The advocates of the continuance—to the extent and for the purposes I have indicated—of classical study will labour under a great and unfair disadvantage, as long as the classics shall be taught with but slight perception, on the part of those who teach them, of their bearing on the higher work of the day. As long as the main object of our public schools shall continue to be professedly linguistic, and that, too, in a somewhat narrow, and shallow fashion; and their tone, sometimes a little ostentatiously, at variance with that of the world, and of the day, for the work of which they ought to be a preparation (it was so with them originally) so long will the advocacy of classical studies be unfairly weighted with a sense of the justice of the charge of unreality brought against them, as now conducted. Whereas in the advocates of modern knowledge as the object and instrument of education, and in its teachers, there is none of this unreality, or want of connexion with the thought, and with the work, of the world that is stirring around us. We, however, hold that it is a different department of work and thought, to which the latter training mainly and primarily applies. A public man need not, as a public man, know anything of astronomy and geology; though, of course, he is behind the age, and his culture is incomplete, if he does not. Of all such subjects he ought, as an educated man, to have a general knowledge; and he will also be the better, as a public man, for having it; but what is primarily and indispensably required of him is a knowledge of man, and of all kinds of social phenomena in their whole range; what they are, how they came to be what they are, and how they affect man. Here his knowledge should be full and precise: and a very valuable part of this knowledge is contained in the literature of the old world. He ought to have lived through those ages. To have done so is a vast extension of experience of the most useful kind. But he cannot have lived through those times, unless he is familiar with the feelings and thoughts, and actions of the men of those times, together with the circumstances, and conditions, under which they so thought, and felt, and acted. And he cannot have this familiarity unless he has a knowledge of the very words, in which they, themselves, expressed, and described, those feelings, thoughts, and actions.
One word more. There is no knowledge so valuable as that of what is knowledge; nor any intellectual habit so valuable as that which disposes us in every thing to require knowledge, and to separate that which is knowledge from that which is not. Theoretically, there is no reason why either the study of language, or theology, should not be made a training for this knowledge, and for this habit. But as this is a matter of practice, as well as of theory, we must look at things as they are, and see where what we want is actually found, and what has in those cases produced it; and where there has been a failure in producing it, and what has been in those cases the cause of this failure. Who, then, are most conspicuous for knowing in what knowledge consists, and for the habit of requiring knowledge as a ground for thought and action, and for being ever on the alert to separate knowledge from its counterfeits? No one, I think, would hesitate in replying, those who have had some scientific training. And it is easy to see how scientific training gives this knowledge, and this habit. It makes no difference what the matter of the study be, whether the stars, or the fungi; whether the physiology of man, or of an earth-worm. The object is soon seen to be truth; and the motive is soon felt to be the satisfaction which truth gives to the mind, and the desire to escape, in the practical order, from the wastefulness, and the mischief of error. Whatever, therefore, is necessary for the attainment of truth is submitted to, or acquired, or eliminated, or avoided, in accordance with the exigency of each case. In these pursuits men learn to guard against appearances that they may not be misled by them; to sift evidence; to distinguish facts from supposed, or alleged, facts; to observe patiently and closely; to suspend judgment; to distinguish probability from certainty; to distinguish different degrees of probability; to distinguish what they know from what they wish; not to wish for anything but ascertained and demonstrable truth; to examine everything, and to hold fast only that which is demonstrably true; to guard against ambiguities in words; to use words for photographing facts, and not to make them a mist which obscures both the object of inquiry, and the paths which lead to it. As a matter of observation, and of fact, these are the habits of mind, which the scientific study of any subject inculcates, and makes natural to a man. They become his second nature. Of course they ought to be the nature of all educated people. And when a man’s mind has been thus trained in the study, scientifically pursued, of any one subject, he applies these habits to the consideration of all other subjects, with which he may have to do: to those, with which he is not familiar, he addresses himself with the same ideas, and the same ways of thinking, as he does to that, with which he is familiar. He knows what knowledge is; and, while he can suspend his judgment, he cannot be satisfied with anything but knowledge. What he does not know upon these subjects he knows that he does not know. The study of language, and theology, if scientifically taught, are doubtless capable of supplying this training, but looking at our educated classes generally, and at those who have had administered to them the greatest amount of these two studies, it does not appear that the desired effect has been produced. If, then, these things are so, here is both something that should be an object, and something that is a defect, as things now are, in our higher education.
CHAPTER XVII.
ELSASS—LOTHRINGEN—METZ—GRAVELOTTE—MOTHER OF THE CURÉ OF STE. MARIE AUX CHÊNES—WATERLOO.
