What is wanted is a class of lay principals with something like the moral authority of Dr. Arnold; but would Dr. Arnold have possessed that authority, or anything approaching to it, if he had been a layman?
A French Principal.
I myself have known very intimately and for many years a French principal who would have delighted in exercising Arnold’s power for good if he had possessed it, but he was a layman only, and did not possess it.
Sacerdotal Authority in Family Life.
In family life there may be a kind of sacerdotal authority in the head of the household when he exercises a sacerdotal function, when he compels his household to join him in family prayer and to listen respectfully whilst he reads and expounds the sacred books. The father assumes in that manner a moral authority that is not easily assumed in any other way.
Clerical Jealousy of Family Influence.
Value of Home Influence.
Manners acquired in the Seminaries.
Still, in many French families, the father is anxious to do what he can, and this is one of his strongest reasons against clerical education in the ecclesiastical seminaries. The clerical teachers, in their desire to establish an uncontested religious influence over the boys, look upon the father and mother as rivals, and do not permit the boys to return home, except during the vacations, even when the parents live in the very town where the seminary itself is situated. In this way home influence is almost annihilated, and clerical influence substituted for it. But the moralising and civilising power of the home influence may be too precious to be sacrificed, and, as a matter of fact, when the children are educated by laymen, it is almost the only influence of that kind that remains. In France it is especially the mother who civilises boys. Lads who are too much shut up in the lycées may get what the French call “instruction,” but they do not get what is called “education.” The pupils imprisoned in the ecclesiastical seminaries acquire, certainly, an oily smoothness of manner and a much greater degree of docility than the lycéens, because they have been more thoroughly broken in.
Home Influences undervalued in England.