EDUGATieW AND TH. NEW UTILITARIANISM ALEXANDER BARROCH BtamstmtBuaaeim msatmmmmMim EDUCATION AND THE NEW UTILITARIANISM BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE PLACE OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER. Crown 8vo, 2s. net. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA. EDUCATION AND THE NEW UTILITARIANISM AND OTHER EDUCATIONAL ADDRESSES BY ALEXANDER DARROCH, M.A. PROFESSOR OP EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OP BDINBUROH ; AUTHOR OP *' HERBART AND THE HBRBARTIAN THEORY OP EDUCATION, "THE CHILDREN," "THE PLACE OP PSYCHOLOGY IN THE TRAINING OP THE TEACHER," ETC. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA 1914 V t>' "^ PREFATORY NOTE The addresses included in this volume are a selection from a large number delivered to various educational societies during the past few years. They are now published because they deal with subjects of present-day import- ance in the educational world, and may prove of value in the furtherance of clear thinking on educational topics. The ** pragmatic " principles set forth in the opening essay, which gives the main title to the volume, are more or less consistently ex- emplified in the addresses which follow. For any imperfection of form or lack of ref- erence, the author craves the reader's kind indulgence on the ground that the addresses, as a rule, have been composed and written in the intervals of a busy practical life. A. D. University of Edinburgh, 19 14. 307983 Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/educationnewutilOOdarrricli CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Education and the New Utilitarianism i II. Democracy and Education - - -21 III. The Moral Education Problem - - 44 IV. Two Ideals of the End of Woman's Edu- cation 66 V. The Place of the Domestic Sciences in the Education of Girls - - - 93 VI. The School and the State - - - 112 VII. Is A Science of Education Possible? - 130 VIII. The Meaning and Educational Value of History 149 « > EDUCATION AND THE NEW UTILITARIANISM. In choosing, as the subject of my address, " Edu- cation and the New Utilitarianism," I have been guided mainly by two sets of considerations. In the first place, it seems to me, that it is not merely the business of a Vacation Course,^ such as this, to give, from time to time, in- struction in any new subjects which may be introduced into the school curriculum, or to afford insight into any proposed new methods of teaching, but ' also, as occasion arises, to give some account of those wider religious, philosophical, and poHtical movements which influence, it may be insensibly and gradually, but no less really, the direction of a people's thoughts as regards the conceptions and the aims of education. In the second place, look where we will in the educational world at the present day, we find constant and con- tinual change. This is true, whether we consider the curricula of our schools or of our Universities. From a fixed and rigid cur- riculum imposed alike upon all children and upon all students, we have passed, or are 1 Originally delivered to the students -tof the Summer Vacation School held in the University of St. Andrews. I .. 2. .EyOUgATION AND UTILITARIANISM passing, both in our schools and colleges, to the greatest variety and elasticity in our courses of study. Moreover, and this is the serious import of the present-day condition of things, in all these changes there appears to be present no clearly defined purpose or end, beyond the mere profitless purpose or end of securing variety and diversity in our schemes of instruction. To such an extreme has this mere desire for variety been carried, that it is now possible, in two at least of our Scottish Universities, for each and every student in the Faculty of Arts to obtain his degree by a unique curriculum, unlike that of any other of his fellows. And very much the same is true of the curriculum of our Secondary Schools : mere variety seems to be the main end or purpose of many of the changes recently intro- duced, and there appears no clear conception of the after purposes in life to which a school education and a school curriculum should be a means. We have, so to speak, left the edu- cational moorings of our fathers, and we seem to be drifting, hither and thither, without any clearly recognized idea of the port or ports to which we should guide our educational barque. This uncertainty of aim or purpose in our educational efforts is, no doubt, largely due to the growing complexity of the modern State, and to the varied demands now made upon our schools and colleges, but it is also partly due to the fact that we have not yet thought out the problems of education in their EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 3 relation to the changing conditions of the modern State. Now, without doubt, one of the causes operative in producing this diversity and variety in our educational aims is the rise and spread of the pragmatic spirit — of that spirit which emphasizes action rather than knowledge, and which looks upon the latter merely as a means to the better performance, or to the better realization of the various pur- poses of life. This pragmatic spirit has within recent years been embodied in a definite system, or, as its opponents would urge, a no-system of philosophy. Bergson in France, Croce in Italy, Schiller in England, and the late William James and Dewey in America, may be taken as ex- ponents of this new spirit, which finds a ready welcome in such diverse spheres of activity as Oxford and Chicago. This forenoon, then, I propose, in the brief time at my disposal, to endeavour to do two things. To give, in the first place, some ac- count of the main positions of this new philo- sophy, and, in the second place, to point out what are its consequences as regards the aims and methods of our schools, and thereafter, assuming that the pragmatist furnishes us with the best working hypothesis for educational guidance, to point out the changes necessary in the external arrangements of our educational system, and in the internal organization of our schools, if the pragmatic ideal is to be realized. One word of prior explanation is, however, necessary. I have called this pragmatic spirit, 4 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM as embodied in a philosophic system, the new utilitarianism, partly because the latter term is better known than the former, and partly be- , I cause in this new philosophy, knowledge and \{^ I its acquisition is not considered valuable in it- l self: the one and only test of the value of any \ knowledge and its acquisition is said to be in its value in use, i.e. its value in realizing some social purpose. Hence, as we shall see later, the criterion employed in the determination and selection of the subjects of any school course, and also in the adoption of any school method, is how far may we expect, by such a course of study or by such a method of teach- ing, to produce the socially efficient individual. Hence utility, in the sense indicated, is the sole educational criterion. Let us now consider the main positions of this new philosophy. In the first place, accord- ing to the pragmatist, truth or knowledge is not something fixed and eternal, which, once dis- covered, is for ever valid. Were this so, there could be no real progress in the world, for, then, the only intelligible meaning of progress would consist in man's coming to know better an unchangeable and eternal universe. For, were progress in knowledge the only real pro- gress, then we should have to postulate as the highest aim of life, and consequently also of education, the ideal sketched forth by Plato in the " Republic," in which the hfe of contempla- tion is considered to be for man the best and the highest. Moreover, it is asserted that this EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 5 fallacy of a one unchangeable and eternal uni- verse, to which all truth must correspond, arises in modern times through Kant's taking the mathematical sciences as the real type of all knowledge. The truths of mathematics are, no doubt, vaHd for all time, but they are valid because of their abstract and conceptual character. In perceptual reality, we never find the exactness and the truth of the abstract science. Further, it is maintained that this ideal of an eternal and unchangeable truth is not borne out by a consideration of the bio- logical sciences which deal with life. Here, what we rather find, at any stage, is a number of provisional truths or hypotheses which are sufficiently true to meet the necessities of man, but which may, in the course of development, be replaced by hypotheses or truths which furnish fuller or better explanations of the observed facts. These hypotheses are valid or true, so far as they go, because of their value in use, i.e. because they enable man to gain a greater power, or a larger control over the universe, and not because they, so to speak, mirror an unchangeable and eternal reality. In the third place, the idea of an unchange- able and eternal truth assumes the existence of a static and unprogressive universe. On the other hand, and as against this, the pragmatist affirms that the universe is dynamic and progressive, and that, in particular, man's activity counts for something in the world ; i.e. man is not a mere thinker whose main purpose 6 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM is to become acquainted through knowledge with an eternal reality, but he is also a doer in the world's history, and by his actions may further or hinder the progress of the world. In short the pragmatist affirms that there may be something added to the progress of the universe which was not contemplated in the original plan ; that evolution may be creative, and that it is possible that the really novel or new may occur in the course of the world's history. Only by the overthrow of the assumption, made alike by the upholders of idealism and materialism, that the future can be predicted in every detail by an absolute intelligence, can we secure, the pragmatist contends, a place for human freedom, or put any real meaning upon human progress. From these positions follows a fourth : According to this new philosophy, knowledge and its attainment are not ends in themselves^ — things good to be sought after for their own sake, but knowledge arises and finds its real meaning and use in the better- ment of practice; i.e. knowledge is not some- thing primary and fundamental, but secondary, since the real aim and object of knowledge is for the sake of better action. Truth or know- ledge is relative to the needs and necessities of man, and not something which exists or could exist independently of these needs. The placing of knowledge in the forefront, 1 Cf. Croce's " Philosophy of the Practical," esp. Pt. II, chap. IV. EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 7 the pragmatist affirms, arises from the fact that we have misconceived the true function of the intellect. "Originally," Bergson writes, "we think only in order to act. Our intellect has been cast in the mould of action. Speculation is a luxury, while action is a necessity." " Thus the human intellect, inasmuch as it is fashioned for the needs of human action, is an intellect which proceeds by intention and by calculation, by adapting means to ends, and by thinking out the mechanical relation of part to part ; " ^ i.e. the acquisition of knowledge is or ought never to be an end in itself The acquisition is motived by a need to satisfy, and a purpose to realize. This is true in the early development of the race and of the child. The latter desires to know in order that he may gain a certain mastery or control over his physical or social environment. It is true also of the purposive adult life. Here also knowledge is sought, not for its own sake alone, but in order that it may further some end or interest either of a practical or theoretical nature. But one error must be avoided, the purposes which knowledge may serve must not be conceived of in any narrow economic sense, all that is contended for, by the pragmatist, is that knowledge and its ac- quisition must serve some purpose in life, and some purpose which either directly or indirectly tends to further the social efficiency of the in- dividual; i.e. the emphasis is laid upon action rather than upon mere knowledge : upon the 1 Bergson, " Creative Evolution," pp. 46-7 (Eng. trans.). 8 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM world with which we come into contact through our perceptual activities, rather than upon the world of abstract ideas : upon the life of active useful citizenship rather than upon the life of mere contemplation ; in short, pragmatism exalts the life of action above that of mere learning. Moreover, the pragmatist affirms that it is possible that there may be several ends or purposes being realized in the course of the world drama, and that there is no clear evidence that through the ages one increasing purpose runs. For to postulate a one eternal, predetermined purpose which is gradually being realized in the course of the world's history, would necessitate the conception that all the parts of the whole were predestined to attain this one eternal purpose. This would exclude all novelty — all real creation in the course of history, and assume a mechanically determined system of means for the attainment of a one end or purpose.^ With Browning, the prag- matist deprecates : — The constant talk men of this stamp keep up Of God's will, as they style it ; one would swear Man had but merely to uplilt his eye, And see the will in question charactered On the heaven's vault. 'Tis hardly wise to moot Such topics : doubts are many and faith is weak.* Rather would he subscribe to the faith that believes : — ^ Cf. Bergson's " Creative Evolution," chap. i. 2 Browning's '♦ Paracelsus ". EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 9 All changes at his instantaneous will, Not by the operation of a law Whose maker is elsewhere at other work. God's hand is still engaged upon His world — Man's praise can forward it, man's prayer suspend, For is not God all-mighty .^ Such, then, are the main principles of this new philosophy. What bearing, let us ask, have they upon our educational aims and methods, and what lessons do they enforce as to the meaning and significance of this human life of ours ? In the first place, as regards the aim of education, the pragmatist affirms that neither culture, nor discipline, nor the acquisition of knowledge are satisfactory definitions of what ought to be the object of our schools and colleges. The school, it is affirmed, is ** fundamentally an institution es- tablished by society to do a certain specific work," viz. to aid "in maintaining the life and advancing the welfare of society ".^ This does not merely mean that the school should train the pupil for the rightful discharge of the duties of citizenship in the narrower usage of that term, it rather implies that the main aim of the school should be to endeavour to secure the future social efficiency of the individual, not only in the carrying out of some particular duty and in the rendering of some particular social ser- vice, but also, if possible, so to educate him that he may aid in the advancement of society. ^ Browning's " Luria ". ^ Dewey's " Educational Essays " (edited by J. J. Findlay), p. 27. 10 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM Hence in considering the concrete nature of the ends which we should seek to attain by an edu- cational system, account must be taken of the conditions of the particular society of which the pupil is hereafter to become a member. Especially must we remember that in a modern and progressive State, industrial conditions are ever changing, and that one of the objects of education must be to train up the youth so that he may be able to adapt himself to these changing conditions. For, neglect to take this factor into account must result, sooner or later, in producing the individual liable to become socially inefficient. Hence, also, for the prag- matist, the acquisition of knowledge is valuable only in so far as it tends to promote future social efficiency, and the qualities to be desired are initiative and adaptability, rather than the mere accumulation of knowledge. Further, and especially regarding higher education, the prag- matist affirms that since the services which the modern State requires of its members are varied in character, so likewise must there be variety in the nature of the previous preparation, if social efficiency is to be secured and the pro- gress of the State maintained. Hence there can be no one type of higher education which is a fitting preparation for all social service. But the pragmatist does not contend that there should be mere diversity — mere elasticity in our courses of higher study for mere diversity's sake. The measure and extent of the diversity required in any particular case can be deter- EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM ii mined only by taking account of the needs of society and of the demands of the particular State. Lastly, in this connexion, the prag- matist affirms that we must educate not merely for service, but also for leadership, if progress is to be maintained. Further, and in the second place, the prag- matist does not believe v^ith Rousseau, and others of the evolutionary school, that the de- velopment of the innate pov^ers or potentialities of the child's nature is a sufficient or accurate account of the process and aim of education. For, since all human development is develop- ment tov^ards an end, partly determined by the innate pov^ers of the child, but also partly determined by the social demands of society, both these factors, he contends, must be taken into account in determining the purpose of edu- cation. Undue emphasis on the one factor may result in the non-adaptation of the child to his social environment : undue stress on the other factor may result in the neglecting, or even in the crushing out, of the individuality of the particular child. In both cases this one-sided emphasis results, and must result, in lessened social efficiency — in individual loss as well as in social loss. Hence also it follows that a mere genetic psychology, which endeavours to trace out the various stages through which the mental life progresses, is not in itself a sufficient or safe guide in education, since throughout the whole process the educator must keep in mind the nature of the particular services which the 12 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM individual is expected to perform in after life in society. Many objections have been urged against the conception of social efficiency as the ideal to be set before us in education and in life. Let me, in a word or two, note the two of most importance. It has been urged that the place of knowledge in the pragmatic scheme reduces the intellect of man to the function of a mere instrument for the adaptation of means to ends, and the underlying assumption is, that by so doing, we place the human intellect in the category of mere mechanical contrivances. But there is nothing derogatory in our human in- tellect being merely instrumental, since it is the instrument which has contrived all other human instruments, and moreover, and with all due re- verence, the intellect of God, if He is active at all in this world's affairs, must also work by the adaptation of means to secure ends. Further, if the intellect of man or of God is not instru- mental, what then is its function? Must we conceive of the intellect of the Almighty as merely engaged in contemplating his completed work, whilst : — We only toil who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown.^ Surely the grander and more helpful concep- tion is that God and man are co-operating in the realization of the world's purposes. 1 Tennyson, •• The Lotus Eaters ". EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 13 The second objection is a fear rather than an objection. From the secondary importance attached to knowledge, and the primary im- portance given to action, it is affirmed that there is a distinct danger of ideal pursuits, such as Literature and Art, being pushed into the background, and that social efficiency as an ideal may be narrowed down to the securing of the future practical or economic efficiency of the individual. This, it is affirmed, will, in education, result in a narrow specialization which may, no doubt, secure efficiency in some one or other direction, but which will inevit- ably tend to narrow down man's life and to limit his mental horizon and outlook. But this is to misconceive the extent of the term action. As used by the pragmatist, it is wide enough to cover all human activities. What he insists upon is that all knowledge acquired must issue in activity of some kind, and that the direction of each and every activity must be towards a common and social good. Social efficiency, he maintains, is much wider than economic efficiency. It embraces the latter as funda- mental, but it involves also that each indi- vidual, according to the measure and extent of his abilities, is so educated as to take his due share in the upward and onward progress of society. From the position laid down as to the end of education, it follows that the ultimate criterion or standard, not merely as regards the subjects to be included in any curriculum, but also of the 14 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM methods to be followed in the teaching of the subjects in any course of study, is to be found by asking how far by such a subject, or by such a method, do we prepare for future social usefulness? i.e. social utility is the ultimate test not only of a school course, but also of the methods by which it is imparted ; e.g. in the training of the teacher does the study of psy- chology issue either in a knowledge which may be turned to use in after life, or does it result in the adoption of an open, inquiring mind towards the various problems of the school ? If it does either of these two things, then, its inclusion in the course of study of the student- teacher is justified on pragmatic grounds, since its study may result in securing his better social efficiency. On the other hand, if by any method of teaching psychology we only store up a certain amount of loose and disjointed know- ledge which drops out of mind as soon as it has served an examination purpose, then, since such a teaching and such a method hinders rather than aids efficiency, its teaching cannot be justified. And so throughout the one and only test is possible future efficiency,, not mere accumulation and extent of knowledge. It further follows from the pragmatic position as regards the general nature of educational method, that, if in any case school procedure emphasizes a passive attitude in the reception of knowledge, then, on the ground that it is not likely to produce active, adaptable, and efficient future citizens and workers, it is not to be com- EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 15 mended. In the words of Professor Dewey,^ the emphasis in method " must be upon con- struction, and upon giving out rather than upon absorption and mere learning". For, what the modern State requires of the vast ma- jority of its members is practical efficiency as workers, and hence both in the organization and in the methods of our schools, this end of future active usefulness must ever be kept in mind. Moreover, the pragmatist affirms that in the determination of school methods, we must take into account the inherent instinctive tendencies to action in the child's nature ; that these instinctive tendencies to action must be developed not for their own sake alone, but always with reference to future social needs. Hence also he lays stress upon the important part which instinctive tendency plays in the development of the individual and in the generation of social ideals and of social con- trols over conduct. Assuming, then, the pragmatist's contention that social efficiency affords us the best work- ing guide in our educational efforts, what are the consequences which should follow in the inner and outer organization of our educational system ? In the first place, and as regards the moral education of the individual, it is con- tended that we cannot separate the moral from the intellectual training of the school. For since the aim of the school is social, viz. to aid in the maintaining and in the furthering of the welfare 1 Dewey, " Educational Essays," p. 38. i6 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM of society, at every stage this involves and must involve both intellectual and moral elements. For, if we think of moral training as something distinct and apart — by itself, then moral educa- tion inevitably tends to the setting up of certain external rules and regulations, and to the taking heed that the pupil conforms to them ; i.e. we have a moral training which tends to be merely negative and preceptive, whereas real moral training is effected by the pupils taking part in the social life and in the social activities of the school. What the teacher really has to do, if his work is to have any permanent moral value, is to make the pupil realize that the various school habits, such as obedience to authority, promptness in doing duties, industry, and non- interference with the work of others, are neces- sary for the social order and progress of the school, and necessary also for the efficiency of society, i.e. school habits are acquired mainly and primarily because they are necessary factors in the maintenance and furtherance of the social welfare. They are not habits acquired merely for the period of school life but for all life.^ Hence the pragmatist welcomes whatever in the organization or methods of our schools tends to create the sense of a co-operative, corporate, social life ; whatever tends to make the pupil engage with his fellows in the attain- ment of a common end ; and whatever tends to make the pupil realize that the main purpose of 1 Cf. Dewey's Ethical Principles underlying Education in '• Edu- cational Essays ". EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 17 the acquisition of knowledge is to aid and to better social action. In the second place, and as regards so-called intellectual education, the emphasis here again in school method is laid upon action or doing : upon the fact that the real object of the acquir- ing of knowledge is for the sake of practice, and that the school must endeavour to relate the acquisition of knowledge to the felt needs of the child. Lastly, as regards physical education and as a logical consequence from the main positions of the pragmatist, the emphasis is laid upon the plays, the games, and the other social activities of the school, rather than upon mere formal gymnastics as means likely to realize the ulti- mate aims of the school in its preparation for social life. We may sum up this view in the generous contention of the pragmatist, " that the only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life ". As regards the outer organization of a school system, we may say that since the social ser- vices in demand in after life in the modern State are varied in character, an educational system must take this fact into account. Hence it follows, as we have already seen, that there can be no one type of higher education which is suited to prepare for all future social service. As a consequence there must be a certain variety in the higher education provided, if on the one hand we are to take into account the fact of variation in individual power and capa- 2 i8 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM city, and on the other of variations in social needs and demands. One present-day charac- teristic is that whilst this need for variety in educational curricula is generally admitted, there is no clearly recognized conception as to the limitation to be imposed upon the demand for variations in school and University courses of study. Finally, in this connexion, if the school is really to prepare for social life, at least three other conditions must be fulfilled. In the first place, there is need for schools of a smaller size, especially in our large towns. The corporate life of the school can never be developed so long as we persist in erecting the huge barrack schools to be found in many cities. In the second place, there is need for smaller classes in order that the teacher may become acquainted with the varying individual- ities of his pupils, and in order that he may introduce active and constructive rather than passive or receptive methods of education. Lastly, in our school courses greater stress needs to be laid on the practical and construc- tive arts, and upon co-operative methods in the work of the school. The qualities of initiative, adaptability, and of co-operative action are stunted and repressed by the predominant part which receptive and passive methods play in the school work of the time, and the non-production of the above- named qualities hinders the aim of the school as a preparation for future social efficiency and social usefulness. EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM 19 In conclusion, and briefly, we may ask : what are the lessons which this new philosophy en- deavours to set forth in its day and genera- tion ? What help can we, men and women of the twentieth century, obtain from it for the direction of our activities and in the guidance of our lives ? And the first great lesson, it seems to me, that it teaches, is a wise humility as regards the value of mere knowledge in itself. It warns us that : — This constitutes the curse that spoils our life And sets man maundering of his misery, That there's no meanest atom he obtains Of what he counts for knowledge but he cries : ** Hold here — I have the whole thing — know, this time, Nor need search further ! " But rather : — The prize is in the process : knowledge means Ever renewed assurance by defeat That victory is somehow still to reach.^ Life is more than knowledge, and the latter's true function is to aid in the elevation and better- ment of the former. Hence the pragmatist reckons as of little value any knowledge unless in some way or other it aids in the furtherance or enhancement of this human life of ours. In the second place, it teaches us that the life of active social usefulness is the only life worth living, and that the really happy man is he who is efficient to perform his duties in the station in life for which by nature and education he is fitted. Moreover, it enforces the lesson that ^ Browning, " A Pillar at Sebzevar ". 20 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM there are worse things in life than hopes un- fulfilled and ideals unrealized, and that the failure which is to be condemned is the failure that results : — From the unlit lamp, and the ungirt loin. In particular it condemns, wherever he may be found, the loafer and parasite of society, and the man who has no other than selfish ends or interests in life. It insists upon the social re- ference, and that the life of actively striving for the progress of society is of much more value than the life of the mere recluse or the mere scholar. But above all it condemns the Hfe of mere amusement and of mere social convention as a life unworthy of a being who may co- operate with the Almighty in the onward pro- gress of the world. Lastly, it leaves us with a great hope, a hope that we men and women count for something in the world's progress, and that we, in some measure or other, con- tribute to the working out of God's purposes here on earth : that our every deed of social usefulness may : — Live, and act, and serve the future hour ; and that we mortals : — As towards the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, May feel that we are greater than we know.^ ^ Wordsworth, •' Sonnets on the River Duddon ". 11. