UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF CAPT. AND MRS. 
 PAUL MCBRIDE PERIGORD

 
 THE BUILDING OF THE INTELLECT.
 
 THE BUILDING OF 
 THE INTELLECT: 
 
 A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
 IN EDUCATION. 
 
 DOUGLAS M. GANE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' NEW SOUTH WALES AND VICTORIA IN 
 
 ' Mens sana in corpora sano.' 
 
 JUVENAL. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1897. 
 
 136466
 
 Library 
 
 5- b 
 
 WITH KIND PERMISSION, 
 
 TO THE 
 
 RT. HONOURABLE SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART., M.P., 
 
 F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 WHOSE VARIED ATTAINMENTS, ' 
 
 IN THOUGHT, IN SPEECH, AND IN ACT, 
 
 PRE-EMINENTLY EXEMPLIFY 
 
 THE AIM AND OBJECT 
 
 OF 
 ALL TRUE EDUCATIONAL METHOD.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN the following pages I have attempted a brief 
 abstract of some of the leading thought on 
 Education. 
 
 I have sought not so much to give expres- 
 sion to any views of my own, as to present 
 a systematic exposition of such opinions as 
 are most deserving of attention in the works 
 of others. 
 
 Not to diminish the force or authority of 
 <s such opinions, I have thought it desirable to 
 S. quote the arguments and conclusions of my 
 
 i 
 
 authors literally, rather than convey them in 
 
 language of my own. 
 i i 
 
 Education being now regarded as a question 
 
 of such vital importance, and opinions differing 
 so widely as to its method, character and scope, 
 a summary of the views of those best qualified 
 
 as guides and teachers cannot fail to be of 
 -+j 
 
 P* service to us in our efforts to arrive at some- 
 88 
 
 O thing like unanimity of opinion.
 
 viii Preface 
 
 In view of the promise of modern psycho- 
 logical inquiry to give Education a scientific 
 basis, I have treated mental phenomena as the 
 only sure guide to sound educational method. 
 Every admission of new data, and verification 
 of old, being an acquisition to the science 
 they concern, I have ventured to submit for 
 the approval of my readers several conclusions 
 at which I have arrived, on a consideration of 
 the parallel presented by the mental evolution 
 of the individual and the mental evolution of 
 the species. 
 
 Though I have been careful not to disregard 
 the advantages of Education as directed to the 
 attainment of scholarship, I have preferred to 
 treat it primarily as an instrument in the for- 
 mation of character. 
 
 I have avoided detail, not only with the 
 object of confining my remarks within mode- 
 rate limits, but also because I consider that, for 
 the general reader for whom the present work 
 is intended such a subject should be treated 
 only in its general bearings. 
 
 With such limitations, I have endeavoured 
 to present a summary of views on the subject 
 of Education that may prove serviceable to 
 those entrusted with the care of the young,
 
 Preface ix 
 
 and who are brought face to face with the 
 difficulties attending it. 
 
 Furthermore, Education apart from its 
 practical aspects, and its value as a means to 
 the due appreciation of all that is great and 
 noble in Literature, Art, and Science is in 
 itself attractive to every thinking mind. To 
 the reader, therefore, who peruses the follow- 
 ing pages with no more serious motive than 
 the interest afforded by the subject, the present 
 work may prove not undeserving of attention. 
 
 RICHMOND HILL, 
 July 21, 1897.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 PREFACE - vii 
 
 INTRODUCTION - i 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SOME DEFINITIONS. 
 
 The difficulty of defining education The Greek 
 ideal Dr. Wiese's view too limited The value of 
 knowledge Mental habits: their aim How 
 acquired Educational subjects Considerations 
 involved in their choice The general training to 
 be kept distinct from the special or business train- 
 ing Special studies General culture - - 12 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A CONSIDERATION OF METHOD. 
 
 The development of the body The early develop- 
 ment of the mind A great problem The perils 
 of competitive education The laws of mental 
 growth Mental phenomena Phenomena of child 
 life give no reliable data Comparative embryology 
 Its lessons The parallel between the child and 
 the primitive community Spencer's educational 
 dictum Our knowledge of primitive and savage 
 life inadequate The universal qualities of the 
 human mind The advantages of a natural system 
 of education The mental history of the ancient 
 Greeks Its lessons - - - 24
 
 xii Contents 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE POWERS. 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 The faculties indivisible Imagination defined 
 Fairy-stories Need for discrimination The in- 
 fluence of the national myths on the Grecian 
 intellect Healthy exercise of imagination depen- 
 dent upon knowledge Judgment to be formed 
 before exercise of imagination encouraged Ob- 
 servation defined The need for its cultivation 
 Mode of cultivation The value of drawing 
 Concentration Not to be looked for in children 
 How acquired Classification defined Comte 
 Froebel Memory defined Its connection with 
 classification Quintilian's observations Taste 
 defined Its cultivation Reasoning defined The 
 need for cultivating the art The variety of opinions 
 as to the best mode Best matured by actual 
 practice The value of conversation and debating 
 The logic of the writer and speaker contrasted - 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE CLASSICS. 
 
 The Classics as an educational subject Milton's 
 criticisms Latin formerly the language of edu- 
 cated men Present-day objections The advan- 
 tages urged The superior claims of scientific 
 training The Classics as an aid to the study of 
 English The value of translating from the Classics 
 appraised The classical literature A foundation 
 of modern culture The disciplinary value of 
 ancient thought Dr. Arnold's instance Scientific 
 nomenclature Classical standards of excellence 
 The ' wisdom of life ' of the ancients The use of 
 translations The claims of Greek and Latin dis- 
 tinguished - - 64 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GRAMMAR MODERN LANGUAGES HISTORY. 
 
 The place of grammar in the school course Its true 
 use Modern languages Importance of the study
 
 Contents xiii 
 
 of English What the study is not What it is 
 The vocabulary Grammar Style Foreign lan- 
 guages Their relative importance De Quincey's 
 test Modes of acquiring History Importance 
 of the scientific method in studying history The 
 true purpose of history The importance of the 
 historical method in study - - 81 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MATHEMATICS SCIENCE. 
 
 Mathematics The study of mathematics as a mental 
 discipline The character of mathematical truth 
 Its importance in a liberal education As the basis 
 of science study Comte's views Science defined 
 Mode of study Children's curiosity The value 
 of the study Methods of literary and scientific 
 training distinguished Science' study as a mental 
 discipline Scientific method Knowledge For 
 acquiring knowledge science study must be general 
 Comte's method The utility of scientific know- 
 ledge Its higher claims A guide to conduct - 92 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 ART. 
 
 The attempts to define art Bacon Cicero Mill 
 Its purpose The intellectual and emotional sides of 
 art The proper limitations of juvenile art training 
 Jean Paul Richter's views Elementary art study 
 defined The advantages of art training Music 
 Objections to music as a paramount study Limited 
 general capacity of musicians Mr. Haweis' views 
 The value of musical training - - 108 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BASIS OK MORALITY. 
 
 Plato's injunction Matthew Arnold's definition of 
 perfection A relative definition more useful for 
 educational purposes A profound student or a 
 comprehensive one ? Specialism Subversive of
 
 xiv Contents 
 
 true morality Herbart's views General know- 
 ledge and surface knowledge distinguished Mill's 
 definition of general knowledge The need for 
 standards of excellence The ideal How con- 
 ceived The intellectual conditions of morality in- 
 sufficient Theory and practice distinguished The 
 cultivation of moral habits The moral force of 
 childhood and youth The importance of work - 117 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 TEACHERS. 
 
 Private and public tuition contrasted The import- 
 ance of bodily exercise The educational value of 
 sports Considerations in the choice of a teacher 
 The rudiments of instructions not to be taught 
 by the half-educated The influence of teachers 
 The influence on ancient Greece of its great men 
 The qualities needful in a teacher Dr. Arnold's 
 views Quintilian's views A noble ideal Can it 
 be realized ?- - - - - - 130
 
 ' Still, it must be allowed that learning does take away 
 something, as the file takes away something from rough 
 metal, the whetstone from blunt instruments, and age 
 from wine ; but it takes away what is faulty ; and that 
 which learning has polished is less only because it is 
 better.' QUINTILIAN.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE picture of man given us by Sir John 
 Herschell, when judged only with regard to his 
 physical constitution, is in strange contrast with 
 the nobility and power he has displayed when 
 raised to the meridian of his intellectual great- 
 ness. ' No other animal,' says this distinguished 
 author, ' passes so large a portion of its exist- 
 ence in a state of absolute helplessness, or falls 
 in old age into such protracted and lamentable 
 imbecility. To no other warm-blooded animal 
 has Nature denied that indispensable covering 
 without which the vicissitudes of a temperate 
 and the rigours of a cold climate are equally 
 insupportable; and to scarcely any has she 
 been so sparing in external weapons, whether 
 for attack or defence. Destitute alike of speed 
 to avoid and of arms to repel the aggressions 
 of his voracious foes, tenderly susceptible of 
 atmospheric influences, and unfitted for the 
 coarse aliments which the earth affords spon- 
 taneously during at least two-thirds of the year, 
 even in temperate climates, man, if abandoned 
 
 i
 
 2 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 to mere instinct, would be of all creatures the 
 most destitute and miserable.' 
 
 In spite of these physical disadvantages, 
 however, man, Sir John Herschell goes on to 
 remark, ' is the undisputed lord of the creation.' 
 
 We will not now attempt to trace the order 
 of development by which the great minds of 
 the earth have been evolved from a source ap- 
 parently so unpropitious. Suffice it to say that 
 countless generations separate these extremes. 
 The accumulated experience of mankind has 
 grown in volume until, in the fulness of time, a 
 Plato, a Leibnitz, or a Descartes has been born. 
 
 But if we are to seek an instance in illustra- 
 tion of the height to which the mind of man has 
 been shown capable of development, we can per- 
 haps find none more forcible than Aristotle. His 
 genius was universal, and his mental achieve- 
 ments were destined for nearly two thousand 
 years to form the beacon light of intellectual 
 effort. ' His aim/ says Sir Alexander Grant, 
 ' was to produce what we should call an en- 
 cyclopaedia of all the sciences. . . . He began 
 from the very beginning, and framed his own 
 philosophical or scientific nomenclature ; he 
 traced out the laws on which human reasoning 
 proceeds, and was the first to reduce these to 
 science, and to produce a logic. He wrote 
 anew "Metaphysics," "Ethics," "Politics," 
 "Rhetoric," and "The Art of Poetry"; and 
 while these were still on the stocks, he was
 
 Introduction 3 
 
 engaged in founding on the largest scale the 
 physical and natural sciences, especially natural 
 philosophy, physiology under various aspects 
 (such as histology and anatomy, embryology, 
 psychology, the philosophy of the senses, etc.), 
 and, above all, natural history.'* 
 
 And the result of this vast learning and 
 industry the same author sums up in the 
 following words : ' In the history of European 
 thought and knowledge, down to the period of 
 the revival of letters, the name of Aristotle was 
 without a rival, supreme. . . . His works may 
 almost have the credit of having saved men 
 from relapsing into barbarism. 'f 
 
 But we are not confined to ancient Greece 
 for instances of vast mental capacity. All 
 times and all places within the limits of civi- 
 lization have given birth to prodigious intel- 
 lects. For example, Leonardo da Vinci, Sidney 
 Colvin says, ' excelled' in almost every honour- 
 able human attainment, the commercial and 
 political excepted. ... In the fine arts he 
 was the most accomplished painter of his 
 generation, and one of the most accomplished 
 of the world, a distinguished sculptor, architect 
 and musician,, and a luminous and pregnant 
 critic. In inventions and experimental philo- 
 sophy he was a great mathematician and 
 engineer, an anatomist, a botanist, a physio- 
 
 * ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' 
 f Sir A. Grant's 'Aristotle.' 
 
 I 2
 
 4 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 legist, an astronomer, a chemist, a geologist and 
 geographer a"n insatiable and successful ex- 
 plorer, in a word, along the whole range of the 
 physical and mathematical sciences when most 
 of these sciences were new.'* 
 
 To turn to our own countrymen, in the poet 
 Gray we find a memorable instance of com- 
 prehensive knowledge. Of his attainments 
 Matthew Arnold writes on the authority of the 
 poet's friend, Temple : ' Mr. Gray was, perhaps, 
 the most learned man in Europe. He knew 
 every branch of history, both natural and civil ; 
 had read all the original historians of England, 
 and France, Italy, and was a great antiquarian. 
 Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made 
 a principal part of his study. Voyages and 
 travels of all sorts were his favourite amuse- 
 ments ; and he had a fine taste in painting, 
 prints, architecture, and gardening.' 
 
 Yet vast as were the attainments of these 
 men, we are justified in saying that their 
 achievements by no means represent the limit 
 of intellectual greatness. Moreover, it is con- 
 soling to reflect that, boundless as is the honour 
 we pay to the intelligence of predecessors such 
 as these, we are not by reason of that ' con- 
 demned to stupidity ' in our own age. ' It is 
 sufficient for encouragement in study,' says 
 Quintilian, ' to know that it is not a law of 
 Nature that what has not been done cannot be 
 * ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.'
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 done-; and in the second, that everything great 
 and admirable had some peculiar time at which 
 it was brought to its highest excellence. . . . 
 Whatever is best had at one time no exist- 
 ence. . . . The advancement of the arts to 
 the highest possible excellence would be but an 
 unhappy service to mankind, if what was best 
 at any particular moment was to be the last.' 
 
 At the same time, it is not to be denied that 
 the appearance of intellectual giants such as we 
 have named is due to the co-operation of many 
 favouring circumstances seldom found in com- 
 bination. Locke has given it as his opinion 
 that, of all the men we meet with, nine-tenths 
 of them are what they are, good or evil, useful 
 or otherwise, according to their education. 
 
 Without doubt education can do much, 
 but it cannot altogether transform what is 
 born in us ; for points of nature, Lord Bacon 
 observes, are without our command. ' If it 
 deserve to be considered,' he remarks, 'that 
 there are minds which are proportioned to 
 great matters, and others to small, doth it not 
 deserve as well to be considered that there are 
 minds proportioned to attend to many matters, 
 and others to few ? So that some can divide 
 themselves, others can perchance do exactly 
 well, but it must be but in few things at once : 
 and so there cometh to be a narrowness of 
 mind, as well as a pusillanimity. And, again, 
 that some minds are proportioned to that which
 
 6 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 may be despatched at once, or within a short 
 return of time ; others to that which begins afar 
 off, and is to be won with length of pursuit.' 
 
 In regard to points of fortune, which Lord 
 Bacon regards as an obstacle to education 
 equally beyond our powers of control, Ignatius 
 Loyola declared, and not without some near 
 knowledge of the matter, ' that in absolute 
 penury, the pursuit of science cannot easily 
 subsist, and the culture of the mind is impeded 
 by the duties of providing for the body.' 
 
 But the whole value of education does not 
 lie in the possibility of arousing prodigious 
 intellects to activity. Education is necessary 
 to the average man, both for forming his - 
 character and for fitting him to fulfil creditably 
 his mission in life. 
 
 X~He must be taught to think, and so to 
 Vjeason ; for ' the real freedom of a rational being 
 consists in an ability to regulate his conduct by 
 reason.' f But to reason accurately he must 
 have knowledge, for to reason from opinions, 
 and not from farts, is to lay himself open to 
 false conclusions. ) Hence Heracleitus says : 
 ' The mass of men live as if each had a 
 private wisdom of his own.' 
 (Prejudice is the natural consequence of 
 reasoning from opinions rather than from facts 
 hence our prejudice is generally proportionate 
 to our ignorance. From this it will be seen 
 that, in our dealings with our fellow-men, the
 
 Introduction 7 
 
 more knowledge we possess, the fairer are our 
 judgments likely to be. Again, if our know- 
 ledge be enlarged, and our reasoning powers 
 matured, may we not hope to escape some of 
 those calamities that, according to Seneca, 
 attend the guidance of the uncultivated judg- 
 ment ? 
 
 ' So great are our mistakes in the true 
 estimate of things,' this philosopher observes, 
 ' that we have hardly done anything that we 
 have not had reason to wish ^undone, and we 
 have found the things we feared to be more 
 desirable than those we coveted ; our very 
 prayers have been more pernicious than the 
 curses of our enemies, and we must pray again 
 to have our former prayers forgiven. Where 
 is the wise man that wishes to himself the 
 wishes of his mother, nurse, or his tutor, the 
 worst of enemies with the intention of the best 
 of friends ?' 
 
 In our daily life we have not only to form 
 conclusions, but are at times called upon to 
 give our reasons for them. ' Men's minds,' 
 says Dr. Whewell, 'are full of convictions which 
 they cannot justify by connected reasoning, 
 however reasonable they may be. Nothing is 
 more common than to hear persons urge very 
 foolish arguments in support of very just 
 opinions, and what has been said of women is 
 often no less true of the sex which pretends to 
 have the more logical kind of head : namely,
 
 8 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 that if they give their judgment only, they are 
 not unlikely to be right, but if they add their 
 reasons for it, those will most probably be 
 wrong.' 
 
 Hence one inducement of education to a man 
 is ' to enable him to render a reason for the 
 belief that is in him.' 
 
 But knowledge is necessary for the main- 
 tenance of our health and the preservation of 
 our fortune. For though, remarks Herbert 
 Spencer, ' Nature has provided efficient safe- 
 guards to health, lack of knowledge makes 
 them in a great measure useless.' 
 
 We cannot of course hope, nor should we 
 attempt, to undertake those offices for which 
 years of study and practice alone can qualify 
 us, and which even then we can fill with 
 only partial success. But we can acquire 
 such a knowledge of their general theory 
 as will save us from imposition, and will give 
 us greater facilities for distinguishing merit 
 and detecting incompetency. Moreover, we 
 shall be contributing to the value of the 
 advice we seek if we approach our adviser 
 with a cultivated mind. For, says Huxley, 
 in speaking of the art of medicine, 'it is, I 
 think, eminently desirable that the hygienist 
 and the physician should find something in the 
 public mind to which they can appeal ; some 
 little stock of universally-acknowledged truths, 
 which may serve as a foundation for their
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 warnings, and predispose towards an intelligent 
 obedience to their recommendations.' 
 
 These remarks apply with equal force to the 
 study of law. In fact, Mr. Justice Stephen, 
 in his ' Commentaries on the Laws of England,' 
 thus recommends to his countrymen a better 
 knowledge of the laws to which they have to 
 render obedience. He remarks : ' The subject 
 (the English law) is one to which no class of 
 readers in the realm can be indifferent ; for it 
 is incumbent upon every man to be acquainted 
 with those laws at least with which he is im- 
 mediately concerned, lest he incur the censure, 
 as well as the inconvenience, of living in society 
 without knowing the obligations which it lays 
 him under. But it ought to have peculiar at- 
 tractions for men of liberal education and 
 respectable rank. These advantages are given 
 them, not for the benefit of themselves only, 
 but also of the public ; and yet they cannot in 
 any scene of life discharge properly their duty, 
 either to the public or to themselves, without 
 some degree of knowledge in the laws.' 
 
 But education offers a further inducement. 
 If duty or utility fail to attract, there yet remains 
 pleasure. ' Shall we,' says Ernest Chesneau, 
 ' appeal to a. final inducement, less lofty, 
 but not less powerful ? May we not invoke 
 the spirit of dilettantism the gratification of 
 refined personal tastes ? Is it not a fact,' he 
 continues, ' that the more open and sensitive
 
 io The Building of the Intellect 
 
 the mind is to intellectual impressions, and the 
 more instinct with moral vitality, the greater 
 are its opportunities of unexpected enjoyment?' 
 
 Indeed, our sources of pleasure are greatly 
 multiplied. Objects of interest arise in places 
 which, were the mind less enlightened, would 
 be thought destitute of attraction. And as 
 education advances, the faculties grow keener, 
 and the mind awakens to the consciousness of 
 the vast fields of knowledge that present them- 
 selves for its exploration. A limited knowledge 
 of astronomy discloses in the firmament above 
 us innumerable wonders that enable us to see 
 in a starlight night something more than a mere 
 condition of fine weather. A moderate ac- 
 quaintance with the principles of art will give 
 a delight to ourvisit to a picture-gallery that 
 we could not otherwise have experienced ; and 
 an elementary knowledge of architecture will 
 enable us to find in a cathedral a volume written 
 in a language which only our ignorance pre- 
 cluded us from reading. In a country walk, 
 too, how many things come into notice if we 
 have but knowledge enough to call the flowers 
 by their names, and how our interest in them 
 will expand if we are but slightly intimate with 
 their structure and classification ! 
 
 But education does not merely afford pleasure : 
 it does more. It affords a refined pleasure 
 a pleasure which, in the words of Huxley, 
 ' is neither withered by age, nor staled by
 
 Introduction i T 
 
 custom, nor embittered in the recollection by 
 the pangs of self-reproach.' 
 
 And this is an important aspect of education; 
 for, says the same author, ' a pleasure-loving 
 character will have pleasure of some sort ; but 
 if you give him the choice, he may prefer 
 pleasures which do not degrade him to those 
 which do.' 
 
 And the enjoyment reaped from education 
 may yet reach a fuller height ; for ' the pleasure 
 derived from knowledge is pure when it is with- 
 drawn from action, that is, from toil, and enjoys 
 the calm contemplation of itself.'* 
 
 * How great a thing it is,' says Rabanus, ' to 
 approach in spirit to the heavens to explore 
 all their supernal mechanism by rational in- 
 vestigation, and by lofty, intellectual insight 
 to observe anywhere and everywhere the veiled 
 secrets of their vast greatness !' 
 
 Thus is the mind brought back to religion, 
 which a little or superficial knowledge, observes 
 Lord Bacon, may have inclined to atheism. 
 
 * Quintilian's ' Institutes.'
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SOME DEFINITIONS. 
 
 ' Education must come before philosophy.' PYTHA- 
 GORAS. 
 
 ' Only let it be accepted as a cardinal law of education 
 that before it can do any profitable work the mind must 
 have material to work upon.' E. E. BOWEN. 
 
 'The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous 
 thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If know- 
 ledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other 
 than a very valuable possession, however infinitesimal 
 its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is 
 dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be 
 out of danger?' HUXLEY. 
 
 ' And the error is, that after the distribution of par- 
 ticular arts and sciences men have abandoned universality, 
 or philosophia prima, which cannot but cease and stop all 
 progression.' BACON. 
 
 IT would be difficult to define education in such 
 a way as to include the multitude of ideas 
 that have been formed concerning it, differing 
 more or less as they have done with each epoch 
 of the growth of civilization. Education in its 
 larger sense, John Stuart Mill has said, is one 
 of the most inexhaustible of all topics, and one
 
 Some Definitions 13 
 
 of the subjects which most essentially require 
 to be considered by various minds, and from 
 a variety of points of view. But impossible 
 though an accurate definition may be, there are 
 certain fundamental notions with regard to its 
 aim and object about which there is little or 
 no difference of opinion ; and these are, that 
 it should comprise the development of the 
 faculties, the acquisition of knowledge, and the 
 enlargement of the power of using knowledge 
 profitably, which is skill. For 'the difference,' 
 observes Dr. Arnold, ' between a useful educa- 
 tion and one which does not affect the future 
 life rests mainly on the greater or less activity 
 which it has communicated to the pupil's mind, 
 and whether he has learned to think or to act, 
 and to gain knowledge by itself, or whether he 
 has merely followed passively as long as there 
 was someone to draw him.' 
 
