U. C. L. A.
EDUC. DEPT,
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
Studies in the History of
Educational Opinion from
the Renaissance
SonOon: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,
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Studies in the History of
Educational Opinion from
the Renaissance
By
S. S. LAURIE, A.M., LL.D.
Professor of the Institutes and
History of Education, University of Edinburgh.
CAMBRIDGE :
at the University Press.
1903
U. C. 1. A.
EDUC. DEPT,
PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Education
1! P I A Libm *
U, U L, f\. /
EDUC. DEPL
PREFATORY NOTE.
I VENTURE to issue these Lectures in the conviction that
the study of the History of Education in the writings of the
most distinguished representatives of various schools of thought
*
is an important part of the general preparation of those who
adopt the profession of Schoolmaster. To present a general
historical outline of opinion I have found in practice to be
uninstructive as compared with an analytic exposition of the
doctrines of eminent writers themselves. At the same time,
the leading characteristics of the historical development have
to be indicated.
To deal with the whole question of education during the
period of transition from the scholastic philosophy and
monastic and cathedral schools down to these times or even
to 1600, which may be regarded as the beginning of the
Modern period, is beyond my power. And even if I had the
necessary learning, I doubt if by so doing I would serve the
purpose I have in view so well as by selecting representative
827733
VI PREFATORY NOTE
men and interesting students of education in their methods.
For my purpose is the education of those who mean to
devote their lives to education.
The student, who adds to a study of this volume the
accounts of Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel in Quick's
Educational Biographies and some good exposition of Herbart,
will have a very fair acquaintance with the main lines of
educational opinion since the Renaissance.
I would apologise for the large space I give to Locke,
did I not think that his Thoughts read along with his Conduct
of the Understanding is, spite of some obvious faults, the
best treatise on education which has ever appeared with the
(doubtful) exception of Quintilian.
S. S. L.
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH,
December 1902.
NOTE. Four of the sixteen chapters of this volume have appeared
in books now for some time out of print.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Renaissance, 1320-1600 3
II. The Renaissance and the School First Period
(1320-1450). Vittorino da Feltre, 1378-1446 . 18
III. The Second Period of the Renaissance (1450-1600).
Trotzendorf; Sturm ; Neander .... 24
IV. Universities 31
V. " The Governour," by Sir Thomas Elyot ; ? 1490-1546 38
VI. Rabelais : Monk, Physician, Cure 1 of Meudon.
I483(?)-I553. Note on Erasmus; 1466-1536
(P- 55) 46
VII. Roger Ascham, the Humanist; 1515-1568 . . 58
VIII. The Jesuits. Order founded 1534 .... 86
IX. Montaigne, the French Rationalist, 1533-1592 . . 94
THE MODERN PERIOD, FROM 1600 A.D.
X. Francis Bacon, 1561-1626 119
XI. Comenius, the Sense-Encyclopaedist and Founder
of Method; 1592-1671 138
XII. John Milton, the Classical Encyclopaedist ; 1608-
1674 159
XIII. John Locke, the English Rationalist ; 1632-1704 . 181
XIV. John Locke continued 208
XV. John Locke concluded. " The Conduct of the
Understanding" 222
XVI. Herbert Spencer, the modern Sense-Realist . . 235
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE
SCHOOL."
CHAPTER I.
THE RENAISSANCE, 13201600.
First Period, 1320 1450.
Second Period, 1450 1600.
THE Renaissance, or the Revival of Letters, is the name by
which we distinguish the period which saw the revolt of the
intellect of Europe against Mediaevalism in all its forms,
political, ecclesiastical, philosophical, and literary. It has
correctly enough been called a ' Humanistic ' revival ; but
the word ' Humanistic,' if it is to be a true designation, must
be interpreted broadly and not confined to the revived interest
in Litterae Humaniores.
The revival, indeed, was inevitable from the day on which
the intellect of Europe had built for itself a house to live in,
and put on the roof, and made fast the doors. Thought on
moral and religious questions had on certain lines exhausted
itself and been rounded off, after having been organized into a
system, provided with administrators and guarded by penalties.
Of the Church Secular, the Church Monastic, and of Civil
Polity this is true. Nay, of the Universities, presumed to be
the centres of a living intellectual activity the mind of
Europe it was also substantially true, from 1200 A.D. till the
time of Descartes. The great organizing intellect of the Middle
4 THE RENAISSANCE, I32O-I6OO
Ages was St Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1272. The disputa-
tions, which gave zest to Academic life for centuries before and
after St Thomas, contained, many of them, grave issues ; but
they were all within certain recognized authoritative lines. And
even where they raised questions that might have called forth
answers fatal to the prevalent theological system, these were
often discussed as matters purely intellectual, which, however
they might be settled in the dialectical arena, could not disturb
the dogmas of Faith. Even after the Revival was in full swing,
doctors had, not seldom, one opinion for philosophic schools,
another for the Church and the world outside. They were
scarcely honest, as we now count honesty ; but intellectual
honesty is in these days a cheap virtue ; and yet, spite of this,
a good many think it even now too dear at the price to be paid
for it.
The House which mediaeval faith, scholastic philosophy
and ecclesiastical administrative genius had built for itself,
was, because of its very completeness, a prison. Perhaps it
may safely be said that there is no possible organized system
of thought and life, which could sustain for long its despotism
over the mind of the higher races of men. Reason is in its
essence free, and will always react against uniformity of
opinion and custom. It is a disruptive force. The laying of
the last stone of a temple is the beginning of its decay.
At the same time let us note this fact, that had it not been
for the freedom of discussion inevitably connected with the
mediaeval Universities from the nth century onwards, the
mind of Europe would not have been prepared for any new
advance. The scholastic disputations and the revival of
Hellenic abstract thought, while they gave form and stability
to Catholic doctrine, yet stirred a speculative spirit which went
far beyond the limits which the Church would have prescribed.
We see this spirit operating as early as Abelard. The Hellenic
literature and attitude to life was the great intellectual foe of
the Church in the early centuries of the Christian era : again
THE RENAISSANCE, I32O-l6oO 5
it intruded itself, and the conflict had to be renewed and is
still progressing. It is, at bottom, a struggle between Naturalism
in the broad Hellenic sense of that term and Supernaturalism.
The former, while necessarily unstable, lends itself to progress ;
the latter is, as authoritative, stable, and suspicious of all move-
ment.
But there were other precursors of the Renaissance. The
Crusades had disturbed the mind of Europe and brought
nations into contact with each other. Above all, they had
brought the more thoughtful and inquiring minds into touch
with Byzantine and Arabic learning, which was itself in the
direct line of Hellenic tradition. Secondly, the general rise of
nationalities and the beginnings of national vernacular litera-
tures were indications of a stirring of the mind of Europe of
which it would be difficult to find an explanation. The
national songs and poems which formed the basis of the
Romance of the Cid in Spain (from nSoA.D. onward),
the Chansons de Geste of a still earlier date, the Provencal
poets, the Niebelunglied in Germany (i3th century), the
Scandinavian Sagas (from ninth century onwards), the Romance
of Arthur among the Celts of England and its translation
into English, the Romances (chief of which was Amadis of
Gaul) were all unmistakable signs of the beginning of a way
of looking at human life and of a free enjoyment of the human
intellect in its own creations, which had little in common with
the ecclesiasticism and monasticism of the ages prior to the
i3th century 1 . It is probable, however, that the supreme agent
in reinstating in man a belief in his natural powers was the
intense intellectual activity at all University centres to which
I have referred above, and which led to the raising of many
questions which had been held to be finally settled. And
1 We get a very instructive account of the pre- Renaissance literary
activity in Warton's History of English Poetry.
6 THE RENAISSANCE, 1320-1600
to this we may add the order of Chivalry so closely associated
with individual prowess and character. Thus Europe passed
out of a period of dogmatic and ecclesiastical bondage into the
freer life of the modern world by very gradual steps, and found
itself unawares in a new intellectual attitude to life and pos-
sessed by a higher faith in human capacities and possibilities.
This advance is correctly enough called the Renaissance.
The new movement ran in three main streams which had a
common source, and that common source was simply Reason
itself as a free, and even rebellious, activity. These streams
were Art, Religion, and Science, or, to put it otherwise, life in
life itself and nature impelled by its fulness to seek the satis-
faction of utterance in beautiful forms through the medium
of language and the other materials and vehicles of artistic ex-
pression; a new and deeper sense of the personal and immediate
relation of the spirit of man to the moral order and to God ; and
a pursuit of truth for its own sake. An immediate and fresh
looking at man and human experience may be said to sum
up the Revival. Thus we find living in the first period, Dante,
Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Chaucer ; and also WyklifFe, Huss,
and Jerome of Prag. When we consider the achievements of
these men, and the still earlier vernacular literatures to which
we have referred above, it is evident that the Renaissance was
not dependent on the revival of Latin and Greek literature for
its origin or its permanence.
It was, however, inevitable that in seeking for an expression
of Life and Art, the more active minds should be drawn to
what was ready-made, but had been forgotten. Latin literature
and, subsequently, the study of Greek, accordingly, were the
two great occupations of the Humanists. In the middle of the
i5th century, says Hallam, "The spirit of ancient learning was
diffused," on the Italian side of the Alps. "The Greek
language might then be learned in four or five cities, and an
acquaintance with it was a recommendation to the favour of
the great ; while the establishment of Universities at Pavia,
THE RENAISSANCE, I32O-l6oO 7
Turin, Ferraraand Florence" (during the preceding generation)
" bore witness to the generous emulation which they served to
redouble and concentrate." Hallam, i. pt. i. ch. 2. Ambitious
scholars from Northern lands visited Italy to participate in the
new learning. Wessel was there in 1470, Rudolf Agricola in
1476.
It is correct to say that the first period of what is
commonly known as the Renaissance was, to begin with,
solely, and till towards the end of the i5th century chiefly,
Italian, whether we regard vernacular writings, the revived
study of Latin and Greek literature, the growth of Art, or
the reaction against mediaeval theology. Unfortunately, the
new delight in literature, art, and a natural life, and the total
breach with religious tradition, led to wide-spread scepticism
and to a loosening of moral bonds. A life of pleasure and
even of licence was characteristic of the time. Impatience
with the theological conception of life took a negative character,
and Christianity was nowhere at such a low ebb as in Rome
and the other cities of Northern Italy.
The second period of the Revival may be dated from the
fall of the Eastern capital (1453), and the consequent dispersion
of Greek scholars. This gave fresh life to the pursuit of ancient
learning, just as Hellenic studies received a great impulse in
ancient Rome after the fall of Corinth. The invention of
printing also was a vital factor in securing the diffusion and
permanence of Humanism, while the invention of the mariner's
compass had a potent effect in extending the world-view. For
more than a century, before and after the above date, men
occupied themselves chiefly with Hellenic and Roman literature.
Thereafter, the slowly growing vernacular and original literatures
of Europe began to take form, and gradually to oust the ancients
from exclusive possession. These continued to hold the field
only in the schools. Art in painting and architecture continued
to share in the general reawakening.
The second stream of the rebirth, anticipated by Wykliff e
8 THE RENAISSANCE, I32O-l6oO
Huss, and Jerome of Prag, was the Religious. In this field
of thought, man longed to see through form, dogma and
ritual into the realities of the life of the soul. The Human-
istic movement was thus closely allied with the theological,
north of the Alps. In Italy, theology had been abjured
and moral laxity had been the result. North of the Alps,
however, there was always present a genuine feeling for the
spiritual life, although the Courts of Princes had been largely
Italianized. A longing for 'reality' in divine things, as opposed
to mere dogmatic form, was conspicuous in the Mystics and in
such men as Wessel, of whom both Erasmus and Luther speak in
laudatory terms. But prior to him, Florentius Radewin, with
the consent of his master, Gerard Groote 1 , had founded the
"Brothers of the Common Life" (Hieronymians), whose
governing idea was life rather than doctrine, and who allied
their religious aims with a restricted humanistic study. Floren-
tius died in 1400, Wessel in 1489, and Thomas a Kempis in 1471.
I name these men because the great intellectual and moral forces
operating during the earlier portion of the second period are
to be found chiefly north of the Alps, if we are to take a large
view of the Renaissance. The pagan and unbelieving spirit
among the Humanists of Italy was not shared by the Northern
men. With them, Humanism and a reformed Theology based
on the original Gospels went hand in hand. There was no
separation of the Humanistic and the Religious revivals ; nor
indeed, when Humanism at its first dawn was recognized by
Catholic prelates in Italy, was it ever imagined that there
could be any necessary antagonism.
The houses and schools of the " brethren of the common
life " spread throughout the Netherlands, Germany and France.
The central motive-force was a religious one an attempt to
return to a simple New Testament life. They had, as I have
said above, a tendency to Mysticism. They were in fact Mystics,
in so far as subjective feeling and an intense personal experience
1 Born at Deventer 1340.
THE RENAISSANCE, I32O--l6oO 9
arising out of this, as opposed to elaborate dogma, governed
their Christianity. It was natural that such men should think
more of the education of the mass of the people than dogma-
tists or the literary humanists could be expected to do. They
welcomed humanistic learning certainly, but always as subordi-
nate to the religious life ; and, for a time, only in the restricted
form of classical Latin and the literature of the Romans. Even
in the struggles of the Reformation period, we find in Luther
(d. 1546) and Melanchthon (d. 1560) the Humanistic and
the Theological in perfect harmony. It has been usual to
regard the more literary Erasmus, because he disapproved of
some of Luther's methods and of his insistence on the doctrine
of Justification by Faith alone, as a kind of literary sce'ptic, like
the neo-pagan Italians. This accusation, it seems to me, is no
more true of him than it would be if directed against his English
friends Colet and Sir Thomas More. These men represented
what in this country has been called evangelical Broad-Church-
ism, and worked in the genuine spirit of Protestantism and of a
spiritual Christianity. The moderation of Erasmus as con-
trasted with the fiery zeal of Luther does not detract from his
earnestness. We find his humane and enlightened religious
convictions stated in his Enchiridion and in his exquisite and
sympathetic portraiture of the rare character of the Franciscan
John Vitrarius 1 .
The third stream of the Revival was a Scientific stream
an extended knowledge of the earth and inquiry into the
causes of things. This followed the literary and religious.
Advanced spirits began to study nature as a system of laws
and to supersede scholastic and theological a priori construc-
tions by knowledge based on the observation of facts. This
and the extension of geographical knowledge profoundly affected
1 See Drummond's Life of Erasmus, cap. IV. Also in his true "Method
of Theology" in the Novum Testatnentum.
IO THE RENAISSANCE, 1320-1600
the world-view of all thinking men. Columbus, Galilei, Pom-
ponazzi, Ludovicus Vives all belong to the second period.
The old order as represented by the Pope and Charles V.
had now taken alarm and resisted all reform. The Church
quickly gathered together its forces ; and by the decrees of
the Council of Trent and the activity of its agents everywhere
and, with the help of the Jesuits (1540) and the Inquisition,
made great way in recovering its hold on the rebellious mind
of Europe. Humanism, the reformed religion, and national
liberty had now all to fight for their existence against the principle
of imperial absolutism supported by clerical absolutism centred
in the Pope. The larger and more vital human interest
necessarily obscured the lesser, and what concerned the life
of the masses of the people dwarfed the claims of Humanism
and culture which were for the few. Moreover, the example
of Italy had shown the world that a society whose dominating
idea was Art contained the germs of the decay of morals and
of all manly virtues. Man does not live by bread alone, that
is to say, a material civilization: Italy placed it beyond all
question that man cannot live by Art alone, however widely
we interpret that word.
Protestant and Catholic alike, in strengthening their de-
fences, had to surround themselves with the buttresses of
dogma; and thus the reformed religion, while retaining at its
heart the principle of freedom, yet narrowed itself to a stringent
orthodoxy which was, and still is, wherever it exists, almost
as great an enemy to the life and art and free philosophy
that are the essential characteristics of pure Humanism as
the mediaeval system was before it was put on its defence.
"U'ith this new orthodoxy was inseparably bound up an earnest
ethical spirit, the principles of civil and religious liberty, and
the eternal interests of the individual. Where could literature
and art find a footing in the face of such important political
and tremendous personal issues? Those belong to the 'world';
THE RENAISSANCE, 1320-1600 II
and the true Christian, it was felt (as in the fourth century), can
know nothing of them, or at best only play with them. We
live in more fortunate times. The humanistic and the theo-
logical now respect each other's aims the theological spirit
having now accepted the best in literature and art and also
that result of the Renaissance which we call science; and
(what is of more importance), having become alive to funda-
mental questions, recognizing that these can only be answered
by the help of a free philosophy and scientific investigation
which shall unite religious thought with the humanistic and
naturalistic theory of life. But the parallel streams have not
yet wholly mingled their waters : that cannot happen until
religion shall have been wholly humanised, and philosophy,
literature and science have been in their turn consecrated.
In Italy we have, during this second period, in addition
to those I have named, Pico, and his friends Politian and
Ficino, and in the sphere of religion Savonarola (b. 1452);
in Holland Erasmus, and in England his friends Grocyn,
Linacre, Colet and More. Greek and a simpler theology than
that of Aquinas had already established itself at Oxford,
whither Erasmus came to extend his knowledge of it In
Germany we have, among others, Rudolf Agricola and
Reuchlin ; and in theology, the Mystics and Brethren of the
Common Life, to whom I have already referred '.
I am well aware that a brief survey of a great and complex
historical movement is, simply because it is inadequate, to
that extent inaccurate, but it is necessary to an intelligent
comprehension of education as affected by the Renaissance
that some such survey should be given.. We may take the
date of the death of Melanchthon (1560) as sufficiently well
1 Chiefly owing to the writings of the Neo-Platonist the pseudo-
Dionysius Areopagiticus, mysticism had never died out during the Middle
Ages; and, in truth, the writings of Dionysius taken along with those of
St Augustine entered, though not so largely as the philosophy of Aristotle,
into the work of the Schoolmen.
12 THE RENAISSANCE, 1320-1600
indicating the period up to which the Religious Reformation
and Humanism maintained a close alliance north of the Alps.
The Humanism of the Reformation is, indeed, well represented
by Melanchthon's text-books for school and college. To this
date the Humanistic and Religious streams had not yet
separated their waters. They now, however, began to diverge.
The Order of the Jesuits was founded in 1540 and flung
down the gauntlet to Protestantism, while so far recognizing the
modern spirit as to take up into its educational system as much
of the new Humanism as was thought safe. Unfortunately, the
reformers of Church and School were too exclusively occupied
with the instruction in the evangelical faith of the masses of
the people to institute any agency of secondary education
capable of coping with the Jesuit organization. The Hiero-
nymians, or a Protestant Order on the same basis, and with
the same aims, could alone have done for modern ideas what
the Jesuits did for mediaeval doctrine and papal supremacy.
The scattered efforts of a great humanistic teacher here and
there were helpless in the presence of an organized force, with
an educational method, and backed by all the power of the
Roman Catholic Church. They confined themselves to the
education of the upper section of society, whilst the educa-
tional zeal of the Reformers, in perfect consistency with their
point of view, expended itself (as I have indicated) chiefly on
the common school and catechetical instruction. In the Uni-
versities the pervading influence was still theological and
Aristotelian.
Classical Humanism had now reached the age of criticism
and learned editions, culminating in those scholars, of whom
the younger Scaliger and Casaubon may be regarded as
principes. It is interesting to note in the divergent move-
ments of religion and literature the same tendencies to
criticism, revision and formulation after the first fervour had
exhausted itself. And yet we may say that, down to about the
THE RENAISSANCE, 1320-1600 13
year 1600, Latin 'style' was still the mark of the humanistic
man of culture, just as a genuine faith in the living substance,
as opposed to the dogmatic form, of Christianity was still the
mark of the reformed theologian.
The above brief survey will enable us to see how the study
of language became the common bond between the literary
and religious promoters of the Revival in the i5th and i6th
centuries. A barbarous and monkish Latinity was the vehicle
of a barbarous and monkish conception of life. We cannot
separate Language and Thought. Hence the identification of
the Humanistic Revival as Literary and Aesthetic with the
study of Latin and Greek the two great vehicles of literature
and art common to the European world. Hence, too, the
identification of the revival of a pure Christianity with the
critical study of the same languages and of Hebrew. Latin
and Greek literature contained models of literary excellence,
while Greek and Hebrew contained the primitive record of a
great historical faith. To understand the true significance of
the faith it was necessary to understand the original records
in which it was given first to the world. The great weapon
against the religious corruptions of the time accordingly was
the Bible and nothing but the Bible, and its interpretation
in the spirit of antiquity and unencumbered by the dogmatism
of the Church and the dialectic of the schoolmen. This was
the teaching of the great Erasmus, who was less scholastic
than Luther, but as genuinely Christian. Men had to receive
the truths of God anew and to start afresh, as it were. Hence,
we may here say, the necessity of always maintaining scholarship
in a historical Church, if it is not to become an organ of
ignorant fanaticism and alienate all save the unhistorical
vulgar ; nay, even because of its extravagances and supersti-
tions, shut out the majority of reasonable men. In Philosophy,
Literature, Art, Theology and, we may add, in Political Science
also, we must ever and in all ages fall back on original sources,
14 THE RENAISSANCE, I32O-I6OO
and be constantly bringing to light the primary significance of
what has been achieved by our ancestors ; and this by a critical
study not only of their language, but also of the conditions of
past life. This, in fact, is History in its fundamental sense ;
and it will be granted universally that, if man is a progressive
being, he must understand the steps of his past progress, or,
failing this, go on repeating the barbarisms, not only of language,
but of thought and life, which preceded the great intellectual
epochs of the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans, the
nations which have laid the foundations of our modern poli-
tical societies, our individual culture, our philosophies and our
religious convictions.
Language, being thus the common bond of all the workers
of the Renaissance period, we must not be surprised that in
the education of youth it should itself have become an object
of idolatry and ultimately also of well-deserved satire. This
was one of the extravagances that attend all great movements,
whether they be intellectual or aesthetic, political or religious.
Note also that the idolatry of language was a restoration of the
ideal of education of Roman imperial times, viz. Oratory. But
we must never forget that the revival of Greek and Hebrew
had other than literary objects in view. Reuchlin, in first
introducing these languages into Germany, with his intense
humanism and simple scriptural Christianity, truly prepared
the way for Luther, by fixing attention on the original records,
and thus on the true meaning of the documents on which the
Church was founded.
It would be a great error, however, to suppose that the
influence of the Renaissance on education was restricted to
language. The Renaissance destroyed, as well as built up
anew, in every department of education.
"The education of the Middle Ages," says Mons. Compayre,
" once rigid and repressive, which condemned the body to a
regime too severe and the mind to a discipline too narrow, is
now to be followed (at least in theory) by an education broader
THE RENAISSANCE, I32O-l6oO 15
and more liberal ; which will give due attention to hygiene and
physical exercises ; which will enfranchise the intelligence
hitherto the prisoner of the syllogism ; which will substitute
real studies for the verbal subtleties of dialectic ; which will
give the preference to things over words ; which, finally, instead
of developing but a single faculty, the reason, and instead of
reducing man to a sort of dialectic automaton, will seek to
develope the whole man in mind and body, taste and knowledge,
heart and will " (p. 83).
The Humanism of Italy in the i5th century gave Europe
its new secondary school curriculum. Schoolmasters seem
however never to have realized that the Humanistic school
as originally conceived was much more than Humanistic; it
was Renaissance. It embraced much more than grammar
and,style. But even if we imitated the more eminent teachers
of the 1 6th century in the greater breadth of our curriculum,
it would be a mistake to allow ancient languages to dominate
the whole system as we have done hitherto. The Humanists
educated the few : we have now to give the higher education
to all above a certain age, and it is incumbent on us to re-
member this difference, and, in the light of it, to reconsider
our educational instruments. And this we can do effectually
only by considering the question of education itself what it
means, what it proposes to itself as aim. And this again
must be considered in close relation to the environment and
duties of modern nations. If we should come to the conclusion
that the purpose of educating a human mind can after all,
even in the 20th century, be best attained by bringing modern
boys into a living acquaintance with the literature of Greece
and Rome, then let us lay all our strength on this and try at
last to succeed. We have as yet failed. I should like the
Conference of Headmasters (confidentially) to tell the public
how many boys are annually stirred by a line of Homer,
touched by a line of Virgil, or led to appreciate eloquence by
16 THE RENAISSANCE, I32O-l6oO
an oration of Cicero or Demosthenes. Whether from want of
method or some other cause, failure is the one word that is
applicable to what we call ' classical ' education in the case of
95 per cent, of those who are said to have been ' put through '
it. And as to the remaining 5 per cent, the educational result
has in not a few cases been narrowness and pedantry and
preciosity the very negation of the true and living Renais-
sance spirit.
Personally I am disposed to think that there are no
instruments that can compare with Latin and Greek literature
if our purpose be culture. But to secure this result boys must,
in the university, be fit to receive and in a position to continue
the instruction which the school only begins. How many are
fit to receive and what proportion of those who receive and
respond are able, in face of the pressing demands of modern
life, to acquire familiarity with the great masters of antiquity ?
Can we think of no other scheme of education which will con-
serve the past while fitting for the living present ? Can we find
no modern definition of Humanism 1 ?
In the preceding pages I have endeavoured to give a brief
and general survey of the Renaissance down to 1600, and to
indicate generally its relation to education in the larger sense.
Our special business now is to speak of it solely in relation to
the actual work of school and university ; and this I shall
best do by adverting, to begin with, to the first period of the
Revival 1320-1450 and to the celebrated Italian school of
Vittorino da Feltre, which led the way for all Europe in point
of time at least, if not as a model.
Meanwhile let us note that we should expect to find in
schools the fertilizing effects of what I have called the three
streams of the Revival : the Literary, the Religious, and the
Scientific.
1 The closing chapter of Professor Lodge's Close of the Middle Ages
gives an excellent survey of the Renaissance Period, at once succinct and
full.
THE RENAISSANCE, 1320-1600 I/
The restoration of antiquity gave the chief direction to the
work of the secondary schools for obvious reasons. It was
only at school and in the university that a knowledge of the
ancients could be obtained. Latin and Greek had to be
laboriously acquired, whereas the active-minded student could
read his Dante and Petrarch and all vernacular contributions
to literature without the help of masters. This theory of
secondary instruction soon prevailed over all Europe, and
still governs the curriculum and aims of British secondary
schools. Nor, indeed, would there be much to regret in
this if boys got what they were supposed to get, and if the
modern "Public School" were as broad and vivifying in its
teaching as the earliest schools of the Renaissance both north
and south of the Alps. Save in a few cases, the European
schoolboy is as a matter of fact not humanized by Latin and
Greek. And I hold that it is not, under modern conditions,
possible to humanize him on so narrow a basis without a liberal
use of translations, familiarity with vernacular literature and
an introduction to national and universal history.
L.
CHAPTER II.
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE SCHOOL-
FIRST PERIOD (13201450).
THE thought of the Middle Ages, penetrated and sustained
(from A.D. 1050 at least) by the philosophy of Aristotle ', may
be said to have summed itself up in the organizing intellect of
St Thomas Aquinas, who died 1274. St Thomas was an
Italian, and it is in Italy also that we find the earliest
intellectual movements which are associated with the revival
of letters. In Italy it began, in so far as it was not an
outburst of native genius in the vernacular tongue, with a
resuscitation of the country's own ancient literature.
I have already said that it is incorrect to say that the new
awakening of the mind of Europe to poetry and the arts was
determined by the renewed interest in Virgil and Cicero and
the subsequent influence of Greek writers. Europe had, in
fact, long before begun to seek original expression for its own
view of human life. The Provencal poetry, the Northern
sagas, the Nibelungenlied, the poetry of the Anglo-Saxons,
the mediaeval romances efflorescing in Amadis of Gaul, were
the beginnings of a literature which owed nothing to a know-
ledge of the ancients ; and it would be a curious speculation
1 Partially known.
FIRST PERIOD. DA FELTRE 19
what modern literature would have been had it developed on
its own independent lines. The rediscovery of the literary
achievements of Rome and Greece accordingly, while they
gave a powerful impulse to modern thought and linguistic
expression, did not create it. And they gave more than
impulse. They presented modern Europe, still struggling
with its native forms of speech, with a perfected medium of
sentiment and thought literary art of the highest kind. The
natural result was that Latin, which had always remained,
though barbarized, the language of the educated, was now
considered to be the only worthy vehicle of expression. The
revival of pure Latinity was thus identified with the revival of
literature itself. It cannot be said that at any time this revival
of Latin gave birth, save in the case of Erasmus, to genuine
literature in Latin. Even Petrarch only partially succeeded.
From first to last the writers of the Renaissance were imitative,
and even consciously imitative ; and original genius could not
find expression for itself through what was essentially a foreign
medium. All that Latin even with the help of Greek could
give, apart from the substance of thought, was vocables, form,
and a standard of excellence. We are not far from the truth
in saying that a genuine literature is not possible save as a native
growth through the organ of the common speech of a people
the mother-tongue of the writer.
Vittorino da Feltre, 1378 1446.
The typical school of the First Renaissance was that of
Vittorino da Feltre, born 1378, died 1446. At Mantua,
whither he had gone on the invitation of the lord of
Mantua (Gonzaga), he opened a school for his children and
such others as might be admitted. As directly connected with
the reigning family this school might be called a Palatine
school, like that of Charlemagne and the ninth century 1 .
1 Also the school of Nebuchadnezzar and of the Persian kings.
20 FIRST PERIOD. DA FELTRE
The success of the school was due to the genius of Vittorino.
Endowed with a large share of common sense, he was able to
organize a school on the basis of Humanism which neither
exaggerated the claims of the ancients nor broke with the
mediaeval Christian ideal. The paganism, which already was
infecting the Renaissance, was as far removed from Vittorino's
sympathies as from those of the transalpine German Humanists
of the second period of the Revival. His educational method
was influenced by the ancients so far that a sound body was
regarded as the condition of a sound mind. Hence games
and bodily exercises, to which he attached great importance.
The supreme aim, however, was the penetration of the Christian
life with classical culture. But he did not exclude, as did
many subsequent schools which called themselves Humanistic,
other subjects of instruction. He believed that variety of
work promoted greater energy and activity of mind in the
pursuit of the dominant studies of the school. Arithmetic,
geometry, natural philosophy, natural history and music were
all admitted to the curriculum. As regards mere intellectual
culture, this was measured by him, as by all Humanists every-
where, by command over language. Ratio showed itself in
Oratio. Hence the great attention paid to constant composition
in Latin on the model of Cicero. In corporal punishment
Vittorino did not believe. He could dispense with it ; and,
indeed, I doubt if any great educator can be named who has
not dispensed with it, save in the very last resort. The moral
training of the pupils, extending even to their personal carriage,
was, considering the looseness of the time, rigid in its character ;
but it was accomplished by personal influence and supervision,
not by coercion. Vespasiano says that Da Feltre's academy
was a " sanctuary of manners, deeds, and words." Vittorino's
school was thus, in marked contrast to the monastic and
cathedral schools, an active, healthy, and happy school, with
a clearly defined ethical character.
We cannot read the account given by Mr Woodward and
FIRST PERIOD. DA FELTRE 21
Mr Addington Symonds (resting largely on Rosmini's life of
Da Feltre) without seeing that this typical Humanist, both in
respect of aim and method, was a close follower of Quintilian 1 .
The education given was Roman, not Hellenic, as became an
Italian school. Much of Quintilian was known before Poggio
discovered a complete MS. in 1414 at S. Gallen. Doubtless
Vittorino had perused the whole.
Vittorino died at the age of sixty-nine in 1446, the date at
which one may fix the beginning of the second period of the
Renaissance. " Wholly dedicated to the cares of teaching," says
Mr Addington Symonds 2 , "more anxious to survive in the
good fame of his scholars than to secure the immortality of
literature, Vittorino bequeathed no writings to posterity. He
lived to a hale and hearty old age, and when he died in 1446
it was found that the illustrious scholar, after enjoying for so
many years the liberality of his princely patron, had not
accumulated enough money to pay for his own funeral. What-
ever he possessed he spent in charity during his lifetime,
trusting to the kindness of his friends to bury him when dead.
Few lives of which there is any record in history are so
perfectly praiseworthy as Vittorino's : few men have more
nobly realized the idea of living for the highest objects of
their age; few have succeeded in keeping themselves so wholly
unspotted by the vices of the world around them."
The " importance of the position of Vittorino " (says
Mr Woodward, p. 91) "lay partly in his own scholarship and
reading but more in the genius which he manifested in
reducing the vast body of rediscovered literature to the
service of a new education" "The old ideal of knowledge,
the growth of centuries, was replaced almost within a generation
by a new one which should correspond in some way with a
1 "Roman Education," in The Historical Survey of Pre-Christian
Edufation, Longmans, 1897.
* Revival of Learning, p. 297.
22 FIRST PERIOD. DA FELTRE
deeper sense of national continuity and of the breadth of
human interests." "The relation of the new hope to the old
faith, the balance between literary form and moral content,
the conflict between the Greek ideal of the body and the
asceticism of the Church here were some of the graver
problems that pressed for attention." And I think that we
may say that Vittorino solved these problems for himself and
for the modern spirit in a combination of religious and
Humanistic teaching well-fitted to produce the cultured gentle-
man and capable citizen. Hallam (Lit. Hist. i. pt. i. cap. 2)
says, " If Gasparin (of Bergamo) was the best writer of this
generation, the most accomplished instructor was Victorin
of Feltre, to whom the Marquis of Mantua entrusted the
education of his own children. Many of the Italian nobility
and some distinguished scholars were brought up under the
care of Victorin in that city ; and in a very corrupt age he was
still more zealous for their moral than their literary improvement.
A pleasing account of his method of discipline will be found
in Tiraboschi, or more fully in Corniani from a life written by
one of Victorin's pupils, Prendilacqua. ' It could hardly be
believed,' says Tiraboschi, 'that in an age of such rude manners
a model of such perfect education could be found : if all to
whom the care of youth is entrusted would make it theirs,
what rich fruits they would derive from their labours ! ' The
learning of Victorin was extensive ; he possessed a moderate
library, and, rigidly demanding a minute exactness from his
pupils in their interpretation of ancient authors as well as in
their own compositions, laid the foundations of a propriety of
style which the next age was to display."
Among the writers on Education in Italy bred under the
impulse of the first Revival were :
(1) L. Bruni D'Arezzo who wrote De Studiis et Litter is
about 1405.
(2) Petrus Paulus Vergerius, one of the earliest humanistic
FIRST PERIOD. DA FELTRE 23
writers on Education, who was born in 1349 and wrote a
treatise, De ingenuis moribus, about 1392.
(3) Battista Guarino, born in 1434, wrote De Ordine
Docendi et Studendi (1459).
(4) Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II., died 1464),
wrote a treatise, De Liberorum Educatione.
These treatises have been translated by Mr Woodward in
his excellent book, Vittorino da Feltre and other Humanist
Educators (1897). They all breathe a common spirit. The
materials of education, apart from a grounding in Christian
faith and practice, are, whether we look to the making of the
man or the citizen, Language and Literature as exemplified in
the practice of Vittorino. This was the conviction of the
Humanists. The Christian life was to be sustained and adorned
by the life of culture, and culture was attainable only through
the Roman classics, and to a limited extent the Greek writers.
The methods of teaching and discipline advocated were, on the
whole, much sounder than any that were prevalent even during
the second Revival, and far in advance of the practice of
secondary schools down to the present time. The training of
the body and gymnastic were not lost sight of, I have said, nor
were other subjects than Latin ignored. In brief, the whole
educational movement of the First Renaissance and much of
the Second was an attempt to restore the best type of Romano-
Hellenic school as that is presented in Quintilian 1 .
We are not, of course, to suppose that there were many
schools modelled on that of Vittorino da Feltre or reaching the
perfection conceived by those Italians who wrote on Education.
But the general spirit and aim of the Humanists undoubtedly
began to leaven much of the instruction and to suggest also a
humaner moral discipline.
1 Greek was only beginning to be studied and taught.
CHAPTER III.
THE SECOND PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE
(1450 1600).
Trotzendorf; Sturm; Neander.
IT was only in the sphere of Christian doctrinal reform that
the first Revival can be said to have been operative north of
the Alps. It was identified largely with the names of Wykliffe
and Huss, and, we may add, Florentius Radewin (died 1400),
the founder of the " Brothers of the Common Life," whose
aim was practical Christianity (with a tendency to Mysticism)
rather than the cultivation of scholastic theology or religious
ritual. The second period of the Revival it is customary to
date from 1453, the Fall of Constantinople. The renewed
impulse given by the dispersion of Greek scholars, coinciding
as it did with the earliest practical application of the printing
art, guaranteed permanence. It was only this second Humanistic
revival which fully reached Northern nations. To this period
belong the transalpine names of Nicolaus of Cusa (d. 1464), at
once schoolman,' Humanist, and religious reformer in the
Catholic sense, Rudolf Agricola (d. 1485), Rabelais, Montaigne,
Hegius, Erasmus, Sturm, etc. So early as 1476 we find Alex.
Hegius at Deventer teaching the elements of Greek and a
classical Latinity in the spirit of Humanism to the boy Erasmus
among others. But it was quite the end of the century before
this example was much followed. The Cathedral school of
TROTZENDORF ; STURM ; NEANDER 25
Miinster under Langen and Murmellius was famous in the
beginning of the :6th century.
The best results of the Humanistic revival in the school
were, however, not fully visible north of the Alps until Trot-
zendorf, friend of Melanchthon, began his scholastic career
in 1516 at Gorlitz and afterwards as rector (1524) of the
Goldberg school. There were many schools, it is true,
throughout Europe in which instruction was given on the
lines of Trotzendorf, but none so celebrated as his. The
organization of the school, the extent to which the elder boys
were employed to assist the master both in the discipline and
the teaching, the spirit of friendliness between the master and
the elder pupils, all anticipate in a remarkable way what is
related of Dr Arnold. His school was called a "second
Latium." Latin alone was spoken, and the writing of themes
in classical Latinity was one of the chief aims of the grammati-
cal discipline. The authors read were, Cicero, Terence, Plautus,
Virgil and Ovid. In addition to this, Greek grammar and
selections from Greek authors formed part of the curriculum,
while logic and rhetoric (the latter chiefly based on the study
of Cicero's Orations, guided doubtless by the De Oratore] were
taught. Natural philosophy, music, and arithmetic, as then
understood, also received an adequate measure of attention.
Religious teaching was a conspicuous feature of the school, no
less than literature. From this course of instruction we may
infer the character of the school, and of similar schools in their
degree. He died in 1556. A very eminent schoolmaster he
was.
The course of school instruction under the Humanistic in-
fluence may also be gathered from the record of John Sturm of
Strassburg, where he began his celebrated Gymnasium in 1537,
continuing to superintend it for forty-five years. Sturm, a
distinguished scholar and theologian who had taught Greek
in Paris, was allied more to the French and Calvinistic
than the Lutheran reformers. He was a vigorous and stern
26 TROTZENDORF ; STURM ; NEANDER
master and insisted on the strict obedience of his assistants
in the Gymnasium as well as on application to study on the
part of the boys. He was a typical disciplinarian. His great
idea was education by means of Latin to which Greek was only
accessory. The power of speech was with him almost an end
in itself. Modern subjects, in so far as they were recognized
in the school, were subordinate to the Latinizing of them. He
desired that Latin should meet all the requirements of modern
life, and it is not an exaggeration to say that educated
Europe would now be speaking and writing in Latin alone,
if Sturm had had his way 1 . His strong points as a school-
master were the accuracy of work he demanded from each
class and his power of organization. There were nine classes,
beginning with boys of seven years of age. Each class had
its master and each master had in his hand an epistle from
the Rector which constituted his marching orders, so to speak.
The Strassburg Gymnasium was in fact the model of the
Jesuit schools and of all the secondary schools of Europe,
much more than the more enlightened Lutheran and Italian
schools.
Sturm wrote extensively on the subject of Education.
Michael Neander, again, pupil of Melanchthon, and rector
of the Cloister school at Ilfeld in the Hartz, was born in 1525,
and died in 1595. His conceptions of education were large and
comprehensive. He had, I think, a more living mind than any
other Northern schoolmaster. He even asked himself why he
should teach Latin and Greek at all a daring, even audacious
question in the full tide of Humanism. This openness of mind
was, I say, of the essence of Humanism, though already many
of the leading Humanists had foreclosed all such questions.
Ciceronian Latin had become a fetich, as Erasmus saw. It was
not possible for more than one generation of grown men to live
solely by imitation. I do not say that Neander, or even
1 See footnote on p. 146.
TROTZENDORF ; STURM ; NEANDER 27
Melanchthon, deliberately recognized this. They were too
much involved in the movement. The question, indeed, could
not arise with them ; for the duty of all men, then and there,
was to connect the life of the modern world with the pre-
Christian. And yet, where the true Hellenic spirit showed
itself it could not but be a living and progressive spirit.
Neander showed by his teaching and his curriculum that he
possessed the true Hellenic spirit in fuller measure than most.
History, geography, science, music, all entered into his school
in addition to the traditionary (but reformed) grammar, rhetoric,
and dialectic. He had to make books to supply his wants,
where Melanchthon had not already anticipated him. A hand-
book of natural philosophy and a Compendium Chronicorum
(a kind of universal history) and a geography entitled Orbis
Terrae Divisio came from his pen. Up to the sixteenth year
Latin and Greek were the chief subjects studied ; but there
was a wide course of reading so wide indeed that much of it
must have been cursive. In the sixteenth year Hebrew was
begun, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth the elements and
chief precepta of logic and rhetoric ; and thereafter physics,
geography, and history. If we compare this curriculum with
that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we become
alive to the barrenness of even our best schools, after the
ardour of young Humanism had cooled. The realism, which
is also the reality, of Humanism was, in truth, nobly illustrated
at Ilfeld ; for there, under Neander, are found the direct con-
tact of the young mind with a wide range of literature,
with rhetoric, dialectic, history, and also with the world of
nature.
We are not to imagine, however, that there were many
schools even in the earlier decades of the i6th century like
those of Murmellius, Trotzendorf, Neander, and Sturm ; but
there were not a few working on the same lines : and in
England, after the reforms of Colet (friend of Erasmus and
More) in the foundation of St Paul's, the stream of literary
28 TROTZENDORF ; STURM ; NEANDER
Humanism flowed through many schools during the i6th century
Stratford-on-Avon, among others, which Shakespeare attended.
Elyot and Ascham (1515-1568) were along with Mulcaster its
literary prophets.
In the institutions of the men whom I have named we
find the best types of the Humanistic school. There was in all
of them, as in the earlier Italian school of Da Feltre, a com-
bination of religious with Humanistic aims. The classical
fervour of Italy and the religious earnestness of the North met
in the educational leaders ; and many other teachers through-
out Germany, France, and the Low Countries, though less
personally distinguished, carried the same combined influences
into the daily work of instruction. Nor did these combined
aims ever after wholly cease to characterize the secondary
schools of Europe. The general curriculum was, however,
soon narrowed and the methods degenerated.
The narrowing of the educational aim and the return to mere
verbalism was, in truth, not long of coming. If it be the essence
of Humanism in its larger meaning that it was an opening of
men's eyes afresh to nature and life, the exhaustion of the new
movement can be easily understood. For it is given to few
men, and those chiefly of poetic temperament, to keep their
eyes open for long. There is an instinctive craving for dogma
and form ; for without these there is no intellectual repose.
Each man's philosophy of life is fixed at the point where he
grows tired of thinking, it has been said. Even the educated
man begins to build his own prison-house very early. Especially
must this be the case with teachers, simply because they have
to teach ; and for this a schoolroom creed of some sort is
necessary. They gladly accept what is offered them in the
name of authority and tradition, and it is the letter of the
doctrine, not the spirit, that governs. They imitate what they
have seen done, or apply the technique of a new doctrine
which they have once accepted as if it were a revelation. Some
schoolmasters will resent this estimate; but the fact is, it is
TROTZENDORF ; STURM ; NEANDER 2Q
only those who recognize the truth of what I say as to the
tendency of the pedagogic mind who do think, and keep them-
selves fresh and open. The intellectual effort and the moral
courage required to organize, and the personal enthusiasm re-
quired to maintain, the inner life of the Humanistic school of
the 1 5th and i6th centuries must have been the endowment
of few.
The second period of the Renaissance saw the philological
and textual movement in full activity, and was distinguished by
the names, among others, of the younger Scaliger and Casaubon,
and on the religious side by the formulation of Protestant
dogma. The schools unfortunately felt the movement at once,
because of the tendency of all teaching to content itself with
form and formula and precept. There was no agency for
maintaining a scholastic aim and method ; the scholastic pro-
fession in short was not a profession : it took the colour of the
time. It had no independent vitality and no philosophic basis.
But every great movement, even when it is spent, leaves
some gain for the world. When we ask ourselves what the
1 6th century did for the secondary schools of Europe, we have
only to compare the work of the old cathedral and monastery
schools with those of the i6th and iyth centuries. The
classical authors of Greece and Rome were now firmly es-
tablished as instruments of instruction. It is true that the
spirit of Vittorino da Feltre, of Neander and Sturm and Ascham
was lost in the lyth century; but classical books remained, and
could not be taken away. Grammar, though then (and now)
badly taught, was simplified, because the text-books had been
simplified. These were two solid facts which survived and
defied the dullest of teachers.
But it appears to me that this was all. The glimmerings of
method and the ethical fervour born of the alliance of Humanism
with the reformed Christianity had disappeared, and grammar
and flagellation, twin brothers, had reasserted themselves
30 TROTZENDORF ; STURM ; NEANDER.
indeed from many schools they had never disappeared. Many
causes contributed to this : the school cannot be permanently
in advance of the time, and every organ of progressive civiliza-
tion must wait for peace among the nations.
Meanwhile the great scheme of the evangelical Humanists
which contemplated a vernacular education for all had received
practical effect in many towns ; but as a universal scheme it
had to wait (except in Scotland, and, later, in Saxony) on poli-
tical enfranchisement for its full recognition ; and this was a
business of about 300 years. The extension, however, of
primary vernacular religious schools, which had existed in towns
before the Reformation, had received a powerful impulse, and
continued to advance wherever the reformed religion was
honestly held as a religion of personal conviction and soul-
experience. The central position of the Reformers was that
between man and God in Christ the personal relation was
immediate. No external authority could relieve a man of his
duty to work out his own salvation. For this, knowledge of the
truth assimilated by himself was essential, and this, again, was
impossible without instruction. Popular education was thus
a logical necessity of the position.
CHAPTER IV.
UNIVERSITIES.
IN the Universities the permanent gain to the Humanists was
chiefly the introduction of Latin literature, of Greek, a little
mathematics, and the genuine Aristotle (though still taught
chiefly through a Latin medium), aided by scholastic text-books
and bald epitomes. The study of Civil Law had now also
more reference to the spirit and life of antiquity, and Medicine
began to be more scientific in its ground-work. These higher
institutions were however essentially conservative and responded
very slowly and unwillingly to the claims of Humanism and of
the modern spirit generally.
It has to be remembered that universities were for long
placed in a difficult position. They were scholae publicae to
which all might go, fit or unfit ; and so long as the secondary
schools were few in number they had themselves to discharge
the function of secondary schools, as they still do at Oxford
and Cambridge in the case of all who are unable to pass
the previous examination on entrance 1 , and also in the case
of the ordinary pass- man. The necessity thus imposed on
universities, and which led to their being attended by boys
of 13 or 14, had in mediaeval times been fully accepted,
especially at Paris. The result must have been a low standard
1 In the Scottish Universities all have to pass a preliminary examination
on entrance.
32 UNIVERSITIES
of general attainment, except for a select few. Then, the practice
of giving school instruction at the universities reacted everywhere
throughout Europe to prevent the erection of secondary schools.
But the general conception of a university as a school of the
higher faculties, law, medicine, theology, and of philosophy
(which also was practically a higher faculty) was never quite
lost sight of. In Italy during the i5th and i6th centuries
Professors of Latin and Greek literature gathered round them
at University and Court centres all who desired culture as
opposed to professional instruction, but the universities them-
selves were not re-organized on a Humanistic basis. The
lecturers were in truth constantly moving from place to place
like the Greek Rhetoricians in Roman imperial times.
Prior to the i6th century the higher university intellect
occupied itself in the department of Arts mainly with logic
and metaphysics, as interpreted by the schoolmen in un-
classical Latin, and too often based on a partially understood
Aristotle. But in the midst of all this they were trying to
read for themselves the riddle of life and thought, and they
were accomplishing great things, when we consider the con-
ditions under which they worked and the complex dogmatism
which they had to rationalize. "Scarcely thirty years ago,"
says Erasmus (1516) in a letter to a friend (quoted in
Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, p. 399), " nothing was taught at
Cambridge but the pan'a logicalia of Alexander, antiquated
exercises from Aristotle, and the ' Quaestiones ' of Scotus. In
process of time improved studies were added, viz., mathematics,
a new, or at all events a renovated Aristotle, and a knowledge
of Greek letters." After the i5th century, though scholastic
logic and disputations still occupied the field, yet the ultimate
reference was now to a better understood authority.
Luther desired to see the curriculum relieved from the
Aristotelian metaphysics, ethics, and physics, as taught from
text-books, and confined to the logic, rhetoric, and poetics in
the original, or studied in epitomes of the original. Cicero's
UNIVERSITIES *33
rhetoric also he advocated, but without cumbrous commentaries.
