Practical Education, Volume II

by Maria Edgeworth; Richard Lovell Edgeworth

A lady told a boy of nine years old (S——) the following story, which she had just met with in "The Curiosities of Literature." An officer, who was confined in the Bastille, used to amuse himself by playing on the flute: one day he observed, that a number of spiders came down from their webs, and hung round him as if listening to his music; a number of mice also came from their holes, and retired as soon as he stopped. The officer had a great dislike to mice; he procured a cat from the keeper of the prison, and when the mice were entranced by his music, he let the cat out amongst them.

S—— was much displeased by this man's treacherous conduct towards the poor mice, and his indignation for some moments suspended his reasoning faculty; but, when S—— had sufficiently expressed his indignation against the officer in the affair of the mice, he began to question the truth of the story; and he said, that he did not think it was certain, that the mice and spiders came to listen to the music. "I do not know about the mice," said he, "but I think, perhaps, when the officer played upon the flute, he set the air in motion, and shook the cobwebs, so as to disturb the spiders." We do not, nor did the child think, that this was a satisfactory account of the matter; but we mention it as an instance of the love of investigation, which we wish to encourage.

The difficulty of judging concerning the truth of evidence increases, when we take moral causes into the account. If we had any suspicion, that a man who told us that he had seen an apple fall from a tree, had himself pulled the apple down and stolen it, we should set the probability of his telling a falsehood, and his motive for doing so, against his evidence; and though according to the natural physical course of things, there would be no improbability in his story, yet there might arise improbability from his character for dishonesty; and thus we should feel ourselves in doubt concerning the fact. But if two people agreed in the same testimony, our doubt would vanish; the dishonest man's doubtful evidence would be corroborated, and we should believe, notwithstanding his general character, in the truth of his assertion in this instance. We could make the matter infinitely more complicated, but what has been said will be sufficient to suggest to preceptors the difficulty which their young and inexperienced pupils must feel, in forming judgments of facts where physical and moral probabilities are in direct opposition to each other.

We wish that a writer equal to such a task would write trials for children as exercises for their judgment; beginning with the simplest, and proceeding gradually to the more complicated cases in which moral reasonings can be used. We do not mean, that it would be advisable to initiate young readers in the technical forms of law; but the general principles of justice, upon which all law is founded, might, we think, be advantageously exemplified. Such trials would entertain children extremely. There is a slight attempt at this kind of composition, we mean in a little trial in Evenings at Home; and we have seen children read it with great avidity. Cyrus's judgment about the two coats, and the ingenious story of the olive merchant's cause, rejudged by the sensible child in the Arabian Tales, have been found highly interesting to a young audience.

We should prefer truth to fiction: if we could select any instances from real life, any trials suited to the capacity of young people, they would be preferable to any which the most ingenious writer could invent for our purpose. A gentleman who has taken his two sons, one of them ten, and the other fifteen years old, to hear trials at his county assizes, found by the account which the boys gave of what they had heard, that they had been interested, and that they were capable of understanding the business.

Allowance must be made at first for the bustle and noise of a public place, and for the variety of objects which distract the attention.

Much of the readiness of forming judgments depends upon the power of discarding and obliterating from our mind all the superfluous circumstances; it may be useful to exercise our pupils, by telling them now and then stories in the confused manner in which they are sometimes related by puzzled witnesses; let them reduce the heterogeneous circumstances to order, make a clear statement of the case for themselves, and try if they can point out the facts on which the decision principally rests. This is not merely education for a lawyer; the powers of reasoning and judgment, when we have been exercised in this manner, may be turned to any art or profession. We should, if we were to try the judgment of children, observe, whether in unusual circumstances they can apply their former principles, and compare the new objects that are placed before them without perplexity. We have sometimes found, that on subjects entirely new to them, children, who have been used to reason, can lay aside the circumstances that are not essential, and form a distinct judgment for themselves, independently of the opinion of others.

Last winter the entertaining life of the celebrated miser Mr. Elwes was read aloud in a family, in which there were a number of children. Mr. Elwes, once, as he was walking home on a dark night, in London, ran against a chair pole and bruised both his shins. His friends sent for a surgeon. Elwes was alarmed at the idea of expense, and he laid the surgeon the amount of his bill, that the leg which he took under his own protection would get well sooner than that which was put under the surgeon's care; at the same time Mr. Elwes promised to put nothing to the leg of which he took charge. Mr. Elwes favourite leg got well sooner than that which the surgeon had undertaken to cure, and Mr. Elwes won his wager. In a note upon this transaction his biographer says, "This wager would have been a bubble bet if it had been brought before the Jockey-club, because Mr. Elwes, though he promised to put nothing to the leg under his own protection, took Velnos' vegetable sirup during the time of its cure."

C—— (a girl of twelve years old) observed when this anecdote was read, that "still the wager was a fair wager, because the medicine which Mr. Elwes took, if it was of any use, must have been of use to both legs; therefore the surgeon and Mr. Elwes had equal advantage from it." C—— had never heard of the Jockey-club, or of bubble bets before, and she used the word medicine, because she forgot the name of Velnos' vegetable sirup.

We have observed,[92] that works of criticism are unfit for children, and teach them rather to remember what others say of authors, than to judge of the books themselves impartially: but, when we object to works of criticism, we do not mean to object to criticism; we think it an excellent exercise for the judgment, and we have ourselves been so well corrected, and so kindly assisted by the observations of young critics, that we cannot doubt their capacity. This book has been read to a jury of young critics, who gave their utmost attention to it for about half an hour at a sitting, and many amendments have been made from their suggestions. In the chapter on obstinacy, for instance, when we were asserting, that children sometimes forget their old bad habits, and do not consider these as a part of themselves, there was this allusion.