Part 13

Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it: and God by all the variety of his Providence makes us see death every where, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person.

Nature hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two: and the spring and the autumn sends throngs of men and women to charnel-houses; and all the summer long men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then the Syrian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the year’s provision, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity; and he that escapes till the winter only stays for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter’s cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death; and you can go no whither but you tread upon a dead man’s bones.

DEATH BEFORE ADAM.

Two hundred years ago, long before the science of Geology called for the belief that mortality had been stamped on creation, and had manifested its proofs in the animal races previously to Adam’s appearance, Jeremy Taylor could write as follows regarding Adam himself before the Fall. He considers him to have been created mortal; not merely liable to become mortal, but actually mortal.

“For ‘flesh and blood,’ that is, whatsoever is born of Adam, ‘cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’ And they are injurious to Christ who think that from Adam we might have inherited immortality. Christ was the giver and preacher of it; ‘he brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.’”

Again: “For that Adam was made mortal in his nature is infinitely certain, and proved by his very eating and drinking, his sleep and recreation, &c.”

And in another passage, quoted by Professor Hitchcock: “That death which God threatened to Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. If he had stayed in innocence, he should have gone placidly and fairly, without vexatious and affective circumstances; he should not have died by sickness, defect, misfortune, or unwillingness.” These sentiments Archdeacon Pratt[68] quotes, not as necessarily approving them, but to show that so good and learned a man as Jeremy Taylor had a view regarding death and mortality no less unusual than that which Geology demands.

Footnote 68:

_Science and Scripture not at Variance_, 2d ed. 1858.

FUTURE EARTHLY EXISTENCE OF THE HUMAN RACE.

Regarding Man, independently of any revealed knowledge of his future destiny, but simply with reference to his relations with the physical world about him, Mr. Hopkins, the able geologist, asks: “Do we see in his character and position here any indication that this earth is his destined abiding place for indefinite periods of time? We conceive that a negative answer to the question is suggested at least by the fact that the extent of the earth’s surface and its powers of production are _finite_, whereas the tendency in human population to increase is unlimited. It is undoubtedly easy to conceive this tendency to be arrested, but not probably by causes consistent with the moral and physical well-being of the race. Whether human population may have increased or not during the last two thousand years, is a matter of little import, we conceive, to the question before us. We know that it is now spreading itself over many parts of the globe, under influences far different from those under which it has heretofore extended,—the influence of Christianity, and of that higher civilisation which must attend the pure doctrines of our religion. We believe that this extension and increase of the civilised races of mankind will continue; and, however it may be temporarily checked by the hardships and evils to which man is subject, we can hardly understand how this tendency can be effectively and finally arrested before the population of the globe shall have approximated to that limit which must be necessarily imposed upon it by the finite dimensions of man’s dwelling-place. We know not what might be the views of political economists on this ultimate condition of human population; but we feel it difficult to conceive its existence, under merely human influences, independently of physical want, and possibly of that moral debasement which so frequently attends it. In fact, those who regard man simply in his human character and in his relations to _nature_, and not in his relations to God, must find in his earthly future the most insoluble problem which can offer itself to the speculative philosopher. It would seem equally difficult to assign to the human race an indefinite term of existence, or to sweep it away by natural causes from the face of the earth. But it is in such questions as this that a steady faith in man’s Creator and Redeemer affords to the embarrassed mind a calm and welcome resting-place. Those who believe man’s introduction on the earth to have been a direct act of his Almighty Creator, will not think it necessary to look for his final earthly destiny in the operation of merely secondary causes, but will refer it to the same Divine Agency as that to which he refers the origin of the race.”[69]

Footnote 69:

_Geology_, by William Hopkins, M.A., F.R.S.; _Cambridge Essays_, 1857.

The School of Life.

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

BISHOP BURNET seems to have given the reply in the fewest words when he observes: “The education of youth is the foundation of all that can be performed for bettering the next age.”

