It does not follow because prevailing methods of education promote the spirit of selfishness, and hence contain the seeds of social and moral decay, that they are wholly vicious; but it does follow, if they are not positively wrong, that they are negatively wrong. Let us assume that they are only negatively wrong, that they lack an essential element in all mental and moral training—the manual element; and let us try to discover what would be the effect of the incorporation of this element into the curriculum of the schools.
A system of education consisting exclusively of mental exercises promotes selfishness because such training is subjective. Its effects flow inward; they relate to self. All mental acquirements become a part of self, and so remain forever, unless they are transmuted into things through the agency of the hand.
It is through the hand alone that the mind finally impresses itself upon matter. In other words, thought and speech must be incarnate in things or they are dead. The orator appeals to the people to strike for their rights; the people rend the air with shouts and subside into silence. The orator cries, “To Arms!” Again the people shout, and again subside into silence. The orator’s thoughts are of carnage, his words of flames, but they are as dead as if never uttered because no hand is raised to embody them in deeds.
Manual training, on the other hand, promotes altruism because it is objective. Its effects flow outward; they relate not to self but to the human race. The skilled hand confers benefits upon man, and each benefit so conferred exerts the natural reflex moral influence of a good act upon the mind of the benefactor.[E6]
Morality is not a mere sentiment, a barren ideality. It is true there is a negative morality which consists in refraining from the commission of wrongful acts. But the morality of the great ethical teachers is positive; it consists in doing. Christ said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Words without acts are as dead as faith without works. Paul said, “Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”
Morality is a vital principle whose exemplification consists in doing justice; and justice is that virtue “which consists in giving to every one what is his due; practical conformity to the laws and to principles of rectitude in the dealings of men with each other; honesty, integrity in commerce or mutual intercourse.” It follows that morality can no more be acquired by memorizing a series of maxims than the art of using tools can be acquired by studying the laws of mechanics and of mechanism.
[E4] “No city was ever so deeply disgraced by its municipal government as the city of New York. Fourteen years ago the exposure of the Tweed Ring revealed a corruption in that government which had mastered Legislatures and courts, and was plotting to control the national administration; and as we write, all of the living ex-members of the late Board of Aldermen, except two, are held for trial for bribery and corruption, or are in hiding.
“Such a shame is unprecedented. It is in itself a sharp satire upon popular elections, as well as upon the character and public spirit of New York; and the worst of it is that, bad as it is, no citizen probably feels himself to be humiliated, or is conscious of any personal responsibility. To the most stupid man, however, such facts forecast a constant deterioration of the situation.”—“Harper’s Weekly,” April 24, 1886.
[E5] The morality of the present age, like that of the Romans, is a mere theory, entirely destitute of vital force. Selfishness is still, as it always has been, the controlling element in human conduct, and selfishness and morality are utterly incompatible. Moral precepts are inculcated in a perfunctory way, as Greek is taught because it is the fashion, but with no more idea that they will be adopted as the rule of life, than that the language of Homer will again be used as the instrument of speech. The contempt in which morality is commonly held is well shown by the remark of a popular lecturer, who said of Peter the Great, that, “viewed morally he was a monster, and by the gauge of decency, a brute, but a giant from the lofty heights of statesmanship and civilization.” How vain is the hope of reform while leaders of men deem it possible for statesmanship to be rendered lofty by a moral monster, or that the cause of civilization may be advanced by a brute!