Chapter IV: The Basis of National Strength54 (2)

We have, no doubt, arrived at a good starting place, but we may not consider that the journey is accomplished. I need not repeat the charges to which we have laid ourselves open because of our ignorance, but I shall endeavour to take a closer survey of the field of education as regarded from the standpoint of knowledge and the innate affinities existing in the mind with that knowledge which is proper for it. For the present the need is that “abstract knowledge” should present itself to practical persons as the crying demand of the nation; the “mandate,” let us say, pronounced by certain general failures to understand the science of relations, and that other neglected form of knowledge, “the science of the proportion of things.”

V

EDUCATION AND THE FULLNESS OF LIFE

“I must live my life!” said the notorious bandit who before the War terrorized Paris; and we have heard the sort of cant often, even before _The Doll’s House_ gave to “self-expression” the dignity of a cult; nevertheless, the brigand Bonnot has done an ill turn to society, for a misguiding theory neatly put is more dangerous than an ill-example.

We are tired of the man who claims to live his life at the general expense, of the girl who will live hers to her family’s annoyance or distress; but there really is a great opportunity open to the nation which will set itself to consider what the life of a man should be and will give each individual a chance to live his life.

We are doing something; we are trying to open the book of nature to children by the proper key--knowledge, acquaintance by look and name, if not more, with bird and flower and tree; we see, too, that the magic of poetry makes knowledge vital, and children and grown-ups quote a verse which shall add blackness to the ashbud, tender wonder to that “flower in the crannied wall,” a thrill to the song of the lark. As for the numerous field clubs of the northern towns, the members of which, weavers, miners, artisans, reveal themselves as accomplished botanists, birdmen, geologists, their Saturday rambles mean not only “life,” but splendid joy. It is to be hoped that the opportunities afforded in the schools will prepare women to take more part in these excursions; at present the work done is too thorough for their endurance and for their slight attainments.

In another direction we are doing well; we are so made that every dynamic relation, be it leap-frog or high-flying, which we establish with Mother Earth, is a cause of joy; we begin to see this and are encouraging swimming, dancing, hockey, and so on, all instruments of present joy and permanent health. Again, we know that the human hand is a wonderful and exquisite instrument to be used in a hundred movements exacting delicacy, direction and force; every such movement is a cause of joy as it leads to the pleasure of execution and the triumph of success. We begin to understand this and make some efforts to train the young in the deft handling of tools and the practice of handicrafts. Some day, perhaps, we shall see apprenticeship to trades revived, and good and beautiful work enforced. In so far, we are laying ourselves out to secure that each shall “live his life”; and that, not at his neighbour’s expense; because, so wonderful is the economy of the world that when a man really lives his life he benefits his neighbour as well as himself; we all thrive in the well-being of each. We are perceiving, too, that a human being is endowed with an ear attuned to harmony and melody, with a voice from which music may issue, hands whose delicate action may draw forth sounds in enthralling sequence. With the ancient Greeks, we begin to realise that music is a necessary part of education. So, too, of pictorial art; at last we understand that every one can draw, and that, because to draw is delightful, every one should be taught how; that every one delights in pictures, and that education is concerned to teach him what pictures to delight in.

A person may sing and dance, enjoy music and natural beauty, sketch what he sees, have satisfaction in his own good craftsmanship, labour with his hands at honest work, perceiving that work is better than wages; may live his life in various directions, the more the merrier. A certain pleasant play of the intellect attends the doing of all these things; his mind is agreeably exercised; he thinks upon what he is doing, often with excitement, sometimes with enthusiasm. He says, “I must live my life,” and he lives it in as many of these ways as are open to him; no other life is impoverished to supply his fullness, but, on the contrary, the sum of general joy in well-being is increased both through sympathy and by imitation.

This is the sort of ideal that is obtaining in our schools and in the public mind, so that the next generation bid fair to be provided with many ways of living their lives, ways which do not encroach upon the lives of others. Here is the contribution of our generation to the science of education, and it is not an unworthy one; we perceive that a person is to be brought up in the first place for his own uses, and after that for the uses of society; but, as a matter of fact, the person who “lives his life” most completely is also of most service to others because he contains within him provision for many serviceable activities which are employed in living his life; and, besides, there is a negative advantage to the community in the fact that the man is able to live on his own resources.

But a man is not made up only of eyes to see, a heart to enjoy, limbs delightful in the using, hands satisfied with perfect execution: life in all these kinds is open more or less to all but the idly depraved. But what of man’s eager, hungry, restless, insatiable mind? True, we teach him the mechanical art of reading while he is at school, but we do not teach him to read; he has little power of attention, a poor vocabulary, little habit of conceiving any life but his own; to add to the gate-money at a football match is his notion of adventure and diversion.

