112. The Personal Education of Montaigne.—One often becomes teacher through recollection of his personal education. This is what happened to Montaigne. His pedagogy is at once an imitation of the methods which a father full of solicitude had himself applied to him, and a protest against the defects and the vices of the college of Guienne, which he entered at the age of six years. The home education of Montaigne affords the interesting spectacle of a child who develops freely. My spirit, he himself says, was trained with all gentleness and freedom, without severity or constraint. His father, skilful in his tender care, had him awakened each morning at the sound of musical instruments, so as to spare him those brusque alarms that are bad preparations for toil. In a word, he applied to him that tempered discipline, at once indulgent and firm, equally removed from complacency and harshness, which Montaigne has christened with the name of severe mildness. Another characteristic of Montaigne’s education is, that he learned Latin as one learns his native tongue. His father had surrounded him with domestics and teachers who conversed with him only in Latin. The result of this was, that at the age of six he was so proficient in the language of Cicero, that the best Latinists of the time feared to address him (craignissent à l’accoster). On the other hand, he knew no more of French than he did of Arabic.[77] It is evident that Montaigne’s father had taken a false route, but at least Montaigne derived a just conception from this experience, namely, that the methods ordinarily pursued in the study of the dead languages are too slow and too mechanical; that an abuse is made of rules, and that sufficient attention is not given to practice: “No doubt but Greek and Latin are very great ornaments, and of very great use, but we buy them too dear.”[78]
At the college of Guienne, where he passed seven years, Montaigne learned to detest corporal chastisements and the hard discipline of the scholars of his day: “ ... Instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle ways, our pedants do in truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion! than which, I certainly believe, nothing more dulls and degenerates a well-descended nature.... The strict government of most of our colleges has evermore displeased me.... ’Tis the true house of correction of imprisoned youth.... Do but come in when they are about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their Pedagogues, drunk with fury, to make up the consort. A pretty way this! to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their book, with a furious countenance, and a rod in hand. A cursed and pernicious way of proceeding.... How much more decent would it be to see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers, than with bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to my ordering, I should paint the school with the pictures of Joy and Gladness, Flora and the Graces ... that where their profit is, they might have their pleasure too.”[79]
113. Importance of a General rather than a Special Education.—If Montaigne, in different chapters of his essays,[80] has given passing attention to pedagogical questions, it is not only through a recollection of his own years of apprenticeship, but also because of his judgment as a philosopher, that “the greatest and most important task of human understanding is in those matters which concern the nurture and instruction of children.”
For him, education is the art of forming men, and not specialists. This he explains in his original manner under the form of an anecdote:
“Going to Orleans one day, I met in that plain this side Clery, two pedants who were going towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces distant from one another. Still further back of them, I saw a troop of horse, and at their head a gentleman who was the late Count de la Rochefoucault. One of my company inquired of the foremost of these dominies, who that gentleman was who was following him. He had not observed the train that was following after, and thought that the question related to his companion; and so he replied pleasantly, ‘He is not a gentleman, but a grammarian, and I am a logician.’ Now, as we are here concerned in the training, not of a grammarian, or of a logician, but of a complete gentleman, we will let those who will abuse their leisure; but we have business of another nature.”[81]
It is true that Montaigne says gentleman, and not simply man; but in reality his thought is the same as that of Rousseau and of all those who require a general education of the human soul.
114. The Purpose of Instruction.—From what has now been said, it is easy to comprehend that, in the opinion of Montaigne, letters and other studies are but the means or instrument, and not the aim and end of instruction. The author of the Essays does not yield to the literary craze, which, in the sixteenth century, took certain scholars captive, and made the ideal of education to consist of a knowledge of the ancient languages. It is of little consequence to him that a pupil has learned to write in Latin; what he does require, is that he become better and more prudent, and have a sounder judgment. “If his soul be not put into better rhythm, if the judgment be not better settled, I would rather have him spend his time at tennis.”[82]
115. Education of the Judgment.—Montaigne has expressed his dominant thought on education in a hundred different ways. He is preoccupied with the training of the judgment, and on this point we might quote whole pages:
“ ... According to the fashion in which we are instructed, it is not singular that neither scholars nor masters become more able, although they become more wise. In fact, our parents devote their care and expense to furnishing our heads with knowledge; but to judgment and virtue no additions are made. Say of a passer-by to people, ‘O what a learned man!’ and of another, ‘O what a good man goes there!’ and they will not fail to turn their eyes and attention towards the former. There should be a third to cry, ‘O the blockheads!’ Men are quick to inquire, ‘Does he know Greek or Latin? Does he write in verse or in prose?’ But whether he has become better or more prudent, which is the principal thing, this receives not the least notice; whereas we ought to inquire who is the better learned, rather than who is the more learned?”
“We labor only at filling the memory, and leave the understanding and the conscience void. Just as birds sometimes go in quest of grain, and bring it in their bills without tasting it themselves, to make of it mouthfuls for their young; so our pedants go rummaging in books for knowledge, only to hold it at their tongues’ end, and then distribute it to their pupils.”[83]