitate scripserit.—It will be a great gain if the master does -not speak in a hurry and without forethought, but is ready with what -he has thought out and written out in his own room.”—_Ratio Studd._, -quoted by Schmid. And Sacchini says: “Ante omnia, quæ quisque docturus -est, egregie calleat. Tum enim bene docet, et facile docet, et libenter -docet; bene, quia sine errore; facile, quia sine labore; libenter, quia -ex pleno.... Memoriæ minimum fidat: instauret eam refricetque iterata -lectione antequam quicquam doceat, etiamsi idem sæpe docuerit. Occurret -non raro quod addat vel commodius proponat.—Before all things let -everyone be thoroughly skilled in what he is going to teach; for then -he teaches well, he teaches easily, he teaches readily: well, because -he makes no mistakes; easily, because he has no need to exert himself; -readily, because, like wealthy men he cares not how he gives.... Let him -be very distrustful of his memory; let him renew his remembrance and rub -it up by repeated reading before he teaches anything, though he may have -often taught it before. Something will now and then occur to him which he -may add, or put more neatly.” - -[22] In a school (not belonging to the Jesuits) where this plan was -adopted, the boys, by an ingenious contrivance, managed to make it work -very smoothly. The boy who was “hearing” the lessons held the book upside -down in such a way that the others _read_ instead of repeating by heart. -The masters finally interfered with this arrangement. - -[23] Since the above was written, an account of these concertations -has appeared in the Rev. G. R. Kingdon’s evidence before the Schools -Commission, 1867 (vol. v, Answers 12, 228 ff.) Mr. Kingdon, the Prefect -of Studies at Stonyhurst, mentions that the side which wins in most -concertations gets an extra half-holiday. - -[24] “The grinding over and over of a subject after pupils have attained -a fair knowledge of it, is nothing less than stultifying—killing -out curiosity and the desire of knowledge, and begetting mechanical -habits.”—_Supt. J. Hancock_, Dayton, Ohio. Every teacher of experience -knows how true this is. - -[25] “Stude potius ut pauciora clare distincteque percipiant, quam -obscure atque confuse pluribus imbuantur.—Care rather for their seeing a -few things vividly and definitely, than that they should get filled with -hazy and confusing notions of many things.” (There are few more valuable -precepts for the teacher than this.) - -[26] Sacchini writes in a very high tone on this subject. The following -passage is striking: “Gravitatem sui muneris summasque opportunitates -assidue animo verset (magister).... ‘Puerilis institutio mundi renovatio -est;’ hæc gymnasia Dei castra sunt, hic bonorum omnium semina latent. -Video solum fundamentumque republicæ quod multi non videant interpositu -terræ.—Let the mind of the master dwell upon the responsibilities of -his office and its immense opportunities.... The education of the young -is the renovation of the world. These schools are the camp of God: in -them lie the seeds of all that is good. There I see the foundation and -ground-work of the commonwealth, which many fail to see from its being -underground.” Perhaps he had read of Trotzendorf’s address to a school, -“Hail reverend divines, learned doctors, worshipful magistrates, &c.” - -[27] “Circa illorum valetudinem peculiari cura animadvertat (Rector) ut -et in laboribus mentis modum servent, et in iis quæ ad corpus pertinent, -religiosa commoditate tractentur, ut diutius in studiis perseverare -tam in litteris addiscendis quam in eisdem exercendis ad Dei gloriam -possint.”—_Ratio Studd._, quoted by Schmid. See also _infra_ p. 62. - -[28] The following, from the _Ratio Studd._, sounds Jesuitical: “Nec -publicé puniant flagitia quædam secretiora sed privatim; aut si publicé, -_alias obtendant causas_, et satis est eos qui plectuntur conscios esse -causarum.” - -[29] As the Public Schools Commission pointed out, the Head Master often -thinks of nothing but the attainment of University honours, _even when -the great majority of his pupils are not going to the University_. - -[30] The advantages of learning by heart are twofold, says Sacchini: -“Primum memoriam ipsam perficiunt, quod est in totam ætatem ad universa -negotia inæstimabile commodum. Deinde suppellectilem inde pulcherrimam -congregant verborum ac rerum: quæ item, quamdiu vivant, usui futura sit: -cum quæ ætate illa insederint indelebilia soleant permanere. Magnam -itaque, ubi adoleverint, gratiam Praeceptori habebunt, cui memoriæ -debebunt profectum, magnamque lætitiam capient invenientes quodammodo -domi thesaurum quem, in ætate cæteroqui parum fructuosa, prope non -sentientes parârint. Enim vero quam sæpe viros graves atque præstantes -magnoque jam natu videre et audire est, dum in docta ac nobili corona -jucundissime quædam promunt ex iis quæ pueri condiderunt?—First, they -strengthen the memory itself and so gain an inestimable advantage in -affairs of every kind throughout life. Then they get together by this -means the fairest furniture for the mind, both of thoughts and words, a -stock that will be of use to them as long as they live, since that which -settles in the mind in youth mostly stays there. And when the lads have -grown up they will feel gratitude to the master to whom they are indebted -for their good memory; and they will take delight in finding within them -a treasure which at a time of life otherwise unfruitful they have been -preparing almost without knowing it. How often we see and hear eminent -men far advanced in life, when in learned and noble company, take a -special delight in quoting what they stored up as boys!” The master, he -says, must point out to his pupils the advantages we derive from memory; -that we only know and possess that which we retain, that this cannot -be taken from us, but is with us always and is always ready for use, -a living library, which may be studied even in the dark. Boys should -therefore be encouraged to run over in their minds, or to say aloud, -what they have learnt, as often as opportunity offers, as when they are -walking or are by themselves: “Ita numquam in otio futuros otiosos; ita -minus fore solos cum soli erunt, consuetudine fruentes sapientum.... -Denique curandum erit ut selecta quædam ediscant quæ deinde in quovis -studiorum genere ac vita fere omni usui sint futura.—So they will never -be without employment when unemployed, never less alone than when alone, -for then they profit by intercourse with the wise.... To sum up, take -care that they thoroughly commit to memory choice selections which will -for ever after be of use to them in every kind of study, and nearly every -pursuit in life.”—(Cap. viij.) This is interesting and well put, but we -see one or two points in which we have now made an advance. Learning -by heart will give none of the advantages mentioned unless the boys -understand the pieces and delight in them. Learning by heart strengthens, -no doubt, a faculty, but nothing large enough to be called “the memory.” -And the Renascence must indeed have blinded the eyes of the man to whom -childhood and youth seemed an “ætas parum fructuosa”! Similarly, Sturm -speaks of the small fry “qui in extremis latent classibus.” (Quoted by -Parker.) But when Pestalozzi and Froebel came these lay hid no longer. - -[31] Ranke, speaking of the success of the Jesuit schools, says: “It was -found that young persons learned more under them in half a year than with -others in two years. Even Protestants called back their children from -distant schools, and put them under the care of the Jesuits.”—_Hist. of -Popes_, book v, p. 138. Kelly’s Trans. - -In France, the University in vain procured an _arrêt_ forbidding the -Parisians to send away their sons to the Jesuit colleges: “Jesuit schools -enjoyed the confidence of the public in a degree which placed them beyond -competition.” (Pattison’s _Casaubon_, p. 182.) - -Pattison remarks elsewhere that such was the common notion of the -Jesuits’ course of instruction that their controversialists could treat -anyone, even a Casaubon, who had not gone through it, as an uneducated -person. - -[32] “Sapientum hoc omnium seu veterum seu recentum constans judicium -est, institutionem puerilem tum fore optimam cum jucundissima -fuerit, inde enim et ludum vocari. Meretur ætatis teneritas ut ne -oneretur: meretur innocentia ut ei parcatur ... Quæ libentibus auribus -instillantur, ad ea velut occurrit animus, avide suscipit, studiose -recondit, fideliter servat.” - -[33] “Conciliabit facilè studiis quos primùm sibi conciliârit. Det itaque -omnem operam illorum erga se observantionem ut sapienter colligat et -continenter enutriat. Ostendat, sibi res eorum curæ esse non solum quæ -ad animum sed etiam quæ ad alia pertinent. Gaudeat cum gaudentibus, nec -dedignetur flere cum flentibus. Instar Apostoli inter parvulos parvulus -fiat quo magnos in Christo et magnum in eis Christum efficiat ... Seriam -comitatem et paternam gravitatem cum materna benignitate permisceat.” -Unfortunately, the Jesuits’ kind manner loses its value from being due -not so much to kind feeling as to some ulterior object, or to a rule -of the Order. I think it is Jouvency who recommends that when a boy is -absent from sickness or other sufficient reason, the master should send -daily to inquire after him, _because the parents will be pleased by such -attention_. When the motive of the inquiry is suspected, the parents will -be pleased no longer. - -[34] “Errorem existimo statim initio spinosiores quasdam grammaticæ -difficultates inculcare ... cum enim planioribus insueverint difficiliora -paulatim usus explanabit. Quin et capacior subinde mens ac firmius cum -ætate judicium, quod alio monstrante perægre unquam percepisset per sese -non raro intelliget. Exempla quoque talium rerum dum praelegitur autor -facilius in orationis contextu agnoscentur et penetrabunt in animos quam -si solitaria et abscissa proponantur. Quamobrem faciendum erit ut quoties -occurrunt diligenter enucleentur.” - -[35] See, _e.g._, marvellous instances of their self-devotion in that -most interesting book, Francis Parkman’s _Jesuits in N. America_ (Boston, -Little & Co., 10th edition, 1876). - -[36] I have referred to Francis Parkman, who has chronicled the -marvellous self-devotion and heroism of the Jesuit missionaries in -Canada. Such a witness may be trusted when he says: “The Jesuit was as -often a fanatic for his Order as for his faith; and oftener yet, the two -fanaticisms mingled in him inextricably. Ardently as he burned for the -saving of souls, he would have none saved on the Upper Lakes except by -his brethren and himself. He claimed a monopoly of conversion with its -attendant monopoly of toil, hardships, and martyrdom. Often disinterested -for himself, he was inordinately ambitious for the great corporate power -in which he had merged his own personality; and here lies one of the -causes among many, of the seeming contradictions which abound in the -annals of the Order.”—_The Discovery of the Great West_, by F. Parkman, -London, 1869, p. 28. - -[37] In a letter dated from Stonyhurst, 22nd April, 1880. - -[38] The best account I have seen of life in a Jesuit school is in -_Erinnerungen eines chemaligen Jesuitenzöglings_ (Leipzig, Brockhaus, -1862). The writer (Köhler?) says that he has become an evangelical -clergyman, but there is no hostile feeling shown to his old instructors, -and the narrative bears the strongest internal evidence of accuracy. Some -of the Jesuit devices mentioned are very ingenious. All house masters who -have adopted the cubicle arrangement of dormitories know how difficult it -is to keep the boys in their own cubicles. The Jesuits have the cubicles -barred across at the top, and the locks on the doors are so constructed -that though they can be opened from the inside _they cannot be shut -again_. The Fathers at Freiburg (in Breisgau) opened a “tuck-shop” for -the boys, and gave “week’s-pay” in counters which passed at their own -shop and nowhere else. The author speaks warmly of the kindness of the -Fathers and of their care for health and recreation. But their ways -were inscrutable and every boy felt himself in the hands of a _human_ -providence. As the boys go out for a walk, one of them is detained by the -porter, who says “the Rector wants to speak to you.” On their way back -the boys meet a diligence in which sits their late comrade waving adieus. -_He has been expelled._ - -Another book which throws much light on Jesuit pedagogy is by a -Jesuit—_La Discipline_, par le R. P. Emmanuel Barbier (Paris, V. Palmé, -2nd edition, 1888). I will give a specimen in a loose translation, as it -may interest the reader to see how carefully the Jesuits have studied the -master’s difficulties. “The master in charge of the boys, especially in -play-time, in his first intercourse with them, has no greater snare in -his way than taking his power for granted, and trusting to the strength -of his will and his knowledge of the world, especially as he is at first -lulled into security by the deferential manner of his pupils. - -“That master who goes off with such ease from the very first, to whom the -carrying out of all the rules seems the simplest thing in the world, who -in the very first hour he is with them has already made himself liked, -almost popular, with his pupils, who shows no more anxiety about his work -than he must show to keep his character for good sense, that master is -indeed to be pitied; he is most likely a lost man. He will soon have to -choose one of two things, either to shut his eyes and put up with all -the irregularities he thought he had done away with, or to break with a -past that he would wish forgotten, and engage in open conflict with the -boys who are inclined to set him at defiance. These cases are we trust -rare. But many believe with a kind of rash ignorance and in spite of -the warnings of experience that the good feelings of their pupils will -work together to maintain their authority. They have been told that this -authority should be mild and endeared by acts of kindness. So they set -about crowning the edifice without making sure of the foundations; and -taking the title of authority for its possession they spend all their -efforts in lightening a yoke of which no one really bears the weight. - -“In point of fact the first steps often determine the whole course. For -this reason you will attach extreme importance to what I am now going to -advise: - -“The chief characteristic in your conduct towards the boys during the -first few weeks should be _an extreme reserve_. However far you go in -this, you can hardly overdo it. So your first attitude is clearly defined. - -“You have everything to observe, the individual character of each boy and -the general tendencies and feelings of the whole body. But be sure of one -thing, viz., that _you_ are observed also, and a careful study is made -both of your strong points and of your weak. Your way of speaking and -of giving orders, the tone of your voice, your gestures, disclose your -character, your tastes, your failings, to a hundred boys on the alert to -pounce upon them. One is summed up long before one has the least notion -of it. Try then to remain impenetrable. You should never give up your -reserve till you are master of the situation. - -“For the rest, let there be no affectation about you. Don’t attempt -to put on a severe manner; answer politely and simply your pupils’ -questions, but let it be in few words, and _avoid conversation_. All -depends on that. Let there be no chatting with them in these early days. -You cannot be too cautious in this respect. Boys have such a polite, such -a taking way with them in drawing out information about your impressions, -your tastes, your antecedents; don’t attempt the diplomate; don’t -match your skill against theirs. You cannot chat without coming out of -your shell, so to speak. Instead of this, you must puzzle them by your -reserve, and drive them to this admission: ‘We don’t know what to make of -our new master.’ - -“Do I advise you then to be on the defensive throughout the whole year -and like a stranger among your pupils? No! a thousand times, No! It is -just to make their relations with you simple, confiding, I might say -cordial, without the least danger to your authority, that I endeavour -to raise this authority at first beyond the reach of assault.”—_La -Discipline_, chap, v, pp. 31 ff. - -In this book we see the best side of the Jesuits. They believe in their -“mission,” and this belief throws light on many things. Those who hate -the Jesuits have often extolled the wisdom of Montaigne, when he says: -“We have not to train up a soul, nor yet a body, but a man; and we cannot -divide him.” Can they see no wisdom in _this_? “Let your mind be filled -with the thought that both soul and body have been created by the Hand of -God: we must account to Him for these two parts of our being; and we are -not required to weaken one of them out of love for the Creator. We should -love the body in the same degree that He could love it.” This is what -Loyola wrote in 1548 to Francis Borgia (Compayré, _Doctrines, &c._, vol. -j, 179). But if we wish to see the other side of the Jesuit character, -we have only to look at the Jesuit as a controversialist. We sometimes -see children hiding things and then having a pretence hunt for them. The -Jesuits are no children, but in arguing they pretend to be searching -for conclusions which are settled before arguments are thought of. See, -_e.g._, the attack on the Port Royalists in _Les Jésuites Instituteurs_, -par le P. Ch. Daniel, 1880, in which the Jesuit sets himself to maintain -this thesis: “D’une source aussi profondément infectée du poison de -l’hérésie, il ne pouvait sortir rien d’absolument bon” (p. 123). One good -point he certainly makes, and in my judgment one only, in comparing the -Port Royalist schools with the schools of Jesuits. Methods which answer -with very small numbers may not do with large numbers: “You might as well -try to extend your gardening operations to agriculture” (p. 102). - -[39] I am sorry to use a German word, but educational matters have been -so little considered among us that we have no English vocabulary for -them. The want of a word for _Realien_ was felt over 200 years ago. -“Repositories for _visibles_ shall be prepared by which from beholding -the things gentlewomen may learn the names, natures, values, and use -of herbs, shrubs, trees, mineral-juices (_sic_), metals, and stones.” -(_Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen._ London, 1672.) - -[40] See the very interesting _Essay on Montaigne_ by Dean R. W. Church. - -[41] Perhaps the saying of Montaigne’s which is most frequently quoted -is the paradox _Savoir par cœur n’est pas savoir_: (“to know by heart is -not to _know_.”) But these words are often misunderstood. The meaning, as -I take it, is this: When a thought has entered into the mind it shakes -off the words by which it was conveyed thither. Therefore so long as the -words are indispensable the thought is not known. Knowing and knowing by -heart are not necessarily opposed, but they are different things; and as -the mind most easily runs along sequences of words a knowledge of the -words often conceals ignorance or neglect of the thought. I once asked a -boy if he thought of the meaning when he repeated Latin poetry and I got -the instructive answer: “Sometimes, _when I am not sure of the words_.” -But there are cases in which we naturally connect a particular form of -words with thoughts that have become part of our minds. We then know, and -know by heart also. - -[42] Lord Armstrong has perhaps never read Montaigne’s _Essay on -Pedantry_; certainly, he has not borrowed from it; and yet much that -he says in discussing “The Cry for Useless Knowledge” (_Nineteenth -Century Magazine_, November, 1888), is just what Montaigne said more -than three centuries ago. “The aphorism that knowledge is power is so -constantly used by educational enthusiasts that it may almost be regarded -as the motto of the party. But the first essential of a motto is that -it be true, and it is certainly not true that knowledge is the same as -power, seeing that it is only an aid to power. The power of a surgeon -to amputate a limb no more lies in his knowledge than in his knife. In -fact, the knife has the better claim to potency of the two, for a man -may hack off a limb with his knife alone, but not with his knowledge -alone. Knowledge is not even an aid to power in all cases, seeing that -useless knowledge, which is no uncommon article in our popular schools, -has no relation to power. The true source of power is the originative -action of the mind which we see exhibited in the daily incidents of -life, as well as in matters of great importance.... A man’s success in -life depends incomparably more upon his capacities for useful action -than upon his acquirements in knowledge, and the education of the young -should therefore be directed to the development of faculties and valuable -qualities rather than to the acquisition of knowledge.... Men of capacity -and possessing qualities for useful action are at a premium all over the -world, while men of mere education are at a deplorable discount.” (p. -664). - -“There is a great tendency in the scholastic world to underrate the value -and potency of self-education, which commences on leaving school and -endures all through life.” (p. 667). - -“I deprecate plunging into doubtful and costly schemes of instruction, -led on by the _ignis fatuus_ that ‘knowledge is a power.’ For where -natural capacity is wasted in attaining knowledge, it would be truer to -say that knowledge is weakness.” (p. 668). - -[43] In another matter, also, we find that the masters of these schools -subsequently departed widely from the intention of the great men who -fostered the revival of learning. Wolsey writes: “Imprimis hoc unum -admonendum censuerimus, ut neque plagis severioribus neque vultuosis -minis, aut ulla tyrannidis specie, tenera pubes afficiatur: hac enim -injuria ingenii alacritas aut extingui aut magna ex parte obtundi solet.” -Again he says: “In ipsis studiis sic voluptas est intermiscenda ut puer -ludum potius discendi quam laborem existimet.” He adds: “Cavendum erit ne -immodica contentione ingenia discentium obruantur aut lectione prolonga -defatigentur; utraque enim juxta offenditur.” - -[44] Professor Arber is one of the very few editors who give accurate and -sufficient bibliographical information about the books they edit. All -students of our old literature are under deep obligations to him. - -[45] Mayor’s is beautifully printed and costs 1_s._ (London, Bell and -Sons.) - -[46] “Utile imprimis ut multi præcipiunt, vel ex Græco in Latinum vel -ex Latino vertere in Græcum; quo genere exercitationis proprietas -splendorque verborum, copia figurarum, vis explicandi, præterea -imitatione optimorum similia inveniendi facultas paratur: simul quæ -legentem fefellissent transferentem fugere non possunt. Intelligentia ex -hoc et judicium acquiritur.”—_Epp._ vii. 9, § 2. So the passage stands in -Pliny. Ascham quotes “_et_ ex Græco in Latinum _et_ ex Latino vertere in -Græcum.” with other variations. - -[47] _Teaching of Languages in Schools_, by W. H. Widgery, p. 6. - -[48] Much information about our early books, with quotations from some of -them, will be found in Henry Barnard’s _English Pedagogy_, 1st and 2nd -series. Some notice of rare books is given in _Schools, School-books, and -Schoolmasters_, by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, Jarvis, 1888), but in this -work there are strange omissions. - -[49] The paging is that of the reprint. It differs slightly from that of -first edition. - -[50] Mulcaster goes on to talk about the brain, &c. Of course he does -not anticipate the discoveries of science, but his language is very -different from what we should expect from a writer in the pre-scientific -age, _e.g._, “To serve the turn of these two, both _sense_ and _motion_, -Nature hath planted in our body a _brain_, the prince of all our parts, -which by spreading sinews of all sorts throughout all our parts doth work -all those effects which either _sense_ is seen in or _motion_ perceived -by.” (_El._, p. 32.) But much as he thinks of the body Mulcaster is no -materialist. “Last of all our soul hath in it an imperial prerogative -of understanding beyond sense, of judging by reason, of directing by -both, for duty towards God, for society towards men, for conquest in -affections, for purchase in knowledge, and such other things, whereby -it furnisheth out all manner of uses in this our mortal life, and -bewrayeth in itself a more excellent being than to continue still in this -roaming pilgrimage.” (p. 33.) The grand thing, he says, is to bring all -these abilities to perfection “which so heavenly a benefit is begun by -education, confirmed by use, perfected with continuance which crowneth -the whole work.” (p. 34.) “Nature makes the boy toward; nurture sees him -forward.” (p. 35.) The neglect of the material world which has been for -ages the source of mischief of all kinds in the schoolroom, and which has -not yet entirely passed away, would have been impossible if Mulcaster’s -elementary course had been adopted. “Is the body made by Nature nimble to -run, to ride, to swim, to fence, to do anything else which beareth praise -in that kind for either profit or pleasure? And doth not the Elementary -help them all forward by precept and train? The hand, the ear, the eye -be the greatest instruments whereby the receiving and delivery of our -learning is chiefly executed, and doth not this Elementary instruct the -hand to write, to draw, to play; the eye to read by letters, to discern -by line, to judge by both; the ear to call for voice and sound with -proportion for pleasure, with reason for wit? Generally whatsoever gift -Nature hath bestowed upon the body, to be brought forth or bettered by -the mean of train for any profitable use in our whole life, doth not this -Elementary both find it and foresee it?” (_El._, p. 35). “_The hand, -the ear, the eye, be the greatest instruments_,” said the Elizabethan -schoolmaster. So says the Victorian reformer. - -[51] I wish some good author would write a book on _Unpopular Truths_, -and show how, on some subjects, wise men go on saying the same thing -in all ages and nobody listens to them. Plato said “In every work the -beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with anything -young and tender.” (_Rep._, bk. ii, 377; Davies and Vaughan, p. 65.) And -the complaints about “bad grounding” prove our common neglect of what -Mulcaster urged three centuries ago: “For the _Elementarie_ because good -scholars will not abase themselves to it, it is left to the meanest, and -therefore to the worst. For that the first grounding would be handled -by the best, and his reward would be greatest, because both his pains -and his judgment should be with the greatest. And it would easily allure -sufficient men to come down so low, if they might perceive that reward -would rise up. No man of judgment will contrary this point, neither can -any ignorant be blamed for the contrary: the one seeth the thing to be -but low in order, the other knoweth the ground to be great in laying, not -only for the matter which the child doth learn: which is very small in -show though great for process: but also for the manner of handling his -wit, to hearten him for afterward, which is of great moment. The first -master can deal but with a few, the next with more, and so still upward -as reason groweth on and receives without forcing. It is the foundation -well and soundly laid, which makes all the upper building muster, with -countenance and continuance. If I were to strike the stroke, as I am -but to give counsel, the first pains truly taken should in good truth -be most liberally recompensed; and less allowed still upward, as the -pains diminish and the ease increaseth. Whereat no master hath cause to -repine, so he may have his children well grounded in the _Elementarie_. -Whose imperfection at this day doth marvellously trouble both masters and -scholars, so that we can hardly do any good, nay, scantly tell how to -place the too too raw boys in any certain form, with hope to go forward -orderly, the ground-work of their entry being so rotten underneath.” -(_PP._, pp. 233, 4.) - -[52] Quaint as we find Mulcaster in his mode of expression, the thing -expressed is sometimes rather what we should expect from Herbert Spencer -than from a schoolmaster of the Renascence. I have met with nothing -more modern in thought than the following: “In time all learning may be -brought into one tongue, and that natural to the inhabitant: so that -schooling for tongues may prove needless, as once they were not needed; -but it can never fall out that arts and sciences in their right nature -shall be but most necessary for any commonwealth that is not given over -unto too too much barbarousness.” (_PP._, 240.) - -[53] “Subject to a regulation like that of the ancient Spartans, the -theft of knowledge in our sex is only connived at while carefully -concealed, and if displayed [is] punished with disgrace.” So says Mrs. -Barbauld, and I have met with similar passages in other female writers. - -[54] John Brinsley (the elder) who married a sister of Bishop Hall’s and -kept school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (was it the _Grammar School_?) was one -of the best English writers on education. In his _Consolation for our -Grammar Schooles_, published early in the sixteen hundreds, he says: -“Amongst others myself having first had long experience of the manifold -evils which grow from the ignorance of a right order of teaching, and -afterwards some gracious taste of the sweetness that is to be found in -the better courses truly known and practised, I have betaken me almost -wholly, for many years unto this weighty work, and that not without much -comfort, through the goodness of our blessed God.” (p. 1.) “And for the -most part wherein any good is done, it is ordinarily effected by the -endless vexation of the painful master, the extreme labour and terror -of the poor children with enduring far overmuch and long severity. Now -whence proceedeth all this but because so few of those who undertake -this function are acquainted with any good method or right order of -instruction fit for a grammar school?” (p. 2.) It is sad to think how -many generations have since suffered from teachers “unacquainted with -any good method or right order of instruction.” And it seems to justify -Goethe’s dictum, “_Der Engländer ist eigentlich ohne Intelligenz_,” that -for several generations to come this evil will be but partially abated. - -[55] At Cambridge (as also in London and Edinburgh) there is already a -Training College for Women Teachers in Secondary Schools. - -[56] All we know of his life may soon be told. Richard Mulcaster was a -Cumberland man of good family, an “esquier borne,” as he calls himself, -who was at Eton, then King’s College, Cambridge, then at Christ Church, -Oxford. His birth year was probably 1530 or 1531, and he became a student -of Christ Church in 1555. In 1558 he settled as a schoolmaster in London, -and was elected first headmaster of Merchant Taylors’ School, which dates -from 1561. Here he remained twenty-five years, _i.e._ till 1586. Whether -he then became, as H. B. Wilson says, surmaster of St. Paul’s, I cannot -determine, but “he came in” highmaster in 1596, and held that office -for twelve years. Though in 1598 Elizabeth made him rector of Stanford -Rivers, there can be no doubt that he did not give up the highmastership -till 1608, when he must have been about 77 years old. He died at -Stanford Rivers three years later. While at Merchant Taylors’, viz., in -1581 and 1582, he published the two books which have secured for him a -permanent place in the history of education in England. The first was his -_Positions_, the second “The first part” (and, as it proved, the only -part) of his _Elementarie_. Of his other writings, his _Cato Christianus_ -seems to have been the most important, and a very interesting quotation -from it has been preserved in Robotham’s Preface to the _Janua_ of -Comenius; but the book itself is lost: at least I never heard of a copy, -and I have sought in vain in the British Museum, and at the University -Libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. His _Catechismus Paulinus_ is a -rare book, but Rev. J. H. Lupton has found and described a copy in the -Bodleian. - -[57] _Lectures and Essays_: _English in School_, by J. R. Seeley, p. -222. Elsewhere in the same lecture (p. 229) Professor Seeley says: “The -schoolmaster might set this right. Every boy that enters the school is -a _talking_ creature. He is a performer, in his small degree, upon the -same instrument as Milton and Shakespeare. Only do not sacrifice this -advantage. Do not try by artificial and laborious processes to give him -a new knowledge before you have developed that which he has already. -Train and perfect the gift of speech, unfold all that is in it, and you -train at the same time the power of thought and the power of intellectual -sympathy, you enable your pupil to think the thoughts and to delight in -the words of great philosophers and poets.” I wish this lecture were -published separately. - -[58] _Rep._ bk. vii, 536, _ad f._; Davies and Vaughan, p. 264. - -[59] In Buisson (_Dictionnaire_) No. 7 is “The children must have -frequent play, and a break after every lesson.” Raumer connects this with -No. 6, and says: “breaks were rendered necessary by Ratke’s plan, which -kept the learners far too silent.” - -[60] In the matter of grammar Ratke’s advice, so long disregarded, has -recently been followed in the “Parallel Grammar Series,” published by -Messrs. Sonnenschein. - -[61] The ordinary teaching of almost every subject offers illustrations -of the neglect of this principle. Take, _e.g._, the way in which children -are usually taught to read. First, they have to say the alphabet—a -very easy task as it seems to us, but if we met with a strange word -of _twenty-six syllables_, and that not a compound word, but one of -which every syllable was new to us, we might have some difficulty in -remembering it. And yet such a word would be to us what the alphabet is -to a child. When he can perform this feat, he is next required to learn -the visual symbols of the sounds and to connect these with the vocal -symbols. Some of the vocal symbols bring the child in contact with the -sound itself, but most are simply conventional. What notion does the -child get of the aspirate from the name of the letter _h_? Having learnt -twenty-six visual and twenty-six vocal symbols, and connected them -together, the child _finally comes to the sounds_ (over 40 in number) -_which the symbols are supposed to represent_. - -[62] See Mr. E. E. Bowen’s vigorous essay on “Teaching by means of -Grammar,” in _Essays on a Liberal Education_, 1867. - -I have returned to the subject of language-learning in § 15 of _Jacotot_ -in the _note_. See page 426. - -[63] Preface to the _Prodromus_. - -[64] Preface to _Prodromus_, first edition, p. 40; second edition (1639), -p. 78. The above is Hartlib’s translation, see _A Reformation of Schools, -&c._, pp. 46, 47. - -[65] Preface to _Prodromus_, first edition, p. 40; second edition, p. 79. -_A Reformation, &c._, p. 47. - -[66] Very interesting are the “immeasurable labours and intellectual -efforts” of Master Samuel Hartlib, whom Milton addresses as “a person -sent hither by some good providence from a far country, to be the -occasion and incitement of great good to this island.” (_Of Education_, -A.D. 1644.) See Masson’s _Life of Milton_, vol. iii; also biographical -and bibliographical account of Hartlib by H. Dircks, 1865. Hartlib’s -mother was English. His father, when driven out of Poland by triumph of -the Jesuits, settled at Elbing, where there was an English “Company of -Merchants” with John Dury for their chaplain. Hartlib came to England not -later than 1628, and devoted himself to the furtherance of a variety of -schemes for the public good. He was one of those rare beings who labour -to promote the schemes of others as if they were their own. He could, -as he says, “contribute but little” himself, but “being carried forth -to watch for the opportunities of provoking others, who can do more, to -improve their talents, I have found experimentally that my endeavours -have not been without effect.” (Quoted by Dircks, p. 66.) The philosophy -of Bacon seemed to have introduced an age of boundless improvement; and -men like Comenius, Hartlib, Petty, and Dury, caught the first unchecked -enthusiasm. “There is scarce one day,” so Hartlib wrote to Robert Boyle, -“and one hour of the day or night, being brim full with all manner of -objects of the most public and universal nature, but my soul is crying -out ‘Phosphore redde diem! Quid gaudia nostra moraris? Phosphore redde -diem!’” - -But in this world Hartlib looked in vain for the day. The income of £300 -a year allowed him by Parliament was £700 in arrears at the Restoration, -and he had then nothing to hope. His last years were attended by much -physical suffering and by extreme poverty. He died as Evelyn thought at -Oxford in 1662, but this is uncertain. - -[67] _Dilucidatio_, Hartlib’s trans., p. 65. - -[68] The _Dilucidation_, as he calls it, is added. All the books above -mentioned are in the Library of the British Museum under _Komensky_. - -[69] Masson’s _Milton_, vol. iii, p. 224, Prof. Masson is quoting _Opera -Didactica_, tom. ii, Introd. - -[70] _Unum Necessarium_, quoted by Raumer. - -Compare George Eliot: “By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we -don’t quite know what it is, and cannot do what we would, we are part of -the Divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the -struggle with darkness narrower.”—_Middlemarch_, bk. iv, p. 308 of first -edition. - -[71] Compare Mulcaster, _supra_, p. 94. - -[72] Comenius here follows Ratke, who, as I have mentioned above (p. -116), required beginners to study the translation _before the original_. - -[73] Professor Masson (_Life of Milton_, vol. iii, p. 205, _note_) gives -us the following from chap. ix (cols. 42-44), of the _Didactica Magna_:— - -“Nor, to say something particularly on this subject, can any sufficient -reason be given why the weaker sex [_sequior sexus_, literally the -_later_ or _following_ sex, is his phrase, borrowed from Apuleius, and, -though the phrase is usually translated the inferior sex, it seems to -have been chosen by Comenius to avoid that implication] should be wholly -shut out from liberal studies whether in the native tongue or in Latin. -For equally are they God’s image; equally are they partakers of grace, -and of the Kingdom to come; equally are they furnished with minds agile -and capable of wisdom, yea, often beyond our sex; equally to them is -there a possibility of attaining high distinction, inasmuch as they -have often been employed by God Himself for the government of peoples, -the bestowing of wholesome counsels on Kings and Princes, the science -of medicine and other things useful to the human race, nay even the -prophetical office, and the rattling reprimand of Priests and Bishops -[etiam ad propheticum munus, et increpandos Sacerdotes Episcoposque, are -the words; and as the treatise was prepared for the press in 1638 one -detects a reference, by the Moravian Brother in Poland to the recent -fame of Jenny Geddes, of Scotland]. Why then should we admit them to -the alphabet, but afterwards debar them from books? Do we fear their -rashness? The more we occupy their thoughts, the less room will there be -in them for rashness, which springs generally from vacuity of mind.” - -[74] Translated by Daniel Benham as _The School of Infancy_. London, 1858. - -[75] Here Comenius seems to be thinking of the intercourse of children -when no older companion is present; Froebel made more of the very -different intercourse when their thoughts and actions are led by some -one who has studied how to lead them. Children constantly want help -from their elders even in amusing themselves. On the other hand, it is -only the very wisest of mortals who can give help enough and _no more_. -Self-dependence may sometimes be cultivated by “a little wholesome -neglect.” - -[76] Comical and at the same time melancholy results follow. In an -elementary school, where the children “took up” geography for the -Inspector, I once put some questions about St. Paul at Rome. I asked in -what country Rome was, but nobody seemed to have heard of such a place. -“It’s geography!” said I, and some twenty hands went up directly: their -owners now answered quite readily, “In Italy.” - -[77] “A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief -inheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. Is not every -memory written quite full of annals...? Our very speech is curiously -historical. Most men, you may observe, speak only to narrate.” (Carlyle -on _History_. Miscellanies.) - -[78] South Kensington, which controls the drawing of millions of -children, says precisely the opposite, and prescribes a kind of drawing, -which, though it may give manual skill to adults, does not “afford -delight” to the mind of children. - -[79] “Generalem nos intendimus institutionem omnium qui homines nati -sunt, ad omnia humana.... Vernaculæ (scholæ) scopus metaque erit, ut -omnis juventus utriusque sexus, intra annum sextum et duodecimum seu -decimum tertium, ea addoceatur quorum usus per totam vitam se extendat.” -I quote this Latin from the excellent article _Coménius_ (by several -writers) in Buisson’s _Dictionnaire_. It is a great thing to get an -author’s exact words. Unfortunately the writer in the _Dictionnaire_ -follows custom and does not give the means of verifying the quotation. -Comenius in Latin I have never seen except in the British Museum. - -[80] In Sermon on Charity Schools, A.D. 1745. The Bishop points out that -“training up children is a very different thing from merely teaching -them some truths necessary to be known or believed.” He goes into the -historical aspect of the subject. As since the days of Elizabeth there -has been legal provision for the maintenance of the poor, there has -been “need also of some particular legal provision in behalf of poor -children for their _education_; this not being included in what we -call maintenance.” “But,” says the Bishop, “it might be necessary that -a burden so entirely new as that of a poor-tax was at the time I am -speaking of, should be as light as possible. Thus the legal provision -for the poor was first settled without any particular consideration of -that additional want in the case of children; as it still remains with -scarce any alteration in this respect.” And _remained_ for nearly a -century longer. Great changes naturally followed and will follow from the -extension of the franchise; and another century will probably see us with -a Folkschool worthy of its importance. By that time we shall no longer be -open to the sarcasm of “the foreign friend:” “It is highly instructive -to visit English elementary schools, for there you find everything that -should be avoided.” (M. Braun quoted by Mr. A. Sonnenschein. The _Old_ -Code was in force.) - -[81] “Adhuc sub judice lis est.” I find the editor of an American -educational paper brandishing in the face of an opponent as a quotation -from Professor N. A. Calkins’ “Ear and Voice Training”: “The senses are -the only powers by which children can gain the elements of knowledge; -and until these have been trained to act, no definite knowledge can be -acquired.” But Calkins says, “act, under direction of the mind.” - -[82] “What do you learn from ‘Paradise Lost’? Nothing at all. What do -you learn from a cookery book? Something new, something that you did -not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the -wretched cookery book on a higher level of estimation than the divine -poem? What you owe to Milton is not any _knowledge_, of which a million -separate items are but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly -level; what you owe is _power_, that is, exercise and expansion to your -own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and -each separate influx is a step upward—a step ascending as upon a Jacob’s -ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps -of knowledge from first to last carry you further on the same plane, but -could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas -the very _first_ step in power is a flight, is an ascending into another -element where earth is forgotten.” I have met with this as a quotation -from De Quincey. - -[83] When I visited (some years ago) the “École Modèle” at Brussels -I was told that books were used for _nothing_ except for learning to -read. Comenius was saved from this consequence of his realism by his -fervent Christianity. He valued the study of the Bible as highly as the -Renascence scholars valued the study of the classics, though for a very -different reason. He cared for the Bible not as literature, but as the -highest authority on the problems of existence. Those who, like Matthew -Arnold, may attribute to it far less authority may still treasure it as -literature, while those who despise literature and recognise no authority -above things would limit us to the curriculum of the “École Modèle” and -care for natural science only. - -In this country we are fortunately able to advocate some reforms which -were suggested by the realism of Comenius without incurring any suspicion -of rejecting his Christianity. It is singular to see how the highest -authorities of to-day—men conversant with the subject on the side of -practice as well as theory—hold precisely the language which practical -men have been wont to laugh at as “theoretical nonsense” ever since -the days of Comenius. A striking instance will be found in a lecture -by the Principal of the Battersea Training College (Rev. Canon Daniel) -as reported in _Educational Times_, July, 1889. Compare what Comenius -said (_supra_ p. 151) with the following: “Children are not sufficiently -required to use their senses. They are allowed to observe by deputy. They -look at Nature through the spectacles of Books, and through the eyes of -the teacher, but do not observe for themselves. It might be expected that -in object lessons and science lessons, which are specially intended to -cultivate the observing faculty, this fault would be avoided, but I do -not find that such is the case. I often hear lessons on objects that are -not object lessons at all. The object is not allowed to speak for itself, -eloquent though it is, and capable though it is of adapting its teaching -to the youngest child who interrogates it. The teacher buries it under a -heap of words and second-hand statements, thereby converting the object -lesson into a verbal lesson and throwing away golden opportunities of -forming the scientific habit of mind. Now mental science teaches us that -our knowledge of the sensible qualities of the material world can come to -us only through our senses, and through the right senses. If we had no -senses we should know nothing about the material world at all; if we had -a sense less we should be cut off from a whole class of facts; if we had -as many senses as are ascribed to the inhabitants of Sirius in Voltaire’s -novel, our knowledge would be proportionately greater than it is now. -Words cannot compensate for sensations. The eloquence of a Cicero would -not explain to a deaf man what music is, or to a blind man what scarlet -is. Yet I have frequently seen teachers wholly disregard these obvious -truths. They have taught as though their pupils had eyes that saw not, -and ears that heard not, and noses that smelled not, and palates that -tasted not, and skins that felt not, and muscles that would not work. -They have insisted on taking the words out of Nature’s mouth and speaking -for her. They have thought it derogatory to play a subordinate part to -the object itself.” - -This subject has been well treated by Mr. Thos. M. Balliet in a paper on -shortening the curriculum (_New York School Journal_, 10th Nov., 1888). -“Studies,” says he, “are of two kinds (1) studies which supply the mind -with thoughts of images, and (2) those which give us ‘labels,’ _i.e._ the -means of indicating and so communicating thought. Under the last head -come the study of language, writing (including spelling), notation, &c.” -Mr. Balliet proposes, as Comenius did, that the symbol subjects shall -not be taken separately, but in connexion with the thought subjects. -Especially in the mother-tongue, we should study language for thought, -not thought for the sake of language. - -But after all though we may and _should_ bring the young in connexion -with the objects of thought and not with words merely, we must not forget -that the scholastic aspect of things will differ from the practical. -When brought into the schoolroom the thing must be divested of details -and surroundings, and used to give a conception of one of a class. The -fir tree of the schoolboy cannot be the fir tree of the wood-cutter. The -“boiler” becomes a cylinder subject to internal or external pressure. It -is not the thing that the engine-driver knows will burn and corrode, get -foul in its tubes and loose in its joints, and be liable to burst. (See -Mr. C. H. Benton on “Practical and Theoretical Training” in _Spectator_, -10th Nov., 1888). The school knowledge of things no less than of words -may easily be over-valued. It should be given not for itself but to -excite interest and draw out the powers of the mind. - -[84] Ruskin seems to be echoing Comenius (of whom perhaps he never heard) -when he says “To be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, -and both true.” (_Address at Camb. Sch. of Art_, Oct. 1858.) - -[85] As far as my experience goes there are few men capable both of -teaching and being taught, and of these rare beings Comenius was a noble -example. The passage in which he acknowledges his obligation to the -Jesuits’ _Janua_ is a striking proof of his candour and open-mindedness. - -As an experiment in language-teaching this _Janua_ is a very interesting -book, and will be well worth a note. From Augustin and Alois de Backer’s -_Bibliothèque des Ecrivains de la C. de Jésus_, I learn that the author -William Bath or Bathe [Latin Bateus] was born in Dublin in 1564, and -died in Madrid in 1614. “A brief introduction to the skill of song as -set forth by William Bathe, gent.” is attributed to him; but we know -nothing of his origin or occupation till he entered on the Jesuit -noviciate at Tournai in 1596. Either before or after this “he ran” as -he himself tells us “the pleasant race of study” at Beauvais. After -studying at Padua he was sent as Spiritual Father to the Irish College at -Salamanca. Here, according to C. Sommervogel he wrote two Latin books. -He also designed the _Janua Linguarum_, and carried out the plan with -the help of the other members of the college. The book was published at -Salamanca “apud de Cea Tesa” 1611, 4to. Four years afterwards an edition -with English version added was published in London edited by Wm. Welde. -I have never seen the Spanish version, but a copy of Welde’s edition -(wanting title page) was bequeathed to me by a friend honoured by all -English-speaking students of education, Joseph Payne. The _Janua_ must -have had great success in this country, and soon had other editors. In an -old catalogue I have seen “_Janua Linguarum Quadrilinguis_, or a Messe -of Tongues, Latine, English, French, Spanish, neatly served up together -for a wholesome repast to the worthy curiositie of the studious, sm. -4to, Matthew Lowndes, 1617.” This must have been the early edition of -Isaac Habrecht. I have his “_Janua Linguarum Silinguis_. _Argentinæ_ -(Strassburg), 1630,” and in the Preface he says that the first English -edition came out in 1615, and that he had added a French version and -published the book at London in four languages in 1617. I have seen -“sixth edition 1627,” also published by Lowndes, and edited “opera I. H. -(John Harmar, called in Catalogue of British Museum ‘Rector of Ewhurst’) -Scholæ Sancti Albani Magistri primarii.” Harmar, I think, suppressed all -mention of the author of the book, but he kept the title. This seems to -have been altered by the celebrated Scioppius who published the book as -_Pascasii Grosippi Mercurius bilinguis_. - -This Jesuits’ _Janua_ is one of the most interesting experiments in -language teaching I ever met with. Bathe and his co-adjutors collected -as they believed all the common root words in the Latin language; and -these they worked up into 1,200 short sentences in the form of proverbs. -After the sentences follows a short Appendix _De ambiguis_ of which the -following is a specimen: “Dum malum comedis juxta malum navis, de malo -commisso sub malo vetita meditare. While thou eatest an apple near the -mast of a ship, think of the evil committed under the forbidden apple -tree.” An alphabetical index of all the Latin words is then given, with -the number of the sentence in which the word occurs. - -Prefixed to this _Janua_ we find some introductory chapters in which -the problem: What is the best way of learning a foreign language? is -considered and some advance made towards a solution. “The body of -every language consisteth of four principal members—words, congruity, -phrases, and elegancy. The dictionary sets down the words, grammar the -congruities, Authors the phrases, and Rhetoricians (with their figures) -the elegancy. We call phrases the proper forms or peculiar manners of -speaking which every Tongue hath.” (Chap. 1 _ad f._) Hitherto, says -Bathe, there have been in use, only two ways of learning a language, -“regular, such as is grammar, to observe the congruities; and irregular -such as is the common use of learners, by reading and speaking in vulgar -tongues.” The “regular” way is more certain, the “irregular” is easier. -So Bathe has planned a middle way which is to combine the advantages of -the other two. The “congruities” are learnt regularly by the grammar. Why -are not the “words” learned regularly by the dictionary? 1st, Because -the Dictionary contains many useless words; 2nd, because compound words -may be known from the root words without special learning; 3rd, because -words as they stand in the Dictionary bear no sense and so cannot be -remembered. By the use of this _Janua_ all these objections will be -avoided. Useful words and root words only are given, and they are worked -up into sentences “easy to be remembered.” And with the exception of a -few little words such as _et_, _in_, _qui_, _sum_, _fio_ no word occurs a -second time; thus, says Bathe, the labour of learning the language will -be lightened and “as it was much more easy to have known all the living -creatures by often looking into Noe’s Ark, wherein was a selected couple -of each kind, than by travelling over all the world until a man should -find here and there a creature of each kind, even in the same manner -will all the words be far more easily learned by use of these sentences -than by hearing, speaking or reading until a man do accidentally meet -with every particular word.” (Proeme _ad f._) “We hope no man will be -so ingrateful as not to think this work very profitable,” says the -author. For my own part I feel grateful for such an earnest attempt at -“retrieving of the curse of Babylon,” but I cannot show my gratitude by -declaring “this work very profitable.” The attempt to squeeze the greater -part of a language into 1,200 short sentences could produce nothing -better than a curiosity. The language could not be thus squeezed into the -memory of the learner. - -[86] This book must have had a great sale in England. Anchoran’s -version (the Latin title of which is _Porta_ not _Janua_) went through -several editions. I have a copy of _Janua Linguarum Reserata_ “formerly -translated by Tho. Horn: afterwards much corrected and amended by Joh. -Robotham: now carefully reviewed and exactly compared with all former -editions, foreign and others, and much enlarged both in the Latine and -English: together with a Portall ... by G. P. 1647.” “W. D.” was a -subsequent editor, and finally it was issued by Roger Daniel, to whom -Comenius dedicates from Amsterdam in 1659 as “Domino Rogero Danieli, -Bibliopolæ ac Typographo Londinensi celeberrimo.” - -[87] Eilhardus Lubinus or Eilert Lueben, born 1565; was Professor first -of Poetry then of Theology at Rostock, where he died in 1621. This -projector of the most famous school-book of modern times seems not to be -mentioned in K. A. Schmid’s great _Encyklopädie_, at least in the first -edition. (I have not seen the second.) I find from F. Sander’s _Lexikon -d. Pädagogik_ that Ratke declared he learnt nothing from Lubinus, while -Comenius recognised him gratefully as his predecessor. This is just what -we should have expected from the character of Ratke and of Comenius. -Lubinus advocated the use of interlinear translations and published (says -Sander) such translations of the New Testament, of Plautus, &c. The very -interesting Preface to the New Test., was translated into English by -Hartlib and published as “The True and Readie Way to Learne the Latine -Tongue by E. Lubinus,” &c., 1654. The date given for Lubinus’ preface is -1614. L. finds fault with the grammar teaching which is thrashed into -boys so that they hate their masters. He would appeal to the senses: “For -from these things falling under the sense of the eyes, and as it were -more known, we will make entrance and begin to learn the Latin speech. -Four-footed living creatures, creeping things, fishes and birds which -can neither be gotten nor live well in these parts ought to be painted. -Others also, which because of their bulk and greatness cannot be shut up -in houses may be made in a lesser form, or drawn with the pencil, yet of -such bigness as they may be well seen by boys even afar off.” He says -he has often counselled the Stationers to bring out a book “in which -all things whatsoever which may be devised and written and seen by the -eyes, might be described, so as there might be also added to all things -and all parts and members of things, its own proper word, its own proper -appellation or term expressed in the Latin and Dutch tongues” (pp. 22, -23). “Visible things are first to be known by the eyes” (p. 23), and the -joining of seeing the thing and hearing the name together “is by far the -profitablest and the bravest course, and passing fit and applicable to -the age of children.” Things themselves if possible, if not, pictures -(p. 25). There are some capital hints on teaching children from things -common in the house, in the street, &c. One Hadrianus Junius has made a -“nomenclator” that may be useful. In the pictures of the projected book -there are to be lines under each object, and under its printed name. (The -excellent device of corresponding numbers seems due to Comenius.) For -printing below the pictures L. also suggests sentences which are simpler -and better for children than those in the Vestibulum, _e.g._ “Panis in -Mensa positus est, Felis vorat Murem.” - -In the Brit. Museum there is a copy of _Medulla Linguæ Græcæ_ in which L. -works up the root words of Greek into sentences. He was evidently a man -with ideas. Comenius thought of them so highly that he tried to carry out -another at Saros-Patak, the plan of a “Cœnobium” or Roman colony in which -no language should be used but Latin. - -[88] For full titles of the books referred to see p. 195. - -[89] The solitaries of Port-Royal used to vary their mental toil with -manual. A Jesuit having maliciously asked whether it was true that -Monsieur Pascal made shoes, met with the awkward repartee, “Je ne sais -pas s’il fait des souliers, mais je crois qu’il _vous a porté une fameuse -botte_.” - -[90] A master in a great public school once stated in a school address -what masters and boys felt to be true. “It would hardly be too much to -say that the whole problem of education is how to surround the young -with good influences. I believe we must go on to add that if the wisest -man had set himself to work out this problem without the teaching of -experience, he would have been little likely to hit upon the system of -which we are so proud, and which we call “the Public School System.” -If the real secret of education is to surround the young with good -influences, is it not a strange paradox to take them at the very age -when influences act most despotically and mass them together in large -numbers, where much that is coarsest is sure to be tolerated, and much -that is gentlest and most refining—the presence of mothers and sisters -for example—is for a large part of the year a memory or an echo rather -than a living voice? I confess I have never seen any answers to this -objection which _apart from the test of experience_ I should have been -prepared to pronounce satisfactory. It is a simple truth that the moral -dangers of our Public School System are enormous. It is the simple truth -that do what you will in the way of precaution, you do give to boys of -low, animal natures, the very boys who ought to be exceptionally subject -to almost despotic restraint, exceptional opportunities of exercising -a debasing influence over natures far more refined and spiritual than -their own. And it is further the simple but the sad truth, that these -exceptional opportunities are too often turned to account, and that the -young boy’s character for a time—sometimes for a long time—is spoiled -or vulgarized by the influence of unworthy companions.” This is what -public schoolmasters, if their eyes are not blinded by routine, are -painfully conscious of. But they find that in the end good prevails; the -average boy gains a manly character and contributes towards the keeping -up a healthy public opinion which is of great effect in restraining the -evil-doer. - -[91] “The number of boarders was never very great, because to a master -were assigned no more than he could have beds for in his room.” -(Fontaine’s _Mémoire_, Carré, p. 24.) - -[92] “Plerisque placet media quædam ratio, ut apud unum Præceptorem -quinque sexve pueri instituantur: ita nec sodalitas deerit ætati, cui -convenit alacritas; neque non sufficiet singulis cura Præceptoris; et -facile vitabitur corruptio quam affert multitudo. Many take up with a -middle course, and would have five or six boys placed with one preceptor; -in this way they will not be without companionship at an age when from -their liveliness they seem specially to need it, and the master may -give sufficient care to each individual; moreover, there will be an -easy avoidance of the moral corruption which numbers bring.” Erasmus on -_Christian Marriage_ quoted by Coustel in Sainte-Beuve, P.Riij, bk. 4, p. -404. - -[93] Lancelot’s “New way of easily learning Latin (_Nouvelle Méthode -pour apprendre facilement la langue Latine_)” was published in 1644, his -method for Greek in 1655. This was followed in 1657 by his “Garden of -Greek Roots (_Jardin des racines grecques_)” (see Cadet, pp. 15 ff.) - -The Port-Royalists seem to me in some respects far behind Comenius, but -they were right in rejecting him as a methodiser in language-learning. -Lancelot in the preface to his “Garden of Greek Roots,” says that the -_Janua_ of Comenius is totally wanting in method. “It would need,” says -he, “an extraordinary memory; and from my experience I should say that -few children could learn this book, for it is long and difficult; and -as the words in it are not repeated, those at the beginning would be -forgotten before the learner reached the end. So he would feel a constant -discouragement, because he would always find himself in a new country -where he would recognize nothing. And the book is full of all sorts of -uncommon and difficult words, and the first chapters throw no light -on those which follow.” To this well-grounded criticism he adds: “The -_entrances to the Tongues_, to deserve its name, should be nothing but -a short and simple way leading us as soon as possible to read the best -books in the language, so that we might not only acquire the words we -are in need of, but also all that is most characteristic in the idiom -and pure in the phraseology, which make up the most difficult and most -important part of every language.” (Quoted by Cadet, p. 17). - -[94] Lemaître, a nephew of La Mère Angélique, was one of the most -celebrated orators in France. In renouncing the world for Port-Royal, he -retired from a splendid position at the Bar. Such men had qualifications -out of the reach of ordinary schoolmasters. Dufossé, in after years, told -how, when he was a boy, Lemaître called him often to his room and gave -him solid instruction in learning and piety. “He read to me and made me -read pieces from poets and orators, and saw that I noticed the beauties -in them both in thought and diction. Moreover he taught me the right -emphasis and articulation both in verse and prose, in which he himself -was admirable, having the charm of a fine voice and all else that goes -to make a great orator. He gave me also many rules for good translation -and for making my progress in that art easy to me.” (Dufossé’s _Mémoires, -&c._, quoted by Cadet, p. 9.) It was Lemaître who instructed Racine (born -1639, admitted at Les Granges, Port Royal des Champs, in 1655). - -[95] In 1670 the General of the Jesuits issued a letter to the Society -against the Cartesian philosophy. The University in this agreed with its -rivals, and petitioned the Parliament to prohibit the Cartesian teaching. -This produced the burlesque _Arrêt_ by Boileau (1675). “Whereas it is -stated that for some years past a stranger named Reason has endeavoured -to make entry by force into the Schools of the University ... where -Aristotle has always been acknowledged as judge without appeal and not -accountable for his opinions.... Be it known by these presents that -this Court has maintained and kept and does maintain and keep the said -Aristotle in perfect and peaceable possession of the said schools ... -and in order that for the future he may not be interfered with in them, -it has banished Reason for ever from the Schools of the said University, -and forbids his entry to disturb and disquiet the said Aristotle in the -possession and enjoyment of the aforesaid schools, under pain and penalty -of being declared a Jansenist and a lover of innovations.” (Quoted by -Cadet, p. 34.) - -[96] Although so much time is given to the study of words, practice in -the use of words is almost entirely neglected, and the English schoolboy -remains inarticulate. - -[97] Rollin somewhat extends Quintilian’s statement: “The desire of -learning rests in the will which you cannot force.” About attempts to -coerce the will in the absence of interest, I may quote a passage from -a lecture of mine at Birmingham in 1884, when I did not know that I had -behind me such high authorities as Quintilian and Rollin: “I should -divide the powers of the mind that may be cultivated in the school-room -into two classes: in the first I should put all the higher powers—grasp -of meaning, perception of analogy, observation, reflection, imagination, -intellectual memory; in the other class is one power only, and that is -a kind of memory that depends on the association of sounds. How is it -then that in most school-rooms far more time is spent in cultivating -this last and least-valuable power than all the rest put together? The -explanation is easy. All the higher powers can be exercised only when the -pupils are interested, or, as Mr. Thring puts it, ‘care for what they -are about.’ The memory that depends on associating sounds is independent -of interest and can be secured by simple repetition. Now it is very hard -to awaken interest, and still harder to maintain it. That magician’s -wand, the cane, with which the schoolmasters of olden time worked such -wonders, is powerless here or powerful only in the negative direction; -and so is every form of punishment. You may tell a boy—‘If you can’t say -your lesson you shall stay in and write it out half-a-dozen times!’ and -the threat may have effect; but no ‘_instans tyrannus_’ from Orbilius -downwards has ever thought of saying, ‘If you don’t take an interest in -your work, I’ll keep you in till you do!’ So teachers very naturally -prefer the kind of teaching in which they can make sure of success.” - -[98] Here as usual Rollin uses Quintilian without directly quoting him. -He gives in a note the passage he had in his mind. “Id imprimis cavere -oportebit, ne studia qui amare nondum potest oderit; et amaritudinem -semel præceptam etiam ultra rudes annos reformidet (Quint., lib. j, cap. -1.)” - -[99] Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel were also in this sense realists, -but they held that the educational value of knowledge lay not in itself, -but only in so far as it was an instrument for developing the faculties -of the mind. - -[100] Henry Barnard (_English Pedagogy_, second series, p. 192), speaks -of Hoole as “one of the pioneer educators of his century.” According to -Barnard he was born at Wakefield, in 1610, and died in 1666, rector of -“Stock Billerica” (perhaps Stock with Billericay), in Essex. - -[101] A very interesting suggestion of Cowley’s is that another house -be built for poor men’s sons who show ability. These shall be brought -up “with the same conveniences that are enjoyed even by rich men’s -children (though they maintain the fewer for that cause), there being -nothing of eminent and illustrious to be expected from a low, sordid, and -hospital-like education.” - -[102] It would seem as if these Puritans were more active in body than in -mind: even the seniors, like the children at Port-Royal, _tombent dans la -nonchalance_. Dury has to lay it down that “the Governour and Ushers and -Steward if they be in health should not go to bed till ten.” (p. 30.) - -[103] It is a sign of the failure of all attempts to establish -educational science in England that though the meaning of “real” and -“realities” which connected them with _res_ seemed established in the -sixteen hundreds, our language soon lost it again. According to a -writer in _Meyer’s Conversations Lexicon_ (first edition) “_reales_” -in this sense occurs first in Taubmann, 1614. Whether this is correct -or not it was certainly about this time that there arose a contest -between _Humanismus_ and _Realismus_, a contest now at its height in the -_Gymnasien_ and _Realschulen_ of Germany. For a discussion of it, _see_ -M. Arnold’s “Literature and Science,” referred to above (p. 154). - -[104] Many of Petty’s proposals are now realized in the South Kensington -Museum. - -[105] Later in the century Locke recommended that “working schools should -be set up in every parish,” (_see_ Fox-Bourne’s _Locke_, or Cambridge -edition of the _Thoughts c. Ed._, App. A, p. 189). The Quakers seem -to have early taken up “industrious education.” John Bellers, whose -_Proposals for Raising a College of Industry_ (1696) was reprinted by -Robt. Owen, has some very good notions. After advising that boys and -girls be taught to knit, spin, &c., and the bigger boys turning, &c., -he says, “Thus the Hand employed brings Profit, _the Reason used in it -makes wise_, and the Will subdued makes them good” (_Proposals_, p. 18). -Years afterwards in a Letter to the Yearly Meeting (dated 1723), he -says, “It may be observed that some of the Boys in Friends’ Workhouse in -Clerkenwell by their present employment of spinning are capable to earn -their own living.” - -[106] Petty does not lose sight of the body. The “educands” are to “use -such exercises whether in work or for recreation as tend to the health, -agility, and strength of their bodies.” - -I have quoted Petty from the very valuable collection of English writings -on Education reprinted in Henry Barnard’s _English Pedagogy_, 2 vols. -Petty is in Vol. I. In this vol. we have plenty of evidence of the -working of the Baconian spirit; _e.g._, we find Sir Matthew Hale in a -_Letter of Advice to his Grandchildren_, written in 1678, saying that -there is little use or improvement in “notional speculations in logic -or philosophy delivered by others; the rather because bare speculations -and notions have little experience and external observation to confirm -them, and they rarely fix the minds especially of young men. But that -part of philosophy that is real may be improved and confirmed by daily -observation, and is more stable and yet more certain and delightful, and -goes along with a man all his life, whatever employment or profession he -undertakes.” - -[107] “In this respect,” says Professor Masson, “the passion and the -projects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton’s.” (_L. of M._ iij, -p. 237.) - -[108] _Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib_ (“the Tractate” as it is -usually called), was published by Milton first in 1644, and again in -1673. _See_ Oscar Browning’s edition, Cambridge Univ. Press. - -[109] The University of Cambridge. The first examination was in June, -1880. - -[110] “Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth’s sake is the -principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of -all other virtues.” L. to Bolde, quoted by Fowler, _Locke_, p. 120. This -shows us that according to Locke “the principal part of human perfection” -is to be found in the intellect. - -[111] Lady Masham seems to consider these two characteristics identical. -She wrote to Leclerc of Locke after his death: “He was always, in the -greatest and in the smallest affairs of human life, as well as in -speculative opinions, disposed to follow reason, whosoever it were that -suggested it; he being ever a faithful servant, I had almost said a -slave, to truth; never abandoning her for anything else, and following -her for her own sake purely” (quoted by Fox-Bourne). But it is one thing -to desire truth, and another to think one’s own reasoning power the sole -means of obtaining it. - -[112] “I am far from imagining myself infallible; but yet I should -be loth to differ from any thinking man; being fully persuaded there -are very few things of pure speculation wherein two thinking men who -impartially seek truth can differ if they give themselves the leisure to -examine their hypotheses and understand one another” (L. to W. M., 26 -Dec., 1692). Again he writes: “I am persuaded that upon debate you and -I cannot be of two opinions, nor I think any two men used to think with -freedom, who really prefer truth to opiniatrety and a little foolish -vain-glory of not having made a mistake” (L. to W. M., 3 Sept., 1694). - -[113] Compare Carlyle:—“Except thine own eye have got to see it, except -thine own soul have victoriously struggled to clear vision and belief -of it, what is the thing seen or the thing believed by another or by -never so many others? Alas, it is not thine, though thou look on it, -brag about it, and bully and fight about it till thou die, striving to -persuade thyself and all men how much it is thine! Not _it_ is thine, -but only a windy echo and tradition of it bedded [an echo _bedded_?] in -hypocrisy, ending sure enough in tragical futility is thine.” Froude’s -_Thos. Carlyle_, ij, 10. Similarly Locke wrote to Bolde in 1699:—“To be -learned in the lump by other men’s thoughts, and to be right by saying -after others is much the easier and quieter way; but how a rational man -that should enquire and know for himself can content himself with a faith -or religion taken upon trust, or with such a servile submission of his -understanding as to admit all and nothing else but what fashion makes -passable among men, is to me astonishing.” Quoted by Fowler, _Locke_, p. -118. - -[114] For Rabelais, _see_ p. 67 _supra_. - -In the notes to the Cambridge edition of the _Thoughts_ Locke’s advice on -physical education is discussed and compared with the results of modern -science by Dr. J. F. Payne. - -[115] “Examinations directed, as the paper examinations of the numerous -examining boards now flourishing are directed, to finding out what the -pupil knows, have the effect of concentrating the teacher’s effort upon -the least important part of his function.” Mark Pattison in _N. Quart. -M._, January, 1880. - -[116] Michelet (_Nos fils_, chap. ij. _ad f._ p. 170), says of -Montaigne’s essay: “c’est déjà une belle esquisse, vive et forte, une -tentative pour donner, _non l’objet_, le savoir, mais _le sujet_, c’est -l’homme.” - -[117] Pope seems to contrast Montaigne and Locke: - - “But ask not to what doctors I apply! - “Sworn to no master, of no sect am I: - “As drives the storm, at any door I knock, - “And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke.” - - _Satires_ iij., 26. - -Perhaps as Dr. Abbott suggests he took Montaigne as representing active -and Locke contemplative life. - -[118] _See_ “An introduction to the History of Educational Theories,” by -Oscar Browning. - -[119] “History and the mathematics, I think, are the most proper and -advantageous studies for persons of your quality; the other are fitter -for schoolmen and people that must live by their learning, though a -little insight and taste of them will be no burthen or inconvenience to -you, especially Natural Philosophy.” _Advice to a young Lord written by -his father_, 1691, p. 29. - -[120] “Il n’y a point avant la raison de véritable éducation pour -l’homme.” (_N. H._, 5th P., Lett. 3. Conf. _supra_, p. 227.) - -[121] “La première éducation doit donc être purement négative. Elle -consiste, non point à enseigner la vertu ni la vérité, mais à garantir -le cœur du vice et l’esprit de l’erreur. Si vous pouviez ne rien faire -et ne rien laisser faire; si vous pouviez amener votre élève sain et -robuste à l’âge de douze ans, sans qu’il sût distinguer sa main droite -de sa main gauche, dès vos premières leçons les yeux de son entendement -s’ouvriraient à la raison; sans préjugés, sans habitudes, il n’aurait -rien en lui qui pût contrarier l’effet de vos soins. Bientôt il -deviendrait entre vos mains le plus sage des hommes; et, en commençant -par ne rien faire, vous auriez fait un prodige d’éducation.” _Ém._ ij., -80. - -[122] “Exercez son corps, ses organes, ses sens, ses forces, mais tenez -son âme oisive aussi longtemps qu’il se pourra. Redoutez tous les -sentiments antérieurs au jugement qui les apprécie. Retenez, arrêtez -les impressions étrangères: et, pour empêcher le mal de naître, ne vous -pressez point de faire le bien; car il n’est jamais tel que quand la -raison l’éclaire. Regardez tous les délais comme des avantages: c’est -gagner beaucoup que d’avancer vers le terme sans rien perdre; laissez -mûrir l’enfance dans les enfants. Enfin quelque leçon leur devient-elle -nécessaire, gardez-vous de la donner aujourd’hui, si vous pouvez différer -jusqu’à demain sans danger.” _Ém._ ij., 80. - -[123] “Effrayez-vous donc peu de cette oisiveté prétendue. Que -diriez-vous d’un homme qui, pour mettre toute la vie à profit, ne -voudrait jamais dormir? Vous diriez: Cet homme est insensé; il ne jouit -pas du temps, il se l’ôte; pour fuir le sommeil il court à la mort. -Songez donc que c’est ici la même chose, et que l’enfance est le sommeil -de la raison.” _Ém._ ij., 99. - -[124] “Il n’y a pas de philosophie plus superficielle que celle qui, -prenant l’homme comme un être égoïste et viager, prétend l’expliquer et -lui tracer ses devoirs en dehors de la société dont il est une partie. -Autant vaut considérer l’abeille abstraction faite de la ruche, et dire -qu’à elle seule l’abeille construit son alvéole.” Renan, _La Réforme_, -312. - -[125] “Tout est bien, sortant des mains de l’Auteur des choses; tout -dégénère entre les mains de l’homme.” - -[126] “Nous naissons faibles, nous avons besoin de forces; nous naissons -dépourvus de tout, nous avons besoin d’assistance; nous naissons -stupides, nous avons besoin de jugement. Tout ce que nous n’avons pas à -notre naissance, et dont nous avons besoin étant grands, nous est donné -par l’éducation. Cette éducation nous vient ou de la nature, ou des -hommes, ou des choses. Le développement interne de nos facultés et de nos -organes est l’éducation de la nature; l’usage qu’on nous apprend à faire -de ce développement est l’éducation des hommes; et l’acquis de notre -propre expérience sur les objets qui nous affectent est l’éducation des -choses.” _Ém._ j., 6. - -[127] “Puisque le concours des trois éducations est nécessaire à leur -perfection, c’est sur celle à laquelle nous ne pouvons rien qu’il faut -diriger les deux autres.” _Ém._ j., 7. - -[128] “Vivre ce n’est pas respirer, c’est agir; c’est faire usage de -nos organes, de nos sens, de nos facultés, de toutes les parties de -nous-mêmes qui nous donnent le sentiment de notre existence. L’homme qui -a le plus vécu n’est pas celui qui a compté le plus d’années, mais celui -qui a le plus senti la vie.” _Ém._ j., 13. - -[129] “On ne connaît point l’enfance: sur les fausses idées qu’on en -a, plus on va, plus on s’égare. Les plus sages s’attachent à ce qu’il -importe aux hommes de savoir, sans considérer ce que les enfants sont -en état d’apprendre. Ils cherchent toujours l’homme dans l’enfant, sans -penser à ce qu’il est avant que d’être homme. Voilà l’êtude à laquelle -je me suis le plus appliqué, afin que, quand toute ma méthode serait -chimérique et fausse, on pût toujours profiter de mes observations. Je -puis avoir très-mal vu ce qu’il faut faire; mais je crois avoir bien vu -le sujet sur lequel on doit opérer. Commencez donc par mieux étudier vos -élèves; car très-assurément vous ne les connaissez point.” - -[130] “La nature veut que les enfants soient enfants avant que d’être -hommes. Si nous voulons pervertir cet ordre, nous produirons des fruits -précoces qui n’auront ni maturité ni saveur, et ne tarderont pas à se -corrompre: nous aurons de jeunes docteurs et de vieux enfants. L’enfance -a des manières de voir, de penser, de sentir, qui lui sont propres; rien -n’est moins sensé que d’y vouloir substituer les nôtres.” _Ém._ ij., 75; -also in _N. H._, 478. - -[131] “Nous ne savons jamais nous mettre à la place des enfants; nous -n’entrons pas dans leurs idées, nous leur prêtons les nôtres; et, suivant -toujours nos propres raisonnements, avec des chaînes de vérités nous -n’entassons qu’extravagances et qu’erreurs dans leur tête.” _Ém._ iij., -185. - -[132] “Je voudrais qu’un homme judicieux nous donnât un traité de l’art -d’observer les enfants. Cet art serait très-important à connaître: les -pères et les maîtres n’en ont pas encore les éléments.” _Ém._ iij., 224. - -[133] Rousseau says: “Full of what is going on in your own head, you do -not see the effect you produce in their head: Pleins de ce qui se passe -dans votre tête vous ne voyez pas l’effet que vous produisez dans la -leur.” (_Ém._ lib. ij., 83.) - -[134] “Or, toutes les études forcées de ces pauvres infortunés tendent -à ces objets entièrement étrangers à leurs esprits. Qu’on juge de -l’attention qu’ils y peuvent donner. Les pédagogues qui nous étalent -en grand appareil les instructions qu’ils donnent à leurs disciples -sont payés pour tenir un autre langage: cependant on voit, par leur -propre conduite, qu’ils pensent exactement comme moi. Car que leur -apprennent-ils enfin? Des mots, encore des mots, et toujours des mots. -Parmi les diverses sciences qu’ils se vantent de leur enseigner, ils se -gardent bien de choisir celles qui leur seraient véritablement utiles, -parce que ce seraient des sciences de choses, et qu’ils n’y réussiraient -pas; mais celles qu’on paraît savoir quand on en sait les termes, le -blason, la géographie, la chronologie, les langues, etc.; toutes études -si loin de l’homme, et surtout de l’enfant, que c’est une merveille si -rien de tout cela lui peut être utile une seule fois en sa vie.” _Ém._ -ij., 100. - -[135] “En quelque étude que ce puisse être, sans l’idée des choses -représentées, les signes représentants ne sont rien. On borne pourtant -toujours l’enfant à ces signes, sans jamais pouvoir lui faire comprendre -aucune des choses qu’ils représentent.” _Ém._ ij., 102. - -[136] “Non, si la nature donne au cerveau d’un enfant cette souplesse -qui le rend propre à recevoir toutes sortes d’impressions, ce n’est pas -pour qu’on y grave des noms de rois, des dates, des termes de blason, -de sphère, de géographie, et tous ces mots sans aucun sens pour son âge -et sans aucune utilité pour quelque âge que ce soit, dont on accable sa -triste et stérile enfance; mais c’est pour que toutes les idées qu’il -peut concevoir et qui lui sont utiles, toutes celles qui se rapportent à -son bonheur et doivent l’éclairer un jour sur ses devoirs, s’y tracent -de bonne heure en caractères ineffaçables, et lui servent à se conduire -pendant sa vie d’une manière convenable à son être et à ses facultés.” -_Ém._ ij., 105; also _N. H._, P. v., L. 3. - -Sans étudier dans les livres, l’espèce de mémoire que peut avoir un -enfant ne reste pas pour cela oisive; tout ce qu’il voit, tout ce qu’il -entend le frappe, et il s’en souvient; il tient registre en lui-même des -actions, des discours des hommes; et tout ce qui l’environne est le livre -dans lequel, sans y songer, il enrichit continuellement sa mémoire, en -attendant que son jugement puisse en profiter. C’est dans le choix de -ces objets, c’est dans le soin de lui présenter sans cesse ceux qu’il -peut connaître, et de lui cacher ceux qu’il doit ignorer, que consiste le -véritable art de cultiver en lui cette première faculté; et c’est par là -qu’il faut tâcher de lui former un magasin de connaissances qui servent à -son éducation durant sa jeunesse, et à sa conduite dans tous les temps. -Cette méthode, il est vrai, ne forme point de petits prodiges et ne fait -pas briller les gouvernantes et les précepteurs; mais elle forme des -hommes judicieux, robustes, sains de corps et d’entendement, qui, sans -s’être fait admirer étant jeunes, se font honorer étant grands. - -[137] “L’activité défaillante se concentre dans le cœur du vieillard; -dans celui de l’enfant elle est surabondante et s’étend au dehors; il se -sent, pour ainsi dire, assez de vie pour animer tout ce qui l’environne. -Qu’il fasse ou qu’il défasse, il n’importe; il suffit qu’il change l’état -des choses, et tout changement est une action. Que s’il semble avoir plus -de penchant à détruire, ce n’est point par méchanceté, c’est que l’action -qui forme est toujours lente, et que celle qui détruit, étant plus -rapide, convient mieux à sa vivacité.” _Ém._ j., 47. - -[138] It would be difficult to find a man more English, in a good sense, -than the present Lord Derby or, whether we say it in praise or dispraise, -a man less like Rousseau. So it is interesting to find him in agreement -with Rousseau in condemning the ordinary restraints of the school-room. -“People are beginning to find out what, if they would use their own -observation more, and not follow one another like sheep, they would have -found out long ago, that it is doing positive harm to a young child, -mental and bodily harm, to keep it learning or pretending to learn, -the greater part of the day. Nature says to a child, ‘Run about,’ the -schoolmaster says, ‘Sit still;’ and as the schoolmaster can punish on the -spot, and Nature only long afterwards, he is obeyed, and health and brain -suffer.”—_Speech in 1864._ - -[139] All this is very crude, and so is the artifice by which Julie in -the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ entraps her son into learning to read. No doubt -Rousseau is right when he says that where there is a desire to read the -power is sure to come. But “reading” is one thing in the lives of the -labouring classes to whom it means reading aloud in school, and quite -another in families of literary tastes and habits with whom the range of -thought is in a great measure dependent on books. In such families the -children learn to read as surely as they learn to talk. They mostly have -access to books which they read to themselves for pleasure; and of course -it is absurdly untrue to say that they learn nothing but words and do not -think. In my opinion it may be questioned whether the world of fiction -into which their reading gives them the _entrée_ does not withdraw them -too much from the actual world in which they live. The elders find it -very convenient when the child can always be depended on to amuse himself -with a book; but noise and motion contribute more to health of body and -perhaps of mind also. While children of well-to-do parents often read too -much, the children of our schools “under government” hardly get a notion -what reading is. In these schools “reading” always stands for vocal -reading, and the power and the habit of using books for pleasure or for -knowledge (other than verbal) are little cultivated. - -[140] “Il veut tout toucher, tout manier; ne vous opposez point à -cette inquiétude; elle lui suggère un apprentissage très-nécessaire. -C’est ainsi qu’il apprend à sentir la chaleur, le froid, la dureté, la -mollesse, la pesanteur, la légèreté des corps; à juger de leur grandeur, -de leur figure et de toutes leurs qualités sensibles, en regardant, -palpant, écoutant, surtout en comparant la vue au toucher, en estimant à -l’œil la sensation qu’ils feraient sous ses doigts.” _Ém._ j., 43. - -[141] “Voyez un chat entrer pour la première fois dans une chambre: il -visite, il regarde, il flaire, il ne reste pas un moment en repos, il -ne se fie à rien qu’après avoir tout examiné, tout connu. Ainsi fait un -enfant commençant à marcher, et entrant pour ainsi dire dans l’espace -du monde. Toute la différence est qu’à la vue, commune à l’enfant et au -chat, le premier joint, pour observer, les mains que lui donna la nature, -et l’autre l’odorat subtil dont elle l’a doué. Cette disposition, bien ou -mal cultivée, est ce qui rend les enfants adroits ou lourds, pesants ou -dispos, étourdis ou prudents. Les premiers mouvements naturels de l’homme -étant donc de se mesurer avec tout ce qui l’environne, et d’éprouver -dans chaque objet qu’il aperçoit toutes les qualités sensibles qui -peuvent se rapporter à lui, sa première étude est une sorte de physique -expérimentale relative à sa propre conservation, et dont on le détourne -par des études spéculatives avant qu’il ait reconnu sa place ici-bas. -Tandis que ses organes délicats et flexibles peuvent s’ajuster aux corps -sur lesquels ils doivent agir, tandis que ses sens encore purs sont -exempts d’illusion, c’est le temps d’exercer les uns et les autres aux -fonctions qui leur sont propres; c’est le temps d’apprendre à connaître -les rapports sensibles que les choses ont avec nous. Comme tout ce qui -entre dans l’entendement humain y vient par les sens, la première raison -de l’homme est une raison sensitive; c’elle qui sert de base à la raison -intellectuelle: nos premiers maîtres de philosophie sont nos pieds, nos -mains, nos yeux. Substituer des livres à tout cela, ce n’est pas nous -apprendre à raisonner, c’est nous apprendre à nous servir de la raison -d’autrui; c’est nous apprendre à beaucoup croire, et à ne jamais rien -savoir. Pour exercer un art, il faut commencer par s’en procurer les -instruments; et, pour pouvoir employer utilement ces instruments, il -faut les faire assez solides pour résister à leur usage. Pour apprendre -à penser, il faut donc exercer nos membres, nos sens, nos organes, qui -sont les instruments de notre intelligence; et pour tirer tout le parti -possible de ces instruments, il faut que le corps, qui les fournit, soit -robuste et sain. Ainsi, loin que la véritable raison de l’homme se forme -indépendamment du corps, c’est la bonne constitution du corps qui rend -les opérations de l’esprit faciles et sûres.” _Ém._ ij., 123. - -[142] “Exercer les sens n’est pas seulement en faire usage, c’est -apprendre à bien juger par eux, c’est apprendre, pour ainsi dire, à -sentir; car nous ne savons ni toucher, ni voir, ni entendre, que comme -nous avons appris. Il y a un exercice purement naturel et mécanique, qui -sert à rendre le corps robuste sans donner aucune prise au jugement: -nager, courir, sauter, fouetter un sabot, lancer des pierres; tout cela -est fort bien: mais n’avons-nous que des bras et des jambes? n’avons-nous -pas aussi des yeux, des oreilles? et ces organes sont-ils superflus à -l’usage des premiers? N’exercez donc pas seulement les forces, exercez -tous les sens qui les dirigent; tirez de chacun d’eux tout le parti -possible, puis vérifiez l’impression de l’un par l’autre. Mesurez, -comptez, pesez, comparez.” _Ém._ ij., 133. - -[143] _E.g._—What can be better than this about family life? “L’attrait -de la vie domestique est le meilleur contrepoison des mauvaises mœurs. Le -tracas des enfants qu’on croit importun devient agréable; il rend le père -et la mère plus nécessaires, plus chers l’un à l’autre; il resserre entre -eux le lien conjugal. Quand la famille est vivante et animée, les soins -domestiques font la plus chère occupation de la femme et le plus doux -amusement du mari. Ainsi de ce seul abus corrigé résulterait bientôt une -réforme générale; bientôt la nature aurait repris tous ses droits. Qu’une -fois les femmes redeviennent mères bientôt les hommes redeviendront pères -et maris.” _Ém._ j., 17. Again he says in a letter quoted by Saint-Marc -Girardin (ij., 121)—“L’habitude la plus douce qui puisse exister est -celle de la vie domestique qui nous tient plus près de nous qu’aucune -autre.” We may say of Rousseau what Émile says of the Corsair:—“Il savait -à fond toute la morale; il n’y avait que la pratique qui lui manquât.” -(_Ém. et S._ 636). And yet he himself testifies:—“Nurses and mothers -become attached to children by the cares they devote to them; it is the -exercise of the social virtues that carries the love of humanity to -the bottom of our hearts; it is in doing good that one becomes good; I -know no experience more certain than this: Les nourrices, les mères, -s’attachent aux enfants par les soins qu’elles leur rendent; l’exercice -des vertus sociales porte au fond des cœurs l’amour de l’humanité; c’est -en faisant le bien qu’on devient bon; je ne connais point de pratique -plus sure.” _Ém._ iv., 291. - -[144] Elsewhere he asserts in his fitful way that there is inborn in the -heart of man a feeling of what is just and unjust. Again, after all his -praise of negation he contradicts himself, and says: “I do not suppose -that he who does not need anything can love anything; and I do not -suppose that he who does not love anything can be happy: Je ne conçois -pas que celui qui n’a besoin de rien puisse aimer quelque chose; je ne -conçois pas que celui qui n’aime rien puisse être heureux.” _Ém._ iv., -252. - -[145] This part of Rousseau’s scheme is well discussed by Saint-Marc -Girardin (_J. J. Rousseau_, vol. ij.). The following passage is striking: -“How is it that Madame Necker-Saussure understood the child better -than Rousseau did? She saw in the child two things, a creation and a -ground-plan, something finished and something begun, a perfection which -prepares the way for another perfection, a child and a man. God, Who has -put together human life in several pieces, has willed, it is true, that -all these pieces should be related to each other; but He has also willed -that each of them should be complete in itself, so that every stage of -life has what it needs as the object of that period, and also what it -needs to bring in the period that comes next. Wonderful union of aims and -means which shews itself at every step in creation! In everything there -is aim and also means, everything exists for itself and also for that -which lies beyond it! (Tout est but et tout est moyen; tout est absolu et -tout est relatif.)” _J. J. R._, ij., 151. - -[146] “Je n’aime point les explications en discours; les jeunes gens y -font peu d’attention et ne les retiennent guère. Les choses! les choses! -Je ne répéterai jamais assez que nous donnons trop de pouvoir aux mots: -avec notre éducation babillarde nous ne faisons que des babillards.” -_Ém._ iij., 198. - -[147] “Forcé d’apprendre de lui-même, il use de sa raison et non de celle -d’autrui; car, pour ne rien donner à l’opinion, il ne faut rien donner -à l’autorité; et la plupart de nos erreurs nous viennent bien moins de -nous que des autres. De cet exercice continuel il doit résulter une -vigueur d’esprit semblable à celle qu’on donne au corps par le travail et -par la fatigue. Un autre avantage est qu’on n’avance qu’à proportion de -ses forces. L’esprit, non plus que le corps, ne porte que ce qu’il peut -porter. Quand l’entendement s’approprie les choses avant de les déposer -dans la mémoire, ce qu’il en tire ensuite est à lui: au lieu qu’en -surchargeant la mémoire, à son insu, on s’expose à n’en jamais rien tirer -qui lui soit propre.” _Ém._ iij., 235. - -[148] “Sans contredit on prend des notions bien plus claires et bien -plus sûres des choses qu’on apprend ainsi de soi-même, que de celles -qu’on tient des enseignements d’autrui; et, outre qu’on n’accoutume -point sa raison à se soumettre servilement à l’autorité, l’on se rend -plus ingénieux à trouver des rapports, à lier des idées, à inventer des -instruments, que quand, adoptant tout cela tel qu’on nous le donne, nous -laissons affaisser notre esprit dans la nonchalance, comme le corps d’un -homme qui, toujours habillé, chaussé, servi par ses gens et traîné par -ses chevaux, perd à la fin la force et l’usage de ses membres. Boileau -se vantait d’avoir appris à Racine à rimer difficilement. Parmi tant -d’admirables méthodes pour abréger l’étude des sciences, nous aurions -grand besoin que quelqu’un nous en donnât une pour les apprendre avec -effort.” _Ém._ iij., 193. - -[149] I avail myself of the old substantival use of the word _elementary_ -to express its German equivalent _Elementarbuch_. - -[150] “Who has not met with some experience such as _this_? A child with -an active and inquiring mind accustomed to chatter about everything -that interests him is sent to school. In a few weeks his vivacity -is extinguished, his abundance of talk has dried up. If you ask him -about his studies, if you desire him to give you a specimen of what he -has learnt, he repeals to you in a sing-song voice some rule for the -formation of tenses or some recipe for spelling words. Such are the -results of the teaching which should be of all teaching the most fruitful -and the most attractive!” Translated from _Quelques Mots_, &c., by M. -Bréal. - -[151] In these visits he observed how the children suffered from working -in factories. These observations influenced him in after years. - -[152] In these aphorisms Pestalozzi states the main principles at work in -his own mind; but this bare statement is not well suited to communicate -these principles to the minds of others. For most readers the aphorisms -have as little attraction as the enunciations, say, of a book of Euclid -would have for those who knew no geometry. But as his future life was -guided by the principles he has formulated in this paper it seems -necessary for us to bear some of these in mind. - -What he mainly insists upon is that all wise guidance must proceed from -a knowledge of the nature of the creature to be guided; further that -there is a simple wisdom which must direct the course of all men. “The -path of Nature,” says he, “which brings out the powers of men must be -open and plain; and human education to true peace-giving wisdom must -be simple and available for all. Nature brings out all men’s powers -by practice, and their increase springs from _use_.” The powers of -children should be strengthened by exercise on what is close at hand; -and this should be done without hardness or pressure. A forced and rigid -sequence in instruction is not Nature’s method, says he: this would -make men one-sided, and truth would not penetrate freely and softly -into their whole being. The pure feeling for truth grows in a small -area; and human wisdom must be grounded on a perception of our closest -relationships, and must show itself in skilled management of our nearest -concerns. Everything we do against our consciousness of right weakens -our perception of truth and disturbs the purity of our fundamental -conceptions and experiences. On this account all wisdom of man rests -in the strength of a good heart that follows after truth, and all the -blessing of man in the sense of simplicity and innocence. Peace of mind -must be the outcome of right training. To get out of his surroundings -all he needs for life and enjoyment, to be patient, painstaking, and in -every difficulty trustful in the love of the Heavenly Father, this comes -of a man’s true education to wisdom. Nothing concerns the human race -so closely and intimately as—God. “God as Father of thy household, as -source of thy blessing—God as thy Father; in this belief thou findest -rest and strength and wisdom, which no violence nor the grave itself can -overthrow.” Belief in God which is a part of our nature, like the sense -of right and wrong and the feeling we can never quench of what is just -and unjust, must be made the foundation in educating the human race. The -subject of that belief is that God is the Father of men, men are the -children of God. To this divine relationship Pestalozzi refers all human -relationships as those of parent and child, of ruler and subject. The -priest is appointed to declare the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood -of men. - -The only text I have seen is that reprinted by Raumer (_Gesch. d. Päd._). -From Otto Fischer (_Wichtigste Pädagogen_), I learn that this is the -edition of 1807, which differs, at least by omission, from the original -of 1780. - -[153] There are now four parts, first published respectively in 1781, -1783, 1785, and 1787 (O. Fischer). The English translation in two small -vols. (1825) ends with the First Part, but Miss Eva Channing has recently -sought to weld the four parts into one (Boston, U.S.