Let us add that this principle is wholly negative, that it furnishes at most only the means of shunning evil; that even in according to it an efficacy it does not have, it would still be necessary to reproach it with narrowing moral culture by reducing it to the rather mean solicitude for simple utility; finally, that it exercises no influence on the development of the positive virtues, on the disinterested education of morality in what is noble and exalted.
Finally, the system of natural punishments would incur the danger of often being cruel, and of causing the child an irreparable injury. Let pass the pin-cushion, the boiling water, and the candle-flame,—examples which Mr. Spencer proposes; but what shall we say of the bar of red-hot iron which he lets the child pick up? What shall be said, above all, of the grave consequences entailed by the faults of a young man left to himself?
“Would it not be,” says Gréard justly, “to condemn the child to a régime so severe as to be an injustice, to count solely on the effects of natural reactions and inevitable consequences, for the purpose of disciplining his will? The penalty which they provoke is the most often enormous as compared with the fault which has produced them, and man himself demands for his conduct other sanctions than those of a harsh reality. He desires that we judge the intention as well as the fact; that he be commended for his efforts; that in the first instance extreme measures be not taken against him; that the blow fall on him if needs be, but without crushing him, and while extending to him a hand to help him up.”[284]
651. Return to Nature.—However it may be, Mr. Spencer is to be commended for having shown that for moral education as for intellectual education, the method which approaches nature the nearest is also the best. The return to nature which was the characteristic of Rousseau’s theories and of Pestalozzi’s practice, is also the dominant trait of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy.
If we look closely into the matter, this decided purpose to follow nature implicates something besides the superficial condemnation of methods introduced by art and human device. It supposes a fundamental belief,—the belief in the beneficent purpose of natural instincts. To have confidence in nature, to fall back on the spontaneous forces of the soul, because we discern behind them or in them a higher providence or an internal foresight, is a belief generally useful and suggestive for conducting human affairs, but particularly necessary for directing the education of man. It is not without some surprise that we discover this belief at the basis of Mr. Spencer’s pedagogy, as though, by a contradiction which is not new, the evolutionist philosophy, which seems to exclude final causes from the conception of the universe, had been practically constrained to bow before them, and to proclaim, at least in the matter of education, the salutary efficacy of the theory which admits them.
Thus, in speaking of physical education, Mr. Spencer remarks that the sensations are the natural guides, which it would be dangerous not to follow.
“Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure direct self-preservation, is in great part already provided for. Too momentous to be left to our own blundering, Nature takes it into her own hands.”
Speaking in another place of the instincts which induce the child to move himself and to seek in physical exercise the basis of physical well-being, he declares that to oppose these instincts would be to go counter to the means “divinely arranged” for assuring the development of the body.
652. Physical Education.—The chapter devoted by Mr. Spencer to physical education, is such as might be expected from a thinker who is wholly exempt from idealistic prejudices and who does not hesitate to write:—