v>.m& | LIBRARY OF C0X6RESS. I «dap«. ■ ; Lb4i 3J-o, ,Cl2> '.-. XITKD STATES Ot IMKitlC Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/lecturesonpopula01comb LECTURES ON POPULAR EDUCATION; DELIVERED TO THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION, IN APRIL AND NOVEMBER 1833. ^utiltsfjeU fit? request of tf)t Btwctors of tf)t 'association. By GEOKGE COMBE. THIRD EDITION, CORRECTED AND ENLARGED. " The efforts of the people are still wanting for the purpose of promoting Education ; and Parliament will render no substantial assistance, until the people themselves take tho matter in hand with energy and spirit, and the determination to do something." — Lord Brougham's Speech at York, 10th October 1833. EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN, STEWART, & CO. LONGMAN & CO.; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO.; AND W. S. ORR & CO. LONDON. DAVID ROBERTSON, GLASGOW; AND JAMES M'GLASHAN, DUBLIN. MDCCCXLYIIl. ■ ^ EDINBURGH: PRINTED ItV WEILL AND COMPANY, OLD FISIISIAKKET. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The following Lectures were first delivered in April 1833, at the end of a course of Lectures on Phrenology ; and again in the month of Novem- ber of the same year. At the request of the Directors of the Philosophical Association, they were then published, in the form of a pamphlet. Im- mediately afterwards they were, with my permission, reprinted by Messrs W. and R. Chambers in their widely-circulated journal. At a later period, a part of them was incorporated into the text of the ' ' Constitution of Man." In these circumstances it seemed unnecessary to reproduce the original lectures in a separate form, and they were allowed to remain for some time out of print. Having been informed, however, that the public continued to demand the work, the present edition has been prepared, and I have endeavoured to make some corrections, additions, and improvements, which I hope may increase its value. In its present form it contains a condensed and comprehensive summary of the chief objects which should be aimed at in popular education. Since these Lectures first appeared, a great improvement has taken place in popular education ; and the principles and practices which they recommend, although at first assailed with ridicule, have already, to a considerable extent, been carried into effect. I allude particularly to the diffusion of useful knowledge by means of lectures on science to popular audiences. There is an increasing demand throughout the country for such instruction, and lecturers are much wanted. So far back as 1796 Dr Beddoes published " A Lecture introductory to a course of popular instruc- tion on the Constitution and Management of the Human Body," and in 1797 lectures on Animal and Human Physiology were delivered to a miscella- neous audience of both sexes at Bristol. When I ventured to revive this practice in my own courses of instruction, and recommended it in these published Lectures, it was objected to as improper and dangerous. The subject, however, has proved so attractive and useful that already it has ceased to be a novelty, and numerous successful courses of lectures have been delivered on it in various parts of the country. Edinburgh, ldth January 1837. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. A third Edition of these Lectures being now called for, I have endea- voured by notes, and also by enlargement and modification of the text, to adapt them to the present time. In doing so, I have been forcibly struck with the rapid progress made by the public mind since 1833, towards form- ing a just estimate, not only of the importance of education, but of its principles, objects, and practical development. In Edinburgh one branch of popular education has recently been instituted, and successfully carried into practice, that was not even contemplated when these lectures were composed. Dr Mainzer has taught singing and a knowledge of music to more than a thousand children of the humbler classes of society, to the VI PREFACE. manifest improvement of their taste and manners, and I have no doubt also of their morals ; for every means of supplying innocent and refined pleasure necessarily tends to moral advancement. The grounds on which this branch of education is recommended are ably and successfully ex- pounded in Dr Mainzer's work on (i Music and Education."* While this Edition is in the press, a new Revolution has taken place in France, Louis Philippe has been dethroned, and a Republic proclaimed. Whatever may be the immediate consequences of this event, I cannot doubt that its ultimate result will be the extension of the power of the people in every country of Europe, and especially in our own. Not a day should be lost, therefore, in qualifying the people, by instruction and training, to distinguish between good and evil, and between the possible and the im- possible, in human institutions. Hitherto, the cause of national education has been greatly impeded by contentions regarding the teaching of religious doctrines in schools . In a series of pamphlets lately published,! I have endeavoured to shew that the world, both moral and physical, is governed by natural laws, instituted by the Creator to serve as guides to human conduct, and that the great aim of secular education should be to communicate a knowledge of these laws, and of the mode in which they are administered, and to train the young to yield obedience to them in their actions. Such an education would tend to protect a country from the evils of revolution. If there be Divine arrangements in nature, connecting consequences of good or evil with every mode of action, and if it be impossible to reach either indivi- dual or social happiness except by submitting to them, the people may be enabled to understand that that form of government will be most perfect which coincides most closely with their requirements. No revolution can unseat the Eternal Ruler of the Universe, or alter, or enable men to evade 1 J is laws. If this truth were demonstrated to the youthful mind as a prac- tical fact, and the rising generation were trained to pay homage to it and its consequences, in their conduct, we should at last feel that social order rested on the basis of nature. The points of religious doctrine on which rival sects differ, are feeble as cobwebs in restraining an excited people in the whirlwind of revolutionary passion ; but the truths of reli- gion in which all are agreed, fortified by a deep conviction that the Di- vine Ruler has established, even in this world, an inseparable connection between virtue, both public and private, and prosperity, might probably furnish a firmer basis for the maintenance of social order, than these dis- cordant doctrines have ever afforded. True religion would harmonize with . hallow, vivify, and render practical, a scheme of education founded on the principles revealed to man in the order of God's secular Providence. The chief object of the present publication, and of the others before named, is to promote this conviction in the public mind. i" Melville Stbeet, Ediwbcbqh, 6th March I Music and Education. ByDr Mainzee. Bvo, pp. 125. London : Longman & Co. burgh: A.dam and Charles Black, 1848. narks on National Education, Svo,JFourth Edition, price 4d. on the Relation between Religion and Science. 8vo, Fhtrd Edition, price 6d. Whal should Secular Education Embrace ' 8vo, price 6d. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. Page Utility of Education, . . . . . 1 View of Man's position on Earth, .... 2 Physical Nature prepared for him, ... 4 His faculties adapted to its constitution, . . ib. Hence, a knowledge of that constitution necessary to his welfare, 6 *" Man is guided not by Instinct, hut by Reason, . . 7 L Reason cannot act with advantage without knowledge, founded on ob- servation and experience, .... 8 Present state of Education, .... 10 Study of Languages, . . . . . ib. Origin of study of Greek and Latin, ... 12 Reasons why Greek and Latin exclusively were taught at Grammar Schools, . . . .. . . 13 Importance of these Languages overrated, ... 15 Importance of studying the English language, . . 18 Opinions of eminent authors on the subject, ... 20 Discipline of the faculties in studying Languages and Science compared, 21 LECTURE If. Education of the Industrious Classes, ... 24 Abridgment of hours of labour necessary, ... 25 What constitutes a good Education ? ... 28 Language necessary as a means of acquiring and communicating know- ledge, ...... 29 But knowledge of objects and their relations indispensable in useful edu- cation, . . , . . 30 Particular branches of education enumerated, . . 32 American and Prussian systems of Education, . . 34 Education in German boarding-schools, ... 35 Vlll CONTENTS. Dr Druramond's defence of the utility of scientific education to the indus- trious classes, ..... General Remarks on education for these classes, Training described, and its importance enforced, I Fees of Knowledge, ..... Objection that the people are incapable of improvement answered, Interference of the Legislature in regulating the habits of the people. Page 38 40 41 44 47 40 LECTURE III. V Education of the Female Sex, Influence of Mothers on the character of their children Physical treatment of children, Moral and intellectual culture of children Elegant accomplishments, Evils attendant on imperfect female education, Mrs John Sandford"s observations, Mrs Willard's remarks, .... Notice of the Philosophical Association (for procuring Instruction ful and Entertaining Science), Objections considered, .... Answer to the objection, " A little learning is a dangerous thing," Importance of the education of the industrious classes On Prizes, Medals, and Place-taking, in Use- 50 52 ib. 55 57 58 59 ib. 61 62 68 73 75 APPENDIX. No. I. The Philosophical Institution described, No. II. Improved method of teaching Drawing. 8$ LECTUBE L OBJECTS OF EDUCATION. A FEW years ago, no question was more frequently asked than, What is the use of Education 1 It was often difficult to give a satisfactory answer, not because education was of no use, but because utility itself was viewed so differently by differ- ent individuals, that it was impossible to shew that educa- tion was calculated to realise the precise advantage which, each aspired to attain. Besides, education is calculated to correct so many errors in practice, and to supply so many deficiencies in human institutions, that volumes would be ne- cessary to render its real importance thoroughly conspicuous. Instead of obtaining from education a correct view of the nature of man, and of the objects and duties of life, each individual has been left to form, upon these points, theories for himself, derived from the impressions made upon his own mind by the particular circumstances in which he has been placed. This has arisen from the want of a prac- tical philosophy of mind. No reasonable person assumes himself to know the sciences of Astronomy, Chemistry, or Physiology, without study and an appeal to nature ; yet, in the department of Mind, the practice is different. Almost every one has a set of notions of his own, which, in his mind, hold the place of a system of the philosophy of man ; and, although he may not have methodised his ideas, or even ac- knowledged them to himself as a theory, yet, to him, they constitute a standard by which he practically judges of all questions in morals, politics, and religion. He advocates whatever views coincide with them, and condemns all that differ from them, with as little hesitation as a professed theorist himself, and also without trying his own principles by any natural standard. In short, the great mass even of educated men, in judging of questions relating to morals, politics, and social institutions, proceed too much on first, or even on accidental, impressions. Hence, public measures, whether relating to education, religion, trade, manufactures, provision for the poor, criminal law, or to any other of the in- THEORIES OF EDUCATION. terests of society, instead of being treated as branches of one general system of economy, and adjusted on scientific prin- ciples, each in harmony with the others, are too often sup- ported or opposed on narrow and empirical grounds, — and discussions regarding them occasionally call forth displays of ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance, calculated greatly to obstruct the progress of improvement. Indeed, general agree- ment on questions of which the first principles must be found in the constitution of human nature, will be impossible, even among sensible and virtuous men, so long as no standard of mental philosophy is admitted to guide individual feelings and perceptions. Hence, when a young man, educated as a merchant, asks the use of any thing, the answer which will most thoroughly interest him, will be one shewing how much wealth may be acquired by it. The sincerely religious will ac- knowledge that to be most useful, which tends most directly to salvation ; while the votaries of fashion will admit the utility of such pursuits only as are recognised by the refined but frivolous and generally ill-informed circle, which to them constitutes the highest tribunal of taste. To expound to such persons, principles affecting the general interests of society, and to talk to them of schemes for promoting the happiness of human beings, in their various conditions of husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, teachers and pupils, governors and subjects, appears like indulging a warm imagination in fanciful harangues. They are of opi- nion that the experience of six thousand years is sufficient to shew, that man is not destined in this life to be different from what he has always been and now is ; and that any measures pretending greatly to improve his. condition, however desira- ble, are not at all to be believed in by sensible and practical people. This state of things could not exist if education were founded on a true system of human nature, and an exposition of its relations to the external world. To enable us to form a just estimate of our position as in- telligent and accountable beings in this world, let us briefly consider, 1st, the general aspect of external nature ; and, 2d, our own constitution. All geological authorities agree in representing physical nature as having undergone a variety of changes, and hav- ing attained to the condition in which it now appears, be- fore Man occupied its surface. l\ace after race of plants and animals flourished on the earth, and were successively destroyed before man appeared. " It is never pretended,'' •ir Lyell, "that our race co-existed with assemblages of animals and plants, of which all or even a large proportion THE PHYSICAL WORLD. 6 of the species are extinct.''* — {Principles of Geology, p. 143, Seventh Edition.) " In all these various formations," says Dr Buckland, " the coprolites" (or the dung of the saurian reptiles in a fossil state) " form records of warfare waged by successive gene- rations of inhabitants of our planet on one another; and the general law of nature, which bids all to eat and to be eaten in their turn, is shewn to have been co-extensive with animal ex- istence upon our globe, the carnivora in each period of the world's history fulfilling their destined office to check excess in the progress of life, and maintain the balance of creation." The history of the globe appears to shew that it has been constituted by the Divine Author on the principle of progres- sive advancement ; but whether by distinct and successive acts of creation, or by the development of qualities and capacities bestowed by Him on inorganic matter and or- ganic beings, we cannot determine. Great improvements have been effected in different species of vegetables and animals, by human sagacity and attention. " In the ab- sence," says Mr Watson, " of any proper definition of the term improvement, we may safely leave it to the general ver- dict of the public, whether the green-gage plum-tree, with its luscious fruit, is not an improvement upon the austere- berried sloe-bush ; whether the pippin and codlin apples are not improvements upon the wild crab ; and whether the swift- footed greyhound, the intelligent lapdog, and the powerful mastiff, are not improvements upon any known wild race of dog, wolf, or fox, — for it is doubtful whether the dog has not descended from one or both of the two latter stocks." * This subject, however, is still involved in great obscurity. Mr Hewett Watson remarks, that " Geology has shewn nothing whatever concerning the creation of races or individuals. Neither the mode of creation, nor the first state, nor yet the last state, of any race or species, has been in the slightest degree explained by geological discovery. The fossil records of past life are limited to incomplete representations of the state of individuals at death ; and in the older deposites the remains are scarcely more than mere copies of their shapes. In the more recent deposites, good skeletons, &c, are found ; but in all likelihood, the stony models and skeletons which have hitherto met the eye of man, will not bear the proportion of one individual out of every million that have existed. Granting this, how can any sober reasoner assert positively, on such meagre evidence, that intermediate forms and structures have not existed ? Geology is far too imperfect yet, to allow of any fair presumption, from its in- dividual facts, either of the transition or non-transition of one species into ano- ther. On the great scale, it is as clear as such evidence can make it, that one species has been substituted for another, but we know not how this substitution has been brought about; and, alloiving for the difference of time, it may well be questioned whether the changes brought to light by geological researches, at all exceed the changes now effected in the vegetable world by human efforts." — Examination of Mr Scott's Attach, ectable families of the working classes, and trained and educated under their guidance and official superintendence. 16 LANGUAGES. is communicated, and children are compelled to proceed at once to learn difficult, copious, and obsolete languages — to burden their memories with words corresponding to which they have no ideas. This course of study being an outrage upon Nature, — tedium, disgust, and suffering, invade the youthful mind. As a means of conquering aversion, severe discipline used to be, and occasionally still is, resorted to : This being felt to be unjust, rouses the lower feelings and debases the higher sentiments, — while the intellect is starved and impaired by dealing habitually with sounds to which no clear conceptions are attached. Second!?/, Under this system, children make no substan- tial progress in any useful acquirement. Nine out of ten of them drawl away the years of their allotted penance, and within a brief space after its close, forget much of what they had learned with so much labour and pain ; and even the tenth, who, from a higher natural talent for languages, per- haps distinguished himself at school, does not, on entering the counting-room or workshop, always find himself as supe- rior to his competitors in practical business as in classical attainments. If the individual select commerce or manufactures for his occupation for life, the time devoted to the dead languages is to some extent misapplied. Nine-tenths of the children edu- cated in a commercial town do not follow professions for which Greek and Latin are indispensable ; and hence the time and money expended, by at least this proportion of pupils, might have been better employed. The habits of mental ac- tivity and application which they acquire in contending with the difficulties of these languages, constitute the most valu- able results of their instruction. To them the languages themselves are of comparative little utility. Professor Christi- son, when examined some years ago before the Royal Commis- sion which visited the University of Edinburgh, stated, that at the High School he had been dux of the Greek Class, and at the College had gained a prize for skill in that language, and was naturally fond of it; but that, from the time when lie began to study medicine, he found his attention so fully oc- cupied by substantial science, that he had scarcely opened a Greek book : while he had been obliged to study French and German for the sake of the medical information to which they were the means of access.* * I heard the statement i:; tin- texl made some few years ago by a friend, and noted it at the time ; but, before publishing it. I wrote to Professor Christison, mentioning my desire to ascertain if it were correct, and he kindly sent me the following letter: — LANGUAGES. 17 It is an error to suppose that Greek and Latin are indispen- sably necessary to enable a boy to understand his own lan- " To George Combe, Esq. " My Dear Sir, — The evidence before the University Commis- sioners was never published, though printed ; nor have I seen that part of my evidence to which you refer since the time it was given. But to the best of my recollection, I stated in regard to Greek — very much as you have put it in your letter — that, in my youth, I had cultivated it for about five years, and had made some proficiency in it, being fond of the language ; but that I had since found so little occasion to put it to practical use, although pursuing the various branches of my profession as objects of scientific study, that I did not believe I could at that moment translate a single passage of Greek which might be placed before me. Such is certainly still the state of matters with me and my Greek ; and I had occasion very lately, in our discussions in the Senatus Aca- demicus regarding the propriety of preliminary general education for Doctors of Medicine, to renew my objections to Greek as one of them, in the terms now mentioned. I am almost certain that, in my evidence before the Commission, I also added, that if any other language but Latin were to be required, I should infinitely prefer placing French, and even German too, in our Statuta. " My opinion regarding Greek shortly is, that it is a most desirable branch of literature for imparting general knowledge and cultivation to the mind ; but, for direct professional purposes, is of so little consequence, both in itself and likewise as compared with modern languages and the exact sciences, that, con- sidering the great augmentation of the branches of proper medical study in these days, the pursuit of it, as a compulsory measure for medical students, is a mere waste of time and labour. " Believe me yours very truly, " R. Christison. "November, 23, 1833. " 3 Great Stuart Street." " P.S. — I have no objection to your making any public use of my sentiments which you may desire ; for I am sure they coincide with those entertained by most qualified judges whom I have conversed with on the subject ; and I am most anxious at the present moment — when the matter of medical education is about to be taken up by Government, — that unprofessional men of common sense be not led away by the natural partiality of classical scholars for their favourite pursuit, or by the recollection, that, in former times, when medicine and the medical sciences were in small compass, and the student had therefore ample time for collateral studies, Greek was naturally enough considered a necessary branch of knowledge, because it was one of the almost indispensable tests of a man of cultivated mind or a learned profession." I consider the cause of education much benefited by the testimony of Pro- fessor Christison in the prefixed letter. It is highly characteristic of that bold, independent, and practical understanding, which has raised him at an early age to a distinguished place in the University of his native city. While, however, this Lecture was in the press in 1833, a friend sent me the following information : — " It is curious that, at this moment, the Statuta Solennia of the University of Edinburgh for the degree of M.D., should for the first time appear in an English dress. An adequate knowledge of Latin is still, of course, required ; but if the graduate shew that he can easily read Celsus or Cicero de Natura Deorum, no more is demanded : the great examination goes on in English, and the modest student is no longer perplexed by having to think and speak in a dead language." B 18 LANGUAGES. guage. This must be the case only where no adequate pains have been bestowed by teachers to convey fully the meaning of English expressions. All words are mere arbitrary sounds ; and, in itself, a sound invented by an Englishman is as capa- ble of being rendered intelligible by proper definition, as one first suggested by a Greek or Roman. A great proportion of the words which compose the English language are de- rived from the Saxon ; yet few persons think a knowledge of that language necessary for the due understanding of their native tongue. The grand requisites to the right use of speech are two, — clear notions and accurate definitions of the words employed to express them. The former will be best attained by studying things and their relations, and the latter by a careful exposition of our mother- tongue, by teachers who know scientifically both the things signified and the ge- nius of the language. The derivation of words is not always an index to their true signification ; artery means literally air-vessel, yet it circulates blood ; physiology is derived from (puetg, nature, and Xoyog, discourse, — yet in English it is used to designate only the doctrine of animal and vegetable func- tions. In teaching etymology, therefore, we must often guard the student against the errors into which it would lead him ; so that the difficulty of his understanding his native tongue, is to that extent increased by his Greek and Latin studies. Various obvious reasons exist why so little of English is understood by those who learn it and no other language or science at school. Owing to the deficiency of their own edu- cation, teachers themselves, in general, do not possess dis- tinct knowledge of the things signified by the sounds which they communicate ; and, from not understanding the ideas, they have it not in their power to define words accurately. Hence they cannot, and do not, bring together before the minds of their pupils, clear conceptions of the things signi- fied, and of the signs ; without the combination of which the right use of speech is impracticable. Further, schoolmasters, in general, communicate only the sounds of words, and the abstract rules of grammar ; but this is not teaching a language. Teaching a language implies unfolding its structure, idiom, and powers — a task which requires extensive information and much reflection. * A professor of English, therefore, would be more useful to nine out of ten of the pupils of any academy for the educa- tion of the industrious classes, than professors of Greek and * Since the text was written, a groat improvement has taken place in many schools in the mode of teaching English. In many instances, the principles here recommended have heen practically adopted. LANGUAGES. 