—D.C. Heath & Co.), -and in this form the book seems to me not only very instructive but -very entertaining also. Not many readers who look into it will fail to -reach the end, and few are the books connected with education of which -this could prudently be asserted. “All good teachers should read it with -care,” says Stanley Hall in his Introduction, and if they thus read it -and catch anything of the spirit of Pestalozzi both they and their pupils -will have reason to rejoice. - -[154] In the pages of this Journal Pestalozzi taught that it was “the -domestic virtues which determine the happiness of a nation.” Again he -says: “On the throne and in the cottage man has equal need of religion, -and becomes the most wretched being on the earth if he forget his God.” -“The child at his mother’s breast is weaker and more dependent than any -creature on earth, and yet he already feels the first moral impressions -of love and gratitude.” “_Morality is nothing but a result of the -development of the first sentiments of love and gratitude felt by the -infant._ The first development of the child’s powers should come from his -participation in the work of his home; for this work is what his parents -understand best, what most absorbs their attention, and what they can -best teach. But even if this were not so, work undertaken to supply real -needs would be just as truly the surest foundation of a good education. -_To engage the attention of the child, to exercise his judgment, to -raise his heart to noble sentiments, these I think the chief ends of -education_: and how can these ends be reached so surely as by training -the child as early as possible in the various daily duties of domestic -life?” It would seem then that at this time Pestalozzi was for basing -education on domestic labour and would teach the child to be useful. But -it is hard to see how this principle could always be applied. - -[155] One of these I have already given (_supra_ p. 292). I will give -another, not as by any means one of the best, but as a fit companion to -Rousseau’s “two dogs.” - -“26. THE TWO COLTS. - -“Two colts as like as two eggs, fell into different hands. One was bought -by a peasant whose only thought was to harness it to his plough as soon -as possible: this one turned out a bad horse. The other fell to the lot -of a man who by looking after it well and training it carefully, made a -noble steed of it, strong and mettlesome. Fathers and mothers, if your -children’s faculties are not carefully trained and directed right, they -will become not only useless, but hurtful; and the greater the faculties -the greater the danger.” - -Compare Rousseau: “Just look at those two dogs; they are of the same -litter, they have been brought up and treated precisely alike, they have -never been separated; and yet one of them is sharp, lively, affectionate, -and very intelligent: the other is dull, lumpish, surly, and nobody could -ever teach him anything. Simply a difference of temperament has produced -in them a difference of character, just as a simple difference of our -interior organisation produces in us a difference of mind.” _N. Héloise._ -5me P. Lettre iii. - -[156] Pestalozzi was with the children at Stanz only during the first -half of 1799. - -[157] As Pestalozzi wrote to Gessner (_How Gertrude, &c._): “You -see street-gossip is not always entirely wrong; I really could not -write properly, nor read, nor reckon. But people always jump to wrong -conclusions from such ‘notorious facts.’ At Stanz you saw that I could -teach writing without myself being able to write properly.” He here -anticipates a paradox of Jacotot’s. - -[158] Years afterwards Napoleon, though he could not foresee Sedan, got -a notion that after all there was _something_ in Pestalozzi; and that -the aim of the system was to put the freedom and development of the -individual in the place of the mechanical routine of the old schools, -which tended to produce a mass of dull uniformity. With this aim, as -Guimps says, Napoleon was quite out of sympathy, and whenever the subject -was mentioned he would say, “The Pestalozzians are Jesuits”; thus very -inaccurately expressing an accurate notion that there was more in them -than could be understood at the first glance. - -[159] Pestalozzi had from this country some more discerning visitors, -_e.g._, J. P. Greaves, to whom Pestalozzi addressed _Letters_, which -were translated and published in this country; also Dr. Mayo, who was -at Yverdun with his pupils for three years from 1818 and afterwards -conducted a celebrated Pestalozzian school at Cheam. Dr. Mayo in 1826 -lectured on Pestalozzi’s system at the Royal Institution. Sir Jas. -Kay-Shuttleworth and Mr. Tufnell also drew attention to it in the -“Minutes of Council on Education.” - -[160] The disciple is not above his master, and if parents and teachers -are without sympathy and religious feeling the children will also be -without faith and love. This cannot be urged too strongly on those who -have charge of the young. But there is no test by which we can ascertain -that a master has these essential qualifications. As in the Christian -ministry the unfit can be shut out only by their own consciences. But let -no one think to understand education if he loses sight of what Joseph -Payne has called “Pestalozzi’s simple but profound discovery—the teacher -must have a heart.” “Soul is kindled only by soul,” says Carlyle; “to -_teach_ religion the first thing needful and also the last and only thing -is finding of a man who _has_ religion. All else follows.” - -[161] In 1872, a Congress in which more than 10,000 German elementary -teachers were represented, petitioned the Prussian Government for “the -organization of training schools in accordance with the pedagogic -principles of Pestalozzi, which formerly enjoyed so much favour in -Prussia and so visibly contributed to the regeneration of the country.” - -[162] Did Pestalozzi make due allowance for the system of thought -which every child inherits? Croom Robertson in “How we came by our -Knowledge” (_Nineteenth Century_, No. 1, March, 1877), without mentioning -Pestalozzi, seems to differ from him. Croom Robertson says that “Children -being born into the world are born into society, and are acted on by -overpowering social influences before they have any chance of being -their proper selves.... The words and sentences that fall upon a child’s -ear and are soon upon his lips, express not so much his subjective -experience as the common experience of his kind, which becomes as it were -an objective rule or measure to which his shall conform.... He does, he -must, accept what he is told; and in general he is only too glad to find -his own experience in accordance with it.... We use our incidental, by -which I mean our natural subjective experience, mainly to decipher and -verify the ready-made scheme of knowledge that is given us _en bloc_ with -the words of our mother-tongue” (pp. 117, 118). - -[163] One of the most interesting and most difficult problems in teaching -is this:—How long should the beginner be kept to the rudiments? With -young children, to whom ideas come fast, the main thing is no doubt to -take care that these ideas become distinct and are made “the intellectual -property” of the learners. But after a year or two children will be -impatient to “get on,” and if they seem “marking time” will be bored -and discouraged. Then again in some subjects the elementary parts seem -clear only to those who have a conception of the whole. As Diderot says -in a passage I have seen quoted from _Le Neveu de Rameau_, “Il faut -être profond dans l’art ou dans la science pour en bien posséder les -éléments.” “C’est le milieu et la fin qui éclaircissent les ténèbres du -commencement.” The greatest “coach” in Cambridge used to “rush” his men -through their subjects and then go back again for thorough learning. To -be sure, the “scientific method” suitable for young men differs greatly -from the “heuristic” or “method of investigation,” which is best for -children. (See Joseph Payne’s Lecture on Pestalozzi.) But even with -children we should bear in mind Niemeyer’s caution, “Thoroughness itself -may become superficial by exaggeration; for it may keep too long to a -part and in this way fail to complete and give any notion of the whole” -(Quoted by O. Fischer, _Wichtigste Päd._ 213). - -[164] Nearly 20 years ago (1871) appeared a paper on “Elementary National -Education” in which “John Parkin, M.D.,” advocated making all our -elementary schools industrial, not only for practical purposes, but still -more for the sake of physical education. The paper attracted no notice -at the time, but now we are beginning to see that the body is concerned -in education as well as the mind, and that the mind learns through it -“without book.” The application of this truth will bring about many -changes. - -[165] Herbart, when he visited Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, observed that -though Pestalozzi’s kindness was apparent to all, he took no pains in -his teaching to mix the _dulce_ with the _utile_. He never talked to -the children, or joked, or gave them an anecdote. This, however, did -not surprise Herbart, whose own experience had taught him that when the -subject requires earnest attention the children do not like it the better -for the teacher’s “fun.” “The feeling of clear apprehension,” says he, “I -held to be the only genuine condiment of instruction” (Herbart’s _Päd. -Schriften_, ed. by O. Willmann, j. 89). - -[166] _First_ look to himself, but there may be other causes of failure -as well. The great thing is never to put up contentedly, or even -discontentedly, with failure. In teaching classes of lads from ten to -sixteen years old, when I have found the lessons in any subject were not -going well, I have sometimes taken the class into my confidence, told -them that they no doubt felt as I did that this lesson was a dull one, -and asked them each to put on paper what he considered to be the reasons, -and also to make any suggestions that occurred to him. In this way I have -got some very good hints, and I have always been helped in my effort to -understand how the work seemed to the pupils. Every teacher should make -this effort. As Pestalozzi says, “Could we conceive the indescribable -tedium which must oppress the young mind while the weary hours are slowly -passing away one after another in occupations which it can neither relish -nor understand ... we should no longer be surprised at the remissness of -the schoolboy creeping like snail unwillingly to school” (To G., xxx, -150). - -[167] With Morf’s summing-up it is interesting to compare Joseph Payne’s, -given at the end of his lecture on _Pestalozzi_: - -I. The principles of education are not to be devised _ab extra_; they are -to be sought for in human nature. - -II. This nature is an organic nature—a plexus of bodily, intellectual -and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop -themselves. - -III. The education conducted by the formal educator has both a negative -and a positive side. The negative function of the educator consists -in removing impediments, so as to afford free scope for the learner’s -self-development. His positive function is to stimulate the learner to -the exercise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasion for the -exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the machinery. - -IV. Self-development begins with the impressions received by the mind -from external objects. These impressions (called sensations), when the -mind becomes conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. These -are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and constitute that -elementary knowledge which is the basis of all knowledge. - -V. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under which -the mind educates itself and gains power and independence. - -VI. Practical aptness or faculty, depends more on habits gained by the -assiduous oft-repeated exercise of the learner’s active powers than on -knowledge alone. Knowing and doing (_Wissen und Können_) must, however, -proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including instruction) -is the development of the learner’s powers. - -VII. All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the -learner’s own observation (_Anschauung_) at first hand—on his own -personal experience. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. First -the reality, then the symbol; first the thing, then the word, not _vice -versâ_. - -VIII. That which the learner has gained by his own observation -(_Anschauung_) and which, as a part of his personal experience, is -incorporated with his mind, he _knows_ and can describe or explain in his -own words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accuracy of -his observation, and consequently of his knowledge. - -IX. Personal experience necessitates the advancement of the learner’s -mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which he -can deal with himself, to the more remote; therefore from the concrete -to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known to the -unknown. This is the method of elementary education; the opposite -proceeding—the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching—leads the -mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to particulars, -from the unknown to the known. This latter is the Scientific method—a -method suited only to the advanced learner, who it assumes is already -trained by the Elementary method. - -[168] Most parents do not seem to think with Jean Paul, “If we regard -all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the world -is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse.” -(_Levana_, quoted in Morley’s _Rousseau_.) - -[169] I will quote the first paragraph of this work which is still -considered mental pabulum suited to the digestions of young ladies and -children:— - -“_Name some of the most Ancient Kingdoms._—Chaldēa, Babylonia, Assyria, -China in Asia, and Egypt in Africa. Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, is -supposed to have founded the first of these B.C. 2221, as well as the -famous cities of Babylon and Nineveh; his kingdom being within the -fertile plains of Chaldēa, Chalonītis, and Assyria, was of small extent -compared with the vast empires that afterwards arose from it, but -included several large cities. In the district called Babylonia were the -cities of Babylon, Barsīta, Idicarra, and Vologsia,” &c., &c. - -[170] I shall always feel gratitude and affection for the two old ladies -(sisters) to whom I was entrusted over half a century ago. More truly -Christian women I never met with. But of the science and art of education -they were totally ignorant; and moreover the premises they occupied were -unfit for a school. As all the boys were under ten years old, it will -seem strange, but is alas! too true, that there were vices among them -which are supposed to be unknown to children and which if discovered -would have made the old ladies close their school. The want of subjects -in which the children can take a healthy interest will in a great measure -account for the spread of evil in such schools. On this point some -mistresses and most parents are dangerously ignorant. - -[171] Having watched the “teaching” of pupil-teachers, I find that some -of them (I may say many) never address more than one child at a time, -and never attempt to gain the attention of more than a single child. So, -by a very simple calculation, we can get at the maximum time each child -is “under instruction.” If the pupil-teacher has but three-quarters of -the pupils for whom the Department supposes him “sufficient,” each child -cannot be under instruction _more_ than two minutes in the hour. The rest -of the time the children must sit quiet, or be cuffed if they do not. -What is called “simultaneous” teaching in, say, reading, consists in the -pupil-teacher reading from the book, and as he pronounces each word, the -children shout it after him; but no one except the pupil-teacher knows -the place in the book. - -But perhaps the dangers from employing boys and girls to teach and govern -children are greater morally than intellectually. Whether he report on -it or not, the Inspector has less influence on the moral training than -the youngest pupil-teacher. Channing has well said: “A child compelled -for six hours each day to see the countenance and hear the voice of an -unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher is placed in a school -of vice.” Those who have never taught day after day, week after week, -month after month, little know what demands school-work makes on the -temper and the sense of justice. The harshest tyrants are usually those -who are raised but a little way above those whom they have to control; -and when I think of the pupil-teacher with his forty pupils to keep in -order, I heartily pity both him and them. Is there not too much reason to -fear lest in many cases the school should prove for both what Channing -has well described as “a school of vice”? (R. H. Q. in _Spectator_, 1st -March, 1890.) - -[172] Since the above was written, another “New Code” has appeared -(March, 1890), in which the system of measuring by “passes,” a -system maintained (in spite of the remonstrances of all interested -in _education_) for nearly 30 years, is at length abandoned. We are -certainly travelling, however slowly, away from Mr. Lowe. Far as we are -still from Pestalozzi there seems reason to hope that the distance is -diminishing. - -[173] This short sketch of Froebel’s life is mainly taken, with Messrs. -Black’s permission, from the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, for which I wrote -it. - -[174] This office was first filled by Langethal and afterwards by -Ferdinand Froebel. I learned this at Burgdorf from Herr Pfarrer Heuer, -whose father had himself been Waisenvater. - -[175] For this quotation, and for much besides (as will appear later -on), I am indebted to Mr. H. Courthope Bowen. See his paper _Froebel’s -Education of Man_. - -[176] The educator _as teacher_ has his activity limited, according to -DeGarmo, to these two things; “(1) The _preparation_ of the child’s -mind for a rapid and effective assimilation of new knowledge; (2) The -_presentation_ of the matter of instruction in such order and manner -as will best conduce to the most effective assimilation” (_Essentials -of Method_ by Chas. DeGarmo, Boston, U.S., D. C. Heath, 1889). Besides -this he must make his pupils _use_ their knowledge both new and old, and -reproduce it in fresh connexions. - -[177] “Little children,” says Joseph Payne, “are scarcely ever contented -with simply doing nothing; and their fidgetiness and unrest, which often -give mothers and teachers so much anxiety, are merely the strugglings of -the soul to get, through the body, some employment for its powers. Supply -this want, give them an object to work upon, and you solve the problem. -The divergence and distraction of the faculties cease as they converge -upon the work, and the mind is at rest in its very occupation.” _V. to -German Schools._ - -[178] I entirely agree with Joseph Payne that where the language -spoken is not German, it would be well to discard _Kindergarten_, -_Kindergärtner_, and _Kindergärtnerin_. All who have to do with children -should master some great principles taught by Froebel, but there is no -need for them to learn German or to use German words. The French seem -satisfied with _Jardin d’Enfants_, but we are not likely to be with -_Children-Garden_. _Playschool_ _might_ do. - -[179] Contrast this with what has been said by an eminent thinker of -our time: “No art of equal importance to mankind has been so little -investigated scientifically as the art of teaching.” Sir H. S. Maine, -quoted in J. H. Hoose’s _M. of Teaching_. - -[180] Here Jacotot’s notion of teaching reminds one of the sophism quoted -by Montaigne—“A Westphalia ham makes a man drink. Drink quenches thirst. -Therefore a Westphalia ham quenches thirst.” - -[181] _See_ H. Courthope Bowen on “Connectedness in Teaching” -(_Educational Times_, June, 1890). Mr. Bowen quotes from H. -Spencer—“Knowledge of the lowest kind is _un-unified_ knowledge: science -is _partially unified_ knowledge: philosophy is _completely unified_ -knowledge.” - -[182] As I have said above (p. 89) these methodizers in language-learning -may, with regard to the first stage, be divided into two parties which I -have called _Complete Retainers_ and _Rapid Impressionists_. Two Complete -Retainers, Robertson and Prendergast, have, as it seems to me, made, -since Jacotot, a great advance on his method and that of his predecessor -Ascham. As I have had a good deal of experience with beginners in German, -I will give from an old lecture of mine the main conclusions at which -I have arrived:—“My principle is to attack the most vital part of the -language, and at first to keep the area small, or rather to enlarge -it very slowly; but within that area I want to get as much variety -as possible. The study of a book written in the language should be -carried on _pari passu_ with drill in its common inflexions. Now arises -the question, Should the book be made with the object of teaching the -language, or should it be selected from those written for other purposes? -I see much to be said on either side. The three great facts we have to -turn to account in teaching a language, are these:—first, a few words -recur so constantly that a knowledge of them and grasp of them gives -us a power in the language quite out of proportion to their number; -second, large classes of words admit of many variations of meaning by -inflection, which variations we can understand from analogy; third, -compound words are formed _ad infinitum_ on simple laws, so that the root -word supplies the key to a whole family. Now, if the book is written by -the language-teacher, he has the whole language before him, and he can -make the most of all these advantages. He can use only the important -words of the language; he can repeat them in various connections; he can -bring the main facts of inflection and construction before the learner -in a regular order, which is a great assistance to the memory; he can -give the simple words before introducing words compounded of them; and -he can provide that, when a word occurs for the first time, the learners -shall connect it with its root meaning. A short book securing all these -advantages would, no doubt, be a very useful implement, but I have never -seen such a book. Almost all delectuses, &c., bury the learner with a -pile of new words, under which he feels himself powerless. So far as I -know, the book has yet to be written. And even if it were written, with -the greatest success from a linguistic point of view, it would of course -make no pretension to a meaning. Having myself gone through a course of -Ahn and of Ollendorf, I remember, as a sort of nightmare, innumerable -questions and answers, such as “Have you my thread stockings? No, I have -your worsted stockings.” Still more repulsive are the long sentences of -Mr. Prendergast:—“How much must I give to the cabdriver to take my father -to the Bank in New Street before his second breakfast, and to bring him -home again before half-past two o’clock?” I cannot forget Voltaire’s -_mot_, which has a good deal of truth in it,—“Every way is good but -the tiresome way.” And most of the books written for beginners are -inexpressibly tiresome. No doubt it will be said, “Unless you adopt the -rapid-impressionist plan, any book _must_ be tiresome. What is a meaning -at first becomes no meaning by frequent repetition.” This, however, is -not altogether true. I myself have taught Niebuhr’s _Heroengeschichten_ -for years, and I know some chapters by heart; but the old tales of Jason -and Hercules as they are told in Niebuhr’s simple language do not bore me -in the least. - - “Ein Begriff muss bei dem Worte sein,” - -says the Student in Faust; and a notion—a very pleasing notion, -too—remains to me about every word in the _Heroengeschichten_. - -These, then, would be my books to be worked at the same time by a -beginner, say in German:—A book for drill in the principal inflexions, -followed by the main facts about gender, &c., and a book like the -_Heroengeschichten_. This I would have prepared very much after the -Robertsonian manner. It should be printed, as should also the Primer, -in good-sized Roman type; though, in an appendix, some of it should be -reprinted in German type. The book should be divided into short lessons. -A translation of each lesson should be given in parallel columns. Then -should come a vocabulary, in which all useful information should be -given about the really important words, _the unimportant words being -neglected_. Finally should come _variations_, and exercises in the -lessons; and in these the important words of that and previous lessons -should be used exclusively. The exercises should be such as the pupils -could do in writing out of school, and _vivâ voce_ in school. They should -be very easy—real exercises in what is already known, not a series of -linguistic puzzles. The object of the exercises, and also of a vast -number of _vivâ voce_ questions, should be to accustom the pupil to use -his knowledge _readily_. (But some teachers, young teachers especially, -are always _cross_-examining, and seem to themselves to fail when their -questions are answered without difficulty.) The ear, the voice, the hand, -should all be practised on each lesson. When the construing is known, -transcription of the German is not by any means to be despised. A good -variety of transcription is, for the teacher to write the German clause -by clause on the black-board, and rub out each clause before the pupils -begin to write it. Then a known piece may be prepared for dictation. In -reading this as dictation, the master may introduce small variations, to -teach his pupils to keep their ears open. He may, as another exercise, -read the German aloud, and stop here and there for the boys to give the -English of the last sentence read; or he may read to them either the -exact German in the book or small variations on it, and make the pupils -translate _vivâ voce_, clause by clause. He may then ask questions on the -piece in German and require answers in English. - -For exercises, there are many devices by which the pupil may be trained -to observation, and also be confirmed in his knowledge of back lessons. -The great teacher, F. A. Wolf, used to make his own children ascertain -how many times such and such a word occurred in such and such pages. -As M. Bréal says, children are collectors by nature; and, acting on -this hint, we might say, “Write in column all the dative cases on pages -_a_ to _c_, and give the English and the corresponding nominatives.” -Or, “Copy from those pages all the accusative prepositions with the -accusatives after them.” Or, “Write out the past participles, with -their infinitives.” Or, “Translate such and such sentences, and explain -them with reference to the context.” Or, questions may be asked on the -subject-matter of the book. There is no end to the possible varieties of -such exercises. - -As soon as they get any feeling of the language, the pupils should learn -by heart some easy poetry in it. I should recommend their learning the -English of the piece first, and then getting the German _vivâ voce_ from -the teacher. To quicken the German in their minds, I think it is well -to give them in addition a German prose version, using almost the same -words. Variations of the more important sentences should be learnt at the -same time. - -In all these suggestions you will see what I am aiming