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Text
’ I M.AG
National Secular Society Tract
No. 6.
Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD on
SECULAR
EDUCATION.
Report of a Speech delivered in support of
Secular Education at a meeting held under the
auspices of the Secular Education League, in
the St. James1 Hall, London, December io, 1908.
z | AHE case for the secular solution is a logical
I
case, it is a just case. This is a question
which concerns more particularly the
children of the working classes. I am bound to say
that nothing made me'feel so1 disgusted as when I
listened in the House of Commons, the other day, to
gentlemen whose feet had never crossed the threshold
of a Board School, who told us about the tre
mendous amount of concern they had for the quality
of the moral and religious teaching given to other
people’s children. All I can say is, I wish they would
look after their own children. If they had only
shown the same anxiety for their own children and
seen that they were well educated in morality and re
ligion, well bred, trained in the knowledge of what
was right and wrong, and had left us to do the same
with our children, modern society would have been a
much holier affair than it is to-day.
I am not
one of those who believe in peace at any price. I am
in favour of a just and lasting peace, a peace that has
been secured after the State and Church make up
their minds to look after their own business. There
is nothing more preposterous than that the State
should attempt to do the work of the Church unless
it is that the Church should actually expect the State
to do its work. Let us suppose that we are all pro
foundly religious and that we are simply burning
with anxiety to get the minds of our children, using
the word in its very best sense, converted. The
children have religious instruction for three quarters
of an hour each day, and we are going to say : ‘ What
�a blessed religious exercise they have had. How en
lightening it has been to their souls.’ Three quarters
of an hour’s instruction in Jewish history—very
ancient—and the child might say : ‘ Thank God, if I
did not know that David was the King of Judah, I
might have been a thief.’ We have a right to test
education by results.
We hear a great deal about
science nowadays. I would like to hear Mr. Hal
dane, who is a leader in science, give his genuine
opinion as a scientist, from the point of view of a
man who believes in the scientific method, as to the
effect of Bible reading in the schools from the re
ligious point of view. Let us begin on a secular
basis. Let us secularize our schools. Let us bring
in, not Bills to allow sectarian strife, but Bills to> in
crease the efficiency of education.
Let us make a
real beginning in the State care of children. Let us
try to devise some means by which the wisdom,
knowledge and power and the financial strength of
the State, can build up a physical, intellectual and
moral character in our children so that when they are
no longer children they shall be powerful men and
women, prepared to face life in all its aspects. Bring
in Bills to do that and peace will naturally follow.
If we could get our education ministers to tear out
from the official volumes, all records of those round
table conferences and barterings, and forget them,
and simply go, day after day, to our schools, see the
children, see the teachers and the buildings, and go
from those schools to' the factories and workshops and
see the conditions under which the youth of the
country has to work, and with that experience go
back to the conference room, and construct an Edu
cation Bill which would enable them to meet those
conditions, then you would have an education of the
right kind. You would have peace, you would have
a settlement which was not a surrender, and the
whole country would benefit enormously as the re
sult of those efforts.”
/
Printed and Published by The National Secular Society,
62 Farringdon Street, E.C.4.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Mr Ramsay Macdonald on secular education : report of a speech delivered in support of secular education at a meeting held under the auspices of the Secular Education League, in the St. James' Hall, London, December 10, 1908
Creator
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Macdonald, Ramsay
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: [2] p. ; 19 cm.
Series: National Secular Society tract 6
Notes: Printed by The National Secular Society.
Publisher
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National Secular Society
Date
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1908
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G5481
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Secularism
Education
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Mr Ramsay Macdonald on secular education : report of a speech delivered in support of secular education at a meeting held under the auspices of the Secular Education League, in the St. James' Hall, London, December 10, 1908), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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Text
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English
Education
Secularism
-
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de80925bb1f582f9d5156bbcc35a9440
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Text
® t s f i in £rn i HI s
IN FAVOUR OF THE
■M.
REV. JOHN BURNELL PAYNE, \A.,
CANDIDATE FOR THE PROFESSORSHIP
OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE
AND HISTORY AT OWEN’S COLLEGE, MANCHESTER.
�INDEX.
I. Professor Birkbeck.
II. E. E. Bowen, Esq.
III. Rev. W. G. Clark.
IV. Rev. T. L. Kinsbury.
V. F. T. Palgrave, Esq.
VI. H. Sidgwick, Esq.
VII. C. A. Buchheim, Ph.D.
VIII. H. Lee Warner, Esq.
IX. Henry Jackson, M.A.
X. A. Sidgwick.
XI. Oscar Browning.
XII. F. C. Hodgson.
XIII. A. C. Swinburne.
XIV. Thos. Woolmer.
XV. Thos. Hodgson.
XVI. A. W. Benson.
XVII. T. H. Fisher.
XVIII. Joseph Bickersteth.
XIX. De Guingand.
�Wellington College,
May 12, 1866,
Gentlemen,
In forwarding for your inspection my Testimonials, I beg
to state a few other particulars which I think may be important.
I am 27 years of age, and unmarried.
In 1858 I took the Degree of B.A. in the University of London,
with Classical Honours.
I had previously studied for two years at University College,
London. The length of time since my connection with University
College ceased, alone prevented my troubling the Trustees with
Testimonials from my Tutors there, who were good enough to
help me to gain a position as private tutor shortly after my
leaving there.
In 1860 I entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, which I left
in 1862, on gaining a Scholarship, open to the whole University,
at Downing College,
In 1864 I took the Degree of B.A., and was in the Second
Class in Classical Honours, First Class in the Moral Sciences
Tripos.
After Christmas 1864-5 I became an Assistant-Master here,
and at the Christmas Ordination 1865-6 I was ordained Deacon
by the Bishop of Oxford.
Trusting that if I receive the honour of your selection I may
deserve it, and assured that my best efforts will in that case be
devoted to the service of your College,
I remain, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
J. B. PAYNE,
The Trustees of Owen’s College, Manchester,
��TESTIMONIALS.
*
I
Downing College,
June Is?, 1864.
My dear Sir,
From the opportunity I have had of forming an opinion,
I believe you possess very considerable knowledge of English
and General Literature, as well as the power of expressing your
views with facility and clearness. I have no doubt that you
would perform with much ability the duties of the office for
which you are a candidate.
Believe me, my dear Sir,
Yours very sincerely,
W. Ll. birkbeck,
Downing Professor of Laws in the
University of Cambridge.
To J. B. Payne, Esq.
* This Testimonial and others marked with an asterisk were presented in
support of an application for the Professorship of English Literature at Lam
peter College.
B 2
�6
II *
Harrow, N.W.
Gentlemen,
Having been informed that my friend Mr. J. B. Payne is
a candidate for the Professorship of English Literature and
History at Owen’s College, I have no hesitation in stating
my belief that the College will be most fortunate should it
succeed in obtaining his services.
Everyone who has known Cambridge for the last few
years must be aware of the reputation which Mr. Payne
has acquired for proficiency in these and kindred subjects. I am
not in a position to speak with authority on his classical attain
ments, to which he will of course find many to do justice ; but
I know him to be well versed in the literature of our own
country as well as that of others, and to be, both in speaking
and in writing, no mean master of the language.
By his knowledge, fluency, and taste, Mr. Payne is eminently fitted for lecturing a class; and his general ability and
high character will be esteemed by every student.
I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
E. E. BOAVEN,
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; AssistantMaster in Harrow School.
HI.
Cambridge.
Mr. J. Burnell Payne, B.A., of Downing College, and
late of Trinity, informs me that he is a candidate for the vacant
Professorship at Owen’s College.
I have much pleasure in stating that in my opinion he is well
qualified for such an office. He has excellent abilities, and an
extensive knowledge of Modern Literature, English, German, and
French. As he is also able to express himself with fluency, he
would, in my opinion, be an effective lecturer.
W. G. CLARK,
Tutor of Trinity College {Public Orator
in the University').
�7
.
*
IV
Trinity College, Cambridge.
I have known Mr. Payne intimately for some years, and
have great pleasure in expressing my conviction that he is
eminently fitted by his literary tastes and habits, an extraordinarily
wide range of reading, and his familiar acquaintance with other
modern literatures beside that of his own country, to discharge
with peculiar efficiency and credit the duties of the post for
which he is a candidate.
Having received his education partly in Germany, he has
diligently availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded him
of acquiring a familiar and accurate knowledge of the language
and literature of that country, and his proficiency in both
respects is such as even the most cultivated Englishmen very
rarely attain to.
T. L. KINGSBURY,
Chaplain of Trinity College.
N
Whitehall.
• Having had the pleasure of knowing Mr. J. B. Payne
for some years, and having myself had considerable experience
in the line of work which he is desirous of carrying on at
Manchester, I think that I may, without presumption, express
the opinion that he possesses more than common qualifications
for a “ Professorship of English Literature, Language, and
History.” In English Literature, which has more frequently been
discussed between us, he seems to me to have an unusually wide
and accurate range of knowledge, with a lively power of criticising
what he has read. I think him a man successful in giving
others the interest which he himself feels in literature, and that,
as a teacher, he would be eminently likely to lead his pupils to a
broad, and, at the same time, an accurate knowledge of his
subject.
F. T. PALGRAVE,
Late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and VicePresident of the Kneller Hall Normal
Training School; at present Examiner in the
Education Office.
�8
*
VI
Gentlemen,
I am requested to testify to the qualifications of Mr. J. B.
Payne for the Professorship of English and General Literature.
I have known Mr. Payne intimately for some years, and am con
vinced that he is unusually well qualified for such a post. His
acquaintance with our own literature, especially the earlier
writers, is very extensive. His knowledge of the French and
German languages is accurate and complete, and his familiarity
with the best writings in those languages remarkable in an
Englishman. He has a sensitive perception of style, and a sound
and cultivated judgment of literary merit of all kinds. He has
laboriously mastered the writings of the most important thinkers
in England and on the Continent, since the re-awakening of
thought in Europe ; and has successfully trained his mind to take
profound and philosophic views of all subjects upon which he
employs it. He, moreover, combines with this capacity for wide
and general views a strong interest in the individualties of
different authors, and a genuine enthusiasm which would prevent
the study of literature from ever becoming a dry and lifeless one
in his hands.
I cannot blit add, that he possesses in a high degree the power
of stimulating other minds with which he comes into contact,
and of communicating to them his own vivid intellectual interest.
This faculty, combined with the clearness of head and readiness
of expression that he possesses, can hardly fail to render him a
successful teacher.
I am, Gentlemen,
Faithfully yours,
HENRY SIDGWICK,
Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Trinity College,
Cambridge.
�9
VII.
King’s College London,
May Yith, 1866.
Enjoying the privilege of a personal acquaintance with
Mr. Payne, of Wellington College, I have much pleasure in
bearing testimony to his high literary attainments, and to his
perfect knowledge of the history and literature, not only of his
own country, but also of that of Germany and France. As a
further recommendation of Mr. Payne, for whom I entertain the
highest respect both as a scholar and a gentleman, I beg to add
that he possesses in an eminent degree a sincere devotion to the
educational profession, and that he is fully acquainted with the
best methods of teaching.
C. A. BUCHHEIM, Ph.D.,
Professor of the German Language and Literature
in King's College; and Examiner in German
to the University of London.
VIII.
Rugby,
May 10, 1866.
My Dear Payne,
I have much pleasure in being able to testify to my
belief that you know more of English Literature than most of
your and my contemporaries at Cambridge. If I am at all
qualified to judge, your knowledge was of a very superior kind;
and of this I am certain, that 1 often derived great instruction
from a walk or a talk with you. Of your fitness for the place, as
regards the interest you take in the subject, no one could doubt.
Of your proficiency I have no doubt.
Believe me,
Yours sincerely,
H. LEE WARNER,
Fellow of S. John's College, Cambridge, Assistant
Master in Rugby School.
�10
IX.
Having been informed that Mr. J. B. Payne, of Downing
College, Cambridge, is a candidate for the vacant Professorship
of English Language and Literature at Owen’s College, Man
chester, I have great pleasure in testifying to my belief of his
fitness for the post. During the last three years I have had
frequent opportunities of forming an estimate of his knowledge
and abilities. He has read extensively in all branches of
literature : in particular he has studied vour early authors with
unusual care. I well remember his acute and just criticisms
upon certain of our less known poets. His own style is fluent
and lively. His love of the artistic, which amounts to
enthusiasm, joined with a remarkable faculty of continuous
exposition and great fertility of illustration, cannot fail to
interest any audience.
I may add that Mr. Payne is well acquainted with the
literature of Greece and Rome, and with the principal languages
of modern Europe.
HENRY JACKSON, M.A.,
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
X.
Rugby,
May 10, 1866.
Gentlemen,
Mr. J. B. Payne was an intimate friend of mine during a
considerable part of my residence at Cambridge, and I am there
fore in a position to speak of his abilities not without confidence.
His acquaintance with English Literature is unusually exten
sive ; and he is at the same time possessed of a vividness and
fluency in his powers of expression which cannot fail to stimulate
all whom he has to teach.
His critical powers are sensitive and developed; and he
belongs to that small class, even among cultivated men, whose
minds can be said to be really active.
As a teacher of any subject he knows, he would be un
doubtedly good; of a subject with which he is so well acquainted
as English Literature he would be most excellent.
Believe me,
Yours obediently,
ARTHUR SIDGWICK.
�11
XI.
Eton College,
May 11.
I am extremely glad to hear that my friend the Rev. J. B.
P^yne is a candidate for the Professorship of English Language,
Literature, and History at Owen’s College, Manchester, as, from
his great knowledge of English and Foreign Literature, his
cultivated taste for beauty, and his clearness and facility of
expression, he appears to me admirably suited to fill such a post
with credit.
OSCAR BROWNING,
Assistant Master at Eton College.
XII.
May 11, 1866.
I have very great pleasure in stating that I believe
Mr. J. B. Payne, who is now a Candidate for the Professorship
of English Language and Literature at Owen’s College, to be
exceedingly well qualified by a wide acquaintance with English
Literature for that position. I believe also that his intimate
knowledge of the Language and Literature of France and Ger
many, as well as of the results of the Science of Comparative
Philology, would render him highly qualified for the scientific
Teaching of the English Language.
F. C. HODGSON,
Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
XIII.
I have enjoyed for some time the acquaintance of
Mr. J. Burnell Payne. No man who can say the same could fail
to perceive and to admire his varied and accurate knowledge,
his fine and critical relish of the higher literature. Few have
ever seemed to me so fit to hold, so certain to adorn, an office in
which this taste and this talent would find scope at once and use.
A. 0. SWINBURNE.
Author of Atalanta tn Ceylon ” and u ChartelardA
�29, Welbeck Street, W.,
May 10, 1866,
I have been acquainted with the Rev. J. B. Payne for
about eleven years, and, from numerous conversations during
that time, believe him to possess not only an unusually extensive
knowledge of English Literature, both prose and poetical, but
likewise an exceedingly vivid power of expressing his own views
upon the subject, and awakening a similar interest in his audience
to that which he himself feels.
THOS. WOOLNER,
Author of “ My Beautiful Ladyf
XV.
May 10, 1866.
Gentlemen,
Though my acquaintance with the Rev. Mr. Payne is
of recent date, and though I have never had an opportunity of
hearing him lecture, I have been frequently, in intercourse with
him, been much impressed by the evidence he has incidentally
given of his extensive knowledge and thoughtful appreciation of
English Literature, and of the amount of reading- that he has
accomplished, not in careless haste, but with profitable result.
From all that I know or have heard of him, I am much disposed
to believe that if he were entrusted with the Professorship to
which he aspires he would speedily earn a reputation for him
self, to the great gain of the Students and the honour of the
College.
I remain,
Yours respectfully,
W. B. HODGSON, L.L.D.,
Vice-President of the College of Preceptors,
Examiner in the University of London, fyc.
�13
XVI.
May 10, 1866.
The Rev. J. B. Payne has been a year and a half a
Master on the Modern side of Wellington College, and now has
the most important part in the administration and teaching of the
Modern Classes.
He is an excellent modern linguist, and is both widely read
and most deeply interested in Modern Literature, English and
Foreign. He is fond of teaching in itself as an art, and has
most successfully cultivated it. I know, indeed, very few men
whom I consider to be equally apt in catching a student’s diffi
culties, weighing them, and meeting them by clear and lucid
statement.
He has great promptness, and fluency of expression, and is
happy in illustration.
Both by knowledge, therefore, and by cultivation, Mr. Payne
appears to me to be excellently adapted for the public duties of
the post which he now seeks; and at the same time his influence
and example would, I am sure, be exceedingly stimulating to the
private studies of his class.
E. W. BENSON,
Master of Wellington College,
Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
XVII.
Wellington College,
May 11.
Gentlemen,
I have been associated here with Mr. Payne since he
has been at the College, and have had opportunity of observing
his knowledge of History, and his extensive acquaintance with
English Literature ; and if conversation be any criterion for public
lecturing, I can also bear witness to his great dexterity in
weaving his literary knowledge into what he says to those about
him. He has, besides, always had among us the reputation of
an excellent teacher.
I have the honour to be,
Yours obediently,
T. H. FISHER,
Mathematical Master
�14
XVIII.
May 10th, 1866.
The Rev. J. B. Payne, attended my lectures in the
Moral Sciences in St. John’s College, and appeared to me to
show not only great interest in the subject, but remarkable
freshness of thought and power of expression. I believe that
the Examiners for the Moral Sciences Tripos formed the same
estimate of Mr. Payne’s ability from the papers which he sent
up in that examination.
I have little doubt that he would prove an effective lecturer.
JOSEPH BICKERSTETII MAYOR M.A.,
Head Master of Kensington School; late Fellow and
Tutor of St. John's College, Cambridge.
XIX
Mon cher Monsieur Payne,
Si vous me demandez ce que je pense de votre connaissance
de la langue et de la litterature Fran^aise, je repondrai a cela,
toute consideration de camaraderie mise de cote, que je vous
crois aussi bien verse dans la litterature Franc;aise qu’aucun de
nous ; que de plus vous savez fort judicieusement en apprecier la
valeur, et qu’enfin vous possedez notre langue de maniere
a l’ecrire et a la parler presqu’aussi bien qu’un Francis, et
qu’un Fran^ais instruit.
Votre tout devout,
DE GUIGNAND.
Professor of French at Wellington College.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SONS,
st. martin’s lane.
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Testimonials in favour of the Rev. John Burnell Payne, M.A., candidate for the professorship of English literature and history at Owen's College, Manchester
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Payne, John Burnell
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 14 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1864
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5682
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education
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COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES
FROM
THE TEACHER’S POINT OF VIEW.
BY
WILLIAM ELLIS.
^Reprinted from “ The Museum and English Journal of Education.”)
LONDON:
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW:
»
AND EDINBURGH.
MDCCCLXV.
�COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES FROM THE TEACHER’S POINT
OF VIEW.
N a journal not devoted to education,
some apology might be required for
introducing a subject so hackneyed
as “Combinations and Strikes.’’ This
subject, like that of education itself,
has become distasteful to the general reader, on ac
count of the flood of vague and irrelevant matter
with which our periodical literature has been
deluged, both directly from the pen, and indirectly
from speeches at public meetings, where these sub
jects have been treated of.
The subject of Combinations and Strikes can
not, however, have become distasteful to teachers
as teachers, because it has seldom found its way
into schools. And our purpose now is to invite
them to consider whether this subject do not de
serve some of their attention, and whether the
judicious treatment of it in schools will not shield
it from some of that ill-treatment outside which
it has met with so undeservedly.
If we can show teachers that correct views
upon the probable influence of Combinations and
Strikes will materially affect the future well-being
of their pupils, and also that it is quite within the
scope of school instruction that correct views shall
be formed by the pupils in their schools, we feel
quite sure of obtaining their attention; and if
we cannot do thus much, none of their atten
tion ought to be bestowed upon us, due as it may
be, nevertheless, to the matter which we shall
have failed in elucidating.
As for the importance to the young of correct
views upon the probable effect of Combinations
and Strikes, we need do little more than state
what that effect is expected to be, viz., increased
wages, or, which is the same thing, less work with
undiminished wages. Few teachers can contem
plate the present state and future prospects of
adults now at work, without desiring for their
pupils better prospective wages than those which j
widely prevail, however well they may be recon- I
efled to the modicum reasonably to be expected
at starting. Neither can teachers consider this
thought to be otherwise than a wholesome one for |
their pupils to carry into industrial life ;—w By 1
what means may we hope to become entitled to
and possessed of, such wages as will enable us, at
least, to live decently and comfortably?”
How far it is possible to qualify the young
while yet in our schools, to judge of the means
likely to be accessible to them for obtaining satis
factory wages, or for obtaining an increase of the
unsatisfactory wages which they may be com
pelled to put up with for a time, is a matter to
which a little space and attention must be de
voted before we can ask teachers to agree or to
discuss with us. We must bespeak, at the same
time, a certain amount of indulgence, if our at
tempted exposition should be more elementary
and elaborate than might appear called for be
tween teachers and teachers. They will kindly
bear in mind that we are addressing the parents
of the children in their schools as well as them
selves. We can hardly hope to escape mystifica
tion, confusion, and obscurity, except by avoiding
to use many of the general terms in common use,
or by deferring their use until we have established
the existence, and obtained a firm hold of the
ideas, for which those terms are the names. To
this precaution against admissions not warranted
by experience under cover of vague and ambigu
ous language, may be added another against the
unguarded introduction into schools of subjects
that are beyond the comprehension of the children
to be instructed in them. Such subjects might
be overlooked in a crowd. To secure inspection,
therefore, we will enumerate, one by one, some of
the subjects which, in our judgment, are at once
important to be known, and teachable to the
young. Attention will thus be fixed upon each
separately, and whatever is deemed inadmissible
can easily be objected to at once.
Assuming it to be desirable that all the young
should take from school as correct and vivid an
impression as is possible at their age, of the
nature of the life which awaits them, we will pro
ceed, briefly and succinctly, to place before our
readers some of the matters important to be under
stood, on which the young may be brought to ob
serve, and. jiudge correctly, and feel strongly, if
�COMB[XATIOWS AND STRIKES
thW’ be but under the direction of teachers cap
able qL supporting and guiding them.
1. They and all their fellow-creatures are subsisting upon the produce of past labour—partly
even of the labour of some of the men who lived
many ages ^go. If the produce of past labour
were suddenly destroyed, all men would perish,
with the exception of a few here and there in the
warmer climates, who might subsist upon the
spontaneous products of the earth.
2. They and their fellow-creatures are day by
day consuming the produce of past labour—some
things rapidly, as articles of food; others more
slowly, as articles of clothing, and furniture, and
dwellings. If, then, men are to continue to live
as comfortably, and in as large numbers, as at
present, the produce of past labour must be re
placed as fast as it is consumed. If they are to
live more comfortably, and in larger numbers, the
produce consumed must be more than replaced.
No portion of the labour, and of the knowledge
and skill to assist it, which were at work in the
past, can be spared in the present and future, if
society is not to deteriorate. More of each must
be brought to bear upon production, if society is
to be improved.
3. Maintenance of the stores of produce, and
encouragement of future production, are indis
pensable for the continued subsistence of society
as it is. Other efforts must be added to these, in
order to bring about an improved state of society.
Side by side with these truths, it has become
known to us that some men will not work to pro
duce, and will spoil and waste as well as consume.
Not only do they fail to replace what they con
sume, but they would, if not prevented, destroy
the produce of other men’s labour, and thereby
discourage their efforts to produce and save for
the future.
4. A consciousness of the existence of such illdisposed persons interspersed among the other
members of society, fear of their increase, and
alarm lest the industry, knowledge, skill, and
economy upon which the subsistence and improve
ment of society depend, should decline or perish
under their assaults, have led to efforts to resist,
and, if possible, to overcome them. Combinations
Mil. contrivances for these purposes fall within
the province of what goes by the name of government, and must ever be the work of those who
desire to defend the happiness and progress of
society against those who are indifferent or averse
to that which is indispensable for the general
welfare.
L, 5. The conclusion arniled at, and acted upon,
by those who have been accgpted_as most, com
3
petent to organize and administer the powers of
government, is, that their efforts must be directed,
First, To securing to each member of society the
undisturbed enjoyment of the produce of his
industry: implying liberty to exchan gejjEroWirei
and sell, to lend and borrow, to give£and ^.lso
to appoint, subject to some few restrictions, who,
at his death, shall succeed to his possessions. The
powers thus enjoyed under the protectiorg^of
government constitute the “rights of property.”
The declarations of these rights by government
are a portion of the laws under which we enffij
property. The products of industry being cfflMal
“wealth,” property consists of wealth, and those
titles to wealth recognised by law. The penaltrM
by which rights are protected against those who
would invade them, are another portion of laws.
Second, To securing, chiefly through the pro
motion of the teaching and training of the young,
that knowledge, skill, and good habits—the human
agents in the production, preservation, and enjoy
ment of wealth—shall as nearly as possible be co
extensive with life itself.
6. A very cursory survey of society enables us
to recognise who are the principal possessors O’m
wealth, as we see them around us, and as they have
grown up under the protection of our laws, and
also who are those that possess little or no wealth.
The former are the elders, the inheritors of wealth, I
and the more capable, that is, the more intelligent,
industrious, economical, and trustworthy. The
latter are the younger, and the less capable, that
is, the uninstructed, the indolent, the dissipated,
and the untrustworthy. It cannot be qnAstiane J
that the former are much better fitted than the
latter to hold and dispose of that wealth, the
replacement of which, as fast as it is consumed, is
so essential to the welfare of society. To entw^giM
it to the latter is impossible, and would be fatal
were it possible. Nevertheless, no human being,
whatever his disqualifications, can be entirely shnj
out from access to some portion of wealth. To
shut him out, would be to sentence him to death
by starvation. It remains to be shewn how the
“rights of property” maybe maintained while
the “ duties to humanity ” are performed
7. The difficulty in the way of performing each
of these duties, without neglecting the other, al
though by no means overcome, is seen to be
greatly diminished when once attention is directed
to the practice prevailing among a large portion
of the possessors of wealth, and a still larger por
tion of the wealthless ; the first, devoting some of
that wealth which they reserve as a provision
against future want, to the purchase of lalwnj
wherpwith to acquire more; the second, selling^
�4
COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES.
their labour for some of that wealth, without
which they could neither work nor live. The
readiness, on one side, to part with present wealth
in order to obtain increased wealth in the future,
and on the other, to surrender the direction and
produce of one’s own labour to obtain the produce
of* past labour, has been accompanied and fol
lowed by a succession of contrivances, in the form
of machinery and other instruments of production,
by which the labour purchased is made to accom
plish results otherwise unattainable, and to bring
about the continually increasing accumulations of
wealth everywhere observable. It must be evi
dent that the duties to property and to humanity
will be performed together more and more in har
mony, progressively as the wealthy become less
wasteful, and the wealthless less incapable.
8. This practice of applying wealth to the pur
pose of procuring more wealth in the future, has
given rise to a number of arrangements and bar
gains to suit the convenience and ciroumstances
of the various persons disposed to apply a portion
of their wealth to this purpose.
AV hat these arrangements and bargains are,
ought to be understood ; but it would be tedious
to describe them without using the terms in general
use ; and it is dangerous to use these terms with
out making sure of the things which the terms are
the names of. Let us, therefore, rapidly run over
these things, and mention the names which have
been given to them.
a. Wealth applied to the purpose of obtaining
ncrease is called capital. Originally, capital can
have been little more than wealth, destined by its
owners for the purchase of labour. Progressively,
larger and larger portions of capital have assumed
the form of instruments of production, among the
latest developments of which may be named rail
ways and their appendages, agricultural, mining
and manufacturing machinery, ships, docks, har
bours, and canals.
b. Wealth obtained by sale of labour is called
wages. The portion of oapital set apart for this
purpose is spoken of as a wages-fund, to distin
guish it from other portions of capital evidently
no longer available for purchasing labour.
c. The increase of wealth, looked forward to
from the application of wealth as capital, is called
' profit.
d. Many owners of capital are not administra
tors of capital; some administer the capital of
others as well as their own. Where they are not,
as in the case of those who prefer to work for
wages, of professional men, and of men conscious
of incapacity for directing labour, they lend their
capitals, surrendering their title to the larger but
uncertain return called profit, and bargaining with
the borrower for a smaller but certain stipulated
return. This smaller and stipulated return, is
called interest.
e. Besides these arrangements for facilitating
the co-operation of capital and labour in the work
of production, there are various forms of partner
ship and joint-stock association, admitting, accord
ing to the tastes, capabilities, and means of each,
the separation, partial or complete, of the elements
of the total future profit expected ; these elements
being, remuneration for the superintendence, for
the risk, and for the use, without risk, of the
capital. The latter of these elements, as before
stated, is called interest.
f. Wealth, capital, wages, profit, and interest,
are more frequently than otherwise measured in
money, and distributed with the aid of money.
They are also, spoken of, and written about, as
money. But each of them is a thing of itself, inde
pendently of money. And money is another thing.
With the assistance of these terms, bearing in
mind that they are familiar to thousands who
attach no definite meanings to them, and keeping
on our guard, so as not to be entrapped into using
them, sometimes in one sense, sometimes in an
other, quite unconscious that the matters denoted
by them have been shifted, let us proceed further
to indicate what the pupils in our schools can be
led to deduce for themselves from what they have
already observed and thought over.
9. The tendency of administrators of capital or
employers, is for them to distribute the wagesfund at their command among the labourers whom
they employ, according to the estimate which they
form of the producing powers of each. Making
use of the term “labourers” in its widest signifi
cation, employers will give to some, £5000 a-year;
to some, £10 a-week; to some, 3s. a-day; and to
others they will refuse wages or employment
altogether.
10. The total capital, and hence the total wagesfund, is a limited quantity. If it were distributed
among labourers in equal portions to each, the
portion of each could not be more than the quo
tient of the whole wages-fund divided by the
number of labourers. If this portion or wage
were considered insufficient, its increase could
only be procured by increasing the total wagesfund, or hy diminishing the number of labourers.
The latter mode of increasing average wages does
not require to be considered, and the former can
only be brought about at some future time, near
or distant, rapidly or slowly, according to oppor
tunities and the means resorted to.
11. Increase of wages to all is no more possible
�FROM THE TEACHER'S POINT OF VTEW1
at once, because the wages-fund is distributed
among labourers according to their respective
producing powers, than if it were distributed
among them equally and irrespectively of their
comparative producing powers. If more than the
average share be given to some, there must re
main less than the average share for others. But
there are two compensating circumstances at
tached to the apportionment of wages according
to producing powers. Greater future wealth is
produced, and as the wages fall into the posses
sion of more capable men, they are more likely to
be well used, and to be partly added to capital
forthwith.
12, Employers and employed,—they who have
bought and they who have sold labour,—it will
be observed, are two classes much more distin
guishable than capitalists and labourers. In every
country where the industrial virtues flourish, and
in proportion as they flourish, labourers, except
ing the youngest, whose power of earning and
hence of saving is as yet undeveloped, are capi
talists. They lend their capitals because they
can earn more through wages and interest than
they see their way to earn by administering their
own capitals, either separately or in co-operation
with other capitalists. The savings banks alone,
with their deposits of more than £40,000,000, are
proofs apparent to everybody, and many more
might be produced, of the extent to which, in a
community still deplorably afflicted with ignor
ance and misconduct, labourers are capitalists.
The chart of life, and the sailing directions
which the young will take out of schools where
they receive this kind of instruction, points to
wealth as the reward of intelligence and good
conduct,—wages small at first, because producing
power is small, but growing with the growth of
the estimate formed of producing power. The
capable labourer does no damage to his less capa
ble fellow-labourer. He assists in the increase,
so urgently required, of future capital. If he
save, a portion of his wages becomes capital at
once, wherewith employers distribute more wages.
The incapable, he assists to support. Lessons
easy and pleasant to learn in schools become difficult and painful if deferred till those who never
learned such lessons begin to suffer from their
ignorance. To children who leave school with
correct chart and good sailing directions, with
capacity for using them and resolution to act
upon them, the world opens not as a scene of
storm and tempest,"in which shipwreck can with
difficulty be escaped, but as an arena for the exer
cise of industry, intelligence, and the other social
5
virtues, with probable success in the future, and
certain satisfaction from the performance of duty
in the present. Little comfort can be derived by
the victims of ignorance and vice from the know
ledge, if communicable to them, that their desti
tution and suffering are the consequences of
previous mistaken conduct. In the presence of
misery, it would be brutal, if possible, to trace to
the sufferers the causes, no longer removable, of
their sufferings.
Taking our leave of school days, we will accom
pany the young as they leave the schools in which
they had received instruction such as we have
faintly sketched. Four out of every five of them
will be more or less dependent for subsistence
upon the sale of their labour. They will rejoice
rather than complain that there are employers to
be found able and willing to buy their labour, and
able and willing to afford them opportunities of
increasing their powers of usefulness. They may
regret, if service satisfactory to themselves and
their friends is not easy to be found, that capital
and employers are not more abundant. They
will surely not murmur if employers, with capital
at command, are so much in want of labour that,
not waiting to be sought, they apply at the schools
to obtain recruits likely to be made efficient la
bourers and deserving of wages.
They have entered upon their industrial career
With the assistance of their friends they have
sought the best service accessible, in the estimate
of which neither prospective nor present advan
tages will have been overlooked. Some will be
less successful than others in the selection of the
employments offered to therm Employers also
will not always find the services which they have
hired worth the wages which they have bargained
to pay. Shiftings and re-engagements will be of
frequent occurrence. But in subsequent, as well
as in original engagements, there will be one
thought prevailing among employers and la
bourers. Each will wish to do the best for them
selves; and if their efforts in this direction are
made intelligently, they will also do the best for;
one another, the employers seeking labourers
whose labour will produce most in proportion to
the wages paid, and the labourers seeking em
ployers whose service is most likely to lead to
those industrial rewards of which immediate wages
are hut a part.