19 Latin ; and it should be only after English had been taught in this way, or by some other method, adapted to the human understanding, and without success, that the conclusion should be drawn that it cannot be understood sufficiently for all useful and ornamental purposes, without a previous know- ledge of Greek and Latin. The extensive study of Greek and Latin by learned men, has led to the practice of compounding many new words out of Greek roots ; and as Chemistry, Geology, and other branches of Natural History, are advancing with cheering rapidity, multitudes of purely Greek words are added to our lan- guage every year, and the uninitiated suffer great incon- venience from not understanding them. This evil, I believe, is to a great extent unavoidable. The things described are new in science, and new names are needed by which to de- signate them. Uninstructed readers are unacquainted with the objects, as well as with their names. If the objects were studied, which, can be done only by observation, no difficulty would be found in comprehending the words, although they be derived from Greek and Latin roots. It would be ex- tremely difficult to give to English terms that scientific pre- cision which is attainable by using names compounded of Greek and Latin roots. Explanatory dictionaries, however, of words, common and scientific, borrowed from these lan- guages, have been published ; so that no one is compelled to study ancient tongues for six or seven years, for the sake of understanding the derivations of a few hundreds of scientific terms. In a very useful work by Dr R. Harrison Elack, en- titled " The Student's Manual " (published by Longman and Co.), the Greek roots are printed in the Greek character, and also in the Roman, by which means unlearned readers may become acquainted with the Greek letters, and many common Greek words, almost without an effort. It has often been observed that the Greeks themselves studied no language except their own, and yet attained to exquisite delicacy and dexterity in the use of it; and why may not the English rival them in this exploit \ The objec- tion, that Greek is a primitive, and English a derivative tongue, is met by the answer, that every word is merely a sound indicative of an idea or an emotion ; and that it makes no difference in the possibility of comprehending the mean- ing of it, whether the sound was invented by the English themselves, or borrowed by them from the Greeks or Ro- mans. In learning the meaning of Greek words, the student must connect the thing signified directly with the expres- sion, because he has no etymology to render the Greek intel- ligible. But if he can comprehend Greek by merely connect- 20 LANGUAGES. ing the idea with the word, why may he not learn to under- stand English by a similar process \ It may be added, that some of the most eminent of our English authors, such as Shakespear, Cobbett, Burns, and a whole host of female writers, had little or no acquaintance with the dead lan- guages ; and that there are not wanting instances of learned critics, like Bentley, whose classical knowledge did not en- able them to express themselves in their native tongue with tolerable correctness, gracefulness, and ease. We have the testimony of several of the greatest masters in English literature against the existing practice. " It is deplorable," says Cowley in his Essays, " to con- sider the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing, or rather casting away, six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that very imper- fectly." Locke, in his Treatise on Education, asks : " "Would not a Chinese, who took notice of our way of breeding, be apt to imagine that all our young gentlemen were designed to be teachers and professors of the dead languages of foreign countries, and not to be men of business in their own % '' Gibbon the historian remarks, that " a finished scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton in total ignorance of the business and conversation of English gen- tlemen in the latter end of the eighteenth century." Mr Moore, who cites these authorities in his notices of the Life of Lord Byron,* adds, that that gifted poet was a miserable Greek and Latin scholar while he attended Har- row School ; that he hated the task of learning these lan- guages ; and that he acquired his astonishing copiousness, flexibility, and beauty of style, by extensive miscellaneous reading in his native tongue. Milton says, " Though a lin- guist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft this world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeo- man or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only." And Dr Adam Smith observes, that " it seldom hap- pens that a man, in any part of his life, derives any conve- niency or advantage from some of the most laborious and troublesome parts of his education." — Wealth of Xations, B. v. c. 1. Education, then, consisting chiefly of languages, leaves Vol. i. p. sp. 90. Murray, 1832. LANGUAGES. 21 the mind of the pupil ignorant of things, ignorant of men, and ignorant of the constitution of the social system in which he is destined to move. He is trained in abstractions, and among shadows ; and when he enters practical life he finds that his real education is only at its commencement. Education consisting of a knowledge of philosophy and science, on the contrary, produces an early and a deep con- viction that man is made for action ; that he is placed among agents, which he must direct, or to which he must accom- modate his conduct ; that everything in the world is regu- lated by laws instituted by the Creator; that all objects which exist — animate and inanimate — have received definite qualities and constitutions, and that good arises from their proper, and evil from their improper, application. This education makes known what these qualities are. It invi- gorates the understanding, and gives boldness and inde- pendence to the sentiments. The practical effect of the two modes of instruction must be widely different. I have heard the practice of teaching the ancient lan- guages as the chief branches of education defended on the ground, that the difficulties which the study of them presents afford an admirable means of training the intellectual fa- culties to contend with obstacles, and that discipline more than knowledge constitutes the practical value of education. In answer to this argument I observe, that the Creator, in bestowing on us faculties fitted to become acquainted with external nature, and in rendering us happy or miserable in proportion to the extent to which we place ourselves in ac- cordance w 7 ith his laws, must certainly have adapted these objects to our mental constitution in such a manner that the study of them, while it carries positive advantages in its train, should also beneficially exercise the faculties them- selves by means of which it is conducted. Accordingly, it appears to me that the power of observation, on the strength and acuteness of which the talent for practical business greatly depends, will be better disciplined by studying the forms, colours, magnitudes, and arrangements, of the differ- ent parts of minerals, earths, metals, salts, plants, and ani- mals, than by learning merely the distinctions between modes, tenses, genders, and cases, in two or three obsolete lan- guages ; and that the reflecting faculties will be better trained to vigour by investigating the active phenomena presented by the objects comprehended in the sciences of Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, and Physiology, than by contending with the subtleties of Greek and Roman authors. In the 22 LANGUAGES. one case the faculties are employed directly on the objects suited to them in creation ; — in the other, they are occupied with artificial inventions in one particular department of in- tellect alone. In the one case, every item of knowledge gained, possesses intrinsic value ; — in the other, the ideas acquired are of slender utility beyond the discipline which the study of them affords. The study of nature, then, calls into existence a much greater amount of thought than does the study of languages. It has been said also in defence of Greek and Latin as the substance of education, that these languages become the basis on which a vast fabric of useful knowledge may be reared. The pupils, we are told, are instructed in the geo- graphy and history, and in the animal and mineral produc- tions, of the countries in which the events recorded in the ancient classics occurred. This, however, i3 an acknow- ledgment that these branches of information are valuable in themselves ; and then the only remaining question is, whether natural science, history, and geography, will be best taught as mere appendages to Greek and Roman literature ; or whether they be not entitled to take the lead, on account of their own inherent excellence, and of their superior adapta- tion to gratify and improve the mental faculties. Those who maintain that they are not, give the preference to the artifi- cial and abstract products of the human intellect in ages when science was scarcely known, over the ever-enduring and per- fect works of the Creator, as strengthening studies for the youthful mind ! Again, it is argued by some person, that in studying science, we acquire a knowledge only of the names of alkalies, acids, earths, salts, minerals, plants, and. animals, which, after all, is an exercise of mere verbal memory — a species of parrot- practice calculated to puff up the youthful mind with conceit, and is in itself far less useful than a real acquaintance with the principles of universal grammar, and with the literature of two of the greatest nations of antiquity. The fundamental proposition in this argument is at variance with fact. In a proper course of instruction in science, the pupil is never taught the name of any object, until he shall have been made acquainted with the object itself. And, in regard to strength- ening the judgment, it appears to me that an individual who is trained to habits of accurate observation, who learns early that the objects of creation are agents acting and reacting on each other and on himself; that they operate according to regular laws ; and that man may control, direct, and apply some of them by his own energy and skill, while to the in- LANGUAGES. 23 fluence of others he must accommodate his conduct ; — is much better prepared to enter life with a vigorous and disciplined understanding than one who has spent five, six, or seven years chiefly in studying the abstractions, and conquering the difficulties, of the Greek and Roman classics. It is no doubt useful to train the youthful mind to contend with and sur- mount difficulties ; but these are presented in abundance, and in the most beneficial form, in the study of nature. In exercising the eyes, we would not teach a child to squint, because this is more difficult than looking straight ; and in exercising the legs, we would not direct the pupil to walk chiefly on his tiptoes, because this demands greater vigour in the muscles than walking on the full sole of the foot : yet it would be equally rational to do so, as to select the intri- cacies of Greek and Latin grammar as mental exercises on account of the difficulties which they present to the under- standing. No man seriously engaged in the study of science, ever found his path too flowery, or the obstacles to his pro- gress too few. Yet the difficulties which he encounters are stimulating, because the scheme of creation is adapted to the constitution of his understanding. He feels so greatly bene- fited and so highly delighted with whatever knowledge he has gained, that the labour of adding to his stores, although severe, is pleasant. He is cheered also by the consciousness that his powers of investigation increase in proportion to his attainments and perseverance. The greatest evils attending a purely classical education appear to me to be the ignorance in which it leaves the pupil of the objects, agents, and relations existing in nature and social life, and the extent to which, in consequence, his mind is exposed to the influence of prejudice and superstition. A thorough education in natural knowledge, on the other hand, enlarges, invigorates, and humanizes the whole mental powers, wherever they possess native aptitude for improvement. ( 24 ) LECTURE II. WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD EDUCATION \ The principles which I have hitherto advanced are appli- cable to all classes of human beings ; but the chief subjects of the present lectures are the education. 1st, Of the indus- trious portion of the community, including all who live by their labour and their talents, and do not belong to the learned professions ; and, 'Idly, Of females of every rank, for whom no adequate means of instruction in useful knowledge are, in general, provided. 1. In regard to the education of the industrious classes. They constitute between thirteen and fourteen out of the sixteen millions of people in Great Britain. Our opinions of the kind of education which they should receive, will de- pend on the objects which we assign to their lives. If they have been created by Providence merely to toil and pay taxes, to eat, sleep, and transmit existence to future genera- tions, a limited education may suffice : but if they have been born with the full faculties of moral, intellectual, and reli- gious beings ; if they are as capable, when instructed, of studying the works of God, of obeying His laws, of loving Him and admiring His institutions, as any class of the com- munity ; in short, if they are rational beings, capable of all the duties, and susceptible of all the enjoyments, which be- long to the rational character ; then no education is sufficient for them which leaves any portion of their highest powers waste and unproductive. This is the light in which I regard them ; and the grand question is, What mode of life, and what kind of pursuits, are best adapted to the nature of man ? In answering this question, we must keep in mind, that hu- man nature consists of the following elements : — 1st, An organised body, requiring food, exercise, and rest, in due proportions ; 2d, Animal propensities, requiring gratification ; 3d, Moral sentiments, demanding exercise and enjoy- ment ;* 4th, Intellectual faculties, calculated to acquire knowledge, and intended to direct the whole voluntary functions, bodily and mental, in the pursuit of their objects. * The term mora when used in these lectures, always implies the innate. LIMITATION OF LABOUR. 25 In the present state of society, the industrious classes, or great mass of the people, live in the habitual infringement of several important laws of their nature. Life with too many of them is spent to so great an extent in labour, that their moral and intellectual powers are stinted of exercise and gra- tification ; and hence their mental enjoyments are chiefly those afforded by the animal propensities : in other words, their ex- istence is too little rational; they are organised machines more than moral, religious, and intellectual beings. The chief duty performed by their higher faculties is not to afford predomi- nant sources of enjoyment, but to communicate so much in- telligence and honesty, as to enable them to execute their labours with fidelity and skill. I mean no disrespect to this most deserving portion of society : on the contrary, I repre- sent their condition in what appears to me to be its true light, only with a view to excite them to amend it. I speak, of course, of the great body of the uneducated people : There are among the labouring classes many individuals, who pos- sess high attainments. Does human nature, then, admit of the adoption of such habits and employments by these classes, as will tend to raise them to the condition of beings whose chief pleasures shall be derived from their rational natures ? — that is, creatures whose bodily powers and animal propensities shall be subservient to their moral and intellectual faculties, and who shall derive from the latter their leading enjoyments \ To attain this end, it would not be necessary that they should cease to labour ; on the contrary, the necessity of labour to the enjoyment of life is imprinted in strong characters on the structure of man. The osseous, muscular, and nervous systems of the body, all demand exercise as a condition of health ; while the digestive and sanguiferous apparatus rapidly fall into disorder if due exertion be neglected. Exercise of the body is labour ; and labour directed to a useful purpose is as beneficial to the cor- poreal organs, and far more pleasing to the mind, than when undertaken for no end but the preservation of health. Commerce is rendered advantageous by the Creator ; be- cause different climates yield different productions. Agricul- ture, manufactures, and commerce, therefore, are adapted to man's nature, and I am not their enemy. But they are not the ends of human existence, even on earth. Labour is be- neficial to the whole human economy, and it is a mere delu- sion to regard it as in itself an evil ; but the great principle is, that it must be moderate both in quantity and duration, in order that men may enjoy, and not be oppressed, by it. I say 26 LIMITATION OF LABOUR . enjoy it ; because moderate exertion is pleasure, and it has been only labour carried to excess, which has given rise to the common opinion, that retirement from active industry is the goal of happiness. It may be objected that a healthy and vigorous man is not oppressed by ten or twelve hours labour a -day ; and I grant that, if he be well fed, his strength may not be so much ex- hausted by this exertion as to cause him pain. JBut this is regarding him merely as a working animal. My proposition is, that after ten or twelve hours of muscular exertion a-day, continued for six days in the week, the labourer is not in a fit condition for that active exercise of his religious, moral, and intellectual faculties which becomes him as a rational being. The activity of these powers depends on the condition of the brain and nervous system ; and these organs are exhausted and deadened by too much muscular exertion . The fox-hunter and ploughman fall asleep when they sit and attempt to read or think. The truth of this proposition is demonstrable on physiological principles, and is supported by general expe- rience ; nevertheless, the teachers of mankind have too often neglected it. The first change, therefore, which is to be de- sired is, to limit the hours of labour, and to dedicate a por- of time daily to the exercise of the mental faculties. The same means will lead to the realisation of practical Christianity. An individual whose active existence is en- grossed by mere bodily labour, or by the pursuits of gain or ambition, lives under the predominance of faculties that do not produce the perfect Christian character. The true prac- tical Christian possesses a vigorous and enlightened intellect, and moral affections glowing with gratitude to God and love to man ; but how can the people at large be enabled to realise this condition of mind, if stimulus for the intellect and the nobler sentiments be excluded by the daily routine of their occupations ? The uneducated and untrained labourer is not only igno- rant, but his mental organs, through want of exercise, are dull, feeble, and incapable of thinking continuously, or acting perseveringly. We may give him instruction, but it does not penetrate into his inactive brain, and it is not reproduc- tive of thought and action. The middle classes have long since arrived at the convic- tion, that this country presents to them a theatre for exer- tion, in which, as a general rule, the prizes of wealth and social consideration fall to the share of those individuals who display the greatest amount of activity, directed by intelli- LIMITATION OF LABOUR. 