What is education?

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

WHAT IS
EDUCATION?

BY

STANLEY LEATHES, C.B., M.A.

LONDON
G. BELL & SONS, LTD.

1913

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.j

AND BUNG AY, SUFFOLK.

TO

MY MOTHER

PREFACE

IT is written that there was once an under-
graduate named Simkins who wearied his ac-
quaintances with such questions as these —
" Why were we born ? Whither are we tending ?
Have we innate conceptions? "—until they said
when they spied him in the offing : " Why was
Simkins born? Is he tending hither? Has he
an innate conception that he is a bore? " In
asking — What is Education? — I may appear to
imitate Simkins. Is there not an Educational
Supplement of the Times ? Is there not an
Educational Section of the British Association?
Are there not educational series and educational
experts ? Is there not a great educational
enthusiasm, a great educational discontent?
Then, how can there be any doubt as to what
education may be ? Yet — at the risk of sharing
Simkins' fate — I have been impelled to ask this
question and to answer it as best I could; and,
having answered it, to consider some of the ends
which public, purposeful education should serve :
in the elementary school and after, in the secondary
school, and at the University.

The results of education have been reviewed and
found wanting by Principal Griffiths, in an address

viii PREFACE

to the British Association. With many of his
conclusions I agree, but he appears to attribute
our disappointments wholly or mainly to defects
in the system or the teachers. I lay much of the
blame elsewhere. The results of education depend
chiefly upon six factors : the capacities of the
children when born, the influence of the parents,
the material environment, the formative pressure
of society, the system of public education, and the
teachers. Deliberate, purposeful, public educa-
tion can in course of time do something indirectly
to modify parents, environment, society; but at
any moment these and the raw material are
beyond our power to alter; public education is
largely devised to remedy the consequences of
their defects. The problem of education is
therefore as extensive as the whole problem of
society, and cannot, except for purposes of limited
discussion, be treated as if only the system and
the teachers were concerned. The moment any
question of practice arises some or all of the other
four must be taken into account.

No system can be so good as that which in the
sapience of our seclusion or our debates we may
comfortably imagine. Put supernal wisdom to
direct the policy of the Board of Education ; yet
that wisdom would have to filter through the
channel of official communications and official
machinery before it could begin — flat and diluted
—to influence local authorities and the people who
teach. Centralised wisdom is useful; but educa-
tion is not carried on in Whitehall ; it is carried
on in the home and the school. To command an

PREFACE ix

army you have to give the right orders and ensure
that they are obeyed; to govern education by
giving orders from a central office would be
disastrous. The local authorities may not see
so clearly as Principal Griffiths, but they are as
good as the society which elects them knows how
to procure. Invent the best, the most varied,
the most elastic courses of study; equip them
with all appliances that heart can desire; you
will still be at the mercy of social influences.
Lengthen the period of compulsion, and you have
to reckon with the nature of the educands, most
of whom, as Principal Griffiths observes, are not
fitted to profit much by academic instruction.
Shorten the period of compulsion, and you appoint
the world as school-master, a harsh and careless
pedagogue. Every practical problem appears
insoluble when stated in words; every practical
problem can be somehow solved, with time,
thought, experience, good will, and perseverance.
I see no ground for despondency; forty years is a
short time in the history of a nation. The effects
of public education are cumulative; in a sense
every generation starts where the last left off.

It is comforting to observe that some of the
remedial principles propounded^ by Principal .
Griffiths have already been adopted. He suggests
that we should work for character rather than
learning; that the natural desire for knowledge — -
should be stimulated, whereas it is too often
extinguished by teaching; that the Board of
Education should not impose uniformity. All
these principles have been accepted : it is easier

x PREFACE

to state them than to carry them into execution.
He praises the Boy Scout movement ; it deserves
all praise; but would it be possible without the
preliminary training of elementary schools, would
it be possible but for its voluntary and selective
character ?

My own observations fall into two classes. On
points where I have practical knowledge I have
intimated conclusions closely bearing upon
practice, but those conclusions, if accepted, must
pass through other minds before they can be car-
ried into effect. The detailed execution of a single
idea cannot be set down in words ; if a practical
man conceives or adopts an idea, he will know how
to adapt it to his own circumstances. On matters
where I have not first-hand knowledge, I have
endeavoured to indicate ends; I have not pre-
sumed to suggest means. I consider thought to
be useful; but I do not confuse theory with
practice ; if you have got the right principles you
have made a good beginning, but that is all.
Principles must mature into a spirit, a tradition.
In that spirit, by that tradition, men must work.
Views on education may appear chaotic; but I
believe a body of sound practical doctrine is
taking shape. I am thankful to believe that
much of what I have said is fully accepted
doctrine ; certain applications which may be new
appear to follow from accepted doctrine.

There is still much to criticise : too much teach-
ing, too little result; too much learning, too
little knowledge. But I hope I have said nothing
that can seem to depreciate the devoted work of

PREFACE xi

elementary school teachers, without whose un-
sparing efforts public compulsory education
would be naught.

For brevity, for convenience, I have spoken as
if there was only one sex — the male. Almost all
my observations apply also to women and girls,
to schoolmistresses as well as to schoolmasters.
But I must not be taken as accepting the view
that the education of girls and women should be
identical with the education of boys and men.
Even in things of the mind I believe there is a
sex difference. But I have not attempted to set
forth the special ends of feminine education. I
recognise my limitations as a male.

I thank the proprietors of the Times for their
courteous permission to reprint Chapters IV, V,
and VI, which appeared in their Educational
Supplement. The chapter on English is to be
issued as a leaflet by the English Association.
Part of the first chapter was included in an address
to the Parents' National Educational Union, and
printed with their Proceedings.

STANLEY LEATHES.

London,

September, 1913.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

i. Meaning of the word. 2. Education by parents, by
social influences, by business, by tradition. 3. The school
and the home. 4. Purposeful education ; instruction, ex-
amination. 5. Tone of a good school. The share of the
State in education. 6. Theory, tradition, staff. Adminis-
trative machinery. 7. Education an art; system, tradition^
liberty. 8. Tests of education. Education not a science:
9. The dilemma of education. / '

10. Physical, moral education, n. Spiritual education.
Intellectual education. 12. Memory and intelligence; the
selective memory. 13. The multiplication table. Tables of
dates. 14. The constructive memory.

15. Knowledge and learning : speech and thought.
1 6. Instruction and knowledge. 17. Reasoning; judge-
ment ; wisdom. The engineer. 1 8. Learning and teaching ;
desire for knowledge. 19. Knowledge a whole; Science and
History. Meaning of mathematics. 20. Geography the
link between Science and History. 21. The story of the
Balkan Peninsula. 22. Learned men and specialisation.
The joy of work. 23. The teaching of the wise men. Unity
of knowledge.

24. Improvement by education. The Public Schools;
25. narrowness and lack of unity in instruction. The
extension of secondary schooling — to the fit alone. 26^_The__,,.
Universities. Knowledge extended but not unified. Pro-
fessional training, learning, education. 27. Education of
teachers. 28. Education for life. Rivalry of learned men.
29. The place of Geography.

29. Eugenics versus education. 30. Heredity, tradition,
education. The education of Shakespeare. 31. The money-
worth of education. 32. Religion and education. 33. The
unity of education.

CHAPTER II

EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

34. Business and life. 35. Education imitates the faults
of business. 36. Self-conscious, socialistic education.
Natural, traditional education a hundred years ago. 38; The
school of life.

38. The factory system. 39. The work of the Churches.
Educate our masters. 40. Self-help. Book-learning and

xiv CONTENTS

business. 41. Health. Feeding the children. 42. Diet.
Sleep. Fresh air. 43. Exercise; dancing. Appearance,
clothing.

44. Training of the senses. The eye and the ear. 45. Manual
training. Madame Montessori. 46. Disappointments of
education. The intelligence of illiterates. 47. Book-learning
and business. 48. The needs of the many. Less learning
and fewer subjects. More intelligence and love of work.

49. Liberty for schoolmasters. Text-books. 50. Liberty
for children. The desire for knowledge. 51. Large classes.
52. Intelligence, love of work, love of knowledge. 53. Dis-
taste for work. 54. Clever boys who cannot work for them-
selves. 55. The worship of learning. Character. 56. Need
for liberty.

56. Useful studies. Trade-schools and technical schools.
57. The use of book-learning. 58. Training gardens. The
parents.

CHAPTER III

EDUCATION AND LIFE

59. The school of life. 60. Life obliterates schooling.
61. Adolescence. Parental and school influence cease to-
gether. Defects of business as an educator. 62. The use
of leisure. 63. Love of good books. Music. 64. Execution
and appreciation. 65. History and geography in education.
66. The daily paper. 67. The love of beauty. 68. The
calls upon schoolmasters. 69. The function of poetry and
humour. Study of material objects. 70. Sports and games.
71. Character and liberty. 72. The cult of mediocrity.
The suggested danger of good qualities.

73. Proposed extension of compulsory schooling. Public
and private efforts to educate adolescence. 74. Blind-alley
occupations. 75. Civics. 76. Politics in the schools.
Results of education. 77. The gifted tenth. The life of
action. 78. A chance for all.

CHAPTER IV

MODERN LANGUAGES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

79. The good points in Classical education. 80. Training
in language, and in the teaching of the wise men. 81. Trans-
lation. Composition. Greek and Latin verses. 82. His-
torical training. 83. Schooling some years ago. 84. Greek
and Latin for the worthy : French for all : German for some.
85. A modern training which might be equivalent to the
classical. 86. Oral method; need of literature. French
diction. 87. Its value : advantage over Greek. 88. Need
of grammatical accuracy. French literature; 89. and
historical training. Tacitus' Germania. Bacon's Henry VII.

CONTENTS xv

90. German literature. French and German translation, and
composition. 92. Direct historical training needed. 93. Cor-
related teaching of history, language, and literature.

95. Modern languages learnt orally before the age of ten.

96, French and German in examination. 97. Defects of
modernist education ; its prospects ; its needs.

CHAPTER V

COMPULSORY GREEK AT THE UNIVERSITIES

98. Greek blocks the way of praiseworthy business.
99. The schools and the Universities. 100. Vested interests.
Greek in the Littlego. 102. Set books. The Littlego a pass
examination. 103. The subjects needful in such an examina-
tion. 104. English ; a foreign language ; mathematics ;
105. elementary science. Leaving-certificates. 106. Reform
of Universities.

CHAPTER VI

A SCHOOL OF MODERN HUMANITIES

107. Universities and the teaching profession. 108. A
school of modern humanities. 109. Liberal education,
no. The common interests of humanists, in. Separation
of allied studies. 112. Modern Languages Tripos. 113. Lack
of history therein. 114. The Historical Tripos. The dis-
integration of English history. Political science. 115. Lan-
guages for historians. 116. The Oxford English School;
Modern Languages School; History School. 117. The aims
and the merits of the Classical system.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITIES

119. Need English be taught? 120. The needs of the
freshman : to write English. 121. A subject that repays the
instructor. 122. Every don a teacher of English. 123.
English composition needed by all. The love of books :
this is not for all, but might be for more. 125. Composition
for business, reading for life. 126. English needful in every
specialist school.

127. The literary schools. 128. The comprehensive unity
of biblical and Classical study. 129. Classics and English.
130. English literature in History Schools. 131. Needs of
students who enter for an English School. 132. Training in
language. Middle- English and Anglo-Saxon. 133. Text-
books on English literature. 134. General English History,

135. Examinations in English literature deprecated.
136. If necessary, 137. combine with history. 138, Unity
of life, thought, and literary expression.

xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII

EXAMINATIONS

139. Trust in examinations. 140. Drawbacks of ex-
aminations; 141. a necessary evil. 142. Examinations
worst for the young; 143. should be as few and light as
possible. Leaving-certificates. 144. Later, competition
not so bad. 145. Entrance scholarship examinations :
excessive specialisation. 146. Scholarships in history.
147. Professional examinations. 148. Exact and inexact
sciences. 149. Each class requires a corrective. The philo-
sophies. 150. Guarantee of education required. 151. Uni-
versity degrees. 152. Examinations should test knowledge
and intelligence rather than learning. Problem questions.
154. Class-marks; numerical marks. 155. Marks versus
impression. 156. Variations of standard. 157. Fair ac-
curacy attained. A school for examiners. 158. Cramming ;
different meanings of the word. 159. Viva voce examination.
1 60. Practical and oral examinations. 161. What do ex-
aminations test? 162. Mr. P. J. Hartog's view. 163. Fun-
damental assumption of substantial similarity among can-
didates. 164. A possible line of progress.

CHAPTER IX

HISTORY

165. Certainty and probability. 166. Power of intuition,
of guessing. 167. Natural sciences aim at certainty ; humane
sciences only at probability. 168. History should not ape
science. 169. The desire to know, essential in history.

170. Should we make history interesting? Sir John Seeley.

171. Value of history. Can it be taught ? 172. The creative
historian. Maitland. Research. 173. Historical learning.
Teaching of history. 174. Before fourteen. History and
literature. Names and dates. 175. Stories for children.
176. Biographies. Geography. 177. Geography and
history. 178. Progressive instruction. 179. Results.
World-history. Fourteen to sixteen. 180. After sixteen.
181. History varies in importance. 182. History at the
University. 183. Unity of history. 184. The political
science heresy. 185. Text-books. Bluntschli. Woodrow
Wilson. Seeley. 186. Heinrich von Treitschke. 187. Previous
instruction needed for political science. 188. Acton and
moral judgements. 189. Economics and history. Isolation
of economic history. 190. History a school of values.
191. History and Science.

CHAPTER I
WHAT IS EDUCATION?

FORTY years have passed since Forster led us
out of Egypt ; and where is the promised land ?
Nearer, we trust ; though not ready for immediate
possession. We are told of a new policy, of a
national system of education;
policy is needed, and could now-be framecf; but
it is not the purpose of this treatise to define
a policy. Policies must foe framed by those
who are responsible for their execution; they
must, however, be expressed in words before
they can be achieved. Education-is an ambigu-
ous term, of which we shall hear more and more,
till we get education right ; it is not inopportune
to enquire what education is, where it begins
and ends, and what part of it can be controlled
by public policy.

The Latin word, educare, means to bring up,
to rear, to foster. In Latin a wet-nurse educates
a baby, the sea educates a fish, the earth educates
a beast, the air educates a bird, the raifi educates
a flower. Language has a sense of ancestry ; it
does not repudiate its origins. The Latin sense
is still the true sense. The term education may

B I

IS EDUCATION?

be narrowed in its common usage, but it draws
dignity from its wider meaning. Education (in
the full sense) is the process by which an in-
dividual is adjusted to his whole ambit of
existence ; the whole being is the subject of
education; and the whole of life is its end. As
the living soul pursues its orderly development
external forces starve or nourish, invigorate or
cramp, distort or favour, the ductile and expansive
growth. Studies supply food and exercise ; they
are the material, the apparatus of education, not
itself.

In whatever circumstances the individual may
be reared he will get an education. His parents
will mould him for goodx5r evil; the air he
breathes, the light that falls upon him, the food
he eats, the pursuits he follows, will each have
a share in his making or marring. His fellows
will school him; his elders will discipline him;
life and his world will teach him. The whole
tradition of the society into which he is born will
leave its mark upon his being. The street arab
has his education, as the Balliol scholar his;
neither is perfectly trained for the world in
which he will have to live; but each acquires
aptitudes for his own sphere.

There is thus a large part of education, and
that not the least important, which public policy
cannot control. The State can do little to
direct, though it can do something to restrain,
or inhibit, the action of the parents; the State
cannot alter the ways of children when they
meet together; the State cannot impose new

THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME 3

methods upon industry ; the State cannot change
the tradition of the people, which grows from
generation to generation, intolerant of direct
command, expressive of the common spirit.
From birth to death education will proceed,
with or without state systems. State systems
will succeed if they adapt themselves to the
surrounding life, if they work with it rather than
against it, utilising the benignant elements to
defeat the malign.

Curing the first years of life,, the parents, with
the traditions that they inherit, are the principal
force in education. Towards the formation of
character, the first five years after birth are of
paramount importance. Moreover, the parents
have the earliest and the best chances ; the school-
master follows after to remedy parental error,
to make good parental neglect. On the parents
public policy cannot work directly; but the
children whom we educate will become parents
in their turn. In this way, as in others, we are
still gathering the fruits of thirty years ago ; and
our grandchildren will endure the regimen
prepared by us.

After the schoolmaster has received the child
parental education continues to operate, if only
by defect; if there be wisdom the school and
the home should work in cordial alliance. No
technical training, no professional zeal, can
replace the understanding, the patience, the
hopefulness of parental love, rejoicing with the
growth of the child, triumphing with its successes,
bringing courage to its failures. The child that

4 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

has a good home will receive fuller recognition
as an individual than any school can give.
Throughout the years of tutelage school and home
share responsibility ; for failures the school alone
cannot be fairly blamed — even apart from those
caused by original sin.

But, as things are, for the great majority the
school education from five or so to thirteen or
fourteen is the only thoughtful and systematic
education provided. The parents may be willing
but they are seldom wise; the schoolmaster
also is but a man, yet the craft of his trade
assists him to redress parental shortcomings.
The State has come by insensible degrees to
take, through the schoolmaster, more and more
care for the growing generation. The need for
instruction was earliest perceived; first by the
Churches, then by the State. So important was
instruction at that time, so signal its defect,
that it usurped the name of education; we still
speak of education when we mean instruction—
the whole for the part. To test the results of
the instruction provided, examinations were set
up. High marks were taken as an indubitable
index of success; few thought of questioning
the record; it was even accepted as a basis for
state payment, which was called payment by
results. But, in every good school, there are
by-products which are not shown in the examina-
tion table. The body may be trained to health
and dexterity, good habits, tastes, and prejudices,
may be ingrafted, a love of good work may be
created, character may be developed, the citizen

EDUCATION AND LIFE 5

may be fitted for civilised society, the intelligence
may be quickened and the understanding may
be informed. So long as our minds were fixed
solely on instruction, so long as they were
dominated by the examination test, these by-
products suffered some neglect. But we have
now come to value school instruction quite as
much for its wholesome discipline as for the
information which it imparts ; we judge a school
by its tone not less than by its examination
results. To have been at a good school is a
voucher of good training. There has been a
change in the spirit by which schools are directed.

for life. In that

preparation society, the whole environment, life
itself, are factors which we cannot influence.
The home is all-important, but we cannot directly
influence the home. The public share in educa-
tion begins where these moulding forces cease
to operate, where they fall short. What the
State can do well to equip the young for life,
what it can do better than other agencies, what
the State can do and other agencies cannot,
what it can do to make up for the default of
other agencies, that is the public share in educa-
tion. The inspector judges a school by examina-
tion, by the methods and skill of the masters,
by the appearance, the tone, the intelligence of
the pupils. The business man judges a school
by the aptitude of its pupils for commercial and
industrial tasks. But the nation should judge
its schools by the fitness of their pupils for life,
of which business is a part, but only a part. If

6 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

our citizens are unfit for the necessary, for the
higher, for the highest functions of life, some
blame must fall to all of us as citizens, for we
all have a share in the result.

The main principles of elementary education
have now been mastered, though practice may
still lag behind ; the blunders of the eighties and
the nineties have been shaken off ; the State can
now move forward cautiously and slowly to
build on the foundations established. One great
cause of the initial disappointments of elementary
education was the lack of a sound theory ; another
was the lack of a sound tradition; a third was
the lack of a trained • staff. The advance of
the State must still be conditioned by these
factors. Higher elementary schools, trade schools,
technical schools, extended secondary schooling
— all these depend on sound theory, sound
tradition, and a skilled staff. The theory, as
well as the rest, can only be perfected by experi-
ence; the ladder of learning — I would rather
say the ladder of education — cannot be perfected
in another year, in a decade, in a generation.

Education is a process, purposeful education
is an art, but when men speak of education,
they are prone to think of buildings, of curricula,
of systems. They call up to mind Boards of
Managers, three hundred Local Authorities with
their inspectors, a Minister at Whitehall, with
a thousand clerks and two or three hundred more
inspectors, a thumping vote, a heavy rate. They
think of subjects, and examinations, and grants,

THE ART OF EDUCATION 7

and salaries, and pensions, and scholarships;
a National Union of Teachers, an Incorporated
Association of Headmasters. They think of forms
to fill up, and schedules, and codes, and rules.
But all these things are not education ; they are
not even part of education ; they are administra-
tive machinery. Public education cannot go
forward without administrative machinery; but
the machinery is not the education.

There is an art of education; it is practised
by a teacher on a class, on the several members
of a class. An art cannot be reduced to a system ;
though it can be assisted by a system. A good
system is helpful; a bad system is a stumbling-
block; but even a good system derives all its
virtue from the persons who work it. A tradition
counts for more than a system; the tradition
shapes and influences the teachers; it works by
spirit and not by rule ; but in the long run teach-
ing, like other arts, is vested in a living being. The
highly trained master may have missed the art ;
the humble unqualified assistant may possess it.

The art of education requires liberty for its
exercise. If it were our sole object to produce
masterpieces, we might claim complete liberty
for the art. But full liberty of experiment cannot
be permitted where human beings are the raw
material. Moreover, what is a masterpiece of
education? Is it a perfect man, is it a perfect
school? Is the perfect school calculated to
produce the perfect man, or does the perfect
man need more liberty of self-development than
the perfect school can allow? And who is the

8 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

judge of masterpieces, and by what canons can
he judge? The full results of education are not
seen for many years ; judging only by immediate
results we may feel that this batch is better than
the last, but the causes of improvement can only
be conjectured; they cannot be ascertained by
proof. Authoritative experiment is impossible.
The same experiment cannot be tried twice on
the same class, two different experiments cannot
be tried on the same class. For in the interval
time has been moving, and the class is no longer
the same class; the pupils have grown, and
changed in growth.

The art of education is not a science; it has
nothing of the science. It must proceed by
experience, by common sense, by happy con-
jecture, by intuitive interpretation of rough
observations, by a priori reasoning from inexact
premisses. It is probable that many various
methods would lead to equally good results;
but each successful method must have a unity
and a harmony of its own, which can be perceived,
though it can never be adequately described in
words. Some rules, some system, must be laid
down by authority, because public money is
brought to account, because human beings are
under treatment; but a large field must be left
to the discretion of the schoolmaster. Rules
should be few, systems elastic; guidance, criti-
cism, and consultation may supplement the rules ;
but the teststone of administration is the choice
and training and direction of executants — in
education, as

THE DILEMMA OF EDUCATION 9

Both as an art and as a part of life, education
must not be afraid to harmonise opposites, to
face any and every dilemma. The State needs,
above all, that the lowest level shall be raised.
Education must therefore work to the average;
the boy or girl of better parts stands less in need
of active instruction than those of inferior gifts.
The less nature and the home has done for the
scholar, the more the schoolmaster has to do.
How great the difference may be, only the ex-
perienced schoolmaster can say. On the other
hand, the clever boy, the exceptional boy, the
boy of genius, must not be sacrificed to the
dullards. In class-teaching, while the backward
are receiving their due, the gifted may be re-
pressed, kept to monotonous tasks that do not
stretch their powers ; they may become disgusted
with all study, or they may be drilled to lifeless
uniformity. To feed the slow, without starving
the quick, that is the great dilemma of education ;
but a practical man is never afraid of a dilemma ;
if it must be solved, he assumes that it can be
solved, and proceeds to solve it. This dilemma
must be solved — in school, day by day, and case
by case ; for, if we need a higher level of general
instruction and intelligence, we also need a
constant supply of vigour and ability; we must
take care that we do not maim a boy or a youth
of genius.

Public education has four main sides, physical,
moral, intellectual, and spiritual. These four
sections are closely interconnected, but they can

io WHAT IS EDUCATION?

in theory, though not in practice, be separated.
To the physical side of education I have addressed
some observations below. There is much ground
to be made up here, and a great harvest to be
gathered. Moral education is closely associated
with physical and intellectual ; it is not neglected,
it has perhaps never been neglected in schools.
No worthy schoolmaster could find himself
before a class, and feel no anxiety for their
moral welfare. If moral education has suffered,
it has suffered from a too rigorous discipline,
from the too absorbing claims of lessons. In any
case the what of morals is little in dispute ; the
how of moral education is above all a question
of practical and personal discretion. No sensible
person would think of teaching morals to a class
by generalities ; and the morals of school children
require no difficult casuistry. They can learn
self-control in their own lives, which is better
than academic lessons on the evils of drink.
They can learn justice, honour, and mercy in their
dealings with their fellows ; which is better than
much economic precept, theory, and doctrine.
The tone of a good home is worth more than any
direct moral teaching; and the tone of a good
school is the best substitute that can be found;
it is also the best support for good parental
influence.

The spiritual side of education is difficult
beyond all others. It aims at faith rather than
dogma, at aspirations rather than a code, at an
atmosphere rather than positive instruction. It

INTELLECT AND MEMORY n

has its social aspect which should be seen in the
common life of a school ; but, if individuality must
be studied in every part of education, here it
must be approached not only with urgency but
with reverence. Though conduct expresses the
spiritual condition, works are but the symptom
of spiritual health ; morality divorced from the
spiritual impulse has always been found to miss
compelling force, to lack life and vigour. Morals
can be taught by reference to self-advantage ; they
can be justified, though only imperfectly, by an
appeal to the intellect ; they can be fortified by
fostering the love of approbation and the social
sense; the love of beauty and fitness is a
powerful aid to the teacher ; but ultimately sound
morality is a healthful condition of the soul. It
would be an impertinence to suggest methods to
the teacher; if things are right with himself, he
will find his own methods, his own avenues of
spiritual approach.

Intellectual education is too narrow a term.
The intellect, the understanding, the intelligence
should be active in all the lesson work of schools.
But habit, memory, instinct, receptive observa-
tion, acquired dexterity, also enter largely into
all scholastic accomplishments. The intelligence
should always be awake, to guard against the
blunders of routine, to combine, compare, and
construct, but it cannot think out every case
anew. Much must be taken on authority,
much must be acquired by practice, as in all
handwork, much must become instinctive by

12 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

use, as in learning the native language or another
and in the processes of arithmetic, some things
must be committed to memory as in geography
or chemistry. The intelligence and the memory
must work together ; neither should be overtaxed.
Here is demanded the supreme exercise of
the schoolmaster's discretion. It is for him to
say what the memory must do, including in
memory practice and use, and what the intelli-
gence must be encouraged to undertake. It is
for him to say what tasks the intelligence of
each successive age, of every several child, is
fit to handle. The development of different sides
of the nature differs much in different children.
But he must be on his guard against the tempta-
tion to work chiefly through the memory, a
temptation specially urgent with a large class.
Children learn readily by memory, and, by loading
the memory, results can be more speedily ob-
tained. It is more difficult to work through the
imagination, the intelligence, the understanding,
but these are at least equally important; they
are the instruments of ultimate success. Again,
many things may be taught, many things should
be studied, but not all things that should be
studied need be remembered. The good memory
is the selective memory, which retains what it
needs, what it desires, and dismisses the rest.
The mind, like the body, is a digestive organ;
it requires bulk for its nutriment; it cannot
digest all that it receives. Therefore, much
should be taught, or otherwise brought to notice ;
but the scholar should be praised who remembers

THE SELECTIVE MEMORY 13

the salient and governing points, who grasps the
interconnexions.

To take an example of intelligence and memory.
The multiplication table must be learnt by heart ;
it must be repeated till its data come at call with-
out effort. But the multiplication table should
also be studied intelligently ; the scholars should
be encouraged to break up the numbers and
combine them afresh; to study their properties
and test the assertions of the table. You cannot
prove that twice two make four ; that is a matter
of definition, of the meaning of words. But you
can test the definitions of the multiplication
table, and show that they are consistent with
each other. At what age the memory, at what
age the intelligence should do what work, is a
question for the schoolmaster. The develop-
ment differs in each child, but I suspect that
intelligence commonly develops earlier than is
supposed, and is often atrophied for want of
exercise.

The selective memory is wronged when tables
of dates are set to be learnt by heart. History
begins to be known when much has been heard
and forgotten and the salient facts begin to
stand out. At this point the order of events
begins to show as inevitable. No one who knew
anything about the French Revolution and its
sequel could suppose that the battle of Waterloo
preceded the execution of the French king.
When the events begin to take form and order,
then knowledge of dates may be exacted. But
it is better to know dates by knowing what the

14 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

order of events must be, than to know the order
of the events by an unmeaning sequence of
numbers. I met a distinguished man who told
me with satisfaction that he had learnt his dates
of English History as a boy by memoria technica,
and had retained them ever since. I wondered
in silence what good they might be to him.

And this leads me to the constructive memory,
which is not imagination, nor understanding,
nor reasoning, but has something of all three.
By the constructive memory learning grows to
knowledge. There is one knowledge of the
elementary schoolboy, there is another know-
ledge of the secondary schoolboy, another of the
University Honours man, yet another of the man
of learning. But each should be built up into
a whole ; so far as it can be. Each should be a
microcosm planned in due proportion and to
scale. Each should be a complete edifice; but
each should resemble one of those buildings,
where the stones are left projecting at the edges
for other buildings to be attached. The element-
ary schoolboy, above all, needs a solid though
contracted nucleus of knowledge, coherent, inter-
connected, and complete in itself; but he also
needs avenues by which to advance, capacities
and impulses to learn, to go on learning, and to
build his further learning into his knowledge.

