Chapter 2

But whatever the true meaning of heredity may be, certain it is that every individual comes into the world heavy-laden. Nowhere has the consciousness of the burden which rests on each generation as it enters on its journey through life found stronger expression than among the Buddhists. What other people call by various names, “fate or providence,” “tradition or inheritance,” “circumstances or environment,” they call _Karman_, deed—what has been done, whether by ourselves or by others, the accumulated work of all who have come before us, the consequences of which we have to bear, both for good and for evil. Originally this _Karman_ seems to have been conceived as personal, as the work which we ourselves have done in our former existences. But, as personally we are not conscious of having done such work in former ages, that kind of _Karman_, too, might be said to be impersonal. To the question how _Karman_ began, what was the nucleus of that accumulation which forms the condition of present existence, Buddhism has no answer to give, any more than any other system of religion or philosophy. The Buddhists say it began with _avidyâ_, and _avidyâ_ means ignorance.(5) They are much more deeply interested in the question how _Karman_ may be annihilated, how each man may free himself from the influence of _Karman_, and Nirvâ_n_a, the highest object of all their dreams, is often defined by Buddhist philosophers as “freedom from _Karman_.”(6)

What the Buddhists call by the general name of _Karman_, comprehends all influences which the past exercises on the present, whether physical or mental.(7) It is not my object to examine or even to name all these influences, though I confess nothing is more interesting than to look upon the surface of our modern life as we look on a geological map, and to see the most ancient formations cropping out everywhere under our feet. Difficult as it is to color a geological map of England, it would be still more difficult to find a sufficient variety of colors to mark the different ingredients of the intellectual condition of her people.

That all of us, whether we speak English or German, or French or Russian, are really speaking an ancient Oriental tongue, incredible as it would have sounded a hundred years ago, is now recognized by everybody. Though the various dialects now spoken in Europe have been separated many thousands of years from the Sanskrit, the ancient classical language of India, yet so close is the bond that holds the West and East together, that in many cases an intelligent Englishman might still guess the meaning of a Sanskrit word. How little difference is there between Sanskrit _sûnu_ and English _son_, between Sanskrit _duhitar_ and English _daughter_, between Sanskrit _vid_, to know, and English to _wit_, between Sanskrit _vaksh_, to grow, and English to _wax!_ Think how we value a Saxon urn, or a Roman coin, or a Keltic weapon! how we dig for them, clean them, label them, and carefully deposit them in our museums! Yet what is their antiquity compared with the antiquity of such words as _son_ or _daughter_, _father_ and _mother_? There are no monuments older than those collected in the handy volumes which we call Dictionaries, and those who know how to interpret those English antiquities—as you may see them interpreted, for instance, in Grimm’s Dictionary of the German, in Littré’s Dictionary of the French, or in Professor Skeats’ Etymological Dictionary of the English Language—will learn more of the real growth of the human mind than by studying many volumes on logic and psychology.

And as by our language we belong to the Aryan stratum, we belong through our letters to the Hamitic. We still write English in hieroglyphics; and in spite of all the vicissitudes through which the ancient hieroglyphics have passed in their journey from Egypt to Phœnicia, from Phœnicia to Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England, when we write a capital F [Cursive F], when we draw the top line and the smaller line through the middle of the letter, we really draw the two horns of the cerastes, the horned serpent, which the ancient Egyptians used for representing the sound of f. They write the name of the king whom the Greeks called _Cheops_, and they themselves _Chu-fu_, like this:(8)—

[Three Egyptian signs.]

Here the first sign, the sieve, is to be pronounced _chu_; the second, the horned serpent, _fu_, and the little bird, again, _u_. In the more cursive or Hieratic writing the horned serpent appears as [Egyptian character]; in the later Demotic as [Egyptian character] and [Egyptian character]. The Phœnicians, who borrowed their letters from the Hieratic Egyptian, wrote [Phoenician character] and [Phoenician character]. The Greeks, who took their letters from the Phœnicians, wrote [Greek character]. When the Greeks, instead of writing, like the Phœnicians, from right to left, began to write from left to right, they turned each letter, and as [Phoenician character] became [Greek character], our k, so [Phoenician character], vau, became F, the Greek so-called Digamma, [Greek character], the Latin F.

