[page 234] The following fragmentary notes on this subject have been set down
at different times. I have been accidentally prevented from arranging them
properly for
publication, but there are one or two truths in them which it is
better to express insufficiently than not at all.
By a large body of the people of
But it seems to me, there is no small error even in this last and more
philosophical theory. I believe, that what it is most honourable to know, it is
also most profitable to learn ; and that the science which it is the highest
power to possess, it is also the best exercise to acquire.
And if this be so, the question as to what should be the material of
education, becomes singularly simplified. It might be matter of dispute what
processes have the greatest effect in developing the intellect ; but it can
hardly be disputed what facts it is most advisable that a man entering into life
should accurately know.
I believe, in brief, that he ought to know three things First. Where he is. Secondly. Where he is going. Thirdly. What he had best do, under those circumstances.
First. Where he is : That is to say, what sort of a world he has got into ;
how large it is ; what kind of creatures [page 235] live in it, and how ; what
it is made of, and what may be made of it.
Secondly. Where he is going : That is to say, what chances or reports there
are of any other world besides this ; what seems to be the nature of that other
world ; and whether, for information respecting it, he had better consult the
Bible, Koran, or Council of Trent.
Thirdly. What he had best do under those circumstances : That is to say,
what kind of faculties he possesses ; what are the present state and wants of
mankind ; what is his place in society ; and what are the readiest means in his
power of attaining happiness and diffusing it. The man who knows these things,
and who has had his will so subdued in the learning them, that he is ready to do
what he knows he ought, I should call educated ; and the man who knows them
not—uneducated, though he could talk all the tongues of Babel.
Our present European system of so-called education ignores, or despises, not
one, nor the other, but all the three, of these great branches of human
knowledge.
First : It despises Natural History : Until within the last year or two, the
instruction in the physical sciences given at
Secondly : It despises Religion : I do not say it despises ' Theology ', that
is to say, Talk about God. But it despises ' Religion ', that is to say, the '
binding ' or training to God's service. There is much talk and much teaching in
all our academies, of which the effect is not to bind, but to loosen, the
elements of religious faith. Of the ten or twelve young men who, at Oxford, were
my especial friends, who [page 236] sat with me under the same lectures on
Divinity, or were punished with me for missing lecture by being sent to evening
prayers [A Mohammedan youth is punished, I believe, for such misdemeanours, by
being kept away from prayers], four are now zealous Romanists—a large average
out of twelve ; and while thus our own universities profess to teach
Protestantism, and do not, the universities on the Continent profess to teach
Romanism, and do not—sending forth only rebels and infidels. During long
residence on the Continent, I do not remember meeting with above two or three
young men, who either believed in revelation, or had the grace to hesitate in
the assertion of their infidelity.
Whence, it seems to me, we may gather one of two things ; either that there
is nothing in any European form of religion so reasonable or ascertained, as
that it can be taught securely to our youth, or fastened in their minds by any
rivets of proof which they shall not be able to loosen the moment they begin to
think ; or else, that no means are taken to train them in such demonstrable
creeds.
It seems to me the duty of a rational nation to ascertain (and to be at some
pains in the matter) which of these suppositions is true ; and, if indeed no
proof can be given of any supernatural fact, or Divine doctrine, stronger than a
youth just out of his teens can overthrow in the first stirrings of serious
thought, to confess this boldly ; to get rid of the expense of an Establishment,
and the hypocrisy of a Liturgy ; to exhibit its cathedrals as curious memorials
of a bygone superstition, and, abandoning all thoughts of the next world, to set
itself to make the best it can of this.
But if, on the other hand, there does exist any evidence by which the
probability of certain religious facts may be shown, as clearly, even, as the
probabilities of things not absolutely ascertained in astronomical or geological
science, let this evidence be set before all our youth so distinctly, and the
facts for which it appears inculcated upon them so steadily, that although it
may be possible for the evil conduct of after life to efface, or for its earnest
and protracted meditation to modify, the impressions of early years, it may not
be possible for our young men, the instant they emerge from their academies, to
scatter themselves like a flock of wild fowl risen out of a marsh, and drift
away on every irregular wind of heresy and apostasy.
