R 15
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.'
Received
Accession No.
. Class No.
1
VCUrcrrowo
ADDEESSES.
ADDRESSES
BY
EDWAED THEING
Head Master qf Uppingham School, 1853-1887
WITH PORTKAIT
SECOND EDITION
T. FISHER UNWIN
26, PATEENOSTEE SQUABE
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,
IN FULFILMENT OF THE AUTHOB'S WISH,
TO
GEOEGE E. PAEKIN,
HEAD MASTEB OF THE COLLEGIATE SCHOOL,
FEEDEEICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK,
HIS FELLOW-WOBKEB OVEB THE SEAS.
PBEFACE.
A FEW of the Addresses delivered by my father
have already been printed singly, and one or two
have been circulated privately in type-writing. But
as the demand for copies continued, and many
friends asked him to publish them, he selected these
seven to form a small companion volume to his
Poems.
These Addresses, with some of the Poems, form
his last literary work, and were sent to the Publisher
only a few days before his fatal illness.
It has been left to me to finish a task in which
he took so much interest and delight, as the first of
his wishes which I can fulfil for him.
SAEAH E. TKRING.
The Schoolhouse,
UPPINGHAM.
CONTENTS.
i.
PAGE
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEPOBE THE EDUCA-
TION SOCIETY 3
II.
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT ST. ALBANS,
APRIL 38, 1886 29
III.
AN ADDRESS TO THE TEACHERS OF MINNE-
SOTA, U.S. ... .... 61
IV.
A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE PRIZE-GIVING
AT THE HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, LEA-
MINGTON, SEPTEMBER, 1886 83
V.
A WORKMAN'S HINTS ON TEACHING WORK,
MARCH 5, 1887 103
VI.
AN ADDRESS TO THE TEACHERS' GUILD, MAY 16,
1837 145
VII.
AN ADDRESS TO THE CONFERENCE OF HEAD
. MISTRESSES, HELD AT UPPINGHAM SCHOOL,
JUNE 1O, 1887 179
AN ADDEESS DELIVEEED BEFOSE THE
EDUCATION SOCIETY.
PEACTIOAL THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION
AFTER THIRTY YEARS' WORK.
THE honour you have conferred on me by making
me your President accounts for my presuming to
address you to-day. I pray you, if you are not
pleased with what I say, take some blame on your-
selves for choosing the wrong man ; for assuredly,
as you wished me to try, you shall have the very
best service I can give, in spite of many reasons that
would make me unwilling to break silence. Yet in
good truth there is no audience I should so much
wish to please ; none with whose life I feel a greater
sympathy ; none who have me more absolutely at
their command. For I am one of yourselves to the
back-bone. I come before you as a working man,
as a f ellow- worker ; as one who has worked up
through an experience of the most varied kind ; who
began very low down, and feels strongly with all
struggling workers, with their weakness, their faint-
heartedness, with weary hand, and weary head, and
weary heart ; and who believes that the new truth
of life, which is ever becoming incarnate in new
births, is always born amongst the struggling, in
4 Practical Thoughts on Education
travail and in pain. Be content, then, to-day with
a working man's contribution ; and permit me first
to prove my right to the name, in order to draw
from it all the , help I can, all such support as
it is entitled to, and you may be willing to
give it.
My first acquaintance with school began at eight
years old, in an old-fashioned private school of the
flog-flog, milk-and-water-at-breakfast type. All my
life long the good and evil of that place has been on
me. It is even now one of my strongest impres-
sions, with its prim misery, the misery of a clipped
hedge, with every clip through flesh and blood and
fresh young feelings ; its snatches of joy, its painful
but honest work, grim, but grimly in earnest, and
its prison morality of discipline. The most lasting
lesson of my life was the failure of suspicion and
severity to get inside the boy-world, however much
it troubled our out sides. Three long years were
spent there. Then came nearly nine years of Eton
as Oppidan and Colleger, and I passed from Eton
as Captain of the School to King's College, Cam-
bridge. Those nine years, with all their chequered
feeling, did not leave me in ignorance of the good,
and evil of a great public school. Six years of work
and reading at Cambridge followed ; now heavy
with labour, now buoyant with hope, bringing great
searchings of heart, and much balancing of right
and wrong, much anxious weighing of the value of
education and life, and their true use. And then,.
After Thirty Years' Work. 5
best of all, the very pivot of all after-time, my Curate
life in Gloucester, and country parishes. Six years
were passed in this way, with a wedge of private
tutor work thrust in between; and work as an
Examiner from time to time ; when I left my parish
to examine at Cambridge for the Classical Tripos,
or was sent by the University to Eugby to examine
there, or chosen by my College for four succes-
sive years to examine at Eton. Lastly, after this,
thirty-one years as Head Master of Uppingham have
brought me to this hour.
But the Curate life was the foundation of it all in
practice. Never shall I forget it, with its teaching
work, almost daily, in National Schools. Every-
thing I most value of teaching thought, and teaching
practice, and teaching experience, came from that.
Never shall I forget those schools in the suburbs of
Gloucester, and their little class-room, with its
solemn problem, no more difficult one in the world ;
how on earth the Cambridge Honour man, with his
success and his brain-world, was to get at the minds
of those little labourers' sons, with their unfurnished
heads, and no time to give.
They had to be got at, or I had failed.
They tried all my patience, called every power
into play, and visited me with much searchings of
heart if they did not do well. Never shall I cease
to be grateful to those impracticable, other-world
boys, and that world of theirs which had to be got
into
6 Practical Thoughts on Education
They gave me the great axiom, " The worse the
material, the greater the skill of the worker."
They called out the useful dictum with which I
ever silently stepped over the threshold " If these
fellows don't learn, it's my fault/'
They disentangled all the loose threads of know-
ledge in my brain, and forced me to wind each
separately in its place, with its beginning and its
end.
They bred in me a supreme contempt for know-
ledge-lumps, and for emptying out knowledge-lumps
in a heap, like stones at the roadside, and calling it
teaching.
They made me hate the long array of fine words,
which lesson-hearers ask, and pupils answer, and
neither really know the meaning of.
They taught me how different knowing is from
being able to make others know.
Nay, they taught me the more valuable lesson
still, how different knowledge which can be produced
to an Examiner is from knowledge which knows
itself, and understands its own life and growth.
There I learnt the great secret of St. Augustine's
golden key, which, though it be of gold, is useless
unless it fits the wards of the lock. And I found
the wards I had to fit, the wards of my lock, which
had to be opened, the minds of those little
street boys, very queer and tortuous affairs ; and I
had to set about cutting and chipping myself in
every way to try and make myself into the wooden
After Thirty Years 9 Work. 1
key, which should have the one merit of a key,
however common it might look, the merit of fitting
the lock, and unlocking the minds, and opening the
shut chambers of the heart.
Oh ! how hard it was to get into shape, their
shape, and fit the twists and corners of blocked and
ignorant minds. But it was glorious work. There
was wonderful freshness in those schools, a most
exhilarating sense of life touching life, of freedom
and reality, after the heaps of knowledge, which,
like sheaves of corn on a threatening day, had had
to be loaded up, and carted in against time at
School and College.
This wrestling with mind was a different world
from the knowledge world and its loading up. It
was like landing on a new continent for the first
time, with a glad liberty of space to explore, and
reclaim ; a glad liberty of going on, and going on,
and going on, exploring and making pathways in
unknown lands.
Many able men, Archbishop Whately amongst
them, were at that time earnestly striving to put
teaching into its most telling shape for the short-
timed poor to get at. Indeed, a new epoch had
come. For the first time in the history of the world,
there was a demand that everybody should get some
teaching of a regular kind. So not only the freedom
of the work itself, and the fascinating novelty of
untried ground, and the zeal of such fellow- workers,
and the feeling of enterprise, discovery, and life, was
8 Practical Thoughts on Education
full of attraction ; bnt a national crisis of the most
momentous kind had come.
The air was full of hope, and bright with possi-
bilities ; new opportunities under new conditions
had arisen, and everything pointed to a great new
birth of teaching power. Something efficient had
to be done to make every child in the kingdom an
intelligent worker in life, in spite of lack of time, or
lack of brains. That was the problem. Some
thought it could be solved. And if the elementary
schools could be made to do it, a new era had set in.
There was a fair field. It was clear that with the
short time that could be given, and the material to
be dealt with, much knowledge was impossible ; but
mind might be roused ; interest might be awakened ;
a sure path might be laid down ; a path into a new
world, which should tempt those who set foot on it
to go on. There might be a feeling of gain produced,
a feeling of things pleasant in the getting, and
pleasant in the having. Mind was there. Why
should not mind be dealt with? What was to
prevent the exercise of new senses ? of eyes taught
to see, and ears taught to hear ? The rudder-strings
of voyages through peopled worlds of mind-creations,
the power to move, the hope to excite movement,
pleasure, happiness, seemed within range. At least,
it was not too much to hope, that the narrow walls
of the dull prison, in which the omniscient ignorance
of the village pot-house hero dwelt, might b? broken
down, and the vast beyond, with its mysterious
After Thirty Years' Work. 9
humility of infinite delight, get a chance of being
seen, or at least believed in. And if by degrees
this living teaching prevailed in the schools below,
and mind-power became mind-power indeed, what
might not be credible in the future, when better
methods and free, unfettered skill should begin their
upward push, and simplify all the processes of
learning ? Enlightened growth by growing would
displace worn-out systems ; and thought and mind
be moved on to their rightful throne ; and intelli*
gence, with memory as its day-labourer and servant,
be lord of all in the schools.
Everything seemed possible in that dawn of
liberty to work, that breaking up of the tyranny of
knowledge, that wakening of love for working, and
that new field for working love.
If there was no time for piling up knowledge, there
were minds to be trained, and lives to be set free.
And education might rise, a resurrection indeed,
from the folio sepulchre in which it had been so
long entombed.
How strange it seems, to look back on all this !
The cold, dead hand of authority came in, and sent
Lazarus back to his grave again.
That time is gone, buried, its tombstone at top of
it dogmas heavier than folios ; there is no resur-
rection for it. But it will ever live fresh in my
memory, as the one great chance of centuries. I
shall never forget it.
In such a time, with such hopes, dreams, but
10 Practical Thoughts on Education
dreams that cannot be undreamed again, circum-
stances sent me to Uppingham; and I suddenly
found myself brought face to face with all I had
professed to believe, when free to profess ; and all I
had ever said, when free to talk ; with a platform
to make the attempt on, twenty-five boys to begin
with, youth on my side, and faith. So the work
began in earnest; and slowly went on through
every gradation known to schools, and has landed
me where I am to-day. These thirty-one years have
passed me through every phase incidental to school
existence from the level in numbers of a small
private school ; and each stage has required to be
dealt with as it came separately, and constructed
as it came. Men talk lightly of success who have
not paid the cost. The great Duke said there is no
sadder thing than victory excepting a defeat. Yet
it is good to have looked ruin in the face, and grown
familiar with her solemn features. He who has
once seen her, walks the earth thenceforth with
other eyes, with tenderer feelings for the weak and
downcast, with sterner confidence in truth; and
knows from end to end all the great tune of working
life, and thrills in answer to those vibrations which
secretly pass to and fro between true workers. I for
one acknowledge nothing higher than the skilled
workman in his own skilled work. It is on this
account, and because you have chosen me, that I
have endeavoured to show, whether what I say is
good or bad, that I ought to have something to say ;
After Thirty Years 9 Work. 11
and if I have, I am not out of place here to-day. I
stand here as a worker.
I fully acknowledge the right of anyone to come
to the skilled workman and say, Make me such and
such a thing, and to hlame him if it is not made
well. But it is for the skilled workman to say
whether it can be made ; and to give instructions
how to make it. And I do not understand any
man, he he Solomon himself, coming to the skilled
workman, and laying down laws how he is to work,
in total ignorance of the material in his hands, the
time at his disposal, and the tools he is able to get.
There is much poetry in childhood, the hopes and
fears of the young are full of imaginative feeling,
and pictorial effect, but a poet would be an unsafe
guide in schools. There is much philosophy in
child-nature, and brain- spinning is a pleasant thing
to the spinner, and brain-spun fabrics fascinating
to artistic connoisseurs, but let no man who has
never taught a child, ay, and many children, de-
ceive himself into thinking he knows how to teach,
or can instruct others in what he does not know
himself. And last, not least, the dead hand of
unfeeling power, that measures lives by a foot-rule,
is dead indeed when thrust into living work.
Now there must be a beginning. The material
to be dealt with is the first thing. This is not a
simple question. It is twofold. First, the answer
is, the child mind is the material, but the child
mind under very stringent conditions of time, and
12 Practical Thoughts on Education
habit. And secondly, as two rival powers compose
the mind, qua teaching, the thinking power, and
the carrying power, holding somewhat the same
relative position to one another that muscular
strength and stomach strength do in the body;
which is going to be most employed ? Is the aim
to be to make the mind strong, or to make it full ?
I unhesitatingly answer that the Teacher's true
business is to make the mind strong. Incidentally
this has been touched on already.
It will be well now to lay down four propositions
as a platform to start from.
The first proposition is,
Every child has to be taught ; with its corollary, that
no system which fails to meet this necessity is true.
The second proposition is,
That Teaching is not yet perfect ; with its corollary,
that no authority, which by rigid requirements
assumes that it is so, is true.
The third proposition is,
That if the teachers don't know how to do their work,
no one else does ; with its corollary, that no dead
hand, thrust into living work from the outside, is
true.
And the fourth proposition is,
That Education means training for life. Lives, not
lessons are dealt with ; with its corollary, that no
system, which battens on books, is true.
It is indeed the fact that human nature has been
so adjusted that any system, however defective, will
After Thirty Yean' Work. 13
have its apparent success* Nay, the worse the
system, the more brilliant may be its outcome in a
few stars. But stars, remember, imply night.
The dullest daylight puts out all the stars.
If every child is properly taught there will be
daylight, and the intelligence of the many will take
off attention from the few, instead of the prizes of
a few being accepted as a compensation for the
darkness of the many.
But, what is being properly taught ? Now there
is a simple fact before beginning to teach which
requires to be recognised.
In choosing what to begin on, not the desirable
but the possible is the question.
Say that there are five years, an ignorant mind,
and many hindrances ; what can an ignorant mind,
in five years, with many hindrances, be got to do ?
That is the question.
Add to this the first axiom of work, that you
cannot use the unknown to teach the unknown;
and it is wonderful how much confused bramble is
cut out of the path by these two simple common-
sense hatchets.
Take any two persons arguing on school at
random, anywhere, at any time, the argument will
be, whether it is better to take this subject or that.
I boldly assert that the question really lies
between doing nothing, or doing something, and has
nothing to do with the desirableness of this or that
subject.
14: Practical Thoughts on Education
What is possible ? That is all ; enough too, and
more than enough.
Few, to begin with, are aware how completely
language, the sole instrument of teaching, is un-
known to the vast majority of those who come to
be taught, high and low. I mean common words,
English words, in their ordinary sense, and in daily
use. The boys even of well-to-do families are
quite ignorant of the meaning of the familiar
words employed in the conversation going on round
them ; of course still more of those used in books.
Examples might be multiplied to any extent. I
had intended to give some, but I thought better of
it, as it might produce a wrong impression of its
being an occasional eccentricity instead of universal
practice. Whole classes don't know the same com-
mon word. I cannot however refrain from quoting
the student, age seventeen, who after a most
patient explanation, a day or two intervening, pro-
pounded Sir Isaac Newton's great law of universal
aggravation.
No doubt many things are desirable, but what
can be got, if time is short, and language unknown;
and the unknown cannot teach the unknown ?
Life is what has to be dealt with, not lessons ;
or lessons only so far as they inspirit life, enrich it,
and give it new powers.
And everyone has to be dealt with ; racing stables
and a crack winner or two will not do.
I state with all the certainty of long experience
After Thirty Years' Work. 15
that under the conditions imposed by the laws of
nature any attempt to pile in knowledge until very
late in the day, has failed, does fail, and will
always fail. It is not possible for gentle or simple.
A settled conviction of hopeless stupidity is the
only gain carried off by many from the knowledge
shops.
I know no sadder sight in creation than to see a
slow good boy kneading himself laboriously, because
he is good, into hopeless despair, through being
forced to load in the measured quantity from out-
side against time.
It is possible at a cost of millions to turn a whole
kingdom in this way into a sort of manufactory of
stupidity.
But though few can get knowledge, everyone can
be taught to use the powers he has. Working
power can be got. But how ? An answer to this
question may fairly be demanded, and I feel that I
am bound to sketch what is possible, as I have so
strongly laid down what is not possible. The sub-
ject is not so vast as it seems. The moment we
leave cloud-land and the desirable, and come down
to earth and the possible, the turmoil and jostling
is at an end. A single line will define the whole
scope of teaching operations up to the point where
the manufacture of learned men begins.
Make every child master of the one instrument
by which all human life moves, speech, the mother-
tongue.
16 Practical Thoughts on Education
Or to take it from a different side, life is the
question. The living come to be taught ; what has
he got already in him ? It is clear that to utilise,
expand, vivify what he has got already in him, is at
once possible.
Lo ! the answer, the first answer, to the question
what has he got in him, is at once speech.
Every Englishman speaks English; and as
nothing can be done till language is known, English
must be known first. If English is not known, as
far as it is not known, it is a foreign language to
him who does not know it, Chinese, let us say.
"Well, at present we are engaged in teaching new
and unknown facts by talking Chinese. As long
as we talk Chinese we must fail. The vocabulary
of the great majority of the so-called educated
classes is very limited, as has been stated above ;
the boys and girls do not understand the meaning
of English words. Make them understand them
by teaching them to read English well.
To read aloud intelligently, with ease, under-
standing, and feeling, as it ought to be the first aim
of sane teaching, so it is the crowning excellence,
the consummate perfection, the most finished pro*
duct, of the highest culture. It stands moreover
that great test of value to the human race that all
can begin, though none can find an end. Nothing
is of true value to man that is not universal.
Again ; w r hat infinite interest and variety there
is in the necessities through which thought passes
After Thirty Years' Work. 17
in finding expression in words. The moment
Grammar is dealt with as thought working into
words, and using the word-creations it gives birth
to, and making them live, instead of as a kind of
Btrait-waistcoat to pinch thought into shape, a new
world is opened. If Grammar is only thought
taking shape, Grammar is already in the mind
waiting to be called out. And it can be called out
without any book work by a teacher. A class can
be made to frame its own rules by a little question-
ing. I have done it again and again; and it is
lively and interesting work. I have known little
children ask for grammar lessons as a favour for
their amusement.
The first economy of time obviously is to utilise
in this way the material already collected by every-
one who speaks, and thus waste no time in having
laboriously to collect new material before it is
necessary to do so.
The next great economy of time is to excite
interest.
Great interest will make up for want of time.
Create great interest. As soon as children can
read, throw away all lesson books for a time. Let
them read. (But alas ! who is there can teach
reading ?) Let them read aloud really read, not ;
tumble through pages. Give them to read Poetry,
the Lives of Good Men, Narratives of noble deeds,
Historical Stories, and Historical Novels, Books of
Travel, and all the fascinating literature of dis-
o
18 Practical Thoughts on Education
covery and adventure. A person who has once
learned to read well is tempted to go on. And such
books, selected by a carefully graduated scheme,
would supply endless knowledge, whilst kindling
the mind, without any waste of time from drudgery
and disgust. Geography, History, and power of
speech are all comprised in such books, if properly
used.
Here let me record my own deep obligations to
Sir Walter Scott, the noblest of writers. Many of
his novels I have read over and over again. The
glorious lesson to honour, and paint with honour,
antagonists and their beliefs, can be learnt nowhere
so well as in him. Better be one of Sir Walter
Scott's dislikes than the hero of many modern
novels. With what a large humanity he takes the
human element even in the characters which he
holds up to ridicule, so that a kindly feeling is
excited whilst we laugh, or even despise ! How ,
noble is his sympathy with the weak, the oppressed,
the hardly-treated ! How manly his spirit, like the
air of his own mountains, full of gallantry and
truth ! To come to lower points, how varied his
language ! his riches of speech how great ! He
gave me an acquaintance with words, and a free-
dom in using them, for which I am, and ever shall
be, grateful. For unsullied purity of lofty thought ;
for a large charity, which ennobles the meanest
person he touches, and leaves behind some tender-
ness towards those we condemn most ; for gene-
After Thirty Years' Work. 19
rous, frank testimony to good wherever found ; how
great gratitude is due to him, who has glorified his
country and the English-speaking world with his
words ! Health and honour flow forth from every
word he wrote, an heir-loom to our race for ever.
I rejoice in confessing my great debt to him, and
others may get from similar reading the happy
gains I got from him.
And did not the present Emperor of Germany,
with a like feeling, think it worth while to parade
the troops throughout his kingdom, and gave com-
mand that every regiment in that mighty army
should have read to them the loss of the Birken-
head, and how the English soldiers stood calmly
in their ranks on deck, and saw the women and
children saved, as the ship was slowly sinking down
with them into the cruel African sea ; and so they
died. The Emperor thought the solemn glory of
the English soldier in his quiet faithfulness even
unto death, a grand example of what men should
be, a noble teaching for his countrymen to hear, an
education of heroes. And we, whose heroes they
are, we, who have many heroes, let it all slip, and
run away, like water after rain in thankless soil.
Yet even as a bit of knowledge, what opportunity
for vivid description of the African sea, the trans-
lucent palace of the shark, and all its wonders ;
and of Africa and its lakes, its deserts, its plants,
its animals, its colonies, its natives, such a reading
naturally gives rise to !
20 Practical Thoughts on Education
What a lesson in geography it might be made !
Then to go on with what is already present, wait-
ing to be used. There are eyes, there are ears;
take them, use them.
Are there no crops in England, clothing the land
with knowledge and beauty ? no plants to be seen ?
no flowers in fields, and hedges, and woods? no
gardens for summer and winter to make sport in ?
Give them tongues to tell their own history.
Not that I would teach Botany book-fashion;
but I would turn every child's eye on to the facts
that botany and the microscope have discovered, and
on to their own daily round of walks or roads.
They should note the first crocus and put down its
date. They should observe each day the new
comers, and their curious differences, the kind of
growth, the various shapes, the beauty of leaves,
the texture and colour, the upward flow of sap, and
all the secret glory of the rushing tide of life ever
flowing; so that the quiet fields with their grass
and their trees, so stationary and so still, are for all
that full of the stir of hurrying life, an infinity of
streams, every blade of grass a rivulet, every tree a
river, till, if all was poured together, these won-
drous springing fountains of earth would form a
second ocean of moving life.
Not a bird should fly unnoticed ; the note of the
first chiff-chaff should be heard. Not a song should
sound, not a wing be moved, without appealing to
seeing eyes, and hearing ears.
After Thirty Years' Work. 21
There are some books already written to glorify
fchese subjects, and not to make specimens of them ;
books, that feel their beauty, and do not want to
lecture on their bones. And there might be any
number, if writers and teachers were agreed that
they wanted to breathe into the taught noble life,
living power, living interest, curiosity, hope, and
not to turn them into fifth-rate catalogues. The
names of Edwards and Dick then would not shine
like stars, because of the daylight in every village ;
and tens of thousands, using happy eyes, would find
delight in common things. First put the marvel-
lous results of observation, and train the eye to see,
and the ear to hear, and afterwards, if there is
time, teach how such things were found out. What
food for observation there would be in making a boy
trace in sand, or build in a play-ground corner, a
map of the district in which he lived, the plan of a
campaign, a traveller's route, or any history capable
of being made visible. And let me guard against
the objection that all this is loose and unmetho-
dical. Be it so. It is better to have loose facts
than nothing; curiosity, than stagnation and dis-
gust. But it need not be loose. As severe a
scheme of logical sequence of knowledge might un-
obtrusively be followed in this way, as on the driest
date card, and most meagre manual. During all
the first years for high and low no lesson book in
the ordinary sense of the word should ever come
into a schoolroom, if I had power: but reading
22 Practical Thoughts on Education
books only, carefully selected, carefully edited, with
plenty of supplementary notes, and Teachers.
Teachers not hearers of lessons.
One word more on reading. It is necessary to
draw attention to the fact that this education by
reading gives, first of all, the pleasurable power of
going on with ease and pleasure, nothing else does ;
and, secondly, every word added to a man's mind
is a new thought, and fact, or a new aspect of a
thought and fact. It is computed that the unedu-
cated man is confined to about three hundred or
four hundred words ; which is the same as saying,
that the uneducated man's mind is imprisoned within
that space. Look at the clouds, what a difference
it makes in mind-power to one who loves the
beauty of the clouds to have the three words, rain-
cloud, cumulus, and cirrus, as classifying guides of
what he sees, instead of simply seeing clouds only !
The fact that all knowledge passes through words
has already been mentioned, but that words them-
selves are such wonderful knowledge, and that the
user of fifteen thousand words, like Shakespear, is
a lord of infinite empires of thought by that simple
fact only, is not heeded, or indeed known. But
words are to their possessors powers of knowledge
and thought themselves. Let then lesson books
and lesson hearers depart, and reading books and
Teachers come in. Exit paper, enter life.
But what is Teaching ? Teaching means drawing
out powers of mind by question and answer.
After Thirty Years' Work. 23
There are many ways of learning, but only one
way of teaching.
There are many ways of learning, where the
learner, shown, or not shown, how to do it, does
the work ; but only one way of teaching, till teach-
ing is no longer necessary, and the pupil becomes a
learner by himself.
Once more, not the desirable but the possible is
what every sane authority will propose. If subjects
are impossible, it is no use pondering over whether
they are [desirable. Change the subjects as you
,please, if the majority get nothing they get nothing.
'A few fragments of knowledge acquired at the cost
of blunted hope, and loss of power, and false ideas
of life, and no skill, and no eye for skill, are not
worth the cost. This might be remedied by teach-
ing ; but there can be no teacher unless teaching is
possible.
Teachers are a very artistic product. They do
not grow by just sprinkling about a few Minutes of
Council by my Lords, like mustard and cress on a
bottle.
A Teacher is a combination of heart, head, artistic
training, and favouring circumstances. Like all
other high arts, life must have free play or there
can be no teaching.
Teaching is not possible if classes are too large.
Teaching is not possible if an inspector is coming
to count the number of bricks made to order.
This is self-evident. The large class destroys
24: Practical Thoughts on Education
teaching, because time does not admit of each boy
being questioned, and each mind being skilfully
probed, and its special difficulties attended to.