We are, in fact, only taking count of the purlieus of that vast domain which pertains to every man in right of his human nature. We neglect mind. We need not consider brain; a duly nourished and duly exercised mind takes care of its physical organ provided that organ also receives its proper material nourishment. But our fault, our exceeding great fault, is that we keep our own minds and the minds of our children shamefully underfed. The mind is a spiritual octopus, reaching out limbs in every direction to draw in enormous rations of that which under the action of the mind itself becomes knowledge. Nothing can stale its infinite variety; the heavens and the earth, the past, the present, and future, things great and things minute, nations and men, the universe, all are within the scope of the human intelligence. But there would appear to be, as we have seen, an unsuspected unwritten law concerning the nature of the “material” which is converted into knowledge during the act of apprehension. The idea of the _Logos_ did not come by chance to the later Greeks; “The Word” is not a meaningless title applied to the second Person of the Trinity; it is not without significance that every utterance which fell from Him is marked by exquisite literary fitness; (a child’s comment on a hymn that was read to her was, “that is not poetry; Jesus would have said it _much_ better”); in rendering an account of His august commission Christ said:--“I have given unto them _the words_ which Thou gavest me”; and one disciple voiced the rest when he said, “Thou hast _the words_ of eternal life.” The Greeks knew better than we that words are more than things, more than events; with all primitive peoples rhetoric appears to have been a power; the grand old sayings which we have scorned as inventions are coming to their own again, because, what modern is capable of such inventions? Men move the world, but the motives which move men are conveyed by words. Now, a person is limited by the number of things he is able to call by their names, qualify by appropriate epithets; this is no mere pedantic ruling, it belongs to that unfathomable mystery we call human nature; and the modern notion of education, with its shibboleth of “things not words,” is intrinsically demoralizing. The human intelligence demands letters, literature, with a more than bread-hunger. It is almost within living memory how the newly emancipated American negroes fell upon books as the famished Israelites fell upon food in the deserted camp of Sennacherib.

Only as he has been and is nourished upon books is a man able to “live his life.” A great deal of mechanical labour is necessarily performed in solitude; the miner, the farm-labourer, cannot think all the time of the block he is hewing, the furrow he is ploughing; how good that he should be figuring to himself the trial scene in the _Heart of Midlothian_, the “high-jinks” in _Guy Mannering_, that his imagination should be playing with ‘Ann Page’ or ‘Mrs. Quickly,’ or that his labour goes the better “because his secret soul a holy strain repeats.” People, working people, do these things. Many a one can say out of a rich experience, “My mind to me a kingdom is”; many a one cries with Browning’s ‘Paracelsus,’ “God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind, Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone!” We know how “_Have mynde_” appears on the tiles paving the choir of St. Cross; but “_mynde_” like body, must have its meat.

Faith has grown feeble in these days, hope faints in our heavy ways, but charity waxes strong; we would make all men millionaires if we could, or, at any rate, take from the millionaires to give to the multitude. No doubt some beneficent and venturous Robin Hood of a minister will arise (has arisen?) to take steps in that direction; but when all has been done in the way of social amelioration we shall not have enabled men to “live their lives” unless we have given them a literary education of such sort that they choose to continue in the pleasant places of the mind. “That is all very well in theory,” some one objects, “but look at the Masses, are they able to receive Letters? When they talk it is in journalese, and anything in the nature of a book must be watered down and padded to suit their comprehension.” But is it not true that working men talk in “journalese” because it is only the newspapers that do them the grace to meet them frankly on their own level? Neither school education nor life has put books in their way, and their adoption of the only literary speech that offers but proves a natural aptitude for Letters. One cannot always avoid appeal to the authority one knows to be final, and I will not apologise for citing the fact at which no doubt we have all wondered that Christ should expose the profoundest philosophy to the multitude, the “Many,” whom even Socrates contemns.

May I quote, with apologies to the writer, a letter signed “A Working Man,” written in answer to one of mine which was honoured by being reprinted in _The Times Weekly Edition_? (It is good, by the way, that such a journal should be in the hands of working men). My correspondent “thanks Heaven that there are still a few persons left in this country who regard education as somewhat different from a means of _keeping a shop_.” We may all thank Heaven that there are working men who value knowledge for its own sake and hate to have it presented to them as a means of getting on.

The fact is, Letters make a universal appeal because they respond to certain innate affinities: young Tennysons, De Quinceys, and the like, are, as we all know, inordinate readers, but these are capable of foraging on their own account; it is for the average, the dull, and the backward boy I would lay urgent claim to a literary education; the minds of such as these respond to this and to no other appeal, and they turn out perfectly intelligent persons, open to knowledge by many avenues. For working men whose intelligence is in excess of their education, Letters are the accessible vehicle of knowledge; having learned the elements of reading, writing, and summing, it is unnecessary to trouble them with any other “beggarly elements”; their natural intelligence and mature minds make them capable of dealing with difficulties as they occur; and for further elucidation every working men’s club should have an encyclopædia. Some men naturally take to learning, and will struggle manfully with their Latin grammar, and Cicero, their Euclid and trigonometry. Happy they! But the general conclusion remains, that for men and women of all ages, all classes, and all complexions of mind, Letters are an imperative and daily requirement to satisfy that universal mind-hunger, the neglect of which gives rise to emotional disturbances, and, as a consequence, to evils that dismay us.

VI

KNOWLEDGE IN LITERARY FORM

I have so far urged that knowledge is necessary to men, and that, in the initial stages, it must be conveyed through a literary medium, whether it be knowledge of physics or of Letters, because there would seem to be some inherent quality in mind which prepares it to respond to this form of appeal and no other. I say in the initial stages, because possibly, when the mind becomes conversant with knowledge of a given type, it unconsciously translates the driest formulæ into living speech; perhaps it is for some such reason that mathematics seem to fall outside this rule of literary presentation; mathematics, like music, is a speech in itself, a speech irrefragably logical, of exquisite clarity, meeting the requirements of mind.

