WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
WHAT IS 
 EDUCATION? 
 
 BY 
 
 STANLEY LEATHES, C.B., M.A. 
 
 LONDON 
 G. BELL & SONS, LTD. 
 
 1913 
 
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.j 
 
 AND BUNG AY, SUFFOLK. 
 
TO 
 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IT is written that there was once an under- 
 graduate named Simkins who wearied his ac- 
 quaintances with such questions as these 
 " Why were we born ? Whither are we tending ? 
 Have we innate conceptions? "until they said 
 when they spied him in the offing : " Why was 
 Simkins born? Is he tending hither? Has he 
 an innate conception that he is a bore? " In 
 asking What is Education? I may appear to 
 imitate Simkins. Is there not an Educational 
 Supplement of the Times ? Is there not an 
 Educational Section of the British Association? 
 Are there not educational series and educational 
 experts ? Is there not a great educational 
 enthusiasm, a great educational discontent? 
 Then, how can there be any doubt as to what 
 education may be ? Yet at the risk of sharing 
 Simkins' fate I have been impelled to ask this 
 question and to answer it as best I could; and, 
 having answered it, to consider some of the ends 
 which public, purposeful education should serve : 
 in the elementary school and after, in the secondary 
 school, and at the University. 
 
 The results of education have been reviewed and 
 found wanting by Principal Griffiths, in an address 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 to the British Association. With many of his 
 conclusions I agree, but he appears to attribute 
 our disappointments wholly or mainly to defects 
 in the system or the teachers. I lay much of the 
 blame elsewhere. The results of education depend 
 chiefly upon six factors : the capacities of the 
 children when born, the influence of the parents, 
 the material environment, the formative pressure 
 of society, the system of public education, and the 
 teachers. Deliberate, purposeful, public educa- 
 tion can in course of time do something indirectly 
 to modify parents, environment, society; but at 
 any moment these and the raw material are 
 beyond our power to alter; public education is 
 largely devised to remedy the consequences of 
 their defects. The problem of education is 
 therefore as extensive as the whole problem of 
 society, and cannot, except for purposes of limited 
 discussion, be treated as if only the system and 
 the teachers were concerned. The moment any 
 question of practice arises some or all of the other 
 four must be taken into account. 
 
 No system can be so good as that which in the 
 sapience of our seclusion or our debates we may 
 comfortably imagine. Put supernal wisdom to 
 direct the policy of the Board of Education ; yet 
 that wisdom would have to filter through the 
 channel of official communications and official 
 machinery before it could begin flat and diluted 
 to influence local authorities and the people who 
 teach. Centralised wisdom is useful; but educa- 
 tion is not carried on in Whitehall ; it is carried 
 on in the home and the school. To command an 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 army you have to give the right orders and ensure 
 that they are obeyed; to govern education by 
 giving orders from a central office would be 
 disastrous. The local authorities may not see 
 so clearly as Principal Griffiths, but they are as 
 good as the society which elects them knows how 
 to procure. Invent the best, the most varied, 
 the most elastic courses of study; equip them 
 with all appliances that heart can desire; you 
 will still be at the mercy of social influences. 
 Lengthen the period of compulsion, and you have 
 to reckon with the nature of the educands, most 
 of whom, as Principal Griffiths observes, are not 
 fitted to profit much by academic instruction. 
 Shorten the period of compulsion, and you appoint 
 the world as school-master, a harsh and careless 
 pedagogue. Every practical problem appears 
 insoluble when stated in words; every practical 
 problem can be somehow solved, with time, 
 thought, experience, good will, and perseverance. 
 I see no ground for despondency; forty years is a 
 short time in the history of a nation. The effects 
 of public education are cumulative; in a sense 
 every generation starts where the last left off. 
 
 It is comforting to observe that some of the 
 remedial principles propounded^ by Principal . 
 Griffiths have already been adopted. He suggests 
 that we should work for character rather than 
 learning; that the natural desire for knowledge - 
 should be stimulated, whereas it is too often 
 extinguished by teaching; that the Board of 
 Education should not impose uniformity. All 
 these principles have been accepted : it is easier 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 to state them than to carry them into execution. 
 He praises the Boy Scout movement ; it deserves 
 all praise; but would it be possible without the 
 preliminary training of elementary schools, would 
 it be possible but for its voluntary and selective 
 character ? 
 
 My own observations fall into two classes. On 
 points where I have practical knowledge I have 
 intimated conclusions closely bearing upon 
 practice, but those conclusions, if accepted, must 
 pass through other minds before they can be car- 
 ried into effect. The detailed execution of a single 
 idea cannot be set down in words ; if a practical 
 man conceives or adopts an idea, he will know how 
 to adapt it to his own circumstances. On matters 
 where I have not first-hand knowledge, I have 
 endeavoured to indicate ends; I have not pre- 
 sumed to suggest means. I consider thought to 
 be useful; but I do not confuse theory with 
 practice ; if you have got the right principles you 
 have made a good beginning, but that is all. 
 Principles must mature into a spirit, a tradition. 
 In that spirit, by that tradition, men must work. 
 Views on education may appear chaotic; but I 
 believe a body of sound practical doctrine is 
 taking shape. I am thankful to believe that 
 much of what I have said is fully accepted 
 doctrine ; certain applications which may be new 
 appear to follow from accepted doctrine. 
 
 There is still much to criticise : too much teach- 
 ing, too little result; too much learning, too 
 little knowledge. But I hope I have said nothing 
 that can seem to depreciate the devoted work of 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 elementary school teachers, without whose un- 
 sparing efforts public compulsory education 
 would be naught. 
 
 For brevity, for convenience, I have spoken as 
 if there was only one sex the male. Almost all 
 my observations apply also to women and girls, 
 to schoolmistresses as well as to schoolmasters. 
 But I must not be taken as accepting the view 
 that the education of girls and women should be 
 identical with the education of boys and men. 
 Even in things of the mind I believe there is a 
 sex difference. But I have not attempted to set 
 forth the special ends of feminine education. I 
 recognise my limitations as a male. 
 
 I thank the proprietors of the Times for their 
 courteous permission to reprint Chapters IV, V, 
 and VI, which appeared in their Educational 
 Supplement. The chapter on English is to be 
 issued as a leaflet by the English Association. 
 Part of the first chapter was included in an address 
 to the Parents' National Educational Union, and 
 printed with their Proceedings. 
 
 STANLEY LEATHES. 
 
 London, 
 
 September, 1913. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 i. Meaning of the word. 2. Education by parents, by 
 social influences, by business, by tradition. 3. The school 
 and the home. 4. Purposeful education ; instruction, ex- 
 amination. 5. Tone of a good school. The share of the 
 State in education. 6. Theory, tradition, staff. Adminis- 
 trative machinery. 7. Education an art; system, tradition^ 
 liberty. 8. Tests of education. Education not a science: 
 9. The dilemma of education. / ' 
 
 10. Physical, moral education, n. Spiritual education. 
 Intellectual education. 12. Memory and intelligence; the 
 selective memory. 13. The multiplication table. Tables of 
 dates. 14. The constructive memory. 
 
 15. Knowledge and learning : speech and thought. 
 1 6. Instruction and knowledge. 17. Reasoning; judge- 
 ment ; wisdom. The engineer. 1 8. Learning and teaching ; 
 desire for knowledge. 19. Knowledge a whole; Science and 
 History. Meaning of mathematics. 20. Geography the 
 link between Science and History. 21. The story of the 
 Balkan Peninsula. 22. Learned men and specialisation. 
 The joy of work. 23. The teaching of the wise men. Unity 
 of knowledge. 
 
 24. Improvement by education. The Public Schools; 
 25. narrowness and lack of unity in instruction. The 
 extension of secondary schooling to the fit alone. 26^_The__,,. 
 Universities. Knowledge extended but not unified. Pro- 
 fessional training, learning, education. 27. Education of 
 teachers. 28. Education for life. Rivalry of learned men. 
 29. The place of Geography. 
 
 29. Eugenics versus education. 30. Heredity, tradition, 
 education. The education of Shakespeare. 31. The money- 
 worth of education. 32. Religion and education. 33. The 
 unity of education. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 34. Business and life. 35. Education imitates the faults 
 of business. 36. Self-conscious, socialistic education. 
 Natural, traditional education a hundred years ago. 38; The 
 school of life. 
 
 38. The factory system. 39. The work of the Churches. 
 Educate our masters. 40. Self-help. Book-learning and 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 business. 41. Health. Feeding the children. 42. Diet. 
 Sleep. Fresh air. 43. Exercise; dancing. Appearance, 
 clothing. 
 
 44. Training of the senses. The eye and the ear. 45. Manual 
 training. Madame Montessori. 46. Disappointments of 
 education. The intelligence of illiterates. 47. Book-learning 
 and business. 48. The needs of the many. Less learning 
 and fewer subjects. More intelligence and love of work. 
 
 49. Liberty for schoolmasters. Text-books. 50. Liberty 
 for children. The desire for knowledge. 51. Large classes. 
 52. Intelligence, love of work, love of knowledge. 53. Dis- 
 taste for work. 54. Clever boys who cannot work for them- 
 selves. 55. The worship of learning. Character. 56. Need 
 for liberty. 
 
 56. Useful studies. Trade-schools and technical schools. 
 57. The use of book-learning. 58. Training gardens. The 
 parents. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 59. The school of life. 60. Life obliterates schooling. 
 61. Adolescence. Parental and school influence cease to- 
 gether. Defects of business as an educator. 62. The use 
 of leisure. 63. Love of good books. Music. 64. Execution 
 and appreciation. 65. History and geography in education. 
 66. The daily paper. 67. The love of beauty. 68. The 
 calls upon schoolmasters. 69. The function of poetry and 
 humour. Study of material objects. 70. Sports and games. 
 71. Character and liberty. 72. The cult of mediocrity. 
 The suggested danger of good qualities. 
 
 73. Proposed extension of compulsory schooling. Public 
 and private efforts to educate adolescence. 74. Blind-alley 
 occupations. 75. Civics. 76. Politics in the schools. 
 Results of education. 77. The gifted tenth. The life of 
 action. 78. A chance for all. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS 
 
 79. The good points in Classical education. 80. Training 
 in language, and in the teaching of the wise men. 81. Trans- 
 lation. Composition. Greek and Latin verses. 82. His- 
 torical training. 83. Schooling some years ago. 84. Greek 
 and Latin for the worthy : French for all : German for some. 
 85. A modern training which might be equivalent to the 
 classical. 86. Oral method; need of literature. French 
 diction. 87. Its value : advantage over Greek. 88. Need 
 of grammatical accuracy. French literature; 89. and 
 historical training. Tacitus' Germania. Bacon's Henry VII. 
 
CONTENTS xv 
 
 90. German literature. French and German translation, and 
 composition. 92. Direct historical training needed. 93. Cor- 
 related teaching of history, language, and literature. 
 
 95. Modern languages learnt orally before the age of ten. 
 
 96, French and German in examination. 97. Defects of 
 modernist education ; its prospects ; its needs. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 COMPULSORY GREEK AT THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 98. Greek blocks the way of praiseworthy business. 
 99. The schools and the Universities. 100. Vested interests. 
 Greek in the Littlego. 102. Set books. The Littlego a pass 
 examination. 103. The subjects needful in such an examina- 
 tion. 104. English ; a foreign language ; mathematics ; 
 105. elementary science. Leaving-certificates. 106. Reform 
 of Universities. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A SCHOOL OF MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 107. Universities and the teaching profession. 108. A 
 school of modern humanities. 109. Liberal education, 
 no. The common interests of humanists, in. Separation 
 of allied studies. 112. Modern Languages Tripos. 113. Lack 
 of history therein. 114. The Historical Tripos. The dis- 
 integration of English history. Political science. 115. Lan- 
 guages for historians. 116. The Oxford English School; 
 Modern Languages School; History School. 117. The aims 
 and the merits of the Classical system. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 119. Need English be taught? 120. The needs of the 
 freshman : to write English. 121. A subject that repays the 
 instructor. 122. Every don a teacher of English. 123. 
 English composition needed by all. The love of books : 
 this is not for all, but might be for more. 125. Composition 
 for business, reading for life. 126. English needful in every 
 specialist school. 
 
 127. The literary schools. 128. The comprehensive unity 
 of biblical and Classical study. 129. Classics and English. 
 130. English literature in History Schools. 131. Needs of 
 students who enter for an English School. 132. Training in 
 language. Middle- English and Anglo-Saxon. 133. Text- 
 books on English literature. 134. General English History, 
 
 135. Examinations in English literature deprecated. 
 136. If necessary, 137. combine with history. 138, Unity 
 of life, thought, and literary expression. 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 139. Trust in examinations. 140. Drawbacks of ex- 
 aminations; 141. a necessary evil. 142. Examinations 
 worst for the young; 143. should be as few and light as 
 possible. Leaving-certificates. 144. Later, competition 
 not so bad. 145. Entrance scholarship examinations : 
 excessive specialisation. 146. Scholarships in history. 
 147. Professional examinations. 148. Exact and inexact 
 sciences. 149. Each class requires a corrective. The philo- 
 sophies. 150. Guarantee of education required. 151. Uni- 
 versity degrees. 152. Examinations should test knowledge 
 and intelligence rather than learning. Problem questions. 
 154. Class-marks; numerical marks. 155. Marks versus 
 impression. 156. Variations of standard. 157. Fair ac- 
 curacy attained. A school for examiners. 158. Cramming ; 
 different meanings of the word. 159. Viva voce examination. 
 1 60. Practical and oral examinations. 161. What do ex- 
 aminations test? 162. Mr. P. J. Hartog's view. 163. Fun- 
 damental assumption of substantial similarity among can- 
 didates. 164. A possible line of progress. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 165. Certainty and probability. 166. Power of intuition, 
 of guessing. 167. Natural sciences aim at certainty ; humane 
 sciences only at probability. 168. History should not ape 
 science. 169. The desire to know, essential in history. 
 
 170. Should we make history interesting? Sir John Seeley. 
 
 171. Value of history. Can it be taught ? 172. The creative 
 historian. Maitland. Research. 173. Historical learning. 
 Teaching of history. 174. Before fourteen. History and 
 literature. Names and dates. 175. Stories for children. 
 176. Biographies. Geography. 177. Geography and 
 history. 178. Progressive instruction. 179. Results. 
 World-history. Fourteen to sixteen. 180. After sixteen. 
 181. History varies in importance. 182. History at the 
 University. 183. Unity of history. 184. The political 
 science heresy. 185. Text-books. Bluntschli. Woodrow 
 Wilson. Seeley. 186. Heinrich von Treitschke. 187. Previous 
 instruction needed for political science. 188. Acton and 
 moral judgements. 189. Economics and history. Isolation 
 of economic history. 190. History a school of values. 
 191. History and Science. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 FORTY years have passed since Forster led us 
 out of Egypt ; and where is the promised land ? 
 Nearer, we trust ; though not ready for immediate 
 possession. We are told of a new policy, of a 
 national system of education; 
 policy is needed, and could now-be framecf; but 
 it is not the purpose of this treatise to define 
 a policy. Policies must foe framed by those 
 who are responsible for their execution; they 
 must, however, be expressed in words before 
 they can be achieved. Education-is an ambigu- 
 ous term, of which we shall hear more and more, 
 till we get education right ; it is not inopportune 
 to enquire what education is, where it begins 
 and ends, and what part of it can be controlled 
 by public policy. 
 
 The Latin word, educare, means to bring up, 
 to rear, to foster. In Latin a wet-nurse educates 
 a baby, the sea educates a fish, the earth educates 
 a beast, the air educates a bird, the raifi educates 
 a flower. Language has a sense of ancestry ; it 
 does not repudiate its origins. The Latin sense 
 is still the true sense. The term education may 
 
 B I 
 
IS EDUCATION? 
 
 be narrowed in its common usage, but it draws 
 dignity from its wider meaning. Education (in 
 the full sense) is the process by which an in- 
 dividual is adjusted to his whole ambit of 
 existence ; the whole being is the subject of 
 education; and the whole of life is its end. As 
 the living soul pursues its orderly development 
 external forces starve or nourish, invigorate or 
 cramp, distort or favour, the ductile and expansive 
 growth. Studies supply food and exercise ; they 
 are the material, the apparatus of education, not 
 itself. 
 
 In whatever circumstances the individual may 
 be reared he will get an education. His parents 
 will mould him for goodx5r evil; the air he 
 breathes, the light that falls upon him, the food 
 he eats, the pursuits he follows, will each have 
 a share in his making or marring. His fellows 
 will school him; his elders will discipline him; 
 life and his world will teach him. The whole 
 tradition of the society into which he is born will 
 leave its mark upon his being. The street arab 
 has his education, as the Balliol scholar his; 
 neither is perfectly trained for the world in 
 which he will have to live; but each acquires 
 aptitudes for his own sphere. 
 
 There is thus a large part of education, and 
 that not the least important, which public policy 
 cannot control. The State can do little to 
 direct, though it can do something to restrain, 
 or inhibit, the action of the parents; the State 
 cannot alter the ways of children when they 
 meet together; the State cannot impose new 
 
THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 3 
 
 methods upon industry ; the State cannot change 
 the tradition of the people, which grows from 
 generation to generation, intolerant of direct 
 command, expressive of the common spirit. 
 From birth to death education will proceed, 
 with or without state systems. State systems 
 will succeed if they adapt themselves to the 
 surrounding life, if they work with it rather than 
 against it, utilising the benignant elements to 
 defeat the malign. 
 
 Curing the first years of life,, the parents, with 
 the traditions that they inherit, are the principal 
 force in education. Towards the formation of 
 character, the first five years after birth are of 
 paramount importance. Moreover, the parents 
 have the earliest and the best chances ; the school- 
 master follows after to remedy parental error, 
 to make good parental neglect. On the parents 
 public policy cannot work directly; but the 
 children whom we educate will become parents 
 in their turn. In this way, as in others, we are 
 still gathering the fruits of thirty years ago ; and 
 our grandchildren will endure the regimen 
 prepared by us. 
 
 After the schoolmaster has received the child 
 parental education continues to operate, if only 
 by defect; if there be wisdom the school and 
 the home should work in cordial alliance. No 
 technical training, no professional zeal, can 
 replace the understanding, the patience, the 
 hopefulness of parental love, rejoicing with the 
 growth of the child, triumphing with its successes, 
 bringing courage to its failures. The child that 
 
4 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 has a good home will receive fuller recognition 
 as an individual than any school can give. 
 Throughout the years of tutelage school and home 
 share responsibility ; for failures the school alone 
 cannot be fairly blamed even apart from those 
 caused by original sin. 
 
 But, as things are, for the great majority the 
 school education from five or so to thirteen or 
 fourteen is the only thoughtful and systematic 
 education provided. The parents may be willing 
 but they are seldom wise; the schoolmaster 
 also is but a man, yet the craft of his trade 
 assists him to redress parental shortcomings. 
 The State has come by insensible degrees to 
 take, through the schoolmaster, more and more 
 care for the growing generation. The need for 
 instruction was earliest perceived; first by the 
 Churches, then by the State. So important was 
 instruction at that time, so signal its defect, 
 that it usurped the name of education; we still 
 speak of education when we mean instruction 
 the whole for the part. To test the results of 
 the instruction provided, examinations were set 
 up. High marks were taken as an indubitable 
 index of success; few thought of questioning 
 the record; it was even accepted as a basis for 
 state payment, which was called payment by 
 results. But, in every good school, there are 
 by-products which are not shown in the examina- 
 tion table. The body may be trained to health 
 and dexterity, good habits, tastes, and prejudices, 
 may be ingrafted, a love of good work may be 
 created, character may be developed, the citizen 
 
EDUCATION AND LIFE 5 
 
 may be fitted for civilised society, the intelligence 
 may be quickened and the understanding may 
 be informed. So long as our minds were fixed 
 solely on instruction, so long as they were 
 dominated by the examination test, these by- 
 products suffered some neglect. But we have 
 now come to value school instruction quite as 
 much for its wholesome discipline as for the 
 information which it imparts ; we judge a school 
 by its tone not less than by its examination 
 results. To have been at a good school is a 
 voucher of good training. There has been a 
 change in the spirit by which schools are directed. 
 
 for life. In that 
 
 preparation society, the whole environment, life 
 itself, are factors which we cannot influence. 
 The home is all-important, but we cannot directly 
 influence the home. The public share in educa- 
 tion begins where these moulding forces cease 
 to operate, where they fall short. What the 
 State can do well to equip the young for life, 
 what it can do better than other agencies, what 
 the State can do and other agencies cannot, 
 what it can do to make up for the default of 
 other agencies, that is the public share in educa- 
 tion. The inspector judges a school by examina- 
 tion, by the methods and skill of the masters, 
 by the appearance, the tone, the intelligence of 
 the pupils. The business man judges a school 
 by the aptitude of its pupils for commercial and 
 industrial tasks. But the nation should judge 
 its schools by the fitness of their pupils for life, 
 of which business is a part, but only a part. If 
 
6 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 our citizens are unfit for the necessary, for the 
 higher, for the highest functions of life, some 
 blame must fall to all of us as citizens, for we 
 all have a share in the result. 
 
 The main principles of elementary education 
 have now been mastered, though practice may 
 still lag behind ; the blunders of the eighties and 
 the nineties have been shaken off ; the State can 
 now move forward cautiously and slowly to 
 build on the foundations established. One great 
 cause of the initial disappointments of elementary 
 education was the lack of a sound theory ; another 
 was the lack of a sound tradition; a third was 
 the lack of a trained staff. The advance of 
 the State must still be conditioned by these 
 factors. Higher elementary schools, trade schools, 
 technical schools, extended secondary schooling 
 all these depend on sound theory, sound 
 tradition, and a skilled staff. The theory, as 
 well as the rest, can only be perfected by experi- 
 ence; the ladder of learning I would rather 
 say the ladder of education cannot be perfected 
 in another year, in a decade, in a generation. 
 
 Education is a process, purposeful education 
 is an art, but when men speak of education, 
 they are prone to think of buildings, of curricula, 
 of systems. They call up to mind Boards of 
 Managers, three hundred Local Authorities with 
 their inspectors, a Minister at Whitehall, with 
 a thousand clerks and two or three hundred more 
 inspectors, a thumping vote, a heavy rate. They 
 think of subjects, and examinations, and grants, 
 
THE ART OF EDUCATION 7 
 
 and salaries, and pensions, and scholarships; 
 a National Union of Teachers, an Incorporated 
 Association of Headmasters. They think of forms 
 to fill up, and schedules, and codes, and rules. 
 But all these things are not education ; they are 
 not even part of education ; they are administra- 
 tive machinery. Public education cannot go 
 forward without administrative machinery; but 
 the machinery is not the education. 
 
 There is an art of education; it is practised 
 by a teacher on a class, on the several members 
 of a class. An art cannot be reduced to a system ; 
 though it can be assisted by a system. A good 
 system is helpful; a bad system is a stumbling- 
 block; but even a good system derives all its 
 virtue from the persons who work it. A tradition 
 counts for more than a system; the tradition 
 shapes and influences the teachers; it works by 
 spirit and not by rule ; but in the long run teach- 
 ing, like other arts, is vested in a living being. The 
 highly trained master may have missed the art ; 
 the humble unqualified assistant may possess it. 
 
 The art of education requires liberty for its 
 exercise. If it were our sole object to produce 
 masterpieces, we might claim complete liberty 
 for the art. But full liberty of experiment cannot 
 be permitted where human beings are the raw 
 material. Moreover, what is a masterpiece of 
 education? Is it a perfect man, is it a perfect 
 school? Is the perfect school calculated to 
 produce the perfect man, or does the perfect 
 man need more liberty of self-development than 
 the perfect school can allow? And who is the 
 
8 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 judge of masterpieces, and by what canons can 
 he judge? The full results of education are not 
 seen for many years ; judging only by immediate 
 results we may feel that this batch is better than 
 the last, but the causes of improvement can only 
 be conjectured; they cannot be ascertained by 
 proof. Authoritative experiment is impossible. 
 The same experiment cannot be tried twice on 
 the same class, two different experiments cannot 
 be tried on the same class. For in the interval 
 time has been moving, and the class is no longer 
 the same class; the pupils have grown, and 
 changed in growth. 
 
 The art of education is not a science; it has 
 nothing of the science. It must proceed by 
 experience, by common sense, by happy con- 
 jecture, by intuitive interpretation of rough 
 observations, by a priori reasoning from inexact 
 premisses. It is probable that many various 
 methods would lead to equally good results; 
 but each successful method must have a unity 
 and a harmony of its own, which can be perceived, 
 though it can never be adequately described in 
 words. Some rules, some system, must be laid 
 down by authority, because public money is 
 brought to account, because human beings are 
 under treatment; but a large field must be left 
 to the discretion of the schoolmaster. Rules 
 should be few, systems elastic; guidance, criti- 
 cism, and consultation may supplement the rules ; 
 but the teststone of administration is the choice 
 and training and direction of executants in 
 education, as 
 
THE DILEMMA OF EDUCATION 9 
 
 Both as an art and as a part of life, education 
 must not be afraid to harmonise opposites, to 
 face any and every dilemma. The State needs, 
 above all, that the lowest level shall be raised. 
 Education must therefore work to the average; 
 the boy or girl of better parts stands less in need 
 of active instruction than those of inferior gifts. 
 The less nature and the home has done for the 
 scholar, the more the schoolmaster has to do. 
 How great the difference may be, only the ex- 
 perienced schoolmaster can say. On the other 
 hand, the clever boy, the exceptional boy, the 
 boy of genius, must not be sacrificed to the 
 dullards. In class-teaching, while the backward 
 are receiving their due, the gifted may be re- 
 pressed, kept to monotonous tasks that do not 
 stretch their powers ; they may become disgusted 
 with all study, or they may be drilled to lifeless 
 uniformity. To feed the slow, without starving 
 the quick, that is the great dilemma of education ; 
 but a practical man is never afraid of a dilemma ; 
 if it must be solved, he assumes that it can be 
 solved, and proceeds to solve it. This dilemma 
 must be solved in school, day by day, and case 
 by case ; for, if we need a higher level of general 
 instruction and intelligence, we also need a 
 constant supply of vigour and ability; we must 
 take care that we do not maim a boy or a youth 
 of genius. 
 
 Public education has four main sides, physical, 
 moral, intellectual, and spiritual. These four 
 sections are closely interconnected, but they can 
 
io WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 in theory, though not in practice, be separated. 
 To the physical side of education I have addressed 
 some observations below. There is much ground 
 to be made up here, and a great harvest to be 
 gathered. Moral education is closely associated 
 with physical and intellectual ; it is not neglected, 
 it has perhaps never been neglected in schools. 
 No worthy schoolmaster could find himself 
 before a class, and feel no anxiety for their 
 moral welfare. If moral education has suffered, 
 it has suffered from a too rigorous discipline, 
 from the too absorbing claims of lessons. In any 
 case the what of morals is little in dispute ; the 
 how of moral education is above all a question 
 of practical and personal discretion. No sensible 
 person would think of teaching morals to a class 
 by generalities ; and the morals of school children 
 require no difficult casuistry. They can learn 
 self-control in their own lives, which is better 
 than academic lessons on the evils of drink. 
 They can learn justice, honour, and mercy in their 
 dealings with their fellows ; which is better than 
 much economic precept, theory, and doctrine. 
 The tone of a good home is worth more than any 
 direct moral teaching; and the tone of a good 
 school is the best substitute that can be found; 
 it is also the best support for good parental 
 influence. 
 
 The spiritual side of education is difficult 
 beyond all others. It aims at faith rather than 
 dogma, at aspirations rather than a code, at an 
 atmosphere rather than positive instruction. It 
 
INTELLECT AND MEMORY n 
 
 has its social aspect which should be seen in the 
 common life of a school ; but, if individuality must 
 be studied in every part of education, here it 
 must be approached not only with urgency but 
 with reverence. Though conduct expresses the 
 spiritual condition, works are but the symptom 
 of spiritual health ; morality divorced from the 
 spiritual impulse has always been found to miss 
 compelling force, to lack life and vigour. Morals 
 can be taught by reference to self-advantage ; they 
 can be justified, though only imperfectly, by an 
 appeal to the intellect ; they can be fortified by 
 fostering the love of approbation and the social 
 sense; the love of beauty and fitness is a 
 powerful aid to the teacher ; but ultimately sound 
 morality is a healthful condition of the soul. It 
 would be an impertinence to suggest methods to 
 the teacher; if things are right with himself, he 
 will find his own methods, his own avenues of 
 spiritual approach. 
 
 Intellectual education is too narrow a term. 
 The intellect, the understanding, the intelligence 
 should be active in all the lesson work of schools. 
 But habit, memory, instinct, receptive observa- 
 tion, acquired dexterity, also enter largely into 
 all scholastic accomplishments. The intelligence 
 should always be awake, to guard against the 
 blunders of routine, to combine, compare, and 
 construct, but it cannot think out every case 
 anew. Much must be taken on authority, 
 much must be acquired by practice, as in all 
 handwork, much must become instinctive by 
 
12 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 use, as in learning the native language or another 
 and in the processes of arithmetic, some things 
 must be committed to memory as in geography 
 or chemistry. The intelligence and the memory 
 must work together ; neither should be overtaxed. 
 Here is demanded the supreme exercise of 
 the schoolmaster's discretion. It is for him to 
 say what the memory must do, including in 
 memory practice and use, and what the intelli- 
 gence must be encouraged to undertake. It is 
 for him to say what tasks the intelligence of 
 each successive age, of every several child, is 
 fit to handle. The development of different sides 
 of the nature differs much in different children. 
 But he must be on his guard against the tempta- 
 tion to work chiefly through the memory, a 
 temptation specially urgent with a large class. 
 Children learn readily by memory, and, by loading 
 the memory, results can be more speedily ob- 
 tained. It is more difficult to work through the 
 imagination, the intelligence, the understanding, 
 but these are at least equally important; they 
 are the instruments of ultimate success. Again, 
 many things may be taught, many things should 
 be studied, but not all things that should be 
 studied need be remembered. The good memory 
 is the selective memory, which retains what it 
 needs, what it desires, and dismisses the rest. 
 The mind, like the body, is a digestive organ; 
 it requires bulk for its nutriment; it cannot 
 digest all that it receives. Therefore, much 
 should be taught, or otherwise brought to notice ; 
 but the scholar should be praised who remembers 
 
THE SELECTIVE MEMORY 13 
 
 the salient and governing points, who grasps the 
 interconnexions. 
 
 To take an example of intelligence and memory. 
 The multiplication table must be learnt by heart ; 
 it must be repeated till its data come at call with- 
 out effort. But the multiplication table should 
 also be studied intelligently ; the scholars should 
 be encouraged to break up the numbers and 
 combine them afresh; to study their properties 
 and test the assertions of the table. You cannot 
 prove that twice two make four ; that is a matter 
 of definition, of the meaning of words. But you 
 can test the definitions of the multiplication 
 table, and show that they are consistent with 
 each other. At what age the memory, at what 
 age the intelligence should do what work, is a 
 question for the schoolmaster. The develop- 
 ment differs in each child, but I suspect that 
 intelligence commonly develops earlier than is 
 supposed, and is often atrophied for want of 
 exercise. 
 
 The selective memory is wronged when tables 
 of dates are set to be learnt by heart. History 
 begins to be known when much has been heard 
 and forgotten and the salient facts begin to 
 stand out. At this point the order of events 
 begins to show as inevitable. No one who knew 
 anything about the French Revolution and its 
 sequel could suppose that the battle of Waterloo 
 preceded the execution of the French king. 
 When the events begin to take form and order, 
 then knowledge of dates may be exacted. But 
 it is better to know dates by knowing what the 
 
14 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 order of events must be, than to know the order 
 of the events by an unmeaning sequence of 
 numbers. I met a distinguished man who told 
 me with satisfaction that he had learnt his dates 
 of English History as a boy by memoria technica, 
 and had retained them ever since. I wondered 
 in silence what good they might be to him. 
 
 And this leads me to the constructive memory, 
 which is not imagination, nor understanding, 
 nor reasoning, but has something of all three. 
 By the constructive memory learning grows to 
 knowledge. There is one knowledge of the 
 elementary schoolboy, there is another know- 
 ledge of the secondary schoolboy, another of the 
 University Honours man, yet another of the man 
 of learning. But each should be built up into 
 a whole ; so far as it can be. Each should be a 
 microcosm planned in due proportion and to 
 scale. Each should be a complete edifice; but 
 each should resemble one of those buildings, 
 where the stones are left projecting at the edges 
 for other buildings to be attached. The element- 
 ary schoolboy, above all, needs a solid though 
 contracted nucleus of knowledge, coherent, inter- 
 connected, and complete in itself; but he also 
 needs avenues by which to advance, capacities 
 and impulses to learn, to go on learning, and to 
 build his further learning into his knowledge. 
 