27 gence and morality to useful or pleasing objects. The ex- traordinary efforts which they make to train up their children in habits of activity and perseverance, shew how deeply they are penetrated by this truth. Their children are sent to school at five or six years of age, and from that age to fifteen or sixteen, in some cases till eighteen or twenty, they are subjected to mental exercises during six or eight hours a-day. It is not so much the knowledge as the habits of mental ac- tivity and perseverance acquired by this discipline that en- ables those children, in after life, to appropriate the prizes to themselves. They do not rob the working classes of them, as somepersons maintain ; because, by the order of Providence, the prizes could not exist unless there were intelligence, powers of combination, capital acquired by industry and ac- cumulated by prudence and economy, to produce them ; and it is the superior mental training of the middle classes which enables them to realise these conditions of wealth. The children of the working classes, in localities where they are not protected by the factory law, or trained by parents who are themselves educated, are too generally sent to la- bour at the age of eight or nine years, and afterwards their mental faculties receive little or no cultivation. The conse- quence is, that they are not only ignorant, but, in adult age, they become dull and incapable of intellectual application and moral perseverance. The necessity which poverty imposes on the labouring classes of taking their children too early from school and employing them on labour, appears to me to be the greatest of all the existing obstacles to the eleva- tion of those classes in the social scale. If this opinion be well founded, the best remedy the evil admits of in the pre- sent condition of society, appears to be to improve and mul- tiply schools, and to lower the fees of them, so that not only none of the children of the poor may be excluded from them, but that the teaching and training may be so efficient as to render the few years of leisure which are at the command of the children of this class as productive of good habits and intellectual intelligence as possible. Parents who neglect the education of their children, really renounce for their offspring all right to the prizes offered by Providence to intelligence, industry, and morality, and rivet the chains of dependence about their necks for ever. As al- ready observed, wealth cannot be produced by ignorance and inertness ; and without a moderate command of property, in- dependence and social consideration cannot be attained. The labouring classes, therefore, in my^opinion, have no alterna- 28 WHAT CONSTITUTES EDUCATION \ tive but to qualify themselves, by training and education, to fulfil the conditions on which Providence has made wealth and social well-being to depend, or to submit to poverty and de- pendence. There is a large number of working men, particularly in the departments of skilled labour, who are intelligent and moral, and who, when married to prudent and active women, live in comfort, and bring up their children with much re- spectability. This class will be able to trace their own ad- vantageous position to good natural endowments, strength- ened and rendered practical by education, example, or other influences tending to give the ascendency to their moral and intellectual faculties. If, therefore, they desire, not only to transmit their own condition to their children, but to promote their elevation in the social scale, they will prize well- constituted schools as the best of all means for accomplish- ing these ends. The question naturally presents itself — What constitutes a good education \ The answer will be found by attending to the distinction between means and an end. If an architect be employed to build a house, he first prepares a plan, and then calls in the aid of practical workmen, to combine his materials into the proposed erection. The plan is merely a means to- wards the end. To be able to produce a plan, characterised at once by taste, elegance, and commodious arrangement, the architect must have studied mathematics and drawing. He might invent a design by means of his intellectual faculties, but without some knowledge of mathematics and drawing he could not reduce it into a practical form. The plan itself, however, is still only a methodised outline of the proposed object. Materials must be acquired and combined, in con- formity with the design, before a house can be called into ex- istence. Now, drawing and mathematics are admirable attainments viewed as means towards accomplishing useful or pleasing ends ; but if they produce nothing but themselves ; or if they produce only plans, pleasing to the fancy, but not applicable to purposes of utility, they must be viewed as mere ingenious recreations or elegant accomplishments. What mathematics, drawing, and plans are to practical house-building, — languages, writing, and arithmetic, are to practical business. They are means of acquiring and commu- nicating knowledge. Moreover, knowledge itself, like the plan, is only a means of attaining useful and pleasing ends. Indeed, I might go farther, and say that drawing and mathe- WHAT CONSTITUTES EDUCATION \ 29 matics delineate forms and deal with proportions ; whereas language, apart from its applications, is a collection of mere unmeaning arbitrary sounds. To limit the education of an in- dividual who is destined to act the part of a husband, father, and member of society, to reading, writing, accounts, and the dead languages, would be similar to arresting the education of an architect at drawing, mathematics, and designing, without teaching him the kinds, strength, durability, cost, and modes of arrangement of the materials necessary for building. A person who could draw a plan of a handsome cot- tage, might be incapable of rearing a fabric corresponding to it, if he were defective in all the practical skill, knowledge, and experience, which are indispensable to convert the design into an actual house. For a similar reason, a man may be a distinguished scholar in Greek and Latin without being there- by rendered a practical man of business, if he be not in- structed in the knowledge of affairs, As, however, the archi- tect must begin by learning to draw, so the practical mem- ber of society should commence his education by studying the means of acquiring practical knowledge ; and I proceed to inquire what these means are. The English language, writing, and arithmetic, then, are important means of acquiring and communicating knowledge. They should be sedulously taught, and by the most approved methods. Algebra and pure mathematics also belong to the class of means. The former embraces only numbers and their relations ; the latter, space and its proportions. The most profound knowledge of these subjects, however, is com- patible with extensive ignorance concerning every object, topic, and relation, that does not essentially imply exact pro- portions of number and space. All languages, likewise, be- long to the class of means. In preferring one to another, we should be guided by the principle of utility ; — that lan- guage in which most knowledge is contained is most useful. For this reason, French, German, and Italian, appear to me to be more valuable acquirements than Greek and Latin. One great object of education is the attainment of know- ledge itself. If the season for obtaining real knowledge be dedicated to the study of languages, the individual will enter on active life in a state of qualification for practical business, similar to that of a man for the practice of architecture, who should have completed only his studies in drawing. He will be defi- cient in many acquirements that would be substantially useful for the preservation of health and the successful conducting 30 WHAT CONSTITUTES EDUCATION % of affairs. He will know nothing about the structure of his own body, and very little about the causes which support it in health, or subject it to disease : he will be very imperfectly informed concerning the constitution of his own mind, and the relations established between himself and other beings : he will not be instructed in any science ; know nothing of the principles of trade ; be profoundly ignorant of the laws of his country, which he will be called on to obey or even to admi- nister ; in short, he will be sent into society with little other preparation than a stock of prejudices gathered from the nursery, and of vague imaginations about the greatness of Greece and Rome, the beauties of classical literature, and the vast superiority of learned pedantry over practical sense. To discover the evils that arise from this misdirection of education, we have only to advert to the numerous cases of individuals who sap their constitutions, and die in youth or middle age, not from the fury of ungovernable passions which knowledge could not subdue, but from sheer ignorance of the physical conditions necessary to health ; — or to the ruined fortunes and broken hearts also referrible to the ignorance of individuals, of their own incapacity for the business in which they have embarked,- — of the characters of those with whom they have connected themselves, — of the natural laws which govern production, or of the civil laws which regulate the transactions of men in particular states ; — and to ask, how many of these calamities might have been avoided by in- struction and by proper discipline of the mind in the fields of observation and reflection I To understand what constitutes useful and practical know- ledge, you are requested to bear in mind the principles which I laid down and illustrated in the first lecture, — that every inanimate object and every living being have received a de- finite constitution from the Creator, in virtue of which each stands in one or other of two relations towards man : — either its natural qualities are such as he may bend to the purposes of his own enjoyment, or they are too gigantic to be subjected to his control, and he must accommodate his conduct to their sway. Water may be pointed to as an example of the first class : Man, as I formerly observed, may turn the roaring torrent from its course, ere it dashes over the mountain-cliff, and conduct it, as his humble slave, to his mill, where it may be made to grind his corn, weave his cloth, forge his iron, or spin his thread, according to the direction given to it by his skill : or he may enclose water in strong metallic boilers, convert it into steam, and employ its powers to propel his ship, in the WHAT CONSTITUTES EDUCATION I 31 face of the stormy winds and waves, to any wished-for haven : or he may, by the same means, almost fly along fields and mea- dows on the smooth lines of his artificial railway. But before he can command these high enjoyments, how minute and accu- rate must be his study of water and the changes which it may be made to undergo, and the latent powers which it may be forced to develop ! how deeply skilled must he become in mechanical philosophy and its applications ! and how com- plicated and admirable must be his combinations of nature's rude materials ! Wind affords an instance of the powers which man cannot control, but to which he may accommodate his conduct. He cannot guide the air as he does the stream ; but he may give to his mill-house a revolving top, so that let the wind blow from what point it listeth, his sails shall spread their bosoms directly to the breeze. He cannot bid the air measure its motions to suit his objects, according as he wishes to saw the slender pine, or to crush into dust a mass of flint ; but he may spread his canvas to the gale in proportion to the power required, so that the wind, if impetuous, shall press a contracted surface, and, if gently blowing, shall be caught by a broad expanded sail. Man has no power over the di- rection of the wind on the ocean : but by the skilful adapta- tion of the helm, masts, and sails, he may steer to his destined haven. How. much of observation, how much of skilful combination, and how much of practical adaptation of the powers which man can wield, to those which defy his control, must be put forth before these glorious triumphs of his ingenuity can be accomplished ! These illustrations are of general application. In common life we may never need to forge, to weave, to steer, or to spin ; but we must all prosecute some vocation of usefulness and duty, otherwise we exist in vain. In whatever sphere of life we move, we are encompassed by the elements of nature, which minister to our health and enjoyment, or to our detri- ment and discomfort, according as we use them wisely or the reverse, according as we adapt our conduct to their real qualities or run counter to their influence. We are sur- rounded by human beings, and are influenced by the great tides of public affairs ; and without knowledge of external nature, and of the nature of man, his history, laws, and in- stiutions, we shall be no more capable of acting well and wisely our parts through life, than is the mariner of steer- ing successfully without helm, compass, or chart, through the ocean. If there be any degree of truth in the views now pro- pounded, the question, "What should secular education em- 32 WHAT CONSTITUTES EDUCATION I brace V may be easily answered. It should embrace instruc- tion in the qualities, modes of action, relations, and purposes of the things and beings by means of which the government of the world is maintained ; and also training of the whole faculties, animal, moral, and intellectual, to action in confor- mity with the order of Providence, The particular branches of instruction should be the fol- lowing : — Reading and Writing, as the means of acquiring, record- ing, and communicating knowledge. Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry, as instruments of numeration and calculation. Geography. The object of this science is to describe the natural and artificial boundaries of the different countries of the world, and their sub-divisions ; also to enumerate the towns, rivers, lakes, &c, which they contain. With these should be combined a description of the inhabitants, institu- tions, soil, climate, and produce of each country, and the relations of these to the objects and beings of other coun- tries. Simple descriptive Geography addresses chiefly the intellectual faculties of Form, Size, and Locality : When en- riched by the additions now mentioned, the science would interest the feelings and excite the reflecting powers. Natural History embraces the description of all the objects of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. In teaching it, the young should be trained to accurate observa- tion of objects, and of their qualities, relations, and modes of action. Chemistry. This science expounds the minute composi- tion of natural objects, and the proportions and laws of com- bination of their parts, with their modes of action. It affords striking examples of design, order, and invariable sequence, in the constitution and modes of action of material objects ; and may be used to demonstrate to the young that the mate- rial world is actually and practically governed by Divine wisdom. Anatomy and Physiology. These sciences unfold the structure, functions, relations and laws of the different parts of which organised bodies are composed. When to these ele- ments of instruction is added information concerning the external circumstances, and also the modes and degrees of action of the organs, which produce health and disease, and the certain connection between infringements of these condi- tions, and pain and suffering, and eventually premature death ; the pupil may be led to comprehend that his health and life are. within certain limits, emnniittcd to his own discretion. WHAT CONSTITUTES EDUCATION % 33 and that the Divine power is constantly operating in and through his organs for his advantage and enjoyment, while he acts in conformity with the laws of his constitution. Natural Philosophy treats of the qualities, relations, and modes and laws of action of bodies, apart from their chemical and vital phenomena. Like chemistry and physio- logy, it addresses in an especial manner the reflecting intel- lect of man, and is calculated to expand his mental powers. By increasing his knowledge of the scheme of creation, it puts it in his power, to a certain extent, to co-operate in the plans of Providence for his own improvement. The Philosophy of Mind. The objects of this science are the external senses, and the internal faculties of emotion, observation, and reflection. It can be studied successfully only by means of reflection on consciousness, and observation of the organs of the several faculties, and the influence of their size, age, health, disease, and training, on the mental mani- festations. The mind of man, in so far as he is concerned, forms the centre to which the objects of all the other sciences are related ; and his deepest interest is involved in knowing accurately what these relations are, and how he may regulate his conduct in conformity with them. Literature, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, and all the useful and ornamental arts, find their principles in the con- stitution of the human faculties, and their relations to the ob- jects of external nature, and cannot be thoroughly and scien- tifically understood until these are comprehended. Natural Religion belongs to Secular Education, and should aim at teaching the young to comprehend that the whole objects and phenomena treated of in the sciences, are the institutions of God ; that the relations of the human mind and body towards them are fixed and unalterable ; that the wdiole are, to a certain extent, cognisable by the human fa- culties ; and that we are bound by duty to God, as well by a regard to our own welfare, reverently and diligently to study these, and to regulate our own conduct in conformity to their modes of action. Above all, the pupil should be trained ha- bitually to acton, the knowledge thus communicated to him.* I do not mean that all the arts and sciences should be taught to every child, in the manner and to the extent in which they are now expounded in our universities and higher seminaries of education. For the industrious portions of the people, it is not necessary to teach these sciences in mi- * See Pamphlet on the question "What should Secular Education Em- brace ?" p. 31. 34 EDUCATION IN AMERICA AND PRUSSIA. nute detail. Elementary instruction, by means of primary schools, and, at a later age, by popular lectures elucidating their leading principles and applications, would be of incal- culable benefit. In many of the United States of North America, the country is divided into school districts, and taxed for the support of schools, which, under the manage- ment of committees chosen by the rate-payers, provide edu- cation for the children of the whole people, free of farther expense.* In Lancashire, in England/a " Plan" for provid- ing secular education to the people, similar to that adopted in the United States, is now (1848) engaging public atten- tion. Prussia also has set a noble example to Europe on the subject of education. In Prussia, t as in Germany generally, it is obligatory on all parents to send their children to school from the age of seven to fourteen, beginning earlier if they choose ; and the duty is enforced by penalties. Each parish is bound to support an elementary school ; each considerable town, a burgh school for the more advanced studies ; each considerable district, a gymnasium for classical studies ; and each province has its university. The parish school is sup- ported by the parish, and for its management all the land- holders and heads of families are formed into a union, which appoints a committee to inspect and watch over the school. The system of instruction is prescribed by authority, and is nearly uniform for the whole monarchy. It embraces, in the elementary schools, 1. Religion and morals ; 2. The German tongue ; 3. Elements of geometry and drawing ; 4. Arith- metic, pure and applied ; 5. The elements of physics (mean- ing chemistry and natural philosophy), general history, and the history of Prussia ; 6. Singing ; 7. Writing ; 8. Gym- nastic exercises ; 9. " The more simple manual labours," by • which seems to be meant the use of tools employed in the most common occupations, such as the spade, pick-axe, saw, plane, file, trowel, stone-chisel, &c. The burgher school em- braces the same branches carried farther, with the addition of a little Latin, the study of which is not, however, univer- sally enforced. The instruction is not gratuitous, except to the- poor. The provision to be made by the parish embraces, 1st, A salary to the schoolmaster, with a retired allowance for him in old age ; 2d, A schoolhouse, well aired and heated ; 3d, Books, maps, models for drawing, collections in natural history, gymnastic apparatus, &c. ; 4///, Aid to poor scholars. The fund is raised by contributions, levied on the inhabitants according to the amount of their property or the produce of * Sec Article on '' Education in America. '" in the Edinburgh Review, jS'o. 148, July 1841. t Kdinburgh Review, No. 116. EDUCATION IN PRUSSIA. 35 their industry, and by moderate fees, which are not paid to the schoolmaster, but to tlfe parochial managers. There are cantonal courts, and inspectors, who control and inspect all the schools in a canton ; others for departments, with a wider authority ; others, with still more extensive powers, for the provinces ; and, above all, there is the minister of public in- struction. In all the courts, councils, or commissions, exer- cising authority over the schools of any class, there are a few of the clergy, — Protestant and Catholic being admitted ac- cording as the scholars belong to the one or the other church : and great care is taken to prevent the slightest offence being offered to the religious feelings of any party. The choice of the books in the elementary schools is left to the local com- mittees. There are half-yearly examinations ; and the boys leaving school obtain certificates of their capacity and their moral and religious dispositions, which must be produced when they go to the communion, or enter into apprentice- ship or service. The Prussian plan embraces also what are of essential importance, schools for training persons to act as teachers. There are thirty-four of these seminaries, where, besides studying the different branches of knowledge to be taught, the pupils learn also the art of instruction. A similar system of education is pursued in the boarding- schools of Germany. The following letter, written by a young gentleman who is personally known to me, and who, after studying at the High School of Edinburgh, went to Cas- sel and Gottingen, is lively and instructive. " In Germany, as in England, boarding-schools are the prin- cipal seminaries of education, day-schools like those which we have in Edinburgh, being seldom if ever met with. These boarding-schools are attended, not only by the boys who re- side with the teacher, but also by what are called day-boar- ders ; and masters for drawing, dancing, music, and other orna- mental and useful accomplishments, teach at stated hours, as in similar establishments in this country. There are in Ger- many no such institutions as our High School, where almost nothing but Latin is taught ; and indeed no one thinks of learning Latin, except those who are intended for the learned professions, and who absolutely require a knowledge of it. Thus, boys in general, instead of spending five or six years in a state of misery, are enabled to acquire an extensive stock of useful and practical information. " In German boarding-schools, natural history is a promi- nent object of pursuit, and the boys are instructed in the out- lines of zoology, ornithology, entomology, and mineralogy. This, I believe, is a branch of education never taught in 3G EDUCATION IN PRUSSIA. seminaries of the same description in Britain ; but it is de- voured by the learners on the Continent with the utmost avi- dity. There, the teacher is not an object of fear, but the friend of his pupils. He takes them, about once a fortnight, to visit some manufactory in the neighbourhood, where they are ge- nerally received with kindness, and are conveyed through the whole building by the owners, who seem to have pleasure in pointing out the uses of the various parts of the machinery, and in explaining to their juvenile visitors the different ope- rations which are carried on. Suppose, for example, that an expedition is undertaken to a paper-mill : the boys begin their scrutiny by inspecting the rags in the condition in which they are first brought in ; then they are made to remark the pro- cesses of cutting them, of forming the paste, of sizing the paper, &c, with the machinery by which all this is executed. On their return, they are required to write out an account of the manufactory, of the operations performed in it, and of the manufactured article. " During the summer months, pedestrian excursions are undertaken, extending to a period of perhaps two, three, or four weeks. Everything worthy of attention is pointed out to the boys as they go along ; and deviations are made on all sides, for the purpose of inspecting every manufactory, old castle, and other remarkable object in the neighbourhood. Minerals, plants, and insects, are collected as they proceed, and thus they early begin to appreciate and enjoy the beau- ties of external nature. If they happen to be travelling in the mountainous districts of the Harts, they descend into the mines, and see the methods of excavating the ore, working the shafts, and ventilating and draining the mine. Ascend- ing again to the surface, they become acquainted with the machinery by which the minerals are brought up, the pro- cesses of separating the ore from the sulphur and the silver from the lead, and the mode in which the former metal is coined into money. "Having become familiar with these operations, the boys next, perhaps, visit the iron-works ; and here a new scene of gratification is opened up to their faculties. The furnaces, the principles of the different kinds of bellows, the method of casting the iron and forming the moulds, — everything, in short, is presented to their senses, and fully expounded to them. In like manner they are taken to the salt-works, and manufactories of porcelain, 2'lass, acids, alkalies, and other chemical bodies, with which that part of Germany abounds. If any mineral springs be in the neighbourhood, these are visited, and the nature and properties of the water explained. EDUCATION IN GERMANY. 