Your Lordship sees what to conclude from these hints. For my own part, my Lord, I esteem politeness, in the reasonable sense of the word, as the ornament, nay more, as the duty of humanity. But, under colour of making this valuable acquisition, let no culture of the human mind, no instruction in letters and business, no discipline of the passions, no improvements of the head and heart, be neglected. Let the foundation of these essential virtues be laid deep in the usual forms of our public, if you will, or (as you know I had rather) in the way of a more attentive and moral, because private, education. Let the commerce of the world, in due time and under due regulation, succeed to this care; and your Lordship will find your young gentleman as fully accomplished in all respects as, in reason, you should wish to see him. And for proof of it, if I were not restrained, by a common and perhaps false delicacy, from bringing the names of our friends and acquaintance into example in conversation, how many instances of this sort could I point to, in such men as your Lordship has known in your own country, and is most disposed to reverence; and some of them, possibly, in your own family!
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
Rather tell me, how we may reasonably expect to see such models produced, according to the vulgar way of our home-breeding: that one or two such may, perhaps, after strict search, be found among ourselves, I shall not dispute with you.
MR. LOCKE.
The search would cost me small pains. But I press the matter no further. It is enough that your Lordship sees I have my eye on some, the most estimable, nay the most accomplished characters, that have been formed among ourselves: and that even so envied a thing, as a fine gentleman, has been fashioned on this side the water. But the rarity of the production, you think, makes against me, and shews there is no trusting to the stubborn soil and unfriendly climate of our country. You conclude, upon the whole, for the expediency of foreign travel, from the acknowledged defects of our authorized seats of learning; which, according to your Lordship’s idea and representation of them, are so degenerate and depraved, that nothing of worth and value can be reasonably expected from that quarter.
This, after all, is your main reason for advising a foreign education. Your spite is to our Universities; and, to bribe, or rather provoke me into the same quarrel, your Lordship did not forget to remind me of the little obligation, which I myself, who was trained in their discipline, have had to them.
I could assent, perhaps, to some part of this charge. It is certain, at least, that the prejudices, the bigotry, the false learning, and narrow principles, which have prevailed too much, and still prevail, in those famous seminaries, create an unfavourable opinion of them in the minds of many liberal and discerning persons. Nay, I will not disown to you, that I have at times been tempted myself to entertain, perhaps to express, some resentment against them. But we are always severe, generally unfair, judges in our own case. And, to say the truth, when the matter comes to be considered impartially and coolly, their faults, of whatever kind, will admit of much alleviation.
The Universities of England, your Lordship knows, had their rise in the barbarous ages. The views of their institutors were, accordingly, such as might be expected from men of their stamp, and in their circumstances.
These seminaries were more immediately consecrated to the service of the church; which is the less to be wondered at, as our statesmen, you know, were, at that time, churchmen. Hence the plan of studies, prescribed to the youth, would be such as was best adapted to the occasions of that class of men, in whose instruction the public was more directly interested.
Besides, the learning of that time was rude and barbarous; and, had their views been more enlarged, the founders of our colleges had it not in their power to provide for the encouragement of any other. The supreme accomplishment even of our men of business was little more than a readiness in the forms, and a dexterity in the quirks, of the canon law: and the pride of the most profound scholars lay in applying the subtleties of the Aristotelian philosophy to theologic and metaphysical questions; whence too much stress was evidently laid on logical exercises and scholastic disputations.