There is an incessant and, we may say, a
healthy activity of thought and effort for in
dividual and general advancement. It is felt
that there is room for improvement. Th era is
no denying that a very large number of people
are inadequately fed, clothed, and lodged; that
�6
COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES.
they have no capital; and that, thrown entirely
upon the wages-fund for support, they obtain
wages insufficient for decent and wholesome liv
ing. It would be a sadder spectacle to see this
state of things contentedly and inertly put up
with, than even to be compelled to acknowledge
that efforts at amelioration were taking a wrong
^direction. In this country, happily, there is no
danger of such passive submission, on the part
either of the immediate sufferers, or of society in
general. But efforts at amelioration will probably
be not wholly either in the right or in the wrong
direction ; susceptible, therefore, of better direc
tion. And it is desirable that the young should
be prepared to form a correct judgment upon the
plans submitted to them for obtaining increase of
wages, and for bettering their condition in other
respects.
We may now ask the specific question whieh
we had in our thoughts at starting : How should
the young, instructed as we say they ought to be,
deal with proposals to them to unite in combina
tions and strikes ?
We mention combinations and strikes together
because they are so commonly brought to our
notice together. But we may dismiss “strikes”
in a few words, and without much ceremony.
Strikes are acknowledged by everybody to be
evils, and they are resorted to only, as many other
evils are, to avert greater—as the destruction of
buildings to check the spread of conflagration, as
a jettison to preserve from foundering, or as am
putation to save life. Because strikes bring to
our notice the existence of combinations, it must
not be forgotten that many combinations exist
keeping clear of strikes. And it is contended
that all might be so managed as to keep clear of
strikes.
We may be quite sure that when combinations
are formed, the prevailing wish must be to keep
clear of strikes. Strikes are no more intended by
labourers who combine, than indigestions by the
hungry who eat. Proposals, accordingly, will
be made to the young to unite in a combination
by itself, and not in conjunction with a strike in
vidiously tacked to it. But before they could
accede to any such proposal, they would wish to
understand what advantages might be reasonably
expected by them and their fellows, and what
ought not to be expected, if they would escape
disappointment.
They might begin by considering the probable
effect of a combination upon wages. It ’ would
not increase the wages-fund. It could not, there
fore, increase general wages. If it were to alter
the distribution of the wages-fund, it would only
do so by interfering with the efforts of employers
to distribute the wages-fund among labourers
according to their several producing powers.
But that would be to diminish future wealtre, and
hence to check the growth of the future wagesfund.
But might it not maintain a high level of wages
in particular branches of business, or raise the
level of wages previously felt to be too low? It
could only do this by excluding additional labourers from access to those branches, or by
bringing additional capital into them. But additional capital cannot be attracted into a business
except by the prospect of profit equal to or greater
than that seen to be obtainable elsewhere. And
with this prospect, capital would flow in, not in
consequence, but in spite of a combination which
prevents labourers from following or accompany
ing the capital to share in the advantages offered by
it. The forcible exclusion of labourers from par
ticular branches of business can only mean con
demnation of the labourers excluded, to lower
wages, in order to maintain or to raise the wages
of those in possession.
Combinations among labourers, so far as they
can influence wages, can only do so by preventing
that distribution of the wages-fund which would
be made by employers left uncontrolled in their
efforts to employ their capitals to the greatest ad
vantage. Combinations among labourers can
scarcely, then, be said to be so much against emplovers as against other labourers, since they
can only control employers by withholding from
labourers permission to be employed. If decrease
of production be the consequence, future wages
will decrease also.
It will not be lost sight of that employers strive
to distribute the wages-fund among labourers
according to their respective producing powers,
i. e. according to the estimate formed of their re
spective industrial virtues. If the authority of
employers be susperseded by that of a combina
tion of labourers, will they also wish to distribute
the wages-fund so as to reward and encourage
the industrial virtues ? If so, which of the two,
the employers or the labourers, are, from their
experience and position, more likely to form a
correct estimate of industrial merits ? If not, the
development of those qualities upon which the
happiness and progress of communities depend
would scarcely be promoted by combinations
among labourers.
One can conceive of a combination among
labourers in which attempts to encroach upon the
prerogative of employers should neither be made
nor contemplated. Its object might be to dis-
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�FROM THE TEACHER'S POINT OF VIEW.
countenance ill conduct, to contribute out of their
wages towards the maintenance of those tem
porarily incapacitated, to introduce promising
recruits, to find other employment for super
numeraries, to form their capitals into a joint
stock, or to add them to a joint stock already
formed. A combination of labourers thus directed
would be a co-operation of labourers with capi
talists, and also of capitalists with one another.
Combinations have been formed, we are not
sure that some are not in existence still, to ex
clude machinery, or new contrivances for making
labour more effective, from particular branches of
business. Our intelligent young people could not
possibly enter into a combination for such a purposa. They would not be misled by the com
plaint, that it was wished to supersede labour by
machinery. Their intellectual exerdises will have
brought to their notice, that language may be used
to conceal a fallacy, as well as to express a truth.
The spade, the plough, and the thrashing-machine
make labour more effective, they do not supersede
it. And the pumping-engine which drains a
mine, which, without it, must remain submerged,
makes labour possible where it was previously im
possible. To obstruct employers in their efforts
to make the labour which they purchase as re
munerative as possible, is to obstruct the growth
of the wages-fund, from which alone general im
provement in wages is to be expected.
There are, and will continue to be, epochs in
most branches of industry, when, from the flow of
capital faster than that of labourers into them,
wages will rise; and also when, from the flow of
capital faster than that of labourers out of them,
wages will fall. If combinations, by spreading
information and organising facilities, could expe
dite the influx and efflux of labourers, to make
them correspond with the movements of capital,
they would unquestionably be useful, by assisting
to diffuse the benefits anticipated from the altered
applications of capital, and to diminish the suffer
ing of those who were about to be abandoned by
the capital upon which they depend for wages.
But if combinations attempt to make labourers
refuse to accommodate themselves to the move
ments of capital, they can only succeed by exclud
ing some from opportunities for bettering their
(condition, and by condemning others to look on
and clamour for undiminished wages, and, per
haps, pine in want, while the tide of capital is
flowing towards other parts, to confer increased
wages upon those who choose to accompany it.
When the workmen of employers who remain to
the last in a declining branch of business, or who
persist in conducting it by means since surpassed
by others, are compelled to submit to lower wages,
can it be said with propriety that capital has
w triumphed” ?
If combinations be so much less capable than
they have been imagined to be, of improving the
condition of under-paid and over-worked labourers, \
is there, it may be asked, no escape for them from
their misery in the present, and no hope of re
dress in the future? Before attempting to an
swer that appeal, it may be observed that there
are few instances of misery so sad that they might
not be made much sadder, and few lots so dark
that they might not be made darker; and com
binations would rather work in those directions
or encourage hopes doomed to disappointment.
There are expressions familiar to us all, which,
whether manufactured on purpose, or diverted
from former uses, have helped to blind us to our
follies and mistakes.* Restrictions on trade were
recommended to us under the name of “protec
tion.” Persistence in error so long as our neigh
bours chose to go wrong, was advised under the
name of “reciprocity.” The free circulation of
capital between borrowers and lenders was long
prevented through fear of the “extortions of
usurers.” And now, combinations among work
men are recommended as bulwarks against the
“tyranny of capitalists.”
The young should leave our schools qualified
not only to use language to express their own
thoughts appropriately, but to detect the misuse
of language by which they might otherwise be
confounded and misled. A tyrant, they know, is
supposed to be an oppressor. When they make
* For specimens of this use of language see letters from Mr
Fawcett in the Times of 17th and 22d March 1865. Some mat
ters are referred to by Mr Fawcett upon which, although beyond
the scope of our text, we would gladly have a little more in
formation. Mr Fawcett, speaking of the labourer of the present
times, says:—
“ He hears our statesmen eloquently describing the vast in
crease in the nation’s wealth, and he does not find that his own
lot is perceptibly improved; mechanical inventions have caused
untold wealth to be created, and yet his hours of toil have not
been materially shortened ; he hears glowing descriptions of
the growth of this mighty metropolis, and at the same time he
knows that the home of the London working man is not more
comfortable, because, as new streets are opened and other im
provements are introduced, places where the labourers can
dwell are more and more restricted.”
Is it true that labourers have not been benefited by “ the vast
increase in the nation’s wealth,” and are less comfortably
lodged in this metropolis ? If these statements cannot be made
with truth of labourers in general, to which in particular will
they apply 1 and why have some been excluded from participa
tion in the blessings enjoyed by others ? If he will tell us what
becomes of the labourers who are refused admittance to, or dis
missed from, the establishments of such employers as Sir Fran
cis Crossley, and thriving co-operative societies, and why they,
in common with the crowds at our dock gates, are thus unfor
tunately situated, he will assist us, and perhaps himself also, to
the information of which we are in search.
�8
COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES
their first attempts to sellltheir^abour, they
scarcely believe themselves. ioB™n the look out
for tyrants. When they obtain an advance of
wages, they do not become conscious of any
tyranny. When some new employer, hearing of
their efficiency, offers them better wages than
their former employers [can afford to give, they do
not suspect the tyrant. W hen employers attract
labourers from districts where they are earning
ten jfflEnings a-weekf by the promise of twenty
shillings; or when enterprising labourers, unsoli
cited by others, quit places where they were
earning ten shillings and apply for employment
at twenty shillings, the acceptance of their ser
vices will not appear tyrannical to them, unwel
come and tyrannical as it may appear to other
labourers in the receipt of thirty shillings.
We have no thought of escaping criticism or
refutation by affirming, that the expositions which
we have attempted are consistent with “ the prin
ciples of political economy,” or are correct appli
cations of those principles. Principles of political
economy, in common with all other principles,
are liable to be misinterpreted and misapplied,
and we do not seek shelter, accordingly, behind
them. Nor shall we be greatly alarmed by those
who do no more than assert that we have sinned
against political economy. Calculations can be
verified, and the analysis of a compound can be
tested by experiment, without ostentatiously ap
pealing to “ the principles of arithmetic or che
mistry.” We beg that our estimate of the probable
influence of combinations upon wages and well
being may be examined by similar methods.
We doubt whether any political economist, master
of his subject, would find much to dissent from in
what we have written. If he would not, he
certainly ought to refrain from the use of such
expressions as “antagonism between capital and
labour,” the effect of which must be to make
truth and sound doctrine unpalatable.
We were told, on one occasion, when comment
ing, perhaps a little warmly, upon this mischievous
trifling with matters of life and death, that such
11 bosh" did ~ot deserve our attention. To this
we replied, it may be very well for you to despise
“ bosh,” but those who listen to bosh as if it were
sense may rush to their ruin, and those who talk
bosh will never know nor talk sense till they can
see through their own bosh.
.
The expression, “ antagonism between capital
and labour,” must have been invented to foster a
prejudice rather than to recommend a truth. We
might as well talk of the antagonism between
food and appetite, or between the shivering body
and clothes. Passing from capital and labour to
capitalists and labourers, they seem to us to be
more attracted towards, than repelled from, each
other. Their respective wants and means of sup
plying wants draw them together. Apart they
are powerless. Buyers and sellers, borrowers
and lenders, are similarly drawn towards each
other. The antagonism, if there be any, is be
tween capitalists and capitalists, labourers and
labourers, buyers and buyers, sellers and sellers,
borrowers and borrowers, lenders and lenders,
each contending for a common object, and appear
ing to frustrate those against whom they contend.
We will not close this paper without reminding
teachers, that the subjects which we have been
urging upon their attention cannot be left un
heeded by their pupils. They, at the close of
school-life, will be compelled to act. The alter
native before them is not action or inaction, but
judicious or injudicious action, the one leading
towards well-being, the other away from it.
Surely there is misery enough caused by wilful
misconduct, and by “ the ills which flesh is heir
to.” Its increase through ignorance is a reproach
to those by whom the ignorance might have been
prevented. It is more in sorrow than in anger
that we blame the courageous, enduring, and
energetic men, who are adding misery to misery
by their mistaken efforts to obtain relief. But
we cannot suppress our anger at the apathy of
those instructors of youth, who persist in a course
of instruction, the end of which is to leave their
pupils in ignorance upon matters, a knowledge of
which is indispensable to good self-guidance
well-being.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
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Title
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Combinations and strikes from the teacher's point of view
Creator
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Ellis, William
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publiction: London and Edinburgh
Collation: 8 p. ; 23 p.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Reprinted from 'The Museum and English Journal of Education'. Printed in double columns. Date in Roman numerals.
Publisher
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Thomas Nelson and Sons
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1865
Identifier
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G5620
Subject
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Education
Working conditions
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Combinations and strikes from the teacher's point of view), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Education
Political Economy
Strikes
Working Classes
-
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4ce1534d4af2d690b3b4c5d885ed9b86
PDF Text
Text
RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION
IN
SECONDARY FOUNDATION
SCHOOLS.
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT.
HE writer of the following brief remarks has been
impelled to commit them to print by the reflection
that whilst the propriety of allowing the Masters of
Primary Schools to give instruction in religion has for
the last two years formed a prominent subject of
national discussion, the objections which lie against
allowing or requiring the Head Masters of Secondary
Endowed Schools “to make provision, in conjunction
with the Governing Body,” for similar instruction, have
not, as far as he is aware, received adequate attention.
Under the system which at present obtains in the
Secondary Endowed Schools of England, a Head Master
of honesty and intelligence is evidently liable to find
himself in a dilemma of the following kind; either he
must teach the scholars (and whether he does so by
explicit inculcation or by the implication of reticence,
makes but little difference to the resiflt), at a peculiarly
impassionable age, that every detail of the Biblical nar
rative is truth unquestioned and unquestionable on pain
of offending God, and. the maxims of conduct therein
commended, of perfect morality; or he must acquaint
them with some at least of the conclusions to the con
trary established or advanced by modern criticism.
The first alternative, it will be admitted, is not only
very unfavourable to the teacher’s growth in accuracy
of thought on religious topics, and sensitiveness to the
responsibilities of his position, but involves the risk of
drawing the children of parents of broad and en
lightened religious opinions back into the terrifying
misapprehensions, to use no stronger word, which it cost
themselves possibly years of mental agony and painful
study to outgrow. The second alternative would most
assuredly involve him in contentions with the Governors
of the School and with parents of a narrow, unculti
vated, and, by consequence, intolerant type of ortho
doxy, whereby would be caused very probably the im
mediate decadence of the School, and, finally, the ruin
of the Head Master by dismissal where possible.
T
�2
Two courses are open by which the evils indicated
may be avoided. Either the curriculum of instruction
in these schools may be restricted to secular knowledge,
as is the case in the nascent Public Schools and Col
leges in New Zealand, among our colonies ; or the treat
ment of the text of the Bible may be conformed in
practice to that of the histories of Livy and Herodotus,
and the ethical treatises of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero,
the established conclusions and critical methods of
modern science and historical proof being no more
ignored, discredited, or suppressed in the case of the
one department of study than in that of the other.
It is to be feared that some time must yet elapse
before either of these two courses is introduced by legis
lative enactment into Secondary Endowed Schools. He
desires, therefore, to advocate the immediate establish
ment of a College of Secondary Education, on the Pro
prietary system, after the model of Cheltenham College,
in which the second of the courses defined above, which
is also the one which appears to him abstractedly the
best, may form the distinguishing feature.
He entertains the conviction that the number of
persons has enormously increased of late years, and is
daily increasing still more rapidly, who, so far from
desiring to see promoted in their children, by the in
struction given them in school, a retrogression in reli
gious conceptions from the standard of enlightenment
they have themselves attained, desire to see them aided
and encouraged in achieving and maintaining a like
moral enfranchisement. He is also of opinion that in
the foundation of a school of this kind is to be found
the remedy for the fact that whereas many of the most
able and the most ardent friends of religious enlighten
ment only achieve late in life the mental development
necessary to qualify them for a position in the ranks of
its adherents (perhaps but a few years before they are
removed from active service by death or the infirmities
of advancing years), the champions of obscurantism,
obstruction, and intolerance are recruited, owing to the
present system of Public School education, by the enlist
ment of each successive generation in its childhood.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Religious instruction in secondary foundation schools: how to deal with it
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London?]
Collation: 2 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
Publisher
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[Thomas Scott?]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[187-?]
Identifier
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G5536
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education
Religion
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Unknown]
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Religious instruction in secondary foundation schools: how to deal with it), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Education
Religious Education
-
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e8b3ed319e01ece73942cf575769712a
PDF Text
Text
REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS
APPOINTED TO
INQUIRE
INTO
THE
CONDITION
OF
*
THE
PRINCIPAL
PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
fir
A PAPER READ AT THE MQNTHLY EVENING MEETING OF THE
COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS, MAY 11th, 1864.
BY
W. B. HODGSON, Esq., LL.D., F.C.P.
“ Falsa est querela paueissimis hominibus vim percipiendi quae tradantur esse concessam; plerosque
vero laborem et tempora tarditate ingenii perdere. Nam contra plures reperias et faciles in excogitando,
et ad discendum promptos. Quippe id est homini naturale: ac sicut aves ad volatum, equi ad cursum, ad
saevitiam ferae gignuntur. ita nobis propria est mentis agitatio atque solertia; unde origo animi coelestis
creditur. Hebetes vero et indociles non magis secundum naturam hominis eduntur, quam prodigiosa cor
pora et monstris insignia : sed hi pauci admodum. Fuerit argumentum, quod in pueris elucet spes plurimorum: quae cum emoritur aetate, manifestum est non naturam defecisse, sed curam."—M. F. Quinctilian.
Inst. Orat. lib. 1. c. 1.
“ Those who, in their own minds, their health, or their fortunes, feel the cursed effects of a wrong
education, wonld do well to consider they cannot better make amends for what was amiss in themselves
than by preventing the same in their posterity.”—Bishop Berkeley, The Minute Philosopher, Dial. vii.§34.
“ An enormous sacrifice of time is made to the study of dead languages, and we ought to reap from them
a great and proportionate advantage.”—Rev. W. Sewell, M.A., “ Essay on the Cultivation of the Intellect
by the Study of Dead Languages.” Lond. 1820. p. 297.
“ I think that, from some cause or other, the success of the work has not been in proportion to the
pains bestowed upon it.”—Rev. E. Balston, Head-Master of Eton School, “ Report of Commissioners,”
vol. iii, p. 117.
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON:
W. AYLOTT & SON, 8, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1864.
Price Sixpence.
�" In this progressive country, we neglect all that knowledge in which there is progress, to devote
ourselves to those branches in which we are scarcely, if at all, superior to our ancestors. In this
practical country, the knowledge of all that gives power over nature, is left to be picked up by chance on
a man’s way through life. In this religious country, the knowledge of God’s works forms no part of
the education of the people,—no part even of the accomplishments of a gentleman.”—Lord Ashburton,
Speech at a Meeting of Schoolmasters at Winchester, 16th Dec., 1853.
"It is a most important truth, and one which requires, at this day, to be most earnestly enforced,
that it is by the study of facts, whether relating to nature or to man, and not by any pretended cultiva
tion of the mind by poetry, oratory, and moral or critical dissertations, that the understandings of
mankind in general will be most improved, and their views of things rendered most accurate.”—Dr.
Arnold, in Thompson's “Hist, of Rom. Lit.” 1852. p. 379. (Encycl. Metrop)
" It . would indeed be wonderful if a study of the poet’s lines were of more value than the study of
those things that inspired them: and if the words of men had in them more spiritual nourishment than
the works of the Creator.”—Prof. Jas. Nicol, “ On the Study of Nat. Hist.” 1853. p. 30.
..." 0 necessario confessare che piil presto sia degno il subbietto che la lingua; perchO il subbietto
0 fine, e la lingua 0 mezzo.”—Lorenzo de’ Medici.
" For one man who is fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted for the study of things, and were
intended to have a perpetual, simple, and religious delight in watching the processes, or admiring the
creatures, of the natural universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure, nothing is left to them but
ambition or dissipation; and the vices of the upper classes of Europe are, I believe, chiefly to be attributed
to this single cause.”—John Ruskin.
“ Our present system, on account of the preposterous manner in which it attempts, to exalt the old
learning, is a direct cause of its being unjustly neglected, decried, and undervalued.”—Rev. F. B. Zincke,
“ School of the Future.” 1852. p. 78.
“ When I considered the former days of my youth, and the years of affliction, which had been many;
when I was driven on circularly in Latin bondage, as a horse in a mill, continually moving, but making
no progress; or, as a Jonas in tne whale’s belly, making long voyages, but seeing nothing about me, ana
often threatened by hard task-masters, who made me serve with rigour; I did, in compliance with
the dictates of reason, and with my own inclinations, resolve that this boy should, from those mis
fortunes, reap some advantage, and gain some knowledge, by (what I apprehended to be) the mistakes
and blunders of other men.”—J. T. Phillips, Preceptor to his R. H. Prince William, Duke of Cumber
land, “ A Compendious Way of Teaching Ancient and Modern Languages'' &c. 3rd Ed. 1728. p. 57.
“ Je croyais avoir d6ja donnd assez de temps aux langues, et m6me aussi it la lecture des livres
anciens, et i leurs histoires, et h leurs fables; car c’est quasi le m6me de converser avec ceux des aut.res
siOcles que de voyager. Il est bon de savoir quelque chose des moeurs des divers peuples, afin de juger
des ndtres plus sainiement.......... Mais lorsqu’on emploie trop de temps h voyager, on devient enfin
stranger en son pays; et lorsqu’on est trop curieux des choses qui se pratiquaient aux siCcles passes, on
demeure fort ignorant de celles qui se pratiquent en celui-ci.”—Descartes, “ Discours de la Methode.”
1637. (Alas! more than 200 years ago!)
“ Il semble que nous devons accommoder nos dtudes fi l’dtat present de nos moeurs, et dtudier les
choses qui sont a’usage dans le monde, puisqu’on ne peut changer cet usage pour l’accommoder h l’ordre
de nos etudes.”—L’Abbe Fleury, “ Traite du Choix des Etudes.” 1685.
" Is it not more probable that the proper and legitimate means of training the intellect co-existed
with the intellect itself, not since the period of the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman empires, but
since the beginning of the world ?”—Angus Macpherson, “ English Education.” Glasgow. 1854.
"Am I wrong in believing that the tendencies of the age are in favour of decreasing, rather than in
creasing, the amount of time bestowed upon classical scholarship P”—Dr. R. G. Latham, “ On the Study
of Language.” 1855. p. 112.
“ The father of Montaigne has observed that the tedious time which we moderns employ in acquiring
the language of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which cost them nothing, is the principal reason why
we cannot arrive at that grandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge that was in them.... The ac
quirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than
useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.”—Rev. C. Colton, “ Latonf &c.
�ON THE
REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS ON
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
The sight of this Report, in four bulky
volumes, which weigh above ten pounds
avoirdupois, may well serve instead of
preface. Its contents are far too ample
and too various to allow me to do more
than call attention to one of its many
aspects; and even so, all our time will be
too short. The Commission included in
its scope the nine following schools:—
Eton, Winchester, Westminster, the
Charterhouse, St. Paul’s, Merchant Tay
lors’, Harrow, Rugby, and Shrewsbury.
The inquiry was divided into three
parts :—“ The first relating to the pro
perty and income of the several schools;
the second, to the administration and
management of them; the third, to the
system and course of study pursued in
them, to the religious and moral training
of the boys, their discipline, and general
education.” (p. 1.) Of these three heads,
it is exclusively the third, and even that
by no means thoroughly, that I wish this
evening to treat; looking less to the reli
gious and moral training of the boys,
than to “ the system and course of study,”
and its ascertained results, especially in
that department of study which claims
the lion’s share of time and effort. My
comments may be best arranged under
three heads: 1st, The Report of the Com
missioners regarding results; 2nd, The
evidence on which it rests; 3rd, The re
commendations of the Commissioners.
It ought to be further explained, that,
besides the general Report and general
recommendations of the Commissioners,
there is given a full and elaborate Report
on each of the nine schools, with further
recommendations specially applicable to
each. I propose, however, to confine
myself entirely to the general Report and
general recommendations. It is impor
tant to bear this restriction in mind, be
cause it is difficult, perhaps impossible,
to avoid injustice in speaking collectively
of nine schools which differ from each
other in not a few respects. It may be
not unnatural, as it is certainly not un
common, to take, as the typical repre
sentative of all these schools, Eton, the
most richly endowed, the most nume
rously attended, the most aristocratic
(though also the most backward and in
efficient) of them all. But much that is
true of the plethoric Eton may be very
far from true, say, of the more sparedieted Shrewsbury, the eminence of
which, in spite of difficulties, is an in
structive fact. At the same time, any
B
�4
such unintentional and inevitable injus
tice belongs rather to the Commissioners
than to me. It is on them and their
authorities that I almost exclusively rely.
I. The Times (of 28th March, 1864) thus
condenses the Commissioners’ Report on
the actual working of the present system,
so far as relates to our present purpose;
and this resume will probably be accepted
as less prejudiced, and so more trust
worthy, than any that I could make.
“ In one word, we may say that they find
it to be a failure—a failure even if tested
by those better specimens, not exceeding one
third of the whole, who go up to the Univer
sities. Though a very large number of these
have literally nothing to show for the results
of their school-hours from childhood to man
hood, but a knowledge of Latin and Greek,
with a little English and arithmetic, we have
here the strongest testimony that their know
ledge of the former is most inaccurate, and
their knowledge of the latter contemptible.
A great deal is taught under these two heads,
but very little is learned under either. A
small proportion become brilliant composers
and finished scholars, if they do not manage
to pick up a good deal of information for
themselves; but the great multitude cannot
construe an easy author at sight, or write
Latin prose without glaring mistakes, or
answer simple questions in grammar, or get
through a problem in the first two books of
Euclid, or apply the higher rules of arith
metic. A great many, amounting to about a
third at Christ Church, and a fifth at Exeter
College, fail to pass the common Matricula
tion Examination. Not less than a fourth
are plucked for their Little-go, a most ele
mentary examination in the very subjects
which we have just mentioned; and of the
rest many are only enabled to pass by the
desperate exertions of College Tutors and
‘ coaches.’ We need not follow this class of
public school men through the remainder of
their University career, since the duty of
teaching has then devolved upon others; but
for their shortcomings at entrance the schools
are mainly responsible. Most of them, says
an Oxford tutor of great experience and
*
judgment, ‘are persons who were allowed
as boys to carry their idleness with them
from form to form, to work below their
powers, and merely to move with the crowd;
they are men of whom something might have
been made, but now it is too late ; they are
grossly ignorant, and have contracted slovenly
habits of mind.’”*
A few citations from the Report itself
will serve to test the general accuracy of
the resume just given. The Commis
sioners say (vol. i. p. 26):—
“From the evidence the following con
clusions appear to follow:—That boys who
ha/ve capacity and industry enough to work for
distinction, are, on the whole, well taught in
the article o£ classical scholarship, at the
public schools; but that they occasionally
show a want of accuracy in elementary
knowledge, either from not having been well
grounded, or from having been suffered to
forget what they have learned; that the
average of classical knowledge among young
men leaving school for college is low; that in
arithmetic and mathematics, in general in
formation, and in English,f the average is
lower still, but is improving; that of the time
spent at school by the generality of boys,
much is absolutely thrown away as regards
intellectual progress, either from ineffective
teaching, from the continued teaching of
subjects in which they cannot advance, or
from idleness, or from a combination of these
causes ; that in arithmetic and mathematics
the public schools are specially defective, and
that this observation is not confined to any
particular class of boys. It is impossible to
misapprehend the effect which this state of
things produces, and must produce, on the
studies of the Universities. In the case of
those who do not read for honours, at all
events, the work of the first two years is
simply school-work—work proper for the
upper forms of a large school. The usual
age of matriculation at Oxford (no record is
kept at Cambridge) is between 18 and 19.
* “ The system (of public schools) has pro
duced men most remarkable for their great public
utility and eminence; but on the other hand it
appears that after spending a great many years in
these educational institutions, the large mass come
out with a great knowledge of cricket, and a very
good knowledge of rowing, with only that sort of
Latin and Greek which is perfectly useless in after
life, and entirely destitute of mathematical, scien
tific elementary truth, a knowledge of history and
their own country, which it must be admitted are
desirable, if possible, to attain.’’—Earl Gran
ville, Chancellor of the University of London.
{Times, 12th May, 1864.)
t It must never be forgotten that one main ob
ject for which boys learn the dead languages is to
teach them to use their own. (Report, vol. i. p. 15.)
“The composition of Greek prose and Greek
verse is a poor substitute for the faculty of trans
lating such authors as Pindar and Thucydides flu
ently into elegant English.”—Rev. C. W. Sand
ford, M.A., Senior Censor of Christ Church,
* The Rev. James Riddell, Fellow and Tutor Master of Rugby from 1841 to 1847 ; in Report,
vol. ii. p. 11. 1864.
of Balliol College.
�5
Of 430 who matriculated in 1862, only 22, or
5 per cent., were below 18 years of age; while
209, or 49 per cent., had attained the age of
19. It follows that, with a great mass of
men, school education—and that education
one which barely enables them at last to con
strue a Latin and Greek book, poet and
orator, chosen by themselves, to master three
books of Euclid, and solve a problem in
quadratic equations—is prolonged to the age
of 20 or 21.”* (p. 24.)
“ Natural science, with such slight excep
tions as have been noticed, is practically ex
cluded from the education of the higher
classes in England. Education is, in this
respect, narrower than it was three centuries
ago; whilst science has prodigiously ex
tended her empire, has explored immense
tracts, divided them into provinces, intro
duced into them order and method, and made
them accessible to all. This exclusion is, in
our view, a plain defect and a great practical
evil. It narrows unduly and injuriously the
mental training of the young, and the know
ledge, interests, and pursuits of men in maturer life. Of the large number of men who
have little aptitude or taste for literature,
there are many who have an aptitude for
science, especially for science which deals,
not with abstractions, but with external and
sensible objects; how many such there are
can never be known, as long as the only edu
cation given at schools is purely literary ; but
that such cases are not rare or exceptional,
can hardly be doubted by any one who has
observed either boys or men. Nor would it
answer, were it true, to say that such persons
are sure to find their vocation, sooner or later.
But this is not true. We believe that many
pass through life without useful employment,
and without the wholesome interest of a
favourite study, for want of an early intro
duction to. one for which they are really fit.
It is not, however, for such cases only, that
an early introduction to natural science is
desirable. It is desirable surely, though not
necessary, for all educated men. Its value as
a means of opening the mind and disciplining
the faculties, is recognised by all who have
taken the trouble to acquire it, whether men
of business or of leisure. It quickens and
cultivates directly the faculty of observation,
which in very many persons lies almost
dormant through life, the power of accurate
and rapid generalisation, and the mental
habit of method and arrangement; it accus
toms young persons to trace the sequence of
* It is “beyond doubt that not one of these
nine schools sends as many as half of its boys to
the Universities, and that in the case of most of
them the proportion is much less than one-third.
These proportions should be borne in mind in
considering the fitness of the system of instruction
at these schools for the end in view.” (p. 27.)
cause and effect; it familiarises them with a
kind of reasoning which interests them, and
which they can promptly comprehend; and
it is, perhaps, the best corrective for that in
dolence which is the vice of half-awakened
minds, and which shrinks from any exertion
that is not, like an effort of memory, merely
mechanical. With sincere respect for the
opinions of the eminent schoolmasters who
differ from us in this matter, we are con
vinced that the introduction of the elements
of natural science into the regular course of
study is desirable, and we see no sufficient
reason to doubt that it is practicable.” (p. 32.)
The length of this citation will, I trust,
be justified by its almost inestimable im
portance. It exposes one of the most
striking omissions in ordinary school
teaching, especially of the richer classes—
an omission which not only is greatly to
be deplored on its own account, but
which goes far to frustrate the attempt
to teach even what is included. Vainly
can it be affirmed that natural science is
already taught in many of these schools.
It may figure in programmes; it may be
made the subject of an occasional lecture
during, probably, the intervals of time
assigned to play; but that it is systemati
cally taught, as other subjects are, and as
it must be if any good is to be effected, is
quite unproved. Better that it should
*
not be taught at all, than that it should
be so taught as to furnish an argument
against its admission into schools on a
reasonable footing.
“ It is clear that there are many boys
whose education can hardly be said to have
* Viscount Boringdon, when examined regard
ing Eton, thus replies:—“Lord Clarendon:—
‘ Natural science is, I believe, wholly unattended
to ?’—‘ Entirely.’ ‘ Occasionally there are lec
tures given ; a lecturer comes down from London,
and lectures on natural science ?’—‘ Yes.’ ‘ Are
they much attended to ?’—‘ Yes ; they are a good
deal attended to; it is with boys who have nothing
to do in the evening; once a week, boys, who have
nothing to do in the evenings, go there, but I do
not think they attend much to them; a certain
number do, but I think that most come a great
deal for making a row.’ ‘ Are the lectures gene
rally of a popular kind? are they good lectures ?’
—‘ Yes.’ ‘ Lecturers entitled to command atten
tion, which they do not get?’—‘ Certainly.’ ” (Vol.
iii. p. 257.) After this, can anything be more evi
dent than that physical science cannot be taught in
schools 1
B2
�6
begun till they enter, at the age of twelve or
thirteen, or even later, a school containing
several hundreds, where there can be com
paratively little of that individual teaching
which a very backward boy requires.” (p. 40.)