“Education,” says Paley, “in the most extensive sense of the word, may comprehend every preparation that is madef in our youth for the sequel of our lives; and in this sense I use it. Some such preparation is necessary for all conditions, because without it they must be miserable, and probably will be vicious, when they grow up, either from the want of the means of subsistence, or from want of rational and inoffensive occupation. In civilised life, every thing is affected by art and skill. Whence a person who is provided with neither (and neither can be acquired without exercise and instruction) will be useless, and he that is useless will generally be at the same time mischievous, to the community. So that to send an uneducated child into the world is injurious to the rest of mankind; it is little better than to turn out a mad dog or a wild-beast into the streets.”

Who are the uneducated? is a question not easily to be answered in a time when books have come to be household furniture in every habitation of the civilised world. All that men have contrived, discovered, done, felt, or imagined, is recorded in books; wherein whoso has learned to spell printed letters may find such knowledge, and turn it to advantageous account.

D’Israeli the younger, in one of his politico-economic speeches, remarks: “As civilisation has gradually progressed, it has equalised the physical qualities of man. Instead of the strong arm, it is now the strong head that is the moving principle of society. You have disenthroned Force, and placed on her high seat Intelligence; and the necessary consequence of this great revolution is, that it has become the duty and the delight equally of every citizen to cultivate his faculties.”

TEACHING YOUNG CHILDREN.

Coleridge relates that Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child’s mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose for itself. “I showed him my garden,” says Coleridge, “and told him it was my botanical garden.” “How so?” said he; “it is covered with weeds.” “Oh!” I replied, “that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds you see have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.”

Madame de Lambert, in her work _Sur l’Education d’une jeune Demoiselle_, says: “The greatest enemy that we have to combat in the education of children is self-love; and to this enemy we cannot give attention too early. Our business is to weaken it, and we must be careful not to strengthen it by indiscriminate praise. Frequent praise encourages pride, induces a child to value herself as superior to her companions, and renders her unable to bear any reproach or objection however mild. We should be cautious, even in the expression of affection, not to lead children to suppose that we are constantly occupied with them. Timid children may be encouraged by praise; but it must be judiciously bestowed, and for their good conduct, not for personal graces. Above all things, it is necessary to inspire them with a love of truth; to teach them to practise it at their own expense; and to impress it upon their minds that there is nothing so truly great as the frank acknowledgment, ‘I am wrong.’”

Harriet Martineau observes: “It is a matter of course that no mother will allow any ignorant person to have access to her child who will frighten it with goblin stories or threats of the old black man. She might as well throw up her charge at once, and leave off thinking of household education altogether, as permit her child to be exposed to such maddening inhumanity as this. The instances are not few of idiotcy or death from terror so caused.”

Children should not be hedged-in with any great number of rules and regulations. Such as are necessary to be established, they should be required implicitly to observe. But there should be none that are superfluous. It is only in rich families, where there is a plentiful attendance of governors and nurses, that many rules can be enforced; and it is believed that the constant attention of governors and nurses is one of the greatest moral disadvantages to which the children of the rich are exposed.

Coleridge has well said: “The most graceful objects in nature are little children—before they have learned to dance.”

“Grace,” says Archbishop Whately, “is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation, or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them ‘elegant’ animals would be absurd. Lastly, ‘elegant’ may be applied to mental qualifications, which ‘graceful’ never can. Elegance must always imply something that is made or invented by man. An imitation of nature is not so; therefore we do not speak of an ‘elegant picture,’ though we do of an elegant pattern for a gown, an elegant piece of work. The general rule is, that elegance is the characteristic of art, and grace of nature.”

EDUCATION AT HOME.

