Part 39

“Do I advise you then to be on the defensive throughout the whole year and like a stranger among your pupils? No! a thousand times, No! It is just to make their relations with you simple, confiding, I might say cordial, without the least danger to your authority, that I endeavour to raise this authority at first beyond the reach of assault.”—_La Discipline_, chap, v, pp. 31 ff.

In this book we see the best side of the Jesuits. They believe in their “mission,” and this belief throws light on many things. Those who hate the Jesuits have often extolled the wisdom of Montaigne, when he says: “We have not to train up a soul, nor yet a body, but a man; and we cannot divide him.” Can they see no wisdom in _this_? “Let your mind be filled with the thought that both soul and body have been created by the Hand of God: we must account to Him for these two parts of our being; and we are not required to weaken one of them out of love for the Creator. We should love the body in the same degree that He could love it.” This is what Loyola wrote in 1548 to Francis Borgia (Compayré, _Doctrines, &c._, vol. j, 179). But if we wish to see the other side of the Jesuit character, we have only to look at the Jesuit as a controversialist. We sometimes see children hiding things and then having a pretence hunt for them. The Jesuits are no children, but in arguing they pretend to be searching for conclusions which are settled before arguments are thought of. See, _e.g._, the attack on the Port Royalists in _Les Jésuites Instituteurs_, par le P. Ch. Daniel, 1880, in which the Jesuit sets himself to maintain this thesis: “D’une source aussi profondément infectée du poison de l’hérésie, il ne pouvait sortir rien d’absolument bon” (p. 123). One good point he certainly makes, and in my judgment one only, in comparing the Port Royalist schools with the schools of Jesuits. Methods which answer with very small numbers may not do with large numbers: “You might as well try to extend your gardening operations to agriculture” (p. 102).

[39] I am sorry to use a German word, but educational matters have been so little considered among us that we have no English vocabulary for them. The want of a word for _Realien_ was felt over 200 years ago. “Repositories for _visibles_ shall be prepared by which from beholding the things gentlewomen may learn the names, natures, values, and use of herbs, shrubs, trees, mineral-juices (_sic_), metals, and stones.” (_Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen._ London, 1672.)

[40] See the very interesting _Essay on Montaigne_ by Dean R. W. Church.

[41] Perhaps the saying of Montaigne’s which is most frequently quoted is the paradox _Savoir par cœur n’est pas savoir_: (“to know by heart is not to _know_.”) But these words are often misunderstood. The meaning, as I take it, is this: When a thought has entered into the mind it shakes off the words by which it was conveyed thither. Therefore so long as the words are indispensable the thought is not known. Knowing and knowing by heart are not necessarily opposed, but they are different things; and as the mind most easily runs along sequences of words a knowledge of the words often conceals ignorance or neglect of the thought. I once asked a boy if he thought of the meaning when he repeated Latin poetry and I got the instructive answer: “Sometimes, _when I am not sure of the words_.” But there are cases in which we naturally connect a particular form of words with thoughts that have become part of our minds. We then know, and know by heart also.

[42] Lord Armstrong has perhaps never read Montaigne’s _Essay on Pedantry_; certainly, he has not borrowed from it; and yet much that he says in discussing “The Cry for Useless Knowledge” (_Nineteenth Century Magazine_, November, 1888), is just what Montaigne said more than three centuries ago. “The aphorism that knowledge is power is so constantly used by educational enthusiasts that it may almost be regarded as the motto of the party. But the first essential of a motto is that it be true, and it is certainly not true that knowledge is the same as power, seeing that it is only an aid to power. The power of a surgeon to amputate a limb no more lies in his knowledge than in his knife. In fact, the knife has the better claim to potency of the two, for a man may hack off a limb with his knife alone, but not with his knowledge alone. Knowledge is not even an aid to power in all cases, seeing that useless knowledge, which is no uncommon article in our popular schools, has no relation to power. The true source of power is the originative action of the mind which we see exhibited in the daily incidents of life, as well as in matters of great importance.... A man’s success in life depends incomparably more upon his capacities for useful action than upon his acquirements in knowledge, and the education of the young should therefore be directed to the development of faculties and valuable qualities rather than to the acquisition of knowledge.... Men of capacity and possessing qualities for useful action are at a premium all over the world, while men of mere education are at a deplorable discount.” (p. 664).

