Chapter 5

On the proper working of the new Act depended the physical, moral, and intellectual betterment of the nation; in particular, "book-learning" needed to be tempered with not merely handcraft, but with something of the direct knowledge of nature; for in itself, if properly applied, this is an admirable instrument of education, and by its method promotes an attitude of mind capable of understanding the reasons for the vast changes at work in human thought.

Accordingly, he stood as a candidate for Marylebone, and, without canvassing, for which he had neither time nor inclination, he was elected second on the list. He had addressed several meetings, and, as an amplification of his election address, he included extracts from his forthcoming article, "The School Boards: What They Can Do, and What They May Do," which were sent to the papers by the editor of the _Contemporary Review_. (See _Coll. Ess._, iii, 374.) Here was his programme, a great part of which he saw carried out:--Physical training, for health and as a basis for further training; Domestic training, especially for girls; Moral training, in a knowledge of moral and social laws, and an engaging of the affections for what is good instead of what is evil; Intellectual training, in knowledge and the means of acquiring knowledge, alike for practical purposes and for recreation.

The opponents of popular education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above all, it set the interests of humanity above the mere development of skill, which would simply turn the child of man into the subtlest beast of the field.

True education, he declared, was impossible without "religion," the unchanging essence of which lies in the love of some ethical ideal to govern and guide conduct, "together with the awe and reverence which have no kinship with base fear, but rise whenever one tries to pierce below the surface of things, whether they be material or spiritual."

It was in this sense that he advocated Bible-reading in schools--simple Bible-reading, without theological gloss. On the one hand, this was the only workable plan under existing circumstances. True, that he would not have employed the Bible as the agency for introducing the religious and ethical idea in a system that could begin with a clean slate. He believed that the principle of strict secularity in State education is sound and must ultimately prevail. But moral instruction must not be too rudely divorced from the system of belief current among the generality; and the Bible had been the instrument of the clergy of all denominations, to whose efforts the mass of half-instructed people owed such redemption from ignorance and barbarism as they possessed. Make all needful deductions, and there remains a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur, interwoven with three centuries of our history. The Bible, as English literature, as old-world history, as moral teaching, as the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed, the most democratic book in the world, could not be spared. The mass of the people should not be deprived of the one great literature which is open to them; not shut out from the perception of their relations with the whole past history of civilized mankind, nor from an unpriestly view of Judaism and Jesus of Nazareth, purged of the accretions of centuries. Accordingly, he supported Mr. W.H. Smith's motion for Bible-reading, even against the champions of immediate secularization; but for Bible-reading under such regulations as would carry out for the children the intention of Mr. W.E. Forster, the originator of the Education Act, that "in the reading and explanation of the Bible... no efforts will be made to cram into their poor little minds theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them from understanding."

But the compromise was not permanently satisfactory. In 1893-94 the clerical party on the School Board "denounced" the treaty agreed to in 1871, and up till then undisputed, in the expectation of securing a new one more favourable to themselves; and the _Times_, hurrying to their support, did not hesitate to declare in a leading article that "the persons who framed the rule" respecting religious instruction intended to include definite teaching of such theological dogmas as the Incarnation.

In a letter to the _Times_ Huxley replied (April 29, 1893):--

I cannot say what may have been in the minds of the framers of the rule; but, assuredly, if I had dreamed that any such interpretation could fairly be put upon it, I should have opposed the arrangement to the best of my ability.

In fact, a year before the rule was framed I wrote an article in the _Contemporary Review_, entitled "The School Boards--what they can do and what they may do," in which I argued that the terms of the Education Act excluded such teaching as it is now proposed to include.

And this contention he supported by the quotation from Mr. W.E. Forster, given above.

Further, in October, 1894, he replied as follows to a correspondent who had asked him whether flat adhesion to the compromise had not made nonsense of a certain Bible lesson, which was the subject of much comment:--

I am at one with you in hating "hush up" as I do all other forms of lying; but I venture to submit that the compromise of 1871 was not a "hush up." If I had taken it to be such, I should have refused to have anything to do with it....