To consider Letters as the staple of education is no new thing; nor is the suggestion new that to turn a young person into a library is to educate him. But here we are brought to a stand; the mind demands method, orderly presentation, as inevitably as it demands knowledge; and it may be that our educational misadventures are due to the fact that we have allowed ourselves to take up any haphazard ordering that is recommended with sufficient pertinacity.

But no one can live without a philosophy which points out the order, means and end of effort, intellectual or other; to fail in discovering this is to fall into melancholia, or more active madness: so we go about picking up a maxim here, a motto there, an idea elsewhere, and make a patchwork of the whole which we call our principles; beggarly fragments enough we piece together to cover our nakedness and a hundred phrases which one may hear any day betray lives founded upon an ignoble philosophy. No doubt people are better than their words, better than their own thoughts; we speak of ourselves as “finite beings,” but is there any limit to the generosity and nobility of almost any person? The hastily spoken “It is the rule at sea,” that distressed us a while ago, what a vista does it disclose of chivalric tenderness, entire self-sacrifice! Human nature has not failed; what has failed us is philosophy, and that applied philosophy which is called education. Philosophy, all the philosophies, old and new, land us on the horns of a dilemma; either we do well by ourselves and seek our own perfection of nature or condition, or we do well by others to our own loss or deterioration. If there is a mean, philosophy does not declare it.

There are things of which we have desperate need: we want a new scale of values: I suppose we all felt when, in those days before the War, we read how several millionaires went down in the “Titanic” disaster, not only that their millions did not matter, but that they did not matter to them; that possibly they felt themselves well quit of an incessant fatigue. We want more life: there is not life enough for our living; we have no great engrossing interests; we hasten from one engagement to another and glance furtively at the clock to see how time, life, is getting on; we triumph if a week seems to have passed quickly; who knows but that the approach of an inevitable end might find us glad to get it all over? We want hope: we busy ourselves excitedly about some object of desire, but the pleasure we get is in effort, not in attainment; and we read, before the War, of the number of suicides among Continental schoolboys, for instance, with secret understanding; what is there to live for? We want to be governed: servants like to receive their “orders”; soldiers and schoolboys enjoy discipline; there is satisfaction in stringent Court etiquette; the fact of being “under orders” adds dignity to character. When we revolt it is only that we may transfer our allegiance. We want a new start: we are sick of ourselves and of knowing in advance how we shall behave and how we shall feel on all occasions; the change we half-unconsciously desire is to other aims, other ways of looking at things. We feel that we are more than there is room for; other conditions might give us room; we don’t know; any way, we are uneasy. These are two or three of the secret matters that oppress us, and we are in need of a philosophy which shall deal with such things of the spirit. We believe we should be able to rise to its demands, however exigeant, for the failure is not in us or in human nature so much as in our limited knowledge of conditions.

The cry of decadence is dispiriting, but is it well-founded? The beautiful little gowns that have come down as heirlooms would not fit the “divinely tall” daughters of many a house where they are treasured. We have become frank, truthful, kind; our conscientiousness and our charity are morbid; we cannot rest in our beds for a disproportionate anxiety for the well-being of everybody; we even exceed the generous hazard, that, peradventure for a good man one might be found to die; almost any man will risk his life for the perishing without question of good or bad; and we expect no less from firemen, doctors, life-boatmen, parsons, the general public. And what a comment on the splendid magnanimity of men does the War afford!

An annoying inquiry concerning risks at sea almost resulted in a ruling that no one should let himself be saved so long as others were in danger; it is preposterous, but is what human nature expects of itself. No, we are not decadent on the whole, and our uneasiness is perhaps caused by growing pains. We may be poor things, but we are ready to break forth into singing should the chance open to us of a full life of passionate devotion. Now, all our exigeant demands are met by words written in a Book, and by the manifestations of a Person; and we are waiting for a Christianity such as the world has not yet known. Hitherto, Christ has existed for our uses; but what if a time were coming when we, also, should taste the “orientall fragrancie” of, “My Master!” So it shall be when the shout of a King is among us, and are there not premonitions? But these things come not by prayer and fasting, by good works and self-denial, alone; there is something prior to all these upon which our Master insists with distressful urgency, “Why will ye not know? Why will ye not understand?”

My excuse for touching upon our most intimate concerns is that this matter, too, belongs to the domain of Letters; if we propose to seek knowledge we must proceed in an orderly way, recognising that the principal knowledge is of most importance; the present writer writes and the reader reads, because we are all moved by the spirit of our time; these things are our secret preoccupation, for we have come out of a long alienation as persons “wearied with trifles,” and are ready and anxious for a new age. We know the way, and we know where to find our rule of the road; but we must bring a new zeal and a new method to our studies; we may no longer dip here and there or read a perfunctory chapter with a view to find some word of counsel or comfort for our use. We are engaged in the study of, in noting the development of, that consummate philosophy which meets every occasion of our lives, all demands of the intellect, every uneasiness of the soul.

