Buckles’s caustic remark, “the most valuable additions made to legislation have been enactments destructive of preceding legislation, and the best laws which have been passed have been those in which some former laws have been repealed,” does not apply to the works of the civil engineers, inventors, and mechanics of England or of any other country. Their works live after them and never fail to reflect honor upon them. The “acts” of the inventor may be amended but they are never repealed. Each inventive step, however short and apparently unimportant, constitutes a substantial link in the chain of progress; and it is a substantial link, because it invariably contains a hint of the next sequential step.
Mr. Galton is an original thinker of great power, and an untiring investigator. In contrasting the politician with the artisan he discriminates admirably. He finds that the politician is of no value, practically, to the community, while the artisan is of almost inestimable value; and this conclusion he states curtly, without appearing to care a rush for the public sentiment which reverences politics and so-called statesmanship. But when he “makes up his jewels,” so to speak, on the subject of “hereditary genius,” Mr. Galton, as already remarked, forgets that it is worth while to consider the class of men who in the last hundred years have literally almost created a new world. Why is this? The late Mr. Horace Mann answered the question long ago, and he answered it so well that his answer is here reproduced in extenso: “Mankind had made great advances in astronomy, in geometry, and other mathematical sciences, in the writing of history, in oratory and in poetry, in painting and in sculpture, and in those kinds of architecture which may be called regal or religious, centuries before the great mechanical discoveries and inventions which now bless the world were brought to light; and the question has often forced itself upon reflecting minds why there was this preposterousness, this inversion of what would appear to be the natural order of progress? Why was it, for instance, that men should have learned the courses of the stars and the revolution of the planets before they found out how to make a good wagon-wheel? Why was it that they built the Parthenon and the Coliseum before they knew how to construct a comfortable, healthful dwelling-house? Why did they build the Roman aqueducts before they framed a saw-mill? Or why did they achieve the noblest models in eloquence, in poetry, and in the drama before they invented movable types? I think we have arrived at a point where we can unriddle this enigma. The labor of the world has been performed by ignorant men, by classes doomed to ignorance from sire to son; by the bondmen and the bondwomen of the Jews, by the helots of Sparta, by the captives who passed under the Roman yoke, and by the villeins and serfs and slaves of more modern times.”
When the great educational reformer of Massachusetts thus graphically pointed out slavery as the cause of the contempt in which the useful arts had been held from the dawn of history, four millions of men were kept in bondage, and compelled to toil under the lash by one of the most enlightened nations of the earth. Later thirteen millions of people pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to the perpetuation of slavery, and half a million soldiers marched repeatedly to battle to do or die in behalf of the right (?) of one man to buy and sell the bodies of his fellow-men.
There is, then, a logical reason for Mr. Galton’s neglect of the artisan class. Slavery in its most odious form not only existed in the heart of a so-called “free” nation twenty-five years ago, but dared Liberty to a deadly contest. Nor were the upholders of slavery without moral support among the governments and peoples of the world. The government of England, of which Mr. Galton is a subject, under cover of a pretended neutrality aided the American slaveholders’ Confederacy in sweeping Freedom’s ships from the sea; and the great families of England, the families cited by Mr. Galton in support of his proposition that genius “is an affair of blood and breed”—those great families were well pleased when Freedom’s ships went down and Freedom’s armies retreated before the assaults of the slave confederacy.
This somewhat extended reference to Mr. Galton is not intended to impugn his good faith as an author. Its design is simply to show that the influence of slavery is not yet extinct; that it still moulds ideas, controls habits of thought, inspires literary men, and permeates literature. In a word, the cause of the contempt in which the useful arts were held in Babylon in the time of Herodotus was in full force in this country down to the date of the issuance of Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation of emancipation; and it is scarcely necessary to observe that the British Constitution grew out of the feudal system, which was only another name for slavery. It is a proverb in England to this day that it is safer to shoot a man than a hare; and the sentiment of the proverb is a complete justification of human bondage, since it implies that property rights are more sacred than the rights of man. Thus slavery has kept its brand of shame upon the useful arts for thousands of years, and the mind of man has been so deeply impressed thereby that it does not react now that slavery is extinct. Like the slave released from bondage, who still feels the chain, still winces and shrinks from the imaginary scourge, the mind of man continues to revolve automatically in the old channels.[E10]
[E10] “It is related of the Scythians that they became involved in a contest with the descendants of certain of their slaves, who successfully resisted them in several battles, whereupon one of them said: ‘Men of Scythia, what are we doing? By fighting with our slaves, both we ourselves by being slain become fewer in number, and by killing them we shall hereafter have fewer to rule over. Now, therefore, it seems to me that we should lay aside our spears and bows, and that everyone, taking a horsewhip, should go directly to them; for so long as they saw us with arms, they considered themselves equal to us, and born of equal birth; but when they shall see us with our whips instead of arms, they will soon learn that they are our slaves, and being conscious of that will no longer resist.’ The Scythians, having heard this, adopted the advice; and the slaves, struck with astonishment at what was done, forgot to fight and fled.”—Herodotus, “Melpomene,” IV. §§ 3, 4. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AUTOMATIC CONTRASTED WITH SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION.
The Past tyrannizes over the Present by Interposing the Stolid Resistance of Habit. — Habits of Thought like Habits of the Body become Automatic. — There is much Freedom of Speech but very little Freedom of Thought: Habit, Tradition, and Reverence for Antiquity forbid it. — The Schools educate Automatically. — A glaring Defect of the Schools shown by Mr. John S. Clark, of Boston. — The Automatic Character of the Popular System of Education shown by the Quincy (Mass.) Experiment. — Several Intelligent Opinions to the same Effect. — The Public Schools as an Industrial Agency a Failure. — A Conclusive Evidence of the Automatic and Superficial Character of prevailing Methods of Education in the Schools of a large City. — The Views of Colonel Francis W. Parker. — Scientific Education is found in the Kindergarten and the Manual Training School. — “The Cultivation of Familiarity betwixt the Mind and Things.” — Colonel Augustus Jacobson on the Effect of the New Education.
All reforms must encounter the stolid resistance of habit. It is not less tyrannical because it is a negative force. It braces itself and holds back with all its might. It is in this manner that the past dominates the present.[E11] This automatic habit of mind is precisely like certain automatic habits of the body which operate quite independently of any act of volition. For example: “When we move about in a room with the objects in which we are quite familiar, we direct our steps so as to avoid them, without being conscious what they are or what we are doing; we see them, as we easily discover if we try to move about in the same way with our eyes shut, but we do not perceive them, the mind being fully occupied with some train of thought.”[42] In the same way the mind under certain conditions becomes an automaton, constantly revolving old thoughts after the causes that gave rise to them have ceased to operate. Piano-forte playing affords an excellent illustration of this automatic action of the mind. “A pupil learning to play the piano-forte is obliged to call to mind each note, but the skilful player goes through no such process of conscious remembrance; his ideas, like his movements, are automatic, and both so rapid as to surpass the rapidity of succession of conscious ideas and movements.”[43]