The first letter in _Chu-fu_, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in the transverse line of our H we may recognize the last remnant of the lines which divide the sieve. The sieve appears in Hieratic as [Egyptian character], in Phœnician as [Phoenician character], in ancient Greek as [Greek character], which occurs on an inscription found at Mycenæ and elsewhere as the sign of the spiritus asper, while in Latin it is known to us as the letter H.(9) In the same manner the undulating line of our capital L [Cursive L] still recalls very strikingly the bent back of the crouching lion, [Egyptian character], which in the later hieroglyphic inscriptions represents the sound of L.

If thus in our language we are Aryan, in our letters Egyptian, we have only to look at our watches to see that we are Babylonian. Why is our hour divided into sixty minutes, our minute into sixty seconds? Would not a division of the hour into ten, or fifty, or a hundred minutes have been more natural? We have sixty divisions on the dials of our watches simply because the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second century B. C., accepted the Babylonian system of reckoning time, that system being sexagesimal. The Babylonians knew the decimal system, but for practical purposes they counted by _sossi_ and _sari_, the _sossos_ representing 60, the _saros_ 60 × 60, or 3,600. From Hipparchus that system found its way into the works of Ptolemy, about 150 A. D., and thence it was carried down the stream of civilization, finding its last resting-place on the dial-plates of our clocks.

And why are there twenty shillings to our sovereign? Again the real reason lies in Babylon. The Greeks learnt from the Babylonians the art of dividing gold and silver for the purpose of trade. It has been proved that the current gold piece of Western Asia was exactly the sixtieth part of a Babylonian _mnâ_, or _mina_. It was nearly equal to our sovereign. The difficult problem of the relative value of gold and silver in a bi-metallic currency had been solved to a certain extent in the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, the proportion between gold and silver being fixed at 1 to 13-1/3. The silver shekel current in Babylon was heavier than the gold shekel in the proportion of 13-1/3 to 10, and had therefore the value of one tenth of a gold shekel; and the half silver shekel, called by the Greeks a drachma, was worth one twentieth of a gold shekel. The drachma, or half silver shekel, may therefore be looked upon as the most ancient type of our own silver shilling in its relation of one twentieth of our gold sovereign.(10)

I shall mention only one more of the most essential tools of our mental life—namely, our _figures_, which we call Arabic, because we received them from the Arabs, but which the Arabs called Indian, because they received them from the Indians—in order to show you how this nineteenth century of ours is under the sway of centuries long past and forgotten; how we are what we are, not by ourselves, but by those who came before us, and how the intellectual ground on which we stand is made up of the detritus of thoughts which were first thought, not on these isles nor in Europe, but on the shores of the Oxus, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Indus.

Now you may well ask, _Quorsum hæc omnia?_ What has all this to do with freedom and with the free development of individuality? Because a man is born the heir of all the ages, can it be said that he is not free to grow and to expand, and to develop all the faculties of his mind? Are those who came before him, and who left him this goodly inheritance, to be called his enemies? Is that chain of tradition which connects him with the past really a galling fetter, and not rather the leading-strings without which he would never learn to walk straight?

Let us look at the matter more closely. No one would venture to say that every individual should begin life as a young savage, and be left to form his own language, and invent his own letters, numerals, and coins. On the contrary, if we comprehend all this and a great deal more, such as religion, morality, and secular knowledge, under the general name of _education_, even the most advanced defenders of individualism would hold that no child should enter society without submitting, or rather without being submitted, to education. Most of us would even go farther, and make it criminal for parents or even for communities to allow children to grow up uneducated. The excuse of worthless parents that they are at liberty to do with their children as they like, has at last been blown to the winds, and among the principal advocates of compulsory education, and of the necessity of curtailing the freedom of savage parents of savage children, have been Mill and his friends, the apostles of liberty and individualism.(11) I remember the time when pseudo-Liberals were not ashamed to say that, whatever other nations, such as the Germans, might do, England would never submit to compulsory education; but that faint-hearted and mischievous cry has at last been silenced. A new era may be said to date in the history of every nation from the day on which “compulsory education” becomes part of its statute-book; and I may congratulate the most Liberal town in England on having proved itself the most inexorable tyrant in carrying it into effect.

But do not let us imagine that compulsory education is without its dangers. Like a powerful engine, it must be carefully watched, if it is not to produce, what all compulsion will produce, a slavish receptivity, and, what all machines do produce, monotonous uniformity.

