Oak Street 
 UNCLASSIFIED 
 
 Volume IV 
 Volume V 
 
 July-September 
 October-December 
 
 Number 4 
 Number 1 
 
 Published by Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 Issued Quarterly 
 
 BULLETIN OF 
 
 RANDOLPH-MACON 
 WOMAN'S COLLEGE 
 
 LYNCHBURG, VA. 
 
 MILTON'S VIEWS ON EDUCATION. THEIR PRESENT 
 SIGNIFICANCE AND VALUE 
 
 By PRESIDENT WILLIAM A. WEBB 
 
 Entered as second-class matter, January 5, 1915, at the post-office at Lynchburg, Virginia 
 under the Act of August 24, 1912. 
 
BULLETIN 
 
 OF 
 
 RANDOLPH-MACON 
 WOMAN'S COLLEGE 
 
 MILTON'S VIEWS ON EDUCATION, THEIR 
 
 PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 AND VALUE 
 
 By PRESIDENT WILLIAM A. WEBB 
 
 Published by Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 lynchburg, va. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/miltonsviewsonedOOwebb 
 
CKCiltons 'Views on Education, their Present Significance 
 and IJalue^ 
 
 To Master Samuel Hartlib, a German gentleman of Polish 
 extraction who resided in England during the Eevolution, the 
 people of his adopted land were deeply indebted, not only for 
 his efforts to advance piety, learning and morality in the schools, 
 but also for his practical contributions in the field of agricul- 
 tural and industrial reform. His friendship was sought after 
 and appreciated by some of the most illustrious of his contem- 
 poraries, both at home and abroad, and it was due to him that 
 the writings of the Moravian reformer Comenius were intro- 
 duced into England. The variety of his interests and the gen- 
 erosity of his nature, the latter illustrated by the liberality of 
 his gifts to the poor scholars of the day, which sometimes re- 
 duced him to actual want, would have saved hisi name from ob- 
 livion, but later generations have cherished his memory mainly 
 because it was thru his influence that John Milton in 1644 was 
 persuaded to write out his views on education which, published 
 in the same year as the Areopagitica^ might very well serve as a 
 sort of preface to the better-known essay. Thru them both runs 
 the same compelling purpose. The tractate on education ot 
 hardly a dozen pages expresses no less than his splendid Speech 
 for the liberty of unlicensed printing, his unswerving faith in 
 the efficacy of free thought and free speech. In them both he 
 pleads for "the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely 
 according to conscience. ' ' In them both he makes freedom based 
 upon willing obedience to the moral law the undergirding prin- 
 ciple of individual rectitude and national integrity. 
 
 The tractate, like most of his prose pamphlets, was a protest — 
 Milton was ever a protestant — in this case a protest against the 
 
 1 President 's Address delivered before the meeting of the Association of 
 Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Southern States at Atlanta, Ga., 
 November 15, 1917, and reprinted by permission from the Educational Re- 
 view, New York, February, 1918. 
 
4 Bulletin 
 
 prevailing methods of education, which, instead of offering 
 nourishing food to the young, too frequently placed before them 
 only **an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles." But the 
 tractate was more than a protest. It was a declaration of Mil- 
 ton's faith in the power of education '*to principle the minds of 
 men in virtue, the only genuine source of political and indi- 
 vidual liberty, the only true safeguard of states, the bulwark ot 
 their prosperity and renown." Such he himself declared in the 
 autobiographic section of the Second defense of the English peo- 
 plSf written some ten years later, to be the specific purpose he 
 had in mind in its composition. It, therefore, falls naturally 
 into its appropriate place in the cycle of his more important 
 prose writings, for like them it revolves about the great central 
 conception of responsible liberty, which is the controlling pas- 
 sion of his soul. 
 
