FOOTNOTES:
[255] Fourcroy (1755-1809), a celebrated chemist, was director-general of public instruction in 1801. He prepared, in the following years, the decrees relative to the establishment of the University.
[256] Fontanes (1757-1821), first Grand Master of the University.
[257] Mémoire politique of Joseph de Maistre, Paris, 1858, p. 30.
[258] The Abbé Gaultier (1746-1818), author of a large number of works on elementary instruction, and almost a reformer in his way. He employed teaching by sight, and recommended varied exercises, such as games where he introduced counters, tickets, interrogations in the form of lotteries.
[259] See Gréard, L’enseignement primaire à Paris de 1867 à 1877. A memoir published in 1877, pp. 75-90. See also an interesting study full of personal recollections of E. Deschamps, L’enseignement mutual. Toulouse, 1883.
[260] Jomard (1777-1862), member of the Society for Elementary Instruction, author of Tableaux des écoles élémentaires.
[261] The Comte de Laborde (1771-1842), author of a plan d’éducation pour les enfants.
[262] Among the other propagators of mutual instruction, mention should be made of the Abbé Gaultier, Larochefoucauld-Liancourt, De Lasteyrie, etc.
[263] Two noted attempts to extend and popularize the monitorial system are exhibited in the following works: Pillans, The Rationale of Discipline (Edinburgh, 1852); Bentham, Chrestomathia (London, 1816).
[264] It is at the same period, in 1832, that Gérando published his Cours normal des instituteurs.
[265] Cournot, Des institutions d’instruction publique, p. 315.
[266] Dittes, op. cit. p. 272.
[267] See Jacotot et sa méthode d’émancipation intellectuelle, by Bernard Perez. Paris, 1883.
[268] Enseignement universel. Paris, 1823.
[269] Cabet, Voyage en Icarie. Paris, 1842.
[270] Considerant, Théorie d’éducation rationnelle et attrayante du dix-neuvième siècle. Paris, 1844.
[271] Cours de philosophie positive, second edition, 1864. Vol. VI. p. 771.
[272] The principal educational works of Dupanloup are Éducation, 1851, three volumes; De la haute éducation intellectuelle, 1855, three volumes; Lettres sur l’éducation des filles, 1879, one volume.
[274] Cournot published in 1864 a remarkable book under this title: Des institutions d’instruction publique.
[275] See the Essais de philosophie et de morale, by E. Bersot, and also Études et discours (1879).
[276] See especially the well-known book of Bréal, Quelques mots sur l’instruction publique en France.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.—HERBERT SPENCER AND ALEXANDER BAIN.
THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION; THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS; THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS; HERBERT SPENCER’S EDUCATION; PLAN OF THE WORK; DEFINITION OF EDUCATION; HUMAN DESTINY; UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES; DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF ACTIVITIES; CRITICISM OF MR. SPENCER’S CLASSIFICATION; EFFECTS ON EDUCATION; SCIENCE IS THE BASIS OF EDUCATION; SCIENCE FOR HEALTH AND INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY; SCIENCE FOR FAMILY LIFE; SCIENCE FOR ÆSTHETIC ACTIVITY; EXAGGERATIONS AND PREJUDICES; INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION; LAWS OF MENTAL EVOLUTION; PERSONAL EDUCATION; MORAL EDUCATION; SYSTEM OF NATURAL PUNISHMENTS; DIFFICULTIES IN APPLICATION; RETURN TO NATURE; PHYSICAL EDUCATION; GENERAL JUDGMENT; MR. BAIN AND THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION; GENERAL IMPRESSIONS; DIVISIONS OF THE BOOK; PSYCHOLOGICAL ORDER AND LOGICAL ORDER; MODERN EDUCATION; ERRORS IN THEORY; UTILITARIAN TENDENCIES; FINAL JUDGMENT; AMERICAN EDUCATORS; CHANNING; HORACE MANN; CONCLUSION; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
629. The Science of Education.—To-day, thanks to important works, the science of education is no longer an empty term, an object of vague aspirations for philosophers, of easy ridicule for wits. Doubtless it is far from being definitely established; but it no longer conceals its name and its pretensions; it defines its purpose and its methods; and manifests its youthful vitality in all directions.
Up to the present period, philosophers had scarcely thought of organizing pedagogy, of constructing it on a rational basis. On the other hand, the practice of education is still less advanced than the conceptions of philosophers. Here we the more often follow a thoughtless routine, or the vague inspirations of instinct. The methods in use are not co-ordinated. They present a curious mixture of old traditions and modern surcharges. It is this lack of definiteness, of co-ordination of ideas, and the spectacle of these contradictions, which caused Richter[277] to say: “The education of the day resembles the Harlequin of the Italian comedy who comes on the stage with a bundle of papers under each arm. ‘What do you carry under your right arm?’ he is asked. ‘Orders,’ he replies. ‘And under your left arm?’ ‘Counter-orders!’”
Quite a number of the philosophers of the nineteenth century have attempted to remedy this incoherence, and, by appealing to the scientific spirit, to regulate educational processes that have fallen into excesses of empiricism or of routine. It is these attempts which we are summarily to recite.
630. The German Philosophers.—Since Kant, and by his example, the most of German philosophers have associated the theory of education with their speculations on human nature.
Fichte (1762-1814), in his Discourse to the German Nation, proclaimed the necessity of a national education to secure the regeneration of his country and its restoration to its former standing. The advocate of a public and common education, because he would fight against the selfishness which family life encourages, he contributed by his eloquent appeals to restore the intellectual and moral grandeur, and consequently, the material grandeur, of Germany.
Schleiermacher (1768-1834) wrote a Doctrine of Education, which was not published till 1849. In this he develops, among other ideas, this proposition, that religious education does not belong to the school, but that it is the affair of the family and the Church.