37 In short, no opportunity is neglected, by which additions to their knowledge may be made. In this way, I may say with- out exaggeration, they acquire, in the course of a single fore- noon, a greater amount of useful, practical, and entertaining knowledge, than they could obtain in six months at a gram- mar-school. For my own part, at least, I learned more in one year at Cassel, than during the five preceding which were spent in Edinburgh. This knowledge, too, is of a kind that remains indelibly written on the memory, and that is often recalled in after life, with pleasure and satisfaction. How different were my feelings, when thus employed, from those which tormented me in that place of misery, the High School of Edinburgh I* " These journeys not only have a beneficial effect on the the mind, but also conduce, in no small degree, to the growth and consolidation of the body. They are performed by short and easy stages, so as not to occasion fatigue. " On their return home, the boys write an account of their travels, in which they describe the nature of the country through which they have passed, and its various productions, minerals, and manufactures. This is corrected and improved by the teacher. The minerals and plants which have been collected, serve at school to illustrate the lessons. The boys likewise go through a regular course of study, and receive lessons on Religion, Geography, French, and the Elements of Geometry. They are taught also the Elements of Astronomy ; not merely the abstract particulars generally given in courses of geography in this country, relative to the moon's distance, the diameter and period of revolution of the earth, and the like, but also the relative positions of the principal constella- tions. The figures of cubes, cones, octagons, pyramids, and other geometrical figures, are impressed upon the minds of the junior boys, by pieces of wood, cut into the proper shapes. Latin is taught to those who particularly desire it. Poles * This letter was inserted in No. XXX. of the Phrenological Journal, and the Editor (not myself) here subjoins the following note : " Our correspondent's language is strong ; but as we know it to be nothing more than the expression of honest and heartfelt indignation, we have allowed it to remain unmodified. We ourselves can never forget the tcedium vitce which attended us, during the lingering years in which we made a strenuous but unsuccessful attempt to over- come the difficulties of Latin Syntax at the High School of Edinburgh. Often did we envy the condition of boys who laboured in the field for a scanty sub- sistence, but whose minds were free from the intolerable and spirit-breaking incubus of Latin grammar." Jt is proper to add, that, in another seminary and at college, the writer of this note subsequently attained considerable proficiency in classical literature, and is an admirer of it : circumstances, however, which do not prevent him from concurring in the views expressed in these lectures 38 EDUCATION IN GERMANY. are erected in the garden for gymnastics, and the boys re- ceive every encouragement to take muscular exercise. " Now, this method of education seems to me — indeed I know experimentally that it is — so vastly superior to that which is in vogue in Edinburgh, that I can never cease to wonder that the barbarisms of the dark ages should still be allowed to exert their influence among us. In Germany, the boys enter the schools which I have described, at the age of eight or nine, and leave them when about fourteen or fifteen, at which period those intended for the learned professions enter the lyceums, preparatory to enrolling their names at the universities. Now, whether is it more rational for a hoy, at that period of life, to consume his valuable time in the dreary halls of the High School,* in acquiring scarcely one useful idea, or to employ it in the pursuit of substantial know- ledge X For my own part, I shall always look back on the time which I spent in obtaining a superficial acquaintance with the Latin tongue as a hideous blank in my existence." In this country we have not enjoyed the preparatory train- ing which fits the poorest peasant in Prussia for relishing in- struction in the higher branches of science ; and not only has education in useful knowledge been neglected, but prejudices are entertained by many excellent persons against it. Dr Drummondt has furnished an admirable answer to this ob- jection. The passage is long, but its excellence is my apo- logy for introducing it. " You will, perhaps," says he, " treat the idea of teaching- matters of science to people generally as chimerical ; but be not over hasty. It is still too common a persuasion that knowledge should be a monopoly, belonging solely to the learned and highly educated ; but there is a vast fund of in- formation of the very highest value, which can be understood by persons who have had but little previous tutoring, either in school or university. There is a vast mass of knowledge which admits of easy explanation, and which could be com- prehended by men of the most moderate education ; and why is it withheld from them ? Is the sun still to shine in the heavens, the planets to roll on in their orbits, the comets to shoot beyond imagination's wing into the regions of space, * Since the publication of the first edition of these lectures, the course of education given at the High School (if Edinburgh has been improved ; but still too little provision is made in it by the Patrons for teaching the elements of physical science. t See (lie excellent and eloquent ''Letters to a Young Naturalist on the Study of Nature and Natural Theology. By .lames L. Pyummond, JU.P.," &c. Long- man & Co., London, 12mo, pp. 342. EDUCATION IN SCIENCE. 39 and the constellations to sparkle for ever on the canopy of night ; and yet our brethren of the human race, a very small portion excepted, to know no more about them than merely that they are the sun and stars ? " Will it be said that the great truths of astronomy can only be made plain to the understandings of those who are profound mathematicians and philosophers % There are lengths in every science, indeed, which can only be gained by long and deep study ; but although it required a Newton to unfold the mystery of the planetary motions, as guided and controlled by the law of gravitation, still these motions, and most of the sublime facts of astronomy, can be comprehended by the bulk of the people, from plain illustrations, given in plain and perspicuous language. But of this, and of nature in general, they are kept in deep ignorance. Simple truths, when simply explained, are more easily comprehended, I be- lieve, than is commonly supposed ; and I feel satisfied that the task of teaching mankind in general such solid and various knowledge as would tend most powerfully to advance both civilization and morality, is any thing but hopeless. Know- ledge has been truly said by Bacon to be power ; and with equal, at least, if not greater truth, it may be asserted, that, when pursued with a reference to the God of all knowledge, it is virtue." — " There is no limit to the study of the Al- mighty in his works. All nature, from the north to the south, and from the east to the west, offers examples innumerable of the power and wisdom with which he works throughout the visible world before us. In the heavens we find suns the centre of systems, and an endless series of rolling worlds ; and when we descend from the consideration of suns and sys- tems, — of stars wheeling in their orbits with a velocity quicker than thought, — of worlds, compared with which the globe we inhabit is in magnitude as a mole-hill, — how delightful is it to find, that on this ball, insignificant as it is in comparison with thousands of the heavenly orbs, the God of all displays himself in characters not less strong, to the inquiring mind, than in the boundless ocean of space that holds the sun and stars ! " Let us consider an insect, or let us study the laws which direct a planet ; let us contemplate the solar system, or in- quire into the history of an ant-hill or a honey -comb ; the mind, the truly valuable portion of the compound called Man, re- cognises in the vast, as well as in the minute, and vice versa, the master Mind, the God, the omnipotent power — express it by what name we will — which formed and which governs the mighty whole, in all its magnitudes, in all its minima. 40 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE. Paley observes in his Natural Theology, — a work which I can never too highly recommend to your notice, — that ' the works of nature want only to be contemplated. When con- templated, they have everything in them which can astonish by their greatness : for, of the vast scale of operation through which our discoveries carry us, at one end we see an Intel- ligent Power arranging planetary systems — fixing, for in- stance, the trajectory of Saturn, or constructing a ring of 200,000 miles diameter, to surround his body, and be sus- pended like a magnificent arch over the heads of his inhabi- tants ; and, at the other, bending a hooked tooth, concerting and providing an appropriate mechanism for the clasping and reclasping of the filaments of the feather of the hum- ming-bird ! We have proof, not only of both these works proceeding from an intelligent agent, but of their proceeding from the same agent : for, in the first place, we can trace an identity of plan, a connection of system, from Saturn to our own globe ; and when arrived upon our globe, we can, in the second place, pursue the connection through all the organised, especially the animated, bodies which it supports. We can observe marks of a common relation, as well to one another, as to the elements of which their habitation is com- posed. Therefore, one mind hath planned, or at least hath prescribed, a general plan for all these productions. One Being has been concerned in all.' " Knowledge of man himself, his mental endowments, his his- tory,and his institutions, belongs to the class of useful informa- tion. As already mentioned, a useful education should em- brace instruction in mental philosophy, geography, civil his- tory, political economy, and religion. A genius or taste for poetry, music, painting, sculpture, or languages, is bestowed by nature on particular individuals, and these branches of knowledge should be taught to those who have an aptitude for them. They are of much value as means of elevating and refining human nature ; but unless there be in the mind a decided talent for them, they should not be made the great objects of education, or the business of life. I request you particularly to observe, that 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 ren- dering them the main substance of the education bestow- ed on young men who have no taste or talent for them, and TRAINING. 41 whose pursuit in life will not render a knowledge of them a valuable acquisition. The fine arts, also, should be taught as enjoyments, and a relish for them encouraged; but in com- mon minds a considerable amount of moral and intellectual cultivation must precede their due appreciation. Farther, as long as the present institutions of society ex- ist, some knowledge of Greek and Latin is indispensable to young men who mean to pursue medicine or law, as a pro- fession. Of course, Greek must be studied by divines. The importance of teaching knowledge is evident; but the necessity for training is less understood. It arises from the dependence of the mind, in this world, on physical organ- isation for its powers of acting. The brain is the ma- terial instrument by means of which the mind acts, and it consists of a variety of parts, each connected with a special mental power. It is subject to the same organic laws as the other parts of the body. If we should confine a man for the first twenty years of his life in a dungeon, without exer- cise and employment, we should find, on bringing him into the active world of light and life, that he could not see dis- tinctly, could not judge correctly of the distance of objects by their sounds, could not walk steadily, and scarcely could make any exertion with his arms and hands. The cause of his defects would be found in the circumstance, that his organic structure had been left feeble and undeveloped through want of exercise ; and that his various senses and muscles (which, although distinct in themselves, are all framed to co-operate and assist in prosecuting general aims) had never been accustomed to act in combination. Such a being, when first introduced into active life, would be help- less, bewildered, and unhappy. There is, therefore, a vast difference between instruction and training ; and education should embrace both. In- struction means communicating knowledge ; while training- implies the repetition of certain modes of action in the mind and body until they have become habits. It is a law of our constitution that any organ, when accustomed to repeat fre- quently its action, acquires additional strength and facility in doing so ; and the force and advantages of habit arise from this law. If we merely tell a pupil how to point his toes, and place his feet, and what series of movements to execute, this is instructing him in dancing ; but it is not training him to the practice of the art. To accomplish the latter object, we must teach him actively to dance ; and the more frequently we cause him to repeat certain movements, short of occasion- ing fatigue, the more expert will he become in performing 42 EDUCATION m SCIENCE. them. In like manner, mere information concerning natural objects, their agencies, and relations, is instruction ; while accustoming children to observe, to discriminate, to arrange, to operate, and to reason for themselves, is training their un derstandings. Teaching a child to repeat the precepts and doctrines of the New Testament is instructing him in religion and mo- rality ; but he is not trained to religion and morality until he shall have been accustomed to practise these precepts in his daily conduct.* The Scripture says, Train up a child in the way in which he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it ; but it does not promise the same result from merely instruc- ting him : In this respect scripture and nature completely agree. f * In the Normal School of the Free Church of Glasgow, training is practi- cally employed with the happiest effects. An excellent exposition of the me- thod adopted in that seminary is given by David Stow, Esq., in his work on " The Training System."' f Since the first edition of these Lectures was published, several high autho- rities in classical literature have admitted the inexpediency of wasting from four to six years of the time of young men destined to merchandise or manufacture in studying Greek and Latin. Professor Pillans says : — " The strongest case against the advocates for classical education, is the prac- tice that has hitherto prevailed of making it so general, as to include boys of whom it is known beforehand that they are to engage in the ordinary pursuits of trade and commerce ; who are not intended to prosecute their education far- ther than school, and arc not therefore likely to follow out the subject of their previous studies much, or at all, beyond the period of their attendance here. " I willingly allow, and have already admitted, that a youth who looks for- ward from the very outset to the practice of some mechanical or even purely scientific art, may employ his time better, in acquiring manual dexterity and mathematical knowledge, than in making himself perfectly acquainted with a dead language. There must be in all very large and populous towns, a class of persons in tolerably easy circumstances, and whose daily business affords them considerable leisure, but who contemplate for their children nothing be- yond such acquirements as shall enable them to follow out the gainful occupa- tion, and move in the narrow circle, in which they themselves, and their fathers before them, have spent a quiet and inoffensive life. It was for youth of this sort that the Prussian government, with a sagacity and foresight characteristic of all its educational proceedings, provided what are called burg* r and mittel- schulen, — intermediate steps between the volka-echulen, or primary schools, and the Gymnasiai or gelehrte-ichuUn ; and the French have wisely followed the example of Prussia, by ordaining the establishment of ecoles moyennes, called also ecoles primairet superiewres, in all towns above a certain population/-* — Lectures on the fyoper Objects and Method of Education, <(•<-., by James Pil- lans, M.A., P.R.S.B., &c, 1836. The Edinburgh Review, in commending Professor Pillans's Lectures, Nothing has more contributed in this country to disparage the cause of aj education than the rendering it the education of all. That to many this education can be of little or no advantage, is a truth too manifest to be denied ; and on this admission the sophism is natural, to convert ' useless to many' into EDUCATION IN SCIENCE. 43 It is by training alone that moral and religious instruc- tion can be rendered practically efficacious in regulating con- duct. Other conditions being equal, the human faculties act with a degree of energy corresponding to the size of their organs ; and the organs of the animal propensities are gene- rally large. They are, therefore, naturally powerful ; and not only so, but the circumstances of life present to them constant and powerful excitements. They are thus trained from infancy by our position and the influence of surrounding objects to activity, without the need of artificial culture. This is well ordered by the Creator, because the activity of the propensities is necessary to our subsistence, preservation, and defence, as individuals and as domestic beings. But the moral and intellectual organs, in most individuals, when com- bined, although equal or superior in size to those of the pro- pensities, stand more in need of artificial cultivation. Their function is to control and direct the animal feelings and de- sires, and they need to be instructed and strengthened them- selves to fit them to accomplish this duty. Instruction should be communicated by directly addressing and exercising the intellectual faculties, and training them to deal with their own objects. Children should be taught to examine every object minutely, and to mark its hardness or softness, its so- lidity, its form, size, weight, colour, the number of its parts, its place of growth or production, its liability to suffer change from the influence of other objects, and its powers of produ- cing changes in them. They should be taught to try experi- ments and note the consequences, and be trained to perceive and comprehend that life is a series of processes, each of which has an inevitable consequence of good or evil attached to it, which they cannot alter or evade, but to which they may, within certain limits, accommodate their own conduct and position. This would constitute training of the intellec- tual faculties. The moral and religious faculties also, are best trained by presenting to them their natural objects, and engaging them in active emotion. When a child is led to relieve suffering, to do a kind or courteous action, its benevolence is brought into activity. When it is engaged in contemplation of God's power, wisdom, and goodness, and taught to yield obedience to His will, and to obey His laws, its veneration is cultivated. When it is called on to scrutinise and try its own actions 1 useful to none. With us the learned languages are at once taught too exten- sively, and not extensively enough, — an absurdity in which wc are now left al- most alone in Europe." — No. 129, vol. Ixiv., p. 123. 44 EDUCATION IN SCIENCE. and those of others by the standard of justice, and to pro- nounce a sentence of approval or condemnation, its conscien- tiousness is strengthened. When beautiful objects and dulcet sounds are presented, and the child is taught to reproduce the like, its faculties of ideality, time, and tune, are trained, and so forth. It is only by a thorough enlightenment of the intellect, and a practical training of the moral and religious sentiments that these faculties can be enabled steadily and in all emergencies to control and direct the animal propen- sities. It is in society that the objects and excitements necessary for training the moral and religious faculties are chiefly found. We cannot be benevolent unless there be animated beings to benefit by our kindness, nor meritoriously just, un- less in presence of individuals whose rights conflict with our own desires. The play-ground and the domestic social circles, therefore, are the spheres in which our moral and religious principles should be reduced to practice ; and it is only by the constant exercise of them there that they can be trained and invigorated to accomplish the objects for which they were bestowed. Suppose, then, knowledge to be obtained, we may inquire into its uses. One great use of knowledge is the preservation of health. This, although too much overlooked in many of the established systems of education, is of paramount importance. Life depends on it, and also the power of exercising with effect all the mental functions. There are two modes of in- structing an individual in the preservation of health ; the one by informing him, as a matter of fact, concerning the conditions on which it depends, and admonishing him, by way of precept, to observe them ; — the other, by expounding to his intellect the constitution of his bodily frame, and teach- ing him the uses of its various parts, the abuses of them, the relations established between them and external objects, such as food, air, water, heat, and cold, and the consequences of observance or neglect of these relations. The former method addresses the memory chiefly ; the latter the judg- ment. The former comes home to the mind, enforced only by the authority of the teacher; the latter is felt to be an exposition of the system of nature, and deeply interests at once the intellect and affections. The former affords rules for particular cases; the latter general principles, which the mind can apply in all emergencies. The instruction here recommended implies an exposition of the principles of anatomy and physiology. Another use of knowledge is to enable us to exercise the USES OF KNOWLEDGE. 45 mental faculties themselves, so as to render them vivacious and vigorous, and thereby to promote our usefulness and enjoyment. The wonderful effect of a change from inactivity to bustle and employment is- well known in ordinary life, and is ex- plicable only on the principle of strengthening the organs by a due amount of exercise. In nine cases out of ten, a visit to a watering-place, or a journey through an interesting country, restores health more by giving excitement to the mind than by means of the water swallowed, or the locomo- tion endured". And it is well known that, under strong ex- citement, weak and delicate persons will not only exert double muscular force, but even prove superior to the effects of miasma and contagion, to which, when unexcited, they would have been the first victims. In the army also, it is proverbial, that the time of fatigue and danger is not the time of disease. It is in the inactive and listless months of a campaign, that crow r ds of patients pass to the hospitals. In the former cases, it is active exercise, giving strength to the mind, and, through it, healthy vigour to the body, which produces the effect. Now, instruction in natural science connects our sympa- thies with real existences and living beings, — furnishes our understandings with positive and precise ideas, and brings home to our minds an irresistible conviction of our being placed in the midst of agents, physical, animal, moral, and intellectual, to whose qualities we must adapt our conduct, if we desire to enjoy life. It furnishes us with the means not only of planning useful occupations, but of executing our designs ; and in such courses of action there is the highest enjoyment. A third use of knowledge is to qualify us to perform our duties, physical, moral, and religious, in the best manner, and to reap the fullest enjoyment which providence allots to to those who best fulfil the objects of their existence, and yield the most perfect obedience to the Divine laws. In a pamphlet entitled, " What should Secular Education Em- brace V I have endeavoured to shew that a knowledge of the qualities, relations, and modes of action of inorganic ob- jects and organic beings, is a knowledge of the order of God's secular providence in the government of the world ; and if this conclusion be sound, it follows that it is only by diligent study of the order of nature that we shall learn how to ac- commodate our conduct to the Divine laws, which regulate prosperity and adversity, health and disease, life and death, in the present state of existence. 