 When ]\Iilton composed his essay he was already famous as a 
 poet and scholar and was in all probability the most cultured 
 man in England, if not in Europe. His scholarship embraced 
 an intimate and an exact knowledge of the languages and lit- 
 eratures of both ancient and modern times, and he counted 
 among his friends and acquaintances some of the most eminent 
 scholars, statesmen and writers of the Continent. His patriot- 
 ism had already been severely testea. In Italy at tlie outbreak 
 of the Civil War, he had promptly broken off his journey and 
 returned to England because he thought it base to be traveling 
 for amusement abroad while his fellow citizens were fighting foi 
 liberty at home. Nor was he without experience in dealing with 
 the practical problems of the classroom. For some years aftei 
 his return from abroad, he conducted a small school for boys, 
 first in Aldergate Street and later in Barbican Street. But his 
 wide scholarship and his varied experiences, first as a scholar 
 and student in St. Paul's and the University, and later as a 
 teacher in his own school, did not save his views on educational 
 matters from severe arraignment. Even to some of our modem 
 students of education, the tractate is still a block of stumbling. 
 The scheme of instruction proposed, they say, is impracticable, 
 the course of study impossible and the goal of achievement 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 5 
 
 utterly beyond the range of any group of students less pre- 
 cocious than a whole college of Miltons. His critics are right. 
 The demands he proposed to make upon the energy of his 
 youthful scholars, if literally carried out, were simply studen- 
 dous. The modern languages, Italian for example, he casually 
 suggests might readily be picked up at any odd moments, and 
 after the pupils have once mastered the elements of Latin and 
 Greek there is no reason, he thinks, why they should not utilize 
 their Sundays by learning Hebrew and the Syriac and Chaldee 
 dialects. Geometry was to be studied as a sort of pleasant 
 game between the masters and the scholars, and a knowledge of 
 the physical sciences including agriculture, architecture, navi- 
 gation and astronomy, was to be obtained thru Latin textbooks. 
 It is not surprising that a recent writer in one of the standard 
 encyclopedias refuses to believe that Milton could have been a 
 successful teacher, and frankly declares that his excursion into 
 the field of education is only another example of the truth that 
 it is not much use putting Pegasus into harness. This writer, 
 however, should not be too severely criticized; he was only fol- 
 lowing in the footsteps of the great Dr. Samuel Johnson, him- 
 self the most noted schoolmaster in English letters after Milton, 
 who exprest doubts about the results of this ''wonder-working 
 academy" from whose walls, so far as he knew, there had never 
 proceeded any man eminent for knowledge. But Dr. Johnson 
 was a High-Churchman and a loyalist and was hardly prepared 
 to do justice to the champion of the Independents who praised 
 Cromwell and defended the regicides. 
 
 But these are not the only charges, nor the most serious ones, 
 that might be brought against the famous essay if one were in- 
 clined to measure its shortcomings by modem standards and 
 ideals. The students for whom Milton planned hi® scheme of 
 education where the sons, and sons only, of gentle and noble 
 parentage. The needs of the opposite sex did not come within 
 the scope of his discussion, and he had not caught the vision 
 splendid of our modem democratic conception of public educa- 
 tion which offers equal opportunity to all without distinction of 
 sex or social position. But the very limitations of Milton's 
 
6 Bulletin 
 
 vision added to the intensity of his convictions. He had dedi- 
 cated himself, soul and body, to the advancement of the prin- 
 ciples of the Revolution and the establishment of the Common- 
 wealth. His eyesight itself was not too precious a sacrifice for 
 the altar of his country. He had cheerfully laid aside his '* gar- 
 land and singing robes" and for long years had purposely post- 
 poned the composition of his masterpiece, in order that he 
 might perform the ''lowliest duties" in behalf of his nativt 
 land. The tractate is a leaf torn from his own experience and 
 its characters are written in his heart's best blood. A brief 
 analysis of it will show how keenly he appreciated some of the 
 deeper problems of education and how essential he felt their 
 proper solution was to the realization of the high ideals of citi- 
 zenship which he ever exemplified in his own life and consist- 
 ently taught his countrymen both by precept and example. 
 