The Inspector destroys teaching, because he is
bound by law and necessity to examine according
to a given pattern ; and the perfection of teaching
is, that it does not work by a given pattern.
Minds cannot be inspected. The minds of the
class cannot be produced as specimens on a board,
with a pin stuck through them, like beetles.
Shoving in the regulation quantity is one thing;
clearing the stuff out of the bewildered brain, and
strengthening the mind, is another ; and the two
are foes.
I stand here to-day for liberty ; liberty to teach.
I assert that if the teachers do not know how to
do their work, no one else does ; and that if they
are ever to know how to do it, there must be fair
liberty.
It is lives, not lessons, that are dealt with. The
great factor of time determines the possible and tho
impossible.
It is madness to throw away what all have, the
language they speak, the sight of their eyes, and
the hearing of their ears ; and set on foot what
cannot be got, in defiance of the fact that it cannot
be got.
The most pitiful sight in the world is the
slow good boy, laboriously kneading himself into
Btupidity, because he is good.
After Thirty Years' Work. 25
And now I must conclude. No one is more
aware than myself, I believe, that silence is
golden.
Certainly I have a most keen feeling of the
danger of speech. But you chose me. You have
made me speak. In obedience to you I have broken
silence.
O Teachers of England, if there is any hope,
strive for liberty to teach. Have mercy on the
slow, the ignorant, the weak. Their lives are the
stake. Let there be liberty to improve. Let there
be some liberty.
But let me finish by begging your pardon for
having broken silence in a lost cause.
AN ADDEESS DELIVERED AT ST. ALBANS,
APRIL 28, 1886.
AN ADDEESS ON EDUCATION.
POWEB of speech has naturally played a great parb
in the world ; a much greater part than it ought to
play, or would play, if experience was allowed a
fair chance, and wisdom had its due. But power
of speech has many meanings ; and Mr. Pitt is said
to have given a definition of oratory, which, fairly
thought out, conveys as much truth as a single
word, perhaps, has ever been enabled to carry. He
was asked, ' ' What made an orator ? " He answered,
" His audience ; " concentrating in that single word
the spiritual law, the grand truth, that where an
audience is earnest, experienced, intelligent, and
full of the powerful subtle sympathy of a good
cause, there the speaker's soul, if it can take the
inspiration, gathers up the silent glory of the
breathing life, like a great organ, and rises instinct
with the harmony of the spiritual presence all
round about when the very air seems to thrill and
throb, transfigured into a kind of wistful expecta-
tion, and unborn hopes gathers it all up, and pours
it forth in articulate utterance, a mighty tide of
30 An Address on Education.
many hearts that feel. Yes, for good or evil the
audience breathe their life into the speaker, and
make him give his best, whatever that best may be.
This is my advantage to-day. I feel upheld by the
sympathy of my audience. We are all met together
this afternoon for a great cause ; all inspired by a
deep interest in the sacred cause of Education.
And I have felt, from the first moment you asked
me to come, that my audience, few or many, would
be a living audience, and uplift me by their life.
Yet, I pray you, be patient with me. Strong as
I feel our sympathy to be, I may, nevertheless, say
unpleasant things, which may grate on your ears.
But give them hearing, for they are of life. I am no
amateur, floating aerial brightnesses to catch your
eyes, but a workman fresh from his workshop and
his forge. You must not expect mental fireworks,
but the sober convictions of many years' labour.
Still less is brain-spun gauze of self-evolved human
nature any part of my stock in trade, with all its
niceties of subtle phraseology, and its fascinating
assumption of intellectual superiority. No, you
must be contented with thicker stuff, woven of
tough fibre, coarse, if you like to think so the
tough, coarse texture of daily toil, of weary hours,
of watchful waiting, of many a victory, and many
a defeat ; ay, many a defeat, and the years of trial,
that kill, or make strong.
One thing I pre-eminently rejoice in to-day, that,
whilst called to speak on education, the moving
An Address on Education. 31
power of this meeting is the Higher Education of
Women.
Not that this will much affect the treatment of
the subject. In my judgment the main lines are
the same for men and women. And the verdict on
the education of both sexes may be given in the
emphatic declaration concerning marriage, " What
God hath joined together let no man put asunder."
Woman was created as a help, or fellow- worker
with man. To be a fellow-worker implies, not the
same work necessarily, but kindred training, the
same main direction of thought and culture. It
implies a power able to step in and give actual help
in all ways outside the actual battle, able to supply
what want of time and rougher strength cannot
compass. Above all, it implies the being able by
delicate excellence, and refined yet dauntless courage
and skill, to nerve men for their highest efforts, and
bring to perfection all those qualities which depend
on spiritual nobility for their triumph; and by
so doing, to break down the idolatry of force, and
appeal, by a perpetual silent eloquence of weak-
ness, strong in lovable goodness, with ceaseless
pleading against the coarse meanness of the argu-
ment of the hand, and the brutality of mere
physical or mental strength.
There are facts of the world, which have, sooner
or later, to be dealt with. When shall we face
honestly the facts of the world ? Let us try to do
so to-day. There is an irresistible march of great
32 An Address on Education.
facts of natural law, however many thousand years
may pass before dearly bought experience sets them
on their rightful throne. But why should we buy
experience so dear, when facts are so plain ? The
most plain, the most practical fact in man's world
is this, that every human being, for the first ten
years or so of life, is in the hands of women. We
are getting skilful in law-making ; but no law has
yet been passed to abolish mothers and nurses.
The real rulers of the world for good or evil must
be those who have its first ten years in their hands.
As an historical truth every nation, since history
began, has been great and living in proportion to
the excellence of its women, and the treatment they
received. And yet the true sovereignty of women
as helpers and fellow-workers can hardly be said to
have ever had a national existence. It is well to
face our facts. Facts have an awkward trick of
knocking down those who treat them badly. No-
thing easier than trampling them underfoot ; nothing
harder than to escape being tripped up flat into the
mud, if you do. The sovereignty of women is a
fact. Those ten years make it so ; to say nothing
of other reasons ; and there are perhaps some other
reasons, not unknown to us, for feminine influence.
Let us then face facts, and educate the queens of
life, and fit them for their throne, their throne by
divine right of motherhood, of nursehood, and the
weakness that rules, not by force, but by harmo-
nious grace of fitness. We will not shut our eyes to
An Address on Education. 33
facts like fools, we will not be fools, to-day at all
events, in this.
Well then. What are the main lines of Educa-
tion facts of natural law ?
What are we dealing with ?
And what do we want ?
I fearlessly assert that these questions have
neither been asked, nor answered.
They have had no public existence. They have
not appeared at all in the arena of action.
I am old enough to remember the beginning of
the great Educational scramble.
I am old enough to have taken a keen personal
interest in the question.
I have lived long enough to have seen every
principle I care for, every belief I hold, every fact
I know, ignored, neglected, or overthrown, in the
gladiatorial contest.
Now to our questions. The Persian of old, if he
had been asked what his view was, would have
answered promptly, " We want to teach the Persian
to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth." But then
we are not Persians.
What do we want to teach the Englishman ?
Is it true that the human being has no feeling ?
Is it true that feeling has been improved off the
the face of the earth ?
Are love and hate dead and buried ?
Is there no honour or dishonour any more ?
Is there no bravery, no cowardice ?
D
84 An Address on Education.
Is truth a thing of the past, and falsehood ?
Is there no temperance and intemperance ?
No joy and sorrow?
No endurance and pain ?
Is there nothing divine ?
No love of Christ, or God?
Have we Solomon's trial over again, with no
Solomon to pass judgment ?
Has England, like the false mother, given up the
child to be cut in half ?
The Persian knew what he wanted, and did it.
Do we?
I prefer not quoting the authority of Holy Scrip-
ture. We do not want authority, but common
sense. If the staircase of our house has been cut
away, or left out, we must begin by replacing the
staircase before we can go up higher.
The Persian defined his view of Education in
three words riding, shooting, truth. And no better
definition will ever be given, if we take it as a type,
and interpret it.
The interpretation is simple. The Persian
wanted practical skill, and perfect heart-power.
For what had a Persian to deal with ? He had to
deal with warfare against wild beasts, warfare
against warlike men, and honour in his home.
Their work was summed up in this ; and so is ours.
They trained for it. Activity, skill, hardihood,
fearless contempt of death, fearless upholding of
truth summed up their idea of training. And it
An Address on Education. 35
gave them the Empire of the world. The boy, who
daily took his bow and arrow in his hand with the
daily thought, when would he be allowed to meet a
lion, had something to think about ; something to
try his feelings, and make him a man.
The bold rider, whose heart thought was set on
the battle and the charge from childhood, had some-
thing to dream about, waking or sleeping. Both
had the joy of strength and temperance, with the
praise of courage ever ringing in their ears. And
the speaker and doer of truth had learned what
honour meant, had learned not to fear the face of
man.
Well! fearless truth, bravery, honour, activity,
manly skill, temperance, hardihood, welded into a
grand national character, gave them the mastery
of the world.
If they somewhat cut the child in half, and 1 put
into him but little ready-made furniture of know-
ledge, they took the half which made them men,
and rulers of men. But we are not Persians ! on
the contrary, the greatest triumph of modern en-
lightenment has been a national amputation of
character.
I am well aware what a big dog is in the way
here ! How dangerous it is to be a believer in life !
The glorification of the dog-in-the-manger as liberal
is a great achievement ; but it staggers somewhat
common sense, when he sits in the manger, and
says, " Go where you like, do what you like, I have
36 An Address on Education.
but one hatred, Hay. Hay you shall neither have,
nor give."
But, then you know, only bigots eat hay, dogs
don't. To the one it is life, to the other litter.
The poor dog was only an advanced thinker born
before his time.
The constellation of the dog-star is the finest
apotheosis of modern times. The dog is avenged
and shines as a star cf the first magnitude, and
only persecutes hay, as it only hates hay.
To resume. What do we want ?
Are we prepared to face the facts of natural law,
and human life, or not ?
Let us begin for ourselves ; and leave alone what
is ui possession of the field, if for no other reason
but this, because all the competitors agree that all
the rest have failed ; and bystanders agree with all.
To say nothing of a grim whisper, which is begin-
ning to pass through the land, that all the
evil of all the homes is being poured by law into
common pools, and carbolic and disinfectants are
forbidden by law. This concerns everybody. Be
sure that everybody suffers when education goes
wrong. The failures are the lives of men. The
teacher's workshop floor is strewed, not with shav-
ings, and wasted wood, but with wasted years and
broken lives. The first duty of a nation is to know
its failures.
If National Education turned out a Shakespear
every ten years, and consumed the children in doing
An Address on Education. 37
it, National Education would be a curse. We want
no Moloch, even if a Shakespear comes out of the
fire periodically.
Still less do we want a Moloch, which only turns
out dust and ashes ; as must always be the case,
where the waste is taken no notice of. A nation
that disregards the waste has not yet begun.
Least of all do we want a manufacture of human
knives to hack at the world.
Well ! what are we dealing with?
And what do we want to do with it ?
Let us face our facts, and not fight against laws
of nature.
We are dealing with the whole human being not
cut in half.
And we want to teach and train each and all ;
and leave no one untrained.
We want to begin at the beginning in accordance
with laws of nature and growth.
Now all laws of growth are pleasurable, however
much demand they may make on the growing life.
The active, growing, healthy child takes pleasure in
the exercise and hardihood which makes him active,
growing, and healthy.
But, as a fact, how do people generally begin ?
The following picture is a true picture, though
only typical.
There is the sea of knowledge, glancing and
gleaming in the glorious summer morning; and
there also is a bathing machine, with a little naked
38 An Address on Education*
victim in it. Up comes a female gorgon, seizes on
her prey, and with grim humour plunges him,
mouth wide open, nose, eyes, helpless and howling
under the floating salt, and brings him up again
tingling every inch of him, spluttering, half-sick ;
eyes, mouth, nose, brain, one complicated misery.
The glad, bright, wide sea disenchanted into a kind
of baby squirt to torment babies. But let us now
dismiss finally how not to do it. Let us go on to
see how to do it.
Here also I will take a heathen's judgment as the
perfection of common sense and wise observation ;
which cannot be sneered at by heathens, and will
not be sneered at by Christians.
Plato, some two thousand years ago, or more,
gave a definition of the true learner, which will not
easily be beaten. It harmonises with our work
to-day. It is a kind of axiom, which ought to be
engraved on every mind.
Plato's true learner learns " smoothly, without
stumbling, and in a prevailing way."
This threefold division is full of life and experi-
ence.
First comes the " smoothly; " that is, the belief
in the work, and the love of it.
Next comes the "without stumbling;" that is,
the obedience, activity, self-mastery, of the learner.
He neither puts, nor finds, anything in the way.
He has no rubbish in him ; rubbish has been
emptied out of his mind. " The stuffed bosom has
An Address on Education. 39
been cleansed of that perilous (or foolish) stuff,
which weighs upon the heart." His heart is open
and clear.
Finally, there is the power of lasting, the staying
power, perseverance, which is not satisfied till all
is done ; which faces all that has to be done, and
does it, and succeeds.
Loving work, unfettered work, persevering work,
make up Plato's idea of a true worker.
I said " a true worker. 19 But observe, the first
demand love, and the second demand the clear
heart, come before work.
They belong to a pre-working stage, and to pre-
working law.
Pre-working law then is the true starting
point.
The want of acknowledging pre-working law has
destroyed work more than every other cause, and
all other defects, put together.
Pre-working law demands first, that every child
should have a clear perception of why he comes to
school.
And secondly, that every child should believe in
the answer, and love it.
This means, that pre-working law requires a
convincing statement of the value of the work to be
done, understandable by a child ; and also the assur-
ance that everybody can do the work.
Complaints of stupidity would vanish if these pre-
working laws were attended to.
40 An Address on Education.
As the homes do not, and often cannot, supply
this want, the schools must do it.
The stable-boy knows what a horse is.
The gardener's boy knows what a garden is.
The carpenter's lad knows what a box is.
The school-boy alone is turned loose into the
working world without the smallest idea of what he
is about, or how to work.
They do not know the common facts about
memory and merely loading up knowledge, about
thought-power and getting skill and strength, about
character and the feelings.
They do not know what their work is to do for
them.
They do not know why the special work they are
set has been chosen.
They do not know what they ought to try and
aim at. In a word, pre-working law is a sealed
book to them.
They do not know the beginning ; without which
no intelligent start can be made.
The child starts blindfolded.
I repeat, the child starts blindfolded.
But every child can be made easily to understand
the value of the skilful mind, the value and pleasure
of growth.
We need not be afraid of labour, if they feel the
gain of labour.
Permit me to try and show briefly this bit of
pre-working law.
An Address on Education. 41
Startle the dull, hidebound class, the corporeal
presence in the room, by an abrupt question, Why
are you not tending pigs, or weeding turnips ? Or
whatever the lowest wage-earning of the district
may be ? A pig-boy, or turnip-boy, gets 3s. a week.
Why don't you get 3s. instead of all this payment?
The answer will probably amount to, ' because my
father sends me to school.' Go on with, Why
does your father pay so much to send you to
school ?
Where does he get the money from, which keeps
you here ?
Are you worth it all ?
Is your work so much better than the pig-boy's ?
Which is it to be, pig-boy, or scholar ? and Why ?
Having sent in this way a strong splash of cold
water into the sleepy soul and woke it up, it is not
difficult by a little questioning to make any child
see, that value, the market price of anything made,
in the first instance depends on the time required,
the strength employed, and the risk run by the
worker.
For example, as a question lesson.
The ploughboy, who begins at once without
learning, who only wants ordinary strength, and
runs no risk of failure, will not command a high
price as a worker ; because anyone can do it, at the
earliest working age.
The carpenter's apprentice has to spend five
years, say, in learning his trade ; he has to pay for
42 An Address on Education.
earning it; he must be fed and clothed, whilst
learning it.
First, then, as compared with the ploughboy,
there are five years of time to be accounted for.
Secondly, there is not only his own time, but the
time and labour of others, which were paid out in
supporting him during the time he was being taught
and earning nothing ; this may fairly be put at
another five years of stored up life of life, that is,
which has passed into the shape of work, and by
work passed into the shape of money earned. The
apprentice also has to buy tools and run some risk
when he sets up in trade on his own account.
The apprentice Bill of Life then runs in these
terms :
Five years of his own life.
Five years of the life of his friends,
Tools.
Skilful strength.
Eisk.
Grand total, ten years of life, tools, skilful
strength, and risk, as against the wage-earning of
the ploughboy at the earliest possible age, without
any outlay of time or brain. Apply these facts of
cost of production to the Lawyer, the Doctor, the
Clergyman, any educated man ; and a child can be
made to see easily that skilled work is very valuable,
that the power of being made a skilled workman
is very valuable, that school- work is intended to
make him skilled workman, that his parents and
An Address on Education. 43
teachers believe that they are taking the best means
to make him a skilled workman, that they give of
their own lives to buy him the chance of being a
skilled workman, and that for children to waste the
lives of others, as well as their own, in idleness, or
worse, is unutterably mean, and base to the last
degree.
If this bit of pre-working law is satisfied, it is not
possible that the present blindfold apathy could go
on for many generations.
Then again there is the real value of Education.
Subject that to the same process.
The pig-boy in the midst of the finest landscape
in the world, if he is but a pig-boy, judges the land-
scape by the number of pigs it would support. In
other words, the pig-boy's body is aprison shutting in
a creature whose highest standard of beauty is pigs.
Can any prison be more deadly than this ?
Any child can be made to see the gain in pleasure
that Education brings.
No child would give up the power of reading, yet
reading was a lesson, a task, at first.
A child who has felt the gain of reading can be
made to feel partly, partly to have faith in, the
exquisite delight of being taught to read all things,
all the languages that speak to the eye, ear, and
heart.
Painting, architecture, music, all creation can be
shown to any child to be languages.
The table before them, the benches on which
44 An Address on Education.
they sit, the room, the inkstands, the paper they
write on, everything, can by a few questions be
made to speak, and tell their own history, and give
up the secrets of the thought which made them.
How much more can attention be awakened to
the beauty of God's thoughts in creation ! the voices
that speak in cloud and rain, in river, forest, moun-
tain, plain, flower, grass. For all we see is thought
made visible.
Again, take the great ear-languages, which appeal
to the feelings. Music, the song of birds, the voice
of winds that breathe o'er land and sea in tender-
ness, or wrath; the waters shouting in joy,
chanting low rippling songs, roaring in their furious
onset ; and last of all, word-language, which par-
takes of the power of all, and is the most living
exponent of life word-language, which bears in its
bosom the sacred gift of conversing with the great
minds and glorious thinkers of all time.
A very few hours' talk, dexterously referred to
from time to time, will make this pre-working law
act, put the child absolutely into a new world, and
ensure, as far as possible, that the learner is willing
to learn smoothly.
The distinction between right feeling and know-
ledge can be brought home by a single question.
Do you always do a lesson when you know you ought
to do it ? If not, the knowledge of what is right is
no good, till right feeling rules your life, and makes
you do what you know.
An Address on Education. 45
No thorough progress will ever be made till mere
intellect meets with the contempt it deserves ; and
the engine without the engine-driver is despised.
The love of Truth and Truth means doing at the
moment what at the moment we know to be right
the love of Truth right love, that is, right feeling,
must be set on its throne, if any nation is ever to be
really educated. Turn us into Persians ; make all
knowledge revolve as satellites round right love, and
the world will have changed from the Ptolemaic
system to the Copernican. And natural law, under-
stood and obeyed, will lead to infinite discoveries in
the science of life.
So much of pre-working law.
Now to work : what to work, and how to work.
There are two axioms, which I would put up as
sign-posts for this part of the road.
First, discussions on subjects are infinite. But
great discoveries, great marvels, great usefulness,
have nothing to do with the value of a subject as a
teaching subject.
Columbus made a marvellous discovery, but any
rough seaman, with a little practice, can follow on
his track. To explore a new continent may only
show the sagacity and savage skill of a Eed Indian.
Ploughing is the most useful of all work, but the
ploughman ranks lowest in the scale of workers.
Secondly, a subject may be very valuable, but not
in practice, if it kicks out another that is more,
valuable.
4:6 An Address on Education.
We need to arrive at some conclusion on the
subject of ignorance necessary ignorance.
I have never seen this subject brought forward ;
it may be my misfortune, but I have not. Yet a
clear perception of necessary ignorance is the very
foundation-stone of true education. Few would
claim omniscience, but all assume it. Omniscience
has to be given up.
As an illustration, let me draw your attention to
the fact that there are about one thousand definite
languages in the world. A reasonably good know-
ledge of five of these would be considered no mean
attainment. To be a good Greek and Latin scholar,
and a thorough speaker of German and French, in
addition to our own language, would be considered
satisfactory. But what becomes of the nine hundred
and ninety-five which we know nothing about?
nine hundred and ninety-five unknown, to five
known?
If this compulsory ignorance meets us in one
subject only, what becomes of the knowledge hunt
as the be-all and end-all of Education ?
Why, not a letter is written to the Times, not a
Cabinet Minister speaks, who does not toss into the
school-caldron some half-dozen new, indispensable
subjects, every one of them with their thousand
variations. They might just as well demonstrate
that the fee simple of six new planets was necessary
to a school-boy. The idolatry of knowledge must
perish, or Education cannot begin.
An Address on Education. 47
A clear perception of necessary ignorance must
become ordinary stock-in-trade, or mental bank-
ruptcy will continue to be as common as it now is.
Study ignorance. Even the bathing gorgon fails
to make the baby swallow all the sea.
But the Persian was right. Nature, the laws of
the world, lay down the main track as long as the
world lasts.
Noble character comes first Truth.
The training of skill and strength comes next.
Noble character is trained by noble example of
life, whether in word or deed, and by honest sur-
roundings, whether in word or deed. The highest
beliefs and the most true work train noble character.
The Teacher must have high beliefs, and be allowed
to teach in their spirit. The hearts of the teachers
are all in all. The place of teaching should honestly
correspond in all things to the work that has to be
done there. The work should have every proper
instrument and appliance, whether of teacher or
aids to teaching, which can be brought to bear.
The whole atmosphere should breathe honour and
truth. All the surroundings, living or non-living,
should appeal unconsciously to the higher nature of
the learners. The highest aims should be put
highest, and honoured as highest. Mangers without
hay do not feed.
As regards the work, a selection must be made
on natural principles of growth, and obedience to
laws of nature.
48 An Address on Education.
The main needs of life, and the main facts of life,
are the same for high and low alike.
All speak a language.
Everything in the world passes through language.
Not to clear the language-pipe is simple insanity.
Clear and widen the language-pipe first.
I am inclined to go on by rescuing from a misuse,
which has done much harm, an old English proverb,
and, by changing one word in it, make it a working
definition of perfect Education on the knowledge
side.
The perfectly educated will be Jack-of-all-trades,
and master of one.
" Master of one/' Because there is no training
in a smattering easily got by an active mind.
"Jack-of-all-trades." Because no man can work
hard all day; and there is infinite pleasure and
profit in picking up everything worth having.
" Master of one." Because in the infinity of
subjects, the wilderness, the jungle of rival ignor-
ances, no strong, calm, great character can gain its
strength, excepting by being pressed to the utmost
limit of its power by the fierce demand for perfection
that every great subject makes on him who gets far
enough to know, what trying to be perfect means.
Every good runner knows this fierce demand of the
last ten or twenty yards of a race.
" Jack-of-all." Because the active brain cannot
be on strain always, and yet, being active, will bo
occupied. And men can gather flowers and know
An Address on Education. 49
them without being gardeners ; men can buy in the
market without being merchants ; and thus in a
properly managed scheme a thousand Jack-of-all-
trade pursuits come in naturally to underpin the
main work, supplement it, give it a finish and
ornament, and find pleasure for unprofessional hours.
In fact, as I have already drawn attention to Pre-
working Law, I would now draw attention to
Sub-working Law, to all the sub-industries, as they
may be called, which make life rich, in pleasure
always, oftentimes in profit too.
The mighty leisure hours with their sub-industries
are all powerful.
Under the name " leisure hours," I comprise all
time not given to main subjects, and the hardest
work first ; and, secondly, all time in which no
compulsory work is done.
This division of time into main working time and
leisure time ought to be carefully studied, with the
whole question of sub-industries and non-compulsory
recreation.
First, however, let us blot out, once and for ever,
any idea that the subjects themselves have anything
to do with this distinction necessarily. The learning
Greek, for instance, would be a sub-industry to a
professional engineer ; not because it is less hard,
less noble as a subject than engineering, but because
to him it would be a turning on a lower power of
time and work, in a more leisurely way.
So also get rid, for ever, of the idea that Painting,
An Address on Education.
Music, Architecture, Sculpture are less noble as
mind-power, because we may not put them, possibly,
into our hard- work time. Till we are immortal on
earth, we can only do what we can do, and no more.
The subjects are not less noble ; but we are too
weak to give them time enough.
The mighty question of leisure hours ought to be
the most important question of all, since it affects
the character most.
I have spoken of not degrading noble subjects
because we cannot give much time to them. I
would now speak of elevating and giving some time
to subjects not usually considered noble, as they
especially belong to the Jack-of-all-trades depart-
ment.
We English are proud of our homes. We sing
songs about them, we write on them ; in fact, we
very justly are proud of our homes. Has it ever
entered into your minds that home to the great
majority in a very large degree, and to all in some
degree, is but a loftier name for cookery ? I once
cooked a pancake in my shovel; I thought it a
success, I am not aware anyone else did. But I am
quite sure neither I nor anyone would like a home
where I was cook. Well, many women don't cook
better than I do, poor women too. But in a cottage
good cookery (I know something about this) means
economy, luxury, health, comfort, love. Well, a
place, \yhere love produces economy, luxury, health,
and comfort by its loving care, sounds very like home.
An Address on Education. 51
Again, everyone ought to have Borne practical
knowledge of what they manage and govern. This
belongs to all mistresses of households.
Again, every living being, male or female, ought
to know the common laws of healthy life. Diet and
cookery belong to this knowledge. This is part of
the Persian's riding and shooting ; the skilful power,
I mean, which does common things well.
Needlework, I need scarcely observe, is very
necessary for those who will daily have to judge
questions of clothing and material, even if they do
not have to do the work. Carpentry and metal
work are specialities for boys in like manner, as
needlework and cookery are for girls.
