I know quite well that launching myself into this discussion 77
is a very dangerous operation; that it is a very large subject, and one
which is difficult to deal with, however much I may trespass upon your
patience in the time allotted to me. But the discussion is so fundamental,
it is so completely impossible to make up one's mind on these matters
until one has settled the question, that I will even venture to make the
experiment. A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age—I
mean Francis Bacon 78—said that truth came out
of error much more rapidly than it came out of confusion. There is a
wonderful truth in that saying. Next to being right in this world, the
best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will
come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong,
vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely
and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have
the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that
sets you all straight again. So I will not trouble myself as to whether I
may be right or wrong in what I am about to say, but at any rate I hope to
be clear and definite; and then you will be able to judge for yourselves
whether, in following out the train of thought I have to introduce, you
knock your heads against facts or not.
I take it that the whole object of education is, in the first place, to
train the faculties of the young in such a manner as to give their
possessors the best chance of being happy 79 and useful
in their generation; and, in the second place, to furnish them with the
most important portions of that immense capitalised experience of the
human race which we call knowledge of various kinds. I am using the term
knowledge in its widest possible sense; and the question is, what subjects
to select by training and discipline, in which the object I have just
defined may be best attained.
I must call your attention further to this fact, that all the subjects of
our thoughts—all feelings and propositions (leaving aside our
sensations as the mere materials and occasions of thinking and feeling),
all our mental furniture—may be classified under one of two heads—as
either within the province of the intellect, something that can be put
into propositions and affirmed or denied; or as within the province of
feeling, or that which, before the name was defiled, was called the
aesthetic side of our nature, and which can neither be proved nor
disproved, but only felt and known.
According to the classification which I have put before you, then, the
subjects of all knowledge are divisible into the two groups, matters of
science and matters of art; for all things with which the reasoning
faculty alone is occupied, come under the province of science; and in the
broadest sense, and not in the narrow and technical sense in which we are
now accustomed to use the word art, all things feelable, all things which
stir our emotions, come under the term of art, in the sense of the
subject-matter of the aesthetic faculty. So that we are shut up to this—that
the business of education is, in the first place, to provide the young
with the means and the habit of observation; and, secondly, to supply the
subject-matter of knowledge either in the shape of science or of art, or
of both combined.
Now, it is a very remarkable fact—but it is true of most things in
this world—that there is hardly anything one-sided, or of one
nature; and it is not immediately obvious what of the things that interest
us may be regarded as pure science, and what may be regarded as pure art.
It may be that there are some peculiarly constituted persons who, before
they have advanced far into the depths of geometry, find artistic beauty
about it; but, taking the generality of mankind, I think it may be said
that, when they begin to learn mathematics, their whole souls are absorbed
in tracing the connection between the premisses and the conclusion, and
that to them geometry is pure science. So I think it may be said that
mechanics and osteology are pure science. On the other hand, melody in
music is pure art. You cannot reason about it; there is no proposition
involved in it. So, again, in the pictorial art, an arabesque, or a
"harmony in grey,"80 touches none but the aesthetic
faculty. But a great mathematician, and even many persons who are not
great mathematicians, will tell you that they derive immense pleasure from
geometrical reasonings. Everybody knows mathematicians speak of solutions
and problems as "elegant," and they tell you that a certain mass of mystic
symbols is "beautiful, quite lovely." Well, you do not see it. They do see
it, because the intellectual process, the process of comprehending the
reasons symbolised by these figures and these signs, confers upon them a
sort of pleasure, such as an artist has in visual symmetry. Take a science
of which I may speak with more confidence, and which is the most
attractive of those I am concerned with. It is what we call morphology,
which consists in tracing out the unity in variety of the infinitely
diversified structures of animals and plants. I cannot give you any
example of a thorough aesthetic pleasure more intensely real than a
pleasure of this kind—the pleasure which arises in one's mind when a
whole mass of different structures run into one harmony as the expression
of a central law. That is where the province of art overlays and embraces
the province of intellect. And, if I may venture to express an opinion on
such a subject, the great majority of forms of art are not in the sense
what I just now defined them to be—pure art; but they derive much of
their quality from simultaneous and even unconscious excitement of the
intellect.