 In Greece, Dr. Donaldson tells us, the chief 
 aim of education was the realization of capacity, 
 and not the furthering of acquisition ; for ' in 
 the best period of the history of that country,' 
 remarks Mr. Perry,* ' there was no such thing 
 as learning or learned men, but only thinkers 
 and actors, whose minds developed themselves 
 in their natural shape.' 
 
 The training of the intelligence of children 
 is, it is said, mainly concerned with the develop- 
 ment of mental habits. ' All that a school can 
 * ' Greek and Roman Sculpture.'
 
 1 4 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 teach,' observes Dr. Wiese,* ' beyond a certain 
 small stock of knowledge is the way to learn. 
 It is a lamentable misconception of that most 
 important maxim to suppose that a liberal 
 education can have any other end in view than 
 to impart and exercise power to be used in 
 after-life.' Though, in part, we agree with this 
 definition, we take exception to the limitations 
 it imports. Let us examine the question more 
 closely. 
 
 Education realizes its final aim in action. 
 We learn in order that we may do. We master 
 each science that we may exercise its corre- 
 sponding art. ' A science,' says Sir James 
 Sawyer, ' has to do with knowing, an art with 
 doing. You must learn each science in order 
 to understand its correlative art ; you must 
 practise each art if you would illustrate and 
 appreciate the principles of its science.' The 
 art of medicine is based upon the knowledge 
 of the human body. The art of thinking is 
 based upon the knowledge of the material of 
 thought ; and the art of right thinking is based 
 upon the knowledge of what is right and estim- 
 able in the material of thought. There is, in fact, 
 an art of conduct, and it can be exercised only 
 after the knowledge is first acquired of what is 
 good and noble in conduct. We cannot do right 
 deliberately until we first know what is right. 
 If, then, our schools teach but a small stock 
 * ' German Letters on English Education.'
 
 Some Definitions 15 
 
 of knowledge, it may satisfactorily explain the 
 not uncommon want of moral rectitude, and 
 the coarse tastes that distinguish many of our 
 ' expensively-educated youths.' The period for 
 acquiring knowledge is deferred too long. The 
 school years are devoted to learning how to 
 learn, and, when they are passed, the instru- 
 ment that it has taken so many dull hours to 
 sharpen is laid aside, its power unrevealed. Is 
 it not lamentable that our school work, ex- 
 pressly dedicated as it is to give the means of 
 acquiring knowledge, should in the final result 
 prove so unproductive?' 
 
 But what is this power that Dr. Wiese tells 
 us our school training should give us for use in 
 after-life ? Is it not the power to be derived 
 from the acquirement of certain mental habits 
 habits of seeing and knowing, habits of 
 attention, memory, and judgment ? Admittedly, 
 these are but a means to an end. For why do 
 we observe, except it be, through the medium 
 of the senses, to bring new facts to the mind ? 
 What virtue is there in concentration, if it be 
 not to render our knowledge of those facts 
 more thorough and precise ? And do we not 
 treasure the faculty of memory for its power to 
 preserve the facts for our future use ? and in 
 the operations of the judgment do we not put 
 to use our store of accumulated facts for all 
 the varied purposes of life ? 
 
 It is manifest, therefore, that we develop the
 
 1 6 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 faculties that we may acquire knowledge ; and 
 we acquire knowledge that we may perform 
 the numerous duties of life with wisdom, tem- 
 perance and precision. 
 
 Of the duties of life, some are general, 
 others special. Some are imposed upon the 
 individual in his capacity of a man, a rational 
 being ; others affect the individual in his special 
 capacity, say as a statesman, a doctor, or a 
 lawyer. The knowledge that is necessary for 
 the fulfilment of general duties should form 
 the subject of school and the very earliest 
 teaching. The knowledge that is required for 
 the performance of special duties should be 
 acquired when school-days are over. We will 
 return to this later. 
 
 The objects of education accordingly arrange 
 themselves under two heads : namely, the de- 
 velopment of the mental faculties, and the 
 acquisition of such knowledge as is necessary 
 for the building up of the rational man. 
 
 Habits of mind are acquired by virtue of 
 things done, not things known. Observation 
 becomes a habit by the practice of observation; 
 attention by the practice of attention ; reason- 
 ing by the practice of reasoning. Knowledge 
 may guide the working of the faculties, but 
 for developing them, it is no substitute for 
 their active use. For instance, knowledge 
 acquired direct from things stimulates observa- 
 tion; the same knowledge acquired from books
 
 Some Definitions 17 
 
 tends to check it. The habit of thought comes 
 from the practice of thinking ; but heads ' re- 
 plete with thoughts of other men ' do not think, 
 or think very little. 
 
 The subjects of the educational course are, 
 it is claimed, chosen firstly with a view to their 
 power to exercise the mental faculties, and 
 secondly from a regard to the value of the 
 knowledge they impart. A moment's considera- 
 tion will show that the former is the prevail- 
 ing factor in the choice. The Classics, it is 
 said, furnish a mental gymnastic of the highest 
 order ; and they impart the most valuable 
 knowledge when access to the literatures has 
 been attained. But access to the literatures, 
 in the cases of ninety-nine students out of every 
 hundred, is not attained, a fact that is well re- 
 cognised, and yet the Classics are retained in 
 the school curriculum. 
 
 In later chapters we shall treat more in detail 
 of the qualities of the main subjects of study. 
 Suffice it now to say that a school subject that 
 does not meet both the requirements we have 
 named, that does not store as well as exercise 
 the mind, lacks one of the vital qualities of a 
 school study, and should not be retained in 
 the course to the exclusion of one that does. 
 
 But unlike the Classics, as they are proved 
 to be to the majority, there are studies which, 
 while they develop the faculties, at the same 
 time impart knowledge. The question then 
 
 2
 
 1 8 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 arises, What is the value of the knowledge ? 
 Between various disciplinary studies in which 
 the quality of the knowledge imparted differs, 
 that study by which the most valuable know- 
 ledge is given should be the subject of the first 
 choice. 
 
 Though, as we have shown, it is desirable 
 in school years to limit the training to the 
 development of mental power and the acqui- 
 sition of general knowledge, yet various excep- 
 tions are made, by common consent, to this rule, 
 and the pupil receives particular instruction in 
 some special branch of knowledge, with a view 
 to pursuing the art to which it is the introduc- 
 tion. This arises in the case of painting and 
 music. 
 
 But though exceptions are made in these two 
 cases, it is not desirable to extend them. ' If 
 the young/ said Aristotle, ' had to learn every- 
 thing that might be useful to them in after-life, 
 they would have to descend to cookery.' ' Un- 
 discerning parents,' says Herbart, ' may drill 
 their sons and daughters according to their 
 tastes ; they may lay all kinds of varnish on 
 the unpolished wood, which in years of inde- 
 pendence will be roughly rubbed off, but not 
 without pain and injury.' 
 
 Spencer maintains that accomplishments, 
 employing as they do the leisure part of life, 
 should occupy the leisure part of education. 
 But if that prevailed, many a brilliant painter
 
 Some Definitions 19 
 
 or musician might be lost to us for lack of 
 serious rudimentary training in early life. In 
 any case, it is obvious that ' we import into the 
 legitimate province of the teacher that which 
 does not belong to it when we crowd a mass 
 of multifarious acquirements into the period 
 of life allotted to the growth and improvement 
 of our reasoning powers and our physical 
 energies.'* 
 
 As we have shown, the period of life allotted 
 to school and college training is not that in 
 which the student should receive instruction in 
 the particular business to which he will apply 
 himself in after-life. The two courses of train- 
 ing should be kept distinct, and the one super- 
 posed on the other. If the business training 
 be allowed to usurp the time that should pro- 
 perly be allotted to the general training, both 
 will suffer : the general training by reason of 
 its lost opportunity, and the business training 
 by reason of the inadequate basis on which it 
 is built. 
 
 ' Men are men,' urges John Stuart Mill, 
 * before they are lawyers or physicians, or 
 merchants or manufacturers; and if you make 
 them capable and sensible men, they will make 
 themselves capable and sensible lawyers or 
 physicians. What professional men should 
 carry away with them from a university is 
 not professional knowledge, but that which 
 * Dr. Donaldson. 
 
 2 2
 
 2O The Building of the Intellect 
 
 should direct the use of their professional 
 knowledge, and bring the light of general 
 culture to illuminate the technicalities of a 
 special pursuit.' 
 
 To the correctness of this view Dr. Donald- 
 son .bears additional testimony when he quotes 
 one of the State Reports on Education, bearing 
 the signatures of Mr. T. B. Macaulay, Lord 
 Ashburton, the Rev. H. Melvill, Professor 
 Jowett, and Mr. Shaw Lefevre. The report runs : 
 ' We believe that men who have been engaged 
 up to twenty-one or twenty-two in studies 
 which have no immediate connection with the 
 business of any profession, and of which the 
 effect is merely to open, to invigorate, and to 
 enrich the mind, will generally be found in the 
 business of every profession superior to men 
 who have, at eighteen or nineteen, devoted 
 themselves to the special studies of their 
 calling.' 
 
 The question is a vital one, and its import- 
 ance should be more widely recognised. To 
 illustrate our meaning more fully, let us briefly 
 apply our general proposition to the cases of 
 particular pursuits. Three examples will per- 
 haps suffice : 
 
 In regard to the study of medicine, Sir James 
 Sawyer, in one of his hospital addresses re- 
 marks : ' At a time when some of you, per- 
 haps, may be inclined to over-estimate the 
 relative importance of a purely professional as
 
 Some Definitions 21 
 
 compared with a general training, pray let me 
 tell you that you are not fitly prepared to 
 come here unless you have been well grounded 
 in the rudiments of a liberal education. . . . 
 Depend upon it, the progress you may make in 
 your studies here, no less than the position you 
 will occupy hereafter in public and professional 
 estimation, depends very greatly on the degree 
 and extent of mental cultivation to which you 
 have already attained.' 
 
 In reference to the pursuit of art, Ernest 
 Chesneau writes : ' A great artist is an impossi- 
 bility without a general education, and a man 
 who has no artistic culture, however superior he 
 may be in other respects, lacks an instrument 
 which is indispensable to his complete use of 
 life.' 
 
 As to the training needful for the artisan, 
 Huxley says : ' In my judgment the prepara- 
 tory education of the handicraftsman ought 
 to have nothing of what is ordinarily under- 
 stood by "technical" about it. The work- 
 shop is the only real school for a handicraft. 
 The education which precedes that of the 
 workshop should be entirely devoted to the 
 strengthening of the body, the elevation of 
 the moral faculties, and the cultivation of the 
 intelligence, and especially to the imbuing the 
 mind with a broad and clear view of the laws 
 of that natural world with the components of 
 which the handicraftsman will have to deal.
 
 22 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 And the earlier the period of life at which the 
 handicraftsman has to enter into actual practice 
 of his craft, the more important is it that he 
 should devote the precious hours of prelimi- 
 nary education to things of the mind which 
 have no direct or immediate bearing on his 
 branch of industry, though they be at the 
 foundation of all realities.' 
 
 But when the period of academic life is 
 past, and the scholar is thrust on the world 
 with his mind rich in the capacity to accumu- 
 late knowledge, he may be tempted to pursue 
 his ' thought-building ' into all departments of 
 learning. But the exigencies of life are such, 
 that, in order to fit himself for the career he 
 determines to make his own, he will have to 
 be content, for a time at least, ' in order to 
 know a little well, to be ignorant of a great 
 deal.' 
 
 'You cannot learn everything,' says Froude; 
 'the objects of knowledge have multiplied 
 beyond the power of the strongest mind to 
 keep pace with them all. You must choose 
 among them, and the only reasonable guide to 
 choice in such matters is utility.' 
 
 But though we cannot hope to excel in 
 numerous studies, the attainment of due pro- 
 ficiency in any one study does not preclude the 
 possibility of thorough general culture. On 
 the contrary, a high standard of general culture 
 will contribute to proficiency in the special
 
 Some Definitions 23 
 
 pursuit. ' Let this be a rule,' says Lord Bacon, 
 ' that all partitions of knowledges be accepted 
 rather for lines and veins than for sections and 
 separations, and that the continuance and 
 entireness of knowledge be preserved. For 
 the contrary thereof hath made particular 
 sciences to become barren, shallow and 
 erroneous, while they have not been nourished 
 and maintained from the common fountain.' 
 
 Let it be, moreover, remembered that, for 
 the correct estimate of life as a whole, and for 
 the due adjustment of a man's life to those of 
 his fellows in other words, for the preservation 
 of character it is necessary that his mind 
 should not be narrowed by the prejudices 
 peculiar to his particular class or pursuit. It 
 was a complaint of Heracleitus that men sought 
 truth in their own little worlds, and not in the 
 great and common world. If we are to have 
 wide views, we must have comprehensive know- 
 ledge. It is this alone, ' the perception of 
 similarity and agreement, by which we rise from 
 the individual to the general, trace sameness 
 in diversity, and master, instead of being 
 mastered by, the multiplicity of nature,'* that 
 gives us the deeper wisdom that wisdom 
 which, Lord Bacon says, ' endueth men's minds 
 with the true sense of the frailty of their 
 persons, the casualty of their fortunes, and the 
 dignity of their soul and vocation.' 
 * Froebel.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A CONSIDERATION OF METHOD. 
 
 ' Order and constancy are said to make the great 
 difference between one man and another. This I am 
 sure: nothing so much clears a learner's way, helps him 
 so much on it, and makes him go so easy and so far in 
 any inquiry, as a good method.' LOCKE. 
 
 Of Loyola's personal studies : ' As it was, they were as 
 good as if they had never begun, or somewhat worse. 
 He had gone about them the wrong way. Whatever 
 solidity of learning he had kept objectively in view, some- 
 thing else, equally important with solidity, had been un- 
 wittingly omitted. That was a good method. Logic, 
 philosophy, and theology, all taken up together, and with 
 such compendious haste, now went together in his mind 
 like a machine out of joint, and his speed was nil.' REV. 
 THOMAS HUGHES. 
 
 Of the studies of Leibnitz : ' So early, then, as his 
 twentieth year we are led to recognise in Leibnitz's life 
 and training peculiarities which are of importance to his 
 philosophy. Few men began to build so early, few laid 
 so broad a foundation ; no mistakes were made in con- 
 struction, no doubts had to be overcome, no time was lost 
 in aimless search. Every step he took was onward, every 
 experience increased the means he already possessed, 
 every stone which the builder took up was placed in the 
 right position. No conclusions were arrived at hastily, 
 no part of the edifice was finished prematurely. In 
 harmony with itself, and without loss of evenness and 
 balance, the work progressed steadily, a true example for
 
 A Consideration of Met hod 25 
 
 the historical student of that process which Leibnitz 
 himself afterwards conceived to be the explanation of the 
 world viz., the individuality of everything real, and the 
 harmony of all things.' JOHN THEODORE MERZ. 
 
 A STATEMENT of Aristotle's that has since 
 been generally allowed is that the development 
 of the body should precede the development 
 of the mind. ' A sound mind in a sound body ': 
 these combined qualities should be the constant 
 aim of those who have the care of children 
 entrusted to them. Health and vitality are the 
 first conditions of success in life, and the 
 student will have enriched his mind to small 
 purpose if he lack the physical strength to 
 fight his way in the battle of life. 
 
 But though the plant should be well grown 
 before the bud be induced to appear, yet in 
 the education of children the wholesome fear of 
 premature development of the mind must not 
 be allowed to unduly hinder the child's intel- 
 lectual growth, for, observes Lord Bacon, ' the 
 culture and manurance of minds in youth hath 
 such a forcible (though unseen) operation as 
 hardly any length of time or contention of 
 labour can countervail it afterwards.' 
 
 In the Kindergarten system Froebel utilizes 
 the earliest years in imparting rudimentary 
 impressions to the child's mind, contending 
 that whatever is then gained is an acquisition 
 to youth. ' Whatever a boy has to learn,' 
 remarks Quintilian on this head, ' may he not
 
 26 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 be too late in beginning to learn. Let us not, 
 then, lose even the earliest period of life, and so 
 much the less as the elements of learning 
 depend on the memory alone, which not only 
 exists in children, but is at that time of life 
 most tenacious.' No age suffers. less from 
 fatigue, he continues, and by way of illustration 
 points to the endurance shown by children in 
 crawling on their hands and knees, and sub- 
 sequently by their constant play and incessant 
 activity ; and he alludes to the ease with which 
 children learn their mother-tongue, though no 
 one incites them to learn a great contrast, 
 he observes, to the difficulty experienced in the 
 same pursuit by the purchased slaves. 
 
 One of the greatest problems in connection 
 with education is to determine what is best 
 suited to the child's mind at particular periods 
 of its growth. ' God does not cram in or ingraft,' 
 says Froebel ; ' He develops the smallest and 
 most imperfect thing in continuously ascending 
 stages and in accordance with eternal laws 
 grounded in and developing from the thing's 
 own self.' 
 
 We may safely affirm that the practice now 
 so prevalent, arising from the overstrained 
 system of competitive education, is not in 
 harmony with these laws. ' It is well known,' 
 says Matthew Arnold, ' that the cramming of 
 little human victims for their ordeal of compe- 
 tition tends more and more to become an
 
 A Consideration of Method 27 
 
 industry with a certain class of small school- 
 masters ;' and he continues : ' The foundations 
 are no gainers, and nervous exhaustion at fifteen 
 is the price many a clever boy pays for over- 
 stimulation at ten . . . You can hardly put 
 too great a pressure on a healthy youth to make 
 him work between fifteen and twenty-five ; 
 healthy or unhealthy, you can hardly put on 
 him too light a pressure of this kind before 
 twelve. . . . To put upon little boys of nine or 
 ten the pressure of a competitive examination 
 for an object of the greatest value to their 
 parents is to offer a premium for the violation 
 of Nature's elementary laws, and to sacrifice, 
 as in the poor geese fatted for Strasburg pies, 
 the due development of all the organs of life 
 to the premature hypertrophy of one/ 
 
 But whatever the laws of mental growth may 
 be, our efforts to comprehend them are met 
 with greater difficulties than are perhaps at first 
 apparent. We aspire to know what is funda- 
 mental, what is general, and we meet with only 
 what is special; and with our present knowledge 
 we are unable to calculate the one from the 
 other. The child lives his life among adults who, 
 in their endeavours to mould him according to 
 their particular ideas, are continually diverting 
 the natural development of his personality. 
 His instincts are checked, and the expression 
 of his characteristic thought is modified to suit 
 the taste and sensibility of the age. The sim-
 
 28 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 plicity and logic of his language is complicated 
 by our penchant for irregularities, and his vanity 
 and love of showing off are curbed in view of 
 the canons of good behaviour. In matters of 
 art, he adopts the taste and judgment of his 
 elders ; and the more cultivated his surround- 
 ings, the more quickly will they modify his 
 original native tendencies. 
 
 We draw attention to these few examples of 
 outside influence on the mental growth of the 
 child not to call in question their wisdom as 
 such. We merely present them in proof of 
 the fact that the phenomena of child-life as 
 lived in our midst afford no available data from 
 which to ascertain the fundamental laws of the 
 development of the human mind. In fact, the 
 child is more often the modified expression of 
 his guardian's individuality than the faithful 
 portrait of his own. 
 
 If, then, we can derive no satisfactory data 
 from childhood itself, where are we to seek? 
 Within the last few years interest has been 
 aroused in the study of comparative embry- 
 ology by the remarkable resemblances that 
 are seen to exist between the embryos of the 
 human and animal species in the early stages 
 of their growth. ' The eggs or germs,' says 
 Mr. Clodd,* ' from which all organisms 
 spring are, to outward seeming, exactly alike; 
 and this likeness persists through the earlier 
 * ' The Story of Creation.'
 
 A Considreation of Method 29 
 
 stages of all the higher animals, even after the 
 form is traceable in the embryos.' But not only 
 in the embryos do we detect this curious corre- 
 spondence, for it is found that the human 
 foetus reveals at successive stages of its growth 
 features that are peculiar to, and in the order 
 of their appearance mark the evolution of, the 
 animal kingdom anterior to man. 'Thus,' 
 remarks the same author, ' does the egg from 
 which man springs, a structure only one hundred 
 and twenty-fifth of an inch in size, compress 
 into a few weeks the results of millions of 
 years, and set before us the history of his 
 development from fishlike and reptilian forms, 
 and of his more important descent from a hairy, 
 tailed quadruped.' 
 
 The positive results that have attended the 
 inquiries of the embryologist are destined to 
 bear yet more important fruit. The resemblance 
 between the child and primitive man has been 
 the subject of frequent remark,* but it is only 
 of late that the matter has received serious 
 consideration. The labours of those who 
 have worked in this field of inquiry would, 
 however, appear to justify the conclusion that 
 the parallel that is established between the 
 growth of the human foetus and the evolution 
 of the animal world admits of extension ; and 
 
 * Professor Sully, in his delightful book ' Studies of 
 Childhood,' gives abundant illustration of this remarkable 
 fact. Frequent allusion, too, is made to it in Professor 
 Tylor's ' Primitive Culture.'
 
 30 T/ie Building of the Intellect 
 
 that, as the result, the child of civilized parents 
 and the primitive community in their journey 
 upward take the same course, the main differ- 
 ence being the swiftness of the one, the slow- 
 ness of the other. ' This same evolutional 
 point of view,' says Professor Sully, ' enables 
 the psychologist to connect the unfolding of 
 an infant's mind with something which has gone 
 before with the mental history of the race. 
 According to this way of looking at infancy, 
 the successive phases of its mental life are a 
 brief resume of the more important features in 
 the slow upward progress of the species.' 
 
