Practical Essays
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Title: Practical Essays
Author: Alexander Bain
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRACTICAL ESSAYS ***
Produced by Marc D'Hooghe.
From images generously made available by Gallica
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PRACTICAL ESSAYS.
by
ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D.,
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN.
LONDON:
1884.
PREFACE.
The present volume is in great part a reprint of articles contributed to
Reviews. The principal bond of union among them is their practical
character. Beyond that, there is little to connect them apart from the
individuality of the author and the range of his studies.
That there is a certain amount of novelty in the various suggestions
here embodied, will be admitted on the most cursory perusal. The farther
question of their worth is necessarily left open.
The first two essays are applications of the laws of mind to some
prevailing Errors.
The next two have an educational bearing: the one is on the subjects
proper for Competitive Examinations; the other, on the present position
of the much vexed Classical controversy.
The fifth considers the range of Philosophical or Metaphysical Study,
and the mode of conducting this study in Debating Societies.
The sixth contains a retrospect of the growth of the Universities, with
more especial reference to those of Scotland; and also a discussion of
the University Ideal, as something more than professional teaching.
The seventh is a chapter omitted from the author's "Science of
Education"; it is mainly devoted to the methods of self-education by
means of books. The situation thus assumed has peculiarities that admit
of being handled apart from the general theory of Education.
The eighth contends for the extension of liberty of thought, as regards
Sectarian Creeds and Subscription to Articles. The total emancipation of
the clerical body from the thraldom of subscription, is here advocated
without reservation.
The concluding essay discusses the Procedure of Deliberative Bodies. Its
novelty lies chiefly in proposing to carry out, more thoroughly than has
yet been done, a few devices already familiar. But for an extraordinary
reluctance in all quarters to adapt simple and obvious remedies to a
growing evil, the article need never have appeared. It so happens, that
the case principally before the public mind at present, is the deadlock
in the House of Commons; yet, had that stood alone, the author would not
have ventured to meddle with the subject. The difficulty, however, is
widely felt: and the principles here put forward are perfectly general;
being applicable wherever deliberative bodies are numerously constituted
and heavily laden with business.
ABERDEEN, _March_, 1884.
CONTENTS.
I.
COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND.
Error regarding Mind as a whole--that Mind can be exerted without bodily
expenditure.
Errors with regard to the FEELINGS.
I. Advice to take on cheerfulness.
Authorities for this prescription.
Presumptions against our ability to comply with it.
Concurrence of the cheerful temperament with youth and health.
With special corporeal vigour. With absence of care and anxiety.
Limitation of Force applies to the mind.
The only means of rescuing from dulness--to increase the supports and
diminish the burdens of life.
Difficulties In the choice of amusements
II. Prescribing certain tastes, or pursuits, to persons
indiscriminately.
Tastes must repose as natural endowment, or else in prolonged education.
III. Inverted relationship of Feelings and Imagination.
Imagination does not determine Feeling, but the reverse.
Examples:--Bacon, Shelley, Byron, Burke, Chalmers, the Orientals, the
Chinese, the Celt, and the Saxon.
IV. Fallaciousness of the view, that happiness is best gained by not
being aimed at.
Seemingly a self-contradiction.
Butler's view of the disinterestedness of Appetite.
Apart from pleasure and pain, Appetite would not move us.
Parallel from other ends of pursuit--Health.
Life has two aims--Happiness and Virtue--each to be sought directly on
its own account.
Errors connected with the WILL.
I. Cost of energy, of Will. Need of a suitable physical confirmation.
Courage, Prudence, Belief.
II. Free-will a centre of various fallacies.
Doctrines repudiated from the offence given to personal dignity.
Operation of this on the history of Free-will.
III. Departing from the usual rendering of a fact, treated as denying
the fact.
Metaphysical and Ethical examples.
Alliance of Mind and Matter.
Perception of a Material World.
IV. The terms Freedom and Necessity miss the real point of the human
will.
V. Moral Ability and Inability.--Fallacy of seizing a question by the
wrong end.
Proper signification of Moral Inability--insufficiency of the ordinary
motives, but not of all motives.
* * * * *
II.
ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES.
Meanings of Relativity--intellectual and emotional.
All impressions greatest at first. Law of Accommodation and habit.
The pleasure of rest presupposes toil.
Knowledge has its charm from previous ignorance.
Silence is of value, after excess of speech.
Previous pain not, in all cases, necessary to pleasure.
Simplicity of Style praiseworthy only under prevailing artificiality. To
extol Knowledge is to reprobate Ignorance.
Authority appealed to, when in our favour, repudiated when against us.
Fallacy of declaring all labour honourable alike.
The happiness of Justice supposes reciprocity.
Love and Benevolence need to be reciprocated.
The _moral nature_ of God--a fallacy of suppressed correlative
A perpetual miracle--a self-contradiction.
Fallacy that, in the world, everything is mysterious.
Proper meaning of Mystery.
Locke and Newton on the true nature of Explanation
The Understanding cannot transcend its own experience.--Time and Space,
their Infinity.
We can assimilate facts, and generalise the many into one. This alone
constitutes Explanation.
Example from Gravity: not now mysterious.
Body and Mind. In what ways the mysteriousness of their union might be
done away with.
* * * * *
III.
THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS.
I. HISTORICAL SKETCH.
First official recommendation of Competitive Examinations.
Successive steps towards their adoption.
First absolutely open Competition--in the India Service.
Macaulay's Report on the subjects for examination and their values.
Table of Subjects. Innovations of Lord Salisbury.
An amended Table.
II. THE SCIENCE CONSIDERED.
Doubts expressed as to the expediency of the competitive system.
Criticism of the present prescription for the higher Services.
The Commissioners' Scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science
objectionable.
Classification of the Sciences into Abstract or fundamental, and
Concrete or derivative.
Those of the first class have a fixed order, the order of dependence.
The other class is represented by the Natural History Sciences, which
bring into play the Logic of Classification.
Each of these is allied to one or other members of the primary Sciences.
The Commissioners' Table misstates the relationships of the various
Sciences.
The London University Scheme a better model.
The choice allowed by the Commissioners not founded on a proper
principle.
The higher Mathematics encouraged to excess.
Amended scheme of comparative values.
Position of Languages in the examinations.
The place in education of Language generally.
Purposes of Language acquisition.
Altered position of the Classical, languages.
Alleged benefits of these languages, after ceasing to be valuable in
their original use.
The teaching of the languages does not correspond to these secondary
values.
Languages are not a proper subject for competition with a view to
appointments.
For foreign service, there should be a pass examination in the languages
needful.
The training powers attributed to languages should be tested in its own
character.
Instead of the Languages of Greece, Rome, &c., substitute the History
and Literature.
Allocation of marks under this view.
Objections answered.
Certain subjects should be obligatory.
* * * * *
IV.
THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY.
ITS PRESENT ASPECT.
Attack on Classics by Combe, fifty years ago.
Alternative proposals at the present day:--
1. The existing system Attempts at extending the Science course under
this system.
2. Remitting Greek in favour of a modern language. A defective
arrangement.
3. Remitting both Latin and Greek in favour of French and German.
4. Complete bifurcation of the Classical and the Modern sides.
The Universities must be prepared to admit a thorough modern alternative
course.
Latin should not be compulsory in the modern side.
Defences of Classics.
The argument from the Greeks knowing only their own language--never
answered.
Admission that the teaching of classics needs improvement.
Alleged results of contact with the great authors of Greece and
Rome--unsupported by facts.
Amount of benefit attainable without knowledge of originals.
The element of training may be obtained from modern languages.
The classics said to keep the mind free from party bias.
Canon Liddon's argument in favour of Greek as a study.
* * * * *
V.
METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES.
Metaphysics here taken as comprising Psychology, Logic, and their
dependent sciences.
Importance of the two fundamental departments.
The great problems, such as Free-will and External Perception should be
run up into systematic Psychology.
Logic also requires to be followed out systematically.
Slender connection of Logic and Psychology.
Derivative Sciences:--Education.
Aesthetics--a corner of the larger field of Human Happiness
The treatment of Happiness should be dissevered from Ethics
Adam Smith's loose rendering of the conditions of happiness
Sociology--treated, partly in its own field, and partly as a derivative
of Psychology.
Through it lies the way to Ethics.
The sociological and the ethical ends compared.
Factitious applications of Metaphysical study.
Bearings on Theology, as regards both attack and defence.
Incapable of supplying the place of Theology.
Polemical handling of Metaphysics.
Methodised Debate in the Greek Schools.
Much must always be done by the solitary thinker.
Best openings for Polemic:--Settling' the meanings of terms.
Discussing the broader generalities.
The Debate a light for mastery, and ill-suited for nice adjustments.
The Essay should be a centre of amicable co-operation, which would have
special advantages.
Avoidance of such debates as are from their very nature interminable.
* * * * *
VI.
THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL--PAST AND PRESENT.
The Higher Teaching in Greece.
The Middle Age and Boëthius.
Eve of the University.
Separation of Philosophy from Theology.
The Universities of Scotland founded--their history.
First Period.--The Teaching Body.
The Subjects taught and manner of teaching.
Second Period.--The Reformation.
Modified Curriculum--Andrew Melville.
Attempted reforms in teaching.
System of Disputation.
Improvements constituting the transition to the Third Period.
The Universities and the political revolutions.
How far the Universities are essential to professional teaching:
perennial alternative of Apprenticeship.
The Ideal Graduate.
* * * * *
VII.
THE ART OF STUDY.
Study more immediately supposes learning from Books.
The Greeks did not found an Art of Study, but afforded examples:
Demosthenes.
Quintilian's "Institutes" a landmark.
Bacon's Essay on Studies. Hobbes.
Milton's Tractate on Education.
Locke's "Conduct of the Understanding" very specific as to rules of
Study.
Watts's work entitled "The Improvement of the Mind".
What an Art of Study should attempt.
Mode of approaching it.
I. First Maxim--"Select a Text-book-in-chief".
Violations of the maxim: Milton's system.
Form or Method to be looked to, in the chief text-book.
The Sciences. History.
Non-methodical subjects.
Repudiation of plans of study by some.
Merits to be sought in a principal Text-book.
Question as between old writers and new.
Paradoxical extreme--one book and no more.
Single all-sufficing books do not exist.
Illustration from Locke's treatment of the Bible.
II. "What constitutes the study of a book?"
1. Copying literally:--Defects of this plan.
2. Committing to memory word for word.
Profitable only for brief portions of a book.
Memory in extension and intension.
3. Making Abstracts.
Variety of modes of abstracting.
4. Locke's plan of reading.
A sense of Form must concur with abstracting.
Example from the Practice of Medicine.
Example from the Oratorical Art
Choice of a series of Speeches to begin upon.
An oratorical scheme essential.
Exemplary Speeches.
Illustration from the oratorical quality of negative tact. Macaulay's
Speeches on Reform.
Study for improvement in Style.
III. Distributing the Attention in Reading.
IV. Desultory Reading.
V. Proportion of book-reading to Observation at first hand.
VI. Adjuncts of Reading.--Conversation.
Original Composition.
* * * * *
VIII.
RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS.
Pursuit of Truth has three departments:--order of nature, ends of
practice, and the supernatural.
Growth of Intolerance. How innovations became possible.
In early society, religion a part of the civil government.
Beginnings of toleration--dissentients from the State Church.
Evils attendant on Subscription:--the practice inherently fallacious.
Enforcement of creeds nugatory for the end in view.
Dogmatic uniformity only a part of the religious character: element of
Feeling.
Recital of the general argument for religious liberty.
Beginnings of prosecution for heresy in Greece:--Anaxagoras, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle.
Forced reticence in recent times:--Carlyle, Macaulay, Lyell.
Evil of disfranchising the Clerical class.
Outspokenness a virtue to be encouraged.
Special necessities of the present time: conflict of advancing knowledge
with the received orthodoxy.
Objections answered:--The Church has engaged itself to the State to
teach given tenets.
Possible abuse of freedom by the clergy.
The history of the English Presbyterian Church exemplifies the absence
of Subscription.
Various modes of transition from the prevailing practice.
* * * * *
IX.
PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES.
Growing evil of the intolerable length of Debates.
Hurried decisions might be obviated by allowing an interval previous to
the vote.
The oral debate reviewed.--Assumptions underlying it, fully examined.
Evidence that, in Parliament, it is not the main engine of persuasion.
Its real service is to supply the newspaper reports.
Printing, without speaking, would serve the end in view.
Proposal to print and distribute beforehand the reasons for each Motion.
Illustration from decisions on Reports of Committees.
Movers of Amendments to follow the same course.
Further proposal to give to each member the liberty of circulating a
speech in print, instead of delivering it.
The dramatic element in legislation much thought of.
Comparison of the advantages of reading and of listening.
The numbers of backers to a motion should be proportioned to the size of
the assembly.
Absurdity of giving so much power to individuals.
In the House of Commons twenty backers to each bill not too many.
The advantages of printed speeches. Objections.
Unworkability of the plan in Committees. How remedied.
In putting questions to Ministers, there should be at least ten backers.
How to compensate for the suppression of oratory in the
House:--Sectional discussions.
The divisions occasioned at one sitting to be taken at the beginning of
the next.
Every deliberative body must be free to determine what amount of
speaking it requires.
The English Parliamentary system considered as a model.
Lord Derby and Lord Sherbrooke on the extension of printing.
Defects of the present system becoming more apparent.
* * * * *
_Notes and References in connection with Essay VIII. on Subscription_
First imposition of Tests after the English Reformation.
Dean Milman's speech in favour of total abolition of Tests.
Tests in Scotland: Mr. Taylor Innes on the "Law of Creeds".
Resumption of Subscription in the English Presbyterian Church.
Other English Dissenting Churches.
Presbyterian Church in the United States.
French Protestant Church--its two divisions.
Switzerland:--Canton of Valid.
Independent Evangelical Church of Neuchatel.
National Protestant Church of Geneva.
Free Church of Geneva. Germanic Switzerland.
Hungarian Reformed Church.
Germany:--Recent prosecutions for heresy.
Holland:--Calvinists and Modern School.
* * * * *
I.
COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND.[1]
On the prevailing errors on the mind, proposed to be considered in this
paper, some relate to the Feelings, others to the Will.
In regard to Mind as a whole, there are still to be found among us some
remnants of a mistake, once universally prevalent and deeply rooted,
namely, the opinion that mind is not only a different fact from
body--which is true, and a vital and fundamental truth--but is to a
greater or less extent independent of the body. In former times, the
remark seldom occurred to any one, unless obtruded by some extreme
instance, that to work the mind is also to work a number of bodily
organs; that not a feeling can arise, not a thought can pass, without a
set of concurring bodily processes. At the present day, however, this
doctrine is very generally preached by men of science. The improved
treatment of the insane has been one consequence of its reception. The
husbanding of mental power, through a bodily _régime_, is a no less
important application. Instead of supposing that mind is something
indefinite, elastic, inexhaustible,--a sort of perpetual motion, or
magician's bottle, all expenditure, and no supply,--we now find that
every single throb of pleasure, every smart of pain, every purpose,
thought, argument, imagination, must have its fixed quota of oxygen,
carbon, and other materials, combined and transformed in certain
physical organs. And, as the possible extent of physical transformation
in each person's framework is limited in amount, the forces resulting
cannot be directed to one purpose without being lost for other purposes.
If an extra share passes to the muscles, there is less for the nerves;
if the cerebral functions are pushed to excess, other functions have to
be correspondingly abated. In several of the prevailing opinions about
to be criticised, failure to recognise this cardinal truth is the prime
source of mistake.
* * * * *
To begin with the FEELINGS.
I. We shall first consider an advice or prescription repeatedly put
forth, not merely by the unthinking mass, but by men of high repute: it
is, that with a view to happiness, to virtue, and to the accomplishment
of great designs, we should all be cheerful, light-hearted, gay.
I quote a passage from the writings of one of the Apostolic Fathers, the
Pastor of Hermas, as given in Dr. Donaldson's abstract:--
"Command tenth affirms that sadness is the sister of doubt, mistrust,
and wrath; that it is worse than all other spirits, and grieves the Holy
Spirit. It is therefore to be completely driven away, and, instead of
it, we are to put on cheerfulness, which is pleasing to God. 'Every
cheerful man works well, and always thinks those things which are good,
and despises sadness. The sad man, on the other hand, is always
bad.'"[2]
[FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING CHEERFULNESS.]
Dugald Stewart inculcates Good-humour as a means of happiness and
virtue; his language implying that the quality is one within our power
to appropriate.
In Mr. Smiles's work entitled "Self-Help," we find an analogous strain
of remarks:--
"To wait patiently, however, man must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is
an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the
character. As a Bishop has said, 'Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity,' so are cheerfulness and diligence [a considerable
make-weight] nine-tenths of practical wisdom."
Sir Arthur Helps, in those essays of his, combining profound observation
with strong genial sympathies and the highest charms of style,
repeatedly adverts to the dulness, the want of sunny light-hearted
enjoyment of the English temperament, and, on one occasion, piquantly
quotes the remark of Froissart on our Saxon progenitors: "They took
their pleasures sadly, as was their fashion; _ils se divertirent moult
tristement à la mode de leur pays_"
There is no dispute as to the value or the desirableness of this
accomplishment. Hume, in his "Life," says of himself, "he was ever
disposed to see the favourable more than the unfavourable side of
things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess than to be born
to an estate of ten thousand a year". This sanguine, happy temper, is
merely another form of the cheerfulness recommended to general adoption.
I contend, nevertheless, that to bid a man be habitually cheerful, he
not being so already, is like bidding him treble his fortune, or add a
cubit to his stature. The quality of a cheerful, buoyant temperament
partly belongs to the original cast of the constitution--like the bone,
the muscle, the power of memory, the aptitude for science or for music;
and is partly the outcome of the whole manner of life. In order to
sustain the quality, the physical (as the support of the mental) forces
of the system must run largely in one particular channel; and, of
course, as the same forces are not available elsewhere, so notable a
feature of strength will be accompanied with counterpart weaknesses or
deficiencies. Let us briefly review the facts bearing upon the point.
The first presumption in favour of the position is grounded in the
concomitance of the cheerful temperament with youth, health, abundant
nourishment. It appears conspicuously along with whatever promotes
physical vigour. The state is partially attained during holidays, in
salubrious climates, and health-bringing avocations; it is lost, in the
midst of toils, in privation of comforts, and in physical prostration.
The seeming exception of elated spirits in bodily decay, in fasting, and
in ascetic practices, is no disproof of the general principle, but
merely the introduction of another principle, namely, that we can feed
one part of the system at the expense of degrading and prematurely
wasting others.
[LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS NOT IN OUR OWN POWER.]
A second presumption is furnished also from our familiar experience. The
high-pitched, hilarious temperament and disposition commonly appear in
company with some well-marked characteristics of corporeal vigour. Such
persons are usually of a robust mould; often large and full in person,
vigorous in circulation and in digestion; able for fatigue, endurance,
and exhausting pleasures. An eminent example of this constitution was
seen in Charles James Fox, whose sociability, cheerfulness, gaiety, and
power of dissipation were the marvel of his age. Another example might
be quoted in the admirable physical frame of Lord Palmerston. It is no
more possible for an ordinarily constituted person to emulate the flow
and the animation of these men, than it is to digest with another
person's stomach, or to perform the twelve labours of Hercules.
