EDVCAT10/1AL
AMD AODRESSE
1
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
EDUCATIONAL STUDIES AND
ADDRESSES
EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
AND
ADDRESSES
BY
T. G. ROOFER
RARy
Of THE
OF
LONDON
BLACKIE & SON, Limited, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.G.
GLASGOW AND DUBLIN
1902
UE.7-7S
GENERAL
TO
CHARLOTTE M. MASON
THIS COLLECTION OF ADDRESSES
DELIVERED BEFORE VARIOUS BRANCHES
OF THE
PARENTS' NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL UNION
WHICH SHE HAS FOUNDED
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR
104650
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive
in 2007 witii funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
littp://www.arcliive.org/details/educationalstudiOOroopricli
PREFACE
The following papers were, most of them, read
before various branches of the Parents* National
Educational Union, and have nearly all appeared
in the Parents' Review. The aim of the writer has
been to assist the members of that association, and
others who are concerned with education, to main-
tain an interest in studies which are not the less
important because they are not novel. Sound
principles that are old may easily be laid on the
shelf and forgotten, unless in each successive gen-
eration a few industrious people can be found who
will take the trouble to draw them forth from the
storehouse.
Some of the papers deal with the art of instilling
a sense of law and order into the minds of young
children. Bishop Dupanloup's fine remark, " I will
respect liberty in the smallest child", can hardly be
too often present in the thoughts of teachers. The
meaning of law as expounded by Lord Russell of
Killowen may be taken as a clear statement of the
theory which underlies the art of commanding men
as practised by Lord Collingwood. Considered
together, the opinions of the admiral and the
lawyer form an excellent introduction to the
8 PREFACE
understanding of conduct which leads to social
and civil order.
The study of S6guin is an attempt to satisfy
enquirers who wish to know more of the physician
to whom Dr. Shuttleworth dedicates his book on
Mentally-deficient Children. The seed which S^guin
sowed matured rapidly into a rich harvest, but it is
something more than gratitude that should impel
students of education to revert to the sower and
the seed-time, for there is always something in the
seed which never appears in the fruit. The life of
S^guin is, as Dr. Shuttleworth implies, an inspira-
tion to all who have the care of children.
The study of Don Quixote is an effort to show
that object-lessons need not necessarily be confined
to natural objects like flowers, insects, or animals.
Such lessons may also deal with literature, but in
this case a book is the "object" which is studied.
There is some danger at present lest, in making up
for past neglect of nature, the transcendent value
of literature may be overlooked. To preserve the
balance between studies in nature and studies in
human nature the collection is completed by an
address on Manual Training, and an account of
a School Garden.
CONTENTS
Page
SfiGUIN 11
V Manual Training 31
Obedience, or the Place of Military Discipline in
Education 43
Lord Collingwood's Theory and Practice of Edu-
cation ..-_-. ---72
Gaiety in Education, or a Study in Augustine and
Calvin 89
Individualism in Education 108
The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life - 124
On Spencer's ** Education" 135
Geography in Elementary Education - . . 149
On Methods of Teaching Geography - - - 171
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra i8i
An Experiment in School Gardening , , - 201
EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
AND ADDRESSES
SEGUIN
Henry Taylor says, "The world knows nothing
of its greatest men". At any rate, while the educa-
tional world is ringing with the praise of Pestalozzi
and Froebel, I am not sure that it is aware that
there is another name worthy to be associated with
these two master minds, and forming a triad uniting
the intellectual forces of Switzerland and Germany
with that of France.
The name which I would associate with the
names of Pestalozzi and Froebel is that of S6guin ;
and it is of Seguin that I propose to give some
account, commencing with a short biography, and
afterwards describing his famous experiment in
training what he calls an Idiot Hand and an Idiot
Eye.
In 1880, there died in New York, Edward
Seguin, at the age of sixty-nine, a man who, on
account of his lifelong devotion to the science
and art of restoring, or at least elevating in the
12 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
scale of living beings, children wholly or partially
imbecile and children of feeble intellect, well de-
serves to have his name recorded in the Liber
Aureus reserved for the few men whose lives
have been of great service to all the human race,
without being the cause of the least harm to any
part of it.
S^guin was born in Burgundy, in 1812, and
came of a family of physicians of good standing
and repute. He had a long line of ancestors who,
for many generations, took a leading place as
physicians in the Department of La Ni^vre.
After receiving a complete education at the
College of Auxerre, and then in the Lyc6e St.
Louis at Paris, he studied medicine under a
famous master of the subject, known as Itard,
and also under Esquirol, the psychologist and
" alidniste ". Both Itard and Esquirol were pro-
foundly interested in psychological studies, and
Seguin had an opportunity of watching the ap-
parently unsuccessful efforts of Itard to develop
the mental powers of an idiot known as the
Sauvage de L'Arveyron. At the early age of
twenty-five his genius led him to the profound
discovery which perhaps initiated the study of
physiological education, and certainly advanced
the art of training imbeciles in a most unexpected
way, and, what is more, the whole science and art
of education. For of course other philanthropists
had tried to teach idiots before Itard, and notably
Vincent de Paul, but with what success is shown
by the description of Idiocy in the Dictionary of
Medicine published in 1837, where it is stated to
SfeGUIN 13
be " the absence of mental faculties, or the almost
complete nullity of the cerebral faculties"; and
farther on, "it is in vain to combat idiocy; in
order to restore the intellectual powers it would
be necessary to remedy the conformation of
cephalic organs which no means have been found
hitherto of modifying at all". This was the
traditional theory of idiocy, and until it was
superseded little progress could be made in
assisting idiots. Seguin was led by his own
researches to consider that idiocy was not so
much due to the malformation of the brain as
to its arrested development, which was the result
of causes often pre-natal. He seems to have been
the first to perceive that the nervous system was
an organic whole, and that the brain was not the
sole organ of intelligence, independent of the peri-
pheral nerves. He believed that the brain could
not be properly said to act as a single organ
without parts, and that as in any organism the
successful working of the whole depends upon
the harmonious action, interaction, and reciprocal
action of all the parts, so defective intellect might
be due not to the absence of parts, but to the
want of co-ordination of action among existing
parts.
His idea of a remedy for this arrested develop-
ment was training of a physiological kind. He
contended that by a suitable physiological train-
ing of all the senses it would be possible to restore
the idiot to a place in society, even if a humble
one, and to make his spark of reason smoulder,
even if it would never burst into a flame.
14 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
While Seguin was working at Bicetre, he con-
ducted experiments at his own expense, to meet
which he earned money by writing for the press
and by other hterary labours. He wrote articles
for one of the principal journals in Paris, of various
kinds, including art criticism, and certain others,
more filled with feeling and fire, on political and
social subjects.
This brought him into connection with the most
brilliant literary circle that existed in Paris during
the century. Among them were Ledru - RoUin,
Louis Blanc, Michel Chevalier and Victor Hugo.
All of these were disciples in the school of St
Simon, P^re Enfantine, and Olinde Rodrigue, and
all alike believed in an approaching revolution
when society would be reconstituted on the prin-
ciple of the greatest happiness of the greatest
number.
Among others, he came to know Louis Napoleon,
while in his Republican days, but in 1850 he found
it necessary, for political reasons, to exchange
France for America somewhat hastily, leaving no
address on his departure. He had, however,
before quitting Paris, as the result of several
years of study, written his epoch-making work on
the moral training, the hygiene, and the educa-
tion of idiots and defective children. This work,
which was published in 1846, was crowned by the
Academy and made the text-book on the subject
in England and every civilized country. Mean-
while the working of Seguin's method had been
demonstrated at the Paris Hospital for Incurables
at Bicetre, and had attracted much attention.
S]fiGUIN 15
In America, partly by his writings, and partly
by his influence, and partly by personal inter-
vention, he founded, or caused the foundation of,
various training-places for idiots. Though well
qualified in every way as a general practitioner,
and easily able to win a good practice and a
lucrative one by the charm of his manner and
his profound knowledge and skill, he was never
able to tear himself from his special line of study,
the proper treatment of idiots, to which he was
ready to sacrifice everything; and, not unnaturally,
his interest in the education of imbeciles extended
itself to education in general. His book on Idiocy
and its Treatme7it by the Physiological Methody
is one which ought to be read by every serious
student of educational literature. Seguin pursued
his researches in various directions, and, among
other applications of his scientific method, he
devoted much attention to the temperature of
the blood, and it is to him we owe the use of the
clinical thermometer, without some knowledge of
which no intelligent mother would in these days
undertake the hygienic supervision of her family,
to say nothing of its use by medical men. Much
again might be said of his views relating to the
kindergarten, but time allows it not. He died too
soon to complete his work. Educationist, philo-
sopher, philanthropist, man of science, he was
perfect in all relations of life. Happy in his
marriage, he left a son able to carry on the
tradition of his family, and a group of friends in
many countries on either side of the Atlantic
inspired by his enthusiasm in the service of man.
1 6 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
He was the honoured recipient of a letter from
Pius IX thanking him for his services in the cause
of humanity. He was a lover of literature and
fine art; he was devoted to plants, animals, and
children ; he was a philanthropist in whose philan-
thropy there was nothing morose or spiteful, and
all forms of social life, in what time he could spare
for them, came to him as a welcome refreshment.
Bold and independent in his views, he was kind
and courteous to all, to his opponents as much as
any, meeting attacks, however unworthy, with a
Gallic shrug of the shoulders. Burning with in-
dignation over social or political injustice, he never
condescended to a disposition of intolerance, and
not the least remarkable feature in his character
was his sympathetic respect for religious creeds in
which he himself had no share. He died without
wealth, an exile from his country, leaving, how-
ever, a heritage far greater than millions of dollars,
viz., institutions all over the world which strengthen
humanity in its weakest part, and ideas and
scientific methods which posterity will assimilate
and carry out to greater perfection. His name
lives not merely an honour to the land of his
birth, France, the land of chivalry, but also to
America, and indeed it merits the proudest ad-
dition — huinani generis deais.
I have endeavoured to describe the man. I pass
on to show the workman in his workshop. Before
introducing you to the student in his own retreat,
I will exhibit him as a critic of one of our English
institutions. He was appointed to make a report
for a special commission on the training of im-
(MWO)
SEGUIN 17
beciles in all parts of the world for the first
exhibition of Vienna. He visits an English
Institution among other places in 1867. "The
Enghsh", he says, "have determined to have the
greatest Asylum for Idiots in the world, and so
far as money and good-will could avail they have
it. But the institution is under a Board of
Governors, and the physician is under their con-
trol. Hence they have a machine which is driven
by men clothed in authority, instead of an organ-
ization resting on the tender sympathy and quick
perception of a woman who is philosophically
directed by some man familiar with the most
recent anthropological discoveries.
^' Modus docendi. Some sixty children formed
a class which the teacher had divided into two
parts. In front a few infants were being taught
to read, while the rest sat behind with slates, under
orders to write a copy from a black-board. A
glance sufficed to make me put the following
questions to myself: — (i) Was it possible for the
children to write this letter, (2) at such a distance
from their teacher, (3) on a slate resting on their
knees, (4) with a pencil that left but a slight mark
on a surface polished by long use, (5) with a hand
feeble, uncertain in movement, unprepared by pre-
liminary exercises, guided by imperfect compre-
hension, the difficulty further increased by the
feeble powers of reasoning characteristic of such
children, who have lived long without instruction,
and grown accustomed to act automatically.-^ The
slates gave me my answers. They were covered
with vague, meaningless lines, often scarcely
(M930) B
1 8 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
visible, which, signifying nothing to the writers,
spoke volumes to me.
" There is another defect which is characteristic
of great institutions where children are trained
for public inspection. In each large class there
were a certain number of those who may be
termed false idiots, i.e. children who are hardly
normal, but suffer from the effects of epilepsy,
chorea, and the like. These children are pushed
forward at the expense of the genuine idiots. Of
course they can answer all sorts of difficult ques-
tions, and their proficiency imposes on the public.
Even this concession is not enough for the visitors.
Idiots must be served in all sorts of sauce; there
must be musicians, mathematicians, architects, and
what not. Utilize time and money, which ought
to be shared by the whole of a class, in developing
among a few children such special faculties as
have survived the shipwreck of the rest, and you
may astound fools and thus most effectively
advertise your institution. Yet it is all useless.
The musician, the architect, or the mathematician,
having but one faculty developed, remains none
the less idiotic, and his possession will by no
means give him a place in society. It is useless
to develop one faculty at the expense of the rest;
if this is true of idiot asylums, it applies equally
to ordinary schools and to the Universities. The
English have yet to learn the principles of Physio-
logical Instruction."
This visit took place in iS6y, and five years
later S^guin gave a far more satisfactory report
I will now attempt to show S6guin at work on
SEGUIN 19
his own method, as explained to the world in a
pamphlet on the Idiot Hand mid the Idiot Eye^
or the training of an idiot child in New York.
The following is the description of the Idiot Hand.
The hand was small, the nails were dry and brittle;
the fingers were short and badly finished; there
seemed no power of resistance to pressure; there
was no use in the hand whatever; in all respects
its conformation exhibited characteristics which
are the opposite of those which mark manual
dexterity. Movement, however, there was, but it
was automatic, having for its centre and lever the
wrist. Vigorous as this automatic action could be,
the child was quite unable to carry out the simplest
direction which involved voluntary action. While,
however, the hand was incapable of finer adjust-
ments, the arm could be moved as a whole up or
down, although with little precision in the move-
ment, and at times even this action was beyond
the child's power. The mistress commenced the
process of educating this Idiot Hand by acting
first on the shoulder, exercising in order, first the
muscles of the shoulder, then those of the fore-arm,
and then those of the wrist and hand itself Thus
voluntary movement was gradually extended down-
wards from the shoulder to the extremity of the
fingers. The exercises were done at first through
imitation of the teacher, but the child soon learnt
to do them for himself as directed.
Thus the education commenced with purely
physical exercises. The movements of the hand
which ordinary children learn unconsciously and
almost imperceptibly may be thusroughly classi-
20 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
fied, viz.: holding (both passively and intentionally),
seizing, raising, lifting, dropping, throwing, snatch-
ing, squeezing, bending, breaking, beating, striking,
modelling, combining, uniting, joining, dividing,
parting, severing with knife or scissors or saw,
according to the resistance offered by the material.
The Idiot Hand was incapable of any of these
movements. The first step in education was
purely physical, consisting of a suitable series of
exercises for the arm, hand, and fingers. The
intellectual worth of these exercises depends upon
the way they are ultimately done, their precision,
their rapidity, their unity, their adjustment, their
promptness, and their subjection to control and
will. The problem of getting the child to imitate
his teacher's action in, say, raising his arm, is far
from simple. He has to take notice of what his
teacher is doing, to form a clear mental image of
it, to transmit this image, along with the intention
to execute the actions which go to make it up, to
the limbs concerned. There is a triple series of
acts, involving registration, volition, and execution.
The resistance which idiocy, active or passive,
opposes to the teacher's efforts is for his or her
skill and patience to overcome. The mistress
reached the tips of the fingers of the Idiot Hand
by commencing with the shoulder; and subse-
quently group after group of nerves and muscles
previously given up to automatism was gradually
won for voluntary action, and a set of apparatus
that was merely brute was made subject to the
sway of reason. The process of training was from
great centres to smaller, and centrifugal. In time
SEGUIN 21
the delicate action of the peripheral nerves and
muscles reacted on the central, and then improve-
ment and training proceeded centripetally.
As an example of the difference in the power to
act according as the impulse is derived from regions
nearer or farther from the central axis, it was
noticed that the child could drive a nail with a
hammer before it could prick a hole on a given spot
on a piece of paper. To use a hammer requires
no movement below the wrist; it is a shoulder
movement; on the contrary, the use of the pin
demands little action on the part of the great
flexor and extensor muscles of the arm, but much
complicated adjustment of the finer muscles of the
fingers.
What was the result at the end of a year of this
daily training of the sense of touch, this develop-
ment of interaction or reciprocal action between
the brain centres and the peripheral nerves? The
child's hand had learnt to help itself, to occupy
itself, and to amuse itself; it ceased to be shoved
into the child's mouth and bitten, or to strike the
child's companions, although the automatic move-
ments did not entirely cease. The touch was
developed so far that the child would appreciate
the ordinary difi*erences of temperature in air,
water, and food, and would recognize and name
blindfold, by mere sense of touch, some fifty objects.
The eye also, being exercised in company with
the hand, although strictly subsidiary in its use,
learnt to distinguish typical forms, first the things
themselves, next coloured pictures of them, and
then sketches or outlines, and by a simple transi-
22 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
tion the child was taught to cut out these things in
paper. He also learnt to arrange objects of vary-
ing size according to their comparative dimensions.
As the child had shown a natural taste for
flowers, and especially sweetly-scented flowers, he
soon learnt in the garden the names of some thirty,
to say them correctly, and many more with less
certainty. This love of flowers made him wish to
plant and tend them ; he also had a vase of flowers
on his mantel-piece, and renewed the water daily
with punctuality, and, though busy with other occu-
pations, he never forgot the right time to attend
to this duty. Under these influences the sudden
and violent emotions with which he had been
afflicted before his training, the sudden flow of
blood to the head, and senseless actions of passion
and rage, gave way to a calmer and sweeter dis-
position. These results showed themselves, after
a little more than a year, in the following changes
in his features. His mouth was no longer seen
with hanging lower lip, his head was upright on
the axis instead of lolling over to one side, and
the curious semicircular depression of the forehead
between the eyes had nearly vanished. The whole
of this system of training is based upon the prin-
ciple of physiological decentralization. It would
have been impossible as a system, although flashes
of the principle have crossed the vision of educa-
tionists from the beginning, unless the idea of the
sovereignty of the brain had not been profoundly
modified by the appreciation of the immensely
important part played in the intellectual develop-
ment by the peripheral nerves and the muscles.
S^GUIN
23
The first year of training was devoted, in the
way described, to the Idiot Hand; the second was
spent in educating the Idiot Eye, and in an
analogous manner.
The manual training of the first year had been
concerned with the muscles of the arm and hand,
the joints of these limbs, and with the sense of
touch. By the sense of touch the child learnt to
comprehend many objects, and to express in words
the impressions which he derived from his sense
of touch. He learnt to recognize many objects, to
hold things, to put things down, to grasp, throw,
&c., and acquired the command over his hand in
many operations either immediately useful or in-
dispensable for progress, such as washing and
dressing, or holding a pencil or a knife. It took
him a year before his hands, at first as flaccid as
in death, could button a button or brush his coat.
After this he would strengthen his hands by
whittling a stick with a jack-knife, and render
his fingers more supple and pliant by tracing
lines on a slate; he would also learn to throw or
catch a ball, though awkwardly, and to manipulate
clay so as to form a few models.
In commencing with the eye training, the doctors
found the state of the eye as imperfect as that
of the hand. Both eyes suffered from lateral
nystagmus, that is, the eyeballs rolled from side
to side with " a short uneasy motion ", and the
range of their movement was small. The pupils
were of unequal size. He also suffered from
hypermetrophy. The optic nerves also were
atrophied.
24 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Nystagmus in idiots is of two kinds. It is either
the rolling or oscillating movement above described,
or else it is a tendency to fix the eyeball with a
stare upwards and sideways towards one corner.
During S^guin's treatment of this child it was
ascertained by oculists that this movement of the
eye was akin to the movements known as St.
Vitus' dance or chorea, and this discovery led him
to seek a remedy in physical training. The eye is
educated through the hand. It was S6guin's object
to bring the eyeball to repose, to direct it steadily
upon an object, and by use of the hand in con-
junction with the eye to give intelligence to the
act of looking. It is well known of how much
use the hand is in guiding the eye, especially in
directing and fixing the attention. The hand of
an adroit person has almost a language of its own.
The Idiot Eye must first be trained through the
Idiot Hand. The child must learn to use the
index digit for pointing out objects. Special
exercises are needed to develop tliis habit as
thoroughly as possible. This exercise is by no
means so easy as might appear. The child was
taught by use of the index finger to seek and find,
to look out for and to look at, to watch and to
follow, moving objects and objects at rest. A
wide sweep of the hand would fix his eyes on an
object, and small movements of the fingers would
prevent his attention from wandering off it again.
But sometimes his eyes would close when pointing
rightly at an object, or else while his finger pointed
at the object his eye wandered away from it, while
he cried all the same: "Look, look". On such
S^GUIN 25
occasions Seguin never lost patience, nor did he
resort to short and wicked words, much less blows.
He wrote treatises instead on the obstinate fixing
of the will, due, as he argued, to the inhibitory effect
of the nerves upon the muscles when a sort of nerve
storm is raging, an effect which he carefully dis-
tinguished from wilful opposition. The exercises
which were necessary during the first year to
overcome the flaccidity of the muscles of the
hand were continued during the second year,
and while at first the hand helped the eye, after
a bit the eye, being improved, helped the hand,
and the exercises having for their main object the
improvement of either organ, the other being for
the time subsidiary, at last met in a region where
it is no longer possible to say which of the two
is the principal one aimed at.
One of the ways of training the eye by the hand
was to get the child to trace over a pattern supplied
to him by the teacher on paper. At first sight this
might seem training the hand by the eye, but it is
not so. The hand has to follow a line marked out.
To do this it calls upon the eye in a sort of reflex
way to help it to follow the line correctly. Thus
hand and eye are fixed on one point, and have to
move together in one direction, but the hand sets
the eye to work.
Eye exercises have been systematically devised
for enabling the child to direct its gaze at will and
with attention, upwards, downwards, and sideways,
and the occupations of tracing patterns, pricking
them, and cutting them out with scissors have all
been found useful in reducing the disorders of the
26 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
organs of vision, which have kept them cut off
from communication with objects around them
and caused the Idiot Eye.
Modelling has also been found useful. It was
soon seen that a hand which had learnt to perform
many of the useful services above described, such
as dressing, &c., and also to use dumb-bells and go
through athletic exercises, was still much too nerve-
less to make an impression on soft clay. The first
step in overcoming the difficulty was to get the
child to squeeze an india-rubber ball and let it go
again, until the rhythmical contraction and ex-
pansion of the ball communicated itself to the
hand.
When the child was thus brought so far that he
could act upon his material and impress upon it
some shape, he was given some clay to work upon.
As he could not use his fingers to much purpose,
owing to their weakness, he rolled the clay between
his palms. A kindergarten teacher would expect
this action to have shaped a ball. It did not. The
resulting shape was a sort of cylinder, unequally
conical at either end. The reason of this was the
imperfection of the touch. To make a ball there
must be muscular action combined with a sense of
touch, which produce together the rotary motion
needed to make a spherical shape. If muscular
activity is present alone, the clay becomes irregu-
larly cylindrical. The child, however, as his sense
of touch had gone through much preliminary
training, soon proved equal to making a ball of
clay. To form a cube or a pyramid in clay,
besides action of muscle and touch, a third thing
S^GUIN 27
is required. The eye must be brought into play.
And here at once a trap is set for the unwary
teacher. It is hard to make a cube by use of hand
and eye. The kindergarten teacher therefore
shows her pupil how to flatten first one side of a
piece of clay and then another on a slate or desk,
until six flat sides are produced. No doubt this
is an excellent way to make a cube if it be your
object to make a cube; but that is not the intention
of the teacher of the idiot He wants to enable
the child to impress an idea of form on matter by
an infinite variety of acts of pressure on the part
of the nervous-muscular mass concentrated at the
ends of the fingers. To instruct a child, whether
normal or idiot, for show, let him use the table as
a mould, and instead of his two eyes the legs of
a pair of compasses to measure distance. But
this is not education. It is to mistake means for
ends, and to make the hand and eye dependent
upon mechanical aid just when by carefully graded
exercises of increasing difficulty they are prepared
to act independently of such crutches. The effect
of it is to make the Idiot Hand and Eye return to
the automatism from which you have been rescuing
them so painfully.
It is not likely that the works of art in the way
of drawing and modelling produced by such an
artist as the child with hands and eyes as described
would reach a high standard absolutely, so as to
please others, but here are the results won for
himself He has learnt to express a mental
image in clay, which, although imperfect, reveals
to him the action of mind and will on matter; he
28 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
has learnt to act at the instigation of another, to
carry out his wish, and to form and carry out a
wish of his own. His eye responds infinitely better
than before to his hand in the way of directions,
presentations, ideas and suggestions, and impulse;
the oscillations of his eyeballs have decreased ; the
fixing of his eyeball at an angle is rarer and less
persistent. The child's vision, the " idiot eye ", is
more under the control of his own will and that of
those around him. The transition from things and
acts to speech has been in this manner. His voca-
bulary is now reasonably correct ; things and their
names have been presented together, and in pre-
senting objects care has been taken to name them
along with their qualities, movements, character-
istics; and, in addition to this, much attention has
been paid to contrast, and along with a given
quality its opposite had been cited; similarly,
analogous ideas had been introduced where appro-
priate. Thus, nothing had been spoken of without
setting alongside of it some contrast or some
analogous conception or object Pictures, too,
and portraits he loved to look at, having learnt
to give value to every detail. In this way he
knows by their face and actions a number of great
men.^
" But ", someone will say, " seven or eight years
old, and the child has not been learning to read
or write. When will his education really begin.^"
" When ", says S^guin, " his mind shall have been
stored by the exercise of his senses with a number
of correct impressions of objects. Let him remain
*Scc Arckiva of Medicine, October, 1879.
m SEGUIN 29
in an 'analphabetic' condition until his preliminary
stock of ideas gives him some chance of being able
to follow what he reads, and then he will not be
exposed to the absurdity of being set to read by
some teacher, really more imbecile than himself,
what he does not understand a word of. Let him,
for some time at any rate, be set to read what he
has himself helped his teacher to compose and
what he has himself written."
If it be asked. How can the study of defective
intellect of cretinous children really throw light on
the mental growth of healthy and normal children ?
the answer is to be found in Seguin's discovery,
that the normal intellect depends upon the inter-
action and proper co-ordination of various parts of
the nervous system.
To understand the co-ordination of the parts of
a complex machine the first thing is to learn the
function of each part separately.
Now in a normal child the various parts of the
nervous organism work so rapidly and promptly
that it is almost impossible to follow the process
of co-ordination. It is indeed quick as thought.
In the cretinous child, owing to want of co-
ordination, different movements can be studied
before they are combined into a whole. The
method of training such children consists in doing
for them artificially what in the ordinary child is
done naturally.
With the necessary modifications, what is good
for the abnormal child is a basis for dealing with
the normal child. The study of the slow move-
ments of the defective intellect is like examining
30 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
minute structures with a microscope. Analysis is
rendered possible. Very minute intervals and
distances become apparent under a lens which
escape observation without it.
Imbecile and defective children, the blighted
flowers in the kindergarten — ^these were the objects
of Sdguin's life-work. Let the world cherish his
memory. Many ladies are following in his steps.
Let them find some refreshment in the fact that
their act of mercy is not merely as the nurse at
the rear of the battle-field of life, attending to the
disabled, but that their labours also place them
among the pioneers who are preparing the way
for the advancement of the knowledge of the
human mind.
MANUAL TRAINING
Lecture to Teachers at the
Bradford Educational Exhibition, December, 1899
I HAVE often had the pleasure of taking part in
conferences on manual training, and I cannot say
anything new. My object to-day is to review the
reasons for its adoption which influence its ad-
vocates. The movement spreads continuously, in
ever-widening circles. Its progress during the
last twenty years has been perhaps slower than
some might desire, but the ground won is held,
and the advance is sure. The growth resembles
that of the oak and not of the mushroom. After
all, there is plenty of time in the next century.
Manual training is advocated on many grounds:
it is a necessary part of sound intellectual training;
the laws of sound health demand its practice; and
art, science, and industry all require its support.
I, however, addressing teachers in West Riding
schools, wish to emphasize the ideas of its first
founders — the spirit of men like Uno Cygnseus,
the father of Finnish elementary schools, and
Herr Salomon, the founder of Swedish manual
training.
These men never ceased to dwell on the idea
that all education must be spiritual. "Work in
education is work for God ", they affirm, and " all
education is something sacred ". Their thoughts
31
32 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
are the conceptions of men who regard education as
something higher than a mere industrial question.
Improved education has something higher in view
than increase in corn and oil and wine, as if a large
school were but the entrance or porch to a still
larger barn or granary. These men set the needs
of humanity in the forefront, and their first aim
is the sound training of the child, to make him
become as perfect a human being as his nature
permits him to be made. They desire that every
child that is born shall become complete as a man,
and not a mere animated tool for use in industry
or commerce — mere labour for the cheapest market.
Manual training is essential to the proper develop-
ment of all human beings. The West Riding, un-
less I am mistaken, is yet a land where music and
song are loved without stint. Let the Yorkshire
dalesmen cling to this precious birthright, and not
think for one moment that advocates of manual
training bid them make any sacrifice of the Muses
for merely material gains, or toss away the solid
end of life, which is ideal, to win the luxuries of
fine raiment and the like, which are the realities
of kings* palaces. Our aim is to make life not
emptier, but fuller; to make the vision of the poet
and the meaning of music more fruitful and in-
spiring; and to awaken wider sympathies between
man and man. We wish to contribute to the
solidarity of the human race by enlarging the
early experience of each member. We wish to
avoid cramping and confining the growing mind
through a one-sided and narrow book -training.
Our desire is to set the roar of the mill and the
MANUAL TRAINING 33
clang of the forge to the music of great thoughts
and great tunes. Manual and literary training
must be combined.
Perhaps some one will ask why manual training
is more necessary in schools at the present time
than it was in the days of our fathers. A moment's
reflection will supply a complete answer. During
the past hundred years a great change in the con-
ditions of industrial life has been in process, and
the change has had an important bearing upon the
way we all live at the end of the nineteenth century.
If you talk, for instance, with almost any farmer
whose years number enough to have whitened his
hair, he will tell you how in the days of his youth
every household was a miniature technical school.
In every homestead, each day of the week and
each season of the year provided different occupa-
tions, which called into play the active use of the
hand, alike for men and women, aided by boys
and girls. Monday, it might be, there was baking;
Tuesday, brewing; Wednesday, perhaps threshing;
Thursday, thatching; Friday, constructing a hovel,
or some rough carpentry. The women spun and
wove. In different neighbourhoods different things
were made ; but in every home all were busy with
their hands. In these days, all those things that
once had to be made at home are purchased at
a store, or brought round by a tradesman's cart.
Machinery saves hand labour, and nothing is
made at home. The hand has no chance of being
trained at all. Now it is clear that in old days,
when the hand was trained at home by many and
varied occupations, all that the school had to do
(M930) C
34 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
was to supplement this manual work by a certain
amount of book-learning. In the present day, if
the training of the hand is omitted at school, the
hand is never trained at all.
