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ADDRESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWAED THRING 
 
 Head Master qf U:ppingham School, 1853-1887 
 
 < 
 
 WITB PORTBAIT r ^' 
 
 SECOND EDITION * , ^ 
 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 26, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 ■ ^' HO 
 
UB775 
 
 "/^J'XO 
 
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, 
 
 IN FULFILMENT OF THE AUTHOB'S WISH, 
 
 TO 
 
 GEOEGE E. PAEKIN, 
 
 HEAD MASTEB OF THE COLLEGIATE SCHOOL, 
 
 FEEDEEICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK, 
 
 HIS FELLOW-WOBKEB OVEB THE SEAS. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 A FEW of the Addresses delivered by my father 
 have already been printed singly, and one or two 
 have been circulated privately in type-writing. But 
 as the demand for copies continued, and many 
 friends asked him to publish them, he selected these 
 seven to form a small companion volume to his 
 Poems. 
 
 These Addresses, with some of the Poems, form 
 his last literary work, and were sent to the Publisher 
 only a few days before his fatal illness. 
 
 It has been left to me to finish a task in which 
 he took so much interest and delight, as the first of 
 his wishes which I can fulfil for him. 
 
 SAEAH E. TKRING. 
 
 The Schoolhouse, 
 
 Uppingham. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE EDUCA- 
 TION SOCIETY 3 
 
 II. 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT ST. ALBANS, 
 
 APRIL S8, 1886 29 
 
 III. 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE TEACHERS OF MINNE- 
 SOTA, U.S. ... . , . . 61 
 IV. 
 
 A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE PRIZE-GIVING 
 AT THE HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, LEA- 
 MINGTON, SEPTEMBER, 1886 83 
 
 V. 
 
 A workman's HINTS ON TEACHING WORK, 
 
 MARCH 6, 1887 103 
 
 VI. 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE TEACHERS' GUILD, MAY 16, 
 
 18S7 145 
 
 VII. 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE CONFERENCE OF HEAD 
 MISTRESSES, HELD AT UPPINGHAM SCHOOL, 
 JUNE 10, 1887 179 
 
AN ADDEESS DELIVERED BEFOSE TEE 
 EDUCATION SOCIETY. 
 

 PEACTIOAL THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 
 Al^TER THIBTY YEARS' WORK. 
 
 The honour you have conferred on me by making 
 me your President accounts for my presuming to 
 address you to-day. I pray you, if you are not 
 pleased with what I say, take some blame on your- 
 selves for choosing the wrong man ; for assuredly, 
 as you wished me to try, you shall have the very 
 best service I can give, in spite of many reasons that 
 would make me unwilling to break silence. Yet in 
 good truth there is no audience I should so much 
 wish to please ; none with whose life I feel a greater 
 sympathy ; none who have me more absolutely at 
 their command. For I am one of yourselves to the 
 back-bone. I come before you as a working man, 
 as a f ellow- worker ; as one who has worked up 
 through an experience of the most varied kind ; who 
 began very low down, and feels strongly with all 
 struggling workers, with their weakness, their faint- 
 heartedness, with weary hand, and weary head, and 
 weary heart ; and who believes that the new truth 
 of life, which is ever becoming incarnate in new 
 births, is always born amongst the struggling, in 
 
 1 
 
4 Practical TJioughts on Education 
 
 travail and in pain. Be content, then, to-day witli 
 a working man's contribution ; and permit me first 
 to prove my right to the name, in order to draw 
 from it all the . help I can, all such support as 
 it is entitled to, and you may be willing to 
 give it. 
 
 My first acquaintance with school began at eight 
 years old, in an old-fashioned private school of the 
 flog-flog, milk-and-water-at-breakfast type. All my 
 life long the good and evil of that place has been on 
 me. It is even now one of my strongest impres- 
 sions, with its prim misery, the misery of a clipped 
 hedge, with every clip through flesh and blood and 
 fresh young feelings ; its snatches of joy, its painful 
 but honest work, grim, but grimly in earnest, and 
 its prison morality of discipline. The most lasting 
 lesson of my Hfe was the failure of suspicion and 
 severity to get inside the boy-world, however much 
 it troubled our out sides. Three long years were 
 spent there. Then came nearly nine years of Eton 
 as Oppidan and Colleger, and I passed from Eton 
 as Captain of the School to King's College, Cam- 
 bridge. Those nine years, with all their chequered 
 feeling, did not leave me in ignorance of the good, 
 and evil of a great public school. Six years of work 
 and reading at Cambridge followed ; now heavy 
 with labour, now buoyant with hope, bringing great 
 sear chin gs of heart, and much balancing of right 
 and wrong, much anxious weighing of the value of 
 education and life, and their true use. And then, 
 
Ajter Thirty Years' Work. 5 
 
 best of all, the very pivot of all after-time, my Curate 
 life in Gloucester, and country parishes. Six years 
 were passed in this way, with a wedge of private 
 tutor work thrust in between; and work as an 
 Examiner from time to time ; when I left my parish 
 to examine at Cambridge for the Classical Tripos, 
 or was sent by the University to Eugby to examine 
 there, or chosen by my College for four succes- 
 sive years to examine at Eton. Lastly, after this, 
 thirty-one years as Head Master of Uppingham have 
 brought me to this hour. 
 
 But the Curate life was the foundation of it all in 
 practice. Never shall I forget it, with its teaching 
 work, almost daily, in National Schools. Every- 
 thing I most value of teaching thought, and teaching 
 practice, and teaching experience, came from that. 
 Never shall I forget those schools in the suburbs of 
 Gloucester, and their little class-room, with its 
 solemn problem, no more difficult one in the world ; 
 how on earth the Cambridge Honour man, with his 
 success and his brain-world, was to get at the minds 
 of those little labourers' sons, with their unfurnished 
 heads, and no time to give. 
 
 They had to be got at, or — I had failed. 
 
 They tried all my patience, called every power 
 into play, and visited me with much searchings of 
 heart if they did not do well. Never shall I cease 
 to be grateful to those impracticable, other-world 
 boys, and that world of theirs which had to be got 
 into 
 
6 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 They gave me the great axiom, '* The worse the 
 material, the greater the skill of the worker." 
 
 They called out the useful dictum with which I 
 ever silently stepped over the threshold — ** If these 
 fellows don't learn, it's my fault." 
 
 They disentangled all the loose threads of know- 
 ledge in my brain, and forced me to wind each 
 separately in its place, with its beginning and its 
 end. 
 
 They bred in me a supreme contempt for know- 
 ledge-lumps, and for emptying out knowledge -lumps 
 in a heap, hke stones at the roadside, and calhng it 
 teaching. 
 
 They made me hate the long array of fine words, 
 which lesson-hearers ask, and pupils answer, and 
 neither really know the meaning of. 
 
 They taught me how different knowing is from 
 being able to make others know. 
 
 Nay, they taught me the more valuable lesson 
 still, how different knowledge which can be produced 
 to an Examiner is from knowledge which knows 
 itself, and understands its own life and growth. 
 
 There I learnt the great secret of St. Augustine's 
 golden key, which, though it be of gold, is useless 
 unless it fits the wards of the lock. And I found 
 the wards I had to fit, the wards of my lock, which 
 had to be opened, the minds of those little 
 street boys, very queer and tortuous affairs ; and I 
 had to set about cutting and chipping myself in 
 every way to try and make myself into the wooden 
 
After Thirty Years' Work. ■ 7 
 
 key, which should have the one merit of a key, 
 however common it might look, the merit of fitting 
 the lock, and unlocking the minds, and opening the 
 shut chambers of the heart. 
 
 Oh! how hard it was to get into shape, their 
 shape, and fit the twists and corners of blocked and 
 ignorant minds. But it was glorious work. There 
 was wonderful freshness in those schools, a most 
 exhilarating sense of life touching life, of freedom 
 and reality, after the heaps of knowledge, which, 
 like sheaves of corn on a threatening day, had had 
 to be loaded up, and carted in against time at 
 School and College. 
 
 This wrestling with mind was a different world 
 from the knowledge world and its loading up. It 
 was like landing on a new continent for the first 
 time, with a glad liberty of space to explore, and 
 reclaim ; a glad liberty of going on, and going on, 
 and going on, exploring and making pathways in 
 unknown lands. 
 
 Many able men, Archbishop Whately amongst 
 them, were at that time earnestly striving to put 
 teaching into its most telling shape for the short- 
 timed poor to get at. Indeed, a new epoch had 
 come. For the first time in the history of the world, 
 there was a demand that everybody should get some 
 teaching of a regular kind. So not only the freedom 
 of the work itself, and the fascinating novelty of 
 untried ground, and the zeal of such fellow- workers, 
 and the feeling of enterprise, discovery, and life, was 
 
"8 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 full of attraction ; bnt a national crisis of the most 
 momentous kind had come. 
 
 The air was full of hope, and bright with possi- 
 bilities ; new opportunities under new conditions 
 had arisen, and everything pointed to a great new 
 birth of teaching power. Something efficient had 
 to be done to make every child in the kingdom an 
 intelligent worker in life, in spite of lack of time, or 
 lack of brains. That was the problem. Some 
 thought it could be solved. And if the elementary 
 schools could be made to do it, a new era had set in. 
 
 There was a fair field. It was clear that with the 
 short time that could be given, and the material to 
 be dealt with, much knowledge was impossible ; but 
 mind might be roused ; interest might be awakened ; 
 a sure path might be laid down ; a path into a new 
 world, which should tempt those who set foot on it 
 to go on. There might be a feeling of gain produced, 
 a feeUng of things pleasant in the getting, and 
 pleasant in the having. Mind was there. Why 
 should not mind be dealt with? What was to 
 prevent the exercise of new senses ? of eyes taught 
 to see, and ears taught to hear ? The rudder-strings 
 of voyages through peopled worlds of mind-creations, 
 the power to move, the hope to excite movement, 
 pleasure, happiness, seemed within range. At least, 
 it was not too much to hope, that the narrow walla 
 of the dull prison, in which the omniscient ignorance 
 of the village pot-house hero dwelt, might he broken 
 down, and the vast beyond, with its mysterious 
 
After Thirty Years' Work, 9 
 
 humility of infinite delight, get a chance of being 
 seen, or at least believed in. And if by degrees 
 this hving teaching prevailed in the schools below, 
 and mind-power became mind-power indeed, what 
 might not be credible in the future, when better 
 methods and free, unfettered skill should begin their 
 upward push, and simplify all the processes of 
 learning ? Enlightened growth by growing would 
 displace worn-out systems ; and thought and mind 
 be moved on to their rightful throne ; and intelli* 
 gence, with memory as its day-labourer and servant, 
 be lord of all in the schools. 
 
 Everything seemed possible in that dawn of 
 liberty to work, that breaking up of the tyranny of 
 knowledge, that wakening of love for working, and 
 that new field for working love. 
 
 If there was no time for piling up knowledge, there 
 were minds to be trained, and lives to be set free. 
 And education might rise^ a resurrection indeed, 
 from the folio sepulchre in which it had been so 
 long entombed. 
 
 How strange it seems, to look back on all this ! 
 The cold, dead hand of authority came in, and sent 
 Lazarus back to his grave again. 
 
 That time is gone, bmied, its tombstone at top of 
 it — dogmas heavier than folios ; there is no resur- 
 rection for it. But it will ever live fresh in my 
 memory, as the one great chance of centuries, I 
 shall never forget it. 
 
 In such a time, with such hopes, dreams, but 
 
10 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 dreams that cannot be undreamed again, circum- 
 stances sent me to Uppingham; and I suddenly 
 found myself brought face to face with all I had 
 professed to believe, when free to profess ; and all I 
 had ever said, when free to talk ; with a platform 
 to make the attempt on, twenty-five boys to begin 
 with, youth on my side, and faith. So the work 
 began in earnest; and slowly went on through 
 every gradation known to schools, and has landed 
 me where I am to-day. These thirty-one years have 
 passed me through every phase incidental to school 
 existence from the level in numbers of a small 
 private school ; and each stage has required to be 
 dealt with as it came separately, and constructed 
 as it came. Men talk lightly of success who have 
 not paid the cost. The great Duke said there is no 
 sadder thing than victory excepting a defeat. Yet 
 it is good to have looked ruin in the face, and grown 
 famihar with her solemn features. He who has 
 once seen her, walks the earth thenceforth with 
 other eyes, with tenderer feelings for the weak and 
 downcast, with sterner confidence in truth ; and 
 knows from end to end all the great tune of working 
 life, and thrills in answer to those vibrations which 
 secretly pass to and fro between true workers. I for 
 one acknowledge nothing higher than the skilled 
 workman in his own skilled work. It is on this 
 account, and because you have chosen me, that I 
 have endeavoured to show, whether what I say is 
 good or bad, that I ought to have something to say ; 
 
After Thirty Years' Work. 11 
 
 and if I have, I am not out of place here to-day. I 
 stand here as a worker. 
 
 I fully acknowledge the right of anyone to come 
 to the skilled workman and say, Make me such and 
 such a thing, and to blame him if it is not made 
 well. But it is for the skilled workman to say 
 whether it can be made ; and to give instructions 
 how to make it. And I do not understand any 
 man, be he Solomon himself, coming to the skilled 
 workman, and laying down laws how he is to work, 
 in total ignorance of the material in his hands, the 
 time at his disposal, and the tools he is able to get. 
 There is much poetry in childhood, the hopes and 
 fears of the young are full of imaginative feeling, 
 and pictorial effect, but a poet would be an unsafe 
 guide in schools. There is much philosophy in 
 child-nature, and brain- spinning is a pleasant thing 
 to the spinner, and brain-spun fabrics fascinating 
 to artistic connoisseurs, but let no man who has 
 never taught a child, ay, and many children, de- 
 ceive himself into thinking he knows how to teach, 
 or can instruct others in what he does not know 
 himself. And last, not least, the dead hand of 
 unfeeling power, that measures lives by a foot-rule, 
 is dead indeed when thrust into living work. 
 
 Now there must be a beginning. The material 
 to be dealt with is the first thing. This is not a 
 simple question. It is twofold. First, the answer 
 is, the child mind is the material, but the child 
 mind under very stringent conditions of time, and 
 
12 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 habit. And secondly, as two rival powers compose 
 the mind, qua teaching, the thinking power, and 
 the carrying power, holding somewhat the same 
 relative position to one another that muscular 
 strength and stomach strength do in the body; 
 which is going to be most employed ? Is the aim 
 to be to make the mind strong, or to make it full ? 
 I unhesitatingly answer that the Teacher's true 
 business is to make the mind strong. Incidentally 
 this has been touched on already. 
 
 It will be well now to lay down four propositions 
 as a platform to start from. 
 
 The first proposition is, 
 
 Every child has to be taught ; with its corollary, that 
 no system which fails to meet this necessity is true. 
 
 The second proposition is, 
 
 That Teaching is not yet perfect ; with its corollarj'-, 
 that no authority, which by rigid rec[uirements 
 assumes that it is so, is true. 
 
 The third proposition is. 
 
 That if the teachers don't know how to do their work, 
 no one else does ; with its corollary, that no dead 
 hand, thrust into living work from the outside, is 
 true. 
 
 And the fourth proposition is. 
 
 That Education means training for life. Lives, not 
 lessons are dealt with ; with its corollary, that no 
 system, which battens on books, is true. 
 
 It is indeed the fact that human nature has been 
 so adjusted that any system, however defective, will 
 
After Thirty Years' Work. 13 
 
 have its apparent success* Nay, the worse the 
 system, the more briUiant may be its outcome in a 
 few stars. But stars, remember, imply night. 
 
 The dullest daylight puts out all the stars. 
 
 If every child is properly taught there will be 
 daylight, and the intelligence of the many will take 
 off attention from the few, instead of the prizes of 
 a few being accepted as a compensation for the 
 darkness of the many. 
 
 But, lohat is being properly tmtght ? Now there 
 is a simple fact before beginning to teach which 
 requires to be recognised. 
 
 In choosing what to begin on, not the desirable 
 but the possible is the question. 
 
 Say that there are five years, an ignorant mind, 
 and many hindrances ; what can an ignorant mind, 
 in five years, with many hindrances, be got to do ? 
 That is the question. 
 
 Add to this the first axiom of work, that you 
 cannot use the unknown to teach the unknown; 
 and it is wonderful how much confused bramble is 
 cut out of the path by these two simple common- 
 sense hatchets. 
 
 Take any two persons arguing on school at 
 random, anywhere, at any time, the argument will 
 be, whether it is better to take this subject or that. 
 
 1 boldly assert that the question really lies 
 between dohig nothing, or doing something, and has 
 nothing to do with the desirableness of this or that 
 subject. 
 
14: Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 "What is possible ? That is all ; enough too, and 
 more than enough. 
 
 Few, to begin with, are aware how completely 
 language, the sole instrument of teaching, is un- 
 known to the vast majority of those who come to 
 be taught, high and low. I mean common words, 
 Enghsh words, in their ordinary sense, and in daily 
 use. The boys even of well-to-do families are 
 quite ignorant of the meaning of the familiar 
 words employed in the conversation going on round 
 them ; of course still more of those used in books. 
 Examples might be multiplied to any extent. I 
 had intended to give some, but I thought better of 
 it, as it might produce a wrong impression of its 
 being an occasional eccentricity instead of universal 
 practice. Whole classes don't know the same com- 
 mon word. I cannot however refrain from quoting 
 the student, age seventeen, who after a most 
 patient explanation, a day or two intervening, pro- 
 pounded Sir Isaac Newton's great law of universal 
 aggravation. 
 
 No doubt many things are desirable, but what 
 can be got, if time is short, and language unknown; 
 and the unknown cannot teach the unknown ? 
 
 Life is what has to be dealt with, not lessons ; 
 or lessons only so far as they inspirit life, enrich it, 
 and give it new powers. 
 
 And everyone has to be dealt with ; racing stables 
 and a crack winner or two will not do. 
 
 I state with all the certainty of long experience 
 
After Thirty Years' Work, 16 
 
 that under the conditions imposed by the laws of 
 nature any attempt to pile in knowledge until very 
 late in the day, has failed, does fail, and will 
 always fail. It is not possible for gentle or simple. 
 A settled conviction of hopeless stupidity is the 
 only gain carried off by many from the knowledge 
 shops. 
 
 I know no sadder sight in creation than to see a 
 slow good boy kneading himself laboriously, because 
 he is good, into hopeless despair, through being 
 forced to load in the measured quantity from out- 
 side against time. 
 
 It is possible at a cost of millions to turn a whole 
 kingdom in this way into a sort of manufactory of 
 stupidity. 
 
 But though few can get knowledge, everyone can 
 be taught to use the powers he has. Working 
 power can be got. But how ? An answer to this 
 question may fairly be demanded, and I feel that I 
 am bound to sketch what is possible, as I have so 
 strongly laid down what is not possible. The sub- 
 ject is not so vast as it seems. The moment we 
 leave cloud-land and the desirable, and come down 
 to earth and the possible, the turmoil and josthng 
 is at an end. A single line will define the whole 
 scope of teaching operations up to the point where 
 the manufacture of learned men begins. 
 
 Make every child master of the one instrument 
 by which all human life moves, speech, the mother- 
 tongue. 
 
16 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 Or to take it from a different side, life is the 
 question. The living come to be taught ; what has 
 he got already in him ? It is clear that to utilise, 
 expand, vivify what he has got already in him, is at 
 once possible. 
 
 Lo I the answer, the first answer, to the question 
 what has he got in him, is at once — speech. 
 
 Every Englishman speaks English; and as 
 nothing can be done till language is known, English 
 must be known first. If English is not known, as 
 far as it is not known, it is a foreign language to 
 him who does not know it, — Chinese, let us say. 
 "Well, at present we are engaged in teaching new 
 and unknown facts by talking Chinese. As long 
 as we talk Chinese we must fail. The vocabulary 
 of the great majority of the so-called educated 
 classes is very limited, as has been stated above ; 
 the boys and girls do not understand the meaning 
 of English words. Make them understand them 
 by teaching them to read English well. 
 
 To read aloud intelligently, with ease, under- 
 standing, and feeling, as it ought to be the first aim 
 of sane teaching, so it is the crowning excellence, 
 the consummate perfection, the most finished pro-- 
 duct, of the highest culture. It stands moreover 
 that great test of value to the human race that all 
 can begin, though none can find an end. Nothing 
 is of true value to man that is not universal. 
 
 Again ; w^hat infinite interest and variety there 
 is in the necessities through which thought passes 
 
After Thirty Years' WorJe. 17 
 
 in finding expression in words. The moment 
 Grammar is dealt with as thought working into 
 words, and using the word*creations it gives birth 
 to, and making them Hve, instead of as a kind of 
 strait-waistcoat to pinch thought into shape, a new 
 world is opened. If Grammar is only thought 
 taking shape. Grammar is already in the mind 
 waiting to be called out. And it can be called out 
 without any book work by a teacher. A class can 
 be made to frame its own rules by a little question- 
 ing. I have done it again and again; and it is 
 lively and interesting work. I have known little 
 children ask for grammar lessons as a favour for 
 their amusement. 
 
 The first economy of time obviously is to utilise 
 in this way the material already collected by every- 
 one who speaks, and thus waste no time in having 
 laboriously to collect new material before it is 
 necessary to do so. 
 
 The next great economy of time is to excite 
 interest. 
 
 Great interest will make up for want of time. 
 Create great interest. As soon as children can 
 read, throw away all lesson books for a time. Let 
 them read. (But alas ! who is there can teach 
 reading ?) Let them read aloud — ^really read, not , 
 tumble through pages. Give them to read Poetry, 
 the Lives of Good Men, Narratives of noble deeds, 
 Historical Stories, and Historical Novels, Books of 
 Travel, and ail the fascinating literatm-e of dis- 
 
 
 
18 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 covery and adventure. A person who has once 
 learned to read well is tempted to go on. And such 
 books, selected by a carefully graduated scheme, 
 would supply endless knowledge, whilst kindling 
 the mind, without any waste of time from drudgery 
 and disgust. Geography, History, and power of 
 speech are all comprised in such books, if properly 
 used. 
 
 Here let me record my own deep obligations to 
 Sir Walter Scott, the noblest of writers. Many of 
 his novels I have read over and over again. The 
 glorious lesson to honour, and paint with honour, 
 antagonists and their beliefs, can be learnt nowhere 
 so well as in him. Better be one of Sir Walter 
 Scott's dislikes than the hero of many modern 
 novels. With what a large humanity he takes the 
 human element even in the characters which he 
 holds up to ridicule, so that a kindly feehng is 
 excited whilst we laugh, or even despise ! How . 
 noble is his sympathy with the weak, the oppressed, 
 the hardly-treated I How manly his spirit, like the 
 air of his own mountains, full of gallantry and 
 truth ! To come to lower points, how varied his 
 language ! his riches of speech how great ! He 
 gave me an acquaintance with words, and a free- 
 dom in using them, for which I am, and ever shall 
 be, grateful. For unsullied purity of lofty thought ; 
 for a large charity, which ennobles the meanest 
 person he touches, and leaves behind some tender- 
 ness towards those we condemn most ; for gene- 
 
After Thvrty Years' Work, 19 
 
 rous, frank testimony to good wherever found ; how 
 great gratitude is due to him, who has glorified his 
 country and the EngHsh-speaking world with his 
 words ! Health and honour flow forth from every 
 word he wrote, an heir-loom to our race for ever. 
 I rejoice in confessing my great debt to him, and 
 others may get from similar reading the happy 
 gains I got from him. 
 
 And did not the present Emperor of Germany, 
 with a like feeling, think it worth while to parade 
 the troops throughout his kingdom, and gave com- 
 mand that every regiment in that mighty army 
 should have read to them the loss of the Birken- 
 head, and how the English soldiers stood calmly 
 in their ranks on deck, and saw the women and 
 children saved, as the ship was slowly sinking down 
 with them into the cruel African sea ; and so they 
 died. The Emperor thought the solemn glory of 
 the English soldier in his quiet faithfulness even 
 unto death, a grand example of what men should 
 be, a noble teaching for his countrymen to hear, an 
 education of heroes. And we, whose heroes they 
 are, we, who have many heroes, let it all slip, and 
 run away, like water after rain in thankless soil. 
 Yet even as a bit of knowledge, what opportunity 
 for vivid description of the African sea, the trans- 
 lucent palace of the shark, and all its wonders ; 
 and of Africa and its lakes, its deserts, its plants, 
 its animals, its colonies, its natives, such a reading 
 naturally gives rise to 1 
 
20 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 What a lesson in geograpliy it might be made ! 
 
 Then to go on with what is already present, wait- 
 ing to be used. There are eyes, there are ears; 
 take them, use them. 
 
 Are there no crops in England, clothing the land 
 with knowledge and beauty ? no plants to be seen ? 
 no flowers in fields, and hedges, and woods? no 
 gardens for summer and winter to make sport in ? 
 Give them tongues to tell their own history. 
 
 Not that I would teach Botany book-fashion; 
 but I would turn every child's eye on to the facts 
 that botany and the microscope have discovered, and 
 on to their own daily round of walks or roads. 
 They should note the first crocus and put down its 
 date. They should observe each day the new 
 comers, and their curious differences, the kind of 
 growth, the various shapes, the beauty of leaves, 
 the texture and colour, the upward flow of sap, and 
 all the secret glory of the rushing tide of life ever 
 flowing; so that the quiet fields with their grass 
 and their trees, so stationary and so still, are for all 
 that full of the stir of hurrying life, an infinity of 
 streams, every blade of gi'ass a rivulet, every tree a 
 river, till, if all was poured together, these won- 
 drous springing fountains of earth would form a 
 second ocean of moving life. 
 
 Not a bird should fly unnoticed ; the note of the 
 first chiff-chaff should be heard. Not a song should 
 sound, not a wing be moved, without appealing to 
 seeing eyes, and hearing ears. 
 
After Thirty Years,' Work, 21 
 
 There are some books already written to glorify 
 these subjects, and not to make specimens of them ; 
 books, that feel their beauty, and do not want to 
 lecture on their bones. And there might be any 
 number, if writers and teachers were agreed that 
 they wanted to breathe into the taught noble Hfe, 
 living power, living interest, curiosity, hope, and 
 not to turn them into fifth-rate catalogues. The 
 names of Edwards and Dick then would not shine 
 like stars, because of the daylight in every village ; 
 and tens of thousands, using happy eyes, would find 
 dehght in common things. First put the marvel- 
 lous results of observation, and train the eye to see, 
 and the ear to hear, and afterwards, if there is 
 time, teach how such things were found out. What 
 food for observation there would be in making a boy 
 trace in sand, or build in a play-ground corner, a 
 map of the district in which he lived, the plan of a 
 campaign, a traveller's route, or any history capable 
 of being made visible. And let m.e guard against 
 the objection that all this is loose and unmetho- 
 dical. Be it so. It is better to have loose facts 
 than nothing; curiosity, than stagnation and dis- 
 gust. But it need not be loose. As severe a 
 scheme of logical sequence of knowledge might un- 
 obtrusively be followed in this way, as on the driest 
 date card, and most meagre manual. During all 
 the first years for high and low no lesson book in 
 the ordinary sense of the word should ever come 
 into a schoolroom, if I had power: but reading 
 
22 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 books only, carefully selected, carefully edited, with 
 plenty of supplementary notes, and — Teachers. 
 Teachers — not hearers of lessons. 
 
 One word more on reading. It is necessary to 
 draw attention to the fact that this education by 
 reading gives, first of all, the pleasurable power of 
 going on with ease and pleasure, nothing else does ; 
 and, secondly, every word added to a man's mind 
 is a new thought, and fact, or a new aspect of a 
 thought and fact. It is computed that the unedu- 
 cated man is confined to about three hundred or 
 four hundred words ; which is the same as saying, 
 that the uneducated man's mind is imprisoned within 
 that space. Look at the clouds, what a difference 
 it makes in mind-power to one who loves the 
 beauty of the clouds to have the three words, rain- 
 cloud, cumulus, and cirrus, as classifying guides of 
 what he sees, instead of simply seeing clouds only ! 
 The fact that all knowledge passes through words 
 has already been mentioned, but that words them- 
 selves are such wonderful knowledge, and that the 
 user of fifteen thousand words, like Shakespear, is 
 a lord of infinite empires of thought by that simple 
 fact only, is not heeded, or indeed known. But 
 words are to their possessors powers of knowledge 
 and thought themselves. Let then lesson books 
 and lesson hearers depart, and reading books and 
 Teachers come in. Exit paper, enter life. 
 
 But what is Teaching ? Teaching means drawing 
 out powers of mind by question and answer. 
 
After Thirty Years' Work. 23 
 
 There are many ways of learning, but only one 
 way of teaching. 
 
 There are many ways of learning, where the 
 learner, shown, or not shown, how to do it, does 
 the work ; but only one way of teaching, till teach- 
 ing is no longer necessary, and the pupil becomes a 
 learner by himself. 
 
 Once more, not the desirable but the possible is 
 what every sane authority will propose. If subjects 
 are impossible, it is no use pondering over whether 
 they are [desirable. Change the subjects as you 
 iplease, if the majority get nothing they get nothing. 
 'A few fragments of knowledge acquired at the cost 
 of blunted hope, and loss of power, and false ideas 
 of life, and no skill, and no eye for skill, are not 
 worth the cost. This might be remedied by teach- 
 ing ; but there can be no teacher unless teaching is 
 possible. 
 
 Teachers are a very artistic product. They do 
 not grow by just sprinkling about a few Minutes of 
 Council by my Lords, like mustard and cress on a 
 bottle. 
 
 A Teacher is a combination of heart, head, artistic 
 training, and favouring circumstances. Like all 
 other high arts, hfe must have free play or there 
 can be no teaching. 
 
 Teaching is not possible if classes are too large. 
 
 Teaching is not possible if an inspector is coming 
 to count the number of bricks made to order. 
 
 This is self-evident. The large class destroys 
 
24 Practical Thoughts on Education 
 
 teaching, because time does not admit of each boy 
 being questioned, and each mind being skilfully 
 probed, and its special difficulties attended to. 
 
 The Inspector destroys teaching, because he is 
 bound by law and necessity to examine according 
 to a given pattern ; and the perfection of teaching 
 is, that it does not work by a given pattern. 
 
 Minds cannot be inspected. The minds of the 
 class cannot be produced as specimens on a board, 
 with a pin stuck through them, like beetles. 
 Shoving in the regulation quantity is one thing; 
 clearing the stuff out of the bewildered brain, and 
 strengthening the mind, is another ; and the two 
 are foes. 
 