Herbart (1776-1841) has composed a series of pedagogical writings which assign him a special place in the list of educational philosophers. Let us call attention, in particular, to his General Pedagogy (1806), and the Outline of my Lessons on Pedagogy (1840). That which distinguishes Herbart is his attempt to reduce to a system all the rules of pedagogy by giving them for a basis his own psychological theory. He inaugurated a new method in psychology, which does not seem, however, to have given the results that were expected from it,—the mathematical method. For him, psychology is only the mechanism of the mind, and by means of mathematical formula calculation may be applied to measure the force of ideas. The soul does not possess innate faculties; it is developed progressively.
But it would require long efforts to enter into the secrets of Herbart’s original thought. Let it suffice to say, that nurtured from an early period on the ideas of Pestalozzi, whose friend he was, he has founded a real school of pedagogy.
Beneke (1798-1854) is the author of a Doctrine of Education and Instruction, which is, in the opinion of Doctor Dittes, a masterpiece of psychological pedagogy. Beneke agrees with Herbart on a great number of points. His pedagogical methods have been popularized by J. G. Dressler, director of the normal school at Bauzen, who died in 1860.[278]
Charles Schmidt, who died in 1864, wrote a large number of works on pedagogy, in which he is inspired by the phrenology of Gall and his fantastical hypotheses. Doubtless this inspiration is not happy, and the works of Schmidt are more valuable for their details, for their special reflections, than for their general doctrine. But from his undertaking there issues at least this truth, that the science of education should have for its basis, not only psychology, but physiology also, the science of the whole man, body and mind.
There is no country where pedagogy has received a more philosophical and a higher development than in Germany. Even the great poets, Lessing, Herder, Gœthe, and Schiller, have contributed through certain grand ideas to the construction of a science of education.
631. The English Philosophers.—English philosophy, with its experimental and practical character, and with its positive and utilitarian tendencies, was naturally called to exercise a great influence on pedagogy. There are more truths to gather from the thinkers who, in different degrees, have followed Locke and Bain, and who have preserved a taste for prudent observation and careful experiments, than from the German idealists, enamored of hypothesis and systematic constructions.
Without doubt this explains the considerable success which the recent books of Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain have obtained even in France.
632. The Book of Herbert Spencer.—If it were sufficient to define with exactness the end to be attained, and to discover the true method for constructing the science, Herbert Spencer’s book on Education, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical,[279] would be a satisfactory treatise; but it is one thing to comprehend that psychology is the only solid basis of a complete and exact pedagogy, and another thing to determine the real laws of psychology.
“Education will not be definitely systematized,” says Mr. Spencer, “till the day when science shall be in possession of a rational psychology.”
This day has not yet come, and Herbert Spencer, who is the first to recognize the fact, modestly presents his work only as an essay. But if it does not yet contain a perfect and fully worked out theory of education, the essay of the English philosopher is at least a vigorous effort, and a notable step towards a rational pedagogy, towards the science of education, which, as Virchow expresses it, “ought forever to proscribe the gropings of an ignorant education whose experiments are ever to be gone over anew.”
633. Plan of the Work.—Every system of education supposes at the same time an ethics,—I mean a certain conception of life and of human destiny, and a psychology,—that is, a knowledge more or less exact of our faculties and of the laws which preside over their development. There are, in fact, in education, two essential questions: 1. What are the subjects of study and instruction, proper to create the qualities, the aggregate of which constitutes the type of the well-educated man? 2. By what methods shall we teach the child rapidly and well that which it is proper for him to learn? There are, in other terms, the question of end and the question of means. Ethics is necessary to resolve the first, and psychology, to illustrate the second.
It is in accordance with this plan that Mr. Spencer has arranged the different parts of his work. The first chapter, entitled What Knowledge is of Most Worth? is in substance but a series of reflections on the final purpose, on the different forms, of human activity, and, consequently, on the relative importance, on the rank, which should be assigned to the studies which go to compose a complete education.
In the three other chapters, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical Education, the author examines the methods which are deemed the best for instructing the intelligence, perfecting the moral character, and fortifying the body.
634. Definition of Education.—Herbert Spencer begins with a definition of education:—
“Education,” he says, “is all that we do for ourselves, and all that others do for us, for the purpose of bringing us nearer the perfection of our nature.... The ideal of education would be to furnish man with a complete preparation for life as a whole.... Do not attempt to give an exclusive development of one order of knowledge at the expense of the rest, however important it may be. Let us distribute our attention over the whole, and justly proportion our efforts to their relative value.... In general, the object of education ought to be to acquire as completely as possible the knowledge that is best adapted to develop individual and social life under all its aspects, and to do no more than glance at the subjects which contribute the least to this development.”[280]
This definition is wrong in being a little pretentious and in not adapting itself to all the forms of education. It is true, perhaps, if it is a question of the ideal to be attained in a complete instruction, accessible to a few privileged men, but it could not be applied to popular education. It soars too high above human conditions and social realities.
635. Human Destiny.—The conception of human destiny, as Mr. Spencer outlines it in the opening of his book, has very marked utilitarian tendencies. His first complaint against the current education is that it sacrifices the useful to the agreeable; that as matters now go, everything which pertains to mental adornment and display has precedence over the knowledge which might increase our well-being and assure our happiness. As in the history of dress, with savages for example, it is proved that the ornamental in dress precedes the useful; so in instruction, ornamental studies are preferred to useful studies. This is especially the case with women, who have a decided preference for the qualities of pure decoration.[281]
In his rather vigorous reaction against the luxuries which in classical instruction would wrongly substitute themselves for more necessary studies, Mr. Spencer goes so far as to say:—
“Just as the Orinoco Indian paints and tattooes himself, so the child in this country learns Latin because it forms a part of the education of a gentleman.”
However, we do not construe this literally. Mr. Spencer does not go so far as to suppress the disinterested studies which are as much the more necessary as they seem to be the more superfluous. He merely demands that instruction be not reduced to a training in the trivial elegancies of a dead language, or to a study of trifles in history, such as the dates of battles, and the birth and death of princes.