Yet the training of the hand is essential.
Students of anatomy, and biology, and mental
science — men like Sir James C. Browne in this
country and Professor Marshal in Leipzig — are
agreed as to the overwhelming importance of the
proper development of the muscles of the hand
during childhood, and especially before the age of
fourteen, by which period the nervous and muscular
apparatus concerned in the skilled use of the hand
is more or less complete, and cannot so well be
modified. Further, it is insisted on that the
proper development of the brain itself depends
upon the proper and varied employment of the
hand in early years. This fact may appear a
paradox to many, but the clearest illustration of
it is to be found in the observation made by
anatomists in dissecting the brain of a person
who has lost a limb in infancy and has died in
maturity. It appears that the part of the brain
tissue which was connected through nerves with
that lost limb is dwarfed, atrophied, and un-
developed. What happens when a limb is lost
altogether happens also to some extent when the
limb is little exercised. "Men", says Marshal,
"who attach little importance to manual training
are blind. Scales must fall from their eyes before
they can see how intimately humanity and civiliza-
tion are bound up with the use of the hand, and
admit the fact that no man's head-work is as com-
MANUAL TRAINING 35
plete as it might be unless he has learned the use
of his hands."
It cannot, I think, be denied that the character
of the average home has changed since it has
ceased to be a miniature technical school. There
are fewer educational incentives in it, and more
opportunities for amusement. Hence there is less
practical intelligence, less of the spirit of industry,
less thrift, and less moral earnestness.
Education in which the use of the hand is no
less suitably attended to than the use of books,
will lead to a life more healthy, more happy, and
more natural than a training confined to literary
studies. Modern literary taste might easily im-
prove. If school life is reduced to a mere cram
of text-books studied for examination purposes,
and supplemented by professional athleticism,
what can be expected of the scholars in later
life but a contemptuous performance of the
drudgery of business during the day, followed by
the false excitement of betting and gambling,
varied with the banalities of music-halls, after the
day's work?
But the handwork in the school must be of the
right kind. Beware of industrialism in education.
Beware of thinking it proper or possible to make
money out of a child's labour, and in so doing to
educate him at the same time. There are here
and there farmers and gentlemen in country dis-
tricts who would send a boy to scare crows from
morning to dusk, and call that occupation educa-
tion — technical education, of course. In towns
there are those who would set children, for ex-
36 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
ample, to gum envelopes all day, and call that
mental training, or character-forming, or technical
education.
Children at school cannot be prepared for a
special calling in after-life. If any zealous person
imagines this to be possible, a glance at the bulky
volume called The London Trades Directory would
be enough to correct him. The important point
to consider is rather this: Has their school life
tended to unfit the children for their calling in
after-life? Do the children, on leaving school, find
themselves content to take up whatever occupation
they may have to earn their living by? An edu-
cation which unfits the scholar for his subsequent
career as an apprentice to a trade or calling is
most unsatisfactory. It ought to be possible to
avoid this defect without attempting what is quite
impossible — to prepare a school-child for a trade.
Mere book-learning which is not supplemented by
handwork does tend to unfit children to take up
work which demands the use of the hand.
It must not, however, be supposed that the train-
ing of the. mind is to be sacrificed to the training
of the muscles. Apart from the use of the hand,
the brain itself as an organ is imperfectly developed.
The early exercise of the muscles of the hand
develops the brain as much as the development
of the brain aids the growth of the finer muscular
activities. It is not possible to choose between
training the intellect and training the muscles.
Both must be trained together to make a complete
man.
To put this in another way. Nervous force is
MANUAL TRAINING 37
brought into play in the reception of impressions
through the senses; again, as often as muscular
reaction follows the stimulation of the nerves,
nervous force is also brought into play. For
health in mind and body, there must be a balance
between these two kinds of nervous activity — be-
tween the force which is chiefly receptive and the
force which is chiefly creative, as between imports
and exports.
There is in most children a wholesome desire to
perform acts, if not constructive, then destructive.
It is the fault of the teaching if this desire is not
guided into habits of making rather than marring.
The true remedy for stupid and cruel displays of
force in hobbledehoys, and of ** Hooliganism ", is
manual training.
Manual training, then, must be considered as a
part of general education, and must be introduced
into the school routine for its own sake, and not
because it subserves the purpose of technical edu-
cation. The method of instruction must on no
account be assimilated to workshop training or
that of technical schools. It must be systemati-
cally developed on lines suited to this conception
of it as a part of general education, as in Sweden
and Germany. It must not be taught on any
system which is simply industrial. For this reason,
the school children must not devote all their time
to perfecting a few joints and mere preliminary
exercises. They must construct simple articles
of which some use can be made, and the use of
which they can see.
If we ask for what standards and classes manual
38 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
training is needed, the answer is, " For all ". It
must begin with the kindergarten, and must con-
tinue in the lower standards, and so on through
the school. The later we commence hand and eye
training, the harder it is to secure success. If when
children first go to school their senses of touch and
sight are neglected, the number of children with
purblind vision and blunted tactile perception will
be greater in proportion to this early neglect.
In dealing with elementary schools, it is most
important not to confuse elementary training with
advanced training. This confusion is easily and
constantly made. Of course, advanced training
must be specialized training; it would be faulty
if it were not. Elementary training must not be
specialized; it is faulty if it is. If you are training
an apprentice in joinery, you will, doubtless, find it
better to use English carpenters' tools, in spite of
some of them being, as compared with American
tools, somewhat antiquated. If, however, you are
not dealing with a joiner's apprentice, you are not
limited to common English joiners* tools, and the
particular kind of tool which you use depends upon
quite other considerations. The knife, no doubt, is
not a joiner's tool, but it is the primary tool with
which some of the finest work is done. The
gardener, for example, docs not bud or prune or
graft with a chisel or plane, but with a knife. It is
worth bearing in mind, by the way, that John
Hunter, the famous surgeon, in his youth practised
woodwork.
The aim of all elementary education must be of
a general description; the aim of advanced training
MANUAL TRAINING 39
is skill in a particular trade. In elementary train-
ing various faculties must be partly trained, and
then when mature the scholar will select, as cir-
cumstances may determine, some one of them by
which he will elect to make his living, and develop
it fully and completely and professionally.
Much that is spoken with truth about specialized
and advanced training is wholly out of place and
misleading when the subject dealt with is the
general education of the child in early years and
in the elementary school.
Attention to these considerations is important,
because if they are neglected, the result may be
the teaching of the more or less adroit use of a few
tools, the structure of materials, and the tricks of
construction, and yet in the end disappointment
will arise. Instead of an improved general edu-
cation, there will be only so much more com-
mercialism, and so much more cheap labour.
The object of education is to awaken spontaneity
in the child. How can this be done if the teaching
constantly holds before his mind that he is being
trained for a particular purpose, and that his every
action as a child has a direct bearing on his future
occupation.? Rather should the ultimate end or
utilitarian value of his handwork be kept out of
sight, or at least in the background. Let his
childish activities occupy his thoughts wholly for
their own sake.
It does matter what thoughts are running
through a child's mind when he is at work. Let
him in his manual training make for his mother a
penholder or a wooden spoon, or a cardboard port-
40 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
folio for his father or sister. Let him work for
others without reward, and so procure a few
precious moments of self-forgetfulness. If the
child in the elementary school is allowed to spend
all his time in making joints which are laid aside
when finished, no account is taken of the child's
heart. The past cannot return, and the home has
ceased to be a centre of practical training; there-
fore children must acquire this at school.
Mr. Worthington was appointed by the Board of
Trade as a special commissioner to enquire into
and report upon the condition of British trade in
South America. He reports a falling off of Eng-
lish trade, and attributes it to (i) English ignorance
of the decimal system, and (2) to inferiority of
English packing. "The French cases arrive in
good condition, whereas the English arrive badly
broken." Mr. Johnson writes from Brussels that
English trade has lost its influence. "We are
beaten only in small matters of general neatness."
Manual dexterity, which leads to neatness, must
be cultivated at school or nowhere. We cannot
afford to send the children out into the world with
hands untrained in habits of neatness and accuracy.
Lessons in drawing must be connected with
practice in cutting out and constructing models of
various kinds: in the lower standards the material
may be paper and cardboard; in the upper stan-
dards it may be wood. Handwork may be em-
ployed in illustrating lessons in elementary science.
If children do not thus learn the use of their hands,
either at home or school, the general level of
manual dexterity must fall lower and lower; and
MANUAL TRAINING 41
this depreciation involves, according to the best
authorities, a loss of brain-power and general in-
telligence. Machinery can replace the human
hand, but it cannot act as a substitute for the
human brain.
In conclusion, I will confirm my own opinion by
a brief quotation, on the subject of manual training,
from William James, a famous American writer on
psychology, a pupil of the German Miinsterberg.
William James's recent book. Talks with Teachers
on Psychology^ is a most important one for all
teachers to read. In it will be found the following
remarks : —
"Manual training will give us citizens of an
entirely different intellectual fibre. Laboratory
work and bench work engender a habit of ob-
servation, a knowledge of the difference between
accuracy and vagueness, and an insight into
nature's complexity, and into the inadequacy of
all abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena,
which, once wrought into the mind, remain there
as lifelong possessions. They confer precision;
because if you are doing a thing, you must do it
definitely, right or wrong. They give honesty;
for when you express yourself by making things
and not by using words, it becomes impossible to
dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by am-
biguity. They beget a habit of self-reliance; they
keep the interest and attention always cheerfully
engaged, and reduce the teacher's disciplinary
functions to a minimum. Of the various systems
of manual training, the Swedish Sloyd seems to
me by far the best, psychologically considered."
42 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
In the introduction of manual training into this
country Bradford has been one of the most active
of pioneers. The work has been taken up in the
right spirit, and carried forward upon right lines.
After all, this is only as might be expected. The
country owes it to a member for Bradford that a
national system of education became an accom-
plished fact. We naturally look to those who laid
the foundation to give us ideas for the completion
of the edifice.
OBEDIENCE
OR
THE PLACE OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN
EDUCATION
"Obedience for its own sake is the worst of vices." — Headmaster
at the Headmasters' Conference
For a most amusing description of disobedient
children no better reference can be found than
Acton Bell's novel, Agnes Grey, and more espe-
cially the following graphic scene, when the heroine
was a sorely-tried governess in Mr. Bloomfield's
family: —
" I particularly remember one wild snowy after-
noon after my return in January; the children
had all come up from dinner, loudly declaring
that they meant ' to be naughty ', and they had
well kept their resolution, though I had talked
myself hoarse and wearied every muscle in my
throat in the vain attempt to reasoji them out of
it. I had got Tom pinned up in a corner, whence
I told him he should not escape till he had done
his appointed task. Meantime Fanny had pos-
sessed herself of my work-bag and was rifling
its contents — and spitting into it besides. I told
her to let it alone, but to no purpose, of course.
'Burn it, Fanny,' cried Tom; and this command
she hastened to obey. I sprang to snatch it from
the fire, and Tom darted to the door. ' Mary Ann,
43
44 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
throw her desk out of the window/ cried he: and
my precious desk containing my letters and papers,
my small amount of cash, and all my valuables,
was about to be precipitated from the three-storey
window. I flew to rescue it. Meanwhile Tom had
left the room and was rushing down the stairs,
followed by Fanny. Having secured my desk I
ran to catch them, and Mary Ann came scamper-
ing after. All three escaped me and ran out of
the house into the garden, where they plunged
about in the snow, shouting and screaming in
exultant glee. While I stood just without the
door, trying by grim looks and angry words to
awe them into subjection, I heard a voice behind
me in harshly piercing tones, exclaiming, * Miss
Grey, is it possible? What in the devil's name
can you be thinking about?' 'I can't get them
in, sir,' said I, turning round and beholding Mr.
Bloomficld, the father of the three hopefuls, with
his hair on end and his pale-blue eyes bolting
from their sockets. ' But I insist upon their being
got in,' cried he, approaching nearer and look-
ing perfectly ferocious. * Then, sir, you must call
them yourself, if you please, for they won't listen
to me,' I replied, stepping back. 'Come in with
you, you filthy brats, or I'll horsewhip you every
one,' roared he; and the children instantly obeyed.
* There, you see, they came at the first word.' * Yes,
when yoti speak.' ' And it's very strange that when
you take care of them you've no better control over
'em than that' "
Who that has had the care of children without
possessing that liking for them, which is said to
OBEDIENCE 45
be an acquired taste, does not sympathize with
poor Miss Grey? And yet, although this young
lady, possessed as she was of great abiHty and a
trenchant faculty of observation, and also fortified
with some philosophy of education, met with such
disastrous failure, many good-natured unsophis-
ticated girls of only twelve or thirteen years
would have reduced the lively trio of juvenile
anarchists to happiness, good temper, and good
order without the slightest consciousness of having
done anything at all remarkable. These are facts
of common experience. What is the explanation
of them? Perhaps the power of securing obedience
is a divine gift, and it may be that no explanation
of it can be given. This, at any rate, was the
opinion of him who among the Athenian com-
manders most deserves the title of scholar and
gentleman.
"Men differ greatly", wrote Xenophon, "in
respect of fitness to rule. One captain of a ship,
for instance, will bring his men into port, after a
long day's rowing, full of good humour and mutual
congratulations in spite of being exhausted by their
work, and bathed with perspiration. Another will
put into port after accomplishing only half the dis-
tance, his men hardly breathed by their exercise,
and yet grumbling, discontented, and full of hatred
towards their captain. So, too, in the army there
are generals who can neither get hard work out
of their men nor inspire them to face danger, and
whose companies take to themselves credit for dis-
obeying orders, instead of feeling the disgrace of it."
" There are other generals," continues Xenophon,
46 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
"divinely great and excellent, who secure willing
obedience, and whose men are prepared to go
through fire and water with them, regarding good
discipline as the highest honour, and the opposite
the deepest disgrace. Their men may be relied
upon for working their hardest whether alone or as
one of a company. It is the same in civil affairs,"
he adds; "success in business accrues not to him
who relies on rewards and punishments, but rather
to him whose serene presence stimulates the
workmen to energy, perseverance, and cheerful
obedience. Let us reserve", he says, "our ad-
miration for the master whose men, if they catch
sight of him, are spurred on to mutual rivalry and
burn with ambition to excel. Such a man ", says
Xenophon, " has something of the kingly character
in him, and I am not sure", he says, "that it is
possible for anyone to learn this art by seeing
it done or by hearing about it, for I do not believe
that this faculty of obtaining willing obedience is
entirely human, but I rather think it is divine, and
that God grants it to those who are initiated in
true wisdom, whereas the exercise of despotism
over men against their will is an office which they
reserve for those whom they consider worthy to
live the life which Tantalus is said to live in hell,
fearing a second death."
Now it may be that as regards the art of control,
whether of children or of men, there is no theory
which will completely match the practice; but as
the power to secure obedience lies at the root
of all efforts to train children, prudence commands
some critical study of those teasing and tantalizing
OBEDIENCE 47
problems which present themselves to all, and
trouble the thoughtful and conscientious few. " I
find no difficulty in securing obedience from my
children," says one. " And what is your counsel?"
** It is just this. Suppose my little boy is playing
in the drawing-room, I tell him, ' you may play as
long as you're good'. He begins to be naughty.
I ring the bell; the nurse comes down and the boy
goes up. He forfeits the pleasure of my company.
The plan is simplicity itself." " Implicit obedience,"
says another, " that is my system. I will have that
and nothing less. Miss Grey's mistake was rea-
soning with her charges. As to her Tom, she
should have thumped him with the back of a hair-
brush, and all that scene would have been avoided.
Reasoning! the only argument a boy understands
is the persuasive penny cane."
Implicit obedience! Well, the most perfect ex-
amples of implicit obedience and prompt execution
of an order are to be found in war. The philoso-
pher, like the dramatist, may be permitted to pass
at once from the nursery to the battle-field with
abrupt transition. Here is a description of the
behaviour of thoroughly well disciplined German
troops when reduced to terrible straits in the
Franco-German war: —
" It would be impossible to overrate the conduct
of the two German regiments, which, with failing
ammunition, with companies and drafts of com-
panies dispersed or intermixed, under the eye
only of subordinate leaders, delivered their fire as
carefully and in as absolute compliance to orders,
as if they were on the rifle ranges in peace time.
48 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
For two days they had been on outpost duty in
contact with the enemy, and they had eaten no
food save what they carried in their haversacks.
During the day of battle they had been marched
backwards and forwards in heavy country, and
mostly in retreat under fire, and now at three
o'clock, almost physically exhausted, they had to
stand for two hours on the defensive. The men
were so absolutely worn out that, as an officer
of the regiment relates, the repulse of the French
was followed by no cheer, no outspoken expression
of triumph ; the men sank down, and, leaning with
their backs against any support available, gazed
blankly before them, or even slept; but on the
call to meet the renewed assault, every man roused
himself from his lethargy, and awaited in perfect
silence the next order to fire. Never has there
been finer illustration of real discipline than that
afforded by the battalion officers, the non-com-
missioned officers, and the rank and file of the
38th Brigade at the battle of Beaune-la-Rolande."
No one can doubt that there are occasions in
life when a training in the practice of implicit
obedience, of prompt unreflecting blind execution
of orders, is vital. A little child who has strayed
out into the roadway, and is in imminent danger
of being run over, would be saved from that fate if
he were prompt in obeying his mother's orders,
"Come here", instead of being in the habit of
loitering and enquiring. Shall we, then, rest satis-
fied with this principle of training, and accept it as
solid rock on which to erect the superstructure of
the child's character?
OBEDIENCE 49
Curiously enough, an incident in the same battle
makes us doubt whether the principle of unreason-
ing obedience is quite complete by itself. A small
force of Germans, inside Beaune, a mere handful,
were being hard pressed by the development of
a concentrated attack upon them of some dozen
battalions of the French 20th Corps. Suddenly
there appeared, as if to their rescue, Captain Feige,
with a small additional force. Captain Feige had,
however, received orders to march through Beaune,
and pass on to a meeting-place on the other side
of the village, and even while he entered the village
he received a second order to proceed to this
destination without delay. Captain Feige, how-
ever, on learning the state of affairs in the village,
determined to disobey the twice-repeated orders
which he had received, and to remain in the village
to strengthen the scanty force available to meet
the French attack, and he adhered to his decision
in spite of receiving a third order. The French
attack was decisively repulsed, and unstinted and
in unmeasured terms is the commendation be-
stowed upon Captain Feige by the historian of
the event for accepting the responsibility of dis-
obeying orders. There seem, then, to be occasions
even in military affairs when disobedience to orders
is commended, and implicit obedience discounten-
anced.
Let me return from the scene of war to the
nursery. A father one day, according to a story
which I heard from the lips of Mr. Spurgeon, lifted
his little boy of four years old into his arms, and
carried him into the garden to amuse him with the
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50 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
sight of the flowers. Hearing himself called, the
father hurried away to see what was wanted, first
setting his baby boy down on the doorstep,
and bidding him to sit there till he came back.
Business, however, absorbed the father's attention,
and he left home for the day, forgetful of his little
son on the step. In the evening, on his return he
found the little fellow still seated where he had
placed him in the morning, never having stirred
the whole day. Is this state of mind, I mean the
state in which such implicit childlike obedience is
possible, one which is desirable.-* Ought we to
wish to establish in the child a spirit of blind un-
reasoning obedience to orders such as is essential
to military discipline?
We all depend upon each other. We are not
like so many Robinson Crusoes living on lonely
islands without even a man Friday. Human
society is pot a mere aggregate of individuals, and
in mere self-protection ostracizes those whose in-
dividuality and self-assertion are inconsistent with
social life. Men must live a large part of their
lives in obedience to usage and conventional rules,
for otherwise there would be no society. Social
life would be impracticable. But there is a differ-
ence between the kind of obedience which is
necessary for a member of ordinary society and
that required in the army, corresponding to the
difference between social and military life. A unit
of an army is not exactly like the unit of a state.
A man may be, and I think ought to be, a unit of
the national army as well as a unit of the nation,
but the discipline of the army is one thing, and the
OBEDIENCE 5 1
discipline of society is another. In an army you
look for its perfection in its value as a fighting
machine. An army is a weapon of war.
In war, human action must be simplified and
reduced to its simplest terms. Army discipline
is not merely a set of regulations designed to pre-
serve order among a vast array of men. Army
discipline is the result of long-continued habit,
which makes the very muscles of the soldier in-
stinctively obey the word of command, so that
under whatsoever stress of circumstances, danger,
and death he hears that word of command, even
though his mind be too confused and astounded
to attend, yet his muscles obey.
The discipline of social life is, however, of a
much more complex character than this muscular
obedience, for the reason that the aims of social
life are manifold and diverse, while the aim of
military life is single and concentrated. When the
aim is single, the means to it are comparatively
simple, and when you know exactly what you
have to do, there is less difficulty in finding the
means to do it. But the aim of social life is not
simple. It may be made to appear simple. It
may, for instance, be stated that the aim of social
life is to make men lead a good life. Complexity,
however, enters into the question as soon as we
enquire, what is the good life.'* The members of a
social community, say a club or a large school, are
apt to be very exacting in their insistence upon
conformity to the smallest details of its usages.
The members of it who live in obedience to rules
of life thus enforced, obey laws which do not
5a EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
depend upon reflection, but only upon imitation.
The consequence is, that they may easily reach
a stage when their conventional habits are wholly
independent of their hereditary temperaments and
faculties. Suppose that a man in this stage happens
to be separated from the society in which he has
grown up and all its conventional restraints. What
surprises are in store! What unexpected revolu-
tions of character take place! The economist
becomes a spendthrift, the courteous become selfish,
the considerate become cruel, and occasionally the
perfect gentleman appears in a new character as
the perfect blackguard. More than this, natural
aptitudes are obscured and remain undeveloped
amid conventional restraints. A possible worker
for the advancement of science, in consequence of
social pressure may become a commonplace athlete
or sportsman. For the same reason a man of mere
muscle may become a clergyman or a lawyer, and
a post which requires energy and confidence may
be filled by a man who is lethargic and desponding.
For every man's character is twofold in its
nature. There is for the one part a group of
dispositions, tendencies, and possibilities which is
inherited, while another part consists of practices
and opinions which are imitative and entirely due
to the society in which he lives. The educator has
to study the natural or hereditary dispositions of
the child and work upon them with discrimination,
repressing or modifying some, and encouraging
others. Military training is like a steam-roller,
which, passing over a stretch of ground, makes an
excellent road, but crushes out other virtue in the
OBEDIENCE 53
soil. The discipline of the educator is like the
gardener's craft, which takes into account the
suitability of each plot of ground and the adapt-
ability of it to varied purposes, and also the
capacities and limitations of the plants which he
proposes to cultivate.
A fault which arises from hereditary defect must
be dealt with in a different way from one which
arises through accidental or transitory circum-
stances. A fault which may lead to a bad habit
must be dealt with in a different way from one
which is a habit, and a fault which has become a
second nature must be dealt with in a different
way from one which is a fault of nature. There
are faults committed by the child, and there are
faults in the child.
One child is untidy by natural disposition,
another because no one has shown him how to
be tidy. One child is cruel by disposition, and
torments his companions or dumb animals because
of the unsympathetic hebetude of his nature;
another is cruel through heedlessness and want
of knowledge. Some are born cowards, and others
are made cowards by the excessive timidity of
those who train them. Some are born gluttons,
and some are made greedy by mistaken kindness.
Some are by nature deceitful and unreliable, others
by mistaken approval of some chance art of deceit,
which ended in a laughable incident to the amuse-
ment of their elders. Some children are by nature
inattentive, others because they have never been
trained to pay attention. As a rule, the mother
is a better judge than the father of these dis-
54 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
tinctions, and her mistakes will be due rather to
the heart than the understanding. Intellectual
deficiency is not unfrequently due to some physical
imperfection which has escaped notice, such as a
slight defect in hearing, or in the sense of sight.
The causes, then, of children's disobedience are
manifold, and cases require very different treat-
ment
Obedience, such as is the first duty of a soldier,
is of a more limited description. Let us think for
a moment more exactly of the nature of military
obedience, or the instinctive response of the muscles
to the word of command, in other words, the dis-
cipline of parade. How quickly can an order be
executed? The art of obedience to an order may
be divided into three periods, which correspond to
three operations of the nervous system. There are
afferent nerves, or in-carrying nerves, which bring
a stimulus from the skin to the brain; these set in
motion some of the complicated nerve-cells of the
brain, and these, in their turn, stimulate the efferent
nerve, or nerves carrying nervous force outwards
from the brain to the muscles. It is important to
note this threefold division of nervous action, be-
cause from experiment it appears that while neither
practice, nor training, nor education can do much
to increase the speed of the action of the in-carry-
ing or out-carrying nerves, they can do a great
deal to enhance the rapidity with which the
nervous force is discharged from the brain -cells,
and in co-ordinating the action of different centres.
The in-carrying nerves are often called sensory
nerves, and the out-carrying nerves, motor nerves.
OBEDIENCE 55
The work of the brain is Hke an obstruction be-
tween the word of command received by the
sensory nerve and the execution of the order by
the motor nerve. The period during which the
cells of the brain are doing their work is longer
than the time needed for the action of the other
two. Training, however, shortens the middle in-
terval, while, as I have said in respect of the other
two, although they differ in different people, it
does not appear that practice or training can do
much to quicken their action. The time taken by
the brain in receiving a word of command and
converting it into the corresponding action can be
shortened, mainly in one way, and that is by con-
stant repetition or drill. That which tends to
extend the time is, of course, such action of the
brain as is connected with reflection or doubt or
uncertainty of purpose. All that is characteristic
of reasoning and consciousness must be eliminated
if obedience to an order is to be as prompt as
nerve and muscle can make it.
What is the least possible time in which a word
of command can be heard and acted on — say the
order, ''Halt"?
Physiologists have reckoned that, roughly speak-
ing and on the average, the sum of the three periods
above described, viz., the period taken by the in-
carrying or sensory nerve, the period taken by the
nerve -cells of the brain, and thirdly, the period
taken by the out-carrying or motor nerves in their
respective action, amounts in the aggregate to one-
sixth of a second. The ideal of drill, then, is that
a soldier is able to act on an order within a sixth
56 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
of a second of the utterance of it by the command-
ing officer. This, then, is the theory of "smartness".
In military affairs this kind of smartness is pretty
much confined to three or four sets of muscles,
namely, those of the legs, feet, arms and hands,
for these are the muscles concerned with march-
ing and handling a rifle. It would appear that
while in general education these muscles ought
to be trained to prompt and perfect working, the
training ought not to be limited to these as in
military drill, but that every care should be taken
to make a child prompt in all its movements. The
power to carry out a command promptly is the
basis of all obedience. Doubtless it is mechanical
rather than moral or rational, but it may be re-
garded as a power which it is important to exercise
and develop as a foundation for moral and rational
obedience.
It is to be observed that this power may be
encouraged by exercises which are almost wholly
pleasant to the little child, and this is one of the
inner and less obvious values of kindergarten games
and drills. Of course, if the exercises are care-
lessly done, if the games are played, as we say,
"without spirit", if directions are only half fol-
lowed, if there is any dilatoriness or slackness in
the execution of orders, they fail of their effect in
training the child to acquire that power of acting
with promptness and precision which may be
called muscular obedience. Hence the immense
advantage of teaching children to play together
in organized games. They may be taught to
insist on each other's playing the game properly
OBEDIENCE 57
and exactly, and to learn the practice of correct
play, and to avoid overlooking mistakes of care-
lessness, confusion, or insubordination. They will
learn from themselves not to tolerate mistaken
kindness, which allows a slipshod and flabby
practice even of a game. I need not say that
in my opinion cricket and football professionally
taught and played are simply a continuation of the
kindergarten games, and, like them, of the highest
educational value.
I accept, then, military discipline thus explained
as the physical basis of obedience, and think that
it may well be imparted to children through games
and drills; but obedience must be moral and rational
before it is really human. For military drill can
be taught to a horse and other animals, such as
birds, and even performing fleas. Some children's
movements resemble those of grasshoppers. I
never heard of a performing grasshopper, but be-
fore training some mercurial youths I should re-
commend the teacher to practise his 'prentice hand
upon drilling a pair of these creatures with their
vigorous but unpredictable boundings. Starting
with a training which partakes of the nature of
military drill, and prompt obedience or power to
execute an order smartly, whether the order be
" fire " or " fetch your grammar ", I proceed to con-
sider the nature of moral and rational obedience.
I have said that a good many practical people
insist upon the absurdity of reasoning with a little
child. It is urged that a child seldom understands
reasoning, and if he does he may win a triumph
over you, either because he is clever in making the
53 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
worse appear the better cause, or because his Hmited
experience prevents him from seeing what nonsense
he talks, or even because he happens to have right
and reason on his side.
Miss Agnes Grey's fault, it may be said, was
that she overlooked this truth, making herself
hoarse with reasoning and argument. A child's
treasury of ideas and experience is nearly empty.
He knows little of the results of actions. For a
boy there are no such things as noise, disorder, or
dirt He regards all this with pleasure, or at least
with pure indifference. He will go birds'-nesting
in his new hat and coat, and laugh aloud at "wisest
aunt telling of saddest tale". He enjoys crude
colour, strong lights, and hideous contrasts. He
loves caricature, while things out of harmony and
proportion amuse him in the same way as their
grossness. A mile long ribbon of scarlet geranium,
yellow calceolaria, and blue lobelia, at which Mr.
Morris would have shrunk, would make a boy cry
" how jolly ", and then he would gather the flowers
and stamp on the border. Children, again, often
seem much more heartless than they really are.
Their want of sympathy, and readiness to inflict
pain, whether on animals or on grown-up people,
is often due to ignorance. It is of no use to appeal
to principles of humanity with a cruel boy, such
as Agnes Grey describes, who tore off the legs of
living fledgelings, because you are appealing to the
very principles which you wish to instil into the
child, and which as yet he has not acquired. I do
not think, however, that it is always a mistake to
reason with a child, but rather that it is easy to
OBEDIENCE 59
reason in a mistaken way. When you have estab-
lished a good principle in a child's mind, then you
can reason from it. He forgets it, or fails to see
its application. You can remind him of it, or ex-
plain the application.
