^EDUCATION INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL BY HERBERT SPENCER N}EW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1860, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. '.- Printed in the United States of America PREFACE. THE four chapters of which this work consists, originally appeared as four Review articles : the first in the Westminster Review, the second in the North British Review, and the remaining two in the British Quarterly Review. Severally treating different divis- ions of the subject, but together forming a tolerably complete whole, I originally wrote them with a view to their republication in a united form ; and they would some time since have thus appeared in England, had not the proprietor of the North British Review re- fused to let me include the one contributed to that periodical. This interdict is, how- ever, of no effect in the United States ; and some transatlantic friends having represented 422349 vi PREFACE. to me that an American re-issue was desir able, I have revised the articles, and placed them in the hands of Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. H. S. LONDON, July, 1800. CONTENTS. I. WHAT KNOWLEDGE is OP MOST WORTH! II. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION . III. MORAL EDUCATION .... IV. PHYSICAL EDUCATION .... rii EDUCATION AT ETON, 1842-5. " Balston, our tutor, was a good scholar after the fashion of the day, and famous for Latin verse; but he was essentially a commonplace don. f Stephen major/ he once said to my brother, i if you do not take more pains, how can you ever expect to write good longs and shorts? If you do not write good longs and shorts, how can you ever be a man of taste? If you are not a man of taste, how can you ever hope to be of use in the world ? ' (The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., by his brother, Leslie Stephen, pp. 80-1.) viii EDUCATION CHAPTER L WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH? IT has been truly remarked that, in order of time, decoration_^ecedes dress. Among people who submit to great physical suffering that they may have themselves handsomely tattooed, ex- tremes of temperature are borne with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labour for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers uniformly find that coloured beads and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or broad- cloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are given, they turn 1 2 WHA? KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH t ihem to seine ludicrous display, show how com- pletely the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. Nay, there are still more extreme il- lustrations: witness the fact narrated by Capt. Speke ojfhis African attendants, who strutted about in their goat-skin mantles when the weather was fine, but when it was wet, took them off, folded them up, and went about naked, shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginaUlif a seem to indicate-^iiat-4i^as^is_^e_vjeloped_out of decorations. And when we remember that even among our- selves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience when we see that the func- tion is still in great measure subordinated to the appearance we have further reason for inferring such an origin. It is not a little curious that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Not only in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that knowledge which con- duces to personal well-being has been postponed to that which brings applause. In the Greek schools, music, poetry, rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until Socrates taught, had but little bearing upon action, were the dominant subjects; while knowl- THE ORNAMENTAL PRECEDES THE USEFUL. > edge aiding the arts of life had a very subordinate place. And in our own universities and schools at the present moment the like antithesis holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude 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 his fam- ily, 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 so little, that generally the greater part of it drops out of his memory; and if he occasionally vents a Latin quota- tion, or alludes to some Greek myth, it is less to throw light on the topic in hand than for the sake of effect. If we inquire what is the real motive for giving boys a classical education, we find it to be simply conformity to public opinion. Men dress their children's minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. As the Orinoco Indian puts on his paint before leaving his hut, not with a view to any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be seen without it; so, a boy's drill- ing in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may not be dis- graced by being found ignorant of them that he may have " the education of a gentleman " the 4 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! badge marking a certain social position, and bring- ing a consequent respect. This parallel is still more clearly displayed in the case of the other sex. In the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has con- tinued to predominate in a greater degree among women than among men. Originally, personal adornment occupied the attention of both sexes equally. In these latter days of civilization, how- ever, we see that in the dress of men the regard for appearance has in a considerable degree yielded to the regard for comfort; while in their education the useful has of late been trenching on the orna- mental. In neither direction has this change gone so far with women. The wearing of ear-rings, fin- ger-rings, bracelets; the elaborate dressings of the hair; the still occasional use of paint; the immense labour bestowed in making habiliments sufficiently attractive; and the great discomfort that will be submitted to for the sake of conformity; show how greatly, in the attiring of women, the desire of ap- probation overrides the desire for warmth and con- venience. And similarly in their education, the immense preponderance of " accomplishments " proves how here, too, use is subordinated to dis- play. . Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing, drawing what a large space do these occupy! If WHY THE SHOWY PREDOMINATES. 5 you ask why Italian and German are learnt, you will find that, under all the sham reasons given, the real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is thought ladylike. It is not that the books written in them may be utilized, which they scarcely ever are ; but that Italian and German . songs may be sung, and that the extent of attainment may bring whispered admiration. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic triviali- ties, are committed to memory, not because of any direct benefits that can possibly result from know- ing them; but because society considers them parts of a good education because the absence of such knowledge may bring the contempt of others. When we have named reading, writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and sewing, we have named about all the things a girl is taught with a view to their direct uses in life; and even some of these have more reference to the good opinion of others than to immediate personal welfare. Thoroughly to realize the truth that with the mind as with the body the ornamental precedes the useful, it is needful to glance at its rationalf . This lies in the fact that, from the far past down even to tne present, social needs have^subordinated individ- ual needs, and that the chief social need has been the control of individuals. It is not, as we com- 6 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! monly suppose, that there are no governments but those of monarchs, and parliaments, and constituted authorities. These acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones, that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives to be king or queen or lesser dig- nitary. To get above some and be reverenced by them, and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By the accumulation of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, by display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to sub- jugate others; and so aids in weaving that ramified network of restraints by which society is kept in order. It is not the savage chief only, who, in for- midable war-paint, with scalps at his belt, aims to strike awe into his inferiors; it is not only the belle who, by elaborate toilet, polished manners, and numerous accomplishments, strives to "make con- quests; " but the scholar, the historian, the philoso- pher, use their acquirements to the same end. We are none of us content with quietly unfolding our own individualities to the full in all directions; but have a restless craving to impress our individu- alities upon others, and in some way subordinate them. And this it is which determines the charac- ter of our education. Not what knowledge is of RELATIVE VALtTES OP KNOWLEDGE. f most real worth, is the consideration; but what will | bring most applause, honour, respect what will t most conduce to social position and influence what will be most imposing. As, throughout life, not what we are, but what we shall be thought, is the question; so in education7~thlTquestion is7"not the intrinsic value of knowledge, so much as its ex- ' trinsic effects on others. And this being our domi- nant idea, direct utility is scarcely more regarded than by the barbarian when filing his teeth and staining his nails. If there needs any further evidence of the rude, undeveloped character of our education, we have it in the fact that the comparative worths of different kinds of knowledge have been as yet scarcely even discussed much less discussed in a methodic way with definite results. Not only is it that no stand- ard of relative values has yet been agreed upon; but the existence of any such standard has not been conceived in any clear manner. And not only is it that the existence of any such standard has not been clearly conceived; but the need for it seems to have been scarcely even felt. Men read books on this topic, and attend lectures on that; decide that their children shall be instructed in these branches of knowledge, and shall not be in- 2 8 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! structed in those; and all under the guidance of -mere custom, or liking, or prejudice; without ever considering the enormous importance of determin- ing in some rational way what things are really most worth learning. It is true that in all circles we have occasional remarks on the importance of this or the other order of information./ But whether the degree of its importance justifies the expendi- ture of the time needed to acquire it; and whether there are not things of more importance to which the time might be better devoted; are queries which, if raised at all, are disposed of quite sum- marily, according to personal predilections. / It is true also, that from time to time, we hear revived the standing controversy respecting the compara tive merits of classics and mathematics. Not only, however, is this controversy carried on in an em- pirical manner, with no reference to an ascertained criterion ; but the question at issue is totally insig- nificant when compared with the general question of which it is part. To suppose that deciding whether a mathematical or a classical education is the best, is deciding what is the proper^ curruzuhvtn, ' is much the same thing as to suppose that the whole of dietetics lies in determining whether or not bread is more nutritive than potatoes! The question which we contend is of such tran- TIME OF ACQUISITION LIMITED. scendent moment, is, not whether such or SUC knowledge is of worth, but what is its relative worth? When they have named certain advan- tages which a given course of study has secured them, persons are apt to assume that they have jus- tified themselves: quite forgetting that the ade- quateness of. the advantages is the point to be judged. There is, perhaps, not a subject to which men devote attention that has not some value. A year diligently spent in getting up heraldry, would very possibly give a little further insight into an- cient manners and morals, and into the origin of names. Any one who should learn the distances between all the towns in England, might, in the course of his life, find one or two of the thousand facts he had acquired of some slight service when arranging a journey. Gathering together all the small gossip of a county, profitless occupation as it would be, might yet occasionally help to establish some useful fact say, a good example of heredi^ tary transmission. 'But in these cases, every one would admit that there was no proportion between the required labour and the probable benefit. No one would tolerate the proposal to devote some years of a boy's time to getting such information, at the cost of much more valuable information which he might else have got. And if here the test 10 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OP MOST WORTH! of relative value is appealed to and held conclusive, then should it be appealed to and held conclusive throughout. Had we time to master all subjects we .need, aqt be particular. To quote the old . spngi-rr ?-i *' > ' <*'* Could a man be secure * s 9 , That his days would endure As of old, for a thousand long years, What things might he know ! What deeds might he do ! And all without hurry or care. " But we that have but span-long lives " must ever bear in mind our limited time for acquisition. And remembering how narrowly this time is limited, not only by the shortness of life, but also still more by the business of life, we ought to be especially solic- itous to employ what time we have to the greatest I advantage. Before devoting years to some subject which fashion or fancy suggests, it is surely wise to weigh with great care the worth of the results, as compared with the worth of various alternative re- sults which the same years might bring if otherwise applied. In education, then, this is the question of ques- tions, which it is high time we discussed in some methodic way. The first in importance, though the last to be considered, is the problem how to decide among the conflicting claims of various subjects on THE GREAT AIM OP EDUCATION. H our attention. Before there can be a rational cur- riculum, we must settle which things it most con- cerns us to know; or, to use a word of Bacon's, now unfortunately obsolete we must determine f the relative value of knowledges. .*^ __^, To this end, a measure of value is the first re- , quisite. And happily, respecting the true measure of value, as expressed in general terms, there can be no dispute. Every one in contending for the worth of any particular order of information, does so by showing its bearing upon some part of life.u In reply to the question, " Of what use is it? " the mathematician, linguist, naturalist, or philosopher, explains the way in which his learning beneficially influences action saves from evil or secures good conduces to happiness. When the teacher of writing has pointed out how great an aid writing is to success in business that is, to the obtainment of sustenance that is, to satisfactory living; he is held to have proved his case.. And when the col- lector of dead facts (say a numismatist) fails to make clear any appreciable effects which these facts can produce on human welfare, he is obliged to admit that they are comparatively valueless. All then, either directly or by implication, appeal to this as the ultimate test. How to live? that is the, essential question for 12 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH t us. Not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general problem which comprehends every special problem is the [htruling of conduct in alj^ directions under all circumstances. In what way to treat the body; in' what way to treat the mind; in what way to man- age our affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize all those sources of happiness which na- ture supplies how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others how to live completely? And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the great thin^w^ch^johicajion has to teach. jTo pre- j pare us for complete Jiving is the function which education has to discharge; anol the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is, to judge in what degree it 4i scnar g es sucn function.] This test, never used in its entirety, but rarely even partially used, and used then in a vague, half conscious way, has to be applied consciously, me- thodically, and throughout all cases. It behoves us to set before ourselves, and ever to keep clearly in * x view, complete living as the end to be achieved; -so that in bringing up our children we may cho*ose subjects and methods of instruction, with deliberate reference to this end. Not only ought we to cease CLASSIFICATION OF OUR ACTIVITIES. from the mere unthinking adoption of the current fashion in education, which has no better warrant than any other fashion; but we must also rise above that rude, empirical style of judging displayed by those more intelligent people who do bestow some care in overseeing the cultivation of their children's minds. It must not suffice simply to think that such or such information will be useful in after life, or that this kind of knowledge is of more practical value than that; but we must seek out some process of estimating their respective values, so that as far as possible we may positively know which are most deserving of attention. Doubtless the task is difficult perhaps never to be more than approximately achieved. But, considering the vastness of the interests at stake, its difficulty is no reason for pusillanimously pass- ing it by^ but rather for devoting every energy to its mastery. And if we only proceed systematic- ally, we may very soon get at results of no small moment. /Our first step jnust .obviously be to classify, in the order of their importance, the leading kinds of activity which constitutehuman life. _ Th ft; be naturally arranged into: 1. Those activities 1 which directly minister to self-preservation; 2. Those activities which, by securing the necessaries 1 14 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OP MOST WORTH! of life, indirectly minister to self -preservation ; 3. Those activities which have for their end the rear- ing and discipline of offspring; 4. Those activities C which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations; 5. Those miscella- neous activities which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of the tastes and \^ feelings. That these stand in something like their true order of subordination, it needs no long considera- tion to show. The actions and precautions by wjnch ? jrom moment to moment, we secure per- sonal safety, must clearly take precedence of all others. Could there be a man, ignorant as an in- fant of all surrounding objects and movements, or how to guide himself among them, he would pretty certainly lose his life the first time he went into the street: notwithstanding any amount of learning he might have on other mattery. And as entire igno- rance in all other directions would be less promptly fatal than entire ignorance in this direction, it must be admitted that knowledge immediately conducive to self-preservation is of primary importance. That next after direct self-preservation comes the indirect self-preservation whj^kjxojisists in ac- quiring the means of living, none will question. That a man's industrial functions must be con* age ORDER OP SUBORDINATION OF SUBJECTS. 15 ered before his parental ones, is manifest from the fact that, speaking generally, the discharge of the parental functions is made possible only by the pre- vious discharge of the industrial ones. The power of self-maintenance necessarily preceding the power of maintaining offspring, it follows that ^npwledge^needful for self -maintenance has strong- _ er claims than knowledge needful for family wel- fare is second in value to none save knowledge needful for immediate self-preservation. As the family comes before the State in order of time as the bringing up of children is possible before the State exists, or when ^t has ceased to be, whereas the State is rendered possible only by the bringing up of children; it follows that the duties. of Jhe parent demand jdoser attention than those of the citizen. Or, to use a further argument since the goodness of a society ultimately depends on the nature of its citizens; and since the nature of its citizens is more modifiable by early training than by anything else; we must conclude thaLlhe wel- fare _pf the family underlies the welfare of society. And hence knowledge directly conducing to the first, must take precedence of knowledge directly conducing to the last. Those various forms of pleasurable occupation fill up the leisure left by graver occupations 16 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH? the enjoyments of music, poetry, painting, &c.: manifestly imply a pre-existing society. Not only is a considerable development of them impossible without a long-established social union; but their very subject-matter consists in great part of social sentiments and sympathies. Not only does society supply the conditions to their growth; but also the ideas and sentiments they express. And, conse- quently, thatj^art of human conduct which consti- tutes good ciikejaLshipJs_QljnQre moment than that which goes out in accomplishments or exercise of the tastes; and, in education, preparation for the one must rank before preparation for the other. ^=-Such then, we repeat, is something like the ra- tional order of subordination: That education which prepares for direct self-preservation; that which prepares for indirect self-preservation; that which prepares for parenthood; that which pre- pares for citizenship; that which prepares for the miscellaneous refinements of life. We do not mean to say that these divisions are definitely separable. We do not deny that they are intricately entangled with each other in such way that there can be no training for any that is not in some measure a train- ing for all. Nor do we question that of each di- vision there are portions more important than cer- tain portions of the preceding divisions: that, for ORDER OF SUBORDINATION OF SUBJECTS. 17 instance, a man of much skill in business but little other faculty, may fall further below the standard of complete living than one of but moderate power of acquiring money but great judgment as a pa- rent; or that exhaustive information bearing on right social action, joined with entire want of gen- eral culture in literature and the fine arts, is less desirable than a more moderate share of the one joined with some of the other. But, after making all qualifications, there still remain these broadly- marked divisions; and it still continues substan- tially true that these divisions subordinate one an- other in the foregoing order, because the corre- sponding divisions of life make one another possible in that order. Of course the ideal of education is complete preparation in all these divisions. But failing this ideal, as in our phase of civilization every one must do more or less, the aim should Jbejta maintain ja due proportion between^ tjie degrees of preparation in each. Not exhaustive cultivation in any one, su- premely important though it may be not even an exclusive attention to the two, three, or four divis- ions of greatest importance ; but an attention to all, greatest where the value is greatest, less where the value is less, least where the value is least. For the average man (not to forget the cases in which 18 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OP MOST WORTH 1 peculiar aptitude for some one department of knowledge rightly makes that one the bread-win- ning occupation) for the average man, we say, the desideratum is, a training that approaches nearest to perfection in the things which most 'subserve complete living, and falls more and more ^belotf perfection in the things that have more and more remote bearings on complete living. In regulating education by this standard, there are some general considerations that should be ever present to us. yJT]iejBgorth--nf any kind of culture, as aiding conipLete_liYing, may be either necessary or more or less contingent. There is knowledge of intrinsic value; knowledge of quasi-intrinsic value; and knowledge of conventional value. Such fac$s as that sensations of numbness and tingling com- monly precede paralysis, that the resistance of water to a body moving through it varies as the square of the velocity, that chlorine is a disinfectant, these, and the truths of Science in general, are of intrinsic value: they will bear on human conduct ten thousand years hence as they do now. The extra knowledge of our own language, which is given by an acquaintance with Latin and Greek, may be considered to have a value that is quasi- intrinsic: it must exist for us and for other races whose languages owe much to these sources; but INTRINSIC AND CONVENTIONAL VALUES. 19 will j^st only as long as our languages last. While thai kind of information which, in our schools, usurps the name History the mere tissue of names and dates and dead unmeaning events has a con- f ventional value only: it has not the remotest bear- ing upon any of our actions; and is of use only for the avoidance of those unpleasant criticisms which current opinion passes upon its absence. Of course, as those facts which concern all mankind throughout all time must be held of greater mo- ment than those which concern only a portion of them during a limited era, and of far greater mo- ment than those which concern only a portion of them during the continuance of a fashion; it fol- lows that in a rational estimate, knowledge of in- trinsic worth must, other things equal, take pre- cedence of knowledge that is of quasi-intrinsic or conventional worth. One further preliminary. Acquirement _p.f every kind has two values value as knowledge and * value as discipline. Besides its use for guidancein conduct, the acquisition of each order of facts has also itLuse_as m^ntj^exereise^ and its effects as a preparative for complete living have to be consid- ered under both these heads. These, then, are the general ideas with which, we must set out in gUscussing a^ curriculum : Life WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH I as divided into jjeveral kinds of activity of succes- sively decreasing importance; the worth of each order of facts as regulating these several kinds of activity, intrinsically, quasi-intrinsically, and con- ventionally; and their regulative influences esti- i mated both as knowledge and discipline. Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure direct self-preservation, is in great part already provided for\^Too momentous to be left to our blundering, Nature takes it into her own hands. While yet in its nurse's arms, the infant, by hiding its face and crying at the sight of a stranger, shows the dawning instinct to attain safety by flying fron\ that which is unknown and may be dangerous; and when it can walk, the ter- ror it manifests if an unfamiliar dog comes near, or the screams with which it runs to its mother after any startling sight or sound, shows this instinct further developed. Moreover, knowledge subserv- ing direct self-preservation is that which it is chiefly busied in acquiring from hour to hour. How to . balance its body; how to control its movements so as to avoid collisions; what objects are hard, and will hurt if struck; what objects are heavy, and injure if they fall on the limbs; which things will bear the weight of the body, and which not; the EDUCATION FOR SELF-PRESERVATION. 21 pains inflicted by fire, by missiles, by sharp instru- ments these, and various other pieces of informa- tion needful for the avoidance of death or accident, it is ever learning. And when, a few years later, the energies go out in running, climbing, and jump- ing, in games of strength and games of skill, we see ill all these actions by which the muscles are devel- oped, the perceptions sharpened, and the judgment quickened, a preparation for the safe conduct of the body among surrounding objects and move- ments; and for meeting those greater dangers that occasionally occur in the lives of all. Being thus, as we say, so well cared for by Nature, this funda- mental education needs comparatively little care from us. What we are chiefly called upon to see, is, that there shall be free scope for gaining this ex- perience, and receiving this discipline, that there shall be no such thwarting of Nature as that by which stupid schoolmistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge from the spontaneous phys- ical activities they would indulge in; and so ren- der them comparatively incapable of taking care of themselves in circumstances of peril. This, however, is by no means all that is com- jrehended in the education that prepares for direct ^lf-_preservation. Besides guarding the body against mechanical damage or^destructipn, it has j2 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WOBTHf to be guarded against injury from other causes against the disease and death that follow breaches of physiologic law. For complete living it is neces- sary, not only that sudden annihilation of life shall be warded off; but also that there shall be escaped the incapacities and the slow annihilation which Unwise habits entail. As, without health and ener- gy, the industrial, the parental, the social, and all other activities become more or less impossible; it is clear that this secondary kind of direct self-pres- ervation is only less important than the primary kind; and that knowledge tending to secure it should rank very high. It is true that here, too, guidance is in some measure ready supplied. By our various physical sensations and desires, Nature has insured a tolera- ble conformity to the chief requirements. Fortu- nately for us, want of food, great heat, extreme cold, produce promptings too peremptory to be dis- regarded. And would men habitually obey these and all like promptings when less strong, compara- tively few evils would arise. If fatigue of body or brain were in every case followed by desistance; if the oppression produced by a close atmosphere always led to ventilation; if there were no eating without hunger, or drinking without tliirst; then would the system be but seldom out of working \ EFFECTS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL IGNORANCE. 23 order. But so profound an ignorance is there of the laws of life, that men do not even know that their sensations are their natural guides, and (when not rendered morbid by long-continued disobe- dience) their trustworthy guides. So that though, to speak ideologically, Nature has provided effi- cient safeguards to health, lack of knowledge makes them in a great measure useless. If any one doubts the importance of an ac- quaintance with the fundamental principles of as a means to complete living, let him look around and see how many men and women he can find in middle or later life who are thoroughly well. Occasionally only do we meet with an exam- ple of vigorous health continued to old age; hourly do we meet with examples of acute disorder, chronic ailment, general debility, premature decrepitude. Scarcely is there one to whom you put the question, who has not, in the course of his life, brought upon himself illnesses which a little knowledge would have saved him from. Here is a case of heart dis- ease consequent on a rheumatic fever that followed reckless exposure. There is a casejif^eyes spoiled^ for life by ov^rstudy. Yesterday the account was of one whose long-enduring lameness was brought on by continuing, spite of the pain, to use a knee * ' after it had been slightly injured. And to-day we 24 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OP MOST WORTH! are told of another who has had to lie by for years, because he did not know that the palpitation he suffered from resulted from overtaxed brain. Now we hear of an irremediable injury that followed some silly feat of strength; and, again, of a consti- tution that has never recovered from the effects of excessive work needlessly undertaken. While on all sides we see the perpetual minor ailments which accompany feebleness. Not to dwell on the natural pain, the weariness, the gloom, the waste of time and money thus entailed, only consider how greatly ill- health hinders the discharge of all duties makes business often impossible, and always more difficult ; produces an irritability fatal to the right manage- ment of children; puts the functions of citizenship out of the question; and makes amusement a bore. Is it not clear that the physical sins partly our forefathers' and partly our own which produce this ill-health, deduct more from complete living than anything else? and to a great extent make life a failure and a burden instead of a benefaction and a pleasure? To all which add the fact, that life, besides be- ing thus immensely deteriorated, is also cut short. It is not true, as we commonly suppose, that a dis- order or disease from which we have recovered leaves us as before. No disturbance of the normal KNOWLEDGE NECESSARY TO HEALTH. 25 course of the functions can pass away and leave things exactly as they were. In all cases a perma- nent damage is done not immediately appreciable, it may be, but still there; and along with other such items which Nature in her strict account-keep- ing never drops, will tell against us to the inevitable shortening of our days. Through the accumula- tion of small injuries it is that constitutions are commonly undermined, and break down, long be- fore their time. And if we call to mind how far the average duration of life falls below the possible duration, we see how immense is the loss. When, to the numerous partial deductions which bad health entails, we add this great final deduction, it results that ordinarily more than one-half of life is thrown away. Hence, knowledge which subserves direct self- preservation by preventing this loss of health, is of primary importance. We do not contend that pos- session of such knowledge would by any means wholly remedy the evil. For it is clear that in our present phase of civilization men's necessities often compel them to transgress. And it is further clear that, even in the absence of such compulsion, their inclinations would frequently lead them, spite f their knowledge, to sacrifice future good to present gratification* But we do contend that the right 26 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! knowledge impressed in the right way would effect much; and we further contend that as the laws of \^/ health must be recognised before they can be fully conformed to, the imparting of such knowledge must precede a more rational living come that may. We infer that as vigorous health and its accompanying high spirits are larger elements of happiness than any other things whatever, the /teaching how to maintain them is a teaching that yields in moment to no other whatever. And .therefore we assert that such a course of physi- ology as is needful for the comprehension of its general truths, and their bearings on daily conduct, is an all-essential part of a rational education. Strange that the assertion should need making! Stranger still that it should need defending! Yet are there not a few by whom such a proposition will be received with something approaching to de- rision. Men who would blush if caught saying Iphigenia instead of Iphigenia, or would resent as an insult any imputation of ignorance respecting the fabled labours of a fabled demi-god, show not the slightest shame in confessing that they do not know where the Eustachian tubes are, what are the actions of the spinal cord, what is the normal rate of pulsation, or how the lungs are inflated. While anxious that their sons shou Id be well up in the su- STRANGE OBLIQUITIES OF OPINION. 27 perstitions of two thousand years ago, they care not that they should be taught anything about the structure and functions of their own bodies nay, would even disapprove such instruction. So over- whelming is the influence of established routine! So terribly in our education does the ornamental override the useful! We need not insist on the value of that knowl- edge which aids indirect self-preservation by facili- tating the gaining of a livelihood. This is admit- ted by all; and, indeed, by the mass is perhaps too " exclusively regarded as the end of education. But while every one is ready to endorse the abstract proposition that instruction fitting youths for the business of life is of high importance, or even to consider it of supreme importance; yet scarcely any inquire what instruction will so fit them. It is true that reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught with an intelligent appreciation of their uses; but when we have said this we have said nearly all. While the great bulk of what else is acquired has no bearing__on Jhe industrial activities, an immensity of information that has a direct bear- ing on the industrial activities is entirely passed over. For, leaving out only some very small classes, #hat are all men employed in? They are em- ^ / 28 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! ployed in the production, preparation, and distri- bution of commodities. And^ on w3iat-do.es effi- ~~cjency in the production, preparation, and distribu- tion of commodities depend? It depends on the . use of methods fitted to the respective natures of these commodities; it depends on an adequate knowledge of their physical, chemical, or vital properties, as the case may be; that is, it depends 1 on Science. This^ order of knowledge, which is in great_part ignored in our school courses, is the order ^ofjinowleolge underlying the right performance of all those processes by which civilized life is made possible. Undeniable as is this truth, and thrust upon us as it is at every turn, there seems to be no living consciousness of it : its very familiarity * makes it unregarded. To give due weight to our argument, we must, therefore, realize this truth to the reader by a rapid review of the facts. For all the higher arts of construction, some- acquaintance with Mathejnatics is indispensable. ' The village carpenter, who, lacHng~ratiT5nal~" in- struction, lays out his work by empirical rules learnt in his apprenticeship, equally with the build- er of a Britannia Bridge, makes hourly reference to the laws of quantitative relations. The sur- veyor on whose survey the land is purchased; the architect in designing a mansion to be built on it* NEEDS OF THE CONSTRUCTOR. 29 the builder in preparing his estimates; his foreman in laying out the foundations; the masons in* cut- ting the stones; and the various artisans who put up the fittings; are all guided by geometrical truths. Railway-making is regulated from begin- ning to end by mathematics: alike in the prepara- tion of plans and sections; in staking out the line; in the mensuration of cuttings and embankments; in the designing, estimating, and building of bridges, culverts, viaducts, tunnels, stations. And* similarly with the harbours, docks, piers, and vari- ous engineering and architectural works that fringe the coasts and overspread the face of the country; as well as the mines that run underneath it. Out of geometry, too, as applied to astronomy, the art of navigation has grown; and so, by this science, has been made possible that enormous foreign com- merce which supports a large part of our pdpula- tion, and supplies us with many necessities and most of our luxuries. And now-a-days even the farmer, for the correct laying out of his drains, has recourse to the level that is, to geometrical principles. When from those divisions of mathematics which deal with space, and number, some small smattering of which is given in schools, we turn to that other division which deals with force, of which even a Smattering is scarcely ever given, we meet with an- 30 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH ! other large class of activities which this science presides over. On the application of rational me- ihanics depends the su^cTsT^fTieaTly^-air modern manufacture. The properties of the lever, the wheel and axle, &c., are involved in every machine every machine is a solidified mechanical theorem; and to machinery in these times we owe nearly all productions. Trace the history of the breakfast- roll. The soil out of which it came was cLrained with machine-made tiles; the surface was turned over by a machine; the seed was put in by a ma- chine; the wheat was reaped, thrashed, and win- nowed by machines; by machinery it was ground and bolted; and had the flour been sent to Gos- port, it might have been made "into biscuits by a machine. Look round the room in which you % sit, If modern/ probably the bricks in its walls v. e re machine-made; by machinery the flooring was fiaw,n, and planed, the mantel-shelf .sawn- and pol- ished, the paper-hangings made and printed;, the veneer on the table, the turned legs of the chairs, the carpet, the curtains, are all products of ma- chinery. And your clothing plain, figured, or printed is it not wholly woven, nay perhaps even sewed, by machinery ro And the volume you are reading are not its leaves fabricated by one ma- chine and covered with these words by another VALUE OF MECHANICAL SCIENCES. 31 Add to which that for the means of distribution over both land and sea, we are similarly indebted. And then let it be remembered that according as the principles of mechajuca_arejwell or ill used to thejge^ends, comesjmcjregs_or_f ailure individual and national. The engineer who misapplies his for- mulae for the strength of materials, builds a bridge that breaks down. The manufacturer whose ap- paratus is badly devised, cannot compete with an- other whose apparatus wastes less in friction and in- ertia. The ship-builder adhering to the old model, is outsailed by one who builds on the mechanically- justified wave-line principle. And as the ability of a nation to hold its own against other nations de- pends on the skilled activity of its units, we see that on such knowledge may turn the national fate/ Judge then the worth of mathematics. -) Pflga ripxjjto Phvjics. Joined with mathemai- ics, it has given us the steam-engine, which does the work of millions of labourers. That section of physics which deals with the laws of heat, has taught us how to economise fuel in our various in- dustries; how to increase the produce of our smelt- ing furnaces by substituting the hot for the cold blast; how to ventilate our mines; how to prevent explosions by using the safety-lamp; and, through the thermometer, how to regulate innumerable pro- 32 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH f cesses. That division which has the phenomena of light for its subject, gives eyes to the old and the myopic; aids through the miscroscope in detecting diseases and adulterations; and by improved light- houses prevents shipwrecks. Researches in elec- tricity and magnetism have saved incalculable life and property by the compass; have subserved sun- dry arts by the electrotype; and now, in the tele- graph, have supplied us with the agency by which for the future all mercantile transactions will be regulated, political intercourse carried on, and per- haps national quarrels often avoided. While in the details of indoor life, from the improved kitchen-range up to the stereoscope on the drawing- room table, the applications of advanced physics underlie our comforts and gratifications. ^ Still more numerous are the bearings of Chem- jistry^orijthose activities by which men obtain the means of living. The bleacher, the dyer, the cali-" co-printer, are severally occupied in processes that are well or ill done according as they do or do not conform to chemical laws. The economical reduc- tion from their ores of copper, tin, zinc, lead, silver, iron, are in a great measure questions of chemistry. Sugar-refining, gas-making, soap-boiling, gunpow- der manufacture, are operations all partly chemi 1 cal; as are also those by which are produced glass CHEMISTRY AND AGRICULTURE. 33 and porcelain. Whether the distiller's work stops at the alcoholic fermentation or passes into the ace- tous, is a chemical question on which hangs his profit or loss; and the brewer, if his business is sufficiently large, finds it pay to keep a chemist on his premises. Glance through a work on tech- nology, and it becomes at once apparent that there is now scarcely any process in the arts or manu- factures over some part of which chemistry does not preside. And then, lastly, we come to the / fact that in these times, agriculture, to be profit- ably__carried on, must^haye analysis of manures and soils; their adaptations to each other; the use of gypsum or other substance for fixing ammonia; the utilization of coprolites; the production of artificial manures all these are boons of chemistry which it behoves the farmer to acquaint himself with. Be it in the lucifer match, or in disinfected sewage, or in photographs in bread made without fermentation, or per- fumes extracted from refuse, we may perceive that chemistry affects all our industries; and that, by consequence, knowledge of it concerns every one who is directly or indirectly connected with our industries. *f And then the science of life Biology : does ^ not this, too, bear fundamentally Jipon these pro- 34 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! cesses of indirect self-preservation? With what we ordinarily call manufactures, it has, indeed, little connexion; but with the all-essential manufacture that of food it is inseparably connected. As agriculture must conform its methods to the phenomena of vegetable and animal life, it follows necessarily that the science of these phenomena is the rational basis of agriculture. Various biological truths have indeed been empirically established and acted upon by farmers while yet there has been no conception of them as science : such as that particu- lar manures are suited to particular plants; that crops of certain kinds unfit the soil for other crops; that horses cannot do good work on poor food ; that such and such diseases of cattle and sheep are caused by such and such conditions. These, and the every-day knowledge which the agriculturist gains by experience respecting the right management of plants and animals, constitute his stock of biological facts; on the largeness of which greatly depends his success. And as these biological facts, scanty, indefinite, rudimentary, though they are, aid him so essentially; judge what must be the value to him of such facts when they become positive, defi- nite, and exhaustive. Indeed, even now we may see the benefits that rational biology is conferring on him. The truth that the production of animal IMPORTANCE OP SCIENCE TO FARMERS. 35 heat implies waste of substance, and that, therefore, preventing loss of heat prevents the need for extra food a purely theoretical conclusion now guides the fattening of cattle: it is found that by keeping cattle warm, fodder is saved. Similarly with re- spect to variety of food. The experiments of phys- iologists have shown that not only is change of diet beneficial, but that digestion is facilitated by a mixture of ingredients in each meal: both which truths are now influencing cattle-feeding. 'The discovery that a disorder known as " the staggers/' of which many thousands of sheep have died annu- ally, is caused by an entozoon which presses on the brain ; and that if the creature is extracted through the softened place in the skull which marks its posi- tion, the sheep usually recovers; is another debt which agriculture owes to biology. When we ob- serve the marked contrast between our farming and farming on the Continent, and remember that this contrast is mainly due to the far -greater influence science has had upon farming here and there; and when we see how, daily, competition is making the adoption of scientific methods more general and necessary; we shall rightly infer that very soon, agricultural success in England will be impossible without a competent knowledge of animal and ^ vegetable physiology. 36 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! Yet one more science have we to note as bearing directly on industrial success -the Science of So- ___iet. Without knowing it, men who daily look at the state of the money-market, glance over prices current, discuss the probable crops of corn, cotton, sugar, wool, silk, weigh the chances of war, and from all those data decide on their mercantile opera- tions, are students of social science: empiricarand blundering students it may be; but still, students who gain the prizes or are plucked of their profits, according as they do or do not reach the right con- clusion. Not only the manufacturer and the mer- chant must guide their transactions by calculations of supply and demand, based on numerous facts, and tacitly recognising sundry general principles of social action; but even the retailer must do the like: his prosperity very greatly depending upon the correctness of his judgments respecting tEe fu- ture wholesale prices and the future rates f con- sumption. Manifestly, all who take part in the entangled commercial activities of a community, are vitally interested in understanding the laws according to which those activities vary. C iJJ^* Thus, to all such as are occupied in the produc- , tion, exchange, or distribution of commodities, ac- quaintance with science income of its Departments, is of fundamental importance. Whoever is inime-* THE SCIENCE OP SOCIETY. 