My Dear Friend,—I feel ashamed, but I have been overwhelmed by work, not flourishing in health, although better now, and altogether unable to fulfil what I had promised. Then, and after all, I write to say that I cannot fulfil it. I said that I would write about the education of your son. I find that I cannot. I ought to know him, his tendencies, his capabilities, what he has already learned. To give general rules is nothing. He may require special ones.
I have mentioned his tendencies. That must be your special object. Every man is a speciality, is capable of some definite thing. You must try to discover that special tendency, and then frame his education accordingly. After a general teaching of those branches which are good for any man, direct his studies towards the development of that special tendency which you will have discovered. Education means drawing out, educere, what is in the boy: not creating in him what is not. You cannot create.
But one thing is, must be common to all. You must give him a proper notion of what Life is, and of what the world in which he has been put for the fulfilment of a task is.
Life is a duty, a function, a mission. For God's sake, do not teach him any Benthamite theory about happiness either individual or collective. A creed of individual happiness would make him an egotist: a creed of collective happiness will reach the same result soon or late. He will perhaps dream Utopias, fight for them, whilst young; then, when he will find that he cannot realise rapidly the dream of his soul, he will turn back to himself and try to conquer his own happiness: sink into egotism.
Teach him that Life has no sense unless being a task:—that happiness may, like sunshine on a traveller, come to him, and he must welcome it and bless God for it; but that to look for it is destroying both the moral man and his duty and most likely the possibility of ever enjoying it:—that to improve himself, morally and intellectually, for the sake of improving his fellow-creatures, is his task:—that he must try to get at Truth and then represent it, in words and deeds, fearlessly and perennially:—that to get at Truth, two criteria have been given to him, his own conscience and tradition, the conscience of mankind:—that whenever he will find the inspiration of his own conscience harmonising with that of mankind, sought for not in the history of a single period or of a single people, but of all periods and peoples, then he is sure of having Truth within his grasp:—that the basis of all Truth is the knowledge of the Law of Life, which is indefinite Progression:—that to this Law he must be a servant.
This knowledge of the Law of Progression must be your aim in all your teaching.
Elementary Astronomy, elementary Geology, ought to be taught as soon as possible. Then, universal History, then Languages.
The difficult thing is to get the proper teaching. When I speak, for instance, of Astronomy, I mean a survey of the Universe, of which the Earth is part, grounded on Herschel's theory and tending to prove how everything is the exponent of a Law of Progression, how the Law is one, how every part of the Universe accomplishes a function in the whole. Herschel, Nichol, Guillemin's recently translated "Heavens" are the guides to be chosen.
Languages are easily learned in boyhood. French, German, and Italian ought to be taught. Two years of study may put the boy in communication with three worlds.
I would not teach any positive Religion; but the great fundamental Trinity, God, the immortality of the soul, the necessity of a religion as a common link of brotherhood for mankind, grounded on the acknowledgment of the Law of Progression. At a later period he will choose.