A 
 
 
 
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 .^fe. 
 
 RUSKIN 
 REVISED 
 
 R. J. MUIR 
 
 _^
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 RUSKIN REVISED 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER PAPERS 
 
 ON 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 
 R. J. MUIR, M.A. 
 
 H.M. INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 OLIVER &.BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT 
 
 BRECHIN : BLACK & JOHNSTON 
 
 1897
 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 The First Article in this Book was suggested by Mr. 
 Jolly's Ruskin on Education. The Second and Third are, 
 substantially, addresses delivered in Montrose and in 
 Brechin respectively. Matters of temporary and of local 
 interest have been omitted. 
 
 K. J. M. 
 
 Peel Place, Montrose, 
 
 931 
 
 r:c'Q
 
 RUSKIN REVISED: 
 
 A NOTE ON EDUCATION. 
 
 A Plea for Cojnmon Sense. 
 
 The primary confusion is as to the meaning of the word 
 — Education. Does it mean the general course of the 
 development of the human faculties from the time that the 
 infant first blinks at the light, through childhood, through 
 school life, through college life or apprenticeship, through 
 manhood with its struggles — up to an old age of 
 resignation and peace. Does it include the early influ- 
 ences of mother and nurse ; the impulses to good or bad 
 from teachers, playmates, schoolmates ; the formation that 
 the soul receives from lover, spouse, offspring ; the harden- 
 ing and the polishing that we get in struggles with our 
 fellow men in the routine of life. If this is meant, it is 
 obvious that propositions about education cannot be under- 
 stood in the same sense, as when we apply the term to the 
 course of school and college life — still less if we apply it to 
 that Education which the State takes most especially under 
 its charge — i.e. the elementary education of children between 
 the ages of 5 and 13.
 
 Let us not then be led astray by generalities about 
 enabling man * to live a life worthy of manhood and of his 
 species.' 
 
 School-education is but one of the things — that enables 
 man — or should enable man to do this. 
 
 Let us come down to Ruskin's views on the education — 
 in or out of school — of young children. What is it that he 
 wants for them ? 
 
 I have looked at his utterances as collected and focussed 
 by Mr. Jolly, and find them strangely inconsistent. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin (Preface to Sesame and the Lilies) is not 
 ashamed to confess the erroneous character of some of his 
 earlier views. But let us confine ourselves to later works, 
 by which he is willing, I understand, to be judged. Mr. 
 Jolly quotes from Sesame and the Lilies^ A Joy for ever, 
 Fors Clavigera. 
 
 2 
 
 Now what are we to teach the young? 'Cleanliness, 
 obedience, the first laws of music, mechanics, and geometry, 
 the primary facts of geography and astronomy, and the 
 outlines of history, should evidently be taught alike to 
 poor and rich, to sailor and shepherd, to labourer and shop- 
 boy.' {Fors, viii. 254-55, Jolly, p. 49). 
 
 Furthermore in his own schools of St. George he chooses 
 ' to teach the elements of music, astronomy, botany, and 
 zoology.' A delightful programme ! Something like it 
 may be secured when to every man is secured an income 
 which will make him liable to payment of income tax. 
 Very well, then. In order that the children may get into
 
 their little heads as many of these subjects as possible and 
 as much of each one as practicable, shall we teach them to 
 read that they may learn what others have written, to write 
 with intelligence that they may think with intelligence, to 
 cipher — that — if for no other reason — they may deal 
 honestly with their fellow men and know how they stand 
 in the world. Oh ! No ! These are too contemptible 
 things. ' The children themselves would have no time to 
 spare, nor should they have.' {Fors, viii.) 
 
 Is not this as if a fond mother should say, * I have no 
 time to teach my baby girl to walk ; I want to teach her 
 to dance. I have no time to train my baby boy to speak ; 
 I am going to train him to sing.' 
 
 Mr. Jolly goes on to say — and I presume he is summar- 
 ising his master correctly : — ' He would have these taught 
 at home by their parents, or by the children to each other.' 
 
 Men of experience know how vain this talk is, though 
 one, Master Dogberry, held that * to write and read comes 
 by nature.' 
 
 But Mr. Ruskin has another way of speaking from which 
 you would almost infer that the sons of labourers should be 
 left pretty much in their ignorance. 
 
 * In matters moral, most men are not intended to be any 
 better than sheep and robins ; so in matters intellectual, 
 most men are not intended to be any wiser than their cocks 
 and bulls, — duly scientific of their yard and pasture, peace- 
 fully nescient of all beyond.' {Fors,vm. 257,8,9, Jolly, p. 46). 
 
 Is it a great Preacher — the great Preacher and Reformer 
 of the age, some would say — who speaks, or is it some 
 galvanized fossil of a Tory (or old Whig for that matter) 
 who objects to the 'lower orders' trying to raise themselves 
 from the view of their anvils or their clods ?
 
 Will it be credited that in the same Fors in which he 
 mentions the higher education that St. George's Schools 
 carry on, the following atrocious sentences are found ? 
 
 * I do not care that St. George's children, as a rule, 
 should learn either reading or writing, because there are 
 very few people in this world who get any good by either. 
 Broadly and practically, whatever foolish people read^ does 
 them harm ; and whatever they write does other people 
 harm.' 
 
 Such utterances of Mr. Ruskin, implying contempt for 
 the mass of humanity, pain those who admire his genius 
 and his zeal to elevate and purify our aims. But in the case 
 of a truly great man we can, I think, usually find the cor- 
 rective to his errors within the sphere of his own work. 
 Hear what he has to say on the education of a girl. ' Keep 
 the modern magazine and novel out of your girl's way : 
 turn her loose into the old library every wet day, and let 
 her alone. She will find what is good for her ; you cannot: 
 .... Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn 
 in a field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better 
 than you.' [Sesame and Lilies^ p. 103). 
 
 Of course, there is much wisdom in these suggestions, 
 but are we rigidly to exclude the light literature of the last 
 thirty — fifty — shall we say, one hundred years, and to as- 
 sume that while there is great risk here, there is — ultimately 
 — little risk in light or heavy literature of an older date. 
 A good rule then would be to confine the girl to books 
 bound in calf or sheepskin, carefully keeping out of her 
 way all in cloth or paste-board covers. But not every one 
 possesses an extensive library, ancient or modern. Men 
 must buy books, it would seem, before they have a right to 
 read them, and they only degrade themselves by using cir- 
 
 I
 
 culating libraries. (There is a capital one within a hundred 
 yards or so of this table, well stocked I am glad to say with 
 Mr. Ruskin's works). Twenty-four pages further on he 
 relaxes, and would have ' royal or national libraries ' 
 founded where knowledge could be drunk on the premises 
 out of ' chosen books, the best in every kind.' But who is 
 to choose the books ? The Guild of St. George or the 
 Court of St. Peter ? 
 
 3 
 
 But it is time to go back and to examine more in detail 
 the educational utterances of Mr. Ruskin where so much 
 that is impracticable or mischievous is mixed up with so 
 much that is instructive and inspiring. 
 
 In the First Lecture of Sesame and the Lilies (p. 41) we 
 find some of Mr. Ruskin's free roaring against the age. 
 ' Be assured, we cannot read. ... It is simply and sternly 
 impossible for the English public, at this moment, to under- 
 stand any thoughtful writing — so incapable of thought has 
 it become in its insanity of avarice.' 
 
 ' And so on. And so on. " The pity of it." ' One is 
 tempted to take a few books from one's shelves, and draw 
 up a chain of denunciations of the ' present age ' — to reach 
 back through the 'drums and tramplings' of many centuries. 
 
 The author of the song ' When this old cap was new ' 
 railed on the degeneracy of his tiroes (A.D. 1610 — say). 
 Juvenal complained of the fondness for money which pre- 
 vailed in Rome — so did Horace before him. And avarice 
 was not unknown in the days of the elder Cato. 
 
 Each man sees and feels more keenly the vices of his
 
 own time, the faults of the community in which he himself 
 lives, than those of other places and times. Therefore, he 
 says, 'What a selfish age — what a malicious, gossiping 
 town.' (This reflection I have borrowed from Lacon — and 
 perhaps spoiled in the conveying, as I have not the book at 
 hand). 
 
 After quoting Mr. Ruskin's tirade of which I have 
 quoted a part, Mr. Jolly sets forth Sir John Lubbock's 
 views. They do not altogether harmonise with those of the 
 Master, who accuses us of ' despising literature,' as a nation, 
 while the other charges us with a ' worship of book learn- 
 ing.' But it must be admitted that these two faults may 
 exist in the same individual. 
 
 Pass this. It seems according to Sir John Lubbock 
 {Addresses Political and Educational, p. 98) that ' we strain 
 the memory, instead of cultivating the mind.' Now as 
 'divers philosophers do hold the mouth to be part and 
 parcel of the face ' so, divers philosophers do hold the 
 memory to be part and parcel of the mind. 
 
 Is it not notorious that the memory — taking the word 
 in its most mechanical application — is better developed in 
 childhood than the other faculties ? Will not a boy of ten 
 learn by heart more easily than a grown man, say, a suc- 
 cession of kings, a list of geographical names, a stanza of 
 poetry ? Ay, and he will retain them longer. The grown 
 man to be sure may be able to grasp the meaning of a 
 complicated sentence better than the boy. 
 
 There is much cant about this training of the faculties. 
 Are they to be trained in vacuo, as it were ? Are they to 
 have a store of matter to work on ? If not, it is as if we 
 were carefully to train children how to carve, masticate, and 
 digest, but at the same time grudge them a proper quantity
 
 of food. I say boldly in the face of ' superior persons ' : — 
 Store the child's mind with facts — with words which are 
 indeed facts. (Note what Dr. Spurzheim says as reported 
 by Combe : — * Everything connected with observation, facts, 
 history, geography, and general information, are best adapted 
 to the youthful, and reasoning and deep reflection to the 
 mature mind.' (Jolly's Combe, p. 287). Of course, as a child 
 may be over-crammed with food or filled with innutritious 
 matter, let us be careful as to the quantity and quality of 
 the facts. As to what are useful facts, there will be differ- 
 ences of opinion. Some would say : — ' This boy is to be 
 a ploughman or a blacksmith. What does it matter to him, 
 what will it ever matter to him whether Queen Elizabeth 
 beheaded Queen Mary or — Queen Mary, Elizabeth; 
 whether Rome be in Italy or in Russia, whether a column 
 of air is balanced by 32 feet or 32 yards of water ? Let him 
 out irito the fields to expand his mind in the smile of 
 nature, to learn the difference between a shilfie and a 
 sparrow, between a useful herb and a noxious weed.' 
 
 My friends, it is precisely because the boy will have, in 
 all probability, his nose kept to the grindstone of mechani- 
 cal toil, that it is expedient that advantage should be taken 
 of his school-time to give him a wider outlook, to raise his 
 mind from the clods — not indeed to inspire him with con- 
 tempt for his own work but to teach him to appreciate the 
 work outside his own. To this I will recur. Meanwhile, I 
 would respectfully ask Sir John Lubbock whether he has 
 ever spent an hour in an elementary school. Does he 
 imagine that there is no training of the faculties there ? Is 
 teaching a child to read a mere matter of memory or is it 
 a training of the faculties of attention, comparison, etc.? 
 Is arithmetical education a mere cramming of addition and
 
 multiplication tables, or is there not some training of other 
 faculties than memory? In the much despised grammar is 
 there not training of the faculties ? Verily some educa- 
 tional reformers would seem to be strangely in harmony 
 with Jack Cade, The end of the Clerk of Chatham — who 
 could ' write and read, and cast accompt ' — was hurried, nor 
 less severe was the doom of the unfortunate baron, who had 
 men about him that did * usually talk of a noun and a verb, 
 and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure 
 to hear.' 
 
 But let us leave Sir John Lubbock and try the nobler 
 quarry. What is to be ' The True Basis of Education ? ' 
 According to Mr. Jolly, Mr. Ruskin is * emphatic on the 
 need. ... of regulating the treatment of our children 
 according to their constitution and capabilities. These are 
 fixed at birth, being the result of natal and pre-natal condi- 
 tions and cannot be changed. (Jolly, p. 12). This is the 
 disciple's summary, but to prevent the possibility of injus- 
 tice to the Master, let us take his own words. ' The facts 
 being that every child is born with an accurately defined 
 and absolutely limited capacity ; that he is naturally (if able 
 at all) able for some things and unable for others ; that no 
 effort and no teaching can add one particle to the granted 
 ounces of his available brains.' (Fors, viii. p. 256). 
 
 Now one might take captious objection to the last clause. 
 A man's brain surely weighs more than a child's, and per- 
 haps the increase may depend, among other conditions, on 
 the education, — taking the word as broadly as you like — 
 
 I
 
 which has been given. But, b«ing no physiologist, I waive 
 this. 
 
 Admit that each child comes into the world with an 
 accurately defined capacity — whrch no human power can 
 increase. Of what value is this transcendental fact to 
 parent or to teacher ? Does each child come into the world 
 with its ' analysis ' carefully written out, like that of Paul 
 Dombey at the end of his first school term ? 
 
 There is a certain school which holds that in a sense he 
 does : I refer to the Phrenologists. The educational world 
 owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Jolly for his monumental 
 edition of George Combe's contributions to the Science and 
 Art of Education. Phrenology, indeed, as Combe taught 
 it, does not seem to have met with general acceptance in 
 the scientific world. But of much of Combe's teaching the 
 value does not depend on the ' localisation ' of the faculties 
 and their connection with 'bumps.' In regard to these 
 very bumps he teaches indeed that some are not properly 
 developed till the age of twenty or upwards, so that no com- 
 plete analysis of character can be obtained from the exam- 
 ination of a young child's head Nor do I observe — and I 
 have spent some time this morning looking over the book 
 — that he uses phrenological doctrine in any fatalistic way. 
 I do not find that he would say or that Dr. Spurzheim 
 would say : — ' This boy is deficient in language, — trouble 
 him not, therefore, with grammar or with any language but 
 his own.' ' This girl is deficient in number ; remove her 
 from the arithmetical class.' 
 
 Whether we believe in ' bumps,' or not, there can be no 
 doubt that the natural endowments of children vary exceed- 
 ingly. Still, in matters of elementary education, no thought- 
 ful parent or teacher will be quick to admit that a boy or
 
 lO 
 
 a girl cannot do this or that. Most boys or girls — all I 
 should say with some few exceptions — can be taught to 
 read, write and cipher, and, at the risk of being written down 
 a Philistine, I maintain that they should. To this I will 
 return. 
 
 I PASS over lightly the warnings given us against con- 
 ducting education 'with a view to mere success in life,' 
 ' advancement in life,' etc., etc. 
 
 In plucking up tares let us be careful lest much good 
 wheat is at the same time uprooted. Is it, I would calmly 
 ask, such a vile thing, such a snobbish thing — this desire of 
 a parent for a son's advancement in life ? Is he to be blamed 
 that he desires that his boy should be spared those corrod- 
 ing petty cares of poverty which — (and, I think, we might 
 quote Mr. Ruskin for it) — tend to keep men at a lower 
 level of ethical and of intellectual being ? 
 