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION. In deciding to address you, this morning, upon some aspects of the problem of Democracy and Education,^ I have been led to do so, mainly, for three reasons. In the first place, the sub- ject of the relation of the people to education is, for us in Scotland, of importance at the present time, since this year marks the fortieth anniversary of the introduction of the School Board system, and along with it, forty years* experience of the so-called popular control of education. In 1872 the charge of elementary and of a large part of higher education passed from the hands of the Churches into the hands of the State. It seems, therefore, a fitting time to take some account of the success, or non- success, of this movement ; and to ask for future guidance whether and wherein the de- mocritization of education has succeeded, and whether and wherein it has failed ; and if it has failed in any one or more respects, to ask and to endeavour to answer if this has not resulted from our imperfect conception of what the democratic principle in government really ^ Originally delivered to the members of the Educational Con- held in Edinburgh in 1912. 21 22 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM means. My second reason for deciding to dis- cuss this particular topic is, that we have the impending prospect of a further extension of the principle of democratic rule in the sphere of poHtical government ; and whilst, under existing circumstances, some may doubt the expediency of such an extension, few will deny its political justice. For, rightly or wrongly, the modern State has entered upon the path of democratic rule, and if the experiment is to be tested thoroughly, then we must see that the government of the State is really broad-based upon the people's will, and is the outcome of their deliberation and choice. For, in a modern State, a democratic basis is an essential condi- tion, in order, as an eminent French writer has recently pointed out, " that the people should not feel itself to be a mere onlooker, but. should realize that it is a part, and an important part, of the body social ; and that the words, * You are the nation, defend it,' have a meaning. In the second place it is necessary, in order that the wishes, the desires, and the ideals of the people may be voiced, become known, and be considered."^ Whether, in this country, or in any other State which has carried the demo- cratic principle to a further extreme than, as yet, we have done, this extension has been accompanied, either by a greater knowledge of what the people really wishes, and desires, or by an intenser feeling of social unity and of social solidarity, are questions beyond our 1 Cf. " The Cult of Incompetence," by M. Faguet. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 23 present reach, and can be only briefly treated of hereafter. But my third and most important reason for entering upon some discussion of the subject has been the fact — the undisputed fact — that there is a widespread feeling, which finds voice in many directions, that the handing over of education to popular control has not resulted in the full attainment of the ends or ideals which its promoters thought to realize by such a control. And the gravamen of the charge is, that whilst professedly the control of education has been democratic, really it has not been so — that, in fact, side by side with the apparent extension of the democratic principle, we have had the growth and the extension of bureau- cracy; that what we set out to estabhsh was freedom in education, and that what has re- sulted has been the establishment of an external authority, which controls and overshadows all our educational institutions : and, moreover, taking into account the wider political problem, it is affirmed that we have not found, and are not likely to find, along the path we are now pursuing, that form of social rule and order in which the individual shall find the conditions essential to the full development of his indi- viduality, and so be enabled to realize his freedom. In particular, as the result of our forty years' experience, it is contended that our educational system has not produced that feel- ing of social unity and of social solidarity amongst the various classes of the community 24 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM which ought to be one of its aims ; and, more- over — and herein Hes the weightier accusation — it is declared that our educational system has not been based upon the real needs and wishes of the great majority of the people of the nation, and that, in fact, we have mistaken the voice of the few as indicative of the wishes of the many. But before considering the evidence for the existence of this widespread dissatisfaction, both with the methods and with the results of our educational system, and before entering upon the question whether the dissatisfaction is justified, and why, let me, at the outset, re- mark that I am not aiming at criticizing the Education Departments of this or of any other country. For Education Departments are the outcome of the condition of things which gave them birth, and which maintain them in exist- ence ; and, further, they, more than any other agency of the State tend to be the servants of the current opinions of their day and genera- tion. Moreover, in other countries, in, e.g. France, and to a greater extent, and upon a larger scale, in America, we find views similar to those voiced in this country as regards edu- cation and its failure. These countries have had a larger experience than we of the so-called democratic principle in education ; and, more- over, it has been carried out more thoroughly there than here ; and accordingly any good or evil results which have followed from the de- mocritization of education, will tend to manifest DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 25 themselves there more clearly and more de- finitely. My task is rather to show that this dissatisfaction exists ; that, if it is justified, then it results from a wrong interpretation of wherein democratic rule really consists ; and, consequently, from a wrong application of the principles of democracy in the sphere of edu- cation. Let us now consider the evidence in favour of the existence of this dissatisfaction, both with the methods and with the results of our educational system. In the first place, we may note the small amount of interest taken in the election of the School Boards of this country. This may be due, in some measure, to the vicious system of election which here prevails ; but the apathy of the people themselves cannot be wholly accounted for in this way. May this apathy, this indifference to what is, or ought to be a vital question to all parents, not be due to the fact that many intelHgent men and women feel, that in spite of the so-called popular control of education, neither they nor their representa- tives have any real voice in the determination of what ought to be the objects of education ; that what our elected representatives have control over is mainly the machinery of educa- tion, and that the subjects, the standards, and the methods of education are otherwise deter- mined. " What concerns us here, in a working- man's family," writes Stephen Reynolds, **is how the education to which the children are hound to submit is going to help them to live, to 26 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM earn their bread and cheese, and to lead useful, happy, and efficient lives." ^ What wants alter- ing, he declares, is the whole spirit of our elementary education, for at present it has two main defects, viz. (i) that mechanical drill forms too large a part of the work of the school ; and (2) that the curriculum has been devised on the assumption that book-knowledge is of first- class importance. In a similar spirit we have the Poor Law Commissioners of England re- porting in 1909 " that our expensive elementary education system (costing ;^2o,ooo,ooo annually) is having no effect on poverty " (i.e. on the decrease of poverty); "it is not developing," they go on to say, "self-reliance or fore- thought in the characters of the children, and is, in fact, persuading them to become clerks rather than artisans." Again, the report de- clares that "It is not in the interests of the country to produce by our system of education a dislike of manual work, and a taste for clerical and intermittent work, when the vast majority of those so educated must maintain themselves by manual work ; " and, finally, they conclude " that the present system of elementary educa- tion is not adapted to the wants of an indus- trial community." And if we look for evidence nearer home we shall not find it wanting. But the other day the "Scotsman," commenting on the lack of interest in continuation schools in some parts of the country, attributed it to the fact that our elementary school system failed 1 Cf. •• Seems So," by Stephen Reynolds, etc. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 27 to create an interest in education. Further, from time to time we have our local School Boards, and other school managers, deploring the fact that a large percentage of the pupils attending the elementary schools attain the age of fourteen, and leave school without ever pass- ing the qualifying examination ; and making investigations into how this deplorable state of matters may be remedied. But in spite of the brave words of the Poor Law Commissioners that our elementary education is not fitted to the needs of an industrial community, they, even as our School Boards, have no remedy to propose beyond that of extending the prevail- ing system of education. May the failure of so many boys and girls to reach a certain stan- dard, under the present system, not be due to the fact that we are imposing upon them a kind of education for which they have no aptitude, and which in consequence fails to obtain their attention and interest ? Again, if we look at our higher education we find a similar state of things. But the other day one of the large School Boards in the West, in their annual report declared and re- gretted that more than one-half of the pupils in their schools had failed to complete the three years' curriculum for the intermediate certifi- cate. This, moreover, is not a merely local characteristic, but is general throughout the length and breadth of Scotland. Here, again, the only remedy suggested is that an endeavour should be made to induce a 28 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM larger number to take the full course in which manifestly there is no interest. This failure, however, is not the only thing to be deplored. What rather is to be deplored, as a recent writer declares, is that in many cases, and during the precious years of youth, boys and girls are compelled to spend their time in schools with books, "striving to develop a mind which is not there to develop, and allowing a body to lie idle until it has become too fixed to acquire a habit as part of itself". What is meant by this statement is that a certain proportion of every people, irrespective of rank or class, are unfitted by nature to profit by the kind of higher education provided at the present time in our schools : that they benefit httle by it in the long run ; and, that whilst they are wasting their time in this vain endeavour, they are not acquiring the education for which by nature they are suited — the education which develops and trains their manual and muscular abilities, and which lies at the base of all after successful craftsmanship. When shall we learn and un- derstand the lesson that — God's finger marks distinctions, all so fine We would confuse : the lesser has its use, Which, when it apes the greater, is forgone.* It is, indeed, sometimes contended that at least our free and compulsory education has reduced illiteracy to a minimum ; but this abolition may be produced at too great a cost ^ Cf. Browning's *' Luria ". DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 29 if, as a concurrent result, the training which underHes craftsmanship is neglected, and we turn out a race of flabby, inefficient, and non- adaptable workmen. The craftsmen of the middle ages were illiterate, in our usage of the term, and yet they produced works of archi- tecture and of art which have no equals at the present day, and they did so because their edu- cation and training was not divorced, as our modern school system tends to be, from life and its ideal aims and purposes. Evidence in abundance might be produced of a similar widespread dissatisfaction with the results of the democritization of education in America and in France, but one piece of evi- dence must here suffice. In 1907, at a meeting of the American Railway Master Mechanics' Association employing nearly half a million workers, they, thoroughly dissatisfied with the public school education provided, and with its ineffectiveness, resolved to establish "schools of their own in their own works, where boys might be taught reading, writing, and arith- metic, as preliminary to a special training in the designing, making, and working of machines " ; i.e. instead of bringing the workshop into the school, by public subsidy, they have brought the schools into the workshops by private enterprise. In 1908 a committee reported " that this new system was the most im- portant influence introduced into railroad or- ganization during the present generation, and that the practical and the theoretical were so 30 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM thoroughly united that "the grease of the shop is literally rubbed into the lesson sheets ".^ One more piece of evidence, and this from another source, may be brought forward, be- cause, all unwittingly, it goes to the root of the matter, and explains why we so often fail in our educational efforts. A committee, com- posed partly of representatives of Oxford Uni- versity, and partly of representatives of working men, reporting in 1909 on the comparative failure of the Oxford University Extension Movement, remark that the whole history of the movement " shows that higher education cannot be imposed upon workpeople from above^ but must be organized and managed by men who belong to themselves". "This is," they go on to say, "a fundamental axiom the neglect of which will be followed by certain failure."^ How, rightly or wrongly, the imposition from above of elementary education is felt, may be realized when we find a present-day writer of repute, acquainted with the poor, declaring " that education is the biggest fraud ever forced upon them, and the most dangerous too, for it has been held forth so persistently and so loudly as a cure-all that even the poor themselves have been very largely deceived".^ Such, then, is the evidence, and much more of a similar character might be produced in witness of the widespread dissatisfaction with the results of ^ Cf. " Essays on Fallacy," by Andrew Macphail. • Cf. •' Report on Oxford University Extension Movement ". 3Cf. "Seems So". DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 31 our educational system. This dissatisfaction, this unrest, may, of course, be but a particular aspect of that wider unrest in nearly every sphere of life and action, which is so striking a characteristic of the present day. And how- ever this may be explained, one contributory cause may be traced to the fact that our ele- mentary school system has, by the over- emphasis placed on the intellectual aims of education, done little in the past to furnish a training in obedience to authority — to a recog- nized authority : recognized because it is self-accepted and self-imposed. Moreover, with- out this training in obedience to established authority, no real democratic rule is possible, for, in every case, where the elected leaders of a people, or any section of a people, fail to command this authority, then the notion of a self-governing group or community, which is the root-idea of democracy, is abandoned, and in its place we have substituted mere indi- vidualism, finding expression in the opinion of some temporary and fluctuating majority. But to pursue this theme would lead me too far away from my particular purpose this morning, and I must now pass to the second question, viz. : Is this dissatisfaction with our educational system wholly or partially justified ? That some of the opinions which I have quoted are extreme, and of too pessimistic a character, may at once be admitted. Moreover, much has been done during the past few years in attempting to remedy the defects of our 32 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM educational system, and in endeavouring to make the instruction given in our schools more practical ; and further, some of the critics seem to be unaware of the more recent developments inaugurated in our schools and colleges. But the very fact that within the past few years serious efforts have been made, both in our schools and universities, to alter and to widen the courses of study, so as to meet the demands of the time, is the best evidence in support of this widespread dissatisfaction, and is its justifi- cation. Now, whilst this consciousness of the necessity of change in our educational system is admitted, yet the most immediate and the most astonishing fact is that we apparently are un- aware of what particular direction this change should take. Ex uno^ omnes disce. Within the past twenty years, from a fixed and rigid curri- culum, imposed upon all students in the faculties of Arts in our universities, we have passed, or are passing, to the greatest variety and elas- ticity in our courses of study. Moreover, and this is the serious import, in all these changes there seems to be no clearly defined end or purpose, beyond the mere profitless end or pur- pose of securing variety and diversity. Very much the same is true of the curricula of our schools and training colleges ; the continual changes introduced seem to point to the fact that we have not yet clearly thought out the aims and after purposes in life, to which educa- tion should be a means. But, to return to the elementary school prob- DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 33 lem, and to the second part of my task this morning, it must be frankly admitted that, after forty years' experience of compulsory, and over twenty years of free education, a considerable portion of the people of this country do not seem to value the education provided, and that without compulsion they would not avail them- selves of the facilities furnished for the training of their children. The compulsory officer is still with us, and if we may judge from statistics recently pubHshed, his duties within recent years have increased rather than decreased. It must be further admitted that another section of the people, whilst acquiescing in this com- pulsion, do so unwillingly, and, in particular, are dissatisfied with the recently enacted ex- tension of the leaving school age. And this dis- satisfaction is based partly on the ground that the boy or girl by this extension enters upon real work too late in life, and partly on the ground that no distinction, either as regards local circumstance or individual aptitude is made ; and it is contended that in fact we are again com- mitting the fallacy which underlay the old code system, the fallacy of assuming that all children are equally circumstanced in hfe, and differ little the one from the other in mental ap- titude. This opinion is widely prevalent in rural districts, and it is openly contended that the eduction and training which a boy receives by taking part in the daily work of the farm is of much greater value between the ages of 12 and 14 than that which can be obtained in the arti- 3 34 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM ficial atmosphere of the schoolroom, even when this is supplemented by that modern invention, the school garden. No one who has read and pondered over the life of Bettesworth,^ the Surrey labourer, so beautifully portrayed by Mr. George Bourne, but must admit that the training which comes through actual daily ex- perience, is at least equally valuable with that which is obtainable from books and the arti- ficial methods of the class-room. Moreover, my own opinion is that sooner or later, as regards education in the rural districts of the country, we must return to a condition of things somewhat similar to that which prevailed fifty years ago in Scotland, when the older boys worked in the summer months and attended school in the winter, with this difference that in the future the education given will have its roots in the needs and desires of the agricul- tural community as a whole, rather than, as was the custom in the past, in the needs of the few intellectually gifted. For all true education has and must have its roots in the attempt to satisfy human needs and to realize human pur- poses. This is the truth which the master mechanics of America have discovered ; this also is the truth which unwittingly the Oxford Committee have begun to realize. Moreover, this is no mere opinion, for words and concepts and all the products of the intellect are but dead abstracta, cut out from a once living experience. * Cf. also Farmer Jeremy and His Ways in " All Men are Ghosts," by L. P. Jacks. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 35 It was from this living experience that they originally derived their value and their use ; and it is only when once again they enter the living tissue of experience that they become real — of value and of use — in the direction and guidance of life. Moreover, throughout all our education we are too apt to forget that there is a kind of knowledge which can be derived only from direct experience. It may be local, par- ticular, and empirical, but it is of equal value to conceptual knowledge, which gives us but the universal or common characteristics of things. Much of the knowledge of the fisherman, of the agriculturist, and even of the good teacher is of this character, and without it real guidance of life and action is impossible. For intellectual knowledge, by itself, and itself alone, produces, and can only produce, the mere mechanic, fitting part to part, in an already conceived and de- termined whole ; and it is well to remember that there may be mere mechanics in our professorial chairs as well as in our work- shops. For real creative work, as well as for all real progress, both kinds of knowledge are required, and without their combination, no matter what our previous education and training may have been, we remain, and must remain, ineffective, inefficient, and incompe- tent workers. And, again, this over-emphasis of intellectual thought, with its corresponding neglect of local, empirical, and particular knowledge has not only led us to over-value the education of the school, 3* 36 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM and to under-value the education of direct ex- perience, but it has also vitiated our philo- sophical, and our political, as well as our educational thinking, for nearly half a century. It has led us, e.g., to believe that by the mere diffusion among the people of certain intellectual conceptions, mainly derived from books, we might thereby raise the mass of mankind to a common level. Even at times, in our foolish- ness, we have been inchned to utter the prayer of Paracelsus, the arch-intellectuaHstic : — Make no more giants God, But elevate the race at once, we ask To put forth all our strength ; our human strength. All starting fairly, all equipped alike, true hearted See if we can not beat Thy angels yet.^ Or again, with social and educational reformers of the intellectualistic and Fabian type, we have been prone to believe that by mere external regulation we can improve mankind, and to affirm — paradox of paradoxes — that the wider the area of external compulsion the larger the amount of individual freedom realized, and as a result we have been apt to forget that : — Mankind are not pieces — there is the fault You cannot push them, and, the first move made Lean back, and study what the next shall be In confidence that, when 'tis fixed upon. You find just where you left them, blacks and whites ; Men go on moving when your hand's away.^ It is again — to pass from the greater to the less — this neglect of empirical and living fact, this denial of variety and diversity in human 1 Cf. Browning's " Paracelsus ". ^ Browning's •' Luria ". DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 37 needs, and in national purposes, that is the root-error of those who contend that a univer- sity training would be a good thing for all intending teachers. We take a general type of education, and without considering the variety in human aptitude, or the multiplicity of local circumstance, or the diversity in national aims, we would shape all in the same mould. Above all, it is by taking certain intellectual concepts of a political nature, and by using them as if they, by themselves, stood for real entities in the living world of experience, that we have formed entirely wrong conceptions of wherein democratic rule really consists. Modern democracy is the offspring of the French Re- volution — is the ill-begotten child of the French Revolution — and French Rationalism was, and still is, but the narrowest of intellectuahsms. We start, e.g., from some abstract and unin- telligible conception of the equahty of all men, and from this we pass by easy gradations to the consequence that all are equally competent to choose their poHtical, their judicial, and their educational leaders ; and, by a further step, to the conclusion that all are equally competent to govern. And so, unless otherwise corrected, democracy of this type leads us to the only kind of equahty possible — the equality of all- round incompetence. In Athens of old the democracy reasoned that because we, the people, make the laws, therefore, we, the people, can interpret and carry out the laws, and so they claimed not merely to elect but to be the judges, 38 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM and to be paid for so acting. As a consequence the control of the legal tribunal passed into the hands of the most incompetent, and the crown- ing feat of this plebeian court was the trial and the condemnation to death of Socrates, the wisest and the most far-seeing of the Athenians of his time. For a modern parallel, in order that we may have an object lesson as to whither this false idea of democracy may lead us, we have only to look to certain present day ten- dencies in America and in France, where similar demands as regards the appointment of judges are being made. Let us look now at the history of popular control of education in this country. In 1872 we created the School Board system, and we then made the stupendous blunder of fixing, as the unit of control, the parish. As a conse- quence, from the very beginning it was, or might have been foreseen that such small and local boards, however willing they might be, possessed, in many cases, neither the know- ledge, nor the ability, nor the foresight to de- vise schemes of education suited to a developing and progressive society. Two results followed : in the first place the real control of education passed into the hands of the experts of the central authority, and since these experts were men educated all in one way, — men of university rank and distinction — con- sequently they supposed that the education of books was all-important, and so over a long period our elementary education was domin- DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 39 ated by this one-sided conception of education. Moreover, we carried the democratic principle of abstract equality even into our educational practice, and imposed the same curriculum equally upon all children. The old code system, the effects of which linger with us even to the present day, embodied this conception, but the faults of that system have so often been pointed out, that it is needless for me to enter upon them at the present time. In the second place, it was assumed, undesignedly it may be admitted, that what the people really desired was an education that would enable their sons and daughters to pass from the class of craftsmen, into the class of so-called brain workers — into what, without any slur, may be called the genteel classes. Moreover, the idea that education should form a kind of ladder by which our boys and girls may be enabled to rise from one class to another has tended to dominate the whole grading of our school system, and has given an entirely wrong bent to our educational organization. For it tends to elevate into the prominent aim what ought to be a subordinate. That a national system of education should furnish the opportunity for the specially gifted to qualify themselves for the work for which by natural aptitude they are best fitted, is a sound principle ; but that the system throughout should make this its main aim, to the neglect of the education and training of the many, is false and vicious. Hence, it seems to me, in so doing, we have taken the ideal of the few as 40 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM indicative of the wishes of the many. For the great majority of the people, whether belonging to the working classes, to the mercantile, or to the professional classes, desire an education for their children which will fit them to do effici- ently some particular work in their own station of life. Hence, after forty years' experience, we have to admit that our local educational boards neither rule nor direct the education of the chil- dren under their charge, and that perhaps this is better so, since, in a true democracy, it may not be their business to do so. Again, we must admit that the education provided in our schools does not satisfy the needs, the aspirations, and the ideals of many of the people ; for if it did so, we should have the system gladly accepted, and compulsion would only be necessary in the case of the few who are antagonistic to all law and order. And so democratic rule in education, as at present conceived, fails in two ways: it fails because, to use words already quoted, it is felt to be an education imposed from without, and not based upon the actual needs and aspir- ations of the people themselves, and if this is so in any great measure, then assuredly, whatever else may be said of it, it is not founded upon a democratic basis. It fails again, because starting from the assumption that the people themselves were competent to direct the education of their children, we have found this to be an ideal im- possible of realization, and so, as a consequence, the real and effective control has passed into the DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 41 hands of a bureaucracy of experts, or of so-called experts. Moreover, the determination of the respective spheres of local and central authority has never been defined, and in my opinion can never be defined until we have overthrown the false ideal of democracy which now prevails. With the creation of popularly elected bodies, who do not govern, we have again to admit that somehow or other we have either failed to arrive at a true conception of democracy, or that having found it we have failed in its practi- cal working out. In the very few moments which remain at my disposal, I can only attempt, in supplement to what has been indicated throughout, to sketch, and that very briefly, wherein true democratic rule in the sphere of education consists. In the first place, we must get rid of the idea that democracy means the rule of the working classes alone. Democracy, in the modern sense, is the rule, or rather, the ad- mitted sovereignty of the whole people. In the second place, we must purge our thinking of all abstract conceptions, such as that of the equahty of all men; and henceforward base our ideas of democratic rule upon the facts of actual experience — upon a knowledge and understanding of the needs and