These philosophic studies, with the addition of Latin, Greek
and Hebrew and their literatures, would have constituted
Luther's scheme of university reform ; and substantially also
Melanchthon's. And this with the introduction of a better
mathematics was in truth the general line which reform took
where it was welcomed. At best, however, it was only initiated.
In short, even after the i6th century, the Aristotelian
encyclopaedia (metaphysics, logic, ethics, poetics, politics,
physics) was the ideal curriculum ; but now more genuinely
Aristotelian than formerly, and not so thickly overlaid with
commentary. The mass of students, however, could never
get beyond their text-books, and these were still highly
scholastic in their form. Thus the complaints of men like
Bacon (b, 1561), and subsequently Milton (b. 1608), re-echoed
by all educational reformers, were fully justified. In truth, the
resettlement of the Faith of Europe, and the great political
issues everywhere at stake, added to the natural conservatism
of universities, and the inadequate preparation of those coming
to them from secondary schools retarded the full growth of
modern ideas in the higher education. And yet the planting
of mathematics and Greek in Academic Halls and the study of
the ancient literatures, by the few at least, were permanent
gains. The universities, however, like the rest of the world,
had to wait for Bacon and Descartes and Newton, before they
could begin to throw off their mediaevalism ; and they, doubt-
less, owed it to the growth of modern literatures that the true
purpose of studying the ancient classics was kept alive by being
understood.
George Buchanan, the Scottish Humanist, who had taught
in the Humanistic College (secondary school) of Bordeaux
when Montaigne was a pupil there, and was familiar with
the work of the University of Paris, drew up a scheme for
the reform of the University of St Andrews, which was printed
in 1570. This is to my mind a very interesting document,
34 UNIVERSITIES
as being a product of the Humanistic revival, and a record
of the university scheme of the Humanists 1 . It is well worthy
of our attention as showing the then curriculum of a good
university, and I shall give the substance of it. In what we
should call the secondary school, but what Buchanan calls
(as being part of the university) the " College of Humanity,"
the course was to extend over six years. From the first, all
were required to speak Latin and write a Latin theme daily.
Their first reading-book was to be Terence, and thereafter
Cicero, Ovid, Virgil and Horace. In the fourth year they
were to begin Greek, and in their fifth and sixth, read Homer
and Hesiod. The boys were then to be admitted to the
" College of Philosophy " the university proper and after
two years' study they were eligible for the degree of bachelor,
the subjects of examination being dialectic, logic and morals.
The next year and a half was devoted to natural philosophy,
mathematics and metaphysics, after which they received their
licencia (equivalent to M.A.). Those intended for the Church
then proceeded to the "College of Divinity," where they studied
Hebrew, law and theology, expounding passages of Scripture
and holding disputations. This scheme of Buchanan's has
close affinities to the organization of the Jesuit ' colleges ' and
academies, the full organization of which was brought into
operation about the same time.
In estimating the work of the universities, we must bear in
mind that the want of books determined largely the method of
teaching. The difficulties by which the diffusion of learning
was beset before the invention of printing, may be gathered
from the historians of the period, and are well summed up in
the following quotation from Mr J. A. Symonds' Renaissance in
Italy.
"Very few of the students whom the master saw before
him possessed more than meagre portions of the text of
Virgil or of Cicero ; they had no notes, grammars, lexicons,
1 Hume Brown's vernacular writings of Buchanan (Scots Texts Society).
UNIVERSITIES 35
or dictionaries of antiquities and mythology to help them.
It was therefore necessary for the lecturer to dictate quota-
tions, to repeat parallel passages at full length, to explain
geographical and historical allusions, to analyse the structure
of sentences in detail, to provide copious illustrations of gram-
matical usage, to trace the stages by which a word acquired
its meaning in a special context, to command a full vocabulary
of synonyms, to give rules for orthography and to have the
whole Pantheon at his fingers' ends. In addition to this, he
was expected to comment upon the meaning of his author,
to interpret his philosophy, to point out the beauties of his
style, to introduce appropriate moral disquisition on his
doctrine, to sketch his biography, and to give some account
of his -relation to the history of his country and to his pre-
decessors in the field of letters.
" In short, the professor of rhetoric had to be a grammarian,
a philologer, an historian, a stylist and a sage in one. He was
obliged to pretend at least to an encyclopaedic knowledge of
the classics, and to retain whole volumes in his memory. All
these requirements, which seem to have been satisfied by such
men as Filelfo and Poliziano, made the Professor of Eloquence
for so the varied subject-matter of Humanism was often
called a very different business from that which occupies a
lecturer of the present century. Scores of students, old and
young, with nothing but pen and paper on the desks before
them, sat patiently recording what the lecturer said. At the
end of his discourses on the Georgia or the Verrines, each of
them carried away a compendious volume, containing a tran-
script of the author's text, together with a miscellaneous mass
of notes, critical, explanatory, ethical, aesthetical, historical,
and biographical. In other words, a book had been dictated,
and as many scores of copies as there were attentive pupils
had been made. The language used was Latin. No dialect
of Italian could have been intelligible to the students of
different nationalities who crowded the lecture-rooms. The
32
36 UNIVERSITIES
elementary education in grammar requisite for following a
professorial course of lectures had been previously provided
by the teachers of the Latin schools which depended for
maintenance partly on the State and partly on private
enterprise."
Even after the invention of printing, books were scarce and
dear and had often to be dispensed with. Hallam {Literature
of Europe, chap. iv. 2, 31) says: "The process of learning
without books was tedious and difficult, but not impracticable
for the diligent. The teacher provided himself with a lexicon
which was in common use among his pupils and with one
of the grammars [he is referring to the teaching of Greek]
published on the Continent, from which he gave oral lectures,
and portions of which were transcribed by each student. The
books read in the lecture-room were probably copied out in
the same manner, the abbreviations giving some facility to a
cursive hand ; and thus the deficiency of impressions was
in some degree supplied, just as before the invention of
printing. The labour of acquiring knowledge strengthened,
as it always does, the memory ; it excited an industry which
surmounted every obstacle, and yielded to no fatigue; and
we may thus account for that copiousness of verbal learning
which sometimes astonishes us in the scholars of the i6th
century, and in which they seem to surpass the more exact
philologers of later ages'." Unquestionably learning without
books had its advantages, but without the cheapening of the
art of printing neither learning nor education could ever have
been wide-spread.
I have endeavoured very briefly to sum up the gains of the
Revival, in so far as it was educational, after it had hardened
down into formula and routine. It must be admitted that,
even in its narrowest conception, the curriculum of study
1 In connexion with this, see an interesting passage in Plato's Phaedrus
(Jowett's translation, i. p. 63).
UNIVERSITIES 37
afforded materials, both in the school and the university,
whereby a true education might be given by capable men to
competent students especially after the invention of printing.
But materials do not themselves suffice : there can be no
education where there is no life, no vital intercourse of mind
with mind in pursuit of some ideal aim, whether that be style,
science, philosophy, Protestant dogma, or Catholic doctrine.
The fire burns out, and all that has not gone off in smoke is
ashes, and with these generations of youth must content them-
selves, except where they are re-lighted here and there by the
rare genius of an eminent teacher. It cannot be expected that
the average schoolmaster or professor should rise above the
spirit and methods of the age in which he lives. Great scholars,
jurists and theologians, were notwithstanding produced, while
the mass of students had now gained access to classical literature
and the elements of mathematics. But in the secondary school,
and for the ordinary boy, as for the ordinary teacher, life was
almost as dreary as ever. Grammar was the despot and rote-
memory the slave. Verbalism had again reasserted itself, though
now, it is true, with higher aims. The attempt to introduce real
studies, even history and geography, broke down. In fact, how
could it be otherwise? Who, or what agency was there to organize
the spirit of the Revival in the school domain and sustain the
teacher's ambition to the level which it had reached in a few
enthusiastic and original minds ?
After the preceding brief survey, the characteristics of the
Revival in education will best be studied, I think, in the
writings of representative men whom I proceed to speak of.
CHAPTER V.
"THE GOVERNOUR,"
by Sir Thomas Elyot ; d. 1546.
The Governour, by Sir Thomas Elyot, was unknown save to
the learned few until it was edited and reprinted by Mr Croft
in 1880. The writer was a lawyer, and after holding a legal
office for some time he was appointed by Wolsey Clerk of the
Council of King Henry VIII. in 1523. He died in 1546.
The Governour was printed 1530-31. The Institutio Principis
Christiani of Erasmus is referred to by him, and he is
indebted also to other writers (among whom I would include
Plutarch).
I think Elyot's book of historical importance for two reasons :
first because it seems to have been the first treatise in English
written in the spirit of the earlier Italian Humanists, and secondly
because it must have exercised influence on the mind of Roger
Ascham. It would not serve much purpose to expound the
whole of The Governour. I can give the reader a fair acquaint-
ance with its spirit and aims by stringing together its leading
precepts, and so letting Elyot speak for himself. Colet, I may
mention, died only 10 or 12 years before the publication of
Elyot's book, but it was only incidentally that he wrote on
education, although historically he was an important figure as
founder of the Humanistic School of St Paul's. Accordingly
Elyot's work may be accepted as the first full exposition of the
Humanistic point of view, not only in English but also in
England.
THE GOVERNOUR 39
Early Training.
"Moreover to the nurse should be appointed another
woman of approved virtue, discretion, and gravity, who shall
not suffer, in the child's presence, to be shown any act or tache
(quality) dishonest or any wanton or unclean word to be spoken :
and for that cause all. men, except physicians only, should be
excluded and kept out of the nursery. Perchance some will
scorn me for that I am so serious, saying that there is no such
damage to be feared in an infant, who for tenderness of years
hath not the understanding to discern good from evil. And
yet no man will deny, but in that innocency he will discern
milk from butter, and bread from pap, and ere he can speak
he will with his hand or countenance signify which he desireth.
And I verily do suppose that in the brains and hearts of
children, which be members spiritual, whiles they be tender,
and the little slips of reason begin in them to burgeon, there
may happen by evil custom some pestiferous dew of vice to
pierce the said members, and infect and corrupt the soft and
tender buds, whereby the fruit may grow wild, and some time
contain in it fervent and mortal poison, to the utter destruction
of a realm.
"And we have in daily experience that little infants essayeth
to follow, not only the words, but also the facts and gesture,
of them that be provect (advanced) in years. For we daily hear,
to our great heaviness, children swear great oaths and speak
lascivious and unclean words, by the example of other whom
they hear, whereat the lewd parents do rejoice, soon after, or in
this world, or elsewhere, to their great pain and torment. Con-
trarywise, we behold some children kneeling in their games
before images, and holding up their little white hands, do move
their pretty mouths as they were praying : other going and
singing as it were in procession : whereby they do express their
disposition to the imitation of those things, be they good or evil,
which they usually do see or hear. Wherefore not only princes,
40 THE GOVERNOUR
but also all other children, from their nurses' paps, are to be kept
diligently from the hearing or seeing of any vice or evil tache.
And incontinent as soon as they can speak, it behoveth, with
most pleasant allurings, to instil in them sweet manners and
virtuous custom. Also to provide for them such companions
and playfellows which shall not do in his presence any reproach-
able act or speak any unclean word or oath, nor to advance
him with flattery, remembering his nobility, or any other like
thing wherein he might glory : unless it be to persuade him to
virtue, or to withdraw him from vice, in the remembering to
him the danger of his evil example."
Beginnings of Latin.
" But there can be nothing more convenient than by little
and little to train and exercise them in speaking of Latin :
informing them to know first the names in Latin of all things
that cometh in sight, and to name all the parts of their bodies :
and giving them somewhat that they covet or desire, in most
gentle manner to teach them to ask it again in Latin. And if
by this means they may be induced to understand and speak
Latin ; it shall afterwards be less grief to them, in a manner,
to learn anything, where they understand the language wherein
it is written. And, as touching grammar, there is at this
day better introductions, and more facile, than ever before
were made, concerning as well Greek as Latin, if they be
wisely chosen. * * *
"And in this wise may they be instructed, without any
violence or enforcing : using the more part of the time,
until they come to the age of seven years, in such dissports as
do appertain to children, wherein is no resemblance or simili-
tude of vice."
Variety of occupation.
" The discretion of a tutor consisteth in temperance : that
is to say, that he suffer not the child to be fatigued with con-
THE GOVERNOUR 41
tinual study or learning, wherewith the delicate and tender wit
may be dulled or oppressed : but that there may be therewith
interlaced and mixed some pleasant learning and exercise, as
playing on instruments of music."
Latin not to be seriously begun till the child knows his own
tongue. Qualification of teacher. Discipline.
"After that the child hath been pleasantly trained, and
induced to know the parts of speech, and can separate one of
them from another, in his own language, it shall then be time
that his tutor or governor do make diligent search for such
a master as is excellently learned both in Greek and Latin,
and therewithal is of sober and virtuous disposition, specially
chaste of living, and of much affability and patience : lest by
any unclean example the tender mind of the child may ,be
infected, hard afterwards to be recovered. For the natures
of children be not so much or soon advanced by things well
done or spoken, as they be hindered and corrupted by that
which in acts or words is wantonly expressed. Also by a
cruel and irous master the wits of children be dulled ; and
that thing for the which children be oftentimes beaten is to
them ever after fastidious : whereof we need no better author
for witness than daily experience. Wherefore the most neces-
sary things to be observed by a master in his disciples or
scholars (as Lycon, the noble grammarian, said) is shamefast-
ness and praise. By shamefastness, as it were with a bridle,
they rule as well their deeds as their appetites. And desire of
praise addeth a sharp spur to their disposition toward learning
and virtue. According thereunto Quintilian, instructing an
orator, desireth such a child to be given unto him, whom
commendation fervently stirreth, glory provoketh, and being
vanquished weepeth. That child (saith he) is to be fed with
ambition, him a little chiding sore biteth, in him no part of
sloth is to be feared. And if nature disposeth not^the child's
42 THE GOVERNOUR
wit to receive learning, but rather otherwise, it is to be applied
with more diligence and also policy, as choosing some book,
whereof the argument or matter approacheth most nigh to the
child's inclination or fantasy, so that it be not extremely vicious,
and therewith by little and little, as it were with a pleasant
sauce, provoke him to have a good appetite to study."
After seven years of age the boy should learn Greek before
Latin, meanwhile practising Latin colloquially with his fellows
and masters. If this be not done, then at least the serious
study of both languages should be begun at the same time.
Grammar not to be too prolonged. Authors to be read as soon
as possible. Method : Committing to memory.
" Grammar being but an introduction to the understanding
of authors, if it be made too long or exquisite to the learner, it
in a manner mortifieth his courage : And by that time he
cometh to the most sweet and pleasant reading of old authors,
the sparks of fervent desire of learning is extinct with the
burden of grammar, like as a little fire is soon quenched
with a great heap of small sticks : so that it can never come
to the principal logs where it should long burn in a great
pleasant fire.
" Now to follow my purpose : after a few and quick rules of
grammar, immediately, or interlacing it therewith, would be
read to the child ^Esop's Fables in Greek : in which argument
children much do delight. And surely it is a much pleasant
lesson and also profitable, as well for that it is elegant and
brief (and notwithstanding it hath much variety in words, and
therewith much helpeth to the understanding of Greek), as
also in those fables is included much moral and politic wisdom.
Wherefore, in the teaching of them, the master diligently must
gather together those fables which may be most accommodate
to the advancement of some virtue, whereto he perceiveth the
child inclined : or to the rebuke of some vice, whereto he
THE GOVERNOUR 43
findeth his nature disposed. And therein the master ought to
exercise his wit, as well to make the child plainly to understand
the fable, as also declaring the signification thereof compen-
diously and to the purpose, foreseen alway, that, as well this
lesson, as all other authors which the child shall learn, either
Greek or Latin, verse or prose, be perfectly had without the
book : whereby he shall not only attain plenty of the tongues
called Copie (Copia) but also increase and nourish remembrance
wonderfully."
Lucian, Aristophanes and Homer are next recommended
to Virgil, Ovid and Lucan ; considerable portions of which
Elyot will have the boy familiar with by the time he is 14
years old. Thereafter Logic (Topics), Rhetoric (Quintilian)
and the Orators, Greek and Latin. He strongly urges the
teaching of Geography and the study of Maps. Then History
as in Livy, Caesar, Sallust, Xenophon. Then after he is 17
years old the first two books of Aristotle's Ethics, Cicero's
De Officiis, and Plato.
Deficiencies of Schoolmasters. The true method of
teaching Literature.
" Lord God, how many good and clean wits of children
be now-a-days perished by ignorant schoolmasters. How little
substantial doctrine is apprehended by the fewness of good
grammarians. Notwithstanding I know that there be some
well learned, which have taught, and also do teach, but God
knoweth a few, and they with small effect, having thereto no
comfort, their aptest and most proper scholars, after they be
well instructed in speaking Latin, and understanding some poets,
being taken from their school by their parents, and either be
brought to the court, and made lackeys or pages, or else are
bound apprentices ; whereby the worship that the master,
above any reward, coveteth to have by the praise of his
scholar, is utterly drowned; whereof I have heard school-
44 THE GOVERNOUR
masters, very well learned, of good right complain. But yet
(as I said) the fewness of good grammarians is a great impedi-
ment of doctrine. (And here I would the readers should mark
that I note to be few good grammarians, and not none.) I
call not them grammarians, which only can teach or make
rules, whereby a child shall only learn to speak congruous
Latin, or to make six verses standing in one foot, wherein
perchance shall be neither sentence nor eloquence. But I
name him a grammarian, by the authority of Quintilian, that
speaking Latin elegantly, can expound good authors, expressing
the invention and disposition of the matter, their style or form
of eloquence, explicating the figures as well of sentences as
words, leaving no thing, person, or place, named by the author,
undeclared or hidden from his scholars. Wherefore Quintilian
saith, it is not enough for him to have read poets, but all kinds
of writing must also be sought for ; not for the histories only,
but also for the propriety of words, which commonly do receive
their authority of noble authors. Moreover without music
grammar may not be perfect ; for as much as therein must
be spoken of metres and harmonies, called rythmi in Greek.
Neither if he have not the knowledge of stars, he may under-
stand poets, which in description of times (I omit other things)
they treat of the rising and going down of planets. Also
he may not be ignorant in philosophy, for many places
that be almost in every poet fetched out of the most subtle
part of natural questions. These be well nigh the words of
Quintilian.
" Then behold how few grammarians after this description
be in this realm."
His remarks on the method of teaching literature are
beyond all question the best ever written in so far as my
knowledge extends.
Elyot then goes on to advocate games, such as tennis,
dumb-bells, wrestling, running, swimming, fencing, riding and
dancing ; above all archery.
THE GOVERNOUR 45
Painting and carving should be taught to boys where there
is any natural talent in that way.
Music also is to be taught but not indulged in to excess.
As regards discipline Elyot was much in advance of his
time.
Hallam {Literature of Europe, chap. vn. 2, 32) says :
" Elyot deprecates [as we have seen] ' cruel and irous school-
masters, by whom the wits of children be dulled, whereof we
need no better author to witness than daily experience.' All
testimonies concur to this savage ill-treatment of boys in the
schools of this period. The fierceness of the Tudor government,
the religious intolerance, the polemical brutality, the rigorous
justice, when justice it was, of our laws, seem to have en-
gendered a harshness of character, which displayed itself in
severity of discipline, when it did not even reach the point of
arbitrary or malignant cruelty. Everyone knows the behaviour
of Lady Jane Grey's parents' towards their accomplished and
admirable child ; the slave of their temper in her brief life,
the victim of their ambition in death. The story told by
Erasmus of Colet is also a little too trite for repetition. The
general fact is indubitable, and I think we may ascribe much
of the hypocrisy and disingenuousness which became almost
national characteristics in this and the first part of the next
century to the rigid scheme of domestic discipline so frequently
adopted : though I will not say but that we owe some part of
the firmness and power of self-command, which were equally
manifest in the English character, to the same cause."
Taking Elyot as a whole we find him to be a genuine
believer in the power of education and an admirable repre-
sentative in England of the fine Humanism of Da Feltre, and
one of the most charming writers on education that ever wrote.
1 Alluded to by Ascham in his Scholemaster.
CHAPTER VI.
RABELAIS: MONK, PHYSICIAN, CURE OF
MEUDON. 1483 (?) 1553.
\Note on Erasmus (page 55).]
A CONTEMPORARY of Elyot, but a man of a very different type,
was Rabelais. In his great satire and burlesque, the Life of the
Great Gargantua, we have some remarks on the education of
the hero and, afterwards, advice addressed by Gargantua to his
son Pantagruel, giving his own views of the education which
he wished him to receive from his tutors'. Rabelais satirizes
word-teaching the grammar and logic instruction of his
time pointing out, by producing a cultured youth of the
name of Eudemon (an extravagant illustration, of course,
like everything in Rabelais), how the ends of education might
be attained without the absorption of all the lumber of the
Schools. He gives prominence to Latin and Greek, as was
inevitable, because these languages contained (for the Western
European, at least) all learning both of the past and co-
temporary world : but he would direct the attention of the
pupils to the real instruction which these languages gave as
opposed to the technicalities and formalities of Logic, Rhetoric,
and Grammar the trivium of the Middle Ages.
1 Book i. caps. 14, 15, 21, 22, 24 ; Book II. caps. 5, 6, 18.
RABELAIS 47
In these few words I believe I have summed up the chief
lessons which Rabelais teaches. His aim, in brief, is the
expansion and enrichment of the human mind as opposed to
the overloading of it with the subtleties and superfluous details
of a formal grammar, and a still more formal scholasticism.
This appears from the account he gives of Gargantua's own
education, conducted in the age of pedantry.
Gargantua's own education.
" Presently they appointed him a great sophister-doctor,
called Master Tubal Holofernes, who taught him his A B C
so well that he could say it by heart backwards ; and about
this he was five years and three months. Then read he to
him, Donat (the popular Latin Grammar for the Middle Ages),
Le Facet, Theodolet, and Alanus in Parabolis'. About this
he was thirteen years six months and two weeks. But you
must remark, that in the meantime he did learn to write in
Gothic characters, and that he wrote all his books ; for the art
of printing was not then in use.
"And did ordinarily carry a huge writing-case, weighing
about seven thousand quintals, the pen-case whereof was as big
and as heavy as the pillar of Enay ; and the horn was hanged
to it in great iron-chains, it being of the wideness to hold a ton
of merchandise.
" After that was read to him, the Book de Modis Significandi,
with the Commentaries of Hurtbise, of Fasquin, of Tropditeux,
of Gaulhault, of John Calf (Jehan le veau), of Billonio, of
Brelinguandus, and a rabble of others ; and herein he spent
more than eighteen years and eleven months, and was so well
versed therein, that to try masteries in school disputes with
1 Notes explanatory of the books used by Gargantua will be found in
Fran9ois Rabelais. Gedanken uber Erziehnng und Unterricht, by Dr
Arnstadt, Leipzig, (n. d.)
48 RABELAIS
his own co-disciples he would recite it by heart backwards ;
and did sometimes prove on his finger-ends to his mother
' Quod de Modis Significandi non erat Scientia.' Then was
read to him the Compost [for knowing the age of the
moon, etc.] on which he spent sixteen years and two months.
And at that very time, which was in the year 1420, his said
Preceptor died.
"Afterwards he got an old coughing fellow to teach him,
named Master Jobelin Bride, who read unto him Hugutio,
Hebrard's ' Graecism,' the ' Doctrinale ' [a metrical Latin
grammar], the 'Partes,' the 'Quid est,' the ' Supplementum,
Marmotretus, De Moribus in Mensa Servandis,' Seneca 'de
quatuor Virtutibus Cardinalibus,' ' Passavantus cum Com-
mento'; and 'Dormi Secure,' for the holidays, and other
such like stuff; by reading of which he became as wise as
any we have since baked in an oven."
But what was the result of all this ? " That he did profit
nothing ; but, which is worse, grew thereby a fool, a sot, a
dolt, and a blockhead." Being introduced to a youth of
excellent accomplishments, called Eudemon, who had followed
a more modern style of education intelligence instead of mere
technical memory having been cultivated Grandgousier there-
upon resolves to send his son 'to Paris, placing him under
Ponocrates, the tutor of the charming Eudemon. We have an
account of his life there, which was devoted to hard work, bodily
and mental. In the midst of much absurdity and grotesque ex-
aggeration we see that athletics, mathematics, medicine, music,
and the reading of classic authors, constituted his chief studies.
Rabelais points to the importance of method when he re-
presents Ponocrates, the tutor of Eudemon, as studying the
character and natural bent of his pupil Gargantua. He also
points to the value of manual work; for Gargantua and his
companions "did recreate themselves with bottling hay, cleav-
ing and sawing wood, and threshing sheaves of corn in the
barn. They also studied the art of painting and carving."
RABELAIS 49
At a subsequent period Gargantua writes a letter of advice
to his own son Pantagruel, in which we find the views of
Rabelais further developed. Athletics, music, classical studies,
and the study of Nature are all included in his proposed
curriculum. Religious instruction is to be from the Bible
as opposed to both scholastic theology and ceremonialism.
The aim is, like that of Montaigne subsequently, to develope
the pupil's (mm thought. The letter is as follows :
*****
"But although my deceased father, of happy memory,
Grandgousier, had bent his best endeavours to make me profit
in all perfection and political knowledge, and that my labour
and study was fully correspondent to, yea, went beyond his
desire ; nevertheless, as thou may'st well understand, the time
then was not so proper and fit for learning as it is at present,
neither had I plenty of such good masters as thou hast had :
for that time was darksome, obscured with clouds of ignorance,
and savouring a little of the infelicity and calamity of the
Goths, who had, wherever they set footing, destroyed all good
literature, which in my age hath by the divine goodness been
restored unto its former light and dignity, and that with such
amendment and increase of knowledge, that now hardly should
I be admitted with the first form of the little Grammar school-
boys : I say, I, who in my school-days was (and that justly)
reputed the most learned of that age. Which I do not speak
in vain-boasting.
*****
"Now it is that the minds of men are qualified with all
manner of discipline, and the old sciences revived, which for
many ages were extinct : now it is, that the learned languages
are to their pristine purity restored, viz. Greek (without which
a man may be ashamed to account himself a scholar), Hebrew,
Arabic, Chaldean, and Latin. Printing likewise is now in use,
so elegant, and so correct, that better cannot be imagined,
although it was found out in my time but by divine inspiration ;
L. 4
50 RABELAIS
as by a diabolical suggestion, on the other side, was the in-
vention of ordnance. All the world is full of knowing men, of
most learned school-masters, and vast libraries ; and it appears
to me as a truth, that neither in Plato's time, nor Cicero's,
nor Papinian's, there was ever such conveniency for studying,
as we see at this day there is. Nor must any adventure hence-
forward to come in public, or represent himself in company,
that hath not been pretty well polished in the shop of Minerva.
I see robbers, hangmen, free-booters, tapsters, ostlers, and such
like, of the very rubbish of the people, more learned now, than
the doctors and preachers were in my time.
" What shall I say ? The very women and children have
aspired to this praise and celestial manna of good learning ;
yet so it is, that at the age I am now of, I have been con-
strained to learn the Greek tongue which I contemned not
like Cato, but had not the leisure in my younger years to
attend the study of it. And I take much delight in the
reading of Plutarch's morals, the pleasant dialogues of Plato,
the monuments of Pausanias, and the antiquities of Athenaeus,
whilst I w r ait the hour wherein God my Creator shall call me,
and command me to depart from this earth and transitory
pilgrimage. Wherefore, my son, I admonish thee to employ
thy youth to profit as well as thou canst, both in thy studies
and in virtue. Thou art at Paris, where the laudable examples
of many brave men may stir up thy mind to many gallant
actions ; and hast likewise for thy tutor the learned Epistemon,
who by his lively and vocal documents may instruct thee in
the arts and sciences.
" I intend, and will have it so, that thou leam the languages
perfectly. First of all, the Greek, as Quintilian will have it;
secondly the Latin ; and then the Hebrew, for the holy
Scripture's sake. And then the Chaldee and Arabic likewise.
And that thou frame thy style in Greek, in imitation of Plato ;
and for the Latin, after Cicero. Let there be no history which
thou shall not have ready in thy memory ; and to help thee
RABELAIS 5 1
therein, the books of cosmography will be very conducible.
Of the liberal arts of geometry, arithmetic, and music, I gave
thee some taste when thou wert yet little, and not above five
or six years old ; proceed further in them and learn the
remainder if thou canst. As for astronomy, study all the
rules thereof: let pass nevertheless the divining and judicial
astrology, and the art of Lullius, as being nothing else but
plain cheats and vanities. As for the civil law, of that I would
have thee to know the texts by heart, and then to compare
them with Philosophy.
" Now in matter of the knowledge of the works of nature,
I would have thee to study that exactly ; so that there be no
sea, river or fountain, of which thou dost not know the fishes ;
all the fowls of the air; all the several kinds of shrubs and
trees, whether in forest or orchard ; all the sorts of herbs and
flowers that grow upon the ground ; all the various metals that
are hid within the bowels of the earth ; together with all the
diversity of precious stones that are to be seen in the orient
and south parts of the world; let nothing of all these be
hidden from thee. Then fail not most carefully to peruse the
books of the great Arabian and Latin physicians : not despising
the Talmudists and Cabalists ; and by frequent anatomies get
thee the perfect knowledge of the microcosm, which is man.
And at some hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of
the holy Scriptures : first in Greek, the New Testament with
the Epistles of the Apostles ; and then the Old Testament, in
Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless
pit of knowledge : for from henceforward, as thou growest great
and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and
rest of study; thou must" learn chivalry, warfare, and the
exercise of the field, the better thereby to defend our house
and our friends and to succour and protect them at all their
needs against the invasion and assaults of evil-doers.
" Furthermore I will that very shortly thou try how much
thou hast profited, which thou canst not better do than by
42
52 RABELAIS
maintaining publicly theses and conclusions in all arts, against
all persons whatsoever, and by haunting the company of
learned men, both at Paris and otherwhere. But because,
as the wise man Solomon saith, wisdom entereth not into a
malicious mind and that science without conscience is but
the ruin of the soul ; it behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear
God, and on Him to cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope,
and by faith formed in charity, to cleave unto Him so that
thou may'st never be separated from Him by thy sins. Suspect
the abuses of the world ; set not thy heart upon vanity, for this
life is transitory ; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever.
Be serviceable to all thy neighbours, and love them as thyself;
reverence thy preceptors; shun the conversation of those wnom
thou desirest not to resemble, and receive not in vain the
graces that God hath bestowed upon thee. And when thou
shall see that thou hast attained all the knowledge that is to
be acquired in that part, return unto me, that I may see thee
and give thee my blessing before I die. My son, the peace
and grace of our Lord be with thee. Amen.
Thy father,
GARGANTUA.
FROM UTOPIA,
the i-]th day of the month of March."
There is in this letter much extravagance, and it is
to be presumed that Rabelais did not regard his whole
scheme as practicable, while yet holding to its main purport.
If we collate this letter with Gargantua's own education in
Paris, the opinions of Rabelais on education may be summed
up as follows : He was bitterly opposed to the grammatical
and scholastic studies of his time, and had a wholesome dislike
of commentators and critics. He accepted to the full the
teaching of the Humanistic revival and desired to send the
pupil direct to the works of great writers, and away from futile
RABELAIS 53
rhetorical rules and empty dialectic. In truth, Rabelais, like
Montaigne and all educational reformers, felt with Cleanthes,
the philosopher, who, looking back on a better time, says
" tune quidem ipsa res exercebatur, nunc autem verba solum."
He certainly inculcates the study of languages ; but this not for
the sake of languages, but merely because in no other way
could the treasures of literature be reached. He urges also
the study of science, and commends personal contact with
nature. In general, he sees the importance of instruction
through the senses and advocates a wide range of realistic
study.
Attention to the body and to personal habits, and a good
bearing, are also important in Rabelais' eyes. He keeps in
view a good, useful and becoming life as the practical end of
all education.
It seems to me absurd to call Rabelais a ' realist ' because
he holds these views. His aim is an intellectual and
moral one, and for the attainment of this he recommends the
humanistic instruments. If he seems to dwell on the import-
ance of a wide and encyclopaedic knowledge of things, it has
to be remembered that he was led to exaggerate this aspect of
education through his antagonism to grammarians and school-
men, and their useless burdening and choking both of the
intellect and memories of their pupils with the mere dead
forms, grammatical, rhetorical, and logical, of true knowledge.
He was no more a realist than Montaigne, who was twenty
years old when Rabelais died, and who advocated the views of
his precursor at greater length, with a more penetrating insight,
and in a more genial, gentle, and rational spirit. With Mon-
taigne the end of education was summed up in the word
' philosophy,' by which he meant wisdom and the conduct of
life. A similar aim unquestionably runs through Rabelais/
teaching. The real was opposed to the formal throughout.
Religion, again, was with him simple, pure, practical: more nearly
allied to the Protestant than the Roman Catholic conception
54 RABELAIS
of the religious life. Both Rabelais and Montaigne alike were,
I hold, Humanists, not Realists, although they naturally
emphasized the knowledge of things, because (as I have already
said) of the time in which they lived and the special evils they
had to combat. No one will hesitate to give Rabelais the
credit of having recalled attention to the study of Nature and
to the poetic enjoyment of it, as elements in the education of
a man. But this does not make him a Sense-Realist.
The importance of Physical Training was also first, in
modern times, urged by Rabelais, although it had already
received practical attention from leading Renaissance school-
masters. And when the weather will not admit of outdoor
athletics, he makes Gargantua give himself to indoor manual
occupation. In truth, there is a great deal in Rabelais brief
as his treatment of the subject is.
The large and liberal curriculum contemplated, including
gymnastic and military training as well as music, suggests that
Milton's Tractate owed not a little to Rabelais, as did also
Locke's Thoughts through the mediation of Montaigne.
I would direct your attention to this : the further we extend
our study of writers on Education, the more are we struck with
the substantial unity of opinion and object among the greatest
of them. Rabelais and Montaigne would have subscribed to
almost every word of the early Italian Humanists, and these
Humanists, again, reproduced Quintilian. All alike have
always before them, as the outcome of all sound teaching, a
self-active, living mind. " Accendere animos" is the aim.
Plutarch reminds us that the soul is not a vessel to fill, but a
hearth on which to kindle a fire. And if the intellectual aim
is always the same with the best writers, so even still more are
they at one on the supreme importance of moral education and
the value of gymnastic.
It is with the rise of the Baconian school that a new idea
enters. It is, then, chiefly by acquiring that man is to be
ERASMUS 55
educated. Knowledge takes the place of wisdom, moral precepts
of moral training and personal discipline. This is what is com-
monly meant by Realism. But even with Ratke and Comenius
and their numerous followers, the ultimate purpose is the same
as with other writers, viz. wisdom and virtue ; but they ex-
aggerate the value of mere instruction as insuring these. The
contribution to the science of education made by the Baconian
school is not so much in the attention they gave to sense-realism
as in the department of method. Locke's Thoughts will be
found to be a wise mixture of the Baconian views and of
Montaigne. In the Conduct of the Understanding, however,
the discipline of the intellect is the theme ; and that valuable
treatise virtually, in my opinion, restores the grammar and
dialectic of the Middle Ages, but these based on the vernacular
and on the analysis of concrete writings by the pupil, and not
to be attained by the study of formal grammars and logics.
NOTE ON ERASMUS; b. 1466, d. 1536.
Erasmus was the most brilliant man of the second period of the
Revival. I have not had time to study all he has said on Education,
and I consequently content myself with this note.
The educational programme of this eminent scholar and thinker
was that of the Italian Humanists : Return to the ancients ;
classical tongues to be studied in the sources, and no longer in
barbarous manuals ; rhetorical exercises to be substituted for use-
less and obscure dialectic ; the study of nature to animate and
vivify literary studies ; the largest possible diffusion of human
knowledge without distinction of age or sex 1 . He severely criticised
universities as the homes of mediaeval barbarism and obscurantism,
and he advocated strongly a milder discipline in all schools, and
cheerful and sanitary class-rooms.
There can be little doubt that Ascham was as largely influenced
by Erasmus as by Quintilian. It is superfluous to say that school-
1 Buisson's Dictionnairc de Pedagogie.
56 ERASMUS
masters listened to neither the one nor the other. Even in these
days we see that the tendency of the majority of secondary school-
masters is to look with all the suspicion which ignorance engenders
on all serious study of the principles, aims, and methods of the work
to which they have devoted their lives. Some have however
advanced far enough to write sentimentally and prettily about it.
The most important educational works of Erasmus, apart from his
Adages and Colloquies, were the following. [In what follows, I quote
from Payne's translation of Compayre"'s History of Pedagogy.]
Educational Works of Erasmus.
In his book, On the Order of Study (De Ratione Studii\ he
seeks out the rules for instruction in literature, for the study of
grammar, for the cultivation of the memory, and for the explication
of the Greek and Latin authors. Another treatise, entitled Of the
First Liberal Education of Children (De Pueris statim ac liber aliter
instituendis], is still more important, and covers the whole field
of education. Erasmus here studies the character of the child,
the question of knowing whether the first years of child-life can
be turned to good account, and the measures that are to be taken
with early life. He also recommends methods that are attractive,
and heartily condemns the barbarous discipline which reigned in
the schools of his time.
Erasmus is one of the first educators who comprehended the
importance of politeness. In an age still uncouth, when the
manners of even the cultivated classes tolerated usages that the
most ignorant rustic of to-day would scorn, it was good to call the
attention to outward appearances and the social value of politeness.
Erasmus knew perfectly well that politeness has a moral side, that
it is not a matter of pure convention, but that it proceeds from the
inner disposition of a well-ordered soul. So he assigns it an
important place in education.
The Instruction of Women was advocated by Erasmus. The
scholars of the Renaissance generally did not exclude women from
all participation in the literary treasures that a recovered antiquity
had disclosed to themselves. Erasmus admits them to an equal
share.
ERASMUS 57
In the Colloquy of the Abbe and the Educated Woman, Magdala
claims for herself the right to learn Latin, " so that she may hold
converse each day with so many authors who are so eloquent, so
instructive, so wise, and such good counsellors." In the book called
Christian Marriage, Erasmus banters young ladies who learn only
to make a bow, to hold the hands crossed, to bite their lips when
they laugh, to eat and drink as little as possible at table, after
having taken ample portions in private. More ambitious for the
wife, Erasmus recommends her to pursue the studies which will
assist her in educating her own children, and in taking part in the
intellectual life of her husband 1 .
1 Ludovicus Vives, a contemporary of Erasmus (1492-1540), a Spanish
writer of great eminence, expressed similar ideas on the education of
women. He recommends young women to read Plato and Seneca.
CHAPTER VII.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 1 ;
b. 1515, d. 1568.
THE leading topic of Ascham's Scholemastcr is the classical
languages and literatures as instruments of the education
of youth. Mulcaster and Brinsley were the first to advocate
the teaching of English 2 .
" Roger Ascham," says Thomas Fuller, " was born at
Kirkby-weik in this County (Yorkshire) ; and bred in Saint
John's Colledge in Cambridge, under Doctor Medcalfe, that
good Governour, who, whet-stone-like, though dull in himself,
by his encouragement, set an edge on most excellent wits
in that foundation. Indeed Ascham came to Cambridge
just at the dawning of Learning, and staid therein till the
bright-day thereof, his own endeavours contributing much
light thereunto. He was Oratour and Greek Professour
in the University (places of some sympathy, which have
often met in the same person) ; and in the beginning of the
Raign of Queen Mary, within three days, wrote letters to
fourty-seven severall Princes, whereof the meanest was a
Cardinal. He travailed into Germany, and there contracted
familiarity with John Sturmius and other learned men ; and,
1 The quotations which follow are from Bennet's quarto edition, 1761.
2 There is a great deal of interesting information on the pre- Reformation
schools in Furnivall's Education in Early England.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 59
after his return, was a kind of teacher to the Lady Elizabeth, to
whom (after she was Queen} he became her Secretary for her
Latine letters.
"In a word, he was an honest man and a good shooter;
Archery (whereof he wrote a Book called ' Too<i\os ') being
his onely exercise in his youth, which in his old age he exchanged
for a worse pastime, neither so healthfidl for his body, nor
profitable for his purse, I mean Cock-fighting, and thereby (being
neither greedy to get, nor carefull to keep money) he much
impaired his estate.
" He had a facile and fluent Latine-style (not like those
who, counting obscurity to be elegancy, weed out all the hard
words they meet in Authors) : witness his ' Epistles,' which
some say are the only Latine-ones extant of any Englishman,
and if so, the more the pity. What loads have we of Letters
from Forraign Pens, as if no Author were compleat without
those necessary appurtenances ! whilst surely our English-men
write (though not so many) as good as any other Nation. In
a word, his ' Tod<iAos ' is accounted a good Book for young
men, his ' School-master ' for old men, his ' Epistles ' for all men,
set out after his death, which happened Anno Domini 1568,"
in the 53rd year of his age. He was buried in St Sepulchre's,
London.
To the above nervous and concise statement I may add
that Ascham was privately educated in the family of Mr
Anthony Wingfield, entered St John's College, Cambridge,
in 1530, and took his bachelor's degree in 1534.
At the University he took with ardour to the new learning
and while yet a boy himself instructed others in Greek with a
view to his own perfect mastery of the language. Mr Pember,
a man of some contemporary eminence, had assured him in
a letter that he would gain more knowledge by explaining one
of Aesop's Fables to a boy than by hearing one of Homer's
poems explained by another.
Being elected to a Fellowship he began to take pupils and
6O ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
was soon highly esteemed as a teacher of Greek and became
by appointment University Lecturer in that language.
As a writer of Latin he was eminent. All the University
letters were written by him in his official capacity of Public
Orator. He excelled also in the art of penmanship. He
was appointed to succeed Sir J. Cheke, who probably more
than any other one man had promoted the study of Greek
literature in Cambridge. He did so not by talking about it,
but by reading Greek authors with select pupils, going over a
large amount of ground. Being of a delicate constitution and
unable to sustain prolonged exertion of mind Ascham took to
archery as a recreation ; and partly as a defence of his practice he
published a book on Archery called " Toxophilus or the School
and Partitions of shooting contained in two books written by
Roger Ascham 1544. Pleasant for all gentlemen and yeomen
of England, for their pastime to read, and profitable for their
use to follow both in war and peace."
In writing from Brussels in 1553 to Cecil he defends his
practice of archery at the same time that he indicates that
he has given it up. " Yet," he says, " I do amiss to dislike
shooting too much which hath hitherto been my best friend ;
and even now looking back to the pleasure which I found in
it and perceiving small repentance to follow after it, by Plato's
judgment I may think well of it. No, it never called me to go
from my book, but it made both wit the lustier and will the
readier to run to it again. And perchance going back
sometime from learning may serve even as well as it doth
at leaping to pass some of those which keep always thus
standing at their books ; besides that seeking company and
experience of men's manners abroad is a fit remedy for the
sore wherewith learned men (many say) be much infected
withal which is 'the best learned not always the wisest.'"
In 1548 Ascham was called to Court to superintend the
studies of the Princess Elizabeth.
Being appointed secretary to an English Embassy to
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 6 1
Germany, he spent nearly three years in various parts of the
continent of Europe and wrote his Report and discourse of
the affairs in Germany. When at Strassburg he visited the
celebrated Rector of the Gymnasium there, John Sturmius,
with whom he had maintained a correspondence, but much
to his regret found him from home.
It was on his return to England that he served as Latin
Secretary at Court under Edward, Philip and Mary, and Queen
Elizabeth successively.
The most important of his writings, The Sc/wlemaster, was not
published till after his death.
Notwithstanding somewhat straitened circumstances Ascham
married on the ist June, 1554. He seems to have been
happy in his marriage. In a quaintly expressed letter to
Mr W. Pawlett, he says, " God, I thank him, hath given me
such an one as the less she seeth I do for her the more loving
in all causes she is to me, when I again have rather wished her
well than done her good : and therefore the more glad she is to
bear my fortune with me the more sorry am I that hitherto she
hath found rather a loving than a lucky husband unto her.
I did choose her to live withal, not hers to live upon, and if
my choice were to choose again I would even do as
I did."
Also in a letter to Sturm he says :
" I have such a wife as John Sturm would willingly desire
for his Roger Ascham. Her name is Margaret, and I was
married on the ist of June, whatever of joyful omen may be in
that name and that day."
Ascham, we may see, was not merely a man of great
learning but also a man of the world and of affairs, and this
adds to the weight of his opinions.
The men who in England were not only most conspicuous,
but also most eminent, as representatives of the revival in all
strictly educational matters, were Dean Colet, Cheke, and
Ascham. The first-named founded St Paul's School, and,
62 ROGER ASCIIAM, THE HUMANIST
with the help of Lilly, made it a kind of normal school, as
it were, for all England. They both shared the Humanism
of their friend Erasmus, but they possessed more definite
Christian conviction and religious purpose than he did. On
the other hand, they were not dominated by the theological
(as distinct from the Christian) spirit so prevalent among many
of the Reformers on the continent of Europe, especially those
who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century. They
exhibited, in truth, that example of moderation in opinion
and action which, until very recent times at least, has always
characterized the reformed Church of England. Ascham lays
very little stress on theology; indeed, he seems to me rather
to evade the subject. I regard him as a pure Humanist.
Colet and his friends belong to the school of Melanchthon ;
Ascham more to the school of Erasmus, but with a genuine
clear, sound and specifically English vein in him.
What is Humanism in education ? It is, when largely
interpreted, the formation of the mind of youth omnibus
artibus quae ad hmnanitatem pertinent. In its more restricted
meaning, as understood in the first revival of letters, it is the
formation of the human mind by literature, as opposed to
the study of barren words, abstract rules, grammar, rhetorical
technicalities, logical sophisticalities, and bald epitomes, all
expressed, by master and pupil alike, in barbarous Latinity.
It is also the study of style or the beautiful in expression, and
this by the perusal of the great writers who express themselves
beautifully. At the time of the revival there were (with the
single exception of Italian) only two languages known to
Europe which, to any large extent at least, exhibited per-
fection of style, whether in prose or poetry, Greek and Latin.
But Latin being the indispensable and universal language
of the time, it was Latin literature that had to be chiefly
cultivated. Terence, Ovid, Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, constituted
the substance of education in the eyes of the Humanists,
because they were the best available models of the artistic
expression of human thought on human things. Observe that
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 63
I say human thought; for the Humanists, though apparently
aiming mainly at education in style, considered that they
were thus giving education in 'humane' things the sub-
stance, as well as artistic form, of Literature through which
the highest culture of the man was alone possible. Humane
letters, the humanities, did not really mean merely style or
rhetoric, but the free unencumbered thought of reason on
nature and man. It is true that the Humanists emphasized
mere style as such, but this arose from the fact that their
movement was a reaction against bald and hard grammaticism,
barbarous uncouth language, and monkish notions. They
truly hated mere words quite as much as the modern sense-
realists. They were themselves Realists; but their realism was
the realism which sought for the things of reason and imagina-
tion, the product of mind which underlies words. That the
truest thought and beauty, or at least fitness, of expression,
went together, was in those days simply a fact ; and if we do
not limit our definition of beauty too narrowly, it is probably
still the fact. " Away, then, they said, with grammatical abstrac-
tions, with barbarous Latin and logical futilities that mere
' agitation of wit,' as Bacon calls it, by which the schoolmen
lived, and give us literary form, and with literary form true
literary substance. This is the proper milk for the growing
mind, this is the proper strong meat for the matured ! "
In sum, the Humanists went back to Quintilian ; and the
" good orator " as conceived by the Roman was the aim of the
new scholastic method. The correctness of this explanation of
the humanistic attitude to the school might be established by
citing many writers, were this the place to do so ; but, as I am
here speaking of Ascham, I shall confine myself to quoting a
passage from his chapter on " Imitation," as illustrating and
confirming what I have said a passage all the more worthy
of quotation that it exhibits well the trenchancy and amusing
vigour of his style. Speaking of the connexion between
language and thought, he says
64 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
" We find always wisdom and eloquence, good matter and
good utterance, never, or seldom, asunder. For all such
authors as be fullest of good matter and right judgment in
doctrine be likewise always most proper in words, most apt in
sentence, most plain and pure in uttering the same.
"And contrariwise in those two tongues, all writers, either
in religion or any sect of philosophy, whosoever be found fond
in judgment of matter be commonly found as rude in uttering
their minds. For stoics, anabaptists, and friars, with epicures,
libertines, and monks, being most like in learning and life, are
no fonder and more pernicious in their opinions than they be
rude and barbarous in their writings. They be not wise,
therefore, that say, 'What care I for a man's words and
utterance, if his matter and reasons be good?' Such men
say so, not so much of ignorance as either in some singular
pride in themselves, or some special malice of others, or some
private and partial matter, either in religion, or other kind of
learning. For good and choice meats be no more requisite
for healthy bodies than proper and apt words be for good
matters; and also plain and sensible utterance for the best
and deepest reasonings ; in which two points standeth perfect
eloquence, one of the fairest and rarest gifts that God doth
give to man.