How, then, should Agnes Grey have dealt with
her heartless Tom.^ I expect that if she had
managed to procure for him some animal which
he could have kept as a pet and learnt to take care
of, watching it and interesting himself in its ways,
she could have effected a considerable change for
the better. This, I take it, is pure Frcebelian
doctrine. At least he would have shown kindness
to one animal, and the disposition could be further
cultivated. If a child is unkind or even cruel to
younger or weaker children, it is useless to reason
about the evils of tyranny and selfishness. The
remedy is to place the small "bully" in the position
of protector to some particularly weak child. Simi-
larly, if a boy or girl evince a taste for staring
contrasts in colour, there is no use in appealing
to the general principles of aesthetics. The remedy
is to call their attention to the arrangement of
colour in some beautiful picture, or in some beauti-
ful piece of textile fabric.
The child can act upon mental images before
he can act (consciously) upon abstract principles.
He can be kind, for instance, to a playfellow at
school who has just left home for the first time,
long before he can appreciate at all adequately
the golden maxim, " Do unto others as you
would they should do unto you ". Simple acts
which he may be led to perform with a little
6o EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
tact on the part of his elders will form a reser-
voir in his mind, from which subsequently rea-
soned action may flow in steady stream. A boy
can divide the contents of a hamper among his
companions long before he can assimilate the
doctrine of the " greatest happiness of the greatest
number". There is a wide difference between
wholly ignoring the undeveloped reasoning powers
of the child, and adapting your appeal to reason
to his miniature intellect. It is waste of time to
appeal to principles before they are formed in his
mind. The right way to build up good principles
is to make a judicious use of carefully chosen
occasions, and wherever it is possible, without
wearying the child, to explain the bearing of the
action.
If a child is accustomed never to learn the reason
for a command, he is apt to look upon all directions
as purely arbitrary, and he tacitly believes, and
acts on the belief, that he may without offence
do almost anything he is not expressly forbidden.
"Jack, don't rest your dusty feet upon the cushion
of the opposite seat. It is not nice for the next
passenger to sit on a dusty seat. You may spoil
somebody's dress." If you give a reason where
you conveniently can, and where the reason is
easily understood by the child, you may implant
in him a belief (sometimes unfounded) that you
always have a good reason for controlling his
actions, and that you don't give unnecessary and
merely harassing directions. If an appeal to rea-
son is of little value to the child, it is of great value
to the parent or teacher. An order or command
OBEDIENCE 6l
involves a virtue in two persons. There must
be a virtue in the issuer of the order as well as
in the recipient. Agnes Grey had to deal with
high-spirited children. She would regard them as
thoroughly disobedient. They would regard her
as always thwarting them and restraining them
from doing what they wished. She would appear
never as a help, but always as a hindrance to their
pleasures. The more exuberant the vital force in
children the more lively are their actions, the more
unexpected their turns and changes of amusement.
The caprice of the moment is the " lawless law of
their behaviour". No action seems to lead up to
any other.
At one moment all is harmony and friendship
in a group, an instant later all is quarrelling and
discord. Their companionship, like an April day,
is an alternation of sunshine and showers, laughter
and tears. The children's acts in this case are not
in themselves good or bad. They are, however,
apt to be appraised as moral actions according to
a false standard, and to be praised, or blamed,
or viewed with indifference, amusement, or indig-
nation, according as they affect grown people.
This more or less chance attitude of their elders
towards juvenile high spirits does not help to
establish in the child a sense of justice. It is not
just to laugh at a child for his smart saying where
it amuses, and punish him when it gives offence.
The fact is, that no wise person will leave their
children to their own caprices for long together.
The habit of acting with heed is not always easy
to establish, and even the burnt child does not
62 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
always heed the fire. Future trouble arises when
a child is habitually left to act from mere physical
impulse without the accompaniment of any mental
effort in directing the action and giving it purpose,
and thereby subjecting the physical impulse to
mental control. Aimless romping, with its accom-
paniment of noise, may reduce the exuberance of
animal spirits, but it tends to enslave the will.
One remedy is to help children to find out and
play at properly-organized games, such as prisoners'
base for young boys, cricket and football for older
ones, where shouting and muscular activity are
directed to some purpose, and hence become
necessarily subject to the players' control. Let
us follow the boy who has been left to play at
his own caprice into later life. He becomes a
youth, a hob-a-de-hoy. The feeling " I can", grows
with his growth and strengthens with his strength.
The well-founded sense of his power issues in a
desire to do, but his vague desire to do is unac-
companied with any operation of the intellect.
Unaccustomed to act with a purpose even in play
he has acquired the opposite habit, and finds action
which is directed or controlled most distasteful
He seems to love to act in opposition to order and
sound advice, and to desire to do what is forbidden ;
he shuns domestic life and orderly circles, seeking
company which is coarse, vulgar, and often cruel.
^^ Fait ce que vous votidrez" is his motto, and
although seeking to do what he likes, he finds
sooner or later how different doing what you like
is from liking what you do. High spirits are
naturally associated with manliness, but it does not
OBEDIENCE 63
seem necessary that sturdy children should develop
upon the unattractive lines which I have described.
The old plan on which many sensible people have
acted since recorded time is the right one. Much
attention must be paid to finding right occupations
for children throughout the day, and paying as
much attention to their so-called play as to their
so-called work.
I am not sure that we sufficiently realize that the
chief value of the so-called work or lessons which
children do is its purposefulness, and this charac-
teristic should belong also to playtime. This also,
in my opinion, is pure Frcebelianism. The real
difference between work and leisure should be
between occupations which are more exacting in
their demands on the intellect and those which are
less so. No good game like cricket or football
is mere play. Neither is it right that any lesson
should appear to a child to be an aimless expendi-
ture of energy like a tread-mill. I am no advocate
for never leaving children to themselves, or de-
priving them of the chance of self-determination
according to the prompting of their natural dis-
position, but I think it is the duty of every educator
to supervise children sufficiently to see that the
occupations of their leisure, however apparently
trivial, are purposeful, even if it consist in early
years of making the humble mud-pie, or throwing
stones at a mark, instead of at one another or at
glass windows. The child at play, who, when asked
what he is playing at, can only reply " Nothing", is
not developing himself at all, but passing his time
at the mercy of fortune, which is not always kindly.
64 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
It is almost entirely through Froebel that the real
meaning and use of play have been made intelligible
to everyone who will devote a little attention to
the subject. Animal spirits — exuberant vital force
— must not be repressed, but judiciously directed
and turned to some definite purpose. They must
be made constructive, or else they tend to become
destructive.
I began by contrasting two methods of securing
obedience, reasoning and force. Agnes Grey tries
to make disobedient children obey her by reasoning.
Their father reduces them to obedience at once by
violent language and threats. " Come in, you filthy
brats, or else I'll horsewhip you every one!" The
failure of Agnes Grey was due to inexperience. It
is useless to appeal to principles before they are
formed in the mind of the child. She did not
really apply the method which she intended, and
her failure is no proof that her method was wrong.
Nevertheless, in its ultimate result, the obedience
secured by their father would have done the
children more harm than the naughtiness which
Miss Grey failed for the moment to put an end to.
Mr. Broomfield relied on his coercive power and
nothing more. He constrained the will of his
children by mere force, practically physical force.
His system was the opposite of that of Froebel.
Now it seems to be a crude but not uncommon
conception of law which defines it " the command
of a superior who has coercive powers to compel
obedience and punish disobedience", because if this
be correct, force is the governing idea of law, and
it is hard to reconcile force with the intelligent
OBEDIENCE 65
assent of those who are subject to its influence. In
place of force, if we wish to act in Froebel's spirit,
we must substitute customary action founded on
general consent. Obedience to authority is dearly
purchased at the cost of forfeiting respect for law
or for the superior who executes it. Even as
regards military organization it must be remem-
bered that army discipline is the discipline of the
army. The commanding officer is no dictator
issuing arbitrary orders at his own caprice. An
officer who plays this part — and there have been
such — soon stirs up a mutiny. The officer is the
mouthpiece of the army. His commands are known
to be necessary for the safety and success of the
army, and his order is but the signal for each to
do what he has already a mind to do. Similarly,
if an officer punishes one of the men, there is be-
hind him the force of the opinion of the rest. They
know that if a man sleeps on his watch or neglects
a serious duty the correction must be stern. The
discipline of each is essential to the collective
safety of all. A French officer not long ago was
detected in supplying the enemy with plans of his
country's forts. He was cashiered in the presence
of his regiment, his sword broken, his regimental
badges torn off, and he was dismissed as a civilian.
The punishment is like a great disaster in nature,
such as a stroke of lightning or an earthquake.
The force behind is overwhelming. There is
dignity in its irresistibleness. The army acts
through its officers for its own good. The culprit
is as a reed cottage in the path of an avalanche.
On the contrary, in a small community such as the
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66 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
family, there can be nothing really corresponding
to military discipline, for, in the first place, the
offender's own good is of primary importance; and
secondly, there is no collective force or common
interest seriously jeopardized by juvenile delin-
quencies — if, for instance, he swims a paper boat
on some freshly-made soup — such as invest the
discipline of the army with so much dignity.
The child, again, is not such an inconsiderable
item in a family as a soldier in the army, when
either member is compared with its respective whole.
It appears, then, that it does matter very much in
what spirit and by what means obedience is en-
forced among young children, for upon these things
depends the conception which children, when they
are grown up, will have of law and of their duty to
the state and their country. If obedience is based
on force alone, they will grow up with the idea
that the state is as a policeman regulating traffic
in a crowded thoroughfare, an ofl^cer who is more
respected than loved for this office. Law will be
the dictatorial command of a superior, and obeyed
mainly because that superior, be the superior one
or many, has power to enforce the dictates of his
or their caprice. A wise parent will early implant
in the mind of the child that he gives an order not
out of pure self-will, but in respect to some higher
principle which controls his action. The captain
of a training ship, which had caught fire, stopped
a panic-stricken cadet who was hurrying over the
ship's side as though he were the only person to be
rescued, with the remark — " That is not the way at
sea, my lad ; fall into your place ". There can be
OBEDIENCE 67
no common life, whether in nursery, or school-room,
or home, or town, or country, without the obser-
vance of certain rules of conduct, and even young
children may soon be taught to feel this before
they understand it. They may be taught " this is
our way here", or "this is not our way here". The
child must doubtless learn to do many things in
response to his parents' plain order, " I tell you to
do it"; but by judicious use of occasion he may be
made to feel that law is not his parents' word, and
that behind the order there is something more than
chance or the wish of the moment, something
which is general in its application, and equally
applying to all, and certain. The child may be
made to feel that he has a better self and a worse
self, and that the parent is by his dictates helping
the child's better self against his worse, and even
in giving his command obeying the dictates of a
command himself.
A curious instance of this perception of a double
self in a little child may be found in that charm-
ing book, W. v.: Her Book (Isbister). "We
lowly folk dine before most people think of lunch-
ing, so dinner was ready when we arrived home.
Now as decorum at table is one of the cardinal
virtues, W. V. dines by proxy. It is her charming
young friend Gladys who gives us the pleasure of
her company. It is strange how many things this
bewildering daughter of mine can do as Gladys,
which she cannot possibly accomplish as W. V.
W. V. is unruly, a chatterbox, careless, or at least
forgetful of the elegancies of the social board;
whereas Gladys is a model of manners, an angel in
68 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
a bib. W. V. cannot eat crusts, and as for por-
ridge, * I am surprised that your little girl does not
like porridge. It is so good for her.'" What we
want is, that boys as they grow up to manhood
should feel that law is not what is commanded by
the school, college, club, regiment, association, or
country to which they belong, but that these in-
stitutions enforce what is law, that is, practice and
customs actually approved by the bulk of the mem-
bers, for where this is not the case, no constitution
can long hang together. The spirit of Tom Brown,
in which the natural and proper attitude of every
healthy schoolboy is assumed to be one of oppo-
sition to the school authorities, cannot be really
sound.
Perhaps I may appear to enunciate a paradox,
but it seems to me far more important that a
child should grow up with a respect for authority,
than that he should be reduced to such mechani-
cal obedience to orders as is indispensable in an
army if it is to be a perfect fighting instrument.
It is not always that the directest road is the
shortest way home, and the prompt response to
orders which may be secured by the domestic mar-
tinet may be the foundation of a character which
develops into libertinism. An apparent failure to
secure momentary obedience may not in the end
spoil the child, if there is a consistent and un-
interrupted effort to inspire the child with a love
for the sweet reasonableness which is far removed
from opposition to authority. As with nations, so
with nurseries; our aims should be to narrow the
domain of mere force as the governing factor, and
OBEDIENCE 69
to substitute a love of order and abhorrence of
what is mean, and cruel, and vile, and a ceaseless
devotion to justice and mansuetude. It may be as
Xenophon says, they who secure willing and cheer-
ful obedience are possessed of a divine gift, and that
this is incommunicable and mysterious, and that
for most people in authority nothing is left but the
exercise of despotic power over the will, and that
kind of life which he compares to the torments of
hell.
But most virtues thus exalted as superhuman are
really of the simplest and plainest, and nearest to
man, in short, most human. The secret of the
success in command is unselfishness and considera-
tion for others. A command, as I have said, implies
two people, one to give and one to receive. If he
who gives an order can always put himself readily
into the position of him who is to receive it, and
never issues an order which he would not himself
be willing to accept as reasonable, and does not
hesitate to give his order when it is reasonable,
though he may be misunderstood for the moment,
and occasionally make mistakes, yet in the end
without any mystery he will rule with divine
authority, and escape the terrors of Tantalus in
his second life always dreading a second death.
In conclusion, I will briefly resume the substance
of my remarks. The foundation of the habit of
obedience is muscular training which leads to the
prompt response of the muscles to the will. The
most striking example of such training, and the
results of it, are seen in military drill, and examples
have been given from actual warfare in which the
70 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
muscles of the soldier obeyed the force of habit
under circumstances which might overpower reason.
The kindergarten games and drills are well
adapted for training the muscles of young children
to prompt action. Military discipline, however, is
distinguished from the law-abiding behaviour which
is the foundation of civic life. Success amid the
carnage of battle depends upon a blind habit of
obedience, whereas in civic life obedience must be
rational. In education we must begin with mus-
cular training and muscular obedience, but we must
not rest satisfied until we have instilled into the
child a sense that law is not the arbitrary will of
his elders, but rather the rule that is acted on by
sensible people, and enforced by general consent.
The formation of blind habits of obedience to the
exclusion of reflection is not the training which
leads to a just appreciation of law, and is not the
way to build up the character of the young citizen.
In all education there must be something austere,
and even severe, but unless severity is combined
with sympathy and consideration it is apt to
develop a spirit of opposition to authority.
Those who are interested in the study of this
subject should not fail to read (i) for its military
aspect, Lieut. Stewart Murray's Discipline (Gale
& Co., Aldershot, 2J. 6d), and (2) for the legal
aspect, the speech of the Lord Chancellor, Lord
Russell of Killowen, to the Congress of the
American Bar, at Saratoga Springs, in August,
1896. This great speech, reported in The Times^
August 2 1 St, 1896, deserves to be widely known in
this country, as it explains the nature of law in
OBEDIENCE 7 1
language which a layman can follow. So great
was its effect at the time, that the vast audience,
consisting of nearly 5000 persons, many of them
lawyers, who are not given to sentiment, arose
spontaneously to their feet at its conclusion, and
cheered vociferously for a quarter of an hour.
LORD COLLINGWOOD'S THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF EDUCATION
The British Empire has its base upon the water,
and it is due to the dauntless trio, Jervis, Nelson,
and Collingwood, that India, Australia, and Canada
are under the English instead of the French flag.
Jervis made the British fleet, which had dissolved
into groups of mutinous ships owing to shameful
mismanagement. Jervis had the iron strength of
will and intellect which reorganized a corrupt
system and provided Nelson with an armament
which his genius rendered invincible. "Jervis",
said Dr. Busby, "made Nelson, he made him a
greater seaman than himself, and then did not
envy him." This is a fine remark, and indeed it
is hardly possible even to speak of any of these
three men without our language and thoughts
rising to an elevation above the common and
ordinary level of social intercourse. Collingwood
was distinguished by his superior education, his
love of study, his contempt for display, and the
depth of his religious feeling. While to Nelson
fell the lot of the most glorious death that man
can die — the death of the hero on the field of
victory, Collingwood's fate was to drag out a
weary, overworked, and overstrained existence,
longing for rest, and home, and wife and children,
but determined to cling to active life so long as
his country required his services. "What", he
LORD COLLINGWOOD'S THEORY 73
writes to his brother-in-law, Mr. J. E. Blackett, in
1793, May Day, "should I suffer in this convulsion
of nations, this general call of Englishmen to the
standard of their country, should I be without
occupation? a miserable creature! While it is
England let me keep my place in the front of
the battle." And this determination Collingwood
carried out. Of fifty years' service in the navy
forty -four were passed in active employment
abroad. On one occasion he kept the sea for the
almost incredible space of twenty -two months
without dropping anchor. This was at a time
when a three months' absence from port was held
to be a severe and unusual strain on the health
and perseverance of the crew. It was his character
and superior education, and study of education and
its kindred study of occupation in daily life, which
made possible to Collingwood such an unparalleled
achievement.
Two years before his death he sends his picture
to Lady Collingwood, painted by an artist who
was reckoned the most eminent in Sicily. "I am
sorry", he says, "to learn my picture was not an
agreeable surprise. You expected to find me a
smooth - skinned, clear - complexioned gentleman
such as I was when I left home, dressed in the
newest taste, and like the fine people who live gay
lives ashore. Alas! it is far otherwise with us.
The painter was thought to have flattered me
much; that lump under my chin was but the loose
skin from which the flesh has shrunk away: my
face is red, yet not with the effect of wine, but of
burning suns and boisterous winds; and my eyes,
74 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
which were once dark and bright, are now faded
and dim. The painter represented me as I am;
not as I once was. It is time and toil that have
worked the change, and not his brush."
For it was not merely his ceaseless military-
occupation that wore him out. His correspondence
was immense, and so highly esteemed was his
judgment that he was consulted from all quarters,
and on all occasions, and on a great variety of
questions. His counsel was in demand, not only
respecting military and naval affairs, but also in
matters of general policy and even of trade. His
death was due to the effects of long-continued
confinement on board ship and constant bending
over his desk. I think, before I conclude, you will
agree with me that his views upon the subject of
education are worth pondering over by the thought-
ful, even after the interval of a century.
He was by nature and education a man of culti-
vated and refined taste, and of great simplicity of
character. He united great intellectual power with
great amiability, and these two gifts are rarely
united in a man. His occupations at home were
reading, especially works on history, from which it
was his habit to compose well-written abridgments.
His recreations were drawing and cultivating his
garden at Morpeth, on the banks of the limpid
stream of Wansbeck. A brother admiral, who
had sought him through the garden in vain, at last
discovered him with his gardener, old Scott, often
mentioned in his correspondence, to whom he was
much attached, in the bottom of a deep trench
which they were busily occupied in digging. His
LORD COLLINGWOOD'S THEORY 75
affection for his wife and children is expressed in
his letters to Lady Collingwood in a most pathetic
way, and though long withheld by a sense of public
duty from returning home, he endeavoured in the
midst of his perpetual contest with the elements,
with the enemy, and with his own seamen, whose
dispositions were as boisterous and untractable as
the Atlantic storm, to guide the education of his
two little girls by correspondence. In various
letters he deals with the training of both boys and
girls, and the opinion of so remarkable a man and
so successful an administrator and disciplinarian
is of the highest interest and value. He never
preached what he did not practise, and if it be
asked what was the cause of his success in keeping
his crew at sea for such a length of time without
sickness, the answer can be readily given. No
society in the world of equal extent was so healthy
as his flagship. She had usually 800 men, and
though on one occasion remained at sea more than
a year and a half without going into port, during
the whole of that time she never had more than six,
and generally only four, on the sick list. Now for
the explanation of this phenomenal achievement.
" My wits ", he writes, " are ever at work to keep
my people employed, both for health's sake and to
save them from mischief We have lately been
making musical instruments, and have now a very
good band. Every moonlight night the sailors
dance, and there seems as much mirth and festivity
as if we were in Wapping itself"
Lord Collingwood was a saint, but he was
human, and not a Puritan. Occupation of the
76 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
right kind was the key-note of his educational
system, and it seems the safest and most practical
for all engaged in education. For himself, he
writes, "when wild war's deadly blast is blown
and gentle peace" returns, and he can honourably
retire from the sea — a fond hope destined never
to be fulfilled — " I must endeavour to find some
employment, which, having at least the show of
business, may keep my mind engaged and prevent
that languor to which from constitution I am more
subject than other people, but which never intrudes
upon my full occupation ". "It has always been
my maxim ", he writes, " to engage and occupy my
men, and to take such care for them that they
should have nothing to think of for themselves
beyond the current business of the day."
So, too, he writes to his wife: " I beseech you to
keep my dearest girls constantly employed, and
make them read to you, not trifles, but history, in
the manner we used to do in the winter evenings —
blessed evenings indeed! The human mind will
improve itself in action, but grows dull and torpid
when left to slumber. I believe even stupidity
itself may be cultivated."
Another cause of Lord Collingwood's success in
maintaining the health of his crew was his attention
to detail and knowledge of sanitary matters beyond
his time. He took great care to ventilate his ship
and the hammocks of the men, by creating as much
circulation of air below as possible and keeping
their quarters dry, rarely permitting scrubbing
between decks. Thus, in addition to attention to
diet and amusement, he kept his crew in spirits,
LORD COLLINGWOOD'S THEORY 77
and as they were assured of justice, kindness, and
comfort, it is no wonder they knew him under the
name of the " Sailors' Friend ", and that many a
gallows-bird with which our ships were then
manned spoke of him as " father to the men ".
Lord St. Vincent, in putting down the spirit of
mutiny in the Mediterranean fleet, would draft the
most ungovernable characters into Collingwood's
ship. "Send them to Collingwood, and he will
bring them to order." Yet, while other captains
resorted to capital punishment, Collingwood seldom
even inflicted corporal punishment. On one occa-
sion a seaman was sent from the Romulus, a man
who had pointed one of the forecastle guns, shotted
to the muzzle, at the quarter-deck, and, standing
by it with a match, threatened to fire on the officers
unless he received a promise that no punishment
should be inflicted upon him. On the man's arrival
on board the Excellent, Collingwood, in the presence
of many of the sailors, said to him with great stern-
ness of manner: "I know your character well, but
beware how you attempt to excite insubordination
in this ship, for I have such confidence in my men
that I am certain I shall hear in an hour of every-
thing you are doing. If you behave well in future
I will treat you like the rest, nor notice here what
has happened on another ship ; but if you endeavour
to excite mutiny, mark me well, I will instantly
head you up in a cask and throw you into the sea!"
Under the treatment which he met in the Excellent
this man became a good and obedient sailor, and
never afterwards gave any cause of complaint.
As his experience in command and his knowledge
78 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
of the dispositions of men increased, his abhorrence
of corporal punishment grew daily stronger, and
in the latter part of his life more than a year
often passed away without his having resorted to
it He used to tell his ship's company that he
was determined the youngest midshipman should
be obeyed as implicitly as himself, and that he
would punish with severity any instance to the
contrary. When a midshipman made a complaint
he would order the man for punishment the next
day, and in the interval, calling the boy down to
him, would say, " In all probability the fault was
yours; but whether it were or not, I am sure it
would go to your heart to see a man old enough
to be your father disgraced and punished on your
account, and it will therefore give me a good
opinion of your disposition if, when he is brought
out, you ask for his pardon". The punishments
which he substituted for the lash were various, such
as watering the grog, or excluding the culprit from
mess and employing him on every sort of extra
duty. He never used discourteous or violent lan-
guage. One of the secrets of his success in keeping
order was the quickness and correctness of his eye,
through which he was enabled in an instant to
detect anything that was out of order. His re-
proofs on these occasions, though always short,
were conveyed in the language of a gentleman
and were deeply felt, so that he was considered by
all to be a strict disciplinarian. He was extremely
careful to avoid giving vexatious and harassing
orders. When captain of the Excellent his ship
was signalled to approach the Admiral's ship.
LORD COLLINGWOOD S THEORY 79
Captain Collingvvood went on board, and found
the order was merely for the Excellent to receive
two bags of onions. "Bless me!" he exclaimed.
"'Is this the service, my Lord St. Vincent? is this
the service, Sir Robert Calder? Has the Excellent' s
signal been made five or six times for two bags
of onions? Man my boat, sir, and let us go on
board again." Nor would he, though repeatedly
pressed by Lord St. Vincent to stay dinner, accept
the invitation, but refused and retired.
He complained to the Admiralty that some of
the younger captains were in the habit of con-
cealing by great severity their own unskilfulness
and want of attention, beating the men into a state
of insubordination, and that such vessels, though
increasing the number, diminished the efficiency of
the fleet. He complained that insubordination was
due to the folly or the cruelty of those in command
as much as to the perverseness of the men.
I have endeavoured to give some idea of
CoUingwood's theory and practice of discipline,
because this subject is the foundation of all sound
education, and ignorance of it is the cause of half
the failures. I pass on to his general views. " The
education", he writes to his daughter, "of a lady,
and indeed of a gentleman too, may be divided
into three parts. The first is the cultivation of the
mind, that they may have a knowledge of right and
wrong, and acquire a habit of doing acts of virtue
and honour. By reading History you will perceive
the high estimation in which the memories of good
people are held, and the contempt and disgust
which are affixed to the base, whatever their rank
8o EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
in life. The second part of education is to acquire
a competent knowledge how to manage your affairs,
whatever they may happen to be; to know how to
direct the economy of your house, and to keep
exact accounts of everything which concerns you.
Whoever cannot do this must be dependent on
somebody else, and those who are dependent on
another cannot be perfectly at their ease. Skill
should be attained in Arithmetic, which, indepen-
dently of its great use to everybody in every
condition of life, is one of the most curious and
entertaining sciences that can be conceived. The
third part is to practise those manners and that
address which will recommend you to strangers.
Boldness and forwardness are disgusting, but shy-
ness and shrinking from conversation with those
with whom you ought to associate are also repul-
sive and unbecoming. There are many hours in
every person's life which are not spent in any-
thing important, but it is necessary that they
should not be spent idly. Music and dancing are
intended to fill up the hours of leisure. Nothing
wearies me more than to see a young lady at
home sitting with her arms across or twirling
her thumbs for want of something to do. Poor
thing! I always pity her; for I am sure her head
is empty, and that she has not the sense even to
devise the means of pleasing herself"
It is perhaps hard to find in the English language
a more admirable description of a cultivated person
than in the following letter: —
" Let me, my dearest child, impress upon you
the importance of temperate conduct and sweet-
8i
ness of manner to all people, on all occasions. It
does not follow you are to agree with every ill-judg-
ing person, but after showing them your reason for
dissenting from their opinion, your argument and
opposition to it should not be tinctured with any-
thing offensive. Never forget for one moment
that you are a gentlewoman, and all your words
and all your actions should mark you gentle.
Next for accomplishments. No sportsman ever
hits a partridge without aiming at it, and skill is
acquired by repeated attempts. It is the same
thing in every art; unless you aim at perfection
you will never attain it. Never, therefore, do
anything with indifference. Whether it be to
mend a rent in your garment, or finish the most
delicate piece of art, endeavour to do it as per-
fectly as possible. When you write a letter, give
it your greatest care that it may be perfect in all
its parts as you can make it. Let the subject be
sense, expressed in the most plain, intelligible, and
elegant manner that you are capable of. If in a
familiar epistle you should be playful and jocular,
guard carefully that your wit be not sharp so as
to give pain to any person, and before you write a
sentence examine it, even the words of which it is
composed, that there be nothing vulgar or in-
elegant in them. Remember that your letter is
the picture of your brains, and those whose brains
are a compound of folly, nonsense, and imperti-
nence are to blame to exhibit them to the con-
tempt of the world and the pity of their friends."
Looking to the subjects of instruction. Lord
Collingwood writes : " I hope my girls will write
(M930) F
83 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
a French letter every day to me or their mother.
I should like them to be taught Spanish, which is
the most elegant language in Europe and very
easy. I would have them taught geometry; it
expands the mind more to the knowledge of all
things in Nature, and better teaches to distinguish
between truths and such things as have the ap-
pearance of being truths, yet are not, than any
other. To inspire them with a love of everything
that is honourable and virtuous, though in rags,
and with contempt for vanity in embroidery, is the
way to make them the darlings of my heart.
" As to reading, it requires a careful selection of
books, nor should they ever have access to two at
the same time, but when a subject is begun it
should be finished before anything else is under-
taken. How would it enlarge their mind if they
could acquire a sufficient knowledge of mathe-
matics and astronomy to give them an idea of
the beauty and wonders of the creation. I am
persuaded that the generality of people, and par-
ticularly fine ladies, only adore God because they
are told that it is proper and the fashion to go to
church; but I would have my girls gain such
knowledge of the works of creation that they
may have a fixed idea of the nature of that
Being who could be the Author of such a world.
Whenever they have that, nothing on this side the
moon will give them much uneasiness of mind. I
do not mean that they should be Stoics, or want
common feelings for the sufferings that flesh is
heir to, but they would then have a source of con-
solation for the worst that could happen."
LORD COLLINGWOOd'S THEORY 83
He laid great stress on the value of keeping a
diary, and when his daughters set out for London
in order to be presented at Court after their father's
promotion to the peerage, he writes to his wife:
" I wish that in these journeys the education of
our children nnay not stop; but that on the road
they may study the geography of that part of
England through which they travel, and keep a
regular journal, not of what they eat and drink,
but of the nature of the country, its appearance,
its produce, and some gay description of the
manners of the inhabitants. I hope you will
take your time in town, and show my girls every-
thing curious. I am sure that you will visit the
tomb of my dear friend. Alas the day that he
had a tomb!
"Do not let our girls be made fine ladies; but
give them a knowledge of the world which they
have to live in, that they may take care of them-
selves when you and I are in heaven. They must
do everything for themselves, and never read novels,
but history, essays, travels, and Shakspere. What
they call books for young persons are nonsense.
They should frequently read aloud, and endeavour
to preserve the natural tone of voice, as if they
were speaking on the subject without a book.
Nothing can be more absurd than altering the
voice to a disagreeable and monotonous drawl
because what they say is taken from a book. The
memory should be strengthened by getting by
heart such speeches and noble sentiments from
Shakspere or Roman history as deserve to be
imprinted on the mind."
84 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Lord Collingwood's objection to novels is thus
expressed: "Above all things keep novels out of
their reach. They are the corrupters of tender
minds, they exercise the imagination instead of
the judgment, make them all desire to become the
Julias and Cecilias of romance, and turn their
heads before they are enabled to distinguish truth
from fictions merely devised for entertainment.