aspirations of the people themselves. From this basis we shall come to the conclusion (i) that every man has an equal right with another to make known effectively the nature of his aspirations 42 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM and his ideals as regards the education of his children ;(2)and the right that his children should have equality of opportunity : that it ought to be the main business of the local controlling authorities to find, to formulate, and to interpret these ideals, and needless to say, such local authorities should be representative of every class of the community, and should be strong enough to make their influence felt upon the central controUing authority ; that, further, (3) it is, or ought to be, the main work of the central authority, having ascertained the views and ideals of the various classes of the community, to devise the means by which they may be reahzed ; and that being effected, to leave as large a measure of freedom as is possible, both to the local authorities and to the teachers in the practical carrying out and attainment of these ideals. But if democratic rule in education, as well as in other departments of public life, is to succeed and to be effective, then its watchword throughout, and especially in the filling up of all public posts, must be that of " competence ". The people must see that their elected repre- sentatives are men of competence ; those in charge of the appointment of the central officials must also make this their sole test, and, more- over, much more than in the past their choice must not be limited to men educated only in one way ; and finally those who are entrusted with the selection of the teachers in our schools must place merit in the forefront. This being DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 43 realized, we may then look forward to the day when, in the words of Martin Luther, we shall believe, and believing, endeavour to secure by means of our educational agencies that " best and richest increase, prosperity and strength of a State, viz. that it shall contain a great number of learned, intelligent, honourable, and well-bred citizens, who, when they have become all this, may get wealth and put it to a good use ". III. THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM. The question of the moral and civic education of the children of the nation is one which is receiv- ing a large measure of attention at the present time. Not only is this the case in our own country, but other countries seem to be faced with problems similar in kind to those which exist in our own. Evidence of this is furnished by the discussions which took place at the Congress on ** Moral Education " — discussions which were taken part in by representatives from all the leading nations of Europe as well as by delegates from America and Japan. Now this question of moral education, as Professor Sadler^ has pointed out, is the heart of the modern educational problem, for it is being increasingly felt by all serious thinkers, that the educational system of a country, however suc- cessful it may be in realizing the intellectual and economic ends of education, by means of its schools, yet if it fails to turn out youth with high moral and civic ideals, then it has failed to pro- duce any lasting or certain result. For the con- tinued well-being and existence of any and every 1 Cf. •' Moral Instruction and Training in Schools," Vol. L 44 THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 45 modern State depends, in the first place, upon the securing of the physical and economic efficiency of its future individual members, and in the second place, and above all, upon the securing of the social and moral efficiency of its future citizens. It is because, then, of its present day importance that I propose to discuss certain aspects of the moral education problem. In the first place, we may ask what are the causes which have been and are operative in bringing this problem to the forefront at the present time ; (2) admitting that something more systematic is necessary in the way of moral instruction in our schools, what are the methods proposed ? and (3) what are the particular difficulties as regards moral instruction and training in our elementary schools, and how are these diffi- culties to be met ? or to put it another way, what changes are necessary in the organization of our elementary schools, if moral instruction and training are to be more effective than they are, or, at least, seem to be at the present time? Taking, then, our first question : what are the causes operative at the present time which have led to the moral education problem being placed in the forefront as the central of all educational questions ? We may say that the first great cause has been the change in the social structure of society due to the great economic and indus- trial development of the modern State. This in- dustrial and economic development began in Great Britain more than a hundred years ago, 46 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM but during the last twenty years it has entered upon a new phase, and the characteristic feature of this new phase of the social problem is the in- tense economic and industrial competition which exists between the more prominent European States. This change in the social structure of the modern State is reflected in the great extension of the school systems — not merely in the estab- lishment and in the development of the Primary School system, but also in the foundation of Higher Schools and of Technical Colleges. As a consequence our schools have become, or are tending to become, more intellectual in aim ; they incline to lay the emphasis upon the know- ledge and training which make for worldly success, and which in after life may enable the individual to earn a living, and as a result the moral and ethical aim of education has tended, and is tending, to fall into the background, and to receive but a small share of the attention of the school. A second result of the economic development has been that, in many cases, the home exerts a less influence upon the formation of character than in the period preceding the introduction of manufactures on a large scale. Pestalozzi, e.g. firmly believed that the home was the best moral and spiritual influence in the building up of moral character, and that public or school education should model itself upon the practice of the good home ; but, then, the home for Pes- talozzi was the home of the small agricultural tenant or the home which engaged in the manu- THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 47 facture of some article. Hence, in a good home of this kind, the child was trained to co-operate with his father or mother from an early age, in the furtherance of the interests of the home, and so received a training and instruction which is absent, or nearly so, from the homes of many of the working classes of our day. Hence the new demand made upon the schools to supply a training in habits which the home no longer provides. The SECOND great cause operative is the great extension in man's knowledge. During the past fifty years Science in every department has made enormous advances. Never since the early days of the Italian Renaissance has there been such an extension of knowledge. Never since that age has there been so much new knowledge claiming to be admitted into the school curriculum and to be adapted for the use of the young. This again is reflected in the over-burdened curricula of our schools, and in the ever constant demand that such or such a new subject should be taught. The time when the three R's formed the main staple of our elementary school course, and a little Latin and less Greek formed the main ingredients in all higher education, has been succeeded by one in which the principal question is not what we can include^ but what we can reasonably exclude from our school courses. With so much in- tellectual knowledge and information to impart year by year, is it to be wondered at that teachers find little time to inquire into the 48 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM particular nature of their pupils and to aid directly in the shaping of their character. A THIRD great cause, and perhaps the most important, has been the change in the in- tellectual outlook of many men and women. Natural Science has furnished the present generation with a new interpretation of the history of the world, and historical investiga- tions have discredited many of the beliefs which formerly swayed the conduct and determined the ideals of mankind. Religious influences are weakening, and, in many cases, religious sanctions are no longer brought forward in support of moral rules, and as yet (with one possible exception) no modern nation has found a substitute for the loss of the religious influences, of the religious sanctions to moral authority. This change in men's thoughts, in the attitude of man to the fundamental problems of life, is also reflected in the schools; e.g. in France, since 1882, the moral and civic instruction in the schools directly under public control has been divorced entirely and absolutely from any and every form of religious belief France, as Mr. De Montmorency^ has pointed out, is engaged in a vast educational experiment. This experiment is the total exclusion of Christianity and every other form of Deism from the State schools, and the substitution of a formal system of moral teaching which aims at instilling a civic and national ideal in the minds of the pupils. What the final outcome of this experiment may 1 Cf. " National Life and National Education ". THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 49 be no one can tell, but the present results, so far as they can be accurately determined, are far from conclusive of the ultimate success of the experiment. In very much the same way the so-called educational struggle in England is largely a struggle between the two great religious bodies — the Episcopalian and the Non- conformist — for the control of the religious and moral instruction of the young, and England may be forced, as France was, to establish a system of public schools upon a purely secular basis. Whether this secularization of the schools is a good or a bad thing, and what ultimate effect it may have upon the moral character of the future citizens is matter of dispute, and one which it is difficult to forecast. What we have to note here is that it is one of the causes operative in bringing the question of the moral education of the child to the forefront at the present day. Closely connected with this movement is the FOURTH cause which is and has been operative now for some years. The rise and spread of the democratic ideal — of the conception that all men are equal and therefore ought to have an equal share in the government of their country, has resulted gradually in the avowal that the modern State is and should become supreme over all associations, and that the interests and life of the State are paramount over every other interest — even over the interests and life of all and every religious association. Thus, the mediaeval contest between the claims of the 4 50 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM State and the Church has resulted or is tending to result in the complete and absolute suprem- acy of the State. As a consequence there follows the demand that the State shall neither, in its educational policy nor in any other way favour this or that religious body. The doctrine of toleration thus tends logically to result in the complete separation of Church and State, and of course the inevitable demand follows for the secularization of the schools under State control. This position has already been arrived at in France, and there is a con- siderable and growing body of opinion that this is, in the last resort, the only possible solu- tion in England. Hence the question is raised, is it not possible to formulate certain common elementary moral truths which all are agreed upon, and to make this common moral tradition the basis of all ethical instruction within our schools. Another cause, not so apparent, nor so much taken account of, but perhaps as real, has been the dominancy of external examination tests in our school system. This has tended and still tends to the over-emphasizing in education of mere memory knowledge ; to the teacher's devoting the greater part of his time and atten- tion to the production of certain intellectual qualities, and to the neglecting of the training in those moral qualities necessary for full in- dividual development. For the result of our moral instruction lies in the future character of the boys and girls which our schools turn out : THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 51 it is life which tests this and it cannot be fully measured by any known school tests. Along with these causes and also operating to bring the moral education problem to the forefront is the growing feeling that universal, free, and compulsory education, although it has done much to increase the intellectual alertness of the nations, yet has done little to effect a betterment in morals. Speaking of the present day condition of things in France, Mr. Harold Johnston, who, I may say in passing, is an advocate of the teaching of morals apart from religion, declares that, "In fifty years crimin- ality has increased threefold although there is scarcely any increase of population. This enormous increase in crime is particularly noticeable amongst the young. Again, France has passed from being one of the soberest of the nations of Europe to being one of the least sober. The population is now retrograde in numbers, and atheism of the grossest kind abounds." ^ And although the picture in our own country cannot be painted in such dark colours, yet there are many features in our present day civilization to make us pause and ask whether universal, free, and compulsory education has produced all the results which its authors fondly expected it to do. History furnishes us with many warnings as to the dangers inherent in the over-intellectualization of the aims of education. It was the over- emphasizing of the intellectual and cultural 1 Cf. Moral Instruction and Training in Schools, Vol. II. 4* 52 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM aims of education that led to the rise and spread of the sophistic spirit in the ancient Greek cities, and was one of the main causes which led to the gradual decay and downfall of this ancient civilization. Again, intellectual education reached a high level of attainment in the Italian cities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and yet through the neglect of the civic and moral aspects of education the Italy of these days became poli- tically and morally corrupt ; and it is this over- intellectualization of education in France at the present day which, in my opinion, constitutes the gravest danger to the future welfare and prosperity of that great State. These, then, are the main causes which have led to the reconsideration of the problems of moral education. Before entering upon the second part of our problem, let me at once say that I do not intend to enter into any debate as to whether morality is or is not inseparable from religion, and this for two reasons. In the first place, the advocates on either side represent two funda- mental and divergent types of temperament, and as these two types have existed from the dawn of civilization and are likely to persist throughout all time, a common and final con- sensus of opinion on this subject is impossible. The men and women in whom the rationalistic temper of mind is dominant will always be found ranged in one camp : the men and women, THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 53 especially the latter, in whom the emotional temperament is supreme, will as a rule always be found in the other and opposing camp, and hence the struggle between the two must be an unending one. Rationalism may prevail for a time, but sooner or later the revolt to the other extreme position is bound to take place. This is both the lesson of history and the inference to be drawn from the complexity and two- sidedness of human nature. In the second place, it seems to me that the conception of a morahty, divorced and separated from any and every form of religion — a mere morality — is a contradiction in terms. Even the positivist has to postulate a final goal, the good of humanity, to all his efforts, and when- ever this or any other goal is held up as desir- able, then its desirability must be based on faith, for manifestly it cannot be guaranteed by any process of the human reason. For we can have no certainty that the existence of the human race on this earth is a permanent char- acteristic of the universe. Man, for all we know, may be but a transitory and accidental phenomenon in the life-history of a world, destined after a time to pass away and leave not a trace behind him. Hence a morality with- out some ultimate belief behind it, based on faith, is to me unthinkable and impossible. But leaving Metaphysics aside, it would be well if it were recognized that the present day dispute is not as to whether morality can exist with or without religion, but really is as to whether the 54 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM teaching of morals should be based on this or that particular form of religion, and whenever the problem takes this shape, the contest tends to become a poHtical one, the object aimed at being to secure the State's aid in the furtherance of the contentions of the one or the other of the parties engaged. But apart from the religious question, it is universally admitted that something more sys- tematic in the way of moral instruction is neces- sary in our schools, and this on the ground that a high ideal of civic and national duty is neces- sary for the life, the welfare, and the continuous well-being of the State. For the evils, such as, e.g., intemperance, which are prevalent in our time, are not merely individual evils, but evils which threaten the life and the welfare of the particular community and of the particular State. This leads me to my second question : assuming that something more systematic in the way of moral instruction and training in our schools is needed, what are the methods advocated ? Here again, and corresponding to some ex- tent to the two opposing camps above men- tioned, we find two opposing schools of thought. On the one hand, we have those who advocate that there should be direct and systematic teach- ing of moral principles, and that a certain part of every school day should be set aside for the direct inculcation of the fundamental truths. In particular it is urged that children should be instructed in the evils of intemperance, of gam- THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 55 bling, and similar vices which they are likely to fall into, unless warned, during youth. On the other side are ranged the advocates of indirect moral education. They contend that the formative influences are indirect rather than direct : that it is through living in, and taking part in, the organized life of the home and the school that the child's character is gradually formed ; that virtue is not so much a thing to be learned as to be acquired by practice ; that as John Locke said, what a boy is to receive from education, what is to sway and influence his life, must be something put into him be- times, viz. habits woven into the very principles of his nature ; and, further, they contend that the mere intellectual understanding of the content of a moral truth and the mere intellectual com- prehension of the physical or moral conse- quences which may follow from its breach, are no guarantees that right conduct will result. Amongst these indirect influences, the most potent and the most far-reaching is the per- sonality of the teacher. What personality really means : what are its psychological con- stituents : how it makes its influence felt upon the pupil, and what the particular attitude of the pupil is towards this influence, are questions of extreme difficulty concerning which I shall say something at a later stage of the discussion. But in the meantime it may be well to note that the influence exerted by the personality of the parent or teacher is not necessarily, in every case, good ; and even when this influence is 56 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM exerted by a man or woman of high ideals, it may result in the inducing in the minds of the pupils of a receptive and submissive attitude v^hich works against the development of such mental and moral qualities as self-reliance and self-initiating power. We may be so long ac- customed to obey that we lose the power to command : we may be so long habituated to receive and accept knowledge from others that we become unable to think or to act for our- selves. In addition to the influence exerted by the personality of the teacher, and the training in habits through taking part in the corporate life of the school, the advocates of the indirect method declare that in the teaching of some of the school subjects, and in particular through the lessons in history and in literature, occa- sions may arise when the skilful teacher may suggest moral truths ; and, further, that events occur in the conduct of the school which fur- nish the teacher with the opportunity directly to inculcate moral principles. Coming now to consider what may be urged against direct and systematic moral instruction, let me say at the outset that no serious educa- tionalist objects to this method, if it can be shown to lead to ultimate good. If lessons on temperance, or on the evils of gambling, or any similar subject, produce or tend to produce any good effect on future conduct, then we, one and all, should gladly welcome the introduction of such lessons into the school course. But I greatly question whether the introduction of THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 57 such teaching into the elementary schools of the country does tend to produce the results desired by its advocates, and moreover, there are certain inherent dangers in this method which may produce greater evils than those which the method desires to prevent. The first danger is that instead of morally training the boy we may simply build up a knowledge about moral truths, and this is quite a different thing from establishing in the minds of our pupils moral ideas effective as controls over conduct. As Ribot points out *' An idea which is only an idea, a simple fact of knowledge, produces nothing and does nothing, it only acts if it is felt : if it is accompanied by an affective state ". In simple terms, if ideas are to affect conduct, they must arouse certain emotional tendencies inherent in the child's nature. Again, the direct method aims at moral instruction rather than at moral training ; at the enlighten- ing of the intelligence rather than at the steady formation of habits and character. Both, no doubt, are necessary in moral education, but if we begin the moral enlightenment at too early an age and neglect the training in habit, then the great danger is that instead of making our pupils moral, we may train up the youth merely to be moral dialecticians. This to a large ex- tent has been the experience of France, as wit- ness the statement of a teacher in a French academy that his prizeman in morals was the biggest knave in the lot.^ 1 Cf. Mr. Harold Johnston's article in " Moral Instruction and Training in Schools," Vol. II. 58 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM The second danger inherent in the method is that by contra-suggestion we may arouse an opposing system of ideas : e.g. lessons on the evils of gambling showing how one individual without effort gains at the expense of another may arouse a very opposite set of ideas to what the teacher intends. The east-end boy may think how good a thing it is to acquire wealth by so simple and easy a means. In the third place, much of such direct teaching, it seems to me, is premature, because at the school stage there is no inclination, no temptation to do the wrong acts. Contrasting the two methods here outlined, I think we may conclude that in the school the method of moral instruction should be largely indirect, and that direct instruction should be limited to those occasions on which some event in the school hfe or in the larger life of the community furnishes the opportunity to the teacher to drive home some particular moral truth. This leads us to our next question, viz. what are the particular difficulties in the way of moral training and instruction in our elemen- tary schools, and how are these difficulties to be met, or (as I have already put it), what changes are necessary in the organization of our elementary schools, if moral instruction and training are to be really effective ? Now the first and perhaps the fundamental condition for all healthy moral activity is sound physical health : we are too prone to think that THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 59 morality is something far above and inde- pendent of physical conditions, and too prone to forget that physical exhaustion is a frequent cause of wrong-doing both in the case of the child and of the adult. But Rousseau clearly states the relation when he declares that ''the weaker the body, the more it commands; the stronger the body, the more it obeys. The body must needs be vigorous to obey the soul." This is the first limitation imposed upon the moral education of the children in many of our elementary schools, and it often proves a real hindrance both to the intellectual and moral aims of the school. The restlessness, the in- abihty of the child to control impulse, and the lack of power to fix his attention upon a sub- ject for any length of time are in many cases due to physical causes, and until these are re- medied, then both the intellectual and the moral education of the child must suffer, and not merely his education, but the child himself suffers. The second condition necessary in the moral education of the child is that the means employed for the attainment of the end should be systematic and continuously applied, and, moreover, this implies that there should be some community between the aim of the home and that of the school, and some consistency between the means both apply. Herein con- sists the second difficulty, the second hindrance to the work of the elementary school. It is true no doubt that this inconsistency may exist in other schools, but it is a far greater evil in 6o EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM many of the elementary schools of our poorer districts than in the schools attended by chil- dren of the better classes, for the training in habits which the elementary school supplies is not supplemented and supported by the home training, indeed, in many cases, the home in- fluence tends to undo the work of the school. In addition to this, the teacher has often to con- tend with the evils of irregular attendance and the continual migration of pupils from one school to another, and both these evils hinder his efforts and tend to lessen the value of both the in- tellectual and moral work of the school. But leaving these more or less external hindrances, let us consider the internal hin- drances which arise from the organization of our large city schools. Again and again we have recently been told that the chief and the most potent influence in moral education is the per- sonality of the teacher. Now the writers and speakers who emphasize this factor in moral education have usually in their minds the great English public schools, or schools established on a similar basis. And one of the remarkable facts throughout the whole course of the de- bates at the recently held Moral Congress was the small reference made to the moral education of the children in our elementary schools. But, we may ask, what is meant by the per- sonality of the teacher, and how does it mani- fest its influence upon the pupil ? To answer this question fully would require me not merely to cover a large part of the psychology of the THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 6i moral life, but also to enter into some descrip- tion of the various stages which have to be passed through by each of us in the ascent to morality. But some answer must be attempted if the influence of this factor is to be understood. Now, sooner or later in the moraHzing of the child, the stage is or should be reached when conduct is regulated not so much by the fear of physical punishment, or by the hope of material gain, as by the anticipated praise or blame of those in authority over him, i.e. at this stage the pleasures or pains which check and control impulse are not physical but social or moral. Taking the negative case, we may now ask, how does the anticipated disapproval of a superior bring about the checking of impulse : how does the anticipated disapproval of the superior work in suppressing an instinctive tendency to do a wrong act. Now, in the first place, we may say that an authority which governs by mere fear is not suflficient to account for this fact. For, in those cases in which the authority is conceived by the child as a mere fear-producing authority — as a mere dispenser of punishment, then when impulse is checked or controlled, it is checked or controlled by the anticipated fear of the painful consequences that may be expected to follow its indulgence. The brutal father, the harsh teacher, are ex- amples of authorities who rule by fear : who inspire no high motives of conduct in those in subjection to them and who exert no permanent influence upon the formation of the moral char- 62 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM acter of the children under their care. If, then, this authority, whose praise the child seeks and whose dispraise he dreads, is not a fear-pro- ducing authority, how are we to conceive of this authority, and the answer is that the person in authority who really influences those under him must evoke the admiration, or the awe or even the reverence of those over whom he is placed.^ These are all complex emotions which we need not stop to analyse, but what I wish you to note is that the teacher whose personaHty influences his pupils is the teacher who arouses the ad- miration or the awe or the reverence of his pupils, and awe and reverence are complex emotions of which admiration is a constituent element. As a consequence, the pupil who admires or reveres his teacher places himself in the attitudes of submission and of receptivity to his superior. When he is praised, he is pleased because it is the acknowledgment of his merit by one whom he recognizes as his su- perior, and as a consequence his sense or feeling of self-respect is strengthened : on the other hand, when he is blamed, when he incurs the disapproval of the superior, then there follows an intense feeling of self-abasement, of self- humihation. Now it is through the operation of these two human sentiments of self-respect and of self-abasement that we may account for the high value of social praise and of social blame in the moral development of the child, ^ Cf. McDougall's •' Social Psychology " and Iron's '• Psy- chology of Ethics *'. THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 63 and it is through evoking now the one and now the other of these fundamental tendencies that the personahty of the teacher works.