 I stand here to-day for liberty ; liberty to teach. 
 
 I assert that if the teachers do not know how to 
 do their work, no one else does ; and that if they 
 are ever to know how to do it, there must be fair 
 liberty. 
 
 It is lives, not lessons, that are dealt with. The 
 great factor of time determines the possible and the 
 impossible. 
 
 It is madness to throw away what all have, the 
 language they speak, the sight of their eyes, and 
 the hearing of their ears ; and set on foot what 
 cannot be got, in defiance of the fact that it cannot 
 be got. 
 
 The most pitiful sight in the world is the 
 slow good boy, laboriously kneading himself into 
 stupidity, because he is good. 
 
After Thirty Years* Work. 25 
 
 And now I must conclude. No one is more 
 aware than myself, I believe, that silence is 
 golden. 
 
 Certainly I have a most keen feeling of the 
 danger of speech. But you chose me. You have 
 made me speak. In obedience to you I have broken 
 silence. 
 
 O Teachers of England, if there is any hope, 
 strive for hberty to teach. Have mercy on the 
 slow, the ignorant, the weak. Their Hves are the 
 stake. Let there be liberty to improve. Let there 
 be some liberty. 
 
 But — let me finish by begging your pardon for 
 having broken silence in a lost cause. i 
 
AN ADDEESS DELIVEEED AT ST. ALBANS, 
 APEIL 28, 1886. 
 
 I 
 
AN ADDEESS ON EDUCATION. 
 
 PowEE of speech has naturally played a great part 
 in the world ; a much greater part than it ought to 
 play, or would play, if experience was allowed a 
 fair chance, and wisdom had its due. But power 
 of speech has many meanings ; and Mr. Pitt is said 
 to have given a definition of oratory, which, fairly 
 thought out, conveys as much truth as a single 
 word, perhaps, has ever been enabled to carry. He 
 was asked, '* What made an orator ? '* He answered, 
 '* His audience ; *' concentrating in that single word 
 the spiritual law, the grand truth, that where an 
 audience is earnest, experienced, intelligent, and 
 full of the powerful subtle sympathy of a good 
 cause, there the speaker's soul, if it can take the 
 inspiration, gathers up the silent glory of the 
 breathing life, like a great organ, and rises instinct 
 with the harmony of the spiritual presence all 
 round about — when the very air seems to thrill and 
 throb, transfigured into a kind of wistful expecta- 
 tion, and unborn hopes — gathers it all up, and pours 
 it forth in articulate utterance, a mighty tide of 
 
30 An Address on Education, 
 
 many hearts that feel. Yes, for good or evil the 
 audience breathe their life into the speaker, and 
 make him give his best, whatever that best may be. 
 This is my advantage to-day. I feel upheld by the 
 sympathy of my audience. We are all met together 
 this afternoon for a great cause ; all inspired by a 
 deep interest in the sacred cause of Education. 
 And I have felt, from the first moment you asked 
 me to come, that my audience, few or many, would 
 be a living audience, and uplift me by their Hfe. 
 
 Yet, I pray you, be patient with me. Strong as 
 I feel our sympathy to be, I may, nevertheless, say 
 unpleasant things, which may grate on your ears. 
 But give them hearing, for they are of life. I am no 
 amateur, floating aerial brightnesses to catch your 
 eyes, but a workman fresh from his workshop and 
 his forge. You must not expect mental fireworks, 
 but the sober convictions of many years' labour. 
 Still less is brain-spun gauze of self-evolved human 
 nature any part of my stock in trade, with all its 
 niceties of subtle phraseology, and its fascinating 
 assumption of intellectual superiority. No, you 
 must be contented with thicker stuff, woven of 
 tough fibre, coarse, if you like to think so — the 
 tough, coarse texture of daily toil, of weary hours, 
 of watchful waiting, of many a victory, and many 
 a defeat ; ay, many a defeat, and the years of trial, 
 that kill, or make strong. 
 
 One thing I pre-eminently rejoice in to-day, that, 
 whilst called to speak on education, the moving 
 
An Address on Education. 31 
 
 power of this meeting is the Higher Education of 
 Women. 
 
 Not that this will much affect the treatment of 
 the subject. In my judgment the main lines are 
 the same for men and women. And the verdict on 
 the education of both sexes may be given in the 
 emphatic declaration concerning marriage, *' What 
 God hath joined together let no man put asunder." 
 
 Woman was created as a help, or fellow- worker 
 with man. To be a fellow-worker implies, not the 
 same work necessarily, but kindred training, the 
 same main direction of thought and culture. It 
 implies a power able to step in and give actual help 
 in all ways outside the actual battle, able to supply 
 what want of time and rougher strength cannot 
 compass. Above all, it implies the being able by 
 delicate excellence, and refined yet dauntless courage 
 and skill, to nerve men for their highest efforts, and 
 bring to perfection all those qualities which depend 
 on spiritual nobility for their triumph; and by 
 so doing, to break down the idolatry of force, and 
 appeal, by a perpetual silent eloquence of weak- 
 ness, strong in lovable goodness, with ceaseless 
 pleading against the coarse meanness of the argu- 
 ment of the hand, and the brutality of mere 
 physical or mental strength. 
 
 There are facts of the world, which have, sooner 
 or later, to be dealt with. When shall we face 
 honestly the facts of the world ? Let us try to do 
 so to-day. There is an irresistible march of great 
 
32 An Address on Education, 
 
 facts of natural law, however many thousand years 
 may pass before dearly bought experience sets them 
 on their rightful throne. But why should we buy 
 experience so dear, when facts are so plain ? The 
 most plain, the most practical fact in man's world 
 is this, that every human being, for the first ten 
 years or so of life, is in the hands of women. We 
 are getting skilful in law-making ; but no law has 
 yet been passed to abolish mothers and nurses. 
 The real rulers of the world for good or evil must 
 be those who have its first ten years in their hands. 
 As an historical truth every nation, since history 
 began, has been great and living in proportion to 
 the excellence of its women, and the treatment they 
 received. And yet the true sovereignty of women 
 as helpers and fellow-workers can hardly be said to 
 have ever had a national existence. It is well to 
 face our facts. Facts have an awkward trick of 
 knocking down those who treat them badly. No- 
 thing easier than trampling them underfoot ; nothing 
 harder than to escape being tripped up flat into the 
 mud, if you do. The sovereignty of women is a 
 fact. Those ten years make it so ; to say nothing 
 of other reasons ; and there are perhaps some other 
 reasons, not unknown to us, for feminine influence. 
 Let us then face facts, and educate the queens of 
 life, and fit them for their throne, their throne by 
 divine right of motherhood, of nursehood, and the 
 weakness that rules, not by force, but by harmo- 
 nious grace of fitness. We will not shut our eyes to 
 
An Address on Education. 83 
 
 facts like fools, we will not be fools, to-day at all 
 events, in this. 
 
 Well then. What are the main lines of Educa- 
 tion — facts of natural law ? 
 
 What are we dealing with ? 
 
 And what do we want ? 
 
 I fearlessly assert that these questions have 
 neither been asked, nor answered. 
 
 They have had no public existence. They have 
 not appeared at all in the arena of action. 
 
 I am old enough to remember the beginning of ,; 
 the great Educational scramble. 
 
 I am old enough to have taken a keen personal 
 interest in the question. 
 
 I have lived long enough to have seen every 
 principle I care for, every belief I hold, every fact 
 I know, ignored, neglected, or overthrown, in the 
 gladiatorial contest. 
 
 Now to our questions. The Persian of old, if he 
 had been asked what his view was, would have 
 answered promptly, ** We want to teach the Persian 
 to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth.*' But then 
 — we are not Persians. 
 
 What do we want to teach the Englishman ? 
 
 Is it true that the human being has no feeling ? 
 
 Is it true that feeling has been improved off the 
 the face of the earth ? 
 
 Are love and hate dead and buried ? 
 
 Is there no honour or dishonour any more ? 
 
 Is there no bravery, no cowardice ? 
 
 D 
 
84 An Address on Education, 
 
 Is truth a thing of the past, and falsehood ? 
 
 Is there no temperance and intemperance ? 
 
 No joy and sorrow? 
 
 No endurance and pain ? 
 
 Is there nothing divine ? 
 
 No love of Christ, or God ? 
 
 Have we Solomon's trial over again, with no 
 Solomon to pass judgment ? 
 
 Has England, like the false mother, given up the 
 child to be cut in half ? 
 
 The Persian knew what he wanted, and did it. 
 Do we? 
 
 I prefer not quoting the authority of Holy Scrip- 
 ture. We do not want authority, but common 
 sense. If the staircase of our house has been cut 
 away, or left out, we must begin by replacing the 
 staircase before we can go up higher. 
 
 The Persian defined his view of Education in 
 three words — riding, shooting, truth. And no better 
 definition will ever be given, if we take it as a type, 
 and interpret it. 
 
 The interpretation is simple. The Persian 
 wanted practical skill, and perfect heart-power. 
 For what had a Persian to deal with ? He had to 
 deal with warfare against wild beasts, warfare 
 against warlike men, and honour in his home. 
 Their work was summed up in this ; and so is ours. 
 
 They trained for it. Activity, skill, hardihood, 
 fearless contempt of death, fearless upholding of 
 truth summed up their idea of training. And it 
 
An Address on Education. 36 
 
 gave them the Empire of the world. The boy, who 
 daily took his bow and arrow in his hand with the 
 daily thought, when would he be allowed to meet a 
 lion, had something to think about ; something to 
 try his feelings, and make him a man. 
 
 The bold rider, whose heart thought was set on 
 the battle and the charge from childhood, had some- 
 thing to dream about, waking or sleeping. Both 
 had the joy of strength and temperance, with the 
 praise of courage ever ringing in their ears. And 
 the speaker and doer of truth had learned what 
 honour meant, had learned not to fear the face of 
 man. 
 
 Well! fearless truth, bravery, honour, activity, 
 manly skill, temperance, hardihood, welded into a 
 grand national character, gave them the mastery 
 of the world. 
 
 If they somewhat cut the child in half, and put 
 into him but little ready-made furniture of know- 
 ledge, they took the half which made them men, 
 and rulers of men. But — we are not Persians ! on 
 the contrary, the greatest triumph of modern en- . 
 lightenment has been a national amputation of 
 character. 
 
 I am well aware what a big dog is in the way 
 here ! How dangerous it is to be a believer in hfe ! 
 The glorification of the dog-in-the-manger as liberal 
 is a great achievement ; but it staggers somewhat ^ 
 common sense, when he sits in the manger, and 
 says, *' Go where you like, do what you Hke, I have 
 
36 An Address on Education, 
 
 but one hatred, — Hay. Hay you shall neither have, 
 nor give." 
 
 But, then you know, only bigots eat hay, dogs 
 don't. To the one it is Hfe, to the other litter. 
 The poor dog was only an advanced thinker born 
 before his time. 
 
 The constellation of the dog-star is the finest 
 apotheosis of modern times. The dog is avenged 
 and shines as a star cf the first magnitude, and 
 only persecutes hay, as it only hates hay. 
 
 To resume. What do we want ? 
 
 Are we prepared to face the facts of natural law, 
 and human life, or not ? 
 
 Let us begin for ourselves ; and leave aJone what 
 is in possession of the field, if for no other reason 
 but this, because all the competitors agree that all 
 the rest have failed ; and bystanders agree with all. 
 To say nothing of a grim whisper, which is begin- 
 ning to pass through the land, that all the 
 evil of all the homes is being poured by law into 
 common pools, and carbolic and disinfectants are 
 forbidden by law. This concerns everybody. Be 
 sure that everybody suffers when education goes 
 wrong. The failures are the lives of men. The 
 teacher's workshop fioor is strevv^ed, not with shav- 
 ings, and wasted wood, but with wasted years and 
 f broken lives. The first duty of a nation is to know 
 its failures. 
 
 If National Education turned out a Shakespear 
 every ten years, and consumed the children in doing 
 
An Address on Education, 37 
 
 it, National Education would be a curse. We want 
 no Moloch, even if a Shakespear comes out of the 
 fire periodically. 
 
 Still less do we want a Moloch, which only turns 
 out dust and ashes ; as must always be the case, 
 where the waste is taken no notice of. A nation 
 that disregards the waste has not yet begun. 
 
 Least of all do we want a manufacture of human ^ 
 knives to hack at the world. i 
 
 Well ! what are we dealing with ? 
 
 And what do we want to do with it ? 
 
 Let us face our facts, and not fight against laws 
 of nature. 
 
 We are dealing with the whole human being not 
 cut in half. 
 
 And we want to teach and train each and all ; 
 and leave no one untrained. 
 
 We want to begin at the beginning in accordance 
 with laws of natm-e and growth. 
 
 Now all laws of growth are pleasurable, however 
 much demand they may make on the growing life. 
 The active, growing, healthy child takes pleasure in 
 the exercise and hardihood which makes him active, 
 growing, and healthy. 
 
 But, as a fact, how do people generally begin ? 
 
 The following picture is a true picture, though 
 only typical. 
 
 There is the sea of knowledge, glancing and 
 gleaming in the glorious summer morning; and 
 there also is a bathing machine, with a little naked 
 
38 An Address on Education^ 
 
 victim in it. Up comes a female gorgon, seizes on 
 her prey, and with grim humom: plunges him, 
 mouth wide open, nose, eyes, helpless and howHng 
 under the floating salt, and brings him up again 
 tingling every inch of him, spluttering, half-sick ; 
 eyes, mouth, nose, brain, one complicated misery. 
 The glad, bright, wide sea disenchanted into a kind 
 of baby squirt to torment babies. But let us now 
 dismiss finally how not to do it. Let us go on to 
 see how to do it. 
 
 Here also I will take a heathen's judgment as the 
 perfection of common sense and wise observation ; 
 which cannot be sneered at by heathens, and will 
 not be sneered at by Christians. 
 
 Plato, some two thousand years ago, or more, 
 gave a definition of the true learner, which will not 
 easily be beaten. It harmonises with our work 
 to-day. It is a kind of axiom, which ought to be 
 engraved on every mind. 
 
 Plato's true learner learns *' smoothly, without 
 stumbling, and in a prevailing way." 
 
 This threefold division is full of life and experi- 
 ence. 
 
 First comes the " smoothly ; " that is, the belief 
 in the work, and the love of it. 
 
 Next comes the '* without stumbling;** that is, 
 the obedience, activity, self-mastery, of the learner. 
 He neither puts, nor finds, anything in the way. 
 He has no rubbish in him ; rubbish has been 
 emptied out of his mind. ** The stuffed bosom has 
 
An Address on Education. 39 
 
 been cleansed of that perilous (or foolish) stuff, 
 which weighs upon the heart/' His heart is open 
 and clear. 
 
 Finally, there is the power of lasting, the staying 
 power, — perseverance, which is not satisfied till all 
 is done ; which faces all that has to be done, and 
 does it, and succeeds. 
 
 Loving work, unfettered work, persevering work, 
 make up Plato's idea of a true worker. 
 
 I said ** a true worker.'* But observe, the first 
 demand — love, and the second demand — the clear 
 heart, come before work. 
 
 They belong to a pre-working stage, and to pre- 
 working law. 
 
 Pre-working law then is the true starting 
 point. 
 
 The want of acknowledging pre-working law has 
 destroyed work more than every other cause, and 
 all other defects, put together. 
 
 Pre-working law demands first, that every child 
 should have a clear perception of why he comes to 
 school. 
 
 And secondly, that every child should believe in 
 the answer, and love it. 
 
 This means, that pre-working law requires a 
 convincing statement of the value of the work to be 
 done, understandable by a child ; and also the assur- 
 ance that everybody can do the work. 
 
 Complaints of stupidity would vanish if these pre- 
 working laws were attended to. 
 
40 An Address on Education. 
 
 As the homes do not, and often cannot, supply 
 this want, the schools must do it. 
 
 The stable-boy knows what a horse is. 
 
 The gardener's boy knows what a garden is. 
 
 The carpenter's lad knows what a box is. 
 
 The school-boy alone is turned loose into the 
 working world without the smallest idea of what he 
 is about, or how to work. 
 
 They do not know the common facts about 
 memory and merely loading up knowledge, about 
 thought-power and getting skill and strength, about 
 character and the feehngs. 
 
 They do not know what their work is to do for 
 them. 
 
 They do not know why the special work they are 
 set has been chosen. 
 
 They do not know what they ought to try and 
 aim at. In a word, pre- working law is a sealed 
 book to them. 
 
 They do not know the beginning ; without which 
 no intelligent start can be made. 
 
 The child starts bhndfolded. 
 
 I repeat, the child starts blindfolded. 
 
 But every child can be made easily to understand 
 the value of the skilful mind, the value and pleasure 
 of growth. 
 
 We need not be afraid of labour, if they feel the 
 gain of labour. 
 
 Permit me to try and show briefly this bit of 
 pre-working law. 
 
An Address on Education. il 
 
 Startle the dull, hidebound class, the corporeal 
 presence in the room, by an abrupt question, Why 
 are you not tending pigs, or weeding turnips ? Or 
 whatever the lowest wage-earning of the district 
 may be ? A pig-boy, or turnip-boy, gets 3s. a week. 
 Why don't you get 3s. instead of all this payment ? 
 The answer will probably amount to, * because my 
 father sends me to school.' Go on with, Why 
 does your father pay so much to send you to 
 school ? 
 
 Where does he get the money from, which keeps 
 you here ? 
 
 Are you worth it all ? 
 
 Is your work so much better than the pig-boy's ? 
 Which is it to be, pig-boy, or scholar ? and Why ? 
 
 Having sent in this way a strong splash of cold 
 water into the sleepy soul and woke it up, it is not 
 difficult by a little questioning to make any child 
 see, that value, the market price of anything made, 
 in the first instance depends on the time required, 
 the strength employed, and the risk run by the 
 worker. 
 
 For example, as a question lesson. 
 
 The ploughboy, who begins at once without 
 learning, who only wants ordinary strength, and 
 runs no risk of failure, will not command a high 
 price as a worker ; because anyone can do it, at the 
 earliest working age. 
 
 The carpenter's apprentice has to spend five 
 years, say, in learning his trade ; he has to pay for 
 
42 An Address on Education, 
 
 earning it; he must be fed and clothed, whilst 
 learning it. 
 
 First, then, as compared with the ploughboy, 
 there are five years of time to be accounted for. 
 Secondly, there is not only his own time, but the 
 time and labour of others, which were paid out in 
 supporting him during the time he was being taught 
 and earning nothing ; this may fairly be put at 
 another five years of stored up life — of life, that is, 
 which has passed into the shape of work, and by 
 work passed into the shape of money earned. The 
 apprentice also has to buy tools and run some risk 
 when he sets up in trade on his own account. 
 
 The apprentice Bill of Life then runs in these 
 terms : 
 
 Five years of his own life. 
 
 Five years of the life of his friends. 
 
 Tools. 
 
 Skilful strength. 
 
 Eisk. 
 Grand total, ten years of life, tools, skilful 
 strength, and risk, as against the wage-earning of 
 the ploughboy at the earhest possible age, without 
 any outlay of time or brain. Apply these facts of 
 cost of production to the Lawyer, the Doctor, the 
 Clergyman, any educated man ; and a child can be 
 made to see easily that skilled work is very valuable, 
 that the power of being made a skilled workman 
 is very valuable, that school-work is intended to 
 make him skilled workman, that his parents and 
 
An Address on Education. 43 
 
 teachers believe that they are taking the best means 
 to make him a skilled workman, that they give of 
 their own lives to buy him the chance of being a 
 skilled workman, and that for children to waste the 
 lives of others, as well as their own, in idleness, or 
 worse, is unutterably mean, and base to the last 
 degree. 
 
 If this bit of pre-working law is satisfied, it is not 
 possible that the present blindfold apathy could go 
 on for many generations. 
 
 Then again there is the real value of Education. 
 
 Subject that to the same process. 
 
 The pig-boy in the midst of the finest landscape 
 in the world, if he is but a pig-boy, judges the land- 
 scape by the number of pigs it would support. In 
 other words, the pig-boy's body is aprison shutting in 
 a creature whose highest standard of beauty is pigs. 
 Can any prison be more deadly than this ? 
 
 Any child can be made to see the gain in pleasure 
 that Education brings. 
 
 No child would give up the power of reading, yet 
 reading was a lesson, a task, at first. 
 
 A child who has felt the gain of reading can be 
 made to feel partly, partly to have faith in, the 
 exquisite delight of being taught to read all things, 
 all the languages that speak to the eye, ear, and 
 heart. 
 
 Painting, architecture, music, all creation can be 
 shown to any child to be languages. 
 
 The table before them, the benches on which 
 
44 An Address on Education, 
 
 they sit, the room, the inkstands, the paper they 
 write on, everything, can by a few questions be 
 made to speak, and tell their own history, and give 
 up the secrets of the thought which made them. 
 
 How much more can attention be awakened to 
 the beauty of God's thoughts in creation ! the voices 
 that speak in cloud and rain, in river, forest, moun- 
 tain, plain, flower, grass. For all we see is thought 
 made visible. 
 
 Again, take the great ear-languages, which appeal 
 to the feelings. Music, the song of birds, the voice 
 of winds that breathe o'er land and sea in tender- 
 ness, or wrath; the waters shouting in joy, 
 chanting low rippling songs, roaring in their furious 
 onset ; and last of all, word-language, which par- 
 takes of the power of all, and is the most living 
 exponent of life — word-language, which bears in its 
 bosom the sacred gift of conversing with the great 
 minds and glorious thinkers of all time. 
 
 A very few hours' talk, dexterously referred to 
 from time to time, will make this pre-working law 
 act, put the child absolutely into a new world, and 
 ensure, as far as possible, that the learner is willing 
 to learn smoothly. 
 
 The distinction between right feeling and know- 
 ledge can be brought home by a single question. 
 Do you always do a lesson when you know you ought 
 to do it ? If not, the knowledge of what is right is 
 no good, till right feeling rules your life, and makes 
 you do what you know. 
 
An Address oil Education. 45. 
 
 No thorough progress will ever be made till mere 
 intellect meets with the contempt it deserves ; and 
 the engine without the engine-driver is despised. 
 
 The love of Truth — and Truth means doing at the 
 moment what at the moment we know to be right — 
 the love of Truth — right love, that is, — right feeling, 
 must be set on its throne, if any nation is ever to be 
 really educated. Turn us into Persians ; make all 
 knowledge revolve as satellites round right love, and 
 the world will have changed from the Ptolemaic 
 system to the Copernican. And natural law, under- 
 stood and obeyed, will lead to infinite discoveries in 
 the science of life. 
 
 So much of pre-working law. 
 
 Now to work : what to work, and how to work. 
 
 There are two axioms, which I would put up as 
 sign-posts for this part of the road. 
 
 First, discussions on subjects are infinite. But 
 great discoveries, great marvels, great usefulness, 
 have nothing to do with the value of a subject as a 
 teaching subject. 
 
 Columbus made a marvellous discovery, but any 
 rough seaman, with a little practice, can follow on 
 his track. To explore a new continent may only 
 show the sagacity and savage skill of a Eed Indian. 
 
 Ploughing is the most useful of all work, but the 
 ploughman ranks lowest in the scale of workers. 
 
 Secondly, a subject may be very valuable, but not 
 in practice, if it kicks out another that is more, 
 valuable. 
 
46 An Address on Education, 
 
 We need to arrive at some conclusion on tho 
 subject of ignorance — necessary ignorance. 
 
 I have never seen this subject brought forward ; 
 it may be my misfortune, but I have not. Yet a 
 clear perception of necessary ignorance is the very 
 foundation-stone of true education. Few would 
 claim omniscience, but all assume it. Omniscience 
 has to be given up. 
 
 As an illustration, let me draw your attention to 
 the fact that there are about one thousand definite 
 languages in the world. A reasonably good know- 
 ledge of five of these would be considered no mean 
 attainment. To be a good Greek and Latin scholar, 
 and a thorough speaker of German and French, in 
 addition to our own language, would be considered 
 satisfactory. But what becomes of the nine hundred 
 and ninety-five which we know nothing about? 
 nine hundred and ninety-five unknown, to five 
 known? 
 
 If this compulsory ignorance meets us in one 
 subject only, what becomes of the knowledge hunt 
 as the be-all and end-all of Education ? 
 
 Why, not a letter is written to the Times, not a 
 Cabinet Minister speaks, who does not toss into the 
 school-caldron some half-dozen new, indispensable 
 subjects, every one of them with their thousand 
 variations. They might just as well demonstrate 
 that the fee simple of six new planets was necessary 
 to a school-boy. The idolatry of knowledge must 
 perish, or Education cannot begin. 
 
\i 
 
 An Address on Education. 47 
 
 A clear perception of necessary ignorance must 
 become ordinary stock-in-trade, or mental bank- 
 ruptcy will continue to be as common as it now is. 
 
 Study ignorance. Even the bathing gorgon fails 
 to make the baby swallow all the sea. 
 
 But the Persian was right. Nature, the laws of 
 the world, lay down the main track as long as the 
 world lasts. 
 
 Noble character comes first— Truth. 
 
 The training of skill and strength comes next. 
 
 Noble character is trained by noble example of 
 life, whether in word or deed, and by honest sur- 
 roundings, whether in word or deed. The highest 
 beliefs and the most true work train noble character. 
 The Teacher must have high behef s, and be allowed 
 to teach in their spirit. The hearts of the teachers 
 are all in all. The place of teaching should honestly 
 correspond in all things to the work that has to be 
 done there. The work should have every proper 
 instrument and appliance, whether of teacher or 
 aids to teaching, which can be brought to bear. 
 The whole atmosphere should breathe honour and 
 truth. All the surroundings, living or non-living, 
 should appeal unconsciously to the higher nature of 
 the learners. The highest aims should be put 
 highest, and honoured as highest. Mangers without 
 hay do not feed. 
 
 As regards the work, a selection must be made 
 on natural principles of growth, and obedience to 
 laws of nature. 
 
48 An Address on Education. 
 
 The main needs of life, and the main facts of life, 
 are the same for high and low alike. 
 
 All speak a language. 
 
 Everything in the world passes through language. 
 
 Not to clear the language-pipe is simple insanity. 
 
 Clear and widen the language-pipe first. 
 
 I am inchned to go on by rescuing from a misuse, 
 which has done much harm, an old English proverb, 
 and, by changing one word in it, make it a working 
 definition of perfect Education on the knowledge 
 side. 
 
 The perfectly educated will be Jack-of-all-trades, 
 and master of one. 
 
 '* Master of one.*' Because there is no training 
 in a smattering easily got by an active mind. 
 ** Jack-of-all-trades.*' Because no man can work 
 hard all day; and there is infinite pleasure and 
 profit in picking up everything worth having. 
 
 ** Master of one." Because in the infinity of 
 subjects, the wilderness, the jungle of rival ignor- 
 ances, no strong, calm, great character can gain its 
 strength, excepting by being pressed to the utmost 
 hmit of its power by the fierce demand for perfection 
 that every great subject makes on him who gets far 
 enough to know, what trying to be perfect means. 
 Every good runner knows this fierce demand of the 
 last ten or twenty yo.rds of a race. 
 
 '* Jack-of-all." Because the active brain cannot 
 be on strain always, and yet, being active, will be 
 occupied. And men can gather flowers and know 
 
An Address on Education. 49 
 
 them without being gardeners ; men can buy in the 
 market without being merchants ; and thus in a 
 properly managed scheme a thousand Jack-of-all- 
 trade pursuits come in naturally to underpin the 
 main work, supplement it, give it a finish and 
 ornament, and find pleasure for unprofessional hours. 
 In fact, as I have already drawn attention to Pre- 
 working Law, I would now draw attention to , 
 Sub-working Law, to all the sub-industries, as they ' 
 may be called, which make life rich, in pleasure 
 always, oftentimes in profit too. 
 
 The mighty leisure hours with their sub-industries 
 are all powerful. 
 
 Under the name *' leisure hours," I comprise all 
 time not given to main subjects, and the hardest 
 work first; and, secondly, all time in which no 
 compulsory work is done. 
 
 This division of time into main working time and 
 leisure time ought to be carefully studied, with the 
 whole question of sub-industries and non- compulsory 
 recreation. 
 
 First, however, let uB blot out, once and for ever, 
 any idea that the subjects themselves have anything 
 to do with this distinction necessarily. The learning 
 Greek, for instance, would be a sub-industry to a 
 professional engineer ; not because it is less hard, 
 less noble as a subject than engineerings but because 
 to him it would be a turning on a lower power of ; 
 time and work, in a more leisurely way. 
 
 So also get rid, for ever, of the idea that Painting, 
 
 E 
 
60 An Address cni Education, 
 
 Music, Architecture, Sculpture are less noble as 
 mind-power, because we may not put them, possibly, 
 into our hard- work time. Till we are immortal on 
 earth, we can only do what we can do, and no more. 
 The subjects are not less noble ; but we are too 
 weak to give them time enough. 
 , j The mighty question of leisure hours ought to be 
 1 ihe most important question of all, since it affects 
 the character most. 
 
 I have spoken of not degrading noble subjects 
 because we cannot give much time to them. I 
 would now speak of elevating and giving some time 
 to subjects not usually considered noble, as they 
 especially belong to the Jack-of -all-trades depart- 
 ment. 
 
 We English are proud of our homes. We sing 
 songs about them, we write on them ; in fact, we 
 very justly are j^roud of our homes. Has it ever 
 entered into your minds that home to the great 
 majority in a very large degree, and to all in some 
 degree, is but a loftier name for cookery ? I once 
 cooked a pancake in my shovel; I thought it a 
 success, I am not aware anyone else did. But I am 
 quite sure neither I nor anyone would like a home 
 where I was cook. Well, many women don't cook 
 better than I do, poor women too. But in a cottage 
 good cookery (I know something about this) means 
 economy, luxury, health, comfort, love. Well, a 
 place, \yhere love produces economy, luxury, health, 
 and comfort by its loving care, sounds very like home. 
 
An Address on Education, 51 
 
 Again, everyone ought to have some practical 
 knowledge of v^hat they manage and govern. This 
 belongs to all mistresses of households. 
 
 Again, every living being, male or female, ought 
 to know the common laws of healthy life. Diet and 
 cookery belong to this knowledge. This is part of 
 the Persian's riding and shooting ; the skilful power, 
 I mean, which does common things well. 
 