636. Utilitarian Tendencies.—Utility, that is, the influence on happiness,—such is the true criterion by which are to be estimated, admitted or excluded, and finally classified, the subjects proposed for the study of man as the elements of his education. It is understood, however, that happiness is to be considered in its widest and highest sense. Happiness does not consist in the satisfaction of such or such a privileged inclination. It consists in being all that it is possible to be,—in complete living. To prepare us for a complete life,—such is the function of education.
637. Different Categories of Activity.—Complete life supposes different kinds of activity, which ought to be subordinated one to another according to their importance and dignity. The following statement shows how Mr. Spencer proposes to classify these different categories of activities according to an ascending scale of progress:—
1. In the first rank is placed the activity which ministers simply to self-preservation. It would be of no consequence to be an eminent scholar, or a citizen and a patriot, or a devoted father; or rather, all this would be impossible, if one did not first know how to assure his safety and his life.
2. Then comes the series of activities which tend indirectly to the same end of physical well-being, by the acquisition and production of the material goods necessary for existence, that is, industry and the different occupations.
3. In the third place, man employs his activities in the service of his family,—he has children to support and to bring up.
4. Social and political life is the fourth object of his efforts. This supposes, as a previous condition, the accomplishment of family duties, just as family life itself supposes the normal development of the individual life.
5. Finally, human existence is consummated and crowned, so to speak, in the exercise of the activities which, in a single word, we might call æsthetic, and which, taking advantage of the leisure left from care and business, will find satisfaction in the culture of letters and the arts.
638. Criticism of this Classification.—What exceptions can be taken to this exact and methodical table of the different elements of an existence complete, normal, and consequently human? Is it necessary to remark that the happiness thus understood does not differ from what we call virtue? None of the five elements distinguished by Mr. Spencer can be safely omitted. The first could not be neglected without endangering the material reality of life; nor the last, without impairing its moral dignity. In some degree they are mutually necessary, in this sense, that the lower, or selfish activities, are the conditions which make possible the other parts of human duty; and that the higher, or disinterested activities, become, as it were, the justification of the toil we endure in order to exist and to satisfy material necessities.
We have, however, one grave reserve to make. Mr. Spencer is wrong in putting into the last category of activities that which is the crown of the others, all that which concerns the moral development of the individual. Between the second and the third class of activities we ask to interpolate another form of activity,—that which constitutes the individual moral life, that which, in every man, even the humblest and the poorest, calls into exercise the conscience, the reason, and the will. Mr. Spencer’s system is decidedly too aristocratic. It seems to reserve the moral life for men of leisure. In a democratic society, which believes in equality and which would not have this an empty term, there are efforts which must be made for the moral development of the human being in all conditions, and it would be wrong to reduce personal activity to the care of health and material well-being.
639. Effects on Education.—It is now easy to comprehend the duties of education. Conforming its efforts to nature, distributing its lessons according to the exact division of human functions, it will seek the branches of knowledge the most fit for making of the pupil, first, a sound and healthy man, then a toiler, a workman,—a man, in a word, capable of earning his livelihood; then it will train him for the family and the State, by endowing him with all the domestic and civic virtues; finally, it will open to him the brilliant domain of art under all its forms.
640. Science is the Basis of Education.—When we have once divided human life into a certain number of superimposed stages which education should teach us to ascend one after another, it becomes necessary to know what are the facts and the branches of knowledge which correspond to each one of these different steps. To this question Mr. Spencer replies that in all the grades of human development that which is pre-eminently necessary, that which is the basis of education, is science.
641. Science for Health and Industrial Activity.—It is in the first part of education, that which has for its object self-preservation, that science is the least useful. So far, education may be in great part negative, because nature has taken it upon herself to lead us to our destination. The child cries at the sight of a stranger, and throws himself into the arms of his mother when he feels the slightest sorrow. However, in proportion to his growth, man has more and more need of science, and he could not do without physiology and hygiene. By this means will he shun all those little acts of imprudence, all those physical faults, which shorten life, or pave the way for infirmities in old age. By this means he will diminish the interval, which is so considerable, between the length of life as it might be and the brevity of life as it is. Evident truths, but too often unheeded!
“How many scholars,” exclaims Mr. Spencer, “who would blush if caught saying Iphigénia instead of Iphigenía, show not the slightest shame in confessing that they do not know where the Eustachian tubes are, and what are the actions of the spinal cord!”
With respect to the activities which might be called lucrative, and to the kind of instruction which they require, Mr. Spencer still shows the utility of science. He knows how great a disposition there is in modern society to promote professional or industrial instruction; but he thinks, not without reason, that we do not proceed as we should in order to be completely successful in this direction. All the sciences, mathematics through its applications to the arts, mechanics through its connection with industries where machines play so great a part, physics and chemistry through the knowledge they furnish on matter and its properties, even the social sciences by reason of the relations of commerce with politics,—all the sciences, in a word, contribute to develop the skill and the prudence of the man who is employed in any trade or occupation whatever.
642. Science for Family Life.—A point in which the originality of Mr. Spencer’s thought is distinctly marked, and which he develops with an eloquent earnestness, is the necessity of enlightening parents, and particularly mothers, upon their obligations and duties, and of putting them in a condition to direct the education of their children by teaching them the natural laws of body and mind: “Is it not monstrous,” he says, “that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy,—joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers.... In the actual state of things the best instruction, even among the favored by fortune, is scarcely more than an instruction of celibates.” We are ever saying that the vocation of woman is to bring up her children, and yet we teach her nothing of that which she ought to know in order to fulfill worthily this great task. Ignorant as she is of the laws of life and of the phenomena of the soul, knowing nothing of the nature of the moral emotions or of physical disorders, her intervention in the education of the child is often more disastrous than her absolute inaction would be.
643. Science in Æsthetic Education.—Mr. Spencer next shows that social and political activity also has need of being enlightened by science. One is a citizen only on the condition of knowing the history of his country.
