FOOTNOTES:

[123] Son of Louis XIV., born Aug. 6, 1682; died Feb. 18, 1712.

[124] See the Advice of Fénelon, Archbishop Cambray, to a lady of quality on the education of her daughter.

[125] For an example of this “artifice” carried to the extreme of absurdity, see Miss Worthington’s translation of the Émile, p. 133. (P.)

[126] Eldest son of Louis XIV., born Nov. 1, 1661; died April 14, 1711.

[127] Education of Girls, Chap. V.

[CHAPTER IX.]
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, LOCKE.

DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, LOCKE; DESCARTES (1596-1650); THE DISCOURSE OF METHOD; CRITICISM OF THE CURRENT EDUCATION; GREAT PRINCIPLES OF MODERN PEDAGOGY; OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE PEDAGOGY; MALEBRANCHE (1638-1715); SENSE INSTRUCTION CONDEMNED; INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT; LOCKE (1632-1704); THE THOUGHTS CONCERNING EDUCATION; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; THE HARDENING PROCESS; HYGIENIC PARADOXES; MORAL EDUCATION MORE IMPORTANT THAN INSTRUCTION; SENSE OF HONOR THE PRINCIPLE OF MORAL DISCIPLINE; CONDEMNATION OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT; INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; UTILITARIAN STUDIES; PROGRAMME OF STUDIES; ATTRACTIVE STUDIES; SHOULD A TRADE BE LEARNED? WORKING SCHOOLS; LOCKE AND ROUSSEAU; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.

199. Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke.—Descartes, a spiritualist; Malebranche, an idealist; Locke, a sensationalist,—such are the philosophers of the seventeenth century who are related to the history of pedagogy. And yet the first two have only a remote connection with it, through their exposition of some of its general principles. Locke is the only one who has resolutely approached educational questions in a special treatise that has become a classic in English pedagogy.

200. Descartes (1596-1650).—Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, does not generally figure in the lists drawn up by the historians of education; and yet, in our opinion, there is no thinker who has exercised a more decisive influence on the destinies of education. The author of the Discourse of Method has, properly speaking, no system of pedagogy, having never directly treated of educational affairs; but through his philosophical principles he has changed the direction of human thought, and has introduced into the study of known truths, as well as into the search for new truths, a method and a taste for clearness and precision, which have profited instruction in all of its departments.

“We now find,” says Rollin, “in the discourses from the pulpit and the bar, and in the dissertations on science, an order, an exactness, a propriety, and a solidity, which were formerly not so common. Many believe, and not without reason, that we owe this manner of thinking and writing to the extraordinary progress which has been made within a a century in the study of philosophy.”[128]

201. The Discourse of Method (1637).—Every system of philosophy contains in germ a special system of education. From the mere fact that philosophers define, each in his own way, the nature and the destiny of man, they come to different conclusions as to the aims and methods of education. Only a few of them have taken pains to deduce from their principles the consequences that are involved in them; but all of them, whether they will or no, are educators.

Such is the case of Descartes. In writing, in the first part of his Discourse of Method, his Considerations Touching the Sciences, Descartes has written a chapter on practical pedagogy, and through the general rules of his logic, he has, in effect, founded a new theory of education.

202. Criticism of the Current Education.—Descartes has given a long account of the education which he had received among the Jesuits, at the college of La Flèche, and this account furnished him occasion, either to criticize the methods in use, or to indicate his personal views and his educational preferences.

“From my infancy letters have been my intellectual nourishment.... But as soon as I had completed the course of study required for the doctor’s degree, I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that I had received no other profit from my efforts at learning than the discovery of my growing ignorance.”

In other terms, Descartes ascertained that his studies, though pursued with ardor for eight years in one of the most celebrated schools of Europe, had not permitted him to acquire “a clear and sure knowledge of all that is useful for living.” This was to condemn the barren teaching and the formal instruction of the Jesuits. Passing in review the different parts of the instruction, Descartes first remarks that it was wrong to make an abuse of the reading of ancient books; for, to hold converse with the men of other centuries “is about the same as travelling; and when we spend too much time in travelling, we become strangers in our own country.” Then he complains that he was not made to know “the true use of mathematics,” since he had been shown their application only to the mechanic arts. He nearly condemns rhetoric and poetics, since eloquence and poetry are “intellectual gifts rather than the fruits of study.” The ancient languages—and in this he gravely deceives himself—seem to him useful only for the understanding of authors. He does not admit that the study of Latin or Greek can contribute to intellectual development.