^ Again, the teacher who evokes one or other of the above-mentioned sentiments in the minds of his pupils tends to influence them through the operation of prestige suggestion. They tend to accept the opinions, the behefs, and the state- ments of the admired person merely upon his authority, and further, the admired person be- comes the model to imitate, and the pupil aims at becoming what the admired person now really is. On the other side, the teacher who is to arouse the above-named sentiments with their corresponding attitudes in the minds of his pupils, who is to make his personality felt in the life of the school and on the conduct of the pupil, must be a man of ready sympathy, of keen moral insight, with a strong sense of justice ; consistent in his dealings with his pupils, and above all with a high ideal of the worth of his calling. As a recent reviewer puts it : '* The chief thing in education is the necessity of directing our efforts to get the right people as teachers and treating the teach- ing profession as one of the most honourable and also as a well paid one. Everywhere we see great expectations as to the results of educa- tion, almost reckless expenditure on educational appliances, and an inclination to look down on 1 For a fuller account of how these two sentiments function in the development of moral personality, cf. Baldwin's '• Social and Ethical Interpretations of Mental Phenomenon ". 64 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM the teachers and to pay them wretchedly. But it is teachers with the vocation for teaching that we require, not admirable systems, clever theories, even sympathetic interest, still less a cumbersome crowd of well-planned educational appliances." But even if this result were attainable, even if all or a large number of our teachers possessed this sense of vocation, the full effects of their efforts would not be attained until our large city schools are so organized that it is possible for the teacher to become intimately acquainted with the characteristic nature of each individual pupil. It is perhaps too late in the day to make lament over the huge size of many of our city schools, and to point out how impossible it is for one man to make his personal influence felt over such large numbers, but, by relieving the head master of the clerical work which he now, in many cases, has to perform, by de- volving more important duties upon the senior assistants and by regular staff conferences, much even in these cases might be done to im- prove the moral agency of the school, to spread the influence of the head throughout, and to make pupils and staff realize the unity and community of the school life. Again, if large classes are a hindrance to the attainment of the intellectual aims of education, they are a still greater obstacle to the realization of its moral and civic aims, for unless both teacher and pupil can come into intimate connexion with one another over a lengthened period, the personal THE MORAL EDUCATION PROBLEM 65 influence of the teacher will fail to effect any very definite result. Lastly, another great defect of our elementary schools as agencies in the moralizing of the young is their want of common school interests — their lack of a common, corporate life. Many teachers have seen this defect, and by the institution of school games, of school magazines, and in other ways are endeavouring to improve matters in this respect, but much more requires to be done to improve our schools as agencies in the moral education of the pupils. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I have tried in a rather imperfect and discursive manner to point out and to deal with certain aspects of the moral education problem, but the question is too vast, too many-sided, and presents too many particular difficulties adequately to be dealt with in one lecture ; however, what I should like to impress upon you, and in particular, to impress upon those who have the control of education in this and other large cities, is that the problem of the moral education of the child is a much more difficult one in the city than in the smaller schools of the country, and that it calls for the very best brains and the highest moral character in the teaching profession, and that the ability and character so demanded should be adequately rewarded. IV. TWO IDEALS OF THE END OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION. The question of the end or ideal which we should set before us as our aim in the education of woman is one which involves the prior settlement of another and more fundamental problem — and on the nature of our answer to this question depends the attitude we may ultimately take up towards the purely educa- tional issue. This problem has reference to the nature of woman, and to the place which she occupies, or, rather, should occupy, in society. In particular, it involves the deter- mination of the relationship in which she stands to man, her fellow and co-worker in society. Is this relationship one of subordination? of superiority? or of equality ? and, if we agree to say that it is one of equahty, is there any difference in the nature of each and in the functions which hereafter they may be called upon respectively to perform that necessitates a corresponding difference in the ends which we should set before us in their education, and in the methods by which these ends are to be attained? What ought woman's life to be? 66 IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION ey Wherein ought she to seek her happiness ? Is her education to fit her merely to be the obedient servant of man, a mirror of his ideas ? Is she to be trained so as to be destitute of all will of her own, or has she an individuality that claims recognition, and therefore demands that her education shall fit her to become an active, independent, reasoning being, with a will and personaHty of her own, which if ever made sub- ordinate to the will and personality of another is so subordinated by her own free choice and consent, in order that certain common ends may be attained. Such are the nature of the questions aroused by the problem of woman's education, and on the settlement of them depends not merely the determination of the ideal which we should set before us in her education, but the much larger question of the nature of the social relationship which we think ought to prevail between men and women. Now, as Lord Morley^ has pointed out, a writer on the subject of the education of women may start from one of three positions. He may consider woman as probably destined hereafter to become the wife and companion of a man ; or as destined to become a mother and the rearer of the young ; or he may look upon her as a human being having an independent personality, and endowed with gifts, talents, potentialities in less or greater number, capable of being turned, as in the case of man, to the best or worst uses. ^Morley, " Life of Rousseau," Vol. II, chap. iv. s* 68 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM According, then, to the emphasis which we lay upon one or other of these three ends, is our conception of the ideal of woman's education de- termined. If we think little of her duties in after life as a mother, and as the rearer and instructor of the young ; still less of her as a human being, possessed of talents and capacities that claim de- velopment for their own sake, and their own sake alone, then we have not got beyond the Oriental conception of woman's nature, or, at best, we have only reached a purified and clarified form of the same ideal, for then, implicitly for the most part, but no less really, we believe that the end of woman's life is something subordinate to the end of man's life, and that her happiness lies in ministering to the pleasures, caprices, and wants of mankind. Similarly, if we lay the chief emphasis upon the second position, upon her duties in after life as a mother and as the rearer and instructor of the young, we arrive at a conception of the end of woman's life as one wholly bounded by the horizon of her domestic and social duties. Her knowledge and activities must then be limited in scope and kind to that of the home and its requirements, and therein, so the theory im- plies, woman will find her true happiness and abiding satisfaction. Again, if we emphasize the third element, if we look upon the end as the realization of all the capacities of the individual woman, if this is made supreme so that the other two ends are neglected, or thought to be of comparatively IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 69 little importance in the education of our girls and women, then we are on the way to an equally one-sided, and therefore false, ideal of the end of woman's life and woman's education, and to a false notion of wherein her true happiness consists, for now we are implicitly assuming that the development of her individuality is an end in itself which can be considered apart from, and in entire independence of, the more primi- tive, but still deeper instincts and needs of her nature. If now you understand this, you will perceive that whatever conception we may form regard- ing the end of woman's life, whatever notion we may have as to the nature of the end with which she identifies her happiness, this determines not merely the ideal at which we should aim in our education of the future woman, but determines also the nature of the relation- ship which we think ought to subsist between men and women, and consequently the nature of the type of society which we think ought to prevail. For if our conception of the nature of the end of woman's life belongs to the first-named class, then we must also conceive of a society in which man is all in all, and woman his mere thing or chattel — a means and a means only to his pleasures, high or low, noble or ignoble. Again, if our conception belongs to the second class, we must place before us as our ideal of the social life which ought to prevail, one in which the activities of man have no limit, but those of 70 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM woman are definitely limited, defined, and cir- cumscribed. Lastly, if we take the third conception in its extreme form, and there is a tendency to do so in some quarters at the present day, then we shall have to conceive of a society in which the activities of woman are as unlimited in scope as those of man — one in which she places herself on a footing of equality with him in every sphere of life and action ; and such an ideal, it is needless to say, has never been realized in the world's history, and were it realized, it would and must inevitably work out its own inherent falsification. Thus, as we shall see more clearly in the sequel, the true ideal must somehow lie in a harmony of all three positions or functions; and whenever we emphasize one position or function to the neglect of the other two, we are in danger of formulating a one-sided and false conception of the true end of woman's life and of woman's education. Nevertheless, the various elements in the notion are not of equal value, and the really important question is as to the relative place of each in reaHzing the ideal as a whole. Moreover, we may test the worth of the various ideals set forth or prevalent during any given period by observing what function is made prominent. For, it is only in so far as we emphasize the claims of women to reahze their individual capacities to the full that we can rightly evaluate the other two sides or aspects of her life. IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 71 But in order that we may understand this question in all its bearings, there is another preliminary distinction which we must bear in mind, and this is the distinction between the potential ideal of what a woman's education should be and the actual ideal as it exists, pre- vails, and determines educational conduct at any given time. By a potential ideal, I mean what exists in the mind, or, it may be, in the works of an author. This no doubt influences conduct to some extent, and may determine practice in particular cases, but, nevertheless, it may exist potentially without influencing con- duct to any appreciable extent. On the other hand, the actual ideal is the ideal which is being realized at any given time. Now, this actual ideal is determined as regards its nature, not by the pupils who are being educated, nor by the educational theorist who at best can only influence the thought of his age, but by the adult portion of the community as organized in various forms. At one time the Church has been the dominant agent in the determination of what kind of education is best suited for the rising generation ; at another, the State ; while, at still another, certain voluntary associations may have the chief influence in the settlement of the question of the end of education. Hence the ideals of education diff'er with the difl'ering nature of the association dominant, and, as a consequence, the end to which the education of woman is directed varies correspondingly. If the Church is supreme, then we have an ideal 72 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM of woman's education, which, in the main, is moral and religious rather than intellectual. If the State, as in Sparta and in modern Germany, we have female education regarded as sub- ordinate in importance to that of man, for here the wife and mother is of much more value than the woman as a human being. In societies where individualism is dominant, we have, as a rule, a higher place assigned to woman, and a more comprehensive ideal of what her educa- tion should be, for the inevitable tendency of both Church and State is to narrow the ends at which education should aim. This is a danger which we have to guard against in our own day, for one of the results, as a rule, of a State- controlled system of education is to limit the ends of education to the purely economic and utilitarian, or, at any rate, to lay the main emphasis upon these aspects of the educational end. If, therefore, the actual ideal of education is determined at any given time by the adult portion of the community, then the chief in- fluence at work in shaping the end of woman's education will be the conception which men have of women, and of her place and function in society, and this is the more true in those cases in which such associations as the Church and the State are the dominant factors at work in guiding and directing the educational policy of a nation. Again, in the ideals prevalent at any one time, the three ends or aims are always present, but at one period, one or other is exalted and de- IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 73 termines the prevailing and dominant type of education. That is, we have to conceive of the three ideals co-existing and all more or less determining the nature of the education given, and so we have three corresponding types of education given — three different ends or aims to which education is directed. Now this afternoon I wish you to examine, with me, two instances in which the ideal of education — of what a woman's education should be — received, if I may so speak, classic ex- pression. In the writings of Rousseau we have the best expression of the ideal that a woman's education should be, through and through, so directed as to make her a fitting wife and com- panion to a man. We shall have to examine this ideal, to point out the fundamental fallacy upon which it is based, and to indicate the conception of the necessary social relations which it in- volves. The other and second ideal which we shall consider received not merely a theoretical but a practical exemplification in the days of the earlier Italian Renaissance, and was exhibited in the lives of many of the illustrious ladies of that period. Nowhere was it more clearly re- alized that a woman had a right to the develop- ment of all her capacities, and that there was a sphere wherein her powers could be freely and independently displayed. Let us now consider the ideal of education which Rousseau sets before us as the aim we should place before us in the education of a woman. In considering the education of Emile, 74 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM Rousseau lays down the rule that we should follow nature, and by this he means, in one aspect at least, that the boy was not merely to learn of and from nature, but that his education was to be carried out, as far as possible, apart from all human interference, and without re- ference to any specific human relation. The boy was to be trained, not to become a member of any special profession, not to follow any particular calling, but first and above all he was to be educated to become a man. The aim of the system (whether it was or could be successful by the methods adopted does not concern us) was thus to develop the powers and capacities of the individual by and through the reactions of nature, and this development was to be undertaken for itself and itself alone without reference to any ulterior aim. Thus Rousseau considers that the individual man has a right to the full all-round development of his particular nature apart from, and without re- ference to, any special function which he may afterwards be called upon to fulfil in society. But when he comes to the consideration of the education of women, Rousseau reverses this position entirely. Instead of laying down, as we should have supposed he would, that a woman has an equal right with a man to the development of all the potentialities of her in- dividual nature, and that she should be educated at first without reference to any special function which she may be called upon to perform in after life, we find that her education throughout is to IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 75 be dictated by the consideration that she is na- turally meant hereafter to become the wife and the companion of a man. Women are specially constituted to please men, and hence their whole education must be made relative to this final end. Herein, according to Rousseau, will woman find true happiness, and nowhere else. " To please men, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honoured by them, to educate them when young, to care for them when grown old, to counsel them, to console them, and to make life agreeable and sweet to them, these are the duties of women at all times, and what should be taught them from their infancy." ^ Having in these terms laid down the end of woman's life and education, we can quite easily understand how Rousseau considers gentleness, docility, and a meek submissiveness to be the chief characteristics desirable in a woman, and that intellectually, morally, and spiritually she is to be in entire subjection to man. Incapable, he says, of judging for herself on any matter of morals or theology, she is to accept the decision of father or husband as if it had the binding authority of the Church. Every girl, he asserts, ought to follow the religion of her mother, and every wife that of her husband. Independence and originality are the two vices which women ought to shun, and '* a woman of culture is to be avoided like a pestilence : she is the plague ^ The quotations are from Mr. W, H. Payne's translation. 76 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM of her husband, her children, her friends, her servants, everybody". If now we consider the subjects and methods of education by which this being is to be made fit to be the servant of mankind, and to mini- ster to his pleasures, we find that those sub- jects are to be chosen which aid and increase her powers to please, and that any method of education which would tend to make her inde- pendent, to have a mind of her own, is to be sedulously avoided, for, to Rousseau, while man's life is or ought to be guided by reason, woman's conduct is or ought to be directed by sentiment. At the beginning a girl's education must re- semble that of a boy, the first culture ought to be that of the body, for this order is common to both the sexes. But the object of the culture is in each case different. In the physical edu- cation of a boy, the object aimed at should be the development of strength : in the case of a girl the object to be aimed at is the development of physical and personal charm. Again, in the difference of the amusements of boys and girls Rousseau sees a natural difference which, so to speak, shadows forth the future destiny of woman and gives a guide to the educator how to proceed. Hence, while boys are being taught to read and write, girls ought to learn to sew, to embroider, and to design, for in this they will take a real and genuine interest because they perceive that these talents will one day be of service to them in adorning their own per- IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION ^j sons. Later, a girl ought to be taught dancing, singing, and any other accomplishment which may increase her charm, and render her more fit to wage successfully the unequal combat she eternally carries on with mankind. In particu- lar she ought to acquire the art of conversation, since " the talent for conversation takes the first place in the art of pleasing, for while a man may speak what he knows, a woman speaks what pleases. In order to converse the one requires knowledge, the other taste; the object of the one should be useful things, of the other agreeable things." But perhaps the best idea of Rousseau's conception may be obtained by considering what ought to be the chief study of women. Unfit, so he tells us, to enter upon the study of the speculative sciences ; with in- sufficient power of attention to do accurate work in the exact sciences ; with but a limited power also of attaining to any degree of pro- ficiency in the physical sciences, there is one science, however, of which every woman who wishes to succeed in the world must make a profound study. This is the Science of Man — not of man in general, of abstract man, but of the living concrete men with whom she comes into contact. She must seek to know the mind of the men who surround her, the mind of the men to whom she is subject either by law or opinion. With this end in view, she must study their looks, their actions, their gestures, their conversation, in order that she may be able to penetrate to and interpret the thoughts 78 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM and feelings of which these signs are the out- ward expression, and thus be enabled to adapt her own conduct so as to give rise to corres- ponding feelings which will be pleasing to them. " The world of men is woman's book : when she reads it wrongly, it is her fault, or some passion Minds her." If now we turn to the description of the characteristics and qualities of Sophie, the typi- cal woman of Rousseau's theory, we shall have some idea of the kind of woman likely to be produced by this system of education. We have here the picture of a young woman in whom the sensuous and emotional side has had full and free opportunity to develop, governed by custom rather than reason, and trained from her earliest years to submit her will to the authority of others. She is a lover of dress, and a good judge of what best shows off her person to advantage, and has thoroughly learned the art of seeming to conceal her charms while yet suggesting them to the imagination. She is accomplished in all forms of needlework, but prefers to work at the finer forms, because thereby she can adopt a more pleasing attitude and exhibit her grace and dexterity. She knows how to direct a household, but of the practical duties of the home she understands little. In fact, " she would rather let the whole dinner burn up than soil a ruffle ". Whatever natural talents she possesses for music, singing, de- signing have been developed so that she can show them off to the greatest advantage. A IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 79 pleasant conversationalist, her knowledge has been attained not by reading and study, but through the conversation of her father, her mother, and her immediate circle of friends. Her religion and morahty is of a simple nature, the result of custom and training rather than the outcome of her own thought and reason. Such, in outline, is a description of Rous- seau's typical woman, and if we consider that the end aimed at throughout is to produce a woman with no will of her own ; with no right to reason upon or think out for herself any of the problems, ethical or religious, which ever engage the attention of man ; and that to acquire the arts and accomplishments which allure or rather are thought to allure mankind, is the one great positive necessity of her life — the one thing needful — then we shall have to admit that Sophie is the true product of such a system. But before going on to criticize this conception of the end of education, it is well to remember that the ideal which is set forth in the pages of Rousseau is no dead and bygone ideal. It exists more or less at the present day, although it may not be explicitly avowed. In the so- called education of accomplishments, the chief end still aimed at is to qualify the future young woman for society and for marriage. Subjects are deemed worthy of study, not because they furnish a knowledge valuable for the carrying out of certain practical duties in after life, nor because they furnish a knowledge inherently valuable for the understanding of the worlds of 8o EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM nature and of society, but because of their social, or supposed social utility. Now, in so far as the chief end aimed at in the education of our girls is the fitting them for society, and for social inter- course in the narrower sense of the term, then whether we explicitly avow it or not, our aim is not different, but the same in kind as that of Rousseau. What is to be said of the ideal, and what conception does it involve of the essential nature of woman ? What is the type of society and of social relations which, according to this ideal, ought to prevail ? In the first place, then, it is founded upon an erroneous and one-sided conception of the nature of woman, it emphasizes certain differences to be found between men and women, forgets the identity in nature between the two, and makes the whole education of women turn upon these differences. Because, as a rule, the emotional and sensuous nature is more prominent in women than in men, Rousseau concludes that while the education of a man should be directed so as to fit him to guide and to direct his life by the light of his own individual reason, women, on the other hand, since they are weak in reason and in the power of judging, must submit their will and reason to the superior will and reason of man in all the graver concerns of life, and in the lesser duties they as a rule succeed better when they allow their actions to be directed by feeling. " Man must be active and strong ; woman, passive and weak ; one needs must have power IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 8i and will, it suffices that the other have little power of resistance ". Now, even if we admit this difference, even if we grant that as a rule the power of reasoning possessed by man is greater than that possessed by woman, this is no argument why we should endeavour in every way to strengthen the power in the one case, and in the other do all we can to weaken it. Both are beings endowed with reason ; both have claims that this power — the essential characteristic of humanity — should have room for full and free development. If the usages of society have lessened the power in woman, if they have filled her with a distrust of her own powers and capabilities, then there is all the more need that these hindrances should be removed, and that she should have an equal opportunity with man to develop her reason, to make of her nature all that it is possible for it to become. And Rousseau, had he been logical, as he never was, would have claimed the same right for the full and free development of a woman's nature as he had done in the case of man. Emile is to be educated apart from society and according to nature, because the customs, the usages, the conventions of society all tended to check, to fetter and to dwarf the development of the individual reason ; but if these hinder, and hinder in a greater degree the full and free development of a woman's nature, then what- ever reasons can be adduced for the liberation of the one from the thraldom of custom and con- 6 82 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM vention can also be advanced in greater force for the liberation of the other. But, to Rousseau, reason is the essential characteristic of man, sentiment that of woman. Hence, the whole education of man must be directed towards the development of reason ; the whole education of woman to the development of feeling, and to the subordination of what reason she possesses to the superior reason of man. Our educational schemes of course must take into account the differences in the natures of boys and girls, must take into account the differences in service which they may hereafter be called upon to perform in society ; but any scheme which is not based upon the identity in nature between the two, which does not aim at training the girl equally with the boy hereafter to guide and direct her own life by the light of reason and to free her from the thraldom of mere custom and convention, is false and one- sided. For Rousseau, woman has never the same right as man to a full and free development of her powers and capacities; she is never his equal in freedom; her Hfe is never an end in itself, but always one in strict subordination to that of man. He looks upon her as destined hereafter to perform only one function in society, and accordingly her whole education must be directed towards this one end — namely, to become the wife and companion of a man, and a wife and companion whose whole nature is exhausted in her sexuality. IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 83 Further, we hear nothing from Rousseau of training the future woman to undertake the duties of motherhood — nothing of her claim to be considered a human being with capacities to be developed and a right to an independence and freedom of her own, and with an equal claim to that of man to be educated, first, as a human being endowed with reason, and there- after, as a human being who may be called upon to undertake certain specific duties in after life. And because he never considers that woman's life may have an end in itself, apart from, or, at least, not in subordination to the life of man, as a consequence we have shadowed forth an ideal of society and of the relationship which ought to subsist there between men and women in which the woman's life is wholly exhausted as a means to the fuller and com- pleter realization of the life of man. Man must be freed from the fetters with which a corrupt society has shackled him — he must be led to the light of reason, but woman's fetters must remain to gird her in, for without them she, a being weak in reason but strong in feeling, is unable to guide and direct her own Hfe. And this conception of woman's nature, as we have seen, determines the nature of her education. To please, to charm, to soothe her lord and master is the end of hfe, and so the end to which her education should be directed — herein alone can she find her true happiness, and so we have produced a pleasant and pretty doll — a charming automaton, but not a woman. 