A third fact, less on the surface, but no less certain, is, that the men
of cheerful and buoyant temperament, as a rule, sit easy to the cares
and obligations of life. They are not much given to care and anxiety as
regards their own affairs, and it is not to be expected that they should
be more anxious about other people's. In point of fact, this is the
constitution of somewhat easy virtue: it is not distinguished by a
severe, rigid attention to the obligations and the punctualities of
life. We should not be justified in calling such persons selfish; still
less should we call them cold-hearted: their exuberance overflows upon
others in the form of heartiness, geniality, joviality, and even lavish
generosity. Still, they can seldom be got to look far before them; they
do not often assume the painfully circumspect attitude required in the
more arduous enterprises. They are not conscientious in trifles. They
cast off readily the burdensome parts of life. All which is in keeping
with our principle. To take on burdens and cares is to draw upon the
vital forces--to leave so much the less to cheerfulness and buoyant
spirits. The same corporeal framework cannot afford a lavish expenditure
in several different ways at one time. Fox had no long-sightedness, no
tendency to forecast evils, or to burden himself with possible
misfortunes. It is very doubtful if Palmerston could have borne the part
of Wellington in the Peninsula; his easy-going temperament would not
have submitted itself to all the anxieties and precautions of that vast
enterprise. But Palmerston was hale and buoyant, and the Prime Minister
of England at eighty: Wellington began to be infirm at sixty.
[LIMITATIONS OF THE MENTAL FORCES.]
To these three experimental proofs we may add the confirmation derived
from the grand doctrine named the Correlation, Conservation,
Persistence, or Limitation of Force, as applied to the human body and
the human mind. We cannot create force anywhere; we merely appropriate
existing force. The heat of our fires has been derived from the solar
fire. We cannot lift a weight in the hand without the combustion of a
certain amount of food; we cannot think a thought without a similar
demand; and the force that goes in one way is unavailable in any other
way. While we are expending ourselves largely in any single function--in
muscular exercise, in digestion, in thought and feeling, the remaining
functions must continue for the time in comparative abeyance. Now, the
maintenance of a high strain of elated feeling, unquestionably costs a
great deal to the forces of the system. All the facts confirm this high
estimate. An unusually copious supply of arterial blood to the brain is
an indispensable requisite, even although other organs should be
partially starved, and consequently be left in a weak condition, or else
deteriorate before their time. To support the excessive demand of power
for one object, less must be exacted from other functions. Hard bodily
labour and severe mental application sap the very foundations of
buoyancy; they may not entail much positive suffering, but they are
scarcely compatible with exuberant spirits. There may be exceptional
individuals whose _total_ of power is a very large figure, who can bear
more work, endure more privation, and yet display more buoyancy, without
shortened life, than the average human being. Hardly any man can attain
commanding greatness without being constituted larger than his fellows
in the sum of human vitality. But until this is proved to be the fact
in any given instance, we are safe in presuming that extraordinary
endowment in one thing implies deficiency in other things. More
especially must we conclude, provisionally at least, that a buoyant,
hopeful, elated temperament lacks some other virtues, aptitudes, or
powers, such as are seen flourishing in the men whose temperament is
sombre, inclining to despondency. Most commonly the contradictory demand
is reconciled by the proverbial "short life and merry".
Adverting now to the object that Helps had so earnestly at
heart--namely, to rouse and rescue the English population from their
comparative dulness to a more lively and cheerful flow of existence--let
us reflect how, upon the foregoing principles, this is to be done. Not
certainly by an eloquent appeal to the nation to get up and be amused.
The process will turn out to be a more circuitous one.
The mental conformation of the English people, which we may admit to be
less lively and less easily amused than the temperament of Irishmen,
Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or even the German branch of our own
Teutonic race, is what it is from natural causes, whether remote
descent, or that coupled with the operation of climate and other local
peculiarities. How long would it take, and what would be the way to
establish in us a second nature on the point of cheerfulness?
Again, with the national temperament such as it is, there may be great
individual differences; and it may be possible by force of
circumstances, to improve the hilarity and the buoyancy of any given
person. Many of our countrymen are as joyous themselves, and as much the
cause of joy in others, as the most light-hearted Irishman, or the
gayest Frenchman or Italian. How shall we increase the number of such,
so as to make them the rule rather than the exception?
[SOLE MEANS OF ATTAINING CHEERFULLNESS.]
The only answer not at variance with the laws of the human constitution
is--_Increase the supports and diminish the burdens of life_.
For example, if by any means you can raise the standard of health and
longevity, you will at once effect a stride in the direction sought. But
what an undertaking is this! It is not merely setting up what we call
sanitary arrangements, to which, in our crowded populations, there must
soon be a limit reached (for how can you secure to the mass of men even
the one condition of sufficient breathing-space?), it is that health
cannot be attained, in any high general standard, without worldly means
far above the average at the disposal of the existing population; while
the most abundant resources are often neutralised by ineradicable
hereditary taint. To which it is to be added, that mankind can hardly as
yet be said to be in earnest in the matter of health.
Farther: it is especially necessary to cheerfulness, that a man should
not be overworked, as many of us are, whether from choice or from
necessity. Much, I believe, turns upon this circumstance. Severe toil
consumes the forces of the constitution, without leaving the remainder
requisite for hilarity of tone. The Irishman fed upon three meals of
potatoes a day, the lazy Highlander, the Lazaroni of Naples living upon
sixpence a week, are very poorly supported; but then their vitality is
so little drawn upon by work, that they may exceed in buoyancy of
spirits the well-fed but hard-worked labourer. We, the English people,
would not change places with them, notwithstanding: our _ideal_ is
industry with abundance; but then our industry sobers our temperament,
and inclines us to the dulness that Helps regrets. Possibly, we may one
day hit a happier mean; but to the human mind extremes have generally
been found easiest.
Once more: the light-hearted races trouble themselves little about their
political constitution, about despotism or liberty; they enjoy the
passing moments of a despot's smiles, and if he turns round and crushes
them, they quietly submit. We live in dread of tyranny. Our liberty is
a serious object; it weighs upon our minds. Now any weight upon the mind
is so much taken from our happiness; hilarity may attend on poverty, but
not so well on a serious, forecasting disposition. Our regard to the
future makes us both personally industrious and politically anxious;
a temper not to be amused with the relaxations of the Parisian in his
_café_ on the boulevards, or with the Sunday merry-go-round of the
light-hearted Dane. Our very pleasures have still a sadness in them.
Then, again, what are to be our amusements? By what recreative
stimulants shall we irradiate the gloom of our idle hours and vacation
periods? Doubtless there have been many amusements invented by the
benefactors of our species--society, games, music, public
entertainments, books; and in a well-chosen round of these, many
contrive to pass their time in a tolerable flow of satisfaction. But
they all cost something; they all cost money, either directly, to
procure them, or indirectly, to be educated for them. There are few very
cheap pleasures. Books are not so difficult to obtain, but the enjoying
of them in any high degree implies an amount of cultivation that cannot
be had cheaply.
Moreover, look at the difficulties that beset the pursuit of amusements.
How fatiguing are they very often! How hard to distribute the time and
the strength between them and our work or our duties! It needs some art
to steer one's way in the midst of variety of pleasures. Hence there
will always be, in a cautious-minded people, a disposition to remain
satisfied with few and safe delights; to assume a sobriety of aims that
Helps might call dulness, but that many of us call the middle path.
* * * * *
[FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING TASTES.]
II. A second error against the limits of the human powers is the
prescribing to persons indiscriminately, certain tastes, pursuits, and
subjects of interest, on the ground that what is a spring of enjoyment
to one or a few may be taken up, as a matter of course, by others with
the same relish. It is, indeed, a part of happiness to have some taste,
occupation, or pursuit, adequate to charm and engross us--a ruling
passion, a favourite study. Accordingly, the victims of dulness and
_ennui_ are often advised to betake themselves to something of this
potent character. Kingsley, in his little book on the "Wonders of the
Shore," endeavoured to convert mankind at large into marine naturalists;
and, some time ago, there appeared in the newspapers a letter from
Carlyle, regretting that he himself had not been indoctrinated into the
zoology of our waysides. I have heard a man out of health, hypochondriac,
and idle, recommended to begin botany, geology, or chemistry, as a
diversion of his misery. The idea is plausible and superficial. An
overpowering taste for any subject--botany, zoology, antiquities,
music--is properly affirmed to be born with a man. The forces of the
brain must from the first incline largely to that one species of
impressions, to which must be added years of engrossing pursuit. We may
gaze with envy at the fervour of a botanist over his dried plants, and
may wish to take up so fascinating a pursuit: we may just as easily wish
to be Archimedes when he leaped out of the bath; a man cannot re-cast
his brain nor re-live his life. A taste of a high order, founded on
natural endowment, formed by education, and strengthened by active
devotion, is also paid for by the atrophy of other tastes, pursuits, and
powers. Carlyle might have contracted an interest in frogs, and spiders,
and bees, and the other denizens of the wayside, but it would have been
with the surrender of some other interest, the diversion of his genius
out of its present channels. The strong emotions of the mind are not to
be turned off and on, to this subject and to that. If you begin early
with a human being, you may impress a particular direction upon the
feelings, you may even cross a natural tendency, and work up a taste on
a small basis of predisposition. Place any youth in the midst of
artists, and you may induce a taste for art that shall at length be
decided and strong. But if you were to take the same person in middle
life and immure him in a laboratory, that he might become an
enthusiastic chemist, the limits of human nature would probably forbid
your success.
Such very strong tastes as impart a high and perennial zest to one's
life are merely the special direction of a natural exuberance of feeling
or emotion. A spare and thin emotional temperament will undoubtedly have
preferences, likings and dislikings, but it can never supply the
material for fervour or enthusiasm in anything.
The early determining of natural tastes is a subject of high practical
interest. We shall only remark at present that a varied and broad
groundwork of early education is the best known device for this end.
* * * * *
[RELATION OF FEELINGS TO IMAGINATION.]
III. A third error, deserving of brief comment, is a singular inversion
of the relationship of the Feelings to the Imagination. It is frequently
affirmed, both in criticism and in philosophy, that the Feelings depend
upon, or have their basis in, the Imagination.
An able and polished writer, discussing the character of Edmund Burke,
remarks: "The passions of Burke were strong; this is attributable in
great measure to the intensity of the imaginative faculty". Again,
Dugald Stewart, observing upon the influence of the Imagination on
Happiness, says: "All that part of our happiness or misery which arises
from our _hopes_ or our _fears_ derives its existence entirely from the
power of imagination". He even goes the length of affirming that
"_cowardice_ is entirely a disease of the imagination". Another writer
accounts for the intensity of the amatory sentiments in Robert Burns by
the strength of his imagination.
[IMAGINATION GROUNDED IN FEELING.]
Now, I venture to affirm that this view very nearly reverses the fact.
The Imagination is determined by the Feelings, and not the Feelings by
the Imagination. Intensity of feeling, emotion, or passion, is the
earlier fact: the intellect swayed and controlled by feeling, shaping
forms to correspond with an existing emotional tone, is Imagination. It
was not the imaginative faculty that gave Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley,
and the poets generally, their great enjoyment of nature; but the love
of nature, pre-existing, turned the attention and the thoughts upon
nature, filling the mind as a consequence with the impressions, images,
recollections of nature; out of which grew the poetic imaginings.
Imagination is a compound of intellectual power and feeling. The
intellectual power may be great, but if it is not accompanied with
feeling, it will not minister to feeling; or it will minister to many
feelings by turns, and to none in particular. As far as the intellectual
power of a poet goes, few men have excelled Bacon. He had a mind stored
with imagery, able to produce various and vivid illustrations of
whatever thought came before him; but these illustrations touched no
deep feeling; they were fresh, original, racy, fanciful, picturesque,
a play of the head that never touched the heart. The man was by nature
cold; he had not the emotional depth or compass of an average
Englishman. Perhaps his strongest feeling of an enlarged or generous
description was for human progress, but it did not rise to passion;
there was no fervour, no fury in it. Compare him with Shelley on the
same subject, and you will see the difference between meagreness and
intensity of feeling. What intellect can be, without strong feeling,
we have in Bacon; what intellect is, with strong feeling, we have in
Shelley. The feeling gives the tone to the thoughts; sets the intellect
at work to find language having its own intensity, to pile up lofty and
impressive circumstances; and then we have the poet, the orator, the
thoughts that breathe, and the words that burn. Bacon wrote on many
impressive themes--on Truth, on Love, on Religion, on Death, and on the
Virtues in detail; he was always original, illustrative, fanciful; if
intellectual means and resources could make a man feel in these things,
he would have felt deeply; yet he never did. The material of feeling is
not contained in the intellect; it has a seat and a source apart. There
was nothing in mere intellectual gifts to make Byron a misanthrope: but,
given that state of the feelings, the intellect would be detained and
engrossed by it; would minister to, expand, and illustrate it; and
intellect so employed is Imagination.
Burke had indisputably a powerful imagination. He had both
elements:--the intellectual power, or the richly stored and highly
productive mind; and the emotional power, or the strength of passion
that gives the lead to intellect. His intellectual strength was often
put forth in the Baconian manner of illustration, in light and sportive
fancies. There were many occasions where his feelings were not much
roused. He had topics to urge, views to express, and he poured out
arguments, and enlivened them with illustrations. He was, on those
occasions, an able expounder, and no more. But when his passions were
stirred to the depths by the French Revolution, his intellectual power,
taking a new flight, supplied him with figures of extraordinary
intensity; it was no longer the play of a cool man, but the thunders of
an aroused man; we have then "the hoofs of the swinish multitude,"--"the
ten thousand swords leaping from their scabbards". Such feelings were
not produced by the speaker's imagination: they were produced by
themselves; they had their independent source in the region of feeling:
coupled with adequate powers of intellect, they burst out into strong
imagery.[3]
The Orientals, as a rule, are distinguished for imaginative flights.
This is apparent in their religion, their morality, their poetry, and
their science. The explanation is to be sought in the strength of their
feelings, coupled with a certain intellectual force. The same intellect,
without the feelings, would have issued differently. The Chinese are the
exception. They want the feelings, and they want the imagination. They
are below Europeans in this respect. When we bring before them our own
imaginative themes, our own cast of religion, accommodated as it is to
our own peculiar temperament, we fail in the desired effect. Our august
mysteries are responded to, not with reverential regard, but with, cold
analysis.
The Celt and the Saxon are often contrasted on the point of imagination;
the prior fact is the comparative endowment for emotion.
* * * * *
[HOW HAPPINESS SHOULD BE AIMED AT.]
IV. There is a fallacious mode of presenting the attainment of
happiness; namely, that happiness is best secured by not being aimed at.
We should be aiming always at something else.
When examined closely, the doctrine resolves itself into a kind of
paradox. All sorts of puzzles come up when we attempt to follow it to
its consequences.
We might ask, first, whether there is any other object of pursuit in the
same predicament--wealth, health, knowledge, fame, power. These are,
every one, a means or instrument of happiness, if not happiness itself.
Must we, then, in the case of each, avoid aiming straight at the goal?
must we look askance in some other direction?
Next, in the case of happiness proper, are we to aim at nothing at all,
to drift at random; or may we aim at a definite object, provided it is
not happiness; or, lastly, is there one side aim in particular that we
must take? The answer here would probably be--Aim at duty in general,
and at the good of others in particular. These ends are not the same as
happiness, yet by keeping them steadily in the view, and not thinking of
self at all, we shall eventually realise our greatest happiness.
Without, at present, raising any question as to the fact alleged, we
must again remark that the prescription seems to contradict itself.
Moralists of the austere type will never allow us to pursue happiness at
all; we must never mention the thing to ourselves: duty or virtue is the
one single aim and end of being. Such teachers may be right or they may
be wrong, but they do not contradict themselves. When, however, we are
told that by aiming at virtue, we are on the best possible road to
happiness, this is but another way of letting us into the secret of
happiness, of putting us on the right, instead of on the wrong, track,
to attain it. Our teacher assumes that we are in search of happiness,
and he tells us how we are to proceed; not by keeping it straight in the
view, but by keeping virtue straight in the view. Instead of pointing us
to the vulgar happiness-seeker who would take the goal in a line, he
corrects the course, and shows us the deviation that is necessary in
order to arrive at it; like the sailor making allowance for the
deviation of the magnetic pole, in steering. Happiness is not gained by
a point-blank aim; we must take a boomerang flight in some other line,
and come back upon the target by an oblique or reflected movement. It is
the idea of Young on the Love of Praise (Satire I., 5.)--
The love of Praise howe'er concealed by art,
Reigns more or less and glows in every heart,
The proud to gain it, toils on toils endure,
_The modest shun it but to make it sure_.
Under this corrected method, we are happiness seekers all the same; only
our aims are better directed, and our fruition more assured.
These remarks are intended to show that the doctrine of making men aim
at virtue, in order to happiness, has no further effect than to teach us
to include the interests of others with our own; by showing that our own
interests do not thereby suffer, but the contrary. The doctrine does not
substitute a virtuous motive for a selfish one; it is a refined artifice
for squaring the two. The world is no doubt a gainer by the change of
view, although the individual is not made really more meritorious.
We must next consider whether, in fact, the oblique aim at happiness is
really the most effectual.
A few words, first, as to the original source of the doctrine of a
devious course. Bishop Butler is renowned for his distinction between
Self-Love and Appetite; he contends that in Appetite the object of
pursuit is not the pleasure of eating, but the food: consequently,
eating is not properly a self-seeking act, it is an indifferent or
disinterested act, to which there is an incidental accompaniment of
pleasure. We should, under the stimulus of Hunger, seek the food,
whether it gave us pleasure or not.
Now, any truth that there is in Butler's view amounts to this:--In our
Appetites we are not thinking every instant of subduing pain and
attaining pleasure; we are ultimately moved by these feelings; but,
having once seen that the medium of their gratification is a certain
material object (food), we direct our whole aim to procuring that. The
hungry wolf ceases to think of his pains of hunger when he is in sight
of a sheep; but for these pains he would have paid no heed to the sheep;
yet when the sheep has to be caught, the hunger is submerged for the
time; the only relevant course, even on its account, is to give the
whole mind and body to the chase of the sheep. Butler calls this
indifferent or disinterested pursuit; and as much as says, that the wolf
is not self-seeking, but sheep-seeking, in its chase. Now, it is quite
true that if the wolf could give no place in its mind for anything but
its hungry pains, it would be in a bad way. It is wiser than that; it
knows the remedy; it is prepared to dismiss the pains from its thoughts,
in favour of a concentrated attention upon the distant flock. This
proves nothing as to its unselfishness; nor does it prove that Appetite
is a different thing from self-seeking or self-love.
[APPETITE DECLARED UNSELFISH.]
There may be disinterested motives in our constitution; but Appetite is
not in any sense one of these. We may have instincts answering to the
traditional phrase used in defining instinct, "a blind propensity" to
act, without aiming at anything in particular, and without any
expectation of pleasure or benefit. Such instincts would conform to
Butler's notion of appetite: they would be entirely out of the course of
self-love or self-seeking of any sort. Whether the nest-building
activity of birds, and the constructiveness of ants, bees, and beavers,
comply with this condition, I do not undertake to say. There is one
process better known to ourselves, not exactly an instinct, but probably
a mixture of instinct and acquirement--I mean the process of
Imitation--which works very much upon this model. Although coming under
the control of the Will, yet in its own proper character it operates
blindly, or without purpose; neither courting pleasure, nor chasing
pain. In like manner, Sympathy, in its most characteristic form,
proceeds without any distinct aim of pleasure to ourselves.