at. I wish the -learner to get a feeling of, and a power over, the main words of the -language and the machinery in which they are employed. - -[183] I append in a note a passage from the old edition of this book -referring to the Cambridge man of forty years ago. “The typical Cambridge -man studies mathematics, not because he likes mathematics, or derives any -pleasure from the perception of mathematical truth, still less with the -notion of ever using his knowledge; but either because, if he is “a good -man,” he hopes for a fellowship, or because, if he cannot aspire so high, -he considers reading the thing to do, and finds a satisfaction in mental -effort just as he does in a constitutional to the Gogmagogs. When such a -student takes his degree, he is by no means a highly cultivated man; but -he is not the sort of man we can despise for all that. He has in him, to -use one of his own metaphors, a considerable amount of _force_, which -may be applied in any direction. He has great power of concentration and -sustained mental effort even on subjects which are distasteful to him. In -other words, his mind is under the control of his will, and he can bring -it to bear promptly and vigorously on anything put before him. He will -sometimes be half through a piece of work, while an average Oxonian (as -we Cambridge men conceive of him at least) is thinking about beginning. -But his training has taught him to value mental force without teaching -him to care about its application. Perhaps he has been working at the -gymnasium, and has at length succeeded in “putting up” a hundredweight. -In learning to do this, he has been acquiring strength for its own sake. -He does not want to put up hundredweights, but simply to be able to put -them up, and his reward is the consciousness of power. Now the tripos -is a kind of competitive examination in putting up weights. The student -who has been training for it, has acquired considerable mental vigour, -and when he has put up his weight he falls back on the consciousness of -strength which he seldom thinks of using. Having put up the heavier, he -despises the lighter weights. He rather prides himself on his ignorance -of such things as history, modern languages, and English literature. He -“can get those up in a few evenings,” whenever he wants them. He reminds -me, indeed, of a tradesman who has worked hard to have a large balance at -his banker’s. This done, he is satisfied. He has neither taste nor desire -for the things which make wealth valuable; but when he sees other people -in the enjoyment of them, he hugs himself with the consciousness that he -can write a cheque for such things whenever he pleases.” - -[184] On this interesting subject I will quote three men who said -nothing _inepte_—De Morgan, Helps, and the first Sir James Stephen. De -Morgan, speaking of Jacotot’s plan, wrote:—“There is much truth in the -assertion that new knowledge hooks on easily to a little of the old -thoroughly mastered. The day is coming when it will be found out that -crammed erudition got up for examination, does not cast out any hooks -for more.” (_Budget of Paradoxes_, p. 3.) Elsewhere he says:—“When the -student has occupied his time in learning a moderate portion of many -different things, what has he acquired—extensive knowledge or useful -habits? Even if he can be said to have varied learning, it will not long -be true of him, for nothing flies so quickly as half-digested knowledge; -and when this is gone, there remains but a slender portion of useful -power. A small quantity of learning quickly evaporates from a mind which -never held any learning except in small quantities; and the intellectual -philosopher can perhaps explain the following phenomenon—that men who -have given deep attention to one or more liberal studies, can learn to -the end of their lives, and are able to retain and apply very small -quantities of other kinds of knowledge; while those who have never learnt -much of any one thing seldom acquire new knowledge after they attain to -years of maturity, and frequently lose the greater part of that which -they once possessed.” - -Sir Arthur Helps in _Reading_ (_Friends in C._) says:—“All things are so -connected together that a man who knows one subject well, cannot, if he -would, have failed to have acquired much besides; and that man will not -be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on than he -who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however, -is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter; for what I would aim at -producing not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in -itself—is always growing. And anybody will confirm this who in his own -case has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon; for he -must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate -itself to, his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in -society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something -almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its -share in whatever is going on.” - -In his Lecture on _Desultory and Systematic Reading_, Sir James Stephen -said:—“Learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accumulations of -human knowledge are not so many detached masses. They are all connected -parts of one great system of truth, and though that system be infinitely -too comprehensive for any one of us to compass, yet each component member -of it bears to every other component member relations which each of us -may, in his own department of study, search out and discover for himself. -A man is really and soundly learned in exact proportion to the number and -to the importance of those relations which he has thus carefully examined -and accurately understood.” - -[185] This essay, which was written nearly twenty-five years ago, I leave -as it stands. I take some credit to myself for having early recognised -the importance of a book now famous. (June, 1890.) - -[186] This proposition has been ably discussed by President W. H. Payne. -_Contributions to the Science of Education._ “Education Values.” - -[187] “The brewer,” as Mr. Spencer himself tells us, “if his business is -very extensive, finds it pay to keep a chemist on the premises”—pay a -good deal better, I suspect, than learning chemistry at school. - -[188] Helps, who by taste and talent is eminently literary, put in this -claim for science more than 20 [now nearer 50] years ago. “The higher -branches of method cannot be taught at first; but you may begin by -teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting, and -weighing facts are some of the processes by which method is taught.... -Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt; but -one or two great branches of science must be accurately known.” (_Friends -in Council, Education._) Helps, though by his delightful style he never -gives the reader any notion of over compression, has told us more truth -about education in a few pages than one sometimes meets with in a -complete treatise. - -[189] J. S. Mill (who by the way, would leave history entirely to private -reading, _Address at St. Andrews_, p. 21), has pointed out that “there -is not a fact in history which is not susceptible of as many different -explanations as there are possible theories of human affairs,” and -that “history is not the foundation but the verification of the social -science.” But he admits that “what we know of former ages, like what -we know of foreign nations, is, with all its imperfectness, of much -use, by correcting the narrowness incident to personal experience.” -(Dissertations, Vol. I, p. 112.) - -[190] It is difficult to treat seriously the arguments by which Mr. -Spencer endeavours to show that a knowledge of science is necessary for -the practice or the enjoyment of the fine arts. Of course, the highest -art of every kind is based on science, that is, on truths which science -takes cognizance of and explains; but it does not therefore follow -that “without science there can be neither perfect production nor full -appreciation.” Mr. Spencer tells us of mistakes which John Lewis and -Rossetti have made for want of science. Very likely; and had those -gentlemen devoted much of their time to science we should never have -heard of their blunders—or of their pictures either. If they were to -paint a piece of woodwork, a carpenter might, perhaps, detect something -amiss in the mitring. If they painted a wall, a bricklayer might point -out that with their arrangement of stretchers and headers the wall would -tumble down for want of a proper bond. But even Mr. Spencer would not -wish them to spend their time in mastering the technicalities of every -handicraft, in order to avoid these inaccuracies. It is the business -of the painter to give us form and colour as they reveal themselves to -the eye, not to prepare illustrations of scientific text-books. The -physical sciences, however, are only part of the painter’s necessary -equipment, according to Mr. Spencer. “He must also understand how the -minds of spectators will be affected by the several peculiarities of his -work—a question in psychology!” Still more surprising is Mr. Spencer’s -dictum about poetry. “Its rhythm, its strong and numerous metaphors, -its hyperboles, its violent inversions, are simply exaggerations of -the traits of excited speech. To be good, therefore, poetry must pay -attention to those laws of nervous action which excited speech obeys.” It -is difficult to see how poetry can pay attention to anything. The poet, -of course must not violate those laws, but, if he _has paid attention_ -to them in composing, he will do well to present his MS. to the local -newspaper. [It seems the class is not extinct of whom Pope wrote:— - - “Some drily plain, without invention’s aid - “Write dull receipts how poems may be made.” - - _Essay on Criticism._] - -[191] Speaking of law, medicine, engineering, and the industrial arts, -J. S. Mill remarks: “Whether those whose speciality they are will learn -them as a branch of intelligence or as a mere trade, and whether having -learnt them, they will make a wise and conscientious use of them, or -the reverse, depends less on the manner in which they are taught their -profession, than upon _what sort of mind they bring to it—what kind -of intelligence and of conscience the general system of education has -developed in them_.”—Address at St. Andrews, p. 6. - -[192] “Comme vous n’avez pas su ou comme vous n’avez pas voulu atteindre -la pensée de l’enfant, vous n’avez aucune action sur son développement -moral et intellectuel. Vous êtes le maître de latin et de grec.” Bréal. -_Quelques Mots, &c._, p. 243. - -[193] Mr. Spencer does not mention this principle in his enumeration, -but, no doubt, considers he implies it. - -[194] “Si l’on partageait toute la science humaine en deux parties, l’une -commune à tous les hommes, l’autre particulière aux savants, celle-ci -serait très-petite en comparaison de l’autre. Mais nous ne songeons guère -aux acquisitions générales, parce qu’elles se font sans qu’on y pense, et -même avant l’âge de raison; que d’ailleurs le savoir ne se fait remarquer -que par ses différences, et que, comme dans les équations d’algèbre, les -quantités communes se comptent pour rien.”—_Émile_, livre i. - -[195] This is well said in Dr. John Brown’s admirable paper _Education -through the Senses_. (Horæ Subsecivæ, pp. 313, 314.) - -[196] After remarking on the wrong order in which subjects are taught, he -continues, “What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwartings, -and a coerced attention to books, what with the mental confusion produced -by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and in each of -them giving generalisations before the facts of which they are the -generalisations, what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient of -others’ ideas and not in the least leading him to be an active inquirer -or self-instructor, and what with taxing the faculties to excess, there -are very few minds that become as efficient as they might be.” - -[197] A class of boys whom I once took in Latin Delectus denied, with -the utmost confidence, when I questioned them on the subject, that there -were any such things in English as verbs and substantives. On another -occasion, I saw a poor boy of nine or ten caned, because, when he had -said that _proficiscor_ was a deponent verb, he could not say what a -deponent verb was. Even if he had remembered the inaccurate grammar -definition expected of him, “A deponent verb is a verb with a passive -form and an active meaning,” his comprehension of _proficiscor_ would -have been no greater. It is worth observing that, even when offending -grievously in great matters against the principle of connecting fresh -knowledge with the old, teachers are sometimes driven to it in small. -They find that it is better for boys to see that _lignum_ is like -_regnum_, and _laudare_ like _amare_, than simply to learn that _lignum_ -is of the Second Declension, and _laudare_ of the First Conjugation. If -boys had to learn by a mere effort of memory the particular declension -or conjugation of Latin words before they were taught anything about -declensions and conjugations, this would be as sensible as the method -adopted in some other instances, and the teachers might urge, as usual, -that the information would come in useful afterwards. - -[198] Mr. Spencer and Professor Tyndall appeal to the results of -experience as justifying a more rational method of teaching. Speaking of -geometrical deductions, Mr. Spencer says: “It has repeatedly occurred -that those who have been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill—by its -abstract formulas, its wearisome tasks, its cramming—have suddenly had -their intellects roused by thus ceasing to make them passive recipients, -and inducing them to become active discoverers. The discouragement -caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, and -sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises -a revolution of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find -themselves incompetent; they too can do something. And gradually, as -success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they -attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage insuring -conquest.” - -[199] On this subject I can quote the authority of a great observer -of the mind—no less a man, indeed, than Wordsworth. He speaks of the -“grand elementary principal of pleasure, by which man knows, and feels, -and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy,” he continues, “but what is -propagated by pleasure—I would not be misunderstood—but wherever we -sympathise with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and -carried on by subtile combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, -that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular -facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by -pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist, and mathematician, -whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have to struggle with, -know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the -anatomist’s knowledge may be connected, he feels that his knowledge is -pleasure, and _when he has no pleasure he has no knowledge_.”—Preface to -second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_. So Wordsworth would have agreed with -Tranio: (_T. of Shrew_, j. 1.) - - “No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en; - In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.” - -[200] This remark, I am glad to say, is much less true now (1890) than -when first published. Indeed some purveyors of books for children are -getting to rely too exclusively on the pictures, just as I have noticed -that an organ-grinder with a monkey seldom or never has a good organ. Of -large pictures for class teaching, some of the best I have seen (both for -history and natural history) are published by the S.P.C.K. - -[201] Tillich’s boxes of bricks (sold by the B’ham Midland Educational -Supply Company, and by Arnold, Briggate, Leeds), are very useful for -“intuitive” arithmetic: for higher stages one might say the same of W. -Wooding’s “Decimal Abacus” with vertical wires. - -[202] The grammar question is still a perplexing one. There are -Inspectors who require children (as I once heard in a remote country -school) to distinguish “7 kinds of adverbs.” Then we have children -discriminating after the fashion of one of my own pupils, (I quote from -a grammar paper,) “Parse _it_.” “_It_ is a prepreition. Almost all small -words are prepreitions.” In such cases it is very hard indeed to find -any common ground for the minds of the old and the young. The true way I -believe is to lead the young to make their own observations. The way is -very very slow, but it developes power. I have lately seen an interesting -little book on these lines, called _Language Work_ by Dr. De Garmo -(Bloomington, Ill., U.S.A.) - -[203] Books for a beginner should contain a little matter in much space, -and, as they are usually written, they contain much matter in a little -space. Nothing can be truer than the saying of Lakanal, “L’abrégé est le -contraire de l’éléméntaire: That which is abridged is just the opposite -of that which is elementary.” When shall we learn what seems obvious -in itself and what is taught us by the great authorities? “Epitome,” -says Ascham, “is good privately for himself that doth work it, but ill -commonly for all others that use other men’s labour therein. A silly -poor kind of study, not unlike to the doing of those poor folk which -neither till, nor sow, nor reap themselves, but glean by stealth upon -other’s grounds. Such have empty barns for dear years.” (_School Master_, -Book ij.) Bacon says (_De Aug._, lib. vj., cap. iv.), “Ad pædagogicam -quod attinet brevissimum foret dictu.... Illud imprimis consuluerim ut -caveatur a compendiis: Not much about pedagogics.... My chief advice is, -keep clear of compendiums.” And yet “the table of contents” method which -I suggested in irony I afterwards found proposed in all seriousness in -an announcement of Dr. J. F. Bright’s _English History_: “The marginal -analysis has been collected at the beginning of the volume so as to -form an abstract of the history _suitable for the use of those who are -beginning the study_.” - -I would rather listen to Oliver Goldsmith: “In history, such stories -alone should be laid before them as might catch the imagination: -instead of this, they are too frequently obliged to toil through the -four Empires, as they are called, where their memories are burthened -by a number of disgusting names that destroy all their future relish -for our best historians.” (Letter on _Education_ in _the Bee_: a letter -containing so much new truth that Goldsmith in re-publishing it had to -point out that it had appeared before Rousseau’s _Emile_.) A modern -authority on education has come to the same conclusion as Goldsmith. -“The first teaching in history will not give dates, but will show -the learner men and actions likely to make an impression on him. Der -erste Geschichtsunterricht wird nicht Jahreszahlen geben, sondern -eindrucksvolle Personen und Thaten vorführen.” (L. Wiese’s _Deutsche -Bildungsfragen_, 1871.) - -[204] Dr. Jas. Donaldson has well said of the educator:—“The most -unguarded of his acts, those which come from the depth of his nature, -uncalled for and unbidden, are the actions which have the most powerful -influence.” _Chambers’ Information_ sub v. _Education_, p. 565. - -[205] - - “That you are wife - To so much bloated flesh _as scarce hath soul_ - _Instead of salt to keep it sweet_, I think - Will ask no witnesses to prove.” - - BEN JONSON: _The Devil is an Ass_, Act i. sc. 3. - -[206] I fortify myself with the following quotation from the _Book about -Dominies_ by “Ascott Hope” (Hope Moncrieff). He says that a school of -from twenty to a hundred boys is too large to be altogether under the -influence of one man, and too small for the development of a healthy -condition of public opinion among the boys themselves. “In a community -of fifty boys, there will always be found so many bad ones who will be -likely to carry things their own way. Vice is more unblushing in small -societies than in large ones. _Fifty boys will be more easily leavened -by the wickedness of five, than five hundred by that of fifty._ It would -be too dangerous an ordeal to send a boy to a school where sin appears -fashionable, and where, if he would remain virtuous, he must shun his -companions. There may be middle-sized schools which derive a good and -healthy tone from the moral strength of their masters or the good example -of a certain set of boys, but I doubt if there are many. Boys are so -easily led to do right or wrong, that we should be very careful at least -to set the balance fairly” (p. 167); and again he says (p. 170), “The -moral tone of a middle-sized school will be peculiarly liable to be at -the mercy of a set of bold and bad boys.” - -[207] As I have been thought to express myself too strongly on this -point, I will give a quotation from a master whose opinion will go far -with all who know him. “The moral tone of the school is made what it -is, not nearly so much by its rules and regulations, or its masters, -as by the leading characters among the boys. They mainly determine the -public opinion amongst their schoolfellows—their personal influence is -incalculable.” Rev. D. Edwardes, of Denstone. - -[208] About Preparatory Schools I find I am at issue with my friend the -Head Master of Harrow (See _Public Schools_, by Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, in -_Contemporary R._, May, 1890). I do indeed incline to his opinion that -very young boys should not be at a public school, but I cannot agree -that they should be at a middle-sized boarding school. I hold that they -should live in a _family_ (their own if possible) and go to a day school. -Day Schools have now been provided for girls, but for young boys they do -not seem in demand. English parents who can afford it send their sons to -boarding schools from eight years old onwards. This seems to me a great -mistake of theirs. - -[209] “What is education? It is that which is imbibed from the moral -atmosphere which a child breathes. It is the involuntary and unconscious -language of its parents and of all those by whom it is surrounded, and -not their set speeches and set lectures. It is the words which the young -hear fall from their seniors when the speakers are off their guard: -and it is by these unconscious expressions that the child interprets -the hearts of its parents. That is education.”—Drummond’s _Speeches in -Parliament_. - -[210] In what I have said on this subject, the incompleteness which is -noticeable enough in the preceding essays, has found an appropriate -climax. I see, too, that if anyone would take the trouble, the little I -have said might easily be misinterpreted. I am well aware, however, that -if the young mind will not readily assimilate sharply defining religious -formulæ, still less will it feel at home among the “immensities” and -“veracities.” The great educating force of Christianity I believe to be -due to this, that it is not a set of abstractions or vague generalities, -but that in it God reveals Himself to us in a Divine Man, and raises us -through our devotion to Him. I hold, therefore, that religious teaching -for the young should neither be vague nor abstract. Mr. Froude, in -commenting on the use made of hagiology in the Church of Rome, has shown -that we lose much by not following the Bible method of instruction. (See -_Short Studies: Lives of the Saints_, and _Representative Men_.) - -[211] This theory of the educator’s task which makes him a disposer or -director of influence rather than a teacher, led Locke to decry our -public schools, for in them the traditions and tone of the school seem -the source of influence, and the masters are to all appearance mainly -teachers. Locke’s own words are these:—“The difference is great between -two or three pupils in the same house and three or four score boys lodged -up and down; for let the master’s industry and skill be never so great, -it is impossible he should have fifty or a hundred scholars under his eye -any longer than they are in the school together, nor can it be expected -that he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books; -the forming of their minds and manners requiring a constant attention -and particular application to every single boy which is impossible in a -numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study -and correct everyone’s particular defects and wrong inclinations) when -the lad was to be left to himself or the prevailing infection of his -fellows the greatest part of the four-and-twenty hours.” But the educator -who considers himself a director of influences must remember that he -is not the only force. The boy’s companions are a force at least as -great; and if he were brought up in private on Locke’s system, he would -be entirely without a kind of influence much more valuable than Locke -seems to think—the influence of boy companions, and of the traditions of -a great school. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that our public -schools used to be, and perhaps are still to some extent, under-mastered, -and that the masters should not be the mere teachers which, from overwork -and other causes, they often tend to become. The consequence has been -that the real education of the boys has in a great measure passed out of -their hands. What has been the result? A long succession of able teachers -have aimed at giving literary instruction and making their pupils -classical scholars. Both manners and bodily training have been left to -take care of themselves. Yet such is the irony of Fate that the majority -of youths who leave our great schools are not literary and are not much -of classical scholars, but they are decidedly gentlemanly and still more -decidedly athletic. - -[212] I append a note written from a different point of view—“_With how -little wisdom!_” certainly seems to cover most departments of life. -_Seems?_ Yes; but are we not apt to overlook the wisdom that lies in the -great mass of people? In some small department we may have investigated -further than our class-mates, and may see, or think we see, a good deal -of stupidity in what goes on. But in most matters we do not investigate -for ourselves, but just do the usual thing; and this seems to work -all right. There must be a good deal of wisdom underlying the complex -machinery of civilised life. Carlyle’s “Mostly fools!” will by no means -account for it. At times one has a dim perception that people in general -are not so stupid as they seem. Perhaps a long life would in the end lead -us to say like Tithonus, - - “Why should a man desire in any way - “To vary from the kindly race of men?” - -There is a higher wisdom than the disintegrating individualism of -Carlyle. Far better to believe with Mazzini in “the collective existence -of humanity,” and remembering that we work in a medium fashioned for us -by the labours of all who have preceded us, regard our collective powers -as “grafted upon those of all foregoing humanity.” (Mazzini’s _Essays_: -_Carlyle_.) This is the point of view to which Wordsworth would raise us:— - - “Among the multitudes - “Of that huge city, oftentimes was seen - “.........................the unity of man, - “One spirit over ignorance and vice - “Predominant, in good and evil hearts; - “One sense for moral judgements, as one eye - “For the sun’s light. The soul when smitten thus - “By a sublime _idea_, whence soe’er - “Vouchsafed for union or communion, feeds - “On the pure bliss and takes her rest with God.” - - _Prelude_ viij, _ad f._ - -Though unable to share in “the pure bliss” of Wordsworth we may take -refuge with Goethe in the thought that “humanity is the true man,” and -enjoy much to which we have no claim as individuals. Tradition, blind -tradition, must rule our actions through by far the greatest part of our -lives; and seeing we owe it so much, we should be tolerant, even grateful. - -[213] Professor Jebb has lately given us the main ideas of the great -Scholar Erasmus. “In all his work,” says the Professor, “he had an -educational aim.... The evils of his age, in Church, in State, in the -daily lives of men, seemed to him to have their roots in _ignorance_; -ignorance of what Christianity meant, ignorance of what the Bible -taught, ignorance of what the noblest and most gifted minds of the -past, whether Christian or pagan, had contributed to the instruction of -the human race.” (Rede Lecture, 1890.) Erasmus evidently fell into the -error against which Pestalozzi and Froebel lift up their voices, often -in vain—the error of forgetting that knowledge is of no avail without -intelligence. What is the use of lighting additional candles for the -blind? - - - - -APPENDIX. - - -=History of this Book.=—Some wise man has advised us never to find fault -with ourselves, for, says he, you may always depend on your friends to -do it for you. So, having looked through the proofs of this book, I -abstain from fault-finding. I fancy I _could_ find fault more effectively -than my friends or even my professional critics. As the _Spectator’s_ -“Correspondent in an easy chair” says very truly; the author has read -his book many times; the critic has read it _at most_ once. In fact the -critic gives to the book (in some cases to the subject of the book also) -no greater number of hours than the author has given months, perhaps -years. Partiality blinds the author, no doubt, but unless he is a fatuous -person it does not blind him so much as his haste blinds the critic. An -author of note said of a book of his, which had been much criticised: -“The book has faults, but I am the only person who has discovered them,” -to which a friend maliciously appended: “For _faults_ read _merits_.” -Whatever was the truth here, I am inclined to think the author has the -best chance of putting his finger on the weak places. - -But if I see weaknesses in the foregoing book, why do I not make it -better? Just for two reasons: to improve the book I should have to spend -more time on it and more money. The more I read and think about any one -of my subjects, the more I want to go on reading and thinking. Perhaps I -hear of an old book that has escaped my notice, or a new book comes out, -sometimes an important book like Pinloche’s _Basedow_. So I can never -finish an essay to my satisfaction, and the only way of getting it off my -hands is to send the copy to the printer. By the time the proof comes in -there is something that I should like to add or alter; but then the dread -of a long bill for “corrections” restrains me. However, now the book is -all in type, I see here and there something that suggests a note by way -of explanation or addition, so I add this appendix. Taking a hint from -one of my favourite authors, Sir Arthur Helps, I throw my notes into the -form of a dialogue, but being entirely destitute of Helps’s dramatic -skill I confine myself to =E.= (the Essayist) and =A.= (Amicus), who is -only too clearly an _alter ego_. - -=A.= So the Americans have kept alive your old book for you, and at last -you have rewritten it. You at least have no reason to complain that there -is no international copyright. Your book would have been forgotten long -ago if a lady in Cincinnati had not persuaded an American publisher there -to reprint it. =E.