"Ye know not what hurt ye do to learning that care not
for words, but for matter, and so make a divorce between the
tongue and the heart. For mark all ages, look upon the whole
course of both the Greek and Latin tongues, and ye shall surely
find that, when apt and good words began to be neglected, and
properties of those two tongues to be confounded, then also
began ill deeds to spring; strange matters to oppress good
orders ; new and fond opinions to strive with old and true
doctrine, first in philosophy and after in religion ; right judg-
ment of all things to be perverted, and so virtue with learning
is contemned, and study left off. Of ill thoughts cometh
perverse judgment, of ill deeds springeth lewd talk ; which
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 65
four mis-orders, as they mar man's life, so destroy they good
learning withal. But behold the goodness of God's providence
for learning; all old authors and sects of philosophy which
were fondest in opinion and rudest in utterance, as stoics and
epicures, first contemned of wise men, and then forgotten of
all men, be so consumed by time, as they be now not only out
of use, but also out of memory of man. Which thing, I surely
think, will shortly chance to the whole doctrine, and all the
books of phantastical anabaptists and friars, and of the beastly
libertines and monks 1 ."
Literary art, or the beautiful in expression, then, was the
humanistic aim ; and with it, as an inevitable concomitant,
the highest and best thought on things human. Even in the
teaching of formal rhetoric and logic, which still constituted
the higher part of the curriculum of youth, the realism of
the Humanists led them to prefer the analysis of rhetorical
pieces, and the exhibition of the logical sequence of great
literary efforts, to abstract rules of logic or rhetoric. When
"Master Cheke" read Greek with Ascham and others in
Cambridge, he read author after author. He did not stop to
dwell on particles, or to write Greek iambics. He, and men
like him, preferred the reality to the mere naming of things, the
material to the formal in the abstract sense of the term, though
ardent students themselves of perfect form in the aesthetic sense.
Hence, too, the importance the Humanists assigned to the
study of the characteristics of the various writers of antiquity.
Criticism was revived. Most know the admirable summary of
literary history in Quintilian's tenth book. We find in Ascham,
in his chapter on "Imitation," to which I have already referred,
an equally admirable review, and the student will do well to
read both and observe in what respects great writers differed
in handling the same subject. An admirable discipline of
mind this. Language is so bound up with thought, that in
1 My quotations are from the large paper quarto ed. of James Bennet,
1761. The best ed. is that of Giles, 1865.
L. C
66 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
teaching language in this critical way, we teach thought and
literary appreciation. In criticism, it is not rules of criticism,
opinions about authors, to which the student is directed by
Ascham, but to the authors themselves. Here, again, the
Humanistic Realism shows itself.
Unfortunately, ere long the substance of literature disap-
peared from the humanistic curriculum : mere style or form, and
Ciceronian imitation, became the aim ; and then, finally, alas !
grammar, although in a less offensive form than in previous
generations and freed from dialectic, reasserted itself. This
degeneracy characterized all higher education till quite recently,
and still indeed survives.
Ascham wishes it to be distinctly understood that he is not
dealing with the question of education in general (as did Elyot,
Rabelais and Montaigne) but of school education. He takes the
subject up from the day on which a boy enters the grammar
school seven years of age ; and the title of his book, The
Scholemaster, indicates his self-imposed limitation. And yet,
as we shall see, he cannot escape the larger questions.
Ascham's object is to show what a literary or humanistic
training truly is, and how it should be set about. It was of course
inevitable that he should first deal with the acquisition of the
language which was to be the vehicle of the training, viz. Latin;
what applied to Latin applied, mutatis mutandis, to Greek.
While giving his conclusions as to language-teaching, he always,
however, has in his thought the great humanistic purpose of all
school instruction. His almost exclusive attention to Latin is
explained by the fact that Greek was only beginning to claim
attention in the secondary schools, and seems to have been
first taught in Colet's school at St Paul's. Few, even in the
universities, yet studied Greek, few but ardent ; and these were
looked upon with suspicion as innovators and heretics '.
I. METHOD OF TEACHING AND LEARNING LATIN. After
1 Even elegant Latinity was suspected at Rome. (Pattison's Life of
Casaubon.)
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 67
learning the parts of speech that is to say, what we now call
the accidence and being exercised in the joining together of
adjectives and nouns, nouns and verbs, and the relative with
its antecedent, the pupil should not be introduced at once, as
was the then custom, to Latin composition, because he has not
yet the materials, and the result is that wrong words, wrong
turns and order in the sentences swarm, and the boy acquires
bad habits in Latinity which are never afterwards uprooted.
Besides, nothing more discourages children, "dulls their wits,
and takes away their will from learning, than the care they have
to satisfy their masters in making of Latines."
The proper way to proceed is this: Let the "master read tQ
his pupils the Epistles of Cicero, gathered together and chosen
out by Sturmius for the capacity of children.
" First, let him teach the child cheerfully and plainly, the
cause and matter of the letter; then let him construe it into
English so oft as the child may easily carry away the understand-
ing of it; 1 lastly, parse it over perfectly. This done thus, let the
child, by-and-by, both construe and parse it over again; so that
it may appear the child doubteth in nothing that his master
taught him before. After this, the child must take a paper
book, and sitting in some place where no man shall prompt
him, by himself, let him translate into English his former
lesson. Then, showing it to his master, let the master take
from him his Latin book, and pausing an hour at the least,
then let the child translate his own English into Latin again in
another paper book. When the child bringeth it, turned into
Latin, the master must compare it with Tullie's book, and lay
them both together ; and where the child doth well, either in
choosing or true placing of Tullie's words, let the master praise
him and say, ' Here do ye well.' For I assure you, there is no f /
such whetstone to sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to
learning, as is praise" (p. 200).
*****
1 Ratke also advocated this plan.
52
68 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
"In these few lines I have wrapped up the most tedious
part of grammar, and also the ground of almost all the rules
that are so busily taught by the master, and so hardly learned
by the scholar in all common schools; which after this sort the
master shall teach without all error, and the scholar shall learn
without great pain, the master being led by so sure a guide,
and the scholar being brought into so plain and easy a way.
And therefore we do not contemn rules, but we gladly teach
rules ; and teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly than
they be commonly taught in common schools. For when the
master shall compare Tullie's book with his scholar's translation,
let the master at the first lead and teach his scholar to join the
rules of his grammar-book with the examples of his present
lesson, until the scholar, by himself, be able to fetch out of his
grammar every rule for every example ; so as the grammar-
book be ever in the scholar's hand, and also used of him as a
dictionary for every present use. This is a lively and perfect
way of teaching of rules ; where the common way, used in
common schools, to read the grammar alone by itself is tedious
for the master, hard for the scholar, cold and uncomfortable
for them both" (p. 201).
*****
"All this while, by mine advice, the child shall use to speak
no Latin ; for, as Cicero saith in like matter, with like words,
' Loquendo, male loqui discunt.' And that excellent learned
man, G. Budaeus, in his Greek commentaries, sore complaineth
that, when he began to learn the Latin tongue, use of speaking
Latin at the table and elsewhere, unadvisedly, did bring him
to such an evil choice of words, to such a crooked framing of
sentences, that no one thing did hurt or hinder him more, all
the days of his life afterwards, both for readiness in speaking,
and also good judgment in writing 1 " (p. 202).
As you will see, the pupil is to have two paper books, the
1 Muretus, the celebrated humanistic Ciceronian Latinist, always declined
to speak Latin.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 69
one for translation from Latin into English, the other for re-
translation from English into Latin.
When he begins to show some facility in these two
exercises, the master will begin to call his attention to those
words which, though like, have diverse shades of meaning, to
words which are synonymous, to phrases, to idioms, and require
him to open a third paper book for the recording of these, the
pupil classifying what he records under the proper heads.
This should be done first with the Ciceronian Epistles, and
then he should be introduced to the simpler orations, such as
Pro Archia Poeta, and Pro Lege Manilla etc. ; and the
continuance of exercises in Cicero "shall work such a right
choice of words, so straight a framing of sentences, such a true
judgment, both to write skilfully and speak wittily as wise men
shall both praise and marvel at."
After the pupil has been for some time exercised as above,
then read daily with him the third book of Epistles as selected
by Sturmius, the De Amiritia, and De Senectute, and also
some comedy of Terence or Plautus. Caesar's Commentaries
also should be read, " wherein is seen the unspotted propriety
of the Latin tongue " ; and the speeches of Livy.
It is not necessary at this stage that the pupil should write
translations daily. It is sufficient if he construe orally and be
examined in the parsing. But the teacher himself, every
second or third day, " should choose some epistle ad Atticum,
some notable commonplace out of his orations or some other
part of Tullie, by his discretion, which the scholar may not
know where to find, and translate it himself into plain, natural
English ; and then give it to the scholar to translate into Latin
again, allowing him good space and time to do it both with
diligent heed and good advisement." When the scholar brings
up his exercise, bring out the Tullie, and compare the work of
the pupil with the original, sentence by sentence, word by word,
" commend his good choice and right placing of words ; show
his faults gently but blame them not over sharply ; for of such
7O ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
missings gently admonished of, proceed glad and good heed-
taking ; of good heed-taking springeth chiefly knowledge, which
after groweth to perfectness, if this order be diligently used by
the scholar and gently handled by the master. For here shall
all the hard points of grammar both easily and surely be
learned up ; which scholars in common schools by making
of Latines be groping at with care and fear, and yet in many
years they scarce can reach unto them " (p. 264).
"I remember," he says, "when I was young, in the north
they went to the grammar school little children ; they came
from thence great lubbers always learning and little profiting ;
learning without book everything, understanding within the
book little or nothing." By the suggested method the pupils
will truly know what is in the book. To construe orally, to
write translation, then to retranslate, to parse, and to analyze
the passage with a view to mark out all the peculiarities,
involves the perusal of the passage a dozen times at the least.
Thus we follow Pliny's advice to his friend Fuscus " Multum,
non multa 1 ."
When the scholar has attained considerable skill in
retranslating into Latin, then the teacher should proceed as
follows. Let him write some letter as if from him to his father
or some friend, " naturally according to the disposition of the
child," or some fable or narrative, and let him translate this
into Latin, " abiding in some place where no other scholar can
prompt him." The teacher will use his discretion in such a
way as to choose matter within the compass of the boy's
previous reading, and " now," says Ascham, "take heed lest the
scholar do not better in some point than yourself, except ye have
been diligently exercised in these kinds of translating before."
II. CRITICISM OF CONTEMPORARY METHODS. Ascham now
proceeds to consider the ways " appointed by the best learned
men for the learning of tongues and increase of eloquence,"
1 Ratke, Milton, and Jacotot, all advocated the thorough "lessoning"
of one book in acquiring a language.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST /I
and to give his judgment on the value of these. And first of
these is Translation.
Regarding translation and its importance, all agree, he says,
but it brings forth little comparatively, (i) because it is single
and not double translation ; and (2) because of the lack of the
daily use of writing, "which is the only thing that breedeth
deep root both in the wit for good understanding, and in the
memory for sure keeping of all that is learned." Tullie, " De
Oratore," commends this way. Plinius Secundus also, in
an epistle to his friend Fuscus, recommends this mode of
procedure with a view not merely to the acquisition of a
language, but of Rhetoric, and of a sound judgment in the
selection of arguments and expressions. Ascham maintains
that any scholar who will translate in this way Tullie, " De
Senectute," and the " Epistle ad Quintum Fratrem," and the
other "Ad Lentulum," the last save one in the first book,
" will come to a better knowledge of the Latin tongue than the
most part do who spend four or five years in tossing all the
rules of grammar in common schools." He tells us that Queen
Elizabeth, his pupil, never took grammar in her hand after the
first declining of the noun and verb, " but only by this double
translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily without missing
every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tullie every afternoon,
for the space of a year or two, had attained to such a perfect
understanding in both the tongues and to such a ready utterance
of the Latin, and that with such a judgment as they be few in
number, in both the universities or elsewhere in England, that
be in both tongues comparable with her majesty" (p. 272).
Another argument used by Ascham is that in this exercise
the master as well as the pupil is guided to correct expression.
At this stage, instruction in the mere structure of the
language may be held to end. What follows belongs to
the best means of forming style as distinct from merely
grammatical writing in its plainest form. Paraphrasing, meta-
72 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
phrasing, epitome, imitation, declamation, are all considered in
their order.
Of Paraphrasing, he says : This was first tried by C. Carbo,
and tried for a while by Lucius Crassus, but condemned by
him and Cicero. Quintilian, it is true, commends the practice.
Pliny, Quintilian's pupil, however, condemned it. He calls it
audax contentio. Ascham calls the practice "the turning,
chopping and changing the best to worse." The scholar, if he
has, as he is presumed to have, a good model, is in fact trying
to express in a worse and inferior way what is already expressed
beautifully. "The scholar," says Ascham, "shall win nothing
by paraphrasis, but only (if we may believe Tullie) to choose
worse words, to place them out of order, to fear overmuch the
judgment of the master, to mislike overmuch the hardness of
learning ; and by use to gather up faults which hardly will be
left off again" (p. 274). Ascham here enters into the question
of the rhetorical benefit, as well as the grammatical, of such
exercises. He quotes Sturmius, who counsels all to avoid
paraphrasis, unless it be from worse to better.
The only case in which paraphrasis is valuable is, Ascham
thinks, in turning Ionic or Doric into the Attic form or style.
A good example of this is the translation of Herodotus' story
of Candaules and Gyges out of the Ionic into the Attic by
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his book Ilepi aw^e'crews 'QvopAriov.
Ascham believes that such exercises would give great power
over the Greek tongue, but it is evident that they are beyond
the scope of grammar-school teaching, and belong rather to the
university.
Metaphrasis is the turning of prose into verse, or vice-versa.
Socrates amused himself in prison by turning ^Esop's fables
into verse. Quintilian lauds the exercise, but Ascham thinks
it of doubtful value save at the university stage (boys went to
the university at fifteen or even younger), and then only in
very competent hands. He gives examples; but, in truth,
they are not truly examples, it seems to me, of deliberate
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST /3
metaphrasis, but rather of imitation, which is unquestionably
a good exercise. We have an illustration in the comparison
of parallel passages in eminent writers, the study of which is, in
capable hands, I think, full of the elements of literary and
rhetorical culture.
Under the head of Epitome, he remarks that Epitomes are
of great utility if made by a student himself for his own use ;
but they are hurtful to teach from.
The rest of the chapter is, in reality, a short treatise on
vices of style, and has reference rather to rhetoric than to the
work of the schoolroom. There occur in the course of it
many wise observations and not a little keen criticism and
sarcasm, and it is as a whole most interesting and instructive.
Imitation. "Imitation is a faculty to express lively and
perfectly that example which ye go about to follow."
" All languages both learned and mother-tongues be gotten
and gotten only by imitation."
"If ye would speak and write as the best and wisest, ye
must be conversant where the best and wisest are."
This chapter is, in truth, a continuance of the treatise on
rhetoric begun in the previous chapter. He dwells on the
necessity of comparing the great classical authors one with
another, so as to ascertain and mark carefully in what respects
they differed in their mode of handling the same subjects.
In Ascham's generation, pure style was the mark of true
learning, as opposed to the barbarous Latinity and vain dispu-
tations of the schoolmen, which were identified with ignorance.
There is consequently an exaggeration of the necessity of
imitation, which was due to the circumstances of the time
and the state of learning. The object of the Humanists was
to form style through the study and reproduction of the best
models. Every classical student should read this chapter,
as it contains many just criticisms on classical authors. A
portion of it may be compared with Quintilian's remarks
on great writers in his tenth book to which I have already
74 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
referred. I doubt if more sound criticism on the literature
of Greece and Rome is to be had, than may be found in
the brief analysis contained in the writings of these two men
taken together.
Ascham, in his commendation of imitation, has evidently
in view the literary translation of a passage in a famous author
from the language in which he writes into another, and is
influenced by the opinion of Pliny in Epist. VH. 9, where he
says, writing to his friend Fuscus, " You ask me what I think
should be your method of study in the retirement which you
have been for some time enjoying. As useful as anything, as
it is frequently recommended, is the practice of translating
either your Greek into Latin, or your Latin into Greek. By
practising this, you acquire propriety and dignity of expression,
an abundant choice of the beauties of style, power in descrip-
tion and in the imitation of the best models, a facility of
creating such models for yourself. Besides, what may escape
you when you read, cannot escape you when you translate.
From this follows a quick appreciation of beauty and sound
taste. There is no reason why you should not write about
the subjects which you have been already reading, keeping
to the same matter and line of argument, as if you were a
rival ; should then compare it with what you have read, and
carefully consider whether the author has been the happier
of the two, and wherefore. You may congratulate yourself
much if sometimes you have done better, but should be much
ashamed if he is always superior. Sometimes you may select
even very famous passages, and compete with what you select.
The competition is daring enough, but, as it is private, cannot
be called impudent 1 ." Such exercises are only, it is clear, for
advanced scholars.
III. THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING MORE THAN ONE
LANGUAGE. Speaking again of the importance of knowing
1 Translated by Messrs Church and Brodribb in Ancient Classics for
English Readers.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 75
more languages than one, with a view to style, he says
(p. 308)-
" Therefore thou, that shootest at perfection in the Latin
tongue, think not thyself wiser than Tullie was, in choice of
the way that leadeth rightly to the same : think not thy wit
better than Tullie's was, as though that may serve thee that
was not sufficient for him. For, even as a hawk flieth not
high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellency
with one tongue.
" I have been a looker-on in the cock-pit of learning these
many years ; and one cock only have I known, which with
one wing, even at this day, doth pass all other, in mine
opinion, that ever I saw in any pit in England though they
had two wings. Yet nevertheless, to fly well with one wing 1 ,
to run fast with one leg, be rather rare masteries much to be
marvelled at, than sure examples safely to be followed. A
bishop, that now liveth, a good man, whose judgment in
religion I better like than his opinion in perfectness in other
learning, said once unto me, 'We have no need now of the
Greek tongue, when all things be translated into Latin.' But
the good man understood not, that even the best translation is
for mere necessity but an evil imped wing to fly withal, or a
heavy stump leg of wood to go withal. Such the higher they
fly, the sooner they falter and fail : the faster they run, the
ofter they stumble and sorer they fall."
IV. SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. In handling this part of method,
Ascham speaks with justice, though sometimes with acerbity,
of teachers. His remarks being quite fresh, and applicable,
to a large extent at least, to the circumstances of our present
time, I shall ask your attention to them. Apart from their
intrinsic value, the raciness and verve of the language in which
they are expressed justify my quoting them.
Discipline was, in Ascham's own view, a very important
1 "Habeas licebit alterum pedem Laclae, Inepte, frustra crure ligneo
curres " (Martial, x. 82).
76 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
part of his treatise. In the preface narrating the circumstances
which led to his undertaking the book, we see that it was the
question of school discipline which led him to take up his
pen. Some boys had run away from Eton because of the
severities there practised, and this led to a conversation among
some men of the time, in the course of which Ascham main-
tained that " children were sooner allured by love than driven
by beating to attain good learning." Others concurred, Sir
Robert Sackville citing his own sad experience, which, how-
ever, seems to have been a very common one. Ascham's
school-method, accordingly, had for its motive a moral purpose.
In the course of his remarks he is naturally led, like Quintilian,
to make various wise and discriminating remarks on the
different characters of boys.
As to the relation between teacher and scholar Ascham
wishes that the scholar should never have any hesitation in
asking the master questions. The relation should be of so free
a kind, that he will not be driven to seek for prompting or to
resort to unlawful means of obtaining help 1 .
"If the child miss," he says, "either in forgetting a word,
or in changing a good with a worse, or mis-ordering a sentence,
I would not have the master either frown or chide with him,
if the child have done his diligence and used no trowandship
therein. For I know by good experience that a child shall
take more profit of two faults gently warned of, than of four
things rightly hit" (p. 201).
As to discipline generally, Ascham is an advocate for love
rather than fear. "I do gladly agree," he says, " with all
good schoolmasters to have children brought to good perfect-
ness in learning, to all honesty in manners, to have all faults
1 Another great Humanist, Cardinal Wolsey, in his directions to the
master of Ipswich School (1528), says, " Imprimis hoc unum admonendum
censuerimus ut neque plagis severioribus neque vultuosis minis aut ulla
tyrannidis specie tenera pubes afficiatur; hac, enim, injuria ingenii alacritas
aut extingui aut magna ex parte obtundi solet."
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 77
rightly amended, to have every vice severely corrected ; but for
the order and way that leadeth rightly to these points we some-
what differ" (p. 206). Schoolmasters, he says, rather mar
than mend their pupils by their severity. When angry with
some other matter altogether, they make their pupils suffer for
it. These be foolish schoolmasters, you will say, and there be
few of them : foolish they be, but " over many such be found
everywhere." "In punishing, too, they quite as often punish
nature, as correct faults. Yet some men, wise indeed, but,
in this matter, more by severity of nature than any wisdom
at all, do laugh at us when we thus wish and reason that
young children should rather be allured to learning by
gentleness and love, than compelled to learning by beating
and fear." "They say our reasons serve only to breed forth
talk and pass away time ; but we never saw good schoolmasters
do so, nor never read of wise men that thought so." He then
brings against them the judgment of Plato, who says : " No
learning ought to be learned with bondage ; for bodily labours
wrought by compulsion hurt not the body, but any learning
learned by compulsion tarrieth not long in the mind." He
also points out that young men trained by compulsion, when
by time they come to their own rule, carry commonly from
school with them a perpetual hatred of their master, and a
continual contempt for learning. He then contravenes the
opinion that children have a natural distaste for learning, and
throws the blame on the schoolmaster. He also advises
doubters to read John Sturmius, " De Institutione Principis."
At the same time, he countenances beating for moral faults ;
but not for intellectual shortcomings. " Yea, many times the
better nature," he says, "is sore punished : for if one by quickness
of wit take his lesson readily, another by hardness of wit taketh
it not so speedily, the first is always commended, the other
is commonly punished ; when a wise schoolmaster should
rather discreetly consider the right disposition of both their
natures, and not so much weigh what either of them is able
78 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
to do now, as what either of them is likely to do hereafter.
For this I know, not only by reading of books in my study,
but also by experience of life abroad in the world, that those
which be commonly the wisest, the best learned, and best men
also, when they be old, were never commonly the quickest
of wit when they were young. The causes why, amongst
other, which be many, that move me thus to think, be these
few which I will reckon. Quick wits be commonly apt to
take, unapt to keep ; soon hot, and desirous of this and that,
as cold, and soon weary of the same again ; more quick to
enter speedily than able to pierce far; even like over sharp
tools, whose edges be very soon turned. Such wits delight
themselves in easy and pleasant studies, and never pass forward
in high and hard sciences. And therefore the quickest wits
commonly may prove the best poets, but not the wisest orators :
ready of tongue to speak boldly, not deep of judgment, either
for good counsel, or wise writing. Also for manners and life,
quick wits commonly be, in desire newfangled, in purpose
unconstant, light to promise anything, ready to forget every-
thing, both benefit and injury : and thereby neither fast to
friend, nor fearful to foe : inquisitive of every trifle, not secret
in greatest affairs ; bold with any person, busy in every matter ;
soothing such as be present, nipping any that is absent; of
nature also always flattering their betters, envying their equals,
despising their inferiors ; and, by quickness of wit, very quick
and ready to like none so well as themselves " (p. 206).
Ascham afterwards gives the notes of the best wits for
learning, following Plato, viz.
A mind well disposed generally,
Of a good memory,
Loving learning,
Loving labour,
Loving to learn of others,
Disposed to ask questions,
Loving praise.
We may compare with this a parallel passage in Quintilian's
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 79
first book ; but Ascham works the whole question out much
more fully than Quintilian.
V. VIRTUE. We now see Roger Ascham's aim in education :
it was a humanistic aim in the broadest sense. I have shown
you briefly his method of teaching language and forming style,
and given you his views of scholastic discipline. In all you
see a man of simple and direct outlook, of strong and manly
sense, of moral purpose and vigour. Had he no higher
purpose than culture in the humanistic sense ? Of course he
had. All men who have written about education, and who are
worth reading, have placed before themselves the ethical out-
come of school and its studies as the highest. In the latter
part of his treatise (and, indeed, all through) Ascham shows
how sensible he was of the prime importance of this aspect of
education, and in the whole of the first book of The Schole-
master, the moral result of the discipline which he advocates
is constantly present to his mind. "Virtue and learning,"
these go together as inseparable. He desires that children be
brought up in " God's fear " to " honesty of life and perfectness
of learning." This training to virtue is, after all, his main
interest. In his Toxophilus he says, " If a young tree grow
crooked, when it is old a man shall rather break it than straight
it." He was too much of a Greek not to have constantly before
him apeTT;, CTUK^/OOO-UVT/, TO KaAoV as the final aims of all school
work. " To come down," he says, " from higher matters to my
little children, and poor schoolhouse again, I will, God willing,
go forward orderly to instruct children and young men both for
learning and manners." " I wish," he says, " to have love of
learning bred up in children. I wish as much to have young
men brought up in good order of living, and in some more severe
discipline than commonly they be." The schoolmaster has to
see to this, but " always using such discreet moderation as that
the schoolhouse should be counted a sanctuary against fear."
But he felt that the most pressing matter was the method and
quality of the instruction, as alone insuring milder discipline, and
80 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
he accordingly devotes himself formally to the consideration of
these ; but the higher aim runs like a thread through the whole
treatise. To the attainment of this higher aim a better method
and a milder discipline were preconditions, and accordingly he
throws his force on them. But learning, he well knew, will not
suffice alone; and yet we may be assured that if a youth's
mind be brought into contact with the highest literary forms,
and through literature with the substance of morality, learning
will do much.
" Learning," says Ascham, " teacheth more in one year
than experience in twenty; and learning teacheth safely when
experience maketh more miserable than wise. He hazardeth
sore that waxeth wise by experience. An unhappy master
he is that is made cunning by many shipwrecks 1 ." And
again, " Learning, ye wise fathers, and good bringing up, and
not blind and dangerous experience, is the next and readiest
way, that must lead your children, first to wisdom, and
then to worthiness, if ever ye purpose they shall come there.
And to say all in short, though I lack authority to give counsel,
yet I lack not good will to wish, that the youth in England,
specially gentlemen, and namely nobility, should be by good
bringing up so grounded in judgement of learning, so founded
in love of honesty, as, when they should be called forth to the
execution of great affairs in service of their prince and country,
they might be able to use and to order all experiences, were
they good, were they bad, and that according to the square,
rule, and line of wisdom, learning, and virtue " (p. 238).
" Italy and Rome," he elsewhere says, " have been, to the great
good of us that now live, the best breeders and bringers-up of
the worthiest men, not only for wise speaking but also for well-
doing in all civil affairs, that ever was in the world." " Virtue
once made that country mistress over all the world ; vice now
1 The saying of Erasmus may be applied to those schoolmasters who do
not study philosophy and method as well as to young men : " Experience is
the common schoolhouse of fools and ill men."
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 8 1
maketh that country slave to them that before were glad to
serve it." If we would avoid such a fate, we must train and
discipline the young, so that they may "find pain in doing ill";
and if " to the goodness of nature be joined the wisdom of the
teacher, in leading young wits into a right and plain way of
learning, surely children kept up in God's fear, and governed
by His grace, may most easily be brought well to serve God
and their country both by virtue and wisdom " (p. 221). "The
foundation of youth well set (as Plato doth say), the whole
body of the commonwealth shall flourish thereafter."
VI. GYMNASTIC AND Music. A man of Ascham's antique
habit of thought was not likely to omit the Greek gymnastic
out of his consideration. He urged that young gentlemen
should "use and delight in all courtly exercises and gentleman-
like pastimes." The Athenians, by making Apollo and Pallas
"patrons of learning to their youth," meant that learning should
always be mingled with honest mirth and comely exercises.
"All pastimes joined with labour, used in open place and in
daylight, containing either some fit exercise for war or some
pleasant pastime for peace, be not only comely and decent,
but also very necessary for a courtly gentleman to use." But
it is in the Toxophilus that we find gymnastic as an element
in education most strongly urged. He says there, "I heard a
good husband at his book once say, that to omit study some
time of the day and some time of the year, made as much for
the increase of learning as to let the land lie sometime fallow
maketh for the better increase of corn." And he quotes
Aristotle as saying, "that as rest is for labour and medicines,
for health, so is pastime at times for sad and weighty study."
For keen and able minds physical exercise was more necessary
than for dull and plodding intelligences : "The best wits to
learning" (he says in his Toxophilus) "must needs have
much recreation and ceasing from their books, or else they
mar themselves, when base and dumpish wits can never be
hurt by continual study."
L. 6
82 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
It was as pastime only that he advocated gymnastic. The
Hellenic idea that gymnastic had itself a moral aim did not
occur to Ascham. At the same time, he points out that some
pastimes not only contribute more to the health of the body
than others do, but are more conducive to morality, by being
public and demanding labour of body. For Ascham, and
indeed the Humanists generally, were practical believers in the
old saying of Epicharmus, that God has sold virtue and many
other good things to man in return for labour, and that amuse-
ment where there was no labour was hurtful to youth.
In his Toxophilus Ascham regrets that not more than
one youth in six entering Cambridge can sing. He also
deplores the decline of the practice of teaching the children
of England "plain-song and prick-song 1 ." He evidently at-
taches a moral value to music-teaching, and on this point
quotes Plato and Aristotle with approval. In the Cathedral
grammar-schools prior to the Reformation the course of in-
struction almost always included singing. In fact the schools
were often called "Song schools." Ascham complains that
only one in six could sing; how many Cambridge freshmen
can sing to-day ?
Ascham's aim, as we have seen, was the same as that of
all the Humanists and we may say of all educational writers
worth reading the promotion of virtue and wisdom. In his
Preface he says, "In the bringing up of youth there are three
special points truth of religion, honesty of living, and right
order in learning. In which three ways I pray God my poor
children may walk." The means whereby the end was to be
obtained was literature, and the "criticism of life" which is
embodied in literature. Literature furnished the materials
with which the human mind was to be fed, as well as the
vehicle of discipline. In the acquisition of literature, and in
coming into personal contact with great and heroic examples,
1 Music in parts.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 83
the true moral discipline for youth consisted. The study of
language, which specially belongs to boyhood, is the study of
literature in its elements, and trains at every step the powers
of perception, discrimination, and judgment, while laying the
foundation for higher things.
Do not suppose that I have exhausted Ascham : this is a
mere introduction to the study of him. Of his method,
generally, we may say that it was a sound and sensible one.
If followed, it would certainly give the intellectual and moral
discipline at which he aimed, and remove those obstacles to
learning which make it hateful to boys. He did not deal with
the art of education on psychological principles. In his time
there was no psychology. But a keen, vigorous, and sane
mind like Ascham's could hit very near the mark without the
formal machinery of philosophy :
"He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly."
(Butler's Hudibras, pt I, canto I, 1. 149.)
And what came of it all, so far as the practice of schools
is concerned? Nothing. And yet that staunch old Tory,
Samuel Johnson (and not alone weak-headed "theorists" who
have always been suspected of revolutionary proclivities), says
that "it contains, perhaps, the best advice that was ever given
for the study of languages." And Mr Quick tells us that
Professor J. E. B. Mayor declares that "this book sets forth
the only sound method of acquiring a dead language." Had
Ascham's own college (St John's, Cambridge) founded a
lectureship on education, three hundred years ago, restricted
to Quintilian and Ascham, the whole course of English educa-
tion would have been powerfully influenced.
To return to Ascham himself: his characteristics, as re-
vealed in his writings, appeared in his life. He was a pleasant-
mannered and a brave man, and called forth the affection as
62
84 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST
well as esteem of his contemporaries. We find no exaggeration
in the epigraphic lines of George Buchanan
"Aschamum extinctum patrias, Graiaeque Camenae
Et Latiie, vera cum pietate, dolent ;
Principibus vixit carus, jucundus amicis,
Re modica, in mores dicere fama nequit."
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.
1. Among the educational treatises of note during this century
was that of Hieronymus Wolf, "Docendi discendique ratio,"
published about 1576.
2. The student of Education would do well to read in connexion
with the whole period of the Renaissance Guizot's Lectures on
Civilization in Europe, and Hallam's Literary History of the
Middle Ages, and to consult Symonds' exhaustive work.
3. The two passages on which Ascham confessedly bases his
system of "Double Translation" are Cic. de Orat. I. 34, and Plin.
Epistol. vn. 9. In the passage from the De Oratore the words
are put into the mouth of M. Licinius Crassus, the most illustrious
of Roman orators before the time of Cicero. The latter was not
only trained by Crassus when a boy (de Oratore, II. i, 2) but
appears to have selected him as the mouthpiece of his own views
in the dialogue. The passage referred to is as follows :
Cicero de Orat. \. 34. "But in my daily exercises I used,
when a youth, to adopt chiefly that method which I knew that
Caius Carbo, my adversary, generally practised ; which was, that
having selected some nervous piece of poetry, or read over such a
portion of a speech as I could retain in my memory, I used to
declaim upon what I had been reading in other words, chosen
with all the judgment that I possessed. But at length I perceived
that in that method there was this inconvenience, that Ennius,
if I exercised myself on his verses, or Gracchus, if I laid one of
his orations before me, had forestalled such words as were peculiarly
appropriate to the subject, and such as were the most elegant
and altogether the best ; so that if I used the same words, it
profited nothing : if others, it was even prejudicial to me, as I
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 85
habituated myself to use such words as were less eligible. After-
wards I thought proper, and continued the practice at a rather
more advanced age, to translate the orations of the best Greek
orators ; by fixing upon which I gained this advantage, that while
I rendered into Latin what I had read in Greek, I not only used
the best words, and yet such as were of common occurrence, but
also formed some words by imitation, which would be new to ourj
countrymen, taking care, however, that they were unobjectionable.'
Watson's Translation (Bonn's series).
4. The letter of Pliny (vn. 9) referred to in the text is
addressed to Fuscus, one of his many literary friends, who had
been asking him for advice as to his studies. The whole letter is
exceedingly interesting.
5. The most important English writers of the period after
Ascham were Mulcaster, d. 1611, who wrote Positions ("vide
Quick's edition) and The Elementarie ; and Brinsley, who wrote
on the Grammar School.
6. The most important of the men omitted is probably the
German Wimpheling, whose book, Guide for the German Youth,
was published in 1497, followed by Die fitgend in 1500. The
writings of this distinguished educationalist would, I have no
doubt, repay a study which I have not time to give to him. The
man who wrote (Janssen's History of the German People at the
Close of the Middle Ages, p. 80) " Let cultivation be for the
quickening of independent thought" was far removed from the
Mediaeval school.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE JESUITS.
Order founded in 1534.
IN some respects the greatest educational movement
generated during the second period of the Renaissance was
that of Ignatius of Loyola (born 1491, died 1556), the
founder of the Jesuit Order. To this I have already adverted ;
but it merits a fuller notice, because it was a scheme of
university as well as of secondary instruction. This order,
founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola and five associates,
knew what it wanted ; the Protestant Humanists did not. As
recognized by Papal Bull in 1540, it was primarily a missionary
organization. Adapting themselves to the urgent wants of the
time, the members devoted themselves to education and to
the cultivation of learning. Primary education certainly
received its great impulse from the Reformers, dogma and the
" godly upbringing " of the young being the governing aim.
We cannot say the same of secondary instruction, although
there were many excellent secondary schools of a Protestant
character. But the higher education generally was left to the
Jesuits to undertake.
It was not the Renaissance as a literary and aesthetic, but
as a theological movement, which led to the institution of the
THE JESUITS S/
Jesuit schools. They were bulwarks of the Faith. They
adopted as much of Humanism as served their purpose. To
say what a Jesuit school was as compared with a cathedral or
monastery school is not difficult. Latin formed in the former,
as in the latter, the central subject of instruction, but now it was
the Latin of classical antiquity. Eloquence in the restricted
sense of Latin style was the aim. The main purpose of this
system apart from its governing religious idea was to give
command of Latin as a medium of communication no less
than of personal culture. The service of the Church was the
end of all learning. Orators and poets were studied with a
view to this. A marked advance on the mediaeval studies was
thus a conspicuous feature of the school system, and as Lord
Bacon says in The Advancement of Learning " partly in
themselves, partly by the emulation and provocation of their
example, they quickened and strengthened the state of learning."
One hundred Colleges and Houses were established within
fifteen years of the foundation of the Order. In 1640 they
numbered 372. Prior to the French Revolution there were
ninety Colleges (secondary schools, and high schools or
" Academies ") in France alone. And these secondary schools
and universities were far in advance of Protestant and State
institutions. If we add the elements of Greek to Latin oratory
we say all that there is to be said as to the central subjects of
secular instruction. There is no record of any Jesuit school, so
far as I know, which approached in its breadth of study or in
the organization of school work the Protestant Gymnasium of
Sturm at Strassburg, much less the school of Neander or of
Trotzendorf examples however which were not largely followed
by Protestants.
How was it then that the Jesuit schools so far excelled the
Humanistic secondary schools of the Reformation as wholly to
eclipse them and to evoke the approval of Bacon and other
Protestant men of eminence ? The answer is contained in one
word, organization.
88 THE JESUITS
(1) There was a ratio studiorum deliberately laid down
and carried out.
(2) There was an organization of the teaching staff so
conceived as to attain the objects of the school and suited to a
system of carefully graded classes. The work was thorough
throughout.
(3) There was a ratio docendi et discendi. A great many
sensible rules of method in teaching were adopted and put into
practice. All parts of the school were subjected to one idea
and to one unquestioned authority. The school worked *as an
organism.
To these characteristics we must add that the discipline was
comparatively mild (always a consequence of good organization).
There were unwholesome elements in the discipline, it is true
too much emulation and a tendency to espionage and its
consequent evils ; but it was freed from the harshness that
characterized other schools. Great attention also was paid to
the health and bodily vigour of the pupils. If we add to this that
all the schools were everywhere alike as being under one Order,
and thus commanded the confidence of parents, we can easily
see that success was certain. The Protestant schools had too
much individualism about them. Their educational theory was
larger, their course of instruction for a time theoretically wider,
the spirit that animated them was more that of Humanism
and freedom, but against such characteristics, admirable as
they are, organization and recognized system will always carry
the day.
^TT^It was, then, not only by their activity in politics and Church
work that the Jesuits arrested the tide of Protestantism, but also
and chiefly by their schools. They believed in education as
moulding the future man, and had a conviction of its power,
which even to this day Protestants do not share, spite of all their
platform talk. At one time it almost appeared as if the whole
secondary and university education of the Continent of Europe
would fall into their hands, and had it not been for the
THE JESUITS 89
restriction of their aims by Church requirements, the tendency
of their system to crush out spontaneity, the reactionary
character of their most advanced teaching, the ultimate issue
and crown of which was, mediaeval philosophy and theology,
complete success, it seems to me, would have been assured.
& The school organization of the Jesuits became a tradition ;
the ratio studiorum and the ratio docendi were handed down.
They have not written much on Paedagogy, but their system
embodies a Paedagogy. That even in these days the Pro-
testant intellect does not believe in a School of Education
is shown by the opposition or indifference which the movement
to instal education as a university subject has had to encounter,
and by the fatuous and complacent satisfaction with which
secondary schoolmasters have regarded their own ignorance
o/ the principles and method of their art as more of a distinc-
lon than a misfortune.
\\
~"ln the field of distinctively secondary education, I have
said, the Jesuits were strong. Their higher or university
instruction was also far from contemptible : they gave a
thorough training in scholastic philosophy, theology, and
the sciences to the members of the order; but, spite of the
fact that there have been among them men eminent in many
departments, they cannot be said to have succeeded as repre-
sentatives of the higher intellectual ambitions of men. And
this for the obvious reason that, as I have above indicated, all
teaching was restricted within certain lines with a view to
conserve the interests of the Roman Catholic Church. I do
not say this by way of reproach : it could not have been other-
wise, and they were fortunate in having a definite aim. Latin
was the central subject, and the philosophy and theology
of the schoolmen, especially of St Thomas Aquinas, bounded
their vision. All else was either useless or dangerous to " The
Faith." Now, it is essential to the advance of humanity that
there should be freedom, and equally essential to a university as
standing in the forefront of the movement of reason in the
90 THE JESUITS
world, that there should be free teaching and free learning.
Truth, and truth alone, whithersoever it leads, must be the
aim of all intellectual activity.
Again, and for similar reasons, while the Jesuit order does
not forbid, they have never advanced, the education of the
masses. There is manifest danger to the Faith in so doing.
Their purpose has been to get hold of those whose business is
to lead and govern, while confining all others to the simplicities
and crudities of faith and obedience.
Accordingly, we may say with confidence, that the essential
characteristic of the humanistic revival (as I have tried to
explain it) was alien to the Jesuit spirit, and that the Order
was under obligation, in accordance with its own principles,
to ally itself with arbitrary authority, despotism, and obscur-
antism. It is only while it does not possess the educational
field to the exclusion of other and more modern forces that it
can be regarded with complacency in a free country. And even
as to their educational efficiency in the i6th and lyth centuries
we may put against the encomium of Bacon the opinion of
Leibnitz, who said that the Jesuits "fell below mediocrity,"
and the words of Macaulay, who said that the Jesuits seemed
to have found the point to which they could push intellectual
culture without reaching intellectual emancipation. All modern
studies have been regarded with distrust. Obedience and Faith
resting on Authority virtually sum up their educational aim.
Formalism, consequently, characterises all their methods.
How remote the spirit and aims of the Jesuits were, and
are, from the true spirit of the Humanistic Renaissance is
evident enough the moment we recognize in this movement
" the endeavour of man to reconstitute himself as a free being,
not as the thrall of theological despotism, and the peculiar
assistance he derived in this effort from Greek and Roman
literature, the litterae humaniores, letters leaning rather to the
side of man than of divinity 1 ."
1 Encyc. Brit., Art. Renaissance.
THE JESUITS 91
The record of the Humanistic Revival in so far as it told
on the schools repeats to us the old lesson that a new idea or
a new enthusiasm is very efficacious while it lasts, but cannot
long endure. Men cannot go on living at high pressure. It is
only in so far as the new idea admits of rational formulation,
or at least of being absorbed into the existing civil economy,
whether of politics or learning, that it can perpetuate itself.
Classical literature in the schools or universities came quickly
to mean merely the classical tongues a great gain when
compared with mediaeval barrenness ; but Latin and Greek
certainly are not Humanism, but merely vehicles for Humanism.
If the humanistic fervour partly aesthetic, partly ethical be
not in the teacher, the whole teaching degenerates rapidly into
language-teaching in its most abstract and uninteresting form.
To all but the select few among pupils it thus conveys
nothing, while engendering disgust of all books and all
thought. This was a fact already before 1600; it is a fact
now. The verbal, the abstract, the formal, is not mental
food ; it cannot, as such, be so. Its work is discipline ; and
this in itself is of little account if divorced from the real ele-
ments of literature and life.
No man interested in the progress of humanity can be in-
different to the question : Can we not so use the admirable and
various material now in our possession as to excite in the
majority of our pupils a genuine interest in literature, in
thought, and in the truth of things ? We cannot imperil the
intellectual and moral welfare of generations on the chance-
birth of teaching genius here and there. Is there a method by
which learning would be as pleasant as eating when one is
hungry, and which could be made the common possession of
all who teach ? If there be not such a method then we must
just go on as we have been doing, trying to coerce the mind of
youth ; and failing even in this. Is it not possible that by making
up our minds as to the end we have in view in educating, we
may get some light on the method to be pursued in order to
92 THE JESUITS
reach that end, nay get inspiration from the mere contemplation
of it ? These questions occurred vaguely to Bacon, and were
taken up by the Baconians, Ratke, Comenius, Locke, Pestalozzi.
The race of schoolmasters called these men " theorists " ; and
there an end. This was enough to condemn them. The
questions which they started seem to me very important, nay
vital questions, if we are to educate at all.
In endeavouring to answer the questions let us take advan-
tage of history. Look at the universities of Europe at the
present day. Whence comes their life, their progressiveness,
without which there is no life? From Bacon and the Baconian
induction and from vernacular literatures, I say without hesita-
tion. It is the scientific spirit engaged in every department of
human inquiry, physical, historical, philosophical, philological,
aesthetic, that keeps them, in these days, centres of intellectual
energy. With all their deficiencies, the learning of the world
and all its highest rational interests were never so adequately
represented in the universities as now. They are true centres
of light, and why? Because they seek scientific results, and
follow a scientific method. Method has done it all. Is
this same method practicable in the school? If so, under
what modifications ? There is always a certain percentage of
dullards born in the good providence of God to be hewers of
wood and drawers of water. But can we not touch to fine
issues 70 or 80 per cent, of the youth of the country ? It is
certainly worth trying. In fact many schools, especially of the
humbler kind, have been already converted by method (and
that even imperfectly understood) from dens of darkness and
despair into chambers of light and hope.
Whether education in the true sense is possible or not, this
is certain, that until the secondary schoolmasters study the
subject at our universities before entering on what they are
pleased to call their " profession," an improvement which shall
be genuine and progressive, because scientifically and historically
grounded, is hopeless. Science and scientific method in all
THE JESUITS 93
subjects alone prevent the world from falling back into barbarism.
Pure literature itself might seem adequate to this ; but even
literature is only a part of the universal thought-movement,
and has never flourished in its grander forms save as the artistic
expression of a philosophy of life and of the earnest pursuit
of truth. Take, for a painful example, Italy in the i5th
century.
To return : Meanwhile the vernacular and vernacular litera-
tures of France, Germany and England had been growing up side
by side with the classical revival, until it was found that the
true meaning of the whole Renaissance movement, in so far as it
was an Art, Literature, and Science movement, was to be found
in modern art, modern literature, and modern science not in
the servile imitation of the Greek and Latin writers, though these
were wisely retained in the schools as the foundation of linguistic
discipline, as models of literary expression, and sources of
modern thought. This was, and is, the true Humanism. The
use of a more and more refined vernacular now also began to
affect that exclusive use of Latin as a means of intercourse in
the schools which gave colloquial familiarity with it, and which,
even if it had done nothing else, had put into the hands of the
student the key to all that had once been worth knowing.
Knowledge in every department of human activity was ad-
vancing. It is clear enough to us, looking back, that the
question of education demanded reconsideration in 1600.
Europe was passing into new conditions. In England the
voice of Mulcaster was raised in advocacy of the study of
English and the training of schoolmasters, but it was as that
of one crying in the wilderness. There were now many, how-
ever, to express discontent with both school and university.
The problem of education in its large and liberal sense must
be always substantially the same ; but the materials by means
of which, and the conditions under which we are to educate,
must be subject to continual modification.
CHAPTER IX.
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST,
1533 1592 1 .
MICHEL MONTAIGNE was born in Peiigord, 1533, and died in
Bordeaux, 1592, in the 59th year of his age. He was the son
of a landed proprietor. On succeeding his father he lived a
retired life, free from all political and business harassment, on
his paternal estate.
In due course he studied law, and was appointed a
Councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux when he was only
2 1 years of age ; but he soon gave up public life as unsuited
to his temperament and genius. Educationally he is the true
successor of Rabelais, who died when Montaigne was 20
years old.
Montaigne was an ardent student of ancient literature, and
his essays are full of references and quotations. He was
neither a scholar, nor a philosopher, nor a theologian, nor a
politician. He had formed his ethical views mainly on
Plutarch and Seneca, and was by nature and in his criticism
of life more nearly allied to Horace perhaps than to any other
man. If he is to be classed among the Philosophers he must
be placed among the Epicureans rather than the Academics.
His Essays treat of all sorts of subjects, and are discursive
in their character. His way of looking at life was singularly
fresh and original, and having no philosophical or political
1 The first edition of the Essays appeared in Bordeaux in 1580.
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST 95
purpose to serve he set down his thoughts and observations
as they occurred to him, simply and naively, not caring much
to preserve consistency. The art in which he especially
excelled was the art of living for the day.
The great essayist and sceptic continues, after a lapse of
three hundred years, to speak to us with all the freshness of a
contemporary. " We converse with Montaigne," says Hallam,
" or rather hear him talk : it is almost impossible to read
his essays without thinking that he speaks to us : we see his
cheerful brow, his sparkling eye, his negligent but gentlemanly
demeanour : we picture him in his arm-chair, with his few
books round the room, and Plutarch on the table." As a man
of letters, who is also in the best sense a man of the world, he
stands alone. He is original and unique as a thinker, and at
the same time a type of a class which he had done much to
create. Though the class he represents may not be a large
one, he yet gives expression to a way of estimating life which
is a passing mood of all thoughtful minds. He thus leads a
large constituency all the larger that he makes no tyrannical
demands, and warns the reader not to labour after even him.
Few writers say so many wise things as Montaigne does, and
no one appears so little solicitous about convincing others that
his sayings are wise. His intellectual philosophy is essentially
sophistical and sceptical, his morality conventional, and his
moral philosophy epicurean.