From these reflections there seems to issue the notion of an instruction more solid, more positive, more directly useful for the purposes of life, than that which had been brought into fashion by the Jesuits. However, Descartes does not eliminate the ordinary studies, as eloquence, “which has incomparable power and beauty”; poetry, “which has an enchanting tenderness and melody”; the reading of the classics, which is “a studied conversation with the most estimable men of past centuries”; history, “which forms the judgment”; fables, whose “charm arouses the spirit.” But he would give to all these exercises a more practical turn, a more utilitarian character, a more positive application.

203. Great Principles of Modern Pedagogy.—Without intending it, without any other thought than that of modifying the false direction of the mind in the search for scientific truth, Descartes has stated some of the great principles of modern pedagogy.

The first is the equal aptitude of minds to know and comprehend. “Good sense,” says Descartes, “is the thing of all else in this world that is most equally distributed.[129] ... The latent ability to judge well, to distinguish the true from the false, is naturally equal among all men.” What is this but saying that all men are entitled to instruction? In a certain sense, what are the innumerable primary schools scattered over the surface of the civilized globe, but the application and the living commentary of Descartes’ ideas on the equal distribution of good sense and reason among men?

But, adds Descartes, “it is not enough to have a sound mind; the principal thing is to make a good use of it.” In other words, nature is not sufficient in herself; she needs to be guided and directed. Method is the essential thing; it has a sovereign importance. Success will depend less on natural qualities, such as imagination, memory, quickness of thought, than upon the rules of intellectual direction imposed on the mind. Education has a far greater part than nature in the formation and development of accurate and upright intelligences.

Another Cartesian principle is the substitution of free inquiry and reflective conviction for blind beliefs founded upon authority. Descartes promulgated this famous rule of his method: “The first precept is, never to receive anything for true that I do not know, upon evidence, to be such; ... and to comprise no more within my judgments than what is presented so clearly and distinctly to my mind that I have no occasion to call it in question.” In this declaration he has not only reformed science and revolutionized philosophy, but has banished from the school the old routine, the mechanical processes and exercises of pure memory, and has made a demand for rational methods that excite the intelligence, awaken clear and distinct ideas, and provoke judgment and reflection. Of course, it is not proposed to make a little Descartes out of every child, despoiling him of received beliefs in order to construct personal opinions de novo; but the rule of evidence, applied with moderation and discretion, is none the less an excellent pedagogical precept, which will never be disallowed by those who wish to make of the child something more than a mere machine.

204. Objective and Subjective Pedagogy.—We have now reached a place where we may call into notice two different tendencies, equally legitimate, which we shall find, with exaggerations that compromise their utility, in the practice of modern teachers. There are those who wish above all to develop the intelligence; and there are others who are preoccupied with furnishing the mind with a stock of positive knowledge. The first conceive instruction as taking place, as it were, through what is within, through the development of the internal qualities of precision and measure; the others are preoccupied only with the instruction that takes place through what is without, through an extended erudition, through an accumulation of knowledges. In a word, if I may be allowed the expression, some affect a subjective pedagogy, and others an objective pedagogy. Bacon is of the latter number. That which preoccupies the great English logician above everything else is the extension of observations and experiments. “To reason without knowing anything of that which we reason upon,” he says, “is as if we were to weigh or measure the wind.” Descartes, however, who has never neglected the study of facts, esteems them less as material to be accumulated in the mind, than as instruments for training the mind itself. He would have repudiated those teachers of our day who seem to think the whole thing is done when there has been made to pass before the mental vision of the child an interminable series of object-lessons, without the thought of developing that intelligence itself.

205. Malebranche (1638-1715).—We must not expect great pedagogical wisdom from a mystical dreamer and resolute idealist, who has imagined the vision of all things in God. Besides, Malebranche has given only a passing attention to things relating to education. The member of a teaching congregation, the Oratory, he has not taught; and the whole effort of his mind was spent in the search for metaphysical truth. Nevertheless, it is interesting to stop for a moment this visionary who traverses the earth with eyes fixed on the heavens, and inquire of him what he thinks of the very practical question, education.

