Many occupations, which are generally supposed to depend upon the understanding, and which do probably depend in the first instance upon the understanding, become by practice purely mechanical. This is the case in many of the imitative arts. A person unused to drawing, exerts a great deal of attention in copying any new object; but custom soon supplies the place of thought. By custom,[36] as a great artist assures us, he will become able to draw the human figure tolerably correctly, with as little effort of the mind, as to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.
We must further observe, that the habit of pursuing any occupation, which requires no mental exertion, induces an indolence or incapacity of intellect. Mere artists are commonly as stupid as mere artificers, and these are little more than machines.
The length of time which is required to obtain practical skill and dexterity in certain accomplishments, is one reason why there are so few people who obtain any thing more than mechanical excellence. They become the slaves of custom, and they become proud of their slavery. At first they might have considered custom as a tyrant; but when they have obeyed her for a certain time, they do her voluntary homage ever after, as to a sovereign by divine right. To prevent this species of intellectual degradation, we must in education be careful to rank mere mechanical talents below the exercise of the mental powers. Thus the ambition of young people will be directed to high objects, and all inferiour qualifications may be attained without contracting the understanding. Praise children for patience, for perseverance, for industry; encourage them to reason and to invent upon all subjects, and you may direct their attention afterwards as you think proper. But if you applaud children merely for drawing a flower neatly, or copying a landscape, without exciting their ambition to any thing higher, you will never create superior talents, or a superior character. The proficiency that is made in any particular accomplishment, at any given age, should not be considered so much, even by those who highly value accomplishments, as the power, the energy, that is excited in the pupil's mind, from which future progress is ensured. The writing and drawing automaton performs its advertised wonders to the satisfaction of the spectators; but the machine is not "instinct with spirit;" you cannot expect from its pencil the sketch of a Raphael, or from its pen the thoughts of a Shakespeare. It is easy to guide the hand, but who can transfuse a soul into the image?
It is not an uncommon thing to hear young people, who have been long under the tuition of masters, complain of their own want of genius. They are sensible that they have not made any great progress in any of the accomplishments which they have endeavoured to learn; they see others, who have not, perhaps, had what they call such opportunities and advantages in their education, suddenly surpass them; this they attribute to natural genius, and they say to themselves in despair, "Certainly I have no taste for drawing; I have no genius for music; I have learned so many years, I have had so many lessons from the best masters, and yet here is such and such a one, who has had no master, who has taught herself, and, perhaps, did not begin till late in life, has got before me, because she has a natural genius for these things. She must have a natural taste for them, because she can sit whole hours at these things for her own pleasure. Now I never would take a pencil in my hand from my own choice; and I am glad, at all events, that the time for lessons and masters is over. My education is finished, for I am of age."
The disgust and despair, which are thus induced by an injudicious education, absolutely defeat its own trivial purposes. So that, whatever may be the views of parents, whether they consider ornamental accomplishments as essential to their daughter's success in the world, or whether they value them rather as secondary objects, subordinate to her happiness; whether they wish their daughter actually to excel in any particular accomplishment, or to have the power of excelling in any to which circumstances may direct her, it is in all cases advisable to cultivate the general power of the pupil's understanding, instead of confining her to technical practices and precepts, under the eye of any master who does not possess that which is the soul of every art.
We do not mean any illiberal attack upon masters; but in writing upon education, it is necessary to examine the utility of different modes of instruction, without fear of offending any class of men. We acknowledge, that it is seldom found, that those who can communicate their knowledge the best, possess the most, especially if this knowledge be that of an artist or a linguist. Before any person is properly qualified to teach, he must have the power of recollecting exactly how he learned; he must go back step by step to the point at which he began, and he must be able to conduct his pupil through the same path without impatience or precipitation. He must not only have acquired a knowledge of the process by which his own ideas and habits were formed, but he must have extensive experience of the varieties of the human mind. He must not suppose, that the operations of intellect are carried on precisely in the same manner in all minds; he must not imagine, that there is but one method of teaching, which will suit all persons alike. The analogies which strike his own mind, the arrangement of ideas, which to him appears the most perspicuous, to his pupil may appear remote and confused. He must not attribute this to his pupil's inattention, stupidity, or obstinacy; but he must attribute it to the true causes; the different association of ideas in different minds, the different habits of thinking, which arise from their various tempers and previous education. He must be acquainted with the habits of all tempers: the slow, the quick, the inventive, the investigating; and he must adapt his instructions accordingly. There is something more requisite: a master must not only know what he professes to teach of his own peculiar art or science, but he ought to know all its bearings and dependencies. He must be acquainted not only with the local topography of his own district, but he must have the whole map of human knowledge before him; and whilst he dwells most upon his own province, he must yet be free from local prejudices, and must consider himself as a citizen of the world. Children who study geography in small separate maps, understand, perhaps, the view of each country tolerably well; but we see them quite puzzled when they are to connect these maps in their idea of the world. They do not know the relative size or situation of England or France; they cannot find London or Paris when they look for the first time upon the globe, and every country seems to be turned upside down in their imagination. Young people who learn particular arts and sciences from masters who have confined their view to the boundaries of each, without having given an enlarged idea of the whole, are much in the same situation with these unfortunate geographers.
The persisting to teach things separately, which ought to be taught as a whole, must prevent the progress of mental cultivation.[37] The division and subdivision of different parts of education, which are monopolised as trades by the masters who profess to teach them, must tend to increase and perpetuate errour. These intellectual casts are pernicious.
It is said, that the Persians had masters to teach their children each separate virtue: one master to teach justice, another fortitude, another temperance, and so on. How these masters could preserve the boundaries of their several moral territories, it is not easy to imagine, especially if they all insisted upon independent sovereignty. There must have been some danger, surely, of their disputing with one another concerning the importance of their respective professions, like the poor bourgeois gentilhomme's dancing-master, music-master, master of morality, and master of philosophy, who all fell to blows to settle their pretensions, forgetful of the presence of their pupil. Masters, who are only expected to teach one thing, may be sincerely anxious for the improvement of their pupils in that particular, without being in the least interested for their general character or happiness. Thus the drawing-master has done his part, and is satisfied if he teaches his pupil to draw well: it is no concern of his what her temper may be, any more than what sort of hand she writes, or how she dances. The dancing-master, in his turn, is wholly indifferent about the young lady's progress in drawing; all he undertakes, is to teach her to dance.
We mention these circumstances to show parents, that masters, even when they do the utmost that they engage to do, cannot educate their children; they can only partially instruct them in particular arts. Parents must themselves preside over the education of their children, or must entirely give them into the care of some person of an enlarged and philosophic mind, who can supply all the deficiencies of common masters, and who can take advantage of all the positive good that can be obtained from existing institutions. Such a preceptor or governess must possess extensive knowledge, and that superiority of mind which sees the just proportion and value of every acquisition, which is not to be overawed by authority, or dazzled by fashion. Under the eye of such persons, masters will keep precisely their proper places; they will teach all they can teach, without instilling absurd prejudices, or inspiring a spirit of vain rivalship; nor will masters be suffered to continue their lessons when they have nothing more to teach.
Parents who do not think that they have leisure, or feel that they have capacity, to take the entire direction of their children's education upon themselves, will trust this important office to a governess. The inquiry concerning the value of female accomplishments, has been purposely entered into before we could speak of the choice of a governess, because the estimation in which these are held, will very much determine parents in their choice.