6* 84 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM If now we turn back and consider the ideal of woman's education which prevailed in the earlier and best days of the Italian Renaissance, we shall find here recognized for the first time in the modern world, the conception that a woman has an equal right with man to the full and unfettered development of her individual powers and capacities, apart from and without special reference to any particular and specific duty which she may hereafter be called upon to perform in society. The educated woman of that time strove after a complete and character- istic development of her unique personality, and the chief end to which her education was directed was the perfecting and enhancing of her characteristic nature. Nor, as is so often the case in our own day, did the claim for the higher education of woman arise from the demand made to free her from the thraldom of man, and from the conventions of society, and to make her independent, eco- nomically and socially, of the need of man ; but the higher education of woman was regarded as a matter of course. There was no question of female emancipation, no claim made for the placing of woman on a footing of equality with man as regards the right to the opportunities of education, for these questions of equality and emancipation did not arise. Women, it was thought, equally with men, had a right to share in the inheritance of the recently discovered past ; had an equal claim to win distinction and fame for themselves, by their own talents and IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 85 their own industry, in the republic of letters. Nor did the men of that day think that an ac- quaintance with classics, that the search after and the possession of knowledge by women de- stroyed the charm of womanliness, nor that the education of women should be less advanced than that of men. Learning, even profound learning, was considered not to diminish but to enhance the other charms of women. This is well exemplified by the current connotation of the term virago. It was then no term of re- proach, of disapprobation, but was used in a compHmentary sense. Women gloried in the name, for a virago was a woman who, by her courage, her understanding, and her attain- ments, had raised herself above the level of the majority of her sex. A virago was a strong woman — a masculine woman — but masculine in the sense that by her intellectual gifts, by the strength of her understanding, and by the variety and width of her attainments, she was on a footing of equality with the wisest and the bravest of men. But certain limitations in the extent and intent of the education of the women of that period must be noted. In the first place, the higher education of woman and the claim made for the development and perfection of her nature was limited to a certain class. It was made, not on behalf of all women, but on behalf of the women of the aristocracy — of the wives and daughters of the leading famihes. Further we find that the higher education of women was 86 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM not equally diffused throughout all the Italian cities. It was, e.g., more common in Venice and in Florence than in the smaller cities, yet from the names, and they are numerous, of the illustrious women of that time which have been handed down to us, we may conjecture that a very large proportion of the women of the better classes were highly educated, and that the women of the Italian cities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were as well, if not better educated than the women of the same classes to-day. In the second place, we have to remember that the culture of that time was mainly based on the study of the classical tongues and litera- tures, in so far as they were then known, and the education of woman as of man was based upon classical antiquity. In this respect the higher education of women was narrower than it is now, but its very narrowness was its strength. It was thorough so far as it went, but it lacked the many-sidedness and conse- quent superficiality which is the characteristic vice of much of the higher education of our time. But while the humanistic educator of the fifteenth century believed that woman had an equal right with man to the full and free de- velopment of her individual nature, and that the education of girls should be carried out on fines similar to that of boys, he had no desire nor wish to bring about any revolution in the position of woman. For him the chief sphere of woman's influence is still the home — her IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 87 chief duties still those of wife and mother — still belongs to her the task of seeing that the " charities that soothe, and heal, and bless are scattered at the feet of men like flowers ". And while the chief motive for the study of the ancient literatures is the perfection of her higher nature undertaken for itself alone, yet this does not diminish but rather enhances her fitness for undertaking the social and practical duties of life. Further in the education of the women of that day, the feminine arts and accomplishments received their due share of attention. We have only to read the biography of Isabella D'Este to become aware that the education of accomplish- ments may be conjoined with the cultivation of the reason of woman. Isabella's education, like that of the women of her class, was based on classical antiquity, but it also included all that we commonly nowadays reckon as accom- pHshments.-^ But what I wish you clearly to realize is that the demand for the higher education of women, and the actual realization of the de- mand, is not something which has appeared in the modern world for the first time in the closing decades of the last century. In the Italian cities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was fully recognized, and the higher education of woman was realized with a purity 1 Cf. " Isabella D'Este," by Julia Cartwright ; " The Women of the Renaissance," by De Maulde; " Ladies of the Italian Ren- aissance," by C. Hare ; •' Education during the Renaissance," by W. H. Woodward. 88 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM and clearness of aim which is often wanting at the present time. For here we have placed before us the right of a woman to be educated first and above all as a human being, but this not as an end in itself in detachment from the education which fits her to perform her special duties in life. The educated woman of the Italian Renaissance was no mere blue-stocking, was not a woman aping musculine airs and with the foolish idea that mere learning was something worthy of being attained for itself and itself alone, something the possession of which raised her above her less fortunate sisters. It was regarded as a means to the perfecting of her personality, as an instrument by which she might be enabled to perform the social duties of life with grace and charm. Nor did pro- found learning excuse a woman from breaking the recognized conventions of society, nor do away with the fact that modesty was still the recognized characteristic quality of woman. And since the educated woman of that period was on a level with man, the social relationship which existed between them was of a kind which recognized the equal right of each other to develop and to manifest their own unique personahties, and not one in which the woman was in dependence and subjection to the man. True, it might be urged that the time was not yet ripe for such a development, that the higher ideal of social life, and the higher unity of the married life necessary when both partners to the union recognize that each has a right to IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 89 the development of their distinct personalities, and that the subordination of the life of the one to that of the other can only be justified on the ground of a common interest — of a common good to be conjointly realized — was an ideal unsuited to the conditions of the time ; and that this explains why the new direction given to woman's education soon reached its end, and further accounts for the fact that even in those days we find writers treating woman as a grown-up child whom man must learn to manage and control. But however imperfectly the ideal was real- ized, however narrow the range in which it held sway, the early humanistic ideal of the education of woman struck a true note. It recognized the right of woman to be educated as a person, and a person who has a right to be educated first as a human reason, and there- after as a person who may be called upon to undertake certain special duties and to perform certain specific functions in society, and just for this reason it recognized that a higher type of society, a higher unity of the married life was necessary for the realization of woman's nature than that which had prevailed in the preceding ages. And it is just here that the earlier ideal of the end of woman's education was clearer in conception and purer in aim than it is in our own time. The early exponents and upholders of the higher education of women recognized the fundamental identity between the nature of 90 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM woman and of man, without blinding themselves to the differences that exist and must always exist between the two. Both were endowed with the power of reason, both were capable of becoming persons, and both had the right to the perfecting of their unique personahties, but their natures were also different, and thus while the education of boys and girls was carried out very much on similar Hnes, yet the emphasis was different in either case. The humanist educator never forgot that the sphere of woman's life was naturally different from that of man, and that this should always be kept in view in her edu- cation and in her training. In our own day, the claim for the higher education of woman is often made on grounds other than that she is a human reason, with the right to the free and full development of her own unique personality as an end in itself There is no such clearness of aim, and often no conception of the final result to be attained. We sometimes advocate the higher education of woman on the ground that she may thereby be made independent, economically and socially, of man ; or again, on the ground that she may be placed on a footing of equality with him in the struggle for existence. And it is no doubt well and good that this should be so, but surely it is not well and good that this should be made an end in itself and generally aimed at. It may, as a recent writer on the subject has pointed out, have been necessary for a time to raise this proxi- mate aim into an ultimate aim in order that as a IDEALS OF WOMAN'S EDUCATION 91 preliminary the right of women to the oppor- tunities of higher education should be recog- nized and admitted, but the initial battles in the campaign having been won, surely it is folly — nay more than folly — to go on mistaking the strategic objective for the real objective, for by so doing we are assuming that the equahty between men and women is of a kind which takes account neither of the differences in nature nor in service which exist between the two, and as a consequence we are setting up as our ideal, one in which the perfecting of a woman's nature can be aimed at in detachment from the special duties to society which she has always performed and must always perform ; and along with this assumption we have the other and correlative ideal of a type of society in which woman places herself on a footing of equality with man in every sphere of action. But the higher education of woman is a means to an end other than this. The recognition of the right of woman to the full development of her powers and capacities may result in making her economically independent, in placing her on a footing of equality with man, but this is a means — a necessary means it may be — by which a higher type of social relationship between men and women, and a higher unity of the married life, may ultimately prevail. Woman, no longer in subjection and in de- pendence upon man, claims the right that she should be regarded as having a will and person- ality of her own, and that in the subordination 92 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM of her will and personality to that of another, she so surrenders herself for the sake of a common good and a common interest to be con- jointly reahzed and conjointly enjoyed. More- over, she has the right to refuse to enter into any relationship — to enter into any kind of union which would degrade her to the level of a mere means, to the position of a mere instru- ment in the realization of the ends and purposes of another; and the higher education which fits her successfully to maintain this negative attitude is good, but it is not good in itself, nor is it the highest good when only the negative aim is attained — it only becomes so when the negative aim is seen to be but the means to the higher and positive aim — a stage in the journey by which a higher type of society, and a higher ideal and unity of the married life, may ulti- mately prevail and become dominant. V. THE PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES IN THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. When some months ago your Secretary invited me to address you on some subject which might be of interest to you in your daily work I lightly and carelessly consented, and as lightly chose as my subject, "The Place of the Do- mestic Sciences in our Educational Curricu- lum ". My reasons for so choosing are or should be obvious. My experience could entitle me to speak only on a topic of a general character, and my impression then was that the subject chosen would present no special difficulties of treatment. But, since the date of choice, my opinions on the latter have been considerably modified, and I rather fear that instead of com- ing to any clear or definite conclusion on the matter in question, you must bear with me and be content with certain rather tentative sug- gestions as to the true place of the teaching of the domestic sciences in our educational institu- tions. But, that we shall be able to come meanwhile to no certain conclusions may be a gain rather than a loss, for if we consider two present-day tendencies in education we may 93 94 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM think this to be the wiser position to adopt. What, then, are these two tendencies ? In the first place, we have in our educational organization and in our educational institutions incessant and continual changes, but the extent and degree of the changes have no necessary re- lation to the extent and degree of educational progress. Whether we look at our schools, our Training Colleges, or our Universities we find the same phenomenon. In my own brief experi- ence, and within a period of less than twenty years, two fundamental and revolutionary changes have taken place in the training of teachers and in the Arts Curriculum of our Uni- versities. From a fixed and rigid curriculum we have passed — not necessarily advanced — to an extension and elasticity in curricula which would have seemed astounding and incredible to our immediate forefathers. Now, this indicates a restlessness, an instability of mind which is a sure index that we have not yet thought out the true nature of our educational aims, and have no settled conception of the means by which these aims should be realized. The second characteristic tendency of the present day is our insistence on the need of technical training, in the emphasis which we lay upon the tech- nical education of our youth, but in this insis- tence we are tending to neglect the fact that in the training of the specialist we may be neglect- ing the training of the individual as a whole, and although the specialist may by means of his training elevate himself above the common herd, PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 95 yet he may still in regard to all else, that is, in regard to all the most important things in life, remain one of them. And this one-sided emphasis and insistence on technical training again clearly points to the fact that, as a nation and as individuals, we have still to determine the true relation of technical education to educa- tion as a whole. By our systems of technical education we may produce better workmen and better cooks but not necessarily better men and better women. This no doubt is a common- place, but a common-place very imperfectly re- alized by our present day educational innovators. This leads me naturally into the very heart of my subject. During the past twenty years there has been a great extension in the teaching of the domestic sciences within our schools and colleges. Schools for advanced instruction in these subjects have, from small beginnings, risen to be great central institutions, and the more recently established girls' secondary schools across the Border have large and ex- tensive equipments for the teaching of the domestic subjects, and yet no one who looks at the facts of the present day, no one who con- siders in a quiet and dispassionate manner the moral and social circumstances of the time, but must admit that in spite of this great extension in the means of technical training, there is something wrong somewhere, that somehow or other we are not really reaching the end that we desire, and that in spite of all the 96 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM technical training we are neglecting some- thing of value, something of importance in the education of our boys and girls. Is the technical training of our girls permeating the home ? Are the women of to-day better house- keepers, better mothers than those of the gen- eration immediately preceding us ? Is there a higher level of domestic life, a higher standard of domestic duty amongst the working classes of to-day than amongst those of yesterday? What — and this is the serious problem of all problems — betterment has taken place through all our educational efforts in the lives of the dwellers in our slums? He would be bold who would assert an affirmative to these questions. And the same result meets us when we consider the domestic servant problem of the present day. The domestic servants of the present may be better trained, though even this is an open question, than the servants of the past, but they are not better servants. We find everywhere amongst this class a lower standard of duty, more so-called independence, but a less faithful performance of service. But let me not be misunderstood ; I have no de- sire to single out a certain class and hold them up to pubHc disapprobation, for what is true here is true elsewhere, and is but significant of a general phenomenon, viz. that one of the most remarkable facts of the present day is the utter disproportion between the number of really well-educated people and the enormous magni- tude and extension of our educational organiza- PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 97 tions. Now, it is this general aspect of the educational problem which I wish to discuss with you, and in the course of our inquiry it may be that we shall come to some under- standing as to the true place of the teaching of domestic subjects in our schools and colleges. In the first place, let me say that no problem deahng with educational curricula can be settled until we come to some understanding as to our general aims in education ; a curricu- lum is a means to an end, and we can no more construct a rational curriculum without a clear idea of the end to which it is a means, than we can construct a machine without some clear idea of the purpose which it is meant to serve. It is the utter neglect of this more than obvious fact that introduces chaos into our educational organizations and is responsible for the poor results that in after life we so often attain. For sometimes our ends are imperfectly realized and so our results have the same imperfection. At other times we over-emphasize one element in our aims, and we end by producing lop- sided men and women. It is, no doubt, true that as civilization becomes more complex, as the demands of society upon its individual members multiply and become more varied, the aims of education become more complex and more varied, but this should not debar us from the endeavour to attain to a clear conception of the ends at which the various educational agencies should aim, nor should it prevent us from arriving at some 7 98 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM evaluation as to the relative place of each amongst the various aims of education. If now we ask what are the causes which have produced the result that in spite of the enor- mous extension of our educational agencies, the number of really well-educated people pro- duced by these agencies is comparatively few, I think we may answer that this has arisen in the main from the operation of two causes, from the prevalence of two one-sided and there- fore false conceptions of education. In the first place, as a nation, we have over-emphasized the intellectual aspect of education, and more- over this intellectualism has been of a narrow and illiberal character, and to a corresponding degree we have neglected the social and moral sides of the educative process. Hence we have produced and are still producing a type of man and woman intellectually alert in a superficial way, but possessed of neither strong moral nor social instincts. We have a superficial culture, no doubt, a culture the nature of which is best reflected in the new journalism of our time, and in the so-called literature which floods our bookstalls, and is the chief intellectual food of the well-to-do classes of the present day. And if further proof were needed of the evils. inci- dent to a narrow intellectualism, to a narrow rationalism in education, we have but to look at the country where this rationalism has been preached and practised in a purer form than here. Listen to what Mr. Harold Johnston says of the present day results of intellectualistic PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 99 education in France. In fifty years crime has increased threefold, although there is scarcely any increase in the population. This enormous increase is particularly noticeable amongst the young. Again France has passed from being one of the soberest of the nations to being one of the least sober : and from being one of the most religious to being the most atheistical of all nations. And the result of this intellectual education upon the women of the French nation is no less marked. Both the marriage and the birth rate have steadily declined ; and evils of an unspeakable nature abound. Can v^e wonder, then, at Mr. Harold Johnston's conclusion that the merely intellectual aspect of education must be held as altogether in- adequate, and that the moral and aesthetic sides of education must be duly regarded. Education, he declares, must have a wider scope ^ and must be concerned with all the living forces that go to mould the nation} In the second place, and this briefly, the other defect in our present educational aims is the at- tempt to superimpose a narrow technical train- ing upon an equally narrow and illiberal general education. This is a matter of common know- ledge. At the present time, the young men and the young women who enter our central insti- tutions have often the most imperfect general education. And this is not the only evil we have to contend with : much more serious than 1 Cf. *• Moral Instruction and Training in Schools," Vol. II, edited by M. E. Sadler. 7* 100 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM imperfection of education is the narrow out- look, the utilitarian spirit which is prevalent. We are so keen to make wage-earners in as quick and as rapid a manner as possible — e.g. to make women economically independent — that we place this in the forefront of our aims in the education of the young women of the present day. From the wisdom of the present I make appeal to the wisdom of the past : " No woman (says a writer of the early fifties), how- ever humble her situation, can have her mind too well stored with knowledge, nor can her acquirements be too diversified, or her accom- plishments too elegant. Whatever is calculated to enlighten the mind or to strengthen the under- "* standing, to purify and elevate the feelings, or to give elegance and refinement to her manners, should be cultivated by woman. Whatever might increase her usefulness, or tend to secure her independence, ought to be pursued by her, always, however, with this caution that the greater be not sacrificed to the less, that Christian usefulness does not give place to the fashions and foibles of the world, and duty yield not to inclination." ^ This, you will agree with me, is the higher ideal, an ideal much higher in its aims than that prevalent in our own time. What, then, should be our fundamental and primary aim in the education of the girls and young maidens of the nation. Education, as a 1 Cf. •' Female Education," by A Labourer's Daughter. London, 1851. PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC: SCffiNC^S ; lai writer already quoted declares, must be con- cerned with all the living forces that go to mould the nation, and one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest of those living forces, is that by means of our educational agencies we shall produce a race of healthy, intelligent, and morally earnest wives, mothers, and house- keepers. This is, and should be, the funda- mental aim in the education of the girls of the nation. Nature has willed it so, and whenever and wherever in the past this cardinal truth has been neglected by a nation or by a people, that nation or that people has sown the seeds of its own decadence. In these days of the so-called higher education of women, it needs some courage to insist upon this fundamental truth, and to assert that whenever and in whatever form the so-called higher education unfits a woman for or lessens her efficiency in the performance of the duties of a wife, a mother, or a housekeeper, that is a higher educa- tion which is radically false, radically per- nicious to the welfare of the State, and is not one of the living forces which go to mould a nation and to contribute to a nation's greatness. Hear again our writer of the early fifties on the education of women : " The most interesting pursuits," she declares, **and the loftiest themes on which the human mind is capable of exerting its faculties, may engage a woman's attention : she may be graced by every accomplishment which fashion approves or the world admires : her hand may be skilled in the finest and most i,02 RPUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM tasteful arts, yet, unless she is prepared to take her place by the side of man as his intelligent and active assistant, amid the labours and pri- vations of life, she is not educated as she ought to be. It is only in so far as any knowledge or accomplishment is made subservient to her mission of love that it is valuable to woman." Again, " Every woman should seek, in the fear of God, to prepare herself for the obligations of her future hfe by the cultivation of such know- ledge and habits as may enable her to enter with intelligence and activity on the perform- ance of family duties." Hence whatever other subsidiary aims we may set before us in the education of our girls, this reference to the performance of future family duties is or should be primary and fundamental, and, moreover, this is the only aim which can further and extend and increase those living and active forces which go to mould a nation and make it truly great. It is no doubt true that women may find other spheres of useful- ness ; it may be that in particular cases a woman may never be called upon to perform the sacred duties of a wife or of a mother, but in laying down a national and social aim in the education of our girls, these considerations must be neglected, since such a state of matters is not an essential characteristic but a mere accident of the situation. Again it is no doubt a good thing to make our girls economically independ- ent, but an education which makes this its main end, and as a consequence tends to unfit a PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 103 woman to fulfil the cardinal duties of woman- hood, is a false and one-sided education and a false independence. This, to some of you, may seem the rankest heresy at the present day, but in considering and deciding such a ques- tion, you must rise above the transient circum- stances of the present, and take into account the experience of the ages and the judgment and wisdom of the whole civilized world. Such then is the end at which we should aim, such is the nature of the goal we should strive to attain in the education of the girls of the nation. Our main aim should be to produce, by means of our various educational agencies, a race of physically healthy, intelligently-minded, and morally earnest women, fitted in after life to perform well and wisely those duties which, from all time have been, and during all time must be, the cardinal duties of womanhood. This is, always has been, and always must be the main direction in which the influence of women acts in shaping those living forces which go to mould a nation's destiny. If you doubt this, if you have some other concep- tion of woman's education and woman's destiny, you have but to consider the negative cases in support of my contention. Do you think that the wives and mothers of the slums, poor, ill-fed, bedraggled wretches, are con- tributing to the nation's greatness ? Do you consider that the utter lack of anything like the decencies of life which exists there is a fitting environment in which to rear up the 104 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM future citizens of this country ? Or, again, do you consider that the many mothers of the middle and well-to-do classes, of frivolous mind and of trivial interests, are the meet and fitting upbringers of the future sons and daughters of this great empire ? Are they the kind of mothers who are likely to train up earnest and patriotic citizens ? Or, finally, do you think this strange product of the twentieth century, this so-called higher educated woman, with head full of many **ologies," but ignorant and contemptuous of the simplest household duties, is a type to be desired, do you consider that the prevalence of this type makes for the good of the nation, is one of the living forces that go to mould the destinies of a people? If the result of the higher education of women is to be the production and prevalence of such a type, then in all seriousness I assert, better no higher education of women than this. Let me, however, in parenthesis, remark that the same or similar strictures apply to all the so-called higher education of man which tends to produce a like result. We, by our educa- tional agencies, must strive to produce good fathers and good citizens as well as good workmen ; and any higher education which unfits a man for the former duties is a one- sided and false conception of education. Having defined the general nature of the end at which we should aim in the education of the girls of the nation, let us consider the nature of the means necessary for the attainment of this PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 105 end, and in particular let us consider what the school can do to further the technical training of the future wives, mothers, and housekeepers of the nation. To discuss this in detail would require many lectures, and hence you must be content this evening to receive only certain general principles which may furnish material for after consideration and for after discussion. These general principles I propose to lay down one by one, and thereafter to point out certain practical corollaries which follow. In the first place, in the technical training of the girls of the nation in domestic subjects, we must bear in mind that all such technical train- ing must be preceded by and based upon a sound general education. Moreover, during the school period, i.e. up to the age of sixteen or seventeen, all such technical training, how- ever important it may be, should be subor- dinated to the education which has for its aim the widening of the intellectual outlook, the broadening of the sympathies, and the establish- ing of sound moral habits. Hence it follows : — (i) That all teaching of domestic subjects should be banished from the elementary school proper. Up to the age of twelve or thirteen the average girl has enough to do to acquire a mastery over the elementary arts which under- lie all extension of knowledge. If the girl is destined to leave the elementary school at the age of fourteen, then her further education should be carried on in special schools or io6 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM special classes with the twofold aim in view of extending her intellectual interests, and of training her in the simpler elements of the domestic arts. In our large towns what is urgently required is the erection of specially built and specially equipped schools for carry- ing on the work of supplementary courses. ^ Much of the present-day teaching of domestic subjects, both in our elementary schools and in our evening classes, is hampered and burdened by inadequate and often unsuitable accommoda- tion and equipment. Such schools could and should be made available also for carrying on evening continuation work. So far I have dealt only with pupils who may attend a sup- plementary course and follow up the technical training received there in an evening continua- tion school, but I am also strongly in favour of the teaching of the domestic subjects in our secondary schools for girls. It should not, however, be begun at too early an age, and should not be made compulsory for all pupils, but it should be recognized as an integral part of some forms of the new group leaving cer- tificates. Certain indications at present point to the fact that the authorities in charge of Secondary Education for girls in Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland are beginning to realize the need for the introduction of these subjects into the school curriculum, but in London and in several other parts of England ^ Since this was written schools providing such technical courses have been established in several towns in Scotland. PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 107 some of the more recently built schools for the education of girls of the better classes have already established well and adequately equip- ped departments for the teaching of the do- mestic sciences. But my special point is that whether in the supplementary course school or in the evening continuation school or in the secondary school this technical training should never be the sole education, but should always be accompanied by the education which aims at developing the intellectual and moral sides of a girl's nature.