Nothing of this can be affirmed of the Appetites. In them, nature places
us, as Bentham says, under the government of two sovereign masters,
_pain_ and _pleasure_. An appetite would cease to move us, if its
painful and pleasurable accompaniments were done away with. It matters
not that we remit our attention, at times, to the pain or the pleasure;
these are always in the background; and the strength of the appetite is
their strength.
So far as concerns Butler's example of the Appetites, there is no case
for the view that to obtain happiness we must avoid aiming at it
directly. If we do not aim at the pleasure in its own subjective
character, we aim at the thing that immediately brings the pleasure;
which is, for all practical purposes, to aim at the pleasure.
The prescription to look away from the final end, Happiness, in order to
secure that end, may be tested on the example of one of our intermediate
pursuits, as Health. It is not a good thing to be always dwelling on the
state of our health: by doing so, we get into a morbid condition of
self-consciousness, which is in itself pernicious. It does not follow
that we are to live at random, without ever giving a thought to our
health. There is a plain middle course. Guided by our own experience,
and by the experience of those that have gone before us, we arrange our
plan of life so as to preserve health; and our actions consist in
adhering to that plan in the detail. So long as our scheme answers
expectation, we think of nothing but of putting it in force, as occasion
arises; we do not dwell upon our states of good health at all. It is
some interruption that makes us self-conscious; and then it is that we
have to exercise ourselves about a remedial course. This, when found, is
likewise objectively pursued; our only subjectiveness lies in being
aware of gradual recovery; and we are glad to get back to the state of
paying no attention to the workings of our viscera. We do not,
therefore, remit our pursuit; only, it is enough to observe the routine
of outward actions, whose sole motive is to keep us in health.
The pursuit of the still wider end, Happiness, has much in common with
the narrower pursuit. When we have discovered what things promote, and
what things impede our happiness, we transfer our attention to these, as
the most direct mode of compassing the end. If we are satisfied that
working for other people brings us happiness, we work accordingly; this
is no side aim, it is as direct as any aim can be. It may involve
immediate sacrifice, but that does not alter the case; we can get no
considerable happiness from any source without temporary sacrifice.
[HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE DISTINCT AIMS.]
If it be said that the best mode of attaining happiness is to put
ourselves entirely out of account, and to work for others exclusively,
this, as already noted, is a self-contradiction. It is to tell people
not to think of their own happiness, and yet to know that they are
securing that in the most effectual way. It is also very questionable,
indeed absolutely erroneous, in fact. The most apparent way to secure
happiness is to ply all the known means of happiness, just as far as,
and no farther than, they are discovered to produce the effect. We must
keep a check upon the methods that we employ, and abandon those that do
not answer. So long as we find happiness in serving others, so long we
continue in that course. And it is a melancholy fact that Pope's bold
assertion--"Virtue alone is happiness below,"--cannot be upheld against
the stern realities of life. Life needs to be made up of two aims--the
one, Happiness, the other Virtue, each on its own account. There is a
certain mutual connection of the two, but all attempts at making out
their identity are failures.
It is of very great importance to teach men the bearings of virtue on
happiness, so far as these are known. There will, however, always remain
a portion of duty that detracts from happiness, and must be done as
duty, nevertheless. Men are entitled to pursue happiness as directly as
ever they please; only, they must couple with the pursuit their round of
duties to others; in which they may or may not reap a share of the
coveted good for self.
* * * * *
Let us, next, consider some of the difficulties and mistakes attaching
to the WILL. Here there are the questions of world-renown, questions
known even in Pandemonium--Free-will, Responsibility, Moral Ability, and
Inability. It is now suspected, on good grounds, that, on these
questions, we have somehow got into a wrong groove--that we are lost in
a maze of our own constructing.
[A STRONG WILL THE GIFT OF NATURE.]
I. We shall first notice a misconception akin to some of the foregoing
mistakes respecting the feelings. In addressing men with a view to spur
their activity, there is usually a too low estimate of what is implied
in great and energetic efforts of will. Here, exactly as in the cheerful
temperament, we find a certain constitutional endowment, a certain
natural force of character, having its physical supports of brain,
muscle, and other tissue; and neither persuasion, nor even education,
can go very far to alter that character. If there be anything at all in
the observations of phrenology, it is the connection of energetic
determination with size of brain. Lay your hand first on the head of an
energetic man, and then on the head of a feeble man, and you will find
a difference that is not to be explained away. Now it passes all the
powers of persuasion and education combined to make up for a great
cranial inequality. Something always comes of assiduous discipline; but
to set up a King Alfred, or a Luther, as a model to be imitated by an
ordinary man, on the points of energy, perseverance, endurance, courage,
is to pass the bounds of the human constitution. Persistent energy of a
high order, like the temperament for happiness, costs a great deal to
the human system. A large share of the total forces of the constitution
go to support it; and the diversion of power often leaves great defects
in other parts of the character, as for example, a low order of the
sensibilities, and a narrow range of sympathies. The men of
extraordinary vigour and activity--our Roman emperors and conquering
heroes--are often brutal and coarse. Nature does not supply power
profusely on all sides; and delicate sympathies, of themselves, use up
a very large fraction of the forces of the organisation. Even
intellectually estimated, the power of sympathising with many various
minds and conditions would occupy as much room in the brain as a
language, or an accomplishment. A man both energetic and sympathetic--a
Pericles, a King Alfred, an Oliver Cromwell--is one of nature's giants,
several men in one.
There is no more notable phase of our active nature than Courage. Great
energy generally implies great courage, and courage--at least in
nine-tenths of its amount--comes by nature. To exhort any one to be
courageous is waste of words. We may animate, for the time, a naturally
timid person, by explaining away the signs of danger, and by assuming a
confident attitude ourselves; but the absolute force of courage is what
neither we nor the man himself can add to. A long and careful education
might effect a slight increase in this, as in other aspects of energy of
character: we can hardly say how much, because it is a matter that is
scarcely ever subjected to the trial; the very conditions of the
experiment have not been thought of.
The moral qualities expressed by Prudence, Forethought, Circumspection,
are talked of with a like insufficient estimate of what they cost. Great
are the rewards of prudence, but great also is the expenditure of the
prudent man. To retain an abiding sense of all the possible evils, risks
and contingencies of an ordinary man's position--professional, family,
and personal--is to go about under a constant burden; the difference
between a thorough-going and an easy-going circumspection is a large
additional demand upon the forces of the brain. The being on the alert
to duck the head at every bullet is a charge to the vital powers; so
much so, that there comes a point when it is better to run risks than to
pile up costly precautions and bear worrying anxieties.
Lastly, the attribute of our active nature called Belief, Confidence,
Conviction, is subject to the same line of remark. This great
quality--the opposite of distrust and timidity, the ally of courage, the
adjunct of a buoyant temperament--is not fed upon airy nothings. It is,
indeed, a true mental quality, an offshoot of our mental nature; yet,
although not material, it is based upon certain forces of the physical
constitution; it grows when these grow, and is nourished when they are
nourished. People possessed of great confidence have it as a gift all
through life, like a broad chest or a good digestion. Preaching and
education have their fractional efficacy, and deserve to be plied,
provided the operator is aware of nature's impassable barriers, and does
not suppose that he is working by charm. It is said of Hannibal that he
dissolved obstructions in the Alps by vinegar; in the moral world,
barriers are not to be removed either by acetic acid or by honey.
* * * * *
[PREJUDICES DUE TO PERSONAL DIGNITY.]
II. The question of Free-will might be a text for discoursing on some of
the most inveterate erroneous tendencies of the mind.
For one thing, it gives occasion to remark on the influence exerted over
our opinions by the feeling of Personal Dignity. Of sources of bias,
prejudices, "Idola," "fallacies _a priori_" this may be allowed
precedence. For example, the maxim has been enunciated by some
philosophers, that, of two differing opinions, preference is to be given
(not to what is true, but) to what ennobles and dignifies human nature.
One of the objections seriously entertained against Darwin's theory is
that it humbles our ancestral pride. So, to ascribe to our mental powers
a material foundation is held to be degrading to our nobler part. Again,
a philosopher of our own day--Sir W. Hamilton--has placed on the
title-page of his principal work this piece of rhetoric: "On earth,
there is nothing great but man; in man, there is nothing great but
mind". Now one would suppose that there are on earth many things besides
man deserving the appellation of "great"; and that the mechanism of the
body is, in any view, quite as remarkable a piece of work as the
mechanism of the mind. There was one step more that Hamilton, as an
Aristotelian, should have made: "In mind, there is nothing great but
intellect". Doubtless, we ought not to dissect an epigram; but epigrams
brought into a perverting contact with science are not harmless. Such
gross pandering to human vanity must be held as disfiguring a work on
philosophy.
The sentiment of dignity has much to answer for in the doctrine of
Free-will. In Aristotle, the question had not assumed its modern
perplexity; but the vicious element of factitious personal importance
had already peeped out, it being one of the few points wherein the bias
of the feelings operated decidedly in his well-balanced mind. In
maintaining the doctrine that vice is voluntary, he argues, that if
virtue is voluntary, vice (its opposite) must also be voluntary; now to
assert virtue not to be voluntary would be to cast an _indignity_ upon
it. This is the earliest association of the feeling of personal dignity
with the exercise of the human will.
[FALSE PRIDE IN CONNECTION WITH FREE-WILL.]
The Stoics are commonly said to have started the free-will difficulty.
This needs an explanation. A leading tenet of theirs was the distinction
between things in our power and things not in our power; and they
greatly overstrained the limits of what is in our power. Looking at the
sentiment about death, where the _idea_ is everything, and at many of
our desires and aversions, also purely sentimental, that is, made and
unmade by our education (as, for example, pride of birth), they
considered that pains in general, even physical pains and grief for
the loss of friends, could be got over by a mental discipline, by
intellectually holding them not to be pains. They extolled and magnified
the power of the will that could command such a transcendent discipline,
and infused an emotion of _pride_ into the consciousness of this
greatness of will. In subsequent ages, poets, moralists, and theologians
followed up the theme; and the appeal to the pride of will may be said
to be a standing engine of moral suasion. This originating of a point of
honour or dignity in connection with our Will has been the main lure in
bringing us into the jungle of Free-will and Necessity.
It is in the Alexandrian school that we find the next move in the
question. In Philo Judaeus, the good man is spoken of as free, the
wicked man as a slave. Except as the medium of a compliment to virtue,
the word "freedom" is not very apposite, seeing that, to the highest
goodness, there attaches submission or restraint, rather than liberty.
The early Christian Fathers (notably Augustine) advanced the question to
the Theological stage, by connecting it with the great doctrines of
Original Sin and Predestination; in which stage it shared all the
speculative difficulties attaching to these doctrines. The Theological
world, however, has always been divided between Free-will and Necessity;
and probably the weightiest names are to be found among the
Necessitarians. No man ever brought greater acumen into theological
controversy than did Jonathan Edwards; and he took the side of
Necessity.
Latterly, however, since the question has become one of pure
metaphysics, Free-will has been the favourite dogma, as being most
consonant to the dignity of man, which appears to be its chief
recommendation, and its only argument. The weight of reasoning is, I
believe, in favour of necessity; but the word carries with it a seeming
affront, and hardly any amount of argument will reconcile men to
indignity.
* * * * *
III. Another weakness of the human mind receives illustration from the
free-will controversy, and deserves to be noticed, as helping to account
for the prolonged existence of the dispute: I mean the disposition to
regard any departure from the accustomed rendering of a fact as denying
the fact itself. The rose under another name is not merely less sweet,
it is not a rose at all. Some of the greatest questions have suffered by
this weakness.
[ANALYSIS DOES NOT DESTROY THE FACT.]
The physical theory of matter that resolves it into _points of force_
will seem to many as doing away with matter no less effectually than the
Berkeleyan Idealism. A universe of inane mathematical points, attracting
and repelling each other, must appear to the ordinary mind a sorry
substitute for the firm-set earth, and the majestically-fretted vault
of heaven, with its planets, stars, and galaxies. It takes a special
education to reconcile any one to this theory. Even if it were
everything that a scientific hypothesis should be, the previously
established modes of speech would be a permanent obstruction to its
being received as the popular doctrine.
But the best illustrations occur in the Ethical and Metaphysical
departments. For example, some ethical theorists endeavour to show that
Conscience is not a primitive and distinct power of the mind, like the
sense of colour, or the feeling of resistance, but a growth and a
compound, being made up of various primitive impulses, together with a
process of education. Again and again has this view been represented as
denying conscience altogether. Exactly parallel has been the handling of
the sentiment of Benevolence. Some have attempted to resolve it into
simpler elements of the mind, and have been attacked as denying the
existence of the sentiment. Hobbes, in particular, has been subjected to
this treatment. Because he held pity to be a form of self-love, his
opponents charged him with declaring that there is no such thing as pity
or sympathy in the human constitution.
A more notable example is the doctrine of the alliance of Mind with
Matter. It is impossible that any mode of viewing this alliance can
erase the distinction between the two modes of existence--the material
and the mental; between extended inert bodies, on the one hand, and
pleasures and pains, thoughts and volitions, on the other. Yet, after
the world has been made familiar with the Cartesian doctrine of two
distinct substances--the one for the inherence of material facts, and
the other for mental facts--any thinker maintaining the separate mental
substance to be unproved, and unnecessary, is denounced as trying to
blot out our mental existence, and to resolve us into watches,
steam-engines, or speaking and calculating machines. The upholder of the
single substance has to spend himself in protestations that he is not
denying the existence of the fact, or the phenomena called mind, but is
merely challenging an arbitrary and unfounded hypothesis for
representing that fact.
[PERCEPTION OF A MATERIAL WORLD.]
The still greater controversy--distinct from the foregoing, although
often confounded with it--relating to the Perception of a Material
World, is the crowning instance of the weakness we are considering.
Berkeley has been unceasingly stigmatised as holding that there is no
material world, merely because he exposed a self-contradiction in the
mode of viewing it, common to the vulgar and to philosophers, and
suggested a mode of escaping the contradiction by an altered rendering
of the facts. The case is very peculiar. The received and
self-contradictory view is exceedingly simple and intelligible in its
statement; it is well adapted, not merely for all the commoner purposes
of life, but even for most scientific purposes. The supposition of an
independent material world, and an independent mental world, created
apart, and coming into mutual contact--the one the objects perceived,
and the other the mind perceiving--expresses (or over-expresses) the
division of the sciences into sciences of matter and sciences of mind;
and the highest laws of the material world at least are in no respect
falsified by it. On the other hand, any attempt to state the facts of
the outer world on Berkeley's plan, or on any plan that avoids the
self-contradiction, is most cumbrous and unmanageable. A smaller, but
exactly parallel instance of the situation is familiar to us. The daily
circuit of the sun around the earth, supposed to be fixed, so exactly
answers all the common uses that, in spite of its being false, we adhere
to it in the language of every-day life. It is a convenient
misrepresentation, and deceives nobody. And such will, in all
likelihood, be the usage regarding the external world, after the
contradiction is admitted, and rectified by a metaphysical circumlocution.
Speculators are still only trying their hand at an unobjectionable
circumlocution; but we may almost be sure that nothing will ever
supersede, for practical uses, the notion of the distinct worlds of Mind
and Matter. If, after the Copernican demonstration of the true position
of the sun, we still find it requisite to keep up the fiction of his
daily course; much more, after the final accomplishment of the
Berkeleyan revolution (to my mind inevitable), shall we retain the
fiction of an independent external world: only, we shall then know how
to fall back upon some mode of stating the case, without incurring the
contradiction.
* * * * *
IV. To return to the Will. The fact that we have to save, and to
represent in adequate language, is this:--A voluntary action is a
sequence distinct and _sui generis;_ a human being avoiding the cold,
searching for food, and clinging to other beings, is not to be
confounded with a pure material sequence, as the fall of rain, or the
explosion of gunpowder. The phenomena, in both kinds, are phenomena of
sequence, and of _regular_ or _uniform_ sequence; but the things that
make up the sequence are widely different: in the one, a feeling of the
mind, or a concurrence of feelings, is followed by a conscious muscular
exertion; in the other, both steps are made up of purely material
circumstances. It is the difference between a mental or psychological,
and a material or physical sequence--in short, the difference between
mind and matter; the greatest contrast within the whole compass of
nature, within the universe of being. Now language must be found to give
ample explicitness to this diametrical antithesis; still, I am satisfied
that rarely in the usages of human speech has a more unfortunate choice
been made than to employ, in the present instance, the antithetic
couple--Freedom and Necessity. It misses the real point, and introduces
meanings alien to the case. It converts the glory of the human character
into a reproach (although its leading motive throughout has been to pay
us a compliment). The _constancy_ of man's emotional nature (but for
which our life would be a chaos, an impossibility) has to be explained
away, for no other reason than that, at one time, a blundering epithet
was applied to designate the mental sequences. Great is the difference
between Mind and Matter; but the terms Freedom and Necessity represent
the point of agreement as the point of difference; and this being made
familiar, through iteration, as the mode of expressing the contrast, the
rectification is supposed to unsettle everything, and to obliterate the
wide distinction of the two natures.
* * * * *
[SEIZING A QUESTION BY THE WRONG END.]
V. What is called Moral Ability and Inability is another artificial
perplexity in regard to the will, and might also be the text for a
sermon on prevailing errors. More especially, it exemplifies what may be
termed _seizing a question by the wrong end_.
The votary, we shall say, of alcoholic liquor is found fault with, and
makes the excuse, he cannot help it--he cannot resist the temptation. So
far, the language may pass. But what shall we say to the not uncommon
reply,--You could help it if you would. Surely there is some
mystification here; it is not one of those plain statements that we
desire in practical affairs. Whether we are dealing with matter or with
mind, we ought to point out some clear and practicable method of
attaining an end in view. To get a good crop, we till and enrich the
soil; to make a youth knowing in mathematics, we send him to a good
master, and stimulate his attention by combined reward and punishment.
There are also intelligible courses of reforming the vicious: withdraw
them from temptation till their habits are remodelled; entice them to
other courses, by presenting objects of superior attraction; or, at
lowest, keep the fact of punishment before their eyes. By these methods
many are kept from vices, and not a few reclaimed after having fallen.
But to say, "You can be virtuous if you will," is either unmeaning, or
it disguises a real meaning. If it have any force at all--and it would
not be used unless, some efficacy had been found attaching to it,--the
force must be in the indirect circumstances or accompaniments. What,
then, is the meaning that is so unhappily expressed? In the first place,
it is a vehicle for conveying the strong wish and determination of the
speaker; it is a clumsy substitute for--"I do wish you would amend your
conduct"; an expression containing a real efficacy, greater or less
according to the estimate formed of the speaker by the person spoken to.
In the next place, it presents to the mind of the delinquent the _ideal_
of improvement, which might also be done in unexceptionable phrase; as
one might say--"Reflect upon your own state, and compare yourself with
the correct and virtuous liver". Then, there is a touch of the stoical
dignity and pride of will. Lastly, there may be a hint or suggestion to
the mind of good and evil consequences, which is the most powerful
motive of all. In giving rise to these various considerations, even the
objectionable expression may have a genuine efficacy; but that does not
justify the form itself, which by no interpretation can be construed
into sense or intelligibility.