Leisure hours are the hinge on which true educa-
tion turns. It is a natural law that a large proportion
of our time cannot be spent on the hardest work.
And it is well to respect natural laws ; they are the
most revengeful creatures in the world, absolutely
merciless. And, secondly, if rubbish is to be emptied
out, and Plato's axiom attended to, it can only be
by not throwing away or misusing two -thirds of the
working day.
If all the bones are put into lessons, and all the
loveliness, the life, the feelings, the pleasure flung
away, no one need wonder that lessons have ill
luck.
Here I would call attention to picture work.
When will picture work and photographs take their
proper place in school ?
52 An Address on Education.
Great will that man be, and, I hope, rich, who,
instead of deluging the world with rotten editions
of brick-dust notes, will put out Livy, for instance,
with really beautiful pictures of the Alps, of modern
Borne, of the Alban Hills and Lake, of the Campagna
with its aqueducts ; of Sicily, of Thrasimene, and
so on.
The " Art in Schools Association " is greatly to be
praised for the effort it is making, to supply schools
with good pictures.
Again, the rooms themselves should teach teach,
first of all, honour to lessons, by their beauty and
order ; and, secondly, by beauty and knowledge.
This is not so impossible as it may seem. Any
person who can paint, by mounting his paintings
on linen, and having them cemented to the wall, can
be a wall-decorator without going near a wall. And
in this way the wall of a schoolroom may be made
to teach every plant, bird, animal, or occupation
that can be found in the district ; as well as to
preach in every foot of space, " Honour to
Lessons/'
Then again take Pictorial Teaching. I mean,
first, the painting in words scenes of local interest,
or other. Secondly, the drawing out of common
things the pictures they enfold. Here, for instance,
what riches there are; your great Abbey, your
battles, your martyrs. Think of that Summer day,
that 20th of June, when the stout soldier, who
gave our city its name, passed up the gentle slope,
An Address on Education. 53
amongst the flowers so lovingly mentioned by the
old Chronicler, just as the sun was setting in its
glory over the pleasant fields : and the river below,
with its evening smile, looked so peaceful and so
glad, as up he passed, that simple, gallant-hearted
Christian man, passed up for the grim work of
dying ; and left behind him such a light on these
your grassy hills as earthly sunshine never gave,
the glorious afterglow which immortality begun
sends back for all who have the heart to see, an
afterglow of life for evermore. And your noble
Abbey, with its vast sweep of poetry in stone,
takes up the tale, and hands the great picture on,
full of the twilight charm of generations passed
away, full of the deeds which all the happy, or
fierce toilsome years have sent rolling through
those silent watchful walls ; full of dreams, full of
realities : which are the dreams, and which the
realities, who shall avail to tell ? Cannot a voice
be given to these things ?
Then again, take the pictorial secrets of the
common world. Give God's great picture-book a
chance. Put a tongue into every visible thing.
They are eager to speak. For example, a wet cloak
what a poor limp thing it is ; but Shakespear
touches it, and makes his laugher's face laugh, till
it is like " a wet cloak, ill laid up." How all the
puckers, and wrinkles, and creases, all the helpless
hopeless crumpling up of the ungovernable Laughter
is stamped with the language stamp of the wet
54 An Address on Education.
cloak for ever ! Or hear the Canadian's picture of
a stingy man who had just given three cents for
charity ! " How they came squealing out of the
tips of his fingers like a dying rat." Look on a
caterpillar, as one, who lives and dies leaving
behind as the record of his life, a few marks of
what he has destroyed. Or, the dead thorn, with
no life but much scratching power. Or, the rivulet
that turns hindrances into music. Or, no stream
BO clear that the cold-hearted cannot draw a fog
from it. But enough, I wish to point out that this
can go on for ever. Thinking in shape, again ; that
is, never learning anything without calling up a
picture of it in the mind, and putting feeling into
the picture, would require an essay by itself. I
meant also to have said something about the cost
of School. But I can only give a clue to it.
The cost, I mean, of the teaching which the pupil
ought to get, not the cost of the pupil himself, who,
in many instances, gets nothing.
The whole kingdom bristles with statistics of the
cost of each pupil ; and I am irresistibly reminded
when I see the figures, and the result of them, of
Aaron's account of his experiment in the now
familiar game of Topsy-turvy, or the Leader led,
" The people gave me of their gold, and then I cast
it into the fire, and lo ! there came out this calf."
The cost of teaching turns on the number of
pupils that can be taught properly in one class. If
twenty-three pupils require a teacher to themselves
An Address on Education. 55
for the main work, then twenty-three pupils must
pay enough to support that teacher.
If beside this a third of another teacher's time
is taken for another subject, another third of a
teacher must be added.
If the whole time is absorbed, as in the case of
a Boarding School, then the outschool hours, the
responsibilities, and influence of an able influential
person require to be paid for. Then the buildings,
and playgrounds, plant and apparatus, with their
wear and tear, have to be paid for. So a true
School Bill runs something in this way :
Class Teaching = f * * a Tea <* er ' s Salaiy.
I eV of a Teacher s Salary, &c.
House Charges.
Board = Board.
Besponsibility and \ = Besponsibility ^ whole time .
whole time )
Buildings, wear and \ = Buildings, wear and tear.
tear, &o. J
The whole of this cannot possibly be done for
each and all at a cheap rate.
The Buildings at Uppingham alone amount to an
original outlay of about 100,000, for one example.
Eather diminish the quantity demanded than the ,
quality.
Above all, never teach the few at the expense of
the many.
I will conclude with a few sober words on the
work before us. you, the Forlorn Hope, who
56 An Address on Education.
are still able to work, work on. You, the Forlorn
Hope, who still hold fast to the two great axioms
the first, that the whole human being is the
teacher's care ; and that you will not cut the child
in half ; and the second, that each child must be
taught, the worst as carefully as the best ; you,
who, if asked what you want, are ashamed to
answer, "A lottery ticket for the scramble in the
market place of Vanity Fair;" you, who if asked
what is your aim, are ashamed to answer, " To
feed 20 on the pay of 100, and send 80 away
dinnerless; you, parents, who love your own
children, and the poor man's hopes too well for
this ; you, schools, that are not yet squeezed out of
existence by nurse-made law and squall, work on,
hope on.
Truth is strong. Many a lost battle has been
victory to come.
Honesty is not cheap, but it is honesty.
Progress is not nurse-law, but it is progress.
Be not dismayed at the difficulty. Be not dis-
mayed at the cost.
Above all, never lose sight of the great truth,
Give not ; lend, help, support, but give not.
No man can do for another what that other
ought to do for himself.
Never pauperise ; never give ; never let others
prey on your life, nor you on theirs.
The Christian Church tried it for fourteen
hundred years, and failed.
An Address on Education. 57
God lends, and comes back, ay, comes back in
this world, to exact strict account from His servants
of the talents entrusted to their charge. The devil
gives, "All these things will I give unto thee," says
he ; for ruin follows all men who do not pay the
price in life for the life work they live on, be they
rich or be they poor. God lends, the devil gives.
And we we, who believe in life, and progress,
and the brotherhood of workers, will in all honour
try to make School teach the whole being, teach
everyone, honestly, with prevailing skill.
So God us help as we make Teaching, crowned
or discrowned, our queen ; and, however small our
kingdom may be, set our queen on her rightful
throne, having first made sure that we have found
the true queen, and are not shouting glory to a
usurper, and a sham.
AN ADDEESS TO THE TEACHEES OP
MINNESOTA.
AN ADDEESS TO THE TEACHEES OF
MINNESOTA.
WOEKEES are bound to help fellow- workers if they
can. In obedience to a request that has been made
to me, I venture to address the teachers of Minne-
sota. We are not altogether strangers. You and
I have joined hands and interchanged life through
your acceptance of the " Theory and Practice of
Teaching/' Yet this advantage has the heavy
drawback for me, that you have already partaken
of my best and now you ask for more. How
shall I better my best ? Yet for your sake I will
try. Be charitable, and receive it in a kindly spirit.
For the sake of the good cause I will try ; the good
cause of Teaching, the good cause of our common
blood and the brotherhood of life words that
carry now no idle meaning. Assuredly a new era of
brotherhood has begun. We stand on the thres-
hold of a new creation. The Steamship, the
Eailway, and the Telegraph, have annihilated
space; and the consequences, which in part we
already know, must follow. The same kind of
union must come on a great scale from greater
62 An Address to tlie
causes, which has already come in miniature from
lesser. Slow movements and seldom, as roads and
ships made better way, gave place to quickened
intercourse, quickened intercourse made tribes into
states, states into nations, nations into empires, in
spite of differences, in spite of feuds. And by a
law of nature, in like manner, our new world, with
its miles turned into yards, its far extremes brought
near, its vastness shrunk, so that the whole earth
has become a kind of home farm of the human
race, will by degrees consolidate into great com-
munities all like-minded peoples and languages.
Of these the English-speaking race is the greatest,
the visible head. Thus it is coming to pass that
the brotherhood of man, which slow movement
rendered impossible, excepting in spirit, has now
passed into the region of visible fact, and is taking
an outward shape.
The first and most active proof of this will be
the interchange of thought. How silently, yet
with what prevailing power, the thought creations
pass to and fro. With what ethereal subtlety the
spirit of a Mrs. Ewing, for instance, floats from
continent to continent in waves of light and life ;
how delicate the sweet heart-message that glides
with its unseen presence into the log hut in the
forest and the city homes alike, and becomes yours
as much as ours ; more, if you love it more. Thus
thought acknowledges no separation any longer.
Unity of language, unity of feeling, have free play.
Teachers of Minnesota. 63
The very gossamers of the brain, light and frail as
they seem, a jest, a humorous speech, fill the whole
air ; and England sparkles with wit from you ; and
all the homely growth of common earth is gemmed
with dewdrops of mirth, and laced with graceful
texture of fine-spun mind. Barriers are broken up.
Life is passing out regardless of distance, regardless
of country, regardless of climate, regardless of
custom, regardless of all the hard facts that sea
and land have hitherto set in the way of outward
friendship. This is the first state of things. This
can be seen by all. No one so blind who does not
know so much. But there is an inner spirit, a
secret invisible truth moving. And even as birds
settling on the Telegraph wires clasp the lightning
message with senseless feet, and stand on the magic
cords as a common perch, and know it not, so it
may be with men. They may lay grasping hands
of hard familiar use on rail, and ship, and wire, and
never know the prophet-voice within, the inspira-
tion of the life that moves, the real message of the
birth to come. But new life is being born, and
they who heed may know. As surely as the old
kingdoms grew by a natural growth through roads,
so surely will the voices speeding through the world
now call into being great communities of kindred
thinkers \ and the governments of the future will
be grand combinations of the more enlightened
peoples for common welfare. This is their prophecy ;
their sure word to us. A brotherhood of nations is
64 An Address to the
intended to be formed, a union over vast areas will
take place; and the great English-speaking race
throughout all the world will feel their kindred,
will know their power, and enter on their inherit-
ance of peace.
This is certain in its main outline. The move-
ments of life compel it. The laws of nature must
act. It would be easy, did time permit, to prove
that a new world is being born, that the travail
pangs have begun, that the birth, however long the
travail lasts, will bear the impress of the present
hour ; will in the next few years, because things
are so new, so tender, so young, take its shape and
capacity for growth unalterably; and be fixed in
its main structure, till broken up again, perchance
thousands of years hence, to make room for a
higher birth still.
Teachers of Minnesota, here is our place. This
new world will assuredly be what teachers make it.
Let who will scoff at the word. Back behind all,
back behind whatever the perseverance, the good
fortune, the brain power, the special gifts of special
men may do, lies the great fact that the mass of
mankind, the working body, which determines in
the end the fate of the world (for what can be done
without instruments?), is what the teachers make
them. The skilled workman is the lord of all things
on earth. And the highest skilled work is the work
which creates the newer life of the coming time, by
moulding the instruments and training the living
Teachers of Minnesota. 65
powers that work the work which makes the life of
time. And the foremost teachers of the foremost
nations are the chief creators of the life that is
to be.
Teachers of Minnesota, let who will scoff, the
English-speaking race is at the head of the world
that now is. And the foremost Teachers of the
English-speaking race are the most living creators
of the life that is to be.
That is our destiny yours and ours. We may
do it, or may not do it ; be true or be traitors ; but
it is our inheritance; it is ours.
Let us then enthrone the skilled workman. But
he must be no idol, no false god, but a real, living,
active embodiment of skill and goodness, a true
combination of the tender heart, with its impressi-
ble teachable power, and the strong brain with its
active, grasping, subtle, busy efficiency of instru-
mental hardness. This can only exist in perfection
where there is much life able and willing to have
intercourse with much life. And this again can
only be where there are favouring conditions,
channels prepared for the flow of thought, easy
ground for workers to meet on, willingness to meet
and be helped, and, above all, the great unselfish
cause of teaching the right crowned in the midst,
and the shaping life for good taken by each and all
to animate the great brotherhood of creative
workers.
I congratulate you on having such conditions,
JF
66 An Address to the
such channels of thought, such common grounds,
such willingness to meet, such a crowned cause ;
and all the more because we have not got them
here. We have the cause ; we have the heart ; but
we have not got the means, the helpful union.
Your Institutes, with their annual gatherings,
appear to me the wisest beginning of true work
that it is possible to devise. Your bringing home
to each district the life and experience of your best
centre is perfect in theory, and, I doubt not, ,
admirable in practice. In this way the central
heart sends the arterial blood to the farthest
extremity and the weakest limb. And all partake
of the common life; each part receiving, and
returning of its best in practice and experience to
the heart again. I congratulate you on this. Be
glad. You do not know what it is to live alone, to
have the outer world only come to you in the shape
of examination, inspection, and chains; we do.
Believe me then how great your gain is. You have
help. You have guidance. You have experience
and friendship at work. Be glad. There are then
these channels for the flow of life. But what of
the life blood ? What of the skill ? Good, I doubt
not. But life that does not better itself is not life.
So I am all the more encouraged in speaking to
you. It may be that a fresh current, because it is
fresh, may freshen the life. At least you expect
me to try and pour into you something not worth-'
less, if only because it may be new.
Teachers of Minnesota. 67
We stand in a new world.
The old world was a world of heaping up slowly
knowledge hardly won.
The old world knew but little, and valued know-
ledge very highly ; had plenty of time for thought if
it chose, and thought much, without being conscious
how valuable thought was.
The old world had a limited range of knowledge,
and human life could master it. Hence it came to
pass that knowledge fact -collecting, that is and
memory naturally was all in all ; and, what is most
important, life was long enough to do the knowledge
work.
Moreover, few did it ; a few at the top of the
social scale alone were employed in learning, or had
anything to do with it.
There was a knowledge caste.
A system of knowledge-hunting grew up under
these circumstances. And it is hard not to think
that the knowers, unconsciously perhaps, made
knowing difficult, and prized their heaps because
they were big, as a miser might, not because they
were useful. The grapes of Eshcol were good, and
the promised land delightful, but there were
giants in the land, and the people had better not
try to go in.
Now, however, what are the conditions which
meet a teacher ? which meet the taught ? First of
all, a mass of knowledge that no man can master,
that not even the chosen few can master ; a mass
68 An Address to the
of knowledge that pushes all thought out of its
area ; there is no time to think. Thought is squeezed
out of existence by the weight of other people's
facts.
Then there is such a multiplicity of subjects that
no man can even try them all, that not even the
chosen few can try many, much less master them.
And lastly, that all are to be taught, not the chosen
few only.
All are to be taught.
And knowledge is infinite.
And life is short.
And average brains are weak.
And few have time to spare.
And time is short even to them.
Teachers of Minnesota, what is to be done ? How
can this be dealt with ?
This is our problem.
I answer boldly, first break down the knowledge
idol. Smash up the idolatry of knowledge. Frankly
and fairly admit that the majority of mankind can-
not get much knowledge ; and that any attempt to
make them get it is a manufacture of stupidity, a
downward education. It can't be done. Directly
any subject is proposed in any programme, the
question arises, what is to be kicked out to make
room for it ? Answer that, before taking up a new
thing.
The first question then in this great problem
is, what can all do ? And what ought all to do ?
Teachers of Minnesota. 69
And then, according to the time at our disposal,
what are the next subjects, and the next, which
experience has shown to he the best for the exercising
and drawing out the highest powers of mind, and
nourishing them ?
Before these points can be settled we must know
what we want. If knowledge is an impossibility
and cannot be got to any extent ; if the best
knowers are the best knowers by virtue of being
ignorant of many subjects outside their own range ;
if ignorance is not only not blameworthy, but a
necessity for all in many things ; for the majority
in most things ; above all, if too much knowledge
squeezes out thought ; we are brought face to face
with the question, whether the calling out thought,
and strengthening mind, is not an entirely different
and higher process from the puttingin knowledge, and
heaping up facts ; or, in a sharp contrast, whether
it is not possible theoretically to separate skill
entirely from knowledge ; whether the skilled work-
man cannot be master of infinite skill, and be
ignorant of much that mankind glory in ; whether,
in fact, we have not first to choose deliberately a
large amount of ignorance, and fling our omniscience
into the common sewer, if we ever mean to be
skilled workmen ourselves, masters of mind, and
lords of thought, or to teach others to be skilled
workmen.
I say it must be done ; or, in other words, our
subject is to find what all can do, and our aim is to
70 An Address to the
make all skilled workmen. All can be trained.
Few can be knowledge-receptacles. Eemember too,
the skilled workman has his skill in himself, and
does not mean to make his life into a miserable
traffic of cheap- jack goods sold cheap in the nearest
market.
I leave it to you to decide what can be done ;
merely remarking, that of necessity a thorough
mastery in reading our own language aloud, well,
so as to gain a ready entrance into the great
treasure-house of English-speaking thought, is the
first thing ; and, secondly, the other side of the same
question of that which is possible, what are you
going to kick out, in order to admit what ?
A careful selection of subjects which train the
mind is necessary for the highest education ; but
this is beyond the scope of the present question.
Let us pass on. There are three main factors in
all teaching work. It is important to start with a
clear idea of them. The Teacher has to deal with
ignorance, idleness, and want of skill. Ignorance
is the not knowing. Idleness is the culpable
refusal to try and know. Skill is the power of
making hand, eye, or mind, do with exactness what
has to be done.
To begin with the last. Call on a pupil to take
a pencil, and lift it above his head, and hit exactly
the spot marked on the paper, four times quickly.
His failure will be ludicrous. But he knew what
to do, he was not ignorant. He tried to do it, ho
Teachers of Minnesota. 71
was not idle. But he could not do that simple
thing from want of skill. Here we have a quiet
example of the wide distinction between ignorance,
idleness, and skill. This distinction is of vital im-
portance. I have no hesitation in saying that if every
teacher, and pupil, set themselves resolutely at first
to do with skill what is already known, a new
creation of thought-work would have begun, a new
mind would be produced into the world. Want of
skill, or skill, are with the worker always, in things
known, or not known, equally; but ignorance is
outside him, and may do him no harm.
The first law of teaching is this : the Teacher
will make his pupil do what he knows with
skill.
This naturally leads us on to the great question
of thought, and how to think.
Think in shape.
Let me put this before you. Your class is read-
ing History. They come across the narrative of the
battle of Marathon ; the lesson-hearer examines
them on the facts and puts at the top of his class
the boy who writes them down most accurately
from memory. Well ; what has he written down ?
an auctioneer's catalogue of a series of actions.
Now let us number roughly the mental possi-
bilities.
1. The fact catalogue, pure memory,
2. A useful idea of the facts.
3. A mental picture of the scene and persons.
72 An Address to the
4 A thrilling and imaginative feeling for the
mental picture.
5. A dramatic representation on the stage.
6. The actual presence at the battle, what it is
to those who fight.
I have left out of the series a painted picture,
because that is subject to the same laws of mind as
the mental picture. A child can see the vital dis-
tinction between writing out an invoice of the facts,
like so many sacks of corn, and the degrees of men-
tal skill represented by the pictorial faculty, and
thinking in shape.
The knowledge-monger will work for the invoice.
The Teacher for the picture. Try this; and the
power of it will be felt. Leave it alone ; and no
words of mine, or anyone, will unlock for you the
doors of the new world.
This pictorial clue again leads us on to the
necessity of working with proper appliances. The
skilled workman must have his tools. The tools of
the teacher are the eye-languages ; everything that
by its beauty gives honour to lessons, everything
that by its pictorial power brings reality to the
mind.
Here I would lay down that I consider photo-
graphy to the teacher is almost as great an inven-
tion as printing, and in time it will be known to
be so.
I have evidence from experience here of the truth
of these words. Every school, as soon as possible,
Teachers of Minnesota. 73
ought, as its necessary tools, to be full of photo-
graphs ranging over a wide extent of subjects akin
to the work done, or pertaining to art, and man's
higher nature.
The school of the future will as soon think of
being without books as without pictures.
I would also observe again appealing to expe-
rience here that lesson-rooms and the surround-
ings of lessons, should by their beauty, or their
fitness, as the case may be, give honour to lessons.
The rooms should tell no lie, but speak the truth,
the honourable truth, about the work done in them
by being full of honour for the work. The furniture
of the rooms, and the treatment of the furniture,
should give glory to lessons, the noblest occupation
in this wide world after religion, and, if done in a
truly religious spirit, the noblest.
This can be managed more easily than people
think. Any artist who is able to paint the flowers
and birds of his district can be a wall-decorator,
without ever touching a wall. Either oil paintings,
as is the case of the schoolrooms here, which have
been decorated by that first-rate artist, Mr. Charles
Eossiter to whom I owe all I am now saying or
water-colours, as is the case with a room we have
painted for the townspeople, can be mounted and
cemented to the wall. This is more durable than
fresco in an uncertain climate.
Again, when shall we have our lesson-books
beautifully illustrated? The first man who does
74 An Address to tJie
this, in a living way, at a reasonable price, will be
a benefactor to mankind; and, if mankind are
moderately wise, will make his fortune.
I throw out these hints ; space does not allow
me to do more, though lives on lives can be spent
on working out some of them. At least, I know
after many years' work I am only looking through
the keyholes of the doors which I am trying to
open for you. I see glimpses of the landscape, and
the path, and the light on the path, and all the life
of it ; I hope you will enter in and make it your
own. But the vast difference between this exqui-
site gladness of new exploration, and the standing
up to the neck in rules, in a hole, cannot be exag-
gerated. The dropping unconnected fragments into
the minds of boys, and being annoyed when they
don't understand broken bits of knowledge, and are
not interested in the uninteresting, will in time
cease to be called teaching.
I suppose everybody is inspirited by the hope of
work being complete and effective. I, for my part,
rejoice in writing to know that my words are to
belong to girls and women, and not to men only.
I hold that nation to be highest in the world which
gives the highest place to women as workers. I
hold that nation to be highest which, in a true way,
has got the farthest in recognising woman's mission
as a worker, whose unique power it is to undermine
and discredit force, to make work lovely, to present
a living example of the highest influence depending
Teachers of Minnesota. 75
on gentleness and helpfulness. How coarse, how
vulgar the tyranny of strength appears when set
side by side with the calm superiority of womanly
weakness in its nobility and truth. The perfection
of working life is the prevailing excellence of attrac-
tive grace, the charm of the irresistible beauty of the
highest truth. For there is only one definition of
beauty. Beauty is the highest thought in its truest
shape.
In this world of rough and violent effort the
paramount and final authority of quiet, gracious life
it is woman's work to proclaim. As teachers their
influence is wonderful. Your schools, if they have
put this great fact in a working shape, are by that
alone the foremost in capability in the world.
One more word. Whatever men say or think,
the almighty wall is, after all, the supreme and
final arbiter of schools.
I mean, no living power in the world can over-
come the dead, unfeeling, everlasting pressure of
the permanent structure, of the permanent condi-
tions under -which work has to be done. Every
now and then a man can be found to say hon-
estly
" Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage." *
But men are not trained to freedom inside a prison.
The prison will have its due. Slowly but surely
Lovelace.
76 An Address to the
the immovable, unless demolished, determines the
shape of all inside it.
Teachers of Minnesota, examine well, in no dis-
contented spirit, seriously, hopefully, the structure
of your schools the buildings, the appliances, the
tools, the whole apparatus for work, living or mate-
rial. Be not hasty, but never rest till you have got
the almighty wall on your side, and not against
you. Never rest till you have got all the fixed
machinery for work, the best possible. The waste
in a Teacher's workshop is the lives of men. And
what becomes of the waste ? You cannot take your
failures and lynch them ; they live on ; they per-
sist in living on ; and they hang heavy on the neck
of all progress; they form the cumberers of the
ground, or worse, who drag down the national life.
A friend has observed to me, that whilst fully
agreeing with the strong condemnation of the
knowledge-fragments and lump-work which often
passes for teaching, he is inclined to be tolerant of
it "as half a loaf is better than no bread." So am
I, as far as the half -loaf theory is true ; and not
unfrequently it is true. But it is not true always.
The half -loaf is wholesome bread ; the mischief is,
there is not enough of it. Now good bread, good
appetite, and not enough to eat, might with a little
modification, be accepted as a definition of by no
means bad education. My complaint is, that the
bread is not bread, but bad, unbaked dough ; and
that lumps of dough are to be forced down the
Teachers of Minnesota. 77
throats of those who do not hunger. Much is
dropped, much the poor stomachs reject, and occa-
sionally, like a wretched boy not long ago, some
miles from here, who swallowed thirteen consecutive
buns, and died in consequence, the victims who do
gorge themselves are killed for all useful and practi-
cal work ever after. The swallowing system is
wrong. Look to it. The thirteen buns are not
good. No, nor the full belly, however good the
food, if the exercise, and the strength, and the skil-
ful use of strength, is not to be the outcome of
feeding. Your business is to train athletes, not to
fatten geese.
Once more, remember the almighty wall. Make
sure of your system. Make sure of your structure.
Athletes are not bred in pastry-cooks' shops, or free
men in prisons. But above all accept in a manly,
frank way what you have got, and what is now
possible. Never lose the present by whining about
the future. Some sow, and others reap. But good
work knows no distinction between them.
Now farewell. If I have succeeded in dropping a
clue or two, and they give you half the pleasure and
profit that the finding and following them has given
me, I shall be greatly rewarded. It would take
volumes, it would take years, it would take centuries,
to pursue the subject to its end, or to trace its great
arteries and veins with all their flow of life. But
interest can be roused, pleasure can be given, hope
can be wakened, enthusiasm fired. If I have not
78 An Address to the
done this, at all events I have brought my contri-
bution of sympathy, and laid it at your feet. And
I will say to you in the words of George Herbert,
England's sacred poet,
" Scorn no man's love however mean lie be,
Love is a present for a mighty king."