If you watch a young child with alert intelli-
gence, well taught, encouraged to learn and to
ask questions, brought up in an atmosphere of
knowledge, you can see the constructive memory
at work. You can see the child piecing together

KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 15

its bits of information, bridging gaps, establish-
ing new lines of communication, preparing a
frame-work into which every fresh fact can be
fitted as it is acquired. Things new and old are
compared and adjusted; often you will be sur-
prised to see how the germane illustration springs
from the mind when it is needed. That is the
process which should be encouraged at school;
unfortunately there are so many for whom school
is the only place where it can be encouraged.

For whatever purpose learning be desired,
whether for life or for business, it is worth little
in itself, but knowledge is worth much. Learning
is the mere acquisition of information; when
information acquired is rounded to a whole,
when it is incorporated in the character, when it
illuminates the mind, when it strengthens the
understanding, when it fortifies the judgement,
when it becomes an instrument to serve rather
than a burden to be carried, then learning
becomes knowledge.

Learning is a simple thing; it proceeds step
by step. You may learn all the words in a
dictionary; you may learn all the inflexions of
all the words in a language, you may learn all
the rules of syntax. Each of those processes
is a simple process. But to grasp the whole
meaning of the most lucid author, to explain
the whole of your own meaning on any subject —
that is a very complicated process, involving many
simultaneous processes of thought. Again, you
may have great learning, say in anatomy, but,

16 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

to form any clear conception of the function
and meaning of the body, you must go far
beyond anatomy, you must go far beyond the
separate and consecutive statements in any
treatise of physiology, you must have in your mind
at one and the same time the functions of the
heart, the lungs, the brain, the digestive organs,
the nervous system, the muscles, half a hundred
things besides. Until you can form such an
elaborate conception in your mind you cannot
have any true knowledge of the body, as a living,
breathing, working organism.

This complexity of life and thought makes
language an imperfect instrument for the ex-
pression of the mind. You can think of many
things at the same time. But you can only
speak of one thing at a time. If one person is
to understand another, the thing stated must be
very simple, or else the hearer must know a
great deal more than is said. What the instructor
says can never illuminate the mind, unless the
mind receives, shapes, and fits together the
information provided. Instruction can only pro-
ceed by the written or spoken word; the
instructor is a hodman with bricks. The pupil
is the bricklayer who may, if he has a gift for
the craft, combine the bricks into a solid and
coherent and symmetrical edifice, with a central
hall, staircases, chambers, passages, cellars, and
roof gardens. In this work the materials are
supplied by books and teachers; but the pupil
must do his own construction; the building must
be his own; at most a plan, a model, and a few

JUDGEMENT AND WISDOM 17

hints can be given. It is better that construction
should go forward all the time, than that the
ground should be cumbered with superfluous
material.

Compared with the building of knowledge,
reasoning is a simple process. You can only
follow one line of reasoning at a time. Every
matter which is worth understanding at all must
be approached by many different trains of
reasoning. You can set out, if you have time,
all these different trains of reasoning, one after
another. But you can only reach your final
conclusion by combining all these trains of
reasoning into one. And that involves an
instinctive process of fitting together, of valuation,
of estimation. The power of recognising and
estimating values we call judgement. Knowledge
informs judgement, but it cannot create it. When
knowledge and judgement meet together, we have
wisdom. And it is the highest and rarest
function of education, aided by and working upon
experience, to produce wisdom.

An engineer who is going to build a bridge
begins by forming a general concept of the task
he has to perform. He then forms particular
concepts of all the parts, great and small; he
works out all the dimensions, weights, stresses,
tensions, strengths ; he guesses all the exceptional
circumstances that his bridge may have to en-
counter; he may put down all these things
severally in his calculations and specifications,
and make drawings of all the parts. But at
some time or other, and from time to time, he
c

i8 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

must conceive his bridge as a single whole.
When he does that, he must have every one of
all his minor calculations operative in his mind,
though not, perhaps, in his consciousness. If
all his parts are right, he has learning; if his
bridge is right as a bridge he has knowledge; if
he has rightly estimated all the circumstances
that cannot be calculated, he has judgement ;
if his bridge is a good bridge, it testifies to his
possession of wisdom, as a bridge-builder.

Now instruction can only proceed by the way
of learning. That does not mean that it should
proceed solely or mainly by the way of teaching.
It is widely recognised nowadays, that what
a child or young person can be taught is of little
importance compared with that which it can
and will teach itself, with the requisite assistance
and encouragement. Almost all normal children
are born with a lively and keen desire for know-
ledge. It is our business to foster and develop
that natural curiosity, to guide it, and by feeding
it to stimulate it. Teaching has far too often
the effect of deadening and wearying the impulse
to learn. If you can once get a child into the
right frame of mind and keep it in that frame of
mind it will learn for itself far more than it can
ever be taught, and with great advantage both
to the mind and to the character.

Schooling, which is a convenient word to
indicate both the teaching and the learning of
the young, must proceed by subjects. But, if
learning is ever to develop into knowledge, the

.

SCIENCE AND HISTORY 19

arriers between subjects should not be allowed
to remain rigid and permanent. Knowledge is
a whole; it can only for temporary convenience
be divided into parts. The two great subjects
of instruction may be classified as Science and
History. The term History, properly conceived,
includes everything that has to do with man as
a living and spiritual being. Language is the
handmaid of history, the most part of literature
is only history made beautiful by imagination
and art. Science is a convenient term to include
all our knowledge of the material world, and of
the material basis of life. Mathematics are the
handmaidens of Science. In themselves, no
doubt, they afford a valuable mental discipline.
But it should always be remembered that, in
education at any rate, Mathematics have no
fruit, unless their bearing upon the practical
things of life is made clear.

It is easy enough to link up Mathematics with
Science. In Physics at any rate the connexion
is ready-made. Probably nowadays the meaning
of Mathematics is made clear to the young. But
I remember when I was at school I was invited
to perform tricks with algebraical symbols.
I liked the game and even attained some trifling
proficiency. But it was not till many years
afterwards, not indeed until I had forgotten
most of the rules of the game, that I understood
what algebra really meant. Similarly with
geometry. Euclid flattered my growing mind,
it was something for my puppy teeth to worry,
but I feel sure that I never understood that

20 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

geometry was an art invented to facilitate the
measuring of the earth's surface. Later on, cos,
sin, and tan, used to follow predestined paths,
which I was able by rule of thumb to forecast
with varying success. It never occurred to me,
it was never suggested to me, that cos, sin, and
tan, had any bearing on the actual world in
which I lived. All this, no doubt, has been
mended. But the moral remains. Algebra,
geometry, trigonometry, are paths of learning,
each of which can be followed without reference
to knowledge. But if knowledge is our aim-
not learning for its own sake — the relation of
each set of observations to the world at large
should be indicated on every possible opportunity.
The gap between History and Science is more
difficult to fill. But there is one subject of
instruction which bridges the gulf. That is
Geography. Here Science and History meet.
The world is a physical complex, whose various
aspects are elucidated by many sciences; such
as Geometry, Geology, Physics, Chemistry. The
world is also the playground of man; the play-
ground of living man, in his nations, his empires,
his competing communities. It has also been
the playground of men and nations long since
dead. I have never had occasion to teach
Geography, as an independent subject. But
if I were teaching, say, the Geography of the
Balkan Peninsula, I should speak of the relics
of Mycenean civilisation, of Minos and his empire,
of Athens and Sparta, Thermopylae, Salamis,
Alexander; of the Byzantine Empire and its

GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 21

ivaders : of Slavs, Illyrians, Albanians, and all
the motley folk who have been, first and last,
poured into that ancient bottle. That would
not prevent me from talking about coast-lines
and harbours, rivers and mountains and water-
sheds, valleys and islands and plains. Nor
would the solid reality of these material features
prevent me from peopling my topography with
Centaurs, Oreads, Naiads, Pan and old Silenus :
nor should I feel that I was detracting from the
serious dignity of my task if I spoke of the voyage
of Jason and the Argo, of Theseus and the
Minotaur, of the siege of Troy and the wanderings
of Odysseus. On the contrary, the Balkan
mountains, in my thinking, would be invested
with greater reality if I spoke of Olympus, the
seat of the Gods, and the struggle to heap Pelion
upon Ossa. The Dardanelles are the more real
because Leander swam across them, because
Xerxes bridged them : the Bosporus because
Jason threaded it ; the position of Thermopylae,
Euboea, Athens, and the Isthmus of Corinth,
will be fixed in the learner's mind once for all
if he understands how and why the battle of
Salamis was fought. Geography is the meeting-
ground of those two great branches of knowledge
which I classify as History and Science — the
knowledge of man, and the knowledge of things.
I hope that Geography is taught in this way;
but I do not feel sure.

This view of the unity of knowledge brings me
into conflict with the specialists — not with all

22 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

specialists, but with those specialists who have
lost sight of knowledge in their enthusiasm for
learning. It is inevitable that learned men should
lean to specialisation. The friends of education
should resist their unfortunate bias, so far as
education is concerned. I am wholly in favour
of variety in education. I would give all special
talents ample room for development. But I
would never forget that knowledge is a whole;
you cannot without grave sacrifice confine
attention only to a part. The specialist who is
only a specialist is, for that reason, not so good
a specialist. One specialist grumbles because
I insist on mathematics; another specialist be-
cause I conceive literature and history as needful
to a liberal education. After all, the object of
education is to make a whole, not a lopsided
man. Though a lopsided man may succeed in
business, he will not be a success in his own more
important personal life. Knowledge is not only
a commercial asset ; it is a precious and enduring
possession, that gives interest to the most trivial
task or occurrence.

That knowledge is best worth having which we
have built up for ourselves by toil. Such toil
it is the fashion to call and to make painful, but
I would prefer to see it joyful. Our best work is
not painful; it absorbs and enfolds us; it is
accompanied by no feeling of effort or labour.
We must garner the crop ourselves; but, if our
harvest is to be abundant, we must get the seed
from those in whom learning has matured into
knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. If we

TEACHING OF THE WISE MEN 23

are pursuing the natural sciences, Nature herself
is our mistress ; and her wisdom is inexhaustible.
But it is fit that the high-priests of Nature should
be wise, as well as learned. If it is the knowledge
of man that we seek, we must frequent not so
much the learned as the wise. The knowledge
of man is not attained by treatises, text-books,
statistics, card indexes, or encyclopaedias; it is
attained by insight working upon knowledge,
and the great men are those whose insight is the
keenest and most illuminating. It is better to
read Thucydides, Herodotus, and Demosthenes
than to read Grote; it is better to read Tacitus
and Cicero than Mommsen; it is better to read
Shakespeare, Bacon, Hobbes, Halifax, Boling-
broke, Burke, Carlyle, Ruskin, than the best of
all the excellent text-books which historical
science has provided for us. On the other hand,
it is better to read Maitland than to read Dooms-
day Book. The text-books are useful; the
original authorities are useful; but the root of
the matter is in the minds and the words of the
wise men. Whether we study the ancients or
the moderns is of little consequence. It is
important that we should study them in the
right way. And that right way cannot be found
unless language, literature, and history are made
to contribute to one whole of historical know-
ledge; and unless that half- whole is amplified,
illuminated, explained, by that other half-whole
of knowledge, which we call Science.

I have now got beyond the elementary school,
beyond the secondary school, even beyond the

24 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

University. But, in so far as it is the end of
education to produce knowledge, these principles
have their bearing upon education at every
stage.

There have been friends of education who
believed that man could be made perfect by
schooling. I do not see how such a belief could
survive any practical experience of education
or of life. Schooling can only have a limited
effect on the majority; it does most for those
of regular and orderly talent; on certain way-
ward and dynamic spirits its influence may be
actually bad. Yet I believe that on the whole
public education can improve mankind; though
its full effect cannot be seen until the third or
fourth generation. We are only just beginning
to learn how much can be done, not perhaps with
the best, nor perhaps with the worst, but with
the average.

Public education is still in its infancy. Ele-
mentary education has bjeen improved, but far
greater improvement is still possible. In second-
ary education much remains to be done — far
short of perfection. The tradition of our Public
Schools implants the love of health and honour,
but not that of knowledge and beauty. This
one-sided tradition the Public Schools share with
the nation ; in fact it would be difficult to decide
whether the schools had educated the nation to
thick-skulled self-satisfaction, or the nation had
made the schools to suit itself. Yet the love
of knowledge and beauty does not exclude the

SECONDARY SCHOOLS 25

Dssession of manly qualities; they cannot truly
flourish apart.

The system of the Public Schools does not make
up for any shortcomings of their tradition.
When the boys learnt nothing but Latin and
Greek and Mathematics, their field of culture
was compact and many-sided, a complete
microcosm. Now subject has been added to
subject, specialism to specialism, until unity,
comprehension, and harmony are lost to sight.

The new secondary system which it is proposed
to create may borrow from the Public Schools
their tradition of manliness, strength, and self-
government; it will need a new tradition to
foster the love of knowledge. This purpose will
be aided if admission to such new or enlarged
schools is strictly confined to those who have
shown fitness and the desire to learn; if those
who fail to fulfil their early promise are sternly
dismissed. " We teach Latin and Greek/' said
an Eton Master, " to boys who should be carting
muck/' A certain class of rich people cannot be
prevented from offering pearls to their children;
they do not know that they are pearls. " Pearls
for the lover of pearls " should be the motto of
the new secondary system. This will assist
to prevent a too rapid increase of second-
ary machinery; which is undesirable for lack
of competent and well-trained masters. Good
secondary schoolmasters are already scarce;
you cannot have good schools with bad masters ;
and bad schools are little better and more ex-
pensive than none at all. Moreover, there is no

26 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

kindness in encouraging a boy to remain at school
when he might be earning his livelihood, unless
there is some fair certainty that he will profit by
the education; unless he possesses the requisite
health, vigour, and character, as well as suitable
brains. Extension of secondary schools is good,
but it is on all grounds desirable that it should
not proceed too fast. A fruit tree that makes
too much wood makes little else; the fruit of
a national system is not bricks, mortar, salaries,
and a curriculum, but a good education; the
harvest depends first upon the staff, next upon
the fitness of the pupils, greatly also upon the
tradition ; the system operates upon and through
the other three.

The Universities are a public institution ; but,
so long as they govern themselves tolerably, I
should prefer that they were left free. The State
has enough to do.

The old Universities have opened their gates;
they have admitted the sciences, history, modern
languages, to an equality with the ancient studies.
But they have not entirely assimilated the new
material. Subjects are recognised with profuse
liberality, but not the unity of knowledge. On
this matter I have said enough below; but I
would here point out that the spirit of University
study will depend upon the objects that are
chiefly in view. If learning and research are
the principal aim, high specialisation will result ;
but learning and research should not be the sole
purpose of an University, of whose students
a great majority are not fitted and do not desire

THE ENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY 27

to become learned men. If professional prepara-
tion is the end of the University, courses will
take a more practical form; specialisation will
be restricted among the students ; and that part
of education which fits for business will come into
prominence. If education is the chief object
of an University, then the unity and inter-
connexions of knowledge will stand foremost
with the framers of any scheme.

The recognition of new studies has been partly
due to professional needs, but much more to the
love of learned men for their own specialities.
The needs of education have suffered a compara-
tive if not a complete neglect. Yet it is quite
safe to say that the most part of students come
to the University to be prepared for life, not
for any branch of learned work, nor for any
particular profession. Among professions, one
has been strangely overlooked, and that is the
teaching profession. A schoolmaster should not
be a specialist ; his bent should lead him to join
up rather than to fence off the several paths of
knowledge. Moreover, only a very large school
can afford to have separate teachers of history,
separate teachers of languages, separate teachers
of mathematics, separate teachers of science :
none, I think, has hitherto afforded to have
separate teachers of English. And yet the uni-
versity schemes, and especially the examinations
for degrees, turn out such specialists by the
hundred; not fitted for any profession, not
specially fitted for life, and certainly not well-
equipped for teaching.

28 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

Apart from the needs of the teaching pro-
fession— for the civil service, for commerce, for
industry, for politics, for the bar, and above
all for life (if there be some who can afford to
frame their education for life itself) we want,
as a rule, men well trained and of wide knowledge,
rather than men of learning. For professions
such as medicine and engineering a wider basis
of knowledge is required than the ordinary
university course guarantees. And, if the teach-
ing profession is taken into account, the need for
some wider training than most Honour Schools
provide appears to me nothing short of over-
whelming. This theme I have attempted to
develop below.

The newer Universities have the same specialist
bent. They suffer from the more imperfect
previous preparation of their students; they
have to think more about professional ends.
But the one professional end for which they do
not appear to provide in their ordinary courses
is the education of teachers for elementary and
secondary schools. The improvement and ex-
tension of secondary teaching will benefit the
Universities greatly; but a wider university
education in modern humanities will do even
more to improve the elementary and secondary
schools.

I do not believe that learning would suffer
from such reforms. The rivalry of subjects
loads the examination schedules with unnecessary
items, which is bad among other things for
learning; if all men of learning recognised a

GEOGRAPHY: EUGENICS 29

3mmon duty to education, perhaps some of
this rivalry would disappear.

There is one subject of first importance, which
has not yet received full separate university
recognition — Geography. At present, the friends
of Geography seem to be working towards an
Honours School in Geography. But would it
not be much better for Geography and all allied
subjects that Geography should have its full
share in the Historical School, in the Science
School, and in any school of modern humanities
that may be established, than that it should
have its own examinations and live on the border-
land of Science and History, poaching on both
and assisted by neither ? However, if Geography
gave its name to the new unifying subject,
I should not object to that name; though I
think History would better serve the purpose.

The unity of knowledge is a great principle;
the unity of education is another. Whatever
link is weak, from the parent to the Professor,
impairs the efficiency of the whole.

Some may say: ''' The results of education
are illusory. They are all implicit in the egg;
heredity is everything; if you want to improve
mankind, promote the study of Eugenics. Educa-
tion works only for a generation ; Eugenics work
for the permanent improvement of the race."
Heredity is important, environment is important,
who shall say how much is due to either in any
particular case, or even upon an average? If
heredity is important, tradition is also important,

30 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

and education influences tradition. If heredity
is the memory of the unconscious mind, tradition
is the heredity of the conscious mind. To allot
shares to inheritance and education is the more
difficult because education and heredity often
work together. The child of good parents gets
the advantage not only of their blood but of
their precept, atmosphere, and example. It is
the more difficult because education and heredity
sometimes work in opposition. The child who
was born to be an engineer is brought up to be
a solicitor. It is the more difficult because we often
do not know what the operative education of
any conspicuous man actually was. We marvel
at the spontaneous manifestations of a Giotto, a
Shakespeare, a Napoleon ; but it may be that the
education that each received was the education
that suited him best. It is impossible to dissect
the grown man and say : this comes by his
blood, this by his education.

It is best to put aside men of genius and other
exceptions, and sorrowfully admit that, although
tradition helps to make them, purposeful educa-
tion is more likely to hurt them than to help
them. If Shakespeare had gone to an elementary
school, and thence by the ladder of education
to a secondary school, and so to the University,
he might have written the works of Francis
Bacon, but he would not have written the plays,
which speak from first to last of untrammelled
development. Shakespeare, like Cobbett, needed
no schoolmaster to teach him English. No
schoolmaster had any important share in the

THE EDUCATION OF SHAKESPEARE 31

making of that mind. A schoolmaster might,
perhaps, have spoiled it; no schoolmaster could
have improved it. If Shakespeare had not known
how to read and write he would have taught
himself. If he had not access to books, he would
have stolen them, as perhaps he stole the deer.
It is lucky he left school when he did, lucky for
him, lucky for us, and lucky for the schoolmaster.
Drunk with his own learning, he flouts the
schoolmaster. Giulio Romano, a beautiful name ;
what matter when he lived? Aristotle said a
fine thing; Hector would have quoted it had
he known it ; the pace was too good to enquire
whether he did. Is it Delphos, or Delphi, or
Delos? The schoolmaster may care, not the
poet. Bohemia, a romantic place; all romantic
places have sea-coasts and bears. What has
romance to do with topography ?

But, taking ordinary men, for whom schemes of
education are devised, it seems probable that the
gifts they receive at birth are on an average not
greater in importance than the ply that education
subsequently gives. Some are less malleable
than others, but on the whole mankind is a
ductile race. It owes at least its prejudices,
its conventions, and a large part of its virtues
and its vices, to tradition and imitation. The
more stubborn the material, the firmer the im-
press carried. Where public education is the
only purposeful education bestowed, we must
make the most of our single opportunity. If
public education improved the average by only
five per cent., it would repay its cost three times

32 WHAT IS EDUCATION?

over, besides making the world a more comfortable
place to live in. Moreover, education is a going
concern, with prestige, momentum, and good-
will; the future may be with Eugenics; the
present is with education.

Education without religion seems to me im-
possible; the religion of all sensible men, the
religion that sensible men do not gratuitously
define. In the present state of public opinion
education with religion seems equally impossible.
This is a practical question and falls to the
province of responsible and practical men to
solve. It is also one of those practical questions
which I am not called upon to handle. I doubt
if such problems can be settled on paper.

I began with a question : what is education ?
Education is a process in which the whole human
environment is concerned — a process of prepara-
tion for life. That part of preparation for life,
whether physical, moral, spiritual, or intellectual,
which the State can better undertake than other
agencies, belongs to the arts and not to the
sciences; though an art may borrow from
a science, as from medicine. Education is
a whole, and whether the State conclude its
training of the children at fourteen, at sixteen,
at nineteen, or at twenty-three, the education
designed to terminate at each age should aim — in
things of the mind — at a coherent nucleus of
knowledge, which is capable thereafter of in-
definite extension. An art does not profit

WHAT IS EDUCATION? 33

greatly from catchwords or maxims; but, if
a single catchword is admissible, it would be
this : the best teacher is he who best assists the
student to teach himself. Education is also
a whole in this sense, that parents, teachers,
schoolmasters, examiners, professors, adminis-
trators, are all working to a common end,, and
if any fail or be misled the whole cause suffers.
To supplement the imperfect definition, I give
my little book.

CHAPTER II
EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

IF education is a preparation for life, it must be
a preparation for business. For business is the
larger part of life, though not perhaps the more
important part of life, and certainly not the whole.
Education is necessary ; it has always existed, it
will always exist, though its form may vary from
age to age. It is for us to consider what form it
should assume to suit our present purposes ; our
purposes of life, and among those purposes our
purposes of business.

There have been saints and sages who con-
temned business. They might better have at-
tempted to improve it. St. Francis and St.
Dominic instituted Orders of poor Friars, who,
individually and collectively, were to possess no
wealth. But those Orders could not have existed
had not inferior orders of men lived and laboured,
who gave alms to support the physical being of
the poor Friars. Like the orchids, which are
rooted in sun and air, the Friars drew their nutri-
ment from faith, hope, and charity ; but even an
orchid requires some material prop. After a
time, business took its moral and material re-
venge upon the despisers of business. The

34

EDUCATION AND BUSINESS 35

Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic found means
to possess property, collectively if not individu-
ally, and thus took toll, not only by alms, from
the business community. But this defection
from their original principle ruined the Orders.
They set out to despise business ; they ceased to
despise it ; inevitably, they became the parasites
of business; at last, business shook off and de-
stroyed its parasites.

Education, as at present organised, does not
profess to be an enemy of business. Indeed, if it
has a single, conspicuous fault, it is that it copies,
though it can hardly exaggerate, the faults of
business. Business creeps near the ground;
education often fails to rise above it. Business
is constantly concerned with ways and means;
education is constantly concerned with ma-
chinery ; it runs to wood and leaves, and produces
the less fruit. Business estimates success by
results, as presented in the entries of a ledger, and
the pages of a bank-book. Education estimates
results by figures in a report or by figures in an
examination table. Business minds its own
business, and never takes account of the life of
the nation as a whole. Education looks at the
school, the college, the University, the subject,
the standard, the examination, the institution;
it seldom rises to a general view. Business grinds
the bones of the individual to make its bread;
education feeds its victims by fifties, sixties, or
seventies, in a well-lighted and well- ventilated
cave. Business sacrifices liberty to order : so
also does education. The order attained in each

36 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

case is not easily distinguishable from chaos,
unless you are familiar with the contours. But,
although education does not profess to despise
business, it is in every grade imperfectly designed
as a preparation for business. There has been
improvement — greatest in the elementary schools ;
but more improvement is needed.

Education used to be natural, automatic,
instinctive ; it has become self-conscious. Educa-
tion used to be individualistic; it has become
socialistic. The immediate result is a greater
consumption of energy ; with a loss of efficiency
in many directions. Probably, unless our Euro-
pean community is destroyed by some convulsion,
the loss of efficiency will in course of time be com-
pensated. The process of compensation is likely
to be slow and expensive, but it may be hastened
if we try to get an idea of the ends which self-
conscious education is intended to subserve.

Let us look back to the processes of natural,
traditional education in an agricultural village
a hundred years ago. The boy was born in a
miserable hut, where sooner or later a dozen like
him might see the light, and several might survive.
He was nursed by his mother, and then weaned.
Food and clothing were scanty, but not unsuitable ;
fresh air and exercise were abundant. Discipline
was enforced by stern and primitive methods;
reading and writing were not taught; but the
youngster got to know the names, the appearance,
the character, the position of two or three hundred
people ; he got to know every hedge, every tree,

THE SCHOOL OF LIFE 37

every field, every domestic animal for a mile
round ; he lived in intimate, though not in friendly
relations, with fish, and bird, and beast ; he knew
his little world, in and out. As soon as he was
Did enough to take responsibility he was turned
on to scare birds, to lead and drive stock, and help
in the fields; eventually he was taught the
misteries of digging, planting, ploughing, and
sowing, hedging, thatching, and ditching, the care
and control of animals, till he became an expert
agricultural labourer. Let no townsman fancy
that the trade of an agricultural labourer is an
unskilled trade; it is the most skilled and most
varied of all skilled trades, and in its learning a
greater mass of coherent knowledge is acquired
than is picked up in the factory, the workshop,
the school, or the gutter, or in all of them, one
after the other.

That was a school of life, a limited, earth to
earth existence, but still a complete life, and a
thorough school. It inculcated a number of
moral ideas, sufficient to promise tolerably good
behaviour in the sphere that the youngster was
likely to occupy.

It lacked half a hundred things that the worst-
educated hooligan of to-day has been taught ; it
lacked above all the cultivation of the written and
spoken word on which our schools concentrate
so much attention. Hodge had few words and
he used them sparingly : but what he knew he
knew deeply, and what he knew was necessary
for his daily life and business — and, by the way,
for ours.

38 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

The girl-child lived a similar life, though in a
still more narrow sphere. She learned all that
her mother and her grandmother had learnt by
long ancestral experience. She learnt the duties
of a humble household, the care of children, cook-
ing, baking, washing, sewing, butter-making,
milking, cheese-making, and such agricultural
work as fell to the lot of women. She was better
fitted to be a mother than most of the school-
taught girls that plunge into matrimony nowadays.

In the towns the apprenticeship system ensured
at small expense that a lad might learn a trade
by constant observation of those who had mas-
tered it ; and afterwards by personal practice.

This primitive education fostered prejudice and
conservatism; it did little to expel ignorance;
but it met the needs of business and it encouraged
individuality. From its first entry into the world
the child was treated as an individual. Home
influence while it lasted was searching and inex-
orable; there was no division of responsibility,
or conflict of authority, between parent and
schoolmaster. Business began early, and it was
learnt in the practical school of business at the
age when the faculties are most ductile.

So far as the towns were concerned this natural
education was broken down by the factory
system. It proved necessary, for reasons of
health, to forbid that young children should be
employed in the factories. There was nothing for
the children to do at home while waiting for thev
age of employment to arrive. If the schools had

BOOK-LEARNING AND EDUCATION 39

not been established for other reasons, they would
have been necessary to keep the children out of
mischief.

But elementary schools were not started for
business reasons : they were started by religious
men, for the moral and spiritual life, rather than
for business. The schools, once started, were
bound to teach something, besides religion.
Reading, writing, and arithmetic, were the obvious
things to teach. These things were not necessary
for all business, but they were useful for some kinds
of business; perhaps, though not certainly, for
all. Reading, at any rate, was necessary for those
who were to read the Bible. And thus the schools
from the beginning acquired a literary, a bookish
bent, which might have been avoided if the school
had been started with the clear intention of fitting
the children for their future business — for the
most part manual and industrial.

Democracy came faster than schooling. But
the argument that our masters must be educated
assisted the growing movement in favour of
elementary education for all. Men would have
to vote; in order to understand the arguments
laid before them by speakers and the press they
needed literary education ; and this was another
reason, unconnected with business, why book-
learning was from the first identified with educa-
tion, when it became self-conscious and socialistic.