 In the very foreground of his discourse he declares that the 
 true aim of all educational effort is to train the man and the 
 citizen. Not learning, not scholarship, not intellectual suprem- 
 acy — as highly as he appreciated these things of themselves— 
 but manhood in its noblest reaches is to be the high argument 
 of his thought and the chief goal of his endeavors. In lan- 
 guage that is couched in the theological phraseology of the day, 
 he declares that the end of all learning is "to repair the ruins 
 of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out 
 of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, 
 as we may the nearest, by possessing our souls of true virtue, 
 which, being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the 
 highest perfection." The poet who was to invoke as the inspira- 
 tion of his immortal epic a divinity no less exalted than the 
 heavenly muse herself was not willing to place the foundation 
 stone of his temple of learning on any less secure basis than the 
 knowledge of God and the desire to know Him and be like Him. 
 To Milton the worthiest representative of the new learning and 
 the Renaissance no less than to Milton the Puritan and the 
 Protestant, man's education was not complete until he had re- 
 produced God's image on earth. "The reason, the passions, the 
 feeling for beauty, the energies which tend to action, strength 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 7 
 
 and skill of hand, the principles of public conduct, statesman- 
 ship, law, art, war — all are sacred because all are portions of 
 the fully developed life of man. ' ' ^ 
 
 But his most valuable contribution to the literature of the 
 subject is his famous definition of education, which alike in its 
 simplicity of statement, its comprehensiveness of terms, and its 
 nobleness of purpose has never been surpast. ' ' I call, therefore, 
 a complete and generous education that which fits a man to per- 
 form justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both 
 private and public, of peace and war." 
 
 Milton*® scheme of education falls into three divisions — 
 studies, bodily exercises, and diet. Taking these in the reverse 
 order, we may quickly dismiss the last. The hard study and 
 spare diet of the academy which is to be the home of his pupils 
 from their twelfth to their twenty-first year anticipate the 
 Wordsworthian ideal of "plain living and high thinking." 
 Bodily exercises are to receive the attention worthy of their 
 dignity and importance. Fencing, wrestling and other forms of 
 athletic training were planned not merely to satisfy the needs of 
 the physical man or to gratify the youthful inclination for 
 sport, not merely to keep the boys ''healthy, nimble and strong" 
 and make them ''grow large and tall," but to "inspire them 
 with a gallant and fearless courage, which being tempered with 
 seasonable lectures and precepts to make them of true fortitude 
 and patience will turn into a native and heroic valor and make 
 them hate the cowardice of wrongdoing." The daily muster in- 
 cluded "marching, encamping, fortifying, besieging and batter- 
 ing, with all the helps of ancient and modern stratagems, tactics, 
 and warlike maxims" — a program that would satisfy the most 
 enthusiastic champion of military training in our schools and 
 colleges. Like everything else connected with Milton's schemt 
 of education, these exercises were directed to a definite end, 
 namely, that from them his young men should "come forth re- 
 
 2 Dowden, Puritan and Anglican studies. 
 
8 Bulletin 
 
 nowned and perfect commanders in the service of their coun- 
 try." 
 
 Their intellectual training begins with some simple exercises 
 in scientific and language study, but advances rapidly until it 
 embraces a list of writers whose names might well give pause to 
 the stoutest hearted of modern classicists. Cebes, Plutarch, 
 Quintilian, Plato, Cato, Varro, Columella, Aristotle, Seneca, 
 Celsus, Pliny, Hesiod, Theocritus, Aratus, Xenophon, Cicero, 
 Euripides, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Hermogenes, Longinus, ana 
 Horace are sufficient to indicate the range and compass of his 
 curriculum. These authors are to be read and studied each foi 
 a particular purpose, for Milton is nothing if not practical, 
 idealist tho he is. From them his students are to gain insight 
 into the mysteries of agriculture, geography, economics, politics, 
 logic, rhetoric, composition, law, mathematical and physical 
 sciences, and theology. But let no one think for a moment that 
 they are to be entirely separated from the swift-moving cur- 
 rents of everyday life. It was no monastic existence that he had 
 in mind. On the contrary, they shall have abundant oppor- 
 tunity of coming in personal contact with hunters, fishermen, 
 mariners, explorers, architects, engineers — in a word, with men 
 of action who can give them ''such a real tincture of natural 
 knowledge as they shall never forget. ' ' Under the inspiring tui- 
 tion of skilful teachers they shall receive from the philosophers, 
 historians, orators and lawgivers "such an ingenuous and noble 
 ardor as would not fail to make many of them renowned and 
 matchless men." But the program is not yet complete, for 
 there shall also be opportunity for them to study the beauties ot 
 nature, especially in "those vernal seasons of the year when the 
 air is calm and pleasant," "the solemn and divine harmonies 
 of music," "the tragedies of stateliest and most regal argu- 
 ment," the uses of poetry "both in divine and human things," 
 and the day's work shall not cease until they shall have come 
 under "the determinate sentence of David or Solomon, or the 
 evangels and apostolic scriptures." By such means they shall 
 become "inflamed with the study of learning and the admira- 
 tion of virtue, stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 9 
 