 6 
 
 Let us pass on to the next consideration (Jolly, p. 20). 
 'Education,' says Mr. Jolly, summarising Mr. Ruskin, 
 ' should train to useful work.' There being an ambiguity 
 as to the meaning of the two nouns in this sentence, the 
 crop of fallacies is rich, and again one hardly knows where 
 to begin.
 
 II 
 
 If we take the words Education and Work in a broad 
 sense the observation is a truism. If we narrow the mean- 
 ing of Education — if we understand it in its popular sense 
 — as the training of boys and girls, the maxim may mis- 
 lead us. If we take 'useful work ''in Mr. Ruskin's narrow 
 sense the maxim becomes positively mischievous. Is the 
 term ' useful work ' to be restrained to delving, ditching and 
 employments on a level therewith ? There are not a few 
 who think that Mr. Ruskin in calling our attention to Art 
 in its nobler aspects, and Carlyle in illuminating history 
 have done more ' useful work ' than if the one had devoted 
 his life to roadmaking in Oxfordshire and the other to sheep- 
 rearing in Annandale. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's teaching irresistibly recalls Plato's parable of 
 the two winged horses of the soul. With one voice he calls 
 men, women and children to a lofty conception of life, its 
 aims and destiny ; with another voice he seems to call on 
 the majority of the human race to be content with the 
 narrow banausic life. But, his disciples will tell us doubt- 
 less, this delving and ditching is to be done in a holy spirit, 
 not with an eye fixed on lucre of gain. True — and all our 
 work should be so done. In our complex state of civilisa- 
 tion, there are multifarious things to be done. Why talk as 
 if there were something peculiarly high and holy about 
 those occupations immediately connected with the tilling of 
 the soil and the preparation of lood and clothing. Doctors, 
 barristers, cab-drivers, stokers, and even the teachers of the 
 much-despised three R's are all doing useful work. Why 
 look on them with scorn because they are ignorant of the 
 art of ' ploughing.' Ploughing, indeed, Mr. Ruskin seems 
 to have upon the brain. We, it seems, teach our youths 
 to • leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and call theni
 
 12 
 
 educated. Can they plough, can they sow, can they plant 
 at the right time, or build with a steady hand ? Is it the 
 effort of their lives, to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in 
 thought, lovely in word arid deed ? ' {Sesame and Lilies, p. 
 140, Jolly, p. 26). 
 
 Now what are we to make of such a hopeless paragraph. 
 Surely those who know aught of anatomy in the abstract — 
 aught of boys in the concrete, will maintain that vaulting, 
 boating, cricket constitute a better physical training than 
 ploughing and bricklaying. The principles of honour and 
 courtesy can be, and I am sure are inculcated as well in 
 connection with the much decried ' genteel ' education, as 
 in a system founded on the assumption that ' in matters 
 intellectual most men are not intended to be any wiser 
 than their cocks and bulls.' {Fors, viii. 257). 
 
 According to Mr. Jolly it is Mr. Ruskin's ' steady wish 
 that school boys should learn skill in ploughing and seaman- 
 ship rather than in cricket.' This is amusing— and melan- 
 choly. Rowing he had spoken of with scorn, though' it is 
 an exercise perfectly compatible with regular school and 
 college work. Seamanship is hardly compatible with school 
 life, seeing that only a limited number of boys can go — or 
 ought to go — to sea. For the inland boys ploughing is 
 prescribed of course. 
 
 7 
 
 Let us not carp. Let us waive the point of detail — that 
 no boy ought to plough — that in fact no boy is allowed to 
 plough till he has attained considerable physical develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Let us take ploughing as a typical word for 'useful 
 work.' Very well.
 
 13 
 
 Those who have had anything to do with elementary 
 education know the great difficulty that is perpetually found 
 in keeping children away from useful work. From re- 
 munerative work — because it is remunerative — you will 
 say ! Certainly — but it is useful work too, and it is of the 
 nature of useful work to be remunerative. Perhaps Mr. 
 Ruskin would not regard selling newspapers in the streets 
 as useful work.- Perhaps he would regard most newspapers, 
 most modern literature as rubbish. But there are other 
 departments of work decidedly useful, at which parents are 
 — or have lately been — anxious to keep their children em- 
 ployed : such as lifting potatoes, frightening crows, working 
 in factories, working in coal mines, etc. The parent may 
 say with much show of reason : — ' Not for " advancement 
 in life," but that we may live at all — that we may have 
 warm clothing and a pittance of plain food, do I desire that 
 my boy and girl should begin early to earn money at what 
 is likely to be his life-long work, instead of troubling his 
 little head about the book-lore that the parson makes such 
 a fuss about' Let us suppose that this honest man gets 
 some volumes of Fors Clavigera, etc., from the local library 
 (horrible as this idea must be to the true Ruskinite) he 
 might pick up much that would confirm his views. We 
 may fancy him speaking as follows : — ' This good man is 
 quite right. I want my boy to learn some useful employ- 
 ment. What good will reading do him ? More harm than 
 good in all likelihood ; and here Mr. Ruskin seems to agree 
 with me. Writing? What will he ever need to write? 
 History and geography ? How do they concern him ? 
 Arithmetic ? Well, let him know enough to calculate his 
 weekly wages.' 
 
 But here the State steps in and says : — ' No ! At least
 
 while your boys and girls are of tender years, they are to 
 have a chance of learning something outside the mill-horse 
 round of daily life. They are to learn something which is 
 not money-making.* 
 
 The State, as such, cannot and perhaps should not try 
 to give the perfect ideal of education demanded by easy- 
 chair philosophers. But each child — unless hopelessly im- 
 becile — is to get a certain minimum of education. He is 
 to learn, amid healthy surroundings, to read, write and 
 cipher. Whether he will on this prosaic foundation build 
 any higher culture will depend on his individual zeal and 
 his personal opportunities. A boy of 13 or 14 who can 
 read, write and cipher, whose memory has been stored with 
 a {t,"^ leading historical and geographical facts, may not be 
 educated in any lofty sense of the word, but at least he is 
 a little better than Mr. Ruskin's 'cocks and bulls.' He has 
 been equipped with means to educate himself, and if a little 
 wholesome compulsion has been exercised by his teacher, 
 he will be all the better trained by obedience for the battle 
 of life. 
 
 8 
 
 The framers of the early education codes have been 
 strangely misunderstood. It cannot be that R<jbert Lowe, 
 himself a man of culture, undervalued the higher learning 
 It cannot be that he, a Liberal in politics, wished or expected 
 to keep the people in darkness. His principle would seem 
 to have been that Government, central or municipal, should 
 provide education only as it provides poor relief ' There 
 can be no doubt that Mr. Lowe intended to make the
 
 15 
 
 Government Schools such that even superior or intelligent 
 artisans, much more all classes of shopkeepers, would refuse 
 to send their children to them. As the workhouse is in- 
 tended to repel all self-respecting able-bodied labourers, so 
 these schools were intended to repel the self-respecting and 
 competent classes, including well-to-do artisans, from using 
 them.' (Article by J. H. Rigg, D.D., Contemporary Review^ 
 xxxi. p. 327, Jan. 1878). 
 
 The policy of the Government has changed since the 
 days of the early Codes, and many think that it has gone 
 too far in promoting higher education. Sundry, I am sure, 
 think so, who are no more inimical to higher education than 
 many advocates of Disestablishment are hostile to Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 At present some hold that the State should provide 
 elementary and higher education all over the country. 
 Free books are already provided to a great extent ; free 
 boots, free dinners and free overcoats will soon be wanted. 
 
 Would it not be well for the educational reformer to 
 have in his mind's eye the gradual removal of the State 
 props which bolster up education. Protection, which may 
 be good for a struggling industry in an infant colony, should 
 be withdrawn as the colony reaches years of maturity. 
 (Dr. Rigg's Article, p. 328-9). 
 
 Let the State see that each child gets a certain minimum 
 of education, and on that foundation let zeal for education 
 and voluntary effort rear what structure might correspond 
 to the idiosyncrasies of the teacher and the taught. There 
 would be room for the schools of St. George's Company — 
 there w^ould be room for free effort by other educationists, 
 whose theories, without being altogether vile, might not 
 coincide with those of Mr. Ruskin. The latter would look
 
 i6 
 
 on me as incurably profane, were he ever to come to know 
 that I think it would be well — for some time at least — to 
 exact a Pass in the three R's before any child was permitted 
 to bask in the smile of St. George. 
 
 9 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, who touches and adorns so many things, 
 seems to have infected me with something of his digressive 
 9f«rit. Let me reiterate my protest against the emphasis 
 given to ' useful work '—in the mechanical sense of the 
 words — as a part of the education of young children. Far 
 too many are engaged in ' useful work ' as it is. It is not 
 from schools attended by Half-Timers — it is not from those 
 schools where children are kept away for field work, that 
 inspectors hope to get good results. There is one eminent 
 educationist — unaccountably overlooked by modern refor- 
 mers — who made it a distinguishing feature of his system 
 to combine intellectual with practical training. When at 
 Do-the-Boys' Hall a lad had learned to define a horse as a 
 quadruped, he was promptly sent to groom Mr. Squeers' 
 horse, and the spelling of the word window was followed up 
 by the cleaning of that which the word signified. 
 
 10 
 
 We now come to consider ' Nature in Education ' — a 
 delightfully vague expression. At the risk of appearing 
 frivolous, one is driven, in the midst of this maddening 
 
 I
 
 17 
 
 series of paralogisms, to cheer himself again by the refer- 
 ence to the Yorkshire Educationist just mentioned : — 
 
 ' She is a rum un, she is, is Natur.' 
 
 ' She is a holy thing, remarked Snawley.' 
 
 Mr. Jolly refers to Mr. Ruskin as insisting on the ' absolute 
 necessity of this open-air element for human training.' It 
 is somewhat disheartening to have to criticise the Master 
 here, when the writer sees so many children living amid the 
 dingiest surroundings and is aware that many of his own 
 happiest hours are those spent in lonely wanderings on 
 mountains and by streams. But I do not find that to many 
 people this wandering is the ideal of happiness. 
 
 One is reminded of the old woman who, when her pastor 
 was expatiating on the joys of Paradise, drily remarked 
 that it would be small pleasure to her to run about naked 
 in a garden eating green apples. 
 
 But would that those who would enjoy it could get 
 more of it ! Would that others could be educated to enjoy 
 it! 
 
 Do not, however, let us be led away by rhapsodizings. 
 Let me quote from Mr. Jolly (p. 37). 'Natural scenes he 
 (Mr. Ruskin) calls, referring to our daughters, " the pleas- 
 ant places which God made at once for their schoolroom 
 and their play-ground," and he declares that "a quiet glade 
 of forest or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the 
 schoolrooms in Christendom." ' 
 
 Dazzling sentences these, but will they bear analysis (I 
 
 do not mean in the grammatical sense). As a preliminary, 
 
 I will simply remark, that, not only ordained priests, but 
 
 those who pooh-pooh parsons and priests have an airy way 
 
 of maintaining that the Deity intends this or that, ' ivhen 
 
 the Lord hath not said it! 
 
 B
 
 i8 
 
 Setting theology aside then, I formally impugn the 
 second proposition and also the first so far as it refers to 
 * school -room.' The woodland is not in any exalted sense 
 — certainly not in any accurate sense — the primary school- 
 room for the youth of Great Britain — though we read that 
 in a mythical age — surrounded by the primeval forest, 
 
 ' The little Hiawatha 
 Learned of every bird its language 
 Learned their names and all their secrets.' 
 
 Not by dreaming in the glades, but by attendance in a 
 prosaic schoolroom — it need not be ugly — it need not be 
 without ornament — is the child to have its intellectual 
 faculties trained in an atmosphere of obedience and self- 
 denial. For the mass of mankind education cannot be 
 made a mere matter of play — a mere kindergarten business. 
 The school is a microcosm, and there children by whole- 
 some discipline must learn to play their part in the outer 
 world. Mr. Jolly, of all men, I am sure is fully aware of 
 this, and Mr. Ruskin in his cooler moments would admit 
 something like it. 
 
 When the * beggarly elements ' of education have been 
 to some extent mastered, let the boy go ahead and grapple 
 with Botany — Zoology — 
 
 ' Down to conckology — has he the call.' 
 
 Mr. Jolly tells us of some worthy teachers who take sec- 
 tions of their schools for country walks. Let them — in 
 Heaven's name ! Would that there were more teachers 
 inspired with the zeal and blessed with the opportunity to 
 do this. Glasgow is a big town — a very big town — to get 
 out of if you live in the middle — but that is all the more 
 reason perhaps why the children should get the chance.
 
 19 
 
 But do not make tlie walk too scholastic. A walk in the 
 fields is one thing, a lesson in Botany is another. Let a 
 boy learn, if he can, to distinguish the note of one bird 
 from that of another — to know the names of trees and of 
 some plants, but do not bother him too much with genera 
 and species and * lang nebbit words.' I am old-fashioned 
 enough to think that a man or a woman may be a capital 
 teacher — intellectually and morally — without being a walk- 
 ing encyclopaedia of ornithology, zoology, mineralogy. 
 Take them to see some old ruin — some site of a battle-field 
 — in order to give life to some of the historical teaching, 
 but do not, on the walk, worry them too much with dates 
 and other particulars. 
 
 11 
 
 But let us go back to the * quiet glade ' and the ' nook ' 
 — which are 'worth all the school-rooms in Christendom.' 
 To do Mr. Ruskin common justice, let us finish the quota- 
 tion. After " Christendom," come the words ' when once 
 you are past the multiplication table.' Mr. Ruskin, in this 
 passage at least, seems to be referring not to the study of 
 external nature but to the expediency of pursuing one's 
 studies amid beautiful natural surroundings. But his re- 
 marks here must be received with caution. The humorous 
 thing is that in Fors Clavigera (vol. viii. p. 264) he pooh- 
 poohs such a prosy thing as the multiplication table. As 
 for arithmetic, ' children's time should never be wasted, nor 
 their heads troubled with it. The importance at present 
 attached to it is a mere filthy folly, coming of the notion 
 that every boy is to become first a banker's clerk and then 
 a banker, — and that every woman's principal business is in 
 checking the cook's accounts.'
 
 20 
 
 By earning (alas ! alas ! poor little things !) and by deal- 
 ing with small sums of money, and by the cultivation of 
 ' perfect habits of order and putting-by of things,' they are 
 to pick up arithmetic ! ' The multiplication table may be 
 learned when they want it" — [this is cheerfully vague] — 
 ' a longish addition sum will always do instead ' [this is 
 rich !] He does concede some teaching of the ' mechanism 
 of multiplication and division,' but speaks scornfully of an 
 attempt he heard to get * an advanced class ' to ' explain 
 the difference between a numerator and denominator.' He 
 adds : — ' I wasn't sure myself, for the minute, which was 
 which, and supremely didn't care.' 
 
 Mr. Jolly has had the good sense not to quote this 
 ' superior ' — this ' supreme ' talk. 
 
 It is a pity that Mr. Ruskin does not call the multiplica- 
 tion table ' directly diabolic' There is a precedent for this 
 in the Diary of Sir Walter Scott's glorious little friend, 
 Marjorie Fleming. 
 
