Means and Ends of Education

by John Lancaster Spalding

As in the beginning of the twelfth century the cry, "God wills it!" rang through Europe, and from all her lands armies of mailed knights sprang into battle-array and turned their faces towards the Holy City, resolved to wrench from infidel hands the Sacred Tomb of Christ, so now, from her thousand watch-towers, science sounds her clarion note with quite other intent, urging on to the attack of the citadel of God in the heart of man, renewing upon lower fields the war in which immortal spirits contended with the Almighty "in dubious battle on the plains of heaven, and shook his throne." As "he jests at scars that never felt a wound," so here the lesser knowledge makes the bolder man. Not that difficulties should create doubts, or that objections may not be answered, or that it is necessary to refute each hypothesis that appears and fades like a dissolving view, or to notice each unwarrantable inference from unquestioned facts, or that it is worth while to address ourselves to minds whose nebulous and shifting opinions make it impossible that they should receive correct impressions; but the field upon which attacks upon religion are now made is so vast, the confusion of thought into which new discoveries and speculations have thrown the minds of even educated men is so bewildering, the methods for the ascertainment of truth are so tangled and misapplied, the rushing on of multitudes to discuss problems which have hitherto been left to philosophers, and which they alone can rightly enunciate, is so stupefying, that those who have the clearest perception of the mental state of the modern world, and who are able to take the finest and most comprehensive view of the religious, philosophic, and scientific controversies of the day, seem loath to enter into a struggle where the ground continually changes, and where victory at the best is only partial, and but leads to further contest. It is well to remember, also, that in the intellectual arena to attack is easier than to defend, and any shallow, incoherent talker or writer can propose difficulties which the keenest thinker will find great trouble to explain. Since we and our works fall to ruin and pass away, we seem instinctively to take the side of those who seek to undermine and overthrow systems of thought and belief which claim to be indestructible, and the human heart is half a traitor to the Church which declares that she is indefectible and infallible. Is there not indeed, however we account for it, in all nature a kind of dread and horror of the supernatural, such as one who hides within his bosom a secret of dark guilt feels in the presence of the conscience of mankind? And does not this make the world lean to the side of those who would eliminate God from nature?

And yet, since man's heart is the home of contradictions, is it not also true to say that he is naturally religious? His faith in God is as deep and unwavering as his faith in the testimony of the senses; and if there are atheists there are also men who hold that all things are unreal and only appear to be; that the world is but a myriad-formed, a myriad-tinted idea, the dream of a substanceless dreamer. Not only do we believe in God and in the soul, but all that we love, all that we hope for, all that gives to life charm, dignity, and sacredness, is interpenetrated, perfumed, and illumined by this faith. If men could be persuaded that the unconscious is the beginning and the end of all things, what good would have been gained? The light of heaven would fade away, and the soul's high faith be made a lie; the poor would have no friend, and the rich no heart; the wicked would be without fear, and the good without hope; success would be consecrated, and death alone would remain as the refuge of the unfortunate. Even animal indulgence, in sinking out of the moral order, would lose its human charm. If then in our day there is wide-spread scepticism, a sort of vague feeling that science is undermining religion and that the most sacred beliefs are dissolving, the cause of this lies not so much in the natural tendencies of the mind and heart, as in social conditions, in passing phases of thought, in the shifting of the point of view from which men have hitherto been accustomed to look on nature; and the continuance and the progress of doubt, and consequently of indifference, is, to some extent at least, to be ascribed also to the fact that the most earnest believers in God and in Christianity have, for now more than a century, been less eager to acquire the best philosophic and literary cultivation of mind than others who, having lost faith in the supernatural, seek for compensation in a wider and deeper knowledge of nature, and in the mental culture which enables them to enjoy more keenly the high thoughts and fair images which live in literature and art. As a well-trained intellect, in argument with the unskilful, easily makes the worse appear the better cause, so in an age or a country where the best discipline of mind is found chiefly among those who are not Christians, or at least not Catholics, public opinion will drift away from the Church, until the view finally becomes general that, whatever she may have been in other times, her day is past. Nor will aught external, however fair or glorious, secure her against this danger. How often in the history of nations and of religions is not outward splendor the mark of inward decay? When Rome was free, a simple life sufficed; but when liberty fled, marble palaces arose. The monarch who built Versailles made the scaffold on which French royalty perished; and so a dying faith, like the setting sun, may drape itself in glory. The Kingdom of God is within; there is the source of life and strength, without which nor numbers nor wealth, nor stately edifices nor solemn rites, avail. Nor can we be certain of men's love when we cease to have influence over their thoughts. The proper appeal is to the heart through the mind; and even a mother loses half her power when she ceases to be the intellectual superior of her children. How then shall the heavenly Mother of the soul keep her place in the world, if those who speak in her name mar by imperfect and ignorant utterance the celestial harmony of her doctrines?