The arrogance which pronounces judgment upon the written “Word” upon so slight an acquaintance as would hardly enable us to cover a sheet or two of paper with sayings of the Master, which confines the Divine teaching to the great Sermon, of which we are able to rehearse some half-dozen sentences, is as absurd as it is blameworthy. Let us give at least as profound attention to the teaching of Christ as the disciples of Plato, say, gave to his words of wisdom. Let us observe, note-book in hand, the orderly and progressive sequence, the penetrating quality, the irresistible appeal, the unique content of the Divine teaching; (for this purpose it might be well to use some one of the approximately chronological arrangements of the Gospel History in the words of the text). Let us read, not for our profiting, though that will come, but for love of that knowledge which is better than thousands of gold and silver. By and by we perceive that this knowledge is the chief thing in life; the meaning of Christ’s saying, “Behold, I make all things new,” dawns upon us; we get new ideas as to the relative worth of things; new vigour, new joy, new hope are ours.

If we believe that knowledge is the principal thing, that knowledge is tri-partite, and that the fundamental knowledge is the knowledge of God, we shall bring up our children as students of Divinity and shall pursue our own life-long studies in the same school. Then we shall find that the weekly sermons for which we are prepared are as bread to the hungry; and we shall perhaps understand how enormous is the demand we make upon the clergy for living, original thought. It is only as we are initiated that science and “Nature” come to our aid in this chief pursuit; then, they “their great Original proclaim”; but while we are ignorant of the principal knowledge they remain dumb. Literature and history have always great matters to speak of or suggest, because they deal with states or phases of moral government and moral anarchy, and tacitly indicate to us the sole key to all this unintelligible world; and literature not only reveals to us the deepest things of the human spirit, but it is profitable also “for example of life and instruction in manners.”

We are at the parting of the ways; our latest educational authority, one who knows and loves little children, would away with all tales and histories that appeal to the imagination; let children learn by means of things, is her mandate; and the charm and tenderness with which it is delivered may well blind us to its desolating character. We recognise Rousseau, of course, and his _Emile_, that self-sufficient person who should know nothing of the past, should see no visions, allow no authority. But human nature in children is stronger than the eighteenth century philosopher and the theories which he continues to inform. Whoever has told a fairy tale to a child has been made aware of that natural appetency for letters to which it is our business to minister. Are we not able to believe that words are more than meat, and, so believing, shall we not rise up and insist that children shall have a liberal diet of the spirit? Rousseau, in spite of false analogies, fallacious arguments, was able to summon fashionable mothers and men of the world throughout Europe to the great task of education, because his eloquence convinced them that this was their assigned work and a work capable of achievement; and we who perhaps see with clearer eyes should do well to cherish this legacy--the conviction that the education of the succeeding generation is the chief business of every age.

Nevertheless, though we are ourselves emerging from the slough of materialism, we are willing to plunge children into its heavy ways through the agency of a “practical” and “useful” education; but children have their rights, and among these is the freedom of the city of mind. Let them use things, know things, learn through things, by all means; but the more they know Letters the better they will be able, with due instruction, to handle things. I do not hesitate to say that the whole of a child’s instruction should be conveyed through the best literary medium available. His history books should be written with the lucidity, concentration, personal conviction, directness, and admirable simplicity which characterizes a work of literary calibre. So should his geography books; the so-called scientific method of teaching geography now in vogue is calculated to place a child in a somewhat priggish relation to Mother Earth; it is impossible, too, that the human intelligence should assimilate the sentences one meets with in many books for children, but the memory retains them and the child is put in the false attitude of one who offers pseudo-knowledge. Most of the geography books, for example, require to be translated into terms of literature before they can be apprehended. Great confidence is placed in diagrammatic and pictorial representation, and it is true that children enjoy diagrams and understand them as they enjoy and understand puzzles; but there is apt to be in their minds a great gulf between the diagram and the fact it illustrates. We trust much to pictures, lantern slides, cinematograph displays; but without labour there is no profit, and probably the pictures which remain with us are those which we have first conceived through the medium of words; pictures may help us to correct our notions, but the imagination does not work upon a visual presentation; we lay the phrases of a description on our palette and make our own pictures; (works of art belong to another category). We recollect how Dr. Arnold was uneasy until he got details enough to form a mental picture of a place new to him. So it is with children and all persons of original mind: a map to put the place in position, and then, all about it, is what we want.

Readings in literature, whether of prose or poetry, should generally illustrate the historical period studied; but selections should be avoided; children should read the whole book or the whole poem to which they are introduced. Here we are confronted by a serious difficulty. Plato, we know, determined that the poets in his “Republic” should be well looked after lest they should write matter to corrupt the morals of youth; aware of what happened in Europe when the flood-gates of knowledge were opened, Erasmus was anxiously solicitous on this score, and it is a little surprising to find that here, Rossetti was on the side of the angels. Will the publishers, who, since Friedrich Perthes discovered their educational mission, have done so much for the world, help us in this matter also? They must excise with a most sparing hand, always under the guidance of a jealous scholar; but what an ease of conscience it would be to teachers if they could throw open the world of books to their scholars without fear of the mental and moral smudge left by a single prurient passage! Many, too, who have taken out their freedom in the republic of letters would be well content to keep complete library editions in costly bindings in their proper place, while handy volumes in daily use might be left about without uneasiness.

The Old Testament itself after such a (very guarded) process would be more available for the reading of children; and few persons would feel that Shakespeare’s plays suffered from the removal of obscenities here and there. In this regard we cherish a too superstitious piety. In another matter, let that great “remedial thinker,” Dr. Arnold, advise us:--“Adjust your proposed amount of reading to your time and inclination; but whether that amount be large or small let it be varied in its kind and widely varied. If I have a confident opinion on any one point connected with the improvement of the human mind it is on this.” Here we get support for a varied and liberal curriculum; and, as a matter of fact, we find that the pupil who studies a number of subjects knows them as well as he who studies a few knows those few.

