211. Physical Education; The Hardening Process.—The ideal of education, according to Locke, is “a sound mind in a sound body.” A physician like Rabelais, the author of the Thoughts concerning Education had special competence in questions of physical education. But a love for the paradoxical, and an excessive tendency towards the hardening of the body, have marred, on this point, the reflections of the English philosopher. He has summed up his precepts on this subject in the following lines:—
“The whole is reduced,” he says, “to a small number of rules, easy to observe; much air, exercise, and sleep; a simple diet, no wine or strong liquors; little or no medicine at all; garments that are neither too tight nor too warm; finally, and above all, the habit of keeping the head and feet cold, of often bathing the feet in cold water and exposing them to dampness.”[132] But it is necessary to enter somewhat into details, and to examine closely some of these ideas.
Locke is the first educator to write a consecutive and methodical dissertation on the food, clothing, and sleep of children. It is he who has stated this principle, afterwards taken up by Rousseau: “Leave to nature the care of forming the body as she thinks it ought to be done.” Hence, no close-fitting garments, life in the open air and in the sun; children brought up like peasants, inured to heat and cold, playing with head and feet bare. In the matter of food, Locke forbids sugar, wine, spices, and flesh, up to the age of three or four. As to fruits, which children often crave with an inordinate appetite, a fact that is not surprising, he pleasantly remarks, “since it was for an apple that our first parents lost paradise,” he makes a singular choice. He authorizes strawberries, gooseberries, apples, and pears; but he interdicts peaches, plums, and grapes. To excuse Locke’s prejudice against the grapes, it must be recollected that he lived in England, a country in which the vine grows with difficulty, and of which an Italian said, “The only ripe fruit I have seen in England is a baked apple.” As to meals, Locke does not think it important to fix them at stated hours. Fénelon, on the contrary, more judiciously requires that the hour for repasts be absolutely determined. But this is not the only instance in which Locke’s wisdom is at fault. What shall be said of that hygienic fancy which consists in allowing the child “to have his shoes so thin, that they might leak and let in water, whenever he comes near it”?
It is certain that Locke treats children with an unheard-of severity, all the more surprising in the case of one who had an infirm and delicate constitution that could be kept in repair only through precaution and management. I do not know whether the consequences of the treatment which he proposes, applied to the letter, might not be disastrous. Madame de Sévigné was more nearly right when she wrote: “If your son is very robust, a rude education is good; but if he is delicate, I think that in your attempts to make him robust, you would kill him.” The body, says Locke, may be accustomed to everything. We may reply to this by quoting an anecdote of Peter the Great, who one day took it into his head, it is said, that it would be best for all the sailors to form the habit of drinking salt water. Immediately he promulgated an edict which ordered that all naval cadets should henceforth drink only sea-water. The boys all died, and there the experiment stopped.
Still, without subscribing to Locke’s paradoxes, which have found no one to approve of them except Rousseau, we should recollect that in his precepts on physical education as a whole, the author of the Thoughts deserves our commendation for having recommended a manly course of discipline, and a frugal diet, for having discarded fashionable conventionalities and drawn near to nature, and for having condemned the refinements of an indolent mode of life, and for being inspired by the simple and manly customs of England.
212. Moral Education.—In the thought of Locke, moral education takes precedence of instruction properly so called:
“That which a gentleman ought to desire for his son, besides the fortune he leaves him is, 1. virtue; 2. prudence; 3. good manners; 4. instruction.”
Virtue and prudence—that is, moral qualities and practical qualities—are of first consideration. “Instruction,” says Locke again, “is but the least part of education.” In the book of Thoughts, where repetitions abound, there is nothing more frequently repeated than the praise of virtue.
Doubtless it may be thought that Locke, like Herbert Spencer in our own day, cherishes prejudices with respect to instruction, and that he does not take sufficient account of the moralizing influence exercised over the heart and will by intellectual enlightenment; but, even with this admission, we must thank Locke for having protested against the teachers who think they have done all when they have embellished the memory and developed the intelligence.
The grand thing in education is certainly to establish good moral habits, to cultivate noble sentiments, and, finally, to form virtuous characters.