That which it is more difficult to grant Mr. Spencer, is that æsthetic education, in its turn, is based on science. Is there not some exaggeration, for example, in asserting that poor musical compositions are poor because they are lacking in truth? and that they are lacking in truth “because they are lacking in science”? Does one become a man of letters and an artist as one becomes a geometrician? To cultivate with success those arts which are as the flower of civilization, is there not required, besides talent and natural gifts, a long practice, a slow initiation, something, in a word, more delicate than the attention which suffices for being instructed in science?
644. Exaggerations and Prejudices.—We believe as thoroughly as any one can in the efficiency and in the educational virtues of science, and we would willingly make it, as Mr. Spencer does, the basis of education. We must be on our guard, however, against cultivating this religion of science until it becomes a superstition. Our author is not completely exempt from this danger.
That science develops the intellectual qualities, such as judgment, memory, reasoning, we admit; that it develops them better than the study of the languages, let even this be granted! But it is impossible for us not to protest when Mr. Spencer represents science as endowed with the same efficacy for inspiring moral qualities, such as perseverance, sincerity, activity, resignation to the will of nature, piety even, and religion. Science appears to us an infallible means of animating and exciting the different energies of the soul; but will it also have the quality of disciplining them? Thanks to science, man will know that which it is proper to do, if he wishes to be a workman, a parent, or a citizen, but on this express condition, that he wills; and this education of the will, is it still science which shall be charged with it? We may be allowed to doubt it.
Mr. Spencer himself now seems to share this doubt, if we may trust one of his recent works.[282] “Faith in books and in nature,” it is there said, “is one of the superstitions of our times.” We deceive ourselves, says the author, when we establish a connection between the intelligence and the will, for conduct is determined not by knowledge but by emotion.
“He who would hope to teach geometry by giving lessons in Latin, would scarcely be more unreasonable than those who count on producing better sentiments by means of a discipline of the intellectual faculties.”
To tell the truth, Mr. Spencer has here fallen into another extreme, and he seems to us at one time to have granted too much, and at another too little, to the influence of instruction on morality.
645. Intellectual Education.—So far we have examined along with Mr. Spencer only the nature of the objects and of the knowledge which befit the education of man. It remains to inquire how the mind can assimilate this knowledge. Pedagogy has not only to draw up in theory a brilliant programme of necessary studies, but it also searches out the means and the methods to be employed, in order that these studies may be presented to the mind, and may have the greater chance of being thus presented with profit.
In this somewhat more practical part of his work, Mr. Spencer thinks that pedagogy should be guided by the idea of evolution; that is, of the progressive course of a being who makes himself, who creates himself little by little, and who develops in succession, according to fixed laws, powers originally enveloped in the germs that he has received from nature, or that have been transmitted to him by heredity.
646. Laws of Intellectual Evolution.—In other terms, Mr. Spencer shows that the precepts of pedagogy cannot be definitely deduced until the laws of mental evolution have been accurately established, and he attempts to determine some of these laws.
He proves that the mind passes naturally from the simple to the complex, from the indefinite to the definite, from the concrete to the abstract, from the empirical to the rational; that the genesis of the individual is the same as the genesis of the race; that the intelligence assimilates by preference that which it discovers for itself; finally, that all culture which profits the pupil is, at the same time, an exercise which stimulates him and delights him.
From this there result these practical consequences: that it is necessary first to present to the child simple subjects of study, individual things, sensible objects, for the purpose of starting him gradually on his way towards complex truths, abstract generalities, conceptions of the reason; that nothing can be exacted of the child’s intelligence but vague and incomplete notions which the travail of the mind will gradually clarify and elaborate; that education ought to be in petto, for each individual, a repetition and a copy of the general march of civilization and of the progress of humanity; that it is necessary to count more on the personal effort of the pupil than upon the action of the teacher; that, finally, it is necessary to find the methods which interest, and even those which amuse. Hence the educator, instead of opposing nature, instead of disconcerting her in her course and in the insensible steps of her real development, will restrict himself to following her step by step, and education will be no longer a force which obstructs, which represses, which smothers; but, on the contrary, a force which sustains and stimulates by associating with itself the work of the spontaneous powers of the soul.
647. Self-Education.—Mr. Spencer attaches great importance to that maxim which recommends us to encourage above all else self-education:—
“In education the process of self-development should be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They should be told as little as possible, and induced to discover as much as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction; and that to achieve the best results, each mind must progress somewhat after the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success of self-made men. Those who have been brought up under the ordinary school-drill, and have carried away with them the idea that education is practicable only in that style, will think it hopeless to make children their own teachers. If, however, they will call to mind that the all-important knowledge of surrounding objects which a child gets in its early years is not without help,—if they will remember that the child is self-taught in the use of its mother tongue,—if they will estimate the amount of that experience of life, that out-of-school wisdom which every boy gathers for himself,—if they will mark the unusual intelligence of the uncared-for London gamin, as shown in all the directions in which his faculties have been tasked,—if further, they will think how many minds have struggled up unaided, not only through the mysteries of our irrationally-planned curriculum, but through hosts of other obstacles besides; they will find it a not unreasonable conclusion, that if the subjects be put before him in right order and right form, any pupil of ordinary capacity will surmount his successive difficulties with but little assistance.”
648. Moral Education.—Moral education, without furnishing occasion for as complete a theory as intellectual education, has, nevertheless, suggested to Mr. Spencer some important reflections.
Mr. Spencer expressly declares that he does not accept the dogma of Lord Palmerston, or what would be called in France the dogma of Rousseau, namely, that all children are born good. He would incline the rather toward the contrary opinion, which, “though untenable,” he says, “seems to us less wide of the truth”! Doubtless, we must not expect too much moral goodness of children; but it may be found that Mr. Spencer exaggerates a little, and draws too dark a portrait of the child when he says, “The child resembles the savage; his physical features, like his moral instincts, recall the savage.” Taken literally, such pessimism would lead logically to an over-severe moral discipline, wholly repressive and restraining. Such, however, is not the conclusion of Mr. Spencer, who recommends a course of tolerance and mildness, a system of relative letting alone which we might almost think dictated by the optimism of Rousseau. He censures the brutal discipline of the English schools. Finally, he would have the child treated, not as an incorrigible rebel who is obedient only to force, but as a reasonable being capable of readily comprehending the reasons and the advantages of obedience, from the simple fact that he takes into account the connection of cause and effect.