37 diately or remotely implicated in any form of indus- try (and few are not) has a direct interest in under- standing something of the mathematical, physical, and chemical properties of things; perhaps, also, has a directMnterest inHbiology; and certainly has in sociology. Whether he does or does not suc- ceed well in that indirect self -preservation -which we call getting a good livelihood, depends in a great degree on his knowledge of one^ or more of these sciences: not, it may be, a rational knowledge; but still a knowledge, though empirical. For what we call learning a business, really implies learning the science involved in it ; though not ( perhaps under the name of science. And hence a ground- ing in science is of great importance, both because it prepares for all this, and because rational knowl- edge has an immense superiority over empirical knowledge. Moreover, ndt only is it that scientific culture is requisite for each, that he may understand the how and the ichy of the things and processes with which he is concerned as maker or distributor; but it is often of much moment that he should under- stand the how and the why 6f various other things and processes. In this age of joint-stock under- takings, nearly every man above the labourer is in- terested as capitalist in some other occupation than his own; and, as thus interested, his profit or loss 38 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! often depends on his knowledge of the sciences bearing on this other occupation. Here is a mine, in the sinking of which many shareholders ruined themselves, from not knowing that a certain fossil belonged to the old red sandstone, below which no coal is found. Not many years ago, 20,OOOL was lost in the prosecution of a scheme for collecting the alcohol that distils from bread in baking : all which would have been saved to the subscribers, had they known that less than a hundredth part by weight of the flour is changed in fermentation. Numer- 7 ous attempts have been made to construct electro- magnetic engines, in the hope of superseding steam; but had those who supplied the money, understood the general law of the correlation and equivalei -e of forces, they might have had better balances at their bankers. Daily are men induced to aid in carrying out inventions which a mere tyro in science could show to be futile. Scarcely a locality but has its history of fortunes thrown away over some impossible project. And if already the loss from want of science is so frequent and so great, still greater and more fre- quent will it be to those who hereafter lack science. Just as fast as productive processes become more scientific, which competition will inevitably make them do; and just as fast as joint-stock under- THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY. 39 takings spread, which they certainly will; so fast will scientific knowledge grow necessary to every one. That which our school courses leave almost en- tirely_outj. we thu&JJnd-to-be that, which -mosljiearly concerns the business of life. All our industries would cease, were it not for that information which men begin to acquire as they best may after their education is said to be finished. And were it not for this information, that has been from age to age accumulated and spread by unofficial means, these industries would never have existed.^ Had there been no teaching but such as is given^in our public schools, England would now be what it was in feu- dal times. That increasing acquaintance with the laws of phenomena which has through successive ages enabled us to subjugate Nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common labourer com- forts which a few centuries ago kings could not purchase, is scarcely in any degree owed to tne ap- pointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge that by which we have grown as a na- tion to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence, is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners; while the ordained, agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else but dead formulas. 4 40 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! We now come to the third great division of hu- I man activities a division for which no preparation whatever is made. If by some strange chance not a vestige of us descended to the remote future save a pile of our school-books or some college examina- tion papers, we may imagine how puzzled an anti- quary of the period would be on finding in them no indication that the learners were ever likely to be parents. " TViig Tnn$t_hgyp. for their celibates," we may fancy him concluding. (e I perceive here an elaborate preparation for many things: especially for reading the books of extinct nations and of co-existing nations (from which in- deed it seems clear that these people had very little worth reading in their own tongue) ; but I find no reference whatever to the bringing up of children. They could not have been so absurd as to omit all training for this gravest of responsibilities. Evi* dently then, this was the school course of one of their monastic orders." Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that though on the treatment of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and their moral welfare or ruin.;, yet not one word of instruction on the treatment of offspring is ever given to those who will hereafter be parents? Is it not monstrous that the fate o*f a new generation should be left to the chances of un- TREATMENT OF OFFSPRING. 1 reasonirf custom, impulse, fancy joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers? If a merchant com- menced business without any knowledge of arith- metic and book-keeping, we should exclaim at hia folly, and look for disastrous consequences. Or if, before studying anatomy, a man set up as a surgi- cal operator, we should wonder at his audacity and pity his patients. But that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children without ever having given a thought to the principles physical, moral, or intellectual which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise at the actors nor pity for their victims. To tens of thousands that are killed, add hun- dreds of thousands that survive with feeble consti- tutions, and millions that grow up with constitu- tions not so strong as they^hould be; and you will have some idea of the curse inflicted on their off- spring by parents ignorant of the laws of life. Do but consider for a moment that the regimen to which children are subject is hourly telling upon them to their life-long injury or benefit; and that there are twenty ways of going wrong to one way of going right; and you will get some idea of the enormous mischief that is almost everywhere in- flicted by the thoughtless, haphazard system in com- 42 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! mon use. Is it decided that a boy shall V, clothed in some flimsy short dress, and be allowed to go playing about with limbs reddened by cold? The decision will tell on his whole future existence either in illnesses; or in stunted growth; or in de- ficient energy; or in a maturity less vigorous than it ought to have been, and consequent hindrances to success and happiness. Are children doomed to a monotonous dietary, or a dietary that is deficient in nutritiveness? Their ultimate physical power and their efficiency as men and women, will inevitably be more or less diminished by it. Are they forbid- den vociferous play, or (being too ill-clothed to bear exposure), are they kept in-doors in cold weather? They are certain to fall below that measure of health and strength to which they would else have attained. When sons and daughters grow up sick- ly and feeble, parents commonly regard the event as a misfortune as a visitation of Providence. Thinking after the prevalent chaotic fashion, they assume that these evils come without causes ; or that the causes are supernatural. Nothing of the kind. In some cases the causes are doubtless inherited; but in most cases foolish regulations are the causes. Very generally parents themselves are responsible for all this pain, this debility, this depression, this misery. They have undertaken to control the lives RESULTS OP PARENTAL IGNORANCE. 43 of their offspring from hour to hour; with cruel carelessness they have neglected to learn anything about these vital processes which they are unceas- ingly affecting by their commands 'and prohibi- tions ; in utter ignorance of the simplest physiologic laws, they have been year by year undermining the constitutions of their children; and have so in- flicted disease and premature death, not only on them but on their descendants. Equally great are the ignorance and the conse- quent injury, when we turn from physical train^ ing. Consider the young mother and her mirspry legislation. But a few years agpjsne was at school, where her memory was crammed with words, and names, and dates, and her reflective faculties scarce- ly in the slightest degree exercised where not one idea was given her respecting the methods of deal- ing with the opening mind of childhood; and where her discipline did not in the least fit her for thinking out methods of her own. The interven- ing years have been passed in practising music,, in fancy-work, in novel-reading, and in party-going: no thought having yet been given, to the grave re- sponsibilities of 'maternity; and scarcely any of that solid intellectual culture obtained which would be some preparation for such responsibilities. And now see her with an unfolding human charac* 44 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! ter committed to her charge see her profoundly ignorant of the phenomena with which she has to deal, undertaking to do that which can be done but imperfectly even with the aid of the profoundest knowledge. She knows nothing about the nature of the emotions, their order of evolution, their func- tions, or where use ends and abuse begins. She is under the impression that some of the feelings are wholly bad, which is not true of any one of them; and that others are good, however far they may be carried, which is also not true of any one of them. And then, ignorant as she is of that with which she has to deal, she is equally ignorant of the effects that will be produced on it by this or that treat- ment. What can be more inevitable than the dis- astrous results we see hourly arising? Lacking knowledge of mental phenomena, with their causes and consequences, her interference is frequently more mischievous than absolute passivity would have been. This and that kind of action, which are quite normal and beneficial, she perpetually thwarts; and so diminishes the child's happiness and profit, injures its temper and her own, and pro- duces estrangement. Deeds which she thinks it desirable to encourage, she gets performed by threats and bribes, or by exciting a desire for ap- plause: considering little what the inward motive EDUCATION OP THE YOUNG MOTHER. 45 may be, so long as the outward conduct conforms; and thus cultivating hypocrisy, and fear, and self- ishness, in place of good feeling. While insisting on truthfulness, she constantly sets an example of untruth, by threatening penalties which she does not inflict. While inculcating self-control, she hourly visits on her little ones angry scoldings for acts that do not call for them. She has not the re- motest idea that in the nursery, as in the world, that alone is the truly salutary discipline which visits on all conduct, good and bad, the natural consequences the consequences, pleasurable or painful, which in the nature of things such conduct tends to bring. Being thus without theoretic guid- ance, and quite incapable of guiding herself by tracing the mental processes going on in her chil- dren, her rule is impulsive, inconsistent, mischiev- ous, often, in the highest degree; and would in- deed be generally ruinous, were it not that the over- whelming tendency of the growing mind to assume the moral type of the race, usually subordinates all minor influences. And then the culture of the i this, too, mismanaged in a similar manner? Grant that the phenomena of intelligence conform to laws; grant that the evolution of intelligence in a child also conforms to laws; and it follows inevita- 4G WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! bly that educa^ionj^u^ejd^ by a __knowledge of tjiejsejaws. To suppose that you can properly regulate this process of forming and accu- mulating ideas, without understanding the nature of the process, is absurd.XHow widely, then, must teaching as it is, differ from teaching as it should J be ; when hardly any parents, and but few teachers, know anything about psychology. As might be expected, the system is grievously at fault, alike in matter and in manner. While the right class of facts is withheld, the wrong class is forcibly admin- istered in the wrong way and in the wrong order, With that common limited idea of education which confines it to knowledge gained from books, parents thrust primers into the hands of their little ones years too soon, to their great injury. /Not recog- msmgjhej;ruth that^ the function of .books, is sup- __p1 eToe^tary^that :_thej form an indirect means to Jknjpjw ledge jv^n.^^ fail a means of see- ing through other men what you cannot see for yourself; they are eager to give second-hand facts in place of first-hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous value of that spontaneous education which goes on in early years not perceiving that a child's re^tle^^bs^rvation, instead of being ig- nored or checked, should be diligently^ administered to, and made as accurate and complete as possible; IMPORTANCE OP PSYCHOLOGY. 4.7 they insist on occupying its eyes and thoughts with things that are, for the time being, incomprehensi- ble and repugnant. Possessed by a superstition which worships the symbols of knowledge instead of the knowledge itself, they do not see that only when his acquaintance with the objects and pro- cesses of the household, the streets, and the fields, is becoming tolerably exhaustive only then should a child be introduced to the new sources of informa- tion which books supply : and this, not only because immediate cognition is of far greater value than mediate cognition ; but also, t>ecauSe the words con- tained in books can be rightly interpreted into ideas, only in proportion to the antecedent experience of things. uObserve next, that_this_fpjmajjnstnictio% far too soon commenced, is carried on with but lit- tle reference ^o-tho laws -o mentaL development. Intellectual progress is of necessity from the con-^ crete to the abstract. But regardless of this, highly abstract subjects, such as grammar, which should come quite late, are begun quite early. Political geography, dead and uninteresting to a child, and which should be an appendage of sociological stud- ies, is commenced betimes; while physical geogra- phy, comprehensible and comparatively attractive to a child, is in great part passed over. Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in abnormal 48 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! order: definitions, and rules, and principles being put first, instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of nature, through the study of cases. And then, pervading the whole, is the vicious sys- tem of rote learning a system of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See the results. What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwarting, and a coerced attention to books what with the mental confusion produced by teaching subjects be- fore they can be understood, and in each of them giving generalizations before the facts of which these are the generalizations what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient of other's ideas, and not in the least leading him to be an active in- quirer or self-instructor and what with taxing the faculties to excess; there are very few minds that become as efficient as they might be. Examina- > tions being once passed, books are laid aside; the \ greater part of what has been acquired, being im- organize^ soon drops out of ^recollection ; what re- mains is mostly inert the art of applyingjoiowl- edge not having been cultivated; and there is but little power either of accurate observation or inde- pendent thinking. To all which add, that while much of the information gained is of relatively small value, an immense mass of information of transcendent value is entirely passed over* TASK OP UNFOLDING A HUMAN BEING. 49 Thus we find the facts to be such as might have been inferred a priori. The training of children physical, moral,, and intellectual is dreadfully defective. And in great measure it is so, because parents are devoid of that knowledge by whi^h this training can alone be rightly guided. What ]s_ to_ be expected when one of the most intricate of prob- lems is undertaken by those who have given scarcely a thought to the principles on which its solution depends? For shoe-making or house- building, for the management of a ship or a loco- motive-engine, a long apprenticeship is needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding of a human being in body and mind, is so comparatively simple a pro- cess, that any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever? If not if the pro- cess is with one exception more complex than any in Nature, and the ' task of administering to it one of surpassing difficulty; is it not madness to make no provision for such a task? Better sacrifice ac- complishments than omit this all-essential instruc- tion. When a father, acting on false dogmas adopted without examination, has alienated his sons, driven them into rebellion by his harsh treat- ment, ruined them, and made himself miserable; he might reflect that the study of Ethology would have been worth pursuing, even at the cost of know- 50 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 1 ing nothing about /Eschylus. When a mother is mourning over a first-born that has sunk under the sequelae of scarlet-fever when perhaps a candid medical man has confirmed her suspicion that her child would have recovered had not its system been enfeebled by over-study when she is prostrate under the pangs of combined grief and remorse; it is but a small consolation that she can read Dante in the original. Thus we see that for regulating the third great of Tnmnfl-n fl.fltivit.ipaj a JkiLOwJedge. of the f lif e i the jone thing needful. . Some ac- quaintance with the_fir^t__rjrinciples of physiology and-the elementary truths of psychology i s inilis- * pensable__for the right bringing jip of children. We doubt not that this assertion will by many be read with a smile. That parents in general should be expected to acquire a knowledge of subjects so abstruse, will seem to them an absurdity. And if we proposed that an exhaustive knowledge of these subjects should be obtained by all fathers and moth- ers, the absurdity would indeed be glaring enough. But we do not. General principles only, accom- panied by such detailed illustrations as may be needed to make them understood, would suffice. And these might be readily taught if not rational- ly, then dogmatically. Be this as it may, however, WORTHLESSNESS OF ORDINARY HISTOBY. 51 here are the indisputable facts: that the develop- ment of children in mind and body rigorously obeys certain laws; that unless these laws are in some de- gree conformed to by parents, death is inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree conformed to, there must result serious physical and mental de- fects; and that only when they are completely con- formed to, can a perfect maturity be reached. Judge, then, whether all who may one day be pa- rents, should not strive with some anxiety to learn what these laws are. From the parental functions let us pass now to .the functions of the citizen. We have here to in- quire what knowledge best fits a man for the dis- charge of these functions. It cannot be alleged, as in the last case, that the need for knowledge fitting him for these functions is wholly overlooked; for our school courses contain certain studies which, nominally at least, bear upon political and social duties. Of these die^.ojil^oji_JtI^i__Qccilpies a lflnn fa But, as already more than once hinted, the his- toric information commonly given is almost value- less for purposes of guidance. Scarcely any of the facts set down in our school-histories, and very few even of those contained in the more elaborate works 52 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! written for adults, give any clue to the right prin- ciples of political action. The biographies of mon- archs (and our children commonly learn little else) throw scarcely any light upon the science of society. Familiarity with court intrigues, pild|^isurpations, or the like, and with all the pers^Rties accom- panying them, aids very little in eiiicraating the principles on which national welfare depends. We read of some squabble .for power, that it led to a pitched battle; that s*h ^nd such were the names of the generals and thB^leading subordinates; that they had each so man^ thousand infantry and cav- alry, and so many cannon ; that they arranged their forces in this and that order; that they manoeuvred, attacked, and fell back in certain ways ; that at this part of the day such disasters were sustained, and at that such advantages gained ; that in one particular movement some leading officer fell, while in an- other a certain regiment was decimated; that after all the changing fortunes of the fight, the victory was gained by this or that army; and that so many were killed and wounded on each side, and so many captured by the conquerors. And now, out of the accumulated details which make up the narrative, say which it is that helps you in deciding on your conduct as a citizen. Supposing even that you had diligently read, not only " The Fifteen Decisive WORTHLESSNESS OF ORDINARY HISTORY. 53 Battles of the World," but accounts of all other bat- tles that history mentions; how much more judi- cious would your vote be at the next election? " But these are facts interesting facts," you say. "Without doubt they are facts (such, at least, as are not wholly or partially fictions) ; and to many they may be interesting facts. But this by no means implies that they are valuable. Factitious or mor- bid opinion often gives seeming value to things that have scarcely any. A tulipomaniac will not part with a choice bulb for its weight in gold. To an- other man an ugly piece of cracked old china seems his most desirable possession. And there are those who give high prices for the relics of celebrated murderers. Will it be contended that these tastes are any measures of value in the things that gratify them? If not, then it must be admitted that the liking felt for certain classes of historical facts is no proof of their worth ; and that we must test their worth as we test the worth of other facts, by asking to what uses they are applicable. Were some one to tell you that your neighbour's cat kiUened yes- terday, you would say the information was worth- less. Fact though it might be, you would say it was an utterly useless fact a fact that could in no way influence your actions in life a fact that would not help you in learning how to live com- 54 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH t pletely* Well, apply the same test to the grea> mass of historical facts, and you will get the same result. They are facts from which no conclusions can be drawn unorganizable facts; and therefore facts which can be of no service in establishing principles of conduct, which is the chief use of f aets< Eead them, if you like, for amusement; but do not flatter yourself they are instructive. That which constitutes History, properly s# called, is in great part omitted from works on the subject. Only of late years have historians com- menced giving us, in any considerable quantity, the truly valuable information. As in past ages the king was every thing and the people nothing; so, in past histories the doings of the king fill the entire picture, to which the national life forms but an ob- scure background. While only now, when the welfare of nations rather than of rulers is becoming the dominant idea, are historians beginning to oc- cupy themselves with the phenomena of_sqcial prog- ress. That which it really concerns us to know, is _ihe_natural history of society. We want all facts whick_help ua 1^_underetand__how_j^nation has grown and organized itself. Among these, let us of course have an account of its government; with as little as may be of gossip about the men who officered it, and as much as possible about the struo- TRUE USES OF HISTORY. 55 ture, principles, methods, prejudices, corruptions, j I &c., which it exhibited: and let this account not only include the nature and actions of the central government, but also those of local governments, down to their minutest ramifications. Let us of course also have a parallel description of the eccle- t- ifa organization., its conduct, its power, its relations to the State: and accom- panying this, the ceremonials creed, and religious ideas not only those nominally believed, but those really believed and acted upon. Let us at the same time be informed of the control exercised by class over class, as displayed in all social observances in titles, salutations, and forms of address. Let us know, too, what were all the other customs which regulated the popular life out of doors and in-doors_ including those which concern the relations of the sexes, and the relations of parents to children. The superstitions, also, from the more important myths down to the charms in common use, should be indi- cated. Next should come a delineation of the in- dustrial: -system: showing to what extent the divi- sion of JaJbfiur^was carried; how-tradea were regu^ lated, whether by caste, guilds, or otherwise; what was the connection between employers and em- ployed; what were the agencies for distributing commodities, what were the means of communica- 56 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! tion; what w.as the circulating medium. Accom- panying all which should come an account of the industrial arts technically considered: stating the processes in use, and the quality of the products. Further, the intellectual condition of the nation in jts^yarious grades shouldjbe depicted : not only with respect to the kind and amount of education, but with respect to the progress made in science, and the prevailing manner of thinking. The degree of aesthetic culture, as displayed in architecture, sculp- ture, painting, dress, music, poetry, and fiction, should be described. Nor should there be omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the people their food, their homes, and their amusements. And lastly, to connect the whole, should be exhibited the morals, theoretical and practical, of all classes: as indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs, deeds. All these facts, given with as much brevity as con- sists with clearness and accuracy, should be so grouped and arranged that they may be compre- hended in their ensemble; and thus may be con- templated as mutually dependent parts of one great \vhole. The aim should be so to present them that we may readily trace the consensus subsisting among them; with the view of learning what social phenomena co-exist with what other?. And then the corresponding delineations of succeeding ages HISTORY A DESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY. 57 should be so managed as to show us, as clearly as may be, how each belief, institution, custom, and arrangement was modified; and how the consensus of preceding structures and functions was devel- oped into the consensus of succeeding ones. Such alone is the kind of information respecting past times, which can be__of_srvice to the citizenfor^the rfegnljttion of higLgondnct., The only history that is of practical value, is what may be called Desorip- _jive Sociology. And the highest office which the historian can discharge, is that of narrating the lives of nations, as to furnish materials for a Compara- tive Sociology; and for the subsequent determina- tion of the ultimate laws to which social phenomena . i conform. But now mark, that even supposing an ade- quate stock of this truly valuable historical knowl- edge has been acquired, it is of comparatively little use without the key. And the key is to be found ^_ . only in science. Without an acquaintance with the general truths of biology and psychology, rational interpretation of social phenomena is im- possible. Only in proportion as men obtain a cer- tain rude, empirical knowledge of human nature, are they enabled to understand even the simplest facts of social life: as, for instance, the relation between supply and demand^ And if not even 58 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH I the most elementary truths of sociology can be reached until some knowledge is obtained of how men generally think, feel, and act under given cir- cumstances; then it is manifest that there can be nothing like a wide comprehension of sociology, un- less through a competent knowledge of man in all his faculties, bodily and mental. Consider the mat- ter in the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evi- dent. Thus: Society isjnaje^up of individuals; all that is done^jnsociety is done by the com- bined actions of individuals; and therefore, in individual actions only can be found the solu- tions of social phenomena. But the actions of % individuals depend on the laws of their natures; and their actions cannot be understood until these laws are understood. These laws, however, when reduced to their simplest expression, are found to depend on the laws of body and mind in general. Hence it necessarily follows, jthat_biolpgy and psy- Lchology are indispensable as interpreters of sociol- _ogy^ Or, to state the conclusions still more sim- ply: all social phenomena are phenomena of life are the most complex manifestations of life are ultimately dependent on the laws of life and can be understood only when the laws of life are nnaerstood. Thus, then, we see that for the regu- lation of this fourth division of human activities, SCIENCE THE KEY TO HISTORY. 59 we are, as before, dependent on Science. r Of the ^ft knowledge commonly imparted in educational i *\ coTFrses, very little is of any service in guiding a I * man in his conduces a Citizen, Only a small part ^ v of the history he reads is of practical value ; and of this small part he is not prepared to make proper use. He commonly lacks not only the materials for, but the very conception of, descriptive soci- ology; and he also lacks that knowledge of the organic sciences, without which even descriptive sociology can give him but little aid. /^\ ^ . v And now we come to that remaining' division of human life which includes the relaxations, jpleas- L ures, and amusements filling leisure hpurs^ - After considering what training best fits for self-preserva- tion, for the obtainment of sustenance, for the dis- charge of parental duties, and for the regulation of social and political conduct; we have now to con- sider what training best fits for the miscellaneous ends not included in these for the enjoyment of Nature, of Literature, and of the Fine Arts, in all their forms. Postponing them as we do to things that bear more vitally upon human welfare; and bringing everything, as we have, to the tes^of ac- tual value; it will perhaps be inferred that we are inclined to slight these less essential things. No 60 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! greater mistake could be made, however. We yield to none in the value we attach to aesthetic cul- ture and its pleasures. Without painting, sculp- ture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm. So far from thinking that the training 'and gratification of the tastes are unimportant, we believe the time will come when they will occupy a much larger share of human life than now. When the forces of Nature have been fully conquered to man's use when the means of production have been brought to perfection when labour has been economized to the highest degree when education has been so systematized that a preparation for the more essential activities may be made with com- parative rapidity and when, consequently, there is a great increase of spare time; then will the poetry, both of Art and Nature, rightly fill a large space in the minds of all. | But it is one thing to admit that aesthetic cul- ture is in a high degree conducive to human hap- piness; and another thing to admit that it is a fun- damental requisite to human happiness/ However important it may be, it must yield precedence to those kinds of culture which bear more directly upon the duties of life. As before hinted, litera- ture and the fine arts are made possible by those ac- RANK OF AESTHETIC CULTURE. 61 tivities which make individual and social life pos- sible; and manifestly, that which is made possible, must be postponed to that which makes it possible. A florist cultivates a plant for the sake of its flower; and regards the roots and leaves as of value, chiefly because they are instrumental in producing the flower. But while, as an ultimate product, the flower is the thing to which everything else is sub- ordinate, the florist very well knows that the ro9t and leaves are intrinsically of greater importance; because on them the evolution of the flowei pends. He bestows every care in rearing a plant; and knows it would be folly if, in his anx- iety to obtain the flower, he were to neglect the plant. Similarly in the case before us. Architect ^_^amting^ jmusic, poetry, &c., may be _truly._c_alled_ the jafflor eseence__of _ civilized life, But even supposing them to be of such transcendent worth as to subordinate the civilized life out of which they grow (which can hardly be asserted), it will still be admitted that the production of a healthy civilized life must be the first considera- tion; and that the knowledge conducing to this must occupy the highest place, And here we see most distinctly the vice of our educational system. It neglects the plant for the sake of the flower. In anxiety for elegance, it for- 62 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH ! gets substance. While it gives no knowledge con- ducive to self-preservation while of knowledge that facilitates gaining a livelihood it gives but the rudiments, and leaves the greater part to be picked up any how in after life while for the discharge ) of parental functions it makes not the slightest pro- vision and while for the duties of citizenship it prepares by imparting a mass of facts, most of which are irrelevant, and the rest without a key ; it % is diligent in teaching every thing that adds to re- finement, polish, eclat. However fully we may admit that extensive acquaintance with modern languages is a valuable accomplishment, which through reading, conversation, and travel, aids in giving a certain finish; it by no means follows that this result is rightly purchased at the cost of that vitally important knowledge sacrificed to it. Sup- posing it true that classical education conduces to elegance and correctness of style; it cannot be said that elegance and correctness of style are compara- ble in importance to a familiarity with the prin- ciples that should guide the rearing of children.) /Grant that the taste may be greatly improved by reading all the poetry written in extinct languages; yet it is not to be inferred that such improvement of taste is equivalent in value to an acquaintance with the laws of health.; Accomplishments, the fine SCIENCE UNDERLIES THE FINE ARTS. 63 arts, belles-lettres, and all those things which, as we say, constitute the efflorescence of civilization, should be wholly subordinate jto_ that knowledge and discipline in which civilization rests. As they f occupy the leisure part of life, so should they occupy fy the leisure part of education. Recognising thus the true position of aesthetics, and holding that while the cultivation of them should form a part of education from its commence- ment, such cultivation should be subsidiary; we* have now to inquire what knowledge is of most use to this end what knowledge best fits for this re- maining sphere of activity. To this question the answer is still the same as heretofore. Unexpected as the assertion may be, it is nevertheless true, that the highest Art of every kind is based upon Science, _ that without Science there can be neither perfect production nor ful! appreciation. Science, in that limited technical tvcceptation current in society, may not have been possessed by many artists of high repute; but acute observers as they have been, they have always possessed a stock of those empiri- cal generalizations which constitute science in its lowest phase; and they have habitually fallen far below perfection, partly because their generaliza- tions were comparatively few and inaccurate. 64 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH I That science necessarily underlies the fine arts, be- comes manifest, a priori, when we remember that art-products are all more or less representative of objective and subjective phenomena; that they can be true only in proportion as they conform to the laws of these phenomena; and that before they can thus conform the artist must know what these laws are. That this a priori conclusion tallies with ex- perience we shall soon see. Youths preparing for the practice of sculpture, have to acquaint themselves with the bones and muscles of the human frame in their distribution, attachments, and movements. This is a portion of science; and it has been found needful to impart it for the prevention of those many errors which sculptors who do not possess it commit. For the prevention of other mistakes, a knowledge of me- chanical principles is requisite; and such knowl- edge not being usually possessed, grave mechanical mistakes are frequently made. Take an instance. For the stability of a figure it is needful that the perpendicular from the centre of gravity " the line of direction," as it is called should fall within the base of support; and hence it happens, that when a man assumes the attitude known as " stand- ing at ease," in which one leg is straightened and the other relaxed, the line of direction falls withm USES OF SCIENCE TO THE PAINTER. 65 the foot of the straightened leg. But sculptors un- familiar with the theory of equilibrium, not un- commonly so represent this attitude, that the line of direction falls midway between the feet. Igno- rance of the laws of momentum leads to analogous errors: as witness the admired Discobolus, which, as it is posed, must inevitably fall forward the mo- ment the quoit is delivered. In painting, the necessity for scientific knowl- edge, empirical if not rational, is still more con- spicuous. In what consists the grotesqueness of Chinese pictures, unless in their utter disregard of the laws of appearances in their absurd linear per- spective, and their want of aerial perspective? In what are the drawings of a child so faulty, if not in a similar absence of truth an absence arising, in great part, from ignorance of the way in which the aspects of things vary with the conditions? Do but remember the books and lectures by which students are instructed; or consider the criticisms of Ruskin ; or look at the doings of the Pre-Raffael- ites; and you will see that progress in painting im- plies increasing knowledge of how effects in Nature are produced. The most diligent _observatiQii,JLL_ not^aided Jby jciencej fails to presexy-e-^f^BKerror^ Every painter will indorse the assertion that unless it is known what appearances must exist under given 66 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! circumstances, they often will not be perceived; and to know what appearances must exist, is, in so far, to understand the science of appearances. From want of science Mr. J. Lewis, careful painter as he is, casts the shadow of a lattice-window in sharply-defined lines upon an opposite wall; which he would not have done, had he been familiar with the phenomena of penumbrae. From want of science, Mr. Rosetti, catching sight of a peculiar iridescence displayed by certain hairy surfaces under particular lights (an iridescence caused by the diffraction of light in passing the hairs), com- mits the error of showing this iridescence on sur- faces and in positions where it could not occur. To say that music, too, has need of scientific aid will seem still more surprising. (Yet it is demon- strable that music is but an idealization of the nat- ural language of emotion ^ and that consequently, music must be good or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this natural language. The various inflections of voice which accompany feelings of different kinds and intensities, have been shown to be the germs out of which music is developed. -It has been further shown, that these inflections and cadences are not accidental or arbitrary; but that they are determined by certain general principles of vital action; and that their expressiveness de- SCIENCE DEALS WITH MUSIC AND POETRY. 67 pends on this. Whence it follows that musical phrases and the melodies built of them, can be ef- fective only when they are in harmony with these general principles. It is difficult here properly to illustrate this position. But perhaps it will suffice to instance the swarms of worthless ballads that in- fest drawing-rooms, as compositions which science would forbid. They sin against science by setting to music ideas that are not emotional enough to prompt musical expression; and they also sin against science by using musical phrases that have no natural relation to the ideas expressed: even where these are emotional. They are bad because they are untrue, and to say they are untrue, is to say they are unscientific. Even in poetry the same thing holds. Like music, poetry has its root in those natural modes of which accompany f~3eep Reeling. Its rhythm, its strong and numerous metaphors, its hy- perboles, its violent inversions, are simply exaggera- tions of the traits of excited speech. To be good, therefore, poetry must pay respect to those laws of nervous actions which excited speech obeys. In in- tensifying and combining the traits of excited speech, it must have due regard to proportion must not use its appliances without restriction ; but, where the ideas are least emotional, must use the 68 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OP MOST WORTH! forms of poetical expression sparingly; must use them more freely as the emotion rises; and must carry them all to their greatest extent only where the emotion reaches a climax. The entire contra- vention of these principles results in bombast or dog- gerel. The insufficient respect for them is seen in didactic poetry. And it is because they are rarely fully obeyed, that we have so much poetry that is inartistic. Not only is it that the artist, of whatever kind, ? rf things, or in other words, a knowledge of i is requisite. And we not only find that S'-KT^O i- 'he handmaid to all forms of art and poetrv, but u, rightly regarded, science is itself poetic. Thus far our question has been, tl kno^ 1 ' V.--3 of this or that kind for purposes e have now to judge the reli 74 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 1 of different kinds of knowledge for purposes of discipline. This division of our subject we are " "obligeoTlo treat with comparative brevity; and hap- pily, no very lengthened treatment of it is needed. Having found what is best for the one end, we have by implication found what is best for the other. We may be quite sure that the acquirement of those classes of facts which are most useful for regulating conduct, involves a mental exercise best fitted for strengthening the faculties. It would be utterly contrary to the beautiful economy of Na- ture, if one kind of culture were needed for the gaining of information and another kind were needed as a mental gymnastic. Everywhere throughout creation we find faculties developed through the performance of those functions which it is their office to perform; not through the per- formance of artificial exercises devised to fit them for these functions. The Ked Indian acquires the swiftness and agility which make him a successful hunter, by the actual pursuit of animals; and by the miscellaneous activities of his life, he gains a better balance of physical powers than gymnastics ever give. That skill in tracking enemies and prey which he has reached by long practice, implies a subtlety of perception far exceeding anything produced by artificial training. And similarly STUDIES BEST ADAPTED FOR DISCIPLINE. 75 throughout. From the Bushman, whose eye, which being habitually employed in identifying distant objects that are to be pursued or fled from, has acquired a quite telescopic range, to the ac- countant whose daily practice enables him to add up several columns of figures simultaneously, we find that the highest power of a faculty results from the discharge of those duties which the conditions of life require it to discharge. And we may be certain, a priori, that the same law holds through- out education. The education_-QjLmo8t--m[uc for jme_time be the education qfjnoat value for discipline. Let us consider the evidence. One advantage claimed for that devotion to language-learning which forms so prominent a feature in the ordinary curriculum, is, that the memory is thereby strengthened. And it is ap- parently assumed that this is an advantage peculiar I to the study of words. But the truth is, that the j sciences afford far wider fields for the exercise of memory. It is no slight task to remember all the facts ascertained respecting our solar system; much more to remember all that is known concerning the structure of our galaxy. The new compounds which chemistry daily accumulates^ are so numer- ous that few, save professors, know the names of 76 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! them all; and to recollect the atomic constitutions and affinities of all these compounds, is scarcely possible without making chemistry the occupation of life. In the enormous mass of phenomena pre- sented by the Earth's crust, and in the still more enormous mass of phenomena presented by the fos- sils it contains, there is matter which it takes the geological student years of application to master. In each leading division of physics sound, heat, light, electricity the facts are numerous enough to alarm any one proposing to learn them all. And when we pass to the organic sciences, the effort of memory required becomes still greater. In human anatomy alone, the quantity of detail is so great, that the young surgeon has commonly to get it up half-a-dozen times before he can permanently re- tain it. The number of species of plants which botanists distinguish, amounts to some 320,000; while the varied forms of animal life with which the zoologist deals, are estimated at some two mil- lions. So vast is the accumulation of facts which men of science have before them, that only by dividing and subdividing their labours can they deal with it. To a complete knowledge of his own division, each adds but a general knowledge of the rest. Surely, then, science, cultivated even to a very moderate extent, affords adequate exercise for DISCIPLINE OF MEMORY AND JUDGMENT. 77 memory. To say the very least, it involves quite as good a training for this faculty as language does. But now mark that while for the training of mere memory, science is as good as, if not better than, language; it has an immense superiority in the kind of memory it cultivates. In the acquire- ment of a language, the connexions jQqdjeas--lQ_be established in the mind correspond A) facts that are in grearlneasure accidentajj_,whereas, in the ac- quirement ^Fscience, the connexions of ideas to be established in the mind correspond to facts that are mostly necessary. It is true that the relations of words to their meaning is in one sense natural, and that the genesis of these relations may be traced back a certain distance; though very rarely to the beginning; (to which let us add the remark that the laws of this genesis form a branch of mental science the science of philology.) But since it will not be contended that in the acquisition of languages, as ordinarily carried on, these natural relations between words and their meanings are habitually traced, and the laws regulating them explained; it must be admitted that they are com- monly learned as fortuitous relations. On the other hand, the relations which science presents are casual relations; and, when properly taught, are understood as such. Instead of being practically 78 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! accidental, they are necessary; and as such, give exercise to the reasoning faculties. While lan- guage familiarizes with non-rational relations, sci- ence familiarizes with rational relations. While * the one exercises memory only, the other exercises ' both memory and understanding. Observe next that a great superiority of science r _|over ; Jangiiage-as a means of discipline, is, that it _jcji^tivatesjth^udgmeiit. As, in a lecture on men- tal education delivered at the Royal Institution, Professor Faraday well remarks, the most common intellectual fault is deficiency of judgment. He contends that " society, speaking generally, is not only ignorant as respects education of the judg- ment, but it is also ignorant of its ignorance." And the cause to which he ascribes this state is ^ _want_of ^scientific culture. The truth of his con- clusion is obvious. Correct judgment with regard to all surrounding things, events, and consequences, becomes possible only through knowledge of the way in which surrounding phenomena depend on each other. No extent of acquaintance with the meanings of words, can give the power of forming correct inferences respecting causes and effects. . The- constant habit of drawing conclusions from __data, and then of verifying those conclusions by ob- ' servation and experiment, can alone give the power }\ SCIENCE AFFORDS MORAL DISCIPLINE. 