 Needlework, I need scarcely observe, is very 
 necessary for those who will daily have to judge 
 questions of clothing and material, even if they do 
 not have to do the work. Carpentry and metal 
 work are specialities for boys in like manner, as 
 needlework and cookery are for girls. 
 
 Leisure hours are the hinge on which true educa- 
 tion turns. It is a natural law that a large proportion 
 of om^ time cannot be spent on the hardest work. 
 And it is well to respect natural laws ; they are the 
 most revengeful creatures in the world, absolutely 
 merciless. And, secondly, if rubbish is to be emptied 
 out, and Plato's axiom attended to, it can only be 
 by not throwing away or misusing two-thirds of the 
 working day. 
 
 If all the bones are put into lessons, and all the 
 loveliness, the life, the feelings, the pleasure flung 
 away, no one need wonder that lessons have ill 
 luck. 
 
 Here I would call attention to picture work. 
 When will picture work and photographs take their 
 proper place in school ? 
 
62 An Address on Education, 
 
 Great will that man be, and, I hope, rich, who, 
 instead of deluging the world with rotten editions 
 of hrick-dust notes, will put out Livy, for instance, 
 with really beautiful pictures of the Alps, of modern 
 Eome, of the Alban Hills and Lake, of the Campagna 
 with its aqueducts ; of Sicily, of Thrasimene, and 
 so on. 
 
 The *' Art in Schools Association" is greatly to be 
 praised for the effort it is making, to supply schools 
 with good pictures. 
 
 Again, the rooms themselves should teach— teach, 
 first of all, honour to lessons, by their beauty and 
 order ; and, secondly, by beauty and knowledge. 
 
 This is not so impossible as it may seem. Any 
 person who can paint, by mounting his paintings 
 on linen, and having them cemented to the wall, can 
 be a wall-decorator without going near a wall. And 
 in this way the wall of a schoolroom may be made 
 to teach every plant, bird, animal, or occupation 
 that can be found in the district ; as well as to 
 preach in every foot of space, "Honour to 
 Lessons." 
 
 Then again take Pictorial Teaching. I mean, 
 first, the painting in words scenes of local interest, 
 or other. Secondly, the drawing out of common 
 things the pictures they enfold. Here, for instance, 
 what riches there are; your great Abbey, your 
 battles, your martyrs. Think of that Summer day, 
 that 20th of June, when the stout soldier, who 
 gave our city its name, passed up the gentle slope. 
 
An Address on Education, 53 
 
 amongst tlie flowers so lovingly mentioned by the 
 old Chronicler, just as the sun was setting in its 
 glory over the pleasant fields : and the river below, 
 with its evening smile, looked so peaceful and so 
 glad, as up he passed, that simple, gallant-hearted 
 Christian man, passed up for the grim work of 
 dying ; and left behind him such a light on these 
 your grassy hills as earthly sunshine never gave, 
 the glorious afterglow which immortality begun 
 sends back for all who have the heart to see, an 
 afterglow of life for evermore. And your noble 
 Abbey, with its vast sweep of poetry in stone, 
 takes up the tale, and hands the great picture on, 
 full of the twilight charm of generations passed 
 away, full of the deeds which all the happy, or 
 fierce toilsome years have sent rolling through 
 those silent watchful walls ; full of dreams, full of 
 realities : which are the dreams, and which the 
 realities, who shall avail to tell ? Cannot a voice 
 be given to these things ? 
 
 Then again, take the pictorial secrets of the 
 common world. Give God's great picture-book a 
 chance. Put a tongue into every visible thing. 
 They are eager to speak. For example, a wet cloak 
 — what a poor limp thing it is ; but Shakespear 
 touches it, and makes his laugher's face laugh, till 
 it is like " a wet cloak, ill laid up." How all the 
 puckers, and wrinkles, and creases, all the helpless 
 hopeless crumpling up of the ungovernable laughtei? 
 ifi stamped with the language stamp of the wet 
 
64 An Address on Education. 
 
 cloak for ever ! Or hear the Canadian's picture of 
 a stingy man who had just given three cents — for 
 charity ! ** How they came squeahng out of the 
 tips of his fingers hke a dying rat." Look on a 
 caterpillar, as one, who lives and dies leaving 
 behind as the record of his life, a few marks of 
 what he has destroyed. Or, the dead thorn, with 
 no life but much scratching power. Or, the rivulet 
 that turns hindrances into music. Or, no stream 
 so clear that the cold-hearted cannot draw a fog 
 from it. But enough, I wish to point out that this 
 can go on for ever. Thinking in shape, again ; that 
 is, never learning anything without caUing up a 
 picture of it in the mind, and putting feeling into 
 the picture, would require an essay by itself. I 
 meant also to have said something about the cost 
 of School. But I can only give a clue to it. 
 
 The cost, I mean, of the teaching which the pupil 
 ought to get, not the cost of the pupil himself, who, 
 in many instances, gets nothing. 
 
 The whole kingdom bristles with statistics of the 
 cost of each pupil ; and I am irresistibly reminded 
 when I see the figures, and the result of them, of 
 Aaron's account of his experiment in the now 
 familiar game of Topsy-turvy, or the Leader led, 
 ** The people gave me of their gold, and then I cast 
 it into the fire, and lo I there came out this calf.*' 
 
 The cost of teaching turns on the number of 
 pupils that can be taught properly in one class. If 
 twenty-three pupils require a teacher to themselves 
 
An Address on Educatioju 55 
 
 for the main work, then twenty-three pupils must 
 pay enough to support that teacher. 
 
 If beside this a third of another teacher's time 
 is taken for another subject, another third of a 
 teacher must be added. 
 
 If the whole time is absorbed, as in the case of 
 a Boarding School, then the outschool hours, the 
 responsibilities, and influence of an able influential 
 person require to be paid for. Then the buildings, 
 and playgrounds, plant and apparatus, with their 
 wear and tear, have to be paid for. So a true 
 School Bill runs something in this way : — 
 
 Class Teaching ^ [ 1 1 ^ m'^'^'''f o^l^'^* . 
 
 c 6 9 of a Teacher s Salary, &c., 
 
 House Charges. 
 
 Board = Board. 
 
 Besponsibility and | ^ Kesponsibility and whole time. 
 
 whole time > 
 
 Buildings, wear and \ ^ Buildings, wear and tear. 
 tear, &o. J 
 
 The whole of this cannot possibly be done for 
 each and all at a cheap rate. 
 
 The Buildings at Uppingham alone amount to an 
 original outlay of about £100,000, for one example. 
 
 Bather diminish the quantity demanded than the 
 quality. I 
 
 Above all, never teach the few at the expense of 
 the many. 
 
 I will conclude with a few sober words on the 
 work before us, you, the Forlorn Hope, who 
 
56 An Address on Education. 
 
 are still able to work, work on. You, the Forlorn 
 Hope, who still hold fast to the two great axioms 
 — the first, that the whole human being is the 
 teacher's care ; and that you will not cut the child 
 in half ; and the second, that each child must be 
 taught, the worst as carefully as the best ; you, 
 who, if asked what you want, are ashamed to 
 answer, "A lottery ticket for the scramble in the 
 market place of Vanity Fair;" you, who if asked 
 what is your aim, are ashamed to answer, " To 
 feed 20 on the pay of 100, and send 80 away 
 dinnerless; you, parents, who love your own 
 children, and the poor man's hopes too well for 
 this ; you, schools, that are not yet squeezed out of 
 existence by nurse-made law and squall, work on, 
 hope on. 
 
 Truth is strong. Many a lost battle has been 
 victory to come. 
 
 Honesty is not cheap, but it is honesty. 
 
 Progress is not nurse-law, but it is progress. 
 
 Be not dismayed at the difficulty. Be not dis- 
 mayed at the cost. 
 
 Above all, never lose sight of the great truth, 
 Give not ; lend, help, support, but give not. 
 
 No man can do for another what that other 
 ought to do for himself. 
 
 Never pauperise ; never give ; never let others 
 prey on your life, nor you on theirs. 
 
 The Christian Church tried it for fourteen 
 hundred years, and failed. 
 
An Address on Education, 57 
 
 God lends, and comes back, ay, comes back in 
 this world, to exact strict account from His servants 
 of the talents entrusted to their charge. The devil 
 gives, "All these things virill I give unto thee," says 
 he ; for ruin follows all men who do not pay the , 
 price in life for the Ufe work they live on, be they 
 rich or be they poor. God lends, the devil gives. 
 
 And we — we, who believe in life, and progress, 
 and the brotherhood of workers, will in all honour 
 try to make School teach the whole being, teach 
 everyone, honestly, with prevailing skill. 
 
 So God us help as we make Teaching, crovnied 
 or discrowned, our queen ; and, however small our 
 kingdom may be, set our queen on her rightful 
 throne, having first made sure that we have found 
 the true queen, and are not shouting glory to a 
 usurper, and a sham. 
 
 ^J^^^--^^^ 
 
 ^^i^ : ::i^^^ 
 
AN ADDEESS TO THE TEACHEES OF 
 MINNESOTA. 
 
AN ADDEESS TO THE TEACHEES OF 
 MINNESOTA. 
 
 WoKKBES are bound to help fellow- workers if they 
 can. In obedience to a request that has been made 
 to me, I venture to address the teachers of Minne- 
 sota. We are not altogether strangers. You and 
 I have joined hands and interchanged life through 
 your acceptance of the *' Theory and Practice of 
 Teaching." Yet this advantage has the heavy 
 drawback for me, that you have already partaken 
 of my best — and now you ask for more. How 
 shall I better my best ? Yet for your sake I will 
 try. Be charitable, and receive it in a kindly spirit. 
 For the sake of the good cause I will try ; the good 
 cause of Teaching, the good cause of our common 
 blood and the brotherhood of life — words that 
 carry now no idle meaning. Assuredly a new era of 
 brotherhood has begun. We stand on the thres- 
 hold of a new creation. The Steamship, the 
 Eailway, and the Telegraph, have annihilated 
 space; and the consequences, which in part we 
 already know, must follow. The same kind of 
 union must come on a great scale from greater 
 
62 An Address to the 
 
 causes, which has aheady come in miniature from 
 lesser. Slow movements and seldom, as roads and 
 ships made better way, gave place to quickened 
 intercourse, quickened intercourse made tribes into 
 states, states into nations, nations into empires, in 
 spite of differences, in spite of feuds. And by a 
 law of nature, in like manner, our new world, with 
 its miles turned into yards, its far extremes brought 
 near, its vastness shrunk, so that the whole earth 
 has become a kind of home farm of the human 
 race, will by degrees consolidate into great com- 
 munities all like-minded peoples and languages. 
 Of these the English-speaking race is the greatest, 
 the visible head. Thus it is coming to pass that 
 the brotherhood of man, which slow movement 
 rendered impossible, excepting in spirit, has now 
 passed into the region of visible fact, and is taking 
 an outward shape. 
 
 The first and most active proof of this will be 
 the interchange of thought. How silently, yet 
 with what prevailing power, the thought creations 
 pass to and fro. With what ethereal subtlety the 
 spirit of a Mrs. Ewing, for instance, floats from 
 continent to continent in waves of light and life ; 
 how delicate the sweet heart-message that glides 
 with its unseen presence into the log hut in the 
 forest and the city homes alike, and becomes yours 
 as much as ours ; more, if you love it more. Thus 
 thought acknowledges no separation any longer. 
 Unity of language, unity of feeling, have free play. 
 
TecLchcrs of Minnesota, 63 
 
 The very gossamers of the brain, light and frail as 
 they seem, a jest, a humorous speech, fill the whole 
 air ; and England sparkles with wit from you ; and 
 all the homely growth of common earth is gemmed 
 \Yith dewdrops of mirth, and laced with graceful 
 texture of fine-spun mind. Barriers are broken up. 
 Life is passing out regardless of distance, regardless 
 of country, regardless of climate, regardless of 
 custom, regardless of all the hard facts that sea 
 and land have hitherto set in the way of outward 
 friendship. This is the first state of things. This 
 can be seen by all. No one so blind who does not 
 know so much. But there is an inner spirit, a 
 secret invisible truth moving. And even as birds 
 settling on the Telegraph wires clasp the lightning 
 message with senseless feet, and stand on the magic 
 cords as a common perch, and know it not, so it 
 may be with men. They may lay grasping hands 
 of hard familiar use on rail, and ship, and wire, and 
 never know the prophet-voice within, the inspira- 
 tion of the life that moves, the real message of the 
 birth to come. But new life is being born, and 
 they who heed may know. As surely as the old 
 kingdoms grew by a natural growth through roads, 
 so surely will the voices speeding through the world 
 now call into being great communities of kindred 
 thinkers ; and the governments of the future will 
 be grand combinations of the more enlightened 
 peoples for common welfare. This is their prophecy ; 
 their sure word to us. A brotherhood of nations is 
 
64 An Address to the 
 
 intended to be formed, a union over vast areas will 
 take place; and the great English-speaking race 
 throughout all the world will feel their kindred, 
 will know their power, and enter on their inherit- 
 ance of peace. 
 
 This is certain in its main outline. The move- 
 ments of life compel it. The laws of nature must 
 act. It would be easy, did time permit, to prove 
 that a new world is being born, that the travail 
 pangs have begun, that the birth, however long the 
 travail lasts, will bear the impress of the present 
 hour ; will in the next few years, because things 
 are so new, so tender, so young, take its shape and 
 capacity for growth unalterably; and be fixed in 
 its main structure, till broken up again, perchance 
 thousands of years hence, to make room for a 
 higher birth still. 
 
 Teachers of Minnesota, here is our place. This 
 new world will assuredly be what teachers make it. 
 Let who will scoff at the word. Back behind all, 
 back behind whatever the perseverance, the good 
 fortune, the brain power, the special gifts of special 
 men may do, lies the great fact that the mass of 
 mankind, the working body, which determines in 
 the end the fate of the world (for what can be done 
 without instruments?), is what the teachers make 
 them. The skilled workman is the lord of all things 
 on earth. And the highest skilled work is the work 
 which creates the newer life of the coming time, by 
 moulding the instruments and training the living 
 
Teachers of Minnesota. 65 
 
 powers that work the work which makes the Ufe of 
 time. And the foremost teachers of the foremost 
 nations are the chief creators of the life that is 
 to be. 
 
 Teachers of Minnesota, let who will scoff, the 
 English-speaking race is at the head of the world 
 that now is. And the foremost Teachers of the 
 English-speaking race are the most living creators 
 of the life that is to be. 
 
 That is our destiny — yom-s and ours. We may 
 do it, or may not do it ; be true or be traitors ; but 
 it is our inheritance; it is ours. 
 
 Let us then enthrone the skilled workman. But 
 he must be no idol, no false god, but a real, living, 
 active embodiment of skill and goodness, a true 
 combination of the tender heart, with its impressi- 
 ble teachable power, and the strong brain with its 
 active, grasping, subtle, busy efficiency of instru- 
 mental hardness. This can only exist in perfection 
 where there is much Ufe able and willing to have 
 intercourse with much life. And this again can 
 only be where there are favouring conditions, 
 channels prepared for the flow of thought, easy 
 ground for workers to meet on, willingness to meet 
 and be helped, and, above all, the great unselfish 
 cause of teaching the right crowned in the midst, 
 and the shaping life for good taken by each and all 
 to animate the great brotherhood of creative 
 workers. 
 
 I congratulate you on having such conditions, 
 
66 An Address to the 
 
 such channels of thought, such common grounds, 
 such wiUingness to meet, such a crowned cause ; 
 and all the more because we have not got them 
 here. We have the cause ; we have the heart ; but 
 we have not got the means, the helpful union. 
 Your Institutes, with their annual gatherings, 
 appear to me the wisest beginning of true work 
 that it is possible to devise. Your bringing home 
 to each district the life and experience of your best 
 centre is perfect in theory, and, I doubt not, 
 admirable in practice. In this way the central 
 heart sends the arterial blood to the farthest 
 extremity and the weakest limb. And all partake 
 of the common life; each part receiving, and 
 returning of its best in practice and experience to 
 the heart again. I congratulate you on this. Be 
 glad. You do not know what it is to live alone, to 
 have the outer world only come to you in the shape 
 of examination, inspection, and chains; we do. 
 Believe me then how great your gain is. You have 
 help. You have guidance. You have experience 
 and friendship at work. Be glad. There are then 
 these channels for the flow of life. But what of 
 the hf e blood ? What of the skill ? Good, I doubt 
 not. But life that does not better itself is not life. 
 So I am all the more encouraged in speaking to 
 you. It may be that a fresh current, because it is 
 fresh, may freshen the life. At least you expect 
 me to try and pour into you something not worths 
 less, if only because it may be new. 
 
Teachers of Minnesota. 67 
 
 We stand la a new world. 
 
 The old world was a world of heaping up slowly 
 knowledge hardly won. 
 
 The old world knew but little, and valued know- 
 ledge very highly ; had plenty of time for thought if 
 it chose, and thought much, without being conscious 
 how valuable thought was. 
 
 The old world had a limited range of knowledge, 
 and human life could master it. Hence it came to 
 pass that knowledge — fact-collecting, that is — and 
 memory naturally was all in all ; and, what is most 
 important, life was long enough to do the knowledge 
 work. 
 
 Moreover, few did it ; a few at the top of the 
 social scale alone were employed in learning, or had 
 anything to do with it. 
 
 There was a knowledge caste. 
 
 A system of knowledge-hunting grew up under 
 these circumstances. And it is hard not to think 
 that the knowers, unconsciously perhaps, made 
 knowing difficult, and prized their heaps because 
 they were big, as a miser might, not because they 
 were useful. The grapes of Eshcol were good, and 
 
 the promised land delightful, but there were 
 
 giants in the land, and the people had better not 
 try to go in. 
 
 Now, however, what are the conditions which 
 meet a teacher ? which meet the taught ? First of 
 all, a mass of knowledge that no man can master, 
 that not even the chosen few can master ; a mass 
 
68 An Address to the 
 
 of knowledge that pushes all thought out of its 
 area ; there is no time to think. Thought is squeezed 
 out of existence by the weight of other people's 
 facts. 
 
 Then there is such a multiplicity of subjects that 
 no man can even try them all, that not even the 
 chosen few can try many, much less master them. 
 And lastly, that all are to be taught, not the chosen 
 few only. 
 
 All are to be taught. 
 
 And knowledge is infinite. 
 
 And life is short. 
 
 And average brains are weak. 
 
 And few have time to spare. 
 
 And time is short even to them. 
 
 Teachers of Minnesota, what is to be done ? How 
 can this be dealt with ? 
 
 This is our problem. 
 
 I answer boldly, first break down the knowledge 
 idol. Smash up the idolatry of knowledge. Frankly 
 and fairly admit that the majority of mankind can- 
 not get much knowledge ; and that any attempt to 
 make them get it is a manufacture of stupidity, a 
 downward education. It can't be done. Directly 
 any subject is proposed in any programme, the 
 question arises, what is to be kicked out to make 
 room for it ? Answer that, before taking up a new 
 thing. 
 
 The first question then in this great problem 
 is, what can all do ? And what ought all to do ? 
 
Teachers of Minnesota. 69 
 
 And then, according to the time at our disposal, 
 what are the next subjects, and the next, which 
 experience has shown to be the best for the exercising 
 and drawing out the highest powers of mind, and 
 nourishing them ? 
 
 Before these points can be settled we must know 
 what we want. If knowledge is an impossibility 
 and cannot be got to any extent ; if the best 
 knowers are the best knowers by virtue of being 
 ignorant of many subjects outside their own range ; 
 if ignorance is not only not blameworthy, but a 
 necessity for all in many things ; for the majority 
 in most things ; above all, if too much knowledge , 
 squeezes out thought ; we are brought face to face • 
 with the question, whether the calling out thought, 
 and strengthening mind, is not an entirely different 
 and higher process from the putting in knowledge, and 
 heaping up facts ; or, in a sharp contrast, whether 
 it is not possible theoretically to separate skill 
 entirely from knowledge ; whether the skilled work- 
 man cannot be master of infinite skill, and be 
 ignorant of much that mankind glory in ; whether, 
 in fact, we have not first to choose deliberately a 
 large amount of ignorance, and fling our omniscience 
 into the common sewer, if we ever mean to be 
 skilled workmen ourselves, masters of mind, and 
 lords of thought, or to teach others to be skilled 
 workmen. 
 
 I say it must be done ; or, in other words, our 
 subject is to find what all can do, and our aim is to 
 
70 An Address to the 
 
 make all skilled workmen. All can be trained. 
 Few can be knowledge-receptacles. Eemember too, 
 the skilled workman has his skill in himself, and 
 does not mean to make his life into a miserable 
 traffic of cheap- jack goods sold cheap in the nearest 
 market. 
 
 I leave it to you to decide what can be done ; 
 merely remarking, that of necessity a thorough 
 mastery in reading our own language aloud, well, 
 so as to gain a ready entrance into the great 
 treasure-house of English-speaking thought, is the 
 first thing ; and, secondly, the other side of the same 
 question of that which is possible, what are you 
 going to kick out, in order to admit what ? 
 
 A careful selection of subjects which train the 
 mind is necessary for the highest education ; but 
 this is beyond the scope of the present question. 
 
 Let us pass on. There are three main factors in 
 all teaching work. It is important to start with a 
 clear idea of them. The Teacher has to deal with 
 ignorance, idleness, and want of skill. Ignorance 
 is the not knowing. Idleness is the culpable 
 refusal to try and know. Skill is the power of 
 making hand, eye, or mind, do with exactness what 
 has to be done. 
 
 To begin with the last. Call on a pupil to take 
 a pencil, and lift it above his head, and hit exactly 
 the spot • marked on the paper, four times quickly. 
 His failure will be ludicrous. But he knew what 
 to do, he was not ignorant. He tried to do it, he 
 
Teachers of Minnesota, 71 
 
 was not idle. But he could not do that simple 
 thing from want of skill. Here we have a quiet 
 example of the wide distinction between ignorance, 
 idleness, and skill. This distinction is of vital im- 
 portance. I have no hesitation in saying that if every 
 teacher, and pupil, set themselves resolutely at first 
 to do with skill what is already known, a new 
 creation of thought-work would have begun, a new 
 mind would be produced into the world. Want of 
 skill, or skill, are with the worker always, in things 
 known, or not known, equally ; but ignorance is 
 outside him, and may do him no harm. 
 
 The first law of teaching is this : the Teacher 
 will make his pupil do what he knows with 
 skill. 
 
 This naturally leads us on to the great question 
 of thought, and how to think. 
 
 Think in shape. 
 
 Let me put this before you. Your class is read- 
 ing History. They come across the narrative of the 
 battle of Marathon; the lesson-hearer examines 
 them on the facts and puts at the top of his class 
 the boy who writes them down most accurately 
 from memory. Well ; what has he written down ? 
 an auctioneer's catalogue of a series of actions. 
 
 Now let us number roughly the mental possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 1. The fact catalogue, pure memory, 
 
 2. A useful idea of the facts. 
 
 3. A mental picture of the scene and persons. 
 
72 An Address to the 
 
 4 A thrilling and imaginative feeling for the 
 mental pictm*e. 
 
 5. A dramatic representation on the stage. 
 
 6. The actual presence at the battle, what it is 
 to those who fight. 
 
 I have left out of the series a painted picture, 
 because that is subject to the same laws of mind as 
 the mental picture. A child can see the vital dis- 
 tinction between writing out an invoice of the facts, 
 like so many sacks of corn, and the degrees of men- 
 tal skill represented by the pictorial faculty, and 
 thinking in shape. 
 
 The knowledge-monger will work for the invoice. 
 The Teacher for the picture. Try this; and the 
 power of it will be felt. Leave it alone ; and no 
 words of mine, or anyone, will unlock for you the 
 doors of the new world. 
 
 This pictorial clue again leads us on to the 
 necessity of working with proper appliances. The 
 skilled workman must have his tools. The tools of 
 the teacher are the eye-languages ; everything that 
 by its beauty gives honour to lessons, everything 
 that by its pictorial power brings reahty to the 
 mind. 
 
 Here I would lay down that I consider photo- 
 graphy to the teacher is almost as great an inven- 
 tion as printing, and in time it will be known to 
 be so. 
 
 I have evidence from experience here of the truth 
 of these words. Every school, as soon as possible, 
 
Teachers of Minnesota, 73 
 
 ought, as its necessary tools, to be full of photo- 
 graphs ranging over a wide extent of subjects akin 
 to the work done, or pertaining to art, and man's 
 higher nature. 
 
 The school of the future will as soon think of 
 being without books as without pictures. 
 
 I would also observe — again appealing to expe- 
 rience here — that lesson-rooms and the surround- 
 ings of lessons, should by their beauty, or their 
 fitness, as the case may be, give honour to lessons. 
 
 The rooms should tell no lie, but speak the truth, 
 the honourable truth, about the work done in them 
 by being full of honour for the work. The furniture 
 of the rooms, and the treatment of the furniture, 
 should give glory to lessons, the noblest occupation 
 in this wide world after religion, and, if done in a 
 truly religious spirit, the noblest. 
 
 This can be managed more easily than people 
 think. Any artist who is able to paint the flowers 
 and birds of his district can be a wall-decorator, 
 without ever touching a wall. Either oil paintings, 
 as is the case of the schoolrooms here, which have 
 been decorated by that first-rate artist, Mr. Charles 
 Eossiter — to whom I owe all I am now saying — or 
 water-colours, as is the case with a room we have 
 painted for the townspeople, can be mounted and 
 cemented to the wall. This is more durable than 
 fresco in an uncertain climate. 
 
 Again, when shall we have our lesson-books 
 beautifully illustrated? The first man who does 
 
74 An Address to the 
 
 this, in a living way, at a reasonable price, will be 
 a benefactor to mankind; and, if mankind are 
 moderately wise, will make his fortune. 
 
 I throw out these hints ; space does not allow 
 me to do more, though lives on lives can be spent 
 on working out some of them. At least, I know 
 after many years' work I am only looking through 
 the keyholes of the doors which I am trying to 
 open for you. I see glimpses of the landscape, and 
 the path, and the Hght on the path, and all the life 
 of it ; I hope you will enter in and make it your 
 own. But the vast difference between this exqui- 
 site gladness of new exploration, and the standing 
 up to the neck in rules, in a hole, cannot be exag- 
 gerated. The dropping unconnected fragments into 
 the minds of boys, and being annoyed when they 
 don't understand broken bits of knowledge, and are 
 not interested in the uninteresting, will in time 
 cease to be called teaching. 
 
 I suppose everybody is inspirited by the hope of 
 work being complete and effective. I, for my part, 
 rejoice in writing to know that my words are to 
 belong to girls and women, and not to men only. 
 I hold that nation to be highest in the world which 
 gives the highest place to women as workers. I 
 hold that nation to be highest which, in a true way, 
 has got the farthest in recognising woman's mission 
 as a worker, whose unique power it is to undermine 
 and discredit force, to make work lovely, to present 
 a living example of the higliest influence depending 
 
Teachers of Minnesota, 75 
 
 on gentleness and helpfulness. How coarse, how 
 vulgar the tyranny of strength appears when set 
 side by side with the calm superiority of womanly 
 weakness in its nobility and truth. The perfection 
 of working life is the prevailing excellence of attrac-. 
 tive grace, the charm of the irresistible beauty of the 
 highest truth. For there is only one definition of 
 beauty. Beauty is the highest thought in its truest 
 shape. 
 
 In this world of rough and violent effort the 
 paramount and final authority of quiet, gracious life 
 it is woman's work to proclaim. As teachers their 
 influence is wonderful. Your schools, if they have 
 put this great fact in a working shape, are by that 
 alone the foremost in capability in the world. 
 
 One more word. Whatever men say or think, 
 the almighty wall is, after all, the suj^reme and 
 final arbiter of schools, 
 
 I mean, no living power in the world can over- 
 come the dead, unfeeling, everlasting pressure of 
 the permanent structure, of the permanent condi- 
 tions under -which work has to be done. Every 
 now and then a man can be found to say hon- 
 estly — 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage." * 
 
 But men are not trained to freedom inside a prison. 
 The prison will have its due. Slowly but surely 
 
 ♦ Lovelace. 
 
76 Alt Address to the 
 
 the immovable, unless demolished, determines the 
 shape of all inside it. 
 
 Teachers of Minnesota, examine well, in no dis- 
 contented spirit, seriously, hopefully, the structure 
 of your schools — the buildings, the appliances, the 
 tools, the whole apparatus for work, living or mate- 
 rial. Be not hasty, but never rest till you have got 
 the almighty wall on your side, and not against 
 you. Never rest till you have got all the fixed 
 machinery for work, the best possible. The waste 
 in a Teacher's workshop is the lives of men. And 
 what becomes of the waste ? You cannot take your 
 failures and lynch them ; they live on ; they per- 
 sist in living on ; and they hang heavy on the neck 
 of all progress; they form the cumberers of the 
 ground, or worse, who drag down the national Hfe. 
 
 A friend has observed to me, that whilst fully 
 agreeing with the strong condemnation of the 
 knowledge-fragments and lump-work which often 
 passes for teaching, he is inclined to be tolerant of 
 it ** as half a loaf is better than no bread." So am 
 I, as far as the half-loaf theory is true ; and not 
 unfrequently it is true. But it is not true always. 
 The half -loaf is wholesome bread ; the mischief is, 
 there is not enough of it. Now good bread, good 
 appetite, and not enough to eat, might with a little 
 modification, be accepted as a definition of by no 
 means bad education. My complaint is, that the 
 bread is not bread, but bad, unbaked dough ; and 
 that lumps of dough are to be forced down the 
 
Teachers of Minnesota. 77 
 
 throats of those who do not hunger. Much is 
 dropped, much the poor stomachs reject, and occa- 
 sionally, like a wretched boy not long ago, some 
 miles from here, who swallowed thirteen consecutive 
 buns, and died in consequence, the victims who do 
 gorge themselves are killed for all useful and practi- 
 cal work ever after. The swallowing system is 
 wrong. Look to it. The thirteen buns are not 
 good. No, nor the full belly, however good the 
 food, if the exercise, and the strength, and the skil- 
 ful use of strength, is not to be the outcome of 
 feeding. Your business is to train athletes, not to 
 fatten geese. 
 
 Once more, remember the almighty wall. Make 
 sure of your system. Make sure of your structure. 
 Athletes are not bred in pastry-cooks' shops, or free 
 men in prisons. But above all accept in a manly, 
 frank way what you have got, and what is now 
 possible. Never lose the present by whining about 
 the future. Some sow, and others reap. But good 
 work knows no distinction between them. 
 