649. System of Natural Punishments.—The true moral discipline, according to Mr. Spencer, is that which puts the child in a state of dependence on nature, who teaches him to detest his faults by reason of the natural consequences which they involve. It is necessary to renounce artificial punishments, which are almost always irritating and taken amiss, and to have recourse, as a rule, only to the privations and the inconveniencies which are the necessary consequences, and, as it were, the inevitable reactions, of the acts which have been committed.
A boy, for example, puts his room in disorder. In this case, the method of natural punishment requires that he himself shall repair the mischief; and in this way he will soon correct himself of a turbulence from which he will be the first to suffer.
A little girl, through indolence, or through tarrying too long over her toilet, has made herself late for a walk. Let her be punished by not waiting for her, by leaving her at home. This is the best means of curing her in the future of her indolence and coquetry.
The system which tends thus to substitute the lessons of nature for artificial penalties, certainly offers great advantages. It subjects the child, not to the authority of a passing teacher, or of parents who will one day die, but to a law whose action neither ceases nor ever relents. Artificial punishments often provoke the resistance of the child because he does not comprehend their meaning, and because, proceeding from the human will, they can be taxed with injustice and caprice. Could one as easily refuse to bow before the impersonal force of nature,—a force which exactly adjusts the punishment to the fault,[283] which accepts no excuse, against which there is no appeal, and which, without threats, without anger, rigorously and silently executes the law?
650. Difficulties in Application.—Mr. Spencer’s principle is excellent, but the opportunities for applying it are far less frequent than our philosopher believes. The child, in most cases, is too little reflective, too little reasonable, to comprehend, and especially to heed, the suggestions of personal interest.
Let us add that this principle is wholly negative, that it furnishes at most only the means of shunning evil; that even in according to it an efficacy it does not have, it would still be necessary to reproach it with narrowing moral culture by reducing it to the rather mean solicitude for simple utility; finally, that it exercises no influence on the development of the positive virtues, on the disinterested education of morality in what is noble and exalted.
Finally, the system of natural punishments would incur the danger of often being cruel, and of causing the child an irreparable injury. Let pass the pin-cushion, the boiling water, and the candle-flame,—examples which Mr. Spencer proposes; but what shall we say of the bar of red-hot iron which he lets the child pick up? What shall be said, above all, of the grave consequences entailed by the faults of a young man left to himself?
“Would it not be,” says Gréard justly, “to condemn the child to a régime so severe as to be an injustice, to count solely on the effects of natural reactions and inevitable consequences, for the purpose of disciplining his will? The penalty which they provoke is the most often enormous as compared with the fault which has produced them, and man himself demands for his conduct other sanctions than those of a harsh reality. He desires that we judge the intention as well as the fact; that he be commended for his efforts; that in the first instance extreme measures be not taken against him; that the blow fall on him if needs be, but without crushing him, and while extending to him a hand to help him up.”[284]
651. Return to Nature.—However it may be, Mr. Spencer is to be commended for having shown that for moral education as for intellectual education, the method which approaches nature the nearest is also the best. The return to nature which was the characteristic of Rousseau’s theories and of Pestalozzi’s practice, is also the dominant trait of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy.
If we look closely into the matter, this decided purpose to follow nature implicates something besides the superficial condemnation of methods introduced by art and human device. It supposes a fundamental belief,—the belief in the beneficent purpose of natural instincts. To have confidence in nature, to fall back on the spontaneous forces of the soul, because we discern behind them or in them a higher providence or an internal foresight, is a belief generally useful and suggestive for conducting human affairs, but particularly necessary for directing the education of man. It is not without some surprise that we discover this belief at the basis of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy, as though, by a contradiction which is not new, the evolutionist philosophy, which seems to exclude final causes from the conception of the universe, had been practically constrained to bow before them, and to proclaim, at least in the matter of education, the salutary efficacy of the theory which admits them.
Thus, in speaking of physical education, Mr. Spencer remarks that the sensations are the natural guides, which it would be dangerous not to follow.
“Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure direct self-preservation, is in great part already provided for. Too momentous to be left to our own blundering, Nature takes it into her own hands.”
Speaking in another place of the instincts which induce the child to move himself and to seek in physical exercise the basis of physical well-being, he declares that to oppose these instincts would be to go counter to the means “divinely arranged” for assuring the development of the body.
652. Physical Education.—The chapter devoted by Mr. Spencer to physical education, is such as might be expected from a thinker who is wholly exempt from idealistic prejudices and who does not hesitate to write:—
“The history of the world shows that the well-fed races have been the energetic and dominant races.”
It is necessary first and above all to establish physical force in man, and to create within him “a robust animal.”
“The actual education of children is defective in several particulars: in an insufficiency of food, in an insufficiency of clothing, in an insufficiency of exercise, and in an excess of mental application.”
Mr. Spencer complains that modern education has become wholly intellectual, and that it neglects the body. He reminds us that “the preservation of health is one of our duties,” and that there exists a thing which might be called “physical morality.”
Here, as everywhere, Mr. Spencer demands that we follow the indications of nature. He explains on physiological grounds the apparently inordinate appetite which children show for certain foods,—sugar, for example. He urgently entreats that preference shall be given to play and to free and spontaneous exercise, over gymnastics.
653. General Judgment.—That which, in our opinion, attests the truth of the pedagogical laws which we have just discussed, is that they are in agreement with the general opinions of the great modern reformers in education. It is thus that Spencer’s ideas are in close harmony with those which Pestalozzi had employed at Stanz. The success which he obtained there, as Mr. Spencer has remarked, depended on two things: first, on the attention which he used in determining what kind of instruction the children had need of, and next, on the pains he took to associate the new knowledge with that which they already possessed.