 * I am now going to tell you the horible and v/retched 
 plaege that my multiplication gives me you can't conceive 
 it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is 
 what nature itself cant endure.' 
 
 In A Joy for ever, Mr. Ruskin seems to concede the 
 multiplication table to the hardness of our hearts. But I 
 would respectfully maintain that, for some considerable 
 time after the mastery thereof, the discipline of the school 
 room or lecture room is needed and the 'quiet nook' is not 
 sufficient. 
 
 But the schoolroom, as I have said, need not be dull. 
 We may read with advantage the many admirable remarks 
 made by Mr. Jolly on the Training of Taste and the quota- 
 tions by which he enforces them.
 
 21 
 
 12 
 
 ' God made the country and man made the town.' True, 
 but, created in the image of God, by that light of reason 
 which he does not share with the beast, man has made the 
 town — understanding thereby the full substance of human 
 institutions — temples, courts, assemblies, schools, colleges. 
 There let us bathe our souls — there seek the divine. More 
 discipline it needs to find it, the more it is overlaid and 
 commingled with the base. The woods ! The mountains ! 
 The shore ! Any man may draw from these physical en- 
 joyment. Any man may there recruit his physical health. 
 But he who is to draw therefrom mental or spiritual inspira- 
 tion must have a soul informed by intercourse with man 
 and with books, which are the image of man — with the 
 books, let us gratefully admit, of Mr. Ruskin, with the 
 poems, say, of Wordsworth, 
 
 And here let us be grateful to Mr, Jolly. Though he 
 refers to Wordsworth he kindly spares us that everlasting 
 ' impulse from a vernal wood ' which might have done harm 
 to so many generations of boys, — if living healthy boy were 
 ever known to read Wordsworth, after once in childhood he 
 had escaped from the thraldom of the ' little cottage girl,' 
 Observe that the illustrious poet only says that it ^ may 
 teach us more of man.' 
 
 In the quiet of the woods a mind already cultivated may 
 learn from Nature, so to speak — that is — may draw wisdom 
 from its own stores, undistracted by books or conversation. 
 Note, that it is a man immersed in books whom the poet 
 would draw into the woods. Note also that in the same 
 poem he seems to pooh-pooh scientific teaching in a way 
 shocking to the modern spirit.
 
 22 
 
 13 
 
 If a boy, despising the * school-rooms in Christendom' with 
 their bookish lore and disagreeable restraints, takes to 
 wandering about glades and nooks, the chances are that he 
 will grow up not a * Thomas Edward, Naturalist," but a 
 loafer, a vagrant, a poacher, a robber — ay, a murderer, 
 ' Nature, red in tooth and claw ' will not restrain him. The 
 * noble savage ' who ran ' wild in woods ' is more extinct 
 than the Dodo : he is extinct as the Unicorn, The nobility 
 of man was not apparent when he ' had but the brutes for 
 kin.' 
 
 O man ! a savage kindred they ; 
 
 To flee that monster brood 
 He scaled the seaside cave, and clomb 
 
 The giants of the wood. 
 
 He dreed his penance age by age ; 
 
 And step by step began 
 Slowly to doff his savage garb, 
 
 And be again a man. 
 
 And learn'd to call upon His name 
 
 And in His faith create 
 A household and a father-land, 
 
 A city and a state. 
 
 Dream of Gerontius — Newman. 
 
 ' The proper study of mankind ' — at least the highest 
 study — ' is man.' 
 
 Plato represents Phaedrus as noting the fact that So- 
 \ crates was not in the habit of quitting the city — that he • 
 would not go beyond the boundaries. 
 
 On this, Socrates observes : — ' I am a lover of knowledge, 
 I and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not 
 I \ the trees, or the country.'
 
 23 
 
 Of course, I have no inclination to undervalue physical 
 science, either in its utilitarian aspects, or as a training for 
 the mind, but let a j^roper foundation be laid ere the child 
 is hurled unceremoniously into the lap of Nature — ' the dear 
 old nurse.' A sound elementary training, on the lines of 
 the despised three R's, the formation of habits of order and 
 obedience, will qualify him, I ween, all the better to wander 
 away 
 
 ' Into regions yet untrod, 
 And read what is still unread 
 In the manuscripts of God.' 
 
 Read the rest ot the Poem (Longfellow' sBirdso/Passa^^e), 
 You will find it implied, that investigating Nature and 
 dreamily wandering on the Alps are two very different 
 things. Do not confuse school-time and playtime. ' Nae- 
 thin' without fash, except dirty faces and lang nails.' 
 Study what Mr. Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle have to say 
 on discipline and obe^lience. You will get the true 
 doctrine laid down — somewhere in their works — with more 
 force and elegance than I can pretend to. 
 
 14 
 
 And yet, moving on to page 47 — I find Mr. Jolly quoting 
 from Mr. Ruskin, — and this, look you, as a part of Mr. 
 Ruskin's own summary of his teaching. 
 
 ' That education should be open to all, is as certain as 
 that the sky should be ; but, as certainly, it should be en- 
 forced on none, and benevolent nature left to lead her 
 children, whether men or beasts, to take or leave at their 
 pleasure. Bring horse and man to the water, let them 
 drink if, and when, they will : the child who desires educa-
 
 24 
 
 tion will be bettered by it ; the child who dislikes it only 
 disgraced.' {Fors Clav., vol. viii. p. 258-9). 
 
 Heard one ever the like of this? There is here, as 
 usual, not utter absurdity but the glimmering of a half 
 truth. 
 
 ' Send a horse to the water, ye'll no mak' him drink, 
 Send a fule to the college, ye'll no mak' him think.' 
 
 Now I am not going into the question whether the State 
 should enforce education — compel parents, under monetary 
 penalties, to send children to school. On that point, clever 
 men have had different opinions, and in this country the 
 matter has been legislatively settled. But, when, in the 
 history of civilised people, has it been deliberately laid 
 down by a thoughtful man, that the children themselves 
 are to be the ultimate tribunal whether they will learn at 
 all, and what, and when ? 
 
 Analogies from the brute creation will not help Mr. 
 Ruskin. The wild animal eats and drinks what ' benevol- 
 ent nature ' suggests. As an animal comes more under the 
 sway of man its tastes and needs become more artificial. 
 A cat — semi-wild are the best of them — may be allowed to 
 eat and drink what it can get hold of — honestly or other- 
 wise — in addition to its regular rations of milk and liver. 
 A dog is not so allowed — though it will sometimes eat offal 
 in spite of you. Those who know anything of horses — 
 I know very little — know that a horse is not allowed to 
 drink where and when it likes. It has often to be restrained 
 from drinking — in its own interest, which is the interest of 
 its master. A horse may seem to have an insuperable aver- 
 sion to going along a certain road. A groom who knows 
 his business will assuredly get it at last to go along that 
 road — not by bullying but by judicious firmness. Similarly
 
 25 
 
 in a healthy community a child is not to be allowed to say 
 — ' I see no use in reading, writing, and the multiplication 
 table. They are all rot. It is hard that I should be kept 
 indoors working at them, I would rather play in the woods 
 and fields. I heard somebody read out of a book, that Mr. 
 Ruxton — or what's his name ? — says, that is the best training 
 for boys. It's the best thing I ever heard out of a book 
 any way.' No ! The parent or teacher steps in with gentle 
 compulsion — ay, with corporal chastisement if need be — 
 and makes the child learn. In time, he will find the prac- 
 tical good of this ; nay, in time he may come to love learn- 
 ing — taking this word in its mildest sense — a little for its 
 own sake. 
 
 The boy will not live to curse his parents — or let us say 
 bitterly to regret their folly — because they let him run free 
 and follow the dictates of ' benevolent nature.' Nature, 
 forsooth ! Have ye never heard of 'second nature ?' When 
 ye might think that a panting runner's powers were ex- 
 hausted he gets his ' second wind ' as it is called. 
 
 ' Have ye yet to argue out 
 The very primal thesis, plainest law, 
 — Man is not God ' — 
 
 (nay, nor is he only in the most of cases, as Mr. Ruskin 
 says, only a little above the birds and brutes — the meanest 
 is immeasurably above them). 
 
 ' But hath God's end to serve, 
 A master to obey, a course to take. 
 Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become ? ' 
 
 15 
 
 Make your children learn then — whether they are inclined
 
 26 
 
 or not — even with a little whipping if necessary, but we will 
 come to that painful part of the subject later on. Of course, 
 it is your business to distinguish between what a child will 
 not do and what a child cannot do. The instinct of paren- 
 tal affection must help the parent in this matter ; training, 
 experience, and ordinary human affection must guide the 
 teacher. I found in the Log-book of a Shetland School 
 taught by a patient, cultured, old lady quite a long account 
 of the difficulty — the impossibility I think — of getting a 
 certain child to distinguish between ' has ' and ' was.' She 
 had, very properly, considered the question whether this 
 was stupidity or obstinacy. Personally, I would have been 
 inclined to give 'pure devilment' as the solution, but I had 
 not the errant youth before me. Problems of this kind, 
 of course, are just what parents and teachers have constantly 
 to solve. Combe thought that phrenology would help 
 them. On that I can express no opinion. At any rate the 
 knot is not to be lightly cut — by sending away the child to 
 study birds — or to stone them. In this case it would likely 
 have been to ' catch piltoeks.' How to do this was all the 
 education needed by Shetland children according to one 
 ®f the lairds, who, I fear, never read a line of Mr. Ruskin's 
 works. 
 
 As children grow, of course it is expedient, it is neces- 
 sary to differentiate their education. It is senseless to keep 
 a girl strumming two hours a day at the piano, who may 
 have no talent in that direction, but who may have a talent 
 for painting. It is a pity to keep a boy exclusively, or 
 mainly working at Latin Grammar when the bent of his 
 mind is mathematical. 
 
 The writer in his school days was sent for a short time 
 to a teacher of drawintr and for a short time to a teacher
 
 27 
 
 of singing. It was speedily found that he had no talent for 
 either. In default of phrenology, I am afraid that the only 
 way of finding out what a boy or girl is fit to learn, is to 
 let him try it. But let it be an honest trial— under the 
 moral if not the physical rod of compulsion. Do not be 
 discouraged by the boy saying sulkily, I do not like this, I 
 cannot understand that. Imitate the cheery officer — in 
 Punch — who is represented as calling out to his stumbling, 
 staggering troop : — ' Come, my men ! Pull yourselves 
 together ; you're not so drunk as you think.' None of us, 
 perhaps, are as wise or as stupid as we imagine ourselves 
 to be. The girl whom the master supposes to be excep- 
 tionally backward, may be found by the examiner to be 
 exceptionally smart. (I have an instance in my mind's eye 
 at this moment). The stammering boy whom it seems a 
 cruelty to catechise, is often — I speak from experience — 
 found to be one of the smartest in his class — and that — pre- 
 cisely where the Easy-chair Educationist would expect him 
 to fail, — namely, in oral answering ! 
 
 I have taken the liberty of referring to my own school 
 days. I remember another boy somewhat junior to me. 
 His leanings were distinctly mathematical so that there 
 might have been some excuse for not troubling him too 
 much with foreign tongues. He sulked over the classics 
 and asked his father : — What was the use of learning Latin ? 
 The father was a Radical in politics but somewhat of a 
 Tory at heart (as all good men are). He — as far as I can 
 remember — treated the blasphemous question with silent 
 indignation. The boy was kept at Latin, and, setting apart 
 what school or college distinction he gained by his know- 
 ledge thereof, setting aside the ' advancement in life ' (des- 
 picable thing !) that it helped him to, it has been to him a
 
 28. 
 
 means of self-culture and a source, directly and indirectly, 
 of much quiet enjoyment. 
 
 18 
 
 Mistakes have been made — mistakes will continue to be 
 made by practical educationists as to the fitness of a boy 
 for this or that. But even if the boy has been kept for an 
 undue time at some study for which he has no aptitude, 
 something which he drops as soon as he can — which he 
 never consciously turns to again, are we to conclude that 
 the time has been wasted ? Certainly not. His mental 
 faculties have been exercised ; memory, reminiscence, com- 
 parison, distinction, reasoning have been brought into play, 
 whatever he has been learning. 
 
 Besides, — and this is of great importance if he has been 
 reared in any school, or in any home where there was dis- 
 cipline worthy of the name, some habit of order and obed- 
 ience has been formed ; some self denial, some self repres- 
 sion there has been, to fit him for his future struggles in the 
 outer world. This is better than letting him run free, 
 moved only by ' benevolent nature.' ' Be ye not like the 
 horse or mule,' says a book reverenced by Mr. Ruskin. 
 Surely, in spirit at least, the same authority says, ' Be still 
 less like the wild goat and the coney.' By obedience man 
 rises to a higher liberty than that of the coney or the goat. 
 True, it is obedience to fallible man whose orders are often 
 wrong. One must take one's risk of that. 
 
 ' If you loved only what were worth your love, 
 Love were clear gain and wholly well for you. ' 
 
 Similarly, if man had only to see and obey the admittedly
 
 29 
 
 highest and worthiest, human society would be perfect — 
 and, as such, would cease to exist. On this point I would 
 refer to an interesting account of the method adopted to 
 train an undisciplined boy (in the Edinburgh Secular 
 School) by Mr. Williams. (See Mr. Jolly's Combe, p. 692). 
 A note tells us that in certain cases Mr. Williams found it 
 desirable to ' put the child through a series of mechanical 
 exercises like military drilling, for the sake of inducing the 
 habit of obedience.' 
 
 The shade of Achilles, we remember, thus addressed 
 Ulysses, * I would wish being on earth to serve another man 
 of no estate who had not much livelihood, rather than rule 
 over all the departed dead.' Thus, better is it for a boy to 
 be under a thumb of a certificated teacher of a little culture 
 and narrow views, than to wander unchecked among flitting 
 phenomena of nature. Wandering in a wood Dante went 
 far astray. After instruction, discipline, rebuke and pain, 
 he was invested with physical and spiritual authority over 
 himself {Piirgatorio, xxviii.) 
 
 17 
 
 I PURPOSELY omit, for the present, references to corporal 
 punishment (Jolly, p. 46) and pass on to another point. 
 
 ' Education should vary with Circumstances, i.e., .... 
 the varying circumstances of the children to be educated.' 
 
 One is bewildered, one hardly knows where to start. Of 
 course, in a sense Education must vary with circumstances. 
 Under whatsoever uniform method it may be given, its 
 reception will depend upon innumerable factors in the case 
 of each individual child — its physical health, its distance 
 from school, its ancestry, its home influences, etc., etc.
 
 30 
 
 But if the method of giving education is to vary indefin- 
 itely in the same way — then — we may give up all attempts 
 at association in culture and leave every she-bear to lick her 
 own whelps. If, however, one great aim of education is to 
 develop individual characteristics — another aim, to be 
 followed pari passu, is to repress individual characteristics. 
 Ruskinites may be horrified at this, but it has been an 
 essential part of any thing deserving the name of education 
 since the world began. To held these two aims steadily in 
 view, that man may be at once a developed individual and 
 a social individual, is just the problem which meets us. 
 The boy sent to a boarding school finds that masters or 
 comrades will ignore or snub those personal tastes as 
 to play, dress, food, etc., which perhaps a fond mother or 
 sister humoured. And this is part of his education — his 
 education as a social being. Of course, care must be taken 
 that, when the boy's fancies are snubbed, the boy is not 
 snubbed. 
 