Again, the pioneers of elementary education
were men of the upper or middle class, whose
notion of a school was derived from the schools
which they had themselves attended. Those

40 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

schools were suited to gentlemen of leisure, to
masters of industry and commerce. It was not
perceived that the special needs of the industrial
population required a different system.

During the industrial revolution, many had
risen from the ranks to control great industries
and commercial establishments. The art of help-
ing yourself was the gospel of the day, and facilities
for elementary book-learning assisted self-help,
and were therefore regarded as beneficent.

Elementary education in schools, begun on
these lines and pressed forward by these motives,
became general, then compulsory, and finally
free, before the actual business needs of the
community had ever been considered. It was
taken for granted that elementary education, as
provided in the government schools, was good for
every one. When it became clear that a little of
it was not of great value, it was assumed that
more of the same kind would be efficacious ; when
that also proved insufficient, then more. And
now, after more than forty years of state elemen-
tary education, it is still held by many that what
the majority require is more book-learning. Yet,
for a large proportion of the community, book-
learning has little bearing upon business.

It is unfortunately true that what is the best
preparation for life is not always the best prepara-
tion for business. At the limit the two may
meet. The best education is at once the best
preparation for life and the best preparation for
the best business. But the business world is not

EDUCATION AND HEALTH 41

staffed entirely with field-marshals. Arithmetic
and handwriting are worth more to a clerk than
Plato and Shakespeare. Cleaning and cooking
are worth more to most mothers than music and
French. The mastery of a skilled trade is a better
bread-winner than poetry and metaphysics.

But there is one ground on which the claims of
life and the claims of business are identical, and
that is health. Life without health is dust and
ashes; health increases business efficiency in
every grade and in every vocation. The first four
requisites of education are food, sleep, air,
exercise. When we touch the question of food
we come to the first conflict of authority, of duty,
of responsibility, between the parent and the
State. It is right that parents should feel re-
sponsibility for their children's daily bread; it
is wrong to impair that feeling of responsibility;
but no less is it right to feed the hungry, no less
must the State be responsible for the children
whom it has taken under its care. There is a
conflict also of expediencies. The great majority
of parents would think it shame that their children
should be fed at the public expense ; but there are
some too poor, others too vicious, to meet this
primary duty. It is not expedient that such
children should go unfed; ill-nourished children
grow into unsound men and women; they
become a burden rather than a strength to their
country. Schooling is worse than wasted on the
starving. On the other hand, the State has
enough burdens on its back already; if it once
accepts the principle that the foodless must be

42 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

fed, there is danger that more and more will
shirk their obligations. But this is a practical
problem, to be solved by experience and ad-
ministrative ingenuity. We have adopted a
socialistic system of education, and this is one
of the problems which it carries with it. By
one hand or another the children must be fed.
Dilemmas are formidable in logic ; they are the
daily discipline of practice.

Unwholesome and unsuitable food is bad
education. I am glad to think that by Care
Committees and Health Visitors the principles
of sound and economical diet are likely to be made
better known. In matters of food (no less than
in politics and invention) there has been a revolu-
tion in the last hundred years. A new tradition,
a new custom, a new code of fashion is needed.
No nation is so inexpert, so wasteful, so stupid,
in the management of food as the English. No
nation has better food to waste.

The State has not yet assumed the duty of
seeing that all young children are in bed by half-
past six. Its activities might be and are worse
employed. But better would be a new and sound
tradition. Sleep is sovereign against neurosis,
the endemic of our time.

Fresh air was early recognised as important in
education. The public elementary schools are
on the whole roomy and well ventilated, as
they ought to be. But overcrowded dwellings,
narrow and sunless streets, all these are bad for
education.

Children who live in the country, children who

PHYSICAL EDUCATION 43

run about the streets, one way and another get
plenty of exercise. But it is now admitted to be
bad for children to sit still too long in school.
They ought to stretch their limbs at least once
every hour — if possible, in the open air. And
disciplined movement, though not exactly neces-
sary for business, has its business value. A man
or woman with an erect, trim, easy, graceful
action of the limbs makes a better impression,
has a better chance in life, a better chance in
marriage, than those who have only learnt to
slouch. Dancing is a natural joy for the young.
I should like to see dancing taught in all the
schools. It cultivates among other things control
of the limbs; and in some mysterious way the
mind that has achieved perfect mastery of the
body is a better mind.

Control of facial expression should also be
taught in school; no doubt it is taught, but I
see many who do not appear to have learnt it.
Open mouths, slack lips, staring eyes, meaningless
contortions of the face, sulky looks — these are a
bad letter of introduction, and no sound person
need carry such tell-tales on his countenance.
The care of the appearance and the clothing is a
necessary element of self-respect; and self-
respect is necessary to success.

Full attention is now being paid to physical
education ; but we have vast arrears to make up
on this side ; in my own business I see proof of
the disastrous neglect of ears and teeth ; and the
generation now at work, even the generation now
growing up, have a heavy claim for damages against

44 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

Victorian statesmen, who so lightly assumed the
responsibility for the education of youth. That
responsibility now rests on us, and we have a
clearer conception of its magnitude than those
worthy but purblind magnates.

Next after care of the health, comes the cultiva-
tion of the senses. We have not yet attempted
the self-conscious cultivation of the senses of
smell and taste, though these are not without
importance. But it is accepted nowadays that
visual and aural and manual training are of the
highest value.

This is not a practical treatise on school
methods, so I will not describe the various devices
which are and may be employed in schools to
train the eye and ear. If the eye and ear are
trained to discern delicate differences, the faculty
of observation must be trained at the same time.
The school through which Mr. Lurgan passed Kim
is a school which every boy and girl might with
advantage attend; though here, as everywhere
else, the schoolmaster must be on his guard lest
by over-insistence he convert a natural pleasure
into a source of fatigue and disgust. The street,
the country-side, are good training grounds for
observation, if once the senses of the child are
opened. But it is not uncommon to find children
whose eyes and ears seem to be sealed, either
because the intelligence is inert, or sometimes
because an imaginative and reflective bent is in
excess. Such children require the most careful
and sympathetic treatment by the schoolmaster,

THE SENSES 45

lest they should grow up to go through life blind
and deaf.

The gateways of the mind must be swung wide
open; and the sense of touch is an important
adit. There may be doubts whether Madame
Montessori's successes are real; if real, whether
they are due to her methods or to her personality.
But no fault can be found with her two main
doctrines : Give the child all the liberty that he
can use with safety ; guide him to the use of his
sensitive hands. I regard dumb-bells with sus-
picion as academic, said Samuel Butler. All
school devices must be academic, but let us be as
little academic as we may. Every natural device
for encouraging children to use their hands, in
games, in building with bricks, in drawing,
modelling, simple construction — all these are
useful. Writing itself is a manual art, and valu-
able not only as a means of putting words on
paper. Let us not forget that every child will
need the use of his hands in his life and business ;
that more of them will earn their livelihood by
the toil of their hands and bodies than by the
exercise of their higher intellectual faculties;
that the bodies develop first and the minds
develop later; that the child in its natural play
is developing its senses and limbs for use in later
life, and if left to itself will always be doing some-
thing with its hands, though it be only making
mud-pies and building grottos of oyster-shells.
Manual training has come into practical educa-
tion ; once adopted, and its importance can never
again be overlooked ; its necessity for business is

46 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

more than obvious, it cries aloud ; but its efficacy
in fostering mental development is not less certain.
A new ingredient has entered our system of
training, which relieves the monotony of
school, and will repay tenfold experiment and
invention.

For business and for life alike, a well-nourished,
well-knit, well-nerved, well-developed body is the
first need; the second is a trained eye, and ear,
and hand ; the third is an alert intelligence.

It must be admitted that the results of com-
pulsory state education are hitherto disappointing,
from the point of view of business. The popula-
tion has more book-learning, but it is not yet more
efficient. We have too many clerks, too many
salesmen and saleswomen, too much casual labour,
not enough manual skill, not enough alertness of
intelligence. The problem was indeed greater
than the pioneers imagined. They opened
schools, but they did not understand that they
were closing the school of life. Our elders describe
to us the intelligence of the old illiterates. Their
memories were infallible, their accuracy inde-
feasible, their industry untiring; they could
reckon without the aid of figures. Such prodigies
were no doubt exceptional, but the school of life
was a good school. It had its failures, no doubt,
perhaps in greater proportion than our modern
schools; it had also its conspicuous successes.
But we cannot go back and trust to the haphazard
methods of the school of life. We must go on and
improve our man-made schools; we must not

BOOK-LEARNING AND BUSINESS 47

rest while the results of art are inferior to those of
chance.

What is the value of book-learning for busi-
ness ? Every business man will tell you it is less
than many scholastics even now imagine. Every
business man prefers the people he employs to be
intelligent; but if you tell him that book-learn-
ing develops the intelligence, he will shrug his
shoulders. It may, or it may not : his experience
does not convince him that it does.

Agricultural labourers, miners, porters, railway-
men, navvies, labourers, machine operatives,
carters, domestic servants — in all these classes
intelligence is valuable, but not book-learning.
In almost all the skilled manual trades book-
learning is not directly useful. If book-learning
does not develop intelligence and love of work it is
useless in all these occupations.

Even for clerks, half the things they have
learnt at school have no business value. Their
reading, their spelling, their handwriting, their
arithmetic, their English, will stand them in good
stead. Their history, their geography, except a
little elementary topography, their mathematics,
their English literature, all these have no direct
bearing upon their work. If they have learnt
foreign languages, they must know them far
beyond the limit they are likely to reach at school
before they can turn them to any profitable end.
It is true that the higher you go in the managing
class, the greater the value of instruction, and
wide, coherent knowledge. But it is not right,
nor is it needful, to teach the multitude things

48 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

that can be of no use to them, in order that the
few may profit if their chance arrives. We
should avoid the error of those who would teach
all secondary schoolboys Greek and Latin, for
the sake of the lucky few who may attain to
classical scholarship. The few have their rights ;
they will repay all care and attention spent upon
them ; they should not be sacrificed to the many,
nor should the many be sacrificed to them. We
want a scheme of education suited to the many ;
we want also a scheme of education suited to the
few ; we want a crown of education suited to the
fewest. But each scheme should be arranged so
as not to interfere with the others.

I do not propose to banish books from schools.
Books have their value for life, as I shall explain
elsewhere. But book-learning is only a means to
an end. At the limit that end is knowledge and
wisdom. For the many the end of book-learning
is intelligence; the end of schooling is intelli-
gence, complete development, love of work, and
character.

All those schemes, for which I desire expansion
and success — physical training, visual training,
aural training, manual training, nature-study, to
which I might add street-study, an interesting
subject, which, so far as I know, has not
been added to the official list — are going to
withdraw a good deal from the time allotted to
book-learning. But if book-learning ceases to be
an end in itself and becomes a means for develop-
ment of the intelligence, there will be, for this
reason also, less learning and fewer subjects.

LIBERTY IN SCHOOLS 49

That is a sacrifice which I, for one, would willingly
make.

I am always afraid of saying anything about
schools, lest the fault to which I refer may have
been removed while I was not looking. Progress
is constantly being made ; the world does move ;
and just now I think it is moving in the right
direction. But I believe I am safe in saying that
what we still want in many elementary schools is
more liberty, and more care for individuality.

There is a cry just now for more liberty in the
schools. That means more liberty for the school-
masters. No doubt, intelligent opinion is in
favour of liberty for the schoolmaster, subject to
safeguards against moral and intellectual and
practical aberrations. The French Minister, who
gloried in the thought that at a particular hour
all the children in France, at each stage, were
learning the same thing, was glorying in the power
of the machine which he governed, but he had no
right to glory in his own wisdom. It appears to
me that the liberty of the schoolmaster under
many education authorities, though not perhaps
under all, is fairly complete. Perhaps this is
one of the belated cries that are raised when a
grievance has been removed.

If you give liberty to the schoolmaster, some
enterprising Educational Publisher will offer him
a text-book in exchange for his liberty. The
text-books which give the lesson ready-made,
which tell what the teacher said to the children,
and what the children said to the teacher, produce
E

50 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

the machine-made instruction which fatigues but
does not illuminate. I find no fault with a
text-book which, placed in the hands of the
children, serves as a core, a nucleus, for the
lesson ; no objection to a model lesson illustrating
a good method; no fault with the text-book
which is suited to the mature mind of the teacher,
and has to be translated, reconstructed, before
it can be given to the class. But ready-made
lessons are anathema. A poor lesson that
comes straight from the teacher's heart and mind
is better than the best that can be got out of a
book. Let the teachers have liberty, and let them
guard it jealously against vendors of cheap doses.
Liberty for the schoolmaster is important ;
liberty for the children is even more important.
Every child, every healthy and normal child, is
full of laudable curiosity. It is our business to
utilise that curiosity. As a rule, we paralyse it
with unacceptable learning. What we should do
is to guide it, to stimulate it, to assist it. If we
can do that, the child will do three-quarters of
the work that is even now done by the school-
master. Books develop the intelligence, in so far
as they stimulate thought, in so far as they
suggest ideas, in so far as the learning they provide
responds to a hunger of the mind, and is linked
forthwith with other learning to form a growing
whole of knowledge. These are difficult doctrines ;
the bearings of them lie in their application;
the application of them lies with the schoolmaster.
The best schoolmasters already fully appreciate
the nature of their task. Children are not sent

SIZE OF CLASSES 51

to school to be stuffed like Surrey fowls ; they are
sent there to learn to live and to think, so that they
may live the better. Schoolmasters are not put
into schools to obey orders ; they are put there
to help the children. More liberty for school-
masters, by all means, where it is needed; but
also more liberty for the children, where it is
needed.

The liberty of children to learn and exercise
their minds must depend in large measure on
the size of the classes. Given fifty children in a
class, they do not, one and all, nor even one,
respond to a given formula. Each one is an
individual, with capacities, desires, aspirations,
tastes, peculiar to itself. Each one deserves a
separate, an individual treatment. The curves
of their progress will resemble each other more or
less, but no two will coincide. We are and we
must be socialists in education; but we should
also be individualists. For every child entrusted
to our care is different from every other. The
bed of Procrustes was not a good bed. We
should none of us allow our children to sleep in it,
if we knew what we were doing.

Fifty, or sixty, or seventy, children in a class.
We have asked, we are still asking, too much of
our schoolmasters. How can a schoolmaster give
sufficient individual attention to even fifty
children? Fifty sheep, no doubt, one shepherd
can attend ; but we do not wish our children to be
sheep. We should not put one man to look after
fifty cows, or fifty horses. How much better,
how much more valuable in sheer money-earning

52 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

capacity, are our children than cows or horses !
How can there be any liberty in a class of fifty ?
How can intelligence be formed? How can
thought be set a-moving? How can the love of
work be encouraged? How can there be much
beyond discipline and teaching? Education is
costly, no doubt; but it is going to be more
costly, before it is satisfactory. It is going to
cost us much in money, it has cost us, it must
cost us, more in mind, otherwise our money will
be wasted.

Very little of what is learnt in an elementary
school is directly useful from the aspect of business
to those who learn it. You cannot find any form
of learning, not even reading, writing and arith-
metic, that would be immediately useful to all
our fellow-citizens in their business. We are told
that many promising school-lads forget all they
have learnt at school within a few years. That
is to be regretted ; but the learning is not all that
matters. If the intelligence has been awakened,
if curiosity has been kept alive, if the love of
work has been aroused, if the desire to learn and
the impulse to excellence has been fostered, those
will not be lost though the young man forget his
very A, B, C. Learning is always a means to an
end; it is never an end in itself, except to the
professional student.

Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of our
modern life is the distaste for work. That arises
partly, no doubt, from that magnificent sub-
division of labour which our ancestors so much

LOVE OF WORK 53

admired. When a man is only a tiny wheel in a
great machine, the product of which he may not
ever see, the artist's joy is denied to him. When
only a minute portion of his faculties is ever called
into operation by his work the higher satisfaction
of the workman cannot be his. But the love
of work is not wholly dependent on either of
these feelings; it is in the being, in the blood;
it comes to us from an industrious ancestry who
subdued the brute creation and the forces of
nature by their labour. Being natural, it can
be developed by exercise and habit, it can be
atrophied by want of use. One of the main
functions of the school is to develop the love of
work.

I do not believe that the elementary school is
an unhappy or a repulsive place. I believe that
in the great majority of such schools the chil-
dren are happy and glad to return. But with
classes of fifty or more I do not see how the
children can be made to do much work for them-
selves. Many schoolmasters, I feel sure, are
doing all that they can do in this direction ; but
the conditions are still unpropitious, if we desire
the children to acquire the love of work, to catch
the desire to learn for themselves. If the children
acquire the habit of taking their meat from the
spoon, their school training is not good for them,
but bad. It is all too easy for schools to quench
the natural love of work.

There is a class of Boy Clerks in the Civil
Service, recruited by a good enough competitive
examination of a secondary kind, between fifteen

54 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

and sixteen. In order to obtain a permanent
situation they have to pass another examination
for which they have two chances, between seven-
teen and eighteen. This second examination is
of a simple kind, and unless the competition is
severe every one of these chosen boys ought to be
able to pass it with a few months' evening work.
Learning that there was a serious deficiency of
qualified candidates to fill the permanent posts,
I inquired as to the reason. I was told that out
of 428 candidates leaving the Service 164 had
never sat for this second examination, 84 had
failed once, 180 had failed twice. I say nothing
about those who never sat; perhaps they did
not want to be clerks ; perhaps they found better
openings for themselves. But how can it be that
so large a proportion sat and failed to qualify?
I can only suggest that these boys were all right
as long as they were at school with some one to
teach them and to make them learn. But when
it came to learning for themselves, they had not
formed the habit. They did not like the exertion,
they did not answer even to the spur of self-
interest.

The development of intelligence, the love of
work, the desire to learn, all these go together —
they require liberty for the scholars, they require
care for the individuality of the several children,
they are dependent partly on the size of the
classes. But they are impeded by the worship
of learning for its own sake. The old bad system
of payment by results has gone. But it is so
much easier to test the possession of learning than

CHARACTER 55

to test intelligence, love of work, the desire to
learn, that it is not unnatural that many school-
masters should work for the former rather than
for the latter. Besides, it is always easier,
especially for the schoolmaster, to do the work
oneself than to make the others do it. And,
though payment by results has gone, the influence
is still felt, and must be felt so long as the effects
are still operative on some of the older teachers,
whose habits cannot be changed by a stroke of
the pen. Education is not a thing that can be
changed in a moment. Improvements work
slowly ; mistakes make themselves felt for many
a weary year. It is encouraging to remember
that improvements have a like prolonged and
cumulative operation.

Finally, for business, the last important result
of schooling is character. The tone of a good
school is an education in itself. Every feeling,
every habit, every expression in word or manners,
every impulse, every thought, is raised perceptibly
by the tone of a good school. Mere discipline is
a good thing. Liberty is a good thing, but,
however free we may be, however powerful, we
have all to submit to authority, we have all to
bow to rules, to environment. But, when these
young things go out into the world, they will have
to oscillate between the iron discipline of business,
and the apparent liberty of leisure. The mere
discipline of school may fit them for the first,
so long as they are in subordinate positions.
But, if they wish to rise above the ruck, they must

56 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

possess self-control, they must have learned to be
their own masters. This can be learnt at school,
but not under iron discipline ; but rather by the
orderly exercise of liberty and self-directed
activities — in study, as well as in games, clubs,
and the like — and by care for individuality.

Here again the size of the classes tells against
the master, however sympathetic, wise, and
enlightened he may be.

People who know more about business than
about education are always talking about useful
studies. I have no prejudice against useful
studies. If anything that is directly useful can
be taught at school, by all means let it be taught,
provided that it is useful to those who learn it.
But schools, like dumb-bells, are and must be
academic. You cannot learn to box by using
dumb-bells. Similarly, you cannot learn a trade
at school, in classes of fifty; and, if you could
learn a trade at school, it is probable that it would
not be a trade that all would wish to follow.
Manual training, training in domestic economy, all
these things are good ; but in schools they must be
academic. They cannot completely prepare for
business or life. In a northern district it was the
practice, when a baby was born, for the eldest
daughter to stay at home for a month and help
in the house. The Education Authority in its
wisdom forebade this practice, and, at the same
time, ordered a large supply of full-size dolls,
each with a complete outfit of baby clothing, for
the girl children to practise upon in school. This

TRAINING OF INTELLIGENCE 57

is an extreme case of dumb-bells against boxing —
dolls against a real baby — if the story is true, and
not merely well invented.

What I have said is not directed against trade-
schools or technical schools, any more than it is
directed against schools of medicine, or engineer-
ing, or law. Trade-schools are a promising
experiment; how far they can be extended will
be seen by trial. Technical schools are intended
for those who have elected to follow certain voca-
tions. They carry with them their own problems.
They are supplementary to education; they are
not, at present, a part of general education.

But, if we once take note of the fact that no
part of the book-learning taught at school is
necessarily useful to all in their business, we shall
see that, so far as the claims of business are con-
cerned, the book-learning is not an end but only a
means. It is a means to awake the intelligence,
to open the mind, to create new interests, to
open new avenues for thought. The more the
school instruction is brought into close touch with
the practical life of the district in which the school
is placed, the more the realistic applications of it
are seized and brought home to the children, the
more that book-learning is likely to perform its
proper work in stimulating the intelligence,
creating a love of work, and a desire to learn,
the more its value for business will be increased.

Every here and there bits of useful instruction
can be fitted in. No one can learn at school to be
a gardener. But it is natural for children to have
their little gardens, and grow a few things in them ;

58 EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

a training garden is a natural adjunct to a rural
school. They will learn a good deal by that,
though they will hardly learn to be gardeners,
or even to manage a cottage garden. Anything
and everything of that kind is good, and not less
good because it brings home to the children that
business exists, and that book-learning is not
business, except for professors.

Throughout this chapter I have spoken as if
the school was all, and the parent nothing. The
parent is not negligible ; the parents can, if they
choose, be all-impoitant. But in existing circum-
stances the schools are in too many cases the
governing factor. The parent abdicates; the
school is the sole physical, moral, religious, intellec-
tual, and business instructor. I think few, except
the schoolmasters, recognise how important the
schoolmasters have become in our modern com-
munities. But, if and when the general level of
intelligence and responsibility has been raised by
education, then a new generation of parents may
grow up, keen to stimulate the intelligence of
their children, eager to teach them all they
know of duty, and self-control, and practical
wisdom. Without a wise parental regimen, the
task of the schoolmaster is heart-breaking. No
wonder that some of them confine their attention
to the book-learning and the discipline, and are
satisfied if these things are well reported.

CHAPTER III
EDUCATION AND LIFE

IT is the purpose of education — scholastic and
domestic — to prepare for life; but life itself is
the great educator. Happy those who can learn
the lessons that life provides, without schedule
or programme, without play-time, respite, or vaca-
tion. Life loves a willing pupil ; with the shirker,
the recalcitrant, the obtuse, its methods are
severe. The schoolmaster may visit the un-
learning and contumacious with rods, but life
will chastise him with scorpions and with cocka-
trices. It is the duty of what we narrowly call
education to fit our pupils for business, but it is
still more the duty of such education to fit them to
learn the lessons of life, and to stand its tests and
examinations. The more gifted the pupil, the
more severe do those tests become. The education
of life is too large a subject for this book to com-
prehend; but education for life is a theme that
cannot be avoided.

Life all too frequently obliterates the manu-
script of school. I read not long ago a book
called Across the Bridges : descriptions of life on
the south side of the Thames. There was much

59

60 EDUCATION AND LIFE

in it to claim attention ; but the author's sketch
of the changes that take place in the children after
leaving school stays in my mind. Over the
water, as on this side, there are excellent schools,
and excellent human material. There may not
be much assistance in some of the homes, there
is little from any of the surroundings, but when
the schoolmaster has done with the children they
are for the most part self-respecting, well-man-
nered, intelligent, alert. Then follows the gradual
declension. Social influences are unpropitious,
employments are not elevating; within a few
years all that the school appeared to have im-
parted of intelligence and polish will have vanished
in the majority.

Some of us, who perhaps have not lost what we
possessed at fourteen, may remember what we
were at that age. We had no doubt been nurtured
with more care at home and at school than most
of these children; but how much of our polish
and instruction would have stood fast had we
been then turned loose in Battersea or the
Borough to earn our livelihood ?

It is probable that a carter or a porter will be
a lout ; it is likely that a shop-boy will be — well, a
shop-boy ; but, if so, has all the schooling run to
waste? Not entirely, I think; such classes are/
I fully believe, in spite of all appearances, more
civilised than their predecessors of thirty years
ago. But humanity cannot be satisfied with the
results hitherto achieved.

We have already seen that the socialistic

THE YEARS OF ADOLESCENCE 61

system of education goes far to relieve parents
of responsibility which properly belongs to them.
The best parents, no doubt, do not let their own
responsibility slip; but it is natural that the
majority should leave to others what others are
willing to undertake. But whatever sum of
authority and influence the parents may have
retained up to the end of school-time is likely to
slide from them when the boy or girl begins to
earn a livelihood. School discipline ceases for
the majority at about fourteen; parental disci-
pline— such as it may be — is weakened from that
moment when the young people have their own
money of which they can dispose. And yet the
years from fourteen to eighteen, the years of
puberty and adolescence, are the most critical
years of the whole development.

The discipline of work and business does not
make up for this defect. A man may be good
at business, and clumsy, unintelligent, ineffective,
unwise, in his own more important personal life.
We all know those who never make a mark in
business, but are admirable in their homes and
with their friends. Moreover, the work, the
business, into which young persons are likely to
drift on leaving school, does not even fit them for
work and business; they earn a few shillings a
week for a few years, and then find themselves
stranded without any marketable skill. And,
even if the chance education of business were
enough for business purposes, there is still the
rest of life, the more important rest, to be con-
sidered.

62 EDUCATION AND LIFE

A mark of the civilised man is the use he makes
of leisure. Education must be regarded as in-
complete that does not fit the pupil for the use of
his leisure. In the reaction between character
and life, character should be adaptable rather than
stubborn, but character should hold its own, and
mould the life that moulds it in return. It is
required of nearly all men — it will some day, per-
haps, be required of all women — that they should
take a share in public affairs. If they take no
part, yet their fortunes depend upon the policy
which others, more active, impose upon the whole.
The function of early education in regard to life
is thus to cultivate wholesome and varied tastes,
to build up directing principles and habits in
the personality, to fit for domestic, social, and
political relations.

What formative powers work upon those classes
whose schooling ceases at about fourteen ? Put-
ting domestic influence aside, which varies in
almost every home and cannot be changed by
the rules or the agents of any public authority,
the schoolmaster has his chance during seven to
nine of the most impressionable years of life.
Though the predominance of books in his armoury
has been excessive, books must always be his chief
instrument. I have depreciated the study of
books from the point of view of business, but I
should be the last to depreciate it from the point
of view of life. Books are to be studied for life
rather than for business. If that is once accepted,
instruction takes on a new spirit. Those who
began the movement for elementary education no

THE USE OF LEISURE 63

doubt imagined that you had only to teach the
young to read, and the world of imagination and
knowledge would be open to them. It is open to
them, but there are few who find their path into
its treasure-houses. Reading, like all other gifts,
can be used or misused. What use or misuse is
made of reading may be inferred from the flood
of trumpery periodicals which finds a sale.
There is not much harm for the most part in such
trash, but the reading of it cannot be regarded as
a worthy use of leisure. The schoolmaster, after
the necessities of physical and business training
are satisfied, has the opportunity of implanting
in some of his pupils the love of good books. But
he must have it first himself; the system under
which schoolmasters are trained should lead them
to regard books as counsellors, friends, and play-
mates for leisure hours, not merely as tools used
for instruction and professional propaedeutic.
There is already a great advance in this direction.

Reading is not for all, but there are no doubt
many who have missed through no fault of their
own the joy and the guidance that a few shillings
will now procure. Music is another harmonising
and civilising influence. The teaching of music
in elementary schools should be devoted to the
development of taste, comprehension, and wisely
directed inclination. Singing classes are good.
Jaques-Dalcroze's Eurhythmies are excellent ;
they combine musical instruction with what I
have claimed above for dancing — the drill of
measured, rhythmical, and controlled movement.

64 EDUCATION AND LIFE

But the children should not only be taught music ;
they should hear good music, if that is in any way
possible. In many country districts the village
choir, the village musical society, afford almost
the only outlook into the world where sound obeys
the mind, and moves it in return. In English
towns the opportunities for hearing good music
are not so abundant as in Germany; but in
churches, in parks, even in music-halls, they are
becoming more frequent. If skilled performers
were to make good music now and then in the
schools, their pains would be well bestowed. And
if a generation trained to love music were to arise,
our music-halls would be transformed : a trans-
formation of which there are already some signs.
Performing dogs and birds and elephants and seals,
acrobats, skirts and kicks, would give more room
to soloists and quartets, chorussed and orchestral
music. We are not now a musical nation; but
we have been more musical than we are; we
evolved the English church-music and gave a
home to the Oratorio, not perhaps the best
music, but still noble and worthy; we still
breed and train the Lancashire and Yorkshire
choirs. A good instinct perverted is seen in the
cult of the piano ; if school taught but this—
that execution is only for the few, appreciation
for the many — it would have taught a valuable
lesson.