So then scorn me not. Scorn not the effort to
help, the effort to breathe common life, to cheer
and be cheered. In this wonderful pouring together
of the heart-blood of the world, brought about in
our generation by the Wisdom which appoints the
times and seasons of human life as completely as
the revolution of the suns, whilst all see the rail-
ways, the steamships, and wires : there are, who see
the spirit-message running on its way. Those who
are in the secret lift up their eyes and minds, and
know the great English-speaking race overspreading
the world with a language that undoes the curse of
Babel, with a life-history which is an inheritance of
honour, which is rank, and a title to every worthy
Bon of the great family, with a brotherhood, which
is yet to be that liberty which is a law to itself.
The very fact that you ask me to speak, and I am
speaking to you, and you are hearing, bears witness
to our belonging to this noble band of brothers. We
clasp hands across the sea ; and I call on you, as
our hands clasp, to be true to your great mission,
to put the skilled workman on his throne, to be
skilled workmen yourselves, ever improving, and to
mould the coming age with skill. Bear your part
Teachers of Minnesota. 79
in binding together your people and ours in one
mighty unity of unselfish work, which intends to be
lord of this world by the right divine of self-sacrifice
and truth, and to pass on for ever in the light of
wisdom and peace.
A SPEECH DELTVEBED AT *I*HK HIGH
SCHOOL FOB GTRT.S. LEAMINGTON.
A SPEECH DELIVEEED AT THE HIGH
SCHOOL FOE GIELS, LEAMINGTON.
No one, I believe, who thinks how much he owes to
the lives and writings of gracious women, will be
slow to come forward and try his best for their
Bake. To me, at all events, the memory of Mrs.
Ewing especially is as a gleam of light across my
path, always calling on me to do what I can, when
asked to give support to good work for women.
How much more, then, must I obey when honoured
names command me, and I stand, as I stand here
to-day, under orders from Mrs. and Miss Kingsley,
to carry out their bidding. I come also with much
sympathy with the work itself, and for the success
of your late Head-mistress, Miss Gadesden ; and I
may add of your present Head-mistress, Miss
Huckwell.
This is a day of Prize-giving. Let me say a few
words about prizes. There are some who think
that no prizes ought ever to be given, and many
hard things are said about them. Well, if ambition
and racing is the meaning of prize-giving, I think
so too. If prizes mean a hunt for distinction at the
84 A Speech delivered at the
expense of the weak and stupid (how I hate the
very word " stupid " as bearing witness to contemp-
tuous feeling), then I would wipe them out of exist-
ence. All the prizes in the world are not worth the
wounded feelings of the vanquished, or the curse of
the false glory of the winner. But prizes are
natural. It is natural for honest merit to receive
its reward, both in this world and the world to
come. That good work should be acknowledged is
a natural desire, and no unrighteous hope. St. Paul,
at all events, thought so. He tells us to " press
forward to the mark for the prize of our high call-
ing." And he is not afraid, in speaking to heathens,
when all the world, excepting a few, was heathen,
to put before them in burning words the prizes won
at the great games, when with thousand thousand
eyes fixed upon them the champions of Greece
stepped into the circle, and strove for the mastery.
He fired their Christian zeal by recalling the excite-
ment and enthusiasm of these national contests,
and bids them take all the glowing feelings of the
struggle, and send the same fiery valour into the
Christian life, only in an immortal unselfish way.
Prizes, then, are natural, nay, a divine institution.
They are, moreover, memorials of early days not
unfruitfully passed, and of having done well in the
beginning of life. Year succeeds year ; and the
young grow old, and the prize-winner of to-day
becomes the parent of to-morrow, and earlier
memories are pushed out by later facts, and much
High School for Grirls, Leamington. 85
is forgotten that it is well to remember ; but prizes
as memorials of childhood well spent call on the
children to be worthy of them; and school-days
full of honour are no mean possession in a family,
proving, as they do, that no flash, no chance, but
steady work, good work, begun early, has laid the
solid foundation of the home, and the secret of the
. after life may be discovered in the obedience and
earnestness of School. As memorials, then, and
witnesses, prizes may in this way have a holy power
quite their own.
But also, if there is ambition and false glory, the
question is not yet settled. Viewed even as a pos-
sible field for the basest rivalry, prize-giving, never-
theless, affords opportunity for the most honourable
training, for self-denial, when those who win gain
from their fellow scholars, as they have done to-day,
loving applause.
We are to be trained for life. Life is no summer
day's holiday. We are to be trained for the battle
of life. There can be no battle without trial, no
fight without training. And if there is 110 battle
practice, no drill, what sort of soldiers shall we be ?
I say it is good to learn in little things the self-
mastery, which will have to be used in great
things; good to practise in pennies the control
which will have to be tempted by pounds ; good to
learn to struggle, to win, or lose with perfect
temper at school, to strive without envy, to be eager
without rivalry, gentle if successful, gentler still if
86 A Speech delivered at the
defeated. For these reasons, therefore, I find
myself thoroughly at home in heart and feeling in
giving your prizes to-day. These are very true and
powerful reasons. And I myself, whilst feeling
intensely strongly that true work is its own exceed-
ing great reward, and sorry as I should be for one
moment to dim the brightness of that bright truth,
still more sorry to give the slightest encouragement
to mean ambition, or add a spark to that black fire,
do know that I am in my right place at this present
prize-giving, do rejoice in the pleasant task of
cheering on successful merit, do sympathise with
the prize-winners, and am proud to be their servant.
But if I glorify prize-winning, far more would I
. glorify defeat. To be defeated, and go on the better
' for being defeated, is the highest thing that can
happen to man. There is no blessing equal to defeat.
I can truly say for myself that everything which I now
care for as I stand here, has come to me out of pain,
suffering, defeat. It needs must be so. The great
cause of living life demands life's highest powers ;
and how can high power, and perseverance, and
unselfish work ; how can hardihood, patience, self-
mastery, unconquerable faith, be brought into
existence even without defeat? How can base
motives, and meaner passions be extinguished with-
out defeat ? There is one grand example of what
defeat means, which I will venture to quote. History
gives us a marvellous heroic act, of almost super-
human self-sacrifice, which stands alone in its
High School for Girls t Leamington. 87
unapproachable greatness as soon as it is seen and
rightly understood. I cannot help thinking that
the noblest deed of mere humanity counting the
cost and all that was given up that was ever done
on this earth, was done when Moses stepped out
of his palace in Egypt. Moses the warrior, the
mighty prince, the wise in learning, threw in his
lot with slaves, his brethren, and cast away a
throne, and risked his life for the sake of the slave,
and the promise of God with the slave. Yet Moses
was met, as he thus went out, with crushing defeat ;
defeat crushing, absolute, irredeemable; in the
morning, a king in the greatest kingdom on earth,
before nightfall, a solitary outcast, fleeing from the
sword of the avenger. What a contrast ! How
strange ! No, not strange in the kingdom of life.
He trusted to have headed a bloody insurrection,
and to have led the slaves in a murderous outburst
of fury against their hated masters, and to have
conquered by their hatred and his skill in war.
Where then would have been the salvation of the
world, and Abraham's promise ? Nay, where would
have been the gain to the people ? By such success
the chosen people of God would only have ex-
changed the mean brutality of the slave for the still
more brutal meanness of the cruelty and lust of
successful murder and conquest added to it. Mean
slaves, but tyrants meaner still. Victory would
have been a curse of death, and ruin, and greed,
and tyranny, let loose to work destruction in their
88 A Speech delivered at the
hearts. If a nation is to be great, or a man, they
must be great from within. Blood and rapine, and
murder, and successful hate only make a more
despicable and more hopeless slave. Therefore
Moses had to fly, a solitary wanderer, and for forty
Bilent years in the wilderness to learn the glorious
lesson of tenderness, and patience, and self-devotion
that really devotes self, to learn that the great
promise cannot come by force, and to find defeat
the highest blessing.
To bring up the rear of the lost battle in a good
cause, is the greatest thing in the world. For the
lost battle is always the victory of life later on. It
is a law of nature that it must be so. First of all,
no great cause can be won by mean and selfish
workers. Ladders from hell (as the old divine said)
do not scale heaven. The workers must be trained
to unselfishness by defeat. And, secondly, a great
cause is intense vitality wrapped up in a small seed.
And the slowness of the growth will be in propor-
tion to the greatness of the life. The sower, then,
of a true seed, may be well content if, after years
of defeat and struggling, he is allowed at last to
catch some glimpse of the promised land from the
summit of his toilsome old age. This is a law of
nature. Defeat is the hallowed means by which
greatness is made great. Be happy, then, you who
are defeated, if the defeat is honest, and the right
stuff is in you ; be happy, character is better than
prizes.
High School for Girls, Leamington. 89
Now let us pass from the prizes of work to the
work itself. The work in which you are engaged,
and the work of every educated nation in its highest
education, is, and must be for ever, the highest form
of thought and feeling. This is self-evident.
Thought and feeling are the ruling powers, and if
there is any way in which thought and feeling of
necessity find their best expression, that way will
be the highest training for mankind. This fact is
not measured by a standard of utility. The
moment you depart from thought and feeling you *
drop into a lower world of instruments and instru-
mental power, which however useful or necessary,
is a lower world. A spade is useful and necessary,
cannon may be of paramount importance, but who
would compare a spade, or a cannon, the embodi-
ment of mere hard power, with the glorious creations
of thought and feeling which have come to us in all
their power and sweetness out of the lives of noble
men and women ?
Translated into common language this means,
that literature, the written expression of what the
highest lives have thought and felt, and said and
done, must of necessity be the main training, where-
ever high training is given. And the great prac-
tical fact stands out clear, that word-language, by
a very law of nature, holds undisputed pre-eminence
as the educational power in all highly educated
nations. Accordingly, I rejoice that you are
being trained in languages. Word-language has
90 A Speech delivered at the
infinite power. The mere mechanism of the words
is marvellous, the kind of life in them which makes
delicate changes of single letters even instinct with
new shades of meaning. Where two or more lan-
guages are compared together, and the minds of the
learners exercised by being made to note the subtle
differences which accompany the transmission of
thought from one language to another, differences
which leave the thought the same, it is impossible to
exaggerate the mental skill called out and quickened
by such a practice.
But without going to other languages, remember
that all knowledge, all thought, all feeling, every-
thing in the world that passes between man and
man, passes through language, which like a pipe
receives and carries it all. All that human
nature sends from soul to soul flows through it.
If the pipe is narrow, or blocked, all com-
munication ceases so far. In other words the
soul is imprisoned, and communication cut off. It
is a great misfortune to be shut up in the prison
of a few words, to be dumb. It is computed that
an ignorant man only uses about five hundred words,
whilst Shakespeare has used fifteen thousand.
Using only five hundred words not only means the
want of power to put out thought, but also the not
having thought to put out, for every fresh word a
man gets, is either a new thought or a new aspect of
a thought. The fifteen thousand words not only
mean increased power in giving utterance to feelings,
High School for Girls, Leamington. 91
but that feelings and thoughts are equally expanded.
The difference is immense.
Yet perhaps this increase in power, this thought
empire, great as it is to be a lord of thought, is as
nothing compared to the gain in judgment, self-
defence, and bringing conviction to the minds of
others, that accuracy in the use of words gives.
The accuracy necessary to do word-work well is an
invaluable training, because it is so various, so
common. All the common business of common
life turns on an accurate use of words. Probably
all in this room, myself included, are but imperfect
masters of words, and not practised as we ought to
be in the strangely magical word power of our own
language. Without entering into any subtleties,
the familiar word "world" has twelve good, fat,
separate meanings in common use. If any have
been in the habit of regarding it as one word, they
have been greatly mistaken ; just as much mistaken
as if they regarded a Chinese box as one, and an
intelligent person came, opened it, and turned out
fifty from inside it. What a fearful and wonderful
power lies in words. Not to know the power of
words renders a person the easy prey of any talker
of talk, and in the present day of talkers of talk
there are more than enough of them. What a
pitiable spectacle to the sober-minded our great
talkers are. This then is no slight reason why you
are trained in word-languaga. I rejoice that you
,are thus trained.
92 A Speech delivered at the
But word-language after all, though the chief ex-
pression of thought, is only one of many. Painting,
Music, Architecture, all that the eye sees, or the
ear hears, is thought that has taken shape. They
all follow the same laws, making allowance for the
difference of the means. The chairs on which you
are sitting, the room, the table, are all thoughts of
man speaking to the eye. If any of you girls can
write an essay on your chair which shall distinguish
it from everything else, and paint in a vivid way
the ideas which belong to it ; well ! the School will
have reason to be proud of you. It is no easy
matter to decipher and interpret all the human
thought that passes into a work of man. It is all
speech. A picture is speech. We ought to be able
to stand before every picture in the world and ask
the question, what is its message ? Is it noble or
mean, true or false ? And according to the answer
pass judgment on the artist, a judgment far rnora
important than whether he has stuck the paint on
the canvas with artistic skill. Nay, a bit of broken
plate in the African desert has its message, too. It
tells at once that man has been there. Why, pray ?
Only because he has left a memorial of his thought
in the sand. And is the eye, able to see it, less a
memorial of creative thought than the bit of burnt
clay that tells so much? All nature is God's
thought put in shape for us to see or heai Look
at the hawk wheeling amongst the mountain, with
the vastness of space as its reign, or dropping from
High School for Girls, Leamington. 93
the rough, fierce crag, or hovering near the solemn
summits of the hills, hark to its wild, shrill cry,
how the bird and the cry fit the place, and the
place the bird. Go to the sea, and mark the wild
waste of waters and the sea-gulls in their stormy
' home, shrieking in bold free flight, with the deep
bass of the sea below in unison. Watch the
rivulet singing at its work of peace. The flowers
gemming earth with sunbeams they have caught
and kept. Listen to the mountains calling aloud to
climb, to be active, to be brave ; and say, is not all
creation one great harmony of martial music
warning, praise, prayer, blended together ? We
move to the tune of the voice of God, even as the
Parables of our Lord have taught us, bidding us all
give heed, saying, " He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear." O Language learners, take these words
to heart.
So far of work in general. Let me say a few
words on the special work of Women ; " Woman's
Mission/* according to the cant term. Well, woman
has a mission, whatever we may think of some of
its advocates, a very plain mission, if you listen to
the Bible. God tells us He created woman to work,
a worker as a help meet for man the worker. Both
were to be workers, and each to fill up what was
wanting in the other's work. But if women were
to be fellow workers in the world, they must be
trained how to work. All work requires training.
Even digging. How then can you pass into ths
94: A Speech delivered at the
greatness of the world, which has been gathering
experience for so many thousand years, without
training? How share in it all, and go onwards
with new experiences, if you have never learnt how
to do it, never worked in any true sense ? What
then is the work and training to be ? The facts of
life will tell us. Look at the facts. Man has the
strong arm, would you match him ? You had better
not try. Woman's mission does not lie in the
strong arm. It is in savage life that the strong
arm rules. The stronger, the more savage.
And is the strong brain a bit better ? I should
like to know in what respect the strong intellect, if
guided wrong, is better than the strong arm ? Both
are equally savage as rulers. And modern civilised
nations are to a great extent still savage in this
idolatry of strength. We worship the strong brain
regardless too often of the weak or mean character
that wields it ; not caring, moreover, for the weak-
ness of unconquerable truth and endurance that
nothing in this world can make yield. Woman's
mission does not lie in the strong brain.
A comparison which you will certainly laugh at,
and possibly despise, appears to me to fitly repre-
sent the triumphs of modern civilisation, and popular
glory. A drunken navvy beating his wife is a true
type of many a political or knowledge-proud hero.
Yet, better ten thousand times be that navvy beat-
ing one whom he ought to love and honour, than
be at the head of a great society, or a great king-
High School for Girls, Leamington. 95
dom, with merciless strength of brain without
character to match, mad drunk with vanity,
dealing out consciously or unconsciously ruin,
death, destruction, and bloodshed, over half a
world. This is not woman's mission.
We shall find a clue to lead us, if we go back to
the Bible again. Woman, we are told, brought
about the Fall, and from that time it became
woman's mission to undo the Fall. The history of
the Fall, put into a few and simple words of English,
is nothing more than that force was made god, and
goodness thrust from its throne. The throne has
to be given back to goodness, and force of arm or
brain despised as the mean things, which by them-
selves they are. This is woman's mission, to make
clear to everybody in the world the intense power
of lovable weakness, when it does right ; the irresis-
tible victoriousness of helplessness and beauty, when
it is enlisted on the side of truth.
And what is beauty ? There is only one definition
of beauty. Beauty is the highest feeling and
thought in the truest shape. You will find this
hold good throughout the whole range of created
things. Let me illustrate this from a quarter where
you would least expect to find it proved I mean
our bodies. Why are they our bodies ? It is stated
now that every particle in a human body changes
in a year ; in other words, that not one particle of
ourselves here assembled to-day would reappear in
this room if we met again a year hence. But we
9G A Speech delivered at the
should be here for all that. The reason is, there is
a power within each which you may call life, or the
soul, which day by day is making the body, its
dwelling, as surely as a mason builds a house. That
is why we call the body our own ; the builder re-
mains, though the materials change. And this
builder, this life, builds a reflection of himself ; and
the face and the figure represent the life. No one
ever yet saw a truly good old person ugly. By the
time old age is reached the goodness within entirely
transfigures features once plain. How familiarly
we speak of the angry look, the joyous look;
these, continually supplied from the life, become
fixed. Everybody knows the way in which the
drunkard and the profligate write their own history
in their bodily appearance. Who cannot call to mind
faces lighted up by expression, where noble feelings
speak from features that beam with light, even as
with St. Stephen just before his death, the whole
assembly saw his face like the face of an angel ;
and in the Book of the Eevelation the countenance
of Our Lord was " as the sun shineth in its
strength," form without outline, because of the
glory of the excellence of the brightness of the life.
And on the other hand, young faces with beautiful
outline are often most uninteresting, and soon
become repulsive, if evil or silliness is within
shaping them. This then is beauty, noble spirit
making the body noble, and it is part of woman's
mission to be beautiful. You are neither rivals of
High School for Girls, Leamington. 97
men, nor ought you to be dependents of man, but
helpers, and examples, making work lovable. You
have to take your own stand in families, and in
society, each of you as
" A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death.'*
If you want a description of a perfect woman, read
that poem of Wordsworth's, " She was a phantom
of delight." Or if you want the expressiveness of
true beauty put into glorious words, take his poem
beginning " Three years she grew in sun and
shower."
We have spoken of undoing the Fall by enthroning
goodness and beauty in the place of force ; now
look forward, take the great prophecy as your own,
open your minds to the final revelation, that all
mankind are to be presented as a Bride to Christ.
Men are to be womanly in their virtues, women are
to be the example of all glorious excellence. That
is a prophecy worth thinking of. The main distinc-
tion between intellect and goodness turns largely on
what has been now said. Intellect slowly learns,
goodness sees what is lovely, and acts. Let me give
an illustration, which I often use. You all know a
field of young wheat. If you stand at the side
looking cross ways, athwart the furrows, there is
total, absolute, hopeless confusion ; the most intel-
lectual man that ever lived, or shall live, shall not
find any order, or disentangle the endless maze ; but
a child, a baby, standing at the end of the field,
H
98 A Speech delivered at the
and following humbly the track of the sower with
his eye, sees by sight the whole plan at once, and its
perfect order. In like manner the good heart sees
truth, and does not want to be argued into it. And
cannot be argued out of it. The stupid, who has
seen, does not argue with his clever tempter ; he
simply says, " I won't/' and he won't ; and " I
will," and he acts, where the other shrinks back.
Strength is not wanted to see truth, only an eye.
With respect to knowledge I have this brief law
to lay down Know what you know ! As for the
old fashioned notion of " accomplishments," I can
scarcely pronounce the word with patience. It
degrades the highest subjects that the highest
mind can deal with to the level of mere toys.
Nevertheless no one can know too many things,
provided they are thoroughly master of one main
subject. An old English saying slightly altered is
a definition of the perfectly educated man or
woman, "Jack of all trades and master of one."
But to be master of one noble subject means the
hard struggle of the last ten yards of the fiercely
contested race. Whereas " The Jack of all trades "
only means the elastic spring of joyous activity and
strength, that can run three-quarters of the race
as amusement in pure delight.
In conclusion, we have dealt with work generally,
and with school work. Your professional work
needs a few words. For you will all have profes-
sional work; some, what everybody calls profes-
High School for Girls, Leamington. 99
sional, as teachers, as nurses, as managers of
various kinds ; others, again, as daughters, or
wives, have household duties as their professional
life. You should make yourselves mistresses of
everything you have to manage, so as to be able to
pass the skilled judgment of a worker on it, and
not speak as an amateur. Don't despise cookery ;
remember, cookery to the vast majority of mankind
means home ; and when the weary worker comes
back from work wanting to refit, cookery alone can
turn him out fit for work again. From this point
of view, home is cookery. You are virtually
sovereigns of home ; make your kingdom what you
can make it ; be winsome, lovable, above all, help-
ful. To be helpful you must be trained. Accord-
ingly I rejoice that both at Leamington and else-
where, for the first time in the history of the world,
an attempt is being made to put women, not indi-
vidually, but one and all, on the grand platform of
true workers. As for the ornament theory, all I
can say is, I believe it to be of the devil.
The strong interest I feel in woman's true
mission as a worker, and not a toy, has brought
me here to-day. I do not mind whether things go
entirely right or not. Nothing goes entirely right.
Any fool can find fault. And road-makers cannofc
be so clean as those who walk on the roads they
have made. There must be some dirt in a great
new movement. And we are engaged in a great
new movement. We are road-making. We are
100 A Speech delivered at Leamington.
starting on a new career, under new circumstances.
If the principles and main facts are right, and I am
sure they are, let us put up with a mistake or two.
And whilst working patiently and in hope, remem-
ber you are obeying God's great charter of human
life. God created women to work. She must,
therefore, be trained to work. She must learn to
make work lovely, to be helpful, to take her stand
on the paramount power of a goodness that is help-
ful with the helpfulness of the workers of God.
A WOEKMAN'S HINTS ON TEACHING
WOBK.
A WOEKMAN'S HINTS ON TEACHING
WOEK.
A LECTURE DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OP
CAMBRIDGE, MARCH 5, 1887.
IF I understand my duty to-day aright, I am
expected to give some facts and thoughts gathered
from the experience of a working life. This is a
very definite task, and relieves me at once from any
necessity of spinning brain cobwehs, and you from
hearing them. I stand here to-day as a workman,
not by my own will, but acting under a request,
which was to me a command ; and, I freely admit,
with a strong feeling for you, my audience, as well
as with a filial regard for my University, and the
days that are gone.
Working facts, then, and working skill are what
we have to deal with to-day. The material that
has to be worked, and how best to work it, is our
subject.
Now, work is work. But it is a curious fact that
teaching, the foundation-stone of the work of the
world, has not taken definite place as work, or been
subjected to the ordinary laws of work. Yet the
original basis is very simple. There are two factors
104: A Workman's Hints on
only to be considered : the child to be taught, and
the teacher.
In the first instance this is all. For what has to
to be taught is quite subordinate to the child that
has to receive the teaching. Only experience can
show what that child is. There is no such thing as
teaching without practice, either for the teacher or
the taught.
These two factors cannot be separated. There is
no such person as the abstract shepherd. A shep-
herd is a shepherd because he keeps sheep. In
Arcadia, indeed, so poets say, shepherds lie on grassy
banks, and tune their pipes, and sing, and the sheep
take care of themselves. Apparently, the shepherd
that sings has found favour in England. At least,
there is much singing in the air about teaching from
those who have never taught a child. The abstract
teacher is not dead. The shepherd without sheep
lords it in the teaching world. The children have
been left out of the programme. Arcadia is a blessed
place, where the sweet piping of some inspired swain
supersedes tar and turnips, frosty nights, hurdles,
and hay. But the sheep will persist in being sheep ;
and the children remain children still. Philosophers
may tune up and sing, and government make laws
to their music, bu.t boys are boys, and will remain
boys in spite of Arcadia. Until the children, the
boys, the girls, their minds, and habits of mind, are
all in all, Arcadia may sing, and the world may
listen, but the work will not be done. For me, my
w
t s
Teaching Work. 105
talk is of tar, and turnips, and hay ; I cannot sing,
I am a shepherd or nothing.
The first thing is the child : the child as he really
is, not the lay figure of Scriblerus's study, or the
frontispiece of the last novelette. The child as yet
has been left out, and must be put in. Only Arcadia
deals in shepherds with shadowy sheep. The child
has been left out, and must be put in. The child as
he is, and not what dreamers make him. Beware
of any song that deals with shadowy sheep, however
sweet it may be, sugared with infallible statistics,
or chanting angelically of the wondrous mechanism
of mind and the workings of knowledge. It may all
be very true in its place; but the first and last
question ought to be, " Where is the child ?" Only
in Arcadia are there shepherds with shadowy sheep.
Only in Arcadia is singing and piping installed as
keeping sheep. Where is the child ?
Again, if I understand my duty aright, the possi-
bility or impossibility of teaching at the present
moment is no concern of mine. I am not here to
speak of schools and their machinery, but of
teaching.
An architect, speaking on architecture, takes no
heed whether there is space enough to build on, or
money enough at that time. Architectural skill is
his subject. And teaching skill is ours. This
determines what I ought to try to do, and you
accept it or not, as you like.
Our subject is Teaching from the Teacher's point
106 A Workman's Hints on
of view. That is, our subject treats .of the skill that
can train the pupil in the best way, and show him
how to work his mind most skilfully.
This again fixes a limit, and at once excludes
mere memory work, and the art of memory. A
teacher is not an elaborate parrot -master, and the
pupil's memory is not his sphere of work. Yet, a
few words on this head will not be out of place, in
consequence of the prevailing idea that the getting
of knowledge by the pupil, and the loading up of
knowledge by the operator, are respectively the
proper work of learner and master.
This is not true. Even in the matter of know-
ledge, which is absurdly over-rated, a teacher's
object is to enable a pupil to get knowledge for
himself.
A man is not made a fisherman by buying fish at
a fishmonger's. Neither is the fishmonger a dealer
in the art of catching fish. Msh ready caught, and
bought, do not make a fisherman.