46 ITSES OP KNOWLEDGE. In consequence of profound ignorance, man, in all ages, lias been directed in his pursuits chiefly by the impulses of his strongest propensities, at one time to war and conquest, at another to animal pleasure, and at a third to accumulating wealth, without having framed his habits and institutions in conformity with correct and enlightened views of his own nature, and its real interests and wants. Down to the pre- sent day the mass of the people, unfavourably situated for the development of their rational nature, have remained es- sentially ignorant, and liable to become the tools of interested leaders, or the victims of their own blind impulses. They constitute the great majority of the nation, and of necessity their condition influences that of the rest. But the arts and sciences are now tending towards abridging human labour, and promise to furnish leisure to the people ; the elements of useful knowledge are rapidly increasing ; the capacity of the operatives for instruction is generally recognised, and the means of communicating it are becoming more abundantj; so that a new era may fairly be considered as having com- menced. It has sometimes appeared to me that divines, with the best intentions, have obstructed the progress of human im- provement by colouring too highly the representations of man's depravity and weakness, and urging in too strong terms his natural incapacity for any good. These views re- press exertion, and foster indolence and ignorance. Dr Chal- mers entertained more favourable opinions of our nature, and I rejoice in calling your attention to the eloquence as well as the truth of the following remarks. " We might not know the reason,'' says he, in his Bridgewater Treatise, <; why, in the moral world, so many ages of darkness and depravity should have been permitted to pass by, any more than we know the reason why, in the natural world, the trees of a forest, instead of starting all at once into the full efflore- scence and stateliness of their manhood, have to make their slow and laborious advancement to maturity, cradled in storms, and alternately drooping or expanding with the vicis- situdes of the seasons. But though unable to scan all the cycles either of the moral or natural economy, yet we may recognise such influences at work, as, when multiplied and developed to the uttermost, are abundantly capable of rege- nerating the world. One of the likeliest of these influences is the power of education, to the perfecting of which so many minds are earnestly directed at this moment, and for the general acceptance of which in society, we have a guarantee IS MAN IMPROVABLE \ 47 in the strongest affections and fondest wishes of the fathers and mothers of families." (Vol. i., p. 186.) Add to these reasons for hoping well of our nature, the discovery, that the capacity for civilisation may be increas- ed by exercising the moral and intellectual faculties, in conformity with the laws of organisation ; a fact which Phrenology brings to light,* and from which the happiest results may be anticipated in regard to human improve- ment. History represents man as having been hitherto a passionate, pugnacious, grasping, and ambitious, rather than a moral and rational, being ; and even now we do not feel entirely secure against a recurrence of rapine and war. Yet fighting and plundering are calculated to gratify only a few of the human faculties, and these the lowest in the scale ; while they outrage the higher and better feelings. In pro- portion as the knowledge of our true good, and of the real relations of our nature to our fellow-men, and the external world, shall increase, it will be seen that prosperity and en- joyment spring only from industry and virtue, and we may hope that the appetite for war will diminish. The objection has been stated, that, even in the most im- proved condition of the great body of the people, there will still be a considerable proportion of them so deficient in talent, so incapable of improvement, and so ignorant, that their labour will be worth little ; that, as they must obtain subsistence, no alternative will be left to them but to com- pensate by protracted hours of exertion for their deficiencies in skill ; and that their labour, furnished at a cheap rate, will affect all other classes of society, and prevent the anticipa- tions now stated from ever being realised. This objection resolves itself into the proposition, That the people have .been destined by the Creator to be mere labouring animals, and that, from their inherent mental defects, they are incapable generally of being raised to any more honourable station ; which is just the great point at issue between the old and the new philosophy. If mankind at large (for the industrious classes constitute so very great a majority of the race, that I may be allowed to speak of them as the whole) had been intended to continue for ever mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, it is probable that moral and intellectual faculties would not have been bestowed on them ; and as even * The power of manifesting the mental faculties augments in proportion to every increase in the size, and improvement in the constitution, of the organs by means of which they act : and exercise of these organs has a tendency both to enlarge their volume and to exalt their quality. 48 IS MAN IMPROVABLE % the humblest individuals enjoy the rudiments of all the feel- ings and capacities which adorn the highest, and as these faculties themselves are capable of improvement, I do not subscribe to the doctrine of the permanent incapacity of the race. I consider them quite capable of becoming qualified, in successive generations, to perform the duties and to reap the enjoyments of rational beings ; and whenever the great majority of them shall have received a thoroughly good educa- tion, and a proper moral training, and have thereby acquired a sense of the true dignity of their nature, and a relish for the en- joyments afforded by their higher faculties, they will be found capable of regulating the supply of labour in reference to the demand, in such a manner as to obtain the means of subsis- tence in return for moderate exertion. I regard it as pro- bable, that then few of the imbeciles alluded to in the objec- tion will exist ; and that these few will be kept in the right path by the influence of enlightened opinion which will then pervade the social circle. At the same time, in reference to the present and several succeeding generations, there is great force in the objection now stated. In throwing out the views contained in these lectures, I embrace centuries of time. I see the slow pro- gress of the human race in the past, and do not anticipate miracles in the future. If a sound principle, however, be developed — one having its roots in nature — there is a cer- tainty that it will wax strong and bear fruit in due season ; but that season, from the character of the plant, must be a distant one. All who aim at benefiting mankind, ought to keep this truth constantly in view. Almost every scheme is judged of by its effects on the living generation : whereas, no great fountain of happiness ever flowed clear at first, or yielded its full stream to the generation who discovered it. Even enlightened men do not yet understand the principles on which the order of God's secular providence is conducted, nor do they practically believe in a real and efficient govern- ment of the world by divine laws.* In consequence, man- kind do not yet enjoy the moral benefits of Christianity. Practical Christianity is only developing its power, and hun- dreds of years may elapse before its blessed spirit shall fully pervade all the transactions of human life. I do not expect to see the principles advocated in these lectures generally reduced to practice in this age ; but if they be founded in nature, they will in time vindicate their own might. * Sec these questions considered in my pamphlets on " The relation be- tween Religion and Science. " and " What should Secular Education em- brace IS MAN IMPROVABLE \ 49 It is now an established principle in political economy, that Government ought not to interfere with industry. This maxim was highly necessary when Governors were little acquainted with the natural laws which regulate the interests of society. Their enactments relating to trade, were then generally failures, often doing much harm, and rarely accomplishing any good. But if God actually governs the world by means of fixed, intelligible, and steadily operating natural laws, de- signedly adapted to serve as guides to human conduct, and if prosperity and enjoyment be attainable only by conforming our institutions and conduct to these laws, it seems reasonable to'conclude that the science of human nature being once clear- ly developed, our rulers might considerably hasten the attain- ment of beneficial results, by adding the constraining autho- rity of human laws to enactments already instituted by the Creator. Natural laws do exist, and the Creator punishes if they be not obeyed. The evils of life are these punishments. Now, if the great body of intelligent men in any state, saw clear- ly that a course of action pursued by the ill-informed of their fellow-subjects was the cause of continual suffering, not only to the evil-doers themselves, but to the community, it appears to me allowable, that they should stop its continuance by legislative enactment. If the majority of the middle classes resident in towns were to petition Parliament, at present, to order shops in general to be shut at eight o'clock, or even at an earlier hour, to allow time for the cultivation of the rational faculties of the men and women engaged in them, it would be no reprehensible stretch of power to give effect to the pe- tition : It would lead to no evil, if the ignorant and avaricious were prevented by law from continuing ignorant, and forcing all their competitors in trade to resemble them in their de- fects. If the Creator have so constituted the world that men may execute all necessary business and still have time to spare for the cultivation of their rational faculties, any enact- ment of the legislature calculated to facilitate the accomplish- ment of both ends would be beneficial and successful. It would be in accordance with nature, and although the preju- diced and ignorant of the present generation might complain against it, its results would justify its adoption. This prin- ciple of interference would go much farther : its only limits seem to me to be the boundaries of the real knowledge of nature : for so lone: as the legislature shall enact in confor- mity with nature, it will be successful. At present, igno- rance is too extensive and prevalent to authorise Parliament to venture far. D 50 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. (Since the text was written in 1833, the legislature has partially acted on the principles here advocated. It has li- mited the hours of labour in factories, enacted laws for en- forcing drainage and other hygienic measures in towns ; and it is now tending towards enactments to improve the educa- tion of the people. These, and other laws of a similar cha- racter, appear to me to be within the legitimate province of a representative legislature. The chief ground for hesitation is, that until the people become so far enlightened as to see the foundations of the enactments in nature, they may view them as officious and offensive interferences with their rights of private judgment and action, and resist them. But if they be really conform to nature they will not truly partake of this character, and increasing knowledge will reconcile the public mind to obedience. In point of fact, resistance will be in vain, because the order of Providence will proceed in send- ing suffering in various forms, as the natural consequences of disobedience to natural laws. Sooner or later this fact will be discerned, and the futility of resistance will be ac- knowledged. It is no slavery to obey God. Man in vain strives with his Maker.) LECTURE III. ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 2. Let us now turn our attention to the Female sex, and inquire into the provision made for their education. In these Lectures I always assume that religious instruc- tion is to be delivered by the clergy, and listened to by the people throughout life. The due fulfilment of religious duties is implied as the consequence of that instruction." As a lay- man I do not consider it necessary to enter at large into the subject of religion as a branch of education. I regard the great secular business of female life to be the producing, nurture, and rearing of children ; the due ma- nagement of domestic affairs; and the cultivation of those graces, virtues, and affections, which shed happiness on the family circle. These occupations are equally important to women as professions are to men; ar.d under a proper system of education, women should be taught every species of know- ledge, and instructed in every accomplishment, which may directly contribute to the proper discharge of their duties. At the earliest dawn of intellect and feeling, the little girl Off FEMALE EDUCATION". 51 manifests the tendency of her nature towards maternity. The doll is then the most absorbing object of interest that can be offered toher attentions. In maturer years, the mimic infant is laid aside, but the feelings which found delightful expres- sion in the caresses bestowed on it are not extinct. The nature of the woman is the same as that of the girl ; the conventional fashions of society may induce her to draw a veil over her affections ; but they glow internally, and it will be among her strongest desires to give them scope in an honourable and useful field. If this be woman's nature, her education should bear direct reference to the cultivation of it ; in short, next to religion, the maternal and domestic duties should be regarded as the leading objects of her exist- ence, and her training should proceed in harmony with this great end. High physical, moral, and intellectual qualities, are necessary for the due fulfilment of these purposes. In- deed no occupations allotted to man afford a higher field for the exercise of the best elements of mind, than those here assigned to woman. The physical qualify of highest importance in a woman, viewed as a mother, is health. The human body is composed of a variety of organs, each endowed with a particular func- tion ; and health is the result of the normal action of the whole in harmonious combination. Every organ is disposed, other circumstances being equal, to act with a degree of energy in proportion to its size ; and as disease is the conse- quence either of under-action or of over-action, their propor- tions to each other in size are points of fundamental impor- tance in regard to health. The handsomest figure is one in which the abdomen, chest, and head, are all well developed ; because, on the first depends digestion, on the second, respi- ration, and on the third, mental energy. The limbs will rarely be found deficient when the size and proportions of those regions are favourable. By the appointment of a wise Providence, a human figure of the finest proportions for sym- metry and beauty, is, cceteris paribus, the most favourably constituted for healthy action. If the carriage of the body be erect, and the motions easy and graceful, these are indi- cations that the bones are solid and the muscles energetic, — that the blood is well nourished and well oxygenized, and that it circulates freely. If the countenance beam with in- telligence and goodness, this is an indication that the moral and intellectual regions of the brain predominate in size, and a,re active. Such an individual is, by birth and constitution, one of nature's nobility. A woman thus endowed, whose in- tellect was also instructed to such an extent that she could 52 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. maintain her high qualities unimpaired through life, would, as a mother, be a treasure of the highest value. For many years, the lives of children depend almost exclu- sively on the care of the mother. Young women, therefore, should be taught not only how to regulate their own habits, so that they may preserve their health and vigour, but also how to treat children, both as physical and mental beings. This information would be attended with great advantages, whether they subsequently discharged maternal duties or not. The very study of the structure, functions, and proper treat- ment of children, with the view of exercising the kindly af- fections towards them, would be delightful in itself; and the young students, if they did not become mothers, would at least be sisters, aunts, or friends, and could never want op- portunities to practise their knowledge. Information of this description is not neglected by women with impunity. It appears by the London bills of mortality, that between a fourth and a fifth of all the children baptized, die within the first two years. There is no example among the more per- fect of the lower animals, of such a vast mortality of the young, where external violence is withheld; so that woman, with reason, and morality, and religion as her gifts, makes a poor figure in her maternal character, contrasted with the in- ferior creatures acting under the o-uidance of instinct alone. Much of this mortality arises from imperfect health in the parents, so that the children are born with feeble constitu- tions ; but much is also directly owing to injudicious treat- ment after birth. One important branch of female instruction, therefore, ought to be, the treatment of children as physical beings. Lectures should be instituted to communicate this informa- tion, and the basis of it ought to be anatomy and physio- logy.* The minutiae of these sciences need not be treated of, but the leading organs and their uses, on which health * '•' It is to the deplorable ignorance, even of persons of education, with re- ■ the structure and functions of the human body, and everything which to health and disease, that we must ascribe the inability of such persons . ■ i _'- 1 1 i 1 1 between the rational practitioner and the quack. The higher tally, hold regular physic and physicians of small account. Their idea i f medicine is, thai it is an art. a craft, a kind of knack (to use a somewhat nt hut not inexpressive word), which Bome people are born with, or at- tain without study, and by the mere felicity o\' nature. If anatomy and phy- , formed part of a good education, physic would reach its proper rank. But those who hang with ecstacy over stamens and pistils, or fragments of gra- nite and spar, never seem to consider how noble and useful a subject for tern ilation exists in their own frames." — Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxiii., p. 119. ON FEMALE EDUCATION.- Oo and mental activity depend, should be explained. The hu- man figure may also be advantageously studied in statuary and painting, not only as an interesting object of taste, but as a source of useful practical information. A mother whose eye was familiar with the proportions of the vital organs most conducive to health, would w T atch with increased atten- tion and intelligence, the progress of the nutrition of her children, and their habits and postures. The tumescent abdomen, the flat and narrow chest, the slender limbs, the large head, and the curving legs and spine, would become perceptible to her practised eye, months before they would arrest the attention of an uninstructed and unreflecting wo- man ; and on these months, when disease was still only in its incipient stage, might depend the life of her cherished off- spring. It is a great error to suppose that these studies are necessarily shocking and indelicate. They are so only in the eyes of ignorance and prejudice. Indelicate descriptions of abuses of the bodily functions are highly objectionable ; and the enemies of knowledge have represented this to be the in- struction which I recommend. Nothing can be more unlike it. The Creator has constituted every organ of the body, and, in studying its structure and uses, we are contemplat- ing his workmanship. There is no inherent indelicacy in the human figure. It is the temple of the mind, and its Author has impressed on it a beauty of form and an elegance of pro- portion, that render it capable of exciting the most pure and refined impressions in cultivated and virtuous minds. Where indelicacy is felt, its source must be looked for — not in the object, but in licentious feelings, or in a perverted and ne- glected education in the spectator. That individual who is able to associate only impure ideas with the most exquisite specimens of the fine arts, resembles a man in whom the aspect of a rich and beautiful domain should excite only feel- ings of envy, cupidity, and discontent. To call the human figure indelicate, is to libel Eternal Wisdom. The Creator has taught the inferior creatures to rear their young successfully by instinct ; but he has not conferred this guide on the human mother. One of two conclusions, there- fore, appears to follow. He has intended either that she should use her faculties of observation and reflection, in ac- quiring all the knowledge requisite for the proper treatment of offspring, or that she should recklessly allow a large pro- portion of them to perish. One or other of these conclusions is really inevitable ; because, as He has denied her instinct, and as she cannot obtain knowledge to supply its place, with- out application of her intellect to the study of the laws of na- 54 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. ture, — which instinct prompts the lower creatures to obey without knowing them, — the Creator must have intended either that she should study these laws, or give up her off- spring in vast numbers to destruction. The latter result ac- tually happens, to the enormous extent just mentioned ; and, if it be the necessary consequence of the Creator's gift of reason, in place of instinct, to woman, I submit to condem- nation ; but if it be the natural effect of her not having em- ployed that reason in a proper direction, I say that He has commanded her to study His works. If this conclusion be just, we may rest assured that she may safely, and in perfect consistency with feminine delicacy, study the Creator's de- signs, power, and goodness, in the structure, functions, and adaptations of the human body ; and that she will not find her higher faculties outraged, but exalted and refined, by the knowledge which will thus be revealed.* It has been said, that it is better to call in the aid of a physician, than to study medicine for one's self. But I do not propose that young persons in general should study me- dicine. My recommendation is simply, that they should be taught the structure and functions of the body with a view to preserving their health, to fit them to judge when it is pro- per that medical advice should be obtained, and to enable them to act like rational patients in the hands of a skilful physician, when they are so unfortunate as to fall into dis- ease. Every medical practitioner of a humane and honest mind, laments the unnecessary suffering and expense to which he sees his patients exposed through lack of this infor- mation. The publication and sale of such works as Dr Ma- caulay's " Popular Medical Dictionary," shew pretty clearly that my views on this subject are by no means singular."]" It may be imagined, that rules for the preservation of health may be taught without anatomy being studied. But all such instruction is empirical. The authority of any rule of health is the fact, that Nature is constituted in such and such a manner, and will act in her own way, whether at- tended to or not — for good if obeyed, and for evil if opposed. This authority is rarely comprehended without instruction conccrnino* the foundation on which it rests. The rule, other- * The public has Btrikingly responded to the views stated in the text, as is evinced by the ex: >g of the works by Dr A. < !ombe, " On the Physical and .Moral bfanag ii of Infancy," and " Physiology applied to Health and Education," and of similar works by other authors. t Since these lectures were delivered and published in 1833, the advice given in the text has been exi ■■■ted on, in teaching Physiology to both sexes, by public lectures, and with the happiest effects. ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 55 wise, resides in the memory rather than in the understand- ing ; and the possessor has no power of modifying her con- duct, and adapting it judiciously to new circumstances. She knows the rule only, and is at a loss whenever any exception or new combination not included in it, presents itself. The Professor of Scots Law most acutely and judiciously directed his students, when reading about the law of title-deeds, to take the parchments themselves into their hands, and to look at them, — assuring them that familiarity with their mere physical appearance, would aid the memory and judgment in becoming acquainted with the doctrines relative to their ef- fects. Philosophy and experience equally confirm the sound- ness of this observation ; and it applies, in an especial manner, to rules relative to health. When a good description of the respiratory organs, illustrated by prepared specimens or good drawings, has been given to a young woman, she understands much better, feels more deeply, and remembers much longer and more clearly, the dangerous consequences of exposing the throat and breast to a stream of cold air or to a sudden change of temperature, than when she has only heard or read precepts to avoid these and similar practical errors. Another leading branch of female education should be that kind of knowledge which will fit a woman to direct success- fully the moral and intellectual culture of her children. This embraces a vast field of useful and interesting information. If we should ask any mother, who has not studied mental philosophy, to write out a catalogue of the desires, emotions, and intellectual powers, which she conceives her children to be endowed with ; to describe the particular objects of each faculty, its proper sphere of action, the abuses into which it is most prone to fall, and also the best method of directing each to its legitimate objects, within its just sphere, so as best to avoid hurtful aberrations, — we know well that she could not execute such a task. I entreat any lady, who has a family, and who has derived no aid from mental philosophy, to make the experiment for her own satisfaction. She will discover in her own mind a vast field of ignorance, of which, before making trial, she could not have conjectured the extent. The earnest study of Phrenology, or, in other words, of the primitive faculties and their scope of action, should form an in- dispensable step in practical education. There are few mothers who do not sometimes discover wayward feelings, particular biases, or alarming tendencies breaking out in their children in some instances when they least expect them ; and I ap- peal to their own consciousness, whether they have not, in alarm and bewilderment, wondered what these could be, and 56 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. lamented their own inability to comprehend or to guide them. Mothers who have experienced this darkness, and have sub- sequently studied Phrenology, have appreciated the value and importance of the light which it has shed on their practical duties. While this edition is in the press, a talented mother of a talented son writes to me thus: " There has ever been, during the past years since my son's babyhood, a shadow in my mind that something more tangible than what is usually thought sufficient to guide young men, ought to exist some- where, although I was ignorant equally of what that was, and where and to whom I should apply to obtain it. The works on Phrenology and its applications are fast investing my shadow with a body.'' I am not pleading the cause of Phrenology for the sake of making proselytes. My proposition is general, that a mother cannot train faculties without knowing their nature, objects, and spheres of activity ; and if any woman can find practical information on these points without the aid of Phrenology, I earnestly recommend her to seek it out and apply it. To Phrenology I owe the views of human nature and its capa- bilities, which have most benefited and delighted my own mind ; but I am far from pressing it on others, who prefer to consider the mind as if it had no known connection with organization. If nature has connected it with organs, such individuals will meet with their reward in disappointment. Let us now suppose a mother to be instructed concerning the physical constitution and mental faculties of her children ; she will find it expedient next to become acquainted with the objects in the external world to which these faculties are re- lated. We are told that it is a " delightful task to rear the tender thought, and teach the young idea how to shoot." The power of doing so seems to imply some knowledge in the teacher of the direction in which the mind will tend to shoot, and of the objects which it will desire to reach ; in other words, such acquaintance with the external world as will en- able the mother to excite the moral sentiments and intellect of the child, and operate on the happiness of the future man or woman. In female training, the communication of this knowledge is too much neglected. It implies the study of the elements of Chemistry, Natural History, and Natural Philosophy, as well as familiar acquaintance with the social institutions of our own country, and the civil history of na- tions.'- If an ill-informed mother have an acute and clever * -Since the first edition of these lectures was published, several successful institutions have been formed to remedy these defects in female education. ON FEMALE EDUCATION. ol child, how is she puzzled by its questions ! and if she possess any natural sensibility, how keenly does she feel and regret her own ignorance, when it forces her to evade instead, of furnishing rational and instructive answers to its ino-enious and interesting inquiries ! I earnestly recommend to such mothers to attend, as speedily as possible, lectures on science when within their reach ; for no kind of information so much delights an inquisitive child as that which unfolds the course of nature. The mother has it in her power to exert a great and per- manent influence on the character of her children ; she makes the deepest impressions, and supplies the earliest ideas that enter their minds ; and it is of the utmost importance to so- ciety at large, that she should be well qualified for so moment- ous a duty. Children who are not gifted with originating powers, which is the case with nineteen out of every twenty, reflect slavishly, when they grow up, the impressions and ideas which their mothers, nurses, companions, teachers, and books have infused into their minds ; and of these the authority of the mother is not the least. " It was said by one of the most extraordinary of men (Napoleon), who was himself, as he avowed, principally indebted to maternal culture for the unexampled elevation to which he subsequently rose, that the future good or bad conduct of a child depends entirely on the mother."* Let women remember, therefore, that they may sow the seeds of superstition, prejudice, error, and baneful prepossessions ; or of piety, universal charity, sound sense, philosophical perception, and true knowledge, according to the state of their own attainments ; and let them also ponder well the fact, that the more thoroughly destitute they are of sound information, and of rational views of mind and its objects, the less they are aware of their own defi- ciencies, and of the evils which their ignorance is inflicting on another generation. In addition to the branches of solid instruction before men- tioned, women should be taught such elegant and refined ac- complishments as they individually are capable of learning. These throw over the domestic circle a charm which cannot be too highly prized. What I condemn is, the teaching of music, drawing, and conventional manners, to the exclusion of all other kinds of knowledge. An enlightened, refined, and elegant woman, is the most lovely and perfect of ani- * Moore's notices of the Life of Byron, 12mo, vol. ii. p. 35. Napoleon's pro- position is too general. The father's qualities Influence the child ; but those of the mother do so still more powerfully. 58 ON FEMALE EDUCATION. mated beings ; and no philosopher, in recommending useful instruction, would desire to see abated, by one iota, the graces which adorn the female character. These views may appear to be so consonant with reason, that they support themselves ; but as I am addressing a po- pular assembly, I solicit permission to strengthen them by the opinions of three contemporary authors. The evils attendant on the imperfect education of females belonging to the upper ranks, are forcibly expounded in a late number of the Foreign Quarterly Review (No. xxiii., p. 127). " Nothing,'' says the reviewer, " is more remarkable in the present age of mental excitement, than the care with which, by most of the prevalent customs and a system of fashionable education, the minds of the generality of females are consigned to inactivity and utter uncompanionable insi- pidity. Whilst the expression of almost every elevated feel- ing is repressed as inconsistent with refinement, every arti- ficial want, every habit of selfish gratification, is as much as possible indulged. Active exercise in the open air, cheerful country walks, a joyful participation of the hearty pleasures of any society, in which every movement is not taught by the posture-master, or conversation conducted according to the rules laid down in books professing to teach female duty and behaviour ; — all this would be inconsistent with the general aim of all classes to imitate the manners and habits of the highest. All kinds of reading, except of works the most fri- volous, is considered ungenteel, or at least singular ; and any display of deep and unsophisticated sentiment excites uni- versal pity. The beauties of nature, the triumphs of science, the miracles of art, excite no more than a languid expression of wonder. To apply the mind to read or understand such things, would destroy the apathetic elegance which those de- sire to preserve, who still believe knowledge to be a very good thing for persons who live by it. With as much care as the natural proportions of the female figure are destroyed by stays made upon abstract principles, is the mind cribbed and cabined by custom and fashion. Then, universal ambi- tion leads to universal difficulties as to fortune ; and the only serious duty as to daughters is, to obtain an advantageous settlement, which, whether gained or missed, is too often thus the cause of cureless discontent, injured health, and all the nervous maladies incidental to an ill-managed mind and infirm body.'' " The system by which young ladies are taught to move their limbs according tu the rules of art, to come into a room with studied diffidence, and to step into a carriage with ON FEMALE EDUCATION. 59 measured action and premeditated grace, are calculated only to keep the degrading idea perpetually present, that they are preparing for the great market of the world. Real elegance or demeanour springs from the mind : fashionable schools do hut teach its imitation,' whilst their rules forbid to be ingenuous. Philosophers never conceived the idea of so perfect a vacuum as is found to exist in the minds of young women who are supposed to have finished their education in such establish- ments. If they marry husbands as uninformed as themselves, they fall into habits of indolent insignificance without much pain ; if they marry persons more accomplished, they can re- tain no hold of their affections. Hence many matrimonial miseries, in the midst of which the wife finds it a consola- tion to be always complaining of her health and ruined nerves."— (lb., pp. 128-9.) " Knowledge,' 5 says Mrs John Sandford, " should be ap- preciated by women for its own sake, and not merely as a distinction. The superiority of cultivated women is in every thing very apparent. They have been accustomed to think and to discriminate, and their opinion is not a mere momen- tary impulse. Their sphere, too, is enlarged ; they are not so much actuated by selfish feelings, or so liable to receive partial, and consequently erroneous, impressions. What an easy dupe to empiricism or design is a half-educated woman ! With sufficient acquirements to be vain, and sufficient sensi- bility to be soon imposed on, she may be easily seduced from principles which she has received only on the authority of others, and which she is therefore ill prepared to defend." — " Disorder is the accident, not the consequence, of talent ; and as it is the more conspicuous, so it is the less excused, when accompanied with mental superiority." I conclude this branch of the subject with the following just and eloquent observations of an American authoress, Mrs Emma Willard. It forms part of an admirable address which she presented, in 1819, to the Legislature of New York, proposing a plan for improving female education ; and which address led to the formation of an extensive esta- blishment at Troy, of which she was long the head. " Not only," says she, " has there been a want of system concern- ing female education, but much of what has been done has proceeded upon mistaken principles. One of these is, that without a regard to the different periods of life, proportionate to their importance, the education of females has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty. Though it may be proper to adorn this period of life, yet it is incomparably more im- GO ON FEMALE EDUCATION . portant to prepare for the serious duties of maturer years. Though well to decorate the blossom, it is far better to pre- pare for the harvest. In the vegetable creation, nature seems but to sport when she embellishes the flower, while all her serious cares are directed to perfect the fruit. " Another error is, that it has been made the first object in educating our sex, to prepare them to please the other. But reason and religion teach, that we too are primary exist- ences ; that it is for us to move, in the orbit of our duty, around the Holy Centre of Perfection, the companions, not the satellites of men ; else, instead of shedding around us an influence that may help to keep them in their proper course, we must accompany them in their wildest deviations. " I would not be understood to insinuate (continues Mrs Willard), that we are not, in particular situations, to yield obedience to the other sex. Submission and obedience be- long to every tiling in the universe, except the Great Master of the whole. Nor is it a degrading peculiarity to our sex, to be under human authority. Whenever one class of human beings derives from another the benefits of support and pro- tection, they must pay its equivalent, obedience. Thus, while we receive these benefits from our parents, we are all, without distinction of sex, under their authority ; when we receive them from the government of our country, we must obey our rulers ; and when our sex take the obligations of marriage, and receive support and protection from the other, it is reasonable that we too should yield obedience. Yet is neither the child, nor the subject, nor the wife, under human authority, but in subservience to the Divine. Our highest responsibility is to God, and our highest interest to please him ; therefore to secure this interest our education should be directed. " Neither would I be understood to mean that our sex should not seek to make themselves agreeable to the other. The error complained of is, that the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has been made a standard for the for- mation of the female character. In whatever we do, it is of the utmost importance that the rule by which we work be perfect; for. if otherwise, what is it but to err upon prin- ciple ? A system of education which leads one class of human beings to consider the approbation of another as their high- est object, teaches that the rule of their conduct should be the will of beings imperfect and erring like themselves, rather than the will of God, which is the only standard of perfection." ON FEMALE EDUCATION. Gl On the whole subject of education, then, I remark, that if society were organised for instructing the people, and pro- viding time arid means for the exercise of their moral and in- tellectual faculties, as effectually as it is for paying taxes or fighting, the progress of civilisation, and the amount of hu- man enjoyment, would be greatly increased. Lord Brougham lately observed, that until the people shall take the matter of education with spirit and energy into their own hands, and with a resolution to accomplish something, Government will be incapable of doing any essential service to the cause. The Association at whose request these Lectures have been de- livered, has been formed in anticipation of the recommenda- tion implied in this remark. I solicit your attention to its objects and constitution, and hope that if these merit your approbation, you will favour it with your support. ACCOUNT OF THE EDINBURGH ASSOCIATION FOR PROCURING INSTRUCTION IN USEFUL AND ENTERTAINING SCIENCE ; NOW NAMED THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION. In the autumn of 1832, a number of individuals of this city, chiefly engaged in practical business, who had attended my Summer Course of Lectures on Phrenology, formed them- selves into an association for the purpose of obtaining in- struction in Useful and Entertaining Science. Associations for similar purposes had previously been founded in other cities, and had been partially successful, but not to so great an extent as might have been anticipated. The London University College, for example, is an institution for afford- ing scientific education, particularly to the sons of persons resident in the metropolis, who prefer superintending their conduct in their own houses, to sending them to Cambridge or Oxford ; but it has not met with the encouragement which its utility and importance deserved. In most of the great towns of England, there are literary and scientific institu- tions ; but they also have been attended with only limited success. In the absolute amount of instruction conveyed to the people, they have fallen greatly short of what they pro- mised to accomplish at their foundation. In tracing the causes of these shortcomings, two in particular attract our notice. In these instances, large sums of money have been collected by subscription from wealthy individuals, and ex- pended in forming buildings, libraries, and museums. The leading founders and directors have been rich merchants, patriotic landed proprietors, and a few men of science. They have provided money, lecture-rooms, apparatus — in short 62 LECTURES ON EDUCATION. every thing physical ; but they have not been equally fortu- nate in furnishing audiences to fill the lecture-rooms, and students to peruse the books piled in the shelves of their libraries. Whence has this last and important deficiency arisen 1 Men in general have appetites sufficiently strong to impel them, without external excitement, to seek supplies for the wants of their animal nature. Hunger and thirst press so keenly on their feelings, that the most thoughtless of mankind are prompted, by their importunity, to exert themselves to procure food. The piercing winds and the winter's frost force them to provide raiment. But it is argued by some writers on religious and scientific education that the case is quite different with our moral and intellectual nature. The human being, deeply buried in ignorance, has no painful con- sciousness of his condition ; he is stimulated by no self-act- ing desires to feed and clothe his mind ; he will remain for ever mentally destitute and naked, the passive victim of his animal feelings, unless excited by the importunity of more enlightened men to cast aside his sloth. The authors who espouse these principles, maintain the necessity of Established churches to teach religion, and of en- dowed universities to impart knowledge of philosophy and science. They regard clergymen and professors, paid by the State, as staff-officers, and an army of aggression appointed to wage war on public apathy and ignorance. It is said to be the duty of the State-Clergy to go from house to house and invade the dormant inmates ; to rouse them with the din of knowledge, and urge them to the banquet of religion. Hav- ing created an appetite for piety, these public heralds are supposed to present food fitted to every palate, and thus to Christianize the world. Professors and teachers, I presume, arc expected to follow a similar course of action. While this representation contains some truth, it does not appear to me to be entirely correct. The appetite of the mass of the people for instruction has never been fairly tried. Ity their external circumstances they have been trained to fight, to labour, and to indulge in dissipation ; but rarely to seek enjoyment in the cultivation of their moral and intellec- tual powers. It would be as reasonable to state, as an objec- tion against human nature, that an individual trained as a divine, has little relish for agriculture or for law, as to urge as a plea against it, that labourers and artizans, whose men- tal powers have never been cultivated, but, on the contraiy, have been blunted by their occupations, have no taste for li- terature or science. LECTURES ON EDUCATION. 