[MEANING OF MORAL INABILITY.]
Moral Inability means that ordinary motives are insufficient, but not
all motives. The confirmed drunkard or thief has got into the stage of
moral inability; the common motives that keep mankind sober and honest
have failed. Yet there are motives that would succeed, if we could
command them. Men may be sometimes cured of intemperance when the
constitution is so susceptible that pain follows at once on indulgence.
And so long as pleasure and pain, in fact and in prospect, operate upon
the will, so long as the individual is in a state wherein motives
operate, there may be moral weakness, but there is nothing more. In such
cases, punishment may be properly employed as a corrective, and is
likely to answer its end. This is the state termed accountability, or,
with more correctness, PUNISHABILITY, for being accountable is merely an
incident bound up with liability to punishment. Moral weakness is a
matter of a degree, and in its lowest grades shades into insanity, the
state wherein motives have lost their usual power--when pleasure and
pain cease to be apprehended by the mind in their proper character. At
_this_ point, punishment is unavailing; the moral inability has passed
into something like physical inability; the loss of self-control is as
complete as if the muscles were paralysed.
In the plea of insanity, entered on behalf of any one charged with
crime, the business of the jury is to ascertain whether the accused is
under the operation of the usual motives--whether pain in prospect has a
deterring effect on the conduct. If a man is as ready to jump out of the
window as to walk downstairs, of course he is not a moral agent; but so
long as he observes, of his own accord, the usual precautions against
harm to himself, he is to be punished for his misdeeds.
* * * * *
These various questions respecting the Will, if stripped of unsuitable
phraseology, are not very difficult questions. They are about as easy to
comprehend as the air-pump, the law of refraction of light, or the
atomic theory of chemistry. Distort them by inapposite metaphors, view
them in perplexing attitudes, and you may make them more abstruse than
the hardest proposition of the "Principia". What is far worse, by
involving a simple fact in inextricable contradictions, they have led
people gravely to recognise self-contradiction as the natural and the
proper condition of a certain class of questions. Consistency is very
well so far, and for the humbler matters of every-day life, but there is
a higher and a sacred region where it does not hold; where the
principles are to be received all the more readily that they land us in
contradictions. In ordinary matters, inconsistency is the test of
falsehood; in transcendental subjects, it is accounted the badge of
truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _Fortnightly Review_, August, 1868.]
[Footnote 2: Donaldson's "History of Christian Literature and Doctrine,"
Vol. I., p. 277.]
[Footnote 3: Intensity of passion stands confessed in the
self-delineations of men of imaginative genius. We forbear to quote the
familiar instances of Wordsworth, Shelley, or Burns, but may refer to a
remarkable chapter in the life of the famous Scotch preacher, Dr. Thomas
Chalmers. The mere title of the chapter is enough for our purpose. It
related to his early youth, and ran thus, in his own words:--"A year of
mental elysium". It is while living at a white-heat that all the
thoughts and conceptions take a lofty, hyperbolical character; and the
outpouring of these at the time, or afterwards, is the imagination of
the orator or the poet.
The spread of the misconception that we have been combating is perhaps
accounted for by the circumstance that imagination in one man is the
cause of feeling _in others_. Wordsworth, by his imaginative colouring,
has excited a warmer sentiment for nature in many spectators of the lake
country. That, however, is a different thing. We may also allow that the
poet intensifies his own feelings by his creative embodiments of them.]
* * * * *
II.
ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES.[4]
By Relativity is here meant the all-pervading fact of our nature that we
are not impressed, made conscious, or mentally alive, without some
change of state or impression. An unvarying action on any of our senses
is the same as no action at all. An even temperature, such as that
enjoyed by the fishes in the tropical seas, leaves the mind an entire
blank as regards heat and cold. We can neither feel nor know without
recognising two distinct states. Hence all knowledge is double, or is
the knowledge of contrasts or opposites: heavy is relative to light; up
supposes down; being awake implies the state of sleep.
The applications of the law in the sphere of emotion are chiefly
contemplated in what follows. Pleasure and pain are never absolute
states; they have reference always to the previous condition. Until we
know what that has been in any case, we cannot pronounce upon the
efficacy of a present stimulation. We see a person reposing, apparently
in luxurious ease; if the state has been immediately consequent upon a
protracted and severe exertion, we are right in calling it highly
pleasurable. Under other circumstances, it might be quite the reverse.
There is an offshoot or modification of the principle, arising out of
the operation of habit. Impressions made upon us are greatest when they
are absolutely new: after repetition they all lose something of their
power; although, by remission and alternative, the causes of pleasure
and pain have still a very considerable efficacy. Many of the
consequences of this great fact are sufficiently acknowledged, or, if
they are not, it is from other causes than our ignorance. The weakness
is moral, rather than intellectual, that makes us expect that the first
flush of a great pleasure, a newly-attained joy or success, will
continue unabated. The poor man, probably, does not overrate the
gratification of newly-attained wealth; what he fails to allow for is
the deadening effect of an unbroken experience of ease and plenty. The
author of "Romola" says of the hero and the heroine, in the early
moments of their affection, that they could not look forward to a time
when their kisses should be common things. So it is with the attainment
of all great objects of pursuit: the first access of good fortune may
not disappoint us; but as we are more and more removed from the state of
privation, as the memory of the prior experience fades away, so does the
vividness of the present enjoyment. It is the same with changes for the
worse: the agony of a great loss is at first overpowering; gradually,
however, the system accommodates itself to the new condition, and the
severity dies away. What is called on these occasions the "force of
custom" is the application of the law of Accommodation, or Relativity
modified by habit.
[RELATIVITY IN PLEASURES.]
It is a familiar experience of mankind, yet hard to realise upon mere
testimony, that the pleasures of rest, repose, retirement, are wholly
relative to foregone labour and toil; after the first shock of
transition, they are less and less felt, and can be renewed only after
a renewal of the contrasting experience. The description, in "Paradise
Lost," of the delicious repose of Adam and Eve in Eden is fallacious;
the poet credits them with an intensity of pleasure attainable only by
the brow-sweating labourer under the curse.
The delights of Knowledge are relative to previous Ignorance; for,
although the possession of knowledge is in many ways a lasting good, yet
the full intensity of the charm is felt only at the moment of passing
from mystery to explanation, from blankness of impression to
intellectual attainment. This form of the pleasure is sustained only by
new acquisitions and new discoveries. Moreover, in the minor forms of
the gratification due to knowledge, we never escape the law of
relativity; the "power" delights us by relation to our previous
impotence. Plato supposed that, in knowledge, we have an example of a
_pure_ pleasure, meaning one that had no reference to foregone privation
or pain; but such "purity" would be a barren fact, not unlike the pure
air of a bladeless and waterless desert. A state of uninterrupted good
health, although a prime condition of enjoyment, is of itself a state of
neutrality or indifference. The man that has never been ill cannot sing
the joys of health; the exultation of that strain is attainable only by
the valetudinarian.
* * * * *
These examples have been remarked upon in every age. It is the moral
weakness of being carried away by a present strong feeling, as if the
state would last for ever, that blinds each of us in turn to the stern
reality of the fact. There are, however, numerous instances, coming
under Relativity, wherein the indispensable correlative is more or less
dropped out of sight and disavowed. These are the proper errors or
fallacies of Relativity, a branch of the comprehensive class termed
"Fallacies of Confusion". The object of the present essay is to exhibit
a few of these errors as they occur in questions of practical moment.
* * * * *
When it is said, as by Carlyle and others, "speech is silvern, silence
is golden," there is implied a condition of things where speech has been
in excess; and but for this excess, the assertion is untrue. One might
as well talk of the delights of hunger, or of cold, or of solitary
confinement, on the ground of there being times when food, warmth, or
society may be in excess, and when the opposing states would be a joyful
change.
The Relativity of Pleasures, although admitted in many individual cases,
has often been misconceived. The view is sometimes expressed, that there
can be no pleasure without a previous pain; but this goes beyond the
exigencies of the principle. We cannot go on for ever with any delight;
but mere remission, without any counterpart pain, is enough for our
entering with zest on many of our pleasures. A healthy man enjoys his
meals without any sensible previous pain of hunger. We do not need to
have been miserable for some time as a preparation for the reading of a
new poem. It is true that if the sense of privation has been acute, the
pleasure is proportionally increased; and that few pleasures of any
great intensity grow up from indifference: still, remission and
alternation may give a zest for enjoyment without any consciousness of
pain.
The principle of Comparison is capriciously made use of by Paley, in his
account of the elements of Happiness. He applies it forcibly and
felicitously to depreciate certain pleasures--as greatness, rank, and
station--and withholds its application from the pleasures that he more
particularly countenances,--namely, the social affections, the exercise
of the faculties, and health.
* * * * *
[SIMPLICITY OF STYLE A RELATIVE MERIT.]
The great praise often accorded to Simplicity of Style, in literature,
is an example of the suppression of the correlative in a case of mutual
relationship. Simplicity is not an absolute merit; it is frequently a
merit by correlation. Thus, if a certain subject has never been treated
except in abstruse and difficult terminology, a man of surpassing
literary powers, setting it forth in homely and intelligible language,
produces a work whose highest praise is expressed by Simplicity. Again,
after the last century period of artificial, complex, and highly-wrought
composition, the reaction of Cowper and Wordsworth in favour of
simplicity was an agreeable and refreshing change, and was in great part
acceptable because of the change. It does not appear that Wordsworth
comprehended this obvious fact; to him, a simplicity that cost nothing
to the composer, and brought no novelty to the reader, had still a
transcendent merit.
* * * * *
It has been a frequent practice of late years to celebrate the praises
of Knowledge. Many eloquent speakers have dilated on the happiness and
the superiority of the enlightened and the cultivated man. Now, the
correlative or obverse must be equally true: there must be a
corresponding degradation and disqualification attaching to ignorance
and the want of instruction. This correlative and equally cogent
statement is suppressed on certain occasions, and by persons that would
not demur to the praises of knowledge: as, when we are told of the
native good sense, the untaught sagacity, the admirable instincts of the
people,--that is, of the ignorant or the uneducated. Hence the great
value of the expository device of following up every principle with its,
counter-statement, the matter denied when the principle is affirmed. If
knowledge is a thing superlatively good, ignorance--the opposite of
knowledge--is a thing superlatively bad. There is no middle standing
ground.
* * * * *
In the way that people use the argument from Authority, there is often
an unfelt contradiction from not adverting to the correlative
implication. If I lay stress upon some one's authority as lending weight
to my opinion, I ought to be equally moved in the opposite direction
when the same authority is against me. The common case, however, is to
make a great flourish when the authority is one way, and to ignore it
when it is the other way. This is especially the fashion in dealing with
the ancient philosophers. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are quoted with
much complacency when they chime in with a modern view; but, in points
where they contradict our cherished sentiments, we treat them with a
kind of pity as half-informed pagans. It is not seen that men liable
to such gross errors as they are alleged to have committed--say on
Ethics--are by that fact deprived of all weight in allied subjects, as,
for example, Politics--in which Aristotle is still quoted as an
authority.
* * * * *
[DIGNITY OF ALL LABOUR ABSURD.]
Many of the sins against Relativity can be traced to rhetorical
exaggeration. Some remarkable instances of this can be cited.
When a system of ranks and dignities has once been established, there
are associations of dignity and of indignity with different conditions
and occupations. It is more dignified to serve in the army than to
engage in trade; to be a surgeon is more honourable than to be a
watchmaker. In this state of things a fervid rhetorician, eager to
redress the inequalities of mankind, starts forth to preach the dignity
of _all_ labour. The device is a self-contradiction. Make all labour
alike dignified, and nothing is dignified; you simply abolish dignity by
depriving it of the contrast that it subsists upon.
Pope's lines--
Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part; there all the honour lies--
cannot be exempted from the fallacy of self-contradiction. Differences
of condition are made by differences in the degree of honour thereto
attached. If every man that did his work well were put on a level, in
point of honour, with every other man that did the same; if the
gatekeeper of a mansion, by being unfailingly punctual in opening the
gate, were to be equally honoured with a great leader of the House of
Commons, then, indeed, equality of pay would be the only thing wanted to
abolish all differences of condition. There is, no doubt, in society, a
quantity of misplaced honour; but so long as there are employments
exceptionally arduous, and virtues signally beneficent in their
operation, honour is a legitimate spur and reward, and should be
graduated according to the desert in each case.
In spurring the ardour of youth to studious exertion, it is common to
repeat the Homeric maxim, "to supplant every one else, and stand out
first". The stimulating effect is undoubted; it is strong rhetorical
brandy. Yet only one man can be first, and the exhortation is given
simultaneously to a thousand.[5]
[JUSTICE ADMIRABLE ONLY IF RECIPROCATED.]
In the discussion and inculcation of the moral duties and virtues, there
has been, in all ages, a tendency to suppress correlative facts, and to
affirm unconditionally what is true only with a condition. Thus, the
admirable nature of Justice, and the happiness of the Just man, are a
proper theme to be extolled with all the power of eloquence. It has been
so with every civilized people, pagan as well as Christian. In the
dialogues of Plato, justice is a prominent subject, and is adorned with
the full splendour of his genius. Aristotle, in one of the few moments
when he rises to poetry, pronounces justice "greater than the
evening-star or the morning-star". Now all this panegyric is admissible
only on the supposition of _reciprocal_ justice. Plato, indeed, had the
hardihood to say that the just man is happy in himself, and by reason of
his justice, even although others are unjust to him; but the position is
untenable. A man is happy in his justice if it procure for him justice
in return; as a citizen is happy in his civil obedience, if it gain him
protection in return. There are two parties in the case, and the
moralist should obtain access to both; he should induce the one to
fulfil his share before promising to the other the happiness of justice
and obedience. It may be rhetorical, but it is not true, that justice
will make a man happy in a society where it is not reciprocated.
Justice, in these circumstances, is highly noble, praiseworthy,
virtuous; but the applying of these lofty compliments is the proof that
it does not bring happiness, and is an attempt to compensate the
deficiency. There is a certain tendency, not very great as human nature
is constituted, for justice to beget justice in return--for social
virtue on one side to procure it on the other side. This is a certain
encouragement to each man to perform his own part, in hope that the
other party concerned may do the same. Still, the reciprocity
occasionally fails, and with that the benefits to the just agent. It is
necessary to urge strongly upon individuals, to impress upon the young,
the necessity of performing their duty to society; it is equally
implied, and equally indispensable, that society should perform its part
to them. The suppressing of the correlative obligation of the State to
the individual leaves a one-sided doctrine; the motive of the
suppression, doubtless, is that society does not often fail of its
duties to the individual, whereas individuals frequently fail of their
duties to society. This may be the fact generally, but not always. It is
not the fact where there are bad laws and corrupt administration. It is
not the fact where the restraints on liberty are greater than the
exigencies of the State demand. It is not the fact, so long as there is
a single vestige of persecution for opinions. To be thoroughly
veracious, for example, in a society that restrains the discussion and
expression of opinions, is more than such a society is entitled to.
* * * * *
[PLEASURES OF BENEVOLENCE CONDITIONAL.]
The same fallacy occurs in an allied theme,--the joys of Love and
Benevolence. That love and benevolence are productive of great happiness
is beyond question; but then the feeling must be mutual, it must be
reciprocated. One-sided love or benevolence is a _virtue_, which is as
much as to say it is _not_ a pleasure. The delights of benevolence are
the delights of reciprocated benevolence; until reciprocated, in some
form, the benevolent man has, strictly speaking, the sacrifice and
nothing more. There is a great reluctance to encounter this simple naked
truth; to state it in theory, at least, for it is fully admitted in
practice. We fence it off by the assumption that benevolence will always
have its reward somehow; that if the objects of it are ungrateful,
others will make good the defect at last. Now these qualifications are
very pertinent, very suitable to be urged after allowing the plain
truth, that benevolence is intrinsically a sacrifice, a painful act; and
that this act is redeemed, and far more than redeemed, by a fair
reciprocity of benevolence. Only such an admission can keep us out of a
mesh of contradictions. Like justice in itself, Benevolence in itself is
painful; any virtue is pain in the first instance, although, when
equally responded to, it brings a surplus of pleasure. There may be acts
of a beneficent tendency that cost the performer nothing, or that even
may chance to be agreeable; but these examples must not be given as the
rule, or the type. It is the essence of virtuous acts, the prevailing
character of the class, to tax the agent, to deprive him of some
satisfaction to himself; this is what we must start from; we are then in
a position to explain how and when, and under what circumstances, and
with what limitations, the virtuous man, whether his virtue be justice
or benevolence, is from that cause a happy man.
* * * * *
It is a fallacy of the suppressed relative to describe virtue as
determined by the _moral nature_ of God, as opposed to his arbitrary
will. The essence of Morality is obedience to a superior, to a Law;
where there is no superior there is nothing either moral or immoral. The
supreme power is incapable of an immoral act. Parliament may do what is
injurious, it cannot do what is illegal. So the Deity may be beneficent
or maleficent, he cannot be moral or immoral.
* * * * *
Among the various ways, proposed in the seventeenth century, of solving
the difficulty of the mutual action of the heterogeneous agencies--matter
and mind--one was a mode of Divine interference, called the "Theory of
Occasional Causes". According to this view, the Deity exerted himself by
a _perpetual miracle_ to bring about the mental changes corresponding to
the physical agents operating on our senses--light, sound, &c. Now in
the mode of action suggested there is nothing self-contradictory; but in
the use of the word "miracle" there is a mistake of relativity. The
meaning of a miracle is an exceptional interference; it supposes an
habitual state of things, from which it is a deviation. The very idea of
miracle is abolished if every act is to be alike miraculous.
* * * * *
[MYSTERY CORRELATES WITH THE INTELLIGIBLE.]
We shall devote the remainder of this exposition to a still more notable
class of mistakes due to the suppression of a correlative member in a
relative couple--those, namely, connected with the designation,
"Mystery," a term greatly abused, in various ways, and especially by
disregarding its relative character. Mystery supposes certain things
that are plain, intelligible, knowable, revealed; and, by contrast to
these, refers to certain other things that are obscure, unintelligible,
unknowable, unrevealed. When a man's conduct is entirely plain,
straightforward, or accounted for, we call that an intelligible case;
when we are perplexed by the tortuosities of a crafty, double-dealing
person, we say it is all very mysterious. So, in nature, we consider
that we understand certain phenomena: such as gravity, and all its
consequences, in the fall of bodies, the flow of rivers, the motions of
the planets, the tides. On the other hand, earthquakes and volcanoes are
very mysterious; we do not know what they depend upon, how or in what
circumstances they are produced. Some of the operations of living bodies
are understood,--as the heart's action in the mechanical propulsion of
the blood; others, and the greater number, are mysterious, as the whole
process of germination and growth. Now the existence of the contrast
between things plainly understood, and things not understood, gives one
distinct meaning to the term Mystery. In some cases, a mystery is formed
by an apparent contradiction, as in the Theological mystery of Free-will
and Divine Foreknowledge; here, too, there is a contrast with the great
mass of consistent and reconcilable things. But now, when we are told by
sensational writers, that _everything is mysterious;_ that the simplest
phenomenon in nature--the fall of a stone, the swing of a pendulum, the
continuance of a ball shot in the air--are wonderful, marvellous,
miraculous, our understanding is confounded; there being then nothing
plain at all, there is nothing mysterious. The wonderful rises from the
common; as the lofty is lofty by relation to something lower: if there
is nothing common, then there is nothing wonderful; if all phenomena are
mysterious, nothing is mysterious; if we are to stand aghast in
amazement because three times four is twelve, what phenomenon can we
take as the type of the plain and the intelligible? You must always keep
up a standard of the common, the easy, the comprehensible, if you are to
regard other things as wonderful, difficult, inexplicable.