When they have passed their climacteric it will
be time enough to begin novels." In another
place he urges his daughters to study geography,
and whenever there are any particular events
happening, to examine the map and see where
they took place. "You are", he tells them, "at a
period of life when the foundation of knowledge
has to be laid, and of those manners and modes of
thinking which distinguish gentlewomen from Miss
Nothings. A good woman has great and im-
portant duties to do in the world, and will always
be in danger of doing them ill unless she have
acquired knowledge. Never do anything that
can denote an angry mind; for although every-
body is born with a certain degree of passion,
and will sometimes from untoward circumstances
feel its operation and be what is called out of
humour, yet a sensible man or woman will not
allow it to be discovered. Check it and restrain
it, and never make any determination until you
find it has entirely subsided; and never say any-
thing that you may afterwards wish unsaid."
Again he writes to his girls: "It is exactly at
your age that much pains should be taken; for
whatever knowledge you acquire now will last
LORD COLLINGWOOD'S THEORY 85
you all your lives. The impression which is
made on young minds is so strong that it never
wears out; whereas everybody knows how difficult
it is to make an old snuff-taking lady comprehend
anything beyond pam or spadille. Such persons
hang very heavy on society. Remember, gentle
manners are the first grace which a lady can
possess. Whether she differ in her opinion from
others or be of the same sentiment, her expression
should be equally mild. A positive contradiction
is vulgar and ill-bred."
I have dealt with Lord Collingwood's views of
the education of girls, and I do not think the
newest of new High Schools have much to add
to his principles. It remains to give his ideas
about the education of boys.
He writes to Mrs. Hall: "You have now three
boys, and I hope they will live to make you very
happy when you are an old woman. But let me
tell you, the chance is very much against you unless
you are for ever on your guard. The temper and
disposition of most people are formed before they
are seven years old, and the common cause of
badness is the too great indulgence and mistaken
fondness which the affection of a parent finds it
difficult to veil, though the happiness of the child
depends upon it. Your measures must be syste-
matic; whenever they do wrong, never omit to
reprove them firmly but with gentleness. Always
speak to them in a style and language rather
superior to their years. Proper words are as
easily learned as improper ones. When they do
well and deserve commendation, bestow it lavishly.
86 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Let the feelings of your heart flow from your eyes
and tongue ; and they will never forget the effect
which their good behaviour has upon their mother,
and this at an earlier time of life than is generally
thought."
He objects to too early specialization for the
career of an officer. Instead of going too early
to sea, he suggests the following plan : — " I would
recommend them to send their young son to a
good mathematical school, and teach him to be
perfect in French and Spanish or Italian; and if
he spend two years in hard study he will be better
qualified at the end than if he came at once to sea.
If parents were to see how many of their chickens
go to ruin by being sent too early abroad, they
would not be so anxious about it."
What Lord Collingwood desiderated most of all
was that his lieutenants should have learnt to work
hard and to be observant. He thus pours con-
tempt on the youth who cannot work. " 1 am told
the boy's want of spirits is owing to the loss of his
time when he was in England, which is a subject
that need give his mother no concern, for if he
takes no more pains in his profession than he has
done he will not be qualified for a lieutenant in
sixteen years, and I should be sorry to put the
safety of a ship and the lives of the men into such
hands. He is no more use here as an officer than
Bounce [Lord Collingwood's old dog], and not
near so entertaining. She writes as if she expected
that he is to be a lieutenant as soon as he has
served six years, but that is a mistaken fancy, and
the loss of his time is while he is at sea. He is
LORD COLLINGWOOD'S THEORY 87
living on the Navy and not serving in it. If he goes,
he may stay, for I have no notion of people mak-
ing the service a mere convenience for themselves
as if it were a public establishment for loungers."
Of another youth he says, " Young has
returned to me, but I have little hope of his being
a sailor. He does not take notice of anything nor
any active part in his business; and yet I suppose
when he has dawdled in a ship for six years he will
think himself very ill-used if he is not made a
lieutenant. Offices in the Navy are now made the
provision for all sorts of idle people."
Lord Collingwood recommends the following
course for young midshipmen. " If his father in-
tended him for the sea he should have been put
to a mathematical school when twelve years old.
Boys make little progress in a ship without being
well practised in navigation, and fifteen is too old
to begin, for very few take well to the sea at that
age. If, however, Mr. is determined, he
should lose no further time, but have his son taught
trigonometry perfectly before he begins navigation.
If the boy has any taste for drawing it will be a
great advantage to him and should be encouraged."
Again he writes of another youth: " I would
recommend his father taking him home and putting
him to a good mathematical school, perfecting him
under his own eye in navigation, astronomy, me-
chanics, and fortifications. He knows enough now
of ships to make the application of what he learns
easy to him, and when his head is well stocked he
will be able to find employment and amusement
without having recourse to company which is as
88 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
often bad as good. He has spirit enough to make
a good officer and an honourable man, but he must
make his studies a business to which he must be
entirely devoted. Drawing is the best kind of re-
creation. If he be sent immediately to sea he may
become a good sailor, but not qualified to fill the
higher offices of his profession, or to make his way
in them."
Lord Collingwood's views upon education merit
the attention of all who are interested in the sub-
ject, but they seem to possess a special value at
the present time when the newspapers are full of
letters discussing the training of naval officers.
GAIETY IN EDUCATION
OR
A STUDY IN AUGUSTINE AND CALVIN
Few will deny in these days that gaiety has a
leading place in education. The belief in gaiety
as an important factor in the training of a child
has not always prevailed. A joyless childhood
has been, and perhaps occasionally is still, the lot
of many children. This is apparent in many
biographies, and is confirmed by common observa-
tion. There have always been some persons who
would start children on the voyage of life by
reading to them a funeral service. They had
better cheer the little craft as it clears the harbour
bar, because the heavens will grow black often
enough before the other shore is reached, and
abundance of animal spirit is needed to weather
the storms of life in safety.
Although our mental states are closely depen-
dent upon physical health, brief experience is
enough to demonstrate the frequent triumph of
a cheerful mind over great bodily infirmity; and
among mysteries there is none more unaccountable
than the power possessed by the human spirit of
continuing strong, healthy, and creative in an ailing,
crazy, and rickety frame. The merriest in a group
of people is often he who has the least cause for
mirth and greatest excuse for depression of spirit.
Gaiety of heart is of course often an advantage of
^8 R A r? p
Or THE
UNIVERSITY J
9© EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
natural disposition; but, like most other virtues,
it is for average human beings largely a matter of
training.
It has always been the view of some, that chil-
dren have by nature too much animal spirit, and
that, so far from cultivation, what is needed is con-
tinuous repression. Disinterested spectators for
the most part disapprove such repression, and
delinquencies in later life are often justified or
excused by the remark that "as children, the
delinquents were kept in hand very tightly at
home", "fast bind, fast find", or similar, more or
less, sympathetic comments. A joyless childhood
will seldom be followed by a frank and straight-
forward manhood. Most children are by nature
inclined to be gay, and their gaiety approves itself
to common sense. What cause, then, leads some
parents and guardians to frustrate nature.? There
are some even who agree with a certain farmer's
advice about boys: "Whenever you see a boy, beat
him. If he is not naughty, he is going to be."
Some grown persons who are not sympathetic
become easily wearied with the mirth of a child,
which bubbles over in froth and clamour and noisy
activity. Other people, again, note how quickly
in some children mirth becomes over-excitement,
and is followed by an inevitable reaction of depres-
sion, and may fear this tidal flow of animal spirits
as injurious to mind and body.
Other people, again, knowing that in most cases
a child's feelings towards his parents must be a
mixture of love and fear, find it easier to work on
the fears than on the affections of their offspring.
GAIETY IN EDUCATION 9I
Hence they are a little afraid of laughter when he
comes "holding both his sides". Laughter seems
to them the mutiny of the flesh against the sove-
reignty of reason. Yet if we judge from the effects
on the body of a hearty laugh, we must own that
there is medicine in it. The biologist tells us that
" laughter is a series of short expirations, more or
less accompanied with noise, depending chiefly on
vigorous contractions of the diaphragm, and accom-
panied by involuntary contractions of the facial
muscles, especially the zygomatic".
Most animals can make a noise of some kind,
but only men can laugh. From a physical point
of view, doubtless the definition which is given
above covers all kinds of laughter; but it is pro-
bably impossible to bring within the limits of a
definition all its psychological aspects, often as
this has been attempted, from the days of Aristotle
until now.
It has been said, with some show of truth, that
the character of the laugher is apparent in the
vowel sound which is audible in his laugh. For
instance, laughter in "a" (or "a" sounded as in
father), " Ha, ha, ha", marks a choleric temperament
like that of Sir Anthony Absolute. Laughter in
"o" is the sign of a generous, hearty, and sanguine
nature. Then there is the melancholy laugh and
the nervous laugh, which are vocalized respectively
with the sound of "a" in late, and "e". Lastly,
there is the laugh of rogues, hypocrites, and cynics,
where the vowel sound is half smothered, and
may be expressed as "u", spoken like the French
diphthong "eu".
92 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Some poisons, such as belladonna, were said to
cause artificial laughter, by contracting the muscles
mechanically, and as these toxic plants grew in
Sardinia, men spoke of a forced laugh or grin as
Sardonic. This paper deals only with laughter
which is an expression of mirth. Children should
have only to do with laughter in "o". The expres-
sion of their mirth should be round and complete
and full-breathed. No feeling of anger or sorrow
or hyprocrisy should check the full expression
of their vocal chords. Then we can say with
Rabelais,
" Oh sweet and heavenly sound to hear them laugh".
Laughter is really a necessary factor in physical
education, and is of no less consequence in the
other two branches of education described re-
spectively as intellectual and moral training, for
physiologists tell us that laughter is conducive to
health, because it facilitates digestion, strengthens
the frame, and is a remedy against feelings of
fatigue and weariness of spirit. Laughter helps
both heart and lungs to do their duty better, and
tends to improve circulation and digestion. Food
becomes more nourishing under its influence, and
the blood is better purified, for the blood of the
laugher has no time to linger in the great organs,
as it loves to do in persons of morose temperament,
but, as under the spell of Mercury (the god, I mean,
and not the drug), dances forward, "and runs
trickling up and down the veins. Such virtue hath
that idiot laughter."
But laughter playing such a part in physical
GAIETY IN EDUCATION 93
training-, it would be strange if there were nothing
corresponding to these benefits in its effect on the
child's moral welfare, as though it were only medi-
cine for the body. What sort of a child is it that
never laughs? It is either one who has no vital
energy to spare and requires all his little stock of
vital force to keep body and soul together, or else
one who morbidly concentrates all his physical
strength upon particular and limited spheres of
reflection; a brooding child, whose book of life is
edited without the lighter chapters, which so much
enliven the rest of the pages; an early genius, or
perhaps a budding lunatic. A sad child is a sad
specimen of childhood, for the child who seldom
laughs is apt to brood over small social troubles
such as must arise from daily intercourse with his
companions, and also over mental perplexities which
are suggested to him unwittingly, through remarks
which are made in his presence by parents, teachers,
and others, or by chance conversation and general
reading. The child who never laughs is apt to be
morose, sullen, and unforgiving, remembering wrong
and planning little schemes of revenge.
Yet laughter is the right way to allay the natural
irritation arising from small acts of injustice, whether
intentional or otherwise, which throw frequent sha-
dows across the path of life, from the font to the
lychgate. The worst lesson which a child can
learn from the teaching of the world is the laugh
of the cynic, because it tends to make trifles of
things serious. On the other hand, one of the best
of lessons is the mirth of Mark Tapley, which
makes trifles of serious troubles, and not merely
94 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
grins and bears, but bears with lightness of humour.
I sometimes think English people find it harder
to get over small annoyances with levity than
French people do. I once saw a party of English
people in holiday attire, approach incautiously too
near a llama in the Zoological Gardens. Of course
the gentle creature spit at them in his peculiar
way, and spoilt their smart clothes. They too
went away quite spoilt in temper for the rest of
the afternoon. Soon after, a still smarter party of
French people were treated by the llama with the
same attention, and instead of exhibiting any sign
of irritation the ladies laughed till the cause for
annoyance was completely forgotten.
The spirit of fun arises in a child in a different
way from that in which it originates in grown-up
people. When we cease to be children, what
makes us laugh is amusing thoughts. While we
are children, what amuses us is amusing sights.
Of fun in the child we may say " it is engendered
in the eye, and is by gazing fed". A young school-
boy may get so far as to enjoy what Sydney Smith
allowed to be the lowest kind of wit, claiming for it
in consequence the right to be called the foundation
of all wit, namely, a pun; but there is a previous
stage, where mirth is born only of unexpected
turns in things visible. If the wind carries off a
man's hat, and he has to chase the same down the
street, the small boy will have no compassion for
the misfortune. He simply laughs without con-
straint. If a pompous alderman, or policeman in
his solemn pacing down the pavement, happens to
slip and fall, so that instead of walking onwards he
GAIETY IN EDUCATION 95
sits on a flag-stone, the small boy will laugh till
tears roll down his cheeks, not that he is amused
because someone is in trouble, but because the
unexpected transition from a position of assured
superiority to one of little dignity tickles the boy's
fancy.
We must not be disappointed if young children's
jokes seem to us, of riper years, no laughing
matter; nor if we find, on the other hand, that
what amuses us bores them to death. It is wise
to look at the outside world as much as possible
from their point of view. After all, much good
may be learnt, even in riper years, by looking at
some things with the eyes of a child. A sense of
fun would save many a dignitary from attacks of
excessive dignity. Biography shows that the more
childlike the man, often the more manlike his con-
duct. The fact is, a child needs a large reserve of
gaiety. His life is apt to appear to him a constant
succession of small checks to his wishes, which he
finds opposed either by the constitution of things,
as when he cries for the moon, or the will of his
elders, as when he is forbidden to sit up till mid-
night. If he cannot take all these small hindrances
to contentment laughing, he will be liable to pass
a rather unhappy time in childhood. How then,
once more, has laughter come to be looked upon
by some with suspicion? Clemens of Alexandria,
for instance, wrote that laughter does not become
a Christian; and the second Council of Carthage
uttered anathema on jokes which move laughter
( Verba joculatoria risum moveiitid). The Preacher,
too, deprecated mirth — "Sorrow is better than
96 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
laughter, for as the crackling of thorns under a
pot, so is the laughter of fools".
Of course laughter forms no exception to human
endowments. It is liable to abuse. Can anything
be rational which cannot be used irrationally.^
Laughter weakens the will for the moment, and
therefore in bad company it is well avoided. But
because a soldier is prudent who wears his armour
in the midst of the enemy, shall he never take it
off even among friends.-*
Laughter, again, as a mere expression of coarse
sensuality cannot be defended: such laughter is
unworthy of a Christian. There is, too, a merri-
ment which loosens moral fibre, as laughter at vice,
or laughter at other people's infirmities, or at the
suffering of animals. There is, too, a peculiarly
hateful laughter arising from a sense of physical
or intellectual superiority, — the "insolens laetitia"
or " hubris " of the ancient Romans and Greeks.
But, after all, though life is a thorn-bush there
are roses on it. I suppose the Calvinists have^
since the Reformation period, been among those
who have brought up youth after the strictest
methods. They held mirth in suspicion. There
is much in the life of a modern child which to an
old Calvinist would have appeared wrong, because
he would have thought it distracting and deleterious
to concentration and simplicity.
The Calvinists loved to simplify life. They
aimed, as it were, at dignity of outline, such as is
seen in a fine building when viewed at a distance^
rather than at the infinite grace of workmanship,
in minor details, which crowd on the sight when
GAIETY IN EDUCATION 97
the spectator approaches nearer. Music, for in-
stance, and dancing and drawing, and the love of
colour and form and harmonious sound, appeared
to them dangerous occupations for children. Such
delights seemed to be distracting, and at any rate
superfluous. The theatre, the novel, and the poem,
are likely, they thought, to lead the mind away
from the main purpose of life and the " chief end
of man ". It was difl"erent in the Mediaeval Church.
This absence of gaiety was no part of the precept
or practice of the church. The impression which
many persons receive from a Gothic cathedral is
one of gloom and sadness. For myself I am more
struck by the revelation of sympathy with the
varied exuberance of life which I find expressed
there. It is true that the focus of all the design
is centred on the Cross and the solemnity of the
Passion, but in minor details there is an evident
determination to assimilate the world as a whole
and take it as it is, the evil with the good. Every
column is covered with fruit or foliage, and the wall
spaces are filled with carvings of scenes of harvest
or vintage, or other common pursuits of mankind.
Quaint birds and animals peep out from among
the leaves, and even human frailties receive their
share of the artist's attention, while types of laugh-
ing faces are frequent enough, not to mention
endless grotesques which move to merriment. In
the present day we seem to be somewhat over-
oppressed by the mystery of pain, while in those
days the sense of this unfathomable mystery was
tempered by a rich feeling of sympathy with the
abundant manifestations of joy in creation. Chris-
(M930) G
98 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
tendom would then have understood Kant's view,
that children must be accustomed to unrestrained
laughter, because mirth stamps a merry look on
the face, and by degrees stamps itself also on the
mind and leads to a disposition to friendliness,
gaiety, and benevolence. At the present day,
perhaps, in the mystery of things, joy, not pain, is
the greatest. We seem nowadays so familiar with
the sense of effort in creation and the struggle
for existence, and the failures in life's struggle,
that we forget the other scenes in life's drama.
Many seem to be so depressed as to feel that
sorrow is the only fact in the order of things. The
only text all seem to take to heart is, " The whole
creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain".
The fact is, children in many cases require a train-
ing in gaiety of spirit as much as in the develop-
ment of other faculties. " Fast bind, fast find ", as
Hood wittily put it. The influence of the gloomy
genius of Mr. Calvin has been the wreck of many
a young person, although in those that survived
the effect of it, how strong was their character,
how determined in purpose, how tenacious in dis-
couragement, and how obstinate in opposition!
Regarding this type of character everyone must
feel some respect for the rigid spirit which would
develop the nature of the child by repression, and
secure concentration of the light of life by cutting
off all the side rays.
In the present day a wholly different conception
of training lies at the base of our ideas of education.
Our desire now is to train the best faculties which
the child possesses, and as many of them as possible,
GAIETY IN EDUCATION 99
in a harmonious way. No greater misfortune, I
think, can befall a child who has a gift for music
or drawing or sculpture, than to miss the chance
of cultivating and improving his talent Yet the
influence of Calvin has spread widely and deeply.
Now there is no spiritual movement of importance
which has not some truth in it commensurate with
its success and popular acceptance. There is, so
far as I can see, really nothing in Calvin himself
which necessarily leads to suppression of faculties
in children. I will quote what Calvin did say
about intercalating periods of solemn thoughtful
repose in the routine of life, his views namely on
the Sabbath:—
" Does the Fourth Commandment order us to work on six
days that we may rest on the seventh?
" Not exactly, but in handing over to men six days to
work, it excepts the seventh that it may be devoted to repose.
" Does it forbid all labour on the seventh day?
" This commandment has a special and peculiar bearing.
The observance of a day of rest was part of the Jewish law,
and as such was abrogated by Christ's advent.
" Had then this commandment a special application to the
Jews alone, so that it was temporary and transient?
" Yes, in so far as it related to Jewish ceremonies.
"Is there then anything in the commandment beyond
Jewish ceremony?
"It was given for three reasons.
" Name them.
" First, to show in a figure spiritual repose. Secondly, to
maintain the constitution of the church. Thirdly, to lighten
the lives of servants.
"(i) What do you understand by spiritual repose?
" We keep a holy day that God may work in us.
"How do we keep holy day?
lOO EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
" We crucify our flesh. That is, we give up our own will
that we may be governed by the Spirit of God.
" Is it sufficient that we do this on the seventh day only.'
" Nay, rather without ceasing. As we have once begun so
we must continue to the end of our lives.
" Then why is a stated day set apart to show in a figure
spiritual repose?
" It is not necessary that the truth should agree with the
figure of it in every particular. It is enough if certain features
of the truth are figured forth.
" Then why is the seventh day prescribed for the purpose
rather than any other?
" The number VII is used in Scripture to denote perfection.
It is therefore suited to denote perpetuity. At the same time
it denotes that this spiritual rest commences only in this life,
and will not be perfect till we migrate from the world.
" But what is the meaning of this that the Lord urges us
to rest after His example?
" Having made an end of creating the world in six days,
He devoted the seventh to the consideration of His work.
To stimulate us to similar meditation He sets His example
before us. For nothing is more desirable than that we should
form ourselves after His image.
"(2) But should the meditation of the works of God be
continuous, or is it enough that one day in seven should be
devoted to that occupation?
" No ; we should exercise ourselves in it day by day, but
by reason of our weakness one day is specially set apart for
the purpose. And this is the constitution of which I spoke.
" What then is the order to be observed on that day?
" People are to meet together to hear Christ's teaching, to
join in public prayers, and to make public profession of their
faith.
" (3) Now explain what you said about the Lord wishing to
provide for the relief of all who are employed as servants.
"Some relaxation should be given to those who are not
their own masters.
GAIETY IN EDUCATION lOI
" This is necessary even for the maintenance of the consti-
tution of the state ; for where one day is set apart for rest,
people accustom themselves to work during the remainder
of the week.
" Now let us consider how far this commandment refers
to us.
"As regards the ceremonial observance, since the truth
and substance of it were in Christ, I say that it is abrogated.
"How?
" By virtue of His death the old man is crucified in us, and
we are called to newness of life.
" Then what part of the commandment remains to apply
to us?
" That we should not neglect the institutes which conduce
to the spiritual constitution of the Church ; especially that
we should attend the holy meetings to hear God's word, to
celebrate His mysteries, and to pray to Him, according to
the ordinances.
" But does the figure convey nothing further to us?
" Yes it does. We must consider the substance of it. As
we are grafted in the body of Christ, and made members of
Him, we should cease from our own ordinary occupations
and resign ourselves to the governance of God."
In these words Calvin endeavours to describe an
element of seriousness which he would see included
in every healthy life. I read in them nothing aus-
tere, much less pedantic. It is on record that on
one occasion Calvin played bowls with his friends
on Sunday, but the elders in Calvinistic families
think it prudent to suppress this record.
I see nothing in Calvin's description of the
Christian Truth, which he recognized as predigi-
tated by the ceremonial law of the Jewish Sabbath,
inconsistent with playing at bowls on Sunday, un-
less, indeed, playing at bowls were a man's ordinary
I03 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
occupation. He would clearly not divide life into
Sundays and week-days, as if, by a convenient
division of labour, thoughts might be all secular
during the week, and all religious on Sunday. I
find in him, again, no sympathy with people who
make a cross for themselves and then take a pride
in believing that they are nobly bearing one sent
by Providence. Calvin would encourage contem-
plation, and, that time might be found for it, desired
rest from manual toil on Sundays. But the train
of thought would control action instead of being
wholly dependent on it. What people did on
Sunday would be in harmony with their medita-
tion, and what there was of constraint in Sunday
occupation would follow from the temper natural
to meditation. Calvin would hardly have expected
that the mere negative conduct of withholding from
this or that pastime, would of itself lead to spiritual
meditation.
Let us suppose, for instance, that you want a
little girl to feel aware that there is something in
the world of greater consequence than dolls, her
chief solace and joy. Suppose you commence by
depriving her of that joy forcibly. Will that tend
to elevate her thoughts.^ What you need to do is
to suggest, by some means or other, ideas which
will lead her, of her own accord, to forget her doll,
or even put it away. Doubtless this is much more
difficult than external constraint. But to empty
the mind of one set of ideas is not to fill it with
another. The supposition, that if you remove the
doll, you will create a vacuum in the mind which
can then be filled with what you please, seems to
GAIETY IN EDUCATION IO3
evince ignorance of the way in which the mind
works.
There is a kind of hving and organic connection
between the succession of thought, and it is no
easy matter to change at will the current ideas in
a child's mind. My own belief is, that if a child's
head is full of some train of thought, or some
object, and you wish to substitute something dif-
ferent, so far from suppressing the pre-existing
thought or object, you had better commence with
it as a base for your efforts. You want, for ex-
ample, to talk about kind and unkind behaviour.
The child plays with her doll. I should not
remove the doll. I should deal with it as the
child's companion, and pass through stories about
it to stories of life, real or imaginative, and so to
parables, till the lower is absorbed into higher
imagination, and the common world in an ideal
world. It is no wise method of training to deprive
a child on Sunday of amusements and occupations
which please him, unless you can substitute others
which please him more. How can instruction be
made attractive.!^ Hardly, if the teacher under-
takes it as an irksome task. If the lesson is
annoying and wearisome to the teacher, it cer-
tainly will not be anything different to the learner.
Even serious subjects cannot be rightly dealt
with among children without a certain amount of
gaiety, and an exaggeration of seriousness in the
teacher is instantly detected by the scholar. Chil-
dren are genuine touchstones of pretence.
Plato remarks, " No study pursued under com-
pulsion remains rooted in the memory; hence you
I04 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
must train the children to their studies in a playful
manner, and without any air of constraint".
Through this truth I am brought to St Augus-
tine. I have always been much impressed by his
sympathy with the wrongs of children.
" I was not incompetent to study," he says, " but
I did enjoy my games, and then I was punished by
those who did no other than myself" " But", he
continues, " the lighter occupations of grown-up
people pass with them as business, while children
are punished by their elders for similarly amusing
themselves, and no one pities the children."
To me there is something remarkably instructive
and suggestive in the contrast between St. Augus-
tine and Calvin in their treatment of the significance
of the Jewish Sabbath to Christians. The contrast
is not due merely to the difference in character and
temperament between the two men. I seem to feel
a difference due to time and development and ex-
perience of many human generations.
There is in Calvin a certain practical sense. He
feels the need of a discipline for the spirit as well
as for the understanding. Even the spirit of pure
religion he sees cannot be entirely free from the aid
of conventional ordinances. The Jews substituted
the letter for the spirit, and observance of con-
ventional ceremonies did duty for justice, mercy,
and righteousness.
The experience of many generations of Chris-
tians seemed to lead the most thoughtful men of
the Reformation period to look back a little, and
lean once again rather more heavily on the staff
"Bands", and rather less on the staff "Beauty".
GAIETY IN EDUCATION I<^5
They were compelled to believe more in the regu-
lation of daily life, and, figuratively speaking, to
substitute a fixed and definite tithe in place of
committing themselves unreservedly to the precept,
** Give alms of all that thou hast".
I shall, perhaps, be more clearly understood if I
describe St. Augustine's treatment of the Sabbath.
He has what seems to modern ideas a curiously
subtle and almost fanciful chain reasoning on its
significance.
" Whatever a man finds to do," he writes, " if he
does it in such a spirit that he expects to obtain
earthly advantage, then he does it in the spirit of
a hired workman, and therefore he does not observe
the Sabbath; for the love towards God must be
without the expectation of payment, and there is
no Sabbath for the soul except in that which God
loves. Eternal rest: there is none except in the
love of God, who alone is eternal, and this alone
is complete holiday and the spiritual sabbath of
sabbaths. God laboured not for six days that
He might rest on the seventh — that is a carnal
idea.
" God made all things, and, behold, all was very
good. And God rested on the seventh day from
all the works which He did. Would you also rest?
Then begin by doing works which are very good.
Do you do what that holiday means; for holiday
is the spiritual quiet of the heart. Quiet of the
heart comes from the calm of a good conscience;
therefore he keeps the true Sabbath who sins not.
Let this be the instruction for those who are to
observe the Sabbath : * Thy service shall not be for
Io6 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
wages, for those who sin work for the wages of
sin '."
St Augustine thus draws a paradoxical but bold
and original conclusion, that there is no rest for
a sinner, because he is a hired workman receiving
pay for his work. It seems to me that fully to
realize and appreciate the height and depth of this
conception needs the mind of a saint. St. Augus-
tine describes a state of mind in which the desire
to avoid error and the aspiration after right con-
duct will render exact conventional regulation of
life no help, and possibly a hindrance.
In Calvin we seem to descend from this almost
superhuman elevation of character to the practical
man of religious sentiment who believes that nine
people out of ten, apart from conventional arrange-
ments for religious exercise, will neglect it alto-
gether. He would seem to agree with Montalem-
bert: "II n'y a pas de religion sans culte; et il
n'y a pas de culte sans Dimanche".
It was ordered in 1584 that one-half of all the
people in every house above twelve years of age,
not being sick or lawfully hindered, be at the be-
ginning of every sermon every Sunday in the
morning, and one from every house at the be-
ginning of every sermon in the afternoon, of every
Sunday and festival day, and likewise on every
Wednesday, upon pain of 2Q>d, on Sundays and
\2d. on other days, and strictest orders were made
for Sunday closure of tradesmen's shops.
Sunday lessons and occupations! How many
people when grown up look back to them with
a sense of disgust, as if they were a weekly drug
GAIETY IN EDUCATION IO7
that turns the sickening memory! How many-
wrecked lives have been caused by irrational Sun-
day conventionalities! Yet God forbid that the
English Sunday should ever be a day either of
paid labour or noisy public holiday. There is no
sin that I know of in making a noise, but generous
youth will not be unwilling on Sunday to suppress
the youthful tendency to noisy behaviour, feeling
the greater pleasure of not disturbing other people
who desire to be quiet. Perhaps, in return, people
who want to be quiet on week-days will not be un-
willing to recognize the sacrifice which youth thus
makes to please them on Sundays, and, above all,
will avoid the hypocrisy of pretending that their
demand for peace is only for the good of youth,
when it is really a thing agreeable and salutary
chiefly to themselves. For life without gaiety is
a cake without sugar, or, rather, it is unleavened
bread.
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION
" The Medietval Church fell because it undertook to do so much Jor
men's souls that men felt they were losing consciousness that their souls
after all were their <w«."— Bishop Creighton.
There is, perhaps, a not uncommon feeling that
the older type of school in its curriculum did too
little to provide for individual tastes, and there
is also a feeling that class teaching is overdone.
Children passing through large schools in large
groups or classes lose, it is thought, their indivi-
duality, and, therefore, rather the opposite type
of teaching should be aimed at, namely, that no
two children should follow the same routine, and
that individual teaching rather than class teaching
should be the rule. Every individual bent of the
child's mind should be sought out with scrupulous
care and developed in the way that is most charac-
teristic of him. Let children grow up all good, if
possible, but at any rate let no two be quite alike.
It is not the school, nor the class, nor the subject
of instruction, but the individual child that the
teacher is really concerned with. So much stress
is laid on individuality by some writers.