Lastly : Our system of European education despises Politics : That is to say,
the science of the relations and duties of men to each other. One would imagine,
indeed, by a glance at the state of the world, that there was no such science.
And, indeed, it is one still in its infancy.
[page 237] It implies, in its full sense, the knowledge of the operations of the virtues
and vices of men upon themselves and society ; the understanding of the ranks
and offices of their intellectual and bodily powers in their various adaptations
to art, science, and industry ; the understanding of the proper offices of art,
science, and labour themselves, as well as of the foundations of jurisprudence,
and broad principles of commerce ; all this being coupled with practical
knowledge of the present state and wants of mankind.
What, it will be said, and is all this to be taught to schoolboys ? No ; but
the first elements of it, all that are necessary to be known by an individual in
order to his acting wisely in any station of life, might be taught, not only to
every school-boy, but to every peasant. The impossibility of equality among men
; the good which arises from their inequality ; the compensating circumstances
in different states and fortunes ; the honourableness of every man who is
worthily filling his appointed place in society, however humble ; the proper
relations of poor and rich, governor and governed ; the nature of wealth, and
mode of its circulation ; the difference between productive and unproductive
labour ; the relation of the products of the mind and hand ; the true value of
works of the higher arts, and the possible amount of their production ; the
meaning of ' Civilization ', its advantages and dangers ; the meaning of the
term ' Refinement ' ; the possibilities of possessing refinement in a low
station, and of losing it in a high one ; and, above all, the significance of
almost every act of a man's daily life, in its ultimate operation upon himself
and others—all this might be, and ought to be, taught to every boy in the
kingdom, so completely, that it should be just as impossible to introduce an
absurd or licentious doctrine among our adult population, as a new version of
the multiplication table. Nor am I altogether without hope that some day it may
enter into the heads of the tutors of our schools to try whether it is not as
easy to make an
I know that this is much to hope. That English ministers of religion should
ever come to desire rather to make a youth acquainted with the powers of Nature
and of God, than with the powers of Greek particles ; that they should ever
think it more useful to show him how the great universe rolls upon its course in
heaven, than how the syllables are fitted in a tragic metre ; that they should
hold it more advisable for him to be fixed in the principles of religion than in
those of syntax ; or, finally, that they should ever come to apprehend that a
youth likely to go straight out of college into Parliament, might not
unadvisably know [page 238] as much of the Peninsular as of the Peloponnesian
War,, and be as well acquainted with the state of modern Italy as of old Etruria—all
this, however unreasonably, I do hope, and mean to work for. For though I have
not yet abandoned all expectation of a better world than this, I believe this in
which we live is not so good as it might be. I know there are many people who
suppose French revolutions, Italian insurrections, Caffre wars, and such other
scenic effects of modern policy, to be among the normal conditions of humanity.
I know there are many who think the atmosphere of rapine, rebellion, and misery
which wraps the lower orders of
* * * * *
The great leading error of modern times is the mistaking erudition for
education. I call it the leading error, for I believe that, with little
difficulty, nearly every other might be shown to have root in it ; and, most
assuredly, the worst that are fallen into on the subject of art.
