After I had formed an opinion both as to where lay the blemishes which disfigured learning and as to how they might be redressed, as well for my own practice as by way of advice to others, I came down to particulars and began to examine even from the very first what went before the tongues in the orderly upbringing of children. This was the first task that claimed me before I fell to further thoughts and the last too, even when I had considered all that followed, but it was then undertaken more advisedly. I entered upon an investigation into the whole early training all the more readily because I perceived great backwardness in the learning of tongues through infirmities in the elementary groundwork. What a toil it is to a grammar master when the young child who is brought to him to teach, has no foundation laid on which anything can be built! I undertook, therefore, to enquire into all those things that concern the elementary training, as a stage in teaching preceding the study of grammar, hoping by my own labour to be of use to a multitude of masters. Moreover, as this matter concerns learners who have not yet entered upon Latin, and teachers who may have only mediocre learning, I thought it best to publish in the tongue that is common to us all, both before and after we learn Latin.
But here there are three questions that may perhaps be asked: First, what those blemishes are which I observed in the main body of learning, a subject so closely investigated in our day by such a variety and excellence of learned wits that every branch of it is thought to have recovered the consideration it had at its highest point; secondly, why in regard to methods of teaching I do not content myself with following the precedent of other writers, who in great numbers have written learned treatises with the same end in view, but rather toil myself with a private labour, the issue of which is uncertain, whereas the previous writers on the subject, being themselves learned, and having achieved success, may be followed with assurance; thirdly, if it is my endeavour to handle a learned subject in the English tongue, why I take so much pains and such a special care in handling it, that the weaker sort, whose benefit I profess to consider—nay, often others also of reasonable study—can with difficulty understand the couching of my sentence and the depth of my meaning.
While I answer these questions, I must pray your patience, my good masters, because the things may not be lightly passed over, and in satisfying your demands I shall pave the way for the suit I have to make to you.
First, as for my general care for the whole course of learning, I have thus much to say. The end of every individual man’s doings for his own advantage, and the end of the whole commonweal for the good of us all, are so much alike in aspect, and so entirely the same in nature, that when the one is seen the other needs little seeking. Each individual man labours in this world in order to win rest after toil, to have ease after work; he does not wish to be always engaged in labour, which would be exceedingly irksome if it were endless. The soldier fights in his own intention perhaps to gain ease through wealth, which he may win by spoil; in outward appearance he labours for the advantage of his country by way of defence and security. The merchant traffics in his own intention to procure personal ease through private wealth; to the public he seems to labour for the common benefit, by supplying wants in necessary wares for general use. Indeed, all men, whatever be their occupation, while seeking private ends in their actions, at the same time concur in serving general ends. Thus it appears that ease after labour is the common aim of both private and public efforts, because everyone in the natural course of his whole conduct has regard to the general prosperity and quiet, which maintain his own personal well-being. Then the means both of coming by this end, and when it is come by, of maintaining it in state, must needs lie in such directions as make for the peace and quietness of a State, for the keeping of concord and agreement without any main public breach, both in private houses and generally throughout the whole government. These peaceable directions I call, and not I alone, by the simple name of general learning, comprising under it all the arts of peace and the ministry of tranquillity—a matter of great moment, being the only right means to so blessed a thing as fortunate peace, imparting the benefit of public quietness to every household, as a central fountain serves every man’s cistern by private pipes, and if it be not sound, conveying the blemish like the infected water of a fountain, or the corrupt blood that escaping from the liver poisons the whole body. Even war itself, a professed enemy to learning, because it is in feud with peace, may by just handling be shown to work for peace at home by uniting the minds of all against a common foe. By the employment of learning in every department all princes govern their States; the general control is exercised through grave and learned counsellors and wise and faithful justiciaries, and the particular control, in religion by divines, in the health of the body by physicians, in the maintenance of right by lawyers, and so on in every particular profession, from the greatest to the meanest, throughout the whole government—a most blessed means to a most blessed end, a learned maintenance of a heavenly happiness in an earthly State of a heavenly constitution. Therefore, any error in this means is an injury indeed, and deserves to be thought of as a hindrance to peace, and a pernicious destroyer of the best public end, beginning perhaps as a small spark, but always gathering strength by the confluence of similar infection in some other parts, till at last it sets all on fire, and bursts out in a confusion, the more to be feared that it festers before it breaks into flame, and shrouding itself under a show of peace, consumes without suspicion, and escapes being brought to terms as a professed enemy. I may say that in my reflection on this subject of the ascent of learning from the elementary stage, I thought I found these four imperfections in the whole body of learning—in some places an excess, in others a defect, in others too great a variety, in others too much disagreement. These are four great enormities in a peaceable means, breeding great diseases, and bidding defiance to quiet, both within the State in the governing direction, and outside it by evident inflammation, and they are therefore to be thought of not only for complaint in particular cases, but by magistrates in regard to their amendment.