Children should read books, not about books and about authors; this sort of reading may be left for the spare hours of the dilettante. Their reading should be carefully ordered, for the most part in historical sequence; they should read to _know_, whether it be _Robinson Crusoe_ or Huxley’s _Physiography_; their knowledge should be tested, not by questions, but by the oral (and occasionally the written) reproduction of a passage after one reading; all further processes that we concern ourselves about in teaching, the mind performs for itself; and, lastly, this sort of reading should be the chief business in the class room.

We are at a crucial moment in the history of English education. John Bull is ruminating. He says, “I have laboured at the higher education of women; let them back to the cooking-pot and distaff and learn the science (!) of domestic economy. I have tried for these forty years to educate the children of the people. What is the result? Strikes and swelled head! Let them have ’prentice schools and learn what will be their business in life!” John Bull is wrong. In so far as we have failed it is that we have offered the pedantry, the mere verbiage, of knowledge in lieu of knowledge itself; and it is time for all who do not hold knowledge in contempt to be up and doing; there is time yet to save England and to make of her a greater nation, more worthy of her opportunities. But the country of our love will not stand still; if we let the people sink into the mire of a material education our doom is sealed; eyes now living will see us take even a third-rate place among the nations, for it is knowledge that exalteth a nation, because out of duly-ordered knowledge proceedeth righteousness and prosperity ensueth.

“Think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well,” says our once familiar mentor, Matthew Arnold, and his monition exactly meets our needs.

SUPPLEMENTARY

TOO WIDE A MESH

“The wide world dreaming on things to come” is concentrating on a luminous figure of education which it beholds, dimly, emerging from a cloudy horizon. This gracious presence is to change the world, to give to all men wider possibilities, other thoughts, aims: but, alas, this Education which is to be open to all promises no more on a nearer view than to make Opportunity universal--that is, in spiritual things, he may take who has the power and he may keep who can.

The net is cast wide no doubt and brings in a mighty haul but the meshes are so wide that it will only retain big fishes. Now this is the history of education since the world was and is no new thing. The mediæval schools of castle or abbey, the Renaissance schools, the very schools of China, have all been conducted upon this plan. Education is for him who wants it and can take it but is no universal boon like the air we breathe or the sunshine we revel in.

We are a little sorry for the effect of this limitation upon the ‘working classes’: only a small percentage of the children of these are ‘big’ enough to be retained in the examination net which, to do it justice, explores all waters. A few of the pass men may do big things and fill big posts, but for the rest, a large percentage is, in practice, illiterate except for the spelling out of a local ‘rag’ for football and parish news.

But is the mischief confined to what we call the ‘working classes’? Is it not a fact that in most schools the full force of instruction is turned on upon a few boys who are likely to distinguish themselves? While for the rest of the school teaching is duly given no doubt but the boys find they may take it or leave it as the humour takes them.

We were all fascinated a while ago by the story of a pair of charming ‘Twins’; these went through the usual preparatory school education and then passed on to a great Public School where they remained until they were nineteen; that is, they had ten or twelve good years among most excellent opportunities. As they were attractive boys we may take it that their masters were not at any rate unwilling to teach them. Their record should have been quite a good one, and, though it is the fashion to sneer a little at Public Schools, we know that these have turned out and do turn out the best and most intellectual men the country has occasion for. Therefore what happened in the case of these ‘Twins’ does not cast any reflection upon Public Schools but solely upon the system of the Big Mesh. Here are some of the things we read in that delightful biography:--

“While in hospital after a smash at polo R---- wrote to
F----:--‘I enjoyed it immensely. What lucky people we are taking
an interest in so many things!’”

Surely here was material for a schoolmaster to work upon! Again, we read:--

“They never ceased to wonder at the magnificence of the world and
they carried a divine innocence into soldiering and travel and
sport and business and, not least,--into the shadows of the Great
War.”

And this ‘wonder’ of theirs was the note that marked them at school. Again, what material for their instructors!

“But,” we read, “at X---- they showed little interest in books
and, later, were wont to lament to each other that ‘_They had
left school wholly uneducated._’” (The italics are ours.)

Their kindly biographer and dear friend goes on to say:--

“But they learnt other things,--the gift of leadership, for
instance, and the power of getting alongside all varieties of
human nature.”

But was not this nature rather than nurture, school nurture at any rate, for these gifts seem to have been a family inheritance? Born in 1880, they left school in 1899, when there follows a delightful record for the one brother of successful and adventurous sport while--

“R---- was soon absorbed in the city ... and beginning to lament
his want of education.” “F----, while in Egypt was greatly
impressed by Lord Cromer and writes to R----, ‘he is quite the
biggest man we have!... to hear him talk is worth hearing.’”

The two brothers correspond constantly and R---- takes the part of mentor to his brother. He advises him to learn _The Times_ leaders by heart to improve his style,--“because they are very good English.” Again,--

“I will send you out next mail a very good book, _Science and
Education_, by Professor Huxley which I have marked in several
places, the sort of book you can read over again.” R---- “had
discovered that he was very badly educated and was determined to
remedy this defect:--‘It don’t matter ... I do believe not having
learned at X---- so long as one does so now.’”