 If you watch a young child with alert intelli- 
 gence, well taught, encouraged to learn and to 
 ask questions, brought up in an atmosphere of 
 knowledge, you can see the constructive memory 
 at work. You can see the child piecing together 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 15 
 
 its bits of information, bridging gaps, establish- 
 ing new lines of communication, preparing a 
 frame-work into which every fresh fact can be 
 fitted as it is acquired. Things new and old are 
 compared and adjusted; often you will be sur- 
 prised to see how the germane illustration springs 
 from the mind when it is needed. That is the 
 process which should be encouraged at school; 
 unfortunately there are so many for whom school 
 is the only place where it can be encouraged. 
 
 For whatever purpose learning be desired, 
 whether for life or for business, it is worth little 
 in itself, but knowledge is worth much. Learning 
 is the mere acquisition of information; when 
 information acquired is rounded to a whole, 
 when it is incorporated in the character, when it 
 illuminates the mind, when it strengthens the 
 understanding, when it fortifies the judgement, 
 when it becomes an instrument to serve rather 
 than a burden to be carried, then learning 
 becomes knowledge. 
 
 Learning is a simple thing; it proceeds step 
 by step. You may learn all the words in a 
 dictionary; you may learn all the inflexions of 
 all the words in a language, you may learn all 
 the rules of syntax. Each of those processes 
 is a simple process. But to grasp the whole 
 meaning of the most lucid author, to explain 
 the whole of your own meaning on any subject 
 that is a very complicated process, involving many 
 simultaneous processes of thought. Again, you 
 may have great learning, say in anatomy, but, 
 
16 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to form any clear conception of the function 
 and meaning of the body, you must go far 
 beyond anatomy, you must go far beyond the 
 separate and consecutive statements in any 
 treatise of physiology, you must have in your mind 
 at one and the same time the functions of the 
 heart, the lungs, the brain, the digestive organs, 
 the nervous system, the muscles, half a hundred 
 things besides. Until you can form such an 
 elaborate conception in your mind you cannot 
 have any true knowledge of the body, as a living, 
 breathing, working organism. 
 
 This complexity of life and thought makes 
 language an imperfect instrument for the ex- 
 pression of the mind. You can think of many 
 things at the same time. But you can only 
 speak of one thing at a time. If one person is 
 to understand another, the thing stated must be 
 very simple, or else the hearer must know a 
 great deal more than is said. What the instructor 
 says can never illuminate the mind, unless the 
 mind receives, shapes, and fits together the 
 information provided. Instruction can only pro- 
 ceed by the written or spoken word; the 
 instructor is a hodman with bricks. The pupil 
 is the bricklayer who may, if he has a gift for 
 the craft, combine the bricks into a solid and 
 coherent and symmetrical edifice, with a central 
 hall, staircases, chambers, passages, cellars, and 
 roof gardens. In this work the materials are 
 supplied by books and teachers; but the pupil 
 must do his own construction; the building must 
 be his own; at most a plan, a model, and a few 
 

 JUDGEMENT AND WISDOM 17 
 
 hints can be given. It is better that construction 
 should go forward all the time, than that the 
 ground should be cumbered with superfluous 
 material. 
 
 Compared with the building of knowledge, 
 reasoning is a simple process. You can only 
 follow one line of reasoning at a time. Every 
 matter which is worth understanding at all must 
 be approached by many different trains of 
 reasoning. You can set out, if you have time, 
 all these different trains of reasoning, one after 
 another. But you can only reach your final 
 conclusion by combining all these trains of 
 reasoning into one. And that involves an 
 instinctive process of fitting together, of valuation, 
 of estimation. The power of recognising and 
 estimating values we call judgement. Knowledge 
 informs judgement, but it cannot create it. When 
 knowledge and judgement meet together, we have 
 wisdom. And it is the highest and rarest 
 function of education, aided by and working upon 
 experience, to produce wisdom. 
 
 An engineer who is going to build a bridge 
 begins by forming a general concept of the task 
 he has to perform. He then forms particular 
 concepts of all the parts, great and small; he 
 works out all the dimensions, weights, stresses, 
 tensions, strengths ; he guesses all the exceptional 
 circumstances that his bridge may have to en- 
 counter; he may put down all these things 
 severally in his calculations and specifications, 
 and make drawings of all the parts. But at 
 some time or other, and from time to time, he 
 c 
 
i8 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 must conceive his bridge as a single whole. 
 When he does that, he must have every one of 
 all his minor calculations operative in his mind, 
 though not, perhaps, in his consciousness. If 
 all his parts are right, he has learning; if his 
 bridge is right as a bridge he has knowledge; if 
 he has rightly estimated all the circumstances 
 that cannot be calculated, he has judgement ; 
 if his bridge is a good bridge, it testifies to his 
 possession of wisdom, as a bridge-builder. 
 
 Now instruction can only proceed by the way 
 of learning. That does not mean that it should 
 proceed solely or mainly by the way of teaching. 
 It is widely recognised nowadays, that what 
 a child or young person can be taught is of little 
 importance compared with that which it can 
 and will teach itself, with the requisite assistance 
 and encouragement. Almost all normal children 
 are born with a lively and keen desire for know- 
 ledge. It is our business to foster and develop 
 that natural curiosity, to guide it, and by feeding 
 it to stimulate it. Teaching has far too often 
 the effect of deadening and wearying the impulse 
 to learn. If you can once get a child into the 
 right frame of mind and keep it in that frame of 
 mind it will learn for itself far more than it can 
 ever be taught, and with great advantage both 
 to the mind and to the character. 
 
 Schooling, which is a convenient word to 
 indicate both the teaching and the learning of 
 the young, must proceed by subjects. But, if 
 learning is ever to develop into knowledge, the 
 
. 
 
 SCIENCE AND HISTORY 19 
 
 arriers between subjects should not be allowed 
 to remain rigid and permanent. Knowledge is 
 a whole; it can only for temporary convenience 
 be divided into parts. The two great subjects 
 of instruction may be classified as Science and 
 History. The term History, properly conceived, 
 includes everything that has to do with man as 
 a living and spiritual being. Language is the 
 handmaid of history, the most part of literature 
 is only history made beautiful by imagination 
 and art. Science is a convenient term to include 
 all our knowledge of the material world, and of 
 the material basis of life. Mathematics are the 
 handmaidens of Science. In themselves, no 
 doubt, they afford a valuable mental discipline. 
 But it should always be remembered that, in 
 education at any rate, Mathematics have no 
 fruit, unless their bearing upon the practical 
 things of life is made clear. 
 
 It is easy enough to link up Mathematics with 
 Science. In Physics at any rate the connexion 
 is ready-made. Probably nowadays the meaning 
 of Mathematics is made clear to the young. But 
 I remember when I was at school I was invited 
 to perform tricks with algebraical symbols. 
 I liked the game and even attained some trifling 
 proficiency. But it was not till many years 
 afterwards, not indeed until I had forgotten 
 most of the rules of the game, that I understood 
 what algebra really meant. Similarly with 
 geometry. Euclid flattered my growing mind, 
 it was something for my puppy teeth to worry, 
 but I feel sure that I never understood that 
 
20 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 geometry was an art invented to facilitate the 
 measuring of the earth's surface. Later on, cos, 
 sin, and tan, used to follow predestined paths, 
 which I was able by rule of thumb to forecast 
 with varying success. It never occurred to me, 
 it was never suggested to me, that cos, sin, and 
 tan, had any bearing on the actual world in 
 which I lived. All this, no doubt, has been 
 mended. But the moral remains. Algebra, 
 geometry, trigonometry, are paths of learning, 
 each of which can be followed without reference 
 to knowledge. But if knowledge is our aim- 
 not learning for its own sake the relation of 
 each set of observations to the world at large 
 should be indicated on every possible opportunity. 
 The gap between History and Science is more 
 difficult to fill. But there is one subject of 
 instruction which bridges the gulf. That is 
 Geography. Here Science and History meet. 
 The world is a physical complex, whose various 
 aspects are elucidated by many sciences; such 
 as Geometry, Geology, Physics, Chemistry. The 
 world is also the playground of man; the play- 
 ground of living man, in his nations, his empires, 
 his competing communities. It has also been 
 the playground of men and nations long since 
 dead. I have never had occasion to teach 
 Geography, as an independent subject. But 
 if I were teaching, say, the Geography of the 
 Balkan Peninsula, I should speak of the relics 
 of Mycenean civilisation, of Minos and his empire, 
 of Athens and Sparta, Thermopylae, Salamis, 
 Alexander; of the Byzantine Empire and its 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 21 
 
 ivaders : of Slavs, Illyrians, Albanians, and all 
 the motley folk who have been, first and last, 
 poured into that ancient bottle. That would 
 not prevent me from talking about coast-lines 
 and harbours, rivers and mountains and water- 
 sheds, valleys and islands and plains. Nor 
 would the solid reality of these material features 
 prevent me from peopling my topography with 
 Centaurs, Oreads, Naiads, Pan and old Silenus : 
 nor should I feel that I was detracting from the 
 serious dignity of my task if I spoke of the voyage 
 of Jason and the Argo, of Theseus and the 
 Minotaur, of the siege of Troy and the wanderings 
 of Odysseus. On the contrary, the Balkan 
 mountains, in my thinking, would be invested 
 with greater reality if I spoke of Olympus, the 
 seat of the Gods, and the struggle to heap Pelion 
 upon Ossa. The Dardanelles are the more real 
 because Leander swam across them, because 
 Xerxes bridged them : the Bosporus because 
 Jason threaded it ; the position of Thermopylae, 
 Euboea, Athens, and the Isthmus of Corinth, 
 will be fixed in the learner's mind once for all 
 if he understands how and why the battle of 
 Salamis was fought. Geography is the meeting- 
 ground of those two great branches of knowledge 
 which I classify as History and Science the 
 knowledge of man, and the knowledge of things. 
 I hope that Geography is taught in this way; 
 but I do not feel sure. 
 
 This view of the unity of knowledge brings me 
 into conflict with the specialists not with all 
 
22 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 specialists, but with those specialists who have 
 lost sight of knowledge in their enthusiasm for 
 learning. It is inevitable that learned men should 
 lean to specialisation. The friends of education 
 should resist their unfortunate bias, so far as 
 education is concerned. I am wholly in favour 
 of variety in education. I would give all special 
 talents ample room for development. But I 
 would never forget that knowledge is a whole; 
 you cannot without grave sacrifice confine 
 attention only to a part. The specialist who is 
 only a specialist is, for that reason, not so good 
 a specialist. One specialist grumbles because 
 I insist on mathematics; another specialist be- 
 cause I conceive literature and history as needful 
 to a liberal education. After all, the object of 
 education is to make a whole, not a lopsided 
 man. Though a lopsided man may succeed in 
 business, he will not be a success in his own more 
 important personal life. Knowledge is not only 
 a commercial asset ; it is a precious and enduring 
 possession, that gives interest to the most trivial 
 task or occurrence. 
 
 That knowledge is best worth having which we 
 have built up for ourselves by toil. Such toil 
 it is the fashion to call and to make painful, but 
 I would prefer to see it joyful. Our best work is 
 not painful; it absorbs and enfolds us; it is 
 accompanied by no feeling of effort or labour. 
 We must garner the crop ourselves; but, if our 
 harvest is to be abundant, we must get the seed 
 from those in whom learning has matured into 
 knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. If we 
 
TEACHING OF THE WISE MEN 23 
 
 are pursuing the natural sciences, Nature herself 
 is our mistress ; and her wisdom is inexhaustible. 
 But it is fit that the high-priests of Nature should 
 be wise, as well as learned. If it is the knowledge 
 of man that we seek, we must frequent not so 
 much the learned as the wise. The knowledge 
 of man is not attained by treatises, text-books, 
 statistics, card indexes, or encyclopaedias; it is 
 attained by insight working upon knowledge, 
 and the great men are those whose insight is the 
 keenest and most illuminating. It is better to 
 read Thucydides, Herodotus, and Demosthenes 
 than to read Grote; it is better to read Tacitus 
 and Cicero than Mommsen; it is better to read 
 Shakespeare, Bacon, Hobbes, Halifax, Boling- 
 broke, Burke, Carlyle, Ruskin, than the best of 
 all the excellent text-books which historical 
 science has provided for us. On the other hand, 
 it is better to read Maitland than to read Dooms- 
 day Book. The text-books are useful; the 
 original authorities are useful; but the root of 
 the matter is in the minds and the words of the 
 wise men. Whether we study the ancients or 
 the moderns is of little consequence. It is 
 important that we should study them in the 
 right way. And that right way cannot be found 
 unless language, literature, and history are made 
 to contribute to one whole of historical know- 
 ledge; and unless that half- whole is amplified, 
 illuminated, explained, by that other half-whole 
 of knowledge, which we call Science. 
 
 I have now got beyond the elementary school, 
 beyond the secondary school, even beyond the 
 
24 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 University. But, in so far as it is the end of 
 education to produce knowledge, these principles 
 have their bearing upon education at every 
 stage. 
 
 There have been friends of education who 
 believed that man could be made perfect by 
 schooling. I do not see how such a belief could 
 survive any practical experience of education 
 or of life. Schooling can only have a limited 
 effect on the majority; it does most for those 
 of regular and orderly talent; on certain way- 
 ward and dynamic spirits its influence may be 
 actually bad. Yet I believe that on the whole 
 public education can improve mankind; though 
 its full effect cannot be seen until the third or 
 fourth generation. We are only just beginning 
 to learn how much can be done, not perhaps with 
 the best, nor perhaps with the worst, but with 
 the average. 
 
 Public education is still in its infancy. Ele- 
 mentary education has bjeen improved, but far 
 greater improvement is still possible. In second- 
 ary education much remains to be done far 
 short of perfection. The tradition of our Public 
 Schools implants the love of health and honour, 
 but not that of knowledge and beauty. This 
 one-sided tradition the Public Schools share with 
 the nation ; in fact it would be difficult to decide 
 whether the schools had educated the nation to 
 thick-skulled self-satisfaction, or the nation had 
 made the schools to suit itself. Yet the love 
 of knowledge and beauty does not exclude the 
 
SECONDARY SCHOOLS 25 
 
 Dssession of manly qualities; they cannot truly 
 flourish apart. 
 
 The system of the Public Schools does not make 
 up for any shortcomings of their tradition. 
 When the boys learnt nothing but Latin and 
 Greek and Mathematics, their field of culture 
 was compact and many-sided, a complete 
 microcosm. Now subject has been added to 
 subject, specialism to specialism, until unity, 
 comprehension, and harmony are lost to sight. 
 
 The new secondary system which it is proposed 
 to create may borrow from the Public Schools 
 their tradition of manliness, strength, and self- 
 government; it will need a new tradition to 
 foster the love of knowledge. This purpose will 
 be aided if admission to such new or enlarged 
 schools is strictly confined to those who have 
 shown fitness and the desire to learn; if those 
 who fail to fulfil their early promise are sternly 
 dismissed. " We teach Latin and Greek/' said 
 an Eton Master, " to boys who should be carting 
 muck/' A certain class of rich people cannot be 
 prevented from offering pearls to their children; 
 they do not know that they are pearls. " Pearls 
 for the lover of pearls " should be the motto of 
 the new secondary system. This will assist 
 to prevent a too rapid increase of second- 
 ary machinery; which is undesirable for lack 
 of competent and well-trained masters. Good 
 secondary schoolmasters are already scarce; 
 you cannot have good schools with bad masters ; 
 and bad schools are little better and more ex- 
 pensive than none at all. Moreover, there is no 
 
26 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 kindness in encouraging a boy to remain at school 
 when he might be earning his livelihood, unless 
 there is some fair certainty that he will profit by 
 the education; unless he possesses the requisite 
 health, vigour, and character, as well as suitable 
 brains. Extension of secondary schools is good, 
 but it is on all grounds desirable that it should 
 not proceed too fast. A fruit tree that makes 
 too much wood makes little else; the fruit of 
 a national system is not bricks, mortar, salaries, 
 and a curriculum, but a good education; the 
 harvest depends first upon the staff, next upon 
 the fitness of the pupils, greatly also upon the 
 tradition ; the system operates upon and through 
 the other three. 
 
 The Universities are a public institution ; but, 
 so long as they govern themselves tolerably, I 
 should prefer that they were left free. The State 
 has enough to do. 
 
 The old Universities have opened their gates; 
 they have admitted the sciences, history, modern 
 languages, to an equality with the ancient studies. 
 But they have not entirely assimilated the new 
 material. Subjects are recognised with profuse 
 liberality, but not the unity of knowledge. On 
 this matter I have said enough below; but I 
 would here point out that the spirit of University 
 study will depend upon the objects that are 
 chiefly in view. If learning and research are 
 the principal aim, high specialisation will result ; 
 but learning and research should not be the sole 
 purpose of an University, of whose students 
 a great majority are not fitted and do not desire 
 
THE ENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY 27 
 
 to become learned men. If professional prepara- 
 tion is the end of the University, courses will 
 take a more practical form; specialisation will 
 be restricted among the students ; and that part 
 of education which fits for business will come into 
 prominence. If education is the chief object 
 of an University, then the unity and inter- 
 connexions of knowledge will stand foremost 
 with the framers of any scheme. 
 
 The recognition of new studies has been partly 
 due to professional needs, but much more to the 
 love of learned men for their own specialities. 
 The needs of education have suffered a compara- 
 tive if not a complete neglect. Yet it is quite 
 safe to say that the most part of students come 
 to the University to be prepared for life, not 
 for any branch of learned work, nor for any 
 particular profession. Among professions, one 
 has been strangely overlooked, and that is the 
 teaching profession. A schoolmaster should not 
 be a specialist ; his bent should lead him to join 
 up rather than to fence off the several paths of 
 knowledge. Moreover, only a very large school 
 can afford to have separate teachers of history, 
 separate teachers of languages, separate teachers 
 of mathematics, separate teachers of science : 
 none, I think, has hitherto afforded to have 
 separate teachers of English. And yet the uni- 
 versity schemes, and especially the examinations 
 for degrees, turn out such specialists by the 
 hundred; not fitted for any profession, not 
 specially fitted for life, and certainly not well- 
 equipped for teaching. 
 
28 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Apart from the needs of the teaching pro- 
 fession for the civil service, for commerce, for 
 industry, for politics, for the bar, and above 
 all for life (if there be some who can afford to 
 frame their education for life itself) we want, 
 as a rule, men well trained and of wide knowledge, 
 rather than men of learning. For professions 
 such as medicine and engineering a wider basis 
 of knowledge is required than the ordinary 
 university course guarantees. And, if the teach- 
 ing profession is taken into account, the need for 
 some wider training than most Honour Schools 
 provide appears to me nothing short of over- 
 whelming. This theme I have attempted to 
 develop below. 
 
 The newer Universities have the same specialist 
 bent. They suffer from the more imperfect 
 previous preparation of their students; they 
 have to think more about professional ends. 
 But the one professional end for which they do 
 not appear to provide in their ordinary courses 
 is the education of teachers for elementary and 
 secondary schools. The improvement and ex- 
 tension of secondary teaching will benefit the 
 Universities greatly; but a wider university 
 education in modern humanities will do even 
 more to improve the elementary and secondary 
 schools. 
 
 I do not believe that learning would suffer 
 from such reforms. The rivalry of subjects 
 loads the examination schedules with unnecessary 
 items, which is bad among other things for 
 learning; if all men of learning recognised a 
 
GEOGRAPHY: EUGENICS 29 
 
 3mmon duty to education, perhaps some of 
 this rivalry would disappear. 
 
 There is one subject of first importance, which 
 has not yet received full separate university 
 recognition Geography. At present, the friends 
 of Geography seem to be working towards an 
 Honours School in Geography. But would it 
 not be much better for Geography and all allied 
 subjects that Geography should have its full 
 share in the Historical School, in the Science 
 School, and in any school of modern humanities 
 that may be established, than that it should 
 have its own examinations and live on the border- 
 land of Science and History, poaching on both 
 and assisted by neither ? However, if Geography 
 gave its name to the new unifying subject, 
 I should not object to that name; though I 
 think History would better serve the purpose. 
 
 The unity of knowledge is a great principle; 
 the unity of education is another. Whatever 
 link is weak, from the parent to the Professor, 
 impairs the efficiency of the whole. 
 
 Some may say: ''' The results of education 
 are illusory. They are all implicit in the egg; 
 heredity is everything; if you want to improve 
 mankind, promote the study of Eugenics. Educa- 
 tion works only for a generation ; Eugenics work 
 for the permanent improvement of the race." 
 Heredity is important, environment is important, 
 who shall say how much is due to either in any 
 particular case, or even upon an average? If 
 heredity is important, tradition is also important, 
 
30 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 and education influences tradition. If heredity 
 is the memory of the unconscious mind, tradition 
 is the heredity of the conscious mind. To allot 
 shares to inheritance and education is the more 
 difficult because education and heredity often 
 work together. The child of good parents gets 
 the advantage not only of their blood but of 
 their precept, atmosphere, and example. It is 
 the more difficult because education and heredity 
 sometimes work in opposition. The child who 
 was born to be an engineer is brought up to be 
 a solicitor. It is the more difficult because we often 
 do not know what the operative education of 
 any conspicuous man actually was. We marvel 
 at the spontaneous manifestations of a Giotto, a 
 Shakespeare, a Napoleon ; but it may be that the 
 education that each received was the education 
 that suited him best. It is impossible to dissect 
 the grown man and say : this comes by his 
 blood, this by his education. 
 
 It is best to put aside men of genius and other 
 exceptions, and sorrowfully admit that, although 
 tradition helps to make them, purposeful educa- 
 tion is more likely to hurt them than to help 
 them. If Shakespeare had gone to an elementary 
 school, and thence by the ladder of education 
 to a secondary school, and so to the University, 
 he might have written the works of Francis 
 Bacon, but he would not have written the plays, 
 which speak from first to last of untrammelled 
 development. Shakespeare, like Cobbett, needed 
 no schoolmaster to teach him English. No 
 schoolmaster had any important share in the 
 
THE EDUCATION OF SHAKESPEARE 31 
 
 making of that mind. A schoolmaster might, 
 perhaps, have spoiled it; no schoolmaster could 
 have improved it. If Shakespeare had not known 
 how to read and write he would have taught 
 himself. If he had not access to books, he would 
 have stolen them, as perhaps he stole the deer. 
 It is lucky he left school when he did, lucky for 
 him, lucky for us, and lucky for the schoolmaster. 
 Drunk with his own learning, he flouts the 
 schoolmaster. Giulio Romano, a beautiful name ; 
 what matter when he lived? Aristotle said a 
 fine thing; Hector would have quoted it had 
 he known it ; the pace was too good to enquire 
 whether he did. Is it Delphos, or Delphi, or 
 Delos? The schoolmaster may care, not the 
 poet. Bohemia, a romantic place; all romantic 
 places have sea-coasts and bears. What has 
 romance to do with topography ? 
 
 But, taking ordinary men, for whom schemes of 
 education are devised, it seems probable that the 
 gifts they receive at birth are on an average not 
 greater in importance than the ply that education 
 subsequently gives. Some are less malleable 
 than others, but on the whole mankind is a 
 ductile race. It owes at least its prejudices, 
 its conventions, and a large part of its virtues 
 and its vices, to tradition and imitation. The 
 more stubborn the material, the firmer the im- 
 press carried. Where public education is the 
 only purposeful education bestowed, we must 
 make the most of our single opportunity. If 
 public education improved the average by only 
 five per cent., it would repay its cost three times 
 
32 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 over, besides making the world a more comfortable 
 place to live in. Moreover, education is a going 
 concern, with prestige, momentum, and good- 
 will; the future may be with Eugenics; the 
 present is with education. 
 
 Education without religion seems to me im- 
 possible; the religion of all sensible men, the 
 religion that sensible men do not gratuitously 
 define. In the present state of public opinion 
 education with religion seems equally impossible. 
 This is a practical question and falls to the 
 province of responsible and practical men to 
 solve. It is also one of those practical questions 
 which I am not called upon to handle. I doubt 
 if such problems can be settled on paper. 
 
 I began with a question : what is education ? 
 Education is a process in which the whole human 
 environment is concerned a process of prepara- 
 tion for life. That part of preparation for life, 
 whether physical, moral, spiritual, or intellectual, 
 which the State can better undertake than other 
 agencies, belongs to the arts and not to the 
 sciences; though an art may borrow from 
 a science, as from medicine. Education is 
 a whole, and whether the State conclude its 
 training of the children at fourteen, at sixteen, 
 at nineteen, or at twenty-three, the education 
 designed to terminate at each age should aim in 
 things of the mind at a coherent nucleus of 
 knowledge, which is capable thereafter of in- 
 definite extension. An art does not profit 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 33 
 
 greatly from catchwords or maxims; but, if 
 a single catchword is admissible, it would be 
 this : the best teacher is he who best assists the 
 student to teach himself. Education is also 
 a whole in this sense, that parents, teachers, 
 schoolmasters, examiners, professors, adminis- 
 trators, are all working to a common end,, and 
 if any fail or be misled the whole cause suffers. 
 To supplement the imperfect definition, I give 
 my little book. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 IF education is a preparation for life, it must be 
 a preparation for business. For business is the 
 larger part of life, though not perhaps the more 
 important part of life, and certainly not the whole. 
 Education is necessary ; it has always existed, it 
 will always exist, though its form may vary from 
 age to age. It is for us to consider what form it 
 should assume to suit our present purposes ; our 
 purposes of life, and among those purposes our 
 purposes of business. 
 
 There have been saints and sages who con- 
 temned business. They might better have at- 
 tempted to improve it. St. Francis and St. 
 Dominic instituted Orders of poor Friars, who, 
 individually and collectively, were to possess no 
 wealth. But those Orders could not have existed 
 had not inferior orders of men lived and laboured, 
 who gave alms to support the physical being of 
 the poor Friars. Like the orchids, which are 
 rooted in sun and air, the Friars drew their nutri- 
 ment from faith, hope, and charity ; but even an 
 orchid requires some material prop. After a 
 time, business took its moral and material re- 
 venge upon the despisers of business. The 
 
 34 
 
EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 35 
 
 Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic found means 
 to possess property, collectively if not individu- 
 ally, and thus took toll, not only by alms, from 
 the business community. But this defection 
 from their original principle ruined the Orders. 
 They set out to despise business ; they ceased to 
 despise it ; inevitably, they became the parasites 
 of business; at last, business shook off and de- 
 stroyed its parasites. 
 
 Education, as at present organised, does not 
 profess to be an enemy of business. Indeed, if it 
 has a single, conspicuous fault, it is that it copies, 
 though it can hardly exaggerate, the faults of 
 business. Business creeps near the ground; 
 education often fails to rise above it. Business 
 is constantly concerned with ways and means; 
 education is constantly concerned with ma- 
 chinery ; it runs to wood and leaves, and produces 
 the less fruit. Business estimates success by 
 results, as presented in the entries of a ledger, and 
 the pages of a bank-book. Education estimates 
 results by figures in a report or by figures in an 
 examination table. Business minds its own 
 business, and never takes account of the life of 
 the nation as a whole. Education looks at the 
 school, the college, the University, the subject, 
 the standard, the examination, the institution; 
 it seldom rises to a general view. Business grinds 
 the bones of the individual to make its bread; 
 education feeds its victims by fifties, sixties, or 
 seventies, in a well-lighted and well- ventilated 
 cave. Business sacrifices liberty to order : so 
 also does education. The order attained in each 
 
36 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 case is not easily distinguishable from chaos, 
 unless you are familiar with the contours. But, 
 although education does not profess to despise 
 business, it is in every grade imperfectly designed 
 as a preparation for business. There has been 
 improvement greatest in the elementary schools ; 
 but more improvement is needed. 
 
 Education used to be natural, automatic, 
 instinctive ; it has become self-conscious. Educa- 
 tion used to be individualistic; it has become 
 socialistic. The immediate result is a greater 
 consumption of energy ; with a loss of efficiency 
 in many directions. Probably, unless our Euro- 
 pean community is destroyed by some convulsion, 
 the loss of efficiency will in course of time be com- 
 pensated. The process of compensation is likely 
 to be slow and expensive, but it may be hastened 
 if we try to get an idea of the ends which self- 
 conscious education is intended to subserve. 
 
 Let us look back to the processes of natural, 
 traditional education in an agricultural village 
 a hundred years ago. The boy was born in a 
 miserable hut, where sooner or later a dozen like 
 him might see the light, and several might survive. 
 He was nursed by his mother, and then weaned. 
 Food and clothing were scanty, but not unsuitable ; 
 fresh air and exercise were abundant. Discipline 
 was enforced by stern and primitive methods; 
 reading and writing were not taught; but the 
 youngster got to know the names, the appearance, 
 the character, the position of two or three hundred 
 people ; he got to know every hedge, every tree, 
 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 37 
 
 every field, every domestic animal for a mile 
 round ; he lived in intimate, though not in friendly 
 relations, with fish, and bird, and beast ; he knew 
 his little world, in and out. As soon as he was 
 Did enough to take responsibility he was turned 
 on to scare birds, to lead and drive stock, and help 
 in the fields; eventually he was taught the 
 misteries of digging, planting, ploughing, and 
 sowing, hedging, thatching, and ditching, the care 
 and control of animals, till he became an expert 
 agricultural labourer. Let no townsman fancy 
 that the trade of an agricultural labourer is an 
 unskilled trade; it is the most skilled and most 
 varied of all skilled trades, and in its learning a 
 greater mass of coherent knowledge is acquired 
 than is picked up in the factory, the workshop, 
 the school, or the gutter, or in all of them, one 
 after the other. 
 
 That was a school of life, a limited, earth to 
 earth existence, but still a complete life, and a 
 thorough school. It inculcated a number of 
 moral ideas, sufficient to promise tolerably good 
 behaviour in the sphere that the youngster was 
 likely to occupy. 
 
 It lacked half a hundred things that the worst- 
 educated hooligan of to-day has been taught ; it 
 lacked above all the cultivation of the written and 
 spoken word on which our schools concentrate 
 so much attention. Hodge had few words and 
 he used them sparingly : but what he knew he 
 knew deeply, and what he knew was necessary 
 for his daily life and business and, by the way, 
 for ours. 
 
38 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 The girl-child lived a similar life, though in a 
 still more narrow sphere. She learned all that 
 her mother and her grandmother had learnt by 
 long ancestral experience. She learnt the duties 
 of a humble household, the care of children, cook- 
 ing, baking, washing, sewing, butter-making, 
 milking, cheese-making, and such agricultural 
 work as fell to the lot of women. She was better 
 fitted to be a mother than most of the school- 
 taught girls that plunge into matrimony nowadays. 
 
 In the towns the apprenticeship system ensured 
 at small expense that a lad might learn a trade 
 by constant observation of those who had mas- 
 tered it ; and afterwards by personal practice. 
 
 This primitive education fostered prejudice and 
 conservatism; it did little to expel ignorance; 
 but it met the needs of business and it encouraged 
 individuality. From its first entry into the world 
 the child was treated as an individual. Home 
 influence while it lasted was searching and inex- 
 orable; there was no division of responsibility, 
 or conflict of authority, between parent and 
 schoolmaster. Business began early, and it was 
 learnt in the practical school of business at the 
 age when the faculties are most ductile. 
 
 So far as the towns were concerned this natural 
 education was broken down by the factory 
 system. It proved necessary, for reasons of 
 health, to forbid that young children should be 
 employed in the factories. There was nothing for 
 the children to do at home while waiting for the v 
 age of employment to arrive. If the schools had 
 
BOOK-LEARNING AND EDUCATION 39 
 
 not been established for other reasons, they would 
 have been necessary to keep the children out of 
 mischief. 
 
 But elementary schools were not started for 
 business reasons : they were started by religious 
 men, for the moral and spiritual life, rather than 
 for business. The schools, once started, were 
 bound to teach something, besides religion. 
 Reading, writing, and arithmetic, were the obvious 
 things to teach. These things were not necessary 
 for all business, but they were useful for some kinds 
 of business; perhaps, though not certainly, for 
 all. Reading, at any rate, was necessary for those 
 who were to read the Bible. And thus the schools 
 from the beginning acquired a literary, a bookish 
 bent, which might have been avoided if the school 
 had been started with the clear intention of fitting 
 the children for their future business for the 
 most part manual and industrial. 
 
 Democracy came faster than schooling. But 
 the argument that our masters must be educated 
 assisted the growing movement in favour of 
 elementary education for all. Men would have 
 to vote; in order to understand the arguments 
 laid before them by speakers and the press they 
 needed literary education ; and this was another 
 reason, unconnected with business, why book- 
 learning was from the first identified with educa- 
 tion, when it became self-conscious and socialistic. 
 
 Again, the pioneers of elementary education 
 were men of the upper or middle class, whose 
 notion of a school was derived from the schools 
 which they had themselves attended. Those 
 
40 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 schools were suited to gentlemen of leisure, to 
 masters of industry and commerce. It was not 
 perceived that the special needs of the industrial 
 population required a different system. 
 