[LOCKE ON THE LIMITS OF THE UNDERSTANDING.]
The real character of a MYSTERY, and what constitutes the Explanation of
a fact, have been greatly misconceived. The changes of view on these
points make up a chapter in the history of the education of the human
mind. Perhaps the most decisive turning point was the publication of
Locke's "Essay concerning Human Understanding," the motive of which, as
stated in the homely and forcible language of the preface, was to
ascertain what our understandings can do, what subjects they are fit to
deal with, and where they should stop. I quote a few sentences:--
"If by this inquiry into the nature of the Understanding, I can discover
the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any
degree proportionate; and where they fail us: I suppose it may be of
use, to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in
meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at
the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of
those things which, upon examination, are proved to be beyond the reach
of our capacities." "The candle that is set up in us, shines bright
enough for all our purposes. The discoveries we can make with this ought
to satisfy us. And we shall then use our Understandings aright, when we
entertain all objects in that way and proportion that they are suited to
our faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable of being proposed
to us." "It is of great use for the sailor to know the length of his
line, though he cannot fathom with it all the depths of the ocean."
The course of physical science was preparing the same salutary lesson.
Locke's great contemporary and friend, Isaac Newton, was his
fellow-worker in this tutorial undertaking; nor should Bacon be
forgotten, although there is dispute as to the extent and character of
his influence. The combined operation of these great leaders of thought
was apparent in the altered views of scientific inquirers as to what is
competent in research--what is the proper aim of inquiry. There arose a
disposition to abandon the pursuit of mysterious essences and grand
pervading unities, and ascertain with precision the facts and the laws
of natural phenomena. The study of astronomy was inaugurated in
Greenwich Observatory. The experiments of Priestley and of Franklin
farther exemplified the eighteenth-century key to the secrets of the
universe.
The lesson imparted by Newton and Locke and their successors still
remains to be carried out and embodied in the subtler inquiries. The
bearing upon what constitutes a Mystery, and what constitutes
Explanation, or the accounting for appearances, may be expressed thus:--
In the first place, the Understanding can never pass out of its own
experience--its acquired knowledge, whether of body or of mind. What we
obtain by our various sensibilities to the world about us, and by our
self-consciousness, are the foundation, the ABC of everything that we
are capable of knowing. We know colours, and we know sound; we know
pleasure and pain, and the various emotions of wonder, fear, love,
anger. If there be any being endowed with senses different from ours,
with that being we can have no communion. If there be any phenomena that
escape our limited sensibilities, they transcend the possibility of our
knowledge.
It is necessary, however, to take account of the combining or
constructive aptitudes of the mind. We can go a certain length in
putting together our alphabet of sensation and experience into many
various compounds. We can imagine a paradise or a pandemonium; but only
as made up of our own knowledge of things good and evil. The limits of
this constructive power are soon reached. We are baffled to enter into
the feelings of our own kindred, when they are far removed in character
and circumstances from ourselves. The youth at twenty cannot approximate
to the feelings of men of middle age. The healthy are unable to
comprehend the life of the invalid.
[TIME AND SPACE RELATIVE TO OUR FACULTIES.]
To come to the practical applications. The great leading notions called
Time and Space are known to us only under the conditions of our own
sensibility. Time is made known by all our actions, all our senses, all
our feelings, and by the succession of our thoughts; it is experienced
as a continuance and a repetition of movement, sight, sound, fear, or
any other state of feeling, or of thinking. One motion or sensation is
continued longer than another; or it is more frequently repeated after
intermission, giving the _numerical_ estimate of time, as in the beats
of the pendulum. In these ways we form estimates of seconds, minutes,
hours, days. And our constructive faculty can be brought into play to
conceive the larger tracts of duration--a century, or a hundred
centuries. Nay, by our arithmetical powers we can put down in cipher,
or conceive _symbolically_ (which is the meagrest of all conceptions)
millions of millions of centuries; these being after all but compounds
of our alphabet of enduring or repeated sensations and thoughts. We can
suppose this arithmetical process to operate upon past duration or upon
future duration, and there is no limit to the numbers that we can write
down. But there is one thing that we cannot do; we cannot fix upon a
point when Time or succession began, or upon a point when it will cease.
That is an operation not in keeping with our faculties; the very
supposition is impracticable. We cannot entertain the notion of a state
of things wherein the fact of continuance had no place; the effort
belies itself. Time is inseparable from our mental nature; whatever we
imagine, we must imagine as enduring. Some philosophers have supposed
that we must be endowed by nature with the conception of Time, before we
begin to exercise our senses; but the difficulty would be to deprive us
of that adjunct without extinguishing our mental nature. Give us
sensibility, and you cannot withhold the element of Time. The
supposition of Kant and others, that it is implanted in us as an empty
form, before we begin to employ our senses upon things, is needless; for
as soon as we move, see, hear, think, are pleased or pained, we create
time. And our notion of Time in general is exactly what these
sensibilities make it, only enlarged by our constructive power already
spoken of.
[MATTER AND VOID SUPPLEMENTARY.]
While all our senses and feelings give us time, it is our experience of
Motion and Resistance,--the energetic or active side of our nature
alone,--that gives us Space. The simplest feature of Space is the
alternation of Resistance and Non-Resistance, of obstructed motion and
freedom to move. The hand presses dead upon an obstacle; the obstacle
gives way and allows free motion; these two contrasting experiences are
the elements of the two contrasting facts--Matter and Space. By none of
the five senses, in their pure and proper character as senses, can we
obtain these experiences; and hence at an earlier stage of inquiry into
the mind, when our knowledge-giving sensibilities were referred to the
five senses, there was no adequate account of the notion of Space or
Extension. Space includes more than this simple contrast of the
resisting and the non-resisting; it includes what we call the
Co-existing or Contemporaneous, the great aggregate of the outspread
world, as existing at any moment, a somewhat complicated attainment,
which I am not now specially concerned with. It sufficiently illustrates
the limitation of our knowledge by our sensibilities, from the nature of
space, to fasten attention on the double and mutually supplementing
experience of Matter and Void; the one resisting movement, and giving
the consciousness of resistance, or dead strain, the other permitting
movement, and giving the consciousness of the unobstructed sweep of the
limbs or members. Whatever else may be in space, this freedom to move,
to soar, to expatiate (in contrast to being hemmed in, obstructed, held
fast), is an essential part of the conception, and is formed out of our
active or moving sensibilities. Now, as far as movement is concerned, we
must be in one of two states;--we must be putting forth energy without
effecting movement, being met by obstacles called matter; or we must be
putting forth energy unresisted and effecting movement, which is what we
mean by empty space. There is no third position in the matter of putting
forth our active energy. Where resistance ends and freedom begins, there
is space; where freedom ends, and obstruction begins, there is matter.
We find our sentient life to be made up, as regards movement, of a
certain number and range of these two alternations; in other words, free
spaces and resisting barriers. And we can, by the constructive power
already mentioned, imagine other proportions of the two experiences; we
can imagine the scope for movement, the absence of obstruction, to be
enlarged more and more, to be counted by thousands and millions of
miles; but the only terminus or boundary that we can imagine is
resistance, a dead obstacle. We are able to conceive the starry spaces
widened and prolonged from galaxy to galaxy through enormous strides of
increasing amplitude, but when we try to think an end to this career, we
can think only of a dead wall. There is no other end of space within the
grasp of our faculties; and that termination is not an end of extension;
for we know that solid matter, viewed in other ways than as obstructing
movement, has the same property of the extended belonging to the empty
void. The inference is, that the limitation of our means of knowledge
renders altogether incompetent the imagination of an end to either Time
or Space. The greatest efforts of our combining faculty cannot exceed
the elements presented to it, and these elements contain nothing that
would set forth the situation of space ending, and obstruction not
beginning.
[ARE TIME AND SPACE INFINITE?]
Under these circumstances, it is an irrevelant enquiry, to ask, Are Time
and Space finite or infinite? Many philosophers have put the question,
and even answered it. They say Time has no beginning and no end, and
Space has no boundaries; or, as otherwise expressed,--Time and Space are
Infinite: an answer of such vagueness as to mean anything, from a
harmless and proper assertion of the limits of our faculties, up to the
verge of extravagance and self-contradiction.
When, in fact, people talk of the Infinite in Time and Space, they can
point to one intelligible signification; as to the rest, this word is
not a subject for scientific propositions, and the attempt at such can
lead only to contradictions. The Infinite is a phrase most various in
its purport: it is for the most part an emotional word, expressing human
desire and aspiration; a word of poetry, imagination, and preaching, not
a word to be discussed under science; no intellectual definition would
exhibit its emotional force.
The second property of our intelligence is, that we can generalise many
facts into one. Tracing agreement among the multifarious appearances of
things, we can comprehend in one statement a vast number of details. The
single law of gravity expresses the fall of a stone, the flow of rivers,
the retention of the moon in her circuit round the earth. Now, this
generalising sweep is a real advance in our knowledge, an ascent in the
matter of intelligence, a step towards centralising the empire of
science. What is more, this is the only real meaning of EXPLANATION.
A difficulty is solved, a mystery unriddled; when it can be shown to
resemble something else; to be an example of a fact already known.
Mystery is isolation, exception, or, it may be, apparent contradiction;
the resolution of the mystery is found in assimilation, identity,
fraternity. When all things are assimilated, so far as assimilation can
go, so far as likeness holds, there is an end to explanation; there is
an end to what the mind can do, or can intelligently desire.
[GRAVITY NOT A MYSTERY.]
Thus, when Gravity was generalised, by assimilating the terrestrial
attraction seen in falling bodies with the celestial attraction of the
sun and planets; and when, by fair presumption, the same power was
extended to the remote stars; when, also, the _law_ was ascertained, so
that the movements of the various bodies could be computed and
predicted, there was nothing further to be done; explanation was
exhausted. Unless we can find some other force to fraternise with
gravity, so that the two might become a still more comprehensive unity,
we must rest in gravity as the ultimatum of our faculties. There is no
conceivable modification, or substitute, that would better our position.
Before Newton, it was a mystery what kept the moon and the planets in
their places; the assimilation with falling bodies was the solution.
But, say many persons, is not gravity itself a mystery? We say No;
gravity has passed through all the stages of legitimate and possible
explanation; it is the most highly generalised of all physical facts,
and by no assignable transformation could it be made more intelligible
than it is. It is singularly easy of comprehension; its law is exactly
known; and, excepting the details of calculation, in its more complex
workings, there is nothing to complain of, nothing to rectify, nothing
to pretend ignorance about; it is the very pattern, the model, the
consummation of knowledge. The path of science, as exhibited in modern
times, is towards generality, wider and wider, until we reach the
highest, the widest laws of every department of things; there
explanation is finished, mystery ends, perfect vision is gained.
* * * * *
What is always reckoned the mystery by pre-eminence is the union of BODY
and MIND. How, then, should we treat this Mystery according to the
spirit of modern thought, according to the modern laws of explanation?
The course is to _conceive_ the elements according to the only possible
plan, our own sensibility or consciousness; which gives us matter as one
class of facts--extension, inertness, weight, and so on; and mind as
another class of facts--pleasures, pains, volitions, ideas. The
difference between these two is total, diametrical, complete; there is
really nothing common to the experience of pleasure and the experience
of a tree; difference has here reached its _acme_; agreement is
eliminated; there is no higher genus to include these two in one; as the
ultimate, the highest elements of knowledge, they admit of 110 fusion,
no resolution, no unity. Our utmost flight of generality leaves us in
possession of a double, a _couple_ of absolutely heterogeneous elements.
Matter cannot be resolved into mind; mind cannot be resolved into
matter; each has its own definition; each negatives the other.
This being the fact, we accept it, and acquiesce. There is surely
nothing to be dissatisfied with, to complain of, in the circumstance
that the elements of our experience are, in the last resort, two, and
not one. If we had been provided with fifty ultimate experiences, none
of them having a single property in common with any other; and if we had
only our present limited intellects, we might be entitled to complain
of the world's mysteriousness in the one proper acceptation of
mystery--namely, as overpowering our means of comprehension, as loading
us with unassimilable facts. As it is, matter, in its commoner aspects
and properties, is perfectly intelligible; in the great number and
variety of its endowments or properties, it is revealed to us slowly and
with much difficulty, and these subtle properties--the deep affinities
and molecular arrangements--- are the mysteries rightly so called. Mind
in itself is also intelligible; a pleasure is as intelligible as would
be any transmutation of it into the inscrutable essence that people
often desiderate. It is one of the facts of our sensibility, and has
a great many facts of its own kindred, which makes it all the more
intelligible.
The varieties of pleasure, pain, and emotion are very numerous; and to
know, remember, and classify them, is a work of labour, a _legitimate_
mystery. The subtle links of thought are also very various, although
probably all reducible to a small number; and the ascertaining and
following out of these has been a work of labour and time; they have,
therefore, been mysterious; mystery and intellectual toil being the real
correlatives. The _complications_ of matter and the _complications_ of
mind are genuine mysteries; the reducing or simplifying of these
complications, by the exertions of thinking men, is the way, and the
only way out of the darkness into light.
[UNION OF MIND AND BODY.]
But what now of the mysterious _union_ of the two great ultimate facts
of human experience? What should the followers of Newton and Locke say
to this crowning instance of deep and awful mystery? Only one answer can
be given. Accept the union, and generalise it. Find out the fewest
number of simple laws, such as will express all the phenomena of this
conjoint life. Resolve into the highest possible generalities the
connections of pleasure and pain, with all the physical stimulants of
the senses--food, tastes, odours, sounds, lights--with all the play of
feature and of gesture, and all the resulting movements and bodily
changes; and when you have done that, you have so far truly, fully,
finally explained the union of body and mind. Extend your generalities
to the course of the thoughts; determine what physical changes accompany
the memory, the reason, the imagination, and express those changes in
the most general, comprehensive laws, and you have explained the how and
the why brain causes thought, and thought works in brain. There is no
other explanation needful, no other competent, no other that would be
explanation. Instead of our being "unfortunate," as is sometimes said,
in not being able to know the essence of either matter or mind--in not
comprehending their union; our misfortune would be to have to know
anything different from what we do or may know. If there be still much
mystery attaching to this linking of the two extreme facts of our
experience, it is simply this: that we have made so little way in
ascertaining what in one goes with what in the other. We know a good
deal about the feelings and their alliances, some of which are open and
palpable to all mankind; and we have obtained some important
generalities in these alliances. Of the connections of thought with
physical changes we know very little: these connections, therefore,
are truly and properly mysterious; but they are not intrinsically or
hopelessly so. The advancing study of the physical organs, on the one
hand, and of the mental functions, on the other, may gradually abate
this mystery. And if a day arrive when the links that unite our
intellectual workings with the workings of the nervous system and the
other bodily organs shall be fully ascertained and adequately
generalised, no one thoroughly educated in the scientific spirit of the
last two centuries will call the union of mind and body any longer
inscrutable or mysterious.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: _Fortnightly Review_, October, 1868.]
[Footnote 5: We may here recall an incident highly characteristic of the
late Earl of Carlisle. Being elected on one occasion to the office of
Lord Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen, he had to deliver an address
to the students on the usual topics of diligence and hopefulness in
their studious career. Referring for a model to the addresses of former
rectors, he found, in that of his immediate predecessor, Lord Eglinton,
the Homeric sentiment above alluded to. It grated harshly on his mind,
and he avowed the fact to the students, he could not reconcile himself
to the elevating of one man upon the humiliation of all the rest. In a
strain more befitting a civilized age, he urged upon his hearers the
pursuit of excellence as such, without involving as a necessary
accompaniment the supplanting or throwing down of other men. He probably
did not sufficiently guard himself against a fallacy of Relativity; for
excellence is purely comparative; it subsists upon inferior grades of
attainment: still, there are many modes of it shared in by a great
number, and not confined to one or a few.]
* * * * *
III.
THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS[6]
1. HISTORICAL SKETCH.
Up to the year 1853, the appointing of Civil Servants lay wholly in the
hands of patrons. In 1853, patronage was severely condemned and
competitive examination officially recommended, for the first time, in a
Report by Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan; but, while
the recommendation was taken up in the following year and immediately
acted upon in the Indian Civil Service, it was not till very much later
that it was fully adopted in the Home Service. The history, indeed, of
this last is somewhat peculiar. After the Report already referred to,
came an Order of Council, of date May 21, 1855, in which we find it
"ordered that all such young men as may be proposed to be appointed to
any junior situation in any department of the Civil Service shall,
before they are admitted to probation, be examined by or under the
Directors of the said Commissioners, and shall receive from them a
Certificate of Qualification for such situation". This order was
rigorously carried out by the Commissioners, and, although its absolute
requirement was simply that the nominees should pass a certain
examination, it, nevertheless, allowed the heads of departments to
institute competition if they cared. Accordingly, we find that
competition--_but limited_--was immediately set on foot in several of
the offices, and the result led to the following remark in the Report of
1856:--
"We do not think it within our province to discuss the expediency of
adopting the principle of open competition as contra-distinguished from
examination; but we must remark that, both in the competitive
examination for clerkships in our own and in other offices, those who
have succeeded in attaining the appointments have appeared to us to
possess considerably higher attainments than those who have come in upon
simple nomination; and, we may add, that we cannot doubt that if it be
adopted as a usual course to nominate several candidates to compete for
each vacancy, the expectation of this ordeal will act most beneficially
on the education and industry of those young persons who are looking
forward to public employment."
In 1857, a near approach was made to open competition, in the case of
four clerkships awarded by the competing examination in the
Commissioners' own establishment. "The fact of the competition was not
made public, but was communicated to one or two heads of schools and
colleges, and mentioned casually to other persons at various times. The
number of competitors who presented themselves was forty-six, of which
number, forty-four were actually examined."
[BEGINNING OF OPEN COMPETITION.]
It was reserved for 1858 to see the first absolutely open competition,
in the case of eight writerships in the Office of the Secretary of State
for India; and in that year, too, a step in advance was made when the
Commissioners in their Report "pointed out the advantage which would
result from enlarging the field of competition by substituting, for the
plan of nominating three persons only to compete for each vacant
situation, the system of nominating a proportionate number of candidates
to compete for several appointments at one examination".
The year 1860 sounded the death-knell of simple pass examination. It was
then recommended by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and the
recommendation was adopted, that the competitive method, in its limited
form, should be henceforth _universally_ applied to junior situations.
This recommendation was at once acted upon in the case of clerkships
under the control of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and others
by and by followed; but, as matter of fact, it was never strictly
carried out in all its scope and rigour; and as late as 1868 the
Commissioners in their Report stated that "the number of situations
filled on the competitive method has been comparatively small".
Meanwhile, competitive examination was making way in other quarters.