206. Sense Instruction condemned.—Malebranche will reply to us, with the prejudices of a metaphysician of the idealist type, that the first thing to do is to nourish the child on abstract truths. In his view, souls have no age, so to speak, and the infant is already capable of ideal contemplation. Then let sense instruction be abandoned, “for this is the reason why children leave metaphysical thoughts, to apply themselves to sensations.” Is it objected that the child does not seem very well adapted to meditation on abstract truths? It is not so much the fault of nature, Malebranche will reply, as of the bad habits he has contracted. There is a means of remedying this ordinary incapacity of the child.

“If we kept children from fear, from desires, and from hope, if we did not make them suffer pain, if we removed them as far as possible from their little pleasures, then we might teach them, from the moment they knew how to speak, the most difficult and the most abstract things, or at least the concrete mathematics, mechanics.”

Does Malebranche hope, then, to suppress, in the life of the child, pleasure and pain, and triumph over the tendencies which ordinary education has developed?

“As an ambitious man who had just lost his fortune and his credit would not be in a condition to resolve questions in metaphysics or equations in algebra, so children, on whose brains apples and sugar-plums make as profound impressions as are made on those of men of forty years by offices and titles, are not in a condition to hear the abstract truths that are taught them.”

Consequently, we must declare war against the senses, and exclude, for example, all sorts of sensible rewards. Only, by a singular contradiction, Malebranche upholds material punishments in the education of children. The only thing of sense he retains is the rod.[130]

207. Influence of Material Environment.—Another contradiction more worthy of note is, that, notwithstanding his idealism, Malebranche believes in the influence of physical conditions on the development of the soul. He does not go so far as to say with the materialists of our time, that “man is what he eats”; but he accords a certain amount of influence to nourishment. He speaks cheerfully of wine and of “those wild spirits who do not willingly submit to the orders of the will.” He never applied himself to work without having partaken of coffee. The soul, in his view, is not a force absolutely independent and isolated, which develops through an internal activity: “we are bound,” he says, “to everything, and stand in relations to all that surrounds us.”

208. Locke (1632-1704).—Locke is above all else a psychologist, an accomplished master in the art of analyzing the origin of ideas and the elements of the mental life. He is the head of that school of empirical psychology that rallies around its standard, Condillac in France, Herbart in Germany, and in Great Britain Hume and other Scotchmen, and the most of modern philosophers. But from psychology to pedagogy the transition is easy, and Locke had to make no great effort to become an authority in education after having been an accomplished philosopher.

209. Some Thoughts on Education (1693).—The book which he published towards the close of his life, under the modest title Some Thoughts concerning Education, was the summing up of a long experience. A studious pupil at Westminster, he conceived from his early years, as Descartes did at La Flèche, a keen sense of repugnance for a purely formal classical instruction, and for language studies in general, in which, nevertheless, he attained distinction. A model student at the University of Oxford, he there became an accomplished humanist, notwithstanding the practical and positive tendency of his mind that was already drawn towards the natural sciences and researches in physics and in medicine. Made Bachelor of Arts in 1656, and Master of Arts in 1658, he passed directly from the student’s bench to the professor’s chair. He was successively lecturer and tutor in Greek, but this did not prevent him later from eliminating Hellenism almost completely from his scheme of liberal education. Then he became lecturer on rhetoric, and finally on moral philosophy. When, in 1666, he discontinued his scholastic life to mingle in political and diplomatic affairs, he at least carried from his studious residence at Oxford, the germs of the most of his ideas on education. He sought occasion to make an application of them in the education of private individuals, of whom he was the inspirer and counsellor, if not the official director. In the families of friends and hosts that he frequented, for example, in that of Lord Shaftesbury, he made a close study of children; and it is in studying them, and in following with a sagacious eye the successive steps of their improvement in disposition and mind, that he succeeded in acquiring that educational experience which has left a trace on each page of the Thoughts concerning Education. This book, in fact, is the issue of one of Locke’s experiences as an assistant in the education of the children of his friends. Towards the year 1684-5, he addressed to his friend Clarke a series of letters which, retouched and slightly modified, have become a classical work, simple and familiar in style, a little disconnected, perhaps, and abounding in repetitions, but the substance of which is excellent, and the ideas as remarkable, in general, for their originality as for their justness. Translated into French in 1695 by P. Coste, and reprinted several times in the lifetime of their author, the Thoughts concerning Education have had a universal success. They have exercised an undoubted influence on the educational writings of Rousseau and Helvetius. They have received the enthusiastic praise of Leibnitz, who placed this work above that on the Human Understanding. “I am persuaded,” said H. Marion recently, in his interesting study on Locke, “that if an edition of the Thoughts were to be published to-day in a separate volume, it would have a marked success.”[131]

