Chapter 19

[156]Pestalozzi was with the children at Stanz only during the first half of 1799.[157]As Pestalozzi wrote to Gessner (How Gertrude, &c.): “You see street-gossip is not always entirely wrong; I really could not write properly, nor read, nor reckon. But people always jump to wrong conclusions from such ‘notorious facts.’ At Stanz you saw that I could teach writing without myself being able to write properly.” He here anticipates a paradox of Jacotot’s.[158]Years afterwards Napoleon, though he could not foresee Sedan, got a notion that after all there wassomethingin Pestalozzi; and that the aim of the system was to put the freedom and development of the individual in the place of the mechanical routine of the old schools, which tended to produce a mass of dull uniformity. With this aim, as Guimps says, Napoleon was quite out of sympathy, and whenever the subject was mentioned he would say, “The Pestalozzians are Jesuits”; thus very inaccurately expressing an accurate notion that there was more in them than could be understood at the first glance.[159]Pestalozzi had from this country some more discerning visitors,e.g., J. P. Greaves, to whom Pestalozzi addressedLetters, which were translated and published in this country; also Dr. Mayo, who was at Yverdun with his pupils for three years from 1818 and afterwards conducted a celebrated Pestalozzian school at Cheam. Dr. Mayo in 1826 lectured on Pestalozzi’s system at the Royal Institution. Sir Jas. Kay-Shuttleworth and Mr. Tufnell also drew attention to it in the “Minutes of Council on Education.”[160]The disciple is not above his master, and if parents and teachers are without sympathy and religious feeling the children will also be without faith and love. This cannot be urged too strongly on those who have charge of the young. But there is no test by which we can ascertain that a master has these essential qualifications. As in the Christian ministry the unfit can be shut out only by their own consciences. But let no one think to understand education if he loses sight of what Joseph Payne has called “Pestalozzi’s simple but profound discovery—the teacher must have a heart.” “Soul is kindled only by soul,” says Carlyle; “toteachreligion the first thing needful and also the last and only thing is finding of a man whohasreligion. All else follows.”[161]In 1872, a Congress in which more than 10,000 German elementary teachers were represented, petitioned the Prussian Government for “the organization of training schools in accordance with the pedagogic principles of Pestalozzi, which formerly enjoyed so much favour in Prussia and so visibly contributed to the regeneration of the country.”[162]Did Pestalozzi make due allowance for the system of thought which every child inherits? Croom Robertson in “How we came by our Knowledge” (Nineteenth Century, No. 1, March, 1877), without mentioning Pestalozzi, seems to differ from him. Croom Robertson says that “Children being born into the world are born into society, and are acted on by overpowering social influences before they have any chance of being their proper selves.... The words and sentences that fall upon a child’s ear and are soon upon his lips, express not so much his subjective experience as the common experience of his kind, which becomes as it were an objective rule or measure to which his shall conform.... He does, he must, accept what he is told; and in general he is only too glad to find his own experience in accordance with it.... We use our incidental, by which I mean our natural subjective experience, mainly to decipher and verify the ready-made scheme of knowledge that is given usen blocwith the words of our mother-tongue” (pp. 117, 118).[163]One of the most interesting and most difficult problems in teaching is this:—How long should the beginner be kept to the rudiments? With young children, to whom ideas come fast, the main thing is no doubt to take care that these ideas become distinct and are made “the intellectual property” of the learners. But after a year or two children will be impatient to “get on,” and if they seem “marking time” will be bored and discouraged. Then again in some subjects the elementary parts seem clear only to those who have a conception of the whole. As Diderot says in a passage I have seen quoted fromLe Neveu de Rameau, “Il faut être profond dans l’art ou dans la science pour en bien posséder les éléments.” “C’est le milieu et la fin qui éclaircissent les ténèbres du commencement.” The greatest “coach” in Cambridge used to “rush” his men through their subjects and then go back again for thorough learning. To be sure, the “scientific method” suitable for young men differs greatly from the “heuristic” or “method of investigation,” which is best for children. (See Joseph Payne’s Lecture on Pestalozzi.) But even with children we should bear in mind Niemeyer’s caution, “Thoroughness itself may become superficial by exaggeration; for it may keep too long to a part and in this way fail to complete and give any notion of the whole” (Quoted by O. Fischer,Wichtigste Päd.213).[164]Nearly 20 years ago (1871) appeared a paper on “Elementary National Education” in which “John Parkin, M.D.,” advocated making all our elementary schools industrial, not only for practical purposes, but still more for the sake of physical education. The paper attracted no notice at the time, but now we are beginning to see that the body is concerned in education as well as the mind, and that the mind learns through it “without book.” The application of this truth will bring about many changes.[165]Herbart, when he visited Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, observed that though Pestalozzi’s kindness was apparent to all, he took no pains in his teaching to mix thedulcewith theutile. He never talked to the children, or joked, or gave them an anecdote. This, however, did not surprise Herbart, whose own experience had taught him that when the subject requires earnest attention the children do not like it the better for the teacher’s “fun.” “The feeling of clear apprehension,” says he, “I held to be the only genuine condiment of instruction” (Herbart’sPäd. Schriften, ed. by O. Willmann, j. 89).