 But let us go back to the original proposition of Mr. 
 Ruskin as summarised by Mr. Jolly. ' Education should 
 vary with circumstances.' Take education in one sense and 
 the proposition is a truism. The education of a man to be 
 a blacksmith, a brewer, a lawyer must of course vary (assu- 
 ming, perhaps rashly, that in Mr. Ruskin's Ideal Common- 
 wealth lawyers would be suffered to exist). But I maintain 
 that the education of a child should not at the outset vary, 
 according as he is to be a blacksmith, a brewer or a 
 lawyer. Still less should it vary, as is hinted, accord- 
 ing to his surroundings. If it is to vary, it should vary 
 to some extent inversely with his surroundings. This 
 will be explained further on.
 
 31 
 
 18 
 
 Let us take up Mr. Ruskin sentence by sentence {Fors 
 Clavigera, viii. p. 254-5 quoted by Mr. Jolly, p. 49). 
 
 ' I start with the general principle, that every school is to 
 be fitted for the children in its neighbourhood who are likely 
 to grow up and live in its neighbourhood.' 
 
 This I utterly deny. There may be special schools of 
 smith-craft, of dairy-work, of agriculture. A great deal of 
 good work is, I believe, being done in this way. But the 
 mass of schools, using the word in its popular sense, must 
 andshould aim in the first place at an elementary education, 
 suited for all places and all classes. What a boy is to learn 
 — and how he is to be taught it — are pretty much the same 
 whether the boy lives amid the gardens of Kent, in the 
 centre of Manchester, or on the heathery slopee of Inverness. 
 
 No assumption can be — or should be made that the 
 children in the neighbourhood of a school are to continue to 
 live in that neighbourhood. Whether they will or not 
 depends on many other circumstances than their school 
 education. 
 
 19 
 
 'The idea of a general education which is to fit everybody \ 
 to be Emperor of Russia, and provoke a boy, whatever he 
 is, to want to be something better, and wherever he was 
 born, to think it a disgrace to die, is the most entirely and 
 directly diabolic of all the countless stupidities into which 
 the British nation has been of late betrayed by its avarice 
 and irrdigion.' 
 
 One hesitates here between the use of Mr. Burchell's
 
 32 
 
 'Fudge,' or the Ettrick Shepherd's 'Hoots-Toots-Toots- 
 Hoots.' 'Directly diabolic' is rather strong, but as it is only 
 * pretty Fanny's way,' let us not return railing — still less be 
 tempted to ' sweer at lairge.' 
 
 There are those who would fain think that a nation 
 which has been and is now striving to place within the 
 reach of the poorest, such advantages as, of yore, nobles and 
 the sons of nobles did not enjoy, cannot be said to be 
 actuated by an irreligious spirit, even though Education 
 Acts and Education Codes may fall short of perfection. 
 There are those who would hold that a nation which now, 
 from central and local taxation — and very heavy the latter 
 is in some places — spends millions on what does not bring in 
 any direct return in cash, cannot well be called superlatively 
 avaricious, even though many of the schools arc conducted 
 on homely lines, provoking the sneer of the ' superior person.' 
 Surely Mr. Ruskin would not, in cold blood, call those 
 agencies evil which ' provoke a boy, whatever he is, to want 
 to be something better.' Observe, the question is not now 
 about being better off, though with bated breath Izvould say 
 that there is no harm in a boy wishing for that too. Is it 
 something altogether bad, this feeling which prompts boy 
 after boy to forsake his native clod — which leads him across 
 the ocean, not necessarily to acquire wealth and get on in 
 ' society' (terrible crimes in the eyes of some whose position 
 and income are secure) but to avoid sordid poverty and to 
 lead an honest healthy life? The reference to the Emperor 
 of Russia is a rhetorical embellishment — a piece of glitter of 
 which the author of The Stones of Venice has surely no 
 need. There are, as Mr. Ruskin would admit, elements 
 which are or ought to be common to the Education of a 
 future Czar and a predestined ploughman. Nay, in the very
 
 33 
 
 next sentence Mr. Ruskin gives himself away and goes off 
 on the opposite tack. 
 
 20 
 
 * There are, indeed,' he says, ' certain elements of educa- 
 tion which are alike necessary to the inhabitants of every 
 spot of earth. Cleanliness, obedience, the first laws of 
 music, mechanics and geometry, the primary facts of 
 geography and astronomy, and the outlines of history, 
 should evidently be taught alike to poor and rich, to sailor 
 and shepherd, to labourer and shop boy.' Truly, a large 
 order ! Mr. Ruskin's pendulum wildly swings. Reading 
 some of his utterances, we might imagine that the educa- 
 tion of the poor man's son was to be pretty much a matter 
 of fitting him for the trade he is to exercise. Looking at 
 other passages, we find that the lad is to receive an impos- 
 ing amount of culture. This may come some day, when 
 the children now being educated at the much despised 
 primary schools grow up to take an interest in the educa- 
 tion of their own children. It may take more than this 
 generation to 'pass away before all these things be ful- 
 filled.' At present between a Code on the one side and 
 parental neglect on the other the teacher has plenty to do. 
 
 21 
 
 I HAVE already dealt with what comes next, i.e., the scorn 
 Mr. Ruskin pours upon the three R's — which one might 
 imagine to be Riot, Rapine, and Revolution. 'Ten mil- 
 lions of inspectors of schools collected on Cader Idris' should 
 not move him, it seems. The picture suggested is an 
 
 C
 
 34 
 
 imposing one. Committed to Mr. Ruskin's mercies, these 
 functionaries would meet a fate similar to what overtook 
 the Bards at the hands of King Edward or the Priests of 
 Baal at the hands of Elijah. (The fate of the former by the 
 way is not matter of breviary). Then we have an account 
 of an ideal parish school {Fors, viii, p. 239). There are 
 some capital suggestions here, but somehow the ' cultivable 
 land' irresistibly suggests the policy of Do-the-boys- Hall at 
 the delightful village of Greta Bridge. 
 
 Rather funny is the lordly concession to the three R's. 
 There is to be a 'children's library, in which the scholars 
 who care to read may learn that art as deftly as they like, by 
 themselves, helping each other, without troubling the master.' 
 
 Heaven help them ! 
 
 It would seem that in his cooler moments Mr. Ruskin 
 would perhaps admit that there is no great harm in the 
 three R's, but that it is a great pity if they are taught with- 
 out the accompaniment of moral training. 
 
 * Why, certainly!' And the same remark applies to the 
 teaching of astronomy, botany, zoology, free-hand drawing, 
 and art-criticism. 
 
 Grammar shares the scorn which is poured on the three 
 R's and their surroundings. Lessons in Grammar will not 
 enable us to write elegantly (begging Mr. Ruskin's pardon 
 for assuming that a poor boy or girl ought to write at all) 
 but grammatical training will prevent, or at least check the 
 corruption of that noble language of which Mr. Ruskin is 
 such a consummate master. It gives a better training to 
 the mental faculties than Botany, and is more universally 
 useful. Of course, I decline to take the word useful in the 
 base, mechanical, bread-and-butter sense in which some 
 would employ it.
 
 35 
 
 Before leaving this part of the subject, I would say that 
 there has been not too much but too little insistence on the 
 three R's. Too many children leave school unable to read 
 fluently, unable to cast accounts, unable to put together with 
 approximate accuracy a few sentences of English. And 
 these are the mild requirements of the State. 
 
 22 
 
 In dealing with Part Second of Mr. Jolly's book, I will be 
 brief The title is : — The training of taste in schools. 
 
 With much that he says on his own account and with 
 much that he quoted from Mr. Ruskin and others, I am in 
 hearty sympathy. I would like to see schools better furnish- 
 ed with drawings or paintings historically or scientifically 
 instructive, and also with drawings or engravings ' directly 
 inUnded for aesthetic purposes! I agree with Mr. Jolly in 
 deprecating the constant exhibition of anatomical charts, 
 plain or coloured, and I would add that the representations 
 of some species of animal life (snakes, lemurs, etc.) should 
 be kept from the walls unless the infants are to have night- 
 mare before their time. 
 
 On the subject of surrounding the young with beautiful 
 objects, Mr. Jolly quotes a most appropriate passage from 
 Plato. But when he goes on to quote Mr. Augustus Wilkins 
 {National Education in Greece^, he soon gets on more dang- 
 erous ground. After a glowing paragraph on the friezes of 
 Phidias and the colonnades of Iktinus,he rashly lays down:— 
 'Not by her discipline, like Sparta and Rome, but by the 
 unfailing charm of her gracious influence did Athens train 
 her children.' 
 
 Precisely. But it needs only a superficial acquaintance
 
 36 
 
 with ancient or modern history to let us see that, for healthy 
 enduring national life, discipline is wanted as well as the 
 Worship of the Beautiful. Thus we are led naturally to 
 Part Third. 
 
 23 
 
 Moral Educa tion in Schools. At the outset we may 
 
 cheerfully — or rather sadly-admit that moral training in 
 schools and everywhere else should be better than it is. But 
 with equal seriousness must we protest at the outset against 
 the fierce denunciations of the present state of things. The 
 Hebrew prophet I have already referred to, after slaying the 
 priests of Baal, retreated into the wilderness, soured and in- 
 dignant, imagining himself to be the only worshipper of the 
 Lord. He was assured, however, that this was not the case. 
 Mr. Ruskin, without supernatural aid, might have found out 
 that there are thousands of teachers, lay and clerical, who, 
 uninspired by such genius as his, and uncheered by hope 
 of worldly fame, are doing sound work in the way of making 
 their fellow creatures wiser and better. We have already 
 learned that we ' cannot read,' cannot ' understand any 
 thoughtful writing,' etc. Now let us look at what is quoted 
 on p. 103 {Fors, viii. p. 279). 
 
 ' The laws of virtue and honour are to be taught compul- 
 sorily to all men.' One might cavil at the form of this 
 sentence. Does it mean that teachers are to be compelled 
 to teach them if they teach at all? But let us go on — 
 'Whereas our present forms of education refuse to teach 
 them any.' 
 
 What is meant by refusing to teach? Does it mean that 
 the curriculum of our schools and colleges, our educational
 
 3; 
 
 Codes and instructions not only exclude the ' laws of virtue 
 and honour' (as they exclude the Hottentot language), but 
 render it impracticable to teach them? Nay more! It 
 seems that these forms 'allow the teaching, by the persons 
 interested in their promulgation, of the laws of cruelty and 
 lying, until we find these British Islands gradually filling 
 with a breed of men who cheat without shame, and kill 
 without remorse.' Now putting aside all wide and wild 
 words, it is of course admitted that morality should be 
 taught to the young — at the impressionable stage of their 
 lives. But how is this to be taught? As little as possible, 
 I should say, by lectures on virtue and duty. Teach them 
 by examples in literature. Teach them by gently forcing 
 habits of well-doing, for by doing good we become good. 
 For this the teacher will overhaul Aristotle's Ethics, but will 
 not inflict much of the text thereof on his charges. Lastly, 
 above all teach them by your own example. This is a much 
 more difficult programme to carry out than the delivery of 
 periodical lectures on the virtues. 
 
 I am pretty sure I could quote Mr. Ruskin for the whole 
 of the programme. Morality is not a matter of separate 
 lessons but is to pervade the whole school-life. This of 
 course is a truism, but I wish to set it in its proper place as 
 against the idea of lectures on the virtues. 
 
 24 
 
 It is interesting to notice how the repetition of actions — 
 without a positively ethical motive at first — tends to react 
 on the soul. 
 
 Take the case of a boy of rude, perhaps evil parentage. 
 Through the efforts of the School Board Officer he is driven
 
 38 
 
 at last to school. He comes, but his entry is not a model 
 of grace. Whether from a desire to show his independence 
 or from thoughtless evil habit, he will perhaps enter with a 
 wild rush, wearing his cap. This of course is checked. 
 Next day, mayhap he removes his cap, chucks it into any 
 corner near him, and pushes on in a rough way to his 
 allotted seat, regardless of the limbs or the property of others. 
 
 This is not a case for a lecture on the abstract beauty of 
 Courtesy. Nor is it a case — just yet — for reading lessons 
 drawn from the life of Lancelot or any other model of court- 
 esy. It is a case for accustoming the boy to small acts of 
 courtesy. Let him be taught to remove his cap as he enters 
 the school — to walk quietly up the floor — to move past his 
 fellows without barking their shins or upsetting their slates, 
 to answer civilly when he is civilly spoken to, neither mum- 
 bling nor yelling. Let all this be enforced with a firm hand 
 and, if necessary, with a flexible strap. The feeling of 
 courtesy will be generated by repeated acts implying court- 
 esy, if indeed, as is highly probable, the poor lad is not an 
 utter brute but an inchoate man. And on this point we may 
 quote Mr. Ruskin himself. (Jolly, p. 117, Fors, vi. p. 225). 
 
 ' Moral education begins in making the creature to be 
 educated clean and obedient. This must be done thoroughly 
 and at all cost, and with any kind of compulsion rendered 
 necessary by the nature of the animal, be it dog, child, or 
 man.' 
 
 The example of the other scholars will of course do 
 much, but the master himself must set the example by being 
 thoroughly courteous to the meanest socially — to the vilest 
 morally — of the children in the school. Nor should this 
 appear a paradox, when we reflect that we are no longer 
 living in the days of Judge Jeffreys, and that the Bench
 
 39 
 
 treats with courtesy and consideration even the prisoner 
 who may have to be sentenced to a long term of penal 
 servitude — or to death. 
 
 25 
 
 Let us remember that the art of coming in at a door em- 
 braces a considerable part of the duty of man. Mr. Ruskin 
 indeed complains (Jolly, p. 104, Sesame and the Lilies, § 80) 
 'that there is hardly a girls' school in this Christian kingdom 
 where the children's courage or sincerity would be thought 
 of half so much importance as their way of coming in at a 
 door.' (Now, I am not greatly concerned to defend girls' 
 schools. I presume that — so to speak — 'genteel' boarding 
 schools are referred to. I am afraid that there is a good 
 deal wrong with them. But I would try to abstain from 
 sweeping generalisations till I had a glimmering notion of 
 the methods of say half-a-dozen. On this subject of coming 
 in at a door, however, I would join issue with The Master. 
 When a girl has learned to enter a room properly, and to 
 leave it properly, she has learned a good deal. Personally, 
 I would place this art above the art of dealing with circulat- 
 ing decimals. But, the Ruskinite will say : Would you put 
 it above training in courage and sincerity ? Pardon me, 
 I would say, the training here is a training in courage and 
 sincerity — and in other virtues. There is a great deal 
 in the way that a girl enters a room. She must not enter 
 with an arrogant air as if nobody in the room were her equal. 
 She must not enter with a combative air as if she expected 
 to have her personal pretensions disputed. She must not 
 enter with an over-humble air as if it were an honour to herthat 
 the company should receive her. She must not enter with
 
 40 
 
 an affected air of delight in the company. She must not 
 enter as if in a hurry. She must not enter with real or ap- 
 parent reluctance. When a girl has mastered these and 
 other points (I never trained girl* personally), she has gone 
 very far on the road not merely of external good breeding 
 but of goodness, if there be any truth in the old Aristotelian 
 idea of habits forming character. 
 
