The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster

by Richard Mulcaster

It is necessary to take into account the state of opinion on matters of learning and on the general conduct of life, in the England of Queen Elizabeth’s day, before we can appreciate the significance of our author’s thought. We must place ourselves in the atmosphere of the Renascence and the Reformation, for although these great movements, which represented the intellectual and moral aspects in the awakening of modern Europe, had been some time in progress, and had even given place to reaction in the countries of their birth, their full influence did not reach our shores till towards the close of the sixteenth century. The phase of English national life represented by Mulcaster is that immediately preceding the great expansion of conscious mental activity to which voice was so memorably given by Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, and their contemporaries. The prestige of Elizabeth, depending as it did so largely on the secure establishment of the Protestant faith, had not yet reached the height it attained through the final repulse of Spanish aggression, but yet the power of the crown retained much of the absolute sway over individual freedom that had been built up and impressed on the popular imagination by the earlier Tudors. It was not a time either of revolt or of reaction. The more galling forms of political and intellectual despotism had already disappeared in the general overthrow of the medieval régime, and it was a more pressing question how to maintain existing charters of liberty than how to extend them. This conservative temper is to be discerned in all the purely English writers of the period, though in the northern part of Britain Knox and his companions were troubling the waters of controversy in a more strenuous fashion.

Apart from the influence of an atmosphere of general conformity to established authority and prevailing sentiment, Mulcaster was constitutionally cautious. He was no zealot, defiant of opposition, and careless of the esteem in which he might be held. His respect for tradition, and, it must be added, his sympathetic instincts, disposed him always to seek grounds of agreement rather than of difference, to support his suggestions by the weight of authority and precedent, to carry his readers with him by winning their consent unawares rather than by startling them into reluctant acquiescence through the use of paradox and exaggeration. Yet there was no timidity or half-heartedness in his temperament. He was profoundly convinced of the justice of his criticisms and the value of his proposals, and he was not backward in urging his views, in season at least if not out of season, on all who shared the responsibility of rejecting them or giving them effect. He has been accused, indeed, of overweening self-conceit, and it is to be feared that this is the only persistent impression of the man that remains with a number of those who know little of him beyond his name. He has been cited as a classical example of the folly into which a misplaced vanity can lead one who enters with a light heart into the region of prophecy, that “most gratuitous form of error,” on the ground that he believed the highest possible perfection of English prose to be represented by the style of his own writings. This conception, however, is due to a misunderstanding which it will be worth while to remove. The remark that is quoted against him occurs in the Peroration of the Elementary, “I need no example in any of these, whereof mine own penning is a general pattern.” Taken apart from the context, as it usually is, such a sentence sounds fatuous enough, being naturally understood to mean that Mulcaster thought he had nothing to learn from any other writers, and had himself devised a perfect model of English composition. But anyone who will take the trouble to read the whole passage ([p. 201]) will see at once that the statement really means, “I need give no example of any of these [idiosyncrasies of our language, especially compactness of expression], as they are sufficiently illustrated in my own writing.” This is a very different matter, and though Mulcaster had little sense of style, and was curiously mistaken in his idea that English prose had no greater heights to reach than the standard of his own time, the error was due to defects of literary taste and judgment, not of character or temper. When his writings are taken as a whole, they offer ample evidence that he was singularly modest in his pretensions, losing all self-consciousness in his enthusiasm for the causes he had at heart.

This attitude may account for the disposition in some quarters to deny Mulcaster any special originality in regard to his leading principles. But in a subject like education, which concerns so many departments of life and character, what is the precise meaning of originality? As the essential traits of human nature have remained unaltered in the last two or three thousand years, except for a slow development along lines in continuity with the past, it is vain to expect that the broader truths which underlie the arts of social improvement will be subject to any radical change. In such matters we must build on the wisdom of the ancients, and the only possible originality consists in discerning the new applications that are suited to the present time and place. It is safe to say that there is hardly a single educational doctrine that has ever won acceptance, the germs of which are not to be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Yet every age and every country must work out its own salvation by choosing, combining, and applying to its needs the general principles that have been laid down by those that came before. Such eclecticism, if it cannot strictly be called originality, is at least the highest wisdom, and he who first proclaims the doctrine as true for his own time and place deserves the credit of the pioneer. The discoveries of the Greek philosophers in social politics, if discoveries they could be called, had to be made over again for the modern world, and it may even be said that they had to be made independently for each separate country. In the sixteenth century there was less uniformity in political and social conditions, and less mutual influence among the different States of Europe than there is now. Although the English nation under Elizabeth could not remain wholly unaffected by the more drastic changes of opinion and sentiment that marked the course of the reforming spirit in Germany and in Scotland, it certainly demanded a rare sagacity and independence of mind, if not absolute originality, to discern how far the new outlook could be shared by those whose experience had been less revolutionary. To understand the value of Mulcaster’s work it is of less moment to ask what may have been his indebtedness to Plato or Quintilian, or even to Luther and Knox, than to consider whether he had been directly anticipated by any of his own countrymen, and whether he himself anticipated, if he did not influence, later English writers on education.