We are not disposed, however, to allow to Montaigne, and
such easy-going sceptics as he, the superiority to limitations
which they affect. It is all very well to proclaim the impossi-
bility of finding absolute truth, and to luxuriate in a cultured
indifference, but as the foundation of such talk there lies
a philosophical conviction as positive as that of the most
ardent zealot. The conviction is that, doomed as man is to
nescience, the happiness of each individual is for himself the
only solid pursuit, and is to be at all hazards cherished. The
standard of happiness will doubtless vary with the idiosyncrasies
96 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
and circumstances of each man, but must always, with cultivated
men, embrace equability of mind, balance of judgment, a kindly
disposition to all with whom they are brought in contact, an
indisposition to exertion for any purpose whatsoever as leading
to certain disturbance and almost as certain disappointment, a
horror of a " Cause," and a strict regard to the comforts of the
animal economy generally. And these were, it seems to me,
the characteristics of Montaigne, characteristics which belong
to natures fundamentally cold and selfish, incapable of sacrifice.
Intellectual scepticism is itself, in truth, an implicit dogmatism,
and in the field of moral action it is a self-complacent epicurean
dogmatism. No man, in truth, holds more tightly to a positive
philosophy of life than Montaigne. Doubtless the attitude of
inquiry, the que sfais-je ? gives a breadth and elasticity of mind
and promotes a geniality of nature that have their charms.
They are, however, the true possession only of those who are
not "too sure" of anything. A steady sustained conviction
that there is nothing admitting of conviction runs through
Montaigne's life and writings, and he is in respect of this as
positive as his neighbours. No man can build his house on
shifting sand. Montaigne may in words defy us to find him
in earnest, but he fails : for he never doubts his attitude of
doubt, and he never loses his grip of his ethical standard such
as it is. So far at least he is in sober earnest.
We should like sometimes to find this arch-philosopher
of practical life-wisdom in earnest about other things than
indifference, and we naturally seek for this quality of earnest-
ness in his views of religion and politics subjects which call
forth the passions of men more than any other. But not-
withstanding all that has been said and written on these points,
I think we shall find that his whole mental attitude was such
as to forbid definite conclusions even on those vital subjects.
His Apology for Sebonde does not throw light on his personal
religious beliefs. If readers are disappointed in their expectations
of definite conclusions here, they have themselves to blame, for
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST 97
they search for something which his philosophy has beforehand
told them not to expect. The fact seems to be that in religion
he was strictly conventional, and in politics he was equally
conventional. "For Heaven's sake," he might be supposed
to say, " don't disturb the status quo ; things are bad enough,
I grant, but in seeking to make them better, you will probably
make them worse. Let us go on from day to day, quietly
meeting little difficulties as they arise, and making the best
both of the good and of the bad. The practical guidance of
life, in the interests of a universal bonhommie that is our
business."
If we prosecute our inquiry after the "earnest" side of
Montaigne's character, we shall find it perhaps most con-
spicuous in a genuine desire to amend the condition of the
poor (probably because their condition offended his sensibilities),
and in his views on education. It is the latter with which we
have to do here ; but of both characteristics I would say that
they were the fruit of his positive philosophy of negation. A
happy, useful (provided usefulness did not call for too much
exertion), practically wise life was his sitmmum bonum, and it
was this aim that unconsciously determined the substance of
his educational theory. In considering, then, his views on edu-
cation, we must keep Montaigne's personal character and theory
of life before our minds. For education, as distinct from in-
struction, is a subject on which no man can possibly write without
being, more or less consciously, controlled in all his utterances
by his philosophy of man and of the meaning of human life.
So much is necessary for the proper understanding of
Montaigne on education. But more than this is needed for
the proper placing of him in the series of educational writers.
We have to understand his historical relations and the circum-
stances of his life and time, of which receptive men like
Montaigne are in a special sense the product and reflexion.
Luther died when Montaigne was thirteen years old. It
was during the latter period of Luther's life that the Humanistic
98 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
movement among the leaders of thought north of the Alps
began to tell (as all great philosophic and political movements
inevitably do sooner or later) upon the education of youth. The
reformation of religion was itself, as we have seen, only part of
the larger Humanistic movement. For Humanism was essen-
tially a rebellion against words and logical forms in the interest
of the realities of life and thought. The Italian Humanists
and their pupils prepared the way for the Religious refor-
mation. An intellectual movement of this kind could not
fail to make itself felt in education as well as in the domain
of religion, for it was truly a philosophical movement ; and
philosophy ultimately determines all such things. Up to
the period of university life, and even beyond it, education
consisted in the acquisition of Latin words and rules about
Latin, and this, as the boy grew, received the addition of
logic with all its scholastic subtleties, and such physics as
abridgments of Aristotle could supply. Prior to Montaigne's
school-days the intellectual life of the schoolboy was, as may
be supposed, very wretched ; but those who survived it,
and continued to devote themselves to grammar, rhetoric,
and logic, certainly acquired an amount of discipline which
could not fail to sharpen their wits. Intensity and subtlety
of thought were the natural outcome of the educational system,
but accompanied with a restricted range of view and a belief
in arid terms and phrases. Luther's educational activity,
like that of Erasmus and Melanchthon, was directed to aid the
Humanists in reviving in the school a regard for substance as
opposed to form. Pure Latinity, the study of the substance of
the great Roman writers, and of rhetoric and logic by the
perusal of those great products of literary genius out of which
the rules of rhetoric and logic were themselves generalized,
began (as previously in certain schools of Italy) to take the
place of mere words and of barbarous Latinity. The typical
schoolmaster of this period, though not the most enlightened,
was John Sturm, the rector of the High School of Strasbourg,
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST 99
whose course of instruction, severe and mainly linguistic, was
yet such as to give genuine culture to all those who were
capable of culture. Sturm died in 1589. Already the Human-
istic movement in schools had been represented in England
by Dean Colet, who died in 1519, after founding S. Paul's
School and putting at its head Mr Lilly; by Sir Thomas
Elyot, who died in 1546 ; and by Roger Ascham, who died in
1568, and was a correspondent of Sturm. Erasmus, the friend
of Colet, and of all the Oxford Reformers, died in 1536.
Rabelais died in 1553. Montaigne's position is thus clearly
defined. Born in 1533, and dying in 1592, he -was in the
midst of the full tide of the reaction against, what Milton calls,
" the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages," " ragged notions
and babblements " ; and also, curiously enough, in the full tide
of the Catholic reaction against Protestantism.
Montaigne's father, a gentleman of private estate in the
province of Guienne, had notions of his own as to the educa-
tion of the young Michel, and whatever we may think of them,
the son thought highly of his father's method, and all through
life retained the profoundest affection and respect for "the
best father that ever was." He used to ride in his father's old
military cloak, "because," he said, "when I have that on, I
seem to wrap myself up in my father." His education, under
the paternal roof, was directed morally to the cultivation in
him of an intense love of truthfulness and of kindliness of
feeling and manners towards the poor and dependent. So
solicitous was the father to surround his child with every
beneficent influence that he had him roused every morning
by the sound of music, that there might be no violent
disturbance of his nervous system. Montaigne further tells
us the novel arrangements his father made for initiating him
in the Latin language without straining his powers. He gave
him a Latin-speaking tutor, and surrounded him with Latin
conversation, so that when he was six years old he spoke Latin
72
100 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
fluently much better, indeed, than he could speak his own
tongue. The whole household, indeed, became so Latinized
that the domestics, and even the peasants on his father's
property, began to use Latin words.
Greek was taught by the invention of a game, but it would
appear without much success, for Montaigne's knowledge of
Greek literature was never much more than he could obtain
through a Latin medium.
He was only six years old when he was sent to the College
of Guienne at Bordeaux, an institution of mark, in which the
Humanistic culture must have reigned supreme, if we may
judge from the names of the teachers William Guerente the
Aristotelian, Muretus the classical Latinist and rhetorician, and
our own George Buchanan the historian and Latin poet 1 . At
college he lost his familiar acquaintance with colloquial Latin,
but largely extended his private reading in classical authors ;
this, however, only by a breach of school rules in which he was
wisely encouraged by his masters. George Buchanan seems to
have been his private tutor as well as his schoolmaster, and it
says much for Buchanan that he encouraged young Montaigne's
wide reading. At the early age of thirteen he had accom-
plished his college course, and although he afterwards affected
to study law, it cannot be said that he had any special public
instruction outside his professional reading after he was a boy.
Had it not been for the wise connivance of his masters, which
enabled him to make acquaintance with the literature of Rome,
he would have " brought away from college nothing but a
hatred of books, as almost all our young gentlemen do." His
father was satisfied with the result of his school-life, " for the
chief things he expected from the endeavour of those to whom
he had delivered me for education was affability of manners and
good humour." Montaigne was, to speak the truth, though not
idle, yet desultory, and he would be the first to admit it. He
1 Here also the father of Casaubon received his instruction.
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST IOI
also complains that he had " a slothful wit that would go no
faster than it was led, a languishing invention and an incredible
defect of memory, so that it is no wonder," he adds, " if from
these nothing considerable could be extracted." He was
incapable of sustained effort and of taking much trouble about
anything. Nor could it be said that, with all the leisure at his
command, he was ever master of any subject : he had " only
nibbled," he himself says, "on the outward crust of sciences, and
had a little snatch of everything and nothing of the whole."
Even of Latin he was not a master, and Scaliger speaks with
contempt of his scholarship ; to which, however, Montaigne
never made any claim. His innumerable classical allusions and
quotations were, however, the genuine fruit of his own reading ;
but he read not as a grammarian or philosopher, but as a man
of letters. " I make no doubt," he says, with his usual naivete,
11 that I oft happen to speak of things that are much better and
more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade
Whoever will take me tripping in my ignorance will not in any
way displease me ; for I should be very unwilling to become
responsible to another for my writings, who am not so to
myself nor satisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of
knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be found : there is
nothing I so little profess." Again, " I could wish to have a
more perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buy it so dear
as it will cost. My design is to pass over easily, and not
laboriously, the remainder of my life. There is nothing that
I will cudgel my brains about ; no, not knowledge of what price
soever. ... I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I
meet with in my reading, and after a charge or two I give them
over. . . . Continuation and a too obstinate endeavour darken,
stupefy, and tire my judgment."
The moral result was more satisfactory. Montaigne's
disposition was naturally kindly, and its kindliness was further
fostered by his father's affectionate upbringing. If ever there
was a man distinguished for "sweet reasonableness" that
102 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
man was Montaigne. He had the light of culture and also its
sweetness.
I have dwelt a little on Montaigne's own character, because
that has to be taken into consideration along with the
circumstances of his time, in forming a true estimate of his
educational opinions. The character of the man, also, is itself
to be regarded as, to some extent at least, the fruit of his
education, and retrospectively his father's method comes up
for judgment according to the saying, " By their fruits ye shall
know them." It is sufficiently clear that of discipline, intel-
lectual or moral, Montaigne had received none, and that
his nature was one that stood in some need of it. On the
other hand, the love that his father bore him and the
gentleness of his treatment unquestionably nurtured the
ingenuous spirit of his son and gave him a freedom of
judgment and a frankness of intelligence which are among
Montaigne's principal charms. His mind was not at any
time oppressed with too strong a burden of duty or warped
by fear. He grew 7 up into an open-eyed, gentle, and sweet-
blooded man, with a sound practical judgment a wise man,
if not a learned one capable of looking at every side of a
question by turns and dallying with each.
But to follow the example of Montaigne's father would not
always succeed. He had a man of genius as his child and
pupil, and all he did was felicitously adapted to develop the
boy's natural endowments. But the system pursued did not
cure the pupil's manifest defects of character. Even his
natural weakness of memory, so far from being remedied, was
probably increased by the father's lax treatment. Perhaps all
the better for the world, it may be said. In this particular
case it was so; but we have not young Montaignes to deal
with. We have to discipline the intellectual and moral
nature of the average boy if we would give energy of will,
earnestness of purpose, power of application, and love of
duty.
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST 103
When Montaigne gives us his own views' on the education
of the young we find them to be very much a reflex of his
own experience and character. I shall speak of them as
they bear on the end of education, on the materials of
instruction, on method, on intellectual and moral discipline,
and on the penalties whereby the work of the school is usually
enforced. One thing is certain, that on the subject of education
Montaigne had no doubts: on the contrary, he speaks with
all the zeal of a reformer.
If we were to put in the shortest form Montaigne's idea of
the End of education we should say that it is this : that a man
be trained up to the use of his own reason and to virtue.
"The trouble and expense of our fathers are directed only to
furnish our heads with knowledge ; not a word of judgment
and virtue." "A man," he says, "can never be wise save by
his own wisdom." Might we not add, A man can never be
virtuous save by his own virtue? Again, "If the mind be
not better disposed by education, if the judgment be not
better settled, I had much rather my scholar had spent his
time at tennis, for at least his body would by that means be in
better exercise and breath. Do but observe him when he
comes back from school, after fifteen or sixteen years that he
has been there : there is nothing so awkward and maladroit, so
unfit for company and employment ; and all that you shall find
he has got is, that his Latin and Greek have only made him a
greater and more conceited coxcomb than when he went from
home. He should bring back his soul replete with good
literature, and he brings it only swelled and puffed up with
vain and empty shreds and snatches of learning, and has
really nothing more in him than he had before." The author
of Hudibras, when he wrote the following lines, gave
expression to the impatience of both Montaigne and Milton :
1 Chiefly in chapters 24, 25 of the First Book.
104 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
" No sooner are the organs of the brain
Quick to receive and steadfast to retain
Best knowledges, but all's laid out upon
Retrieving of the curse of Babylon.
*****
And he that is but able to express
No sense in several languages,
Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own."
It is true that great men and vigorous natures overcome
the defects of their schooling ; but " it is not enough that our
education does not spoil us, it must alter us for the better."
" It is not enough to tie learning to the soul, but to work and
incorporate them together ; not to tincture the soul merely, but
to give it a thorough and perfect dye ; and if it will not take
colour and meliorate its imperfect state, it were, without
question, better to let it alone." Knowledge will not " find a
man eyes ; its business is to guide, govern, and direct his steps,
provided he have sound feet and straight legs to go upon."
Neither Persia nor Sparta, I may interpose, made much
account of mere knowledge, and Rome was at its greatest in
virtue and vigour before schools were much thought of. To
train to valour, honesty, prudence, wisdom, justice these were
the aims of the greatest nations. As Agesilaus said when asked
" what boys should learn " : " Those things " (he said) " that
they ought to do when they become men."
Montaigne, then, would keep in view the end of education
from the very first ; and that end is to train to right reason and
independent judgment, to moderation of mind, and to virtue.
The cultivated and capable man of affairs, fit to manage his
own business well and discharge public duties wisely, is his
educated man. This is the antique idea of education, and is
very much what Quintilian has in view in the training of the
" Good Orator." Philosophy, according to Montaigne, is the
highest fruit of education not the philosophy which has logical
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST IO5
formulae for its subject-matter, but philosophy which has virtue
for its end. Virtue and philosophy are not (to use Milton's
words) "harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose," but the
"enemies of melancholy and the friends of wisdom : they teach
us how to know and make use of all good things, and how to
part with them without concern." " Philosophy instructs us to
live, and infancy has there its lessons as well as other ages."
We are not, however, to force to virtue and to philosophy, but
to attract by showing that they alone yield happiness, and by
leading the pupil to recognize their essential beauty and charm.
It may be that there are youths who are inaccessible to all that
is noble and beautiful and ingenuous in thought and action,
and turn aside by preference to common pleasures. What is to
be done with these? "Bind them 'prentice," says Montaigne,
" in some good town to learn to make mince-pies, though they
were the sons of dukes"; and in a manuscript emendation he
recommends that the masters should " strangle such youths if
they can do it without witnesses " !
What now has Montaigne to say as to the Materials of
instruction whereby his end is to be attained? "The most
difficult and most important of all human arts is education,"
he says. The differences among children increase the difficulty;
but the promise of the future is with young children so uncertain
that it is better, so far as the matter of instruction goes, to give
to all the elements of knowledge alike. In any case, let us
begin when they are young, when the clay is moist and soft.
From the very first, the lessons of philosophy in their simple
and practical form can be inculcated. In philosophy Montaigne
includes all that we now understand by the religious and moral,
and he maintains, and rightly maintains, that a child's mind is
more open to all such lessons than to reading and writing. In
selecting other materials of instruction, we must bear in mind
that a child " owes but the first fifteen or sixteen years of his
life to discipline, and the rest to action. Let us, therefore,
106 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
employ that time in necessary instruction." At every stage
that which constitutes the ultimate aim of education is to
appear in some form or other philosophy, namely; for it
forms the judgment and conduct. This has a hand in every-
thing : " She is always in place, and is to be admitted to all
sports and entertainments because of the sweetness of her con-
versation. By guiding conduct, as well as by discourse in season,
this instruction is to be given and habits thus formed."
Montaigne is generally classed by educational writers as a
realist as the very founder of realism. Those who so write,
write, it appears to me, without understanding. Educational
realism in our modern sense means the substitution of a know-
ledge of nature and of the practical work of after-life for the
study of language and literature and all that we include in the
Humanities. Those who advocate the latter are Humanists, and
are the true descendants of the Humanists of the Renaissance.
All educationalists, however (except, perhaps, the majority of
schoolmasters), are realists in this sense Montaigne's sense
that they desire to see reality, that is, to see the substance of fact
and thought dominant in the education of youth. Montaigne's
realism opposed itself merely to verbalism, and he fought a
good fight in this. But all this belongs to the past; in the
region of educational theory at least, whatever may be said of
practice. We all now seek reality; we are all opposed to mere
verbalism. The difference now consists in this, that one school
of philosophy holds by language and literature as introducing
youth to the highest and best realities the realities of feeling
and thought ; the other school holds by facts, the facts of
nature and of man's relation to nature as yielding the highest
and best realities for educational purposes. If we may make a
distinction between the real-humanistic and the verbal-human-
istic, there can be no doubt that Montaigne belonged, like
Quintilian, to the former class, and not to the utilitarian realists
of whom Mr Spencer and Professor Bain are the best contem-
porary types.
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST IO/
The ordinary subjects of reading, writing, and casting
accounts are, of course, to be taught. After this, whatever
you teach, avoid words simply as words. So far Montaigne
and Bacon would agree. Most modern Humanists, how-
ever, would not go so far as Montaigne in their opposition
to words. They see more in them. But we must bear in
mind the state of things at the time Montaigne wrote. The
Humanistic revival, which was a revival in the interest of
realities, was also a revival of style ; and the tendency was to
give prominence to art in language, and consequently to what
may be called the formulas of style. This must always be the
case : teachers in their daily work cannot, without the greatest
difficulty, consistently maintain from hour to hour the reality of
any subject, be it language, literature, or science. The tendency
inevitably is to fall back upon mechanical expedients, on the
learning of rules, and on symbolism generally. It is so even
with religion and morality. To the end of time, the task of
the true teacher, who desires truly to educate, will be a struggle
against the dominion of words and forms, and this quite irre-
spectively of the subjects he may choose to make the basis of
his school-work. The virtues of the educational profession
are all summed up in the words life, reality ; but, like other
virtues, they are not always easily practised.
"The world," says Montaigne, "is nothing but babble
We are kept four or five years to learn nothing but words and
to tack them together into clauses ; as many more to make
exercises, and to divide a continued discourse into so many
parts ; and other five years, at least, to learn succinctly to mix
and interweave them after a subtle and intricate manner. Let
us leave this to the learned professors ! " Words, grammar,
style, and rhetoric constituted the main end of school and
college instruction in those days, and this was supplemented
by logic. Montaigne held that if a man had really anything to
say he could manage to say it without all this training. " Let
the pupil be well furnished with things" (i.e. thoughts), he says,
108 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
" words will follow but too fast." People who pretend to have
great thoughts which they cannot express are deceiving them-
selves ; they are not labouring to bring forth, but merely
" licking the formless embryo " of their minds. If a man has
any clear conceptions, he will express them well enough, though
ignorant of "ablative, conjunctive, substantive, and grammar."
" When things are once formed in the fancy, words offer them-
selves in muster." " Ipsae res verba rapiunt" says Cicero.
"The fine flourishes of rhetoric serve only to amuse the vulgar,
who are incapable of more solid and nutritive diet." The
attack on mere rhetoric in the sense of the technique of style
is keen and incisive, and has not a little truth in it. " Words
are to serve and to follow a man's purpose." He quotes
Plato as approving of fecundity of conception rather than of
fertility of speech, and Zeno as dividing his pupils into two
classes, the philologi, who loved things and reasonings, and
logophili, who cared for nothing but words. " I am scanda-
lized," he says, "that our whole life should be spent in nothing
else."
What would he have, then, in addition to the usual elements
of all education, and the teaching of philosophy and of virtue ?
He would have a man learn thoroughly his own language first,
and then that of his neighbour, regarding Greek and Latin as
ornamental merely. Little, however, did Montaigne think
that instruction, even in our own language, could degenerate
into what it has become in these latter days verbalism of
a kind much more offensive than any to be found in classical
teaching. He could not foresee detailed analysis of sentences,
and the dreary pedantry of the school grammars of our native
tongue. Paedagogic ingenuity had not yet invented such arid
substitutes for the substance and living form of our mother-
speech arch-enemies of true humanistic culture the logical
babblement of the primary school. Truly teachers have an
"infinite capacity for sinking."
Vernacular and modern languages once secured, Montaigne
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST 109
would thereafter limit the course of study " to those things only
where a true and real utility and advantage are to be expected
and found. To teach a boy astronomy, for example, instead
of what will make him wise and good, is absurd. After you
have done this last, the pupil may be admitted to the elements
of geometry, rhetoric, logic, and physics ; and then the science
which his judgment most affects he will generally make his
own." But we must above all teach him " what it is to know
and what to be ignorant, what valour is, and temperance and
justice ; the difference between ambition and avarice, servitude
and subjection, licence and liberty ; in brief, season his under-
standing with that which regulates his manners and his sense,
that which teaches him to know himself, and how both well to
die and well to live. Over and above this, let us make a
selection of those subjects which directly and professedly serve
for the instruction and use of life." But the direct instruction
of the master is not all. "Human understanding is marvellously
enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are other-
wise of ourselves so stupid as to have our sight limited to the
end of our own noses. One asking Socrates of what country
he was, he did not make answer 'of Athens,' but 'of the
world.' " We must learn to measure ourselves aright : " who-
soever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great
image of our mother Nature portrayed in her full majesty and
lustre, whoever in her face shall read her so universal and
constant variety, whoever shall observe himself, and not only
himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch
or prick of a pencil in comparison with the whole, that man
alone is able to value things according to their true estimate
and grandeur." The great world is the mirror wherein we are
to behold ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought
to do. History naturally suggests itself in this connexion as a
leading subject of study, for " thereby we converse with those
great and heroic souls of former and better ages " an empty
and an idle study as commonly conducted, but of "inestimable
HO MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
fruit and value" when prosecuted with care and observation.
The object of history-teaching in the school is not facts, but
the appreciation of historical characters.
Meanwhile the body is not to be forgotten, for, not to
speak of the moral instruction which may be conveyed in
connexion with leaping, riding, wrestling etc., we have to
form the youth's outward fashion and mien at the same
time as his mind : for " 'tis not a soul, 'tis not a body we are
training only, but a man, and we ought not to divide him."
And, as Plato says, "we are not to fashion one without the
other, but make them draw together like two horses harnessed
to a coach." " It is not enough to fortify the soul : you are
also to make the sinews strong, for the soul will be oppressed
if not assisted by the bodily members, and would have too
hard a task to discharge two offices at once." Effeminacy in
food or clothes or habits is also to be eschewed.
So much for the end of education according to Montaigne,
and the materials of instruction whereby that end is to be
attained. Montaigne's public school, if he had to construct
one in these days, would certainly be somewhat after the fashion
of a German Real school, as regards its external organization,
and, so far, he is rightly named a realist. But the leading
purpose of all his instruction would essentially be ethical and
humanistic. The only respect in which his curriculum would
be realistic in the utilitarian meaning would be in the sub-
ordinate place assigned to Latin and Greek. So far is he from
being a Realist in the modern sense, that he may be rather set
down as an enemy of mere knowledge or information. " The
cares and expense our parents are at in our education, point at
nothing save to fill our heads with knowledge," he says, "but
not a word of judgment or virtue. We toil and labour to stuff
the memory, and in the mean time leave the conscience and the
understanding unfurnished void."
It has to be noted that Montaigne, and after him Milton
and Locke, think only of the education of the few and not of
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST III
the many of the sons of gentlemen only : but we may remark
that, while the extent to which school instruction is carried
depends for the most part on the social position of the parent,
the principles which regulate a prolonged education are equally
operative in the briefest, if they are worth anything at all as
principles.
Of equal importance with end and means is Method. On
this Montaigne has less to say, but what he says contains
probably the germs of the most important principles of all
method.
" 'Tis the custom of schoolmasters to be eternally thunder-
ing in their pupils' ears as if they were pouring into a funnel,
whilst the business of the pupil is simply to repeat what the
teacher has before said. I would have a tutor correct this
error, and at the very first he should, according to the capacity
he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil
himself to taste and relish things and of himself to choose and
discern them, sometimes opening the way to him and some-
times making him break the ice himself; that is to say, I would
not have him alone to invent and speak, but also hear his
pupil invent and speak in his turn. Socrates, and since him
Arcesilaus, madeyf^/ 1 their scholars speak and then they spoke
to them. The authority of those who teach is very often an
impediment to those who desire to learn. It is good to make
the pupil, like a young horse, trot before the master, that he
may judge of his going and how much he, the master, is to
abate of his own speed to accommodate himself to the vigour
and capacity of his pupil. For want of this due proportion we
spoil all : to know how to adjust this and to keep within an
exact and due measure is one of the hardest things I know;
and it is an effect of a judicious and well-tempered soul to
know how to condescend to the boy's puerile movements and
to govern and direct them. Those who, according to our
common way of teaching, undertake with one and the same
112 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
lesson and the same measure of direction to instruct several
boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken
in their method; and at this rate it is no wonder if, in a
multitude of scholars, there are not found above two or three
who bring away any good account of their time and discipline."
Here we have the foreshadowing of the organization of instruc-
tion and the classification of pupils. The importance of
examination as a part of good method is also insisted on.
" Let the master," he says, " not only examine him about the
grammatical construction of the bare words of the lesson, but
about the sense and meaning of them, and let him judge of the
profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory, but of
his understanding. Let him make the pupil put what he hath
learned into a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to
many subjects to see if he yet rightly comprehend it and have
made it his own, taking instruction in his progress from the
' Institutions of Plato.' " " Tis a sign of crudity and in-
digestion," he says, " to vomit up what we eat in the same
condition it was swallowed down, and the stomach has not
performed its office unless it have altered the form and con-
dition of what was committed to it to concoct." " What is the
good of having the stomach full of meat if it do not nourish
us ? " Here we have what used to be called the " Intellectual
method " anticipated, the importance of assimilation enforced,
and the distinguishing characteristic of cram well exposed.
Montaigne, further, in opposition to theories of education still
current, advises that the pupil be made to sift and examine for
himself, and to accept nothing on mere authority. " We can
say, Cicero says thus : that these were the manners of Plato :
that these, again, are the very words of Aristotle : but what do
we say ourselves that is our own ? What do we do ? What do
we judge? A parrot would say as much."
So much for the method of intellectual instruction. The
method of moral teaching is summed up in the words that it
should " insensibly insinuate " itself in so far as it is direct, as
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST 113
lessons do which are not set and formal, but suggested by time
and place.
Of intellectual and moral discipline, in the true sense of
that term, we find in Montaigne nothing. Nor does religion,
in any true sense, or a high ideal of personal life enter into
his scheme of education. And when we have said this, we
convict him of having left unwritten the two chief chapters in
educational theory. These grave omissions the character and
upbringing of the man would lead us to expect ; and we must
not quarrel with what we have, because it falls short of all our
demands.
With respect to Discipline, in the vulgar school sense that
is to say, the means taken to force boys to do what their masters
want them to do Montaigne takes up a position substantially
the same as that of the great majority of eminent writers on
education. He is persuaded that, by following a good method,
instruction will become pleasant, and that it will not be difficult
to allure the pupil to both wisdom and virtue. " If you do
not allure the appetite and affection, " he says, " you make
nothing but asses laden with books, and, by virtue of the lash,
give them their pocket full of learning to keep ; whereas, to do
well, you should not merely lodge it with them, but make
them to espouse it." Physical punishment fails of its aim, and
must fail by the nature of the case. If it be necessary at any
time to punish a child, it should be done when we are calm.
"No one," he says, "would hesitate to punish a judge with
death who should have condemned a prisoner in a fit of
passion. Why is it allowed any more to parents and masters
to beat and strike children in their anger? That is not
correction : it is revenge. Chastisement stands to children in
the place of medicine ; and should we endure a physician who
was angry and violent with his patient ? " " Education," he
says elsewhere, " should be carried on with a severe sweetness,
quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who, instead of
L. 8
114 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle
ways, do, in truth, present nothing before them but rods and
ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence ! away
with this compulsion ! than which nothing, I certainly believe,
more dulls and degenerates a well-descended nature. If you
would have the pupil alive to shame and chastisement, do not
harden him to them. . . . The strict government of most of
our colleges has even more displeased me ; and peradventure
they might have erred less perniciously on the indulgent side.
The school is the true house of correction of imprisoned
youth. . . . Do but come in, when they are about their
lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys
under execution, with the thundering noise of their pedagogues,
drunk with fury, to make up the concert. A very pretty way
this to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their
book with a furious countenance and a rod in hand ! A
cursed and pernicious way of proceeding ! . . . How much
more decent would it be to see their classes strewn with green
leaves and fine flowers, than with the bloody stumps of birch
and willows ! Were it left to my ordering, I would paint the
school with the pictures of Joy and Gladness, Flora and the
Graces, that where the profit of the pupils is, there might their
pleasure also be."
We are all of Montaigne's opinion nowadays ; for he did
not forbid punishment or coercion, in some form or other,
when all other means failed. Extrema in extremis. He
merely protested against the scholastic tyranny of his time (and
we may say of all time, as may be learned from almost every
writer on education for the last 2000 years) a tyranny still
existing, and till lately prevalent. Slave-driver and school-
master were almost convertible terms. The school and the
rod were ideas of inseparable association. Samuel Butler calls
" whipping "
" Virtue's governess,
Tutoress of arts and sciences."
MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST I 15
"Oh ! ye" (says Byron) "who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, and Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions :
It mends the morals ; never mind the pain."
Thomas Hood, again, in looking back on his school-days,
recalls chiefly his floggings ; and yet his pleasant humour can
call up some sentimental regret :
"Ay, though the very birch's smart
Should mark those hours again,
I'd kiss the rod, and be resigned
Beneath the stroke, and even find
Some sugar in the cane."
The subject, however, is too serious for jocular treatment.
Before Montaigne's day, and long after it, the brutality of school-
masters was such as to leave an almost indelible stain on the
profession. The whole body should make an annual pilgrim-
age of penitence for the sins of their predecessors. School-
masters are now beginning to understand that it is only by
balanced temper and by sound method that they can dispense
with physical motives, and out of the more or less contemptible
" dominie " of the past, evolve the educator of the future. In
no other way certainly can they make good their claim to that
social position which they, often too morbidly, claim. A mere
castigator pueronim has no claim to anything save his wages,
which should be the minimum for which he can be hired.
Montaigne's educational views were defective, certainly,
though in substance and in their main purpose sound. The
defects, as before observed, may be traced to his own upbring-
ing and character. Everything with him is too easy. Wisdom's
ways, alas ! are not always ways of pleasantness, nor are her
paths always those of peace. The easy and harmonious way
of life of Montaigne is for a few fortunate souls only. We
have to train our boys to work hard, to will vigorously, to be
much in earnest, to have a high sense of duty. Such qualities
do not come by wishing. By intellectual and moral discipline,
82
Il6 MONTAIGNE, THE FRENCH RATIONALIST
by inducing him to do what may be disagreeable, by requiring
obedience, by enforcement of law, we have to mould our
British boy. For all this kind of work Montaigne has little to
teach us ; but we can learn much from him, and we part from
the wise and kindly Frenchman with gratitude, and even
affection.
To one taking a survey of the history of education it is
interesting to note that Montaigne was brought up in a
Humanistic school taught by men who stood high in Europe
as Humanists, and yet he has nothing but hard words for the
system. When Montaigne was at school, Humanism in
education was at high tide north of the Alps. We may
learn from him that the revival was restricted in its aims and
not wholly successful. As I have said elsewhere : a simpler
grammar than that popular in previous centuries and the
substitution of classical Latin authors for bad Latin and a
little Greek sums up the revival so far as all save a few schools
were concerned. They still had much to learn from Quintilian,
of whom Montaigne sometimes reminds us. An important
advance had been made, but containing in it the seeds of
relapse. For even with an improved grammar, abstract rules
and the study of words for their own sake would still hold
sway, and when the freshness of the new movement had worn
off the inevitable result would be the restoration of the rule and
the whip. The only true and permanent reform of education
must comprehend not only a reform of Method but a school
of Method at our universities. The need of a method well
thought out was felt as we have seen by Ascham, but it was not
till Bacon arose that method on a scientific basis became
possible.
THE MODERN PERIOD,
FROM 1600 A.D.
CHAPTER X.
THE MODERN PERIOD, FROM 1600 A.D.
THE characteristics of what may be called the Modern Period
in education are I think the following :
i st. Belief in the power of mere knowledge to educate the
human mind.
and. A tendency to exalt the sense-realistic, and conse-
quently to advocate the study of physical science as opposed
to the Humanities.
3rd. The application of the inductive method to in-
struction.
These doctrines of the Modern School of Naturalists derive
themselves from the Baconian philosophic movement, although
Bacon himself would be the first to repudiate its advocates as
his legitimate descendants. It is only in recent years that they
have had any success. Conservative narrowness has held the
citadel of the Schools against the equally narrow aggressiveness
of the Liberals. In the impending reorganization of educational
systems, the victory will go to neither party.
FRANCIS BACON, 15611626.
In 1605 there appeared a book which was destined to
place educational method on a scientific foundation, although
its mission is not yet, it is true, accomplished. This was
Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning, which was followed,
120 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
some years later, by the Organon. For some time the
thoughts of men had been turning to the study of Nature.
Bacon represented this movement, and gave it the necessary
impulse by his masterly survey of the domain of human
knowledge, his pregnant suggestions, and his formulation,
imperfect as it was, of scientific method. Bacon was not
aware of his relations to the science and art of Education ; he
praises the Jesuit schools, not knowing that he was by his
philosophy subverting their very foundations. We know
inductively : that was the sum of Bacon's teaching. In the
sphere of outer Nature, the scholastic saying, Nihil est in
intellect u quod non prius fuerit in sensu, was accepted, but with
this addition, that the impressions on our senses were not
themselves to be trusted. The mode of verifying sense-
impressions, and the grounds of valid and necessary inference,
had to be investigated and applied. The educational bearing
of this is manifest ; for it is clear that if we can tell how it is we
know, it follows that the method of intellectual instruction is
scientifically settled.
Bacon himself says, writing to Lord Burleigh in 1592, " I
have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends,
for I have taken all knowledge to be my province ; and if I
could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with
frivolous disputations, confutations and verbosities (the school-
men), the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions
and impostures (unmethodical investigators, e.g. alchemists,
astrologers, etc.) hath committed so many spoils, I hope I
should bring in industrious observations and profitable inven-
tions and discoveries the best state of that province. This...
is so fixed in my mind that it cannot be removed." And in
his letter to Toby Matthews in 1609 he says, " the
question between me and the ancients is not of the virtue of
the race, but of the Tightness of the way." As the philosopher
of Realism and of the Inductive method, Bacon, it may be,
only summed up the thoughts and practice of several pre-
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 121
decessors ; but he was the man of genius who (as frequently
happens) gathered up those hints, anticipations and aspirations
which constitute a " tendency," and gave them shape.
In the department of education one of the chief services
Bacon rendered was his including it among the sciences to be
studied. It was by him called " tradition " the handing down
of the acquired intellectual possessions of mankind to those
who are to be our successors. But this was not all; for, in
speaking of this subject, he was naturally influenced by the
new gospel of the real of the founding of knowledge on
seeing for ourselves what was there before us, and basing our
conclusions on accurate observation, and a sound method of
rational procedure. Nature was no longer to be studied by
means of divisions and definitions of hastily formed concepts,
and compelled to fit itself into premature axioms in which the
very processes of nature were forestalled. Generalization was
to follow only in the wake of carefully observed facts. " Man,"
he says, in the Novum Organum, " who is the servant and
interpreter of Nature, can act and understand no further than
he has, either in operation or contemplation, observed of the
method or order of Nature." And again, " Men have sought
to make a world from their own conceptions and to draw from
their own minds all the materials which they employed ; but if
instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and obser-
vation, they would have had facts and not opinions to reason
about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of
the laws which govern the material world. ... Thus they may
hope to arrive at principles luminous and well defined,
such as Nature herself will not refuse to acknowledge." But
Bacon did not invent Induction any more than he invented
the human mind ; he, however, unquestionably gave to the
world the Logic of Induction and formulated the practice
of Galilei and the premonitions of Da Vinci. He was,
as Isaac Walton called him, " the great secretary of Nature
and Science."
122 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
To speak of the Baconian induction as Goethe did, is to
misapprehend it. It is true that to the man of genius one
fact is worth a thousand to the uninspired laboratory hodman,
and that the laborious collection and comparison of "instances "
is not always necessary. On the other hand, it is equally true
that the flashes of insight, which enable a great man to put his
finger on the true cause and ultimate generalization in any
department of knowledge, are simply swift anticipatory in-
ductive processes. Nor will any "flash of insight" ever be
accepted by the world as objective truth, until it has been
indirectly verified and established by the reverse process of
Deduction that is to say, by applying the supreme generaliza-
tion to the elucidation of lower generalizations, and ultimately
of individual facts, thereby showing that it truly explains them
by containing them.
Bacon was not in his reform of Method thinking of
psychology and the manner in which the mind attains to
knowledge : he had his eye fixed chiefly on the matter itself
of knowledge, and he saw that it was inductively, and by
various steps of inductive activity, that what was presented
to the senses received its verification. This, and this only,
was the way in which we knew a thing for certain. It no
doubt followed from this that we should teach inductively ; but
it was to Bacon's successors that we owe the full exposition of
what was implicit in Bacon's thought. Bacon and his school
were thus, I hold, the founders of modern method in educa-
tion not as based- on reflective psychology, but rather as
revealed by the actual process whereby the truth of things was
ascertained. He looked at the matter of thought, not at the
thinking process. A more advanced psychology claims in these
days to ground the realistic or inductive method of inquiry and
instruction on a study of abstract mind itself, on a criticism of
knowing, and so to extend its sphere and supplement its defects.
Bacon and the Baconians, in short, occupied themselves
with the Content, not the pure Form, of Thought, and found
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 123
their method in the way in which things were truly known.
They fixed their attention on things as growing into the
thought or truth of themselves in our minds, not on thought
or thinking as such.
We thus find in Bacon the pregnant seeds of reforms both
as regards the substance and method of education. He
attacks the universities as still the home of scholastic traditions
and futile sophistries ; he sketches a pansophic ideal ;
he points to the importance of method ; he recognizes
teachers as students of an Art ; he points the way to
realistic studies : above all, he has faith in the future. It
is these ideas which we find taking practical shape in
his successors.
Allowing all possible credit to his precursors, Ludovicus
Vives, Da Vinci, Galilei and others (and to certain contempo-
raries whom he strangely ignores), we yet recognize in Bacon
the true Father of Modern Method. He represents the
transition from the old world to the new, and more than any
other man is to be revered as the " first of the Moderns " ; and
this not only in the large sphere of investigation generally, but
in the narrower sphere of the School, with which we have here
to do. That we now enter on the distinctively " modern "
period of European intellectual activity is sufficiently attested
by the great names in every department of investigation. It
was not by accident, but rather in accordance with the natural
evolution of mind, that we find almost as contemporaries Galilei,
Bacon, Descartes, Boyle, Kepler, and Hugo Grotius.
It seems to me that, while we certainly fail to find in
Bacon a developed system of education correlated with the
method of the sciences, we yet encounter in the Advancement
of Learning, in the conclusion of the sixth book of the De
Augmentis (the Latin translation of the Advancement extended),
in the Essay on Studies, and in the letter to Savile (Provost of
Eton), many pregnant hints which suggest a method, as well as
124 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
a curriculum, of instruction. In the De Augmentis, for example,
he gives the preference to the teacher who " transplants know-
ledge into the scholar's mind as it grew in his own." "A
gardener, again," he says, " takes more pains with the young
than with the full-grown plant, and men commonly find it
needful in any undertaking to begin well." And on the
training of teachers he adds, " We give scarce a thought to our
teachers and care little for what they may be ; and yet we are
for ever complaining because rulers are rigid in the matter of
laws and penalties, but indifferent to the right training of the
young." The importance of proceeding from the more easy to
the more difficult in learning, and the mental effects of different
kinds of studies, are also adverted to. And as to subjects, it
was no difficult matter for his followers to recognize in their
master an advocate for realities in the school : " Be not wrapt
up in the past ; there is an actual present lying all about you,
look up, and behold it in its grandeur."
If encyclopaedism or pansophy, that is to say, the correlation
of sciences in a unity as taught in that encyclopaedic university
of which Bacon has a brilliant vision in the New Atlantis, was
the ultimate resting-place of the adult mind, it was only one
step to the conclusion that the education of the young should
be so begun and conducted as to lead to this Great Temple
of all Knowledge. A broad realistic foundation was thus
necessary. Education he calls an " early custom " ; it is all
important then that the custom should be a wise custom from
the beginning. Here we have the germ of much in Co-
menius.
We read the history of educational thought in its relation
to wider movements with small intelligence, if we do not see in
Bacon the gatherings of the fruits of the renaissance movement
in so far as it was a study of the realities both of things and
thoughts, a groping after reality both in science, philosophy
and literature ; and further, detect in all this a formulation
of intellectual Protestantism. Authority, as such, was not in
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 125
precise terms set aside, but its doom was fixed wherever the
New Method was heartily accepted. The truth, as founded on
an ever-fresh and an ever-growing study of the facts of nature
and mind, was now and henceforth to be the sole aim of
thinkers in every field of inquiry. The opinions of Colet,
More, and Erasmus were about to become the convictions of
all educated men, but now carried into spheres of thought
which these men had not contemplated. Authority, tradition,
even revelation had all to be thrown into the melting-pot, not
by an individual here and there in advance of his time as in
the previous centuries, but by the method and general consen-
sus of the age. Thus it is that we, for the most part, find an
intense Protestant feeling in those who advocated educational
reform in the method and substance of instruction on Baconian
lines. Ratke and Comenius are in scholastic matters repre-
sentative of the school of Bacon in a wider than in a school
sense. They are the reformers of the schools, it is true, but
always with an eye to social and ecclesiastical, if not also
political, changes. The Humanists, on the contrary, after
their first efflorescence, ranged themselves with the conservative
reaction, and Loyola himself found no difficulty in annexing
much of their territory in the interests of Obscurantism.
We need not fear the result of this free investigation. So
long as the recognition of the fact that the true life of man is
a life in the ideals which we call philosophy and literature
survives, the purpose of education will be found where the true
life of man himself lies ; that is to say, in philosophy and
literature. The past, accordingly, will for ever retain its hold.
It is essential that it should do so, if humanity is not to revert
to barbarism. 1
I think I shall now best serve the student of education by
bringing together those passages in Bacon which give a general
indication of his contribution to the subject.
1 Every student of Education should read the Advancement of Learning
(Aldis Wright's Edition).
126 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
UNIVERSITIES, ETC.
" First therefore, amongst so many great foundations of
colleges in Europe, I find strange that they are all dedicated
to professions, and none left free to arts and sciences at
large. For if men judge that learning should be referred to
action, they judge well ; but in this they fall into the error
described in the ancient fable, in which the other parts of
the body did suppose the stomach had been idle, because it
neither performed the orifice of motion, as the limbs do, nor
of sense, as the head doth : but yet notwithstanding it is the
stomach that digesteth and distributeth to all the rest. So
if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle
studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from
thence served and supplied. And this I take to be a great
cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because
these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in
passage. For if you will have a tree bear more fruit than it
hath used to do, it is not anything you can do to the boughs,
but it is the stirring of the earth and putting new mould
about the roots that must work it. Neither is it to be for-
gotten, that this dedicating of foundations and dilations to
professory learning hath not only had a malign aspect and
influence upon the growth of sciences, but hath also been
prejudicial to states and governments. For hence it pro-
ceedeth that princes find a solitude in regard of able men to
serve them in causes of estate, because there is no education
collegiate which is free; where such as were so disposed
mought give themselves to histories, modern languages, books
of policy and civil discourse, and other the like enablements
unto service of estate.
" And because founders of colleges do plant, and founders
of lectures do water, it followeth well in order to speak of
the defect which is in public lectures ; namely, in the small-
ness and meanness of the salary or reward which in most
127
places is assigned unto them ; whether they be lectures of
arts, or of professions. For it is necessary to the progression
of sciences that readers be of the most able and sufficient
men ; as those which are ordained for generating and propa-
gating of sciences, and not for transitory use. This cannot
be, except their condition and endowment be such as may
content the ablest man to appropriate his whole labour and
continue his whole age in that function and attendance ;
and therefore must have a proportion answerable to that
mediocrity or competency of advancement, which may be
expected from a profession or the practice of a profession.
So as, if you will have sciences flourish, you must observe
David's military law, which was, That those which staid with
the carriage shoitld have equal part with those which were in
the action; else will the carriages be ill attended. So readers
in sciences are indeed the guardians of the stores and
provisions of sciences, whence men in active courses are
furnished, and therefore ought to have equal entertainment
with them ; otherwise if the fathers in sciences be of the
weakest sort or be ill maintained,
Et patrum invalid! referent jejunia nati.
" And therefore inasmuch as most of the usages and
orders of the universities were derived from more obscure
times, it is the more requisite they be re-examined. In this
kind I will give an instance or two, for example sake, of
things that are the most obvious and familiar. The one is a
matter, which though it be ancient and general, yet I hold
to be an error; which is that scholars in universities come
too soon and too unripe to logic and rhetoric, arts fitter for
graduates than children and novices. For these two, rightly
taken, are the gravest of sciences, being the arts of arts ; the
one for judgement, the other for ornament. And they be
the rules and directions how to set forth and dispose matter :
and therefore for minds empty and unfraught with matter,
128 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
and which have not gathered that which Cicero calleth sylra
and supellex, stuff and variety, to begin with those arts (as
if one should learn to weigh, or to measure, or to paint the
wind) doth work but this effect, that the wisdom of those arts,
which is great and universal, is almost made contemptible,
and is degenerate into childish sophistry and ridiculous
affectation. And further, the untimely learning of them hath
drawn on by consequence the superficial and unprofitable
teaching and writing of them, as fitteth indeed to the capacity
of children. Another is a lack I find in the exercises used
in the universities, which do make too great a divorce
between invention and memory. For their speeches are
either premeditate, in verbis conceptis, where nothing is left
to invention, or merely extemporal, where little is left to
memory. Whereas in life and action there is least use of
either of these, but rather of intermixtures of premeditation
and invention, notes and memory. So as the exercise fitteth
not the practice, nor the image the life ; and it is ever a true
rule in exercises, that they be framed as near as may be to
the life of practice ; for otherwise they do pervert the motions
and faculties of the mind, and not prepare them. The truth
whereof is not obscure, when scholars come to the practices
of professions, or other actions of civil life ; which when they
set into, this want is soon found by themselves, and sooner
by others."
******
"Another defect which I note, ascendeth a little higher
than the precedent. For as the proficience of learning con-
sisteth much in the orders and institutions of universities in
the same states and kingdoms, so it would be yet more
advanced, if there were more intelligence mutual between the
universities of Europe than now there is. We see there be
many orders and foundations, which though they be divided
under several sovereignties and territories, yet they take
themselves to have a kind of contract, fraternity, and
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 129
correspondence one with the other, insomuch as they have
provincials and generals. And surely as nature createth
brotherhood in families, and arts mechanical contract brother-
hoods in communalities, and the anointment of God superin-
duceth a brotherhood in kings and bishops, so in like manner
there cannot but be a fraternity in learning and illumination,
relating to that paternity which is attributed to God, who is
called the Father of illuminations or lights.
" The last defect which I will note is, that there hath not
been, or very rarely been, any public designation of writers
or inquirers concerning such parts of knowledge as may
appear not to have been already sufficiently laboured or
undertaken ; unto which point it is an inducement to enter
into a view and examination what parts of learning have
been prosecuted, and what omitted. For the opinion of
plenty is amongst the causes of want, and the great quantity
of books maketh a show rather of superfluity than lack;
which surcharge nevertheless is not to be remedied by making
no more books, but by making more good books, which,
as the serpent of Moses, mought devour the serpents of the
enchanters 1 ."
Elsewhere, speaking of universities, he says :
" As water, whether it be the dew of Heaven or the springs
of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, except
it be collected into some receptacle where it may by union
comfort and sustain itself; and for that cause the industry
of man hath framed and made spring-heads, conduits, cisterns
and pools ; which men have accustomed likewise to beautify
and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence and state
as well as of use and necessity; so knowledge whether it
descend from divine inspiration or spring from human sense,
would soon perish and vanish to oblivion if it were not
1 Advancement of Learning, pp. 78 83 (Aldis Wright's Edition).
L. 9
130 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
preserved in books 1 , traditions, conferences and places ap-
pointed as universities, colleges and schools for the receipt
and comforting the same."