 It will be said, of course, that this training engenders 
 hypocrisy. Not at all. The boy who comes to school with 
 little respect for the master, for his school-mates, for educa- 
 tion in the abstract, for anything created or uncreated, is 
 trained by small matters of obedience, by the example of 
 others, and by the respect shown to himself, not only to 
 simulate but to feel respect. The gawky untrained girl 
 will welcome some of her acquaintance with obtrusive and 
 effusive delight ; from others she will hold aloof in dislike 
 or in disdain. In company she will display either ill-regu- 
 lated joy or unseemly sulkiness. This has to be checked. 
 The expression of emotion has to be kept within bounds. 
 In the first place she must learn that all human beings are 
 to be treated with consideration, though we cannot help 
 liking some better than others. In the second case, she 
 must remember that though she has her own moods of 
 gladness and of sorrow, she must not obtrude the outward 
 signs of them on others who have not the same reasons for 
 rejoicing or for grieving. (I refer to demeanour in general 
 society, not to confidential intercourse). This training, if 
 properly carried out, results not in hypocrisy but in self- 
 restraint and a due regard — not a mere pretence of regard 
 — for the feelings of others. In fact when a man or woman 
 has come to have a due regard for the feelings of others 
 and to make but little demand that others shall have regard 
 
 J
 
 4« 
 
 for his or her feelings, he has gone far — very far indeed — 
 in the way of moral education. Of course the training must 
 not get the length of self-repression. Too wild an attempt 
 to consider our neighbours may result in what is neither for 
 their comfort nor for our own. It is absurd — say — that a 
 party of girls should agree to play croquet, every one wish- 
 ing to oblige the others, but every one secretly preferring 
 lawn-tennis. It is absurd — but perhaps not uncommon, 
 that four men from polite mutual consideration should agree 
 to play whist when each would prefer to smoke and chat. 
 
 26 
 
 But I have been led away from my subject — perhaps not 
 so very far after all. Anyhow, I daresay that much or all 
 of what I have just been trying to say will be found much 
 better expressed somewhere in the voluminous works of 
 Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 I have a strong impression too that I am in substantial 
 agreement with Mr. Jolly. Where I differ from the latter 
 gentleman is as to the value of systematic lectures on morals 
 for young children. In the training of teachers they should 
 of course find a place. Invaluable hints for the moral and 
 intellectual training of the young will be found in Mr. Jolly's 
 Combe. It is a pity that the book is so unwieldy. But look 
 at p. 310 and the pages before and after. As I have hinted, 
 one may to a great extent avail himself of the suggestions 
 without ' knowing the bumps,' or even assuming the truth 
 of phrenology.
 
 42 
 
 27 
 
 But there are some other matters ranged under this head- 
 ing with which I can by no means agree. Mr. Ruskin, who 
 so cheerily denounces the present Government system and 
 scorns its hide-bound inspectors, is no anarchist. He would 
 have (Jolly's Ruskin, p. ii8) 'training schools for youth 
 established at Government cost, and under Government 
 discipline, over the whole country.' There they are to be 
 taught the ' laws of health, and the exercises enjoined by 
 them.' Good ! But lay stress on the exercises and do not 
 crowd the minds of the very young with too much anatomy 
 or physiology. They are also to be taught 'habits of 
 gentleness and justice.' Very good. Keep a due emphasis 
 on the word ' habits.' The child is also to be taught it 
 seems ' The calling by which he is to live.' 
 
 A statesman — a would-be law-maker — needs to keep his 
 mind in a state of proper balance between those who think 
 that 'government for every man must always do every 
 dings,' and those who are fain ' to do mitout a President 
 and no Government at all.' 
 
 Is the State to prescribe ' the calling by which he is to 
 live ? ' Is the lad to try one calling after another at the 
 State's expense? Of course, I say nothing against the 
 establishment — from central, county, or municipal funds — 
 of technical schools, or technological as, it is said, they 
 should be called. But I would protest against this expand- 
 ing idea of the State's functions — against the notion that 
 the State, as such, is bound to take up everything that is 
 included in the Ideal of Education — even if modern superior 
 persons were agreed as to what is the Ideal of Education. 
 I would be inclined to leave a good deal to be done by
 
 43 
 
 voluntary agencies — St. George's Guild, for instance, among 
 others. Mr. Ruskin's desire for schools established by 
 Government all over the land does not seem to harmonise 
 with his Cock-and-Bull theory as to the majority of the 
 human race. 
 
 28 
 
 There follow some thoughtful and valuable suggestions, 
 with which I do not quarrel, on Cleanliness, Obedience, 
 Honesty and Kindness to animals. But, I would remark 
 in passing that some difficulty may be found in the dutiful 
 reception of lessons on kindness to animals, if they are given 
 by parents or teachers who are notoriously devoted to 
 * angling, the crudest, the coldest and the stupidest of 
 pretended sports.' (Byron). 
 
 29 
 
 After this we are again irritated by quotations introducing 
 what I would call Mr. Ruskin's ' fatalism.' The scholar Is 
 to be taught (Jolly's Ruskin, p. 124) *the irrevocable ordi- 
 nance that his mental rank among men is fixed from the 
 hour he was born ; that, by no temporary or violent effort, 
 can he train, though he may seriously injure, the faculties he 
 has ; that, by no manner of effort, can he increase them ; and 
 that his best happiness is to consist in the admiration of 
 powers by him for ever unattainable, and of arts and deeds 
 by him for ever inimitable.' 
 
 Mr. Burchell's ' Fudge ' and the Shepherd's ' Hoots-Toots ' 
 are inadequate expressions here. Indignation swells and 
 one is tempted to borrow expressions from the Ruskinite
 
 44 
 
 theological vocabulary. Woe to the land where the above 
 becomes the regular and accepted teaching ! Who is to tell 
 us the mental rank of 
 
 * A helpless infant newly born, 
 Whose little hands unconscious hold 
 The keys of darkness and of morn?' 
 
 Who is to map out the precise mental endowments of the 
 growing boy or girl ? Not the most loving and most judi- 
 cious parent, not the certificated teacher, not Dr. Spurzheim 
 the phrenologist (he would not pretend to do it) — not a 
 committee of ' ten millions of Inspectors of Schools collected 
 on Cader Idris' — not the Grand Master of St. George's 
 Company. Is it not better to overrate a child's powers in 
 the way of kindly encouragement— to tell him that what 
 man has done man may do, than to let him feel that it is 
 no use trying to do this or that? But with this matter 
 I have dealt before. I wish now to look on it in connection 
 with new matter here introduced. 
 
 30 
 
 Emulation, it seems, is to be discouraged and Competi- 
 tion abolished. I deny this. If, to go back to what I have 
 just been dealing with, we had an exact chart of a child's 
 faculties, we might lay down with precision what and how 
 far he was fit to learn. As it is, emulation is one of our 
 means of finding out what he is able to do — whether physic- 
 ally or mentally. A boy will learn to run better by match- 
 ing himself against his fellows than against his father's stop 
 watch. I have an idea that, as a general rule, a boy will 
 learn to read, write, and cipher; or, if these be too contempt-
 
 45 
 
 ible arts, will acquire better whatever Mr, Ruskin may think 
 to be the elements of a good education, in healthy rivalry 
 with his mates than he will do under the supervision of a 
 Ruskinite father and a Ruskinite tutor, who will draw out 
 a curriculum for him based on their theory as to his 'mental 
 rank among men.' 
 
 The love of Approbation is a powerful factor in human 
 nature. There is a bump for it. I do not know that there 
 is a special bump of Emulativeness, but there should be 
 one. I have just looked up my long ignored friend 
 Dugald Stewart, to find what he ennumerates among the 
 * Certain principles which co-operate with our moral powers 
 in their influence on Conduct.' These are : — a Regard to 
 character, Sympathy, the Sense of the Ridiculous, Taste. 
 I do not find the spirit of Emulation distinctly brought for- 
 ward in this chapter, but it may be held as connected with 
 the desire of esteem which he mentions when dealing with 
 the first of the four principles. Now from one point of view 
 the writer is inclined to adhere to Kant's Categorical Im- 
 perative — to Rigid Virtue for its own sake. But in the 
 training of the young we must fall back on old Aristotle 
 after all and attend to the formation of virtuous habits in 
 fallible man, hereditarily corrupt. (I speak here scientifi- 
 cally, not theologically). Noiv we need all the aids to virtui 
 tJiat we can get. In the garden of Eden the Categorical 
 Imperative might have been suflficient — but it was not. But, 
 you say. Competition and the Spirit of Emulation will lead 
 a boy to try wildly what he has no power to do. Pray, do 
 you know, or does he know precisely what he can or cannot 
 do ? How is he to find out except by trying ? The Spirit 
 of Emulation will draw out a boy to do more than he will 
 do for the abstract love of learning — more than he will do
 
 46 
 
 perhaps, for love of the parent who urges him to learn — ay, 
 assuming that love to be one tenth that of the parent for 
 him. 
 
 But some will bring a graver charge against the spirit of 
 Emulation. They will say that it may corrupt the children 
 morally. My friends, you must take your chance of this. 
 So may anything else in human nature, except the Catego- 
 rical Imperative. ' From each of the four principles ' which 
 I have cited from Dugald Stewart, ' unfortunate consequen- 
 ces result,' he tells us, ' wherever it prevails in the character, 
 as the leading motive to action.' In a previous chapter 
 dealing with Emulation directly he gives us a passage from 
 Aristotle's Rhetoric (ii. ii), which may be translated 
 thus. 
 
 ' Emulation is a virtuous feeling and characteristic of 
 virtuous persons, while envy is vicious and characteristic of 
 vicious persons ; for the emulous man is led on by his 
 emulation to the attainment of good things whereas the envy 
 of the envious man merely makes him try to prevent others 
 having them.' 
 
 31 
 
 Boys are not to be brought up that they may be hermits, 
 nor girls that they may be angels (will the dear ones excuse 
 me saying so ?) All the elements of human nature have to 
 be taken into account ; of course I do not say that they 
 should all be lectured on. The spirit of emulation is an 
 important element in human nature. It cannot be sup- 
 pressed in any human being worthy of the name. It should 
 not be ignored by any educationist worthy of consideration. 
 And yet we find Mr. Ruskin denouncing emulation and the
 
 47 
 
 ' giving of prizes,' and going on as follows. (Jolly's Ruskin, 
 p. 130, A Joy for ever, § 135-6) :— 
 
 ' All that you can depend upon in a boy, as significative 
 of true power, likely to issue in good fruit, is his will to work 
 for the work's sake, not his desire to surpass his school- 
 fellows.' But this will to work for the work's sake — how 
 are we to evolve it ? Are we to assume it as not merely 
 latent but active in the urchin when he comes to school. 
 Is it not the case that human beings have constantly to be 
 prompted to actions materially good by motives which are 
 not formally of the highest rank, just as surely as we are 
 prompted to eating by hunger and to drinking by thirst — 
 and other motives. How is a child taught to walk ? After 
 that divine moment in the life of the child when of its own 
 free will it raises itself and stands erect, comes the time 
 when, joying in spontaneity of movement, it moves from 
 chair to chair. Besides delighting in walking for its own 
 sake, the child will toddle manfully from the knees of one 
 parent to those of the other, moved in some measure by the 
 caress it receives at either end of its little pilgrimage. A 
 very laudable motive for the child, you will say. Certainly, 
 but even in this innocent fashion comes in something differ- 
 ent from the ' will to work for the work's sake.' But there 
 is worse than this. Johnnie will soon be trying to show 
 that he can walk, or run, or climb, or refrain from crying 
 when he is hurt, as well as his brother Tommie or his 
 neighbour Charlie. Nay more, he will soon be attempting 
 impossibilities and, having no fear of Mr. Ruskin before his 
 eyes, be trying to match his tiny limbs against those of his 
 father. It is just the business of those who have the charge 
 of the child to see that this spirit of rivalry works for good 
 and not for ill. Similarly in the school, which like the
 
 4^ 
 
 Round Table is ' an image of the mighty world,' the same 
 spirit has to be utilized. The teacher of course has to see 
 that powers are not over-strained, but that is just one of the 
 problems of his profession. He must not try to get rid of 
 the problem by abolishing competition and treating the 
 spirit of emulation as if it did not exist. But, it will be 
 objected, such feelings as vanity and malice are engendered 
 by competition. Certainly, but you must take your risk of 
 that. Children have to be kept from 'picking and stealing,' 
 but this is not to be done by chopping off their fingers, nor 
 by erasing appletrees from the face of the earth. There is 
 a great moral training involved in competing tvithoiit malice, 
 whether it he in the Latin Class or in the cricket field. 
 • Every child should be measured by its own standard, 
 trained to its own duty, and rewarded by its just praise.' 
 (Jolly's Ruskin, p. 131, Fors, viii. 255). True, O King! But, 
 as I have urged at some length, who is to determine the 
 'standard ' of any child ? We can find out only by trying, 
 and the spirit of emulation — I round it in your ears once 
 more — will, perhaps, stir to effort more than abstract lectures 
 on virtue or aesthetic will do. 
 
 • It is the effort that deserves praise, not the success.' 
 (Ibid.) True ! But this is only in the 
 
 * Pure eyes 
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove I ' 
 
 Outside the sphere of fallible human judgment, outside 
 the operation of stern natural laws which seem to make 
 little allowance for unsuccessful effort, we assume a sphere 
 — the kingdom of grace/ as Leibnitz would perhaps call it 
 —where
 
 49 
 
 ' Human power and failure are equalized for ever. 
 And the one great light that haloes all is the passionate bright 
 endeavour.' 
 
 Now, some of the teaching of Mr. Ruskin would tend to 
 check honest effort — would tend to make a boy thhik that 
 he need not try to make himself more proficient, since he 
 will certainly not rise to the level of the crack boys in the 
 school — especially if he reads those lines where he will learn 
 that in all liklihood he is not intended to be better than 
 ' sheep and robins,' ' cocks and bulls.' But this is unutter- 
 ably false — I was almost about to imitate Mr. Ruskin and 
 call it thoroughly diabolical — teaching. 
 
 ' We ' — not merely the companions of Ulysses, but the 
 humblest of us ' were not formed to lead the life of brutes.' 
 
 ' But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.' 
 
 32 
 
 Following these remarks we find a denunciation of * the 
 modern cram and examination system ' as a result (Query 
 — cause) of ' the struggle to get lucrative places,' which, I 
 presume, is a high crime in the sons of poor men. Now I 
 am not greatly concerned to defend the ' modern system.' 
 But there is much education which is not cram ; there are 
 many examinations conducted on modern lines which are 
 not altogether irrational. Mr. Ruskin {ibid.) goes on to 
 attribute this modern system partly to ' the radical block- 
 headism of supposing that all men are naturally equal and 
 can only make their way by elbowing.' Really, it is only 
 a man of genius whom we can tolerate writing thus. The 
 rewards of a competitive system are not moral rewards to
 
 50 
 
 those of a number of men equally gifted who have made the 
 best use of their talents. 
 