 During the industrial revolution, many had 
 risen from the ranks to control great industries 
 and commercial establishments. The art of help- 
 ing yourself was the gospel of the day, and facilities 
 for elementary book-learning assisted self-help, 
 and were therefore regarded as beneficent. 
 
 Elementary education in schools, begun on 
 these lines and pressed forward by these motives, 
 became general, then compulsory, and finally 
 free, before the actual business needs of the 
 community had ever been considered. It was 
 taken for granted that elementary education, as 
 provided in the government schools, was good for 
 every one. When it became clear that a little of 
 it was not of great value, it was assumed that 
 more of the same kind would be efficacious ; when 
 that also proved insufficient, then more. And 
 now, after more than forty years of state elemen- 
 tary education, it is still held by many that what 
 the majority require is more book-learning. Yet, 
 for a large proportion of the community, book- 
 learning has little bearing upon business. 
 
 It is unfortunately true that what is the best 
 preparation for life is not always the best prepara- 
 tion for business. At the limit the two may 
 meet. The best education is at once the best 
 preparation for life and the best preparation for 
 the best business. But the business world is not 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 41 
 
 staffed entirely with field-marshals. Arithmetic 
 and handwriting are worth more to a clerk than 
 Plato and Shakespeare. Cleaning and cooking 
 are worth more to most mothers than music and 
 French. The mastery of a skilled trade is a better 
 bread-winner than poetry and metaphysics. 
 
 But there is one ground on which the claims of 
 life and the claims of business are identical, and 
 that is health. Life without health is dust and 
 ashes; health increases business efficiency in 
 every grade and in every vocation. The first four 
 requisites of education are food, sleep, air, 
 exercise. When we touch the question of food 
 we come to the first conflict of authority, of duty, 
 of responsibility, between the parent and the 
 State. It is right that parents should feel re- 
 sponsibility for their children's daily bread; it 
 is wrong to impair that feeling of responsibility; 
 but no less is it right to feed the hungry, no less 
 must the State be responsible for the children 
 whom it has taken under its care. There is a 
 conflict also of expediencies. The great majority 
 of parents would think it shame that their children 
 should be fed at the public expense ; but there are 
 some too poor, others too vicious, to meet this 
 primary duty. It is not expedient that such 
 children should go unfed; ill-nourished children 
 grow into unsound men and women; they 
 become a burden rather than a strength to their 
 country. Schooling is worse than wasted on the 
 starving. On the other hand, the State has 
 enough burdens on its back already; if it once 
 accepts the principle that the foodless must be 
 
42 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 fed, there is danger that more and more will 
 shirk their obligations. But this is a practical 
 problem, to be solved by experience and ad- 
 ministrative ingenuity. We have adopted a 
 socialistic system of education, and this is one 
 of the problems which it carries with it. By 
 one hand or another the children must be fed. 
 Dilemmas are formidable in logic ; they are the 
 daily discipline of practice. 
 
 Unwholesome and unsuitable food is bad 
 education. I am glad to think that by Care 
 Committees and Health Visitors the principles 
 of sound and economical diet are likely to be made 
 better known. In matters of food (no less than 
 in politics and invention) there has been a revolu- 
 tion in the last hundred years. A new tradition, 
 a new custom, a new code of fashion is needed. 
 No nation is so inexpert, so wasteful, so stupid, 
 in the management of food as the English. No 
 nation has better food to waste. 
 
 The State has not yet assumed the duty of 
 seeing that all young children are in bed by half- 
 past six. Its activities might be and are worse 
 employed. But better would be a new and sound 
 tradition. Sleep is sovereign against neurosis, 
 the endemic of our time. 
 
 Fresh air was early recognised as important in 
 education. The public elementary schools are 
 on the whole roomy and well ventilated, as 
 they ought to be. But overcrowded dwellings, 
 narrow and sunless streets, all these are bad for 
 education. 
 
 Children who live in the country, children who 
 
PHYSICAL EDUCATION 43 
 
 run about the streets, one way and another get 
 plenty of exercise. But it is now admitted to be 
 bad for children to sit still too long in school. 
 They ought to stretch their limbs at least once 
 every hour if possible, in the open air. And 
 disciplined movement, though not exactly neces- 
 sary for business, has its business value. A man 
 or woman with an erect, trim, easy, graceful 
 action of the limbs makes a better impression, 
 has a better chance in life, a better chance in 
 marriage, than those who have only learnt to 
 slouch. Dancing is a natural joy for the young. 
 I should like to see dancing taught in all the 
 schools. It cultivates among other things control 
 of the limbs; and in some mysterious way the 
 mind that has achieved perfect mastery of the 
 body is a better mind. 
 
 Control of facial expression should also be 
 taught in school; no doubt it is taught, but I 
 see many who do not appear to have learnt it. 
 Open mouths, slack lips, staring eyes, meaningless 
 contortions of the face, sulky looks these are a 
 bad letter of introduction, and no sound person 
 need carry such tell-tales on his countenance. 
 The care of the appearance and the clothing is a 
 necessary element of self-respect; and self- 
 respect is necessary to success. 
 
 Full attention is now being paid to physical 
 education ; but we have vast arrears to make up 
 on this side ; in my own business I see proof of 
 the disastrous neglect of ears and teeth ; and the 
 generation now at work, even the generation now 
 growing up, have a heavy claim for damages against 
 
44 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 Victorian statesmen, who so lightly assumed the 
 responsibility for the education of youth. That 
 responsibility now rests on us, and we have a 
 clearer conception of its magnitude than those 
 worthy but purblind magnates. 
 
 Next after care of the health, comes the cultiva- 
 tion of the senses. We have not yet attempted 
 the self-conscious cultivation of the senses of 
 smell and taste, though these are not without 
 importance. But it is accepted nowadays that 
 visual and aural and manual training are of the 
 highest value. 
 
 This is not a practical treatise on school 
 methods, so I will not describe the various devices 
 which are and may be employed in schools to 
 train the eye and ear. If the eye and ear are 
 trained to discern delicate differences, the faculty 
 of observation must be trained at the same time. 
 The school through which Mr. Lurgan passed Kim 
 is a school which every boy and girl might with 
 advantage attend; though here, as everywhere 
 else, the schoolmaster must be on his guard lest 
 by over-insistence he convert a natural pleasure 
 into a source of fatigue and disgust. The street, 
 the country-side, are good training grounds for 
 observation, if once the senses of the child are 
 opened. But it is not uncommon to find children 
 whose eyes and ears seem to be sealed, either 
 because the intelligence is inert, or sometimes 
 because an imaginative and reflective bent is in 
 excess. Such children require the most careful 
 and sympathetic treatment by the schoolmaster, 
 
THE SENSES 45 
 
 lest they should grow up to go through life blind 
 and deaf. 
 
 The gateways of the mind must be swung wide 
 open; and the sense of touch is an important 
 adit. There may be doubts whether Madame 
 Montessori's successes are real; if real, whether 
 they are due to her methods or to her personality. 
 But no fault can be found with her two main 
 doctrines : Give the child all the liberty that he 
 can use with safety ; guide him to the use of his 
 sensitive hands. I regard dumb-bells with sus- 
 picion as academic, said Samuel Butler. All 
 school devices must be academic, but let us be as 
 little academic as we may. Every natural device 
 for encouraging children to use their hands, in 
 games, in building with bricks, in drawing, 
 modelling, simple construction all these are 
 useful. Writing itself is a manual art, and valu- 
 able not only as a means of putting words on 
 paper. Let us not forget that every child will 
 need the use of his hands in his life and business ; 
 that more of them will earn their livelihood by 
 the toil of their hands and bodies than by the 
 exercise of their higher intellectual faculties; 
 that the bodies develop first and the minds 
 develop later; that the child in its natural play 
 is developing its senses and limbs for use in later 
 life, and if left to itself will always be doing some- 
 thing with its hands, though it be only making 
 mud-pies and building grottos of oyster-shells. 
 Manual training has come into practical educa- 
 tion ; once adopted, and its importance can never 
 again be overlooked ; its necessity for business is 
 
46 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 more than obvious, it cries aloud ; but its efficacy 
 in fostering mental development is not less certain. 
 A new ingredient has entered our system of 
 training, which relieves the monotony of 
 school, and will repay tenfold experiment and 
 invention. 
 
 For business and for life alike, a well-nourished, 
 well-knit, well-nerved, well-developed body is the 
 first need; the second is a trained eye, and ear, 
 and hand ; the third is an alert intelligence. 
 
 It must be admitted that the results of com- 
 pulsory state education are hitherto disappointing, 
 from the point of view of business. The popula- 
 tion has more book-learning, but it is not yet more 
 efficient. We have too many clerks, too many 
 salesmen and saleswomen, too much casual labour, 
 not enough manual skill, not enough alertness of 
 intelligence. The problem was indeed greater 
 than the pioneers imagined. They opened 
 schools, but they did not understand that they 
 were closing the school of life. Our elders describe 
 to us the intelligence of the old illiterates. Their 
 memories were infallible, their accuracy inde- 
 feasible, their industry untiring; they could 
 reckon without the aid of figures. Such prodigies 
 were no doubt exceptional, but the school of life 
 was a good school. It had its failures, no doubt, 
 perhaps in greater proportion than our modern 
 schools; it had also its conspicuous successes. 
 But we cannot go back and trust to the haphazard 
 methods of the school of life. We must go on and 
 improve our man-made schools; we must not 
 
BOOK-LEARNING AND BUSINESS 47 
 
 rest while the results of art are inferior to those of 
 chance. 
 
 What is the value of book-learning for busi- 
 ness ? Every business man will tell you it is less 
 than many scholastics even now imagine. Every 
 business man prefers the people he employs to be 
 intelligent; but if you tell him that book-learn- 
 ing develops the intelligence, he will shrug his 
 shoulders. It may, or it may not : his experience 
 does not convince him that it does. 
 
 Agricultural labourers, miners, porters, railway- 
 men, navvies, labourers, machine operatives, 
 carters, domestic servants in all these classes 
 intelligence is valuable, but not book-learning. 
 In almost all the skilled manual trades book- 
 learning is not directly useful. If book-learning 
 does not develop intelligence and love of work it is 
 useless in all these occupations. 
 
 Even for clerks, half the things they have 
 learnt at school have no business value. Their 
 reading, their spelling, their handwriting, their 
 arithmetic, their English, will stand them in good 
 stead. Their history, their geography, except a 
 little elementary topography, their mathematics, 
 their English literature, all these have no direct 
 bearing upon their work. If they have learnt 
 foreign languages, they must know them far 
 beyond the limit they are likely to reach at school 
 before they can turn them to any profitable end. 
 It is true that the higher you go in the managing 
 class, the greater the value of instruction, and 
 wide, coherent knowledge. But it is not right, 
 nor is it needful, to teach the multitude things 
 
48 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 that can be of no use to them, in order that the 
 few may profit if their chance arrives. We 
 should avoid the error of those who would teach 
 all secondary schoolboys Greek and Latin, for 
 the sake of the lucky few who may attain to 
 classical scholarship. The few have their rights ; 
 they will repay all care and attention spent upon 
 them ; they should not be sacrificed to the many, 
 nor should the many be sacrificed to them. We 
 want a scheme of education suited to the many ; 
 we want also a scheme of education suited to the 
 few ; we want a crown of education suited to the 
 fewest. But each scheme should be arranged so 
 as not to interfere with the others. 
 
 I do not propose to banish books from schools. 
 Books have their value for life, as I shall explain 
 elsewhere. But book-learning is only a means to 
 an end. At the limit that end is knowledge and 
 wisdom. For the many the end of book-learning 
 is intelligence; the end of schooling is intelli- 
 gence, complete development, love of work, and 
 character. 
 
 All those schemes, for which I desire expansion 
 and success physical training, visual training, 
 aural training, manual training, nature-study, to 
 which I might add street-study, an interesting 
 subject, which, so far as I know, has not 
 been added to the official list are going to 
 withdraw a good deal from the time allotted to 
 book-learning. But if book-learning ceases to be 
 an end in itself and becomes a means for develop- 
 ment of the intelligence, there will be, for this 
 reason also, less learning and fewer subjects. 
 
LIBERTY IN SCHOOLS 49 
 
 That is a sacrifice which I, for one, would willingly 
 make. 
 
 I am always afraid of saying anything about 
 schools, lest the fault to which I refer may have 
 been removed while I was not looking. Progress 
 is constantly being made ; the world does move ; 
 and just now I think it is moving in the right 
 direction. But I believe I am safe in saying that 
 what we still want in many elementary schools is 
 more liberty, and more care for individuality. 
 
 There is a cry just now for more liberty in the 
 schools. That means more liberty for the school- 
 masters. No doubt, intelligent opinion is in 
 favour of liberty for the schoolmaster, subject to 
 safeguards against moral and intellectual and 
 practical aberrations. The French Minister, who 
 gloried in the thought that at a particular hour 
 all the children in France, at each stage, were 
 learning the same thing, was glorying in the power 
 of the machine which he governed, but he had no 
 right to glory in his own wisdom. It appears to 
 me that the liberty of the schoolmaster under 
 many education authorities, though not perhaps 
 under all, is fairly complete. Perhaps this is 
 one of the belated cries that are raised when a 
 grievance has been removed. 
 
 If you give liberty to the schoolmaster, some 
 enterprising Educational Publisher will offer him 
 a text-book in exchange for his liberty. The 
 text-books which give the lesson ready-made, 
 which tell what the teacher said to the children, 
 and what the children said to the teacher, produce 
 E 
 
50 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 the machine-made instruction which fatigues but 
 does not illuminate. I find no fault with a 
 text-book which, placed in the hands of the 
 children, serves as a core, a nucleus, for the 
 lesson ; no objection to a model lesson illustrating 
 a good method; no fault with the text-book 
 which is suited to the mature mind of the teacher, 
 and has to be translated, reconstructed, before 
 it can be given to the class. But ready-made 
 lessons are anathema. A poor lesson that 
 comes straight from the teacher's heart and mind 
 is better than the best that can be got out of a 
 book. Let the teachers have liberty, and let them 
 guard it jealously against vendors of cheap doses. 
 Liberty for the schoolmaster is important ; 
 liberty for the children is even more important. 
 Every child, every healthy and normal child, is 
 full of laudable curiosity. It is our business to 
 utilise that curiosity. As a rule, we paralyse it 
 with unacceptable learning. What we should do 
 is to guide it, to stimulate it, to assist it. If we 
 can do that, the child will do three-quarters of 
 the work that is even now done by the school- 
 master. Books develop the intelligence, in so far 
 as they stimulate thought, in so far as they 
 suggest ideas, in so far as the learning they provide 
 responds to a hunger of the mind, and is linked 
 forthwith with other learning to form a growing 
 whole of knowledge. These are difficult doctrines ; 
 the bearings of them lie in their application; 
 the application of them lies with the schoolmaster. 
 The best schoolmasters already fully appreciate 
 the nature of their task. Children are not sent 
 
SIZE OF CLASSES 51 
 
 to school to be stuffed like Surrey fowls ; they are 
 sent there to learn to live and to think, so that they 
 may live the better. Schoolmasters are not put 
 into schools to obey orders ; they are put there 
 to help the children. More liberty for school- 
 masters, by all means, where it is needed; but 
 also more liberty for the children, where it is 
 needed. 
 
 The liberty of children to learn and exercise 
 their minds must depend in large measure on 
 the size of the classes. Given fifty children in a 
 class, they do not, one and all, nor even one, 
 respond to a given formula. Each one is an 
 individual, with capacities, desires, aspirations, 
 tastes, peculiar to itself. Each one deserves a 
 separate, an individual treatment. The curves 
 of their progress will resemble each other more or 
 less, but no two will coincide. We are and we 
 must be socialists in education; but we should 
 also be individualists. For every child entrusted 
 to our care is different from every other. The 
 bed of Procrustes was not a good bed. We 
 should none of us allow our children to sleep in it, 
 if we knew what we were doing. 
 
 Fifty, or sixty, or seventy, children in a class. 
 We have asked, we are still asking, too much of 
 our schoolmasters. How can a schoolmaster give 
 sufficient individual attention to even fifty 
 children? Fifty sheep, no doubt, one shepherd 
 can attend ; but we do not wish our children to be 
 sheep. We should not put one man to look after 
 fifty cows, or fifty horses. How much better, 
 how much more valuable in sheer money-earning 
 
52 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 capacity, are our children than cows or horses ! 
 How can there be any liberty in a class of fifty ? 
 How can intelligence be formed? How can 
 thought be set a-moving? How can the love of 
 work be encouraged? How can there be much 
 beyond discipline and teaching? Education is 
 costly, no doubt; but it is going to be more 
 costly, before it is satisfactory. It is going to 
 cost us much in money, it has cost us, it must 
 cost us, more in mind, otherwise our money will 
 be wasted. 
 
 Very little of what is learnt in an elementary 
 school is directly useful from the aspect of business 
 to those who learn it. You cannot find any form 
 of learning, not even reading, writing and arith- 
 metic, that would be immediately useful to all 
 our fellow-citizens in their business. We are told 
 that many promising school-lads forget all they 
 have learnt at school within a few years. That 
 is to be regretted ; but the learning is not all that 
 matters. If the intelligence has been awakened, 
 if curiosity has been kept alive, if the love of 
 work has been aroused, if the desire to learn and 
 the impulse to excellence has been fostered, those 
 will not be lost though the young man forget his 
 very A, B, C. Learning is always a means to an 
 end; it is never an end in itself, except to the 
 professional student. 
 
 Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of our 
 modern life is the distaste for work. That arises 
 partly, no doubt, from that magnificent sub- 
 division of labour which our ancestors so much 
 
LOVE OF WORK 53 
 
 admired. When a man is only a tiny wheel in a 
 great machine, the product of which he may not 
 ever see, the artist's joy is denied to him. When 
 only a minute portion of his faculties is ever called 
 into operation by his work the higher satisfaction 
 of the workman cannot be his. But the love 
 of work is not wholly dependent on either of 
 these feelings; it is in the being, in the blood; 
 it comes to us from an industrious ancestry who 
 subdued the brute creation and the forces of 
 nature by their labour. Being natural, it can 
 be developed by exercise and habit, it can be 
 atrophied by want of use. One of the main 
 functions of the school is to develop the love of 
 work. 
 
 I do not believe that the elementary school is 
 an unhappy or a repulsive place. I believe that 
 in the great majority of such schools the chil- 
 dren are happy and glad to return. But with 
 classes of fifty or more I do not see how the 
 children can be made to do much work for them- 
 selves. Many schoolmasters, I feel sure, are 
 doing all that they can do in this direction ; but 
 the conditions are still unpropitious, if we desire 
 the children to acquire the love of work, to catch 
 the desire to learn for themselves. If the children 
 acquire the habit of taking their meat from the 
 spoon, their school training is not good for them, 
 but bad. It is all too easy for schools to quench 
 the natural love of work. 
 
 There is a class of Boy Clerks in the Civil 
 Service, recruited by a good enough competitive 
 examination of a secondary kind, between fifteen 
 
54 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 and sixteen. In order to obtain a permanent 
 situation they have to pass another examination 
 for which they have two chances, between seven- 
 teen and eighteen. This second examination is 
 of a simple kind, and unless the competition is 
 severe every one of these chosen boys ought to be 
 able to pass it with a few months' evening work. 
 Learning that there was a serious deficiency of 
 qualified candidates to fill the permanent posts, 
 I inquired as to the reason. I was told that out 
 of 428 candidates leaving the Service 164 had 
 never sat for this second examination, 84 had 
 failed once, 180 had failed twice. I say nothing 
 about those who never sat; perhaps they did 
 not want to be clerks ; perhaps they found better 
 openings for themselves. But how can it be that 
 so large a proportion sat and failed to qualify? 
 I can only suggest that these boys were all right 
 as long as they were at school with some one to 
 teach them and to make them learn. But when 
 it came to learning for themselves, they had not 
 formed the habit. They did not like the exertion, 
 they did not answer even to the spur of self- 
 interest. 
 
 The development of intelligence, the love of 
 work, the desire to learn, all these go together 
 they require liberty for the scholars, they require 
 care for the individuality of the several children, 
 they are dependent partly on the size of the 
 classes. But they are impeded by the worship 
 of learning for its own sake. The old bad system 
 of payment by results has gone. But it is so 
 much easier to test the possession of learning than 
 
CHARACTER 55 
 
 to test intelligence, love of work, the desire to 
 learn, that it is not unnatural that many school- 
 masters should work for the former rather than 
 for the latter. Besides, it is always easier, 
 especially for the schoolmaster, to do the work 
 oneself than to make the others do it. And, 
 though payment by results has gone, the influence 
 is still felt, and must be felt so long as the effects 
 are still operative on some of the older teachers, 
 whose habits cannot be changed by a stroke of 
 the pen. Education is not a thing that can be 
 changed in a moment. Improvements work 
 slowly ; mistakes make themselves felt for many 
 a weary year. It is encouraging to remember 
 that improvements have a like prolonged and 
 cumulative operation. 
 
 Finally, for business, the last important result 
 of schooling is character. The tone of a good 
 school is an education in itself. Every feeling, 
 every habit, every expression in word or manners, 
 every impulse, every thought, is raised perceptibly 
 by the tone of a good school. Mere discipline is 
 a good thing. Liberty is a good thing, but, 
 however free we may be, however powerful, we 
 have all to submit to authority, we have all to 
 bow to rules, to environment. But, when these 
 young things go out into the world, they will have 
 to oscillate between the iron discipline of business, 
 and the apparent liberty of leisure. The mere 
 discipline of school may fit them for the first, 
 so long as they are in subordinate positions. 
 But, if they wish to rise above the ruck, they must 
 
56 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 possess self-control, they must have learned to be 
 their own masters. This can be learnt at school, 
 but not under iron discipline ; but rather by the 
 orderly exercise of liberty and self-directed 
 activities in study, as well as in games, clubs, 
 and the like and by care for individuality. 
 
 Here again the size of the classes tells against 
 the master, however sympathetic, wise, and 
 enlightened he may be. 
 
 People who know more about business than 
 about education are always talking about useful 
 studies. I have no prejudice against useful 
 studies. If anything that is directly useful can 
 be taught at school, by all means let it be taught, 
 provided that it is useful to those who learn it. 
 But schools, like dumb-bells, are and must be 
 academic. You cannot learn to box by using 
 dumb-bells. Similarly, you cannot learn a trade 
 at school, in classes of fifty; and, if you could 
 learn a trade at school, it is probable that it would 
 not be a trade that all would wish to follow. 
 Manual training, training in domestic economy, all 
 these things are good ; but in schools they must be 
 academic. They cannot completely prepare for 
 business or life. In a northern district it was the 
 practice, when a baby was born, for the eldest 
 daughter to stay at home for a month and help 
 in the house. The Education Authority in its 
 wisdom forebade this practice, and, at the same 
 time, ordered a large supply of full-size dolls, 
 each with a complete outfit of baby clothing, for 
 the girl children to practise upon in school. This 
 
TRAINING OF INTELLIGENCE 57 
 
 is an extreme case of dumb-bells against boxing 
 dolls against a real baby if the story is true, and 
 not merely well invented. 
 
 What I have said is not directed against trade- 
 schools or technical schools, any more than it is 
 directed against schools of medicine, or engineer- 
 ing, or law. Trade-schools are a promising 
 experiment; how far they can be extended will 
 be seen by trial. Technical schools are intended 
 for those who have elected to follow certain voca- 
 tions. They carry with them their own problems. 
 They are supplementary to education; they are 
 not, at present, a part of general education. 
 
 But, if we once take note of the fact that no 
 part of the book-learning taught at school is 
 necessarily useful to all in their business, we shall 
 see that, so far as the claims of business are con- 
 cerned, the book-learning is not an end but only a 
 means. It is a means to awake the intelligence, 
 to open the mind, to create new interests, to 
 open new avenues for thought. The more the 
 school instruction is brought into close touch with 
 the practical life of the district in which the school 
 is placed, the more the realistic applications of it 
 are seized and brought home to the children, the 
 more that book-learning is likely to perform its 
 proper work in stimulating the intelligence, 
 creating a love of work, and a desire to learn, 
 the more its value for business will be increased. 
 
 Every here and there bits of useful instruction 
 can be fitted in. No one can learn at school to be 
 a gardener. But it is natural for children to have 
 their little gardens, and grow a few things in them ; 
 
58 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 
 
 a training garden is a natural adjunct to a rural 
 school. They will learn a good deal by that, 
 though they will hardly learn to be gardeners, 
 or even to manage a cottage garden. Anything 
 and everything of that kind is good, and not less 
 good because it brings home to the children that 
 business exists, and that book-learning is not 
 business, except for professors. 
 
 Throughout this chapter I have spoken as if 
 the school was all, and the parent nothing. The 
 parent is not negligible ; the parents can, if they 
 choose, be all-impoitant. But in existing circum- 
 stances the schools are in too many cases the 
 governing factor. The parent abdicates; the 
 school is the sole physical, moral, religious, intellec- 
 tual, and business instructor. I think few, except 
 the schoolmasters, recognise how important the 
 schoolmasters have become in our modern com- 
 munities. But, if and when the general level of 
 intelligence and responsibility has been raised by 
 education, then a new generation of parents may 
 grow up, keen to stimulate the intelligence of 
 their children, eager to teach them all they 
 know of duty, and self-control, and practical 
 wisdom. Without a wise parental regimen, the 
 task of the schoolmaster is heart-breaking. No 
 wonder that some of them confine their attention 
 to the book-learning and the discipline, and are 
 satisfied if these things are well reported. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 IT is the purpose of education scholastic and 
 domestic to prepare for life; but life itself is 
 the great educator. Happy those who can learn 
 the lessons that life provides, without schedule 
 or programme, without play-time, respite, or vaca- 
 tion. Life loves a willing pupil ; with the shirker, 
 the recalcitrant, the obtuse, its methods are 
 severe. The schoolmaster may visit the un- 
 learning and contumacious with rods, but life 
 will chastise him with scorpions and with cocka- 
 trices. It is the duty of what we narrowly call 
 education to fit our pupils for business, but it is 
 still more the duty of such education to fit them to 
 learn the lessons of life, and to stand its tests and 
 examinations. The more gifted the pupil, the 
 more severe do those tests become. The education 
 of life is too large a subject for this book to com- 
 prehend; but education for life is a theme that 
 cannot be avoided. 
 
 Life all too frequently obliterates the manu- 
 script of school. I read not long ago a book 
 called Across the Bridges : descriptions of life on 
 the south side of the Thames. There was much 
 
 59 
 
60 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 in it to claim attention ; but the author's sketch 
 of the changes that take place in the children after 
 leaving school stays in my mind. Over the 
 water, as on this side, there are excellent schools, 
 and excellent human material. There may not 
 be much assistance in some of the homes, there 
 is little from any of the surroundings, but when 
 the schoolmaster has done with the children they 
 are for the most part self-respecting, well-man- 
 nered, intelligent, alert. Then follows the gradual 
 declension. Social influences are unpropitious, 
 employments are not elevating; within a few 
 years all that the school appeared to have im- 
 parted of intelligence and polish will have vanished 
 in the majority. 
 
 Some of us, who perhaps have not lost what we 
 possessed at fourteen, may remember what we 
 were at that age. We had no doubt been nurtured 
 with more care at home and at school than most 
 of these children; but how much of our polish 
 and instruction would have stood fast had we 
 been then turned loose in Battersea or the 
 Borough to earn our livelihood ? 
 
 It is probable that a carter or a porter will be 
 a lout ; it is likely that a shop-boy will be well, a 
 shop-boy ; but, if so, has all the schooling run to 
 waste? Not entirely, I think; such classes are/ 
 I fully believe, in spite of all appearances, more 
 civilised than their predecessors of thirty years 
 ago. But humanity cannot be satisfied with the 
 results hitherto achieved. 
 
 We have already seen that the socialistic 
 
THE YEARS OF ADOLESCENCE 61 
 
 system of education goes far to relieve parents 
 of responsibility which properly belongs to them. 
 The best parents, no doubt, do not let their own 
 responsibility slip; but it is natural that the 
 majority should leave to others what others are 
 willing to undertake. But whatever sum of 
 authority and influence the parents may have 
 retained up to the end of school-time is likely to 
 slide from them when the boy or girl begins to 
 earn a livelihood. School discipline ceases for 
 the majority at about fourteen; parental disci- 
 pline such as it may be is weakened from that 
 moment when the young people have their own 
 money of which they can dispose. And yet the 
 years from fourteen to eighteen, the years of 
 puberty and adolescence, are the most critical 
 years of the whole development. 
 
 The discipline of work and business does not 
 make up for this defect. A man may be good 
 at business, and clumsy, unintelligent, ineffective, 
 unwise, in his own more important personal life. 
 We all know those who never make a mark in 
 business, but are admirable in their homes and 
 with their friends. Moreover, the work, the 
 business, into which young persons are likely to 
 drift on leaving school, does not even fit them for 
 work and business; they earn a few shillings a 
 week for a few years, and then find themselves 
 stranded without any marketable skill. And, 
 even if the chance education of business were 
 enough for business purposes, there is still the 
 rest of life, the more important rest, to be con- 
 sidered. 
 
62 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 A mark of the civilised man is the use he makes 
 of leisure. Education must be regarded as in- 
 complete that does not fit the pupil for the use of 
 his leisure. In the reaction between character 
 and life, character should be adaptable rather than 
 stubborn, but character should hold its own, and 
 mould the life that moulds it in return. It is 
 required of nearly all men it will some day, per- 
 haps, be required of all women that they should 
 take a share in public affairs. If they take no 
 part, yet their fortunes depend upon the policy 
 which others, more active, impose upon the whole. 
 The function of early education in regard to life 
 is thus to cultivate wholesome and varied tastes, 
 to build up directing principles and habits in 
 the personality, to fit for domestic, social, and 
 political relations. 
 
 What formative powers work upon those classes 
 whose schooling ceases at about fourteen ? Put- 
 ting domestic influence aside, which varies in 
 almost every home and cannot be changed by 
 the rules or the agents of any public authority, 
 the schoolmaster has his chance during seven to 
 nine of the most impressionable years of life. 
 Though the predominance of books in his armoury 
 has been excessive, books must always be his chief 
 instrument. I have depreciated the study of 
 books from the point of view of business, but I 
 should be the last to depreciate it from the point 
 of view of life. Books are to be studied for life 
 rather than for business. If that is once accepted, 
 instruction takes on a new spirit. Those who 
 began the movement for elementary education no 
 
THE USE OF LEISURE 63 
 
 doubt imagined that you had only to teach the 
 young to read, and the world of imagination and 
 knowledge would be open to them. It is open to 
 them, but there are few who find their path into 
 its treasure-houses. Reading, like all other gifts, 
 can be used or misused. What use or misuse is 
 made of reading may be inferred from the flood 
 of trumpery periodicals which finds a sale. 
 There is not much harm for the most part in such 
 trash, but the reading of it cannot be regarded as 
 a worthy use of leisure. The schoolmaster, after 
 the necessities of physical and business training 
 are satisfied, has the opportunity of implanting 
 in some of his pupils the love of good books. But 
 he must have it first himself; the system under 
 which schoolmasters are trained should lead them 
 to regard books as counsellors, friends, and play- 
 mates for leisure hours, not merely as tools used 
 for instruction and professional propaedeutic. 
 There is already a great advance in this direction. 
 
 Reading is not for all, but there are no doubt 
 many who have missed through no fault of their 
 own the joy and the guidance that a few shillings 
 will now procure. Music is another harmonising 
 and civilising influence. The teaching of music 
 in elementary schools should be devoted to the 
 development of taste, comprehension, and wisely 
 directed inclination. Singing classes are good. 
 Jaques-Dalcroze's Eurhythmies are excellent ; 
 they combine musical instruction with what I 
 have claimed above for dancing the drill of 
 measured, rhythmical, and controlled movement. 
 
64 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 But the children should not only be taught music ; 
 they should hear good music, if that is in any way 
 possible. In many country districts the village 
 choir, the village musical society, afford almost 
 the only outlook into the world where sound obeys 
 the mind, and moves it in return. In English 
 towns the opportunities for hearing good music 
 are not so abundant as in Germany; but in 
 churches, in parks, even in music-halls, they are 
 becoming more frequent. If skilled performers 
 were to make good music now and then in the 
 schools, their pains would be well bestowed. And 
 if a generation trained to love music were to arise, 
 our music-halls would be transformed : a trans- 
 formation of which there are already some signs. 
 Performing dogs and birds and elephants and seals, 
 acrobats, skirts and kicks, would give more room 
 to soloists and quartets, chorussed and orchestral 
 music. We are not now a musical nation; but 
 we have been more musical than we are; we 
 evolved the English church-music and gave a 
 home to the Oratorio, not perhaps the best 
 music, but still noble and worthy; we still 
 breed and train the Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 choirs. A good instinct perverted is seen in the 
 cult of the piano ; if school taught but this 
 that execution is only for the few, appreciation 
 for the many it would have taught a valuable 
 lesson. 
 