This cannot be too strongly insisted on. Nothing
is done as long as the fishmonger poses as a
fisherman, and a teacher of the art of fishing.
Every art, every branch of skill, turns on the
knowledge of the artist and skilled workman how
to do the work, and make others able to do the
work.
Fishmongers are not fishermen, or teachers of the
art of fishing.
The shopkeeper alone sells his goods to all who
Teaching Work. 107
buy them, without giving the power of producing
them.
Do the Universities, the Government, and the
parents want shopkeeping, or producing power ?
Do they want memory, or mind ?
Do they want knowledge, or strength ?
Is a goods' station, with a clerk ticketing off the
loaded trucks, the ideal ?
The goods' station, with a clerk ticketing off the
loaded trucks, is a fascinating display of busy order.
And busy order, statistics, and neat columns of
figures, are dear to the official eye. They are so
neat, they are so infallible, they are so unanswer-
able, if only figures are wanted. But the shed of
the skilled workman, where the things were made, is
no such official paradise ; and the skill of hand, and
eye, and mind, acquired there, is not a matter of
invoice, figures, and clerk- work.
The question lies in a nut-shell. Producing power
is one thing, truck- work is another.
The undefined power of producing and teaching is
undefined, especially in the earlier stages. And
teaching and examinations are deadly enemies, as
soon as examinations cramp the liberty necessary
for teaching.
Where examinations reign, every novelty in
training, every original advance, every new method
of dealing with mind, becomes at once simply
impossible. - It is outside the prescribed area, and
(Joes not pay.
108 A Workman's Hints on
Questions of this kind require to be put out
sharply. No true beginning can be made till they
are answered.
If examiners condemn, and Trustees endorse their
sentence, how can teachers work ?
If a Teacher has courage to face this, he cannot
face the tacit refusal of the pupils to be taught,
which is sure to follow, as the result of freedom
destroyed.
I know this by personal experience. I have
repeatedly been condemned by examiners, and found
fault with to the Trustees, for the best work I do,
and had not my pupils found out, before I was put
in the dock by the Examiners, that it was good
work, I could not even have tried it. I could not
try it now.
Let us now suppose, for argument's sake, that we
have answered the above questions, and wish to be
Teachers, and not keepers of knowledge shops.
How are we to set about it ?
I was once told a story of an Irish landlord who
was great in pigs. His estates lay by the sea. He
cast an observant eye round about, and saw that
there were many fish in the sea, and much sea- weed
on the shore, and a bright idea struck him. Pigs
eat fish, and ought, he decided, to eat sea- weed. So
he set to, and had the whole herd driven down to
the coast, and left them in the midst of this plenty
to feed. About a month after he bethought himself
of looking to the success of his plan ; and he found
Teaching Work. 109
four or five old boars left, who had eaten, not tho
sea-weed, but their companions, and were in first-
rate fighting order. What are we to think of this
gentleman as a rearer and feeder of pigs ? Did he
do his duty by the pigs? He walled them in
between rock and sea. He provided, theoretically,
abundance of food. The sea was full of fish, the
shore of sea-weed. But the ungrateful brutes did
not appreciate all this, excepting the old boars, who
throve mightily.
From that point of view, it was a grand success.
Yet, I think we shall agree that this high-handed
process was scarcely doing his duty by the pigs.
. His duty was to take care of the whole multitude,
to see that the weak had fair play, to see that the
weak had food which they both could and would
take, to see that they were not eaten by the strong,
and to bring each to such perfection as he was
capable of. Four old boars were a sorry success
out of a herd a hundred strong.
Well ! has a herd of boys a better chance ? Is it
fair to assume that, left to themselves, they must
be able to eat the mental food provided ?
There is the great sea of knowledge ; but the fish
they cannot get, the sea-weed they cannot
digest.
Only the diligent and clever boys can do things
for themselves.
Yet, I suppose, we are all agreed that there are,
and will be again, idle, ignorant, and even stupid
110 A Workman's Hints on
boys. Are they to be turned out on the shore ? or
is it our business to make the best of them ?
Everyone who wishes to be a Teacher will
answer, " We must make the best of them." Be it
so. But this means that the vast majority must
have individual attention, and be looked to singly,
and that there must be proper machinery, and
proper structure and plan, to make this individual
attention possible.
Innocent -looking sentences, but holding in them-
selves the seed power of a world.
Given a stupid boy, make him an efficient
worker.
This one line contains the whole matter. Hence-
forth we may entirely dismiss the clever from our
calculations. Let the sole figure in the field of
sight be the stupid boy. This will simplify the
question very much.
Any fool with knowledge can pour it into a clever
boy ; but it needs the skilled workman to be able to
teach.
Leave the strong for the present to take care of
themselves. Let the sole figure in the field of sight
be the stupid boy.
Innumerable illusions vanish at once, and leave
the course clear.
The knowledge-fungus drops off at once ; for
stupid boys can never be learned as a body.
The idolatry of force drops off at once ; for stupid
boys can never do the strongest brain work.
Teaching "Work. Ill
The prize idolatry drops off at once ; for the great
majority cannot be prize-winners.
The true work is seen ; and skill is enthroned as
the true king, in the proper place, as making the
many capable ; and the noble life of weakness, that
becomes strong by being good, is given a fair chance.
So, at last, the Teacher is left face to face with
the world as it is, and not as philosophy and idolatry
make it to be. The man who does not teach the
stupid boy is no teacher, just as the man who cannot
find his way in lanes and bypaths is no guide.
In fact, given fair play, " stupid boys" come to
mean "bad teachers ; " for intelligent teaching can
make all get along with reasonable speed and
certainty.
What, then, is teaching, if nothing is teaching
which does not reach and raise the stupid boy ?
There are, roughly speaking, three ways of work-
ing, two of which are truck work, with its loading
up, and putting in ; and one is production, with its
mental chemistry, and bringing out.
These three may be called Eule-printing, Lecturing
and Teaching.
Eule-printing and Lecturing might be done by
automatons to automatons of a higher order.
Teaching is living intelligence, dealing with life.
The Eule-printer puts a boy into his printing
press, sets the steam rollers going, and prints a rule
on the mental page, if it is not already well filled up
with cricket, and other chromo -lithographs.
112 A Workman's Hints on
The Lecturer pours a stream of knowledge on
Something which is supposed to receive the stream.
The Teacher applies himself mind to mind.
The two first have as their subject lessons and
books. The last has as his subject the life he deals
with.
The Kule-printer says: "The verb must agree
with its nominative case in number and person."
And ever after repeats : " What's the rule?" vary-
ing the repetition by different dispensations of
punishment, when the unintelligible has been undone
by the unintelligent. In a happier world than ours
an automaton cane would do the work as well.
The Lecturer says the rule as before, but then
goes on : " You see that the third person plural
ends in ' ant,' ' amant;' and words ending in ' ant,'
and the like, which speak of many, cannot take a
singular noun which ends in ' us' as * dominws,'
which speaks of one only." And then he leaves it ;
like a benevolent old verger, who seizes you, and
makes you stand in a certain place to look at the
great Cathedral, the glorious poem in stone, and
inspires you with fear lest he should seize your eye
too, and twist it round, as he drones out his tale, till
at last you escape, rubbing your eyes, and blessing
your stars that they are still in the right place,
though he may have told you interesting things.
Thirdly, comes Teaching.
Teaching gets it all out of the learner, with much
fun and sparring in doing it.
Teaching Work. 113
Teaching begins :
Do you ever think ?
Pupil (modestly or otherwise). I believe so.
T* Do you ever think your thoughts worth
telling?
P. Sometimes.
T. What do you do?
P. Why, tell them.
T. Oh, you do. How, pray ?
P. I talk.
T. Indeed. What is talking?
P. Why, talking, to be sure talking's talking.
T, No doubt. But how do you do it ?
P. Oh, I open my mouth and talk.
T. Good. You open your mouth and talk. A
dog opens his mouth and barks. Is that it ?
P. No ; of course not. I talk sense.
T. Glad to hear it. But how do you talk sense,
if opening your mouth and barking won't do ?
P. I tell what I think about.
T. Do you ? Think about something.
P. I have.
T. Name it.
P. I thought about a horse.
T. Well. But I know nothing of your thought.
You have named a horse, but I am no wiser.
P. I must tell you something about a horse.
T. Do so.
P. A horse runs.
T. Well. Now I know. What two things havo
114 A Workman's Hints on
you had to do in order to talk sense instead of
barking ?
P. I named what I thought about first, and then
I told you something about it.
T. True. Suppose we call every name a noun,
and every word which tells us what the noun does
a verb, what is the word " horse " ?
P. A noun.
T. And the word " runs " ?
P. A verb.
T. I think you said the noun named what you
were going to speak about ?
P. Yes.
T. Suppose we call it, when it does, the nomi-
native, or " naming " case. What had the verb
"runs" to do?
P. It spoke of it.
T. Then to make sense the verb must speak of its
nominative case ?
P. Of course it must.
T. And if it does not, or cannot do so, it is
barking ?
P. Yes. Nothing better than barking.
T. Why so ? Show me that the noun can name
things in different ways, and the verb tell of different
numbers, and persons, &c.
It is not necessary to go on with this series now.
Let us suppose it done, with all the little sly hints
that can be given in doing it, to a pupil's amuse-
ment and bewilderment at his own answers, then
Teaching Work. 115
when we have finished this first series, tnrn, and
ask abruptly, "Do you know what you have done
in grammar-making ? "
P. Grammar-making? No.
T. You have made for yourself the first rule in
grammar, "That the verb must agree with its nomi-
native case in number and person/' and you know
the reason why. You have also discovered the
meaning of the words, noun, verb, and nominative
case. I congratulate you, O grammarian !
Yes, gentlemen ; and we also, in doing this, have
discovered the first law of teaching, the first article
of the teacher's creed : " Work from the inside
outwards."
All grammar, from beginning to end, can be easily
questioned in this way out of everybody who speaks
a language. Every subject can be treated in this
way the moment any material is gathered. Much
time is saved in the end ; whole lives wasted and
maimed can be saved. The unintelligent dealing with
the unintelligible does not answer. Technical terms
and rule-printing are very often mental paralysis.
Nay, the glorified parrot, however full of other
people's thoughts and discoveries, however much
glorified, is a poor creature. The world has yet to
get rid of glorified parrots. Once begin to teach,
and you can prove all this for yourselves. They
are not ipse dixits, but very common working-day
facts.
We have now arrived at the first article of the
116 A Workman's Hints on
teacher's creed : " Work from the inside outwards."
The subject of the teacher is the child.
Now let us turn from the teacher to the pupil.
We are all agreed that no one can teach a brick
wall. But why not ? Only because of the absence
of mind. But if the mind is absent, and the causes
of the absence of mind are permanent, it matters
not whether the teacher has a brick wall before him
or a boy. In other words, the boy's mind must be
present. No one can teach a brick wall, or a boy
who has been made brick wall.
We must begin with the homes.
It would be a curious branch of research in these
days to discover how many homes have any books
at all. Newspapers there are. The children read
the police reports. Periodicals there are. The
children read the novels, and an occasional yellow-
back. But books !
Again. The whole air is charged with change
and educational infallibility. This acts in two ways.
One section is omniscient over progress, and science,
and new methods. Another section considers itself
utilitarian. How many homes abuse that or this
bit of education as useless, and glorify the judges of
pigs, or the smellers and handlers of cotton, or the
tormentors of witnesses, all the more if they don't
know Greek and Latin. Between the two the
children fare badly. Both equally unsettle the boy-
mind ; the first perhaps most. Then, to come to
the boys. How many of them have the remotest
Teaching Work. 117
idea why the work is given them to do, or how it
bears on their lives ? How many of them, again,
believe that it is possible for themselves to do it ?
They see it taken as a matter of course that many
cannot do it.
Then once more. How many boys have the
slightest real instruction given them, how to do it ;
when they break down at first ?
Observe and this is very important everyone
of these difficulties is of the brick wall type.
They are difficulties before the work can begin.
Not difficulties of the work itself, but difficulties
before the work can begin. This introduces us to the
all-important subject of pre-working law, which is
simply paramount. You cannot teach the brick
wall.
Teachers must have somebody to teach. They
cannot teach the brick wall. Pre-working law
must have its due. In other words, it is as much a
teacher's business to study his material, and make
it fit for his work, as it is his business to work it up
afterwards, and in these days this is pre-eminently
true. There ought to be a machine to shout :
" Pre-working law sold cheap," and the buying it
made compulsory.
Practically, gigantic as its scope is, and wide its
range, pre-working law resolves itself into three
main statement's.
The boys must know that the work is part and
parcel of daily life.
118 A Workman's Hints on
The boys must know the value of their work, and
how to deal with it.
The boys must know that everyone can get it ;
that it is no lottery, but an absolute certainty to
honest efforts.
As for the homes, their views of education are
what the schools have made them. The less said
about that the better.
If the pupil does not know why he has to work,
or what it has to do with his life, he will not work.
All is blind, and broken bits, and a painful
puzzle.
The bandage must be taken off his eyes, or he
cannot and will not work.
But if he will not work, there is nobody to teach.
And, if there is nobody to teach, there can be no
teacher. A simple proposition ; but one which goes
to the root of the matter.
Pre-working law is a large subject, and can be
dealt with in a thousand ways. A few hints on how
to deal with it, will not be out of place here.
Every boy has a body, a mind, and life. The
common facts concerning them ought to be ques-
tioned out of the pupil.
Pre-working law means the process by which the
intending worker is got into condition to make him
fit for work.
Let the work proposed be a race. Then pre-work-
ing law prescribes that the runner shall be most
carefully trained, in food, sleep, and exercise, before
Teaching Work. 119
he comes to the starting post. It prescribes also,
as severe exertion is demanded of him, that he
shall heartily care for the race he has to run, before
he comes to the starting post. But blindfold, or
fat, or not caring, he will not race.
Now to begin with the body. Every boy has a
body, and, whilst keenly alive to its value at dinner,
or cricket, does not associate it with Latin verse or
Thucydides. He calls it his own body ; but if he
means that it stops with him, it is not true. It is
flying away every moment ; the daily food shows
the daily waste. It is calculated that the space of
one year changes every particle in the body. If,
again, he means that his body is of special stuff, a
thing by itself, that is still more clearly not true.
Every day we take in corn, vegetable, fruit, beef,
and mutton ; water, beer, wine ; but no one pre-
tends to say that because of this we become sheep, or
oxen, or cabbage, or grapes. But why not? We
go to India and do not turn into mangoes, to Africa
and do not become mealies ; we might go to Mer-
cury, or to any other planet on which we could live,
and should still be the same Englishmen we were
and ever have been. But why so ? Simply because
something which we call our life every moment,
wherever we are, builds up whatever material it
gets into the same body ; because it is the same
builder, the same life. The life builds the body. A
bad life builds an ugly, unhealthy body ; a good life
builds a good and healthy body, and in a short time
120 A Workman's Hints on
prints the character on the body, as much as if a
label was put round a man's neck, to ticket him as
a scamp or an able man. It does concern a boy
very much whether he is labelling himself glutton,
or liar, or fool, day by day. It does concern him
whether he is strengthening nerve and sinew, body
and mind, as he builds ; or watering himself down
into an incapable or diseased article. A boy can
understand this. Question it out. Turn sharply
round, fasten on an inattentive victim, ask him how
he would like to be labelled for his last hour's idle-
ness, or for the way in which he spent his last
shilling, or for his last act, or thought, of evil. Do
you want to live in a ramshackle, tumbledown build-
ing by and by ? If so, go on idling, fooling, and
disregarding warning. No printing-press so sure as
the master builder and printer, Life, who turns out
a new edition of your body every year, with all its
improvements or its evils. You print yourself off
daily. That is the meaning of being taught. What
label have you got in your printing-press this week?
In this way common sense is called in, lif e is shown
to be one piece, and the boy made see that his
lessons are as much himself as his dinner. Every
boy knows that if he goes into school ten minutes
after a hearty dinner, he could not do his work
though his life depended on it. And every boy may
know that a permanent state of fatwittedness, from
laziness, sleep, and heavy feeding, is equally fatal.
Does he want to be labelled fool? He ought to
Teaching Work. 121
abuse his fierce stomach, instead of unjustly bewail-
ing his poor brains. He is simply blunting all his
tools before he begins to work. How can he do fine
work with blunted tools? Question this out. It
can change in an hour all life.
Again, boys like games. For games represent
the right action of bodily life, and all right action
is pleasure. But the very games they play are full
of pain, possible disagreeables, blows, defeat, dis-
appointment, mortified pride, trials of temper, trials
of courage, trials of honesty. What is it that makes
games so fascinating ? Question it out of them. It
is a most amusing bit of fencing, repartee, and
unexpected surprises, to put a class through such a
discussion on cricket or football. They wake up to
a new world. They learn that it is delight in the
exercise of activity, skill, and strength that makes
their games so fascinating in spite of much trial.
But is bodily skill a greater delight than mental
skill ? Is the body higher than the mind ? What
boy would give up his power of reading and writing ?
What boy would not give up every other thing first ?
Yet these were lessons, hated lessons. Let us bring
forward our old friend, the pig-boy. The pig-boy, if
he is but a pig-boy, in the midst of the most beauti-
ful landscape in the world, enjoys it in proportion to
his idea, how many pigs it would keep. The most
callous schoolboy would scorn that, and enjoy it
in proportion to his educated eye for beauty. The
master, if worth his salt, is far more above the
122 A Workman's Hints on
schoolboy than the schoolboy is above the pig-boy.
Let us put the pleasure of the pig-boy at 10, the
pleasure of the schoolboy at 100, and the pleasure
of the master at 1,000. Extend that principle, and
apply it all round, and you have the difference in
the degrees of happiness which work and education
give to a right mind. Any schoolboy can see that.
Question it out of them. One hour of such pre-
working law may be a life changed. Education is
pleasure.
Again, let us take the question of value.
Value ultimately depends on the quality and
quantity of the life put into anything, or, in more
precise words, on the strength of body or mind
employed, on the skill or time needed, and on the
risk of failure after all.
For example : Land as land is perfectly valueless.
You can get any amount for nothing in Canada and
elsewhere. It has to be worked. But work is life-
acting. The work makes it valuable. Moreover, if,
when the crop is ripe, the workman is robbed by
bad men, who cut his throat, or bad laws, which
give his gains to others, he won't work.
Law and order, and security and justice, are
higher forms of work in which people unite to
protect one another in right work.
First, then, in the scale of value comes bodily
work ; that is, in the first instance, the amount of
life, the amount of skill, required in learning how
to work, and afterwards in working, and the amount
Teaching Work. 123
of risk run, that after all the worker may not be able
to acquire the strength and skill necessary ; all
these determine the value of the first stratum of
work, which is summed up in Scripture by the
word " bread." " Man shall not live by bread
alone." Above this comes every kind of work that
makes the higher life of man higher and better :
law, justice, literature, religion, worship, and every-
thing that grows out of them. And each of these
rises in the scale of human value according to the
time required in learning, the strength of head or
heart required to do it, and the risk whether the
worker after all his toil will be able to do the higher
kind of work with success. In this manner all
work, secular or sacred, rises in value step by step
through every bodily and mental gradation, accord-
ing to the amount and quality of the life expended
in doing it. And high education, literary training,
Latin and Greek, music and painting, &c., mean
the opportunity given to the pupil to do the most
valuable work. This privilege is bought at a price ;
that price is the work, in other words the life, of
those who maintain the schoolboy at school. And
the schoolboy who idles whilst living on the life-
earnings of others is a thief, thieving their lives,
and wasting his own. Doing nothing on other
people's work is simply robbing those who support
you.
Question this out. Any school-boy can be made
to see the value of the work he has to do.
124 A Workman's Hints on
So much of pre- working law, an endless subject.
When we have done this kind of thing we have
got somebody to teach, and not before. All daily
life, all pleasure, all value, in a word, all the great
problems of life, open up from these beginnings,
and are involved in school-work ; a very different
thing from class-room dust and scrapings. The
boy world is, as a class confessed the other day,
turned topsy-turvy, right end up at last, by an hour's
work or so, and the meanness, which thinks it
manly to drop down pig-boy way, is gone.
And we have now also made our second law of
teaching ; the second article of the Teacher's creed :
" Never work blindfold " ; or, in the language of
our forefathers : " Never fly hooded hawks."
Again, we want to make the commonest common
life glow with unexpected fire, and everything be-
come a part of the growth of mind, of pleasure,
value, in a word, of education. To do this, the
commonest thing is the best : words for instance.
Give out as a lesson, " Names that are true, and
the truths that make the names." Then imagine
such a scene as the following : A dozen little boys
from nine to thirteen years of age sitting round a
table expectant and nervous, as a new authority
has come to examine them.
New authority begins :
What have you got sticking up between your
shoulders ?
P. My head.
Teaching Work. 125
N. A. Quite sure it isn't a turnip ?
P. Oh, yes ! quite.
N. A. Why? What is the difference between a
head and a turnip ?
P. Oh, a head thinks and a turnip doesn't.
N. A. Glad to hear it. We'll see. I'm not so
sure. Where are your books ?
P. On the table.
N.A. What's a table ?
P. Wood, to be sure.
N. A. Oh, wood. Look out of the window at
those beautiful tables growing on the lawn. You
turnip !
P. Oh, no ! A table is wood sawn out flat.
N. A. So's the floor. Take your feet off your
table.
P. No, a table is wood sawn out flat, put on legs.
JNT. A. Indeed ! Have you ever slept on a wooden
bedstead ? A table is a sleeping place, eh ? Well,
I am inclined to agree at lesson time.
P. Dear no. A table is a flat surface on legs, not
like a bedstead.
N. A. Get off the table directly; do you sit on
the table in my presence ?
P. I am sitting on a form ; a table isn't a form ;
it is higher than a form, and broader, to put things
on.
N. A. Very well. You will serve up dinner on
that book-case then ?
And so on, till the pupil is made, after much fun
126 A Workman's Hints on
and searching of spirit, to define a table, first, as a
flat, smooth surface, raised so that people may sit
at it, and place any articles they wish to use for
meals or ordinary work upon it ; and secondly, that
a table is ultimately the thought of a skilled work-
man, as to the best way of doing this, put into
shape, in wood or other material.
But the surprises, quaint overthrows, and con-
trasts between heads and turnips, that can be got
out of this kind of wrestling with a word are
infinite.
Having begun with a tangible and visible com-
mon object, go on with a common abstract term.
Ask, what is health ?
A first-rate primary answer was given by a boy
of twelve who had just gone through a course of
" table." Health, he said, is the perfect power of
body and mind for use.
T. Put out your arm. Why can you do it ?
P. Oh, my arm is strong enough for that, and a
great deal more too.
T. Indeed. Is your arm your arm after starving
three days ?
P. Well, yes.
T. You would put it out, and do a great deal more
than that with it ? Eh ?
P. Dear no. I should be starved.
T. Your arm then has something to do with food ?
P. Certainly.
T. And food with your stomach ?
Teaching Work. 127
P. Yes.
T. We get then to the old story of the belly and
the members. Your stomach is the first thing in
health. Eh ?
P. Certainly.
T. Did you think of that when you spent that last
sixpence in tarts ?
P. Well, no.
Then go on, show that health means everything
that food, sleep, exercise, self-control, proper
endurance, self-denial, heat, cold, call on a man to
do or to bear in a right way ; and that work is
stopped, and life soon put an end to, or shortened,
by any want of attention to these. Flash light into
the meaning of health. Show it in daily action.
Show it working always and everywhere. Hunt it
into corners and hiding-places. Dislodge it from
lazing by the fire, or stuffing in the grub shop. Pull
it out of bed in the morning. Send it running down
the road with the east wind. Kick it on the shins
at football. Hit it on the knuckles at cricket. Pur-
sue it into the class-room. Catch it making its
false concords, or telling you that Eegulus was an
effete of Carthage ; till your boy has some tangible
idea of what health in body and mind means ; and
how the meaning sticks to him in and out of school
equally and always.
Then go on with " work." What does work
mean?
Hunt that down, flashing light on it. Show
128 A Workman's Hints on
what a much bigger word it is than health. How,
so to say, it begins where health ends. How it
holds all health and its meaning within it first, as a
Chinese box with fifty more inside it ; then, how it
adds to the meaning of health, skill, practice,
accuracy, teaching ; hand, eye, and mind, obedient
to orders, knowing what to do and doing it, and a
thousand things more. When you have questioned
this out of your class, you will also have made the
third Law of Teaching for yourself.
"Light up the magic lantern of common words
and tilings' 3
Flash light out of them and through them.
You may say, This takes too much time. If it is
the shortest way of making mind work, it cannot
take too much time. I grant no one living is
allowed at present to teach as his main work. But
a little teaching can be done. An hour will pull a
great deal of this out of little boys ; and they go
away with new powers, questioning everyone they
dare about tables, &c., full of fun and interest.
But an hour a week bestowed in this way might
work wonders ; and is not much to steal from
Pharaoh and his tale of bricks.
Next : as we have been questioning, let us see
what an answer means.
Every answer in the world, which consciously or
unconsciously is given by an intelligent mind,
obeys the same laws, and goes through the same
process. The manner in which to set about giving
Teaching Work. 129
an answer is a matter of rule, a purely mechanic
act, as much mechanical as measuring out the
ground for a building is mechanical.
Before beginning, let us affirm, that a true
answer is never a mere act of memory; and
secondly, that the untaught, young and old, learned
and unlearned, invariably try to make it one. The
true answer is no act of memory. Let us then for
the present throw memory on one side.
The true answer first fastens on an example.
Then collects facts about the example ; and their
relative position as regards the question. Then
compares them, draws a conclusion, and answers.
All this is very often done with lightning rapidity,
quite unconsciously, but it is done.
The ordinary heads under which this mechanical
skill in answering on a word, a sentence, or a
narrative, is ranged, are the following :
1. See the thing dealt with.
2. Marshal all facts which belong to it by itself,
with their meaning.
3. Take the people dealt with.
4. Do the same with them.
5. The facts of the narrative.
6. Their relative position and value,
7. Draw conclusions, and answer.
Suppose, for instance, a question is asked about
fishing, it is clear that no one can answer it who
has never heard of, or seen, rivers, sea, rods, nets,
&c. But, if this is obviously true of visible
K
130 A Workman's Hints on
material objects, it is still more true of the objects
which the mind has to frame for itself.