At first sight, this evil may seem to be
chargeable, not on the public schools, but
on the preparatory schools, or on the
parents, with whom the Commissioners
“ do not hesitate to say that the fault
chiefly rests.” But a strict entrance
examination, such as the Commissioners
themselves recommend, and such as it is
the duty, as well as the right and the
interest (rightly viewed) of the public
schools to institute, would very speedily
abate this grievance, which now aggra
vates, much more than it excuses, their
inefficiency.
.
It is the office of education,” say
the Commissioners, (p. 30,) “ not only to dis
cipline some of the faculties, but to awaken,
call out, and exercise them all, so far as this
can be usefully done, in boyhood ; to awaken
tastes that may be developed in after life; to
impart early habits of reading, thought, and
observation; and to furnish the mind with
such knowledge as is wanted at the outset of
life. A young man is not well educated—
and, indeed, not educated at all—who cannot
reason, or observe, or express himself easily
and correctly, and who is unable to bear his
part in cultivated society, from ignorance of
things which all who mix in it are assumed
to be acquainted with. He is not well edu
cated if all his information is shut up within
one narrow circle, and he has not been
taught, at least, that beyond what he has been
able to acquire lie great and varied fields of
knowledge, some of which he may afterwards
explore, if he has inclination and opportunity
to do so. The kind of knowledge which is
necessary or useful, and the best way of
exercising and disciplining the faculties (?),
must vary, of course, with the habits and re
quirements of the age and society in which his
life is to be spent.............. Hence, no system of
instruction can be framed which will not re
quire modification from time to time. The
highest and most useful office of education is
certainly to train and discipline; but it is
not the only office. And we cannot but re
mark that, whilst in the busy world too great
a value perhaps is sometimes set upon the
actual acquisition of knowledge, and too little
upon that mental discipline which enables
men to acquire and turn it to the best ac
count, there is also a tendency, which is the
very reverse of this, and which is among the
besetting temptations of the ablest school
masters ; and that if very superficial men may
be prodmeed by one of these infi/uences, very
ignorant men are sometimes produced by the
other.” (p. 30.)
“ If a youth, after four or five years spent
at school, quits it at 19, unable to construe an
easy bit of Latin or Greek without the help
of a Dictionary, or to write Latin grammati
cally, almost ignorant of geography and of
the history of his own country, unacquainted
with any modern language but his own, and
hardly competent to write English correctly,
to do a simple sum, or stumble through an
easy proposition of Euclid, a total stranger to
the laws which govern the physical world,
and to its structure, with an eye and hand
unpractised in drawing, and without knowing
a note of music, with an uncultivated mind,
and no taste for reading or observation, his
intellectual education must certainly be ac
counted a failure, though there may be no
fault to find with his principles, character, or
manners. We by no means intend to repre
sent this as a type of the ordinary product of
English public-school education; but speak
ing both from the evidence we have received
and from opportunities of observation open
to all, we must say that it is a type much
more common than it ought to be, making
ample allowance for the difficulties before re
ferred to, and that the proportion of failures
is, therefore, unduly large.......... The school
has absolute possession of the boy during four
or five years, the most valuable years of pupil
age, the time when the powers of apprehension
and memory are brightest, when the faculty
of observation is quick and lively, and he is
forming his acquaintance with the various
objects of knowledge. Something, surely,
may be done during that time in the way, not
of training alone, but of positive acquisition,
and the school is responsible for turning it to
the best account.” (p. 31.)
These passages may, and indeed must,
suffice to indicate the point of view from
which the Commissioners regard these
schools, the standard by which they try
their results, and the degree in which
their expectations have been fulfilled or
disappointed.
Before we proceed to cite a small part
of the evidence in support of these very
grave strictures, let me remind you, first,
that the Commissioners are not the ene
mies, but the friends, of the public-school
system—most of them, if not all, having
been themselves brought up under one or
other of its forms,—and that their purpose
is to amend, not to destroy; 2ndly, that
�these institutions are, for the most part,
richly endowed, venerable from their
antiquity and the associations with indi
vidual greatness which cling to their
very stones, and amply represented in
both houses of the Legislature, as in all
the upper walks of social life I 3rdly, that
their intimate connexion with the Church
renders them in reality a branch of the
great ecclesiastical organization of the
country; 4thly, that they are superin
tended, in the main, by the ablest and
most accomplished men whom, within
the limits of the Church, it is possible to
find; that the masters are, in general,
handsomely paid, and not unfrequently
exchange the ferule for the crozier, and
still more frequently retire from the tur
moil of the schoolroom to some not un
dignified church-living. The concur
rence of all these circumstances ought
surely to favour the development and
diffusion of the highest and widest cul
ture, if only the wit and the will existed,—
the wit to know in what true education
consists, and the will to carry this know
ledge into practical effect. Terribly deepseated must the evil be which goes so far
to, neutralize all these seemingly great
advantages, and to make the results of all
this vast mechanism so miserably meagre,'
on the admission of even its best friends!
II. The evidence on which the Com
missioners base their conclusions is too
extensive to permit, and too uniform to
require, many extracts here. The Rev.
C. W. Sandford, M.A., Senior Censor of
Christ Church, Oxford, thus writes:—
“ The head boys come well prepared from
school. The standard in our class examina
tions in classics is consequently high. This
is not affected by the state in which the
average boys come to the University. The
other studies may suffer in some degree...........
Some fifty or sixty young men matriculate at
Christ Church in the course of each year.
Of these perhaps ten will read for honours in
classics. Such men would be able to construe
with tolerable correctness a new passage from
any Latin or Greek author, translate a piece
of easy English prose into tolerable Latin,
and answer correctly simple grammatical
and etymological questions in Latin and
Greek. The other forty or fifty would not.
In fact, very few of those who are merely
candidates for matriculation can construe
with accuracy a piece from an author whom
they profess to have read. We never try
them in an unseen passage. It would be
useless to do so. They are usually examined
in Virg. JLn. I—V, and Homer, II. I—V.
But if they have not read Homer orVirgil, we
examine them in whatever authors they have
read last.... We do not test their knowledge
of ancient or modern history, or of geography,
at matriculation. We examine them in arith
metic, but not in Euclid or Algebra. Their
answers to the questions in arithmetic do not
encourage us to examine them in Euclid or
Algebra. We do not examine the candidates
in religious knowledge. But at the end of
every term the junior members of the house
are examined in some portion of the New
Testament. The answers written by the
mass of the men are not better than what we
might expect from the upper classes of our
parochial schools. Very few have that know
ledge of the Bible that a Christian gentleman
should have. Nor do many show a desire to
increase their knowledge. Of the 150 who
attend the divinity lectures, 20 will show that
they they have been well taught before en
tering the University.” (Vol. ii. pp. 10,11.)
The Rev. G. W. Sitchin, M.A., Junior
Censor of Christ Church, thus writes:—
“ The average men bring up but small re
sults of the training to which they have been
subjected for years. There is a general want
of accuracy in their work; even the rudi
mentary knowledge of grammar and Latin
prose writing is far less than it ought to be.
I fear that the elementary schools send the
little boys up to the public schools in a very
unprepared state, and that the public schools,
to a great extent, assume that the boys are
fairly grounded; which is not the case. The
only subjects which are professed at school,
and do not form part of our system of work,
are such rudimentary matters as English
composition, spelling, arithmetic, &c. In
these there seems to be considerable defi
ciency. The University course of teaching
is much hampered by the crude state of the
men subjected to it, and by the necessity of
supplementing the shortcomings of school
education. Our system becomes, for average
men, both narrow and vague. We feel that
the most we can do for men who come up de
ficient in knowledge of grammar, history,
language, &c., is to provide something for
them to do; the time for real progress seems,
in many cases, to be absolutely past. Men
whose abilities lead them towards other than
classical studies are much hindered from
their proper pursuits, and sometimes stopped
altogether, by that want of early accurate
�8
training, which shows itself at every step we
take in educating our men. Consequently,
it appears to me that the University is obliged
to spend much of her energies on matters
which do not belong to her. If one is of
opinion that eight to ten years spent chiefly
on the elements of Latin and Greek ought to
have been enough to secure a fair knowledge
of grammar, then one cannot help regretting
the weight which presses on us. But I am
aware that many think otherwise, consider
such a repetition of rudiments a good, and
call it a general education. As a matter of
fact, a couple of plays of Euripides, a little
Virgil, two books of Euclid, or the like, form
the occupation of a large part of our men
during their first university year; and I can
not consider this a satisfactory state of things,
especially as not a few fail in passing their
examination in these subjects. It should be
remembered that the best men, who go in for
scholarships, are taken without the ordinary
matriculation examination.... Of the ordinary
men, a quarter might possibly steer their way
through an unseen passage in Greek with
fair success. Bather a larger number might
manage an ordinary piece of Latin. Tolerable
Latin prose is very rare. Perhaps one piece
in four is free from bad blunders. A good
style is scarcely ever seen. The answers we
get to simple grammatical questions are very
inaccurate. In arithmetic they have im
proved, as it is now understood that they
cannot pass responsions without it. With a
matriculation examination, whose standard is
very low, and solely intended to prove that
men have a fair chance of afterwards passing
responsions, and with every wish to admit
men, we have still been obliged this year to
reject about one-third of the whole number
who have presented themselves. As to
average men, their exact knowledge of gram
mar, &c., is now tested by us ; whereas,
a few years ago, it was almost taken for
granted. This makes me diffident in express
ing an opinion about its improvement or
decay. On the whole, I am inclined to think
it has gone backwards, for I can easily ima
gine it better; it would be hard to conceive
it much worse.... We have a vast number of
young men from the upper forms of the
public schools, especially from Eton. On the
whole, their conduct is very satisfactory, and
I can imagine no men more pleasant to deal
with, had they had fair-play in respect of
their learning. As it is, they come to us
with very unawakened minds, and habits of
mental indolence and inaccuracy.” (Vol. ii.
pp. 11—13.)
“ I think that the education given at the
schools does not sufficiently prepare boys for
the University course. The boys are not
well grounded in the subjects to which most
of their time has been given, and on other
points less strictly academical their ignorance
is sometimes surprising. In fact, I am sorry
to say that many boys come to the University
from school knowing next to nothing. These
general remarks, of course, admit of very
many exceptions, as regards both schools and
individuals. The University course is much
affected by the ill-prepared state in which
the majority of the students come; and
instead of making progress, a few years ago
the University had to make its course com
mence with more elementary teaching, and
to insist on the rudiments of arithmetic, and
a more precise acquaintance with the ele
ments of grammar. Tutors felt that it was
degrading to both themselves and the Uni
versity to descend to such preliminary in
struction; but the necessity of the case
compelled them. Had reading and spelling
been included in the reforms of that day, it
would have been not without benefit to many
members of the University. I have some
times had to remind my brother examiners
and myself in the final examination for B.A.,
that we were not at liberty to pluck for bad
spelling, bad English, or worse writing. If
more of such elementary teaching were done
at school, the University course might be
both deepened and widened. Hitherto it has
seemed useless for the University to enlarge
her course to suit the tastes of men whose
minds have never been formed at all by any
methodical teaching, and who really cannot
be said to have any tastes.... It is difficult to
say what proportion of candidates for ma
triculation can translate a new passage of a
Latin or Greek author. At my own college
we consider such a test much too severe, the
college would be left half empty if it were
insisted on. The usual plan is to select a
passage from some book which they have
recently read. Perhaps eight out of twenty
candidates could translate a passage from an
easy author. (Of course I am speaking of
the ordinary students, not of candidates for
scholarships.) Rather more than this pro
portion, perhaps twelve out of twenty, would
write a piece of tolerable Latin prose, and do
a fair grammar paper. Of arithmetic and
mathematics few of them know anything
more than the amount insisted on by the
University, and many of them barely that;
the extent of their knowledge does not reach
beyond vulgar fractions and decimals. And
here I think that the schools are greatly to
be blamed.” (Vol. ii. pp. 16, 17.)
The Rev. W. Hedley, M.A., lately
The Rev. D. P. Chase, M.A., Principal
Fellow and Tutor of University College,
Oxford, and Public Examiner, thus of St. Mary Hall, and Tutor of Oriel
Collesze. thus writes:—
�9
“In my opinion, the previous education
given to those who enter the University does
not fulfil satisfactorily the purpose of ground
ing in the classical studies which they are
required to pursue. The result is, that the
minimum of attainment necessary for the
B.A. degree is far below what it might and
ought to be; while the difficulty which the
majority of passmen have in producing even
that minimum necessarily restricts and
narrows the course. Much of the teaching
given at the University is such as ought to
have been given at school. This, while it
tends to weary and disgust those who have
been better taught, precludes any higher
teaching of those who must be kept to school
boy work. ... I think that public-school boys,
when they are good, are better than any
others. They have a readiness in producing
what they know, and a polish in their pro
ductions, which are rarely found in others.
When they are bad, they are very bad. This
seems to me to prove that the public schools
have the power of giving the very best in
struction, while their circumstances are in
themselves an education; that all boys have
there an opportunity of being well taught,
but that on no boy is imposed the necessity
of learning.” (Vol. ii. pp. 17,18.)
preparation for the University course shown
by candidates for an ordinary matriculation,
that I am convinced either that the system of
teaching at the schools is radically faulty, or
(what is more probable) that little more can
be done in the matter of Latin and Greek
than is done, and that therefore some new
direction should be given to the studies
pursued in schools.” (Vol. ii. p. 20.)
The Rev. Arthur Faber, M.A., Fellow
and Tutor of New College, thinks that
“in scholarship and mathematics the
public school system has a marked supe
riority over that of other schools;” and
that while “ the standard is undoubtedly
a low one, and might be raised with
advantage to the University, public school
education tends to qualify for a University
residence the great majority of boys.”
(Vol. ii. p. 21.)
The Rev. Bartholomew Price, M.A.,
Fellow of Pembroke College, and Sadlerian Professor of Natural Philosophy,
speaking “of mathematical instruction
The Rev. Henry Furneaux, M.A., and attainments in Oxford, so far as
Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi Oxford and the public schools act on each
College, thus writes:—
other,” thus writes:—
“ It may be fairly maintained, that the
schools from which the University is fed
either have not sufficiently grounded in
classics and mathematics a large number of
those whom they send us, or, as is very
commonly the case, have allowed them to
forget in the higher forms the groundwork
which was taught in the lower.” (Vol. ii.
p. 19.)
“I do observe a very marked difference
between young men coming to this University
from the great public schools, and from other
schools or from private tutors, as to their
mathematical attainments. The young men
from public schools are far worse prepared.
Whatever time they may have given to the
subject, it does not appear to me that they
have given that study and attention to it
The Rev. J. R. T. Eaton, Fellow and which has generally been so profitably be
stowed elsewhere.
Tutor of Merton College, thus writes:— the young men to be Assuming the ability of
equal, not only do I find
“ It has long been held among college tutors the attainments of those from other schools
that the late age (18—19) up to which young to be greater, but I find them to be better
men are retained at our public schools, grounded and to have learned the elements
before quitting them for the Universities, is more thoroughly and more carefully. Seldom
counterbalanced by no corresponding increase do I meet with young men from the public
in the amount of knowledge gained. In this, schools who know more than the bare ele
as in other points, the many are sacrificed to ments of mathematics; whereas others have
the few. While a really persevering and gone through a sound course of geometry,
intelligent youth is gaining fresh stores of which I take to be a most excellent dis
information, improving his powers of taste ciplinary exercise, and have often well studied
and composition, and grounding himself in the principles of the modern analytical
his knowledge with a view to competing for methods. This is frequently the case with
scholarships at the University, the bulk of young men who come from the Universities
young men at a public school are going back, sflid schools of Scotland, and from schools in
not progressing. They have reached an age England of the class just below the large
when the stricter discipline fitted to boys is public schools. . . . The junior scholarship has
losing its hold; they have no adequate motive never been gained by a young man from the
to engage their diligence. . . . On the whole,! great public schools. ... I cannot say that
I am so little satisfied with the amount of the knowledge of the young men who come
�to this University as ordinary Btudents
appears to me such as it might and ought to
be. Frequently arithmetic, one or two books
of Euclid, and a little algebra, usually no
farther than simple equations, is all that they
profess to have learned, and this amount is
generally known very imperfectly. During
the last four years I have become acquainted,
through the Oxford local examinations, with
the standard of knowledge of those subjects
possessed by boys belonging to the middle
class schools; and I find it, for extent and
accuracy, far superior to that which is ex
hibited by the candidates for matriculation
from public schools who come under my
notice. These latter can in many cases
scarcely apply the rules of arithmetic, and
generally egregiously fail in questions which
require a little independent thought and
common sense.”
The evidence from Cambridge, while less
extensive, is on the whole less strongly
conclusive than that from Oxford against
the public school system.
The Rev. J. B. Mayor, M.A., Fellow
and Tutor of St. John’s College, thus
writes:—
for a ' pass’ is lowered, in consequence of the
numbers who fail to answer a fair proportion
of the questions proposed to them. For 18
years I have found employment in Cambridge
in supplementing, as a private tutor, the de
ficiencies of school education, and in teaching
the simplest rudiments of arithmetic, algebra,
and elementary mathematics, and in pre
paring in Latin and Greek candidates for the
previous examination and ordinary degree...
The greater part of my pupils are from
public schools, and I cannot but think that I
have to teach them nothing but what they
ought to have been thoroughly taught at
school. ... There is at Cambridge no matricu
lation examination except at Trinity College,
and there the Greek and Latin subjects are
fixed, and Latin prose composition is not re
quired ; yet I may call attention to the fact
that, for the last two years, rather more than
one-third of those who entered at Trinity
failed at the first entrance examination. With
regard to arithmetic, I can testify, from my
own experience, to the almost universal
ignorance of the simplest first principles of
the subject, and may state that at the pre
vious examination in October, 1862, there
were 86 decided failures in arithmetic and
algebra out of 260 candidates; while in the
examination for the ordinary degree in June,
1862, one examiner found in the translations
from the Greek author mistakes in spelling
in the papers of 91 candidates out of 161.
I think in Greek and Latin I find public
school boys generally more fluent, and as su
perficial as boys educated elsewhere, but
worse prepared in arithmetic and elementary
mathematics.” (Vol. ii. p. 30.)
“I think that the standard of University
teaching and of the University degree is
much lower than it should be, partly in con
sequence of the ignorance and backwardness
of the men who come to us from the schools.
.... My impression, after some years’ ex
perience as a lecturer and tutor at one of the
largest colleges of the University, is that not
more than two-thirds of those who come up
The last witness whom I shall cite is
for matriculation could construe an easy
passage from a Latin author, and not more the Very Rev. H. G. Liddell, who was
than one-third an easy passage from a Greek for nine years Head Master of West
author, which they had not seen before.
Probably about -the same proportion might be minster School, and who has been for
able to translate into Latin, and answer easy seven years (since 1855) Dean of Christ
philological questions. . . . My impression is Church, Oxford. Being examined by the
that more is known of ancient than of modern
history; but the majority are very ignorant Commissioners, he says:—
“ I think those boys are generally better
of both, as well as of geography.” (Vol. ii.
prepared who come from less fashionable
p.26.)
The large majority
The Rev. W. H. Girdleston, M.A., schools.... get from the great of the average
of boys I
public schools
Christ’s College, thus writes :—
are from Eton. I think the temptations to
“ I consider that the education generally idleness that exist there are greater than in
given at schools does not give a satisfactory other schools, and I suppose that is the
grounding in those subjects which form the reason of their being less well prepared.”
especial studies of this University, and that
Being asked, “ in regard to the average
the large majority of young men who enter number of public schools, what would be
into college show a very superficial knowledge
of Latin and Greek; while of English litera the qualifications of the boys; for in
ture, English history, and English composition, stance, can they write Latin, not ele
they are deplorably ignorant. ... It is a con gantly, but correctly, without gram
stant complaint of our University examiners,
that the mass of men are very badly ground matical mistakes P” he answers, “ No,
ed ; and often the standard of marks required generally not.”
The examiner, Mr.
�11
Vaughan, having said, “I need hardly
ask you whether they can write Greek
correctly ? ” Mr. Liddell answers, “ I
never tried them in Greek at the ma
triculation examination.” Being asked,
“ Can they, if a Greek author is put into
their hands, and they are allowed to read
it once over, construe a passage which,
does not contain words of very rare occur
rence, and no sentence of a very intricate
character P” he says:—
“‘I can best answer that question by
stating that in practice we are obliged to1
restrict ourselves to books that have been
prepared. I do not think we should get even
a tolerable translation of a book which they
had not read before.’... ‘ Not of any pas
sage ?’—‘ If you pointed out an easy passage
from Xenophon, in which there was not the
slightest difficulty, perhaps you might; but
you would have to select your passage with
great care; you could not open the book at
random and ask them to read a Greek pas
sage. We do not get it well done even in the
books that are prepared in a great many
cases. I am speaking of those who come up
merely to be matriculated — the average
boys.’... ‘ Now, I have asked you generally
with regard to the public schools. With
respect to Eton, can you tell what is the state
of classical attainments there ?’ .... ‘ With
these average boys it is very much what I
have stated. Their Latin prose is certainly
not elegant or scholarlike. It is exceedingly
bad. Even those boys who can construe
pretty fluently, when you come to probe
them in grammar, often fail to give satis
factory answers. They often fail even when
the question is put upon paper, and they have
plenty of time to think. Many of them bring
up the words misspelt in the grossest man
ner.’ ” (Vol. iii., p. 400.)
*
The evidence now quoted suggests
several reflections, of which I venture to
present a few in brief.
1st. Seeing that, in the main, “ clas* The case is not better in France. “ Il n’est
presque pas de jour qui n’apporte son temoignage
de la decadence des humanites scolaires chez vous.
L’autre semaine, je fus a la Sorbonne recommander
un candidat qui se presentait pour la deuxieme
fois aux epreuves du baccalaureat. Disant qu’aux
premieres epreuves sa version avait ete ‘ bonne,’
je fus vivement interrompu par le venerable examinateur: ‘ Dites passable,’ s’ecria-t-il; ‘jamais
nous n’en voyons une bonne 1 Et cependant cette
version est la deux-millieme environ que le candi
dat a mise sur le papier depuis le commencement
de ses etudes!’—Fred. Diibner, Reforme, life.
1862. p. 3.
sics” and mathematics, and especially
classics, are taught in these schools to the
grievous neglect, partial or total, of all
other subjects which are important either
from their practical utility or from their
educational influence, it might have been
some consolation, if not some compen
sation, to find that classics at least were
well taught and commonly learned. But
no! For the sake of classics, all other
subjects are more or less neglected; yet
even these do not seem to profit by the
monopoly so largely assigned, and so vigi
lantly guarded. This discovery is most
lamentable, yet most instructive. Just
as, in economics, a “ protected” manu
facture is always sickly,—so in education,
monopoly is fatal to the subject it would
encourage. It is only just to add, that it
is not to the public schools only, though
mainly, that this stricture applies.
2nd. In the light of such disclosures as
these, we can better understand the as
sault lately made on the education of the
poor, so far as it depends on state agency,
and the too successful attempt to restrict
it virtually within limits not long ago
believed to be too narrow for even the
poorest of the poor. Very revolutionary
indeed must have been the continuance
of a scheme of primary instruction which
should make the children of the humbler
classes superior in real intelligence and
available acquirements to those of the
richer and higher classes. “ Payment
according to results” — a cry so mis
chievously potent to curtail the instruc
tion of the former—may, with far greater
reason, be commended to the attention
of those who conduct the instruction of
the latter.
*
* According to .the last Report of the National
Society, “ The effect of the Revised Code has
been to increase the demand for reading-books,
copy-books, and slates, while that for books on
history, geography, and all higher branches, has
considerably diminished.” At the last Annual
Meeting of the Society, the Archbishop of Canter
bury said:—“In order to meet the diminished
contributions, it has been found necessary to give
up the employment of many skilled teachers. The
result has been, that mental teaching has not been
�12
3rd. It is sadly striking that too com
monly the school instruction of the rich
seems to be expected to begin at the very
age at which that of the poor is expected
to end, or at even a later age. Com
plaints have long been rife of the diffi
culty of retaining poor children at school
beyond the age of 10,11, or, at furthest,
12. Yet it seems that 12, and even 13, is
the age virtually often assigned for the
commencement of the actual teaching of
the children of the rich. The very years
in which for the former all must be done,
are by the latter passed with nothing
done. Universities, condemned to mere
school work, throw the blame on the
schools, especially the public schools.
These schools pass on the charge to the
preparatory schools; and by these again
it is shifted to the parents, who, having
been themselves brought up in the old
school and college course, tread blindly
in the routine of custom. The vicious
circle is thus complete, and each party, if
even it desires a change, waits for the
so efficient as before. As to reading, writing, and
arithmetic, that has been in no way affected ; but
in regard to history, geography, and general infor
mation, the demand for that description of know
ledge has been diminished. He was, therefore,
afraid that less general information would be given
in the schools than before the new Code was esta
blished.” (limes, 8th June, 1864.) “Mr. M.
Arnold observed that the new method of examina
tion did not afford Inspectors the same means of
drawing out the children, and of ascertaining
really what they could do, that was afforded under
the old system; and when he (Mr. Walter) lately
had an opportunity of seeing a school inspection,
it struck him forcibly that that was the case. If
it were not a breach of confidence, he might add
that the Inspector was very much of the same
opinion, and observed to him, that under the new
system of examination it was impossible to get at
the intelligence of the children, to ask them ques
tions which would draw out their minds and prove
what they really understood, so well as under the
old system of inspection. The children were re
quired to read a certain number of lines, to do a
sum, and write a copy; but as to putting any
question which would test their general knowledge
and understanding, nothing of the kind was at
tempted ; and when he (Mr. Walter) suggested
that such a course of examination might as well
be attempted, the answer was that there was no
time for it, and that it would be impossible to get
through the work if that system were pursued.”—
Mr. Walter, M.P. for Berkshire. (Times, 1st
July, 1864.)
others to set it on foot. The institution,
by the great public schools, of a standard
of preliminary qualification, and a rigo
rous adherence to it, may abate this cry
ing evil; but its removal can be effected
only by a thorough remodelling of the
course of private instruction. So long as
children are left in ignorance of those
studies most congenial to their age, and
forced to acquire what is unsuitable to
their mental condition, so long must the
work of early teaching be irksome in its
operation and barren in its result.
4th. These disclosures of the real re
sults of public school teaching lead me to
view with some surprise a recent jeremiad
by a gentleman of high educational name,
on the incompetency and untrustworthi
ness of private schools, with slight, if any,
exception. Ifthere are any private schools
the results of whose teaching are as de
plorably unsatisfactory as those now pro
ved to attend public school teaching, it is
indeed time that they should be “im
proved off the face of the earth;” and
probably this consummation would long
ago have been attained, had the public
schools, the great educational exemplars
of the nation, not neglected their duty,
and wasted their mighty power. The
better and, I believe, the larger class of
private school teachers will assuredly
welcome as an auxiliary, not dread as an
opposing force, any improvements in the
great public schools. Their hands would
thus be strengthened, and their aspira
tions raised. Though their labours may
be more obscure than those of public
school masters, they are not less zealous;
to them also are the names of Arnold,
Kennedy, and Temple treasured watch
words, rich in encouragement and guid
ance. But even if names like these were
less exceptional than they are, they would
but strengthen the case against a system
which, in spite of these, has been so sig
nally found wanting.
5th. It must not be forgotten, that the
results, whether for good or for evil, of
�13
6th. The Commissioners, in their gene
which we have seen in part the evidence,
concern almost exclusively those of the ral conclusion, after saying of the course
pupils who go up to the Universities. of study,
Of even these, say the Commissioners,
“ which appears to us sound and valuable
“ those from the highest forms of these in its main elements, but wanting in breadth
and flexibility,—defects which, in our judg
schools, who are on the whole well taught ment, destroy in many cases, and impair in
classical scholars, notoriously form a all, its value as an education of the mind;
small proportion of the boys who receive and which are made more prominent at the
present time by the extension of knowledge
a public school education. The great in various directions, and by the multiplied
mass of such boys expose themselves to requirements of modern life,”—and of the
no tests which they can possibly avoid.” organization and teaching, regarded not as to
its range, but as to its force and efficacy,—
(Vol. i. p. 23.) But, as we have already I “ we have been unable to resist the conclu
seen, the Commissioners declare that sion, that these schools, in very different
only about one third of the pupils of the degrees, are too indulgent to idleness, or
struggle ineffectually with it; and that they
public schools, “taking them altogether,” consequently send out a large proportion of
go into the Universities. “Not one of men of idle habits and empty and unculti
these nine schools sends as many as half vated minds,”— go on to say,—“ Of their disci
moral training we have been
of its boys to the Universities; and in pline andterms of high praise.” (Vol. i. able to
speak in
p. 55.)
the case of most of them the proportion
This estimate, which it would be pre
is much less than one half.” (Vol. i.
sumptuous in me formally to contradict,
p. 27.) If such is the mental condition
*
I think it would be not less credulous to
of the one-third who have had before
accept. When I remember the applause
them what ought to be the stimulus of
which almost everywhere greeted, some
farther training at the University, what
years ago, the melancholy revelations of
is likely to be the mental condition of the
“ Tom Brown,” I am very distrustful of
remaining two-thirds, who, on their leav
the general notion of the morality, whe
ing school, enter at once on the business
ther possible or desirable, among school
of life, or oxi some course of professional
boys. In the absence of more direct
training, for which the teaching at the
means of judging, I note the indications,
public schools is still less likely to have
casually given in the Commissioners’
formed a fitting preparation ? The Com
Report, of the moral state of Eton, less
missioners regret that the test, which
casually of that of Westminster. I fix
they proposed to apply, of “ a direct and
my eye on the idleness and mental va
simple examination of a certain propor
cuity admitted to be too common, and I
tion of the boys,” was “ declined by the
rest in the conviction, that idleness is the
schools.” In the absence of such or any
fruitful parent of vice, and that the devil
equivalent test, we are left to an inference
dances not more surely in the empty
of probability. Few perhaps will main
pocket than in the empty head. It is not
tain that, leaving out of view the prize
wonderful that in a country where suc
winners at Oxford and Cambridge, it is
cessive generations of the leaders of opi
only the stupid and ignorant who con
nion have been subject to the public school
tinue their training at the Universities;
regime, such as it used to be, the general
or even that they are inferior to the ma
standard of morals by which youth are
jority who do not enter at the Univer
tried should be as low as is undoubtedly
sities. If the selected sample fail, what the general estimate of what is possible
shall we say of the sack ?
to be learned in school, still more of the
* At Christmas, 1861, the nine schools con
tained 2696 boys between 8 and 19 years of age,
the average being about 15. (Vol. i. p. 11.)
influence of judicious school-training on
character and conduct in after life. The
“ Tom Brown” code of school ethics often
�14
reminds me of the Irish father who said
that of all his sons he liked his youngest
best, “ because,” said he, “ he never kicks
me when I’m down.” It is scarcely more
exacting, or more difficult to please.
III. Time permits only a very brief
notice of the general recommendations of
the Commissioners. They are given un
der thirty-two heads, but many of them
are beyond our present scope.
“ (7) In the selection of the masters, the
field of choice should in no case be confined
to persons educated at the school. (8) The
classical languages and literature should con
tinue to hold the principal place in the course
of study. (9) In addition to the study of
classics and to religious teaching, every boy
should be taught arithmetic and mathe
matics ; one modern language at least, which
should be either French or German; some
one branch at least of natural science, and
either drawing or music. Care should be
taken to ensure that the boys acquire a good
general knowledge of geography and of an
cient history, some acquaintance with modern
*
history, **
and a command of pure gram
matical English. . . . (11) The teaching of
natural science should, wherever practicable,
include two main branches—1, chemistry
and physics; 2, comparative physiology and
natural history, both animal and vegetable.
. • . . (13) Arrangements should be made
for allowing boys, after arriving at a certain
place in the school, and upon the request of
their parents or guardians, to drop some
portion of their classical work (for example,
Latin verse and Greek composition), in order
to devote more time to mathematics, modern
languages, or natural science; or, on the
other hand, to discontinue wholly or in part
natural science, modern languages, or mathe
matics, in order to give more time to classics
or some other study. . . . (16) The promo
tion of the boys from one classical form to
another, and the places assigned to them in
such promotion, should depend upon their
* The difference between the phrases, “ a good
general knowledge of ancient history,” and “ some
acquaintance with modern history,” is equally
significant and strange.—W. B. H.
** Young people should learn the contemporary
history in which they live, and of which they are a
'part. Vicksburg is as important as Saguntum ;
to follow Forey from the coast to Puebla (and
learn why if'e lent) is as exciting as accompany
ing Cortez ; and to know something of the history
and the sayings and the doings of those who would
like to govern us, is at lenst as important for
our youth of either sex, as to learn the consti
tution of the Roman legislature.”—Athenceum,
20th June, 1863.
progress, not only in classics and divinity,
but also in arithmetic and mathematics; and
likewise, in the case of those boys who are
studying modern languages or natural sci
ence, on their progress in those subjects re
spectively. (17) The scale of marks should
be so framed as to give substantial weight
and encouragement to the non-classical stu
*
dies. ....
“ (23) Every boy should be required, be
fore admission to the school, to pass an en
trance examination, and to show himself well
grounded for his age in classics and arith
metic, and in the elements of French and
German. (24) No boy should be promoted
from one form to another, on ground of seni
ority, unless he has passed a satisfactory
examination in the work of the form into
which he is to be promoted. (25) No boy
should be suffered to remain in the school
who fails to make reasonable progress in it.
.... (32) The Head Master should be re
quired to make an annual report to the Go
vernors on the state of the school, and this
report should be printed.” (Vol. i. pp. 53
—55.)
Without attempting to criticise these
recommendations in detail, I may say
that, in their general spirit and tendency,
they are a worthy sequel of a Report
which, admirably written, bears traces
everywhere of anxious yet calm and
patient deliberation, clear and impartial
judgment, and earnest desire to conci
liate the claims of the present, if not the
future, with respect for the past; to re
pair, enlarge, and adapt the existing sys
tem, not to destroy it and build afresh
upon its ruins. No one interested in
education can fail to find in its almost
every page ample material for reflection.