 The parallel between the evolution of the 
 child and the evolution of the race is no doubt 
 in its general features satisfactorily established. 
 But it would be premature to claim from the 
 conclusions we are as yet justified in drawing 
 that we are therefore in possession of a final 
 solution of the difficult question of education. 
 Herbert Spencer, it is true, goes so far as to 
 say that 'the education of the child must accord 
 both in mode and arrangement with the educa- 
 tion of mankind, considered historically.' But 
 his dictum we are inclined to think is one 
 of those daring hypotheses that Mr. Starcke 
 declares are the common fate of every dawning 
 science in its approach to truth. In the first 
 place, we have no definite knowledge of the 
 mode and arrangement of the education of man- 
 kind, considered historically. We have histories
 
 A Consideration of Method 3 1 
 
 of particular peoples setting forth more or less 
 fully the evolution of their national character- 
 istics and aptitudes, marked by increasing 
 vagueness and uncertainty the farther back we 
 go in point of time, and leaving the long pre- 
 historic period in impenetrable mist. We have 
 the records of travellers revealing to us curious 
 facts regarding existing savage communities. 
 Many, no doubt, are accurate, but others require 
 corroboration before they can serve for scientific 
 use. Moreover, valuable as these observations 
 are when verified, they are usually disconnected, 
 ' sawdustish,' to use a telling expression of 
 Carlyle's, and are utterly valueless for scientific 
 purposes until multiplied and arranged. With 
 histories that ignore the infancies of nations, 
 and records of existing primitive communities 
 that, taken in the mass, are in every way in- 
 adequate, it will be manifest that we are not 
 yet in a position to determine what is funda- 
 mental in mental evolution, and what is special 
 or accidental. True as it may be that the 
 life of the race represents the life of the indi- 
 vidual microscopically enlarged, it is not equally 
 true that the life of any given nation represents 
 the life of any given individual. Nations differ 
 in every way as much as individuals. Greece, 
 for instance, as we know, began her memorable 
 career ' in the gorgeous clouds of fancy and 
 feeling.' Rome, on the other hand, was virtually 
 without a mythology of its own ; all that their
 
 32 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 poets have to say with regard to the creation of 
 the world and the origin of the gods is, without 
 exception, borrowed from the Greeks.* 
 
 What we require to know, in investigating 
 the laws of mental growth, is what is common 
 to communities as a whole, what is special to 
 each ; what are the universal qualities of the 
 human mind, and what are 'individual, national, 
 or even racial, distinctions.'! To attain this 
 we must carry our researches over a wide field 
 of observation. Our prime sources of infor- 
 mation are history and ethnology. But it is 
 only by the method of comparative history and 
 comparative ethnology that we can hope to 
 extricate the fundamental character of the 
 species from the acquired characters of nations. 
 
 When we have done this, we shall have gone 
 far towards acquiring the true, natural system 
 of education. We shall no doubt by this 
 means learn that the periods of development 
 have a well-assigned order, and that the differ- 
 ence in communities, as in individuals, does not 
 lie in the order of procession of these periods, 
 but in the intensity of them. In studying 
 nations whose careers are esteemed memorable, 
 we shall mark, where records exist, the charac- 
 teristics of their infancy and youth, and thus 
 detect the essential features that, with peoples 
 as with men, are prophetic of future greatness. 
 
 * O. Seeman, ' The Mythology of Greece and Rome.' 
 f Tylor's ' Primitive Culture.'
 
 A Consideration of Method 33 
 
 We may further note the influences that helped 
 or marred their progress. On the other hand, 
 we shall mark, and so be forearmed against, 
 those undesirable traits that by reference to 
 this intelligible key will stand declared as evil 
 tendencies. 
 
 Though, as we have stated, the mental evolu- 
 tion of any one race affords no sufficient clue 
 to what is permanent and general in mental 
 evolution, it may be useful and instructive to 
 briefly sketch the mental history of some nation 
 the records of whose descent are sufficiently 
 precise and comprehensive. We naturally 
 turn to the ancient Greeks. We make this 
 selection not only on account of the compara- 
 tive fulness of its records and the exhaustive 
 criticism that has been applied to their inves- 
 tigation, but by reason of the phenomenal 
 brilliance that marked the various periods of its 
 intellectual growth. If the life of the race 
 represents the life of the individual micro- 
 scopically enlarged, our vision in viewing the 
 latter will, through such a medium, be mate- 
 rially assisted. But how much more will this 
 be the case if we choose for our inspection a 
 race the features of which are in themselves of 
 more than ordinary distinctness. Moreover, in 
 taking as our instance the ancient Greeks, 
 though we do not claim through them to give 
 an exposition of the essential features of mental 
 .growth, we do hope by this choice to give the 
 
 3
 
 34 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 leading characteristics of mental growth in its 
 most vigorous manifestation. 
 
 It is well known that the infancy of ancient Greece was 
 marked by the extraordinary display of its imaginative 
 faculty.* Most, if not all, nations, says Mr. Grote, have 
 had myths, but no nation except the Greeks have im- 
 parted to them immortal charm and universal interest. 
 Of all the authentic depositories of these early myths that 
 have come down to us from the very era of their birth, 
 but two remain the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey'; but 
 these two, says the historian above quoted, 'are quite 
 sufficient to demonstrate in the primitive Greeks a mental 
 organization unparalleled in any other people, and powers 
 of invention and expression which prepared, as well as 
 foreboded, the future eminence of the nation in all the 
 various departments to which thought and language can 
 be applied.' 
 
 The literature of this period was metrical, prose com- 
 position being a much later development. Writing was 
 not general, the poems being committed to memory and 
 handed down by oral transmission. They were sung or 
 chanted at the national festivals, and were intended to 
 appeal to the emotions of the hearers. The stories they 
 embodied were regarded as true 'from their full con- 
 formity with the predispositions and deep-seated faith of 
 an uncritical audience.' They appealed to a condition of 
 morality that had its seat in the feelings, not in the 
 judgment. Moreover, the poets were the sole instructors 
 of youth. ' Down to the generation preceding Sokrates,' 
 says Mr. Grote, 'the poets continued to be the grand 
 leaders of the Greek mind. Until then nothing was 
 taught to youth except to read, to remember, to recite 
 musically and rhythmically, and to comprehend, poetical 
 composition. The comments of preceptors addressed to 
 their pupils may probably have become fuller and more 
 
 * The introduction of this historical summary into a 
 work that professedly deals with education may seem to- 
 some of our readers a tiresome departure. We may say 
 that the inferences we have drawn from it are intelligible 
 without its previous perusal. On the other hand, it may 
 be useful to those who wish to test for themselves th& 
 value of our conclusions.
 
 A Consideration of Method 35 
 
 instructive, but the text still continued to be epic or lyric 
 poetry.' 
 
 The first trace we have of the emancipation of judg- 
 ment from feeling is in 'the naked, dogmatical laconism 
 of the Seven Wise Men.' They were men not so much 
 marked by scientific genius as by practical sagacity 
 and foresight in the appreciation of worldly affairs,* and 
 their peculiar purpose seems to have been to enforce 
 the early poets in their terse homely sayings or admoni- 
 tions.t ' Their appearance,' says Mr. Grote, ' forms 
 an epoch in Grecian history, inasmuch as they are the 
 first persons who ever acquired an Hellenic reputation 
 grounded on mental competency apart from poetical 
 genius or effect.' 
 
 The sayings of these wise men were not addressed to 
 inquiring minds, and were not therefore intended to 
 evoke discussion. It is from this time, however, that we 
 note the growth of the critical faculty. It was chiefly 
 manifest in Athens, and it was due in chief part to the 
 establishment of popular government and popular judica- 
 ture. A certain power of speech then became necessary, 
 not merely for those who intended to take a prominent 
 part in politics, but also for private citizens to vindicate 
 their rights or repel accusations in a court of justice. J 
 That its development was greatest among the most 
 enlightened sections of the Grecian name, and smallest 
 among the more obtuse and stationary, is matter of 
 notorious fact ; and it is not less true that the prevalence 
 of this habit was one of the chief causes of the intellectual 
 eminence of the nation generally. 
 
 In abstract science we find the true scientific method 
 established in the short period that separates Thucydides 
 from Herodotus. Comte has said that 'prevision is the 
 characteristic and the test of knowledge. If you can 
 predict certain results, and they occur as you predicted, 
 then you are assured that your knowledge is correct.' 
 Now, Thucydides has told us in his preface that this is 
 the method upon which his history is written : 'to record 
 past facts as a basis for rational prevision in regard to 
 the future.'] In recounting the details of the terrible 
 
 * Grote's ' History of Greece,' iv. 306. 
 f Jbitt., iv. 23 I Ibid., v. 257. 
 
 Ibid., ii. 77. || Ibid., v. 419. 
 
 32
 
 36 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 plague at Athens he gives striking evidence of his 
 efficiency in this mode of treatment. ' His notice of the 
 symptoms,' Mr. Grote says, 'is such as to instruct the 
 medical reader of the present age, and to enable the 
 malady to be understood and identified.'* But the most 
 remarkable proof of his appreciation of scientific require- 
 ments we give in his own words, when he discloses his 
 reasons for making these careful observations : ' Having 
 myself had the distemper, and having seen others suffer- 
 ing under it, I will state what it actually was, and will 
 indicate in addition such other matters as will furnish any 
 man who lays them to heart with knowledge and the 
 means of calculation beforehand, in case the same mis- 
 fortune should ever again occur.'f 
 
 The art of prose composition appears to have come 
 with the first approach of scientific thought, being used 
 as a means of recording information. ' Neither the large 
 mass of geographical matter,' says Mr. Grote, ' contained 
 in the " Periegesis " of Hekataeus, nor the first map 
 prepared by his contemporary, Anaximander, could have 
 been presented to the world without the previous labours 
 of unpretending prose writers, who set down the mere 
 results of their own experience.' J But prose composition 
 was not in general use until after the Persian War, when 
 the requirements of public speaking created a class of 
 rhetorical teachers, while the gradual spread of physical 
 philosophy widened the range of instruction ; so that, for 
 speech or for writing, it occupied a larger and larger 
 share of the attention of men, and was gradually wrought 
 up to high perfection, such as we see for the first time in 
 Herodotus.' 
 
 In matters of art the growth of this habit of criticism is 
 no less apparent. In earlier times the hand of the artist 
 had been restrained by religious and time-sanctioned 
 prejudices, and accordingly, in the execution of his work, 
 he had ' adhered with strict exactness to the consecrated 
 type of each particular god.' i It was in statues of men, 
 especially in those of the victors at Olympia and other 
 sacred games, that genuine ideas of beauty were first 
 aimed at and in part attained, from whence they pass 
 
 * Crete's ' History of Greece,' v. 420. 
 f Ibid. % Ibid., iv. 25. 
 
 Ibid. \ Ibid.
 
 A Consideration of Method 37 
 
 afterwards to the statues of the gods.* But the emancipa- 
 tion of Greek art was due to those great sculptors and 
 architects who belonged to that period of expanding and 
 stimulating Athenian democracy, which likewise called 
 forth creative genius in oratory, dramatic poetry, and in 
 philosophical speculation.f 
 
 Mr. Grote observes that Grecian literature passed into 
 the rhetoric, dialectics, and ethical speculation through 
 the intermediate stage of tragedy. He remarks the wider 
 intellectual range that the growth of tragedy evinced, and 
 the mental progress it betokened as compared with the 
 lyric and gnomic poetry, or with the Seven Wise Men and 
 their authoritative aphorisms. J ' The great innovation of 
 the dramatists,' says the historian. ' consisted in the 
 rhetorical, the dialectical, and the ethical spirit which 
 they breathed into their poetry. Of all this the un- 
 developed germ doubtless existed in the previous epic, 
 lyric, and gnomic composition ; but the drama stood dis- 
 tinguished from all three by bringing it out into con- 
 spicuous amplitude, and making it the substantive means 
 of effect. The characters of Grecian mythology reappear 
 in the tragedies, but the relations between them are 
 human and simple. They are exalted above the level of 
 humanity, but only in such measure as to present a 
 stronger claim to the hearer's admiration or pity. 
 Whereas the earlier Grecian poetry was employed in 
 recounting the exploits and sufferings of the heroes, in 
 the tragedy the internal mind and motives of the doer or 
 sufferer, on which the ethical interest fastens, are laid 
 open with an impressive minuteness which neither the 
 epic nor the lyric could possibly parallel. *" The problems 
 advanced by the dramatists, as Mr. Grote remarks, no 
 doubt appealed to the ethical sentiment of the audience, 
 but they were calculated also to awaken the spirit of 
 reflective and critical inquiry, and that they had this 
 effect it is necessary for us to admit in order to com- 
 prehend their connection with the period of philosophical 
 speculation which followed. 
 
 But philosophical speculation could lead to no satis- 
 factory results so long as the knowledge of each indi- 
 
 * Grote's ' History of Greece,' iv.. 25. 
 
 t Ibid., v. 285. \ Ibid., viii. 139. 
 
 Ibid., viii. 136. | Ibid., viii. 122. 
 
 ' Ibid., viii. 137. 
 
 4 *"> f 1 * I* 
 
 Lob^bb
 
 38 The Building of tJie Intellect 
 
 vidual sacrificed its exactness to the religious or poetical 
 bent of his imagination. Accordingly, we now find the 
 Grecian intellect, under the stimulus of Sokra'es, engaged 
 in a supreme effort to revise and determine its knowledge 
 and methodize its reasoning process. To correct ' the 
 seeming and conceit of knowledge without the reality' ; 
 to create 'earnest setkers. analytical intellects, fore- 
 knowing and consistent agents, capable of forming con- 
 clusions for themselves and of teaching others '* these 
 were the objects of the new intellectual movement. 
 Sokrates found that men were ever re>dy to give con- 
 fident opinions on the gravest questions concerning men 
 and society without bestowing upon them sufficient 
 reflection to be aware that they involved any difficulty.f 
 He convinced them out of their own mouths of the 
 difficulty they did not realize, and persuaded them that 
 their knowledge was but 'ignorance mistaking itself for 
 knowledge.' By pointing out their fallacies in the defini- 
 tion of general terms, he introduced exactness into this 
 elementary part of the logical process. His efforts were 
 directed to 'learn what each separate thing really was,' 
 and his method as shown in the Discourses WHS to 
 distinguish and distribute things into genera or families, 
 thereby introducing that method of generalization that we 
 know as the inductive process. In Sokrates the increased 
 self-working of the Grecian mind manifested itself-! He 
 laid open, says Mr. Grote, all ethical and social doctrines 
 to the scrutiny of reason, and first awakened amongst 
 his countrymen that love of dialectics which never left 
 them an analytical interest in the mental process of 
 inquiring out, verifying, proving, and expounding truth. 
 
 In attempting this brief abstract of the record 
 of so momentous a subject as the growth of 
 the Grecian intellect, we have been careful to 
 introduce no speculations of our own. Our 
 authority throughout has been the highest. 
 We have drawn our information from Mr. 
 Grote's monumental history of this nation, and, 
 
 * Grote's ' History of Greece,' viii. 257. 
 t ib:d., viii. 242. { Ibid. t iv. 23.
 
 A Consideration of Method 39 
 
 as it will be observed, we have, to ensure 
 accuracy, in great measure adhered to the 
 actual text of the author. Various considera- 
 tions suggest themselves in reviewing the 
 growth of this expansive intellect ; and though 
 we are sensible of the extreme difficulty and 
 peril of dogmatizing when endeavouring to 
 extract meaning from materials of such com- 
 plexity, yet we make bold to offer a few 
 suggestions as calculated to show in what way 
 the portrayal of this national mind illuminates 
 the obscure problem of the development of the 
 individual intellect. 
 
 In the first place, we may safely affirm that 
 imagination was the earliest manifestation of 
 mental activity of which we have record. 
 Poetry and music formed the only intellectual 
 food, and constituted, moreover, the sole moral 
 stimulus, appealing as they did to the ' sym- 
 pathy, emotion or reverence ' of their hearers. 
 The critical age was ushered in by maxims or 
 proverbs which, though they enforced the 
 teachings of the poets, yet presupposed the 
 awakening judgment. The growth of reason 
 was chiefly attributable to the tremendous 
 power of speech that grew out of free institu- 
 tions, and which produced that power of 
 thought which has furnished the world with 
 ideals which it has in vain endeavoured to 
 excel. It manifested itself first by the display 
 of its creative genius, and later by that specu-
 
 4O The Building of the Intellect 
 
 lative moral and political philosophy, and the 
 didactic analysis of rhetoric and grammar, 
 which long survived.* Of the deliberate pursuit 
 of natural science we hear little during the 
 brilliant period of Grecian history, and we may 
 take it that scientific culture, as we understand 
 it to-day, was not found necessary to the pro- 
 duction of the intellect of this nation. That 
 they had acquired a large power of observation 
 there can be no doubt ; but that they attempted 
 in any degree, until much later, to give system- 
 atic classification and exactness to their know- 
 ledge, we have no reason to think. 
 
 If this brief historical retrospect is now con- 
 sidered with regard to its bearing on the indi- 
 vidual, the following, we believe, are amongst 
 some of the most obvious lessons to be derived 
 from it : 
 
 1. What appetite is to infancy, feeling is to 
 childhood and youth, the prevailing impulse 
 and paramount sanction. 
 
 2. Since the Grecian intellect did not attain 
 its phenomenal splendour until the formation 
 of the power of judgment, it should obviously 
 be our endeavour, though we must accept the 
 period of feeling as a necessary condition of 
 early years, to neutralize and regulate its con- 
 trol by the cultivation of the reasoning faculty. 
 
 3. In the Seven Wise Men and their un- 
 criticised maxims we find Reason, through the 
 
 * Crete's ' History of Greece,' v. 260.
 
 A Consideration of Method 41 
 
 medium of popular precepts, operating as a 
 guide to conduct during the age of feeling, and 
 operating as such, not by force of the evidence 
 upon which the precepts were built, but by 
 virtue of the weight of the authority by whom 
 they were proclaimed. In the case of the 
 individual we have a parallel to this in the 
 acquiescence of the child in the knowledge of 
 the adult a parallel that, moreover, affords a 
 curious justification of the method of the adult 
 in obtaining such acquiescence by force of 
 authority, rather than by an appeal to intellect. 
 
 4. That the class of intellect of which the 
 Greek, amongst communities, is the most 
 brilliant example, is first manifested by fertility 
 of imagination. 
 
 5. That the memory throughout the early 
 period is most retentive. It is matter of 
 common knowledge that the ancient poems 
 were handed down by oral transmission. May 
 we not from this conclude that the memory 
 attained and preserved its power by virtue of 
 the use to which it was put, and that the 
 exercise of the faculty is therefore the natural 
 means of cultivating it ? 
 
 6. That the practice of speech is a powerful 
 aid in developing the mental faculties. 
 
 7. That the origin and growth of reading and 
 writing are intimately associated with the pro- 
 cess of observation. 
 
 8. From the period of infancy the mind
 
 42 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 employed in storing up observations, but the 
 introduction of any general method and arrange- 
 ment into its accumulations is deferred until 
 later. 
 
 9. That in art strict conformity is imposed 
 until the mind is fitted to earn its own eman- 
 cipation. This is significant, as suggesting a 
 natural provision for preserving the mind, 
 during the cultivation of the faculty of judg- 
 ment, from an extravagant expression of feeling.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE POWERS. 
 
 ' Most people's minds are too like a child's garden, 
 where the flowers are planted without the roots.' REV 
 J. JOYCE. 
 
 ' Knowledge dwells 
 
 In heads replete with thoughts of other men : 
 Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. 
 Knowledge a rude unprofitable mass, 
 The mere materials with which wisdom builds 
 Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, 
 Does but encumber, whom it seems t'enrich. 
 Knowledge is proud, that it has learned so much ; 
 Wisdom is humble, that it knows no more. 
 Books are not seldom talismans and spells, 
 By which the magic arts of shrewder wits 
 Hold an unthinking multitude enthralled. 
 Some to the fascination of a name 
 Surrender judgment hoodwinked. Some the style 
 Infatuates ; and, through labyrinths and wilds 
 Of error, leads them by a tune entranced. 
 While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear 
 The insupportable fatigue of thought ; 
 And swallowing therefore, without pause or choice, 
 The total grist unsifted, husks and all. 
 But trees, and rivulets, and haunts of deer, 
 And sheep walks, populous with bleating lambs, 
 And groves, in which the primrose ere her time 
 Peeps through the moss, that clothes the hawthorn root, 
 Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, 
 Not shy as in the world, and to be won
 
 44 The Biiildtng of the Intellect 
 
 By slow solicitation, seize at once 
 
 The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.' 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 ' Reading maketh a full man ; conference a ready man ; 
 and writing an exact man.' BACON. 
 
 ' We can never reckon, then, among philosophic souls 
 that which is forgetful ; but we shall, on the other hand, 
 require it to have a good memory.' PLATO. 
 
 MUCH has been said regarding the development 
 of the mental faculties, but it must not be 
 thought, because a distinct name is given to 
 each, that they therefore represent separate 
 divisions of the mind, and that a distinct 
 activity operates in each. The memory, for 
 instance, is not a section of the mind, but one 
 manifestation among many of an activity that 
 is one and indivisible. 
 
 To deal with those faculties and habits of mind 
 with which education is most neatly concerned : 
 
 Imagination. Imagination has been thus 
 defined : ' Memory retains and recalls the past 
 in the form which it assumed when it was 
 previously before the mind. Imagination brings 
 up the past in new shapes and combinations. 
 Both of them are reflective of objects ; but the 
 one may be compared to the mirror which 
 reflects whatever has been before it in its proper 
 form and colour ; the other may be likened to 
 the kaleidoscope, which reflects what is before 
 it in an infinite variety of new forms and dis- 
 positions.'* 
 
 * M'Cosh's ' Typical Forms.'
 
 The Development of the Powers 45 
 
 Let us try to determine what part the imagi- 
 nation plays in the mental process. To take 
 an elementary instance : A little child is told 
 some story of a lion, and, as the result, his rest 
 is disturbed by vague fears. He is then taken 
 to see a living lion, and from that time his 
 alarm disappears. The child now knows what 
 a lion is, and the vagaries of the imagination 
 have no longer any terror for him. The lion 
 may, however, still constitute food for his 
 imagination, but it will always be a lion. He 
 may conceive one greater in size or in strength 
 than the one he has seen, but, subject to his 
 power to be voluntarily deceived, a story of a 
 lion will never again picture to his mind that 
 indefinable monster that was wont to give rise 
 to such distress of mind. 
 
 It is thought by many that at this imagi- 
 native age the species of fiction we now call 
 fairy-stories affords a desirable mental stimulant. 
 We must admit that our observations in the pre- 
 vious chapter appear at first sight to lend some 
 countenance to this view. It might no doubt 
 be contended that, because in the infancy of 
 nations the only culture passed on from genera- 
 tion to generation was derived from myths and 
 legends, therefore fiction of this kind is a suit- 
 able mental food for the young child. But we 
 must remember that, in reviewing the mental 
 history of nations, it is of the first importance 
 to discriminate between what has produced
 
 46 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 good and what has produced ill results ; 
 between what has promoted and what has 
 retarded the growth of character and intellect. 
 Now, in dealing with myths and fairy-stories, 
 we shall find that they are capable of division 
 into two distinct classes. In our illustration 
 of the story of the lion, we distinguished 
 between the effect produced by the idea of the 
 animal on the mind of the child before and 
 after he had seen it. These two conditions of 
 mind faithfully represent the generative causes 
 of the two classes of mythical creations : the 
 monstrous, and the natural and ideal. The 
 state of mind that gives birth to the unnatural 
 conceptions of primitive man and the child is 
 a negative quality. It is a condition of mind 
 arising from ignorance, and in fact presents 
 nothing more nor less than the mere phenomena 
 of the intellect before it has come under the 
 influence of experience. To attempt to increase 
 or prolong this condition is manifestly sub- 
 versive of even the least ambitious aims of 
 education. We take it as in no way con- 
 tributing to the healthy growth of the national 
 mind, and therefore undesirable as an agent in 
 the development of the individual mind. With 
 myths and stories that interpret Nature, and 
 with those that depict the supernatural, pro- 
 vided their character in this respect lay in the 
 mere enlargement or idealization of the natural, 
 it is otherwise. Both for their intrinsic worth
 
 The Development of the Powers 47 
 
 and their power to counteract the natural habit 
 of the infant mind to paint the monstrous, they 
 are needful as an aid to early culture. We shall 
 therefore be wise to follow the recommendation 
 of Plato that care must be taken that the fiction 
 employed in mental training is beneficial, and 
 not mischievous. 
 