What, then, is want of individuality.? Is it when
a person is not easily distinguishable from his com-
panions.? A hundred workhouse boys, for instance,
are hardly to be distinguished one from another,
at any rate by a stranger. When we speak of
want of individuality in a boy, do we mean that
he is one of a number all alike, resembling pebbles
tot
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION IO9
on a beach, "the unnumbered pebbles by the surges
idly chafed " ? When we regard each pebble as a
separate and handy thing for throwing at a mark,
we think of it also as wanting in characteristic
shape, since all alike are ground down by the surge
to forms more or less spherical, and one stone is
as good as another for our purpose. Are we, then,
to find fault with a boy for wanting individuality
because he acts and talks exactly like a hundred
others, each as complete in their own way as him-
self? Or are we, again, to talk of a boy as wanting
individuality, because in thought and action he is
so much assimilated to his parents or teachers that
his being seems merged in them and his thoughts
seem mere repetition of theirs? Do we not say
that an object has the greatest individuality when
it is most unlike its own kind, say a crow with
whitish feathers? We certainly say that an old
apple-tree has individuality, when in its twisted,
gnarled, and irregular stems and branches its own
particular past history may be easily read.
Do we, however, speak of individuality in a boy
who is quite unlike others, say, wears long hair
and plays with a doll, or who doesn't see any use
in a pocket-knife? Or do we after all rather call
that individuality when a boy does the same as
others, only in a different way, either better or
worse? If the last view is true, then any character,
however individual, has much in it that is common
to it and others, and is not, therefore, an isolated
human unit. When we complain of a school
routine, that it tends to destroy individuality, we
mean, probably, that it turns out boys all alike,
no EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
whether of a high quah'ty, or of average capacity,
or of a low tone. In such a case we ask are they
all alike, because they all assimilate the tone and
teaching of the school? But if a boy has been
brought up at home, and is quite unlike average
boys in important particulars, should we say that
he has a marked individuality?
I think it no paradox to say that a boy goes to
school to get rid of individuality, namely, that
kind which is stamped upon him by home life in
being unlike other boys. In losing, however, one
kind of individuality, which is apt to be either anti-
social or unserviceable, or at least what Dr. Johnson
called " not clubbable ", he really gains a new per-
sonality, which ought to be the old one, not abol-
ished, but modified and intensified and improved.
If a boy takes with him to school no sense of
individual responsibility, and if he is in none of
his thoughts or actions other than imitative, sub-
servient, receptive, and obedient, the character he
will acquire at school will be just that which stamps
the average boy at that school, good or bad as it
may be. If he brings to school a feeling of re-
sponsibility and obeys and imitates with intelli-
gence and reflection, his intercourse with boys and
masters will not form a new and merely average
character, nor will it abolish his old individuality,
but rather enhance it.
A boy should learn at school the value of doing
as others do, where nothing of consequence is in-
volved in conventional practice. He should also
learn to respect the individual opinions of others
while maintaining his own, and learn the limits
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION III
between wilful and rational opposition. That
which is awkward, boorish, graceless or shy, and
eccentric should disappear under the influence of
converse with other boys.
But the old-fashioned grammar-school performed
its work very badly. The ways of the scholars
were often unworthy of a gentleman, the course of
studies was the same for all boys alike, and took
no account of the varied occupations of life or the
varied endowments of boys. After sixteen, most
boys must, in these days, learn to make up their
mind whether they will pursue a more literary or
a more scientific training, and whether they intend
to adopt a practical career or lead a life of study,
and their instruction should (within limits) be
varied accordingly. But a boy must learn to do
as others do in many matters. How can the indi-
viduality of a boy, then, be respected at school?
Judging from these considerations, it will be
admitted that a negative answer must be given
to the question: Can you make a boy most him-
self by leaving him alone and giving him particular
private tuition .>* Individuality is better developed
at school than at home, and no child can grow
up strong in mind and body without interference.
Then comes the question: When should inter-
ference be recommended, and how far should it
extend } Everyone can see the harm of false con-
trol, but all education implies control, and, in some
form, compulsion. The reason why many people
object to compulsory religion, compulsory morality,
and compulsory learning, is, that such religion, vir-
tue, and learning can hardly be distinguished in
112 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
reality and practice from the absence of them ; yet
no society can really exist without compulsion in
some form. In a pack of wolves or wild animals
with social instincts, the members who fail in their
duty are destroyed by the rest, and in more com-
plex human associations compulsion in some form
or other is inevitably exercised. Yet freedom is
often spoken of as a " natural " thing.
Poets seem to yearn after a freedom with which
in their fancy they invest nature. " Follow nature,"
they seem to say, "she alone is free." Wordsworth
wrote : —
" How does the meadow flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and in that freedom bold ;
And so the grandeur of the forest tree
Comes not by casting in a formal mould,
But from its own divine vitality ".
Students of science, on the other hand, differ
here from poets. What most impresses and often
oppresses them is the prevalence of law in nature,
and the whole progress of learning tends to force
upon us the fact that in nature there is nothing
capricious and nothing arbitrary or mutable. The
wind which seemed so long to have a "liberal
charter" is now, after years of patient research,
known to blow in obedience to regular laws. It
is only imperfect knowledge that leads us to think
that growth of living matter is uncontrolled. The
results of vitality are a compromise between in-
ternal and external forces. Neither child nor
flower can grow up free from external force, but,
of course, the force must be suited to its needs.
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION II3
For there is a principle in the application of com-
pulsion to human beings. There is a state of man
which is neither slavery nor anarchy. It is wild
nature that really lives in slavery, however free it
may appear to poets. The principle for men is,
that so far as possible the compulsion must be
directed to setting free energy for good, which
without it is impeded or wasted.
In each particular case it is impossible to say
without much consideration whether compulsion
is necessary or not. In itself, compulsion is not
an evil. The mistaken application of it is most
injurious. What makes compulsion unpopular is
its abuse and not its use. Even in a game of
football, if the boys do not compel each other to
"play the game", they will get no game at all,
and no pleasure in their aimless scrimmage.
It is easy to see that compulsion which prevents
an immediate evil may, after a time, give rise to a
crop of others, and that the evil may be increased
by the remedy. The law, for instance, by which
public-houses are closed on compulsion at a certain
hour seems to have worked very well. The reason
is, because it only exercises a little unobjectionable
force in urging every ale-house politician and club-
man in the direction he is really not unwilling to
go, namely home, in decent time. It is asserted,
however — probably with truth — that if, without
abolishing the demand for what is sold in public-
houses, you abolish public-houses altogether, your
compulsory measure would lead to an immense
consumption in private-houses, clubs, and the like;
compulsion works well in one case and not in
(M930) H
114 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
another. Again, the English people like to rest
on the seventh day, and machinery is therefore,
by lying idle, often taxed or mulcted of one
seventh of its use. Few people, however, object
to the law which prohibits manufacture and trad-
ing on Sunday. The nation secures a day of rest
by this compulsion. What would, however, be
the effect of compelling everyone to go to church
according to an old statute.'* The evil would far
outweigh the good. Uniform practice in such a
matter is another question.
All civilized nations now most wisely insist on
all children attending school. The attendance at
school is a matter of discipline, and it is an indis-
pensable part of the training of the ordinary family.
Except in rare cases, the family training which is
the basis of all education needs the supplement of
a good school where the motives and movements
of human life may play upon the child's growing
organism more freely than they can in the narrow
sphere of home, and yet not without some check.
The methods of instruction and the course of
studies, however, remained too long stereotyped,
the successful scholar becoming in the next gen-
eration the school teacher, and repeating over
again with no significant alteration precisely the
same routine which had answered his purpose, in
spite of the fact that manufacture, trade, and even
professions keep on changing to suit the growing
complexity of modern life. An Elizabethan cur-
riculum consisting of ancient languages is imper-
fectly adapted to the time in which we live, and
yet the vis inertia that has to be overcome before
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION II 5
any important alteration can be made is so great,
that probably private schools will be the first to
inaugurate them. Probably in the end the efforts
of private schoolmasters will create an opinion so
favourable to a new type of school, that the old
grammar-school routine will be seriously modified,
and in time a boy's career at school will be very
unlike the excessive book cram at a German gym-
nasium on the one hand, or the one-sided physical
development of a mere athlete, such as characterizes
the rather low aims of some English public schools.
"How", said George Kingsley to the South Sea
Islander, "do you make your living?" "Oh, we!
we play games." More clearly than before it is
seen to be the teacher's business to seek out the
natural endowments of each boy, but inasmuch
as in most cases these are of an average type, a
common education and routine is both possible
and desirable. The demand to have one teacher
for one child is as false in theory as impracticable.
We have, however, to be keenly alive to the ex-
ceptional types, and deal with these prudently.
For most even of these highly -gifted children,
one of the best lessons that they can possibly learn
is the use and value of what is average, and we
have to help them so to develop their special gift,
that they may not, by a mistaken reliance on their
one talent, become foolish in matters where what
is ordinary and usual is of far greater importance
than what is exceptional. School should offer the
average boy opportunities of measuring himself
with those whose talents are far beyond his own,
and at the same time it must enable the boys of
Il6 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
exceptional talent and aspirations to develop them-
selves prudently, and to live in society with their
fellow fools and their fellow brutes, for these are,
after all, their brothers, with whom they will have
to get on in after-years, or else pass their lives, as
many men of genius have done, in perpetual dis-
content and misery. School must, however, not
exaggerate the average qualities of average boys.
An injurious influence was formerly exercised by
the first class English public schools, in that they
made the average boy think too little of his powers
and the clever boy too much. " Modesty ", said
jesting Jowett, " is only a virtue in youth ", and
perhaps even this excessive belief in one's self does
more good than harm. At any rate " a mixture
of a lie doth ever add pleasure ". But the feeling
engendered by the Homeric treatment of the rank
and file compared with the Hectors, Achilleses, and
Ajaxes worked badly on the careers of the ordinary
boys. They felt themselves one of a genus, a
specimen, a black ant on a forest ant-heap, or a
sombre - clad sparrow amid the thieves of the
harvest They became shorn of their individu-
ality. Their spirit of self-assertion was unduly
depressed. They started to face the world in
despair of their own powers. School-life, instead
of making them manly and self-reliant, made them
tarae and wanting in forgetivc power.
While, then, there is a growing demand that in-
dividuality may be more respected, on the other
hand some .say the crop of individualism in modern
life is too heavy, and that the spirit of Rousseau,
while destroying obedience to traditional practices
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION ny
and conventional customs, has replaced it with a
love of disobedience for its own sake. It has been
said that old-fashioned behaviour and principles
which had some admixture of sound sense have
been replaced by sophistical and fallacious state-
ments which have none.
Undoubtedly the hardest task of the educator is
to help a growing youth to know himself, for that
involves a wide knowledge of others. A boy has
to learn to play his part with others, and not to
live in solitude. He has to learn that the great
organic communities with and in which he has to
live and work, the state, the church, the army, or
other professions, are not mere aggregates of in-
dividuals, each getting something for himself which
alone determines his association with the others
like political parties. He has to learn that great
organic associations depend on the due expansion
of the individual will ; and that each member must
learn to undei;stand himself and others by expand-
ing each his own will until it embraces the wills of
others, and thus to become a member of a corporate
and, in the ecclesiastical phrase, a mystical union.
There is, however, a type of individualism which
is the purest vulgarity. " Who ", says Amiel, " has
not been repelled by the conduct of the young men
standing at the corners of the village -green on
Sunday evenings .!* The starlight is superb. The
night is peace, harmony, and fragrance. The
youths howl breakdown songs, purposely out of
tune and harsh, they grin and make coarse or
brutal remarks and jests on passers-by. Why all
this? It is instinct. It is the imperious need of
Il8 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
self-assertion. It is the feeling they must assert
themselves to be what they are; they must oppose
themselves as such to everyone else; they must
set themselves in contrast sharp and clear with all
around, with nature, with poetry, with order, with
society, with harmony, with the adoration which
raises us to God. It is I, I, I, before all; I by
opposition, I by vulgarity, by contortion of face,
by coarse chaff, by impertinent caprice, by inde-
pendence and self-sovereignty, by exultant spon-
taneity, I for myself, a self-sufficient, invincible
monad, outside, not inside God's creation. It is
I as Satan tempted Adam, I as the centre of all,
I to be as God."
This conduct is a gross and coarse caricature of
man's most precious privilege to be himself; it is
the abuse of personal responsibility, it is the night-
mare of the conception of freedom. Yet these
young musicians of Bremen, the ass, the cock,
and the dog, may learn wisdom in time. Let
them alone, let them continue their base concert
till its repulsiveness appals even themselves. The
sense of shame must grow up from within. Better
this individuality than none at all. For it is certain
that modern thought often does tend to the prac-
tical suppression of individuality. Materialism and
socialism both overlook and misunderstand the true
value of human personality and efface it, the one in
the sum of natural facts, the other in society.
As there is a danger of sacrificing the whole for
a part, as when a child is momentarily indulged,
regardless of his whole career, or when the majesty
of the law is unvindicated owing to favour in a
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION II9
Special case, so there is a danger of sacrificing a
part for the whole, as when a boy at school with
a special taste finds no opportunity of pursuing it
because it lies outside the routine of the school.
What is inconsistent with the bond of union that
holds any society together must be got rid of, but
the wisest may easily confuse what is with what is
not essential, hence the reformer is easily excom-
municated or martyred, and man has ever behaved
most shamefully to those who have served him best.
To develop individuality, boys ought to have
some time alone, and some place where they can
follow their own thoughts. Amiel remarks finely:
" In the depths of self leave some room for the
vague, undecided, and mysterious; leave a corner
of the land uncultivated where chance seeds may
grow as the wind conveys them; leave a few
branches to shelter strange birds; leave an altar
unascribed where there is a place for a strange
god. Allow some novel thoughts to grow without
much criticism. If the soil is of the right sort and
well cultivated, bad seeds will not take root, and
only what is good will flourish there."
The greatest difficulty of the teacher is to possess
the tact and skill to know how much fallow-time
to leave his scholars. This inner hidden individual
life must not be choked and destroyed by the
exigencies of social organization. Character is
suppressed if the individual is made a mere instru-
ment of the body or community to which he
belongs. The true social aim is to frame a society,
such that each member governs himself, hard as
it is to establish this type of government. The
I20 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Latin people, it is said, cannot establish self-
government nor accept truth as a whole. They
seek miracles and objects of faith and worship at
Lourdes and elsewhere. They petrify abstractions,
and never penetrate into the inner sanctuary of
the heart where ideas are not yet fashioned apart
and completely defined. Instead of seeking truth,
they build a fort round an accepted position and
defend it from attacks of critical enquiry. Their
daily life is determined exclusively by custom,
tradition, and convention, however contrary to
reason and sound criticism. It was this conven-
tionality that Rosseau undermined, but the Latin
people still dread individual responsibility for them-
selves and do not train their children to it. "The
English family", it is well maintained by Amiel,
"is the opposite of this. Each member has his
place, and fills it in an orderly way. Each has
his duty, and the rights of each are respected;
children are happy, smiling, and trusting, and yet
discreet. They know they are loved, but they do
not presume on this. English mothers practise
a firm impersonal rule which is the base of all
law. Children feel they have rights and are not
obeying arbitrary and capricious commands. * Dieu
et mon droit' is a principle imbibed by Englishmen
with their mother's milk."
If, then, the English family is so good a type of
a social community, cannot we imagine, according
to Frcebel's views, a school which shall be designed
as an extension of it rather than a substitute.
Such an institution would aim at a position be-
tween the old-fashioned school and family life. It
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION 121
would be wider than the family circle, but the
masters would not be out of relation to the boys
when not instructing them, nor mere companions
in games. The masters and boys would have
common occupations in farm and garden and
workshop, and in expeditions for surveying, science
studies, and practical handwork and military train-
ing. The boys would not be left too much to
themselves, nor subjected to the degrading espion-
age of the pitiful pio7i of the French schools. In
such a school there will be a place for both sexes,
and the brutalities of Tom Brown's experience will
be avoided, while the effeminacy of a smug boarding-
house will be equally absent. Hard and rough
work out of doors will check the growth of squeam-
ishness, and evening occupations, in the way of
music, literature, recitations, readings, play-acting,
and the like, will cultivate refinement. We want
nothing soft, and yet nothing brutal or brutish.
We can imagine a school in the country, where
hardihood can be cultivated amid fresh air, open
windows, and cold water, where life is simple and
varied, and the evils of excessive subdivision of
labour are avoided.
The effect of a one-sided education is obvious.
We have excessive division of labour, distributing
life into sharply-divided states of toil and amuse-
ment; work without pleasure in it, and amusement
without intellect. We have a vast heap of human
misery which we pity and cannot alleviate; we
have abolished slavery in word, but there are
masses of men who are not yet free and cannot
develop their individual capacities.
122 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
We can imagine a school where the masters lead
a common life with the boys, dressed like them for
practical activity in the field, and not in black cloth
gowns or cassocks, working at gardening or plough-
ing, directing the boys at work with them, where
the child is not isolated from the society of adults
out of lesson -time, and where adults find a real
and not a pretence or toy occupation in utilizing
the child's force as far as it goes in work which is
useful for the establishment. We can imagine that
time at this school will not divide itself into sharply-
cut sections of work and play, hated restraint fol-
lowed by lawless relaxation, but rather consist of
interchange of occupation, continuous but varied,
some lighter, some severer, some taxing muscle,
some brain.
We can imagine that in such a school there
would be established a collective corporate life, in
which, however juvenile, each member would learn
self-reliance and individual responsibility. The
life would call out spontaneous activity, and not
merely depend on drill, hurry, force, and uniformity.
Each will be a law unto himself and no man's
slave, but he will not on that account obey his own
arbitrary will and caprice. His law will be based
upon the will of all, which is his own will expanded
till it comprehends the will of others. " Each on
himself relied as on his arm alone the moment lay
of victory." The transition from such a school to
life would not then be felt as passing from a con-
dition of restraint to freedom, but rather from
freedom to greater freedom, a transition which
actually and really implies passing from a state
INDIVIDUALISM IN EDUCATION 12$
of restraint to greater restraint, from less need of
self-control to greater need of it, from few chances
of offence to many chances.
In such a school the idea of liberty which grows
up in the mind will not be absence of restraint and
order, not unorder, not anarchy, not false individu-
alism, not disregard of others, not absence of ex-
ternal control, but rather constant consideration
of others, and constant adjustment of the relation
of self to other people. The virtue that here grows
up will be not negative, as of those who are good
because they are constrained to be good by force
external to themselves, but active virtue, such as
springs from having lived in a society where good
lives are led and where a good life has been led,
thanks to the environment of a well -organized
community.
Reform in education must be slow. It must be
a compromise between past and present.
New types of schools want the prestige and
distinction that invest older schools. All honour
to those who in faith make trial of new movements,
and face the future without a craven shrinking
before risk, and do not take timid refuge in the
shelter of the imposing and magnificent, but attenu-
ated and moth-eaten garments of the past.
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND
THE TREE OF LIFE
Address at the Annual Conference of
THE Parents' National Educational Union, 1898
Last year, on a corresponding occasion, I had an
opportunity of laying before you some account of
the Institution which has been founded for some
years in Berlin, where women of all ranks can learn
both the science and the art connected with rearing
and teaching children, and the management of the
house. Frau Schrader's work, has, I read, been
treated of this week before the Frobel Society. It
appears to me that among the many branches of
its work which a Parents' National Educational
Union should bear constantly in mind, the exten-
sion of undertakings of this kind is one of the most
important.
We hear, and some of us experience in our own
own families, much of the strife of nations in the
present day, and it looks as if our country, at the
end of this century, might be again, as it was at
the end of the last, fighting for its existence as an
imperial power. It seems well, therefore, to bear
in mind the immense importance of making the
most of every living child, both physically and
mentally. It was a fine thought of Pestalozzi's,
that the character of a people could be raised by
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 1 25
maternal — that is home — education, which is the
base of the work of the RN.E.U. This conception
of education, I should like to point out, differs
much from the views of Plato, the founder of all
educational theory. In Plato's view education is
the way in which the national principles and char-
acter are realized in the individual member of the
nation. It is the nation that must somehow guide
the development of the child through the mother.
The child is thus to be brought up, as at Sparta,
largely under influences which are external to the
family. There is little left in such a system for
the free development of the individual.
Miss Mason says rightly, education must make
for the evolution of the individual. The highest
ideal of morality in the ancient view of education
was the character of a good citizen in a good state.
Such an ideal is no mean one ; we all ought to have
it; but while aiming at nothing lower we ought to
aim at something higher. For Christianity, build-
ing upon and extending the views of the Hebrews,
has taught us to look beyond the daily needs of
the society into which we are born. Beyond and
above the laws of the nation there is the conception
of the Laws of God. It would appear that if
freedom of development and natural growth under
judicious and far-sighted guidance are held the
right system of education, then this can only be
worked out effectively through family life. Of
course lazy people are apt to confuse such true
development on the part of the child with the
principle of laissez-faire on the part of the mother
and father. But the truth is, that unrestricted
126 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
growth of the child is impossible without much
attention on the part of all those in charge of him.
The analogy of the garden is complete. A flower
will not bud and bloom in natural perfection unless
the gardener defends it from all injurious influences,
and this art requires much science. There is no
member of the P.N.E.U. who does not look on the
nation as an aggregate of families and as depending
for its welfare upon the successful organization of
family life, in which the members of the common-
wealth are developed to the utmost in spirit, mind,
and body. It is through the family that the char-
acter of the nation can be raised, and that character
includes the growth of the body as well as of the
soul.
The P.N.E.U., then, in endeavouring to direct
the attention of parents and all who assist them,
whether teachers, doctors, nurses, or others, to the
need of a more systematic study of the moral,
spiritual, and physical nature of the child, is work-
ing in accordance with the beliefs, and hopes, and
recommendations of the wisest and best of men
from hoar antiquity to the present hour. It seems
to me, therefore, that the P.N.E.U. ought to en-
courage what, for want of a better description, I
will term technical education of women, in all
matters relating to family life, or as Mrs. Steinthal
has put it, the Utilitarian Education of Girls. It
appears to me that in every country and in every
large town there should be an institution where
girls and women of all classes in society could
study the art and theory of all that appertains to
home life. In France and Germany and Holland
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 1 27
much has been done to supply instruction of this
type, and, quite apart from all other advantages, I
venture to think there is some evidence that these
races are growing physically stronger and that the
number of stunted and ill -developed children is
decreasing. I am not sure whether, when we read
the account of those who devote their lives to
assisting the lowest stratum of English society —
the stratum which I am afraid is correctly de-
scribed as the dregs of all the classes rather than
a special class, — we can feel sure that the Eng-
lish are keeping up the standard of bone and
muscle which existed before the congregation of
the inhabitants in big towns and manufacturing
centres.
The following is a recent statement of a Medi-
cal Officer of Health, who thereby defends a
parent from the charge of cruel neglect on the
score that he is only dirty. The Medical Officer
of Health writes, iiiter alia: — "If dirt on children
be taken to be neglect, within the meaning of
the Acts quoted, there will be no end to these pro-
secutions. Very poor people are as a rule dirty,
and generally verminous. ... It is hopeless to
expect that this, or any town, can ever be free of
its naturally sluttish people and their dirty homes.
It never struck me that such should be looked at
in the light of criminals, nor that imprisonment is
in the least likely to improve their condition.
Under the Public Health Acts we deal with them
in a comparatively gentle way, giving notice of
requirements, with sufficient time for carrying them
out. . . . Surely the better way of getting sanitary
128 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
deficiencies amended would be to direct the atten-
tion of the sanitary authority to them. We are
open to receive complaints and give them our
attention, and possibly the object of the N.S.P.C.C.
will be as well served by their inspector bearing-
this in mind."
It is clear that civilizing influences must work
from above downwards. What can Sanitary
Authorities do without deep-seated public support,
and the public can only give this support where
properly instructed. At present men attribute
dirt, disease, and death to the visitation of God
instead of to their crass and criminal ignorance.
Some may say home education ought to be
studied at home. The answer to this objection is,
that no home is so perfectly organized that every-
thing can be taught in it which is desirable to be
learnt Institutions are needed. One of the most
complete of British institutions of this type known
to me is that which exists in Edinburgh for techni-
cal training in domestic work, called the Edinburgh
School of Cookery and Domestic Economy. Here
there are elementary and advanced classes in
cookery, dressmaking, and millinery, plain needle-
work, laundry-work, hygiene, home nursing, house-
keeping, and book-keeping. There are also courses
laid out for housewives and lady housekeepers.
Besides these courses special provision is made for
the training of teachers, including high class, plain
class, and artisan cookery. Doubtless in London
the Polytechnics are attempting similar work, and
at the Battersea Polytechnic the courses are per-
haps in some respects of a higher type, and corre-
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 1 29
spond more nearly to the ideal of such institu-
tions as I will presently endeavour to describe it.
Another admirable institution is the Yorkshire
Ladies' Council of Education with head -quarters
at Leeds.
It is my opinion that the number of institutions
of this kind should be largely extended, and I
cannot but believe that those who wish to do their
country some service and help to leave it better than
they find it should take every opportunity of sup-
porting this movement. Unluckily the amount of
wealth accumulated in the country is so enormous
that to be called an educated person is perhaps
becoming equivalent to having a dilettante know-
ledge of literature, science, or art, and no practical
knowledge of the material needs of life and living,
which are relegated to other people and paid for
as menial service.
Now it may seem that the drift of my remarks
has been to reduce the occupations of women to
domestic drudgery, and that it tends to advance
the materialization of society, which is already
over- materialized. It may also seem that the
title of my paper has been selected because I
prefer the tree of life to the tree of knowledge.
However, I wish to advocate something very
different. The tree of knowledge should some-
how be grafted into the tree of life. I wish
to raise the arts of living and not cut down
the tree of knowledge. I can see no reason why
knowledge should be pursued by ordinary persons
for its own sake out of all relation to the needs of
daily life. I do not see why knowledge should be
(M930) I
130 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
degraded because it is studied in relation to prac-
tical affairs. It seems to me that some means
must be found of reconciling formative and utili-
tarian purposes in our studies. I cannot help
thinking that the technical schools for girls and
women on the Continent are just so far superior
to most of those which have been attempted in
England, because, while in our own country the
studies in the technical schools for women are
purely utilitarian, and the students pursue nothing
but a special course or courses in cookery, or laun-
dry-work, or nursing, omitting all studies of a
general nature, abroad the course of practical
studies is held incomplete without lessons in lan-
guage, history, geography, moral conduct, and
other branches of science.
In Frau Busch's Woman's Industries School, in
Leipzig, the object is to give the students a theo-
retical and practical knowledge of all the duties
that belong to the management of family life, and
to inspire them with a love of industry and readi-
ness to attend to business. The aim is thus
strictly practical. But yet the time-table pro-
vides the students with regular exercises in their
native language and literature.
In Munich, a Continuation School has been
established consisting of a three-year course, in
which girls are taught the care and education of
children from the first cry onwards. They learn
the most recent contributions of science to the
subject of breathing and ventilation, food and
digestion, care of teeth, warmth, temperature and
clothing, sickness and nursing. Besides the physi-
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE I3I
cal development of the children, the instruction
deals with their intellectual development. The
students learn about the senses and their mode of
operation, the development of presentation of ideas,
feeling, and instinct. The aid of a sensible medi-
cal man, teaching in the light of modern science,
thus rescues the young children from mistaken
treatment arising out of prejudice, bad tradition
and custom, and neglect. The instruction is prac-
tical as well as theoretical, and is treated on broad
lines, so that general principles are not obscured
in a multiplicity of detail. The students learn the
arts of the kindergarten by visiting such institutions
in the town and assisting in the occupations of the
infants. A doctor shows them how to fill up a
nurse's report, take temperature, and select suit-
able nourishment in sickness. Bishop Fraser once
said that the right sort of instruction for a youth
was the kind which ended in his knowing where
to look for the varied information which he would
be constantly requiring when grown up. Many of
the Germans now pride themselves on surpassing
other nations in versatility. It is no doubt very
difficult indeed to combine versatility with stability
of character. The pluck and pertinacity of the
British bull-dog are worthy of all admiration, but
the expansion of science and the application of it
to industry, the growth of new wants and the
fresh means of supplying them, all make modern
life more and more complex. We may sigh for an
Arcadian simplicity and homelier living, but the
trend of civilization is not in that direction, and it
is useless to find fault with what is not in itself
132 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
necessarily bad. For it is the abuse of modern
opportunities and not the use of them that is to
be deplored. The hard thing is to live up to all
the new advantages that surround us. The in-
crease of opportunity implies increase of educated
effort to make a worthy use of it
There is no valid reason why practical house-
wifery and the rearing and training of children
should not be intellectual pursuits. Almost every
action may be based on science, but there is a
tendency in the present time to take little account
of literature and philosophy, whether mental or
moral, in technical schools. I read a letter from
a girl who had passed from a good elementary
school to a Polytechnic. She described her routine
and its results, and was justly proud of first-class
certificates (beautiful ornaments) in cooking, wash-
ing, and dressmaking. The acquisition of these
arts is worth the effort. They are the sound fruit
of the tree of life, but none of them are by them-
selves stimulating, inspiring, or elevating, apart
from the products of the other tree. It is not a
question of book versus bench, or knowledge versus
action, but of the working of a mind on a mind.
There is a valuable paper in Hand and Eye for
March, and also printed in the Report of the Sloyd
Association of Great Britain and Ireland for 1898,
by Mr. Sidney H. Wells, Principal of the Battersea
Polytechnic, upon the influence of the technical
education movement on the profession of teaching.
He shows the danger of substituting a cook or a
carpenter for a schoolmaster or schoolmistress, and
the effect of separating kitchen practice from the
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 1 33
methods of true education. It must not be for-
gotten that the disciplinary value of athletic train-
ing has been vastly enhanced since it has been
undertaken by educated men instead of merely
professionals.
One of the chiefest differences is the mind of
the teacher. Skilled artisans or cooks, whose
early training has been such that they have never
exercised their minds upon the great problems of
conduct and government, of history, literature, or
art, will seldom see beyond the material product
of their skill. They can communicate their art
and make boys into carpenters or girls into cooks,
but they cannot reach the spirit. Therefore I
earnestly hope that ladies and gentlemen who
have enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education
may take up, as some few have already done, this
new and difficult task of grafting the tree of know-
ledge on the tree of life. I hope that many local
charities which are now devoted to antiquated and
useless purposes may be devoted to establishing
technical schools for girls and women, in which
utilitarian training shall not be divorced from for-
mative studies. There is need of men and women
who will devote themselves to educational work
of this kind. It will be largely a work of self-
sacrifice. There is little recompense of reward in
it, whether in a pecuniary way or in respect of
honour or glory. To follow the beaten track and
supply the demand of the current market is far
more lucrative to the producer than making fresh
experiments, which, like all valuable experiments,
though they are fruitful whether they succeed or
134 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
fail, often do fail. Nevertheless, those who apply
themselves earnestly to this work may have the
satisfaction which Schiller says comes to all great-
minded people, that they are living for posterity.