79 of judging correctly. And that it necessitates this habit is one of the immense advantages of sci- ence. Not only, however, for intellectual discipline is \ science the best; bnt_also jfor moral discipline, tl/ The learning of languages tends, if anything, fur- / ther to increase the already undue_ resrjeet_iQr_aiir__L thority. Such and such are the meanings of these words, says the teacher or the dictionary. So and so is the rule in this case, says the grammar. By the pupil these dicta are received as unquestionable. His constant attitude of mind is that of submission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary result is a tendency to accept without inquiry whatever is^ es: ___ tablished. Quite opposite is the attitude of mind generated by the cultivation of science. By-^ci- I ence, constant-appeal is made to individual reason. Its truths are not accepted upon authority alone; but all are at liberty to test them nay, in many cases, the pupil is required to think out his own con- clusions. Every step in a scientific investigation is submitted to his judgment. He is not asked to ad- mit it without seeing it to be true. And the trust in his own powers thus produced, is further in- creased by the constancy with which Nature justi- fies his conclusions when they are correctly drawn. From all which there flows that independence 80 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH I which is a most valuable element in character. Nor is this the only moral benefit bequeathed by scientific culture. When carried on, as it should always be, as much as possible under the form of in- dependent research, it exercises perseverance and sincerity. As says Professor Tyndall of inductive inquiry, " it requires patient industry, and an hum- ble and conscientious acceptance of what Nature reveals. The first condition of success is an honest receptivity and a willingness to abandon all precon- ceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the truth. Believe me, a self-renun- ciation which has something noble in it, and of which the world never hears, is often enacted in the private experience of the true votary of sci- ence." Lastly we have to assert and the assertion will, we doubt not, cause extreme surprise that the discipline of science is superior to that of our ordi- nary ^^education^^ecaiise^ .GL-jho^^di^ious culture^ that it gives. Of course we do not here use the words scientific and religious in their ordinary lim- ited acceptations; but in their widest and highest Doubtless, to the superstitions that pass under the name of religion, science is antago- nistic; but not to the essential religion which these superstitions merely hide. Doubtless, too, in much RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE. 81 of the science that is current, there is a pervading spirit of irreligion; but not in that true science which has passed beyond the superficial into the profound. "True science and true religion," says Professor Huxley at the close of a recent course of lectures, "are twin-sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious ; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis. The great deeds of philosophers have been less the fruit of their intel- lect than of the direction of that intellect by an eminently religious tone of mind. Truth has yielded herself rather to their patience, their love, their single-heartedness, and their self-denial, than to their logical acumen." So far from science being irreligious, as many think, it is the neglect of science that is irreligious it is the refusal to study the surrounding cre- ation that is irreligious. Take a humble simile. Suppose a writer were daily saluted with praises couched in superlative language. Suppose the wisdom, the grandeur, the beauty of his works, were the constant topics of the eulogies addressed to him. Suppose those who unceasingly uttered these eulogies on his works were content with looking at the outsides of them; and had never opened them, much less tried to understand them. What value should we put upon their praises? What should we think of their sincerity? Yet, compar- 82 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! ing small things to great, such is the conduct of mankind in general, in reference to the Universe and its Cause. Nay, it is worse. Not only 4 they pass by without study, these things which they daily proclaim to be so wonderful; but very fre- quently the^ condemn as mere triflers those who give time to the observation of Nature they actu- ally scorn those who show any active interest in these marvels. We repeat, then, that not science, but the neglect of science, is irreligious. Devotion to science, is a tacit worship a tacit recognition of worth in the things studied ; and by implication in their Cause. It is not a mere lip-homage, but a homage expressed in actions not a mere professed respect, but a respect proved by the sacrifice of time, thought, and labour. Nor is it thus only that true science is essen- tially religious. It is religious, too, inasmuch as it generates a profound respect for, and an implicit faith in, those uniform laws which all things By accumulated experi- ences the man of science acquires a thorough be- lief in the unchanging relations of phenomena - in the invariable connexion of cause and conse- quence in the necessity of good or evil results. Instead of the rewards and punishments of tra- ditional belief, which men vaguely hope they may TRANSCENDENT VALUE OF SCIENCE. 83 gain, or escape, spite of their disobedience; he finds that there are rewards and punishments in the or- dained constitution of things, and that the evil results of disobedience are inevitable. He sees that the laws to which we must submit are not only inexorable but beneficent. He sees that in virtue of these laws, the process of things is ever towards a greater perfection and a higher happiness. Hence he is led constantly to insist on these laws, and is in- dignant when men disregard them. And thus does . he, by asserting the eternal principles of things and the necessity of conforming to them, prove himself intrinsically religious. To all which add the further religious aspect of science, that it alone can give us true conceptions of ourselves and our relation to the mysteries of existence. At the same time that it shows us all which can be known, it shows us the limits beyond which we can know nothing. Not by dogmatic as- sertion does it teach the impossibility of compre- hending the ultimate cause of things; but it leads us clearly to recognise this impossibility by bring- ing us in every direction to boundaries we cannot cross. It realizes to us in a way which' nothing else can, the littleness of human intelligence in the face of that which transcends human intelligence. While towards the traditions and authorities of men 84: WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! its attitude may be proud, before the impenetrable veil which hides the Absolute its attitude is humble a true pride and a true humility. Only the sin- cere man of science (and by this title we do not mean the mere calculator of distances, or analyser of compounds, or labeller of species; but him who through lower truths seeks higher, and eventually the highest) only the genuine man of science, we say, can truly know how utterly beyond, not only human knowledge, but human conception, is the Universal Power of which Nature, and Life, and Thought are manifestations. We-conclude, then, that for discipline, as well as for guidance, science is of chiefest value. In all its effects, learning the meanings of things, is better than learning the meanings of words. Whether for intellectual, moral, or religious train^ ing, the study of surrounding phenomena is iin- ' mensely superior to the study of grammars and/ lexicons. Thus to the question with which we set out What knowledge is of most worth? the uniform reply is Pfcjeruy. This is the verdict on all the counts. For direct self-preservation, or the main- tenance of life and health, the all-important knowl- edge is Science. For that indirect self-preserva- TRANSCENDENT VALUE OF SCIENCE. 85 tion which we call gaining a livelihood, the knowl- edge of greatest value is Science. For the due discharge of parental functions, the proper guidance is to be found only in Science. For that inter- pretation of national life, past 'and present, with- out which the citizen cannot Brightly regulate his conduct, the indispensable key is Science. Alike for the most perfect production and highest enjoy- ment of art in all its forms, the needful preparation is still Science. And for purposes of disci- pline intellectual, moral, religious the most effi- cient study is, once more Science. The question which at first seemed so perplexed, has become, in the course of our inquiry, comparatively simple. We have not to estimate the degrees of importance x of different orders of human ' activity, and different studies as severally fitting us for them; since we find that the study of Science, in its most compre- hensive meaning, is the best preparation for all these orders of activity. We have not to decide between the claims of knowledge of great though conventional value, and knowledge of less though intrinsic value; seeing 'that the knowledge which we find to be of most value in all other respects, is intrinsically most valuable: its worth is not de- pendent upon opinion, but is as fixed as is the re- lation of man to the surrounding world. ) Neces- 86 WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH! sary and eternal as are its truths, all Science ^ concerns all mankind for all time. Equally at present, and in the remotest future, must it be of in- calculable importance for the regulation of their conduct, that men should understand the science of life, physical, mental, and social; and that they should understand all other science as a key to the science of life. And yet the knowledge which is of such tran- scendent value is that which, in our age of boasted education, receives the least attention. While this which we call civilization could never have arisen had it not been for science; science forms scarcely an appreciable element in what men consider civi- lized training. Though to the progress of science we owe it, that millions find support where once there was food only for thousands ; yet of these mil- lions but a few thousands pay any respect to that which has made their existence possible. Though this increasing knowledge of the properties and re- lations of things has not only enabled wandering tribes to grow into populous nations, but has given to the countless members of those populous na j tions comforts and pleasures which their few naked ancestors never even conceived, or could have- believed, yet is this kind of knowledge onl^ now receiving a grudging recognition in our, highest odu- STRANGE NEGLECT OF SCIENCE. 87 cational institutions. To the slowly growing ac- quaintance with the uniform co-existences and se- quences of phenomena to the establishment of in- variable laws, weriwfe our emancipation from the grossest superstitions. , But for science we should be still worshipping fetishes; or, with hecatombs of victims, propitiating diabolical deities. And yet this science, which, in place of the most degrading conceptions of things, has given us some insight into the grandeurs of creation, is written against in our theologies and frowned upon from our pulpits. Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we may say that in the family of knowledges, Science is the house- hold drudge, who, in obscurity, hides unrecognised perfections. To her has been committed ajl the work; by her skill, intelligence, and devotion, have all the conveniences and gratifications been ob- tained; and while ceaselessly occupied ministering to the rest, she has been kept in the background, that her haughty sisters might flaunt their frip- peries in the eyes of the world. The parallel holds yet further. For we are fast coming to the denoue- ment, when the positions will be changed; and while these haughty sisters sink into merited neg- lect, Science, proclaimed as highest alike in worth and beauty, will reign supreme. 7 CHAPTER H. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. THERE cannot fail to be a relationship between the successive systems of education, and the succes- sive social states with which they have co-existed. Having a common origin in the national mind, the institutions of each epoch, whatever be their special functions, must have a family likeness. When men received their creed and its interpretations from an infallible authority deigning no explana- tions, it was natural that the teaching of children should be purely dogmatic. While " believe and ask no questions " was the maxim of the Church, it was fitly the maxim of the school. Conversely, now that Protestantism has gained for adults a right of private judgment and established the prac- tice of appealing to reason, there is harmony in the change that has made juvenile instruction a process of exposition addressed to the understanding. Along with political despotism, stern in its com- mands, ruling by force of terror, visiting trifling 88 AN ORDER OF MENTAL EVOLUTION. 89 crimes with death, and implacable in its vengeance on the disloyal, there necessarily grew up an aca- demic discipline similarly harsh a discipline of multiplied injunctions and blows for every breach of them a discipline of unlimited autocracy up- held by rods, and ferules, and the black-hole. On the other hand, the increase of political liberty, the abolition of law restricting individual action, and the amelioration of the criminal code, have been accompanied by a kindred progress towards non- coercive education: the pupil is hampered by fewer restraints, and other means than punishments are used to govern him. In those ascetic days when men, acting on the greatest misery principle, held that the more gratifications they denied themselves the more virtuous they were, they, as a matter of course, considered that the best education which most thwarted the wishes of their children, and cut short all spontaneous activity with " You mustn't do so." While on the contrary, now that happi- ness is coming to be regarded as a legitimate aim now that hours of labour are being shortened and popular recreations provided, parents and teachers are beginning to see that most childish desires may rightly be gratified, that childish sports should be encouraged, and that the tendencies of the growing mind are not altogether so diabolical as was sup- 90 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. posed. The age in which all thought that trades must be established by bounties and prohibitions; that manufacturers needed their materials and qualities and prices to be prescribed; and that the value of money could be determined by law; was an age which unavoidably cherished the notions that a child's mind could be made to order; that its powers were to be imparted by the schoolmaster; that it was a receptacle into which knowledge was to be put and there built up after its teacher's ideal. In this free-trade era, however, when we are learn- ing that there is much more self-regulation in things than was supposed; that labour, and com- merce, and agriculture, and navigation can do bet- ter without management than with it; that politi- cal governments, to be efficient, must grow up from within and not be imposed from without; we are also beginning to see that there is a natural process of mental evolution which is not to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force on the un- folding mind our artificial forms; but that Psy- chology, also, discloses to us a law of supply and demand, to which, if we would not do harm, we must conform. Thus alike in its oracular dogma- tism, in its harsh discipline, in its multiplied restric- tions, in its professed asceticism, and in its faith in the devices of men, the old educational regime was THE TRANSITION STAGE OF INQUIRY. 91 akin to the social systems with which it was con- temporaneous; and similarly, in the reverse of these characteristics our modern modes of culture correspond to our more liberal religious and political institutions. But there remain further parallelisms to which we have not yet adverted: that, namely, between /the processes by which these respective changes have been wrought out; and that between the sev- \ eral states of heterogeneous opinion to which they \have led. Some centuries ago there was uniformity of belief religious, political, and educational. All men were Romanists, all were Monarchists, all were disciples of Aristotle, and no one thought of calling in question that grammar-school routine under which all were brought up. The same agency has in each case replaced this uniformity by a constantly increasing diversity. That tendency towards assertion of the individuality, which, after contributing to produce the great Protestant move- ment, has gone on to produce an ever-increasing number of sects that tendency which initiated po- litical parties, and out of the two primary ones has, in these modern days, evolved a multiplicity to which every year adds that tendency which led to the Baconian rebellion against the schools, and has since originated here and abroad sundry new ** 92 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. systems of thought is a tendency which, in educa- tion also, has caused division and the accumulation of methods. As external consequences of the same internal change, these processes have neces- sarily been more or less simultaneous. The decline of authority, whether papal, philosophic, kingly, or tutorial, is essentially one phenomenon; in each of its aspects a leaning towards free action is seen alike in the working out of the change itself, and in the new forms of theory and practice to which the change has given birth. While many will regret this multiplication of schemes of juvenile culture, the catholic observer will discern in it a means of ensuring the final es- tablishment of a rational system. Whatever may be thought of theological dissent, it is clear that dissent in education results in facilitating inquiry by the-f|ivifiioTi ir> Iqfrrflir. Were we in possession of the true method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial; but the true method hav- ing to be found, the efforts of numerous indepen- dent seekers carrying out their researches in dif- ferent directions, constitute a better agency for find- ing it than any that could be devised. Each of them struck by some new thought which probably contains more or less of basis in facts each of them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients CULTURE OF THE WHOLE BEING. 93 to test its correctness, and untiring in his efforts, to make known its success each of them merciless in his criticism on the rest there cannot fail, by com- position of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever portion of the normal method any one of them has dis- covered, must, by the constant exhibition of its re- sults, force itself into adoption; whatever wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated ex- periment and failure, be exploded. And by this aggregation of truths and elimination of errors, I there must eventually be developed a correct and complete body of doctrine. Of the three phases through which human opinion passes the una- nimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise it is manifest that the second is the parent of the third. They are not sequences in time only; they are se- quences in causation. However impatiently, there- fore, we may witness the present conflict of educa- tional systems, and however much we may regret its accompanying evils, we must recognise it as a transition state needful to be passed through, and beneficent in its ultimate effects. Meanwhile may we not advantageously take stock of our progress? After fifty years of discus- sion, experiment, and comparison of results, may 94 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. we not expect a few steps towards the goal to be already made good? Some old methods must by this time have fallen out of use; some new ones must have become established; and many others must be in process of general abandonment or adoption. Probably we may see in these various changes, when put side by side, similar characteris- tics may find in them a common tendency; and so, by inference, may get a clue to the direction in which experience is leading us, and gather hints how we may achieve yet further improvements. Let us then, as a preliminary to a deeper considera- tion of the matter, glance at the leading contrasts between the education of the past and of the present. The suppression of every error is commonly followed by a temporary ascendency of the con- trary one; and it so happened, that after the ages when physical development alone was aimed at, there came an age when culture of the mind was the sole solicitude when children had lesson-books put before them at between two and three years old when school-hours were protracted, and the get- ting of knowledge was thought the one thing need- ful. As, further, it usually happens, that after one of these reactions the next advance is achieved by co-ordinating the antagonist errors, and per' CULTURE OF THE WHOLE BEING. 95 ceiving that they are opposite sides of one truth; so we are now coming to the conviction that body and mind must both be cared for, and the whole being unfolded. The forcing system has been in great measure given up, and precocity is discouraged. People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life, is to be a good animal. The best brain is found of little service, if there be not enough vital energy to work it; and hence to ob- tain the one by sacrificing the source of the other, is now considered a folly a folly which the event- ual failure of juvenile prodigies constantly illus- trates. Thus we are discovering the wisdom of the saying, that one secret in education is " to know howjrcisely to lose time." The once universal practice of learning by rote, is daily falling more into discredit. All modern authorities condemn the old mechanical way of teaching the alphabet. The multiplication table is now frequently taught experimentally. In the ac- quirement of languages, the grammar-school plan is being superseded by plans based on the spontane- ous process followed by the child in gaining its mother tongue. Describing the methods there used, the " Reports on the Training School at Bat- tersea " say : " The instruction in the whole pre- paratory course is chiefly oral, and is illustrated as 96 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. much as possible by appeals to nature." And so throughout. The rote-system, like other systems of its age, made more of the forms and symbols than of the things symbolized. To repeat the words correctly was everything; to understand their meaning nothing: and thus the spirit was sacrificed to the letter. It is at length perceived, that in this case as in others, such a result is not accidental but necessary that in proportion as there is attention to the signs, there must be inat- tention to the things signified; or that, as Mon- taigne long ago said Sgavoir par cceur n'est pas sgavoir. Along with rote-teaching, is declining also the nearly allied teaching by rules. The particulars first, and then the generalization, is the new method a method, as the Battersea School Reports re- mark, which, though " the reverse of the method usually followed which consists in giving the pupil the rule first," is yet proved by experience to be the right one. Rule-teaching is now condemned as imparting a merely empirical knowledge as producing an appearance of understanding without the reality. To give the net product of inquiry, without the inquiry that leads to it, is found to be both enervating and inefficient. General truths to be of due and permanent use, must be earned. MISCHIEFS OF RULE-TEACHING. 97 " Easy come easy go," is a saying as applicable io\ knowledge as to wealth. While rules, lying iso- lated in the mind not joined to its other contents as outgrowths from them are continually forgot- ten, the principles which those rules express piece- meal, become, when once reached by the under- standing, enduring possessions. While the rule- taught youth is at sea when beyond his rules, the youth instructed in principles solves a new case as readily as an old one. Between a mind of rules and a mind of principles, there exists a difference 'such as that between a confused heap of materials, and the same materials organized into a complete whole, with all its parts bound together. Of which types this last has not only the advantage that its constituent parts are better retained, but the much greater advantage, that it forms an efficient agent for inquiry, for independent thought, for discovery ends for which the first is useless. Nor let it be supposed that this is a simile only : it is the literal truth. The union of facts into generalizations is the organization of knowledge, whether considered as an objective phenomenon, or a subjective one: and the mental grasp may be measured by the ex- tent to which this organization is carried. From the substitution of principles for rules, and the necessarily co-ordinate practice of leaving 98 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. abstraction untaught until the mind has been famil- iarized with the facts from which they are ab- stracted, has resulted the postponement of some once early studies to a late period. This is exem- plified in the abandonment of that intensely stupid custom, the teaching of grammar to children. As M. Marcel says: "It may without hesitation be affirmed that grammar is not the stepping-stone, but the finishing instrument." As Mr. Wyse argues: " Grammar and Syntax are a collection of laws and rules. Rules are gathered from practice; they are the results of induction to which we come by long observation and comparison of facts. It is, in fine, the science, the philosophy of language. In following the process of nature, neither individuals nor nations ever arrive at the science first. A lan- guage is spoken, and poetry written, many years be- fore either a grammar or prosody is even thought of. Men did not wait till Aristotle had construct- ed his logic, to reason. In short, as grammar was made after language, so ought it to be taught after language: an inference which all who recognise the relationship between the evolution of the race and of the individual, will see to be unavoidable. Of new practices that have grown up during the decline of these old ones, the most important is the systematic culture of the powers of observation. TRAINING THE POWERS OP OBSERVATION. 99 After long ages of blindness men are at last seeing that the spontaneous activity of the observing fac- ulties in children has a meaning and a use. What was once thought mere purposeless action, or play, or mischief, as the case might be, is now recog- nised as the process of acquiring a knowledge on which all after-knowledge is based. Hence the well-conceived but ill-conducted system of object- lessons. The saying of Bacon, that physics is the mother of sciences, has come to have a meaning in education. Without an accurate acquaintance with the visible and tangible properties of things, our conceptions must be erroneous, our inferences fallacious, and our operations unsuccessful. " The education of the senses neglected, all after educa- tion partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, an insuffi- ciency which it is impossible to cure." Indeed, if we consider it, we shall find that exhaustive obser- vation is an element in all great success. It is not to artists, naturalists, and men of science only, that it is needful; it is not only that the skilful physician depends on it for the correctness of his diagnosis, and that to the good engineer it is so im- portant that some years in the workshop are pre- scribed for him; but we may see that the philoso- pher also is fundamentally one who observes rela- tionships of things which others had overlooked, 100 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. and that the poet, too, is one who sees the fine facts in nature which all recognise when pointed out, but did not before remark. Nothing requires more to be insisted on than that vivid and complete impres- sions are all essential. 'No sound fabric of wisdom can be woven out of a rotten raw-material. While the old method of presenting truths in the abstract has been falling out of use, there has been a corresponding adoption of the new method of presenting them in the concrete. The rudimen- tary facts of exact science are now being learnt by direct intuition, as textures, and tastes, and colours are learnt. Employing the ball-frame for the first lesson in arithmetic exemplifies this. It is well il- lustrated, too, in Professor De Morgan's mode of explaining the decimal notation. M. Marcel, rightly repudiating the old system of tables, teaches weights and measures by referring to the actual yard and foot, pound and ounce, gallon and quart; and lets the discovery of their relationships be experi' mental. The use of geographical models and mod- els of the regular bodies, &c., as introductory to geography and geometry respectively, are facts of the same class. Manifestly a common trait of these methods is, that they carry each child's mind through a process like that which the mind of hu- manity at large has gone through. The truths of THB NATUEAL METHOD number, of form, of relationship in position, were all originally drawn from objects; and to present these truths to the child in the concrete is to let him learn them as the race learnt them. By and by, perhaps, it will be seen that he cannot possibly learn them in any other way ; for that if he is made to re- peat them as abstractions, the abstractions can have no meaning for him, until he finds that they are simply statements of what he intuitively discerns. But of all the changes taking place, the most significant is the growing desire to make the ac- quirement of knowledge pleasurable rather than painful a desire based on the more or less distinct perception that at each age the intellectual action which a child likes is a healthful one for it; and conversely. There is a spreading opinion that the rise of an appetite for any kind of knowledge im- plies that the unfolding mind has become fit to as- similate it, and needs it for the purposes of growth ; and that on the other hand, the disgust felt towards any kind of knowledge is a sign either that it is prematurely presented, or that it is presented in an indigestible form. Hence the efforts to make early education amusing, and all education interest- ing. Hence the lectures on the value of play. Hence the defence of nursery rhymes, and fairy tales. Daily we more and more conform our plans mTKDLBCTUAL EDUCATION. to juvenile opinion. Does the child like this or that kind of teaching? does he take to it? we con- stantly ask. " His natural desire of variety should be indulged," says M. Marcel; " and the gratifica- tion of his curiosity should be combined with his improvement." " Lessons," he again remarks, " should cease before the child evinces symptoms of weariness." And so with later education. Short breaks during school-hours, excursions into the country, amusing lectures, choral songs in these and many like traits, the change may be discerned. Asceticism is disappearing out of education as out of life ; and the usual test of political legislation its tendency to promote happiness is beginning to be, in a great degree, the test of legislation for the school and the nursery. What now is the common characteristic of these ! several changes? Is it not an increasing conform- iity to the methods of nature? The relinquishment of early forcing against which nature ever rebels, and the leaving of the first years for exercise of the limbs and senses, show this. The superseding of rote-learnt lessons by lessons orally and experiment- ally given, like those of the field and play-ground, shows this. The disuse of rule-teaching, and the adoption of teaching by principles that is, the leaving of generalizations until there are particulars ORDER OF EVOLUTION OF THE FACULTIES. 103 to base them on show this. The system of object- lessons shows this. The teaching of the rudiments of science in the concrete instead of the abstract, shows this. And above all, this tendency is shown in the variously directed efforts to present knowl- edge in attractive forms, and so to make the ac- quirement of it pleasurable. For as it is the order of nature in all creatures that the gratification ac- companying the fulfilment of needful functions serves as a stimulus to their fulfilment as during the self-education of the young child, the delight taken in the biting of corals, and the pulling to pieces of toys, becomes the prompter to actions which teach it the properties of matter; it follows that, in choosing the succession of subjects and the modes of instruction which most interest the pupil, we are fulfilling nature's behests, and adjusting our proceedings to the laws of life. Thus, then, we are on the highway towards the doctrine long ago enunciated by Pestalozzi, that alike in its order and its methods, education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution \ that there is a certain sequence in which the faculties spontaneously develop, and a certain kind of knowledge which each requires during its devel- opment; and that it is for us to ascertain this se- quence, and supply this knowledge. All the im- 8 104 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. provements above alluded to are partial applications of this general principle. A nebulous perception of it now prevails among teachers; and it is daily more insisted on in educational works. " The method of nature is the archetype of all methods," says M. Marcel. " The vital principle in the pur- suit is to enable the pupil rightly to instruct him- self," writes Mr. Wyse. The more science familiar- izes us with the constitution of things the more do we see in them an inherent self-sufficingness. A higher knowledge tends continually to limit our in- terference with the processes of life. As in medi- cine the old " heroic treatment " has given place to mild treatment, and often no treatment save a normal regimen as we have found that it is not needful to mould the bodies of babes by bandaging them in papoose fashion or otherwise as in gaols it is being discovered that no cunningly devised disci- pline of ours is so efficient in producing reformation as the natural discipline, the making prisoners maintain themselves by productive labour; so in education we are finding that success is to be achieved only by rendering our measures subservi- ent to that spontaneous unfolding which all minds go through in their progress to maturity. Of course, this fundamental principle of tu- ition, and the arrangement of matter and method ORDER OF EVOLUTION OF THE FACULTIES. 105 must correspond with the order of evolution and mode of activity of the faculties a principle so obviously true, that once stated it seems almost self- evident has never been wholly disregarded. Teachers have unavoidably made their school- courses coincide with it in some degree, for the simple reason that education is possible only on that condition. Boys were never taught the rule-of- three until after they had learnt addition. They were not set to write exercises before they had got into their copy-books. Conic sections have always been preceded by Euclid. But the error of the old methods consists in this, that they do not recognise in detail what they are obliged to recognise in the general. Yet the principle applies throughout. If from the time when a child is able to conceive two things as related in position, years must elapse before it can form a true concept of the earth, as a sphere made up of land and sea, covered with moun- tains, forests, rivers, and cities, revolving on its axis, and sweeping round the sun if it gets from the one concept to the other by degrees if the inter- mediate concepts which it forms are consecutively larger and more complicated; is it not manifest that there is a general succession through which only it can pass; that each larger concept is made by the combination of smaller ones, and presupposes 106 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. them; and that to present any of these compound concepts before the child is in possession of its con- stituent ones, is only less absurd than to present the final concept of the series before the initial one? In the mastering of every subject some course of in- creasingly complex ideas has to be gone through. The evolution of the corresponding faculties con- sists in the assimilation of these ; which, in any true sense, is impossible without they are put into the mind in the normal order. And when this order is not followed, the result is, that they are received with apathy or disgust; and that unless the pupil is intelligent enough to eventually fill up the gaps himself, they lie in his memory as dead facts, capa- ble of being turned to little or no use. " But why trouble ourselves about any cur- riculum at all? " it may be asked. " If it be true that the mind like the body has a predetermined course of evolution if it unfolds spontaneously if its successive desires for this or that kind of infor- mation arise when these are severally required for its nutrition if there thus exists in itself a promp- ter to the right species of activity at the right time; why interfere in any way? Why not leave chil- dren wholly to the discipline of nature? why not remain quite passive and let them get knowledge as they best can? why not be consistent through- GUIDANCE NOT TO BE DISPENSED WITH. 107 out?" This is an awkward looking question. Plausibly implying as it does, that a system of com- plete laissez-faire is the logical outcome of the doc- trines set forth, it seems to furnish a disproof of them by redudio ad absurdum. In truth, how- ever, they do not, when rightly understood, commit us to any such untenable position. A glance at the physical analogies will clearly show this. It is a general law of all life that the more complex the organism to be produced, the longer the period ' during which it is dependent on a parent organism for food and protection. The contrast between the minute, rapidly-formed, and self -moving spore of a conferva, and the slowly developed seed of a tree, with its multiplied envelopes and large stock of nutriment laid by to nourish the germ during its first stages of growth, illustrates this law in its ap- plication to the vegetable world. Among animal organisms we may trace it in a series of contrasts from the monad whose spontaneously-divided halves are as self-sufficing the moment after their sepa- ration as was the original whole; up to man, whose offspring not only passes through a protracted ges- tation, and subsequently long depends on the breast for sustenance; but after that must have its food artificially administered; must, after it has learned to feed itself, continue to have bread, clothing, and 108 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. shelter provided; and does not acquire the power of complete self-support until a time varying from fif- teen to twenty years after its birth. Now this law applies to the mind as to the body. For mental pabulum also, every higher creature, and especially man, is at first dependent on adult aid. Lacking the ability to move about, the babe is as powerless to get materials on which to exercise its perceptions as it is to get supplies for its stomach. Unable to pre- pare its own food, it is in like manner unable to 'reduce many kinds of knowledge to a fit form for assimilation. The language through which all higher truths are to be gained it wholly derives from those surrounding it. And we see in. such an example as the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the arrest of development that results when no help is received from parents and nurses. Thus, in providing from day to day the right kind of facts, prepared in the right manner, and giving them in due abundance at appropriate intervals, there is as much scope for active ministration to a child's mind as to its body. In either case it is the chief function of par- ents to see that the conditions requisite to growth are maintained. And, as in supplying aliment, and clothing, and shelter, they may fulfil this func- tion without at all interfering with the spontaneous development of the limbs and viscera either in their PROVISION OF MENTAL NUTRIMENT. 109 order or mode; so they may supply sounds for imi- tation, objects for examination, books for reading, problems for solution, and, if they use neither di- rect nor indirect coercion, may do this without in any way disturbing the normal process of mental evolution; or rather, may greatly facilitate that process. Hence the admission of the doctrines enunciated does not, as some might argue, involve the abandonment of all teaching; but leaves am- ple room for an active and elaborate course of culture. Passing from generalities to special considera- tions it is to be remarked that in practice, the Pes- talozzian system seems scarcely to have fulfilled the ' promise of its theory. We hear of children not at all interested in its lessons disgusted with them rather; and, so far as we can gather, the Pestaloz- zian schools have not turned out any unusual pro- portion of distinguished men if even they have reached the average. We are not surprised at this. The success of every appliance depends mainly upon the intelligence with which it is used. It is a trite remark, that, having the choicest tools, an unskilful artisan will botch his work; and bad teachers will fail even with the best methods. Indeed, the good- ness of the method becomes in such case a cause of HO INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. failure; as, to continue the simile, the perfection of the tool becomes in undisciplined hands a source of imperfection in results. A simple, unchanging, al- most mechanical routine of tuition may be carried out by the commonest intellects, with such small beneficial effect as it is capable of producing; but a complete system, a system as heterogeneous in its appliances as the mind in its faculties, a system proposing a special means for^ each special end, de- mands for its right employment powers such as few teachers possess. The mistress of a dame-school can hear spelling-lessons; any hedge-schoolmaster can drill boys in the multiplication-table; but to teach spelling rightly by using the powers of the letters instead of their names, or to instruct in nu- merical combinations by experimental synthesis, a modicum of understanding is needful: and to pur- sue a like rational course throughout the entire range of studies, asks an amount of judgment, of in- vention, of intellectual sympathy, of analytical fac- ulty, which we shall never see applied to it while Jthe tutorial office is held in such small esteem. The true education is practicable only to the true philosopher. Judge, then, what prospect a philo- sophical method now has of being acted out! Knowing so little as we yet do of Psychology, and ignorant as our teachers are of that little, what PESTALOZZI'S PRACTICE DEFECTIVE. chance has a system which requires Psychology for its basis? Further hindrance and discouragement has arisen from confounding the Pestalozzian principle with the forms in which it has been embodied. Be- cause particular plans have not answered expecta- tion, discredit has been cast upon the doctrine asso- ciated with them; no inquiry being made whether these plans truly conform to such doctrine. Judg- ing as usual by the concrete rather than the abstract, men have blamed the theory for the bunglings of the practice. It is as though Papin's futile attempt to construct a steam-engine had been held to prove that steam could not be used as a motive power. Let it be constantly borne in mind that while right in his fundamental ideas Pestalozzi was not there- fore right in all his applications of them: and we believe the fact to be that he was often wrong. As described even by his admirers, Pestalozzi was a man of partial intuitions, a man who had occasional flashes of insight, rather than a man of systematic thought. His first great success at Stantz was achieved when he had no books or appliances of ordinary teaching, and when " the only object of his attention was to find out at each moment what instruction his children stood peculiarly in need of, and what was the best manner of connecting it with 112 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. the knowledge they already possessed." Much of his power was due, not to calmly reasoned-out plans of culture, but to his profound sympathy, which gave him an instinctive perception of childish needs and difficulties. He lacked the ability logically to co-ordinate and develop the truths which he thus from time to time laid hold of; and had in great measure to leave this to his assistants, Kruesi, Tob- ler, Buss, Niederer, and Schmid. The result is that in their details his own plans, and those vicariously devised, contain numerous crudities and inconsist- encies. His nursery-method, described in " The Mother's Manual," beginning as it does with a no- menclature of the different parts of the body, and proceeding next to specify their relative positions, and next their connexions, may be proved not at all in accordance with the initial stages of mental evo- lution. His process of teaching the mother tongue by formal exercises in the meanings of words and in the construction of sentences, is quite needless, and must entail on the pupil loss of time, labour, and happiness. His proposed mode of teaching geography is utterly unpestalozzian. And often where his plans are essentially sound they are either incomplete or vitiated by some remnant of the old regime. While, therefore, we would defend in ita entire extent the general doctrine which Pestalozzi TRUTH OF THE PBSTALOZZIAN IDEA. H3 inaugurated, we think great evil likely to result from an uncritical reception of his specific devices. That tendency which mankind constantly exhibit to canonize the forms and practices along with which any great truth has been bequeathed to them, their liability to prostrate their intellects before the prophet and swear by his every word, their proneness to mistake the clothing of the idea for the idea itself; renders it needful to insist strongly upon the distinction between the fundamental prin- ciple of the Pestalozzian system, and the set of ex- pedients devised for its practice: and to suggest that while the one may be considered as established, the other is probably nothing but an adumbration of the normal course. Indeed, on looking at the state of our knowledge we may be quite sure that this is the case. Before our educational methods can be made to harmonize in character and arrange- ment with the faculties in their mode and order of unfolding, it is first needful that we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties do unfold. At present our knowledge of the matter extends only to a few general notions. These general notions must be developed in detail, must be transformed into a multitude of specific propositions, before we can be said to possess that science on which the art of education must be based. And then when we 114 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. have definitely made out in what succession, and in what combinations the mental powers become ac- tive, it remains to choose out of the many possible ways of exercising each of them that which best conforms to its natural mode of action. Evidently, therefore, it is not to be supposed that even our most advanced modes of teaching are the right ones, or nearly the right ones. Bearing in mind then this distinction between the principle and the practice of Pestalozzi, and in- ferring from the grounds assigned that the last must necessarily be very defective, the reader will rate at its true worth the dissatisfaction with the system which some have expressed; and will see that the due realization of the Pestalozzian idea remains to be achieved. Should he argue, however, from what has just been said that no such realization is at present practicable, and that all effort ought to be devoted to the preliminary inquiry; we reply, that though it is not possible for a scheme of cul- ture to be perfected either in matter or form until a rational Psychology has been established, it is | possible, with the aid of certain guiding principles, 'to make empirical approximations towards a per- fect scheme. To prepare the way for further re- search we will now specify these principles. Some of them have already been more or less distinctly ORDER OF MENTAL PROCEDURE. H5 implied in the foregoing pages; but it will be well here to state them all in logical order. 