Education at Home has been thus aptly illustrated: History and Geography should begin at home. If we want a boy to know some day the families of the Herods and the Cæsars, let him start by learning who was his own grandfather. The Church Catechism rightly commences by making the child tell his own name; it would be in many cases almost puzzling, but in all cases and senses a most proper question, to ask him, further, the names of his godfathers and godmothers; and so carrying him gradually onward, he would know, what seldom happens, the kings of England before he attempts those of Israel and Judah. This principle holds as true of places as of persons. The things that touch us nearest interest us most. Geography should begin from the school-walls: “Which side of this room does the sun rise on?” “Does Church-lane run west or north?” “Whither does the brook flow that rises on Squash-hill?” In this way the young scholar would in time be brought to comprehend the round world and his own position on it, and probably with some clearer perception of the truth and relation of things than if he had begun by rote: “The earth is a terraqueous globe, depressed at the poles, consisting of,” &c. But we are all taught on the contrary plan. We begin at the wrong end; for, in the ladder of learning, _Ego_, not Adam, is the true No. 1. We start from the equator instead of High-street, and the result is the lamentable fact, that even educated men are strangers in their own country, and thousands die within the sound of Bow-bells who have never seen the inside of St. Paul’s. Topography, then, should precede geography. Yet perhaps there is not a schoolroom in England where a county map is to be found hung up on the wall. Frightened by the remembrance of having been once the deluded subscriber to a Topographical Dictionary, even students have a horror of the word; and the subject is consigned, in expensive folios, to a few professed antiquaries, or to some eccentric member of a county family, who emerges every third or fourth generation to preserve a provincial dignity which he would not willingly let die.[70]

Footnote 70:

_Quarterly Review._

TENDERNESS OF YOUTH.

Leaving home the first time, for school, has been thus pathetically described by Southey: “The pain which is felt when we are first transplanted from our native soil, when the living branch is cut from the parent tree, is one of the most poignant griefs which we have to endure through life. There are after-griefs which wound more deeply, which leave behind them scars never to be effaced, which bruise the spirit, and sometimes break the heart: but never do we feel so keenly the want of love, the necessity of being loved, and the utter sense of desertion, as when we first leave the haven of home, and are, as it were, pushed off upon the stream of life.” Nelson, when he was sent a boy first to rough it out at sea, felt this loneliness most acutely: he paced the deck most of the day without being noticed by any one; and it was not till the second day that somebody, as he expresses it, “took compassion on him.” Nelson had a feeble body and an affectionate heart, and he remembered through life his first days of wretchedness in the service.

Humanity to animals has been thus eloquently enjoined upon children by Dr. Parr: “He that can look with rapture upon the agonies of an unoffending and unresisting animal, will soon learn to view the sufferings of a fellow-creature with indifference: and in time he will acquire the power of viewing them with triumph, if that fellow-creature should become the victim of his resentment, be it just or unjust. But the minds of children are open to impressions of every sort, and indeed wonderful is the facility with which a judicious instructor may habituate them to tender emotions. I have therefore always considered mercy to beings of an inferior species as a virtue which children are very capable of learning, but which is most difficult to be taught if the heart has been once familiarised to spectacles of distress, and has been permitted either to behold the pangs of any living creature with cold insensibility, or to inflict them with wanton barbarity.”

BUSINESS OF EDUCATION.

Among the many recommendations which will always attach to a public system of education, the value of early emulation, the force of example, the abandonment of sulky and selfish habits, and the acquirement of generous, manly dispositions, are not to be overlooked. To begin at the beginning is the only royal road to learning; and this is only to be reached by attention to elementary truths. Yet this is difficult, even for cultivated men. “In reality,” says Dr. Temple, “elementary truths are the hardest of all to learn, unless we pass our childhood in an atmosphere thoroughly impregnated with them; and then we imbibe them unconsciously, and find it difficult to perceive their difficulty.”[71] Yet how few children have this advantage: so many false impressions are received in childhood, that the first business of education proper is to _unlearn_.

The superior influence of example over precept is thus eloquently illustrated by Carlyle: “Is not love, from of old, known to be the beginning of all things? And what is admiration of the great but love of the truly lovable? The first product of love is imitation, that all-important peculiar gift of man, whereby mankind is not only held socially together in the present time, but connected in like union with the past and future; so that the attainment of the innumerable departed can be conveyed down to the living, and transmitted with increase to the unborn. Now, great men, in particular spiritually great men (for all men have a spirit to guide, though all have not kingdoms to govern and battles to fight), are the men universally imitated and learned of, the glass in which whole generations survey and shape themselves.”