“There is a great tendency in the scholastic world to underrate the value and potency of self-education, which commences on leaving school and endures all through life.” (p. 667).

“I deprecate plunging into doubtful and costly schemes of instruction, led on by the _ignis fatuus_ that ‘knowledge is a power.’ For where natural capacity is wasted in attaining knowledge, it would be truer to say that knowledge is weakness.” (p. 668).

[43] In another matter, also, we find that the masters of these schools subsequently departed widely from the intention of the great men who fostered the revival of learning. Wolsey writes: “Imprimis hoc unum admonendum censuerimus, ut neque plagis severioribus neque vultuosis minis, aut ulla tyrannidis specie, tenera pubes afficiatur: hac enim injuria ingenii alacritas aut extingui aut magna ex parte obtundi solet.” Again he says: “In ipsis studiis sic voluptas est intermiscenda ut puer ludum potius discendi quam laborem existimet.” He adds: “Cavendum erit ne immodica contentione ingenia discentium obruantur aut lectione prolonga defatigentur; utraque enim juxta offenditur.”

[44] Professor Arber is one of the very few editors who give accurate and sufficient bibliographical information about the books they edit. All students of our old literature are under deep obligations to him.

[45] Mayor’s is beautifully printed and costs 1_s._ (London, Bell and Sons.)

[46] “Utile imprimis ut multi præcipiunt, vel ex Græco in Latinum vel ex Latino vertere in Græcum; quo genere exercitationis proprietas splendorque verborum, copia figurarum, vis explicandi, præterea imitatione optimorum similia inveniendi facultas paratur: simul quæ legentem fefellissent transferentem fugere non possunt. Intelligentia ex hoc et judicium acquiritur.”—_Epp._ vii. 9, § 2. So the passage stands in Pliny. Ascham quotes “_et_ ex Græco in Latinum _et_ ex Latino vertere in Græcum.” with other variations.

[47] _Teaching of Languages in Schools_, by W. H. Widgery, p. 6.

[48] Much information about our early books, with quotations from some of them, will be found in Henry Barnard’s _English Pedagogy_, 1st and 2nd series. Some notice of rare books is given in _Schools, School-books, and Schoolmasters_, by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, Jarvis, 1888), but in this work there are strange omissions.

[49] The paging is that of the reprint. It differs slightly from that of first edition.

[50] Mulcaster goes on to talk about the brain, &c. Of course he does not anticipate the discoveries of science, but his language is very different from what we should expect from a writer in the pre-scientific age, _e.g._, “To serve the turn of these two, both _sense_ and _motion_, Nature hath planted in our body a _brain_, the prince of all our parts, which by spreading sinews of all sorts throughout all our parts doth work all those effects which either _sense_ is seen in or _motion_ perceived by.” (_El._, p. 32.) But much as he thinks of the body Mulcaster is no materialist. “Last of all our soul hath in it an imperial prerogative of understanding beyond sense, of judging by reason, of directing by both, for duty towards God, for society towards men, for conquest in affections, for purchase in knowledge, and such other things, whereby it furnisheth out all manner of uses in this our mortal life, and bewrayeth in itself a more excellent being than to continue still in this roaming pilgrimage.” (p. 33.) The grand thing, he says, is to bring all these abilities to perfection “which so heavenly a benefit is begun by education, confirmed by use, perfected with continuance which crowneth the whole work.” (p. 34.) “Nature makes the boy toward; nurture sees him forward.” (p. 35.) The neglect of the material world which has been for ages the source of mischief of all kinds in the schoolroom, and which has not yet entirely passed away, would have been impossible if Mulcaster’s elementary course had been adopted. “Is the body made by Nature nimble to run, to ride, to swim, to fence, to do anything else which beareth praise in that kind for either profit or pleasure? And doth not the Elementary help them all forward by precept and train? The hand, the ear, the eye be the greatest instruments whereby the receiving and delivery of our learning is chiefly executed, and doth not this Elementary instruct the hand to write, to draw, to play; the eye to read by letters, to discern by line, to judge by both; the ear to call for voice and sound with proportion for pleasure, with reason for wit? Generally whatsoever gift Nature hath bestowed upon the body, to be brought forth or bettered by the mean of train for any profitable use in our whole life, doth not this Elementary both find it and foresee it?” (_El._, p. 35). “_The hand, the ear, the eye, be the greatest instruments_,” said the Elizabethan schoolmaster. So says the Victorian reformer.