As for excess I conceive that as in every natural body the number of sinews, veins, and arteries to give it life and motion, is definite and certain, so in a body politic the distributive use of learning, which I compare to those parts, is everywhere certain. And whatever is more than nature requires in either of them, as in the one it breeds disease, so in the other it causes destruction by breach of proportion, and so consequently of peace. In natural bodies excess appears when one or more parts encroach on the others and enfeeble them. In communities this excess in learning is to be discerned when the private professions swell too much and so weaken the whole body, either by the multitude of professional men, who bite deeply where many must be fed and there is little to feed on, or by unnecessary professions, which choke off the more useful, and fill the world with trifles, or by an infinitude of books, which cloy up students, and weaken them by an intolerable diffuseness of treatment, fattening the carcass but lowering the strength of pithy matter. Do not all these surfeits exist at this day in our own State? Are they not enemies to the common good, being grown out of proportion? Are they not worth consideration and redress?
I pass now to the question of defect. In a natural body there is too little, when either something necessary is wanting, or what is there is too weak to serve its purpose. And does not learning show the same defects, disquieting to a State, when the necessary professional men are wanting either in number or in worthiness; where show takes the place of sound stuff; where in place of real learning only superficial knowledge is sought, enough to make a shift with; when necessary professions are despised and trampled under foot, because the cursory student has to post away in haste; when there is a lack of needful books to further learning, and those we have are of little use owing to insufficiency of treatment? This corruption in learning any man may see who desires to seek out either the malady or its cure; it is a breach of proportion, and therefore of peace, in a commonwealth, a pining evil which consumes by starving.
As for diversity in matters of learning, I think that as it proceeds from differences in ability, in upbringing, in intelligence, in judgment, because these are much finer in some than in others, it does a great deal of harm to the peace of any State, especially where its leaders, though they may not fall out, but merely express their opinions, yet divide studies according to their favourites, considering the importance of the subjects less than the attraction of the authors. If this diversity breaks out in earnest, as it has frequently done in our time, while printing itself, which in its natural and best uses is the instrument of necessity and the exponent of learning, becomes very often too easy an outlet for vaunting ambition, for malicious envy and revenge, for all passions to all purposes, what a sore blow is given to the public quiet, when the means to welfare is made an instrument of distemper! For will not he fight in his fury who brawls in his books? Do not those minds seem armed for open conflict—nay, do they not arm others too by pressing enmity forward—which in private studies enter into combats on paper; which by too much eagerness make a great ado in matters better quenched than stirred to life; which whet their wits beforehand to be wranglers ever after, and as far as lies in them disturb the general welfare? What I disapprove of is needless combats in learning; those that are fruitful may go on, yet with no more passion than common civility and Christian charity will allow. Excess overburdens, defect weakens, diversity distracts, but dissension destroys. You know yourselves, my learned readers, what a wonderful stir there is daily in your schools, through diverging opinions in logic, in philosophy, in mathematics, in physics. The lawyer generally abstains from controversal writing, because he does not gain by it what he seeks; pleading in the Common Courts offers a better pasture for a lean purse than a busy pen. The dissension in divinity is specially fierce, the more so because it often falls out that the adversaries intermingle their own passions with the matters they treat of. For while our religious doctrines sometimes require defence, disputes might often be compounded, if men’s feelings were as readily cooled as they are inflamed. But in the meanwhile how greatly is the general peace disturbed by dissensions that turn aside a worthy means, to maintain a wrong and become a slave to some inordinate passion! I cannot enter fully upon this subject, but touch upon it merely that my good readers may understand how much my desire for the furtherance of learning was increased after I had noticed these inconveniences, though at first I meant only to help the teaching of the learned tongues. Agreement among the learned is the mother of general contentment; by carping and contradicting they trouble the world and taint themselves, bearing all the while the name of Christians—a title which enjoins us to avoid contention, even by the submission of those who are wronged, and charges us to defend our religion, not with passionate minds, but with the armour of patience and truth. These were the blemishes which I saw by the way, and lamented in the body of learning. The amendment which I desire rests upon two great pillars—the professors of learning, who must give intelligence of the error, and the principal magistrates—nay, even the sovereign prince—who being God’s great instruments to procure quietness for our souls and bodies, our goods and actions, must bring about redress in so important a matter as the course of learning.