See the fine loyalty of the young man; his failures were not to be put down to his school!

If the schools take credit for any one thing it is that they show their pupils ‘how to learn’; but do they? We are told that R---- set to work at a queer assortment of books and writes to F----:--

“Anyone can improve his memory: the best way is by learning by
heart--no matter what--and then when you think you know it,
say it or write it.... After two or three days you are sure to
forget it again and then instead of looking at the book ‘strain
your mind’ and try to remember it. Above all things always keep
your mind employed. One great man (I forget which) used to see
a number on a door, say 69, and tried to remember all that had
happened in the years ending in 69. Or, see a horse and remember
how many you have seen that day.... Asquith always learns things
by heart, he never wastes a minute; as soon as he has nothing to
do he picks up some book. He reads till 1-30 every night. When
driving to the Temple next morning he thinks over what he has
read. Result: he has a marvellous memory and knows everything.”

Think of the Herculean labours the poor fellow set for both himself and his brother! They ran an intellectual race across a ploughed field after heavy rain and the marvel is that they made way at all. Yet these two brothers had sufficient intellectual zeal to have made them great men as Ambassadors, Governors of Dominions, Statesmen, what not; whereas so far as things of the mind go, they spent their days in a hopeless struggle, alert for any indication which might help them to make up lee-way, and all because, according to their own confession, they ‘had learned nothing at school.’ Here are further indications of R----’s labours in the field of knowledge:--

“I am reading Rosebery’s _Napoleon_ and will send it to you.
What a wonder he was! Never spent a moment of his life without
learning something.... I enclose an essay from Bacon’s book.
Learn it by heart if you can. I have and think it a clinker....
I have also finished _Life of Macaulay_. I have always wondered
how our great politicians and literary chaps live.... I also
send you a Shakespeare. I learnt Antony’s harangue to the Romans
after Cæsar’s death; I am also trying to learn a little about
electricity and railroad organization, so have my time filled
up. _Pickwick Papers_ I also send to you. I have always avoided
this sort of books but Dickens’ works are miles funnier than the
rotten novels one sees.... I have learnt one thing by my reading
and my conversation with Professors,--_you and I go at a subject
all wrong_.” (Italics ours.)

These letters are pathetic documents and, that they are reassuring also, let us be thankful. They do go to prove that the desire of knowledge is inextinguishable whatever schools do or leave undone; but have these nothing to answer for when a pursuit which should yield ever recurring refreshment becomes dogged labour over heavy roads with little pleasure in progress?

Here, again, is another evidence of the limitations attending an utter absence of education. A cultivated sense of humour is a great factor in a joyous life, but these young men are without it. Perhaps the youth addicted to sports usually fails to appreciate delicate nonsense; sports are too strenuous to admit of a subtler, more airy kind of play and we read:--

“R---- heard Mr. Balfour and Lord Reay praising _Alice in
Wonderland_. Deeply impressed he bought the book as soon as he
returned to London and read it earnestly. To his horror he saw
no sense in it. Then it struck him that it might be meant as
nonsense and he had another try, when he concluded that it was
rather funny but he remained disappointed.”

We need not follow the career of these interesting men further. Both fell early before they were forty. Their fine qualities and their personal fascination remained with them to the end, as did also, alas, their invincible ignorance. They laboured indefatigably, but, as R---- remarked,--“You and I go at a subject all wrong!”

The schools must tell us why men who attained mediocre successes and the personal favour due to charming manners and sweet natures were yet somewhat depressed and disappointed on account of the ignorance which they made blind and futile efforts to correct; but they never got so far as to learn that knowledge is delightful _because one likes it_; and that no effort at self-education can do anything until one has found out this supreme delightfulness of knowledge.

It must be noted that this failure of a great school to fulfil its purpose occurred twenty years ago, and that no educational body has made more well-considered and enlightened advances than have the Headmasters of the great Public Schools. Probably that delightful group of Eton boys in _Coningsby_ has always been and is to-day typical; there is a certain knightly character in the fine bearing and intelligent countenances of the Head Boys one comes across there which speaks well for their intellectual activity. The question is whether more might not be done with the average boy.

The function of the schools is no doubt to feed their scholars on knowledge until they have created in them a healthy appetite which they will go on satisfying for themselves day by day throughout life. We must give up the farce of teaching young people how to learn, which is just as felicitous a labour and just as necessary as to teach a child the motions of eating without offering him food; and studies which are pursued with a view to improve the mind must in future take a back seat.

The multitudinous things that every person wants to know must be made accessible in the schoolroom, not by diagrams, digests, and abstract principles; but boys and girls, like ‘Kit’s little brother,’ must learn ‘what oysters is’ by supping on oysters. There is absolutely no avenue to knowledge but knowledge itself, and the schools must begin, not by qualifying the mind to deal with knowledge, but by affording all the best books containing all the sorts of knowledge which these ‘Twins,’ like everyone else, wanted to know. We have to face two difficulties. We do not believe in children as intellectual persons nor in knowledge as requisite and necessary for intellectual life. It is a pity that education is conducted _in camera_ save for the examination lists which shew how the best pupils in a school have acquitted themselves, the half-dozen or dozen best in a big school. Finely conscientious as teachers are they can hardly fail to give undue importance to their group of candidates for examination and a school of four or five hundred stands or falls by a dozen head boys.