Music, like reading, is not for all, but it is for
many. It is the most democratic of the arts.
Its spiritual and intellectual influence defies
analysis ; it irritates, and stimulates, and pacifies ;

HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY 65

upon the artist, whose fibres it tears and excru-
ciates with passion, its operation has something
of malign ; but to those whose working hours are
dull, mechanical, and sordid, it brings harmony
—partly spiritual, partly physical — and ideal
beauty, beyond the power of any other art.

To pass to other subjects of school instruction,
history and geography, which have an intimate
connexion, have been in the past — in the for-
gotten past, I trust — more ill-treated than almost
any subjects of education. History was for a
long time regarded and taught as a series of names,
and events, and dates, without unity, inter-
connexion, or meaning; supplemented at best
by stories about Alfred and the cakes, or the like.
Geography was for a long time treated as a list of
topographical details to be committed to memory.
Almost all of this is without value or significance.
History and geography were for a long time
treated like technical subjects, in which exact
learning is all important. On the contrary, the
function of history and human geography is to
stimulate the imagination, to inform the under-
standing, to widen the outlook. Unless these
purposes are served, the history is without worth,
the geography is only useful for the details of
—here and there — a business. If history and
geography are treated in the proper way, the child
will go out into life prepared to find history
happening before its eyes, with the fields of
Europe, the territories of the globe, spread out
before its ken, as the scene of majestic dramas of
F

66 EDUCATION AND LIFE

which the action is incessant and progressive.
He will be in some measure prepared to take his
part as a citizen and a voter.

If the youth does nothing else that is intellec-
tual and illuminative in his leisure hours, he will
from time to time read the daily paper — the
Daily Mirror, perhaps, or the Daily Mail. The
daily paper is the greatest of original historical
authorities, affording matter for infinite reflective,
constructive, and imaginative scope. But has
any of my readers ever tried to imagine what the
daily paper means to the undeveloped ? We can
guess from the importance that is given in papers
of widest circulation to personal details : clothing,
accidents, adventures, murders, robberies, scan-
dals, trials. On the abstract or general side the
chief part is devoted to politics. And the political
side is mostly concerned with catch-words and
stock phrases, which take the place of ideas.
The daily paper should afford from day to day
subjects of instruction in every school. It should
be woven into the history and geography; the
history and the geography should be called up to
illuminate modern events.

We do not teach literature, music, history,
geography, for business purposes ; but to furnish
the mind, open the understanding, vivify the
faculties, and stimulate the imagination. We
cannot do much in these directions before the age
of fourteen; much of our seed will fall upon
stony ground ; but if we devote the scanty time
at our disposal to inculcating dry facts without
illuminative value, we shall do nothing at all,

THE LOVE OF BEAUTY 67

except waste the time and dull the appetite for
knowledge and the intelligence of our pupils.

Quite apart from any definite tastes which we
may awaken in the young to adorn and diversify
their recreations, anything that enlivens their
intelligence and stimulates their imagination
will alleviate the burden of business and give
them lights to lead them onward during their
leisure.

The natural love of beauty that used to dwell in
our race, that raised and adorned our cathedrals,
our churches, our castles, and our mansions, seems
now to be extinct, or to live only in the mind of a
few professionals and a few cultivated people.
The traditional and instinctive is dead ; we must
rely upon self-conscious effort to resuscitate the
love of beauty. Until that is done, it is useless
to look for a revival of art — in any living sense.
Architecture, for instance, after music the most
democratic of the arts, depends not more upon
the conception of the architect than on the execu-
tion of the handicraftsman. If the craftsman is
tied and bound to the scrupulous reproduction
of a plan or drawing, his work will be dull and
starved, and kill the general conception, however
good. All interior decoration, furniture, and
fittings, all details of any plan of construction or
laying out, depend for their success on the instinct
of the workman. And the demand for beauty,
without which our dull and sordid surroundings
will never be improved, must come from the
multitude. It can only be effective if the minds

68 EDUCATION AND LIFE

of the many are attuned to beauty, and hate
ugliness.

No rules can be laid down, no scheme can be
prescribed, for the renovation of the love of beauty
in our masses. But it must, as things are, proceed
in the first instance from the elementary schools,
and from the love of beauty in elementary school-
masters. The love of beauty may be rare in the
elementary schoolmaster; but I think it is only
by accident and defective training if it is so.
Given the love of beauty in the schoolmaster —
and the schoolmaster loves many beautiful things,
such as duty, self-sacrifice, truthfulness, honesty,
and good work — I feel sure he would find means to
awaken it in his classes. In every district, rural
or urban, there are beautiful things to be noticed.
If there are churches, museums, happy effects of
nature or of art or of accident, he can bring them
to observation. We expect much of our school-
masters, and we get much ; we must expect more,
and we shall get more. Just now we seem more
anxious to get well-educated clerks for our public
offices than to secure the most suitable school-
masters. The second is the more urgent need.
The entrance to the schoolmaster's profession
should be thronged with applicants, from whom
the most worthy should be chosen. For ten men
who are fit to be clerks, there is only one that is
fit to be a schoolmaster.

If we find a poet carting muck, we think that
we see a tragedy. But there is a greater tragedy,
when he whose duties require him to cart muck is
not a poet and a humourist. If the soul and the

MECHANISM AND CONSTRUCTION 69

mind are awakened, if they have independent
force to resist the weight of circumstance, occupa-
tion matters little. If we can hear the music of
the spheres, then the rattle of the typewriter, the
insistence of figures to be totted in a book, the
monotonous toil of a navvy or a ploughman, will
not avail to hush that music. Education, wisely
started, puts it within the reach of " Everyman "
to attune his hearing to the melody of humanity,
the song of the worlds.

But the spiritual and intellectual preparation
for life and leisure is not all; the material also
demands our attention. The majority will always
find their chief interest in the concrete rather than
in the abstract or imaginative. The great con-
quests of the modern world have been made by
science and machinery. If we open the eyes of
our children to these wonders, we increase to them
the value of life. It is obvious that mechanism
and construction offer abundant subjects for
school lessons. I am not sure whether girls are
interested in such things : I am sure that boys
are. Everything that widens the interest in daily
life is a preparation for life ; but this is or may be
to some extent a preparation for business also.
Wherever an unfamiliar machine is at work, a
Scotch derrick, a steam-navvy, a system for
generation of electricity, the mechanical opera-
tions can be studied and explained, so far as the
boys can understand them. A new building,
especially if it is of great size, offers a good object-
lesson. A plough, a mechanical scarifier, a

70 EDUCATION AND LIFE

thrashing machine, a grain elevator, a drill, all
offer opportunities. The physical side of geo-
graphy can be illustrated in every country district.
Nature-study is already widely pursued in schools.
A beginning can be made in every school of unfold-
ing the marvels of material knowledge. But the
schoolmaster must be sure that he knows aright
what he has to explain. In truth, we expect a
great deal of our schoolmasters; they are that
branch of the workers in the hive, whose business
it is to see that the young brood is duly nourished
and brought to useful maturity. There are no
workers of whom more is expected; and the
expectation is not in vain.

All social sports and games are valuable. We
call ourselves a sporting people, and we are, but
our sporting instincts are confined in large
measure, not by choice, but by the pressure of
circumstance, to watching races, football, and
cricket. The beauty of our parks and open spaces
should not be sacrificed; it has its own great
educative worth ; but every yard of ground that
can be spared ought to be thrown open for those
youths who desire to exercise their bodies and
their minds and their faculties of combined action.
It is no good scolding the young men because they
crowd to football matches — unless you are sure
that they might themselves be playing football.
Civilisation may be defined as the art of living
decently in towns; what the palaestra did in
Athens, what the Bath Club does in London for its
members, the Polytechnics do for the less fortunate

CHARACTER 71

classes; such play-grounds should be multiplied.
But, if it is desirable, and for reasons of health,
education, and sound development it is desirable,
that young men should meet together to play,
combine, and strive in competition, the beginnings
of such combination and such tastes must be laid
at school. Then any opportunities which exist
will be brought to use.

I need not insist much upon the building of
character in the elementary school. All eyes are
fully opened to the importance of moral education
in the school. I must, however, repeat, what I
have said above, that character cannot be de-
veloped under conditions of rigid discipline and
mere instruction. The more liberty that can be
introduced into the methods of the elementary
schools, the more the children can be allowed to
work out things for themselves, instead of receiv-
ing their nutriment predigested — predigested even
before it reaches the schoolmaster, as I see it in
certain text-books — the more chance there is for
the individuality to grow and gather strength.
Technical progress may be thus less rapid, but
intellectual and moral progress will be more
certain and more firm.

It is put to us by Mr. F. J. Gould, in his Moral
Instruction, that all the qualities which we most
desire to cultivate — self-reliance, self-control,
initiative, perseverance, strength of will, sympa-
thetic comprehension of our neighbours, intelli-
gence, alertness, quickness — are qualities capable
of misuse. I am myself quite willing to take that

72 EDUCATION AND LIFE

risk : provided the teacher exercises his enormous
opportunities of suggestion so as to set before the
taught on every fitting occasion noble rather than
unworthy objects of desire. But it is not good
that the young should be surfeited with morality.
All forms of priggishness — unnatural virtue,
sermonising, want of sympathy with youth,
narrow judgements, censorious fussiness, multi-
plication of rules and offences against rules—
these tend to defeat their own purpose. A high
example, a good tone, coupled with human sym-
pathy, human comprehension, and a true sense
of proportion, these are the schoolmaster's ideal.
A sense of humour is a great help. If the school-
master is a good man and competent, the morals
of his school will correspond. What Matthew
Arnold said of his father is still the schoolmaster's
high calling :

" Still them upraisest with zeal
The humble good from the ground,
Sternly repressest the bad !
Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse
Those who with half-open eyes
Tread the border-land dim
'Twixt vice and virtue ; reviv'st,
Succourest . . . ."

Above all, we should decline to cultivate a
colourless mediocrity, and fear of deviation from
a common pattern. Strong virtue is magnificent ;
strong vice is dangerous; weakness is always
contemptible ; uniformity is barren.

But when the elementary schoolmaster has

EXTENSION OF SCHOOL COMPULSION 73

done his work, the boy or girl goes out into the
world — a David to meet Goliath. There are four
or five more years before maturity, years full of
adverse chances. This is the time when parental
example, parental influence, is all-important.
But we have already shaken and impaired paternal
and maternal authority by the school ; the world
will weaken it still more by granting a large
measure of economic independence.

There are many who would endeavour to replace
domestic discipline by carrying on school educa-
tion of all alike to fifteen, sixteen, or even higher
ages. If school education were to become more
perfect as preparation for average life and average
business than it is ever likely to be, there would
be much to be said for this ; but the family budget
of nine-tenths of our citizens will not permit it.
They cannot forgo the contributions of children
to current expenses, and also maintain them mean-
while. Those who are thought likely to repay
further schooling should receive all possible
encouragement to continue their studies; but
for nine-tenths of the children, fit or unfit, the
invincible argument of res angusta will limit the
school period.

But in course of time we shall evolve machinery,
by public and, better still, by private effort, that
will do much to tide over this dangerous period.
Much has already been done. The Boy Scout
movement, though it cannot catch all, is ad-
mirable for boys of this age. Continuation classes,
if properly devised, and made interesting, illu-
minating, or useful — we want all these elements,

74 EDUCATION AND LIFE

to suit different natures — will do something for
many. Polytechnics, trade-schools, technical
courses, commercial courses, courses in cookery,
dressmaking, and domestic economy, do much and
will do more. The girls' clubs and boys' clubs
that are carried on with so much zest and sym-
pathy in many districts afford further assistance.
I think we can look ahead with confidence to the
development of all these agencies, and of others
like them which have not been invented, to pre-
serve the work of the schoolmaster from oblitera-
tion. It must be remembered that at this age
we have only to provide for leisure ; the hours of
work are covered by commercial and industrial
discipline. The chief danger on this side is in the
blind-alley openings. But associations for ap-
prenticeship, and committees for directing juvenile
employment, have already begun to fence off
these traps for the unwary. The watches set to
guard the critical years of puberty and adolescence
are many, and will become more numerous. No
one organisation, no single compulsion, can deal
with the multifarious individuality that has to
be protected. At school every boy, every girl,
is a different being, but they can in some measure
be grouped and brigaded. After school is left
behind, the variety of types, characters, needs,
and tastes, makes variety of methods yet more
necessary.

The school, and the agencies that strive to
supplement the school, provide to some extent
training for social and domestic and industrial and

CIVIC TRAINING 75

commercial life; but training for political duty
must also be considered. The school-training
in history and geography, if still further improved,
would lay a foundation; all opportunity should
be given to carry on these studies after compulsory
schooling has ceased ; but I do not much believe
in lectures or teaching on what is often called
civics. It is hard in civics to hit the mean be-
tween mere information and propaganda. His-
tory is the real school of civics; if you try to
isolate the information useful to the citizen, you
tear it from its natural connexions, its organic
life. It is not learning so much that is needed, as
comprehension and judgement; and I am much
afraid of political influence in the schools, employed
to suit the views of a party. Debating societies
are good; but I imagine that the most part of
the political training of the youth of the country
comes from political associations, friendly society
organisations, trade unions, and socialist clubs.
There is in most of these bodies too much partisan-
ship, too much acrimony, too narrow a point of
view, to make them ideal grounds of training for
those who have to sit in judgement on politicians.
But all these agencies open minds to ideas; the
ideas that rush in first may be the most violent,
the most hasty, and those that present the
narrowest front. But when ideas once begin to
move, elimination, selection, comparison, can
hardly fail to follow. Sooner or later, truth will
have its own way; the older men will gain not
only experience but gradually wisdom ; they will
pass on their reading of life to the young; the

76 EDUCATION AND LIFE

young will no doubt reject it as old-fashioned and
out-of-date; but it will not therefore miss its
eventual fruit. Just now, partisan politics have
it all their own way ; but there are signs that the
voters are beginning to learn that they are not
parties to the suit, but judges in the action; that
their interests are at stake ; and that if they are
to deliver judgements that will not afterwards be
regretted they must not only hear and weigh both
sides, but also think for themselves, remembering
that neither party is dominated by a disinterested
regard for their welfare. The political education
of the people is progressing, and is likely to lead
to unforeseen results.

Anything resembling political education in
schools is dangerous ; to-day it may be patriotism
that is offered as a subject ; to-morrow it may be
something much more objectionable. The busi-
ness of the schools is to prepare and develop the
intelligence, to train and strengthen the character
and individual judgement. If that is successfully
accomplished, the politicians will have to fight
out their battles — not now, perhaps, but some
years hence — before an instructed and confident
tribunal.

I write these things; but I am only too well
aware how few there are that care for beauty and
understanding. Travel in the tube on Sunday
evening, when the boys and girls — whom we have
trained — are coming back from their afternoon;
walk down the Strand, go into any golf club, and
you will see how much education — higher or

THE ENDS OF EDUCATION 77

lower — has hitherto effected ; you may infer that
little more will ever be effected.

Nine-tenths of men and women are perhaps
incapable of rising above the material world. Of
the others many are ashamed to admit — even to
themselves — that there are things above and
beyond the necessities of ordinary life, which they
can see and their fellows do not see. Those who
acknowledge intellectual and imaginative calls
gather for self-protection in eccentric cliques and
coteries, circles of mutual admiration. But some-
where among the more gifted tenth are those who
will do all by which our generation will deserve
to be known. It may be for them alone that
education should work ; if so, the kind of education
that I dream — freed from the dullness of pedantry
and the tyranny of learning — is that only kind
which will not blunt the faculties that God has
given. But I believe that all have some small
change, if not a talent in a napkin. Business
comes first, no doubt, that daily bread may be
won. But I have shown that the urgent needs of
business are not exacting so far as book-learning
is concerned. The further needs of business —
intelligence, alertness, love of knowledge and of
work — coincide very nearly with the needs of
life. If we try to work for life as well as for
business, business itself may also profit ; in any
case the needs of life should not be neglected.

It may also be said that I have confined myself
to the life of thought and imagination, and that I
have left out of account the life of action. The
life of action is the life of business ; if initiative

78 EDUCATION AND LIFE

and individuality are not crushed out of the
children, business will train for action. But for
most of us business is but a narrow round, a
squirrel's wheel. Education gives a chance of
emerging from that narrow round by thoughts
and tastes and feelings that give dignity and
beauty to life. If all cannot profit by the wider,
the more humane course, it is yet our duty to
offer that chance to all.

CHAPTER IV

MODERN LANGUAGES IN SECONDARY
SCHOOLS

MUCH has been said and much may be said
against the Greek and Latin classics as a general
instrument of secondary and higher education
in this country. But there are many of us — now,
shall I say, in middle age ? — who, looking back on
our own mental development, recognise that
we owe an immense debt to the system of classical
education under which we were trained. We
do not grudge an hour that we spent on reading
the Greek and Latin classics, on composing in
Greek and Latin, prose or verse, or even an hour
that we spent on studying the niceties of Greek
and Latin grammar. Whatever may be the
trend of future policy in education, what we had
and have can never be taken from us. But
those of us who watch the progress of that policy
must be anxious that future generations may be
schooled as well as we were. And, since we
cannot deny that there were many of our school-
fellows who did not value or profit by the schooling
that suited us, we must make it our endeavour
or at least our hope that those who are not able
or willing to get all the good that is to be got

79

80 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

from Greek or Latin should yet receive some
corresponding benefits in another way.

We received, first of all, a thorough drilling in
grammar, accidence first and syntax afterwards.
Man has many tools, but the most powerful of
all is language. In dealing with language gener-
ally, with our own language, and with any other
languages which we may use, we conceive that
we thus acquired a certainty, an accuracy, a
confidence, a sense of what is possible and not
possible in language, which we, at any rate,
should not have acquired in any other way.
Further, we became acquainted with master-
pieces of all time — with Virgil, Lucretius, Horace,
Catullus, Juvenal, Cicero, Livy, Caesar, Tacitus;
and in Greek with even greater masterpieces —
Homer, the tragedians, Aristophanes, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Plato, Demosthenes. In Greek we
learnt to know the finest, the most graceful, the
most musical, the most flexible of all instruments
of human expression.

Then we had to translate into English from
Greek and Latin authors at sight. That was
a fine intellectual exercise in itself. We knew that
the passage before us must contain a coherent,
intelligible, logical series of expressions. We had
to construct, first of all, and often from imperfect
knowledge, a conception of its general purport;
then we had to work out the detail and seize the
finest shades of meaning; last, we had to find
idiomatic expressions, orderly, rhythmical, har-
monious, to render the general effect and the

A CLASSICAL TRAINING 81

particular phrases, with the knowledge that our
prose would be judged by a critic who was a
scholar, not only in Latin and Greek, but also
in English. Thus, we learnt to use our own
language. The translation of ideas or statements
or arguments conveyed in one language into the
approximate equivalents of another speech in-
volves a whole set of useful mental gymnastics.
I think that bilinguals, like the Welsh, whose
education is carried on in two languages, must
get more from their elementary schools than the
scholars of a country like England, where only
one language is used in school.

Some authorities condemn translation, as
fostering a false sense of language ; an excessive
preoccupation with the word. This view finds
no response in my mind or experience ; but — for
composition — invention, construction, proportion,
and arrangement, must be separately practised
and taught.

Then we composed in Greek and Latin, prose
and verse. I suppose the pleasantest part of
our work was reading, just reading, Greek.
But next to that I should certainly put successful
composition in Latin or Greek verse. Yet, if
one part of our classical system must be jettisoned
to save the rest, I imagine it should be the
verses. They were useful to some, I am certain ;
perhaps they were not useful to all. But no
wrestling with the awkward structure of a German
sentence, no graceful manoeuvring with the
infinite resources of French, will ever give the
easy mastery of language that comes from long
G

82 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

practice in the artistic construction of Greek
and Latin sentences. You have only to survey
English prose before and after the classical revival
to see how much our language owes in rhythmical
and musical variety, in skilled co-ordination,
in resources of style, to men who had learnt to
write Latin and Greek. It will be a pity if the
time ever comes when no one works for himself
in that workshop.

We got also an introduction to foreign history,
politics, customs, and institutions. What is
valuable in historical education is not the ac-
quisition of a set of facts or dates, or even the
comprehension of a reasoned account of the
causal determination of a nation's destiny, but
the living into the life of a people whose manners,
customs, ideas, institutions, are different from our
own and yet not so different that we cannot
understand them. That came to us, not by
lectures or systematic instruction, but in the
effort to master and understand the books that
we were set to read. And those peoples, whose
life grew familiar as if they had been our cousins,
are the peoples on whose civilisation is based
the whole of modern European culture and
polity. I think even the stupidest, the idlest,
the most recalcitrant of us learnt something
from this.

Other things we learnt, a little at school, more
at the University : political, moral, and meta-
physical philosophy ; but I am now dealing more
with classics at school than classics at the
University.

SOME YEARS AGO 83

All the boys at my school had an opportunity
of learning these things, but only the minority
used that opportunity ; many of those who failed
to make much progress were stupid and dull at
books; others were idle; but all of them, I
think, learnt something; and some of them,
I know, have lived to regret that they did not
learn more. But I am willing to admit that many
of them might have learnt more if the course of
study had been better suited to their faculties.
Greek and Latin are difficult languages, and
until some progress has been made the drilling
is all the profit. Hounds that are never blooded
grow dull.

I think it probable that those of us who had a
taste for languages and literature learnt more
in those days of Latin and Greek and of all the
classical wealth than our likes do now. Mathe-
matics were not pressed upon our notice; you
could learn some, if you wished, but no one
bothered you much if you felt no inclination.
We used to draw a great many maps, and we took
great pride in making them look neat and pretty
and decorating them with water-colours; we
learnt no systematic history; there was a little
science going, which used to turn up in the most
capricious way. Looking back, I cannot imagine
why I should have learnt a little geology, a little
botany, even a little crystallography, and should
never have pursued an}/ of these studies any
further, nor have learnt any chemistry or physics.
I have never done a laboratory experiment in
my life; and theoretically I regard that as

84 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

indicating a defect in the old system. Boys in
modern schools have to devote a great deal of
time to these subjects, and no doubt they are the
better for them ; they certainly have less time
for Latin and Greek; and that is one of the
reasons why Latin and Greek are being pushed
aside, and why the most ardent of their friends
can no longer demand that they should continue
to be the universal instrument of secondary and
higher education.

For my own part, if I were a headmaster,
valuing Greek and Latin as I do, and as many of
them do, I should aim at making Greek and
Latin a prize for those boys who proved them-
selves capable of learning other and easier
languages. I think every boy who aspires to
a secondary education, liberal or commercial,
should learn at least one foreign language, and
for many reasons, I think that universal language
should be French. If such a boy proved dull at
French I would nevertheless keep him at it all
his school days, so that when he left me he should
at least have got beyond the rudiments of some
foreign language. If he proved bright at French
I would put him on to another language ; Latin
if he desired a liberal education, German if his
aspirations were commercial. And I would have
a small and select body — three classes at most,
unless the school were very large — a body of
Grecians, all industrious and gifted, who would be
put on rapidly in Greek and Latin and get the
full benefit of a classical education without being

SCIENCE AND LETTERS 85

impeded by the dullards. Such boys under such
circumstances would learn more Latin and Greek
in four years than most of us did in ten ; and it
would probably be found that their other studies
did not suffer. The classical scholarships at the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge would be
prizes, to which such boys could aspire. By
this means we should keep alight the torch of
classical learning, scholarship, and education,
without interfering with the utilitarian ends and
desires of modern parents. No boy would be
forced to learn Latin or Greek unless his parents
wished it.

If this were done, the chief part of most great
schools would be a modern side. On this side
science (including the chief part of geography)
and mathematics would have their appropriate
places, which I do not propose to allot, and
English (including English history) would be
thoroughly taught throughout by the medium
of the English classics, and otherwise. French
and German would represent that part of culture
which can only be developed through foreign
language and literature. How far can French
and German be made to supply that sort of
training which Greek and Latin have given,
and still give, to the best schoolboys on our great
classical sides? I should be glad to learn that
any serious attempt was being generally made to
attain this ideal, but I believe that the domination
of the direct method and the study of phonetics
have tended to put this objective out of sight
and to push aside written translation, written

86 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

composition, and the study of a considerable
body of masterpieces. I am not a schoolmaster,
and I should not be entitled, even if I were in-
clined, to say anything against the direct method
of teaching modern languages. But I think
a point must be reached in the secondary school
at which the literary study of the language
becomes more important than the oral. From
this point onwards more use might be made of
French and German as instruments of liberal
education than is now the case.

Let us take the various points in order. To
begin with, French has an advantage which
neither Greek nor Latin have. French diction
has been developed into a fine art. It has its
professors, whose methods I know from experience
to be admirable. We know exactly how French
ought to be pronounced. I, you, or they, may
not be able to do it aright, but it is agreed how
it should be done. It is pronounced with the
utmost accuracy both in its consonants and its
vowels. No consonant is slurred; every vowel
is true and pure. English, on the other hand,
is slurred and blurred; many of our consonants
are half swallowed; many of our vowels are
commonly pronounced as irregular diphthongs
or degraded to a nondescript. I do not hope
to alter the main characteristics of English
pronunciation; and an English diction class
would probably bring the schoolmaster into
collision with many of the parents, who might
find that the pronunciation learnt at home was

FRENCH DICTION 87

being condemned as vulgar or incorrect, and, in
any case, would consider accurate enunciation
to be pedantic and affected. But if boys were
taught (very likely they are so taught in some
schools) to give full value to French consonants
and vowels, and made to practise until they had
learnt to use in speech their lips and tongue and
teeth, they would not only learn to pronounce
French, they would not only learn the full beauty
of French sonorities, but they would learn the
principles of elocution, which would be of value
to them should they become schoolmasters,
professors, barristers, clergymen, actors, singers,
or politicians. Moreover, they would approach
the pronunciation of any new language with a
knowledge of the points to be observed and a
trained mechanism of speech. They would even
unconsciously improve their pronunciation of
English. German pronunciation might also be
made a useful exercise, but it is not comparable
in elegance and accuracy to French.

Now, unfortunately, Greek has not this ad-
vantage. We do not know the full beauty of
Greek, because we do not know how it was pro-
nounced. We cannot give it its true sonorities.
We do not know how accent, stress, and quantity
were reconciled. Greek is marvellously beautiful,
even as we recite it. How much more beautiful
it must have been in the mouth of a Greek actor
or orator ! The " new " pronunciation of Latin is
nearer the mark than we can ever hope to get with
Greek. But I doubt whether Cicero would under-
stand a Professor of Phoiietics speaking Latin.

88 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

Next, as to grammar. French grammar is
a pretty study; but it is not comparable in
difficulty to Greek or Latin grammar. All the
more reason that it should be accurately learnt.
Many of its processes are of great interest in
relation to logic and thought. When I used to
examine in French I used to be astonished at the
grammatical inaccuracy even of good candidates.
Few seemed to know that a French sentence as
a rule can only mean one precise thing, and that
attention to grammar will disclose what that
precise thing must be.

German grammar is more troublesome. The
accidence is very arbitrary, and can only be
mastered by an effort of memory. But such
efforts of memory should be made in youth.
The time of youth is less valuable, and the verbal
memory is at its best in youth. If French and
German are taught in schools, they should be
taught with full insistence upon grammatical
accuracy. That is, among other things, a useful
moral discipline.

There is no lack of masterpieces in French.
French, especially modern French, has its lyrical
poets, and some of them are hardly inferior to
the Greeks. The English, in their pride of poetical
wealth, are apt to look down upon French poetry.
Such lack of perception can only be excused on
the ground of ignorance. French prose is an
incomparable instrument of lucid and brilliant
expression. There is no lack of texts of the
seventeenth century, of the eighteenth century, or

FRENCH READING 89

of the nineteenth. French is so easy to read
that schoolboys might read a great many books.
It is very undesirable that boys working at
French and German should work through their
texts so slowly as our Greek and Latin texts
were taken in school. A few carefully chosen
books should be read in school for systematic
instruction in the niceties of language and ex-
pression. But schoolboys ought to learn to
read French and German for pleasure. Grecian
schoolboys learn to read Homer. I do not see
why sixth-form schoolboys should not read
Commines and selected essays of Montaigne.
The French comedians offer, besides classical
specimens of literature, a mirror of seventeenth
century and eighteenth century life in France.
In history, however, it is difficult to find texts
so suitable for the illumination of schoolboys
as Caesar, Tacitus, Herodotus, Thucydides. The
invention of printing has made our modern
historians intolerably prolix. vrjinoi, ovds toaot
ooq) TrXeov rj/jiiov iravrot;. The Greek and Latin
writers had to consider the value of the scribe's
time. What modern work is so worthy of lineal
study as Tacitus' Ger mania ? I can think only
of Bacon's Henry VII,1 and the Prince.