* The following scheme for the distribution of
the school or class lessons in a week is suggested
as furnishing a comparative scale (p. 34) ;—
1. Classics, with History and Divinity . 11
2. Arithmetic and Mathematics ... 3
3. French or German
.............................. 2
4. Natural Science................................... 2
5. Music or Drawing................................... 2
School Lessons, taking about an hour each, 20
“ It is here assumed that the school lessons take
about an hour each, and that they will be such as
to demand for preparation in the case of classics
10 additional hours, and in those of modern lan
guages and natural science respectively, at least
two additional hours, in the course of the week;
and that composition will demand about five
hours.” (In all 37 hours per week, out of 144, not
reckoning Sunday; 107 remaining for sleep, meals,
and exercise—say 18, or three-fourths, per day.)
�15
Nevertheless, while I cheerfully admit
that these suggestions go as far in the
right direction as could fairly be expected,
with due regard to either the inevitable
prepossessions of the Commissioners, or
the great practical difficulties with which
inveterate custom and neglect have per
plexed the question, I am very far from
thinking that they go to the root of the
evil, or do more than facilitate future
changes far more extensive than any now
possible, or perhaps safe. Progress, to
be sure, must be gradual; and sudden
and sweeping revolution is only less to be
dreaded than total immobility or torpor.
It was not to be expected that the Com
missioners should raise the question,
which, in spite of many well meant at
tempts to extend to the middle and lower
classes what are called the benefits of
public school training, is gradually for
cing itself on the public mind—whether
the system of separating boys from their
homes, and herding them in large num
bers in barrack-monasteries, away from
the blessed influences of the family, be
indeed the true ideal of education; and
whether the evil which exists to a smaller
extent in private boarding schools be not
magnified and intensified in the great
public schools. A judicious provision for
an exceptional and unfortunate necessity
is widely different from the advocacy of a
system as in itself the best that can be
even desired. This is a grave question,
which I must here only indicate, without
stopping to discuss.
But there is another question, only
less important, which the Commissioners
have tried to settle, and which I cannot
pass over. I belong to a large and everincreasing class of persons who, by ob
servation, reflection, and experience, are
led to believe the present system of clas
sical teaching to be a superstition, a
blunder, and a failure. Historically ex
plicable as a necessity of a bygone age,
its continuance in our day seems to me a
mischievous anachronism. Animated by
a deep sense of the value of Roman and
Greek literature, and of the good which
its study might effect under a wiser and
more natural method of instruction, and
truly grateful for the benefit I have my
self derived from it—dearly purchased as
it has been—I am not to be deterred
or dissuaded from uttering convictions
which I have long and carefully matured.
It is in the interest of classical instruc
tion itself that I would speak. Hitherto
neither the languages nor the literatures
of Greece or Rome have been in any
worthy sense learned by any but a very
minute fraction of the great mass of boys
who have spent eight, ten, and more of
the most precious years of their lives in
the wearisome drudgery which ancestral
wisdom has decided to be the inseparable
accompaniment, and even the indispen
sable instrument, of this kind of learn
ing. Hitherto even the few, with rare
exceptions, know little, while the many
know nothing, of what they are seeming
to learn; the training, thus practically
null in respect of knowledge, has done,
and is doing, much to foster habits of
idleness, distate, and incapacity for men
tal exertion, obtuseness, and confusion of
mind; and lastly, while these subjects
are not learned, other subjects, more con
genial to youthful faculty and taste, as
well as more practically useful in after
life, and at the same time better fitted as
educational agents, are, for the sake of
these, not taught. “ If,” says the Times
(28th April, 1864), “ we had any reason
to believe that Latin and Greek had been
displaced by French, or geography, or
music, or the elements of natural science,
we might, at any rate, feel that we had
gained something in place of what we
had lost.” But no! Just as a great Ger
man philosopher is reported to have said
that only one man living understood his
system, and he didn’t; so boys learn only
Latin and Greek, and these they do not
learn. Yet singular, almost incredible
is the indifferent levity with which this
�16
admitted result is tolerated, even by those
who profess to regret it, and to wish it
changed. Only the other day, this same
Times said (7th May, 1864):—
“ If you despise an accomplishment, you
may live to want it. Indeed, there are few
men who do not confess, some time or other,
that they would give a good deal to be able
to learn what they could have learnt easily in
their youth. It is very common to see gentle
men long past the freshness of youth making
violent efforts to learn music, chymistry, geo
logy, botany, and a good many other things.
At a much earlier date, a young gentleman,
having by great interest got his name on the
Foreign-office, finds himself condemned to a
French master for a twelvemonth before he
can get an appointment; or he travels, and
finds an impassable gulf between himself and
every human being who cannot speak Eng
lish. He may even become painfully con
scious of a much more serious defect, in a
total ignorance of English literature, down to
the composition of a sentence, the wording of
a note, or the spelling of words in common
use. He may expose himself to those with
whom he has every reason to stand well. He
may hear conversations about the incidents
of war or history, in which he will find it wise
to avoid taking a part, lest his geography
should be found wanting. On these occasions
the strongest conviction that he can write
Latin hexameters better than any of the com
pany will hardly sustain self-respect under
the detection of profound geographical or his
torical ignorance. These, however, a/re only
inconveniences; and, to the sound English
reason, are trifles compared with the disci
pline of the mind. But even in that point of
view, all these accomplishments—and we must
add to them mathematics—have their value
in giving breadth and elasticity to the intel
lect, besides that opportunity of change which
is necessary to many learners.”
All this admitted ignorance and inca
pacity are, it seems, “only inconveniences
—trifles compared with the discipline of
the mind.” But it occurs to ask, How
far are this ignorance and incapacity com
patible with the much-lauded discipline of
the mind; and would not the removal of
this very ignorance and incapacity, as the
Times itself admits in the very next sen
tence, do much to promote the discipline
of the mind ? Everywhere, and for ever,
do we find this unhappy and groundless
contrast between what is called, almost
with a sneer, “ useful knowledge,” and
mental discipline,— as if it were only
through useless knowledge, or stuff too
useless to be called knowledge, that men
tal discipline can be attained. Similarly
pernicious and baseless is the current pre
ference of what is acquired with toil and
pain to what is acquired with ease and
pleasure. * Of the body it is true that only
what food is taken with healthy appetite
can be healthfully digested, and converted
into blood and tissue; and so is it. with
the mind. Is it reasonable to believe that
utility and pleasure are inevitably di
vorced from educational influence, and
that the true value of learning lies in its
inutility and repulsiveness P f To classical
teaching I utterly refuse, in any case, the
monopoly of mental (discipline; and in the
case of those who never get beyond the
grammatical and verbal ’husks, I contend
that the mental influence is, to the young,
for evil, not for good. But the advocate
of the prevailing system, if driven from
the defence of mental discipline, shelters
himself behind other screens, such as
physical training, geni/us loci, influence of
numbers, esprit de corps, advantage of as
sociation with youths of rank and breed
ing. Of none of these things do I need
or wish to speak disparagingly; though,
as regards the last, it does strike me as
strange that those who spurn utility in
the matter of young men’s learning should
lay stress upon utility of a much lower
kind in the associations that they form.
But all these things are quite irrelevant,
unless it can be shown that a change of
subjects and mode of teaching would be
fatal to their existence. Would boys be
less addicted to football, cricket, and boat
ing, if they ceased to be ignoramuses P
Would the influence of numbers, and of
the rivalry which “ develops the manly
*
fllaiov ovSev ep.p.eves /J.d9np.a.—P:LA.TO.
t “ How stupidly wrong are they who speak' of
the dryness of study. And how marvellously sa
gacious were the fathers of the Latin language who
gave to the word studium the double meaning,
study and desire."—W. P. Scargill, Essays,
&c., p. 373. 1857.
�17
English character,” so much admired, we
are told, and envied by continental na
tions, perish if boys were taught what
interests, not disgusts, them, and what it
is of the utmost importance for their own
and for others’ sakes that they should
know ? If not, then away with such
flimsy pretexts, which do but thinly veil
an obstinate resistance to educational im
provement ! If I complain of scarcity and
badness of food, is it any answer to tell
me that the air is very pure, and the
prospect exquisitely fine. I rejoin, “ Give
me better food, and more of .it, and I will
better appreciate the purity of the air and
the loveliness of the prospect.” I remem
ber an advertisement of a vacant curacy
in one of the Southern counties, which is
scarcely a burlesque on this mode of rea
soning. It ended thus,—“ The salary is
small, but the sea-bathing is excellent.”
The learning is small (for, as Mr. Glad
stone says—
“ Boys learn but little here below,
And learn that little ill,”)—
things which need not be its substitutes
at all, but which ought to be its firm
allies and faithful friends. Even Mr.
Gladstone (who, in spite of his brilliant
and versatile talents, his rich and various
acquirements, is still a striking instance
of the defect which Mr. Faraday, in his
evidence, points out in men classically
*
trained) speaks, in his letter to the Com
missioners, of “ the low utilitarian argu
ment in matter of education, for giving it
what is termed a practical direction;” and
declares it to be “ so plausible, that we
may on the whole be thankful that the
instincts of the country have resisted what
in argument it has been ill able to con
fute.” In some amazement I turn up the
word imstinct in Johnson’s Dictionary; it
is there defined: “ Desire or aversion act
ing in the mind without the intervention
of reason or deliberation; the power de
termining the will of brutes.” I will not
ask whether instincts may be acquired, or
are necessarily innate. But never before,
probably, was so singular a duty assigned
to instinct as that of judging of the com
parative value of rival methods of school
training. Falstaff indeed says,—“ Beware
instinct. The lion will not touch the true
prince. Instinct is a great matter; I was
a coward on instinct.” To be an educa
tionist on instinct, and by instinct to
recognize the true system of education,
is a feat so remarkable, that I can hardly
believe it to be within the capacity of any
one man, much less of a whole nation. Is
it not, besides, the very business of reason
to lessen the exclusive domain of instinct,
and to guide instinct, where it does not
take its place? Mr. Gladstone’s recent
speech in the House of Commons presents
many subjects for remark; but time per
mits me to say here only that when he
charges the ineffectiveness of school
teaching on the “ luxury and self-indul
gence ” in which we live, and “ the laxity
which is essentially connected with the
but the cricket is excellent. If physical
exercise and amusement (for which, by the
way, I have long and earnestly pleaded)
are indeed the leading purpose of our
great schools,—and it would seem that at
Eton they absorb a very large proportion
of the school-life,—then let the fact be
avowed and acted on: cedat armis toga;
let the gown give place to bat, ball, and
wickets ; let cricket be promoted, vice
classics superseded, and let the HeadMastership be transferred to that vir
ca/ndidatus, Mr. Lillywhite, or the clas
sically denominated Mr. Julius Caesar.
Possibly, however, if cricket were made
compulsory and primary, and classics op
tional and secondary, we should have less
of the former and more of the latter, and
the change might be fatal to the very
supremacy of the physical training which
it was intended to promote. But, seri
ously, it is deplorable to see how parents
suffer themselves to be hoodwinked by the * See Frazer’s Magazine for February, 1864,
substitution for sound mental culture of p. 156.
�18
signal prosperity and wealth of the coun
try,” he virtually, though unconsciously,
passes the severest censure on those great
capitals of education, in which generation
after generation of our richer upper classes
have been allowed to grow up without any
guidance whatever as to the true duties,
any more than as to the true sources, of
wealth. But here is involved a conception
of youthful training which as yet has
dawned on only a very few minds, and of
which the Commissioners, unlike those
who reported not long ago on the state of
English primary schools, seem never to
have even heard. For aught they appear
to know, the successful attempts made,
for some years past, in and near this city,
to convey to poorer children knowledge
and training in this most vital subject,
embracing as it does all our economic and
other social relations, and full of interest
and instruction for both rich and poor,
might as well have been made in Nova
Zembla. The rising sun of education, un
like the physical sun, would seem to touch
first with his beams the lowly valley, and
then, through mist and cloud, slowly to
climb to the hill-tops.
This omission in the Commissioners’
Report detracts largely, in my opinion,
from its value. But I trust I am duly
grateful for what I find. The two great
wedges—Natural Science and Modern
*
Languages —which are destined, sooner
or later, to rend asunder the present sys
tem, have, at all events, received a vigorous
impulse which will not be lost. No vis
inertias can for ever prevail against testi
mony so clear and so emphatic as that
of Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Hooker, Professor
Owen, Sir Charles Lyell, Sir John Her
schel, Professor Faraday, and others,f to
the value of Natural Science, not for pur* “ The interchange of ideas with the contem
poraneous world is of as much importance as the
preservation of the ideas of the past; and the
tongues which men now speak are those which
men should learn to understand.’’—Sir Robert
Kane, 1849.
f I regret that Professor Tyndal and Drs. Lankester and Lyon Playfair were not examined.
poses of “ low practical utility,” but as an
instrument of mental discipline.
Meantime, it is cheering to have a
statement like the following from so emi
nent an authority as the Rev. Dr. Morti
mer, Head Master of the City of London
School:—
“It is my opinion, founded on very con
siderable experience, that the limited time
given to classics, in comparison with other
public schools, is fully made up by the in
creased mental power obtained by an ac
quaintance with many other subjects. At all
events, it is a fact, that the university career
of pupils of the City of London School is emi
nently successful; and the reason seems to
be, that from being early trained to take up
several different subjects of study, they ac
quire the faculty of readily adapting them
selves to the work set before them, and bring
to it a large amount of collateral information.”
(Vol. ii. p. 580.) *
Other evidence to alike effect might be
quoted. (See Vol. ii. p. 17.)
Still more encouraging is the declara
tion of Charles Neate, Esq., M.A., Fellow
of Oriel College, Oxford:—
“We cannot go on for-ever learning all that
our ancestors learned 300 years ago, and all
* “ It is generally agreed that the greater at
tention now given at most schools to mathematics,
history, and modern languages, whilst it has ad
vanced those subjects, and proved beneficial by
enlarging and stimulating the mind, has not in
jured scholarship.”—Report, vol. i. p. 25.
“We collect from the evidence that, speaking
generally (there are not a few exceptions), boys
who succeed in classics succeed also in mathematics
and in modern languages. This shows that, ordi
narily, any boy of good capacity may with advan
tage study each of these subjects, and may study
them all together.”—Report, vol. i. p. 16.
“As an almost invariable rule, the men who do
best in outlying subjects also do best in scholar
ship. Men of great intelligence will naturally be
greedy of all learning; and there is something,
too, in the awakening of a boy’s mind, even if he
is not of high ability, which far more than pays for
the outlay of time and energy.”—Rev. G. W.
Kitchin, M.A., Junior Censor of Christ Church,
Oxford.Report, vol. ii. p. 12.
“ During the years that I was at Rugby, from
1841 to 1847, the knowledge of mathematics and
modern languages advanced. Special masters
were appointed to teach those subjects. Sctiolarship during the same time advanced. Mathema
tics, history and geography, and modern languages
should certainly be taught at school. Nor need
scholarship suffer. The study of modern languages
would tend to improve, not to injure, scholarship.”
—Rev. C. W. Sandford, M.A., Senior Censor
of Christ-Church. Report, vol. ii. p. 11.
�19
that has grown up as new knowledge since
Of three plans which have been devised,
then. The time must come when we must and two of which are actually in operation
make a selection and a sacrifice. I think it
in various places in this and other coun
has come now.” (Vol. ii. p. 49.)
tries, for evading the ever-increasing dif
The great practical remedy suggested ficulties of the present system, this is, I
by Mr. Neate almost exactly coincides am convinced, by far the simplest, the
with what I have advocated for many most effective, and the one destined ulti
years. He proposes “that the learning mately to prevail. Against the other two
of either Latin or Greek should be post plans, whether that of having side by side,
poned till the age of 12 years [I would say in the same institution, a collegiate and a
14]; boys being up to that time taught non-collegiate department, or that called
their own language and one foreign lan in France “ bifurcation,” by which boys
guage, together with something of the who have been taught together up to 14
literature of either; also arithmetic, some
and 15 diverge, some to the modern or
portion of natural history, and, of course,
non-collegiate, others to the ancient or
the facts of their own history; in all which
collegiate side of the school,—there are
those boys more especially that come from
very grave objections. On both the Com
public schools are almost incredibly igno
missioners report with caution rather than
rant.” (Vol. ii. p. 49.) If the age of 14
approval. The third plan, according to
were adopted, the course of instruction
which all boys up to the age of 14 should
up to that age would be, and ought to be,
be taught together all the subjects really
considerably enlarged. Mr. Neate goes
most important for them all to know,
on:—“ I believe a boy so prepared would
whatever their lot in life,—classics being
learn more Latin and Greek between the
reserved for those who should remain long
ages of 12 and 16, than he does now be
enough at school to profit by the study,
tween the ages of 10 and 18.” “ But in
order to ensure this, great improvements to learn, in his sense, to lose a little more time,
are needed in our methods of teaching.” to delay a little longer before we begin teaching
Latin and Greek.”
(Ibid.) This proposal, heretical as it may Reform," 1836, p. —Sir Thos. Wyse, “ Educa.
166.
appear, is supported by high and ample “ We are of opinion that the study of the
learned languages ought not to be commenced till
authority; but, not to stray too far from the higher functions of fancy and feeling begin to
the Report before us, I will quote only a stir, and a taste for literature and reading begins
short passage from a pamphlet, “ Oxford to bud in the soul."—Professor Blackie, 1842.
“ I must say that in fixing upon ten as the
Reform and Oxford Professors,” published earliest age [at which the study of Latin or Greek
in 1854, by H. Halford Vaughan, Esq., ought to begin], I am by no means convinced that
it is best to begin so young. Judging from several
M.A., one of the Commissioners, and then instances which have come under my own obser
Regius Professor of History in the Uni vation, I am strongly inclined to believe that
twelve, or even fourteen, would be a better period
versity of Oxford:—“I believe it might for commencing Latin.”—Dr. J. H. Jerrard,
possibly be found that we have hitherto formerly Classical Examiner in the London Uni
learned the classical languages painfully, versity. the idea ever been suggested, that the
“ Has
imperfectly, and unseasonably,—slowly public schools should take nearly all of classical
study on themselves [i. e., relieving the prepara
imbibing rules by rote and by the ear, be tory schools from it]; that they should at least
cause we learn them at an age too unripe give up an entrance examination in Greek, but
standard in
spelling,
for a rational appreciation of such abstract I require a higher French, whichreading,thus form
history, &c., and
might
propositions, and losing thereby great part one of the principal previous studies, and then
.............
of the discipline so much boasted in the would not be so much required afterwardsto public
In this case, our sons would not go on
course of acquisition.” (p. 30, note.)
*
schools with so much Latin and Greek; but I beL
| lieve they would have a far greater capacity for
* “ We begin too soon, and we begin the wrong classical studies, and pleasure in studying, than
way. Rousseau says that one of the great arts of they ever now have.”—Letter signed “ G.,’’ in
education is to know how to lose time. We ought Times, 12th May, 1864.
�20
whether they go on to a University or not, proved to be bad be thrown aside, and let
•—would render classical instruction at advantage be taken of the private school
once easier and more effective in three teacher’s greater freedom, of the greater
ways : 1st, By the reduced number of flexibility of his system, unhampered by
those who take part in it; 2nd, By their charters, and traditions, and long prestige,
greater age; 3rd, By the greater develop to adopt whatever changes may seem most'
ment of their intelligence, due to their accordant, not with the whim of the mo
previous training in subjects more level ment, but with the growing tendencies
Jo their juvenile capacities, and more con and necessities of modern life. The tu
genial to their tastes. This innovation quoque argument is very well as a retort
was, doubtless, too formidable to be con to one-sided.satirists; it is a poor excuse
sidered by the Commissioners; but their for inaction and-indifference to improveReport, valuable as it is, is not finally | ment. If, as is possible, a Commission be
conclusive, and their suggestions, in so appointed by Parliament for inquiry into
far as they may be adopted, will render the state of middle-class school-teaching,
the introduction of it easier hereafter. Any I trust that you will aid, not obstruct, its
one who has had the twofold experience investigations; that you will not close
of teaching to young pupils what they your doors against examination. You
learn willingly, and what they learn invita have, or ought to have, nothing to con
\ut aiunt) Minerva, and who is competent ceal. A good school, like a good house
to more than “gerund-grinding,” will wife, can never be caught en deshabille.
hail with gladness a change which will I for one do not fear the result. There
render his labour at once more pleasing cannot surely be many private school
masters who, under examination the most
and more efficient.
There are yet many things of which I rigorous, would rival the evasiveness, the
inconsistency, the narrowness, and the
should wish to speak,
“ Sed jam tempos equum fumantia solvere petulance displayed by the Rev. Head
colla.”
Master of Eton, or the humiliating want
In conclusion, let me hope that this of acquaintance with the moral evil per
Report will be of service to the large body vading his own school, and of power to
of private-school teachers who chiefly con put it down, revealed by the Rev. Head
stitute this College of Preceptors. Dis Master of Westminster. But a much
paraged and maligned as they too often higher level than all this would still be
are, they will not, I trust, rest satisfied in too low. To the progress now going on
the belief that, bad as private schools may in private middle-class schools, in schools
sometimes be, the large public schools for primary instruction of both sexes, and
have now been shown to be, most pro not least, in schools for girls of the middle
bably, much worse. Rather let warning and upper classes, much more than even
be taken from the signal and melancholy to the direct effect of such a revelation as
failure here set forth, all the more strik this, startling as it is, do I look for the
ingly because by friendly hands ; let the steady rise and swell of public opinion
causes of that failure be' anxiously consi which shall sweep away the accumulated
dered ; let all slavish copying of models abuses in our public schools.
London: Printed by C. F. Hodgson & Son, Gough Square, Fleet Street, E.C.
�
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On the report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the condition of the principal public schools: a paper read at the monthly evening meeting of the College of Preceptors, May 11th, 1864
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Edition: 2nd
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Collation: 20 p. ; 23 cm.
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& 2-37 2-
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
PRICE TWOPENCE
THE
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
OF CHILDREN
BY THE LATE
Rev. JAMES CRANBROOK
(EDINBURGH)
[issued for the rationalist press association, ltd.]
London :
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1908
��THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF
CHILDREN
Religion is only a form of feeling. This needs to be dis
tinctly understood, or else we shall blunder at every step we
take. But I feel I have no occasion to go into any very
elaborate proof of it, as most rational thinkers have become
familiar with the arguments on which it rests. They know
that religion is not the observance of forms and ceremonies,
inasmuch as men may observe all these most punctiliously
and yet be mere hypocrites and pretenders to the religious
life. Nor is religion the belief of certain creeds, inasmuch
as men have held parts of every kind of orthodoxy, and yet
been most atrociously impious. But, as it is generally
expressed, it is a state of the heart, of the feelings, a state
of faith, reverence, awe, love, dependence, or fear, according
to the character of the divine object presented to the mind.
No distinction can be more important than that of this
modern one between theology and religion. It is necessary
to the interpretation of all the religious history of the past,
and to all intelligent religious action in the present. Religion
is the feeling which arises when a divine object is presented
to the mind ; theology is the explanation the intellect gives
of that object, its nature, character, and relations, the analysis
of the feeling itself, and the exposition of the forms of expres
sion or worship to which the feeling gives rise. So that it is
quite clear that religion must precede theology in the order of
time; the thing analysed and explained, ?>., must come
before the analysis and explanation. And it is further clear
that religion and theology may exist quite independently of
3
�4
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
each other—i.e., the intellectual process which explains is
quite a different thing from the emotional state which seeks
for the explanation. A man may feel deeply, and yet, through
defect of intellect, be entirely without the theological know
ledge ; or he may through his power of intellect understand
the whole question of the theology, and yet seldom or never
in the faintest degree be the subject of the religious feeling.
Bearing in mind, then, these distinctions, what is it we are
inquiring into when we propose to ourselves the subject of
a child’s religious education ?
By religious education do we mean the education of that
feeling which arises upon the perception of a divine object?
or do we mean the analysis and ascertaining of the truths or
facts respecting the divine object of the feeling—z.e., theo
logy? or do we mean both the education of the feeling and
of the intellectual process of its interpretation ? Now, if I
mistake not, the popular idea of religious education is wholly
limited to the second meaning—z.e., the learning of theology.
Hence, e.g\, you will see in the prospectuses of various
schools a long rigmarole about the great importance they
attach to religious education, and the pains they give to it ;
and then, when you come to look into the processes by which
they carry on this important work, you will find that it often
happens that the sole effort they make in this direction with
one class for a whole year is to instruct their pupils in the
question of the Christian evidences 1 Now, I admit to the
fullest extent the great importance of this question. It is
one of the great questions of the day. In matters of theo
logy, it is the great question. But it is not a question of
religion. It is a question of historical criticism. And
historical criticism is a science of recent times, and requires
more learning, hard and dry study, power of acute and
accurate reasoning, and maturity of judgment than any other
science of the same class. To set children, therefore, to the
study of the Christian evidences, and then to call this
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
5
proceeding their religious education, seems to me as egregious
a piece of blundering as ever was perpetrated, and at the
same time proves what I said—that in popular estimation
religious education means, for the most part, education in
theology.
I do not mean to say, however, that there is no religious
education. On the contrary, there is a great deal of it,
Sometimes too much, and out of all proportion. But it is
carried on, and especially by pious mothers, without any
idea that it is education, and, consequently, without any
thought or system. The only thing called and attended to
as education consists of theological doctrines. But, in the
sense in which I speak of religious education, it is the first
of those I named—z’.e., the education of that feeling or those
feelings which arise upon the presentation to the mind of a
divine object, or, in other words, on the contemplation of the
mystery of the universe—the education of the feelings of
wonder, awe, reverence, love, and dependence. It is not
forming our minds to the study of theological truth. That
may be used as a means of religious education indirectly ;
and we may see thereafter that it is a means. But the
religious education itself is the development, direction, and
promotion of the growth of the religious feeling, the
purifying it from gross superstitions and sensual elements,
and rendering it elevated and elevating, pure and purifying,
noble and ennobling. Now, by what process is this to be
effected ? I have already alluded to the means generally
employed. Pious parents feel it their duty at the very
earliest period to begin with teaching their children theology—
notions respecting God, the soul, eternity—and in instructing
them in the feelings they ought to cherish with regard to
these objects. As soon as they can lisp, they teach them to
say prayers ; as soon as they can repeat sentences like a
parrot, they teach them a catechism. Now, not only is this
most destructive to the intellect, by teaching the child to use
�6
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
words without a meaning, but it is creating in the child, so
far as it awakens religious feeling at all, a merely super
stitious religion founded on a false theology, which it will
afterwards have to correct. It is sad to reflect that in most
schools children receive to-day the same ideas in regard to
the universe and the destiny of man which their ancestors
entertained, and which are in direct contradiction to con
temporary knowledge.
Let us take as an illustration of what I mean the first two
questions of the simplest and the most generally used cate
chism for little children I know—Dr. Watts’s. I have known
it taught to children three years old, and, of course, before
they could read ; and have constantly heard it referred to as
the very model of a manual for the purpose. And most
certainly it represents the spirit—and very much of the letter
—of teaching children yet in their early years. It begins
with asking: “Can you tell me, child, who made you?”
The answer is: “The Great God who made heaven and
earth.” Now, here at the very outset are two notions
involving the most recondite and difficult ideas, which lie
utterly beyond a child’s comprehension. What idea can a
child have of God which is not utterly false ? Whatnotion
can the words convey but what is grossly superstitious? To
give the word “ God ” to a young child without explanation
is to teach him to use words without meaning—the greatest
curse of most people’s lives. To attempt to give him an
explanation is simply to call his creative fancy into play, by
means of which he will form for himself a most ridiculous
idol. If you awaken religion at all—i.e., feeling towards this
misconceived object, this idol—it will be a religion as super
stitious as ever was that of pagan nations. But then, in this
answer there is another notion besides that of God, and as
utterly incomprehensible to a child—that of a cosmogony—
the generation of a world, of the universe. What are you
going to say to a young child about God’s making the
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
7
heavens and the earth? Will you explain, supposing you
are able to do so? He could not comprehend. Would you
leave it unexplained, and let him form his own notions?
“ Oh,” you say ; “ who would think to teach a child your fine
scientific ideas ? I would leave him to the plain common
sense meaning of the words; every child knows what to make
means.” To be sure ! You are quite right. A child knows
what to make means, for he has seen your cook make pastry,
or he has made mud houses in the streets ; so he takes the
meaning of to make as thus learned—the only thing he can
do, according to the laws of thought—and applies the notion
to God’s making the heavens and the earth ! Is that, how
ever, the meaning you would have him take the words in ?
Do you think such a notion will produce in him any deep
religion—that is, reverence, wonder, love, dependence upon
him who has done for the heavens and the earth what the
child knows he has done for the mud house made in the
streets? It is all an absurdity together. If the child think
and feel about it at all, it will be false thought and feeling.
If he do not think and feel, he has learned to use words
without attending to the ideas they represent.
Let us now go on to the second question in the cate
chism, recollecting we quote it, not merely because it is very
generally used, but because it exactly expresses the spirit of
what is called “ religious ” education where it is not used.
That question is : “ What does this Great God do for you?”
“He keeps me from harm by night and by day, and is always
doing me good.” Now, the criticism upon this is very short
and very sharp. In the only sense in which a young child
could understand it, it is absolutely untrue. In the only
sense in which anybody could understand it, it is partially
untrue. God does not keep us from harm by night and by
day, and is not always doing us good. He sometimes lets
us get into a very great deal of harm, and sometimes does us
a great deal of evil. “Oh, but that is all for wise and
�8
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
gracious purposes.” But the catechism does not say so ;
and besides, whatever the purpose, harm is harm, evil is
evil ; and, in the sense of the catechism, God does not keep
us from the one and does inflict the other. What of truth
would there have been in the answer if those children who
lost their lives in the fire last week had repeated it before they
went to bed? “ He keeps me from harm by night and by day,
and is always doing me good ’’—and yet to wake up in the
agony of suffocation and a horrible death by fire ! “ Oh,
yes,” you say ; “ but those poor children may have been saved
from worse calamities by this premature death, agonising
and dreadful as it was.”
Ay ! but to die and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible, warm motion to become
A kneaded clod........... ’tis too horrible !
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
But, indeed, all the poets might be quoted in the same strain,
showing that our human nature shrinks from death as the
greatest of earthly evils ; nor could any sophistry persuade
one that it were better to die the agonising death of those
children than to live on in poverty. What I say, therefore,
is that that catechism does not teach truth when it teaches
“God keeps us,” etc. He may have higher and wiser pur
poses to serve than we could comprehend; but in our mortal
state harm is constantly happening to us, and we constantly
suffer evil. If, therefore, the child’s religion be founded upon
such teaching, it will be an erring, blind, superstitious reli
gion. It will trust God for what it will not get, depend upon
him for what he will not do ; and the consequence will be, if
the child ever become thoughtful, he will have to abandon,
and perhaps with agonising conflicts and doubts, all you
have ever taught.
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
9
Having thus prepared the way, the next step generally
taken in the child’s religious education is to introduce a
catechism of a more theologically recondite character. It
may be taught at school or at home. But, with any notion
of religion, the idea of training a child in it at school,
surrounded by a large and restless class, and all the want of
seriousness which belongs to children’s nature, is simply
preposterous. It is the work of home ; of solitude, if pos
sible ; of quiet, if not sombre ; but certainly serious
circumstances. However, that is of no consequence now.
Let the education be conducted at home or at school, it is
generally most pernicious. The catechism most commonly
used in this country (Scotland) is, as everyone knows, the
Assembly’s. Now, I do not speak yet of the truth or untruth
of what it teaches—I speak of the capacity of the child to
comprehend. And I know of no thoughtful person who
would pretend that a boy or girl between eight and sixteen
could comprehend the doctrines, philosophical, metaphysical,
and theological, it contains. Again, I will pass over the
intellectual injury done by teaching a child to handle words
which convey to him no distinct or clear idea ; and I simply
ask, What is the result? It is obvious throughout society.
Children so taught are not even grounded in theology—they
are simply furnished with theological words ; they, therefore,
MS they advance in life, easily become indoctrinated with that
weak, watery, and illogical form of evangelicalism which has
become popular in our pulpits during recent years, and which
is infinitely more detestable than the stern, consistent, daring
Calvinism of the catechism. The last is the system of men
of strong, trained, logical minds ; the first is pure fanaticism.
But, even supposing a child could understand, what would
you have gained in the way of religious education? What
could the knowledge of some 500 (as I have heard say there
are) difficult questions of metaphysics, physics, philosophy,
and theology do towards developing in his nature the feelings
�IO
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
of reverence, wonder, love, and dependence? Does feeling
spring forth from metaphysics ; emotion from philosophy ;
love from theology? Divine humanity, how thy history
shudders at the thought I No, it is other things than dry,
intellectual propositions which inspire feeling, and so long
as you are occupying the mind with the propositions of the
catechism you are necessarily keeping the attention from
those other things. And then, when you add to these
considerations the utter falsehood of the theology of the
catechism, the gross and wicked representations it contains
of the character and government of God, and the pernicious
effect this, so far as it is understood and heartily believed,
must have upon the whole character, one is forced to conclude
that the so-called “ religious ” education of the masses of
children in this country is altogether irreligious, and one
continued misnomer and mistake.