From 1857, the Commissioners had been in the habit of examining
competitively, at the request of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, such
candidates as might be nominated for cadetships in the Royal Irish
Constabulary; and, in 1861, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty
"threw open to public competition" appointments as apprentices in Her
Majesty's dockyards, and appointments as "engineer students" in the
steam factories connected therewith.
In 1870, the end so long aimed at was attained, and by an Order in
Council of June 4, open competition was made the only door of entry to
the general Civil Service.
In entire contrast with this, as has been already said, was the action
in the case of the Indian Civil Service. Here the principle of open
competition was adopted from the first, and the examination took a very
elevated start, comprising the highest branches of a learned education.
These branches were duly specified in a Report drawn up in November,
1854, by a Committee, of which Lord Macaulay was chairman; and, with the
exception of Sanskrit and Arabic, they included simply (as might have
been expected) the literary and scientific subjects ordinarily taught at
the principal seats of general education in the Kingdom. These were:--
English Language and Literature (Composition, History, and General
Literature,--to each of which 500 marks were assigned, making a total of
1,500); Greek and Latin (each with 750 marks); French, German, and
Italian (valued at 375 marks, respectively); Mathematics, pure and mixed
(marks 1,000); Natural and Moral Sciences (each 500); Sanscrit and
Arabic (375 each).
[PRINCIPLE OF SELECTION OF SUBJECTS.]
The principle of selection here is clear and obvious. It did not rest
upon any doctrine regarding the utility or value of subjects for mental
training, but simply upon this, that those subjects already in the field
must be accepted, and that (as Mr. Jowett, in his letter to Sir Charles
Trevelyan, of January, 1854, put it) "it will not do to frame our
examination on any mere theory of education. We must test a young man's
ability by what he knows, not by what we wish him to know." Indeed, this
is explicitly avowed in the Report by the author of the Scheme himself.
The Natural Sciences are included, because (it is confessed) "of late
years they have been introduced as a part of general education into
several of our universities and colleges": and, as for the Moral
Sciences, "those Sciences are, it is well known, much studied both at
Oxford and at the Scottish Universities".
Into the details of Macaulay's interesting Report, I need not here
enter. Room, however, must be found for one quotation. It deals with the
distribution of marks, and is both characteristic and puts the matter in
small compass. "It will be necessary," says the writer, "that a certain
number of marks should be assigned to each subject, and that the place
of a candidate should be determined by the sum total of the marks which
he has gained. The marks ought, we conceive, to be distributed among the
subjects of examination in such a manner that no part of the kingdom,
and no class of schools, shall exclusively furnish servants to the East
India Company. It would be grossly unjust, for example, to the great
academical institutions of England, not to allow skill in Greek and
Latin versification to have a considerable share in determining the
issue of the competition. Skill in Greek and Latin versification has,
indeed, no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a
diplomatist. But the youth who does best what all the ablest and most
ambitious youths about him are trying to do well will generally prove a
superior man; nor can we doubt that an accomplishment by which Fox and
Canning, Grenville and Wellesley, Mansfield and Tenterden first
distinguished themselves above their fellows, indicates powers of mind,
which, properly trained and directed, may do great service to the State.
On the other hand, we must remember that in the north of this island the
art of metrical composition in the ancient languages is very little
cultivated, and that men so eminent as Dugald Stewart, Horner, Jeffrey,
and Mackintosh, would probably have been quite unable to write a good
copy of Latin alcaics, or to translate ten lines of Shakspeare into
Greek iambics. We wish to see such a system of examination established
as shall not exclude from the service of the East India Company either
a Mackintosh or a Tenterden, either a Canning or a Horner."
[ORIGINAL SCHEME FOR THE INDIA SERVICE.]
Now, reverting to Macaulay's Table of Subjects as above exhibited, I may
observe that, till quite recently, no very serious alterations were ever
made upon it. The scale of marks, indeed, was altered more than once,
and sometimes Sanskrit and Arabic were struck off, and Jurisprudence and
Political Economy put in their stead; but, if we except the exclusion of
Political Philosophy in 1858, at the desire of the present Lord Derby,
from the Moral Science branch, the list remained, till Lord Salisbury's
late innovation, to all intents and purposes what it was at the
beginning. Here, for instance, is the prescription for 1875:--
MAKES
English Composition 500
History of England, including that of the laws
and constitution 500
English Language and Literature 500
Language, literature, and history of Greece 750
Rome 750
France 375
Germany 375
Italy 375
Mathematics, pure and mixed 1,250
Natural Sciences, that is, (1) chemistry, including
heat; (2) electricity and magnetism; (3) geology
and mineralogy; (4) zoology; (5) botany 1,000
*** The total (1,000) marks may be obtained by
adequate proficiency in any two or more of the five
branches of science included under this head.
Moral Sciences, that is, logic, mental and
moral philosophy 500
Sanskrit, language and literature 500
Arabic, language and literature 500
But Lord Salisbury's changes have been great and sweeping. They are
probably in keeping with the restriction of the competitor's age to
"over 17 under 19"; but, if so, they serve only to shew all the more
conclusively that the restriction is a mistake. A scheme that
distributes marks on anything but a rational and intelligent system; a
scheme that excludes the Natural History Sciences, mineralogy and
Geology, as well as Psychology and Moral Philosophy from its scope
altogether; a scheme that prescribes only _Elements_ and _Outlines_ of
such important subjects as Natural Science (Chemistry, Electricity and
Magnetism, &c.) and Political Economy--stands self-condemned. But, to do
it justice, let us produce the Table _in extenso_:--
MAKES.
English Composition 300
History of England, including _a period selected_
by the candidate 300
English Literature including _books selected_ by
the candidate 300
Greek 600
Latin 800
French 500
German 500
Italian 400
Mathematics, pure and mixed 1,000
Natural Science, that is, the _Elements_ of any
two of the following Sciences viz.:--
Chemistry, 500; Electricity and Magnetism,
300; Experimental Laws of Heat and Light,
300; Mechanical Philosophy, with _Outlines_
of Astronomy, 300.
Logic 300
_Elements_ of Political Economy 300
Sanskrit 500
Arabic 500
Further remarks are reserved for the sequel. Meanwhile,
I give the scheme advocated by myself in the
present Essay:--
GENERAL SCIENCES:--
Mathematics 500
Natural Philosophy 500
Chemistry 500
Biology, as physiology 500
Mental Science 500
SPECIAL OR CONCRETE SCIENCES:--
Mineralogy }
Botany } each 250
Zoology } or 300
Geology }
As a substitute for language, literature, and philosophy
of Greece, Rome, France, Germany, and Italy:--
Greece--Institutions and History 500
Literature 250
Rome--Institutions and History 500
Literature 250
France--Literature 250
Germany--Literature 250
Italy--Literature 250
Modern History 1,000
* * * * *
II. THE SCHEME CONSIDERED.
The system of competitive examinations for the public service, of which
I have laid before the Section a brief history compiled from the
Reports, is one of those radical innovations that may ultimately lead to
great consequences. For the present, however, it leads to many debates.
Not merely does the working out of the scheme involve conflicting views,
but there is still, in many quarters, great hesitation as to whether the
innovation is to be productive of good or of evil. The Report of the
Playfair Commission, and the more recent Report relative to the changes
in the India Civil Service Regulations, indicate pretty broadly the
doubts that still cleave to many minds on the whole question. It is
enough to refer to the views of Sir Arthur Helps, W.R. Greg, and Dr.
Farr, expressed to the Playfair Commission, as decidedly adverse to the
competitive system. The authorities cited in the Report on the India
Examinations scarcely go the length of total condemnation; but many
acquiesce only because there is no hope of a reversal.
The question of the expediency of the system as a whole is not well
suited to a sectional discussion. We shall be much better employed in
adverting to some of those details in the conduct of the examinations
that have a bearing on the general education of the country, as well as
on the Civil Service itself. It was very well for the Commissioners, at
first starting, to be guided, in their choice of subjects and in their
assigning of values to those subjects, by the received branches of
education in the schools and colleges. But, sooner or later, these
subjects must be discussed on their intrinsic merits for the ends in
view. Indeed, the scheme of Lord Salisbury has already made the venture
that Macaulay declined to make; it has absolutely excluded some of the
best recognised subjects of our school and college teaching, instead of
leaving them to the option of the candidates.
I will occupy the present paper with the consideration of two
departments in the examination programme--the one relating to the
PHYSICAL or NATURAL SCIENCES, the other relating to LANGUAGES.
* * * * *
[COMMISSIONER' SCHEME OF SCIENCE.]
The Commissioners' scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science is not, in
my opinion, accordant either with the best views of the relations of the
sciences, or with the best teaching usages.
In the classification of the Sciences, the first and most important
distinction is between the fundamental sciences, sometimes called the
Abstract sciences, and the derivative or Concrete branches. My purpose
does not require any nice clearing of the meanings of those technical
terms. It is sufficient to say that the fundamental sciences are those
that embrace distinct departments of the natural forces or phenomena;
and the derivative or concrete departments assume all the laws laid down
in the others, and apply them in certain spheres of natural objects. For
example, Chemistry is a primary, fundamental, or abstract science; and
Mineralogy is a derivative and concrete science. In Chemistry the stress
lies in explaining a peculiar kind of force, called chemical force; in
Mineralogy the stress is laid on the description and classification of
a select group of natural objects.
The fundamental, or departmental sciences, as most commonly accepted,
are these:--1. Mathematics; 2. Natural Philosophy, or Physics; 3.
Chemistry; 4. Biology; 5. Psychology. They may be, therefore, expressed
as Formal, Inanimate, Animate, and Mental. In these sciences, the idea
is to view exhaustively some department of natural phenomena, and to
assume the order best suited for the elucidation of the phenomena.
Mathematics, the Formal Science, exhausts the relations of Quantity
and Number; measure being a universal property of things. Natural
Philosophy, in its two divisions (molar and molecular), deals with one
kind of force; Chemistry with another: and the two together conspire to
exhaust the phenomena of _inanimate_ nature; being indispensably aided
by the laws and formulae of quantity, as given in Mathematics. Biology
turns over a new leaf; it takes up the phenomenon--Life, or the
_animated_ world. Finally, Psychology makes another stride, and embraces
the sphere of _mind_.
Now, there is no fact or phenomenon of the world that is not comprised
under the doctrines expounded in some one or other of these sciences.
We may have fifty "ologies" besides, but they will merely repeat for
special ends, or in special connections, the principles already
comprised in these five fundamental subjects. The regular, systematic,
exhaustive account of the laws of nature is to be found within their
compass.
[ORDER OF THE FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES.]
Again, these sciences have a fixed order or sequence, the order of
dependence. Mathematics precedes them all, as being not dependent upon
any, while all are more or less dependent upon it. The physical forces
have to be viewed prior to the chemical; and both physical and chemical
forces are preparatory to vital. So there are reasons for placing Mental
Science last of all. Hence a student cannot comprehend chemistry without
natural philosophy, nor biology without both. You cannot stand a thorough
examination in chemistry without indirectly showing your knowledge of
physics; and a testing examination in biology would guarantee, with some
slight qualifications, both physics and chemistry.
Let us now turn to the other sciences--those that are not fundamental,
but derivative. The chief examples are the three commonly called Natural
History sciences--Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology. In these sciences no law
or principle is at work that has not been already brought forward in
the primary sciences. The properties of a Mineral are mathematical,
physical, and chemical: the testing of minerals is by measurement, by
physical tests, by chemical tests. The aim of this science is not to
teach forces unknown to the student of physics and chemistry; it is to
embrace, under the best classification, all the bodies called minerals,
and to describe the species in detail under mathematical, physical, and
chemical characters. It is the first in order of the _classificatory_
sciences. Its purpose in the economy of education is distinct and
peculiar; it imparts knowledge, not respecting laws, forces, or
principles of operating, but respecting the concrete constituents of
the world. It gives us a commanding view of one whole department of
the material universe; supplying information useful in practice, and
interesting to the feelings. It also brings into exercise the great
logical process, wanted on many occasions, the process of
CLASSIFICATION.
[CLASSIFICATORY SCIENCES.]
So much for an instance from the Inorganic world, as showing the
distinction between the two kinds of sciences. Another example may be
cited from the field of Biology; it is a little more perplexing. For
"biology" is sometimes given as the name for the two concrete
classificatory sciences--botany and zoology. In point of fact, however,
there is a science that precedes those two branches, although blending
with them; the science commonly expressed by the older term,
'Physiology,' which is not a classificatory and a dependent science, but
a mother science, like chemistry. It expounds the peculiarities of
living bodies, as such, and the laws of living processes--such processes
as assimilation, nutrition, respiration, innervation, reproduction, and
so on. One division is Vegetable Physiology, which is generally fused
with the classificatory science of botany. Animal Physiology is allied
with zoology, but more commonly stands alone. Lastly, the Physiology of
the Human animal has been from time immemorial a distinct branch of
knowledge, and is, of course, the chief of them all. Man being the most
complicated of all organised beings, not only are the laws of his
vitality the most numerous, and the most practically interesting, but
they go far to include all that is to be said of the workings of animal
life in general. Thus, then, the mother science of Biology, as a general
or fundamental science, comprises Vegetable, Animal, and Human
physiology. The classificatory adjunct sciences are Botany and Zoology.
It is in the various aspects of the mother science that we look for the
account of all vital phenomena, and all practical applications to the
preservation of life. Even if we stop at these, we shall have a full
command of the laws of the animate world. But we may go farther, and
embrace the sciences that arrange, classify, and describe the
innumerable host of living beings. These have their own independent
interest and value, but they are not the sciences that of themselves
teach us the living processes.
Thus, then, a proper scheme of scientific instruction starts from the
essential, fundamental, and law-giving sciences--Mathematics, Physics,
Chemistry, Biology, and Mind. It then proceeds to the adjunct branches
--such as Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology: and I might add others, as
Geology, Meteorology, Geography, no one of which is primary; for they
all repeat in new connections, and for special purposes, the laws
systematically set forth in the primary sciences.
In the foregoing remarks, I do not advance any new or debatable views.
I believe the scientific world to be substantially in accord upon all
that I have here stated; any differences that there are in the manner
of expressing the points do not affect my present purpose--namely, to
discuss the scheme of the mathematical and physical sciences as set
forth in the Civil Service Examinations.
[BAD GROUPINGS OF SCIENCES.]
Under Mathematics (pure and mixed) the Commissioners (in their Scheme of
1875), include mathematics, properly so called, and those departments of
natural philosophy that are mathematically handled--statics, dynamics,
and optics. But the next branch, entitled "Natural Science," is what I
am chiefly to remark upon. Under it there is a fivefold enumeration:
--(1) Chemistry, including Heat; (2) Electricity and Magnetism; (3)
Geology and Mineralogy; (4) Zoology; (5) Botany. I cannot pretend to say
where the Commissioners obtained this arrangement of natural knowledge.
It is not supported by any authority that I am acquainted with. If the
scheme just set forth is the correct one, it has _three_ defects. First,
it does not embrace in one group the remaining parts of natural
philosophy, the _experimental_ branches which, with the mathematical
treatment, complete the department; one of these, Heat, is attached to
chemistry, to which undoubtedly it has important relations, but not such
as to withdraw it from physics and embody it in chemistry. Then, again,
the physical branches, Electricity and Magnetism, are coupled in a
department and made of co-equal value with chemistry together with heat.
I need not say that the united couple--electricity and magnetism--is in
point of extent of study not a half or a third of what is included in
the other coupling. Lastly, the three remaining members of the
enumeration are three natural history sciences; geology being coupled
with mineralogy--which is a secondary consideration. Now I think it
is quite right that these three sciences should have a place in the
competition. What is objectionable is, that Biology is represented
solely by its two classificatory components or adjuncts, botany and
zoology; there is no mother science of Physiology: and consequently the
knowledge of the vast region of the Laws of Life goes for nothing. Nor
can it be said that physiology is given with the others. The subject of
_vegetable_ physiology could easily enough be taken with Botany: I would
not make a quarrel upon this part. It is zoology and animal physiology
that cannot be so coupled. If we look to the questions actually set
under zoology, we shall see that there is no pretence to take in
physiology. I contend, therefore, that there is a radical omission in
the scheme of natural science; an omission that seems without any
justification. I am not here to sing the praises of Physiology: its
place is fixed and determined by the concurrence of all competent
judges: I merely point out that Zoology does not include it, but
presupposes it.
The Science scheme of the London University, to which the first Civil
Service Commissioners, Sir Edward Ryan and Sir John Lefevre, were
parties, is very nearly what I contend for. It gives the
order--Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Biology, Mental
Science (including Logic). In the working of that scheme, however,
Biology is made to comprehend both the mother science, Physiology, and
the two classificatory sciences, Botany and Zoology. Of course the
presence of two such enormous adjuncts cramps and confines the purely
physiological examination, which in my opinion should have full justice
done to it in the first instance: still, the physiology is not
suppressed nor reduced to a mere formality. Now, in any science scheme,
I would provide for the general sciences first, and take the others, so
far as expedient, in a new grouping, where those of a kind shall appear
together, and stand in their proper character, not as law-giving, but as
arranging and describing sciences. There is no more reason for coupling
Zoology with Physiology, than for tacking on Mineralogy to Chemistry.
In point of outward form, Mineralogy and Zoology are kindred subjects.
When the subjects are placed in the order that I have suggested, there
is an end of that promiscuous and random choosing that the arrangement
of the Commissioners suggests and encourages. To the specification of
the five heads of natural science, it is added, that the whole of the
1,000 marks may be gained by high eminence in any two; as if the choice
were a matter of indifference. Now, I cannot think that this suggestion
is in conformity with a just view of the continuity of science. When the
sciences are rightly arranged, there is but one order in the mother
sciences; if we are to choose a single science, it must be (with some
qualifications) the first; if two, the first and second, and so on. To
choose one of the higher sciences, Chemistry or Physiology, without the
others that precede, is irrational. Indeed, it would scarcely ever be
done, and for this reason. A man cannot have mastered Physiology without
having gone through Physics and Chemistry; and, although it is not
necessary that he should retain a hold of everything in these previous
sciences, yet he is sure to have done enough in both one and the other
to make it worth his while to take these up in the examination. So a
good chemist must have so much familiarity with Physics, as to make it
bad economy on his part not to give in Physics as well. The only case
where an earlier science might be dropped is Mathematics; for although
that finds its application extensively in Physics and indirectly in
Chemistry, yet there is a very large body of physical and chemical
doctrine that is not dependent upon any of the more difficult branches,
so that these may admit of being partially neglected. But, as an
examination in Physics ought to include (as in the London University)
all the mathematical applications, short of the higher calculus, it is
not likely that Mathematics would be often dropped. So that, as regards
the _mother_ sciences, the variation of choice would be reduced to the
different lengths that the candidate would go in the order as laid down.
As regards the other sciences--those of _classification_ and
_description_--the selection might certainly be arbitrary to this
extent, that Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology might each be prescribed
alone. But then, whoever presented one of these would also present the
related mother science. He that took up Mineralogy, would infallibly
also take up the three first as far as Chemistry. He that gave in Botany
would probably take up Physiology, although not so necessarily, because
the area of plant Physiology is very limited, and has little bearing on
descriptive Botany, so that anything like a familiarity with Physiology
might be evaded. But he that took up Zoology, would to a certainty take
up Physiology; and very probably also the antecedent members of the
fundamental group. As to Geology, it is usually coupled with Mineralogy,
although involving also a slight knowledge of Botany and Zoology.