We know that all education must in the beginning be purely dogmatic. Children are taught language, religion, morality, patriotism, and afterwards, at school, history, literature, mathematics, and all the rest, long before they are able to question, to judge, or choose for themselves, and there is hardly anything that a child will not believe, if it comes from those in whom the child believes.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic, no doubt, must be taught dogmatically, and they take up an enormous amount of time, particularly in English schools. English spelling is a national misfortune, and in the keen international race among all the countries of Europe, it handicaps the English child to a degree that seems incredible till we look at statistics. I know the difficulties of a Spelling Reform, I know what people mean when they call it impossible; but I also know that personal and national virtue consists in doing so-called impossible things, and that no nation has done, and has still to do, so many impossible things as the English.

But, granted that reading, writing, and arithmetic occupy nearly the whole school time and absorb the best powers of the pupils, cannot something be done in play-hours? Is there not some work that can be turned into play, and some play that can be turned into work? Cannot the powers of observation be called out in a child while collecting flowers, or stones, or butterflies? Cannot his judgment be strengthened either in gymnastic exercises, or in measuring the area of a field or the height of a tower? Might not all this be done without a view to examinations or payment by results, simply for the sake of filling the little dull minds with one sunbeam of joy, such sunbeams being more likely hereafter to call hidden precious germs into life than the deadening weight of such lessons as, for instance, that _th-ough_ is though, _thr-ough_ is through, _en-ough_ is enough. A child who believes that will hereafter believe anything. Those who wish to see Natural Science introduced into elementary schools frighten school-masters by the very name of Natural Science. But surely every school-master who is worth his salt should be able to teach children a love of Nature, a wondering at Nature, a curiosity to pry into the secrets of Nature, an acquisitiveness for some of the treasures of Nature, and all this acquired in the fresh air of the field and the forest, where, better than in frowzy lecture-rooms, the edge of the senses can be sharpened, the chest widened, and that freedom of thought fostered which made England what it was even before the days of compulsory education.

But in addressing you here to-night, it was my intention to speak of higher rather than of elementary education.

All education—as it now exists in most countries of Europe—may be divided into three stages—_elementary_, _scholastic_, and _academical_; or call it _primary_, _secondary_, and _tertiary_.

Elementary education has at last been made compulsory in most civilized countries. Unfortunately, however, it seems impossible to include under compulsory education anything beyond the very elements of knowledge—at least for the present; though I know from experience that, with proper management, a well-conducted elementary school can afford to provide instruction in extra subjects—such as natural science, modern languages, and political economy—and yet, with the present system of government grants, be self-supporting.(12)

The next stage above the elementary is _scholastic_ education, as it is supplied in grammar schools, whether public or private. According as the pupils are intended either to go on to a university, or to enter at once on leaving school on the practical work of life, these schools are divided into two classes. In the one class, which in Germany are called _Realschulen_, less Latin is taught, and no Greek, but more of mathematics, modern languages, and physical science; in the other, called _Gymnasia_ on the Continent, classics form the chief staple of instruction.

It is during this stage that education, whether at private or public schools, exercises its strongest levelling influence. Little attention can be paid at large schools to individual tastes or talents. In Germany—even more, perhaps, than in England—it is the chief object of a good and conscientious master to have his class as uniform as possible at the end of the year; and he receives far more credit from the official examiner if his whole class marches well and keeps pace together, than if he can parade a few brilliant and forward boys, followed by a number of straggling laggards.

And as to the character of the teaching at school, how can it be otherwise than authoritative or dogmatic? The Sokratic method is very good if we can find the _viri Socratici_ and leisure for discussion. But at school, which now may seem to be called almost in mockery σχολή, or leisure, the true method is, after all, that patronized by the great educators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Boys at school must turn their mind into a row of pigeon-holes, filling as many as they can with useful notes, and never forgetting how many are empty. There is an immense amount of positive knowledge to be acquired between the ages of ten and eighteen—rules of grammar, strings of vocables, dates, names of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical formulas, etc. All depends here on the receptive and retentive powers of the mind. The memory has to be strengthened, without being overtaxed, till it acts almost mechanically. Learning by heart, I believe, cannot be too assiduously practised during the years spent at school. There may have been too much of it when, as the Rev. H. C. Adams informs us in his “Wykehamica” (p. 357), boys used to say by heart 13,000 and 14,000 lines, when one repeated the whole of Virgil, nay, when another was able to say the whole of the English Bible by rote: “Put him on where you would, he would go fluently on, as long as any one would listen.”

No intellectual investment, I feel certain, bears such ample and such regular interest as gems of English, Latin, or Greek literature deposited in the memory during childhood and youth, and taken up from time to time in the happy hours of solitude.