[166]Firstlook to himself, but there may be other causes of failure as well. The great thing is never to put up contentedly, or even discontentedly, with failure. In teaching classes of lads from ten to sixteen years old, when I have found the lessons in any subject were not going well, I have sometimes taken the class into my confidence, told them that they no doubt felt as I did that this lesson was a dull one, and asked them each to put on paper what he considered to be the reasons, and also to make any suggestions that occurred to him. In this way I have got some very good hints, and I have always been helped in my effort to understand how the work seemed to the pupils. Every teacher should make this effort. As Pestalozzi says, “Could we conceive the indescribable tedium which must oppress the young mind while the weary hours are slowly passing away one after another in occupations which it can neither relish nor understand ... we should no longer be surprised at the remissness of the schoolboy creeping like snail unwillingly to school” (To G., xxx, 150).[167]With Morf’s summing-up it is interesting to compare Joseph Payne’s, given at the end of his lecture onPestalozzi:I. The principles of education are not to be devisedab extra; they are to be sought for in human nature.II. This nature is an organic nature—a plexus of bodily, intellectual and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop themselves.III. The education conducted by the formal educator has both a negative and a positive side. The negative function of the educator consists in removing impediments, so as to afford free scope for the learner’s self-development. His positive function is to stimulate the learner to the exercise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasion for the exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the machinery.IV. Self-development begins with the impressions received by the mind from external objects. These impressions (called sensations), when the mind becomes conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. These are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and constitute that elementary knowledge which is the basis of all knowledge.V. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under which the mind educates itself and gains power and independence.VI. Practical aptness or faculty, depends more on habits gained by the assiduous oft-repeated exercise of the learner’s active powers than on knowledge alone. Knowing and doing (Wissen und Können) must, however, proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including instruction) is the development of the learner’s powers.VII. All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the learner’s own observation (Anschauung) at first hand—on his own personal experience. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. First the reality, then the symbol; first the thing, then the word, notvice versâ.VIII. That which the learner has gained by his own observation (Anschauung) and which, as a part of his personal experience, is incorporated with his mind, heknowsand can describe or explain in his own words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accuracy of his observation, and consequently of his knowledge.IX. Personal experience necessitates the advancement of the learner’s mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which he can deal with himself, to the more remote; therefore from the concrete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known to the unknown. This is the method of elementary education; the opposite proceeding—the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching—leads the mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to particulars, from the unknown to the known. This latter is the Scientific method—a method suited only to the advanced learner, who it assumes is already trained by the Elementary method.[168]Most parents do not seem to think with Jean Paul, “If we regard all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse.” (Levana, quoted in Morley’sRousseau.)[169]I will quote the first paragraph of this work which is still considered mental pabulum suited to the digestions of young ladies and children:—“Name some of the most Ancient Kingdoms.—Chaldēa, Babylonia, Assyria, China in Asia, and Egypt in Africa. Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, is supposed to have founded the first of theseB.C.2221, as well as the famous cities of Babylon and Nineveh; his kingdom being within the fertile plains of Chaldēa, Chalonītis, and Assyria, was of small extent compared with the vast empires that afterwards arose from it, but included several large cities. In the district called Babylonia were the cities of Babylon, Barsīta, Idicarra, and Vologsia,” &c., &c.[170]I shall always feel gratitude and affection for the two old ladies (sisters) to whom I was entrusted over half a century ago. More truly Christian women I never met with. But of the science and art of education they were totally ignorant; and moreover the premises they occupied were unfit for a school. As all the boys were under ten years old, it will seem strange, but is alas! too true, that there were vices among them which are supposed to be unknown to children and which if discovered would have made the old ladies close their school. The want of subjects in which the children can take a healthy interest will in a great measure account for the spread of evil in such schools. On this point some mistresses and most parents are dangerously ignorant.[171]Having watched the “teaching” of pupil-teachers, I find that some of them (I may say many) never address more than one child at a time, and never attempt to gain the attention of more than a single child. So, by a very simple calculation, we can get at the maximum time each child is “under instruction.” If the pupil-teacher has but three-quarters of the pupils for whom the Department supposes him “sufficient,” each child cannot be under instructionmorethan two minutes in the hour. The rest of the time the children must sit quiet, or be cuffed if they do not. What is called “simultaneous” teaching in, say, reading, consists in the pupil-teacher reading from the book, and as he pronounces each word, the children shout it after him; but no one except the pupil-teacher knows the place in the book.But perhaps the dangers from employing boys and girls to teach and govern children are greater morally than intellectually. Whether he report on it or not, the Inspector has less influence on the moral training than the youngest pupil-teacher. Channing has well said: “A child compelled for six hours each day to see the countenance and hear the voice of an unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher is placed in a school of vice.” Those who have never taught day after day, week after week, month after month, little know what demands school-work makes on the temper and the sense of justice. The harshest tyrants are usually those who are raised but a little way above those whom they have to control; and when I think of the pupil-teacher with his forty pupils to keep in order, I heartily pity both him and them. Is there not too much reason to fear lest in many cases the school should prove for both what Channing has well described as “a school of vice”? (R. H. Q. inSpectator, 1st March, 1890.)