 Music, like reading, is not for all, but it is for 
 many. It is the most democratic of the arts. 
 Its spiritual and intellectual influence defies 
 analysis ; it irritates, and stimulates, and pacifies ; 
 
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY 65 
 
 upon the artist, whose fibres it tears and excru- 
 ciates with passion, its operation has something 
 of malign ; but to those whose working hours are 
 dull, mechanical, and sordid, it brings harmony 
 partly spiritual, partly physical and ideal 
 beauty, beyond the power of any other art. 
 
 To pass to other subjects of school instruction, 
 history and geography, which have an intimate 
 connexion, have been in the past in the for- 
 gotten past, I trust more ill-treated than almost 
 any subjects of education. History was for a 
 long time regarded and taught as a series of names, 
 and events, and dates, without unity, inter- 
 connexion, or meaning; supplemented at best 
 by stories about Alfred and the cakes, or the like. 
 Geography was for a long time treated as a list of 
 topographical details to be committed to memory. 
 Almost all of this is without value or significance. 
 History and geography were for a long time 
 treated like technical subjects, in which exact 
 learning is all important. On the contrary, the 
 function of history and human geography is to 
 stimulate the imagination, to inform the under- 
 standing, to widen the outlook. Unless these 
 purposes are served, the history is without worth, 
 the geography is only useful for the details of 
 here and there a business. If history and 
 geography are treated in the proper way, the child 
 will go out into life prepared to find history 
 happening before its eyes, with the fields of 
 Europe, the territories of the globe, spread out 
 before its ken, as the scene of majestic dramas of 
 F 
 
66 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 which the action is incessant and progressive. 
 He will be in some measure prepared to take his 
 part as a citizen and a voter. 
 
 If the youth does nothing else that is intellec- 
 tual and illuminative in his leisure hours, he will 
 from time to time read the daily paper the 
 Daily Mirror, perhaps, or the Daily Mail. The 
 daily paper is the greatest of original historical 
 authorities, affording matter for infinite reflective, 
 constructive, and imaginative scope. But has 
 any of my readers ever tried to imagine what the 
 daily paper means to the undeveloped ? We can 
 guess from the importance that is given in papers 
 of widest circulation to personal details : clothing, 
 accidents, adventures, murders, robberies, scan- 
 dals, trials. On the abstract or general side the 
 chief part is devoted to politics. And the political 
 side is mostly concerned with catch-words and 
 stock phrases, which take the place of ideas. 
 The daily paper should afford from day to day 
 subjects of instruction in every school. It should 
 be woven into the history and geography; the 
 history and the geography should be called up to 
 illuminate modern events. 
 
 We do not teach literature, music, history, 
 geography, for business purposes ; but to furnish 
 the mind, open the understanding, vivify the 
 faculties, and stimulate the imagination. We 
 cannot do much in these directions before the age 
 of fourteen; much of our seed will fall upon 
 stony ground ; but if we devote the scanty time 
 at our disposal to inculcating dry facts without 
 illuminative value, we shall do nothing at all, 
 
THE LOVE OF BEAUTY 67 
 
 except waste the time and dull the appetite for 
 knowledge and the intelligence of our pupils. 
 
 Quite apart from any definite tastes which we 
 may awaken in the young to adorn and diversify 
 their recreations, anything that enlivens their 
 intelligence and stimulates their imagination 
 will alleviate the burden of business and give 
 them lights to lead them onward during their 
 leisure. 
 
 The natural love of beauty that used to dwell in 
 our race, that raised and adorned our cathedrals, 
 our churches, our castles, and our mansions, seems 
 now to be extinct, or to live only in the mind of a 
 few professionals and a few cultivated people. 
 The traditional and instinctive is dead ; we must 
 rely upon self-conscious effort to resuscitate the 
 love of beauty. Until that is done, it is useless 
 to look for a revival of art in any living sense. 
 Architecture, for instance, after music the most 
 democratic of the arts, depends not more upon 
 the conception of the architect than on the execu- 
 tion of the handicraftsman. If the craftsman is 
 tied and bound to the scrupulous reproduction 
 of a plan or drawing, his work will be dull and 
 starved, and kill the general conception, however 
 good. All interior decoration, furniture, and 
 fittings, all details of any plan of construction or 
 laying out, depend for their success on the instinct 
 of the workman. And the demand for beauty, 
 without which our dull and sordid surroundings 
 will never be improved, must come from the 
 multitude. It can only be effective if the minds 
 
68 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 of the many are attuned to beauty, and hate 
 ugliness. 
 
 No rules can be laid down, no scheme can be 
 prescribed, for the renovation of the love of beauty 
 in our masses. But it must, as things are, proceed 
 in the first instance from the elementary schools, 
 and from the love of beauty in elementary school- 
 masters. The love of beauty may be rare in the 
 elementary schoolmaster; but I think it is only 
 by accident and defective training if it is so. 
 Given the love of beauty in the schoolmaster 
 and the schoolmaster loves many beautiful things, 
 such as duty, self-sacrifice, truthfulness, honesty, 
 and good work I feel sure he would find means to 
 awaken it in his classes. In every district, rural 
 or urban, there are beautiful things to be noticed. 
 If there are churches, museums, happy effects of 
 nature or of art or of accident, he can bring them 
 to observation. We expect much of our school- 
 masters, and we get much ; we must expect more, 
 and we shall get more. Just now we seem more 
 anxious to get well-educated clerks for our public 
 offices than to secure the most suitable school- 
 masters. The second is the more urgent need. 
 The entrance to the schoolmaster's profession 
 should be thronged with applicants, from whom 
 the most worthy should be chosen. For ten men 
 who are fit to be clerks, there is only one that is 
 fit to be a schoolmaster. 
 
 If we find a poet carting muck, we think that 
 we see a tragedy. But there is a greater tragedy, 
 when he whose duties require him to cart muck is 
 not a poet and a humourist. If the soul and the 
 
MECHANISM AND CONSTRUCTION 69 
 
 mind are awakened, if they have independent 
 force to resist the weight of circumstance, occupa- 
 tion matters little. If we can hear the music of 
 the spheres, then the rattle of the typewriter, the 
 insistence of figures to be totted in a book, the 
 monotonous toil of a navvy or a ploughman, will 
 not avail to hush that music. Education, wisely 
 started, puts it within the reach of " Everyman " 
 to attune his hearing to the melody of humanity, 
 the song of the worlds. 
 
 But the spiritual and intellectual preparation 
 for life and leisure is not all; the material also 
 demands our attention. The majority will always 
 find their chief interest in the concrete rather than 
 in the abstract or imaginative. The great con- 
 quests of the modern world have been made by 
 science and machinery. If we open the eyes of 
 our children to these wonders, we increase to them 
 the value of life. It is obvious that mechanism 
 and construction offer abundant subjects for 
 school lessons. I am not sure whether girls are 
 interested in such things : I am sure that boys 
 are. Everything that widens the interest in daily 
 life is a preparation for life ; but this is or may be 
 to some extent a preparation for business also. 
 Wherever an unfamiliar machine is at work, a 
 Scotch derrick, a steam-navvy, a system for 
 generation of electricity, the mechanical opera- 
 tions can be studied and explained, so far as the 
 boys can understand them. A new building, 
 especially if it is of great size, offers a good object- 
 lesson. A plough, a mechanical scarifier, a 
 
70 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 thrashing machine, a grain elevator, a drill, all 
 offer opportunities. The physical side of geo- 
 graphy can be illustrated in every country district. 
 Nature-study is already widely pursued in schools. 
 A beginning can be made in every school of unfold- 
 ing the marvels of material knowledge. But the 
 schoolmaster must be sure that he knows aright 
 what he has to explain. In truth, we expect a 
 great deal of our schoolmasters; they are that 
 branch of the workers in the hive, whose business 
 it is to see that the young brood is duly nourished 
 and brought to useful maturity. There are no 
 workers of whom more is expected; and the 
 expectation is not in vain. 
 
 All social sports and games are valuable. We 
 call ourselves a sporting people, and we are, but 
 our sporting instincts are confined in large 
 measure, not by choice, but by the pressure of 
 circumstance, to watching races, football, and 
 cricket. The beauty of our parks and open spaces 
 should not be sacrificed; it has its own great 
 educative worth ; but every yard of ground that 
 can be spared ought to be thrown open for those 
 youths who desire to exercise their bodies and 
 their minds and their faculties of combined action. 
 It is no good scolding the young men because they 
 crowd to football matches unless you are sure 
 that they might themselves be playing football. 
 Civilisation may be defined as the art of living 
 decently in towns; what the palaestra did in 
 Athens, what the Bath Club does in London for its 
 members, the Polytechnics do for the less fortunate 
 
CHARACTER 71 
 
 classes; such play-grounds should be multiplied. 
 But, if it is desirable, and for reasons of health, 
 education, and sound development it is desirable, 
 that young men should meet together to play, 
 combine, and strive in competition, the beginnings 
 of such combination and such tastes must be laid 
 at school. Then any opportunities which exist 
 will be brought to use. 
 
 I need not insist much upon the building of 
 character in the elementary school. All eyes are 
 fully opened to the importance of moral education 
 in the school. I must, however, repeat, what I 
 have said above, that character cannot be de- 
 veloped under conditions of rigid discipline and 
 mere instruction. The more liberty that can be 
 introduced into the methods of the elementary 
 schools, the more the children can be allowed to 
 work out things for themselves, instead of receiv- 
 ing their nutriment predigested predigested even 
 before it reaches the schoolmaster, as I see it in 
 certain text-books the more chance there is for 
 the individuality to grow and gather strength. 
 Technical progress may be thus less rapid, but 
 intellectual and moral progress will be more 
 certain and more firm. 
 
 It is put to us by Mr. F. J. Gould, in his Moral 
 Instruction, that all the qualities which we most 
 desire to cultivate self-reliance, self-control, 
 initiative, perseverance, strength of will, sympa- 
 thetic comprehension of our neighbours, intelli- 
 gence, alertness, quickness are qualities capable 
 of misuse. I am myself quite willing to take that 
 
72 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 risk : provided the teacher exercises his enormous 
 opportunities of suggestion so as to set before the 
 taught on every fitting occasion noble rather than 
 unworthy objects of desire. But it is not good 
 that the young should be surfeited with morality. 
 All forms of priggishness unnatural virtue, 
 sermonising, want of sympathy with youth, 
 narrow judgements, censorious fussiness, multi- 
 plication of rules and offences against rules 
 these tend to defeat their own purpose. A high 
 example, a good tone, coupled with human sym- 
 pathy, human comprehension, and a true sense 
 of proportion, these are the schoolmaster's ideal. 
 A sense of humour is a great help. If the school- 
 master is a good man and competent, the morals 
 of his school will correspond. What Matthew 
 Arnold said of his father is still the schoolmaster's 
 high calling : 
 
 " Still them upraisest with zeal 
 The humble good from the ground, 
 Sternly repressest the bad ! 
 Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse 
 Those who with half-open eyes 
 Tread the border-land dim 
 'Twixt vice and virtue ; reviv'st, 
 Succourest . . . ." 
 
 Above all, we should decline to cultivate a 
 colourless mediocrity, and fear of deviation from 
 a common pattern. Strong virtue is magnificent ; 
 strong vice is dangerous; weakness is always 
 contemptible ; uniformity is barren. 
 
 But when the elementary schoolmaster has 
 
EXTENSION OF SCHOOL COMPULSION 73 
 
 done his work, the boy or girl goes out into the 
 world a David to meet Goliath. There are four 
 or five more years before maturity, years full of 
 adverse chances. This is the time when parental 
 example, parental influence, is all-important. 
 But we have already shaken and impaired paternal 
 and maternal authority by the school ; the world 
 will weaken it still more by granting a large 
 measure of economic independence. 
 
 There are many who would endeavour to replace 
 domestic discipline by carrying on school educa- 
 tion of all alike to fifteen, sixteen, or even higher 
 ages. If school education were to become more 
 perfect as preparation for average life and average 
 business than it is ever likely to be, there would 
 be much to be said for this ; but the family budget 
 of nine-tenths of our citizens will not permit it. 
 They cannot forgo the contributions of children 
 to current expenses, and also maintain them mean- 
 while. Those who are thought likely to repay 
 further schooling should receive all possible 
 encouragement to continue their studies; but 
 for nine-tenths of the children, fit or unfit, the 
 invincible argument of res angusta will limit the 
 school period. 
 
 But in course of time we shall evolve machinery, 
 by public and, better still, by private effort, that 
 will do much to tide over this dangerous period. 
 Much has already been done. The Boy Scout 
 movement, though it cannot catch all, is ad- 
 mirable for boys of this age. Continuation classes, 
 if properly devised, and made interesting, illu- 
 minating, or useful we want all these elements, 
 
74 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 to suit different natures will do something for 
 many. Polytechnics, trade-schools, technical 
 courses, commercial courses, courses in cookery, 
 dressmaking, and domestic economy, do much and 
 will do more. The girls' clubs and boys' clubs 
 that are carried on with so much zest and sym- 
 pathy in many districts afford further assistance. 
 I think we can look ahead with confidence to the 
 development of all these agencies, and of others 
 like them which have not been invented, to pre- 
 serve the work of the schoolmaster from oblitera- 
 tion. It must be remembered that at this age 
 we have only to provide for leisure ; the hours of 
 work are covered by commercial and industrial 
 discipline. The chief danger on this side is in the 
 blind-alley openings. But associations for ap- 
 prenticeship, and committees for directing juvenile 
 employment, have already begun to fence off 
 these traps for the unwary. The watches set to 
 guard the critical years of puberty and adolescence 
 are many, and will become more numerous. No 
 one organisation, no single compulsion, can deal 
 with the multifarious individuality that has to 
 be protected. At school every boy, every girl, 
 is a different being, but they can in some measure 
 be grouped and brigaded. After school is left 
 behind, the variety of types, characters, needs, 
 and tastes, makes variety of methods yet more 
 necessary. 
 
 The school, and the agencies that strive to 
 supplement the school, provide to some extent 
 training for social and domestic and industrial and 
 
CIVIC TRAINING 75 
 
 commercial life; but training for political duty 
 must also be considered. The school-training 
 in history and geography, if still further improved, 
 would lay a foundation; all opportunity should 
 be given to carry on these studies after compulsory 
 schooling has ceased ; but I do not much believe 
 in lectures or teaching on what is often called 
 civics. It is hard in civics to hit the mean be- 
 tween mere information and propaganda. His- 
 tory is the real school of civics; if you try to 
 isolate the information useful to the citizen, you 
 tear it from its natural connexions, its organic 
 life. It is not learning so much that is needed, as 
 comprehension and judgement; and I am much 
 afraid of political influence in the schools, employed 
 to suit the views of a party. Debating societies 
 are good; but I imagine that the most part of 
 the political training of the youth of the country 
 comes from political associations, friendly society 
 organisations, trade unions, and socialist clubs. 
 There is in most of these bodies too much partisan- 
 ship, too much acrimony, too narrow a point of 
 view, to make them ideal grounds of training for 
 those who have to sit in judgement on politicians. 
 But all these agencies open minds to ideas; the 
 ideas that rush in first may be the most violent, 
 the most hasty, and those that present the 
 narrowest front. But when ideas once begin to 
 move, elimination, selection, comparison, can 
 hardly fail to follow. Sooner or later, truth will 
 have its own way; the older men will gain not 
 only experience but gradually wisdom ; they will 
 pass on their reading of life to the young; the 
 
76 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 young will no doubt reject it as old-fashioned and 
 out-of-date; but it will not therefore miss its 
 eventual fruit. Just now, partisan politics have 
 it all their own way ; but there are signs that the 
 voters are beginning to learn that they are not 
 parties to the suit, but judges in the action; that 
 their interests are at stake ; and that if they are 
 to deliver judgements that will not afterwards be 
 regretted they must not only hear and weigh both 
 sides, but also think for themselves, remembering 
 that neither party is dominated by a disinterested 
 regard for their welfare. The political education 
 of the people is progressing, and is likely to lead 
 to unforeseen results. 
 
 Anything resembling political education in 
 schools is dangerous ; to-day it may be patriotism 
 that is offered as a subject ; to-morrow it may be 
 something much more objectionable. The busi- 
 ness of the schools is to prepare and develop the 
 intelligence, to train and strengthen the character 
 and individual judgement. If that is successfully 
 accomplished, the politicians will have to fight 
 out their battles not now, perhaps, but some 
 years hence before an instructed and confident 
 tribunal. 
 
 I write these things; but I am only too well 
 aware how few there are that care for beauty and 
 understanding. Travel in the tube on Sunday 
 evening, when the boys and girls whom we have 
 trained are coming back from their afternoon; 
 walk down the Strand, go into any golf club, and 
 you will see how much education higher or 
 
THE ENDS OF EDUCATION 77 
 
 lower has hitherto effected ; you may infer that 
 little more will ever be effected. 
 
 Nine-tenths of men and women are perhaps 
 incapable of rising above the material world. Of 
 the others many are ashamed to admit even to 
 themselves that there are things above and 
 beyond the necessities of ordinary life, which they 
 can see and their fellows do not see. Those who 
 acknowledge intellectual and imaginative calls 
 gather for self-protection in eccentric cliques and 
 coteries, circles of mutual admiration. But some- 
 where among the more gifted tenth are those who 
 will do all by which our generation will deserve 
 to be known. It may be for them alone that 
 education should work ; if so, the kind of education 
 that I dream freed from the dullness of pedantry 
 and the tyranny of learning is that only kind 
 which will not blunt the faculties that God has 
 given. But I believe that all have some small 
 change, if not a talent in a napkin. Business 
 comes first, no doubt, that daily bread may be 
 won. But I have shown that the urgent needs of 
 business are not exacting so far as book-learning 
 is concerned. The further needs of business 
 intelligence, alertness, love of knowledge and of 
 work coincide very nearly with the needs of 
 life. If we try to work for life as well as for 
 business, business itself may also profit ; in any 
 case the needs of life should not be neglected. 
 
 It may also be said that I have confined myself 
 to the life of thought and imagination, and that I 
 have left out of account the life of action. The 
 life of action is the life of business ; if initiative 
 
78 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 and individuality are not crushed out of the 
 children, business will train for action. But for 
 most of us business is but a narrow round, a 
 squirrel's wheel. Education gives a chance of 
 emerging from that narrow round by thoughts 
 and tastes and feelings that give dignity and 
 beauty to life. If all cannot profit by the wider, 
 the more humane course, it is yet our duty to 
 offer that chance to all. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SECONDARY 
 SCHOOLS 
 
 MUCH has been said and much may be said 
 against the Greek and Latin classics as a general 
 instrument of secondary and higher education 
 in this country. But there are many of us now, 
 shall I say, in middle age ? who, looking back on 
 our own mental development, recognise that 
 we owe an immense debt to the system of classical 
 education under which we were trained. We 
 do not grudge an hour that we spent on reading 
 the Greek and Latin classics, on composing in 
 Greek and Latin, prose or verse, or even an hour 
 that we spent on studying the niceties of Greek 
 and Latin grammar. Whatever may be the 
 trend of future policy in education, what we had 
 and have can never be taken from us. But 
 those of us who watch the progress of that policy 
 must be anxious that future generations may be 
 schooled as well as we were. And, since we 
 cannot deny that there were many of our school- 
 fellows who did not value or profit by the schooling 
 that suited us, we must make it our endeavour 
 or at least our hope that those who are not able 
 or willing to get all the good that is to be got 
 
 79 
 
80 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 from Greek or Latin should yet receive some 
 corresponding benefits in another way. 
 
 We received, first of all, a thorough drilling in 
 grammar, accidence first and syntax afterwards. 
 Man has many tools, but the most powerful of 
 all is language. In dealing with language gener- 
 ally, with our own language, and with any other 
 languages which we may use, we conceive that 
 we thus acquired a certainty, an accuracy, a 
 confidence, a sense of what is possible and not 
 possible in language, which we, at any rate, 
 should not have acquired in any other way. 
 Further, we became acquainted with master- 
 pieces of all time with Virgil, Lucretius, Horace, 
 Catullus, Juvenal, Cicero, Livy, Caesar, Tacitus; 
 and in Greek with even greater masterpieces 
 Homer, the tragedians, Aristophanes, Herodotus, 
 Thucydides, Plato, Demosthenes. In Greek we 
 learnt to know the finest, the most graceful, the 
 most musical, the most flexible of all instruments 
 of human expression. 
 
 Then we had to translate into English from 
 Greek and Latin authors at sight. That was 
 a fine intellectual exercise in itself. We knew that 
 the passage before us must contain a coherent, 
 intelligible, logical series of expressions. We had 
 to construct, first of all, and often from imperfect 
 knowledge, a conception of its general purport; 
 then we had to work out the detail and seize the 
 finest shades of meaning; last, we had to find 
 idiomatic expressions, orderly, rhythmical, har- 
 monious, to render the general effect and the 
 
A CLASSICAL TRAINING 81 
 
 particular phrases, with the knowledge that our 
 prose would be judged by a critic who was a 
 scholar, not only in Latin and Greek, but also 
 in English. Thus, we learnt to use our own 
 language. The translation of ideas or statements 
 or arguments conveyed in one language into the 
 approximate equivalents of another speech in- 
 volves a whole set of useful mental gymnastics. 
 I think that bilinguals, like the Welsh, whose 
 education is carried on in two languages, must 
 get more from their elementary schools than the 
 scholars of a country like England, where only 
 one language is used in school. 
 
 Some authorities condemn translation, as 
 fostering a false sense of language ; an excessive 
 preoccupation with the word. This view finds 
 no response in my mind or experience ; but for 
 composition invention, construction, proportion, 
 and arrangement, must be separately practised 
 and taught. 
 
 Then we composed in Greek and Latin, prose 
 and verse. I suppose the pleasantest part of 
 our work was reading, just reading, Greek. 
 But next to that I should certainly put successful 
 composition in Latin or Greek verse. Yet, if 
 one part of our classical system must be jettisoned 
 to save the rest, I imagine it should be the 
 verses. They were useful to some, I am certain ; 
 perhaps they were not useful to all. But no 
 wrestling with the awkward structure of a German 
 sentence, no graceful manoeuvring with the 
 infinite resources of French, will ever give the 
 easy mastery of language that comes from long 
 G 
 
82 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 practice in the artistic construction of Greek 
 and Latin sentences. You have only to survey 
 English prose before and after the classical revival 
 to see how much our language owes in rhythmical 
 and musical variety, in skilled co-ordination, 
 in resources of style, to men who had learnt to 
 write Latin and Greek. It will be a pity if the 
 time ever comes when no one works for himself 
 in that workshop. 
 
 We got also an introduction to foreign history, 
 politics, customs, and institutions. What is 
 valuable in historical education is not the ac- 
 quisition of a set of facts or dates, or even the 
 comprehension of a reasoned account of the 
 causal determination of a nation's destiny, but 
 the living into the life of a people whose manners, 
 customs, ideas, institutions, are different from our 
 own and yet not so different that we cannot 
 understand them. That came to us, not by 
 lectures or systematic instruction, but in the 
 effort to master and understand the books that 
 we were set to read. And those peoples, whose 
 life grew familiar as if they had been our cousins, 
 are the peoples on whose civilisation is based 
 the whole of modern European culture and 
 polity. I think even the stupidest, the idlest, 
 the most recalcitrant of us learnt something 
 from this. 
 
 Other things we learnt, a little at school, more 
 at the University : political, moral, and meta- 
 physical philosophy ; but I am now dealing more 
 with classics at school than classics at the 
 University. 
 
SOME YEARS AGO 83 
 
 All the boys at my school had an opportunity 
 of learning these things, but only the minority 
 used that opportunity ; many of those who failed 
 to make much progress were stupid and dull at 
 books; others were idle; but all of them, I 
 think, learnt something; and some of them, 
 I know, have lived to regret that they did not 
 learn more. But I am willing to admit that many 
 of them might have learnt more if the course of 
 study had been better suited to their faculties. 
 Greek and Latin are difficult languages, and 
 until some progress has been made the drilling 
 is all the profit. Hounds that are never blooded 
 grow dull. 
 
 I think it probable that those of us who had a 
 taste for languages and literature learnt more 
 in those days of Latin and Greek and of all the 
 classical wealth than our likes do now. Mathe- 
 matics were not pressed upon our notice; you 
 could learn some, if you wished, but no one 
 bothered you much if you felt no inclination. 
 We used to draw a great many maps, and we took 
 great pride in making them look neat and pretty 
 and decorating them with water-colours; we 
 learnt no systematic history; there was a little 
 science going, which used to turn up in the most 
 capricious way. Looking back, I cannot imagine 
 why I should have learnt a little geology, a little 
 botany, even a little crystallography, and should 
 never have pursued an}/ of these studies any 
 further, nor have learnt any chemistry or physics. 
 I have never done a laboratory experiment in 
 my life; and theoretically I regard that as 
 
84 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 indicating a defect in the old system. Boys in 
 modern schools have to devote a great deal of 
 time to these subjects, and no doubt they are the 
 better for them ; they certainly have less time 
 for Latin and Greek; and that is one of the 
 reasons why Latin and Greek are being pushed 
 aside, and why the most ardent of their friends 
 can no longer demand that they should continue 
 to be the universal instrument of secondary and 
 higher education. 
 
 For my own part, if I were a headmaster, 
 valuing Greek and Latin as I do, and as many of 
 them do, I should aim at making Greek and 
 Latin a prize for those boys who proved them- 
 selves capable of learning other and easier 
 languages. I think every boy who aspires to 
 a secondary education, liberal or commercial, 
 should learn at least one foreign language, and 
 for many reasons, I think that universal language 
 should be French. If such a boy proved dull at 
 French I would nevertheless keep him at it all 
 his school days, so that when he left me he should 
 at least have got beyond the rudiments of some 
 foreign language. If he proved bright at French 
 I would put him on to another language ; Latin 
 if he desired a liberal education, German if his 
 aspirations were commercial. And I would have 
 a small and select body three classes at most, 
 unless the school were very large a body of 
 Grecians, all industrious and gifted, who would be 
 put on rapidly in Greek and Latin and get the 
 full benefit of a classical education without being 
 
SCIENCE AND LETTERS 85 
 
 impeded by the dullards. Such boys under such 
 circumstances would learn more Latin and Greek 
 in four years than most of us did in ten ; and it 
 would probably be found that their other studies 
 did not suffer. The classical scholarships at the 
 Universities of Oxford and Cambridge would be 
 prizes, to which such boys could aspire. By 
 this means we should keep alight the torch of 
 classical learning, scholarship, and education, 
 without interfering with the utilitarian ends and 
 desires of modern parents. No boy would be 
 forced to learn Latin or Greek unless his parents 
 wished it. 
 
 If this were done, the chief part of most great 
 schools would be a modern side. On this side 
 science (including the chief part of geography) 
 and mathematics would have their appropriate 
 places, which I do not propose to allot, and 
 English (including English history) would be 
 thoroughly taught throughout by the medium 
 of the English classics, and otherwise. French 
 and German would represent that part of culture 
 which can only be developed through foreign 
 language and literature. How far can French 
 and German be made to supply that sort of 
 training which Greek and Latin have given, 
 and still give, to the best schoolboys on our great 
 classical sides? I should be glad to learn that 
 any serious attempt was being generally made to 
 attain this ideal, but I believe that the domination 
 of the direct method and the study of phonetics 
 have tended to put this objective out of sight 
 and to push aside written translation, written 
 
86 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 composition, and the study of a considerable 
 body of masterpieces. I am not a schoolmaster, 
 and I should not be entitled, even if I were in- 
 clined, to say anything against the direct method 
 of teaching modern languages. But I think 
 a point must be reached in the secondary school 
 at which the literary study of the language 
 becomes more important than the oral. From 
 this point onwards more use might be made of 
 French and German as instruments of liberal 
 education than is now the case. 
 
 Let us take the various points in order. To 
 begin with, French has an advantage which 
 neither Greek nor Latin have. French diction 
 has been developed into a fine art. It has its 
 professors, whose methods I know from experience 
 to be admirable. We know exactly how French 
 ought to be pronounced. I, you, or they, may 
 not be able to do it aright, but it is agreed how 
 it should be done. It is pronounced with the 
 utmost accuracy both in its consonants and its 
 vowels. No consonant is slurred; every vowel 
 is true and pure. English, on the other hand, 
 is slurred and blurred; many of our consonants 
 are half swallowed; many of our vowels are 
 commonly pronounced as irregular diphthongs 
 or degraded to a nondescript. I do not hope 
 to alter the main characteristics of English 
 pronunciation; and an English diction class 
 would probably bring the schoolmaster into 
 collision with many of the parents, who might 
 find that the pronunciation learnt at home was 
 
FRENCH DICTION 87 
 
 being condemned as vulgar or incorrect, and, in 
 any case, would consider accurate enunciation 
 to be pedantic and affected. But if boys were 
 taught (very likely they are so taught in some 
 schools) to give full value to French consonants 
 and vowels, and made to practise until they had 
 learnt to use in speech their lips and tongue and 
 teeth, they would not only learn to pronounce 
 French, they would not only learn the full beauty 
 of French sonorities, but they would learn the 
 principles of elocution, which would be of value 
 to them should they become schoolmasters, 
 professors, barristers, clergymen, actors, singers, 
 or politicians. Moreover, they would approach 
 the pronunciation of any new language with a 
 knowledge of the points to be observed and a 
 trained mechanism of speech. They would even 
 unconsciously improve their pronunciation of 
 English. German pronunciation might also be 
 made a useful exercise, but it is not comparable 
 in elegance and accuracy to French. 
 
 Now, unfortunately, Greek has not this ad- 
 vantage. We do not know the full beauty of 
 Greek, because we do not know how it was pro- 
 nounced. We cannot give it its true sonorities. 
 We do not know how accent, stress, and quantity 
 were reconciled. Greek is marvellously beautiful, 
 even as we recite it. How much more beautiful 
 it must have been in the mouth of a Greek actor 
 or orator ! The " new " pronunciation of Latin is 
 nearer the mark than we can ever hope to get with 
 Greek. But I doubt whether Cicero would under- 
 stand a Professor of Phoiietics speaking Latin. 
 
88 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 Next, as to grammar. French grammar is 
 a pretty study; but it is not comparable in 
 difficulty to Greek or Latin grammar. All the 
 more reason that it should be accurately learnt. 
 Many of its processes are of great interest in 
 relation to logic and thought. When I used to 
 examine in French I used to be astonished at the 
 grammatical inaccuracy even of good candidates. 
 Few seemed to know that a French sentence as 
 a rule can only mean one precise thing, and that 
 attention to grammar will disclose what that 
 precise thing must be. 
 
 German grammar is more troublesome. The 
 accidence is very arbitrary, and can only be 
 mastered by an effort of memory. But such 
 efforts of memory should be made in youth. 
 The time of youth is less valuable, and the verbal 
 memory is at its best in youth. If French and 
 German are taught in schools, they should be 
 taught with full insistence upon grammatical 
 accuracy. That is, among other things, a useful 
 moral discipline. 
 
 There is no lack of masterpieces in French. 
 French, especially modern French, has its lyrical 
 poets, and some of them are hardly inferior to 
 the Greeks. The English, in their pride of poetical 
 wealth, are apt to look down upon French poetry. 
 Such lack of perception can only be excused on 
 the ground of ignorance. French prose is an 
 incomparable instrument of lucid and brilliant 
 expression. There is no lack of texts of the 
 seventeenth century, of the eighteenth century, or 
 
FRENCH READING 89 
 
 of the nineteenth. French is so easy to read 
 that schoolboys might read a great many books. 
 It is very undesirable that boys working at 
 French and German should work through their 
 texts so slowly as our Greek and Latin texts 
 were taken in school. A few carefully chosen 
 books should be read in school for systematic 
 instruction in the niceties of language and ex- 
 pression. But schoolboys ought to learn to 
 read French and German for pleasure. Grecian 
 schoolboys learn to read Homer. I do not see 
 why sixth-form schoolboys should not read 
 Commines and selected essays of Montaigne. 
 The French comedians offer, besides classical 
 specimens of literature, a mirror of seventeenth 
 century and eighteenth century life in France. 
 In history, however, it is difficult to find texts 
 so suitable for the illumination of schoolboys 
 as Caesar, Tacitus, Herodotus, Thucydides. The 
 invention of printing has made our modern 
 historians intolerably prolix. vrjinoi, ovds toaot 
 ooq) TrXeov rj/jiiov iravrot;. The Greek and Latin 
 writers had to consider the value of the scribe's 
 time. What modern work is so worthy of lineal 
 study as Tacitus' Ger mania ? I can think only 
 of Bacon's Henry VII, 1 and the Prince. 
 