ON SPENCER'S "EDUCATION"
A BOOK that is written for a particular time, if it
be written by a great author, often becomes a book
for all time. Few will deny that Herbert Spencer
is one of the most considerable of the famous series
of English thinkers, and although not everyone
accepts his principles of philosophy, yet even those
who differ from him will perhaps admit, with Lord
Beaconsfield, that we should be grateful to any
philosopher, however much we may disagree with
him.
Herbert Spencer's treatise on education should
unquestionably be studied thoughtfully by every-
one who pretends to make any enquiry into this
most intricate and difficult, and I may even say
tedious subject. I call it tedious because I cannot
deny that the elevated thoughts on which all of it
depends hardly serve to raise to the level of a high
argument the petty details which must needs make
up the present round of child-life. The incidents
of the nursery day by day must needs seem trivial,
unless parents and others are something of prophets
and can see the future through the present, the ful-
filment in the promise, and the hope of the empire
in the success of their training.
It is most important to bear in mind in the out-
set, that Spencer does not claim to be writing a
detailed treatise upon education. His aim is to
state a few general principles, and to notice a few
methods in illustration of them. The reason why
135
136 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
it is so important to bear this fact in mind is be-
cause it is only so that the reader can avoid the
common error of hunting in vain for what is not
in the book, and never intended to be there, and
thus allowing his disappointment to make him
overlook the valuable suggestions which it really
contains.
A book that is written to meet the wants of a
particular time is unavoidably limited by the special
circumstances of that time. When Spencer was
writing this book, and looked around at the gen-
eral state of culture in England, when he regarded
the average type of graduate put forth annually in
hundreds by the universities, he would not fail to
be struck by gaps in their studies. Natural Science
was without any devotees, there was no History
School, and the German language — the key to all
serious study — was seldom mastered. There was
not one Science master in most of the Public
Schools at that time.
Spencer had no idea of revolutionizing the edu-
cational arrangements of his day; for, as a philoso-
pher, he stated clearly enough that systems are not
made, but grow. Sound ideas require time for ful-
filment. They may be sown broadcast, but the
minds of men do not work in a single season like
the soil of a field. Ideas have not only to be
understood, but they have also to be reconciled
with previously existing ideas, and adapted to the
mental furniture of the current generation. The
human whole — mind, body, spirit, — however we
divide it up, is seen to be far too complex to play
tricks with. Old experience, which is part of a
ON spencer's "education" 137
working system, may be more effective than sound
ideas that, being new, are not yet worked into a
system. The nature of the required changes must
be explained in the first instance, but means for
carrying them out can only be discovered with
patience and by taking plenty of time.
In Spencer's first chapter he discusses what
knowledge is most worth, and gives the first place
to science. I think that, since he was writing in
days when the science that was acted on in daily
life was almost mediaeval in its character owing to
the general ignorance of the advance of learning,
he was justified in giving a very prominent place
to Natural Science. He saw that the kind of
education that was given both to boys and girls
tended rather to the acquisition of accomplish-
ments than to power to accomplish. When, he
says, a mother is mourning over a first-born that
has sunk under scarlet fever, which might not have
been so serious a complaint if the offspring's health
had not been enfeebled by over-study, it is small
consolation to her that she can read Dante in the
original.
He saw that industry of all kinds, whether agri-
cultural or manufacturing, was becoming more and
more dependent upon the study of science. He
saw that the result of the struggle for existence
among nations was resting more and more upon
the amount of science which each of them applied
to the affairs of daily life. He points out that the
ability of a nation to hold its own against other
nations depends on the skilled activity of its units.
He saw the appalling infant mortality, nearly
138 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
half the babies born in some districts dying in
their first year; he saw the weak and sickly sur-
vivals that lived to be a burden rather than an aid
to the state, and then he insisted on the need for
some widely-spread study of the science of health,
and the structure and maintenance of the human
body.
Science in those days was thought to be irre-
ligious, or at least drawing men away from religion.
Spencer maintains that true science is essentially
religious. Devotion to science is a tacit worship.
It is sad, he says, to see men learned and critical
over the Homeric poetry and passing by without
a glance that grand epic written by the finger of
God upon the strata of the earth. Devotion to
science is not a mere lip-homage, but a homage
expressed in actions, not a mere professed respect,
but a respect proved by the sacrifice of time,
thought, and labour. Only the genuine man of
science can truly know how utterly beyond human
conception is the universal power of which nature,
life, and thought are manifestations. Thus Spencer
asks. What knowledge is most worth? and answers
— Science. Science is needed for maintenance of
life and health; science is needed for gaining a
livelihood ; science is needed for the due discharge
of parental functions; science is needed for the
discharge of the citizen's duties. It is science
that saves religion from becoming mere enthu-
siasm or degrading superstition; it is science that
directs the intellect into profitable studies, and it
is science that rescues morality from becoming
mere conventional behaviour. Education has four
ON spencer's "education" 139
aspects — physical, intellectual, moral, and religious
— some study of science is necessary for each.
I have said Spencer's Education was written
for a special time. Perhaps in these days it is no
longer necessary to make such an elaborate defence
for science, but I am quite sure that when the
book was written Spencer's language was not too
strong. Science was tabooed in most of the
schools and frowned upon in innumerable pulpits.
We may be grateful to Spencer for his advocacy
of science as an indispensable part of education.
In respect of moral training I think his attitude
is equally satisfactory. As he wishes to make in-
tellectual education less bookish, and to cause more
attention to be paid to the art of applying know-
ledge, so he would make moral training less con-
ventional. He would have the moral law an inner
and not an outward necessity. It must be a spirit
growing up within and not merely imposed from
without. It grows from within when you con-
stantly cultivate good feeling in the child and
encourage acts according to them. It grows from
without when moral conduct is the result of threats,
bribes, and ill-considered arbitrary punishment.
After spending her own youth in playing pieces
on the piano, in fancy needle-work, in reading
story-books and novels, and in party going, a
woman knows nothing of the nature of the
emotions of her children. She thinks some are
wholly bad, which is not true of any one of them,
and that some are wholly good, which is also not
true of any one of them. Ignorant of the basis
of feeling upon which moral life must be built, she
I40 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
knows nothing of the effects produced on it by this
or that treatment. It is the same with fathers:
acting on the caprice of the moment, or false prin-
ciples adopted without examination, they alienate
their sons, drive them into rebellion by harshness,
and ruin them and their families. Better some
knowledge which would tend to put an end to this
than exclusive attention to Greek plays. The
study of literature and art should be built upon
a foundation of science, or else education is like
the craft of a gardener, who, in aiming to produce
a big flower, starves the plant. Education certainly
involves sound discipline, and discipline is born of
firmness, but firmness is often confused with stern-
ness, and parents have often been stern, and even
harsh and cruel, with the impression that they
were maintaining discipline. Mere discipline, mere
external laws, do not produce morality. Many a
gentle boy and girl have followed the primrose way
to the everlasting bonfire through such ignorant
mismanagement. Their parents have succeeded in
making them dread, not wrong-doing, but punish-
ment I think that some theological systems,
parodies rather than examples of Christian teach-
ing, have supported this mistaken treatment At
any rate, when Spencer wrote, it was still worth
while to lay great stress upon the distinction, old
as recorded time, between enslaving the spirit of a
child and guiding him into good feeling; between
the fear of hell and the love of heaven; between
the dread of the consequences of wrong-doing and
the affection for the higher life; between the sj)irit
of Wordsworth's Ode to Duty, and of Calvinism.
ON SPENCER'S "EDUCATION" I41
Education must be non-coercive. As Bishop
Dupanloup said: — "I will respect human liberty
in the youngest child". Multiplied restrictions are
to be avoided. The aim is to arrange the child's
occupations so as to thwart his will as little, not as
much, as possible. Aimless asceticism is an evil,
not a virtue. Spontaneous activity must be directed,
not cherished. Co-ordinate and organize the child's
impulses with fear and trembling, dreading sup-
pression, and fearing, like a clumsy pruner, to cull
off a vigorous shoot, instead of merely repressing
exuberant growth. Watch and attend on nature;
do not substitute artificial for natural occupations —
understanding by natural what is suited to the age
and disposition of the child. Encourage the child
to seek and follow advice rather than to replace
his will by your own. Let your aim be self-
development in the child through wisely directed
habits and occupations rather than superinducing
an alien mind. Spencer guards himself against
the idea that he supposes for one moment that
you can produce a child of nature by leaving a
child to be brought up by nature, as though he
advocated entire laissez-faire. To assist nature
there is no need to unduly interfere with nature.
Because you do not swaddle a baby in yards of
winding cloth you need not therefore let him roll
off a cot on to the floor and injure his spine. By
harsh training the child may be mastered, but in
the end, when the youth has to leave home and
enter on the responsibilities of life, the only useful
part of his moral training is that which has led to
self-mastery. If the spirit of the relation between
142 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
the child and his parents and guardians is one of
antagonism, if the parent looks on the child as
always naughty, and the child on the parent as
always morose, the present life is miserable, and
the future almost desperate. Encourage the child
to aim at small conquests, and take a delight in
small triumphs. Set before boys some generous
purpose to achieve and live for. Let childhood
ripen in the child, and be as much as may be
his helper, adviser, and experienced friend, rather
than a despot or tyrannical autocrat
If right conduct in the moral training, and the
pursuit of knowledge in the intellectual, are made
habitually repugnant, there will be a prevailing
tendency to discontinue both as soon as parental
constraint comes to its inevitable conclusion.
It may be that at the present time there is not
much need to insist upon it, that in the main the
process of his education must be pleasurable to the
child, or else it will probably be a failure; but
when Spencer wrote this fact needed emphasiz-
ing.
As regards methods of teaching, Spencer did
yeoman service to the cause of education in re-
iterating the value of Pestalozzi's principles, and
restating them in the clearest way. Exercise
the limbs and the senses before burthening the
memory, substitute experiment, and observation,
and manual training for rote work. Deal with
concrete objects before abstract, even in number
and geometry. Take the child out of doors and
let nature enter inside the school -room. Take
notice that there are mental powers in the child,
ON spencer's " EDUCATION " 143
but that they do not become active all at once,
but in a certain order. Study that order and
follow it. The powers of the mind are developed
by use. Search out appropriate exercises and
study the individual child and his peculiarities.
Sympathy with the child's difficulties, and tact
in dealing with them, are essential. Above all,
knowledge of books must not be pursued without
the training of hand and eye, nor without the
practice of drawing, painting, and constructing
objects in paper, cardboard, and the like; because
handwork more than any other enables the child
to feel what it can do of itself " I made it", is
ever a feeling of triumph, and gives a sense of
power to do and confidence in self This kind
of work develops courage to attack difficulties,
patience in fighting with them, and perseverance
through failure.
It would seem to me doubtful whether the his-
tory of civilization throws as much light upon plans
for educational systems as Spencer supposes. It
seems to me that modern researches leave us less
certainty than prevailed some time back, as to the
precise course of this history; and, although the
embryo seems to follow in abbreviated stages the
development of the race to which it belongs, I see
little but a fanciful analogy in supposing that the
mind of the child must progress on the same lines
as the intellectual expansion of mankind. This,
however, is a minor matter, and critics of Spencer
attach, I think, too much importance to the dis-
cussion.
Lastly, I come to Spencer's chapter on moral
144 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
education. I think in this part of his book there is
a certain clumsiness, natural to a philosopher, and
"one who has no children", but in spite of this the
chapter deserves the approbation of all members
of the P.N.E.U. for one bold and remarkable state-
ment
The end of education is to prepare the young for
the duties of life. Then, says Spencer, is it not
surprising that not an hour should be devoted to
preparation for the gravest of all responsibilities,
the management of a family. Whether as bearing
on the happiness of parents themselves, or whether
as affecting the characters and lives of their children
and remote descendants, we must admit that a
knowledge of the right methods of juvenile culture
— physical, intellectual, and moral — is a knowledge
of extreme importance. This topic should be the
final one in the course of instruction passed through
by each man and woman. The subject which in-
volves all other subjects, and therefore the subject
in which education should culminate, is the theory
and practice of education. This view of education
is surely at the root of the principles of the
P.N.E.U. For this reason the members of the
Union should deal respectfully with Spencer's
book, even though they differ on certain points.
Educational systems, Spencer is well aware, and
emphasizes the fact, like political constitutions, are
not made, but grow. Improvement must needs be
slow, but, however slow, improvement implies the
use of means, and among the means is discussion.
The Parents' Union is the most important society
for stimulating such discussion, and we should be
ON spencer's "education" 145
grateful to Spencer for insisting on the importance
of discussion. Undoubtedly many people hold
that what demands much discussion is not much
worth discussing. Spencer is on the side of those
who value discussion. Discussion is rather to aid
us in avoiding mistakes than to elaborate some
uniform scheme of education. Few will deny that
it is worth while to hold up an ideal of family disci-
pline. Ideals, if rational, are in their nature un-
attained, but not exactly unattainable, and they
are indispensable beacon lights or guides. We
cannot cease from war in our time, but the ideal of
Universal Peace is still the highest ideal of inter-
national law.
Moral discipline, says Spencer, should be based
upon natural consequences. Let parents see that
their children experience the true consequences
of their conduct, neither warding them off nor
intensifying them. I always feel that natural
consequences as a base for discipline is inadequate.
The examples that Spencer gives cover too little
ground.
If a child is unpunctual let him suffer for his un-
punctuality. He may, however, be late for school
and punctual for the school-feast. A child may
learn not to play with fire by a slight burning of
the finger from an awkward use of a lucifer match,
but he may burn the house down and himself in it,
so that there is no child to discipline. If a small boy
slides down the banisters, are you to warn him and
then leave him till he falls off and breaks his arm
or leg, or worse .'' The natural consequence is too
often out of all proportion to the offence. Spencer,
(M930) K
146 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
however, is conscious of this, for he admits that a
three-years' urchin playing with an open razor
cannot be allowed to learn by the discipline of
consequences.
I feel that Spencer is adopting an often useful
device for a particular fault or class of faults, and
raising it to the dignity of a general principle, with
almost comic effect I think, however, that even
if the device could be carried out consistently it
would be insufficient It seems to me that there
is no really moral principle involved in it, and that
the idea is contrary, or at least inconsistent with
Spencer's own view that moral conduct must be
conscious and not superimposed; that the child
must learn to take a pleasure in the right conduct,
and to be averse to the wrong. If parents give wise
orders, their children ought to be glad to obey
them because they love their parents. This is an
ideal Parents cannot always give wise orders.
Who is wise enough for these things? Children
cannot always avoid testiness, irritability, restless-
ness, and the like.
But, after all, Spencer seems to me to have been
rather opposing the principle of severe punishment
than insisting overmuch on his own recipe. He is
absolutely true to human nature when he remarks
that harsh and unsympathetic treatment makes
children harsh and unsympathetic in after-life. He
was opposing, and rightly, excess of control, over-
regulation, and hothouse virtue. The child must
not be allowed to think that what passes for right
conduct is nothing else but his parents' arbitrary
will. There is all the difference between enforcing
ON spencer's "education" 147
what is right and setting up the idea that what is
right is merely what you enforce.
Spencer rightly objects to the style — " How
dare you disobey me?" " I'll make you do it, sir."
" I'll teach you who is master!' A skilful parent
or guardian can secure a spontaneous conformity
to parental wishes, leading to self-control, by means
of which obedience is secured without needless cross
and harsh demonstrations of authority. Mould the
will, do not break it; make children obedient, but
not submissive; give boys gradually greater and
greater responsibility. What unwise parents call
giving their sons liberty and freedom from con-
straint, wiser parents will show to be imposing on
them increased responsibility for self, which is a
saving of trouble to parent and increase of trouble
to child, little as he thinks so unless taught.
To sum up, I have endeavoured to show that
Herbert Spencer's book on Education is worth
your study. Do not look for what is not there,
namely, a complete system of education, but rather
profit by what is written. Much of it is consistent
with common sense — the need for science, the
inadequacy of the mediaeval quadrivium, the need
for pleasurable labour in learning, the need for
moulding rather than breaking the spirit of chil-
dren, the counterblast to a repressive system which
once prevailed. Lastly, he is most to be approved
for his approval of Pestalozzi. Do not lay too
much stress on punishment by natural conse-
quences, nor the idea that the education of the
individual must follow the development of cultiva-
tion in the human race. These are really minor
I4S EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
matters. On the other hand, as you beh'eve in the
principles of the Parents' National Educational
Union, at least respect Spencer for boldly placing
the goal of all education in the being properly
qualified to undertake parental responsibility.
GEOGRAPHY
IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION^
DEFECTS OF EARLIER METHOD
It cannot be denied that of all the subjects which
belong to elementary education there is none
which is more attractive than geography. It is
almost the only one, except what is called the
science of common things, which keeps the teacher
and scholar in touch with new discoveries and
fresh developments.
Yet geography remained for a long time one of
the dullest of subjects, because it consisted in learn-
ing by heart lists of mountains and rivers, with
their heights and lengths, often without even the
identification of their locality on the map.
To make a subject interesting, details must be
presented in relation to each other. One fact must
be dealt with in such a way as to explain another.
As Professor Mackinder has said, the teacher's
aim should be to show not only "where", but
also "why".
The defects of the old methods of teaching
geography may be summed up as follows: —
First, geographical learning was not based upon
object teaching, but upon names and numbers,
which had little meaning for the child, and no
interest. A pitman in the north of England,
looking at a poster which advertised a course of
^A paper read at the British Association meeting, Bradford
U9
15© EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
University Extension Lectures on the Age of
Elizabeth, was heard to remark: "Age of Eliza-
beth! well, I'm blessed if I care how old she was".
Many a child in former days had the same kind
of feeling about the length of the Yang-tse-kiang.
The facts were as dead as a skeleton, and could
communicate no vital force to the intellects of the
scholars.
Secondly, whereas the key to the understanding
of the rest of the surface of the earth is to be found
in the study of that part of it which adjoins the
child's home, this fact was quite ignored. Obser-
vations made by the child, under guidance, will
enable him to use the words hill, plain, stream, and
the like, with some meaning behind the terms.
So, too, by watching the varying height of the
sun, the changes of the season, the rainfall, the
first appearance of familiar birds and flowers, the
rise and fall of the tide, and such matters, the child
can lay a sure foundation for the intelligent study
of more advanced geography.
Thirdly, the map was supposed to speak for
itself Little attention was paid to the interesting
and important art of map reading. The truth is,
that to the untrained eye a map is a confused mass
of lines and names and colours. As Shakespeare
says: "He laughed till there were as many lines
in his face as on the Map of the World, with the
Indies added ".
Fourthly, there was not sufficient introduction
to the construction and use of the map. Children
should be shown how to record on paper the
direction and length of short walks. They should
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 151
be taken to commanding views, and shown how to
place, according to the compass, some of the chief
features in the landscape. They should learn to
pass from observation of nature to modes of repre-
sentation of nature, and they should feel the need
for marks to represent hills and rivers and towns
before they study elaborate maps. They should
pass, in short, from the object to the symbol or
diagram of it.
Fifthly, the children's studies were almost ex-
clusively confined to political geography, and too
little attention was paid to physical and astrono-
mical geography, which are the basis of the other.
Boundaries of states change; the form of the earth
abides.
Sixthly, geographical details were not sufficiently
connected as cause and effect, and they were not
regarded from various points of view. Each coun-
try which is studied, although no great amount of
detail is really needed for the purpose, should,
when the study is complete, present to the scholar
a connected whole.
Seventhly, a great many details were learned by
heart which reaHy had no value whatever to the
beginner — as, for instance, the names of all the
rivers that flow off eastwards from the Scandi-
navian mountains to the Baltic Sea.
PROGRESSIVE COURSE BASED ON
OBJECT-LESSONS
The systematic and continuous study of geo-
graphy should be deferred till the child is eight or
15a EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
nine years of age. Before this stage, coloured or
other pictures of England and foreign countries
may be shown, and romantic stories of adventures
by land and sea may be told or read, and attractive
poems, like " Ralph the Rover ", may be recited or
read to the children, and talked over. Walks may
be taken, and the geographical features of the
country may be pointed out. The sunrise and
star-rise may be watched, and the beauty of brooks,
rivers, and the " innumerable laughter of the sea "
may be enjoyed as opportunity permits. When a
child is eight or nine years old, however, the study
may become more precise. By use of slates or
paper ruled in squares, and by taking a side of a
square for a foot or a yard, the child may learn to
construct a plan of the class-room to scale, and also
to make such measurements of the walls as are
necessary for the purpose. I think work of this
kind, on square-ruled paper, although simple, is of
very permanent value, and that it is fruitful learn-
ing, because it suggests numerous useful applica-
tions of itself later on.
An excellent book on teaching geography through
object-lessons, by Mr. Frew (Blackie), shows how
children may learn to make graphic records of
short walks or even longer expeditions. That a
plan shows size and shape and direction, and that
a line carefully drawn from point to point as the
direction of the walker changes, may record the
turns he takes in the course of a long walk, are
facts worth mastering, and not really hard for a
child to master if taught in a practical way, by
doing, and not by reading.
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 1 53
The next best help to the understanding of the
right use of geographical terms is a relief map or
model of the locality of the home. Along with the
model there should be a photograph of it, because
this forms an admirable introduction to the idea
of a map. The difficulty of the map-maker is to
indicate on a flat surface the relief of the land.
The difficulty of the child is to think how a flat
surface like a map can possibly indicate a moun-
tainous or hilly country.
The third stage after the use of the model and
the photograph of it is the pictorial map, or bird's-
eye view ; and the last stage is the ordnance map
of the same district. For young children, as for
newspaper readers, a bird's-eye view is an excellent
introduction to a real map. Some may say that
this careful gradation of difficulties, and this pre-
senting them one at a time, are unnecessary. They
are wrong. Clearness of apprehension and clear-
ness of thought are gained in early years by this
slow and methodical practice. For want of it
great mistakes are often made by men of un-
doubted ability.
Children can learn from a model of their country
most of the important geographical terms in a
concrete form.
Such a model presents the various types of
elevated land, such as the isolated hill, ranges of
hills, masses of high land, passes in ranges of hills
and valleys, and ways of communication. It en-
ables the beginner to obtain a clear idea of rivers,
and not merely rivers, but river basins. Water-
sheds also are easily studied, and similar facts.
154 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
By suitable questioning, based upon the model,
reasons can be drawn out for the rise of a town
in a particular situation. The idea that there is
little that is really arbitrary or matter of chance
even in the site of a town or village may be well
developed, and simple ideas of reasoning conveyed
in an effective way, even to young children.
Geography is the study of the earth as the stage
on which the drama of the human race is played
out; hence traces of former inhabitants can be
noted, with a view to connecting geography with
history. The difference in climate between dif-
ferent parts of the district may be noted and ex-
plained. Where the hills catch the Atlantic winds
and condense the moist air into vapour; where the
downs form pasture for sheep; where the lower-
lying sands and clays bear forests; and where the
earliest flowers and fruits appear — such funda-
mental facts as these are hard neither to observe
nor to understand.
MAP READING
This now brings us to the foundation of all real
study of geography — namely, the wall-map.
The scholar, so far, has proceeded after the fol-
lowing method: first, observation; second, descrip-
tion ; and third, representation — first the eye, then
the lips, and lastly the pencil. He has learned to
use his eyes; he has learned to describe what he
sees in correct terms, and by using complete sen-
tences ; and lastly, he has learned how geographical
details can be represented on paper. A map
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 1 55
should no longer be a dead and mute mass of
lines, colours, and names, but a living and speaking
interpretation of natural facts.
In studying the wall-map of England, it is a
great advantage to have a graduated series, in
which one set of facts is presented at a time. The
first of a series will be purely physical, showing
hills and rivers; the next map may show counties,
towns, and railways; the next, industrial or eco-
nomic facts and easy statistics. It is a great pity
that we have not a few boldly- drawn historical
maps of England, for use in elementary schools,
showing England under the Romans, Anglo-Saxon
England, and mediaeval England.
Of course there comes a time when the scholars
must pass from what they themselves can observe
and record to what others have observed and re-
corded. The great difference between mediaeval
and modern education lies in this, that whereas in
the Middle Ages the teacher omitted all this basis
of observation and commenced at once with com-
municating to the child the experience of others,
so that all was taken by the learner on trust, and
an uncritical habit of mind was cultivated, at the
present time the best schools attempt to base their
teaching on the direction of the child's individual
faculties and means of acquiring knowledge. The
wall-map is a record of the observations of others,
and the child can only properly understand it if he
has made and recorded similar observations for
himself
Now there are wall-maps and wall-maps. If the
map is to be the interpreter of nature, it must in-
156 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
terpret nature correctly: every line must have a
meaning. It is not good enough if it gives merely
the political divisions, with a few vague indications
of mountain chains, but without delineation of
highlands and lowlands, peaks and passes, water-
sheds and valleys.
Map reading, which is the proper use of the
wall-map, is a kind of reversal of the process of
the study of home geography. In studying home
geography the child begins with a natural fact,
such as a river or a hill, and learns how to re-
present its position and character on paper. In
reading a wall-map, the scholar begins with the
symbol or representation of natural facts, such as
watersheds and valleys and mountains, and by
means of them works his way to the natural fact
which such symbols represent Hence the extreme
importance of the right study of home geography.
The symbols on the wall-map are vague and
meaningless unless a content and significance are
given them by the previous study and practice of
the building up of local plans and maps. The
pupil must learn to translate the symbols of the
wall-map back into the forms of nature which they
represent
The teacher can then, if he have the use of a
good wall-map, by judicious questioning, direct the
scholar's attention to noteworthy physical and other
facts, and lead the scholar first to observe, and then
to draw inferences from what he observes.
This kind of analytical study of a map is easy
enough if the map is really good. If, for instance,
the rivers are marked in their course up to their
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 157
true source, if passes in mountain ranges are shown,
if river basins can be made out, then the child need
not be told that the Rhine rises in Mount St.
Gothard; he can quickly find it out from the
wall-map, under the guidance of a developing
question. Similarly, the termination of the North
and South Downs in two headlands — namely, the
South Foreland and Beachy Head respectively —
can easily be discovered by the child himself, if
aided in the manner described.
Gradually the child acquires skill in drawing
inferences, and thus he continues to proceed by
the triple process of observation, description, and
representation, much as he did when studying
home geography. By observing the map, the
child may be helped to infer much about the level
and vertical forms of land which he has never seen,
together with its river systems and its topography.
He may also learn to infer the main character of
the climate and the consequent productions of the
soil.
The first wall-map that the child will study care-
fully will be that of the country in which he lives ;
not, of course, that even the younger children
should never be shown a wall-map until this stage
is reached. On the contrary, even the youngest
children may look at a globe and a map of the
world showing the British possessions, and a map
of England. Before beginning the systematic
study of a subject, it is useful to learn something
about it in an informal way; the study of geo-
graphy may be imperceptibly introduced, and first
glimpses may anticipate more thorough inspection.
158 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Besides the hills, rivers, counties, and towns of
England, a few striking facts of exports and im-
ports should be introduced by aid of Whitaker's
Almanac or Sell's Commercial Intelligtuce^ a few
contrasts of rainfall east and west, and a few facts
of historical geography. In this way a child early
learns the existence of the various branches of the
subject — namely, of physical, political, historical,
and commercial geography, and the kind of differ-
ences between them.
Tables may be made in which the trade of a few
towns is set out in a graphic way, and thus curious
facts come out — as, for instance, that London im-
ports more than twice as much as Liverpool, but
exports only half as much.
GRAPHIC EXERCISES
This leads up to the mention of the value of
graphic work in geography. The first branch of
graphic work is, of course, drawing maps. Where
the teacher requires a more or less interesting ex-
ercise in drawing and tinting, the scholar may
practise copying on a large scale a map of Europe
or of any country as a whole. Such map drawing,
however, does less than might be imagined for the
study of geography. Map drawing should be a
form of object teaching. What is object teaching.^
It is the employment of all the possible means by
which the learner may acquire an exact conception
of an object, whether this conception is a mental
image, or, in more abstract studies, what may be
called a whole of reasoning. The use of map
drawing should be much the same as that of
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 1 59
making diagrams in other studies. For instance,
in studying physiology, a carefully-drawn muscle
or nerve or gland in a diagrammatic form is much
clearer to understand than the confused mass of
flesh from which it has been dissected. The
map, then, should not be drawn by the scholar
before he has studied the wall - map with the
greatest care.
Secondly, each map which the scholar draws
should serve some definite purpose. For instance,
his sketch-map may show that he can trace on the
map and set down on paper the basin of the
Thames or the Ganges; or it may show the direc-
tions of a journey from London to Madrid, and the
relative positions of the leading towns on the way,
which is a kind of elementary traversing; or it
may show the disposition and arrangement of the
cotton towns around Manchester, and the like.
In most cases these sketch-maps are best worked
out in conjunction with the teacher, but the
teacher's sketch-map should never supersede the
observation of a good wall-map. It is impossible
for sketches to be as accurate as the wall-map,
and, apart from wall-maps, sketch-maps encourage
vagueness instead of leading to precision. The
sketch-maps should proceed from simpler studies
to more complex ones. No one should attempt to
draw a map of a country as a whole until the
leading features have been dealt with separately.
Analysis should precede synthesis.
Then, again, while maps should be as neat as
possible, they should emphasize the important
features. For instance, in English maps of the
l6o EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Pennine Hills the marked depression between the
Aire and the Ribble is seldom indicated, yet this
has determined the course of the Leeds and Liver-
pool Canal and of the Midland Railway; and some
maps made in Germany show it quite clearly, but
not always those made in England. It is only
when the sketch-map is thus employed to simplify
the real map, and in close connection with it, that
it can be considered object teaching. Map draw-
ing, then, should be a constructive exercise, and
not mere copying. It should be the external
presentation of a mental conception. It should
not be a part of a process of learning by memory,
but rather a means of proving that a right im-
pression has been obtained.