There has never been the slightest ambiguity about my position in the matter; in fact, if you will turn to one paper on the School Board written by me before my election in 1870, I think you will find that I anticipated the pith of the present discussion.

The persons who agreed to the compromise did exactly what all sincere men who agree to compromise do. For the sake of the enormous advantage of giving the rudiments of a decent education to several generations of the people, they accepted what was practically an armistice in respect of certain matters about which the contending parties were absolutely irreconcilable.

To return to his activity on the School Board. His vigorous work as chairman of the committee appointed to frame an educational scheme was marked by great breadth of view. He desired the elementary schools to be linked at the one end with infant schools; at the other with continuation schools and some scheme for technical education. A perfect scheme would provide what he first called a ladder from the gutter to the university, whereby children of exceptional capacity might reach the places for which nature had fitted them. His sense of fitness would have welcomed even more warmly some system whereby the incompetent born into the higher strata of the social organism should be automatically graded down to the positions more appropriate to their wits and character. But this is an ideal only possible in Plato's State, where philosophers are kings and possess superhuman power of intuition.

Sincerity is sometimes impracticable. But here sincerity was combined with common-sense practicality, and even an opponent like Lord Shaftesbury was impelled to write in his journal:--"Professor Huxley has this definition of morality and religion: 'Teach a child what is wise: that is _morality_. Teach him what is wise and beautiful: that is _religion!_' Let no one henceforth despair of making things clear and of giving explanations!"

He did not, however, disguise his fundamental opposition to Ultramontanism, that intellectual and social _imperium in imperio_, with its basic hostility to the free scientific spirit. This he had already expressed in his "Scientific Education" (_Coll. Ess._, iii, 111), an address of 1869, and he repeated it towards the end of his service on the School Board when opposing a bye-law that the Board should pay over direct to denominational schools the fees for poor children--to schools, that is, outside the Board's control. He opposed it partly because it would assuredly lead to repeated contests on the Board; partly because it would give a handle to that party whose system, as set forth in the syllabus, of securing complete possession of the minds of their flock, was destructive of all that was highest in the nature of mankind and inconsistent with intellectual and political liberty.

The committee did excellent work in systematizing important matters and leaving minor arrangements to the local managers; in apportioning essential and discretionary subjects, and--what was of special interest to its chairman--the teaching of elementary geography and elementary social economy, and in particular the systematized object-lessons, embracing a course of elementary construction in physical science, and serving as an introduction to the courses for the examinations under the Science and Art Department. Science, as he declared, was assuming such a position alike in practical life and in thought that any one totally ignorant of it would be at a disadvantage in both spheres. Moreover, the proposed technical schools--for applied science, that is--must suffer if they had to deal with pupils who had no preliminary grounding in the principles of physical science. His early advocacy of music and drawing, not to produce artists, but to develop personality, also bore some fruit. The man of science, too, was found defending Latin as a discretionary subject, alternatively with a modern language. Latin was the gate to many things, and, apart from the question of overloading the curriculum, there was great danger if educational possibilities were not thrown open to all without restriction. There is no more frightful "sitting on the safety valve" than in denying men of ability the means of rising to the positions for which their talents and industry might qualify them.

As for the compulsory element in education and the justification for levying rates and taxes for what objectors called "educating other people's children," his answer was: "Every ignorant person tends to become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer of the liberty of, his fellows, and an obstacle to their success. Under such circumstances an education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for purposes of defence."

In all this it was his attitude towards the child which deeply impressed his colleagues in whom child-sympathy was strongest. As the Rev. Benjamin Waugh put it, he was on the Board to establish schools for the children. He wanted to turn them into sound men and women, and resented the idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches or hands for factories. "What he sought to do for the child was for the child's sake, that it might live a fuller, truer, worthier life."