 If indeed men were equally gifted intellectually, this 
 would be a good way to test moral superiority. But the 
 system proceeds on the assumption that men are not 
 * naturally equal,' and tries, with more or less skill, to find 
 out those who are better. Whether, indeed competitive 
 examination Is the best means ot selecting men for respon- 
 sible posts in the army, the navy or the civil service, is a 
 question into which I do not propose to enter. Here I am 
 only concerned with emulation and competition as factors 
 in education. After this we have more prelections on the 
 ' accurately defined and absolutely limited capacity' of every 
 child — etc., etc., etc. But I spare my readers — and myself 
 Let me quote one more gem, before quitting this part of the 
 subject. Mr. Ruskin advocates some kind of a pass exam- 
 ination — vaguely described — adapted to ' average capacity.' 
 
 * Beyond such indication or acknowledgment of merit, 
 there should be neither prizes nor honours ; these are meant 
 by Heaven to be the proper rewards of a man's consistent 
 and kindly life, not of a youth's temporary and selfish 
 exertion.' 
 
 Outsiders as well as parsons have a free and easy way of 
 assuring us of the intentions of Heaven. Those of us who 
 try to observe piously and humbly the course of human 
 life, might be inclined to say that the * consistent and kindly 
 life* is its own reward, and that prizes and honours are 
 required in many cases — as human nature goes — to stimulate 
 men to exceptional exertion.
 
 51 
 
 33 
 
 Let us get back to education. Get the boy to work by 
 what reasonable inducements you can : — by punishment 
 and reward, palms or ' palmies/ praise or blame, thirst for 
 success or shame at defeat. Form good habits in him and 
 then you will perhaps find arising in him the ' will to work 
 for the work's sake.' A similar training awaits him in the 
 outer world. School life is not to be specially arranged 
 that the boy may be trained to be a blacksmith or a joiner, 
 a physician or a lawyer, but to train his intellectual and 
 moral nature so as to fit him generally for a profession or 
 a handicraft. In time he may come to love good work for 
 the work's sake. If he does not get to this high pitch it is 
 better that he should do good work for motives which are 
 not the highest, than that he should be taught to hold him- 
 self only a trifle above ' sheep and robins,' * cocks and 
 bulls,' Whatever superior persons on the one side and 
 materialist philosophers — save the mark — on the other may 
 say, I would fain concur with two such different men as 
 Carlyle and Disraeli in holding man to be * a little lower 
 than the angels.' As for what is intended for any individual 
 man, let us be careful. Mr. Ruskin, and others inside and 
 outside of Christian communities will tell us glibly what is 
 ' meant by Heaven ' in this case or that. ' Who hath known 
 the mind of the Lord or who hath been his counsellor ? ' 
 
 34 
 
 Let us draw to an end. Some weird observations on — 
 what is supposed to be Political Economy — are quoted. It 
 is difficult to imagine that Mr. Ruskin and his faithful
 
 52 
 
 disciples can, individually or collectively, have read six con- 
 secutive pages — say the initial chapter — of any one of such 
 Philistines as Mill or Fawcett. The merest tyro could 
 assure them that in this ' dismal science ' wealth does not 
 mean gold — nor does Political Economy mean the art of 
 acquiring gold. There is an undercurrent of assumption 
 that Political Economy is to be condemned because it is 
 not a system of Religion and Morals. It would be as 
 reasonable to blame geometry — literally earth-measurement 
 — because it does not instruct us in landscape painting. 
 And yet, I fancy, a little knowledge of geometry will keep 
 a man from gross errors in perspective. So, I maintain, a 
 little knowledge of Political Economy may keep a man from 
 making important blunders in the moral sphere. It is no 
 business of Political Economy to make a man unselfish — 
 to induce him to abstain from luxury, but eten a slight 
 knowledge thereof will deprive him of the intellectual ex- 
 cuses with which he might comfort his weakness or encour- 
 age his inclinations. He will learn that ' a demand for 
 commodities is not a demand for labour' — and that he 
 cannot excuse extravagance in champagne — in artistic 
 furniture — in thoroughbred horses — in well bound books on 
 any such plea as holding it to be good for trade — -causing 
 money to circulate — employing the needy, etc. 
 
 But to deal with Mr. Ruskin's relations to Political 
 Economy there would be needed a man who has more 
 knowledge of Mr. Ruskin's works, more knowledge of 
 Political Economy, more time and — more patience than 
 I have.
 
 5^ * 
 35 
 
 Let us draw nearer to the end, Mr. Jolly has a few 
 thoughtful remarks on the selection of poetry for recitation 
 by the children. He hardly quotes Mr. Ruskin here, and 
 I have an idea that Mr. Ruskin would disagree with him. 
 I concur with Mr. Jolly in thinking that the songs of Burns 
 are not to be used indiscriminately in elementary schools. I 
 found in one school a pious parody on a good Scotch song, 
 but this sort of thing is not advisable. 
 
 ' Willie brewed a peck o' maut ' is not quite a suitable 
 song for schoolboys. Something might be done by putting 
 it in this shape. 
 
 ' Oh Willie gave a cookie-shine 
 
 And Rob and Allan came to tea ; 
 Twa steadier lads ye wadna meet, 
 The ane was Free and ane U.P.' 
 
 But perhaps it would be better to leave the song ' severely 
 alone.' Man, as I have said, needs incentives to virtue ; he 
 needs none to drink. I cannot, however, agree with Mr. 
 Jolly in his idea of repressing songs founded on war and 
 love. Let us take up the former idea and keep the latter 
 for a treat. Does Mr. Jolly really see in the ' Combat be- 
 tween Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu,' which he condemns 
 as a school recitation, nothing but ' fierce bloodthirstiness,' 
 a ' tiger-like struggle to kill ? ' Mr. Jolly, I am sure, is not 
 blind to the chivalrous aspects of the contest, and though 
 there are boys whose only concern in a fight is that it 
 should be ' all bluggy, bluggy as everyfing,' there are I am 
 sure many boys, and perhaps there are more girls, capable 
 of appreciating the spirit of honour on which the poet so 
 lovingly dwells. I assume of course that the teacher has
 
 54 
 
 had the sense not only to teach the children to recite the 
 lines — comparatively few — descriptive of slashes and gore, 
 but to teach them something of the lines before and after, 
 and in fact something of the whole story. At the beginning 
 of the Canto the poet has put up a sign-post, but it should 
 not be necessary. 
 
 * Fair as the earliest beam of morning light 
 
 Shine martial Faith, and Courtesy's bright star, 
 
 Through all the wreckful storms that cloud the brow of war.' 
 
 There is somewhere a capital paragraph by Mr. Raskin, 
 dealing with an aspect of mediaeval contests — namely the 
 absence of malice in many of them. I have an idea, how- 
 ever, that this ' plentiful lack ' of bad feeling has been 
 greatly exaggerated, and that anyhow there will be found 
 on the average quite as much honour and courtesy in the 
 hostile dealings between a Colonel Jackson and a Major 
 Schwackskopf as between those bearing of old such designa- 
 tions as Sir Aymer de Valence and Sieur de Coucy. 
 
 36 
 
 Mr. Jolly's deliverance on ' pieces to be selected ' is rather 
 uncertain. I agree with him when he says that ' the moral 
 element should not be obtruded as didactic moral teaching ' 
 (p. i6i). 
 
 I am not in agreement with the note appended to this 
 paragraph where he names several pieces that he considers 
 suitable, 
 
 ' Drive the nail aright, boys,' has a priggish sound, and 
 ' Ho ! ye who at the anvil toil ' has a — but I see that it was
 
 written by a lady. Nor do I care much about such songs 
 as ' There's a good time coming.' 
 
 In this country at least, there is no sense now in hinting 
 that the working classes are down-trodden — that honest 
 merit gets little recognition — that Lords and Priests stand 
 in the way of social advance. It is well to cultivate hope 
 among the weary sons of Adam, but not to buoy them up 
 with an expectation of an immediate millennium as the result 
 of anybody's social or political programme. 
 
 At the risk of being stoned to death next 25 th of 
 January, I would express a doubt whether ' A man's a man 
 for a' that ' is suitable for boys. It is a capital song, but let 
 it be sung with understanding. In Scotland at least, the 
 ' soaring human boy ' has no need to have a ' gude conceit 
 o' himsel'.' We laugh at the picture — Leech's, I think — 
 where the old woman struggling in the crowd says, ' Now 
 where are you shovin' and screouging to — as if you was a 
 lord! The good dame betrayed no intimate knowledge of 
 the habits of the aristocracy. The boy need not be taught 
 to assume that a lord is one ' who struts and stares and a' 
 that,' nor that, as a rule, it is ' fools ' who wear ' silks ' and 
 'knaves' who drink 'wine.' 
 
 I have an idea that ' Rantin' rovin' Robin ' — is morally 
 a better song. 
 
 87 
 
 Before we part let us end in Love — I mean in dealing 
 with Love Songs. Let the children learn Love songs — 
 ' selected with the utmost caution ' — as Mr. Jolly says, even 
 if the sentiments and notions introduced are not what they 
 have ' experimentally felt ' or known. Love songs of a
 
 56 
 
 flippant kind, perhaps of a coarse kind — will soon come 
 their way. Let them be imbued — ay, I might say saturated 
 — with the expression of tender sentiments in noble 
 language before they begin to experience the sentiments, 
 even as they are, or ought to be, imbued with high notions 
 as to religion and common life before they can inform those 
 notions with the requisite feeling. Let me say another 
 word that I may part from Mr. Jolly in a friendly spirit. 
 Though I hold that the pure poetry of Burns — that is to say, 
 the most of his poetry — is, as a rule, not only unobjection- 
 able but good for boys and girls — yet, I have my doubts 
 whether it is the best. For the noble, the self-disregarding, 
 let them look to the lyrics of the earlier half of the seven- 
 teenth century, inferior as many may be to the songs of 
 Burns both in spontaneity and in energy. 
 We may quote from Burns two lines : — 
 
 ' But, though fell Fortune should fate us to sever, 
 Queen shall she be in my bosom for ever. ' 
 
 This, however, is not a common note in his poems. Neither, 
 perhaps, was it the leading note in the lives of some of the 
 Elizabethan and Carolinian poets. 
 
 Whatever Catullus may say, let us never mind men's 
 lives, but thankfully enjoy what of good they have left us 
 in prose — or verse. 
 
 And so — Farewell. 
 
 Feast of St. Valentine, 
 1895.
 
 57 
 
 THE PROFESSION OF A TEACHER. 
 
 Address at the opening of Southesk Street School^ Montrose^ 
 November 2ist, 1891. 
 
 ' Timely happy, timely wise 
 
 Hearts that with early morn arise ; 
 Eyes that the beam celestial view, 
 Which evermore makes all things new." 
 
 Who has not felt at some time or other the subdued 
 exaltation, the calm rapture of the early morning hours, a 
 foretaste, mayhap, of the joy of our ultimate awakening from 
 the dream — our passing forth from the gloom — of this life. 
 We have said, in thought at least, with the dream-tormen- 
 ted opium eater — ' I will walk abroad ; old griefs shall be 
 forgotten to-day ; for the air is cool and still, and the hills 
 are high and stretch away to Heaven ; and the churchyard 
 is as verdant as the forest lawns, and the forest lawns are as 
 quiet as the churchyard.' Too soon — or shall we dare to 
 say, too soon — the morning glory fades into ' the light of 
 common day.' Too soon — nay, we must not say, too soon 
 — our spirits fall into the wonted groove of daily duty. But 
 morning after morning blossoms forth for us, did we but use 
 them aright. Somehow I have been led into these reflec- 
 tions thinking upon the teachers' profession. You, my 
 friends, are perpetually brought into contact with the morn- 
 ing of human life. You have, as others, trials of your faith, 
 trials of your charity, but before you in each infant that 
 enters your school you have a living embodiment of 
 hope upon earth. You live in an atmosphere full of care,
 
 58 
 
 but Aarged with hope. Men — and women tOo — deceive 
 and disappoint hs — some maliciously, some recklessly — but, 
 as each succeeding young creature unfolds itself beside us, 
 we are inclined to say with Lamech — ' This same shall 
 comfort us concerning the toil and work of our hands.' 
 They grow up — they disappoint us too, mayhap. We try 
 to find what comfort we can in plodding at our daily round 
 of duties till life ' ringeth to evensong.' But to you teachers 
 there is a constant stream of freshness in your lives — a per- 
 petual dawn accompanying your duties. Your work is hard, 
 your disappointments are many ; but new souls are yearly, 
 monthly, sometimes weekly committed to your care. I say 
 souls advisedly — not minds — for even as you cannot divide 
 the living organism and say, one man shall doctor my 
 throat, another my liver, and another my spinal cord — 
 so neither can you practically divide the spirit of the child. 
 For convenience sake, indeed, it may be arranged that one 
 teacher shall teach the boy geography and another teach 
 him grammar ; but what I want to insist on is this, that, in 
 dealing with young children at least, you cannot say that 
 one agency shall develop his intellect, another train his 
 morals, and a third polish his manners. No. At a Uni- 
 versity we find a Professor of Mathematics, a Professor of 
 Moral Philosophy, a Professor of Rhetoric. But in dealing 
 with the plastic soul of a young child there can be no such 
 differentiation of function as yet. 
 
 When you are giving a lesson in arithmetic to Standard 
 I., when you are testing Standard II. in dictation, you are, 
 consciously or unconsciously, giving a lesson in morals and 
 in manners. This lesson is given, of course, in great meas- 
 ure by example. Consider, I pray, how many of the virtues 
 are involved in the work of teaching an elementary class.
 
 ^9 
 
 Firstly, there is courage, the goad and stimulus of the 
 virtues. Young pupil-teachers are specially called on for 
 the exercise of this virtue, when they have to exercise moral 
 control over boys and girls not much younger than them- 
 selves. There are, however, older teachers who seem to me 
 deficient herein ; otherwise order would be better. Then 
 ^ere is mildness, gentleness or whatever the virtue may be 
 called, which holds a mean place between irascibility and 
 stolidity, for men instinctively recognise that there is some- 
 thing unbecoming both in that temperament which is not 
 moved to anger on proper occasions and in that tempera- 
 ment which too easily flies to an extreme of passion. The 
 one indeed would seem to be the vice of the tyrant and the 
 other of the slave. Now, how near akin are the tyrant and 
 the slave, wise men of old could see, and as it is absurd that 
 the schoolmaster should be slavish in disposition, so is it 
 most unseemly that he should be tyrannical. Then there 
 is the virtue of temperance — of speech. 
 
 It is well that a teacher should be on his guard to say no 
 more than the occasion demands, whether in ordering, in 
 rebuking, or in expounding. If an order is given to a class, 
 let it be given in a manner both clear and decisive. There 
 is often no harm, of course, in giving the reasons of the 
 order. Ye are governing not ' dumb, driven cattle,' but 
 rational beings. But the order should not be accompanied 
 with coaxings and unnecessary verbiage. Still less should 
 it be supplemented with private editions of the order given 
 to individual members of the class — unless these should be 
 peculiarly deaf or foolish. Then, in rebuking, how much 
 reason there is for temperance. Let not words be added 
 unto words till the leading idea left in the child's mind is — 
 not that he has done wrong, but that the master is angry.
 