 men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages." 
 Trained in these ideals our lawyers will no longer pass the time 
 in pleasing thoughts of "litigious terms, fat contentions, and 
 flowing fees," our ministers will not be given over to worldly 
 ambitions, our men of affairs will be otherwise occupied than 
 ''living out their days in feast and jollity," and our political 
 councillors will indeed become "steadfast pillars of state." 
 
 Such is Milton's ideal "of a virtuous and noble education; 
 laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, 
 so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, 
 that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming." Since hi^ 
 day many of our greatest thinkers — Locke, Newman, Huxley, 
 Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, TJuskin, Emtr&on — 
 have written illuminatingly and convincingly on the subject of 
 education, but I question whether any one of them has gone be- 
 yond Milton either in depicting a nobler ideal or in describing 
 more happily the true function of education, namely, to fit one 
 "to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, 
 both private and public, of peace and war." In its clear-cut 
 recognition of the rights of the individual on the one hand, and 
 of the state on the other, in its provision for the full and com- 
 plete development of man's physical, intellectual and spiritual 
 nature, in its insistence upon the sanctity of truthfulness and 
 necessity of justice, in its wideness of vision, its directness of 
 aim, its oneness of purpose, it gives verbal expression to the 
 very genius of the Anglo-Saxon race; and where it has been 
 tried out, either in Great Britain or in those newer common- 
 wealths, including our own, which have sprung from her loins, 
 it has had a great and profound influence in determining the 
 character and molding the destiny of the English speaking na- 
 tions of the earth. If asked to account for the difference be- 
 tween the ideals of life and conduct which has suddenly yawned 
 like a mighty chasm between the German nation and our own, 
 would we not find it largely due to the fact that the German 
 people have not yet learned the meaning and significance of 
 that fundamental principle on which Milton based his whole 
 scheme of education, namely, the liberty "to know, to utter and 
 
10 Bulletin 
 
 to argue freely according to conscience?" Is it not this realiz- 
 ing sense of liberty of thought and action which begets sober- 
 ness of judgment and disciplines one to act both justly and mag- 
 nanimously as well as skilfully in the performance of public and 
 private duties ? The absence of this ideal from the German con- 
 sciousness, or perhaps I should rather say a lack of its realisa- 
 tion in German life, points to the fatally vulnerable joint in 
 Germany's armor and indicates the place where the spear of 
 outraged humanity will finally pierce thru to her vitals. *'By 
 the soul only the nations shall be great and free." 
 