If. the mind cannot frame those objects, and has
not got them present, it cannot answer. The
knowledge, then, of any mechanical process by
which to produce this presence is invaluable. A
Teacher's business is to show how this can be
done, and habitually ensure that the pupils do go
through this mechanical process of getting the
objects before their minds, comparing them, and
drawing conclusions.
For example let us take the abstract noun
" structure."
What is structure, and its value ?
Let the class turn it at once into a lesson on the
class-room in which the class is held, and its
structure. Make them note carefully :
1. The walls, their thickness, height, archi-
tecture.
2. The floor, the ceiling, any peculiarities, and
why?
3. The surface of the walls, bare or decorated,
painted or whitewashed, panelled or left un-
touched.
4. The engravings, pictures, maps, models, or
bareness of the walls.
5. The benches, chairs, desks, apparatus, espe-
cially if of different date and character.
6. Then the class itself, its number, its arrange-
ment, its position in life, its apparatus, its books.
Teaching Work. 131
When all this has been thought over to the best
of ths ability of the pnpil, or questioned out of him,
he will be in a condition to deduce from what he
sees and knows, the kind of life which has em-
bodied itself in that structure; the idea the
builders had, good or bad, of the work to be done
in it ; what kind of work is, or can be, done in it ;
the impossibility of doing the work without the
structure ; the effect that the structure has on the
work for good or evil ; the ideas about the work in
that kingdom ; its progress from earlier times ;
what it owes to past skill ; whether it is adding to
present skill, or falling short of its requirements.
In fact, many a class-room is an epitome of educa-
tional ideas. Hence the pupil is naturally led on
to the great truths we have already touched on,
that all life needs structure ; that all life by degrees
makes its own structure or body ; that a base life
makes a base body, and a noble life a noble body ;
and that the goodness or badness of the body
declares infallibly in time the goodness or badness
of the life that produced it. A good structure is
produced by good life, and tends to produce good
life ; a bad structure decides absolutely, if sufficient
time has elapsed, that the life is bad, and it tends
to perpetuate bad life. This kind of thing can be
brought out by a lesson on structure translated into
class-room, and is an example of the law of
answers. At all events an hour's questioning on
the class-room can produce really good essays from
132 A Workman's Hints on
one of the lowest classes in a school ; and open
their eyes as to the mechanic rules to be observed
in answering a question.
Again, to take another instance of working with
tools, by method, and setting about things in the
right way, which is of universal application, I refer
to making the known lead up to the less known in
an intelligent way. An example will make this
clearer. I will bring forward the much maligned
subject of Latin verse, the most useful literary tool
that ever was invented, but nothing more than a
tool. It is not too much to say that a little intel-
ligent leading up from the known to the less known
will work a miracle here. I need not dilate on
the hopeless refusal to do anything, which speedily
becomes incapacity, that is bred by home omni-
science, boy restiveness, and school mismanage-
ment, in this matter. Everyone knows the diffi-
culty of screwing a single line out of the poor,
misguided Solomon, who whines out that he is not
a poet, when his master only wants him not to be
a fool. Let Solomon take his seat, and the line
from Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," "And now
the storm-blast came," be dictated to him, after the
passage and its context has been read and made
familiar. This line is to be translated into a Latin
Hexameter. "Et jam flatus procellae venit," is
not a promising start for a verse. The class was
first ordered to picture to themselves the ship as
it sailed merrily along, the glad bright sunny waves
Teaching Work. 133
of the Southern Sea, the life on board, the crew,
the sails set, the tackle, the air, the light ; and
then the clouds gather fierce and heavy, then in
the distance the black shadows move, they whiten,
they rush on, telling of waves smitten, and crested
waters gleaming and hurrying, till at last up it
comes with a roar and a shock, and is on the ship
in a moment with its crew. All this was ques-
tioned out in a few minutes, and they were ready
to begin.
Then they were asked to give different English
versions for" And now/'
As soon as any boy gave one they were told to
write them down in column.
Seventeen variations were produced in about ten
minutes, each giving the sense sufficiently well.
Then the word " storm " was treated in the same
way.
Then the word "blast."
Then the words " blast of storm."
Then the words " blast with storm."
Then the words " wind with violence."
Then the words " anger of storm," etc.
Then the words " storm raging with wind."
Then the words " storm raging with anger."
Then the words " storm raging with violence."
Then the words " storm raging with blast."
Then the words " storm raging with fury."
Then the words " storm raging with turmoil."
Then the words " storm raging with roaring," etc.
134 A Workman's Hints on
Then the words " storm rouses wind."
Then the words " storm excites anger, etc."
Then all these were ordered to be changed about,
and the same sense produced by altering the
arrangement, both grammatical and verbal. Then
we took the word "came" in the same manner,
showed its real meaning, how little the idea of
coming, or arrival, had to do with it, but violent
change, the wind force, and its power over the
ship.
The word " came " accordingly was varied again
and again.
When all this was written down, the Latin words
called up and suggested by the English variations
were asked for, and ordered to be written down
opposite the corresponding English. All this took
about an hour, and 12 o'clock in the day was
reached. They were now ready to begin. Observe,
the whole of this was a quasi-mechanical process of
working with given tools. No books were allowed.
It is not too much to say that no boy in that
class, left to himself, as he was when he came into
the class-room at 11 a.m., could have produced more
than eight or so indifferent versions of that line of
Coleridge by night. A prize was offered for the
greatest number of hexameter versions of that line
to be shown up that night.
Several copies shown up that night ranged from
90 to 100 verses, and good verses too.
That was a miracle worked by natural means.
Teaching Work. 135
But let us analyse what was done.
First, pictorial thought was called into play.
Next, sense was studied.
Next, the English language was exercised, and
interest in the English language roused.
Next, instead of a dreary hunt for Latin words,
there was a great sifting of thought, and thought-
expression.
Next, the versatility of thought-expression was
shown.
Next, the methods of changing thought - ex-
pression were shown.
Next, nimble movement of mind was practised.
Next, judgment in choice and rejection was
practised.
Next, harmonious arrangement, taste, and the
sense of the melodious sound, were practised.
Next, word-power, and the delicate adjustment
of words were practised.
Next, an enormously extended vocabulary in
both languages was summoned, and came.
Next, the two languages were blended together,
and brought into union.
Finally, all this was a working of thought, and
not of stick-in-the-mud memory ; a simple process
of stirring up the known, and making it lead up to
the less known.
If this is not mental teaching I do not know
what is. And the process is of universal appli-
cation.
136 A Workman's Hints on
And thus we are brought to the fourth law of
teaching : " Work with tools, and know how to use
them: 3
This last exercise has naturally led us up to the
crown and summit of all teaching, the formation of
mental pictures, and pictorial habits of mind. No
true work has been done till this is done. Do this,
and you have educated; for it is a germ of life
that, once planted, never ceases to live.
What is the mind peopled with ?
An argument ab homine shall answer the question.
Until I saw Eichard Cceur de Lion's mark at
Eouen, when I was just twenty years old, all history
was to me shadowy ghostland. I never put the
living reality of daily life into any bit of history
whatever. The personages of history were ex-
amples, or warnings : I believed in them, but they
did not live. They were not flesh and blood.
There were four gradations in my mind.
Fairy tales, where all was imaginary and de-
lightful.
Novels, which were more delightful still, but still
unreal.
History, which was less delightful, and was
supposed to be real.
Daily life, and its persons, which was real.
Until I saw Eichard' s mark appended to a docu-
ment, much as his courage and wars impressed me,
he had no living reality and personal existence for
me. I suspect that vast numbers of people are in
Teaching Work. 137
the same predicament, and never bring home to
themselves a single incident which does not happen
before their eyes ; in other words, they live in the
present, and in ghostland ; as their minds are
peopled with shadows, phantoms, ghosts. Let no
one despise this assertion, who has not brought
home to himself the difference between knowing a
thing and actually presenting that knowledge in a
fiesh-and-blood form to his mind. It is certain
that all mere memory work is a creating of mental
ghosts, and that all mere memory work turns the
mind into ghostland, and peoples it with a popu-
lation, which has shape, but neither substance nor
life. Exorcise the ghosts. No pupil, if teachers
were allowed to teach, ought ever to be permitted
to do a lesson without having a vivid picture in his
mind of the persons and facts he is dealing with.
As regards the actions, the homelier the picture, the
better. A boy, for instance, did not in the least
understand the passage from Caesar he had just put
into words, which said : " That Caesar did not wish to
leave an enemy behind his back when he was going
to invade Britain." But he understood perfectly
well the following dialogue, and his Caesar :
T. General Smith, do you see the road through
the door outside, beyond the corner ?
P. Yes.
T. Can you imagine rushing out to attack Brown
in the road ?
P. Oh! yes.
138 A Workman's Hints on
T. But suppose just round that corner there were
two small boys waiting to pitch into you the moment
you engage Brown ?
P. I should lick them first.
Just what Caesar did. He did not leave an enemy
at his back to pitch into him as soon as he turned
to face the Briton, his Brown.
It need scarcely be observed that the construer
knew what Caesar was about after that little picture
of the proceedings. Yet, this is but a far-off glimpse
of whab is meant. When Caesar is being read,
Genera] Smith ma., the boy set on to construe, ought
be leading the troops through the enemy's country
with Csesar, and speculate on the boys round the
cornei as native armies. Drawing has never been
pressed into service as it ought to be. Every boy
in the two upper classes at Uppingham has now to
learn some drawing, and will be required hence-
forward to illustrate the school work from time to
time by drawings and plans. But photographs of
important places are sadly wanted. Buildings can
be got ; but good photographs of the great scenes of
historical fame, or of landscapes and rivers cele-
brated in prose or poetry, cannot be got. When will
the Universities rise up and demand them ? The
difference between knowledge of a fact, and a mental
picture of a fact, is stupendous ; and, unfortunately,
it is very difficult to bring this home. Obviously
the best plan is to require actual drawings from time
to time, if possible. But, unfortunately, it is not
Teaching Work. 139
possible. Also, there would arise a great danger
lest the vividness of the fact should be lost in the
excellence of the drawing, and a foolish picture of
Eoman troops be preferred to the little boys round
the corner. The pictorial mind is wanted first, not
skill of hand.
The next best way I believe to be, to set a boy
before a picture or a scene ; tell him to look at it,
to fix it in his mind ; and then to turn him round,
make him shut his eyes, and describe what he sees
in his mind. If boys can be got to do this in their
walks, and to make matches with one another,
either in or out of doors, as to who sees most with
his eyes shut, the thing is done. But in some way
or other, for first-rate teaching, and being taught,
the thing has to be done. Once more, remember
that in drawing the mental picture, not the excellence
of the drawing, but the picture which embodies with
spirit the true sense of the passage, is the object
sought. For instance, few boys could put Csssar's
army into the field with any accuracy, and marshal
the Menapii and Morini against him ; the life of the
narrative, however, is thoroughly rendered by the
two boys round the corner waiting to take General
Smith ma. a tergo, as he advances through the
door into the road to attack the redoubtable Brown.
Moreover, General Smith ma. is learning to construe
and understand a Latin narrative, and is not a
student of military tactics, or antique armour, in the
first instance.
140 A Workman's Hints on
In this way substance and life can be given to all
the work, and we arrive at the last, and most
important, law of all teaching :
" Think in shape, get out of Ghostland."
The natural conclusion of the subject is now in
sight. The Teacher is brought by his voyage of
discovery to the fountain of youth. For there is a
fountain of youth, in teaching at all events. If
school-work means the spending year after year in
making up little packets of knowledge, seizing boys
and packing them tight, like portmanteaus, jumping
on the lid when things won't fit in at last, nothing
more need be said. There is no immortality in a
grocer's paper bag, or a knowledge-packer's. But
if a Teacher's life means teaching pupils to use
mind, to paint mental pictures, and to create new
creations of mind ; if a Teacher has the whole world
as his field for illustrations, and is for ever lighting
on fresh illustrations, grave or gay, and making
every flint flash new sparks of truth, every stone
speak, every brook have a tongue for him, just as
the moment requires ; then there is immortality for
a Teacher, there is a fountain of youth for teaching.
If he lived a thousand years, he would every day be
finding more illustrations, and be growing more full
of life, more plastic, more fresh, more nimble, ever
finding greater pleasure himself in daily new dis-
coveries of brighter, clearer ways of working, ever
becoming more hopeful of turning the stickiest clay
into china.
Teaching Work. 141
There is a fountain of youth in teaching which no
clay can dam up, no resistance stop flowing, no
monotony of dulness stagnate.
The Teacher does discover some who will be
taught.
The Teacher revels even without them, in the
delight of finding all creation teeming with life and
teaching. The Teacher can illuminate the dullest
cloud, and light it up with inward fire, for a time at
all events, for all time, if the prevailing atmosphere
allows. His work of endless discovery, of waking
up, inspiriting, interesting, winging minds, keeps
him always at the top of his powers, to supply the
spirit needed. His own life daily flashes into new
existences. He learns far more than he teaches ;
he gains far more than he gives. Nothing seems
impossible as he works. No child ever found the
unsightly basket and the common straw break loose
into more unlikely surprises of delightful realities,
of Christmas presents ; no diamond digger, toiling
amidst rock, and mud, and clay, is fired with greater
hopes, or more certain of his gains. Every stroke
may bring out a diamond.
There is a fountain of youth in teaching, inex-
haustible, eternal.
I have nothing more to say to-day. It is only
left me to utter the fervent prayer that the Teachers
of England may win free access to the fountain of
youth ; may slay the dragon that guards it, and
drink freely and without stint, where I must be
142 A Workman's Hints on Teaching Work.
satisfied with a few stray drops, and a far-off hearing
of the ripple of its flow, rooted, like a sign-post, to
the ground, only able to point out the way I may
not tread, too glad if others may get a chance of
doing that which, afar off, it has sometimes been per-
mitted me to see. But I have seen, come what may,
I have seen teaching afar off, and caught some stray
drops in happier hours of the Teacher's fountain of
youth. 1
AN ADDEESS TO THE TEACHEES' GUILD,
MAY 16, 1887.
AN ADDBESS TO THE TEACHEE8' GUILD.
EAETH is a battle-field. The clash of armies
meeting is a mere transient symptom of the cease*
less ebb and flow of conflict, that goes on, all
unperceived, in every city, village, home, nay, in
every human heart. Education, and the training
of life, cannot escape the universal lot. The globe
on which we live is a parable. Ful of unseen
tides of seas of fire, with an occasional volcano
betraying their existence, men mark the volcano*
and disregard the fiery sea. But if the sea itself
is within the reach and control of man, then it
would be madness not to study its nature. Now
the ceaseless conflict of principle in Education, and
the causes which create the conflict, are within the
reach of man's research and control, They demand
our attention*
The fact is that mankind are divided into two
camps. Everyone belongs to the one or the other,
however high or refined, or however low or brutal,
he may be.
There are the lordly spirits, who look on the world
i
146 An Address to the
as subject to their power, and proceed to handle
heaven and earth, man, animal, and matter, accord-
ing to their own good pleasure. They have got
hold of the scissors of creation, and with wonderful
sagacity and pains set to work to cut infinity into
little squares, which they can understand, and
master, and move at will. Out of these they com-
pose a universe of their own. It is very ingenious,
and they make all fit in, and come within the
compass of their knowledge, and form a lovely
tessellated pattern, smooth and hard, a polished
perfection of surface, which is presented to all who
advance to meet them on their own chosen side of
argument. This is one camp, the camp of intellect
and knowledge.
Then there are the Shakespears, and all those
pupils of light, who approach infinity with its
infinite hints of infinity of unknown and unknow-
able glory, in a spirit of worship, with eyes open,
and loving, and humble. Men, whose first glance
at creation has merged more or less their own
personality in a glad bewilderment of joy at all they
see ; and who pass on, lost to themselves and their
own bounded powers, satisfied with an overflow of
never-ceasing delight as they see ; all their being
bathed in light ; feelings, and intellect, and heart,
and tongue, all alike filled and quickened by an
inpouring on souls ready to receive. Happy spirits,
whose supreme ideal would be to live like a dew-
drop, however small, yet capable of taking in a
Teachers' Guild. 147
perfect image and reflection of the sun himself,
swallowed up in a universe of light, and yet con-
taining it ; light all round ; light on this side, light
on that, light within, light without, yet with no
power in itself to grasp, for who can grasp light ?
Only willing and ahle to receive.
This is the other camp ; the camp of the seeing
heart, and the seeing eye, and the love of greatness
bowing down before life which is greater than itself.
It is obvious, that the scissors with the squares,
and the dewdrop and the sun, are diametrically
opposed to one another in essence.
It is obvious, that knowledge-worship and the
lust of the head, are deadly enemies to the loving
eye and the humble spirit.
It is obvious, that the manufactured universe is
a different conception from the universe of infinity
that is.
It is obvious, that a hard hand stretched out to
seize facts, and the winning a way by humility
and love into the heart of things, are as far apart
as whipping a slave, and wooing a bride. They
belong to different worlds.
Every living being, consciously or unconsciously,
is in one of these two classes, ranged under one or
other of these banners, is in one camp or the other.
The pothouse oracle can be as omniscient as the
most worshipped philosopher, and with equal
justice. Each wields the scissors of creation in
his own world.
148 An Address to the
The village labourer with the reverent heart cart
be as wise as the wisest thinker, and with equal
justice. They are both full of light. Neither
wants more. Neither sets up for more than he is ;
as the sailor's kettle did, which when filled claimed
the sovereignty of the sea ; as many a kettle has
done since, and black kettles too.
Until this vast chasm and split is recognised as
the one fact in dealing with life, no beginning in
education, which is the training of life, has been
made consciously on any true principle. This
seriously affects our subject to-night of Thinking in
shape, and Pictorial Teaching.
For knowledge -hunting is one thing, and the
seeing eye and active mind another.
I fearlessly assert, what it is not my business
to-night to prove, but I can prove it, that intellect-
worship and the banner of knowledge set up in a
kingdom mean death to true progress, death to the
welfare of the vast majority, if unchecked.
Few stop to consider what knowledge is. It is
only second-hand information. The sum of the
facts collected, noted, and laid up, by the labour
and research of those who have gone before
us.
It is very valuable ; BO is gold ; but the old story
of the man found dead in the desert by the side of
his heap of gold is not out of date, and never will
be. Or, if you like it better, the more recent
example of the returning colonist, who was drowned
Teachers 9 Guild. 149
when the Eoyal Charter was wrecked, by the gold
in the belt round his body.
Supposing the knowledge all got, it may drown
you.
But as a fact it is not got. To the majority it is
administered like physic to a dog, half shoved down
his throat, and then his mouth held, if you can do
it for his biting, till he has gulped it down, some at
all events, from sheer inability to get rid of it.
Many cannot be said to take it at all. And no
one will dispute that second-hand information, not
taken, is worthless.
But is it less worthless if not understood ? Is it
less worthless in the modern version of the Fools
of our ancestors, clothed in modern motley, a dab
of language here, a dab of mathematics there, a bit
of this, and a shred of that, all stitched together
without a pattern or order, particoloured and patchy
manuals and date-cards, and a pitiable want of any
texture of sufficiently thick fibre to let the victim
11 sit in the belfry and warm his five wits/' like the
owl. If indeed he has any wits left to warm, and
they have not all departed under this patchwork
process, and left nothing behind but a firm persua-
sion that he cannot learn ; which is only too true.
Throw aside the few who are strong enough to
shift for themselves. And I appeal to every school-
master in England from the Board School in its
lowest phase to the Public School in its highest, as
to what in their hearts they believe about the rank
150 An Address to the
and file of their pupils, whether they are willing
and capable acquirers of knowledge or not.
Above all, whether the results attained by the
majority bear any proportion to the time spent.
I have talked with many, I have read much,
and never yet in talking, and never in writings,
outside the magic circle of officials and amateurs,
have I found any difference of opinion as to
the boys and their work as a whole. I myself
after thirty-three years' experience, and a good bit
of the thirty-fourth, emphatically state that I have
only lately begun to really become aware of the
utter ignorance of the English boy in English
common words, common stories, common know-
ledge of all kinds, and the utter indifference to
being ignorant, and the still more surprising apathy
towards attempts to excite thought, which prevail,
and, unless I am much mistaken, are gaining ground
in this generation, and becoming worse and worse
every day.
My appeal is to Philip in private, not to Philip in
print. I affirm that Philip in private is in despair
over the mass of boys, and the way he has to deal
with them.
The work done (the boys, that is) is condemned.
But it is the boys we want to see full of power and
training.
What is the remedy for this condemnation ? The
remedy is, " think in shape." If you are allowed to
do it. This is the practical answer. For every-
Teachers' Guild. 151
thing follows if this is done. This alone rouses
mind. Mind must be roused. But mind is without
exception the most perverse thing in creation.
Mind will do anything but think. Mind will crawl
through any number of manuals, and grovel over as
many date cards as you like ; ay, and bear any
punishment rather than think. Mind will wriggle
out of thinking by every conceivable twist and
twiddle. Mind is the prince of shirks.
Yet mind is very active when it likes. Is it not
possible that this ingrained reluctance to think does
not rest with mind, but has something to do with
the way in which mind is treated ? If you load a
racer like a cart-horse, and expect him to race, I
suspect he would lay back his ears and kick not a
little. So does mind, the racer. In the great
market of the world the cart-horses rule, and test
everyone by the number of sacks he can carry for
sale. Nay, some of the strongest beasts of burden
walk proudly round the market carrying their sacks,
and don't even sell. The cart-horses have it their
own way. Every fool can understand sacks, and so
the racer is nowhere. Memory, and knowledge,
and the many sacks carry the day. Thought hasn't
a chance. But thought is wanted, and the mind
- must be made to think.
The mind must be taught to think in shape, to
translate meaning out of shape, and to translate
meaning into shape. That is, train the mind, your
own and other people's, whenever it sees anything,
152 An Address to the
at once to find out, what thought made the shape
it sees. And, on the other hand, accustom it to take
every word used, and put it into some definite shape,
example, or reality. This translation and retrans-
lation of shape, into thought and words, and of
words into thought and shape, awakens mind, and
makes thought possible and pleasant.
Let us proceed to examples. In other words, let
us put what has been said into shape, and begin our
work by thinking in shape ourselves.
I must first, however, lay down as an axiom, that
it does not matter in the least how simple, how
imperfect, or absurd even, the shape may be, if it
embodies the thought in a vivid way, as when we
say, "He stood like a rock/ '
Here is an illustration of this on a larger scale.
A friend and colleague of mine was reading with his
little girl of six years old, Campbell's poem of " Lord
Ullin's Daughter.'* She was delighted, but puzzled.
There were so many persons, and so much move-
ment. The lake and the mountain, the ferry and
the road, the pursuers and pursued, got mixed up
together and entangled in her poor little mind. Of
course her father gave her an elaborate explanation,
getting slightly out of temper in tone and word,
when she still couldn't see it ! He did nothing of
the sort. Breakfast was just over. The table was
crumby. He took the crumbs. He made one
heap stand for the angry father and his company,
another for the mountains, a thin circle for the
Teachers' Guild. 153
:e, a little bit of crust for tlie boat, two little bits
of sugar for the lovers, and all was clear. His little
girl took in the whole thing ; she thought in shape.
These few crumbs changed her world for her, per-
haps for ever, gave her mind solid ground and
living power, instead of leaving her suffocated under
a heap of words. Those few crumbs in an able
man's hand lived and imparted life. Never lose
eight of the crumbs and their marvellous power.
What could we, unhappy that we are, have done
with our unhappy classes under like circumstances ?
Oh, the deadly paralysis of words, words, words !
Often not understood singly, and, if understood
singly, utterly bewildering when whirled round in
the boiler of an elaborate, self-satisfied explanation.
Oh, the curse of words and memory !
Then again, let us apply another bit of familiar
knowledge.
At the battle of Wfirth, at the beginning of the
Franco-German War, 17,000 men were killed.
Why don't you burst into tears at this vast pre-
sence of desolation, agony, death, pain, ruin?
Simply because it is not present. The figures are
present. They are an arithmetical fact, all pat for
an examination paper. But we don't weep for an
examination paper, unless indeed we have to answer
it. These many thousand deaths move you not.
But I, for my part, agree with the old general, who
is said to have locked himself in his room every
Sunday to read Mrs. Ewing's story of " Jackanapes "
154: An Address to the
unseen. I could not trust myself to read it in
public, or her " Story of a Short Life," and her
" Six to Sixteen," with the death of the old French
noble. Yet these are fictions, and only three, set
against those many thousands of real sufferers.
But the fiction is real, because it is thought in
shape; the reality is unreal, because it is fact in
cipher, no nearer the heart than any other bit of
arithmetic. I have purposely taken these three
simple narratives because they are the most trans-
parent that I know, the most free from artificial
excitement, the most direct appeal of heart to heart,
exquisite in their simplicity, pure spirit, rnind
touching mind by the passage of light, clear and
untainted by extraneous mixture ; in fact, the most
perfect specimens of thought in shape. Thus the
unreal becomes real when it is thought in shape,
and the real unreal, when ciphers are put in its
place.
But figures and arithmetic are not the only
ciphers. Every word not vividly understood is a
cipher. We will leave common words at present, and
take abstract words. The fondness of the youthful
and the uneducated for general terms cannot have
escaped the notice of an experienced teacher. The
general terms are so convenient ; like Charity, they
cover a multitude of sins. Well, take the axiom,
" Law kills love." I dare say you think the illus-
tration so perfect that it conveys no meaning at all.
Let us translate it into shape. A good home may
Teachers' Guild. 155
stand for love. The children in a good home are
young natures undergoing training through love.
And accordingly theft, gluttony, and violence, ill-
temper, and all the evil passions either do not
appear, overborne by the higher life and its pure
atmosphere, or if they appear, are dealt with in a
loving spirit. But let us suppose that the first
moment a child appropriates an apple, or breaks a
window, the police are called in, and the small
offender taken before the magistrate. There would
be an end to love. And you get at once the axiom
" that law kills love," as soon as thinking in shape
is practised, stamped upon the mind in clear
characters ; an axiom, which after all is only a con-
densed statement of most of St. Paul's Epistles;
even as the Gospel is the other side of the same
truth, namely, that love establishes a kingdom
higher than law, and above it, though it is not dim-
cult to fall down out of the kingdom of love and
the family life into the realm of law, and make
police-courts the choice instead of a father's love.
In this way, by thinking in shape, ciphers and
memory drop into their proper place, and reality
begins.