1. That in education we should proceed from the simple to the complex is a truth which has always been to some extent acted upon; not pro- fessedly, indeed, nor by any means consistently. The mind grows. Like all things that grow it pro- gresses from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous ; and a normal training system being an objective counterpart of this subjective process, must exhibit the like progression. Moreover, regarding it from this point of view, we may see that this formula has much wider applications than at first appears. For its rationale involves not only that we should proceed from the single to the combined in the teaching of each branch of knowledge; but that we should do the like with knowledge as a whole. As the mind, consisting at first of but few active faculties; has its later-completed faculties succes- sively awakened, and ultimately comes to have all its faculties in simultaneous action; it follows that our teaching should begin with but few subjects at once, and successively adding to these, should final- ly carry on all subjects abreast that not only in its details should education proceed from the simple to the complex, but in its ensemble also. 116 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 2. To say that our lessons ought to start from the concrete and end in the abstract, may be con- sidered as in part a repetition of the foregoing. Nevertheless it is a maxim that needs to be stated: if with no other view, then with the view of shew- ing in certain cases what are truly the simple and the complex. For unfortunately there has been much misunderstanding on this point. General formulas which men have devised to express groups of details, and which have severally simplified their conceptions by uniting many facts into one fact, they have supposed must simplify the conceptions of the child also; quite forgetting that a generali- zation is simple only in comparison with the whole mass of particular truths it comprehends that it is more complex than any one of these truths taken singly that only after many of these single truths have been acquired does the generalization ease the memory and help the reason and that to the child not possessing these single truths it is necessarily a mystery. Thus confounding two kinds of simplifi- cation, teachers have constantly erred by setting out with " first principles " : a proceeding essen- tially, though not apparently, at variance with the primary rule; which implies that the mind should be introduced to principles through the medium of examples, and so should be led from the partic- MENTAL GROWTH OF THE RACE. H7 ular to the general from the concrete to the ab- stract. 3. The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind as considered historically; or in other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowl- edge in the race. To M. Comte we believe society owes the enunciation of this doctrine a doctrine which we may accept without committing ourselves to his theory of the genesis of knowledge, either in its causes or its order. In support of this doctrine two reasons may be assigned, either of them suffi- cient to establish it. One is deducible from the law of hereditary transmission as considered in its wider consequences. For if it be true that men exhibit likeness to ancestry both in aspect and char- acter if it be true that certain mental manifesta- tions, as insanity, will occur in successive members of the same family at the same age if, passing from individual cases in which the traits of many dead ancestors mixing with those of a few living ones greatly obscure the law, we turn to national types, and remark how the contrasts between them are persistent from age to age if we remember that these respective types came from a common stock, and that hence the present marked differences 118 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. between them must have arisen from the action of modifying circumstances upon successive genera- tions who severally transmitted the accumulated effects to their descendants if we find the differ- ences to be now organic, so that the French child grows into a French man even when brought up among strangers and if the general fact thus illus- trated is true of the whole nature, intellect inclu- sive; then it follows that if there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order in- trinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps trav- ersed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the funda- mental reason why education should be a repetition of civilisation in little. It is alike provable that the historical sequence was, in its main outlines, a necessary one; and that the causes which deter- mined it apply to the child as to the race. Not to specify these causes in detail, it will suffice here to point out that as the mind of humanity placed in the midst of phenomena and striving to compre- hend them, has, after endless comparisons, specula- tions, experiments, and theories, reached its present MENTAL GROWTH OF THE RACE. H9 knowledge of each subject by a specific route; it may rationally be inferred that the relationship be- tween mind and phenomena is such as to prevent this knowledge from being reached by any other route; and that as each child's mind stands in this same relationship to phenomena, they can be acces- sible to it only through the same route. Hence in deciding upon the right method of education, an in- quiry into the method of civilisation will help to guide us. 4. One of the conclusions to which such an in- quiry leads is, that in each branch of instruction we should proceed from the empirical to the ration- al. A leading fact in human progress is, that every science is evolved out of its corresponding art. It results from the necessity we are under, both in- dividually and as a race, of reaching the abstract by way of the concrete, that there must be practice and an accruing experience with its empirical gener- alizations, before there can be science. Science is organized knowledge ; and before knowledge can be organized, some of it must first be possessed. Every study, therefore, should have a purely experimental introduction; and only after an ample fund of observations has been accumulated, should reason- ing begin. As illustrative applications of this rule, we may instance the modern course of placing 9 120 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. grammar, not before language, but after it; or the ordinary custom of prefacing perspective by prac- tical drawing. By and by further applications of it will be indicated. * 5, A second corollary from the foregoing gen- eral principle, and one which cannot be too strenu- ously insisted upon, is, that in education the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own in- ferences. They should be told as little as possible, and induced to discover as much as possible. Hu- manity has progressed solely by self -instruction ; and that to achieve the best results, each mind must progress somewhat after the same fashion, is con- tinually proved by the marked success of self-made men. Those who have been brought up under the ordinary school-drill, and have carried away with them the idea that education is practicable only in that style, will think it hopeless to make children their own teachers. If, however, they will call to mind that the all-important knowledge of surround- ing objects which a child gets in its early years is got without help if they will remember that the child is self-taught in the use of its mother tongue if they will estimate the amount of that experi- ence of life, that otit-of -school wisdom, which every PROGRESS BY SELF-INSTRUCTION. 121 boy gathers for himself if they will mark the unusual intelligence of the uncared-for London gamin, as shewn in all directions in which his facul- ties have been tasked if further, they will think how many minds have struggled up unaided, not only through the mysteries of our irrationally- planned curriculum, but through hosts of other ob- stacles besides; they will find it a not unreasonable conclusion, that if the subjects be put before him in right order and right form, any pupil of ordinary capacity will surmount his successive difficulties with but little assistance. Who indeed can watch the ceaseless observation, and inquiry, and infer- ence going on in a child's mind, or listen to its acute remarks on matters within the range of its faculties, without perceiving that these powers which it manifests, if brought to bear systematic- ally upon any studies within the same range, would readily master them without help? This need for perpetual telling is the result of our stupidity, not of the child's. We drag it away from the facts in which it is interested, and which it is actively as- similating of itself; we put before it facts far too complex for it to understand, and therefore dis- tasteful to it; finding that it will not voluntarily acquire these facts, we thrust them into its mind by force of threats and punishment; by thus denying 122 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. the knowledge it craves, and cramming it with knowledge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid state of its faculties, and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general; and when, as a result partly of the stolid indolence we have brought on, and partly of still continued unfitness in its studies, the child can understand nothing without explanation, and becomes a mere passive recipient of our in- struction, we infer that education must necessarily be carried on thus. Having by our method in- duced helplessness, we straightway make the help- lessness a reason for our method. Clearly then the experience of pedagogues cannot rationally be quoted against the doctrine we are defending. And whoever sees this will see that we may safely follow the method of nature throughout may, by a skil- ful ministration, make the mind as self-developing in its later stages as it is in its earlier ones; and that only by doing this can we produce the highest power and activity. 6. As a final test by which to judge any plan of culture, should come the question, Does it create a pleasurable excitement in the pupils? When in doubt whether a particular mode or arrangement is or is not more in harmony with the foregoing princi- ples than some other, we may safely abide by this criterion. Even when, as considered theoretically, INSTINCTIVE DEMAND OP THE PLEASURABLE. 1 the proposed course seems the best, yet if it produce no interest, or less interest than another course, we should relinquish it; for a child's intellectual in- stincts are more trustworthy than our reasonings. In respect to the knowing faculties, we may confi- dently trust in the general law, that under normal conditions, healthful action is pleasurable, while action which gives pain is not healthful. Though at present very incompletely conformed to by the emotional nature, yet by the intellectual nature, or at least by those parts of it which the child exhibits, this law is almost wholly conformed to. The re- pugnances to this and that study which vex the or- dinary teacher, are not innate, but result from his unwise system. Fellenberg says, " Experience has taught me that indolence in young persons is so directly opposite to their natural disposition to ac- tivity, that unless it is the consequence of bad edu- cation, it is almost invariably connected with some constitutional defect." And the spontaneous ac- tivity to which children are thus prone, is simply the pursuit of those pleasures which the healthful exercise of the faculties gives. It is true that some of the higher mental powers as yet but little devel- oped in the race, and congenitally possessed in any considerable degree only by the most advanced, are indisposed to the amount of exertion required of 124 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. them. But these, in virtue of their very complex- ity, will, in a normal course of culture, come last into exercise, and will therefore have no demands made upon them until the pupil has arrived at an age when ulterior motives can be brought into play, and an indirect pleasure made to counterbalance a direct displeasure. With all faculties lower than these, however, the direct gratification consequent on activity is the normal stimulus; and under good management the only needful stimulus. When we are obliged to fall back upon some other, we must take the fact as evidence that we are on the wrong track. Experience is daily shew- ing with greater clearness that there is always a method to be found productive of interest even of delight; and it ever turns out that this is the method proved by all other tests to be the right one. With most, these guiding principles will weigh but little if left in this abstract form. Partly, therefore, to exemplify their application, and partly with a view of making sundry specific suggestions, we propose now to pass from the theory of educa- tion to the practice of it. It was the opinion of Pestalozzi an opinion which has ever since his day been gaining ground IT BEGINS IN INFANCY. 125 that education of some kind should begin from the cradle. Whoever has watched with any dis- cernment, the wide-eyed gaze of the infant at sur- rounding objects, knows very well that education does begin thus early, whether we intend it or not; and that these fingerings and suckings of every thing it can lay hold of, these open-mouthed listen- ings to every sound, are the first steps in the series which ends in the discovery of unseen planets, the invention of calculating engines, the production of great paintings, or the composition of sympho- nies and operas. This activity of the faculties from the very first being spontaneous and inevita- ble, the question is whether we shall supply in due variety the materials on which they may exercise themselves; and to the question so put, none but an affirmative answer can be given. As before said, however, agreement with Pestalozzi's theory does not involve agreement with his practice; and here occurs a case in point. Treating of instruction in spelling he says: "The spelling-book ought, therefore, to contain all the sounds of the language, and these ought to be taught in every family from the earliest infancy. The child who learns his spelling-book ought to repeat them to the infant in the cradle, before it is able to pronounce even one of them, so that they may be deeply impressed upon its mind by frequent repetition." 126 INTELLECTUAL DUCATION. Joining this with the suggestions for " a nur- sery-method/' as set down in his " Mother's Man- ual," in which he makes the names, positions, con- nexions, numbers, properties, and uses of the limbs and body his first lessons, it becomes clear that Pes- talozzi's notions on early mental development were too crude to enable him to devise judicious plans. Let us inquire into the course which Psychology dictates. The earliest impressions which the mind can as- similate, are those given to it by the undecompo- sable sensations resistance, light, sound, &c. Manifestly decomposable states of consciousness cannot exist before the states of consciousness out of which they are composed. There can be no idea of form until some familiarity with light in its gradations and qualities, or resistance in its differ- ent intensities, has been acquired; for, as has been long known, we recognize visible form by means of varieties of light, and tangible form by means of varieties of resistance. Similarly, no articulate sound is cognizable until the inarticulate sounds which go to make it up have been learned. And thus must it be in every other case. Following, therefore, the necessary law of progression from the simple to the complex, we should provide for the infant a sufficiency of objects presenting dif- EARLY CULTURE OF THE SENSES. 12? ferent degrees and kinds of resistance, a sufficiency of objects reflecting different amounts and quali- ties of light, and a sufficiency of sounds contrasted in their loudness, their pitch and their timbre. How fully this a priori conclusion is confirmed by infantile instincts all will see on being reminded of the delight which every young child has in biting its toys, in feeling its brother's bright jacket-but- tons, and pulling papa's whiskers how absorbed it becomes in gazing at any gaudily painted object, to which it applies the word " pretty," when it can pronounce it, wholly in virtue of the bright colours and how its face broadens into a laugh at the tat- tlings of its nurse, the snapping of a visitor's fingers, or any sound which it has not before heard. For- tunately, the ordinary practices of the nursery fulfil these early requirements of education to a consider- able degree. Much, however, remains to be done; and it is of more importance that it should be done than at first appears. Every faculty during the period of its greatest activity the period in which it is spontaneously evolving itself is capable of re- ceiving more vivid impressions than at any other period. Moreover, as these simplest elements must eventually be mastered, and as the mastery of them whenever achieved must take time, it becomes an economy of time to occupy this first stage of child- 128 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. hood, during which no other intellectual action is possible, in gaining a complete familiarity with them in all their modifications. Add to which, that both temper and health will be improved by the continual gratification resulting from a due supply of these impressions which every child so greedily assimilates. Space, could it be spared, might here be well filled by some suggestions to- wards a more systematic ministration to these sim- plest of the perceptions. But it must suffice to point out that any such ministration ought to be based upon the general truth that in the develop- ment of every faculty, markedly contrasted im- pressions are the first to be distinguished: that hence sounds greatly differing in loudness and pitch, colours very remote from each other, and substances widely unlike in hardness or texture, should be the first supplied; and that in each case the progression must be by slow degrees to impres- sions more nearly allied. ,/ Passing on to objejctrlessons, which manifestly form a natural continuation of this primary culture of the senses, it is to be remarked, that the system commonly pursued is wholly at variance with the method of nature, as alike exhibited in infancy, in adult life, and in the course of civilization. " The child," says M. Marcel, " must be shewn how all THE CHILD'S DEMAND FOR SYMPATHY. 129 the parts of an object are connected, &c. ; " and the various manuals of these object-lessons severally contain lists of the facts which the child is to be told respecting each of the things put before it. Now it needs but a glance at the daily life of the infant to see that all the knowledge of things which is gained before the acquirement of speech, is self- gained that the qualities of hardness and weight associated with certain visual appearances, the pos- session of particular forms and colours by particular persons, the production of special sounds by animals of special aspects, are phenomena which it observes for itself. In manhood too, when there are no longer teachers at hand, the observations and infer- ences required for daily guidance, must be made unhelped; and success in life depends upon the ac- curacy and completeness with which they are made. Is it probable then, that while the process displayed in the evolution of humanity at large, is repeated alike by the infant and the man, a reverse process must be followed during the period between infancy and manhood? and that too, even in so simple a thing as learning the properties of objects? Is it not obvious, on the contrary, that one method must be pursued throughout? And is not nature perpet- ually thrusting this method upon us, if we had but the wit to see it, and the humility to adopt it? 130 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. What can be more manifest than the desire of chil- dren for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you too may look at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can " Hear this new sound." Watch how the elder children come into the room exclaiming " Mamma, see what a curious thing," " Mamma, look at this," " Mamma, look at that; " and would continue the habit, did not the silly mamma tell them not to tease her. Observe how, when out with the nurse-maid, each little one runs up to her with the new flower it has gathered, to show her how pretty it is, and to get her also, to say it is pretty. Listen to the eager volubility with which every urchin describes any novelty he has been to see, if only he can find some one who will attend with any interest. Does not the induction lie on the surface? Is it not clear that we must conform our V course to these intellectual instincts that we must I just systematize the natural process that we must listen to all the child has to tell us about each ob- ject, must induce it to say every thing it can think of about such object, must occasionally draw its attention to facts it has not yet observed, with the TRUE METHOD OF OBJECT-LESSONS. 131 view of leading it to notice them itself whenever they recur, and must go on by and by to indicate or supply new series of things for a like exhaustive ex- amination? See the way in which, on this method, the intelligent mother conducts her lessons. Step by step she familiarizes her little boy with the names of the simpler attributes, hardness, softness, colour, taste, size, &c., in doing which she finds him eagerly help by bringing this to show her that it is red, and the other to make her feel that it is hard, as fast as she gives him words for these properties. Each additional property, as she draws his atten- tion to it in some fresh thing which he brings her, she takes care to mention in connexion with those he already knows; so that by the natural tendency to imitate, he may get into the habit of repeating them one after another. Gradually as there occur cases in which he omits to name one or more of the properties he has become acquainted with, she in- troduces the practice of asking him whether there is not something more that he can tell her about the thing he has got. Probably he does not under- stand. After letting him puzzle awhile she tells him; perhaps laughing at him a little for his fail- ure. A few recurrences of this and he perceives what is to be done. When next she says she knows something more about the object than he has told 132 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. her, his pride is roused; he looks at it intently; he thinks over all that he has heard; and the prob- lem being easy, presently finds it out. He is full of glee at his success, and she sympathizes with him. In common with every child, he delights in the dis- covery of his powers. He wishes for more victories, and goes in quest of more things about which to tell her. As his faculties unfold she adds quality after quality to his list: progressing from hardness and softness to roughness and smoothness, from col- our to polish, from simple bodies to composite ones thus constantly complicating the problem as he gains competence, constantly taxing his attention and memory to a greater extent, constantly main- taining his interest by supplying him with new im- pressions such as his mind can assimilate, and con- stantly gratifying him by conquests over such small difficulties as he can master. In doing this she is manifestly but following out that spontaneous pro- cess that was going on during a still earlier period simply aiding self-evolution ; and is aiding it in the mode suggested by the boy's instinctive behav- iour to her. Manifestly, too, the course she is pur- suing is the one best calculated to establish a habit of exhaustive observation; which is the professed aim of these lessons. To tell a child this and to show it the other, is not to teach it how to TRAINING THE OBSERVATION. 133 but to make it a mere recipient of another's observa- tions: a proceeding which weakens rather than strengthens its powers of self-instruction which deprives it of the pleasures resulting from success- ful activity which presents this all-attractive knowledge under the aspect of formal tuition and which thus generates that indifference and even disgust with which these object-lessons are not un- frequently regarded. On the other hand, to pur- sue the course above described is simply to guide the intellect to its appropriate food; to join with the intellectual appetites their natural adjuncts amour propre and the desire for sympathy; to in- duce by the union of all these an intensity of at- tention which insures perceptions alike vivid and complete; and to habituate the mind from the be- ginning to that practice of self-help which it must ultimately follow. Object-lessons should not only be carried on after quite a different fashion from that commonly pursued, but should be extended to a range of things far wider, and continue to a period far later, than now. They should not be limited to the con- tents of the house; but should include those of the fields and the hedges, the quarry and the sea-shore. They should not cease with early childhood; but should be so kept up during youth as insensibly to 134 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. merge into the investigations of the naturalist and the man of science. Here again we have but to follow nature's leadings. Where can be seen an in- tenser delight than that of children picking up new flowers and watching new insects, or hoarding peb- bles and shells? And who is there but perceives that by sympathizing with them they may be led on to any extent of inquiry into the qualities and structures of these things? Every botanist who has had children with him in the woods and the lanes must have noticed how eagerly they joined in his pursuits, how keenly they searched out plants for him, how intently they watched whilst he ex- amined them, how they overwhelmed him with questions. The consistent follower of Bacon the " servant and interpreter of nature," will see that we ought modestly to adopt the course of culture thus indicated. Having gained due familiarity with the simpler properties of inorganic objects, the child should by the same process be led on to a like exhaustive examination of the things it picks up in its daily walks the less complex facts they present being alone noticed at first: in plants, the colour, number, and forma of the petals and shapes of the stalks and leaves: in insects, the numbers of the wings, legs, and antennae, and their colours. As these become fully appreciated and invariably TRAINING THE OBSERVATION. 135 observed, further facts may be successively intro- duced : in the one case, the numbers of stamens and pistils, the forms of the flowers, whether radial or bilateral in symmetry, the arrangement and charac- ter of the leaves, whether opposite or alternate, stalked or sessile, smooth or hairy, serrated, toothed, or crenate; in the other, the divisions of the body, the segments of the abdomen, the markings of the wings, the number of joints in the legs, and the forms of the smaller organs the system pursued throughout being that of making it the child's am- bition to say respecting everything it finds, all that can be said. Then when a fit age has been reached, the means of preserving these plants which have become so interesting in virtue of the knowledge obtained of them, may as a great favour be sup- plied; and eventually, as a still greater favour, may also be supplied the apparatus needful for keeping the larvae of our common butterflies and moths through their transformations a practice which, as we can personally testify, yields the high- est gratification; is continued with ardour for years; when joined with the formation of an ento- mological collection, adds immense interest to Sat- urday-afternoon rambles; and forms an admirable introduction to the study of physiology. We are quite prepared to hear from many that 10 136 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. all this is throwing away time and energy; and that children would be much better occupied in writing their copies or learning their pence-tables, and so fitting themselves for the business of life. We re- gret that such crude ideas of what constitutes education and such a narrow conception of utility, should still be generally prevalent. Saying noth- ing on the need for a systematic culture of the per- ceptions and the value of the practices above in- culcated, as subserving that need, we are prepared to defend them even on the score of the knowledge gained. If men are to be mere cits, mere porers over ledgers, with no ideas beyond their trades if it is well that they should be as the cockney whose conception of rural pleasures extends no further than sitting in a tea-garden smoking pipes and drinking porter; or as the squire who thinks of woods as places for shooting in, of uncultivated plants as nothing but weeds, and who classifies ani- mals into game, vermin, and stock then indeed it is needless for men to learn any thing that does not directly help to replenish the till and fill the larder. But if there is a more worthy aim for us than to be drudges if there are other uses in the things around us than their power to bring money if there are higher faculties to be exercised than ac- quisitive and sensual ones if the pleasures which ENLARGED VIEWS OF ITS IMPORT. 137 poetry and art and science and philosophy can bring are of any moment then is it desirable that the in- stinctive inclination which every child shows to ob- serve natural beauties and investigate natural phe- nomena should be encouraged. But this gross util- itarianism which is content to come into the world and quit it again without knowing what kind of a world it is or what it contains, may be met on its own ground. It will by and by be found that a knowledge of the laws of life is more important than any other knowledge whatever that the laws of life include not only all bodily and mental pro- cesses, but by implication all the transactions of the house and the street, all commerce, all politics, all morals and that therefore without a due ac- quaintance with them neither personal nor social conduct can be rightly regulated. It will eventu- ally be seen too, that the laws of life are essentially the same throughout the whole organic creation; and further, that they cannot be properly under- stood in their complex manifestations until they have been studied in their simpler ones. And when this is seen, it will be also seen that in aiding the child to acquire the out-of-door information for which it shews so great an avidity, and in encourag- ing the acquisition of such information throughout youth, we are simply inducing it to store up the raw 138 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. material for future organization the facts that will one day bring home to it with due force those great generalizations of science by which actions may be rightly guided. The spreading recognition of drawing as an ele- ment of education, is one amongst many signs of the more rational views on mental culture now be- ginning to prevail. Once more it may be re- marked that teachers are at length adopting the course which nature has for ages been pressing upon their notice. The spontaneous efforts made by children to represent the men, houses, trees, and animals around them on a slate if they can get nothing better, or with lead-pencil on paper, if they can beg them are familiar to all. To be shown through a picture-book is one of their highest grati- fications; and as usual, their strong imitative ten- dency presently generates in them the ambition to make pictures themselves also. This attempt to de- )ict the striking things they see is a further instinc- tive exercise of the perceptions a means whereby still greater accuracy and completeness of observa- tion is induced. And alike by seeking to interest us in their discoveries of the sensible properties of things, and by their endeavours to draw, they so- licit from us just that kind of culture which they most need. DRAWING EARLY USB OF COLOURS. 139 Had teachers been guided by nature's hints not only in the making of drawing a part of education, but in the choice of their modes of teaching it, they would have done still better than they have done. What is it that the child first tries to represent? Things that are large, things that are attractive in colour, things round which its pleasurable associa- tions must cluster human beings from whom it has received so many emotions, cows and dogs which interest by the many phenomena they present, houses that are hourly visible and strike by their size and contrast of parts. And which of all the processes of representation gives it most delight? Colouring. Paper and pencil are good in default -.if something better; but a box of paints and a brush these are the treasures. The drawing of outlines immediately becomes secondary to colour- ing is gone through mainly with a view to the colouring; and if leave can be got to colour a book of prints, how great is the favour! Now, ridicu- lous as such a position will seem to drawing-masters, who postpone colouring and who teach form by a dreary discipline of copying lines, we believe that the course of culture thus indicated is the right one. That priority of colour to form, which, as already pointed out, has a psychological basis, and in virtue of which psychological basis arises this strong pref- 140 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. erence in the child, should be recognized from the very beginning; and from the very beginning also the things imitated should be real. That greater delight in colour which is not only conspicuous in children but persists in most persons throughout life, should be continuously employed as the natu- ral stimulus to the mastery of the comparatively difficult and unattractive form should be the pro- spective reward for the achievement of form. And these instinctive attempts to represent interesting actualities should be all along encouraged; in the conviction that as, by a widening experience, small- er and more practicable objects become interesting, they too will be attempted; and that so a gradual approximation will be made towards imitations hav- ing some resemblance to the realities. No matter how grotesque the shapes produced : no matter how daubed and glaring the colours. The question is not whether the child is producing good drawings: the question is, whether it is developing its facul- ties. It has first to gain some command over its fingers, some crude notions of likeness; and this practice is better than any other for these ends; seeing that it is the spontaneous and the interesting one. During these early years, be it remembered, no formal drawing-lessons are possible: shall we therefore repress, or neglect to aid, these efforts at DRAWING EARLY USB OF COLOURS. self -culture ? or shall we encourage and guide them as normal exercises of the perceptions and the pow- ers of manipulation? If by the supply of cheap woodcuts to be coloured, and simple contour-maps to have their boundary-lines tinted, we can not only pleasurably draw out the faculty of colour, but can incidentally produce some familiarity with the out- lines of things and countries, and some ability to move the brush steadily; and if by the supply of temptingly-painted objects we can keep up the in- stinctive practice of making representations, how- ever rough, it must happen that by the time draw- ing is commonly commenced there will exist a facil- ity that would else have been absent. Time will have been gained; and trouble both to teacher and pupil, saved. From all that has been said, it may be readily inferred that we wholly disapprove of the practice of drawing from copies; and still more so of that formal discipline in making straight lines and curved lines and compound lines, with which it is the fashion of some teachers to begin. We regret to find that the Society of Arts has recently, in its series of manuals on " Rudimentary Art-Instruc- tion," given its countenance to an elementary draw- ing-book, which is the most vicious in principle that -we haye seen, We Tefer to the " Outline from 142 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. Outline, or from the Flat," by John Bell, sculptor. As expressed in the prefatory note, this publication proposes " to place before the student a simple, yet logical mode of instruction; " and to this end sets out with a number of definitions thus: "A simple line in drawing is a thin mark drawn from one point to another. "Lines maybe divided, as to their nature in drawing, into two classes : "1. Straight, which are marks that go the shortest road between two points, as A B. "2. Or Curved, which are marks which do not go the shortest road between two points, as C D." And so the introduction progresses to horizontal lines, perpendicular lines, oblique lines, angles of the several kinds, and the various figures which lines and angles make up. The work is, in short, a grammar of form, with exercises. And thus the system of commencing with a dry analysis of ele- ments, which, in the teaching of language, has been exploded, is to be re-instituted in the teaching of drawing. The abstract is to be preliminary to the concrete. Scientific conceptions are to precede em- pirical experiences. That this is an inversion of the normal order, we need scarcely repeat. It has been well said concerning the custom of prefacing the art of speaking any tongue by a drilling in the parts of speech and their functions, that it is about ERRONEOUS METHOD IN DRAWING. 143 as reasonable as prefacing the art of walking by a course of lessons on the bones, muscles, and nerves of the legs; and much the same thing may be said of the proposal to preface the art of representing objects by a nomenclature and definitions of the lines which they yield on analysis. These techni- calities are alike repulsive and needless. They ren- der the study distasteful at the very outset; and all with the view of teaching that, which, in the course of practice, will be learnt unconsciously. Just as the child incidentally gathers the meanings of ordi- nary words from the conversations going on around it, without the help of dictionaries; so, from the remarks on objects, pictures, and its own drawings, will it presently acquire, not only without effort but even pleasurably, those same scientific terms, which, if presented at first, are a mystery and a weariness. If any dependence is to be placed upon the general principles of education that have been laid down, the process of learning to draw should be throughout continuous with those efforts of early childhood described above, as so worthy of encour- agement. By the time that the voluntary practice thus initiated has given some steadiness of hand, and some tolerable ideas of proportion, there will have arisen a vague notion of body as presenting its three dimensions in perspective. And when, after 144 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. sundry abortive, Chinese-like attempts to render this appearance on paper, there has grown up a pretty clear perception of the thing to be achieved, and a desire to achieve it, a first lesson in empirical perspective may be given by means of the apparatus occasionally used in explaining perspective as a sci- ence. This sounds formidable; but the experi- ment is both comprehensive and interesting to any boy or girl of ordinary intelligence. A plate of glass so framed as to stand vertically on the table, being placed before the pupil, and a book, or like simple object laid on the other side of it, he is re- quested, whilst keeping the eye in one position, to make ink dots upon the glass, so that they may coincide with, or hide the corners of this object. He is then told to join these dots by lines; on doing which he perceives that the lines he makes hide, or coincide with, the outlines of the object. And then, on being asked to put a sheet of paper on the other side of the glass, he discovers that the lines he has thus drawn represent the object as he saw it. They not only look like it, but he perceives that they must be like it, because he made them agree with its outlines; and by removing the paper he can re- peatedly convince himself that they do agree with its outlines. The fact is new and striking; and serves him as an experimental demonstration, that EARLY LESSONS IN PERSPECTIVE. 145 lines of certain lengths, placed in certain directions on a plane, can represent lines of other lengths, and having other directions in space. Subsequently, by gradually changing the position of the object, he may be led to observe how some lines shorten and disappear, whilst others come into sight and lengthen. The convergence of parallel lines, and, indeed, all the leading facts of perspective may, from time to time, be similarly illustrated to him. If he has been duly accustomed to self-help, he will gladly, when it is suggested, make the attempt to draw one of these outlines upon paper, by the eye only; and it may soon be made an exciting aim to produce, unassisted, a representation, as like as he can, to one subsequently sketched on the glass. Thus, without the unintelligent, mechanical prac- tice of copying other drawings, but by a method at once simple and attractive rational, yet not ab- stract, a familiarity with the linear appearances of things, and a faculty of rendering them, may be, step by step, acquired. To which advantages add these: that even thus early the pupil learns, al- most unconsciously, the true theory of a picture namely, that it is a delineation of objects as they appear when projected on a plane placed between them and the eye; and that when he reaches a fit age for commencing scientific perspective he is al- 146 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. ready thoroughly acquainted with the facts which form its logical basis. As exhibiting a rational mode of communicat- ing primary conceptions in geometry, we cannot do better than quote the following passage from Mr. Wyse: "A child has been in the habit of using cubes for arith- metic ; let him use them also for the elements of geometry. I would begin with solids, the reverse of the usual plan. It saves all the difficulty of absurd definitions, and bad ex- planations on points, lines, and surfaces, which are nothing but abstractions. ... A cube presents many of the prin- cipal elements of geometry ; it at once exhibits points, straight lines, parallel lines, angles, parallelograms, &c., &c. These cubes are divisible into various parts. The pupil has already been familiarized with such divisions in numeration, and he now proceeds to a comparison of their several parts, and of the relation of these parts to each other. . . . From thence he advances to globes, which furnish him with ele- mentary notions of the circle, of curves generally, &c., &c. "Being, tolerably familiar with solids, he may now sub- stitute planes. The transition may be made very easy. Let the cube, for instance, be cut into thin divisions, and placed on paper ; he will then see as many plane rectangles as he has divisions ; so with all the others. Globes may be treated in the same manner ; he will thus see how surfaces really are generated, and be enabled to abstract them with facility in every solid. "He has thus acquired the alphabet and reading of geometry. He now proceeds to write it. "The simplest operation, and therefore the first, is merely to place these planes on a piece of paper, and pass the pencil round them. When this has been frequently PRIMARY LESSONS IN GEOMETRY. 147 done, the plane may be put at a little distance, and the child required to copy it, and so on." A stock of geometrical conceptions having been obtained, in some such manner as this recommend- ed by Mr. Wyse, a further step may, in course of time, be taken, by introducing the practice of test- ing the correctness of all figures drawn by the eye; thus alike exciting an ambition to make them ex- act, and continually illustrating the difficulty of fulfilling that ambition. There can be little doubt that geometry had its origin (as, indeed, the word implies) in the methods discovered by artisans and others, of making accurate measurement for the foundations of buildings, areas of inclosures, and the like; and that its truths came to be treasured up, merely with a view to their immediate utility. They should be introduced to the pupil under anal- ogous relationships. In the cutting out of pieces for his card-houses, in the drawing of ornamental diagrams for colouring, and in those various in- structive occupations which an inventive teacher will lead him into, he may be for a length of time advantageously left, like the primitive builder, to tentative processes; and will so gain an abundant experience of the difficulty of achieving his aims by the unaided senses. When, having meanwhile undergone a valuable discipline of the perceptions, 148 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. he has reached a fit age for using a pair of compass- es, he will, whilst duly appreciating these as en- abling him to verify his ocular guesses, be still hin- dered by the difficulties of the approximative method. In this stage he may be left for a further period: partly as being yet too young for anything higher; partly because it is desirable that he should be made to feel still more strongly the want of systematic contrivances. If the acquisition of knowledge is to be made continuously interesting; and if, in the early civilization of the child, as in the early civilization of the race, science becomes attractive only as ministering to art; it is manifest that the proper preliminary to geometry is a long practice in those constructive processes which geometry will facilitate. Observe that here, too, nature points the way. Almost invariably, chil- dren show a strong propensity to cut out things in paper, to make, to build a propensity which, if duly encouraged and directed, will not only pre- pare the way for scientific conceptions, but will de- velop those powers of manipulation in which most people are so deficient. When the observing and inventive faculties have attained the requisite power, the pupil may be introduced to empirical geometry; that is geometry dealing with methodical solutions, but HOW GEOMETRY IS MADE ATTRACTIVE. not with the demonstrations of them. Like all other transitions in education, this should be made not formally but incidentally; and the relationship to constructive art should still be maintained. To make a tetrahedron in cardboard, like one given to him, is a problem which will alike interest the pupil, and serve as a convenient starting-point. In attempting this, he finds it needful to draw four equilateral triangles arranged in special positions. Being unable in the absence of an exact method to do this accurately he discovers on putting the tri- angles into their respective positions, that he can not make their sides fit, and that their angles do not properly meet at the apex. He may now be shown how by describing a couple of circles, each of these triangles may be drawn with perfect cor- rectness and without guessing; and after his failure he will duly value the information. Having thus helped him to the solution of his first problem, with the view of illustrating the nature of geomet- rical methods, he is in future to be left altogether to his own ingenuity in solving the questions put to him. To bisect a line, to erect a perpendicular, to describe a square, to bisect an angle, to draw a line parallel to a given line, to describe a hexagon, are problems which a little patience will enable him to find out. And from these he may be led on 150 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. step by step to questions of a more complex kind; all of which, under judicious management, he will puzzle through unhelped. Doubtless, many of those brought up under the old regime, will look upon this assertion sceptically. We speak from facts, however, and those neither few nor special. We have seen a class of boys become so interested in making out solutions to these problems, as to look forward to their geometry-lesson as a chief event of the week. Within the last month, we have been told of one girls' school, in which some of the young ladies voluntarily occupy themselves with geometrical questions out of school-hours; and of another, in which they not only do this, but in which one of them is begging for problems to find out during the holidays both which facts we state on the authority of the teacher. There could in- deed be no stronger proofs than are thus afforded of the practicability and the immense advantage of self-development. A branch of knowledge which as commonly taught is dry and even repulsive, may, /by following the method of nature, be made ex- tremely interesting and profoundly beneficial. We say profoundly beneficial, because the effects are not confined to the gaining of geometrical facts, but often revolutionize the whole state of mind. It has repeatedly occurred, that those who have HOW GEOMETRY IS MADE ATTRACTIVE. 151 been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill by its abstract formulas, by its wearisome tasks, by its cramming have suddenly had their intellects roused, by thus ceasing to make them passive recipi- ents, and inducing them to become active discover- ers. The discouragement brought about by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympa- thy and sufficient perseverance induced to achieve a first success, there arises a revulsion of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find themselves incompetent; they too can do some- thing. And gradually as success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage that insures conquest. This empirical geometry which presents an end- less series of problems, and should be continued along with other studies for years, may throughout be advantageously accompanied by those concrete applications of its principles which serve as its pre- liminary. After the cube, the octahedron, and the various forms of pyramid and prism have been mastered, may come the more complex regular bodies the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron to construct which out of single pieces of cardboard requires considerable ingenuity. From these, the transition may naturally be made to such modified 11 152 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. forms of the regular bodies as are met with in crys- tals the truncated cube, the cube with its dihedral as well as its solid angles truncated, the octahedron and the various prisms as similarly modified; in imitating which numerous forms assumed by dif- ferent metals and salts, an acquaintance with the leading facts of mineralogy will be incidentally gained. After long continuance in exercises of this kind, rational geometry, as may be supposed, presents no obstacles. Constantly habituated to contemplate relationships of form and quantity, and vaguely perceiving from time to time the necessity of certain results as reached by certain means, the pupil comes to regard the demonstrations of Eu- clid as the missing supplements to his familiar prob- lems. His well-disciplined faculties enable him easily to master its successive propositions, and to appreciate their value; and he has the occasional gratification of finding some of his own methods proved to be true. Thus he enjoys what is to the unprepared a dreary task. It only remains to add, that his mind will presently arrive at a fit condition for that most valuable of all exercises for the re- flective faculties the making of original demon- strations. Such theorems as those appended to the successive books of the Messrs. Chambers' Euclid, will soon become practicable to him; and in prov- COURSE OP THE NATURAL METHOD. 