 But it is urged, chiefly from the example 
 afforded by ancient Greece, that the fruitfulness 
 of the national intellect in matters of art is 
 proportionate to the abundance of the national 
 myths. 'We must not omit,' says the historian 
 Grote, ' the incalculable importance of the 
 myths as stimulants to the imagination of the 
 Grecian artists in sculpture, in painting, in 
 carving, and in architecture. From the divine 
 and heroic legends and personages were bor- 
 rowed those paintings, statues and reliefs which 
 rendered the temples, porticos and public 
 buildings at Athens and elsewhere objects of 
 surpassing admiration. Such visible reproduc- 
 tion contributed again to fix the types of the 
 gods and heroes familiarly and indelibly on the 
 public mind. The figures delineated on cups 
 and vases, as well as on the walls of private 
 houses, were chiefly drawn from the same 
 source, the myths being the great storehouse of 
 artistic scenes and composition.' 
 
 But the inspiration of Greek art did not 
 arise from its traditional centaurs, satyrs, 
 tritons,and other monsters, but from its idealized
 
 48 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 men and women, all natural, but perfected as 
 types of beauty, strength and valour. In the 
 Barberini Juno, the Belvedere Apollo, the 
 Mars Ludovisi, the Venus of Milo, the Gius- 
 tiniani Vesta, the Sleeping Ariadne, the Farnese 
 Hercules, in Niobe in one and all of these* 
 the monstrous has no part, and it is upon these, 
 and upon such as these, that the fame of Greek 
 sculpture rests. 
 
 We must be careful, moreover, in reading 
 our children fairy-stories, how we allow our own 
 incredulity to infect them. It is of capital 
 importance to bear in mind that in the infancy 
 of nations their myths were believed, and it 
 was only in the succeeding age of criticism 
 that their literal truth was called in question. 
 Moreover, it is not well to impart a habit of 
 doubt to our children. The result may be 
 somewhat unexpected. For we have it on the 
 authority of Professor Sully that children graft 
 the ideas introduced by their religious in- 
 struction on to those of fairy-lore, with some 
 not altogether surprising confusion of the two. 
 
 If knowledge, then, be necessary for the 
 healthy exercise of the imagination, how im- 
 portant a part does the acquisition of know- 
 ledge play in the cultivation of the faculty, 
 the more so as we come to recognise that 'the 
 office of our thought is to develop, to combine, 
 
 * We adopt the general opinion that the works of the 
 so-called Roman school were executed by Greek artists.
 
 The Development of the Poivers 49 
 
 and to derive, rather than to create'!* 'The 
 imagination of a painter or sculptor,' says Mr. 
 Fairholt,f ' is the fruit of genius cultivated by 
 study ; to depict images under the most beau- 
 tiful forms, he must have that knowledge of 
 contour of forms which is acquired by the 
 practice of design ; to imagine the figures acting 
 in conformity with the subject, he must have 
 observed with meditation the movements of 
 man under the different actions of which he 
 is susceptible ; to depict the proper expression 
 he must have studied the effects of the affec- 
 tions of the mind upon the body ; to represent 
 the lights and colours, he must know the effects 
 of light upon the body, according to its posi- 
 tion, substance or colour, as proper to each ; 
 and, above all, have received from Nature that 
 aptitude to see well and to render well those 
 things which constitute the genius of the 
 sculptor and painter.' 
 
 But we must be careful to distinguish between 
 the mere accumulation of ideas calculated to 
 feed the imagination and the active employment 
 of the faculty itself. The imagination actively 
 engaged, expressing itself in works of art, re- 
 ceives its vitality from the play of the emotions, 
 and the play of the emotions should not be 
 encouraged at a time when the mind should be 
 employed in those severer studies whose end is 
 
 * Tylor's ' Primitive Culture.' 
 f ' Dictionary of Terms in Art.'
 
 50 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 the strengthening of the faculty of judgment. 
 ' Nothing is more dangerous,' says Jean Paul 
 Richter, ' either for art or heart than the pre- 
 mature expression of feeling ; many a poetic 
 genius has been fatally chilled by delicious 
 draughts of Hippocrene in the warm season 
 of youth. The feelings of the poet should be 
 closely and coolly covered, and the hardest 
 and driest sciences should retard the bursting 
 blossoms till the due spring time.' 
 
 But this introduces us to the subject of art 
 training, and as we purpose dealing with this 
 in a subsequent chapter, we must reserve until 
 then any further observations we may have to 
 make on this head. 
 
 Observation, Observation is the direct per- 
 ception of objects as they appear to us through 
 the medium of the senses. It furnishes us 
 with the raw material from which to fashion 
 future knowledge. ' To observe,' says Lavater, 
 ' is to be attentive, so as to fix the mind on a 
 particular object, which it selects, or may select, 
 for consideration, from a number of surround- 
 ing objects. To be attentive is to consider 
 some one particular object, exclusively of all 
 others, and to analyze, consequently, to dis- 
 tinguish, its peculiarities. To observe, to be 
 attentive, to distinguish what is similar, what 
 dissimilar, to discover proportion and dispro- 
 portion, is the office of the understanding.' 
 
 Can this faculty be enlarged by training ?
 
 The Development of the Powers 5 1 
 
 It is well known that the child sees more in 
 the aggregate and in detail than the adult. 
 But if this faculty is strong in the child and 
 weak in the adult, is it necessarily so ? Why 
 should the power become so unproductive in 
 the man, unless it is our neglect to cultivate it? 
 It has until lately been customary to discourage 
 the teaching of observation ; but how, except 
 by cultivation, can we give the individual the 
 habit of observation that the power may not be 
 lost to him when he grows up ? 
 
 But if we cannot hope to carry this power 
 into our later years, how important does it 
 become that we should utilize it while it lasts! 
 The impressions we receive in childhood are 
 the most lasting ; persons of advanced years 
 can recall the most trivial occurrences of their 
 youth, when the events of middle life have 
 faded from their memory. Childhood is pecu- 
 liarly the period of accumulation and cogni- 
 zance of facts, and things acquired during that 
 period are the least likely to be forgotten. 
 That being the case, should we not encourage 
 this capacity for observation in the child ? The 
 natural instinct of curiosity, that at this age is 
 so active, is a safe guide to the child's mental 
 requirements ; and to refuse nutriment then 
 is to run the risk of promoting intellectual 
 atrophy in riper years. 
 
 We say ' teach observation.' We had rather 
 say ' direct observation.' For the child will 
 
 42
 
 52 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 not require teaching in the ordinary sense. 
 But as he is not master of his own movements, 
 and is no judge of the value of the impressions 
 his mind receives, it is desirable that those who 
 are consulting his welfare should afford him 
 full opportunity for storing up ideas, and par- 
 ticularly those ideas that are likely to prove 
 most beneficial and useful to him in the future. 
 It is one thing to receive a general impression 
 of an object, and another to detect its particular 
 characteristics. The habit of observation will 
 have been encouraged to no purpose if correct- 
 ness of eye be not attained. Various artificial 
 methods are suggested as a means of implant- 
 ing this power; but none, we believe, show 
 better results than requiring the child, in the 
 first place, to describe in words the object that 
 has caught its notice, and, in the second place, 
 to draw it. Both processes carry the young 
 eyes from the appreciation of the general effect 
 to an examination of the detail. In the French 
 lycees drawing is a compulsory subject, and 
 proceeds through a course of freehand up to 
 model drawing. ' I should make it necessary,' 
 says Huxley, ' for every boy, for a longer or 
 shorter period, to learn to draw. ... In my 
 judgment, there is no mode of exercising the 
 faculty of observation and the faculty of accurate 
 reproduction of that which is observed, no 
 discipline which so readily tests error in these 
 matters, as drawing properly taught.'
 
 The Development of the Powers 53 
 
 But it must be taught as a science rather 
 than as an art, and must not be pushed too far, 
 lest it come to engross too much of the pupil's 
 mind, and so impede the due development of 
 his faculties as a whole. And this is even more 
 likely to be the result if, on completing his course 
 of drawing, he experience the subtle allurements 
 of colour. 
 
 Concentration, or A Mention. ' When we see, 
 hear, or think of anything, and feel a desire to 
 know more of it, we keep the mind fixed upon 
 the object ; this effort of the mind, produced 
 by the desire of knowledge, is called atten- 
 tion.'* 
 
 Concentration is mental effort prolonged by 
 the dominion of the will. Nothing is more 
 difficult to acquire. In the young child it does 
 not exist, and it would be detrimental to force 
 it. Our little ones come into a world full 
 of delightful and marvellous things. Their in- 
 terest is aroused at every turn. They have no 
 time, even had they capacity, for prolonged 
 attention ; on every hand new sources of won- 
 derment bear along the awakening mind. The 
 field of experience is day by day enlarged, and 
 the knowledge of external things builds up the 
 young intelligence. 
 
 The general knowledge that is thus acquired 
 will in due time give birth to powers of pene- 
 tration and inquiry, the call for deeper and more 
 * Taylor's 'Elenents of Thought.'
 
 54 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 special knowledge. Then the power of con- 
 centration will grow, and then it should be 
 cultivated. 
 
 There is no greater stimulus to concentra- 
 tion than the interest afforded by the subject. 
 The mind gives its attention, naturally, to what 
 interests it, but when the interest wanes, atten- 
 tion is maintained only by force of discipline. 
 ' Locke is justified,' remarks Canon Daniel, ' in 
 saying that persons may remember well one 
 class of things and not another. The reason 
 is obvious. We remember what we attend to, 
 and our attention is mainly dependent on our 
 interest. As our interest in different things 
 varies, our power of remembering them varies 
 also.' 
 
 It should be noted that all studies require 
 concentration, but the pursuit of mathematics 
 demands the most sustained attention, and hence 
 is perhaps the most helpful in developing this 
 power. ' There is no defect in the faculties 
 intellectual,' says Lord Bacon, ' but seemeth to 
 have a proper cure contained in some studies ; 
 as, for example, if a child be bird-witted, that 
 is, hath not the faculty of attention, the mathe- 
 matics giveth a remedy thereunto, for in them, 
 if the wit be caught away for a moment, one is 
 new to begin.' 
 
 Classification. This is ' the sorting of a multi- 
 tude of things into parcels, for the sake of 
 knowing them better, and remembering them
 
 The Development of the Powers 55 
 
 more easily. When we attempt to classify a 
 multitude of things, we first observe some 
 respects in which they differ from each other ; 
 for we could not classify things that are 
 entirely alike, as, for instance, a bushel of 
 peas ; we, then, separate things that are 
 not alike, and bring together things that are 
 similar.'* 
 
 Classification is the principle of order in 
 knowledge. When we consider the vast multi- 
 tude of facts that are comprised in any one 
 branch of knowledge, the need for arrangement 
 becomes apparent. Of what use would a 
 library be, the books of which were placed on 
 the shelves irrespective of their subject-matter, 
 or, worse still, thrown in a heap on the floor ? 
 But arrangement in knowledge is of still greater 
 importance. It is by the classification of facts 
 that principles are arrived at ; and principles or 
 rules are the lines upon which the human 
 mind operates, and arrives at new facts and 
 conclusions. 
 
 ' All science? says Mr. Lewes,t ' consists in 
 the co-ordination of facts. If our different 
 observations were entirely isolated, there would 
 be no science. We may even say that, in so 
 far as the different phenomena will permit, 
 science is essentially destined to dispense with all 
 direct observation, by allowing us to deduce the 
 
 * Taylor's ' Elements of Thought.' 
 
 f Comte's ' Philosophic Positive,' by G. H. Lewes.
 
 56 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 greatest possible number of results from the smallest 
 possible number of immediate data.' 
 
 ' And so,' says Froebel,* ' since education has 
 largely to do with inducing the right acquire- 
 ment of knowledge and the right use of know- 
 ledge, the task of the educator must largely 
 consist in bringing out, and making clear, and 
 maintaining, the connectedness of facts and 
 things.' 
 
 Memory. The memory is that faculty which 
 enables us to treasure up and preserve for 
 future use the knowledge we acquire a faculty 
 which is obviously the great foundation of all 
 intellectual improvement, and without which 
 no advantage could be derived from the most 
 enlarged experience. This faculty implies two 
 things : a capacity of retaining knowledge, and 
 a power of recalling it to our thoughts when we 
 have occasion to apply it to use.'f 
 
 The power of memory has a close connection 
 with the habit of classification. 'Recollection/ 
 says Jean Paul Richter, ' like every other 
 mental power, can only work according to the 
 laws of association. . . . Read a volume of 
 history to a boy, and compare the copious 
 abstract he can furnish of that with the 
 miserable remnant he could collect from a page 
 of Humboldt's Mexican Words which you had 
 read aloud to him.' 
 
 * H. C. Bowen's ' Froebel.' 
 
 t Stewart's 'Philosophy of the Human Mind.'
 
 The Development of the Powers 57 
 
 Quintilian, whose memorable work was said 
 by John Stuart Mill to contain all that was best 
 in the educational doctrines of the ancients, 
 has given some valuable advice regarding the 
 cultivation of the memory. 
 
 In an earlier part of his work he observes 
 that the chief symptom of ability in children is 
 memory, of which the excellence is twofold : to 
 receive with ease and retain with fidelity. He 
 then insists on the necessity for stimulating the 
 faculty, reminding us that all knowledge depends 
 on memory ; and that we shall be taught to no 
 purpose if whatever we hear escapes us, and 
 concludes with some practical recommenda- 
 tions, from which we extract the following : 
 
 ' If anyone ask me, however, what is the only 
 and great art of memory, I shall say that it is 
 exercise and labour. To learn much by heart, to 
 meditate much, and, if possible, daily, are the 
 most efficacious of all methods. Nothing is so 
 much strengthened by practice, or weakened 
 by neglect, as memory. Let children, there- 
 fore, as I directed, learn as much as possible by 
 heart at the earliest possible age.' 
 
 ' For fixing in the memory what we have 
 written, and for retaining in it what we 
 meditate, the most efficacious, and almost the 
 only, means (except exercise, which is the most 
 powerful of all) are division and arrangement. 
 He who makes a judicious division of his sub- 
 ject will never err in the order of particulars.'
 
 58 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 Taste. ' Taste is the settled habit of discern- 
 ing faults and excellencies in a moment the 
 mind's independent expression of approval or 
 aversion. It is that faculty by which we discover 
 and enjoy the beautiful, the picturesque, and 
 the sublime in literature, art, and nature/ 
 
 For the cultivation of taste in poetry, art, 
 or music, it is not necessary to be either a poet, 
 an artist, or a musician ; but it is necessary 
 to have an acquaintance with poetry, art, or 
 music. As in the case of the imagination, 
 knowledge is the first requirement. A high 
 standard of excellence is necessary, and this 
 can be acquired only by an appreciation of the 
 best that has been done, and a discernment 
 of the possibilities of higher achievements. It 
 is grounded upon knowledge, but a knowledge 
 of the best. 
 
 Reasoning. ' Reasoning is that operation of 
 the mind through which it forms one judgment 
 from many others ; as when, for instance, having 
 judged that true virtue ought to be referred to 
 God, and that the virtue of the heathens was 
 not referred to Him, we thence conclude that 
 the virtue of the heathens was not true virtue.'* 
 
 The pursuit of every art is preceded or is 
 accompanied by the knowledge of its cor- 
 relative science. The art of medicine, to wit, 
 succeeds the study of anatomy and physio- 
 logy. The art of clockmaking is not acquired 
 * ' Port Royal Logic.'
 
 The Development of the Powers 59 
 
 without a co-extensive knowledge of the prin- 
 ciples of construction. The art of reasoning, 
 also, is not without its corresponding science, 
 and that science is knowledge itself. But wide 
 knowledge is not identical with skill in reason- 
 ing, any more than an intimate knowledge of 
 anatomy and physiology or the principles of 
 construction of a clock is identical with skill in 
 surgery or clockmaking. 
 
 While much time and much money are spent 
 in learning the arts of reading and writing, little 
 or no attention is given to the art of reason- 
 ing. Since we must reason if we are to get 
 through life at all creditably, is it not desirable 
 that we should lose no time in learning to 
 reason well ? We devote many hours of our 
 children's lives to achieve skill in pianoforte- 
 playing, but we give none to the acquisition 
 of power in reasoning. If it is desirable that 
 we should fit ourselves early to pursue an art 
 which is voluntary, how much more desirable 
 is it that we should fit ourselves early to pursue 
 an art that is compulsory ! 
 
 There is a difference of opinion as to the 
 best mode of cultivating the faculty of reason. 
 The science of logic, John Stuart Mill contends, 
 ' is the great disperser of hazy and confused 
 thinking ; it clears up the fogs which hide from 
 us our own ignorance, and make us believe 
 that we understand a subject when we do not.' 
 But Dr. Whewell considers that to cultivate
 
 60 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 logic as an art is like learning horsemanship 
 by book, and another author holds that the 
 principles of logic are best acquired by the 
 study of those authors who reason the best. 
 Locke averred that he knew of no case of skill 
 in reasoning being acquired by the study of the 
 rules of logic ; but he would no doubt have been 
 in accord with John Stuart Mill when he . 
 observed that ' if the practice of thinking is not 
 improved by rules, I venture to say it is the 
 only difficult thing done by human beings that 
 is not so.' 
 
 Dr. Whewell, however, is not absolute in his 
 opinion, for elsewhere he writes : ' Let us 
 suppose it established, then, that it is a proper 
 object of education to develop and cultivate the 
 reasoning faculty. The question then arises, 
 By what means can this be done ? What is 
 the best instrument for educating men in 
 reasoning ? There are two principal means 
 which have been used for this purpose in our 
 Universities : the study of mathematics and 
 the study of logic. These may be considered 
 respectively as the teaching of reasoning by 
 practice and by rule.' 
 
 The faculty of reason is, we believe, best 
 matured by the actual practice of the art of 
 reasoning. Useful, as it no doubt is, to be 
 familiar with the best models of reasoning, 
 it is a familiarity that produces increase of 
 knowledge, not increase of skill. We may be
 
 The Development of the Powers 61 
 
 acquainted with the best works of art, and our 
 knowledge may extend to both their technical 
 and artistic merits ; but this acquaintance will 
 not enable us to create works of equal worth. 
 It is only practice that could do that, and even 
 practice can do it only on certain conditions. 
 
 The practice of the art of reasoning is active 
 thought precipitated, as it were, in the form 
 of speech or writing. Conference, says Lord 
 Bacon, maketh a ready man, and writing an 
 exact man. ' Certain it is,' he observes, ' that 
 whosoever hath his mind fraught with many 
 thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify 
 and break up in the communicating and dis- 
 cussing with another ; he tosseth his thoughts 
 more easily; he marshalleth them more orderly; 
 he seeth how they look when they are turned 
 into words ; finally, he waxeth wiser than him- 
 self, and that more by an hour's discourse than 
 by a day's meditation. ... In a word, a man 
 were better relate himself to a statue or picture 
 than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.' 
 
 It is not until conversation is regulated by 
 established method, and becomes the art of 
 disputation, or debating, that its full disciplinary 
 value is perceived. It then becomes a great 
 power in quickening our perceptive and re- 
 flective faculties and in facilitating the adequate 
 and spontaneous expression of our thoughts. 
 
 ' Disputation,' says Sir William Hamilton, 
 ' is, in a certain sort, the condition of all im-
 
 62 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 provement.' It brings out, he contends, ' the 
 most important intellectual virtues : presence 
 of mind, dominion over our faculties, prompti- 
 tude of recollection and thought, and withal, 
 though animating emulation, a perfect command 
 of temper. It stimulates also to a more at- 
 tentive and profounder study of the matters to 
 be thus discussed ; it more deeply impresses 
 the facts and doctrines taught upon the mind ; 
 and, finally, what is of peculiar importance, 
 and peculiarly accomplished by rightly-regulated 
 disputation, it checks all tendency towards 
 irrelevancy, and disorder in statement, by 
 astricting the disputants to a pertinent and 
 precise and logically-predetermined order in the 
 evolution of their reasonings.' 
 
 De Quincey, avowedly a taciturn man, en- 
 larges upon the new light that awaited him 
 when he came to realize the educational value 
 of the practice of speaking. Yet the culture 
 of this faculty, in our modern school systems, 
 is almost entirely disregarded. And what is 
 more indispensable to the active man than a 
 fluent and well-regulated power of speech ? 
 Oratory has been termed the art of persuasion, 
 and, though it is not needful to the majority 
 of men, every man is at a disadvantage who 
 cannot express himself with distinctness, fluency, 
 and point. In most cases these qualities may be 
 attained by training and practice. ' If, therefore,' 
 says Quintilian, 'we have received from the
 
 The Development of the Powers 63 
 
 gods nothing more valuable than speech, what 
 can we consider more deserving of cultivation 
 and exercise ? or in what can we more strongly 
 desire to be superior to other men than in that 
 by which man himself is superior to other 
 animals, especially as in no kind of exertion 
 does labour more plentifully bring its reward ?' 
 It is curious, but it is no less true, that the 
 man who is logical in speech is not necessarily 
 logical on paper, and the reverse is no less a 
 fact. The criticism that is brought to bear on 
 the logic of the speaker is less penetrating than 
 the criticism that reviews the work of the writer. 
 The argument of the speaker is no sooner 
 delivered than the attention of the listener is 
 carried on to new matter; but the reasoning of 
 the author is crystallized in permanent type 
 over which the critic can pore with relentless 
 concentration. Therefore, by reason of the 
 greater demands upon the author, we conclude 
 that the practice of writing can develop greater 
 logical accuracy than the practice of speaking. 
 The highest achievement is reached when skill 
 is attained in both.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CLASSICS. 
 
 ' Then farewell, Horace ; whom I hated so !' 
 
 BYRON. 
 
 ' Latin and Greek are a great and splendid ornament, 
 which commonly, however, is too dearly bought.' MON- 
 TAIGNE. 
 