Mr. Spencer’s essay, then, deserves the attention of educators. There is scarcely a book in which a keen scent for details comes more agreeably to animate a fund of solid arguments, and from which it is more useful to extract the substance. However, it must not be read save with precaution. The brilliant English thinker sometimes fails in justness and measure, and his bold generalizations need to be tested with care.
654. Alexander Bain and Education as a Science.—Less brilliant than the work of Mr. Spencer, the book of Mr. Bain, Education as a Science, recommends itself by merits of studied analysis and scholarly minuteness. Others surpass Mr. Bain in brilliancy of imagination, in originality and in enthusiasm; but no one equals him in richness of details, in acuteness and abundance of observations. After the more venturesome have taken the lead and have published the original sketch, Mr. Bain appears and writes the methodical and complete manual. His own work resembles that of a conscientious guard who marches in the rear of a victorious army, and by a wise organization makes sure the positions conquered by the march of an impetuous commander-in-chief. His book, in other terms, is but the studious and thorough development of Mr. Spencer’s principles.
655. General Impression.—It is impossible in an analysis to bring out the merit of a book which is especially valuable for the multiplicity of the questions which the author discusses in it, and for the infinite variety of the solutions which he proposes. There are landscapes which discourage the painter, because, notwithstanding their beauty, they are too vast, too full of details, to admit of being crowded into a frame. We may say the same of Mr. Bain’s book. One must have studied it himself in order to form an estimate of its value. Professors of all classes will here find pages of well-considered counsels, and judicious reflections upon educational methods. The nature of studies, the sequence of subjects, the gradation of difficulties, the choice of exercises, the comparison of oral instruction with text-book instruction, modes of discipline,—nothing escapes a thinker who is not a mere theorist or an amateur educator, but a professional man, a competent teacher, an experienced professor.
Indeed, no one should allow himself to be deceived by this fine phrase, Education as a Science, which might disconcert and turn aside whole classes of readers, such as those who, in works on education, especially desire a guide for practice. On the contrary, they will have every reason to commend a book which passes very quickly from generalities to applications, and which is above all else a manual of practical and technical pedagogy. The study of it will be profitable not merely to professors who are teaching the higher branches of literature and science, but even to the humblest instructors, and even—for Mr. Bain overlooks no detail—to teachers of reading and writing.
656. Division of the Work.—Education as a Science comprises three parts: 1. psychological data; 2. methods; 3. modern education.
The author first inquires in what order the faculties are developed, and what effect this order should have on the distribution of studies. This is the psychological part. Then follows a discussion of what Mr. Bain calls the logical order, that is, of the relations which exist between the studies themselves and their different parts. This is the “analytical problem” of education.[285]
These preliminaries being established, Mr. Bain enters upon the principal theme,—the methods of instruction. He discusses one after another the first elements of reading, object-lessons, “which, more than any other means of instruction, require to be practised with care, for without this, an admirable process might, in unskillful hands, be nothing more than a thing of seductive appearance, but without value”; then methods relating to history, geography, the sciences, and the languages.
Finally, in his third book, Mr. Bain exhibits a new plan of study, with particular reference to secondary instruction.
657. Psychological Order and Logical Order.—In his reflections on the development of the mind and upon the distribution of studies, Mr. Bain is inspired by the principles which have guided Mr. Spencer.
“Observation precedes reflection. The concrete comes before the abstract.”
In education, then, the sequence should be from the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general, from the indefinite to the definite, from the empirical to the rational, from analysis to synthesis, from the outline to details; finally, from the material to the immaterial.
Such would be the ideal order in education; but Mr. Bain remarks that in practice all sorts of obstacles come to disturb this rigorous sequence.
658. Modern Education.—The plan of secondary studies which Mr. Bain recommends to the reformers of teaching is the result and the résumé of all these observations.
Intellectual education, common to all young people who receive a liberal instruction, would henceforth comprise three essential parts: 1. the sciences; 2. the humanities; 3. rhetoric and the national literature. We see at once what is to be understood by this last item; but the two others have need of some explanations.
The sciences are divided into two groups: those which are to be mastered,—arithmetic, geometry, algebra, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology; and the natural sciences, which should be studied only superficially because they would overwhelm the memory under the weight of too large a number of facts. Geography, which, one does not know why, is included in the sciences, while history is attached to the humanities, will complete the programme of scientific studies.
As to the humanities, Mr. Bain preserves scarcely more than the name while suppressing the thing; for in the curtailed and disfigured domain which he persists in calling by this name, he cuts off precisely that which has always been considered as constituting its essence,—the study of the dead languages. He excludes from it even the living languages, and that which he still decorates with the fine title of humanities, is still science,—moral science, it is true,—“history and sociology with political economy and jurisprudence.”
A course in universal literature, but, be it understood, without original texts, might afterwards be added to this pretended teaching of the humanities.
Two or three hours a week would be devoted parallelly, during the whole course of study, which would last six years, to each of the three departments of instruction which Mr. Bain thinks equally important.
As to the real humanities, dead or living languages, they should no longer be included in education save as optional and extra studies, on the same basis as the accomplishments. And, appealing to the future, Mr. Bain even predicts that “a day will come when it will be found that this is still granting them too large a place in education.”
Mr. Bain, then, gives all his preferences to scientific studies, and his book might properly be entitled, not only Education as a Science, but also Science in Education.
659. Theoretical Errors.—Mr. Bain reproaches letters with giving the mind the habit of servility. By what singular revulsion of thought can the liberal studies par excellence be represented as a school of intellectual servitude? It is rather to scientific instruction that we may properly return the accusation of enslaving the spirit. By their inexorable evidence and by their very exactness, do not the sciences sometimes smother the originality and the free flight of the imagination?
This defect, however, does not cut them off from a right to a place, and to a large place, in the programme of intellectual education. Let us accept with favor their alliance, let us admit them to a certain degree of fellowship, but do not let us tolerate their encroachments. In a word, the object of the sciences is either pure abstractions or material realities. He who studies mathematics and physics first acquires real knowledge of high value; and, on the other hand, he strengthens his mind through the habits engendered by the rigorous methods which the sciences employ. We cheerfully grant to Mr. Bain that the sciences are at the same time admirable sources of useful truths and valuable instruments of mental discipline. By cultivating them we gain not only the positive knowledge which they teach respecting the world, but also the power, rigor, and exactness which they impose on their adepts.