 1 I was amused to find, in looking over some examina- 
 tion papers of London University, that this remark 
 of mine was quoted side by side with another, which 
 proclaimed Bacon's Henry VII untrustworthy as a 
 work of history. The candidates were asked to choose 
 between the two views. I see no opposition between 
 them. I do not believe that Tacitus' Germania is a 
 trustworthy work of history. It is worthy of lineal 
 study because of its superb economy of words, and 
 
90 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 In German masterpieces are more rare and 
 less varied in character. At one time, when the 
 Germans were proud to learn from the French, 
 German prose looked as if it might develop into 
 an artistic instrument. But that process of 
 development ceased with Heine, and there are 
 not many German writers who are accepted as 
 classics, as Montaigne, Pascal, Moliere, Racine, 
 Boileau, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others, are 
 accepted. Hardly any modern German writer 
 carries on the classical tradition; it would be 
 difficult to find one who has the classical and 
 individual style of Flaubert, Maupassant, Anatole 
 France. Still, there are plenty of German texts 
 that no schoolboy need regret to have studied. 
 And the German lyrics of the great period show 
 what poetic genius can do, even with somewhat 
 intractable material. 
 
 Translation from French into English cannot 
 be made so valuable an exercise as translation 
 from Latin or Greek. Good French prose is 
 seldom difficult to an Englishman, unless perhaps 
 in vocabulary, and we do not want our school- 
 boys to spend their energies in learning hard 
 words. I do not think that there would be any 
 advantage in racking their brains with Mallarme. 
 Not only is it the genius of French expression 
 to be lucid, but the order of words in French 
 is similar to that in English, the construction 
 
 because it is almost the only authority we have on the 
 early Germans. Bacon's Henry VII I conceive to be 
 also worthy of lineal study, not for its statements of 
 historical fact, but as a storehouse of political wisdom. 
 At any rate, I find it a fascinating work. 
 
TRANSLATION 91 
 
 of the language is similar, and the syntactical 
 methods are familiar to us. Still, there is room 
 here for some exercise in style and accuracy. 
 I once asked an acquaintance, who had obtained 
 a first class in the Modern Languages Tripos at 
 Cambridge and specialised in French, to translate 
 an article written in French. Not only did the 
 translation, when it arrived, contain many 
 blunders, but it showed no attempt to render 
 the original into elegant and idiomatic, even into 
 printable, English. It required to be rewritten. 
 This seems to show in the Modern Languages 
 Tripos neglect of one of the most important 
 sides of language study. 
 
 Translation from the German is more difficult, 
 and, owing to the structure of the German 
 language, it affords a more valuable exercise than 
 translation from the French. 
 
 Translation into French is a very charming 
 and tantalising game ; it can be made as difficult 
 as any one cares to make it. I think schoolboys 
 might well spend a good deal of time in practising 
 it. After they had attained some proficiency 
 they might be trained in extempore translation. 
 Such a language can be learnt more rapidly 
 than Greek and Latin, and its study can, with 
 most boys, be carried much further. This 
 advantage should be made profitable. 
 
 Translation into German is necessary for the 
 learning of German. I cannot imagine any one 
 practising it except from sheer necessity. But 
 it is not undesirable that schoolboys should 
 have some disagreeable tasks. They should be 
 
92 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 warned, however, to be on their guard against 
 introducing German methods of expression into 
 their English style. 
 
 After much reflexion I do not think that school- 
 boys are ever likely, from the study of French 
 texts or German texts, to obtain the kind of 
 familiarity with the life of foreign nations that 
 we used to get from reading Greek and Latin. 
 There are no French books at least, none of 
 manageable dimensions that throw such light 
 on the life of France as Caesar, Tacitus, Livy, 
 Juvenal, and the speeches and letters of Cicero, 
 throw upon Roman life; none that are so well 
 worth study from this point of view as Herodotus, 
 Thucydides, Aristophanes, and the speeches of 
 Demosthenes. One reason for this is that French 
 literature has always been, for the most part, 
 divorced from politics. Horace and La Fontaine 
 have many similarities ; but Horace is a mine of 
 definite political and historical allusion; not so 
 La Fontaine. French memoirs are not, for the 
 most part, literature, and if they were you could 
 not put schoolboys through a course of them; 
 they are too lengthy. Commines is an exception, 
 but he is only suitable for the very advanced 
 schoolmasters as well as schoolboys. The history 
 and the antiquities are too difficult. Montesquieu 
 and Rousseau are only theorists, and not very 
 good theorists at that. I think this difficulty 
 would be got over by teaching boys with their 
 books the dramatic and fascinating history of 
 France. While reading Moliire and Boileau 
 they might learn the history of Louis XIV, with 
 
HISTORY AND LITERATURE 93 
 
 explanatory retrospects. But, whatever the diffi- 
 culties, if French is to take the place of Greek 
 or Latin in our schools, it cannot be enough that 
 the boys or the girls should only learn French 
 language. They must learn something of France, 
 of French literature, French history, French 
 institutions, French customs, French manners; 
 otherwise they will have missed one-half of the 
 benefit that we got from learning Greek and 
 Latin. If anything is essentially learning and 
 cannot possibly by itself become knowledge, it 
 is the learning of a language. 
 
 For many boys more can be done by means 
 of the modern languages than by the classics. 
 This is another case in which the half may be 
 better than the whole. We few, we happy few, 
 learnt many things which are a priceless possession. 
 But many of our stupid friends, and many of 
 our idle friends some of them have since proved 
 that they are, in fact, neither idle nor stupid- 
 learnt but little. Let us take, then, for the 
 humane studies, as a rule, not less than half the 
 time, in school and out; let us leave to mathe- 
 matics, science, and the allied studies, the other 
 half. For the Grecians we might poach a little 
 on that half. Of the humane half let us take 
 one-third for English. That leaves eight hours 
 a week, or perhaps a little more of school time 
 to be devoted to foreign languages. Let the 
 boy who is fit to learn but one language give 
 all that time to French. Let the boy who is fit 
 to learn French and German, or French and Latin, 
 
94 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 or Greek and Latin, give all that time to those. 
 But if any boy learns only French, let him learn 
 that thoroughly. Let him learn to pronounce 
 it, let him learn its grammar, let him read the 
 French classics, let him translate French into 
 English and English into French, let him learn 
 something about France, her romantic history, 
 and her gifted people. Dull as he may be, idle 
 as he may wish to be, after five or six years 
 given to French he will have learnt something 
 that will widen his intellectual horizon, and 
 develop his capacities where they most need 
 development. 
 
 With German the problem is still more difficult. 
 German literature begins, for our purposes, with 
 Lessing, and, I am afraid, for our purposes we 
 must say that it almost comes to an end with 
 Heine. In that period many things happened 
 in Germany, but we cannot say there was any 
 history of Germany. The German nation was 
 struggling to its political birth, but it had not 
 yet achieved organic unity. All the same, let 
 us work on the same lines. Let the boy who has 
 been promoted to German give half the language- 
 time to German and half to French. Let him 
 learn to pronounce German according to the best 
 school the school of the German theatre; let 
 him get its grammar into his bones, let him read 
 the German classics; let him translate German 
 into English, and English into German. Let 
 him study German history from Frederick the 
 Great to Bismarck. If he has time, let him be 
 introduced to the history of the Holy Roman 
 
ORAL STUDY OF LANGUAGES 95 
 
 Empire. But this history can hardly, at school, 
 be illustrated by literature. 
 
 All this is complicated by the fact that if a 
 parent wants his boy to learn French and German, 
 he had better see that he learns them before he 
 is ten; if possible, before he is eight. That is 
 the time to learn languages orally, the time when 
 Nature fits us to learn our own. But most 
 parents cannot afford to have their children 
 taught either or both languages in this way ; and 
 if any boy comes to my ideal school knowing 
 French and German up to the standard of the 
 lower fifth, as well may happen, I shall know what 
 to do with him. I shall put him into the lower 
 fifth for French and German. He may not 
 understand all that he hears there, but he will 
 not forget what he has learnt, and he can put 
 the chief part of his work into English and the 
 other studies. Or he may go into the lowest 
 Grecian class, and start right off on Latin and 
 Greek. Having learnt two foreign languages, he 
 is probably the better fitted to learn others. 
 But schools must be organised for the average, 
 and it is not likely that for some long time to 
 come more than a few boys or girls will learn 
 French and German from their nurses and nursery 
 governesses to any real purpose. 
 
 I am an examiner, perhaps the Arch-Examiner ; 
 but I will not dispute that title with any one who 
 thinks he has a better right to it. I was led to 
 write this chapter by a practical problem which 
 had been occupying my mind for many months. 
 
96 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS 
 
 In one of our examinations, which is intended 
 to test the relative merits of boys at about the 
 age when they leave the public schools, we have 
 a higher grade examination in Greek, Latin, 
 Frehch, and German. Candidates may take 
 any one, or any two of the languages in this 
 grade ; they are all of equal value ; and we have 
 to hold the balance even between them; that is 
 by no means easy to do. The headmasters who 
 are interested in Greek and Latin asked us to 
 set a general paper such as classical candidates 
 are ready to take, in Greek and Latin history, 
 customs, literature, and institutions. This we 
 could easily do in Latin and Greek, but if we did 
 it for Latin and Greek we must also do it for 
 French and German, otherwise the classical 
 candidates would be at a disadvantage. Does 
 any one think we could do it just now in French 
 or German? If so, does any one think he can 
 suggest a syllabus that would suit our purposes 
 and also suit his school? I have considered 
 many syllabuses ; but I cannot think of any that 
 would not drive our candidates from the schools 
 to the crammers. But if education in French 
 and German had been developed as classical 
 education has been we should be able to do 
 what we desire. Perhaps, ten years hence, we 
 may be able to do it. 
 
 The modernists have been so eager to put 
 forward the claims of the languages, which one 
 might be led to think they had discovered, that 
 they have almost forgotten the history and with 
 
PROGRESS OF MODERNISM 97 
 
 it the geography. Of course modern history and 
 geography are taught at schools, but they are 
 taught as separate subjects ; they are not brought 
 into close relation with the languages and the 
 literature. Modernist education is a new thing. 
 One should not, on the one hand, expect too 
 much from the work of one generation, and on 
 the other hand, the modernists cannot expect 
 the best results so long as two sections of them 
 are working in complete independence. The 
 historians neglect language and literature, the 
 linguists neglect history. When the historians 
 and the linguists make common cause, and unite 
 to make their separate learning contribute to 
 the whole of knowledge, then modernist education 
 will come into its own. 
 
 H 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 COMPULSORY GREEK AT THE 
 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 ALL great things have enemies who hate them 
 because they are great. All beautiful things have 
 enemies who hate them because they are beautiful. 
 All established things have enemies who hate them 
 because they are established. The Greek language 
 and literature have enemies for each of these 
 reasons ; but I do not think they need fear such 
 enemies unless their friends attempt to main- 
 tain a monopoly which has become oppressive, 
 unless ordinary well-meaning people find Greek 
 blocking the way of their ordinary, praiseworthy, 
 and legitimate business. 
 
 The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have 
 each of them a School of humane letters based 
 upon the ancient languages, in which language, 
 history, literature are co-ordinated on sound 
 principles elaborated through four centuries, 
 in which also philosophy, law, politics, archaeology, 
 philology, and criticism, all find an appropriate 
 place. I and those who think with me would 
 regard it as a calamity if those great open-hearted 
 schools were damaged or in any way discouraged. 
 But each of those Universities has also Schools 
 
 98 
 
SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 99 
 
 of mathematics, natural science, modern languages, 
 modern history, law, engineering, medicine. 
 Many, perhaps most, of those who wish to follow 
 any of these Schools find themselves held up 
 and put to ransom, before they can begin the 
 praiseworthy and legitimate business of studying 
 anything from history to engineering, by janitors 
 who, as the price of entry, demand that they 
 shall acquire the rudiments of Greek. Here 
 ordinary, legitimate, and praiseworthy business 
 is hampered ; here monopoly becomes oppressive. 
 I conceive that any one who maintains these 
 obstacles, who defends that monopoly, is inviting 
 the enemy to attack the vital strongholds of 
 humanistic education which we should spare 
 no effort to preserve. 
 
 The Public Schools assert that they are forced, 
 by the policy of the Universities, to keep up Greek 
 for boys who are never likely to make any progress 
 in that study. The Universities will tell you that 
 they maintain their policy in order to preserve 
 Greek and Latin from extinction in the schools. 
 But there are other reasons, entirely natural 
 and human, why schools and Universities alike 
 should shrink from change. It is probable that 
 a large proportion of masters in Public Schools 
 were trained in classics and are better fitted to 
 teach them than anything else. Only by degrees 
 as fresh teachers come in can teaching be turned 
 on to new lines. Education cannot be changed 
 at a leap; our present education policy is con- 
 ditioned by the policy of twenty and thirty years 
 
ioo COMPULSORY GREEK 
 
 ago. At the Universities, also, there are, no 
 doubt, many^ vested interests bound up in the 
 teaching and testing of Greek and Latin for lower 
 examinations. 
 
 The Universities should consider their own 
 best interests first ; in order to protect the schools 
 it is not necessary to hold them in fetters, or 
 block the way of praiseworthy and legitimate 
 business. Moreover, willing or unwilling, the 
 schools are now moving fast ; the old Universities 
 run the risk of losing their control altogether. 
 Again, by the constant introduction and develop- 
 ment of new studies, the Universities are making 
 it more and more difficult to maintain compulsory 
 Greek. I have great sympathy with industries 
 threatened with extinction by inevitable change 
 or, as it is often called, progress. But there is 
 no longer any question of preserving these vested 
 interests intact. Give up compulsory Greek and 
 compulsory Latin may be maintained for a con- 
 siderable time. Maintain compulsory Greek and 
 compulsory Latin may go with it ; nay, even the 
 higher studies connected with Greek and Latin 
 may be imperilled. 
 
 I should be more willing to support compulsory 
 Greek if I thought that the Greek required for 
 the Littlego was worth anything to any one. But 
 I do not believe that it is. I do not see how it can 
 be. Many years ago I used to prepare pupils 
 for the Littlego in Greek. I know what the attain- 
 ments were then' of candidates who qualified 
 under my supervision. I had one candidate 
 
GREEK IN THE-LITTI>GO^ 101 
 
 to teach who did not know the Greek alphabet. 
 We were reading Xenophon's (Economicus, a long 
 and rather troublesome book. He knew the book 
 very well before he came to me, so I do not claim 
 the discreditable credit of having defeated the 
 examiners. He knew the words by sight, and 
 he often knew what they meant. He knew the 
 translation very well and could fit it more or 
 less to the text. But when we came to the letter 
 V* he would say, " What is this queer fountain- 
 looking letter? " And, when we came to the 
 word yewQyla, which occurs often, he never could 
 get any nearer to its pronunciation than to say 
 " Gegrewer." He passed, dear, cheerful soul, 
 and I have no reason to believe that the examina- 
 tion was any easier then than it is now ; probably 
 the reverse. A headmaster, a classical man, 
 a most veracious person, told me that clever 
 mathematical or science boys could be taught 
 enough Greek and Latin in two months to pass 
 the Littlego, and that the real trouble was with 
 boys who had been learning Greek and Latin all 
 their lives. The case of the latter is far more 
 to be deplored than that of the former. 
 
 It may be said : " If Greek for the Littlego is 
 so easy as that, why make such a fuss about it ? " 
 I make to the defenders of compulsory Greek a 
 present of that two-edged argument. I will only 
 call attention to those boys who have been learn- 
 ing Greek and Latin all their lives, and cannot 
 pass this contemptible examination. Such use- 
 less drudgery is not what Greek in the Littlego is 
 intended to perpetuate, but this is what it does 
 
io2 COMPULSORY GREEK 
 
 perpetuate. Is there no other study in which 
 these boys could better spend their time? If 
 not, what are they doing at a higher grade school, 
 what are they going to do at an University? 
 Let us look at them with pity and pass on. 
 
 The reason why the Littlego Greek is of so 
 little value is that it is an examination in set-books. 
 It is possible to cram such books with the aid of 
 a crib and a coach and pass without any real 
 knowledge of the language. It may be laid down 
 without hesitation that no one can, from the 
 examiner's point of view, be said to know a 
 language who cannot translate passages from it 
 at sight. The fact that Cambridge cannot impose 
 this test in Greek proves that they find themselves 
 unable to require any Greek that is worth respect, 
 although they cannot find it in their hearts to 
 acknowledge that what is called Greek is a sham. 
 
 But it is not enough to be prepared to destroy, 
 it is not enough to cry with the barbarians " Down 
 with Greek ! " Some one must have a policy, 
 some one must have a better alternative to 
 propose. All alternatives that I have hitherto 
 seen are too elaborate. Let the Littlego be 
 recognised as a pass examination qualifying for 
 entry to an University course and we at once 
 get a new and clear indication of the way 
 in which it should be treated. 
 
 The range of subjects in this pass examination 
 should be rigorously limited ; thoroughness should 
 be tested rather than width of scope; mental 
 training should be the aim rather than learning. 
 
AN ENTRANCE EXAMINATION 103 
 
 There are three branches of education, each of 
 which should have recognition in such a pass 
 examination : language and letters, mathematics, 
 and experimental science. The University should 
 make up its mind what is the least it must require 
 in each : remembering on the one hand that the 
 student who studies science or mathematics will, 
 as things are, leave literature behind him ; and, 
 on the other hand, that there are some distinguished 
 minds which have no aptitude, some for letters, 
 some for mathematics, some for science, some 
 for two of them. 
 
 Any new scheme should have a purpose and 
 a character of its own. Its purpose should be 
 not to test the total results of the boy's school 
 education; that is already done by the myriad 
 school examinations; nor to take samples of 
 those results at haphazard; that is otiose; but 
 to test those crucial points in which a boy must 
 not be allowed to be defective. Its character 
 should be simplicity, moderation, and sincerity. 
 We do not want to put the schools into fetters, 
 to have tribes of boys working on uncongenial 
 lines to satisfy our requirements. The tests 
 which we apply should be few, but they should 
 be real tests. For my own part I do not see that 
 the University need require more than four things : 
 English, one foreign language, mathematics, and 
 elementary physics and chemistry. 
 
 Religious topics I avoid, to escape controversy ; 
 but I do not see why any person who is to live 
 in this country or this empire should demand 
 
104 COMPULSORY GREEK 
 
 to be ignorant of the four Gospels and the Acts 
 of the Apostles in the Authorised Version. 
 
 English is the most important of the four, and 
 the whole expert world is coming to be of that 
 opinion. English should be thoroughly tested, 
 not only by an essay. And I would not forget 
 handwriting and spelling. There is too little 
 inducement nowadays for boys to learn to write a 
 good hand. I do not overrate the importance of 
 spelling, but there is nothing that produces a 
 worse impression in ordinary life than bad spelling. 
 An university degree should be a guarantee of 
 tolerable writing and tolerable spelling. It is 
 sometimes accepted as carrying such a guarantee, 
 but that is only out of politeness. 
 
 Next comes language. There is a good deal 
 to be said for compulsory Latin. Latin is still 
 strong in the schools, and whether it is compulsory 
 or not a great many will take it. If Latin is com- 
 pulsory the language section is complete : other 
 languages would be left for free enterprise. But 
 I should prefer myself as an alternative to Latin 
 either one modern language, translation and 
 composition, or two modern languages, translation 
 only. It would be easy to arrange that these 
 tests should be at least as hard as the elementary 
 Latin. It would be an immense advantage 
 if many of our students entered the University 
 able to read two modern languages easily. Com- 
 position, on the other hand, has a greater value 
 as an exercise. 
 
 Mathematics we are all agreed about; they 
 would comprise arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. 
 
AN ENTRANCE EXAMINATION 105 
 
 Experimental science introduces a different 
 element into education, an element with which 
 none should be unfamiliar. I fancy that science 
 is not taught on some of our classical sides, but 
 I suppose most people would admit that it ought 
 to be. 
 
 It is possible that all these discussions may lose 
 their importance if the Government succeed in 
 establishing their secondary school leaving certifi- 
 cate or certificates for the whole of the United 
 Kingdom. The difficulties are still very great. 
 But, supposing that this policy were carried into 
 effect, the University would still have to make pro- 
 vision for foreigners, for Colonials, for those who, 
 for health or other reasons, had been unable to 
 attend a secondary school. 
 
 Failing a leaving certificate, it may be said 
 that this simplified Littlego makes no provision 
 for all those branches of useful knowledge in 
 which a boy should receive instruction history, 
 geography, elementary politics, for instance. 
 I should leave all that to the schools. There is 
 no history or geography in the Littlego at present, 
 but those subjects are nevertheless taught in 
 the schools. A pass examination in those sub- 
 jects is not likely to improve the teaching; it is 
 certain to hamper it. All these subjects lend 
 themselves to cram ; only on a very high standard 
 can an examination in such subjects discount 
 cram. It will be noticed that all the subjects left 
 in the simplified Littlego which I have ventured 
 to propose are subjects disadvantageous to 
 cram. 
 
io6 COMPULSORY GREEK 
 
 There are some people who, despairing of 
 reform from within, desire that Royal Commissions 
 should be set up to reform the Universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. I think that the reform 
 which they would get from without might be 
 salutary; it would certainly be unpalatable. 
 Like Nebuchadnezzar they would 
 
 " Say, as they munched the unaccustomed food, 
 It may be wholesome, but it is not good." 
 
 Any reforms which the Universities need they 
 are perfectly competent to carry out spontaneously. 
 It will be time to impose reform from without 
 when they have declined to do what is necessary 
 themselves. 
 
 I have been told that I am the most dangerous 
 enemy of classical education ; that if I have my 
 way the study of Greek and Latin will become 
 extinct. I do not believe these dismal prognosti- 
 cations; and, so far as I myself am concerned, 
 I observe that I have also been accused of wishing 
 to make the public service a close preserve for 
 classical scholars. Attacked on both sides, it 
 seems probable that I have found my position 
 near the true middle. At any rate, I feel con- 
 vinced that the worst enemies of classical know- 
 ledge are those who still wish to force Greek and 
 Latin down the throats of the unfit. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 A SCHOOL OF MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 IF modern humanistic studies are to take their 
 proper place in the education of this country, 
 they must receive not only full but enlightened 
 recognition from the Universities. The Univer- 
 sities should provide the schools with masters 
 thoroughly trained in English and in the languages 
 which they propose to teach, and not only in the 
 languages, but in the masterpieces of the literature 
 and in the history which binds all together. But 
 the University is not mainly or in the first place 
 a training school for teachers; teachers are a 
 by-product of the educational system. If the 
 educational system is bad, the teachers will 
 suffer from corresponding deficiencies. If the 
 educational system is broad, stimulating, and 
 illuminative, a generation of teachers will arise 
 who are themselves wide-minded enthusiasts and 
 will create a like enthusiasm in others. We need, 
 therefore, in the Universities a School of modern 
 humanities, combining careful and accurate 
 study of the use of words with a wide and system- 
 atic study of history and a close and loving study 
 of great literary masterpieces. And these three 
 studies are not three but one. The language must 
 
 107 
 
io8 MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 be learnt through the literature ; the literature 
 must be used to illuminate the history; the 
 history must explain and give unity to the litera- 
 ture; and all together need the help of geo- 
 graphy, and give it human worth. 
 
 That modern studies could serve as an effective 
 instrument of liberal education I make no doubt. 
 They already do so in an imperfect and fortuitous 
 manner. But an unified course of humane study, 
 based upon modern languages, modern history, 
 modern literature, with excursions into politics, 
 law, economics, and philosophy, is yet to seek, 
 through all our Universities. The University 
 which first establishes such a School will do a great 
 service to liberal education; it will awaken the 
 minds of many whose interests are dormant, 
 whose talents are wasted; it will put new life 
 into modern sides and modernist schools; it 
 will provide a constant supply of well-trained 
 teachers, and incidentally it will steal a march on 
 its rivals. 
 
 A liberal education may be a vain and useless 
 luxury, suitable only to those few among the idle 
 rich who value its meretricious attractions. 
 In this age of specialisation, in this age when 
 studies take rank by their money-getting virtue, 
 such an opinion is common enough. Or a liberal 
 education may be the most potent of humanising 
 and civilising agencies, needful for the statesman, 
 the public servant, the administrator, the diplo- 
 matist, the professional man, and valuable also 
 to the man of science, the engineer, the master 
 of industry or commerce, if these are to 
 
LEARNING AND EDUCATION 109 
 
 develop their highest potentialities, at any rate 
 in their inner life. I trust there is no need 
 to enquire which of these two opinions is held 
 by my readers. 
 
 For generations past this country has been 
 proud to possess a large class of enlightened men, 
 interested in politics, literature, art, science, 
 philosophy not specialists alone, nor learned in 
 any ordinary sense, but with minds open to 
 every range of human activity. It is to the stan- 
 dard of this class that our daily and periodical 
 Press has been created, which is superior to that 
 of any other country. This class has been trained 
 under the system of classical learning ; if modern 
 learning is to serve a like purpose in education, 
 it should not set a lower standard of breadth and 
 enlightenment. 
 
 The University is a place of learning, a place 
 where learning is and should be pursued for its 
 own sake. It is also a place of professional 
 training, where men are or may be trained to be 
 doctors, surgeons, engineers, lawyers, cultivators, 
 schoolmasters, divines, etc. Professional training 
 has always been part of university duty, though 
 some persons may regard it with undeserved 
 contempt. But the University is also, and I 
 think it should be above all, a place of education. 
 In the older Universities learning is sometimes in 
 conflict with the ideal of education. The learned 
 men, impressed beyond reason with the importance 
 of their own subject, wish for a little educative 
 playground of their own, a close garden to them- 
 
no MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 selves, from which all extraneous studies should 
 be excluded. Learning requires specialisation; 
 and learned men are apt to lose that breadth of 
 view, that comprehensive sympathy with kindred 
 learning, which are needed if studies are to bear 
 their full measure of fruit. A man may take many 
 " subjects," but every subject will suffer if they 
 are not made to interpret and strengthen each 
 other. Education should not be sacrificed to 
 learning. Such a sacrifice is not needed, even 
 in the interests of learning. 
 
 In the new Universities professional studies are 
 all important; neither their own resources nor 
 the resources of their students permit a lavish 
 supply of unremunerative accessories. And they 
 hardly dare to lead students into paths which do 
 not at once command a life-giving employment. 
 I should be the last to blame those who only 
 bow to the tyranny of circumstance. How- 
 ever, one way and another the ideal of a liberal 
 education suffers, except in the Classical Schools, 
 when the tradition of the universality of humane 
 knowledge survives. It is the boast of Oxford 
 that any and every piece of knowledge may be 
 useful in Greats. But even the Classical men 
 are sometimes jealous of modern studies. They 
 and the historians should be our most cordial 
 allies. We are all alike humanists; none of us, 
 except by accident, can provide an immediate 
 livelihood for our students ; but we all, together, 
 not in separation or antagonism, ought to provide 
 education for a class which the nation can ill 
 afford to do without. 
 
SEPARATION OF ALLIED STUDIES in 
 
 In the University of Cambridge provision is 
 made for modern studies (besides Science, 
 Philosophy, Law, Economics, etc.) in two separate 
 Schools in the Historical Tripos, and in the 
 Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos. It is 
 very rare for a man to go from one to the other. 
 The teachers on one side hardly ever fortify the 
 other. In the Historical Tripos no scholarly 
 knowledge of any language is required; in the 
 Modern Languages Tripos hardly any history 
 except that of literature is taken into account. 
 The study of history suffers in interest and illu- 
 minating force through the neglect of literature ; 
 the study of language and literature is a dead 
 thing if separated from the general stream of 
 human life. 
 
 A modernist School should be a school to form 
 men for the world, not to form students and pro- 
 fessional scholars for academic pursuits. Get 
 your education right; get your men into the 
 School; learning will then look after itself; 
 the student of literature only needs a few books 
 and a little leisure time; he needs no expensive 
 equipment or endowment of research ; the natural 
 student, having once drunk of the fountain, will 
 drink and drink again; the student against his 
 bent will never rise to scholarship. The Cam- 
 bridge School of Modern Languages started under 
 a disadvantage; it was sneered at; men called 
 it the new Courier Tripos ; it was determined to 
 falsify that reproach at any cost ; it was resolved 
 to be very serious and learned; hence, all this 
 philology and medieval languages. Disraeli was 
 
MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 once present at a solemn feast, and his neighbour 
 turned to him and whispered, " This is very dull." 
 Disraeli replied, " It is intended to be dull/' One 
 might think that the founders of the Modern 
 Languages Tripos intended it to be dull. It is 
 difficult to make such matters dull. But anything 
 can be made dull by conscientious effort. 
 
 The sections dealing with English are not com- 
 pulsory; neither of them is attractive. "Out- 
 lines of English Literature " ; what good are 
 outlines of literature to any one ? Let us study 
 the texts, not commentaries and catalogues. 
 " Questions on language, metre, literary history, 
 and literary criticism/' Are such questions 
 all that the masterpieces of literature suggest? 
 " Questions on the plays and poems of Shakespeare 
 and their relations to the contemporary literature. ' ' 
 What about their relations to the contemporary 
 life? "Questions on the history of literary 
 criticism/' That is, questions on what people 
 have said about what other people said about 
 other people's books. 
 
 It would be my desire to abolish the English 
 sections and substitute one section with two sub- 
 jects English history and English literature. 
 A list of books, not in Wessex dialect, nor in 
 Icelandic, nor in Moeso-Gothic, would be provided. 
 These the candidates would be expected to read. 
 About four papers would be set with an abundant 
 choice of questions, and the questions should 
 bring the subject matter of the books and the 
 history into all kinds of obvious and some un- 
 expected relations. English composition would 
 
THE MODERN LANGUAGES TRIPOS 113 
 
 be tested by an essay, and also by the written 
 answers to the papers. All candidates for the 
 modern school of humane letters would be required 
 to take the English section. 
 
 I need not trouble my readers with the regula- 
 tions for the other sections of the Cambridge 
 Tripos; they are, except the Russian section, 
 all on the same lines philological, antiquarian, 
 critical, anything but historical and I should 
 wish them to be reformed on the same principles 
 as the English section. The students of Russian 
 are allowed to take a paper on Russian history 
 instead of questions on old Russian books, 
 grammar, metre, and literary history. This 
 section is almost good; though there is nothing 
 to show that the books are to be used to illustrate 
 the history, or the history to illustrate the books. 
 
 Two things can be said about the Modern 
 Languages Tripos : that the candidates probably 
 learn the languages, and that they read certain 
 great books as well as others that have no value 
 except as curiosities. But the scheme is not as 
 good as it could be made, and the students do 
 not get one-half of the benefit they would get 
 from a more liberal system. The result is that 
 after thirty years this School, with all its com- 
 plicated machinery, gives honours to less than 
 seventy students a year, men and women. It 
 should be the largest School in the University. 
 
 The Historical Tripos was not constructed with 
 a view to dullness. It is therefore very attractive 
 and its honours list is large. It is, however, 
 i 
 
n 4 MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 overburdened with matter, and bears upon it 
 certain marks of an unfortunate youth. Dr. 
 Stubbs wrote a text-book on English constitutional 
 history. Dr. Cunningham wrote another on 
 English economic history. It is a great conveni- 
 ence in a youthful school to have a good text-book, 
 so Constitutional History and Economic History 
 were made, and still continue to be, separate sub- 
 jects in the Tripos. English history does not 
 appear except in a footnote to constitutional 
 history. I find no similar footnote to economic 
 history, which goes on its lonely and independent 
 path. It is time that these separate sections 
 were cut, if not out of teaching, at any rate out 
 of examining. There should be three or four 
 papers on English history as a whole, including 
 constitution, economics, literature, law; and a 
 few appropriate masterpieces might be set for 
 the students' private reading such as Bacon, 
 Hobbes, Bolingbroke, and Burke have provided. 
 
 When the Historical School was started its 
 leaders aspired to gather the harvest without 
 going through the tedious interval of seed-time 
 and growth. I remember the time when the 
 staff was very weak, and four of its most eminent 
 members were lecturing on political science, as 
 it was called. We were told that history without 
 political science had no fruit. I doubt the 
 existence of political science ; political knowledge 
 is part of history; political wisdom should per- 
 vade all the teaching of all the teachers ; political 
 philosophy should come after, not before, the 
 survey of the facts. 
 
THE HISTORICAL TRIPOS 115 
 
 Many improvements have been made in the 
 Historical Tripos since my time. I think I see 
 a certain tendency to set first-rate works of litera- 
 ture as authorities where such are available. 
 Machiavelli's Prince occurs more than once. 
 Machiavelli is indeed almost an ideal text for 
 historical study; and it is a great thing that 
 young historians should be put to exercise their 
 critical and constructive acumen on books that 
 are worth reading for their own sake, instead of 
 grinding at dull works that are only useful as 
 repositories of information. 
 
 Is it too much to hope that some day in the 
 First Part of the Historical Tripos there will be 
 papers in translation and composition of modern 
 languages? I should like to see the Historical 
 Tripos and the Modern Languages Tripos com- 
 bined, with abundant liberty of choice, so that 
 students should follow their own tastes in this 
 direction or that, provided always that language, 
 literature, and history, were duly morticed each 
 into the other. Failing that, more history in the 
 Modern Language Tripos, more language and 
 literature in the Historical Tripos, would provide 
 a more liberal education and a better training. 
 When you have a staff for each of two cognate 
 Triposes, they should be available for inter- 
 change of services. 
 