 ' Happy were the Latins, who needed only to learn 
 Greek, and that not by school teaching, but by inter- 
 course with living Greeks. Happier still were the Greeks, 
 who, so soon as they could read and write their mother- 
 tongue, might pass at once to the liberal arts and the 
 pursuit of wisdom. For us, who must spend many years 
 in learning foreign languages, the entrance into the gates 
 of Philosophy is made much more difficult. For to 
 understand Latin and Greek is not learning itself, but 
 the entrance - hall and ante-chamber of learning.' 
 MELANCTHON. 
 
 ' The antique symmetry was the one thing wanting to 
 me.' LEONARDO DA VINCI. 
 
 ' For I cannot help thinking that classical literature, in 
 spite of its enormous prestige, has very little attraction 
 for the mass even of cultivated persons at the present 
 day. I wish statistics could be obtained of the amount 
 of Latin and Greek read in any year (except for pro- 
 fessional purposes), even by those who have gone through 
 a complete classical curriculum. From the information 
 that I have been able privately to obtain, I incline to 
 think that such statistics, when compared with the fervent
 
 The Classics 65 
 
 admiration with which we all still speak of the Classics 
 upon every opportunity, would be found rather startling.' 
 SIDGWICK. 
 
 BY the Classics we understand the study of the 
 Greek and Latin languages and literatures. 
 
 For many years a controversy has existed 
 with regard to the advantage or the compara- 
 tive advantage of devoting so large a portion 
 of school hours to this study ; and of late, as 
 the claims of science have become more fully 
 recognised, the question has become a more vital 
 one. The same battle is being fought out on 
 the Continent, and the present trend of opinion, 
 Matthew Arnold tells us, in speaking of France 
 and Germany, is ' a growing disbelief in Greek 
 and Latin at any rate, as at present taught 
 and a growing disposition to make modern 
 languages and the natural sciences take their 
 place.' 
 
 The objections to the study itself, or the 
 methods adopted in its pursuit, are not new, 
 for Milton, in his letter on Education, thus 
 delivers himself on the subject : ' We do amiss 
 to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping 
 together so much miserable Latin and Greek 
 as might be learned otherwise easily and delight- 
 fully in one year. And that which casts our 
 proficiency therein so much behind is our time 
 lost in too oft idle vacancies given both to 
 schools and universities; partly on a pre- 
 posterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of 
 
 5
 
 66 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 children to compose themes, verses and orations, 
 which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the 
 final work of a head filled by long reading and 
 observing with elegant maxims and copious 
 invention. These are not matters to be wrung 
 from poor striplings like blood out of the 
 nose.' 
 
 Milton's indictment is preferred in our own 
 day, if not with more truth, yet perhaps with 
 greater vehemence. ' Is it not madness,' writes 
 Jean Paul Richter in the ' Levana,' ' to think 
 it even possible that a boy of fourteen or sixteen, 
 however great his abilities, can comprehend the 
 harmony of poetry and deep thought contained 
 in one of Plato's discourses, or the worldly 
 persiflage of Horace's satires, when the genius 
 itself has not conducted the men I name to 
 the pure cold heights of antiquity until long 
 after the fiery season of youth ? . . . Merely 
 verbal difficulties may be overcome by teaching 
 and industry, but mental difficulties only by 
 the maturity of thought which comes with 
 years.' 
 
 In the Middle Ages Latin was the language of 
 the cultured classes, and the literature of Europe 
 in those times was for the greater part a litera- 
 ture written in that tongue. It was made the 
 groundwork of education, says Mr. Parker, 
 ' not for the beauty of its classical literature, 
 not because the study of a dead language was 
 the best mental gymnastic or the only means of
 
 The Classics 67 
 
 acquiring a masterly freedom in the use of 
 living tongues, but because it was the language 
 of educated men throughout Western Europe, 
 employed for public business, literature, philo- 
 sophy and science ; above all, in God's provi- 
 dence, essential to the unity, and therefore 
 enforced by the authority, of the Western 
 Church.'* 
 
 But this inducement to the study of Latin 
 has ceased to have weight. Beyond its em- 
 ployment in scientific nomenclature, and its 
 very limited service to the legal practitioner, 
 the study of this language is advocated on 
 entirely new grounds. Moreover, Greek, viewed 
 with regard to its practical utility, lays no class 
 of the community under obligations, except, it 
 may be, the clergy. 
 
 If, then, the classical tongues have ceased to 
 be necessary to us to-day, it will be well for us 
 to consider upon what grounds the study of 
 them is held to be desirable. It is not to be 
 denied that few scholars push their classical 
 studies to that point that gives them access to 
 the ancient literatures. Nor is it seriously 
 maintained that the mere knowledge of the 
 languages has any intrinsic value. Yet we are 
 told that the Classics are the backbone of a 
 liberal education. The average public school- 
 boy presents all the intellectual limitations that 
 this deliberate mental starvation involves. His 
 * ' Essays on a Liberal Education." 
 
 52
 
 68 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 prejudices are profound, proportionate, in fact, 
 to his ignorance on all matters that lie without 
 the bounds of his narrow curriculum. His 
 knowledge of the English vocabulary does not 
 greatly exceed the equivalent in the vernacular 
 of those ideas that a dead language can supply. 
 ' The half-technical, the philosophical language,' 
 says Mr. Sidgwick, 'which thoughtful men 
 habitually use in dealing with abstract subjects,' 
 he is in danger of never learning. ' Of some 
 of these terms,' says the same author, ' such a 
 boy may pick up a loose and vague comprehen- 
 sion from ordinary conversation, novels and 
 newspapers, but he will generally retain suffi- 
 cient ignorance of them to make the perusal of 
 all difficult and profound works more weary and 
 distasteful than their subject matter alone could 
 make them.' 
 
 Nor can it be contended that the study of 
 ancient languages is a literary culture. Where 
 is the boy who, leaving school at seventeen, 
 with his classical studies not half finished, does 
 not from that day instinctively identify his 
 Cicero, his Xenophon and his Euripides with 
 grammatical problems and linguistic difficulties ? 
 The consequence is, says Mr. Sidgwick, ' that 
 half the undergraduates, and a large proportion 
 of the boys at all (except perhaps one or two) of 
 our public schools, if they have received a literary 
 education at all, have got it for themselves ; 
 the fragments of Greek and Latin that they
 
 The Classics 69 
 
 have struggled through have not given it them. 
 If so many of our most expensively-educated 
 youths regard athletic sports as the one con- 
 ceivable mode of enjoying leisure ; if so many 
 professional persons confine their extra-pro- 
 fessional reading to the newspapers and novels ; 
 if the middle-class Englishman (as he is con- 
 tinually told) is narrow, unrefined, conventional, 
 ignorant of what is really good and really evil 
 in human life ; if (as an uncompromising 
 writer says) he is " the tool of bigotry, the echo 
 of stereotyped opinions, the victim of class 
 prejudices, the great stumbling-block in the 
 way of a general diffusion of higher cultivation 
 in this country," it is not because these persons 
 have had a literary education which their " in- 
 vincible brutality " has rendered inefficacious ; 
 it is because the education has not been (to 
 them) literary : their minds have been merely 
 put through various unmeaning linguistic exer- 
 cises.' 
 
 After this heavy indictment of the customary 
 mode of study of the classical tongues and its 
 results, let us proceed to consider what the 
 advocates of the system have to say in support 
 of it. 
 
 The study of the Greek and Latin languages, 
 and of the authors who have written in them, 
 is, says Dr. Donaldson, the particular form 
 which our grammatical teaching has assumed. 
 For, he says later, ' the ultimate object of
 
 70 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 classical training is to give the many a habit 
 of methodically arranging their thoughts.' 
 
 This habit, it would seem, is acquired by 
 the structural analysis of the languages that 
 accompanies and forms part of our study of 
 them. In illustration of this, the Rev. Thomas 
 Hughes observes: ' I may be allowed the passing 
 remark, which is familiar to every judge of a 
 classical education, that the disciplinary value 
 of literary studies reaches here its highest 
 degree of mental exercise ; and that the two 
 classical tongues, Latin and Greek, are alto- 
 gether eminent as supplying materials for this 
 exercise in their own native structure ; which in 
 the Latin is an architectural build, character- 
 istic of the reasoning human mind ; and in the 
 Greek is a subtle delicacy of conception and 
 tracery, reflecting the art, the grace and 
 versatility of Athens and the Ionian Isles.' 
 
 But the chief, and perhaps the only additional, 
 advantage afforded the classical student, who 
 has not acquired facility in reading in the 
 original, is the knowledge he gains of the 
 structure, derivation, and pronunciation of his 
 own tongue, together with a better and more 
 precise acquaintance with the meaning of the 
 words and phrases that compose it. The 
 practice of translating, and more especially 
 from the classical languages, is particularly 
 conducive to this accuracy. ' As we seldom 
 think of asking the meaning of what we see
 
 The Classics 71 
 
 every day,' remarks John Stuart Mill, 4 so, when 
 our ears are used to the sound of a word or a 
 phrase, we do not suspect that it conveys no 
 clear idea to our minds, and that we should 
 have the utmost difficulty in denning it, or ex- 
 pressing in any other words what we think we 
 understand by it. Now, it is obvious in what 
 manner this bad habit tends to be corrected 
 by the practice of translating with accuracy 
 from one language to another, and hunting out 
 the meanings expressed in a vocabulary with 
 which we have not grown familiar by early and 
 constant use/ 
 
 But are not these benefits alleged to be 
 derived from classical tuition small when we 
 take into account the price paid for them, viz., 
 the almost entire appropriation of the scholar's 
 most receptive years ? It is not claimed that 
 there is any intrinsic advantage in the mere 
 knowledge of a dead language. The study of 
 it is a means to an end, but to an end it may 
 not be the best means to attain. 
 
 It is admitted that in so far as language can 
 furnish the mental exercise afforded by science 
 it is preferable, by reason of the greater con- 
 venience that naturally attends tuition from a 
 book, than tuition by means of natural objects 
 and scientific apparatus. We acknowledge, too, 
 that the science of language confers the peculiar 
 benefits attaching to a science of its class. But 
 it does not comprise in its result the full effect
 
 72 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 that is produced by scientific education. It fails 
 to exercise that important function of the mind, 
 the reasoning from ' cause to effect ' a habit 
 that can only be acquired by the cultivation of 
 the scientific method that illustrates it. 
 
 While we give full credit to the value of 
 
 language as a disciplinary study, we must 
 
 again draw attention to the fact that, in the 
 
 case of the classical tongues at least, it has no 
 
 advantage in itself. ' We are guilty of something 
 
 like a platitude,' says Herbert Spencer, ' when we 
 
 say that throughout his after-career a boy in nine 
 
 cases out of ten applies his Latin and Greek to 
 
 no practical purposes. The remark is trite, that 
 
 in his shop or his office, in managing his estate 
 
 or family, in playing his part as director of a 
 
 bank or a railway, he is very little aided by this 
 
 knowledge he took so many years to acquire.' 
 
 With science, on the other hand, the education 
 
 that trains and develops the faculties at the 
 
 same time stores the mind with knowledge and 
 
 gives it power that will be of practical service 
 
 to the student throughout life. With a mind 
 
 trained in scientific method, with a general 
 
 knowledge of scientific facts, the student will 
 
 carry into his future career the intelligence 
 
 required to build up the successful man of 
 
 action. Whether as a manufacturer, doctor, 
 
 or engineer, he will bring a mind trained to 
 
 grasp with facility the knowledge and principles 
 
 special to each of these pursuits ; and he will
 
 The Classics- 73 
 
 escape the indignity, so well described by Lord 
 Houghton, in speaking of the English gentle- 
 man, of being ' a landed proprietor without a 
 notion of agriculture a coal-owner without 
 an inkling of geology a sportsman without 
 curiosity in natural history.' 
 
 It cannot be denied that the study of the 
 classical tongues is an important aid in the 
 study of English ; but is not its importance 
 unduly exaggerated, and is it altogether an un- 
 mixed benefit ? As Mr. Sidgwick inquires, if 
 etymology is necessary for the understanding 
 of English, then why are the Classics taught and 
 Early English neglected ? As we have else- 
 where shown, a knowledge of the principles 
 of structure of a language is not necessary 
 to ensure grammatical expression. Even less 
 so is a knowledge of its derivation and 
 lineage. On the contrary, derivative meanings 
 are not generally the same as modern mean- 
 ings ; and he who persistently adheres to the 
 former will soon be convicted of pedantry. 
 In English, custom is the only safe guide, and 
 consequently the language itself, as best spoken 
 to-day, is the only safe study. 
 
 The process of translating undoubtedly brings 
 with it the advantages attributed to it by Mr. 
 Mill ; but if it be confined to the translation of 
 the ancient languages, while the student gains 
 in cultivating the military precision that is so 
 essential a feature of the Classics, he loses
 
 74 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 by reason of the necessary absence of modern 
 ideas in the literature ; so that, in representing 
 in English the ideas of the old world, the 
 student derives no acquaintance with the im- 
 mense vocabulary that is the peculiar product 
 of the new. 
 
 The knowledge to be acquired by those who 
 have mastered the classical tongues and gained 
 access to the literatures has been the topic of 
 many a brilliant essay. It is a subject that stirs 
 the imagination and gives birth to fine periods. 
 We should like to quote freely, for the sake of the 
 pleasure of introducing to our readers some of 
 the most brilliant passages in literature with 
 which we are acquainted ; but we must confine 
 ourselves to our purpose, and be content with 
 selecting merely those observations which we 
 feel will best illustrate the subject under con- 
 sideration. 
 
 The learning of the Greeks and Romans is 
 regarded as the surest foundation upon which 
 modern civilization can rest. In tracing back 
 the history of nations, we can find no equivalent, 
 in stability and permanence, to the productions 
 of these two races. Posterity has reversed fewer 
 of their conclusions than of those of other 
 peoples. Their ideas have been again and again 
 4 submitted to the crucible of human thought,' 
 until they have come to be regarded as a 
 ' mirror or picture of human reason in general.'* 
 * Steinthal.
 
 The Classics 75 
 
 They are the nations who have been most ' in- 
 dustrious after wisdom,' and they afford more 
 than any other nation ' the experience and tradi- 
 tion for all kinds of learning.' 
 
 Modern civilization has been grounded upon 
 this enduring basis. ' The cultivated mind,' 
 observes Dr. Whewell, ' up to the present day 
 has been bound together, and each generation 
 bound to the preceding, by living upon a com- 
 mon intellectual estate. . . . All the countries 
 of lettered Europe have been one body, because 
 the same nutriment, the literature of the ancient 
 world, was conveyed to all, by the organization of 
 their institutions of education. The authors of 
 Greece and Rome, familiar to the child, admired 
 and dwelt on by the aged, were the common 
 language, by the possession of which each man 
 felt himself a denizen of the civilized world.' 
 
 Of the disciplinary value of ancient thought, 
 as expressed in the classical authors, as distinct 
 from the disciplinary value of the languages 
 themselves, John Stuart Mill writes : ' Human 
 invention has never produced anything so valu- 
 able, both in the way of stimulation and disci- 
 pline to the inquiring intellect, as the dialectics 
 of the ancients, of which many of the works of 
 Aristotle illustrate the theory, and those of 
 Plato exhibit the practice. No modern writings 
 come near to these, in teaching, both by precept 
 and example, the way to investigate truth, on 
 these subjects, so vastly important to us, which
 
 76 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 remain matters of controversy from the diffi- 
 culty or impossibility of bringing them to a 
 directly experimental test.' 
 
 Of the correctness of such an estimate, Dr. 
 Arnold furnishes us with a remarkable illustra- 
 tion. In a letter to the Archbishop of Dublin 
 he describes the mental condition of a Jew from 
 whom he was taking lessons in Hebrew, and 
 who, learned as he was in the writings of the 
 Rabbis, was totally ignorant of all the litera- 
 ture of the West, ancient or modern. ' He 
 was consequently,' said Dr. Arnold, 'just like 
 a child, his mind being entirely without the 
 habit of criticism or analysis, whether as 
 applied to words or things ; wholly ignorant, 
 for instance, of the analysis of language, 
 whether grammatical or logical ; or of the 
 analysis of a narrative of facts, according to 
 any rules of probability external or internal. 
 I never so felt the debt which the human race 
 owes to Pythagoras, or whoever it was that was 
 the first founder of Greek philosophy.' 
 
 It is a curious fact that science, antagonistic 
 as it is to classical study, has more especially 
 appropriated Latin as its peculiar tongue, and 
 has thus made its preservation more than 
 ever necessary. ' The Latin language,' De 
 Quincey says, ' has a planetary importance ; it 
 belongs not to this land or that land, but to all 
 lands where the human intellect has obtained 
 its rights and its development. It is the one
 
 The Classics 77 
 
 sole lingua franca; that is, in a catholic sense, 
 it is such for the whole humanized earth, and 
 the total family of man. It is still the common 
 dialect which binds together that great impe- 
 rium in imperio the republic of letters.' 
 
 Valuable as Latin is to the republic of letters, 
 it is hardly less so to the republic of science, 
 forming as it does the common ground by means 
 of which inquirers of different nationality can 
 make themselves intelligible to one another. 
 
 But perhaps the chief advantage of a close 
 acquaintance with Greek and Roman traditions 
 is attributable to the many standards of excel- 
 lence with which we are familiarized standards 
 that by common consent have never since been 
 reached, much less surpassed. ' In purely 
 literary excellence, in perfection of form,' re- 
 marks John Stuart Mill, ' the pre-eminence of the 
 ancients is not disputed. In every department 
 which they attempted, and they attempted 
 almost all, their composition, like their sculp- 
 ture, has been to the greatest modern artists 
 an example to be looked up to with hopeless 
 admiration.' 
 
 ' In studying the great writers of antiquity,' 
 he elsewhere observes, ' we are not only learn- 
 ing to understand the ancient mind, but laying 
 in a stock of wise thought and observation, still 
 valuable to ourselves, and at the same time 
 making ourselves familiar with a number of 
 the most perfect and finished literary com-
 
 78 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 positions which the human mind has pro- 
 vided.' 
 
 But Mr. Mill attributes even a higher value 
 to what he designates their ' wisdom of life ' 
 ' the rich store,' he explains, ' of experience of 
 human nature and conduct, which the acute 
 and observing minds of those ages, aided in 
 their observations by the greater simplicity of 
 manners and life, consigned to their writings, 
 and most of which retains all its value.' 
 
 But why, it will be asked, cannot all this be 
 attained by the majority of persons through 
 translations ? 
 
 The answer is obvious : Much of it can. 
 ' All knowledge,' says De Quincey, ' is trans- 
 latable, and translatable without one atom of 
 loss.' ' For no man,' says the same author, 
 * will wish to study a profound philosopher but 
 for some previous interest in his doctrines, and 
 if by any means a man has obtained this, he 
 may pursue this study sufficiently through trans- 
 lations.' But where the reader seeks art and 
 not science, then translations are all but value- 
 less ; for ' if the golden apparel is lost, if the 
 music has melted away from the thoughts, all, 
 in fact, is lost.' 
 
 Lord Houghton considers that franker recog- 
 nition should be given to the worth and use of 
 translations into modern languages, and main- 
 tains that they should be ' the most effective 
 material of school training, instead of being
 
 The Classics 79 
 
 prohibited and regarded as substitutes for severe 
 study and inducements to juvenile indolence.' 
 
 Mr. Sidgwick even goes further, and gives it 
 as his opinion that the greater part of the vivid 
 impressions that most boys receive of the ancient 
 world are derived from English works ; and, 
 moreover, he remarks elsewhere, some persons 
 ' would perhaps be ashamed to confess how 
 shallow an appreciation they had of Greek art 
 till they read Goethe and Schiller, Lessing and 
 Schlegel.' 
 
 In conclusion, let us venture a word of prac- 
 tical advice. Whatever may be the disadvan- 
 tages of an exclusively literary education, they 
 can hardly exceed the drawbacks that we believe 
 would accompany an exclusively scientific one. 
 There is need for both. But we maintain that 
 though it may be desirable, for the purposes of 
 mental discipline, to study one classical tongue, 
 the study of two does not offer additional ad- 
 vantages proportionate to the extra time em- 
 ployed in its pursuit. In the choice of Latin 
 or Greek, we shall be guided by one of two 
 considerations. If our choice is determined by 
 the value of the literature (to which, after all, 
 we may never gain access), we shall select 
 Greek. If, on the other hand, we seek those 
 advantages which the defenders of a classical 
 education contend accompany the study of the 
 ancient languages, we shall choose Latin. In 
 selecting the latter, our choice will be wisely
 
 8o The Building of the Intellect 
 
 exercised ; for, since few boys mature their 
 classical studies, the only benefit accruing to 
 them is the disciplinary one we have referred 
 to, and this they will get in greater measure 
 from Latin than from Greek. Moreover, in 
 nearly all examinations, professional or other- 
 wise, Latin is a compulsory subject, and Greek 
 is not. Obviously this is a consideration of 
 great importance, and one that we cannot afford 
 to overlook.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GRAMMAR MODERN LANGUAGES HISTORY. 
 
 ' He that is learning to arrange his sentences with 
 order is learning to think with accuracy and order.' 
 BLAIR. 
 
 ' It is the evident failure to carry out the original 
 intention of classical studies which has made it necessary 
 to bring more prominently forward the supposed ad- 
 vantages of grammar.' BOWEN. 
 
 ' But living languages are so much more easily acquired 
 by intercourse wiih those who use them in daily life . . . 
 that it is really waste of time for those to whom that 
 easier mode is attainable to labour at them with no help 
 but that of books and masters.' MILL. 
 
 ' The only history that is of practical value is what may 
 be called descriptive sociology. And the highest office 
 which the historian can discharge is that of so narrating 
 the lives of nations as to furnish materials for a compara- 
 tive sociology, and for the subsequent determination of 
 the ultimate laws to which social phenomena conform.' 
 SPENCER. 
 
 Grammar. If we accept the dictum of Herbert 
 Spencer, that the education of the child must 
 accord both in mode and arrangement with the 
 education of mankind, considered historically, 
 
 6
 
 82 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 then we must put the study of grammar much 
 later in the school course than is customary. 
 ' The study of language,' says Mr. Bowen, ' is at 
 the present day the only kind of study which 
 deliberately professes to advance in a direction 
 exactly the reverse of every other branch of 
 human progress. In every other fruitful inquiry 
 we ascend from phenomena to principles. In 
 classical study alone we profess to learn prin- 
 ciples first, and then advance to facts.' 
 
 The study of grammar is not in general neces- 
 sary to ensure grammatical expression of our 
 thoughts ; not more, in fact, than our reasoning 
 power is dependent on our mastery of works on 
 logic. ' English grammar,' observes Sir John 
 Lubbock, ' as it is ordinarily taught in ele- 
 mentary schools, seems to be of very doubtful 
 value. Moreover, the power of speaking gram- 
 matically is more a matter of practice and tact 
 than of tuition. I do not wish to undervalue 
 grammar with reference to language, but would 
 say, in the words of George Herbert : 
 
 ' " Who cannot dress it well, want wit, not words." ' 
 
 Both Dr. Arnold and Matthew Arnold 
 maintain that the rationale the explanation 
 of the principles of language belongs to a more 
 advanced age of scholarship, and that what is 
 required in the school grammar is a system of 
 ' clear categories ' which the student can under- 
 stand and apply practically to his reading.
 