A competent mineralogist would be pretty sure to add Geology to his
professional subjects.
Before considering the re-arrangement of marks entailed by the proposed
distribution of the sciences, I must advert to the position of
Mathematics in the Commissioners' scheme. This position was first
assigned in the original draft of 1854, and on the motives therein set
forth with such ostentatious candour; namely, the wish to reward the
existing subjects of teaching, whatever they might be. Now, I contend
that it is wholly beside the ends either of the Indian Civil Service, or
of the Home Service, with known exceptions, to stimulate the very high
mathematical knowledge that has hitherto entered into the examination
scheme. A certain amount of Mathematics, the amount required in a pass
examination in the London University, is essential as a basis of
rational culture; but, for a good general education, all beyond that is
misdirected energy. After receiving the modicum required, the student
should pass on to the other sciences, and employ his strength in adding
Experimental Physics and Chemistry to his stock. Whether a candidate
succeeds or fails in the competitions, this is his best policy.
[PROPER SCIENCE VALUES.]
Without arguing the point farther, I will now come to the amended scheme
of science markings. It would be over-refining, and would not bring
conviction to the general public, to make out a case for inequality in
the five fundamental branches. It may be said that Physiology is of more
value than Chemistry, because it is farther on, and takes Chemistry with
it; the answer is, let the Physiology candidate go in and take marks in
Chemistry also, which he is sure to do. I have purposely avoided all
discussion about Mental Science; I merely assume it as a branch
coordinate with the prior sciences placed before it in the general list.
I would then simply, in conclusion, give the _primary sciences_,
Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Biology (as explained),
Mental Philosophy, each 500 marks. The other sciences, Mineralogy,
Botany, Zoology, Geology, I would make equal as between themselves, but
somewhat lower than the primaries. The reasons are already apparent: the
candidate for them would always have some of the others to present; and
their importance is, on the whole, less than the importance of the
law-giving sciences. I should conceive that 250 or 300 marks apiece
would be a proper amount of consideration shewn towards them. With that
figure, I believe many science students could take up one or other in
addition to the general sciences.
* * * * *
The other topic that I am to bring forward is one of very serious
import. It concerns the Civil Service competitions only as a part of our
whole scheme of Education. I mean the position of LANGUAGES in our
examinations. While the vast field of Natural Science is comprised in
one heading, with a total of 1,000 marks (raised finally to 1,400), our
Civil Service scheme presents a row of five languages besides our
own--two ancient, and three modern--with an aggregate value of 2,625
marks, or 2,800, as finally adjusted. The India scheme has, in addition,
Sanskrit and Arabic, at 500 marks each; the reasons for this
prescription being, however, not the same as for the foregoing.
The place of Language in education is not confined to the question as
between the ancient and the modern languages. There is a wider enquiry
as to the place of languages as a whole. In pursuing this enquiry, we
may begin with certain things that are obvious and incontestable.
In the first place, it is apparent that if a man is sent to hold
intercourse with the people of a foreign nation, he must be able to
understand and to speak the language of that nation. Our India civil
servants are on that ground required to master the Hindoo spoken
dialects.
[PLACE OF LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION.]
In the next place, if a certain range of information that you find
indispensable is locked up in a foreign language, you are obliged to
learn the language. If, in course of time, all this information is
transferred to our native tongue, the necessity apparently ceases. These
two extreme suppositions will be allowed at once. There may, however,
be an indefinite number of intermediate stages. The information may be
partially translated; and it will then be a question whether the trouble
of learning the language should be incurred for the sake of the
untranslated part. Or, it may be wholly translated: but, conscious of
the necessary defects even of good translations, if the subject-matter
be supremely important, some people will think it worth while to learn
the language in order to obtain the knowledge in its greatest purity and
precision. This is a situation that admits of no certain rule. Our
clergy are expected to know the original languages of the Bible,
notwithstanding the abundance of translations; many of which must be far
superior in worth and authority to the judgment of a merely ordinary
proficient in Hebrew and in Greek.
It is now generally conceded that the classical languages are no longer
the exclusive depository of any kind of valuable information, as they
were two or three centuries ago. Yet they are still continued in the
schools as if they possessed their original function unabated. We do not
speak in them, nor listen to them spoken, nor write in them, nor read in
them, for obtaining information. Why then are they kept up? Many reasons
are given, as we know. There is an endeavour to show that even in their
original function, they are not quite effete. Certain professions are
said to rely upon them for some points of information not fully
communicated by the medium of English. Such is the rather indirect
example of the clergy with Greek. So, it is said that Law is not
thoroughly understood without Latin, because the great source of law,
the Roman code, is written in Latin, and is in many points
untranslatable. Further, it is contended that Greek philosophy cannot
be fully mastered without a knowledge of the language of Plato and
Aristotle. But an argument that is reduced to these examples must be
near its vanishing point. Not one of the cases stands a rigorous
scrutiny; and they are not relied upon as the main justification of the
continuance of classics. A new line of defence is opened up which was
not at all present to the minds of sixteenth century scholars. We are
told of numerous indirect and secondary advantages of cultivating
language in general and the classic languages in particular, which make
the acquisition a rewarding labour, even without one particle of the
primary use. But for these secondary advantages, languages could have no
claim to appear, with such enormous values, in the Civil Service scheme.
[LANGUAGE MAY HAVE SECONDARY USES.]
My purpose requires me to advert in these alleged secondary uses of
language, not, however, for the view of counter-arguing them, but rather
in order to indicate what seems to me the true mode of bringing them to
the proof.
The most usual phraseology for describing the indirect benefit of
languages is, that they supply a _training_ to the powers of the mind;
that, if not information, they are _culture_; that they re-act upon our
mastery of our own language, and so on. It is quite necessary, however,
to find phrases more definite and tangible than the slippery words
"culture" and "training": we must know precisely what particular powers
or aptitudes are increased by the study of a foreign language.
Nevertheless, the conclusions set forth in this paper do not require me
to work out an exhaustive review of these advantages. It is enough to
give as many as will serve for examples.
Now, it must be freely admitted as a possible case, that a practice
introduced in the first instance for a particular purpose, may be found
applicable to many other purposes; so much so, that, ceasing to be
employed for the original use, the practice may be kept up for the sake
of the after uses. For example, clothing was no doubt primarily
contrived for warmth; but it is not now confined to that: decoration or
ornament, distinction of sexes, ranks and offices, modesty--are also
attained by means of clothes. This example is a suggestive one. We have
only to suppose ourselves migrating to some African climate, where
clothing for warmth is absolutely dispensed with. We should not on that
account adopt literal nudity--we should still desire to maintain those
other advantages. The artistic decoration of the person would continue
to be thought of; and, as no amount of painting and tattooing, with
strings of beads superadded, would answer to our ideal of personal
elegance, we should have recourse to some light filmy textures, such as
would allow the varieties of drapery, colours, and design, and show off
the poetry of motion; we should also indicate the personal differences
that we were accustomed to show by vesture. But now comes the point of
the moral; we should not maintain our close heavy fabrics, our
great-coats, shawls and cloaks. These would cease with the need for
them. Perhaps the first emigrants would keep up the prejudice for their
warm things, but not so their successors.
Well, then, suppose the extreme case of a foreign language that is
entirely and avowedly superseded as regards communication and
interpretation of thoughts, but still furnishing so many valuable aids
to mental improvement, that we keep it up for the sake of these. As we
are not to hear, speak, or read the language, we do not need absolutely
to know the meaning of every word: we may, perhaps, dispense with much
of the technicality of its grammar. The vocables and the grammar would
be kept up exactly so far as to serve the other purposes, and no
farther. The teacher would have in view the secondary uses alone.
Supposing the language related to our own by derivation of words, and
that this was what we put stress upon; then the derivation would always
be uppermost in the teacher's thoughts. If it were to illustrate
Universal Grammar and Philology, this would be brought out to the
neglect of translation.
[CLASSICAL TEACHER'S IDEAL.]
I have made an imaginary supposition to prepare the way for the real
case. The classical or language teacher, is assumed to be fully
conscious of the fact that the primary use of the languages is as good
as defunct; and that he is continued in office because of certain
clearly assigned secondary uses, but for which he would be superseded
entirely. Some of the secondary uses present to his mind, at all events
one of those that are put forward in argument, is that a foreign
language, and especially Latin, conduces to good composition in our own
language. And as we do compose in our own language, and never compose in
Latin, the teacher is bound to think mainly of the English part of the
task--to see that the pupils succeed in the English translation, whether
they succeed in the other or not. They may be left in a state of
considerable ignorance of good Latin forms (ignorance will never expose
them); but any defects in their English expression will be sure to be
disclosed. Again, it is said that Universal Grammar or Philology is
taught upon the basis of a foreign language. Is this object, in point of
fact, present to the mind of every teacher, and brought forward, even to
the sacrifice of the power of reading and writing, which, by the
supposition, is never to be wanted? Further, the Latin Grammar is said
to be a logical discipline. Is this, too, kept in view as a
predominating end? Once more, it is declared that, through the classics,
we attain the highest cultivation of Taste, by seeing models of
unparalleled literary form. Be it so: is this habitually attended to in
the teaching of these languages?
I believe I am safe in saying that, whilst these various secondary
advantages are put forward in the polemic as to the value of languages,
the teaching practice is by no means in harmony therewith. Even when in
word the supporters of classics put forward the secondary uses, in deed
they belie themselves. Excellence in teaching is held by them to
consist, in the first instance, in the power of accurate
interpretation,--as if that obsolete use were still _the_ use. If a
teacher does this well, he is reckoned a good teacher, although he does
little or nothing for the other ends, which in argument are treated as
the reason of his existence. Indeed, this is the kind of teaching that
is alone to be expected from the ordinary teacher; all the other ends
are more difficult than simple word teaching. Even when English
Composition, Logic and Taste are taught in the most direct way, they
are more abstruse than the simple teaching of a foreign language for
purposes of interpretation; but when tacked on as accessories to
instruction in a language, they are still more troublesome to impart.
A teacher of rare excellence may help his pupils in English style, in
philology, in logic, and in taste; but the mass of teachers can do very
little in any of those directions. They are never found fault with
merely because their teaching does not rise to the height of the great
arguments that justify their vocation; they would be found fault with,
if their pupils were supposed to have made little way in that first
function of language which is never to be called into exercise.
I do not rest satisfied with quoting the palpable inconsistency between
the practice of the teacher and the polemic of the defender of
languages. I believe, further, that it is not expedient to carry on so
many different acquisitions together. If you want to teach thorough
English, you need to arrange a course of English, allot a definite time
to it, and follow it with undivided attention during that time. If you
wish to teach Philology you must provide a systematic scheme, or else
a text-book of Philology, and bring together all the most select
illustrations from languages generally. So for Logic and for Taste.
These subjects are far too serious to be imparted in passing allusions
while the pupil is engaged in struggling with linguistic difficulties.
They need a place in the programme to themselves; and, when so provided
for, the small dropping contributions of the language teacher may easily
be dispensed with.
[SECONDARY ENDS OF LANGUAGE NOT PRESSED.]
The argument for Languages may, no doubt, take a bolder flight, and go
so far as to maintain that the teacher does not need to turn aside from
his plain path to secure these secondary ends--now the only valuable
ends. The contention may be that in the close and rigorous attention to
mere interpretation, just as if interpretation were still the living
use, these other purposes are inevitably secured--good English,
universal grammar, logic, taste, &c. I think, however, that this is too
far from the fact to be very confidently maintained. Of course, were it
correct, the teacher should never have departed from it, as the best
teachers continually do, and glory in doing.
On the face of the thing, it must seem an unworkable position to
surrender the value of a language, as a language, and keep it up for
something else. The teaching must always be guided by the original,
although defunct, use; this is the natural, the easy, course to follow;
for the mass of teachers at all times it is the broad way. Whatever the
necessities of argument may drive a man to say, yet in his teaching he
cannot help postulating to himself, as an indispensable fiction, that
his pupils are some day or other to hear, to read, to speak, or to write
the language.
The intense conservatism in the matter of Languages--the alacrity to
prescribe languages on all sides, without inquiring whether they are
likely to be turned to account--may be referred to various causes. For
one thing--although the remark may seem ungracious and invidious--many
minds, not always of the highest force, are absorbed and intoxicated by
languages. But apart from this, languages are, by comparison, easy to
teach, and easy to examine upon. Now, if there is any motive in
education more powerful than another, it is ease in the work itself. We
are all, as teachers, copyists of that Irish celebrity who, when he came
to a good bit of road, paced it to and fro a number of times before
going forward to his destination on the rougher footing.
So far I may seem to be arguing against the teaching of language at all,
or, at any rate, the languages expressively called dead. I am not,
however, pressing this point farther than as an illustration. I do not
ask anyone to give an opinion against Classics as a subject of
instruction; although, undoubtedly, if this opinion were prevalent, my
principal task would be very much lightened. I have merely analysed the
utilities ascribed to the ancient and the modern languages, with a view
to settling their place in competitive examinations.
* * * * *
[LANGUAGES NOT PROPER FOR THE COMPETITION.]
My thesis, then, is, that languages are not a proper subject for
competition with a view to professional appointments. The explanation
falls under two heads.
In the first place, there are certain avocations where a foreign
language must be known, because it has to be used in actual business.
Such are the Indian spoken languages. Now, it is clear that in these
cases the knowledge of the language, as being a _sine quâ non_, must be
made imperative. This, however, as I think, is not a case for
competition, but for a sufficient pass. There is a certain pitch of
attainment that is desirable even at first entering the service; no one
should fall below this, and to rise much above it cannot matter a great
deal. At all events, I think the measure should be absolute and not
relative. I would not give a man merit in a competition because another
man happens to be worse than himself in a matter that all must know;
both the men may be absolutely bad.
It may be the case that certain languages are so admirably constructed
and so full of beauties that to study them is a liberal education in
itself. But this does not necessarily hold of every language that an
official of the British Empire may happen to need. It does not apply to
the Indian tongues, nor to Chinese, nor, I should suppose, to the Fiji
dialects. The only human faculty that is tested and brought into play in
these acquisitions is the commonest kind of memory exercised for a
certain time. The value to the Service of the man that can excel in
spoken languages does not lie in his superior administrative ability,
but in his being sooner fitted for actual duty. Undoubtedly, if two men
go out to Calcutta so unequal in their knowledge of native languages, or
in the preparation for that knowledge, that one can begin work in six
months, while the other takes nine, there is an important difference
between them. But what is the obvious mode of rewarding the difference?
Not, I should think, by pronouncing one a higher man in the scale of the
competition, but by giving him some money prize in proportion to the
redemption of his time for official work.
Now, as regards the second kind of languages--those that are supposed to
carry with them all the valuable indirect consequences that we have just
reviewed. There are in the Civil Service Scheme five such languages--two
ancient, and three modern. They are kept there, not because they are
ever to be read or spoken in the Service, but because they exercise some
magical efficacy in elevating the whole tone of the human intellect.
If I were discussing the Indian Civil Service in its own specialities,
I would deprecate the introduction of extraneous languages into the
competition, for this reason, that the Service itself taxes the verbal
powers more than any other service. I do not think that Lord Macaulay
and his colleagues had this circumstance fully in view. Macaulay was
himself a glutton for language; and, while in India, read a great
quantity of Latin and Greek. But he was exempted from the ordinary lot
of the Indian civil servant; he had no native languages to acquire and
to use. If a man both speaks and writes in good English, and converses
familiarly in several Oriental dialects, his language memory is
sufficiently well taxed, and if he carries with him one European
language besides, it is as much as belongs to the fitness of things in
that department.
[SECONDARY USES OF LANGUAGE DIRECTLY TESTED.]
My proposal, then, goes the length of excluding all these five
cultivated languages from the competition, notwithstanding the influence
that they may be supposed to have as general culture. In supporting it,
I shall assume that everything that can be said in their favour is true
to the letter: that they assist us in our own language, that they
cultivate logic and taste, that they exemplify universal grammar, and so
on. All that my purpose requires is to affirm that the same good ends
may be attained in other ways: that Latin, Greek, &c, are but one of
several instruments for instructing us in English composition,
reasoning, or taste. My contention, then, is that the _ends_ themselves
are to be looked to, and not the means or instruments, since these are
very various. English composition is, of course, a valuable end, whether
got through the study of Latin, or through the study of English authors
themselves, or through the inspiration of natural genius. Whatever
amount of skill and attainment a candidate can show in this department
should be valued _the examination for English_; and all the good that
Latin has done for him would thus be entered to his credit. If, then,
the study of Latin is found the best means of securing good marks in
English, it will be pursued on that account; if the candidate is able to
discover other less laborious ways of attaining the end, he will prefer
these ways.
The same applies to all the other secondary ends of language. Let them
be valued _in their own departments_. Let the improvement of the
reasoning faculty be counted wherever that is shown in the examination.
Good reasoning powers will evince themselves in many places, and will
have their, reward.
The principle is a plain and obvious one. It is that of payment for
results, without inquiring into the means. There are certain extreme
cases where the means are not improperly coupled with the results in the
final examination; and these are illustrations of the principle. Thus,
in passing a candidate for the medical profession, the final end is his
or her knowledge of diseases and their remedies. As it is admitted,
however, that there are certain indispensable preparatory
studies--anatomy, physiology, and materia medica--such studies are made
part of the examination, because they contribute to the testing for the
final end.
[HISTORY AND LITERATURE DETACHABLE FROM LANGUAGE.]
The argument is not complete until we survey another branch of the
subject of examination in languages. It will be observed in the wording
of the programme that each separate language is coupled with 'literature
and history (or, as latterly expressed, 'literature--including books
selected by the candidate')'. It is the Language, Literature, and
History of Rome, Greece, &c. And the examination questions show the
exact scope of these adjuncts, and also the values attached to them, as
compared with the language by itself.
Let us consider this matter a little. Take History first, as being the
least perplexed. Greece and Rome have both a certain lasting importance
attaching to their history and institutions; and these accordingly are a
useful study. Of course, the extant writings are the chief groundwork of
our knowledge of these, and must be read. But, at the present day, all
that can be extracted from the originals is presented to the student in
English books; and to these he is exclusively referred for this part of
his knowledge. In the small portion of original texts that a pupil at
school or college toils through, he necessarily gets a few of the
historical facts at first hand; but he could much more easily get these
few where he gets the rest--in the English compilations. Admitting,
then, that the history and institutions of Greece and Rome constitute a
valuable education, it is in our power to secure it independently of the
original tongues.
The other branch--Literature--is not so easily disposed of. In fact, the
separating of the literature from the language, you will say, is a
self-evident absurdity. That, however, only shows that you have not
looked carefully into examination papers. I am not concerned with what
the _à priori_ imagination may suppose to be Literature, but with the
actual questions put by examiners under that name. I find that such
questions are, generally speaking, very few, perhaps one or two in a
long paper, and nearly all pertain to the outworks of literature, so to
speak. Here is the Latin literature of one paper:--In what special
branch of literature were the Romans independent of the Greeks? Mention
the principal writers in it, with the peculiar characteristics of each.