Ah! let us learn to see things as they are. In face of the modern world, that which the Catholic priest most needs, after virtue, is the best cultivation of mind, which issues in comprehensiveness of view, in exactness of perception, in the clear discernment of the relations of truths and of the limitations of scientific knowledge, in fairness and flexibility of thought, in ease and grace of expression, in candor, in reasonableness; the intellectual culture which brings the mind into form gives it the control of its faculties, creates the habit of attention, and develops firmness of grasp. The education of which I speak is expansion and discipline of mind rather than learning; and its tendency is not so much to form profound dogmatists, or erudite canonists, or acute casuists, as to cultivate a habit of mind, which, for want of a better word, may be called philosophical; to enlarge the intellect, to strengthen and supple its faculties, to enable it to take connected views of things and their relations, and to see clear amid the mazes of human error and through the mists of human passion. I speak of that perfection of the intellect, which, to use the words of Cardinal Newman, "is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things as far as the finite mind can embrace them, each in its place and with its own characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres." This is, indeed, ideal; but they who believe not in ideals were not born to know the real worth of things:

"Spite of proudest boast
Reason, best reason is to imperfect man
An effort only and a noble aim,—
A crown, an attribute of sovereign power,
Still to be courted, never to be won."

It is plain that education of this kind aims at something quite different from the mere imparting of useful knowledge. It takes the view that it is good to know, even though knowledge should not be a means to wealth or power or any other common aim of life. It regards the mind as the organ of truth, and trains it for its own sake, without reference to the exercise of a profession. Hence its distinguishing characteristic is that it is liberal and not professional. It holds cultivated faculties in higher esteem than learning, and it makes use of knowledge to improve the intellect, rather than of the intellect to acquire knowledge. Hence, one may be a skilful physician, a judicious lawyer, a learned theologian, and yet be greatly lacking in mental culture. It is a common experience to find that professional men are apt to be narrow and one-sided. Their mind, like the dyer's hand, is subdued to what it works in. They want comprehensiveness of view, flexibility of thought, openness to light, and freedom of mental play. They think in grooves, make the rules of their art the measure of truth, and their own methods of inquiry the only valid laws of reasoning. These same defects may be observed in those who are given exclusively to the study of physical science. When they sweep the heavens with the telescope and do not find God, they conclude that there is no God. When the soul does not reveal itself under the microscope, they argue it does not exist; and since there is no thought without nervous movement, they claim that the brain thinks.