153 ing them the process of self-development will be not intellectual only, but moral. To continue much further these suggestions would be to write a detailed treatise on education, which we do not purpose. The foregoing outlines of plans for exercising the perceptions in early childhood for conducting object-lessons for teach- ing drawing and geometry, must be considered as roughly-sketched illustrations of the method dic- tated by the general principles previously specified. We believe that on examination they will be found not only to progress from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract, from the empiri- cal to the rational; but to satisfy the further re- quirements that education shall be a repetition of civilization in little, that it shall be as much as pos- ! eible a process of self -evolution, and that it shall be pleasurable. That there should be one type of method capable of satisfying all these conditions, tends alike to verify the conditions, and to prove that type of method the right one. And when we add that this method is the logical outcome of the tendency, characterizing all modern systems of in- struction that it is but an adoption in full of the method of nature which they adopt partially that it displays this complete adoption of the method of nature, not only by conforming to the above prin- 154 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. ciples, but by following the suggestions which the unfolding mind itself gives, facilitating its spon- taneous activities, and so aiding the developments which nature is busy with when we add this, there seems abundant reason to conclude, that the mode of procedure above exemplified, closely approxi- mates to the true one. A few paragraphs must be appended in further inculcation of the two general principles, alike the most important and the least attended to: .we mean the principle that throughout youth, as in early childhood and in maturity, the process shall be one of self -instruction; and the obverse principle, that the mental action induced by this process shall be throughout intrinsically grateful. If progression from simple to complex, and from concrete to ab- stract, be considered the essential requirements as dictated by abstract psychology, then do these re- quirements that knowledge shall be self-mastered, and pleasurably mastered, become the tests by which we may judge whether the dictates of ab- stract psychology are being fulfilled. If the first embody the leading generalizations of the science of mental growth, the last are the chief canons of the art of fostering mental growth. For manifest- ly if the steps in our curriculum are so arranged ADVANTAGES OF SELF-EVOLUTION. 155 that they can be successively ascended by the pupil himself with little or no help, they must correspond with the stages of evolution in his faculties; and manifestly if the successive achievements of these steps are intrinsically gratifying to him, it follows that they require no more than a normal exercise of his powers. But the making education a process of self- evolution has other advantages than this of keeping ! our lessons in the right order. In the first place, it guarantees a vividness and permanency of impres- sion which the usual methods can never produce. Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has him- self acquired, any problem which he has himself . solved, becomes by virtue of the conquest much more thoroughly his than it could else be. The \ preliminary activity of mind which his success im- plies, the concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent on his triumph, con- spire to register all the facts in his memory in a way that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a school-book, can be registered. Even if he fails, the tension to which his faculties have been wound up insures his remembrance of the solution when given to him, better than half a dozen repetitions would. Observe again, that this discipline necessitates a continuous organization of 156 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. the knowledge he requires. It is in the very nature of facts and inferences, assimilated in this normal manner, that they successively become the prem- isses of further conclusions, the means of solving still further questions. The solution of yesterday's problem helps the pupil in mastering to-day's. Thus the knowledge is turned into faculty as soon as it is taken in, and forthwith aids in the general function of thinking does not lie merely written in the pages of an internal library, as when rote-learnt. Mark further, the importance of the moral culture hich this constant self-help involves. Courage in attacking difficulties, patient concentration of the attention, perseverance through failures these are characteristics which after-life specially re- quires; and these are characteristics which this sys- tem of making the mind work for its food specially produces. That it is thoroughly practicable to carry out instruction after this fashion we can our- selves testify ; having been in youth thus led to suc- cessively solve the comparatively complex problems of Perspective. And that leading teachers have been gradually tending in this direction is indicated alike in the saying of Fellenberg, that " the indi- vidual, independent activity of the pupil is of much greater importance than the ordinary busy officious- nese of many who assume the office of educators; " PROMOTED BY PLEASURABLE FEELING. 157 in the opinion of Horace Mann, that " unfortunate- ly education amongst us at present consists too much in telling, not in training; " and in the re- mark of M. Marcel, that " what the learner discov- ers by mental exertion is better known than what is told to him." Similarly with the correlative requirement, that the method of culture pursued shall be one produc- tive of an intrinsically happy activity, an activity not happy in virtue of extrinsic rewards to be ob- tained, but in virtue of its own healthfulness. Conformity to this requirement not only guards us against thwarting the normal process of evolution, but incidentally secures positive benefits of impor- tance. Unless we are to return to an ascetic moral- ity, the maintenance of youthful happiness must be considered in itself a worthy aim. Not to dwell upon this, however, we go on to remark that a pleas- urable state of feeling is far more favourable to in- tellectual action than one of indifference or disgust. Every one knows that things read, heard, or seen with interest, are better remembered than those read, heard, or seen with apathy. In the one case the faculties appealed to are actively occupied with the subject presented; in the other they are inac- tively occupied with it; and the attention is contin- ually drawn away after more attractive thoughts. 158 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. -/Hence the impressions are respectively strong and weak. Moreover, the intellectual listlessness which a pupil's lack of interest in any study involves, is further complicated by his anxiety, by his fear of consequences, which distract his attention, and in- crease the difficulty he finds in bringing his facul- ties to bear upon these facts that are repugnant to them. Clearly, therefore, the efficiency of any in- tellectual action will, other things equal, be pro- portionate to the gratification with which it is per- formed. It should be considered also, that important moral consequences depend upon the habitual pleas- ure or pain which daily lessons produce. No one can compare the faces and manners of two boys the one made happy by mastering interesting sub- jects, and the other made miserable by disgust with his studies, by consequent failure, by cold looks, by threats, by punishment without seeing that the disposition of the one is being benefited, and that of the other greatly injured. Whoever has marked the effect of intellectual success upon the mind, and the power of the mind over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are favour- ably affected; whilst in the other there is danger of permanent moroseness, of permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional depression. To PROMOTED BY PLEASURABLE PEELING. 159 all which considerations we must add the further one, that the relationship between teachers and their pupils is, other things equal, rendered friendly and influential, or antagonistic and powerless, ac- cording as the system of culture produces happiness or misery. Human beings are at the mercy of their associated ideas. A daily minister of pain cannot fail to be regarded with a secret dislike, and if he causes no emotions but painful ones, will inevitably be hated. Conversely, he who constantly aids chil- dren to their ends, hourly provides them with the satisfaction of conquest, hourly encourages them through their difficulties and sympathizes in their successes, cannot fail to be liked; nay, if his behav- iour is consistent throughout, must be loved. And when we remember how efficient and benign is the control of a master who is felt to be a friend, when compared with the control of one who is looked upon with aversion, or at best indifference, we may infer that the indirect advantages of conducting education on the happiness principle do not fall far short of the direct ones. To all who question the possibility of acting out the system here advo- cated, we reply as before, that not only does theory point to it, but experience commends it. To the many verdicts of distinguished teachers who since Pestalozzi's time have testified this, may be here 160 INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. added that of Professor Pillans, who asserts that " where young people are taught as they ought to be, they are quite as happy in school as at play, seldom less delighted, nay, often more, with the well-directed exercise of their mental energies, than with that of their muscular powers." As suggesting a final reason for making educa- tion a process of self-instruction, and by conse- quence a process of pleasurable instruction, we may advert to the fact that, in proportion as it is made so, is there a probability that education will not cease when school-daysf end. As long as the acqui- sition of knowledge is rendered habitually repug- nant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it when free from the coercion of par- ents and masters. And when the acquisition of knowledge has been rendered habitually gratifying, then will there be as prevailing a tendency to con- tinue, without superintendence, that same self-cul- ture previously carried on under superintendence. These results are inevitable. While the laws of mental association remain true while men dislike the things and places that suggest painful recollec- tions, and delight in those which call to mind by- gone pleasures painful lessons will make knowl- edge repulsive, and pleasurable lessons will make it attractive. The men to whom in boyhood infor- SELF-CULTURE SELF-PERPETUATING. 161 mation came in dreary tasks along with threats of punishment, and who were never led into habits of independent inquiry, are unlikely to be students in after years; while those to whom it came in the natural forms, at the proper times, and who remem- ber its facts as not only interesting in themselves, but as the occasions of a long series of gratifying successes, are likely to continue through life that self -instruction commenced in youth. CHAPTER HI. MORAL EDUCATION. STRANGELY enough, the most glaring defect in our programmes of education is entirely overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improve- ment of our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the most pressing desideratum has not yet been even recognised as a desideratum. To pre- pare the young for the duties of life is tacitly ad- mitted by all to be the end which parents and schoolmasters should have in view; and happily the value of the things taught, and the goodness of the method followed in teaching them, are now ostensi- bly judged by their fitness to this end. The pro- priety of substituting for an exclusively classical training a training in which the modern languages shall have a share, is argued on this ground. The necessity of increasing the amount of science is urged for like reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citi- zenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for 162 ART OF EDUCATION. 163 the still more important position they will ultimate- ly have to fill the position of parents. While it is seen that for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children, no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge, of which the chief value is that it constitutes ' the edu- cation of a gentleman; ' and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties; not an hour is spent by either of them for that gravest of all re- sponsibilities the management of a family. Is it that this responsibility is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is certain to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not: of all functions which the adult has to fulfil this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self -instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No: not only is the need for such self -instruction unrecognised, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self -instruction is least likely to succeed. No rational plea can be put forward for leaving the Art of Education out of our curric- ulum. Whether as bearing upon the happiness of parents themselves, or whether as affecting the 164 MORAL EDUCATION. characters and lives of their children and remote descendants, we must admit that a knowledge of the right methods of juvenile culture, physical, 1 intellectual, and moral, is a knowledge second to none in importance. This topic should occupy the highest and last place in the course of instruction passed through by each man and woman. As phys^ ical maturity is marked by the ability to produce offspring, so mental maturity is marked by the abil- ity to train those offspring. The subject which in- volves all other subjects, and therefore the subject in which the education of every one should culminate, is. the Theory and Practice of Education. In the absence of this preparation, the manage- ment of children, and more especially the moral management, is lamentably bad. Parents either never think about the matter at all, or else their conclusions are crude and inconsistent. In most cases, and especially on the part of mothers, the treatment adopted on every occasion is that which the impulse of the moment prompts: it springs not from any reasoned-out conviction as to what will most conduce to the child's welfare, but merely ex- presses the passing parental feelings, whether good or ill; and varies from hour to hour as these feel- ings vary. Or if these blind dictates of passion are supplemented by any definite doctrines and meth- NEGLECT OF THE SUBJECT. ods, they are those that have been handed down from the past, or those suggested by the remem- brances of childhood, or those adopted from nurses and servants methods devised not by the enlight- enment, but by the ignorance of the time. Com- menting on the chaotic state of opinion and prac- tice relative to family government, Kichter writes : "If the secret variances of a large class of ordinary fathers were brought to light, and laid down as a plan of studies, and reading catalogued for a moral education, they would run somewhat after this fashion: In the first hour ' pure morality must be read to the child, either by myself or the tutor ; ' in the second, * mixed morality, or that which may be applied to one's own advantage ; ' in the third, * do you not see that your father does so and so ? ' in the fourth, ' you are little, and this is only fit for grown-up people ; ' in the fifth, * the chief matter is that you should succeed in the world, and become something in the state ; ' in the sixth, ' not the temporary, but the eternal, determines the worth of a man ; ' in the seventh, * therefore rather suffer injustice, and be kind ; ' in the eighth, * but defend yourself bravely if any one attack you;' in the ninth, ' do not make a noise, dear child ; ' in the tenth, ' a boy must not sit so quiet ; ' in the eleventh, * you must obey your parents better ; ' in the twelfth, * and educate your- self.' So by the hourly change of his principles, the father conceals their untenableness and onesidedness. As for his wife, she is neither like him, nor yet like that harlequin who came on to the stage with a bundle of papers under each arm, and answered to the inquiry, what he had under his right arm, ' orders,' and to what he had under his left 166 MORAL EDUCATION. arm, * counter-orders.' But the mother might be much better compared to a giant Briareus, who had a hundred arms, and a bundle of papers under each." This state of things is not to be readily changed. Generations must pass before any great ameliora- tion of it can be expected. Like political constitu- tions, educational systems are not made, but grow; and within brief periods growth is insensible. Slow, however, as must be any improvement, even that improvement implies the use of means; and among the means is discussion. We are not among those who believe in Lord Palmerston's dogma, that " all children are born good." On the whole, the opposite dogma, unten- able as it is, seems to us less wide of the truth. Nor do we agree with those who think that, by skilful discipline, children may be made altogether what they should be. Contrariwise, we are satis- fied that though imperfections of nature may be di- minished by wise management, they cannot be re- moved by it. The notion that an ideal humanity might be forthwith produced by a perfect system of education, is near akin to that shadowed forth in the poems of Shelley, that would mankind give up their old institutions, prejudices, and errors, all the evils in the world would at once disappear: neither ITS LIMITS AND DIFFICULTIES. 167 notion being acceptable to such as have dispassion- ately studied human affairs. Not that we are without sympathy with those who entertain these too sanguine hopes. Enthu- siasm, pushed even to fanaticism, is a useful motive- power perhaps an indispensable one. It is clear that the ardent politician would never undergo the labours and make the sacrifices he does, did he not believe that the reform he fights for is the one thing needful. But for his conviction that drunkenness is the root of almost all social evils, the teetotaller would agitate far less energetically. In philan- thropy as in other things great advantage results from division of labour; and that there may be division of labour, each class of philanthropists must be more or less subordinated to its function must have an exaggerated faith in its work. Hence, of those who regard education, intellectual or moral, as the panacea, we may say that their un- due expectations are not without use; and that per- haps it is part of the beneficent order of things that their confidence cannot be shaken. Even were it true, however, that by some pos- sible system of moral government children could be moulded into the desired form; and even could every parent be duly indoctrinated with this sys- tem; we should still be far from achieving the ob- 12 168 MORAL EDUCATION. ject in view. It is forgotten that the carrying out of any such system presupposes, on the part of adults, a degree of intelligence, of goodness, of self- control, possessed by no one. The great error made by those who discuss questions of juvenile disci- pline, is in ascribing all the faults and difficulties to the children, and none to the parents.' The cur- rent assumption respecting family government, as respecting national government, is, that the vir- tues are with the rulers and the vices with the ruled. Judging by educational theories, men and women are entirely transfigured in the domestic relation. The citizens we do business with, the people we meet in the world, we all know to be very imperfect creatures. In the daily scandals, in the quarrels of friends, in bankruptcy disclosures, in lawsuits, in police reports, we have constantly thrust before us the pervading selfishness, dishonesty, brutality. Yet when we criticise nursery management, and canvass the misbehaviour of juveniles, we habitu- ally take for granted that these culpable men and women are free from moral delinquency in the treatment of their offspring! So far is this from the truth, that we do not hesitate to say that to parental misconduct is traceable a great part of the domestic disorder commonly ascribed to the perversity of children. We do not assert this DEFICIENCIES OP PARENTS. 169 of the more sympathetic and self -restrained, among whom we hope most of our readers may be classed, but we assert it of the mass. What kind of moral discipline is to be expected of a mother who, time after time, angrily shakes her infant because it will not suckle her, which we once saw a mother do? How much love of justice and generosity is likely to be instilled by a father who, on having his at- tention drawn by his child's scream to the fact that its finger is jammed between the window sash and the sill, forthwith begins to beat the child instead of releasing it? Yet that there are such fathers is testified to us by an eye-witness. Or, to take a still stronger case, also vouched for by direct testimony what are the educational prospects of the boy who, on being taken home with a dislocated thigh, is saluted with a castigation? It is true that these are extreme instances instances exhibiting in hu- man beings that blind instinct which impels brutes to destroy the weakly and injured of their own race. But extreme though they are, they typify feelings and conduct daily observable in many families. Who has not repeatedly seen a child slapped by nurse or parent for a fretfulness probably resulting from bodily derangement? Who, when watch- ing a mother snatch up a fallen little one, has not often traced, both in the rough manner and in the 1YO MORAL EDUCATION. sharply-uttered exclamation ' You stupid little thing! ' an irascibility foretelling endless future squabbles? Is there not in the harsh tones in which a father bids his children be quiet, evidence of a deficient fellow-feeling with them? Are not the constant, and often quite needless, thwartings that the young experience the injunctions to sit still, which an active child cannot obey without suf- fering great nervous irritation, the commands not to look out of the window when travelling by rail- way, which on a child of any intelligence entails serious deprivation are not these thwartings, we ask, signs of a terrible lack of sympathy? The truth is, that the difficulties of moral education are necessarily of dual origin necessarily result from the combined faults of parents and children. If hereditary transmission is a law of nature, as every naturalist knows it to be, and as our daily remarks and current pro verbs admit it to be; then on the average of cases, the defects of children mirror the defects of their parents; on the average of cases, we say, because, complicated as the results are by the transmitted traits of remoter ancestors, the cor- respondence is not special, but only general. And if, on the average of cases, this inheritance of defects exists, then the evil passions which parents have to check in their children imply like evil MUST DEPEND UPON GENERAL IMPROVEMENT. 171 passions in themselves: hidden, it may be, from the public eye; or perhaps obscured by other feel- ings; but still there. Evidently, therefore, the general practice of any ideal system of discipline is hopeless: parents are not good enough. Moreover, even were there methods by which the desired end could be at once effected, and even had fathers and mothers sufficient insight, sym- pathy, and self-command to employ these methods, consistently, it might still be contended that it would be of no use to reform family discipline faster than other things are reformed. What is it that we aim to do? Is it not that education of what- ever kind has for its proximate end to prepare a child for the business of life to produce a citizen who, at the same time that he is well conducted, is also able to make his way in the world? And does not making his way in the world (by which we mean, not the acquirement of wealth, but of the means requisite for properly bringing up a family) does not this imply a certain fitness for the world as it now is? And if by any system of culture an ideal human being could be produced, is it not doubtful whether he would be fit for the world as it now is? May we not, on the contrary, suspect that his too keen sense of rectitude, and too elevated standard of conduct, would make life alike intoler- MORAL EDUCATION. able and impossible? And however admirable the results might be, considered individually, would it not be self-defeating in so far as society and poster- ity are concerned? It may, we think, be argued with much reason, that as in a nation so in a family, the kind of government is, on the whole, about as good as the general state of human nature permits it to be. It may be said that in the one case, as in the other, the average character of the people deter- mines the quality of the control exercised. It may be inferred that in both cases amelioration of the average character leads to an amelioration of sys- tem; and further, that were it possible to amelio- rate the system without the average character being- first ameliorated, evil, rather than good, would fol- low. It may be urged that such degree of harsh- ness as children now experience from their parents and teachers, is but a preparation for that greater harshness which they will meet with on entering the world; and that were it possible for parents and teachers to behave towards them with perfect equity and entire sympathy, it would but intensify the sufferings which the selfishness of men must, in after life, inflict on them.* * This is the plea put in by some for the rough treatment experienced by boys at our public schools ; where, as it is said,, they are introduced to a miniature world whose imperfections LIMITED BY THE STATE OF SOCIETY. 173 " But does not this prove too much? " some one will ask. "If no system of moral culture can forthwith make children altogether what they should be; if, even were there a system that would do this, existing parents are too imperfect to carry it out; and if even could such a system be success- fully carried out, its results would be disastrously incongruous with the present state of society; does it not follow that a reform in the system now in use is neither practicable nor desirable? " No. It merely follows that reform in domestic government must go on, pari passu, with other reforms. It merely follows that methods of discipline neither can be nor should be ameliorated, except by instal- ments. It merely follows that the dictates of ab- stract rectitude will, in practice, inevitably be sub- and hardships prepare them for those of the real world : and it must be admitted that the plea has some force. But it is a very insufficient plea. For whereas domestic and school dis- cipline, though they should not be very much better than the discipline of adult life, should at any rate be somewhat better; the discipline which boys meet with at Eton, Winchester, Harrow, &c., is much worse than that of adult life much more unjust, cruel, brutal. Instead of being an aid to human progress, which all culture should be, the culture of our public schools, by accustoming boys to a despotic form of govern- ment and an intercourse regulated by brute force, tends to fit them for a lower state of society than that which exists. And chiefly recruited as our legislature is from among those who are brought up at these schools, this barbarizing influence becomes a serious hindrance to national progress. 174: MORAL EDUCATION. ordinated by the present state of human nature by the imperfections alike of children, of parents, and of society; and can only be better fulfilled as the general character becomes better. " At any rate, then/' may rejoin our critic, " it is clearly useless to set up any ideal standard of family discipline. There can be no advantage in elaborating and recommending methods that are in advance of the time." Again we must contend for the contrary. Just as in the case of political gov- ernment, though pure rectitude may be at present impracticable, it is requisite to know where the right lies, so that the changes we make may be towards the right instead of away from it; so in the case of domestic government, an ideal must be upheld, that there may be gradual approximations to it. We need fear no evil consequences from the maintenance of such an ideal. On the average the constitutional conservatism of mankind is always strong enough to prevent a too rapid change. So admirable are the arrangements of things that until men have grown up to the level of a higher belief, they cannot receive it: nominally, they may hold it, but not virtually. And even when the truth gets recognised, the obstacles to conformity with it are so persistent as to outlive the patience of phi- lanthropists and even philosophers. We may be THE METHOD OF NATURE. 175 quite sure, therefore, that the many difficulties standing in the way of a normal government of children, will always put an adequate check upon the efforts to realize it. With these preliminary explanations, let us go on to consider the true aims and methods of moral education moral education, strictly so called, we mean; for we do not propose to enter upon the question of religious education as an aid to the education exclusively moral. This we admit as a topic better dealt with separately. After a few pages devoted to the settlement of general prin- ciples, during the perusal of which we bespeak the reader's patience, we shall aim by illustrations to make clear the right methods of parental behaviour in the hourly occurring difficulties of family gov- ernment. When a child falls, or runs its head against the table, it suffers a pain, the remembrance of which tends to make it more careful for the future; and by an occasional repetition of like experiences, it is eventually disciplined into a proper guidance of its movements. If it lays hold of the fire-bars, thrusts its finger into the candle-flame, or spills boiling water on any part of its skin, the resulting burn or scald is a lesson not easily forgotten. So deep an 176 MORAL EDUCATION. impression is produced by one or two such events, that afterwards no persuasion will induce it again to disregard the laws of its constitution in these ways. Now in these and like cases, Nature illustrates to us in the simplest way, the true theory and practice of moral discipline a theory and practice which, however much they may seem to the super- ficial like those commonly received, we shall find on examination to differ from them very widely. Observe, in the first place, that in bodily in- juries and their penalties we have misconduct and its consequences reduced to their simplest forms. Though, according to their popular acceptations, right and wrong are words scarcely applicable to actions that have none but direct bodily effects; yet whoever considers the matter will see that such actions must be as much classifiable under these heads as any other actions. From whatever basis they start, all theories of morality agree in con- sidering that conduct whose total results, immediate and remote, are beneficial, is good conduct; while conduct whose total results, immediate and remote, are injurious, is bad conduct. The happiness or misery caused by it are the ultimate standards by which all men judge of behaviour. We consider drunkenness wrong because of the .physical degen- THE CHILD ACTS AND NATURE REACTS. 177 eracy and accompanying moral evils entailed on the transgressor and his dependents. Did theft uniformly give pleasure both to taker and loser, we should not find it in our catalogue of sins. Were it conceivable that benevolent actions multiplied human pains, we should condemn them should not consider them benevolent. It needs but to read the first newspaper leader, or listen to any conversation touching social affairs, to see that acts of parliament, political movements, philanthropic agitations, in common with the doings of individ- uals, are judged by their anticipated results in mul- tiplying the pleasures or pains of men. And if on looking on all secondary superinduced ideas, we find these to be our ultimate tests of right and wrong, we cannot refuse to class purely physical actions as right or wrong according to the beneficial or detrimental results they produce. Note, in the second place, the character of the punishments by which these physical transgressions are prevented. Punishments, we call them, in the absence of a better word; for they are not pun- ishments in the literal sense. They are not arti- ficial and unnecessary inflictions of pain; but are simply the beneficent checks to actions that are essentially at variance with bodily welfare checks in the absence of which life would quickly be de- 178 MORAL EDUCATION. stroyed by bodily injuries. It is the peculiarity of these penalties, if we must so call them, that they are nothing more than the unavoidable conse- quences of the deeds which they follow: they are nothing more than the inevitable reactions entailed by the child's actions. Let it be further borneMn mind that these pain- ful reactions are proportionate to the degree in which the organic laws have been transgressed. A slight accident brings a slight pain, a more serious one, a greater pain. When a child tumbles over the door-step, it is not ordained that it shall suffer in excess of the amount necessary, with the view of making it still more cautious than the necessary suffering will make it. But from its daily expe- rience it is left to learn the greater or less penalties of greater or less errors ; and to behave accordingly. And then mark, lastly, that these natural reac- tions which follow the child's wrong actions, are constant, direct, unhesitating, and not to be es- caped. No threats: but a silent, rigorous perform- ance. If a child runs a pin into its finger, pain follows. If it does it again, there is again the same result: and so on perpetually. In all its dealings with surrounding inorganic nature it finds this un- swerving persistence, which listens to no excuse, and from which there is no appeal; and very soon NATURE'S METHOD WITH ADULTS. 179 recognising this stern though beneficent discipline, it becomes extremely careful not to transgress. Still more significant will these general truths appear, when we remember that they hold through- out adult life as well as throughout infantine life. It is by an experimentally-gained knowledge of the natural consequences, that men and women are checked when they go wrong. After home educa- tion has ceased, and when there are no longer par- ents and teachers to forbid this or that kind of conduct, there comes into play a discipline like that by which the young child is taught its first lessons in self-guidance. If the youth entering upon the business of life idles away his time and fulfils slowly or unskilf ally the duties entrusted to him, there by- and-bye follows the natural penalty: he is dis- charged and left to suffer for awhile the evils of relative poverty. On the unpunctual man, failing alike his appointments of business and pleasure, there continually fall the consequent inconven- iences, losses, and deprivations. The avaricious tradesman who charges too high a rate of profit, loses his customers, and so is checked in his greedi- ness. Diminishing practice teaches the inattentive doctor to bestow more trouble on his patients. The too credulous creditor and the over-sanguine specu- lator alike learn by the difficulties which rashness 180 MORAL EDUCATION. entails on them, the necessity of being more cau- tious in their engagements. And so throughout the life of every citizen. In the quotation so often made apropos of these cases " The burnt child dreads the fire " we see not only that the analogy between this social discipline and Nature's early discipline of infants is universally recognised; but we also see an implied conviction that this disci- pline is of the most efficient kind. E"ay more, this conviction is not only implied, but distinctly stated. Every one has heard others confess that only by " dearly bought experience " had they been induced to give up some bad or foolish course of conduct formerly pursued. Every one has heard, in the criticisms passed on the doings of this spendthrift or the other speculator, the remark that advice was useless, and that nothing but " bitter experience " would produce any effect: nothing, that is, but suffering the unavoidable consequences. And if further proof be needed that the penalty of the natural reaction is not only the most efficient, but that no humanly-devised penalty can replace it, we have such further proof in the notorious ill-success of our various penal systems. Out of the many methods of criminal discipline that have been pro- posed and legally enforced, none have answered the expectations of their advocates. Not only have NATURE'S METHOD WITH ADULTS. 181 artificial punishments failed to produce reformation, but they have in many cases increased the criminal- ity. The only successful reformatories are those privately-established ones which have approximated their regime to the method of Nature which have done little more than administer the natural conse- quences of criminal conduct: the natural conse- quences being, that by imprisonment or other re- straint, the criminal shall have his liberty of action diminished as much as is needful for the safety of society; and that he shall be made to maintain him- self while living under this restraint. Thus we see not only that the discipline by which the young child is so successfully taught to regulate its move- ments is also the discipline by which the great mass of adults are kept in order, and more or less im- proved; but that the discipline humanly-devised for the worst adults, fails when it diverges from this divinely-ordained discipline, and begins to succeed when it approximates to it. Have we not here, then, the guiding principle of moral education? Must we not infer that the system so beneficent in its effects, alike during in- fancy and maturity, will be equally beneficent throughout youth? Can any one believe that the method which answers so well in the first and the 182 MORAL EDUCATION. last divisions of life will not answer in the inter- mediate division? Is it not manifest that as " min- isters and interpreters of Nature " it is the function of parents to see that their children habitually ex- perience the true consequences of their conduct ' the natural reactions: neither warding them off, nor intensifying them, nor putting artificial conse- quences in place of them? No unprejudiced reader will hesitate in his assent. Probably, however, not a few will contend that already most parents do this that the punishments J;hey inflict are, in the majority of cases, the true consequences of ill-conduct that parental anger, venting itself in harsh words and deeds, is the re- sult of a child's transgression and that, in the suffering, physical or moral, which the child is subject to, it experiences the natural reaction of its misbehaviour. Along with much error this asser- tion, doubtless, contains some truth. It is unques- tionable that the displeasure of fathers and mothers is a true consequence of juvenile delinquency; and that the manifestation of it is a normal check upon such delinquency. It is unquestionable that the scoldings, and threats, and blows, which a passion- ate parent visits on offending little ones, are effects actually produced in such a parent by their of- fences; and so are, in some sort, to be considered BAD SYSTEMS MAY BE RELATIVELY GOOD. 183 as among the natural reactions of their wrong ac- tions. And we are by no means prepared to say that these modes of treatment are not relatively right right, that is, in relation to the uncontrol- lable children of ill-controlled adults; and right in relation to a state of society in which such ill-con- trolled adults make up the mass of the people. As already suggested, educatioaaLs^tems, like politi- cal and other institutions, are generally as good as the state of human nature permits. The barbarous chilo^fenof barbarous parents are probably only to be restrained by the barbarous methods which such parents spontaneously employ; while submission to these barbarous methods is perhaps the best prep- aration such children can have for the barbarous society in which they are presently to play a part. Conversely, the civilized members of a civilized so- ciety will spontaneously manifest their displeasure in less violent ways will spontaneously use milder measures: measures strong enough for their better- natured children. Thus it is doubtless true that, in so far as the expression of parental feeling is concerned, the principle of the natural reaction is always more or less followed. The system of do- mestic government ever gravitates towards its right form. But now observe two important facts. In the 13 184 MORAL EDUCATION. firstjDlace, observe that, in states of rapid transition like ours, which witness a long-drawn battle be- tween old and new theories and old and new prac- tices, the educational methods in use are apt to be 1 considerably out of harmony with the times. In deference to dogmas fit only for the ages that ut- tered them, many parents inflict punishments that do violence to their own feelings, and so visit on their children unnatural reactions; while other parents, enthusiastic in their hopes of immediate perfection, rush to the opposite extreme. And then observe, in the second place, that the discipline on which we are insisting is not so much the expe- rience of parental approbation or disapprobation, which, in most cases, is only a secondary conse- quence of a child's conduct; but it is the experience of those results which would naturally flow from the conduct in the absence of parental opinion or interference. The truly instructive and salutary consequences are not those inflicted by parents when they take upon themselves to be Nature's * proxies; but they are those inflicted by Nature herself. We will endeavour to make this distinc- tion clear by a few illustrations, which, while they show what we mean by natural reactions as con- trasted with artificial ones, will afford some directly practical suggestions. THE NORMAL SYSTEM ILLUSTRATED. 185 ID every family where there are young children there almost daily occur cases of what mothers and servants call " making a litter." A child has had out its box of toys, and leaves them scattered about the floor. Or a handful of flowers, brought in from a morning walk, is presently seen dispersed over tables and chairs. Or a little girl, making doll's-clothes, disfigures the room with shreds. In most cases the trouble of rectifying this disorder falls anywhere but in the right place: if in the nursery, the nurse herself, with many grumblings about " tiresome little things," &c., undertakes the task; if below stairs, the task usually devolves either on one of the elder children or on the house- maid; the transgressor being visited with nothing more than a scolding. In this very simple case, however, there are many parents wise enough to fol- low out, more or less consistently, the normal course that of making the child itself collect the toys or shreds. The labour of putting things in order is the true consequence of having put them in dis- order. Every trader in his office, every wife in her household, has daily experience of this fact. And if education be a preparation for the business of life, then every child should also, from the beginning, have daily experience of this fact. If the natural penalty be met by any refractory behaviour (which 186 MORAL EDUCATION. it may perhaps be where the general system of moral discipline previously pursued has been bad), then the proper course is to let the child feel the ulterior reaction consequent on its disobedience. Having refused or neglected to pick up and put away the things it has scattered about, and having thereby entailed the trouble of doing this on some one else, the child should, on subsequent occasions, be denied the means of giving this trouble. When next it petitions for its toy-box, the reply of its mamma should be " The last time you had your toys you left them lying on the floor, and Jane had to pick them up. Jane is too busy to pick up every day the things you leave about; and I cannot do it myself. So that, as you will not put away your toys when you have done with them, I cannot let you have them." This is obviously a natural con- sequence, neither increased nor lessened; and must be so recognised by a child. The penalty comes, too, at the moment when it is most keenly felt. A new-born desire is balked at the moment of antici- pated gratification; and the strong impression so produced can scarcely fail to have an effect on the future conduct: an effect which, by consistent rep- etition, will do whatever can be done in curing the fault. Add to which, that, by this method, a child is early taught the lesson which cannot be THE NORMAL SYSTEM ILLUSTRATED. 187 learnt too soon, that in this world of ours pleasures are rightly to be obtained only by labour. Take another case. Not long since we had fre- quently to listen to the reprimands visited on a little girl who was scarcely ever ready in time for the daily walk. Of eager disposition, and apt to become thoroughly absorbed in the occupation of the moment, Constance never thought of putting on her things until the rest were ready. The gov- erness and the other children had almost invariably to wait; and from the mamma there almost in- variably came the same scolding. Utterly as this system failed it never occurred to the mamma to let Constance experience the natural penalty. Nor, indeed, would she try it when it was suggested to her. In the world the penalty of being behind time is the loss of some advantage that would else have been gained: the train is gone; or the steam- boat is just leaving its moorings; or the best things in the market are sold; or all the good seats in the concert-room are filled. And every one, in cases perpetually occurring, may see that it is the prospective deprivations entailed by being too late which prevent people from being too late. Is not the inference obvious? Should not these prospec- tive deprivations control the child's conduct also? If Constance is not ready at the appointed time, the 188 MOEAL EDUCATION. natural result is that of being left behind, and losing her walk. And no one can, we think, doubt that after having once or twice remained at home while the rest were enjoying themselves in the fields, and after havfhg felt that this loss of a much- prized gratification was solely due to want of promptitude, some amendment would take place. At any rate, the measure would be more effective than that perpetual scolding which ends only in pro- ducing callousness. Again, when children, with more than usual carelessness, break or lose the things given to them, the natural penalty the penalty which makes grown-up persons more careful is the consequent inconvenience. The want of the lost or damaged article, and the cost of supplying its place, are the experiences by which men and women are disci' plined in these matters; and the experience of chil- dren should be as much as possible assimilated tu theirs. We do not refer to that early period at which toys are pulled to pieces in the process of learning their physical properties, and at which the results of carelessness cannot be understood; but to a later period, when the meaning and advantages of property are perceived. When a boy, old enough to possess a penknife, uses it so roughly as to snap the blade, or leaves it in the grass by some ADVANTAGES OF THE NORMAL SYSTEM. 