When I was a boy, I was very fond of music, and I am so now; and it so
happened that I had the opportunity of hearing much good music. Among
other things, I had abundant opportunities of hearing that great old
master, Sebastian Bach. I remember perfectly well—though I knew
nothing about music then, and, I may add, know nothing whatever about it
now—the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in listening,
by the hour together, to Bach's fugues. It is a pleasure which remains
with me, I am glad to think; but, of late years, I have tried to find out
the why and wherefore, and it has often occurred to me that the pleasure
derived from musical compositions of this kind is essentially of the same
nature as that which is derived from pursuits which are commonly regarded
as purely intellectual. I mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the
same as in most of my problems in morphology—that you have the theme
in one of the old master's works followed out in all its endless
variations, always appearing and always reminding you of unity in variety.
So in painting; what is called "truth to nature" is the intellectual
element coming in, and truth to nature depends entirely upon the
intellectual culture of the person to whom art is addressed. If you are in
Australia, you may get credit for being a good artist—I mean among
the natives—if you can draw a kangaroo after a fashion. But, among
men of higher civilisation, the intellectual knowledge we possess brings
its criticism into our appreciation of works of art, and we are obliged to
satisfy it, as well as the mere sense of beauty in colour and in outline.
And so, the higher the culture and information of those whom art
addresses, the more exact and precise must be what we call its "truth to
nature."
If we turn to literature, the same thing is true, and you find works of
literature which may be said to be pure art. A little song of Shakespeare
or of Goethe is pure art; it is exquisitely beautiful, although its
intellectual content may be nothing. A series of pictures is made to pass
before your mind by the meaning of words, and the effect is a melody of
ideas. Nevertheless, the great mass of the literature we esteem is valued,
not merely because of having artistic form, but because of its
intellectual content; and the value is the higher the more precise,
distinct, and true is that intellectual content. And, if you will let me
for a moment speak of the very highest forms of literature, do we not
regard them as highest simply because the more we know the truer they
seem, and the more competent we are to appreciate beauty the more
beautiful they are? No man ever understands Shakespeare until he is old,
though the youngest may admire him, the reason being that he satisfies the
artistic instinct of the youngest and harmonises with the ripest and
richest experience of the oldest.
I have said this much to draw your attention to what, in my mind, lies at
the root of all this matter, and at the understanding of one another by
the men of science on the one hand, and the men of literature, and
history, and art, on the other. It is not a question whether one order of
study or another should predominate. It is a question of what topics of
education you shall select which will combine all the needful elements in
such due proportion as to give the greatest amount of food, support, and
encouragement to those faculties which enable us to appreciate truth, and
to profit by those sources of innocent happiness which are open to us,
and, at the same time, to avoid that which is bad, and coarse, and ugly,
and keep clear of the multitude of pitfalls and dangers which beset those
who break through the natural or moral laws.
I address myself, in this spirit, to the consideration of the question of
the value of purely literary education. Is it good and sufficient, or is
it insufficient and bad? Well, here I venture to say that there are
literary educations and literary educations. If I am to understand by that
term the education that was current in the great majority of middle-class
schools, and upper schools too, in this country when I was a boy, and
which consisted absolutely and almost entirely in keeping boys for eight
or ten years at learning the rules of Latin and Greek grammar, construing
certain Latin and Greek authors, and possibly making verses which, had
they been English verses, would have been condemned as abominable
doggerel,—if that is what you mean by liberal education, then I say
it is scandalously insufficient and almost worthless. My reason for saying
so is not from the point of view of science at all, but from the point of
view of literature. I say the thing professes to be literary education
that is not a literary education at all. It was not literature at all that
was taught, but science in a very bad form. It is quite obvious that
grammar is science and not literature. The analysis of a text by the help
of the rules of grammar is just as much a scientific operation as the
analysis of a chemical compound by the help of the rules of chemical
analysis. There is nothing that appeals to the aesthetic faculty in that
operation; and I ask multitudes of men of my own age, who went through
this process, whether they ever had a conception of art or literature
until they obtained it for themselves after leaving school? Then you may
say, "If that is so, if the education was scientific, why cannot you be
satisfied with it?" I say, because although it is a scientific training,
it is of the most inadequate and inappropriate kind. If there is any good
at all in scientific education it is that men should be trained, as I said
before, to know things for themselves at first hand, and that they should
understand every step of the reason of that which they do.