Who was the first to employ the hexameter in Latin poetry, and in what
poem? To what language is Latin most nearly related; and what is the
cause of their great resemblance? The Greek literature of the same
examination involves these points:--The Aristophanic estimate of
Euripides, with criticisms on its taste and justice (for which, however,
a historical subject is given as an alternative); the Greek chorus, and
choric metres. Now such an examination is, in the first place, a most
meagre view of literature: it does not necessarily exercise the faculty
of critical discernment. In the next place, it is chiefly a matter of
compilation from English sources; the actual readings of the candidate
in Greek and Latin would be of little account in the matter. Of course,
the choric metres could not be described without some knowledge of
Greek, but the matter is of very trifling importance in an educational
point of view. Generally speaking, the questions in literature, which in
number bear no proportion to historical questions, are such as might be
included under history, as the department of the History of Literature.
[LANGUAGES EXAMINATION PAPERS REVIEWED.]
The distribution of the 750 marks allotted respectively to Latin and to
Greek, in the scheme of 1875, is this. There are three papers: two are
occupied exclusively with translation. The third is language,
literature, and history: the language means purely grammatical
questions; so that possibly 583 marks are for the language proper. The
remaining number, 167, should be allotted equally between literature and
history, but history has always the lion's share, and is in fact the
only part of the whole examination that has, to my mind, any real worth.
It is generally a very searching view of important institutions and
events, together with what may be called their philosophy. Now, the
reform that seems to me to be wanted is to strike out everything else
from the examination. At the same time, I should like to see the
experiment of a _real_ literary examination, such as did not necessarily
imply a knowledge of the originals.
It is interesting to turn to the examination in modern languages, where
the ancient scheme is copied, by appending literature and history. Here
the Literature is decidedly more prominent and thorough. There is also
a fair paper of History questions. What strikes us, however, in this,
is a slavish adherence to the form, without the reality, of the ancient
situation. We have independent histories of Greece and Rome, but
scarcely of Germany, France, and Italy. Instead of partitioning Modern
European history among the language-examiners for English, French,
German, Italian, it would be better to relieve them of history
altogether, and place the subject as a whole in the hands of a distinct
examiner. I would still allow merit for a literary examination in
French, German, and Italian, but would strike off the languages, and let
the candidate get up the literature as he chose. The basis of a
candidate's literary knowledge, and his first introduction to
literature, ought to be his own language: but he may extend his
discrimination and his power by other literatures, either in
translations or in originals, as he pleases; still the examination, as
before, should test the discrimination and the power, and not the
vocabulary of the languages themselves.
In order to do full justice to classical antiquity, I would allow
markings at the rate of 500 for Political Institutions and History, and
250 for Literature. Some day this will be thought too much; but
political philosophy or sociology may become more systematic than at
present, and history questions will then take a different form.
In like manner, I would abolish the language-examination in modern
languages, and give 250 marks for the literature of each of the three
modern languages--French, German, Italian. The history would be taken as
Modern History, with an adequate total value.
The objections to this proposal will mainly resolve themselves into its
revolutionary character. The remark will at once be made that the
classical languages would cease to be taught, and even the modern
languages discouraged. The meaning of this I take to be, that, if such
teaching is judged solely by its fruits, it must necessarily be
condemned.
The only way to fence this unpalatable conclusion, is to maintain that
the results could not be fully tested in an examination as suggested.
Some of these are so fine, impalpable, and spiritual in their texture,
that they cannot be seized by any questions that can be put; and would
be dropped out if the present system were changed. But results so
untraceable cannot be proved to exist at all.
[LANGUAGE QUESTIONS TAKE THE PLACE OF THE SUBJECT.]
So far from the results being missed by disusing the exercises of
translation, one might contend that they would only begin to be
appreciated fairly when the whole stress of the examination is put upon
them. If an examiner sets a paper in Roman Law, containing long Latin
extracts to be translated, he is starving the examination in Law by
substituting for it an examination in Latin. Whatever knowledge of Latin
terminology is necessary to the knowledge of Law should be required, and
no more. So, it is not an examination in Aristotle to require long
translations from the Greek; only by dispensing with all this, does the
main subject receive proper attention.
If the properly literary part of the present examinations were much of
a reality, there would be a nice discussion as to the amount of literary
tact that could be imparted in connection with a foreign language, as
translated or translatable. But I have made an ample concession, when I
propose that the trial should be made of examining in literature in this
fashion; and I do not see any difficulty beyond the initial repugnance
of the professors of languages to be employed in this task, and the
fear, on the part of candidates, that, undue stress might be placed on
points that need a knowledge of originals.
* * * * *
I will conclude with a remark on the apparent tendency of the wide
options in the Commissioners' scheme. No one subject is obligatory; and
the choice is so wide that by a very narrow range of acquirements a man
may sometimes succeed. No doubt, as a rule, it requires a considerable
mixture of subjects: both sciences and literature have to be included.
But I find the case of a man entering the Indian Service by force of
Languages alone, which I cannot but think a miscarriage. Then the very
high marks assigned to Mathematics allow a man to win with no other
science, and no other culture, but a middling examination in English.
To those that think so highly of foreign languages, this must seem a much
greater anomaly than it does to me. I would prefer, however, that such a
candidate had traversed a wider field of science, instead of excelling
in high mathematics alone.
There are, I should say, _three_ great regions of study that should be
fairly represented by every successful candidate. The first is the
Sciences as a whole, in the form and order that I have suggested. The
second is English Composition, in which successful men in the Indian
competition sometimes show a cipher. The third is what I may call
loosely the Humanities, meaning the department of institutions and
history, with perhaps literature: to be computed in any or all of the
regions of ancient and modern history. In every one of these three
departments, I would fix a minimum, below which the candidate must not
fall.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: _The Civil Service Examination Scheme, considered with
reference (1) to Sciences, and (2) to Languages_. A paper read before
the Educational Section of the Social Science Association, at the
meeting in Aberdeen. 1877: with additions relevant to Lord Salisbury's
Scheme.]
* * * * *
IV.
THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY.
ITS PRESENT ASPECT.[7]
In the present state of the controversy on classical studies, the
publication of George Combe's contributions to Education is highly
opportune. Combe took the lead in the attack on these studies fifty
years ago, and Mr. Jolly, the editor of the volume, gives a connected
view of the struggle that followed. The results were, on the whole, not
very great. A small portion of natural science was introduced into the
secondary schools; but as the classical teaching was kept up as before,
the pupils were simply subjected to a greater crush of subjects; they
could derive very little benefit from science introduced on such terms.
The effect on the Universities was _nil_; they were true to Dugald
Stewart's celebrated deliverance on their conservatism.[8] The general
public, however, were not unmoved; during a number of years there was
a most material reduction in the numbers attending all the Scotch
Universities, and the anti-classical agitation was reputed to be the
cause.
The reasonings of Combe will still repay perusal. He puts with great
felicity and clearness the standing objections to the classical system;
while he is exceedingly liberal in his concessions, and moderate in his
demands. "I do not denounce the ancient languages and classical
literature on their own account, or desire to see them cast into utter
oblivion. I admit them to be refined studies, and think that there are
individuals who, having a natural turn for them, learn them easily and
enjoy them much. They ought, therefore, to be cultivated by all such
persons. My objection is solely to the practice of rendering them the
main substance of the education bestowed on young men who have no taste
or talent for them, and whose pursuits in life will not render them a
valuable acquisition."
Before alluding to the more recent utterances in defence of classical
teaching, I wish to lay out as distinctly as I can the various
alternatives that are apparently now before us as respects the higher
education--that is to say, the education begun in the secondary or
grammar schools, and completed and stamped in the Universities.
[THE EXISTING CLASSICAL TEACHING.]
1. The existing system of requiring proficiency in both classical
languages. Except in the University of London, this requirement is still
imperative. The other Universities agree in exacting Latin and Greek as
the condition of an Arts' Degree, and in very little else. The defenders
of classics say with some truth that these languages are the principal
basis of uniformity in our degrees; if they were struck out, the public
would not know what a degree meant.
How exclusive was the study of Latin and Greek in the schools in
England, until lately, is too well known to need any detailed statement.
A recent utterance of Mr. Gladstone, however, has felicitously supplied
the crowning illustration. At Eton, in his time, the engrossment with
classics was such as to keep out religious instruction!
As not many contend that Latin and Greek make an education in
themselves, we may not improperly call to mind what other things it has
been found possible to include with them in the scope of the Arts'
Degree. The Scotch Universities were always distinguished from the
English in the breadth of their requirements: they have comprised, for
many ages, three other subjects; mathematics, natural philosophy, and
mental philosophy (including logic and ethics). In exceptional
instances, another science is added; in one case, natural history, in
another, chemistry. According to the notions of scientific order and
completeness in the present day, a full course of the primary sciences
would comprise mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, physiology or
biology, and mental philosophy. The natural history branches are not
looked upon as primary sciences; they give no laws, but repeat the laws
of the primary sciences while classifying the kingdoms of Nature. (See
paragraph that begins with: In the classification of the sciences ...).
In John Stuart Mill's celebrated Address at St. Andrews, he stood up for
the continuance of the Classics in all their integrity, and suddenly
became a great authority with numbers of persons who probably had never
treated him as an authority before. But his advocacy of the classics was
coupled with an equally strenuous advocacy for the extension of the
scientific course to the full circle of the primary sciences; that is to
say, he urged the addition of chemistry and physiology to the received
sciences. Those that have so industriously brandished his authority for
retaining classics, are discreetly silent upon this other
recommendation. He was too little conversant with the working of
Universities to be aware that the addition of two sciences to the
existing course was impracticable; and he was never asked which
alternative he would prefer. I am inclined to believe that he would have
sacrificed the classics to scientific completeness; he would have been
satisfied with the quantum of these already gained at school. But while
we have no positive assurance on this point, I consider that his opinion
should be wholly discounted as not bearing on the actual case.
[UNIVERSITY OF LONDON CURRICULUM.]
The founders of the University of London attempted to realise Mill's
conception to the full. They retained Classics; they added English and
a modern language, and completed the course of the primary sciences by
including both Chemistry and Physiology. This was a noble experiment,
and we can now report on its success. The classical languages, English
and French or German, mathematics and natural philosophy, and (after a
time) logic and moral philosophy, were all kept at a good standard; thus
exceeding the requirements of the Scotch Universities at the time by
English and a modern language. The amount of attainment in chemistry was
very small, and was disposed of in the Matriculation examination.
Physiology was reserved for the final B.A. examination, and was the
least satisfactory of all. Having myself sat at the Examining Board
while Dr. Sharpey was Examiner in Physiology, I had occasion to know
that he considered it prudent to be content with a mere show of studying
the subject. Thus, though the experience of the University of London, as
well as of the Scotch Universities, proves that the classical languages
are compatible with a very tolerable scientific education, yet these
will need to be curtailed if every one of the fundamental sciences, as
Mill urged, is to be represented at a passable figure.
In the various new proposals for extending the sphere of scientific
knowledge, a much smaller amount of classics is to be required, but
neither of the two languages is wholly dispensed with. If not taught at
college, they must be taken up at school as a preparation for entering
on the Arts' curriculum in the University. This can hardly be a
permanent state of things, but it is likely to be in operation for some
time.
2. The remitting of Greek in favour of a modern language is the
alternative most prominently before the public at present. It accepts
the mixed form of the old curriculum, and replaces one of the dead
languages by one of the living. Resisted by nearly the whole might of
the classical party, this proposal finds favour with the lay professions
as giving one language that will actually be useful to the pupils as a
language. It is the very smallest change that would be a real relief.
That it will speedily be carried we do not doubt.
Except as a relaxation of the grip of classicism, this change is not
altogether satisfactory. That there must be two languages (besides
English) in order to an Arts' Degree is far from obvious. Moreover,
although it is very desirable that every pupil should have facilities at
school or at college for commencing modern languages, these do not rank
as indispensable and universal culture, like the knowledge of sciences
and of literature generally. They would have to be taught along with
their respective literatures to correspond to the classics.
Another objection to replacing classics by modern languages is the
necessity of importing foreigners as teachers. Now, although there are
plenty of Frenchmen and Germans that can teach as well as any
Englishman, it is a painful fact that foreigners do oftener miscarry,
both in teaching and in discipline, with English pupils, than our own
countrymen. Foreign masters are well enough for those that go to them
voluntarily with the desire of being taught; it is as teachers in a
compulsory curriculum that their inferiority becomes apparent.
The retort is sometimes made to this proposal--Why omit Greek rather
than Latin? Should you not retain the greater of the two languages? This
may be pronounced as mainly a piece of tactics; for every one must know
that the order of teaching Latin and Greek at the schools will never be
topsyturvied to suit the fancy of an individual here and there, even
although John Stuart Mill himself was educated in that order. On the
scheme of withdrawing all foreign languages from the imperative
curriculum, and providing for them as voluntary adjuncts, such freedom
of selection would be easy.[9]
[ALTERNATIVE OF MODERN LANGUAGES.]
3. Another alternative is to remit both Latin and Greek in favour of
French and German. Strange to say, this advance upon the previous
alternative was actually contained in Mr. Gladstone's ill-fated Irish
University Bill. Had that Bill succeeded, the Irish would have been
for fourteen years in the enjoyment of a full option for both the
languages.[10] From a careful perusal of the debates, I could not
discover that the opposition ever fastened upon this bold surrender of
the classical exclusiveness.
The proposal was facilitated by the existence of professors of French
and German in the Queen's Colleges, In the English and Scotch Colleges
endowments are not as yet provided for these languages; although it
would be easy enough to make provision for them in Oxford and Cambridge.
In favour of this alternative, it is urged that the classics, if entered
on at all, should be entered on thoroughly and entirely. The two
languages and literatures form a coherent whole, a homogeneous
discipline; and those that do not mean to follow this out should not
begin it. Some of the upholders of classics take this view.
4. More thorough-going still is the scheme of complete bifurcation of
the classical and the modern sides. In our great schools there has been
instituted what is called the _modern side_, made up of sciences and
modern languages, together with Latin. The understanding hitherto has
been, that the votaries of the ancient and classical side should alone
proceed to the Universities; the modern side being the introduction to
commercial life, and to professions that dispense with a University
degree. Here, as far as the schools are concerned, a fair scope is given
to modern studies.
As was to be expected, the modern side is now demanding admission to the
Universities on its own terms; that is, to continue the same line of
studies there, and to be crowned with the same distinctions as the
classical side. This attempt to render school and college homogeneous
throughout, to treat ancient studies and modern studies as of equal
value in the eye of the law, will of course be resisted to the utmost.
Yet it seems the only solution likely to bring about a settlement that
will last.
The defenders of the classical system in its extreme exclusiveness are
fond of adducing examples of very illustrious men who at college showed
an utter incapacity for science in its simplest elements. They say that,
by classics alone, these men are what they are, and if their way had
been stopped by serious scientific requirements, they would have never
come before the world at all. The allegation is somewhat strongly put;
yet we shall assume it to be correct, on condition of being allowed to
draw an inference. If some minds are so constituted for languages, and
for classics in particular, may not there be other minds equally
constituted for science, and equally incapable of taking up two
classical languages? Should this be granted, the next question is--Ought
these two classes of minds to be treated as equal in rights and
privileges? The upholders of the present system say, No. The Language
mind is the true aristocrat; the Science mind is an inferior creation.
Degrees and privileges are for the man that can score languages, with
never so little science; outer darkness is assigned to the man whose
_forte_ is science alone. But a war of caste in education is an unseemly
thing; and, after all the levelling operations that we have passed
through, it is not likely that this distinction will be long preserved.
[CLAIMS OF THE MODERN SIDE.]
The modern side, as at present constituted, still retains Latin. There
is a considerable strength of feeling in favour of that language for all
kinds of people; it is thought to be a proper appendage of the lay
professions; and there is a wide-spread opinion in favour of its utility
for English. So much is this the case, that the modern-siders are at
present quite willing to come under a pledge to keep up Latin, and to
pass in it with a view to the University. In fact, the schools find this
for the present the most convenient arrangement. It is easier to supply
teaching in Latin than in a modern language, or in most other things;
and while Latin continues to be held in respect, it will remain
untouched. Yet the quantity of time occupied by it, with so little
result, must ultimately force a departure from the present curriculum.
The real destination of the modern side is to be modern throughout. It
should not be rigorously tied down even to a certain number of modern
languages. English and one other language ought to be quite enough; and
the choice should be free. On this footing, the modern side ought to
have its place in the schools as the co-equal of classics; it would be
the natural precursor of the modernised alternatives in the
Universities; those where knowledge subjects predominate.
The proposal to give an _inferior degree_ to a curriculum that excludes
Greek should, in my judgment, be simply declined. It is, however, a
matter of opinion whether, in point of tactics, the modern party did not
do well to accept this as an instalment in the meantime. The Oxford
offer, as I understand it, was so far liberal, that the new degree was
to rank equal in privileges with the old, although inferior in
_prestige_. In Scotland, the decree conceded by the classical party to
a Greekless education was worthless, and was offered for that very
reason.[11]
[SURRENDER OF CLAIMS FOR SOME.]
Among the adherents of classics, Professor Blackie is distinguished for
surrendering the study of them in the case of those that cannot profit
by them. He believes that with a free alternative, such as the thorough
bifurcation into two sides would give, they would still hold their
ground, and bear all their present fruits. His classical brethren,
however, do not in general share this conviction. They seem to think
that if they can no longer compel every University graduate to pass
beneath the double yoke of Rome and Greece, these two illustrious
nationalities will be in danger of passing out of the popular mind
altogether. For my own part, I do not share their fears, nor do I think
that, even on the voluntary footing, the study of the two languages will
decline with any great rapidity. As I have said, the belief in Latin is
wide and deep. Whatever may be urged as to the extraordinary stringency
of the intellectual discipline now said to be given by means of Latin
and Greek, I am satisfied that the feeling with both teachers and
scholars is, that the process of acquisition is not toilsome to either
party; less so perhaps than anything that would come in their place.
Of the hundreds of hours spent over them, a very large number are
associated with listless idleness. Carlyle describes Scott's novels as
a "beatific lubber land"; with the exception of the "beatific," we might
say nearly the same of classics. To all which must be added the immense
endowments of classical teaching; not only of old date but of recent
acquisition. It will be a very long time before these endowments can be
diverted, even although the study decline steadily in estimation.
The thing that stands to reason is to place the modern and the ancient
studies on exactly the same footing; to accord a fair field and no
favour. The public will decide for themselves in the long run. If the
classical advocates are afraid of this test, they have no faith in the
merits of their own case.
* * * * *
The arguments _pro_ and _con_ on the question have been almost
exhausted. Nothing is left except to vary the expression and
illustration. Still, so long as the monopoly exists, it will be argued
and counter-argued; and, if there are no new reasons, the old will have
to be iterated.
[EXAMPLE FROM THE GREEKS THEMSELVES]
Perhaps the most hackneyed of all the answers to the case for the
classics is the one that has been most rarely replied to. I mean the
fact that the Greeks were not acquainted with any language but their
own. I have never known an attempt to parry this thrust. Yet, besides
the fact itself, there are strong presumptions in favour of the position
that to know a language well, you should devote your time and strength
to it alone, and not attempt to learn three or four. Of course, the
Greeks were in possession of the most perfect language, and were not
likely to be gainers by studying the languages of their contemporaries.
So, we too are in possession of a very admirable language, although put
together in a nondescript fashion; and it is not impossible that if
Plato had his Dialogues to compose among us, he would give his whole
streng
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