189 hedge-side, where he was cutting a stick, a thought- less parent, or some indulgent relative, will com- monly forthwith buy him another; not seeing that, by doing this, a valuable lesson is lost. In such a case, a father may properly explain that penknives cost money, and that to get money requires labour; that he cannot afford to purchase new penknives for one who loses or breaks them; and that until he sees evidence of greater carefulness he must de- cline to make good the loss. A parallel discipline may be used as a means of checking extravagance. These few familiar instances, here chosen be- cause of the simplicity with which they illustrate our point, will make clear to every one the distinc- tion between those natural penalties which we con- tend are the truly efficient ones, and those artificial penalties which parents commonly substitute for them. Before going on to exhibit the higher and subtler applications of this principle, let us note its many and great superiorities over the principle, or rather the empirical practice, which prevails in most families. In the first place, right conceptions f r gnsp gri ^ effect are^early formed; and by frequent and con- sistent experience are eventually rendered definite and complete. Proper conduct in life is much bet- ter guaranteed when the good and evil consequences 190 MORAL EDUCATION. of actions are rationally understood, than when they are merely believed on authority. A child who finds that disorderliness entails the subsequent trouble of putting things in order, or who misses a gratification from dilatoriness, or whose want of care is followed by the loss or breakage of some much-prized possession, not only experiences a keen- ly-felt consequence, but gains a knowledge of cau- sation: both the one and the other being just like those which adult life will bring. Whereas a child who in such cases receives some reprimand or some factitious penalty, not only experiences a conse- quence for which it often cares very little, but lacks that instruction respecting the essential natures of good and evil conduct, which it would else have gathered. It is a vice of the common system of artificial rewards and punishments, long since no- ticed by the clear-sighted, that by substituting for the natural results of misbehaviour certain threat- ened tasks or castigations, it produces a radically wrong standard of moral guidance. Having throughout infancy and boyhood always regarded parental or tutorial displeasure as the result of a forbidden action, the youth has gained an estab- lished association of ideas between such action and such displeasure, as cause and effect; and con- sequently when parents and tutors have abdicated, ADVANTAGES OF THE NORMAL SYSTEM. 191 and their displeasure is not to be feared, the re- straint on a forbidden action is in great measure removed: the true restraints, the natural reac- tions having yet to be learnt by sad experience. As writes one who has had personal knowledge of this short-sighted system: " Young men let loose from school, particularly those whose par- ents have neglected to exert their influence, plunge into every description of extravagance; they know no rule of action they are ignorant of the reasons for moral conduct they have no foun- dation to rest upon and until they have been se- verely disciplined by the world are extremely dan- gerous members of society." Another great advantage of this natural system of discipline is, that it is a syjaiem_ofpure justice;, and wjll j2_JCCQgnisfid by every child as such. Whoso suffers nothing more than the evil which ob- viously follows naturally from his own misbehav- iour, is much less likely to think himself wrongly treated than if he suffers an evil artificially inflicted on him; and this will be true of children as of men. Take the case of a boy who is habitually reckless of his clothes scrambles through hedges without caution, or is utterly regardless of mud. If he is beaten, or sent to bed, he is apt to regard himself as ill-used; and his mind is more likely to 192 MORAL EDUCATION. be occupied by thinking over his injuries than re- penting of his transgressions. But suppose he is required to rectify as far as he can the harm he has done to clean off the mud with which he has cov- ered himself, or to mend the tear as well as he can. Will he not feel that the evil is one of his own pro- ducing? Will he not while paying this penalty be continuously conscious of the connexion between it and its cause? And will he not, spite his irrita- tion, recognise more or less clearly the justice of the arrangement? If several lessons of this kind fail to produce amendment if suits of clothes are pre- maturely spoiled if pursuing this same system of discipline a father declines to spend money for new ones until the ordinary time has elapsed and if meanwhile, there occur occasions on which, having no decent clothes to go in, the boy is debarred from joining the rest of the family on holiday excursions and fete days, it is manifest that while he will keen- ly feel the punishment, he can scarcely fail to trace the chain of causation, and to perceive that his own carelessness is the origin of it; and seeing this, he will not have the same sense of injustice as when there is no obvious connexion between the trans- gression and its penalty. Again, the tempers both of parents and children are much less liable to be ruffled under this system EVILS OP ARTIFICIAL PUNISHMENT.' 193 than under the ordinary system. Instead of letting children experience the painful results which natu- rally follow from wrong conduct, the usual course pursued by parents is to inflict themselves certain other painful results. A double mischief arises from this. Making, as they do, multiplied family laws; and identifying their own supremacy and dignity with the maintenance of these laws; it hap- pens that every transgression comes to be regarded as an offence against themselves, and a cause of anger on their part. Add to which the further ir- ritations which result from taking upon themselves, in the shape of extra labour or cost, those evil con- sequences which should have been allowed to fall on the wrong-doers. Similarly with the children. Penalties which the necessary reaction of things brings around upon them penalties which are in- flicted by impersonal agency, produce an irritation that is comparatively slight and transient; whereas, penalties which are voluntarily inflicted by a par- ent, and are afterwards remembered as caused by him or her, produce an irritation both greater and more continued. Just consider how disastrous would be the result if this empirical method were pursued from the beginning. Suppose it were pos- sible for parents to take upon themselves the phys- ical sufferings entailed on their children by igno- 194 MORAL EDUCATION. ranee and awkwardness; and that while bearing these evil consequences they visited on their chil- dren certain other evil consequences, with the view of teaching them the impropriety of their conduct. Suppose that when a child, who had been forbidden to meddle with the kettle, spilt some boiling water on its foot, the mother vicariously assumed the scald and gave a blow in place of it; and similarly in all other cases. Would not the daily mishaps be sources of far more anger than now? Would there not be chronic ill-temper on both sides? Yet an exactly parallel policy is pursued in after years. A father who punishes his boy for carelessly or wil- fully breaking a sister's toy, and then himself pays for a new toy, does substantially this same thing inflicts an artificial penalty on the transgressor, and takes the natural penalty on himself: his own feelings and those of the transgressor being alike needlessly irritated. If he simply required resti- tution to be made, he would produce far less heart- burning. If he told the boy that a new toy must be bought at his, the boy's cost, and that his supply of pocket-money must be withheld to the needful extent, there would be much less cause for ebulli- tion of temper on either side; while in the depriva- tion afterwards felt, the boy would experience the equitable and salutary consequence. In brief, the PARENTAL WRATH. 195 system of discipline by natural reactions is less in- jurious to temper, alike because it is perceived on both sides to be nothing more than pure justice, and because it more or less substitutes the imper- sonal agency of nature for the personal agency of parents. Whence also follows the manifest corollary, that under this system the parental and filial relation will be more friendly, and therefore a more in- fluential one. Whether in parent or child, anger, however caused, and to whomsoever directed, is more or less detrimental. But anger in a parent to- wards a child, and in a child towards a parent, is es- pecially detrimental; because it weakens that bond of sympathy which is essential to a beneficent con- trol. In virtue of the general law of association of ideas, it inevitably results, both in young and old, that dislike is contracted towards things which in our experience are habitually connected with dis- agreeable feelings. Or where attachment origi- nally existed, it is weakened, or destroyed, or turned into repugnance, according to the quantity of pain- ful impressions received. Parental wrath, with its accompanying reprimands and castigations, cannot fail, if often repeated, to produce filial alienation; while the resentment and sulkiness of children can- not fail to weaken the affection felt for them, and 196 MORAL EDUCATION. may even end in destroying it. Hence the numer- ous cases in which parents (and especially fathers, who are commonly deputed to express the anger and inflict the punishment) are regarded with indif- ference, if not with aversion ; and hence the equally numerous cases in which children are looked upon as inflictions. Seeing, then, as all must do, that estrangement of this kind is fatal to a salutary moral culture, it follows that parents cannot be too solicitous in avoiding the occasions of direct antago- nism with their children occasions of personal resentment. And therefore they cannot too anx- iously avail themselves of this discipline of natural consequences this system of letting the penalty be inflicted by the laws of things; which, by saving the parent from the function of a penal agent, prevents these mutual exasperations and estrange- ments. Thus we see that this method of moral culture by experience of the normal reactions, which is the divinely-ordained method alike for infancy and for adult life, is equally applicable during the inter- mediate childhood and youth. And among the ad- vantages of this method we see First. That it gives that rational comprehension of right and wrong conduct which results from actual experience of the good and bad consequences caused by them. A FEW ILLUSTRATIVE PACTS. 197 Second. That the child, suffering nothing more than the painful effects brought upon it by its own wrong actions, must recognise more or less clearly the justice of the penalties. Third. That, recog- nising the justice of the penalties, and receiving those penalties through the working of things, rather than at the hands of an individual, its temper will be less disturbed; while the parent occupying the comparatively passive position of taking care that the natural penalties are felt, will preserve a comparative equanimity. And Fourth. That mutual exasperation being thus in great measure prevented, a much happier, and a more influential state of feeling, will exist between parent and child. " But what is to be done with more serious mis- conduct?" some will ask. "How is this plan to be carried out when a petty theft has been com- mitted? or when a lie has been told? or when some younger brother or sister has been ill-used? " Before replying to these questions, let us con- sider the bearings of a few illustrative facts. Living in the family of his brother-in-law, a friend of ours had undertaken the education of his little nephew and niece. This he had conducted, more perhaps from natural sympathy than from reasoned-out conclusions, in the spirit of the method 198 MORAL EDUCATION. above set forth. The two children were in doors his pupils and out of doors his companions. They dai'y joined him in walks and botanizing excur- sions, eagerly sought out plants for him, looked on while he examined and identified them, and in this and other ways were ever gaining both pleasure and instruction in his society. In short, morally con- sidered, he stood to them much more in the position of parent than either their father or mother did. Describing to us the results of this policy, he gave, among other instances, the following. One even- ing, having need for some article lying in another part of the house, he asked his nephew to fetch it for him. Deeply interested as the boy was in some amusement of the moment, he, contrary to his wont, either exhibited great reluctance or refused, we forget which. His uncle, disapproving of a coercive course, fetched it himself; merely exhibit- ing by his manner the annoyance this ill-behaviour gave him. And when, later in the evening, the boy made overtures for the usual play, they were gravely repelled the uncle manifested just that coldness of feeling naturally produced in him, and so let the boy experience the necessary consequences of his conduct. Next morning at the usual time for rising, our friend heard a new voice outside the door, and in walked his little nephew with the hot FRIENDSHIP OF PARENT AND CHILD. 199 water; and then the boy, peering about the room to see what else could be done, exclaimed, " Oh! you want your boots," and forthwith rushed down stairs to fetch them. In this and other ways he showed a true penitence for his misconduct; he en- deavoured by unusual services to make up for the service he had refused; his higher feelings had of themselves conquered his lower ones, and acquired strength by the conquest; and he valued more than before the friendship he thus regained. This gentleman is now himself a father; acts on the same system; and finds it answers completely. He makes himself thoroughly his children's friend. The evening is longed for by them because he will be at home; and they especially enjoy the Sunday because he is with them all day. Thus possessing their perfect confidence and affection, he finds that the simple display of his approbation or disapproba- tion gives him abundant power of control. If, on his return home, he hears that one of his boys has been naughty, he behaves towards him with that comparative coldness which the consciousness of the boy's misconduct naturally produces; and he finds this a most efficient punishment. The mere with- holding of the usual caresses, is a source of the keenest distress produces a much more prolonged fit of crying than a beating would do. And the 14 200 MORAL EDUCATION. dread of this purely moral penalty is, he says, ever present during his absence: so much so, that fre- quently during the day his children inquire of their mamma how they have behaved, and whether the report will be good. Recently, the eldest, an ac- tive urchin of five, in one of those bursts of animal spirits common in healthy children, committed sun- dry extravagances during his mamma's absence cut off part of his brother's hair and wounded him- self with a razor taken from his father's dressing- case. Hearing of these occurrences on his return, the father did not speak to the boy either that night or next morning. Not only was the tribulation great, but the subsequent effect was, that when, a few days after, the mamma was about to go out, she was earnestly entreated by the boy not to do so ; and on inquiry, it appeared his fear was that he might again transgress in her absence. We have introduced these facts before replying to the question " What is to be done with the graver offences? " for the purpose of first exhibiting the relation that may and ought to be established between parents and children; for on the existence of this relation depends the successful treatment of these graver offences. And as a further prelimi- nary, we must now point out that the establishment of this relation will result from adopting the sys- PARENTS REGARDED AS FRIEND-ENEMIES. 201 tern we advocate. Already we have shown that by letting a child experience simply the painful reactions of its own wrong actions, a parent in great measure avoids assuming the attitude of an enemy, and escapes being regarded as one; but it still re- mains to be shown that where this course has been consistently pursued from the beginning, a strong feeling of active friendship will be generated. At present, mothers and fathers are mostly con- sidered by their offspring as friend-enemies. De- termined as their impressions inevitably are by the treatment they receive ; and oscillating as that treat- ment does between bribery and thwarting, between petting and scolding, between gentleness and casti- gation; children necessarily acquire conflicting be- liefs respecting the parental character. A mother commonly thinks it quite sufficient to tell her little boy that she is his best friend ; and assuming that he is in duty bound to believe her, concludes that he will forthwith do so. " It is all for your good; " " I know what is proper for you better than you do yourself ; " " You are not old enough to understand it now, but when you grow up you will thank me for doing what I do; " these, and like assertions, are daily reiterated. Meanwhile the boy is daily suffering positive penalties; and is hourly forbid- den to do this, that* and the other, which he was 202 MORAL EDUCATION. anxious to do. By words he hears that his happi- ness is the end in view; but from the accompanying deeds he habitually receives more or less pain. Ut- terly incompetent as he is to understand that future which his mother has in view, or how this treatment conduces to the happiness of that future, he judges by such results as he feels; and finding these results any thing but pleasurable, he becomes sceptical respecting these professions of friendship. And is it not folly to expect any other issue? Must not the child judge by such evidence as he has got? and does not this evidence seem to warrant his con- clusion? The mother would reason in just the same way if similarly placed. If, in the circle of her acquaintance, she found some one who was constantly thwarting her wishes, uttering sharp rep- rimands, and occasionally inflicting actual pen- alties on her, she would pay but little attention to any professions of anxiety for her welfare which accompanied these acts. Why, then, does she sup- pose that her boy will conclude otherwise? But now observe how different will be the re- sults if the system we contend for be consistently pursued if the mother not only avoids becoming the instrument of punishment, but plays the part of a friend, by warning her boy of the punishments which Nature will inflict. Take a case; and that COURSE OP THE DISCRIMINATING MOTHER. 203 it may illustrate the mode in which this policy is to be early initiated, let it be one of the simplest cases. Suppose that, prompted by the experi- mental spirit so conspicuous in children, whose proceedings instinctively conform to the inductive method of inquiry suppose that so prompted the child is amusing himself by lighting pieces of pa- per in the candle and watching them burn. If his mother is of the ordinary unreflective stamp, she will either, on the plea of keeping the child " out of mischief," or from fear that he will burn himself, command him to desist; and in case of non-com- pliance will snatch the paper from him. On the other hand, should he be so fortunate as to have a mother of sufficient rationality, who knows that this interest with which the child is watching the paper burn results from a healthy inquisitiveness, without which he would never have emerged out of infantine stupidity, and who is also wise enough to consider the moral results of interference, she will reason thus: " If I put a stop to this I shall prevent the acquirement of a certain amount of knowledge. It is true that I may save the child from a burn; but what then? He is sure to burn himself sometime; and it is quite essential to his safety in life that he should learn by experience the properties of flame. Moreover, if I forbid him 204 MORAL EDUCATION. from running this present risk, he is sure hereafter to run the same or a greater risk when no one is present to prevent him; whereas, if he should have any accident now that I am by, I can save him from any great injury; add to which the advantage that he will have in future some dread of fire, and will be less likely to burn himself to death, or set the house in a flame when others are absent. Fur- thermore, were I to make him desist, I should thwart him in the pursuit of what is in itself a purely harm- less, and indeed, instructive gratification; and he would be sure to regard me with more or less ill- feeling. Ignorant as he is of the pain from which I would save him, and feeling only the pain of a balked desire, he could not fail to look upon me as the cause of that pain. To save him from a hurt, which he cannot conceive, and which has therefore no existence for him, I inflict upon him a hurt which he feels keenly enough ; and so become, from his point of view, a minister of evil. My best course then, is simply to warn him of the danger, and to be ready to prevent any serious damage." And following out this conclusion, she says to the child " I fear you will hurt yourself if you do that." Suppose, now, that the child perseveres, as he will very probably do; and suppose that he ends by burning himself. What are the results? In CHILDREN MUST LEARN BY EXPERIENCE. 205 the first place he has gained an experience which he must gain eventually, and which, for his own safety he cannot gain too soon. And in the second place, he has found that his mother's disapproval or warning was meant for his welfare: he has a fur- ther positive experience of her benevolence a fur- ther reason for placing confidence in her judgment and her kindness a further reason for loving her. Of course, in those occasional hazards where there is a risk of broken limbs or other serious bodily injury, forcible prevention is called for. But leav- ing out these extreme cases, the system pursued should be not that of guarding a child against the small dangers into which it daily runs, but that of advising and warning it against them. And by consistently pursuing this course, a much stronger filial affection will be generated than commonly exists. If here, as elsewhere, the discipline of the natural reactions is allowed to come into play if in all those out-of-door scramblings and in-door ex- periments, by which children are liable to hurt themselves, they are allowed to persevere, subject only to dissuasion more or less earnest according to the risk, there cannot fail to arise an ever-increasing faith in the parental friendship and guidance. Not only, as before shown, does the adoption of this principle enable fathers and mothers to avoid the 206 MOEAL EDUCATION. chief part of that odium which attaches to the in- fliction of positive punishment ; but, as we here see, it enables them further to avoid the odium that at- taches to constant thwartings; and even to turn each of those incidents which commonly cause squabbles, into a means of strengthening the mu- tual good feeling. Instead of being told in words, which deeds seem to contradict, that their parents are their best friends, children will learn this truth by a consistent daily experience ; and so learning it, will acquire a degree of trust and attachment which nothing else can give. And now having indicated the much more sympathetic relation which must result from the habitual use of this method, let us return to the question above put How is this method to be ap- plied to the graver offences? Note, in the first place, that these graver of- fences are likely to be both less frequent and less grave under the regime we have described than un- der the ordinary regime. The perpetual ill-behav- iour of many children is itself the consequence of that chronic irritation in which they are kept by bad management. The state of isolation and an- tagonism produced by frequent punishment, neces- sarily deadens the sympathies; necessarily, there- fore, opens the way to those transgressions which TREATMENT OF GRAVE OFFENCES. 207 the sympathies should check. That harsh treat- ment which children of the same family inflict on each other is often, in great measure, a reflex of the harsh treatment they receive from adults partly suggested by direct example, and partly generated by the ill-temper and the tendency to vicarious re- taliation, which follow chastisements and scoldings. It cannot be questioned that the greater activity of the affections and happier state of feeling, main- tained in children by the discipline we have de- scribed, must prevent their sins against each other from being either so great or so frequent. More- over, the still more reprehensible offences, as lies and petty thefts, will, by the same causes, be di- minished. Domestic estrangement is a fruitful source of such transgressions. It is a law of human nature, visible enough to all who observe, that those who are debarred the higher gratifications fall back upon the lower; those who have no sym- pathetic pleasures seek selfish ones; and hence, conversely, the maintenance of happier relations between parents and children is calculated to di- minish the number of those offences of which selfishness is the origin. When, however, such offences are committed, as they will occasionally be even under the best sys- tem, the discipline of consequences may still be 208 MORAL EDUCATION. resorted to; and if there exist that bond of confi- dence and affection which we have described, this discipline will be found efficient. For what are the natural consequences, say, of a theft? They are of two kinds direct and indirect. The direct consequence, as dictated by pure equity, is that of making restitution. An absolutely just ruler (and every parent should aim to be one) will demand that, wherever it is possible, a wrong act shall be undone by a right one: and in the case of theft this implies either the restoration of the thing stolen, or, if it is consumed, then the giving of an equiva- lent: which, in the case of a child, may be effected out of its pocket-money. The indirect and more serious consequence is the grave displeasure of parents a consequence which inevitably follows among all peoples sufficiently civilized to regard theft as a crime; and the manifestation of this dis- pleasure is, in this instance, the most severe of the natural reactions produced by the wrong a(Mon. " But," it will be said, " the manifestations of pa- rental displeasure, either in words or blows, is the ordinary course in these cases: the method leads here to nothing new." Very true. Already we have admitted that, in some directions, this method is spontaneously pursued. Already we have shown that there is a more or less manifest tendency for EFFECTS OF SYMPATHY AND FRIENDSHIP. 209 educational systems to gravitate towards the true system. And here we may remark, as before, that the intensity of this natural reaction will, in the beneficent order of things, adjust itself to the re- quirements that this parental displeasure will vent itself in violent measures during comparatively barbarous times, when the children are also com- paratively barbarous; and will express itself less cruelly in those more advanced social states in which, by implication, the children are amenable to milder treatment. But what it chiefly concerns us here to observe is, that the manifestation of strong parental displeasure, produced by one of these graver offences, will be potent for good just in proportion to the warmth of the attachment ex- isting between parent and child. Just in propor- tion as the discipline of the natural consequences has been consistently pursued in other cases, will it be efficient in this case. Proof is within the ex- perience of all, if they will look for it. For does not every man know that when he has offended another person, the amount of genuine re- gret he feels (of course, leaving worldly considera- tions out of the question) varies with the degree of sympathy he has for that person? Is he not con- scious that when the person offended stands to him in the position of an enemy, the having given 210 MORAL EDUCATION. annoyance is apt to be a source rather of secret satis- faction than of sorrow? Does he not remember that where umbrage has been taken by some total stranger, he has felt much less concern than he would have done had such umbrage been taken by one with whom he was intimate? While, converse- ly, has not the anger of an admired and cherished friend been regarded by him as a serious misfor- tune, long and keenly regretted? Clearly, then, the effects of parental displeasure upon children must similarly depend upon the pre-existing re- lationship. Where there is an established aliena- tion, the feeling of a child who has transgressed is a purely selfish fear of the evil consequences likely to fall upon it in the shape of physical penalties or deprivations; and after these evil consequences have been inflicted, there are aroused an antagonism and dislike which are morally injurious, and tend further to increase the alienation. On the con- trary, where there exists a warm filial affection pro- duced by a consistent parental friendship a friend- ship not dogmatically asserted as an excuse for pun- ishments and denials, but daily exhibited in ways that a child can comprehend a friendship which avoids needless thwartings, which warns against im- pending evil consequences, and which sympathizes with juvenile pursuits there the state of mind EFFECTS OF SYMPATHY AND FRIENDSHIP. 211 caused by parental displeasure will not only be salutary as a check to future misconduct of like kind, but will also be intrinsically salutary. The moral pain consequent upon having, for the time being, lost so loved a friend, will stand in place of the physical pain usually inflicted; and where this attachment exists, will prove equally, if not more, efficient. While instead of the fear and vin- dictiveness excited by the one course, there will be excited by the other more or less of sympathy with parental sorrow, a genuine regret for having caused it, and a desire, by some atonement, to re-establish the habitual friendly relationship. Instead of bringing into play those purely egoistic feelings whose predominance is the cause of criminal acts, there will be brought into play those altruistic feel- ings which check criminal acts. Thus the disci- pline of the natural consequences is applicable to grave as well as trivial faults; and the practice of it conduces not simply to the repression, but to the eradication of such faults. In brief, the truth is that savageness begets savageness, and gentleness begets gentleness. Chil- dren who are unsympathetically treated become relatively unsympathetic; whereas treating them with due fellow-feeling is a means of cultivating their fellow-feeling. With family governments as 212 MORAL EDUCATION. with political ones, a harsh despotism itself gener- ates a great part of the crimes it has to repress; while conversely a mild and liberal rule not only avoids many causes of dissension, but so amelio- rates the tone of feeling as to diminish the ten- dency to transgression. As John Locke long since remarked, " Great severity of punishment does but very little good, nay, great harm, in education; and I believe it will be found that, cceteris paribus, those children who have been most chastised sel- dom make the best men." In confirmation of which opinion we may cite the fact not long since made public by Mr. Kogers, Chaplain of the Pen- tonville Prison, that those juvenile criminals who have been whipped are those who most frequently return to prison. On the other hand, as exhibiting the beneficial effects of a kinder treatment, we will instance the fact stated to us by a French lady, in whose house we recently staid in Paris. Apologiz- ing for the disturbance daily caused by a little boy who was unmanageable both at home and at school, she expressed her fear that there was no remedy save that which had succeeded in the case of an elder brother; namely, sending him to an English school. She explained that at various schools in Paris this elder brother had proved utterly untract- able; that in despair they had followed the advice EFFECTS OF CHASTISEMENT. 213 to send him to England; and that on his return home he was as good as he had before been bad. And this remarkable change she ascribed entirely to the comparative mildness of the English disci- pline. After this exposition of principles, our remain- ing space may best be occupied by a few of the chief maxims and rules deducible from them; and with a view to brevity we will put these in a more or less hortatory form. Do not expect from a child any great amount of moral goodness. During early years every civil- ized man passes through that phase of character exhibited by the barbarous race from which he is descended. As the child's features flat nose, for- ward-opening nostrils, large lips, wide-apart eyes, absent frontal sinus, &c. resemble for a time those of the savage, so, too, do his instincts. Hence the tendencies to cruelty, to thieving, to lying, so gen- eral among children tendencies which, even with- out the aid of discipline, will become more or less modified just as the features do. The popular idea that children are " innocent," while it may be true in so far as it refers to evil knowledge, is totally false in so far as it refers to evil impulses, as half an hour's observation in the nursery will prove to any one. Boys when left to themselves, as at a 2U MORAL EDUCATION. public school, treat each other far more brutally than men do; and were they left to themselves at an earlier age their brutality would be still more conspicuous. Not only is it unwise to set up a high standard for juvenile good conduct, but it is even unwise to use very urgent incitements to such good conduct. Already most people recognise the detrimental re- sults of intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognised the truth that there is a moral pre- cocity which is also detrimental. Our higher moral faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively complex. By consequence they are both comparatively late in their evolution. And with the one as with the other, a very early activity produced by stimulation will be at the ex- pense of the future character. Hence the not un- common fact that those who during childhood were instanced as models of juvenile goodness, by-and-by undergo some disastrous and seemingly inexplica- ble change, and end by being not above but below par; while relatively exemplary men are often the issue of a childhood by no means so promising. Be content, therefore, with moderate measures and moderate results. Constantly bear in mind the fact that a higher morality, like a higher intelli- gence, must be reached by a slow growth; and SLOW EVOLUTION OF MORAL FACULTIES. 215 you will then have more patience with those imper- fections of nature which your child hourly displays. You will be less prone to that constant scolding, and threatening, and forbidding, by which many parents induce a chronic domestic irritation, in the foolish hope that they will thus make their chil- dren what they should be. This comparatively liberal form of domestic government, which does not seek despotically to regulate all the details of a child's conduct, neces- sarily results from the system for which we have been contending. Satisfy yourself with seeing that your child always suffers the natural conse- quences of his actions, and you will avoid that excess of control in which so many parents err. Leave him wherever you can to the discipline of experi- ence, and you will so save him from that hothouse virtue which over-regulation produces in yielding natures, or that demoralizing antagonism which it produces in independent ones. By aiming in all cases to administer the natural reactions to your child's actions, you will put an advantageous check upon your own temper. The method of moral education pursued by many, we fear by most, parents, is little else than that of vent- ing their anger in the way that first suggests itself. The slaps, and rough shakings, and sharp words, 15 216 MORAL EDUCATION. with which a mother commonly visits her off- spring's small offences (many of them not offences considered intrinsically), are very generally but the manifestations of her own ill-controlled feelings result much more from the promptings of those feelings than from a wish to benefit the offenders. While they are injurious to her own character, these ebullitions tend, by alienating her children and by decreasing their respect for her, to diminish her influence over them. But by pausing in each case of transgression to consider what is the natural consequence, and how that natural consequence may best be brought home to the transgressor, some little time is necessarily obtained for the mastery of yourself; the mere blind anger first aroused in you settles down into a less vehement feeling, and one not so likely to mislead you. Do not, however, seek to behave as an utterly passionless instrument. Kemember that besides the natural consequences of your child's conduct which the working of things tends to bring round on him, your own approbation or disapprobation is also a natural consequence, and one of the ordained agencies for guiding him. The error which we have been combating is that of substituting pa- rental displeasure and its artificial penalties, for the penalties which nature has established. But while CAUTIOUS USB OP PARENTAL DISPLEASURE. 217 it should not be substituted for these natural pen- alties, it by no means follows that it should not, in some form, accompany them. The secondary kind of punishment should not usurp the place of the primary kind; but, in moderation, it may rightly supplement the primary kind. Such amount of disapproval, or sorrow, or indignation, as you feel, should be expressed in words or manner or other- wise; subject, of course, to the approval of your judgment. The degree and kind of feeling pro- duced in you will necessarily depend upon your own character, and it is therefore useless to say it should be this or that. All that can be recom- mended is, that you should aim to modify the feel- ing into that which you believe ought to be enter- tained. Beware, however, of the two extremes; not only in respect of the intensity, but in respect of the duration of your displeasure. On the one hand, anxiously avoid that weak impulsiveness, so general among mothers, which scolds and forgives almost in the same breath. On the other hand, do not unduly continue to show estrangement of feel- ing, lest you accustom your child to do without your friendship, and so lose your influence over him. The moral reactions called forth from you by your child's actions, you should as much as possible assimilate to those which you conceive 218 MORAL EDUCATION. would be called forth from a parent of perfect nature. Be sparing of commands. Command only in those cases in which other means are inapplicable, or have failed. " In frequent orders the parents' advantage is more considered than the child's," says Eichter. As in primitive societies a breach of law is punished, not so much because it is intrinsically wrong as because it is a disregard of the king's authority a rebellion against him; so in many families, the penalty visited on a transgressor pro- ceeds less from reprobation of the offence than from anger at the disobedience. Listen to the ordinary speeches " How dare you disobey me? " " I tell you I'll make you do it, sir." " I'll soon teach you who is master " and then consider what the words, the tone, and the manner imply. A determination to subjugate is much more conspicuous in them than an anxiety for the child's welfare. For the time being the attitude of mind differs but little from that of the despot bent on punishing a recalci- trant subject. The right-feeling parent, however, like the philanthropic legislator, will not rejoice in coercion, but will rejoice in dispensing with coer- cion. He will do without law in all cases where other modes of regulating conduct can be success- fully employed; and he will regret the having WISE PENALTIES, BUT INEVITABLE. 219 recourse to law when it is necessary. As Richter remarks " The best rule in politics is said to be ' pas trop gouverner: ' it is also true in education." And in spontaneous conformity with this maxim, parents whose lust of dominion is restrained by a true sense of duty, will aim to make their children control themselves wherever it is possible, and will fall back upon absolutism only as a last resort. But whenever you do command, command with decision and consistency. If the case is one which really cannot be otherwise dealt with, then issue your fiat, and having issued it, never afterwards swerve from it. Consider well beforehand what you are going to do; weigh all the consequences; think whether your firmness of purpose will be sufficient; and then, if you finally make the law, enforce it uniformly at whatever cost. Let your penalties be like the penalties inflicted by inani- mate nature inevitable. The hot cinder burns a child the first time he seizes it; it burns him the second time; it burns him the third time; it burns him every time; and he very soon learns not to touch the hot cinder. If you are equally consist- ent if the consequences which you tell your child will follow certain acts, follow with like uniform- ity, he will soon come to respect your laws as he does those of Nature. And this respect once estab- 220 MORAL EDUCATION. lished will prevent endless domestic evils. Of errors in education one of the worst is that of incon- sistency. As in a community, crimes multiply when there is no certain administration of justice; so in a family, an immense increase of transgressions results from a hesitating or irregular infliction of penalties. A weak mother, who perpetually threat- ens and rarely performs who makes rules in haste and repents of them at leisure who treats the same offence now with severity and now with leniency, according as the passing humour dictates, is laying up miseries both for herself and her children. She is making herself contemptible in their eyes; she is setting them an example of uncontrolled feelings ; she is encouraging them to transgress by the pros- pect of probable impunity; she is entailing end- less squabbles and accompanying damage to her own temper and the tempers of her little ones; she is reducing their minds to a moral chaos, which after-years of bitter experience will with difficulty bring into order. Better even a barbarous form of domestic government carried out consistently, than a humane one inconsistently carried out. Again we say, avoid coercive measures whenever it is possible to do so; but when you find despotism really necessary, be despotic in good earnest. Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim PROGRESSIVE; NEED OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. 221 of your discipline should be to produce SL^ ernm2_beiag; not to produce a being to be erned by others. Were your children fated to pass their lives as" slaves, you could not too much accus- tom them to slavery during their childhood; but as they are by-and-by to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still under your eye. This it is which makes the sys- tem of discipline by natural consequences, so espe- cially appropriate to the social state which we in England have now reached. Under early, tyran- nical forms of society, when one of the chief evils the citizen had to fear was the anger of his supe- riors, it was well that during childhood parental vengeance should be a predominant means of gov- ernment. But now that the citizen has little to fear from any one now that the good or evil which he experiences throughout life is mainly that which in the nature of things results from his own con- duct, it is desirable that from his first years he should begin to learn, experimentally, the good or evil consequences which naturally follow this or that conduct. Aim, therefore, to diminish the amount of parental government as fast as you can substitute for it in your child's mind that self -gov- ernment arising from a foresight of results. In in- 222 MORAL EDUCATION. fancy a considerable amount of absolutism is ne- cessary. A three-year old urchin playing with an open razor, cannot be allowed to learn by this disci- pline of consequences; for the consequences may, in such a case, be too serious. But as intelligence increases, the number of instances calling for per- emptory interference may be, and should be, di- minished; with the view of gradually ending them as maturity is approached. All periods of transi- tion are dangerous; and the most dangerous is the transition from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world. Hence the impor- tance of pursuing the policy we advocate; which, alike by cultivating a child's faculty of self-re- straint, by continually increasing the degree in which it is left to its self -constraint, and by so bring- ing it, step by step, to a state of unaided self-re- straint, obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazard- ous change from externally-governed youth to inter- nally-governed maturity. Let the history of your domestic rule typify, in little, the history of our political rule: at the outset, autocratic control, where control is really needful; by-and-by an in- cipient constitutionalism, in which the liberty of the subject gains some express recognition; successive extensions of this liberty of the subject; gradually ending in parental abdication. ._ ^ .ir NECESSITY OF PARENTAL DISCRIMINATION. 223 Do not regret the exhibition of considerable self-will on the part of your children. It is the correlative of that diminished coerciveness so con- spicuous in modern education. The greater ten- dency to assert freedom of action on the one side, corresponds to the smaller tendency to tyrannize on the other. They both indicate an approach to the system of discipline we contend for, under which children will be more and more led to rule them- selves by the experience of natural consequences; and they are both the accompaniments of our more advanced social state. The independent English boy is the father of the independent English man; and you cannot have the last without the first. German teachers say that they had rather manage a dozen German boys than one English one. Shall we, therefore, wish that our boys had the managea- bleness of the German ones, and with it the sub- missiveness and political serfdom of adult Ger- mans? Or shall we not rather tolerate in our boys those feelings which make them free men, and modify our methods accordingly? Lastly^ always remember that to educate rightlyf is not a simple and easy thing, but a complex andL extremely difficult thing: the hardest task which j devolves upon adult life. The rough and ready style of domestic government is indeed practicable 224 MORAL EDUCATION. by the meanest and most uncultivated intellects. Slaps and sharp words are penalties that suggest themselves alike to the least reclaimed barbarian and the most stolid peasant. Even brutes can use this method of discipline; as you may see in the growl and half-bite with which a bitch will check a too-exigeant puppy. But if you would carry out with success a rational and civilized system, you must be prepared for considerable mental exertion for some study, some ingenuity, some patience, some self-control. You will have habitually to trace the consequences of conduct to consider what are the results which in adult life follow cer- tain kind of acts; and then you will have to de- vise methods by which parallel results shall be en- tailed on the parallel acts of your children. You will daily be called upon to analyze the motives of juvenile conduct: you must distinguish between acts that are really good and those which, though externally simulating them, proceed from inferior impulses; while you must be ever on your guard against the cruel mistake not unfrequently made, of translating neutral acts into transgressions, or ascribing worse feelings than were entertained. You must more or less modify your method to suit the disposition of each child ; and must be prepared to make further modifications as each child's dis- THE HIGH DISCIPLINE OP PARENTHOOD. 225 position enters on a new phase. Your faith will often be taxed to maintain the requisite persever- ance in a course which seems to produce little or no effect. Especially if you are dealing with chil- dren who have been wrongly treated, you must be prepared for a lengthened trial of patience before succeeding with better methods; seeing that which is not easy even where a right state of feeling has been established from the beginning, becomes doubly difficult when a wrong state of feeling has to be set right. Not only will you have constantly to analyze the motives of your children, but you will have to analyze your own motives to discriminate between those internal suggestions springing from a true parental solicitude, and those which spring from your own selfishness, from your love of ease, from your lust of dominion. And then, more try- ing still, you will have not only to detect, but to curb these baser impulses. In brief, you will have to carry on your higher education at the same time that you are educating your children. Intellectu- ally you must cultivate to good purpose that most complex of subjects human nature and its laws, as exhibited in your children, in yourself, and in the world. Morally ; ^you must keep in constant ex- ercise your higher feelings, and restrain your lower. It is a truth yet remaining to be recognized, that 226 MORAL EDUCATION. the last stage in the mental development of each man and woman is to be reached only through the proper discharge of the parental duties. And when this truth is recognised, it will be seen how ad- mirable is the ordination in virtue of which hu- man beings are led by their strongest affections to subject themselves to a discipline which they would else elude. While some will probably regard this concep- tion of education as it should be, with doubt and discouragement, others will, we think, perceive in the exalted ideal which it involves, evidence of its truth. That it cannot be realized by the impulsive, the unsympathetic, and the short-sighted, but de- mands the higher attributes of human nature, they will see to be evidence of its fitness for the more advanced states of humanity. Though it calls for much labour and self-sacrifice, they will see that it promises an abundant return of happiness, im- mediate and remote. They will see that while in its injurious effects on both parent and child a bad system is twice cursed, a good system is twice blessed it blesses him that trains and him that's trained. It will be seen that we have said nothing in this Chapter about the transcendental distinction between right and wrong, of which wise men know so little, and children nothing. All thinkers are THE HIGH DISCIPLINE OF PARENTHOOD. 