63 Besides, the great body of the people have never had whole- some mental food presented to them, and their defect of ap- petite is prematurely assumed. If the foregoing views of the constitution of the mind and its adaptations be correct, the objects best calculated to rouse the intellect, and delight the moral sentiments, are those presented by Nature in her va- rious departments ; and knowledge of this kind has never been offered to the people and rej ected. Drowsy and incapable teachers have too often administered husks and rubbish to the youthful mind ; and, because it has revolted at this dose, it has been charged with a distaste for all useful information. If the minds of practical men could have taken a deep and abiding interest in Greek, Latin, scholastic logic, and metaphy- sics, I should have despaired of the progress of the race ; and yet, until almost the present day, the learned had little else to offer to their notice. That they have turned with distaste from these studies is no better proof that they will dislike all knowledge, than the rejection of wormwood by a child is evidence that it will not relish sugar. Before the appetite of the people for knowledge can be fairly estimated, they must be placed in external circumstances calculated to favour the activity of their moral and intellectual powers ; knowledge really related to their faculties must be presented to them ; and their teachers must be men qualified by nature and ac- quirements to communicate useful information and command respect. In ;i Hints on an improved and Self-paying System of National Education," recently published by the Reverend Richard Dawes, Yicar of King's Somborne,* this author states, as the result of his own experience, " and as a ground of encouragement, that where the education in our schools is made to bear on practical life, the parents themselves will make a much greater effort to pay for it than they have hitherto had credit for." (P. 17.) In two pamphlets on the ' ; Relation between Religion and Science," and on the question " What should Secular Edu- cation "embrace V I have endeavoured to expound the idea that the principles on which God administers the physical, organic, and moral government of the world, are to be dis- covered by studying the constitution, modes of action, and laws of the instruments, or of the things and beings, by means of which that government is conducted ; but this proposition is not generally recognised as true ; yet, until it shall be ad- mitted, the paramount importance of studying and acting in harmony with the laws of nature, cannot be comprehended. * London : Groombriclge and Sons. 1847. (]4 LECTURES ON EDUCATION. This view of Providence is not understood because the people have rarely been taught the philosophy of their own nature, physical and mental, and its relations to the external world. Hence, if there be any course of study or of action, written, as it were, in the constitution of man, and recommended by the Creator to our attention, too little of that lesson has yet been read to the people. Teachers themselves were igno- rant of it. The mental organs being a portion of the means by which the moral government of the world is conducted, must be studied and understood before the principles of that government can be comprehended ; nevertheless, this study is, by many persons, opposed, denounced, or neglected, as if God had neither framed the organs nor established their re- lations. Even assuming the argument against the appetite of the people for instruction to be more sound than it is, the pro- posed mode of supplying the defect does not appear to me to be altogether satisfactory. After the churches and colleges have been built, and ministers and professors endowed, the question remains, Who shall arouse and collect the people for instruction % It is easy to say that it will be the duty of these teachers to do so ; but professors cannot, in consistency with the practices of society, go into the houses, the streets, and the byeways, and expostulate with the people on their want of a moral and intellectual appetite, and importune them to come to the banquet of knowledge and be fed. They are remunerated by fees contributed by their students, and they cannot go a-begging for an audience, without having their motives entirely misinterpreted. Great obstacles lie in the way even of the clergy pursuing such a course. There are various sects in religion, and various shades of belief. The families who differ from the State minister will not volunta- rily accept of his invitation ; and if it be too anxiously urged upon them, they will repel it. If the clergy of every sect shall become active belligerents in favour each of his own opinions, they will convert the world into a theatre of theo- logic war, and the minds of men will become the prize of the acutest wrangler. The decorum of the clerical character re- quires a modest, calm, and dignified deportment, unlike that of solicitation and importunity. Yet, unless there be prompters to enforce attendance, or unless the appetite already exist to induce the people spontaneously to repair to the portals of the church, or to the halls of the schools and the university, the richest viands for the mind may be spread there, and no guests be found to enjoy their delicious savours. Accordingly, we perceive, that, after the London University College has been LECTURES ON EDUCATION. 65 reared, and other arrangements for education have been com- pleted, the students are few, and the good accomplished is limited. The citizens, educated in words alone, are unbe- lievers in the existence of practical knowledge, and proceed in their wonted rounds of labour and money-getting, uncon- scious of the value of science, and without a motive to en- gage in its study. Some provincial institutions for the scien- tific instruction of the industrious classes, have shared a simi- lar fate. They have perhaps been frequented for a short time, while novelty and influential names produced excite- ment ; but have too soon been deserted by those for whose benefit they were reared. For these unfavorable results, I blame the stinted education given to the existing generation in their primary schools. This left them sceptics concerning even the existence of useful knowledge, and defrauded them of all taste for its advantages and sweets. Indifference to instruction has been fostered also, by the low estimate too generally formed by religious teachers of the practical value of natural science ; and the blindness of many persons to the fact that science is information concerning the great laws by means of which God governs the world. It is true, then, that, in the present state of society, there is a vast body of men, who, from their circumstances and train- ing, feel no spontaneous impulses towards improving their moral and intellectual nature, and who, if provided with food, clothing, shelter, and amusement, desire little else. But there are also among the people many gifted spirits, whose native energies have enabled them to surmount all the ob- stacles presented by imperfect education to the expansion of their minds, whose moral and intellectual faculties long for knowledge, for refinement, and for improvement in virtue, as keenly as their bodily appetites burn for their proper gra- tifications. These individuals have struggled hard for food for the mind ; and they have generally obtained it. They not only desire to advance themselves, but they feel a call within them to become apostles or missionaries to excite their less vivacious and intellectual brethren to improvement. This appears to me to be the class instituted by Providence for successfully inviting the unwilling guests to the banquet of knowledge. Too many of the educational institutions which have hither- to been formed, have omitted to invoke the co-operation of these important auxiliaries. Bankers, merchants, and landed gentlemen, whose consequence and influence originated in, and depended chiefly on, wealth, have been the founders and directors of most of the existing establishments ; and by rank, E 66 LECTURES ON EDUCATION. habits, feelings, and inclinations, they were far removed from the class of slumbering minds who stood in need of being awakened. The Association whose cause I now advocate, is founded on better principles. If we wished to institute a bank or an insurance company, we should apply to the richest, most ex- perienced, and most respectable citizens, for their subscrip- tions, names, and influence ; just because the skill of such men would constitute the soul, and their wealth the substance, of such associations. But if our object were to form a so- ciety for convincing ill-educated men and women of the evils of ignorance and the advantages of knowledge, and for urg- ing them to send their sons and their daughters to school to be taught ; and if we acted on the principles which sagacious men follow in the formation of trading companies, whom should we select to become the members and directors of such an association ! Not, certainly, gentlemen who have attained eminence in trade, without being conspicuous for their general knowledge ; not persons distinguished for wealth, but desti- tute of liberal ideas ; nor even philosophers devoted exclu- sively to science, and far removed by their habits and pur- suits from familiar intercourse with the busy, but ill-educated, sons of commerce : No ; — we should give such an association a body and a soul suited to its proper objects, and then we should succeed. These are to be found only among the men, whatever may be their rank or wealth, to whom Providence has given the noble inheritance of vigorous moral and intel- lectual faculties ; persons who have had the appetite for knowledge bestowed on them by nature, without having had instruction placed before them by fortune, independently of their own exertions : men whose minds rejoice in having been the architects of their own education; who know what it is to have been ignorant, and to have burned with the desire of instruction ; and who, through many difficulties, have ac- quired a considerable portion of useful knowledge. An as- sociation composed of such individuals will do much good on apparently small means. They will form a nucleus round which all interested in the welfare of the rising generation may gather together. From observation and experience they will be capable of judging what kind of instruction will be most relished, and what lecturers will best communicate it. A few years ago, some of the Professors of the University of Edinburgh most laudably gave popular lectures on their sciences to the higher ranks, but failed in securing audiences after the first and second years. On inquiring into the causes of their want of success, I was led to believe that these were LECTURES ON" EDUCATION. 67 two. 1. The individuals who attended were, in general, not actuated by any real love of science, but chiefly by the im- pulse of fashion. 2. The Professors did not put forth their strength to open up the sciences to the understandings of their audiences, with the purpose of giving them useful in- formation. They addressed chiefly the imagination and won- der of their hearers ; they astonished and amused them ; but left no permanent impression of advantage resulting from the studies. Many minds are capable of teaching a subject scientifically, who cannot impart practical and popular views of it; and only those who possess the latter gift will succeed in permanently commanding the attention of a general audi- ence. The present Association proceeds on different principles. Its lecturers keep solid instruction, and the enlargement of the minds of their hearers, constantly in view, as their lead- ing objects ; adding graces and ornament only in so far as these are compatible with the main ends. The members and directors of this Association, then, are men engaged in the business of the world, yet ardently alive to the advantages of education, and desirous to induce their fel- low-citizens to embrace all opportunities of acquiring it. They are connected by relationship, friendship, and business, with the very classes who require to be roused and induced to come to the halls of science. They are not themselves teachers or lecturers, and are consequently at liberty to importune, advise, and plead in favour of knowledge, in a way that no professor can possibly do, to induce hearers to come to his prelections. They are at all times witnesses of the impressions made, and are much better aware of the kind of information want- ed, than any established authorities, moving in a higher sphere, and holding only a formal communication with igno- rant inferiors. The Directors are regularly changed, transmitting the ac- tive management to the young and rising of each generation. It would be fatal to the project, if the same individuals were retained constantly in office. Their zeal would flag ; the circle of their influence would be exhausted ; and drowsiness would seize upon all the movements of the society. Another advantage of an association of this kind is, that it affords instruction cheap. The industrious classes are so numerous, that if they will only act in combination, there are no mental advantages which wealth can command that they may not attain. As a lecturer, I can certify that, inde- pendently of gain, it is far more animating and agreeable to lecture to 100 than to 20 hearers, and more exciting still to 68 LECTURES ON EDUCATION. address 200 than 100. By bringing forward an audience of 200 or 300, therefore, the lecturer will be remunerated by a comparatively small contribution from each, and have his pleasure in teaching greatly increased. This Association differs in its objects from the School of Arts, and has succeeded without interfering with it. The School of Arts is designed chiefly to afford scientific instruc- tion, which may aid operative mechanics in their trades ; the present Institution embraces a more extensive range. There are numerous classes of merchants and tradesmen, besides fe- males of every rank, to whom the instruction provided at the School of Arts is too technical to be useful ; and for them chiefly is this Association intended. An objection may be urged, that only superficial knowledge can be communicated in the proposed lectures, and that the tendency of such instruction is to encourage pedantry and discontent. The line of Pope, that " a little learniny is a dangerous thing," is often quoted in opposition to all propo- sals for instructing the industrious classes. There is much force in this objection, if learning be confined to mere read- ing and writing ; but it is pointless when applied to instruc- tion in Natural Science, which is the kind of knowledge in fa- vour of which I am now pleading. " It would be easy to shew, 1 ' says Dr Caldwell, " that, under the government of the United States, a very limited amount of school-learning, diffused among the people, is cal- culated, politically speaking, to injure, rather than to benefit them. I allude to that degree of attainment, which qualifies them merely to read newspapers, and understand the mean- ing of what they contain, without enabling them to judge of its soundness. A people only thus far instructed, are in the fittest of all conditions to be imposed on and misled by art- ful demagogues and dishonest presses. When party spirit runs high, and the political passions become inflamed, they are induced, by intriguing men, to read papers only on one side of the question. The consequence is plain. Not being able to judge of the truth of the matter laid before them, as respects either the fitness of men, or the tendency of mea- sures, they are liable to be seduced into the most ruinous courses. Were they unable to read at all, or did they never see a newspaper, their condition would be less dangerous. Demagogues would have less power to delude and injure them. In the present state of our country, it is emphatically true, as relates to the great body of the people, that ' A little learning is a dangerous thing.' LECTURES ON EDUCATION. 69 " The only remedy for the evil consists in the reformation of the public pr 'esses, or the diffusion of more learning, know- ledge, and virtue^ among the people. The former, it is to be apprehended, is not soon to be looked for. On the latter alone, therefore, rest the fate of our government, and the hope of our country. Let the community at large be taught to think correctly and feel soundly, and they will not only have a secure protection against the falsehood and corruption of the presses ; these sources of mischief will cease to be en- couraged. They must then choose between reformation and extinction. At the present moment, some of our public presses are the arch-engines of evil to our country, and a dis- grace to the human character.''* I consider entire ignorance as more dangerous than partial knowledge. " Learning," in Pope's time, meant an acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and with the barbarous jargons of logic and metaphysics, which constituted the chief stock of knowledge of educated men in his clay. Science has, to a great extent' been created since the time of Pope ; and it has been brought within the reach of the industrious classes only within these twenty years. His remark, therefore, is wholly inapplicable to instruction in scientific knowledge. So far as it goes, it is instruction in the laws of God's secular Providence. A little of such knowledge is better than none at all, on the same principle that it is better to know our way clearly, al- though only for one mile, than to be entirely ignorant to which hand to turn on our journey through life. A man who has learned how to deal with two causes which produce two ef- fects involving his happiness, is more profitably wise than he who is acquainted with only one. If the instruction be use- ful, the smallest quantity cannot possibly injure, while it may create an appetite for more. I deny, however, that the knowledge communicated will necessarily be superficial. If the directors and the lecturers do their duty, solid and extensive instruction in the great leading principles of the sciences may be communicated in popular lectures. An intelligent student of geography may be very far behind a practical surveyor in his knowledge of the localities of a particular country, every acre of which the surveyor has measured and delineated ; but his knowledge of the relative positions of all important places, may still be * A Discourse on the Advantages of a National University, especially in its influence on the Union of the United (States; delivered September 25, 1832. By Charles Caldwell, M.D. 70 LECTURES ON EDUCATION. accurate, extensive, and useful. The popular student of ana- tomy and physiology may be far short of the skill which would enable him to tie an artery or to amputate a limb ; but he may still possess precise and valuable information concerning the structure and functions of the great organs, on the proper condition of which health and life depend ; and he may understand and be able practically to apply the prin- ciples thus unfolded. Lectures have also a very beneficial influence in communicating to the mind an interest in any science treated of, and a familiarity with its general prin- ciples, which enable the student to pursue his studies of it in books, with a zeal and facility which could not otherwise be attained. It has been urged against popular instruction, that, by communicating a smattering of knowledge to all, it will pre- vent the growth of great geniuses and profound philosophers ; in short, that we shall have a superficially learned society, but no masters in science. This is the argument of a com- mon-place mind, which has acquired celebrity by arduous study of other men's thoughts, and which dreads the approach of the vulgar to its shrine of self-importance and conceit. There is a simple answer to the argument. Genius either is, or is not, necessary to reach the profundities of science. If it be necessary, — then my argumen is, that genius is an in- herent quality of a few gifted minds ; it goes on in its own way conquering and to conquer; it rejoices in the fellowship of human beings, although their progress be but a furlong, while it advances a league ; its power is within itself, and it is not impeded by the presence of a multitude moving in the same direction. It is cheered by their proximity, ani- mated by their applause, and feels more confident of its re- ward, in proportion as they become capable of appreciating its achievements. Genius, therefore, will not stop short in its high career, because the denizens of the busy world are gazing at its progress in fond admiration, and advancing .in the same path, although at a vast and perhaps an impassable distance. If genius be not necessary to profound acquire- ments in philosophy and science, then the higher the common standard of attainment is raised, the farther ahead must those proceed who desire to hold a prominent station in public esteem. All the motives of interest and ambition by which common minds are actuated, increase in proportion as the class is numerous and enlightened by which the prizes are awarded. This objection, therefore, has no solid foundation. It has also been maintained, that the study of science in- capacitates the mind, or at least gives it a distaste, for busi- LECTURES ON EDUCATION. 71 ness. This is an important objection, and demands serious consideration. What should we say to the assertion that the practice of walking unfitted a man for running ; or that the habit of eating wholesome food had a great tendency to impair the digestive organs 1 "We should laugh at such ab- surdities : because the man runs by means of the same bones, tendons, and muscles by which he walks ; and walking is the moderate, natural, and healthy exercise of those parts ; so that while it may well augment his capacity for running, it cannot possibly impair it, unless carried to excess. Whole- some food also is the natural stimulus of the digestive or- gans, and, if used in moderation, it is the best prescription for preserving them in health ; and, in point of fact, there can be no vigour in the function if it be withheld. Now, the Creator has constituted external nature and the moral and intellectual faculties of man, and adapted them to each other, with the same wisdom which he has manifested in adapting the stomach to food, and the muscles to the law of gravita- tion. The effects of knowledge are, to strengthen the under- standing and to enable it to act vigorously, and to judge soundly of the things and beings with which it is dealing. A man transacts business by means of the same mental fa- culties with which he studies useful science. The moderate pursuit of science, therefore, has the same tendency to strengthen, improve, and gratify the mental faculties, that the use of wholesome food has to benefit the digestive func- tions. It is absurd, then, to assert either that the study of nature is not calculated to strengthen these powers, or that a study which is calculated to strengthen them, unfits them for business. Facts also support these conclusions of reason. The Rev. J. R. Bryce, of the Belfast Academy, certified from expe- rience, that boys engaged in studying Natural History and Languages, mastered their lessons in the latter with greater alacrity than did boys who learned languages exclusively ; and a successful private teacher in Edinburgh has declared to me that those among his pupils who are permitted to at- tend to science, outstrip those who do not, even, in the study of Greek and Latin. The sources of the prevalent errors on this head can be easily traced. If young persons give themselves up to the excessive and exclusive study of works of fiction and imagi- nation, they impair their relish for, and also their powers of conducting, practical business ; because most works of fiction are addressed more to the propensities and inferior senti- ments, than to the moral and intellectual faculties. The re- 72 LECTURES ON EDUCATION. cital of horrors exercises Destructiveness, the description of wild and mysterious events arouses Wonder, Cautiousness, and Secretiveness ; but these are not the chief faculties by means of which business is transacted. When these facul- ties become highly active, the transition to sober observa- tion and reflection is painful, and business is disliked. The exclusive study of the Fine Arts, even, is not favourable to the formation of business habits. Painting, poetry, sculp- ture, and music, exercise Ideality, the moral sentiments, and several of the intellectual powers ; and unquestionably com- municate to these refinement and susceptibility : but they leave many of the subordinate feelings and some of the re- flecting faculties uncultivated ; while the objects with which they are chiefly conversant, belong to the world of imagina- tion. The study of the Fine Arts, therefore, when exclusive, both unfits the faculties for practical business, and withholds ideas connected with worldly affairs. Many persons, from observing the injurious effects of an excessive devotion to those pursuits on the mind's aptitude for serious study, have concluded that every species of mental exercise that is not laborious and disagreeable, must have a similar effect, and that therefore science also is apt to obstruct the formation of habits of energetic application. But the cases are widely different. The kind of exercise which the study of the natu- ral sciences gives to the mind, is closely analogous to that which is necessary in the management of practical affairs. Those persons, therefore, who imagine that they have facts in support of the baneful influence of scientific instruction, in unfitting the mind for business, must have in view only the exclusive pursuit of one abstract science, such as mathema- tics, which is quite different from what is here recommended. The study of the fine arts, poetry, and works of fiction, however, should not be undervalued. They are sources of great enjoyment, and when kept within due bounds, refine, exalt, and expand the mind, without weakening it. It is only excessive indulgence in the pleasures which they afford, that is practically injurious. But there is one effect of the study of science, which I am prepared to admit. When the mind has been opened up to the designs of Providence, as displayed in creation, and has learned to draw its best enjoyments from contemplating their excellence and grandeur, and taking a part in their execution, there will be a distaste for excessive and exclusive money- getting, and for the present long and toilsome hours of at- tendance at the manufactory, the shop, and the counting- house. These will be felt to be inimical to man's moral and LECTURES ON EDUCATION. 