There is one other catechism used, upon which I need
here only make but a passing remark. I refer to the
catechism of the Church of England, used in this country
also, I believe, by the Episcopalians. As an epitome of
theology, it is altogether deficient. It has the advantage,
however, of being entirely practical in the body of it, and,
therefore, immeasurably superior to the Assembly’s as a
manual for a child. But then, on the other hand, it begins
and ends with the monstrous notions about the sacraments
which place the system bound up with them on a level with
the magic of the rain-makers of South Africa. I would
rather, however, that children were taught this than to think
of God under the awfully malignant aspects in which he is
represented in the Assembly’s catechism. I have already
referred to the additions which are made to the religious (!)
education of children in some schools by instruction in the
evidences of Christianity, and in the same connection may
be mentioned what is called Bible history. I have shown
you that teaching the evidences is not teaching religion, but
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
ii
the application of the science of historical criticism, and that,
if it be done thoroughly, it requires a knowledge and a
development of faculties no child can possess. And how
Bible history could be thought specially connected with
religion one would be at a loss to imagine, if it were not
for that doctrine of inspiration which is now becoming
rejected by all the more advanced of even the orthodox
school. It is true that Bible history refers all events to the
immediate and direct management of God ; but so do all the
histories of people in their ancient, barbarous state. In the
early histories of Greece and Rome, e.g., the gods were
always interfering as much as in the early history of the
Hebrews, and if this fact constitutes the Bible history
religious, all ancient histories are religious. And then,
while I grant that certain forms of religious feeling may be
excited by some of the facts and events of Bible history, I
must add, they are superstitious and erroneous forms, mostly
connected with that doctrine of a special providence against
which the whole experience of mankind protests. I do not say
anything now about the intellectual mischief done by teaching
Bible history as it stands ; because it is not greater than that
done by teaching the events of the siege of Troy, the
wanderings of Ulysses, and the stories of Romulus and
Remus as true history, excepting, indeed, that the sacred
element mingled with the Bible history renders it more
difficult to discern the purely mythical character of the
narrative.
Well, then, when I consider what religion is, and what is
the formal and systematic education given to a child to culti
vate the religion, I am forced to conclude there is little of a
directly systematic religious character in it; and that what
little there is is of an erroneous character, only leading to
mischief. Parents and teachers substitute theology for reli
gion, and indoctrinate with a theology which I deem utterly
false. But I do not mean that children therefore get no
�12
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
religious education. Nature has been to them too bountiful
for that, and begins their education in religion almost as soon
as it is begun in knowledge. She surrounds the child from
its earliest days with objects calling forth its reverence,
wonder, love, dependence, worship, and thus gradually
prepares it for the devout recognition of God. Spontane
ously, Nature furnishes the child with all that is necessary
for the culture of its religious life for many years. First of
all, just as in the Book of Exodus Jehovah is represented as
saying to Moses, “ Lo! I have made thee God unto Pharaoh ”
—z.e., by the miracles he enabled him to work—so Nature
makes the parent God to the child through the miracles of
power, wisdom, and goodness which the parent seems to the
child to display. The parent, if of ordinary attainments and
character, stands up before the child as a mysterious source
of knowledge, wisdom, supply, protection, and happiness—
incomprehensible to it, and calling forth all its wonder and
faith, all its devotion and love, all its reverence and depen
dence. The word of the parent is infallible ; the action of
the parent is necessarily right. He has a seeming omni
potence about him, an irresistible will. What is there a little
child thinks his father cannot do? What is there his mother
does not know? For what of love will he not trust her
wholly? Yes, a little child has nothing greater he could
imagine to make a God out of than the parent. Nothing he
could imagine (seeing it would be but an imagination) could
by any means call forth half the depth and intensity of reli
gious feeling the parent calls forth. Practically the parent is
the young child’s God ; he knows no other, can know no
other; and no other, simply by the knowing, could do him
any good. And when the mother, in her ignorance, takes
him upon her knee and strives to make him understand
about the God she imagines, and is ready, perhaps, to burst
into tears because her efforts are so much in vain, all the
while great Nature is developing the child’s deepest and
�1
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
13
truest religious life through the trust and love awakened in
his heart by the light and love which pour into his soul from
her eyes. By and by, however, as the child’s intellectual
nature is developed, the perception dawns upon him that the
parent is not quite so powerful and wise as he had thought.
There are things he cannot do, things he does not know ;
trust gets disappointed, dependence is shaken. Then a
higher object becomes necessary to call forth the perfect
reverence and trust the parent can no longer do ; and,
generally, that object is found in the teacher. I would not
speak with the same certainty with respect to the teachers of
large schools as with regard to those in smaller ones, where
the connection between master and pupil is more intimate.
But in a well-ordered school a boy looks up with profound
reverence and trust to his master, and regards him for long
years as the very embodiment of wisdom and knowledge.
Here again, then, is the provision made in nature for the
direct culture of the religious nature of the child—not by
means of a dogma, but by bringing the mind into contact
with real objects, which necessarily excite those feelings in
the exercise of which religion consists. After a while, how
ever, even the teacher’s wisdom is found sometimes to fail,
and his knowledge to have its soundings. Then the sceptical
period in the child’s mind is renewed. There are, however,
other provisions as useful as these, which, at this later
period, come into more active operation — I refer to the
grander object of Nature herself, ever appearing more grand
and glorious as our knowledge extends. From early years
such objects make some impression on the child, and they
would do more if he had judicious parents to guide his eye
sight. But it is in after years, when science has interpreted
the laws, the order, the forces of these objects to him, that
they make the deepest impression and excite the deepest
reverence, adoration, wonder, and dependence. It is then
that inquiry leads to the perception of the grand and awful
�i4
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN .
mystery which surrounds the whole universe ; and the mind
takes refuge from its exhausting, fruitless questionings in the
conception of an infinite, efficient, conscious force working in
all and by all. It is at this point religion and theology
mingle, and the latter becomes of any practical service to
the former. For when the active intellect has begun seriously
to inquire into the nature and origin of those deep feelings
which the great objects of the universe, its order, its mystery,
excite, its answers react upon these feelings according to the
attributes with which the answers clothe its conception of that
infinite, efficient Force into which it resolves the whole. If
that force be dealt with subjectively, and so have ascribed to it
human qualities and affections, there results an imagined
object which excites many other feelings besides those of
reverence, wonder, love, and dependence, and which may
degenerate into the lowest forms of superstition to which man
is liable. But if it be dealt with objectively, then it remains
the sublimely generalised conception of all the forces in the
universe, and is known, worshipped, and adored only as it
manifests itself in man and the outer world.
Now, this being the only form in which I can think of
God, the course of the child’s religious education seems to
me very simple. It merely consists in leading him face to
face with those objects which excite religious feeling. First,
as parents, by the development of his own nature to the
highest, preserving his reverence, wonder, love, and depen
dence until the last moment—which is natural ; then, as
teachers, securing his devotion by the real resources of
wisdom and knowledge we have treasured up in ourselves ;
and then, finally, when both these fail—and even concur
rently with them—ever lead him forth to gaze upon those
wondrous objects of which physical nature is full, and those
not less wondrous characters and events of which the history
of humanity is full. And as he gazes and marvels, the
deepest feelings of his being will be stirred, and he will
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
i5
begin to wonder and adore. But wonder and adore what?
At first blindly, and simply instinctively. But if this happen
before his knowledge is matured, he will soon construct for
himself a fetish. It is yours to stand by, and, by means of
clear, intellectual light, beat down the fetish. And so, in the
whole course of his progress, you must help him to destroy
all the false gods he will create for himself whilst attempting
to solve that mystery of Nature which makes him feel so
deeply, until, at last, he come to rest on the only thought
which remains for this and the coming age—a God who is
the all-in-all, ever immanent in all that is, the one absolute
force ; unknown in himself and unknowable, but recognised
and felt in the forces and order of universal Nature. To sum
up, then, I say : Never attempt to give a God to a child until
the child’s nature asks for one. And then your work will be
more destructive than positive—-the destruction of his idols as
he forms them. Leave theology as much as possible alone
until he learns it in history. If, in the meanwhile, you would
have his religious life be growing, reverence, adoration,
wonder, love, and dependence becoming deeper and more
habitual, you must not create for him imaginary beings by
the play of the metaphysical fancy, but you must lead him
to whatever is great, sublime, glorious, and divine in this
universe. To that direct his eye steadily, and by the act you
will place him under the influence of all that has power to
‘ inspire a pure, religious life.
WATTS AND CO., PRINTERS, 17, JOHNSON*S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
��
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The religious education of children
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Cranbrook, James
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 22 cm.
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Education
Religion
Child rearing
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Children
Education
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Religious Education
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Text
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
AT EDINBURGH, APRIL 2nd, 1866 ;
BY
THOMAS CARLYLE,
ON BEING INSTALLED AS RECTOR OF THE
UNIVERSITY THERE.
[AUTHORIZED REPORT]
EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.
LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL.
.1 8 6 6.
�ADDRESS.
Gentlemen,—I have accepted the office you have elected
me to, and it is now my duty to return thanks for the
great honour done me. Your enthusiasm towards me, I
must admit, is in itself very beautiful, however undeserved
it may be in regard to the object of it. It is a feeling hon
ourable to all men, and one well known to myself when I
was of an age like yours, nor is it yet quite gone. I
can only hope that, with you too, it may endure to the
end,—this noble desire to honour those whom you think
worthy of honour; and that you will come to be more
and more select and discriminate in the choice of the
object of it:—for I can well understand that you will
modify your opinions of me and of many things else,
as you go on. {Laughter and cheers?) It is now fifty-six
years, gone last November, since I first entered your City,
a boy of not quite fourteen; to ‘attend the classes’ here,
and gain knowledge of all kinds, I could little guess
what, my poor mind full of wonder and awe-struck ex
pectation ; and now, after a long course, this is what we
have come to. (Cheers?) There is something touching
�6
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
and tragic, and yet at the same time beautiful, to see, as
it were, the third generation of my dear old native land,
rising up and saying, “ Well, you are not altogether an
unworthy labourer in the vineyard; you have' toiled through
a great variety of fortunes, and have had many judges:
this is our judgment of you I” As the old proverb says,
‘ He that builds by the wayside has many masters.’ We
must expect a variety of judges; but the voice of young
Scotland, through you, is really of some value to me; and
I return you many thanks for it,—though I cannot go
into describing my emotions to you, and perhaps they
will be much more perfectly conceivable if expressed in
silence. (Cheers.)
When this office was first proposed to me, some of you
know I was not very ambitious to accept it, but had my
doubts rather. I was taught to believe that there were
certain more or less important duties which would lie
in my power. This, I confess, was my chief motive in
going into it, and overcoming the objections I felt to
such things: if I could do anything to serve my dear
old Alma Mater and you, why should not I ? (Loud
cheers.) Well, but on practically looking into the matter
when the office actually came into my hands, I find it
grows more and more uncertain and abstruse to me whether
there is much real duty that I can do at all. I live four
hundred miles away from you, in an entirely different
scene of things; and my weak health, with the burden
of the many years now accumulating on me, and my total
unacquaintance with such subjects as concern your affairs
here,—all this fills me with apprehension that there is
�EXTEMPORE.
7
really nothing worth the least consideration that I can do
on that score. You may depend on it, however, that if
any such duty does arise in any form, I will use my most
faithful endeavour to do in it whatever is right and proper,
according to the best of my judgment. (Cheers.)
Meanwhile, the duty I at present have,—which might
be very pleasant, but which is not quite so, for reasons you
may fancy,—is to address some words to you, if possible
not quite useless, nor incongruous to the occasion, and on
subjects more or less cognate to the pursuits you are
engaged in. Accordingly, I mean to offer you some loose
observations, loose in point of order, but the truest I have,
in such form as they may present themselves; certain
of the thoughts that are in me about the business you
are here engaged in, what kind of race it is that you
young gentlemen have started on, and what sort of arena
you are likely to find in this world. I ought, I believe,
according to custom, to have written all that down on
paper, and had it read out. That would have been much
handier for me at the present moment—(A laugh);—
but, on attempting the thing, I found I was not used
to write speeches, and that I didn’t get on very well.
So I flung that aside; and could only resolve to trust, in
all superficial respects, to the suggestion of the moment, as
you now see. You will therefore have to accept what is
readiest; what comes direct from the heart; and you must
just take that in compensation for any good order or
arrangement there might have been in it. I will endea
vour to say nothing that is not true, so far as I can
manage; and that is pretty much all I can engage for.
(A laugh.)
�8
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
Advices, I believe, to young men, as to all men, are
very seldom much valued. There is a great deal of ad
vising, and very little faithful performing ; and talk that
does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed
altogether. I would not, therefore, go much into advising;
but there is one advice I must give you. In fact, it is the
summary of all advices, and doubtless you have heard it a
thousand times; but I must nevertheless let you hear it
the thousand-and-first time, for it is most intensely true,
whether you will believe it at present or not:—namely,
That above all things the interest of your whole life depends
on your being diligent, now while it is called to-day, in this
place where you have come to get education ! Diligent:
that includes in it all virtues that a student can have: I
mean it to include all those qualities of conduct that lead
on to the acquirement of real instruction and improve
ment in such a place. If you will believe me, you who
are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have
heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of life; in
which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of
wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you
will arrive at little. And in the course of years, when you
come to look back, if you have not done what you have
heard from your advisers,—and among many counsellors
there is wisdom,—you will bitterly repent when it is too
late. The habits of study acquired at Universities are of
the highest importance in after-life. At the season when
you are young in years, the whole mind is, as it were,
fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape
that the owner of the mind pleases to allow it, or con
�HONESTY OF MIND.
9
strain it, to form itself into. The mind is then in a
plastic or fluid state ; but it hardens gradually, to the
consistency of rock or of iron, and you cannot alter the
habits of an old man: he, as he has begun, so he will
proceed and go on to the last.
By diligence I mean among other things, and very
chiefly too,—honesty, in all your inquiries, and in all you
are about. Pursue your studies in the way your conscience
can name honest. More and more endeavour to do that.
Keep, I should say for one thing, an accurate separation
between what you have really come to know in your minds
and what is still unknown. Leave all that latter on the
hypothetical side of the barrier, as things afterwards to be
acquired, if acquired at all; and be careful not to admit a
thing as known when you do not yet know it. Count a thing
known only when it is imprinted clearly on your mind, and
has become transparent to you, so that you may survey it
on all sides with intelligence. There is such a thing as a
man endeavouring to persuade himself, and endeavouring
to persuade others, that he knows things, when he does
not know more than the outside skin of them; and yet
he goes flourishing about with’ them. (Hear, hear, and
a laugh?) There is also a process called cramming, in some
Universities (A laugh),—that is, getting up such points of
things as the examiner is likely to put questions about.
Avoid all that, as entirely unworthy of an honourable
mind. Be modest, and humble, and assiduous in your
attention to what your teachers tell you, who are pro
foundly interested in trying to bring you forward in the
right way, so far as they have been able to understand it.
�10
e
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
Try all things they set before you, in order, if possible, to
understand them, and to follow and adopt them in propor
tion to their fitness for you. Gradually see what kind of
work you individually can do; it is the first of all pro
blems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to
do in this universe. In short, morality as regards study
is, as in all other things, the primary consideration, and
overrules all others. A dishonest man cannot do anything
real; he never will study with real fruit; and perhaps it
would be greatly better if he were tied up from trying
it. He does nothing but darken counsel by the words
he utters. That is a very old doctrine, but a very true
one; and you will find it confirmed by all the thinking
men that have ever lived in this long series of generations
of which we are the latest.
I daresay you know, very many of you, that it is now
some seven hundred years since Universities were first set
up in this world of ours. Abelard and other thinkers had
arisen with doctrines in them which people wished to hear
of, and students flocked towards them from all parts of the
world. There was no getting the thing recorded in books,
as you now may. You had to hear the man speaking to
you vocally, or else you could not learn at all what it
was that he wanted to say. And so they gathered to
gether, these speaking ones,—the various people who had
anything to teach;—and formed themselves gradually,
under the patronage of kings and other potentates who
were anxious about the culture of their populations, and
nobly studious of their best benefit; and became a body
�UNIVERSITIES.
11
corporate, with high privileges, high dignities, and really
high aims, under the title of a University.
Possibly too you may have heard it said that the course
of centuries has changed all this ; and that ‘ the true Uni
versity of our days is a Collection of Books.’ And beyond
doubt, all this is greatly altered by the invention of Print
ing, which took place about midway between us and the
origin of Universities. Men have not now to go in person
to where a Professor is actually speaking; because in
most cases you can* get his doctrine out of him through a
book; and can then read it, and read it again and again,
and study it. That is an immense change, that one fact
of Printed Books. And I am not sure that I know of any
University in which the whole of that fact has yet been
completely taken in, and the studies moulded in complete
conformity with it. Nevertheless, Universities have, and
will continue to have, an indispensable value in society;
—I think, a very high, and it might be, almost the highest
value. They began, as is well known, with their grand
aim directed on Theology,—their eye turned earnestly on
Heaven. And perhaps, in a sense, it may be still said, the
very highest interests of man are virtually intrusted to them.
In regard to theology, as you are aware, it has been, and
especially was then, the study of the deepest heads that
have come into the world,—what is the nature of this stupen
dous universe, and what are our relations to it, and to all
things knowable by man, or known only to the great Author
of man and it. Theology was once the name for all this;
all this is still alive for man, however dead the name
may grow! In fact, the members of the Church keeping
�12
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
theology in a lively condition—(Laughter)—for the benefit
of the whole population, theology was the great object of
the Universities. I consider it is the same intrinsically
now, though very much forgotten, from many causes, and
not so successful—(A laugh)—as might be wished, by any
manner of means I
It remains, however, practically a most important truth,
what I alluded to above, that the main use of Universities
in the present age is that, after you have done with all
your classes, the next thing is a collection of books, a
great i library of good books, which you proceed to study
and to read. What the Universities can mainly do for
you,—what I have found the University did for me, is, That
it taught me to read, in various languages, in various
sciences ; so that I could go into the books which treated of
these things, and gradually penetrate into any department
I wanted to make myself master of, as I found it suit me.
Well, gentlemen, whatever you may think of these
historical points, the clearest and most imperative duty
lies on every one of you to be assiduous in your reading.
Learn to be good readers,—which is, perhaps, a more
difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be di scrim in ative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best
attention, all kinds of things which you have a real in
terest in, a real not an imaginary, and which you find to be
really fit for what you are engaged in. Of course, at the
present time, in a great deal of the reading incumbent on
you, you must be guided by the books recommended
by your Professors for assistance towards the effect of their
�READING.
13
prelections. And then, when you leave the University, and
go into studies of your own, you will find it very important
that you have chosen a field, some province specially suited
to you, in which you can study and work. The most unhappy
of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to
do, who has got no work cut out for him in the world,
and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of
all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,—
honest work, which you intend getting done.
If, in any vacant vague time, you are in a strait as to
choice of reading,-^-a very good indication for you, perhaps
the best you could get, is towards some book you have
a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest
and best of all possible conditions to improve by that
book. It is analogous to what doctors tell us about the
physical health and appetites of the patient. You must
learn, however, to distinguish between false appetite and
true. There is such a thing as a false appetite, which will
lead a man into vagaries with regard to diet; will tempt
him to eat spicy things, which he should not eat at all,
nor would, but that the things are toothsome, and that
he is under a momentary baseness of mind. A man ought
to examine and find out what he really and truly has an
appetite for, what suits his constitution and condition;
and that, doctors tell him, is in general the very thing he
ought to have. And so with books.
As applicable to all of you, I will say that it is highly
expedient to go into history; to inquire into what has
passed before you on this Earth, and in the Family of Man.
�14
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
The history of the Romans and Greeks will first of all
concern you; and you will find that the classical know
ledge you have got will he extremely applicable to eluci
date that. There you have two of the most remarkable
races of men in the world set before you, calculated to
open innumerable reflections and considerations; a mighty
advantage, if you can achieve it;—to say nothing of what
their two languages will yield you, which your Professors
can better explain; model languages, which are universally
admitted to be the most perfect forms of speech we have
yet found to exist among men. And you will find, if you
read well, a pair of extremely remarkable nations, shining
in the records left by themselves, as a kind of beacon, or
solitary mass of illumination, to light up some noble
forms of human life for us, in the otherwise utter darkness
of the past ages; and it will be well worth your while if
you can get into the understanding of what these people
were, and what they did. You will find a great deal of
hearsay, of empty rumour and tradition, which does not
touch on the matter; but perhaps some of you will get
to see the old Roman and the old Greek face to face; you
will know in some measure how they contrived to exist,
and to perform their feats in the world.
I believe, also, you will find one important thing not
much noted, That there was a very great deal of deep reli
gion in both nations. This is pointed out by the wiser kind
of historians, and particularly by Ferguson, who is particu
larly well worth reading on Roman history,—and who, I
believe, was an alumnus of our own University. His book
is a very creditable work. He points out the profoundly
�ROMANS AND GREEKS.
15
religious nature of the Roman people, notwithstanding their
ruggedly positive, defiant, and fierce ways. They believed
that Jupiter Optimus Maximus was lord of the universe, and
that he had appointed the Romans to become the chief of
nations, provided they followed his commands,—to brave
all danger, all difficulty, and stand up with an invin
cible front, and be ready to do and die; and also to have
the same sacred regard to truth of promise, to thorough
veracity, thorough integrity, and all the virtues that ac
company that noblest quality of man, valour,—to which
latter the Romans gave the name of ‘ virtue’ proper (yirtus,
manhood), as the crown and summary of all that is en
nobling for a man. In the literary ages of Rome, this re
ligious feeling had very much decayed away; but it still
retained its place among the lower classes of the Roman
people. Of the deeply religious nature of the Greeks,
along with their beautiful and sunny effulgences of art,
you have striking proof, if you look for it. In the tragedies
of Sophocles, there is a most deep-toned recognition of
the eternal justice of Heaven, and the unfailing punish
ment of crime against the laws of God. I believe you
will find in all histories of nations, that this has been at
the origin and foundation of them all; and that no nation
which did not contemplate this wonderful universe with
an awestricken and reverential belief that there was a great
unknown, omnipotent, and all-wise and all-just Being,
superintending all men in it, and all interests in it,—no
nation ever came to very much, nor did any man either,
who forgot that. If a man did forget that, he forgot the
most important part of his mission in this world.
�16
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
Our own history of England, which you will naturally
take a great deal of pains to make yourselves acquainted
with, you will find beyond all others worthy of your study.
For indeed I believe that the British nation,—including
in that the Scottish nation,—produced a finer set of men
than any you will find it possible to get anywhere else in
the world. (Applause?) I don’t know, in any history
of Greece or Rome, where you will get so fine a man as
Oliver Cromwell, for example. (Applause?) And we, too,
have had men worthy of memory, in our little corner of
the Island here, as well as others; and our history has had
its heroic features all along; and did become great at last
in being connected with world-history:—for if you examine
well, you will find that John Knox was the author, as it
were, of Oliver Cromwell; that the Puritan revolution
never would have taken place in England at all, had it
not been for that Scotchman. (Applause.) That is an
authentic fact, and is not prompted by national vanity
on my part, but will stand examining. (Laughter and
applause^)
In fact, if you look at the struggle that was then going
on in England, as I have had to do in my time, you will
see that people were overawed by the immense impedi
ments lying in the way. A small minority of God-fearing
men in that country were flying away, with any ship they
could get, to New England, rather than take the lion by
the beard. They durst not confront the powers with their
most just complaints, and demands to be delivered from
idolatry. They wanted to make the nation altogether con
formable to the Hebrew Bible, which they, and all men,
�ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH HISTORY.
17
understood to be the exact transcript of the Will of God ;
—and could there be, for man, a more legitimate aim ?
Nevertheless, it would have been impossible in their
circumstances, and not to be attempted at all, had not
Knox succeeded in it here, some fifty years before, by
the firmness and nobleness of his mind. For he also is of
the select of the earth to me,—John Knox. (Applause?)
What he has suffered from the ungrateful generations that
have followed him should really make us humble ourselves
to the dust, to think that the most excellent man our country
has produced, to whom we owe everything that distin
guishes us among the nations, should have been so sneered
at, misknown, and abused. (Applause?) Knox was heard by
Scotland; the people heard him, believed him to the marrow
of their bones : they took up his doctrine, and they defied
principalities and powers to move them from it. “We
must have it,” they said; “ we will and must!” It was in
this state of things that the Puritan struggle arose in
England; and you know well how the Scottish earls and
nobility, with their tenantry, marched away to Dunse Hill
in 1639, and sat down there: just at the crisis of that
struggle, when it was either to be suppressed or brought
into greater vitality, they encamped on Dunse Hill,—thirty
thousand armed men, drawn out for that occasion, each
regiment round its landlord, its earl, or whatever he might
be called, and zealous all of them ‘ For Christ’s Crown and
Covenant.’ That was the signal for all England’s rising up
into unappeasable determination to have the Gospel there
also ; and you know it went on, and came to be a contest
whether the Parliament or the King should rule; whether it
B
�18
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
should he old formalities and use and wont, or something
that had been of new conceived in the Souls of men, namely,
a divine determination to walk according to the laws of
God here, as the sum of all prosperity; which, of these
should have the mastery: and after a long, long agony of
struggle, it was decided—the way we know.
I should say also of that Protectorate of Oliver Crom
well’s, notwithstanding the censures it has encountered,
and the denial of everybody that it could continue in the
world, and so on, it appears to me to have been, on the
whole, the most salutary thing in the modern history of
England. If Oliver Cromwell had continued it out, I
don’t know what it would have come to. It would have
got corrupted probably in other hands, and could not have
gone on; but it was pure and true, to the last fibre, in
his mind; there was perfect truth in it while he ruled
over it. Machiavelli has remarked, in speaking of the
Romans, that Democracy cannot long exist anywhere in
the world; that as a' mode of government, of national
management or administration, it involves an impossibility,
and after a little while must end in wreck. And he goes
on proving that, in his own way. I do not ask you all to
follow him in that conviction—(hear),—but it is to him
a clear truth; he considers it a solecism and impossibility
that the universal mass of men should ever govern them
selves. He has to admit of the Romans, that they con
tinued a long time; but believes, it was purely in virtue
of this item in their constitution, namely, of their all
having the conviction in their minds that it was solemnly
�THE PROTECTOR.
19
necessary, at times, to appoint a Dictator; a man who had
the power of life and death over everything, who degraded
men out of their places, ordered them to execution, and
did whatever seemed to him good in the name of God above
him. He was commanded to take care that the republic
suffer no detriment. And Machiavelli calculates that this
was the thing which purified the social system, from time
to time, and enabled it to continue as it did. Probable
enough, if you consider it. And an extremely proper
function surely, this of a Dictator, if the republic was
composed of little other than bad and tumultuous men,
triumphing in general over the better, and all going the
bad road, in fact. Well, Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate,
or Dictatorate if you will let me name it so, lasted for
about ten years, and you will find that nothing which was
contrary to the laws of heaven was allowed to live by
Oliver. (Applaus'e.)
For example, it was found by his Parliament of Notables,
what they call the ‘Barebones Parliament,’—the most
zealous of all Parliaments probably (laughter),—that the
Court of Chancery in England was in a state which was
really capable of no apology; no man could get up and
say that that was a right court. There were, I think,
fifteen thousand, or fifteen hundred (Laughter),—I really
don’t remember which, but we will call it by the last num
ber, to be safe (Renewed laughter);—-there were fifteen
hundred cases lying in it undecided; and one of them,
I remember, for a large amount of money, was eightythree years old, and it was going on still; wigs were
wagging over it, and lawyers were taking their fees, and
�20
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
there was no end of it. Upon view of all which, the
Barebones people, after deliberation about it, thought it
was expedient, and commanded by the Author of Man and
Fountain of Justice, and in the name of what was true and
right, to abolish said court. Really, I don’t know who could
have dissented from that opinion. At the same time, it was
thought by those who were wiser in their generation, and
had more experience of the world, that this was a very dan
gerous thing, and wouldn’t suit at all. The lawyers began to
make an immense noise about it. (Laughter?) All the public,
the great mass of solid and well-disposed people who had got
no deep insight into such matters, were very adverse to it:
and the Speaker of the Parliament, old Sir Francis Rous,—
who translated the Psalms for us, those that we sing here
every Sunday in the Church yet; a very good man, and a
wise and learned, Provost of Eton College afterwards,—
he got a great number of the Parliament to go to Oliver
the Dictator, and lay down their functions altogether, and
declare officially, with their signature, on Monday morning,
that the Parliament was dissolved. The act of abolition
had been passed on Saturday night; and on Monday
morning, Rous came and said, “We cannot carry on the
affair any longer, and we remit it into the hands of your
Highness.” Oliver in that way became Protector a second
time. I give you this as an instance that Oliver was
faithfully doing a Dictator’s function, and of his prudence
in it, as well.
Oliver felt that the Parliament, now
dismissed, had been perfectly right with regard to Chan
cery, and that there was no doubt of the propriety of
abolishing Chancery, or else reforming it in some kind
�sources of history.
21
of way.. He considered the matter, and this is what he
did. He assembled sixty of the wisest lawyers to be found
in England. Happily, there were men great in the law;
men who valued the laws of England as much as anybody
ever did; and who knew withal that there was something
still more sacred than any of these. (A laugh,^ Oliver
said to them, “ Go and examine this thing, and in the name
of God inform me what is necessary to be done with it.
You will see how we may clean out the foul things in that Chancery Court, which render it poison to everybody.”
Well, they sat down accordingly, and in the course of six
weeks,(there was no public speaking then, no reporting
of speeches, and no babble of any kind, there was just
the business in hand,)—they got sixty propositions fixed
in their minds as the summary of the things that re
quired to be done. And upon these sixty propositions,
Chancery was reconstituted and remodelled; and so it got
a new lease of life, and has lasted to our time. It had
become a nuisance, and could not have continued much
longer. That is an instance of the manner of things that
were done when a Dictatorship prevailed in the country,
and that was how the Dictator did them. I reckon, all
England, Parliamentary England, got a new lease of life
from that Dictatorship of Oliver’s; and, on the whole, that
the good fruits of it will never die while England exists as
a nation.
In general, I hardly think that out of common history
books you will ever get into the real history of this
country, or ascertain anything which can specially illu
�■
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
minate it for you, and which it would most of all behove
you to know. You may read very ingenious and very
clever books, by men whom it would be the height of in
solence in me to do other than express my respect for.
But their position is essentially sceptical. God and the
Godlike, as our fathers would have said, has fallen asleep for
them; and plays no part in their histories. A most sad and
fatal condition of matters; who shall say how fatal to us all'
A man unhappily in that condition will make but a tem
porary explanation of anything:—in short, you will not be
able, I believe, by aid of these men, to understand how this
Island came to be what it is. You will not find it re
corded in books. You will find recorded in books a
jumble of tumults, disastrous ineptitudes,, and all that
kind of thing. But to get what you want, you will have
to look into side sources, and inquire in all directions.
I remember getting Collins’s Peerage to read,—a very poor
performance as a work of genius, but an excellent book
for diligence and fidelity. I was writing on Oliver Crom
well at the time. (Applause?) I could get no biographical
dictionary available; and I thought the Peerage Book,
since most of my men were peers or sons of peers, would
help me, at least would tell me whether people were old
or young, where they lived, and the like particulars, better
than absolute nescience and darkness. And accordingly
I found amply all I had expected in poor Collins, and got
a great deal of help out of him. He was a diligent dull
London bookseller, of about a hundred years ago, who
compiled out of all kinds of parchments, charter-chests,
archives, books that were authentic, and gathered far and
�COLLINS’S PEERAGE.
23
wide wherever he could get it the information wanted.
He was a very meritorious man.
I not only found the solution of everything I had ex
pected there, but I began gradually to perceive this im
mense fact, which I really advise every one of you who
read history to look out for, if you have not already found
it. It was that the Kings of England, all the way from
the Norman Conquest down to the times of Charles I.,
had actually, in a good degree, so far as they knew, been
in the habit of appointing as Peers those who deserved
to be appointed. In general, I perceived, those Peers of
theirs were all royal men of a sort, with minds full of justice,
valour, and humanity, and all kinds of qualities that men
ought to have who rule over others. And then their genea
logy, the kind of sons and descendants they had, this also
was remarkable:—for there is a great deal more in genea
logy than is generally believed at present. I never heard
tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people.
(Laughter^) If you look around, among the families of your
acquaintance, you will see such cases in all directions;—
I know that my own experience is steadily that way; I
can trace the father, and the son, and the grandson, and
the family stamp is quite distinctly legible upon each of
them. So that it goes for a great deal, the hereditary prin
ciple,—in Government as in other things; and it must be
recognised so soon as there is any fixity in things. You
will remark, too, in your Collins, that, if at any time the
genealogy of a peerage goes awry, if the man that actu
ally holds the peerage is a fool,—in those earnest practical
times, the man soon gets into mischief, gets into treason
�24
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
probably,—soon gets himself and his peerage extinguished
altogether, in short. (Laughter?)
From those old documents of Collins, you learn and
ascertain that a peer conducts himself in a pious, highminded, grave, dignified, and manly kind of way, in his
course through life, and when he takes leave of life:—his
last will is often a remarkable piece, which one lingers
over. And then you perceive that there was kindness in
him as well as rigour, pity for the poor; that he has fine
hospitalities, generosities,—in fine, that he is throughout
much of a noble, good and valiant man. And that in general
the King, with a beautiful approximation to accuracy, had
nominated this kind of man; saying, “ Come you to me,
sir. Come out of the common level of the people, where
you are liable to be trampled upon, jostled about, and can
do in a manner nothing with your fine gift; come here and
take a district of country, and make it into your own image
more or less; be a king under me, and understand that
that is your function.” I say this is the most divine
thing that a human being can do to other human beings,
and no kind of thing whatever has so much of the
character of God Almighty’s Divine Government as that
thing, which, we see, went on all over England for about
six hundred years. That is the grand soul of England’s
history. (Cheers?) It is historically true that, down to
the time of James, or even Charles I., it was not under
stood that any man was made a Peer without having
merit in him to constitute him a proper subject for a
peerage. In Charles i.’s time, it grew to be known or
said that, if a man was born a gentleman, and cared to
�BOOKS.