Lord Jeffrey has remarked upon the necessity of early restraint, that

Young people who have been habitually gratified in all their desires will not only more indulge in capricious desires, but will infallibly take it more amiss when the feelings or happiness of others require that they should be thwarted, than those who have been practically trained to the habit of subduing and restraining them; and consequently will in general sacrifice the happiness of others to their own selfish indulgence. To what else is the selfishness of princes and other great people to be attributed? It is in vain to think of cultivating principles of generosity and beneficence by mere exhortation and reasoning. Nothing but the _practical habit_ of overcoming our own selfishness, and of familiarly encountering privations and discomfort on account of others, will ever enable us to do it when required. And therefore I am firmly persuaded that indulgence infallibly produces selfishness and hardness of heart, and that nothing but a pretty severe discipline and control can lay the foundation of a magnanimous character.

Footnote 71:

_Education of the World._

THE CLASSICS.

Especially was Dr. Arnold an orthodox Oxonian in his belief of the indispensable usefulness of Classical Learning, not only as an important branch of knowledge, but as the substantial basis of education itself, the importance of which he thus forcibly illustrates: “The study of Greek and Latin, considered as mere languages, is of importance mainly as it enables us to understand and employ well that language in which we commonly think and speak and write. It does this because Greek and Latin are specimens of language at once highly perfect and incapable of being understood without long and minute attention: the study of them, therefore, naturally involves that of the general principles of grammar; while their peculiar excellences illustrate the points which render language clear and forcible and beautiful. But our _application_ of this general knowledge must naturally be to our own language: to show us what are its peculiarities, what its beauties, what its defects; to teach us, by the patterns or the analogies offered by other languages, how the effect we admire in them may be produced with a somewhat different instrument. Every lesson in Greek or Latin may and ought to be made a lesson in English; the translation of every sentence in Demosthenes or Tacitus is properly an extemporaneous English composition; a problem, how to express with equal brevity, clearness, and force, in our own language, the thought which the original author has so admirably expressed in his.”

In other words, Dr. Arnold was the first English commentator who gave life to the study of the Classics, by bringing the facts and manners which they disclose to the test of real life.

Mr. Buckle, siding with the anti-classicists, remarks that, “With the single exception of Porson, not one of the great English scholars has shown an appreciation of the beauties of his native language; and many of them, such as Parr (in all his works) and Bentley (in his mad edition of Milton) have done every thing in their power to corrupt it. And there can be little doubt that the principal reason why well-educated women write and converse in a purer style than well-educated men, is because they have not formed their taste according to those ancient classical standards, which, admirable as they are in themselves, should never be introduced into a state of society unfitted for them. To this may be added, that Cobbett, the most racy and idiomatic of all our writers, and Erskine, by far the greatest of our forensic orators, knew little or nothing of any ancient language; and the same observation applies to Shakspeare.”[72]

Our author has been just to Porson, to whom chiefly English scholarship owes its accuracy and its certainty; and this as a branch of education—as a substratum on which to rest other branches of knowledge often infinitely more useful in themselves—really takes as high a rank as any of those studies which can contribute to form the character of a well-educated English gentleman.

Footnote 72:

_History of Civilisation in England._

LIBERAL EDUCATION.

Dean Hook has written the following able defence of a Liberal Education, as distinguished from the special training for a profession:

A Liberal Education is to the present time the characteristic of what is called a University Education. By a liberal education is meant a non-professional education. By a non-professional education is meant an education conducted without reference to the future profession, or calling, or special pursuit for which the person under education is designed. It is an education which is regarded not merely as a means, but as something which is in itself an end. The end proposed is not the formation of the divine, or the physician, or the lawyer, or the statesman, or the soldier, or the man of business, or the botanist, or the chemist, or the man of science, or even the scholar; but simply of the thinker.