In drawing sketch-maps, the details should be
simplified with consideration, so as to emphasize
salient features. For instance, in sketching the
Rhine or Danube, only the leading bends need be
attended to, and towns or tributaries associated
with them should be emphasized. A good basis
for a sketch-map is a cross, consisting of a meridian
of longitude crossing a parallel of latitude, both
carefully chosen.
Map drawing is not the only form of graphic
geography. Striking statistics of trade and com-
merce can be made clear by the use of paper ruled
in squares, and those who teach commercial geo-
graphy should proceed some way with exercises of
this kind. " Graphic illustrations ", says Quetelet,
" often afford immediate conviction of a point which
the most subtle mind would find it difficult to per-
ceive without such aid."
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION l6l
CONNECTION WITH HISTORY AND
OTHER STUDIES
The principle of the correlation of studies should
not be neglected. Of course the principle should
not be pushed too far, but by a judicious applica-
tion of it one study may reinforce another instead
of forming a distraction to it. While, for instance,
England is being studied in the geography lessons,
and especially the counties, let the early period of
English history be read, which explains their for-
mation. Also let some of the pieces for recitation
illustrate some of the scenes which are described in
the geography lesson. Let, for example, Kingsley's
beautiful lyric, "Go, Mary, call the cattle home,
across the sands of Dee," be learned when Cheshire
is studied.
Simple records of rain and temperature and
wind, and the first appearance of birds and flowers
and fish, throw much light on climatology. Object-
lessons also help the understanding of the circula-
tion of water, the formation of ice, glaciers, and ice-
bergs. In some places interesting records could
be kept of the tides, and the temperature of water
at different times of the year, whether in the sea or
in rivers or springs, and similar facts which bear
on climate.
Much spirit is awakened in young students of
geography by expeditions for practical work.
Such expeditions are growing more common in
England, but the following account of the organ-
ization of school expeditions as they have been
made in France is worth attention.
(M930) L
1 6a EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
DESCRIPTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL EXCURSIONS
IN FRENCH SCHOOLS
The scholars in some French schools carry with
them on such expeditions all that is necessary in
a handy form, but no more than is necessary, and
the cost is reduced as far as possible; and they
learn to make themselves at home wherever they
find themselves. The arrangements described are
made for children between the ages of ten and
fifteen.
Each scholar, and of course also each adult,
taking part in the expedition carries a canvas bag
— if waterproof, so much the better — containing a
plate, made of unbreakable material, and a cup,
a knife and fork, and spoon, and a small towel or
napkin.
There are three types of expeditions, according
to the time devoted to them.
The first consists of a short day's walk into the
hills, forests, or other places where there are no
houses or inns to be met with. The scholars take
provisions for the day in their bags, along with the
other things above mentioned.
In the second type of expedition, somewhat more
comfort, not to say luxury, is secured by hiring a
horse and cart to accompany the expedition. In
this way more substantial food can be taken, and
also urns and kettles for making tea. Aided by
a cart, the expedition can cover more ground.
The third type of expedition is one which ex-
tends over at least one night, and it may be for
several nights.
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 163
The details of this kind of expedition have to be
carefully thought out and prearranged. The chief
conductor places himself in communication with
teachers of the schools in the places in which he
intends to stop for food or lodging. The principal
meal is thus ordered beforehand at a given hour.
The payment is made either at so much per head,
which is always rather expensive, or the materials
are ordered and paid for, and the trouble of pre-
paring them remunerated separately. The party
may well dine in a shed or barn, and undertake
much of the trouble of arranging the meal, and
thus save labour, which means money.
The cost of sleeping arrangements is reduced by
the following means: —
Each scholar has two sacks — one made of
mattress cloth, which is open down the side, and
capable of being laced up, in order that it may be
filled with straw. Straw is not spoiled by being
used once for this purpose. The other sack is
made of coarse cotton, into which the sleeper can
insert himself in order to lie warmly and comfort-
ably on the other. Sybarites can make a pillow by
wrapping up some straw in their towel.
In the expeditions which extend over one night,
the scholars carry in their knapsack, as well as
their cup, plate, &c., as before mentioned, some
soap, a tooth-brush, and a comb. The morning
toilet is made in the open air. Head, neck, and
trunk to the waist are rubbed and scrubbed either
at the pump, if at hand, or in a river.
The sleeping-sacks, and in the case of prolonged
expeditions the necessary change of linen, are
164 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
either conveyed in a cart accompanying the party,
or sent forward by train.
The excursion is planned beforehand with a
certain amount of elasticity, so that any chance
occasion of special interest may be taken advantage
of, or any breakdown made good, without much
confusion or disorganization.
The map of the route is carefully studied. The
best for use is one which shows the contours. Our
English ordnance coloured contour maps are the
envy of the French. It is a good plan to place a
sheet of glass over the map and trace the route
upon it. Another way is to make a map of the
route, and multiply it by any manifolding process,
and provide each member of the party with a copy.
The scholars discuss their route beforehand, both
under the guidance of their teachers and among
themselves. There is first the physical geography
of the country to consider, then the natural history,
places of interest, industrial facts, and the like.
During the expedition, time is found for practice
in traversing with a prismatic compass, for using
the barometer, the pedometer, the pocket sextant,
and the Abney level. Suitable apparatus is also
taken for studying the flowers, and the nature of
the soil and rocks and fossils. Of course there is
also a small pharmacy and ambulance in case of
wounds, indisposition, or similar accidents.
The speed of progress varies. Sometimes the
party saunters along, looking carefully at various
objects of interest, scenery, flowers, birds, and cul-
tivation of land, and taking notes; sometimes it
marches at a steady pace, making straight for some
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 1 65
goal. The way in the latter case is much enlivened
by music, either by singing school songs or by a
small band.
It only remains to add that, before starting, the
party is carefully drilled in packing their knap-
sacks, in making their straw couches and unmaking
them, and putting them away in the assigned place.
Expeditions like this have been made during the
summer holidays, and as many as fifty scholars
have spent as much as fifteen days on a tour. On
one occasion some sixty scholars made a week's
tour in Belgium. Such expeditions strengthen the
body as well as the mind, and girls as well as boys
take part in them. It is to be wished that they
should be undertaken in this country as they are
abroad.
LOCAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETIES
In conclusion, I will give a brief account of the
Southampton Geographical Society, because I hope
to prove by it that for promoting and deepening
the interest in the study of geography there is no
more excellent way than to establish similar local
geographical societies — if possible, in connection
with the Royal Geographical Society. Such
societies have been formed at Liverpool, Man-
chester, and Newcastle. The Royal Scottish Geo-
graphical Society is, of course, not adequately
described as local; it is imperial. The work of
these societies is well known, and the efforts made
by the Manchester Geographical Society to en-
courage the study of geography in day and evening
schools formed the subject of an interesting paper
1 66 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
which was read before the British Association in
1896, under the title of "Practical Geography in
Manchester".
The youngest of these societies is the South-
ampton Geographical Society, and a brief account
of its aims and mode of working will, it is hoped,
be of interest to the members of this section.
The Southampton Geographical Society was
founded in 1897. The aim of the society is chiefly
educational; its purpose is to acquire and diffuse
geographical knowledge in the town and district
by uniting the efforts of all who are interested in
the science of geography. In the first place, lec-
tures are held periodically from October to April.
These are of two kinds. Those which come before
Christmas do not form a continuous course, but
are given by travellers who have visited foreign
countries and are able to spread information which
they have obtained at first hand. The stimulating
effect of such a lecturer's words influences the
minds and hearts of the students as no amount
of accumulation of learning by reading books can
ever do. The society has enjoyed the privilege of
hearing, among many others, Mrs. Bishop on the
Yang-tse River, and Miss Kingsley, whose heroic
death is still so fresh in our memories, on West
Africa. Mr. V. Cornish has shown us how to
study the waves of the sea and sand waves. The
Chamber of Commerce in Southampton has also
helped to supply lecturers. The second portion of
the session, between Christmas and Easter, is de-
voted to a continuous course on some special branch
of geographical study. Dr. Mill has lectured on
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 1 67
the principles of geographical instruction in special
connection with British colonies. Mr. Dickson has
lectured on the physical geography of the oceans,
and recently Mr. Herbertson has treated of South
Africa. A special feature of the society is the
attempt which is being made to carry out the
suggestion of Archbishop Benson, which he made
at a missionary conference at St. James's Hall,
in London, in 1894. "The scientific study of
missions", he said, "is a thing which is beginning,
and could only begin after people in general had
got some idea of the philosophy of history. The
business of the great missionary societies has been
to plant the faith. The scientific study of the
results of their work as a great historical subject,
revealing a view of the enormous importance of
the idea of missions, such as has been thought out
by Mr. B. Kidd, is work for thoughtful people who
desire to form sound and philosophical conceptions
of what missions really mean in the evolution of
human society."
This is a copious and generous study for those
who wish to know something of the place of mis-
sions in current history, whereto they are growing,
and how they may be helped, and, it may be, where
they have made mistakes. It is the business of the
wisest and most thoughtful, of the most experienced
and well read, to develop and propagate this study.
In accordance with this suggestion, the society has
listened to a paper from the Archdeacon of Trini-
dad, upon the general geography and the social
and industrial condition of the island as it is to-day,
with special reference to mission work and its
l6S EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
effect on the negroes. The winter session, then,
is devoted to lectures. During the summer months
expeditions are arranged for the purpose of study-
ing geography in a practical way.
Day expeditions are made to places in the
neighbourhood. The company divides itself into
groups, each group being in charge of a competent
guide. One group, in charge of a late member of
the Ordnance Survey Office, maps out, by aid of a
prismatic compass, a track of a small area in the
New Forest. Another group devotes itself to the
forest trees in the same area, another to the botany,
and another to the insect life. At the end of the
day the company meet together, and the various
guides give a brief report of the results of the day's
proceedings.
In some cases these expeditions take the form of
an object-lesson in illustration of some part of the
spring course of lectures. For example, after the
lectures on the ocean by Mr. Dickson, the society
hired a steamer, and, under the guidance of Mr.
Garstang, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, an
expedition was made to the Solent, in the course
of which a compari.son was made and tabulated of
the results of investigations into two stations — one
in the Solent off Spithcad, and the other off
Netley, in the brackish tide of the Southampton
Water. The temperature and density of the water
at varying depths were ascertained by use of the
-deep-sea thermometer and the water-bottle. The
fauna and flora of the surface and the bottom
were explored by a fine silk tow-net and a trawl.
The results of this expedition, besides profoundly
GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 1 69
interesting the company, proved of some scientific
value to Mr. Garstang.
The society is also promoting the publication of
a set of maps of the county for use in schools,
which will show, in bold and not too minute ren-
dering, its (i) physical geography; (2) geology;
(3) archaeology; (4) history; (5) industries. It is
also collecting a library and sets of lantern slides, &c.
The inaugural lecture of the Southampton Geo-
graphical Society was given by Sir Clements
Markham, who, in an address which kindled in
the audience something of the enthusiasm with
which he is himself inspired, laid down the lines
on which it has been attempted to work the
society. In wishing it all success, he gave a cor-
dial welcome to the members, and offered them
the privilege of consulting the library and the map-
room of the Royal Geographical Society, together
with special opportunities of attending lectures and
purchasing publications.
A widely-spread interest in the study of geo-
graphy seems almost indispensable to the adminis-
tration of this great empire. The century dies, as
it was born, amid the clash of arms. The opera-
tions of war are in everybody's thoughts. Is it not
an assured fact, that at the commencement of the
war in South Africa our maps were sadly inade-
quate, and that for want of better ones the move-
ments of our troops were seriously hampered .!*
There are two points in connection with this
defect which are germane to the subject of geo-
graphical instruction.
In the first place, the early mapping of a country
170 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
depends largely upon surveys of farms and hold-
ings. If boys learned at school how to measure
and map land, the surveys of farms and estates in
new countries would be much more useful and
reliable.
Secondly, we are told that the interest in ord-
nance work in this country is so slight that the
nation would not be prepared to sanction the ex-
penditure of money on mapping our colonial pos-
sessions. If the interest in the study of geography
were half as widely disseminated as the interest in
sport, the country would be keen to provide good
maps of its foreign possessions. The expenditure
would not be grudged, and it would not be neces-
sary to wait for calamity in war before the chief
details of each part of our vast territories were
mapped with sufficient accuracy.
Similarly, a knowledge of the work which is
being done by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory,
with its almost surprising possibilities of aiding
fishery and even meteorology, would secure public
approbation, and a readiness to devote public funds
to its extension. In the same way, exploration of
the unknown parts of the Globe, such as the Ant-
arctic Ocean, would command ungrudging financial
support, as what people are interested in they are
ready to pay for.
The establishment of similar societies in all
large centres would conduce to the progress and
welfare of the British Empire. May their number
increase and multiply!
ON METHODS OF TEACHING
GEOGRAPHY ^
Britain has no need to fear comparison with
other nations so far as exploration and com-
mercial enterprise are concerned. In these re-
spects no nation deserves more honour. But it
must be admitted that our country falls short in
one respect. In answer to the question: "What
have the British done to extend the theoretical
study of geography?" the answer must be "Little
or nothing". Deeds, however, that give rise to no
thought are incomplete. Yet Britain is the chosen
home of philosophy. The names of Alcuin, of
Duns Scotus, of Roger Bacon, of Lord Bacon, of
Locke, of Hume, and their followers are sufficient
to prove that theory has not been left entirely to
other countries. Cavendish, Lyall, Darwin, Joule,
and Maxwell have led the world in the applica-
tion of philosophy to natural science. It remains
true, however, that Britain awaits the birth of an
epoch-making writer on geography. We have no
such series of geographers as Humboldt, Ritter,
and Peschel, whose names add so much lustre to
the fame of German learning.
In British schools geography has ever been a
dull and uninteresting subject It has been a
dreary recitation of names and statistics, of no
* Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Geographical Associa-
tion, at the College of Preceptors, January, 1901.
xyx
172 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
interest to the learner, and of little use except,
perhaps, in the sorting department of the post-
office. Yet our consular reports are full of
reminders that British ignorance of the theory of
geography is not bliss. They point out the ad-
vantage which better-informed nations possess in
the keen struggle for trade. In France almost all
the chief commercial centres possess geographical
societies. As an example of the work of one
of these valuable associations may be mentioned
the Paris Commercial Geography Society. The
following are the objects of it according to its
report : —
(i) To place science at the disposal of commerce,
and to put theory in practice.
(2) To aggrandize France by developing industry
and commerce abroad.
(3) To receive and sift information from all parts
of the world, and store up facts which may
be freely drawn upon by all who can turn
such knowledge to good account, whether for
commerce or for theoretical study.
(4) To extend the study of everything which pro-
motes agriculture, manufacture, or trade, both
at home and in the colonies.
(5) To show the mass of the people that they are
interested in the produce, exports, and imports
of their own and other countries, and that
knowledge leads to foresight, and foresight
leads to power.
Surely such a society ought to exist in every
large town in a commercial country like ours, and
be affiliated to the Royal Geographical Society.
METHODS OF TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 1 73
As nothing is so practical as sound theory, my
first aim in this paper is to give some idea of the
methods of studying geography which have been
devised in Germany.
Since Humboldt the improvement of the study
of geography has been attempted in several dif-
ferent ways. None of these methods is complete
in itself, none of them is without value, and all of
them ought to be present to the mind in preparing
the simplest course of lessons in geography. In
briefly reviewing these methods, it must be borne
in mind that each of them has been developed in
great detail by some school of German writers, and
that it is impossible in a short space to do more
than open up a glimpse of a wide prospect.
The first is the Analytic Method. The student
starts with the Earth as a whole, and divides it
systematically into oceans and continents and
countries. The Globe, as a whole, is analysed
into parts, and these are subdivided again. This
plan is not suited to beginners, for it presupposes
much knowledge. Moreover, this method of ana-
lysing a subject as a whole into its parts implies a
finality and completeness which is far from being
yet acquired in our geographical learning. Never-
theless, even at an early stage a child may be in-
troduced, in a cursory way, to a globe and a map
of the world. A preliminary view of the whole
forest may with advantage precede a detailed study
of the trees, provided it be only a means of mark-
ing out the tract that has to be studied, and not
the actual method of attacking the study.
The next is the Synthetic Method. Proceeding
174 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
on this plan, the student deals with a small part of
the Earth's surface, and then adds to this a study
of an adjoining part, and so on, by continuously
successive additions, until the whole Globe has
been mastered. It is the converse of the first
method. This method ignores the fact that geo-
graphy is a living study, and that all parts of the
Globe are not equally worth studying. Moreover,
it nearly always happens, especially to us in the
British Isles, that there is some special region of
the Globe on which public attention is riveted,
and then it is important to learn about this
country rather than about one which is not
marked out for any special study. Nevertheless,
most teachers would deal with England, Scotland,
Ireland, and France in close succession, so that, by
successive steps, the scholars may arrive at a com-
prehensive idea of Western Europe before examin-
ing more distant parts.
The third is the Associative Method. There are
some few sciences whose field is so well defined
that their subject-matter is but little intermixed
with other branches of learning. Such, for instance,
is geometry, and, to a great extent, chemistry;
but others, like geography, geology, political
economy, and the like, seem rather to be com-
posed of parts of several sciences. If we think
for a moment of sciences as circles, and then of
several circles intersecting at a given point, we
have the presentment of a fresh science, which
differs from any one of them taken by itself, and
yet is made up by the common ground which is
shared by all of them. The study of geography
METHODS OF TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 1 75
draws upon the sciences of astronomy, physics,
biology, ethnology, statistics, archaeology, history,
cartography, and many more.
Because it associates several distinct sciences
for a particular purpose, geography is called an
Associating Science. It links together many
branches of study which are otherwise dissociated.
Of course this plan does not consist in amal-
gamating history, geology, astronomy, and the
rest into one science under a new name. This
would be absurd. Rather, it consists in showing
the bearing of each of these sciences on the other
in a certain sphere of study; how they depend on
each other, and how they support each other in
dealing with a particular range of facts.
This method seems a matter of common sense,
but, like much of this nature, it was only obvious
after some deep thinkers had worked it out. For
want of observance of this principle, there may still
be seen on some time-tables lessons quite discon-
nected under the heads geography and physical
geography.
For an admirable example of a geographical
study on the associative method, reference should
be made to Dr. Mill's paper upon two sheets of the
Ordnance Survey in the neighbourhood of Arundel,
recently published in the Journal of the Royal
Geographical Society. He dreams of a day when
all England may be studied on similar lines; but
before this can be done the public interest in the
5tudy of geography must be widely extended, and
especially in local geographical work.
The fourth is the Grouping Method. This con-
176 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
sists in classifying geographical facts of the same
kind. On this plan kindred facts and phenomena
are dealt with together. One section may treat of
the Capitals of the World, showing how their sites
have been determined. Another section may deal
with the Chief Ports of the World, showing their
origin and their growth or decay; another section
may deal with Glaciers; another with Islands;
another with Zones of Vegetation; another with
the position of Fortresses and Delimitation of
Frontiers; and so forth. This method is clearly
not for beginners; it is only suitable for an ad-
vanced class, because it presupposes much know-
ledge. At the same time it helps to deepen the
advanced study of geography, and there is much
literature which facilitates its pursuit. Facts already
known are placed in a fresh light. It connects dis-
tant places together and suggests comparison. It
leads the student to search for principles, and to
comprehend more clearly that there are laws which
underlie apparently dissociated facts and pheno-
mena.
Elis6e Reclus, for instance, has shown the curious
rhythmical distribution of towns along the old high-
ways or coach-roads radiating from the capital of
a country. The traveller meets with a larger town
about every twenty miles and a smaller one every
eight or ten. In other words, the towns are spaced
according to the distance a well-loaded coach and
horses could cover without stopping for lighter or
more substantial refreshment. The growth of rail-
ways seems to have tended to increase the town
and decrease the village. In the absence of good
METHODS OF TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 1 77
means of locomotion large towns arise with diffi-
culty, and nowadays, however remote, do not
remain long unprovided with a railway approach.
It is this method which suggests the study of the
position of towns at the foot of mountain passes,
at the head of estuaries, at fords, or at places where
bridges can be made over rivers.
The fifth is the Concentric Method. This plan
consists in teaching even the youngest class a brief
outline of all the geography that it is intended the
children shall study while they are in the school.
The brief outline which is studied in the lowest
class is expanded in the next class, and again in
the next, like the gradual filling in of a slight
sketch to the fulness of a photograph. This
method meets the objection that it is absurd for
the child to know a plan of his school and the
name of the next street and remain ignorant of the
main features of the Globe.
This procedure, the concentric, seems to me the
best for studying history, because the fundamental
conception of history is continuity, the continuity
of a people under changing conditions of govern-
ment and civilization. Disjointed stories and anec-
dotes and short periods do not give children that
sense of a stream of time, nor the perception of the
dramatic unity, which lie at the root of national
feeling.
As regards the elements of geography, however,
except to a very limited extent, there is no such
systematic whole to be studied that the concentric
method can be applied with advantage.
The sixth is the Comparative Method. This con-
(M930) M
' ^ OF THE
UNIVERSITY
I 78 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
sists in comparing- the various leading phenomena
of one country with those of another. This plan
has done perhaps as much as any to deepen the
study of geography. Comparison leads to the
appreciation of contrasts; it leads to questioning;
for example, it forces on the attention the curious
parallel between Australia and South Africa, be-
tween the equatorial forests in the Western and
Eastern Hemispheres, between the physical features
of North and South America, and between the
local features of New York and Southampton as
seaports. The Basin of the Yorkshire Ouse or
Humber certainly makes the geography of the
Mississippi much more intelligible.
This method cannot be left out of account in
any course of lessons on geography, however ele-
mentary.
The last method that calls for notice is the
Constructive MetJiod (Ritter). This consists in
teaching the scholars to draw what they are being
taught. It is applicable to most of the other
methods. Copying a map may be a useful exer-
cise in drawing, but it does not teach much geo-
graphy. The better way is for the scholars to
study the wall-map or small hand atlases of their
own, such as Philip's Comparative Atlas of Geo-
graphy, under the guidance of developing questions,
and then for the scholars to give precision to their
impressions by making sketch-maps which illustrate
special details. By commencing with the hills and
river basins they may afterwards construct the
country as a whole. Knowledge so built up is
more likely to be correct than that which depends
METHODS OF TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 1 79
Upon the reproduction of a whole map of a country
before it has been dealt with in detail. It is best
for the teacher to have a good wall-map and the
scholar a hand atlas, so that the scholar can follow
the teacher as he demonstrates. Other interesting
studies may be made on this plan. As an intro-
duction to this work, children may be taken to a
neighbouring eminence, and, having in their hands
a " graphed " map of the locality, they may mark
on it in red chalk all that they can actually see
around them.
Another stage of the same process is for the
children to take the bearings of various objects
which are in view from some eminence, and con-
struct a sketch-map of the landscape that is visible
before them.
Or, again, children may have in their hands
"graphs" of the World on Mercator's Projection,
and mark with red chalk all the places noted for
this or that product. It is best to use a different
" graph " for each product. Thus may be shown
the various tea-producing places, the various sugar
plantations, and so forth; where wool is grown,
where cotton. Maps thus constructed may be
used for comparison with maps which show the
distribution of temperature, rainfall, &c. The
reasoning which connects these phenomena is so
easy that a child may follow it What is simple
is not always the less profound. Diagrams can be
drawn showing the slope of a country, say from
Johannesburg to Durban, or from De Aar to Cape
Town, or from the Bernese Oberland to the mouth
of the Rhine.
l8o EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
The road-books prepared for cyclists are most
helpful. Figures which mean but little to the
reader may, when presented in a graphic form,
be most striking and suggestive. By use of paper
ruled in squares, comparative tables of area and
population may be made most interesting, and so,
too, the ratio of the population to area. Then,
again, comparative tables of leading exports and
imports may be made interesting, if put in a dia-
grammatic form. To represent varying quantities
by comparative areas on squared paper is most
instructive. The great advantage of this construc-
tive work is that scholars can be taught to work
out these diagrams for themselves, and in a class
of scholars of ordinary intelligence, some unex-
pected and interesting observations are sure to be
made.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA
A LITERARY OBJECT-STUDY
In 1570 the Turks took Cyprus. Christendom
was alarmed at the encroachment of Mahometan
forces, and Spain, Venice, and Rome formed
a Holy League against Selim II, laying aside
their old dissensions for the purpose of making
a united attempt to bridle the Ottomans, and curb
the power not only of the Turks, but of the Moors
of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Under Don John
of Austria the most formidable fleet ever seen
in the Mediterranean attacked and defeated the
Turkish Fleet on the 7th October, 1571, in the
Gulf of Lepanto. On board one of the galleys,
named Marquesa, lay Cervantes, a boy of fourteen,
down in his cabin, sick of a fever. On coming
into action, the ship was in the van, and he was
urged by his captain to remain in his bed; but
he refused, asking what would be thought of him
if he did not do his duty, and declared he was
resolved to die fighting for God and duty, rather
than remain in shelter and nurse his health.
Accordingly he was at his own wish placed in
the post of chief danger, namely, in a boat hang-
ing from the galley's side and much exposed to
the enemies' fire. He performed his part in that
day's work so valiantly as to attract the notice
of his commanders, and even of Don John himself.
The famous battle of Lepanto, which broke the
x8x
l82 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Spell of the invincibility of Turkish arms by sea,
was among the most glorious feats of Spain at
the zenith of her greatness, and remained in the
memory of Cervantes as the proudest event of
his life. During the fight he received two gun-
shot wounds in the chest and one in the left hand,
which was rendered useless for life — "to the greater
glory of the right ", as he said in the spirit of Don
Quixote, his great creation; and his countrymen
love to dub him " El Manco de Lepanto ", the
maimed hero of Lepanto. Cervantes continued
in service against the Turks, both by land and
sea. He describes in the story of the captain
in Don Quixote^ which is founded on facts of
his own life, the feeble effort of the allied fleet
against the Turks anchored in Navarino Bay,
and afterwards he was present at the capture
of Goletta in Tunis, which is also referred to in
the same story. His experience of warfare by
land and sea afforded him that knowledge of
men and things without which Don Quixote would
not have touched the heart of mankind as it has
done. To this war, also, must be attributed the
traces of the art and culture of Italy which are
manifest throughout his works.
In 1575, on his way from Naples to Spain, he
was captured off Minorca by Algerine pirates.
The treatment of their prisoners by these pirates
was most cruel, and the captivity of Cervantes
was of the hardest. He bore it with a courage
and constancy which would alone have entitled
him to be ranked as a hero. The books of
chivalry contain no episode more romantic. The
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA I 83
fabled deeds of Amadis de Gaul and the knights-
errant, which had kindled his youthful imagination,
did not surpass his real adventures, for the exag-
gerations of chivalry and romance were even
surpassed in the lofty spirit with which he
discharged his knightly duty. It was a miserable
five years. Evil seemed to triumph over him.
Lost to his friends, lost to all hope of living the
high heroic life which he had set before himself to
live, subjected to hardships, tyranny, and caprice,
he bore all with indomitable spirit, cheering the
despondent, sharing what little he had with others,
helping the sick, risking danger in the cause of
Christian faith, and ever bearing himself as a true
soldier of the king and as a noble gentleman. His
sweetness, his magnanimity and daring, secured
him an extraordinary influence, not only over his
fellow-prisoners, but even over his jailer Hassan,
a Venetian renegade who was famous as a terror
to Christendom.
Cervantes' life and sorrows are the key to the
understanding of Don Quixote. Like the Knight
of the Sorrowful Figure, Cervantes started his life's
adventures full of glowing visions of chivalry,
impatient of wrong-doing, eager to set wrong right,
and aid the weak.
The so-called realities of the world might well
have suppressed all this faith in the ideal, and
dwarfed his soaring spirit. But Cervantes was no
commonplace vapouring adventurer. His misfor-
tunes ennobled his soul, and he emerged from them
sweeter in temper and stronger in mind than ever.
When thirty-seven years old, Cervantes married.
184 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
His own family, though not a noble one, was good,
and his wife was of equal birth. He wrote a poem
called Galatea, criticised by himself among the
books in Don Quixote's library, and certain
dramatic works, but nothing of first-class merit.
At this period of his life he was engaged in pro-
viding grain and oil and wine for victualling the
Spanish Armada, wandering among Andalusian
villages for the purpose, and incidentally enrich-
ing his experience of men.
Cervantes lived in great poverty, and Don
Quixote, according to his own statement, was
*' born in a jail ", like The Pilgrim's Progress ;
the cause of his imprisonment not being certainly
known. It was in 1604 that Don Quixote was
published, when Cervantes was sixty years old,
and it should be noticed that the same year saw
the publication of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
It is needless to say that its popularity caused
it to pass through six editions. Since the inven-
tion of printing, in 1479, no book had had so
many readers. The Romance of Amadis de Gaul
had led to much feeble and insipid imitation.
Here was a burlesque or satire upon that kind
of literature, from which, however, unlike any
other satire, the best features were selected for
approbation, and while that which was rotten
was pruned away, that which was sound was
placed in a pure and clear light never to be lost
to humanity. Here were humour and fun in its
utmost abandon; here was wisdom, simple, deep,
homely, with refined philosophy; here were true
charity and widest sympathy with humanity in
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA I 85
all its Strength and frailty; here was a fresh and
lively picture of national life, containing all its
elements.
Don Quixote's primary aim was, no doubt, like
that of all true artists, to please and amuse. His
book was a pastime for melancholy and gloomy
spirits, but he also meant to laugh out of current
literature the romances of chivalry which were
harmful alike to morals and taste. He succeeded
in his aim. After Cervantes, false chivalry died,
and much false sentiment.
Those who care more for historical truth than
poetry may find in Don Quixote a type of Spanish
nobility and in his servant a type of Spanish pea-
santry. The rest of Cervantes' literary career, and
how his tales suggested to Walter Scott the idea
for his novels, and the story of his death in the
year that Shakespeare died, 1616, do not concern
us now. The next study after the biography is
the contents of the famous Romance. It should
be noticed that while Cervantes admits in his
preface that the ecstasies of Don Quixote may
not seem to the reader so novel and unexpected,
the character of Sancho Panza is claimed as
wholly original.
The pursuit of knowledge had, in the sixteenth
century, led men to seek it, not in old books or
traditional learning, but in all that is near and close
around in nature and human nature. The student
and the poet alike endeavoured in that age to
grasp with both hands what was within reach.