1 I was amused to find, in looking over some examina-
tion papers of London University, that this remark
of mine was quoted side by side with another, which
proclaimed Bacon's Henry VII untrustworthy as a
work of history. The candidates were asked to choose
between the two views. I see no opposition between
them. I do not believe that Tacitus' Germania is a
trustworthy work of history. It is worthy of lineal
study because of its superb economy of words, and

90 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

In German masterpieces are more rare and
less varied in character. At one time, when the
Germans were proud to learn from the French,
German prose looked as if it might develop into
an artistic instrument. But that process of
development ceased with Heine, and there are
not many German writers who are accepted as
classics, as Montaigne, Pascal, Moliere, Racine,
Boileau, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others, are
accepted. Hardly any modern German writer
carries on the classical tradition; it would be
difficult to find one who has the classical and
individual style of Flaubert, Maupassant, Anatole
France. Still, there are plenty of German texts
that no schoolboy need regret to have studied.
And the German lyrics of the great period show
what poetic genius can do, even with somewhat
intractable material.

Translation from French into English cannot
be made so valuable an exercise as translation
from Latin or Greek. Good French prose is
seldom difficult to an Englishman, unless perhaps
in vocabulary, and we do not want our school-
boys to spend their energies in learning hard
words. I do not think that there would be any
advantage in racking their brains with Mallarme.
Not only is it the genius of French expression
to be lucid, but the order of words in French
is similar to that in English, the construction

because it is almost the only authority we have on the
early Germans. Bacon's Henry VII I conceive to be
also worthy of lineal study, not for its statements of
historical fact, but as a storehouse of political wisdom.
At any rate, I find it a fascinating work.

TRANSLATION 91

of the language is similar, and the syntactical
methods are familiar to us. Still, there is room
here for some exercise in style and accuracy.
I once asked an acquaintance, who had obtained
a first class in the Modern Languages Tripos at
Cambridge and specialised in French, to translate
an article written in French. Not only did the
translation, when it arrived, contain many
blunders, but it showed no attempt to render
the original into elegant and idiomatic, even into
printable, English. It required to be rewritten.
This seems to show in the Modern Languages
Tripos neglect of one of the most important
sides of language study.

Translation from the German is more difficult,
and, owing to the structure of the German
language, it affords a more valuable exercise than
translation from the French.

Translation into French is a very charming
and tantalising game ; it can be made as difficult
as any one cares to make it. I think schoolboys
might well spend a good deal of time in practising
it. After they had attained some proficiency
they might be trained in extempore translation.
Such a language can be learnt more rapidly
than Greek and Latin, and its study can, with
most boys, be carried much further. This
advantage should be made profitable.

Translation into German is necessary for the
learning of German. I cannot imagine any one
practising it except from sheer necessity. But
it is not undesirable that schoolboys should
have some disagreeable tasks. They should be

92 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

warned, however, to be on their guard against
introducing German methods of expression into
their English style.

After much reflexion I do not think that school-
boys are ever likely, from the study of French
texts or German texts, to obtain the kind of
familiarity with the life of foreign nations that
we used to get from reading Greek and Latin.
There are no French books — at least, none of
manageable dimensions — that throw such light
on the life of France as Caesar, Tacitus, Livy,
Juvenal, and the speeches and letters of Cicero,
throw upon Roman life; none that are so well
worth study from this point of view as Herodotus,
Thucydides, Aristophanes, and the speeches of
Demosthenes. One reason for this is that French
literature has always been, for the most part,
divorced from politics. Horace and La Fontaine
have many similarities ; but Horace is a mine of
definite political and historical allusion; not so
La Fontaine. French memoirs are not, for the
most part, literature, and if they were you could
not put schoolboys through a course of them;
they are too lengthy. Commines is an exception,
but he is only suitable for the very advanced —
schoolmasters as well as schoolboys. The history
and the antiquities are too difficult. Montesquieu
and Rousseau are only theorists, and not very
good theorists at that. I think this difficulty
would be got over by teaching boys with their
books the dramatic and fascinating history of
France. While reading Moliire and Boileau
they might learn the history of Louis XIV, with

HISTORY AND LITERATURE 93

explanatory retrospects. But, whatever the diffi-
culties, if French is to take the place of Greek
or Latin in our schools, it cannot be enough that
the boys or the girls should only learn French
language. They must learn something of France,
of French literature, French history, French
institutions, French customs, French manners;
otherwise they will have missed one-half of the
benefit that we got from learning Greek and
Latin. If anything is essentially learning and
cannot possibly by itself become knowledge, it
is the learning of a language.

For many boys more can be done by means
of the modern languages than by the classics.
This is another case in which the half may be
better than the whole. We few, we happy few,
learnt many things which are a priceless possession.
But many of our stupid friends, and many of
our idle friends — some of them have since proved
that they are, in fact, neither idle nor stupid-
learnt but little. Let us take, then, for the
humane studies, as a rule, not less than half the
time, in school and out; let us leave to mathe-
matics, science, and the allied studies, the other
half. For the Grecians we might poach a little
on that half. Of the humane half let us take
one-third for English. That leaves eight hours
a week, or perhaps a little more — of school time
—to be devoted to foreign languages. Let the
boy who is fit to learn but one language give
all that time to French. Let the boy who is fit
to learn French and German, or French and Latin,

94 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

or Greek and Latin, give all that time to those.
But if any boy learns only French, let him learn
that thoroughly. Let him learn to pronounce
it, let him learn its grammar, let him read the
French classics, let him translate French into
English and English into French, let him learn
something about France, her romantic history,
and her gifted people. Dull as he may be, idle
as he may wish to be, after five or six years
given to French he will have learnt something
that will widen his intellectual horizon, and
develop his capacities where they most need
development.

With German the problem is still more difficult.
German literature begins, for our purposes, with
Lessing, and, I am afraid, for our purposes we
must say that it almost comes to an end with
Heine. In that period many things happened
in Germany, but we cannot say there was any
history of Germany. The German nation was
struggling to its political birth, but it had not
yet achieved organic unity. All the same, let
us work on the same lines. Let the boy who has
been promoted to German give half the language-
time to German and half to French. Let him
learn to pronounce German according to the best
school — the school of the German theatre; let
him get its grammar into his bones, let him read
the German classics; let him translate German
into English, and English into German. Let
him study German history from Frederick the
Great to Bismarck. If he has time, let him be
introduced to the history of the Holy Roman

ORAL STUDY OF LANGUAGES 95

Empire. But this history can hardly, at school,
be illustrated by literature.

All this is complicated by the fact that if a
parent wants his boy to learn French and German,
he had better see that he learns them before he
is ten; if possible, before he is eight. That is
the time to learn languages orally, the time when
Nature fits us to learn our own. But most
parents cannot afford to have their children
taught either or both languages in this way ; and
if any boy comes to my ideal school knowing
French and German up to the standard of the
lower fifth, as well may happen, I shall know what
to do with him. I shall put him into the lower
fifth for French and German. He may not
understand all that he hears there, but he will
not forget what he has learnt, and he can put
the chief part of his work into English and the
other studies. Or he may go into the lowest
Grecian class, and start right off on Latin and
Greek. Having learnt two foreign languages, he
is probably the better fitted to learn others.
But schools must be organised for the average,
and it is not likely that for some long time to
come more than a few boys or girls will learn
French and German from their nurses and nursery
governesses — to any real purpose.

I am an examiner, perhaps the Arch-Examiner ;
but I will not dispute that title with any one who
thinks he has a better right to it. I was led to
write this chapter by a practical problem which
had been occupying my mind for many months.

96 MODERN LANGUAGES IN SCHOOLS

In one of our examinations, which is intended
to test the relative merits of boys at about the
age when they leave the public schools, we have
a higher grade examination in Greek, Latin,
Frehch, and German. Candidates may take
any one, or any two of the languages in this
grade ; they are all of equal value ; and we have
to hold the balance even between them; that is
by no means easy to do. The headmasters who
are interested in Greek and Latin asked us to
set a general paper such as classical candidates
are ready to take, in Greek and Latin history,
customs, literature, and institutions. This we
could easily do in Latin and Greek, but if we did
it for Latin and Greek we must also do it for
French and German, otherwise the classical
candidates would be at a disadvantage. Does
any one think we could do it just now in French
or German? If so, does any one think he can
suggest a syllabus that would suit our purposes
and also suit his school? I have considered
many syllabuses ; but I cannot think of any that
would not drive our candidates from the schools
to the crammers. But if education in French
and German had been developed as classical
education has been we should be able to do
what we desire. Perhaps, ten years hence, we
may be able to do it.

The modernists have been so eager to put
forward the claims of the languages, which one
might be led to think they had discovered, that
they have almost forgotten the history and with

PROGRESS OF MODERNISM 97

it the geography. Of course modern history and
geography are taught at schools, but they are
taught as separate subjects ; they are not brought
into close relation with the languages and the
literature. Modernist education is a new thing.
One should not, on the one hand, expect too
much from the work of one generation, and on
the other hand, the modernists cannot expect
the best results so long as two sections of them
are working in complete independence. The
historians neglect language and literature, the
linguists neglect history. When the historians
and the linguists make common cause, and unite
to make their separate learning contribute to
the whole of knowledge, then modernist education
will come into its own.

H

CHAPTER V

COMPULSORY GREEK AT THE
UNIVERSITIES

ALL great things have enemies who hate them
because they are great. All beautiful things have
enemies who hate them because they are beautiful.
All established things have enemies who hate them
because they are established. The Greek language
and literature have enemies for each of these
reasons ; but I do not think they need fear such
enemies unless their friends attempt to main-
tain a monopoly which has become oppressive,
unless ordinary well-meaning people find Greek
blocking the way of their ordinary, praiseworthy,
and legitimate business.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have
each of them a School of humane letters based
upon the ancient languages, in which language,
history, literature are co-ordinated on sound
principles elaborated through four centuries,
in which also philosophy, law, politics, archaeology,
philology, and criticism, all find an appropriate
place. I and those who think with me would
regard it as a calamity if those great open-hearted
schools were damaged or in any way discouraged.
But each of those Universities has also Schools

98

SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 99

of mathematics, natural science, modern languages,
modern history, law, engineering, medicine.
Many, perhaps most, of those who wish to follow
any of these Schools find themselves held up
and put to ransom, before they can begin the
praiseworthy and legitimate business of studying
anything from history to engineering, by janitors
who, as the price of entry, demand that they
shall acquire the rudiments of Greek. Here
ordinary, legitimate, and praiseworthy business
is hampered ; here monopoly becomes oppressive.
I conceive that any one who maintains these
obstacles, who defends that monopoly, is inviting
the enemy to attack the vital strongholds of
humanistic education which we should spare
no effort to preserve.

The Public Schools assert that they are forced,
by the policy of the Universities, to keep up Greek
for boys who are never likely to make any progress
in that study. The Universities will tell you that
they maintain their policy in order to preserve
Greek and Latin from extinction in the schools.
But there are other reasons, entirely natural
and human, why schools and Universities alike
should shrink from change. It is probable that
a large proportion of masters in Public Schools
were trained in classics and are better fitted to
teach them than anything else. Only by degrees
as fresh teachers come in can teaching be turned
on to new lines. Education cannot be changed
at a leap; our present education policy is con-
ditioned by the policy of twenty and thirty years

ioo COMPULSORY GREEK

ago. At the Universities, also, there are, no
doubt, many^ vested interests bound up in the
teaching and testing of Greek and Latin for lower
examinations.

The Universities should consider their own
best interests first ; in order to protect the schools
it is not necessary to hold them in fetters, or
block the way of praiseworthy and legitimate
business. Moreover, willing or unwilling, the
schools are now moving fast ; the old Universities
run the risk of losing their control altogether.
Again, by the constant introduction and develop-
ment of new studies, the Universities are making
it more and more difficult to maintain compulsory
Greek. I have great sympathy with industries
threatened with extinction by inevitable change
or, as it is often called, progress. But there is
no longer any question of preserving these vested
interests intact. Give up compulsory Greek and
compulsory Latin may be maintained for a con-
siderable time. Maintain compulsory Greek and
compulsory Latin may go with it ; nay, even the
higher studies connected with Greek and Latin
may be imperilled.

I should be more willing to support compulsory
Greek if I thought that the Greek required for
the Littlego was worth anything to any one. But
I do not believe that it is. I do not see how it can
be. Many years ago I used to prepare pupils
for the Littlego in Greek. I know what the attain-
ments were then' of candidates who qualified
under my supervision. I had one candidate

GREEK IN THE-LITTI>£GO^ 101

to teach who did not know the Greek alphabet.
We were reading Xenophon's (Economicus, a long
and rather troublesome book. He knew the book
very well before he came to me, so I do not claim
the discreditable credit of having defeated the
examiners. He knew the words by sight, and
he often knew what they meant. He knew the
translation very well and could fit it more or
less to the text. But when we came to the letter
V* he would say, " What is this queer fountain-
looking letter? " And, when we came to the
word yewQyla, which occurs often, he never could
get any nearer to its pronunciation than to say
" Gegrewer." He passed, dear, cheerful soul,
and I have no reason to believe that the examina-
tion was any easier then than it is now ; probably
the reverse. A headmaster, a classical man,
a most veracious person, told me that clever
mathematical or science boys could be taught
enough Greek and Latin in two months to pass
the Littlego, and that the real trouble was with
boys who had been learning Greek and Latin all
their lives. The case of the latter is far more
to be deplored than that of the former.

It may be said : " If Greek for the Littlego is
so easy as that, why make such a fuss about it ? "
I make to the defenders of compulsory Greek a
present of that two-edged argument. I will only
call attention to those boys who have been learn-
ing Greek and Latin all their lives, and cannot
pass this contemptible examination. Such use-
less drudgery is not what Greek in the Littlego is
intended to perpetuate, but this is what it does

io2 COMPULSORY GREEK

perpetuate. Is there no other study in which
these boys could better spend their time? If
not, what are they doing at a higher grade school,
what are they going to do at an University?
Let us look at them with pity and pass on.

The reason why the Littlego Greek is of so
little value is that it is an examination in set-books.
It is possible to cram such books with the aid of
a crib and a coach and pass without any real
knowledge of the language. It may be laid down
without hesitation that no one can, from the
examiner's point of view, be said to know a
language who cannot translate passages from it
at sight. The fact that Cambridge cannot impose
this test in Greek proves that they find themselves
unable to require any Greek that is worth respect,
although they cannot find it in their hearts to
acknowledge that what is called Greek is a sham.

But it is not enough to be prepared to destroy,
it is not enough to cry with the barbarians " Down
with Greek ! " Some one must have a policy,
some one must have a better alternative to
propose. All alternatives that I have hitherto
seen are too elaborate. Let the Littlego be
recognised as a pass examination qualifying for
entry to an University course and we at once
get a new and clear indication of the way
in which it should be treated.

The range of subjects in this pass examination
should be rigorously limited ; thoroughness should
be tested rather than width of scope; mental
training should be the aim rather than learning.

AN ENTRANCE EXAMINATION 103

There are three branches of education, each of
which should have recognition in such a pass
examination : language and letters, mathematics,
and experimental science. The University should
make up its mind what is the least it must require
in each : remembering on the one hand that the
student who studies science or mathematics will,
as things are, leave literature behind him ; and,
on the other hand, that there are some distinguished
minds which have no aptitude, some for letters,
some for mathematics, some for science, some
for two of them.

Any new scheme should have a purpose and
a character of its own. Its purpose should be
not to test the total results of the boy's school
education; that is already done by the myriad
school examinations; nor to take samples of
those results at haphazard; that is otiose; but
to test those crucial points in which a boy must
not be allowed to be defective. Its character
should be simplicity, moderation, and sincerity.
We do not want to put the schools into fetters,
to have tribes of boys working on uncongenial
lines to satisfy our requirements. The tests
which we apply should be few, but they should
be real tests. For my own part I do not see that
the University need require more than four things :
English, one foreign language, mathematics, and
elementary physics and chemistry.

Religious topics I avoid, to escape controversy ;
but I do not see why any person who is to live
in this country or this empire should demand

104 COMPULSORY GREEK

to be ignorant of the four Gospels and the Acts
of the Apostles in the Authorised Version.

English is the most important of the four, and
the whole expert world is coming to be of that
opinion. English should be thoroughly tested,
not only by an essay. And I would not forget
handwriting and spelling. There is too little
inducement nowadays for boys to learn to write a
good hand. I do not overrate the importance of
spelling, but there is nothing that produces a
worse impression in ordinary life than bad spelling.
An university degree should be a guarantee of
tolerable writing and tolerable spelling. It is
sometimes accepted as carrying such a guarantee,
but that is only out of politeness.

Next comes language. There is a good deal
to be said for compulsory Latin. Latin is still
strong in the schools, and whether it is compulsory
or not a great many will take it. If Latin is com-
pulsory the language section is complete : other
languages would be left for free enterprise. But
I should prefer myself as an alternative to Latin
either one modern language, translation and
composition, or two modern languages, translation
only. It would be easy to arrange that these
tests should be at least as hard as the elementary
Latin. It would be an immense advantage
if many of our students entered the University
able to read two modern languages easily. Com-
position, on the other hand, has a greater value
as an exercise.

Mathematics we are all agreed about; they
would comprise arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.

AN ENTRANCE EXAMINATION 105

Experimental science introduces a different
element into education, an element with which
none should be unfamiliar. I fancy that science
is not taught on some of our classical sides, but
I suppose most people would admit that it ought
to be.

It is possible that all these discussions may lose
their importance if the Government succeed in
establishing their secondary school leaving certifi-
cate or certificates for the whole of the United
Kingdom. The difficulties are still very great.
But, supposing that this policy were carried into
effect, the University would still have to make pro-
vision for foreigners, for Colonials, for those who,
for health or other reasons, had been unable to
attend a secondary school.

Failing a leaving certificate, it may be said
that this simplified Littlego makes no provision
for all those branches of useful knowledge in
which a boy should receive instruction — history,
geography, elementary politics, for instance.
I should leave all that to the schools. There is
no history or geography in the Littlego at present,
but those subjects are nevertheless taught in
the schools. A pass examination in those sub-
jects is not likely to improve the teaching; it is
certain to hamper it. All these subjects lend
themselves to cram ; only on a very high standard
can an examination in such subjects discount
cram. It will be noticed that all the subjects left
in the simplified Littlego which I have ventured
to propose are subjects disadvantageous to
cram.

io6 COMPULSORY GREEK

There are some people who, despairing of
reform from within, desire that Royal Commissions
should be set up to reform the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge. I think that the reform
which they would get from without might be
salutary; it would certainly be unpalatable.
Like Nebuchadnezzar they would —

" Say, as they munched the unaccustomed food,
It may be wholesome, but it is not good."

Any reforms which the Universities need they
are perfectly competent to carry out spontaneously.
It will be time to impose reform from without
when they have declined to do what is necessary
themselves.

I have been told that I am the most dangerous
enemy of classical education ; that if I have my
way the study of Greek and Latin will become
extinct. I do not believe these dismal prognosti-
cations; and, so far as I myself am concerned,
I observe that I have also been accused of wishing
to make the public service a close preserve for
classical scholars. Attacked on both sides, it
seems probable that I have found my position
near the true middle. At any rate, I feel con-
vinced that the worst enemies of classical know-
ledge are those who still wish to force Greek and
Latin down the throats of the unfit.

CHAPTER VI
A SCHOOL OF MODERN HUMANITIES

IF modern humanistic studies are to take their
proper place in the education of this country,
they must receive not only full but enlightened
recognition from the Universities. The Univer-
sities should provide the schools with masters
thoroughly trained in English and in the languages
which they propose to teach, and not only in the
languages, but in the masterpieces of the literature
and in the history which binds all together. But
the University is not mainly or in the first place
a training school for teachers; teachers are a
by-product of the educational system. If the
educational system is bad, the teachers will
suffer from corresponding deficiencies. If the
educational system is broad, stimulating, and
illuminative, a generation of teachers will arise
who are themselves wide-minded enthusiasts and
will create a like enthusiasm in others. We need,
therefore, in the Universities a School of modern
humanities, combining careful and accurate
study of the use of words with a wide and system-
atic study of history and a close and loving study
of great literary masterpieces. And these three
studies are not three but one. The language must

107

io8 MODERN HUMANITIES

be learnt through the literature ; the literature
must be used to illuminate the history; the
history must explain and give unity to the litera-
ture; and all together need the help of geo-
graphy, and give it human worth.

That modern studies could serve as an effective
instrument of liberal education I make no doubt.
They already do so in an imperfect and fortuitous
manner. But an unified course of humane study,
based upon modern languages, modern history,
modern literature, with excursions into politics,
law, economics, and philosophy, is yet to seek,
through all our Universities. The University
which first establishes such a School will do a great
service to liberal education; it will awaken the
minds of many whose interests are dormant,
whose talents are wasted; it will put new life
into modern sides and modernist schools; it
will provide a constant supply of well-trained
teachers, and incidentally it will steal a march on
its rivals.

A liberal education may be a vain and useless
luxury, suitable only to those few among the idle
rich who value its meretricious attractions.
In this age of specialisation, in this age when
studies take rank by their money-getting virtue,
such an opinion is common enough. Or a liberal
education may be the most potent of humanising
and civilising agencies, needful for the statesman,
the public servant, the administrator, the diplo-
matist, the professional man, and valuable also
to the man of science, the engineer, the master
of industry or commerce, if these are to

LEARNING AND EDUCATION 109

develop their highest potentialities, at any rate
in their inner life. I trust there is no need
to enquire which of these two opinions is held
by my readers.

For generations past this country has been
proud to possess a large class of enlightened men,
interested in politics, literature, art, science,
philosophy — not specialists alone, nor learned in
any ordinary sense, but with minds open to
every range of human activity. It is to the stan-
dard of this class that our daily and periodical
Press has been created, which is superior to that
of any other country. This class has been trained
under the system of classical learning ; if modern
learning is to serve a like purpose in education,
it should not set a lower standard of breadth and
enlightenment.

The University is a place of learning, a place
where learning is and should be pursued for its
own sake. It is also a place of professional
training, where men are or may be trained to be
doctors, surgeons, engineers, lawyers, cultivators,
schoolmasters, divines, etc. Professional training
has always been part of university duty, though
some persons may regard it with undeserved
contempt. But the University is also, and I
think it should be above all, a place of education.
In the older Universities learning is sometimes in
conflict with the ideal of education. The learned
men, impressed beyond reason with the importance
of their own subject, wish for a little educative
playground of their own, a close garden to them-

no MODERN HUMANITIES

selves, from which all extraneous studies should
be excluded. Learning requires specialisation;
and learned men are apt to lose that breadth of
view, that comprehensive sympathy with kindred
learning, which are needed if studies are to bear
their full measure of fruit. A man may take many
" subjects," but every subject will suffer if they
are not made to interpret and strengthen each
other. Education should not be sacrificed to
learning. Such a sacrifice is not needed, even
in the interests of learning.

In the new Universities professional studies are
all important; neither their own resources nor
the resources of their students permit a lavish
supply of unremunerative accessories. And they
hardly dare to lead students into paths which do
not at once command a life-giving employment.
I should be the last to blame those who only
bow to the tyranny of circumstance. How-
ever, one way and another the ideal of a liberal
education suffers, except in the Classical Schools,
when the tradition of the universality of humane
knowledge survives. It is the boast of Oxford
that any and every piece of knowledge may be
useful in Greats. But even the Classical men
are sometimes jealous of modern studies. They
and the historians should be our most cordial
allies. We are all alike humanists; none of us,
except by accident, can provide an immediate
livelihood for our students ; but we all, together,
not in separation or antagonism, ought to provide
education for a class which the nation can ill
afford to do without.

SEPARATION OF ALLIED STUDIES in

In the University of Cambridge provision is
made for modern studies (besides Science,
Philosophy, Law, Economics, etc.) in two separate
Schools — in the Historical Tripos, and in the
Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos. It is
very rare for a man to go from one to the other.
The teachers on one side hardly ever fortify the
other. In the Historical Tripos no scholarly
knowledge of any language is required; in the
Modern Languages Tripos hardly any history
except that of literature is taken into account.
The study of history suffers in interest and illu-
minating force through the neglect of literature ;
the study of language and literature is a dead
thing if separated from the general stream of
human life.

A modernist School should be a school to form
men for the world, not to form students and pro-
fessional scholars for academic pursuits. Get
your education right; get your men into the
School; learning will then look after itself;
the student of literature only needs a few books
and a little leisure time; he needs no expensive
equipment or endowment of research ; the natural
student, having once drunk of the fountain, will
drink and drink again; the student against his
bent will never rise to scholarship. The Cam-
bridge School of Modern Languages started under
a disadvantage; it was sneered at; men called
it the new Courier Tripos ; it was determined to
falsify that reproach at any cost ; it was resolved
to be very serious and learned; hence, all this
philology and medieval languages. Disraeli was

MODERN HUMANITIES

once present at a solemn feast, and his neighbour
turned to him and whispered, " This is very dull."
Disraeli replied, " It is intended to be dull/' One
might think that the founders of the Modern
Languages Tripos intended it to be dull. It is
difficult to make such matters dull. But anything
can be made dull by conscientious effort.

The sections dealing with English are not com-
pulsory; neither of them is attractive. "Out-
lines of English Literature " ; what good are
outlines of literature to any one ? Let us study
the texts, not commentaries and catalogues.
" Questions on language, metre, literary history,
and literary criticism/' Are such questions
all that the masterpieces of literature suggest?
" Questions on the plays and poems of Shakespeare
and their relations to the contemporary literature. ' '
What about their relations to the contemporary
life? "Questions on the history of literary
criticism/' That is, questions on what people
have said about what other people said about
other people's books.

It would be my desire to abolish the English
sections and substitute one section with two sub-
jects— English history and English literature.
A list of books, not in Wessex dialect, nor in
Icelandic, nor in Moeso-Gothic, would be provided.
These the candidates would be expected to read.
About four papers would be set with an abundant
choice of questions, and the questions should
bring the subject matter of the books and the
history into all kinds of obvious and some un-
expected relations. English composition would

THE MODERN LANGUAGES TRIPOS 113

be tested by an essay, and also by the written
answers to the papers. All candidates for the
modern school of humane letters would be required
to take the English section.

I need not trouble my readers with the regula-
tions for the other sections of the Cambridge
Tripos; they are, except the Russian section,
all on the same lines — philological, antiquarian,
critical, anything but historical — and I should
wish them to be reformed on the same principles
as the English section. The students of Russian
are allowed to take a paper on Russian history
instead of questions on old Russian books,
grammar, metre, and literary history. This
section is almost good; though there is nothing
to show that the books are to be used to illustrate
the history, or the history to illustrate the books.

Two things can be said about the Modern
Languages Tripos : that the candidates probably
learn the languages, and that they read certain
great books as well as others that have no value
except as curiosities. But the scheme is not as
good as it could be made, and the students do
not get one-half of the benefit they would get
from a more liberal system. The result is that
after thirty years this School, with all its com-
plicated machinery, gives honours to less than
seventy students a year, men and women. It
should be the largest School in the University.

The Historical Tripos was not constructed with
a view to dullness. It is therefore very attractive
and its honours list is large. It is, however,
i

n4 MODERN HUMANITIES

overburdened with matter, and bears upon it
certain marks of an unfortunate youth. Dr.
Stubbs wrote a text-book on English constitutional
history. Dr. Cunningham wrote another on
English economic history. It is a great conveni-
ence in a youthful school to have a good text-book,
so Constitutional History and Economic History
were made, and still continue to be, separate sub-
jects in the Tripos. English history does not
appear except in a footnote to constitutional
history. I find no similar footnote to economic
history, which goes on its lonely and independent
path. It is time that these separate sections
were cut, if not out of teaching, at any rate out
of examining. There should be three or four
papers on English history as a whole, including
constitution, economics, literature, law; and a
few appropriate masterpieces might be set for
the students' private reading such as Bacon,
Hobbes, Bolingbroke, and Burke have provided.

When the Historical School was started its
leaders aspired to gather the harvest without
going through the tedious interval of seed-time
and growth. I remember the time when the
staff was very weak, and four of its most eminent
members were lecturing on political science, as
it was called. We were told that history without
political science had no fruit. I doubt the
existence of political science ; political knowledge
is part of history; political wisdom should per-
vade all the teaching of all the teachers ; political
philosophy should come after, not before, the
survey of the facts.

THE HISTORICAL TRIPOS 115

Many improvements have been made in the
Historical Tripos since my time. I think I see
a certain tendency to set first-rate works of litera-
ture as authorities where such are available.
Machiavelli's Prince occurs more than once.
Machiavelli is indeed almost an ideal text for
historical study; and it is a great thing that
young historians should be put to exercise their
critical and constructive acumen on books that
are worth reading for their own sake, instead of
grinding at dull works that are only useful as
repositories of information.