210. Analysis of the Thoughts concerning Education.—Without pretending to give in this place a detailed analysis of Locke’s book, which deserves to be read entire, and which discusses exhaustively or calls to notice, one after another, almost all important educational questions, we shall attempt to make known the essential principles which are to be drawn from it. These are: 1. in physical education, the hardening process; 2. in intellectual education, practical utility; 3. in moral education, the principle of honor, set up as a rule for the free self-government of man.

211. Physical Education; The Hardening Process.—The ideal of education, according to Locke, is “a sound mind in a sound body.” A physician like Rabelais, the author of the Thoughts concerning Education had special competence in questions of physical education. But a love for the paradoxical, and an excessive tendency towards the hardening of the body, have marred, on this point, the reflections of the English philosopher. He has summed up his precepts on this subject in the following lines:—

“The whole is reduced,” he says, “to a small number of rules, easy to observe; much air, exercise, and sleep; a simple diet, no wine or strong liquors; little or no medicine at all; garments that are neither too tight nor too warm; finally, and above all, the habit of keeping the head and feet cold, of often bathing the feet in cold water and exposing them to dampness.”[132] But it is necessary to enter somewhat into details, and to examine closely some of these ideas.

Locke is the first educator to write a consecutive and methodical dissertation on the food, clothing, and sleep of children. It is he who has stated this principle, afterwards taken up by Rousseau: “Leave to nature the care of forming the body as she thinks it ought to be done.” Hence, no close-fitting garments, life in the open air and in the sun; children brought up like peasants, inured to heat and cold, playing with head and feet bare. In the matter of food, Locke forbids sugar, wine, spices, and flesh, up to the age of three or four. As to fruits, which children often crave with an inordinate appetite, a fact that is not surprising, he pleasantly remarks, “since it was for an apple that our first parents lost paradise,” he makes a singular choice. He authorizes strawberries, gooseberries, apples, and pears; but he interdicts peaches, plums, and grapes. To excuse Locke’s prejudice against the grapes, it must be recollected that he lived in England, a country in which the vine grows with difficulty, and of which an Italian said, “The only ripe fruit I have seen in England is a baked apple.” As to meals, Locke does not think it important to fix them at stated hours. Fénelon, on the contrary, more judiciously requires that the hour for repasts be absolutely determined. But this is not the only instance in which Locke’s wisdom is at fault. What shall be said of that hygienic fancy which consists in allowing the child “to have his shoes so thin, that they might leak and let in water, whenever he comes near it”?

It is certain that Locke treats children with an unheard-of severity, all the more surprising in the case of one who had an infirm and delicate constitution that could be kept in repair only through precaution and management. I do not know whether the consequences of the treatment which he proposes, applied to the letter, might not be disastrous. Madame de Sévigné was more nearly right when she wrote: “If your son is very robust, a rude education is good; but if he is delicate, I think that in your attempts to make him robust, you would kill him.” The body, says Locke, may be accustomed to everything. We may reply to this by quoting an anecdote of Peter the Great, who one day took it into his head, it is said, that it would be best for all the sailors to form the habit of drinking salt water. Immediately he promulgated an edict which ordered that all naval cadets should henceforth drink only sea-water. The boys all died, and there the experiment stopped.

Still, without subscribing to Locke’s paradoxes, which have found no one to approve of them except Rousseau, we should recollect that in his precepts on physical education as a whole, the author of the Thoughts deserves our commendation for having recommended a manly course of discipline, and a frugal diet, for having discarded fashionable conventionalities and drawn near to nature, and for having condemned the refinements of an indolent mode of life, and for being inspired by the simple and manly customs of England.