^ " If parents in humble circumstances " (again declares our writer of the early fifties) '' rest satisfied with merely training their daughters to habits of active industry, neg- lecting to avail themselves of any opportunity providence may place within their reach of securing for them a more extended education, or if they fail to awaken in their minds a de- sire to become acquainted with all that is known, and skilled in all that can be useful, they set a limit to the progress of their children which the Creator never intended to exist. They narrow the sphere of their usefulness and diminish their resources. They bind them down to the same dull round of rude habits and continual dependence amid unremitting toil." What was true then, what was necessary as a warning in 1850 is truer to-day, is now more necessary to be insisted on since our present-day tendencies ever tend to narrow down our economic use- 1 Cf. " The Idea of the Industrial School," by G. Kerschen- steiner. io8 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM fulness to one small groove of unremitting toil. But before leaving this part of the subject let me in a word answer an objection which has already been urged against this position, viz. that all teaching of the domestic arts in school should be postponed until the pupil has passed into the supplementary courses in the ele- mentary school or into the higher forms in our secondary schools. Is it, it has been asked, your contention that all training in sewing should be banished entirely from the elemen- tary school course. My answer is yes, in its present form. Any course of sewing or knitting included in the elementary school curriculum should form an integral part of a course on educational handwork. Its main aim should be not to produce articles of use, but to train and discipline the active powers of the child, it should aim, in the words of Rousseau : " to make the eye accurate and the hand deft ". Nothing moves my indignation so much as to see a little child compelled to do white seam sewing which spoils its eyes, wearies its brain, and results in nothing but a stupid and sense- less exercise. My second general principle is that the home must be the real centre of all domestic training of the girls of the nation, and that the main function of the school must be to aid and to supplement the home training. It may be urged, and it is urged, that the demand for the technical training in the school has arisen from the fact that the home in many cases, at PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 109 the present time, is unable to supply the need. This may be so, and if it be so, then it is a lamentable fact, but my contention is that unless by means of the training of the present you remedy this defect in the home in the future, then all our organization of domestic training, all our teaching will be in vain. The greatness of a nation depends upon the character of its people, and the character of a people depends upon the quality of its homes. Years ago Pestalozzi laid down that the home is the true basis of the education of humanity : that it is the home which gives the best training, whether for public or for private life, and that the education of most importance both for men and for women is that which is necessary for domestic happiness. And though there may be some doubt in applying these principles to all educa- tion, there can be no doubt that these principles should be kept in mind in all training in the domestic arts. My third general principle is that all the teaching of domestic subjects in schools, and all the organization and equipment of such schools, should have a direct bearing upon the future home circumstances of the pupils. This principle especially must be kept always in mind in the training of the girls of the working classes, and were it kept in mind, the equipment and teaching would be of a much more simple and much more practical nature than exists in many cases at present. We are too prone in the teaching of the domestic arts no EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM to run to elaborate equipment, to an equipment which it is utterly impossible to provide within the house of a working man or even in the houses of the middle classes. It is no doubt true that in the training for domestic service we must have a wider aim in view, but the func- tion of the supplementary course school, of the evening continuation school class as well as of the secondary school, is not to train for domestic service, but for future family duties. My fourth general principle is that if the teaching of domestic science is to take its proper place in the educational organization of the country then we require better trained and better educated teachers than we have had in the past. One of the aims in the present move- ment in the training of teachers is to endeavour to secure this end, for we believe that prior to any student entering upon a technical course of training, he or she should produce evidence of having received a good general education, and that thereafter the training should be of a thorough and systematic character. But when this result is realized, it should follow that the status, the salary, and the prospects of advance- ment of domestic science teachers should be equal to those of other teachers. For the good teacher of the domestic arts must be much more than a mere technical expert. If she is to be successful in her work she must be a woman of wide interests, of ready sympathy, a help- meet and a friend to the girls under her care. Such, then, are the general principles which PLACE OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCES 1 1 1 should guide us in determining the true place of the domestic sciences in female education. Of the importance of the right education of women to the State there can be no doubt, and in conclusion, and in reference to this matter, I cannot do better than again quote the writer of the early fifties. In concluding her discussion on female education, the writer asserts that " the health and purity of the social system are placed under the immediate guardianship of women; it is their duty to keep the springs of home life ever gushing fresh and pure, that the woman who is capable of so regulating a household as to keep all in due subordination, securing the rights of each individual, without in any way encroaching on those of another, possesses tact, talent, and energy little inferior to him who guides the policy of a nation". And she goes on to say, ** We need only look at daily life in its most familiar walks to be convinced that it is only woman, educated, and acting for eternity, devotedly bringing all the faculties of mind and body into the service of her God in the intelligent performance of domestic duty, who is fitted to enjoy happiness herself or to hold the cup of bhss to the lips of man". This was the high ideal of woman's work and woman's duty set forth by the daughter of a Scotch labourer some sixty years ago, and no words of mine could express in clearer, more elegant, or more eloquent terms the high and important part which woman rightly educated may take in the moulding of a nation and in the shaping of its destinies. VI. THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. The problem of the relation of the State to the School and to Education generally is one which requires fresh consideration at the present day from both our political and our educational leaders, as well as from the public at large. Three sets of causes at present operative de- mand this. In the first place, during the past few years we have seen a growing extension of the control of the State over education. Not content with the provision of, and control over, the means of elementary education, the State is gradually extending its influence over our secondary school system, and also over all forms of higher education. Our Colleges of Art, our Technical Colleges, our Schools of Domestic Economy are ceasing to be managed privately, and are becoming central institutions, guided and directed by the State. To some, this extension of the sphere of State control is a blighting influence, destroying and under- mining the independence and freedom of our schools and colleges ; to others, it seems a wise and beneficent policy which will result in the greater efficiency of these institutions, and 1X2 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE U3 in the opportunities which they furnish being taken advantage of by a larger number than at present of the young men and women of the country. But much more important — much more sig- nificant than the extension of the sphere of the State over the means of education — is the ex- tension of its control over the life of the growing individual. We have foreshadowed the time when by means of its compulsory continuation schools the influence of the State over the child's life will be greatly enlarged and the pupilage of the State over the child extended. But this mere extension in time is not the only fact at the present to be taken into account. The nature of the influence exerted is now widened. Not merely the intellectual, but also the physi- cal health of the child is becoming a matter for the concern of the State, and the first step in this direction has been taken in insisting upon the medical inspection and examination of the children in our schools. Now, whether this extension of the control of the State over the means of education is a good or bad thing; whether this widening of the concept of educa- tion is desirable or not, are questions which we shall discuss later ; what is wanted at the present time is to make the public clearly realize the facts, and then to ask them to consider what is the meaning and the significance of the facts. On what grounds, if any, can we justify this extension and deepening of the State's control over the lives and futures of our children ? 8 114 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM Forty years ago this country instituted a system of compulsory elementary education, but it left to the individual parent some responsibility as regards the provision of the means of educa- tion : to-day, elementary education is still compulsory, but the responsibility of the par- ent for the direct provision of any part of the means has almost entirely ceased. We have free education indeed, and that no doubt is a good, but may we not ask : At what price ? Has the parent of to-day a greater sense of responsibility for the education of his children ? Has he a greater freedom than of old in the determination of the course of study of his chil- dren ? Has the system tended to strengthen the ties of home and to make it a better medium for the moral and social training of the young ? To-day we are introducing a system of compul- sory medical examination of all children. Will it happen that some ten or twenty years hence the medical care of the children of the nation will also be undertaken at the cost of the State ? And if free medical care, why not free feeding, free clothing ? Until the parent ceases to be a parent, and becomes merely the begetter of the children of the nation. As a nation we drifted from the position of insisting that every parent should directly bear a part of the cost of educa- tion to the position that he shall directly bear no part of the cost. Are we to drift in a simi- lar manner to free education all round, to free medical attendance, free provision of all that is necessary for sound physical and intellectual THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 115 health ? — without considering whether these things be ultimately good or bad in their effect upon the kind of citizen we shall produce, and upon the kind of nation we wish to become. The second set of causes which demand a reconsideration of this problem is the growing feeling that, in spite of the great extension in the means of education, and in spite of the enormous increase in the cost of education, somehow or other we are not getting the best results for our greatly enlarged expenditure. The benefits of education are, it is admitted, now shared by all ; there is less illiteracy in the country, less want of the mere elements of knowledge, but morally and socially there seems to be no great advance. Whether this be true or not, we have nevertheless to admit that the charge is levelled from many quarters at our educational system, and, if so, we are bound to inquire into its truth, and, if it is justified, we shall have to ask whether the poor results com- plained of do not spring directly out of our edu- cational system ; do not arise from the fact that we have not fully considered the relation of the school to the State ; that we have formulated no clear or definite conception of what the State should aim at, nor of the kind of citizen which it requires our schools to provide in order that it may realize its aims. The third set of causes arises from the fact that whilst the political leaders of our two great parties have no clear or definite concep- tion as to what the true aims of the State 8 * ii6 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM should be, and, as a consequence, no clear idea of what our educational agencies should aim at, yet there is one party, a growing party within the State, who have such ideas and who have recently furnished us with a full statement of the duties of the State as regards the provision, the cost, and the opportunities of education. These demands, the demands of the Sociahst party, are as follows : — 1. That the State shall provide at its own cost all the means of education, not merely the means of elementary education but also of higher education, including secondary, techni- cal and University education. 2. That this education shall be free to all capable of profiting by it, and irrespective of distinction of class or patronage. 3. That if anything hinders the individual parent or the individual child from profiting by the means so provided, this defect shall be remedied by the State. This demand in- volves not only the establishment of a system of State bursaries, but also may include free feeding, free clothing, free medical care and so on. This morning then I propose, with your per- mission, to examine critically these demands, to point out wherein they seem to me to be just demands, and wherein they seem to be based upon a false notion of the true nature of a State and its duty as regards the provision of the means of education. But before entering upon this examination, let me say a word or two in THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 117 justification of the statement that, at the present time, our two great political parties have no clear idea at what the State should aim, and, as a consequence, no clear conception of the nature of the State's duty in the matter of the provision of the means of education. The present position of education across the Border amply justifies this statement. Both parties have tried to solve the educational riddle : both have endeavoured to establish some system of national education, and both have failed. The pohtical and religious aspects of the problem have been placed in the fore- front, and around these standards the battles have been waged, and whilst this has been going on, the national and social aspects of the edu- cational problem have been allowed to slip into the background. But surely, if the aim of the State is to develop the national capacities, to perfect the national Hfe, and if these aims can be realized onl}'' by the establishment of a well-thought-out system of education, then nothing should stand in the way of their fulfilment. Nearly a hundred years ago Fichte, the great German philosopher, proclaimed, in trumpet tones, that it was the business of the State to provide the educational means for the furtherance of all national and social interests, and prophesied that the State which in all its classes possessed the most varied and thorough education would, at the same time, be the most powerful and the happiest. The educational leaders of his time ii8 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM began the work of the national organization and re-organization of the means of education, and the German people of to-day are reaping a rich reward through the foresight of their fore- fathers. In England at the present time we have a far different condition of things : thus the provision made for elementary education is in many places defective, secondary education of a modern kind is wanting in many districts, and the provision of the means of higher technical and industrial education is being made in a spas- modic and unmethodical manner ; and, worst of all, there is no proper co-ordination between the various grades of education, because there is no one all-embracing, controlling authority. And although in Scotland we are in a much better condition, both as regards the provision and co-ordination of the means of education, yet we have at times to deplore a similar in- definiteness of view in our educational leaders to that which exists in England ; e.g. recently we have had a new Education Act which in some quarters has been proclaimed as a wide- reaching and far-seeing measure, but if we look into it narrowly we shall find that its two main educational provisions are : (i) the free medical examination of all school children, and (2) what I may call optional compulsory continuation schools. But the mere medical examination of the children of the nation will do httle good unless we have some means to compel parents to remedy defects, and in cases where, through poverty, the parent is unable to do this, to THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 119 remedy them at the expense of the State.^ The aim of this particular enactment is to secure the future physical efficiency of the members of the State, and if this is to be attained then no half-measures should be tolerated. Again, as regards the other provision : the power given to School Boards to compel at- tendance at continuation classes, little or nothing has as yet been done to make the enactment operative. School Boards are too much at the mercy of their constituents to enforce such regulations, and, moreover, in many cases at the present time they have not the knowledge necessary to take such a new and important step in educational reform. And yet the evils which such an extension of education is intended to remove are clamant and obvious. Year by year a large proportion of the youth of the country go to swell the ranks of the casual and unskilled labourer. Year by year hooliganism in our large cities extends and spreads. As a nation we are allow- ing large numbers of our boys and girls to grow up both economically inefficient and socially inefficient. We are allowing the youth of the country to neglect their duty both to them- selves and to the community, and, as a con- sequence, we lose economically and socially through this neglect. As a unit contending against other national units, we are as a nation less fit to wage the economic battle and less fit 1 Recently, funds have been provided for this purpose, but the provision is far from adequate. 120 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM to contend against any foreign foe who may attack these shores. These evils are known, and the remedies, in part, are known, and yet, largely because we believe in liberty, — in the false notion of liberty, that it consists in allow- ing every one to do as he pleases, we have no statesman courageous enough to say that these evils shall no longer be allowed to exist. As I have already said, the only party which has a consistent and all-embracing policy as re- gards the relation of the State to education is the Socialist party, and this is due to the fact that they have definite ideas of the nature of a State, and of the means which she should adopt to attain her aims. But before we can test the schemes set forth by them we need a criterion — a standard — by which to test these principles. Now this can only be found in a true concep- tion of the nature of the State and in a true idea at what the State should aim. The true aims of the State are, as we have already incidentally pointed out, to develop the national capacities and to perfect the national life, and, as one of the means to this end, the State must en- deavour to secure the physical, the economic, and the ethical efficiency of all her members, in short, the aim of the State should be to secure the social efficiency of its future mem- bers, and by this is meant that each should not only be fitted to render some particular service to the community, but also should be able, in small measure or large, to contribute to the further advancement of the nation's welfare. THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 121 Now of these three ends, of these three tests, the securing of the ethical efficiency of the future members of the State is the most im- portant, and is the supreme end and the supreme test of all our educational efforts. This ethical efficiency is secured, and can only be secured, when by means of our educational agencies we produce men who are independent, active, self- determined personalities, masters of themselves and of their environment. To educate a man, writes Fichte, means *' to give him opportunities to make himself the complete master and ruler of his own powers, the question is not what he learns but rather what he becomes ". The first demand made is that the State should provide at its own cost all the means of education, not merely the means for elementary education, but that it should also make pro- vision for all forms of higher education. Now, if the aim of the State is to develop the national capacities, to secure the future social efficiency of its members, and if to attain these ends pro- vision for all forms of education is necessary, then it is the bounden duty of the State to see that these means are provided and distributed in such a manner as to be readily accessible to all who desire to make use of the educational agencies, and are capable of profiting by them. This demand may be justified on various grounds. Both Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill pointed out that the provision of the means of education might become one of the duties of the State, and although they had mainly in view 122 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM the provision of elementary education, yet if we look at the changed economic and social con- ditions which exist now, their arguments are still valid as regards the provision by the State of all the means of higher education. No parent, no association of parents, with the exception of the very wealthy, pays the whole cost of the higher education of their boys and girls. The question of the provision of higher education is then not one between its provision by the State and its provision by voluntary agencies. If left to purely voluntary agencies, there is the danger that it will either not be pro- vided at all or that it will be inadequately pro- vided. If then the institution of technical colleges, of schools of art and other similar in- stitutions is necessary in order to develop the nation's capacities, in order to secure the social efficiency of its members, then it is the duty of the State to see that these institutions are pro- vided. Again, it is advisable that these should be provided by the State, and that it should in- tervene in their management, because the State alone is able to guarantee the efficiency of the education provided. The provision of higher education when left to private individuals may result in a condition of things prevalent in several American States, where we find all kinds of sham institutions pretending to provide higher education and granting degrees of a per- fectly worthless character. The public has to be protected against such evils and the only power able to secure this protection is the State. THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 123 Much has been done in our own country during the past year or two to place our higher technical and industrial education on a proper footing, and much more is expected as a result of the operation of the new Education Act, but the State has yet to realize that if these institu- tions are really needed, the means necessary for their establishment in full efficiency should be provided. Much of the energy of the heads of our Colleges and Universities has been ex- pended in the past, not in the organization of their institutions, but in carrying the hat round, begging and imploring the wealthy few to sub- scribe to their extension and development funds. Now such a condition of things neither befits the dignity of our principals nor is it creditable to the nation which permits and encourages such a method of touting for the provision of higher education. But, whilst this first demand seems to me right and just, the second, which claims that every kind of education should be free to all irrespective of distinction of class or parentage is in my opinion fallacious, and the fallacy arises from the confounding of two distinct and divergent meanings of the term equality. We may hold, and rightly hold, that any obstacle in the way of a man's educating his children should be removed, and that he should have an equal opportunity with others of obtaining the best possible education for his children, for it is only by giving him this right that we can be sure that all individual capacities 124 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM are being developed in the interests of the State and of the national life. For it is not, as is commonly supposed, on the ground that, through the higher education freely provided, a lad of ability may be enabled to rise in the social scale, but on the ground that otherwise his particular abilities, the particular services v^hich in after life he can render to the community, may be lost that it is urged that there should be equality of opportunity to all capable of pro- fiting by a course of higher education. The other meaning of equality with which this is confounded is that there should be equality in the treatment of all ; and since this can only be produced by bringing all down to a common level, to a common denominator, then the result is that the common level is determined by the standard of the individuals who are unable to pay for the education of their children. Now this principle is carried by its upholders consistently into other spheres, it is, e.g., the principle which underlies many trade-union methods, for there also equahty means equahty of treatment, no matter what may be the differ- ences in ability between individual men, and if we push this doctrine of equality of treatment back to its final base we come to the position which played so great a part in the French Revolution, that all men are by nature equal and that all inequalities arise through the injustice of social customs and social laws. But men are by nature not equal in intel- lectual capacity, or in mental power and invent- THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 125 iveness, and no equality of treatment as regards the benefits of education will make them so. Moreover, if we apply our ethical test to such proposals, what is the result ? Do we think that by removing all difficulties in the way of a man's educating his children we shall thereby deepen and strengthen his sense of responsi- bility for the welfare and up-bringing of his children ? Do we think that thereby we shall make him a freer, a more independent, a more self-reliant individual ? Shall we by such means tend to strengthen the ties of home life ? Shall we by handing the child over to the State, raise the ideal of home? Surely if we think these things out, our answer to all these questions must be in the negative. Surely a nation's greatness depends upon the character of its people, and the character of a people depends upon the quality of its homes. The lessening and the lowering of parental responsibility, the decay of the influences of home with all that this impHes, which, it seems to me, would be the inevitable result of such a policy, is too great a price to be paid for what after all seems a doubtful benefit. On the other hand, removing all obstacles in the way of the youth will not tend to produce the best type of citizen, will not aid us in the production of free, independent and self-reliant men and women. It is with much anxiety and with much sorrow that many who have to do with the control of higher education in this country have viewed the spread of the spirit of not 126 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM merely asking but demanding free education and even maintenance allowances by parents who are quite able to pay for the education of their sons and daughters. Many influences at work at the present are tending to bring about a fundamental change in the attitude of the Scottish people to the provision of higher education. On the other hand, we do find a large number of middle and working-class parents still willing and anxious to contribute directly to the cost of their children's education. But in this con- nexion what I should like you to realize is that, in the long history of the human race man has risen above the animals, has attained his present stature because in the past he has had to face and to overcome difficulties, that the civilization which we inherit has been won for us by the long travail of the human spirit, by the efforts of man to control his lower instincts, by his efforts to gain the mastery over nature, and by his endeavour to make this earth a fitting although temporary resting-place for the soul of man. Whatever be the ultimate meaning of this fact, whatever may be its ultimate significance, it is only by effort and by trial, by failure and by success, that we human mortals raise our- selves above the brutes and aspire to the level of the divine. Moreover, as a nation we Scotsmen have been proud of our educational system in the past : it was, and I sincerely hope that it still is and may continue to be so, the pride of THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 127 Scottish parents to sacrifice themselves in order that their children might receive a better edu- cation than they themselves received, and any- thing which tends to lessen or to lower thisfunda- mental parental instinct is not a good, nor will it tend in the future to produce the good citizen. The answer to the third demand follows from the adoption of the principles already laid down. If the aim of the State in the matter of educa- tion should be to remove obstacles in the way of a man's educating his children, if the policy of the State should be to afford equal oppor- tunity to all to benefit by the means of educa- tion provided, then we must agree that a system of State bursaries is necessary if all individual capacities are to be fully developed for the good of the nation and of the community. But we must no longer look upon bursaries as a reward for special ability alone, for in that case the moneys provided will tend to be taken up by those who stand in no need thereof We must see that they are given only when there is special ability and also special need. Above all, in some way or other, we must get beyond the individu- alistic point of view in the award of such bur- saries. We must get into the way of thinking that these awards are granted in order that by developing the individual capacity and by the perfecting of the individual life we are devel- oping the national capacities and perfecting the national life. By adopting the principle of equality of op- portunity in education, and by following similar 128 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM lines of reasoning to those given above, we shall come to the true answer as regards the free feed- ing, the free medical care of the children, and other problems of a like nature. For, in the State provision of the means of education, in the State aid to all forms of higher education, we must steer a course which will not lessen the parent's responsibihty for the education of his children, but will yet ensure that through want of sufficient means no indi- vidual capacity, no individual talent is being neglected or being lost to the State. In con- clusion, the clamant need of our own time is to come to a clear conception of what the function of a State or nation essentially is. Is the State an agency merely and solely for the protection of the individual members who compose it, from foreign foes, and protection from its anti- social members ? Or is it an agency which in addition to these merely police duties should endeavour to secure the conditions for the full development of the individual capacities, of the individual powers, of all its members. If this latter conception be the true nature of a State, then its aim must be to perfect the national life, to develop to the full all national capacities. And one great agency in the realization of these ideals is a well and fully equipped system of education, a system of education which takes into account not merely the fitting of the indi- vidual for the economic welfare of society, but aims at the furtherance and the ultimate per- fection of all national interests. THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 129 Hence our answer to the demands made, our answer as to the problem of the true relation of the State to education is briefly as follows : — 1. That it is the business and the duty of the State to see that the means for all kinds of education are fully and efficiently provided, and that they are so distributed as to be readily accessible to all. 2. That by means of a system of State bur- saries it should endeavour to equalize the op- portunities to all capable of profiting by any form of secondary or higher education. 