Is it too much to hope that some day in the
First Part of the Historical Tripos there will be
papers in translation and composition of modern
languages? I should like to see the Historical
Tripos and the Modern Languages Tripos com-
bined, with abundant liberty of choice, so that
students should follow their own tastes in this
direction or that, provided always that language,
literature, and history, were duly morticed each
into the other. Failing that, more history in the
Modern Language Tripos, more language and
literature in the Historical Tripos, would provide
a more liberal education and a better training.
When you have a staff for each of two cognate
Triposes, they should be available for inter-
change of services.

The case of Oxford is similar to that of Cam-
bridge, except that the English School is separated
entirely from that of Modern Languages.
In the English School Anglo-Saxon and Middle-

n6 MODERN HUMANITIES

English are compulsory. In the Modern
Languages School we find the Gospel of St.
Mark in Gothic, and the Althochdeutsches Lese-
buch prescribed for all students of German;
and the rest is to match. On the other hand,
in both these Schools we find that candidates are
expected to show some knowledge of history.

In the Oxford Historical School we find Con-
stitutional History, as at Cambridge, in a water-
tight compartment by itself. On the other hand,
English History, including literature, is treated
in a broad and comprehensive manner. By
tradition Political Science is at Oxford fortified
by a study of the works of some of the great
masters — Aristotle, Hobbes, and Maine are
prescribed. In this form it is no doubt excellent.
There used to be an admirable optional period;
Italian History from about 1494 to about 1515
with Machiavelli, Guicciardini, da Porto, Corn-
mines, to be read in the originals. This has now
apparently been dropped, and Cambridge has
taken it up with slight modifications and a less
insistence on the foreign languages. In such a
subject, language, literature, history, and geo-
graphy, complement and illuminate each other
as they should. Modern languages have now
been introduced.

Once more we come back to the Classics. Why
do we value the best Classical education? Not
because Latin and Greek are superior to all
other languages; that would be an insufficient
reason. Nor because the poets, the dramatists,

CLASSICAL METHOD 117

the orators, the historians, the philosophers of
Greece and Rome were the greatest that the world
has known. Shakespeare and Dante and Goethe,
at least, are worthy to stand beside the best of
them. Nor because of the excellent drill provided
by Greek and Latin grammar and composition.
We must not be slaves to the drill-sergeant, and
drill can be provided in other ways. But our
ancestors, the humanists of the Renaissance, were
enthusiasts at once for language, literature, and
history; they rejoiced to range the whole gamut
of human life. They were lovers of literature,
but they loved not the mere history and criticism
of books, but the wisdom and humane lore that
the books contain. They were lovers of history ;
they valued documentary evidence; but they
cared more for the document that was also a book
than for the mere storehouse of historical fact.
That tradition survives in the best Classical
School of to-day. It is a school of words, and
words are worthy to be studied and reverenced;
but it is also a school of history and of the best
literature and philosophy. It is a school of
learning, but humanity comes first. There may be
pedantries, and undue emphasis of scholastic
points; but the humanity shines through, and
it is the whole humanity of man. And man two
thousand years ago was much what man is now.

There are some who decry this School of ancient
humanities because it is out of touch with modern
life. Some like it the better because it is removed
from the cant, the bitterness, the fallacies, of
modern statement. But granted that this be a

n8 MODERN HUMANITIES

drawback, let us nevertheless salute the great
ideal, and strive to follow it in other and more
modern fields. Let us value learning and scholar-
ship, but not to the neglect of humane knowledge.
Let us value history, but seek its illumination
in the greatest minds of the past. We have not
much time and we cannot afford to pore over bad
books. Let us value language, but not as the
botanist values his dried specimens, rather as the
key to the mind of genius, and the soul of man.
Fatti non foste a viver come brutti, Ma per seguir
virtute e conoscenza. Conoscenza is good, but
it is worth little without virtute. And virtute,
which may be rendered as complete and excellent
humanity, is the end of liberal and humane
studies ; if humanity does not gain in flexibility,
sympathetic comprehension, and enlightenment,
blame the pupil, blame the teacher, blame the
system, but do not blame the studies.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AT THE
UNIVERSITIES

THERE are now, in this United Kingdom and
in other English-speaking countries, a great
number of Professors of the English language
and of English literature. Not so very long ago
there were none. Yet the art of writing English
had been practised with some trifling success for
many generations before the first professor
appeared. This reflexion may serve to keep us
humble, who belong to the teaching profession.
One might hastily draw the inference that there
is no necessity to teach English at all, at the
Universities or elsewhere. But I do not think
that inference would be safe. Things used to
manage themselves in the old days. Now we
have undertaken to manage things, and they no
longer run alone. We must go on managing them,
and manage them as well as we can. Some day,
perhaps, we shall learn to manage them better
than they used to manage themselves.

It would be hazardous for an amateur — and in
this field I am but an amateur — to lay down lines
of English teaching for those who have made it
their life work. To mention one danger alone,

119

120 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

I cannot pretend to know what all of them are
doing; still less, what all of them have done.
The hasty critic might be silenced by one or other
of these replies : " I have done that all my life " ;
" I have tried that and it failed." And yet it
would not be safe to omit from the survey what
is common practice; it is also sometimes worth
while to repeat an unlucky experiment. From
a more lowly position I can speak with less offence ;
let me try to put myself into the place of the fresh-
man, and set forth as best I can the needs of his
class, which, diverse as it may be in character,
capacity, and preparation, is not so diverse in its
needs. Teaching should be determined by the
needs of the taught, and not by the propensities
of the Professor.

The first need of every freshman, although he
may not know it, is to learn to write English. It
is easy to say that he ought to have learnt to
write English at school. So he ought, and, by
the efforts of the English Association, the number
of those who come up to the University unable to
turn one sentence or to put two together, has
diminished and will no doubt further diminish.
But it is always safe to bank on the imperfections
of human nature, and on the shortcomings of
human institutions. One may be certain that,
until the Judgement Day shall come, or Universi-
ties cease to be, many undergraduates will enter
the University imperfectly trained in the com-
position of their native tongue.

When I was a practising teacher, I used to take

ENGLISH ESSAYS 121

the freshmen's essays. As I think my friend,
Arthur Benson, has said, this is the most en-
couraging form of teaching that can fall to the
lot of any man. It is not really teaching at all ;
it is a kind of maieutic, almost a magic. There
was very little one could teach them. One could
correct faults. One could point out ugly, in-
correct, or awkward casts of phrase, one could
chastise stock expressions and what Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch calls jargon, one could make
suggestions as to order and arrangement of matter.
In fact, one could find something to say if there
was anything to criticise. But, very often, at the
beginning there was next to nothing. The teach-
ing of English may improve treatment ; it cannot
provide topics. But they soon found topics for
themselves. The miracle of the young mind
expanding under fresh conditions is always
astonishing. Up to the very last I was filled with
wonder at the changes a few weeks could produce.
They taught themselves, of course, not I. Every
one must, in fact, teach himself ; all we can do is
to give him an opportunity to learn; it is true,
we can paralyse him, if we choose.

There would be some who came up well-skilled
for their age in the art of expression; glib, self-
confident, even brilliant. But every experienced
university teacher will agree that there should
be quite as much to do for these as for the others.
There always was something to do for them up to
the end. The art of writing English is no child's
play ; it is an art worth studying ; that is to say,
an art in which perfection is unattainable. The

122 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

better the student the more there is to criticise
in his work. The teacher need not be afraid that
the time will ever come for helpless, speechless
approbation. If English essay palls — and it may
—there are other ways of teaching the same thing.
I shall not be satisfied until the teaching of
English at our schools and Universities is as
thorough and effective as the teaching of French
in France.

If all the young men and women are to have
their due every don should constitute himself a
professor of English. Some of them have already
done this; others will look contemptuous at the
suggestion, others embarrassed. The contemptu-
ous will continue to rejoice in their own mag-
nificence ; the embarrassed will find, if they try,
that the task is not so hard as they imagine.
They would not have reached their present
eminence had they been innocent of the art of
expression. They would not have been there, it
is presumed, had they not some gift, some taste
for teaching. There is no form of teaching more
full of reward to the teacher, more necessary to
the taught.

This kind of teaching fits in naturally with all
the literary Schools, though I have reason to
believe that it is often neglected where it seems
most obvious. I came across one classical
scholar, a schoolmaster, who said he could not
teach English essay. I think his own education
must have been neglected. But the necessity for
such teaching is not confined to the literary
departments. Even if a man specialises in

NEED OF TRAINING IN ENGLISH 123

Mathematics or in Natural Science he cannot
with impunity dismiss his English studies. Most
men follow the sciences for education, or to fit
them for a profession. Education without English
is the wisdom of the dumb : it lacks the one thing
that gives outward value to the whole. And
what sort of professional training is that which
has not made the man fit to put his meaning on
paper so that others can grasp and respect it?
A time will come even to the professed mathema-
tician when mathematical symbols will not express
what he has to say. Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt
has told us how his profession suffers from the
deficient literary training of its entrants. I mis-
doubt the other technical professions would say
the like if they found a voice. In the literary
courses of instruction at the University other
influences may make up for defect of training in
English. In mathematics and science and the
technical courses that is not so.

The power to write English is a possession in
itself : it is also an assistance in business. A love
of English literature may not be useful for busi-
ness ; but it is for life beyond rubies and pearls.
There are probably many who can be trained to
write decent English, who will never love a good
book for its own sake. You can offer to such men
good books ; they will prefer the bad, or none at
all — perhaps only one. I once knew an under-
graduate who confided to me that he found it
saved trouble always to read in one book. I
enquired : What book ? He replied, Handley

124 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

Cross. Now Handley Cross is a good book ; but
it is insufficient nutriment, when unvaried. It is
useless to try coercion with such folk; their
nature will defeat you. They are often lovable,
trustworthy, and capable; the schoolmaster has
already had his chance with them ; where he has
failed we are not likely to succeed. For them no
provision need be made of bellettristic studies.

There are also those natural lovers of good
books, for whom the libraries of the University
are a wide-spread pleasure ground. They know
the way ; they need no guide. All they need is
a friend with whom to speak of books ; the wise,
the fortunate Professor is he who can supply that
need, who can draw a circle of such young men
round himself.

But there is a large and indeterminate class of
men and women, who have a vague, undeveloped
taste for good books. There should always be a
stirring and sympathetic Professor of English
literature to catch some of these, and set them
reading. At such popular work the men of learn-
ing smile a superior smile; such cheap successes
are not for them. It is true that such students
will rarely train into scholars ; their labours will
not benefit the world, they will not increase
learning; but the mark of a civilised man is the
use he makes of leisure, and no better use can be
made of leisure than to read a good book. If you
can implant the love of good books in a single
mind you start a new centre of book-loving in the
world. There is no more humanising influence.
The children of these young men and women will

THE LOVE OF GOOD BOOKS 125

have the chance that is denied to so many, the
chance that is worth all the teachers in the world —
a home where books are treated as friends, and
introduced in their turn to the children of the
house. The humbler the position where this love
of books arises, the greater its value for life. If
you have horses, shooting, motor-cars, travelling,
golf, you may be able to do without books ; but,
if you have none of these things, a single book can
serve to extend the horizon of life — too narrow for
us all.

The teaching of English ought to be all-pervading
in an University. All should learn there to say
what they mean in workmanlike fashion. Some
should learn the pride of an artist in good work.
Many should acquire there and fix in their hearts
for ever the love of good books ; by this I mean
first the love of English books, for English books
are the most accessible to us and inferior to none ;
but the love of English books leads on to other
books in other languages ; and the book-lover will
seldom be a bad scholar. He will also learn to use
a book as an instrument of knowledge ; and those
who have learned that have broken half the path
to any study, permanent or temporary.

Hitherto I have been trying to set down what
young men and women need from the University
apart from their special studies ; composition for
business, reading for life. That all should get
these, from an imperfect institution, is too much
to expect ; that many should get both is what we
have to work for. But now I approach the

126 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

specialised university studies, whose number
increases day by day. In my own University
an Honours degree can be taken in the follow-
ing subjects separately : Classics, Mathematics,
Natural Sciences, Philosophy, Law, History,
Modern Languages, Engineering, Economics,
Theology, and Oriental Languages. Mathemati-
cians have a language of their own; the more
reason that they should return from time to time
and commune with their fellows and their great
ancestry in the language which unites our race.
It is a great thing to make discoveries in natural
science, inventions in engineering; but, if the
man of science wishes to make his discoveries and
inventions known, if he wishes to pass on the
torch to others, he must be able to speak and to
write so as to command attention. The medical
man, the surgeon, is not only a man of learning,
a practitioner; he has also to be a man of the
world ; and the world is swayed by words. The
lawyer has to be an expert in the use and meaning
of words ; any academic drilling, however severe,
that he may receive at the University, will tend
to fit him for his professional career. He will also
have to know men ; men are not to be learnt either
from laws or books, or both, but more knowledge
of men is to be obtained by a study of the great
writers, than by a study of the law alone. The
efficacy, the currency, of philosophy and econo-
mics are greatly impaired by the jargon with
which many modern economists and philosophers
choose to disfigure their pages. Plato was no
superficial trifler with philosophy; yet he said

ENGLISH IN THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS 127

all he had to say in the ordinary language of his
day. Adam Smith was no mean economist, yet
he found no need for an esoteric vocabulary.
How different from some I could name ! For
theologians I am sure English is useful ; it should
also be useful to students of oriental languages.

In dealing with these subjects I have confined
myself to a statement of the needs of all students.
Those needs, whether for business or life, include
lucidity in the teacher, and powers of self-
expression for the students.

I now come to the three great literary Schools,
which in some form or other exist in almost all
our Universities : the Classical School, the History
School, the School of Modern Languages and
Literature from which the English School may
or may not be separated.

In these Schools, I take it, the students may be
divided into two classes, according to their
different needs. There are some who, having
received from early childhood a methodical, con-
tinuous, and thorough education, require and
deserve from the University the best, the most
coherent, the most extended, the most en-
lightened conclusion and consummation to their
training by way of letters. Their framework of
humane knowledge is ready. They come to us
to complete the edifice. For them provision
must be made.

And then there is also, especially in our newer
Universities, a considerable class, eager for know-
ledge and illumination, but less completely

128 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

equipped at the outset of their University career.
For them a similar provision is suitable ; but the
range of studies cannot be so wide.

In old days it used to be the fashion to read the
Bible. The man who knew one book thoroughly,
and that book the Bible, had no contemptible
education. The Bible contains, in the most noble
and purest language, a complete literature, a
complete picture of national and individual life.
Legend and history, poetry, drama, rhetoric,
philosophy, law, geography, human nature, all
are there. And with them a hope, a vision, a
plan of life. Even the secondary authors have
been inspired ; somewhere in the range from John
Bunyan through Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to
John Henry Newman very diverse minds will find
congenial instruction. But, putting exegesis
aside, it is partly because we have stopped reading
our Bible that many modern educational devices
are needed.

The comprehensive unity of Bible study is also
to be found in a good Classical School. The study
of language and of the art of expression, poetry,
tragedy, comedy, oratory, history, law, philo-
sophy— all find a place in it. All there are studied,
not in text-books, but in the works of the great
men. The range of profitable study is so accur-
ately determined by a wise tradition that the
restrictions of the examination are as harmless as
may be.

But there is one defect in any and every
Classical School : there is nothing modern in it,

THE CLASSICS AND ENGLISH 129

not even any English literature. I think this
defect is more apparent than real as regards
English. Wherever the best traditions prevail
in a Classical School, sufficient attention is paid
to the niceties of English composition. Invention,
order, proportion, construction, can be learned
from classical models ; though a little criticism will
not come amiss. Classical scholars have for the
most part acquired the love of good books ; you
will generally find them well-read in English
literature. What they need from their teachers —
and no doubt often get — is to be constantly
reminded of the modern applications of their
ancient studies, of modern parallels to their
ancient authors. Some of our most distinguished
Professors of English literature have been trained
in a Classical School. I do not think there is need
in any Classical School to make special provision
for English literature. There is danger in sub-
mitting the delicate flowers of English literature
to the methods of the lecture room, the schedules
and tests of the examination room. If in any
conditions English literature is being spontane-
ously studied, it is best to leave those conditions
alone.

The History Schools in our Universities are for
the most part very flourishing institutions. By
their nature they must be Schools of English.
Every student who aspires to success must have
constant practice in writing essays on historical
or theoretical subjects, in composing neat, well-
arranged, well-expressed answers to questions.
I find them wanting, however, in one respect.

130 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

They lay great stress on original authorities, and
endeavour by their examinations to secure that
students shall have practice in making use of
contemporary material. But every author is an
original authority for his own time. When there-
is an abundance of authors of the first rank, who
are worth reading for their own sake and also
for the information they contain, why not make
use of these? I give a list of authors some of
whose works ought, at an University, to be read
alongside with English History and used as illus-
trative material — Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon,
More, Hobbes, Dryden, Halifax, De Foe, Swift,
Bolingbroke, Burke, Cobbett, Carlyle, Dickens,
Thackeray. The list might be greatly extended,
but these will serve as a sample. I dislike
coercion as applied to English literature. But the
least objectionable form of coercion is to tell the
students to read the books, and intimate that
they will be or may be examined on their subject-
matter. Applied in this way, coercion may not
lead to disgust, but may form a taste.

I hope some day to see a School of Modern
History as comprehensive as the best Classical
School, with language and literature as its two
wings. But probably the men and women do
not come up at present sufficiently well prepared
in modern subjects. Meamvhile it seems reason-
able that there should be two modern Schools :
one historical, in which literature should not be
ignored ; one literary, in which history should
not be ignored. In the literary School English
language and literature will find its own place.

THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH 131

And now I come to that part of my subject
which may appear to be most important, though
I am not sure that it is. What do those students
want who enter for an Honours School of English
language and literature ? What they think they
want is one thing; what they need may be
another; what the Professor desires to teach
them may be a third.

I think such students have in their minds a
vague, sometimes even a precise idea, that English
literature is a great and glorious thing ; they think
that they would like to give their time of study
to the masterpieces; they feel that by so doing
they will achieve some knowledge of the race to
which they were born, of its history and the
thoughts on which that history is built. Are they
far wrong in this idea ? Can we better the con-
ception which they have formed of their needs ?

The exalted precedents of Oxford and Cam-
bridge and London would lead us to believe that
we may. Their Schools of English language and
literature appear to be framed on the hypothesis
that before the student is fit to appreciate the
structure and harmonies of his own tongue, before
he can rightly taste the works of art expressed in
it, he must have gone through a training in
language. It is assumed, it is perhaps a fair
assumption, that he will not have received a
thorough training in language before he comes up.
Granted that he should have some drill in lan-
guage, what language should be chosen as a
medium for instruction ? Should it be a language
which opens a great modern literature, suitable

132 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

for comparison with his own? Should it be
French, German, Italian, Spanish — or should it
be Middle-English and Anglo-Saxon ?

I think the question can be solved by the answer
to another question. Is the interest of the aver-
age student who enters the English School prin-
cipally philological, or is it literary, historical,
humanistic ? Is it archaeological or is it modern ?
I think the question admits of only one answer ;
it is historical and modern, rather than archaeo-
logical and philological.

If that is so, we may have to give the student
something he does not exactly ask for; we may
have to give him training in language. But we
should open to him, at least, those languages which
give him the richest return in history, literature,
and modern knowledge. If the choice, to be
made on those lines, lay between Middle-English
and Anglo-Saxon, and say modern German, can
there be any doubt how the choice would go ?

I trust that I am not hostile to any form of
learning, but I cannot bring myself to regard
Middle-English and Anglo-Saxon as in any way
necessary to an university course in English
literature. I reckon such studies as post-graduate
rather than pre-graduate.

If any student desires to take these early
tongues, they will serve to give him the language
training that he needs. I would not curb the
zeal of those who wish to teach, of those who
wish to learn. But I would compel no student
to learn Middle-English or Anglo-Saxon. The
students should be permitted to offer for their

MIDDLE-ENGLISH AND ANGLO-SAXON 133

language training Latin, French, German, Italian,
or Spanish, one or more. A student who desires
to study English literature does not want — he
may want, but there is no conclusive reason why
he should want — to study any English author
earlier than Chaucer.

Again, the student of English and English
literature does want, though he may not know it,
some historical knowledge. The books are part
of the history ; the history is necessary to explain
the books. But the history that he requires
should be given in the form of history, the whole
history — political, constitutional, economic, social,
literary ; and not in the form of isolated history
of literature. Of all forms of history, the history
of literature is most dumb to the uninstructed.
If you have read the books, it may illuminate by
criticism and comparison, and by explanation
of progression, succession, innovation, and growth.
But if you have not read the books, it is without
depth and meaning.

I have no doubt the practice is better than the
appearance. When I read in a syllabus that one
subject is the outlines of English literature from
1350-1832, I do not see how a student can come
before the examiners without cramming a text-
book. When I study the examination paper, I
see that he may, if he is fairly well-read in English
literature. But I know enough of undergraduates
to doubt whether the average student will take
such a risk. Such a subject is an invitation to
cram the text-book. You can never tell what may
be set. The invitation will be accepted.

134 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

To supplement the knowledge derived from the
direct study of the authors general history of
England is required — methodical, comprehensive,
not necessarily detailed. It might begin with
Edward III, when our modern literature begins.
It would press lightly on the period from Richard
II to Elizabeth, when great works are scanty.
From Elizabeth to the present day it would find
little opportunity for rest. People say we are
not a race of ideas and imagination. Let us be
judged by our literature. They say we are not
an artistic people. Let us be judged by our
cathedrals, our churches, our mansions, our
gardens, our villages, our furniture, our china, our
portraits, our landscapes. Art working in matter
may have had with us its sterile periods; just
now we are too self-conscious to be creative ; but
art working in words has been continuously fertile
from the time of Shakespeare and the Authorised
Version. It is fertile to-day.

Thus the history of our nation and the history
of its literature go hand in hand. The study of
each will gain infinitely from the study of the
other. There is hardly any historical theme that
cannot be illustrated from the best writers of the
time; hardly any writer who cannot be better
understood if the history of his time is known.
Our writers have often taken a part in politics;
they have shared the full life of the nation. Mr.
Wingfield-Stratford's History of English Patriotism
is a good example of the worth to history of a wide
outlook upon literature.

Of history, of connected, methodical historical

EXAMINATION IN ENGLISH 135

knowledge, the value to the student of literature
appears so obvious that I wonder it can ever have
been overlooked. An ad hoc excursion into history
is the customary prelude to an edition of a literary
work. But what is written or got up for a specific
purpose is never so illuminating as knowledge
which forms part of an assimilated whole. Separ-
ate, if you must, your literary School from your
historical School ; but the two should always live
in the closest intimacy and alliance.

As mines and manufactures devastate the
countryside, so do examination and the methods
of teaching connected with it devastate the
matter which they attack. Theological examina-
tion spoils the Bible, grammatical examination
spoils Greek, physiological examination spoils the
frog. Examination, like mines and manufacture,
is necessary ; but to examine in English literature
is like opening a coal mine in the Lake District.
Why is examination necessary ? Examination is
a form of peine forte et dure^ to compel the recalci-
trant to plead. Why not settle the matter out of
court? There is the greatest literature in the
world, written in your own tongue, why not read
it, dispensing with examiners ? There is some-
thing in it for every taste. We are a political
race, a race of politicians, and the first-rate
political works that have been written in English
make up for themselves a sufficient student's
library. It is rare for philosophers to cultivate
the gift of expression — they are, no doubt, too
busy thinking -but we have one philosopher at

136 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

least — Berkeley — who is worth reading for his
English as well as for his thought. If you must
have commentaries, there is a succession of
accomplished critics. If you are fond of travel,
you can steep your mind in good English, without
leaving the company of great travellers. If your
chief interest is in sport, there is a score of sports-
men who demonstrate that the horse, the gun, and
the rod, are not jealous enemies of the pen, who
prove that the man of intelligence having some-
thing in his heart to say will seldom fail to say it
well. And if you do not want to read, why read
at all? There are other things in life besides
books. It is a pity to miss that joy, that illumina-
tion; but if you are sure it is not for you then
leave it alone.

Where the door of a study is difficult to enter,
some compulsion, no doubt, is necessary for the
beginners. All of us are lazy, and beginnings are
apt to be dull. But, once the student has learnt
to read, the door of English literature stands wide
open. He has but to walk in and help himself.
Even expense is no obstacle to-day.

However, our freshman does not go to the
University merely to follow his favourite study.
He goes there to get the hall-mark of an university
degree — he would like Honours, if he can get them ;
his ambition aspires to a class. That being so,
examinations and all their machinery of schedule
and syllabus are necessary. I have, for the pur-
pose of this chapter, been looking over examina-
tion papers set in the English Schools of various
Universities. Sometimes they seem to me de-

HISTORY WITH LITERATURE 137

signed to test learning, rather than intelligence
and knowledge. But on the whole they are
framed with great delicacy and ingenuity. How
much greater the field for the exercise of that
ingenuity when history and literature offer their
united permutations and combinations ! An
examination question should not call for recondite
learning; it should handle the familiar in an
unexpected way. It should set the student
hastily to rebuild his old materials in a new shape.
The better trained his intelligence, the greater
his command of his subject, the more skilfully he
will be able to effect the desired reconstruction.
If there is historical material on the one hand,
and literary material on the other, the range,
interest, and variety of the problems that can
be set without leaving well-trodden ground may
be four times as great as when literature is
separated from history.

That English literature should be widely
studied at the University must be our desire. If
it must be taught the object of the teaching should
be to give the student something he needs but
cannot get for himself. An accurate sense of the
meaning and quality of words, a feeling for
rhythm and flavour and association, those can be
suggested to him. New outlooks and lines of
progression, new affinities, contrasts, and com-
parisons— those can be put before him. But,
above all, the kinetic unity of national life
and thought and literary expression is a thing
that he may miss, or only attain after painful

138 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

and fruitless wanderings. And that can only be
made clear by the most skilled and inspiring
teacher, if history, language, and literature are
treated as various manifestations of a single
spirit.

CHAPTER VIII
EXAMINATIONS

THE unquestioning belief in examinations that
possessed our ancestors is passing away. Open
competition for posts in the Civil Service still
retains public confidence and favour, as giving
an equal chance to all in proportion to the in-
struction they have received, the ability they own,
the industry, perseverance, and force of will, that
they have displayed. Examinations are not
beloved but they are trusted. Equality of oppor-
tunity is an ideal, which corresponds to our
ever unsatisfied yearning for justice, and in so
far as competitive examinations secure equality
of opportunity they merit the support that is
somewhat blindly given. Opportunities are not,
and never can be, equal ; but examinations tend
to remove one class of inequalities. The road
cannot be made as smooth as a mirror; but
some of the roughest obstacles can be removed.
Nothing creates, or should create, a more pungent
sense of injustice than public advancement
without merit. The faith in examinations as
a test of merit has at least this ground, that no
suspicion has ever fallen on any class of public
examinations in this country. Favour and all
kinds of unjust discrimination have been con-

139

140 EXAMINATIONS

stantly excluded. The eyes of justice being
always veiled, the justice dispensed by examiners
must be purblind; but it is impersonal, equal,
and impartial. Justice, blind or seeing, is so
rare, that we should cherish it wherever it can
be found.

The early reformers identified instruction with
education. By testing the results of instruction
they thought they were testing education. They
multiplied examinations and thought that thereby
they would improve education. At the most
they improved instruction ; but examinations not
only concentrate undue attention upon the results
of instruction; they are bad for the instruction
itself. They prejudice in the first place the
liberty of teaching and the liberty of learning.
Every teacher differs from every other teacher ;
if you force a teacher to work on fixed
lines you cramp the exercise of his special
gifts. School differs from school; if you sub-
ject them all to the same tests, you establish
an undesirable uniformity. Child differs from
child; the examination test ignores diversity.
Education is not identical with instruction ; it is
easy by examination to test instruction and the
results of instruction ; it is not possible so to test
education. First secure that the candidates have
had the desired education; it is then possible to
ascertain by examination what profit has been
drawn from the learning and instruction which
is part, but only a part, of the education. But
there should be no more examination than is

EVILS OF EXAMINATION 141

necessary. However good the examination, how-
ever wisely it be devised to test promise, ability,
intelligence, rather than information and the
power of unintelligent repetition, its effect on
the mind must be burdensome, exacting, and
depressing, except for those exceptional and
light-hearted beings who take all tasks easily.

Large numbers increase the evil. If few are
to be tested examination can be thoughtful and
responsive to varying kinds of merit. Where
large numbers are concerned, the methods of
examination must become mechanical; marks
must be awarded according to fixed canons;
individual judgement on the work of several
thousand candidates is impossible. Since there
are many examining bodies the numbers with
which each body has to deal are reduced; but
other drawbacks arise; a multiple slavery is
imposed upon those schools which, to suit the
various needs of their students, have to prepare
candidates for several different schemes.

We have all been saying these things for many
years ; they have now been enshrined in a report
of the Advisory Committee of the Board of
Education ; so we need not say them any more.
It is more important now to point out that
examinations are a necessary evil. We can then
go about our business and try to get good out
of evil, which has been the most ordinary task
of man, since Eve listened to the serpent.