One fault I have to find with most schools, both in England and on the Continent. Boys do not read enough of the Greek and Roman classics. The majority of our masters are scholars by profession, and they are apt to lay undue stress on what they call accurate and minute scholarship, and to neglect wide and cursory reading. I know the arguments for minute accuracy, but I also know the mischief that is done by an exclusive devotion to critical scholarship before we have acquired a real familiarity with the principal works of classical literature. The time spent in our schools in learning the rules of grammar and syntax, writing exercises, and composing verses, is too large. Look only at our Greek and Latin grammars, with all their rules and exceptions, and exceptions on exceptions! It is too heavy a weight for any boy to carry; and no wonder that when one of the thousand small rules which they have learnt by heart is really wanted, it is seldom forthcoming. The end of classical teaching at school should be to make our boys acquainted, not only with the language, but with the literature and history, the ancient thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar, syntax, or metre, are but means towards that end; they must never be mistaken for the end itself. A young man of eighteen, who has probably spent on an average ten years in learning Greek and Latin, ought to be able to read any of the ordinary Greek or Latin classics without much difficulty; nay, with a certain amount of pleasure. He might have to consult his dictionary now and then, or guess the meaning of certain words; he might also feel doubtful sometime whether certain forms came from ἵημι, I send, or εἶμι, I go, or εἰμί, I am, particularly if preceded by prepositions. In these matters the best scholars are least inclined to be pharisaical; and whenever I meet in the controversies of classical scholars the favorite phrase, “Every school-boy knows, or ought to know, this,” I generally say to myself, “No, he ought not.” Anyhow, those who wish to see the study of Greek and Latin retained in our public schools ought to feel convinced that it will certainly not be retained much longer, if it can be said with any truth that young men who leave school at eighteen are in many cases unable to read or to enjoy a classical text, unless they have seen it before.

Classical teaching, and all purely scholastic teaching, ought to be finished at school. When a young man goes to a University, unless he means to make scholarship his profession, he ought to be free to enter upon a new career. If he has not learnt by that time so much of Greek and Latin as is absolutely necessary in after-life for a lawyer, or a student of physical science, or even a clergyman, either he or his school is to blame. I do not mean to say that it would not be most desirable for every one during his University career to attend some lectures on classical literature, on ancient history, philosophy, or art. What is to be deprecated is, that the University should have to do the work which belongs properly to the school.

The best colleges at Oxford and Cambridge have shown by their matriculation examinations what the standard of classical knowledge ought to be at eighteen or nineteen. That standard can be reached by boys while still at school, as has been proved both by the so-called local examinations, and by the examinations of schools held under the Delegates appointed by the Universities. If, therefore, the University would reassert her old right, and make the first examination, called at Oxford Responsions, a general matriculation examination for admission to the University, not only would the public schools be stimulated to greater efforts, but the teaching of the University might assume, from the very beginning, that academic character which ought to distinguish it from mere school-boy work.

Academic teaching ought to be not merely a continuation, but in one sense a correction of scholastic teaching. While at school instruction must be chiefly dogmatic, at the University is it to be Sokratic? for I find no better name for that method which is to set a man free from the burden of purely traditional knowledge; to make him feel that the words which he uses are often empty, that the concepts he employs are, for the most part, mere bundles picked up at random; that even where he knows facts he does not know the evidence for them; and where he expresses opinions, they are mostly mere dogmas, adopted by him without examination.

But for the Universities, I should indeed fear that Mill’s prophecies might come true, and that the intellect of Europe might drift into dreary monotony. The Universities always have been, and, unless they are diverted from their original purpose, always will be, the guardians of the freedom of thought, the protectors of individual spontaneity; and it was owing, I believe, to Mill’s want of acquaintance with true academic teaching that he took so desponding a view of the generation growing up under his eyes.

When we leave school, our heads are naturally brimful of dogma—that is, of knowledge and opinions at second-hand. Such dead knowledge is extremely dangerous, unless it is sooner or later revived by the spirit of free inquiry. It does not matter whether our scholastic dogmas be true or false. The danger is the same. And why? Because to place either truth or error above the reach of argument is certain to weaken truth and to strengthen error. Secondly, because to hold as true on the authority of others anything which concerns us deeply, and which we could prove ourselves, produces feebleness, if not dishonesty. And, thirdly, because to feel unwilling or unable to meet objections by argument is generally the first step towards violence and persecution.