25
lay out £10,000 judiciously up and down among courtiers,
lie could be made a Peer. Under Charles H. it went on
still faster, and has been going on w7ith ever-increasing
velocity, until we see the perfectly breakneck pace at
which they are going now (A laugh?), so that now a
peerage is a paltry kind of thing to what it was in those
old times. I could go into a great many more details
about things of that sort, but I must turn to another
branch of the subject.
First, however, one remark more about your reading.
I do not know whether it has been sufficiently brought
home to you that there are two kinds of books. When a
man is reading on any kind of subject, in most depart
ments of books,—in all books, if you take it in a wide
sense,—he will find that there is a division into good
books and bad books. Everywhere a good kind of book
and a bad kind of book. I am not to assume that you
are unacquainted, or ill acquainted with this plain fact;
but I may remind you that it is becoming a very im
portant Consideration in our day. And we have to cast
aside altogether the idea people have, that, if they are.
reading any book, that if an ignorant man is reading any
book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all. I must
entirely call that in question; I even venture to deny it.
(Laughter and cheers?) It would be much safer and better
for many a reader, that he had no concern with books at
all. There is a number, a frightfully increasing number,
of books that are decidedly, to the readers of them, not
useful. (?H?ear?) But an ingenuous reader will learn, also,
that a certain number of books were written by a su
�26
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
premely noble kind of people,—not a very great number
of books, but still a number fit to occupy all your reading
industry, do adhere more or less to that side of things.
In short, as I have written it down somewhere else, I
conceive that books are like men’s souls; divided into
sheep and goats. (Laughter and cheers.) Some few are
going up, and carrying us up, heavenward; calculated,
I mean, to be of priceless advantage in teaching,—in
forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others, a
frightful multitude, are going down, down; doing ever
the more and the wider and the wilder mischief. Keep
a strict eye on that latter class of books, my young
friends!—
And for the rest, in regard to all your studies and read
ings here, and to whatever you may learn, you are to
remember that the object is not particular knowledges,—
not that of getting higher and higher in technical perfec
tions, and all that sort of thing. There is a higher aim
lying at the rear of all that, especially among those who
are intended for literary or speaking pursuits, or the sacred
profession. You are ever to bear in mind that there lies
behind that the acquisition of what may be called wisdom;
—namely, sound appreciation and just decision as to all
the objects that come round you, and the habit of behaving
with justice, candour, clear insight, and loyal adherence to
fact. Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom.
It cannot be exaggerated ; it is the highest achievement
of man: ‘ Blessed is he that getteth understanding.’ And
that, I believe, on occasion, may be missed very easily;
never more easily than now, I sometimes think. If that
�ENDOWMENTS.
27
is a failure, all is failure!—However, I will not touch
further upon that matter.
But I should have said, in regard to hook-reading, if it
he so very important, how very useful would an excellent
library be in every University! I hope, that will not be
neglected by the gentlemen who have charge of you; and,
indeed, I am happy to hea.r that your library is very much
improved since the time I knew it, and I hope it will go
on improving more and more. Nay, I have sometimes
thought, why should not there be a library in every county
town, for benefit of those that could read well, and might
if permitted? True, you require money to accomplish
that;—and withal, what perhaps is still less attainable at
present, you require judgment in the selectors of books;
real insight into what is for the advantage of human souls,
the exclusion of all kinds of clap-trap books which merely
excite the astonishment of foolish people (Laughter), and
the choice of wise books, as much as possible of good books.
Let us hope the future will be kind to us in this respect.
In this University, as I learn from many sides, there
is considerable stir about endowments; an assiduous and
praiseworthy industry for getting new funds collected to
encourage the ingenuous youth of Universities, especially of
this our chief University. (Hear, hear?) Well, I entirely
participate in everybody’s approval of the movement. It
is very desirable. It should be responded to, and one
surely expects it will. At least, if it is not, it will be
shameful to the country of Scotland, which never was so
rich in money as at the present moment, and never stood
�28
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
so much iu need of getting noble Universities, and insti
tutions to counteract many influences that are springing
up alongside of money. It should not be slack in coming
forward in the way of endowments (A laugh) ; at any rate,
to the extent of rivalling our rude old barbarous ancestors,
as we have been pleased to call them. Such munificence as
theirs is beyond all praise; and to them, I am sorry to say,
we are not yet by any manner of means equal, or ap
proaching equality. (Laughter?) There is an abundance
and over-abundance of money. Sometimes I cannot help
thinking that probably never has there been, at any other
time, in Scotland, the hundredth part of the money that
now is, or even the thousandth part. For wherever I go
there is that same gold-nuggeting (A laugh?),—-that ‘ unex;
ampled prosperity,’ and men counting their balances by
the million sterling. Money was never so abundant, and
nothing that is good to be done with it. (Hear, hear, and
a laugh?) No man knows,—or very few men know,—what
benefit to get out of his money. In fact, it too often is
secretly a curse to him. Much better for him never to
have had any. But I do not expect that generally to
be believed. (Laughter?) Nevertheless, I should think it
would be a beneficent relief to many a rich man who has an
honest purpose struggling in him, to bequeath some house
of refuge, so to speak, for the gifted poor man who may'
hereafter be born into the world, to enable him to get on
his way a little. To do, in fact, as those old Norman
kings whom I have been describing; to raise some noble
poor man out of the dirt and mud where he is getting
trampled on unworthily, by the unworthy, into some kind
�A DEEPER WANT.
29
of position where he might acquire the power to do a little
good in his generation! I hope that as much as possible
will be achieved in this direction; and that efforts will
not be relaxed till the thing is in a satisfactory state. In
regard to the classical department, above all, it surely is
to be desired by us that it were properly supported,—that
we could allow the fit people to have their scholarships and
subventions, and devote more leisure to the cultivation of
particular departments. We might have more of this from
Scotch Universities than we have; and I hope we shall.
I am bound, however, to say that it does not appear as if,
of late times, endowment were the real soul of the matter.
The English, for example, are the richest people in the
world for endowments in their Universities; and it is
an evident fact that, since the time of Bentley, you
cannot name anybody that has gained a European name
in scholarship, or constituted a point of revolution in the
pursuits of men in that way. The man who does so is
a man worthy of being remembered; and he is poor,
and not an Englishman.
One man that actually did
constitute a revolution was the son of a poor weaver in
Saxony; who edited his Tibullus, in Dresden, in a poor
comrade’s garret, with the floor for his bed, and two folios
for pillow; and who, while editing his Tibullus, had to
gather peasecod shells on the streets and boil them for his
dinner. That was his endowment. (Laughter?) But he
was recognised soon to have done a great thing. His
name was Heyne. (Cheers?) I can remember, it was
quite a revolution in my mind when I got hold of that
�30
INAUGURAL address.
man’s edition of Virgil. I found that, for the first time,
I understood Virgil; that Heyne had introduced me, for
the first time, into an insight of Roman life and ways of
thought; had pointed out the circumstances in which
these works were written, and given me their interpreta
tion. And the process has gone on in all manner of
developments, and has spread out into other countries.
On the whole, there is one reason why endowments are
not given now as they were in old days, when men founded
abbeys, colleges, and all kinds of things of that description,
with such success as we know. All that has now changed;
a vast decay of zeal in that direction. And truly the reason
may in part be, that people have become doubtful whether
colleges are now the real sources of what I called wisdom;
whether they are anything more, anything much more, than
a cultivating of man in the specific arts. In fact, there has
been in the world a suspicion of that kind for a long time.
(A laugh.') There goes a proverb of old date, ‘ An ounce
of mother-wit is worth a pound of clergy.’ {Laughter^)
There is a suspicion that a man is perhaps not nearly so
wise as he looks, or because he has poured out speech
so copiously. {Laughter.) When ‘the seven free arts ’
which the old Universities were based on, came to be
modified a little, in order to be convenient for the wants of
modern society,—though perhaps some of them are obsolete
enough even yet for some of us,—there arose a feeling that
mere vocality, mere culture of speech, if that is what comes
out of a man, is not the synonym of wisdom by any
means ! That a man may be a ‘ great speaker,’ as eloquent
as you like, and but little real substance in him,—espe
�FINE SPEECH.
31
cially, if that is what was required and aimed at by the
man himself, and by the community that set him upon
becoming a learned man. Maid-servants, I hear people
complaining, are getting instructed in the ‘ologies,’ and
are apparently becoming more and more ignorant of brew
ing, boiling, and baking (Laughter); and above all, are
not taught what is necessary to be known, from the highest
of us to the lowest,—faithful obedience, modesty, humility,
and correct moral conduct.
Oh, it is a dismal chapter all that if one went into it,—
what has been done by rushing after fine speech! I have
written down some very fierce things about that, perhaps
considerably more emphatic than I could now wish them to
be; but they were and are deeply my conviction. (Hear,
hear?) There is very great necessity indeed of getting a
little more silent than we are. It seems to me as if the
finest nations of the world,—the English and the Ameri
can, in chief,—were going all off into wind and tongue.
(Applause and laughter?) But it will appear sufficiently
tragical by-and-by, long after I am away out of it. There
is a time to speak, and a time to be silent. Silence withal
is the eternal duty of a man. He won’t get to any real
understanding of what is complex, and what is more than
aught else pertinent to his interests, without keeping
silence too. ‘Watch the tongue,’ is a very old precept,
and a most true one.
I don’t want to discourage any of you from your
Demosthenes, and your studies of the niceties of language,
and all that. Believe me, I value that as much as any
�32
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
one of you. I consider it a very graceful thing, and a
most proper, for every human creature to know what the
implement which he uses in communicating his thoughts
is, and how to make the very utmost of it. I want you
to study Demosthenes, and to know all his excellences.
At the same time, I must say that speech, in the case
even of Demosthenes, does not seem, on the whole, to
have turned to almost any good account. He advised
next to nothing that proved practicable; much of the re
verse. Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is
not the truth that he is speaking ? Phocion, who mostly
did not speak at all, was a great deal nearer hitting the
mark than Demosthenes. (Laughter?) He used to tell
the Athenians, “You can’t fight Philip. Better if you
don’t provoke him, as Demosthenes is always urging
to you to do. You have not the slightest chance with
Philip. He is a man who holds his tongue ; he has
great disciplined armies; a full treasury; can bribe any
body you like in your cities here; he is going on steadily
with an unvarying aim towards his object; while you, with
your idle clamourings, with your Cleon the Tanner spout
ing to you what you take for Wisdom— ! Philip will in
fallibly beat any set of men such as you, going on raging
from shore to shore with all that rampant nonsense.”
Demosthenes said to him once, “ Phocion, you will drive
the Athenians mad some day, and they will kill you.”
“ Yes,” Phocion answered, “ me, when they go mad; and
as soon as they get sane again, you I ” (Laughter and
applause?) It is also told of him how he went once to
Messene, on some deputation which the Athenians wanted
�FINE SPEECH.
33
him to head, on some kind of matter of an intricate and
contentious nature: Phocion went accordingly; and had,
as usual, a clear story to have told for himself and his
case. He was a man of few words, but all of them true
and to the point. And so he had gone on telling his
story for a while, wheii there arose some interruption.
One man, interrupting with something, he tried to answer;
then another, the like ; till finally, too many went in, and
all began arguing and bawling in endless debate. Where
upon Phocion struck down his staff; drew back altogether,
and would speak no other word to any man. It appears
to me there is a kind of eloquence in that rap of Phocion’s
staff which is equal to anything Demosthenes ever said:
“ Take your own way, then; I go out of it altogether.”
(Applause?)
Such considerations, and manifold more connected with
them,—innumerable considerations, resulting from obser
vation of the world at this epoch,—have led various
people to doubt of the salutary effect of vocal education
altogether. I do not mean to say it should be entirely
excluded; but I look to something that will take hold of
the matter much more closely, and not allow it to slip out
of our fingers, and remain worse than it was. For, if a
‘good speaker,’ never so eloquent, does not see into the
fact, and is not speaking the truth of that, but the untruth
and the mistake of that,—is there a more horrid kind of
object in creation ? (Loud cheers?) Of such speech I hear
all manner of people say, “ How excellent!” Well, really
it is not the speech, but the thing spoken, that I am
anxious about! I really care very little how the man
I
�34
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
said it, provided I understand him, and it be true. Ex
cellent speaker ? But what if he is telling me things that
are contrary to the fact; what if he has formed a wrong
judgment about the fact,—if he has in his mind (like
Phocion’s friend, Cleon the Tanner) no power to form a
right judgment in regard to the matter? An excellent
speaker of that kind is, as it were, saying, “ Ho, every
one that wants to be persuaded of the thing that is not
true; here is the man for you!” (Great laughter and
applause?) I recommend you to be very chary of that
kind of excellent speech. (?Renewed laughter?)
Well, all that sad stuff being the too well-known product
of our method of vocal education,—the teacher merely
operating on the tongue of the pupil, and teaching him to
wag it in a particular way (Laughter),—it has made various
thinking men entertain a distrust of this not very salu
tary way of procedure; and they have longed for some less
theoretic, and more practical and concrete way of working
out the problem of education;-—in effect, for an educa
tion not vocal at all, but mute except where speaking was
strictly needful. There would be room for a great deal of
description about this, if I went into it; but I must con
tent myself with saying that the most remarkable piece
of writing on it is in a book of Goethe’s,—the whole of
which you may be recommended to take up, and try if you
can study it with understanding. It is one of his last
books; written when he was an old man above seventy
years of age: I think, one of the most beautiful he ever
wrote; full of meek wisdom, of intellect and piety; which
�THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE.
35
is found to be strangely illuminative, and very touching,
by those who have eyes to discern and hearts to feel it.
This about education is one of the pieces in Wilhelm,
Meister’s Travels; or rather, in a fitful way, it forms
the whole gist of the book. I first read it many years
agoand, of course, I had to read into the very heart of
it while I was translating it (Applause); and it has ever
since dwelt in my mind as perhaps the most remark
able bit of writing which I have known to be executed in
these late centuries. I have often said that there are some
ten pageS of that, which, if ambition had been my only rule,
I would rather have written, been able to write, than have
written all the books that have appeared since I came into
the world. (Cheers?) Beep, deep is the meaning of what
is said there. Those pages turn on the Christian religion,
and the religious phenomena of the modern and the
ancient world: altogether sketched out in the most aerial,
graceful, delicately wise kind of way, so as to keep him
self out of the common controversies of the street and
of the forum, yet to indicate what was the result of things
he had been long meditating upon.
Among others, he introduces in an airy, sketchy kind
of way, with here and there a touch,—the sum-total of
which grows into a beautiful picture,—a scheme of entirely
mute education, at least with no more speech than is ab
solutely necessary for what the pupils have to do. Three
of the wisest men discoverable in the world have been
got together, to consider, to manage and supervise, the
function which transcends all others in importance; that
of building up the young generation so as to keep it
�36
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
free from that perilous stuff that has been weighing
us down, and clogging every step;—which function, in
deed, is the only thing we can hope to go on with, 'c we
would leave the world a little better, and not the worse,
of our having been in it, for those who are to follow.
The Chief, who is the Eldest of the 'three, says to Wil
helm : “ Healthy well-formed children bring into the
world with them many precious gifts; and very frequently
these are best of all developed by Nature herself, with
but slight assistance, where assistance is seen to be wise
and profitable, and with forbearance very often on the
part of the overseer of the process. But there is one
thing which no child brings into the world with him,
and without which all other things are of no use.”
Wilhelm, who is there beside him, asks, “And what is
that?” “All want it,” says the Eldest; “perhaps you
yourself.” Wilhelm says, “Well, but tell me what it is?”
“ It is,” answers the other, “ Reverence (EhrfurcM); Re
verence! Honour done to those who are greater and
better than ourselves; honour distinct from fear. Ehrfurcht; the soul of all religion that has ever been among
men, or ever will be.”
And then he goes into details about the religions of the
modern and the ancient world. He practically distinguishes
the kinds of religion that are, or have been, in the world ;
and says that for men there are three reverences. The
boys are all trained to go through certain gesticulations;
to lay their hands on their breast and look up to heaven,
in sign of the first reverence; other forms for the other
two: so they give their three reverences. The first and
�THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE.
37
simplest is that of reverence for what is above us. It is
the soul of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better
in th# antique man than that. Then there is reverence
for what is around us,—reverence for our equals, to which
he attributes an immense power in the culture of man.
The third is reverence for what is beneath us; to learn to
recognise in pain, in sorrow and contradiction, even in thoee
things, odious to flesh and blood, what divine meanings
are in them; to learn that there lies in these also, and
more than in any of the preceding, a priceless blessing.
And he defines that as being the soul of the Christian
religion,—the highest of all religions; ‘ a height,’ as Goethe
says (and that is very true, even to the letter, as I con
sider), ‘ a height to which mankind was fated and enabled
to attain; and from which, having once attained it, they
can never retrograde.’ Man cannot quite lose that (Goethe
thinks), or permanently descend below it again; but
always, even in the most degraded, sunken, and unbe
lieving times, he calculates there will be found some few
souls who will recognise what this highest of the religions
meant; and that, the world having once received it, there
is no fear of its ever wholly disappearing.
The Eldest then goes on to explain by what methods
they seek to educate and train their boys; in the trades,
in the arts, in the sciences, in whatever pursuit the boy is
found best fitted for. Beyond all, they are anxious to dis
cover the boy’s aptitudes; and they try him and watch him
continually, in many wise ways, till by degrees they can
discover this. Wilhelm had left his own boy there, per
haps expecting they would make him a Master of Arts,
X
�38
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
or something of the kind; and on coming back for him,
he sees a thunder-cloud of dust rushing over the plain,
of which he can make nothing. It turns out to be a
tempest of wild horses, managed by young lads who had
a turn for horsemanship, for hunting, and being grooms.
His own son is among them || and 'he finds that the
breaking of colts has been the thing he was most suited
for. (Laughter?)
The highest outcome, and most precious of all the fruits
that are to spring from this ideal mode of educating, is
what Goethe calls Art:—of which I could at present give
no definition that would make it clear to you, unless it
were clearer already than is likely. (A laugh?) Goethe
calls it music, painting, poetry: but it is in quite a higher
sense than the common one ; and a sense in which, I am
afraid, most of our painters, poets, and music men, would
not pass muster. (A laugh?) He considers this as the
highest pitch to which human culture can go; infinitely
valuable and ennobling; and he watches with great in
dustry how it is to be brought about, in the men who have
a turn for it. Very wise and beautiful his notion of the
matter is. It gives one an idea that something far better
and higher, something as high as ever, and indubitably
true too, is still possible for man in this world.—And that
is all I can say to you of Goethe’s fine theorem of mute
education.
I confess it seems to me there is in it a shadow of what will
one day be; will and must, unless the world is to come to a
conclusion that is altogether frightful: some kind of scheme
of education analogous to that; presided over by the
�THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE.
39
wisest and most sacred men that can be got in the world,
and watching from a distance: a training in practicality
at every turn; no speech in it except speech that is to be
followed by action, for that ought to be the rule as nearly
as possible among men. Not very often or much, rarely
rather, should a man speak at all, unless it is for the sake
of something that is to be done; this spoken, let him go
and do his part in it, and say no more about it.
I will only add that it is possible,—all this fine theorem
of Goethe’s, or something similar ! Consider what we have
already ; and what ‘ difficulties ’ we have overcome. I
should say there is nothing in the world you can conceive
so difficult, prima facie, as that of getting a set of men
gathered together as soldiers. Rough, rude, ignorant, dis
obedient people; you gather them together, promise them
a shilling a day; rank them up, give them very severe
and sharp drill; and by bullying and drilling and com
pelling (the word drilling, if you go to the original,
means ‘beating,’ ‘steadily tormenting’ to the due pitch),
they do learn what it is necessary to learn; and there is
your man in red coat, a trained soldier; piece of an ani
mated machine incomparably the most potent in this
world; a wonder of wonders to look qt. He will go
where bidden; obeys one man, will walk into the can
non’s mouth for him; does punctually whatever is com
manded by his general officer. And, I believe, all
manner of things of this kind could be accomplished,
if there were the same attention bestowed. Very many
things could be regimented, organized into this mute
system;—and perhaps in some of the mechanical, com
�40
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
mercial, and manufacturing departments, some faint in
cipiences may be attempted before very long. For the
saving of human labour, and the avoidance of human
misery, the effects would be incalculable, were it set about
and begun even in part.
Alas, it is painful to think how very far away it all is,
any real fulfilment of such things! For I need not hide
from you, young gentlemen,—and it is one of the last
things I am going to tell you,—that you have got into a
very troublous epoch of the world; and I don’t think you
will find your path in it to be smoother than ours has been,
though you have many advantages which we had not.
You have careers open to you, by public examinations and
so on, which is a thing much to be approved of, and which
we hope to see perfected more and more. All that was
entirely unknown in my time, and you have many things
to recognise as advantages. But you will find the ways
of the world, I think, more anarchical than ever. Look
where one will, revolution has come upon us. We have
got into the age of revolutions. All kinds of things are
coming to be subjected to fire, as it were: hotter and hotter
blows the element round everything. Curious to see how,
in Oxford and other places that used to seem as lying at
anchor in the stream of time, regardless of all changes,
they are getting into the highest humour of mutation, and
all sorts of new ideas are afloat. It is evident that what
ever is not inconsumable, made of asbestos, will have to
be burnt, in this world. Nothing other will stand the
heat it is getting exposed to.
And in saying that, I am but saying in other words that
�AN AGE OF REVOLUTIONS.
41
we are in an epoch of anarchy. Anarchy plus a constable!
(Laughter?) There is nobody that picks one’s pocket
without some policeman being ready to take him up.
(?Renewed laughter?) But in every other point, man is
becoming more and more the son, not of Cosmos, but
of Chaos. He is a disobedient, discontented, reckless,
and altogether waste kind of object (the commonplace
man is, in these epochs); and the wiser kind of man,
—the select few, of whom I hope you will be part,—has
more and more to see to this, to look vigilantly forward ;
and will require to move with double, wisdom. Will
find, in short, that the crooked things he has got to pull
straight in his own life all round him, wherever he may
go, are manifold, and will task all his strength, however
great it be.
But why should I complain of that either ? For that is
the thing a man is born to, in all epochs. He is born to
expend every particle of strength that God Almighty has
given him, in doing the work he finds he is fit for; to
stand up to it to the last breath of life, and do his best.
We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get,
—which we are perfectly sure of if we have merited it,—is
that we have got the work done, or at least that we have
tried to do the work. For that is a great blessing in itself;
and I should say, there is not very much more reward than
that going in this world. If the man gets meat and
clothes, what matters it whether he buy those neces
saries with seven thousand a year, or with seven million,
could that be, or with seventy pounds a year? He can
get meat and clothes for that; and he will find intrinsi
�42
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
cally, if he is a wise man, wonderfully little real differ
ence. (Laughter?)
On the whole, avoid what is called ambition; that is
not a fine principle to go upon,—and it has in it all de
grees of vulgarity, if that is a consideration. ‘ Seekest
thou great things, seek them notI warmly second that
advice of the wisest of men. Don’t be ambitious; don’t
too much need success; be loyal and modest. Cut down
the proud towering thoughts that get into you, or see that
they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition
than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting
of all the suffrages that are on the Planet just now. (Loud
and prolonged cheers?)
Finally, gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which
is practically of very great importance, though a very
humble one. In the midst of your zeal and ardour,—
for such, I foresee, will rise high enough, in spite of all the
counsels to moderate it that I can give you,—remember
the care of health. I have no doubt you have among you
young souls ardently bent to consider life cheap, for the
purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of
high; but you are to consider throughout, much more than
is done at present, and what it would have been a very
great thing for me if I had been able to consider, that
health is a thing to be attended to continually; that you
are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things
for you. (Applause?) There is no kind of achievement you
could make in the world that is equal to perfect health.
What to it are nuggets and millions ? The French financier
�HEALTH.
43
said, “ Why, is there no sleep to be sold !” Sleep was not
in the market at any quotation. {Laughter and applause?)
It is a curious thing, which I remarked long ago, and have
often turned in my head, that the old word for ‘holy’
in the Teutonic languages, heilig, also means ‘healthy.’
Thus Heilbronn means indifferently ‘holy-well,’ or ‘health
well.’ We have, in the Scotch too, ‘ hale,’ and its deriva
tives; and, I suppose, our English word ‘whole’ (with a
‘w’), all of one piece, without any hole in it, is the same
word. I find that you could not get any better defini
tion of what ‘holy’ really is than ‘healthy.’ Completely
healthy; mens sana in corpore sano. {Applause.) A
man all lucid, and in equilibrium. His intellect a clear
mirror geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive to all
objects and impressions made on it, and imaging all
things in their correct proportions; not twisted up into
convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he
cannot see the truth of the matter-without endless groping
and manipulation: healthy, clear, and free, and discerning
truly all round him. We never can attain that at all. In
fact, the operations we have got into are destructive of it.
You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual
operation that will last a long while; if, for instance, you
are going to write a book,—you cannot manage it (at
least, I never could) without getting decidedly made ill
by it: and really one nevertheless must; if it is your
business, you are obliged to follow out what you are at,
and to do it, if even at the expense of health. Only
remember, at all times, to get back as fast as possible out
of it into health; and regard that as the real equilibrium
�44
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
and centre of things. You should always look at the
heilig, which means 1 holy’ as well as ‘healtny.’l I
And that old etymology,—what a lesson it is against
certain gloomy, austere, ascetic people, who have gone
about as if this world were all a dismal prison-house. It
has indeed got all the ugly things in it which I have been
alluding to ; but there is an eternal sky over it; and the
blessed sunshine, the green of prophetic spring, and rich
harvests coming,—all this is in it, too. Piety does not
mean that a man should make a sour face about things,
and refuse to enjoy wisely what his Maker has given.
Neither do you find it to have been so with the best sort,
—with old Knox, in particular. No; if you look into
Knox you will find a beautiful Scotch humour in him, as
well as the grimmest and sternest truth when necessary,
and a great deal of laughter. We find really some of
the sunniest glimpses of things come out of Knox that I
have seen in any man; for instance, in his History of
the Reformation,—which is a book I hope every one of
you will read (Applause), a glorious old book.
On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work,
whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it; not in sor
rows or contradictions to yield, but to push on towards the
goal. And don’t suppose that people are hostile to you or
have you at ill-will, in the world. In general, you will rarely
find anybody designedly doing you ill. You may feel often
as if the whole world were obstructing you, setting itself
against you: but you will find that to mean only, that
the world is travelling in a different way from you, and,
rushing on in its own path, heedlessly treads on you.
�A LAST WORD.
45
That is mostly all: to you no specific ill-will;—only each
has an extremely good-will to himself, which he has a right
to have, and is rushing on towards his object. Keep out
of literature, I should say also, as a general rule (Laughter),
—though that is by-the-by. If you find many people
who are hard and indifferent to you, in a world which you
consider to be inhospitable and cruel, as often indeed
happens to a tender-hearted, striving young creature, you
will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly
on you; and their help will be precious to you beyond
price. You will get good and evil as you go on, and
have the success that has been appointed you.
I will wind up with a small bit of verse which is from
Goethe also, and has often gone through my mind. To me,
it has something of a modern psalm in it, in some mea
sure. It is deep as the foundations, deep and high, and it
is true and clear :—no clearer man, or nobler and grander
intellect has lived in the world, I believe, since Shakspeare left it. This is what the poet sings;—a kind of
road-melody or marching-music of mankind :
‘ The Future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow;
We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us,—onward.
And solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal;
Goal of all mortal:—
Stars silent rest o’er us,
Graves under us silent.
�46
INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
While earnest thou gazest,
Comes boding of terror,
Comes phantasm and error;
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.
But heard are the Voices,
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages
“ Choose well, your choice is
Brief, and yet endless.
Here eyes do regard you,
In Eternity’s stillness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you ;
Work, and despair not.” ’
Work, and despair not: Wir heissen euch hoffcn, We bid
you be of hope!’—let that be my last word. Gentlemen,
I thank you for your great patience in hearing me ;
and, with many most kind wishes, say Adieu for this
time.
EDINBURGH I THOMAS CONSTABLE,
PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Inaugural address at Edinburgh, April 2nd, 1866; by Thomas Carlyle, at being installed as Rector of the university there
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Carlyle, Thomas [1795-1881.]
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Place of publication: Edinburgh; London
Collation: 46 p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: 'Authorised Report' [title page]. Later published under the title 'On the Choice of Books'. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Edmonston and Douglas; Chapman and Hall
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1866
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G5189
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Education
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Addresses
Education
Reading
Speeches
Thomas Carlyle
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Text
EXAGGERATED ESTIMATES
OF
READING AND WRITING,
AS
MEANS OF EDUCATION.
A
Paper read
Belfast Meeting of the Social Science
Association, on 24th Sept., 1867,
at the
BY
W. B. HODGSON, LL.D., F.C.P.,
one of the Examiners in the University of London.
•‘Sans lumieres point
de morale.”—Mirabeau
(l’Aind).
Tom. 5, p. 5S8„
1792.
LONDON;
PRINTED BY W. W. HEAD, VICTORIA PRESS, WESTMINSTER
1868.
�“ To suffer the lower orders of the people to be ill educated,—and then to
punish them for crimes which have originated in bad habits, has the appearance
of a cruelty not less severe than any which is exercised under the most despotic
governments.”—P. Colquhoun, LL.D., “Treatise on the Police of the Metro
polis.” 7th edition, 1806, c. 2, p. 34.
“ What is lhe use of arguing so pertinaciously that a black’s skull will
hold as much as a white’s, when you are declaring in the same breath that a
white’s skull must not hold as much as it can, or it will le the worse for him ?
It does not appear to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped into
doing a piece of low work that I don’t like. But it is a very profound state of
slavery to be kept myself low in the forehead, that I may r.ot dislike low work.”
—John Ruskin, Letter, March 30, 1867.
“It is true there are people who say the Bible is enough reading for the
poor, but they are evidently of a widely different opinion as to their own case,
though in religion more than any other subject do all classes stand alike. In
these days general knowledge is a fact for both the poor and the rich, yet it most
certainly is not communicated at the parish school; nor is there laid down the
Very lowest and roughest foundation j no, not a beginning, not an earnest, not a
pattern, not a morsel to speak of.”—Times, Saturday, Nov. 19, 1864.
“I am among those who think the greatest problem of legislation and
government unsolved so long as ignorance, sensual waste, or ciime keeps a large
part of the people, though emancipated from the serfdom of their ancestors, still
the thralls of appetite or p>rejudice, and consequently poor and miserable.”—Sir
J. K. Shuttleworth, at Opening of Art Workmen’s Exhibition.—Manchester
Examiner and Times, February 21, 1865.
“ One of the great objects now is that the education of all classes should
be harmonized.................... Whatever study can be commonly agreed upon as
conducive to formation of good character, of improved taste, and instrumental
in cultivating the faculty of accurate observation, that study is one which no
particular class should acquire, but to which all classes should devote them
selves.”—Sir Stafford Northcote, at Exeter.—Times, Jan. 4, 1865.
“In the most essential points, in the chief objects of life, and the most
necessary elements of education, rich and poor are really on a level....................
In the mansion and the cottage there is just the same necessity of methodical
habits, forethought, industry, order, cleanliness, peaceful and respectful bearing,
the study of one another’s wishes and good opinions, openness and the virtues
that make a good and useful being. These are matters of conduct; but even in
school work there is far greater community between rich and poor than people
are apt to imagine.”—Times, Jan. 6, 1865.
“ Let us, then, I beseech you, in the name of God, let us earnestly and heartily
have recourse to education. We must ‘begin at the beginning’—we must
prevent what is evil, by implanting what is good—we must enlighten the under
standing, as well as control the will.”—Dr. Parr’s “ Discourse on Education,”
p. 41, part II.
�EXAGGERATED ESTIMATES lit READING
AND WRITING.
N these days much is said about progress, and I am not disposed
to deny its reality in various regions, or to disparage its extent.
But, admittedly, general and ultimate progression is compatible with
partial or temporary retrogression ; and there are occasions which
tempt one to doubt whether the alleged progress be not a delusion—
whether the too obvious retrogression be not final and enduring. Or,
to take the somewhat hackneyed simile, which tells us that the
advance of the tide is not inconsistent with the retirement of indi
vidual waves after they have reached the shore, let us but continue
the analogy, and we find that the tide itself, after it has reached its
highest, its appointed limit, retires also, leaving a wide waste of
dreary sand; and that, though it returns again, it retires again, so
that we have, on the whole, not progress, but only oscillation and
repetition. The history of popular education tends to confirm the
notion that movement is by flux and reflux, and that there is now a
season of low watei’ and ebb tide.
Not much more than half a century divides us from the state of
social opinion which denounced, or dreaded, or ridiculed any and all
teaching of the great masses, which prompted even intelligent and
kindly men to predict the entire overturning of society as the
inevitable result of the teaching of“ the lower orders,” as if society
depended, for its very existence, on the domination of one small class
more or less enlightened, and on the unquestioning subserviency of
all other classes, whom any glimmering of light could not fail to
render discontented, insubordinate, insurrectionary.
Then came the period which may be called, for a well-known
reason, the era of the three R’s, Reading, Riling, and 'Rithmetic.