The evil effects of examination — the mechanical
and oppressive methods of instruction that it

142 EXAMINATIONS

encourages, the anxiety, the excitement, the undue
stimulation that it creates — increase in inverse
proportion to the age of the candidates. In the
elementary schools these evils once were evident ;
they have been already diminished, perhaps to
the limits of possible relief. The headmaster
will, of course, examine his pupils from time to
time to test their progress. That is a legitimate
use of examination tests and in no way interferes
with the liberty of teaching and learning. The
inspector will occasionally examine each school,
but rather for the purpose of testing the efficiency
of the school in its own appointed work, than
with the intention of trying each child by refer-
ence to an identical code. Through the relaxation
of such trials, there may be some loss of thorough-
ness and severity of instruction, but what may
have been lost in specific instruction has been
gained in education under a more elastic system.
Before the age of sixteen examination should
be reduced to a minimum. The headmaster's
test of his pupils, the inspector's test of the school
and of each class, should suffice; except for one
purpose, the awarding of scholarships and free
places in secondary or other intermediate schools.
But this test should be so far as possible a test
of fitness and desire to learn, rather than a hard-
run race for a limited number of prizes. The
headmaster, rather than any examiners, should
be able to judge which of his scholars are fit to
undergo secondary or technical instruction. The
examination is only needed to correct aberrations
of standard or of judgement — to check the school-

COMPETITION OF CHILDREN 143

master's decisions. Without some such check
we should make the schoolmasters control the
future life of every girl and boy. Moreover,
examination gives a chance to the child who is
clever but idle and inattentive to school lessons.
A schoolmaster might be tempted to forget that
it is the clever children — rather than the docile—
who repay cultivation. The tortoise once beat
the hare, but as a rule the hare can afford to
spend some time in sleep. The normal odds
against the tortoise, however wakeful, must be
very long. To continue in this vein of sporting
analogies, competitive examination before sixteen
is like racing two-year-olds ; the colt or the filly
may not actually suffer, but premature effort
should be avoided; the course should be short
and feather-weights should be up. Competitive
examinations have much in common with the
contests of the turf; except that there is no
betting, and horses are not pulled.

The following points of policy seem now to be
agreed, though I dare say when they come to
be discussed some things may be said against
them.

The first school-leaving certificate from second-
ary schools should be granted about sixteen.
The examination for such a certificate should be
a qualifying and not a competitive test. The
certificate should be evidence of continuous and
satisfactory attendance at efficient schools up
to the time of testing ; it should also affirm that
the scholar had shown under examination

144 EXAMINATIONS

adequate proficiency in the ordinary subjects of
instruction. Another school-leaving certificate
should be granted to those who stay at school
till eighteen or nineteen, on similar conditions.

If severe competition is avoided until the age
of sixteen, the chief danger is past for boys,
and greater pressure can be applied to the
negligent, greater encouragement can be given
to the willing. Girls require more careful treat-
ment up to the age of nineteen at least. I see
no objection to competitive examination of boys
at the age of eighteen or nineteen, provided
the proper course of education is not abandoned,
provided the proper balance of studies is pre-
served. No doubt the competitive element in
schooling has been exaggerated in the past ; but
some reforming societies seem to go too far in
endeavouring to exclude all competition and
rivalry. Education is a preparation for life, and
life is a highly competitive pursuit, alev apiorev-
eiv fcal VTreipo%ov 8/j,fjLevai a\\wv is a motto for
heroes; but most of us (who are not heroes) are
prone to an easy belief that we are doing our
best, unless we are stimulated by seeing that our
fellows are doing better.

The chief competitive examinations at the
higher school-leaving age are the entrance
scholarship examinations at the Colleges of
Oxford and Cambridge. Those examinations
are admirable in one way ; the work of each
competitor is studied thoughtfully for evidence
of promise, as well as for performance; marks

SCHOLARSHIP TESTS 145

may be given, but they do not govern the award ;
one College may discern merit which another
has not seen. But they are in my opinion too
highly specialised; it is not desirable that boys
of seventeen should specialise in mathematics,
in science, in history, to the exclusion of other
subjects of general education. The higher school-
leaving certificate, when established and fully
valued, may correct this tendency, and secure
a solid foundation for the specialists. A mathe-
matician, for instance, or a boy who has studied
science, ought to have formed some clear historical
conceptions, and learnt some geography, and
studied at least one foreign language ; a classical
boy should have made some way in mathematics
and formed some notion of scientific methods;
but it is not necessary that such boys should be
able to pass a stiff examination in uncongenial
subjects. To have studied a subject is often
sufficient; it is not necessary to remember all
one has learnt. The good mind retains what it
needs, and discards the superfluous. The effects
of the training, if it has been thorough, will
never be lost. But all should be subjected alike
to a thorough test in English.

Similarly an examination which deals with
language alone (like some examinations for
scholarships in Modern Languages) does not
suffice to test the acquirements and the promise
of boys at eighteen. Language is not an end in
itself; it is the key to the mind of the wise, the
symbol by which tradition is handed down.
Any examination in language of boys leaving

146 EXAMINATIONS

school should test the use that such boys have
made of their study; it should be a test in the
literature and history that goes with the language.

I am not at all satisfied at present with some
of our entrance scholarship examinations in
history. A boy, who is going to study history
to advantage at the University, needs above all
the knowledge of two foreign languages. His-
torical fact, historical sequence, historical method,
these he can study at the University. All that
it is necessary to test at this age is historical
intelligence and comprehension. For such a
test a certain amount of knowledge must be
assumed, but it need not be very extensive.
Having examined in history a very great number
of boys of seventeen and eighteen I can say with
some certainty that boys of this age are capable
of understanding history; it is possible to set
them questions that test not only historical
information but also historical insight — the
capacity to understand the mutual causation
of events, great men, peoples, customs, ideas,
land-shapes, and climates.

It is also easy, too easy, for schoolboys to
acquire a considerable mass of historical fact.
But I would rather, at any time, have taken into
my College a boy with good training in languages
and literature and promise of historical com-
prehension, than a boy who had at his fingers'
ends the whole historical sequence of several
world periods.

Thus there is not much at eighteen to separate
the historical student from the student of litera-

SCHOLARSHIPS IN HISTORY 147

ture. Both should have had up to that age a
similar training and should show similar know-
ledge. The difference between them is a difference
of taste and bent which can be allowed to assert
itself later. Language is of so great importance
to the student of history, history of so great
importance to the student of language, that these
twro classes of scholars need not be separated in
schoolboy training or testing.

Coming to examinations at the University,
I have said elsewhere what I have to say about
matriculation tests. Other examinations at the
University are either professional or educational.
Professional examinations at the University
should have a strong educational element. The
German school training, with its greater duration
and severity, may afford a sufficient groundwork
for university specialisation. Our school training
does not and cannot. Part of this groundwork
should be supplied at the University. Moreover,
a man cannot learn to be a lawyer, a doctor, an
engineer, at the University. He can acquire
at the University a sound scientific basis for his
professional studies. This can be tested. The
University should also strive to secure for him
a sound training in the art of expression, and
a wide outlook on adjoining branches of know-
ledge. The first of these, at least, should be
tested ; the other if possible. But at some time
or other, preferably after leaving the University,
he will have to serve an apprenticeship in a
lawyer's chambers, in an hospital, in engineering

148 EXAMINATIONS

works. How far the knowledge there acquired
can be tested by examination, and by what
methods, I leave to the experts.

In the educational subjects there should be
a certain practical element. Those who study
mathematics or natural science do not all study
merely to improve their minds and widen their
outlook; some of them, it is to be presumed,
have a professional end which they seek. Such
professional ends should be kept in view in teach-
ing and examination, if these and similar studies
are not to prove blind-alleys.

But, taking the educational studies in a block,
they fall into two main groups, the exact sciences
and the inexact sciences. Each group has its
own drawbacks as a preparation for life. The
exact sciences are those which deal with things;
their method is a method of exact observa-
tion, weighing, measuring, counting, dissecting—
analysis in all its forms. But life has many
elements which cannot be measured or exactly
analysed, but require to be estimated by judgement
and imagination. The examination in exact
science, to correct the effects of exclusive
attention to things which can be proved, should
endeavour to test imagination and synthetical
comprehension. The mutual relations of the
separate sciences (which are not really separate)
should be continually brought under notice.

The inexact sciences, if I may so call them,
are those which deal with man, his nature, his
history, his social relations, and the words by

SCIENCES, EXACT AND INEXACT 149

which he expresses or endeavours to express his
mind. Here imagination, intuitive sympathy,
and all kinds of intellectual short-cuts have their
full scope. The results of such estimative
processes can rarely be brought to a practical
test ; the more need in the inexact sciences to
insist on accuracy and exactitude, wherever these
qualities can be tested. Proof should be required
wherever proof is possible; reasoning should be
demanded, wherever reasoning can be applied;
that very inexact instrument, the word, should
be forced to take on so much accuracy and nicety
as it will bear.

Exactitude is all important in life, but skilful
guess-work is also needed in every art of life.
In history exactitude is needed as a corrective;
in science imagination and speculation should be
encouraged. It is hardly too much to say that
every scientific discovery begins with a guess,
verified thereafter by experiment and further
observation. In science there is yet one other
danger; scientific authority, professing to be
based on exact proof, is allowed to enjoy excessive
prestige ; when a grown man is learning he should
be encouraged to test his authorities, however
august, though not, of course, with undue levity.
The dogmas of science are from time to time
reminted, but they are often much worn before
they are called in.

Studies may also be divided into abstract and
concrete. The inexact sciences have their ab-
stract section, which we call ethical, psychological,

150 EXAMINATIONS

economic, and political philosophy. The exact
sciences have their own philosophy. Above all
.the sciences stands metaphysical philosophy.

The philosophical side of exact and inexact
sciences should not be neglected in examination.
But I have nothing to say about examination
in philosophy by itself, except that from the
examiners' point of view it makes no difference
whether the examination be in Ancient or in
Modern Philosophy; and that I should entirely
mistrust an examination in philosophy of candi-
dates who had not proved in other ways their
knowledge of the human and material world
about which we philosophise.

I say, once more, that examination cannot test
education; it can only test the results of study
and instruction. If a boy has been for a certain
number of years at an efficient school you have
a guarantee of education. If he has also lived
in a good home you have a still better guarantee
of education. The second cannot be entered on
a certificate; the first can. Thus a leaving
certificate, as designed, gives a proof of education
as well as of the results of study and instruction.
It is worth at least twice as much as a certificate
granted on the results of examination alone.
An university degree in like manner should be
a certificate of residence in a teaching University,
and should not be awarded merely on examination.
I have great sympathy for the external students
of London University who have in the past by
examination obtained a degree without residence.

TESTS FOR DEGREES 151

It is natural that they should be attached to
the examining institution from which they have
got so much. But now that teaching Universities
are within the reach of the chief part of those
who are competent to profit by their instruction,
their tradition, and their atmosphere, university
degrees should only be granted to students who
have had an university education. It follows
that degrees should not be refused on the ground
of sex to those who have had an university
education, and have passed the other tests.

A degree being in part a guarantee of university
education, degree examinations should test know-
ledge rather than learning. Professors are men
of learning, but they should not aspire to create
men in their own image — to usurp the Divine
prerogative. It is not the first business of a
Professor to train other Professors; his first
business is to train the young for life. If the
training is right, he need not be anxious about
the supply of Professors. If the undergraduate
training is right, and the post-graduate training
is right, the supply of the right sort of Professors
will never be lacking.

A stiff examination is regarded with awe and
admiration, especially by those who never could
pass one. But an easy examination, with sound
and thoughtful examiners, is a better test of
knowledge and ability. The syllabus should
comprise less than the students can fully assimi-
late; extraneous, or supererogatory knowledge
will easily make its presence felt, and, with wise

152 EXAMINATIONS

examiners, will tell in the class list. The best
students will always want to wander a little
beyond the appointed path; if the syllabus is
too exacting, the liberty of learning is curtailed.

I cannot speak of all examinations, but in
those which I know best — historical examinations
— questions should almost always contain some
kind of problem or rider; if possible, an easy
problem that has not been handled in the books.
The knowledge tested should not go beyond that
which a man of second-class stamp should possess.
The first-class man will show himself by the ease
and skill with which he moves in a field where
he ought to be at home. If he is learned he can
always show his learning on whatever questions
may be set ; examinations, however, are not to
test learning, but sound knowledge and ability.
It is hard work to set a good examination paper ;
none harder, that I know. The examiner should
pass all his knowledge through his mind to
discover new points of view, new associations.
To create a new question means that you have
found a new aspect of the obvious and familiar.
But as a rule old questions can be given a new
face. The examiner who tries to vary his papers
by straying into new fields of fact will almost
certainly set unfair questions; and unfair
questions should never be set. Questions should
always demand a little less learning than the
second-class man need be expected to possess.

I feel sure, from observing the methods of the
best examiners, that the same principles apply
to examinations in law, and literature. Examina-

PROBLEMS IN QUESTIONS 153

tions in language are always problem papers,
unless the candidate knows the passages set for
translation. In the Classical languages the well-
read candidate knows most of the passages that
can fairly be set. That is unlucky; memory is
apt to become too important. I never knew how
hard Juvenal was until a new passage was dis-
covered, for which no commentary existed.
Stock translations hold the field. Sessilis obba
is well translated by " squab noggin/' though
" squat " is better; if a candidate gives " squab
noggin " it is obvious that his memory is to be
praised rather than his invention. He has lost
a chance of doing better than Conington.

In modern languages, especially French, it is
hard to find passages which are difficult without
being recondite in vocabulary. But translation
into French can be made by well-selected passages
to present an abundance of crucial difficulties,
that do not pass fair limits.

I am told that in the old Mathematical Tripos
the problem method had been overdone. I bow
to expert opinion; but, so far as my experience
extends, I should always prefer the problem
test to the bookwork test. To do the problems
you must have some familiarity with the book-
work.

If the examination papers are well set, if they
neither demand too much learning nor too little,
if they are framed to test intelligence, then the
question arises of marking. There are two
methods of marking, by numbers, and by classes.

154 EXAMINATIONS

If the choice between these two methods is open,
I unhesitatingly prefer the class mark with modifi-
cations; a +,a, a—, etc. And for this reason,
that the examiner, in assigning an a or a /?, or a <5,
is forced to give a judgement on the paper as a
whole. If numerical marks are adopted, the
examiner, after marking each question in turn
and adding up his total, is apt to think that his
work is done. He is prone to regard his marks
as the act of God ; they must not be tampered
with. If cross-examined as to why he gave a mark
which does not seem to agree with his judgement,
as expressed in his own words, he may say :
" I don't know; the candidate is a good mark-
getter" (or a bad mark-getter, as the case may be).

But it is his business to watch the marks, and
see that the total, as well as the items, represents
his deliberate judgement. If he does that, there
is not much to choose between the two methods.

The rivalry between the two methods — of
numerical marks and class- judgement — corre-
sponds pretty closely to the rivalry between
mechanical marking and impression marking
which raged among Classical scholars many years
ago. There were three fellows of St. Sophia's
and three fellows of St. Michael's examining in
a certain competition. The Sophites stood for
" marks " ; the Michaelites for " impression."
St. Sophia's happened to bring out the scholars of
their own College first : St. Michael's preferred
the Michaelites; but that was an accident.
The point is that differently considered the
candidates came out in different order. I forget

MARKS VERSUS IMPRESSION 155

how the matter was settled. But, unless the
Sophites corrected their " marks " by " im-
pression," I would a priori support the
Michaelites.

It is very difficult to persuade people who are
only accustomed to marks to consider impression
as well. Though you may persuade them that
they have brought out the candidates in the
wrong order they will not regard the error as
indicating any fault on their own part. It is
difficult to bring home to those who are accus-
tomed to produce numerical totals that their
particular duty with regard to a class list is to
put the candidates into three or four classes :
in fact, to give a class- judgement on each candidate.
It is also very difficult for those who are accus-
tomed to marking by class- judgement to commute
their class- judgements into numerical marks. And
this is a real difficulty ; for in class marks a =
comes next to ft + + . Yet a = means that
first class quality appears in the paper and
ft + + that second class quality alone is evident.
There should be a f airly big numerical gap between
them. This difficulty is met in practice (where
examiners have to be fettered by rules) by allow-
ing the assignment of marks up to a certain
percentage for positive merit which does not
receive recognition in the total of items.

I have said enough to show that marking in
examinations is a very difficult thing; it is one
of the inexact sciences; in fact, it is rather an
art than a science. But only once in a wide ex-
perience have I met an examiner who brought the

156 EXAMINATIONS

candidates out in an order which conformed to
no recognisable standard of merit. He was a
man of great distinction ; but he was never
employed again by that examining body. How-
ever, personal equations vary. Yet the personal
equation cannot be wholly discounted by appoint-
ing two examiners to examine every paper. If
you have two examiners, they may mark on
different scales; one may be a " flat-marker,"
that is, he does not bring out the due proportional
difference between the best and the worst; the
marks of the other may exhibit a normal curve.
To average these two will not produce a satis-
factory result : the marks of the " flat-marker "
should first be " spread " by proportional in-
crease and reduction. A "flat-marker" should
always be mistrusted; he has no sound sense of
proportion; he approaches the impartiality of
the illustrious examiner who gave almost all
his candidates ft — , adding a query to his mark.
If he cannot see the true scale difference between
good and bad, it is doubtful whether he will
rightly distinguish between candidates of more
nearly equal merit. But, apart from differences
of scale between two good examiners, if two
examiners mark the work of a certain candidate,
the one at forty, the other at ninety (which I
have known to happen) justice is not done by
splitting the difference. One of them is probably
much more nearly right than the other; strict
justice would require that a third opinion should
be taken, unless the two after meeting can
agree upon a mark. But the referee should at

TRAINING OF EXAMINERS 157

least sample the work of the other candidates;
you cannot mark one paper by itself. Marking
is a relative, not an absolute judgement.

Arithmetic papers are easy to mark; history
papers much more difficult; an English essay
perhaps the hardest of all. But if I go on much
longer I shall shake the faith of the public in
numerical marks altogether. That I do not want
to^do. For in open competitions, where a number
of subjects and different examiners are concerned,
numerical marks are necessary, and they are
probably as good a test of the kind of merit they
are capable of testing as any other test that can
be applied. They do not do absolute justice;
but, if examiners are carefully chosen, and their
work is tested from time to time, a very tolerable
approximation may be obtained.

But one thing I should like to require : that
every aspirant examiner should go to school with
an expert and trustworthy old hand, who will
teach him what kind of papers ought to be set,
and how to appraise the results. Otherwise he
will do a vast amount of damage before he learns
this trade, and perhaps may never learn the art
after all. I shudder to think of all the blunders
I should have committed had I not early in life
found myself in partnership with Mr. A. and
Professor B. Examining is an art, and cannot be
picked up by rule of thumb, unless you are
prepared to spoil a great deal of good material.
Experience teaches; but it is cheaper to learn
from the experience of others. In examining
you can have a good tradition, or a bad tradition.

158 EXAMINATIONS

Open competition leads to cramming, in various
forms. One definition of cramming is instruction
without education. However good the instruc-
tion, it loses fully half its value if it is not part
of a well-devised scheme of education. For this
reason I hope that some day, for the several
competitions of the Civil Service, we may be
able to require (according to circumstances)
a first leaving certificate, a second leaving
certificate, or an university degree as a condition
of entry. Then we should have a guarantee of
suitable education, and the results of the com-
petitions would be much more trustworthy.

But in another sense cramming is forcing the
boy or youth to acquire learning — not for its
own sake, nor for purposes of education — but for
the purposes of the examination. There must
always be some cramming so long as competition
is severe. If cramming by a crammer (instruction
without education) is excluded, we shall still get
cramming in the schools. If cramming only
means hard work, I see no harm in that,
after a certain age and with normal, healthy
boys. But, if cramming means the acquisition of
great masses of undigested information, that is
the fault of the examination. Some subjects
cannot be crammed in this sense. Mathematics,
languages, English, cannot be crammed if the
papers are properly constructed. History is
more liable to be crammed; for this reason the
papers should be cunningly drafted so as to
require no more learning than can easily be carried,
and to test as far as possible ability and comprc-

CRAMMING. VIVA VOCE 159

hension. The same with Geography. English
literature can hardly be crammed if the questions
are based right down upon the texts, and not on
the text-books or the commentaries.

I think viva voce examination should be
introduced as far as possible into competitive
examinations. When the numbers are great
this is impossible : in any case it means a great
expenditure of time and money. But it is worth
while. Written examinations test the power of
expression on paper. The power of expression
by the spoken word is not less important. This
we cannot test without an oral examination.
In a competition where considerable choice of
subjects is allowed the candidates should be
examined orally in the subject of their choice,
and also on topics which ought to be familiar
to every candidate of that age and training.
Two skilled examiners should be present through-
out to conduct the general examination, and to
keep a level standard in the various special
examinations.

It is often said that viva voce examination is
unfair, because some candidates suffer from
nervousness. But some candidates suffer from
nervousness in written examination, and never
do themselves justice. I am inclined to think
that self-possession under examination, oral or
other, indicates qualities which should receive
credit.

Practical competitive examinations in science
present great difficulty. If the numbers are

i6o EXAMINATIONS

great, they become impossible. If the numbers
exceed a moderate total, all the candidates cannot
be examined in the same room. It then becomes
necessary to vary the problems, from session to
session. And, however much care may be taken,
it is impossible to be quite certain that all the
problems set will be of equal difficulty. The
chief object of including a practical examination
in an open competition is to ensure that no
candidate should get credit who had not received
the requisite training in a laboratory. If this
could be secured otherwise, I think the practical
examination might be dispensed with. Questions
could be set to test the competence of candidates
in dealing with laboratory problems. It would
not be a bad exercise or test to ask the candidate
to state in words what he would do if he were
asked to solve a certain problem in a laboratory
with specified appliances.

Oral examinations in modern foreign languages
are necessary. But if the numbers are very
great they are impossible. The result is that the
Civil Service Commissioners assign high marks
for French and German in one competition at
least, with no guarantee that the candidates can
pronounce correctly any single word. I do not
see how this can be avoided in existing circum-
stances. But I console myself by the reflexion
that the same is true when we deal with Latin
and Greek. Some day, however, we may find
a way to defeat the dilemma. The Leaving
Certificate may help us out of it.

Practical work in Mathematics — measuring

WHAT DO EXAMINATIONS TEST? 161

and so forth — bothers some of the old-fashioned
teachers. Not an expert myself, I have been
obliged to hear the arguments. I have no doubt
that the practical work has it. Our staff had
an acute controversy with an eminent Professor
about arithmetical illustrations in certain ques-
tions of high mathematics. The Professor
declared that arithmetic had nothing to do with
mathematics. After hearing counsel on both
sides, and the evidence of experts, we non-suited
the Professor ; it is, of course, a matter of opinion,
but I hope we were right.

What do examinations test? I have said
that they test the results of instruction and
study : study is more important than instruction,
though instruction is also important. But I
will go a little further. They test industry and
perseverance and readiness to think at the
required moment. I also think they test ability
if the papers are rightly constructed; though
the kind of ability which they test is of little
value, unless it be accompanied by certain
qualities which examination cannot test. Some
of those qualities are more likely to be present
if methodical education has had its chance.
That is the value of a leaving certificate or an
university degree. It is true that a man who has
never been to school or to an University may have
received a better education than those who have.
But such cases are exceptional; and we cannot
legislate for exceptions. The man who has had
such an excellent education is lucky enough ; he
M

162 EXAMINATIONS

need not complain if he finds one or two drawbacks.
Nor can the State expect to get all the best
people for its posts. There is a trifling thing,
the world outside the Civil Service, which also
has great claims, great needs, and not insignificant
opportunities for the meritorious.

Mr. P. J. Hartog, in an interesting paper, said
examination could only test the power to do
a definite thing, e. g. to do sums in Arithmetic, or
write French prose. And I think he suggested
that the powers which could be tested by
examination were not in themselves of much
importance. There is much truth in what he
said. We conduct all sorts of technical examina-
tions— for architects, surveyors, draughtsmen,
engineers, book-keepers, etc. The examination
papers look thoroughly business-like, but I would
not rely upon the results unless I also knew that
the candidates had had a thorough practical
training. And even then the best man on paper
might not be the best man at his job. But,
whatever method of selection is adopted, you
cannot avoid mistakes, and bad bargains. The
candidates think that examination is fairer than
personal selection, and I for one am not prepared
to disagree with them; if among the qualities
to be looked for are those which can be tested
by examination. Where experience of definite
work in the world is needed and candidates must
be of mature age, personal selection by an
impartial authority is the only way.

But there is one fundamental assumption
which underlies all forms of open competition.

FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS 163

The assumption is that there is a substantial
similarity among the candidates. If one candi-
date has had a methodical education, and another
has been crammed, this assumption breaks down.
I think that if women compete with men it also
breaks down. Still more, if the candidates are
of different race. If you had a competition in
which Englishmen and Chinamen competed
together, it might happen — I think it very likely
would — that Chinamen would win all the places.
That would be all right if the fundamental
qualities required in the Service were those
possessed as a rule by Chinamen. But if the
qualities desired were those most common among
Englishmen then it would be all wrong.

For this reason I dislike competitions between
Orientals and Englishmen. The fundamental
qualities are different. If Orientals are wanted,
let them compete among themselves. If British
are wanted, let them compete among themselves.
I do not think the fundamental differences
between Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen,
Irishmen, are sufficient seriously to disturb the
results. Whether the differences between the
Mohammedan races of India, the Bengali, the
Sikhs, the Mahrathas, the Madrasi, are sufficient
to vitiate a competition open to all India, I
leave to experts. Such a competition would
clearly be more sound than one which was open
to all India, and the United Kingdom as well.

Some will regard examinations as inhuman and
unpractical ; others will regard them with favour

1 64 EXAMINATIONS

as bringing the best man to the front, without
handicap from accidents of birth or influence.
Neither of these views embodies the whole
truth; each is in possession of a part of the
truth. But, if we remember that examination
is only a test of the results of study and instruc-
tion, that it is all important what that study and
instruction has been, with what education it
has been linked, then we see a line along which
progress may be made. But the tribunal which
is sufficiently wise and impartial to dispense
altogether with examinations has not yet been
made, and I see no likelihood that it will be
speedily established.

CHAPTER IX
HISTORY

PERHAPS, if we were atoms ourselves, we
should find that each atom was endowed with a
different individuality. Then we should be unable
to forecast with certainty the behaviour of other
atoms, each by each or in the lump. It may be
that the uniformity of nature, the certainty of
physical law, illusions of human minds, are
effects of distance. Or it may be that the caprice
of human nature, the uncertainty of human
action, the pleasing hazard of human affairs,
disappear not only in the sight of God but in the
sight of beings infinitely less remote. As seen by
man, however, man is above all things diverse
and incalculable ; material nature as seen by man
appears to obey fixed laws. The caprice of matter,
the immutable laws of human conduct, are things
which may exist, but have not been by us observed.
Human nature craves for certainty. Given a
judgement, man elevates it into a precedent.
Given a hint, he stiffens it to a rule. Given a
principle, he kills it and calls its stuffed image a
law. Given a wise man's teaching, he establishes
a system. Granted a vision of the Eternal, he
formulates an Athanasian orthodoxy.

165

166 HISTORY

But in the realm of human affairs not certainty
but probability is king. Of two men of business,
equal in courage, accuracy, industry, and know-
ledge, he who guesses best will succeed. The
great leader may dazzle with his rhetoric, his
logic, his wide information, but he convinces by
confidence in his own speculative forecast.
Analyse as we may the daring conjectures that
have changed the world, after examining the
processes of research, logic, and invention by
which the trail was found, we still must acknow-
ledge something beyond these, some flash of soul
which lays the East at the feet of Alexander,
opens a new world to Columbus, or reveals the
cosmic laws to Newton. Man has a gift of
guessing ; the slave of certainty is an unprofitable
servant, who lets his talent tarnish in a napkin.

Man cannot know mankind, by one or by many,
as he can know the rhythm of the conic curves.
But, for dealing with man, he has a gift of sympa-
thetic intuition which may be cultivated or
allowed to die. He can cultivate it by experience,
by intercourse with his fellow-men, in the school,
the playground, the market, the workshop, the
law-court, the street, the committee-room, the
meeting-hall. But our own experience, however
wide, is too narrow if we can make it wider. We
can widen it indefinitely by communion with the
great minds of the dead and the living writers,
by travelling the crowded and bustling ways of
history. The knowledge of values, the sense of
proportion, the power of speculative forecast, the
gift of sympathetic intuition, are strengthened

CERTAINTY AND PROBABILITY 167

by experience; history is vicarious experience;
experience itself is history, our own history.

The man, still more the boy, who devotes
himself exclusively to mathematics or natural
science or both, gains in command of certainty;
he loses in command of probability, in knowledge
of man. What he gains may be worth more to
him; but, whatever his gifts, his nature, his
temperament, he loses something; what he loses
is especially important in public and adminis-
trative life — knowledge that will assist his con-
structive imagination.