I desire to speak with the utmost respect of that science—philology—of
which grammar is a part and parcel; yet everybody knows that grammar, as
it is usually learned at school, affords no scientific training. It is
taught just as you would teach the rules of chess or draughts. On the
other hand, if I am to understand by a literary education the study of the
literatures of either ancient or modern nations—but especially those
of antiquity, and especially that of ancient Greece; if this literature is
studied, not merely from the point of view of philological science, and
its practical application to the interpretation of texts, but as an
exemplification of and commentary upon the principles of art; if you look
upon the literature of a people as a chapter in the development of the
human mind, if you work out this in a broad spirit, and with such
collateral references to morals and politics, and physical geography, and
the like as are needful to make you comprehend what the meaning of ancient
literature and civilisation is,—then, assuredly, it affords a
splendid and noble education. But I still think it is susceptible of
improvement, and that no man will ever comprehend the real secret of the
difference between the ancient world and our present time, unless he has
learned to see the difference which the late development of physical
science has made between the thought of this day and the thought of that,
and he will never see that difference, unless he has some practical
insight into some branches of physical science; and you must remember that
a literary education such as that which I have just referred to, is out of
the reach of those whose school life is cut short at sixteen or seventeen.
But, you will say, all this is fault-finding; let us hear what you have in
the way of positive suggestion. Then I am bound to tell you that, if I
could make a clean sweep of everything—I am very glad I cannot
because I might, and probably should, make mistakes,—but if I could
make a clean sweep of everything and start afresh, I should, in the first
place, secure that training of the young in reading and writing, and in
the habit of attention and observation, both to that which is told them,
and that which they see, which everybody agrees to. But in addition to
that, I should make it absolutely necessary for everybody, for a longer or
shorter period, to learn to draw. Now, you may say, there are some people
who cannot draw, however much they may be taught. I deny that in toto,
because I never yet met with anybody who could not learn to write. Writing
is a form of drawing; therefore if you give the same attention and trouble
to drawing as you do to writing, depend upon it, there is nobody who
cannot be made to draw, more or less well. Do not misapprehend me. I do
not say for one moment you would make an artistic draughtsman. Artists are
not made; they grow. You may improve the natural faculty in that
direction, but you cannot make it; but you can teach simple drawing, and
you will find it an implement of learning of extreme value. I do not think
its value can be exaggerated, because it gives you the means of training
the young in attention and accuracy, which are the two things in which all
mankind are more deficient than in any other mental quality whatever. The
whole of my life has been spent in trying to give my proper attention to
things and to be accurate, and I have not succeeded as well as I could
wish; and other people, I am afraid, are not much more fortunate. You
cannot begin this habit too early, and I consider there is nothing of so
great a value as the habit of drawing, to secure those two desirable ends.
Then we come to the subject-matter, whether scientific or aesthetic, of
education, and I should naturally have no question at all about teaching
the elements of physical science of the kind I have sketched, in a
practical manner; but among scientific topics, using the word scientific
in the broadest sense, I would also include the elements of the theory of
morals and of that of political and social life, which, strangely enough,
it never seems to occur to anybody to teach a child. I would have the
history of our own country, and of all the influences which have been
brought to bear upon it, with incidental geography, not as a mere
chronicle of reigns and battles, but as a chapter in the development of
the race, and the history of civilisation.