In the above passages Bacon has always in his eye the
scientific encyclopaedia. And again in his New Atlantis Bacon
returns to the consideration of the same subject, "the
amplification of the power and kingdom of mankind over
the world " ; and in the Address made to the traveller by the
Father of Solomon's House we get some idea of the vastness
of his academic scheme. He says :
" God bless thee, my son ; I will give thee the greatest
jewel I have. For I will impart unto thee, for the love of
God and men, a relation of the true state of Solomon's House.
Son, to make you know the true state of Solomon's House,
I will keep this order. First, I will set forth unto you the
end of our foundation. Secondly, the preparations and in-
struments we have for our works. Thirdly, the several
employments and functions whereto our fellows are assigned.
And fourthly, the ordinances and rites which we observe.
"The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of the
Causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of
the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things
possible."
He then proceeds to develope his conception of a great
Institution devoted to Knowledge with a view always to the
benefits thereby to be conferred on mankind ; and it is no
exaggeration to say that were all the Universities, Technical
Colleges, Laboratories, Botanic and Zoological Gardens of
Europe and America rolled into one, Bacon's great pansophic
ideal would even then be only approximately attained.
1 Libraries, he says, are as the shrines where all the relics of the
ancient saints, full of true virtue and that without delusion and imposture,
are preserved and reposed.
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 131
Writing on the education of Youth to Sir Henry Savill 1 ,
he expounds his views as to the
Power of Education.
" But certain it is, whether it be believed or no, that as
the most excellent of metals, gold, is of all other the most
pliant and most enduring to be wrought ; so of all living and
breathing substances, the perfectest (Man) is the most sus-
ceptible of help, improvement, impression, and alteration.
And not only in his body, but in his mind and spirit. And
there again not only in his appetite and affection, but in his
power of wit and reason."
*****
"And as to the will of man, it is that which is most
maniable and obedient; as that which admitteth most medi-
cines to cure and alter it. The most sovereign of all is
Religion, which is able to change and transform it in the
deepest and most inward inclinations and motions. And
next to that is Opinion and Apprehension ; whether it be
infused by tradition and institution, or wrought in by dis-
putation and persuasion. And the third is example, which
transformeth the will of man into the similitude of that which
is much observant and familiar towards it. And the fourth
is, when one affection is healed and corrected by another;
as when cowardice is remedied by shame and dishonour, or
sluggishness and backwardness by indignation and emulation ;
and so of the like. And lastly, when all these means, or
any of them, have new framed or formed human will, then
doth custom and habit corroborate and confirm all the rest.
Therefore it is no marvel though this faculty of the mind
of will and election, which inclineth affection and appetite,
being but the inceptions and rudiments of will, may be so
well governed and managed, because it admitteth access to
1 Vol. VII. p. 99 (Spedding's Edition).
92
132 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
so divers remedies to be applied to it and to work upon it.
The effects whereof are so many and so known as require
no enumeration ; but generally they do issue, as medicines
do, into two kinds of cures ; whereof the one is a just or true
cure, and the other is called palliation."
Method generally.
Exercises. " That exercises are to be framed to the life ;
that is to say, to work ability in that kind, whereof a man in
the course of actions shall have most use.
" The indirect and oblique exercises which do per paries
and per consequentiam inable those faculties, which perhaps
direct exercise at first, would but distort. And those have
chiefly place where the faculty is weak not per se but per
acridens. As if want of memory grow through lightness of
wit and want of stayed attention, then the mathematics or
the law helpeth ; because they are things wherein if the mind
once roam it cannot recover.
" Of the cautions of exercise ; as to beware lest by evil
doing, as all beginners do weakly, a man grow and be inveter-
ate in an ill habit ; and so take not the advantage of custom in
perfection, but in confirming ill."
Order of Exercises. "The marshalling and sequel of
sciences and practices : Logic and Rhetoric should be used
to be read after Poesy, History, and Philosophy. First
exercise to do things well and clean ; after, promptly and
readily."
In the Advancement of Learning 1 we find pertinent advice
on the order and method in the study of Authors.
"There remain two appendices touching the tradition of
knowledge, the one critical, the other pedantical. For all
knowledge is either delivered by teachers, or attained by
1 p. i8r (Aldis Wright's Edition).
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 133
men's proper endeavours; and therefore as the principal
part of tradition of knowledge concerneth chiefly writing of
books, so the relative part thereof concerneth reading of
books; whereunto appertain incidently these considerations.
The first is concerning the true correction and edition of
authors ; wherein nevertheless rash diligence hath done great
prejudice. For these critics have often presumed that that
which they understand not is false set down : as the priest
that, where he found it written of S. Paul Demissus est per
sportam, mended his book, and made it Demissus est per
portam ; because sporta was an hard word, and out of his
reading : and surely their errors, though they be not so
palpable and ridiculous, yet are of the same kind. And
therefore, as it hath been wisely noted, the most corrected
copies are commonly the least correct.
" The second is concerning the exposition and explication
of authors, which resteth in annotations and commentaries :
wherein it is over usual to blanch the obscure places and
discourse upon the plain.
" The third is concerning the times, which in many cases
give great light to true interpretations.
" The fourth is concerning some brief censure and judgment
of the authors ; that men thereby may take some election unto
themselves what books to read.
"And the fifth is concerning the syntax and disposition
of studies ; that men may know in what order or pursuit to
read.
" For pedantical knowledge, it containeth that difference
of tradition which is proper for youth ; whereunto appertain
divers considerations of great fruit.
" As first, the timing and seasoning of knowledges ; as with
what to initiate them, and from what for a time to refrain
them.
"Secondly, the consideration where to begin with the
easiest, and so proceed to the more difficult ; and in what
134 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
courses to press the more difficult, and then to turn them to
the more easy : for it is one method to practise swimming
with bladders, and another to practise dancing with heavy
shoes.
" A third is the application of learning according unto the
propriety of the wits; for there is no defect in the faculties
intellectual, but seemeth to have a proper cure contained in
some studies : as, for example, if a child be bird-witted, that
is, hath not the faculty of attention, the mathematics giveth
a remedy thereunto ; for in them, if the wit be caught away
but a moment, one is new to begin. And as sciences have a
propriety towards faculties for cure and help, so faculties or
powers have a sympathy towards sciences for excellency
or speedy profiting : and therefore it is an inquiry of great
wisdom, what kinds of wits and natures are most apt and
proper for what sciences.
" Fourthly, the ordering of exercises is matter of great
consequence to hurt or help : for, as is well observed by
Cicero, men in exercising their faculties, if they be not well
advised, do exercise their faults and get ill habits as well as
good ; so as there is a great judgment to be had in the
continuance and intermission of exercises. It were too long
to particularize a number of other considerations of this
nature, things but of mean appearance, but of singular
efficacy. For as the wronging or cherishing of seeds or
young plants is that that is most important to their thriving,
and as it was noted that the first six kings being in truth as
tutors of the state of Rome in the infancy thereof was the
principal cause of the immense greatness of that state which
followed, so the culture and manurance of minds in youth
hath such a forcible (though unseen) operation, as hardly
any length of time or contention of labour can countervail it
afterwards."
In the above quotations we find the prognostication of
many much-needed educational reforms. It was not, however,
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 135
within Bacon's purpose to elaborate his views in their specific
relation to the ordinary school. This, as regards Method
at least, was left to Ratke.
Bacon represented not only the longing for a new Method
and for the co-ordination of the sciences ; but also the
weariness of words and phrases and vain subtleties which
had been gradually recovering their old place in spite of
Rabelais, Montaigne, Ludovicus Vives, Erasmus, and Ascham.
The poets, also, had been placing Nature before the minds
of men in a new aspect. The Humanists, while unquestion-
ably improving the aims and procedure of education, had
been powerless to prevent the tendency to fall once more
under the dominion of words, and to revert to mere gram-
matical and rhetorical form. The realism of human life
and thought, which constituted their raison d'etre, had been
unable to sustain itself as a principle of action, because, as
we have seen, there was no school of method. It was the
study of the realities of sense that was finally to place
education on a scientific basis, and make reaction, as to
method, impossible, at least in so far as thinkers were
concerned.
The thought of any age determines the education of the
age which is to succeed it. Education follows, it does not
lead. The School and the Church alike march in the wake
of science, philosophy, and political ideas. We see this
illustrated in every epoch of human history, and in none
so conspicuously as in the changes which occurred in the
philosophy and education of ancient Rome during the lifetime
of the elder Cato, and, in modern times, during the revival
of letters and the subsequent rise of the Baconian induction.
It is impossible, indeed, for any great movement of thought
to find acceptance without its telling to some extent on every
department of the body politic. Its influence on the ideas
entertained as to the education of the rising generation
must be, above all, distinct and emphatic. Every philosophi-
136 THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON
cal writer on political science has recognized this, and has
felt the vast significance of the educational system of a
country both as an effect the consequence of a revolution
in thought and as a cause, a moving force of incalculable
power in the future life of a commonwealth. Thus it was
that the Humanistic movement which preceded and accom-
panied the Reformation of religion shook to its centre the
mediaeval school-system of Europe ; and that subsequently
the silent rise of the inductive spirit began to subvert its
very foundations.
Bacon, though not himself a Realist in the modern and
abused sense of that term, was the father of Realism. It
was this side of his teaching which was greedily seized upon,
and even exaggerated. Educational zeal now ran in this
channel. The conviction of the Churches of the time, that
one can make men what one pleases (by fair means or
foul), was shared by the innovators. The method which
could conquer all knowledge could also train the knowing
powers and mould the whole man. By education, rightly
conceived and rightly applied, the fervent successors of Bacon
dreamed that they could manufacture men ; and, in point of
fact, the Jesuits had shown that a good deal could be done in
this direction. The new enthusiasts failed to see that the genius
of Protestantism is the genius of freedom, and that man refuses
to be manufactured except on suicidal terms. He must first
sacrifice that which is his distinctive title to manhood his
personality. That the prophets of educational Realism should
have failed to see this is not to be laid at their door as a fault :
it merely shows that they belonged to their own time and not
to ours. They failed then, as some fail now, to understand
man and his education, because they break with the
past. The record of the past is with them, as it was with
the Baconian realists, merely a record of blunders. The
modern Humanist more wisely accepts it as the storehouse
of the thoughts and life of human reason. In the life of Man
THE MODERN PERIOD, BACON 137
each individual of the race best finds his own true life.
This is modern Humanism the Realism of thought. Let
us not, however, confound Bacon with his bastard children
in these days. He would not have acknowledged them.
Let us at the same time freely grant that it is to the
Sense-realists of the earlier half of the seventeenth century
that we owe the scientific foundations of educational method,
and the only indication of the true line of answer to the
complaints of the time.
CHAPTER XI.
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST AND
FOUNDER OF METHOD 1 .
(d. 1671.)
IN March, 1892, three hundred years had elapsed since
Comenius was born. The whole educational world was alive
to the fact, and in Germany and America the day was widely
celebrated, although forty years ago the name of Comenius was
known only to an historical student here and there ; and
that, chiefly as associated with an illustrated school-book, the
Orbis Pictus*.
It is not universally true that writers of genuine original
vein suffer neglect during their lifetime. Much depends on the
position of social authority which they may hold, or on their
power of fitting their fresh thought to the forms of expression
current in their time. It cannot be said that Comenius,
though an unsuccessful man, as all men of ideas are, failed to
interest and attract his contemporaries : on the contrary, his
two chief school-books were enormously popular ; but he was
1 A memorial address for the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth.
Delivered in Edinburgh and Birmingham.
The predecessor of Comenius was the Baconian Wolfgang Ratke,
2 A full account of Comenius's work on Education and a sufficient
account of Ratke will be found in my Life of Comenius.
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 139
scarcely dead when his name and reputation died also. That
in him which was specially original was precisely that which
most of all fell into oblivion. Bayle, in his " Dictionary "
(1695), speaks of him in a depreciating way, though allowing
that the Janua is an immortal (!) school-book; and nearly
a hundred years afterward, Adelung, in his History of Human
Folly, describes him as a man of weak and limited mind, and
regards him as little more than a charlatan. Hallam passes
him by, with a brief reference only to the Janua and the
Orbis, characterizing him as a man of "some ingenuity but
little judgment." No doubt much of this neglect of the old
bishop was due to the fact that his ecclesiastical and pansophic
writings were of only passing interest, and that his chief claim
to permanent regard as an intellectual force lay in his contribu-
tions to the education of the young. Even in our own day a
man who writes on education is regarded as, to some extent,
a trifler, if not a fanatic, by historians and men of letters. The
mere fact that he occupies himself with the education of the
child-mind seems to stamp him as something of a child
himself in any case, as not worthy of notice, except by
schoolmasters : and they avoid him. If Milton, the contem-
porary of Comenius, had written nothing but his Tractate on
Education, he would have been long since forgotten, or, at
most, known only to a few antiquaries, notwithstanding the
literary excellence of portions of the famous essay. Roger
Ascham has seldom been assigned his fit place as a stylist and
a former of English prose; and this, because he wrote on
education. Even many men of letters, whose business is the
history of English literature, have not, I find, read his Schole-
master, save in extracts, and, in like manner, classical experts
know wonderfully little of Quintilian. Mulcaster's Positions
has met with a like fate. And yet it is beyond all question
that, had the subject on which these men wrote been the
political backstairs gossip of " Memoires pour servir," or
tracings on monumental stones, or even the ways of bees or
140 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
beetles, their importance as mere men of letters and as
contributors to the enrichment of the substance, and refiners
of the form, of the English tongue, would have been kept
constantly in the eye of the literary public.
As a partial explanation of this neglect, it has to be noted
that to write anything, having the aspect of novelty, on
education and schools, is by implication to attack a large and
powerful class, and to insure their hostility. This doubtless
helps to consign the writers to forgetfulness. Even the
venerable Comenius, when his life-work was approaching its
close, was assailed at Amsterdam as an arch-enemy of schools
and schoolmasters, and had to make a pathetic defence. "I
can affirm," he says, " from the bottom of my heart, that these
forty years my aim has been simple and unpretending ;
indifferent whether I teach or be taught, admonish or be
admonished ; walling to act the part of a teacher of teachers, if
in anything it may be permitted to me to do so, and a disciple
of disciples where progress may be possible. They say that I
write against schools ; nay, it is for schools that I speak and
have spoken Why, then, should any delight to molest me?
Let me live in tranquillity as long as God wills me to be here."
To resent criticism of an institution, or a mode of adminis-
tration, as if it were a personal attack on its administrators, is
not confined to the teaching profession, but it certainly has
been a more active characteristic of schoolmasters than
of clergymen, lawyers, or physicians. Teachers, as a rule,
do not wish to be disturbed by new ideas. Even Milton,
though he shared with Comenius hatred of the traditionary
methods, yet, just because he was himself a schoolmaster,
suffers from this narrow pedagogic spirit, and declines, in his
letter to Hartlib, to have anything to do with new-fangled
notions. "To search what many modern Januas and
Didactics, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my
inclination leads me not." It is true that he also says, " What
I have benefited herein among old renowned authors I shall
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 14!
spare." Who the "renowned authors" may have been, how-
ever, he does not say ; nor does his treatise give any indication
that he ever read any of them, although we may, perhaps, not
err in presuming that Quintilian, at least, was not unknown to
him. Doubtless this peculiar attitude of the scholastic mind
is largely due to the position of authority in which teachers are
placed when yet young and unformed. They succeed to a
certain traditionary way of doing things ; a few years' practice
habituates them to it, and this habit combines with the almost
despotic position in which they are placed to produce a self-
conviction of finality. They repeat themselves from day to
day and call it experience. It is unreasonable, accordingly, to
blame teachers for their attitude to the science, history, and
criticism of their art. The causes are obvious : to understand
is to sympathise. And it is vain, I think, to expect this
attitude to be altered until all intending schoolmasters are
required, before they begin their work, to study the theory and
history of education. The academic study of their science and
art, such as is now found at many universities in America,
Germany, and elsewhere, will convey to the young aspirant the
best tradition, while stimulating to thought on his own account.
If he begins to think about the principles and aims of his
profession when still young, he will, in the great majority of
cases, continue to think when engrossed with the practical
work of the school.
Comenius did not flash on the world unheralded. Perhaps
no man ever stood forth as the representative of an intellectual
or moral movement by organizing its essential characteristics
in a coherent statement, without owing much to his prede-
cessors. Aristotle had his Plato, and Newton his Kepler, and
Bacon had many men working for the inductive gospel before
he formulated the Novum Organum. So with Comenius.
To begin with, the Reformation movement had stirred
questions which went far beyond the limits which it had
originally prescribed for itself, and in no department did it
142 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
more directly assail old conceptions than in that of education.
It would be out of place here to show how this was a necessary
consequence of the Reformation principle, and it would only
irritate a reader to have the words of Luther and others
quoted for the hundredth time. The questions, however, of
whom to teach and what to teach, naturally first occupied the
field of vision, to the exclusion of the more fundamental
question, how to teach. Ascham and Sturm certainly wrote
on the "how," but their "how" was limited to the teaching of the
Latin language and literature. It is surprising to find how many
books treated of the work of schools before Comenius came on
the field. Comenius, accordingly, had many forerunners ; but
this does not justify us in exaggerating what he owed to them,
by way of detracting from his greatness and originality. No
one is more open and candid on the subject than is Comenius
himself. He names the books he had read, always in the
sincere hope of finding what he wanted. He had no desire to
originate. I doubt if there ever was a man who devoted
himself to labour for his fellow-men so ardently as Comenius
did, in the field of religion, intellectual progress, and education,
who was less of an egotist. He worked and wrote in the most
single-hearted spirit. Much, very much, of the work he did
for education was, in truth, done unwillingly and from a pure
sense of duty. His main intellectual interest was his pansophy,
the co-ordination of all knowledge with a view to the advance
of humanity and the conciliation of religious parties. All that
he conceived and did was conceived and done for the " glory
of God," and to advance Christian unity and a rational
Christian civilization on a Protestant basis. An irenicon was
the necessity of the times, and it was the dream of Comenius,
as it was of Vives, Casaubon, and Grotius. Thus, in many
essential respects he was the European popularizer of Bacon,
and he was perhaps also the first evangelical Broad Churchman
among Protestants. He was constantly, however, setting aside
his more ambitious schemes to do the educational work that
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 143
lay to his hand ; and this he called following the leadings of
Providence.
The three most important of the precursors of Comenius
were Ludovicus Vives the Spaniard, Bacon the Englishman,
and Ratke the Holsteiner.
Vives was born in 1492, at Valencia, exactly one hundred
years before Comenius ; Bacon was born in 1561 ; and Ratke
in 1571, twenty-one years before Comenius. Rabelais and
Montaigne seem to have been unknown to Comenius. Of
Vives, Comenius himself says that he knew better where the
fault in schools lay than the nature of the remedy ; and yet he,
like Bacon, owed more to Vives than he imagined if not in
the sphere of education, at least in his whole cast of thought,
including his pansophic ideal. For Vives was an encyclopae-
dist in his range of intellectual activity, an enemy of mere
authority, directing attention away from the barren dialectic of
the schools to the silent study of nature. Like Comenius, too,
he was one of those who were always hoping to find some
basis of ecclesiastical and civil unity which might conciliate
the distractions of the time. He is sometimes called a
Humanist, sometimes a Realist. The truth is, that after
giving promise of future distinction as a schoolman, he grew
out of the scholastic philosophy, and became, in relation to the
general current of thought, a Humanist, but without falling
into the idolatry of style which characterized the leaders of that
movement. In relation to education and the school, he was
a Realist only in so far as he included in his course of
education realistic subjects. In his book, De Tradendis
Disciplinis, he treats of the education of the child from
infancy, keeping in view always the moral aim of all instruction.
What he says is always characterized by good sense ; but to us
nowadays his rules and recommendations are commonplaces.
In his book on the education of women, for which he has been
extolled as a reformer, it is the morals, manners, and domestic
training of women, along with instruction in reading and
144 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
writing, that he speaks of; beyond this, nothing. The
instruction of boys meant, with Vives, as with everybody in
those days, Latin chiefly ; and he gives eight or nine years to
the acquisition of this language 1 . Into the school curriculum,
however, he would introduce Greek, history, geography, and
nature-knowledge. But he does not seem to have had any
idea of a curriculum through which, with a view to mind-
culture generally, all boys should be carried. His remarks are
generally pertinent and sagacious, and it is believed that the
Jesuit teachers learned much from him ; but to the specific
subject of method, in our modern sense, he does not seem to
have made any contribution of value. There is, I suspect,
little in Vives that may not be found in Quintilian and Plutarch.
The severe discipline of the time, and the want of lightness
and variety in school-work, are condemned by him, but in this
and in other respects he only shares his opinion with many
writers. This slight sketch of the teaching of Vives will suffice
to show that Comenius may have owed to him suggestion and
stimulus, but nothing more.
The educational activity of men like Vives supports the
view set forth in the beginning of this book, viz. that it is
impossible clearly to apprehend the history of education from
the close of the Middle Ages down to this century, unless
we distinctly recognize two lines of thought which run side
by side in their beginning, but soon cross each other the
theological and the literary. The Renaissance had many
aspects ; in its purely educational aims it was an attempt to
rouse men from dogmatic slumber, and to bring them face
to face once more with nature and life as that was interpreted
1 The latter half of the i^th century was full of complaints as to the time
spent in learning Latin and full also of short ways, but no one then or for 150
years after doubted its absolute necessity. John Sturm states the case thus :
" Romanus sermo per omnes nationes et populos et regna commeat.
Neque usquam gentium venias ubi non Latinum hospitem invenias qui
viam proficiscenti monstret. Adeo linguam hanc hospitalem esse voluit
Deus quam late terrarum orbis patet, hominibus."
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 145
in the great literatures of Greece and Rome. The Reformation
of religion was only a part of the movement, and, till Luther's
time, a subordinate part. When the Lutheran movement,
however, fairly took hold of men's minds, literature and pure
Humanism found a potent rival in theology and the new ideal
of justification, saving grace, and personal piety. " By faith
are ye saved " not by literature. Unquestionably, the more
enlightened reformers, and notably Luther and Melanchthon,
accepted literature and a genial view of human life. But the
literary and artistic interest was not dominant with them, as
with Erasmus. Faith, justification in the sight of God, and
morality as fruit of faith, constituted the chief end of man, and
consequently of the education of the young. But the reformed
faith did not, as yet, wholly break with Humanism, as Chris-
tianity had done before the fifth century.
After Luther and Sturm and Ascham, however, the
paramount interest began to obscure the less important. The
career of Casaubon illustrates this. Though much had been
done to improve the curriculum of schools, the literary
enthusiasm had exhausted itself, and there was unquestionably
a relapse into the old formalism. The Catholic reaction, also,
called many minds away to the main issue of modern civiliza-
tion personality versus organized spiritual despotism. Then
came on the scene a new educational force the potent ideas
of Realism as represented by Bacon. Nature was to be
studied at first hand, and studied by silent and faithful
observation. This study had more than a mere theoretical
interest. The observation of nature and of its teachings was
to accomplish great things for the improvement of the social
and industrial conditions of human life. In a letter addressed
by Bacon to Casaubon, these words are used : " The contem-
plations I have in view are those which may bring about the
better ordering of man's life, with all its turmoil 1 ." Nature, in
1 Footnote in Pattison's Life of Casaubon, p. 335. The letter was
never sent.
L. 10
146 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
short, was to be used as a gift of God to man. There was
nothing in this nearly so dangerous to the Protestant theo-
logical conception of life as pure Humanism was, which in
some of its manifestations had little to distinguish it from a
cultured paganism ; and this the Christian Church had always
feared as its chief enemy, until in the middle of the sixteenth
century the Jesuits suborned it. There was nothing, in truth,
to prevent the whole-hearted union of Realism and a liberal
reformed theology; but in their relations to Realism the Jesuits,
who had already captured Humanism and subordinated it to
the Church, had to reconsider their ways ; and are still recon-
sidering them. Science and the scientific spirit gave them
their death-blow, though it is true they are long of dying.
Now, Ratke and Comenius were the apostolic missionaries
of the specific Baconian realistic movement in the field of
education. They adopted the saying that " there was nothing
in the understanding which had not first been in sense " ; but
neither they nor any of their contemporaries saw the far-
reaching and fatal philosophical and theological effects of such
a doctrine. The maxim was used only to establish the
necessity of founding all instruction on sense, and on all the
senses, and the importance of cultivating the powers of
observation. " Live we not in the garden of Nature, as well
as those who have gone before us? Why, then, learn the
works of Nature otherwise than through our senses ? Why not
substitute for dead books the living book of Nature ? " The
philosophical consequences, I say, of the celebrated dictum as
to intellect and sense could not occur to such men as
Comenius ; for, in his crude psychology, there was, quite apart
from the mere understanding, the "soul," and the spiritual
life of the soul in God.
Bacon's interest lay in the sphere of the higher education.
He was a pansophist, and his ambition was to see a visible
organization of science, in the form of a great State-supported
academy of investigation and teaching. In this respect
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 147
Comenius directly affiliates himself to Bacon. All that
Comenius did in this department of his activity derives itself
from the Englishman. The Advancement of Learning and
the New Atlantis were the teachers of Comenius. The
same magnificent conception lay at the foundation of the
" Institut National," projected by the French revolutionaries
in 1795. "Finally, we propose to you to create a National
Institute," they said to the Government, " able in its several
parts to give every branch of public instruction and collectively
human knowledge carried to its highest point : everything
which men know must be taught there to its highest perfection :
every man must be able to learn there how to do what any
man of any country, aglow with the fire of genius, has done,
and is able still to do. This establishment must honour, not
France only, but the whole human race, astonishing it by the
spectacle of its power and the development of its strength 1 ."
The names of the first members of the Institute were those of
men capable of doing the work expected of them Lagrange,
Laplace, Legendre, Cuvier, Volney, Sainte Pierre, Lakanal,
Chenier, Lebrun, and Fontanes. It is a curious fact that the
Long Parliament (also a revolutionary Parliament) contem-
plated, in 1641, handing over Chelsea College to carry out the
pansophic views of Comenius, thus anticipating the action of
the French Republic by one hundred and fifty years. The
Baconian, Comenian, and revolutionary ideas have now been,
in some places, almost realized ; and, in so far as they are not
realized, they still enter into the dreams of university reformers.
It is of importance to insist on this, because it has been
customary to look on the fervent old bishop as a visionary,
whereas he was the most practical of men only living a few
centuries too soon.
The advocacy of pansophy and realism did not exhaust the
powers of Comenius. He was an ardent worker, as I have
1 Quoted from a paper by Mr. Jamson Smith, Birmingham.
IO 2
148 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
indicated above, in the cause of a Protestant union, based on
the vital and essential interests of Christianity. His Union
Necessarium had this for its aim. The fanatical divisions of
Protestantism had been the Jesuits' opportunity. Being an
unorganized mass, they had been swept back by the serried
ranks of Loyola. Protestantism was in a critical position.
It has been sometimes said that Comenius owed much to
Valentine Andrea, his senior by four years. This remarkable
man, born at Herrenburg in 1586, was distinguished for his
learning, energy, and originality, and stood eminent among his
contemporaries. Of him Herder said that he " blossomed as a
rose among thorns." He was a man of poetic and ideal
character, and yet, like Comenius, in the highest degree
practical. Like other educational reformers, he attacked the
mechanical character of grammar-school instruction, and the
equally mechanical character of the people's schools, and of
the instruction of children in the Catechism. He desiderated
a better method in both the primary and secondary schools,
and the substitution of an evangelical spirit for the heathenism
and arid curriculum of the latter. His disgust of the narrow
range of school instruction made him lean to realistic studies
and hail with enthusiasm Comenius's Didactica. Realist as
he was, however, education by means of language, and
education by means of things, was subordinated to the religious
aim " omnis spiritus cedat Christo." His educational ideas
are contained in his Reipublicae Christianopolitanae De-
scriptio, 1619. A book published in his youth, called Idea
Bonae Institutionis, is lost. The dates of these books show
that he had anticipated Comenius as an educational writer;
but there is no evidence that Comenius owed anything to him
which he did not himself already ascribe to the general
influence of Vives. Impulse, sympathy, and encouragement he
found, doubtless, in Andrea's strongly expressed views, as he
did in the personal recognition and encouragement which Andrea
himself generously extended to him by letter ; but this was all.
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 149
Within a few years after the publication of the Advance-
ment of Learning (1605), we find Ratke, the Holsteiner,
formulating the new ideas in the interest of education and
attracting the attention of the princes and universities of
Northern Europe. Although it is true that Ratke failed to
answer Comenius's letter of inquiry, there can be no doubt that
Ratke anticipated him in all his general principles of method.
To him, and not to Vives or Andrea, Comenius was directly
indebted. There was, perhaps, more of the light of originality
in Ratke than in Comenius.
To Bateus, the Irish Jesuit, who died at Madrid in 1614,
Comenius was, in an indirect way, also indebted, in so far
as the Jesuit's Janua showed the possibility of bringing
together a vast number of vocables in a school-book, and also
in so far as it showed him what to avoid. He called it a
" Noah's Ark for Words." To Professor Lubinus of Rostock,
again, who died in 1621, Comenius certainly owed the first idea
of the Orbis Pictus.
I think I have now exhausted the external sources of
Comenius's inspiration, and the result is this : In respect of his
philosophy, and of the materials which should enter into the
education of man, Comenius was a disciple of Bacon, of whom
he speaks as "the noble Verulam, who has given us the true
key of nature " ; in respect of the fundamental conception of
method as determined by the inductive process of mind, and
many of the rules of method, he was indebted directly to Ratke
and only indirectly to Bacon ; and to Lubinus he owed the
suggestion of the Orbis Pictus. But in the wide reach of
his educational conceptions, in the development of the whole
subject of method, and in his mode of procedure in dis-
covering it, and expounding it, Comenius was wholly original.
Let us now briefly consider the leading characteristics of
Comenius as an educationalist, bearing in mind, the while, that
the education of his age consisted of reading, writing, the
ISO COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
Catechism badly taught, and Latin nothing but Latin, with
here and there, but chiefly in the universities, Greek and
scholastic logic even reading and writing being for the few,
and further education only for the select among those
few.
1. Comenius held that every human being should be
educated, simply because he was a human being. This is
nothing new to us, but it was an immense step in advance of
previous thinkers. Luther and his friends desired to educate
the young because they had souls to be saved; Comenius,
simply because they were human beings.
2. In perfect consistency with this fundamental view,
Comenius advocated pansophy in the school, for only by an
encyclopaedic training could we build up the whole fabric of
the human mind. We must begin by instructing in the
elements of all things, for our final aim has need of them
all, that aim being threefold : First, knowledge universal,
including knowledge of oneself ; second, virtue ; and third,
religion. There is involved in the first portion of the threefold
end a thoroughgoing encyclopaedism. The work to be done
in the school has for its ultimate aim pansophy, and is entirely
governed and suggested by the pansophic ideal of man and
society. Universal knowledge is to be organized, and all must
share in it.
3. Knowledge must be expressed in the vernacular of
each nation, for it is a human possession, and not the
possession of any one individual or class. This also was
logically involved in his fundamental conception. " We desire
and protest," he says in the Prodromus, " that studies of
wisdom be no longer committed to Latin alone, and kept shut
up in the schools, as has hitherto been done, to the greatest
contempt and injury of the people at large and of the popular
tongues. Let all things be delivered to each nation in its own
speech." This was clearly a necessary deduction from his
principle that every human being had, as such, a right to
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 151
education. All knowledge existed for the bettering of man's
condition and elevating him as a rational being. Nature is
God's work, and is an enemy of man only in so far as he does
not know it. He must, then, be taught to know nature and to
know himself. Why ? That he may rule nature; and also rule
himself, which is virtue. The more comprehensive the know-
ledge, the wiser is the ordinary life of man, and the more assured,
consequently, is his virtue. Nay, religion, as well as virtue,
rests on a knowledge of nature. Man's nature and external
nature presented themselves to the mind of Comenius as a
fundamental harmony. In this harmony was visible the good-
ness of God : man's business was to find it and then to refer all
things to God, and lead a life in nature and society as with
Him. So Milton held that we could not arrive at a "knowledge
of God and things invisible, save by conning over the visible
inferior creature " ; and Picus of Mirandola identified the law
of nature with the utterance of " our Lord Himself."
4. If encyclopaedic knowledge is to be acquired, even in
its elements, we must take care that every one begins early, i.e.
in the infant school. Comenius was the originator of the idea
of the infant school -the " school of the mother's lap," as he
calls it; and there is little in Pestalozzi and Frobel which is not
in Comenius, though not in him fully developed. Very simple
instruction is to be given, only such as infant minds can
assimilate ; but, however simple it may be, it must be wide-
reaching as nature itself. It must be a foundation broad enough
to sustain, in the long run, the weight of the pansophic temple.
5. How this broad foundation was to be laid, and a
building erected on it, was the question of questions, for it was
the question of method, and is the problem solved in the
Great Didactic Comenius's central work. Ratke's leading
positions were that all procedure in education was to be from
particulars to generals, and all, consequently, by observation
and experiment. The Baconian philosophy showed that thus .
we acquired knowledge, and accordingly thus must we impart
152 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
knowledge. For with Ratke, as with Comenius, it was always
giving and imparting, but now no longer a mere storing of
memory, but all according to a method such that the teaching of
one thing should be the teaching to reason on all things.
Comenius seized on the same conception, and wrote, as I have
said above, to Ratke for fuller information ; but his letter
remained unanswered, and he had to think out the problem for
himself. And just at that critical point, his philosophy of the
world and of man's life, and the harmonious relation of the
two, came to his aid. The world was not a mechanical
construction, but dynamical. It was the wisdom of God
making itself manifest ; and, as regarded man, God's purpose
was to bring him back to himself through nature and life. Let
nature and man, then, be conceived as order and law, with a
purpose. But if this were so, there must be some way of
building up knowledge, virtue, and religion in the mind of
man, so as to make him what he is intended to be an image
of his Creator. There must be order and law here as well as
elsewhere. The larger cosmical conception suggested the way,
for what was true of the whole must be true of the parts. Each
individual thing, no less than the cosmic whole, was dynamical;
each thing was an organism growing from seed to flower and
fruit. In fact, the biological process was the mind-process.
In his Prodromus, p. 40, he says, " After many workings
and tossings of my thought, by reducing everything to the
immovable laws of nature, I lighted upon my Didactica
Afagna, which shows the art of easily and solidly teaching all
men all things."
6. Having already determined the end of education and
the materials to be used, it was now clear to Comenius that the
building up of the mind by means of these materials must be
an organic process. In nature, then, he must find the clue to
the method of education in the chick, and in the seed of the
1 Except in so far as he may have read some of Ratke's writings.
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 153
plant, and in their gradual development. The mode of
procedure in finding principles and rules was analogical, or, as
he calls it, syncretic. The science of nature was then in its
infancy, and Comenius could work only on such knowledge as
he had sometimes mistaken, always inadequate. His firm
conviction, however, in the harmony of things sustained him.
The result was that many of his illustrations were fanciful, and
some of his rules of method strained. Yet in the main he was
right. In spite of many defects, we have from him the only
thoroughgoing treatise on educational method that has yet
appeared in the history of the world.
7. Comenius reformed language-teaching, and began a
new era in text-books. He had been met at once by a great
difficulty in the practical working out of his theory. The
curriculum of the schools was substantially Latin, and in Latin.
His theory of the building up of the human mind demanded
realia. Hence he advocated teaching of and in the vernacular :
the vernacular first, and then Latin. When Latin had to be
faced, his principles led to the Janua and the Orbis
Pictus, which latter is an illustrated real-encyclopaedia for the
young. All the words necessary for Latin intercourse must be
acquired as soon and as easily as possible. But things had
also to be taught, of which words are but the symbols. Words,
then, must be taught with and through things. Language and
reality must go hand in hand. The building up of a knowledge
of things was the true building up of minds. Words being but
the symbols of things were best acquired along with the things
of which- they are the symbols. Thus we kill two birds with
one stone. Then, the true process of mind was the inductive.
Accordingly, the universal was to be reached through the
particular. Hence the multitude of facts in his school-books,
which were to be the basis of future generalization and
reasoning. As with things, so with language ; the elaborate
abstractions of Latin grammar are obstructive. Reading and
grammar must go together, and grammar itself must be
154 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
simplified, and dictionaries too. Hence his graded grammars
and dictionaries, that the time spent over Latin might be
shorter, and progress more pleasant for the pupil. "If so
much time is to be spent on language alone," he says, " when
is the boy to know about things? when will he learn philosophy,
when religion, and so forth ? He will continue his life in pre-
paring for life." Again, all was to be graduated, and adapted
to the boy's age.
8. As to school discipline, Comenius was far ahead of his
own time, and even of ours. The seeds of knowledge, of
virtue, and of piety were, to begin with, already in the child.
Only wise culture was needed to make them spring into life
and grow to maturity, just as with plants. Coercion was thus
entirely out of place ; method superseded it, although he
admitted that corporal chastisement was sometimes necessary
for moral offences.
Onmia sponte fluant : absit violentia rebus.
9. As to the education of girls, Comenius was not only
more thoroughgoing than Vives and Erasmus, but two hundred
and fifty years in advance of other men. I take Professor
Masson's translation of Comenius's utterance on this subject 1 :
V " Nor, to say something particularly on this subject, can
any sufficient reason be given why the weaker sex should be
wholly shut out from liberal studies, whether in the native
tongue or in Latin. For equally are they God's image ;
equally are they partakers of grace, and of the kingdom to
come ; equally are they furnished with minds agile and capable
of wisdom, yea, often beyond our sex ; equally to them is there
a possibility of attaining high distinction, inasmuch as they
have often been employed by God Himself for the government
of peoples, the bestowing of wholesome counsels on kings and
princes, the science of medicine, and other things useful to the
human race, nay, even the prophetical office, and the rattling
1 Life of Milton.
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 155
reprimand of priests and bishops. Why, then, should we
admit them to the alphabet, but afterwards debar them from
books ? Do we fear their rashness ? The more we occupy
their thoughts, the less room will there be in them for
waywardness, which springs generally from vacuity of mind." ^
Now it is an easy matter to pick holes in Comenius,
whether we regard him as a mystic theologian, a pansophic
philosopher, an enthusiastic humanitarian, or an educational
reformer. I leave this task to those who care to do it.
Assuredly no schoolboy in Europe or America, who under-
stands the nature of the old bishop's work, would do it, even if
he had the intellectual power ; and this, perhaps, is the highest
tribute to the services which Comenius rendered. I confine
myself to pointing out the defects which lapse of time and the
accumulation of experience have taught us to be defects ; for it
is the logic of events that teaches us the wisdom we call
our own.
The Baconian dictum, " Knowledge is power," is false, or,
at least, fallacious. Power lies in ideas and ideals, and a
vigorous intelligence behind them. This, Comenius, and with
him modern sensationalists, did not see. The mind is not
built up by universal knowledge, but by its own native energy
and activity in using a little well. Discipline of mind is of
more importance than the stocking of mind with multifarious
knowledges. "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." We
can now scarcely understand that men should seriously main-
tain that we could form men by knowledge ; but it was an
earnest conviction. " The mind is the man and the knowledge
of the mind. A man is but what he knoweth," says Bacon.
This being so, the conception of the school as an officina
humanitatis is a logical enough consequence.
Further, the pansophic basis in elementary education is to
be advocated only in a restricted sense. Children begin with
close and narrow interests and widen as they grow older.
156 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
Literature, which, as artistic expression, includes art, is the
most potent of all instruments in the hands of the educator,
whether we have regard to intellectual growth, or to the moral
and religious life. Comenius, however, had not the remotest
conception of the aesthetic and literary, and in this respect
is like Locke. His own Latin prose is hard and poor and
negligent. So far, he is certainly an anti-humanist. But he is
not an anti-humanist in his conception of the ends of education
as moral and religious ends, but only in the narrower meaning
of Humanism that characterized the first period of the
Renaissance, when art and literary form were all in all. He
grew up in the latter half of the second humanistic period, when
textual criticism and erudition prevailed, and when men's
minds were too much agitated by the success of the Catholic
reaction to find time to pick phrases and polish lines. The
second epoch, even that of Scaliger, Casaubon, and Buchanan
was already passing away.
Further, his Janua as a book for learning Latin, is, it
must be confessed, a failure.
Finally, Comenius had no psychology to speak of, and thus
he was compelled to rely on the frail support of analogy for the
grounding of his principles.
Neither in his philosophy nor his erudition was Comenius
profound. Joseph Scaliger and Casaubon, of the immediately
preceding generation, would have had none of him : Spinoza,
writing his Ethica round the street-corner while Comenius
was carrying his cumbrous works through the press, would
have smiled at his too energetic faith. The theologians, so
much in evidence in the beginning of the seventeenth century,
would have deplored his vagueness and want of dogmatic
system. But, in truth, he was a better theologian than any of
them Swiss Calvinist, Roman Jesuit, or Dutch Arminian;
while his moral enthusiasm and educational insight almost
raised him to the rank of genius. The present and the future
so engrossed him that he had no time to overweight his mind
COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST 157
by accumulating the written records of the past. He lived at
a time when men of intellect were divided into two classes,
those who looked back and those who looked forward ; he was
essentially a modern, and at once put his hand to the work
that was most urgent in the interests of Europe, viz. an
irenicon, scientific organization, and education.
And yet, whatever his shortcomings, Comenius remains for
us the most earnest and simple-hearted worker for the educa-
tion of the people, and the most penetrating writer on method
whom the world has ever seen in fact, the founder of method.
The more we study the subject of education in connexion
with the various influences at work in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, whether we take its large national, or
narrower scholastic, aspects, the more clearly do we see that
the simple-minded, much-enduring, and self-denying Moravian
bishop, so long forgotten, stands out as a prominent figure
even in general European history, and as quite the most
eminent in the history of European education. He is still
a living influence, and a power that will remain. When we
read the record of his days, we are amazed at the persistency
of his self-imposed labours in the midst of uncertain fortunes :
of him it may be truly said that he " linked month with month
in long-drawn chain of knitted purport."
" I thank God," he said, after a toilsome and disappointing
pilgrimage of fourscore years, " that I have been a man of
aspirations." But it is not as a man of aspirations alone that
we honour him to-day, but as a man who laboured for us as
few men have laboured ; who, in all the chances and changes
of his troubled life, was a unique and touching example of the
Christian graces of faith, hope, and love, and who has
bequeathed to us, as the solid fruit of his aspirations, the
Great Didactic a possession which the educational world,
at least, " will not willingly let die."
NOTE. There can be no doubt that Mulcaster (died 1611?)
anticipated much of both Ratke and Comenius, but there is no
158 COMENIUS, THE SENSE-ENCYCLOPAEDIST
evidence that he was known to them. Mr Quick says in his
Educational Biographies, " The latest advances in pedagogy have
established : (i) That the end and aim of education is to develop
the faculties of mind and body. (2) That all teaching processes
should be carefully adapted to the mental constitution of the learner.
(3) That the first stage of learning is of universal importance, and
requires a very high degree of skill in the teacher. (4) That the
brain of children, especially clever children, should not be subjected
to pressure. (5) That childhood should not be spent in learning
foreign languages, but that its language should be the mother-
tongue, and its exercises should include handiwork, especially
drawing. (6) That girls' education should be cared for no less than
boys'. (7) That the only hope of improving our schools lies in the
training of teachers." These were all advocated by Mulcaster.
CHAPTER XII.
JOHN MILTON 1 , THE CLASSICAL
ENCYCLOPAEDIST.
(d. 1674.)
WHEN we reflect that Milton was not only a Great Poet one
of the greatest but also the most learned and accomplished
man of his time, we naturally approach his Tractate with
profound respect and in the anticipation of much instruction.
Our expectations, it must be confessed, are at first disappointed.
For we are entitled to expect not only philosophic grasp but
also practical guidance from a man of genius who happened to
be also himself a teacher and for a long time kept a boys'
school in Aldersgate Street. On a closer acquaintance with
the book, however, we find much more in it than is obvious in
a first reading.
Rabelais and Montaigne had first moved in the direction
of the realistic in education, but by the real, Montaigne meant
studying what was said by eminent writers as opposed to mere
words and grammatical rules. He held that the languages
might be taught as they were taught to himself, conversationally,
and that the true end of education was not learning, in the
linguistic, or any other sense; but Wisdom. Rabelais advocated,
1 Born 1608: died 1674. Tractate on Education, published in 1644,
and a second edition 1673 at the end of the second edition of the minor
poems.
160 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
in addition to this, realistic instruction in its usual sense.
Milton also, nearly 100 years after, wrote in the same sense,
but he was largely influenced by the educational movements
which had preceded him under Ratke and which were even
then represented by Comenius. He directly refers indeed to
Comenius's works in a somewhat sneering way in the begin-
ning of his Tractate. . " To tell you," he says, " what I have
benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare ;
and to search what many modern Januas and Didactics, more
than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me
not." The reference is manifestly to Comenius's Janua Lin-
guarum Reserata and to the Magna Didactica, in which
Comenius lays down his principles ; or it may be to the
Didactics of Ratke. But no man, not even a Milton, however
he may ignore the originators of ideas, can keep himself
outside the influence of the ideas themselves, if they are in
the air.
Let us first of all bear in mind that Milton's Treatise is
only a very condensed and brief statement, written at the
request of his friend Hartlib, the devoted follower of Comenius,
and that it reads more like a summary of opinions to be after-
wards elaborated than a complete treatise. It is because of
the almost negligent structure of the Essay and the condensed
and pregnant character of the style "a few observations which
have flower'd off and are as it were the burnishing of many
studious and contemplative years" that it demands close
attention if it is to be thoroughly appreciated.
Milton was to a certain modified extent a Realist and
Encyclopaedist like Comenius, but in essential respects different.
For he was a realist who sought the study of reality, in so far
as realism entered into his system, in the ancients, whereas
Comenius sought for the study of reality as modern science
presented it, including the ancients or abridgments of their
works, only in so far as they were necessary and accessory.
In another essential respect Milton differed from Comenius.
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST l6l
He had not in view the education of the people as a whole.
He thought only of the few "our nobler and our gentle
youth " those who had time for prolonged study.
Both writers, however, were alike in disregarding mere
words language and literary expression as in themselves
containing the elements of knowledge and discipline during the
juvenile or primary period of education.
Oratory, poetry, all art in language, were certainly recog-
nized by both (as they are by all realists whom it is worth our
while to consider), but only as the ornament and finish of
education and as belonging to the period of adolescence.
The peculiar discipline of mind given by the comparison of a
modern with an ancient tongue is not even alluded to by either
Milton or Comenius. This was largely due to the prevalent
method or no-method of teaching which justified Milton in
calling the studies of schools and universities " an asinine feast
of sow-thistles and brambles," and again, " meer words or such
things chiefly as were better unlearnt."
THE END OF EDUCATION.
Milton's first proposition is thus laid down :
" The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our
first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that
knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we
may the meerest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which
being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the
highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in
this body found it self but on sensible things, nor arrive so
clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by
orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same
method is necessarily to be follow'd in all discreet teaching.
And seeing every Nation affords not experience and tradition
enough for all kind of Learning, therefore we are chiefly
taught the Languages of those people who have at any time
L. n
162 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
been most industrious after Wisdom ; so that Language is but
the Instrument conveying to us things usefull to be known.
And though a Linguist should pride himself to have all the
Tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not
studied the solid things in them as well as the Words &
Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteem'd a learned
man, as any Yeoman or Tradesman competently wise in his
Mother Dialect only."
Now in this passage we have several propositions which it
is worth our while to disentangle that we may clearly com-
prehend Milton's view of the End of Education.
1. The aim of Education is the knowledge of God and
likeness to God.
2. Likeness to God we attain by possessing our souls of
true Virtue and by the Heavenly Grace of Faith.
3. Knowledge of God we attain by the study of the visible
things of God.
4. Teaching, then, has for its aim this knowledge.
5. Language is merely an instrument or vehicle for the
knowledge of things.
6. The knowledge of all the languages in the world, with-
out a knowledge of the solid things regarding which they treat,
leaves a man less "learned" than any farmer or tradesman who
knows only his own vernacular, but, in and through that, has a
competent knowledge of things.
Milton also tells us in another part of his Essay that he
considers that to be "a compleat and generous education
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously
all the offices, both private and public, of Peace and War."
With this large and noble aim all will heartily concur. But we
cannot pass without remark the assumption contained in the
larger statement of the aim of education. We do not admit
that the knowledge of language is not a knowledge of things.
We would, on the contrary, maintain that language, apart from
the general argumentum of a writer, is a thing a thing intel-
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST 163
lectual and a thing moral. And further in these days, when
language extends itself into the science of comparative
philology, it is also a thing scientific.
I shall not dwell on this however, because I wish rather to
expound Milton's views than to criticize them. It is enough
that I emphasize the above aspect of Milton's doctrine, as it is
with him fundamental and explains much that follows.