Now, if it is desirable that those who are charged with the teaching and defence of divine truth should be free from this narrowness and one-sidedness, this lack of openness to light and freedom of mental play, the education of the priest must be more than a professional education; and he must be sent to a school higher and broader than the ecclesiastical seminary, which is simply a training college for the practical work of the ministry. The purpose for which it was instituted is to prepare young men for the worthy exercise of the general functions of the priestly office, and the good it has done is too great and too manifest to need commendation. But the ecclesiastical seminary is not a school of intellectual culture, either here in America or elsewhere, and to imagine that it can become the instrument of intellectual culture is to cherish a delusion. It must impart a certain amount of professional knowledge, fit its students to become more or less expert catechists, rubricists, and casuists, and its aim is to do this; and whatever mental improvement, if any, thence results, is accidental. Hence its methods are not such as one would choose who desires to open the mind, to give it breadth, flexibility, strength, refinement, and grace. Its text-books are written often in a barbarous style, the subjects are discussed in a dry and mechanical way, and the professor, wholly intent upon giving instruction, is frequently indifferent as to the manner in which it is imparted; or else not possessing himself a really cultivated intellect, he holds in slight esteem expansion and refinement of mind, looking upon it as at the best a mere ornament. I am not offering a criticism upon the ecclesiastical seminary, but am simply pointing to the plain fact that it is not a school of intellectual culture, and consequently, if its course were lengthened to five, to six, to eight, to ten years, its students would go forth to their work with a more thorough professional training, but not with more really cultivated minds. The test of intellect is not so much what we know as the manner in which it is known; just as in the moral world, the important consideration is not what virtues we possess, but the completeness with which they are ours. He who really believes in God, serves Him, loves Him, is a hero, a saint; whereas he who half believes may have a thousand good qualities, but not a great character. Knowledge is not education any more than food is nutrition; and as one may eat voraciously, and yet remain without bodily health or strength, so one may have great learning, and yet be almost wholly lacking in intellectual cultivation. His learning may only oppress and confuse him, be felt as a load, and not as a vital principle, which upraises, illumines, and beautifies the mind; mentally he may still be a boy, in whom memory predominates, and whose intellect is only a receptacle of facts. Memory is the least noble of the intellectual faculties, and the nearest to animal intelligence; and to know well is, in the eyes of a true educator, of quite other importance than to know much. But a memory, more or less well-stored, is nearly all a youth carries with him from the college to the seminary, and here he enters, as I have already pointed out, upon a course not of intellectual discipline, but of professional studies, whose object is not "to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, eloquent expression," but simply to impart the requisite skill for the ordinary exercise of the holy ministry. Hence it is not surprising that priests who are zealous, earnest, self-sacrificing, who to piety join discretion and good sense, rarely possess the intellectual culture of which I am speaking, for the simple reason that a university and not a seminary is the school in which this kind of education is received. That the absence of such trained intellects is a most serious obstacle to the progress of the Catholic faith, no thoughtful man will doubt or deny. Since the mind is a power, in religion, as in every sphere of thought and life, the discipline which best develops and perfects its faculties will fit it to do its work, whatever it may be, in the most effective manner. Hence, though the education of which I speak does not directly aim at being useful, it is in fact the most useful, and prepares better than any other for the business of life. It enables a man to master a subject with ease, to fill an office with honor; and whatever he does, the mark of completeness and finish will be found upon his work. He sees more clearly, judges more calmly, reasons more pertinently, speaks more seasonably than other men. The free and full possession of his faculties gives him power to turn himself to whatever may be demanded of him, whether it be to govern wisely, or to counsel judiciously, or to write gracefully, or to plead eloquently. Whatever course in life he may take, whatever line of thought or investigation he may pursue, his intellectual culture will give him superiority over men who, with equal or greater talents, lack his education; and he possesses withal resources within himself, which in a measure make him independent of fortune, and which, when failure comes and the world abandons him, remain, like faith, or hope, or a friend, to make him forget his misfortunes.

Of the English universities, with all their shortcomings, Cardinal Newman says: "At least they can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made England what it is,—able to subdue the earth, able to domineer over Catholics." It is only in a university that all the sciences are brought together, their relations adjusted, their provinces assigned. There natural science is limited by metaphysics; morality is studied in the light of history; language and literature are viewed from the standpoint of ethnology; the criticism which seeks beauty and not deformity, which in the gardens of the mind takes the honey and leaves the poison, is applied to the study of eloquence and poetry; and over all religion throws the warmth and life of faith and hope, like a ray from heaven. The mind thus lives in an atmosphere in which the comparison of ideas and truths with one an other is inevitable; and so it grows, is strengthened, enlarged, refined, made pliant, candid, open, equitable.

When numbers of priests will be able to bring this cultivation of intellect to the treatment of religious subjects, then will Catholic theology again come forth from its isolation in the modern world; then will Catholic truth again irradiate and perfume the thoughts and opinions of men; then will Catholic doctrines again sink into their hearts, and not remain loose in the mind to be thrown aside, as one casts away the outworn vesture of the body; then will it be felt that the fascination of Christian faith is still fresh, supreme, as far above the charm of science as the joy of a poet's soul is above the pleasures of sense. The religious view of life must forever remain the true view, since no other explains our longings and aspirations, or justifies hope and enthusiasm; and the worship of God in spirit and in truth, which Christ has revealed to the world, the religion not of an age or a people, but of all time and of the human race, must eternally prevail when brought home to us in a language which we understand; for we place the testimony of reason above that of the senses. To the eye the sun rises and sets, to the mind it is stationary; and we accept, not what is seen, but what is known. Is there need of stronger evidence that the power within, which is our real self, is spiritual? And is it not enough to see clearly, to perceive that in the struggle of mind with matter, which is the essential form of the conflict of spiritualism with materialism, of religion with science, the soul, in the end, will be victorious, and rest in the real world of faith and intuition, and not in the pictured world of the senses?