[172]Since the above was written, another “New Code” has appeared (March, 1890), in which the system of measuring by “passes,” a system maintained (in spite of the remonstrances of all interested ineducation) for nearly 30 years, is at length abandoned. We are certainly travelling, however slowly, away from Mr. Lowe. Far as we are still from Pestalozzi there seems reason to hope that the distance is diminishing.[173]This short sketch of Froebel’s life is mainly taken, with Messrs. Black’s permission, from theEncyclopædia Britannica, for which I wrote it.[174]This office was first filled by Langethal and afterwards by Ferdinand Froebel. I learned this at Burgdorf from Herr Pfarrer Heuer, whose father had himself been Waisenvater.[175]For this quotation, and for much besides (as will appear later on), I am indebted to Mr. H. Courthope Bowen. See his paperFroebel’s Education of Man.[176]The educatoras teacherhas his activity limited, according to DeGarmo, to these two things; “(1) Thepreparationof the child’s mind for a rapid and effective assimilation of new knowledge; (2) Thepresentationof the matter of instruction in such order and manner as will best conduce to the most effective assimilation” (Essentials of Methodby Chas. DeGarmo, Boston, U.S., D. C. Heath, 1889). Besides this he must make his pupilsusetheir knowledge both new and old, and reproduce it in fresh connexions.[177]“Little children,” says Joseph Payne, “are scarcely ever contented with simply doing nothing; and their fidgetiness and unrest, which often give mothers and teachers so much anxiety, are merely the strugglings of the soul to get, through the body, some employment for its powers. Supply this want, give them an object to work upon, and you solve the problem. The divergence and distraction of the faculties cease as they converge upon the work, and the mind is at rest in its very occupation.”V. to German Schools.[178]I entirely agree with Joseph Payne that where the language spoken is not German, it would be well to discardKindergarten,Kindergärtner, andKindergärtnerin. All who have to do with children should master some great principles taught by Froebel, but there is no need for them to learn German or to use German words. The French seem satisfied withJardin d’Enfants, but we are not likely to be withChildren-Garden.Playschoolmightdo.[179]Contrast this with what has been said by an eminent thinker of our time: “No art of equal importance to mankind has been so little investigated scientifically as the art of teaching.” Sir H. S. Maine, quoted in J. H. Hoose’sM. of Teaching.[180]Here Jacotot’s notion of teaching reminds one of the sophism quoted by Montaigne—“A Westphalia ham makes a man drink. Drink quenches thirst. Therefore a Westphalia ham quenches thirst.”[181]SeeH. Courthope Bowen on “Connectedness in Teaching” (Educational Times, June, 1890). Mr. Bowen quotes from H. Spencer—“Knowledge of the lowest kind isun-unifiedknowledge: science ispartially unifiedknowledge: philosophy iscompletely unifiedknowledge.”[182]As I have said above (p. 89) these methodizers in language-learning may, with regard to the first stage, be divided into two parties which I have calledComplete RetainersandRapid Impressionists. Two Complete Retainers, Robertson and Prendergast, have, as it seems to me, made, since Jacotot, a great advance on his method and that of his predecessor Ascham. As I have had a good deal of experience with beginners in German, I will give from an old lecture of mine the main conclusions at which I have arrived:—“My principle is to attack the most vital part of the language, and at first to keep the area small, or rather to enlarge it very slowly; but within that area I want to get as much variety as possible. The study of a book written in the language should be carried onpari passuwith drill in its common inflexions. Now arises the question, Should the book be made with the object of teaching the language, or should it be selected from those written for other purposes? I see much to be said on either side. The three great facts we have to turn to account in teaching a language, are these:—first, a few words recur so constantly that a knowledge of them and grasp of them gives us a power in the language quite out of proportion to their number; second, large classes of words admit of many variations of meaning by inflection, which variations we can understand from analogy; third, compound words are formedad infinitumon simple laws, so that the root word supplies the key to a whole family. Now, if the book is written by the language-teacher, he has the whole language before him, and he can make the most of all these advantages. He can use only the important words of the language; he can repeat them in various connections; he can bring the main facts of inflection and construction before the learner in a regular order, which is a great assistance to the memory; he can give the simple words before introducing words compounded of them; and he can provide that, when a word occurs for the first time, the learners shall connect it with its root meaning. A short book securing all these advantages would, no doubt, be a very useful implement, but I have never seen such a book. Almost all delectuses, &c., bury the learner with a pile of new words, under which he feels himself powerless. So far as I know, the book has yet to be written. And even if it were written, with the greatest success from a linguistic point of view, it would of course make no pretension to a meaning. Having myself gone through a course of Ahn and of Ollendorf, I remember, as a sort of nightmare, innumerable questions and answers, such as “Have you my thread stockings? No, I have your worsted stockings.” Still more repulsive are the long sentences of Mr. Prendergast:—“How much must I give to the cabdriver to take my father to the Bank in New Street before his second breakfast, and to bring him home again before half-past two o’clock?” I cannot forget Voltaire’smot, which has a good deal of truth in it,—“Every way is good but the tiresome way.” And most of the books written for beginners are inexpressibly tiresome. No doubt it will be said, “Unless you adopt the rapid-impressionist plan, any bookmustbe tiresome. What is a meaning at first becomes no meaning by frequent repetition.” This, however, is not altogether true. I myself have taught Niebuhr’sHeroengeschichtenfor years, and I know some chapters by heart; but the old tales of Jason and Hercules as they are told in Niebuhr’s simple language do not bore me in the least.