212. Moral Education.—In the thought of Locke, moral education takes precedence of instruction properly so called:

“That which a gentleman ought to desire for his son, besides the fortune he leaves him is, 1. virtue; 2. prudence; 3. good manners; 4. instruction.”

Virtue and prudence—that is, moral qualities and practical qualities—are of first consideration. “Instruction,” says Locke again, “is but the least part of education.” In the book of Thoughts, where repetitions abound, there is nothing more frequently repeated than the praise of virtue.

Doubtless it may be thought that Locke, like Herbert Spencer in our own day, cherishes prejudices with respect to instruction, and that he does not take sufficient account of the moralizing influence exercised over the heart and will by intellectual enlightenment; but, even with this admission, we must thank Locke for having protested against the teachers who think they have done all when they have embellished the memory and developed the intelligence.

The grand thing in education is certainly to establish good moral habits, to cultivate noble sentiments, and, finally, to form virtuous characters.

213. Honor, the Principle of Moral Discipline.—But after having placed moral education in its proper rank, which is the first, it remains to inquire what shall be the principles and the methods of this education. Shall it be the maxim of utility, as Rousseau requires? Must the child, before acting, inquire what is the good of this? Cui bono? No; utilitarian in instruction and in intellectual education, as we have just seen, Locke is not so in moral education. Shall it be fear, shall it be the authority of the teacher or of parents, founded on punishments, upon the slavish feeling of terror? Still less. Locke reproves repressive discipline, and is not inclined to chastisements. Shall it be affection, the love of parents, the aggregate of tender sentiments? Locke scarcely speaks of them. Of too little sensibility himself, he does not seem to think of all that can be done through the sensibility of the child.

Locke, who perhaps is wrong in treating the child too early, as though he were a man, who does not take sufficient account of all the feebleness that is in infant nature, appeals from the first to the sentiment of honor, and to the fear of shame, that is, to emotions which, I fear, by their very nobleness, are above the powers of the child. Honor, which is, in fact, but another name for duty, and the ordinary synonym of virtue,—honor may assuredly be the guide of an adult and already trained conscience; but is it not chimerical to hope that the child, from his earliest years, will be sensible to the esteem or the contempt of those who surround him? If it were possible to inspire a child with a regard for his reputation, I grant with Locke that we might henceforth “make of him whatever we will, and teach him to love all the forms of virtue”; but the question is to know whether we can succeed in this, and I doubt it, notwithstanding the assurances of Locke.

Kant has very justly said:—

“It is labor lost to speak of duty to children. They comprehend it only as a thing whose transgression is followed by the ferule.... So one ought not to try to call into play with children the feeling of shame, but to wait for this till the period of youth comes. In fact, it cannot be developed in them till the idea of honor has already taken root there.”

Locke is the dupe of the same illusion, both when he expects of the child enough moral power so that the sense of honor suffices to govern him, and when he counts enough on his intellectual forces to desire to reason with him from the moment he knows how to speak. For forming good habits in the child, and preparing him for a life of virtue, there is full need of all the resources that nature and art put at the disposal of the educator,—sensibility under all its forms, the calculations of self-interest, the lights of the intelligence. It is only little by little, and with the progress of age, that an exalted principle, like the sentiment of honor or the sentiment of duty, will be able to emerge from out the mobile humors of the child, and dominate his actions like a sovereign law. The moral pedagogy of Locke is certainly faulty in that it is not sufficiently addressed to the heart, and to the potency of loving, which is already so great in the child. I add, that in his haste to emancipate the child, to treat him as a reasonable creature, and to develop in him the principles of self-government, Locke was wrong in proscribing almost absolutely the fear of punishment. It is good to respect the liberty and the dignity of the man that is in the child, but it is not necessary that this respect degenerate into superstition; and it is not sure that to train firm and robust wills, it is necessary to have them early affranchised from all fear and all constraint.