The man who deliberately sets out to exercise
his power of guessing may find himself in the
Bankruptcy Court. Those who pride themselves
on sympathetic intuition are not always more
wise; they are generally more tiresome. Self-
consciousness hampers and stultifies all effort.
But we can help the youth without stimulating
his self-consciousness. We can put him to studies
which will tend to develop those gifts, we can put
him in an atmosphere in which such gifts are
fostered. Or we can do the reverse.

The great achievements of the natural sciences
have aroused in the humane sciences an unprofit-
able rivalry. The word science itself suggests
methods appropriate to the natural sciences.
When men speak of historical science, economic
science, political science, they are, unless I
misjudge them, claiming for their methods and
their results an accuracy, a certainty, which is
unattainable in those fields. In support of these
claims they are apt to make parade with methodi-

168 HISTORY

cal and tedious disquisitions which should be kept
in the background. If we spend too much time
on the processes by which knowledge can be
obtained, we omit to build our knowledge. If
we are over-anxious to be certain about trifles,
we lose the wider outlook, the greater illumina-
tion. The most instructive things that can be
said about history, economics, politics, are things
which have no universal validity, which show an
aspect of truth but not its rounded whole, which
assist the conclusions of wisdom, but do not
determine them. For these reasons I prefer not
to speak of historical, economic, political science,
but of the learning, knowledge, wisdom, or
philosophy, of history, economics, or politics — as
the case may be. If the term science is used in
such connexion let us be sure that by science we
do not mean an exact science, but a science which
is content with probability based on imperfect
knowledge.

Aristotle, a wise man, was wont at a certain
point of his argument to test his provisional
conclusions by an appeal to ra evdoga — received
opinions commending themselves to ordinary
minds. Some of the doctrines of common sense
are enshrined in proverbs ; and it is well known
that many proverbs can be found which other
proverbs contradict. Each proverb in the several
pairs enshrines an aspect of practical wisdom.
The same is true of general historical proposi-
tions : they may be true, they are never the whole
truth; positive and negative, they may both be
true. History repeats itself — history never re-

THE HALF-WHOLE OF KNOWLEDGE 169

peats itself ; history is made by great men — history
is made by the silent masses; war is the test-
stone of human endeavour, the school of all the
virtues — war is the great illusion; progress is
from status to contract — progress is from contract
to status. The doctrines of political economy
were at first enunciated as if they possessed
universal validity ; the same doctrines have since
been drafted anew with greater care as statements
of tendency; but the error still prevails among
economists of seeking mathematical certainty
in human affairs.

I claim for history the half-whole of knowledge
—the knowledge of man in the past and in the
present — a knowledge in which outward fact
alone can be certain, interpretation may be
illuminating, but cannot be certain. The philo-
sophies I leave outside ; they are modes of thought,
dealing now with natural knowledge, now with
humane knowledge, now with things beyond our
knowledge; only when they claim to influence
conduct they come within the sphere of history,
and their conclusions must be judged in the court
of history. What is false in history can never be
true in ethics, psychology, economics, or politics.

By the individual, knowledge may be pursued
for a practical end — as an engineer learns mathe-
matics— or it may be pursued for its own sake.
In education rewards, punishments, the desire of
approbation, the desire of self-advancement, are
useful as incentives. But the study of history
cannot attain its fruit without the desire to know

170 HISTORY

and understand what has been and what is. The
man who reads history to improve his mind is
like the man who eats his dinner because it is
good for him — there is something wrong with the
meal or something wrong with the man. Brilliant
writing, dramatic statement, personal anecdote,
political application, are sauces, good or bad;
but plain cooking should suffice for appetite.
History is always interesting unless it is made
dull by dull people. But different history is
interesting at different grades of mental develop-
ment.

Seeley said : " I do not attempt to make history
interesting ; if a man does not find history interest-
ing, I do not alter the history ; I try to alter him/'
The statement is striking, but not complete in
truth. No one, I should say, ever tried less than
Seeley to alter his pupils. He approached them
with the conviction that what he had to say was
interesting; his exposition was admirable in its
economy of fact, its luminous interpretation;
many who never knew before what history was
were captivated. The public was hit by his
Expansion of England ; yet I doubt if he knew
that he was writing a popular work. It is true
that he did not try to alter history ; but not being
a dull man, nor adhering to a dull convention, he
impressed it with his own mark. History is in-
teresting ; it is therefore not necessary to make it
interesting ; but it is quite easy to make it dull ;
as you can spoil good food in the cooking.

The State, however, should need to be con-

THE SCOPE OF HISTORY 171

vinced, not only that history is interesting but
that it is useful, before public money is spent
upon it. Art for art's sake, knowledge for the
sake of knowledge, research for the sake of
research, these are mottoes good enough for indi-
viduals who give their own time, their own money,
their own lives. They do not justify a public
grant; they do not justify institutions, endow-
ments, salaries. Education in history can be
justified by arguments ; but I speak to a public
already convinced, to a public that every day
shows greater eagerness to learn of the present
and the past. I need only point out that all the
human things we teach — languages, literature,
archaeology, art, anthropology, ethnology, econo-
mics, politics, law, sociology — all are affluents,
tributaries of history, all find their meaning and
their unity in history, in the knowledge of the
quick and the dead. What is it to be parochial,
provincial, insular, but to lack the wider view
that history can give? Even a little knowledge
of man is good ; our widest knowledge of man is
co-extensive with our knowledge of history.

Can history be taught? That depends upon
the object of the teaching. You cannot teach a
man to be a creative historian — nascitur, non fit.
The greatest English historian of our time —
Maitland — began as a mathematician, continued
as a philosopher, worked as a practical lawyer.
No one of these studies is specially appropriate
to an historian. But his natural, his hereditary
bent prevailed. The law spoke to him as a lawyer ;

172 HISTORY

it spoke to him more clearly, more compellingly,
as an historian. The law of to-day led him back
to the beginnings of law in this country. The
antiquities of law took new form when irradiated
by his imagination. He did not think it a duty
to be dull; he knew that humour and wit were
given to illuminate a sober and laborious path.
He made the dry bones live, the dead bones
of Doomsday Book, of Bracton's Notes, of the
Year Books. The sympathetic intuition of which
I speak he possessed in the highest degree. It
is the gift of history, it is the gift of the historian.
I do not pretend that teaching can do much for
a Maitland.

The true spirit of a researcher cannot be evoked
by teaching ; though it can be communicated by
example. The technicalities of the trade can be
taught ; the business of the trade can be encour-
aged and fostered; we can thus breed hewers of
wood and drawers of water, necessary folk. But
for vivifying research broad foundations must be
laid; it is a mistake to encourage research, as is
done in Germany, before the foundations are
completed.

If we pass to lower grades, it is lamentably easy
to teach, to induce the acquisition, of the facts
and commonplaces of history. We are inundated
with text-books which tell us, not only what
happened, but why it happened and what it
meant. These things are learnt by heart and
reproduced in examination papers. But where
knowledge of fact or of conventional explanation
outstrips the capacity to think, to interpret, to

LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING 173

understand, our instruction does harm rather
than good. In no branch of study is there greater
danger that learning may be mistaken for know-
ledge, that teaching may outrun intelligence.
I am afraid that the university systems with their
overloaded schedules, the entrance scholarships
for specialists in history, almost all the examina-
tions in history, tend to increase this danger.
Examinations in history for boys under sixteen
are not desirable; if they are necessary they
should be quite different from those with which I
am acquainted ; but these, I presume, are designed
to suit the teaching actually in fashion. Thus we
get a vicious circle. The examinations cannot be
altered because they must fit the teaching; the
teaching cannot be altered because of the
examinations.

How then should history be brought to the
notice of boys under fourteen, boys under sixteen,
boys under nineteen, and men at the University ?

It will be clear to my readers that I draw no
hard and fast line between history and literature.
Both deal with the facts of the human soul,
human nature, human life, human action. Both
aim at interpreting man to man. History has a
larger substratum of ascertained fact; but its
value depends not only on the accuracy of its
statements, but on the truth of its interpretation.
The facts of literature are of a more generalised,
sometimes of a more individual character, but
they should be true, as true as those of history —
true to life, and true to human nature; and the

174 HISTORY

gift of genius to man is a gift of interpretation and
of insight. History, no more than literature, can
afford to neglect the art of expression; however
brilliant our discoveries, however illuminating the
connexions we establish, however deep our wisdom,
what we have to say loses its compelling, its
illuminative force, if it is presented in a gloomy,
uncouth, or catalogic form. What we seek in
literature, what we seek from history, is knowledge
of man. What history gives and literature does
not, is a knowledge of man in his groups, his
communities, his nations, which have a psychology
as real as that of the individual — elusive in both
cases, but none the less existent and perceptible.
It is not true to say that a nation is merely the
sum of its individual citizens ; it would be as true
to say that I am the sum of the molecules which
compose my body. I read in this day's Times
that " names and dates are the stock-in-trade of
history/' Not so : the stock-in-trade of history
is an apperception of the unity and unities that
explain the weltering chaos of human life. The
names and dates are only headings in the stock-
book, which do not by any means cover all the
entries. The stock is more important than the
inventory.

It is my contention that the teaching of history
and the teaching of literature should go hand-in-
hand, from first to last ; that, here above all, the
desire for knowledge is our greatest motive force,
for every normal boy, every normal man, wants
to know about his fellow-creatures. We should
need no compulsion, beyond the need to fix the

STORIES 175

volatile attention of the young when it wanders.
History is interesting and we can rely upon its
own compulsion, unless by some error we make it
dull ; and that we may do, not only by our own
dullness, but by presenting things interesting in
themselves to the wrong people or at the wrong
time. History should be graded to suit the
different ages.

History is a distillation of stories ; stories are the
raw material of history; is there any child that
can resist a story ?

Let us then begin with stories. History, legend,
fable, fiction, everything that is suited to a child
will serve our purpose. Kingsley's Heroes, Haw-
thorne's Tanglewood Tales, the Arabian Nights,
Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, stories from the
Bible, stories from the Odyssey, stories from
Morte d' Arthur, — everything of this kind will
serve to make the child familiar with people — real
or imaginary — living under conditions different
from his own. I was told of a schoolmaster who
taught the Norse Sagas " in order to give back-
ground for English composition." The practice
is excellent ; but the reason given is very profes-
sional. The schoolmaster meant the same thing
that I mean; he wanted to stock the children's
minds with imaginative figures, to extend their
range of vision, their scope of interest, to enrich
their poor horizon. He knew that by so doing he
would improve their English composition ; and so
he would ; his reason was not the best of reasons,
but any reason will serve that leads to sound

176 HISTORY

practice ; especially if it leads the children to read
the stories for themselves.

Then let us come to stories more definitely
historical; let them range over the widest field.
David and Saul, Ahab and Elijah, Leonidas, the
lays of Ancient Rome, Coriolanus, Regulus,
King Alfred, Roland and Roncesvalles, Robin
Hood, Becket, King Richard and Blondel,
Henry V at Agincourt, Chevy Chase, the Princes
in the Tower, the Armada, the adventures of
Charles II, the Fire of London, the great Plague,
stories of Nelson ; these are only samples, there are
hundreds of stories which might be told, each
contributing something to " background/'

Then to personal biographies, each giving a
glimpse into great chapters of history : Alexander,
Hannibal, Caesar, Mohammed, Charlemagne,
Gregory VII, William the Conqueror, Saint Louis,
Louis XI of France, Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro,
Charles I, Cromwell, Peter the Great, Clive,
Warren Hastings, Napoleon — again only samples.
At each stage the historical setting of the personal
details will need to be more full, more precise :
but it is even more evident that geographical
instruction must help to fill out the pictures.
Indeed there is a large part of early historical
instruction that can only be reached through
geography.

When I say that history and geography should
be taught together, the geographers are up in
arms : they say : " You wish geography to be
made a servant of history." On the contrary,

GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY 177

in the early stages, at least, I offer history as a
servant of geography. I once set out to write a
history for young children ; I found myself forced
to make it a geography; in that form its con-
struction proved a fascinating task. The first
thing that is necessary in history is to present to
the child persons, historical or legendary heroes,
living in conditions different from his own. To
make those conditions real the geographical setting
must at least be indicated. What is the story of
David, of Jason, of Theseus, without some know-
ledge of Palestine, the Black Sea, Crete and the
eastern Mediterranean? When we come to
Alexander, Columbus, Napoleon, geographical
conceptions become even more important. Above
all the conception of a country must begin to
emerge. It is easy to show a child France or
Italy on the map. The conception of a country
is in part a geographical conception; if it were
not so, why should we tell in the history of
England of cave-men, stone ages, bronze ages,
none of which had any part in the history of
Englishmen? But the conception of a country
is not only geographical; it is also political,
historical. There is no better way to give reality
to the name of France or Italy or Britain when
presented in a geographical lesson than to give
a sketch of the history of those countries, as
countries. They thus acquire an individuality, a
personality, which will give life and interest to
any geographical conceptions that may be grouped
about them. I do not say that it is easy to give
a sketch of the history of France or Italy which

N

178 HISTORY

will be intelligible and attractive to children.
But I know that it can be done.

I would approach then the study of history with
children up to about the age of twelve from two
sides : by stories of persons involving more and
more the history of communities, of peoples, of
empires : thus the story of Napoleon can be made
personal, but the conception of warring states
cannot be excluded. On the other hand, it should
be approached from the side of geography, intro-
ducing with the geographical description of a
country a sketch of the story of that country;
affixing to any place the striking events and
monuments with which it is associated. As the
flood of ignorance sinks let a few peaks emerge :
if connexions and interrelations, the whole struc-
ture, are discovered later, so much the better;
but each isolated discovery is an item to the good.
I would have no dates up to this point, except
a few round numbers : for instance, that the
Norman Conquest was more than a thousand
years after Christ, the discovery of America about
fifteen hundred years after Christ. I doubt if
numerical dates have any meaning to the majority
of children. I once asked a Sunday-school boy :
How long ago Our Lord had lived ? He replied :
" Forty days/' To whom his companion : " No,
you silly; more like forty year." Neither of
these boys was feeble-minded, or ignorant as
school children go.

I see no waste, indeed, I see great advantage,
in telling the children many things that they will
utterly forget; on that point I have already

EARLY HISTORICAL CONCEPTIONS 179

stated my view; but I would not willingly tell
them anything that they could not understand.
Before they left the elementary school they ought
to understand what a country, what a people, an
army, a navy, a government, a city, a law-court,
a law, a king, a parliament may be : not by precise
definitions, which like the received definition of
an island seldom square with the truth, but by
hints and discussions and descriptions, and by
encountering these concrete abstractions in the
movements of history.

I put world-history before English History,
mainly for two reasons : I desire to widen the
range of interest so far as possible : I want to
avoid all administrative detail; which is unin-
telligible to children who have no experience. I
care nothing for completeness at this stage : con-
nexions should be established, when it is possible ;
but it is impossible for children to form a fully-
connected picture of English or any other history.

But from twelve to fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen,
whichever may be the school leaving age, I should
allow some more connected English History to
appear in the course. Not the whole of English
History ; some parts I should pass over rapidly :
a detailed knowledge of the Wars of the Roses is
of no general value. It is enough if the children
hear some of the picturesque detail, and know that
there were such wars and how they cleared the
ground. Britons, Romans, and Saxons, I would
have treated very broadly; emphasising chiefly
the building up of the people and the material

i8o HISTORY

remains. Then (all this illustrated by architec-
ture) William I, Henry II to John, Edward I, the
French wars (chiefly strategical and tactical),
Henry VIII (not the names of his wives, nor the
liturgical and doctrinal aspects of the Reforma-
tion) , Elizabeth, Charles I and Cromwell. And then
the rest of the history (not constitutional, but the
big imperial movements and the great social
changes). Very little constitutional history, and
no legal history. It is ridiculous that boys of
under sixteen should be expected to know about
the Five Mile Act, the Habeas Corpus Act, or the
Sinking Fund : they cannot really understand
Magna Charta or the Constitutions of Clarendon ;
it is enough for them to know that Magna Charta
was the result of a quarrel between the King on
the one hand, the Bishops and Barons on the
other ; that the quarrel with Becket arose out of
the question whether the King could punish a
priest. The treatment of this history will be
different according as the pupils are to leave at
fourteen or stay on to sixteen : in the latter case
the extra time should chiefly be given to literature.
But even under fourteen more important than any
details of English history is the habit of reading
good books for personal satisfaction.

After sixteen — all these dates are average and
approximate : development varies greatly in indi-
viduals— the existing teaching and examining
of English History is very good, at its best ; let
the best practice be studied and followed, not
slavishly, but with understanding. But for
examination purposes I should like to have

HISTORY VARIES IN IMPORTANCE 181

English History and Literature more closely
linked. I must repeat my protests, recorded
above, against specialisation in history at school,
and against the teaching of French and German
without the literature and history of France and
Germany.

I do not accept the dictum of Professor Bury,
that all history is equally important. All history
was no doubt equally important to those who lived
it, all history may be equally important to the
student, but all history is not equally important
in education, or equally illuminating to us, which
is the same thing. History is more or less im-
portant as we can know it better or worse. The
history of the Middle Ages is not, on the whole,
so important as the history of Greece and Rome,
because it is not so completely recorded or under-
stood. As a corollary, history is important, if it
is well backed by literature. Later Roman his-
tory is a fine university subject because of the
constructive work that can be done with inscrip-
tions, but it is not so illuminating as that of the
later Republic or early Principate, because it is
not so well backed by literature. History is
important if the interests at stake are large.
Thus, the battle of Salamis, the campaigns of
Hannibal, the victory of Charles Martel, the
defeat of Frederick Barbarossa in Italy, the
campaign of Moscow, are turning points of human
fortune. History is important if it extends our
field of knowledge. Thus the discovery of a skull
in Sussex, of a palace in Crete, of the Rosetta
Stone, rank as events of the greatest historical

i82 HISTORY

moment. Above all history is more or less im-
portant as it touches us more or less closely.
Thus the history of Greece and Rome is far more
important to us than the history of Russia.
Without Greece and Rome we could not be what
we are ; we should be much what we are if Russia
were a desert. I speak here of the past ; I do not
mean to suggest that the present history of Russia
is not to us of great importance.

In teaching history at school we should devote
more attention to the important periods as judged
by these criteria; in selecting periods for study
at the University we should look to the same
standards of judgement.

With regard to the study of history at the
University I have sufficiently expressed my views
above as to the study of language and of literature
in connexion with history. At the University
the young man should begin to see history as a
connected whole. He should travel through the
predestined succession of the ages; he should
learn the measure of our debt to Athens and to
Rome; he should receive some clear conception
of the construction, the system, and the demolition
of Imperial Rome. He should traverse the dark
winter and the seed-time of the Middle Ages, when
the modern world was in germination. He should
know how our modern Europe was framed, and
when and how the Great Men lived and worked.
All this should be laid before him in its broad
organic unity till he feels European society and
civilisation as a single living whole.

THE UNITY OF HISTORY 183

He should pass in like manner, but with closer
inspection, through the history of our native
islands. But his special study should be of certain
periods in this and foreign countries when literary
masterpieces were abundant. Athens in the time
of Pericles and Plato ; Rome in the late Republic
and the early Empire; Italy from Dante to
Ariosto; England in the times of Chaucer, of
Shakespeare, of Milton, of Swift, and Steele;
France from Louis XIV to the Revolution. He
cannot, of course, study all the periods that are
worth studying from this aspect, but he might
well study two foreign periods and two English
periods.

I deprecate from the point of view of education
the separation of political, constitutional, eco-
nomic, literary history. All these form one ; and
the young student can claim to have won his
footing, to have done something to prepare him-
self for life, when he begins to perceive these
several elements as distinct but intermingling
manifestations of the one informing spirit. To
estimate the various pressures and reactions, to
interpret the movements of the forces that are
disclosed, to understand the unity in multiplicity,
the multiplicity in unity — that is the gift of history ;
and young men are well capable of receiving it.

But I have a little more to say about what I
regard as the political science heresy and the
economic heresy ; two heresies particularly rife at
my own University, but not unknown elsewhere.

Aristotle regarded young men as unfit to learn

184 HISTORY

moral philosophy. I do not remember that he
gave his reasons; no doubt he considered that
they lacked the requisite experience of life. I
would go further, and say that very young men
are unfit to learn political science, or political
economy : partly because they have not the
requisite knowledge of life, partly because they
cannot have the requisite knowledge of history.
To teach these subjects to schoolboys is mon-
strous ; but I need say no more about it.

History is a fascinating subject to teach, but
it is also a very troublesome and laborious subject
to get up, and, after it has been got up, its expo-
sition for purposes of teaching is or should be a
quintessential product of distillation. Given a
man well read in literature and history, advanced
in years, a thinker, but not a trained historian, he
may feel that he has something to say on the
theory of politics and the State, but he may not
feel called to expound a period, a course of history.
Such a man will advertise a course of lectures on
Political Science or Comparative Politics, which-
ever he chooses to call it. He will be quite at
ease in dealing with the patriarchal and the
matriarchal theory, with Greek and Roman
constitutions; a fortunate convention will allow
him to pass lightly over feudalism and the
mediaeval city — difficult ground; and he will be
comfortable once more when he talks of modern
constitutions. If he is a clever man what he says
will be interesting to those who know a little less
than he does, it will be curious to those who
know a little more, but what about the freshman

POLITICAL SCIENCE 185

who knows next to nothing at all ? I submit that
all this analysis, comparison, classification, and
generalisation, is useless except to those who have
independent knowledge of the matters under dis-
cussion. After their second year at the University
I do not say that certain students may not derive
profit and satisfaction from such lectures; but
the rational process is to study the facts before
you are told how to classify them. Political
Science at the University has been in the past the
happy hunting-ground of the amateur.

I am fortified in this position by consideration
of the text-books. In my days Blunt schli was
the text-book — a farrago of loose observation and
ill-digested propositions, enlivened occasionally
by such wisdom as this : " The State is male, the
Church is female/' So they are, in German ; but,
if the natural deductions from this physiological
statement are followed out, they will not agree
with history. Professor Woodrow "Wilson, the
President of the United States, has written a better
book, The State. But all the early part of his
book to the end of the Greek matter is highly
controversial and entirely unfit for dogmatic
statement. Where he is on firmer ground the
tissue of fact is so closely woven that it is unsuited
for the instruction of youth — useful, however, as
a repository of information, especially to those
who only wish to refresh their memory. Seeley
was an acute and luminous critic of history ; his
lectures contained just the suitable dose of
apophthegmatic wisdom. But he was infected
with the political science heresy : he was the

186 HISTORY

author of the saying that history without political
science had no fruit ; he is said to have claimed for
political science the power of prediction. When
he came to put down in a book his system of
political science, we were all of us disappointed,
though not all of us were surprised, that it did
not amount to much.

Of all the lecturers on systematic politics
Heinrich von Treitschke was, as I should guess,
the most frank. His treatment of the subject was
purely personal, and I do not think he would con-
descend to claim for it any scientific validity.
His attitude towards theoretical politics is suffici-
ently indicated by his definition of the State as a
juristic person. The State is no doubt a person
in the eye of the law, but, if it is not more than
that, it is plain that it has only an artificial,
almost a nominal existence. But, as a personal
avowal, his course on Politik, which I heard at
Berlin, was full of interest. A massive, rough,
harsh figure, stone-deaf, he mounted the chair and
intoned in a monotonous sing-song words which
he never heard himself and which no German could
understand without practice. Yet he held a class
of a hundred and fifty for his Politik, and his
Publica drew classes of a thousand. His influence
over the students was enormous. He was a great
historian — Acton said that he could drive more
horses abreast than any other — and everything
he said had a rich background of history as well as
a full admixture of personal animus and prejudice.
He hated England — a fact of great moment — and
elevated that hatred to a principle of Politik.

HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE 187

One day, enraged by some act of Sir Robert
Morier, he came down and began : " Gentlemen,
to these English we can apply the words of Goethe ;
Sie lispeln englisch wenn sie liigen." x Another
time, discussing criteria of culture, he said : " The
English point to their vast consumption of soap
as a proof of their high grade of civilisation. But,
gentlemen, why do they use so much soap?
Because they are so dirty ! " Speaking of
colonies, he pointed out their importance to
national trade and development, and concluded :
" Gentlemen, the German empire is short of
colonies. Holland has colonies. It is our
natural destiny to absorb the Dutch into our
Reich." Those lectures were afterwards pub-
lished; I wonder if these passages are printed
with them.

Political Science is one of two things : a
summary — always somewhat distorted by con-
densation— of custom, law, and constitutions, that
cannot be profitably studied by freshmen, at
least, apart from the history to which they belong :
or a statement of personal opinion. The latter
may be illuminating; the former must be in-
digestible, and may be misleading. The value of
either depends upon the previous knowledge of the
recipient ; I have never been able to understand
how such nutriment could be thought suitable for
freshmen or even for second-year men.

Acton desired to elevate history to be a court

1 Goethe meant, that they whispered with the voice of
angels when they lied : Treitschke, punning, that they
spoke in English.

i88 HISTORY

of moral judgements — quoting and misapplying
the great line : Die Weltgeschichte ist das
Weltgericht.1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged,"
is a better motto for the historian. Wherever we
meet men, in life, in fiction, in history, let us en-
deavour to understand them, let us follow them
or reject their example; but do not let us aspire
to judge them. History is better used to correct
the scale of moral values which is in vogue to-day,
than in passing judgement on the dead, whose acts
we may ascertain but never their motives. Nor
can I applaud his other great generalisation, that
the progress of history is a progress towards
liberty. It seems to me that liberty is primeval :
the cave-man was — I presume — very free ; order
and reasonable authority are less ancient but
not less salutary ; progress consists in reconciling
order with liberty.

But even the errors of a sincere and learned man
are illuminating. The exposition of history gives
opportunity for the propounding of such principles
of historical and political wisdom as illustrate the
matter in hand. Though they be not true,
they may enshrine a half-truth. If Acton had
shared the political science heresy, which he did
not, he would have been tempted to elevate these
personal opinions to the headstone of the corner ;
as an historian he kept them in their proper
place.

1 History is the tribunal by which the world is judged ;
i.e. men, causes, systems, nations, are tried in the court
of history, by the issue of events. Not by the judgement
of historians ; which seems to be Acton's reading of the
passage.

HISTORY AND ECONOMICS 189

My case against economics in relation to history
is similar but somewhat more extensive. I regard
abstract economics as affording useful categories
and useful lines of thought in dealing with his-
torical fact past or present. Taken by themselves
—without history — the propositions of abstract
economics are unreal and misleading. I regard
them as misleading, because, in attempting to
explain the operations of economic forces, they
appear to justify results which occur without any
reference to justice; the "laws" of political
economy have been used over and over again to
defend abuses ; we must accept the solar system
with all its defects; we are not bound to accept
the existing economic system. I regard it there-
fore as a mistake to offer such teaching to very
young men who have not the knowledge of history,
the knowledge of business, the knowledge of life,
by which they could correct their impressions.
That, however, is the affair of the economists.
My friends, the historians at Cambridge, have
happily shaken off the domination of the econo-
mists, which lay heavy upon them for many years.
But one effect of that domination remains, the
isolation of economic history for purposes of teach-
ing and examining. The separation of economic
development from the general life of the nation
I regard as false in teaching, and as involving
a distortion of values. Not wealth itself is worth
anything in history, but the use that has been
made of wealth. For purposes of special study,
for purposes of research, I admit that economic
history may be profitably isolated ; I should not

HISTORY

be backward to acknowledge that the total wisdom
of history has thus been notably increased. But
that our young men should be encouraged at the
outset of their studies to concentrate attention on
the wealth-history of the nation, without reference
to all the other elements of national life, seems to
me false in principle and false in method, unless
by the other teaching and the scheme of examina-
tion the whole of history is afterwards brought
once more together, and its vital unity restored.

I do not value history for its direct and concrete
political applications. More bad politics have
been justified by true history than by any other
evidence, even by that of statistics. I prize it as
a school of values, as correcting our standards of
proportion, as supplying long reckonings for com-
parison with our ephemeral experience, as afford-
ing a means to the study of human nature, in
great men, in little men, in crowds, in nations, and
in races, as providing an exercise in the cautious
examination of evidence. Though it can only
afford its full wisdom to those who drink long and
deep, and drink also at the fountain of the know-
ledge of life, still in every grade and every stage
of education I conceive it has its proper use and
worth — for life, rather than for business, though
in business if its lessons are well learnt it may
assist to a certain sanity of judgement.

If I appear to neglect the other illumination —
that of Science — it is not because I do not value
it, nor because it does not appeal to me, nor even
because I have wholly missed it myself. I call

HISTORY AND SCIENCE 191

it the half-whole of knowledge, and such is my
estimation. If I suggest that Science has an im-
perfect message, so also has History. Each is
enfeebled if it ignores the other. On certain paths
of life Science gives more light ; on others History.
But the adequate treatment of Science is not, I
regret, for me. In speaking of History I have
been bold enough.

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STRKF.T, S.K.,

AND RUWIAY, SUFFOLK.

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