 Now farewell. If I have succeeded in dropping a 
 clue or two, and they give you half the pleasure and 
 profit that the finding and following them has given 
 me, I shall be greatly rewarded. It would take 
 volumes, it would take years, it would take centuries, 
 to pursue the subject to its end, or to trace its gi-eat 
 arteries and veins with all their flow of life. But 
 interest can be roused, pleasure can be given, hope 
 can be wakened, enthusiasm fired. If I have not 
 
78 An Address to the 
 
 done this, at all events I have brought my contri- 
 bution of sympathy, and laid it at your feet. And 
 I will say to you in the words of George Herbert, 
 England's sacred poet, 
 
 ** Scorn no man's love however mean he be, 
 Love is a present for a mighty king." 
 
 So then scorn me not. Scorn not the effort to 
 help, the effort to breathe common Hfe, to cheer 
 and be cheered. In this wonderful pouring together 
 of the heart-blood of the world, brought about in 
 our generation by the Wisdom which appoints the 
 times and seasons of human life as completely as 
 the revolution of the suns, whilst all see the rail- 
 ways, the steamships, and wires : there are, who see 
 the spirit-message running on its way. Those who 
 are in the secret lift up their eyes and minds, and 
 know the great English-speaking race overspreading 
 the world with a language that undoes the curse of 
 Babel, with a life-history which is an inheritance of 
 honour, which is rank, and a title to every worthy 
 son of the great family, with a brotherhood, which 
 is yet to be that liberty which is a law to itself. 
 The very fact that you ask me to speak, and I am 
 speaking to you, and you are hearing, bears witness 
 to our belonging to this noble band of brothers. We 
 clasp hands across the sea ; and I call on you, as 
 our hands clasp, to be true to your great mission, 
 to put the skilled workman on his throne, to be 
 skilled workmen yourselves, ever improving, and to 
 mould the coming age with skill. Bear your part 
 
Teachers of Minnesota. 79 
 
 in binding together your people and ours in one 
 mighty unity of unselfish work, which intends to be 
 lord of this world by the right divine of self-sacrifice 
 and truth, and to pass on for ever in the light of 
 wisdom and peace. 
 
A SPEECH DfiLTVEBED AT THR HiQH 
 
 SCHOOL FOS GIBLS, LEAMINGTON. 
 
A SPEECH DELIVEEED AT THE HIGH 
 SCHOOL FOE GIELS, LEAMINGTON. 
 
 No one, I believe, who thinks how much he owes to 
 the hves and writings of gracious women, will be 
 slow to come forward and try his best for their 
 sake. To me, at all events, the memory of Mrs. 
 Ewing especially is as a gleam of light across my 
 path, always calling on me to do what I can, when 
 asked to give support to good work for women. 
 How much more, then, must I obey when honoured 
 names command me, and I stand, as I stand here 
 to-day, under orders from Mrs. and Miss Kingsley, 
 to carry out their bidding. I come also with much 
 sympathy with the work itself, and for the success 
 of your late Head-mistress, Miss Gadesden ; and I 
 may add of your present Head-mistress, Miss 
 Huckwell. 
 
 This is a day of Prize-giving. Let me say a few 
 words about prizes. There are some who think 
 that no prizes ought ever to be given, and many 
 hard things are said about them. Well, if ambition 
 and racing is the meaning of prize-giving, I think 
 so too. If prizes mean a hunt for distinction at the 
 
Si A Sjpeech delivered at the 
 
 expense of the weak and stupid (how I hate the 
 very word *' stupid " as bearing witness to contemp- 
 tuous feeling), then I would wipe them out of exist- 
 ence. All the prizes in the world are not worth the 
 wounded feelings of the vanquished, or the curse of 
 the false glory of the winner. But prizes are 
 natural. It is natural for honest merit to receive 
 its reward, both in this world and the world to 
 come. That good work should be acknowledged is 
 a natural desire, and no unrighteous hope. St. Paul, 
 at all events, thought so. He tells us to ** press 
 forward to the mark for the prize of our high call- 
 ing." And he is not afraid, in speaking to heathens, 
 when all the world, excepting a few, was heathen, 
 to put before them in burning words the prizes won 
 at the great games, when with thousand thousand 
 eyes fixed upon them the champions of Greece 
 stepped into the circle, and strove for the mastery. 
 He fired their Christian zeal by recalling the excite- 
 ment and enthusiasm of these national contests, 
 and bids them take all the glowing feeUngs of the 
 struggle, and send the same fiery valour into the 
 Christian hfe, only in an immortal unselfish way. 
 Prizes, then, are natural, nay, a divine institution. 
 They are, moreover, memorials of early days not 
 unfruitfuUy passed, and of having done well in the 
 beginning of hfe. Year succeeds year ; and the 
 young grow old, and the prize-winner of to-day 
 becomes the parent of to-morrow, and earlier 
 memories are pushed out by later facts, and much 
 
High School for Girls^ Leammgton. 85 
 
 is forgotten that it is well to remember ; but prizes 
 as memorials of childhood well spent call on the 
 children to be worthy of them; and school-days 
 full of honour are no mean possession in a family, 
 proving, as they do, that no flash, no chance, but 
 steady work, good work, begun early, has laid the 
 solid foundation of the home, and the secret of the 
 , after life may be discovered in the obedience and 
 earnestness of School. As memorials, then, and 
 witnesses, prizes may in this way have a holy power 
 quite their own. 
 
 But also, if there u ambition and false glory, the 
 question is not yet settled. Viewed even as a pos- 
 sible field for the basest rivalry, prize-giving, never- 
 theless, affords opportunity for the most honourable 
 training, for self-denial, when those who win gain 
 from their fellow scholars, as they have done to-day, 
 loving applause. 
 
 We are to be trained for life. Life is no summer 
 day's holiday. We are to be trained for the battle 
 of life. There can be no battle without trial, no 
 fight without training. And if there is no battle 
 practice, no drill, what sort of soldiers shall we be ? 
 I say it is good to learn in little things the self- 
 mastery, which will have to be used in great 
 things; good to practise in pennies the control 
 which will have to be tempted by pounds ; good to 
 learn to struggle, to win, or — lose — with perfect 
 temper at school, to strive without envy, to be eager 
 without rivalry, gentle if successful, gentler still if ' 
 
1 
 
 86 A Speech delivered at the 
 
 defeated. For these reasons, therefore, I find 
 myself thoroughly at home in heart and feeHng in 
 giving your prizes to-day. These are very true and 
 powerful reasons. And I myself, whilst feeling 
 intensely strongly that true work is its own exceed- 
 ing great reward, and sorry as I should be for one 
 moment to dim the brightness of that bright truth, 
 still more sorry to give the slightest encouragement 
 to mean ambition, or add a spark to that black fire, 
 do know that I am in my right place at this present 
 prize-giving, do rejoice in the pleasant task of 
 cheering on successful merit, do sympathise with 
 the prize-winners, and am proud to be their servant. 
 But if I glorify prize-winning, far more would I 
 glorify defeat. To be defeated, and go on the better 
 for being defeated, is the highest thing that can 
 happen to man. There is no blessing equal to defeat. 
 I can truly say for myself that everything which I now 
 care for as I stand here, has come to me out of pain, 
 suffering, defeat. It needs must be so. The great 
 cause of living hfe demands hfe's highest powers ; 
 and how can high power, and perseverance, and 
 unselfish work ; how can hardihood, patience, self- 
 mastery, unconquerable faith, be brought into 
 existence even without defeat? How can base 
 motives, and meaner passions be extinguished with- 
 out defeat ? There is one grand example of what 
 defeat means, which I will venture to quote. History 
 gives us a marvellous heroic act, of almost super- 
 tiuman self-sacrifice, which stands alone in its 
 
High School for Girls, Leamington, 87 
 
 unapproachable greatness as soon as it is seen and 
 rightly understood. I cannot help thinking that 
 the noblest deed of mere humanity — counting the 
 cost and all that was given up — that was ever done 
 on this earth, was done when Moses stepped out 
 of his palace in Egypt. Moses the warrior, the 
 mighty prince, the wise in learning, threw in his 
 lot with slaves, his brethren, and cast away a 
 throne, and risked his life for the sake of the slave, 
 and the promise of God with the slave. Yet Moses 
 was met, as he thus went out, with crushing defeat ; 
 defe&t crushing, absolute, irredeemable; in the 
 morning, a king in the greatest kingdom on earth, 
 before nightfall, a solitary outcast, fleeing from the 
 sword of the avenger. What a contrast ! How 
 strange ! No, not strange in the kingdom of life. 
 He trusted to have headed a bloody insurrection, 
 and to have led the slaves in a murderous outburst 
 of fury against their hated masters, and to have 
 conquered by their hatred and his skill in war. 
 Where then would have been the salvation of the 
 world, and Abraham's promise ? Nay, where would 
 have been the gain to the people ? By such success 
 the chosen people of God would only have ex- 
 changed the mean brutality of the slave for the still 
 more brutal meanness of the cruelty and lust of 
 successful murder and conquest added to it. Mean 
 slaves, but tyrants meaner still. Victory would 
 have been a curse of death, and ruin, and greed, 
 and tyranny, let loose to work destruction in their 
 
88 A Speech delivered at the 
 
 hearts. If a nation is to be great, or a man, they 
 must be great from within. Blood and rapine, and 
 murder, and successful hate only make a more 
 despicable and more hopeless slave. Therefore 
 Moses had to fly, a solitary wanderer, and for forty 
 silent years in the wilderness to learn the glorious 
 lesson of tenderness, and patience, and self-devotion 
 that really devotes self, to learn that the great 
 promise cannot come by force, and to find defeat 
 the highest blessing. 
 [ To bring up the rear of the lost battle in a good 
 ' cause, is the greatest thing in the world. For the 
 lost battle is always the victory of life later on. It 
 is a law of nature that it must be so. First of all, 
 no great cause can be won by mean and selfish 
 workers. Ladders from hell (as the old divine said) 
 do not scale heaven. The workers must be trained 
 to unselfishness by defeat. And, secondly, a great 
 cause is intense vitality wrapped up in a small seed. 
 And the slowness of the growth will be in propor- 
 tion to the greatness of the life. The sower, then, 
 of a true seed, may be well content if, after years 
 of defeat and struggling, he is allowed at last to 
 catch some glimpse of the promised land from the 
 summit of his toilsome old age. This is a law of 
 nature. Defeat is the hallowed means by which 
 greatness is made great. Be happy, then, you who 
 are defeated, if the defeat is honest, and the right 
 stuff is in you ; be happy, character is better than 
 prizes. 
 
High School for Oirls, Leammgton. 89 
 
 Now let us pass from the prizes of work to the 
 work itself. The work in which you are engaged, 
 and the work of every educated nation in its highest 
 education, is, and must be for ever, the highest form 
 of thought and feeling. This is self-evident. 
 Thought and feeling are the ruling powers, and if 
 there is any way in which thought and feeling of 
 necessity find their best expression, that way will 
 be the highest training for mankind. This fact is 
 not measured by a standard of utility. The 
 moment you depart from thought and feeling you ' 
 drop into a lower world of instruments and instru- 
 mental power, which however useful or necessary, 
 is a lower world. A spade is useful and necessary, 
 cannon may be of paramount importance, but who 
 would compare a spade, or a cannon, the embodi- 
 ment of mere hard power, with the glorious creations 
 of thought and feeling w^hich have come to us in all 
 their power and sweetness out of the lives of noble 
 men and women ? 
 
 Translated into common language this means, 
 that literature, the written expression of what the ' 
 highest lives have thought and felt, and said and 
 done, must of necessity be the main training, where- 
 ever high training is given. And the great prac- 
 tical fact stands out clear, that word-language, by 
 a very law of nature, holds undisputed pre-eminence 
 as the educational power in all highly educated 
 nations. Accordingly, I rejoice that you are 
 being trained in languages. Word-language has 
 
90 A S;peech delivered at the 
 
 infinite power. The mere mechanism of the words 
 is marvellous, the kind of life in them which makes 
 delicate changes of single letters even instinct with 
 new shades of meaning. Where two or more lan- 
 guages are compared together, and the minds of the 
 learners exercised by being made to note the subtle 
 differences which accompany the transmission of 
 thought from one language to another, differences 
 which leave the thought the same, it is impossible to 
 exaggerate the mental skill called out and quickened 
 by such a practice. 
 
 But without going to other languages, remember 
 that all knowledge, all thought, all feeling, every- 
 thing in the world that passes between man and 
 man, passes through language, which like a pipe 
 receives and carries it all. All that human 
 nature sends from soul to soul flows through it. 
 If the pipe is narrow, or blocked, all com- 
 munication ceases so far. In other words the 
 soul is imprisoned, and communication cut off. It 
 is a great misfortune to be shut up in the prison 
 of a few words, — to be dumb. It is computed that 
 an ignorant man only uses about five hundred words, 
 whilst Shakespeare has used fifteen thousand. 
 Using only five hundred words not only means the 
 want of power to put out thought, but also the not 
 having thought to put out, for every fresh word a 
 man gets, is either a new thought or a new aspect of 
 a thought. The fifteen thousand words not only 
 mean increased power in giving utterance to feelings, 
 
High School for Girls, Leamington, 91 
 
 but that feelings and thoughts are equally expanded. 
 The difference is immense. 
 
 Yet perhaps this increase in power, this thought 
 empire, great as it is to be a lord of thought, is as 
 nothing compared to the gain in judgment, self- 
 defence, and bringing conviction to the minds of 
 others, that accuracy in the use of words gives. 
 The accuracy necessary to do word-work well is an 
 invaluable training, because it is so various, so 
 common. All the common business of common 
 life turns on an accurate use of words. Probably 
 all in this room, myself included, are but imperfect 
 masters of words, and not practised as we ought to 
 be in the strangely magical word power of our own 
 language. Without entering into any subtleties, 
 the familiar word ** world" has twelve good, fat, 
 separate meanings in common use. If any have 
 been in the habit of regarding it as one word, they 
 have been greatly mistaken ; just as much mistaken 
 as if they regarded a Chinese box as one, and an 
 intelligent person came, opened it, and turned out 
 fifty from inside it. What a fearful and wonderful 
 power lies in words. Not to know the power of 
 words renders a person the easy prey of any talker 
 of talk, and in the present day of talkers of talk 
 there are more than enough of them. What a 
 pitiable spectacle to the sober-minded our great 
 talkers are. This then is no slight reason why you 
 are trained in word-languaga. I rejoice that you 
 .jore thus trained. 
 
92 A Speech delivered at the 
 
 But word-language after all, though the chief ex- 
 pression of thought, is only one of many. Painting, 
 Music, Architecture, all that the eye sees, or the 
 ear hears, is thought that has taken shape. They 
 all follow the same laws, making allowance for the 
 difference of the means. The chairs on which you 
 are sitting, the room, the table, are all thoughts of 
 man speaking to the eye. If any of you girls can 
 write an essay on your chair which shall distinguish 
 it from everything else, and paint in a vivid way 
 the ideas which belong to it ; well ! the School will 
 have reason to be proud of you. It is no easy 
 matter to decipher and interpret all the human 
 thought that passes into a work of man. It is all 
 speech. A picture is speech. We ought to be able 
 to stand before every picture in the world and ask 
 the question, what is its message ? Is it noble or 
 mean, true or false ? And according to the answer 
 pass judgment on the artist, a judgment far more 
 important than whether he has stuck the paint on 
 the canvas with artistic skill. Nay, a bit of broken 
 plate in the African desert has its message, too. It 
 tells at once that man has been there. Why, pray ? 
 Only because he has left a memorial of his thought 
 in the sand. And is the eye, able to see it, less a 
 memorial of creative thought than the bit of burnt 
 clay that tells so much? All nature is God's 
 thought put in shape for us to see or heai Look 
 at the hawk wheehng amongst the mountaii>e, with 
 the vastness of space as its reign, or dropping from 
 
High School for Girls, Leamington, 93 
 
 the rough, fierce crag, or hovering near the solemn 
 summits of the hills, hark to its wild, shrill cry, 
 how the bird and the cry fit the place, and the 
 place the bird. Go to the sea, and mark the wild 
 waste of waters and the sea-gulls in their stormy 
 ' home, shrieking in bold free flight, with the deep 
 bass of the sea below in unison. Watch the 
 rivulet singing at its work of peace. The flowers 
 gemming earth with sunbeams they have caught 
 and kept. Listen to the mountains calling aloud to 
 chmb, to be active, to be brave ; and say, is not all 
 creation one great harmony of martial music — 
 warning, praise, prayer, blended together ? We 
 move to the tune of the voice of God, even as the 
 Parables of our Lord have taught us, bidding us all 
 give heed, saying, ** He that hath ears to hear, let 
 him hear.** O Language learners, take these words 
 to heart. 
 
 So far of work in general. Let me say a few 
 words on the special work of Women ; ** Woman's 
 Mission,** according to the cant term. Well, woman 
 has a mission, whatever we may think of some of 
 its advocates, a very plain mission, if you Hsten to 
 the Bible. God tells us He created woman to work, 
 a worker as a help meet for man the worker. Both 
 were to be workers, and each to fill up what was 
 v/anting in the other's work. But if women were 
 to be fellow workers in the world, they must be 
 trained how to work. All work requires training. 
 Even digging. How then can you pass into the 
 
94 A Speech delivered at the 
 
 greatness of the world, which has been gathering 
 experience for so many thousand years, without 
 training? How share in it all, and go onwards 
 with new experiences, if you have never learnt how 
 to do it, never worked in any true sense ? What 
 then is the work and training to be ? The facts of 
 life will tell us. Look at the facts. Man has the 
 strong arm, would you match him ? You had better 
 not try. Woman's mission does not lie in the 
 strong arm. It is in savage hfe that the strong 
 arm rules. The stronger, the more savage. 
 
 And is the strong brain a bit better ? I should 
 like to know in what respect the strong intellect, if 
 guided wrong, is better than the strong arm? Both 
 are equally savage as rulers. And modern civilised 
 nations are to a great extent still savage in this 
 idolatry of strength. We worship the strong brain 
 regardless too often of the weak or mean character 
 that wields it ; not caring, moreover, for the weak- 
 ness of unconquerable truth and endurance that 
 nothing in this world can make yield. Woman's 
 mission does not lie in the strong brain. 
 
 A comparison which you will certainly laugh at, 
 and possibly despise, appears to me to fitly repre- 
 sent the triumphs of modern civilisation, and popular 
 glory. A drunken navvy beating his wife is a true 
 type of many a political or knowledge-proud hero. 
 Yet, better ten thousand times be that navvy beat- 
 ing one whom he ought to love and honour, than 
 be at the head of a great society, or a great king- 
 
High School for Girls, Leamington, 95 
 
 dom, with merciless strength of brain without 
 character to match, mad drunk with vanity, 
 deahng out — consciously or unconsciously — ruin, 
 death, destruction, and bloodshed, over half a 
 world. This is not woman's mission. 
 
 "We shall find a clue to lead us, if we go back to 
 the Bible again. Woman, we are told, brought 
 about the Fall, and from that time it became 
 woman's mission to undo the Fall. The history of 
 the Fall, put into a few and simple words of English, 
 is nothing mc»:e than that force was made god, and 
 goodness thrust from its throne. The throne has 
 to be given back to goodness, and force of arm or 
 brain despised as the mean things, which by them- 
 selves they are. This is woman's mission, to make 
 clear to everybody in the world the intense power 
 of lovable weakness, when it does right ; the irresis- 
 tible victoriousness of helplessness and beauty, when 
 it is enlisted on the side of truth. 
 
 And what is beauty ? There is only one definition 
 of beauty. Beauty is the highest feeling and 
 thought in the truest shape. You will find this 
 hold good throughout the whole range of created 
 things. Let me illustrate this from a quarter where 
 you would least expect to find it proved — I mean 
 our bodies. Why are they our bodies ? It is stated 
 now that every particle in a human body changes 
 in a year ; in other words, that not one particle of 
 ourselves here assembled to-day would reappear in 
 this room if we met again a year hence. But wq 
 
96 A S;peech delivered at the 
 
 should be here for all that. The reason is, there is 
 a power within each which you may call life, or the 
 soul, which day by day is making the body, its 
 dwelling, as surely as a mason builds a house. That 
 is why we call the body our own ; the builder re- 
 mains, though the materials change. And this 
 builder, this life, builds a reflection of himself ; and 
 the face and the figure represent the life. No one 
 ever yet saw a truly good old person ugly. By the 
 time old age is reached the goodness within entirely 
 transfigures features once plain. How familiarly 
 we speak of the angry look, the joyous look; 
 these, continually supplied from the life, become 
 fixed. Everybody knows the way in which the 
 drunkard and the profligate write their own history 
 in their bodily appearance. Who cannot call to mind 
 faces lighted up by expression, v^rhere noble feelings 
 speak from features that beam with light, even as 
 with St. Stephen just before his death, the whole 
 assembly saw his face like the face of an angel ; 
 and in the Book of the Eevelation the countenance 
 of Our Lord was ** as the sun shineth in its 
 strength," form without outline, because of the 
 glory of the excellence of the brightness of the hfe. 
 And on the other hand, young faces with beautiful 
 outhne are often most uninteresting, and soon 
 become repulsive, if evil or silliness is within 
 shaping them. This then is beauty, noble spirit 
 making the body noble, and it is part of woman's 
 mission to be beautiful. You are neither rivals of 
 
nigh School for Girls, Leamington. 97 
 
 men, nor ought you to be dex)enclents of man, but 
 helpers, and examples, making work lovable. You 
 have to take your own stand in families, and in 
 society, each of you as — 
 
 »* A Being breathing thoughtful breath, 
 A traveller between life and death." 
 
 If you want a description of a perfect woman, read 
 that poem of Wordsworth's, " She was a phantom 
 of delight/' Or if you want the expressiveness of 
 true beauty put into glorious words, take his poem 
 beginning ** Three years she grew in sun and 
 shower." 
 
 We have spoken of undoing the Fall by enthroning 
 goodness and beauty in the place of force ; now 
 look forward, take the great prophecy as your own, 
 open your minds to the final revelation, that all 
 mankind are to be presented as a Bride to Christ. 
 Men are to be womanly in their virtues, women are 
 to be the example of all glorious excellence. That 
 is a prophecy worth thinking of. The main distinc- 
 tion between intellect and goodness turns largely on 
 what has been now said. Intellect slowly learns, 
 goodness sees what is lovely, and acts. Let me give 
 an illustration, which I often use. You all know a 
 field of young wheat. If you stand at the side 
 looking crossways, athwart the furrows, there is 
 total, absolute, hopeless confusion ; the most intel- 
 lectual man that ever lived, or shall hve, shall not 
 find any order, or disentangle the endless maze ; but 
 a child, a baby, standing at the end of the field, 
 
 H 
 
98 A Sjpeech delivered at the 
 
 and following humbly the track of the sower with 
 his eye, sees by sight the whole plan at once, and its 
 perfect order. In like manner the good heart sees 
 truth, and does not want to be argued into it. And 
 cannot be argued out of it. The stupid, who has 
 seen, does not argue with his clever tempter ; he 
 simply says, *'I won't,'* and he won't; and '*I 
 will," and he acts, where the other shrinks back. 
 Strength is not wanted to see truth, only an eye. 
 
 With respect to knowledge I have this brief law 
 to lay down — Know what you know 1 As for the 
 old fashioned notion of ** accomplishments," I can 
 scarcely pronounce the word with patience. It 
 degrades the highest subjects that the highest 
 mind can deal with to the level of mere toys. 
 Nevertheless no one can know too many things, 
 provided they are thoroughly master of one main 
 subject. An old English saying slightly altered is 
 a definition of the perfectly educated man or 
 woman, ** Jack of all trades and master of one." 
 But to be master of one noble subject means the 
 hard struggle of the last ten yards of the fiercely 
 contested race. Whereas ''The Jack of all trades " 
 only means the elastic spring of joyous activity and 
 strength, that can run three-quarters of the race 
 as amusement in pure delight. 
 
 In conclusion, we have dealt with work generally, 
 and with school work. Your professional work 
 needs a few words. For you will all have profes- 
 sional work; some, what everybody calls profes- 
 
nigh School for Girls, Leamington. 99 
 
 sional, as teachers, as nurses, as managers of 
 various kinds ; others, again, as daughters, or 
 wives, have household duties as their professional 
 life. You should make yourselves mistresses of 
 everything you have to manage, so as to be able to 
 pass the skilled judgment of a worker on it, and 
 not speak as an amateur. Don't despise cookery ; 
 remember, cookery to the vast majority of mankind 
 means home ; and when the weary worker comes 
 back from work wanting to refit, cookery alone can 
 turn him out fit for work again. From this point 
 of view, home is cookery. You are virtually 
 sovereigns of home ; make your kingdom what you 
 can make it ; be winsome, lovable, above all, help- 
 ful. To be helpful you must be trained. Accord- 
 ingly I rejoice that both at Leamington and else- 
 where, for the first time in the history of the world, 
 an attempt is being made to put women, not indi- 
 vidually, but one and all, on the grand platform of 
 true workers. As for the ornament theory, all I 
 can say is, I believe it to be of the devil. 
 
 The strong interest I feel in woman's true 
 mission as a worker, and not a toy, has brought 
 me here to-day. I do not mind whether things go 
 entirely right or not. Nothing goes entirely right. 
 Any fool can find fault. And road-makers cannoli 
 be so clean as those who walk on the roads they 
 have made. There must be some dirt in a great 
 new movement. And we are engaged in a great 
 new movement. We are road-making. We are 
 
100 A Speech delivered at Leamington, 
 
 starting on a new career, under new circumstances. 
 If the principles and main facts are right, and I am 
 sure they are, let us put up with a mistake or two. 
 And whilst working patiently and in hope, remem- 
 ber you are obeying God's great charter of human 
 life. God created women to work. She must, 
 therefore, be trained to work. She must learn to 
 make work lovely, to be helpful, to take her stand 
 on the paramount power of a goodness that is help- 
 ful with the helpfulness of the workers of God, 
 
A WOEKMAN'S HINTS ON TEACHING 
 WOSK. 
 
A WOEKMAN^S HINTS ON TEACHING 
 WOEK. 
 
 A Lbctuee deliveeed in the Univebsity of 
 Cambbidge, Mabch 5, 1887. 
 
 If I understand my duty to-day aright, I am 
 expected to give some facts and thoughts gathered 
 from the experience of a working Hfe. This is a 
 very definite task, and reheves me at once from any 
 necessity of spinning brain cobwebs, and you from 
 hearing them. I stand here to-day as a workman, 
 not by my own will, but acting under a request, 
 which was to me a command ; and, I freely admit, 
 with a strong feehng for you, my audience, as well 
 as with a filial regard for my University, and the 
 days that are gone. 
 
 Working facts, then, and working skill are what 
 we have to deal with to-day. The material that 
 has to be worked, and how best to work it, is our 
 subject. 
 
 Now, work is work. But it is a curious fact that 
 teaching, the foundation-stone of the work of the 
 world, has not taken definite place as work, or been 
 subjected to the ordinary laws of work. Yet the 
 original basis is very simple. There are two factors 
 
104 A Workman^s Hints on 
 
 only to be considered : the child to be taught, and 
 the teacher. 
 
 In the first instance this is all. For what has to 
 to be taught is quite subordinate to the child that 
 has to receive the teaching. Only experience can 
 show what that child is. There is no such thing as 
 teaching without practice, either for the teacher or 
 the taught. 
 
 These two factors cannot be separated. There is 
 no such person as the abstract shepherd. A shep- 
 herd is a shepherd because he keeps sheep. In 
 Arcadia, indeed, so poets say, shepherds he on grassy 
 banks, and tune their pipes, and sing, and the sheep 
 take care of themselves. Apparently, the shepherd 
 that sings has found favour in England. At leasts 
 there is much singing in the air about teaching from 
 those who have never taught a child. The abstract 
 teacher is not dead. The shepherd without sheep 
 lords it in the teaching world. The children have 
 been left out of the programme. Arcadia is a blessed 
 place, where the sweet piping of some inspired swain 
 supersedes tar and turnips, frosty nights, hurdles, 
 and hay. But the sheep will persist in being sheep ; 
 and the children remain children still. Philosophers 
 may tune up and sing, and government make laws 
 to their music, but boys are boys, and will remain 
 boys in spite of Arcadia. Until the children, the 
 boys, the girls, their minds, and habits of mind, are 
 all in all, Arcadia may sing, and the world may 
 listen, but the work will not be done. For me, my 
 
 MLf 
 
 Wt) 
 
Teaching Work, 103 
 
 talk is of tar, and turnips, and hay ; I cannot sing, 
 I am a shepherd or nothing. 
 
 The first thing is the child : the child as he really 
 is, not the lay figure of Scriblerus's study, or the 
 frontispiece of the last novelette. The child as yet 
 has been left out, and must be put in. Only Arcadia 
 deals in shepherds with shadowy sheep. The child 
 has been left out, and must be put in. The child as 
 he is, and not what dreamers make him. Beware 
 of any song that deals with shadowy sheep, however 
 sweet it may be, sugared with infallible statistics, 
 or chanting angelically of the wondrous mechanism 
 of mind and the workings of knowledge. It may all 
 be very true in its place ; but the first and last 
 question ought to be, ** Where is the child T* Only 
 in Arcadia are there shepherds with shadowy sheep. 
 Only in Arcadia is singing and piping installed as 
 keeping sheep. Where is the child ? 
 
 Again, if I understand my duty aright, the possi- 
 bility or impossibility of teaching at the present 
 moment is no concern of mine. I am not here to 
 speak of schools and their machinery, but of 
 teaching. 
 
 An architect, speaking on architecture, takes no 
 heed whether there is space enough to build on, or 
 money enough at that time. Architectural skill is 
 his subject. And teaching skill is ours. This 
 determines what I ought to try to do, and you 
 accept it or not, as you like. 
 
 Our subject is Teaching from the Teacher's point 
 
106 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 of view. That is, our subject treats of tlie skill that 
 can train the pupil in the best way, and show him 
 how to work his mind most skilfully. 
 
 This again fixes a limit, and at once excludes 
 mere memory work, and the art of memory. A 
 teacher is not an elaborate parrot -master, and the 
 pupil's memory is not his sphere of work. Yet, a 
 few words on this head will not be out of place, in 
 consequence of the prevailing idea that the getting 
 of knowledge by the pupil, and the loading up of 
 knowledge by the operator, are respectively the 
 proper work of learner and master. 
 