Truth and purity and justice were not laid up
somewhere in the sky, but intelligible realities
l86 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
here on earth. The true remedy for Don Quixote's
ecstasy lay in the homely wisdom of his faithful
disciple. It was not by abandoning the ideal that
relief might be found, but by merely fixing his
feet more firmly on God's earth and seeking virtue
in all that lay at hand and about him. The Eliza-
bethan dramatists did the same as Cervantes. The
ways of men and women, and the loveliness of
woods and meads and streams, were their inspi-
ration, and they reached out after what was far
without despising what was near.
People have endeavoured to construct lists of
the best hundred books in the world. So far as
purely literary works are concerned, there are not
fifty, not a score! There are Homer, the Greek
Play-writers, then the Roman Virgil, and, after
him, there are none of that rank until Cervantes
and Shakespeare. The list is a very short one.
All things change, but the most stable thing
throughout recorded time is human nature. The
few great writers of the world have dived so deeply
into the springs of human action, and displayed
their secrets with such art and charm, that how-
ever habits, customs, and countries may vary, man
delights in the image of himself which these authors
mirror for him in their pages. In these few great
books man's nature is presented as a whole, and
not from any partial view or in any single aspect.
The good is of the highest, but the evil is not left
out of the picture.
In commencing Don Quixote the reader must
beware of prepossessions and expectations, other-
wise, looking for what is not there, he will be
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 187
disappointed and overlook what it really contains.
It is in the spirit of a little child that all great
works of genius must be approached. The mental
attitude must be purely receptive and not critical.
To depreciate anything which the verdict of the
human race has pronounced upon favourably is
the mark of a small mind.
The reader of Cervantes must not look for a
carefully-woven plot such as is ingeniously con-
trived in a modern novel. He must not, on the
other hand, think that in the absence of such a
plot there is no unity at all, and that the book
consists of a number of mad adventures inartisti-
cally thrown together.
If the structure of the book is not at first ap-
parent, that is a reason for allowing the thoughts
to dwell upon it for a long time, and for returning
to it again and again.
One great charm of the book is that the reader
is transported into an unfamiliar country and into
a novel society. His narrow, insular, and limited
sympathies are widened and extended. If Don
Quixote is not composed like a modern novel, it
is not, therefore, quite unlike any other literature.
It must be remembered that it was written in
Spain, and that Arabian influence is stronger in
that country than anywhere else in Europe. Hence
for the type of narrative to which Don Quixote
belongs it is natural to think of the Arabian Nights
Entertainment. This is possible and probable.
The manuscript from which Galland's version of
this delightful book was made (in 1704) certainly
existed in 1 548, that is, at the time Cervantes was
1 88 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
bom. The long series of stories in the Arabian
Nights have no connection with each other. They
form a miscellany. At first sight the adventures
of Don Quixote appear to be disconnected in the
same way. The author's hidden and perhaps sub-
conscious art, it is for the reader to detect. The
stories are, however, connected psychologically.
One adventure relieves the next by a sort of
contrast; furious combats are followed by love
scenes, the extravagant and exuberant fun, the
blunders and blows which arc so attractive to
boys, are relieved by serious disquisitions, and all
the time jest and earnest are so interwoven that
the reader finds himself half in tears over the jest
and making merry at what is earnest. Cervantes,
as he says in his preface, set himself the task of
satirizing extravagant tales of chivalry, but he
aimed at preserving what was best in chivalry
while sweeping away what was rubbish. Hence
in quite an early chapter the reader is introduced
to the library of Don Quixote, who only "loses
his stirrups " when he is dealing with chivalry.
The reader should not skip the "grand scrutiny
made by the priest into Don Quixote's Library '*.
The chapter throws some light on the Spanish
Inquisition, and it also shows how large the
growth of Romantic literature had become; and
it further proves that Cervantes was by no means
willing to destroy the first and original books of
chivalry, such as Avtadis de Gaul, which had some
merit, but only the ridiculous imitations, which had
none.
Cervantes helps to maintain the unity of his
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 1 89
story by grouping the adventures around an inn,
and this device should be compared with Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, for he also assembles all his
story-tellers at the Taberd inn, in Southwark. Of
course the advantage of this device is that it en-
ables the writer to introduce into his story all sorts
and conditions of men — nobles and peasants, priests
and soldiers, court ladies and peasant girls — in the
most natural way in the world. How widely
spread was the taste for books on chivalry, Cer-
vantes indicates more than once, showing that not
only educated people enjoyed them, but that even
reapers and other labourers loved to listen to them
in the harvest-field or elsewhere. He shows what
charms they had for men, for the servant girl, for
the young lady; the men enjoying the combats, the
servant girls the love scenes, and the young ladies
the impassioned complaints of the knights for their
absent mistresses. Tales of romance touched some
of the many chords of the human heart in no un-
worthy manner. It was not in Spain alone that
this kind of romance was universally popular. It
was just the same in our own country, and besides
the Arthurian Romances, enshrined in the pages of
Malory and reproduced for us by Lord Tennyson,
there are many others, some of which are being
published, as for instance the tale of The Green
Kfiight and Sir Gawain. The green knight being
beheaded lifts up his head and rides away with it.
It should be noticed that these mad stories of
chivalry throw some light on the fables told of
mediaeval saints. The Church, finding such ad-
ventures in possession of men's minds, saw that
190 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
it was easier to transfer them from a region wholly
secular to a religious atmosphere than to eradicate
from an ignorant age what was so vastly pleasing
to it, and hence fables of St. Denys and the like
are but the reflection in religious teaching of
similar tales in profane or secular learning. In
the amusing discussions between Don Quixote,
who defends his belief in all the fables of romance
and pins his faith on all that is printed, and the
Canon, who regards them as a tissue of lies, it is
easy to see the never-ending contest between those
who desire to sift what is genuine in history from
what is imaginary.
But if the matter of romance had become wild
and foolish, the style of it was not less ridiculous.
Cervantes gives a specimen. " Scarcely had ruddy
Phoebus extended over the face of this wide and
spacious earth the golden filaments of his beautiful
hair, and scarcely had the little painted birds with
their forked tongues hailed in soft and mellifluous
harmony the approach of the rosy harbinger of
morn, who, leaving the soft couch of her jealous
consort, had just disclosed herself to mortals
through the gates and balconies of the Man-
chejan horizon, when the renowned knight Don
Quixote de la Mancha, quitting the slothful down,
mounted Rozinante, his famous steed, and pro-
ceeded over the ancient memorable plain of Mon-
tiel." Shakespeare, it will be remembered, lays
the plot of two of his plays in Spain, namely,
Love's Labour's Lost and Much Ado About Nothing.
The fantastical Spaniard Don Adriano de Armado
also writes in this absurd style: " So it is, besieged
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA I9I
with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend
the black oppressing humour to the most whole-
some of thy health-giving air, and as I am a gentle-
man betook myself for a walk ", &c. From such
a style the world was delivered by Cervantes and
Shakespeare until some modern newspapers re-
vived it in this country.
But along with the decay of romance and the
dissatisfaction with excessive conventionality which
substituted ceremony for heart-felt courtesy, there
sprang up a reaction in favour of what was called
Nature. Cervantes leads us from town and vil-
lage to the wild hills and the heart of the Sierra
Morena. The story of the shepherd Chrysostom,
who kills himself for love of Marcela, who will not
marry him, is full of pathos and leads to profoundly
interesting disquisitions which should by no means
be skipped as dull and unimportant. Though they
interrupt the narrative they are the real substance
of the book, and the adventures are in a manner
a sugar coating to a pill. What a pretty natural
scene is conveyed in the few words which describe
the funeral of Chrysostom ! " They discerned
through a cleft between two high mountains
about twenty shepherds coming down, all clad
in jerkins of black wool and crowned with gar-
lands, some of which, as appeared afterwards, were
of yew and some of cypress. Six of them carried
a bier covered with various flowers and boughs.
They made haste therefore to reach them, which
they did just as the bier was set down upon the
ground, and four of the shepherds with pickaxes
were making the grave in the hard rock under a
192 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
tree near the fountain." Only more charming-
than this is Shakespeare's funeral of the fair
Imogene in Cymbeline.
The danger, however, of passing from excess of
conventionality to the opposite extreme, the excess
of freedom falsely ascribed to nature, is amusingly
dwelt on by Cervantes in the scene where Quixote's
niece, during the Inquisition into the books, urges
the burning, not only of the works on chivalry
which had made her uncle mad, but also of books
of poetry. "These", said the priest, "do injury to
none." " Oh, sir," said the niece, " pray order them
to be burnt, for should my uncle be cured of this
distemper of chivalry, he may possibly, by reading
such books, take it into his head to turn shepherd^
and wander through the woods and fields singing
and playing on a pipe, and what would be worse
still turn poet, which they say is an incurable and
contagious disease." Shakespeare also in his Tem-
pest ridicules this kind of return to nature in the
amusing scene where Gonzalo tries to comfort
Alonzo after their shipwreck on the enchanted
Island of Prospero.
"Had I plantation of this Isle, my Lord,
r the commonwealth, I would by contraries
Execute all things : for no kind of traffic
Would I admit ; no name of magistrate.
Letters should not be known ; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none ; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none ;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil,
No occupation ; all men idle, all,
And women, too, but innocent and pure.
No sovereignty "
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA I 93
"Yet he would be king of it!" says one of the
other courtiers ; and then the courtiers make fun of
the garrulous old man's "natural" commonwealth.
Don Quixote, in a similar manner, apostrophizes
the Golden Age, and Cervantes, like Shakespeare,
makes merry over the idea of a restoration of that
purely fabulous past. " In that blessed age all
things were in common," says Don Quixote, con-
templating an acorn; "to provide their ordinary
sustenance no other labour was needed than to
raise their hands and take it from the sturdy oaks
which stood liberally inviting them to taste their
sweet and relishing fruit. The limpid fountains
and running streams offered them in magnificent
abundance their delicious and transparent waters.
In the clefts of the rocks the industrious and
provident bees formed their commonwealths, offer-
ing to every hand without interest the fertile pro-
duce of their delicious toil. All, then, was peace,
all amity, all concord." Such ideas have reap-
peared in Rousseau, Defoe, and other writers in-
numerable, and will forever dangle like forbidden
fruit before the eyes of fond enthusiasts.
But now it is time to dwell a little on the Knight
of the Sorrowful Figure himself and his faithful
squire, for in these is taught more finely than any-
where else in the world's literature the strange and
sad fact that conduct which awakens laughter may
not always be ridiculous. The Knight sets out on
his mad adventure with high purpose, namely, to
redress wrongs and win fame among men. It is
impossible to separate the Knight's high aim from
the crazy means he takes to achieve it. Cervantes
(ugso) K
194 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
assists the reader in his effort to grasp poor frail
human nature, ever, as Goethe says, leaping up to
heaven for a moment and then falling back to
earth like grasshoppers, by placing beside the
Knight the honest peasant, who has no imaginative
ideal like his master, but longs only for material
prizes, and who, in spite of his belief in what is
undoubtedly real and material, is led as far into an
unreal world as his master. It is Sancho who re-
minds the enthusiast that men may " go out into
the world to seek better bread than wheaten", and
"that to do good to the vulgar is to throw water
into the sea", but yet he looks to be governor of
an island and make his wife a countess. Events
soon show Quixote that his efforts to redress griev-
ances only create them or make them worse. " I
do not like your way of redressing grievances; I
do not understand your way of righting wrongs,"
said the bachelor master, Alonzo Lopez; "for from
right you have set me wrong, having broken my
leg, which will never be right as long as I live, and
the grievance you have redressed for me is to leave
me so aggrieved that I shall never be otherwise,
and to me it was a most unlucky adventure to
meet you who are seeking adventures." The
Knight tilts with vain bravery at windmills, and
trembles with false alarm at the noise of a fulling
mill in the darkness of night. Yet he is ever better
than his actions. He has the noble art of self-
deception. It is, after all, that art which has re-
dressed the wrongs of mankind. " The case was
hopeless; yet he hoped." This is, after all; the true
spirit of Christian reformers, from St Paul to the
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 1 95
last missionary. Don Quixote finely retorts on
Sancho, who laughs at his misfortune, " Know,
Sancho, that one man is no more than another,
only inasmuch as he does more than another"; and
" if a man should try and fail, at least he has the
satisfaction of knowing that if he did not achieve
great things he died attempting them". Sancho,
however, makes the far-reaching remark, that some-
times we set out in search of one thing and find
another, a proverb that reminds us of Saul, the son
of Kish, who set out to seek for his father's asses
and found a kingdom.
Thus it should be noticed that although Quixote's
adventures end so unfavourably for himself, and
though his squire never gets his coveted island
nevertheless their wanderings lead at last to the
good of others; and the happy union of the pairs
of lovers Cardenio and Lucinda on the one hand,
and Don Fernando and Dorothea on the other,
may be set down to the account of Don Quixote
all in his favour. This theme of lovers at cross-
purposes should, of course, be compared with the
plot of Shakespeare's Midsummer- Night's Dream^
where Hermia and Helena are crossed in love with
Lysander and Demetrius.
Among the parallels with Shakespeare's plays
is one of the most striking dramatic effects in the
book by which Cervantes brings about an interview
between the crazy Don Quixote, whose brain has
been turned by too much study and ill-directed
imagination, with the tattered knight Cardenio,
who, crossed in hopeless love, has fled for refuge
to the wilds of the Sierra Morena Mountains. The
196 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
contrast between the two types of mental derange-
ment, romantic and real, is very remarkably drawn.
With this strange meeting might perhaps be com-
pared the interview between Shakespeare's Timon
of Athens, the misanthrope whose ingratitude
had made him mad, with Apemantus, whose self-
abnegation was chiefly pure affectation. It is only
a master mind who can bring into juxtaposition
two characters, both eccentric and strong, and both
outwardly resembling each other, but with a marked
inner difference.
The romantic attachment of knights to fair
ladies, in whose name they undertake their most
dangerous exploits, is a feature in chivalry which
Cervantes evidently treats with respect. In one
passage he is at pains to show how this zeal for
his lady's name may be reconciled with the knight's
commendation of himself to God; and by way
of contrast he presents Sancho as quite unable to
understand any such ideal affection, whether for
things human or divine. " How dull and simple
thou art, Sancho!" said Don Quixote; "knowest
thou not that in our style of chivalry it is to the
honour of a lady to have many knights-errant who
serve her merely for her own sake, without indulg-
ing a hope of any other reward for their zeal than
the honour of being admitted among the number
of her knights?" " I have heard it preached," quoth
Sancho, " that God is to be loved with this kind of
love, for Himself alone, without our being moved
to it by hope of reward or fear of punishment;
though for my part I am inclined to love and serve
Him for what He is able to do for me." "The
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 1 97
Devil take thee for a bumpkin," said Don Quixote,
"thou sayest ever and anon such apt things that
one would almost think thee a scholar." "And
yet, by my faith," quoth Sancho, " I cannot so
much as read." Passages like these help us to
understand !the veneration paid in the mediaeval
church to the Virgin Mary.
One topic more is worthy of special attention.
The greatest of the immortals have included it
in their works. Homer in the horses of Achilles
Shakespeare in the scene between Launce and his
dog, Cervantes in the passages of the Goatherd
and his Nanny-goat, and Sancho and Dapple his
ass. " Suddenly they heard a sound of a little bell
from a thicket near them, and at the same instant
a beautiful she-goat, speckled with black, white and
gray, ran out of the thicket, followed by a goatherd
calling to her aloud to stop and come back to the
fold. The fugitive animal, trembling and affrighted,
ran to the company, claiming as it were their pro-
tection. But the goatherd pursued her and seizing
her by the horns addressed her as a rational creature.
" ' Ah, wanton and spotted thing, how hast thou
strayed of late! What wolves have frightened
thee, child.? Wilt thou tell me, pretty one, what
this means.'' But what else can it mean but that
thou art a female and therefore cannot be quiet.
A plague on thy humours and on all theirs whom
thou resemblest! Turn back, my love, turn back;
for though not content, at least thou wilt be more
safe in thine own fold and among thy companions,
for if thou who shouldest protect and guide them
go astray, what must become of them.^"
198 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
" The party were much amused, and the canon
told the goatherd that it was useless to oppose a
female, who would as such always have her own
way. * Come, do not be angry, but eat and drink
with us, and let the wayward creature have her
will,' offering him at the same time the hind
quarter of a cold rabbit on the point of a fork.
The goatherd thanked him and accepted the offer,
and then, being in a better temper, he said: * Do
not think me a fool, gentlemen, for talking seriously
to this animal, for, in truth, my words are not with-
out meaning, and though I am a rustic I know the
difference between conversing with men and beasts.'
' I doubt it not,' said the priest, * indeed, it is well
known that the mountains breed learned men, and
the huts of the shepherds contain philosophers.'
"'At least, sir,' said the goatherd, 'they contain
men who have some knowledge gained from ex-
perience.' "
Later, when Sancho recovered his lost ass which
Ginesillo had stolen, seeing the latter riding on the
lost friend, he cried: "Ah, rogue, leave me my
darling, let go my life, rob me not of my comfort,
quit my sweetheart, leave my delight, fly, rapscal-
lion, fly; get you gone, thief, give up what is not
your own."
So much railing was needless, for at the first
words Ginesillo dismounted in a trice, and, taking
to his heels, was out of sight in a moment. Sancho
ran to his Dapple, and, embracing him, said: "How
hast thou fared, my dearest Dapple, delight of my
eyes, my sweet companion?" Then he kissed and
caressed him as if he had been a human creature.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA I 99
The ass held his peace, and suffered himself to be
thus kissed and caressed by Sancho without answer-
ing one word. This affection for our humble com-
panions and for the animal creation is a special
feature of our own day.
But now I must bid farewell to the Knight of
the Sorrowful Figure, conscious that I have but
touched the fringe of his robes, and unworthy to
do that His name is the mark of every foolish ven-
ture that is bound to fail, but perhaps it should be
noticed that not quite every foolish venture is called
quixotic, but only those that are for some worthy
cause. Therefore, in spite of all that is ridiculous
in our associations with this name, there is still
something half-sublime which lurks among them.
Life may pass away for us mainly in getting and
spending, but few people die before they have been
brought face to face with action that is not for
themselves; it may be at home, it may be on the
battle-field. Few will live their lives through with-
out at some time giving, and giving gladly, with
no expectation of any return, and where this is
done for a worthy end the spirit of chivalry is not
far off, and where it is done, as it often is done, for
an end which onlookers can see to be out of all
proportion to the sacrifice, there appears the very
spirit of Don Quixote itself. May <it never die!
When it does, mankind will indeed be without
hope. " Study well these books," as Don Quixote
says, " for, believe me, you will find that they ex-
hilarate and improve your mind. Of myself I can
say, that since I have been a knight-errant I am
become valiant, polite, liberal, well-bred, generous,
200 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
courteous, daring, affable, patient, a sufferer of
toils, imprisonments, and enchantments." This
noble recklessness is well summed up by our New
Forest poet, with certain of whose verses I will
conclude:
" You will carry the flag, the old torn rag,
You will carry the flag to the fore.
Mid the press and the strain and the deadly rain,
Where our fathers passed of yore.
" You will stand by the flag when faint hearts fly,
And the best that you have you'll give.
For the men who have learnt for a cause to die
Are the men who learn to live."
AN EXPERIMENT
IN SCHOOL GARDENING
THE SCHOOL GARDENS AT THE BOSCOMBE
BRITISH SCHOOL
STARTING A SCHOOL GARDEN
There are two ways of setting boys to work at
gardening. They may either cultivate a plot in
common, or each boy may be provided with a plot
of his own. The latter plan is the better, because
it offers superior educational advantages. If, for
example, a boy is one of a group cultivating a
garden, he cannot know for certain what is the
effect of his share in the work. It is only when
a boy is sole master of a plot of his own that he
can be sure what the results of his efforts really are
— whether meritorious or defective.
THE OBJECTS OF SCHOOL GARDENING
A school garden must not be treated as though
it were an allotment. The difference is important,
because, if it is ignored, the school garden may
prove a pecuniary success but an educational
failure. The owner of an allotment naturally seeks
to make the greatest commercial profit out of
his parcel of land. In the school garden, on the
other hand, the boys have partly to receive instruc-
tion in the rudiments of the gardener's craft, ac-
cording to the best methods, and partly to find
202 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
illustrations for their lessons in natural science,
and to make practical application of them. In
an allotment the owner often finds it pay better
to grow one or two kinds of crops, either for the
sake of the demand for them in his market, or
because the soil is best suited for them. The
school-boy should learn how to raise a variety of
crops, and will benefit educationally as much by
failure as success. Indeed, where the conditions of
soil and climate are so favourable that, be the gar-
dening good or bad, the crop is always forthcoming,
though the undertaking may prove a greater com-
mercial success, yet as an educational exercise it
will have less value than where nature is unkindly
and hard to subdue.
Again, the object of a school garden is certainly
not to put boys as apprentices to gardening. Some
boys, no doubt, who learn gardening will become
gardeners in a professional way when they grow
older, but it would be wholly out of place in school
unless it served a general purpose as well as having
a technical aim.
SCHOOL GARDENS ARE A PART OF GENERAL AS
WELL AS TECHNICAL EDUCATION
A very slight acquaintance with modern text-
books and their readers, whether dealing of the
farm, or the garden, or the home, is sufficient to
show that while many of the plain facts of modern
science are assumed by the writers to be matters
of general knowledge, most of the readers continue
to regard such facts as outside their province and
SCHOOL GARDENING 20$
belonging to the peculiar domain of men of science.
Now, some knowledge of the nature of a few of
the chief gases and other elements is really indis-
pensable for the farmer, the gardener, and house-
wife, and it may be acquired in more ways than
one. While a girl may study it in connection with
cooking and cleaning, a boy may have it brought
home to him in connection with a garden plot.
The kind of experiments which may be made and
studied with advantage in connection with school
gardens are described in Laurie's Food of Plants
(Macmillan), and in an extremely practical and
suggestive paper by the Professor of Botany in
the Durham College of Science, Mr. M. C. Potter,
which was published in the Record of the Associa-
tion for Promoting Technical and Secondary Edu-
cation. Mr. J. H. Crawford published in Natural
Science (July, 1892), a plan for making an agri-
cultural museum, which offers valuable suggestions
for associating practical garden work with the
study of elementary science in the class-room.
The result of this combined indoor and outdoor
instruction will be to spread a much-needed type
of general as well as technical knowledge. The
rising generation will learn what is the true nature
of an experiment, what are the methods of modern
science, in what way observations are made and
inferences drawn from them, what are the sources
of error, and how it comes about that a merely
practical man may as easily underrate as overrate
the researches of the laboratory.
204 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
THE DIVISION OF THE GROUND
(i) Size, Shape, and Arrangement of the
Individual Plots
Each boy, then, should have a plot to himself,
and in the Boscombe School gardens there are
plots for twelve boys. The plots must not be too
large, because the boys cannot work more than two
afternoons a week. The shape, again, is important,
because it is desirable that the boys should be able
to perform much of their gardening while standing
on the paths between the plots, instead of having
to step on the border for every operation. The
plots, therefore, measure thirty feet in length, and
are only ten feet in width. The four corners of each
plot are carefully marked by substantial squared
pegs firmly driven into the ground. Each plot is
numbered, and the numbers are written clearly and
boldly on the face of the pegs.
The longer axis of each plot extends in the
direction of east to west, and the width is in the
direction of north to south. This arrangement
facilitates the cropping. The vegetables are
planted in rows across the plots, from north to
south, because this plan gives them the best
chance of thriving. Each particular kind of vege-
table is planted in the same line right across all
the plots, so that although in the separate plots
the rows are short, being only ten feet long, yet,
when the whole set of plots is looked at in one
view, the vegetables are seen to be planted in long
rows extending right across the garden in regular
SCHOOL GARDENING 205
lines from the north boundary to the south. The
conaparative success of each boy is thus apparent.
THE CROPPING OF A PLOT
I will now describe the first cropping of one of
the plots. All the others were cropped in the
same way. A succession of late autumn and
winter vegetables was arranged to follow.
Broad beans.
Hollow crown parsnips.
White Spanish onions.
Bedfordshire champion onion.
Radishes.
Lettuce (two rows — cos and cabbage).
Potatoes (three rows — early, medium, and late).
Brussels sprouts.
Cauliflower.
James' intermediate carrot.
Shorthorn carrot.
Pineapple beet.
Cabbage (Wheeler).
Drumhead savoy.
Autumn cauliflower (Veitch's Autumn Giant).
Scarlet runners.
The scarlet runners were planted on the side
next the road, and served as a screen against the
depredations of roughs and idlers, who, in the
absence of the boys, would occasionally steal their
best vegetables.
(2.) Other Plots for Working in Common
Besides the ground which was taken up by the
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GENERAL PLAN OF SCHOOL GARDEN.
2o8 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
twelve plots and the paths between them, the en-
closure contained space for two other purposes.
{a.) Along the south side there was a border,
about one hundred feet in length and ten
in width, for growing certain vegetables
which did not lend themselves readily to
separate treatment in the twelve plots, such
as asparagus, marrow, and seakale. Here,
too, were planted several pot-herbs, such as
thyme, sage, marjoram, &c., and also seed-
lings to be pricked out later in the other
plots, such as lettuce, celery, leeks, sprouts,
and cabbage.
(b.) At the east end of the ground there was
space for four plots of the same size as the
twelve others — namely, thirty feet by ten —
in which certain fruit-trees were planted,
including standard apples, pears, and plums,
and also such bush fruit as currants, goose-
berries, and raspberries. Room was also
found for some tomatoes, a strawberry bed,
and a few herbaceous flowers, by way of
ornament, and some roses. In the north-
east corner a small frame, six feet by four
feet, was placed for the purpose of growing
seedlings, which might thus be preserved
through the winter for early spring plant-
ing. In these plots the boys learnt how to
bud roses, to train fruit-trees, and to make
grafts in different ways.
SCHOOL GARDENING 209
CARE OF TOOLS
The ground was enclosed by a barbed -wire
fencing, which was stretched upon strong posts.
Inside this fence was planted a privet hedge, in
which were set at intervals a few trees, such as
poplars, maple, birch, and ash.
At the gate of the enclosure a wooden hut was
built for the accommodation of the tools and seeds.
It is made of tarred boards, with a corrugated-iron
roof In its dimensions it is nine feet square, and
its height at the back is nine feet, sloping towards
the front to six feet, where the entrance is made.
The floor is paved with brick, and suitable shelves
are provided. Each plot has a set of tools assigned
to it, and each tool is numbered to correspond with
the plot to which it belongs. Each set of tools
hangs from a peg, which is numbered in corres-
pondence with the tools. The boys are taught to
keep their tools scrupulously clean by aid of lin-
seed oil and paraffin, and to put them away in an
orderly manner after using them.
LIST OF TOOLS
The following is a list of the tools which are
provided for each plot. The sizes given are
adapted to boys' use: —
I Dutch hoe (four-inch).
I Draw hoe (four-inch).
I Fork (four-prong).
I Spade (seven inches wide and eleven inches long).
I Rake (ten-comb).
(M930) O
310 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
Besides these there are other tools for common
use. The following is a list of them: —
List of tools to be used in common.
I Besom.
1 Mallet.
2 Wheelbarrows.
1 Water-can.
2 Boat-baskets.
4 Lines, sixty feet in length.
The plans on pages 206, 207, show the details
of the arrangements which have been described.
THE EFFECTS OF GOOD AND BAD GARDENING
CONTRASTED
The soil was of the worst possible description,
consisting of almost pure gravel. The boys had
obviously to overcome natural difficulties. Culti-
vation was commenced by trenching to a depth of
two feet, which involves digging out three spits.
Stable manure was applied somewhat liberally at
the bottom of the trench. The summer of 1896
was very dry, but, owing to this "bastard" trench-
ing, although there was no artificial watering, the
fine growth of the crops in these plots as compared
with the scanty show in neighbouring gardens,
where there was far less labour expended, proved
the truth of the old saying, "justissima tellus", for
the honest earth well repaid all the toil. The pro-
duce of the gardens received certificates of merit at
more than one horticultural show. The contrast
between the results of good and bad gardening
SCHOOL GARDENING 211
forms a most telling object-lesson, and the differ-
ence in the crops, according as the boys are more
or less skilful, or as they are careful or careless, is
well demonstrated by the arrangement of the rows
of vegetables which cross the plots in a straight line.
In the report of the Woburn Fruit Farm for 1897
(Longmans), a method is described of making ap-
proximate measurements of the comparative loss
of growth which is due to neglect and bad method.
The instructor of the Boscombe School gardens,
who is himself a nurseryman, is attempting to
teach the boys to practise the method of measure-
ment there described.
THE YOUNG GARDENER'S DIARY AND ACCOUNT-
BOOK
The boys are taught to make rough notes on the
ground, recording the operations of each day, the
dates of planting seeds, and the names of the sorts
selected. Hints are added as to the distance be-
tween the rows of plants, and also between the
plants in a row, and a record is made of the kind
of manure which is used, and other matters. A
daily record of the weather is kept, and the amount
of rainfall observed and noted. The notes are
afterwards worked up in a systematic form, and
serve as a gardener's diary of great value for future
use, when in later life the boys do some gardening
of their own.
A few extracts from one of these diaries are here
subjoined : —
212 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES
EXTRACTS FROM BOY'S GARDENING DIARY
" March 1 5. — Sowing onion seed. White Spanish
and Bedfordshire Champion. One row of
each, one foot apart; made drill about three
inches deep; after sowing the seed, raked
the soil over them and patted it down with
the spade.
"March 22. — Trenching and manuring. The
broad beans and peas are showing above-
ground.
" March 23, 26, 29. — Trenching, manuring, and
weeding.
"April 2. — Finished trenching on all the plots
to-day. Edging and weeding paths.
" May 14. — Sowed one row of cabbage lettuce in
the experimental plot. Dressed the cabbage
plants with four different kinds of artificial
manure, namely —
Two rows with nitrate of soda.
Two rows of nitrate silicate.
Two rows with native guano.
One row with ichthemic guano."
ACCOUNT-BOOKS
Each boy sold the produce of his own plot, and
the money so earned was brought to the instructor,
who received it and entered the amount in an
account -book, reserving a separate page for each
plot Each boy also kept an account-book of his
own, so that he might feel sure that he received
his proper share. The money is divided, and one-
SCHOOL GARDENING 213
half is devoted to the purchase of seeds for the
next season, while the other half is given to the
boys in proportion to their earnings. In this way-
some boys earned as much as eight shillings in the
year, while the average was about six shillings.
In conclusion, I may add that a year's garden
work had a strikingly beneficial effect upon the
growth and physical development of the boys who
had thus done their part to carry out the somewhat
neglected instruction to man to go forth "and till
the ground from whence he was taken".
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