[51] I wish some good author would write a book on _Unpopular Truths_, and show how, on some subjects, wise men go on saying the same thing in all ages and nobody listens to them. Plato said “In every work the beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with anything young and tender.” (_Rep._, bk. ii, 377; Davies and Vaughan, p. 65.) And the complaints about “bad grounding” prove our common neglect of what Mulcaster urged three centuries ago: “For the _Elementarie_ because good scholars will not abase themselves to it, it is left to the meanest, and therefore to the worst. For that the first grounding would be handled by the best, and his reward would be greatest, because both his pains and his judgment should be with the greatest. And it would easily allure sufficient men to come down so low, if they might perceive that reward would rise up. No man of judgment will contrary this point, neither can any ignorant be blamed for the contrary: the one seeth the thing to be but low in order, the other knoweth the ground to be great in laying, not only for the matter which the child doth learn: which is very small in show though great for process: but also for the manner of handling his wit, to hearten him for afterward, which is of great moment. The first master can deal but with a few, the next with more, and so still upward as reason groweth on and receives without forcing. It is the foundation well and soundly laid, which makes all the upper building muster, with countenance and continuance. If I were to strike the stroke, as I am but to give counsel, the first pains truly taken should in good truth be most liberally recompensed; and less allowed still upward, as the pains diminish and the ease increaseth. Whereat no master hath cause to repine, so he may have his children well grounded in the _Elementarie_. Whose imperfection at this day doth marvellously trouble both masters and scholars, so that we can hardly do any good, nay, scantly tell how to place the too too raw boys in any certain form, with hope to go forward orderly, the ground-work of their entry being so rotten underneath.” (_PP._, pp. 233, 4.)

[52] Quaint as we find Mulcaster in his mode of expression, the thing expressed is sometimes rather what we should expect from Herbert Spencer than from a schoolmaster of the Renascence. I have met with nothing more modern in thought than the following: “In time all learning may be brought into one tongue, and that natural to the inhabitant: so that schooling for tongues may prove needless, as once they were not needed; but it can never fall out that arts and sciences in their right nature shall be but most necessary for any commonwealth that is not given over unto too too much barbarousness.” (_PP._, 240.)

[53] “Subject to a regulation like that of the ancient Spartans, the theft of knowledge in our sex is only connived at while carefully concealed, and if displayed [is] punished with disgrace.” So says Mrs. Barbauld, and I have met with similar passages in other female writers.

[54] John Brinsley (the elder) who married a sister of Bishop Hall’s and kept school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (was it the _Grammar School_?) was one of the best English writers on education. In his _Consolation for our Grammar Schooles_, published early in the sixteen hundreds, he says: “Amongst others myself having first had long experience of the manifold evils which grow from the ignorance of a right order of teaching, and afterwards some gracious taste of the sweetness that is to be found in the better courses truly known and practised, I have betaken me almost wholly, for many years unto this weighty work, and that not without much comfort, through the goodness of our blessed God.” (p. 1.) “And for the most part wherein any good is done, it is ordinarily effected by the endless vexation of the painful master, the extreme labour and terror of the poor children with enduring far overmuch and long severity. Now whence proceedeth all this but because so few of those who undertake this function are acquainted with any good method or right order of instruction fit for a grammar school?” (p. 2.) It is sad to think how many generations have since suffered from teachers “unacquainted with any good method or right order of instruction.” And it seems to justify Goethe’s dictum, “_Der Engländer ist eigentlich ohne Intelligenz_,” that for several generations to come this evil will be but partially abated.

