[105] Later in the century Locke recommended that “working schools should be set up in every parish,” (see Fox-Bourne’s Locke, or Cambridge edition of the Thoughts c. Ed., App. A, p. 189). The Quakers seem to have early taken up “industrious education.” John Bellers, whose Proposals for Raising a College of Industry (1696) was reprinted by Robt. Owen, has some very good notions. After advising that boys and girls be taught to knit, spin, &c., and the bigger boys turning, &c., he says, “Thus the Hand employed brings Profit, the Reason used in it makes wise, and the Will subdued makes them good” (Proposals, p. 18). Years afterwards in a Letter to the Yearly Meeting (dated 1723), he says, “It may be observed that some of the Boys in Friends’ Workhouse in Clerkenwell by their present employment of spinning are capable to earn their own living.”
[106] Petty does not lose sight of the body. The “educands” are to “use such exercises whether in work or for recreation as tend to the health, agility, and strength of their bodies.”
I have quoted Petty from the very valuable collection of English writings on Education reprinted in Henry Barnard’s English Pedagogy, 2 vols. Petty is in Vol. I. In this vol. we have plenty of evidence of the working of the Baconian spirit; e.g., we find Sir Matthew Hale in a Letter of Advice to his Grandchildren, written in 1678, saying that there is little use or improvement in “notional speculations in logic or philosophy delivered by others; the rather because bare speculations and notions have little experience and external observation to confirm them, and they rarely fix the minds especially of young men. But that part of philosophy that is real may be improved and confirmed by daily observation, and is more stable and yet more certain and delightful, and goes along with a man all his life, whatever employment or profession he undertakes.”
[107] “In this respect,” says Professor Masson, “the passion and the projects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton’s.” (L. of M. iij, p. 237.)
[108] Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib (“the Tractate” as it is usually called), was published by Milton first in 1644, and again in 1673. See Oscar Browning’s edition, Cambridge Univ. Press.
[109] The University of Cambridge. The first examination was in June, 1880.
[110] “Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues.” L. to Bolde, quoted by Fowler, Locke, p. 120. This shows us that according to Locke “the principal part of human perfection” is to be found in the intellect.
[111] Lady Masham seems to consider these two characteristics identical. She wrote to Leclerc of Locke after his death: “He was always, in the greatest and in the smallest affairs of human life, as well as in speculative opinions, disposed to follow reason, whosoever it were that suggested it; he being ever a faithful servant, I had almost said a slave, to truth; never abandoning her for anything else, and following her for her own sake purely” (quoted by Fox-Bourne). But it is one thing to desire truth, and another to think one’s own reasoning power the sole means of obtaining it.
[112] “I am far from imagining myself infallible; but yet I should be loth to differ from any thinking man; being fully persuaded there are very few things of pure speculation wherein two thinking men who impartially seek truth can differ if they give themselves the leisure to examine their hypotheses and understand one another” (L. to W. M., 26 Dec., 1692). Again he writes: “I am persuaded that upon debate you and I cannot be of two opinions, nor I think any two men used to think with freedom, who really prefer truth to opiniatrety and a little foolish vain-glory of not having made a mistake” (L. to W. M., 3 Sept., 1694).
[113] Compare Carlyle:—“Except thine own eye have got to see it, except thine own soul have victoriously struggled to clear vision and belief of it, what is the thing seen or the thing believed by another or by never so many others? Alas, it is not thine, though thou look on it, brag about it, and bully and fight about it till thou die, striving to persuade thyself and all men how much it is thine! Not it is thine, but only a windy echo and tradition of it bedded [an echo bedded?] in hypocrisy, ending sure enough in tragical futility is thine.” Froude’s Thos. Carlyle, ij, 10. Similarly Locke wrote to Bolde in 1699:—“To be learned in the lump by other men’s thoughts, and to be right by saying after others is much the easier and quieter way; but how a rational man that should enquire and know for himself can content himself with a faith or religion taken upon trust, or with such a servile submission of his understanding as to admit all and nothing else but what fashion makes passable among men, is to me astonishing.” Quoted by Fowler, Locke, p. 118.