Then with respect to aesthetic knowledge and discipline, we have happily
in the English language one of the most magnificent storehouses of
artistic beauty and of models of literary excellence which exists in the
world at the present time. I have said before, and I repeat it here, that
if a man cannot get literary culture of the highest kind out of his Bible,
and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes,81 and Bishop
Berkeley,82
to mention only a few of our illustrious writers—I say, if he cannot
get it out of those writers he cannot get it out of anything; and I would
assuredly devote a very large portion of the time of every English child
to the careful study of the models of English writing of such varied and
wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is still more important and still
more neglected, the habit of using that language with precision, with
force, and with art. I fancy we are almost the only nation in the world
who seem to think that composition comes by nature. The French attend to
their own language, the Germans study theirs; but Englishmen do not seem
to think it is worth their while. Nor would I fail to include, in the
course of study I am sketching, translations of all the best works of
antiquity, or of the modern world. It is a very desirable thing to read
Homer in Greek; but if you don't happen to know Greek, the next best thing
we can do is to read as good a translation of it as we have recently been
furnished with in prose.83 You won't get all you would get
from the original, but you may get a great deal; and to refuse to know
this great deal because you cannot get all, seems to be as sensible as for
a hungry man to refuse bread because he cannot get partridge. Finally, I
would add instruction in either music or painting, or, if the child should
be so unhappy, as sometimes happens, as to have no faculty for either of
those, and no possibility of doing anything in any artistic sense with
them, then I would see what could be done with literature alone; but I
would provide, in the fullest sense, for the development of the aesthetic
side of the mind. In my judgment, those are all the essentials of
education for an English child. With that outfit, such as it might be made
in the time given to education which is within the reach of nine-tenths of
the population—with that outfit, an Englishman, within the limits of
English life, is fitted to go anywhere, to occupy the highest positions,
to fill the highest offices of the State, and to become distinguished in
practical pursuits, in science, or in art. For, if he have the opportunity
to learn all those things, and have his mind disciplined in the various
directions the teaching of those topics would have necessitated, then,
assuredly, he will be able to pick up, on his road through life, all the
rest of the intellectual baggage he wants.
If the educational time at our disposition were sufficient, there are one
or two things I would add to those I have just now called the essentials;
and perhaps you will be surprised to hear, though I hope you will not,
that I should add, not more science, but one, or, if possible, two
languages. The knowledge of some other language than one's own is, in
fact, of singular intellectual value. Many of the faults and mistakes of
the ancient philosophers are traceable to the fact that they knew no
language but their own, and were often led into confusing the symbol with
the thought which it embodied. I think it is Locke 84 who says
that one-half of the mistakes of philosophers have arisen from questions
about words; and one of the safest ways of delivering yourself from the
bondage of words is, to know how ideas look in words to which you are not
accustomed. That is one reason for the study of language; another reason
is, that it opens new fields in art and in science. Another is the
practical value of such knowledge; and yet another is this, that if your
languages are properly chosen, from the time of learning the additional
languages you will know your own language better than ever you did. So, I
say, if the time given to education permits, add Latin and German. Latin,
because it is the key to nearly one-half of English and to all the Romance
languages; and German, because it is the key to almost all the remainder
of English, and helps you to understand a race from whom most of us have
sprung, and who have a character and a literature of a fateful force in
the history of the world, such as probably has been allotted to those of
no other people, except the Jews, the Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond these,
the essential and the eminently desirable elements of all education, let
each man take up his special line—the historian devote himself to
his history, the man of science to his science, the man of letters to his
culture of that kind, and the artist to his special pursuit.
Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no more than this: Franciscus
Bacon sic cogitavit;85 let "sic cogitavi" be the
epilogue to what I have ventured to address to you to-night.