660. Insufficiency of the Sciences.—But the question is to know whether the sciences, so useful and so necessary for enriching and disciplining the mind, are also the best agents for training it. The educator is not in the situation of the farmer who has only two things to do,—to plow and sow the field which he cultivates. The work of education is vast in another direction. It has to do with developing the aptitudes or latent energies, that which the philosophy of the day hardly allows us longer to call faculties, but that which they re-establish under another name, that of the unconscious forces of the soul; it has to do, not with laboring on a soil almost entirely prepared by nature, but in great part with creating the soil itself. Now, the sciences are indeed the seed which it will be proper by and by to sow on the field, but they are not the substance which nourishes and fertilizes it.
661. Sensualistic Tendencies.—If we go to the bottom of Mr. Bain’s thought and doctrine on the mind, we shall find the secret of his ardent preference for the teaching of the sciences. His errors in practical pedagogy proceed from theoretical errors on human nature.
For him, as for Locke, there are not, properly speaking, intellectual forces independent of the facts which succeed one another in the consciousness. Consequently, there is not an education of the faculties. Memory or imagination, considered as a distinct power, as an aptitude more or less happy, is but a word. It is nothing apart from the recollections or the images which are successively graven in the mind. For Mr. Bain, as for Locke, the best education is that which places items of knowledge side by side in the mind, which accumulates facts there, but not that which seeks to enkindle in the soul a flame of intelligence.
That which also warps the theoretical views of Mr. Bain is that he accords no independence, no individual life, to the mind; and that for him, back of the facts of consciousness, there come to view, without any intermedium, the cerebral organs. Now the brain is developed of itself; it acquires fatally, with the progress of years, more weight and more volume; it passes from the age of concrete things to the age of abstractions. Hence a reduction, an inevitable contraction, of the sphere of education. There is nothing more to do than to let nature have her way, and to fill the vase which she charges herself with constructing.
662. Utilitarian Tendencies.—Finally, to conclude this indication of the general ideas which dominate and which mar the pedagogy of Mr. Bain, let us observe that a positive and practical utility, a vulgar utility, mingles too many of its inspirations with it. The criterion of utility is sometimes applied to it with an artless extravagance. Thus, in the languages, only those words should be learned which occur the most often, and in the sciences, only the parts which are of the most frequent use. Even in moral education, as it is conceived by the English philosopher, are to be found, as we might expect, these utilitarian and narrow views.
Would one believe, for example, that Mr. Bain makes the fear of the penal code the mainspring of the teaching of virtue?[286] Here, at least, we must acknowledge that science is insufficient. “To pretend, for example, that physiology can teach us moderation in the sexual appetite is to attribute to it a result which no science has yet been able to give.” But must we count any more, as Mr. Bain would have us, for example, on social influences and on personal experience? In this truly experimental education in virtue, ethics would be learned just as the mother tongue is learned, by use, by the imitation of others; and moral instruction, properly so called, would be a sort of grammar which is to rectify vicious practices.
663. Final Judgment.—But our criticisms on the general tendencies of Mr. Bain’s pedagogy subtract nothing from our admiration of the sterling qualities of his Education as a Science. Doubtless there would also be errors of detail to notice, or some particular methods to discuss; for example, that of never doing more than one thing at a time, or the propriety of first teaching to children the history of their country. Mr. Bain forgets that mythological history and sacred history, by their legendary and fabulous character, offer a particular attraction to the childish imagination, and are better adapted than history proper to infant minds. But, aside from the portions which are debatable, how many wise observations to gather on the different processes of instruction, on the transition from the concrete to the abstract, on the discretion which must be employed in object-lessons, the use of which so easily degenerates into abuse! Even through its absolute theories, Education as a Science will render great services; for, to illustrate the march of thought, nothing is so valuable as opinions which are exclusive and sincere. It were even desirable, if one did not fear to experiment on human souls, in anima sublimi, that according to Mr. Bain’s plan, the experiment should be tried of an education exclusively scientific.
664. American Educators. Channing (1780-1842).—The general fault of English pedagogy is its aristocratic character. For Mr. Spencer and Mr. Bain, as for Locke, it is simply a question of the education of a gentleman. It is in America, in the writings of Channing and Horace Mann, that we must seek the elements of a theory of democratic education, and of popular instruction.[287]
Channing, a Unitarian minister, associated religious sentiment and philosophic reason, and desired that in theology itself everything should issue in the supremacy of the human judgment. The most interesting of his writings are the public lectures which he gave in Boston in 1838, and the object of which is the education one gives himself, and the elevation of the working classes. We lack the space to give an analysis of these lectures, but a few quotations will make known the general spirit of the American reformer:—
“I am not discouraged by the objection that the laborer, if encouraged to give time and strength to the elevation of his mind, will starve himself and impoverish the country, when I consider the energy, and the efficiency of Mind.”
“The highest force in the universe is Mind. This created the heavens and earth. This has changed the wilderness into fruitfulness, and linked distant countries in a beneficent ministry to one another’s wants. It is not to brute force, to physical strength, so much as to art, to skill, to intellectual and moral energy, that men owe their mastery over the world. It is mind which has conquered matter. To fear, then, that by calling forth a people’s mind, we shall impoverish and starve them, is to be frightened at a shadow.”
“It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.”
665. Horace Mann (1796-1859).—Horace Mann is not a philosopher who discusses education, but a politician who reformed and developed the education of his country. Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, he opened schools, founded libraries, and pronounced a great number of discourses, the best known of which is The Necessity of Education in a Republican Government.
“When, then,” he often said, “will men give their thought to infancy? We watch the seed which we confide to the earth, but we do not concern ourselves with the human soul till the sun of youth has set. Were it in my power, I would scatter books over all the earth as men sow wheat on the plowed fields.”