 This is not true. Even in the matter of know- 
 ledge, which is absurdly over-rated, a teacher's 
 object is to enable a pupil to get knowledge for 
 himself. 
 
 A man is not made a fisherman by buying fish at 
 a fishmonger's. Neither is the fishmonger a dealer 
 in the art of catching fish. Fish ready caught, and 
 bought, do not make a fisherman. 
 
 This cannot be too strongly insisted on. Nothing 
 is done as long as the fishmonger poses as a 
 fisherman, and a teacher of the art of fishing. 
 
 Every art, every branch of skill, turns on the 
 knowledge of the artist and skilled workman how 
 to do the work, and make others able to do the 
 work. 
 
 Fishmongers are not fishermen, or teachers of the 
 art of fishing. 
 
 The shopkeeper alone sells his goods to all who 
 
Teaching Worfc. 107 
 
 buy them, without giving the power of producing 
 them. 
 
 Do the Universities, the Government, and the 
 parents want shopkeeping, or producing power ? 
 
 Do they want memory, or mind ? 
 
 Do they want knowledge, or strength ? 
 
 Is a goods' station, with a clerk ticketing off the 
 loaded trucks, the ideal ? 
 
 The goods' station, with a clerk ticketing off the 
 loaded trucks, is a fascinating display of busy order. 
 And busy order, statistics, and neat columns of 
 figures, are dear to the official eye. They are so 
 neat, they are so infallible, they are so unanswer- 
 able, if only figures are wanted. But the shed of 
 the skilled workman, where the things were made, is 
 no such official paradise ; and the skill of hand, and 
 eye, and mind, acquired there, is not a matter of 
 invoice, figures, and clerk- work. 
 
 The question lies in a nut-shell. Producing power 
 is one thing, truck-work is another. 
 
 The undefined power of producing and teaching is 
 undefined, especially in the earher stages. And 
 teaching and examinations are deadly enemies, as 
 soon as examinations cramp the liberty necessary 
 for teaching. 
 
 Where examinations reign, every novelty in 
 training, every original advance, every new method 
 of dealing with mind, becomes at once simply 
 impossible. - It is outside the prescribed area, and 
 (Joes not pay. 
 
108 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 Questions of this kind require to be put out 
 sharply. No true beginning can be made till they 
 are answered. 
 
 If examiners condemn, and Trustees endorse their 
 sentence, how can teachers work ? 
 
 If a Teacher has courage to face this, he cannot 
 face the tacit refusal of the pupils to be taught, 
 which is sure to follow, as the result of freedom 
 destroyed. 
 
 I know this by personal experience. I have 
 repeatedly been condemned by examiners, a.nd found 
 fault with to the Trustees, for the best work I do, 
 and had not my pupils found out, before I was put 
 in the dock by the Examiners, that it was good 
 work, I could not even have tried it. I could not 
 try it now. 
 
 Let us now suppose, for argument's sake, that we 
 have answered the above questions, and wish to be 
 Teachers, and not keepers of knowledge shops. 
 How are we to set about it ? 
 
 I was once told a story of an Irish landlord who 
 was great in pigs. His estates lay by the sea. He 
 cast an observant eye round about, and saw that 
 there were many fish in the sea, and much sea- weed 
 on the shore, and a bright idea struck him. Pigs 
 eat fish, and ought, he decided, to eat sea-weed. So 
 he set to, and had the whole herd driven down to 
 the coast, and left them in the midst of this plenty 
 to feed. About a month after he bethought himself 
 of looking to the success of his plan ; and he found 
 
Teaching Worh. 109 
 
 four or five old boars left, who had eaten, not the 
 sea-weed, but their companions, and were in first- 
 rate fighting order. What are we to think of this 
 gentleman as a rearer and feeder of pigs ? Did he 
 do his duty by the pigs? He walled them in 
 between rock and sea. He provided, theoretically, 
 abundance of food. The sea was full of fish, the 
 shore of sea-weed. But the ungrateful brutes did 
 not appreciate all this, excepting the old boars, who 
 throve mightily. 
 
 From that point of view, it was a grand success. 
 Yet, I think we shall agree that this high-handed 
 process was scarcely doing his duty by the pigs. 
 
 His duty was to take care of the whole multitude, 
 to see that the weak had fair play, to see that the 
 weak had food which they both could and would 
 take, to see that they were not eaten by the strong, 
 and to bring each to such perfection as he was 
 capable of. Four old boars were a sorry success 
 out of a herd a hundred strong. 
 
 Well ! ha.s a herd of boys a better chance ? Is it 
 fair to assume that, left to themselves, they must 
 be able to eat the mental food provided ? 
 
 There is the great sea of knowledge ; but the fish 
 they cannot get, the sea-weed they cannot 
 digest. 
 
 Only the diligent and clever boys can do things 
 for themselves. 
 
 Yet, I suppose, we are all agreed that there are, 
 and will be again, idle, ignorant, and even stupid 
 
110 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 boys. Are they to be turned out on the shore ? or 
 is it our business to make the best of them ? 
 
 Everyone who wishes to be a Teacher will 
 answer, ** We must make the best of them." Be it 
 so. But this means that the vast majority must 
 have individual attention, and be looked to singly, 
 and that there must be proper machinery, and 
 proper structure and plan, to make this individual 
 attention possible. 
 
 Innocent-looking sentences, but holding in them- 
 selves the seed power of a world. 
 
 Given a stupid boy, make him an efficient 
 worker. 
 
 This one line contains the whole matter. Hence- 
 forth we may entirely dismiss the clever from our 
 calculations. Let the sole figure in the field of 
 sight be the stupid boy. This will simplify the 
 question very much. 
 
 Any fool with knowledge can pour it into a clever 
 boy ; but it needs the skilled workman to be able to 
 teach. 
 
 Leave the strong for the present to take care of 
 themselves. Let the sole figure in the field of sight 
 be the stupid boy. 
 
 Innumerable illusions vanish at once, and leave 
 the course clear. 
 
 The knowledge-fungus drops off at once; for 
 stupid boys can never be learned as a body. 
 
 The idolatry of force drops off at once ; for stupid 
 boys can never do the strongest brain work. 
 
Teaching Work. Ill 
 
 Tlie prize idolatry drops off at once ; for the great 
 majority cannot be prize-winners. 
 
 The true work is seen ; and skill is enthroned as 
 the true king, in the proper place, as making the 
 many capable ; and the noble life of weakness, that 
 becomes strong by being good, is given a fair chance. 
 
 So, at last, the Teacher is left face to face with 
 the world as it is, and not as philosophy and idolatry 
 make it to be. The man who does not teach the 
 stupid boy is no teacher, just as the man who cannot 
 find his way in lanes and bypaths is no guide. 
 
 In fact, given fair play, *' stupid boys" come to 
 mean *' bad teachers ; " f or intelligent teaching can 
 make all get along with reasonable speed and 
 certainty. 
 
 What, then, is teaching, if nothing is teaching 
 which does not reach and raise the stupid boy ? 
 
 There are, roughly speaking, three ways of work- 
 ing, two of which are truck work, with its loading 
 up, and putting in ; and one is production, with its 
 mental chemistry, and bringing out. 
 
 These three may be called Kule-printing, Lecturing 
 and Teaching. 
 
 Eule-printing and Lecturing might be done by 
 automatons to automatons of a higher order. 
 
 Teaching is living intelligence, dealing with life. 
 
 The Eule-printer puts a boy into his printing 
 press, sets the steam rollers going, and prints a rule 
 on the mental page, if it is not already well filled up 
 with cricket, and other chromo-lithographs. 
 
112 A Workman*s Hints on 
 
 The Lecturer pours a stream of knov/ledge on 
 something which is supposed to receive the stream. 
 
 The Teacher appHes himself mind to mind. 
 
 The two first have as their subject lessons and 
 books. The last has as his subject the life he deals 
 with. 
 
 The Eule-printer says: "The verb must agree 
 with its nominative case in number and person." 
 And ever after repeats : ** What's the rule?" vary- 
 ing the repetition by different dispensations of 
 punishment, when the unintelligible has been undone 
 by the unintelligent. In a happier world than ours 
 an automaton cane would do the work as well. 
 
 The Lecturer says the rule as before, but then 
 goes on: "You see that the third person plural 
 ends in * ant,* * amant ;' and words ending in * ant,* 
 and the Hke, which speak of many, cannot take a 
 singular noun which ends in * us' as ' domin^s,* 
 which speaks of one only." And then he leaves it ; 
 like a benevolent old verger, who seizes you, and 
 makes you stand in a certain place to look at the 
 great Cathedral, the glorious poem in stone, and 
 inspires you with fear lest he should seize your eye 
 too, and twist it round, as he drones out his tale, till 
 at last you escape, rubbing your eyes, and blessing 
 your stars that they are still in the right place, 
 though he may have told you interesting things. 
 
 Thirdly, comes Teaching. 
 
 Teaching gets it all out of the learner, with much 
 fun and sparring in doing it. 
 
Teaching Work. 113 
 
 Teaching begins : — 
 
 Do you ever think ? 
 
 Fujpil (modestly or otherwise). I believe so. 
 
 T, Do you ever think your thoughts V7orth 
 telling? 
 
 P. Sometimes. 
 
 T. What do you do? 
 
 P. Why, tell them. 
 
 T. Oh, you do. How, pray? 
 
 P. I talk. 
 
 T. Indeed. What is talking? 
 
 P. Why, talking, to be sure — talking* s talking. 
 
 T. No doubt. But how do you do it ? 
 
 P. Oh, I open my mouth and talk. 
 
 T. Good. You open your mouth and talk, A 
 dog opens his mouth and barks. Is that it ? 
 
 P. No ; of course not. I talk sense. 
 
 jP. Glad to hear it. But how do you talk sense, 
 if opening your mouth and barking won*t do ? 
 
 P. I tell what I think about. 
 
 T. Do you ? Think about something. 
 
 P. I have. 
 
 T. Name it. 
 
 P. I thought about a horse. 
 
 jP. Well. But I know nothing of your thought. 
 You have named a horse, but I am no wiser. 
 
 P. I must tell you something about a horse. 
 
 T. Do so. 
 
 P. A horse runs. 
 
 T, Well. Now I know. What two things have 
 
114 A Workman*s Hints on 
 
 you had to do in order to talk sense instead of 
 barking ? 
 
 P. I named what I thought about first, and then 
 I told you something about it. 
 
 T, True. Suppose we call every name a noun, 
 and every word which tells us what the noun does 
 a verb, what is the word " horse " ? 
 
 P. A noun. 
 
 T. And the word " runs " ? 
 
 P. A verb. 
 
 T, 1 think you said the noun named what you 
 were going to speak about ? 
 
 P. Yes. 
 
 T, Suppose we call it, when it does, the nomi- 
 native, or '* naming ** case. What had the verb 
 **runs" to do? 
 
 P. It spoke of it. 
 
 T, Then to make sense the verb must speak of its 
 nominative case ? 
 
 P. Of course it must. 
 
 T. And if it does not, or cannot do so, it is 
 barking ? 
 
 P. Yes. Nothing better than barking. 
 
 T, "Why so ? Show me that the noun can name 
 things in different ways, and the verb tell of different 
 numbers, and persons, &c. 
 
 It is not necessary to go on with this series now. 
 Let us suppose it done, with all the Httle sly hints 
 that can be given in doing it, to a pupil's amuse- 
 ment and bewilderment at his own answers, then 
 
Teaching Work. 115 
 
 when we liave finished this first series, tnrn, and 
 ask abruptly, '* Do you know what you have done 
 in grammar-making ? '* 
 
 P. Grammar-making? No. 
 
 T, You have made for yourself the first rule in 
 grammar, ** That the verb must agree with its nomi- 
 native case in number and person,*' and you know 
 the reason why. You have also discovered the 
 meaning of the words, noun, verb, and nominative 
 case. I congratulate you, O grammarian ! 
 
 Yes, gentlemen ; and we also, in doing this, have 
 discovered the first law of teaching, the first article 
 of the teacher's creed : *' Work from the inside 
 outwards,'* 
 
 All grammar, from beginning to end, can be easily 
 questioned in this way out of everybody who speaks 
 a language. Every subject can be treated in this 
 way the moment any material is gathered. Much 
 time is saved in the end ; whole lives wasted and 
 maimed can be saved. The unintelligent dealing with 
 the unintelligible does not answer. Technical terms 
 and rule-printing are very often mental paralysis. 
 Nay, the glorified parrot, however full of other 
 people's thoughts and discoveries, however much 
 glorified, is a poor creature. The world has yet to 
 get rid of glorified parrots. Once begin to teach, 
 and you can prove all this for yourselves. They 
 are not i^se dixits, but very common working-day 
 facts. 
 
 We have now arrived at the first article of the 
 
116 A WorhmaTCs Hints on 
 
 teacher's creed : ** Work from the inside outwards J* 
 The subject of the teacher is the child. 
 
 Now let us turn from the teacher to the pupil. 
 
 We are all agreed that no one can teach a brick 
 wall. But why not ? Only because of the absence 
 of mind. But if the mind is absent, and the causes 
 of the absence of mind are permanent, it matters 
 not whether the teacher has a brick wall before him 
 or a boy. In other words, the boy's mind must be 
 present. No one can teach a brick wall, or a boy 
 who has been made brick wall. 
 
 We must begin with the homes. 
 
 It would be a curious branch of research in these 
 days to discover how many homes have any books 
 at all. Newspapers there are. The children read 
 the police reports. Periodicals there are. The 
 children read the novels, and an occasional yellow- 
 back. But books ! 
 
 Again. The whole air is charged with change 
 and educational infallibility. This acts in two ways. 
 One section is omniscient over progress, and science, 
 and new methods. Another section considers itself 
 utilitarian. How many homes abuse that or this 
 bit of education as useless, and glorify the judges of 
 pigs, or the smellers and handlers of cotton, or the 
 tormentors of witnesses, all the more if they don't 
 know Greek and Latin. Between the two the 
 children fare badly. Both equally unsettle the boy- 
 mind ; the first perhaps most. Then, to come to 
 the boys. How many of them have the remotest 
 
Teaching Work. 117 
 
 idea why the work is given them to do, or how it 
 bears on their Hves ? How many of them, again, 
 beheve that it is possible for themselves to do it ? 
 They see it taken as a matter of com*se that many 
 cannot do it. 
 
 Then once more. How many boys have the 
 slightest real instruction given them, how to do it ; 
 when they break down at first ? 
 
 Observe — and this is very important — everyone 
 of these difficulties is of the brick wall type. 
 
 They are difficulties before the work can begin. 
 Not difficulties of the work itself, but difficulties 
 before the work can begin. This introduces us to the 
 all-important subject of ^re-working law, which is 
 simply paramount. You cannot teach the brick 
 wall. 
 
 Teachers must have somebody to teach. They 
 cannot teach the brick wall. Pre- working law 
 must have its due. In other words, it is as much a 
 teacher's business to study his material, and make 
 it fit for his work, as it is his business to work it up 
 afterwards, and in these days this is pre-eminently 
 true. There ought to be a machine to shout : 
 ** Pre-working law sold cheap," and the buying it 
 made compulsory. 
 
 Practically, gigantic as its scope is, and wide its 
 range, pre-working law resolves itself into three 
 main statement's. 
 
 The boys must know that the work is part and 
 parcel of daily life. 
 
118 A Worhman's Hints on 
 
 The boys must know the value of their work, and 
 how to deal with it. 
 
 The boys must know that everyone can get it ; 
 that it is no lottery, but an absolute certainty to 
 honest efforts. 
 
 As for the homes, their views of education are 
 what the schools have made them. The less said 
 about that the better. 
 
 If the pupil does not know why he has to work, 
 or what it has to do with his hfe, he will not work. 
 
 All is blind, and broken bits, and a painful 
 puzzle. 
 
 The bandage must be taken off his eyes, or he 
 cannot and will not work. 
 
 But if he will not work, there is nobody to teach. 
 And, if there is nobody to teach, there can be no 
 teacher. A simple proposition ; but one which goes 
 to the root of the matter. 
 
 Pre-working law is a large subject, and can be 
 dealt with in a thousand ways. A few hints on how 
 to deal with it, will not be out of place here. 
 
 Every boy has a body, a mind, and life. The 
 common facts concerning them ought to be ques- 
 tioned out of the pupil. 
 
 Pre-working law means the process by which the 
 intending worker is got into condition to make him 
 fit for work. 
 
 Let the work proposed be a race. Then pre-work- 
 ing law prescribes that the runner shall be most 
 carefully trained, in food, sleep, and exercise, before 
 
Teaching Work, 119 
 
 he comes to the starting post. It prescribes also, 
 as severe exertion is demanded of him, that he 
 shall heartily care for the race he has to run, before 
 he comes to the starting post. But blindfold, or 
 fat, or not caring, he will not race. 
 
 Now to begin with the body. Every boy has a 
 body, and, whilst keenly alive to its value at dinner, 
 or cricket, does not associate it with Latin verse or 
 Thucydides. He calls it his own body ; but if he 
 means that it stops with him, it is not true. It is 
 flying away every moment ; the daily food shows 
 the daily waste. It is calculated that the space of 
 one year changes every particle in the body. If, 
 again, he means that his body is of special stuff, a 
 thing by itseK, that is still more clearly not true. 
 Every day we take in corn, vegetable, fruit, beef, 
 and mutton ; water, beer, wine ; but no one pre- 
 tends to say that because of this we become sheep, or 
 oxen, or cabbage, or grapes. But why not? We 
 go to India and do not turn into mangoes, to Africa 
 and do not become meaUes ; we might go to Mer- 
 cury, or to any other planet on which we could live, 
 and should still be the same Englishmen we were 
 and ever have been. But why so ? Simply because 
 something which we call our life every moment, 
 wherever we are, builds up whatever material it 
 gets into the same body ; because it is the same 
 builder, the same Hfe. The life builds the body. A 
 bad life builds an ugly, unhealthy body ; a good life 
 builds a good and healthy body, and in a short time 
 
120 A WorhnarCs Hints on 
 
 prints the character on the body, as much as if a 
 label was put round a man*s neck, to ticket him as 
 a scamp or an able man. It does concern a boy 
 very much whether he is labelling himself glutton, 
 or har, or fool, day by day. It does concern him 
 whether he is strengthening nerve and sinew, body 
 and mind, as he builds ; or watering himself down 
 into an incapable or diseased article. A boy can 
 understand this. Question it out. Turn sharply 
 round, fasten on an inattentive victim, ask him how 
 he would like to be labelled for his last hour's idle- 
 ness, or for the way in which he spent his last 
 shilhng, or for his last act, or thought, of evil. Do 
 you want to live in a ramshackle, tumbledown build- 
 ing by and by ? If so, go on idhng, fooling, and 
 disregarding warning. No printing-press so sure as 
 the master builder and printer. Life, who turns out 
 a new edition of your body every year, with all its 
 improvements or its evils. You print yourself off 
 daily. That is the meaning of being taught. What 
 label have you got in your printing-press this week? 
 In this way common sense is called in, hfe is shown 
 to be one piece, and the boy made see that his 
 lessons are as much himself as his dinner. Every 
 boy knows that if he goes into school ten minutes 
 after a hearty dinner, he could not do his work 
 though his life depended on it. And every boy may 
 know that a permanent state of fatwittedness, from 
 laziness, sleep, and heavy feeding, is equally fatal. 
 Does he want to be labelled fool? He ought to 
 
Teaching Work. 121 
 
 abuse his fierce stomach, instead of unjustly bewail- 
 ing his poor brains. He is simply blunting all his 
 tools before he begins to work. How can he do fine 
 work with blunted tools? Question this out. It 
 can change in an hour all life. 
 
 Again, boys like games. For games represent 
 the right action of bodily life, and all right action 
 is pleasure. But the very games they play are full 
 of pain, possible disagreeables, blows, defeat, dis- 
 appointment, mortified pride, trials of temper, trials 
 of courage, trials of honesty. What is it that makes 
 games so fascinating ? Question it out of them. It 
 is a most amusing bit of fencing, repartee, and 
 unexpected surprises, to put a class through such a 
 discussion on cricket or football. They wake up to 
 a new world. They learn that it is delight in the 
 exercise of activity, skill, and strength that makes 
 their games so fascinating in spite of much trial. 
 But is bodily skill a greater delight than mental 
 skill ? Is the body higher than the mind ? What 
 boy would give up his power of reading and writing ? 
 What boy would not give up every other thing first ? 
 Yet these were lessons, hated lessons. Let us bring 
 forward our old friend, the pig-boy. The pig-boy, if 
 he is but a pig-boy, in the midst of the most beauti- 
 ful landscape in the world, enjoys it in proportion to 
 his idea, how many pigs it would keep. The most 
 callous schoolboy would scorn that, and enjoy it 
 in proportion to his educated eye for beauty. The 
 master, if worth his salt, is far more above the 
 
122 A Workman* s Hints on 
 
 schoolboy than the schoolboy is above the pig-boy. 
 Let us put the pleasure of the pig-boy at 10, the 
 pleasure of the schoolboy at 100, and the pleasure 
 of the master at 1,000. Extend that principle,, and 
 apply it all round, and you have the difference in 
 the degrees of happiness which work and education 
 give to a right mind. Any schoolboy can see that. 
 Question it out of them. One hour of such pre- 
 working law may be a life changed. Education is 
 ^pleasure. 
 
 Again, let us take the question of value. 
 
 Value ultimately depends on the quality and 
 quantity of the life put into anything, or, in more 
 precise words, on the strength of body or mind 
 employed, on the skill or time needed, and on the 
 risk of failure after all. 
 
 For example : Land as land is perfectly valueless. 
 You can get any amount for nothing in Canada and 
 elsewhere. It has to be worked. But work is life- 
 acting. The work makes it valuable. Moreover, if, 
 when the crop is ripe, the workman is robbed by 
 bad men, who cut his throat, or bad laws, which 
 give his gains to others, he won't work. 
 
 Law and order, and security and justice, are 
 higher forms of work in which people unite to 
 protect one another in right work. 
 
 First, then, in the scale of value comes bodily 
 work ; that is, in the first instance, the amount of 
 life, the amount of skill, required in learning how 
 to work, and afterwards in working, and the amount 
 
Teaching Work. 123 
 
 of risk run, that after all the worker may not be able 
 to acquire the strength and skill necessary ; all 
 these determine the value of the first stratum of 
 work, which is summed up in Scripture by the 
 word ''bread." ''Man shall not live by bread 
 alone/' Above this comes every kind of work that 
 makes the higher life of man higher and better : 
 law, justice, literature, religion, worship, and every- 
 thing that grows out of them. And each of these 
 rises in the scale of human value according to the 
 time required in learning, the strength of head or 
 heart required to do it, and the risk whether lihe 
 worker after all his toil will be able to do the higher 
 kind of work with success. In this manner all 
 work, secular or sacred, rises in value step by step 
 through every bodily and mental gradation, accord- 
 ing to the amount and quality of the life expended 
 in doing it. And high education, literary training, 
 Latin and Greek, music and painting, &c., mean 
 the opportunity given to the pupil to do the most 
 valuable work. This privilege is bought at a price ; 
 that price is the work, in other words the Hfe, of 
 those who maintain the schoolboy at school. And 
 the schoolboy who idles whilst living on the life- 
 earnings of others is a thief, thieving their lives, 
 and wasting his own. Doing nothing on other 
 people's work is simply robbing those who support 
 you. 
 
 Question this out. Any school-boy can be made 
 to see the value of the work he has to do. 
 
124 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 So much of pre-working law, an endless subject. 
 
 When we have done this kind of thing we have 
 got somebody to teach, and not before. All daily 
 hfe, all pleasure, all value, in a word, all the great 
 problems of life, open up from these beginnings, 
 and are involved in school-work ; a very different 
 thing from class-room dust and scrapings. The 
 boy world is, as a class confessed the other day, 
 turned topsy-turvy, right end up at last, by an hour's 
 work or so, and the meanness, which thinks it 
 manly to drop down pig-boy way, is gone. 
 
 And we have now also made our second law of 
 teaching ; the second article of the Teacher's creed : 
 '* Never work blindfold " ; or, in the language of 
 our forefathers : ** Never fly hooded hawks." 
 
 Again, we want to make the commonest common 
 life glow with unexpected fire, and everything be- 
 come a part of the growth of mind, of pleasure, 
 value, in a word, of education. To do this, the 
 commonest thing is the best : words for instance. 
 Give out as a lesson, ** Names that are true, and 
 the truths that make the names." Then imagine 
 such a scene as the following : — A dozen little boys 
 from nine to thirteen years of age sitting round a 
 table expectant and nervous, as a new authority 
 has come to examine them. 
 
 New authority begins : 
 
 What have you got sticking up between your 
 shoulders ? 
 
 P. My head. 
 
Teaching Work, 125 
 
 N» A, Quite sure it isn't a turnip ? 
 
 P. Oh, yes ! quite. 
 
 N, A, Why? What is the difference between a 
 head and a turnip ? 
 
 P. Oh, a head thinks and a turnip doesn't. 
 
 iV*. A, Glad to hear it. We'll see. I'm not so 
 sure. Where are your books ? 
 
 P. On the table. 
 
 j^^. ^. What's a table ? 
 
 P. Wood, to be sure. 
 
 N, A, Oh, wood. Look out of the window at 
 those beautiful tables growing on the lawn. You 
 turnip I 
 
 P. Oh, no ! A table is wood sawn out flat. 
 
 N, A, So's the floor. Take your feet off your 
 table. 
 
 P. No, a table is wood sawn out flat, put on legs. 
 
 JV*. A. Indeed ! Have you ever slept on a wooden 
 bedstead ? A table is a sleeping place, eh ? Well, 
 I am inclined to agree — at lesson time. 
 
 P. Dear no. A table is a flat surface on legs, not 
 like a bedstead. 
 
 JV. A, Get off the table directly; do you sit on 
 the table in my presence ? 
 
 P. I am sitting on a form ; a table isn't a form ; 
 it is higher than a form, and broader, to put things 
 on. 
 
 N. A, Very well. You will serve up dinner on 
 that book-case then ? 
 
 And so on, till the pupil is made, after much fun 
 
126 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 and searching of spirit, to define a table, first, as a 
 fiat, smooth surface, raised so that people may sit 
 at it, and place any articles they wish to use for 
 meals or ordinary work upon it ; and secondly, that 
 a table is ultimately the thought of a skilled work- 
 man, as to the best way of doing this, put into 
 shape, in wood or other material. 
 
 But the surprises, quaint overthrows, and con- 
 trasts between heads and turnips, that can be got 
 out of this kind of wresthng with a word are 
 infinite. 
 
 Having begun with a tangible and visible com- 
 mon object, go on with a common abstract term. 
 
 Ask, what is health ? 
 
 A first-rate primary answer was given by a boy 
 of twelve who had just gone through a course of 
 " table." Health, he said, is the perfect power of 
 body and mind for use. 
 
 T, Put out your arm. Why can you do it ? 
 
 P. Oh, my arm is strong enough for that, and a 
 great deal more too. 
 
 T, Indeed. Is your arm your arm after starving 
 three days ? 
 
 P. Well, yes. 
 
 T, You would put it out, and do a great deal more 
 than that with it ? Eh ? 
 
 P. Dear no. I should be starved. 
 
 T. Your arm then has something to do with food ? 
 
 P. Certainly. 
 
 T. And food with your stomach ? 
 
Teaching Work, 127 
 
 P. Yes. 
 
 jP. We get then to the old story of the belly and 
 the members. Yomr stomach is the first thing in 
 health. Eh ? 
 
 P. Certainly. 
 
 T. Did you think of that when you spent that last 
 sixpence in tarts ? 
 
 P. Well, no. 
 
 Then go on, show that health means everything 
 that food, sleep, exercise, self-control, proper 
 endurance, self-denial, heat, cold, call on a man to 
 do or to bear in a right way ; and that work is 
 stopped, and hfe soon put an end to, or shortened, 
 by any want of attention to these. Flash light into 
 the meaning of health. Show it in daily action. 
 Show it working always and everywhere. Hunt it 
 into corners and hiding-places. Dislodge it from 
 lazing by the fire, or stuffing in the grub shop. Pull 
 it out of bed in the morning. Send it running down 
 the road with the east wind. Kick it on the shins 
 at football. Hit it on the knuckles at cricket. Pur- 
 sue it into the class-room. Catch it making its 
 false concords, or telling you that Eegulus was an 
 eftete of Carthage ; till your boy has some tangible 
 idea of what health in body and mind means ; and 
 how the meaning sticks to him in and out of school 
 equally and always. 
 
 Then go on with " work." What does work 
 mean? 
 
 Hunt that down, flashing light on it. Show 
 
128 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 what a much bigger word it is than health. How, 
 so to say, it begins where health ends. How it 
 holds all health and its meaning within it first, as a 
 Chinese box with fifty more inside it ; then, how it 
 adds to the meaning of health, skill, practice, 
 accuracy, teaching ; hand, eye, and mind, obedient 
 to orders, knowing what to do and doing it, and a 
 thousand things more. When you have questioned 
 this out of your class, you will also have made the 
 third Law of Teaching for yourself. 
 
 ** Light up the magic lantern of common words 
 and things'' 
 
 Flash light out of them and through them. 
 
 You may say. This takes too much time. If it is 
 the shortest way of making mind work, it cannot 
 take too much time. I grant no one living is 
 allowed at present to teach as his main work. But 
 a little teaching can be done. An hour will pull a 
 great deal of this out of little boys ; and they go 
 away with new powers, questioning everyone they 
 dare about tables, &c., full of fun and interest. 
 But an hour a week bestowed in this way might 
 work wonders ; and is not much to steal from 
 Pharaoh and his tale of bricks. 
 
 Next : as we have been questioning, let us see 
 what an answer means. 
 
 Every answer in the world, which consciously or 
 unconsciously is given by an intelligent mind, 
 obeys the same laws, and goes through the same 
 process. The manner in which to set about giving 
 
Teaching Work. 129 
 
 an answer is a matter of rule, a purely mechanic 
 act, as much mechanical as measuring out the 
 ground for a building is mechanical. 
 
 Before beginning, let us affirm, that a true 
 answer is never a mere act of memory; and 
 secondly, that the untaught, young and old, learned 
 and unlearned, invariably try to make it one. The 
 true answer is no act of memory. Let us then for 
 the present throw memory on one side. 
 
 The true answer first fastens on an example. 
 Then collects facts about the example ; and their 
 relative position as regards the question. Then 
 compares them, draws a conclusion, and answers. 
 All this is very often done with lightning rapidity, 
 quite unconsciously, but it is done. 
 