The prince may cut off what is in excess, make up what is deficient, reconcile diversities, expel dissensions, by his lawful authority for the general good; and everyone will submit, because everyone is benefited. This, indeed, confirms Plato’s saying that kings should be philosophers; that is, that all magistrates should be learned. It is a great corrosive to the whole body of learning, which is the procurer of peace, when those who have to direct gain their wisdom only through experience. That is much, but experience and learning together make the better equipment. It is an honourable conception, besides that it tends to the general good, for a learned and virtuous prince, assisted by wise counsel, to reduce the number of those that follow learning, by some principle of selection in every department, to decide what kinds of learning are most useful to the State, and to appoint a reasonable number of such books as have the best methods of treatment. The final authority in regard to every profession has always lain with the prince. Action has been taken before in all the directions I have spoken of, both by consent of the learned and by command of good princes. As our country is small, the thing could be the more easily done; as our livings are limited, it is the more needful; as the evil is great, we are the less able to bear it; as our sovereign is learned, we shall be the readier to give ear; as our people are of good understanding, they are the better able to inform her. But as the physician does not thrive by the prevention of disease, nor the lawyer grow rich by arresting contentions, nor a divine prosper so much in a heaven where all is good as on earth where all is evil, and as private profit will be followed, though it bring confusion to the State, redress will not stir, because it judges the world to be in some fault which it is loth to confess. However, to secure some redress and help in this matter at the hand of the ruler, is the duty of all who make a profession of learning, if they will but consider the reputation of learning in our day, whether from the contempt in which some professions are held, or from a deficiency in those who enter them.
In the professors of learning, to whose solicitation this point is recommended, two things are chiefly required. First, that with minds given to peace they should study soundly themselves, and that the matter be worthy and taken in due order. For sound learning will not so soon be shaken at every eager point of controversy as that which is shallow. Orderly progress gives security, and a pacific temper furthers the end that is desired both privately and publicly. The consent of the learned and their quiet inclination are a great blessing to any Commonwealth, but especially to ours in this contentious time, when overwhetted minds do very little good to some worthy professions. The distracting division of minds into sects and sorts of philosophy did much injury in the countries where it befel, and those nations among which religious dissensions arose have never been quiet since. The second point required in a student is not to seek his own advancement so much as that of the things he professes, and indeed the possession of these things is the best means to advance himself, for, where ignorance is blamed, knowledge is approved, even though the approver may not be learned. He who studies soundly recommends letters by his own example; he who solicits the help of those in authority advances learning still further; he who uses his pen to strengthen the best current of opinion proves the genuineness of his desire by his own practice. In this last form my own labour seeks to recommend uniformity, to strip off what is needless, to supply some defects, to help everyone to as quiet a course as I can temper my style to.
The second question which I said might be demanded of me, why I do not follow the precedent of those learned writers who have handled the subject with great admiration may be very soon answered. I admit that the number of those who have written upon the upbringing of children might be considered sufficient, and I grant the excellence of many of them, such as Bembus, Sturmius, and Erasmus. But the situation is different. A free city and a country under a monarchy are not in the same position, though they agree in some general respects, in which indeed these writers do not dissent from me. Nor do I fail to follow good writers, taking example from those authors who taught all the later ones to write so well. I am the servant of my country; for her sake I labour, her circumstances I must consider, and whatsoever I shall pen I shall myself see it carried out, by the grace of God, in order the better to persuade others by offering the proof of trial.