After fifteen months of service on the School Board superadded to the heavy strain of his ordinary work, his health broke down utterly, and he resigned. But after his retirement his successors found that their duty was "to put into practice the scheme of instruction which Huxley was mainly instrumental in settling. We were thus able indirectly to improve both the means and methods of teaching.... The most important developments and additions have been in the direction of educating the hand and eye.... Thus the impulse given by Huxley in the first months of the Board's existence has been carried forward by others." So wrote Dr. J. H. Gladstone in 1896. The tide of education has swelled since then and is still swelling, but its main direction is the same.

NOTE

As these pages are passing through the press, I note an appeal for money by the Religious Tract Society, which is running short of funds to keep up the number and quality of the 6-7,000 Bibles annually awarded as prizes to elementary school children. This advertisement fills more than half a column of the _Times_ of March 25, 1920. It is headed in bold type, PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE BIBLE, and, opening with the words "All who value the teaching of the Holy Bible will appreciate this wonderful description of the Bible by Professor Huxley," proceeds to quote the eloquent passage, referred to above on p. 54, from "The School Boards, etc." (_Coll. Ess_., iii, 396).

This testimony to the interest of the Bible outside its theological applications is detached from its context as a spur to "all those who value the Word of God... to send the Society help in [its] work of extending Bible teaching in our Elementary Schools."

But these words were written with grave qualifications, especially as to the need of excluding doctrinal teaching. By suppressing these qualifications the Secretaries of the Religious Tract Society approve themselves denizens of the world of half-truths, along with puff-writers and similar experts.

X

EDUCATION: ESPECIALLY OF TEACHERS AND OF WOMEN

The third of his excursions into the field of education, in his burning desire to give the people that right knowledge for want of which they perish, was the training of the teachers who prepared pupils for the examinations of the Science and Art Department. The future of scientific teaching depended upon the proper supply of trained teachers. Now, the School of Mines in Jermyn Street was without a laboratory in which to make even his own students work out with their own hands the structure of the biological "types" expounded in the lectures. An opportunity to train these new "scientific missionaries" came in 1871, when he was deep in the great schemes of elementary education. More than a hundred of them flocked to South Kensington, where some large rooms on the ground floor of the museum had been secured and rigged up for the purpose by the Professor and his three demonstrators. For six weeks in the summer there was a daily lecture, followed by four hours' laboratory work under the demonstrators, in which the students verified for themselves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to their unfortunate pupils from books alone. The naive astonishment and delight of the more intelligent among them was sometimes almost pathetic. One clergyman, who had for years conducted classes in physiology under the Science and Art Department, was shown a drop of his own blood under the microscope. "Dear me!" he exclaimed, "it's just like the picture in Huxley's _Physiology_."

From 1872 onwards, when the School of Mines removed bodily to new buildings at South Kensington, Huxley had a fine laboratory of his own, in which not only were these teachers taught, but he was able to adopt the same method with the students in his regular courses--a method for long universally adopted in detail as well as in principle. The first and unchangeable principle was to make the student verify every fact for himself; to be satisfied with nothing at second hand. The system was to work over a chosen set of biological types, each representing a well-marked group and providing comparisons one with another as well as stepping stones to further investigations. Originally he started the series with the simplest organisms, and proceeded to the more complex; but, though a good philosophical order, it had the disadvantages of requiring the beginner to have much skill in handling the microscope, and of proceeding from the less known organism to the better known. Starting with the latter, the beginner would know better what to look for. His demonstrator, Jeffery Parker, argued the point vigorously with Huxley, and finally persuaded him to invert the series, with great success, albeit other lecturers preferred to keep to his original arrangement.

Education, furthermore, owes him a great debt for his long and active work upon the Royal Commissions on the Royal College of Science for Ireland, on Science and Art Instruction in Ireland, on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science; on Vivisection, to inquire into the Universities of Scotland, and on the Medical Acts--all in the sixteen years between 1866 and 1882. At the London University, also, he was an examiner for many years, and in the early nineties he strove hard to give it a new constitution, first as a member of the Senate, and then as president of a reforming Association. It is noteworthy, too, that ten years earlier he was elected a Governor of Eton College, and in the short time before his health broke down a second time he did something to aid science-teaching there and to make drawing a general subject.