“Ein Begriff muss bei dem Worte sein,”says the Student in Faust; and a notion—a very pleasing notion, too—remains to me about every word in theHeroengeschichten.These, then, would be my books to be worked at the same time by a beginner, say in German:—A book for drill in the principal inflexions, followed by the main facts about gender, &c., and a book like theHeroengeschichten. This I would have prepared very much after the Robertsonian manner. It should be printed, as should also the Primer, in good-sized Roman type; though, in an appendix, some of it should be reprinted in German type. The book should be divided into short lessons. A translation of each lesson should be given in parallel columns. Then should come a vocabulary, in which all useful information should be given about the really important words,the unimportant words being neglected. Finally should comevariations, and exercises in the lessons; and in these the important words of that and previous lessons should be used exclusively. The exercises should be such as the pupils could do in writing out of school, andvivâ vocein school. They should be very easy—real exercises in what is already known, not a series of linguistic puzzles. The object of the exercises, and also of a vast number ofvivâ vocequestions, should be to accustom the pupil to use his knowledgereadily. (But some teachers, young teachers especially, are alwayscross-examining, and seem to themselves to fail when their questions are answered without difficulty.) The ear, the voice, the hand, should all be practised on each lesson. When the construing is known, transcription of the German is not by any means to be despised. A good variety of transcription is, for the teacher to write the German clause by clause on the black-board, and rub out each clause before the pupils begin to write it. Then a known piece may be prepared for dictation. In reading this as dictation, the master may introduce small variations, to teach his pupils to keep their ears open. He may, as another exercise, read the German aloud, and stop here and there for the boys to give the English of the last sentence read; or he may read to them either the exact German in the book or small variations on it, and make the pupils translatevivâ voce, clause by clause. He may then ask questions on the piece in German and require answers in English.For exercises, there are many devices by which the pupil may be trained to observation, and also be confirmed in his knowledge of back lessons. The great teacher, F. A. Wolf, used to make his own children ascertain how many times such and such a word occurred in such and such pages. As M. Bréal says, children are collectors by nature; and, acting on this hint, we might say, “Write in column all the dative cases on pagesatoc, and give the English and the corresponding nominatives.” Or, “Copy from those pages all the accusative prepositions with the accusatives after them.” Or, “Write out the past participles, with their infinitives.” Or, “Translate such and such sentences, and explain them with reference to the context.” Or, questions may be asked on the subject-matter of the book. There is no end to the possible varieties of such exercises.As soon as they get any feeling of the language, the pupils should learn by heart some easy poetry in it. I should recommend their learning the English of the piece first, and then getting the Germanvivâ vocefrom the teacher. To quicken the German in their minds, I think it is well to give them in addition a German prose version, using almost the same words. Variations of the more important sentences should be learnt at the same time.In all these suggestions you will see what I am aiming at. I wish the learner to get a feeling of, and a power over, the main words of the language and the machinery in which they are employed.[183]I append in a note a passage from the old edition of this book referring to the Cambridge man of forty years ago. “The typical Cambridge man studies mathematics, not because he likes mathematics, or derives any pleasure from the perception of mathematical truth, still less with the notion of ever using his knowledge; but either because, if he is “a good man,” he hopes for a fellowship, or because, if he cannot aspire so high, he considers reading the thing to do, and finds a satisfaction in mental effort just as he does in a constitutional to the Gogmagogs. When such a student takes his degree, he is by no means a highly cultivated man; but he is not the sort of man we can despise for all that. He has in him, to use one of his own metaphors, a considerable amount offorce, which may be applied in any direction. He has great power of concentration and sustained mental effort even on subjects which are distasteful to him. In other words, his mind is under the control of his will, and he can bring it to bear promptly and vigorously on anything put before him. He will sometimes be half through a piece of work, while an average Oxonian (as we Cambridge men conceive of him at least) is thinking about beginning. But his training has taught him to value mental force without teaching him to care about its application. Perhaps he has been working at the gymnasium, and has at length succeeded in “putting up” a hundredweight. In learning to do this, he has been acquiring strength for its own sake. He does not want to put up hundredweights, but simply to be able to put them up, and his reward is the consciousness of power. Now the tripos is a kind of competitive examination in putting up weights. The student who has been training for it, has acquired considerable mental vigour, and when he has put up his weight he falls back on the consciousness of strength which he seldom thinks of using. Having put up the heavier, he despises the lighter weights. He rather prides himself on his ignorance of such things as history, modern languages, and English literature. He “can get those up in a few evenings,” whenever he wants them. He reminds me, indeed, of a tradesman who has worked hard to have a large balance at his banker’s. This done, he is satisfied. He has neither taste nor desire for the things which make wealth valuable; but when he sees other people in the enjoyment of them, he hugs himself with the consciousness that he can write a cheque for such things whenever he pleases.”