 Grammar 83 
 
 ' But we, and the Germans, too,' remarks the 
 latter, ' keep trying to put the rationale of 
 grammar into the first grammar the grammar 
 that is learnt, not consulted ; and the boy's 
 mental digestion rejects the rationale, and 
 meanwhile the fixity needed for categories to 
 which he is promptly and precisely to refer all 
 his cases an effort of which his mind is 
 perfectly capable is sacrificed.' 
 
 Nothing is so apt to provoke an early disgust 
 of literature, or to cramp the expansion of the 
 individual power of expression, as the selection 
 of standard passages of poetry or rhetoric as 
 mere exercises in grammatical analysis or con- 
 struction. Grammar is the servant, not the 
 master, of language, and the best intellects 
 have always so regarded it ; otherwise language 
 could have no development. 
 
 The rules of grammar become necessary, 
 says Locke, when it is thought time to put 
 anyone upon the care of polishing his tongue. 
 They are necessary as a preparation for the 
 cultivation of style an art which De Quincey, 
 that master of style, has defined as the 
 ' management of language,' and of the functions 
 of which he has given the following pregnant 
 description. ' Style,' he says, ' has two separate 
 functions : first, to brighten the intelligibility 
 of a subject which is obscure to the under- 
 standing ; secondly, to regenerate the normal 
 power and impressiveness of a subject which 
 
 62
 
 84 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 has become dormant to the sensibilities. Dark- 
 ness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes 
 from previous mistreatment, but often from 
 original perplexities investing its very nature. 
 Upon the style it is, if we take that word in its 
 largest sense upon the skill and art of the de- 
 veloper that these perplexities greatly depend 
 for their illumination.' 
 
 Modern Languages. The cultivation of the 
 English language is the chief concern of every 
 Englishman. Is it not strange, then, that of 
 all school subjects it is the one that receives 
 least attention ? 
 
 Many vague and superficial statements have 
 been made in the attempt to define and explain 
 this study. It is not merely a knowledge of 
 the classics of the English tongue ; it is not 
 merely a knowledge of the English grammar. 
 It is rather a study whose aim is to acquire a 
 wide and exact knowledge of the English 
 vocabulary, an instinctive acquaintance with 
 the rules of grammatical composition, and 
 the power of elegant and appropriate ex- 
 pression. 
 
 ' Language is the medium for expressing our 
 thoughts.' We may have nebulous ideas on 
 many subjects, but we are unable to communi- 
 cate them to our fellow-men because we are- 
 unfamiliar with that fragment of the English 
 vocabulary that expresses them. As our know- 
 ledge of the vocabulary expands, our field of
 
 Modern Languages 85 
 
 thought and power of speech enlarge. The 
 study of English classics is altogether in- 
 adequate for this purpose. The fact that they 
 are classics endows them with a certain re- 
 verend age, in consequence of which their pages 
 are not likely to afford acquaintance with that 
 multitude of new ideas that is the product of 
 our century. 
 
 The teaching of English is a fit subject for 
 home and early training. The first efforts to 
 build up the vast vocabulary which the cultured 
 Englishman commands must be confined to 
 those familiar things and their parts that are 
 the common objects of the home and country. 
 The habit of description should be encouraged ; 
 and the ideas of things should not only be 
 grasped by the child, but he should be induced 
 to express the ideas in words. Thus the know- 
 ledge of things and the power of language 
 will be contemporaneously developed. 
 
 When the student proceeds to abstract ideas, 
 he should be helped to gradually accumulate 
 those half-technical, philosophical words that 
 are the stock-in-trade of the thoughtful, cul- 
 tured man. ' If,' says Mr. Sidgwick, ' English 
 authors were read in schools so carefully that 
 a boy was kept continually ready to explain 
 words, paraphrase sentences, and summarize 
 arguments ; if the prose authors chosen gradu- 
 ally became, as the boy's mind opened, more 
 difficult and more philosophical in their diction;
 
 86 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 if, at the same time, in the teaching of 
 natural science, a great part of the technical 
 phraseology (from which the main stream of 
 the language is being continually enriched) was 
 thoroughly explained to him, then we might 
 feel that, by direct and indirect teaching to- 
 gether, we had imparted a complete grasp of 
 what is probably the completest instrument of 
 thought in the world.' 
 
 When the boy's vocabulary has assumed 
 dimensions great enough to enable him to 
 express his ideas with facility, he should 
 proceed to the study of grammar, and par- 
 ticularly of syntax, that he may learn that 
 language ' is not capricious and arbitrary in 
 its arrangements, but reflects the operations 
 of the mind.'* 
 
 Facility of expression and accuracy of com- 
 position attained, the student should culti- 
 vate style ; and to do this he can seek no better 
 guides than the masters of style who have 
 written in our tongue. Not that the style of 
 any given writer should be imitated, for style 
 is essentially an idiosyncrasy, the peculiar 
 and distinct expression of the individual. But 
 a general acquaintance with style in its various 
 garbs will imperceptibly affect the student, and 
 slowly and surely give to his expression the 
 peculiar characteristic in style that is the 
 natural product of his individuality. 
 * J. W. Hales.
 
 Modern Languages 87 
 
 Next to English, which language has the 
 chief claim to the student's attention ? 
 
 ' French and German,' says Huxley, ' and 
 especially the latter language, are absolutely 
 indispensable to those who desire full know- 
 ledge in any department of science.' And 
 there are other reasons, for later in the same 
 work he remarks : ' If the time given to educa- 
 tion permits, add Latin and German. Latin, 
 because it is the key to nearly one-half of 
 English ; and German, because it is the key 
 to almost all the remainder of English, and 
 helps you to understand a race from whom 
 most of us have sprung, and who have a char- 
 acter and a literature of a fateful force in the 
 history of the world, such as probably has been 
 allotted to those of no other people except the 
 Jews, the Greeks, and ourselves.' 
 
 De Quincey has dealt with this subject, and 
 has laid it down as an axiom that the act of 
 learning a language is in itself an evil ; and he 
 has recommended us to so frame our selection 
 of languages that the largest possible body of 
 literature available for our purposes may be put 
 at our disposal with the least possible waste of 
 time and mental energy. 
 
 After excluding Italian, Spanish, and Portu- 
 guese, he maintains French and German to be 
 worthy rivals for the first place, and gives the 
 preference to the latter, with this recommenda- 
 tion that German literature, for vast compass,
 
 88 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 variety, and extent, far exceeds all others as a 
 depository for the current accumulations of 
 knowledge. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the choice may 
 be exercised on other than literary considera- 
 tions. For instance, for purposes of statesman- 
 ship French is indispensable ; to the musician, 
 Italian is desirable. But these are, and will 
 remain, special considerations. For purposes of 
 general culture, science, business, and all anti- 
 quarian matters, it is plain that German is the 
 language that gives the amplest returns. 
 
 In learning a foreign modern tongue, our 
 chief object is to speak, and this accomplish- 
 ment can at no time be so easily acquired as 
 in childhood. Chilchood is a period when 
 Nature gives us peculiar facilities for learning 
 to speak a language, and in this respect a 
 foreign nurse, in the first six or seven years of 
 life, will do more service than the most accom- 
 plished masters throughout the succeeding 
 school period. But the advantages to be 
 derived from a foreign nurse will, when her 
 influence is withdrawn, be quickly lost, unless 
 the child be induced to continue to exercise 
 the power he has by this means acquired ; and 
 for this reason it is desirable that the practice 
 of reading the language should be grafted on 
 the habit 01 speech. 
 
 What we have said of the study of English 
 applies equally to the study of a foreign tongue.
 
 History 89 
 
 The first requirement is a substantial vocabu- 
 lary ; and grammar, which in our schools so 
 often takes its place in order of time, should be 
 deferred until the linguist has acquired com- 
 plete facility in the expression of his ideas. 
 
 History. It is a common objection that his- 
 tory, as learnt at school, is limited to the mere 
 committing to memory of dates, and that school 
 histories give an undue prominence to mere 
 events. History, it is urged, should be less a 
 record of a nation's battles and a monarch's 
 deeds than the life of a people. 
 
 These critics seem to recommend, in the 
 study of history, a system that is expressly 
 deprecated in the study of grammar. Children 
 are as little likely to understand the rationale 
 of history as they are the rationale of grammar. 
 They must acquire the facts, and from these 
 they will build up the principles. And what is 
 more necessary to a correct application of the 
 events of history than the precise date of their 
 occurrence ? An error in a date may occasion 
 the cause to be mistaken for the effect, and 
 then how misleading a study will the philo- 
 sophy of history become ! Dates are as neces- 
 sary for a correct interpretation of history as 
 are the positions of the planets at any given 
 time for the ascertainment of their orbits. 
 We do not commit ourselves to assert that a 
 child should learn a long string of dates by 
 heart. We merely say that, without a due
 
 9O The Building of the Intellect 
 
 regard to dates, he will never learn to appre- 
 ciate the lessons that history can impart. 
 
 It must be remembered, too, that in learning 
 a date he is at the same time learning a fact, 
 and from the association of the two ideas the 
 memory will better retain both. 
 
 But the facts of history, like the facts of 
 science, are barren and useless until the lessons 
 they are capable of yielding have been drawn 
 from them. ' The principal and proper work 
 of history,' says Hobbes, ' is to instruct and 
 enable men, by the knowledge of actions past, 
 to bear themselves prudently in the present, 
 and providentially towards the future.' For 
 what is true of the individual is true of the 
 nation : ' whatsoever a man sows, that shall 
 he also reap.' 
 
 The term ' history,' however, is capable of 
 wider signification. The popular definition, 
 limiting its application to the history of com- 
 munities only, is too restrictive. The process 
 of development, which is characteristic of 
 every idea and everything of which we are, or 
 can become, cognizant, is tantamount to saying 
 that they have their histories. It is generally 
 admitted that we can understand nations only 
 through their histories. It is equally true, as 
 Comte has declared, that ' no conception can 
 be understood except through its history.' 
 The latest efforts of human invention, says 
 Mr. Ferguson, are but a continuation of certain
 
 History 9 1 
 
 devices which were practised in the earliest 
 ages of the world. Nor is any human thought 
 so primitive as to have lost its bearing on our 
 own thought, nor so ancient as to have broken 
 its connection with our own life.* The his- 
 torical method of study is, we are convinced, 
 the only one that can give firm and reliable 
 knowledge. ' The investigator who turns from 
 his modern text-books,' says Professor Tylor, 
 ' to the antiquated dissertations of the great 
 thinkers of the past gains from the history of 
 his own craft a truer view of the relation of 
 theory to fact, learns from the course of growth 
 in each current hypothesis to appreciate its 
 raison d'etre and full significance, and even finds 
 that a return to older starting-points may enable 
 him to find new paths where the modern track 
 seems stopped by impassable barriers. 't 
 
 * Tylor's ' Primitive Culture/ t Ibid.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MATHEMATICS SCIENCE. 
 
 " ' Our hazy and inconstant age, fuller of dreams than of 
 poems, of phantasms than imagination, has great need of 
 the clear, accurate eye of mathematics, and of firm hold 
 upon reality.' JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 
 
 ' Geometry, if we may be allowed to say so, has a holy 
 divinity of its own, inasmuch as it imposes its various 
 forms and models on creation, and maintains it in exist- 
 ence up to the present day.' RABANUS. 
 
 ' Wherever there is a law and system, wherever there 
 is relation and correspondence of parts, the intellect will 
 make its way will interfuse amongst the dry bones the 
 blood and pulses of life, and create " a soul under the ribs 
 of death.'' ; DE QUINCEY. 
 
 ' It is one of the tragi-comic features of human life that 
 the ardent little explorer, looking out with wide-eyed 
 wonder upon his new world, should now and again find 
 as his first guide a nurse, or even a mother, who will 
 resent the majority of his questions as disturbing the 
 luxurious mood of indolence in which she chooses to pass 
 her days. We can never know how much valuable 
 mental activity has been checked, how much hope and 
 courage cast down, by this kind of treatment. Yet, 
 happily, the questioning impulse is not easily eradicated, 
 and a child who has suffered at the outset from this whole- 
 sale contempt may be fortunate enough to meet, while 
 the spirit of investigation is still upon him, one who 
 knows, and who has the good nature and the patience to 
 impart what he knows in response to the child's appeal.' 
 JAMES SULLY.
 
 Mathematics Science 93 
 
 IN our educational systems the study of mathe- 
 matics is pursued almost exclusively for its 
 disciplinary value. Beyond a little elementary 
 arithmetic, how few of us have occasion to 
 utilize the knowledge we have gained from this 
 study in after-life ! The rules and propositions 
 that we become familiar with in our school-days 
 soon drop out of our memory, and in after-life 
 we naturally ask ourselves whether all the 
 valuable hours spent in mastering them were 
 not so much time wasted. 
 
 It will not be difficult to show that intelligent 
 opinion is on the whole opposed to this view. 
 Dr. Donaldson, a strong advocate of classical 
 training, allows that mathematics, if pursued 
 in moderation and simultaneously with other 
 studies, may correct the habit of mental dis- 
 traction, and substitute for it the habit of con- 
 tinuous attention. In ' The Advancement of 
 Learning,' Lord Bacon complains that this use 
 of mathematics is ignored, and observes : 
 ' Men do not sufficiently understand the ex- 
 cellent use of the pure mathematics, in that 
 they do remedy and cure many defects in the 
 wit and faculties intellectual. For, if the wit 
 be too dull, they sharpen it ; if too wandering, 
 they fix it ; if too inherent in the sense, they 
 abstract it.' 
 
 In ' A French Eton,' Matthew Arnold says 
 that M. de la Rive, a distinguished Swiss, told 
 him he could trace in the educated class of
 
 94 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 Frenchmen a precision of mind distinctly due 
 to the sound and close mathematical train- 
 ing of their schools. Dr. Whewell, again, 
 referring to successful lawyers, remarks the 
 extraordinary coincidence of professional emi- 
 nence in after-life with mathematical distinc- 
 tion in their University careers, and from this 
 concludes that ' our studies may be an ad- 
 mirable discipline and preparation for pursuits 
 extremely different from our own.' ' That 
 mathematical habits,' he observes, ' do, or 
 have done, so much to make men good 
 lawyers, is not an unimportant consideration 
 with respect to that profession ; but it is far 
 more important as showing what such a train- 
 ing may effect in reference to other and wider 
 studies.' 
 
 But what are the peculiar characteristics of 
 mathematics that tend to such a result ? 
 
 ' The peculiar character of mathematical 
 truth,' says Dr. Whewell, ' is that it is neces- 
 sarily and inevitably true.' We are concerned 
 in this study, he proceeds, ' with long chains of 
 reasoning in which each link hangs from all the 
 preceding.' We take for our premises some 
 obvious truth, and upon this we build a suc- 
 cession of other truths, which, if our reason- 
 ing be sound, are each and all necessarily and 
 inevitably true. ' Pure mathematics,' says the 
 Rev. J. Joyce, 'have one peculiar and dis- 
 tinguishing advantage, that they occasion no
 
 Mathematics Science 95 
 
 disputes among wrangling disputants as in 
 other branches of knowledge ; and the reason 
 is because the definitions of the terms are 
 premised, and everybody that reads a propo- 
 sition has the same idea of every part of it. 
 Hence it is easy to put an end to all mathe- 
 matical controversies by showing either that 
 our adversary has not stuck to his definitions, 
 or has not laid down true premises, or else that 
 he has drawn false conclusions from true 
 principles.' 
 
 In mathematics, though concentration is of 
 the first importance for, says Lord Bacon, in 
 demonstrations, if a man's wits be called away 
 never so little he must begin again the study 
 is, moreover, fraught with encouragement to 
 the student, for the difficulties mathematics 
 present are such ' as will bend to a resolute 
 effort of the mind ;'* and not only so, for they 
 have ' the additional recommendation that they 
 are apt to stimulate and irritate the mind to 
 make that effort. 'f 
 
 The disciplinary value of mathematics is 
 admitted, not only by the advocates of a para- 
 mount mathematical training, but also by those 
 who give greater prominence to the literary 
 curriculum. We offer an opinion from each 
 side. 
 
 In regard to this, the eminent mathematician 
 Dr. Whewell observes : ' The man of mathe- 
 * De Quincey. t Ibid.
 
 96 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 matical genius who, by the demands of his 
 college or university, is led to become familiar 
 with the best Greek and Latin classics, becomes 
 thus a man of liberal education, instead of 
 being merely a powerful calculator. The elegant 
 classical scholar who is compelled in the same 
 way to master the propositions of geometry and 
 mechanics, acquires among them habits of 
 rigour of thought and connection of reasoning. 
 He thus becomes fitted to deal with any sub- 
 ject with which reason can be concerned, and 
 to estimate the prospects of science instead of 
 being kept down to the level of the mere 
 scholar learned in the literature of the past, 
 but illogical and incoherent in his thoughts, and 
 incapable of grappling with the questions which 
 the present and the future offer.' 
 
 Dr. Donaldson we may cite as a fair ex- 
 ponent of the other side. In his work on 
 ' Classical Scholarship and Classical Learning' 
 he remarks : ' The full cultivation of the reason- 
 ing or logical faculty does no doubt require 
 geometry as well as grammar or logic. . . . 
 I feel assured that, although the classical scholar 
 as such would be ill provided for the full dis- 
 charge of his important functions, if he were 
 not also to a certain extent at least a mathe- 
 matician, and though a liberal education would 
 be incomplete if it did not add geometry to 
 its grammatical training, the mere mathe- 
 matician stands in an infinitely lower position
 
 Mathematics Science 97 
 
 in regard to the cultivation of his intellectual 
 powers than even the merely classical scholar.' 
 
 But the value of a mathematical training does 
 not solely depend upon its utility in developing 
 the reasoning powers. It has an even more 
 vital and fundamental importance. It is placed 
 by Comte, says Mr. Lewes, ' in virtue of the 
 principle of his classification at the very head 
 of the scale of sciences. But he regards this 
 vast and important science less as a constituent 
 part of natural philosophy than as the true and 
 fundamental basis of it ; and he values it not so 
 much for its own intrinsic truths as for its 
 being the great and most powerful instrument 
 in furthering the progress of science.'* 
 
 For, he adds, ' it is by the study of mathe- 
 matics, and it alone, that we can obtain a 
 just and comprehensive idea of what a science 
 really is. It is in that study we ought to learn 
 precisely the general method always followed 
 by the human mind in its positive researches, 
 for nowhere else are questions resolved so 
 completely and deductions prolonged so far 
 with extreme rigour. It is there, too, that 
 our intelligence has given the greatest proof of 
 its power, since the ideas dealt with are the 
 most entirely abstract possible in positive 
 science. All scientific education which does 
 not commence with this study is therefore and 
 of necessity defective at its foundation.' 
 
 * Comte's ' Philosophic Positive,' by G. H. Lewes. 
 
 7
 
 98 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 These remarks form a fitting introduction to 
 a brief consideration of the subject of scientific 
 education. 
 
 Let us first determine what Science is. ' In- 
 formation, when it is nothing more,' says Dr. 
 Donaldson, ' merely denotes an accumulation 
 of stray particulars by means of the memory ; 
 on the other hand, knowledge is information 
 appropriated and thoroughly matured. . . . 
 And when knowledge extends to a methodical 
 comprehension of general laws and principles, 
 it is called science.' 
 
 Science, therefore, is a knowledge of the laws 
 of Nature. 
 
 ' This knowledge,' says Mr. Lewes, ' is the 
 only rational basis of man's action on Nature. 
 By it he foresees what will be the result of the 
 working of any phenomena left to their own 
 spontaneous activity, and by what modifications 
 he may produce a different result more advan- 
 tageous to himself. Science gives power to 
 foresee, and foreseeing leads to action. . . . 
 Prevision is the characteristic and the test of 
 knowledge. If you can predict certain results, 
 and they occur as you predicted, then you are 
 assured that your knowledge is correct. If the 
 wind blows according to the will of Boreas, we 
 may, indeed, propitiate his favour, but we cannot 
 calculate upon it. We can have no certain 
 knowledge whether the wind will blow or not. 
 If, on the other hand, it is subject to laws, like
 
 Mathematics Science 99 
 
 everything else, once discover these laws, and 
 men will predict concerning it as they predict 
 concerning other matters.' 
 
 Knowing as we now do the general aim of 
 scientific education, let us pause to consider 
 what is the most rational and appropriate 
 system. If we have hitherto been guided by 
 Herbert Spencer's dictum that the education 
 of the child should accord both in mode and 
 arrangement with the education of mankind, 
 considered historically, we feel that, in dealing 
 with scientific education, the justification for 
 this preference will be the more convincing. 
 
 The remarks we made in an earlier part of this 
 book, when treating of the cultivation of the 
 faculty of observation, have special application 
 in determining what the true elementary train- 
 ing in science is. In the first place, the mind 
 must have material to work upon. During 
 childhood, the senses are particularly active in 
 detecting and registering in the mind the 
 multitude of impressions by which they are 
 assailed. It is a period peculiarly devoted to 
 the accumulation of stray knowledge, a process 
 destined in due course to call into requisition 
 the power of classification or arrangement 
 which has not yet appeared. We should at this 
 time encourage in the child the habit of whole- 
 some curiosity. To repress it is to stifle one of 
 Nature's most potent intellectual agencies. But 
 to encourage it is not enough. It needs satis- 
 
 72
 
 ioo The Building of the Intellect 
 
 faction, and it becomes our duty to minister to 
 it. ' How much better and more intelligent,' 
 says Archdeacon Wilson, 'would early train- 
 ing be if curiosity were looked on as the store 
 of force, the possible love of knowledge in 
 embryo in the boy's mind, which in its later 
 transformations is so highly valued.' 
 
 In general science, and particularly natural 
 history, the curiosity of boys is seldom dormant. 
 The subjects have peculiar charm for them, 
 and this charm it is our duty to promote 
 and sustain, that the effect of so ennobling 
 and vitalizing an intellectual activity may not 
 be lost to them in after-life. But not only 
 does the subject-matter of scientific educa- 
 tion afford special incitement to the young 
 mind, but, as Mr. Sidgwick says, it teaches 
 him what he will afterwards be more glad to 
 know ; it is, in fact, a book which, when once 
 opened, will never be shut up and put by. 
 For, Mr. Sidgwick adds, ' Physical science is 
 now so bound up with all the interests of man- 
 kind, from the lowest and most material to the 
 loftiest and most profound ; it is so engrossing 
 in its infinite detail, so exciting in its progress 
 and promise, so fascinating in the varied 
 beauty of its revelations, that it draws to itself 
 an ever-increasing amount of intellectual energy; 
 so that the intellectual man who has been 
 trained without it must feel at every turn his 
 inability to comprehend thoroughly the present
 
 Mathematics Science 101 
 
 phase of the progress of humanity, and his 
 limited sympathy with the thoughts and feel- 
 ings, labours and aspirations, of his fellow- 
 men.' 
 