Too much time, he says, is spent in acquiring a knowledge
of Greek and Latin. We spend seven or eight years in
acquiring what might be acquired in one especially if we
would stop the absurd practice of the " forcing the empty wits
of children to write Theams, Verses and Orations, which are the
acts of ripest judgment and the final work of a head fill'd by
long reading and observing." Another objection to the
practice is that the boys are under the necessity of "using such
language as they have, thus barbarizing against the Latin and
Greek Idiom with their untutored Anglicisms odious to be
read."
We may now pass from the general aim of education to the
detail of Milton's scheme, merely premising that he had in view
boys from 12 to 2 1 years of age, that is to say, the secondary
and university periods of instruction.
THE MATERIALS AND ORDER OF EDUCATION.
Secondary School Stage.
Milton's opinion is that after the boys have acquired the
accidence and the " chief and necessary rules " they should
have " some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them,"
with a view to praxis of the accidence and syntax. Arithmetic
and Geometry are to be learned at " some other hour of the
day, even playing as the old manner was."
The pupils, now we may presume thirteen years old, were
next immediately to proceed to the study of things in Latin and
II 2
164 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
Greek authors, and they would thus " bring the whole language
quickly into their power." This he considered to be " the
most rational and most profitable way of learning languages
and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our
youth spent herein."
The things to be studied first and for long are sensible
things and not abstractions. We learn from Phillips, who was
a pupil of Milton's at Aldersgate Street, the names of the books
which Milton made use of in teaching with a view to give
instruction at once in language through things, and things
through language :
The work of Cato Major, De Re Rustica the only work of
Gate's which has come down to us.
Columella's 12 books on the same subject.
Varro [of course De Re Rustica].
PalladiuSy also an agricultural writer very popular in the
Middle Ages. His treatise is in 14 books, mostly in the form
of a farmer's calendar.
Celsus on Medicine.
Pliny's Natural History.
Vitruvius on Architecture.
Frontinus on Strategy. (4 books.)
Lucretius 's philosophical poem De Rerum Natura.
Manilius, a writer of a poem on Astrology and Astronomy.
(Astronomica, 5 books.)
In Greek :
Aratus, who wrote two astronomical poems very popular
among the ancients.
Dionysius, commonly called Periegetes, who wrote a
description of the earth in hexameters.
Oppian, who wrote on fishing and hunting.
Apollonius Rhodius, whose Argonautica gives a description
of the adventures of the Argonauts.
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST 165
Quintus Calaber, author of a Greek epic poem on the
Trojan war.
Plutarch (apparently some of the Moral writings ?).
Geminus, who wrote on Astronomy.
Aelian on Tactics.
Xenophorfs Anabasis and Cyropaedia.
The substantial correctness of the record made by Phillips
is guaranteed by the list of books which Milton himself re-
commends in his treatise, though he omits some of the above
books, and adds others. Among those named by Milton and
omitted by Phillips are the rural parts of Virgil, Hesiod, Theo-
critus : also Seneca's Quaestiones Naturales. Milton also
names for ethical, philosophical, and political teaching, the
moral works of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Cicero and the
Greek poets.
Now, if we attempt to arrange the course of study, following
such slight indications as are given by Milton, we find that
after the initiatory year's work already adverted to (substantially
grammatical), the books first to be studied are the writers on
agriculture, Cato, Columella, and Varro. These will give the
pupils command of all ordinary prose. After reading these
books they should study in some modern author " the use of
the globes and all the maps." Concurrently with this, Greek
would be begun after the same fashion as Latin, and the pupil
be introduced to Aristotle's physical works and the history of
plants by Theophrastus. To help in these studies in so far as
they were of a practical kind, all sorts of mechanical teachers
might be employed such as hunters, fowlers, fishermen, archi-
tects, engineers, etc. in a subordinate capacity, either giving
their services gratuitously or for a salary. This course of study
would bring the pupil to the age of about 17! should say.
The pupils would now proceed to Latin and Greek authors
on Astronomy and Geometry, and proceed to the study of
Trigonometry, Engineering, Fortification, Navigation. A com-
pendium of Physics would be here introduced, and Natural
l66 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
History, and even Anatomy and Medicine (within certain limits)
studied. Milton's scheme of secondary education (in so far as
it has reference to the intellect) is thus at once realistic, encyclo-
paedic and technical.
University Stage.
The above studies could not possibly be completed until
the pupils were at least 18 years of age the university age, as
we may call it. It is at this age that the purely literary,
political, theological, and philosophical course would, according
to Milton's scheme, begin. The literary, by the reading of the
moral parts of Plato, Cicero, Xenophon, some Greek, Latin or
Italian comedies, and those tragedies which "treat of house-
hold matters, as the Trachiniae, Alcestis and the like." Then
would come the study of Politics, " that they might know the
beginning, end and reasons of Political Societies ; that they
may not in a dangerous fit of the Commonwealth be such poor,
shaken, uncertain Reeds, of such a tottering Conscience as
many of our great Counsellors have lately shown themselves,
but stedfast pillars of the State." Next they would study Law
in its grounds and practice, including Roman Law, and the
Common and Statutory Law of England, and concurrently with
this, on Sundays and in the evening of each day, the high
matters of theology and Church History, ancient and modern,
" the Hebrew tongue having been already acquired at a set
hour " so that the Scriptures might be read " in their own
original."
It is only after these "employments are well conquered,"
and consequently not sooner than the 2oth year (I presume),
that the youth is admitted to a purely literary course. This is
to consist of choice histories, heroic poems, Attic tragedies and
all the famous political orations, " which, if they were not only
read but some of them got by memory and solemnly pro-
nounc't with right accent and grace (as might be taught), would
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST l6/
endue them ever with the spirit and vigour of Demosthenes or
Cicero, Euripides or Sophocles."
Last of all that is to say in the 2ist year might be
studied the "organic Arts," viz. Logic, Rhetoric, Poetry, as
these are to be found treated by Aristotle, Plato and others.
"This," he says, "would make them soon perceive what de-
spicable creatures our common Rimers and play- writers be;
and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent
use might be made of poetry, both in divine and humane
things."
This large curriculum would be concluded by literary
compositions "in every excellent matter." "When fraught
with an universal insight into things" will be the right season,
Milton says, to form them into able writers. " Then," he goes
on, "whether they be to speak in Parliament or counsel,
honour and attention would be waiting on their lips. There
would then also appear in pulpits other visages, other gestures
and stuff otherwise wrought, than what we now sit under, oft-
times to as great a trial of our patience as any other that they
preach to us." "These," he cries out, "be the studies in
which our noble and our gentle youth ought to bestow their
time in a disciplinary way from twelve to one and twenty
unless they rely more on their ancestors dead than on them-
selves living."
Milton's University curriculum is, be it noted, a curriculum
of Literature, Rhetoric, History, ethical Philosophy, and Law ;
Science is omitted. The curriculum is Humanistic, but it,
the real-Humanistic, that is to say, has regard to the substance
of what is studied rather than to the formal and linguistic.
l68 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
GYMNASTIC.
" I call a complete and generous education," he says, " that
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnani-
mously all the offices both private and public, of peace and
war." The course of discipline which he has as yet sketched
out, however, would prepare only for the offices of peace ; and
he accordingly now proceeds to deal with gymnastic "the
exercises and recreations" that best agree and become these
studies. The day should be divided into three parts devoted
respectively to studies, exercise and diet.
An hour and a half before they eat at noon is to be
allowed the youths for exercise and due rest afterwards ; the
time for this being extended according as they rise early.
Their exercises should be fencing and wrestling " to keep them
healthy, nimble and strong and well in breath." " It is also
the likeliest means to make them grow large and tall and to
inspire them with a gallant and fearless courage"; which he
adds " being tempered with seasonable lectures and precepts to
them of true Fortitude and Patience will turn into a native and
heroick valour and make them hate the cowardise of doing
wrong."
With gymnastic should be combined military exercises.
" About two hours before supper, they are by a sudden alarum
or watch word, to be call'd out to their military motions, under
skie or covert, according to the season, as was the Roman
wont : first on foot, then as their age permits, on Horseback, to
all the Art of Cavalry ; That having in sport, but with much
exactness, and daily muster, serv'd out the rudiments of their
Souldiership in all the skill of Embattelling, Marching, En-
camping, Fortifying, Besieging and Battering, with all the helps
of ancient and modern stratagems, Tacticks and warlike maxims,
they may as it were out of a long War come forth renowned
and perfect Commanders in the service of their Country."
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST 169
In this way the " Institution of Breeding " which he
"delineates" shall "be equally good both for Peace and
War."
As to relaxation from study and recreation, he would, after
the grounds have been well laid in the first two or three years,
give a holiday in Spring. He says beautifully, " In those vernal
seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were
an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see
her riches, and partake of her rejoycing with Heaven and
Earth." But even this holiday he would turn to educative uses.
He would have the youths ride out in companies under proper
superintendence, to all quarters of the land, learning all places
of strength and studying the places most suitable for harbours,
ports and industries. Sometimes he would have them take to
sea, and visit the navy to learn there something of naval tactics.
" These ways would try all their peculiar gifts of nature, and if
there were any secret excellence among them would fetch it out
and give it fair opportunities to advance itself by, which could
not but mightily redound to the good of this nation and bring
into fashion again those old admired vertues and excellencies,
with far more advantage now in this purity of Christian
Knowledge."
MORAL, RELIGIOUS AND AESTHETIC TRAINING.
The moral instruction should be direct as well as indirect.
In addition to the study of Scripture prosecuted chiefly in the
evening, Cebes 1 and Plutarch in Greek and Quintilian in Latin
should be studied in connexion with this reading ; but here
" the main skill and groundwork will be to temper them such
1 Tabula (a board hence picture) Cebetis : a philosophical explanation
of a picture (said to be hung in the Temple of Cronus in Athens or Thebes)
symbolically representing human life, written by Cebes (?), a pupil of
Sokrates, very popular in ancient times. Sometimes it has been bound up
with the Enchiridion of Epictetus.
I/O JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
lectures and explanations upon every opportunity as may lead
and draw them in willing obedience, enflamed with the study
of Learning and admiration of Vertue; stirr'd up with high
hopes of living to be brave men and worthy Patriots, dear to
God and famous to all ages infusing into their young
breasts such an ingenious and noble ardor as would not fail to
make many of them renowned and matchless men."
Chiefly, however, the example of their master was to
influence them.
At a more advanced stage when they have been prepared
by "years and good general precepts" they will require "a
special reinforcement of constant and sound endoctrinating to
set them right and firm, instructing them more amply in the
knowledge of Vertue and the hatred of Vice " : " Their young
and pliant affections " should with this view be led through all
the moral works of Plato and Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch etc.,
they will thus be perfected in the " knowledge of personal
duty" and thereafter proceed to the study of Economics. Each
day's work is to be closed with the study of the Bible.
Aesthetic. Milton attaches importance to music as an
educational agency, but he would teach it as a relief from other
studies and from gymnastic. " The interim," he says, " of
unsweating themselves regularly, and convenient rest before
meat may both with profit and delight be taken up in re-
creating and composing their travail'd spirits with the solemn
and divine harmonies of Musick heard or learnt ; either while
the skilful Organist plies his grave and fancied descant, in
lofty fugues, or the whole Symphony with artful and un-
imaginable touches adorn and grace the well studied chords of
some choice Composer, sometimes the Lute, or soft Organ
stop waiting on elegant Voices either to Religious, martial, or
civil Ditties ; which if wise men and Prophets be not extreamly
out, have a great power over dispositions and manners, to
smooth and make them gentle from rustick harshness and
distemper'd passions. The like also would not be unexpedient
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST 171
after Meat to assist and cherish Nature in her first concoction,
and send their minds back to study in good tune and satis-
faction."
Of Discipline in the vulgar school sense Milton says little.
He believes evidently that the course of daily life which he
delineates will be so attractive to boys as to make this super-
fluous : for, speaking of his own scheme he says, " I will strait
conduct ye to a hill side, where I will point ye out the right
path of a vertuous and noble Education ; laborious indeed at
the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly
prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the Harp
of Orpheus was not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall
have more adoe to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our
stocks and stubbs, from the infinite desire of such a happy
nurture, then we have now to hale and drag our choicest and
hopefullest Wits to that asinine feast of sowthistles and brambles
which is commonly set before them, as all the food and enter-
tainment of their tenderest and most docible age."
Elsewhere he suggests, but only in a remote and incidental
way, coercion ; for if " mild and effectual perswasions " and the
teacher's own example fail to gain them (as he thinks they will)
to an " incredible diligence," there may be " an intimation of
some fear, if need be." One would like to know what Milton's
own practice as a teacher was. We can imagine that sheer
stupidity would not so much irritate him as make him indignant.
If he vented his indignation in words the poor boy would be in
a pitiable plight under the torrent of vigorous vituperation of
which Milton was a master. It is not a violent supposition
that a lexicon might sometimes hurtle through the air the
objective point being some crass skull. In any case we may
be sure that the schoolroom 'scene' would be enacted after
the grand manner of the demigods and would, doubtless, have
its educative uses.
1/2 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
As to travel ; Milton would postpone this till the youths
were three or four and twenty. They would then go, "not to
learn principles but to enlarge experience and make wise
observation " ; and, as being already cultivated men, they
would be well received by foreigners of eminence.
School Buildings and Apparatus. To carry out his scheme
of Education Milton proposes that a " spacious house and
ground around it fit for an Academy and big enough to lodge
150 persons" should be secured and placed under the govern-
ment of one Head. This place should be at once school and
University, "not making a remove to any other House of
Scholarship" except in the case of those who desired to
continue their studies in the specific faculties of I-aw and
Physic with a view to being practitioners. Several such
institutions ought to be founded throughout the country.
The reader of the Tractate will notice that every recom-
mendation made by Milton is accompanied with a fierce, but
wonderfully eloquent, attack on the then existing school
practice, or on the melancholy results of that defective practice
in every department Social Life, Letters, Preaching, Politics,
Administration and the Military Art. There is much in these
passages that recalls Carlyle. Some of them I have already
quoted and I shall here conclude my exposition with his
invective on Universities " And for the usual method of
teaching Arts, I deem it to be an old errour of Universities not
yet well recover'd from the Scholastick grossness of barbarous
ages, that in stead of beginning with Arts most easie, and those
be such as are most obvious to the sence, they present their
young unmatriculated Novices at first coming with the most
intellective abstractions of Logick and Metaphysicks ; So that
they having but newly left those Grammatick flats and shallows
where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with
lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST 173
under another climate to be tost and turmoil'd with their
unballasted wits in fadomless and unquiet deeps of controversie,
do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of
Learning, mockt and deluded all this while with ragged
Notions and Babblements, while they expected worthy and
delightful knowledge ; till poverty or youthful years call them
importunately their several wayes, and hasten them with the
sway of friends either to an ambitious and mercenary, or
ignorantly zealous Divinity ; Some allur'd to the trade of Law,
grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly
contemplation of justice and equity which was never taught
them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious
terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees ; others betake them to
State affairs, with souls so unprincipl'd in virtue, and true
generous breeding, that flattery, and Court Shifts and tyrannous
Aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom ;
instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if, as
I rather think, it be not fain'd. Others lastly of a more
delicious and airie spirit, retire themselves knowing no better,
to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their daies in
feast and jollity ; which indeed is the wisest and the safest
course of all these, unless they were with more integrity
undertaken. And these are the fruits of misspending our prime
youth at the Schools and Universities as we do, either in
learning meer words or such things chiefly, as were better
unlearnt."
By way of criticism ; I would first take exception to
Milton's proposal to institute isolated boy colonies. To shut
up 150 youths from the age of 12 to 21 and put them through
a severe curriculum of study is, altogether apart from the
scheme of study which may be adopted, a proposal funda-
mentally unsound. Boys, like men, learn by contact with the
world as it is, and in their own families they acquire that kind
of intellectual and moral training which prepares them best for
174 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
the world we live in. Milton's scheme has most of the
disadvantages that attend monastic life, and is an exaggeration
of the English Public School system from which even Sparta
would have shrunk.
The rigid system of intellectual and physical discipline to
be carried out in these prison-houses is to be condemned.
Neither mind, nor body, can grow to its best if it is always
laced tight and dressed in regimentals.
A second obvious criticism is that Milton in allowing only
one year for learning as much Latin and Greek as was "scraped
together " in seven or eight, absurdly exaggerates the aptitude
of boys and the capacity of teachers.
As regards the substance of intellectual instruction : even
admitting that real-naturalistic instruction is alone valuable up
to the age of say 1 8 or 1 9, it certainly would not be practicable
to carry boys through the extensive course of reading which
Milton advocates. He enormously over-estimates the capacity
of the average pupil. A boy would certainly be 15 years of
age before his knowledge of Latin (even with the best teaching)
or his maturity of intelligence would make it possible for him
to begin to read with advantage the authors named by Milton
as coming first in the curriculum. The work could simply not
be done in any save the most perfunctory manner, even
allowing for the fact that some of the books were to be " read
to " the boys. On the ground of mere practicability, therefore,
the scheme of intellectual instruction must be pronounced a
wild imagination, even if it were sound educationally.
But it may be said, and said truly, these objections do not
touch the substance of Milton's theory, which is this : The Real
or Sensible should alone (with religion and morals) be taught
until a boy is 18 or 19 years of age. Even the humble
linguistic exercise of composition is to be eschewed until the
boy is full of matter. Now this principle can perfectly well be
given effect to if we choose to do so. We might confine
youths till they had reached the age of 18 solely to real-
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST 175
naturalistic studies. Latin and Greek, of course, we should
now, on Milton's principles, exclude entirely, inasmuch as they
could in these days contribute nothing to the knowledge of
the youth save what was better not learned, because it would
have to be unlearned. A few boys might be allowed to take
up Latin and Greek on the special ground that they were to
continue their education throughout the university stage in
which theology, oratory, and literature generally were to be
the Miltonic study. But it is doubtful whether the time
required for languages of such difficulty would, on the Miltonic
theory, be well spent even by the few in these days. By
means of good translations in his own or in foreign modern
tongues, a youth might be admitted to as much of ancient
eloquence and thought as was requisite for general culture or
for specialized work.
The conclusion then would be, if we translate Milton into
the conditions of the igth century, that none save those
ultimately going forward to the university should waste their time
over the ancient languages. English, French, German, and
Italian would of course take their place in all schools, on the
ground that these are now the channels of all real and realistic
knowledge, and at the same time are vehicles of philosophy and
literature adequate to the full culture of a man. This is truly
what Milton proposes when we translate him into contemporary
and equivalent terms.
Even the professed philologer and theologian would study
Latin and Greek (if he studied these at all) and modern
languages not for their own sake, but solely for the sake of the
substance of the writings to be met with in the various tongues.
By the material of thought, the substance of morality, the ideas
of religion, man, according to Milton, can be made all we can
mentally and morally make him. Much hard work, much
discipline are, doubtless, needed to acquire the material and
substance of all knowledge, but the mental discipline which the
curriculum of study would necessitate is not valued by Milton,
1/6 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
not thought of. It is simply the knowledge acquired, the
mental equipment he cares for. By knowledge we are saved,
not by discipline or training. Milton, if he were answering an
opponent, would doubtless say that he had in his thoughts,
implicitly, the whole idea of intellectual and moral discipline as
well as instruction. But the answer is, that his theory of
education does not take account of the former as an end in
itself, and therefore falls to be ranked among those schemes
which think that knowledge will accomplish all. Wisely
remarked Milton's immediate successor in educational history,
John Locke, " Men of much reading are greatly learned but
may be little knowing." Mark Pattison also says, " Milton
saw strongly, as many have done before and since, one weak
point in the practice of schools, namely, the small result of
much time. He fell into the natural error of the inexperienced
teacher, that of supposing that the remedy was the ingestion of
much and diversified intelligible matter. It requires much
observation of young minds to discover that the rapid in-
culcation of unassimilable information stupefies the faculties
instead of training them."
Let me by way of caution, however, repeat that Milton does
not confine himself to the real of sense, but embraces in his
scheme the real of the humanities. At the fitting age the youth,
as we have seen, is to be introduced to literature and theology
and philosophy. A strictly accurate exhibition therefore of
Milton's system would show that he confines himself almost
wholly to the realistic of sense (but always including moral and
religious instruction and training) up to a certain age (say 18),
and thereafter takes the youth into that other realm of the
Real, viz. Poetry, Politics, Oratory and Philosophy.
Milton's conception of the substance of the education of a
man has, if we take it as a whole, an air of magnificence. But it
is crude in its general conception not thoroughly thought out.
His prime defect is that he takes account only of a limited
class of the community, and his educational views suffer from
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST I//
this. They were limited and narrow. Even judged by the
needs of this limited class his curriculum of instruction is
inadequate. He keeps in view the final stage of instruction,
which comprehends all that is best in Humanism ; but the
long road that has to be traversed to reach this is occupied
with Latin and Greek and the realistic instruction to be found
in ancient writers. The secondary school would be on his
principles a home neither of discipline nor culture.
Under Milton's scheme accordingly the mass of boys would
enter life unhumanized by their education, and with their
minds filled, or rather, congested, not disciplined and
trained. Even the few who went forward to university study
could not, without great, perhaps insuperable, difficulty, enter
on the ' organic ' studies and the pursuit of literature and
philosophy. Moreover instruction in the Latin and Greek
languages, which alone saved Milton's primary and secondary
course from pure sense-realism, would in these days be a waste
of time, for in all matters of science our modern books are
alone worthy of study.
Samuel Johnson in a criticism of Milton puts the antagon-
istic view exceedingly well : " The truth," he says, " is, that the
knowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that
knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or frequent
business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action
or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the
first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and
wrong ; the next is an acquaintance with the history of man-
kind and with those examples which may be said to embody
truth and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions.
Prudence and Justice are virtues and excellencies of all places.
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by
chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary ;
our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at leisure.
Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, that one may
know another half his life, without being able to estimate his
L. 12
178 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
skill in hydrostatics or astronomy ; but his moral and pru-
dential character immediately appears. Those authors, there-
fore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of
prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials
for conversation ; and these purposes are best served by poets,
orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this
digression as pedantic or paradoxical ; for, if I have Milton
against me, I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to
turn philosophy from the study of nature to speculations upon
life ; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off
attention from life to nature. They seem to think, that we are
placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motion of
the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to
learn was, how to do good and avoid evil 1 ."
Johnson, however, omits to notice the very large place
assigned by Milton to the moral and religious education of
boys. In this respect, indeed, Milton stands out conspicuously
as an advocate of direct moral instruction, while the practice of
schools, then and now, is to rely almost wholly on such in-
direct instruction as school events may yield and on the
dogmatism of religious creeds. A just criticism would be that
Milton did not see the importance of language and literature
as a moralizing agent in the education of the young, and so
dispensed with them till it was too late to make use of them.
A serious error of omission in Milton is due to his
contemptuous ignoring of the work which the Baconian
school of educationalists was doing. Method is not even
mentioned by him. His treatise keeps steadily in view a great
aim, but in other respects it presents us, not with a method,
but only with a ratio stwiiorum or Lehrplan, and that a bad one.
Nor can we approve of Milton's giving a practical and
useful turn to play. The essence of play is that it shall be
useless. The objection may also be urged that Milton's course
of instruction is not boyish enough for boys ; but while recog-
1 Johnson's Lives, vol. i. p. 95.
JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST 179
nizing the force of this objection, I am yet disposed to agree
with Mr Browning when he says', " One of the main hopes of
the improvement of education lies in adopting the truth that
manly and serious studies are capable of being handled and
mastered by intelligent schoolboys."
Because of the obvious defects of Milton's scheme, it has
been the habit of schoolmasters to treat his Tractate with
something like contempt, or, at least, to ignore it. Drop the
mere externalities of the scheme however and contemplate the
ideas inherent in it, and we find much that is valuable : (i) A
condemnation of exclusive Latin and Greek instruction with
which all thinking men now agree. (2) A condemnation of the
verbalism and formalism of school teaching, which also now
meets with universal acceptance. (3) An advocacy of nature-
instruction and of practical handwork : who is there among
thinking educationalists now to question this ? (4) An earnest
plea for direct moral instruction : still awaiting response from
our schools. (5) A denunciation of attempts at composition
without material to write about. (6) Generally, the putting of
the study of the real of sense and the real of the Humanities
before the study of the organic arts Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric :
" Matter before Form," as Comenius was then preaching and
which all intelligent teachers (at least theoretically) now accept.
(7) The recommendation of technical instruction in its widest
sense. (8) The advocacy of gymnastic and physical drill, now
accepted elements in all properly organized education. (9) The
teaching of Latin Grammar by means of the English tongue and
not in Latin as was then, and till quite recently, universal 2 .
Even his encyclopaedism may be defended as a necessary
protest against the meagre intellectual life of the schools of his
time. And greater than all was the profound conviction, which
1 Educational Theories, p. 97.
- Milton's first publication after Paradise Lost was a Latin Grammar
for Beginners within the compass of 65 pages and written in English. It is
entitled Accedence Commenc't Grammar, 1669.
12 2
180 JOHN MILTON, THE CLASSICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIST
he has handed down to all worthy to inherit it, of the efficacy of
education to mould the youth of a country to virtue, generosity
and sacrifice. Professor Masson well says, " The noble moral
glow that pervades the Tract, the mood of magnanimity in
which it is conceived and the faith it inculcates in the power of
the young spirit are merits everlasting 1 ."
Milton himself, remember, recognizes the ideal character of
his scheme of education. For he tells us that "this is not
a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher ;
but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer
gave Ulysses." And in truth this is what every man is driven
to say who seriously thinks about national education its nature
and its possibilities, viz. where are we to find the Educators ?
Few are born in the purple : how can we make the average
man worthy to assume it?
Some writers would class Milton among the Realists in
education, but this is only a partial truth. It is true that
Milton was of opinion that the books read by boys, both in the
primary and secondary stages, should treat of things, but his
whole scheme of higher education is, as we have seen, literary
and oratorical and musical essentially Humanistic. The
distinctive note of the earlier Humanists is that while " real "
subjects should be taught, the governing studies of youth should
be Language and Literature with History ; the strict Realist, on
the other hand, would make the Real or Naturalistic along with
Arithmetic and Mathematics dominant. Even language should
be taught, as a subordinate though necessary study, mainly
through things, according to the Realist, while in the case of
foreign tongues it is the utilities of life that govern instruction
in them not language and literature as such. This being so,
to class Milton among sense-realists is incorrect. He stands
by himself. I have called him a Classical Encyclopaedist.
Note. The quotations in the above Lecture are printed verbatim
from Mr Browning's edition of the Tractate (Pitt Press).
1 Professor Masson in Life of Milton.
CHAPTER XIII.
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST.
Introduction. Value of Education. Aim of Education. Vigour
of body. Virtue or Morality and Good Breeding. Habit. Fun-
damental Principle of Locke, Authority. Enforcing of Authority,
(a) Punishment in relation to Moral Training, (b) Punishment
in relation to Instruction, (c) Rewards. Substance and Method of
Moral Training.
JOHN LOCKE was born in 1632 and died in 1704. His
Thoughts on Education were published in 1693.
Locke is the most important English writer on education
next to Ascham. I devote considerable space to him because
no writer on education surpasses him in my opinion. His
personal experience, however, was limited. As tutor of Lord
Shaftesbury's son, and thereafter as adviser and guide of the
education of that son's children, he had his attention directed
to the subject practically ; but his knowledge of school work
was restricted to his own experience as a boy at Westminster
and as a lecturer in Oxford. Hence many defects in his book
and many merits ; defects arising from his ignorance of the
routine of the school and the difficulties which a master has to
encounter ; merits arising from the close and paternal relation
in which he stood to his pupils. This close and paternal
relation led him to see that the daily moral training had far
more effect in producing the ultimate result at which all wise
1 82 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
educationalists aim cultured, virtuous, and generally well
informed and capable men than instruction in the narrower
scholastic sense. He was led however to underrate both the
importance and difficulties of instruction ; and valuable as were
his thoughts on moral training, much significance cannot be
attached to his treatment of Method as applied to those
subjects which all must learn, and which he says "may be
had into the bargain, at a very easy rate, by methods that
may be thought upon."
While residing in Holland he had corresponded with his
friend Mr Clark, member for Taunton in King William's
Parliament, on the bringing up of that gentleman's children ;
and yielding to the solicitations of many of his friends,
especially of William Molyneux, his Dublin correspondent, he
reduced his letters to shape and published them in 1693 under
the title Some Thoughts concerning Education. The form in
which the Thoughts were originally cast explains the want of
method and the frequent repetitions.
The admirable, but loosely constructed book on The
Conduct of the Human Understanding, though not professedly
written as an educational treatise, ought to be read with the
Thoughts, and as the complement of them, if we would
understand fully Locke's real views and adequately exhibit
them ; for what is the conduct of the understanding, or in
Spinoza's phrase Emendatio Intellectus, but education?
In my exposition I of course follow Locke closely, but
I endeavour to give a more articulate shape to what he has
somewhat loosely set down ; and it is because I do so, that I
think my exposition will be of service to the student or teacher.
Locke seems to have been ignorant of Comenius and Ascham,
but he must have known Milton's Tractate, and the influence
of Montaigne is everywhere conspicuous. Had it not, indeed,
been for the influence of Montaigne and the circumstances
in which his Thoughts were written, he could not have, I think,
so entirely parted company with his philosophical system when
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 183
he came to write on education. It is true we find a treatment
which is generally in perfect consonance with the doctrine of
the Essay on the Human Understanding, but there is no
purposed or conscious connexion ; nor could this have been
expected in a book which he himself says is rather of the
nature of " a private conversation " between two friends than
"a discourse designed for public view 1 ."
Value of Education.
To begin with, we must note carefully that Locke does not
think of the education of the people any more than Milton does.
He considers the education of a young gentleman only. And
as he presumes that the education is domestic, his remarks are
not always very applicable to schools. Still substantially,
mutatis mutandis, many of his principles are of universal
application. By way of introduction he points to the effects
of education in a well-known passage, in the first part of which
he somewhat exaggerates the influence of education.
i, pp. i, 2. "A sound mind in a sound body is a short
but full description of a happy state in this world. He that has
these two has little more to wish for : and he that wants either
of them will be but little the better for anything else. Men's
happiness or misery is most part of their own making. He
whose mind directs not wisely will never take the right way,
and he whose body is crazy and feeble will never be able to
advance in it. I confess there are some men's constitutions of
body and mind so vigorous and well framed by nature, that
they need not much assistance from others, but by the strength
of their natural genius they are from their cradles carried
towards what is excellent and by the privilege of their happy
constitution are able to do wonders 2 ."
" But examples of this kind are but few, and I think I may
say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are
1 Letter addressed to Mr Clark when sending the book to him.
2 The quotations are from Quick's edition.
184 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.
It is that which makes the great difference in mankind. The
little, or almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies,
have very important and lasting consequences, and there it is
(as in the fountains of some rivers) where a gentle application
of the hand turns the flexible waters into channels that makes
them take quite contrary courses ; and by this little direction
given them at first in the source, they receive different
tendencies, and arrive at last at very remote and distant places."
Aim of Education.
Locke's educational aims may be summed up thus :
I. Vigour of body.
II. Virtue in the soul, with its manifestation in good
breeding : wisdom in conduct. I add wisdom because towards
the end of his Treatise, p. 200, he says, "The great business
of all is Virtue and Wisdom.
Nullum numen abest si sit Prudentia 1 ."
III. Knowledge, or mental acquisition: but this sub-
ordinate to health of body, and virtue, and good breeding.
His first concern is for the corpus sanum, the "case," the
"clay cottage."
I. THE BODY.
He recommends absence of cockering and generally the
hardening of childhood. Bare heads, especially in bed, and
leaky shoes (!).
Swimming and exposure of head and person generally
urged.
As to girls he says, " The nearer they come to the hardship
of their brothers in their education the greater advantage they
1 The more logical order, perhaps, would be to make Wisdom a fourth
head as being the fruit of II and III.
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 185
will receive from it all the remaining part of their lives."
It is of importance, however, in this climate to be careful
against chills after exercise. Women guarded very strongly
against tight-lacing. Nature alone can develope the frame
harmoniously. P. 7.
Diet should be simple. No flesh meat for the first three
years. Careful chewing. Much bread should be eaten. Small
beer to be allowed if taken with bread. Drink no more than
natural thirst requires. Above all things the young should
avoid wine and all strong drinks. Fruits, except stone fruits,
if quite ripe, wholesome for children in moderation of course.
Early to bed and early to rise : quantity of sleep not to be
limited in case of very young children ; very much a matter
of temperament. Children to be awoke from sleep gently
( 21, p. 1 6), and "give them none but kind words and
usage until they be come perfectly to themselves." Hard beds
recommended.
II. VIRTUE OR MORALITY.
(i) Habit in relation to early training in virtue and
the hardening of body and mind.
" Due care being had to keep the body in vigour and
strength, so that it may be able to execute and obey the
orders of the mind; the next and principal business is, to
set the mind right, that on all occasions it may be disposed
to consent to nothing but what may be suitable to the dignity
and excellency of a rational creature.
" If what I have said in the beginning of this discourse be
true, as I do not doubt but it is, viz. that the difference to be
found in the manners and abilities of men is owing more to
their education than to anything else, we have reason to
conclude that great care is to be had of forming children's
minds and giving them that reasoning early, which shall
1 86 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
influence their lives always after; for when they do well or
ill the praise or blame will be laid there, and when anything
is done awkwardly, the common saying will pass upon them,
that it is ' suitable to their breeding.'
"As the strength of the body lies chiefly in being able to
endure hardships, so also does that of the mind. And the
great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed
in this, that a man is able to deny himself his own desires,
cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs
as best, though the appetite lean the other way.
"The great mistake I have observed in people breeding
their children has been that this has not been taken care
enough of in due season, that the mind has not been made
obedient to discipline and pliant to reason, when at first it
was most tender, most easy to be bowed." ["The most early
habits are the most lasting," says Bishop Butler a truism.]
" It is not that the performance of a single act is in itself
to be deprecated perhaps : but the formation of Habit is all
important 1 .
" When a child is young, therefore, obedience and control of
temper and sacrifice of desires must be taught. Why should a
child who has had his will up to the age of 14 or 15 be
expected to submit to checking then ? And if- checked, with
what hope of true success?" Pp. 20, 21.
"Try it in a horse or dog or any other creature and see
whether the ill and resty tricks they have learned when young
are easily to be mended when they are knit; and yet none
of these creatures are half so wilful and proud or half so
desirous to be masters of themselves and others as man."
P. 22.
"The having desires accommodated to the apprehensions
and relish of those several ages is not the fault ; but the not
1 Erasmus says : Plato " adolescentem quod lusisset aleam graviter
increpuit : qui quum dixisset, Sic objurgas ob rem parvam ? At parvum non
est inquit assuescere." Apophth. vn.
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST l8/
having them subject to the rules and restraints of reason :
the difference lies not in having or not having appetites but
in the power to govern and deny ourselves in them. He
that is not used to submit his will to the reason of others
when he is young, will scarce hearken to submit to his
own reason when he is of an age to make use of it. And
what kind of a man such a one is like to prove is easy to
foresee." P. 22.
Locke expresses his surprise that men turn out morally as
well as they do, when we consider how they are brought up.
The bad example of parents, the violence which takes the
place of reason, the love of dress" encouraged in girls, lying
and equivocations seen in the family or overlooked when done
for the interest of the family, over-eating and drinking, etc.
" It seems plain to me," he says, " that the principle of
all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves
the satisfaction of our own desires, where reason does not
authorize them. This power is to be got and improved
by custom, made easy and familiar by an early practice.
If therefore I might be heard, I would advise that contrary
to the ordinary way, children should be used to submit
their desires and go without their longings, even from their
very cradles. The first thing they should learn to know
should be that they were not to have anything because it
pleased them, but because it was thought fit for them. If
things suitable to their wants were supplied to them, so that
they were never suffered to have what they once cried for,
they would karn to be content without it, would never with
brawling and peevishness contend for mastery, nor be half so
uneasy to themselves or others as they are, because from the
first beginning they are not thus handled. If they were never
suffered to obtain their desire by the impatience they expressed
for it, they would no more cry for it than they do for the
moon." P. 25.
The main thing accordingly is the formation of good habits.
1 88 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
" Habits," he says, " work more constantly and with greater
facility than Reason, which when we have most need of it,
is seldom fairly consulted and more rarely obeyed." This can
be accomplished only by seeing that certain things are done
and done rightly. And this you will do by watchfulness and
by encouragement, and kind words and reminders and not by
force. Concentrate yourself on one or two habits at a time,
and when these are pretty well formed go to others.
It will be noticed (and this is a guide to the understanding
of Locke) that just as he advocates the hardening of the body
he advocates the hardening of the mind by refusing children
all they want, simply because they want it. This kind of
hardening is, I think, irrational. The true principle of action
is rather this Let children have what they want, unless their
having it is hurtful to themselves or hurtful or annoying to
others. Training to virtue is a training not to sacrifice for
the sake of sacrifice, but to sacrifice of some one object to
another, of the lower to the higher, the worse to the better.
To this, children should be daily inured ; and Dugald Stewart
well says :
" To a certain hardness of character, not unfrequently united
with an insensibility to the charms of poetry and eloquence,
may partly be ascribed the severe and forbidding spirit which
has suggested some of the maxims in his Tract on Education.
He had been treated himself it would appear with very little
indulgence by his parents, and probably was led by that filial
veneration, which he always expressed for their memory, to
ascribe to the early habits of self-denial imposed on him by
their ascetic system of ethics the existence of those moral
qualities which he owed to the regulating influence of his
own reason in fostering his natural dispositions, and which
under a gentler and more skilful culture might have assumed
a still more engaging and amiable form. His father, who had
served in the Parliament's army, seems to have retained
through life that austerity of manners which characterized his
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 189
puritanical associates ; and notwithstanding the comparative
enlargement and cultivation of Mr Locke's mind, something
of this hereditary leaven, if I am not mistaken, continued to
operate upon many of his opinions and habits of thinking.
If in the Conduct of the Understanding he trusted (as many
have thought) too much to nature and laid too little stress
on logical rules, he certainly fell into the opposite extreme in
everything connected with the culture of the heart, distrusting
nature altogether and placing his sole confidence in the effects
of a systematical and vigilant discipline."
(2) Fundamental Principle of Training Authority.
The condition essential to the training of children to the habit
of virtue is the recognition by them of the authority of the
educator be he parent or master.
"Those then that intend ever to govern their children
should begin it while they are very little, and look that they
perfectly comply with the will of their parents. Would you
have your son obedient to you when past a child, be sure
then to establish the authority of a father as soon as he is
capable of submission and can understand in whose power he
is. If you would have him stand in awe of you, imprint it in
its infancy ; and as he approaches more to a man, admit him
nearer to your familiarity ; so shall you have him your obedient
subject (as is fit) whilst he is a child, and your affectionate
friend when he is a man." P. 27.
"Thus much for the settling your authority over your
children in general. Fear and awe ought to give you the
first power over their minds, and love of friendship in riper
years to hold it, for the time must come when they will be
past the rod and correction, and then if the love of you
make them not obedient and dutiful, if the love of virtue and
reputation keep them not in laudable courses, I ask, what hold
190 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
will you have upon them to turn to it ? Indeed, fear of having
a scanty portion if they displease you, may make them slaves
to your estate but they will be nevertheless ill and wicked in
private : and that restraint will not last always. Every man
must sometime or other be trusted to himself and his own
conduct and he that is a good and virtuous and able man,
must be made so within. And therefore what he is to receive
from Education, which is to sway and influence his life, must
be something put into him betimes : habits woven with the
very principles of his nature and not a counterfeit carriage and
dissembled outside, put on by fear, only to avoid the present
anger of a father who perhaps may disinherit him."
Locke pushes the necessity of establishing a feeling of awe
and fear in the child's mind a great deal too far. Respect for
authority and obedience can be secured by better and juster
means. The assumption is, that there is no instinctive feeling
of reverence in the human mind. If there be this, then all we
have to do, is to conduct ourselves as rightful authorities ought
to conduct themselves, in order to secure respect and obedience.
Then the affections of children being active we can make obe-
dience a pleasure to them through their regard for our affection
and esteem. Mr Daniell truly says, " Had Locke been a parent
he might have known that there was no greater need of im-
periousness and severity in dealing with infancy than in dealing
with adolescence."
(3) Enforcing of Authority,
(a) Punishments in relation to moral training.
To secure the above results, which (as has been shown) are
to be obtained by a process of training or discipline under
authority, does not involve punishment.
"To bring a young man to [the Habit of ] submitting his
appetite to Reason, I know nothing which so much contributes
as the Love of Praise and Commendation." * * " Make
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 19 1
his mind as sensible of Credit and Shame as may be : and
when you have done that you have put a principle into him
which will influence his actions when you are not by * * *
and which will be the proper stock whereon afterwards to graff
the true principles of Morality and Religion." 200.
This is Locke's great instrument of moral training. But
the child may not respond to praise or blame. What then ?
Must we compel from without by flogging? Locke does not
answer this wholly in the negative, though he denounces
severe punishment.
43, p. 19. "A great severity of punishment does but
very little good, nay, great harm in education, and I think it
will be found that cet. par. these children who have been most
chastised seldom make the best men." Now why should a child
care for your orders, or for your praise, or blame at all? Locke
does not ask or answer this save by assuming the existence of
an unquestioned authority. But awe must be implanted and
for this purpose severity must be increased if necessary.
Severity so as to secure awe and obedience should however
be got over, before children have memories to retain the
beginning of it. In this way it will seem natural to them and
be unconsciously established and more rational relations may
then gradually be established. That the bringing up must be
rational is evident from this that we desire to produce an
inclination to virtue from within (Positive Morality). If there
be too much curbing and severity the spirits are abased and
broken, the timid never become worth anything, although it is
to be admitted on the other hand that those who are by nature
lively and spirited may throw off the oppression and become
able men.
46, p. 30. " He that has found a way, how to keep up a
child's spirit, easy, active and free, and yet at the same time to
restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw
him to things that are uneasy to him ; he I say that knows how
to reconcile these seeming contradictions has in my opinion
Ip2 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
got the true secret of education." But still he has suggested
no means but praise and blame.
47, p. 30. "The usual lazy and short way by chastise-
ment and the rod which is the only instrument of government
that tutors generally know or ever think of, is the most unfit of
any to be used in education."
48, p. 30. " This kind of punishment contributes not at
all to the mastery of our natural propensity to indulge corporal
and present pleasure and to avoid pain at any rate, but rather
encourages it, and therefore strengthens that in us, which is the
root from whence spring all vicious actions and all irregularities
of life. For what other motive, but of sensual pleasure and
pain does a child act by who drudges at his book against his
inclination, or abstains from eating unwholesome fruit that he
takes pleasure in, only out of fear of a whipping ? He in this
way only prefers the greater corporal pleasure or avoids the
greater corporal pain. And what is it to govern his actions
and direct his conduct by such motives as these ? What is it I
say but to cherish that principle in him which it is our business
to root out and destroy? And therefore I cannot think any
correction useful to a child, where the shame of suffering for
having done amiss, does not work more upon him than the
pain."
49, p. 31. "This sort of correction naturally breeds an
aversion to that which it is the tutor's business to create a
liking to. How obvious is it to observe that children come to
hate things which were at first acceptable to them when they
find themselves whipped and chid and teased about them ?
And it is not to be wondered at in them, when grown men
would not be able to be reconciled to anything by such ways.
Who is there that would not be disgusted with any innocent
recreation, in itself indifferent to him, if he should with blows
or ill language be hauled to it when he had no mind ; or be
constantly so treated for some circumstances in his application
to it? This is natural to be so. Offensive circumstances
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 193
ordinarily infect innocent things, which they are joined with :
and the very sight of a cup, wherein any one uses to take
nauseous physic, turns his stomach, so that nothing will relish
well out of it, though the cup be never so clean and well-shaped
and of the richest materials."
5j P- 3 1 - Such a sort of slavish discipline makes a
slavish temper. The child submits and dissembles obedience
whilst the fear of the rod hangs over him : but when that is
removed and by being out of sight he can promise himself im-
punity, he gives the greater scope to his natural inclination ;
which by this way is not at all altered, but on the contrary
heightened and increased in him ; and after such restraint
breaks out usually with the more violence; or ( 51) "If
severity carried to the highest pitch does prevail and works
a cure upon the present unruly distemper it is often by
bringing in the room of it a worse and more dangerous disease
by breaking the mind ; and then in the place of a disorderly
young fellow, you have a low-spirited moped creature, who,
however with his unnatural sobriety he may please silly
people, who commend tame, inactive children, because they
make no noise, nor give them any trouble, yet at last will
probably prove as uncomfortable a thing to their friends, as they
will be all their lives a useless thing to themselves and others."
What Locke means in his apparently contradictory state-
ments is this : Do not exercise severity, do not resort to
punishment even in the details of moral training. Attract and
guide to goodness, do not coerce. But you are helpless to
begin with and all through, unless you have authority and
unless that authority is recognized. Accordingly, this central
virtue in the child respect and obedience must be estab-
lished in him somehow and at all hazards as the foundation of
all possible moral training. Any amount of severity is justi-
fiable in the interests of authority pure and simple. But
this once established, coercion, castigation and chiding are
hurtful.
L. 13
194 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
It may be here noted that at the time Locke wrote great
severity was practised by both parents and schoolmasters.
Hallam says, "The mode of treatment seems to have been
passionate and barbarous severity, alternating with foolish in-
dulgence. The spirits [of children] were often broken down
and their ingenuousness destroyed by the former, their habits
of self-will and sensuality confirmed by the latter" (Lit.
Hist. ii. 183).
() Punishment in relation to instruction.
As might be expected Locke returns to this question of
coercion and punishment in connexion with intellectual work,
and speaks substantially as follows :
He objects to forcing children to learn. We must take
advantage of the natural disposition to learn when we find it
and make the most of it. We are not always in the humour
to do even the things which we are really fond of. Why then
expect children to be always ready? The seasons should be
warily observed and taken advantage of, and if we have to call
on them to apply themselves when they are not disposed, we
should prepare their minds for the task dispose them to it,
and so gradually accustom them to get a dominion over them-
selves and to be able on choice to turn from one thing to
another, and so forth !
This course of procedure, even if desirable, is manifestly
only practicable where there are only one or two pupils under
a man who lives with them. In my opinion it is not desirable.
We have to form the habit of putting a pressure on one's self.
This is the truest of all discipline. It is not merely an intellec-
tual, but a moral, discipline. Energizing of will to overcome
difficulty is the root of all virtue. Moreover, a fixed time for
studies once recognized is more easily observed from day to
day. The formation of intellectual habit is just as easy as the
formation of moral habit.
195
Chiding is as bad as blows, Locke says, in giving instruction
just as in moral training. A nod or look should suffice, and
when words are used they should be calm and serious, not
passionate. Children easily distinguish between passion and
reason. Rating breeds a dislike both of the teacher and of the
lesson. It has to be remembered that beating, as such, does
no real good. It is the shame and disgrace of it that are
moral in their effects. And if these be not found, the beating
soon loses its terror.
Generally, Locke's doctrine of punishment is this, that every
motive to do right, including attention to work, should be
exhausted by the master and parent before beating is resorted
to. The child should even be reasoned with, not on broad
general grounds, but with such reasonings as are suited to his
age. He deprecates beating for intellectual defects or for idle-
ness or want of attention to study, until these are so often
repeated as to show perverseness and deliberateness of dis-
obedience. They then become moral faults, nay the supreme
moral fault the fault of .disregard of authority; and for this,
in accordance with the principles already laid down, he would
flog soundly.
He guards parents, however, from elevating trifles into
serious offences. ( 80, p. 59.) "Inadvertency, carelessness,
and gaiety" in the child, account for much. "Nor is
that to be hastily interpreted obstinacy or wilfulness which is
the natural product of their age or temper." " With a gentle
hand the faults natural to childhood should be set right as
time and age permit." " Nor is relapse into minor faults to be
construed into wilfulness."
At the same time if there be unmistakable wilfulness
amounting to obstinacy and rebellion, beating must be resorted
to, and then it should be so severe as not to need repetition.
An obstinately disobedient child must be bent. Locke tells
us of a mother, who, receiving her child home from nurse
and finding her peevish and disobedient, beat her for seven
132
196 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
successive mornings without effect, and succeeded in bending
her only on the eighth. He applauds her for her perseverance.
His approbation of the monstrous conduct of this woman reveals
the weakness of Locke's position. By such pitting of the adult
will against the child's will we abuse our strength. If we
succeed, it is only an apparent success : that is to say, the
boy yields externally, but is full of passionate hate towards
his master a hate which carries its demoralization into
every corner of his being. Or he is, when we think him
bent, in truth broken in spirit, and all manhood and inner
moral growth, which must be free to be true, rendered
impossible a melancholy result. Nor is this all, for in
such contests the adult is simply pitting his obstinacy against
the child's and so strengthening the latter by exercise and
example. Another illustration of the weakness of Locke's
position is his recommendation that when a child cries under a
beating he should be beaten more if he does not stop crying
a wholly unnatural proceeding. He assumes that this continued
crying indicates continued perversity and rebellion, which it
by no means does. The continued crying is generally nervous
and automatic. Again, he would beat till a child said he was
sorry for his fault. Now neither child nor man can be expected
at a moment when their passions are roused to admit their
fault (save hypocritically). This is to expect passion and
calmness of mind to coexist, which is impossible. Give the
beating, I should say, if it must be given, and have done with it.