[55] At Cambridge (as also in London and Edinburgh) there is already a Training College for Women Teachers in Secondary Schools.

[56] All we know of his life may soon be told. Richard Mulcaster was a Cumberland man of good family, an “esquier borne,” as he calls himself, who was at Eton, then King’s College, Cambridge, then at Christ Church, Oxford. His birth year was probably 1530 or 1531, and he became a student of Christ Church in 1555. In 1558 he settled as a schoolmaster in London, and was elected first headmaster of Merchant Taylors’ School, which dates from 1561. Here he remained twenty-five years, _i.e._ till 1586. Whether he then became, as H. B. Wilson says, surmaster of St. Paul’s, I cannot determine, but “he came in” highmaster in 1596, and held that office for twelve years. Though in 1598 Elizabeth made him rector of Stanford Rivers, there can be no doubt that he did not give up the highmastership till 1608, when he must have been about 77 years old. He died at Stanford Rivers three years later. While at Merchant Taylors’, viz., in 1581 and 1582, he published the two books which have secured for him a permanent place in the history of education in England. The first was his _Positions_, the second “The first part” (and, as it proved, the only part) of his _Elementarie_. Of his other writings, his _Cato Christianus_ seems to have been the most important, and a very interesting quotation from it has been preserved in Robotham’s Preface to the _Janua_ of Comenius; but the book itself is lost: at least I never heard of a copy, and I have sought in vain in the British Museum, and at the University Libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. His _Catechismus Paulinus_ is a rare book, but Rev. J. H. Lupton has found and described a copy in the Bodleian.

[57] _Lectures and Essays_: _English in School_, by J. R. Seeley, p. 222. Elsewhere in the same lecture (p. 229) Professor Seeley says: “The schoolmaster might set this right. Every boy that enters the school is a _talking_ creature. He is a performer, in his small degree, upon the same instrument as Milton and Shakespeare. Only do not sacrifice this advantage. Do not try by artificial and laborious processes to give him a new knowledge before you have developed that which he has already. Train and perfect the gift of speech, unfold all that is in it, and you train at the same time the power of thought and the power of intellectual sympathy, you enable your pupil to think the thoughts and to delight in the words of great philosophers and poets.” I wish this lecture were published separately.

[58] _Rep._ bk. vii, 536, _ad f._; Davies and Vaughan, p. 264.

[59] In Buisson (_Dictionnaire_) No. 7 is “The children must have frequent play, and a break after every lesson.” Raumer connects this with No. 6, and says: “breaks were rendered necessary by Ratke’s plan, which kept the learners far too silent.”

[60] In the matter of grammar Ratke’s advice, so long disregarded, has recently been followed in the “Parallel Grammar Series,” published by Messrs. Sonnenschein.

[61] The ordinary teaching of almost every subject offers illustrations of the neglect of this principle. Take, _e.g._, the way in which children are usually taught to read. First, they have to say the alphabet—a very easy task as it seems to us, but if we met with a strange word of _twenty-six syllables_, and that not a compound word, but one of which every syllable was new to us, we might have some difficulty in remembering it. And yet such a word would be to us what the alphabet is to a child. When he can perform this feat, he is next required to learn the visual symbols of the sounds and to connect these with the vocal symbols. Some of the vocal symbols bring the child in contact with the sound itself, but most are simply conventional. What notion does the child get of the aspirate from the name of the letter _h_? Having learnt twenty-six visual and twenty-six vocal symbols, and connected them together, the child _finally comes to the sounds_ (over 40 in number) _which the symbols are supposed to represent_.

[62] See Mr. E. E. Bowen’s vigorous essay on “Teaching by means of Grammar,” in _Essays on a Liberal Education_, 1867.

I have returned to the subject of language-learning in § 15 of _Jacotot_ in the _note_. See page 426.

[63] Preface to the _Prodromus_.

[64] Preface to _Prodromus_, first edition, p. 40; second edition (1639), p. 78. The above is Hartlib’s translation, see _A Reformation of Schools, &c._, pp. 46, 47.

