Happily, we know another means, a much surer process, for causing to appear, not a strange race, until now unknown, but generations of more worth than our own, which are superior to it in physical force, as in qualities of mind or virtues of character. This means is to establish, through reflection and reason, an education better adapted to our destination; an education broader and more complete, at once more severe and more liberal, since it will at the same time exact more toil and permit more scope; in which the child will learn to count more on himself; in which his indolence will no longer be encouraged by accustoming him inopportunely to invoke supernatural aid; in which instruction will no longer be a formulary recited as lip-service, but an inner and profound acquisition of the soul, in which the fear of the conscience will be substituted for the other rules of conduct, and in which thought and free reflection will no longer be distrusted; finally, an education more scientific and more rational, because it will neglect nothing which can develop a human soul and bring it into likeness with its ideal. Now that education to which the future belongs, notwithstanding the obstacles which the spirit of the past will still stir up against it,—that education is not possible, its laws cannot be established, its methods cannot be practised, except on one condition; this is, that the psychology of the child be written, and well written, and that reflection draw from this psychology all the consequences which it permits.
[667. Comment on Mr. Spencer’s Education.—Monsieur Compayré might have emphasized his cautions. Read with caution, and with a purpose to weigh the truth, Mr. Spencer’s Education is inspiring and wholesome; but it may be doubted whether there has been written, since the Émile, a book on education which is so well fitted to deceive an unwary reader by its rhetoric and philosophic plausibility. The air of breadth and candor with which the writer sets out is eminently prepossessing, and the reader is almost obliged to assume that he is being led to foregone conclusions. The first chapter, in particular, is a piece of literary art, in which there is such a deft handling of sentiment and pathos as to unfit the susceptible reader for exercising his own critical judgment.
In this place I can only indicate in the briefest manner what seem to be the fundamental errors contained in the book:—
1. Mr. Spencer does not distinguish between the immediate and the mediate practical value of knowledges. We may admit with him that science is of inestimable value to the human race; but it does not follow by any means that every person must be versed in science. As we need not own everything that is essential to our comfort, so we need not have as a personal possession all the knowledge that we need for guidance.
2. It is a very low conception of education that would limit its function to adapting a man merely to that state in life into which he chances to be born. The Bushman, the Red Indian, and the accountant, are unfortunate illustrations of the province of education. Often the highest function of education is to lift a man out of his ancestral state.
3. That the value of a subject for guidance is the same as its value for discipline, is true under only one assumption,—that the Bushman is always to remain a Bushman, and the Red Indian always a Red Indian, as by the new philosophy of course they should. Practical teachers very well know that, as a rule, the studies that are the most valuable for practical use are the least valuable for discipline. Mr. Spencer quotes no better proof of his assumption than “the beautiful economy of Nature.”
4. Mr. Spencer’s proposed education is sordid in its utilitarianism. He is preoccupied with man as an instrument rather than with a human being aspiring towards the highest type of his kind. A liberal education should be preoccupied first with the training of the man, then with the training of the instrument.
5. Mr. Spencer’s restatement of Condillac’s and Comte’s doctrine, that individual education should be a repetition of civilization in petto, is at best but a specious generalization. The doctrine cannot be applied to practice, in any considerable degree, if we would, and should not be, if we could, for it ignores one essential factor in progress,—inheritance.
6. The part assigned to “Nature” in the work of education is so overstrained as to be unnatural and absurd. Physical science has long since discarded this myth of Nature personified. It is only in educational science that this fiction is still employed to eke out an argument.