= Yes, I very readily allow that I have been a gainer. -The Americans have done more for me than my own countrymen. To be sure -neither have “praised with the hands” (as Molière’s _professeur_ has it); -and, in money at least, the book has never paid _me_ its expenses; but -three American publishers have done for themselves what no Englishman -would do for me, viz., publish at their own risk. In 1868 when my MS. was -ready, I went to my old friend, Mr. Alexander Macmillan; but he would -not even look at it. “Books on education,” said he, “don’t pay. Why -there is Thring’s _Education and School_, a capital book” (I assented -heartily, for I was very fond of it), “well, _that_ doesn’t sell.” I was -forced to admit that in that case I had little chance. “But,” I said, “I -suppose you would publish at my risk?” “No,” said Mr. Macmillan. “The -author is never satisfied when his book doesn’t pay.” “What would you -advise?” I asked. “I’ll give you a letter of introduction to Mr. William -Longman,” said Mr. Macmillan; “I dare say he’ll publish for you.” With -this letter I went to Mr. William Longman (who has since those days been -gathered to his ancestors, formerly of Paternoster Row). Mr. Longman -said he would put the MS. in the hands of his reader. If the reader’s -report was favourable the firm would offer me terms; if not, they would -publish for me on commission. I sent the MS. accordingly, and soon after -I had a letter from the firm offering to publish “on commission.” When -the book was in type, Mr. Longman advised me to have only 500 printed, -and to publish at a high price. “I should charge 9_s._,” he said. “Very -few people will buy, and they won’t consider the price.” This was not my -opinion, but in such a matter I felt that the weight of authority was -enormously against me. So I consented to the publishing price of 7_s._ -6_d._ And at first it seemed that Mr. Longman was right—at least about -the small number of purchasers. £30 was spent in advertising, and the -book was very generally and I may say very favourably reviewed; but when -about 100 copies had been sold, it almost entirely ceased “to move.” I -think 13 copies were sold in six months. So to get rid of the remainder -of my 500 copies (some 300 of them) I put down the price to 3_s._ 6_d._ -Then it seemed that Mr. Longman had made a mistake about the price. -Without another advertisement the 300 were sold in a month or two. Some -time after, I heard that the book had been republished in Cincinnati, -and on my writing to the publishers, Messrs. Robert Clarke & Co., they -presented me with half-a-dozen copies. This proved to be a perfect -reprint, which is more than I can say of those which years afterwards -were issued by Mr. Bardeen and Messrs. Kellogg. I have therefore from -time to time purchased from Messrs. Clarke and imported the copies (I -suppose about 1500 in all) that have been wanted for the English market. -I hope these details do not bore you. =A.= Not at all. The history of any -book interests me, and your book has had some odd experiences. It has -lived, I own, much longer than I expected, and for this you have to thank -the Americans. =A.= In my case the absence of international copyright -has done no harm certainly; but after all copyright has its advantages, -international copyright included. Specialists suffer severely from the -want of it. Perhaps the “special” public in this country is so small that -an important book for it cannot be published. If to our special public -were joined the special public of the U.S., the book might be fairly -remunerative to its author. Take, _e.g._, Joseph Payne’s writings. These -would have been lost to the world had not Dr. Payne published them as an -act of filial piety. With an international copyright these works would be -very good property. =E.= You think then that in the long run “honesty is -the best policy” even internationally? =A.= I must say my opinion does -incline in that direction. - -=Class Matches (p 42).=—=A.= I think you have had a good deal to do with -class matches? =E.= Yes. One must be careful not to overdo them, but I -have found an occasional match a capital way of enlivening school-work. -Some time before the match takes place the master lets the two best boys -pick up sides, the second boy having the first choice. The subject for -the match is then arranged, and to prevent disputes the area must be -carefully defined. Moreover, there must be no opportunity for the boys to -ask questions about unimportant details that are likely to have escaped -attention. When the match is to take place each boy should come provided -with a set of written questions, and whenever a boy shows himself -ignorant of the right answer to a question of his own he must be held to -have failed even if his opponent is ignorant also. At Harrow, where I -had a class-room (“school-room” as it is there called) to myself, I used -to work these matches very successfully in German. Say Heine’s Lorelei -had been learnt by heart. I set as a subject for a match the plurals -of the substantives and the past participles of the verbs in the poem. -Or the boys had to make up for themselves and number on paper a set of -short sentences in which only words which occurred in the poem were used. -In this last case the questioner handed in to the master his paper with -both the English and the German on it, and the master gave the other side -the English, of which they had to write the German. The details of such -matches may of course be varied to any extent so long as the subject -set is quite definite. The scoring will be found best at the lower end, -so that a match stimulates those who need stimulus. =A.= What did you -call “scratch pairs?” =E.= Oh, that was a device for getting up a little -harmless excitement. Knowing the capacities of my boys, I arranged them -in pairs, the best boy and the worst forming one pair, the next best and -next worst the second pair, &c., &c. I then asked a series of questions -to which all had to write short answers. I then looked over the answers -and marked them. Finally the marks of each _pair_ were added together, -and I announced the order in which the pairs “came in.” It was really -“anybody’s race” for neither I nor anyone could predict the result. If -the number of boys was an odd number the boy in the middle fought for his -own hand and had his marks doubled. Perhaps on the whole he had the best -chance. - -=Competition.=—=A.= There were then some forms of emulation which you -did not set your face against? =E.= There were many, but I preferred -emulation which stimulated the idle rather than the industrious. Most -“prizes” act only on those who would be better without them. =A.= Do you -see no danger in encouraging rivalry between different bodies? The strife -between parties has often been more virulent than the strife between -individuals. =E.= Yes, I know well that in exciting party-feeling one -is playing with edged tools; and besides this, a boy who for any cause -is thought a disgrace to his side, is very likely to be bullied by it. -Let me tell you of one form of stimulus which seemed to work well and -was free from most of the objections you are thinking of. When I had a -small school of my own in which there were only young boys, I put up in -the school-room a list of the boys’ names in alphabetical order with -blank spaces after the names. I looked over the boys’ written work very -carefully, and whenever I came across any written exercise evidently -done with great painstaking and for that boy with more than ordinary -success, I marked it with a G, and I put up the G in one of the spaces -after that boy’s name in the list hung up in the school-room. When the -school collectively had obtained a fixed number of G’s we had an extra -half-holiday. The announcement of a G was therefore always hailed with -delight. =A.= I see one thing in favour of that device. You might by a -G give encouragement to a boy when he has just begun to _try_. This is -often a turning-point in a boy’s life; and a master’s early recognition -of effort may do much to strengthen into a habit what might, without -the recognition, have proved nothing but a passing whim. At the very -least, all such devices have one good effect; they break the monotony -of school-work; and monotony is much more wearing to the young than it -is to their elders. Can you tell me of others who have used such plans? -=E.= A friend of mine who has a genius for inventing school plans of -all kinds and marvellous energy in working them, has a boarding-house -in connexion with a large school. The marks of every boy in the school -are given out for each week. My friend gives a supper at the end of the -quarter if the average marks of his house come up to a certain standard. -He puts up each week a list of “Furtherers,” _i.e._, of the boys who -have surpassed the average, and of “Hinderers,” _i.e._, of boys who have -fallen below it =A.= No doubt this is an effective spur, but I should -fear it would in practice deliver the hindermost to Satan. The boy whom -nature has made a “hinderer” is likely to have by no means a good time -in that house. Do you know if such devices as you have mentioned are -common in schools? =E.= I really can’t say. I have seen in American -school papers accounts of class matches. In the New England _Journal of -Education_ (22nd November, 1888) Mr. A. E. Winship gave an account of -some inter-class matches at Milwaukee. There is a match between three -classes, say in penmanship. If there are seventy boys in the three -classes together, each boy draws a number from one to seventy, and puts -not his name but his number on his paper. The same lesson is set for all. -The papers are collected, divided into three equal heaps, and looked -over and marked by three masters. Finally the _average_ of each class is -taken. In mental arithmetic each class chooses its own champions. This -would be fun, but would do nothing for the lower end of the class. The -principal of McDonough School No. 12, New Orleans, Mr. H. E. Chambers, -gives an account in the New York _School Journal_ (8th December, 1888), -how he organised sixteen boys into teams of four, putting the best and -worst together as I did in making up scratch pairs. The match between -these teams was to see which could get the best record for the month. As -Mr. Chambers tells us the sharper boys managed with more success than the -master to let light into the dull intellects of boys in the same team -with them. This union of interests between the “strong” and the “weak” as -the French call them, is a very good feature in combats of _sides_. - -=The Jesuits.=—=A.= What is it that interests you so much in the Jesuits? -=E.= Two things. First, the Jesuit shows the effects of a definitely -planned and rigidly carried out system of education; and next, in such -a society you find a continuity of effort which is and must be wanting -in the life of an individual. If ever “we feel that we are greater than -we know” it is when we can think of ourselves as parts of a society, -a society which existed long before us, and will last after us. For -instance, it is a great thing to be connected with an historical school -such as Harrow. We then realise, as the school’s poet, Mr. E. E. Bowen, -has said, that we are no mere “sons of yesterday,” and thinking of the -connection between the mighty dead and the old school we join heartily in -the chorus of the school song:— - - “Their glory thus shall circle us - “Till time be done.” - -=A.= I verily believe you expect your share in this “glory” for having -invented the Harrow “Blue Book,” which is likely to outlive _Educational -Reformers_; but if the boys ever thought of the inventor (which they -don’t) they would naturally suppose that he was some contemporary of -Cadmus or Deucalion. _Sic transit!_ But what has this to do with the -Jesuits? =E.= Only this, that by corporate life you secure a continuity -of effort. There is to me something very attractive in the idea of a -teaching society. How such a society might capitalise its discoveries! -The Roman Church has shown a genius for such societies, witness the -Jesuits and the Christian Brothers. The experience of centuries must have -taught them much that we could learn of them. =A.= The Jesuits seem to -me to be without the spirit of investigators and discoverers. The rules -of their Society do not permit of their learning anything or forgetting -anything. Ignatius Loyola was a wonderful man, but he must have been -superhuman if he could legislate for all time. By the way, I see you say -the first edition of the _Ratio_ was published in 1585. What is your -authority? =E.= I took the date from the copy in the British Museum. -According to a volume published by Rivingtons in 1838 (_Constitutiones -Societatis Jesu_) the _Constitutions_ were first printed in 1558, but -were not divulged till “the celebrated suit of the MM. Lionci and Father -La Valette” in 1761. - -=Alexander’s Doctrinale (p. 80).=—=A.= I thought you made it a rule -to give only what was useful. What can be the use of the quotations -which your old Appendix contained “from a celebrated grammar written -by a Franciscan of Brittany about the middle of the 13th century”? -=E.= Perhaps I had an attack of antiquarianism; but I rather think the -quotations were given in order to shew our progress since those days. -The Teachers’ art of making easy things difficult is well exemplified in -Alexander’s rules for the first declension. But life is short, and folly -is best forgotten. - -=Lily’s Grammar (p. 80).= =A.= Would not your last remark rule out what -you told us about Lily’s Grammar? =E.= As regards Lily’s assertion, -“Genders of nouns be 7,” it certainly would. Surely nobody but a writer -of school-books would ever have thought of making a “gender” out of “hic, -hæc, hoc, felix”! But the absurdity did not originate with Lily. He was -all for simplification, and though there were some changes in the Eton -Latin Grammar which succeeded the “Short introduction of Grammar” known -as Lily’s Grammar, these changes were, some of them at least, by no means -improvements. The old book put _a_ before _all_ ablatives and taught that -“by a kingdom” was _a regno_. If this was not any better than teaching -that _domino_ by itself was “by a Lord,” it was at least no worse. The -optative of the old book (“_Utinam sim_ I pray God I be; _Utinam Essem_ -would God I were, &c.”) and the subjunctive (“_Cum Sim_ When I am, -&c.,”) were better than the oracular statement which perplexed my youth, -“The subjunctive mood is declined like the potential.” How often I said -those words, and being of an inquiring mind wondered what on earth “the -subjunctive mood” was! - -=Colet.= =E.= The passage I refer to on page 80 from Colet is in a little -book in the B.M. It is “Joannis Coleti theologi, olim Decani Divi Pauli, -editio, una cum quibusdam G. Lilii Grammatices Rudimentis, &c. Antuerpiæ -1535.” After the accidence of the eight parts of speech, he says:—“Of -these eight parts of speech in order well construed, be made reasons -and sentences, and long orations. But how and in what manner, and with -what constructions of words, and all the varieties, and diversities, and -changes in Latin speech (which be innumerable), if any man will know, and -by that knowledge attain to understand Latin books, and to speak and to -write clean Latin, let him, above all, busily learn and read good Latin -authors of chosen poets and orators, and note wisely how they wrote and -spake; and study always to follow them, desiring none other rules but -their examples. For in the beginning men spake not Latin because such -rules were made, but, contrariwise, because men spake such Latin, upon -that followed the rules, and were made. That is to say, Latin speech was -before the rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech. Wherefore, -well-beloved masters and teachers of grammar, after the parts of speech -sufficiently known in our schools, read and expound plainly unto your -scholars good authors, and show to them [in] every word, and in every -sentence, what they shall note and observe, warning them busily to follow -and do like both in writing and in speaking; and be to them your own self -also speaking with them the pure Latin very present, and leave the rules; -for reading of good books, diligent information of learned masters, -studious advertence and taking heed of learners, hearing eloquent men -speak, and finally, busy imitation with tongue and pen, more availeth -shortly to get the true eloquent speech, than all the traditions, rules, -and precepts of masters.” This passage is, I find, well known. It is -given in Knights’ _Life of Colet_ and is referred to by Mr. Seebohm. Mr. -J. H. Lupton, Colet’s latest biographer, has kindly corrected the date -for me: it is indistinct in the Museum copy. - -=Mulcaster for English (p. 97).= =A.= Except in Clarke’s edition, -your extracts from Mulcaster’s _Elementarie_ have been omitted by -your American reprinters. =E.= So I see. I should have thought the -Americans would have been much interested by this early praise of our -common language. The passage is certainly a very remarkable one, and -Professor Masson has thought it worth quoting in his _Life of Milton_. -The _Elementarie_ is a scarce book; so I will not follow my reprinters -in leaving out this passage:—“Is it not a marvellous bondage to become -servants to one tongue, for learning’s sake, the most part of our time, -with loss of most time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in -our own tongue with the gain of most time? our own bearing the joyful -title of our liberty and freedom, the Latin tongue remembering us of our -thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy, -but England more: I honour the Latin, but I worship the English.... -I honour foreign tongues, but wish my own to be partaker of their -honour. Knowing them, I wish my own tongue to resemble their grace. I -confess their furniture, and wish it were ours.... The diligent labour -of learned countrymen did so enrich those tongues, and not the tongues -themselves; though they proved very pliable, as our tongue will prove, -I dare assure it, of knowledge, if our learned countrymen will put to -their labour. And why not, I pray you, as well in English as either -Latin or any tongue else? Will ye say it is needless? sure that will not -hold. If loss of time, while ye be pilgrims to learning, by lingering -about tongues be no argument of need; if lack of sound skill while the -tongue distracteth sense more than half to itself and that most of all -in a simple student or a silly wit, be no argument of need, then ye say -somewhat which pretend no need. But because we needed not to lose any -time unless we listed, if we had such a vantage, in the course of study, -as we now lose while we travail in tongues; and because our understanding -also were most full in our natural speech, though we know the foreign -exceedingly well—methink _necessity_ itself doth call for _English_, -whereby all that gaiety may be had at home which makes us gaze so much -at the fine stranger.” Among various objections to the use of English -which he answers, he comes to this one:—“But will ye thus break off the -common conference with the learned foreign?” To this his answer is not -very forcible:—“The conference will not cease while the people have cause -to interchange dealings, and without the Latin it may well be continued: -as in some countries the learneder sort and some near cousins to the -Latin itself do already wean their pens and tongues from the use of the -Latin, both in written discourse and spoken disputation, into their -own natural, and yet no dry nurse being so well appointed by the milch -nurse’s help.” Further on he says:—“The emperor Justinian said, when he -made the Institutes of force, that the students were happy in having such -a foredeal [_i.e._, advantage—German _Vortheil_] as to hear him at once, -and not to wait four years first. And doth not our languaging hold us -back four years and that full, think you?... [But this is not all.] Our -best understanding is in our natural tongue, and all our foreign learning -is applied to our use by means of our own; and without the application -to particular use, wherefore serves learning?... [As for dishonouring -antiquity], if we must cleave to the eldest and not the best, we should -be eating acorns and wearing old Adam’s pelts. But why not all in -English, a tongue of itself both deep in conceit and frank in delivery? I -do not think that any language, be it whatsoever, is better able to utter -all arguments either with more pith or greater plainness than our English -tongue is.... It is our accident which restrains our tongue and not the -tongue itself, which will strain with the strongest and stretch to the -furthest, for either government if we were conquerors, or for cunning -if we were treasurers; not any whit behind either the subtle Greek for -crouching close, or the stately Latin for spreading fair.” - -=Marcel’s “Axiomatic Truths.”=—=A.= I have seen Marcel referred to as a -great authority in education, but I look in vain for his name in Kiddle’s -Cyclopædia and in Sonnenschein’s. =E.= You would be more successful in -Buisson’s. There I see that Claude Marcel was born at Paris in 1793, and -died in 1876. He was one of Napoleon’s soldiers. After 40 years’ absence -from France dating from 1825 he went back to Paris. He had been French -Consul at Cork, and brought up nine children whom he taught entirely -himself. In 1853 he published with Chapman and Hall his _Language as a -Means of Mental Culture_ (2 vols.). This book was not very well named, -for it contains in fact an analysis of the subject—education. To the -study of this subject Marcel must have given his life, and it seems odd -that his contribution to English (not French) pedagogic literature is -so little known. A French abridgment of his work appeared in 1855 with -the title _Premiers Principes d’Education_; and in 1867 he published in -French _L’Études des Languages_ (Paris, Borrani) of which a translation -was published in the U.S.A. Marcel’s notion of education is threefold, -viz., Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Education: the 1st aiming at -_health_, _strength_, and _beauty_; the 2nd at _mental power_ and the -_acquisition of knowledge_; the 3rd at _piety_, _justice_, _goodness_, -and _wisdom_. According to him the Creator has made the exercise of our -faculties _pleasurable_. This will suggest his main lines. He expects to -find general assent, for he quotes from Garrick:— - - “When Doctrine meets with general approbation, - “It is not heresy but reformation.” - -But he has met with less approbation than neglect. His “axiomatic truths” -that I quoted in the old appendix were abused without mercy by a critic -of those days who accused me of “bookmaking” for putting them in. On the -other hand my last American reprinter singles them out for honour and -puts them at the beginning of the book. After this I suppose somebody -likes them, so here they are: - -“=Axiomatic Truths of Methodology.=—1. The method of nature is the -archetype of all methods, and especially of the method of learning -languages. - -2. The classification of the objects of study should mark out to teacher -and learner their respective spheres of action. - -3. The ultimate objects of the study should always be kept in view, that -the end be not forgotten in pursuit of the means. - -4. The means ought to be consistent with the end. - -5. Example and practice are more efficient than precept and theory. - -6. Only one thing should be taught at one time; and an accumulation of -difficulties should be avoided, especially in the beginning of the study. - -7. Instruction should proceed from the known to the unknown, from the -simple to the complex, from concrete to abstract notions, from analysis -to synthesis. - -8. The mind should be impressed with the idea before it takes cognisance -of the sign that represents it. - -9. The development of the intellectual powers is more important than the -acquisition of knowledge; each should be made auxiliary to the other. - -10. All the faculties should be equally exercised, and exercised in a way -consistent with the exigencies of active life. - -11. The protracted exercise of the faculties is injurious: a change of -occupation renews the energy of their action. - -12. No exercise should be so difficult as to discourage exertion, nor so -easy as to render it unnecessary: attention is secured by making study -interesting. - -13. First impressions and early habits are the most important, because -they are the most enduring. - -14. What the learner discovers by mental exertion is better known than -what is told him. - -15. Learners should not do with their instructor what they can do by -themselves, that they may have time to do with him what they cannot do by -themselves. - -16. The monitorial principle multiplies the benefits of public -instruction. By teaching we learn. - -17. The more concentrated is the professor’s teaching, the more -comprehensive and efficient his instruction. - -18. In a class the time must be so employed that no learner shall be -idle, and the business so contrived, that learners of different degrees -of advancement shall derive equal advantage from the instructor. - -19. Repetition must mature into a habit what the learner wishes to -remember. - -20. Young persons should be taught only what they are capable of clearly -understanding, and what may be useful to them in after-life.” - -=A.= What do _you_ think of these? =E.= I confess they bring into my mind -the advice given to a learner in billiards: “When in doubt cannon and -pocket the red.” First catch your “Method of Nature,” as Mrs. Glass might -have said. As to No. 10 again, who shall say what “all the faculties” -are? And is smelling a faculty that must be equally exercised with -seeing? When the young Marcels went to Paris I fancy they found there far -more that was worth seeing than worth smelling. =A.= After what you have -said about pupil-teachers I infer you do not advocate the “monitorial -principle”? =E.= Not exactly. “By teaching we learn.” This is very true. -But if we can’t teach we can’t learn by teaching. =A.= But may we not -gain by trying to teach? And short of teaching a good deal may be done -by monitors. =E.= If by the monitorial principle we mean “Encourage the -young to make themselves useful” it is a capital principle. - -=Words and Things.=—=A.= In your Sturm Essay you say: “The schoolmaster’s -art always has taken, and I suppose, in the main, always will take for -its material the means of expression.” Surely the signs of the times do -not indicate this. Have not the tongue and the pen had their day, and -is not the schoolmaster turning his attention from them, not perhaps -to the brain, but certainly to the eye and the hand? It has at length -occurred to him to ask like Shylock “Hath not a boy eyes? Hath not a -boy hands?” And as it seems certain that the boy has these organs, the -schoolmaster wants to find employment for them. Till now no scholastic -use has been found for the eye except reading, or for the hand except -making strokes with the pen and receiving them from the cane. But it will -be different in the future. Words have had their day. Things will have -theirs. =E.= You may be right; but be careful in your use of terms. As -is usually the case with “cries,” if we want a meaning we may take our -choice. The contrast between “words” and “things” is sometimes between -studies like grammar, logic, and rhetoric on the one hand, and, on -the other, _Realien_, studies which in some way have Things for their -subject. Then again we have _words_ as the vocal or visible symbols -of ideas contrasted with the ideas themselves. Those who complain of -the time spent on words are thinking, some of them, of the time spent -on the art of expression, others of the time given to symbols which -do not, to the learner, symbolize anything. But in our day Words and -Things are supposed to represent the study of literature and the study -of natural science. At present there is a rage for Things, but it is a -little early to adjudicate on the comparative claims of, say Homer and -James Watt, on the gratitude of mankind. The great book of our day on -Education, Herbert Spencer’s, would make short work with “words”; and -yet two School Commissions, the Public Schools Commission of 1862, and -the Middle Schools Commission of 1867 have defended “words.” The first -of these says: “Grammar is the logic of common speech, and there are -few educated men who are not sensible of the advantages they gained, as -boys, from the steady practice of composition and translation, and from -their introduction to etymology. The study of literature is the study, -not indeed of the physical, but of the intellectual and moral world -we live in, and of the thoughts, lives, and characters of those men -whose writings or whose memories succeeding generations have thought it -worth while to preserve.” The Commissioners on Middle Schools express -a similar opinion:—“The ‘human’ subjects of instruction, of which the -study of language is the beginning, appear to have a distinctly greater -educational power than the ‘material.’ As all civilisation really takes -its rise in human intercourse, so the most efficient instrument of -education appears to be the study which most bears on that intercourse, -the study of human speech. Nothing appears to develop and discipline the -whole man so much as the study which assists the learner to understand -the thoughts, to enter into the feelings, to appreciate the moral -judgments of others. There is nothing so opposed to true cultivation, -nothing so unreasonable, as excessive narrowness of mind; and nothing -contributes to remove this narrowness so much as that clear understanding -of language which lays open the thoughts of others to ready appreciation. -Nor is equal clearness of thought to be obtained in any other way. -Clearness of thought is bound up with clearness of language, and the -one is impossible without the other. When the study of language can be -followed by that of literature, not only breadth and clearness, but -refinement becomes attainable. The study of history in the full sense -belongs to a still later age: for till the learner is old enough to have -some appreciation of politics, he is not capable of grasping the meaning -of what he studies. But both literature and history do but carry on that -which the study of language has begun, the cultivation of all those -faculties by which man has contact with man.” (Middle Schools Report, -vol. i, c. iv, p. 22.) As Matthew Arnold says, in comparing two things -it is “a kind of disadvantage” to be totally ignorant about one of them; -and I labour under this disadvantage in comparing literature and science. -But I own I do not expect the ultimate victory will be with those who may -kill, or even cure or carry, the body, and after that have no more that -they can do. Milton says of fine music, that it “brings all heaven before -our eyes.” Similarly fine literature can at least bring all earth and -its inhabitants, and the best thoughts and actions the world has known. -I remember Matthew Arnold in conversation dwelling on the difference it -makes to us _what we read_. Surely one of the great things education -should do is to enable and to accustom the thoughts of the young to -follow the guidance which is offered us in “the words of the wise.” - -=Seneca= _v._ =Comenius=.—=A.= I like your quotation on p. 169 from Dr. -John Brown. After your see-saw fashion, you have, in a note on p. 365, -expressed a fondness for “a notion of the whole.” E. I am there thinking -of _minute_ instruction about parts. But in most things notions of the -parts precede the notion of the whole; and in this matter I think Seneca -was wiser than Comenius: “More easily are we led through the parts into -a conception of the whole. Facilius per partes in cognitionem totius -adducimur.” (Ep. 88, 1.) A. May I ask to whom you are indebted for this -erudition? E. To Wuestemann. (_Promptuarium._ Gotha, 1856.) - -=Useful Knowledge.