227 agreed that we may find the criterion of right in the effect of actions, if we do not find the rule there; and that is sufficient for the purpose we have had in view. Nor have we introduced the religious element. We have confined our inquiries to a nearer, and a much more neglected field, though a very important one. Our readers may supplement our thoughts in any way they please; we are only concerned that they should be accepted as far as they go. CHAPTER IY. PHYSICAL EDUCATION. EQUALLY at the squire's table after the with- drawal of the ladies, at the farmers' market-ordi- nary, and at the village ale-house, the topic which, after the political question of the day, excites per- haps the most general interest, is the management of animals. Riding home from hunting, the con- versation is pretty sure to gravitate towards horse- breeding and pedigrees, and comments on this or that ' good point; ' while a day on the moors is very unlikely to pass without something being said on the treatment of dogs. When crossing the fields together from church, the tenants of adjacent farms are apt to pass from criticisms on the sermon to criticisms on the weather, the crops, and the stock; and thence to slide into discussions on the various kinds of fodder and their feeding qualities. Hodge and Giles, after comparing notes over their respective pig-styes, show by their remarks that they have been more or less observant of their mas- IMPROVEMENT OF INFERIOR ANIMALS. 229 ters' beasts and sheep ; and of the effects produced on them by this or that kind of treatment. Nor is it only among the rural population that the regu- lations of the kennel, the stable, the cow-shed, and the sheep-pen, are favourite subjects. In towns, too, the numerous artisans who keep dogs, the young men who are rich enough to now and then indulge their sporting tendencies, and their more staid seniors who talk over agricultural progress or read Mr. Mechi's annual reports and Mr. Caird's letters to the Times, form, when added together, a large portion of the inhabitants. Take the adult males throughout the kingdom, and a great major- ity will be found to show some interest in the breed- ing, rearing, or training of animals, of one kind or other. But, during after-dinner conversations, or at other times of like intercourse, who hears anything said about the rearing of children? When the country gentleman has paid his daily visit to the stable, and personally inspected the condition and treatment of his horses; when he has glanced at his minor live stock, and given directions about them; how often does he go up to the nursery and examine into its dietary, its hours, its ventilation? On his library shelves may be found White's Far- riery, Stephen's Book of the Farm, Nimrod on the 230 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. Condition of Hunters; and with the contents of these he is more or less familiar; but how many books has he read on the management of infancy and childhood? The fattening properties of oil- cake, the relative values of hay and chopped straw, the dangers of unlimited clover, are points on which every landlord, farmer, and peasant has some knowledge; but what proportion of them know much about the qualities of the food they give their children, and its fitness to the constitutional needs of growing boys and girls? Perhaps the business interests of these classes will be assigned as account- ing for this anomaly. The explanation is inade- quate, however; seeing that the same contrast holds more or less among other classes. Of a score of townspeople few, if any, would prove ignorant of the fact that it is undesirable to work a horse soon after it has eaten; and yet, of this same score, sup- posing them all to be fathers, probably not one would be found who had considered whether the time elapsing between his children's dinner and their resumption of lessons was sufficient. Indeed, on cross-examination, nearly every man would dis- close the latent opinion that the regimen of the nursery was no concern of his. " Oh, I leave all those things to the women," would probably be the reply. And in most cases the tone and manner of IMPROVEMENT OF INFERIOR ANIMALS. 231 this reply would convey the implication, that such cares are not consistent with masculine dignity. Consider the fact from any but the conven- tional point of view, and it will seem strange that while the raising of first-rate bullocks is an occupa- tion on which men of education willingly bestow much time, inquiry, and thought, the bringing up of fine human beings is an occupation tacitly voted unworthy of their attention. Mammas who have been taught little but languages, music, and accom- plishments, aided by nurses full of antiquated pre- judices, are held competent regulators of the food, clothing, and exercise of children. Meanwhile the fathers read books and periodicals, attend agricul- tural meetings, try experiments, and engage in dis- cussions, all with the view of discovering how to fatten prize pigs! Infinite pains will be taken to produce a racer that shall win the Derby: none to produce a modern athlete. Had Gulliver narrated of the Laputans that the men vied with each other in learning how best to rear the offspring of other creatures, and were careless of learning how best to rear their own offspring, he would have paralleled any of the other absurdities he ascribes to them. The matter is a serious one, however. Ludi- crous as is the antithesis, the fact it expresses is not less disastrous. As remarks a suggestive writer, 16 232 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. the first requisite to success in life is " to_be a good animal; " and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition to national prosperity. Not only is it that the event of a war turns on the strength and hardiness of soldiers; but it is that the con- tests of commerce are in part determined by the bodily endurance of producers. Thus far we have found no reason to fear trials of strength with other races in either of these fields. But there are not wanting signs that our powers will presently be taxed to the uttermost. Already under the keen competition of modern life, the application required of almost every one is such as few can bear without more or less injury. Already thousands break down under the high pressure they are subject to. If this pressure continues to increase, as it seems likely to do, it will try severely all but the soundest constitutions. Hence it is becoming of especial importance that the training of children should be so carried on, as not only to fit them mentally for the struggle before them, but also to make them physically fit to bear its excessive wear and tear. Happily the matter is beginning to attract at- tention. The writings of Mr. Kingsley indicate a reaction against over-culture; carried, as reactions usually are, somewhat too far. Occasional letters and leaders in the newspapers have shown an awak- SCHOOL OF MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 233 ening interest in physical training. And the for- mation of a school, significantly nicknamed that of " muscular Christianity," implies a growing opinion that our present methods of bringing up children do not sufficiently regard the welfare of the body. The topic is evidently ripe for discussion. To conform the regimen of the nursery and the/ school to the established truths of modern science [ this is the desideratum, li is time that the benefits which our sheep and oxen have for years past de- rived from the investigations of the laboratory, should be participated in by our children. With- out calling in question the great importance of horse-training and pig-feeding, we would suggest that, as the rearing of well-grown men and women is also of some moment, the conclusions indicated by theory, and endorsed by practice, ought to be acted on in the last case as in the first. Probably not a few will be startled perhaps offended by this collocation of ideas. But it is a fact not to be disputed, and to which we had best reconcile our- selves, that man is subject to the same organic laws as inferior creatures. No anatomist, no phys- iologist, no chemist, will for a moment hesitate to assert, that the general principles which rule over the vital processes in animals equally rule over the vital processes in man. And a candid admission 234: PHYSICAL EDUCATION. of this fact is not without its reward: namely, that the truths established by observation and experi- ment on brutes, become more or less available for human guidance. Rudimentary as is the Science of Life, it has already attained to certain funda- mental principles underlying the development of all organisms, the human included. That which has now to be done, and that which we shall en- f deavour in some measure to do, is to show the bear- I ing of these fundamental principles upon the phys- ical training of childhood and youth. The rhythmical tendency which is traceable in all departments of social life which is illustrated in the access of despotism after revolution, or, among ourselves, in the alternation of reforming epochs and conservative epochs which, after a dis- solute age, brings an age of ascetism, and converse- ly which, in commerce, produces the regularly recurring inflations and panics which carries the devotees of fashion from the one absurd extreme to the opposite one; this rhythmical tendency affects also our table-habits, and by implication, the diet- ary of the young. After a period distinguished by hard drinking and hard eating, has come a period of comparative sobriety, which, in teetotalism and vegetarianism, exhibits extreme forms of its protest DIETARY REACTIONS. 235 against the riotous living of the past. And along with this change in the regimen of adults, has come a parallel change in the regimen for boys and girls. In past generations, the belief was, that the more a child could be induced to eat, the better; and even now, among farmers and in remote districts, where traditional ideas most linger, parents may be found who tempt their children to gorge themselves. But among the educated classes, who chiefly display this reaction towards abstemiousness, there may be seen a decided leaning to the under-feeding, rather than the over-feeding of children. Indeed their disgust for bygone animalism, is more clearly shown in the treatment of their offspring than in the treatment of themselves; seeing that while their disguised asceticism is, in so far as their personal conduct is concerned, kept in check by their appetites, it has full play in legislating for juveniles. That over-feeding and under-feeding are both bad, is a truism. Of the two, however, the last is the worst. As writes a high authority, " the effects of casual repletion are less prejudicial, and more easily corrected, than those of inanition." * Add to which, that where there has been no injudicious interference, repletion will seldom occur. " Ex- cess is the vice rather of adults than of the young, * Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine. 236 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. who are rarely either gourmands or epicures, un- less through the fault of those who rear them." * This system of restriction which many parents think so necessary, is based upon very inadequate observa- tion, and very erroneous reasoning. There is an over-legislation in the nursery, as well as an over- legislation in the State; and one of the most injuri- ous forms of it is this limitation in the quantity of food. " But are children to be allowed to surfeit them- selves? Shall they be suffered to take their fill of dainties and make themselves ill, as they certainly will do? " As thus put, the question admits of but one reply. But as thus put it assumes the point at issue. We contend that, as appetite is a good guide to all the lower creation as it is a good guide to the infant as it is a good guide to the invalid as it is a good guide to the differently-placed races of men, and as it is a good guide for every adult who leads a healthful life; it may safely be inferred that it is a good guide for childhood. It would be strange indeed were it here alone untrustworthy. Probably not a few will read this reply with some impatience; being able, as they think, to cite facts totally at variance with it. It will appear ab- surd if we deny the relevancy of these facts; and * Cyclopcedia of Practical Medicine. GUIDANCE OP APPETITE IN CHILDHOOD. 237 yet the paradox is quite defensible. The truth is, that the instances of excess which such persons have in mind, are usually the consequences of the re- strictive system they seem to justify. They are the sensual reactions caused by a more or less asce- tic regimen. They illustrate on a small scale that commonly remarked fact, that those who during youth have been subject to the most rigorous disci- pline, are apt afterwards to rush into the wildest ex- travagances. They are analogous to those fright- ful phenomena, once not uncommon in convents, where nuns suddenly lapsed from the extremest austerities into an almost demoniac wickedness. They simply exhibit the uncontrollable vehemence of a long-denied desire. Consider the ordinary tastes and the ordinary treatment of children. The love of sweets is conspicuous and almost uni- versal among them. Probably ninety-nine people in a hundred, presume that there is nothing more in this than gratification of the palate; and that, in common with other sensual desires, it should be discouraged. The physiologist, how- ever, whose discoveries lead him to an ever-in- creasing reverence for the arrangements of things, will suspect that there is something more in this love of sweets than the current hypothesis supposes; and a little inquiry confirms the suspicion. Any 238 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. work on organic chemistry shows that sugar plays an important part in the vital processes. Both sac- charine and fatty matters are eventually oxidized in the body; and there is an accompanying evolution of heat. Sugar is the form to which sundry other compounds have to be reduced before they are avail- able as heat-making food; and this formation of sugar is carried on in the body. Not only is starch changed into sugar in the course of digestion, but it has been proved by M. Claude Bernard that the liver is a factory in which other constituents of food are transformed into sugar. Now, when to the fact that children have a marked desire for this valuable heat-food, we join the fact that they have usually a marked dislike to that food which gives out the greatest amount of heat during its oxidation (name- ly, fat), we shall see strong reason for thinking that excess of the one compensates for defect of the other that the organism demands more sugar because it cannot deal with much fat. Again, children are usually very fond of vegetable acids. Fruits of all kinds are their delight; and, in the absence of any- thing better, they will devour unripe gooseberries and the sourest of crabs. Now, not only are vegeta- ble acids, in common with mineral ones, very good tonics, and beneficial as such when taken in modera- tion; but they have, when administered ia their RESTRICTED DIET PROVOKES EXCESS. 239 / natural forms, other advantages. " Ripe fruit," says Dr. Andrew Combe, " is more freely given on the Continent than in this country; and, particu- larly when the bowels act imperfectly, it is often very useful." See, then, the discord between the instinctive wants of children and their habitual treatment. Here are two dominant desires, which there is good reason to believe express certain needs of the juvenile constitution; and not only are they ignored in the nursery regimen, but there is a gen- eral tendency to forbid the gratification of them. Bread-and-milk in the morning, tea and bread-and- butter, or some dietary equally insipid, is rigidly ad- hered to; and any ministration to the palate is thought not only needless but wrong. What is the necessary consequence? When, on fete-days there is an unlimited access to good things when a gift of pocket-money brings the contents of the confec- tioner's window within reach, or when by some accident the free run of a fruit-garden is obtained; then the long-denied, and therefore intense, desires lead to great excesses. There is an impromptu carnival, caused not only by the release from past restraints, but also by the consciousness that a long Lent will begin on the morrow. And then, when the evils of repletion display themselves, it is argued that children must not be left to the guidance of 240 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. their appetites! These disastrous results of artifi- cial restrictions, are themselves cited as proving the need for further restrictions! We contend, therefore, that the reasoning commonly used to justify this system of interference is vicious. We contend that, were children allowed daily to par- take of these more sapid edibles, for which there is a physiological requirement, they would rarely ex- ceed, as they now mostly do when they have the opportunity: were fruit, as Dr. Combe recom- mends, " to constitute a part of the regular food " (given, as he advises, not between meals, but along with them), there would be none of that craving which prompts the devouring of such fruits as crabs and sloes. And similarly in other cases. Not only is it that the a priori reasons for trust- ing the appetites of children are so strong; and that the reasons assigned for distrusting them are in- valid; but it is that no other guidance is worthy of any confidence. What is the value of this pa- rental judgment, set up as an alternative regulator? When to " Oliver asking for more," the mamma or the governess replies in the negative, on what data does she proceed? She thinks he has had enough. But where are her grounds for so thinking? Has she some secret understanding with the boy's stom- ach some clairvoyant power enabling her to dip* NATURE AND INSTINCT TO BE TRUSTED. 241 cern the needs of his body? If not, how can she safely decide ? Does she not know that the demand of the system for food is determined by numerous and involved causes varies with the temperature, with the hygrometric state of the air, with the elec- tric state of the air varies also according to the exercise taken, according to the kind and quality of food eaten at the last meal, and according to the rapidity with which the last meal was digested? How can she calculate the result of such a combina- tion of causes? As we heard said by the father of a five-years-old boy, who stands a head taller than most of his age, and is proportionately robust, rosy, and active: "I can see no artificial standard by which to mete out his food. If I say, ' this much is enough/ it is a mere guess; and the guess is as likely to be wrong as right. Consequently, having no faith in guesses, I let him eat his fill." And cer- tainly, any one judging of his policy by its effects, would be constrained to admit its wisdom. In truth, this confidence, with which most parents take upon themselves to legislate for the stomach of their children, proves their unacquaintance with the principles of physiology: if they knew more, they would be more modest. " The pride of science is humble when compared with the pride of igno- rance." If any one would learn how little faith is 242 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. to be placed in human judgments, and how much in the pre-established arrangements of things, let him compare the rashness of the inexperienced physician with the caution of the most advanced; or let him dip into Sir John Forbes' work, On Nature and Art in the cure of Disease; and he will then see that, in proportion as men gain a (greater knowledge of the laws of life, they come to have less confidence in themselves, and more in Nature. Turning from the question of quantity of food to that of quality, we may discern the same ascetic tendency. Not simply a more or less restricted diet, but a comparatively low diet, is thought proper for children. The current opinion is, that they should have but little animal food. Among the less wealthy classes, economy seems to have dictated this opinion the wish has been father to the thought. Parents not affording to buy much meat, and liking meat themselves, answer the petitions of juveniles with " Meat is not good for little boys and girls; " and this, at first, probably nothing but a convenient excuse, has by repetition grown into an article of faith. While the classes with whom cost is not a consideration, have been swayed partly by the example of the majority, partly by the in- fluence of nurses drawn from the lower classes, and THE VERDICT OF SCIENCE. 243 In some measure by the reaction against past ani- malism. If, however, we inquire for the basis of this jpinion, we find little or none. It is a dogma re- peated and received without proof, like that which, for thousands of years, insisted on the necessity of swaddling-clothes. It may indeed be true that, to the young child's stomach, not yet endowed with much muscular power, meat, which requires con- siderable trituration before it can be made into chyme, is an unfit aliment. But this objection does not tell against animal food from which the fibrous part has been extracted; nor does it apply when, after the lapse of two or three years, consider- able muscular vigour has been acquired. And while the evidence in support of this dogma, par- tially valid in the case of very young children, is not valid in the case of older children, who are, nevertheless, ordinarily treated in conformity with the dogma, the adverse evidence is abundant and conclusive. The verdict of science is exactly oppo- site to the popular opinion. We have put the ques- tion to two of our leading physicians, and to sev- eral of the most distinguished physiologists, and they uniformly agree in the conclusion that chil- dren should have a diet not less nutritive, but, if / anything, more nutritive than that of adults. / 244 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. The grounds for this conclusion are obvious, and the reasoning simple. It needs but to compare the vital processes of a man with those of a boy, to see at once that the demand for sustenance is rela- tively greater in the boy than in the man. What are the ends for which a man requires food? Each day his body undergoes more or less wear wear through muscular exertion, wear of the nervous system through mental actions, wear of the viscera in carrying on the functions of life; and the tissue thus wasted has to be renewed. Each day, too, by perpetual radiation, his body loses a large amount of heat; and as, for the continuance of the vital actions, the temperature of the body must be main- tained, this loss has to be compensated by a con- stant production of heat: to which end certain con- stituents of the food are unceasingly undergoing [oxidation. To make up for the day's waste, and to j supply fuel for the day's expenditure of heat, are, I then, the sole purposes for which the adult requires food. Consider, now, the case of the boy. He, too, wastes the substance of his body by action ; and k needs but to note his restless activity to see that, in proportion to his bulk, he probably wastes as much as a man. He, too, loses heat by radia- tion; and as his body exposes a greater surface in proportion to its mass than does that of a man, and CHILDREN REQUIRE A NUTRITIVE DIET. 245 therefore loses heat more rapidly, the quantity of heat-food he requires is, bulk for bulk, greater than that required by a man. So that even had the boy no other vital processes to carry on than the man has, he would need, relatively to his size, a some- what larger supply of nutriment. But, besides re- pairing his body and maintaining its heat, the boy has to make new tissue to grow. After waste and thermal Joss have been provided for, such sur- plus of nutriment as remains, goes to the further building up of the frame ; and only in virtue of this surplus is normal growth possible the growth that sometimes takes place in the absence of such sur- plus, causing a manifest prostration consequent upon defective repair. How peremptory is the de- mand of the unfolding organism for materials, is seen alike in that " school-boy hunger," which after- life rarely parallels in intensity, and in the compara- tively quick return of appetite. And if there needs further evidence of this extra necessity for nutri- ment, we have it in the fact that, during the fam- ines following shipwrecks and other disasters, the children are the first to die. This relatively greater need for nutriment be- ing admitted, as it must perforce be, the question that remains is shall we meet it by giving an ex- cessive quantity of what may be called dilute food, or a more moderate quantity of concentrated food? The nutriment obtainable from a given weight of meat is obtainable only from a larger weight of bread, or from a still larger weight of potatoes, and so on. To fulfil the requirement, the quantity must be increased as the nutritiveness is diminished. Shall we, then, respond to the extra wants of the growing child by giving an adequate quantity of food as good as that of adults? Or, regardless of the fact that its stomach has to dispose of a relative- ly larger quantity even of this good food, shall we further tax it by giving an inferior food in still greater quantity? The answer is tolerably obvious. The more the labour of digestion can be economised, the more energy is left for the purposes of growth and action. The functions of the stomach and intestines cannot be performed without a large supply of blood and nervous power; and in the comparative lassitude that follows a hearty meal, every adult has proof that this supply of blood and nervous power is at the expense of the system at large. If the requisite nutriment is furnished by a great quantity of innu- tritious food, more work is entailed on the viscera than when it is furnished by a moderate quantity of nutritious food. This extra work is so much sheer loss a loss which in children shows itself either in diminished energy, or in smaller growth, or in both. The inference is, then, that they should have a diet which combines, as much as possible, nutritiveness and digestibility. It is doubtless true that boys and girls may be brought up upon an exclusively, or almost exclu- sively, vegetable diet. Among the upper classes are to be found children to whom comparatively little meat is given ; and who, nevertheless, grow and ap- *pear in good health. Animal food is scarcely tasted by the offspring of labouring people; and yet they reach a healthy maturity. But these seemingly ad- verse facts have by no means the weight commonly supposed. In the first place, it does not follow that those who in early years nourish on bread and po- tatoes, will eventually reach a fine development; and a comparison between the agricultural labour- ers and the gentry, in England, or between the mid- dle and lower classes in France, is by no means in favour of vegetable feeders. In the second place, the question is not only a question of bulk, but also a question of quality. A soft, flabby flesh makes as good a show as a firm one; but though to the careless eye, a child of full, flaccid tissue may ap- pear the equal of one whose fibres are well toned, a trial of strength will prove the difference. Obesity ^in adults is often a sign of feebleness. Men lose 17 248 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. weight in training. And hence the appearance of these low-fed children is by no means conclusive. In the third place, not only size, but energy has to be considered. Between children of the meat-eat- ing classes and those of the bread-and-potato-eating classes, there is a marked contrast in this respect. Both in mental and physical vivacity the low-fed peasant-boy is greatly inferior to the better-fed son of a gentleman. If we compare different classes of animals, or different races of men, or the same animals or men when differently fed, we find still more distinct Jproof that the degree of energy essentially depends I on the nutritiveness of the food. In a cow, subsisting on so innutritive a food as grass, we see that the immense quantity required to be eaten necessitates an enormous digestive sys- tem; that the limbs, small in comparison with the body, are burdened by its weight; that in carrying about this heavy body and digesting this excessive quantity of food, a great amount of force is ex- pended; and that, having but little energy remain- ing, the creature is sluggish. Compare with the cow a horse an animal of nearly allied structure, but adapted to a more concentrated food. Here we see that the body, and more especially its ab- dominal region, bears a much smaller ratio to the EFFECTS OF CONCENTRATED FOOD. 249 limbs; that the powers are not taxed by the support of such massive viscera, nor the digestion of so bulky a food; and that, as a consequence, there is great locomotive energy and considerable vivaci- ty. If, again, we contrast the stolid inactivity of the graminivorous sheep with the liveliness of the dog, subsisting upon flesh or farinaceous food, or a mixture of the two, we see a difference similar in kind, but still greater in degree. And after walk- ing through the Zoological Gardens, and noting the restlessness with which the carnivorous animals pace up and down their cages, it needs but to re- member that none of the herbivorous animals habitually display this superfluous energy, to see how clear is the relation between concentration of food and degree of activity. That these differences are not directly conse- quent upon differences of constitution, as some may argue; but are directly consequent upon differences in the food which the creatures are constituted to subsist on; is proved by the fact, that they are observable between different divisions of the same species. Take the case of mankind. The Austra- lians, Bushmen, and others of the lowest savages who live on roots and berries, varied by larvse of insects and the like meagre fare, are comparatively puny in stature, have large abdomens, soft and un- 250 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. developed muscles, and are quite unable to cope with Europeans, either in a struggle or in a pro- longed exertion. Count up the wild races who are well grown, strong and active, as the Kaffirs, North- American Indians, and Patagonians, and you find them large consumers of flesh. The ill-fed Hindoo goes down before the Englishman fed on more nutritive food; to whom he is as inferior in mental as in physical energy. And generally, we think, the history of the world shows that the well- fed races have been the energetic and dominant races. Still stronger, however, becomes the argument, when we find that the same individual animal be- comes capable of more or less exertion according as its food is more or less nutritious. This has been clearly demonstrated in the case of the horse. Though flesh may be gained by a grazing horse, strength is lost ; as putting him to hard work proves. " The consequence of turning horses out to grass is relaxation of the muscular system." " Grass is a very good preparation for a bullock for Smith- field market, but a very bad one for a hunter." It was well known of old that, after passing the sum- mer months in the field, hunters required some months of stable-feeding before becoming able to follow the hounds; and that they did not get into DIET INFLUENCES ENERGY. 251 good condition until the beginning of the next spring. And the modern practice is that insisted on by Mr. Apperley " Never to give a hunter what is called a ' summer's run at grass/ and, ex- cept under particular and very favourable circum- stances, never to turn him out at all." That is to say, never give him poor food; great energy and endurance are to be obtained only by the continu- ous use of very nutritive food. So true is this that, as proved by Mr. Apperley, prolonged high-feed- ing will enable a middling horse to equal, in his performances, a first-rate horse fed in the ordinary way. To which various evidences add the familiar fact that, when a horse is required to do double duty, it is the practice to give him beans a food containing a larger proportion of nitrogenous, or flesh-making material, than his habitual oats. Once more, in the case of individual men the truth has been illustrated with equal, or still great- er, clearness. We do not refer to men in training for feats of strength, whose regimen, however, thoroughly conforms to the doctrine. We refer to the experience of railway contractors and their labourers. It has been for years past a well-estab- lished fact that the English navvy, eating largely of flesh, is far more efficient than a Continental navvy living on a less nutritive food: so much more 252 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. efficient, that English contractors for Continental railways have habitually taken their labourers with them. That difference of diet and not difference of race caused this superiority, has been of late dis- tinctly shown. For it has turned out, that when the Continental navvies live in the same style as their English competitors, they presently rise, more or less nearly, to a par with them in efficiency. To which fact let us here add the converse one, to which we can give personal testimony based upon six months' experience of vegetarianism, that absti- nence from meat entails diminished energy of both body and mind. Do not these various evidences distinctly en- dorse our argument respecting the feeding of chil- dren? Do they not imply that, even supposing the me stature and bulk to be attained on an innutri- tive as on a nutritive diet, the quality of tissue is greatly inferior. Do they not establish the posi- tion that, where energy as well as growth has to be maintained, it can only be done by high feeding? Do they not confirm the a priori conclusion that, though a child of whom little is expected in the way of bodily or mental activity, may thrive tolera- bly well on farinaceous substances, a child who is daily required, not only to form the due amount of new tissue, but to supply the waste consequent on CHILDREN'S DIET SHOULD BE VARIED. 253 great muscular action, and the further waste con- sequent on hard exercise of brain, must live on sub- stances containing a larger ratio of nutritive mat- ter ? And is it not an obvious corollary, that denial of this better food will be at the expense either of growth, or of bodily activity, or of mental activity; as constitution and circumstances may determine? We believe no logical intellect will question it. To think otherwise is to entertain in a disguised form the old fallacy of the perpetual-motion schemers that it is possible to get power out of nothing. Before leaving the question of food, a few words must be said on another requisite variety. In this respect the dietary of the young is very faulty. If not, like our soldiers, condemned to " twenty years of boiled beef/' our children have mostly to bear a monotony which, though less extreme and less lasting, is quite as clearly at variance with the laws of health. At dinner, it is true, they usually have food that is more or less mixed, and that is changed day by day. But week after week, month after month, year after year, comes the same break- fast of bread-and-milk, or, it may be, oatmeal por- ridge. And with like persistence the day is closed, perhaps with a second edition of the bread-and-milk, perhaps with tea and bread-and-butter. This practice is opposed to the dictates of physi- 254 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. ology. The satiety produced by an often-repeated dish, and the gratification caused by one long a stranger to the palate, are not meaningless, as many carelessly assume; but they are the incen- tives to a wholesome diversity of diet. It is a fact, established by numerous experiments, that there is scarcely any one food, however good, which sup- plies in due proportions or right forms all the ele- ments required for carrying on the vital processes in a normal manner: from whence it is to be in- ferred that frequent change of food is desirable to balance the supply of all the elements. It is a further fact, well known to physiologists, that the enjoyment given by a much-liked food is a nervous stimulus, which, by increasing the action of the heart and so propelling the blood with increased vigour, aids in the subsequent digestion. And these truths are in harmony with the maxims of modern cattle-feeding, which dictate a rotation of diet. Not only, however, is periodic change of food very desirable; but, for the same reasons, it is very \ desirable that a mixture of food should be taken at each meal. The better balance of ingredients, and the greater nervous stimulation, are advantages which hold here as before. If facts are asked for, we may name as one, the comparative ease with CAUTION IN CHANGING DIET. 255 which the stomach disposes of a French dinner, enormous in quantity but extremely varied in ma- terial. Few will contend that an equal weight of one kind of food, however well cooked, could be digested with as much facility. If any desire further facts, they may find them in every modern book on the management of animals. Animals thrive best when each meal is made up of several things. And indeed, among men of science the truth has been long ago established. The experi- ments of Goss and Stark " afford the most decisive proof of the advantage, or rather the necessity, of a mixture of substances, in order to produce the com- pound which is the best adapted for the action of the stomach." * Should any object, as probably many will, that a rotating dietary for children, and one which also requires a mixture of food at each meal, would en- tail too much trouble; we reply, that no trouble is thought too great which conduces to the mental de- velopment of children, and that for their future Welfare, good bodily development is equally impor- tant. Moreover, it seems alike sad and strange that a trouble which is cheerfully taken in the fattening of pigs, should be thought too great in the rearing of children. * Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology. 256 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. One more paragraph, with the view of warning those who may propose to adopt the regimen indi- cated. The change must not be made suddenly; for continued low-feeding so enfeebles the system, as to disable it from at once dealing with a high diet. Deficient nutrition is itself a cause of dyspepsia. This is true even of animals. " When calves are fed with skimmed milk, or whey, or other poor food, they are liable to indigestion." * Hence, there- fore, where the energies are low, the transition to a generous diet must be gradual: each increment of strength gained, justifying a further increase of nutriment. Further, it should always be borne in mind that the concentration of nutriment may be carried too far. A bulk sufficient to fill the stom- ach is one requisite of a proper meal; and this requisite negatives a diet deficient in those waste matters which give adequate mass. Though the size of the digestive organs is less in the well-fed civilized races than in the ill-fed savage ones; and, though their size may eventually diminish still fur- ther; yet, for the time being, the bulk of the ingesta must be determined by the existing capacity. But, paying due regard to these two qualifications, our conclusions are that the food of children should be highly nutritive; that it should be varied at * MORTON'S Cyclopaedia of Agriculture. OBEDIENCE TO THE PHYSICAL CONSCIENCE. 257 each meal and at successive meals; and that it should be abundant. "With clothing as with food, the established ten- dency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained, if not put into a defi- nite formula, that the sensations are to be disre- garded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief re- duced to its naked form. It is a grave error: we are much more beneficently constituted. It is not obedience to the sensations, but disobedience to them, which is the habitual cause of bodily evils. "It is not the eating when hungry, but the eating in the absence of appetite, which is bad. It is not the drinking when thirsty, but the continuing to drink when thirst has ceased, that is the vice. Harm results not from breathing that fresh air which every healthy person enjoys; but from con- tinuing to breathe foul air, spite of the protest of the lungs. Harm results not from taking that active exercise which, as every child shows us, na- ture strongly prompts; but from a persistent disre- gard of nature's promptings. Not that mental ac- tivity which is spontaneous and enjoyable does the mischief; but that which is persevered in after a 258 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. hot or aching head commands desistance. Not that bodily exertion which is pleasant or indifferent, does injury; but that which is continued when ex- haustion forbids. It is true that, in those who have long led unhealthy lives, the sensations are not trust- worthy guides. People who have for years been al- most constantly in-doors, who have exercised their brains very much, and their bodies scarcely at all, who in eating have obeyed their clocks without con- sulting their stomachs, may very likely be misled by their vitiated feelings. But their abnormal state is itself the result of transgressing their feel- ings. Had they from childhood up never dis- obeyed what we may term the physical conscience, it would not have been seared, but would have re- mained a faithful monitor. Among the sensations serving for our guidance are those of heat and cold ; and a clothing for chil- dren which does not carefully consult these sensa- tions is to be condemned. The common notion about " hardening " is a grievous delusion. Chil- dren are not unfrequently " hardened " out of the world; and those who survive, permanently suffer either in growth or constitution. " Their delicate appearance furnishes ample indication of the mis- chief thus produced, and their frequent attacks of illness might prove a warning even to unreflecting PROTECTION FROM COLD. 259 parents," says Dr. Combe. The reasoning on which this hardening theory rests is extremely su- perficial. Wealthy parents, seeing little peasant boys and girls playing about in the open air only half -clothed, and joining with this fact the general healthiness of labouring people, draw the unwar- rantable conclusion that the healthiness is the result of the exposure, and resolve to keep their own off- spring scantily covered! It is forgotten that these urchins who gambol upon village-greens are in many respects favourably circumstanced that their days are spent in almost perpetual play; that they are always breathing fresh air; and that their sys- tems are not disturbed by over-taxed brains. For aught that appears to the contrary, their good health may be maintained, not in consequence of, but in spite of, their deficient clothing. This alter- native conclusion we believe to be the true one; and that an inevitable detriment results from the needless loss of animal heat to which they are subject. For when, the constitution being sound enough lo bear it, exposure does produce hardness, it does so a* the expense of growth. This truth is displayed alike in animals and in man. The Shetland pony bears greater inclemencies than the horses of the south, but is dwarfed. Highland sheep and 260 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. cattle, living in a colder climate, are stunted in comparison with English breeds. In both the arc- tic and antarctic regions the human race falls much below its ordinary height: the Laplander and Es- quimaux are very short; and the Terra del Fue- gians, who go naked in a cold latitude, are de- scribed by Darwin as so stunted and hideous, that " one can hardly make one's self believe they are fellow-creatures." Science clearly explains this dwarfishness pro- duced by great abstraction of heat: showing that, food and other things being equal, it unavoidably results. For, as before pointed out, to make up for that cooling by radiation which the body is con- stantly undergoing, there must be a constant oxida- tion of certain matters which form part of the food. And in proportion as the thermal loss is great, must the quantity of these matters required for oxidation be great. But the power of the digestive organs is limited. Hence it follows, that when they have to prepare a large quantity of this material needful for maintaining the temperature, they can prepare but a small quantity of the material which goes to build up the frame. Excessive expenditure for fuel entails diminished means for other purposes: wherefore there necessarily results a body small in size, or inferior in texture, or both. PROTECTION FROM COLD. 261 Hence the great importance of clothing. As Liebig says: " Our clothing is, in reference to the temperature of the body, merely an equivalent for a certain amount of food." By diminishing the loss of heat, it diminishes the amount of fuel needful for maintaining the heat; and when the stomach has less to do in preparing fuel, it can do more in preparing other materials. This deduction is entirely confirmed by the experience of those who manage animals. Cold can be borne by animals only at an expense of fat, or muscle, or growth, as the ase may be. " If fattening cattle are exposed to a low temperature, either their progress must be retarded, or a great additional expenditure of food incurred." * Mr. Apperley insists strongly that, to bring hunters into good condition, it is necessary that the stable should be kept warm. And among those who rear racers, it is an established doctrine that exposure is to be avoided. ,< The scientific truth thus illustrated by ethnolo- gy, and recognised by agriculturists and sportsmen, applies with double force to children. In propor- tion to their smallness and the rapidity of their growth is the injury from cold great. In France, new-born infants often die in winter from being carried to the office of the maire for registration. * MORTON'S Cyclopcedia of Agriculture.* 262 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. " M. Quetelet has pointed out, that in Belgium two infants die in January for one that dies in July." And in Kussia the infant mortality is something enormous. Even when near maturity, the unde- veloped frame is comparatively unable to bear ex- posure: as witness the quickness with which young soldiers succumb in a trying campaign. The rationale is obvious. We have already adverted to the fact that, in consequence of the varying re- lation between surface and bulk, a child loses a rela- tively larger amount of heat than an adult; and here we must point out that the disadvantage under which the child thus labours is very great. Leh- mann says: " If the carbonic acid excreted by children or young animals is calculated for an equal bodily weight, it results that children produce nearly twice as much acid as adults." Now the quantity of carbonic acid given off varies with tolerable accuracy as the quantity of heat produced. And thus we see that in children the system, even when not placed at a disadvantage, is called upon to provide nearly double the proportion of material for generating heat. See, then, the extreme folly of clothing the young scantily. What father, full-grown though he is, losing heat less rapidly as he does, and having no physiological necessity but to supply the waste EVILS INFLICTED BY SCANTY CLOTHING. 263 of each day what father, we ask, would think it salutary to go about with bare legs, bare arms, and bare neck? Yet this tax upon the system, from which he would shrink, he inflicts upon his little ones, who are so much less able to bear it! or, if he does not inflict it, sees it inflicted without protest. Let him remember that every ounce of nutriment needlessly expended for the maintenance of tem- perature, is so much deducted from the nutriment going to build up the frame and maintain the ener- gies; and that even when colds, congestions, or other consequent disorders are escaped, diminished growth or less perfect structure is inevitable. The rule is, therefore, not to dress in an inva- riable way in all cases, but to put on clothing in kind and quantity sufficient in the individual case to protect the body effectually from an abiding sensation of cold y however slight" This rule, the importance of which Dr. Combe indicates by the italics, is one in which men of science and practi- tioners agree. We have met with none competent to form a judgment on the matter, who do not strongly condemn the exposure of children's limbs. If there is one point above others in which " pesti- lent custom " should be ignored, it is this. Lamentable, indeed, is it to see mothers serious- ly damaging the constitutions of their children out 18 264: PHYSICAL EDUCATION. of compliance with an irrational fashion. It is bad enough that they should themselves conform to every folly which our Gallic neighbours please to initiate; but that they should clothe their children in any mountebank dress which Le petit Courrier des Dames indicates, regardless of its insufficiency and unfitness, is monstrous. Discomfort, more or less great, is inflicted; frequent disorders are en- tailed; growth is checked or stamina undermined; premature death not uncommonly caused; and all because it is thought needful to make frocks of a size and material dictated by French caprice. Not only is it that for the sake of conformity, mothers thus punish and injure their little ones by scanti- ness of covering; but it is that from an allied mo- tive they impose a style of dress which forbids healthful activity. To please the eye, colours and fabrics are chosen totally unfit to bear that rough usage which unrestrained play involves; and then to prevent damage the unrestrained play is inter- dicted. " Get up this moment: you will soil your clean frock," is the mandate issued to some urchin creeping about on the floor. "Come back: you will dirty your stockings," calls out the governess to one of her charges, who has left the footpath to scramble up a bank. Thus is the evil doubled. That they may come up to their mamma's standard MATERNAL FOLLY IN DRESSING CHILDREN. 