 The case of Oxford is similar to that of Cam- 
 bridge, except that the English School is separated 
 entirely from that of Modern Languages. 
 In the English School Anglo-Saxon and Middle- 
 
n6 MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 English are compulsory. In the Modern 
 Languages School we find the Gospel of St. 
 Mark in Gothic, and the Althochdeutsches Lese- 
 buch prescribed for all students of German; 
 and the rest is to match. On the other hand, 
 in both these Schools we find that candidates are 
 expected to show some knowledge of history. 
 
 In the Oxford Historical School we find Con- 
 stitutional History, as at Cambridge, in a water- 
 tight compartment by itself. On the other hand, 
 English History, including literature, is treated 
 in a broad and comprehensive manner. By 
 tradition Political Science is at Oxford fortified 
 by a study of the works of some of the great 
 masters Aristotle, Hobbes, and Maine are 
 prescribed. In this form it is no doubt excellent. 
 There used to be an admirable optional period; 
 Italian History from about 1494 to about 1515 
 with Machiavelli, Guicciardini, da Porto, Corn- 
 mines, to be read in the originals. This has now 
 apparently been dropped, and Cambridge has 
 taken it up with slight modifications and a less 
 insistence on the foreign languages. In such a 
 subject, language, literature, history, and geo- 
 graphy, complement and illuminate each other 
 as they should. Modern languages have now 
 been introduced. 
 
 Once more we come back to the Classics. Why 
 do we value the best Classical education? Not 
 because Latin and Greek are superior to all 
 other languages; that would be an insufficient 
 reason. Nor because the poets, the dramatists, 
 
CLASSICAL METHOD 117 
 
 the orators, the historians, the philosophers of 
 Greece and Rome were the greatest that the world 
 has known. Shakespeare and Dante and Goethe, 
 at least, are worthy to stand beside the best of 
 them. Nor because of the excellent drill provided 
 by Greek and Latin grammar and composition. 
 We must not be slaves to the drill-sergeant, and 
 drill can be provided in other ways. But our 
 ancestors, the humanists of the Renaissance, were 
 enthusiasts at once for language, literature, and 
 history; they rejoiced to range the whole gamut 
 of human life. They were lovers of literature, 
 but they loved not the mere history and criticism 
 of books, but the wisdom and humane lore that 
 the books contain. They were lovers of history ; 
 they valued documentary evidence; but they 
 cared more for the document that was also a book 
 than for the mere storehouse of historical fact. 
 That tradition survives in the best Classical 
 School of to-day. It is a school of words, and 
 words are worthy to be studied and reverenced; 
 but it is also a school of history and of the best 
 literature and philosophy. It is a school of 
 learning, but humanity comes first. There may be 
 pedantries, and undue emphasis of scholastic 
 points; but the humanity shines through, and 
 it is the whole humanity of man. And man two 
 thousand years ago was much what man is now. 
 
 There are some who decry this School of ancient 
 humanities because it is out of touch with modern 
 life. Some like it the better because it is removed 
 from the cant, the bitterness, the fallacies, of 
 modern statement. But granted that this be a 
 
n8 MODERN HUMANITIES 
 
 drawback, let us nevertheless salute the great 
 ideal, and strive to follow it in other and more 
 modern fields. Let us value learning and scholar- 
 ship, but not to the neglect of humane knowledge. 
 Let us value history, but seek its illumination 
 in the greatest minds of the past. We have not 
 much time and we cannot afford to pore over bad 
 books. Let us value language, but not as the 
 botanist values his dried specimens, rather as the 
 key to the mind of genius, and the soul of man. 
 Fatti non foste a viver come brutti, Ma per seguir 
 virtute e conoscenza. Conoscenza is good, but 
 it is worth little without virtute. And virtute, 
 which may be rendered as complete and excellent 
 humanity, is the end of liberal and humane 
 studies ; if humanity does not gain in flexibility, 
 sympathetic comprehension, and enlightenment, 
 blame the pupil, blame the teacher, blame the 
 system, but do not blame the studies. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AT THE 
 UNIVERSITIES 
 
 THERE are now, in this United Kingdom and 
 in other English-speaking countries, a great 
 number of Professors of the English language 
 and of English literature. Not so very long ago 
 there were none. Yet the art of writing English 
 had been practised with some trifling success for 
 many generations before the first professor 
 appeared. This reflexion may serve to keep us 
 humble, who belong to the teaching profession. 
 One might hastily draw the inference that there 
 is no necessity to teach English at all, at the 
 Universities or elsewhere. But I do not think 
 that inference would be safe. Things used to 
 manage themselves in the old days. Now we 
 have undertaken to manage things, and they no 
 longer run alone. We must go on managing them, 
 and manage them as well as we can. Some day, 
 perhaps, we shall learn to manage them better 
 than they used to manage themselves. 
 
 It would be hazardous for an amateur and in 
 this field I am but an amateur to lay down lines 
 of English teaching for those who have made it 
 their life work. To mention one danger alone, 
 
 119 
 
120 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 I cannot pretend to know what all of them are 
 doing; still less, what all of them have done. 
 The hasty critic might be silenced by one or other 
 of these replies : " I have done that all my life " ; 
 " I have tried that and it failed." And yet it 
 would not be safe to omit from the survey what 
 is common practice; it is also sometimes worth 
 while to repeat an unlucky experiment. From 
 a more lowly position I can speak with less offence ; 
 let me try to put myself into the place of the fresh- 
 man, and set forth as best I can the needs of his 
 class, which, diverse as it may be in character, 
 capacity, and preparation, is not so diverse in its 
 needs. Teaching should be determined by the 
 needs of the taught, and not by the propensities 
 of the Professor. 
 
 The first need of every freshman, although he 
 may not know it, is to learn to write English. It 
 is easy to say that he ought to have learnt to 
 write English at school. So he ought, and, by 
 the efforts of the English Association, the number 
 of those who come up to the University unable to 
 turn one sentence or to put two together, has 
 diminished and will no doubt further diminish. 
 But it is always safe to bank on the imperfections 
 of human nature, and on the shortcomings of 
 human institutions. One may be certain that, 
 until the Judgement Day shall come, or Universi- 
 ties cease to be, many undergraduates will enter 
 the University imperfectly trained in the com- 
 position of their native tongue. 
 
 When I was a practising teacher, I used to take 
 
ENGLISH ESSAYS 121 
 
 the freshmen's essays. As I think my friend, 
 Arthur Benson, has said, this is the most en- 
 couraging form of teaching that can fall to the 
 lot of any man. It is not really teaching at all ; 
 it is a kind of maieutic, almost a magic. There 
 was very little one could teach them. One could 
 correct faults. One could point out ugly, in- 
 correct, or awkward casts of phrase, one could 
 chastise stock expressions and what Sir Arthur 
 Quiller-Couch calls jargon, one could make 
 suggestions as to order and arrangement of matter. 
 In fact, one could find something to say if there 
 was anything to criticise. But, very often, at the 
 beginning there was next to nothing. The teach- 
 ing of English may improve treatment ; it cannot 
 provide topics. But they soon found topics for 
 themselves. The miracle of the young mind 
 expanding under fresh conditions is always 
 astonishing. Up to the very last I was filled with 
 wonder at the changes a few weeks could produce. 
 They taught themselves, of course, not I. Every 
 one must, in fact, teach himself ; all we can do is 
 to give him an opportunity to learn; it is true, 
 we can paralyse him, if we choose. 
 
 There would be some who came up well-skilled 
 for their age in the art of expression; glib, self- 
 confident, even brilliant. But every experienced 
 university teacher will agree that there should 
 be quite as much to do for these as for the others. 
 There always was something to do for them up to 
 the end. The art of writing English is no child's 
 play ; it is an art worth studying ; that is to say, 
 an art in which perfection is unattainable. The 
 
122 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 better the student the more there is to criticise 
 in his work. The teacher need not be afraid that 
 the time will ever come for helpless, speechless 
 approbation. If English essay palls and it may 
 there are other ways of teaching the same thing. 
 I shall not be satisfied until the teaching of 
 English at our schools and Universities is as 
 thorough and effective as the teaching of French 
 in France. 
 
 If all the young men and women are to have 
 their due every don should constitute himself a 
 professor of English. Some of them have already 
 done this; others will look contemptuous at the 
 suggestion, others embarrassed. The contemptu- 
 ous will continue to rejoice in their own mag- 
 nificence ; the embarrassed will find, if they try, 
 that the task is not so hard as they imagine. 
 They would not have reached their present 
 eminence had they been innocent of the art of 
 expression. They would not have been there, it 
 is presumed, had they not some gift, some taste 
 for teaching. There is no form of teaching more 
 full of reward to the teacher, more necessary to 
 the taught. 
 
 This kind of teaching fits in naturally with all 
 the literary Schools, though I have reason to 
 believe that it is often neglected where it seems 
 most obvious. I came across one classical 
 scholar, a schoolmaster, who said he could not 
 teach English essay. I think his own education 
 must have been neglected. But the necessity for 
 such teaching is not confined to the literary 
 departments. Even if a man specialises in 
 
NEED OF TRAINING IN ENGLISH 123 
 
 Mathematics or in Natural Science he cannot 
 with impunity dismiss his English studies. Most 
 men follow the sciences for education, or to fit 
 them for a profession. Education without English 
 is the wisdom of the dumb : it lacks the one thing 
 that gives outward value to the whole. And 
 what sort of professional training is that which 
 has not made the man fit to put his meaning on 
 paper so that others can grasp and respect it? 
 A time will come even to the professed mathema- 
 tician when mathematical symbols will not express 
 what he has to say. Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt 
 has told us how his profession suffers from the 
 deficient literary training of its entrants. I mis- 
 doubt the other technical professions would say 
 the like if they found a voice. In the literary 
 courses of instruction at the University other 
 influences may make up for defect of training in 
 English. In mathematics and science and the 
 technical courses that is not so. 
 
 The power to write English is a possession in 
 itself : it is also an assistance in business. A love 
 of English literature may not be useful for busi- 
 ness ; but it is for life beyond rubies and pearls. 
 There are probably many who can be trained to 
 write decent English, who will never love a good 
 book for its own sake. You can offer to such men 
 good books ; they will prefer the bad, or none at 
 all perhaps only one. I once knew an under- 
 graduate who confided to me that he found it 
 saved trouble always to read in one book. I 
 enquired : What book ? He replied, Handley 
 
124 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 Cross. Now Handley Cross is a good book ; but 
 it is insufficient nutriment, when unvaried. It is 
 useless to try coercion with such folk; their 
 nature will defeat you. They are often lovable, 
 trustworthy, and capable; the schoolmaster has 
 already had his chance with them ; where he has 
 failed we are not likely to succeed. For them no 
 provision need be made of bellettristic studies. 
 
 There are also those natural lovers of good 
 books, for whom the libraries of the University 
 are a wide-spread pleasure ground. They know 
 the way ; they need no guide. All they need is 
 a friend with whom to speak of books ; the wise, 
 the fortunate Professor is he who can supply that 
 need, who can draw a circle of such young men 
 round himself. 
 
 But there is a large and indeterminate class of 
 men and women, who have a vague, undeveloped 
 taste for good books. There should always be a 
 stirring and sympathetic Professor of English 
 literature to catch some of these, and set them 
 reading. At such popular work the men of learn- 
 ing smile a superior smile; such cheap successes 
 are not for them. It is true that such students 
 will rarely train into scholars ; their labours will 
 not benefit the world, they will not increase 
 learning; but the mark of a civilised man is the 
 use he makes of leisure, and no better use can be 
 made of leisure than to read a good book. If you 
 can implant the love of good books in a single 
 mind you start a new centre of book-loving in the 
 world. There is no more humanising influence. 
 The children of these young men and women will 
 
THE LOVE OF GOOD BOOKS 125 
 
 have the chance that is denied to so many, the 
 chance that is worth all the teachers in the world 
 a home where books are treated as friends, and 
 introduced in their turn to the children of the 
 house. The humbler the position where this love 
 of books arises, the greater its value for life. If 
 you have horses, shooting, motor-cars, travelling, 
 golf, you may be able to do without books ; but, 
 if you have none of these things, a single book can 
 serve to extend the horizon of life too narrow for 
 us all. 
 
 The teaching of English ought to be all-pervading 
 in an University. All should learn there to say 
 what they mean in workmanlike fashion. Some 
 should learn the pride of an artist in good work. 
 Many should acquire there and fix in their hearts 
 for ever the love of good books ; by this I mean 
 first the love of English books, for English books 
 are the most accessible to us and inferior to none ; 
 but the love of English books leads on to other 
 books in other languages ; and the book-lover will 
 seldom be a bad scholar. He will also learn to use 
 a book as an instrument of knowledge ; and those 
 who have learned that have broken half the path 
 to any study, permanent or temporary. 
 
 Hitherto I have been trying to set down what 
 young men and women need from the University 
 apart from their special studies ; composition for 
 business, reading for life. That all should get 
 these, from an imperfect institution, is too much 
 to expect ; that many should get both is what we 
 have to work for. But now I approach the 
 
126 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 specialised university studies, whose number 
 increases day by day. In my own University 
 an Honours degree can be taken in the follow- 
 ing subjects separately : Classics, Mathematics, 
 Natural Sciences, Philosophy, Law, History, 
 Modern Languages, Engineering, Economics, 
 Theology, and Oriental Languages. Mathemati- 
 cians have a language of their own; the more 
 reason that they should return from time to time 
 and commune with their fellows and their great 
 ancestry in the language which unites our race. 
 It is a great thing to make discoveries in natural 
 science, inventions in engineering; but, if the 
 man of science wishes to make his discoveries and 
 inventions known, if he wishes to pass on the 
 torch to others, he must be able to speak and to 
 write so as to command attention. The medical 
 man, the surgeon, is not only a man of learning, 
 a practitioner; he has also to be a man of the 
 world ; and the world is swayed by words. The 
 lawyer has to be an expert in the use and meaning 
 of words ; any academic drilling, however severe, 
 that he may receive at the University, will tend 
 to fit him for his professional career. He will also 
 have to know men ; men are not to be learnt either 
 from laws or books, or both, but more knowledge 
 of men is to be obtained by a study of the great 
 writers, than by a study of the law alone. The 
 efficacy, the currency, of philosophy and econo- 
 mics are greatly impaired by the jargon with 
 which many modern economists and philosophers 
 choose to disfigure their pages. Plato was no 
 superficial trifler with philosophy; yet he said 
 
ENGLISH IN THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS 127 
 
 all he had to say in the ordinary language of his 
 day. Adam Smith was no mean economist, yet 
 he found no need for an esoteric vocabulary. 
 How different from some I could name ! For 
 theologians I am sure English is useful ; it should 
 also be useful to students of oriental languages. 
 
 In dealing with these subjects I have confined 
 myself to a statement of the needs of all students. 
 Those needs, whether for business or life, include 
 lucidity in the teacher, and powers of self- 
 expression for the students. 
 
 I now come to the three great literary Schools, 
 which in some form or other exist in almost all 
 our Universities : the Classical School, the History 
 School, the School of Modern Languages and 
 Literature from which the English School may 
 or may not be separated. 
 
 In these Schools, I take it, the students may be 
 divided into two classes, according to their 
 different needs. There are some who, having 
 received from early childhood a methodical, con- 
 tinuous, and thorough education, require and 
 deserve from the University the best, the most 
 coherent, the most extended, the most en- 
 lightened conclusion and consummation to their 
 training by way of letters. Their framework of 
 humane knowledge is ready. They come to us 
 to complete the edifice. For them provision 
 must be made. 
 
 And then there is also, especially in our newer 
 Universities, a considerable class, eager for know- 
 ledge and illumination, but less completely 
 
128 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 equipped at the outset of their University career. 
 For them a similar provision is suitable ; but the 
 range of studies cannot be so wide. 
 
 In old days it used to be the fashion to read the 
 Bible. The man who knew one book thoroughly, 
 and that book the Bible, had no contemptible 
 education. The Bible contains, in the most noble 
 and purest language, a complete literature, a 
 complete picture of national and individual life. 
 Legend and history, poetry, drama, rhetoric, 
 philosophy, law, geography, human nature, all 
 are there. And with them a hope, a vision, a 
 plan of life. Even the secondary authors have 
 been inspired ; somewhere in the range from John 
 Bunyan through Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to 
 John Henry Newman very diverse minds will find 
 congenial instruction. But, putting exegesis 
 aside, it is partly because we have stopped reading 
 our Bible that many modern educational devices 
 are needed. 
 
 The comprehensive unity of Bible study is also 
 to be found in a good Classical School. The study 
 of language and of the art of expression, poetry, 
 tragedy, comedy, oratory, history, law, philo- 
 sophy all find a place in it. All there are studied, 
 not in text-books, but in the works of the great 
 men. The range of profitable study is so accur- 
 ately determined by a wise tradition that the 
 restrictions of the examination are as harmless as 
 may be. 
 
 But there is one defect in any and every 
 Classical School : there is nothing modern in it, 
 
THE CLASSICS AND ENGLISH 129 
 
 not even any English literature. I think this 
 defect is more apparent than real as regards 
 English. Wherever the best traditions prevail 
 in a Classical School, sufficient attention is paid 
 to the niceties of English composition. Invention, 
 order, proportion, construction, can be learned 
 from classical models ; though a little criticism will 
 not come amiss. Classical scholars have for the 
 most part acquired the love of good books ; you 
 will generally find them well-read in English 
 literature. What they need from their teachers 
 and no doubt often get is to be constantly 
 reminded of the modern applications of their 
 ancient studies, of modern parallels to their 
 ancient authors. Some of our most distinguished 
 Professors of English literature have been trained 
 in a Classical School. I do not think there is need 
 in any Classical School to make special provision 
 for English literature. There is danger in sub- 
 mitting the delicate flowers of English literature 
 to the methods of the lecture room, the schedules 
 and tests of the examination room. If in any 
 conditions English literature is being spontane- 
 ously studied, it is best to leave those conditions 
 alone. 
 
 The History Schools in our Universities are for 
 the most part very flourishing institutions. By 
 their nature they must be Schools of English. 
 Every student who aspires to success must have 
 constant practice in writing essays on historical 
 or theoretical subjects, in composing neat, well- 
 arranged, well-expressed answers to questions. 
 I find them wanting, however, in one respect. 
 
130 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 They lay great stress on original authorities, and 
 endeavour by their examinations to secure that 
 students shall have practice in making use of 
 contemporary material. But every author is an 
 original authority for his own time. When there- 
 is an abundance of authors of the first rank, who 
 are worth reading for their own sake and also 
 for the information they contain, why not make 
 use of these? I give a list of authors some of 
 whose works ought, at an University, to be read 
 alongside with English History and used as illus- 
 trative material Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, 
 More, Hobbes, Dryden, Halifax, De Foe, Swift, 
 Bolingbroke, Burke, Cobbett, Carlyle, Dickens, 
 Thackeray. The list might be greatly extended, 
 but these will serve as a sample. I dislike 
 coercion as applied to English literature. But the 
 least objectionable form of coercion is to tell the 
 students to read the books, and intimate that 
 they will be or may be examined on their subject- 
 matter. Applied in this way, coercion may not 
 lead to disgust, but may form a taste. 
 
 I hope some day to see a School of Modern 
 History as comprehensive as the best Classical 
 School, with language and literature as its two 
 wings. But probably the men and women do 
 not come up at present sufficiently well prepared 
 in modern subjects. Meamvhile it seems reason- 
 able that there should be two modern Schools : 
 one historical, in which literature should not be 
 ignored ; one literary, in which history should 
 not be ignored. In the literary School English 
 language and literature will find its own place. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH 131 
 
 And now I come to that part of my subject 
 which may appear to be most important, though 
 I am not sure that it is. What do those students 
 want who enter for an Honours School of English 
 language and literature ? What they think they 
 want is one thing; what they need may be 
 another; what the Professor desires to teach 
 them may be a third. 
 
 I think such students have in their minds a 
 vague, sometimes even a precise idea, that English 
 literature is a great and glorious thing ; they think 
 that they would like to give their time of study 
 to the masterpieces; they feel that by so doing 
 they will achieve some knowledge of the race to 
 which they were born, of its history and the 
 thoughts on which that history is built. Are they 
 far wrong in this idea ? Can we better the con- 
 ception which they have formed of their needs ? 
 
 The exalted precedents of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge and London would lead us to believe that 
 we may. Their Schools of English language and 
 literature appear to be framed on the hypothesis 
 that before the student is fit to appreciate the 
 structure and harmonies of his own tongue, before 
 he can rightly taste the works of art expressed in 
 it, he must have gone through a training in 
 language. It is assumed, it is perhaps a fair 
 assumption, that he will not have received a 
 thorough training in language before he comes up. 
 Granted that he should have some drill in lan- 
 guage, what language should be chosen as a 
 medium for instruction ? Should it be a language 
 which opens a great modern literature, suitable 
 
132 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 for comparison with his own? Should it be 
 French, German, Italian, Spanish or should it 
 be Middle-English and Anglo-Saxon ? 
 
 I think the question can be solved by the answer 
 to another question. Is the interest of the aver- 
 age student who enters the English School prin- 
 cipally philological, or is it literary, historical, 
 humanistic ? Is it archaeological or is it modern ? 
 I think the question admits of only one answer ; 
 it is historical and modern, rather than archaeo- 
 logical and philological. 
 
 If that is so, we may have to give the student 
 something he does not exactly ask for; we may 
 have to give him training in language. But we 
 should open to him, at least, those languages which 
 give him the richest return in history, literature, 
 and modern knowledge. If the choice, to be 
 made on those lines, lay between Middle-English 
 and Anglo-Saxon, and say modern German, can 
 there be any doubt how the choice would go ? 
 
 I trust that I am not hostile to any form of 
 learning, but I cannot bring myself to regard 
 Middle-English and Anglo-Saxon as in any way 
 necessary to an university course in English 
 literature. I reckon such studies as post-graduate 
 rather than pre-graduate. 
 
 If any student desires to take these early 
 tongues, they will serve to give him the language 
 training that he needs. I would not curb the 
 zeal of those who wish to teach, of those who 
 wish to learn. But I would compel no student 
 to learn Middle-English or Anglo-Saxon. The 
 students should be permitted to offer for their 
 
MIDDLE-ENGLISH AND ANGLO-SAXON 133 
 
 language training Latin, French, German, Italian, 
 or Spanish, one or more. A student who desires 
 to study English literature does not want he 
 may want, but there is no conclusive reason why 
 he should want to study any English author 
 earlier than Chaucer. 
 
 Again, the student of English and English 
 literature does want, though he may not know it, 
 some historical knowledge. The books are part 
 of the history ; the history is necessary to explain 
 the books. But the history that he requires 
 should be given in the form of history, the whole 
 history political, constitutional, economic, social, 
 literary ; and not in the form of isolated history 
 of literature. Of all forms of history, the history 
 of literature is most dumb to the uninstructed. 
 If you have read the books, it may illuminate by 
 criticism and comparison, and by explanation 
 of progression, succession, innovation, and growth. 
 But if you have not read the books, it is without 
 depth and meaning. 
 
 I have no doubt the practice is better than the 
 appearance. When I read in a syllabus that one 
 subject is the outlines of English literature from 
 1350-1832, I do not see how a student can come 
 before the examiners without cramming a text- 
 book. When I study the examination paper, I 
 see that he may, if he is fairly well-read in English 
 literature. But I know enough of undergraduates 
 to doubt whether the average student will take 
 such a risk. Such a subject is an invitation to 
 cram the text-book. You can never tell what may 
 be set. The invitation will be accepted. 
 
134 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 To supplement the knowledge derived from the 
 direct study of the authors general history of 
 England is required methodical, comprehensive, 
 not necessarily detailed. It might begin with 
 Edward III, when our modern literature begins. 
 It would press lightly on the period from Richard 
 II to Elizabeth, when great works are scanty. 
 From Elizabeth to the present day it would find 
 little opportunity for rest. People say we are 
 not a race of ideas and imagination. Let us be 
 judged by our literature. They say we are not 
 an artistic people. Let us be judged by our 
 cathedrals, our churches, our mansions, our 
 gardens, our villages, our furniture, our china, our 
 portraits, our landscapes. Art working in matter 
 may have had with us its sterile periods; just 
 now we are too self-conscious to be creative ; but 
 art working in words has been continuously fertile 
 from the time of Shakespeare and the Authorised 
 Version. It is fertile to-day. 
 
 Thus the history of our nation and the history 
 of its literature go hand in hand. The study of 
 each will gain infinitely from the study of the 
 other. There is hardly any historical theme that 
 cannot be illustrated from the best writers of the 
 time; hardly any writer who cannot be better 
 understood if the history of his time is known. 
 Our writers have often taken a part in politics; 
 they have shared the full life of the nation. Mr. 
 Wingfield-Stratford's History of English Patriotism 
 is a good example of the worth to history of a wide 
 outlook upon literature. 
 
 Of history, of connected, methodical historical 
 
EXAMINATION IN ENGLISH 135 
 
 knowledge, the value to the student of literature 
 appears so obvious that I wonder it can ever have 
 been overlooked. An ad hoc excursion into history 
 is the customary prelude to an edition of a literary 
 work. But what is written or got up for a specific 
 purpose is never so illuminating as knowledge 
 which forms part of an assimilated whole. Separ- 
 ate, if you must, your literary School from your 
 historical School ; but the two should always live 
 in the closest intimacy and alliance. 
 
 As mines and manufactures devastate the 
 countryside, so do examination and the methods 
 of teaching connected with it devastate the 
 matter which they attack. Theological examina- 
 tion spoils the Bible, grammatical examination 
 spoils Greek, physiological examination spoils the 
 frog. Examination, like mines and manufacture, 
 is necessary ; but to examine in English literature 
 is like opening a coal mine in the Lake District. 
 Why is examination necessary ? Examination is 
 a form of peine forte et dure^ to compel the recalci- 
 trant to plead. Why not settle the matter out of 
 court? There is the greatest literature in the 
 world, written in your own tongue, why not read 
 it, dispensing with examiners ? There is some- 
 thing in it for every taste. We are a political 
 race, a race of politicians, and the first-rate 
 political works that have been written in English 
 make up for themselves a sufficient student's 
 library. It is rare for philosophers to cultivate 
 the gift of expression they are, no doubt, too 
 busy thinking -but we have one philosopher at 
 
136 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 least Berkeley who is worth reading for his 
 English as well as for his thought. If you must 
 have commentaries, there is a succession of 
 accomplished critics. If you are fond of travel, 
 you can steep your mind in good English, without 
 leaving the company of great travellers. If your 
 chief interest is in sport, there is a score of sports- 
 men who demonstrate that the horse, the gun, and 
 the rod, are not jealous enemies of the pen, who 
 prove that the man of intelligence having some- 
 thing in his heart to say will seldom fail to say it 
 well. And if you do not want to read, why read 
 at all? There are other things in life besides 
 books. It is a pity to miss that joy, that illumina- 
 tion; but if you are sure it is not for you then 
 leave it alone. 
 
 Where the door of a study is difficult to enter, 
 some compulsion, no doubt, is necessary for the 
 beginners. All of us are lazy, and beginnings are 
 apt to be dull. But, once the student has learnt 
 to read, the door of English literature stands wide 
 open. He has but to walk in and help himself. 
 Even expense is no obstacle to-day. 
 
 However, our freshman does not go to the 
 University merely to follow his favourite study. 
 He goes there to get the hall-mark of an university 
 degree he would like Honours, if he can get them ; 
 his ambition aspires to a class. That being so, 
 examinations and all their machinery of schedule 
 and syllabus are necessary. I have, for the pur- 
 pose of this chapter, been looking over examina- 
 tion papers set in the English Schools of various 
 Universities. Sometimes they seem to me de- 
 
HISTORY WITH LITERATURE 137 
 
 signed to test learning, rather than intelligence 
 and knowledge. But on the whole they are 
 framed with great delicacy and ingenuity. How 
 much greater the field for the exercise of that 
 ingenuity when history and literature offer their 
 united permutations and combinations ! An 
 examination question should not call for recondite 
 learning; it should handle the familiar in an 
 unexpected way. It should set the student 
 hastily to rebuild his old materials in a new shape. 
 The better trained his intelligence, the greater 
 his command of his subject, the more skilfully he 
 will be able to effect the desired reconstruction. 
 If there is historical material on the one hand, 
 and literary material on the other, the range, 
 interest, and variety of the problems that can 
 be set without leaving well-trodden ground may 
 be four times as great as when literature is 
 separated from history. 
 
 That English literature should be widely 
 studied at the University must be our desire. If 
 it must be taught the object of the teaching should 
 be to give the student something he needs but 
 cannot get for himself. An accurate sense of the 
 meaning and quality of words, a feeling for 
 rhythm and flavour and association, those can be 
 suggested to him. New outlooks and lines of 
 progression, new affinities, contrasts, and com- 
 parisons those can be put before him. But, 
 above all, the kinetic unity of national life 
 and thought and literary expression is a thing 
 that he may miss, or only attain after painful 
 
138 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 
 
 and fruitless wanderings. And that can only be 
 made clear by the most skilled and inspiring 
 teacher, if history, language, and literature are 
 treated as various manifestations of a single 
 spirit. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 THE unquestioning belief in examinations that 
 possessed our ancestors is passing away. Open 
 competition for posts in the Civil Service still 
 retains public confidence and favour, as giving 
 an equal chance to all in proportion to the in- 
 struction they have received, the ability they own, 
 the industry, perseverance, and force of will, that 
 they have displayed. Examinations are not 
 beloved but they are trusted. Equality of oppor- 
 tunity is an ideal, which corresponds to our 
 ever unsatisfied yearning for justice, and in so 
 far as competitive examinations secure equality 
 of opportunity they merit the support that is 
 somewhat blindly given. Opportunities are not, 
 and never can be, equal ; but examinations tend 
 to remove one class of inequalities. The road 
 cannot be made as smooth as a mirror; but 
 some of the roughest obstacles can be removed. 
 Nothing creates, or should create, a more pungent 
 sense of injustice than public advancement 
 without merit. The faith in examinations as 
 a test of merit has at least this ground, that no 
 suspicion has ever fallen on any class of public 
 examinations in this country. Favour and all 
 kinds of unjust discrimination have been con- 
 
 139 
 
140 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 stantly excluded. The eyes of justice being 
 always veiled, the justice dispensed by examiners 
 must be purblind; but it is impersonal, equal, 
 and impartial. Justice, blind or seeing, is so 
 rare, that we should cherish it wherever it can 
 be found. 
 
 The early reformers identified instruction with 
 education. By testing the results of instruction 
 they thought they were testing education. They 
 multiplied examinations and thought that thereby 
 they would improve education. At the most 
 they improved instruction ; but examinations not 
 only concentrate undue attention upon the results 
 of instruction; they are bad for the instruction 
 itself. They prejudice in the first place the 
 liberty of teaching and the liberty of learning. 
 Every teacher differs from every other teacher ; 
 if you force a teacher to work on fixed 
 lines you cramp the exercise of his special 
 gifts. School differs from school; if you sub- 
 ject them all to the same tests, you establish 
 an undesirable uniformity. Child differs from 
 child; the examination test ignores diversity. 
 Education is not identical with instruction ; it is 
 easy by examination to test instruction and the 
 results of instruction ; it is not possible so to test 
 education. First secure that the candidates have 
 had the desired education; it is then possible to 
 ascertain by examination what profit has been 
 drawn from the learning and instruction which 
 is part, but only a part, of the education. But 
 there should be no more examination than is 
 
EVILS OF EXAMINATION 141 
 
 necessary. However good the examination, how- 
 ever wisely it be devised to test promise, ability, 
 intelligence, rather than information and the 
 power of unintelligent repetition, its effect on 
 the mind must be burdensome, exacting, and 
 depressing, except for those exceptional and 
 light-hearted beings who take all tasks easily. 
 
 Large numbers increase the evil. If few are 
 to be tested examination can be thoughtful and 
 responsive to varying kinds of merit. Where 
 large numbers are concerned, the methods of 
 examination must become mechanical; marks 
 must be awarded according to fixed canons; 
 individual judgement on the work of several 
 thousand candidates is impossible. Since there 
 are many examining bodies the numbers with 
 which each body has to deal are reduced; but 
 other drawbacks arise; a multiple slavery is 
 imposed upon those schools which, to suit the 
 various needs of their students, have to prepare 
 candidates for several different schemes. 
 
 We have all been saying these things for many 
 years ; they have now been enshrined in a report 
 of the Advisory Committee of the Board of 
 Education ; so we need not say them any more. 
 It is more important now to point out that 
 examinations are a necessary evil. We can then 
 go about our business and try to get good out 
 of evil, which has been the most ordinary task 
 of man, since Eve listened to the serpent. 
 