[184]On this interesting subject I will quote three men who said nothinginepte—De Morgan, Helps, and the first Sir James Stephen. De Morgan, speaking of Jacotot’s plan, wrote:—“There is much truth in the assertion that new knowledge hooks on easily to a little of the old thoroughly mastered. The day is coming when it will be found out that crammed erudition got up for examination, does not cast out any hooks for more.” (Budget of Paradoxes, p. 3.) Elsewhere he says:—“When the student has occupied his time in learning a moderate portion of many different things, what has he acquired—extensive knowledge or useful habits? Even if he can be said to have varied learning, it will not long be true of him, for nothing flies so quickly as half-digested knowledge; and when this is gone, there remains but a slender portion of useful power. A small quantity of learning quickly evaporates from a mind which never held any learning except in small quantities; and the intellectual philosopher can perhaps explain the following phenomenon—that men who have given deep attention to one or more liberal studies, can learn to the end of their lives, and are able to retain and apply very small quantities of other kinds of knowledge; while those who have never learnt much of any one thing seldom acquire new knowledge after they attain to years of maturity, and frequently lose the greater part of that which they once possessed.”Sir Arthur Helps inReading(Friends in C.) says:—“All things are so connected together that a man who knows one subject well, cannot, if he would, have failed to have acquired much besides; and that man will not be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on than he who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however, is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter; for what I would aim at producing not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in itself—is always growing. And anybody will confirm this who in his own case has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon; for he must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate itself to, his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on.”In his Lecture onDesultory and Systematic Reading, Sir James Stephen said:—“Learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accumulations of human knowledge are not so many detached masses. They are all connected parts of one great system of truth, and though that system be infinitely too comprehensive for any one of us to compass, yet each component member of it bears to every other component member relations which each of us may, in his own department of study, search out and discover for himself. A man is really and soundly learned in exact proportion to the number and to the importance of those relations which he has thus carefully examined and accurately understood.”[185]This essay, which was written nearly twenty-five years ago, I leave as it stands. I take some credit to myself for having early recognised the importance of a book now famous. (June, 1890.)[186]This proposition has been ably discussed by President W. H. Payne.Contributions to the Science of Education.“Education Values.”[187]“The brewer,” as Mr. Spencer himself tells us, “if his business is very extensive, finds it pay to keep a chemist on the premises”—pay a good deal better, I suspect, than learning chemistry at school.[188]Helps, who by taste and talent is eminently literary, put in this claim for science more than 20 [now nearer 50] years ago. “The higher branches of method cannot be taught at first; but you may begin by teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting, and weighing facts are some of the processes by which method is taught.... Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt; but one or two great branches of science must be accurately known.” (Friends in Council, Education.) Helps, though by his delightful style he never gives the reader any notion of over compression, has told us more truth about education in a few pages than one sometimes meets with in a complete treatise.[189]J. S. Mill (who by the way, would leave history entirely to private reading,Address at St. Andrews, p. 21), has pointed out that “there is not a fact in history which is not susceptible of as many different explanations as there are possible theories of human affairs,” and that “history is not the foundation but the verification of the social science.” But he admits that “what we know of former ages, like what we know of foreign nations, is, with all its imperfectness, of much use, by correcting the narrowness incident to personal experience.” (Dissertations, Vol. I, p. 112.)