 The ordinary heads under which this mechanical 
 skill in answering on a word, a sentence, or a 
 narrative, is ranged, are the following : 
 
 1. See the thing dealt with. 
 
 2. Marshal all facts which belong to it by itself, 
 with their meaning. 
 
 3. Take the people dealt with. 
 
 4. Do the same with them. 
 
 5. The facts of the narrative. 
 
 6. Their relative position and value, 
 
 7. Draw conclusions, and answer. 
 
 Suppose, for instance, a question is asked about 
 fishing, it is clear that no one can answer it who 
 has never heard of, or seen, rivers, sea, rods, nets, 
 &c. But, if this is obviously true of visible 
 
 K 
 
130 A WorhmarCs Hints on 
 
 material objects, it is still more true of the objects 
 which the mind has to frame for itself. 
 
 Ji the mind cannot frame those objects, and has 
 not got them present, it cannot answer. The 
 knowledge, then, of any mechanical process by 
 which to produce this presence is invaluable. A 
 Teacher's business is to show how this can be 
 done, and habitually ensure that the pupils do go 
 through this mechanical process of getting the 
 objects before their minds, comparing them, and 
 drawing conclusions. 
 
 For example let us take the abstract noun 
 *' structure." 
 
 What is structure, and its value ? 
 
 Let the class turn it at once into a lesson on the 
 class-room in which the class is held, and its 
 structure. Make them note carefully : 
 
 1. The walls, their thickness, height, archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 2. The floor, the ceiling, any peculiarities, and 
 why? 
 
 3. The surface of the walls, bare or decorated, 
 painted or whitewashed, panelled or left un- 
 touched. 
 
 4. The engravings, pictures, maps, models, or 
 bareness of the walls. 
 
 5. The benches, chairs, desks, apparatus, espe- 
 cially if of different date and character. 
 
 6. Then the class itself, its number, its arrange- 
 ment, its position in life, its apparatus, its books. 
 
Teaching Work. 131 
 
 When all this has been thought over to the best 
 of the ability of the pupil, or questioned out of him, 
 he will be in a condition to deduce from what he 
 sees and knows, the kind of life which has em- 
 bodied itself in that structure; the idea the 
 builders had, good or bad, of the work to be done 
 in it ; what kind of work is, or can be, done in it ; 
 the impossibility of doing the work without the 
 structure ; the effect that the structure has on the 
 work for good or evil ; the ideas about the work in 
 that kingdom ; its progress from earlier times ; 
 what it owes to past skill ; whether it is adding to 
 present skill, or falling short of its requirements. 
 In fact, many a class-room is an epitome of educa- 
 tional ideas. Hence the pupil is naturally led on 
 to the great truths we have already touched on, 
 that all life needs structure ; that all life by degrees 
 makes its own structure or body ; that a base life 
 makes a base body, and a noble life a noble body ; 
 and that the goodness or badness of the body 
 declares infallibly in time the goodness or badness 
 of the life that produced it. A good structure is 
 produced by good life, and tends to produce good 
 life ; a bad structure decides absolutely, if sufficient 
 time has elapsed, that the life is bad, and it tends 
 to perpetuate bad life. This kind of thing can be 
 brought out by a lesson on structure translated into 
 class-room, and is an example of the law of 
 answers. At all events an hour's questioning on 
 the class-room can produce really good essays from 
 
132 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 one of the lowest classes in a school ; and open 
 their eyes as to the mechanic rules to be observed 
 in answering a question. 
 
 Again, to take another instance of working with 
 tools, by method, and setting about things in the 
 right way, which is of universal application, I refer 
 to making the known lead up to the less known in 
 an intelligent way. An example will make this 
 clearer. I will bring forward the much maligned 
 subject of Latin verse, the most useful literary tool 
 that ever was invented, but nothing more than a 
 tool. It is not too much to say that a little intel- 
 ligent leading up from the known to the less known 
 will work a miracle here. I need not dilate on 
 the hopeless refusal to do anything, which speedily 
 becomes incapacity, that is bred by home omni- 
 science, boy restiveness, and school mismanage- 
 ment, in this matter. Everyone knows the diffi- 
 culty of screwing a single line out of the poor, 
 misguided Solomon, who whines out that he is not 
 a poet, when his master only wants him not to be 
 a fool. Let Solomon take his seat, and the line 
 from Coleridge's ''Ancient Mariner," ''And now 
 the storm-blast came," be dictated to him, after the 
 passage and its context has been read and made 
 familiar. This Hne is to be translated into a Latin 
 Hexameter. "Et jam flatus procellae venit," is 
 not a promising start for a verse. The class was 
 first ordered to picture to themselves the ship as 
 it sailed merrily along, the glad bright sunny waves 
 
Teaching Work. 133 
 
 of the Sonthern Sea, the life on board, the crew, 
 the sails set, the tackle, the air, the light ; and 
 then the clouds gather fierce and heavy, then in 
 the distance the black shadows move, they whiten, 
 they rush on, telling of waves smitten, and crested 
 waters gleaming and hurrying, till at last up it 
 comes with a roar and a shock, and is on the ship 
 in a moment with its crew. All this was ques- 
 tioned out in a few minutes, and they were ready 
 to begin. 
 
 Then they were asked to give different English 
 versions f or " And now.'* 
 
 As soon as any boy gave one they were told to 
 write them down in column. 
 
 Seventeen variations were produced in about ten 
 minutes, each giving the sense sufficiently well. 
 
 Then the word *' storm " was treated in the same 
 way. 
 
 Then the word '* blast." 
 Then the words '' blast of storm." 
 Then the words *' blast with storm." 
 Then the words ** wind with violence." 
 Then the words '* anger of storm," etc. 
 Then the words " storm raging with wind." 
 Then the words '' storm raging with anger." 
 Then the words " storm raging with violence." 
 Then the words ** storm raging with blast." 
 Then the words ^* storm raging with fury." 
 Then the words ** storm raging with turmoil." 
 Then the words '* storm raging with roaring," etc. 
 
134 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 Then the words '' storm rouses wind.*' 
 
 Then the words *' storm excites anger, etc.*' 
 
 Then all these were ordered to be changed about, 
 and the same sense produced by altering the 
 arrangement, both grammatical and verbal. Then 
 we took the word **came'* in the same manner, 
 showed its real meaning, how little the idea of 
 coming, or arrival, had to do with it, but violent 
 change, the wind force, and its power over the 
 ship. 
 
 The word " came ** accordingly was varied again 
 and again. 
 
 When all this was written down, the Latin words 
 called up and suggested by the English variations 
 were asked for, and ordered to be written down 
 opposite the corresponding English. All this took 
 about an hour, and 12 o'clock in the day was 
 reached. They were now ready to begin. Observe, 
 the whole of this was a quasi-mechanical process of 
 working with given tools. No books were allowed. 
 
 It is not too much to say that no boy in that 
 class, left to himself, as he was when he came into 
 the class-room at 11 a.m., could have produced more 
 than eight or so indifferent versions of that line of 
 Coleridge by night. A prize was offered for the 
 greatest number of hexameter versions of that line 
 to be shown up that night. 
 
 Several copies shown up that night ranged from 
 90 to 100 verses, and good verses too. 
 
 That was a miracle worked by natural means. 
 
Teaching Work. 135 
 
 But let us analyse what was done. 
 
 First, pictorial thought was called into play. 
 
 Next, sense was studied. 
 
 Next, the English language was exercised, and 
 interest in the English language roused. 
 
 Next, instead of a dreary hunt for Latin words, 
 there was a great sifting of thought, and thought- 
 expression. 
 
 Next, the versatility of thought-expression was 
 shown. 
 
 Next, the methods of changing thought - ex- 
 pression were shown. 
 
 Next, nimble movement of mind was practised. 
 
 Next, judgment in choice and rejection was 
 practised. 
 
 Next, harmonious arrangement, taste, and the 
 sense of the melodious sound, were practised. 
 
 Next, word-power, and the delicate adjustment 
 of words were practised. 
 
 Next, an enormously extended vocabulary in 
 both languages was summoned, and — came. 
 
 Next, the two languages were blended together, 
 and brought into union. 
 
 Finally, all this was a working of thought, and 
 not of stick-in-the-mud memory ; a simple process 
 of stirring up the known, and making it lead up to 
 the less known. 
 
 If this is not mental teaching I do not know 
 what is. And the process is of universal appH- 
 cation. 
 
136 A Workman's Hints on 
 
 And thus we are brougM to the fourth law of 
 teaching : " Work with tools , and know how to use 
 them J' 
 
 This last exercise has naturally led us up to the 
 crown and summit of all teaching, the formation of 
 mental pictures, and pictorial habits of mind. No 
 true work has been done till this is done. Do this, 
 and you have educated; for it is a germ of life 
 that, once planted, never ceases to live. 
 
 What is the mind peopled with ? 
 
 An argument ah homine shall answer the question. 
 
 Until I saw Eichard Coeur de Lion's mark at 
 Eouen, when I was just twenty years old, all history 
 was to me shadowy ghostland. I never put the 
 living reality of daily life into any bit of history 
 whatever. The personages of history were ex- 
 amples, or warnings : I believed in them, but they 
 did not live. They were not flesh and blood. 
 
 There were four gradations in my mind. 
 
 Eairy tales, where all was imaginary and de- 
 lightful. 
 
 Novels, which were more delightful still, but still 
 unreal. 
 
 History, which was less delightful, and was 
 supposed to be real. 
 
 Daily life, and its persons, which was real. 
 
 Until I saw Eichard' s mark appended to a docu- 
 ment, much as his courage and wars impressed me, 
 he had no living reality and personal existence for 
 me. I suspect that vast numbers of people are in 
 
Teaching Work, 137 
 
 the same predicament, and never bring home to 
 themselves a single incident which does not happen 
 before their eyes ; in other words, they live in the 
 present, and— in ghostland ; as their minds are 
 peopled with shadows, phantoms, ghosts. Let no 
 one despise this assertion, who has not brought 
 home to himself the difference between knowing a 
 thing and actually presenting that knowledge in a 
 flesh-and-blood form to his mind. It is certain 
 that all mere memory work is a creating of mental 
 ghosts, and that all mere memory work turns the 
 mind into ghostland, and peoples it with a popu- 
 lation, which has shape, but neither substance nor 
 life.' Exorcise the ghosts. No pupil, if teachers 
 were allowed to teach, ought ever to be permitted 
 to do a lesson without having a vivid picture in his 
 mind of the persons and facts he is dealing with. 
 As regards the actions, the homelier the picture, the 
 better. A boy, for instance, did not in the least 
 understand the passage from Caesar he had just put 
 into words, which said : " That Caesar did not wish to 
 leave an enemy behind his back when he was going 
 to invade Britain." But he understood perfectly 
 well the following dialogue, and — his Caesar : 
 
 T, General Smith, do you see the road through 
 the door outside, beyond the corner ? 
 
 P. Yes. 
 
 T, Can you imagine rushing out to attack Brown 
 in the road ? 
 
 P. Oh! yes. 
 
 I y k 
 
138 A "Worhnan's HinU on 
 
 T. But suppose just round that corner there were 
 two small boys waiting to pitch into you the moment 
 you engage Brown ? 
 
 P. I should lick them first. 
 
 Just what Csssar did. He did not leave an enemy 
 at his back to pitch into him as soon as he turned 
 to face the Briton, his Brown. 
 
 It need scarcely be observed that the construer 
 knew what Caesar was about after that little picture 
 of the proceedings. Yet, this is but a far-oif ghmpse 
 of what is meant. When Caesar is being read, 
 Genera] Smith ma., the boy set on to construe, ought 
 be leading the troops through the enemy's country 
 with Csesar, and speculate on the boys round the 
 cornel as native armies. Drawing has never been 
 pressed into service as it ought to be. Every boy 
 in the two upper classes at Uppingham has now to 
 learn some drav/ing, and will be required hence- 
 forward to illustrate the school work from time to 
 time by drawings and plans. But photographs of 
 important places are sadly wanted. Buildings can 
 be got ; but good photographs of the great scenes of 
 historical fame, or of landscapes and rivers cele- 
 brated in prose or poetry, cannot be got. When will 
 the Universities rise up and demand them ? The 
 difference between knowledge of a fact, and a mental 
 picture of a fact, is stupendous ; and, unfortunately, 
 it is very difficult to bring this home. Obviously 
 the best plan is to require actual drawings from time 
 to time, if possible. But, unfortunately, it is not 
 
Teaching Work. 139 
 
 possible. Also, there would arise a great danger 
 lest the vividness of the fact should be lost in the 
 excellence of the drawing, and a foolish picture of 
 Boman troops be preferred to the little boys round 
 the corner. The pictorial mind is wanted first, not 
 skill of hand. 
 
 The next best way I believe to be, to set a boy 
 before a picture or a scene ; tell him to look at it, 
 to ^x it in his mind ; and then to turn him round, 
 make him shut his eyes, and describe what he sees 
 in his mind. If boys can be got to do this in their 
 walks, and to make matches with one another, 
 either in or out of doors, as to who sees most with 
 his eyes shut, the thing is done. But in some way 
 or other, for first-rate teaching, and being taught, 
 the thing has to be done. Once more, remember 
 that in drawing the mental picture, not the excellence 
 of the drawing, but the picture which embodies with 
 spirit the true sense of the passage, is the object 
 sought. For instance, few boys could put CsBsar's 
 army into the field with any accuracy, and marshal 
 the Menapii and Morini against him ; the life of the 
 narrative, however, is thoroughly rendered by the 
 two boys round the corner waiting to take General 
 Smith ma. a tergOj as he advances through the 
 door into the road to attack the redoubtable Brown. 
 Moreover, General Smith ma. is learning to construe 
 and understand a Latin narrative, and is not a 
 student of military tactics, or antique armour, in the 
 first instance. 
 
140 A WorJcman*s Hints on 
 
 In this way substance and life can be given to all 
 tbe work, and we arrive at the last, and most 
 important, law of all teaching : 
 
 " Think in shape y get out of Ghostland,*' 
 The natural conclusion of the subject is now in 
 sight. The Teacher is brought by his voyage of 
 discovery to the fountain of youth. For there is a 
 fountain of youth, in teaching at all events. If 
 school-work means the spending year after year in 
 making up little packets of knowledge, seizing boys 
 and packing them tight, like portmanteaus, jumping 
 on the lid when things won't fit in at last, nothing 
 more need be said. There is no immortality in a 
 grocer's paper bag, or a knowledge-packer's. But 
 if a Teacher's life means teaching pupils to use 
 mind, to paint mental pictures, and to create new 
 creations of mind ; if a Teacher has the whole world 
 as his field for illustrations, and is for ever lighting 
 on fresh illustrations, grave or gay, and making 
 every flint flash new sparks of truth, every stone 
 speak, every brook have a tongue for him, just as 
 the moment requires ; then there is immortality for 
 a Teacher, there is a fountain of youth for teaching. 
 If he lived a thousand years, he would every day be 
 finding more illustrations, and be growing more full 
 of life, more plastic, more fresh, more nirable, ever 
 finding greater pleasure himself in daily new dis- 
 coveries of brighter, clearer ways of working, ever 
 becoming more hopeful of turning the stickiest clay 
 into china. 
 
Teaching Work, 141 
 
 There is a fountain of youth in teaching which no 
 clay can dam up, no resistance stop flowing, no 
 monotony of dulness stagnate. 
 
 The Teacher does discover some who will be 
 taught. 
 
 The Teacher revels even without them, in the 
 delight of finding all creation teeming with life and 
 teaching. The Teacher can illuminate the dullest 
 cloud, and light it up with inward fire, for a time at 
 all events, for all time, if the prevailing atmosphere 
 allows. His work of endless discovery, of waking 
 up, inspiriting, interesting, winging minds, keeps 
 him always at the top of his powers, to supply the 
 spirit needed. His own life daily flashes into new 
 existences. He learns far more than he teaches ; 
 he gains far more than he gives. Nothing seems 
 impossible as he works. No child ever found the 
 unsightly basket and the common straw break loose 
 into more unlikely surprises of delightful realities, 
 of Christmas presents ; no diamond digger, toiling 
 amidst rock, and mud, and clay, is fired with greater 
 hopes, or more certain of his gains. Every stroke 
 may bring out a diamond. 
 
 There is a fountain of youth in teaching, inex- 
 haustible, eternal. 
 
 I have nothing more to say to-day. It is only 
 left me to utter the fervent prayer that the Teachers 
 of England may win free access to the fountain of 
 youth; may slay the dragon that guards it, and 
 drink freely and without stint, where I must be 
 
142 A Worhman's Hints on Teaching Work. 
 
 satisfied with a few stray drops, and a far-off hearing 
 of the ripple of its flow, rooted, Hke a sign-post, to 
 the ground, only able to point out the way I may 
 not tread, too glad if others may get a chance of 
 doing that which, afar off, it has sometimes been per- 
 mitted me to see. But I have seen, come what may, 
 I have seen teaching afar off, and caught some stray 
 drops in happier hours of the Teacher's fountain of 
 youth.' 
 
AN ADDEESS TO THE TEACHEES' GUILD, 
 MAY 16, 1887. 
 
AN ADDEESS TO THE TEACHEES* GUILD. 
 
 Eaeth is a battle-field. The clash of armies 
 meeting is a mere transient symptom of the cease^ 
 le^s ebb and flow of conflict, that goes on, all 
 unperceived, in every city, village, home, nay, in 
 every human heart. Education, and the training 
 of life, cannot escape the universal lot. The globe 
 on which we Kve is a parable. Ful of unseen 
 tides of seas of fire, with an occasional volcano 
 betraying their existence, men mark the volcano^ 
 and disregard the fiery sea. But if the sea itself 
 is within the reach and control of man, then it 
 would be madness not to study its nature. Now 
 the ceaseless conflict of principle in Education, and 
 the causes which create the conflict, are within the 
 l^each of man's research and control. They demand 
 our attention. 
 
 The fact is that mankind are divided into two 
 camps. Everyone belongs to the one or the other, 
 however high or refined, or however low or brutal, 
 he may be. 
 
 There are the lordly spirits, who look on the world 
 
146 An Address to the 
 
 as subject to their power, and proceed to handle 
 heaven and earth, man, animal, and matter, accord- 
 ing to their own good pleasure. They have got 
 hold of the scissors of creation, and with wonderful 
 sagacity and pains set to work to cut infinity into 
 httle squares, which they can understand, and 
 master, and move at will. Out of these they com- 
 pose a universe of their own. It is very ingenious, 
 and they make all fit in, and come within the 
 compass of their knowledge, and form a lovely 
 tessellated pattern, smooth and hard, a polished 
 perfection of surface, which is presented to all who 
 advance to meet them on their own chosen side of 
 argument. This is one camp, the camp of intellect 
 and knowledge. 
 
 Then there are the Shakespears, and all those 
 pupils of light, who approach infinity with its 
 infinite hints of infinity of unknown and unknow- 
 able glory, in a spirit of worship, with eyes open, 
 and loving, and humble. Men, whose first glance 
 at creation has merged more or less their own 
 personality in a glad bewilderment of joy at all they 
 see ; and who pass on, lost to themselves and their 
 own bounded powers, satisfied with an overflow of 
 never-ceasing delight as they see ; all their being 
 bathed in light ; feelings, and intellect, and heart, 
 and tongue, all alike filled and quickened by an 
 inpouring on souls ready to receive. Happy spirits, 
 whose supreme ideal would be to live like a dew- 
 drop, however small, yet capable of taking in a 
 
Teachers' Guild. 147 
 
 perfect image and reflection of the sun himself, 
 swallowed up in a universe of light, and yet con- 
 taining it ; light all round ; light on this side, light 
 on that, light within, light without, yet with no 
 power in itself to grasp, for who can grasp light ? 
 Only willing and ahle to receive. 
 
 This is the other camp ; the camp of the seeing 
 heart, and the seeing eye, and the love of greatness 
 bowing down before life which is greater than itself. 
 
 It is obvious, that the scissors with the squares, 
 and the dewdrop and the sun, are diametrically 
 opposed to one another in essence. 
 
 It is obvious, that knowledge-worship and the 
 lust of the head, are deadly enemies to the loving 
 eye and the humble spirit. 
 
 It is obvious, that the manufactured universe is 
 a different conception from the universe of infinity 
 that is. 
 
 It is obvious, that a hard hand stretched out to 
 seize facts, and the winning a way by humility 
 and love into the heart of things, are as far apart 
 as whipping a slave, and wooing a bride. They 
 belong to different worlds. 
 
 Every living being, consciously or unconsciously, 
 is in one of these two classes, ranged under one or 
 other of these banners, is in one camp or the other. 
 
 The pothouse oracle can be as omniscient as the 
 most worshipped philosopher, and with equal 
 justice. Each wields the scissors of creation in 
 his own world. 
 
148 An Address to the 
 
 The village labourer with the reverent heart can 
 be as wise as the wisest thinker, and with equal 
 justice. They are both full of Hght. Neither 
 wants more. Neither sets up for more than he is ; 
 as the sailor's kettle did, which when filled claimed 
 the sovereignty of the sea ; as many a kettle has 
 done since, and black kettles too. 
 
 Until this vast chasm and split is recognised as 
 the one fact in dealing with life, no beginning in 
 education, which is the training of life, has been 
 made consciously on any true principle. This 
 seriously affects our subject to-night of Thinking in 
 shape, and Pictorial Teaching. 
 
 For knowledge-hunting is one thing, and the 
 seeing eye and active mind another. 
 
 I fearlessly assert, what it is not my business 
 to-night to prove, but I can prove it, that intellect- 
 worship and the banner of knowledge set up in a 
 kingdom mean death to true progress, death to the 
 welfare of the vast majority, if unchecked. 
 
 Few stop to consider what knowledge is. It is 
 only second-hand information. The sum of the 
 facts collected, noted, and laid up, by the labour 
 and resepjrch of those who have gone before 
 us. 
 
 It is very valuable ; so is gold ; but the old story 
 of the man found dead in the desert by the side of 
 his heap of gold is not out of date, and never will 
 be. Or, if you like it better, the more recent 
 example of the returning colonist, who was drowned 
 
Teachers' Guild. 149 
 
 when the Boyal Charter was wrecked, by the gold 
 in the belt round his body. 
 
 Supposing the knowledge all got, it may drown 
 you. 
 
 But as a fact it is not got. To the majority it is 
 administered like physic to a dog, half shoved down 
 his throat, and then his mouth held, if you can do 
 it for his biting, till he has gulped it down, some at 
 all events, from sheer inability to get rid of it. 
 
 Many cannot be said to take it at all. And no 
 one will dispute that second-hand information, not 
 taken, is worthless. 
 
 But is it less worthless if not understood ? Is it 
 less worthless in the modern version of the Fools 
 of our ancestors, clothed in modern motley, a dab 
 of language here, a dab of mathematics there, a bit 
 of this, and a shred of that, all stitched together 
 without a pattern or order, particoloured and patchy 
 manuals and date-cards, and a pitiable want of any 
 texture of sufficiently thick fibre to let the victim 
 '* sit in the belfry and warm his five wits," like the 
 owl. If indeed he has any wits left to warm, and 
 they have not all departed under this patchwork 
 process, and left nothing behind but a firm persua- 
 sion that he cannot learn ; which is only too true. 
 
 Throw aside the few who are strong enough to 
 shift for themselves. And I appeal to every school- 
 master in England from the Board School in its 
 lowest phase to the Public School in its highest, as 
 to what in their hearts they believe about the rank 
 
150 An Address to the 
 
 and file of their pupils, whether they are willing 
 and capable acquirers of knowledge or not. 
 Above all, whether the results attained by the 
 majority bear any proportion to the time spent. 
 I have talked with many, I have read much, 
 and never yet in talking, and never in writings, 
 outside the magic circle of officials and amateurs, 
 have I found any difference of opinion as to 
 the boys and their work as a whole. I myself 
 after thirty-three years' experience, and a good bit 
 of the thirty-fourth, emphatically state that I have 
 only lately begun to really become aware of the 
 utter ignorance of the Enghsh boy in English 
 common words, common stories, common know- 
 ledge of all kinds, and the utter indifference to 
 being ignorant, and the still more surprising apathy 
 towards attempts to excite thought, which prevail, 
 and, unless I am much mistaken, are gaining ground 
 in this generation, and becoming worse and worse 
 every day. 
 
 My appeal is to Philip in private, not to Philip in 
 print. I affirm that Philip in private is in despair 
 over the mass of boys, and the way he has to deal 
 with them. 
 
 The work done (the boys, that is) is condemned. 
 But it is the boys we want to see full of power and 
 training. 
 
 What is the remedy for this condemnation ? The 
 remedy is, ** think in shape.'* If you are allowed to 
 do it. This is the practical answer. Eor every- 
 
Teachers* Guild, 151 
 
 thing follows if this is done. This alone rouses 
 mind. Mind must be roused. But mind is without 
 exception the most perverse thing in creation. 
 Mind will do anything but think. Mind will crawl 
 through any number of manuals, and grovel over as 
 many date cards as you like ; ay, and bear any 
 punishment rather than think. Mind will wriggle 
 out of thinking by every conceivable twist and 
 twiddle. Mind is the prince of shirks. 
 
 Yet mind is very active when it likes. Is it not 
 possible that this ingrained reluctance to think does 
 not rest with mind, but has something to do with 
 the way in which mind is treated ? If you load a 
 racer like a cart-horse, and expect him to race, I 
 suspect he would lay back his ears and kick not a 
 little. So does mind, the racer. In the great 
 market of the world the cart-horses rule, and test 
 everyone by the number of sacks he can carry for 
 sale. Nay, some of the strongest beasts of burden 
 walk proudly round the market carrying their sacks, 
 and don't even sell. The cart-horses have it their 
 own way. Every fool can understand sacks, and so 
 the racer is nowhere. Memory, and knowledge, 
 and the many sacks carry the day. Thought hasn't 
 a chance. But thought is wanted, and the mind 
 • must be made to think. 
 
 The mind must be taught to think in shape, to 
 translate meaning out of shape, and to translate 
 meaning into shape. That is, train the mind, your 
 own and other people's, whenever it sees anything. 
 
152 An Address to the 
 
 at once to find out, what thought made the shape 
 it sees. And, on the other hand, accustom it to take 
 every word used, and put it into some definite shape, 
 example, or reaUty. This translation and retrans- 
 lation of shape, into thought and words, and of 
 words into thought and shape, awakens mind, and 
 makes thought possible and pleasant. 
 
 Let us proceed to examples. In other words, let 
 us put what has been said into shape, and begin our 
 work by thinking in shape ourselves. 
 
 I must first, however, lay down as an axiom, that 
 it does not matter in the least how simple, how 
 imperfect, or absurd even, the shape may be, if it 
 embodies the thought in a vivid way, as when we 
 say, **He stood like a rock." 
 
 Here is an illustration of this on a larger scale. 
 A friend and colleague of mine was reading with his 
 little girl of six years old, Campbell's poem of ** Lord 
 Ullin's Daughter.'* She was delighted, but puzzled. 
 There were so many persons, and so much move- 
 ment. The lake and the mountain, the ferry and 
 the road, the pursuers and pursued, got mixed up 
 together and entangled in her poor little mind. Of 
 course her father gave her an elaborate explanation, 
 getting slightly out of temper in tone and word, 
 when she still couldn't see it ! He did nothing of 
 the sort. Breakfast was just over. The table was 
 crumby. He took the crumbs. He made one 
 heap stand for the angry father and his company, 
 another for the mountains, a thin circle for the 
 
I 
 
 Teachers* Guild. 153 
 
 ake, a little bit of crust for the boat, two little bits 
 of sugar for the lovers, and all was clear. His little 
 girl took in the whole thing ; she thought in shape. 
 These few crumbs changed her world for her, per- 
 haps for ever, gave her mind solid ground and 
 living power, instead of leaving her suffocated under 
 a heap of words. Those few crumbs in an able 
 man's hand lived and imparted life. Never lose 
 sight of the crumbs and their marvellous power. 
 What could we, unhappy that we are, have done 
 with our unhappy classes under like circumstances ? 
 Oh, the deadly paralysis of words, words, words ! 
 Often not understood singly, and, if understood 
 singly, utterly bewildering when whirled round in 
 the boiler of an elaborate, self-satisfied explanation. 
 Oh, the curse of words and memory ! 
 
 Then again, let us apply another bit of famihar 
 knowledge. 
 
 At the battle of W5rth, at the beginning of the 
 Franco-German War, 17,000 men were killed. 
 
 Why don't you burst into tears at this vast pre- 
 sence of desolation, agony, death, pain, ruin? 
 Simply because it is not present. The figures are 
 present. They are an arithmetical fact, all pat for 
 an examination paper. But we don't weep for an 
 examination paper, unless indeed we have to answer 
 it. These many thousand deaths move you not. 
 But I, for my part, agree with the old general, who 
 is said to have locked himself in his room every 
 Sunday to read Mrs. E wing's story of ** Jackanapes " 
 
154 An Address to the 
 
 unseen. I could not trust myself to read it in 
 public, or her ** Story of a Short Life," and her 
 *' Six to Sixteen," with the death of the old French 
 noble. Yet these are fictions, and only three, set 
 against those many thousands of real sufferers. 
 But the fiction is real, because it is thought in 
 shape ; the reality is unreal, because it is fact in 
 cipher, no nearer the heart than any other bit of 
 arithmetic. I have purposely taken these three 
 simple narratives because they are the most trans- 
 parent that I know, the most free from artificial 
 excitement, the most direct appeal of heart to heart, 
 exquisite in their simplicity, pure spirit, mind 
 touching mind by the passage of light, clear and 
 untainted by extraneous mixture ; in fact, the most 
 perfect specimens of thought in shape. Thus the 
 unreal becomes real when it is thought in shape, 
 and the real unreal, when ciphers are put in its 
 place. 
 