’
The inconveniences of total darkness were more and more recognized,
and the advantage of, at least, a sort of twilight state of mind was
more and more perceived ; but it may well be questioned whether
the noonday blaze of knowledge was not more dreaded by the educa
tional patrons of the lower’ classes than even the midnight blackness
of total ignorance. Teaching was encompassed with many limitations
and precautions. It might be well for all to be able to read their
Bible, according to the famous wish of George III.; but no other
literature was encouraged. A good plain hand-writing, with a
certain knowledge of ciphering, as it was called, might be useful for
the taking of business-orders, and the keeping of accounts. But a
too facile or graceful penmanship might be dangerous ; it might even
lead to forgery, and through that to the gallows. With acquirements
so restricted, it was not unlikely that the lower classes would still
demean themselves with due humility towards their superiors in
I
�4
station, and believe and act and suffer according to the will of those
placed in authority over them, whether spiritual or secular.
By degrees, the scope of popular education was widened, so far, at
least, as regards the admission of other subjects of instruction. I
cannot think that there was generally a more philosophic estimate of
the true nature of education ; but the frequent modern examples of
individuals rising from humble station to wealth and rank, familiarized
men’s minds with the thought that so much culture should be
generally given as would assist the exceptionally clever boy in his
social ascent, rather than improve the condition of the great body of
the working classes. Geography, and history, and sundry other
things, were more and more generally introduced. It may well be
doubted whether these additions were always or commonly improve
ments. Time w’as consumed in committing to memory the events of
so called history, one half of which was probably false, while of the
other half, one half was probably doubtful, while a large proportion
of the whole was unimportant. History must, of course, be begun
at the beginning, and the ancient Britons, and the Danes, and the
Saxons, and the Nonnans must have due attention, though, probably,
the pupils had passed away from the schools before they had gone
down the stream of history below the time of Henry VIII., the names
of whose wives, with the order of their execution, furnished excellent
material for questions,—or of Elizabeth, whose character was
summed up and recited in the pithiest phrases of the Pinnock order
of historians. As for geography, such facts as the height of the
Himalayas, and the length of the Brahmapootra, were stored up
for reproduction at the stated examinations, where the effect was
striking, in proportion to the recondite nature of the information, and
in inverse proportion to its utility. The barrenness of this kind of
teaching, for which, in some cases, no doubt, things of more impor
tance were neglected, did much to damage popular education in the
esteem of many, and to give occasion to those previously so disposed
to disparage or deny the efficacy and the value of all popular educa
tion whatsoever. This tendency was brought to a crisis by the fact that
the Educational Department of the Government was in danger of
breaking down from an accumulation of routine work, while the
annual cost of the educational grant had risen to an amount that
shocked the frugal temper of the House of Commons ; and the
opportunity afforded by the complaint of the Royal Commissioners
of 1858-9, that reading, writing, and arithmetic were in some cases
neglected, and especially in the younger classes, was readily seized
for the introduction of the Revised Code. Of that I need say little
more here, than that it gave a new or renewed prominence to reading,
writing, and arithmetic, confining practically its rewards to a
certain measure of proficiency in these branches, under the name
of payment for results, as tested by individual examination.
As to the actual result, opinion is considerably divided, and I
cannot here weigh the conflicting testimony. My own belief, how
ever, is that, as might have been expected, it has injuriously affected
�5
the higher education, that is, all that deserves the name of education,
while it has not generally succeeded in ensuring even mechanical
proficiency in the three arts thus specially fostered. It has done
much, I venture to think, to throw us back into the second of
those stages of national opinion on educational subjects which I
have hastily sketched; that, namely, in which this merely ele
mentary sort of teaching was deemed enough for the masses of the
people.
And here let me say that it is of reading and writing, and not at
all of arithmetic, that henceforth I mean to speak. Arithmetic holds
a quite different position from the other two things. Besides its
actual uses in the working world, it is a science, capable of becoming
the instrument of important training, and though when Baillie Nicol
Jarvie said that the multiplication table (i.e. arithmetic) is the root
of all knowledge, he had rather in view its application to bills of
parcels, and tare and tret, and profit and loss, than to cosmic harmo
nies, or numerical proportions in the framework of the universe,
the doctrine of numbers may truly be regarded as at once a root
science and a great power in education. I would rescue it from the
slur cast on it by the company in which it is usually found.
Of reading and writing, then, we are often enough told in words
that they do not constitute education. By many this is considered
a mere truism, but a truism quite as often means a truth neglected
as a truth made real. It is with words as with things, (though words
too are things), “ Too much familiarity breeds contempt.” The coin
which passes from hand to hand, loses gradually the clearness, and
finally the traces, of its image and superscription. Now, in spite of
the currency of this truism, I venture to think that reading and
writing are far too much regarded not as all education, but as all of
education that can be secured for and by the children of the mass,
nay, as all that it is important for them to obtain ; and that thus a
low, unworthy, and mischievous estimate of education, so far as con
cerns the masses, prevails among us.
In last Friday’s meeting one speaker drew forth strong expressions
of dissent, by saying that often it is thought enough to apportion
knowledge to the station in which the pupil happens to be born, and
in which it is assumed that he is likely to remain. I must confess
that my own experience supports this statement. Thus, not many
years ago I visited a school for female orphans in London, and I
was told distinctly by the secretary that only a very plain education was
even aimed at, “ because,” said he, “ they are destined to be domestic
servants, and it would not do for them to be too near the level of
their employers’ attainments ! ” It may not be necessary here to speak
in condemnation of that spirit which would keep back those who have
so few and so slight opportunities of culture for the supposed sake of
those who have so many and so great advantages within their reach;
or to contend that the lot to which human beings are really and truly
called by Providence (that Providence so often appealed to as a
justification of existing evils which it is sought to maintain), is not
�6
the condition in which they are born, or in which their parents live,
but that of which by the best culture of all their faculties, they
qualify themselves adequately to do the work ; or to argue that the
education of the lower classes is in the interest even of the upper.
But that this spirit prevails largely beyond the circle of such an
association as this I cannot doubt. There are persons who, as I once
heai’d Archbishop Whately say, embark in the ship of knowledge
in order to delay the voyage, being quite willing to appear as pro*
moters of education if they can but gain the power to limit it within
what they consider to be safe bounds.
Even among those who regard education with very different
feelings, and who have no unworthy jealousy of others less favoured
by fortune than themselves, a similar estimate of the sufficiency of
the mere elements of knowledge in schools for the people may be
traced. “ Teach a child to read and to write, and he will educate
himself,’’ this is a common saying. No doubt, your Stephensons,
and your Faradays, and those with large natural capacity for any
kind of mental effort, will, with this simple help, do all besides for
themselves. Nay, even without this help, their innate energy would
still surmount every obstacle in their way. But such men are the
exceptions, not the rule ; and the frequent appeal to such cases in
evidence of the sufficiency of reading and writing in humble schools,
is one more proof of the prevalence of the error which looks at
popular education rather as a means of enabling the peculiarly
gifted to rise into a higher station, than of enabling and disposing all
efficiently to discharge the duties of their actual station, even though
they should x’ise to none higher. It is to the average capacity, the
average disposition of ordinary school pupils, that teaching must be
adapted, and it is by its success in dealing with that average capacity,
that average disposition, that its efficiency is to be judged. Now, that
for such natures reading and writing will be a master-key to all
or much beyond, is not to be thus proved, or without proof to be
accepted.
Another sign of the current estimate of reading and writing may
be cited. We are all familiar with the statistical tables about crimi
nals, and the proportions among them of those who can read and
write well, imperfectly, or not at all. Crime, we are told, flourishes
most rankly among the last, less among the second, least among the
first. What, then, is the natural inference from such statements ?
Of course, diminish the ignorance, and you diminish the crime (1.)
But the ignorance of what ? Of course, of reading and writing.
Ignorance of reading and writing is productive of, or accompanied
by, a great amount of crime. Knowledge of reading and writing
will, therefore, diminish crime I There may be fallacies more
palpable than this ; there can be few more gross or serious. The
inability to read and write argues, in our present state, it may be
freely granted, great ignorance of all beyond that it is good or useful
to know. But the ability to read and write, (not to cavil about the
degree of ability), by no means argues the knowledge of aught
�1
beyond. Negatively, the ignorance implies much, positively the
knowledge implies little. Let us take an obvious illustration. If a
man does not possess a penny, he is undeniably very poor; if he does
possess a penny, is he therefore rich ? Is he removed more than
very slightly from absolute impecuniosity ? It may be said that,
with even one penny, a man may begin to increase his store ; but his
doing so, his striving, or desiring to do so, depends on considerations
widely apart from the mere possession of the penny. The tabulation
of such statistics may be useful in various ways. It is not in the
facts or in the figures, but in the application of them that the danger
lies. By all means let those tell-tale columns make us blush for the
deplorable and disgraceful national ignorance that they reveal; let
them spur our determination to remove it; but do not let them lull
us into the delusive fancy that the presence of the minimum of
knowledge will cure the evils which the absence of that minimum,
indicates, if it does not cause.
We will now test a little more closely the real educational value of
reading and writing.
1. Reading is a mechanical means, one of_ several means, of
gaining knowledge and ideas. Writing is one mechanical means of
conveying knowledge or ideas to others, as well as a means of
recording them for either others or ourselves. What is the educa
tional value of either ? There is, I am well aware, a high sense,
in which it may be contended that he who can read easily, intelli
gently, appreciatively, pleasurably, even one valuable book, especially
if he can read it aloud with due “ emphasis and discretion,” correct
intonation, and utterance at once expressive and impressive ; and
who further can give written form to his thoughts and knowledge,
if, that is, we take writing to mean not merely penmanship, but
what is called composition also,—may be said to have received no
mean or narrow, though it may still be a defective education.
But it is obvious that we are here concerned with such measure of
the powers of reading and of penmanship, as is commonly obtained
in our cheap and general schools. Now, the first thing that strikes
us, is, that they are at most, not knowledge, but means of knowledge.
Isay not the means, but means of knowledge. They are no more
knowledge or education, as has often been said, than a knife, fork,
and plate constitute a dinner. Given the dinner,—the knife, fork, and
plate are useful in enabling us to deal with it. But, though the com
bination is best, it is bettei' to have the dinner without the imple
ments, than the implements without the dinner. That the two can
be separated is undeniable; and so it is quite possible, though not
common, to find a man shrewd, sagacious, even well informed, who
can neither write nor read, and it is not only possible but very
common to find the grossest ignorance and the greatest dulness
associated with ability to read and write (2.) But it may be said that
a knife, fork, and plate are instruments not for gaining a dinner, but
for helping us to consume it when gained ; whereas reading and
perhaps writing are instruments for actually gaining knowledge.
�8
Let us grant that they are tools for gaining knowledge ; they are
not crop, but plough and harrow. Now, given the plough and the
harrew, the mode of using them remains to be taught ; the disposi
tion to use them remains to be encouraged. Neither of these
things follows inevitably from the mere conferring of the tools ;
the workman may still be unskilful, or indolent or both. To give a
man a loom is one thing ; to teach him to weave well and indus
triously is quite another thing.
This leads me, dropping metaphors, in which fallacy may lurk, to
say in the second place—
2. That the power of reading and of writing often rusts unused,
if it is not wholly lost, through neglect and apathy after leaving
school. The attainments are not usually carried far enough to
render their use either easy or pleasant, and the power gradually
decays (3.) For, in the third place—
3. A knowledge of the sounds and forms of the letters, the sylla
bles and words made up by the letters, is too commonly confounded
with knowledge of the things read about, with the taking in of the
ideas verbally expressed. An extreme instance may be given. The
late Principal Baird, of Edinburgh University, reported that on an
official visit which he made to some schools in the remote highlands
and islands of Scotland, he was greatly surprised and pleased by the
fluency and correctness with which the children read some verses
from the New Testament in English. He ventured to put some
question, and then discovered that the children knew nothing
whatever of English, that they spoke Gaelic solely, and that they
read the English words aloud, by imitation, as mere sounds, without
any sense to which they could be echo. Let me cite another
instance less extreme. In a school in Hampshire I once heard some
girls read, as I thought, with rather unusual correctness, a descrip
tion of a crab. I happened to ask, as it was an inland place, if any
of them had ever seen a crab. After a pause, one girl acknow
ledged her having seen a crab ; but, on inquiry, it appeared that it
was a crab-apple she had seen, and it never had occurred to her
that the description did not at all fit the object supposed to be
described ! So, after reading about the straining out of gnats, and
the swallowing of camels, one of the pupils (as Miss Cobbe vouches)
being asked what was the great sin of the Pharisees, answered, not
hypocrisy, but “ eating camels.” These are detached examples of
misapprehension of the things for which the equivalent words are
given : but thousands escape detection, and, whether it is through
the eye or through the ear that the words reach the sensorium, it is
a sad truth, that in innumerable cases they excite no ideas, or false
ideas. For such condition of mind is it wonderful that reading
should be an irksome, not a pleasing task, one to be soon laid aside,
and as seldom as possible resumed ? The great mass do not, like the
few, persevere sufficiently to surmount those hampering difficulties
and earn the reward which such perseverance brings. But, in the
fourth place, as I have already said,—
�9
4. Reading is but one means, if, in the long run, the most impor
tant, for acquiring knowledge. On Saturday last I had a letter from
home which, by an apt coincidence, illustrates what I mean. My
little boy, not yet four years old, says to his mother, “Mamma, why
does cousin Bella learn lessons ?” “That she may grow up to be
wise and useful.” “But don’t I learn by asking questions ?” “ Out
of the mouth of babes.” The radical fallacy is in supposing that no
knowledge or improvement is obtainable except from books, and the
result is the confounding of means with ends. A child is a living,
restless, never ceasing interrogator, “perpetually wanting to know,
you know,” perpetually asking, What ? and how ? and when ? and
where ? and above all (as I have observed with some surprise) why ?
perpetually putting all around it “to the question.” This is to
nurses and parents and teachers a disturbing, fatiguing, and exas
perating process, and questions are commonly discouraged, 01* evaded,
if not forbidden. “ Children ought not to ask questions : ” “ Child
ren should be seen, not heard:” such are the ethics of the nursery.
I willingly allow for the difficulty of at once carrying on, at
least in school, a continuous course of teaching with many pupils
simultaneously, and of caring for individual differences of mental state.
But principles do not cease to be principles because their application
is difficult; and it cannot be doubted that one intelligent answer to
such a question as a child will ask and at the time when it asks it,
when its interest is aroused and the mental soil is prepared, does
more good, has more suggestive and stimulative power than pages of
“useful knowledge” which are not “en rapport” with the child’s
mental state, and which respond to nothing then active within its
little brain. A child of average health and capacity sucks in know
ledge at every pore; its craving for knowledge is truly insatiable.
“It is as natural” says Quintilian, “for the human mind to learn as for
the bird to fly, or the fish to swim.” But many who spend dreary
years in seeking the power to read Quintilian in the original, and
most^frequently without succeeding in the endeavour, tell us a very
different tale. The youthful mind, they say, is averse from know
ledge, that is, what they call knowledge, or, at best, indifferent to it,
and it must be artificially coaxed, or bribed, or threatened into the
semblance of interest. A child eagerly examines every object
around it, or, in lack of objects, then the pictures or images of objects.
But between the child and nature we interpose an opaque medium
called a book, and we expect the child to profit by symbols which to
us, indeed, are full of meaning, but which to it are mysteries, whose
significance it is slow to discover. Pedants snort disdainfully at the
thought of teaching science to children. Yet what is science, in great
part, but observation methodized ? A child cannot be easily kept from
observing and even from generalizing. The question is whether it.
shall do both ignorantly, of its own wild fancy, or under the guidance
of maturer judgment and ampler knowledge. As all children, not wholly
stupified by the compression and distortion of the school, form for
themselves a kind of science, draw inferences and make generalizations,
�10
probably erroneous, certainly incomplete, shall they be left without
guidance, as without encouragement ? (4.)
Even attempts to teach science are often marred by confounding
it with literary or verbal knowledge. Nature is treated on the
system of the Eton Latin grammar. Technical names and lists of
genera and species are committed to memory without due explanation
of the grounds of distinction. I have before me a catechism for the
young, entitled “ First Lessons in Physiology.” All the know
ledge runs freely from the pupil, when tapped by the teacher
with a question. The teacher says: “ How many varieties of
absorption are there, and name them ?” The pupil answers : “Inter
stitial, cutaneous, recrementitial, respiratory, venous, excrementitial,
and lacteal.” Such are the new husks upon which babes are fed !
Without a revolution in method no mere change of subject can do
much good.
5. Again, the learning of the art of reading, being treated as an
end, is made much more difficult than it needs to be. The letters
are taught by their names, not by their sounds; in the arbitrary
order of the alphabet, instead of in the natural order of the organs
by which they are pronounced. Spelling is still taught by means of
columns of long, hard, unconnected words, selected for their very
difficulty and rarity, to be learned by rote, or, as is said with
unconscious irony, “by heart.” At a large and well-endowed
school in London, I have seen dozens of boys engaged simulta
neously in laborious efforts to learn to spell badly, with the aid
of a most ingenious book, in which every word was incorrectly
spelled. Then the process of teaching to read begins too early, as
it is continued too long. I know well the difficulty in a school,
where the minds of the pupils may be, nay must be, in different
stages of development; still, the first thing being to rouse an appetite
for knowledge, and the second to gratify it when roused, all attempts
to reverse this order, or even to anticipate its evolution, must be
injurious. A child that, eager to heai’ a story over again, puts to its
ear the book in which it is told, is in a fair way of learning to read
swiftly, easily, gladly. Before it reaches that sjtage, the instruction
might have been tedious and ineffectual. These are but hints which
it is impossible here to follow out in detail.
6. Then, what is the literature by means of which reading is too
often taught ? In Scotland still, the shorter Catechism of the West
minster Assembly of Divines (in my boyhood I used to wonder what
the longer could possibly be), has prefixed to it an alphabet which is
learned as a preliminary to plunging into the depths of Calvinistic divi
nity. Even in London I have visited a “ respectable” school, in which
reading is taught from the Bible, and so soon as the pupil is tolerably
proficient, he is promoted to the dignity of secular reading 1 And
this is done in the supposed interests of religion 1 It is as if we
were to begin the teaching of our children with Milton’s Paradise
Lost, and then advance them into Robinson Crusoe, or Miss Edger
worth’s Tales. In many Scotch schools the Bible is almost the only
�11
reading book ; the junior and senior classes are called respectively
the Testament class and the Bible class. I have heard of a boy so
taught who, having been asked by his mother to read a passage in
a newspaper, was suddenly roused from his monotonous chaunt by a
box on the ear, accompanied by these words—“ How dare ye, ye
tcoundrel, read the newspaper with the Bible twang ?”
7. With such a spirit in the school, is it wonderful that the whole
teaching should have a narcotic tendency, that it should crush intel
ligence, and breed disgust, weariness, hatred of all study ? At a
former meeting of this Association, I heard one of Hei' Majesty’s
Inspectors of Schools (since dead), declare that in certain schools he
could tell pretty accurately by the pupils’ faces how long they had
been at school. The longer the period, the more stupid, vacant, and
expressionless the face. Another school inspector (Diocesan), has
told me that when, examining a class in the Acts of the Apostles, he
asked:—“Why did the eunuch go away rejoicing,”—the answer’
frankly was—“ Please, sir, because Philip had a done o’ teaching on
him.” What hours of weariness and waste are summed up in this
brief story! Such teaching defeats its own end; the power to read
is gained at the cost of the desire to read. This, if, in spite of false
quantity, I may adapt the words of the Roman poet, is “ propter
legendum legendi perdere causas,” for the sake of reading to lose
that which makes reading to be desired.
8. Lastly, it ought never to be forgotten that the power to read
does not in the least determine the use to which it is to be put. What
will be the nature of the books or journals read ? How much of
mischievous, not to speak of idle, literature is there in the world
that must all find readers, admirers, purchasers ! With the diffusion
of the mere power of reading, without intellectual and moral culture,
must we not expect that this sort of literature will be multiplied ?
The increased numbers of cheap “ sporting ” papers, of papers de
voted to police reports, with coarse and exciting woodcuts, and
of the literary master-pieces of the “ singing saloon,” have of late
attracted notice. Nay, the power to read and write arms with
greater force the disposition for evil, as well as that for good. In
every wicked enterprise such attainments are helps to its success.
It used to be argued that writing ought not to be taught to the
people, lest it should lead to the commission of forgery, or other
fraud ; but this sort of argument, if futile against teaching to write,
supplies a reason why the power of writing, or of reading, should be
associated with such training and guidance as will tend to ensure its
beneficial employment.
As I rejoice to see in this Association, and elsewhere, a growing
tendency to regard the teaching of all classes, and of both sexes,
from the same points of view, and to apply to all alike the same
fundamental principles, I will here briefly say that what I think to
be the exaggerated estimate of reading and writing in the instruction
of the poor has its exact counterpart in the hitherto far too exclu
sively literary character of the instruction of the rich. In this
�aspect, how pregnant with meaning is the title, “ Grammar school,”
so almost universal as the designation of our upper schools ! Not
to insist on the practical identification of “ Grammar ” with the
teaching of Latin and Greek, what a petrifaction is this term of the
whole cast of opinion, which viewed all instruction as an affair of
books and words 1 What a record it preserves of the habit of regarding
even Science as a knowledge less of things than of what men have
written about things, and of the style in which they have written 1
Widen as we may the sense of grammar, far beyond the scope and
practice of schools, past or present, till it become, if you will, co
extensive with philology, and even literature, (and far be it from
me to disparage such studies), how lamentably does this title fall
short of what ought to be the aim of education in such a country, in
such an age as ours 1 Over the door of the Bradford Grammar
School stands this inscription
“ Quod Deus optimus maximus bene vertat
Aedificium hocce ad literarum antiquarum
Studium promovendum juventutemque doctrinA
Elegantiore imbuendum extructum est atque
Musis in perpetuum consecratum.”
—“ For promoting the study of ancient literature, and for imbuing
youth with elegant learning, this building has been raised, and for
ever consecrated to the muses.”
A noble part of a liberal education, the polished and graceful
capital of the educational column, but assuredly neither its shaft
nor its base ! Try mentally to realize what Bradford or Belfast is,
and what it needs for the instruction and guidance of the youth who
are to do its actual work, to maintain and to extend its prosperity, to
remove its evils, to raise the charactei* of its people, to improve their
sanitary and social condition, to teach them how to lead a clean,
healthy, happy, human life — and how painfully one-sided and
defective it is ! How it ignores the essential! How it magnifies
the less important! How it subordinates strength, solidity, and
service to grace and ornament and surface-show I Assuredly the
time is coming, I think it is at hand, when such a title- as that of
“ Spelling school” will be regarded as scarcely less expressive of the
purposes, grand and manifold, at which our uppei’ schools, aye, all
our schools, ought to aim. Even in our higher, even in our highest
schools, improvement is slowly but surely creeping in ; slowly but
surely is it being recognized that any school which ignores the know
ledge of man himself, of the objects animate and inanimate with
which he is surrounded, and of the relationship between him and them,
his social duties, his economic interests, and the reciprocal bearing of
the individual and the social well being is radically, deplorably, dis
gracefully defective. Every improvement in our lower schools will
react upon the upper, and vice versa. And when the instruction of
our higher classes is what it ought to be, and in proportion as it shall
be what it ought to be, will the problem of our lower education be
practically solved. Had our upper classes ever been really educated,
�13
they would not, and could not, so long and so complacently have
endured the ignorance and consequent degradation of the masses of
their fellow citizens, of those whom, as if in mockery, they style
their fellow immortals, their brothers and their sisters.
It is, however, of the lower schools that I here speak. It is even
fortunate that narrow and selfish fears are beginning to urge on what
enlarged conceptions and generous impulse have failed hitherto to
effect. Thus (1) the recent extension of the suffrage is opening
the eyes of many to the necessity of training the masses to the ju
dicious and beneficial exercise of the power thus conferred. One
whose name will be, in history, connected as well with the political
changes that he resisted as with the educational changes that he
introduced, has said that we must now teach our future masters their
letters. That this was said in bitter irony there can be little doubt;
and it cannot be taken to mean that in the opinion of the speaker
that amount of teaching will suffice. Those who have already had
the suffrage can, for the most part, read and write. But they, too,
need enlightenment, and moral as well as intellectual training; so do
those whom they elect to represent them. On the one hand, reading
and writing have not prevented dishonest voters in thousands from
selling their votes for bribes, solid or liquid ; on the other, reading
and writing, and much besides, have not prevented unscrupulously
ambitious millionaires from debauching whole constituencies by
lavish expenditure, or from masking their immoral and demoralising
practices by liberal donations to charities, to schools, and even to
churches. Nevertheless, the fear of the large classes now admitted
within the pale of the constitution for the first time has given no
slight impulse to the general zeal for education. It is for us to see
that the movement now begun be turned to good account. Let us
help to educate, but in what ? That is the question of questions.
Then, again (2), foreign nations, we are told, are beginning to beat
us at our own weapons. They have learned more than their letters.
They are, it is said, driving us out of the markets which, with insular
arrogance, we have fancied should for ever be ours exclusively.
A cry of alarm is raised for more and better technical instruction ;
and, though this is narrow enough in the thoughts of many who raise
it, more and better general culture will certainly come out of it;
a greater development of general mental power, and the formation
of better social habits, will ere long be discovered to be the things
really needful.
Again (3), our industry is partially paralyzed, our capital is wasted,
our prosperity, our very national existence, are endangered by strikes
and trade combinations and restrictions, which check production,
often by means as unscrupulous and truculent as the end sought is
false and mischievous. The masses have been suffered to grow up
in ignorant and angry defiance of the elementary principles of
economic science, and reading and writing will not cure this long
rankling sore. Broadhead, who could read and write (as he has
amply shown), believing at the time that the introduction of a certain
�14
machine would injure his craft, instigated an act of criminal violence^
He confessed that he had discovered his error ; but the discovery came
too late. Had he made it sooner, one outrage less would have been
attempted. With wider knowledge others, perhaps all, might have
been prevented. Knowledge is not merely power; it is restraint
and guidance, if not impulse. It is the rudder, if not the sail ; the
fly-wheel, if not the steam-boiler. It is true that there have not
been wanting men of so-called education to defend such blunders,
and even to extenuate such atrocities ; but their education has lacked
the special direction which alone could save from error in this matter.
It is true that the employers are often not more intelligent in this
respect than the employed ; but the enlightenment of the latter, who
are the many, and from whose ranks the former, hitherto the few,
must largely come, will extend to, and react upon the former
also, and do much to soften their mutual relations, to make all see
their common interest, and to fuse them together, so as in time to
modify, if not, as some hope, to obliterate the distinction itself (5.)
For such reasons as these, a new educational agitation is arising,
or the old is reviving with fresh vigour. One and all point to something
far beyond reading and writing. I am, I must say, hopeful of the
ultimate, if not of the early, issue. The now swelling call for
“ compulsory” education will force on the public mind the funda
mental inquiry, what ought education to be. If, by compulsion,
what now passes under the name of education were rendered even
universal, I presume to think that the existing mass of pauperism,
crime, vice, misery and disease, would scarcely be perceptibly
abated. But it is no small gain to have recognized the claim of even
the poorest, still more even because the poorest, to something that is
called education. Bad or grossly defective education in any quarter
cannot continue long aftei’ education has ceased to be regarded as the
heritage of the few. Just as air becomes stagnant and foul when con
fined, so education when restricted to the few loses its vital freshness.
To diffuse education of any kind is indirectly to improve it. Make
education general, universal, and the (so called) higher education
will be rationalized, and, as I think, liberalized (6.) Youths will no
longei* be sent into active life from costly seminaries, accomplished
it may be in Greek metres, but ignorant of the structure of their own
bodies, the constitution of their own minds; filled with mythologic
lore, but unaware of their social duties ; primed with verbal scraps of
inconsistent moral precept, but less ashamed of debt than of honest
industry; looking on the world as a spoil for the lucky, or the
crafty, oi' the strong, not as a field for useful and ennobling labour
to the benefit of all as well as of self; of self just in proportion as it
tends to the good of all. Then, instead of the rich being fed on
intellectual sweetmeats, while the poor are starved, or gathei’ up the
crumbs that fall from the others’ table, all, rich and poor alike, shall
be nourished with plainer, more substantial and wholesome diet, not
without such lighter fare as may be obtainable by either. As know
ledge will be no longer confounded with books, or with words about
�16
knowledge, so morals, of which the laws are as eternal as they are
simple, as universal as they are strong, the morals in which all sects
and conditions of thinking men agree, will be dissociated from the
verbal and dogmatic formularies about which men differ, and, while
becoming less sectarian and theological, will become more widely
Catholic, more truly religious (7.) We, or our survivors, will then look
back with a smile, not of contempt or pride, but of joy and pity, on
the time when there was so great a pother about so small a matter
as reading and writing, and when even this beggarly amount of
teaching was found to be a tremendous national difficulty, just
because so little more was aimed at, or desired, or perhaps conceived.
The less is included in the greater, and the little becomes easy from
the effort to do much.
Notes.
(1.) p. 6. “ A Maiden Session.—At the Salisbury Quarter Sessions, just held,
there was not a single prisoner for trial. The Mayor of the city (Mr. S. Eldridge)
had therefore the pleasing duty of presenting the Recorder (Mr. J. D. Chambers),
the clerk of the peace, and the governor of the gaol with a pair of white kid
gloves each, according to custom on occasions of this sort. The Recorder, in
addressing the grand jury, said that he had read the other day in The Times that
Wiltshire was one ot the best educated counties in England, and it was highly
satisfactory to learn therefore that the decrease of crime had been in proportion to the
spread of education.” (/)—Times, 2nd Jan., 1868.
(2.) p. 7. “ Although the perusal of such works must, in strictness of speech,
be denominated reading, yet, so far as the cultivation of mind is concerned, it is
little else than the sheer act of deciphering so much letter press, without the
acquisition of a single new idea that can at all conduce towards improvement.”
—Rev. Thos. Price, “Tour in Brittany, Literary Remains,” 1854, vol. 1,
p. 81. “No doubt the power of reading is a key to the whole literature of
England. But in the hands of persons ignorant how to use it, a key is of little
use.”—Saturday Review, 4th Jan., 1868, p. 20. In the very same article the
writer says:—« What is wanted is that every child should be able to read and
write fairly before he goes to work; that he should be enabled to turn this
knowledge to -laone intellectual account while he is at work; and that, in cases
where his parents’ means, or his own industry, can defray the cost, he should be
further enabled to perfect himself in the various branches of study which have a
bearing, general or special, on his professional occupation.” It is too obvious
that the reviewer does not expect the child to turn the ability to read and write
to any “ intellectual account ” during the school period!
(3.) p. 8. “ The imperfect instruction given to the children in factories, under the
half-time system, is retained by them during a year or two at most, when it is
forgotten, and many intelligent young overlookers are unable to keep correctly
the simple accounts which should form a part of the duties of their position.”—
Mr. Samuelson, M.P. (speaking of Bradford, Yorkshire).
(4.) p. 10. “Why are the people who notice what comes before them to be marked
by a separating name, and called naturalists? Why are we ashamed of a
failure in what comes to us through books and the costly instrumentality of
masters and teachers ? Why do we blush at any flagrant slip in history, or
science, or language, and keep cool and easy under any extravagance of error in
�what'nature, through our own observation, might teach us.”—Saturday Revieu),
28th July, 1863. Article on “ Ignorance.” Yet Canon Moseley, who is deservedly
an authority in education, would keep out of schools (not merely elementary
schools) all “ the sciences of observation,” specially so called. At Clifton College,
on 30th July, 1867, he is reported to have said: —“The subjects of human know
ledge, which claimed to be considered and taught in our schools, might be
divided into four groups. First of all,” (why ‘ first ? ’) “ there were the languages
and the subjects allied to them; secondly, the pure mathematical sciences, which
were pursued in the exercise of pure thought and rested upon abstractions ;
thirdly, the sciences of experiment, including physics and chemistry; and
fourthly, the great sciences of observation, such as natural history and the like.
He thought they might put the last out of consideration, as they had had quite
enough to do with the three others.” In like manner, I once heard it contended
that any new poetry is superfluous, because there is more poetry already written
than any human being can possibly read! In like manner, it has been urged
that the discovery of new planets is absurd, because we have as many already
as we well know what to do with! But, perhaps, we ought less to regret
that the subjects in the fourth class are thus shut out, than rejoice that those in
the third are admitted. Too often both classes are still visited with the same
arbitrary sentence of exclusion, and on the same ground, that there is quite
enough to do without them! It is not very long since subjects of even the
second class ceased to be regarded as unlicensed intruders on the traditional
monopoly of the first.
(5.) p. 14. “ To the three reasons given in the text a fourth may well be added.
Society is, not without reason, more and more alarmed by the rapid increase of
outrages which threaten its very existence. “ Education ” is hailed as the sure
if slow, remedy. The adult ruffian is probably beyond its influence, but the
embryo garotter may be tamed if only he can be taught to spell “ gallows; ” and
on the juvenile pickpocket a course of alphabet, with exercise in pothooks and
hangers, may have a salutary effect, deterrent or emollient! By all means let
trial be made. Its failure will open the eyes of many to the need of something
better, though it may also lead many to say, “ Education has been tried, and
tried in vain.”
(6.) p. 14. “ Coleridge, when he predicted that the effect of popularizing know
ledge would be to plebify it, erred in his vision of the future, as many seers have
done before and since. He uttered that prediction on the assumption that know
ledge, in its higher portions, was confined to the regions of theology and
psychology; and he overlooked the faot that, in proportion as these branches of
knowledge have been cultivated by the few,-ignorance has prevailed among the
many. He failed to observe that, if thousands rushed to Abelard’s lecture room,
millions outside of it were immersed in the grossest superstition.”—Saturday
Review, 26th Oct., 1867, p. 544.
(7.) p. 15. “As Sir R. Palmer reminded his audience, the line between ‘ religious’
and ‘ secular ’ is purely conventional. ‘ All knowledge, all instruction, in what
ever is honest and of good report, is essentially religious.’ Dogmatic theology
concerns itself with creeds; but religion has to do with common life; and its
sphere, though net identical, is co-extensive with that of education. The
clergyman and the schoolmaster are inevitably working together, whether they
are working in concert or not.”—Times, 2nd Nov., 1866.
