While we believed that thought was purely volatile, incapable of impact upon matter, or of being acted upon by matter, our theories of education were necessarily vague. We could not catch our Ariel; how then could we school him? But now, the physiologists have taught us that our wilful sprite rests with the tips of his toes, at any rate, upon solid ground; nay more, his foothold is none so slight but that it leaves footmarks behind, an impress on that domain of the physical in which we are somewhat at home. The impalpable thoughts that we think leave their mark upon the quite palpable substance of the brain, set up, so the physiologists tell us, connections between the nerve-cells of which that organ is composed; in fact, to make a long story short, the cerebrum “grows to the uses it is earliest and most constantly put to.” This fact opens up a function of education upon which M. Fouillée hardly touches, that most important function of the formation of habits—physical, intellectual, moral. “Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny,” says Thackeray. And a great function of the educator is to secure that acts shall be so regularly, purposefully, and methodically sown that the child shall reap the habits of the good life in thinking and doing, with the minimum of conscious effort.
We are only now beginning to discover how beneficial are the laws which govern our being. Educate the child in these habits and the man’s life will run in them, without the constant wear and tear of the moral effort of decision. Once, twice, three times in a day, he will still, no doubt, have to choose between the highest and the less high, the best and the less good course. But all the minor moralities of life may be made habitual to him. He has been brought up to be courteous, prompt, punctual, neat, considerate; and he practises these virtues without conscious effort. It is much easier to behave in the way he is used to, than to originate a new line of conduct. And this is so, because it is graciously and mercifully ordered that there shall be a physical record and adaptation as the result of our educational efforts; and that the enormous strain of moral endeavour shall come upon us only occasionally. “Sow a habit, reap a character;” that is, the formation of habits is the chief means whereby we modify the original hereditary disposition of the child until it becomes the character of the man.
But even in this physiological work, the spiritual force of the idea has its part to play. For a habit is set up by following out an initial idea with a long sequence of corresponding acts. You tell a child that the Great Duke slept in so narrow a bed that he could not turn over, because, said he, “When you want to turn over it’s time to get up.” The boy does not wish to get up in the morning; but he does wish to be like the hero of Waterloo. You stimulate him to act upon this idea day after day for a month or so, until the habit is formed, and it is just as easy as not to get up in good time.
The functions of education may be roughly defined as twofold; (a) the formation of habits; (b) the presentation of ideas. The first depends far more largely than we recognise on physiological processes. The second is purely spiritual in origin, method, and result. Is it not possible that here we have the meeting-point of the two philosophies which have divided mankind since men began to think about their thoughts and ways? Both are right; both are necessary; both have their full activity in the development of a human being at his best. The crux of modern thought, as indeed of all profound thought, is, Is it conceivable that the spiritual should have any manner of impact upon the material? Every problem, from the education of a little child to the Divine Incarnation, turns upon this point. Conceive this possibility and all is plain, from the marvels resulting from hypnotic suggestion to the miracles of our faith. We can even believe what we are told, that, by an effort of passionate concentration of thought and feeling the devout may arrive at the figure of the stigmata upon hands and feet. With this key nothing is impossible to our faith, all we ask for is precedent. And after all, this inter-action of forces is the most common and every-day of our experiences. What is it but the impact of spirit upon matter which writes upon the face of flesh that record of character and conduct which we call countenance. And not only upon the face. He is a dull scholar in the lore of human nature, who cannot read a man fairly well from a back view. The sculptor knows the trick of it. There is a statue of the late Prince Consort in Edinburgh in which representative groups pay homage to the Prince. Stand so as to get the back view of any one of them and the shoulders of scholar, soldier, peasant, artisan, tell unmistakably the tale of their several lives. What is this but the impress of spirit upon matter!
Anyway we are on the horns of a dilemma. There is no middle course open to us. The physiologists have made it absolutely plain that the brain is concerned with thinking. Nay more, that thought may go on without any volition on the part of the thinker. Further, that much of our best work in art and literature is the result of what is called unconscious cerebration. Now, we must admit one of two things. Either thought is a process of the material brain, one more “mode of motion,” as the materialists contend, or the material brain is the agent of the spiritual thought, which acts upon it, let us say, as the fingers of a player upon the keys of his instrument. Grant this and the whole question is conceded. The impact of the spiritual upon the material is an accepted fact.
As we have had occasion to say before, in this great work of education parents and teachers are permitted to play only a subordinate part after all. You may bring your horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink; and you may present ideas of the fittest to the mind of the child; but you do not know in the least which he will take, and which he will reject. And very well for us it is that this safeguard to his individuality is implanted in every child’s breast. Our part is to see that his educational plat is constantly replenished with fit and inspiring ideas, and then we must needs leave it to the child’s own appetite to take which he will have, and as much as he requires. Of one thing we must beware. The least symptom of satiety, especially when the ideas we present are moral and religious, should be taken as a serious warning. Persistence on our part just then may end in the child’s never willingly sitting down to that dish any more.
The very limitations we see to our own powers in this matter of presenting ideas should make us the more anxiously careful as to the nature of the ideas set before our children. We shall not be content that they learn geography, history, Latin, what not,—we shall ask what salient ideas are presented in each such study, and how will these ideas affect the intellectual and moral development of the child. We shall be in a mood, that is, to go calmly and earnestly into the question of education as presented by M. Fouillée. We shall probably differ from him in many matters of detail, but we shall most likely be inclined to agree with his conclusion that, not some subject of mere utility, but moral and social science conveyed by means of history, literature, or otherwise, is the one subject which we are not at liberty to leave out from the curriculum of “a being breathing thoughtful breath.”
The tables of studies given in the appendix are of extreme value. Every subject is treated from what may be called the ideal point of view.
“Two things are necessary. First, we must introduce into the study of each science the philosophic spirit and method, general views, the search for the most general principles and conclusions. We must then reduce the different sciences to unity by a sound training in philosophy, which will be as obligatory to students in science as to students in literature.... Scientific truths, said Descartes, are battles won; describe to the young the principal and most heroic of these battles; you will thus interest them in the results of science, and you will develop in them a scientific spirit by means of the enthusiasm for the conquest of truth; you will make them see the power of the reasoning which has led to discoveries in the past, and which will do so again in the future. How interesting arithmetic and geometry might be if we gave a short history of their principal theorems; if the child were mentally present at the labours of a Pythagoras, a Plato, a Euclid, or in modern times of a Viète, a Descartes, a Pascal, or a Leibnitz. Great theories, instead of being lifeless and anonymous abstractions, would become human, living truths, each with its own history, like a statue by Michael Angelo, or like a painting by Raphael.”