I am not prepared to say that we must never beat; but,
assuredly, beating should be always merely a vehicle for
conveying the disapprobation with which we regard the boy's
conduct; it, in truth, should be merely an emphatic way
of saying, " You are behaving badly and all the world would
think so." By means of a beating, a boy, who persists in
a perverse wrong-doing without ever realizing its badness,
may have its badness and the shame of it carried home to
him in a way which nothing else can do.
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 197
In cases of obstinacy, I should say, always give an alter-
native. Never push the contest to an extreme. "If you don't
do this, then you must do that, or lose such or such a pleasure."
Thus avoid a pitched battle. For by such battles you do one
of two things certainly -either break the boy or confirm his
obstinacy which is roused to passionateness and increased
persistency. Another course with very young children is to
shunt them. One engine advancing against another brings
about damage to both when the collision takes place, and,
probably, complete destruction to one. Run to the points and
shunt one of them into a siding, and you are safe. In like
manner, distract the perversely obstinate child by presenting
some new object or idea. When the fit is over, you may
calmly remonstrate, and with effect.
Locke, while requiring that the parent, and consequently
the master, shall establish his authority so as to be regarded
with awe by his pupils, urges strongly (as we have seen) that
this relationship, once established, shall be gradually relaxed,
and that, as the boy grows older, there should be a growing
equality and familiarity of treatment. In this way the pupil will
grow up to regard the master or the parent as his best friend, he
says. Yes, truly his best friend in a sense : but it seems to
me that there can never be in such cases the equality of all true
friendship between father and son. The father will remain
" a governor " till the end, though " not a bad sort of fellow."
(c) Rnvards.
52, p. 31. "Beating then and all other sorts of
slavish and corporal punishments are not the discipline fit
to be used in the education of those we should have wise,
good, and ingenuous men : and therefore very rarely to be
applied, and that only in great occasions and in cases of
extremity. On the other hand to flatter children by rewards
of things that are pleasant to them is as carefully to be
avoided." "Esteem and disgrace" are the proper instruments
198 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
of discipline. But you must inspire them with a love of the
one and fear of the other if they are to operate. This is
certainly difficult, but it is the secret of education. The parents
must caress and commend when their children do well, and
show a cold exterior when they do ill.
The remaining remarks of Locke may be summed up as
follows : To make the sense of esteem and disgrace sink
deeper they should be followed with agreeable and disagreeable
things respectively not as rewards but as the necessary
consequences of this or that kind of action. They thus
associate well-doing with the attainment of desires and vice
versa. In this way they will be gradually shamed out of their
faults and in love with all the ways of virtue.
Beating or chiding have only the effect of causing annoy-
ance, with the miscarriage that brought it on them, whereas
if their pain be not regret for having done amiss the beating
will have no true effect. It only patches up and skins over a
sore, but does not reach to the bottom. Ingenuous shame
and the apprehensions of displeasure are the only true restraint.
This love of good reputation is not (it is true) the real
principle and measure of virtue (for that is the knowledge of
duty and the desire to please God), yet it is that which comes
nearest to it, and is therefore the proper guide and encourage-
ment of children. The rebukes and chidings which the faults of
children sometimes make necessary should not only be in
sober, grave, and impassionate words but also alone and in
private ; but the commendations they deserve should be in the
presence of others.
To conclude ; if a right course be taken with children there
will not be so much need of the application of the common
rewards and punishments as we imagine. All their innocent
folly, playing and childish actions are to be left free and
unrestrained as far as they consist with due respect to those
present, and that with the greatest allowance. These faults
should be left to years to cure. If we reprove too much for
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 199
small things, we make correction in more serious cases of less
avail. A gamesome humour should be rather encouraged, the
authority of parents being however so established that a look
or word will suffice to quiet them.
Rules. In connexion with moral discipline generally Locke
speaks of Rules and says,
"Avoid heaping up rules. Few years require few rules."
If there are too many it is simply impossible for the nature of
children to remember them all always and also for you always
to punish the infringement. Thus your rules fall into contempt
and the important and unimportant are confounded. Especially
in the matter of manners, these are best learned by example
and commendation when things are rightly done rather than
by rules. Rules, I may here add, should not be laid down
before offences, but should arise out of offences.
(4) Substance and Method of Moral Training.
Dealing, as Locke does, with the moral upbringing of youth
and giving prominence to that, he first by way of introduction
considers the comparative advantages of a private and public
education. He considers that " the breeding of a young man
at home in his father's house and under a good governor is
much the best and safest way to the great and main end of
Education." He considers that the roughness, trickery, rude-
ness, sometimes called " spirit," acquired among a company of
boys drawn from homes of very varying kind, are, so far from
being an advantage, a positive evil. There are faults no doubt
in a domestic education, but these are of a kind which can easily
be cured. Shamefacedness and absence of that modest con-
fidence which are characteristics of good breeding can easily
be guarded against by accustoming a boy to his father's society
and to free intercourse with his visitors. In any case ( 70)
200 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
" Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world :
and if lost in a young man is seldom recovered." In a
school, even a well-disposed and competent master cannot
have the requisite opportunities for forming the minds and
manners of his pupils, which require constant attention and
"particular application to every single boy." The "waggeries
and cheats " etc. practised among schoolboys will not make a
thriving man. "He that lays the foundation of his son's fortune
on virtue and good breeding takes the only sure and warrantable
way." The restraint of discipline it is which makes a great
nation.
7> P- 5- " It i s virtue, direct virtue which is the hard
and valuable part to be aimed at in education and not a forward
pertness or any little arts of shifting. All other considerations
and accomplishments should give way and be postponed to this.
This is the solid and substantial good, which tutors should not
only read lectures and talk of, but the labour and art of
education should furnish the mind with, fasten there, and
never cease, till the young man had a true relish for it and
placed his strength, his glory and his pleasure in it."
(Note here that Locke contrasts Domestic Education with
Public Education in the English sense. The Scottish and
German system would be in his view the next best ; in fact
the best, if we consider that Locke's system, even if the best
theoretically, is impracticable for all save a few wealthy. \Ve
have only to introduce morality as a conscious end and object
into our public day schools to have as perfect a system as the
conditions of life admit of.)
Virtue, then, by which is here meant the subjection of our
inclinations to duty, is the main thing. How is this to be taught ?
According to Locke almost wholly by training : not by instruc-
tion.
The great governing rule of Method here is, that you
yourself afford in your own person an example of virtue.
7 1, p. 5 1. " Maxima debetur pueris reverentia." You must
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 2OI
do nothing before them which you would not have them imitate
nothing which you would regard as a fault in your pupil.
But virtue is a general term, and we must be watchful of our
pupils so that vices as they arise may be checked and tendencies
to virtue encouraged. If we would detect these incipient vices
we should watch children at play when they fancy themselves
unnoticed.
Locke does not exhaust the various vices and virtues, nor
does he follow any intelligible order in discussing them, as
might have been expected from the author of the Essay on the
Human Understanding. He seems very much to take them
up as they occur to him, and deals with their superficial aspect
only ; but in spite of this, there are few books better suited to
form an elementary manual of morals and manners than the
sections in Locke's treatise which deal with the various
moralities, or rather immoralities. I shall take up only a few
of those which Locke deals with, as a specimen of his way of
looking at moral training.
( i ) Love of Power.
When watching children at play we shall see that special
development of selfishness which we call Love of Power.
This must be curbed, because it is the root of almost all
injustice and contention and if we do not restrain it we cannot
lay the " foundations of a good and worthy man." To check
this vice Locke proposes that "children ( 107) should never
have what their inclinations lead them to ask for, unless it be
the satisfaction of their actual needs. They should be trained
so that they would not dare to express their desires when these
were mere fancies, and the parent should as occasion served
reward them for their general restraint and self-denial by
indulgence."
Locke here, it seems to me, advocates an unnatural and
irrational system, as I have previously pointed out. If a child
202 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
desires a box of sweetmeats or a cricket-ball or a pair of skates,
why should he not desire them ? And if he desire them why
should he not express his desire to his parents or master?
Locke's system, in fact, introduces a forced and artificial
relation between parents and children, out of which love and
sympathy and that mutual confidence which is the source of all
true moral influence over the young cannot possibly grow. If
we lose this, what have we gained ? Nothing. Moreover, the
suggestion is based on an inadequate moral analysis. Children
are just like ourselves. \Ve desire many things which we cannot
get : there is nothing wrong in desiring them, or in expressing
our desires. The wrong consists in not sacrificing our desires
to higher considerations. So with children : let Johnny have his
box of sweetmeats by all means, if there is no higher considera-
tion forbidding it. If there be; e.g. if his having them prevents
his brothers or sisters having what is necessary for them ; or
if it be a purely selfish desire, he intending to eat them all
himself; or if it be a question between spending the money in
gratifying this desire or in relieving the hunger of some poor
destitute child, put these motives before him and get him
himself to crucify his love of sweetmeats for the sake of these
higher things. A child well brought up will do so. It is
the supplying of the higher motives wherewith to suppress
the lower that moral training consists in. The mere law or
command of a superior is to be resorted to only if moral
motives fail. And even then, not by way of defeating the
child's desire, but with a view to impress him with your
conviction of its unworthiness. How can you do this at all,
if you refuse satisfaction on every side indiscriminately, thus
substituting your ipse dixit for the true spirit of morality ?
Locke is, I think, more successful in suggesting the true way
of combating selfishness and love of power when he speaks of
the virtues of liberality and justice.
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 203
(2) Liberality.
Encourage children to be kind and generous to each other,
and let them see that the esteem and commendation of others
always attend the exercise of generosity.
(3) Justice.
no, p. 90. "Great care is to be taken that children
transgress not the rules of justice, and whenever they do, they
should be set right, and if there be occasion for it severely re-
buked." Through ignorance, children are "apt to deviate from
just measures of right and wrong, and, consequently, even the
least slip in this great social virtue should be taken notice of
and rectified." Wonder and abhorrence should be expressed
at any unjust act, and the foundations of justice laid in the
practice of liberality. As they grow in years they will under-
stand better what justice means, and if then or indeed at any
time an act of injustice proceeds not from mistake but per-
verseness, and gentle rebukes fail, " rougher remedies " must be
resorted to. For example, the father or tutor may keep forcibly
from them something they think their own, and so show how
little advantage they are likely to gain by appropriating unjustly
what is another's so long as there are people stronger than they.
But the best way is when they are yet young to implant in them
an ingenuous detestation of all injustice.
(4) Cowardice and Fortitude.
Again, in speaking of the moral fault of cowardice, and the
virtue of fortitude, Locke suggests the hardening of children
to blows and making light of their pains lest we soften them too
much. Nay we are sometimes to subject them to pain with
a view to hardening. This strikes us as unsound. There
are pains enough without inventing them. And again it is
unnatural, because a child should express its suffering and be
sympathised with within limits, so long as the expression is not
204 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
excessive. It is the excess which is wrong. If I knock my
knuckles against a door I probably utter some impatient word,
and I confess I think none the worse of myself for doing so.
I should be ashamed, however, of myself if I gave any sign
of pain even when I burnt my finger if there were sufficient
reason for concealing my suffering. So with children. Let
us be reasonable and not exaggerate acts which in themselves
are truly of little importance, of great importance only when
higher considerations enter. By just and rational treatment we
shall, nay we cannot but, form the highest character. Artificial
pretences are out of place.
(5) Cruelty.
On the subject of cruelty, Locke thinks that the tendency
which many children have to inflict pain on the lower animals
should be carefully watched, and in connexion with this he
animadverts strongly on the manners of wealthy children
towards servants.
(6) Sauntering or Idleness.
First make sure whether it be at his lessons only that the
boy is idle. If he is active in other things there is hope of
him, and by counsel or severe measures you may get him to
reform.
If, however, the idleness be constitutional the case is more
difficult. The only remark of Locke's of any value with respect
to such cases is to watch the boy and see whether he has a
liking for any one thing and encourage this. For the main
object is to get him to overcome the constitutional tendency, by-
getting him to work at something, be it what it may beetle-
collecting or carpentering, if not Latin or French.
The above question naturally suggests again to Locke's
mind the question of compulsion, and he finds the means of
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 2O5
getting children to attend to lessons by making their play a
task. Order a boy to whip his top and not to stop for a
certain time, and the boy will at once get disgusted with the
amusement and gladly accept his reading or writing, as a
change. Whatever elder people choose to make a reward or a
task can be made so.
Playthings. As to playthings : let the children have very
few, and invent what more they want for themselves. Nothing
is more hurtful than an excessive abundance of toys. It tends
to create luxurious habits and immoderate desires.
(7) Lying.
131. "Lying is so ready and cheap a cover for any mis-
carriage and so much in fashion among all sorts of people that a
child can hardly avoid observing the use which is made of it on
all occasions, and so can scarce be kept without great care from
getting into it. But it is so ill a quality and the mother of so
many ill ones that spawn from it and take shelter under it, that
a child should be brought up in the greatest horror of it imagin-
able." The first lie, he thinks, should be treated with surprise and
astonishment that such a thing should be possible. The second
with coldness and displeasure of all about him. If this fail,
the lying may be held to be deliberate and therefore a sign of
obstinacy. In accordance with his fundamental idea, beating
must now be resorted to. When children commit faults they
will "like the rest of the sons of Adam be apt to make
excuses." This borders on untruth and they must be urged to
be ingenuous. But when they confess ingenuously they must
be commended for this, and not punished for the fault which
they have confessed. And this condonation of the fault should
be thorough ; no allusion should afterwards be made to it.
If sometimes there be a few slips in truth do not be too ready
to take notice of them, lest the boy should feel that he has
lost his reputation with you, than which nothing can be more
206 JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST
hurtful. When you have once detected him in a lie you must
be most vigilant and severe.
(8) Truth and Good Nature.
Having laid the foundations of virtue in a true knowledge
of God, the next thing is to keep him exactly to speaking the
truth and to cultivate his "good nature." By this Locke
means his benevolence, for as he truly remarks "injustice
generally springs from too great love of ourselves and too little
of others."
(9) Wisdom.
Wisdom is the managing of one's affairs ably and with
foresight in this world. It has however a moral side. In its
full sense it can only be learned from experience and observa-
tion, but we can at least guard the young, with a view to
wisdom, against that "ape of wisdom" cunning, resorted to by
those who cannot gain their ends by direct ways. Accustom
them in truth and sincerity to a submission to reason, and
as much as may be to reflection on their actions.
( i o) Good-breeding.
On the subject of good-breeding Locke has some good
observations. He speaks at length and with such wisdom and
knowledge of the world that I would recommend teachers to
read what he says. Indeed it is to young men and women
alone that his remarks can be serviceable. In the case of
mere boys, I think we have only to cultivate good-nature and
a moderate estimate of themselves. The rest will come from
the experience of life, and above all from the society they
keep : for as Locke truly says, " the tincture of company sinks
deeper than the outside." The breaches of good breeding
he says may be all avoided by observing this one rule, " Not
to think meanly of ourselves and not to think meanly of
others."
JOHN LOCKE, THE ENGLISH RATIONALIST 2O/
( 1 1 ) Religion.
Religion being (136) "the foundation of all virtue, there
ought very early to be imprinted on a child's mind a true
notion of God as of the independent Supreme Being, Author
and Maker of all things, from Whom we receive all our good,
Who loves us and gives us all things " : but this without any
attempt to enter into the subtler questions of Deity. Simple
prayer, night and morning, should be practised.
CHAPTER XIV.
JOHN LOCKE continued.
Knowledge or Learning, (a) Method, (d) Materials,
(c) The Recreative, (d) Qualification of the Teacher.
LOCKE is a utilitarian in this sense that he holds that a boy
should learn what will be useful to him as a man in intercourse
with his fellows and in the conduct of ordinary affairs. He is also
cyclopaedic, because he advocates the learning of the elements
of many things. In both these respects Locke is in accord
with almost every thinker in these days. It is only a gradually
decreasing number of secondary schoolmasters who differ from
him. Were it not however for the argument of the treatise
on the Conduct of the Understanding we should quarrel with
him as to his restricted use of the term "useful." Next to
moral principles and a religious habit of mind, nothing surely
is so " useful " to a man as a vigorous and sound judgment.
The materials and methods of instruction have to be con-
sidered in view of this supreme end what Locke himself
would call Wisdom. The great merit of Locke is that he
denounced the rigid classicism of his time which led to
instruction exclusively in the instruments of knowledge and
of thought not in knowledge and thought themselves. As
regards materials of instruction Locke was a Realist as opposed
to the Formalists, but this does not mean that he was a
JOHN LOCKE 209
naturalistic realist. At the same time, it must be admitted that
he had, like Comenius, the conspicuous defect that he was
unable to comprehend the education which was to be found in
literary expression and was not alive to the intellectual dis-
cipline which grammatical studies yield.
(a) Method. As regards method in instructing, Locke
makes many pertinent remarks, but it had never occurred to
him, though a philosopher, that method had a scientific basis
in psychology. He dealt with the whole subject in a somewhat
light, but by no means perfunctory, spirit. He considers that
good methods may be easily found, and that as children natur-
ally love knowledge, the task of instruction should not be so
very difficult. " Knowledge," he says, "is grateful to the under-
standing as light to the eyes." Outside the three "R's" his
remarks are rather directed to what ought to be the matter of
instruction than to the how of method, although his pages
are full of admirable suggestions. Knowledge may be had "at
a very easy rate by good methods," but he does not suggest
anything save what are rightly to be called wise expedients
rather than methods strictly so called. The most valuable
of his remarks to be found in the Thoughts on the
subject of method in general are these: (167) "Children's
minds are narrow and weak and usually susceptible but of
one thought at once. Whatever is in a child's head fills
it for the time, especially if set on with any passion. It
should, therefore, be the skill and art of the teacher to clear
their heads of all other thoughts while they are learning
of anything, the better to make room for what he would instil
into them, that it may be received with attention and appli-
cation, without which it leaves no impression. The natural
temper of children disposes their minds to wander. Novelty
alone takes them ; whatever that presents they are presently
eager to have a taste of and are as soon satisfied with it.
They quickly grow weary of the same thing, and so have
L. 14
210 JOHN LOCKE
almost their whole delight in change and variety. It is a
contradiction to the natural state of childhood for them to
fix their fleeting thoughts." Again he says that the success
of instruction depends on the activity of the pupil's mind
relatively to the instruction given and to its attractiveness.
In this Locke is right. But he is wrong, I think, when
he says that everything must be made pleasant and attractive.
The object of education in so far as it is discipline is, as I
have already pointed out, to induce a child to put pressure
on himself and to initiate intellectual effort under a sense of
duty. This is one of the "hardships of the mind" which
every young person has to endure and overcome. It is moral
as well as intellectual in its effect. In some of his utterances
Locke seems to recognize this fact himself, but he certainly
does not take firm hold of it. The sum of the matter is that
the instruction should always be as pleasant and attractive as
it can possibly be made, and for this we rely on Method.
(b} Materials, As regards the matter of knowledge
Locke lets us clearly understand that this is quite secondary.
Virtue, wisdom, and breeding, these are the chief ends of
education. Other things he only "allows to be necessary."
We must however give an account, however brief, of this
portion of Locke's treatise.
Reading. The letters of the alphabet (Locke thinks) may
be learned as an amusement. Let them be pasted on a many
sided bale or on four dice, and let children amuse themselves
by casting these and seeing what letter is thrown. Then when
the letters are known let the same process be followed, the
players seeing after every throw who has thrown most words.
Thus much for learning to read. Cheat your pupil into it if
you can. In this way he will soon be able to read some " easy
pleasant book," Aesop's fables being the best, and if it has
pictures in it so much the better. Reynard the Fox he also
recommends. Learning by heart and learning to read should
JOHN LOCKE 211
not be made to " clog one another," as it is essential that the
reading should always be associated with pleasure. The
Creed and Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer for example
should not be learned by heart from a book, but by the oral
repetition of others. Locke complains of the want of pleasant
and suitable reading for children. He objects to the promis-
cuous reading of the Bible, for obvious reasons.
Writing. This is to be begun only when the pupil can read
English well, and first he should be taught to hold his pen
right, and this before he is suffered to put it to paper. Then
the proper placing of the paper and of his body is to be
attended to. He should then trace over with black ink, letters
lithographed in red ink. Then he may write without tracing.
He recommends also shorthand.
Drawing. This is recommended as a part of the education
of a young gentleman : but solely because of its future utility.
French and Latin. As soon as he can speak English it
is time for him to learn some other language. This is to be
talked into him, and begun early, that the organs of speech may
be adapted to the French pronunciation. A year or two will
enable a boy to speak French.
Latin. When he can speak and read French well he should
proceed to Latin. This should be learned in the same way, by
talking and reading. "Latin I look upon as absolutely necessary
to a gentleman." But can there be anything more absurd than
forcing boys to learn Latin who will never need it afterwards,
entering perhaps some trade? But custom is so strong that
even tradesmen think that their children have not an orthodox
education unless they learn Lilly's Grammar.
The ordinary way of learning Latin is bad. The true way
is by talking it into him, and thus he will learn easily what is
usually whipped into boys over a period of 6 or 7 years. "Our
knowledge [even of foreign tongues] should all begin in the
things of sense and not in the abstractions of Logic and
Metaphysics." 166, p. 140.
142
212 JOHN LOCKE
If a man cannot be got who can teach your son in the way
suggested, the next best thing is to give him some easy book
with an interlinear word for word translation taking care that
he makes himself perfect in one lesson before he goes to
another. But as a preliminary it will be necessary that he
first get the accidence by heart. More than this of grammar
he need not have until he can himself read "Sanctii Minerva'."
If a boy encounters difficulties in reading Latin do not
trouble him to find them out, but tell him and help him on.
Everything is to be made as easy and pleasant as possible.
" Languages are to be learned by rote, custom, and memory."
The grammar of a language he admits is to be studied
critically, but only by professed scholars. In further considering
the method of teaching Latin, he says that after some facility
has been attained by reading the interlinear book, he may then
be advanced to Justin or Eutropius, helping himself with an
English translation. If this involves rote work what then?
All languages are really learned by rote and are only well known
when the words to express thought come readily without thought
and without the conscious application of grammatical rules.
Grammar is not on this account to be said to be of no use,
but children in grammar schools should not be perplexed with
it. People acquire great correctness and elegance in speaking
a language who know nothing about its grammar. Conversation
is that whereby people acquire languages. If grammar is to be
studied with a view to greater correctness of speech it ought to
be the grammar of our own tongue. At present one would
think that all our youths were being trained to be teachers of
the dead languages.
Grammar, then, should be taught to those who desire to
write or speak with elegance and to scholars, but only after
they can speak and write the tongue whose grammar they
study. [Note however that the accidence is to be got by
1 A treatise on Latin Grammar rather than a Latin Grammar (now
forgotten).
JOHN LOCKE 213
heart.] Its proper place in truth is as an introduction to
rhetoric. The speaking and reading are all that is necessary
to those who merely want a gentleman's acquaintance with a
tongue: the critical knowledge is for those who have to write it
with exactness. In any case there is no doubt in Locke's mind
that those are tormented about grammar to whom it does not
at all belong, " I mean children at the age wherein they are
generally perplexed with it in grammar schools." 168,
pp. 145, 146.
He can scarcely find words strong enough to express his
contempt for Latin in those schools that prepare for ordinary
middle-class life. Latin is necessary to a "gentleman"; at least
it was so in Locke's time, but the argument of utility, in the
vulgar sense of that word, breaks down when we consider its
employment as an instrument of education in the schools of
the bourgeoisie.
Let the scholar translate Latin into English, but as the mere
learning of words is a very unpleasant business let him "join
as much real knowledge with it as he can," beginning still with
that which lies most obvious to the senses, such as is the
knowledge of minerals, plants, and animals, and particularly
timber and fruit trees * * " more especially geography,
astronomy, and anatomy." ( 169.) [Here we see the influence
of Milton.] But whatever he is taught let virtue be the
chief end.
Spite of all that has been said, a boy if he has to go to
school must submit to the usual routine, but by all means try
to get him exempt from writing Latin themes and, above all,
verses. As to themes, Locke considers it an Egyptian tyranny
to ask boys to write themes when they have not, by reason of
their age and ignorance, the materials. He suggests their
being induced to speak to a subject which they know something
about without preparation.
As to verses the school practice is absurd and indefensible.
Locke had an aversion to poetry. He says that if a boy
214 JOHN LOCKE
shows a poetic vein it should be stifled and suppressed, if
he is not to grow up to a dislike of all other "callings and
businesses " and to be led into frivolous company. Poetry and
gaming go together. And even if any one desires to cultivate
the poetic vein he will do it best by reading the poets
certainly not by writing Latin verses.
Locke further objects to learning parts of classical authors
by heart as tending to make a pedant, and yet he commends
the learning of beautiful passages, if selected for this reason,
that they are beautiful. As to exercising the memory, that is
not improved by learning by heart. The learning one class of
things by heart does not improve the memory for others.
"What the mind is intent upon and careful of that it re-
members best" ( 176); and if we add to this order and
method we have done all that can be done. Yet Locke
does not mean that there should be no exercise of memory.
Useful things and fine sayings might well be learned by heart
and frequently called for that they may not be forgotten.
Greek. When a youth is grown up he may acquire the
Greek tongue for himself if he desire it, without the aid of a
tutor. Greek is for a professed student and is not necessary to
the equipment of a gentleman.
Geography. While a child is learning French and Latin
he should learn things through these arithmetic, geometry,
geography, chronology and history.
Geography should be begun with the globe ; as the leading
outlines being dependent entirely on the eye will be learned
readily.
Arithmetic. When he has the natural parts of the globe
in his memory it may then be time to begin arithmetic, which
is the easiest and first sort of abstract reasoning that the mind
is accustomed to and of universal application. A man cannot
have too much of it.
Along with this, the globe should again be studied,
advancing from the terrestrial to the celestial globe. Then
JOHN LOCKE 215
the planetary system should be taught to him; but always
begin with what is plain and simple, and settle that well in
the pupils' heads before proceeding further. " Give first one
simple idea and see that they take it right and perfectly
comprehend it, before you go further, and then add some other
simple idea which lies next in your way to what you aim at,
and so proceeding by gentle and insensible steps children,
without confusion and amazement, will have their under-
standings opened and their thoughts extended farther than
could have been expected." ( 181.)'
Geometry. The six books of Euclid should be learned in
the ordinary school course : but it is in the essay on the
Conduct of the Human Understanding, not here, that we
find Locke's estimate of mathematics in education. He
there says (Fowler's edition, section vn. p. 23) :
" I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle in the
mind a habit of reasoning closely and in train ; not that I
think it necessary that all men should be deep mathematicians,
but that, having got the way of reasoning, which that study
necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer
it to other parts of knowledge, as they shall have occasion.
For, in all sorts of reasoning every single argument should be
managed as a mathematical demonstration; the connexion and
dependence of ideas should be followed till the mind is brought
to the source on which it bottoms, and observes the coherence
all along; though in proofs of probability one such train is not
enough to settle the judgment, as in demonstrative knowledge."
Chronology. A boy should have a general knowledge of the
great dates and epochs as preparatory, along with geography,
to the proper understanding of history.
History. This delights the young, and they should read
history in Latin, e.g. Eutropius, Justin and Curtius, and thus
prepare themselves for the more difficult authors. They need
not be troubled as to the period at which they begin, because
1 The teaching of Locke's philosophy is to be seen in this.
2l6 JOHN LOCKE
their chronology will keep them right. As boys grow up,
history is an important subject as "the great mistress of
prudence and civil knowledge."
Ethics. This having been all along taught by practice
rather than by rule, nothing more is needed than what the
Bible, and, later, Tully's offices afford. Yet it is worthy of
notice here that while Locke relies mainly on the formation
of moral habits, he yet considers that the study of morality
as maxims and precepts in other words, instruction in the
substance of morality should enter into school-work.
Civil Law. This should be studied in Puffendorf and
Grotius. There he will be instructed in the natural rights
of men and in the foundations of Civil Society. A virtuous
young man who knows Latin and the Civil Law and writes a
good hand, may be turned out into the world with the certainty
that he will " find employment and esteem everywhere." Civil
law and history are in Locke's opinion " studies which a
gentleman should constantly dwell upon and never have done
with."
Law (Municipal}. A gentleman should not be ignorant of
the law of his own country by studying the ancient books of
the Common Law, and " taking a view of our English constitu-
tion and Government." Then in connexion with this he
should read the history of his own country.
Rhetoric and Logic. These are not to be learned from
books of rhetoric and logic, but from the study of good
models and by practice.
Style. As to style, youth should be trained to write, being
practised first in narrative and then in epistolary composition.
A gentleman should labour to get facility, clearness, and
elegance, in expressing himself in his own tongue; and "to
this purpose he should be daily exercised in it." Locke is
bitterly satirical on the neglect of English composition in
schools. " To mind what English his pupil speaks or writes is
below the dignity of one bred up amongst Latin and Greek."
JOHN LOCKE 217
Natural Philosophy. Locke thinks that the works of
nature " are contrived by a wisdom and speak by ways too far
surpassing our faculties to discover or capacities to conceive,
for us ever to be able to reduce them into a science ! "
There are two parts of Natural Science that which has to
do with Spirit and that which has to do with Body. The study
of Spirit or Spirits ought to precede that of Body, not as a
science but as an enlargement of mind " towards a fuller com-
prehension of the intellectual world to which we are led both
by Reason and Revelation" ( 190). He thinks the best
way of doing this would be the perusal of Bible history,
in a book written for the young. This is all the more
necessary " because matter being a thing that all our senses are
constantly conversant with, it is so apt to possess the mind and
exclude all other beings but matter, that prejudice grounded
on such principles often leaves no room for the admittance of
spirits or the allowing any such thing as immaterial beings in
rerutn natura ; when yet it is evident that by mere matter and
motion none of the great phenomena of nature can be resolved :
to instance but that common one of gravity, which I think
impossible to be explained by any natural operation of matter
or any other law of motion but the positive will of a superior
Being so ordering it." ( 192.)' The world, he says, is full
of systems of Natural Philosophy, but as there is no true or
certain science I conclude that none of them are to be read,
though a gentleman may look into some of them to fit himself
for conversation. Yet Locke adds laudation of the "incom-
parable Mr Newton's " application of Mathematics to Natural
Philosophy.
Locke evidently means that too much occupation with the
things of sense has a tendency to extrude moral and spiritual
ideas from the mind of youth. This is much better put in
1 Locke tries to explain the Noachian Deluge by the alteration of the
centre of the earth's gravity by the will of God.
218 JOHN LOCKE
the Conduct of the Human Understanding (Fowler's edition,
section ix.), where he says, "Outward corporeal objects, that
constantly importune our senses and captivate our appetites,
fail not to fill our heads with lively and lasting ideas of
that kind. Here the mind needs not to be set upon getting
greater store; they offer themselves fast enough, and are
usually entertained in such plenty, and lodged so carefully,
that the mind wants room or attention for others that it has
more use and need of. To fit the understanding therefore for
such reasoning as I have been above speaking of, care should
be taken to fill it with moral and more abstract ideas ; for
these not offering themselves to the senses, but being to be
framed to the understanding, people are generally so neglectful
of a faculty they are apt to think wants nothing, that I fear
most men's minds are more unfurnished with such ideas than
is imagined. They often use the words, and how can they be
suspected to want the ideas?"
We may fitly conclude Locke's views of the subjects and
methods of instruction with his own words, "The tutor should
remember that his business is not so much to teach his pupil
all that is knowable as to raise in him a love and esteem of
knowledge, and to put him in a right way of knowing and
improving himself when he has a mind to it." 195, p. 171.
(c) The Recreative. When we reflect that Locke was a
physician and recall his remarks about the importance of
having a body which would be a willing servant of the mind,
his almost total omission of all that comes under the head of
Gymnastic is strange. In Gymnastic in the form of games,
apart from its influence on the body, there is also a species of
moral training of great value which ought to have commended
the subject to him. Nay in public schools it is often the
chief moral training which those boys receive who are inapt to
learn. When Locke speaks of bodily exercises he has in view
only those exercises which make an accomplished gentleman
JOHN LOCKE 219
and contribute to an easy bearing in society and to the en-
joyment of life.
Dancing for example is to be taught because it gives an
easy and graceful motion to the body and " manliness."
Music Locke sets little store by, but admits it as a recreation,
since we cannot be always at work.
Riding the " great horse " he commends as necessary to
gentlemen, but fencing he discourages as leading to quarrels
and duelling.
As to recreations in addition to the usual exercises of the
body, Locke recommends gardening, husbandry, and working
in wood. Recreation "is not being idle but easing the
wearied part by change of business."
Again, he says, " nothing is recreation which is not done with
delight." All sorts of manual occupations might be taken to,
e.g. varnishing, graving, cutting precious stones, etc., etc.
(d) The Qualifications oj a Teacher, and his personal re-
lation to his Pupil. ( 94.) " The great work of a governor is to
fashion the carriage and form the mind, to settle in his pupil good
habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom ; to give him by
little and little a view of mankind, and work him into a love
and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and in the
prosecution of it to give him vigour, activity, and industry.
The studies which he sets him upon are but as it were the
exercises of his faculties and employment of his time, to keep
him from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application and
accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste
of what his own industry must perfect. For who expects that
under a tutor a young gentleman should be an accomplished
critic, orator, or logician ; go to the bottom of metaphysics,
natural philosophy or mathematics, or be a master in history
or chronology ? though something of each of these is to be
taught him ; but it is only to open the door, that he may look
in, and as it were begin an acquaintance, but not to dwell there ;
220 JOHN LOCKE
and a governor would be much blamed that should keep his
pupil too long and lead him too far in most of them. But of
good breeding, knowledge of the world, virtue, industry and a
love of reputation he cannot have too much ; and if he have
these he will not long want what he needs or desires of the
other. And since it cannot be hoped he should have time and
strength to learn all things, most pains should be taken about
that which is most necessary, and that principally looked after
which will be of most and frequentest use to him in the world."
In teaching, he says, try to dispose the mind of your pupil
to his work, but remember the instability of children's minds
and be easy with them. To rate and chide and punish is to
instil a hatred of the lesson hour, and moreover it confuses the
child's mind, so that he does not know what he is doing or
what you are saying to him. ( 167.) "It is as impossible
to draw fair and regular characters on a trembling mind as
on a shaking paper. The great skill of a teacher is to get
and keep the attention of his scholar; whilst he has that he
is sure to advance as fast as the learner's abilities will carry
him ; and without that, all his bustle and pother will be to
little or no purpose. To attain this he should make the child
comprehend (as much as may be) the usefulness of what he
teaches him and let him see by what he has learnt that he can
do something which he could not before. To this he should
add sweetness in all his instructions and by a certain tender-
ness in his whole carriage make the child sensible that he
loves him and designs nothing but his good, the only way
to beget love in the child which will make him hearken to
his lessons and relish what he teaches him. Nothing but
obstinacy should meet with any imperiousness or rough
usage. All other faults should be corrected with a gentle
hand, and kind engaging words will work better and more
effectually upon a willing mind, and even prevent a good deal
of that perverseness which rough and imperious usage often
produces in well-disposed and generous minds. It is true,
JOHN LOCKE 221
obstinacy and wilful neglect must be mastered even if it cost
blows to do it : but I am apt to think perverseness in the
pupils is often the effect of frowardness in the tutor ; and that
most children would seldom have deserved blows, if needless
and misapplied roughness had not taught them ill nature and
given them an aversion for their teacher and all that comes from
him. Inadvertency, forgetfulness, unsteadiness and wandering
of thought are the natural faults of childhood, and, therefore,
when they are not observed to be wilful, are to be mentioned
softly and gained upon by time."
He concludes his treatise by stating that he has made no
pretension to write a full and "just" tractate, but only to
record some general views " regarding the main end and aims
of education, and these designed for a gentleman's son," and he
commends them to those who " dare venture to consult their
own reason in the education of their children rather than rely
wholly upon old custom."
CHAPTER XV.
JOHN LOCKE concluded.
Conduct of the Understanding. Method and Intellectual
Discipline : Words : Judgments : Reasonings.
LOCKE'S method in the department of instruction is not so
much a method in any philosophic acceptation of the term as
a collection of empirical rules and hints as to the easiest way of
disposing of the difficulty of getting the work of mere learning
well over. One might rightly conclude that Locke had never
fairly faced the question of the discipline of intelligence as
opposed to mere instruction, were it not for the Conduct of
the Understanding the last of his writings. In this book
the training and discipline of the intelligence is the theme,
and while treating of this, many sound rules of general method
are given and vividly illustrated. This essay, as Hallam truly
says, is a " treatise on the moral discipline of the intellect." I
shall first give a few extracts bearing on method generally and
then on discipline of the intellect.
JOHN LOCKE 223
(i) Method generally Step by Step Little by Little-
Predisposing the mind of the Pupil Labour.
i. The analytic method. ( xxxix.) 1
"Things that in a remote and confused view seem very
obscure must be approached by gentle and regular steps ; and
what is most visible, easy, and obvious in them, first considered.
Reduce them into their distinct parts ; and then in their due
order bring all that should be known concerning every one of
these parts into plain and simple questions ; and then what
was thought obscure, perplexed and too hard for our weak
parts, will lay itself open to the understanding in a fair view,
and let the mind into that which before it was awed with, and
kept at a distance from as wholly mysterious."
2. Step by step: graduation of studies. ( xxxix.)
"The surest way for a learner in this, as in all other cases,
is not to advance by jumps and large strides ; let that which
he sets himself to learn next be indeed the next ; i.e. as nearly
conjoined with what he knows already as is possible ; let it be
distinct but not remote from it : let it be new, and what he did
not know before, that the understanding may advance ; but let
it be as little at once as may be, that its advances may be clear
and sure. All the ground that it gets this way it will hold.
This distinct, gradual growth in knowledge is firm and sure ; it
carries its own light with it in every step of its progression in
an easy and orderly train ; than which there is nothing of
more use to the understanding. And though this perhaps may
seem a very slow and lingering way to knowledge, yet I dare
confidently affirm that whoever will try it in himself or any one
he will teach, shall find the advances greater in this method
than they would in the same space of time have been in any
other he could have taken."
1 Fowler's edition.
224 JOHN LOCKE
3. Little by little. The new out of the old. ( xxxix.)
" I therefore take the liberty to repeat here again what
I have said elsewhere, that in learning anything, as little should
be proposed to the mind at once as is possible ; and, that being
understood and fully mastered, to proceed to the next adjoining
part yet unknown, simple, unperplexed proposition belonging
to the matter in hand, and tending to the clearing what is
principally designed."
4. Predisposing the mind of the Pupil and co-operation
of the Teacher. ( xxx.)
" He that will observe children will find that even when
they endeavour their utmost, they cannot keep their minds
from straggling. The way to cure it I am satisfied is not angry
chiding or beating, for that presently fills their heads with all
the ideas that fear, dread, or confusion can offer to them. To
bring back gently their wandering thoughts by leading them
into the path and going before them in the train they should
pursue without any rebuke or so much as taking notice (where
it can be avoided) of their roving, would I suppose sooner
reconcile and inure them to attention than all those rougher
methods, which more distract their thought and, hindering the
application they would promote, introduce a contrary habit."
5. Labour necessary. ( xxxvni.)
In his Thoughts Locke would have everything, as we
found, made easy for the young learner, but in the Conduct of
the Understanding he says,
" We are born ignorant of everything. The superficies of
things that surround them make impressions on the negligent,
but nobody penetrates into the inside without labour, attention,
and industry. Stones and timber grow of themselves, but yet
there is no uniform pile with symmetry and convenience to
JOHN LOCKE 225
lodge in, without toil and pains. God has made the intellectual
world harmonious and beautiful without us ; but it will never
come into our heads all at once ; we must bring it home piece-
meal, and there set it up by our own industry, or else we shall
have nothing but darkness and a chaos within, whatever order
and light there be in things without us."
(2) Discipline of the Intellect.
I do not suppose anyone would be disposed to quarrel
with the substance of Locke's views on moral training and
discipline, nor yet in these days at least with his advocacy of a
wide range of study, for boys, so long as the range was not so
wide as to dissipate all the powers and train none. But I
imagine all men who have thought about educational principles
and aims must concur in feeling that instruction given on
Locke's plan as contained in the Thoughts, would fail to give
discipline or power to the intelligence. This would not be a
matter to grieve over were it not that we cannot separate the
intellectual and moral nature, and that the discipline of the
intellect is a discipline of the will, and indirectly a training
to virtue.
In the Conduct of the Human Understanding, however, we
find the necessary supplement to the Thoughts on this point
as on others, for it is in fact a treatise on mental Discipline :
and it is to this valuable essay that we must go, if we
wish to know what Locke's idea was of the proper aim of
education as regards the intellect. He there shows what a
sound intellect and habit of mind are and what an unsound.
His characteristics of the former constitute his educational
ideal as regards intellect, his remarks on the latter point out
what we have to guard against and correct both in ourselves
and in those we educate.
L. I 5
226 JOHN LOCKE
Words and Judgments.
Discipline is to be obtained by the analysis of words as the
vehicles of things, the analysis and reconstruction in our own
minds of the reasonings which we encounter in literature and
by the exercise of our own reason. On these points let us see
what Locke says.
Analysis of Words. ( xv.)
" The sure and only way to get true knowledge is to form
in our minds clear settled notions of things, with names
annexed to those determined ideas. These we are to consider
and with their several relations and habitudes, and not amuse
ourselves with floating names, and words of indetermined signi-
fication, which we can use in several senses to serve a turn."
Again he says (Fowler's edition, xxix.):
" I have copiously enough spoken of the abuse of words in
another place 1 , and therefore shall upon this reflection that the
sciences are full of them, warn those that would conduct their
understandings right, not to take any term howsoever authorised
by the language of the schools, to stand for anything till they
have an idea of it. A word may be of frequent use, and
great credit, with several authors, and be by them made use of
as if it stood for some real being; but yet, if he that reads
cannot frame any distinct idea of that being, it is certainly to
him a mere empty sound without a meaning ; and he learns no
more by all that is said of it, or attributed to it, than if it were
affirmed only of that bare empty sound. They who would
advance in knowledge and not deceive and swell themselves
with a little articulated air, should lay down this as a funda-
mental rule not to take words for things, nor suppose that
names in books signify real entities in nature till they can
frame clear and distinct ideas of those entities."
1 In the Essay on the Human Understanding.
JOHN LOCKE 227
Elsewhere :
" Words are not made to conceal, but to declare and show
something. Where they are by those who pretend to instruct,
otherwise used, they conceal indeed something ; but that they
conceal is nothing but the ignorance, error or sophistry of the
talker ; for there is in truth nothing else under them."
Analysis of the substance of Reading.
When he speaks of Reading and the uselessness of it
without analysis and thought, he has some remarks which
notwithstanding their length I may here quote with advantage
to all who read. xx.
"This is that which I think great readers are apt to be
mistaken in. Those who have read of everything, are thought
to understand everything too ; but it is not always so. Reading
furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is
thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating
kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load
of collections ; unless we chew them over again they will not
give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some
writers visible instances of deep thoughts, close and acute
reasoning and ideas well pursued. The light these would give
would be of great use, if their reader would observe and imitate
them ; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned
into knowledge ; but that can be done only by our own
meditation, and examining the reach, force, and coherence of
what is said ; and then, as far as we apprehend and see the con-
nexion of ideas, so far it is ours ; without that, it is but so
much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be
stored, but the judgment is little better, and the stock of
knowledge not increased, by being able to repeat what others
have said, or produce the arguments we have found in them.
Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and
the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very
often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be
152
228 JOHN LOCKE
found in books is not built upon true foundations, nor always
rightly deduced from the principles it is pretended to be
built on. Such an examen as is requisite to discover that,
every reader's mind is not forward to make ; especially in those
who have given themselves up to a party, and only hunt for
what they can scrape together, that may favour and support
the tenets of it. Such men wilfully exclude themselves from
truth and from all true benefit to be derived by reading.
Others of more indifferency often want attention and industry.
The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace
every argument to its original, and to see upon what basis
it stands and how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much
the advantage to one man more than another in reading. The
mind should by severe rules be tied down to this, at first,
uneasy task; use and exercise will give it facility. So that
those who are accustomed to it, readily, as it were with one
cast of the eye take a view of the argument and presently,
in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who have got this
faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books and
the clue to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of
opinions and authors to truth and certainty. This young
readers should be entered in, and showed the use of, that
they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers
to it will be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of
men's studies, and they will suspect they shall make but small
progress, if, in the books they read, they must stand to examine
and unravel every argument, and follow it step by step up to
its original.
" I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to weigh
with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little
knowledge, and I have nothing to say to it. But I am here
inquiring into the conduct of the understanding in its progress
towards knowledge ; and to those who aim at that, I may say,
that he who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course
that points right, will sooner be at his journey's end than he
JOHN LOCKE 229
that runs after every one he meets, though he gallop all day
full speed.
" To which let me add, that this way of thinking on, and
profiting by what we read, will be a clog and rub to any one
only in the beginning : when custom and exercise have made
it familiar, it will be despatched on most occasions without
resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The
motions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonder-
fully quick ; and a man used to such sort of reflections sees as
much at one glimpse as would require a long discourse to
lay before another, and make out in an entire and gradual
deduction. Besides, that, when the first difficulties are over,
the delight and sensible advantage it brings mightily en-
courages and enlivens the mind in reading, which without this
is very improperly called study.''
Reasoning and Principles.
Then when he speaks of the necessity of reasoning, and
resting our convictions on principles, he points out how
generally men fail to use their reason. vi.
" Few men (he says) are from their youth (observe from
their yout/i) accustomed to strict reasoning, and to trace the
dependence of any truth, in a long train of consequences,
to its remotest principles and to observe its connexion ; and he
that by frequent practice has not been used to this employ-
ment of his understanding, it is no more wonder that he
should not, when he is grown into years, be able to bring his
mind to it, than that he should not be, on a sudden, able to
grave or design, dance on the ropes, or write a good hand, who
has never practised either of them.
" Nay, the most of men are so wholly strangers to this, that
they do not so much as perceive their want of it ; they despatch
the ordinary business of their callings by rote, as we say, as
they have learnt it ; and if at any time they miss success they
impute it to anything rather than want of thought or skill."
230 JOHN LOCKE
Again ( XLIV.) :
" To accustom ourselves in any question proposed, to
examine and find out upon what it bottoms. Most of the
difficulties that come in our way, when well considered and
traced, lead us to some proposition, which, known to be true,
clears the doubt and gives an easy solution of the question :
whilst topical and superficial arguments, of which there is store
to be found on both sides, filling the head with variety of
thoughts and the mouth with copious discourse, serve only to
amuse the understanding, and entertain company, without
coming to the bottom of the question, the only place of rest
and stability for an inquisitive mind, whose tendency is only to
truth and knowledge."
Here then in these quotations we have laid down with
sufficient clearness and vigour of language, wherein intellectual
virtue consists in almost all the operations of the understand-
ing. We now know what is the educational aim as regards
intelligence. Is this intellectual excellence, the issue of which
is truth and wisdom, to be acquired by simply wishing for it ?
Certainly not. It is a habit of mind to which we have to be
trained or to train ourselves, and is to be attained only (save in
the case of genius) by a slow and laborious process of discipline.
" What then," Locke says, " should be done in the case ? "
( vi.) " I answer, we should always remember what I said above
that the faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to
us just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would you
have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any
other manual operation dexterously and with ease; let him
have ever so much vigour and activity, suppleness and address
naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless he has
been used to it, and has employed time and pains in fashion-
ing and forming his hand, or outward parts, to these motions.
Just so it is in the mind, would you have a man reason well,
you must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing
JOHN LOCKE 231
the connexion of ideas, and following them in train. Nothing
does this better than Mathematics, which therefore I think
should be taught all those who have the time and opportunity,
not so much to make them mathematicians as to make them
reasonable creatures; for though we all call ourselves so, because
we are born to it if we please, yet we may truly say, nature
gives us but the seeds of it: we are born to be, if we please,
rational creatures ; but it is use and exercise only that make us
so : and we are indeed so, no farther than industry and
application have carried us. And, therefore, in ways of reason-
ing, which men have not been used to, he that will observe
the conclusions they take up must be satisfied they are not
all rational."
Elsewhere he says ( vi.),
" What then can grown men never be improved or enlarged
in their understandings? I say not so; but this I think I
may say, that it will not be done without industry and appli-
cation, which will require more time and pains than grown
men settled in their course of life will allow to it, and there-
fore very seldom is done. And this very capacity of attaining
it by use and exercise only brings us back to that which I
laid down before, that it is only practice that improves our
minds as well as bodies, and we must expect nothing from our
understandings any farther than they are perfected by habits."
Conclusion,
Locke has been called a Realist and Cyclopaedist, and
perhaps if we are to classify him he would fall under these
designations as compared with other men of his time were we
to consider the Thoughts alone ; but the Conduct of the Under-
standing throws fresh light on his position.
As to Encyclopaedism he himself says : " Others that they
may seem universally knowing, get a little smattering in every-
232 JOHN LOCKE
thing. These may fill their heads with superficial notions of
things, but are very much out of the way of attaining truth or
knowledge." xvm.