[190]It is difficult to treat seriously the arguments by which Mr. Spencer endeavours to show that a knowledge of science is necessary for the practice or the enjoyment of the fine arts. Of course, the highest art of every kind is based on science, that is, on truths which science takes cognizance of and explains; but it does not therefore follow that “without science there can be neither perfect production nor full appreciation.” Mr. Spencer tells us of mistakes which John Lewis and Rossetti have made for want of science. Very likely; and had those gentlemen devoted much of their time to science we should never have heard of their blunders—or of their pictures either. If they were to paint a piece of woodwork, a carpenter might, perhaps, detect something amiss in the mitring. If they painted a wall, a bricklayer might point out that with their arrangement of stretchers and headers the wall would tumble down for want of a proper bond. But even Mr. Spencer would not wish them to spend their time in mastering the technicalities of every handicraft, in order to avoid these inaccuracies. It is the business of the painter to give us form and colour as they reveal themselves to the eye, not to prepare illustrations of scientific text-books. The physical sciences, however, are only part of the painter’s necessary equipment, according to Mr. Spencer. “He must also understand how the minds of spectators will be affected by the several peculiarities of his work—a question in psychology!” Still more surprising is Mr. Spencer’s dictum about poetry. “Its rhythm, its strong and numerous metaphors, its hyperboles, its violent inversions, are simply exaggerations of the traits of excited speech. To be good, therefore, poetry must pay attention to those laws of nervous action which excited speech obeys.” It is difficult to see how poetry can pay attention to anything. The poet, of course must not violate those laws, but, if hehas paid attentionto them in composing, he will do well to present his MS. to the local newspaper. [It seems the class is not extinct of whom Pope wrote:—“Some drily plain, without invention’s aid“Write dull receipts how poems may be made.”Essay on Criticism.][191]Speaking of law, medicine, engineering, and the industrial arts, J. S. Mill remarks: “Whether those whose speciality they are will learn them as a branch of intelligence or as a mere trade, and whether having learnt them, they will make a wise and conscientious use of them, or the reverse, depends less on the manner in which they are taught their profession, than uponwhat sort of mind they bring to it—what kind of intelligence and of conscience the general system of education has developed in them.”—Address at St. Andrews, p. 6.[192]“Comme vous n’avez pas su ou comme vous n’avez pas voulu atteindre la pensée de l’enfant, vous n’avez aucune action sur son développement moral et intellectuel. Vous êtes le maître de latin et de grec.” Bréal.Quelques Mots, &c., p. 243.[193]Mr. Spencer does not mention this principle in his enumeration, but, no doubt, considers he implies it.[194]“Si l’on partageait toute la science humaine en deux parties, l’une commune à tous les hommes, l’autre particulière aux savants, celle-ci serait très-petite en comparaison de l’autre. Mais nous ne songeons guère aux acquisitions générales, parce qu’elles se font sans qu’on y pense, et même avant l’âge de raison; que d’ailleurs le savoir ne se fait remarquer que par ses différences, et que, comme dans les équations d’algèbre, les quantités communes se comptent pour rien.”—Émile, livre i.[195]This is well said in Dr. John Brown’s admirable paperEducation through the Senses. (Horæ Subsecivæ, pp. 313, 314.)[196]After remarking on the wrong order in which subjects are taught, he continues, “What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwartings, and a coerced attention to books, what with the mental confusion produced by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and in each of them giving generalisations before the facts of which they are the generalisations, what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient of others’ ideas and not in the least leading him to be an active inquirer or self-instructor, and what with taxing the faculties to excess, there are very few minds that become as efficient as they might be.”[197]A class of boys whom I once took in Latin Delectus denied, with the utmost confidence, when I questioned them on the subject, that there were any such things in English as verbs and substantives. On another occasion, I saw a poor boy of nine or ten caned, because, when he had said thatproficiscorwas a deponent verb, he could not say what a deponent verb was. Even if he had remembered the inaccurate grammar definition expected of him, “A deponent verb is a verb with a passive form and an active meaning,” his comprehension ofproficiscorwould have been no greater. It is worth observing that, even when offending grievously in great matters against the principle of connecting fresh knowledge with the old, teachers are sometimes driven to it in small. They find that it is better for boys to see thatlignumis likeregnum, andlaudarelikeamare, than simply to learn thatlignumis of the Second Declension, andlaudareof the First Conjugation. If boys had to learn by a mere effort of memory the particular declension or conjugation of Latin words before they were taught anything about declensions and conjugations, this would be as sensible as the method adopted in some other instances, and the teachers might urge, as usual, that the information would come in useful afterwards.[198]Mr. Spencer and Professor Tyndall appeal to the results of experience as justifying a more rational method of teaching. Speaking of geometrical deductions, Mr. Spencer says: “It has repeatedly occurred that those who have been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill—by its abstract formulas, its wearisome tasks, its cramming—have suddenly had their intellects roused by thus ceasing to make them passive recipients, and inducing them to become active discoverers. The discouragement caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, and sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises a revolution of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find themselves incompetent; they too can do something. And gradually, as success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage insuring conquest.”[199]On this subject I can quote the authority of a great observer of the mind—no less a man, indeed, than Wordsworth. He speaks of the “grand elementary principal of pleasure, by which man knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy,” he continues, “but what is propagated by pleasure—I would not be misunderstood—but wherever we sympathise with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtile combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist, and mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the anatomist’s knowledge may be connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure, andwhen he has no pleasure he has no knowledge.”—Preface to second edition ofLyrical Ballads. So Wordsworth would have agreed with Tranio: (T. of Shrew, j. 1.)“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.”