 In one particular, at least, the methods of 
 classical and scientific training are in singular 
 contrast. Whereas the classical student pur- 
 sues his labours almost entirely through the 
 agency of books, the science student, on the 
 other hand, is concerned with facts, with living 
 facts, which he must observe for himself. ' No 
 teaching of science,' remarks Huxley, ' is 
 worth anything as a mental discipline, which 
 is not based upon direct perception of the 
 facts, and practical exercise of the observing 
 and logical faculties upon them.' 
 
 As a mental discipline it would be hard to 
 overrate the value of scientific training; even 
 our very errors, De Quincey says, are full of 
 instruction. ' There is no intellectual dis- 
 cipline,' remarks John Stuart Mill, ' more im- 
 portant than that which the experimental 
 sciences afford. Their whole occupation con- 
 sists in doing well what all of us, during the 
 whole of life, are engaged in doing for the most 
 part badly.' 
 
 Perhaps the importance of this training as a 
 means of developing the mental faculties has 
 never been more emphatically stated than in 
 the Report of the Royal Commission on Edu- 
 cation of 1861. The Commissioners say in
 
 IO2 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 regard to the study of natural science : ' We 
 believe that its value as a means of opening the 
 mind and disciplining the faculties is recognised 
 by all who have taken the trouble to acquire 
 it, whether men of business or of leisure. 
 It quickens and cultivates directly the faculty 
 of observation, which in very many persons 
 lies almost dormant through life, the power of 
 accurate and rapid generalization, and the 
 mental habit of method and arrangement ; it 
 accustoms young persons to trace the sequence 
 of cause and effect ; it familiarizes them with a 
 kind of reasoning which interests them, and 
 which they can promptly comprehend ; and it 
 is perhaps the best corrective for that indolence 
 which is the vice of half-awakened minds, which 
 shrink from any exertion that is not, like an 
 effort of memory, merely mechanical.' 
 
 But the pursuit of science as a form of mental 
 discipline need not comprehend the numerous 
 departments that are necessary when know- 
 ledge is sought. Great as is the intrinsic 
 importance of scientific facts, the quest of them 
 should not form the only consideration in 
 school training. Scientific method is what 
 the scholar should be stimulated to attain, 
 and those departments of science should be 
 systematically pursued that most conduce to 
 the realization of this aim. ' There are two 
 kinds of physical science,' says Huxley: 'the 
 one regards form and the relations of forms
 
 Mathematics Science 1 03 
 
 to one another; the other deals with causes 
 and effects. In many of what we term sciences, 
 these two kinds are mixed up together ; but 
 systematic botany is a pure example of the 
 former kind, and physics of the latter kind, 
 of science. . . . Every educational advantage 
 which training in physical science can give is 
 obtainable from the proper study of these two.' 
 
 We have still to point out the value of 
 scientific education as a means of imparting 
 knowledge. 
 
 ' The most obvious part of the value of 
 scientific instruction,' says John Stuart Mill, 
 ' the mere information it gives, speaks for itself. 
 We are born into a world which we have not 
 made a world whose phenomena take place 
 according to fixed laws, of which we do not 
 bring any knowledge into the world with us. 
 In such a world we are appointed to live, and 
 in it all our work is to be done. Our whole 
 working power depends on knowing the laws 
 of the world in other words, the properties of 
 the things we have to work with, and work 
 among, and to work upon.' 
 
 When science is pursued for the value of the 
 knowledge it affords, it must be a general 
 study. We may push our original investiga- 
 tions further in one department of science than 
 in others ; but we can do so successfully only 
 after we have grown to realize the unity and 
 interdependence of the operations of Nature,
 
 1O4 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 and are able to bring to the explanation of the 
 phenomenon under our consideration the know- 
 ledge that can unravel the various contributory 
 causes of which it is the product. 
 
 ' It can hardly,' says Sir John Herschel, ' be 
 pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the 
 student of Nature, that there is scarcely any 
 natural phenomenon which can be fully and 
 completely explained, in all its circumstances, 
 without a union of several, perhaps of all, the 
 sciences.' 
 
 Not only should our science training be 
 general ; but it should be methodical. Apply- 
 ing Herbert Spencer's precept, it should advance 
 in conformity with the order in which mankind 
 has itself gained a knowledge of the universe. 
 
 ' It is at the very root of Comte's system,' 
 remarks Mr. Lewes, ' that until the sciences 
 are learnt in their natural order, which at 
 present is seldom the case, a scientific educa- 
 tion will be incapable of realizing its most 
 general and essential results.' 
 
 And he gives the following illustration on 
 the basis of Comte's classification of the 
 sciences : ' The natural philosophers who have 
 not in the first place studied astronomy, at 
 least under the general point of view ; the 
 chemists who, before occupying themselves 
 with their own science, have not previously 
 studied astronomy, and, after it, physics ; the 
 physiologists who have not prepared themselves
 
 Mathematics Science 105 
 
 for their special labours by a preliminary study 
 of astronomy, of physics, and of chemistry all 
 want one of the fundamental conditions of their 
 intellectual development.' 
 
 The utility of scientific knowledge is obvious. 
 The whole of our commerce and manufacturing 
 industries are based upon it. As we have 
 wrested from Nature her secrets, so our oppor- 
 tunities of progress in power, in happiness, 
 and in culture, have increased. We have ac- 
 quired the knowledge of the constitution of the 
 earth's crust only to snatch from its entrails 
 the two prime sources of our great industrial 
 activity coal and iron : the one the source of 
 light, heat, and mechanical power ; the other 
 the means by which alone our great mechanical 
 knowledge can be practically utilized. We 
 have studied the motions of the heavenly 
 bodies and the mysteries of the magnet, and, 
 with knowledge thus acquired, have mapped 
 out the surface of the globe, and are thus 
 enabled to send our ships to distant parts of 
 the earth with unerring precision. We no 
 longer regard electricity as the ' flashing wrath 
 of the Deity,' but have learnt to control and 
 utilize it until it has become one of the potent 
 factors in our civilization. Again, from the 
 study of the constitution and functions of man, 
 the art of medicine has arisen, with all its 
 possibilities of arresting and curing our diseases. 
 In fact, there is no department of science
 
 io6 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 which man has not made to answer to his 
 material needs. 
 
 But scientific education has a deeper and 
 more significant purpose.* As a spiritual in- 
 fluence, illustrative of the singleness of mind 
 that pervades all creation, its chief importance 
 stands declared. The whole use of astronomy 
 is not included in the pages of the ' Nautical 
 Almanack.' On the contrary, its immediate 
 justification rests in the fact that it has un- 
 folded to us -a perfect intelligence manifesting 
 itself in laws and principles of faultless harmony 
 and stability, by which the universe is, we may 
 safely affirm, preserved in perpetual equilibrium. 
 As an individual fact, it may be interesting to 
 know the exact amount of perturbation exist- 
 ing between the planets Uranus and Neptune ; 
 but it is, or should be, of universal interest, 
 and, what is more, the subject of reverential 
 wonder and admiration, the fact that so precise 
 and Providential is the balance of the system 
 that that perturbation will in time receive its 
 due compensation and the stability o-f the 
 system be preserved. 
 
 ' To the establishment of invariable laws,' 
 says Spencer, ' we owe our emancipation from 
 the grossest superstitions. But for science we 
 should be still worshipping fetishes, or, with 
 
 * The succeeding paragraphs appeared substantially 
 as here produced in a contribution of the author's to the 
 Echo newspaper.
 
 Mathematics Science 107 
 
 hecatombs of victims, propitiating diabolical 
 deities.' 
 
 By a profound intuition, the ancient Jews 
 maintained the existence of but one God, a 
 belief to which modern science fully subscribes. 
 The entire body of scientific evidence is accu- 
 mulated in support of it, and every new dis- 
 covery helps to confirm it. By the aid of 
 science we find that the evolution of humanity 
 is ordered upon a wise and symmetrical design, 
 and that the perplexities that vex us arise only 
 when our knowledge is imperfect, and we view 
 the events of life as isolated facts, and not in 
 perspective in the scheme of the creation. 
 
 Thus, it is to attain a knowledge of the laws 
 of Nature that our highest efforts should be con- 
 secrated. In doing this, we shall find 'a guide 
 and sanction for our conduct a sanction no 
 longer external and imposed by the State, but 
 internal and imposed by the mind.'* 
 
 * ' Aristotle,' by Thomas Davidson.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ART. 
 
 ' If I were to define art, I should be inclined to call it 
 the endeavour after perfection in execution. If we meet 
 with even a piece of mechanical work which bears the 
 marks of being done in this spirit which is done as if 
 the workman loved it, and tried to make it as good as 
 possible, though something less good would have 
 answered the purpose for which it was ostensibly made 
 we say that he has worked like an artist.' MILL. 
 
 ' The latest efforts of human invention are but a con- 
 tinuation of certain devices which were practised in the 
 earliest ages of the world and in the rudest state of 
 mankind.' FERGUSON. 
 
 ' Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, 
 wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to 
 sadness, gaiety and life to everything.' PLATO. 
 
 WE have already, in speaking of the cultivation 
 of imagination, approached the subject of art 
 training. Let us now deal with it more in 
 detail. 
 
 But, in the first place, what is Art ? 
 
 In speaking of poetry, Lord Bacon observes: 
 ' The use of this feigned history hath been to 
 give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind
 
 Art 109 
 
 of man in those points wherein the nature of 
 things doth deny it, the world being in propor- 
 tion inferior to the soul ; by reason whereof 
 there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more 
 ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a 
 more absolute variety, than can be found in the 
 nature of things.' 
 
 And, we may add, there is a more perfect 
 beauty. ' There is nothing of any kind so fair,' 
 says Cicero, ' that there may not be a fairer 
 conceived by the mind. We can conceive of 
 statues more perfect than those of Phidias. 
 Nor did the artist, when he made the statue 
 of Jupiter or Minerva, contemplate any one 
 individual form from which to take a likeness ; 
 but there was in his mind a form of beauty, 
 gazing on which he guided his hand and skill 
 in imitation of it.' 
 
 To give form to this ideal is the purpose of 
 art. To select and assemble in one whole 
 beauties and perfections which are usually seen 
 in different individuals, excluding everything 
 defective or unseemly, and thereout to form a 
 type or model of the species :* this is the 
 method of art. Zeuxis, it is said, drew his 
 picture of ideal beauty from five of the most 
 beautiful women of Crotona. 
 
 ' Art,' says John Stuart Mill, ' when really 
 cultivated, and not merely practised empiri- 
 cally, maintains, what it first gave the con- 
 * Dr. Fleming.
 
 1 1 o The Building of the Intellect 
 
 ception of, an ideal beauty, to be externally 
 aimed at, though surpassing what can be 
 actually attained.' 
 
 From the standpoint of education, art has a 
 twofold aspect, according as it appeals to the 
 intellect or the emotions. It appeals to the 
 intellect in so far as it displays technical skill 
 and craftsmanship. It appeals to the emotions 
 by reason of the sentiments it illustrates. 
 ' Now, an ignorant man,' says M. Chesneau, 
 ' is not insensible to the influence of a work of 
 art, when it is conceived by so high a standard 
 as to rouse the best impulses of our nature. 
 Such works as these he at once apprehends.' 
 ' His heart,' says George Sand, 'will teach him 
 what his ignorance hides from him.' ... 'It 
 is the feeling of the work that appeals to him, 
 and he will be no less, or perhaps even more, 
 touched by a piece of indifferent execution as 
 by learned workmanship.' 
 
 But, adds M. Chesneau, he is insensible to 
 the ' cleverness, solidity, or technical skill which 
 enchant a practised amateur,' and the 'subtlety, 
 refinement, and special skill of handling will be 
 a sealed book to him.' 
 
 This distinction seems to indicate the proper 
 limitations of art training in our schools. We 
 have already, when treating of the imagination, 
 called attention to the injurious effect that is 
 likely to ensue from an untimely stimulation of 
 the emotions. What Jean Paul Richter so
 
 Art 1 1 r 
 
 eloquently prescribes for the healthy cultivation 
 of the poetic genius may be taken to apply to 
 the art temperament in general. ' The feelings 
 of the poet,' he says, ' should be closely and 
 coolly covered, and the hardest and driest 
 sciences should retard the bursting blossoms 
 till the due springtime.' But the feelings of 
 the poet differ from the feelings of the painter 
 or musician only in their instrument of expres- 
 sion : the one has language, the others colour 
 and tone. All are a means to an end, and the 
 end in each is the expression of feeling. 
 
 But though systematic expression of feeling 
 in youth is to be discountenanced, it does not 
 justify the total exclusion of art training from 
 our curriculum. It must be allowed that the 
 technical side of art the acquisition of art 
 knowledge and skill in art method is not open 
 to the objection we have named. On the con- 
 trary, it is disciplinary, and, moreover, neces- 
 sary as an aid to subsequent general culture. 
 But let us give this more careful considera- 
 tion. 
 
 ' The beginnings of every study,' says Quin- 
 tilian, ' are formed in accordance with some 
 prescribed rule.' The accumulated experience 
 of mankind, sifted and refined by frequent re- 
 examination, becomes embodied in rules and 
 principles. These, by general assent, have 
 become the foundations of knowledge. They 
 are steps to higher efforts, and must be scaled
 
 1 1 2 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 before the mind can achieve original work. 
 ' Though to invent,' says the same author, 
 ' was first in order of time, and holds the first 
 place in merit, yet it is of advantage to copy 
 what has been invented with success. Indeed, 
 the whole conduct of life is based on the desire 
 of doing ourselves that which we approve in 
 others.' Thus it is that the beginning of art 
 consists of imitation. 
 
 The art training of our children, then, should 
 be confined to the imitation of what has already 
 been invented with success, to the pursuit of 
 established principles and method. After they 
 have acquired these, after they have ' equalled 
 what they imitate,' they can, when relaxation 
 in other studies is permissible, push on to 
 higher efforts. ' The pupil must first obtain a 
 thorough knowledge of art,' says Mr. Val 
 Prinsep, ' and then render his own feelings, 
 which he alone can find out.' By this the 
 mind will receive its proper direction of im- 
 pulse, and will be the less liable to waste its 
 efforts in vague imaginings. 
 
 The question then arises, To what limit 
 should this art training be followed ? By the 
 majority of us, art will not be studied at school 
 with a view to pursuing it in after-life. We 
 shall relinquish its pursuit to those who are 
 specially endowed. But however we decide, 
 we shall have reaped advantages from our 
 training that will endure through life ; we shall
 
 Art 113 
 
 have it in our power to become judges of what 
 is excellent in art, and take a proper pleasure 
 therein ;* and this power acquired, we shall 
 imperceptibly grow, not only to seek perfection 
 in art, but to idealize, as much as possible, 
 every work we do, and, most of all, our own 
 characters and lives.f 
 
 In dealing with music as a subject of school 
 education, we are brought face to face with 
 several important considerations. 
 
 What we have already said of art generally 
 applies particularly to music. Music is, perhaps 
 more than poetry or painting, the language of 
 the emotions, and is, therefore, particularly 
 open to the objection that we made when 
 treating of the emotional side of art. More- 
 over, as music is more commonly studied and 
 is pushed to a more advanced stage in school 
 years than other branches of art, the immode- 
 rate pursuit of music lays itself the more open 
 to condemnation. 
 
 Musicians, when suffered to become absorbed 
 from youth upward in their profession, not un- 
 frequently manifest the most restricted general 
 knowledge, and the most limited general capa- 
 city. Mr. Haweis, while admitting the perils 
 that attend the musician's mental develop- 
 ment, attributes their origin to the following 
 cause : 
 
 ' They ' (the musicians), he observes, ' have 
 * Aristotle. t Mill.
 
 ii4 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 not so much time for reading and thinking. . . . 
 The practice of musical mechanism is not in- 
 tellectual : it does not nourish the brain or 
 feed the heart ; it does not even leave the 
 mind at liberty to think ; it chokes everything 
 but its own development, and that is merely 
 a physical development. . . . The musician's 
 strict exercise which, after all, takes up a 
 great deal of his time admits of very little 
 intellect, imagination, or emotion. It requires 
 industry, perception, and nerve; in short, be- 
 cause it is more mechanical, it is therefore less 
 refining and elevating.' 
 
 In our next chapter it will be shown how 
 morality lies in the co-ordinate development 
 of all the faculties, and how the forcing of one 
 or more at the expense of the rest not unfre- 
 quently results in an injurious disturbance of 
 the balance of the moral nature. Upon this 
 thesis it will be seen how harmful must be 
 the effect of the dedication of a child's best 
 efforts to the paramount pursuit of music. 
 The science learnt in early years too quickly 
 resolves itself into the art. The art gradually 
 appropriates more and more of the pupil's 
 intellectual activity, until in the end it exercises 
 a supreme dominion over his mental faculties, 
 and absorbs, for the purposes of its own de- 
 velopment, that energy which should be exer- 
 cised towards the maturing of the mind as a 
 whole.
 
 Art 115 
 
 Further, though, as we are reminded by 
 Mr. Haweis, the musician's strict exercise is 
 merely physical development, it is not exercise 
 of a kind capable of counteracting the deleteri- 
 ous effects of the pursuit of music unaccom- 
 panied by that more beneficial exercise so 
 necessary for the preservation of the health 
 of both body and mind. The effect, says 
 Plato, on one who studies music exclusively, 
 is that, ' should he possess any spirit, it softens 
 it like iron, and makes it serviceable instead of 
 useless and harsh. When, however, he posi- 
 tively declines desisting, and becomes the 
 victim of a kind of fascination, after this he 
 is melted and dissolved, till his spirit is quite 
 spent, and the nerves are, as it were, cut out 
 from his soul.' 
 
 But let us not be understood from the above 
 to depreciate the value of music, nor to dis- 
 countenance the pursuit of it. We do neither. 
 With due, regard to the claims of other studies, 
 we consider the study of music necessary to 
 insure the full development of the mental 
 faculties ; for we hold that a mind insensible 
 to the beauties of art, and therefore of music, 
 is one that is but half awakened. What is 
 concerned with music, says Plato, ought, some- 
 how, to terminate with the love of the beau- 
 tiful. It is not enough that the mind be 
 transformed into the ' clear, cold logic-engine ' 
 of the scientist or man of business. The 
 
 82
 
 1 6 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 emotions are as much a fact as the judgment, 
 and each expresses itself in its own way, and 
 has need of its own particular language. By 
 all means, let us study music ; but beware, lest 
 it become our infatuation !
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BASIS OF MORALITY. 
 
 ' If, then, intellect is something divine in relation to 
 man, the life lived according to it must be divine in 
 relation to human life.' ARISTOTLE. 
 
 'Right action is better than right knowledge ; but, in 
 order to do what is right, we must know what is right.' 
 BALUZIUS. 
 
 1 Refrain to-night ; 
 
 And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
 To the next abstinence : the next more easy : 
 For use almost can change the stamp of nature, 
 And either curb the devil, or throw him out 
 With wondrous potency.' 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ' But men must know that in this theatre of man's life 
 it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers-on.' 
 BACON. 
 
 IN the ' Republic ' Plato has said that it is 
 incumbent upon each one of us to learn and 
 find out who will make him expert and intelli- 
 gent to discern a good life and a bad. 
 
 To choose the good and reject the bad ; to 
 practise virtue, that ' health, beauty, and good 
 habit of the soul,' and eschew vice, ' its disease, 
 deformity, and infirmity ' this is the final aim
 
 1 1 8 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 of education : knowledge, to ' point the way ; 
 and discipline, to reach the goal. 
 
 And how is this perfection to be gained ? 
 Is virtue a separate faculty, like the memory, 
 that can be developed by artificial aids ? 
 'Perfection,' Matthew Arnold says, 'is a har- 
 monious expansion of all the powers which 
 make the beauty and worth of human nature, 
 and it is not consistent with the over-develop- 
 ment of any one power at the expense of the 
 rest.' It is * the fit details strictly combined in 
 view of a large general result.' 
 
 But though perfection lies in the harmonious 
 expansion of all the powers which make the 
 beauty and worth of human nature, we must 
 not from that conclude that perfection lies in 
 their equal development. It is, no doubt, 
 possible for us to conceive a type of human 
 nature manifesting to the full our ideals of per- 
 fection both in its collective and separate 
 features ; but so far is such a type beyond our 
 hopes of realization that we must be content to 
 regard perfection as a relative term, and, for 
 the purposes of education, hold each individual 
 perfect whose unequal powers for good have 
 expanded to their utmost without disturbing the 
 general harmony of the whole. We must not 
 seek perfection in uniformity. No two flowers, 
 even of the same species or on the same plant, 
 are alike. Though corresponding in their 
 general characteristics, there are diversities of
 
 The Basis of Morality 1 1 9 
 
 form, colour, and scent that give to each its 
 individuality. We must attempt to unfold, 
 says Lavater, only what Nature is desirous of 
 unfolding, give what Nature is capable of re- 
 ceiving, and take away that with which Nature 
 would not be encumbered. 
 
 The form of education most calculated to 
 enlarge the scholar's special power is, unfortu- 
 nately, not that best suited to promote his 
 growth of character. In other words, the con- 
 centration that is necessary for success in life 
 will operate to disturb the harmony and balance 
 of the mind upon which all true morality is 
 based. 
 
 ' Is it better,' says De Quincey, ' to be a 
 profound student or a comprehensive one ? In 
 some degree,' he answers, ' this must depend 
 upon the direction of the studies ; but generally, 
 I think, it is better for the interests of know- 
 ledge that the scholar should aim at profundity, 
 and better for the interests of the individual 
 that he should aim at comprehensiveness. A 
 due balance and equilibrium of the mind is 
 best preserved by a large and multiform know- 
 ledge ; but knowledge itself is best served by 
 an exclusive (or at least paramount) dedication 
 of one mind to one science.' 
 
 An equivalent, but perhaps more suggestive, 
 answer to this question is made by Schiller in 
 ' The ^Esthetic Education of Man.' He there 
 says : ' Partial exercise of the faculties leads
 
 1 20 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 the individual undoubtedly into error, but the 
 species into truth.' And further on : ' Extra- 
 ordinary men are formed by energetic and 
 over-excited spasms, as it were, in the indi- 
 vidual faculties, though it is true that the 
 equable exercise of all the faculties in harmony 
 with each other can alone make happy and 
 perfect men.' 
 
 We must not ignore the fact that the con- 
 ditions of present life tend more and more to 
 make specialists of us. ' So vast is the accu- 
 mulation of facts,' observes Spencer, ' which 
 men of science have before them, that only by 
 dividing and subdividing their labours can they 
 deal with it.' It is as when we visit some great 
 cathedral, which, as we approach, we regard as 
 a whole, contemplating the harmony of its pro- 
 portions and the elegance of its design. It is 
 not until we are under its very towers that the 
 charm of its detail strikes us, and we then give 
 ourselves over to an examination of its subor- 
 dinate beauties. The closer we approach, the 
 better are we able to distinguish its minor 
 characteristics ; but the less able are we to 
 realize the proportion and relationship of its 
 various parts. Were it not for the aid of 
 memory, we should lose all appreciation of the 
 symmetry of the building as a whole, and be 
 only too ready to attach to the particular part 
 under our immediate observation a greater or 
 less importance than is justified by the facts.
 