 The evil effects of examination the mechanical 
 and oppressive methods of instruction that it 
 
142 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 encourages, the anxiety, the excitement, the undue 
 stimulation that it creates increase in inverse 
 proportion to the age of the candidates. In the 
 elementary schools these evils once were evident ; 
 they have been already diminished, perhaps to 
 the limits of possible relief. The headmaster 
 will, of course, examine his pupils from time to 
 time to test their progress. That is a legitimate 
 use of examination tests and in no way interferes 
 with the liberty of teaching and learning. The 
 inspector will occasionally examine each school, 
 but rather for the purpose of testing the efficiency 
 of the school in its own appointed work, than 
 with the intention of trying each child by refer- 
 ence to an identical code. Through the relaxation 
 of such trials, there may be some loss of thorough- 
 ness and severity of instruction, but what may 
 have been lost in specific instruction has been 
 gained in education under a more elastic system. 
 Before the age of sixteen examination should 
 be reduced to a minimum. The headmaster's 
 test of his pupils, the inspector's test of the school 
 and of each class, should suffice; except for one 
 purpose, the awarding of scholarships and free 
 places in secondary or other intermediate schools. 
 But this test should be so far as possible a test 
 of fitness and desire to learn, rather than a hard- 
 run race for a limited number of prizes. The 
 headmaster, rather than any examiners, should 
 be able to judge which of his scholars are fit to 
 undergo secondary or technical instruction. The 
 examination is only needed to correct aberrations 
 of standard or of judgement to check the school- 
 
COMPETITION OF CHILDREN 143 
 
 master's decisions. Without some such check 
 we should make the schoolmasters control the 
 future life of every girl and boy. Moreover, 
 examination gives a chance to the child who is 
 clever but idle and inattentive to school lessons. 
 A schoolmaster might be tempted to forget that 
 it is the clever children rather than the docile 
 who repay cultivation. The tortoise once beat 
 the hare, but as a rule the hare can afford to 
 spend some time in sleep. The normal odds 
 against the tortoise, however wakeful, must be 
 very long. To continue in this vein of sporting 
 analogies, competitive examination before sixteen 
 is like racing two-year-olds ; the colt or the filly 
 may not actually suffer, but premature effort 
 should be avoided; the course should be short 
 and feather-weights should be up. Competitive 
 examinations have much in common with the 
 contests of the turf; except that there is no 
 betting, and horses are not pulled. 
 
 The following points of policy seem now to be 
 agreed, though I dare say when they come to 
 be discussed some things may be said against 
 them. 
 
 The first school-leaving certificate from second- 
 ary schools should be granted about sixteen. 
 The examination for such a certificate should be 
 a qualifying and not a competitive test. The 
 certificate should be evidence of continuous and 
 satisfactory attendance at efficient schools up 
 to the time of testing ; it should also affirm that 
 the scholar had shown under examination 
 
144 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 adequate proficiency in the ordinary subjects of 
 instruction. Another school-leaving certificate 
 should be granted to those who stay at school 
 till eighteen or nineteen, on similar conditions. 
 
 If severe competition is avoided until the age 
 of sixteen, the chief danger is past for boys, 
 and greater pressure can be applied to the 
 negligent, greater encouragement can be given 
 to the willing. Girls require more careful treat- 
 ment up to the age of nineteen at least. I see 
 no objection to competitive examination of boys 
 at the age of eighteen or nineteen, provided 
 the proper course of education is not abandoned, 
 provided the proper balance of studies is pre- 
 served. No doubt the competitive element in 
 schooling has been exaggerated in the past ; but 
 some reforming societies seem to go too far in 
 endeavouring to exclude all competition and 
 rivalry. Education is a preparation for life, and 
 life is a highly competitive pursuit, alev apiorev- 
 eiv fcal VTreipo%ov 8/j,fjLevai a\\wv is a motto for 
 heroes; but most of us (who are not heroes) are 
 prone to an easy belief that we are doing our 
 best, unless we are stimulated by seeing that our 
 fellows are doing better. 
 
 The chief competitive examinations at the 
 higher school-leaving age are the entrance 
 scholarship examinations at the Colleges of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. Those examinations 
 are admirable in one way ; the work of each 
 competitor is studied thoughtfully for evidence 
 of promise, as well as for performance; marks 
 
SCHOLARSHIP TESTS 145 
 
 may be given, but they do not govern the award ; 
 one College may discern merit which another 
 has not seen. But they are in my opinion too 
 highly specialised; it is not desirable that boys 
 of seventeen should specialise in mathematics, 
 in science, in history, to the exclusion of other 
 subjects of general education. The higher school- 
 leaving certificate, when established and fully 
 valued, may correct this tendency, and secure 
 a solid foundation for the specialists. A mathe- 
 matician, for instance, or a boy who has studied 
 science, ought to have formed some clear historical 
 conceptions, and learnt some geography, and 
 studied at least one foreign language ; a classical 
 boy should have made some way in mathematics 
 and formed some notion of scientific methods; 
 but it is not necessary that such boys should be 
 able to pass a stiff examination in uncongenial 
 subjects. To have studied a subject is often 
 sufficient; it is not necessary to remember all 
 one has learnt. The good mind retains what it 
 needs, and discards the superfluous. The effects 
 of the training, if it has been thorough, will 
 never be lost. But all should be subjected alike 
 to a thorough test in English. 
 
 Similarly an examination which deals with 
 language alone (like some examinations for 
 scholarships in Modern Languages) does not 
 suffice to test the acquirements and the promise 
 of boys at eighteen. Language is not an end in 
 itself; it is the key to the mind of the wise, the 
 symbol by which tradition is handed down. 
 Any examination in language of boys leaving 
 
146 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 school should test the use that such boys have 
 made of their study; it should be a test in the 
 literature and history that goes with the language. 
 
 I am not at all satisfied at present with some 
 of our entrance scholarship examinations in 
 history. A boy, who is going to study history 
 to advantage at the University, needs above all 
 the knowledge of two foreign languages. His- 
 torical fact, historical sequence, historical method, 
 these he can study at the University. All that 
 it is necessary to test at this age is historical 
 intelligence and comprehension. For such a 
 test a certain amount of knowledge must be 
 assumed, but it need not be very extensive. 
 Having examined in history a very great number 
 of boys of seventeen and eighteen I can say with 
 some certainty that boys of this age are capable 
 of understanding history; it is possible to set 
 them questions that test not only historical 
 information but also historical insight the 
 capacity to understand the mutual causation 
 of events, great men, peoples, customs, ideas, 
 land-shapes, and climates. 
 
 It is also easy, too easy, for schoolboys to 
 acquire a considerable mass of historical fact. 
 But I would rather, at any time, have taken into 
 my College a boy with good training in languages 
 and literature and promise of historical com- 
 prehension, than a boy who had at his fingers' 
 ends the whole historical sequence of several 
 world periods. 
 
 Thus there is not much at eighteen to separate 
 the historical student from the student of litera- 
 
SCHOLARSHIPS IN HISTORY 147 
 
 ture. Both should have had up to that age a 
 similar training and should show similar know- 
 ledge. The difference between them is a difference 
 of taste and bent which can be allowed to assert 
 itself later. Language is of so great importance 
 to the student of history, history of so great 
 importance to the student of language, that these 
 tw r o classes of scholars need not be separated in 
 schoolboy training or testing. 
 
 Coming to examinations at the University, 
 I have said elsewhere what I have to say about 
 matriculation tests. Other examinations at the 
 University are either professional or educational. 
 Professional examinations at the University 
 should have a strong educational element. The 
 German school training, with its greater duration 
 and severity, may afford a sufficient groundwork 
 for university specialisation. Our school training 
 does not and cannot. Part of this groundwork 
 should be supplied at the University. Moreover, 
 a man cannot learn to be a lawyer, a doctor, an 
 engineer, at the University. He can acquire 
 at the University a sound scientific basis for his 
 professional studies. This can be tested. The 
 University should also strive to secure for him 
 a sound training in the art of expression, and 
 a wide outlook on adjoining branches of know- 
 ledge. The first of these, at least, should be 
 tested ; the other if possible. But at some time 
 or other, preferably after leaving the University, 
 he will have to serve an apprenticeship in a 
 lawyer's chambers, in an hospital, in engineering 
 
148 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 works. How far the knowledge there acquired 
 can be tested by examination, and by what 
 methods, I leave to the experts. 
 
 In the educational subjects there should be 
 a certain practical element. Those who study 
 mathematics or natural science do not all study 
 merely to improve their minds and widen their 
 outlook; some of them, it is to be presumed, 
 have a professional end which they seek. Such 
 professional ends should be kept in view in teach- 
 ing and examination, if these and similar studies 
 are not to prove blind-alleys. 
 
 But, taking the educational studies in a block, 
 they fall into two main groups, the exact sciences 
 and the inexact sciences. Each group has its 
 own drawbacks as a preparation for life. The 
 exact sciences are those which deal with things; 
 their method is a method of exact observa- 
 tion, weighing, measuring, counting, dissecting 
 analysis in all its forms. But life has many 
 elements which cannot be measured or exactly 
 analysed, but require to be estimated by judgement 
 and imagination. The examination in exact 
 science, to correct the effects of exclusive 
 attention to things which can be proved, should 
 endeavour to test imagination and synthetical 
 comprehension. The mutual relations of the 
 separate sciences (which are not really separate) 
 should be continually brought under notice. 
 
 The inexact sciences, if I may so call them, 
 are those which deal with man, his nature, his 
 history, his social relations, and the words by 
 
SCIENCES, EXACT AND INEXACT 149 
 
 which he expresses or endeavours to express his 
 mind. Here imagination, intuitive sympathy, 
 and all kinds of intellectual short-cuts have their 
 full scope. The results of such estimative 
 processes can rarely be brought to a practical 
 test ; the more need in the inexact sciences to 
 insist on accuracy and exactitude, wherever these 
 qualities can be tested. Proof should be required 
 wherever proof is possible; reasoning should be 
 demanded, wherever reasoning can be applied; 
 that very inexact instrument, the word, should 
 be forced to take on so much accuracy and nicety 
 as it will bear. 
 
 Exactitude is all important in life, but skilful 
 guess-work is also needed in every art of life. 
 In history exactitude is needed as a corrective; 
 in science imagination and speculation should be 
 encouraged. It is hardly too much to say that 
 every scientific discovery begins with a guess, 
 verified thereafter by experiment and further 
 observation. In science there is yet one other 
 danger; scientific authority, professing to be 
 based on exact proof, is allowed to enjoy excessive 
 prestige ; when a grown man is learning he should 
 be encouraged to test his authorities, however 
 august, though not, of course, with undue levity. 
 The dogmas of science are from time to time 
 reminted, but they are often much worn before 
 they are called in. 
 
 Studies may also be divided into abstract and 
 concrete. The inexact sciences have their ab- 
 stract section, which we call ethical, psychological, 
 
150 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 economic, and political philosophy. The exact 
 sciences have their own philosophy. Above all 
 .the sciences stands metaphysical philosophy. 
 
 The philosophical side of exact and inexact 
 sciences should not be neglected in examination. 
 But I have nothing to say about examination 
 in philosophy by itself, except that from the 
 examiners' point of view it makes no difference 
 whether the examination be in Ancient or in 
 Modern Philosophy; and that I should entirely 
 mistrust an examination in philosophy of candi- 
 dates who had not proved in other ways their 
 knowledge of the human and material world 
 about which we philosophise. 
 
 I say, once more, that examination cannot test 
 education; it can only test the results of study 
 and instruction. If a boy has been for a certain 
 number of years at an efficient school you have 
 a guarantee of education. If he has also lived 
 in a good home you have a still better guarantee 
 of education. The second cannot be entered on 
 a certificate; the first can. Thus a leaving 
 certificate, as designed, gives a proof of education 
 as well as of the results of study and instruction. 
 It is worth at least twice as much as a certificate 
 granted on the results of examination alone. 
 An university degree in like manner should be 
 a certificate of residence in a teaching University, 
 and should not be awarded merely on examination. 
 I have great sympathy for the external students 
 of London University who have in the past by 
 examination obtained a degree without residence. 
 
TESTS FOR DEGREES 151 
 
 It is natural that they should be attached to 
 the examining institution from which they have 
 got so much. But now that teaching Universities 
 are within the reach of the chief part of those 
 who are competent to profit by their instruction, 
 their tradition, and their atmosphere, university 
 degrees should only be granted to students who 
 have had an university education. It follows 
 that degrees should not be refused on the ground 
 of sex to those who have had an university 
 education, and have passed the other tests. 
 
 A degree being in part a guarantee of university 
 education, degree examinations should test know- 
 ledge rather than learning. Professors are men 
 of learning, but they should not aspire to create 
 men in their own image to usurp the Divine 
 prerogative. It is not the first business of a 
 Professor to train other Professors; his first 
 business is to train the young for life. If the 
 training is right, he need not be anxious about 
 the supply of Professors. If the undergraduate 
 training is right, and the post-graduate training 
 is right, the supply of the right sort of Professors 
 will never be lacking. 
 
 A stiff examination is regarded with awe and 
 admiration, especially by those who never could 
 pass one. But an easy examination, with sound 
 and thoughtful examiners, is a better test of 
 knowledge and ability. The syllabus should 
 comprise less than the students can fully assimi- 
 late; extraneous, or supererogatory knowledge 
 will easily make its presence felt, and, with wise 
 
152 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 examiners, will tell in the class list. The best 
 students will always want to wander a little 
 beyond the appointed path; if the syllabus is 
 too exacting, the liberty of learning is curtailed. 
 
 I cannot speak of all examinations, but in 
 those which I know best historical examinations 
 questions should almost always contain some 
 kind of problem or rider; if possible, an easy 
 problem that has not been handled in the books. 
 The knowledge tested should not go beyond that 
 which a man of second-class stamp should possess. 
 The first-class man will show himself by the ease 
 and skill with which he moves in a field where 
 he ought to be at home. If he is learned he can 
 always show his learning on whatever questions 
 may be set ; examinations, however, are not to 
 test learning, but sound knowledge and ability. 
 It is hard work to set a good examination paper ; 
 none harder, that I know. The examiner should 
 pass all his knowledge through his mind to 
 discover new points of view, new associations. 
 To create a new question means that you have 
 found a new aspect of the obvious and familiar. 
 But as a rule old questions can be given a new 
 face. The examiner who tries to vary his papers 
 by straying into new fields of fact will almost 
 certainly set unfair questions; and unfair 
 questions should never be set. Questions should 
 always demand a little less learning than the 
 second-class man need be expected to possess. 
 
 I feel sure, from observing the methods of the 
 best examiners, that the same principles apply 
 to examinations in law, and literature. Examina- 
 
PROBLEMS IN QUESTIONS 153 
 
 tions in language are always problem papers, 
 unless the candidate knows the passages set for 
 translation. In the Classical languages the well- 
 read candidate knows most of the passages that 
 can fairly be set. That is unlucky; memory is 
 apt to become too important. I never knew how 
 hard Juvenal was until a new passage was dis- 
 covered, for which no commentary existed. 
 Stock translations hold the field. Sessilis obba 
 is well translated by " squab noggin/' though 
 " squat " is better; if a candidate gives " squab 
 noggin " it is obvious that his memory is to be 
 praised rather than his invention. He has lost 
 a chance of doing better than Conington. 
 
 In modern languages, especially French, it is 
 hard to find passages which are difficult without 
 being recondite in vocabulary. But translation 
 into French can be made by well-selected passages 
 to present an abundance of crucial difficulties, 
 that do not pass fair limits. 
 
 I am told that in the old Mathematical Tripos 
 the problem method had been overdone. I bow 
 to expert opinion; but, so far as my experience 
 extends, I should always prefer the problem 
 test to the bookwork test. To do the problems 
 you must have some familiarity with the book- 
 work. 
 
 If the examination papers are well set, if they 
 neither demand too much learning nor too little, 
 if they are framed to test intelligence, then the 
 question arises of marking. There are two 
 methods of marking, by numbers, and by classes. 
 
154 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 If the choice between these two methods is open, 
 I unhesitatingly prefer the class mark with modifi- 
 cations; a +,a, a, etc. And for this reason, 
 that the examiner, in assigning an a or a /?, or a <5, 
 is forced to give a judgement on the paper as a 
 whole. If numerical marks are adopted, the 
 examiner, after marking each question in turn 
 and adding up his total, is apt to think that his 
 work is done. He is prone to regard his marks 
 as the act of God ; they must not be tampered 
 with. If cross-examined as to why he gave a mark 
 which does not seem to agree with his judgement, 
 as expressed in his own words, he may say : 
 " I don't know; the candidate is a good mark- 
 getter" (or a bad mark-getter, as the case may be). 
 
 But it is his business to watch the marks, and 
 see that the total, as well as the items, represents 
 his deliberate judgement. If he does that, there 
 is not much to choose between the two methods. 
 
 The rivalry between the two methods of 
 numerical marks and class- judgement corre- 
 sponds pretty closely to the rivalry between 
 mechanical marking and impression marking 
 which raged among Classical scholars many years 
 ago. There were three fellows of St. Sophia's 
 and three fellows of St. Michael's examining in 
 a certain competition. The Sophites stood for 
 " marks " ; the Michaelites for " impression." 
 St. Sophia's happened to bring out the scholars of 
 their own College first : St. Michael's preferred 
 the Michaelites; but that was an accident. 
 The point is that differently considered the 
 candidates came out in different order. I forget 
 
MARKS VERSUS IMPRESSION 155 
 
 how the matter was settled. But, unless the 
 Sophites corrected their " marks " by " im- 
 pression," I would a priori support the 
 Michaelites. 
 
 It is very difficult to persuade people who are 
 only accustomed to marks to consider impression 
 as well. Though you may persuade them that 
 they have brought out the candidates in the 
 wrong order they will not regard the error as 
 indicating any fault on their own part. It is 
 difficult to bring home to those who are accus- 
 tomed to produce numerical totals that their 
 particular duty with regard to a class list is to 
 put the candidates into three or four classes : 
 in fact, to give a class- judgement on each candidate. 
 It is also very difficult for those who are accus- 
 tomed to marking by class- judgement to commute 
 their class- judgements into numerical marks. And 
 this is a real difficulty ; for in class marks a = 
 comes next to ft + + . Yet a = means that 
 first class quality appears in the paper and 
 ft + + that second class quality alone is evident. 
 There should be a f airly big numerical gap between 
 them. This difficulty is met in practice (where 
 examiners have to be fettered by rules) by allow- 
 ing the assignment of marks up to a certain 
 percentage for positive merit which does not 
 receive recognition in the total of items. 
 
 I have said enough to show that marking in 
 examinations is a very difficult thing; it is one 
 of the inexact sciences; in fact, it is rather an 
 art than a science. But only once in a wide ex- 
 perience have I met an examiner who brought the 
 
156 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 candidates out in an order which conformed to 
 no recognisable standard of merit. He was a 
 man of great distinction ; but he was never 
 employed again by that examining body. How- 
 ever, personal equations vary. Yet the personal 
 equation cannot be wholly discounted by appoint- 
 ing two examiners to examine every paper. If 
 you have two examiners, they may mark on 
 different scales; one may be a " flat-marker," 
 that is, he does not bring out the due proportional 
 difference between the best and the worst; the 
 marks of the other may exhibit a normal curve. 
 To average these two will not produce a satis- 
 factory result : the marks of the " flat-marker " 
 should first be " spread " by proportional in- 
 crease and reduction. A "flat-marker" should 
 always be mistrusted; he has no sound sense of 
 proportion; he approaches the impartiality of 
 the illustrious examiner who gave almost all 
 his candidates ft , adding a query to his mark. 
 If he cannot see the true scale difference between 
 good and bad, it is doubtful whether he will 
 rightly distinguish between candidates of more 
 nearly equal merit. But, apart from differences 
 of scale between two good examiners, if two 
 examiners mark the work of a certain candidate, 
 the one at forty, the other at ninety (which I 
 have known to happen) justice is not done by 
 splitting the difference. One of them is probably 
 much more nearly right than the other; strict 
 justice would require that a third opinion should 
 be taken, unless the two after meeting can 
 agree upon a mark. But the referee should at 
 
TRAINING OF EXAMINERS 157 
 
 least sample the work of the other candidates; 
 you cannot mark one paper by itself. Marking 
 is a relative, not an absolute judgement. 
 
 Arithmetic papers are easy to mark; history 
 papers much more difficult; an English essay 
 perhaps the hardest of all. But if I go on much 
 longer I shall shake the faith of the public in 
 numerical marks altogether. That I do not want 
 to^do. For in open competitions, where a number 
 of subjects and different examiners are concerned, 
 numerical marks are necessary, and they are 
 probably as good a test of the kind of merit they 
 are capable of testing as any other test that can 
 be applied. They do not do absolute justice; 
 but, if examiners are carefully chosen, and their 
 work is tested from time to time, a very tolerable 
 approximation may be obtained. 
 
 But one thing I should like to require : that 
 every aspirant examiner should go to school with 
 an expert and trustworthy old hand, who will 
 teach him what kind of papers ought to be set, 
 and how to appraise the results. Otherwise he 
 will do a vast amount of damage before he learns 
 this trade, and perhaps may never learn the art 
 after all. I shudder to think of all the blunders 
 I should have committed had I not early in life 
 found myself in partnership with Mr. A. and 
 Professor B. Examining is an art, and cannot be 
 picked up by rule of thumb, unless you are 
 prepared to spoil a great deal of good material. 
 Experience teaches; but it is cheaper to learn 
 from the experience of others. In examining 
 you can have a good tradition, or a bad tradition. 
 
158 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 Open competition leads to cramming, in various 
 forms. One definition of cramming is instruction 
 without education. However good the instruc- 
 tion, it loses fully half its value if it is not part 
 of a well-devised scheme of education. For this 
 reason I hope that some day, for the several 
 competitions of the Civil Service, we may be 
 able to require (according to circumstances) 
 a first leaving certificate, a second leaving 
 certificate, or an university degree as a condition 
 of entry. Then we should have a guarantee of 
 suitable education, and the results of the com- 
 petitions would be much more trustworthy. 
 
 But in another sense cramming is forcing the 
 boy or youth to acquire learning not for its 
 own sake, nor for purposes of education but for 
 the purposes of the examination. There must 
 always be some cramming so long as competition 
 is severe. If cramming by a crammer (instruction 
 without education) is excluded, we shall still get 
 cramming in the schools. If cramming only 
 means hard work, I see no harm in that, 
 after a certain age and with normal, healthy 
 boys. But, if cramming means the acquisition of 
 great masses of undigested information, that is 
 the fault of the examination. Some subjects 
 cannot be crammed in this sense. Mathematics, 
 languages, English, cannot be crammed if the 
 papers are properly constructed. History is 
 more liable to be crammed; for this reason the 
 papers should be cunningly drafted so as to 
 require no more learning than can easily be carried, 
 and to test as far as possible ability and comprc- 
 
CRAMMING. VIVA VOCE 159 
 
 hension. The same with Geography. English 
 literature can hardly be crammed if the questions 
 are based right down upon the texts, and not on 
 the text-books or the commentaries. 
 
 I think viva voce examination should be 
 introduced as far as possible into competitive 
 examinations. When the numbers are great 
 this is impossible : in any case it means a great 
 expenditure of time and money. But it is worth 
 while. Written examinations test the power of 
 expression on paper. The power of expression 
 by the spoken word is not less important. This 
 we cannot test without an oral examination. 
 In a competition where considerable choice of 
 subjects is allowed the candidates should be 
 examined orally in the subject of their choice, 
 and also on topics which ought to be familiar 
 to every candidate of that age and training. 
 Two skilled examiners should be present through- 
 out to conduct the general examination, and to 
 keep a level standard in the various special 
 examinations. 
 
 It is often said that viva voce examination is 
 unfair, because some candidates suffer from 
 nervousness. But some candidates suffer from 
 nervousness in written examination, and never 
 do themselves justice. I am inclined to think 
 that self-possession under examination, oral or 
 other, indicates qualities which should receive 
 credit. 
 
 Practical competitive examinations in science 
 present great difficulty. If the numbers are 
 
i6o EXAMINATIONS 
 
 great, they become impossible. If the numbers 
 exceed a moderate total, all the candidates cannot 
 be examined in the same room. It then becomes 
 necessary to vary the problems, from session to 
 session. And, however much care may be taken, 
 it is impossible to be quite certain that all the 
 problems set will be of equal difficulty. The 
 chief object of including a practical examination 
 in an open competition is to ensure that no 
 candidate should get credit who had not received 
 the requisite training in a laboratory. If this 
 could be secured otherwise, I think the practical 
 examination might be dispensed with. Questions 
 could be set to test the competence of candidates 
 in dealing with laboratory problems. It would 
 not be a bad exercise or test to ask the candidate 
 to state in words what he would do if he were 
 asked to solve a certain problem in a laboratory 
 with specified appliances. 
 
 Oral examinations in modern foreign languages 
 are necessary. But if the numbers are very 
 great they are impossible. The result is that the 
 Civil Service Commissioners assign high marks 
 for French and German in one competition at 
 least, with no guarantee that the candidates can 
 pronounce correctly any single word. I do not 
 see how this can be avoided in existing circum- 
 stances. But I console myself by the reflexion 
 that the same is true when we deal with Latin 
 and Greek. Some day, however, we may find 
 a way to defeat the dilemma. The Leaving 
 Certificate may help us out of it. 
 
 Practical work in Mathematics measuring 
 
WHAT DO EXAMINATIONS TEST? 161 
 
 and so forth bothers some of the old-fashioned 
 teachers. Not an expert myself, I have been 
 obliged to hear the arguments. I have no doubt 
 that the practical work has it. Our staff had 
 an acute controversy with an eminent Professor 
 about arithmetical illustrations in certain ques- 
 tions of high mathematics. The Professor 
 declared that arithmetic had nothing to do with 
 mathematics. After hearing counsel on both 
 sides, and the evidence of experts, we non-suited 
 the Professor ; it is, of course, a matter of opinion, 
 but I hope we were right. 
 
 What do examinations test? I have said 
 that they test the results of instruction and 
 study : study is more important than instruction, 
 though instruction is also important. But I 
 will go a little further. They test industry and 
 perseverance and readiness to think at the 
 required moment. I also think they test ability 
 if the papers are rightly constructed; though 
 the kind of ability which they test is of little 
 value, unless it be accompanied by certain 
 qualities which examination cannot test. Some 
 of those qualities are more likely to be present 
 if methodical education has had its chance. 
 That is the value of a leaving certificate or an 
 university degree. It is true that a man who has 
 never been to school or to an University may have 
 received a better education than those who have. 
 But such cases are exceptional; and we cannot 
 legislate for exceptions. The man who has had 
 such an excellent education is lucky enough ; he 
 M 
 
162 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 need not complain if he finds one or two drawbacks. 
 Nor can the State expect to get all the best 
 people for its posts. There is a trifling thing, 
 the world outside the Civil Service, which also 
 has great claims, great needs, and not insignificant 
 opportunities for the meritorious. 
 
 Mr. P. J. Hartog, in an interesting paper, said 
 examination could only test the power to do 
 a definite thing, e. g. to do sums in Arithmetic, or 
 write French prose. And I think he suggested 
 that the powers which could be tested by 
 examination were not in themselves of much 
 importance. There is much truth in what he 
 said. We conduct all sorts of technical examina- 
 tions for architects, surveyors, draughtsmen, 
 engineers, book-keepers, etc. The examination 
 papers look thoroughly business-like, but I would 
 not rely upon the results unless I also knew that 
 the candidates had had a thorough practical 
 training. And even then the best man on paper 
 might not be the best man at his job. But, 
 whatever method of selection is adopted, you 
 cannot avoid mistakes, and bad bargains. The 
 candidates think that examination is fairer than 
 personal selection, and I for one am not prepared 
 to disagree with them; if among the qualities 
 to be looked for are those which can be tested 
 by examination. Where experience of definite 
 work in the world is needed and candidates must 
 be of mature age, personal selection by an 
 impartial authority is the only way. 
 
 But there is one fundamental assumption 
 which underlies all forms of open competition. 
 
FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS 163 
 
 The assumption is that there is a substantial 
 similarity among the candidates. If one candi- 
 date has had a methodical education, and another 
 has been crammed, this assumption breaks down. 
 I think that if women compete with men it also 
 breaks down. Still more, if the candidates are 
 of different race. If you had a competition in 
 which Englishmen and Chinamen competed 
 together, it might happen I think it very likely 
 would that Chinamen would win all the places. 
 That would be all right if the fundamental 
 qualities required in the Service were those 
 possessed as a rule by Chinamen. But if the 
 qualities desired were those most common among 
 Englishmen then it would be all wrong. 
 
 For this reason I dislike competitions between 
 Orientals and Englishmen. The fundamental 
 qualities are different. If Orientals are wanted, 
 let them compete among themselves. If British 
 are wanted, let them compete among themselves. 
 I do not think the fundamental differences 
 between Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen, 
 Irishmen, are sufficient seriously to disturb the 
 results. Whether the differences between the 
 Mohammedan races of India, the Bengali, the 
 Sikhs, the Mahrathas, the Madrasi, are sufficient 
 to vitiate a competition open to all India, I 
 leave to experts. Such a competition would 
 clearly be more sound than one which was open 
 to all India, and the United Kingdom as well. 
 
 Some will regard examinations as inhuman and 
 unpractical ; others will regard them with favour 
 
1 64 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 as bringing the best man to the front, without 
 handicap from accidents of birth or influence. 
 Neither of these views embodies the whole 
 truth; each is in possession of a part of the 
 truth. But, if we remember that examination 
 is only a test of the results of study and instruc- 
 tion, that it is all important what that study and 
 instruction has been, with what education it 
 has been linked, then we see a line along which 
 progress may be made. But the tribunal which 
 is sufficiently wise and impartial to dispense 
 altogether with examinations has not yet been 
 made, and I see no likelihood that it will be 
 speedily established. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 HISTORY 
 
 PERHAPS, if we were atoms ourselves, we 
 should find that each atom was endowed with a 
 different individuality. Then we should be unable 
 to forecast with certainty the behaviour of other 
 atoms, each by each or in the lump. It may be 
 that the uniformity of nature, the certainty of 
 physical law, illusions of human minds, are 
 effects of distance. Or it may be that the caprice 
 of human nature, the uncertainty of human 
 action, the pleasing hazard of human affairs, 
 disappear not only in the sight of God but in the 
 sight of beings infinitely less remote. As seen by 
 man, however, man is above all things diverse 
 and incalculable ; material nature as seen by man 
 appears to obey fixed laws. The caprice of matter, 
 the immutable laws of human conduct, are things 
 which may exist, but have not been by us observed. 
 Human nature craves for certainty. Given a 
 judgement, man elevates it into a precedent. 
 Given a hint, he stiffens it to a rule. Given a 
 principle, he kills it and calls its stuffed image a 
 law. Given a wise man's teaching, he establishes 
 a system. Granted a vision of the Eternal, he 
 formulates an Athanasian orthodoxy. 
 
 165 
 
166 HISTORY 
 
 But in the realm of human affairs not certainty 
 but probability is king. Of two men of business, 
 equal in courage, accuracy, industry, and know- 
 ledge, he who guesses best will succeed. The 
 great leader may dazzle with his rhetoric, his 
 logic, his wide information, but he convinces by 
 confidence in his own speculative forecast. 
 Analyse as we may the daring conjectures that 
 have changed the world, after examining the 
 processes of research, logic, and invention by 
 which the trail was found, we still must acknow- 
 ledge something beyond these, some flash of soul 
 which lays the East at the feet of Alexander, 
 opens a new world to Columbus, or reveals the 
 cosmic laws to Newton. Man has a gift of 
 guessing ; the slave of certainty is an unprofitable 
 servant, who lets his talent tarnish in a napkin. 
 
 Man cannot know mankind, by one or by many, 
 as he can know the rhythm of the conic curves. 
 But, for dealing with man, he has a gift of sympa- 
 thetic intuition which may be cultivated or 
 allowed to die. He can cultivate it by experience, 
 by intercourse with his fellow-men, in the school, 
 the playground, the market, the workshop, the 
 law-court, the street, the committee-room, the 
 meeting-hall. But our own experience, however 
 wide, is too narrow if we can make it wider. We 
 can widen it indefinitely by communion with the 
 great minds of the dead and the living writers, 
 by travelling the crowded and bustling ways of 
 history. The knowledge of values, the sense of 
 proportion, the power of speculative forecast, the 
 gift of sympathetic intuition, are strengthened 
 
CERTAINTY AND PROBABILITY 167 
 
 by experience; history is vicarious experience; 
 experience itself is history, our own history. 
 
 The man, still more the boy, who devotes 
 himself exclusively to mathematics or natural 
 science or both, gains in command of certainty; 
 he loses in command of probability, in knowledge 
 of man. What he gains may be worth more to 
 him; but, whatever his gifts, his nature, his 
 temperament, he loses something; what he loses 
 is especially important in public and adminis- 
 trative life knowledge that will assist his con- 
 structive imagination. 
 