It is a just award
That they who take, should perish by, the sword.
I included Mulhouse, Colmar, Strasbourg, Bitche, and Metz in my homeward journey. As I passed along, the higher peaks of the Vosges were white with recently fallen snow. It is not, however, the forest-clad mountains, and their snow-capped summits which interest most the thought of the traveller, as he traverses this district, now, but the consequences of that recent transference of power, of which the names just written down remind him: the cotton industry of Mulhouse and Colmar; the astonishing agricultural wealth of the neighbourhood of Strasbourg, where the land yields, side by side, in singular luxuriance the five agricultural products, sugar-beet, hops, wine, tobacco, and maize, which in Europe pay the best; the strategical importance, and military strength, of Strasbourg, Bitche, and Metz; the variety of the manufactures, and of the agricultural resources, of the country round Metz; and, more than all this wealth and strength, the people themselves of these districts, who were the manliest, the most industrious, and the most thriving part of the population of France. One can, at present, hardly estimate rightly the value of what has thus been taken from France, and given, if the expression may be allowed, to her natural enemy. Still it was France herself that laid this incalculable stake upon the table: her portion of the left bank of the Rhine against Prussia’s; and insisted on the game being played. And the chances were against her. She had acquired Strasbourg by amazing treachery; and now the ignorance, arrogance, and vice by which she was to lose it, were equally amazing. And this war of 1870-71 was a natural sequel of the wrongs the first Napoleon did to Germany. That it was that had obliged the Germans to devote themselves to military organisation, and to understand the necessity of national union; and which was hardening their will, and nerving their arm. As to the French, one would be glad to find that they were delivering themselves from those causes in themselves, which led to their great catastrophe. But the existing generation cannot expect to see the day, when the rural population of France will have attained to more enlightenment than they have at present, and its city population to more rational ideas of liberty, justice, and truth, than they have exhibited hitherto; for the lives of the former are too hard, and the latter are too fanatical, to admit of much immediate improvement in either.
I stopped at Metz to see the battle-field of Gravelotte. I went over it with two Englishmen, who had come to Metz for the same purpose. We were provided with maps, and plans, and narratives of the great battle. It was a bright fine day. We started at 8.30 A.M., and did not get back to Metz till 5 P.M. It requires, at least, six hours to go over the field, including the hour you stop at Ste. Marie aux Chênes for baiting your horses, and for luncheon.
The French ground was well chosen for a defensive battle. It was along the ridge of the rising ground, facing to the west, from St. Privat and Roncour on their right, to the high ground opposite to, and behind St. Hubert, on their left. St. Hubert was a farmhouse in the depression. It had a walled garden. This ground was about five miles in length. Early in the day the Germans occupied only a part of the ground in front of the French position, beginning at Gravelotte, a little to the south-west of the French left. At this time there was no enemy in front of the French right. The ground here, rendered strong by a line of detached farm-houses, woods, and villages, was occupied by French outposts. From all these they were driven, in succession, by the extension of the German left. The strongest position here, and in it much hard fighting took place, was the village of Ste. Marie aux Chênes. The Germans first attacked the French left at St. Hubert. From this they drove them out. One can hardly understand how they managed to get possession of it, for the French occupied the high ground all round it. To march upon it was like marching into the bottom of a bowl to attack a strong place in the bottom, commanded by the enemy’s cannon from every part of the rim. Having, however, established themselves here, they advanced up the hill against the French left. But, though they were repulsed, they were not driven out of St. Hubert. In the evening, the Germans, having established themselves along the front of the French right, and having even somewhat outflanked it, attacked them at St. Privat and Roncour. Here was most desperate fighting; and one, while standing on the ground, is surprised that any troops could have faced what the Germans had to go through. Their advance was made up a perfectly smooth, and open, incline, three-quarters of a mile across, the whole of it completely swept, and commanded by the French cannon, mitrailleuse, and Chassepots, which we must recollect killed some hundreds of yards further than the needle-gun. A Saxon corps, that had been coming up with forced marches, in the evening reached this point, and went straight up the hill. In fourteen minutes half its strength was hors du combat. There is a monument on the spot to those who fell here. The whole field is full of German monuments, for wherever their men fell, there they were buried; and there a monument has since been raised to their memory. At last the French right was driven off this ground, and out of the strong village of St. Privat behind it. It was now dark. The French were in no position, or condition, to renew the fight the next day; and so, during the night, they withdrew to Metz, leaving their material behind. They had fought a defensive battle, which suited neither the character of their troops, nor the circumstances of their position.