=—A. I am inclined to think that now and then you do -not attach sufficient importance to the possession of knowledge and -skill. E. Perhaps I do not. What I wish to cultivate is, not so much -knowledge as the desire for knowledge, and further, the activity of mind -that will turn knowledge to account. Knowledge driven in from without, -so to speak, and skill obtained by enforced practice are, I will not say -valueless, but very different in quality from the knowledge and skill -that their possessor has sought for. Knowledge is a tool. He who has -acquired it without caring for it, will have neither the skill nor the -will to use it. A. Does not this apply to the knowledges recommended by -Herbert Spencer, knowledge how to bring up children, &c., and to the -knowledge of physiological facts and rules of health which you yourself -say would be “of great practical value” (p. 444)? E. Certainly it does, -and also to the “domestic economy” of our Board schools; still more to -the lessons in morality which it seems are, at least in France if not -elsewhere, to supersede religion. If you can get the learners to care for -such lessons, the lessons are worth giving; if not, not. Care, not for -the thing, but for the examination in the thing, is different, and can -produce only a very inferior article. I expect there are instances in -which care for the examination develops into care for the subject of the -examination; but these cases are so rare that they may be neglected. A. I -see you would not take a deep interest in the “Society for the Diffusion -of Useful Knowledge.” And yet how terrible are the results of ignorance! -Herbert Spencer is great on knowledge for earning a livelihood. It -would add, perhaps, three or four shillings a week to the wages of the -working man if his wife had learnt to cook. In matters of food the waste -from ignorance among the English poor is appalling. E. In this case the -school might do much, as girls would be anxious to learn. And though we -cannot lay down as a general rule that it is “never too late to learn,” -this rule might be applied to cooking. I see that in Govan, a suburb of -Glasgow, the widow of the great ship-builder, John Elder, employs a -trained teacher of cookery to instruct both by demonstrations, and also -by visiting houses to which he (or she?) is invited. The results are said -to be excellent. May this good lady find many imitators! - -=Memorizing Poetry.=—A. About learning poetry by heart, did you ever hear -of the old Winchester plan of “Standing up”? In the regular “exams.” -(“trials” as we called them at Harrow), each boy had to state in how much -Homer and Virgil he was ready to “stand up.” The master examined into the -boy’s power of saying this by heart, and of construing all he said. From -the very first the boy always gave in the _same_ poetry, only adding to -it each time. E. I have heard of it. Why, I wonder, was this plan given -up? A. I have asked old Wykamists, but nobody seems to know. Perhaps the -quantities learnt became absurdly large. But this method of accretion, -if not overdone, would leave something behind it for life. Let me show -you a passage from Æschines (Agnst Ktesip. § 135) which I have seen, not -in Æschines, but in J. H. Krause’s “Education among the Greeks” (_Gesch. -d. Erziehg bei d. Griechen_). It is so simple that even _you_ may -construe it. Διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ οἶμαι ἠμᾶς παῖδας ὄντας τὰς τῶν ποιητῶν γνώμας -ἔκμανθάνειν ἵν’ ἄνδρες ὄντὲς αὐταῖς χρώμεθα. E. There is very little -left of my Littlego Greek, but I will try: “For it is, I suppose, with -this object that, when we are boys, we thoroughly commit to memory the -sayings of the poets—in order to turn them to account when we are men.” I -wish the old Greek custom were continued. I believe in learning by heart -what is worthy of it (see _supra_, p. 74, _n._). A. But the poetry that -appeals to children they grow out of. E. This cannot be said of the best -of it; but of this best there is, to be sure, a very small quantity. By -“appeals to,” I suppose you mean “written on purpose for.” But in a sense -much melodious poetry appeals to children even when they can get only -a vague notion that it _has_ a meaning. I have known children delight -in “The splendour falls on castle walls,” and Hohen Linden pleases them -much better than anything of Jane Taylor’s. But here, at all events, -there can be no doubt about the wisdom of Tranio’s rule: “Study what you -most affect.” As I have said in an old paper of mine (_How to Train the -Memory_; Kellogg’s _Teachers Manuals_, No. 9), the teacher may read aloud -some selected pieces, and let the children separately “give marks” for -each. He can then choose “what they most affect.” - -=Books for Teachers.=—A. Don’t you think you might give some useful -advice to young teachers about the books they should read? E. I had -intended giving some advice, but in reading tastes differ widely, and -after all the best advice is Tranio’s, “Study what you most affect.” -There are three Englishmen who have written so well that, as it seems, -they will be read by English-speaking teachers of all time. These are -Ascham, Locke, and Herbert Spencer. If a teacher does not know these he -is not likely to know or care anything about the literature of education. -These authors have attained to the position of classics by writing short -books in excellent English. After these, I must know something of the -student before I ventured on a recommendation. If he (or more probably -_she_) be a student indeed, nothing will be found more valuable than -Henry Barnard’s vols. especially those of the _English Pedagogy_. But -the majority of mankind want books that are readable, _i.e._, can be -read easily. I do not know any books on teaching that I have found -easier reading than D’Arcy Thompson’s _Day-Dreams of a Schoolmaster_ and -H. Clay Trumbull’s _Teaching and Teachers_ (Eng. edition is Hodder and -Stoughton’s). But some very valuable books are by no means easy reading. -Take _e.g._ Froebel’s _Education of Man_ (trans. by Hailmann, Appletons). -This book is a fount of ideas, but Froebel seems to want interpreters, -and happily he has found them. The Baroness Marenholtz-Bülow has done -good work for him in German, and in English he has had good interpreters -as _e.g._, Miss Shirreff, Mr. H. C. Bowen, and Supt. Hailmann. In the -case of Froebel there is certainly a want of literary talent; but even -where this talent is clearly shown, a book may be by no means “easy -reading.” It may make great demands on our thinking power, and thought -is never easy. This will probably prevent Thring’s _Theory and Practice -of Teaching_ (Pitt Press, 4_s._ 6_d._) from ever being a popular book, -though every teacher who has read it will feel that he is the better for -it. Sometimes the size of a book stands in the way of its popularity. -This seems to me the case with Joseph Payne’s _Science and Art of -Teaching_ (Longmans, 10_s._); but this book is popular in the United -States, and I take this as a proof that the American teachers are more -in earnest than we are. All the essentials of popularity are combined in -Fitch’s _Lectures on Teaching_ (Pitt Press, 5_s._), and this is now (and -long may it continue!) one of our most read educational works. A. But -what about less known books? Cannot you recommend anything as yet unknown -to fame? E. Ah! you want me to tell you what books deserve fame, that is, -to— - - “Look into the seeds of time - “And say which grain will grow, and which will not.” - -But I have no intention of posing as the representative of the readers of -our day, still less of the future. Indeed, far from being able to tell -you what other people would like or should like, I can hardly say what -I like myself. Perhaps I come across a book and read it with delight. -Remembering the very favourable impression made by the first reading I go -back to the book some years afterwards and I then in some cases cannot -discover what it was that pleased me. A. That reminds me of Wordsworth’s -similar experience— - - “I sometimes could be sad - To think of, to read over, many a page, - Poems withal of name, which at that time - Did never fail to entrance me, and are now - Dead in my eyes, dead as a theatre - Fresh emptied of spectators.” (_Prelude_ v.) - -I suppose this has happened to all of us. We go back and the things -are the same and yet look so different. It is like after the night of -an illumination looking at the designs by daylight. E. Not many of our -designs will bear “the light of common day.” And if we tried to settle -which, we should probably be quite wrong. Of my three English Educational -Classics one can hardly understand why the peoples who speak English have -retained Ascham while Mulcaster, Brinsley, and Hoole are forgotten. Locke -had his reputation as a philosopher to keep his _Thoughts_ from neglect, -and yet at the beginning of 1880 1 found that there was no _English_ -edition in print. Perhaps some of the old writers will come into the -field of view again. _E.g._, my friend Dr. Bülbring, of Heidelberg, the -editor of De Foe’s _Compleat Gentleman_, talks of reviving the fame of -Mary Astell, who at the end of the seventeenth century took up the rights -of women and put very vigorously some of the pet ideas of the nineteenth -century. A. I will not ask you to “look into the seeds of time,” and -I will not take you for a representative person in any way. On these -conditions perhaps you will give me the names of some of the books that -have made such a favourable impression on first reading—at least in cases -where that impression has not been effaced by further acquaintance. E. -Agreed. I ought to begin with psychology, but I must with sorrow confess -that I never read a _whole_ book on the science of mind; so this most -important section of the subject must be omitted. French and German books -I will also omit unless they exist in an English translation. About the -historical and biographical part of the subject I have already named -many books such as S. S. Laurie’s _Comenius_ and Russell’s Guimps’s -_Pestalozzi_. F. V. N. Painter’s _History of Education_ is pleasantly -written; but no really satisfactory history of education can be held -in one small volume. This objection _in limine_ also applies to G. -Compayré’s _History of Pedagogy_ (trans. by W. H. Payne) which is far too -full of matter. In it we find _many things_, but only a very advanced -student can find _much_. Little has been written about English-speaking -educators, but there are good accounts of Bell, Lancaster, Wilderspin, -and Stow in J. Leitch’s _Practical Educationists_ (Macmillans, 6_s._). -Turning to books about principles and methods I have found nothing that -with reference to the first stage of instruction seems to me better -than Colonel F. W. Parker’s _Talks on Teaching_ (New York, Kelloggs). -Fitch’s more complete book I have named already. A. Geikie’s _Teaching of -Geography_ (Macmillans, 2_s._ 6_d._) is a book I read with great delight. -For principles Joseph Payne seems to me one of our best educational -writers, and we shall before long have, I hope, the much expected volume -of his papers on the history of education. Some of the smaller books -that I remember reading with especial gratification are Jacob Abbott’s -_Teacher_, Calderwood _On Teaching_, A. Sidgwick’s lectures on _Stimulus_ -(Pitt Press) and on _Discipline_ (Rivingtons), and Mrs. Malleson’s _Notes -on Early Training_ (Sonnenschein). There seemed to me a very fine tone in -a book much read in the United States—D. P. Page’s _Theory and Practice -of Teaching_. T. Tate’s _Philosophy of Education_ I liked very much, and -the book has been revived by Colonel Parker (Kelloggs). There are some -books that are worth getting “by opportunity,” as the Germans say, good -books now out of print. Among them I should name Rollin’s _Method_ in -three volumes, Rousseau’s _Emilius_ in four, De Morgan’s _Arithmetic, -Essays on a Liberal Education_ edited by Farrar. I know or have known -all the books here named, but my knowledge and time for reading do not -extend as far as my bookshelves, and I see before me some books that I -have not mentioned and yet feel sure I ought to mention. Among them are -Compayré’s _Lectures on Pedagogy_, translated by W. H. Payne, which seems -an admirable compilation (Boston, Heath; London, Sonnenschein); Shaw and -Donnell’s _School Devices_ (Kelloggs) in which I have seen some good -“wrinkles”; and T. J. Morgan’s _Educational Mosaics_ (Boston; Silver, -Rogers & Co.). J. Landon’s _School Management_ (London, K. Paul) I have -heard spoken of as an excellent book, and I like what I have seen of it. -But I set out with a promise to mention not all our good books, but those -which I thought good _after reading them_. There still remain some that -fall under this category and have not been mentioned, _e.g._, _The Action -of Examinations_, by H. Latham, Cotterill’s _Reforms in Public Schools_, -W. H. Payne’s _Contributions_, and a pamphlet from which I formed a very -high estimate of the writer’s ability to give us some first-rate books -about teaching. I mean _A Pot of Green Feathers_, by T. G. Rooper. - -=Professional Knowledge.=—A. What a pity it is that in English we have -no name for _Kernsprüche_! When an important truth has been aptly -expressed, the very expression may be an important event in the history -of thought. Take _e.g._ Milton’s words which I observe you have quoted -more than once, about “the understanding founding itself on sensible -things” (p. 510). Here we have a “kernel-saying” that might have sprung -up and yielded a rich crop of improvements in teaching if it had only -taken root in teachers’ minds. Why don’t you make a collection of such -“kernel-sayings”? E. I have had thoughts of doing so, and I have a -collection of collections of _Kernsprüche_ in German. A. Well, German -is _not_ the language I should choose for the expression of thought. -According to Heine, in everything the Germans do there is a thought -embodied; and we may add that in everything they say a thought is -embedded; but I rather shrink from the labour of digging it out. E. -You would find a collection of “kernel-sayings” in any language rather -stiff reading. And after all, the sayings which strike us are just -those which give utterance to our own thought. This is probably the -reason why in reading such a book so few sayings seem to us worthy of -selection. I had intended prefacing these essays with some mottoes, as -Dr. W. B. Hodgson used to do when he wrote, but finally I have left my -readers to collect for themselves. A. I should like to know the sort -of thing you intended for your “first course.” E. Here is one of them -from Professor Stanley Hall, of Worcester, Mass.: “Modern life in all -its departments is ruled by experts and by those who have attained the -mastery that comes by concentration.” (New England _J. of Ed._, 27th -February, 1890.) A. According to you, sayings strike us only when they -express our own thought. In that case Professor Hall’s saying would not -make much impression on the generality of your scholastic friends. Many -of the best paid schoolmasters in England would burst out laughing if -anyone spoke of them as “educational experts.” Educational experts? Why -they have never even thought of the art of teaching, leave alone the -science of education. They are “good scholars” who at one time thought -enough of preparing for the Tripos or the Honour Schools; and having -got a good degree they thought (and small blame to them!) how to employ -their knowledge of classics so as to secure a comfortable income for -life. Accordingly they took a mastership, and soon settled down into the -groove of work. But as for the science of education they have thought -of it about as much as they have thought of the sea-serpent, and would -probably tell you with Mr. Lowe (now forgotten as Lord Sherbrooke) that -“there is no such thing.” E. No doubt they feel the force of Dr. Harris’s -words: “For the most part the teacher who is theoretically inclined -is lame in the region of details of work.” It would be a pity indeed -if their “resolution” to make a good income were “sicklied o’er with -the pale cast of thought.” A. They had to think how to prepare for the -Tripos; and before long they will have to think how to do their work -of teaching and educating better than they have done it hitherto. The -future will demand something more than “a good degree.” Professor Hall -is right. The day of the experts is coming. But does not even Dr. Harris -warn teachers against being “too theoretical”? E. It is rather jumping at -conclusions to assume with some of our countrymen that if a man does not -think, he does act. Goethe’s aphorism which Dr. Harris quotes is this: -“Thought expands, but lames; action narrows, but intensifies.” Now a good -many men who do not expend energy in thought are by no means strong in -action. In education they have no desire either to think the best that is -thought or to do the best that is done. They won’t inquire about either; -and they show the most impartial ignorance of both. Like Dr. Ridding -they are of opinion that professional knowledge is to be sought only by -persons without the advantages of having been at a public school and of -“a good degree.” As for reading books about teaching they leave that sort -of thing to national schoolmasters. And yet if teaching is an art, they -might get at least as much good from books as the golf-player gets or -the whist-player. “How marvellous it is when one comes to consider the -matter, that a man should decline to receive instruction on a technical -subject from those who have eminently distinguished themselves in it and -have systematised for the benefit of others the results of the experience -of a lifetime!” Mr. James Payn who wrote this (_Some Private Views_, p. -176) was thinking of books not on teaching but on whist; but his words -would come home to teachers if they took as much interest in teaching as -he takes in whist. A. I fancy you have spotted the real deficiency; it -is want of interest. It is only when a man becomes thoroughly interested -in whist that he desires to play better, and when he becomes thoroughly -interested in teaching that he desires to teach better. And if only he -_desires_ to improve he will seek all the professional knowledge within -his reach. “Every one,” says Matthew Arnold, “every one is aware how -those who want to cultivate any sense or endowment in themselves must be -habitually conversant with the works of people who have been eminent for -that sense, must study them, catch inspiration from them. Only in this -way can progress be made.” (Quoted by Momerie). Let us hope that you have -incited some young teachers to study and catch inspiration from the great -thinkers and workers in the educational field. E. This is the object I -have aimed at. If I wanted a motto I think I should choose this from -Froebel interpreted by Miss Shirreff: - -“The duty of each generation is to gather up its inheritance from the -past, and thus to serve the present, and prepare better things for the -future.” - - - - -SYLLABUS OF QUICK’S EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS. - -_From the International Reading Circle Course of Professional Study._ - - -Pages 1 to 62. - - -I. THE RENASCENCE. - - 1. The essential element in literature. - - 2. Classical literature in education. - - 3. The educational classes produced by renascence tendencies. - - 4. How much of the error of the “renascence ideal” still - survives? - - 5. Is this harm overbalanced by the good influences of that - ideal? - - -II. STURM. - -(_See Painter, pp. 160-162, for Sturm’s Course of Study._) - - 1. What two or more influences of Sturm’s school would you - mention as most prominently retained in our larger schools of - to-day? - - 2. How far are these influences good, and in what ways are they - evil? - - -III. THE JESUITS. - - 1. Their motive. - - 2. Their elements of excellence. - - 3. What value attaches to their provisions for securing - thoroughness? - - 4. What to their instruction in morals? - - 5. What to their physical training? - - -Pages 63 to 171. - - -RABELAIS. - - 1. His products of education: wisdom, eloquence, and piety. - - 2. His emphasis upon the study of _things_. - - 3. His standard of physical training. - - -MONTAIGNE. - - 1. His prime product of education: wisdom, in thought and - action; not knowledge. - - 2. The practical errors in his theory of educational methods. - - -ASCHAM. - - 1. His method of Latin instruction. - - -MULCASTER. - - 1. His principles of education as identical with the best of - to-day. - - 2. His recognition of the need for trained teachers. - - -RATKE. - - 1. His practical failure due to the characteristics of the man, - not to faults in his principles of education. - - 2. Nine cardinal principles of didactics as gathered from his - writings upon method. - - -COMENIUS. - - 1. The first to treat education in a scientific spirit. - - 2. Based educational method upon an understanding of the nature - of the child. - - 3. Insisted upon the direct study of external Nature, and upon - the learning of words only in connection with things. - - 4. Recognized education as the development of all the faculties - of body and of mind. - - 5. Demanded the equal instruction of both sexes. - - 6. Taught that languages must be learned through practice, not - by means of rules. - - 7. Made provision for education through the hand as well as - through the eye and ear. - - -Pages 172 to 218. - - -THE PORT-ROYALISTS. - - 1. Purpose and method of Saint Cyran’s “Little Schools.” - - 2. Actual results of English public-school influences as - opposed to St. Cyran’s theory. - - 3. Port-Royalists’ restoration of the mother tongue as the - subject-matter of elementary instruction. - - 4. Literature study as distinguished from grammar study of - Latin and Greek. - - 5. Logic, or the act of thinking. - - 6. The principles set forth in the pedagogic writings of the - Port-Royalists. - - -SOME ENGLISH WRITERS BEFORE LOCKE. - - 1. Francis Bacon: first great leader of the _realists_—of those - who sought to know the facts of Nature rather than the thoughts - of man. - - 2. Charles Hoole: “one of the pioneer educators of his century.” - - 3. Dury and Petty: extending the doctrines of _realism_. - - 4. Milton: elevating the moral nature to the first place in his - theory of a complete education. - - -Pages 219 to 238. - - -JOHN LOCKE. - -(See Painter’s History, pp. 218-223.) - - 1. From the standpoints of reason he rejected the established - methods. - - 2. His definition of knowledge. - - 3. Development of body and mind, and formation of right habits - the true aim of education. - - 4. Locke’s comparison of the child to white paper or wax. - - 5. The _naturalistic_ school of educational thinkers. - - 6. Objections to classing Locke as a utilitarian. - - -Pages 239 to 289. - - -ROUSSEAU. - - 1. To be classed with the thinkers, not with the doers, in - educational work. - - 2. The value of his destructive work. - - 3. His three kinds of education—from Nature, from men, from - things. - - 4. The first essential in the work of education is to - understand the mind of childhood. - - 5. Some characteristics of the mode of acting of the child’s - mind. - - 6. Evil of over-directing in both discipline and instruction. - - 7. Right and wrong views of the value of self-teaching. - - -BASEDOW. - - 1. His mode of thought and manner of life. - - 2. The theory outlined in his Elementary and in his Book of - Method. - - 3. Interesting devices used at the Philanthropinum. - - 4. The training of the senses and acquirement of knowledge - through the senses pre-eminent both in Rousseau’s and in - Basedow’s theories. - - -Pages 290 to 383. - - -PESTALOZZI. I. HIS LIFE. - - 1. His personal characteristics as shown in his early life and - in his farming venture. - - 2. His view of the nature and purpose of education. - - 3. The first experiment at Neuhof and its failure. - - 4. The orphanage at Stanz. - - 5. The experiences at Burgdorf. - - 6. The Institute at Yverdun. - - 7. The last success at Clindy. - - 8. Death of Pestalozzi at Neuhof. - - -II. PESTALOZZI’S PRINCIPLES. - - 1. The main object of the school not to teach but to develop. - - 2. The child first to be trained to _love_; moral education. - - 3. The child next to be trained to _think_; intellectual - education. - - 4. The child also to be trained to _work_; physical education. - - 5. The _self-activity_ of the pupil the real force in all true - education. - - -Pages 384 to 413. - - -FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. - - 1. The best tendencies of educational thought embodied in - Froebel’s teachings. - - 2. Froebel imperfectly understood even by the most earnest - students. - - 3. Influence of his own neglected youth upon his after - consideration for children. - - 4. His communion with Nature in the Thuringian Forest. - - 5. His transfer from the study of architecture to the practice - and study of education. - - 6. His association with Pestalozzi at Yverdun. - - 7. The influence of his military experience in showing him the - value of discipline and united action. - - 8. His experiences in teaching prior to his first kindergarten. - - 9. The edict forbidding the establishment of schools based upon - Froebel’s principles. - - 10. His death at threescore years and ten. - - -FROEBEL’S EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES. - - 11. To find in science the expression of the mind of God. - - 12. To view education as founded upon religion, and leading to - unity with God. - - 13. To regard the educational process as a process of - development. - - 14. To seek development, or evolution of power, in the exercise - of those functions, in the use of those faculties, that it is - desired to develop. - - 15. That the exercise productive of true development must be - in harmony with the function or faculty to be developed, and - proportioned to its present strength. - - 16. That to be most truly efficient the exercise must arise - from and be sustained by the _self_-activity of the function or - faculty to be developed. - - 17. That this self-activity must manifest itself not in - receptive action or acquisition alone, but in expressive action - or production. - - 18. Practically, that children should be busied with things - that they can not only see but can handle and use in the making - or representing of new things to express their growing ideas. - - -Pages 414 to 469. - - -JACOTOT. - - 1. Set pupils to learning by their own investigation and - refrained from giving them direct instruction. - - 2. Asserted that all human beings are equally capable of - learning. - - 3. Declared that every one can teach; and, moreover, can teach - that which he does not know. - - 4. Has done great service by giving prominence to the principle - that the mental faculties must be developed and trained by - being put to actual work. - - 5. By his doctrine “All is in all,” he gave prominence to the - correlation of knowledge. - - 6. Made the thorough mastery of a single book and the retention - of it all in the memory his basis of all further accumulation. - - 7. His methodology summarized: Learn something, repeat it, - reflect upon it, test all related facts by it. - - -HERBERT SPENCER. - - 1. The value in the views of one who comes to educational - problems free from tradition and prejudice. - - 2. The teaching that gives the most valuable knowledge also - best disciplines in the mental faculties. - - 3. The end and aim of education is to prepare us for complete - living. - - 4. The test of the relative value of knowledge lies in its - power to influence action in right or wrong directions. - - 5. In method we must proceed from the simple to the complex; - from the known to the unknown; from the concrete to the - abstract. - - 6. Every study should have a purely experimental introduction, - and children should be led to make their own investigations and - draw their own inferences. - - 7. Instruction must excite the interest of pupils and therefore - be pleasurable to them. - - -Pages 470 to 503. - - -I. THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS. - - 1. The ideal of public-school work is to beget a healthy - interest and pleasure in the doing of hard work. - - 2. The interest to arise from the nature of the subject itself, - or from the recognized usefulness of the subject, or from - emulation. - - 3. The value of pictures in the teaching of children as a means - of awakening active interest. - - 4. The first teaching in reading and number to begin with the - objective method and pass thence to the subjective. - - 5. In geography and history the lively description and the - interesting story to precede the formal compend. - - -II. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. - - 6. Sources and means of the teacher’s influence upon his pupils. - - 7. Causes of the loss of his good influence. - - 8. The influence of a few leading spirits among the pupils - themselves. - - 9. A mode of religious training. - - -Pages 504 to 547. - - -REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. - - 1. The good and the ill influences of the Jesuits as the “first - reformers” in educational practice. - - 2. Rabelais, the first to advocate training as distinguished - from teaching. - - 3. Comenius, founder of the science of education, recognizing - in his scheme the threefold nature of man. - - 4. Rousseau, the originator of the “new education” as based - upon the inherent nature of the child. - - 5. Pestalozzi and Froebel, reformers of the processes of - education, seeking to secure the development of each faculty by - its own activity in appropriate exercise. - - - - -INDEX. - - - Abbott, E. A., on Montaigne and Locke, 231, _n._ - - — Jacob; Teacher, 544 - - Accomplishments, 451 - - Action, the root of Ed., 403 - - “Advice to a Young Lord” (1691), 234, _n._ - - Æschines on memorizing, 541 - - Æsop’s Fables, Locke’s, 238, _n._ - - Alexander De Villa Dei, 80, 532 - - All can learn, Jacotot, 416 - - — Education for, 356 - - — Education for. Comenius, 515, 522 - - — is in all. Jacotot, 423 - - — to be educated. Comenius, 146 - - Altdorf burnt, 326 - - Analogies for illustration not proof, 155 - - Anchoran edits C.’s _Janua_, 163 - - Andreæ, J. V., 122 - - _Anschauung_, Pestalozzi on, 360 - - — Froebel for, 408 - - Apparatus, 462 - - Aquaviva and Jesuit schools, 36 - - Arber, Prof., 82, _n._, 83 - - Arithmetic, Children’s. Comenius, 145 - - — for children, 479, 482 - - Armstrong, Ld., on cry for Useless Knowledge, 78, _n._ - - Arnauld, his _Règlement_, 189 - - — the Philosopher of Port-Royal, 187 - - Arnaulds, The, and the Jesuits, 173 - - Arnold, Dr., educator of English type, 219 - - — History Primer, 487 - - — on citizens’ duties, 447 - - Arnold, M., about the Middle Age, 240 - - — Barbarian’s inaptitude for ideas, 178 - - — on importance of reading, 539 - - — on studying great authorities, 547 - - — on Words and Things, 154 - - Arnstädt, F. A.: _Rabelais_, 69 - - Art learnt by right practice, 420 - - — of observing children, 252 - - Ascham against epitomes, 486, _n._ - - — and Jacotot, 425 - - Ascham’s method for Latin, 84 - - — “six points,” 85 - - “Ascott Hope,” quoted, 498, _n._ - - Athletic public schoolmen, 514, _n._ - - Audition, Hint for, 429, _n._ - - Augsburg, Ratke at, 106 - - - Bacon against epitomes, 446, _n._ - - — for Jesuits, 33, _n._ - - — for study of Nature, 408 - - — on “young plants,” 406 - - — studied by Comenius, 122, 149 - - Baconian teaching, Effect of, 510 - - Bahrd, 289 - - Balliet, T. M., quoted, 156, _n._ - - Banzet, Sara, 408 - - Barbauld, Mrs., on women’s concealment of knowledge, 98, _n._ - - Barbier, _La Discipline_, 60, _n._ - - Bardeen’s _Orbis Pictus_, 168 - - Barnard, H., _English Pedagogy_, 542 - - — _Eng. Pedagogy_, 91, _n._, 212, _n._ - - — on Kindergarten, 409 - - — Opinion of _Positions_, 91, and _n._ - - — _The Kindergarten_, 413 - - Bartle Massey in _Adam Bede_, 507 - - Basedow and Goethe, 277 - - _Basedow_, Pinloche’s mentioned, 289, _n._, 527 - - Bateus, 160, _n._ - - Bath, W., 160, _n._ - - Beaconsfield, Ld. His “two nations,” 371 - - Beautiful, Pestalozzi on sense of the, 339 - - Beginners shall have best teachers. Mulcaster, 95 - - Bell, Dr., at Yverdun, 352 - - Bellers, John, for hand-work, 211, _n._ - - Benham, D. His _Comenius_, 119 - - — His trans. of _Sch. of Infancy_, 142 - - Besant, W. Readings in Rabelais, 67, _n._ - - Biographies before history, 489 - - Birmingham lecture quoted, 193, _n._ - - Blackboard, Drawing on, 476 - - Blunder of insisting on repulsive tasks, 467 - - — of not getting clear ideas about definitions, 460 - - — of giving only book knowledge, 458 - - — of teaching epitomes, 485 - - — of teaching words without ideas, 475 - - — of “cramming” children, 374, 375 - - — of not beginning at the beginning, 468 - - — of assuming knowledge in pupil, 468 - - — of neglecting interest, 464, 474 - - — of teaching the incomprehensible, 195 - - — about “first principles,” 461 - - Bluntschli warns Pestalozzi, 293 - - Bodily health, Jesuits cared for, 48, 507 - - Bodmer, 291 - - Body, its part in education, 566 - - — must be educated, 411 - - — Rabelais’s care of the, 508 - - Boileau’s _Arrêt_, 187, _n._ - - Bookishness of Renascence. Montaigne, 76 - - Book-learning, connected with life, 459 - - Books for teachers, 541 - - “Books, Miserable,” 153 - - — Reaction against, 510 - - — Respect for, 481 - - — Rousseau against, 259 - - — useful in learning an art, 546 - - Bowen, E. E., 118, _n._, 532 - - Bowen, H. C., on connected teaching, 424, _n._ - - — on development, 399 - - — on Kindergartens without idea, 410 - - Bréal, M., quoted, 286, _n._ - - — on child-collectors, 429, _n._ - - — on teachers, 455, _n._ - - Brewer, Prof., 98 - - Brinsley, J., 200 - - — on training teachers, 99, _n._ - - Brown, Dr. John, _Ed. through senses_, 458, _n._ - - — _Horæ Sub._, quoted, 169 - - Browning, Oscar, on Humanists, &c., 231 - - Buchanan and Infant Schools, 409 - - Buisson on Intuition, 361 - - Bülbring, Dr., and Mary Astell, 543 - - Burgdorf Institute, 341 - - — Pestalozzi at, 335 - - Burke, quoted, 437 - - Buss, 341, 365 - - Butler, Bp., on Ed., 147, 148, _n._ - - Butler, Samuel, quoted, 30 - - - Cadet on Port-Royal, 195 - - Calkins, Prof., on learning thro’ senses, 150, _n._ - - Cambridge exam, of teachers, 219, _n._ - - — man, 40 years ago, 431, _n._ - - Campanella, 122 - - Campe, 287 - - Capitalizing discoveries, 517 - - Carlyle about the Schoolmen, 10, _n._ - - — on divine message, 401 - - — on History, quoted, 145, _n._ - - — on Knowledge, 223 - - — on “nag for sand-cart,” 467 - - — on teaching religion, 359, _n._ - - Carlyle’s “mostly fools,” 517, _n._ - - — “Succedaneum for salt,” 498 - - Carré on Port-Royal, 195 - - Cat, Rousseau on the, 258 - - Cato’s _Distichs_, 81, 121 - - Chambers, H. E., of N. Orleans, on “teams,” 531 - - Channing, Eva, Trans, of _L. and G._, 306, _n._ - - Children and poetry, 541 - - — care for things and animals, 475, 521 - - — not small men, 250 - - Childhood the sleep of Reason, 245 - - _Christopher and Eliza_, 309 - - Church, Dean R. W., on Montaigne, 71, _n._ - - Citizens’ duties, 447 - - Classics, “Discovery” of the, 3 - - — do not satisfy modern wants, 7 - - — in Public Schools, 76 - - — too hard for boys, 16 - - Classification, Thoughts on, 232 - - Classifiers, Caution against, 232 - - Class matches, 42, 529 - - Clindy, Pestalozzi at, 353 - - Clough, quoted, 358 - - Colet, Dean, 80, 533 - - Columbus and geography, 2 - - Comenius and Science of ed., 512 - - — Books about, 170 - - — at Amsterdam, 133 - - — in London, 126 - - — criticized by Lancelot, 186, _n._ - - — stiftung, 119 - - Compayré, _Hist. of Pedagogy_ and _Lectures_, 544 - - — on Jesuits, 56 - - — on Port-Royal, 196 - - Compendia Dispendia, 169 - - Complete living, H. Spencer on, 442 - - “Complete Retainers,” 89, 426, _n._ - - Composition, 483 - - Compulsion, Nothing on, 112 - - Concept, Larger, how formed, 457 - - Concertations, 42 - - Concrete, Start from, 461 - - _Conduct of Understanding_ and Reason, 221 - - _Conférences pédagogiques_, 362 - - Connexion of knowledges, 424 - - _Consolation_, &c., Brinsley, 200 - - Cooking should be taught, 540 - - Coote, Edward, _English Scholemaster_, 91 - - Corporal punishment, Pestalozzi for, 327 - - Cotterill, C. C., _Suggested Reforms_, 545 - - Cowley’s Proposition, &c., 202 - - Cowper on man and animals, 517 - - Creative instinct. Froebel, 404 - - - Daniel, Canon, quoted, 155, _n._ - - Daniel, Le P. Ch., quoted, 62, _n._ - - _Day-dreams of a Schoolmaster_, 541 - - Day-schools wanted, 499 - - Dead knowledge, 524 - - Decimal scale universal, 479 - - De Garmo, Dr., on language work. 481, _n._ - - — quoted, 403, _n._ - - De Geer and Comenius, 130 - - _De Imitatione_, quoted, 398 - - De Morgan, quoted, 433, _n._ - - De Quincey, quoted, 153, _n._ - - Derby, Ld., on criminals, 358 - - — quoted, 256, _n._ - - Development, Froebel’s theory of, 400 - - Didactic teaching, Rousseau against, 268 - - Diderot, quoted, 365, _n._ - - Diesterweg on dead knowledge, 365 - - Diesterweg’s rule for repetition, 111 - - _Dilucidatio_ of Comenius, 123 - - _Discentem oportet credere_, 152 - - Dislike often from ignorance, 466 - - _Doctrinale_, 80, 532 - - Double Translating, 86 - - — translation judged, 89 - - Drawing, Comenius for, 146 - - — Pestalozzi on, 368 - - — Rousseau for, 261 - - Drill, Need of, 526 - - Drudgery defined, 472 - - Drummond, Henry, quoted, 502, _n._ - - _Dunciad_, quoted, 31, 422 - - Dupanloup, Bp., quoted, 113 - - Dupanloup against Public Schools, 179 - - Dury’s _Reformed Schoole_, 203 - - — watch simile, 205 - - - Early education negative, 244, 402 - - Ecclesiasticus, quoted, 77 - - École modèle, books not used, 154, _n._ - - “Economy of Nature,” 440 - - _Education of Man_, published 1826, 392 - - _Educational Reformers._ History of the book, 527 - - — in America, 529 - - Educations. Rousseau’s three, 248 - - Edwardes, Rev. D., quoted, 499, _n._ - - Elbing, Comenius at, 130 - - _Elementarie._ Mulcaster’s, 92 - - Elementary, Basedow’s, published, 275 - - — course. Mulcaster, 97 - - — studies. Comenius, 141 - - Elizabeth, Queen, Ascham’s pupil, 88 - - Elyot’s _Governour_, 91, 202 - - Emerson, R. W., quoted, 501 - - Empirical before Rational, 462 - - Emulation cultivated by Jesuits, 42 - - — Forms of, 530 - - Encyclopædia Bri., 385, _n._ - - Endter. Publisher of _Orbis Rictus_, 167 - - English, Mulcaster’s eulogy of, 534 - - — party questions, 381 - - — tongue, Mulcaster on, 92 - - — without Verbs and Substantives, 460, _n._ - - Epitomes. Against, 485 - - Erasmus against ignorance, 523, _n._ - - — for small schools, 180, _n._ - - — the Scholar, 23 - - _Erinnerungen eines Jesuitenzöglings_, 60 - - _Eruditio_ in Jesuit Schools, 40 - - Eve, H. W., on old and young teachers, 506 - - _Evening Hour of Hermit_, 302 - - Evolution and Froebel, 399 - - Examination of children for scholarships, 97 - - — knowledge, 540 - - Examinations cause pressure, 77 - - Exercises, Correcting, 484 - - — Hints for, 429, _n._ - - Experience _v._ Theory, 107 - - Experts needed in modern life, 545 - - Eyes, Use of, 411 - - Eyre, Father, on the _Ratio_, 57 - - - Fables for Composition, 483 - - — Pestalozzi’s, 312 - - Faculties, Equal attention to all, 537 - - Fag-end, Children not the, 354 - - _Faust_, quoted, 426, 428 - - Fellenberg, 344 - - Fichte and Pestalozzi, 347 - - Final opinions, Demand for, 410 - - Fire like knowledge, 433 - - First-hand knowledge not enough, 224 - - First impressions important, 194 - - Fischer, O., 366, _n._ - - Fitch’s _Lectures on Teaching_, 542 - - Folk-schools, Importance of, 376 - - Forcing, Comenius against, 144 - - Formative instinct. Froebel, 404 - - Franklin, B., on reading aloud, 482 - - Froebel and Bacon, 408 - - — on preparing better things for future, 547 - - — showed the right road, 384 - - Froude, J. A., on use of hagiology, 503, _n._ - - “Furtherers” and “Hinderers,” 531 - - - Garbovicianu on Basedow, 289, _n._ - - Gargantua’s Education, 63 - - Garrick, David, “When doctrine, &c.,” 536 - - Geikie, A.: _Teaching of Geography_, 544 - - Generalization, 461 - - General view should not come first, 169 - - Geography absent from Trivium and Quadrivium, 2 - - — Beginnings in, 489 - - — how begun, Comenius, 145 - - Gerard, Father (S. J.), quoted, 57 - - German not a good medium of thought, 545 - - “Gertrude,” Account of, 301 - - Gesner, J. M., for _Statarisch_ and _Cursorisch_, 32 - - “Gifts.” Froebel’s, 408 - - Girard, Père, and Pestalozzi, 349 - - Girardin, St. M., on Rousseau, 264, _n._ - - Girls, Schoolmistresses’ blunders about, 443 - - Giving “G.’s,” 530 - - Goethe and bad pictures, 487 - - — on Basedow, 276 - - — on unity of man, 518, _n._ - - — on Voices and Echoes, 504 - - — on thought and action, 546 - - Golden Age, in Past or Future? 22 - - Goldsmith against epitomes, 486, _n._ - - “Good scholars” as schoolmasters, 545 - - — spirits needed for teaching, 497 - - Grammar, 481, _n._ - - — learnt from good authors, Ascham, 85 - - — Mistakes about, 460 - - Grant’s, H., _Arithmetic_, 482 - - “Gratis receive, gratis give.” Jesuit rule, 39 - - Greaves, J. P., at Yverdun, 352, _n._ - - Grounding, Importance of, Mulcaster, 96, _n._ - - Groundwork by best workman, Mulcaster, 95 - - Grubé’s method, 479 - - _Guesses at Truth_, quoted, 24 - - Guillaume’s Pestalozzi mentioned, 383, _n._ - - Guimps, 383, _n._ - - Guimps’s Pestalozzi, 317, &c. - - - Habrecht, Isaac, 161, _n._ - - Hack, Miss, _Tales of Travelers_, 490 - - Hailmann, W. H., on creative doing, 412 - - Hale, Sir Matthew, for realism, 212, _n._ - - Hall, Stanley, about _L. & G._, 306, _n._ - - — Experts needed, 545 - - Hallam on Comenius, 158 - - Hallé, Children’s Lessons at, 475 - - Hancock, Supt. J., quoted, 46, _n._ - - Handelschulen, 445 - - Hands, Children’s use of, 407 - - — use of, 411 - - — use of, 538 - - Handwork at Neuhof, 297 - - — Comenius for, 146 - - — Petty on, 211 - - — Rabelais for, 66 - - — Rousseau for, 271 - - Harmar, J. 161, _n._ - - Harris, W. T., on “Nature,” 109 - - — started public Kindergartens, 410 - - — on thought and action, 546 - - Harrow “Bluebook,” 532 - - — Class-matches at, 529 - - — Religious instruction at, 500 - - Hartlib, S., 124, _n._, 130 - - Hazlitt, W. C., 91, _n._ - - Helplessness produced by bad teaching, 464 - - Helps, Sir A., for science, 447, _n._ - - — on looking straight at things, 481 - - — on open-mindedness, 502 - - — quoted, 434, _n._ - - Herbart at Burgdorf, 367, _n._ - - — on Rousseau, 269 - - Herbert, Ld., of Cherbury, on physical ed., 227 - - Hewitson on Stonyhurst, 59 - - “Hinter dem Berge,” 449 - - Hints from pupils, 367, _n._ - - History, Beginnings in, 489 - - — H. Spencer on, 448 - - Home and School, 342 - - Honesty the best policy, 529 - - Hoole’s _A new discovery_, &c., 200 - - — trans. of _Orbis Pictus_, 166 - - Humility to be taught, 503 - - Hymns to be used, 501 - - - Ickelsamer, 116 - - Ideal, high, 496 - - — value of, 382 - - — want of an, 471 - - Ideas before symbols, 253 - - “Idols,” escape from, 514 - - Ignorance, Erasmus agst., 523 - - _Il faut apprendre_, &c., Jacotot, 424 - - “Impressionists,” 89, 426, _n._ - - Improvements suggested by Mulcaster, 92 - - Inclinations should be studied, 465 - - Industrial school at Neuhof, 297 - - “Infelix divortium verum et verborum,” 139 - - Innovators, 103 - - “Inquiry into course of Nature,” 311 - - _Instruct_ is _instruere_, 432 - - Instruction an exercise of faculty, 332 - - Intellect before critical faculty. Comenius, 138 - - Interest, Degrees in, 113 - - — in teaching needed, 546 - - — needed for activity, 474 - - — needed for mental exertion, 193, _n._ - - — No success without, 473 - - Interesting, Can learning be? 465 - - Intuition = _Anschauung_, 361 - - — Froebel for, 408 - - Investigation, Method of, 437 - - “Ipse dixit,” Comenius against, 152 - - Iselin, editor of _Ephemerides_, 298, 302 - - - “Jacob’s Ladder,” Pestalozzi, 356 - - Jahn on Froebel, 386 - - Jansenius and St.-Cyran, 175 - - _Janua_, English versions of C.’s, 165 - - — Jesuits, 160, _n._ - - — of Comenius published, 123, 163 - - Jebb on Erasmus, 523, _n._ - - Jesuit a trained teacher, 37 - - — course included _Studia Superiora et inferiora_, 38 - - — exams., 47 - - — shows effect of planned system, 532 - - — teaching. An example of, 44 - - Jesuits. Books about, 34 - - — the army of the Church, 55 - - — the first reformers, 506 - - Johnson, Richard, _Gram. Commentaries_, 82 - - Johnson, Dr., on knowledge of education 410, 525 - - — on _Scholemaster_, 82 - - Jonson, Ben. “Soul for salt,” 498, _n._ - - Jullien on Intuition, 362 - - Jung, 106 - - - Kant and Intuition, 361 - - — on the Philanthropinum, 288 - - Kay-Shuttleworth and Pestalozzi, 352 - - Kempe, W., _Ed. of Children_, 83 - - “Kernsprüche,” 545 - - Kindergarten and Comenius, 143 - - — a German word, 409, _n._ - - — Froebel on aim of, 409 - - — Notion of, 406 - - — The first, 394 - - Kinglake’s _Eothen_, quoted, 15 - - Kingsley on Jesuits, 54 - - Knowing, after Being and Doing, 307 - - — by heart, 74, _n._ - - Knowledge and Locke, 513 - - — a tool, 540 - - — and Comenius, 512 - - — Danger from, 78 - - — Desire for, 540 - - — despised by New Educationists, 526 - - — Genesis of, 462 - - — Locke’s definition of, 222 - - — must not be dead knowledge, 524 - - — not fastened to mind, Montaigne, 71 - - — over-estimated by Comenius, 168 - - — Perfect, impossible, 226 - - — spreads like fire, 433 - - — self-gained, Locke, 515 - - — Teaching what it is, 453 - - Knowledges, Relative value of, 442 - - — Connexion of, Comenius, 157 - - Known to Unknown, 457 - - Koethen, Ratke fails at, 107 - - Kruesi joins Pestalozzi, 340 - - - Lancelot on Comenius, 186 - - — on learning Latin, 185 - - Landon, J., School Management, 544 - - Langethal and Froebel, 390 - - Language-learning, Lancelot on, 186, _n._ - - — Method for, 426, _n._ - - Language lives in small vocabulary, 169 - - — not Literature, 17 - - — teaching, Ratke’s plan, 116 - - Languages, Comenius on learning, 140 - - Latham, H., _Action of Exam._, 544 - - Latin, Comenius for, 159 - - Laurie, S. S., his _Comenius_, 119 - - — on books of Comenius, 135 - - — on Milton, 214 - - Lavater and Basedow, 276 - - — and Pestalozzi, 291 - - Learn, Every one can, Jacotot, 416 - - Learning as employment, 75 - - — begins with birth. Pestalozzi, 537 - - — by heart wrong. Ratke, 113 - - — by heart. _See_ Memorizing - - — for the few, Mulcaster, 93 - - — may be borrowed, Montaigne, 73 - - — must not be play, 367 - - — not Knowledge, Montaigne, 71 - - Leipzig, Dr. Vater at, 477 - - Leisure hours, 450 - - — often useless, 498 - - Leitch, J., Practical Educationists, 409 - - — Practical Educationists, 544 - - Lemaître, 186, _n._ - - _Leonard and Gertrude_, 305 - - Lessing on Raphael, 420 - - Leszna sacked, 132 - - “Letters,” Comm. for, 538 - - Lewis, Prince, and Ratke, 106 - - Light from within, Nicole, 190 - - Likes and Dislikes, Study, 466 - - Lily’s _Carmen Mon._, 81 - - — Grammar, 533 - - Literature and Science, 154, 539 - - — at Port-Royal, 184 - - — in education, 539 - - — or Letters, 9 - - — What is? 6 - - “Little Schools,” 176 - - Locke against sugar and salt, 466 - - — and Froebel, 407 - - — behind Comenius, 230 - - — Books on, 238 - - — for Working Schools, 211, _n._ - - — on Public Schools, 177, 513 - - — and Rousseau, 227 - - — against ordinary learning, 234 - - — predecessor of Pestalozzi, 362 - - — two characteristics, 220 - - — teacher disposes influence, 513 - - — Was he a utilitarian? 234 - - _Locksley Hall_ quoted, 152 - - Louis XIV and Port-Royalists, 176 - - Love the essential principle, 358 - - Loyola on body and soul, 62 - - Lowe or Pestalozzi? 379 - - Lubinus, E., 166, _n._ - - _Ludus Literarius_, 200 - - Lupton, J. H., and Colet, 534 - - Lupton, J. H., on _Catechismus_ P., 102, _n._ - - _Lux in tenebris_, 133 - - Lytton, Ld., on mother’s interference, 371 - - - MacAlister, James, and _Anschauung_, 361 - - Macaulay on French Revolution, 246 - - — wanted, 488 - - “Magis magnos clericos, &c.,” 70 - - Maine, Sir H. S., on studying teaching scientifically, 410, _n._ - - Malleson, Mrs., _Notes on Early Training_, 544 - - Mangnall’s Questions, 374 - - Manning, Miss E. A., a Froebelian, 413 - - Manual labour at Stanz, 331 - - Marcel, C., 535 - - Marenholtz-Bülow and Froebel, 394 - - Marion’s fraud, 173 - - Martineau, Miss, and comet, 223 - - Masham, Lady, on Locke, 220, _n._ - - Masson, D., quotes Mulcaster, 534 - - Masson, D., quotes _Didac. Mag._, 140, _n._ - - Masson’s _Milton_, quoted, 127, _n._ - - Masters and religion, 492 - - Masters, The “open” and the “reserved,” 494 - - Mastery, 365 - - Maurice and Froebel, 406 - - Maurice, F. D., on Jesuits, 54 - - Max Müller, a descendant of Basedow’s, 289, _n._ - - Mayo, Dr., 352, _n._ - - Mayor, J. E. B., on _Scholemaster_, 82, 83 - - Mazzini on humanity, 518, _n._ - - Measuring for arithmetic, 480 - - Mediæval art excelled Renascence, 5 - - “_Melius est scire paucca_, &c.,” 168 - - Memorizing, 113 - - — poetry, 541 - - — Sacchini on, 50, _n._ - - Memory after senses, Comenius, 138 - - — alone can be driven, 474 - - — and interest, 487 - - — depending on associating sounds, 193, _n._ - - — helped by association, 424 - - — Jacotot’s demands on, 425 - - — stuffed, Montaigne, 73 - - — subservient to other powers, 411 - - — The carrying, 77 - - — Waste of, 431 - - — without books, 257 - - Methodology, Truths of, 536 - - Methods defined, 414 - - “Methods teach the Teachers,” 82 - - _Methodus Linguarum_, published, 131 - - Michaelis and Moore, Trans. of Froebel, 413 - - Michelet on Montaigne, 94 - - — on Montaigne, 229, _n._ - - — on Stanz, 317 - - Middendorff and Froebel, 390 - - Middle Age blind to beauty in human form and literature, 5 - - Middle-class education without ideal, 470 - - Middle Schools Comm., quoted, 538 - - Mill, J. S., against specializing, 453, _n._ - - — for teaching classics, 444 - - — on history, 449, _n._ - - Milton a great scholar, 212 - - — a Verbal Realist, 215 - - — and Realism, 23 - - — on learning through the senses, 150, 213, 510 - - Milwaukee, Inter-class matches at, 531 - - Mind like sea-anemone, 474 - - Model book, Ascham for, 87 - - — Jacotot’s use of, 436 - - — Ways of studying, 426 - - Molyneux on geography, 225 - - Moncrieff, H., quoted, 498, _n._ - - Monitorial principle, 538 - - Monitors at Stanz, 333 - - Monotony wearing to the young, 531 - - Montaigne and Froebel, 407 - - Montaigne for educating mind and body, 509 - - — his paradox of ham, 419, _n._ - - Moral development first, 358 - - Morality is development of infant’s gratitude, 309 - - Morals, Rousseau on, 263 - - Morf, Summary of Pestalozzi’s principles, 368 - - Morgan, T. J., _Educational Mosaics_, 544 - - Mother-tongue, 104 - - — Everything through, 111 - - — first at Port-Royal, 184 - - — Jacotot’s plan for, 435 - - — only, till ten, Comenius, 139 - - — Ratke for, 108 - - Mulcaster for English, 534 - - Mulcaster’s elementary subject, 97 - - — Life, 102 - - — proposed reforms, 92 - - — style fatal, 92 - - Music, Benefit from, 452 - - — Rousseau for, 261 - - - Naef, Eliz., at Neuhof, 300 - - Nägeli, 368 - - Napoleon I and Pestalozzi, 343 - - Narrow-mindedness, How to avoid, 503 - - Natural History at Stanz, 333 - - Natural _v._ Usual, 516 - - Nature, Comenius about, 136, 137 - - — Laws of, 134 - - — Ratke for, 109 - - — Return to, 515 - - Negative education, Rousseau, 519 - - New Code of 1890, 379, _n._ - - “New Education” started by Rousseau, 271, 522 - - — education and old, 524 - - — Froebel’s in 1816, 391, 411 - - Newman, J. H., on Locke, 235 - - — on connexion of knowledges, 158 - - — on nature of literature, 7, _n._ - - New master, Advice to, 60, _n._ - - New road, Pestalozzi’s, 337 - - — York _School Journal_ and New Education, 411 - - Nicole on Ed., 190 - - Niebuhr’s _Heroengeschichten_, 428, _n._ - - Niemeyer on thoroughness, 366, _n._ - - _Nihil est in intellectu_ &c., 138 - - Noah’s Ark for words, 161 - - _Nonconformist_, 504 - - Normal Schools on increase, 414 - - _Nouvelle Héloïse_, Family life, 242 - - Number of boarders in Port-Royalist schools small, 179 - - Numbers, First knowledge of, 479 - - Numeration before notation, 479 - - - Oberlin, 408 - - Observation, Poetry for cultivating, 209 - - Observing children, 251 - - “Omnia sponte fluant,” Comenius, 136 - - One thing at a time, Ratke, 109 - - Opinion, Education of, 502 - - — Sensible men cannot differ in, Locke, 221, _n._ - - _Orbis Pictus_ published, 132, 167 - - “Over and over again,” Ratke, 110 - - Over-directing, Rousseau against, 265 - - Overworking teachers, 497 - - Oxenstiern sees Comenius, 128 - - - Painter, F. V. N., _History of Education_, 543 - - Parallel Grammar Series, 114, _n._ - - Parænesis by Sacchini, 34, _n._ - - Parker, F. W., and Kindergarten, 411 - - — on reading, 482 - - — _Talks on Teaching_, 544 - - Parker, C. S., in _Essays on Lib. Ed._, 32 - - Parkin, John, 366, _n._ - - Parkman, Francis, on Jesuits, 55, 56 - - Pascal and Loyola, 172 - - Past, No escape from the, 2 - - Pattison, Mark, on exams., 228, _n._ - - — on dearth of books, 12 - - — on what is education, 228 - - — on Milton - - Pattison’s account of Renascence, 4 - - Paul III recognizes Jesuits, 35 - - Paulsen on Jesuits, 55 - - — on Comenius, 153 - - Payn, James, on learning from books, 546 - - Payne, Joseph, on Pestalozzi, 359, _n._ - - — on observation, 361 - - — on child’s unrest, 407, _n._ - - — _Science and Art of Teaching_, 542 - - — Papers on History of Ed., 544 - - — summing up Pestalozzi, 369, _n._ - - — a disciple of Jacotot, 415 - - — and International Copyright, 529 - - — on women’s ed., 98 - - Payne, Dr. J. F., notes to Locke, 228, _n._ - - Payne, W. H., _Science of Ed._, 545 - - Perez, B., on Jacotot, 438 - - Perfect familiarity, 433 - - Pestalozzian books, 383 - - Pestalozzianism lies in aim, 354 - - Pestalozzi’s school at Neuhof, 296 - - — talks with children at Stanz, 325 - - Pestalozzi, a strange schoolmaster, 334 - - — A portrait of, 345 - - — and Bacon, 408 - - — His poverty, 340 - - — His severity, 308 - - Petty’s Battlefield simile, 207 - - — Realism, 208 - - Philanthropinum, Subjects taught at, 279 - - Physical education for health, 104 - - — Ed. neglected by Port-Royalists, 188 - - — Ed., Rabelais for, 67 - - Physician’s defective science, 519 - - Picture-book for History, Dr. Arnold, 487 - - Pictures for teaching, 476 - - Piety at Port-Royal, 181 - - Pinloche’s Basedow mentioned, 289, _n._, 527 - - Plants and education, Rousseau, 255 - - Plato against compulsion, 113 - - — on literary instruction, 14 - - Play and learning different, 367 - - Pleasant, Learning must be, 138 - - Pleasurable, Exercise is, 464 - - Pleasure in learning, Jesuits, 506 - - — in learning. Ratke, 112 - - — in sch. work. Sacchini, 52 - - — in sch. work. Mulcaster, 98 - - — in study at Port-Royal, 183, 194 - - Poetry, Memorizing, 483 - - Pomey’s _Indiculus_, 40 - - Pope. _Dunciad_ quoted, 31, 422 - - — on Locke and Montaigne, 230, _n._ - - — on “Nature,” 109 - - — quoted, 451, _n._ - - Pope’s “Little Knowledge,” 446 - - Port-Royal des Champs and the Solitaries, 174 - - Posture, Importance of, 327 - - Potter, Miss J. D., quoted, 21 - - Pouring-in theory, 507 - - Practice does not make perfect, 182 - - Preparatory Schools, 374 - - Prendergast and language learning, 426, _n._ - - Pressure, Causes of, 77 - - — Mulcaster against, 97 - - Principles of the Innovators, 104 - - — H. Spencer’s summing up, 454 - - Printing, Effect of, 10 - - — spread literature at Renascence, 9 - - Private prayer, 502 - - Prize-giving in Jesuit schools, 58 - - _Prodromus_ of Comenius, 125, 126 - - Prussia adopts Pestalozzianism, 346 - - Prussian edict against Froebel, 395 - - Psychologizing instruction, 338 - - Public education must imitate domestic, Pestalozzi, 321 - - — schools, 513, _n._ - - — schools Comm., quoted, 531 - - — school freedom, 265 - - — schools leave boys to themselves, 177 - - — schools undermastered, 514, _n._ - - Punishments for moral offences only. Comenius, 139 - - — in Jesuit schools, 48 - - — Pestalozzi on, 327 - - Pupil teachers, 377, _n._ - - - Quadrivium preferred by Rabelais, 65 - - Queen Louisa on Pestalozzi, 346 - - Questioning, art of, 428, _n._ - - — Rousseau, on art of, 266 - - Questions by pupils at Port-Royal, 190 - - _Quidlibet ex quolibet_, 423 - - Quintilian on rudiments, 195, _n._ - - - Rabelais for intuition, 508 - - — His detachment, 63 - - — on Curriculum, 67, _n._ - - Racine and Port-Royal, 187 - - Ramsauer and Pestalozzi, 336 - - “Rapid impressionists,” 89, 426, _n._ - - “Ratich,” 105 - - Ratio Studd, Soc. Jesu, 34, _note_ - - Ratke and Ascham, 117 - - Ratke’s promises, 105 - - Raumer on Comenius, 146 - - Reaction in 17th century against books, 510 - - Reading after study of things. Petty, 209 - - — badly taught, 115, _n._ - - — begun with Mother-tongue at Port-Royal, 183 - - — in elementary schools, 257, _n._ - - — Jacotot’s plan for, 435 - - — Rousseau against, 256 - - — silent and vocal, 482 - - Realism, Birth of, 198 - - — Comenius for, 149 - - — Rabelais, 66 - - Rearing offspring, to be taught, 447 - - Reason, Locke’s dependence on, 221 - - — No education before, 242 - - _Reformation of Schools_, 125 - - Reformers, Attitude towards, 396 - - Reimarus and Basedow, 273 - - _Rejected Addresses_, quoted, 505 - - Relative value of Knowledges, 442 - - Religion and Science, 147 - - “Religion” lessons in Germany, 501 - - Religious and moral Training, 359 - - Religious instruction, 500 - - Renan, quoted, 247, _n._ - - Renascence defects. _See_ Table of Contents - - — gave a new bend to ideas, 2 - - — re-awakening to beauty in lit., 5 - - — settled Curriculum, 4 - - Repetitio, 45 - - Restlessness, The Child’s, 406 - - “Retainers,” 89 - - — 426, _n._ - - Reverence to be taught, 503 - - Richelieu and Saint-Cyran, 174 - - Richter, J. P., on nurse’s influence, 373, _n._ - - Ritter, Karl, on Pestalozzi, 347 - - Robertson, a methodiser, 426, _n._ - - — Croome, on inherited Knowledge, 364, _n._ - - Rollin’s _Traité des Etudes_, 192 - - Rooper, T. G., _A Pot of Green Feathers_, 545 - - Rousseau against schoolroom lore, 363 - - — first shook off Renascence, 246 - - — His proposals, 267 - - — His two dogs, 312 - - —His great influence, 240, 290 - - — on Common Knowledge, 458, _n._ - - — studied by all, 248 - - Rousseauism, 516 - - Rousseau’s work, 520 - - Routine work a refuge, 498 - - Rudiments not to be made repulsive, 194 - - Rules, Hoole about, 202 - - Ruskin on things and words, 159, _n._ - - Russell, John, translator of Guimps, 317 - - - Sacchini quoted, 39, 41, 46, 47 - - Saint-Cyran and Port-Royal, 174 - - Sainte-Beuve on Port-Royal, 195 - - Salzmann, 287, 289 - - Saros-Patak. Comenius at, 132 - - _Savoir par cœur_, &c., 74, _n._ - - Scheppler, Louise, 408 - - Schmid, Josef, goes to Yverdun, 349 - - Schmid, J. A., on Jesuits, 34 - - Schuepfenthal, School at, 289 - - _Schola materni gremii_, 142 - - _Scholemaster_, When published, 81 - - School-hours of Jesuits short, 43 - - Schoolmaster and words, 538 - - — his test of knowledge, 222 - - — in Education, 177 - - — art led to Verbalism, 30 - - School means different things, 522 - - Schoolroom rubbish, 252 - - Schuppius, _in spem_, &c., 432 - - Science of Education dates from Comenius, 512 - - — of Education denied by Lowe, 379 - - — of Education growing, 505 - - — of education, Importance of, 456 - - — of education like medicine, 519 - - — of Education, Mulcaster for, 94 - - — of education, only beginning. H. Spencer, 455 - - — the thought of God, 413 - - Scientific foundation for Method, 412 - - — knowledge now valued, 77 - - Scioppius edits _Janua_, 161, _n._ - - “Scratch pairs,” 530 - - Seeley, J. R., on language teaching, 460 - - — on use of tongue, 112, _n._ - - Self-activity, 401 - - — the main thing, 524 - - Self-development, H. Spencer for, 462 - - Self-education, Locke for, 236 - - Self-preservation, Education for, 443 - - Self-teaching: Jacotot, 415 - - Seneca for knowing few things, 168 - - — on learning through parts, 540 - - Sense, Art learnt by. Dury, 206 - - Senses, Everything through, Rousseau, 259 - - — Error of neglecting, 151 - - — first, Comenius, 138 - - — Hoole about, 20 - - — How to cultivate. Rousseau, 260 - - — Insufficiency of, 152 - - — Learning from. Comenius, 149 - - — Rousseau on training, 257, 258 - - — Teach by the. Nicole, 191 - - — Training of the. Mulcaster, 95, _n._ - - Sequences of nature arranged by man, 314 - - Severity, Wolsey against, 81, _n._ - - Shakespeare and Mulcaster, 91 - - — “No profit grows, &c.,” 473 - - — quoted, 17 - - Shaw and Donnell: _School Devices_, 544 - - Shirreff, Miss, a Froebelian, 413, _n._ - - Sides, Good of, 532 - - Sidgwick, A.; Lectures on _Stimulus_ and _Discipline_, 544 - - Simple to complex, 456 - - Singing, 368 - - Skyte sees Comenius, 128 - - Small schools worse than large, 179 - - _Societas Professa_ of Jesuits, 36 - - Sociology, 449 - - Sonnenschein’s parallel Grammars, 114, _n._ - - “Soul instead of salt,” Ben Jonson, 498, _n._ - - Spartan Ed. preferred by Montaigne, 72 - - S.P.C.K. pictures, 476, _n._ - - “_Spectator’s_ C. in easy chair,” quoted, 527 - - Spelling, 483 - - — Jacotot’s plan for, 436 - - Spencer, H., Conclusions about, 452 - - — his “Economy of nature,” 235 - - Stanford Rivers, Mulcaster at, 102, _n._ - - Stanz, Pestalozzi at, 316, 318, _ff._ - - — The French at, 315 - - Starting-points of the Sciences, Comenius, 144 - - Stephen, Sir J., quoted, 434 - - _Stonyhurst College_, by Hewitson, 59 - - Street for Mediæval art, 5 - - Study depends on will, 193 - - Sturmius. _See_ Table of Contents - - Stylists, 26 - - Sugar needed, 466 - - Sunrise can’t be hastened, 191 - - Superintendence, the educator’s function, 357 - - Sweetmeats, Locke against, 466 - - _Swiss Journal_, Pestalozzi, 309 - - - Talleyrand on methods, 82 - - Teach, Everyone can, Jacotot, 417 - - — Meaning of word, 417 - - Teacher a gardener, 512 - - — Can he write on Education? 439 - - — does not begin at beginning, 468 - - Teachers, Books for, 541 - - Teachers, College for. Mulcaster, 100 - - — Harm of overworking, 497 - - — ignorant of principles, 455 - - — must be trained, 412 - - — Old, overdo repetition, 506 - - — Young, neglect repetition, 506 - - Teacher’s business, 272 - - — personality, Force of, _Forum_, quoted, 380 - - Teaching, causing to learn, 417 - - — gained from pupils, 497 - - — Good, escapes common tests, 192 - - — needs good spirits, 497 - - Télémaque, 423 - - “Telling,” H. Spencer against, 463 - - Theorists, Use of, 383 - - Things before words, 104 - - — Children’s delight in. Petty, 210 - - “Things” in education, 521 - - Things, Rabelais for, 65 - - Threefold life, Comenius, 135 - - Thring. _Theory and Practice of Teaching_, 542 - - Tillich’s bricks, 480, _n._ - - Tithonus, Quotation from Tennyson’s, 518, _n._ - - Tobler, 341 - - Tone of school and big boys, 500 - - _Tout est en tout_, 423 - - Tradition, loss and gain from, 518 - - — needed, 182 - - Trainer better than teacher, 422 - - Training of teachers, Mulcaster, 99 - - — of teachers needed, 520 - - Transcription, Hint for, 429, _n._ - - Translating both ways, 86 - - Translations at Port-Royal, 185 - - — discouraged at Renascence, 8 - - — would be literature, 15 - - _Travelers, Tales of_, 490 - - Trench, Archbishop, on 13th century art, 5 - - Trumbull, H. K. _Teaching and Teachers_, 542 - - Trivium and Quadrivium, 2 - - — like squirrel’s revolving cage, 10 - - Tyndall on teaching, 468, _n._ - - - Uniformity, Ratke for, 114 - - Unity, Froebel’s desire for, 398 - - — of Universe, Froebel, 389 - - Universities excluded Baconian teaching, 511 - - University men in middle class education, 472 - - _Unum necessarium_, quoted, 133 - - Upton, Editor of _Scholemaster_, 82 - - Useful knowledge, 540 - - Usual contrasted with natural, 516 - - Utilitarianism defined, 235 - - - Variations, Prendergastian, 428, _n._ - - Vater, Dr., at Leipzig, 477 - - Ventilabrum Sapientiæ, 135 - - Verbal Realism, 25 - - — Rabelais, 65 - - Verbalism, Milton against, 213, 214 - - “Visibles” used for Realien, 70, _n._ - - _Vive la destruction_, 1 - - Vogel, Dr., at Leipzig, 478 - - Vogel, A., on Comenius, 156 - - - Ward, James, on Kindergarten, 410 - - Weighing for arithmetic, 480 - - Welldon, J. E. C., on schools for young boys, 499, _n._ - - Well-educated, When, 525 - - Widgery, W. H., quoted, 90 - - Wilderspin and Infant Schools, 409 - - Will, learning depends on. Jacotot, 416 - - — needed for study, 193 - - Wilson, H. B., on Mulcaster, 102 - - Wilson, J. M., against “telling,” 422 - - — on training, 422 - - Winchester, “Standing up,” 541 - - Winship, A. E., on inter-class matches, 531 - - “Wisdom cried of old,” &c., 77 - - Wisdom in “the general,” 517, _n._ - - — must be our own, Montaigne, 73 - - Wolf, F. A., for self-teaching, 268 - - — on child-collectors, 429, _n._ - - Wolf, Hiero., quoted, 31 - - Wolsey, 80 - - Women Commissioners, 308 - - Women’s education, 98, 412 - - — education, Comenius, 141 - - — interest in education, 106 - - Wooding, W., on numbering, 479, 480, _n._ - - Words and Things, 538 - - Words, Learning from, 364, _n._ - - — studying, 154 - - — taught without meaning, 467 - - “Words,” Various meanings of, 538 - - Wordsworth on action of man, 516 - - — on children’s games, 407 - - — on general truths, 496 - - — on need of pleasure, 473, _n._ - - — quoted, 20 - - — Taste in books changes, 543 - - — on tendency, 516 - - — on unity of man, 518, _n._ - - — “We live by admiration &c.,” 154 - - Working-schools, Locke’s, 211, _n._ - - Worship connected with instruction, 501 - - Writing, Jacotot’s plan for, 435 - - - Yverdun, Pestalozzi goes to, 344 - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays on Educational Reformers, by -Robert Hebert Quick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ON EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS *** - -***** This file should be named 60832-0.txt or 60832-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/8/3/60832/ - -Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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