3. Whenever any obstacle exists which hin- ders the full benefit of the education furnished being received by the child, and provided that the obstacle is such that it cannot be removed by the parent without permanently lowering his own social efficiency, then it ought to be removed by and at the expense of the com- munity. It is only by keeping clearly in view these principles that we can ensure in the future a race of free, independent, and self-reliant citizens ; and it is only when we do so that we are really developing the national capacities and perfecting the national life. VII. IS A SCIENCE OF EDUCATION POSSIBLE ? In proposing to ask and to endeavour, in some way or other, to answer the question, In what sense is a science of education possible ? I have been led to do so by various considerations. In the first place, questions of a similar kind are at the present time being eagerly asked in other departments of knowledge. Is there but one science of nature, of which the several sciences are but varying expressions ? If so, have all the sciences similar aims and similar methods, the sole difference being that in some the objects studied are relatively simple, in others the matters investigated relatively com- plex? Does organic nature differ from the so-called inorganic simply in complexity ? Must we postulate, e.g. that the causes at work in the realms of biology and physiology are similar in kind to those that govern the worlds of physics and of chemistry ? May we look forward to the day when organic life may be fully explained in terms of certain physico-chemical changes, and when the mental life of man may be fully set forth and fully explained by certain physical and chemical reactions of the central nervous 130 IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 131 system ? Is evolution one and continuous ? Can we demonstrate, to use the words of Prof. Sor- ley, " that the effective factors in the evolution of organic life can be accounted for completely by the forces already operative in inorganic evolution — greatly comphcated, perhaps, and newly distributed, but not different in nature "?^ That an affirmative answer to these funda- mental questions has been the dream of many philosophers and some scientists may be ad- mitted, but it is well to remember that a con- trary opinion widely prevails at the present day, and that it has been strenuously asserted that neither the facts of biology nor the pheno- mena with which Psychology deals are, or can be, fully set forth in so-called scientific terms. Physics and chemistry, it is declared, may explain, with more or less success, how the mechanism works by which a particular organ- ism attains its ends, but the specific nature of the organism itself, its uniqueness, cannot be accounted for by purely mechanical causes, for to do this would imply that it was the result or outcome of a previous and more complex mechanism, and following out this line of thought we should have to postulate that evo- lution is not from the relatively simple to the relatively complex, but takes place in the opposite direction, and that for the understand- ing of the part we first must have a thorough comprehension of the whole. Let me explain 1 " The Moral Life," by W. R. Sorley. r\ ♦ 132 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM this rather difficult position by a simple illus- tration : Let us assume for the moment, with some scientists, that the physiology of respira- tion can be fully explained in mechanical terms, that here we have a case of pure mechanism. Now, if this be so, the breathing apparatus itself must also be purely a machine, and since it had an origin it must be the outcome of a more complex mechanism, viz. the germ cell, and so on ad infinitum. One other criticism may here be made, when we, or others who ought to know better, glibly speak of life or of any particular bodily organ as a mechanism, we must remember that the only conception — the only real con- ception that we possess of a mechanism — is something made by human hands to serve a human need or to realize a social purpose ; i.e. a mechanism is the embodiment of a plan of thought and therefore cannot be fully ex- plained without reference to the previous intellectual aim or purpose. From these con- siderations it ought to be apparent that be- fore we can answer the question as to the possibility of a science of education, we must ask in what sense is a science of human life possible, and in particular we must endeavour to ascertain in what sense a science of psy- chology is possible. For if there is but one science of Nature of which physics and chemistry are the best known types, then a scientific psychology must ultimately be subordinated to physiology, and the changes in the central IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 133 nervous system must be capable of being fully explained in terms of physico-chemical changes. My second reason for entering upon this par- ticular discussion follows from the first. Until we define exactly what we mean by ** science " then it is impossible to say whether or not there can be any such thing as a science of Education. Now, there is no term which is more abused at the present time and none which is used with so varying a connotation as the term ** science ". Sometimes the term and its corresponding adjective is opposed to em- pirical knowledge with the assumption that the latter somehow or other is not knowledge at all, whereas a great part of everyone's know- ledge is of the latter character. My knowledge, e.g., of the characters and temperaments of the people I meet in life is largely of this nature. It is derived from direct experience, it cannot be reduced to general terms, or summed up in any scientific formulae. What is true of human life is also true of both inorganic and organic nature, a large part of our knowledge is local, peculiar, and unique, and cannot be reduced further, and yet it is valid, in so far as we can use it in the attainment of our ends. Now, as we shall see later, it is this particular and unique knowledge of our individual pupils which is, at least, one essential factor in Educa- tion, if we are to make our educational efforts a success. Hence, whatever may be the case in other departments of practice, in education, this empirical, local, and unique knowledge is 134 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM of equal importance with that which may be summed up in general rules or stated in scien- tific formulae. But the term " science " is still further used to distinguish knowledge which is the result of careful observation or pre-arranged experi- ment, from that gathered in a haphazard manner. A large part of the established knowledge, e.g. of biology, is of this char- acter. By careful observation we , are en- abled to give an account of the Hfe-hi story of an organism and of the means by which it adapts itself to its particular environment. But this careful observation and description need not be accompanied by the assumption that the whole process of adaptation to environment can be fully set forth, and be fully explained in terms of mechanical causality. Further, the term science has still a third meaning. As used in such sciences as physics and astronomy, it lays down an ideal of knowledge which under certain conditions can be realized, and is based upon three pos- tulates. It assumes in the first place that the total conditions which produce any given effect are ascertainable ; (2) that the repeti- tion of the same or similar conditions will produce a similar result, and (3) that an exact quantitative relation in terms of matter and energy can be established between the ante- cedent conditions and the consequent results. This is the conception of science which largely underlies the work of the physicist and the IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 135 chemist, and it assumes that finally all change can be explained in terms of the transference of energy from one mechanical system to another. Now, when we speak of the possibility of a science of biology, of psychology, and of edu- cation, in what sense are we using the term ? Do we lay it down as a postulate to guide our procedure in the attainment of the desired end, that the facts of life, and of the mental life in particular, can be fully explained and without remainder on mechanical terms ? Now, this is an assumption which we have no business to make unless we are first satisfied that the phe- nomena of life and of spiritual growth are of the same order as the phenomena of the inor- ganic world. We may, of course, make such a premature simplification to see how far it works, but if we are fully convinced that the facts are not of the same order, then we shall have to revise our conception of science as applied to biology and to psychology. My third reason for entering upon the dis- cussion of this particular topic arises from the fact that within recent years the experimental study of children of school age, their general characteristics, and their individual diff'erences, has received a considerable amount of attention, with the consequence that a certain measure of more or less definite knowledge is now avail- able for the guidance of educators, and the hope has arisen that in the course of time education from being an art based on inaccurate and slip- shod knowledge may in time found its practice 136 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM upon a verified and established knowledge of the principles governing mental and moral growth. With this ideal and with this aim I have no fault to find ; what I am concerned to ascertain is, What conception of science and of scientific procedure must we bring to the inter- pretation of mental phenomena ? Are we to conceive of the science of psychology as follow- ing the methods of the natural sciences and to picture the mind as a very complex mechan- ism ; or are we to conceive of it after the manner of biology as an organism and en- deavour to understand how the organism is so constituted as to adapt itself to a particular environment, or, finally, must we assert that there is a factor in human life which cannot be explained either in terms of mechanism or of biological adaptation ? If this be so, all our observations of mental growth, all our experi- mentations with or upon children must take this factor into account ; otherwise, our observa- tions and experiments may result in a premature simplification and in an incomplete generaliza- tion. It has recently been asserted by Driesch, J. S. Haldane^ and Professor Arthur Thomson^ that the mechanical categories of physics and chemistry are inadequate fully to explain bio- logical phenomena, and the claim has been made that biology is an independent and autonomous science. "Life," in the words of Driesch, "is * Cf. " Mechanism, Life, and Personality," especially Lect. IV. « " Hibbert Journal," Vol. X. IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 137 not a specialized arrangement of inorganic events : biology, therefore, is not applied physics and chemistry : life is something apart, and biology is an independent science." If this be so, if the claim for independence be admitted in the case of biology, then the claim that the mental life cannot be fully explained in mechanical terms is much greater. Nay, we should go even further and assert that neither the category of mechanism nor that of purposive adaptation to environment are sufficient fully to explain mental growth and development, and, that when this is attempted, the one essential characteristic feature of our human life is omitted. For, on the human plane, adaptation to environment is a consciously foreseen and directed adaptation, which, in many cases, attains its end by the alteration of environ- mental circumstance. The possibility of a science of education therefore in part, at least, depends upon the possibility of a science of psychology — its nature, methods, and purpose, and until we have come to some conclusion on this latter question, it is useless to attempt any definite answer to the former. Let me not be mis- understood. Very much may, and has been done, by introspection, by careful observation, and by experiment, to further and to extend our knowledge of mental process, its principles and its physiological pre-conditions, and, further, much has been done in the discrimination of certain mental differences between children. 138 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM In so far as by better and more systematic methods of inquiry we thus render our know- ledge of the mental life more exact, then this is pure gain and may be helpful in the guidance of educational practice. But, when we pass from this, and with the uncritical and the half- educated go on to postulate that the mind is a complex piece of mechanism, which with fuller knowledge the educator may manipulate so as to produce any desired result, we protest that upon a clear and unbiassed view, our human purposive life cannot be so reduced. English Associationism and German Herbartianism both were attempts to explain mental growth by quasi-mechanical conceptions. Both to-day are bankrupt, but their evil influence upon educational thought and practice still prevails. For, in a word, it has led to the emphasis in education being placed on the storing up and systematization of knowledge to the neglect of the generation of ideals of conduct and of the establishment of permanent and social interests. In order further to elucidate this question, let us consider, in some detail, the nature of the various problems with which a complete theory of education has to deal, and let us endeavour to ascertain how far, and to what extent, we may call in the aid of scientific knowledge for our guidance. Now the prob- lems with which a theory of education en- deavours to deal are, at least, four in number. We have in the first place to ask and to en- deavour to answer the question as to the IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 139 general nature of the end or object of educa- tion. "The first thing," writes Prof Ward, "the educator should be clear about is what he intends, what his end and aim is. To ascertain this ideal," he goes on to say, "we must turn not to psychology but to life : it is a social and ethical, rather than a psychological problem." How far such a statement is correct we shall presently discuss. But assuming that we have more or less clearly discerned the objects to be aimed at in education, we have now to enter upon a discussion of the course or courses of study best fitted to attain this end. These two problems of the end and of the curriculum are really social rather than educational questions, since their determina- tion both in the past and in the present goes beyond the precise function of the teacher. Given the nature of the end and the curriculum by which it may be attained, the third problem, or rather group of problems is concerned with the nature of the methods of instruction and training by which we may gradually realize our ideal. Finally, we have a class of problems, which we need here only mention : the dis- cussion of such matters as the best methods in the organization of a school and of an educa- tional system. Let us now consider the first problem — the end or ideal towards which our educational efforts are or should be directed. To what science are we to turn for guidance ? To ethics, answer some. But to this answer there are at least 140 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM three objections. In the first place, ethical theories are as varied as philosophical ideals or religious creeds. In the second place, ethical discussions centre largely round such problems as the precise nature of the moral judgment, and the ultimate test or criterion of goodness. Now these problems, however interesting in them- selves, afford little guidance to the teacher either as to the nature of the concrete ideal which he should set before him, or as to the nature of the methods by which he may attain it. His problem as a moral educator is to aid in the formation of certain habits and in the generation of certain ideals, and the ordinary moral cosmos of his time furnishes him with sufficient guidance without reference to any abstract theory as to the nature of these ideals. In the third place, even if ethics could give us definite guidance, it would be only partial guid- ance, for the formation of moral character is not the sole purpose of education or of the school. We must know in addition something of the nature of the civilization to which the child must be correlated in adult hfe. To what science should we turn for guidance here. To sociology ? But there is no such accredited science. We have many theories — many ideals — socialistic and otherwise — but no definite body of knowledge which may guide us as to the future trend of social progress. If, then, neither ethics nor sociology is capable of affording us much definite insight into the nature of our educational ideals, in IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 141 what direction are we to look for aid ? And the answer, it seems to me, is two-fold. By the study of past educational history, we may trace the causes or conditions which determined educational ideals in the past, and show how the social and reHgious forces of the period were instrumental in shaping the direction of educational change. Thus, e.g., we know and can trace how religious ideals were operative in determining the ends and methods of educa- tion over Western Europe during several centuries. Again, to take another example, we can show how at the beginning of the nineteenth century a new national ideal arose in Germany and how the educational system there has been gradually made instrumental in the realization of this new national ideal. Thus from the study of the past we come to know that behind every educational movement there has always been a more comprehensive ideal — sometimes it has been religious and cosmopolitan — some- times political and national — whilst, at other times some philosophical ideal as to man's place in Nature has been the dominating factor in shaping the educational aim. The other direction in which we must look for guidance is in the study of actual present-day ten- dencies. By a careful study we must endeavour to understand the actual forces behind present- day educational movements : to discriminate be- tween those which are merely transitory, and those which are not, and to evaluate them by their possible future contribution to social pro- 142 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM gress and to individual welfare. To this task — to the solution of this problem — the insight of the scientist is of less importance than the faith of the prophet. All of us who are engaged in the actual reconstruction of our educational system or any part of it, are aware of this fact. We establish new technical colleges, encourage new developments in the extension of the means of education, in the hope and expectation that in the future this will tend towards social pro- gress and towards the uplifting and elevating of the life of the individual. But we build on faith rather than upon a full and reasoned in- sight into the trend of social progress ; for the human intellect is unable to grasp in one com- plete synthesis all the factors operative in what, for want of a better name, we call the advance of civiHzation, nor again can we positively be assured that some new and hitherto unexpected and unknown factor may not emerge and play its part in moulding the future destiny of society. Is there, therefore, no study which can give us positive aid ? To this, the answer is, that psychology, in individual cases, can, to some extent, give us guidance as to whether such or such an aim is compatible with the child's nature, and how best it may be attained. What is here meant is that by careful observation of a child's nature, and by the employment of experimental methods, we may obtain a knowledge of the child's native endowment, and so be enabled to direct his education that he shall realize himself to the best advantage, and thus be enabled to perform IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 143 the service to society for which he is best adapted. This aspect of education has been much neglected in the past, for we have been prone to assume that all children are more or less alike, and to take account only of marked differences in native endowment. To illustrate, from the wider educational sphere, a similar neglect, we have only to look at the failure of our prison system to reform the offender and to prevent crime. This is largely due to our ignorance of the mind of the criminal and wherein he differs from the ordinary well-behaved citizen. In considering the second class of problems, viz. those concerned with the nature of the various courses of study necessary to realize our aims, we are met with difficulties similar to those we found in the endeavour to de- termine the ideal towards which our educa- tional efforts should be directed. In higher education, e.g., we no longer believe that there is one type — one kind of curriculum — suited to all. We have begun now to realize that in the determination of the courses of study in our secondary schools and higher educational in- stitutions, we must take into account not merely differences in native endowment, but also dif- ferences in the nature of the higher social services which are in demand. Psychology, as I have already said, may furnish us with some insight into the nature and extent or range of native endowment, but as regards the influence of the second factor, 144 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM we must trust to a wise study of the im- mediate past and of present-day tendencies and their probable development in the future. But exact scientific knowledge of either factor is not at present possible, if by science we mean knowledge similar to that of the astronomer and the physicist. Let me illustrate this by an example. A very common and very serviceable definition of the end or purpose of education at the pres- ent day is to lay down that it should en- deavour to secure the future social efficiency of the individual, and under education is in- cluded all the agencies at work which endeavour consciously to mould the character of the rising generation. The educational problem is : How may the schools best aid in the attainment of this end of social efficiency ? and to this question there are various answers. Some would have our schools undertake some kind of so-called vocational training ; others would prefer the extension of the general education of the pupil by the school. But, further, it is asserted that our courses of study, both of training and of in- struction, should be so devised throughout as to secure this end of social efficiency. When, how- ever, we endeavour to analyse all that is included under this definition of the end we have differ- ences of opinion, e.g. some assert that efficiency as a citizen both in peace and war is essential, and that therefore every youth should be com- pelled to undergo a course of military training ; others would exclude this element and rather IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 145 emphasize the securing of the economic effici- ency of the individual. The future course of events may be such that by common consent universal military training may become an integral element in our ideal of the end of education, but we have no scientific evidence which can lead us to this or that conclusion. Enough has been said to show that in the determination of the purposes of education and in the devising of courses of study suited to attain these purposes, we can have nothing like the exactness of the natural sciences. As the concrete nature of the ideal changes, so also must there be a change in the courses of study necessary to attain it. The education, e.g., of a sailor fifty years ago would not suffice for the manning of a ship to-day. For the art of navigation has advanced greatly and has also largely changed in character. What is true in this particular instance is true in almost every department of practice, and hence social efficiency and the means to secure it are never static and permanent, but change with the ad- vance or progress of society; and, as I have already said, the insight of the prophet is here as valuable as the evidence of the scientist. The third set of problems deals with the methods of teaching, and with the guidance which the teacher may derive in his work from the study of psychology. Now since this science endeavours to explain the growth of individual minds, and attempts to trace the laws governing the development of mental habits and the prin- 10 146 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM ciples by which knowledge is organized, some study of psychology is necessary if the teacher is to understand and to educate the pupil with whom he has to deal. To enter in detail into the question as to the guidance which the study affords would be to anticipate much of what follows in the course. What I am more concerned with to-day is to emphasize two things. In the first place, whilst a sound knowledge of psychology, in so far as it can be obtained at the present, may be of use in the devising of better educational methods and in the solution of the problems of the class-room, it is not the only qualification necessary for the teacher. A sound psychologist is not neces- sarily a good teacher. Enthusiasm for his work, a ready sympathy with, and care in dealing with the young, and that intuitive and empirical knowledge of the differences between individuals which comes through direct experience, are equally necessary for the successful teacher. Moreover, devoid of this enthusiasm and sympathy, the teacher will fail in spite of all the theoretical knowledge which he may possess. This would be true even if psychology consisted of a body of principles thoroughly ascertained and universally agreed upon, and at the present time there is no such universally accepted body of knowledge. The second thing which I wish to insist upon is that mental growth and development is sui generis and is not analogous to organic growth. If this be so, neither the categories of mechanical IS A SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 147 science nor those of the biological sciences are adequate to interpret fully either our intellectual life or the facts of moral and spiritual growth. For what is characteristic of life on the human plane is the presence of self-conscious purpose, e.g. an animal instinct and a human bodily habit fully established act very much in the same manner. But what a difference in their mode of formation, the instinct is largely an inborn endowment, formed we know not how — the habit has been formed by repeated efforts to attain a foreseen and desired end. Purpose and self-conscious purposive action is man's characteristic, and without this we cannot understand the development of his mental life. Further, how are we to explain, on merely mechanical and biological grounds, man's spiritual needs, and how, in order to satisfy them, he has created the religious creeds and institutions of the world. In conclusion, we may say that the study of psychology has become fruitful to the teacher, since it has rid itself of theological presup- positions as to the nature of the soul, and has separated itself from metaphysical conceptions as to the origin and nature of knowledge; and been content to analyse and to describe the modes by which habits are formed, ideals gener- ated, and knowledge organized within individual minds. It will also further progress and be of value so long as it follows its own methods of inquiry and