Most people, however, live in a world of ciphers.
The hard facts are ciphers, the words are ciphers ;
nothing lives. The men and women are wooden
figures, animated automatons, ciphers, too ; and
the successful master of innumerable cipher facts
becomes a ruler, and sways senates, and deals with
156 An Address to the
delicate life as with wood. And the people well,
the less said about them, when they worship the
great cipherers, the better. They have never beenj
taught to think in shape, at all events.
But the commonest words are still worse off.
"What everybody knows nobody thinks about. So
different is knowledge from thought. In nine cases
out of ten, knowledge means the shut mind. The
knower has got his x and y pat. They transact his
daily work and his talk. He has collected a box-
ful, he shuts down the lid, locks it, and is satisfied.
But what does he really know ? We will concede
him at once a certain amount of bread-and-butter
power ; x and y do this pretty well. He can set
up house ; we have furnished him, perhaps, with
respectable pots and a little fuel, and he is a
reasonably good pot-boiler. As Wordsworth's old
cook told us, when asked by one of our ladies to
admire a splendid sunset one of those glorious
glimpses of heaven's great picture gallery which we
sometimes get : " Lor, ma'am ! I am a decent cook,
and tidyish lodgingrhouse keeper ; but I don't hold
with none of them sort of things." Yes, we make,
perhaps, decent cooks, and tidyish lodging-house
keepers though I have heard this contradicted
but mind and sunset are nowhere. " We don't
hold with them sort of things." Just look at the
small amount of literature and the slight bowing
acquaintance with words which our average samples
of humanity have, and which yet they imagine they
Teachers' Guild. 157
know. No cue ever yet heard an. argument going
on in an ordinary company anywhere palace or
pothouse I believe, without becoming aware in
the first five minutes that the speakers are using
the same words in entirely different senses, fre-
quently changing the senses backwards and for-
wards, as convenient not from dishonesty; they
have no intention of cheating or conjuring. We
have mentioned abstract terms already ; but take
the word " liberty," One combatant means by it
the liberty of the individual to grow as he pleases ;
the other, the liberty of the majority to make him
grow as they please : and neither are aware of this*
All this arises from their never having learnt to
think in shape. Logic can teach the right use of
word-ciphers, but thinking in shape alone teaches
the right use of words. Indeed, the most learned
men are often the greatest Sinners in this ; marvel-
lously ready with accurate ciphers and cold facts,
which serve to disguise utter non-thought and con-
fusion underneath, just as a smooth sheet of ice coats
over the muddy depths and weeds below in a pond,
This is the case with the symbols they have and
use. But very often there are no symbols to speak
of ; a practical vacuum. A question is asked. The
unhappy victim tries to remember, as he calls it.
But there is no memory; it is simply vacuum*
Now, it is not possible to pull anything out of
nothing. Cheques drawn on the Bank of Empti-
ness are empty. Nevertheless, three-fourths of
158 An Address to the
work, so called, are frantic attempts to draw
cheques on vacuum. The beginning of this is the
effort to pour into a reluctant mind some unintelli-
gible bit of cipher knowledge, and to cork it down
by punishment. It disagrees ; it ferments ; the
cork flies out ; the noxious stuff is spilt ; whilst the
taskmaster believes it is all right because of the
trouble he took to get it in. But it isn't there for
all that. Vacuum is vacuum. There is no memory,
and where there is no memory to begin with,
there is no memory at the end. But very often,
though there is no memory, the answer is all there
if the poor boy had been taught to use his mind,
think in shape, frame an example, look at, and then
make answers from what he sees. One lesson on
a chair even would go far towards setting the mind
on the right method. First the ludicrous failures
to define a chair, show how far the names, that are
true of things supposed to be known, fail to convey
the truths that make the names. Then the draw-
ing out from the learner a simple, clear description
of the chair which is actually before his eyes, and
making him really see what he sees ; then the
reason for each part, the thought which has taken
shape in it ; then what would happen if this or that
part were left out ; then, if possible, make him
draw the chair ; then let him see that the chair is
a story told in wood ; then lead him back to the
first makers of chairs, and the sort of life that is
implied in a chair, and so on ; then with a firm,
Teachers' Guild. 159
strong hand drive home the fact that all this is a
history of thought gradually passing from shape to
shape as experience led it on ; then finish with the
great truth that every shape is such a history,
everything we see a living narrative, telling of
movements of life to any mind that lives, a story-
book capable of unfolding centuries of thought,
which he who thinks can interpret; then go on,
show him that the whole world is one great illumi-
nated volume of thought, speaking through shape,
where the illuminations are beautiful and wonder-
ful, but the power of reading what is written more
glorious still.
A common chair will tell you all this, if you can
read chairs, and translate shape into thought, and
thought into words. And this, again, gives practice
for translating words into thought and thought into
shape, until the learner learns to think in shape.
Every shape is life-speaking. Hence it follows that
shape can be false or true, honourable or dishonour-
able. A sign-post can be a liar, a building a hypo-
crite, a room can give honour or dishonour, can
glorify or insult. Nay, more, life and death can
depend on a room. Christianity itself cannot lodge
large families in one room in a civilised country
and remain Christian. The Christianity either
breaks up the one room into many or the one room
breaks up the Christianity. If a stronger power
fixes the one room as permanent, good-bye to the
Christianity.
160 An Address ft> th&
If, again, a Stronger power kept a princess in a
hovel, and dressed her in rags, such treatment
shows contempt for the princess, and she would be
treated as a slave by the inferiors, who in this
would imitate their superiors. The hovel gives
answer, every room gives answer when called on,
and tells the value set on the life that lives in it.
Answer, then, ye rooms ; answer, class-rooms,
from end to end of England, What is thought oi
lessons ; of lessons, the noblest of all work in the
world ; of lessons, the sowers of light ; of lessons,
the princess supreme over the children's life, the
true dispensers of nobility, the royal givers of rank,
the creators of the coming generations, the sove*
reign powers of the world, which demand unfalter*
ing allegiance, and unquestioning loyalty; which
call for honour, courage, endurance, skill of brain
and hand ; which demand self-denial, purity, health,
activity of body and mind ; queens, which reject
with scorn the lazy, the cowards, the self-indulgent,
the mean ? Answer, class-rooms, how we treat our
queens. Answer, dirt and shabbiness ; fittings
hacked and mutilated, tattooed with knives, all
daubed with their war-paint of ink, like an Indian
savage making ready for the humanising refine*
ments of scalping, or being scalped. Answer, walls,
bare, unsightly, and grimy ; or, if not bare, grimly
austere with maps, and blackboards, sanctimoni*
ously arrayed with prim pretences of improvement,
tidily repulsive, like an ill-dressed woman. Is not
TeacJiers' Guild. 161
the answer in a free translation : " Out on ye ! out
on ye, lessons, necessary animals, but mean, kept
for your bacon, nob for your own sakes " ? And
does not the school-boy answer, too? It is hard
to escape something of the pig if lodged in a sty.
The school-boy has not escaped, and never will, till
" Honour to Lessons " is the first article in the
nation's secular creed. Everything that meets the
eye ought to be as perfect, according to the work
and workers, as human skill can make it. Give
honour, you will receive honour. I know that boys
respond with honour when they and their life-work
are honoured. I could speak with authority if it
was fitting for me to do so. Honour to lessons is
the first article in the Teacher's creed.
There are three ways of promoting honour to
lessons.
First comes the room in which they are given,
and all its furniture. The room itself should be
decorated. The walls should have honour written
on them in honourable characters. All the furni-
ture should be as solid and handsome as suits the
rank of the workers. And every room should
declare at a glance its value, and the value of the
work done in it.
Secondly, there should be pictures on the walls,
real pictures, able to raise the mind of all who see
them by their merit as pictures, as well as instruc-
tive from their knowledge power.
Thirdly, the books should be as full as possible
1C
162 An Address to the
of good engravings of the countries, landscapes,
and cities mentioned, and, not the least, with good
portraits of eminent men.
Nothing not good is wanted.
Allow me to say a few words on these three
heads. I have ventured to bring up several
examples of wall decoration. These first are the
decorations of the old schoolroom at Uppingham,
which is now used as an art school, and art
museum. A dado ahout 6J ft. high runs along the
wall, with panelled squares along the top; then
there is a coloured space of about 3Jft. of wall;
then a fresco line of 3 ft. under the cornice beams.
Mr. Charles -Eossiter is filling every one of these
squares in the dado, in number seventy, with good
portrait heads of the great artists from the earliest
times. The space next above is hung with
engravings and chrorno -lithographs of some of the
most famous works ; and along the line under the
cornice runs what I must call a fresco series of
scenes from the history of artist life. There are
two of them : the first, Phidias showing Pericles
his Athene, and Ictinus, the plan of the Parthenon,
with Aspasia, Sophocles, Anaxagoras, and Socrates
introduced ; the second, Apelles and his critics, and
the cobbler.
There, again, is the plan of the great schoolroom.
The dado is stone, and low, and does not admit of
decoration. The space between the dado and the
fresco line is coloured Pompeian red, and filled with
Teachers 9 Guild. 163
splendid autotypes of ancient sculpture and works
of art, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek. The fresco
line is ornamented, with arabesque, and at short
intervals medallions, with sitting figures of the
famous men in literature of all times, are placed,
beginning with King David and St. John, and going
through a selection of the great Greeks and
Eomans, then taking the modern, beginning with
King Alfred and Dante, and ending with Words-
worth. The windows have a border of painted
glass, words of our Lord on human life from the
Gospels, and arms of various houses and donors.
i There is also a great historical window at the
north end, representing in eight pictures the
foundation of the school three hundred years ago,
and its practical refoundation in this generation.
At the south end there is a memorial window to
commemorate the school having been the first to
send out a school mission, at the suggestion of the
Eev. John Foy, in April, 1869, to North Woolwich.
There are also plans for the decoration of other
schools which Mr. Eossiter has designed for me.
This is one, which is being carried out in the High
School for Girls in Upper Baker-street, under
Miss MacEae.
I would especially draw your attention to these
illustrations of -ZEsop's Fables in double medallions,
one above and one below ; with the line of drawings
under of the flowers, fruits, birds, insects, of the
country. The principle is capable of such wide
164 An Address to the
application. How many story-books might appear
on our walls !
You will doubtless object that all this is very
costly. I have kept that till now. Some of it is,
but much is not. Much is, I doubt not, within the
reach of almost every school in England.
You see those frames of frescoes of artist life.
They are oil-paintings fastened to the wall by
their frames. The medallions in the great school-
room are oil-paintings cemented to the walls ;
others are water-colours mounted on linen, or
canvas, and either framed or cemented to the
walls.
This is a case of Columbus' s egg ; this little fact
turns in a moment every painter in England into a
wall-painter without ever having to go near a wall.
They can sit in their drawing-rooms, boudoirs,
studios, and do it all. There are few neighbour-
hoods where there are not artists able and willing
to paint flowers, fruits, birds, butterflies, effectively.
How many a lady in the parsonage or hall would
gladly ornament the village schoolroom when the
work can be done at home. I believe this simple fact
of framing, or cementing, the knowledge of which I
owe to Mr. Eossiter, to be of world- wide import-
ance. I believe it has opened a new era in
education. I look forward in spirit to the time
when every village school in the land shall have its
decorations, the work of the many earnest, loving
hearts and hands of tho educated, who have been
Teachers' Guild. 165
eager to help, but not known how to do it. There-
fore I have been at some pains to-night to make
you think in shape (forgive me this little hit) by
bringing before your eyes some examples of the
coming revolution in walls, and the sober excesses
which our poverty-stricken neighbours, the school-
rooms, are prepared to break out into.
The second point is, the pictures on the walls.
I think a great mistake has been made, when
anything has been done, in dealing rather with
works of art, and figures, than landscapes. I
think photography has not seen its great educa-
tional vocation, or been called on by us to see it.
Where there are many class-rooms, every room
should have its speciality. One should be the
English room, and be hung with pictures of the
most beautiful or famous landscapes, rivers, moun-
tains of Britain. There should be a Colonial room,
an Indian room, a Bird room, a Flower room ; then
another should have the great Cathedrals ; another
Greek landscapes Marathon, Athens, Delphi;
another the Italian. The class should be able to
see Trasymene, for instance, with its lake, and the
great plain, lying all flat and open to the eye for
many a mile, skirted on the left by those fatal
hills. They might be made to march down with
the Eoman army the day before through ravaged
lands, and ruined homesteads, laid waste by their
great enemy. Then they would encamp for the
night not far from the hills sloping gently down to
166 An Address to the
the green space between them and the water.
There the Consul and his gallant troops entrenched
themselves the night before the battle, full of fury,
and hate, and revenge; and as they worked they
would see in the evening light the gleam of the
innocent -looking lake, and the great plain, as yet
untouched by war, stretching away, mile after mile
of fertile land, and wealth of corn and cattle, flat,
and rich, the very picture of plenty and peace.
There they passed the night, Flaminius with a
haughty trust that he was the saviour of his
country ; his army maddened at the sight of
plundered homes, and the shame of their slaugh-
tered countrymen.
They should be made to see the camp break up
on that April morning as early dawn grew grey,
and those brave, confident men began their exultant
march. On they tramped, the legions in their
pride : a fog lay thick on the broad plain and the
flat lake ; but the dew was on the grass, and the
brisk morning breathing in their faces, and keen
delight in their strength, and life, and the rising
sun fresh in their hearts ; and before long they
reached the fair green meadows between the lake
and the hills by the side of the still waters gleam-
ing, and the van had passed the narrow point at
the end, and crowded all the pass beyond, when,
hark ! suddenly the still air rang, shattered by
the blast of an African trumpet ; trumpet after
trumpet sounded, the sun came out, the mist rose ;
Teachers 9 Guild. 167
and all around them, like a great wild beast, was
Hannibal, and his army, in act to spring. Then
earne the thunder of rushing squadrons, the tramp-
ling of the horse-hoofs, the headlong charge, and
a great black wave of death swept in fierce onset
down the slopes, and the wild horsemen of the
desert leapt upon their prey. Soon, too, the gigantic
Gauls whirled overhead their huge two-handed
swords, and dashed upon the foe. In vain those hardy
soldiers turned to bay ; borne down by weight, and
rush and multitude, perforce they are pushed back
into a dense struggling mass of unavailing valour
and sullen despair. In vain the stubborn Eoman
stabbed and died. In vain for three long hours
they fought with little room for fighting. Javelin
and sword made ghastly space, and slowly thinned
their ranks for easier slaughter, as the fierce slayers
forced their way by slaying into the dense mass of
helpless, huddled human flesh, and pushed the
survivors into the lake to die there. Long before
evening the hills rose calm and quiet again, and
night came down on the great plain peaceful as
before, save only for those silent witnesses, some
15,000 mangled shapes lying stark and stiff between
the hills and the lake, and the spoilers busy at
their horrible market of death.
In this way each Teacher, as he knows how,
would turn from time to time the pictures to
account; and breathe the breath of life over the
wall.
168 An Address to the
This well done, even once, would teach something
of shapes, big with thought, and of thinking in
shape, and give a new eye for looking on the
world.
I need not go on to say that there would be a
German room, and above all, perhaps, a Portrait
room, for good portraits are very powerful; and
that each country as far as possible should be repre-
sented according to its importance, and the funds
and space available. Lastly, Palestine ought to be
fully placed before the eyes. The Maps ought to
have a room to themselves, and great care be taken
to make them as attractive as possible, by their
beauty as maps, by their skilful arrangement, and
respectful use. In this way no boy could even walk
through the Class-rooms of a large school without
being forced to notice how full the world must be
of things worth seeing, and how worthy are the
books that tell of them. Even without a teacher
how much the walls can be made to print on the
dullest mind ! and with a teacher, what thinking in
shape there can be ! what a breathing of life into
countries, and cities, river, forest, and glen ! What
a suggestion of unexplored regions of delight ! what
a whispering of liberty to roam, and adventurous
holidays ! what a certainty of activity of thought !
Verily, the walls are very living, if in this way made
to live. Many a poor hammerer-in of lessons might
profitably wish himself a wall.
After what has been stated very little need bo
Teachers' Guild. 169
said about the Books, all important as they are, for
the same principles and treatment in the main apply
to them. I would repeat, that really good land-
scapes, views of cities, very seldom single buildings
by themselves, and portraits, are wanted, with
first-rate attractive-looking plans. I lay great stress
on beauty and attractiveness. Without beauty an
illustration is degrading to the thing it professes to
illustrate. I have brought up a little book of plans,
schoolwork from America, done as Classwork by
pupils between the ages of 16 and 18 in Minnesota,
which has been sent me from their normal school.
I think it illustrates what we want to get, and what
a school can do in a practical way. They appear
to me a thorough example, as far as they go, of
thought put into shape in an attractive way.
These are a few of the principal ideas which
appear to belong to thinking in shape, and the Pic-
torial mind, as a matter of practical teaching to be
daily, hourly, always, put in practice.
Few, I believe, are aware of the progress which
has been made in Pictorial Mind since the Parables
were spoken.
Thinking in shape and Pictorial Teaching at once
turn all created things into new language for
thought. Every created thing becomes on the spot
a possible new bit of thought, a possible new word
born into the world of speech. I throw out as a
suggestion for any master of language, as distinct
from a doctorer of words, to examine into the
170 An Address to the
curious fact, that in the last eighty years the
English language has in this way doubled itself, by
flashing new light into old words, by new combina-
tions of words, by freer use of allusions and meta-
phors, and by pictorial handling of its material ; and
that it is practically a new language in its wonder-
ful increase in power of expression, and the breath-
ing of new life into its shape.
For Expression goes on for ever as higher life
produces high manifestation of life, feelings, and
thought, in human face and form, and again be-
comes able by being higher, more sensitive, more
sympathising, not only to see and interpret the new
shapes, but to find endless riches of unknown stores
of precious discoveries in the old. This is the only
true path of progress.
And this we owe to the Parables. The Parables
came into a heathen intellect world, which called
the earth "insensate" or " the giver of food," and
saw nothing but discomfort, or the comfortable, in
what it did see.
The Parables came into this dead world as an
entirely new revelation that all created things were
thoughts clothed in shape, created for the express
purpose of exciting and communicating thought;
that they were language, the language of God to
man, an open book for man to use, pictorial teach-
ing. The earth and all creation become in this way
known to be full of secret life. The outside remains
the same in its main features, but, like an expres-
Teachers' Guild. 171
sive face, it can all be lighted up from within as
soon as the living life moves ; and then the linear
outlines, which are all in all to the semi-heathen
eye and mind, practically disappear, transfigured
and glorified by new powers of life from the inner
life movement. Thus Expression and Pictorial
Mind have no end, but go on for ever, whilst out-
line and linear grace is finite, and bounded. This
is the .only real progress that is possible in art,
whether by art we mean literary art, or pictures, or
any other of the languages that appeal to eye or ear.
Art can be more expressive, Expression by laws of
nature more and more renews itself in more excel-
lent beauty, in which the actual outward shape is ever
more and more merged. The inner nobility passing
into a visible glory in which the bare shape is lost ;
even as the Apostle saw his Lord, with a counte-
nance as of the sun shining in its strength, so
radiant that no fixed outline was seen ; and with
feet that burned like fine brass in the furnace : a
wonderful appearance, that is, of form without out-
line.
This is the goal, Expression, brought out by
inward life to an extent that makes outline vanish
in an effluence of mind and feeling which absorbs
all other sight. This it is the special province of
Pictorial Mind to see, and read, and interpret.
Time forbids my dwelling on this, however little ;
but this vista of infinite eternal progress is opened
up by thinking in shape, and Pictorial Teaching,
172 An Address to the
and creating the Pictorial Mind, as new expressive-
ness comes into sight, and demands increasingly
new power to show it.
The Pictorial Mind first pictures to itself all its
own ideas and thinks in shape, and secondly is ever
extracting ideas new and old out of the things it
sees, picturing to itself all the words it uses, trans-
lating and retranslating thought into shape and
shape into thought till all things live and move for
it in a universe that is living thought incarnate.
The lesson book is always before it. In city or
desert, church or hovel, street or field, with flower,
or tree, or cloud, or sun, or animal, or bird, or
insect, from end to end of all things, there is the
everlasting voice crying, " He that hath ears to hear,
let him hear ; he that hath eyes to see, let him see ;
for life infinite, language universal, lies at your feet
for pleasure and use always." The Pictorial Mind
is the only power man has that is capable of infinite
progress. It is the only power that belongs to all
men. It is the only power that is within reach of
the poor. It can be taught. It can almost be
created.
As the world goes on and knowledge increases, ifc
will be more and more impossible to know it all, a
thing which was once quite within reach. Every
man, however learned, will be narrowed by degrees
down to a single subject. But subjects are many.
There are a thousand languages, for instance ; to
know how to speak even half a dozen really well is
Teachers 1 Guild. 173
an achievement ; and so on, through the whole range
of knowledge. How can any one man cope with
this accumulation of facts ? Boasts of knowledge
therefore belong to the nursery level, betokening
stupendous ignorance of man's capacity for knowing
and of what there is to know. Let us get out of the
nursery and betake ourselves to true progress, and
men as they are.
Knowledge with its broken victuals, and its half-
starved paupers snatching at the scraps, has lorded
it long enough at the gate of its monastery. It is
high time to turn to better things, to liberty, to the
free use of active powers. Pictorial Teaching is the
great agent to advance this. If it once gets fairly
out of prison, and touches the world, all will be
changed. And there are signs of better things.
There are upheavings of discontent, the sea of living
fire within is in motion. There are everywhere
groanings of bondage felt, of loathing, and scorn, for
the dead hand, the really dead hand, the dead, dry,
hard hand of power from without set on the heart
of teaching, and stopping its free pulsations. There
is a rattling beginning to be heard amongst the
skeletons, and bones, and specimens, and the stuffed
figures, and ticketed vocabularies, and verbs with
pins through them all ready to be stuck down, and
all the Noah's ark assortment of the examination,
inspection, scissordom repository of the manufac-
tured world of scissordom. There is too an English-
speaking world besides England, to which we appeal
174 An Address to the
not entirely in vain. Moreover, true ideas, like
music, know no country, are exempt from the curse
of Babel, and pass from heart to heart. Yes, there
is a shaking in the valley of dry bones. It may yet
be, as in the vision of Ezekiel, " There is a noise,
and behold a shaking, and the bones came together,
bone to his bone. And, when I beheld, lo ! the
sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the
skin covered them above. And He said unto me,
Prophesy unto the wind, and say to the wind, Come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon
these slain, that they may live ; and I prophesied,
as He commanded me, and the breath came into
them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an
exceeding great army/' There is a noise and a
shaking, and a hope, with us too. May not we too
prophesy to the four quarters of heaven where the
English-speaking race over all the world is found,
and call upon the breath ,of life to come and breathe
life into the dry bones of our manufactured world,
and put an end to the dead hand. There is life
stirring. No true life ever dies. Kill it here, it
re-appears there, and, in spite of all killing, lives.
There is life in thinking in shape, and in the
Pictorial Mind. And life is universal. All men have
life. All men can have life trained, and raised, and
taught.
The true definition of a teacher is : " One who
sows seeds of life and fosters them."
Let us bury the bones that cannot live.
Teachers' Guild. 175
But thinking in shape, and the Pictorial Mind are
life powers. They can bring light to the dustiest,
darkest corner of memories which are strewn with
the dust, and broken chips of knowledge. There
will be a veritable resurrection when thinking in
shape is taught.
We stand on the threshold of an almost un-
travelled world in beginning this work. We are
bound on a voyage of discovery, a band of pioneers,
yet certain of our promised land. Let the be-all
and end-all of teaching be for us the thinking in
shape, and the Pictorial Mind. Let our watchword
be, "Liberty to teach/ 1
AN ADDRESS TO THE CONFERENCE 01
HEAD MISTRESSES, HELD AT
UPPINGHAM SCHOOL, JUNE 10, 1887.
AN ADDEESS TO HEAD MISTRESSES,
UPPINGHAM SCHOOL, JUNE 10, 1887.
EIGHTEEN years ago, on December 21, 1869, the
first School Conference, I believe, that was held in
England was held in this schoolroom, in which we
are now met together. Most certainly, the first
Conference of the Higher Schools for boys began its
existence on that day in this room. It was called
together after much searching of heart from a deep
conviction that all the skill of the skilled workmen
of English schools was truly lying, like the seed in
the parable, scattered by the wayside for the birds
of the air to peck at and devour, and for amateur
authority to trample under foot. All lay helpless ;
there was no defence, no union, no central life that
could speak and move. Any risk was better than
this. So with many misgivings, with a very
resolute and yet very cowardly heart, that meeting
was called together. Between sixty and seventy
invitations were sent out, and twelve finally came.
The excuses were various, and a curious study.
How often in my working life have I been
reminded of Ovid's line : " Spectatum veniunt,
180 An Address to Head Mistresses
veniunt spectentur ut ipsss." For how are the
judges judged, especially when inspecting their
inferiors, as they think, and dealing out self-
satisfied superiority with complacent skill. Well,
twelve came. And we can glory at this hour that
only twelve came ; so big a tree has now grown out
of it, and so many branches on every side. I hold
it to be a most happy omen that this same room
should have the honour of being the first school-
room of our public schools for boys to welcome
you and your Conference to-day. A most happy
omen, when I look back and consider what a little
seed was sown in December, 1869, and then reflect
how different in power and place, horw important
your assembly is as compared with our weak little
life-germ ; and I may add, in the highest sense truer
and better than anything we masters could set on
foot. Both because the rough, instrumental work
of the world is- done by men, whilst the fine and
delicate life-power, with its influence on life, is dona
by the women ; and also because you are fresh, and
enthusiastic, and comparatively untrammeled, whilst
we are weighed down by tradition, cast, like iron,
in the rigid moulds of the past, with still heavier
chains of modern improvement imposed by present
law on our life.
The hope of teaching lies in you. Yours is the
power.
It will be well to examine into the nature of
power, and see if we can learn how far instrumental
at Uppingliam School. 181
force, because every fool can see it, usurps the
name.
True power clearly is that essence which at last
sets in motion all other things, however long the
chain of movement may be before you come
to it.
Let a steam-engine symbolise force; then the
hand which sets the engine in motion is greater
than the engine, in spite of the engine being so
much stronger ; and the intellect that sets the
hand in motion is greater than the hand, in spite of
the hand being seen to work more ; and the choice
of good or evil, which sets the intellect on to order
the hand to set the engine at work, is greater than
intellect, hand, or engine, which are all its instru-
ments, servants, to do its pleasure.