 Since the beginning of the war much serious thought has been 
 given to the consideration of methods and principles of educa- 
 tion. The main controversy, as might have been expected, has 
 ranged around the relative advantages and disadvantages of 
 scientific and humanistic studies. From time immemorial the 
 man on the street has been accustomed to argue that inasmuch 
 as a knowledge of the applied sciences has added so immensely 
 to the material resources of the world, while literary studies 
 have so little to show for the time and patience spent on them, 
 we should frankly follow the trend of the times and place the 
 burden of emphasis on those studies which promise large and 
 visible returns in the good things of life. Since the outbreak of 
 the war, this conception of education has won new converts by 
 reason of the phenomenal successes of the Germans, who havb 
 sho^vn such marvelous skill in the use of the mechanical arts 
 and in the application of technical and scientific training to the 
 enginery of war. Both in this country and in Great Britain 
 there has been an increasing number of writers on education 
 who have been demanding a reorganization of the school and 
 college curriculum. They are insisting upon a lai^er substitu 
 tion of scientific for literary studies and are clamoring for a 
 still further curtailment of the classics. A knowledge of the 
 physical sciences, such as electricity, mechanics, chemistry and 
 the like, they declare, would be infinitely more valuable at the 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 11 
 
 present time, both for the individual and the state, than the con- 
 tinued study of languages, literature, or the social sciences. But 
 after all, is there solid ground for this belief ? Sir Philip Mag- 
 nus, who stands high as an authority both as a scientist and as 
 an educator, declares in a recent article that the study of lit- 
 erature, language and history is still a constituent element in 
 modem education. ''The main purpose," he declares, ''of 
 school-teaching is clear thinking and self-expression ; and whilst 
 the study of science, especially in its higher branches, helps to 
 cultivate logical and accurate thought, it is only thru the me- 
 dium of literature and language that thought can be adequately 
 exprest. There should be no conflict, therefore, between these 
 two great branches of learning, and it should be recognized that 
 the foundations of education must rest on a humanistic basis. ' ' ^ 
 This position, it seems to me, is impregnable. Each of these 
 grand divisions of knowledge, the domain of the physical 
 isciences on the one hand, and of the humanities on the other, 
 has its enthusiastic advocates and loyal followers; each offers 
 unlimited capacity for the satisfaction of the curiosity of the 
 mind; each furnishes to a greater or less degree the chance foi 
 developing self-expression and the power of thought ; each when 
 properly pursued contributes elements which are inseparably 
 connected with our idea of a truly educated man. In reality 
 they are not antagonistic, but complementary. One star differ- 
 eth from another star in glory. In insisting, therefore, upon 
 the intrinsic value of literary studies we are not disparaging 
 scientific training. Every sane man knows that in the prose- 
 cution of the war as well as in the reparation of its ravages that 
 will come at its close, we shall use as we have never used before 
 the scientific skill and the technical ingenuity of the American 
 mind. But if we are wise, we shall not forget that more im- 
 portant lesson which a recent writer in the London Times ha& 
 seen fit to remind his own countrymen of. "We have no wish,'* 
 he says, "to neglect these (scientific) studies. They have their 
 place. But it is the second, not the first. It is not matter but 
 spirit that is going to win this war. It is not matter but spirit 
 
 sNmeteenth Century, June, 1917. 
 
12 Bulletin 
 
 that we are going to need to solve the problems that will come 
 after the war. And it is literature and literature alone which 
 can nourish that vital spirit. For literature by its very nature 
 deals always with human life, while physical science by its 
 very nature deals with matter which, if it has life at all, has at 
 least no life which is human. . . The whole of the people, each 
 for his own sake, and for the sake of all the rest too, will need 
 a knowledge of human life. . . The wisest man of all antiq- 
 uity turned away from the study of physical sciences and gave 
 himself to that of the life of man. And why? Because, as his 
 greatest pupil declared, 'an intelligent man will prize those 
 studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness 
 and wisdom, and will less value the other. ' " * 
 