 6o 
 
 Do not let the words of your rebuke wander unnecessarily 
 from the cause of the rebuke. If you are checking a boy 
 for chattering in the class, it is not advisable, as a rule, to 
 bring up the fact that he was ten minutes late three days 
 before. Again, in expounding a subject to the children, 
 there is such a thing as temperance in words to be observed. 
 There is such a thing as over-explaining — with the kindest 
 intentions. Let the children have something to exercise 
 their wits on. So much for temperance. 
 
 Then there is the virtue of pleasantness. It may sur- 
 prise some to hear this called a virtue ; but some of you 
 may notice that I am following the lines of Aristotle. This, 
 then, is that virtue which holds a mean place between undue 
 jocularity and sullenness. The moral position of the jeet in 
 the school, as in society, is a thing on which much might be 
 said. Here I would point out that such pleasantries as a 
 teacher may indulge in should have the air of being in- 
 tended to relieve the mental strain of the lesson. A well- 
 timed joke may stimulate a languid class, but, as in the case 
 of other stimulants, caution must be exercised. A joke 
 should not be used to make a bashful or stupid child mis- 
 erable — adding sorrow to those already afflicted. On the 
 other hand, in the case of a smart child, a joke may call his 
 intelligence into greater activity, and sometimes gentle sar- 
 casm may have the effect of curing a clever child — be it 
 noted — of some objectionable habit. Closely allied to this 
 is the virtue of magnanimity — what we call a proper sense 
 of personal dignity. The schoolmaster, like everybody else, 
 must strike a proper balance between arrogance and mean- 
 ness — faults which are sometimes united in the same indi- 
 vidual, in the same act. Again, a medium must be struck 
 between undue complaisance and undue severity of manner.
 
 6i 
 
 Undue complaisance is, it may surprise some to hear, the 
 less evil of the two, for by this a school sooner gets utterly 
 broken up, and it may be reconstructed. In the case of 
 undue severity, the form of a school is perhaps kept up for 
 a long time, but the teaching is unsympathetic, and there- 
 fore not so successful as it might be. Of course, I am here 
 referring only to severity of manner. The old system of 
 frequent corporal chastisement has, I fancy, died out in 
 Scotland. Then, let me briefly refer to justice, the bond 
 and cement of the virtues. 
 
 I need not say how much occasidn there is for careful 
 attention to justice, in judging not only between child and 
 child, but between yourselves and the children. It is more 
 difficult to judge in the latter case, seeing that you are a 
 party in the case, but you have to remember the absolute 
 claim — the claim of right — that the humblest and youngest 
 child has to consideration at your hands. In the din and 
 complication of the work of teaching it may happen — I 
 know that it sometimes happens during the work of inspec- 
 tion — that a child gets an undeserved rebuke. Be not 
 ashamed to take back the rebuke, ay, with some words of 
 negret. You will not hereby lower your position as a moral 
 trainer, but strengthen it. Children are quick to discover 
 that teachers — like inspectors — are far from infallible. The 
 better among them will resent injustice more than the in- 
 fliction of physical pain, just as you yourselves resent unfair 
 treatment — whether at the hands of Boards or of Inspectors 
 — more than any ensuing loss of grant or diminution of 
 emolument. While I am on this topic, let me warn you 
 against the frantic efforts made by some teachers to push 
 individual children through the narrow portals of the pass. 
 This is a fault which, I fancy, is more apt to be committed
 
 62 
 
 by female teachers, woman's love and interest going out 
 more to individuals than to classes or masses. Under no 
 code was this a proper thing for a teacher to do ; under the 
 present code there is, thereto, much less temptation. In 
 this connection I have to point out the injustice that you 
 are doing to the rest of the class. Those ' hungry ' lambs 
 ' look up and are not fed.' And now, my friends, resent not 
 these remarks as if I, from some lofty platform, were treat- 
 ing you as Sunday School children, who needed to be 
 taught the first principles of conduct. Viewing this indi- 
 vidual occasion ' under some form of eternity,' as Spinoza 
 hath it, I speak to the teaching profession in general whether 
 or not my words will ever reach many of them. I have said, 
 you will probably think, nothing new — certainly nothing 
 startling. The virtues on which I have briefly dwelt are 
 known to all of you, and in many teachers we find them in 
 active exercise. By arranging my thoughts in this form, I 
 wished to point out the dignity of your profession as 
 teachers of morals, and thus, so far as any words of mine 
 can do, to hearten you up in the discharge of your arduous 
 duties. I have not thought it necessary to dwell on the 
 details of the new Code. Last year I met groups of 
 teachers at different places and had pleasant conferences. 
 Since then sundry inspections have taken place ; teachers 
 and inspectors are co-operating in a friendly manner. 
 
 Let me briefly reiterate what I said last year. Payment 
 by results (which is a law of the moral universe) is not 
 abolished. A school earns more or less money according as 
 the results are excellent, good, fair, or indifferent. Some 
 teachers seem to hold that no distinctions of this sort 
 should affect the grant — that this should simply be a func- 
 tion of the average attendance. But this does not seem to
 
 63 
 
 be the prevailing feeling in Scotland at least. Individual 
 examination is not abolished for this good reason, that it is 
 only individuals who can be examined — as it is only indi- 
 viduals who can be taught. A class is an abstraction. 
 Inspectors indeed are relieved from the labour of reporting 
 on individuals: you are not relieved from the duty of teach- 
 ing individuals. An inspector can only judge of the work 
 of a school by the answers he receives from individuals, 
 whether he examines the whole of a given standard or 
 selects a goodly proportion at random. Our responsibility, 
 which I can assure you we feel, is not less but greater under 
 the new system. 
 
 Let me take this opportunity of saying that I am surprised 
 that the Educational Blue Books are not more studied by 
 teachers. You may not find in them anything particularly 
 wise or witty, but you will find the generalisations of men 
 who have had the advantage of seeing scores, of seeing 
 hundreds of schools. Their opinions are by no means to 
 be accepted by you as infallible — any more than those of 
 the Pope — seeing that they are by no means unanimous, 
 but surely teachers need not be ashamed to receive practical 
 hints for their guidance from those who, whether their men- 
 tal endowments be great or small, have at least had the 
 advantage of a wider experience than any teacher can 
 possibly have had. 
 
 And now — as clergymen say — perhaps I have detained 
 you too long. Speaking, not to teachers in general but to 
 the staff that is to work here, I bid them welcome to this 
 magnificent building, due to the enterprise and courage of 
 the School Board of Montrose. The true school, however, 
 as you know, is not constituted in essentials by well poised 
 stones and well polished desks any more than a true church
 
 64 
 
 is constituted by ' long drawn aisles and fretted vaults.' 
 By you is to be built up something nobler than Notre Dame 
 — grander than St. Peter's. Build up the children in know- 
 ledge and righteousness. Then, as the German poet hath 
 it, the power which ruined Babel's towers shall never lay 
 your work low. When in after ages not a stone of this 
 building shall be left on another, the results of your work 
 will remain. 
 
 * What hands have built, time brings to nought ; 
 Ye for eternity have wrought.' 
 
 Before concluding I would say a word to the parents who 
 are present. Much of the success which is expected here 
 will depend on your kindly co-operation with the teachers. 
 Do not be ready to keep your children at home for every 
 trifling excuse — for every shower of rain. Think, that in 
 countrydistricts children have to walk — and do walk — longer 
 distances than from the extreme end of Montrose to South- 
 esk Street — and not upon solid pavements but on muddy 
 roads. Do not be too ready to receive complaints about 
 chastisement. The teachers in Montrose vary in character 
 and ability, but I do not think there is one of them of a 
 savage disposition — so far as young children are concerned. 
 Do not weaken a teacher's influence by sneering at him in 
 the presence of your children, even where you may think 
 that he has laid himself open to blame. Remember that, as 
 someone has said, a sneer is one of the ugliest things that 
 God didn't make. Yours, my fellow citizens, is the town 
 which the sea enriches, and the rose adorns. Sympathise 
 with your teachers who will struggle here to launch frail 
 barks on the ocean of truth. Co-operate with them in 
 cultivating the sweet rose of courtesy and mutual forbear- 
 ance. So may industry flourish in our midst — so may food
 
 65 
 
 convenient if not wealth be afforded to us — ' that there be 
 no complaining in our streets.' 
 
 Mr. Robert Duncan, minister of the First Charge, 
 having offered the dedicatory prayer, 
 
 Mr. MuiR said — I declare this school opened for the 
 purpose of rearing men to serve God in Church and State. 
 I declare the school open in the name of the School Board 
 representatives, in the name of the ratepayers who have 
 given them their powers and in the name of Him by whom 
 kings reign and princes decree justice.
 
 66 
 
 EMULATION AS A FACTOR IN EDUCATION. 
 
 The substance of an Address to a Meeting of Teachers in 
 Brechin, 2gih February 1896. 
 
 I CONGRATULATE you on the changes of the last twenty- 
 three years — on the greater comfort and satisfaction you 
 find in your work owing to the improved buildings and the 
 more regular attendance — I would avoid using the words 
 ' compulsory attendance.* I would fain believe that, not 
 only in Brechin but in the districts round about, the attend- 
 ance is a willing one, that the children do not come in 'like 
 dumb driven cattle,' that they do not come ' creeping like 
 snail' unwillingly to school, but 'with shining morning 
 face ' — a face shining with spontaneous cheerfulness as well 
 as with compulsory maternal soap. I congratulate, more- 
 over, the younger members of the profession on having 
 enjoyed, as scholars, many of the advantages of the new 
 system and the new methods. Many of you must have 
 experienced, not merely as teachers but as taught, changes 
 in methods of teaching and in methods of examination, 
 and, therefore, must be in a position of peculiar advantage 
 for appreciating the present state of things — and for im- 
 proving on it. Some of us, some who are not very old, can 
 remember the bare unornamented walls of the old schools, 
 the dingy frowsiness of the furnishings, the want of light, 
 the want of air.
 
 67 
 
 But it was in such circumstances that good educational 
 work was done, it was in such obscure shrines that the flame 
 of a zeal for better work was kept alive. An Act for com- 
 pulsory education would have been of little use unless the 
 country had been to some extent prepared by education 
 for it. Where there had not been this preparation, com- 
 pulsion for years existed but in name, and even yet in many 
 places attendance is far from being what it might be. But 
 nominal compulsion is being succeeded by real compulsion, 
 and, paradoxical as it may seem, I hope that the real com- 
 pulsion will in its turn be succeeded by nominal compulsion, 
 when no officer shall say to children, Go to school, for all 
 will go. I trust that, in Brechin at least, things have nearly 
 reached this stage. You who teach in towns have this 
 advantage, that you are able to get hold of the children at 
 a much more tender age than that at which it would be 
 reasonable to enforce attendance in the country. When we 
 look at the gentle and joyous character of the existing 
 Infant Schools and Infant Departments, it is difficult to 
 imagine reluctance on the part of any parent or of any 
 infant. Looking at the may-poles, ribbons, wreaths, fans, 
 dumb-bells, dances, dialogues, which now form part of the 
 furnishings or of the programme of an ordinary Infant 
 Department one is reminded of the enthusiasm awakened 
 in ardent souls by the outbreak of the French Revolution. 
 
 ' Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
 But to be young was very Heaven.' 
 
 But, while rejoicing in the march of education, praising 
 the statesmen who planned it and those who are planning 
 changes for the better, congratulating the country on having 
 so loyally accepted a gigantic scheme which not only costs
 
 68 
 
 money but seems to interfere with liberty, we must not be 
 carried away by those reformers who would ignore impor- 
 tant elements in human nature, who would think to abolish 
 them by Codes or Acts of Parliament. 
 
 The true principle of education I cannot think to have 
 been left for discovery to the nineteenth century. Since 
 the days of Ptolemy the true motions of the earth and the 
 heavens have been set forth and new planets have been 
 discovered. In fact, every year or two a new asteroid turns 
 up, and, what we are to do with them, I know not. But 
 human nature is pretty much as it was, and as it was known 
 to be, two thousand years ago, and, for hints concerning it, 
 it is not superfluous to go back, as Professor Blackie says, 
 to * Plato and Peter and Paul.' For instance, that it is 
 better to rule by love than by fear is a good maxim for a 
 king, a school master or a cab driver, but this is no dis- 
 covery of our soft sentimental age. 
 
 I have been considering lately what to say to you that 
 you do not know as well as I do. Lately I found myself 
 in one of the class-rooms of the University of Edinburgh 
 listening to a personal friend prelecting upon law. Lifting 
 my eyes I saw over his chair a Greek inscription which 
 seemed to suggest an appropriate topic. It may be trans- 
 lated thus, — 
 
 ' 'Tis pleasant pain and toil which is no toil, to strive 
 with others for honour, for by ambition the soul is greatly 
 stirred to industry — [more literally, urged on by love of 
 victory to love of labour] — wherefore let the words of Hesiod 
 be our motto in all that concerneth virtue generally, and 
 especially in what concerneth education ; a good strife is 
 this for mortals.' 
 
 There seem to be at present certain easy-chair educa-
 
 69 
 
 tionists who maintain that emulation and rivalry, competi- 
 tion and prize giving should be excluded from the educa- 
 tional curriculum. One might wonder if these educationists 
 have ever — ' seen a child.' This objection, this doubt, was 
 once urged by some clever man against — if I mistake not 
 — the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education. 
 This reproach can no longer be brought against 'My Lords' 
 even in the way of a joke, when we see how earnestly they 
 take into consideration and embody in their decrees the 
 suggestions of practical educationists. 
 
 Not that the Code is perfect yet — nor the British con- 
 stitution. But as to those who moralise from a lofty stand- 
 point, we may doubt whether, as a rule, they are to be found 
 among those who teach children, among those who examine 
 children, or among those whose dreary but important duty 
 it is to consider the reports of inspectors. Their lofty stand- 
 point is, I fear, upon the clouds and not upon the fixed 
 stars. Between the distance of the clouds and that of the 
 fixed stars there is little difference to the naked eye. 
 Astronomers tell us that there is a considerable difference. 
 
 When full-grown men are found steadily pursuing the 
 good, doing the right and admiring the honourable, each 
 for its own sake, it will be time enough to insist that naught 
 but abstract motives shall be presented to the mind of a 
 child. 
 
 But, viewing things as they are, I would argue that we 
 should try to form good habits by any means not positively 
 objectionable. Let us fall back on the teaching of old 
 Aristotle. By doing virtuous acts we become virtuous. 
 The child has to learn, when it emerges from babyhood, 
 various good habits before it can possibly know the reason 
 for their cultivation, before it can learn why obedience to
 
 70 
 
 parents is a good practical rule for a well-ordered com- 
 munity, before it can learn the practical limitations of 
 that rule. 
 