Education then, briefly, is the leading human souls to what is best, and
making what is best out of them ; and these two objects are always attainable
together, and by the same means ; the training which makes men happiest in
themselves, also makes them most serviceable to others. True education, then,
has respect, first to the ends which are proposable to the man, or attainable by
him , and, secondly, to the material of which the man is made. So far as it is
able, it chooses the end according to the material : but it cannot always choose
the end, for the position of many persons in life is fixed by necessity ; still
less can it choose the material ; and, therefore, all it can do, is to fit the
one to the other as wisely as may be. [page 239]
But the first point to be understood, is that the material is as various as
the ends ; that not only one man is unlike another, but every man is essentially
different from every other, so that no training, no forming, nor informing, will
ever make two persons alike in thought or in power. Among all men, whether of
the upper or lower orders, the differences are eternal and irreconcilable,
between one individual and another, born under absolutely the same
circumstances. One man is made of agate, another of oak ; one of slate, another
of clay. The education of the first is polishing ; of the second, seasoning ; of
the third, rending ; of the fourth, moulding. It is of no use to season the
agate ; it is vain to try to polish the slate ; but both are fitted, by the
qualities they possess, for services in which they may be honoured.
Now the cry for the education of the lower classes, which is heard every day
more widely and loudly, is a wise and a sacred cry, provided it be extended into
one for the education of all classes, with definite respect to the work each
man has to do, and the substance of which he is made. But it is a foolish and
vain cry, if it be understood, as in the plurality of cases it is meant to be,
for the expression of mere craving after knowledge, irrespective of the simple
purposes of the life that now is, and blessings of that which is to come.
One great fallacy into which men are apt to fall when they are reasoning on
this subject is : that light, as such, is always good , and darkness, as such,
always evil. Far from it. Light untempered would be annihilation. It is good to
them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death ; but, to those that faint
in the wilderness, so also is the shadow of the great rock in a weary land. If
the sunshine is good, so also the cloud of the latter rain. Light is only
beautiful, only available for life, when it is tempered with shadow ; pure light
is fearful, and unendurable by humanity. And it is not less ridiculous to say
that the light, as such, is good in itself, than to say that the darkness is
good in itself. Both are rendered safe, healthy, and useful by the other , the
night by the day, the day by the night ; and we could just as easily live
without the dawn as without the sunset, so long as we are human. Of the
celestial city we are told there shall be ' no night there ', and then we shall
know even as also we are known : but the night and the mystery have both their
service here ; and our business is not to strive to turn the night into day, but
to be sure that we are as they that watch for the morning.
Therefore, in the education either of lower or upper classes, it matters not
the least how much or how little they know, provided they know just what will
fit them [page 240] to do their work, and to be happy in it. What the sum or the nature of their knowledge ought to be at a given time or in
a given case, is a totally different question : the main thing to be
understood is, that a man is not educated, in any sense whatsoever, because he
can read Latin, or write English, or can behave well in a drawing-room ; but
that he is is only educated if he is happy, busy, beneficent and effective in
the world ; that millions of peasants are therefore at this
moment better educated than most of those who call themselves
gentlemen ; and that the means taken to ' educate ' the lower classes in any other sense may very often be productive of a precisely
opposite result. Observe : I do not say, nor do I believe, that the
lower classes ought not to be better educated, in millions of ways, than they
are. I believe every man in a Christian kingdom ought to be equally well educated. But I would have it education to purpose ; stern, practical, irresistible, in moral
habits, in bodily strength and beauty, in all faculties of mind capable of being
developed under the circumstances of the individual, and especially in the
technical knowledge of his own business ; but yet, infinitely various in
its effort, directed to make one youth humble, and another confident ;
to tranquillize this mind, to put some spark of ambition into that ; now to urge, and now to restrain
; and in the doing of all this, considering knowledge as one only out of myriads
of means in its hands, or myriads of gifts at its disposal ; and
giving it or withholding it as a good husbandman waters his garden, giving the
full shower only to the thirsty plants, and at times when they are thirsty
; whereas at present we pour it upon the heads of our youth as the
snow falls on the Alps, on one and another alike, till they can bear no more,
and then take honour to ourselves because here and there a river
descends from their crests into the valleys, not observing that we have
made the loaded hills themselves barren for ever.
Finally : I hold it for indisputable, that the first duty of a state is to
see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and
educated, till it attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting
this, the government must have an authority over the people of which we now do
not so much as dream ; and I cannot in this place pursue the subject farther.