214. Condemnation of Corporal Punishment.—It is undeniable that Locke has not sufficiently enlarged the bases of his theory of moral discipline; but if he has rested incomplete in the positive part of his task, if he has not advised all that should be done, he has been more successful in the negative part, that which consists in eliminating all that ought not to be done. The chapters devoted to punishments in general, and in particular to corporal punishments, count among the best in the Thoughts. Rollin and Rousseau have often copied from them. It is true that Locke himself has borrowed the suggestion of them from Montaigne. The “severe mildness” which is the pedagogical rule of the author of the Essays, is also the rule of Locke. It is in accordance with this that Locke has brought to bear on the rod the final judgment of good sense: “The rod is a slavish discipline, which makes a slavish temper.” He has yielded to the ideas of his time on only one point, when he admits one exception to the absolute interdiction of the rod, and tolerates its use in extreme cases to overcome the obstinate and rebellious resistance of the child. This is going too far without any doubt; but to do justice to the boldness of Locke’s views, we must consider how powerful the custom then was, and still is, in England, in a country where the heads of institutions think themselves obliged to notify the public, in the advertisements published in the journals, that the interdiction of corporal punishment counts among the advantages of their schools. “It is difficult to conceive the perseverance with which English teachers cling to the old and degrading customs of corrections by the rod.... A more astonishing thing is that the scholars seem to hold to it as much as the teachers.” “In 1818,” relates one of the former pupils of Charterhouse, “our head master, Doctor Russell, who had ideas of his own, resolved to abolish corporal punishment and substitute for it a fine. Everybody resisted the innovation. The rod seemed to us perfectly consistent with the dignity of a gentleman; but a fine, for shame! The school rose to the cry: ‘Down with the fine! Long live the rod!’ The revolt triumphed, and the rod was solemnly restored. Then we were glad-hearted over the affair. On the next day after the fine was abolished, we found, on entering the class-room, a superb forest of birches, and the two hours of the session were conscientiously employed in making use of them.”[133][134]

215. Intellectual Education.—In what concerns intellectual education, Locke manifestly belongs to the school, small in his time, but more and more numerous to-day, of utilitarian teachers. He would train, not men of letters, or of science, but practical men, armed for the battle of life, provided with all the knowledge they will need in order to keep their accounts, administer their fortune, satisfy the requirements of their profession, and, finally, to fulfill their duties as men and citizens. In a word, he wrote for a nation of tradesmen and citizens.

216. Utilitarian Studies.—An undeniable merit of Locke is that of having reacted against a purely formal instruction, which substitutes for the acquisition of positive and real knowledge a superfluous culture, so to speak, a training in a superficial rhetoric and an elegant verbiage. Locke disdains and condemns studies that do not contribute directly to a preparation for life. Doubtless he goes a little too far in his reaction against the current formalism and in his predilection for realism. He is too forgetful of the fact that the old classical studies, if not useful in the positive sense of the term, and not satisfying the ordinary needs of existence, have yet a higher utility, in the sense that they may become, in skillful and discreet hands, an excellent instrument for intellectual discipline and the education of the judgment. But Locke spoke to fanatics and pedants, for whom Latin and Greek were the whole of instruction, and who, turning letters from their true purpose, wrongly made a knowledge of the dead languages the sole end, and not, as should be the case, one of the means of instruction. Locke is by no means a blind utilitarian, a coarse positivist, who dreams of absolutely abolishing disinterested studies. He wishes merely to put them in their place, and to guard against investing them with a sort of exclusive privilege, and against sacrificing to them other branches of instruction that are more essential and more immediately useful.

217. Programme of Studies.—As soon as the child knows how to read and write, he should be taught to draw. Very disdainful of painting and of the fine arts in general, whose benign and profound influence on the souls of children his colder nature has not sufficiently recognized, Locke, by way of compensation, recommends drawing, because drawing may be practically useful, and he puts it on almost the same footing as reading and writing.

These elements once acquired, the child should be drilled in the mother tongue, first in reading, and afterwards in exercises in composition, in brief narratives, in familiar letters, etc. The study of a living language (Locke recommends French to his countrymen) should immediately follow; and it is only after this has been acquired that the child shall be put to the study of Latin. Save the omission of the sciences, Locke’s plan is singularly like that which for ten years has been in use in the French lycées.