73 intellectual progression, and be restricted. This result I hail as a positive advantage, believing, as I do, that all our wants may be amply supplied, and that time may still be left us to cultivate and enjoy our rational powers. Should this result follow in the course of ages, it will be an example, not of study producing incapacity for business, but of moral and in- tellectual enlightenment regulating the plan of life, and re- ducing it into conformity with the constitution of our rational nature. The class of persons who would be benefited by the lec- tures which this Association will bring forward, is one of great importance. They have votes for members of Parlia- ment, and exercise political power. From among them are chosen the managers of many of the Hospitals for educating children, both male and female, in this city. They become commissioners of Police, and in that capacity superintend all public measures for increasing the health and comfort of the citizens. As members of Parochial Boards, they are entrusted with the management of the poor, and the education and training of the pauper children. They are elected members of the Town-Council of Edinburgh, and become the patrons of the City's public schools, of the High School, of most of the Chairs in the University, and of the City Churches.* Society is at present in a state of visible transition. Old ideas, habits, and practices, are fast disappearing, and the public mind is bounding forward eagerly in search of new and untried institutions. Is it not the interest of all, that sound knowledge of physical science and the nature of man, and through them of the laws of God's Secular Providence, should be diffused among all ranks, and particularly among that class which is respectable by its morality, and influential by its property, and which requires only intellectual information to render it at once the ornament and safeguard of the state 1 Mechanics' Institutions provide instruction in science for operative tradesmen ; and the Universities open their gates for the aristocracy ; but females of all ranks, and the middle * One of the first consequences of the instruction of this class of the commu- nity in science, will probably be the reformation of the primary schools of this City, and the second, if not simultaneous with the other, will be the ventilating of the churches and public rooms ; in both of which matters the profound ignorance of the last generation continues to inflict much evil on the present in- habitants of Edinburgh. First Edition. Since the foregoing note was written in 1833, a good deal has been done in Edinburgh to remove the evils of defective ventilation in public rooms. Second Edition, 1837. Since 1837, great pro- gress has been made in extending and improving schools, and promoting sani- tary measures in Edinburgh, 1818. 74 LECTUItES ON EDUCATION. classes of citizens, although at least as important and inte- resting from their numbers, their position, and their wealth, as either of the other two, have hitherto been overlooked. They are now pursuing the only course that can conduct them to an equality in point of knowledge with the classes above and below them in the social scale, — coming forward to provide the means of instruction for themselves. This is precisely what they ought to do. They possess among them- selves too many well-informed, able, and active men, to ren- der it necessary for them to go into leading-strings under the great in literature and science ; and too much wealth to per- mit them to solicit pecuniary aid from any individuals out of their own circle. They come forth, therefore, in their own strength and might, conscious that, by union and co-operation, they can accomplish their own intellectual regeneration. Edinburgh stands pre-eminent in literary and philosophical reputation among the cities of the world ; but she would place a still more noble crown of glory on her head, could she boast of industrious citizens combining talents for every species of practical usefulness with refined taste and cultivated under- standings. She would then become the preceptress of the world ; and prove, by her example, that labour, intelligence, morality, and religion, go hand in hand in promoting the highest enjoyments of man. In these Lectures, then, I have endeavoured to shew, that man is a progressive and improvable being ; that he is per- mitted to some extent to control the external elements and apply them to his advantage ; that where this power is de- nied, he may, by observing their operation, accommodate his conduct to their influence ; that to do either, knowledge of nature and its qualities is indispensable ; that a knowledge of nature is a knowledge of the laws of God's Secular Provi- dence ; that the command to acquire knowledge is thus written in his constitution ; and that discoveries in science and in- ventions in art are intended to give him leisure for studying nature, and for cultivating his moral and intellectual faculties. This Association is founded in the spirit of these views : — let us hold out to it the hand of encouragement, and promote its success. [The Philosophical Association, after flourishing for some years, became dormant ; but it was subsequently revived under the title of the Philosophical Institution, an account of which is given in the Appendix, No. 1.] ( 75 ) (POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION.) REMARKS ON PRIZES AND PLACE-TAKING IN SCHOOLS. The question has been much agitated, whether it be expe- dient to use prizes as a stimulus to exertion in education. I beg leave to offer a few remarks on the subject, leaving the reader to decide for himself. The natural rewards for exerting each faculty are, first, The pleasure attending the exercise of the faculty itself; secondly, The value of the objects which it desires, when at- tained ; and, thirdly, The consequential advantages which may result from that attainment. Thus, a highly gifted musician derives intense pleasure, directly from exercising his talents ; by cultivating them he lays up a store of enjoy- ment for himself on which he may draw at pleasure ; and he may also obtain admiration from the public, and fortune, if he choose to dedicate his abilities to their gratification. In some children certain faculties enjoy high spontaneous activity, and the pleasure and natural advantages attend- ing the exercise of them, suffice to render them as active as any sensible teacher or parent would desire. If a child, for example, have a great natural talent for languages, he will learn to read with facility, and experience great pleasure in reading. Books and study will be his delight, and in many instances it will be more necessary to offer him a recompense for giving up this pleasure and resorting to play for the be- nefit of his health, than to stimulate him by honours and prizes to greater mental application. The same remarks apply to children who have great natural talents for drawing, or calculation, or mechanics, or natural history, or any other pursuit. They will study in the direction of these faculties with an ardour and a relish that will render all extrinsic re- wards superfluous. For such children, therefore, prizes, as a stimulus, are altogether unnecessary. There are other children, however, who have very little natural talent for particular branches of education which their parents wish them to learn, such as languages, or arith- metic, or mathematics ; and as they do not experience any direct pleasure in such studies, teachers have resorted to punishment for deficiency, and prizes for proficiency, in the prescribed exercises, as motives to exertion. It cannot be denied that these have a certain effect in promoting the at- tainment of the end in view. A boy with a moderate talent 76 REMARKS ON PRIZES AND for languages will not study Greek and Latin for his own gratification ; whereas he may be induced to do so by receiv- ing a severe beating if he fail, and a gold medal if he succeed, in learning certain lessons. Even the advocates of prizes, therefore, should, in consis- tency, confine the application of them to the object of draw- ing forth exertion from children in studies which are neces- sary for their destination in life, but to which they are not naturally inclined. The indiscriminate administration of them is clearly erroneous. Prizes are of two kinds, either marks of personal distinc- tion, such as high places in a class, or medals worn for a day ; — or property, such as books, sums of money, or medals of gold and silver, bestowed on the individual as gifts. The value of the former, namely places and decorations, consists in the gratification which they afford to the self-love and vanity of the wearer. They mark, not that he is a good scholar, but that he is the best compared with his fellows, all of whom may be only indifferently accomplished. Two obvious objections present themselves to prizes ad- ministered in this form. The gratification consists not in the attainment of an object valuable in itself, but in a feel- ing of personal superiority over a neighbour. The circum- stance which makes a child dux, or brings him the decoration of medal, is not the actual possession of a certain quantity of useful knowledge, or of learning, but the accident of the other children in the class with him being more stupid or less dili- gent than himself. The mind of the child does not always contemplate the medal as the certificate that he has acquired a certain amount of information, but often as the symbol of a personal triumph over all the other children in his class. It therefore fosters pride and selfish ambition in the success- ful competitor, and envy and jealousy in the unsuccessful, feel- ings which are naturally strong, and need to be repressed ; while it does not in any appreciable degree cultivate the love of knowledge for its own sake, which is the legitimate object of education. I have known children in whom these passions were strong, bribe their more talented school-fellows, in whom they were less energetic, by giving them money or play- things, to resign high places and medals in their favour. They carried home the trophies thus acquired, and were lauded by their parents for their genius. This was a direct cultivation of falsehood and cunning, in addition to vanity and pride, in the children, and was calculated to exercise a baneful influ- ence over their future lives. Prizes administered in the form of donations of books, PLACE-TAKING IN SCHOOLS. 77 money, or other kinds of property, do not necessarily imply the depreciation of other competitors, and in so far are unobjec- tionable. If they are offered, not as insignia of triumph over them, but as rewards for exertion, they appear much in the same light as fees paid to artists, and to men of talent in the professions of the law and medicine, which assuredly stimu- late them to diligent application. Great evils attend the prevalent system of administering prizes, some of which may be briefly noticed. First, In place-takings, the competition is directly personal, and the reward of the successful child is founded on the hu- miliation of his less successful fellow. In this practice the attention of the competitors is very little drawn to the value of the lessons themselves ; their minds are strongly agitated by the passions of ambition, envy, and hatred. Place-taking, therefore, appears to be calculated to throw into the shade the natural advantages of knowledge, and to cultivate some of the worst passions of our nature. Secondly, In place-taking, and in the usual method of awarding prizes, the reward is frequently assigned to those individuals who have least merit. If one boy enjoy from nature a great aptitude for learning languages, with a viva- cious temperament, and another possess only a moderate en- dowment of that talent, with a slow temperament, the latter may have sacrificed more hours of play and pleasure in pre- paring his lessons than the former, yet the clever boy shall reap the prize and the glory of scholarship. Thirdly, At the time when I was educated, punishment, place-taking, and prizes, were, to a great extent, relied on as superseding the duty on the part of the masters of teaching the scholars. Our lessons were prescribed, and we were left to learn them as we best could ; being flogged, confined, and put down places, if we failed to say them, and praised, put up, and let out of school early, if we were expert in perform- ing our tasks. This rendered the school literally a place of punishment, a character of it which seemed to be recognised by the teacher himself also, when he rewarded us by abridg- ing the hours of our confinement in it. I do not know whether this practice still lingers in any schools ; but I fear that it does. Fourthly, The prevalent system of place-taking and prizes obscures the perception in both teachers and pupils, of the natural pleasures and advantages of knowledge. From ex- perience and observation, I am satisfied that to the great majority of children, a school may be rendered a scene of delightful occupation. A well conducted infant-school, in 78 REMARKS ON PRIZES, &C. IN SCHOOLS. which the moral affections are exercised, and the intellectual faculties instructed in objects adapted to their constitution, ' is resorted to by most children with positive pleasure ; and the majority of young men follow courses of instruction in science with a degree of zeal which shews that they regard their studies as a pleasure, and not as a burden. If place- taking, medals, and prizes, were abolished at ordinary schools, it would soon be discovered that a number of the branches taught, as well as the methods of instruction, are deficient in real interest : it would be found impossible to induce the scholars to make adequate exertions to learn ; and the con- sequence would be, that teachers would be prompted by ne- cessity to select branches of knowledge and methods of in- struction calculated to benefit the youthful mind, and thus improvement would be forced upon both teachers and pupils. Fifthly ', A considerable number of excellent and successful schools are now conducted without place-taking, with the best results both on the moral dispositions and the intellectual habits of the children, a fact which shews that the natural advantages of knowledge are sufficient to induce exertion for their attainment when judiciously presented to the youthful mind. In the Appendix will be found a description of an improved method of teaching drawing for practical purposes, for which I was indebted to the kindness of the late Sir John Robison, formerly Secretary to the Royal Society, Edinburgh. Postscript to the Third Edition. — The progress of sound principles in education is at present rapid and encouraging. The following, among other worts recently published, embody, to a greater or lesser extent, the views advocated in the preceding pages, viz. : — Suggestive Hints towards an Improved Secular Instruction. By the Rev. Richard Dawes, A.M., Vicar of King's Somborne, Hants. Groom- bridge & Sons, London. 200 Class Reading Lessons, comprising a circle of Knowledge. Grades I. and II. By Charles Baker, Head-Master of the Yorkshire Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. Doncaster. Questions and Answers suggested by a consideration of some of the Arrangements and Relations of Social Life. London : Smith, Elder, & Co. The Laws of Periodic Growth and Development, considered with re- ference to Hygienic, Moral, and Intellectual Education. By Lieutenant J. A. Walker, II. -P., 34th Regiment. London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co. APPENDIX. No. I. THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION, 4 Queen Street, Edinburgh, January 1848. The Philosophical Institution was established for the pur- pose of placing within the reach of the Public the means not only of acquiring the fullest and most authentic information on all topics of immediate or passing interest, but of cultivating and extending the growing taste for Science, Arts, and Literature ; and although it has been only about fifteen months in existence, the support which it has already received has been in the highest degree encouraging. The Annual Subscription to the Institution is only One Guinea, and there is no Entry-money payable. For this contribution Mem- bers are entitled to the use of A News Room, very fully supplied with all the best and most popular Newspapers ; — A Reading- Room, supplied with a great variety of the most in- teresting and important Literary and Scientific Periodicals, Trans- actions of the Learned Societies of this and other countries, &c, be- sides a valuable collection of Atlasses, Encyclopaedias, Dictionaries, and other Works of Reference ; — and A Library for Circulation, which already consists of upwards of 2000 Volumes of Standard Works in Literature and Science (besides Periodicals), and to which a liberal addition of the newest and most interesting Works is made every month. The Members have also access to a series of Popular Lectures, consisting of a variety of short Courses on interesting topics in Science, Art, and Literature, delivered gene- rally on the Evenings of Tuesday and Friday during the months of the Winter and Spring. A Chess Club, consisting of Members of the Institution, meets in the premises every Monday and Thursday Evening ; — and A Debating- or Discussion Society meets Weekly on Wednes- day Evening ; — to either of which, Members are admitted on pay- ment of a very small additional contribution. Evening Classes for Drawing, Architectural and Engineering, — Drawing, Figure, Landscape, and Ornamental, — English, includ- 80 APPENDIX. ing Grammar, Composition, and Elocution, — Fencing and Gym- nastics, — French, — German,— Geology and Mineralogy, — Mathe- matics, — and Singing — have been instituted, with the view of accom- modating young men who require the aid of Teachers in the prose- cution of their studies. The hours of meeting are fixed so as to interfere as slightly as possible with ordinary business engagements, while the Fees are as moderate as possible, due regard being had to efficient Teachers and proper accommodation. A Refreshment Room is now fitted up on the premises for the convenience of Members. Lady's Annual contribution, Fifteen Shillings. No. II. ON AN IMPROVED METHOD OF TEACHING DRAWING. To John Robison, Esq., Sec. to the Royal Society, &c* Edinburgh, lQtJi January 1837. Dear Sir, — In conversation I have heard you mention an im- proved method of teaching drawing for practical purposes, which you recommended, and which appears to me to be calculated to be highly useful. Would you do me the favour to state your method in writ- ing, and to permit me to print the description of it in the Appendix to the new edition of my Lectures on Popular Education, which is now in the press I This may be the means of extending the know- ledge of it, and especially of benefiting the operative mechanics in whose advancement you take so enlightened an interest. — I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, Geo. Combe. Mr Robison kindly favoured me with the following answer to this letter : — 9 Atiiole Crescent, 11th January 1837. Dear Sir, — In reply to your request, that I should give you a brief statement in writing of the ideas which I entertain on the sub- ject of teaching drawing as a part of the ordinary course of popular education, I beg to say, as a preliminary, that, in what I have al- ready stated to you verbally, and in what I may now write, I wish to be understood as referring chiefly to that art or power of delinea- ting the objects presented to our eyes, which may be useful to every one in the ordinary habits of life ; and that I do not take into con- * Afterwards Sir John Kobison. APPENDIX. 81 sideration the further training which may be required for those who aspire to cultivate the higher departments of the Fine Arts. I now proceed to say, that it appears to me that every one who can write is capable, with a slight effort, of making every line or mark which is wanted in order to represent any object presented to hiin. It is not, therefore, the mechanical use of the pen or the pencil which requires to be taught, so much as the art of looking at objects, and of recognising what ive really see. When the habit of noting the true visual forms of objects has been acquired (which it wil-1 soon be, if cultivated under the directions of an intelligent instructor), the power of delineating the outline will not be long found wanting ; the perception of the effects of light and shade may be acquired in the same way, and they will then be rendered on paper by the pupil with a degree of truth which he could not attain by any time or labour spent in copying the drawings of others. If a young or uninstructed person be required to make a represen- tation of such an object as a common pencil, he will probably pro- ceed to mark on his paper an outline of the actual length and breadth of the pencil, but he will be at a loss to shew that it is round and not square; again, he will not be able, without consideration, or perhaps explanation, to delineate on paper the different appearances which the pencil assumes when held nearer to or further from the eye ; or in positions more and more oblique until nothing be seen but the circular end. A little pains on the part of the instructor would lead a pupil to observe and comprehend all that is required to do this, by making him attend to what he really sees, and the lesson, when once acquired, would be in little danger of being forgotten, although it in face include the whole doctrine of perspective. In forming any institution for teaching drawing as a useful art, I should therefore propose that the pupils should, from the very com- mencement, be exercised in noting and delineating the appearances of a few simple objects, presented to their view at varied distances, heights, and degrees of inclination. A convenient object may be found in a cubical box of wood, fitted to slide on an upright rod or stand, on which it may be fixed at any desired height by a hollow through its axis. If this model be set in front of a pupil, at such a distance that it can be conveniently seen, and its height be made that of his eye, and one of the sides be parallel to his face, then, en noting its appearance, he will soon observe that it may be represent- ed by a square outline, parallel to the sides of his paper. If the model be then raised by sliding it up the rod, the pupil will find that a change in the apparent form has taken place, and that his outline must include a representation of the bottom, which he will be enabled to give, by combining his present observations with what he learned in studying the changes of position of the pencil in the earlier les- sons. He will also find, that the degrees of light falling on the two F 82 APrENDIX. faces which he now sees are different, and require different shadings from the pencil. In the first case, the single face of the cube which he saw may have been either lighter or darker than the distant back- ground, and in the delineation some shading may have been required on the background, or on the object, according to which appeared darkest to him ; but in this second case, he may have three degrees of light to represent, according to existing circumstances. In the same way, the position of the model may be varied, both in respect to figure and to light ; or, if a class be under instruction, the pupils may interchange their places round the object, and each in succes- sion take similar views, and compare the results at the conclusion of each series. It is obvious that such a system of instruction may be pursued to a great extent, and with the variations which may be required ac- cording to the views of the pupils ; and that, even for those who intend to pursue the higher branches of the Fine Arts, a better foundation could hardly be given for enabling them to understand and profit by the examples left by the great masters. I shall be very happy that these ideas meet your approbation ; and if they do so, you are at liberty to make any use of them which you may wish. — I am, dear Sir, very faithfully yours, John Robison. EDINBURGH: l' BY NEILL AND COMPANY, OLD FI 019 810 791 8 *m