 Obedience to parents is at first the compound result of 
 the affection felt for the parents and of the sense of their 
 superior physical power. When the child comes to feel 
 the religious and social sanctions for this duty, it will at the 
 same time feel the limitations of the duty ; it will feel that 
 the command, Never disobey your father, is not to be put 
 on the same footing as the precepts, Do not He, Do not 
 steal. 
 
 I may seem to be wandering from my subject, but I am 
 coming back to it. 
 
 Advice, exhortations, commands have to be given to 
 young people not only by parents, but by aunts and 
 grandmothers, and, to come to the point, by teachers of 
 schools, public or private. Of course, a teacher or guardian 
 of youth who is worth his salt will establish a habit of 
 obedience independent of explicit reason. We cannot stop 
 to explain the 'why' of every thing. But, equally, of 
 course, in the case of a teacher who is worth a little more 
 than his salt, will the child dimly feel — if he cannot clearly 
 see — that on the whole the commands are reasonable. As 
 soon as there is a dawn of reason, is it not well to take the 
 child with yoii in your commands. The training of a child 
 is not that of the brute. The proud steed is not expected 
 to know 
 
 • Why man restrains 
 His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains.' 
 
 Nor the dull ox, 
 
 ' Why now he breaks the clod, 
 Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god.'
 
 71 
 
 A child is bound to know something of the why and 
 wherefore of your commands. It is not advisable, as Mark 
 Twain suggests, to rap the little boy over the head and say, 
 • That's why ! ' 
 
 Here I would pass on to a consideration of the motives 
 for action which it is proper to set before a child — motives 
 to do something, the good of which it cannot be expected 
 to understand. 
 
 Let us start at a stage somewhat anterior to that of 
 prize competitions. 
 
 Little Tommy has to be induced to have a tooth taken 
 out, or to take some peculiarly nauseous physic. There are 
 various ways of doing this, without actual physical force. 
 The child may be one in whom the habit of confident 
 obedience has been formed by love and he will assent, more 
 or less whimperingly, more or less manfully. Tommy may 
 be well aware from previous experience that physical force 
 will be used — and that immediately — if he does not yield. 
 He may be told that boys who disobey their parents never 
 go to heaven — or he may be promised a piece of ginger- 
 bread. An appeal may be made to his manhood, and, to 
 emphasize this, he may be invited to emulate the hardihood 
 of brother Johnny or of neighbour Charlie, who has had to 
 undergo similar suffering. Of course, there may be no 
 brother Johnnie or neighbour Charlie available to point the 
 moral with, but, if there should be, surely this way of mov- 
 ing the boy is better than some of the ways referred to 
 above. Nay, more, I maintain that it is absolutely good. 
 Do not merely say to the poor little fellow : — Now, be a 
 man ! Tommy ! without letting him see by a concrete ex- 
 ample what you mean. If you have no other available 
 example, you may show one in your own person, not per-
 
 72 
 
 haps by swallowing a doze of physic which you do not 
 need, or by getting a tooth drawn which you can ill spare 
 — but by patiently enduring the bodily or practical worries 
 which come in your way. 
 
 Let us take Tommy at a somewhat more advanced stage. 
 He has begun the study of Latin, but is slackening in his 
 zeal. (I am taking the case of a boy as to whom the 
 teacher feels that he ought to study Latin — not the case of 
 a boy who ought to study mathematics, nor the case of a 
 boy who ought to pass Standard V., and then get off to a 
 farm or to a factory as soon as possible). The boy, having 
 a turn for Latin, has probably an intellectual taste, which is 
 centrifugal in its effects, urging him in various directions. 
 He is inclined to desultory reading. Like the clerk ' who 
 pens a stanza when he should engross,' he is reading Pope's 
 Homer or Ivanhoe — he might be worse employed — when 
 you want him to be working at the Datives in Ovid, or the 
 Participles in Virgil, How are you to proceed ? Are you 
 to tell him that your word as parent or your word as school- 
 master is a divine law, which Sie must obey under penalty 
 of unpleasant consequences ill the next world? This is 
 false, and, if you press the theory too strongly, you will find 
 that you have weakened, not only your own influence, but 
 any tendency that he may have had to adhere to laws which 
 are truly divine. Are you to lecture him on the develop- 
 ment which will accrue to his mental faculties by linguistic 
 training? Are you to dwell on his chance of becoming, 
 not a ploughman nor a mechanic like his father before him, 
 but a dominie, a minister, a school inspector, a professor ? 
 Are you to dwell on the satisfaction, the mental pleasure 
 which he will derive from books written in Latin and in the 
 cognate languages? Ah! The rewards are too dim, too distant.
 
 73 
 
 What harm is there then in awakening the boy's spirit 
 of emulation by inciting him to watch himself against his 
 fellows, inciting him by places in class, by marks, by prize 
 books, by medals ? Thus you call out the manhood of the 
 boy, thus you arouse a generous spirit, whether he is des- 
 tined to be much of a Latin scholar or not. The prizes 
 need not, nay, they should not be of much intrinsic value. 
 The prizes in the Pythian, the Olympian, the Nemean 
 games were chaplets of laurel, of wild olive, of parsley. 
 Then was Greece a terror to the barbarian, then was she a 
 bulwark of ancient and a pioneer of modern civilisation. 
 The spirit of emulation was there — was encouraged. An 
 abstract devotion to Athens — to Sparta was not enough. 
 Each Athenian, each Spartan, was to be spurred on to do 
 better than his fellows. 
 
 But objections are taken to emulation — to competition, 
 to prize-giving, by the seriously superficial people of the 
 age. Some of these objections are associated with a highly 
 honoured name — that of Mr. Ruskin. It is the privilege of 
 genius, as has been said, to make with impunity great mis- 
 takes. It is the duty of school-masters and school-inspectors 
 to be humbly accurate. While cheered by glimpses of the 
 mountain tops to which these great men would lead us, we 
 have to attend to the stimulation and the guidance of the 
 young committed to our charge, whose heads are too low 
 to perceive the glories of the summit. We will not lightly 
 admit that our methods founded on an observation of 
 human nature as it is, not as it might be, are merely fitted 
 to develop * the base in man.' From the ' palmies ' which 
 correct the truant to the palms which glorify the victor, 
 there is a gradation of teaching, a gradation of motive. 
 Beyond the palms, beyond the laurel, wc shall find the irn-
 
 74 
 
 pulse to good, without hope of reward or honour to be 
 personally enjoyed — we shall find it, I say, it may be in 
 Leonidas or it may be in some obscure Tommy Atkins. 
 The courage, which at first needed to be stimulated by the 
 sight of his comrades in action, develops till it becomes 
 something higher — becomes two-o'clock-in-the- morning 
 courage, the courage which will prompt a man to wait and 
 perish if need be, lonely in ambush or at a picket, never to 
 be sung by the voice of Fame. 
 
 I have been borne away, apparently, from my subject, 
 which relates to the education of young boys and girls. 
 
 With all firmness, and I hope with all modesty, I must 
 join issue with Mr, Ruskin here. Let me quote his words. 
 
 * In all trial of our children, I believe all Emulation to be 
 a false motive, and all giving of prizes a false means. All 
 that you can depend upon in a boy, as significative of true 
 power, likely to issue in good fruit, is his will to work for 
 the work's sake, not his desire to surpass his school -fellows; 
 and the aim of the teaching you give him ought to be to 
 prove to him, and strengthen in him, his own separate gift, 
 not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who are 
 everlastingly greater than he ; still less ought you to hang 
 favours and ribands about the neck of the creature who is 
 the greatest, to make the rest envy him. Try to make them 
 love him and follow him, not struggle with him.' {A Joy 
 for ever, §§ 135-6.) 
 
 In the Fors Clavigera (vol. viii. p. 255) he reiterates the 
 same teaching. He refers to — I quote his own words — 
 * The radical blockheadism of supposing that all men are 
 naturally equal and can only make their way by elbowing,' 
 
 The fact, of course, is that the modern competitive 
 system — I do not say that it is perfect — proceeds upon the
 
 75 
 
 assumption that men are anything but equal in natural 
 gifts, and tries, more or less skilfully, more or less success- 
 fully, to find who are superior in intellectual attainments 
 and in moral energy. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin goes on to tell us solemnly, 'that every child 
 is born with an accurately defined and absolutely limited 
 capacity ; that he is naturally (if able at all) able for some 
 things and unable for others ; that no effort and no teach- 
 ing can add one particle to the granted ounces of his avail- 
 able brains ; that by competition, he may paralyse or 
 pervert his faculties, but cannot stretch them a line ; and 
 that the entire grace, happiness, and virtue of his life depend 
 on his contentment in doing what he can dutifully, and in 
 staying where he is peaceably.' 
 
 Great men, it has been pointed out, lay on their contem- 
 poraries the duty of criticising them. Let us look calmly 
 at the above glowing periods. Who, in the name of all the 
 stones of Venice and of Greece and of Rome, is to define 
 any given child's capacity, and give the limit of its ability ? 
 When a boy emerges from school or college, the certificates, 
 testimonials, degrees which he has obtained, and those 
 which he has missed, show in some dim way what he can 
 do and what he cannot do. But in the next few years he 
 will learn — and his neighbours may come to know — more 
 thoroughly what he can do and what he cannot do. The 
 child comes into the world with no mapped out plan of his 
 faculties. The most intelligent parent, the most sympath- 
 etic teacher, can only find out what a child is fit for by try- 
 ing, can only find out the limit of his faculties by urging 
 him to do his best. Now, here I would maintain that the 
 spirit of emulation is useful in bringing out energy which 
 would otherwise lie dormant. This spirit will be found in
 
 76 
 
 the very young, as, I think, you who are parents will confirm 
 me in saying. Johnny, five years old, will try if he cannot 
 run faster than Katie, who is six, but only a girl. He will 
 get more cheerful and healthy exercise of body and mind 
 in this way than if a Ruskinite papa were to measure out 
 the exact distance and calculate the exact speed suitable to 
 his age. Again, when he goes to school, healthy competi- 
 tion with his mates will draw out his intellectual faculties 
 better than would be the case, were he to confine his studies 
 in kind and in amount to what some priggish tutor would 
 prescribe as suited to his ' absolutely limited capacity.' 
 
 Mark me, I am speaking of generous rivalry. This is 
 different from the spirit of envy. In other aspects of human 
 conduct we find a vice bordering on a virtue, as rashness on 
 courage, profusion on generosity, weakness of nature on 
 kindness. In such cases there is a difference in the way of 
 excess or defect. But the difference between Emulation 
 and Envy is not of this sort. Excess in the spirit of Emu- 
 lation, prompting us to make foolish strivings after the 
 unattainable, is a fault, but Envy is something different in 
 kind. 
 
 We must go back to Aristotle again. 
 
 * Emulation,' he tells us, ' is a virtuous feeling and char- 
 acteristic of virtuous persons, while envy is vicious and 
 characteristic of vicious persons ; for the emulous man is 
 led on by his emulation to the attainment of good things, 
 whereas the envy of the envious man merely makes him 
 try to prevent others having them.' {Rhetoric ii. Chap. ii). 
 
 Let us not be afraid then that we may demoralise a boy 
 by urging him to try to get to the top of his class, to try to 
 win a brightly bound volume at the end of the school year. 
 His natural and proper place, which Mr, Ruskin would
 
 77 
 
 tell you is irrevocably fixed, is known neither to Mr. Ruskin, 
 nor to you, nor to the boy. Competition is one of the 
 means of determining it. If you want to be a good golfer 
 it is better to match yourself against your fellow man than 
 to play alone. 
 
 But we are told to beware of exciting the feelings of 
 Envy and Malice. True. The steps of all the virtues are 
 dogged by corresponding vices. At the threshold of the 
 House Beautiful, Christian found lions, which were to be 
 avoided by walking in the straight path, not by going back. 
 Envy and malignity are to be checked in the school-room, 
 as on the links. In what sphere of action, indeed, can we 
 be free from the danger of cherishing such feelings ? Let 
 the boy be trained to strive, to strive lawfully, whether in 
 the play-ground or in the class-room, and to recognise 
 cheerfully the superiority of others, but let him be taught, 
 not to take for granted in a fatalistic spirit his own settled 
 inferiority. Emulation will not only bring out the lad's 
 faculties, but in itself constitute a generous and ennobling 
 training. The emulation, to which I would call your atten- 
 tion, is not the emulation in a ' barrel of Egyptian vipers,' 
 where each is trying to get its head above the others. It is 
 emulation as on the arena at Corinth, where a man knew 
 that, if he was beaten, he would be beaten by an honourable 
 and beautiful man, a son of Greece. 
 
 This brings us to another lesson — often hard to be 
 learned. We should learn — many do learn — to rejoice 
 heartily in the success and glory of another, and— here 
 comes the hardest part — to rejoice even when that success 
 is in a line where we ourselves are competitors. Nor indeed 
 is this rare or to be found only among saints and sages. 
 Tommy Atkins will cheer the soldier who has gone before
 
 78 
 
 him in the pathway of danger, who, in some fight where no 
 one has failed in duty, has distinguished himself by more 
 than ordinary 'derring-do.' Then comes what is perhaps 
 the hardest part of emulation, the fight that each man has 
 to wage against himself. I do not here refer to the struggle 
 against his baser self, but to the effort that he must make to 
 excel his previous self in what was good — but not so good 
 as it might be. Here is the prerogative of man — to do this 
 consciously. 
 
 ' The sun,' as Goethe tells us, ' sounds with his brother 
 spheres a song of emulation.' 
 
 This is rhetoric, but when we rise above the contempla- 
 tion of inorganic matter, we may almost fancy that we see 
 the trees of the forest, the blossoms of the garden, the 
 golden stalks of the cornfield thrusting themselves up in 
 buoyant rivalry. In the animal world emulation comesclearly 
 to the front, notably in dogs and horses, which, to some ex- 
 tent, in our nature seem to share. But it is in man, and, 
 alas ! not in every man, that we must look for the conscious 
 effort to excel himself The true man is, in war or in peace, 
 as Wordsworth's Happy Warrior — is he 
 
 ' Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 
 Looks forward, persevering to the last, 
 From well to better, daily self-surpast.' 
 
 Be not carried away, let not those for whom you are 
 responsible be deluded by the specious maxim : * If God 
 had wanted me to be better, he would have made me 
 better.' He who deliberately uses such language believes 
 neither in God nor in Man. Which is the more melancholy 
 scepticism I know not. 
 
 Wherefore I say unto you, fight, and encourage others to
 
 79 
 
 fight. 'Covet earnestly the best gifts.' Let no man be 
 content to take back his talent to his Master, just as he 
 fancies he received it. Rejoice when ye succeed. Rejoice 
 when ye are beaten. There may be a sphere, where — 
 
 ' Human power and failure 
 Are equalized for ever, 
 And the one great light that haloes all 
 
 Is the passionate bright endeavour.* 
 
 What is beyond the Laurels, beyond the Cypress, we 
 but dimly conjecture. While to those who have passed 
 away we wish rest, there may be something in the feeling, 
 that would prompt us to greet them as a great departed 
 poet wished to be hailed in the unseen world by his lovers 
 in this : — 
 
 * Strive and thrive — fight on — fare ever, 
 There as here ! '
 
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