Intellectual education, common to all young people who receive a liberal instruction, would henceforth comprise three essential parts: 1. the sciences; 2. the humanities; 3. rhetoric and the national literature. We see at once what is to be understood by this last item; but the two others have need of some explanations.
The sciences are divided into two groups: those which are to be mastered,—arithmetic, geometry, algebra, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology; and the natural sciences, which should be studied only superficially because they would overwhelm the memory under the weight of too large a number of facts. Geography, which, one does not know why, is included in the sciences, while history is attached to the humanities, will complete the programme of scientific studies.
As to the humanities, Mr. Bain preserves scarcely more than the name while suppressing the thing; for in the curtailed and disfigured domain which he persists in calling by this name, he cuts off precisely that which has always been considered as constituting its essence,—the study of the dead languages. He excludes from it even the living languages, and that which he still decorates with the fine title of humanities, is still science,—moral science, it is true,—“history and sociology with political economy and jurisprudence.”
A course in universal literature, but, be it understood, without original texts, might afterwards be added to this pretended teaching of the humanities.
Two or three hours a week would be devoted parallelly, during the whole course of study, which would last six years, to each of the three departments of instruction which Mr. Bain thinks equally important.
As to the real humanities, dead or living languages, they should no longer be included in education save as optional and extra studies, on the same basis as the accomplishments. And, appealing to the future, Mr. Bain even predicts that “a day will come when it will be found that this is still granting them too large a place in education.”
Mr. Bain, then, gives all his preferences to scientific studies, and his book might properly be entitled, not only Education as a Science, but also Science in Education.
659. Theoretical Errors.—Mr. Bain reproaches letters with giving the mind the habit of servility. By what singular revulsion of thought can the liberal studies par excellence be represented as a school of intellectual servitude? It is rather to scientific instruction that we may properly return the accusation of enslaving the spirit. By their inexorable evidence and by their very exactness, do not the sciences sometimes smother the originality and the free flight of the imagination?
This defect, however, does not cut them off from a right to a place, and to a large place, in the programme of intellectual education. Let us accept with favor their alliance, let us admit them to a certain degree of fellowship, but do not let us tolerate their encroachments. In a word, the object of the sciences is either pure abstractions or material realities. He who studies mathematics and physics first acquires real knowledge of high value; and, on the other hand, he strengthens his mind through the habits engendered by the rigorous methods which the sciences employ. We cheerfully grant to Mr. Bain that the sciences are at the same time admirable sources of useful truths and valuable instruments of mental discipline. By cultivating them we gain not only the positive knowledge which they teach respecting the world, but also the power, rigor, and exactness which they impose on their adepts.