Religion, indeed, like morality, is in the nature of things, and Catholic faith is Una's Red Cross Knight, on whose shield are old dints of deep wounds and cruel marks of many a bloody field, who is assailed by all the powers of earth and of the nether world, armed with whatever weapons may hurt the mind or corrupt the heart, but whom heavenly Providence rescues from the jaws of monsters and leads on to victory.

But what true believer thinks himself excused from effort, because Christ has declared that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church? Does he not know that though, when we consider her whole course through the world, she has triumphed, so as to have become the miracle of history, yet has she at many points suffered disastrous defeat? Hence, those who love her must be vigilant, and stand prepared for battle. And in an age when persecution has either died away or lost its harshness, when crying abuses have disappeared, when heresy has run its course, and the struggle of the world with the Church has become almost wholly intellectual, it is not possible, assuredly, that her ministers should have too great power of intellect. And consequently it is not possible that the bishops, in whose hands the education of priests is placed, should have too great a care that they receive the best mental culture. And if this is a general truth, with what pertinency does it not come home to us here in America, who are the descendants of men who, on account of their faith, have for centuries been oppressed and thrust back from opportunities of education, and who, when persecution and robbery had reduced them to ignorance and poverty, were forced to hear their religion reproached with the crimes of her foes? And now, when at length a fairer day has dawned for us in this new world, what can be more natural than our eager desire to move out from the valleys of darkness towards the hills and mountain tops that are bathed in sunlight? What more praiseworthy than the fixed resolve to prove that not our faith, but our misfortunes made and kept us inferior. And, since we live in the midst of millions who have indeed good will towards us, but who still bear the yoke of inherited prejudices, and who, because for three hundred years real cultivation of mind was denied to Catholics who spoke English, conclude that Protestantism is the source of enlightenment, and the Church the mother of ignorance, do not all generous impulses urge us to make this reproach henceforth meaningless? And in what way shall we best accomplish this task? Surely not by writing or speaking about what the influence of the Church is, or by pointing to what she has done in other ages, but by becoming what we claim her spirit tends to make us. Here, if anywhere, the proverb is applicable—verba movent, exempla trahunt. As the devotion of American Catholics to this country and its free institutions, as shown not on battle-fields alone, but in our whole bearing and conduct, convinces all but the unreasonable of the depth and sincerity of our patriotism, so when our zeal for intellectual excellence shall have raised up men who will take place among the first writers and thinkers of their day their very presence will become the most persuasive of arguments to teach the world that no best gift is at war with the spirit of Catholic faith, and that, while the humblest mind may feel its force, the lofty genius of Augustine, of Dante, and of Bossuet is upborne and strengthened by the splendor of its truth. But if we are to be intellectually the equals of others, we must have with them equal advantages of education; and so long as we look rather to the multiplying of schools and seminaries than to the creation of a real university, our progress will be slow and uncertain, because a university is the great ordinary means to the best cultivation of mind. The fact that the growth of the Church here, like that of the country itself, is chiefly external, a growth in wealth and in numbers, makes it the more necessary that we bring the most strenuous efforts to improve the gifts of the soul. The whole tendency of our social life insures the increase of churches, convents, schools, hospitals, and asylums; our advance in population and in wealth will be counted from decade to decade by millions, and our worship will approach more and more to the pomp and splendor of the full ritual; but this very growth makes such demands upon our energies, that we are in danger of forgetting higher things, or at least of thinking them less urgent. Few men are at once thoughtful and active. The man of deeds dwells in the world around him; the thinker lives within his mind. Contemplation, in widening the view, makes us feel that what even the strongest can do is lost in the limitless expanse of space and time; and the soul is tempted to fall back upon itself and to gaze passively upon the course of the world, as though the general stream of human events were as little subject to man's control as the procession of the seasons. Busy workers, on the other hand, having little taste or time for reflection, see but the present and what lies close to them, and the energy of their doing circumscribes their thinking.