�
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Exaggerated estimates of reading and writing as means of education: a paper read at the Belfast meeting of the Social Science Association, on 24th Sept., 1867
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Hodgson, W. B. (William Ballantyne) [1815-1880.]
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Collation: 16 p. ; 22 cm.
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Education
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NEGLECTED VIEW OF EDUCATION.
•
Jirtart
DELIVERED AT
Mr. M. D. CONWAY’S CHAPEL, CAMDEN TOWN,
NOVEMBER 21st, 1875,
By
M. MACFIE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
1 II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1876.
Price Fourpence.
�TO THE READER.
The following Lecture is published by the desire
of many who heard it delivered.
As it aims at a practical rather than a controversial
object, it has been thought that the friends of Educa
tion might wish to promote its distribution.
In case you should decide to circulate it among
your friends, the publisher is willing to make a
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ordered.
�NEGLECTED VIEW OE EDUCATION.
--------- ♦---------
HE subject of education, like some other and
greater questions debated by our law-makers,
has two aspects—a political and a philosophical aspect.
The first of these has to do simply with the right
of the tax payers, in claiming certain concessions from
Parliament for the intellectual and moral good of the
population. The latter of these aspects, concerns the
far-reaching social issues of the educational measure.
And the result of our agitation of this question will
be at least unsatisfactory, unless the political boon
we seek is understood in its philosophical bearings.
But it is to be feared, that many who are fighting in
the van as well as in the rear of the movement for
national education, and who have a clear enough
comprehension of the subject politically, are still far
from realizing its application philosophically. The
struggle of the dominant Church to keep the con
trol of the people’s education in its own hands, for
sectarian purposes, has compelled the friends of the
National Education League to narrow their discussion
of the question, in and out of the legislature, to one
point. In order to carry the enemy’s barriers, they
have been forced to concentrate their efforts mainly
upon obtaining a just Education Act, and an impartial
working of that Act in school districts. It has been
found so necessary for the Liberal party, till recently,
to limit their exertions to checking the tendency of the
Government to apply the revenue of the country to
the teaching of the dogmas of conflicting sects, that
our views of what education is in its full and broad
T
�4
A Neglected View of Education.
acceptation, may have been obscured in the dust
and din of the contest. We have had to work so
hard in placing education, as supplied at the national
expense, on a purely secular basis—the only basis on
which we can equitably take our stand in requiring
the appropriation of Treasury or local funds, for
the education of the children of the masses,—that we
have been apt to lose sight of many other aspects
of the matter, if possible, much more momentous.
The rank and file of education orators, on the
platform, in the pulpit, and in the senate, would
have us believe that, if we can but put children
through the process of learning to read, write, and
cypher, and give them some smattering of history,
literature, and science, with perhaps, an appreciable
theological tincture mingled—vice, pauperism, and
crime, the inhumanities and dishonesties festering in
commerce, brutal excesses, and parental ignorance,
would die out, and give place to a millennium. Nor
is it wonderful that such sanguine though vague ex
pectations should be indulged. It would be ungrate
ful and wrong to doubt that sound school and college
instruction, universally diffused, would be a great
step towards such a consummation. We may congra
tulate ourselves, that a beginning has been made—as
it must be made somewhere—in the elevation of our
countrymen, even though for the present the move
ment is not, and does not aim at, all some of us could
wish. If we might compare the child to the bee,.
elementary education gives the wings by which it is to
fly from flower to flower in the bowers of knowledge,
and extract the honey of truth. Primary school train
ing supplies the tools, without which the youth cannot
cut his way to a noble self-development. But we
must not forget that the highest culture we can get
from books and seminaries of learning, goes no further
than putting these tools in our hands. Oar use of
them comes later; and the fact which so commonly
�A Neglected View of Education.
$
escapes notice, even in the best informed communities,
is, that it is not the man who has acquired stores of
varied knowledge and experience of the arts that is
educated; but he, and only he, who employs these
things in rounding off his whole being and character
—filling up the gaps, and paring down the over
growths. Education proper, the adjustment, dis
cipline and proportionate development of our physical,
intellectual, and moral nature only begins, if it take
place at all, after we leave school; and if the
result of classes, tutors, study, and thought, in what
ever direction—be not to mould, refine, balance,
and strengthen, every part of us, as the exigencies of
our organisation may require,—our education is almost
an empty name, though we may leave our alma mater
with “ blushing honours thick upon us.” This, though
the most vital view of the question is the one, I ven
ture to assert, least enforced in our families and Edu
cational Institutions, whether primary or advanced,
whether secular or religious. And hence the mon
strous illusion in which multitudes of all classes grow
up, that if they have only gained fair proficiency
in the recognised branches of instruction, have
passed examinations creditably, have learned to use
language with grace and perspicacity, and to feel
at home in the proprieties of fashionable society, or
have mastered the details of their profession, they are
educated. And the mischiefs bred by this shallow and
pitiable conceit are past reckoning. We are not
educated—in any adequate sense—unless our training
leave in the mind a sacred deposit of principles, clear,
and independently thought out; unless those principles
settle down into cherished and practical convictions,
and unless those convictions prove their reality in the
correct management of our health, the honest, fear
less, and unbiassed use of our reason, yielding us the
courage of our opinions, and the earnest culture of all
beautiful, tender, unselfish, and brave sentiments;—
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A Neglected View of Education.
unless our appetites, passions, and desires, are dulymoderated in a manner befitting our relation to our
selves, to the laws of the universe, and to humanity.
The person who comes nearest to this ideal is alone
entitled to be called a highly-educated man. The one
who falls most bel-ow this standard—be he ever so
quick-witted diligent in intellectual, or even in
certain moral or religious pursuits, is the least edu
cated. . I grant that an intelligent rake is more
interesting and tolerable than an ignorant and vulgar
one, that it is less offensive to be swindled by a clever
and agreeable knave, than by one who is gross as
well as mean and tricky ; that selfishness is not so
odious in one of graceful manners and generous speech,
and whose ambition soars to intellectual and social
honours, as in one in whom this vice is reckless and
undisguised. But what we want to feel more deeply
and to teach more frequently, is that the commonly
received opinion as to the nature and ends of human
training is pernicious to society, and offers a formid
able hindrance to the real progress of mankind. If
the chief object of rational existence were simply to
multiply adepts in scholarship, mechanics, military
tactics, agriculture, or commerce, and to perpetuate
races of lop-sided minds with one or two faculties
disciplined, and the rest left unheeded, presenting
intellectual and moral malformations—then the ruling
ideas of education might continue to be indulged, but
if the grand aim of life should be to discipline each
power that it may fulfil to the utmost its appropriate
functions, within lawful limits, and in subjection to
the laws of truth and harmony, then the time has
arrived for reform in our conceptions and methods of
culture.
There are three conditions possible for human
beings in respect to education. There are indivi
duals whose nature is like a garden, so walled-up and
over-hung with dense vapours, that the sun cannot
�A Neglected View of Education.
7
penetrate ; their minds are covered with the weeds of
folly and the rubbish of superstition, and grow only
what is rank and unwholesome. There are others
whose nature is like a garden, in which the plants
in one plot get little care and hardly any sun, while
those in another section have plenty of both. There is
another class, not the most numerous, however, whose
nature is like a garden well cultivated, the flowers and
fruits springing up in genial soil presenting a southern
aspect—not an inch of ground hid from the fostering
light, and air, and warmth. A moment’s reflection
will, doubtless, recal to you instances of these
several types of mind and character. Those utterly
shut out from the light of knowledge, and growing
up in moral wastes, are to be found chiefly, but not
exclusively, in the lower strata of society—in the
abodes of squalor, improvidence and ignorance. Na
tures in the second condition, I have pictured, half in
the light and half in the shade, form the majority,
and may be met with in all ranks, from the highest to
the lowest. But it must be confessed that it is rare
to find persons in any sphere of life, of whom it can
be said that they come up to the terms of the third
condition, and have faithfully striven to make the
most of themselves in all respects. Perhaps it is most
common to meet with those who answer to the homely
metaphor of the Prophet: “ Ephraim is like a cake
not turned”—baked—almost burned on one side and
raw on the other; with some parts of their organisa
tion excessively developed and the rest dwarfed ; no
obligation being solemnly and intelligently felt by
them to till and keep the whole ground. To regard
the elements that are popularly understood to consti
tute the most liberal training of a lady or a gentleman
as exhaustive of what the education of a mind ought
to be, is to profane this most sacred of all subjects,
and encourage a painful error. Who has not
known or read of men that have mastered the most
�8
A Neglected View of Education.
subtle problems of life, and distinguished themselves
by profound insight into the workings of the human
mind, that have allowed other regions in their nature
to remain conspicuously uncultivated. There is no
more striking illustration of this contrariety of men
tal tendencies than Lord Bacon. But for the unde
niable testimony of history, it would appear incredible
that the author of the ‘Counsels, Civil and Moral,’
and of the immortal treatise, ‘ The Novum Organon,’
could be guilty of such execrable baseness towards
his benefactor, Essex, and that the same man should
write ‘ The Advancement of Learning,’ and lend
himself, as Attorney-General, to a crafty and bigoted
King, to foment the persecution of Roman Catholic
priests, and justify the Protestant burning of heretics ;
file informations against those who gave utterance to
free opinions, and degrade himself to the uttermost
by sharing complicity with the King in hushing up a
royal crime in relation to Somerset too disgusting to
specify. To judge the natures, as a whole, of some
eminent authors within living memory by what they
wrote, and wrote so beautifully, one would fancy that
no lives could be purer, no dispositions more lovely,
no hearts more responsive to appeals of suffering
and want, no consciences more delicately strung than
theirs ; and yet in some cases—happily not in all—
when we come to know their inner life, we have
found them almost the reverse of all this. Their
memories were enriched with the choicest symbols
of everything noble and good, and their imagina
tions ran wild with ideal luxuriance, while those
faculties and powers that were not among the forces
that produced their literary reputation, were sometimes
left a prey to weakness and neglect. There is no
rule without its exceptions ; but as a rule it may be
said, so little has the ideal of education now under
our consideration been acted upon, that the very fact
that a man is singularly strong in one direction, may
�9
A Neglected View of Education.
be taken as an index that he is singularly weak in
another. If he have severely trained the logical
faculty, he is almost sure to have slighted the culti
vation of common sense, or that delicate sensibility
which a chastened and refined imagination promotes.
If he be distinguished by a susceptible emotional na
ture, and devoted to moralism or philanthropy, he
will probably not be found remarkably vigorous in
tellectually ; and how often it has happened that men
who have attained high distinction in a profession
requiring very great mental acuteness, have left
themselves specially open to attack in their appetites
or passions.
I have heard from those competent to express an
opinion, that so often have they been disappointed by
marked contradictions—not necessarily grave moral
inconsistencies—in distinguished political, and even
in religious, leaders, that their early enthusiasm in
seeking the private acquaintance of such persons had
received a considerable check. I have been told that
in proportion as men’s lives are consecrated to sup
porting a public relation, or a relation purely to the
public, their capacity for the cultivation of intense,
constant, and self-sacrificing private friendship seems
to diminish. If carried away by their public function,
those sentiments which befit the attitude they con
stantly sustain to the public are so stimulated, that
without special watchfulness, the feelings and bear
ing belonging to the quiet devotion of a private
relationship are apt to decay. I have heard of an
instance of this sort, in which consciousness of apti
tude to sway the masses on political and social
questions has led to these results. In public the
man’s enunciation of great and liberal principles was
so fervent and kindling to the sympathies of his vast
audiences, that the poorest person might be tempted
to approach him under the impression that his manner
would be warm and attractive, while, as a matter
B
�io
A Neglected View of Education.
of fact, in private he was found to be haughty,
cold, reserved, and repellent, and his ambition to be
great as a public character seemed to eat away those
delicate, genial, unaffected private virtues which alone
make a man beloved and sought after by his friends.
To so sad an extent have I known this discrepancy
between strong public sentiments and weak private
ones to extend, that a certain person who once
lavished many thousands of pounds upon public
charities, knowingly left respectable and deserving
relations on the brink of want. In like manner
are people apt to be imposed upon by the fiction
that, because a man is solely occupied with preaching
high moral and religious truths, he is necessarily
among the best exemplars of his own teaching. But
through neglect of educating the whole man, the
most eloquent in preaching may be the most indif
ferent in practice.
There is another class that may be adduced, as a
warning example of this same perverted view of
education. I refer to a considerable number of
languid youths of both sexes who are supposed largely
to inhabit the “ West-end ” in the season, whose
leisure hangs heavily on their hands, and who, for
want of useful occupation, receive as a god-send the
announcement of the last three-volumed novel to trans
port them for some hours to an elysium of fancy—a
mischievous substitute for the stern realities of the
work-a-day life. My remarks refer not to the use but
the abuse of novel-reading ; and I am only concerned
at present in showing the evil effects of its abuse in
freezing up sympathy with actual distress, while the
vacant-minded reader is being dissolved in tears over
the imaginary scenes of sorrow depicted by the
novelist. That excessive novel-reading may quicken
sympathy and strengthen sensibility of the morbid
sentimental kind is true ; but it is also true that it at
the same time tends to weaken practical benevolence
�A Neglected View of Education.
11
and may end in quenching it altogether. Sentimen
talism of any kind is always whimsical and visionary
unless it be under the direction of judgment and
reason, which always pre-supposes the harmonious
culture of all the faculties and susceptibilities of our
nature. “ There is a law of our mental mechanism
pointed out by Bishop Butler that from our very
faculty of habits, passive impressions by being repeated
grow weaker, and practical habits are formed and
strengthened by repeated acts. Benevolence is
worthless which does not proceed to action. But the
frequent repetition of that species of emotion which
fiction stimulates tends to prevent practical benevo
lence, because it is out of proportion to correspond
ing action ; it is like that frequent going over of
virtue in our own minds, which, as Butler says, so
far from being auxiliary to it may be obstructive of
it. As long as the balance is maintained between the
stimulus given to imagination with the consequent
emotions on the one hand, and our practical habits
which those emotions are chiefly designed to form
and strengthen on the other, so long the stimulus of
the imagination will not stand in the way of benevo
lence but aid it. And therefore if we will read a
novel extra, now and then, about some unfortunate
hero or heroine, we ought to impose upon ourselves
the corrective of an extra ten-pound note to some
poor unfortunate family, who only want substantial
help to enable them permanently to help themselves.
To maintain a balance between the emotions and the
will, and thus give effect to true educational principles,
we should keep a sort of debtor and creditor account
of sentimental indulgence and practical benevo
lence.”*
Another common instance of defective education, in
the broad sense, is the devotee of religious excitement
The ‘ Greyson Letters,’ p. 177.
�12
A Neglected View of Education.
whose religion, in effect,, becomes a bar to enlightened
morality. The religious or devotional faculty in some
people is forced like a hot-house plant into unnatural
growth, and comes out in the rankest forms of
fanaticism. Their brains become suffused and sodden
with the fantastic drapery and musical spells of Highchurchism or with unctuous Evangelicalism. They act
on the Sunday as if the only things worth living for
were singing hymns and offering extatic prayers or
listening to revivalist extravagancies. Yet contact
with many of that class in every-day life proves that
the sentimental sanctities of their church have no
more influence in aiding the development in them of
homely human virtues than the study of poetry
would have in improving the ability of an engineer
to construct machinery; the culture of honour and
justice in their business, of wise and amiable tempers
in their families, and of usefulness to their fellow
citizens, hardly costs them a thought. Jacob is not
the only person who took undue advantage of a
brother, and then lost himself in dreams of a ladder
reaching up to heaven, with angels going up and
down upon it. How often do we find that individuals
of the intensely devotional type have zeal without
tenderness, energy without repose, care for what
they deem truth, without charity towards those whom
they account heretical, driving by this incongruous
compound of good and evil many honest seeking souls
into scepticism and despair.
Perhaps even we advanced rationalists are not
without our special temptations to overlook, in some
respects, the manifold bearings of a whole-minded
culture. We have fought our way, point by point,
out of the Egyptian bondage of miserable dogmas
into intellectual light and freedom, and may we not
sometimes be in danger of resting in the peace and
satisfaction of an intellectual victory, and omit the
minute application of the exalted principles we have
�A Neglected View of Education.
13
attained to the shaping and governing of all the con
stituent parts of our nature ? While orthodoxy may
combine with intellectual feebleness does it neces
sarily follow that theological liberalism is always
associated with moral courage, scrupulous conscien
tiousness and self-denying kindness ? Nothing is more
remarkable in the higher Greek schools than the
practical’turn given to the philosophy taught. Plato,
Socrates, and others were not mere theorists. “ Know
thyself” expressed the condition of entrance upon
studies of the Academy. Their attainments in
philosophy were first applied in making themselves
and their disciples morally better, and still the per
fection of an educated manhood consists in the highest
and freest possible intellectual inquiry combined with
a correspondingly exact application of the know
ledge gained to all the faculties and powers in their
various grades and relations.
A great diplomatist is said to have defined language
as the art of concealing thought, and certainly one of
the anomalies of our civilization is that we sometimes
call things that are very absurd by very fine names.
Thus we honour with the name of education a very
crude and imperfectly-developed state of mind and
character; and, in saying as much, I use not hyper
bole ; I mean no play upon words. Education is
educement, development—harmonious development—
and the thoroughly-educated man is not the scholar or
even the gentleman, commonly so-called, but he who
has the most fully and harmoniously-developed powers
of mind and the most fully and harmoniously-deve
loped powers of body; and the time will come when
the existing fallacy, almost universally practised, if
not taught, on this subject will be looked back upon as
a relic of a rudimentary and transition state of human
culture; when training will formally and positively aim
at securing physical, intellectual, and moral balance;
when predominating tendencies will be harnessed
�14
A Neglected View of Education.
and guided; when the man naturally inclined to
animalism will be systematically brought under the
counter forces of reason and conscience; when the
man of hard logic will be carefully brought into
sympathy with the cause of human weal and trained
in the sentiments of pure and unselfish social affec
tions, in the tender experiences of sweet family
life, and in the refinements of natural and artistic
beauty; when the man of weak moral purpose will
snatch a fair share of the time he now excessively
gives to trade, social ambitions, or the duties of some
profession, to the building up of the waste places of
his mind, and cease the error of thinking his moral
defects inevitable, or imagining that his virtues can
in any degree pass as an atonement for his imper
fections.
Having dwelt on the meaning of true education as
distinguished from false, allow me for a moment or
two to try to show how this art of educating the whole
nature may be successfully carried out. The three
grand essentials of an efficient education are the best
teachers,. the most suitable text-books, and the strictest
application of what we learn, to the elevation of physical,
intellectual, and moral life. If one of this trinity of
requisites be wanting, the business of educating is
spoilt, and our time and money as good as wasted.
The development of the mind is just as much under
the direction of law as the growth of the plant. It
is sad to read the Report of Official School Inspectors,
and to see how very few out of the millions of children
in our schools indicate even a superficial acquaintance
with the subjects they profess. Of course, there will
always be differences of attainment owing to different
degrees of talent and application. But if only justice
were done to the three essentials I have named, no
child of average ability couid miss getting a compe
tent idea of the branches he was taught, or fail to
realise their bearing on the culture of his mind.
�A Neglected View of Education.
i$
There are teachers here and there thoroughly en
lightened, able, and consecrated, having a worthy
and comprehensive idea of their work, but they are
not numerous, and this is not to be wondered at.
For owing to the wretched feudalists cant, out of
which the nation is now but slowly passing, a school
master used to be looked down upon as belonging to
a fifth-rate social position; and, consequently, till
lately, only fifth-rate men could be induced to become
candidates for the office. It was only self-denying
devotion to the work, or dire pecuniary necessity,
that formerly induced persons to take up the profes
sion of a teacher ; and it was not likely that a crop
of efficient teachers could be raised under conditions
so chilling. Public opinion is still a long way from
offering encouragements that would tempt men of
philosophical understanding and culture into this
greatest of all human offices. Why is it that the sons
of our noblemen, squires, and even of our merchants
are mostly drafted to the bar or into the church or into
commerce, and that we hardly hear of youths belong
ing to these classes becoming working schoolmasters ?
*
Why would so many parents rather that their sons
earned a mere pittance in any of the professions than
get a fair living as a schoolmaster ? The post of a
schoolmaster has not been deemed respectable enough.
It will be very different by-and-bye, when English
men and English women have cast that fictitious god
of so-called respectability to the moles and the bats
and risen to the purer sphere, in which the truly
highest realities will be duly appreciated, and the
really highest functions adequately honoured and
remunerated. The day will come when the training
of youth in scientific and philosophical principles will
* Of course the Head-mastership of our great and ancient endowed
schools are not referred to here. The honoursand emoluments of such
positions have never been deemed, amongst us, incompatible with the
highest talent, scholarship, and even family influence.
�16
A Neglected View of Education.
be viewed in so exalted a light that the most power
ful and cultured minds of both sexes in the kingdom
will, gladly enlist in this service, and when the pro
fession of a teacher will rank, as it deserves to do,
the noblest and most honourable of all.
But the use of the best text-books is equally indis
pensable. In this respect, too, matters are improving,
but we have still a good deal to learn, and not till the
nation rises to a full realisation of the nature of the
work to be done can we be expected to have text
books that will fitly correspond with the end we have
in view.
I speak it with sorrow, but with grave delibera
tion, in the language of an eloquent writer —
*
“ the rock upon which all our hopes of rescuing the
mass of our countrymen from ignorance and bar
barism, are in danger of being dashed, consists in the
unreasoning and indiscriminate veneration in which
the Bible is popularly held among us as a central
educational book. Impelled by that veneration, we
hesitate not—I refer to Englishmen generally,—to
degrade our children’s view of Deity by familiarising
them with a literature in which He is represented as
feeble, treacherous, implacable, and unjust; and con
found at once their intelligence and moral sense, by
compelling them to regard that literature as altogether
divine and infallible. This notion is ingrained by
priestcraft in the minds of the multitude and even of
their Parliamentary representatives, that morality,
•—except when based upon the contents of the Bible,
—is not only defective but mischievous. And yet it
cannot be too distinctly asserted—if we sincerely
desire our children to have an education really con
sisting in the development of intelligence and con
science,—that it is absolutely impossible to give from
the Bible instructions in the principles of morality
• Mr. Edward Maitland.
�A Neglected View of Education.
17
and religion suitable to children. There is an absolute
and irreconcilable antagonism between what is called
Biblical theology and correct principles of religion
and morality. Bearing in mind the fundamental fact
in human nature, that man’s view of Deity inevitably
reacts upon himself, tending to form him in the image
of his own ideal—it is evident that to familiarise
children with the imperfect morality, the coarse
manners and expressions, the rude fables, and the
unworthy conceptions of Deity, appertaining to a
people low in culture—such as were the Israelites—
and to confound their minds and consciences at the
most impressible period of life, by telling them that
such narratives and representations are all divinely
inspired and infallibly true—is to utterly stultify
ourselves and the whole of the principles by which
we profess to be actuated in giving them an educa
tion at all. Did we find any others than our
selves, any South Sea savages for example, putting
into the hands of their children, books containing
coarse and impure stories, detailing the morbid
anatomy of the most execrable vices, extolling deeds
prompted by a spirit of the lowest selfishness, exult
ing in fraud, rapine, and murder, and justifying what
ever is most disgraceful to humanity, by representing
it as prompted or approved by their Deity, and so
making Him altogether such a one as themselves—
surely we should say that they must be savages of the
lowest and most degraded type, and sad proofs of the
utter depravity of human nature. Palpable to the
eyes of all are the hideous tales of Lot and his
daughters; Judah and Tamar; the massacre of
Shechemites; the Levite of Ephraim; David and
Bathsheba ; Amnon and his sister, and whole chapters
of Leviticus and the Prophets. That such things
should be in a book freely given to children to read,
and that they should be expected, notwithstanding, to
grow up pure and uncontaminated in mind and habit,
�18
A Neglected View of Education.
is one of those anomalies in the British character
which makes it a hopeless puzzle to the world. Who
can say that much of the viciousness at present pre
valent among us is not attributable to early curiosity
being aroused and stimulated by the obscenities of
the Old Testament.”
And if we turn from the Old Testament to the New,
mingled with the unquestionably precious gems of
moral teaching, we have hopeless contradictions in
the narratives and precepts of the Gospels, and false
and degrading doctrines in the epistles, which may
safely be credited with a vast amount of prevailing
intellectual confusion, sectarian fanaticism, and low
morality. Teachers should be required both by
School Boards and parents, to hold back the know
ledge of the Bible from the pupils till their latest
stage of training, and when the objectionable portions
are taught, the pupils should be made to understand
that these represent only the imperfect notions of a
semi-barbarous age and people, and as having no
special claim upon their reverence. And the passages
of the Bible that harmonise with natural morality,
should be presented as the outcome—not of any super
natural revelation—but of the ordinary moral instincts
of higher humanity.
We want the rising generation to cultivate freely
the art of thinking for themselves, to sift out the
precious from the vile in their investigation of truth,
to be always certain that the premises they reason
from are based on provable facts, and to draw their
conclusions logically from these premises; and not from
sentiment or passive submission to traditional or con
ventional authority, to be blinded or awed into the
surrender of their individual judgments ; and books
on history, science, art, and the philosophy of morals,
having a tendency to develope eorrect and indepen
dent thought, should from the first be put in their
hands. We want them to be of delicate, pure, and
�A Neglected View of Education.
19
elevated feeling, and the right method of disciplining
this part of their nature is nowhere better set forth
than in that admirable book by Charles Bray, on
the ‘Education of the Feelings.’ We want their
imaginations to be filled with images of unsullied
beauty, and the most vigilant care should be taken
that a selection should be made of works of poetry
and fiction, pre-eminently Shakspeare and Goethe,
free from all maudlin and spurious ideas of life and
duty.
We want their memories to be strong, and choice
passages of intellectual and moral value should be
stored early verbatim in their minds, the full force of
which will be interpreted in the progress of their ex
perience. We want their powers of observation to
be acute, and nothing is better adapted for this pur
pose than a thorough acquaintance with the prominent
facts in the history of ancient and modern nations,
the classifications of objects in geography, botany,
geology, chemistry, and astronomy. We want their
control of their physical functions, their appetites and
passions to be strict and intelligent, and a knowledge of
physiology and the laws of health should be judiciously
instilled. When this view of education has taken
the place of the narrow and insipid trifling to which
education has been subordinated by fashion and sec
tarianism, in this and other countries ; when we have
learned to view the claims of education, in short, not
in relation to sect, creed, and social station, but in
relation to the natural requirements of the mind and
the life of humanity, our class-books, like our teachers,
will be wonderfully in advance of anything ever pre
viously known. Unfortunately the illusion usually
held out to youth as the prime incentive to diligence
in culture is the qualification, which education is sup
posed to give for money-getting and social distinction.
But, with a heightening standard of life in its objects
�20
A Neglected View of Education.
and aims erected in our schools and our families, this
degrading fallacy, too, must eventually disappear.
*
So much, then, is clear. The best teachers will
not avail without suitable methods. But the last
requisite is by no means the least important, viz., the
rigid practice of what is learnt theoretically. A
glaring defect here sadly impairs our success, espe
cially as regards the moral training of the people.
The seed must not only be good and must not only
be sown in prepared soil; it must also be dug about
and helped forward in its growth by the varied
practical experience of what is taught. This is
not wholly overlooked in some of the branches of
intellectual education. It is only the practice of
reading and writing that can test our knowledge
of the rules of grammar. It is only the working
out of numerical and geometrical problems that can
prove our mastery of arithmetic and geometry. The
measure of our acquaintance with the laws of musical
harmony can be best ascertained by exercise on
some musical instrument. How, then, can we hope
for children to become thoroughly trained in morals
unless opportunities are sysZema&caZZy afforded them
for the practice of the principles and laws of virtue ?
This is not the view acted upon by orthodox churches.
I was lately thrown into the company of a self-made
religious man—a type of a large class—who depre
cated the higher quality of secular education now
sought to be given to the children of the masses. He
believed that its result would be to make them dis
satisfied with their position in life, and tempt them
into dishonest schemes, in order to raise themselves
in the social scale; and as for their moral improve
ment, he held that that could alone be attained by
what he termed “ the grace of God.” I told him that
♦Nothing'could be more true and seasonable than the remarks of
Lord Derby on this point in his Rectoral address before the Edinburgh
University.
�A Neglected View of Education.
21
was a phrase I could not understand, and one which
belonged to a bygone age of ignorance and supersti
tion, at which he expressed himself “ sorry for me.”
The old Evangelical notion was—and it is not yet
extinct—that at conversion the soul receives some
mystic essence from Heaven that transmutes its whole
texture supernaturally, so that a new nature is im
parted, which involuntarily manifests itself in suc
cessful aspirations after an almost perfect moral life,
just as an acid and a carbonate combined dissolve and
effervesce in water and change the taste of the liquid.
But, in point of fact, is this radical transformation by
“ grace ” ever seen in daily life ? Having had special
opportunities of studying the interior life of the
religious world for a quarter of a century, I
solemnly declare that I have never once seen the
alleged moral transformation answering to the
theory. Look narrowly into the lives of the vast
majority confirmed by bishops, or admitted to par
take of “ the Lord’s Supper ” in Nonconformist com
munions as “ children of God ” and “ heirs of grace,”
and say if those, as a rule, who profess to be “ saved ”
and “sanctified” by “grace,” are the characters that,
as a whole, approach the noblest moral ideals. While
churches multiply and increase, are justice and truth
and honour and self-denying generosity among their
adherents increasing ? Are there fewer instances of
vexation among employers or of eye-service among
the employed ? Nearly all those who serve in our
families have passed through Sunday-schools, and in
many cases are “ communicants.” Are they, as a
class, becoming more faithful in their duties, more
truthful in their speech, and more honest in their
conduct ? The doctrine of “ sanctifying grace ”
has more frequently than not proved a barrier to
the growth of simple, unaffected natural virtues. So
lulled are many religious minds into delusion by
the imagined power of grace, that ordinary and
�22
A Neglected View of Education,
sound morality is despised by church members as a
product of “ the flesh.” And the effect of this deadly
error upon multitudes of orthodox teachers who
believe it, is to make them feel it to be almost a pre
sumption to try to implant virtue in the child’s mind
by rule and system, while they believe that there is a
mass of inherited depravity in every soul which can
only be overcome by some mysterious and irresistible
inworking of “ the third Person of the Trinity ” in
the mind.
In the school system of the future there will be
scientific arrangements for the discipline of the powers
and dispositions of the children. As a basis of ope
rations, the predominating tendencies of the child’s
mind will be duly ascertained by indices, craniological
and physiognomical, his more marked inherited idiosyncracies will be carefully inquired about and kept
in vie wat all times by the teacher, for his guidance
in dealing with the child’s faculties, and the training
will be adapted accordingly. The unsympathetic
selfishly-disposed child will have special circumstances
planned for his special benefit and adapted to his
moral wants. He will be guided to study the lives
of the unselfish and morally heroic, and, in company
with his teacher, he will be brought in contact with
scenes of misfortune, want, pain, and sickness, at
intervals, for protracted periods—scenes from which
he would tend constitutionally to recoil—that his
spirit may become habitually penetrated by the
sympathy which such spectacles are calculated to
inspire. The same child will have selected for him
the companionship of the most refined, sensitive, and
disinterested of his school-fellows; and such a train
of influence, shaped and brought to bear upon his
weak points continuously, could not fail to greatly
modify the outcome of his natural tendencies. So
will each moral imperfection be dealt with, with
all the care with which a surgeon watches and
�A Neglected View of Education.
23
operates upon a wound, till it be healed. The hard
headed youth, in whom the imaginative element is
defective, will be specially exercised in the power of
discriminating the merits of aesthetic compositions,
—varied forms of beauty in pictures, statuary, music,
and healthy works of fiction, in addition to the pabu
lum supplied for the proper training of his stronger
faculties. The pupil who may have inherited defi
cient sentiments of honour, truthfulness, and justice,
will be suddenly and from time to time placed by his
masters in circumstances calculated to thrust habi
tually, yet tenderly, but prominently, his moral
defects upon his attention, till a sense of shame and
disgust at his faults will induce in time efforts to
subdue them. And so with the subjugation of all
other innate crooked propensities.
In spite of the abuse of the system of penance and
confession in the Roman Catholic Church, which we
are bound to deprecate, there is, nevertheless, at the
root of that corrupt system a principle which might,
under the direction of a sound philosophy of educa
tion, be employed with advantage in general training.
The extreme of morbid and microscopic analysis of
moral faults is doubtless bad; but the opposite ex
treme of leaving the moral culture of the rising gene
ration, as at present, to the vague inculcation of
maxims and precepts, is equally to be avoided. The
dispositions of each pupil’s mind should be mapped
out, and each weakness minutely particularised and
dealt with in detail. Under such a well-defined
method, who can tell the transcendant improvement
that, in half a century, might be worked in civilised
nations !
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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A neglected view of education.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Macfie, Matthew
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: A lecture delivered at Mr. M. D. Conway's Chapel, Camden Town, November 21st, 1875. Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
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CT172
Subject
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Education
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (A neglected view of education.), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Education
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
An address to the people of Cambridge from the School Committee concerning a recent case of corporal punishment in the Allston Grammar School
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cambridge (Mass) School Committee
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass.
Collation: 24 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Mr Henry W. Muzzey presented the report. Published by order of the Board. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Press of John Wilson and Son
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1866
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5182
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (An address to the people of Cambridge from the School Committee concerning a recent case of corporal punishment in the Allston Grammar School), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Corporal Punishment
Education
School Discipline