As to Latin, which follows the living language, Locke requires that it shall be learned above all through use, through conversation if a master can be found who speaks it fluently, but if not, through the reading of authors. As little of grammar as possible, no memoriter exercises, no Latin composition, either in prose or verse, but, as soon as possible, the reading of easy Latin texts,—these are the recommendations of Locke that have been too little heeded. The purpose is no longer to learn Latin for the sake of writing it elegantly; the only purpose truly desirable is to comprehend the authors who have written in that language. The obstinate partisans of Latin verse and conversation will not read without chagrin these earnest protests of Locke against exercises that have been too much abused, and that impose on the learner the torment of writing in a language which he handles with difficulty, upon subjects which he but imperfectly understands. As to Greek, Locke proscribes it absolutely. He does not disparage the beauty of a language whose masterpieces, he says, are the original source of our literature and science; but he reserves the knowledge of it to the learned, to the lettered, to professional scholars, and he excludes it from secondary instruction, which ought to be but the school which trains for active life. Thus relieved, classical instruction will more easily welcome the studies that are of real use and of practical application,—geography, which Locke places in the first rank, because it is “an exercise of the eyes and memory”; arithmetic, which “is of so general use in all parts of life and business, that scarce anything can be done without it”; then what he somewhat ambitiously calls astronomy, and which is in reality an elementary cosmography; the parts of geometry which are necessary for “a man of business”; chronology and history, “the most agreeable and the most instructive of studies”; ethics and common law, which do not yet have a place in French programmes; finally, natural philosophy, that is, the physical sciences; and, to crown all, a manual trade and bookkeeping.

218. Attractive Studies.—Another characteristic of Locke’s intellectual discipline is, that, utilitarian in its purpose, the instruction which he organizes shall be attractive in its methods. After hatred for the pedantry which uselessly spends the powers of the learner in barren studies, the next strongest antipathy of Locke is that which is inspired by the rigor of a too didactic system of instruction, where the methods are repulsive, the processes painful, and where the teacher appears to his pupils only as a bugbear and a marplot.

Although he may go to extremes in this, he is partly right in wishing to bring into favor processes that are inviting and methods that are attractive. Without hoping, as he does, without desiring even, that the pupil may come to make no distinction between study and other diversions, we are disposed to believe that something may be done to alleviate for him the first difficulties in learning, to entice and captivate him without constraining him, and, finally, to spare him the disgust which cannot fail to be inspired by studies too severely forced upon him, and which are made the subject of scourges and scoldings. It is especially for reading and the first exercises of the child that Locke recommends the use of instructive plays. “They may be taught to read, without perceiving it to be anything but a sport, and play themselves into that which others are whipped for.”

Children of every age are jealous of their independence and eager for pleasure. No one before Locke had so clearly recognized the need of the activity and liberty which are natural to the child, or so strongly insisted on the necessity of respecting his independent disposition and his personal tastes. Here again English pedagogy of the seventeenth century meets its illustrious successor of the nineteenth. Herbert Spencer has thoroughly demonstrated the fact that the mind really appropriates only the knowledge that affords it pleasure and agreeable exercise. Now, there is pleasure and agreeable excitation wherever there is the development of a normal activity corresponding to an instinctive taste and proportioned to the natural powers of the child; and there is no real instruction save at the expense of a real display of activity.[135]

219. Should there be Learning by Heart?—To this question, Should there be learning by heart? Locke gives a resolute reply in the negative. The conclusion is absolute and false; but the premises that he assumes to justify his conclusion are, if possible, falser still. Locke sets out from this psychological idea, that the memory is not susceptible of progress. He brings into the discussion his sensualistic prejudices, his peculiar conception of the soul, which is but a tabula rasa, an empty and inert capacity, and not a congeries of energies and of living forces that are strengthened by exercise. He does not believe that the faculties, whatever they may be, can grow and develop, and this for the good reason, according to his thinking, that the faculties have no existence.