[156]Pestalozzi was with the children at Stanz only during the first half of 1799.

[157]As Pestalozzi wrote to Gessner (How Gertrude, &c.): “You see street-gossip is not always entirely wrong; I really could not write properly, nor read, nor reckon. But people always jump to wrong conclusions from such ‘notorious facts.’ At Stanz you saw that I could teach writing without myself being able to write properly.” He here anticipates a paradox of Jacotot’s.

[158]Years afterwards Napoleon, though he could not foresee Sedan, got a notion that after all there wassomethingin Pestalozzi; and that the aim of the system was to put the freedom and development of the individual in the place of the mechanical routine of the old schools, which tended to produce a mass of dull uniformity. With this aim, as Guimps says, Napoleon was quite out of sympathy, and whenever the subject was mentioned he would say, “The Pestalozzians are Jesuits”; thus very inaccurately expressing an accurate notion that there was more in them than could be understood at the first glance.

[159]Pestalozzi had from this country some more discerning visitors,e.g., J. P. Greaves, to whom Pestalozzi addressedLetters, which were translated and published in this country; also Dr. Mayo, who was at Yverdun with his pupils for three years from 1818 and afterwards conducted a celebrated Pestalozzian school at Cheam. Dr. Mayo in 1826 lectured on Pestalozzi’s system at the Royal Institution. Sir Jas. Kay-Shuttleworth and Mr. Tufnell also drew attention to it in the “Minutes of Council on Education.”

[160]The disciple is not above his master, and if parents and teachers are without sympathy and religious feeling the children will also be without faith and love. This cannot be urged too strongly on those who have charge of the young. But there is no test by which we can ascertain that a master has these essential qualifications. As in the Christian ministry the unfit can be shut out only by their own consciences. But let no one think to understand education if he loses sight of what Joseph Payne has called “Pestalozzi’s simple but profound discovery—the teacher must have a heart.” “Soul is kindled only by soul,” says Carlyle; “toteachreligion the first thing needful and also the last and only thing is finding of a man whohasreligion. All else follows.”

[161]In 1872, a Congress in which more than 10,000 German elementary teachers were represented, petitioned the Prussian Government for “the organization of training schools in accordance with the pedagogic principles of Pestalozzi, which formerly enjoyed so much favour in Prussia and so visibly contributed to the regeneration of the country.”

[162]Did Pestalozzi make due allowance for the system of thought which every child inherits? Croom Robertson in “How we came by our Knowledge” (Nineteenth Century, No. 1, March, 1877), without mentioning Pestalozzi, seems to differ from him. Croom Robertson says that “Children being born into the world are born into society, and are acted on by overpowering social influences before they have any chance of being their proper selves.... The words and sentences that fall upon a child’s ear and are soon upon his lips, express not so much his subjective experience as the common experience of his kind, which becomes as it were an objective rule or measure to which his shall conform.... He does, he must, accept what he is told; and in general he is only too glad to find his own experience in accordance with it.... We use our incidental, by which I mean our natural subjective experience, mainly to decipher and verify the ready-made scheme of knowledge that is given usen blocwith the words of our mother-tongue” (pp. 117, 118).

[163]One of the most interesting and most difficult problems in teaching is this:—How long should the beginner be kept to the rudiments? With young children, to whom ideas come fast, the main thing is no doubt to take care that these ideas become distinct and are made “the intellectual property” of the learners. But after a year or two children will be impatient to “get on,” and if they seem “marking time” will be bored and discouraged. Then again in some subjects the elementary parts seem clear only to those who have a conception of the whole. As Diderot says in a passage I have seen quoted fromLe Neveu de Rameau, “Il faut être profond dans l’art ou dans la science pour en bien posséder les éléments.” “C’est le milieu et la fin qui éclaircissent les ténèbres du commencement.” The greatest “coach” in Cambridge used to “rush” his men through their subjects and then go back again for thorough learning. To be sure, the “scientific method” suitable for young men differs greatly from the “heuristic” or “method of investigation,” which is best for children. (See Joseph Payne’s Lecture on Pestalozzi.) But even with children we should bear in mind Niemeyer’s caution, “Thoroughness itself may become superficial by exaggeration; for it may keep too long to a part and in this way fail to complete and give any notion of the whole” (Quoted by O. Fischer,Wichtigste Päd.213).

[164]Nearly 20 years ago (1871) appeared a paper on “Elementary National Education” in which “John Parkin, M.D.,” advocated making all our elementary schools industrial, not only for practical purposes, but still more for the sake of physical education. The paper attracted no notice at the time, but now we are beginning to see that the body is concerned in education as well as the mind, and that the mind learns through it “without book.” The application of this truth will bring about many changes.

[165]Herbart, when he visited Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, observed that though Pestalozzi’s kindness was apparent to all, he took no pains in his teaching to mix thedulcewith theutile. He never talked to the children, or joked, or gave them an anecdote. This, however, did not surprise Herbart, whose own experience had taught him that when the subject requires earnest attention the children do not like it the better for the teacher’s “fun.” “The feeling of clear apprehension,” says he, “I held to be the only genuine condiment of instruction” (Herbart’sPäd. Schriften, ed. by O. Willmann, j. 89).