 The man who deliberately sets out to exercise 
 his power of guessing may find himself in the 
 Bankruptcy Court. Those who pride themselves 
 on sympathetic intuition are not always more 
 wise; they are generally more tiresome. Self- 
 consciousness hampers and stultifies all effort. 
 But we can help the youth without stimulating 
 his self-consciousness. We can put him to studies 
 which will tend to develop those gifts, we can put 
 him in an atmosphere in which such gifts are 
 fostered. Or we can do the reverse. 
 
 The great achievements of the natural sciences 
 have aroused in the humane sciences an unprofit- 
 able rivalry. The word science itself suggests 
 methods appropriate to the natural sciences. 
 When men speak of historical science, economic 
 science, political science, they are, unless I 
 misjudge them, claiming for their methods and 
 their results an accuracy, a certainty, which is 
 unattainable in those fields. In support of these 
 claims they are apt to make parade with methodi- 
 
168 HISTORY 
 
 cal and tedious disquisitions which should be kept 
 in the background. If we spend too much time 
 on the processes by which knowledge can be 
 obtained, we omit to build our knowledge. If 
 we are over-anxious to be certain about trifles, 
 we lose the wider outlook, the greater illumina- 
 tion. The most instructive things that can be 
 said about history, economics, politics, are things 
 which have no universal validity, which show an 
 aspect of truth but not its rounded whole, which 
 assist the conclusions of wisdom, but do not 
 determine them. For these reasons I prefer not 
 to speak of historical, economic, political science, 
 but of the learning, knowledge, wisdom, or 
 philosophy, of history, economics, or politics as 
 the case may be. If the term science is used in 
 such connexion let us be sure that by science we 
 do not mean an exact science, but a science which 
 is content with probability based on imperfect 
 knowledge. 
 
 Aristotle, a wise man, was wont at a certain 
 point of his argument to test his provisional 
 conclusions by an appeal to ra evdoga received 
 opinions commending themselves to ordinary 
 minds. Some of the doctrines of common sense 
 are enshrined in proverbs ; and it is well known 
 that many proverbs can be found which other 
 proverbs contradict. Each proverb in the several 
 pairs enshrines an aspect of practical wisdom. 
 The same is true of general historical proposi- 
 tions : they may be true, they are never the whole 
 truth; positive and negative, they may both be 
 true. History repeats itself history never re- 
 
THE HALF-WHOLE OF KNOWLEDGE 169 
 
 peats itself ; history is made by great men history 
 is made by the silent masses; war is the test- 
 stone of human endeavour, the school of all the 
 virtues war is the great illusion; progress is 
 from status to contract progress is from contract 
 to status. The doctrines of political economy 
 were at first enunciated as if they possessed 
 universal validity ; the same doctrines have since 
 been drafted anew with greater care as statements 
 of tendency; but the error still prevails among 
 economists of seeking mathematical certainty 
 in human affairs. 
 
 I claim for history the half-whole of knowledge 
 the knowledge of man in the past and in the 
 present a knowledge in which outward fact 
 alone can be certain, interpretation may be 
 illuminating, but cannot be certain. The philo- 
 sophies I leave outside ; they are modes of thought, 
 dealing now with natural knowledge, now with 
 humane knowledge, now with things beyond our 
 knowledge; only when they claim to influence 
 conduct they come within the sphere of history, 
 and their conclusions must be judged in the court 
 of history. What is false in history can never be 
 true in ethics, psychology, economics, or politics. 
 
 By the individual, knowledge may be pursued 
 for a practical end as an engineer learns mathe- 
 matics or it may be pursued for its own sake. 
 In education rewards, punishments, the desire of 
 approbation, the desire of self-advancement, are 
 useful as incentives. But the study of history 
 cannot attain its fruit without the desire to know 
 
170 HISTORY 
 
 and understand what has been and what is. The 
 man who reads history to improve his mind is 
 like the man who eats his dinner because it is 
 good for him there is something wrong with the 
 meal or something wrong with the man. Brilliant 
 writing, dramatic statement, personal anecdote, 
 political application, are sauces, good or bad; 
 but plain cooking should suffice for appetite. 
 History is always interesting unless it is made 
 dull by dull people. But different history is 
 interesting at different grades of mental develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Seeley said : " I do not attempt to make history 
 interesting ; if a man does not find history interest- 
 ing, I do not alter the history ; I try to alter him/' 
 The statement is striking, but not complete in 
 truth. No one, I should say, ever tried less than 
 Seeley to alter his pupils. He approached them 
 with the conviction that what he had to say was 
 interesting; his exposition was admirable in its 
 economy of fact, its luminous interpretation; 
 many who never knew before what history was 
 were captivated. The public was hit by his 
 Expansion of England ; yet I doubt if he knew 
 that he was writing a popular work. It is true 
 that he did not try to alter history ; but not being 
 a dull man, nor adhering to a dull convention, he 
 impressed it with his own mark. History is in- 
 teresting ; it is therefore not necessary to make it 
 interesting ; but it is quite easy to make it dull ; 
 as you can spoil good food in the cooking. 
 
 The State, however, should need to be con- 
 
THE SCOPE OF HISTORY 171 
 
 vinced, not only that history is interesting but 
 that it is useful, before public money is spent 
 upon it. Art for art's sake, knowledge for the 
 sake of knowledge, research for the sake of 
 research, these are mottoes good enough for indi- 
 viduals who give their own time, their own money, 
 their own lives. They do not justify a public 
 grant; they do not justify institutions, endow- 
 ments, salaries. Education in history can be 
 justified by arguments ; but I speak to a public 
 already convinced, to a public that every day 
 shows greater eagerness to learn of the present 
 and the past. I need only point out that all the 
 human things we teach languages, literature, 
 archaeology, art, anthropology, ethnology, econo- 
 mics, politics, law, sociology all are affluents, 
 tributaries of history, all find their meaning and 
 their unity in history, in the knowledge of the 
 quick and the dead. What is it to be parochial, 
 provincial, insular, but to lack the wider view 
 that history can give? Even a little knowledge 
 of man is good ; our widest knowledge of man is 
 co-extensive with our knowledge of history. 
 
 Can history be taught? That depends upon 
 the object of the teaching. You cannot teach a 
 man to be a creative historian nascitur, non fit. 
 The greatest English historian of our time 
 Maitland began as a mathematician, continued 
 as a philosopher, worked as a practical lawyer. 
 No one of these studies is specially appropriate 
 to an historian. But his natural, his hereditary 
 bent prevailed. The law spoke to him as a lawyer ; 
 
172 HISTORY 
 
 it spoke to him more clearly, more compellingly, 
 as an historian. The law of to-day led him back 
 to the beginnings of law in this country. The 
 antiquities of law took new form when irradiated 
 by his imagination. He did not think it a duty 
 to be dull; he knew that humour and wit were 
 given to illuminate a sober and laborious path. 
 He made the dry bones live, the dead bones 
 of Doomsday Book, of Bracton's Notes, of the 
 Year Books. The sympathetic intuition of which 
 I speak he possessed in the highest degree. It 
 is the gift of history, it is the gift of the historian. 
 I do not pretend that teaching can do much for 
 a Maitland. 
 
 The true spirit of a researcher cannot be evoked 
 by teaching ; though it can be communicated by 
 example. The technicalities of the trade can be 
 taught ; the business of the trade can be encour- 
 aged and fostered; we can thus breed hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water, necessary folk. But 
 for vivifying research broad foundations must be 
 laid; it is a mistake to encourage research, as is 
 done in Germany, before the foundations are 
 completed. 
 
 If we pass to lower grades, it is lamentably easy 
 to teach, to induce the acquisition, of the facts 
 and commonplaces of history. We are inundated 
 with text-books which tell us, not only what 
 happened, but why it happened and what it 
 meant. These things are learnt by heart and 
 reproduced in examination papers. But where 
 knowledge of fact or of conventional explanation 
 outstrips the capacity to think, to interpret, to 
 
LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING 173 
 
 understand, our instruction does harm rather 
 than good. In no branch of study is there greater 
 danger that learning may be mistaken for know- 
 ledge, that teaching may outrun intelligence. 
 I am afraid that the university systems with their 
 overloaded schedules, the entrance scholarships 
 for specialists in history, almost all the examina- 
 tions in history, tend to increase this danger. 
 Examinations in history for boys under sixteen 
 are not desirable; if they are necessary they 
 should be quite different from those with which I 
 am acquainted ; but these, I presume, are designed 
 to suit the teaching actually in fashion. Thus we 
 get a vicious circle. The examinations cannot be 
 altered because they must fit the teaching; the 
 teaching cannot be altered because of the 
 examinations. 
 
 How then should history be brought to the 
 notice of boys under fourteen, boys under sixteen, 
 boys under nineteen, and men at the University ? 
 
 It will be clear to my readers that I draw no 
 hard and fast line between history and literature. 
 Both deal with the facts of the human soul, 
 human nature, human life, human action. Both 
 aim at interpreting man to man. History has a 
 larger substratum of ascertained fact; but its 
 value depends not only on the accuracy of its 
 statements, but on the truth of its interpretation. 
 The facts of literature are of a more generalised, 
 sometimes of a more individual character, but 
 they should be true, as true as those of history 
 true to life, and true to human nature; and the 
 
174 HISTORY 
 
 gift of genius to man is a gift of interpretation and 
 of insight. History, no more than literature, can 
 afford to neglect the art of expression; however 
 brilliant our discoveries, however illuminating the 
 connexions we establish, however deep our wisdom, 
 what we have to say loses its compelling, its 
 illuminative force, if it is presented in a gloomy, 
 uncouth, or catalogic form. What we seek in 
 literature, what we seek from history, is knowledge 
 of man. What history gives and literature does 
 not, is a knowledge of man in his groups, his 
 communities, his nations, which have a psychology 
 as real as that of the individual elusive in both 
 cases, but none the less existent and perceptible. 
 It is not true to say that a nation is merely the 
 sum of its individual citizens ; it would be as true 
 to say that I am the sum of the molecules which 
 compose my body. I read in this day's Times 
 that " names and dates are the stock-in-trade of 
 history/' Not so : the stock-in-trade of history 
 is an apperception of the unity and unities that 
 explain the weltering chaos of human life. The 
 names and dates are only headings in the stock- 
 book, which do not by any means cover all the 
 entries. The stock is more important than the 
 inventory. 
 
 It is my contention that the teaching of history 
 and the teaching of literature should go hand-in- 
 hand, from first to last ; that, here above all, the 
 desire for knowledge is our greatest motive force, 
 for every normal boy, every normal man, wants 
 to know about his fellow-creatures. We should 
 need no compulsion, beyond the need to fix the 
 
STORIES 175 
 
 volatile attention of the young when it wanders. 
 History is interesting and we can rely upon its 
 own compulsion, unless by some error we make it 
 dull ; and that we may do, not only by our own 
 dullness, but by presenting things interesting in 
 themselves to the wrong people or at the wrong 
 time. History should be graded to suit the 
 different ages. 
 
 History is a distillation of stories ; stories are the 
 raw material of history; is there any child that 
 can resist a story ? 
 
 Let us then begin with stories. History, legend, 
 fable, fiction, everything that is suited to a child 
 will serve our purpose. Kingsley's Heroes, Haw- 
 thorne's Tanglewood Tales, the Arabian Nights, 
 Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, stories from the 
 Bible, stories from the Odyssey, stories from 
 Morte d' Arthur, everything of this kind will 
 serve to make the child familiar with people real 
 or imaginary living under conditions different 
 from his own. I was told of a schoolmaster who 
 taught the Norse Sagas " in order to give back- 
 ground for English composition." The practice 
 is excellent ; but the reason given is very profes- 
 sional. The schoolmaster meant the same thing 
 that I mean; he wanted to stock the children's 
 minds with imaginative figures, to extend their 
 range of vision, their scope of interest, to enrich 
 their poor horizon. He knew that by so doing he 
 would improve their English composition ; and so 
 he would ; his reason was not the best of reasons, 
 but any reason will serve that leads to sound 
 
176 HISTORY 
 
 practice ; especially if it leads the children to read 
 the stories for themselves. 
 
 Then let us come to stories more definitely 
 historical; let them range over the widest field. 
 David and Saul, Ahab and Elijah, Leonidas, the 
 lays of Ancient Rome, Coriolanus, Regulus, 
 King Alfred, Roland and Roncesvalles, Robin 
 Hood, Becket, King Richard and Blondel, 
 Henry V at Agincourt, Chevy Chase, the Princes 
 in the Tower, the Armada, the adventures of 
 Charles II, the Fire of London, the great Plague, 
 stories of Nelson ; these are only samples, there are 
 hundreds of stories which might be told, each 
 contributing something to " background/' 
 
 Then to personal biographies, each giving a 
 glimpse into great chapters of history : Alexander, 
 Hannibal, Caesar, Mohammed, Charlemagne, 
 Gregory VII, William the Conqueror, Saint Louis, 
 Louis XI of France, Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, 
 Charles I, Cromwell, Peter the Great, Clive, 
 Warren Hastings, Napoleon again only samples. 
 At each stage the historical setting of the personal 
 details will need to be more full, more precise : 
 but it is even more evident that geographical 
 instruction must help to fill out the pictures. 
 Indeed there is a large part of early historical 
 instruction that can only be reached through 
 geography. 
 
 When I say that history and geography should 
 be taught together, the geographers are up in 
 arms : they say : " You wish geography to be 
 made a servant of history." On the contrary, 
 
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 177 
 
 in the early stages, at least, I offer history as a 
 servant of geography. I once set out to write a 
 history for young children ; I found myself forced 
 to make it a geography; in that form its con- 
 struction proved a fascinating task. The first 
 thing that is necessary in history is to present to 
 the child persons, historical or legendary heroes, 
 living in conditions different from his own. To 
 make those conditions real the geographical setting 
 must at least be indicated. What is the story of 
 David, of Jason, of Theseus, without some know- 
 ledge of Palestine, the Black Sea, Crete and the 
 eastern Mediterranean? When we come to 
 Alexander, Columbus, Napoleon, geographical 
 conceptions become even more important. Above 
 all the conception of a country must begin to 
 emerge. It is easy to show a child France or 
 Italy on the map. The conception of a country 
 is in part a geographical conception; if it were 
 not so, why should we tell in the history of 
 England of cave-men, stone ages, bronze ages, 
 none of which had any part in the history of 
 Englishmen? But the conception of a country 
 is not only geographical; it is also political, 
 historical. There is no better way to give reality 
 to the name of France or Italy or Britain when 
 presented in a geographical lesson than to give 
 a sketch of the history of those countries, as 
 countries. They thus acquire an individuality, a 
 personality, which will give life and interest to 
 any geographical conceptions that may be grouped 
 about them. I do not say that it is easy to give 
 a sketch of the history of France or Italy which 
 
 N 
 
178 HISTORY 
 
 will be intelligible and attractive to children. 
 But I know that it can be done. 
 
 I would approach then the study of history with 
 children up to about the age of twelve from two 
 sides : by stories of persons involving more and 
 more the history of communities, of peoples, of 
 empires : thus the story of Napoleon can be made 
 personal, but the conception of warring states 
 cannot be excluded. On the other hand, it should 
 be approached from the side of geography, intro- 
 ducing with the geographical description of a 
 country a sketch of the story of that country; 
 affixing to any place the striking events and 
 monuments with which it is associated. As the 
 flood of ignorance sinks let a few peaks emerge : 
 if connexions and interrelations, the whole struc- 
 ture, are discovered later, so much the better; 
 but each isolated discovery is an item to the good. 
 I would have no dates up to this point, except 
 a few round numbers : for instance, that the 
 Norman Conquest was more than a thousand 
 years after Christ, the discovery of America about 
 fifteen hundred years after Christ. I doubt if 
 numerical dates have any meaning to the majority 
 of children. I once asked a Sunday-school boy : 
 How long ago Our Lord had lived ? He replied : 
 " Forty days/' To whom his companion : " No, 
 you silly; more like forty year." Neither of 
 these boys was feeble-minded, or ignorant as 
 school children go. 
 
 I see no waste, indeed, I see great advantage, 
 in telling the children many things that they will 
 utterly forget; on that point I have already 
 
EARLY HISTORICAL CONCEPTIONS 179 
 
 stated my view; but I would not willingly tell 
 them anything that they could not understand. 
 Before they left the elementary school they ought 
 to understand what a country, what a people, an 
 army, a navy, a government, a city, a law-court, 
 a law, a king, a parliament may be : not by precise 
 definitions, which like the received definition of 
 an island seldom square with the truth, but by 
 hints and discussions and descriptions, and by 
 encountering these concrete abstractions in the 
 movements of history. 
 
 I put world-history before English History, 
 mainly for two reasons : I desire to widen the 
 range of interest so far as possible : I want to 
 avoid all administrative detail; which is unin- 
 telligible to children who have no experience. I 
 care nothing for completeness at this stage : con- 
 nexions should be established, when it is possible ; 
 but it is impossible for children to form a fully- 
 connected picture of English or any other history. 
 
 But from twelve to fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, 
 whichever may be the school leaving age, I should 
 allow some more connected English History to 
 appear in the course. Not the whole of English 
 History ; some parts I should pass over rapidly : 
 a detailed knowledge of the Wars of the Roses is 
 of no general value. It is enough if the children 
 hear some of the picturesque detail, and know that 
 there were such wars and how they cleared the 
 ground. Britons, Romans, and Saxons, I would 
 have treated very broadly; emphasising chiefly 
 the building up of the people and the material 
 
i8o HISTORY 
 
 remains. Then (all this illustrated by architec- 
 ture) William I, Henry II to John, Edward I, the 
 French wars (chiefly strategical and tactical), 
 Henry VIII (not the names of his wives, nor the 
 liturgical and doctrinal aspects of the Reforma- 
 tion) , Elizabeth, Charles I and Cromwell. And then 
 the rest of the history (not constitutional, but the 
 big imperial movements and the great social 
 changes). Very little constitutional history, and 
 no legal history. It is ridiculous that boys of 
 under sixteen should be expected to know about 
 the Five Mile Act, the Habeas Corpus Act, or the 
 Sinking Fund : they cannot really understand 
 Magna Charta or the Constitutions of Clarendon ; 
 it is enough for them to know that Magna Charta 
 was the result of a quarrel between the King on 
 the one hand, the Bishops and Barons on the 
 other ; that the quarrel with Becket arose out of 
 the question whether the King could punish a 
 priest. The treatment of this history will be 
 different according as the pupils are to leave at 
 fourteen or stay on to sixteen : in the latter case 
 the extra time should chiefly be given to literature. 
 But even under fourteen more important than any 
 details of English history is the habit of reading 
 good books for personal satisfaction. 
 
 After sixteen all these dates are average and 
 approximate : development varies greatly in indi- 
 viduals the existing teaching and examining 
 of English History is very good, at its best ; let 
 the best practice be studied and followed, not 
 slavishly, but with understanding. But for 
 examination purposes I should like to have 
 
HISTORY VARIES IN IMPORTANCE 181 
 
 English History and Literature more closely 
 linked. I must repeat my protests, recorded 
 above, against specialisation in history at school, 
 and against the teaching of French and German 
 without the literature and history of France and 
 Germany. 
 
 I do not accept the dictum of Professor Bury, 
 that all history is equally important. All history 
 was no doubt equally important to those who lived 
 it, all history may be equally important to the 
 student, but all history is not equally important 
 in education, or equally illuminating to us, which 
 is the same thing. History is more or less im- 
 portant as we can know it better or worse. The 
 history of the Middle Ages is not, on the whole, 
 so important as the history of Greece and Rome, 
 because it is not so completely recorded or under- 
 stood. As a corollary, history is important, if it 
 is well backed by literature. Later Roman his- 
 tory is a fine university subject because of the 
 constructive work that can be done with inscrip- 
 tions, but it is not so illuminating as that of the 
 later Republic or early Principate, because it is 
 not so well backed by literature. History is 
 important if the interests at stake are large. 
 Thus, the battle of Salamis, the campaigns of 
 Hannibal, the victory of Charles Martel, the 
 defeat of Frederick Barbarossa in Italy, the 
 campaign of Moscow, are turning points of human 
 fortune. History is important if it extends our 
 field of knowledge. Thus the discovery of a skull 
 in Sussex, of a palace in Crete, of the Rosetta 
 Stone, rank as events of the greatest historical 
 
i82 HISTORY 
 
 moment. Above all history is more or less im- 
 portant as it touches us more or less closely. 
 Thus the history of Greece and Rome is far more 
 important to us than the history of Russia. 
 Without Greece and Rome we could not be what 
 we are ; we should be much what we are if Russia 
 were a desert. I speak here of the past ; I do not 
 mean to suggest that the present history of Russia 
 is not to us of great importance. 
 
 In teaching history at school we should devote 
 more attention to the important periods as judged 
 by these criteria; in selecting periods for study 
 at the University we should look to the same 
 standards of judgement. 
 
 With regard to the study of history at the 
 University I have sufficiently expressed my views 
 above as to the study of language and of literature 
 in connexion with history. At the University 
 the young man should begin to see history as a 
 connected whole. He should travel through the 
 predestined succession of the ages; he should 
 learn the measure of our debt to Athens and to 
 Rome; he should receive some clear conception 
 of the construction, the system, and the demolition 
 of Imperial Rome. He should traverse the dark 
 winter and the seed-time of the Middle Ages, when 
 the modern world was in germination. He should 
 know how our modern Europe was framed, and 
 when and how the Great Men lived and worked. 
 All this should be laid before him in its broad 
 organic unity till he feels European society and 
 civilisation as a single living whole. 
 
THE UNITY OF HISTORY 183 
 
 He should pass in like manner, but with closer 
 inspection, through the history of our native 
 islands. But his special study should be of certain 
 periods in this and foreign countries when literary 
 masterpieces were abundant. Athens in the time 
 of Pericles and Plato ; Rome in the late Republic 
 and the early Empire; Italy from Dante to 
 Ariosto; England in the times of Chaucer, of 
 Shakespeare, of Milton, of Swift, and Steele; 
 France from Louis XIV to the Revolution. He 
 cannot, of course, study all the periods that are 
 worth studying from this aspect, but he might 
 well study two foreign periods and two English 
 periods. 
 
 I deprecate from the point of view of education 
 the separation of political, constitutional, eco- 
 nomic, literary history. All these form one ; and 
 the young student can claim to have won his 
 footing, to have done something to prepare him- 
 self for life, when he begins to perceive these 
 several elements as distinct but intermingling 
 manifestations of the one informing spirit. To 
 estimate the various pressures and reactions, to 
 interpret the movements of the forces that are 
 disclosed, to understand the unity in multiplicity, 
 the multiplicity in unity that is the gift of history ; 
 and young men are well capable of receiving it. 
 
 But I have a little more to say about what I 
 regard as the political science heresy and the 
 economic heresy ; two heresies particularly rife at 
 my own University, but not unknown elsewhere. 
 
 Aristotle regarded young men as unfit to learn 
 
184 HISTORY 
 
 moral philosophy. I do not remember that he 
 gave his reasons; no doubt he considered that 
 they lacked the requisite experience of life. I 
 would go further, and say that very young men 
 are unfit to learn political science, or political 
 economy : partly because they have not the 
 requisite knowledge of life, partly because they 
 cannot have the requisite knowledge of history. 
 To teach these subjects to schoolboys is mon- 
 strous ; but I need say no more about it. 
 
 History is a fascinating subject to teach, but 
 it is also a very troublesome and laborious subject 
 to get up, and, after it has been got up, its expo- 
 sition for purposes of teaching is or should be a 
 quintessential product of distillation. Given a 
 man well read in literature and history, advanced 
 in years, a thinker, but not a trained historian, he 
 may feel that he has something to say on the 
 theory of politics and the State, but he may not 
 feel called to expound a period, a course of history. 
 Such a man will advertise a course of lectures on 
 Political Science or Comparative Politics, which- 
 ever he chooses to call it. He will be quite at 
 ease in dealing with the patriarchal and the 
 matriarchal theory, with Greek and Roman 
 constitutions; a fortunate convention will allow 
 him to pass lightly over feudalism and the 
 mediaeval city difficult ground; and he will be 
 comfortable once more when he talks of modern 
 constitutions. If he is a clever man what he says 
 will be interesting to those who know a little less 
 than he does, it will be curious to those who 
 know a little more, but what about the freshman 
 
POLITICAL SCIENCE 185 
 
 who knows next to nothing at all ? I submit that 
 all this analysis, comparison, classification, and 
 generalisation, is useless except to those who have 
 independent knowledge of the matters under dis- 
 cussion. After their second year at the University 
 I do not say that certain students may not derive 
 profit and satisfaction from such lectures; but 
 the rational process is to study the facts before 
 you are told how to classify them. Political 
 Science at the University has been in the past the 
 happy hunting-ground of the amateur. 
 
 I am fortified in this position by consideration 
 of the text-books. In my days Blunt schli was 
 the text-book a farrago of loose observation and 
 ill-digested propositions, enlivened occasionally 
 by such wisdom as this : " The State is male, the 
 Church is female/' So they are, in German ; but, 
 if the natural deductions from this physiological 
 statement are followed out, they will not agree 
 with history. Professor Woodrow "Wilson, the 
 President of the United States, has written a better 
 book, The State. But all the early part of his 
 book to the end of the Greek matter is highly 
 controversial and entirely unfit for dogmatic 
 statement. Where he is on firmer ground the 
 tissue of fact is so closely woven that it is unsuited 
 for the instruction of youth useful, however, as 
 a repository of information, especially to those 
 who only wish to refresh their memory. Seeley 
 was an acute and luminous critic of history ; his 
 lectures contained just the suitable dose of 
 apophthegmatic wisdom. But he was infected 
 with the political science heresy : he was the 
 
186 HISTORY 
 
 author of the saying that history without political 
 science had no fruit ; he is said to have claimed for 
 political science the power of prediction. When 
 he came to put down in a book his system of 
 political science, we were all of us disappointed, 
 though not all of us were surprised, that it did 
 not amount to much. 
 
 Of all the lecturers on systematic politics 
 Heinrich von Treitschke was, as I should guess, 
 the most frank. His treatment of the subject was 
 purely personal, and I do not think he would con- 
 descend to claim for it any scientific validity. 
 His attitude towards theoretical politics is suffici- 
 ently indicated by his definition of the State as a 
 juristic person. The State is no doubt a person 
 in the eye of the law, but, if it is not more than 
 that, it is plain that it has only an artificial, 
 almost a nominal existence. But, as a personal 
 avowal, his course on Politik, which I heard at 
 Berlin, was full of interest. A massive, rough, 
 harsh figure, stone-deaf, he mounted the chair and 
 intoned in a monotonous sing-song words which 
 he never heard himself and which no German could 
 understand without practice. Yet he held a class 
 of a hundred and fifty for his Politik, and his 
 Publica drew classes of a thousand. His influence 
 over the students was enormous. He was a great 
 historian Acton said that he could drive more 
 horses abreast than any other and everything 
 he said had a rich background of history as well as 
 a full admixture of personal animus and prejudice. 
 He hated England a fact of great moment and 
 elevated that hatred to a principle of Politik. 
 
HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE 187 
 
 One day, enraged by some act of Sir Robert 
 Morier, he came down and began : " Gentlemen, 
 to these English we can apply the words of Goethe ; 
 Sie lispeln englisch wenn sie liigen." x Another 
 time, discussing criteria of culture, he said : " The 
 English point to their vast consumption of soap 
 as a proof of their high grade of civilisation. But, 
 gentlemen, why do they use so much soap? 
 Because they are so dirty ! " Speaking of 
 colonies, he pointed out their importance to 
 national trade and development, and concluded : 
 " Gentlemen, the German empire is short of 
 colonies. Holland has colonies. It is our 
 natural destiny to absorb the Dutch into our 
 Reich." Those lectures were afterwards pub- 
 lished; I wonder if these passages are printed 
 with them. 
 
 Political Science is one of two things : a 
 summary always somewhat distorted by con- 
 densation of custom, law, and constitutions, that 
 cannot be profitably studied by freshmen, at 
 least, apart from the history to which they belong : 
 or a statement of personal opinion. The latter 
 may be illuminating; the former must be in- 
 digestible, and may be misleading. The value of 
 either depends upon the previous knowledge of the 
 recipient ; I have never been able to understand 
 how such nutriment could be thought suitable for 
 freshmen or even for second-year men. 
 
 Acton desired to elevate history to be a court 
 
 1 Goethe meant, that they whispered with the voice of 
 angels when they lied : Treitschke, punning, that they 
 spoke in English. 
 
i88 HISTORY 
 
 of moral judgements quoting and misapplying 
 the great line : Die Weltgeschichte ist das 
 Weltgericht. 1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged," 
 is a better motto for the historian. Wherever we 
 meet men, in life, in fiction, in history, let us en- 
 deavour to understand them, let us follow them 
 or reject their example; but do not let us aspire 
 to judge them. History is better used to correct 
 the scale of moral values which is in vogue to-day, 
 than in passing judgement on the dead, whose acts 
 we may ascertain but never their motives. Nor 
 can I applaud his other great generalisation, that 
 the progress of history is a progress towards 
 liberty. It seems to me that liberty is primeval : 
 the cave-man was I presume very free ; order 
 and reasonable authority are less ancient but 
 not less salutary ; progress consists in reconciling 
 order with liberty. 
 
 But even the errors of a sincere and learned man 
 are illuminating. The exposition of history gives 
 opportunity for the propounding of such principles 
 of historical and political wisdom as illustrate the 
 matter in hand. Though they be not true, 
 they may enshrine a half-truth. If Acton had 
 shared the political science heresy, which he did 
 not, he would have been tempted to elevate these 
 personal opinions to the headstone of the corner ; 
 as an historian he kept them in their proper 
 place. 
 
 1 History is the tribunal by which the world is judged ; 
 i.e. men, causes, systems, nations, are tried in the court 
 of history, by the issue of events. Not by the judgement 
 of historians ; which seems to be Acton's reading of the 
 passage. 
 
HISTORY AND ECONOMICS 189 
 
 My case against economics in relation to history 
 is similar but somewhat more extensive. I regard 
 abstract economics as affording useful categories 
 and useful lines of thought in dealing with his- 
 torical fact past or present. Taken by themselves 
 without history the propositions of abstract 
 economics are unreal and misleading. I regard 
 them as misleading, because, in attempting to 
 explain the operations of economic forces, they 
 appear to justify results which occur without any 
 reference to justice; the "laws" of political 
 economy have been used over and over again to 
 defend abuses ; we must accept the solar system 
 with all its defects; we are not bound to accept 
 the existing economic system. I regard it there- 
 fore as a mistake to offer such teaching to very 
 young men who have not the knowledge of history, 
 the knowledge of business, the knowledge of life, 
 by which they could correct their impressions. 
 That, however, is the affair of the economists. 
 My friends, the historians at Cambridge, have 
 happily shaken off the domination of the econo- 
 mists, which lay heavy upon them for many years. 
 But one effect of that domination remains, the 
 isolation of economic history for purposes of teach- 
 ing and examining. The separation of economic 
 development from the general life of the nation 
 I regard as false in teaching, and as involving 
 a distortion of values. Not wealth itself is worth 
 anything in history, but the use that has been 
 made of wealth. For purposes of special study, 
 for purposes of research, I admit that economic 
 history may be profitably isolated ; I should not 
 
HISTORY 
 
 be backward to acknowledge that the total wisdom 
 of history has thus been notably increased. But 
 that our young men should be encouraged at the 
 outset of their studies to concentrate attention on 
 the wealth-history of the nation, without reference 
 to all the other elements of national life, seems to 
 me false in principle and false in method, unless 
 by the other teaching and the scheme of examina- 
 tion the whole of history is afterwards brought 
 once more together, and its vital unity restored. 
 
 I do not value history for its direct and concrete 
 political applications. More bad politics have 
 been justified by true history than by any other 
 evidence, even by that of statistics. I prize it as 
 a school of values, as correcting our standards of 
 proportion, as supplying long reckonings for com- 
 parison with our ephemeral experience, as afford- 
 ing a means to the study of human nature, in 
 great men, in little men, in crowds, in nations, and 
 in races, as providing an exercise in the cautious 
 examination of evidence. Though it can only 
 afford its full wisdom to those who drink long and 
 deep, and drink also at the fountain of the know- 
 ledge of life, still in every grade and every stage 
 of education I conceive it has its proper use and 
 worth for life, rather than for business, though 
 in business if its lessons are well learnt it may 
 assist to a certain sanity of judgement. 
 
 If I appear to neglect the other illumination 
 that of Science it is not because I do not value 
 it, nor because it does not appeal to me, nor even 
 because I have wholly missed it myself. I call 
 
HISTORY AND SCIENCE 191 
 
 it the half-whole of knowledge, and such is my 
 estimation. If I suggest that Science has an im- 
 perfect message, so also has History. Each is 
 enfeebled if it ignores the other. On certain paths 
 of life Science gives more light ; on others History. 
 But the adequate treatment of Science is not, I 
 regret, for me. In speaking of History I have 
 been bold enough. 
 
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STRKF.T, S.K., 
 
 AND RUWIAY, SUFFOLK. 
 
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