This truth can be made plain from another side.
It is self-evident that nothing which can be taken
away from the possessor is the possessor himself.
But the steam-engine can be taken away, and the
hand remains ; the hand can be cut off, and the
intellect remains ; the intellect can be marred, by
fever, for instance, and daily fluctuates with health
and digestion, but whether it is damaged or not,
active or inert, the choice power remains intact.
The love which decides remains : this is the ulti-
mate moving power ; this cannot be changed or
taken away without destruction of the being. The
unprofitable servant in the parable lost his talent,
the good had others given, but both the evil and
182 An Address to Head Mistresses
the good remained themselves, whatever instru-
mental powers were given, or taken away.
That power, then, is truest which is least de-
pendent on instrumental force, and yet can set
instrumental force in motion best.
There is no question to a thoughtful mind that
men are most endowed with instrumental force, and
that women most set instrumental force in motion.
Of what paramount importance it is then that they
should do it in a sober, wise, queenly way, under-
standing their great mission, neither afraid, nor
betraying their sovereignty by mean blandishments,
nor trifling with it, but with a calm, grand confi-
dence that it rests with them, when they are trained
to know it, and do it, to create a new ideal of
manly excellence, and perfect, gentle, pure, un-
selfish magnanimity in the world, which shall put
force in its proper place as a servant of servants,
and enthrone the life that moves all things in a
tender supremacy of unquestioned right.
Men have tried their hand long enough as the
sole teachers; their idolatry of brain-force and
glorification of memory-stores have made but poor
work of it. The human being has been left out.
The human being must be brought in. I feel a
special diffidence as well as a special pride in being
allowed by you to-day to address the leaders of
England who are making a new start in the history
of the world, and have 3et a movement on foot to
introduce a fresh and higher power into national
at Uppingham School. 183
life, and purify the ways of mankind. Men at all
events have tried long enough, and stuck deep
enough in the ruts. The human being has been
left out. The human being must be brought in.
Somehow he persists in existing in spite of know-
ledge-shops. There has been a dreary sameness in
the perpetual circle of every man and nation elbow-
ing its neighbour out of the way, which we glorify
under the name of competition : which, however,
has been aptly exemplified in the old heathen down-
right times, when vice was bold, and spades were
spades, by " the priest that slew the slayer, and
shall himself be slain/' We want something new;
life, not human museums. And we have it. For
are not we ourselves to-day a sort of parable, and a
prophecy ? Very few years ago how utterly wild
the idea would have appeared of this distinguished
company of lady teachers meeting in the great
schoolroom of this public school during term time.
What a bit of pictorial teaching this is ! How
plainly it puts before our eyes the change that has
already taken place. It speaks of a new present ;
it prophesies a still greater coming age ; you cannot
help seeing how welcome you are ; how you honour
us by being here, and how we delight to do you
honour. I would not strike a discordant note by
hinting what would have been the case twenty
years ago. Nay, it is no discord. It is the under-
tone needed to bring out the great contrast, to swell
to its rightful fulness the harmony that now is, to
184 An Address to Head Mistresses
lead up to the union that is yet to be between the
education of men and the education of women ; a
true union of two different, but harmonious powers
working for the same end, with clear views what
that end is, and of the harmonious differences that
must combine to produce it. That end is the
putting life-power and character above knowledge,
heart above head, and making the life-training do
this.
Let me lay down some plain propositions.
The first has already been stated, namely, that
the instrument is inferior to that which moves it.
The steam-engine is inferior to the hand, and the
hand-strength inferior to the head-strength, and the
head-strength inferior to the love, whether good or
evil, that sets it all going. Instrumental power
broken loose may be symbolised by the drunken
navvy beating the woman he loves.
Secondly, if spiritual influence is the primary
power which sets movement going, the sovereign
power of woman in the world is manifest.
Thirdly, women train the childhood of the world
always.
Lastly, as the world advances, every nation in
proportion to its advancement gives increased
honour to women.
Now these are facts. And facts sooner or later
have to be faced.
The eternal facts, I mean, have to be faced, that
underlie, and ultimately determine all practice,
at Uppingham School. 185
however much for a time practice may upset, ignore,
or act against them, and make its own facts, and
appeal to them triumphantly as conclusive.
How small a space a generation occupies in the
great onward sweep of time ; say, a space of a foot
measure in a river. How many eddies there are in
a great river, that just swing backward their two or
three feet or so, and seem to be fixed, the same
backward swirl in the same place ; but all the time
the water flows on unheeding the permanent eddy,
and its puny facts. If we were drops of water
caught in such an eddy how hopeless the case
might seem ! how irresistible the logic of its facts !
How many backwaters there are that do actually
flow back ; a nation, as it were, choosing to rebel
against good ; but nevertheless the river sweeps it
all on in time, its facts and all. Yet, how hopeless
it would seem to be a drop in a backwater, know-
ing what was right, but borne along in the opposite
direction.
The onward sweep of the river is an eternal fact.
The eddy and the backwater are facts of practice.
There is no delusion like a temporary fact. The
logic of an eddy has everything on its side except-
ing the knowledge of rivers. And the eddy is
close, the world-plan far off; and the eddy facts
are triumphantly appealed to as the " spirit of the
times," " the irresistible evidence of public
opinion," and this or that name, which will at
once occur to you, that implies that every one who
186 An Address to Head Mistresses
does not swing with the eddy is a fool. Beware
of self-satisfied names; fools are duped by them.
Moreover, the eddy at the moment confers honour
and profit, the eddy bribes heavily. So it comes to
pass that fact-worshippers get to mean those who
are infallible on the thing nearest, men who put a
guinea on the bridge of their nose, as it were, or
haveitput there, and never even follow their nose, for
they never see to the end of it, but turn roundabout
in obedience to the golden fact planted half-way.
Now, no subject in the world has had more
eddies, and more eddy facts, dealing with it, than
the sovereignty of womanly excellence and the ne-
cessity of casting force from the throne it has usurped
since first Eve put it there in her betrayal of love
and good for the sake of knowledge and power.
Yet, no question has had the great eternal fact of
its law of existence put out more plainly in a grand
river-like certainty of progress at last, in spite of
the permanent eddy of force, and its apparent
backward flow.
What eternal fact is more obviously eternal than
the significant fact that the first ten years of the
life of all mankind pass through the hands of
women ? Eddy as you please, you cannot eddy out
of that.
It is true that Force has had it pretty well its own
way in public life. This was a certainty in a fallen
world, which had fallen through a revolt against
gentleness and good.
at Uppingham School. 187
The great permanent eddy of Force supplies the
greater part of mankind with their facts. Yet, it
is but an eddy, and can be seen to be so by any
observant eye.
I venture to think that a few words about Force
will not be out of place.
What is the eternal fact ? Are there no tender
things in life ? Bather it may be asked, Is not life
all tenderness? Tenderness by a multitudinous,
quiet, loving, inward determination creating every-
thing, maintaining everything, ruling everything,
ever repairing with delicate prevailing touch the
ravages made by Force, beautifying the shattered
fragments, covering even ruins with a softness as
of moss. But the moment Force comes in, whether
to hearts or any growths of life, love and life de-
part. The kingdom of growth knows not Force.
Force, the rat, is ever gnawing at the root of life.
And life is tenderness embodied in ceaseless growth,
and prevailing movement. Look at earth's great
Parable. Look at the grass, the corn, with their
everlasting cry of joy, and blessing, and life,
" Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," Lord and
Giver of life, over every inch of ground that lives,
and every fruitful field that sustains life. Yet how
tender is this omnipotence of living ! How tender
every blade of grass that clothes the hills with con-
quest. How tender the slenderness of the grace of
the living corn that turns the broad plain into an
endless sea of life and life-giving power. What has
188 An Address to Head Mistresses
Force to do with the life of grass, or wheat, or any
plant, or flower that blows, or tree that spreads in
prayer towards heaven? What has Force to do
with the bird on its nest, or any animal that
breathes the breath of life, the wild things that
make their home in forest, plain, or river, or sea ?
Force can kill life, but it cannot give life ; no, not
to a worm even, or in any way touch life without
hurting it. The same truth holds good with man,
Force of fighting can kill. Force of law can kill
evil, and destroy hindrances. But if law goes on,
and in its self-righteousness lays its hand on life, it
kills life too. Whenever law sets its finger on any
portion of the higher life, that life dies ; for the
simple reason that fixity is the essence of law, and
life is movement, and fixity and movement cannot
co-exist. Thus law, which is the highest and
holiest form of Force, becomes an angel of death
when it enters the kingdom of life and love.
History might tell us something about force.
The early world lived by the sword ; and a pretty
mess they made of it, with their conquests and their
plunder. They lived by force on the work of
others, on other people's lives ; that is, they rotted
in their own corruption. They were swept away
when rotten by another wave of force-worshippers,
to be in turn corrupted and swept away, wave fol-
lowing wave of force and corruption, a dreary
monotony of successful death in an endless circle.
But when Christ planted His kingdom of life on
at Uppingham School. 189
earth, a life-germ was set in the world as the ruling
power, and Force was thrust down from the highest
place, and made to serve life, even when it seemed
victorious, by scavenger work of sweeping away
evil and clearing off rubbish, so as to make room
and space for new forms of life. In this way when
the life-germ was not strong enough, and failed to
master the corrupt Eoman Empire, with its splendid
magnificence of heathen buildings, and civilised
atrocities, the Force powers were let loose, and the
strong arms and destroying battle-axes of the
Northmen swept temples and civilisation alike out
of the world ; but even whilst they were doing it a
tender undergrowth of spiritual life was rising to
replace it. And marvellous heart feeling was astir ;
and travail pangs, and birth-throes of irrepressible
grandeur that found at last life and speech in the
strange new language of the great cathedrals, and
the order of Christian communities, and glorious
buildings for God and man, were reclothing earth
with unapproachable majesty of heart and mind.
Whilst work and wages began to supplant war ;
and the nobility of labour, that grand gift of Christ
to the world at large, was slowly taking the place
of triumphant force, and the sword, as the honour-
able occupation of men. So at last, after a
thousand years, out of the crash, and the triumphs
of Force, and the breakage, the new birth came.
Modern Europe was born, with all its splendid
possibilities, and all its intricate problems of labour
190 An Address to Head Mistresses
and capital, and almsgiving and idleness, and thrift
and communism, each to be solved by the genera-
tion which through its own or past mismanagement
has allowed difficulties to become dangers ; or by
duty neglected has bred lawlessness and crime.
Nevertheless, we have got thus far. Force in the
shape of war is not the god of the nations any
more.
Work and wages, and peace, and industry, have
taken its place as the aim of manly men.
Now let us pause. This thousand years was on
the whole a reign of Force. The North men did this
bloody work of universal breakage by physical
force. Do you envy that murderous onslaught ?
Would you in imagination glory in the thought
that the North women had fought, and slain, and
burnt, and ravaged, and marched through blood and
ruin, all blood-besmeared and pitiless, and red with
butchery, in their brave but brutal career of Force ?
Or would you rather choose to be the lovable weak-
ness of holy life, which by living holy, though
weak, brought a new birth of life into the world
a higher creation and subdued those barbarous,
but gallant, champions of Force ? Oh ! let the men
do the dirty work of the world : leave it to them.
Feel no envy for the great scavengers, the glorified
destroyers, the scavengers set on to clean out all
the refuse peoples and kingdoms from the streets of
our Jerusalem, and cart off the rotten institutions
and worn-out immoralities with their gauds and
at Uppingham School. 191
glitter : leave it to them. There must be destruc-
tion, but it is not enviable work; it is not your
work.
This is what history tells us of the first great
epoch of Christian life moving, with Force making
room for it, whilst it destroyed for its own blind
ends. So the great river flowed on.
Two thousand years have been spent in this first
experience, and now it is over. Another world-era
has begun. The drama is to be re-enacted on a
larger scale. Another breakage is going on ; another
irruption of force and another birth is to come.
The weapons are different, but the struggle is the
same. The force-powers of the hand smashed up
the early world when its glory became its curse and
its failure ; the force-powers of the head are now to
make havoc of civilisations that have failed. Science
and intellect, with their railroads, and telegraphs,
and steam, are dashing all mankind together in one
great fighting mass of forceful, self -glorious, destroy-
ing energy, to which nothing is sacred, not even its
own pride. And the modern world is to be de-
stroyed, even as the old world was destroyed, and
for the same reason : because it has failed to grow
with the life, and hardened itself into shapes too
narrow for the growing life, and dammed the stream
of life back, and forced it to stagnate, and made
itself into a prison, and lost its light and its
expansion. So it is to perish. It is to be burst up
by the foul gases it has generated. A great
192 An Address to Head Mistresses
triumphant breakage by the lust of the head, and
the vain-glorious intellect, and the ignorant lawless-
ness of evil repressed, but not humanised, by the
higher power, is on foot. The intellect is let loose,
tod a Force which turns the world upside down,
putting its interpretation above the creation it has
to interpret, rating a speck it has studied higher
than infinity, valuing its own footnote more than
the great volume of the universe ; hunting, as it
says, for truth, not knowing that truth is doing at
the moment what at the moment is known to be
right ! strength of life, not strength of brain this
fighting energy is let loose, and the destroying has
begun. And the whole world poured together in
one great whirlpool of creeds, habits, idolatries,
worships, ignorances, and omnisciences, may need
thousands of years before the mud settles and the
great river clears again. The drunken navvy is
abroad, law is being paralysed, and he is likely for
a time to have it pretty well his own way. But oh,
leave it to men to do the dirty work of the world ;
to overthrow for a time in the general crash the
beautiful and true old shapes, and to scavenge out
of existence for ever the decayed and rotten forms
of worn-out decrepitude that have served their time
or failed.
Force-power of hand or head only touches life to
destroy, and yours is the kingdom of life. Search
through the world, you will find it true. Force at
best is a hewer of wood and drawer of water. Life
at UppingJiam School. 193
knows not Force excepting as a servant of servants
in a true world.
It is your sovereignty to see this. It is your
sovereignty to leave men to do the coarse work,
whilst you govern by the unconquerable power of
life and the tenderness of gracious life, whose
weakest glance is stronger than all instrumental
power, whether of hand or head.
The eternal fact which condenses this truth into
a great practical reality is this : Everything is
woman's work in which life is highest and Force is
below.
Both men and women have force-powers, and use
them. A woman has arms; a woman has feet.
No one, excepting the Chinese, would destroy the
feet ; and not even the Chinese have yet cut off the
arms. But the prize-fighter and the athlete make
arms and feet their vocation. The mental prize-
fighters and athletes make head and brainwork
their vocation. Head-athletics are no better in
principle than feet -athletics ; but, in denouncing
athletics as the highest vocation, no insult is offered
to head, or arms, or feet. No counsel is given to
cut them off, or to depreciate their living exercise
in an excellent way. We do not want the Chinese
foot plan extended and transferred to the head ; as
Europe has done all too much in the case of its
women. Heads a la Chinese must be abolished,
Women must have thoroughly healthy instrumental
power of their own, both in head and limb. Life
o
194: An Address to Head Mistresses
works by instruments ; and the civilised man who
would prevent women from doing good work is as
much a savage as the savage who sleeps or fights
whilst he makes women do the labour he ought to
do himself.
Women have to use influence ; and, however
they are dealt with, do use it. Where is the right
influence to come from ? It can only come from a
right training of body and mind.
Mark what the influence in the first instance is.
The whole world of mankind for the first ten
years of their existence is sent in a continuous
stream through the hands of women. This is the
great river rolling seaward. This is an eternal fact ;
no eddy. The training and moulding of character
by women is an eternal fact.
Women are teachers by a law of nature. This is
emphatically woman's work.
Character-training for the child is yet too young
to be hammered along in the hack-intellect omnibus.
Character-training, under sweet influences of home
and gentle teaching.
Where, then, is this to come from, this power of
moulding character?
The answer is, or ought to be, the key to the
problem of the life of the world.
The data are simple : tender growth in the hands
of tender but skilful womanhood.
Erom this beginning all manhood starts.
This is the key to woman's mission.
at Uppingham School. 195
This is the key to the true progress of the world.
No eddy can get rid of the onward sweep of this
great river.
To form character requires character-power.
Character-power requires all good life -knowledge of
all real factors of life, combined with the perfection
of trained skill.
Perfect life-knowledge requires such a mastery of
all instrumental powers of limb and head as is
necessary to understand and use them.
Such a mastery demands that women should be
trained in limb and head, not as champions of limb
and head, but as thoroughly capable in both, so as
to be moulders of the character of the world.
This defines accurately the aim and object of all
womanly excellence in all things belonging to
education.
And eternal fact demands that they shall be
educators of the world heart-educators.
This also points out in how many fields of refined
feeling and delicate power in art and literature
women will excel men, when fair play is given them ;
and where they will not do so. Where force is
paramount they will not do so. Leave men to do
the coarser work. Be content with the queenly
life-power that moulds and rules.
There is, however, a good old saying, often
neglected, that you cannot teach what you do not
know. The teachers must first be taught. Who
that realises this can fail to rejoice in the great
196 An Address to Head Mistresses
movement of teaching and training now going on,
which this Conference so excellently represents?
This is a great epoch. I believe it to be the first
time in the history of the world that a well-con-
sidered course of action has been set on foot by a
natural movement of the life itself for training women
in general to do their true work in life. Efficiency
in life is the question. If efficiency in life is not
produced, it will be a heavy blow to the good cause.
If, like the Board Schools, life-power is dropped,
and a scramble for fragments of knowledge put in
its place, the good cause will receive a fatal
check.
Character-moulding, or, in other words, the
creation of power that rules the world of instru-
mental force, will always be your main work. There
you are queens supreme, and it is the supreme work
of the world. It is your grand privilege to make
goodness lovely and lovable, and by your very
presence to diffuse a kind of sacred atmosphere
wherever you move, if you are true to your high
mission ; which is to show to all the world the
omnipotence of the weakness of beauty, when beauty
means, as it ought to mean, the purest thought and
feeling in its truest shape. This is Christianity.
" Whatsover things are lovely, think of these
things.'* This is Christianity. The Crucifixion has
set in letters of light and flame on all creation the
glorious truth, that a weakness which dies at the
hand of force because it is good, is immortality, and
at Upplngliam School. 197
life, triumphant by its own inward power of life, is
divine, is of God, is God with us.
You who are weak in force-power have to prove
this as Teachers. And as Teachers, you will want
all the strength of heart that religion can give when
your weakness is matched against the trials of life.
It matters comparatively little what knowledge is
taught. Who are the Teachers ? is the real question.
What the Teacher is, and how the teaching is done,
that is all in all. I do not understand how anyone
can keep fresh as a Teacher, when the first
enthusiasm has worn off, excepting from a feeling
of doing work for Christ. Neither do I understand
what knowledge is to do to make better lives, unless
it is guided by religion. Nero was a very accom-
plished man. And we need not go back to Nero for
examples of men, whose splendid knowledge and
ready tongues have only made them more consum-
mate evil-doers, and more elaborate artificers of
pernicious delusions and ambitious falsehoods. Not
what is taught, so much as the spirit in which it is
taught, makes the difference ; above all, the char-
acter of the Teacher. True Teachers cannot be
knowledge-hacks. Set hacks to drag a knowledge
omnibus, and farewell to Teachers. And you you,
the moulders of character, how can you mould
character without the one great character-power ?
Lives are committed to you, not heads, not animated
steam-engines, or intellectual navvies. You have to
justify this great new movement by the efficiency of
198 An Address to Head Mistresses
the lives you train. It is now certain that this
great movement cannot be crushed. So far success
is assured. But very jealous eyes watch its
progress, and are looking at its outcome. You have
to justify the movement in every English home by
increased efficiency in home life. All new move-
ments are criticised ; that is but the common lot.
Never fear that. All new movements are open to
criticism ; there must be mistakes ; never be dis-
couraged by that; pathfinders of necessity get a
little mud. It is very possible to be too clean.
Shame on the pioneer whom his tailor would praise.
Moreover, ages of experience under the force-idolatry
of men have not made things so delightful that you
need be afraid. If education means making the
most of each and all, and giving to everyone a fair
chance, simply it does not exist. How many minds
of the young are mere lumber-rooms, small, untidy,
with nothing in them but dirty bits of old finery and
a few blunt tools? How many distinguished
individuals are nothing more than second-hand
book-shelves, vilely disarranged ! Others, again,
are just dust-bins full of sweepings of police reports,
yellow-backs, Latin grammar leaves, broken ink
bottles, and other rubbish. And worst of all are
those non-human manufactures, the opposite to
Chinese feet, the big heads, the human bull-dogs, all
skull and jaw : those bodiless heads, with their
squirmy, shrunken carcases, from which all feeling
and sympathy have been dried out ; those dwarfs
at Uppingham School. 199
who know everything except human life and
practice ; those chemical alembics of distilled books ;
those automaton rulers of a world which unhappily
is alive. How can they and the system which
glorifies them cavil if a few women do turn out
unpractical? Defend us from the goggle-eyed,
giant-headed dwarfs, with their shrivelled anatomies,
male or female, say I. Knowledge set above feeling
has cursed the world long enough.
Let us, then, be content to make sure of a great
cause, and be regardless of criticism, true or false,
excepting so far as we can learn from it.
You have to mould character from babyhood
onwards. Bear in mind every untaught, untrained
mind is a baby mind ; and even Newton began by
being a baby. Here, in my judgment, lies the great
sin of men as Teachers. They will persist in
shutting their eyes to the real work they have to do,
namely, teach immature baby minds, because some
few, on whom they have bestowed extra pains, are
not babies. So they leave them babies still, as they
have not attempted to do anything with them as
they actually are. Avoid this sublime error.
The air is full of aerial disquisitions and philoso-
phic terms. Big words have a peculiar charm for
non-thinkers and half -thinkers. The blessed word
"Mesopotamia" will never die out of schools.
The philosophy may be all true, very gospel in its
way, but nevertheless (it may be my misfortune),
almost all that have heard or read of it belongs
200 An Address to Head Mistresses
to another world from our child-world; and is
much the same as the birds of the air dealing with
the fishes of the sea, and has no more to do with
baby mind than an eagle with a mollusc. We do
not claim to pass judgment on the flight of eagles,
or demonstrate the laws of wings, but we do try to
be authorities as to how to teach the average
mind ; we do try to understand the simple pro-
cesses by which baby mind is given healthy growth,
and to make it grow. Let us fix our hearts on the
baby mind, the immature, growing young creature,
the average child, boy or girl ; do that, and I will
venture to say you will never lose sight of your
great function of moulding the character of the
world. You will never forget that the young world,
all of it, passes through your hands always.
There is another eternal fact equally unforget-
able when once seen, the eternal fact of helpful-
ness, which is yours. The divine privilege of being
helpers. Woman was created to help : to make
good, that is, the deficiencies of the world of man ; to
come in in times of strain and trial to relieve and
cheer ; to take, as it were, on themselves the part
of angels on earth, ministering spirits, good
Samaritans to succour the wounded, standing some-
what apart from the fray, to bring hope, and kindly,
gentle support : in a word, " helps meet for man."
And here again we meet the double truth which
has attended us all along, of a higher and more
sovereign influence, committed to your hands, and
at Uppinglwm School. 201
of true working power : the truth, which this Con-
ference embodies, of trained working skill. For
how can they help, who know not how to work ?
We meet again the truth, which has accompanied
us from the beginning, that man in no mean spirit
is intended to do the rough work of the world,
while it is the divine mission of women to follow
on his work, to put the finishing touches, to help,
and bind up, and soothe, and cheer, and throw a
halo of gentler life round this hard, warring, daily
contest of good and evil struggling and toiling in
their pain. Work-power is wanted. You are busy
in giving it : but it is helpful work-power, not
destroying ; gentle work-power, not forceful.
This once more fixes definitely woman's domain.
Woman is a fellow-worker with man in an harmo-
nious but independent sphere ; man, the rough
shaper and fighter ; woman, the helper, healer, arid
queen of the inner life. These two, character-
moulding and helpfulness, condense all that can be
said upon the subject. No one can go wrong who
is loyal to these two. Eemember, out of this
comes also the truth that it is your special business
to make goodness lovable, it is your business to be
lovely in mind and body. Force is not lovely, not
lovable ; the moment force is allowed to assert
itself in a character, it destroys love. The old
golden-mouthed preacher, St. Chrysostom, gave
utterance to a sentence, which is perhaps the
greatest practical truth in earth and heaven that
202 An Address to Head Mistresses
ever came from lips not directly inspired, when he
said : " Those who love prefer obeying to com-
manding/' Prefer it. How gladly when we love
do we long with unutterable yearning to do some
service, some act of obedience, some devoted deed,
which shall show the love, and prove it, by laying
down before the feet of the beloved all things, even
life itself. Thus a true world would be inhabited
by beings earnestly striving to do all the most
laborious or painful duties for one another with a
glad alacrity ; the highest striving most. And it is
a marvellous thing that such an unselfish fire
divine should be found burning in this low world of
force-idolaters : marvellous, that womanhood by
its very presence should make the strong stoop, and
the proud lay aside their armour, and bow even the
lowest of the low before this altar-fire of God.
And quite apart from what is called love, a noble
woman, like a star, radiates pure light round her as
she moves, and the basest even, all unconsciously
draw healthier breath ; and evil thoughts, and evil
words, and evil deeds, slink away, and feel some
perception of brighter things.
This great unconscious faculty of scattering
light leads up to the last summit and crown of
earthly life, the final revelation waiting waiting
patiently, all ready to spring into living life when-
ever earth has been purged enough to let it live,
that grand revelation, that all life on earth, men
and women alike, is to be cleansed and glorified
at Uppingham School. 203
into the supreme excellence of womanly perfection,
and that glorified humanity is the Bride of Christ.
And here I close, though much needs to be said,
for the subject is too great for speech, far too great
for a few words at the end of our time. Here I
close. But all I have said leads up to this solemn
certainty of the life that is yet to be, in earth, in
heaven, when force shall be cast out from the
kingdom of life, and all mankind shall recognise
and acknowledge this great and last revelation of
the gentleness and loveliness of true life ; and
glorified humanity here and hereafter shall be
purified into the perfection of womanhood, and
presented to Christ as the Bride,
UNWIN BROTHERS,
CHZLWOUIR AND LONDON.
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