265 of prettiness, and be admired by her visitors, chil- dren must have habiliments deficient in quantity and unfit in texture; and that these easily-dam- aged habiliments may be kept clean and uninjured, the restless activity, so natural and needful for the young, is more or less restrained. The exercise which becomes doubly requisite when the clothing is insufficient, is cut short, lest it should deface the clothing. Would that the terrible cruelty of this system could be seen by those who maintain it. We do not hesitate to say that, through enfeebled health, defective energies, and consequent non- success in life, thousands are annually doomed to unhappiness by this unscrupulous regard for ap- pearances even when they are not, by early death, literally sacrificed to the Moloch of maternal van- ity. We are reluctant to counsel strong measures, but really the evils are so great as to justify, or even to demand, a peremptory interference on the part of fathers. Our conclusions are, then that, while the clothing of children should never be in such excess * as to create oppressive warmth, it should always be sufficient to prevent any general feeling of cold; * * It is needful to remark that children whose legs and arms have been from the beginning habitually without covering, cease to be conscious that the exposed surfaces are cold; just 266 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. that, instead of the flimsy cotton, linen, or mixed fabrics commonly used, it should be made of some good non-conductor, such as coarse woollen cloth; that it should be so strong as to receive little damage from the hard wear and tear which childish sports will give it; and that its colours should be such as will not soon suffer from use and exposure. To the importance of bodily exercise most peo- ple are in some degree awake. Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite of physical education than on most others: at any rate, in so far as boys are concerned. Public schools and private schools alike furnish tolerably adequate playgrounds; and there is usually a fair share of time for out-of-door games, and a recognition of them as needful. In this, if in no other direction, it seems admitted that the natural promptings of boyish instinct may ad- vantageously be followed; and, indeed, in the modern practice of breaking the prolonged morning and afternoon's lessons by a few minutes' open-air recreation, we see an increasing tendency to con- as by use we have all ceased to be conscious that our faces are cold, even when out of doors. But though in such children the sensations no longer protest, it does not follow that the system escapes injury ; any more than it follows that the Fue- gian is undamaged by exposure, because he bears with indif- ference the melting of the falling snow on his naked body. GIRLS HAVE NOT ENOUGH EXERCISE. 267 form school regulations to the bodily sensations of the pupils. Here, then, little needs to be said in the way of expostulation or suggestion. But we have been obliged to qualify this ad- mission by inserting the clause "in so far as boys are concerned." Unfortunately, the fact is quite otherwise in the case of girls. It chances, some- what strangely, that we have daily opportunity of drawing a comparison. We have both a boy's and a girl's school within view; and the contrast be- tween them is remarkable. In the one case, nearly the whole of a large garden is turned into an open, gravelled space, affording ample scope for games, and supplied with poles and horizontal bars for gymnastic exercises. Every day before breakfast, again towards eleven o'clock, again at mid-day, again in the afternoon, and once more after school is over, the neighbourhood is awakened by a chorus of shouts and laughter as the boys rush out to play ; and for as long as they remain, both eyes and ears give proof that they are absorbed in that enjoyable activity which makes the pulse bound and ensures the healthful activity of every organ. How unlike is the picture offered by the " Establishment for Young Ladies " ! Until the fact was pointed out, we actually did not know that we had a girl's school as close to us as the school for boys. The garden, 268 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. equally large with the other, affords no sign what- ever of any provision for juvenile recreation; but is entirely laid out with prim grassplots, gravel-walks, shrubs and flowers, after the usual suburban style. During five months we have not once had our atten- tion drawn to the premises by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally girls may be observed sauntering along the paths with their lesson-books in their hands, or else walking arm-in-arm. Once, in- 'deed, we saw one chase another round the garden; but, with this exception, nothing like vigorous ex- ertion has been visible. Why this astonishing difference? Is it that the constitution of a girl differs so entirely from that of a boy as not to need these active exercises? Is it that a girl has none of the promptings to vocifer- ous play by which boys are impelled? Or is it that, while in boys these promptings are to be re- garded as securing that bodily activity without which there cannot be adequate development, to their sisters nature has given them for no purpose whatever unless it be for the vexation of school- mistresses? Perhaps, however, we mistake the aim of those who train the gentler sex. We have a vague suspicion that to produce a robust physique is thought undesirable; that rude health and abun- dant vigour are considered somewhat plebeian; THE HORROR OF THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS. 269 that a certain delicacy, a strength not competent to more than a mile or two's walk, an appetite fasti- dious and easily satisfied, joined with that timidity which commonly accompanies feebleness, are held more lady-like. We do not expect that any would distinctly avow this; but we fancy the governess- mind is haunted by an ideal young lady bearing not a little resemblance to this type. If so, it must be admitted that the established system is admira- bly calculated to realize this ideal. But to sup- pose that such is the ideal of the opposite sex is a profound mistake. That men are not commonly drawn towards masculine women, is doubtless true. That such relative weakness as calls for the protec- tion of superior strength is an element of attraction, we quite admit. But the difference to which the feelings thus respond is the natural, pre-established difference, which will assert itself without artificial appliances. And when, by artificial appliances, the degree of this difference is increased, it becomes an element of repulsion rather than attraction. " Then girls should be allowed to run wild to become as rude as boys, and grow up into romps and hoydens! " exclaims some defender of the pro- prieties. This, we presume, is the ever-present dread of schoolmistresses. It appears, on inquiry, that at " Establishments for Young Ladies " noisy 270 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. play like that daily indulged in by boys, is a punish- able offence; and it is to be inferred that this noisy play is forbidden, lest unlady-like habits should be formed. The fear is quite groundless, however. For if the sportive activity allowed to boys does not prevent them from growing up into gentlemen; why should a like sportive activity allowed to girls prevent them from growing up into ladies? Hough as may have been their accustomed play-ground frolics, youths who have left school do not indulge in leapfrog in the street, or marbles in the drawing- room. Abandoning their jackets, they abandon at the same time boyish games; and display an anxiety often a ludicrous anxiety to avoid what- ever is not manly. If now, on arriving at the due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so effi- cient a restraint on the romping sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of feminine modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appear- ances than men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a stronger check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the supposi- tion that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves but for the rigorous discipline of school- mistresses ! PLAY BETTER THAN GYMNASTICS. 271 In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one artificiality, another artificiality has been in- troduced. The natural spontaneous exercise hav- ing been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise having become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious exercise gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit; but that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny. The defects are both positive and negative. In the first place, these formal, muscular motions, necessarily much less varied than those accompanying juvenile sports, do not secure so equable a distribution of action to all parts of the body; whence it results that the exer- tion, falling on special parts, produces fatigue soon- er than it would else have done: add to which, that, if constantly repeated, this exertion of special parts leads to a disproportionate development. Again, the quantity of exercise thus taken will be deficient, not only in consequence of uneven distribution, but it will be further deficient in consequence of lack of interest. Even when not made repulsive, as they sometimes are, by assuming the shape of ap- pointed lessons, these monotonous movements are sure to become wearisome, from the absence of amusement. Competition, it is true, serves as a stimulus; but it is not a lasting stimulus, like that 272 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. enjoyment which accompanies varied play. Not only, however, are gymnastics inferior in respect of the quantity of muscular exertion which they se- cure; they are still more inferior in respect of the quality. This comparative want of enjoyment to which we have just referred as a cause of early desistance from artificial exercises, is also a cause of inferiority in the effects they produce on the system. The common assumption that so long as the amount of bodily action is the same, it matters not whether it be pleasurable or otherwise, is a grave mistake. An agreeable mental excitement has a highly invigorating influence. See the ef- fect produced upon an invalid by good news, or by the visit of an old friend. Mark how careful med- ical men are to recommend lively society to debili- tated patients. Remember how beneficial to the health is the gratification produced by change of scene. The truth is that happiness is the most pow- erful of tonics. By accelerating the circulation of the blood, it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends alike to increase health when it exists, and to restore it when it has been lost. Hence the essential superiority of play to gymnastics. The extreme interest felt by children, in their games, and the riotous glee with which they carry on their rougher frolics,, are of as much ^HYSICAL DEGENERACY. 273 importanc ^s the accompanying exertion. And as i ng these mental stimuli, gymnastics must be i^ndamentally defective. Granting then, as we do, that formal exercises of the limbs are better than nothing granting, further, that they may be used with advantage as supplementary aids; we yet contend that such formal exercises can never supply the place of the exercises prompted by nature. For girls, as well as boys, the sportive activities to which the instincts impel, are essential to bodily welfare. Whoever forbids them, forbids the divinely-ap- pointed means to physical development. A topic still remains one perhaps more ur- gently demanding consideration than any of the foregoing. It is asserted by not a few, that among {he educated classes the younger adults and those who are verging upon maturity are, on the aver- age, neither so well grown nor so strong as their seniors. When first we heard this assertion, we were inclined to disregard it as one of the many manifestations of the old tendency to exalt the past at the expense of the present. Calling to mind the facts that, as measured by ancient armour, modern men are proved to be larger than ancient men, and .that the tables of mortality show no diminution, 274 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. but rather an increase in the duration of life, we paid little attention to what seemed a groundless belief. Detailed observation, however, has greatly shaken our opinion. Omitting from the compari- son the labouring classes, we have noticed a major- ity of cases in which the children do not reach the stature of their parents; and, in massiveness, mak- ing due allowance for difference of age, there seems a like inferiority. In health, the contrast appears still greater. Men of past generations, liv- ing riotously as they did, could bear much more than men of the present generation, who live sober- ly, can bear. Though they drank hard, kept ir- regular hours, were regardless of fresh air, and thought little of cleanliness, our recent ancestors were capable of prolonged application without in- jury, even to a ripe old age: witness the annals of the bench and the bar. Yet we who think much about our bodily welfare ; who eat with moderation, and do not drink to excess; who attend to ventila- tion, and use frequent ablutions; who make annual excursions, and have the benefit of greater medical knowledge; we are continually breaking down under our work. Paying considerable attention to the laws of health, we seem to be weaker than our grandfathers who, in many respects, defied the laws of health. And, judging from the appearance and MISCHIEFS OF OVER-APPLICATION. 275 frequent ailments of the rising generation, they are likely to be even less robust than ourselves. What is the meaning of this? Is it that past over-feeding, alike of adults and juveniles, was less injurious than the under-feeding to which we have adverted as now so general? Is it that the defi- cient clothing which this delusive hardening theory has encouraged, is to blame? Is it that the greater or less discouragement of juvenile sports, in defer- ence to a false refinement, is the cause? From our reasonings it may be inferred that each of these has probably had a share in producing the evil. But there has been yet another detrimental in- fluence at work, perhaps more potent than any of the others: we mean excess of mental application. On old and young, the pressure of modern life puts a still-increasing strain. In all businesses and professions, intenser competition taxes the energies and abilities of every adult; and, with the view of better fitting the young to hold their place under this intenser competition, they are subject to a more severe discipline than heretofore. The dam- age is thus doubled. Fathers, who find not only that they are run hard by their multiplying com- petitors, but that, while labouring under this dis- advantage, they have to maintain a more expensive style of living, are all the year round obliged to 2Y6 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. work early and late, taking little exercise and get- ting but short holidays. The constitutions, shaken by this long-continued over-application, they be- queath to their children. And then these compara- tively feeble children, predisposed as they are to break down even under an ordinary strain upon their energies, are required to go through a cur- riculum much more extended than that prescribed for the unenf eebled children of past generations. That disastrous consequences must result from this cumulative transgression might be predicted with certainty; and that they do result, every ob- servant persons knows. Go where you will, and before long there come under your notice cases of children, or youths, of either sex, more or less in- jured by undue study. Here, to recover from a state of debility thus produced, a year's rustication has been found necessary. There you find a chronic congestion of the brain, that has already lasted many months, and threatens to last much longer. Now you hear of a fever that resulted from the over-excitement in some way brought on at school. And, again, the instance is that of a youth who has already had once to desist from his studies, and who, since he has returned to them, is frequently taken out of his class in a fainting fit. We state facts facts that have not been sought for, MISCHIEFS OF OVER-APPLICATION. 277 but have been thrust upon our observation during the last two years: and that, too, within a very limited range. Nor have we by any means ex- hausted the list. Quite recently we had the op- portunity of marking how the evil becomes heredi- tary: the case being that of a lady of robust paren- tage, whose system was so injured by the regime of a Scotch boarding-school, where she was under-fed and over-worked, that she invariably suffers from vertigo on rising in the morning; and whose chil- dren, inheriting this enfeebled brain, are several of them unable to bear even a moderate amount of study without headache or giddiness. At the pres- ent time we have daily under our eyes, a young lady whose system has been damaged for life by the college-course through which she has passed. Taxed as she was to such an extent that she had no energy left for exercise, she is, now that she has finished her education, a constant complainant. Appetite small and very capricious, mostly refusing meat; extremities perpetually cold, even when the weather is warm; a feebleness which forbids any- thing but the slowest walking, and that only for a short time; palpitation on going up stairs; greatly impaired vision these, joined with checked growth and lax tissue, are among the results entailed. And to her case we may add that of her friend and fel- 278 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. low-student; who is similarly weak; who is liable to faint even under the excitement of a quiet party of friends; and who has at length been obliged by her medical attendant to desist from study en- tirely. If injuries so conspicuous are thus frequent, how very general must be the smaller and incon- spicuous injuries. To one case where positive ill- ness is directly traceable to over-application, there are probably at least half-a-dozen cases where the evil is unobtrusive and slowly accumulating cases where there is frequent derangement of the functions, attributed to this or that special cause, or to constitutional delicacy; cases where there is retardation and premature arrest of bodily growth; cases where a latent tendency to consumption is brought out and established; cases where a predis- position is given to that now common cerebral dis- order brought on by the hard work of adult life. How commonly constitutions are thus undermined, will be clear to all who, after noting the frequent ailments of hard-worked professional and mercantile men, will reflect on the disastrous effects which undue application must produce upon the unde- veloped systems of the young. The young are competent to bear neither as much hardship, nor as much physical exertion, nor as much mental exer- MISCHIEFS OF OVER-APPLICATION. 279 tion, as the full grown. Judge, then, if the full grown so manifestly suffer from the excessive men- tal exertion required of them, how great must be the damage which a mental exertion, often equally excessive, inflicts upon the young! Indeed, when we examine the merciless school- drill to which many children are subjected, the wonder is, not that it does great injury, but that it can be borne at all. Take the instance given by Sir John Forbes from personal knowledge; and which he asserts, after much inquiry, to be an average sample of the middle-class girPs-school sys- tem throughout England. Omitting the detailed divisions of time, we quote the summary of the twenty-four hours. /In bed 9 hours (the younger 10) / In school, at their studies and / tasks 9 " / In school, or in the house, the older at optional studies or V ' the work, younger at play . - 3| " (the younger 2$) I -At meals li " Exercise in the open air, in the shape of a formal walk, \ often with lesson-books in \ hand, and even this only \ when the weather is fine at the appointed time . . . 1 " 19 280 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. And what are the results of this " astounding regimen," as Sir John Forbes terms it? Of course feebleness, pallor, want of spirits, general ill-health. But he describes something more. This utter dis- regard of physical welfare, out of extreme anxiety to cultivate the mind this prolonged exercise of the brain and deficient exercise of the limbs, he found to be habitually followed, not only by dis- ordered functions but by malformation. He says: " We lately visited, in a large town, a boarding- school containing forty girls; and we learnt, on close and accurate inquiry, that there was not one of the girls who had been at the school two years (and the majority had been as long) that was not more or less crooked ! " * It may be that since 1833, when this was writ- ten, some improvement has taken place. We hope it has. But that the system is still common nay, that it is in some cases carried even to a greater ex- treme than ever; we can personally testify. We recently went over a training college for young men: one of those instituted of late years for the purpose of supplying schools with well-dis- ciplined teachers. Here, under official supervi- sion, where something better than the judgment of private schoolmistresses might have been * Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine, vol. i. pp. 697, 698. TIME DEVOTED TO STUDY. 281 looked for, we found the daily routine to be aa follows : At 6 o'clock the students are called, " 7 to 8 studies, " 8 to 9 scripture reading, prayers, and breakfast, " 9 to 12 studies, " 12 to 1 leisure, nominally devoted to walking or other exercise, but often spent in study. " li to 2 dinner, the meal commonly occupying twenty minutes, " 2 to 5 studies, " 5 to 6 tea and relaxation, " 6 to 8} studies, " 8i to 9 private studies in preparing lessons for the next day, " 10 to bed. Thus, out of the twenty-four hours, eight are devoted to sleep ; four and a quarter are occupied in dressing, prayers, meals, and the brief periods of rest accompanying them; ten and a half are given to study; and one and a quarter to exercise, which is optional and often avoided. Not only, however, is it that the ten and a half hours of recognised study are frequently increased to eleven and a half by devoting to books the time set apart for exercise ; but some of the students who are not quick in learn- ing, get up at four o'clock in the morning to prepare their lessons; and are actually encouraged by their teachers to do this ! The course to be passed through 282 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. in a given time is so extensive; the teachers, whose credit is at stake in getting their pupils well through the examinations, are so urgent; and the difficulty of satisfying the requirements is so great; that pupils are not uncommonly induced to spend twelve and thirteen hours a day in mental labour! It needs no prophet to see that the bodily injury inflicted must be great. As we were told by one of the inmates, those who arrive with fresh com- plexions quickly become blanched. Illness is fre- quent: there are always some on the sick-list. Failure of appetite and indigestion are very com- mon. Diarrhrea is a prevalent disorder: not un- commonly a third of the whole number of students suffering under it at the same time. Headache is generally complained of; and by some is borne al- most daily for months. While a certain percent- age break down entirely and go away. That this should be the regimen of what is in some sort a model institution, established and super- intended by the embodied enlightenment of the age, is a startling fact. That the severe examina- tions, joined with the short period assigned for prep- aration, should practically compel recourse to a system which inevitably undermines the health of all who pass through it, "is proof, if not of cruelty, then of wof ul ignorance. DANGERS OF OVER-EDUCATION. 283 Doubtless the case is in a great degree excep- tional perhaps to be paralleled only in other insti- tutions of the same class. But that cases so extreme should exist at all, indicates pretty clearly how great is the extent to which the minds of the rising generation are overtasked. Expressing as they do the ideas of the educated community, these training colleges, even in the absence of all other evidence, would conclusively imply a prevailing tendency to an unduly urgent system of culture. It seems strange that there should be so little consciousness of the dangers of over-education dur- ing youth, when there is so general a consciousness of the dangers of over-education during childhood. Most parents are more or less aware of the evil con- sequences that follow infant precocity. In every society may be heard reprobation of those who too early stimulate the minds of their little ones. And the dread of this early stimulation is great in pro- portion as there is adequate knowledge of the ef- fects: witness the implied opinion of one of our most distinguished professors of physiology, who told us that he did not intend his little boy to learn any lessons until he was eight years old. But while to all it is a familiar truth that a forced develop- ment of intelligence in childhood entails disastrous results either physical feebleness, or ultimate stu- 284: PHYSICAL EDUCATION. pidity, or early death it appears not to be per- ceived that throughout youth the same truth holds. Yet it is certain that it must do so. There is a given order in which, and a given rate at which, the faculties unfold. If the course of education conforms itself to that order and rate, well. If not if the higher faculties are early taxed by presenting an order of knowledge more complex and abstract than can be readily assimilated; or if, by excess of culture, the intellect in general is de- veloped to a degree beyond that which is natural to the age; the abnormal result so produced will in- e*vitably be accompanied by some equivalent, or more than equivalent, evil. For Nature is a strict accountant; and if you demand of her in one direction more than she is prepared to lay out, she balances the account by making a deduction elsewhere. If you will let her follow her own course, taking care to supply, in right quantities and kinds, the raw materials of bodily and mental growth required at each age, she will eventually produce an individual more or less evenly developed. If, however, you insist on pre- mature or undue growth of any one part, she will, with more or less protest, concede the point; but that she may do your extra work, she must leave some of her more important work undone. Let it VARIOUS DRAUGHTS UPON THE ENERGY. 285 never be forgotten that the amount of vital energy which the body at any moment possesses is limited; and that, being limited, it is impossible to get from it more than a fixed quantity of results. In a child or youth the demands upon this vital energy are various and urgent. As before pointed out, the waste consequent on the day's bodily exercise has to be repaired; the wear of brain entailed by the day's study has to be made good; a certain addi- tional growth of body has to be provided for; and also a certain additional growth of brain: add to which the amount of energy absorbed in the di- gestion of the large quantity of food required for meeting these many demands. Now, that to divert an excess of energy into any one of these channels is to abstract it from the others, is not only manifest a priori; but may be shown a posteriori from the experience of every one. Every one knows, for in- stance, that the digestion of a heavy meal makes such a demand on the system as to produce lassi- tude of mind and body, ending not unfrequently in sleep. Every one knows, too, that excess of bodily exercise diminishes the power of thought that the temporary prostration following any sudden exer- tion, or the fatigue produced by a thirty miles' walk, is accompanied by a disinclination to mental effort: that, after a month's pedestrian tour, the 286 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. mental inertia is such that some days are required to overcome it; and that in peasants who spend their lives in muscular labour the activity of mind is very small. Again, it is a truth familiar to all that during those fits of extreme rapid growth which sometimes occur in childhood, the great ab- straction of energy is shown in the attendant pros- tration, bodily and mental. Once more, the facts that violent muscular exertion after eating will stop digestion, and that children who are early put to hard labour become stunted, similarly exhibit the antagonism similarly imply that excess of activity in one direction involves deficiency of it in another direction. Now, the law which is thus manifest in extreme cases holds in all cases. These injurious abstractions of energy as certainly take place when the undue demands are slight and constant, as when they are great and sudden. Hence, if in youth, the expenditure in mental labour exceeds that which nature had provided for; the expenditure for other purposes falls below what it should have been : and evils of one kind or other are inevitably entailed. Let us briefly consider these evils. Supposing the over-activity of brain not to be extreme, but to exceed the normal activity only in a moderate degree, there will be nothing more than some slight reaction on the development of the ANTAGONISM OP GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 287 body: the stature falling a little below that which it would else have reached; or the bulk being less than it would have been; or the quality of tissue being not so good. One or more of these effects must necessarily occur. The extra quantity of blood supplied to the brain, not only during the period of mental exertion, but during the subse- quent period in which the waste of cerebral sub- stance is being made good, is blood that would else have been circulating through the limbs and vis- cera; and the amount of growth or repair for which that blood would have supplied materials, is lost. This physical reaction being certain, the question is, whether the gain resulting from the extra cul- ture is equivalent to the loss? whether defect of bodily growth, or the want of that structural per- fection which gives high vigour and endurance, is compensated for by the additional knowledge gained? When the excess of mental exertion is greater, there follow results far more serious; telling not only against bodily perfection, but against the per- fection of the brain itself. It is a physiological law, first pointed out by M. Isidore St. Hilaire, and to which attention has been drawn by Mr. Lewes in his essay on Dwarfs and Giants, that there is an antagonism between growth and development. 288 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. By growth, as used in this antithetical sense, is to be understood increase of size; by development, increase of structure. And the law is, that great activity in either of these processes involves retar- dation or arrest of the other. A familiar illustra- tion is furnished by the cases of the caterpillar and the chrysalis. In the caterpillar there is extremely rapid augmentation of bulk; but the structure is scarcely at all more complex when the caterpillar is full-grown than when it is small. In the chrysa- lis the bulk does not increase; on the contrary, weight is lost during this stage of the creature's life; but the elaboration of a more complex structure goes on with great activity. The antagonism, here so clear, is less traceable in higher creatures, because the two processes are carried on together. But we see it pretty well illustrated among our- selves by contrasting the sexes. A girl develops in body and mind rapidly, and ceases to grow com- paratively early. A boy's bodily and mental de- velopment is slower, and his growth greater. At the age when the one is mature, finished, and hav- ing all faculties in full play, the other, whose vital energies have been more directed towards increase of size, is relatively incomplete in structure; and shows it in a comparative awkwardness, bodily and mental. Now this law is true not only of the EFFECTS OF CEREBRAL EXCITEMENT. 289 organism as a whole, but of each separate part. The abnormally rapid advance of any part in re- spect of structure involves premature arrest of its growth; and this happens with the organ of the mind as certainly as with any other organ. The brain, which, during early years is relatively large in mass but imperfect in structure will, if required to perform its functions with undue activity, under- go a structural advance greater than is appropriate to the age; but the ultimate effect will be a falling short of the size and power that would else have been attained. And this is a part cause probably the chief cause why precocious children, and youths who up to a certain time were carrying all before them, so often stop short and disappoint the high hopes of their parents. But these results of over-education, disastrous as they are, are perhaps less disastrous than the re- sults produced upon the health the undermined constitution, the enfeebled energies, the morbid feelings. Recent discoveries in physiology have shown how immense is the influence of the brain over the functions of the body. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and through these all other organic processes, are profoundly affected by cerebral excitement. Whoever has seen repeated, as we have, the experiment first per- 290 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. formed by Weber, showing the consequence of irritating the vagus nerve which connects the brain with the viscera whoever has seen the action of the heart suddenly arrested by the irritation of this nerve; slowly recommencing when the irritation is suspended; and again arrested the moment it is re- newed; will have a vivid conception of the depress- ing influence which an over-wrought brain exer- cises on the body. The effects thus physiologically explained, are indeed exemplified in ordinary ex- perience. There is no one but has felt the palpita- tion accompanying hope, fear, anger, joy no one but has observed how laboured becomes the action of the heart when these feelings are very violent. And though there are many who have never them- selves suffered that extreme emotional excitement which is followed by arrest of the heart's action and fainting; yet every one knows them to be cause and effect. It is a familiar fact, too, that dis- turbance of the stomach is entailed by mental ex- citement exceeding a certain intensity. Loss of appetite is a common result alike of very pleasura- ble and very painful states of mind. When the event producing a pleasurable or painful state of mind occurs shortly after a meal, it not unfrequent- ly happens either that the stomach rejects what haa been eaten, or digests it with great difficulty and DANGEROUS EFFECTS OF OVER-STUDY. 291 under prolonged protest. And as every one who taxes his brain much can testify, even purely intel- lectual action will, when excessive, produce analo- gous effects. Now the relation between brain and body which is so manifest in these extreme cases, holds equally in ordinary, less-marked cases. Just as these violent but temporary cerebral excitements produce violent but temporary disturbances of the viscera; so do the less violent but chronic cerebral excitements, produce less violent but chronic visce- ral disturbances. This is not simply an inference it is a truth to which every medical man can bear witness; and it is one to which a long and sad experience enables us to give personal testimony. Various degrees and forms of bodily derangement,, often taking years of enforced idleness to set par- tially right, result from this prolonged over-exer- tion of mind. Sometimes the heart is chiefly af- fected: habitual palpitations; a jpulse much en- feebled; and very generally a diminution in the number of beats from seventy-two to sixty, or even fewer. Sometimes the conspicuous disorder is of the stomach: a dyspepsia which makes life a bur- den, and is amenable to no remedy but time. In many cases both heart and stomach are implicated. Mostly the sleep is short and broken. And very generally there is more or less mental depression. 292 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. Consider, then, how great must be the damage inflicted by undue mental excitement on children and youths. More or less of this constitutional dis- turbance will inevitably follow an exertion of brain beyond that which nature had provided for; and when not so excessive as to produce absolute illness, is sure to entail a slowly accumulating degeneracy of physique. With a small and fastidious appetite, an imperfect digestion, and an enfeebled circula- tion, how can the developing body flourish? The due performance of every vital process depends on the adequate supply of good blood. Without enough good blood, no gland can secrete properly, no viscus can fully discharge its office. Without enough good blood, no nerve, muscle, membrane, or other tissue can be efficiently repaired. With- out enough good blood, growth will neither be sound nor sufficient. Judge, then, how bad must be the consequences when to a growing body the weakened stomach supplies blood that is deficient in quantity and poor in quality; while the debili- tated heart propels this poor and scanty blood with unnatural slowness. And if, as all who candidly investigate the matter must admit, physical degeneracy is a conse- quence of excessive study, how grave is the con- demnation to be passed upon this cramming system DANGEROUS EFFECTS OF OVER-STUDY. 293 above exemplified. It is a terrible mistake, from whatever point of view regarded. It is a mistake in so far as the mere acquirement of knowledge is concerned: for it is notorious that the mind, like the body, cannot assimilate beyond a certain rate; and if you ply it with facts faster than it can assimi- late them, they are very soon rejected again; they do not become permanently built into the intellec- tual fabric; but fall out of recollection after the passing of the examination for which they were got up. It is a mistake, too, because it tends to make study distasteful. Either through the pain- ful associations produced by ceaseless mental toil, or through the abnormal state of brain it leaves behind, it often generates an aversion to books; and, instead of that subsequent self -culture induced by a rational education, there comes a continued retrogression. It is a mistake, also, inasmuch as it assumes that the acquisition of knowledge is every- thing; and forgets that a much more important matter is the organization of knowledge, for which time and spontaneous thinking are requisite. Just as Humboldt remarks respecting the progress of intelligence in general, that " the interpretation of nature is obscured when the description languishes under too great an accumulation of insulated facts; " so it may be remarked, respecting the prog- 294 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. ress of individual intelligence, that the mind is overburdened and hampered by an excess of ill- digested information. It is not the knowledge stored up as intellectual fat which is of value; but that which is turned into intellectual muscle. But the mistake is still deeper. Even were the system good as a syatem of intellectual training, which it is not, it would still be bad, because, as we have shown, it is fatal to that vigour of physique which is needful to make intellectual training available in the struggle of life. Those who, in eagerness to cultivate their pupils' minds, are reckless of their bodies, do not remember that success in the world depends much more upon energy than upon infor- mation ; and that a policy which in cramming with information undermines energy, is self-defeating. The strong will and untiring activity which result from abundant animal vigour, go far to compensate even for great defects of education; and when joined with that quite adequate education which may be obtained without sacrificing health, they ensure an easy victory over competitors enfeebled by excessive study: prodigies of learning though they may be. / A comparatively small and ill-made en- gine, worked at high-pressure, will do more than a larger and well-finished one worked at low-pressure. What folly is it, then, while finishing the engine, THE PRICELESS BLESSING OF HEALTH. 295 so to damage the boiler that it will not generate steam! Once more, the system is a mistake, as in- volving a false estimate of welfare in life. Even supposing it were a means to worldly success, in- stead of a means to worldly failure, yet, in the en- tailed ill-health, it would inflict a more than equivalent curse. What boots it to have obtained wealth, if the wealth is accompanied by ceaseless ailments? What is the worth of distinction, if it has brought hypochondria with it? Surely none needs telling that a good digestion, a bounding pulse, and high spirits are elements of happiness which no external advantages can outbalance. Chronic bodily disorder casts a gloom over the brightest prospects; while the vivacity of strong health gilds even misfortune. We contend, then, that this over-education is vicious in every way vicious, as giving knowledge that will soon be for- gotten; vicious, as producing a disgust for knowl- edge; vicious, as neglecting that organization of knowledge which is more important than its ac- quisition; vicious, as weakening or destroying that energy, without which a trained intellect is useless; \iicious, as entailing that ill-health for which even success would not compensate, and which makes failure doubly bitter. On women the effects of this forcing system are, 296 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. if possible, even more injurious than on men. Be- ing in great measure debarred from those vigorous and enjoyable exercises of body by which boys mitigate the evils of excessive study, girls feed these evils in their full intensity. Hence, the much smaller proportion of them who grow up well made and healthy. In the pale, angular, flat-chested young ladies, so abundant in London drawing- rooms, we see the effect of merciless application,, un- relieved by youthful sports; and this physical de- generacy exhibited by them, hinders their welfare far more than their many accomplishments aid it. Mammas anxious to make their daughters attrac- tive, could scarcely choose a course more fatal than this, which sacrifices the body to the mind. Either they disregard the tastes of the opposite sex, or else their conception of those tastes is erroneous. Men care comparatively little for erudition in women; but very much for physical beauty, and goodnature, and sound sense. How many conquests does the blue-stocking make through her extensive knowl- edge of history? What man ever fell in love with a woman because she nrulfrat.nn j^TtaljflTi 1 Where is the Edwin who was brought to Angelina's feet by her German? But rosy cheeks and laughing eyes are great attractions. A_finely rounded figure draws admiring glances. The liveliness and good ELEMENTS OF tfEfMtNINE ATTRACTION. 297 humour that overflowing health produces, go a great way towards establishing attachments. Every one knows cases where bodily perfections, in the absence of all other recommendations, have in- cited a passion that carried all before it; but scarce- ly any one can point to a case where mere intellec- tual acquirements, apart from moral or physical at- tributes, have aroused such a feeling. The truth is that, out of the many elements uniting in various proportions to produce in a man's breast that com- plex emotion which we call love, the strongest are those produced by physical attractions; the next in order of strength are those produced by moral at- tractions; the weakest are those produced by intel- lectual attractions; and even these are dependent much less upon acquired knowledge than on natural faculty quickness, wit, insight. If any think the assertion a derogatory one, and inveigh against the masculine character for being thus swayed; we re- ply that they little know what they say when they thus call in question the Divine ordinations. Even were there no obvious meaning in the arrangement, we might be sure that some important end was sub- served. But the meaning is quite obvious to those who examine. It needs but to remember that one of Nature's ends, or rather her supreme end, is the welfare pi posterity it needs but to remember that, 298 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. in so far as posterity are concerned, a cultivated in- telligence based upon a bad physique is of little worth, seeing that its descendants will die out in a generation or two it needs but to bear in mind that a good physique, however poor the accompa- nying mental endowments, is worth preserving, be- cause, throughout future generations, the mental endowments may be indefinitely developed it needs but to contemplate these truths, to see how important is the balance of instincts above de- scribed. But, purpose apart, the instincts being thus balanced, it is a fatal folly to persist in a sys- tem which undermines a girl's constitution that it may overload her memory. Educate as highly as possible the higher the better providing no bod- ily injury is entailed (and we may remark, in pass- ing, that a high standard might be so reached were the parrot-faculty cultivated less, and the human faculty more, and were the discipline extended over that now wasted period between leaving school and being married). But to educate in such manner, or to such extent, as to produce physical degeneracy, is to defeat the chief end for which the toil and cost and anxiety are submitted to. By subjecting their daughters to this high-pressure system, parents fre- quently ruin their prospects in life. Not only do they inflict on them enfeebled health, with all its ERRORS OF THE PREVALENT SYSTEM. pains and disabilities and gloom; but very often they actually doom them to celibacy. Our general conclusion is, then, that the ordi- 'nary treatment of children is, in various ways, se- riously prejudicial. It errs in deficient feeding; in deficient clothing; in deficient exercise (among girls at least); and in excessive mental application. Considering the regime as a whole, its tendency is too exacting: it asks too much and gives too little. In the extent to which it taxes the vital energies, it makes the juvenile life much more like the adult life than it should be. It overlooks the truth that, as in the foetus the entire vitality is expended in the direction of growth as in the infant, the ex- penditure of vitality in growth is so great as to leave extremely little for either physical or mental action; so throughout childhood and youth growth is the dominant requirement to which all others must be subordinated: a requirement which dic- tates the giving of much and the taking away of little a requirement which, therefore, restricts the exertion of body and mind to a degree proportionate to the rapidity of growth a requirement which permits the mental and physical activities to in- crease only as fast as the rate of growth diminishes. Regarded from another point of view, this high- 300 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. pressure education manifestly results from our pass- ing phase of civilization. In primitive times, when aggression and defence were the leading social ac- tivities, bodily vigour with its accompanying cour- age were the desiderata; and then education was almost wholly physical: mental cultivation was lit- tle cared for, and indeed, as in our own feudal ages, was often treated with contempt. But now that our state is relatively peaceful now that muscular power is of use for little else than manual labour, while social success of nearly every kind depends very much on mental power; our education has become almost exclusively mental. Instead of re- specting the body and ignoring the mind, we now respect the mind and ignore the body. Both these attitudes are wrong. We do not yet sufficiently realize the truth that as, in this life of ours, the physical underlies the mental, the mental must not be developed at the expense of the physical. The ancient and modern conceptions must be combined. Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the preserva- tion of health is a duiy. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. PHYSICAL IMMORALITIES AND SINS. 301 Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dic- tates, they regard simply as grievances: not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime; yet they do not think them- selves in any degree criminal. It is true, that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a purely bodily transgression is recognised; but none ap- pear to infer that, if this bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression. The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are physical sins. When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till then, will the physical training of the young receive all the attention it deserves. (92) THE END. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days orior to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. gHTDLD APRS 72 -8PM S4 1 JAN 2 b ZUU4 LD21A-40m-8,'71 (P6572slO)476-A-32 General Library University of California Berkeley