[See note under Table of Contents for (_a_) the large number of
children’s answers, and (_b_) Book IV of which only Chapter 1
appears in this volume].

Index

abridged editions, 183

_Abt Vogler_, 324

academic solution of educational problems, the, 254, 288

Academy (French), 252, 256

_Across the Bridges_, by A. Paterson, 118, 119, 300

act of knowing, 99, 254, 271, 292, 298;
knowledge acquired by, 291

Adams, Professor John, 112

æsthetic sense, 43;
open to disaster, 56

affections, mis-directed, 58

Albrecht, Dr., 162

allusions, literary, 264

Ambleside, 212, 217

_Ambleside Geography, The_, 226-229

Amyot, on history, 273

anarchy, 69

‘Angelic Doctor,’ The, 284

‘aniseed drops,’ educational, 302

_aphasia_, our national, 269

‘appetency,’ 56, 107

apprenticeship, 328

architecture, 77, 217, 220

arithmetic, 59, 73, 141, 151, 152, 230-233

Armstrong, Dr., 280

Arnold, Dr., 257, 340, 341

Arnold, Matthew, 239, 252, 258, 309, 315, 342

art, xxx, 14, 43, 45, 63, 154, 157, 254;
teaching of, 213-217, 275;
is of the spirit, 214;
power of appreciating, 214;
reverent knowledge of, 214

Arthur, King, 28

assimilation, 259

astronomy, 50, 220, 222

Astrophel, 100

athleticism and mental activity, 72

atmosphere, education is an, xxix, 94-99

attention, 259;
a habit, 100;
a natural function, 171;
how secured, 13-15, 17, 28, 45, 76, 255;
must not have crutches, 258;
power of, present in children, xxxi, 7, 14, 18, 76, 154, 171, 255,
263, 290;
the hall-mark of an educated person, 99;
the prime agent in education, 16, 76, 247;
weakened by efforts to memorise, 17;
unfailing, 17, 171, 291

_Aus Meinem Leben_ (Goethe), 161

Austen, Jane, 16, 77, 193, 294

authority, natural, necessary and fundamental, xxix, 68-78, 97, 134;
deputed, 68;
the condition of liberty, 69;
order, outcome of, 69;
chastened, 71;
_vide_ self-authority

average boy, the, 300, 310, 312

Bacon, 7, 29, 61, 105, 124, 143

_Barnaby Rudge_, 259, 282

‘Baron of Bradwardine,’ the, 312

Bergson, Henri, 173

Bernhardi, F. von, 3

Bible, The, 143, 186, 272, 273;
in curriculum, 30, 40, 61-65, 160-165, 254;
fine English of, 160, 309;
method of, lesson, 159-169;
and critical teaching, 163

Big Mesh, The system of the, 344

biology, 221

Blake, William, 79

Board of Education, 250

body, well-being of, 46;
a sound, 189

Bompas Smith, Professor, 27

Bonnot, 327

books, many, xxx, 7, 12, 15, 30, 59, 76, 267, 271, 303;
living, xxx, 303;
worthy, 12, 18, 26, 52, 75, 104, 191, 260, 268;
delight in, 28;
text-books, 50, 53, 105, 256, 263, 271, 275;
difficulty of choosing, 187, 248;
choice of, 248, 272;
P.U.S., tested by examinations, 248;
‘classes’ and ‘masses’ must read the same, 264;
about books, 341

Bosanquet, Bernard, 149

Bose, Professor Sir Jagadis Chandra, 95

botany, 220, 221

brain, adaptation of, to habits, xxx, 101;
thought not a function of, 2, 4, 260;
subject to same conditions as body, 38;
should not know fatigue, 38;
mind takes care of, 330

British Association, The, 222, 251

British Museum, The, 77, 175, 176, 274

Browning, Robert, 100, 133, 215, 331

Büchner, 4

Burns, John, 300

_Bushido_, 133

‘Caleb Garth,’ 61

‘Caleb Balderstone,’ 314

Carlyle, Thomas, 238, 288

Catechism, The, 169

Cavell, Nurse, 77, 141

Character, the one achievement possible, 129;
more important than conduct, 129;
formation of, 264, 278;
magnanimity of, 248