investigation without adopting the mechanical conceptions of much of the present 148 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM day science, and in so far as it leaves the de- termination of such ultimate questions as the relation of body and mind to the philosopher. Much has been done by patient analysis to make more clear our knowledge of the instinc- tive springs to action which govern conduct and determine the direction in which we seek knowledge : much also has been done to make evident the truth that in the acquisition of all knowledge there is present some interest ori- ginal or acquired. But we are a long way from a full and exact knowledge of how mind develops, and consequently we are not within sight of a scientific pedagogy. VIII. THE MEANING AND EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY. The value of the study of history as an agent in the moral and social education of the young has within recent years again become the subject of much discussion. By some German writers history is placed in the forefront as the most important of all studies in the formation of moral character, and a somewhat similar place has been assigned to it by Prof. Dewey of Chicago, who may be taken as a typical re- presentative of the most forward school of educational thought in America. Now this raises the question as to the educa- tional purpose of the study of history. Do we merely aim at providing the young with a cer- tain store of information concerning the histori- cal past — such information as may be said to be a necessary part of the equipment in life of every cultured man and woman — or do we de- sire in addition, by means of the teaching and study of history, to stimulate the imagination of the young, to cultivate the reasoning powers of the youth, to train the critical faculty of the few, and to imbue them with the true historical 149 150 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM spirit of attempting critically to understand and to interpret the past, and so of arousing in them the desire to search its records in order that they and their fellows may gather guidance for the present and wisdom for the future ? Above all, it is urged, should it not be one, if not our chief aim in the teaching and study of history to extend the mental horizon of the young, to make them realize that they are what they are because of the past, that they are the heirs of all the ages, and that what the future generations shall be depends in large measure upon what they and we now are as members of a community, of a State, and of society as a whole. And surely, it is said, it should be one of the aims of the teaching of history during the period of education to lay the basis of a wise patriot- ism, to endeavour to bring home to the youth of the country in some measure, at least, the truth that the institutions by which we live and move and have our being, which have gone to form us and to make us what we are, have been gained for us by the labour and sweat of our forefathers, and that it is our duty to main- tain, to further, and to improve these political, ethical, and religious institutions, and that to understand them in the present we must know something of their origins in the past, some- thing of the changes which they have under- gone, and of the different forms through which they have passed in response to the changing needs of mankind. For institutions arise, main- EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 1 5 1 tain and develop themselves through the en- deavour of man to grapple with the changing circumstances of his natural and social environ- ments. Now this renewed interest in the value of history as an educative influence is largely due to the renewed interest in history itself. During the past twenty years the amount and the extent of historical investigation has been enormous, so that at the present day it is no longer possible for the student of history to make himself acquainted with all that has been discovered and recovered of the historical past. At best he must be content to remain satisfied with a general knowledge of world-history, and to devote himself to the intensive study of one historical period, of one historical epoch. But not only is there an increased interest in the historical past, not only is there an amount of material, critically sifted and published, greater than at any previous time, but the point of view from which history was regarded in former times is gradually changing. The newer spirit in history emphasizes not so much the constitu- tional as the institutional side of social develop- ment, and understands by institutions not merely the political institutions of a country but the wider social institutions of which the political form only one manifestation. In particular, attention has been drawn, and rightly drawn, to the fact that changes in the economic institu- tions, in the economic structure of any country 152 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM are the determining agents in many cases of political and constitutional changes; e.g. we cannot understand the feudal system of the middle ages unless we understand the economic institutions on which it was founded and by which it was determined. We cannot under- stand the decay and break-down of that system unless we understand that we have first of all a change in the economic structure of society — a change which made the relation of servant and feudal lord, one not of custom but of contract. This newer spirit in history is to be traced to the success, or the supposed success, of the historical method in the explanation of natural phenomena, and to the application of the con- ception of evolution to the explanation of the facts of natural history. The genetic method has been applied in geology, in biology, in anthropology, and in other cognate sciences. Its success in those spheres has led to its being carried over to the interpretation of the moral or social sciences. First applied in jurispru- dence, in opposition to the deductive method of Austin and Bentham, it has also been applied to the explanation of economic phenomena, and one of the ablest of present-day economists declares that it is no longer worth while to attempt to explain the complex economic in- stitutions of our own times by the methods of Adam Smith, Mill, and Cairnes. We must rather, he states, investigate the successive stages through which the economic life of EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 153 society has actually passed, and by means of this insight into the past we shall better be able to understand present-day institutions and the probable course of economic development in the future. What is to be emphasized in this connexion is the fact of the thorough-going carrying over of the conception of causation into the histori- cal field, and the assumption made that there are principles which determine social and historical change as well as natural change. With the validity of the assumption we have nothing to do. What we have to note is the changed spirit of historical investigation. This is manifest even in such an orthodox quarter as among the writers of the Cambridge School, for in their monumental modern history we are told that the main aim of the volumes is not merely to describe and to discuss the various great movements of our Western civili- zation, but to show the nations, influences, and interests which were active in the production of change. In contrast, we may note that the historians of the earlier half of last century were for the most part content to describe the facts of political and constitutional history, and when they sought for anything more than the most obvious explanation of the facts, they usually had recourse to the "great man " theory of history, and explained the peculiarities of any particular epoch by the vague doctrine of the genius of the age. 154 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM Now, this increased interest in the study and in the interpretation of the past has led to the question being asked as to what is being done, and what can be done, in our schools to stimulate an interest in the study of history. It is admitted by every education- alist that history in its final and complete form cannot with any hope of success be taught to the young, but it is contended that much might be done by a wise choice of materials and by the adoption of right methods of teaching to promote interest in the subject, and to lay a basis for future study. For, the true test of an educational course is, how far it has tended to interest the pupil, so that when the initiative of the teacher is withdrawn, the pupil, so far as it lies within his power and means, carries on the study of his own accord. Much of the seed which we as teachers sow falls upon stony ground, much more of it springs up only to be choked by the tares of the world, but the hope and reward for work done of every true teacher is that here and there a seed may find the con- ditions favourable for its growth. Now unless we lay the foundation for this continued interest in and study of the subject, our teaching has been of no avail, for history shares with literature and philosophy the honour of deahng with subjects of ever-abiding interest and concern to the human mind. It claims that he who comes and reverently wor- ships at her shrine will obtain not only increase of knowledge ; will have his mental powers not EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 1 5 5 only exercised and sharpened ; but that from the narrow outlook of his petty present she will extend his mental horizon until he sees down the long vista of the ages ; that thereby only can he truly know and understand the present, and^ pondering over what she reveals, he may gain wisdom, practical wisdom for the guidance of his life as a man and a citizen, and theoretical wisdom that he may perhaps learn the meaning of human life and of human destiny, and it is on this last-named claim that history makes her strongest appeal to be ad- mitted into the educational curriculum. Time does not permit me to go more fully into this part of the subject. However, it is enough for our purpose to-night to have noted the changed emphasis which has been placed on the influences which have moulded and formed societies, and to have taken account of the fact that the newer spirit in history is more con- cerned with the investigation of the causes of social change than with the mere recording of these changes ; and that this changed spirit has raised anew the question of the kind of history suitable in the education of the young. But before saying a word or two on the latter question I wish to draw your attention to four ways of looking at the past ; to four methods of historical interpretation ; or, viewed from the point of the historian, to four methods of writ- ing history ; to the fourfold function of the historian ; and the thesis which I wish to lay down is that for the final and complete investi- 156 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM gation of the social past, all these four methods are necessary, and in fact that the one passes into the other. In the first place, then, we may investigate the past for the purpose of accurately finding out and of exactly stating what did or did not take place. What has been regarded by many of us as historical truth has now been found, if not to be false, at least to be one-sided and partial. As an example of this we may note the conventional and current belief that the Lutheran or Protestant Reformation was motived by purely religious influences ; that it was an effort of the human spirit to free itself from the chains that shackled its free move- ment, and that it was an endeavour of man to rid himself of the intolerable burdens imposed by the dogmas of the Church. In contrast with this let me quote one of the latest state- ments by an historian of repute on this subject : " The motives," he says, " both proximate and remote, which led to the Lutheran revolt were largely secular rather than spiritual, the re- ligious changes incidental to the Reformation were not the objects sought, but the means for attaining that object ; the overthrow of dogma was the only means to obtain permanent relief from the secular abuses of the ecclesiastical system ". Now, the main purpose of the historian as so conceived is by a close, critical examination of the evidence to separate the facts of history EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 1 57 from the legendary and mythical accretions in which they have become embedded in the course of time, and I need scarcely point out in how many spheres this critical investigation has been carried on, until at the present day our beliefs in many subjects are, so to speak, in the melting-pot ; for in history, and especially in religious history, the cry from many an anxious soul is ; What are we actually to be- lieve concerning the past ? But here, as else- where, it is well to remember that we are passing through a transition period. The old conventional beliefs and interpretations are passing away, and we have not yet reached the stage when a new historical reconstruction is possible. As the editors of the Cambridge History point out, the time for writing an ulti- mate account of so near an event to our own times as the Renaissance has not yet come, and the function of the present-day historian must be critically to examine the conventional inter- pretations and to gather together the materials for a newer and a more accurate reconstruc- tion of the influences which underlay this great movement of our Western world. In a somewhat similar spirit the late Sir Leslie Stephen but a few years ago declared that as yet we have not the materials for writing a scientific account of the history of civilization, and that in the meantime and for many years to come the task set before the historian should be the careful and critical gathering together of and investigation into the facts and influences which 158 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM determined social change. And in other spheres than in history this critical spirit is manifest. In religion, in philosophy, in political theory, old things are passing away, and once again in the world's history the eyes of the faithful are turned towards the East, looking eagerly for the advent of him who is yet to come — of the new prophet, of the new teacher, whose mission is to reconstruct and to re-interpret for us our political, our religious, and our philosophical ideals. Much might be said in criticism of this view of historical interpretation, which is, in some quarters, the dominant one in our day and which but mirrors the prevailing tendencies of our age ; but my task to-night is not to criticize, but to explain and as briefly as possible to point out the truth in the various views. What I wish you to notice is that this kind of historical investigation is absolutely necessary before any work of reconstruction is possible. We must get accurately to know the facts, accurately to discriminate the various influences operative in the past, accurately to measure the extent and amount of the forces at work during any period, before we can set about either the imaginative or theoretical reconstruc- tion of the past. But when we have accurately determined the facts and influences operative during any period, in so far as it lies within our power — for in no other study is it so difficult to know our data— EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 1 59 there is a second function of the historian, a second method of interpreting the past, and this is to make us realize it in imagination ; to bring home to us the events, the manner of men; the social customs; the institutions of the past ; to give us, as Carlyle described it, a picture of the thing acted. In such a view of history, and I now quote from an early essay of Macaulay, "Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest ; from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw ; from the throne of the legate to the chimney corner where the begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders, the stately monastery with the good cheer in its refectory ; the tournament with its heralds and ladies ; the trumpets and the cloth of gold would give truth and life to the representation." To represent the world-drama in a series of pictures is the aim or purpose of such a view of history ; the men and the events portrayed are not the mere embodiments of some abstract theory, nor the modes by which some pervading influence manifests itself, but are represented as real, as active, as determining agents. " Show me,"^ writes Walter Savage Landor in one of his imaginary conversations, "show me how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence ; tell me their names that I may repeat them to my children . . . leave weights and measures i6o EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM in the market-place, commerce in the harbour, the Arts in the light they love, philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne and by her side Eloquence and War." And in a similar strain Mr. Birrell writes : ** To keep the past ahve for us is the pious function of the historian ; our curiosity is endless, his the task of gratifying it. We want to know what happened long ago. Performance of the task is only approximately possible, but none the less it must be attempted for the demand for it is born afresh with every infants cry. History is a pageant and not a philosophy." The task, then, of the historian as so conceived is vividly to depict the past for us ; to bring home to us the characters of the men and women who have been influential in moulding the destinies of nations. This method of writing history has not inaptly been termed impressionist. The historian is an artist who recreates for us the past, and in so doing he may alter the perspec- tive and neglect strict accuracy in detail. His aim is to make an impression ; to depict in striking colours what seems to him the most important events and influences at work during any given period, and his task is accomplished if he attains his aim of making his reader realize that these seemingly shadowy events of the past were real : events in which were mani- fested the passions, the prejudices, the loves, the hates, the ambitions, the despondencies of men and women of like nature unto our very selves ; that those theories and beliefs which EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY i6i seem perhaps to some of us in these enlightened days so fallacious and so silly once roused the enthusiasm and directed the energies of men ; that, in particular, those religious beliefs and truths which the modern world so lightly dis- cards were once great formative influences in shaping the destinies of Western Europe ; for ideas are not mere lifeless abstractions existing somewhere in our heads, but, as Hegel was so fond of saying, have hands and feet ; that for these beliefs our forefathers have fought and died, and that but for these we should not have been what we now are. Time is the stage on which the great world-drama is being enacted, and the most striking incidents are often those connected with the lives and actions of nations, and of men as members of corporate com- munities. To make us realize all this is one great function of the historian. But the human mind cannot rest with this mere representation of the past to the imagina- tion ; it must seek here as elsewhere, here as in other spheres of knowledge, to go behind the outward show of things ; beyond their outward and visible manifestations to the causes or ideas or motives which determined them — in short, to give a reasoned account of historical change. In such a view of history, we seek to know the nature of the influences which de- termined and determine historical and social change, and here we may either rest content with discovering the causes, influences, or II i62 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM motives operative during any given epoch, or we may seek by this method to gain a unitary conception of history, i.e. may endeavour to explain all historical change as fundamentally due to one kind or one set of conditions. The earliest and perhaps most notev^orthy of these attempts was that of Buckle, who endeavoured to show that the main determinants of social change were physical. Later, Karl Marx, in- fluenced by the dialectic method of Hegel, attempted to trace all political, legal, and con- stitutional changes in the main to economic causes. A more moderate interpretation of this theory has lately been advanced by Prof. Seligmann, who, while not carrying the theory to an extreme, tries to show that we may rightly speak of "the economic interpretation of history, since economic influences are at all times the most influential in determining social change ". In opposition, but following the same method, Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his *' Principles of Western CiviHzation," is found declaring that the religious and ethical motives have been the dominant influences at work in the advance of our western civihzation, and, with the ardour of the enthusiast and without the caution of the philosopher, prophesying that those nations in which the economic motives are subordinated to the ethical will survive in the struggle for existence. We may then call this the scientific interpre- tation of history, since by this method we seek to determine the influences, forces, causes, or EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 163 conditions operative in the production of any particular social change or social change gen- erally. And when we seek to determine the principles operating in all historical change, we naturally pass to the fourth conception, to the fourth method of interpreting the past, viz. to the philosophical interpretation. Here the problem is : What is the meaning, what is the signi- ficance of this long process of humanity in time ? Can we trace, either in the social world as a whole, or in any particular part of it, the gradual reaHzation of any final end ? Can we, not with the imagination of the poet, but by the dry light of reason, see through the ages one increasing purpose run ? Or must we say that whilst there is incessant change, con- stant movement, we can see no marked advance along the whole line ; that what we have is progress, or seeming progress here ; retrogres- sion, or seeming retrogression there ; gain here, loss there ; but in the Universe as a whole, no progress, no gain which is not another's loss, no loss which is not compensated for else- where ? This is the deepest, the most fundamental problem of human nature. Mere process in the whole without progress seems unthinkable: and were it thinkable it would be terrible. Against any such conclusions of the head our heart cries out. Against such conclusions our ethical, re- ligious, and emotional nature starts up in angry rebeUion, for such a conception would impl}^ an II * i64 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM endless, an unmeaning, an incessant series of changes in which we men and women were the sport, the very playthings of Almighty God — the mere pieces in a game, a game as unmean- ing as it would be unending. But to me, at least, it seems necessary to postulate an end to which the whole creation moves, although its clear and definite formulation can never be adequately, but only approximately attained ; and what in this reference I wish particularly to emphasize is that when we begin to interpret the events of history as determined by this or that set of influences, we must postulate some end to which the movement or movements seem to lead, and just for this reason ultimate history as ultimate philosophy is impossible. For as we gain greater insight into the meaning of the present, this alters our interpretation of the past. What formerly seemed so important is seen now, in view of our altered insight, to be less important ; and what seemed then to be of so little significance, now seems alight with life and meaning. And here I must close this part of the discussion with a dogmatic statement, over which those of you who are philosophi- cally inclined may ponder. If the present can only be thoroughly understood in, and by means of, the light derived from the study of the past, so, in like manner, the past can only be thoroughly understood and interpreted by means of the in- sight which we have of the significance of the present, and hence in every age, with every advance of thought, there will arise the need EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 165 for a fresh reconstruction — a fresh re-interpre- tation of the past. The facts in each period may be more or less the same, but the point of view from which the facts are interpreted and their present significance understood, will have changed, and so call for a fresh reconstruction. And what this conception of history brings home to us is that the past is not a dead and bygone past, but that it lives and makes its influence felt in the present, just as the present determines and is determined by the future. And if we realize this, then we may also realize and understand the meaning of Wordsworth's sonnet : — I thought of thee, my partner and my guide, As being passed away. Vain sympathies ! For backward, Duddon ! as I cast my eyes, I see what was, and is, and will abide ; Still glides the stream, and shall for ever glide ; The form remains, the function never dies ; While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise. We men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish ; — be it so ! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; And if, as tow'rd the silent tomb we go. Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know. Hence fully to understand the meaning of the historical past, fully to understand how the past lives in and makes its influence felt in the present, we must endeavour to interpret history from the fourfold points of view mentioned and, moreover, this fourfold method of interpretation is necessary for the full and complete treatment 1 66 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM of history. For if we make history a mere record of past events, a mere catalogue of wars, battles and treaties, then we reduce it to a mere chronological set of annals without life and without meaning. Again, however important the imaginative method of depicting the past may be, it can never lead us truly to under- stand and to interpret the past, much less can it make us understand how the present not only is the outcome of the past, but how the past persists in and still influences the present. Further, if it were possible, and it is not now possible, and it may be for ever impossible, to trace out all the causes and in- fluences which have been operative throughout historical change, then this alone would not satisfy the human intellect, for by the very constitution of our human nature we are com- pelled to go beyond this stage, and to endeavour to ascertain the final purpose, or purposes, which for ever runs down the ringing grooves of change. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, let us for a moment consider the kind of history study which may be valuable in the education of the young. Manifestly, the philosophic study of history is beyond the reach of the youth of the country, and beyond the reach of any but the man of philosophic temperament. Again the critical study of history, except to a very limited extent, cannot be undertaken either in our schools or in our colleges. For the successful EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 167 carrying out of this method implies a well- trained and well balanced judgment and a store of knowledge which can be possessed only by the scholar of ripe years and of wide attainments. As a consequence, during the school period the kind of history which interests the young mind is that which makes an appeal to the imagination, and hence in the teaching of history we should make our test of the material to be chosen its quality of imaginative stimulus. Prof Wood- ward has declared, and rightly declared, that history begins and ought always on certain sides of it to continue to be an exercise of the constructive imagination. The aim then should be to make the child realize in mental pictures the action or the scene or the character presented by the subject chosen, just as at a much later stage the same capacity for realizing the emotions called into play by the great formative ideas of social organization is essential to comprehending their force, and essential to the true under- standing of an}^ great movement in the progress of society. But the proper study of history may be used, not merely as an instrument in the cultivation of the imagination of the young, and so tend to foster certain emotional tendencies which lie at the basis of such virtues as courage and patriot- ism, it may also be used as a means of training the reasoning powers to trace the operation of cause and effect in the determination of social change and in the shaping of the destinies of nations. It is true, no doubt, that we must be 1 68 EDUCATION AND UTILITARIANISM content, if the youthful student is able to select and to trace out the more obvious and the more prominent causes that have determined his- torical change in the past, but this training is valuable if for no other reason than that when the youth becomes a man and a citizen he may bring this attitude of mind to the interpretation of the present and to the criticism of any pro- jected change. Mr. Sidney Webb but the other day declared that a certain widely advocated change in the present economic structure of Great Britain would never have been advanced if the great statesman who initiated the move- ment had not failed to get the historical point of view. Whether in this particular case this is or is not true need not concern us, but what is undoubtedly true is that for the wise con- duct of the affairs of the State as well as for the wise discharge of the duties of citizenship, the historical attitude of mind is absolutely essential. Lastly, through the study of history we may train the practical judgment of the young, and this in two ways. We may, in the first place, train them to perceive that great changes have been projected in the past and have failed through the lack of an adequate discernment of the means necessary for the attainment of -the end. Thus they may learn to judge critic- ally whether the means proposed for any pro- jected present change are sufficient for its at- tainment. In the second place, through the study of history we may train them to estimate EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF HISTORY 169 the morality of events which have taken place in the past and to criticize justly any projected changes in the present. Ladies and gentlemen, I have endeavoured, in a somewhat imperfect and discursive manner, to indicate all that history really means, and to point out certain values which attach to its study, and, as a final word, I can only say with Montaigne: "That history is an idle study to those who choose to make it so, but of inestim- able value to such as can make use of it ". ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS THE PRINCIPLES AND HISTORY OF TEACHING. WORKS BY JAMES SULLY, M.A. Outlines of Psychology. Crown 8vo, gs. The Teacher's Handbook of Psychology. Crown 8vo, 6s. net. Studies of Childhood. 8vo, 125. 6d. net. Children's Ways : being Selections from the Author's " Studies of Child- hood," with some Additional Matter. With 25 Figures in the Text. Cr. 8vo, 4s. 6d. A New Manual of Method. By A. H. Garlick, B.A. With Exam- ination Questions, Illustrations and Diagrams. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. A Primer of Teaching Practice. By J. A. 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