But here let him speak for himself:—

“I hear it is said that children should be employed in getting things by heart, to exercise and improve their memories. I would wish this were said with as much authority and reason as it is with forwardness of assurance, and that this practice were established upon good observation more than old custom. For it is evident that strength of memory is owing to an happy constitution, and not to any habitual improvement got by exercise. ’Tis true what the mind is intent upon, and, for fear of letting it slip, often imprints afresh on itself by frequent reflection, that it is apt to retain, but still according to its own natural strength of retention. An impression made on beeswax or lead will not last so long as on brass or steel. Indeed, if it be renewed often, it may last the longer; but every new reflecting on it is a new impression, and ’tis from thence one is to reckon, if one would know how long the mind retains it. But the learning pages of Latin by heart no more fits the memory for retention of anything else, than the graving of one sentence in lead makes it the more capable of retaining firmly any other characters.”[136]

If Locke were right, education would become wholly impossible; for, in case of all the faculties, education supposes the existence of a natural germ which exercise fertilizes and develops.

220. A Trade should be learned.—Locke, like Rousseau, but for other reasons, wishes his pupil to learn a trade:

“I can not forbear to say, I would have my gentleman learn a trade, a manual trade; nay, two or three, but one more particularly.”[137]

Rousseau will say the same: “Recollect that it is not talent that I require of you; it is a trade, a real trade, a purely mechanical art, in which the hands work more than the head.”

But Locke, in having his gentleman learn carpentry or agriculture, especially designed that this physical labor should lend the mind a diversion, an occasion for relaxation and repose, and secure to the body a useful exercise. Rousseau is influenced by totally different ideas. What he wants is, first, that through an apprenticeship to a trade, Émile may protect himself against need in case a revolutionary crisis should deprive him of his wealth. In the second place, Rousseau obeys his social, we might even say his socialistic, preoccupations. Work, in his view, is a strict duty, from which no one can exempt himself. “Rich or poor, every idle citizen is a knave.”

221. Working Schools.—Although Locke is almost exclusively preoccupied with classical studies and with a gentleman’s education, nevertheless he has not remained completely a stranger to questions of primary instruction. In 1697 he addressed to the English government a remarkable document on the importance of organizing “working schools” for the children of the poor. All children over three and under fourteen years of age are to be collected in homes where they will find labor and food. In this way Locke thought to contend against immorality and pauperism. He would find a remedy for the idleness and vagabondage of the child, and lighten the care of the mother who is absorbed in her work. He would also, through habits of order and discipline, train up steady men and industrious workmen. In other terms, he attempted a work of social regeneration, and the tutor of gentlemen became the educator of the poor.

222. Locke and Rousseau.—In the Émile we shall frequently find passages inspired by him whom Rousseau calls “the wise Locke.” Perhaps we shall admire even more the practical qualities and the good sense of the English educator when we shall have become acquainted with the chimeras of his French imitator. In the case of Locke, we have to do, not with an author who wishes to shine, but with a man of sense and judgment who expresses his opinions, and who has no other pretense than to understand himself and to be comprehended by others. To appreciate the Thoughts at their full value, they should not be read till after having re-read the Émile, which is so much indebted to them. On coming from the reading of Rousseau, after the brilliant glare and almost the giddiness occasioned his reader by a writer of genius whose imagination is ever on the wing, whose passion urges him on, and who mingles with so many exalted truths, hasty paradoxes, and noisy declamations, it is like repose and a delicious unbending to the spirit to go to the study of Locke, and to find a train of thought always equable, a style simple and dispassionate, an author always master of himself, always correct, notwithstanding some errors, and a book, finally, filled, not with flashes and smoke, but with a light that is agreeable and pure.

[223. Analytical Summary.—1. This study illustrates the fact that the aims and methods of education are determined by the types of thought, philosophical, political, religious, scientific, and social, that happen to be in the ascendent; and also the tendency of the human mind to adopt extreme views.

2. The subjective tendency of human thought is typified by the Socratic philosophy, and the objective tendency by the Baconian philosophy; and from these two main sources have issued two distinctive schools of educators, the formalists and the realists, the first holding that the main purpose of education is discipline, training, or formation, and the other, that this purpose is furnishing instruction or information. This line is distinctly drawn in the seventeenth century, and the two schools are typified by Malebranche and Locke.

3. The spirit of reaction is exhibited in the opposition to classical studies, in the effort to convert study into a diversion, in the use of milder means of discipline, and in the importance attached to useful studies. In these particulars the reaction of the sixteenth century is intensified.]