The general object of all instruction he puts before us
in the following words (xix.): "The business of education
is not to make the young perfect in any one of the sciences,
but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make
them capable of any, when they shall apply themselves to
it. * * It is therefore to give them this freedom that I
think they should be made to look into all sorts of knowledge
and exercise their understanding in so wide a variety or stock
of knowledge. But I do not propose it as a variety and stock
of knowledge but a variety and freedom of thinking ; as an
increase of the powers and activities of the mind, not as an
enlargement of its possessions."
It is now, I should say, sufficiently clear that if we
wish fully to understand Locke's educational views we must
read his Thoughts and his Conduct of the Understanding
together. And if we do so we find on his own showing, not
that Virtue in the moral sense and good manners and general
information constitute the sole educational aim, but also Virtue
of the Intellect. We also find on his own showing that
this latter virtue is truly a training to accurate knowledge of
things and words and the putting of a man in possession of
his own Reason. We further find that an intellectual result so
high is to be attained only by labour, by exercise, by discipline.
Let us then read his educational system back from this its
admitted aim, and we find it in complete discord with the
prevalent tone of the section of the Thoughts which has to do
with intelligence and instruction. It is in childhood and
boyhood that we can alone sow the seeds of a good habit of
Intelligence as well as of a good habit of Will according to
Locke himself. The intelligence then has to be trained and
disciplined as well as the moral nature. The materials of that
training we may take from Locke's Thoughts, if we please,
JOHN LOCKE 233
but the mode of procedure suggested by him is always vitiated
by the exclusion of toil and the overcoming of difficulty. His
method is in the Essay essentially subverted by himself. It
seems accordingly to be a necessary consequence of Locke's
position that through Language and Literature (not therefore
excluding other instruments) we can best give that very dis-
cipline which Locke finds to be necessary to the full growth
of Reason.
In respect then of Intellectual as well as Moral aims
Locke, properly interpreted, is more of a Humanist than a
Realist an unimaginative Humanist but yet a Humanist,
though not of course in the narrow, classical sense. In respect
of the matter of instruction he wisely includes much that did
not till recently enter into the curriculum of schools, but he
specially guards against too exclusive an occupation of the
mind with sense-knowledge in a passage which I have quoted
and which is repeated in the Conduct of the Understanding
in another and a better form, a repetition which shows the
importance he attached to this point. It may seem from
the Thoughts that he at least verges on superficial encyclo-
paedism, a characteristic generally of the Sense-realists ; but
he even guards against this in a passage also cited above. He
desires that boys in reading their own tongue or learning a
foreign one read about things ; in other words acquire know-
ledge as well as words, or rather, with words; and he also
desires that many subjects should be taught which in his
time were (and still are) neglected, but this does not con-
stitute him a Realist in the naturalistic sense. He merely
as a philosopher saw that young people must be occupied
first and chiefly with the concrete. In this he agrees with
Comenius and Milton, and every other competent writer.
Encyclopaedism, let me add, in the vulgar sense of the word
is a great error in the education of the adolescent, but during
the sense and acquisitive period it is to be commended in
order that we may attain our ultimate aim, which is that men
234 JOHN LOCKE
should have a rational attitude to all knowledge, and be open
to the influences and experiences and questions of life from day
to day. Encyclopaedism, not of acquired knowledge, but of
faculty and interest that is what we aim at.
In respect then both of Aim, Method, and Matter of Edu-
cation I claim Locke as essentially a Humanist, who had
gone astray on the subject of language and discipline in his
Thoughts, while he corrected himself in his Conduct of the
Understanding. Had he deliberately connected the latter
work with the former he would have seen the true significance,
and indeed the necessity, of language-discipline in the school.
By what other road indeed save Language and Mathematics is
it possible for a man to reach that Ideal of Reason which he
sketches in the more advanced book, the statement of his
latest thoughts and not published till after his death ? Locke's
supreme defect, which detracts from his Humanistic claims, was
his inability to see the educative effect of literature as such, and
his entire ignorance of the relation of the aesthetic emotions to
the moral and religious education of youth.
I have dwelt longer on Locke than on any other educational
writer because I consider him the greatest of them all, in
spite of his attitude to Language and Literature, and his
encyclopaedism. After all, the encyclopaedism is justifiable
from his point of view ; for he was considering the all-round
education of a " young gentleman " only ; nor did he for a
moment contemplate that all the subjects he recommends
should be taught in schools. As to the middle and artizan
classes, he belonged to his own epoch and considered that a
knowledge of the Bible and of their own trades would suffice.
Notwithstanding his debt to Rabelais, and still more to Mon-
taigne, his educational conceptions are in the truest sense
his own 1 .
1 His Essay on Study (collected from his Journal) should be read as an
appendix to the Conduct of the Understanding. It is printed by Quick at
the end of his edition of the Thoughts.
CHAPTER XVI.
HERBERT SPENCER, THE MODERN
SENSE-REALIST.
I HAD not intended in this volume to speak of the educa-
tional system of any contemporary, but on reflection it seemed
to me that an exception should be made in the case of
Mr Herbert Spencer, whose little volume has had so wide
a circulation. And this because I consider him to be the most
eminent and most logical representative of the Naturalistic
School of Philosophy, sometimes called Sensationalist, Utili-
tarian and Phenomenalist 1 . It is most instructive I think to
have before us an illustration of the fact that the philosophy
of a man must determine his educational theory and his
advice to the world as to educational practice.
It is in the bearing of a philosophical theory on Moral
Education the ethical ideal which we propose to ourselves
in educating that we see the true significance of the philosophy
we profess or affect, and it is this to which I would chiefly refer
in the subsequent remarks.
But first, in justice to Mr Spencer, I must say something on
his educational aim. It is " Complete Living." No one can
take exception to the phrase so far as it goes, but when we
look to its definition by Mr Spencer himself, we find that it
1 Not that any of these terms accurately describes Mr Spencer's philo-
sophical position.
236 HERBERT SPENCER,
practically means the adaptation of man to his environment
environment of nature and of other men with whom he is
associated in a political society "in what way to treat the
body ; in what way to treat the mind ; in what way to bring
up a family ; in what way to behave as a citizen ; in what way
to utilize those sources of happiness which nature supplies ;
how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of
ourselves and others." If we learn to do all this we have
attained to " Complete Living." But inasmuch as we cannot
exhaust a complete preparation, we must lay chief stress on the
most important subjects.
The subject of primary importance is the preservation of
health and life. Therefore teach physiology, that is to say, in
the sense of Hygiene.
Next comes preparation for making a living, and as all
industrial activities rest ultimately on science, the subject
next in importance to physiology is Science in general and
in particular.
After this will naturally come instruction in the rearing of
offspring. This also depends on Science. Then also the moral
discipline of offspring can be illuminated only by mental
science.
Next come the functions of the Citizen History properly
understood and presented, and Economics. The key is here
again Science.
Finally, those occupations which promote the enjoyment
of life and are for leisure are not to be neglected, but
postponed ; and even these things Literature, Art, etc., though
it may not be at first sight obvious, rest for their true ap-
preciation on Science. "Accomplishments, the fine Arts,
Literature, etc.," all those things which constitute the efflor-
escence of civilization should be wholly subordinate to that
instruction and discipline on which investigation rests. "As
they occupy the leisure part of life, so should they occupy tlie leisure
part of education."
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 237
Science, also, is not only best for knowledge, but for intel-
lectual discipline. Nay also, it has direct bearing on the moral
perceptions and the religious emotions. Thus to the question
"What knowledge is of most worth?" the uniform reply is
'Science.' And to the question "What discipline is of most
worth ? " the answer is again ' Science ' ; and this even in the
moral and religious sphere.
We see in all this the most logical and lucid exposition of
the educational theory of the Sense-realistic school. It rests
on a philosophy of man, which amounts to this, that man's
task on this earth is, like that of any other sentient organism,
to adapt himself to his environment in order that he may
live comfortably, and, as a condition of comfort, reputably.
Morality even is subordinated to comfortable living called
Complete Living. The theory opposed to this, as light to
darkness, we have called the Real-humanistic. Its aim is not
complete living but complete life. It may be summed up as
character and culture. It seeks to define the life of man as
that of a spirit which rises above its environment and seeks
ideal aims, ethical, aesthetic, and religious, and a will formed
to right conduct. But it does not, on that account, ignore the
claims of a knowledge of the phenomenal world and of society
and of man's relations to both. It assumes this as necessary
alike to conduct and the highest spiritual life; but in the
education of the people, as in the development of the man
to his full manhood, it regards the knowledge of all that has
to do with the body and with nature as merely contributory
to true education.
The best reply to Spencer is Locke, although he was no
idealist. And all I would say here is that, suppose we had a
man with all the pigeon-holed acquirements that Mr Spencer
would give him, we should say ' Now let us begin to educate
him.' In fact suppose an anthropoid ape who had lost the
divine gift of instinct and was endowed with the imperfect
beginnings of reason instead, and Mr Spencer's system of
238 HERBERT SPENCER,
education would be admirable. The literary, aesthetic, religious
and even morality as an ideal system of perfection, are all
decorative merely. The intelligent anthropoid ape's desire for
decoration would be satisfied with coloured ribbons and straw
which please the village idiot, and would rightly be postponed
to material necessities. Man's function on earth, we believe, is
to use his environment as a mere basis for higher things the
things by which men truly live, and these must from the first
and all through, constitute the substance of his education.
Assuredly, we all hope never to be, and never to meet,
that incorporation of the elements of all the sciences which
Mr Spencer calls a man, even though endowed with the pru-
dential bourgeois morality which by the help of the police keeps
things going. A classical prig and pedant is bad enough, but,
after all, he is in touch with the best in humanity : the prig
pedant who has fed on the dry crumbs of science since he was
a baby would be wholly intolerable. There is surely some
other ideal of the completely educated man which carries us
far beyond the sphere of " complete living " in the Spencerian
sense. The total inadequacy of sense-realism to conceive
such a theory will I think be well illustrated by turning to
Mr Spencer's special treatment of Moral Education which has
not so far as I know been subjected to adverse criticism,
attention having for the most part been directed to the in-
tellectual part of his treatise.
But before doing so I would say that Mr Spencer's chapter
on Method, although it is, perhaps because it is, a collection
of recognized precepts lucidly and logically put, is well worthy
of the perusal, both of teachers and theorists.
Moral Education. A Criticism.
I heartily concur with Mr Spencer, both in the beginning
and the conclusion of his chapter on " Moral Education." His
first paragraph concludes with this utterance : " The subject
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 239
which involves all other subjects, and therefore the subject in
which education should culminate, is the Theory and Practice
of Education." We cannot, of course, teach boys and girls at
school how to discharge their duties as parents : at the school
age, such instructions could have no link of association with the
knowledge and experience of the boy and girl, and would,
therefore, be wholly futile. We teach children these, their
future duties, by being ourselves an example to them, which
they will remember and imitate : nothing in education is so
potent as tradition early received. But when Spencer suggests
that the education of young men and women should culminate
in the study of education that is to say, of moral education
I think he gives utterance to a novel idea, which is not to be set
hastily aside because of its novelty. Perhaps it will one day be
accepted as a truism at least as regards young women. I re-
member, many years ago, being much impressed, but, of course,
not surprised, when I beheld young ladies hurrying in consider-
able numbers to University lectures in Logic, Latin, Mathematics,
and Physiology, while the subject which most nearly concerned
the future life of more than ninety per cent, of them, viz., Edu-
cation, was taken only by the few who meant to be school
teachers. It will not always be so. Mothers of the wealthier
classes will tell us that they have no time for the training of
their children ; the demands of society are too exacting to
admit of it. The day will come, if the race is to make progress,
when it will be the other way about, and " Society " will have to
content itself with taking a second place, while the duties of the
nursery and the parlour will make good their prior claim. If
the mother, though never the sole, yet always (theoretically, at
least) the chief educator, is unfit for these duties, as is too
commonly the case, it is just as well that she should delegate
them, for, as Spencer truly says, "The defects of children
mirror the defects of their parents " a remark to be extended,
I need scarcely say, from the parent to the teacher. That the
teacher who professes to be an educator should study education
240 HERBERT SPENCER,
before he enters on his task would seem to be a proposition
beyond all question, and yet it is still questioned by not a few
survivals of a passing generation at Eton and elsewhere.
Mr Spencer adverts to the irrational severity of domestic
discipline, but he omits the still greater evils which flow from
the training which is irrationally indulgent. In this respect
Locke takes a much firmer and more profound view of the re-
lation between parent and child, though he errs in the excessive
severity which lies at the foundation of his system of moral
training. We are not to suppose that over-indulgence is limited
to the well-to-do ; it is even more common among the poor
varied, of course, with fits of passion. The following incident
(a part of my own personal experience) sums up the attitude of
the indulgent maternal mind :
" Why do you not send your children to school? " said the
minister to a fisherwoman in a Banffshire village.
" Because they dinna want to gang," answers the mother.
" But, surely, it is not what they want that you should
think of, but what is good for them."
"Oh, puir things," retorts the mother, "they maun hae
their ane wull, for it's a' we puir folk hae to gie them"!
So far, I say, we shall concur with Mr Spencer. But now he
plunges into a sea of error, putting what he has to say, however,
in a way so lucid, pleasant, and seeming-logical as to seduce
the young reader into the acceptance of a fatal doctrine a
doctrine, moreover, which, if understood and held, degrades
the position, by degrading the aims and work, of the educator.
He discusses the end or aim of moral education, and the relation
of this end or aim to an ideal morality and an ideal system of
training. Adaptation to environment governs all he says in the
moral, as it did in the intellectual, education of the young.
Here I shall let Spencer speak for himself before I proceed
to criticize his position :
" Even were there methods by which the desired end [the
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 24!
practice of an ideal system of morality] could be at once
effected, and even had fathers and mothers sufficient insight,
sympathy, and self-command to employ these methods consis-
tently, it might still be contended that it would be of no use
to reform family government faster than other things are
reformed. What is it we aim to do ? Is it not that education,
of whatever kind, has for its proximate end to prepare a child
for the business of life to produce a citizen who, while he is
well-conducted, is also able to make his way in the world? And
does not making his way in the world (by which we mean, not
the acquirement of wealth, but of the funds requisite for
bringing-up a family) does not this imply a certain fitness for
the world as it now is ? And if by any system of culture an
ideal human being could be produced, is it not doubtful whether
he would be fit for the world as it now is ? May we not, on
the contrary, suspect that his too keen sense of rectitude, and
too elevated standard of conduct, would make life intolerable
or even impossible ? And, however admirable the result might
be, considered individually, would it not be self-defeating in so
far as society and posterity are concerned ? There is much
reason for thinking that, as in a nation so in a family, the kind
of government is, on the whole, about as good as the general
state of human nature permits it to be. We may argue that,
in the one case, as in the other, the average character of the
people determines the quality of the control exercised. In
both cases it may be inferred that amelioration of the average
character leads to an amelioration of system ; and further that,
were it impossible to ameliorate the system without the average
character being first ameliorated, evil rather than good would
follow. Such degree of harshness as children now experience
from their parents and teachers may be regarded as but a
preparation for that greater harshness which they will meet with
on entering the world. And it may be argued that, were it
possible for parents and teachers to treat them with perfect
equity and entire sympathy, it would but intensify the sufferings
L. 16
242 HERBERT SPENCER,
which the selfishness of men must, in after life, inflict on
them.
"'But does not this prove too much?' someone will ask.
' If no system of moral training can forthwith make children
what they should be if, even were there a system that would
do this, existing parents are too imperfect to carry it out and
if, even could such a system be successfully carried out, its
results would be disastrously incongruous with the present state
of society does it not follow that to reform the system now in
use is neither practicable nor desirable?' No. It merely
follows that reform in domestic government must go on part
passu with other reforms. It merely follows that methods of
discipline neither can be nor should be ameliorated except by
instalments. It merely follows that the dictates of abstract
rectitude will, in practice, inevitably be subordinated by the
present state of human nature by the imperfections alike of
children, of parents, and of society and can only be better
fulfilled as the general character becomes better.
'"At any rate, then,' may rejoin our critic, 'it is clearly use-
less to set up any ideal standard of family discipline. There
can be no advantage in elaborating and recommending methods
that are in advance of the time.' Again we contend for the
contrary. Just as in the case of political government, though
pure rectitude may be at present impracticable, it is requisite to
know where the right lies, in order that the changes we make
may be towards the right instead of away from it ; so, in the
case of domestic government, an ideal must be upheld, that
there may be gradual approximations to it. We need fear no
evil consequences from the maintenance of such an ideal. On
the average, the constitutional conservatism of mankind is strong
enough to prevent too rapid a change. Things are so organized
that, until men have grown up to the level of a higher belief,
they cannot receive it ; nominally they may hold it, but not
virtually. And, even when the truth gets recognized, the
obstacles to conformity with it are so persistent as to outlive
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 243
the patience of philanthropists, and even of philosophers. We
may be sure, therefore, that the difficulties in the way of a
normal government of children will always put an adequate
check upon the efforts to realize it." Note now the "proxi-
mate end" of moral education, as defined by Spencer (p. 99),
viz.: "to produce a citizen who is well-conducted, and is also
able to make his way in the world," that is to say, "acquire the
funds requisite for bringing-up a family." This "proximate
end" he elsewhere identifies with the "practical ideal."
We at once quarrel with Mr Spencer's conception of
the moral or ethical end. If he simply means that, try as
we may, we ourselves shall never be able to lead ideal lives
or train up others to lead them, he utters a commonplace
which is all too true ; but this is not what he means, as we may
see from the rest of his argument. Although it may be that we
must often enough be content with the attainment of a "proxi-
mate end," in the sense of an approximation to an ideal end,
the approximation is not our end or aim. The proximate end,
as conceived by Mr Spencer, has its value; but as an edu-
cational end it is contemptible, and would take the very heart
out of any teacher worth his salt. There is such a conception
as that of the ideal man : that is to say, the man to whom the
great ethical ideas of justice, benevolence, integrity, purity,
and the thought of God in whom all ideals rest, are a sacred
possession, and who strives daily to make them the guide of
his conduct, though they may often lead him to suffering, nay,
sometimes to death. No man succeeds perfectly ; but, that
each may be even such as he is, it is necessary that he strive
after something higher than his actual attainment or the prac-
tical ideal. In the ideas resides the imperative moral law, and
it is this the true man would fain, by God's help, fulfil. The
fulfilment of the law in the ideas is the spiritual life the true
life of a rational spirit; all else is life inadequate and im-
perfect. This true life is, for each, simply the completion of
himself as man. All created things tend unconsciously or
1 6 2
244 HERBERT SPENCER,
consciously, through the forces within them, to their own
fulfilment or completion, while the self-conscious man purposely
endeavours to realize that fulfilment in himself, if he is to be
truly man. This, I submit, is the true doctrine ; and it is to
this we have to educate children and youths ; and if we fail,
accept our failure. It is also, substantially at least, the doctrine
of Plato, Aristotle, and the New Testament.
I must assume that you have read the relative passages in
Spencer. If you have, you will have learned that the young
must not be trained to seek and serve the ideal, but for the
" world as it now is." If too good for it, or trying to rise above
the average, first the child, then the youth, and finally the man
will suffer. We must abjure the highest, because it leads to
possible pain this pain having chiefly or wholly to do with
our "getting on." We must not try to be better than our
neighbours. If a youth has ideals of conduct, he must keep
them under lock and key. They are too good for daily use.
He had better, I should say, expunge them from his mind
altogether, lest he should inadvertently act in accordance with
them. His best course would be not to deny their existence,
but to write them on a card, and hang them on his walls, to be
read over say, on birthdays ; but, when he has read them, he
must, with a cynical smile, exclaim : " All these I shall not
observe from my youth up. These are the solid coins of fools,
but only the counters of wise men in this sense : that the
wise do not deny their absolute truth as symbolic of something
or other which is real and true ideally, but they must not treat
these idealities as realities here and now in this world. They
are for some other place and time."
This is no misrepresentation of our author, for he admits
that there is a true ideal ; it is to be known to us that we may
be aware "where the truth lies," and to guide us in making
cautious and calculated changes in the right and true direction;
but that is all. You may live, more or less, according to an
ideal standard, and teach others to live according to an ideal
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 245
standard, but only in so far as it does not separate you and
others too far from the common motives that govern the
average man. Out of a kind consideration for those who have
an ideal standard, Spencer condescends to say, that if we only
work in the direction of it, without trying too hard, "we need
fear no evil consequences"! (p. 101). Such, according to
Spencer, is the moral aim generally, and such the place and
dangers of the ideal.
I would remark that this practical ideal of Spencer's is not
an ideal at all. There cannot, if there is any meaning in words,
be two ideals. The practical ideal, which he commends, is the
ideal ; the other ideal what we should call the ideal is with
him so remote as to be little better than an illusion. What
reality can there be in that which cannot be used ?
" Let us now," he says, " consider the true aims and
methods." But there is confusion here, for he has already
given us his true aim, which is that a man shall be trained
"to be no better than he should be," to use a phrase which
is strictly true of Spencer's aim, and conveys also its criticism.
Spencer has already, I repeat, got his aim or end in the
sphere of moral education, and what he now proceeds to
consider are the methods whereby we may attain that aim or
end how we are to train children to be as good as their
neighbours, and prevent their being any better, lest "evil
consequences" should follow. But he is, very naturally
indeed, necessarily, when he begins to think of method led
aside for a moment to consider the final standard or criterion
of all morality whatsoever. He has already said, remember,
that our approximate end, as he calls it, is to produce a well-
conducted citizen, who "can make his living," etc. That there
is an ideal greater and higher than this, however, he admits,
but he sets it aside as if it were the dream of enthusiasts
something we may as well know, that our conduct generally,
and our teaching generally, may tend that way, so far as it
246 HERBERT SPENCER,
t's quite safe. There might, he grants, flow "evil consequences"
even from merely keeping ideals in view; there is some danger
in this, but he trusts to human wickedness and weakness to
obviate these evils. That is to say, the evil in men may be
trusted to obviate the evils arising from the pursuit of the
ideal good a singular position ! There is manifestly some-
thing hopelessly mixed here, to say the least. The evil in
man is to be relied on to keep him safe from evil a re-
markable assertion ! We wonder what the author can mean
by "evil," and in what sense he uses the word.
And he must sympathise with the wonder of his reader,
for he proceeds to consider how the (dangerous) true and
absolute ideal in life and conduct is ascertained. By what
mark shall I know it when I see it? What is its criterion?
Important this, because it may not only make the whole
argument logical and coherent, but also, perhaps, suggest a
method of procedure in educating the young. The criterion
or standard he seeks is thus propounded : that conduct is
right and good "whose total consequences are beneficial";
and by the word 'beneficial' he means "resulting in happiness."
This is the way (we are told) we find the true the moral ideal.
But as he has already said that we must not make the ideal
our aim in educating, but that our aim should rather be the
adapting of the young to the time and circumstances in which
they live a training of them to a kind of average morality
which sets aside the ideal and perfection as idle dreams the
standard of the said ideal which he now exhibits to us lands
him in endless contradictions. If the ideal is that whose
total consequences are most pleasurable and beneficial, then,
surely, we ought always ourselves to aim at the "most pleasur-
able and beneficial," in other words, the true ideal, and train
the young to do so ; for, if we do not aim at it, we shall be
aiming at something which is not pleasant and beneficial, or,
at best, only in a minor and subordinate degree pleasant and
beneficial. To do what is most pleasant and beneficial to you
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 247
as a man, would, inasmuch as it is the true ideal, be unpleasant
and unbeneficial ! Has he not already virtually said, "Be not too
good, lest you suffer in this unsatisfactory world"? And now he
tells us that the goodest goodness is the pleasantest thing goin:
How, then, by pursuing this goodest goodness this true and
absolute ideal can I suffer at least in the moral and spiritual
sense? Why should I content myself with hanging up ideal
principles on the wall, and suspending them in my daily
conduct? How, in short, can that which is "pleasant and
beneficial " be undesirable, according to Spencer's theory of
morals? Not to aim at the "ideal" is to aim at that which
is not pleasant and beneficial, according to Mr Spencer's own
theory, or, at least, not so pleasant and beneficial as the ideal,
by his own showing, is. This is a singular result of the
happiness theory of morals. He would rejoin, doubtless, that
the practical ideal it is which contradicts the true ideal. Men
are not yet ready for the pleasures of the true ideal ; it would
be painful to them, not pleasant; striving itself, in fact, is
unpleasant ; therefore, don't strive.
Now, I do not think we can let such an argument pass with-
out protest. If the true ideal is the most pleasurable in its
consequences, it can have been ascertained only by experience
if not the experience of everybody, yet the experience of
Mr Spencer and other thinking men. If so, then it is surely
his duty to educate to this " highest pleasure," this true ideal,
and not to allow his fellow-men to go on living without even
trying to get the "greatest pleasure." Doubtless, he might reply :
"I cannot admit the duty, because I know very well the mass
of mankind cannot rise to such enjoyments." Then, we say :
Why talk about the true ideal at all, and dangle it before their
eyes as a thing first to be looked at and then to be looked away
from? For, if it is the highest pleasure, it can exist to their
consciousness at all only in so far (according to your criterion)
as it is conceived as the highest pleasure the ideal. For the
ideal and the highest pleasure are interchangeable terms.
248 HERBERT SPENCER,
Accordingly, it can only add to their pain, not their pleasure,
to see the highest pleasure, and then to be told to rest content
with the lower pleasure, as best suited to them. And, again, if
they pursue the lower pleasure, as best suited to them and
their environment, this must mean that they get more pleasure
out of the lesser pleasure than they could out of the so-called
greater pleasure. Their ideal is, in short, the lesser pleasure,
and they have as much right to call it the true ideal as you
have to call the scheme of life hanging on the wall the true
ideal. " So long as they are happy, what's the odds?"
True, Mr Spencer might say : " I do not try to teach what
I regard as the highest pleasure, the true ideal, to children and
men because I would not disturb them in their greatest pleasure
[beer and skittles], though it is really painful to them more
than they know ; but to pursue the true greatest pleasure, the
true ideal, would be more painful still." Then, may I not
rejoin, neither the true ideal nor the pursuit of the true ideal is
so pleasurable to them as their own lower ideal, and (according
to you) greater pain? That is to say, they already have the true
ideal, and not you at all. They have summed up one way,
and you have summed up another ; your criterion or standard
is manifestly no standard, for a standard is not a standard unless
it is a fixed something by which all else can be measured.
Pleasure and pain, we may conclude, are not the criteria of
virtue and vice.
Another answer to the question, "Why do you not train
men to the highest pleasure, the true ideal?" might be this.
Mr Spencer might, quite consistently, say that he did not try
to teach men the highest pleasure, the true ideal, because it
was such a bore to him. In other words, the mere labour of
doing so was a pain greater than any pleasure that could come
out of it to him, and, as detracting from his pleasure, detract
consequently from his own ideal moral state. In brief, to
attempt to convert men to his ideal, he would, in his own
person, be untrue to the standard of all morality the greatest
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 249
sum of pleasure ; nay, inasmuch as it would be purposely done,
he would be profoundly immoral in so acting, so far as his own
ethical completeness was concerned. Nay, further, knowing, as
he did, the pain they would suffer from pursuing his ideal, his
purpose would be a purpose of evil at best, a doing evil that
good might, perhaps, come. But, surely, we ought not to be
afraid to teach men the true ideal the most pleasurable ; for
has it not been already said that, men being so wicked and
weak, we need not anticipate any "evil consequences" from
keeping the ideal in view. This ought to console us, and
encourage us in teaching the true ideal. "Do not hang back,"
he might say, "for the pursuit of that which is absolutely
pleasant and beneficial (the true ideal) will not result in evil
consequences (i.e. the unpleasant and unbeneficial) so much as
we might fear (!), because men have such a strong natural bias
to the unpleasant and unbeneficial."
It is assumed, remember, all this while, that there exists
a true moral ideal ; it is distinctly stated that that moral ideal
yields the maximum of pleasure, and is finally to be tested by
its power to do so ; but we are to set it aside in favour of the
relatively right and good the practical ideal of that which
shall make us good enough, and no more, for the society into
which we are born. In other words, we are to adopt as our
standard the less pleasurable and the less beneficial meanwhile,
in order that we may secure the maximum of pleasure obtain-
able now and here London, 1902 the maximum possibile
varying as we may happen to be in England or France or
Syria or India or China. Why are we to do so? Because if
a man aimed at true and genuine pleasure and happiness, and
so lived, or strove to live, the true ideal life, he would, inasmuch
as his " sense of rectitude " would then be too keen and his
standard of conduct too " elevated " (p. 99), fail to secure the
greatest pleasure and benefit ; therefore, the standard of conduct
is never that which would yield to a man the greatest pleasure
and benefit, but that which would, taking all his circumstances
250 HERBERT SPENCER,
into consideration, yield the greatest pleasure and benefit in his
own judgment at the moment. As it is absurd, in such a case,
to suppose a man not choosing the greater pleasure, we may be
sure he always does so ; consequently, every man is always
moral, always in harmony with his ideal, i.e., his greatest
pleasure and happiness at the time.
And yet there can be no doubt that Mr Spencer does
actually believe in a true moral ideal which, though measured
by pleasure, is different from a "practical" ideal also measured
by pleasure. But, if we are to measure conduct by the sum of
the pleasurable which it yields, and not by law, how can any ideal
be truer than another ? Mr Spencer has no right to speak of a
true ideal which shall be a standard for all ; one man's ideal is
as good as another's if it happens to be the greatest pleasure
for him, which we may always presume it is, for why should he
not choose pleasure ? What prevents him doing as he pleases,
unless it be the policeman ? But although Mr Spencer has, in
my opinion, no philosophical right to speak of a true ideal, he
yet does so, and sets this true ideal against the practical ideal.
The former, Spencer evidently quite honestly holds to be truly
morality as being the true ideal ; the latter, then, is not morality
at all, but an approximation, an adaptation of some of the
truths of morality to the average of a particular time, place,
and circumstance. This latter is always at war with the former
the true ideal and our business is, according to Mr Spencer,
after taking a passing glance at the impossible true ideal of
conduct to educate ourselves and others in that which is not
too moral that is to say, not too pleasure-giving, not too bene-
ficial in its results!
It is manifest, then, that the " practical " moral ideal, which
is to be the working ideal of teacher and parent, is a gathering
together of the dubious and admittedly defective, untrue, and
pain-giving principles which regulate the Church, the Market,
and 'Change, and training our children in these. Be just, but
not too just ; be benevolent, but not too benevolent ; be self-
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 251
controlled, but not too self-controlled ; be pure, but not too
pure ; be virtuous, but not too virtuous ; be good, but not too
good : this is the working ideal.
Where, then, can the true ideal the just, the good, the
noble, the heroic, the self-sacrificing, and so forth be all this
while ? In Spencer's view, doubtless, as well as in ours, this
ideal is in the thoughts of all the wise of all ages, who have
preached it and pressed it on men, not altogether in vain.
Have they been wrong to preach it as yielding a scheme of
conduct? If not, are we wrong to teach it? Shall we de-
liberately counterwork it ? Shall we set aside Christ and Paul,
and all the philosophers and poets, and say to them, " Go to,
do not interfere with our practical teaching; do not fill our
children's heads with ideal nonsense. We have to prepare
for the world that now is, and the world is to him who can
take it ; and he alone can take it who sands the sugar of his
justice, who waters the milk of his human-kindness, who mixes
his truthfulness with prevarications, his wisdom with cunning,
his self-sacrifice with selfishness, his reverence with impudence,
his nobleness with ignobleness, his virtue with vice, his good
with evil." If Mr Spencer does not mean this, what does he
mean ? Do you not feel that there is an error somewhere, that
Mr Spencer and his school either use language in a non-natural
sense, or that they are hopelessly wrong in their attempts to
give the philosophy of the moral and spiritual life of man ?
The maximum of pleasure, now and here, is to be your aim,
and you are not to bother yourselves or your pupils about the
true ideal (the most pleasurable, note), save by a passing
allusion to what is essentially an illusion. Now, to compare
such teaching as this of Spencer's with that of Greek or Roman
thought, would be an insult to the latter. Nay, even the edu-
cated Chinaman would abjure it, and as to Christianity, what
shall we say ? Is this the teaching of Christ ? And yet our
training colleges exist as Christian institutions. The Churches
are eager to take Government money to conduct these colleges
252 HERBERT SPENCER,
in order that, at the very fountain-head, they may guarantee
Christian teachers and Christian teaching ; and this is the
book 1 which those who are shortly to be placed in a position
of authority over the coming generation are told to study as
if it were a Gospel a new evangel to English men and women.
In one room the Churches teach Christ, and in the other
Spencer Christ the teacher of Divine law, the preacher of
transcendent ideals, the priest of self-sacrifice. I do not doubt
that the training college authorities, generally at least, try to
counteract this teaching ; but is it wise to give young and
whoUy unformed minds such a foundation for their philosophy
of life ?
According to Spencer, Christ on the cross, and all the
crucified and self-sacrificed martyrs, were enjoying the greatest
sum of pleasure possible for them. I ask you : Is this the
true reading of history? According to Spencer, it was foolish
of Christ and the others ; they were mistaken. They were
blind to their environment. Unadapted to their environment
they did not "survive." Mr Spencer might, perhaps, admit
that they were nobly blind; but he must at heart despise
their intelligence, and denounce their blunder. No wonder
the people mocked at them and went off self-corn placently
to their beer and skittles their greatest sum of pleasure, and,
therefore, as moral and as lofty as the faith of the martyr on
the cross or the rack. Alas, for Christ and the others, who
misprized the common pleasures of life ; tliey had made a mistake
in arithmetic. That figure there on the board, running into
the thousands, with a fraction (a circulating decimal, and a
little elusive), represents pleasures; it has to be divided by
something called the "sum," and these mistaken martyrs
brought out a wrong quotient.
It would be out of place here to enter further into philo-
sophical argument than we have done. But, speaking generally,
1 It is no longer specially recommended.
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 253
I may say that the Christian faith (it matters not to what extent
men may differ regarding facts and doctrines) always includes
this ethical substance, viz. the innate instincts and needs of
man's nature, as a complex of feeling, tendency, emotion, and
reason, yield to us, in the long-run, certain ethical ideas for
example, truthfulness, benevolence, justice, integrity, purity,
self-sacrifice, and so forth ; these ideas, in their highest and
purest form, constitute the law of our nature the law of God
in us. It matters not that these ideas may have taken gener-
ations to grow, if they are the true reading of the moral and
spiritual nature of man. It is precisely these ideas, in their
most generalized and universal form, with Divine law inherent
in them, that constitute the ethical ideal ; and up to this we
have ourselves to strive, and up to this we have to educate the
young. The process by which we educate them we call training
to the good, and discipline to duty ; and the question of method,
which so much concerns us as teachers, is simply an inquiry
into the " way " whereby we may build up this ethical ideal
in the minds of children and youths, and make it the motive
force in their conduct of life, as at once the law of God
and alone the true life of man on earth here and now.
This brings us to the question of method, as dealt with by
Mr Spencer.
As might be expected, his method is the method of conse-
quences. We accept this. In our own adult case, however, the
consequences of misconduct are the inner pain of sentiment
ignored, of a foregone ideal, of a broken law, of an outraged
nature, of God defied ; and in the case of the young, the pain
of the disapprobation of teachers and parents, as embodying
for the young the ideal and the law. Material consequences
may or may not follow that is to say, the punishment of the
body in various ways, direct and indirect, positive and negative.
Whether they should ever follow is one of the debated ques-
tions.
254 HERBERT SPENCER,
You will see that, even to train up children to be no better
than they should be, and always to choose what yields the
most pleasure, some method is wanted. They have to be taught
wherein their true pleasure lies when they are men, although
it may seem not to be their true pleasure when children,
because of their immaturity of judgment. How are we to
proceed? Doubtless, if we may make a reasonable inference
from a statement in the beginning of the chapter, Spencer would
say, along with all other educational moralists, "By example."
But, outside example, some other mode of procedure is
necessary. This mode of procedure is called a method. Now,
it is manifest that if morality is identical with the most beneficial
or pleasing consequences, I must train to morality by painful
consequences. The child-sum of pleasures must bjs rectified
by the adult-sum.
Mr Spencer points out, I have just said, that the method is
the method of consequences ; but the consequences are, in the
larger part of his argument, always material, not moral with
the boy, the pain of burning his finger or having to put right
what he has put wrong ; with the man, indigestion or the pain
of being deprived of his salary or the injury to his prospects of
salary. Thus, he says, the child and the youth attain to a
" knowledge of right and wrong by personal experience of good
and bad consequences."
If I amuse myself by sticking a pin into my leg, I feel
pain, and I seek some other amusement in future. There is
here what Spencer calls a "natural reaction" that is to say,
nature instantaneously punishes an infraction of nature's laws.
Spencer's main proposition, then, as regards method of moral
training is, let the reaction of nature take place. Now, it is
not morally wrong to stick a pin into my leg. It is merely
a physical miscalculation. Mr Spencer confounds moral and
emotional with purely physical reactions. When a little boy, in
his anger, smashes his mother's best china- bowl, the natural
reaction is a feeling of great satisfaction. When he burns his
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 255
catechism in the hope of so ending a painful series of daily lessons,
the flames are less bright and joyous than those that blaze up
in his own heart. This is, as a matter of fact, the natural
reaction. Then, again, when he climbs a tree, and falls and
breaks a leg, the natural reaction of his being such a goose as
to lose hold of one footing before he has secured the next is
manifest. He has broken a physical law, but not a moral law,
and must take the physical consequences. If he has taken
firm hold, and secures the object of his ambition the thrush's
nest and sells the eggs for 6d. apiece, he now enjoys the
natural reaction, as before he suffered from it. It is quite clear
from these illustrations that "natural reactions" are outside
the moral sphere altogether, and that if there be anything
immoral in his act, it must arise in some other way. In what
way ? It arises from the fact that he has broken a moral law ;
and that moral law can only be to a child the command of his
parents and teachers. What, then, is the natural reaction?
Spencer gets so confused over his natural reactions that he
begins, towards the end of this chapter, to see that he is some-
how wrong, and says that the disapprobation of the parent or
teacher is itself a "natural reaction." Here he is at last on
the right scent. But what becomes of his original "natural"
reaction? The natural reactions he has been talking of are
the reactions of nature in the sense of physical laws. He
would now include the parent's disapprobation under the same
head, using the word " natural " in the vulgar sense of what
might be "reasonably expected to follow." I see my boy in the
tree where he has been told not to go. Am I cunningly to
shake it, that I may cause him to fall and break his leg, and so
facilitate the natural reaction? What natural reaction the
reaction of physical law or of moral law? Is this to be his
punishment, a fall that breaks his leg, and to which I have
cunningly contributed ? I think not. The parent who did it
would soon be in the hands of the police.
In fact, the much-lauded doctrine of natural reactions in
256 HERBERT SPENCER,
the sense of reactions of physical law, carries us a very little way
indeed. At best it is a physical reaction to a breach of physical
law. We are compelled from the first to consider moral re-
actions for moral offences, and let the physical blunders correct
themselves, after we have given due warning.
No parent or teacher needs to be told that ninety-nine
per cent, of the wrong-doing of the young is, not a breach of
physical laws, but simply disobedience the breach of moral
law as that is centred in the parent or teacher, the moral
authority set over them. There would be no natural reaction
(i.e., no material consequences) at all in the great majority of
cases of wrong-doing, and the majority of the remainder would
be pleasant were it not for the purposed intervention of the
parent or teacher, who deliberately inflicts certain unpleasant
material consequences under the name of punishments. And
Mr Spencer himself is compelled to admit that this is so, for
when he leaves certain little childish faults behind him, he
virtually admits that he is on the wrong track, and has to rest
the training of the child on the simple approval or disapproval
of the master or parent, with such punishments, if any, as they
may choose to inflict. There is no other course open to him.
In the sphere of child-morality there is no " natural ' : reaction
available, except approval or disapproval. But if this is so in
all important cases, it is equally true of the unimportant. The
child who makes a litter (to take Mr Spencer's illustration), and
is required as a punishment to put things right, is not morally
educated by that, but by the disapproval of his mother, who
emphasizes her disapproval by imposing this task a course of
conduct on her part to be justified by the fact that it impresses
her disapproval and puts it in a concrete form. Again, the
restitution of a stolen knife, or of the knife of another lost
through carelessness, does not give rise to any moral feeling ;
that moral feeling must precede the restitution, this latter being
only the outward and visible sign of an inward spiritual grace.
So the boy, of whom Spencer speaks, who, having been kindly
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 257
and generously treated by an elder, declines to do a kindness
to him in return, and, when he finds the consequences of it in
the elder refusing to amuse him any more, then, and not till then,
of his own accord brings him his shaving water and boots in
order to restore friendly relations, has gone through no moral
training at all, except in so far as he first felt the disapprobation
of his elder, &&&, feeling that, felt his own unworthiness, and then
tried to make amends. And what does Mr Spencer himself
say of the father who has the " perfect confidence and affection
of his children " ? He says that the said father finds that the
"simple display of his approbation or disapprobation gives
him abundant power of control." Of course it does. But is
this the calculation of material consequences by the children ?
If so, they are mean and demoralized little monsters.
Thus the method of Spencer, no less than his end and
criterion, breaks down all round, even taking him on his own
showing ; and, in so many words, he has to tell us at last what
he ought to have told us in the beginning, that the disappro-
bation or approbation of the teacher is itself a " natural
reaction," and this is not a reaction of nature at all, but a
moral consequence. Mr Spencer, when he gets on the right
track, begins to talk of sympathy between parent and child, and
the power of approbation and disapprobation where this sym-
pathy exists. With all this I believe we should all substantially
concur, as well as with his remarks on the importance of not
expecting children to be too good, and so forth. But as regards
the moral end, the moral aim, the moral motive, the moral
criterion, and the moral method, his doctrine is always wrong,
and sometimes pernicious. Then, when he begins at last to
see light, in the course of his fluent argument, instead of tearing
up his MS. and beginning over again from a new and higher
point of view, he involves himself in intellectual confusion and
moral contradiction, as he did when he spoke of true and
practical ideals.
The old doctrine of " natural reactions," which Mr Spencer
L. 17
258 HERBERT SPENCER,
fathers anew, simply amounts to this : " We see how nature
inflicts a physical penalty for a breach of physical law ; if, then,
we desire to inflict a physical punishment over and above the
moral penalty, so as to emphasize the breach of moral law, let
us take a hint from nature, and let our physical punishment,
as far as possible, have some relation to the physical character of
the moral offence. It is not a method of moral education at all ;
but simplya Rule to guide us when we find it necessary to mark,
in an external way, our disapproval or condemnation the dis-
approval being the essential punishment, and the gain of that
disapproval being the stirring-up of a moral emotion in the
breasts of the young. Even as a rule for our guidance in
carrying our moral disapproval out into painful material conse-
quences, the method of natural reactions is of very restricted
application. Bentham's word is much preferable. Let the
punishment, he says, be " characteristical." It is the voice of
moral authority, and the force of example in the parent and
teacher, that teach morality. In brief, and without dwelling
longer on the subject, I repeat that the whole principle of
natural reactions does not touch the theory of punishment for
moral offences, but at best only gives a rule for the selection
of physical punishments when we have once made up our
mind, on moral grounds, to inflict them, and then, if possible,
they should certainly be " characteristical."
I would impress the futility of the so-called method on you
with a few additional remarks. It is evident enough that, follow-
ing the rule of natural reactions without considering moral
elements, we should constantly be led into blunders. When
a boy breaks a wine-glass through carelessness, we might say
that he should be required to replace it; but "nature" does
not require this, and to insist on it would be unjust. If he is
the son of poor parents, and makes great efforts to economize,
with a view to replacing it, he does so because of his feeling of
sympathy with his parents in their loss, and of vexation with
himself, as having inadvertently caused a loss. The replace-
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 259
ment, then, is a moral act pure and simple, and has nothing to
do with nature's reactions. If, again, he has broken the glass
intentionally, in order to pay his parents out for some imaginary
injustice, there is no natural reaction of replacement, but quite
the reverse. He would like to break two glasses. This is the
natural reaction ; and, if I wish to correct the boy, I must first
get him to feel what the good boy, who inadvertently broke
the glass, felt, and, out of the strength of that feeling, condemn
himself, and seek to make restitution. Bentham's recommenda-
tion is a sound one, because, among other advantages, it admits
of our bringing in reason and common-sense to control nature's
reactions, which are generally irrational. A good thing it is that
we have to determine punishments, and not nature ; for nature
is blind, and stupid, and often cruel. Spencer says that natural
reactions are "pure justice." On the contrary, they very
seldom are justice at all, if men do not guide and control
them. Natural reactions are constantly too slight for the
offence, more frequently too grave. Two boys are clambering
over a high wall. They have no right to do so, but " boys will
be boys," and one falls and breaks his leg ; the other falls, and
escapes with a slight bruise. Which of them has been justly
treated by nature? Both boys will certainly be more careful
in future, but the boy who broke his leg will, perhaps, be, ever
after, afraid of high places. This, surely, is an unfortunate
result. Courage is a virtue. By over-severity, nature has
extinguished the growth of a possible virtue. An infant puts
his finger into a candle-flame. Surely, the punishment of
hours of pain is too severe. In truth, nature is a very hard
task-master, and if we were to follow her example we should
often be most unjust. A boy snaps the blade of his knife
through carelessness. Let him be punished by going without
a knife, Mr Spencer would say. This may be called a natural
reaction, but why should I permit nature to inflict it ? I have
to consider the boy's motive. What is there that is morally
wrong in snapping the blade of his knife through carelessness ?
26O HERBERT SPENCER,
I should say, regret the incident with him, and give him a
shilling to buy another knife. If there is anything wrong in the
snapping of the blade, it must have been that he did it purposely,
or while using it for some purpose forbidden by you. The wrong
then is breach of law imposed by authority. So with a child
littering the floor. Punish by making the child set everything in
order again, says Mr Spencer. But why punish at all ? There is
nothing wrong in littering the floor ; it is a very innocent and
very pleasant and seductive amusement. The natural reaction is
a disposition to make the litter greater than ever, that the joy
may grow with the mess. The wrong exists only if you, the
parent, have forbidden it. Here, again then, the wrong is
against law as imposed by authority. Mr Spencer has exag-
gerated the range and misinterpreted the meaning of nature's
reactions. In the whole of moral training it is the motive of
the child's act that you have to consider ; other offences due to
thoughtlessness or redundancy of animal life must be kept out-
side the moral sphere and gently dealt with.
One of Mr Spencer's punishments shows, in an amusing
way, how little he has realized the difficulties of the teacher
and parent : "Stop pocket-money," he says. How many boys
have any pocket-money to stop ? It is as if you were to pass
a law to punish thieves by increasing their income-tax.
One excellent result, however, it seems, would flow from
Mr Spencer's doctrine. He tells us that parents, having to
reflect, after a misdemeanour, as to the proper natural reaction
applicable to that particular misdemeanour, would learn self-
control, and no longer punish impulsively. This is like telling
an angry man to count twenty before he speaks. It manifestly
assumes that the parent already sees the importance of self-
control, and desires and endeavours to exercise it. If he does,
the end is gained without the help of the necessity of consider-
ing natural reactions. He cannot consider these until he has
first controlled himself.
THE MODERN SENSE-REALIST 26l
I would, in conclusion, point out that Mr Spencer's method
is a method of merely negative training in morality ; not a word
is said about positive training. Negative training can repress
the external exhibition of a vice, while the vice itself may be
more deeply rooted than ever. I say there is no positive
training to moral ideas, and to a habit of virtue : but with
Spencer's moral theory how could there be ? The theory is :
Do so-and-so or you will suffer ; you will get the minimum of
pleasure and the maximum of pain, and the maximum of pain
is vice. Accordingly you cannot train except negatively, if you
are to work out this theory consistently. And negative training
will produce only negative results.
I hope that these critical notes have made it clear : (i) that
Mr Spencer's ideal aim in education is false : (2) that his
standard of morality is false : (3) that his " method " of moral
education is nothing save a Rule to help you in selecting a
punishment in certain cases ; and that of very restricted appli-
cation : (4) that, while there is much sound practical advice
scattered throughout the chapter, the whole argument is as
confused as it is misleading and pernicious, until he comes to
the moral instrument of approbation and disapprobation, as
resting on sympathy : (5) that the Spencerian moral training
would be exclusively negative and deterrent training, and only
incidentally and uncertainly secure the positive results at
which the parent and teacher alike aim. For the attainment
of this, not for punishing error, we want a method a method
which shall have for its aim the true ideal ; for, we are assured
by Quintilian and all the wise, that we can reach any height
worth reaching only by striving to reach the top of the hill
not by sitting down despairingly at the foot of it or building
a hut with a good kitchen and comfortable bed one-third of
the way up.
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY j. AND c. r. CLAY AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
The Institutes of Education. 2nd ed.
OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH.
Primary Instruction in relation to Education. 6th ed.
OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH.
Language and Linguistic Method in the School.
4th ed.
OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH.
The Training of Teachers and Methods of Instruc-
tion. 2nd ed.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE.
The Life and Educational Writings of John Amos
Comenius. 6th ed.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE.
Historical Survey of pre-Christian Education. 2nd ed.
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