Charles IX, 50

chemistry, 254

_Childe Harold_ (Byron), 186

child-garden, 24

children, waiting for call of knowledge, xxv;
are born persons, xxix, 13, 18, 29, 36, 80, 238;
have good and evil tendencies, xxix, 47-49, 52, 61, 66, 85, 86,
88, 89;
must live under natural conditions, xxix, 96-99;
have appetite for knowledge, xxx, 10, 11-13, 14, 18, 29, 44, 53,
58, 62, 77, 89, 91, 124;
can deal with knowledge, xxx, 10, 14, 18, 40, 72, 109, 117, 154,
237, 263;
require much and various knowledge, xxx, 11, 12, 14, 19, 25, 72,
109, 111, 116, 125, 154, 157, 253, 256, 263, 288-290;
and in literary form, xxxi, 13, 17, 18, 29, 30, 51, 92, 109, 154,
160, 172, 218, 248, 256, 260, 291;
have power of attention, xxxi, 7, 14, 18, 29, 75, 154, 171, 255,
263, 291;
enormous educability of, xxxi;
must have principles of conduct, xxxi, 62;
must have responsibility of learning, 6, 74, 99;
have powers common to _all_, 8;
backward, 9, 62, 183, 245, 255, 291;
are ignorant, 10;
have imagination, 10, 18, 36, 41, 50;
and judgment, 10, 18;
hindered by apparatus of teacher, 11, 54;
made apathetic by spiritual malnutrition, 11, 54;
must have great thoughts, 12, 40;
must read many books, xxx, 7, 12, 15, 30, 59, 76, 267, 271, 303;
must read to know, 13, 99;
are bored by talk, 15, 19, 41, 44, 52, 58;
intellectual capacity of, belittled, 26, 31, 75, 81, 158, 192,
238, 246;
are not all alike, 30, 241;
first notions of, 35;
and language, 35;
early thoughts of, 36, 238;
experience what they hear and read, 40;
hearts of, thoroughly furnished, 43, 60;
of the slums, 44, 63, 256, 260, 293;
all, persons of infinite possibilities, 44, 156;
start fair, 47;
muscles and nerves of, 48;
have power to sense meaning, 51, 181;
not intellectual ruminants, 53;
dangers of feeding, morally, 59;
must think fairly, 61;
capacity and needs of, 66, 157;
and the sense of ‘must,’ 73;
offences against, 81;
must be relieved of decisions, 97;
need bracing, not too stimulating, atmosphere, 98;
should not ‘run wild,’ 98;
must form good habits, 100;
grow upon ideas, 109;
should know something of their own capacities, 131, 187, 189;
must follow arguments and detect fallacies, 147;
must know what religion is, 149;
educational rights of, 157, 339;
howlers of _v._ mistakes, 158, 256;
have affinity for God, 158;
able for school education at five, but no conscious mental effort
desirable until six, 159;
examination answers of, 167, 168, 185, 191, 193, 194, 195-209,
244;
enjoy classical names, 181;
must see life whole, 187;
must learn science of proportion, 187;
chastely taught, watch their thoughts, 188;
do not generalise, 224;
devitalised, 237;
not products of education or environment, 238;
not incomplete beings, but ignorant, 238;
powers of, 9, 238, 255;
shown in verses, 242-243;
offer a resisting medium, 253;
need physical and mechanical training, 255;
beings ‘of large discourse,’ 305;
should be persons of leisure, 305

China, schools of, 343

Chinese Empire, 179

Christ, parables of, 304;
gave profoundest philosophy to the multitude, 332;
does not exist for our uses only, 336;
teaching of, must receive profound attention, 337

Christianity, 336

Chrysostom, St., Prayer of, 64

cinematograph displays, 340

Circe, 186, 267

_Citizens to Be_, by Miss M. L. V. Hughes, 235

citizenship, 185-189, 254, 274;
the inspiration of, 185;
ancillary to history, 185;
problem of good and evil in, 186

Cizek, Herr, 216

Coleridge, S. T., 35, 56, 105-108, 110, 233, 290, 318, 322

Colet, Dean, xxvi, 247

Collingwood, Lord, 60

Comenius, 8, 20, 291

composition, 190-209;
oral, 190, 269;
art of, should not be taught, 190, 192, 269;
not an adjunct of education, 192;
in verse, 193, 242;
definite teaching of, in Forms V and VI, 193, 194;
power of, innate in children, 191;
written, 192;
comes of free and exact use of books, 193;
children’s, 195-209

concentration, 8, 15;
innate, 171

_Coningsby_, 348

conscience, present in infant, 37;
governing power of man, 131

_Continuation Schools_, edited by Sir Michael Sadler, 285

Continuation Schools, a Liberal Education in, 119, 124, 127, 147;
the scope of, 279-299;
movement and technical education, 279;
not for technical instruction, but for things of the mind, 287

Copenhagen, 285

Copts, 314

Cornwell, Jack, 141

correlation, principle of, 276

correlation lessons, 114, ff.

Council Schools, P.U.S. work in, xxv, 77, 81, 181, 182, 195, 241,
290, 293

‘countenance,’ a manifestation of thought, 301

‘Creakle, Mr.’ 81, 101

Curie, Madame, 141

curriculum, a full, xxx, 14, 19, 30, 154, 263;
a common, 12, 293;
principles bearing upon the, 13, 31, 156-158;
in P.U.S., 15, 28, 154-234;
in Grammar and Public Schools, 85;
and the formation of habits, 99;
in Elementary Schools, 155;
standard set by examinations, 233;
a complete, suggested by the nature of things, 156

Damien, Father, 60

dancing, 234

Darwin, 3, 4, 5, 54

_David Copperfield_, 81, 111, 238

democracy, 312

Demos clamours for humanistic education, 299

Denmark, education in, 123, 283-287, 291, 306

De Quincey, 29, 103, 333

Departmental Committee on English, 269

desires, which stimulate mind, 11, 88;
cater for spiritual sustenance, 11;
atrophy of, 89;
_v._ other desires, 247;
must be used wisely, 56;
right and wrong, 84

Dewey, Professor, 280

Dickens, 81, 111

discipline, xxix, xxx;
secured by knowledge-hunger, 11;
education a, 99-104

discrimination, 259

diversion, xxxi

Divine Spirit, xxxi;
Divine sanctions, 20

docility, 68;
universal, 69;
_v._ subservience, 71;
implies equality, 71

_Doll’s House, The_ (Ibsen), 327

drawing, 217, 329

Drighlington Girls’ School, xxv, 236

economics, 73, 313