 But figures and arithmetic are not the only 
 ciphers. Every word not vividly understood is a 
 cipher. We will leave common words at present, and 
 take abstract words. The fondness of the youthful 
 and the uneducated for general terms cannot have 
 escaped the notice of an experienced teacher. The 
 general terms are so convenient ; like Charity, they 
 cover a multitude of sins. Well, take the axiom, 
 *' Law kills love." I dare say you think the illus- 
 tration so perfect that it conveys no meaning at all. 
 Let us translate it into shape. A good home may 
 
Teachers' Guild, 155 
 
 stand for love. The children in a good home are 
 young natures undergoing training through love. 
 And accordingly theft, gluttony, and violence, ill- 
 temper, and all the evil passions either do not 
 appear, overborne by the higher life and its pure 
 atmosphere, or if they appear, are dealt with in a 
 loving spirit. But let us suppose that the first 
 moment a child appropriates an apple, or breaks a 
 window, the police are called in, and the small 
 offender taken before the magistrate. There would 
 be an end to love. And you get at once the axiom 
 ** that law kills love," as soon as thinking in shape 
 is practised, stamped upon the mind in clear 
 characters ; an axiom, which after all is only a con- 
 densed statement of most of St. Paul's Epistles; 
 even as the Gospel is the other side of the same 
 truth, namely, that love establishes a kingdom 
 higher than law, and above it, though it is not diffi- 
 cult to fall down out of the kingdom of love and 
 the family life into the realm of law, and make 
 police-courts the choice instead of a father's love. 
 
 In this way, by thinking in shape, ciphers and 
 memory drop into their proper place, and reality 
 begins. 
 
 Most people, however, hve in a world of ciphers. 
 The hard facts are ciphers, the words are ciphers ; 
 nothing lives. The men and women are wooden 
 figures, animated automatons, ciphers, too ; and 
 the successful master of innumerable cipher facts 
 becomes a ruler, and sways senates, and deals with 
 
156 An Address to the 
 
 delicate life as with wood. And the people — well, 
 the less said about them, when they worship the 
 great cipherers, the better. They have never been| 
 taught to think in shape, at all events. 
 
 But the commonest words are still worse off. 
 What everybody knows nobody thinks about, So 
 different is knowledge from thought. In nine cases 
 out of ten, knowledge means the shut mind. The 
 knower has got his x and y pat. They transact his 
 daily work and his talk. He has collected a box- 
 ful, he shuts down the lid, locks it, and is satisfied. 
 But what does he really know ? We will concede 
 him at once a certain amount of bread-and-butter 
 power ; x and y do this pretty well. He can set 
 up house ; we have furnished him, perhaps, with 
 respectable pots and a little fuel, and he is a 
 reasonably good pot-boiler. As Wordsworth's old 
 cook told us, when asked by one of our ladies to 
 admire a splendid sunset — one of those glorious 
 glimpses of heaven's great picture gallery which we 
 sometimes get : " Lor, ma'am I I am a decent cook, 
 and tidyish lodging-house keeper ; but I don't hold 
 with none of them sort of things." Yes, we make, 
 perhaps, decent cooks, and tidyish lodging-house 
 keepers — though I have heard this contradicted — 
 but mind and sunset are nowhere. ** We don't 
 hold with them sort of things.'* Just look at the 
 small amount of literature and the slight bowing 
 acquaintance with words which our average samples 
 of humanity have, and which yet they imagine they 
 
Teachers' Chiild. 157 
 
 know. No one ever yet heard an argument going 
 on in an ordinary company anywhere — palace or 
 pothouse — I beheve, without becoming aware in 
 the first five minutes that the speakers are using 
 the same words in entirely different senses, fre- 
 quently changing the senses backwards and for- 
 wards, as convenient — not from dishonesty; they 
 have no intention of cheating or conjuring. We 
 have mentioned abstract terms already ; but take 
 the word ** liberty." One combatant means by it 
 the liberty of the individual to grow as he pleases ; 
 the other, the liberty of the majority to make him 
 grow as they please : and neither are aware of this* 
 All this arises from their never having learnt to 
 think in shape. Logic can teach the right use of 
 word-ciphers, but thinking in shape alone teaches 
 the right use of words. Indeed, the most learned 
 men are often the greatest sinners in this ; marvel- 
 lously ready with accurate ciphers and cold facts, 
 which serve to disguise utter non-thought and con- 
 fusion underneath, just as a smooth sheet of ice coats 
 over the muddy depths and weeds below in a pond. 
 This is the case with the symbols they have and 
 use. But very often there are no symbols to speak 
 of ; a practical vacuum. A question is asked. The 
 unhappy victim tries to remember, as he calls it. 
 But there is no memory; it is simply vacuum. 
 Now, it is not possible to pull anything out of 
 nothing. Cheques drawn on the Bank of Empti- 
 ness are empty. Nevertheless, tliree-fourths of 
 
158 An Address to the 
 
 work, so called, are frantic attempts to draw 
 cheques on vacuum. The beginning of this is the 
 effort to pour into a reluctant mind some unintelli- 
 gible bit of cipher knowledge, and to cork it down 
 by punishment. It disagrees ; it ferments ; the 
 cork flies out ; the noxious stuff is spilt ; whilst the 
 taskmaster believes it is all right because of the 
 trouble he took to get it in. But it isn't there for 
 all that. Vacuum is vacuum. There is no memory, 
 and where there is no memory to begin with, 
 there is no memory at the end. But very often, 
 though there is no memory, the answer is all there 
 if the poor boy had been taught to use his mind, 
 think in shape, frame an example, look at, and then 
 make answers from what he sees. One lesson on 
 a chair even would go far towards setting the mind 
 on the right method. First the ludicrous failures 
 to define a chair, show how far the names, that are 
 true of things supposed to be known, fail to convey 
 the truths that make the names. Then the draw- 
 ing out from the learner a simple, clear description 
 of the chair which is actually before his eyes, and 
 making him really see what he sees ; then the 
 reason for each part, the thought which has taken 
 shape in it ; then what would happen if this or that 
 part were left out ; then, if possible, make him 
 draw the chair ; then let him see that the chair is 
 a story told in wood ; then lead him back to the 
 first makers of chairs, and the sort of life that is 
 implied in a chair, and so on ; then with a firm, 
 
Teachers' Guild, 159 
 
 strong hand drive home the fact that all this is a 
 history of thought gradually passing from shape to 
 shape as experience led it on ; then finish with the 
 great truth that every shape is such a history, 
 everything we see a living narrative, telling of 
 movements of life to any mind that lives, a story- 
 book capable of unfolding centuries of thought, 
 which he who thinks can interpret; then go on, 
 show him that the whole world is one great illumi- 
 nated volume of thought, speaking through shape, 
 where the illuminations are beautiful and wonder- 
 ful, but the power of reading what is written more 
 glorious still. 
 
 A common chair will tell you all this, if you can 
 read chairs, and translate shape into thought, and 
 thought into words. And this, again, gives practice 
 for translating words into thought and thought into 
 shape, until the learner learns to think in shape. 
 Every shape is life-speaking. Hence it follows that 
 shape can be false or true, honourable or dishonour- 
 able. A sign-post can be a liar, a building a hypo- 
 crite, a room can give honour or dishonour, can 
 glorify or insult. Nay, more, life and death can 
 depend on a room. Christianity itself cannot lodge 
 large families in one room in a civilised country 
 and remain Christian. The Christianity either 
 breaks up the one room into many or the one room 
 breaks up the Christianity. If a stronger power 
 fixes the one room as permanent, good-bye to the 
 Christianity. 
 
ICO An Address to thd 
 
 If, again, a Stronger poWer kept a princess in £b 
 hovel, and dressed her in rags, such treatment 
 shows contempt for the princess, and she would be 
 treated aS a slave by the inferiors, who in this 
 would imitate their superiors. The hovel gives 
 answer, every room gives answer when called on^ 
 and tells the value set on the life that lives in it. 
 
 Answer, then, ye rooms ; answer, class-rooms, 
 from end to end of England, What is thought ol 
 lessons ; of lessons, the noblest of all work in the 
 world ; of lessons, the sowers of light ; of lessons> 
 the princess supreme over the children's life, the 
 true dispensers of nobility, the royal givers of rank, 
 the creators of the coming generations, the sove- 
 reign powers of the worlds which demand unfalter* 
 ing allegiance, and unquestioning loyalty; which 
 call for honour, courage, endurance, skill of brain 
 and hand ; which demand self-denial, purity, health, 
 activity of body and mind ; queens, which reject 
 with scorn the lazy, the cowards, the self-indulgent, 
 the mean ? Answer, class-rooms, how we treat our 
 queens. Answer, dirt and shabbiness ; fittings 
 hacked and mutilated, tattooed with knives, all 
 daubed with their war-paint of ink, like an Indian 
 savage making ready for the humanising refine- 
 ments of scalping, or being scalped. Answer, walls, 
 bare, unsightly, and grimy ; or, if not bare, grimly 
 austere with maps, and blackboards, sanctimoni* 
 ously arrayed with prim pretences of improvement, 
 tidily repulsive, like an ill-dressed woman. Is not 
 
TeacJiers' Chiild, 161 
 
 the answer in a free translation r " Out on ye ! out 
 on ye, lessons, necessary animals, but mean, kept 
 for your bacon, nob for your own sakes " ? And 
 does not the scbool-boy answer, too? It is hard 
 to escape something of the pig if lodged in a sty. 
 The school-boy has not escaped, and never will, till 
 ** Honour to Lessons*' is the first article in the 
 nation's secular creed. Everything that meets the 
 eye ought to be as perfect, according to the work 
 and workers, as human skill can make it. Give 
 honour, you will receive honour. I know that boys 
 respond with honour when they and their life-work 
 are honoured. I could speak with authority if it 
 was fitting for me to do so. Honour to lessons is 
 the first article in the Teacher's creed. 
 
 There are three ways of promoting honour to 
 lessons. 
 
 First comes the room in which they are given, 
 and all its furniture. The room itself should be 
 decorated. The walls should have honour written 
 on them in honourable characters. All the furni- 
 ture should be as solid and handsome as suits the 
 rank of the workers. And every room should 
 declare at a glance its value, and the value of the 
 work done in it. 
 
 Secondly, there should be pictures on the walls, 
 real pictures, able to raise the mind of all who see 
 them by their merit as pictures, as well as instruc- 
 tive from their knowledge power. 
 
 Thirdly, the books should be as full as possible 
 
162 An Address to the 
 
 of good engravings of the countries, landscapes, 
 and cities mentioned, and, not the least, with good 
 portraits of eminent men. 
 
 Nothing not good is wanted. 
 
 Allow me to say a few words on these three 
 heads. I have ventured to bring up several 
 examples of wall decoration. These first are the 
 decorations of the old schoolroom at Uppingham, 
 which is now used as an art school, and art 
 museum. A dado about 6 J ft. high runs along the 
 wall, with panelled squares along the top; then 
 there is a coloured space of about 3Jft. of wall; 
 then a fresco line of 3 ft. under the cornice beams. . 
 Mr. Charles lEossiter is filling every one of these 
 squares in the dado, in number seventy, with good 
 portrait heads of the great artists from the earliest 
 times. The space next above is hung with 
 engravings and chromo-lithographs of some of the 
 most famous works ; and along the line under the 
 cornice runs what I must call a fresco series of 
 scenes from the history of artist life. There are 
 two of them : the first, Phidias showing Pericles 
 his Athene, and Ictinus, the plan of the Parthenon, 
 with Aspasia, Sophocles, Anaxagoras, and Socrates 
 introduced ; the second, Apelles and his critics, and 
 the cobbler. 
 
 There, again, is the plan of the great schoolroom. 
 The dado is stone, and low, and does not admit of 
 decoration. The space between the dado and the 
 fresco hue is coloured Pompeian red, and filled with 
 
Teachers'' Chcild, 163 
 
 splendid autotypes of ancient sculpture and works 
 of art, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek. The fresco 
 line is ornamented, with arabesque, and at short 
 intervals medallions, with sitting figures of thfe 
 famous men in literature of all times, are placed, 
 beginning with King David and St. John, and going 
 through a selection of the great Greeks and 
 Eomans, then taking the modern, beginning with 
 King Alfred and Dante, and ending with Words- 
 worth. The windows have a border of painted 
 glass, words of our Lord on human life from the 
 Gospels, and arms of various houses and donors. 
 i There is also a great historical window at the 
 north end, representing in eight pictures the 
 foundation of the school three hundred years ago, 
 and its practical refoundation in this generation. 
 At the south end there is a memorial window to 
 commemorate the school having been the first to 
 send out a school mission, at the suggestion of the 
 Eev. John Foy, in April, 1869, to North Woolwich. 
 
 There are also plans for the decoration of other 
 schools which Mr. Eossiter has designed for me. 
 This is one, which is being carried out in the High 
 School for Girls in Upper Baker-street, xmder 
 Miss MacEae. 
 
 I would especially draw your attention to these 
 illustrations of JEsop's Fables in double medallions, 
 one above and one below ; with the line of drawings 
 under of the flowers, fruits, birds, insects, of the 
 country. The principle is capable of such wide 
 
164 An Address to the 
 
 application. How many story-books might appear 
 on our walls ! 
 
 You will doubtless object that all this is very 
 costly. I have kept that till now. Some of it is, 
 but much is not. Much is, I doubt not, within the 
 reach of almost every school in England. 
 
 You see those frames of frescoes of artist life. 
 They are oil-paintings fastened to the wall by 
 their frames. The medallions in the great school- 
 room are oil-paintings cemented to the wails ; 
 others are water-colours mounted on linen, or 
 canvas, and either framed or cemented to the 
 walls. 
 
 This is a case of Columbus's egg ; this little fact 
 turns in a moment every painter in England into a 
 wall-painter without ever having to go near a wall. 
 They can sit in their drawing-rooms, boudoirs, 
 studios, and do it all. There are few neighbour- 
 hoods where there are not artists able and willing 
 to paint flowers, fruits, birds, butterflies, effectively. 
 How many a lady in the parsonage or hall would 
 gladly ornament the village schoolroom when the 
 work can be done at home. I believe this simple fact 
 of framing, or cementing, the knowledge of which I 
 owe to Mr. Eossiter, to be of world-wide import- 
 ance. I believe it has opened a new era in 
 education. I look forward in spirit to the time 
 when every village school in the land shall have its 
 decorations, the work of the many earnest, loving 
 hearts and hands of the educated, who have been 
 
Teachers* Guild, 165 
 
 eager to help, but not known how to do it. There- 
 fore I have been at some pains to-night to make 
 you think in shape (forgive me this httle hit) by 
 bringing before your eyes some examples of the 
 coming revolution in walls, and the sober excesses 
 which our poverty-stricken neighbours, the school- 
 rooms, are prepared to break out into. 
 
 The second point is, the pictures on the walls. 
 I think a great mistake has been made, when 
 anything has been done, in dealing rather with 
 works of art, and figures, than landscapes. I 
 think photography has not seen its great educa- 
 tional vocation, or been called on by us to see it. 
 Where there are many class-rooms, every room 
 should have its speciality. One should be the 
 English room, and be hung with pictures of the 
 most beautiful or famous landscapes, rivers, moun- 
 tains of Britain. There should be a Colonial room, 
 an Indian room, a Bird room, a Flower room ; then 
 another should have the great Cathedrals ; another 
 Greek landscapes — Marathon, Athens, Delphi; 
 another the Italian. The class should be able to 
 see Trasymene, for instance, with its lake, and the 
 great plain, lying all flat and open to the eye for 
 many a mile, skirted on the left by those fatal 
 hills. They might be made to march down with 
 the Eoman army the day before through ravaged 
 lands, and ruined homesteads, laid waste by their 
 great enemy. Then they would encamp for the 
 night not far from the hills sloping gently down to 
 
166 An Address to the 
 
 the green space between them and the water. 
 There the Consul and his gallant troops entrenched 
 themselves the night before the battle, full of fury, 
 and hate, and revenge; and as they worked they 
 would see in the evening light the gleam of the 
 innocent -looking lake, and the great plain, as yet 
 untouched by war, stretching away, mile after mile 
 of fertile land, and wealth of corn and cattle, flat, 
 and rich, the very picture of plenty and peace. 
 There they passed the night, Flaminius with a 
 haughty trust that he was the saviour of his 
 country ; his army maddened at the sight of 
 plundered homes, and the shame of their slaugh- 
 tered countrymen. 
 
 They should be made to see the camp break up 
 on that April morning as early dawn grew grey, 
 and those brave, confident men began their exultant 
 march. On they tramped, the legions in their 
 pride : a fog lay thick on the broad plain and the 
 flat lake ; but the dew was on the grass, and the 
 brisk morning breathing in their faces, and keen 
 delight in their strength, and life, and the rising 
 sun fresh in their hearts ; and before long they 
 reached the fair green meadows between the lake 
 and the hills by the side of the still waters gleam- 
 ing, and the van had passed the narrow point at 
 the end, and crowded all the pass beyond, when, 
 hark ! — suddenly — the still air rang, shattered by 
 the blast of an African trumpet ; trumpet after 
 trumpet sounded, the sun came out, the mist rose ; 
 
Teachers' Guild. 167* 
 
 and all around them, like a great wild beast, was 
 Hannibal, and his army, in act to spring. Then 
 eame the thunder of rushing squadrons, the tramp- 
 ling of the horse-hoofs, the headlong charge, and 
 a great black wave of death swept in fierce onset 
 down the slopes, and the wild horsemen of the 
 desert leapt upon their prey. Soon, too, the gigantic 
 Gauls whirled overhead their huge two-handed 
 swords, and dashed upon the foe. In vain those hardy 
 soldiers turned to bay ; borne down by weight, and 
 rush and multitude, perforce they are pushed back 
 into a dense struggling mass of unavailing valour 
 and sullen despair. In vain the stubborn Eoman 
 stabbed and died. In vain for three long hours 
 they fought with little room for fighting. Javelin 
 and sword made ghastly space, and slowly thinned 
 their ranks for easier slaughter, as the fierce slayers 
 forced their way by slaying into the dense mass of 
 helpless, huddled human flesh, and pushed the 
 survivors into the lake to die there. Long before 
 evening the hills rose calm and quiet again, and 
 night came down on the great plain peaceful as 
 before, save only for those silent witnesses, some 
 15,000 mangled shapes lying stark and stiff between 
 the hills and the lake, and the spoilers busy at 
 their horrible market of death. 
 
 In this way each Teacher, as he knows how, 
 would turn from time to time the pictures to 
 account; and breathe the breath of life over the 
 wall. 
 
168 An Address to the 
 
 This well done, even once, would teach something 
 of shapes, big with thought, and of thinking in 
 shape, and give a new eye for looking on the 
 world. 
 
 I need not go on to say that there would be a 
 German room, and above all, perhaps, a Portrait 
 room, for good portraits are very powerful; and 
 that each country as far as possible should be repre- 
 sented according to its importance, and the funds 
 and space available. Lastly, Palestine ought to be 
 fully placed before the eyes. The Maps ought to 
 have a room to themselves, and great care be taken 
 to make them as attractive as possible, by their 
 beauty as maps, by their skilful arrangement, and 
 respectful use. In this way no boy could even walk 
 through the Class-rooms of a large school without 
 being forced to notice how full the world must be 
 of things worth seeing, and how worthy are the 
 books that tell of them. Even without a teacher 
 how much the walls can be made to print on the 
 dullest mind ! and with a teacher, what thinking in 
 shape there can be ! what a breathing of life into 
 countries, and cities, river, forest, and glen ! What 
 a suggestion of unexplored regions of delight ! what 
 a whispering of liberty to roam, and adventurous 
 holidays ! what a certainty of activity of thought ! 
 Verily, the walls are very living, if in this way made 
 to live. Many a poor hammerer-in of lessons might 
 profitably wish himself a wall. 
 
 After what has been stated very little need bo 
 
Teachers' Guild. 169 
 
 said about the Books, all important as they are, for 
 the same principles and treatment in the main apply 
 to them. I would repeat, that really good land- 
 scapes, views of cities, very seldom single buildings 
 by themselves, and portraits, are wanted, with 
 first-rate attractive-looking plans. I lay great stress 
 on beauty and attractiveness. Without beauty an 
 illustration is degrading to the thing it professes to 
 illustrate. I have brought up a little book of plans, 
 schoolwork from America, done as Classwork by 
 pupils between the ages of 16 and 18 in Minnesota, 
 which has been sent me from their normal school. 
 I think it illustrates what we want to get, and what 
 a school can do in a practical way. They appear 
 to me a thorough example, as far as they go, of 
 thought put into shape in an attractive way. 
 
 These are a few of the principal ideas which 
 appear to belong to thinking in shape, and the Pic- 
 torial mind, as a matter of practical teaching to be 
 daily, hourly, always, put in practice. 
 
 Few, I believe, are aware of the progress which 
 has been made in Pictorial Mind since the Parables 
 were spoken. 
 
 Thinking in shape and Pictorial Teaching at once 
 turn all created things into new language for 
 thought. Every created thing becomes on the spot 
 a possible new bit of thought, a possible new word 
 born into the world of speech. I throw out as a 
 suggestion for any master of language, as distinct 
 from a doctorer of words, to examine into the 
 
170 An Address to the 
 
 curious fact, that in the last eighty years the 
 English language has in this way doubled itself, by 
 flashing new light into old words, by new combina- 
 tions of words, by freer use of allusions and meta- 
 phors, and by pictorial handling of its material ; and 
 that it is practically a new language in its wonder- 
 ful increase in power of expression, and the breath- 
 ing of new Hfe into its shape. 
 
 For Expression goes on for ever as higher life 
 produces high manifestation of life, feelings, and 
 thought, in human face and form, and again be- 
 comes able by being higher, more sensitive, more 
 sympathising, not only to see and interpret the new 
 shapes, but to find endless riches of unknown stores 
 of precious discoveries in the old. This is the only 
 true path of progress. 
 
 And this we owe to the Parables. The Parables 
 came into a heathen intellect world, which called 
 the earth ''insensate" or ** the giver of food," and 
 saw nothing but discomfort, or the comfortable, in 
 what it did see. 
 
 The Parables came into this dead world as an 
 entirely new revelation that all created things were 
 thoughts clothed in shape, created for the express 
 purpose of exciting and communicating thought; 
 that they were language, the language of God to 
 man, an open book for man to use, pictorial teach- 
 ing. The earth and all creation become in this way 
 known to be full of secret life. The outside remains 
 the same in its main features, but, like an expres- 
 
Teachers' Guild. 171 
 
 sive face, it can all be lighted up from within as 
 soon as the living life moves ; and then the linear 
 outlines, which are all in all to the semi-heathen 
 eye and mind, practically disappear, transfigured 
 and glorified by new powers of life from the inner 
 life movement. Thus Expression and Pictorial 
 Mind have no end, but go on for ever, whilst out- 
 line and linear grace is finite, and bounded. This 
 is the only real progress that is possible in art, 
 whether by art we mean literary art, or pictures, or 
 any other of the languages that appeal to eye or ear. 
 Art can be more expressive. Expression by laws of 
 nature more and more renews itself in more excel- 
 lent beauty, in which the actual outward shape is ever 
 more and more merged. The inner nobihty passing 
 into a visible glory in which the bare shape is lost ; 
 even as the Apostle saw his Lord, with a counte- 
 nance as of the sun shining in its strength, bo 
 radiant that no fixed outline was seen ; and with 
 feet that bm^ned like fine brass in the furnace : a 
 wonderful appearance, that is, of form without out- 
 line. 
 
 This is the goal. Expression, brought out by 
 inward life to an extent that makes outline vanish 
 in an effluence of mind and feeling which absorbs 
 all other sight. This it is the special province of 
 Pictorial Mind to see, and read, and interpret. 
 Time forbids my dwelling on this, however little ; 
 but this vista of infinite eternal progress is opened 
 up by thinking in shape, and Pictorial Teaching, 
 
172 An Address to the 
 
 and creating the Pictorial Mind, as new expressive- 
 ness comes into sight, and demands increasingly 
 new power to show it. 
 
 The Pictorial Mind first pictures to itself all its 
 own ideas and thinks in shape, and secondly is ever 
 extracting ideas new and old out of the things it 
 sees, picturing to itself all the words it uses, trans- 
 lating and retranslating thought into shape and 
 shape into thought till all things live and move for 
 it in a universe that is living thought incarnate. 
 The lesson book is always before it. In city or 
 desert, church or hovel, street or field, with flower, 
 or tree, or cloud, or sun, or animal, or bird, or 
 insect, from end to end of all things, there is tha 
 everlasting voice crying, *' He that hath ears to hear, 
 let him hear ; he that hath eyes to see, let him see ; 
 for life infinite, language universal, lies at your feet 
 for pleasure and use always." The Pictorial Mind 
 is the only power man has that is capable of infinite 
 progress. It is the only power that belongs to all 
 men. It is the only power that is within reach of 
 the poor. It can be taught. It can almost be 
 created. 
 
 As the world goes on and knowledge increases, ifc 
 will be more and more impossible to know it all, a 
 thing which was once quite within reach. Every 
 man, however learned, will be narrowed by degrees 
 down to a single subject. But subjects are many. 
 There are a thousand languages, for instance ; to 
 know how to speak even half a dozen really well is 
 
Teachers' Guild. 173 
 
 an achievement ; and so on, through the whole range 
 of knowledge. How can any one man cope with 
 this accumulation of facts ? Boasts of knowledge 
 therefore belong to the nursery level, betokening 
 stupendous ignorance of man's capacity for knowing 
 and of what there is to know. Let us get out of the 
 nursery and betake ourselves to true progress, and 
 men as they are. 
 
 Knowledge with its broken victuals, and its half- 
 starved paupers snatching at the scraps, has lorded 
 it long enough at the gate of its monastery. It is 
 high time to turn to better things, to liberty, to the 
 free use of active powers. Pictorial Teaching is the 
 great agent to advance this. If it once gets fairly 
 out of prison, and touches the world, all will be 
 changed. And there are signs of better things. 
 There are upheavings of discontent, the sea of living 
 lire within is in motion. There are everywhere 
 groanings of bondage felt, of loathing, and scorn, for 
 the dead hand, the really dead hand, the dead, dry, 
 hard hand of power from without set on the heart 
 of teaching, and stopping its free pulsations. There 
 is a rattling beginning to be heard amongst the 
 skeletons, and bones, and specimens, and the stuffed 
 figures, and ticketed vocabularies, and verbs with 
 pins through them all ready to be stuck down, and 
 all the Noah's ark assortment of the examination, 
 inspection, scissordom repository of the manufac- 
 tured world of scissordom. There is too an English- 
 speaking world besides England, to which we appeal 
 
174 An Address to the 
 
 not entirely in vain. Moreover, true ideas, like 
 music, know no country, are exempt from the curse 
 of Babel, and pass from heart to heart. Yes, there 
 is a shaking in the valley of dry bones. It may yet 
 be, as in the vision of Ezekiel, " There is a noise, 
 and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, 
 bone to his bone. And, when I beheld, lo 1 the 
 sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the 
 skin covered them above. And He said unto me. 
 Prophesy unto the wind, and say to the wind. Come 
 from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 
 these slain, that they may live ; and I prophesied, 
 as He commanded me, and the breath came into 
 them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an 
 exceeding great army.'* There is a noise and a 
 shaking, and a hope, with us too. May not we too 
 prophesy to the four quarters of heaven where the 
 English-speaking race over all the world is found, 
 and call upon the breath .of life to come and breathe 
 life into the dry bones of our manufactured world, 
 and put an end to the dead hand. There is life 
 stirring. No true life ever dies. Kill it here, it 
 re-appears there, and, in spite of all killing, lives. 
 There is life in thinking in shape, and in the 
 Pictorial Mind. And Hfe is universal. All men have 
 life. All men can have life trained, and raised, and 
 taught. 
 
 The true definition of a teacher is : *' One who 
 sows seeds of life and fosters them.'* 
 
 Let us bury the bones that cannot live. 
 
Teachers* Guild, 175 
 
 But thinking in shape, and the Pictorial Mind are 
 life powers. They can bring light to the dustiest, 
 darkest corner of memories which are strewn with 
 the dust, and broken chips of knowledge. There 
 will be a veritable resurrection when thinking in 
 shape is taught. 
 
 We stand on the threshold of an almost un- 
 travelled world in beginning this work. We are 
 bound on a voyage of discovery, a band of pioneers, 
 yet certain of our promised land. Let the be-all 
 and end-all of teaching be for us the thinking in 
 shape, and the Pictorial Mind. Let our watchword 
 be, ** Liberty to teach/' 
 
AN ADDEESS TO THE CONFERENCE 01 
 
 HEAD MISTEESSES, HELD AT 
 
 UPPINGHAM SCHOOL, JUNE 10, 1887. 
 
 » 
 
AN ADDEESS TO HEAD MISTRESSES, 
 UPPINGHAM SCHOOL, JUNE 10, 1887. 
 
 Eighteen years ago, on December 21, 1869, the 
 first School Conference, I beheve, that was held in 
 England was held in this schoolroom, in which we 
 are now met together. Most certainly, the first 
 Conference of the Higher Schools for boys began its 
 existence on that day in this room. It was called 
 together after much searching of heart from a deep 
 conviction that all the skill of the skilled workmen 
 of English schools was truly lying, like the seed in 
 the parable, scattered by the wayside for the birds 
 of the air to peck at and devour, and for amateur 
 authority to trample under foot. All lay helpless ; 
 there was no defence, no union, no central life that 
 could speak and move. Any risk was better than 
 this. So with many misgivings, with a very 
 resolute and yet very cowardly heart, that meeting 
 was called together. Between sixty and seventy 
 invitations were sent out, and twelve finally came. 
 
 The excuses were various, and a curious study. 
 
 How often in my working life have I been 
 reminded of Ovid's line ; ** Spectatum veniunt, 
 
180 An Address to Sead Mistresses 
 
 veniunt spectentur ut ipsss." For how are tlie 
 judges judged, especially when inspecting their 
 inferiors, as they think, and dealing out self- 
 satisfied superiority with complacent skill. "Well, 
 twelve came. And we can glory at this hour that 
 only twelve came ; so big a tree has now grown out 
 of it, and so many branches on every side. I hold 
 it to be a most happy omen that this same room 
 should have the honour of being the first school- 
 room of our public schools for boys to w^elcome 
 you and your Conference to-day. A most happy 
 omen, when I look back and consider what a little 
 seed was sown in December, 1869, and then reflect 
 how different in power and place, how important 
 your assembly is as compared with our weak little 
 life-germ ; and I may add, in the highest sense truer 
 and better than anything we masters could set on 
 foot. Both because the rough, instrumental work 
 of the world is done by men, whilst the fine and 
 delicate life-power, with its influence on life, is done 
 by the women ; and also because you are fresh, and 
 enthusiastic, and comparatively untrammeled, whilst 
 we are weighed down by tradition, cast, like iron^ 
 in the rigid moulds of the past, with still heavier 
 chains of modem improvement imposed by present 
 law on our life. 
 
 The hope of teaching lies in you. Yours is the 
 power. 
 