[65] Preface to _Prodromus_, first edition, p. 40; second edition, p. 79. _A Reformation, &c._, p. 47.

[66] Very interesting are the “immeasurable labours and intellectual efforts” of Master Samuel Hartlib, whom Milton addresses as “a person sent hither by some good providence from a far country, to be the occasion and incitement of great good to this island.” (_Of Education_, A.D. 1644.) See Masson’s _Life of Milton_, vol. iii; also biographical and bibliographical account of Hartlib by H. Dircks, 1865. Hartlib’s mother was English. His father, when driven out of Poland by triumph of the Jesuits, settled at Elbing, where there was an English “Company of Merchants” with John Dury for their chaplain. Hartlib came to England not later than 1628, and devoted himself to the furtherance of a variety of schemes for the public good. He was one of those rare beings who labour to promote the schemes of others as if they were their own. He could, as he says, “contribute but little” himself, but “being carried forth to watch for the opportunities of provoking others, who can do more, to improve their talents, I have found experimentally that my endeavours have not been without effect.” (Quoted by Dircks, p. 66.) The philosophy of Bacon seemed to have introduced an age of boundless improvement; and men like Comenius, Hartlib, Petty, and Dury, caught the first unchecked enthusiasm. “There is scarce one day,” so Hartlib wrote to Robert Boyle, “and one hour of the day or night, being brim full with all manner of objects of the most public and universal nature, but my soul is crying out ‘Phosphore redde diem! Quid gaudia nostra moraris? Phosphore redde diem!’”

But in this world Hartlib looked in vain for the day. The income of £300 a year allowed him by Parliament was £700 in arrears at the Restoration, and he had then nothing to hope. His last years were attended by much physical suffering and by extreme poverty. He died as Evelyn thought at Oxford in 1662, but this is uncertain.

[67] _Dilucidatio_, Hartlib’s trans., p. 65.

[68] The _Dilucidation_, as he calls it, is added. All the books above mentioned are in the Library of the British Museum under _Komensky_.

[69] Masson’s _Milton_, vol. iii, p. 224, Prof. Masson is quoting _Opera Didactica_, tom. ii, Introd.

[70] _Unum Necessarium_, quoted by Raumer.

Compare George Eliot: “By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is, and cannot do what we would, we are part of the Divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.”—_Middlemarch_, bk. iv, p. 308 of first edition.

[71] Compare Mulcaster, _supra_, p. 94.

[72] Comenius here follows Ratke, who, as I have mentioned above (p. 116), required beginners to study the translation _before the original_.

[73] Professor Masson (_Life of Milton_, vol. iii, p. 205, _note_) gives us the following from chap. ix (cols. 42-44), of the _Didactica Magna_:—

“Nor, to say something particularly on this subject, can any sufficient reason be given why the weaker sex [_sequior sexus_, literally the _later_ or _following_ sex, is his phrase, borrowed from Apuleius, and, though the phrase is usually translated the inferior sex, it seems to have been chosen by Comenius to avoid that implication] should be wholly shut out from liberal studies whether in the native tongue or in Latin. For equally are they God’s image; equally are they partakers of grace, and of the Kingdom to come; equally are they furnished with minds agile and capable of wisdom, yea, often beyond our sex; equally to them is there a possibility of attaining high distinction, inasmuch as they have often been employed by God Himself for the government of peoples, the bestowing of wholesome counsels on Kings and Princes, the science of medicine and other things useful to the human race, nay even the prophetical office, and the rattling reprimand of Priests and Bishops [etiam ad propheticum munus, et increpandos Sacerdotes Episcoposque, are the words; and as the treatise was prepared for the press in 1638 one detects a reference, by the Moravian Brother in Poland to the recent fame of Jenny Geddes, of Scotland]. Why then should we admit them to the alphabet, but afterwards debar them from books? Do we fear their rashness? The more we occupy their thoughts, the less room will there be in them for rashness, which springs generally from vacuity of mind.”

[74] Translated by Daniel Benham as _The School of Infancy_. London, 1858.