 Scientific studies will find their appropriate place, and it will 
 be one of increasing honor and service, but they can never sup- 
 plant without irreparable loss those disciplines whose special 
 function it is to open the mind, to clarify the vision, and "to 
 extend from the few to the many the delights which thought 
 and knowledge give, saving the people from degenerating into 
 base and corrupting pleasures by teaching them to enjoy those 
 which are high and pure." Not even the bitter exigencies of 
 modern warfare and the hard necessity of meeting a resourceful 
 and unscrupulous enemy will make us forget the value of our 
 human heritage. Surely no worse calamity could befall us in- 
 tellectually and morally than the wilful neglect of those studies 
 which have come down to us from the past redolent with the 
 wisdom of the ages and still capable of firing the imaginations 
 and inspiring the hearts of our youth to become "brave men 
 and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages." If 
 we wish to realize Milton's dream of responsible liberty thru an 
 ordered democracy not only in our own country, but thruout 
 the world, we must not neglect to school our children in a knowl- 
 edge of those literatures which in both ancient and modern 
 times have preserved the great ideals of the race. The neces- 
 sity of this procedure is eloquently brought home to us in an 
 
 4 Times Literary Supplement, June 1, 1916. 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 13 
 
 essay on Education and freedom by Professor R. S. Conway, 
 of Manchester University. He says: 
 
 The epoch in which the free life of England bore its most glorious fruit, 
 both in action and letters — the age of Elizabeth — was the age in which 
 Greek literature had just been re-discovered, an age in which the Greek 
 sense of beauty and the Greek passion for freedom inspired our own poets. 
 For if Shakespeare knew only a little Greek, Thomas More and Spenser 
 and Herrick and Herbert and Sidney knew a great deal; and Shakespeare's 
 whole political thought is colored by his love for the Greek biographies of 
 Plutarch, read in the magnificent English of Thomas North. Since that 
 day such names as Bacon, Milton, Clarendon, Burke, Chatham, Gladstone, 
 to mention no living examples, are those of men who have learnt from 
 classical scholarship to be great defenders of freedom. Our public schools 
 have not studied the ancient authors for nothing; if you want to implant 
 in a boy some reverence for freedom, some knowledge of what it means, 
 you will not give him definitions or well-meaning talk about civic or ethi- 
 cal theory; he merely hates such abstractions. Nor will you hope to 
 achieve this end by concentrating his thoughts on the exact laws of physi- 
 cal science, important as they are for other ends. The study of physical 
 science at its best should awaken some conception of the wonderfulness of 
 the world, of the fixity of its laws, of the danger and futility of falsehood 
 and impatient or careless observation; but for more far-reaching ideals 
 which he is to follow in public conduct a boy must look not to the scien- 
 tific but to the humane side of his training. If education is to make men 
 good citizens of the world, not merely good carpenters and plumbers, not 
 merely docile instruments of tyrannical commands, it must teach them 
 something of men, must inspire them with some affection for the ideals by 
 which mankind has been swayed. And that is the reason for the study ot 
 literature; only from the record of what men have thought and felt can 
 a boy or girl learn to understand the conceptions that move men most. To 
 implant the sources of morality, the ethics of private conduct, no disquisi- 
 tions on the beauty of the separate virtues will ever compete with the di- 
 vine parables of the New Testament; so in the region of public ethics, if 
 you wish to kindle patriotism and courage, teach your children such poetry 
 as the Agincourt scenes of Shakespeare's Henry the fifth. And if you 
 wish to instil into a boy's mind a conception of freedom, give him to 
 read the story of the struggle of Athens with Persia in Herodotus, or in 
 the patriotic drama of the poet Aeschylus, who fought himself at Mara- 
 thon; give him to read the defense of Plataea in Thucydides, or any one 
 of the great speeches of Demosthenes against Philip, and he will come 
 away with a knowledge of the meaning of freedom that no experience can 
 blot out, with a respect for the free spirit which no hardness or bitter- 
 ness of life will ever wholly extinguish.s 
 
 5 Contemporary Beview, vol. 109. 
 
14 Bulletin 
 
 And now, as we behold our nation — God grant she may prove 
 both ** noble and puissant" — ''rousing herself like a strong man 
 after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks," as she arms her- 
 self for the purpose of bringing peace, safety and freedom to 
 the world, shall we not rededicate ourselves to the high calling 
 wherewith we have been called, resolved that our students shall 
 receive as far as we are able to give them that ''complete and 
 generous education" which shall fit them "to perform justly, 
 skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and 
 public, of peace and war ? ' '