 The Basis of Morality 1 2 1 
 
 * Each,' said Plato, ' may exercise one business 
 well, but many not.' This is no doubt true ; 
 and it is equally true that it is the duty of each 
 one of us to exercise his business well. But we 
 may here apply the advice given by Sir James 
 Sawyer in an address to medical students, 
 when he insisted that they should aim at be- 
 coming specialists rather in practice than in 
 knowledge. Our knowledge should not be con- 
 fined to merely what is necessary for excellence 
 in our particular vocation ; for in that case we 
 shall falsify, through the habitual frame of mind 
 this exclusive cultivation will give us, every 
 other impression our minds will receive.* 
 
 Every pursuit, when followed exclusively, 
 carries its own Nemesis with it. ' Experience 
 proves,' says John Stuart Mill, ' that there is no 
 one study or pursuit which, practised to the 
 exclusion of all others, does not narrow and 
 pervert the mind, breeding in it a class of pre- 
 judices special to that pursuit, besides a general 
 prejudice, common to all narrow specialities, 
 against large views, from an incapacity to take 
 in and appreciate the grounds of them.' 
 
 Of the attorney of his day, Bishop Earle wrote: 
 ' His business gives him not leave to think of 
 his conscience, and when the time or term of 
 his life is going out, for doomsday he is secure, 
 for he hopes he has a trick to reverse judgment.' 
 
 A caricature, no doubt, but only a partial 
 * Herbart.
 
 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 one ! We have here a mind ' narrowed and 
 perverted' by the prejudices and illusions 
 peculiar to a particular calling. The broader 
 principles of justice and honesty are obscured, 
 and conduct is shaped by the exigencies of 
 professional interests. 
 
 Medicine, too, is open to the same censure. 
 The practice of vivisection can, we feel sure, 
 prevail only where the mind, devoted to one 
 pursuit, has ceased to recognise the higher 
 claims of pity. Little is of value to such a 
 mind but what is subservient to the advance- 
 ment of its one aim, and life itself becomes 
 merely a temporary vehicle for exhibiting in 
 prolonged suffering its obscure phenomena. 
 
 We have already shown the inadvisability of 
 introducing special studies into the general 
 education. The reason for this will now be 
 more apparent. ' The individuality,' says Her- 
 bart, ' must first be changed through widened 
 interest, and approximate to a general form, 
 before they (the teachers) can venture to think 
 they will find it amenable to the general obliga- 
 tory moral law.' 
 
 Morality, he contends, has its root in many- 
 sidedness. ' The more individuality is blended 
 with manysidedness,' he observes, ' the more 
 easily will the character assert its sway over 
 the individual.' For morality lies in our power 
 to estimate the due proportion and value of 
 circumstances and things, and to make the
 
 The Basis of Morality 1 2 3 
 
 exercise of this power the moving impulse of 
 our life ; and it is at variance with our ' inap- 
 titude for seeing more than one side of a thing, 
 and our intense energetic absorption in the 
 particular pursuit we happen to be following.'* 
 But general knowledge is not necessarily 
 surface knowledge a 'versatility in everything, 
 with sure knowledge of nothing.' Sokrates has 
 said that ' it is better to accomplish a little 
 thoroughly than a great deal insufficiently.' 
 But it is one thing, Sir John Lubbock has 
 reminded us, to know a few stray facts of a 
 subject ; it is quite a different thing to be well 
 grounded in it. 
 
 The limit of general studies has been well 
 denned by John Stuart Mill, and, helping as it 
 does to disperse the mists that envelop a diffi- 
 cult subject, we cannot do better than quote 
 his words. He observes : ' To have a general 
 knowledge of a subject is to know only its 
 leading truths, but to know these not super- 
 ficially, but thoroughly, so as to have a true 
 conception of the subject in its great features, 
 leaving the minor details to those who require 
 them for the purposes of their special pursuit. 
 There is no incompatibility between knowing 
 a wide range of subjects up to this point, and 
 some one subject with the completeness required 
 by those who make it their principal occupa- 
 tion. It is this combination which gives an 
 * Matthew Arnold.
 
 124 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 enlightened public a body of cultivated intel- 
 lects, each taught by its attainments in its own 
 province what real knowledge is, and knowing 
 enough of other subjects to be able to discern 
 who are those that know them better.' 
 
 But such knowledge is not of itself the final 
 guide to conduct. We need the help of the 
 imagination. We must cultivate standards of 
 excellence, ideals of perfection. We can have 
 no direct experience of absolute goodness or 
 perfect beauty; but, from familiarity with objects 
 which display the qualities of goodness and 
 beauty, we can form our own idea of absolute 
 goodness and perfect beauty, and these will be 
 our standards and exemplars in the work of 
 self-examination. 
 
 ' The ideal,' says Dr. Fleming, ' is to be 
 attained by selecting and assembling in the 
 one whole the beauties and perfections which 
 are usually seen in different individuals, ex- 
 cluding everything defective or unseemly, so as 
 to form a type or model of the species. Thus, 
 the Apollo Belvedere is an ideal of the beauty 
 and proportion of the human frame ; the 
 Farnese Hercules is an ideal of manly strength. 
 The ideal can only be attained by following 
 Nature. There must be no elements nor com- 
 binations but such as Nature exhibits ; but the 
 elements of beauty and perfection must be dis- 
 engaged from individuals, and embodied in one 
 faultless whole.'
 
 The Basis of Morality 125 
 
 Hence it will be seen that our ideals corre- 
 spond with the state of our mental cultivation. 
 The Apollo Belvedere does not exist in Nature. 
 It is the embodiment of the sculptor's acquaint- 
 ance with many separate instances of manly 
 beauty. The wider his experience has been, 
 the more likely is his work to show the in- 
 fluence of all available instances of manly 
 beauty. His ideal cannot be affected by in- 
 stances of manly beauty of which he is not 
 cognizant. 
 
 So it is with our ideals of justice, duty, and 
 the like. They will be high according to the 
 extent of our acquaintance with individual 
 instances of justice and duty, and we shall 
 shape our composite idea of perfect justice 
 and perfect duty from the instances of indi- 
 vidual justice and individual duty that come 
 under our notice. As we shall regard our own 
 imperfections by the light of our idea of per- 
 fection, how necessary it is that our idea should 
 be a high one : for it is our duty, says Aristotle, 
 as far as may be, to act as immortal beings, 
 and do all we can to live in accordance with 
 the supreme part of us. 
 
 But let us not indulge the vain belief that so 
 many have held, that the intellectual conditions 
 of morality are our only concern. To cite the 
 parallel that Sokrates so frequently employed 
 of the education of the professional man the 
 surgeon, for instance. As we have shown in
 
 126 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 an earlier chapter, a full knowledge of the 
 human body is not identical with skill in 
 surgery ; for, though skill in surgery cannot be 
 attained until this previous knowledge be ac- 
 quired, we know by experience that the intel- 
 lectual conditions of surgery do not meet the 
 whole demand. In like manner, the knowledge 
 of what is right in conduct is not identical with 
 the successful practice of what is right. No 
 two ideas are more frequently confounded in 
 the unscientific mind than science and art, 
 theory and practice. To keep them distinct is 
 to render intelligible much that is apparently 
 obscure in the material of our thought. 
 Amongst other subjects upon which the ob- 
 servance of this precaution sheds especial light 
 is that of which we now treat, moral train- 
 ing- 
 There is a science of good conduct, and there 
 is an art of good conduct the theory and prac- 
 tice respectively. Our remarks hitherto, devoted 
 as they have been to maintaining the importance 
 of knowledge in building up the moral nature, 
 have touched upon only the theory of conduct. 
 But as the surgeon would be but half equipped 
 if he possessed only the knowledge of anatomy 
 and physiology without skill in practice, so, in 
 matters of conduct, the individual is ill furnished 
 if he have only acquired the knowledge of what 
 is right in conduct without the habit of putting 
 it in practice.
 
 The Basis of Morality 1 2 7 
 
 Habits, as we have shown, are acquired by 
 virtue of things done, not things known. As 
 practice is necessary to give skill in surgery, so 
 the practice of good acts can alone create good 
 habits. But the surgeon's practice is regulated 
 by method, and his method is determined by 
 his knowledge of that upon which he has to 
 operate. In like manner, the development of 
 our moral habits should proceed with method, 
 and the method should be determined by the 
 general knowledge that we have shown to 
 constitute the theory of moral training. 
 
 But the greater the experience of the surgeon, 
 the more intimate is the alliance between 
 theory and practice, and the less easily can he 
 be induced to extend his practice beyond the 
 limits of his knowledge, or, conversely, the less 
 likely is he to allow his knowledge to fall short 
 of the limits of his practice. In matters of 
 conduct, may we not safely affirm that the more 
 the knowledge of what is right underlies the 
 habit of doing what is right, the more potent 
 will knowledge relatively become in controlling 
 the moral nature ? We are, of course, aware 
 that the professional man has inducements to 
 preserve his fitness undiminished, that find only 
 a partial parallel in the domain of ethics. The 
 stimulus of competition, the sanctity of pro- 
 fessional reputation, the material remuneration 
 of successful practice, are considerations that 
 have weight, even in natures in which the pride
 
 128 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 of good workmanship brings its own reward. 
 For all this, however, it will be found that the 
 individual, even apart from outside inducements, 
 has a singular propensity for adjusting his acts 
 to the dictates of his reason, and the more so 
 the less casual and indefinite the knowledge is 
 upon which his reason operates. 
 
 But the acquisition of knowledge is a slow 
 process, and habits are formed only after long 
 practice. What, then, is to be the moral force 
 of childhood and youth ? It is a question that 
 gives rise to much speculation, and to which 
 no satisfactory answer is obtainable. Each has 
 his pet nostrum, the product of 'much faith 
 and much chance'; but none seem able to 
 refer their method to an adequate know- 
 ledge of the material with which they have to 
 deal. The only definite answer given to this 
 question is that supplied by the youth of the 
 race. From this comparison we learn, if we 
 take the history of the ancient Greeks as our 
 guide, that in the youth of the race feeling 
 is the paramount moral sanction. We also 
 learn that feeling gradually gives place to judg- 
 ment, and that during this period of transition 
 the moral force is external and imposed, des- 
 tined, it would seem, to assist the formation of 
 moral habits at a time when the knowledge 
 acquired is inadequate as a guide. 
 
 It remains only to observe that work is one 
 of the chief factors in moral training. ' Religion
 
 The Basis of Morality 129 
 
 without work,' says Froebel, ' runs the risk of 
 becoming empty dreaming, passing enthusiasm, 
 and an evanescent phantom, as work without 
 religion makes man a beast of burden or a 
 machine.' The acquisition of knowledge and 
 the development of power must be regarded 
 as only a means to an end ; and that end 
 is action. ' But for contemplation,' observes 
 Lord Bacon, 'which should be finished in 
 itself, without casting beams upon society, 
 surely divinity knoweth it not.'
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TEACHERS. 
 
 ' People think that morals are corrupted in schools : 
 for indeed they are at times corrupted ; but such may be 
 the case even at home. Many proofs of this fact may be 
 adduced, proofs of character having been vitiated, as well 
 as preserved with the utmost purity, under both modes of 
 education. It is the disposition of the individual pupil, 
 and the care taken of him, that makes the whole differ- 
 ence.' QUINTILIAN. 
 
 ' Those who, in eagerness to cultivate their pupils' 
 minds, are reckless of their bodies, do not remember that 
 success in the world depends more on energy than in- 
 formation, and that a policy which in cramming with 
 information undermines energy is self-defeating.' 
 SPENCER. 
 
 ' The beginning is more than half the whole.' From 
 the Greek. 
 
 ' It is a singular circumstance that within a quarter of 
 a mile of the well-head of the Wye arises the Severn. 
 The two springs are nearly alike ; but the fortunes of 
 rivers, like those of men, are owing to various little cir- 
 cumstances of which they take advantage in the early 
 part of their course.' WILLIAM GILPIN. 
 
 MUCH has been written and said upon the 
 respective advantages of public and private 
 tuition. Parents who hope, by the engagement
 
 Teachers i 3 i 
 
 of a private tutor, to shield their children from 
 the possibility of contamination in school life, 
 often have reason to regret the loss of the virile 
 influence that the school competition and 
 sports afford. Dupanloup once said : ' I have 
 heard a man of great sense utter this remark- 
 able word, " If a usurping and able Government 
 wanted to get rid of great races in the country, 
 and root them out, it need only come down to 
 this, that it require of them, .out of respect for 
 themselves, to bring up their children at home, 
 alone, far from their equals, shut up in the 
 narrow horizon of a private education and a 
 private tutor." '* 
 
 The importance of bodily exercise as a con- 
 comitant to mental effort is well recognised 
 in the public schools of this country. In^ 
 ancient Greece it was an important feature in 
 the training of the young, regarded as it was 
 not only as a means towards bodily develop- 
 ment, but also as an indispensable aid in pro- 
 moting strength and vigour of mind. 
 
 Gymnastics was the form of exercise em- 
 ployed by the children of ancient Greece. 
 They were trained to acquire ' the grace and 
 activity of motion, the free step, the erect mien, 
 the healthy glow.'t Mr. Mahaffy, in his ' Old 
 Greek Education,' contrasts this practice with 
 the advantages enjoyed by the modern English 
 
 * Rev. Thomas Hughes' ' Loyola.' 
 t Dr. Donaldson. 
 
 92
 
 132 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 scholar, and observes : ' I say it quite deliber- 
 ately : the public schoolboy, who is trained in 
 cricket, football, and rowing, and who in his 
 holidays can obtain riding, salmon-fishing, 
 hunting and shooting, enjoys a physical training 
 which no classical days ever equalled.' Froebel, 
 too, has remarked the profound mental dis- 
 cipline that arises from well-organized school 
 sports. ' I studied the boys' play,' he says, 
 'the whole series of games in the open air, 
 and learned to recognise their mighty power to 
 awaken and to strengthen the intelligence and 
 the soul as well as the body.' 
 
 All this will be lost to the student who pur- 
 sues his studies privately. The choice is a 
 difficult one to make, and has disturbed the 
 minds of men the most capable of coming to a 
 decision. Dr. Arnold, in a letter to Sir Thomas 
 Paisley, gives expression to conflicting views 
 on the subject. ' The difficulties of education,' 
 he says, ' stare me in the face whenever I look 
 at my own four boys. I think by-and-by I 
 shall put them into the school here, but I shall 
 do it with trembling. Experience seems to 
 point out no one plan of education as decidedly 
 the best ; it only says, I think, that public 
 education is the best where it answers. But, 
 then, the question is, Will it answer with one's 
 own boy ? and if it fails, is the failure complete? 
 It becomes a question of particulars. A very 
 good private tutor would tempt me to try
 
 Teachers 133 
 
 private education, or a very good public school, 
 with connections amongst the boys at it, might 
 induce me to venture upon public. Still, there 
 is much chance in the matter; for a school 
 may change its character greatly, even with the 
 same master, by the prevalence of a good or 
 bad set of boys, and this no caution can guard 
 against. But I should certainly advise any- 
 thing rather than a private school of above 
 thirty boys. Large private schools, I think, 
 are the worst possible system ; the choice lies 
 between public schools and an education 
 whose character may be strictly private and 
 domestic.' 
 
 With regard to the teachers themselves, 
 when it lies in our power, as it seldom does, to 
 exercise some choice, the following considera- 
 tions deserve attention. 
 
 ' The beginning of every work,' says Plato, 
 ' is the most important, especially to anyone 
 young and tender, because then that particular 
 impression is most easily instilled and formed 
 which anyone may wish to imprint on each 
 individual.' 
 
 How frequently we hear it remarked that the 
 rudiments of education, because they appear 
 simple, can be taught by the half-educated ! 
 ' Let me assure you,' says Huxley, ' that 
 that is the profoundest mistake in the world. 
 There is nothing so difficult to do as to write 
 a good elementary book, and there is nobody
 
 134 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 so hard to teach properly and well as people 
 who know nothing about a subject. ... It 
 involves that difficult process of knowing what 
 you know so well that you can talk about it as 
 you can talk about your ordinary business. A 
 man can always talk about his own business. 
 He can always make it plain ; but if his know- 
 ledge is hearsay, he is afraid to go beyond 
 what he has recollected, and put it before 
 those that are ignorant in such a shape that 
 they shall comprehend it.' 
 
 Quintilian has much to say on this topic, 
 and what he has said, like almost everything 
 he has said, deserves attention. Though he is 
 treating primarily of the education of the 
 orator, yet the remarks we now quote apply to 
 education generally. 
 
 ' Would Philip, King of Macedonia,' he 
 exclaims, ' have wished the first principles of 
 learning to be communicated to his son Alex- 
 ander by Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of 
 that age, or would Aristotle have undertaken 
 that office, if they had not both thought that 
 the first rudiments of instruction are best 
 treated by the most accomplished teacher, and 
 have an influence on the whole course ?' 
 
 ' The ablest teachers,' he explains, * can teach 
 little things best if they will : first, because it 
 is likely -that he who excels others in eloquence 
 has gained the most accurate knowledge of 
 the means by which men attain eloquence ;
 
 Teachers 135 
 
 secondly, because method, which with the best- 
 qualified instructors is always plainest, is of 
 great efficacy in teaching ; and, lastly, because 
 no man rises to such a height in greater things 
 that lesser fade entirely from his view. . . . 
 What shall be said, too, if it generally happens 
 that instructions given by the most learned 
 are far more easy to be understood and more 
 perspicuous than those of others ? . . . The 
 less able a teacher is, the more obscure will 
 he be.' 
 
 If we seek enlightenment on this topic from 
 the history of nations, we shall find a most in- 
 structive lesson presented to us in the influence 
 exerted on the national mind and character of 
 the ancient Greeks by its great men ; for in- 
 stance, by Lykurgus in Sparta, and by Solon 
 and Kleisthenes in Athens. There can be no 
 doubt that the peculiar qualities of each of 
 these communities were attributable in great 
 measure to the influence of these early law- 
 givers. ' That the Spartans,' says Mr. Grote, 
 ' had an original organization and tendencies 
 common to them with the other Dorians we 
 may readily conceive ; but the Lykurgean con- 
 stitution impressed upon them a peculiar 
 tendency which took them out of the general 
 march.' 
 
 But even more profitable as a pattern of 
 sound and judicious culture is the instance 
 afforded by Perikles, who, according to Mr.
 
 136 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 Grote, found the Athenian character with ' very 
 marked positive characteristics and suscepti- 
 bilities,' and who, too wise to endeavour to 
 mould it afresh, exercised his talents in bring- 
 ing out and improving its most estimable 
 qualities. 
 
 In the foregoing pages we have said much 
 with regard to the aim of education and the 
 mode of attaining it. But systems are of little 
 value if they be not applied by intelligent minds. 
 ' Methods of teaching are very important, but 
 the teacher is of far more importance ; and 
 no teaching of these or any other subject is 
 likely to be worth much unless the teacher is 
 thoroughly master of his work, has made it 
 his own by viewing it in various lights, and is 
 independent of any text-book or any order of 
 viewing Nature. He cannot be too discursive 
 in his reading or varied in his attainments ; 
 and if he is further able to be prosecuting some 
 original work, however humble, in which his 
 pupils can assist him, they will learn more of 
 the true scientific spirit by contagion than they 
 will gather from the most eloquent lectures.'* 
 
 Dr. Arnold holds that a man is only fit to 
 teach so long as he himself is learning daily. 
 ' If the mind once becomes stagnant,' he says, 
 ' it can give no fresh draught to another mind ; 
 it is drinking out of a pond, instead of from a 
 spring. And whatever you read tends generally 
 * Archdeacon Wilson.
 
 Teachers 137 
 
 to your own increase of power, and will be felt 
 by you in a hundred ways hereafter.' 
 
 But great as is the importance of wide know- 
 ledge and skill in teaching in a master, they are 
 not so imperative as rectitude of conduct and 
 loftiness of idea. Pupils will insensibly imitate 
 their teachers, and imitations, says Plato, if 
 from earliest youth onwards they be long con- 
 tinued, become established in the manners and 
 natural temper, both as to body and voice and 
 intellect, too. 
 
 ' There is nothing,' says John Stuart Mill, 
 ' which spreads more contagiously from teacher 
 to pupil than elevation of sentiment. Often 
 and often have students caught from the living 
 influence of a professor a contempt for mean 
 and selfish objects, and a noble ambition to 
 leave the world better than they found it, which 
 they have carried with them throughout life.' 
 
 Let us conclude our observations with regard 
 to the qualities necessary in an enlightened 
 teacher by some valuable remarks of the 
 luminous Quintilian : ' Let him adopt, then, 
 above all things, the feelings of a parent 
 towards his pupils, and consider that he 
 succeeds to the place of those by whom the 
 children were entrusted to him. Let him 
 neither have vices in himself nor tolerate them 
 in others. Let his austerity not be stern, nor 
 his affability too easy, lest dislike arise from 
 the one or contempt from the other. Let him
 
 138 The Building of the Intellect 
 
 discourse frequently on what is honourable and 
 good ; for the oftener he admonishes, the more 
 seldom will he have to chastise. Let him not 
 be of an angry temper, and yet not a conniver 
 at what ought to be corrected. Let him be 
 plain in his mode of teaching and patient of 
 labour, but rather diligent in exacting tasks 
 than fond of giving them of excessive length. 
 Let him reply readily to those who put questions 
 to him, and question of his own accord those 
 who do not. In commending the exercises of 
 his pupils, let him be neither niggardly nor 
 lavish ; for the one quality begets dislike of 
 labour, and the other self-complacency. In 
 amending what requires correction, let him not 
 be harsh, and, least of all, not reproachful ; 
 for that very circumstance, that some tutors 
 blame as if they hated, deters many young men 
 from their proposed course of study. Let him 
 every day say something, and even much, 
 which, when the pupils hear, they may carry 
 away with them ; for though he may point out 
 to them, in their course of reading, plenty of 
 examples for their imitation, yet the living voice, 
 as it is called, feeds the mind more nutritiously, 
 and especially the voice of the teacher, whom 
 his pupils, if they are but rightly instructed, 
 both love and reverence. How much more 
 readily we imitate those whom we like can 
 scarcely be expressed.' 
 
 Truly a noble ideal ! Would that it could
 
 Teachers 139 
 
 more frequently be realized ! But we fear that 
 many will say, as Milton did of the qualities he 
 judged necessary to the teacher, 'that this is 
 not a bow for every man to shoot with that counts 
 himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost 
 equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses.' 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.
 
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