In the general need for education he ranked high the need for the education of women. As early as 1860 he wrote: "I don't see how we are to make any permanent advancement while one-half of the race is sunk, as nine-tenths of women are, in mere ignorant parsonese superstitions." If only people would not bring up their daughters as man-traps for the matrimonial market, the next generation would see women fit to be the companions of men in all their pursuits; "though," he added, "I don't think that men have anything to fear from their competition." On this point he remarked five years later: "Nature's old salique law will never be repealed, and no change of dynasty will be effected, though whatever argument justifies a given education for boys justifies its application to girls as well."

A letter of 1874, touching the first efforts of women to qualify as doctors, prefigures what has been done since for the higher education of women:--

Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity. We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial--the products of their modes of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, and that "over-stimulation of the emotions" which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy play during the years of adolescence; and those who are best acquainted with the requirements of an average medical practitioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is likely to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated young woman.

Twenty years later he supported the entry of women into public life in a plainly reasoned letter, which he himself thought highly complimentary, although a number of estimable ladies flew at him for writing it:--

The best of women are apt to be a little weak in the great practical arts of give-and-take and putting up with a beating, and a little too strong in their belief in the efficacy of government. Men learn about these things in the ordinary course of their business; women have no chance in home life, and the boards and councils will be capital schools for them. Again, in the public interest it will be well; women are more naturally economical than men, and have none of our false shame about looking after pence. Moreover, they don't job for any but their lovers, husbands, and children, so that we know the worst.

Directly, then, as teacher, lecturer, and essayist indirectly as organizer, he ranks among the great educators of his age. But he did not establish a "school" of his own; such a thing was abhorrent to him. A resolute seeker after truth, he bade others seek also; but he refused to impose his own conclusions on any man.

Of all possible positions [he wrote in 1892], that of master of a school, or leader of a sect, or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact, the average British matron cannot look upon followers with a more evil eye than I do. Such acquaintance with the history of thought as I possess has taught me to regard school, parties, and sects as arrangements, the usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is worst and feeblest in the master's, leader's, or founder's work; or else, as in some cases, to upset it altogether; as a sort of hydrant for extinguishing the fire of genius, and for stifling the flame of high aspirations, the kindling of which has been the chief, perhaps the only, merit of the protagonist of the movement. I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, This and this have I learned, thus and thus have I learned it; go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions the value of which you ought to have tested for yourself.

In fact, what his teaching stood for was not so much the thing taught as the method by which facts should be observed and conclusions drawn from them. As science, in his definition, is but trained and organized common sense, so this method, the scientific method, is but the ordinary common-sense method rigidly carried out. And the correlative to this method is the attitude of mind that suspends judgment until adequate proof is forthcoming.

XI

METHODS OF WORK

Of his method of work something has already been said, recalling his insistence upon verifying, experimentally, all statements made by others which he wished to employ in his lectures. This was true not only of his daily teaching, but of any new research that interested him. He repeated the series of Pasteur's experiments for himself before making a pronouncement on the much-debated question of spontaneous generation. A curious by-result of these investigations was that the Admiralty requested him to track down the cause of great trouble in the Navy--namely, that the ship's biscuit, though carefully prepared and packed in tins, was constantly found, when the tins were opened, to be full of maggots.

His far-ranging work in Comparative Anatomy was based upon dissections by his own hand, executed rapidly and broadly, going straight to the essential point without any finikin elaboration, and recorded in very fine anatomical drawings. Indeed, his power of clear and rapid draughtsmanship was the other side of his unusual power of visualizing a conception. Each faculty helped the other, and one of the most striking examples of his memory of forms was when, before a delighted audience, he traced on the blackboard the development of some complex structure, showing, stroke upon stroke, the orderly transition from one form to the next.