A right estimate of Mulcaster’s temperament, and of his relation to the surrounding conditions of thought and feeling, is due not only as a matter of personal justice, but as affording a key to a proper estimate of his writings. For these have a significance beyond that of most works of the kind, in forming a somewhat unique record of historical facts for a bygone period. The attempt to trace the lines of progress by comparing one phase of culture with another, has hitherto had imperfect success in the sphere of education, for, like the arts of music and acting, it works in a perishable medium, and makes a direct impression only on a single generation. Even indirect testimony has until recently been almost entirely wanting. To hardly any writer of earlier times has it occurred to make any report of the actual conduct of teaching as it existed around him, for the benefit of future ages. Those who were interested in the subject have been more concerned to offer speculative suggestions of reform that have apparently little organic relation to the conditions of their own community. It is not so much to the formal treatises of Plato and Aristotle that we must look for such knowledge as we can obtain of Athenian education in the fourth century before Christ, as to the incidental references of writers who had no thought of conveying any definite or detailed information on the matter. We find the same dearth of evidence when we try to ascertain the actual working of educational methods and organisation in the most advanced countries of Europe during the two or three centuries that succeeded the Renascence. The contemporary writers on the subject are for the most part idealists; and while we gladly acknowledge their services in that capacity, we must regret that to the visionary outlook of the reformer they did not add the careful observation of the historian. If Mulcaster is a noteworthy exception to this rule, it is not because of set purpose he undertook the task of record and criticism. It was no part of his plan to offer any narrative or statistical report; indeed he expressly refrains from commenting on the current practice of teaching, and alludes to it only incidentally. His intention, as with the great majority of educational writers, was to suggest improvements, to propose an ideal; but his responsible position as a headmaster gave him an ever-present sense of what was practicable, and enabled him to base his efforts on the firm ground of accomplished fact. His proposals are so evidently related to the existing state of affairs that they may almost be taken as affording an historical record of contemporary practice. The common-sense criticisms of a shrewd observer like Montaigne, and the dreams of an idealist such as Rabelais, have their own value; but we shall listen even more readily to the words of one who speaks out of the fulness of immediate knowledge, yet with equal power to rouse our aspiration and energy.

Before considering Mulcaster’s contributions to the theory and art of education strictly so-called, it will be well to glance at his influence in the more general aspects of learning and literature. He must be credited with an important share in the movement towards the dethronement of Latin in favour of the vernacular tongues, as the medium of communication in subjects hitherto held to belong exclusively to the domain of the learned class. The initiative in this matter goes back, of course, to the time of Dante, but even with the examples of Italy, France, and Spain to suggest the change, it was a distinct and difficult task to work it out for our own language. Mulcaster was not the first Englishman to write a book in his native tongue which everyone would have expected to be written in Latin. Sir Thomas More, in some of his historical and controversial works, Roger Ascham, and a few other writers of lesser note, had anticipated him in practice, and had been more successful in attaining a lucid and graceful style, but it may fairly be claimed that Mulcaster was the first to give a reasoned justification of the course he followed and recommended, and to further the end in view by taking definite steps to elaborate the means. Nor is it only for his service in helping to establish a canon of literary English, and show the way to others by using it himself to the best of his ability, that acknowledgment is due. It was a still more conspicuous merit to see clearly, and to enforce by these means, the truth that the increase of learning, and the methods by which it may be furthered, are subjects of interest not to any limited class alone, but to every member of the community. There may be comparatively little present value in his judgments as to the proper content of the English vocabulary, and the forms of spelling which he thought should be made authoritative, but at least it is noteworthy that, at a time when linguistic science was at a rudimentary stage, he had reached a singularly just conception of the essential nature of a language, and the conditions of its growth and decay. The interesting allegory where he traces the process by which speech came to be represented by written symbols, proves him to have grasped the idea, only in later times fully understood, that language, as a product of human activity, shares in all the features characteristic of organic development.

It is not only the more formal aspects of language, moreover, that he treats with discrimination. On the still subtler question of its relation to thought and knowledge he speaks with a discernment far beyond his time. The usurping tyranny of words over the minds of men, in place of the lawful domination of the realities they symbolised, had in the movement of the Renascence changed its form without relaxing its severity. If they were no longer so frequently used as mere counters in vain disputations, they were yet apt to be regarded with unreasoning idolatry, as the sacred embodiment of the thoughts and feelings of settled forms of civilisation in the past, exempt from any enquiry as to the conceptions they expressed. Mulcaster does not share this illusion. In his view language is primarily a means of communication, and though the acquirement of foreign tongues may be a necessity for the time, yet they “push us one degree further off from knowledge.” He may not have fully realised the degree in which language is to be reckoned with as a form of artistic expression and as an instrument of thought, though his appreciation of the possibilities of the English tongue shows that he did not forget these invaluable uses; but in any case he saw clearly, and he was one of the first to see, that the crying need of his time was to be set free from the despotism of words, which made them rather a hindrance than a help to real knowledge. “We attribute too much to tongues, in paying more heed to them than we do to matter.” The bearing of this opinion on educational theory will be considered presently, but it deserves to be noted at the outset in evidence of the advanced philosophical standpoint of a writer who belonged to the generation preceding Francis Bacon.

Mulcaster’s independence of conventional practice is further set beyond doubt by his conception of the place of authority in argument. Anticipating Locke in deprecating the constant use of great names in support of a writer’s thesis, he is of course laying down a principle now so universally accepted that it seems unnecessary to refer to it, but those who are acquainted with the Renascence writers of any country know how widely a slavish regard for the opinions of the classical authors took the place of a direct appeal to the rational judgment of the reader. It was no needless service to assign limits to this controversial habit, to discriminate between superstitious servility and justifiable deference to previous thinkers, to call for a fearless statement of the truth as it appeared to each new enquiring spirit, and claim that it should be tested wholly by its conformity to reason and nature and experience. Especially valuable for his time was his insistence on the difference of circumstance between the ancient and the modern worlds, and between the characters of the various nations. He may seem to us to carry these distinctions to an excess when in considering ideal types of human nature he takes account of the form of government under which each individual has to live, holding certain qualities appropriate to a monarchy and others to a republic, but at least he laid a useful emphasis on the relativity of progress, and on the need for harmony in the component institutions of a particular form of society.