Speaking to Americans, to working people, and to tradesmen, he made apparent the positive advantages of instruction:—
“If to-morrow some one were to tell you that a coal mine had been discovered which would pay ten per cent, you would all rush to it; and yet there are men whom you let grovel in ignorance when you might realize from forty to fifty per cent on them. You are ever giving your thought to capital and to machines; but the first machine is man, and the first capital, man, and you neglect him.”
But he also interested himself in the moral effects of education, especially in a democratic society, where each citizen is a sovereign:—
“The education which has already been given a people makes it necessary to give them more. By instructing them, new powers have been awakened in them, and this intellectual and moral energy must be regulated. In this case we have not to do with mechanical forces, which, once put in action, accomplish their purpose and then stop. No; these are spiritual forces endowed with a principle of life and of progress which nothing can quench.”
666. Conclusion.—The labors of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Bain, the works of Channing and Mann, and others still, will contribute, we hope, to prepare the definite solutions demanded by our times in the matter of education. These solutions are important for the security and the greatness of our country. More than ever it is necessary that education become something else than an affair of inspiration, abandoned to caprice and hazard, but that it be a work of reflection. It is said that the future is uncertain, that events are leading French society no one knows where, and that our destinies are at the mercy of the most unforeseen storms. We do not believe this, since it is within our power that it shall be otherwise. There is a means, in fact, of assuring the future of peoples, and this is to give them an intellectual and moral education which purifies the soul and strengthens character. Do not let us look for regeneration and progress from a sudden and miraculous transformation; do not let us demand them even of the immediate efficiency of such or such a political institution. Everything here below is accomplished according to the laws of a slow progression, by trifling and successive modifications. Just as for the child there is no abridgment which allows us to suppress the slow steps of the insensible growth which each year brings forward, so for nations there is no other process than the action, slow but sure, of a wise and vigorous education, for causing them to pass from vice to virtue, from abasement to grandeur.
The partisans of evolution sometimes seem to announce to us the near apparition of a race superior to our own, called to supplant us, as we shall have supplanted the inferior races. One day or another we shall be liable, it seems, to meet “at the angle of a rock” the successor of the human race. We count but little on such promises, and the coming of this hypothetical race of men, suddenly evoked by a wave of the magic wand of natural selection, leaves us very incredulous.
Happily, we know another means, a much surer process, for causing to appear, not a strange race, until now unknown, but generations of more worth than our own, which are superior to it in physical force, as in qualities of mind or virtues of character. This means is to establish, through reflection and reason, an education better adapted to our destination; an education broader and more complete, at once more severe and more liberal, since it will at the same time exact more toil and permit more scope; in which the child will learn to count more on himself; in which his indolence will no longer be encouraged by accustoming him inopportunely to invoke supernatural aid; in which instruction will no longer be a formulary recited as lip-service, but an inner and profound acquisition of the soul, in which the fear of the conscience will be substituted for the other rules of conduct, and in which thought and free reflection will no longer be distrusted; finally, an education more scientific and more rational, because it will neglect nothing which can develop a human soul and bring it into likeness with its ideal. Now that education to which the future belongs, notwithstanding the obstacles which the spirit of the past will still stir up against it,—that education is not possible, its laws cannot be established, its methods cannot be practised, except on one condition; this is, that the psychology of the child be written, and well written, and that reflection draw from this psychology all the consequences which it permits.
[667. Comment on Mr. Spencer’s Education.—Monsieur Compayré might have emphasized his cautions. Read with caution, and with a purpose to weigh the truth, Mr. Spencer’s Education is inspiring and wholesome; but it may be doubted whether there has been written, since the Émile, a book on education which is so well fitted to deceive an unwary reader by its rhetoric and philosophic plausibility. The air of breadth and candor with which the writer sets out is eminently prepossessing, and the reader is almost obliged to assume that he is being led to foregone conclusions. The first chapter, in particular, is a piece of literary art, in which there is such a deft handling of sentiment and pathos as to unfit the susceptible reader for exercising his own critical judgment.
In this place I can only indicate in the briefest manner what seem to be the fundamental errors contained in the book:—
1. Mr. Spencer does not distinguish between the immediate and the mediate practical value of knowledges. We may admit with him that science is of inestimable value to the human race; but it does not follow by any means that every person must be versed in science. As we need not own everything that is essential to our comfort, so we need not have as a personal possession all the knowledge that we need for guidance.
2. It is a very low conception of education that would limit its function to adapting a man merely to that state in life into which he chances to be born. The Bushman, the Red Indian, and the accountant, are unfortunate illustrations of the province of education. Often the highest function of education is to lift a man out of his ancestral state.
3. That the value of a subject for guidance is the same as its value for discipline, is true under only one assumption,—that the Bushman is always to remain a Bushman, and the Red Indian always a Red Indian, as by the new philosophy of course they should. Practical teachers very well know that, as a rule, the studies that are the most valuable for practical use are the least valuable for discipline. Mr. Spencer quotes no better proof of his assumption than “the beautiful economy of Nature.”
4. Mr. Spencer’s proposed education is sordid in its utilitarianism. He is preoccupied with man as an instrument rather than with a human being aspiring towards the highest type of his kind. A liberal education should be preoccupied first with the training of the man, then with the training of the instrument.
5. Mr. Spencer’s restatement of Condillac’s and Comte’s doctrine, that individual education should be a repetition of civilization in petto, is at best but a specious generalization. The doctrine cannot be applied to practice, in any considerable degree, if we would, and should not be, if we could, for it ignores one essential factor in progress,—inheritance.
6. The part assigned to “Nature” in the work of education is so overstrained as to be unnatural and absurd. Physical science has long since discarded this myth of Nature personified. It is only in educational science that this fiction is still employed to eke out an argument.
7. The doctrine of consequences which underlies Mr. Spencer’s system of moral education is applicable to but a limited number of cases, or, if applied with thoroughness, is inhuman. Not even all the fit would survive if they were not shielded from the consequences of their acts by human sympathy and oversight.]