Mind and Hand: Manual Training the Chief Factor in Education

by Charles H. Ham

It is not essential to our purpose to inquire whether a perfect system of education, and hence an ideal state of society, is possible. It will be sufficient if we are able to show wherein prevailing systems of education can be improved.

In a former chapter we sought to show that the use of mechanical tools stimulates the intellect; in the present chapter it is our purpose to endeavor to show that manual training tends to the promotion of rectitude, to the up building of character.

For purposes of culture the mind consists of divisions, as the body consists of members. It is susceptible of development in the line of the application of mental training, as any member of the body is susceptible of development through physical training or use. For example, the memory may be invigorated by the constant application of certain kinds of mental training, as the arm is strengthened by the constant use of the sledge-hammer. But if the mental training which stimulates the memory is applied to the neglect of other lines of training, the memory will be strengthened at the expense of some other faculty of the mind, as the excessive use of the sledge-hammer strengthens the arm at the cost of other members of the body. In the one case the mind, and in the other the body will be deformed. In the case of the sledge-hammer training the muscles of the arm will stand out like whip-cords, while those of the legs will shrivel and become attenuated. In the case of the training of the memory that faculty will show an abnormal development, while some other faculty, as the power of ratiocination, probably, will become weak.

It is not necessary in this connection to inquire into the origin of moral sentiments, or to consider the rival theories on the subject. However men may differ as between the two schools of moral philosophers—the sentimentalists and the utilitarians—they will agree that the moral side of the mind, so to speak, consists of divisions like the mental side; that these divisions are the source, respectively, of good and evil tendencies, and that these tendencies are susceptible of cultivation; that the evil may be restrained and the good developed, and vice versa. Nor will it be disputed that there is such a blending of the moral with the mental nature in the mind of man as to render any consideration of the subject irrational and incomplete which does not comprehend both, and treat them, practically, as one and the same. Man is so constituted, and his relations to society are such, that every mental impression he receives produces a moral effect, the character of which is, of course, largely dependent upon the accepted standards of right, truth, and justice. Hence all scholastic training is both mental and moral. It is moral as well as mental, whether the instructor will it so or not; and that it is moral is well, since it is obviously true, as Galton pertinently remarks, that “Great men have usually high moral natures, and are affectionate and reverential, inasmuch as mere brain without heart is insufficient to achieve eminence.”

Selfishness is the arch enemy of virtue; from it all forms of immorality spring, and its last analysis is total depravity. But literature, which is the fruitage of education, is full of maxims in honor of selfishness. Said the Dauphin to the French king, “Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.” Said Herbert, “Help thyself and God will help thee.” “A penny saved is as good as a penny earned,” said Franklin; and the grasping “Yankee” stretches the maxim a point in saying to his son, “Make money honestly if you can, but make money.”

The following, also, are current maxims: “Every man is the architect of his own fortune;” “Every tub must stand upon its own bottom;” “In the race of life the devil takes the hindmost;” “Look to the main chance;” and, “Keep what you have got, and catch what you can.” To the same purpose is the famous old aphorism of which Napoleon the First was so fond, “God always favors the heaviest battalions.” Emerson declared that Napoleon represented “the spirit of modern commerce, of money, and material power,” and he certainly was the very incarnation of selfishness.[10] He had a hand of iron, and he laid it heavily on all who opposed him. If it became necessary to imprison his enemies he imprisoned them; if it became necessary to kill them he cut off their heads. When charged with the commission of great crimes, he retorted, “Men of my stamp do not commit crimes!” “I have always marched with the opinion of great masses and events,” he exclaimed, with the insolence of a butcher exhibiting his bloody hands. Old-fashioned codes of morals were for those who opposed his plans, not for him. But the end of selfishness is disaster. It is as dangerous to assume to rise above moral laws as to sink below them; in the one case they crush, and in the other they undermine. “The half” is, after all, “more than the whole,” for “the half” may be retained, but “the whole” is sure to slip from the fingers of grasping avarice. Napoleon, who defied all mankind, expiated his crimes on a rock in mid-ocean. There, whining, protesting, and prating of injustice, he died miserably, a colossal example of the folly of selfishness.

[10] “‘God has granted,’ says the Koran, ‘to every people a prophet in its own tongue.’ Paris, and London, and New York, the spirit of commerce, of money, and material power, were also to have their prophet; and Bonaparte was qualified and sent. Every one of the million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, or lives of Napoleon delights in the page, because he studies in it his own history.”—“Representative Men,” p. 221. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1858.

It would be impossible more severely to arraign existing educational methods; for men are what education makes them.

Selfishness seeks to wring from society a support without giving to it an equivalent return. What industry creates and saves to society, selfishness seeks to misappropriate to its own use; hence selfishness is in conflict with the true spirit of civilization, which is the compact of all to protect each in his rights. Selfishness caused the destruction of all the governments of ancient times, and it has been the cause of all the revolutions of modern times. There can be no stability in government until altruism takes the place of selfishness in the world’s code of ethics. The sole condition of the stability of the State is a disposition on the part of its people to conform to justice and correct moral principles in all social relations.

Any system of education that does not tend to produce a state of morals conformable to this high standard is not merely defective; it is radically wrong, and therefore positively vicious. The true purpose of education is the harmonious development of all the powers of the man—mental, moral, and physical. But harmony in a selfish character is impossible, for selfishness is blind of one eye, so to speak; it considers only one side of a cause—the side that relates to its interest, regardless of all other interests. Let not prudence be confounded with selfishness. Prudence and selfishness are as wide apart as the poles. Extreme prudence is perfectly consistent with entire rectitude, while extreme selfishness is the synonym of depravity; hence the first step in education is to eliminate selfishness from the mind, and the next step is to put rectitude in its place.