 It will be well to examine into the nature of 
 power, and see if we can learn how far instrumental 
 
at Ujp^ingham School, 181 
 
 force, because every fool can see it, usurps the 
 name. 
 
 True power clearly is that essence which at last 
 sets in motion all other things, however long the 
 chain of movement may be before you come 
 to it. 
 
 Let a steam-engine symbolise force; then the 
 hand which sets the engine in motion is greater 
 than the engine, in spite of the engine being so 
 much stronger ; and the intellect that sets the 
 hand in motion is greater than the hand, in spite of 
 the hand being seen to work more ; and the choice 
 of good or evil, which sets the intellect on to order 
 the hand to set the engine at work, is greater than 
 intellect, hand, or engine, which are all its instru- 
 ments, servants, to do its pleasure. 
 
 This truth can be made plain from another side. 
 It is self-evident that nothing which can be taken 
 away from the possessor is the possessor himself. 
 But the steam-engine can be taken away, and the 
 hand remains; the hand can be cut off, and the 
 intellect remains ; the intellect can be marred, by 
 fever, for instance, and daily fluctuates with health 
 and digestion, but whether it is damaged or not, 
 active or inert, the choice power remains intact. 
 The love which decides remains : this is the ulti- 
 mate moving power; this cannot be changed or 
 taken away without destruction of the being. The 
 unprofitable servant in the parable lost his talent, 
 the good had others given, but both the evil and 
 
182 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 the good remained themselves, whatever instru- 
 mental powers were given, or taken away. 
 
 That power, then, is truest which is least de- 
 pendent on instrumental force, and yet can set 
 instrumental force in motion best. 
 
 There is no question to a thoughtful mind that 
 men are most endowed with instrumental force, and 
 that women most set instrumental force in motion. 
 Of what paramount importance it is then that they 
 should do it in a sober, wise, queenly way, under- 
 standing their great mission, neither afraid, nor 
 betraying their sovereignty by mean blandishments, 
 nor trifling with it, but with a calm, grand confi- 
 dence that it rests with them, when they are trained 
 to know it, and do it, to create a new ideal of 
 manly excellence, and perfect, gentle, pure, un- 
 selfish magnanimity in the world, which shall put 
 force in its proper place as a servant of servants, 
 and enthrone the life that moves all things in a 
 tender supremacy of unquestioned right. 
 
 Men have tried their hand long enough as the 
 sole teachers; their idolatry of brain-force and 
 glorification of memory-stores have made but poor 
 work of it. The human being has been left out. 
 The human being must be brought in. I feel a 
 special diffidence as well as a special pride in being 
 allowed by you to-day to address the leaders of 
 England who are making a new start in the history 
 of the world, and have 3et a movement on foot to 
 introduce a fresh and higher power into national 
 
at U;p;pingJiam School. 183 
 
 life, and purify the ways of mankind. Men at all 
 events have tried long enough, and stuck deep 
 enough in the ruts. The human being has been 
 left out. The human being must be brought in. 
 Somehow he persists in existing in spite of know- 
 ledge-shops. There has been a dreary sameness in 
 the perpetual circle of every man and nation elbow- 
 ing its neighbour out of the way, which we glorify 
 under the name of competition : which, however, 
 has been aptly exemplijBied in the old heathen down- 
 right times, when vice was bold, and spades were 
 spades, by ** the priest that slew the slayer, and 
 shall himself be slain.*' We want something new; 
 life, not human museums. And we have it. For 
 are not we ourselves to-day a sort of parable, and a 
 prophecy ? Very few years ago how utterly wild 
 the idea would have appeared of this distinguished 
 company of lady teachers meeting in the great 
 schoolroom of this public school during term time. 
 What a bit of pictorial teaching this is! How 
 plainly it puts before our eyes the change that has 
 already taken place. It speaks of a new present ; 
 it prophesies a still greater coming age ; you cannot 
 help seeing how welcome you are ; how you honour 
 us by being here, and how we dehght to do you 
 honour. I would not strike a discordant note by 
 hinting what would have been the case twenty 
 years ago. Nay, it is no discord. It is the under- 
 tone needed to bring out the great contrast, to swell 
 to its rightful fulness the harmony that now is, to 
 
184 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 lead up to the union that is yet to be between the 
 education of men and the education of women ; a 
 true union of two different, but harmonious powers 
 working for the same end, with clear views what 
 that end is, and of the harmonious differences that 
 must combine to produce it. That end is the 
 putting life-power and character above knowledge, 
 heart above head, and making the life-training do 
 this. 
 
 Let me lay down some plain propositions. 
 
 The first has already been stated, namely, that 
 the instrument is inferior to that which moves it. 
 The steam-engine is inferior to the hand, and the 
 hand-strength inferior to the head- strength, and the 
 head- strength inferior to the love, whether good or 
 evil, that sets it all going. Instrumental power 
 broken loose may be symbolised by the drunken 
 navvy beating the woman he loves. 
 
 Secondly, if spiritual influence is the primary 
 power which sets movement going, the sovereign 
 power of woman in the world is manifest. 
 
 Thirdly, women train the childhood of the world 
 always. 
 
 Lastly, as the world advances, every nation in 
 proportion to its advancement gives increased 
 honour to women. 
 
 Now these are facts. And facts sooner or later 
 have to be faced. 
 
 The eternal facts, I mean, have to be faced, that 
 underhe, and ultimately determine all practice. 
 
at UjppingJiam School, 185 
 
 however much for a time practice may upset, ignore, 
 or act against them, and make its own facts, and 
 appeal to them triumphantly as conclusive. 
 
 How small a space a generation occupies in the 
 great onward sweep of time ; say, a space of a foot 
 measure in a river. How many eddies there are in 
 a great river, that just swing backward their two or 
 three feet or so, and seem to be fixed, the same 
 backward swirl in the same place ; but all the time 
 the water flows on unheeding the permanent eddy, 
 and its puny facts. If we were drops of water 
 caught in such an eddy how hopeless the case 
 might seem ! how irresistible the logic of its facts ! 
 How many backwaters there are that do actually 
 flow back ; a nation, as it were, choosing to rebel 
 against good ; but nevertheless the river sweeps it 
 all on in time, its facts and all. Yet, how hopeless 
 it would seem to be a drop in a backwater, know- 
 ing what was right, but borne along in the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 The onward sweep of the river is an eternal fact. 
 The eddy and the backwater are facts of practice. 
 There is no delusion like a temporary fact. The 
 logic of an eddy has everything on its side except- 
 ing the knowledge of rivers. And the eddy is 
 close, the world-plan far off; and the eddy facts 
 are triumphantly appealed to as the '* spirit of the 
 times," ** the irresistible evidence of public 
 opinion," and this or that name, which will at 
 once occur to you, that implies that every one who 
 
186 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 does not swing with the eddy is a fool. Beware 
 of self-satisfied names; fools are duped by them. 
 Moreover, the eddy at the moment confers honour 
 and profit, the eddy bribes heavily. So it comes to 
 pass that fact -worshippers get to mean those who 
 are infallible on the thing nearest, men who put a 
 guinea on the bridge of their nose, as it were, or 
 haveitput there, and never even follow their nose, for 
 they never see to the end of it, but turn roundabout 
 in obedience to the golden fact planted half-way. 
 
 Now, no subject in the world has had more 
 eddies, and more eddy facts, dealing with it, than 
 the sovereignty of womanly excellence and the ne- 
 cessity of casting force from the throne it has usurped 
 since first Eve put it there in her betrayal of love 
 and good for the sake of knowledge and power. 
 Yet, no question has had the great eternal fact of 
 its law of existence put out more plainly in a grand 
 river-like certainty of progress at last, in spite of 
 the permanent eddy of force, and its apparent 
 backward flow. 
 
 What eternal fact is more obviously eternal than 
 the significant fact that the first ten years of the 
 life of all mankind pass through the hands of 
 women ? Eddy as you please, you cannot eddy out 
 of that. 
 
 It is true that Force has had it pretty well its own 
 way in public life. This was a certainty in a fallen 
 world, which had fallen through a revolt against 
 gentleness and good. 
 
at Uppingham School. 187 
 
 The great permanent eddy of Force supplies the 
 greater part of mankind with their facts. Yet, it 
 is but an eddy, and can be seen to be so by any 
 observant eye. 
 
 I venture to think that a few words about Force 
 will not be out of place. 
 
 What is the eternal fact ? Are there no tender 
 things in life ? Eather it may be asked, Is not life 
 all tenderness? Tenderness by a multitudinous, 
 quiet, loving, inward determination creating every- 
 thing, maintaining everything, ruling everything, 
 ever repairing with delicate prevaihng touch the 
 ravages made by Force, beautifying the shattered 
 fragments, covering even ruins with a softness as 
 of moss. But the moment Force comes in, whether 
 to hearts or any growths of life, love and life de- 
 part. The kingdom of growth knows not Force. 
 Force, the rat, is ever gnawing at the root of life. 
 And life is tenderness embodied in ceaseless growth, 
 and prevailing movement. Look at earth's great 
 Parable. Look at the grass, the corn, with their 
 everlasting cry of joy, and blessing, and life, 
 " Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty," Lord and 
 Giver of life, over every inch of ground that lives, 
 and every fruitful field that sustains life. Yet how 
 tender is this omnipotence of living ! How tender 
 every blade of grass that clothes the hills with con- 
 quest. How tender the slenderness of the grace of 
 the living corn that turns the broad plain into an 
 endless sea of life and life-giving power. What has 
 
188 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 Force to do with the life of grass, or wheat, or any 
 plant, or flower that blows, or tree that spreads in 
 prayer towards heaven? What has Force to do 
 with the bird on its nest, or any animal that 
 breathes the breath of life, the wild things that 
 make their home in forest, plain, or river, or sea ? 
 Force can kill hfe, but it cannot give life ; no, not 
 to a worm even, or in any way touch life without 
 hurting it. The same truth holds good with man, 
 Force of fighting can kill. Force of law can kill 
 evil, and destroy hindrances. But if law goes on, 
 and in its self-righteousness lays its hand on life, it 
 kills life too. Whenever law sets its finger on any 
 portion of the higher life, that life dies ; for the 
 simple reason that fixity is the essence of law, and 
 life is movement, and fixity and movement cannot 
 co-exist. Thus law, which is the highest and 
 holiest form of Force, becomes an angel of death 
 when it enters the kingdom of life and love. 
 
 History might tell us something about force. 
 The early world lived by the sword ; and a pretty 
 mess they made of it, with their conquests and their 
 plunder. They lived by force on the work of 
 others, on other people's lives ; that is, they rotted 
 in their own corruption. They were swept away 
 when rotten by another wave of force-worshippers, 
 to be in turn corrupted and swept away, wave fol- 
 lowing wave of force and corruption, a dreary 
 monotony of successful death in an endless circle. 
 
 But when Christ planted His kingdom of life on 
 
at Uppingham School. 189 
 
 earth, a life-germ was set in the world as the ruling 
 power, and Force was thrust down from the highest 
 place, and made to serve life, even when it seemed 
 victorious, by scavenger work of sweeping away 
 evil and clearing off rubbish, so as to make room 
 and space for new forms of life. In this way when 
 the life-germ was not strong enough, and failed to 
 master the corrupt Eoman Empire, with its splendid 
 magnificence of heathen buildings, and civilised 
 atrocities, the Force powers were let loose, and the 
 strong arms and destroying battle-axes of the 
 Northmen swept temples and civilisation alike out 
 of the world ; but even whilst they were doing it a 
 tender undergrowth of spiritual life was rising to 
 replace it. And marvellous heart feeling was astir ; 
 and travail pangs, and birth-throes of irrepressible 
 grandeur that found at last life and speech in the 
 strange new language of the great cathedrals, and 
 the order of Christian communities, and glorious 
 buildings for God and man, were reclothing earth 
 with unapproachable majesty of heart and mind. 
 "Whilst work and wages began to supplant war; 
 and the nobility of labour, that grand gift of Christ 
 to the world at large, was slowly taking the place 
 of triumphant force, and the sword, as the honour- 
 able occupation of men. So at last, after a 
 thousand years, out of the crash, and the triumphs 
 of Force, and the breakage, the new birth came. 
 Modern Europe was born, with all its splendid 
 possibilities, and ail its intricate problems of labour 
 
190 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 and capital, and almsgiving and idleness, and thrift 
 and communism, each to be solved by the genera- 
 tion which through its own or past mismanagement 
 has allowed difficulties to become dangers ; or by 
 duty neglected has bred lawlessness and crime. 
 
 Nevertheless, we have got thus far. Force in the 
 shape of war is not the god of the nations any 
 more. 
 
 Work and wages, and peace, and industry, have 
 taken its place as the aim of manly men. 
 
 Now let us pause. This thousand years was on 
 the whole a reign of Force. The North men did this 
 bloody work of universal breakage by physical 
 force. Do you envy that murderous onslaught ? 
 Would you in imagination glory in the thought 
 that the North womeji had fought, and slain, and 
 burnt, and ravaged, and marched through blood and 
 ruin, all blood-besmeared and pitiless, and red with 
 butchery, in their brave but brutal career of Force ? 
 Or would you rather choose to be the lovable weak- 
 ness of holy life, which by living holy, though 
 weak, brought a new birth of life into the world — 
 a higher creation — and subdued those barbarous, 
 but gallant, champions of Force ? Oh ! let the men 
 do the dirty work of the world : leave it to them. 
 Feel no envy for the great scavengers, the glorified 
 destroyers, the scavengers set on to clean out all 
 the refuse peoples and kingdoms from the streets of 
 our Jerusalem, and cart off the rotten institutions 
 and worn-out immoralities with their gauds and 
 
at U;ppingham School, 191 
 
 glitter : leave it to them. There must be destruc- 
 tion, but it is not enviable work ; it is not your 
 work. 
 
 This is what history tells us of the first great 
 epoch of Christian hfe moving, with Force making 
 room for it, whilst it destroyed for its own bhnd 
 ends. So the great river flowed on. 
 
 Two thousand years have been spent in this first 
 experience, and now it is over. Another world-era 
 has begun. The drama is to be re-enacted on a 
 larger scale. Another breakage is going on ; another 
 irruption of force and another birth is to come. 
 The weapons are different, but the struggle is the 
 same. The force-powers of the hand smashed up 
 the early world when its glory became its curse and 
 its failure ; the force-powers of the head are now to 
 make havoc of civilisations that have failed. Science 
 and intellect, with their railroads, and telegraphs, 
 and steam, are dashing all mankind together in one 
 great fighting mass of forceful, self -glorious, destroy- 
 ing energy, to which nothing is sacred, not even its 
 own pride. And the modern world is to be de- 
 stroyed, even as the old world was destroyed, and 
 for the same reason : because it has failed to grow 
 with the life, and hardened itself into shapes too 
 narrow for the growing life, and dammed the stream 
 of life back, and forced it to stagnate, and made 
 itself into a prison, and lost its light and its 
 expansion. So it is to perish. It is to be burst up 
 by the foul gases it has generated, A great 
 
192 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 triumphant breakage by the lust of the head, and 
 the vain-glorious intellect, and the ignorant lawless- 
 ness of evil repressed, but not humanised, by the 
 higher power, is on foot. The intellect is let loose, 
 and a Force which turns the world upside down, 
 putting its interpretation above the creation it has 
 to interpret, rating a speck it has studied higher 
 than infinity, valuing its own footnote more than 
 the great volume of the universe ; hunting, as it 
 says, for truth, not knowing that truth is doing at 
 the moment what at the moment is known to be 
 right ! strength of life, not strength of brain — this 
 fighting energy is let loose, and the destroying has 
 begun. And the whole world poured together in 
 one great whirlpool of creeds, habits, idolatries, 
 worships, ignorances, and omnisciences, may need 
 thousands of years before the mud settles and the 
 great river clears again. The drunken navvy is 
 abroad, law is being paralysed, and he is likely for 
 a time to have it pretty well his own way. But oh, 
 leave it to men to do the dirty work of the world ; 
 to overthrow for a time in the general crash the 
 beautiful and true old shapes, and to scavenge out 
 of existence for ever the decayed and rotten forms 
 of worn-out decrepitude that have served their time 
 or failed. 
 
 Force-power of hand or head only touches life to 
 destroy, and yours is the kingdom of life. Search 
 through the world, you will find it true. Force at 
 best is a hewer of wood and drawer of water. Life 
 
^tU;ppingham ScliooL 
 
 knows not Force excepting as a servant of servants 
 in a true world. 
 
 It is your sovereignty to see this. It is your 
 sovereignty to leave men to do the coarse work, 
 whilst you govern by the unconquerable power of 
 life and the tenderness of gracious life, whose 
 weakest glance is stronger than all instrumental 
 power, whether of hand or head. 
 
 The eternal fact which condenses this truth into 
 a great practical reality is this : Everything is 
 woman*s work in which life is highest and Force is 
 below. 
 
 Both men and women have force-powers, and use 
 them. A woman has arms; a woman has feet. 
 No one, excepting the Chinese, would destroy the 
 feet ; and not even the Chinese have yet cut off the 
 arms. But the prize-fighter and the athlete make 
 arms and feet their vocation. The mental prize- 
 fighters and athletes make head and brainwork 
 their vocation. Head-athletics are no better in 
 principle than feet -athletics ; but, in denouncing 
 athletics as the highest vocation, no insult is offered 
 to head, or arms, or feet. No counsel is given to 
 cut them off, or to depreciate their living exercise 
 in an excellent way. We do not want the Chinese 
 foot plan extended and transferred to the head ; as 
 Europe has done all too much in the case of its 
 women. Heads a la Chinese must be abolished, 
 Women must have thoroughly healthy instrumental 
 power of their own, both in head and limb. Life 
 
 
 
194 An Addi'ess to Head Mistresses 
 
 works by instruments ; and the civilised man who 
 would prevent women from doing good work is as 
 much a savage as the savage who sleeps or fights 
 whilst he makes women do the labour he ought to 
 do himself. 
 
 Women have to use influence ; and, however 
 they are dealt with, do use it. Where is the right 
 influence to come from ? It can only come from a 
 right training of body and mind. 
 
 Mark what the influence in the first instance is. 
 
 The whole world of mankind for the first ten 
 years of their existence is sent in a continuous 
 stream through the hands of women. This is the 
 great river rolling seaward. This is an eternal fact ; 
 no eddy. The training and moulding of character 
 by women is an eternal fact. 
 
 Women are teachers by a law of nature. This is 
 emphatically woman's work. 
 
 Character-training — for the child is yet too young 
 to be hammered along in the hack-intellect omnibus. 
 Character-training, under sweet influences of home 
 and gentle teaching. 
 
 Where, then, is this to come from, this power of 
 moulding character? 
 
 The answer is, or ought to be, the key to the 
 problem of the life of the world. 
 
 The data are simple : tender growth in the hands 
 of tender but skilful womanhood. 
 
 From this beginning all manhood starts. 
 
 This is the key to woman's mission. 
 
at Up;pingham School, 195 
 
 This is the key to the true progress of the world. 
 
 No eddy can get rid of the onward sweep of this 
 great river. 
 
 To form character requires character-power. 
 Character-power requires all good life -knowledge of 
 all real factors of life, combined with the perfection 
 of trained skill. 
 
 Perfect life-knowledge requires such a mastery of 
 all . instrumental powers of Hmb and head as is 
 necessary to understand and use them. 
 
 Such a mastery demands that women should be 
 trained in limb and head, not as champions of limb 
 and head, but as thoroughly capable in both, so as 
 to be moulders of the character of the world. 
 
 This defines accurately the aim and object of all 
 womanly excellence in all things belonging to 
 education. 
 
 And eternal fact demands that they shall be 
 educators of the world — heart-educators. 
 
 This also points out in how many fields of refined 
 feeling and delicate power in art and literature 
 women will excel men, when fair play is given them ; 
 and where they will not do so. Where force is 
 paramount they will not do so. Leave men to do 
 the coarser work. Be content with the queenly 
 life-power that moulds and rules. 
 
 There is, however, a good old saying, often 
 neglected, that you cannot teach what you do not 
 know. The teachers must first be taught. Who 
 that reahses this cau fail to rejoice in the great 
 
196 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 movement of teaching and training now going on, 
 which this Conference so excellently represents? 
 This is a great epoch. I believe it to be the first 
 time in the history of the world that a well-con- 
 sidered course of action has been set on foot by a 
 natural movement of the life itself for training women 
 in general to do their true work in life. Efficiency 
 in life is the question. If efficiency in life is not 
 produced, it will be a heavy blow to the good cause. 
 If, like the Board Schools, life-power is dropped, 
 and a scramble for fragments of knowledge put in 
 its place, the good cause will receive a fatal 
 check. 
 
 Character-moulding, or, in other words, the 
 creation of power that rules the world of instru- 
 mental force, will always be your main work. There 
 you are queens supreme, and it is the supreme work 
 of the world. It is your grand privilege to make 
 goodness lovely and lovable, and by your very 
 presence to diffuse a kind of sacred atmosphere 
 wherever you move, if you are true to your high 
 mission ; which is to show to all the world the 
 omnipotence of the weakness of beauty, when beauty 
 means, as it ought to mean, the purest thought and 
 feeling in its truest shape. This is Christianity. 
 " Whatsover things are lovely, think of these 
 things." This is Christianity. The Crucifixion has 
 set in letters of light and fiame on all creation the 
 glorious truth, that a weakness which dies at the 
 hand of force because it is good, is immortality, and 
 
at Uppi7igham School, 197 
 
 life, triumphant by its own inward power of life, is 
 divine, is of God, is God with us. 
 
 You who are weak in force-power have to prove 
 this as Teachers. And as Teachers, you will want 
 all the strength of heart that religion can give when 
 your weakness is matched against the trials of life. 
 It matters comparatively little what knowledge is 
 taught. Who are the Teachers ? is the real question. 
 What the Teacher is, and how the teaching is done, 
 that is all in all. I do not understand how anyone 
 can keep fresh as a Teacher, when the first 
 enthusiasm has worn off, excepting from a feeling 
 of doing work for Christ. Neither do I understand 
 what knowledge is to do to make better lives, unless 
 it is guided by religion. Nero was a very accom- 
 plished man. And we need not go back to Nero for 
 examples of men, whose splendid knowledge and 
 ready tongues have only made them more consum- 
 mate evil-doers, and more elaborate artificers of 
 pernicious delusions and ambitious falsehoods. Not 
 what is taught, so much as the spirit in which it is 
 taught, makes the difference ; above all, the char- 
 acter of the Teacher. True Teachers cannot be 
 knowledge-hacks. Set hacks to drag a knowledge 
 omnibus, and farewell to Teachers. And you — you, 
 the moulders of character, how can you mould 
 character without the one great character-power ? 
 Lives are committed to you, not heads, not animated 
 steam-engines, or intellectual navvies. You have to 
 justify this great new movement by the efficiency of 
 
198 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 the lives you train. It is now certain that this 
 great movement cannot be crushed. So far success 
 is assured. But very jealous eyes watch its 
 progress, and are looking at its outcome. You have 
 to justify the movement in every English home by 
 increased efficiency in home life. All new move- 
 ments are criticised ; that is but the common lot. 
 Never fear that. All new movements are open to 
 criticism; there must be mistakes; never be dis- 
 couraged by that; pathfinders of necessity get a 
 little mud. It is very possible to be too clean. 
 Shame on the pioneer whom his tailor would praise. 
 Moreover, ages of experience under the force-idolatry 
 of men have not made things so delightful that you 
 need be afraid. If education means making the 
 most of each and all, and giving to everyone a fair 
 chance, simply it does not exist. How many minds 
 of the young are mere lumber-rooms, small, untidy, 
 with nothing in them but dirty bits of old finery and 
 a few blunt tools? How many distinguished 
 individuals are nothing more than second-hand 
 book-shelves, vilely disarranged ! Others, again, 
 are just dust-bins full of sweepings of pohce reports, 
 yellow-backs, Latin grammar leaves, broken ink 
 bottles, and other rubbish. And worst of all are 
 those non-human manufactures, the opposite to 
 Chinese feet, the big heads, the human bull-dogs, all 
 skull and jaw : those bodiless heads, with their 
 squirmy, shrunken carcases, from which all feeling 
 and sympathy have been dried out ; those dwarfs 
 
at Up;pingham School, 199 
 
 who know everything except human life and 
 practice ; those chemical alembics of distilled books ; 
 those automaton rulers of a world which unhappily 
 is alive. How can they and the system which 
 glorifies them cavil if a few women do turn out 
 unpractical? Defend us from the goggle-eyed, 
 giant-headed dwarfs, with their shrivelled anatomies, 
 male or female, say I. Knowledge set above feehng 
 has cursed the world long enough. 
 
 Let us, then, be content to make sure of a great 
 cause, and be regardless of criticism, true or false, 
 excepting so far as we can learn from it. 
 
 You have to mould character from babyhood 
 onwards. Bear in mind every untaught, untrained 
 mind is a baby mind ; and even Newton began by 
 being a baby. Here, in my judgment, lies the great 
 sin of men as Teachers. They will persist in 
 shutting their eyes to the real work they have to do, 
 namely, teach immature baby minds, because some 
 few, on whom they have bestowed extra pains, are 
 not babies. So they leave them babies still, as they 
 have not attempted to do anything with them as 
 they actually are. Avoid this sublime error. 
 
 The air is full of aerial disquisitions and philoso- 
 phic terms. Big words have a peculiar charm for 
 non-thinkers and half- thinkers. The blessed word 
 ** Mesopotamia" will never die out of schools. 
 The philosophy may be all true, very gospel in its 
 way, but nevertheless (it may be my misfortune), 
 almost all that have heard or read of it belongs 
 
200 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 to another world from our child- world ; and is 
 mnch the same as the birds of the air dealing with 
 the fishes of the sea, and has no more to do with 
 baby mind than an eagle with a mollusc. We do 
 not claim to pass judgment on the flight of eagles, 
 or demonstrate the laws of wings, but we do try to 
 be authorities as to how to teach the average 
 mind; we do try to understand the simple pro- 
 cesses by which baby mind is given healthy growth, 
 and to make it grow. Let us ^-^ our hearts on the 
 baby mind, the immature, growing young creature, 
 the average child, boy or girl ; do that, and I will 
 venture to say you will never lose sight of your 
 great function of moulding the character of the 
 world. You will never forget that the young world, 
 all of it, passes through your hands always. 
 
 There is another eternal fact equally unforget- 
 able when once seen, the eternal fact of helpful- 
 ness, which is yours. The divine privilege of being 
 helpers. "Woman was created to help : to make 
 good, that is, the deficiencies of the world of man ; to 
 come in in times of strain and trial to relieve and 
 cheer ; to take, as it were, on themselves the part 
 of angels on earth, ministering spirits, good 
 Samaritans to succour the wounded, standing some- 
 what apart from the fray, to bring hope, and kindly, 
 gentle support : in a word, ** helps meet for man." 
 And here again we meet the double truth which 
 has attended us all along, of a higher and more 
 sovereign influence, committed to your hands, and 
 
at U;ppingliam School. 201 
 
 of true working power : the truth, which this Con- 
 ference embodies, of trained working skill. For 
 how can they help, who know not how to work ? 
 We meet again the truth, which has accompanied 
 us from the beginning, that man in no mean spirit 
 is intended to do the rough work of the world, 
 while it is the divine mission of vv^omen to follow 
 on his work, to put the finishing touches, to help, 
 and bind up, and soothe, and cheer, and throw a 
 halo of gentler hfe round this hard, warring, daily 
 contest of good and evil struggling and toiling in 
 their pain. Work-power is wanted. You are busy 
 in giving it : but it is helpful work-power, not 
 destroying ; gentle work-power, not forceful. 
 
 This once more fixes definitely woman's domain. 
 Woman is a fellow-worker with man in an harmo- 
 nious but independent sphere ; man, the rough 
 shaper and fighter ; woman, the helper, healer, and 
 queen of the inner life. These two, character- 
 moulding and helpfulness, condense all that can be 
 said upon the subject. No one can go wrong v/ho 
 is loyal to these two. Eemember, out of this 
 comes also the truth that it is your special business 
 to make goodness lovable, it is your business to be 
 lovely in mind and body. Force is not lovely, not 
 lovable ; the moment force is allowed to assert 
 itself in a character, it destroys love. The old 
 golden-mouthed preacher, St. Chrysostom, gave 
 utterance to a sentence, which is perhaps the 
 greatest practical truth in earth and heaven that 
 
202 An Address to Head Mistresses 
 
 ever came from lips not directly inspired, when he 
 said : ** Those who love prefer obeying to com- 
 manding/' Prefer it. How gladly when we love 
 do we long with unutterable yearning to do some 
 service, some act of obedience, some devoted deed, 
 which shall show the love, and prove it, by laying 
 down before the feet of the beloved all things, even 
 life itself. Thus a true world would be inhabited 
 by beings earnestly striving to do all the most 
 laborious or painful duties for one another with a 
 glad alacrity ; the highest striving most. And it is 
 a marvellous thing that such an unselfish fire 
 divine should be found burning in this low world of 
 force-idolaters : marvellous, that womanhood by 
 its very presence should make the strong stoop, and 
 the proud lay aside their armour, and bow even the 
 lowest of the low before this altar-fire of God. 
 And quite apart from what is called love, a noble 
 woman, like a star, radiates pure light round her as 
 she moves, and the basest even, all unconsciously 
 draw healthier breath ; and evil thoughts, and evil 
 words, and evil deeds, slink away, and feel some 
 perception of brighter things. 
 
 This great unconscious faculty of scattering 
 light leads up to the last summit and crown of 
 earthly life, the final revelation waiting — waiting 
 patiently, all ready to spring into living life when- 
 ever earth has been purged enough to let it live, 
 that grand revelation, that all life on earth, men 
 and women alike, is to be cleansed and glorified 
 
at Uppingham School. 203 
 
 into the supreme excellence of womanly perfection, 
 and that glorified humanity is the Bride of Christ. 
 And here I close, though much needs to be said, 
 for the subject is too great for speech, far too great 
 for a few words at the end of our time. Here I 
 close. But all I have said leads up to this solemn 
 certainty of the life that is yet to be, in earth, in 
 heaven, when force shall be cast out from the 
 kingdom of life, and all mankind shall recognise 
 and acknowledge this great and last revelation of 
 the gentleness and loveliness of true life ; and 
 glorified humanity here and hereafter shall be 
 purified into the perfection of womanhood, and 
 presented to Christ as the Bride, 
 
 
 
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