206. Sense Instruction condemned.—Malebranche will reply to us, with the prejudices of a metaphysician of the idealist type, that the first thing to do is to nourish the child on abstract truths. In his view, souls have no age, so to speak, and the infant is already capable of ideal contemplation. Then let sense instruction be abandoned, “for this is the reason why children leave metaphysical thoughts, to apply themselves to sensations.” Is it objected that the child does not seem very well adapted to meditation on abstract truths? It is not so much the fault of nature, Malebranche will reply, as of the bad habits he has contracted. There is a means of remedying this ordinary incapacity of the child.
“If we kept children from fear, from desires, and from hope, if we did not make them suffer pain, if we removed them as far as possible from their little pleasures, then we might teach them, from the moment they knew how to speak, the most difficult and the most abstract things, or at least the concrete mathematics, mechanics.”
Does Malebranche hope, then, to suppress, in the life of the child, pleasure and pain, and triumph over the tendencies which ordinary education has developed?
“As an ambitious man who had just lost his fortune and his credit would not be in a condition to resolve questions in metaphysics or equations in algebra, so children, on whose brains apples and sugar-plums make as profound impressions as are made on those of men of forty years by offices and titles, are not in a condition to hear the abstract truths that are taught them.”
Consequently, we must declare war against the senses, and exclude, for example, all sorts of sensible rewards. Only, by a singular contradiction, Malebranche upholds material punishments in the education of children. The only thing of sense he retains is the rod.[130]
207. Influence of Material Environment.—Another contradiction more worthy of note is, that, notwithstanding his idealism, Malebranche believes in the influence of physical conditions on the development of the soul. He does not go so far as to say with the materialists of our time, that “man is what he eats”; but he accords a certain amount of influence to nourishment. He speaks cheerfully of wine and of “those wild spirits who do not willingly submit to the orders of the will.” He never applied himself to work without having partaken of coffee. The soul, in his view, is not a force absolutely independent and isolated, which develops through an internal activity: “we are bound,” he says, “to everything, and stand in relations to all that surrounds us.”
208. Locke (1632-1704).—Locke is above all else a psychologist, an accomplished master in the art of analyzing the origin of ideas and the elements of the mental life. He is the head of that school of empirical psychology that rallies around its standard, Condillac in France, Herbart in Germany, and in Great Britain Hume and other Scotchmen, and the most of modern philosophers. But from psychology to pedagogy the transition is easy, and Locke had to make no great effort to become an authority in education after having been an accomplished philosopher.
209. Some Thoughts on Education (1693).—The book which he published towards the close of his life, under the modest title Some Thoughts concerning Education, was the summing up of a long experience. A studious pupil at Westminster, he conceived from his early years, as Descartes did at La Flèche, a keen sense of repugnance for a purely formal classical instruction, and for language studies in general, in which, nevertheless, he attained distinction. A model student at the University of Oxford, he there became an accomplished humanist, notwithstanding the practical and positive tendency of his mind that was already drawn towards the natural sciences and researches in physics and in medicine. Made Bachelor of Arts in 1656, and Master of Arts in 1658, he passed directly from the student’s bench to the professor’s chair. He was successively lecturer and tutor in Greek, but this did not prevent him later from eliminating Hellenism almost completely from his scheme of liberal education. Then he became lecturer on rhetoric, and finally on moral philosophy. When, in 1666, he discontinued his scholastic life to mingle in political and diplomatic affairs, he at least carried from his studious residence at Oxford, the germs of the most of his ideas on education. He sought occasion to make an application of them in the education of private individuals, of whom he was the inspirer and counsellor, if not the official director. In the families of friends and hosts that he frequented, for example, in that of Lord Shaftesbury, he made a close study of children; and it is in studying them, and in following with a sagacious eye the successive steps of their improvement in disposition and mind, that he succeeded in acquiring that educational experience which has left a trace on each page of the Thoughts concerning Education. This book, in fact, is the issue of one of Locke’s experiences as an assistant in the education of the children of his friends. Towards the year 1684-5, he addressed to his friend Clarke a series of letters which, retouched and slightly modified, have become a classical work, simple and familiar in style, a little disconnected, perhaps, and abounding in repetitions, but the substance of which is excellent, and the ideas as remarkable, in general, for their originality as for their justness. Translated into French in 1695 by P. Coste, and reprinted several times in the lifetime of their author, the Thoughts concerning Education have had a universal success. They have exercised an undoubted influence on the educational writings of Rousseau and Helvetius. They have received the enthusiastic praise of Leibnitz, who placed this work above that on the Human Understanding. “I am persuaded,” said H. Marion recently, in his interesting study on Locke, “that if an edition of the Thoughts were to be published to-day in a separate volume, it would have a marked success.”[131]
210. Analysis of the Thoughts concerning Education.—Without pretending to give in this place a detailed analysis of Locke’s book, which deserves to be read entire, and which discusses exhaustively or calls to notice, one after another, almost all important educational questions, we shall attempt to make known the essential principles which are to be drawn from it. These are: 1. in physical education, the hardening process; 2. in intellectual education, practical utility; 3. in moral education, the principle of honor, set up as a rule for the free self-government of man.