[166]Firstlook to himself, but there may be other causes of failure as well. The great thing is never to put up contentedly, or even discontentedly, with failure. In teaching classes of lads from ten to sixteen years old, when I have found the lessons in any subject were not going well, I have sometimes taken the class into my confidence, told them that they no doubt felt as I did that this lesson was a dull one, and asked them each to put on paper what he considered to be the reasons, and also to make any suggestions that occurred to him. In this way I have got some very good hints, and I have always been helped in my effort to understand how the work seemed to the pupils. Every teacher should make this effort. As Pestalozzi says, “Could we conceive the indescribable tedium which must oppress the young mind while the weary hours are slowly passing away one after another in occupations which it can neither relish nor understand ... we should no longer be surprised at the remissness of the schoolboy creeping like snail unwillingly to school” (To G., xxx, 150).

[167]With Morf’s summing-up it is interesting to compare Joseph Payne’s, given at the end of his lecture onPestalozzi:I. The principles of education are not to be devisedab extra; they are to be sought for in human nature.II. This nature is an organic nature—a plexus of bodily, intellectual and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop themselves.III. The education conducted by the formal educator has both a negative and a positive side. The negative function of the educator consists in removing impediments, so as to afford free scope for the learner’s self-development. His positive function is to stimulate the learner to the exercise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasion for the exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the machinery.IV. Self-development begins with the impressions received by the mind from external objects. These impressions (called sensations), when the mind becomes conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. These are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and constitute that elementary knowledge which is the basis of all knowledge.V. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under which the mind educates itself and gains power and independence.VI. Practical aptness or faculty, depends more on habits gained by the assiduous oft-repeated exercise of the learner’s active powers than on knowledge alone. Knowing and doing (Wissen und Können) must, however, proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including instruction) is the development of the learner’s powers.VII. All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the learner’s own observation (Anschauung) at first hand—on his own personal experience. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. First the reality, then the symbol; first the thing, then the word, notvice versâ.VIII. That which the learner has gained by his own observation (Anschauung) and which, as a part of his personal experience, is incorporated with his mind, heknowsand can describe or explain in his own words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accuracy of his observation, and consequently of his knowledge.IX. Personal experience necessitates the advancement of the learner’s mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which he can deal with himself, to the more remote; therefore from the concrete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known to the unknown. This is the method of elementary education; the opposite proceeding—the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching—leads the mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to particulars, from the unknown to the known. This latter is the Scientific method—a method suited only to the advanced learner, who it assumes is already trained by the Elementary method.

[167]With Morf’s summing-up it is interesting to compare Joseph Payne’s, given at the end of his lecture onPestalozzi:

I. The principles of education are not to be devisedab extra; they are to be sought for in human nature.

II. This nature is an organic nature—a plexus of bodily, intellectual and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop themselves.

III. The education conducted by the formal educator has both a negative and a positive side. The negative function of the educator consists in removing impediments, so as to afford free scope for the learner’s self-development. His positive function is to stimulate the learner to the exercise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasion for the exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the machinery.

IV. Self-development begins with the impressions received by the mind from external objects. These impressions (called sensations), when the mind becomes conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. These are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and constitute that elementary knowledge which is the basis of all knowledge.

V. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under which the mind educates itself and gains power and independence.

VI. Practical aptness or faculty, depends more on habits gained by the assiduous oft-repeated exercise of the learner’s active powers than on knowledge alone. Knowing and doing (Wissen und Können) must, however, proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including instruction) is the development of the learner’s powers.

VII. All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the learner’s own observation (Anschauung) at first hand—on his own personal experience. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. First the reality, then the symbol; first the thing, then the word, notvice versâ.

VIII. That which the learner has gained by his own observation (Anschauung) and which, as a part of his personal experience, is incorporated with his mind, heknowsand can describe or explain in his own words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accuracy of his observation, and consequently of his knowledge.

IX. Personal experience necessitates the advancement of the learner’s mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which he can deal with himself, to the more remote; therefore from the concrete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known to the unknown. This is the method of elementary education; the opposite proceeding—the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching—leads the mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to particulars, from the unknown to the known. This latter is the Scientific method—a method suited only to the advanced learner, who it assumes is already trained by the Elementary method.

[168]Most parents do not seem to think with Jean Paul, “If we regard all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse.” (Levana, quoted in Morley’sRousseau.)

[169]I will quote the first paragraph of this work which is still considered mental pabulum suited to the digestions of young ladies and children:—“Name some of the most Ancient Kingdoms.—Chaldēa, Babylonia, Assyria, China in Asia, and Egypt in Africa. Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, is supposed to have founded the first of theseB.C.2221, as well as the famous cities of Babylon and Nineveh; his kingdom being within the fertile plains of Chaldēa, Chalonītis, and Assyria, was of small extent compared with the vast empires that afterwards arose from it, but included several large cities. In the district called Babylonia were the cities of Babylon, Barsīta, Idicarra, and Vologsia,” &c., &c.

[169]I will quote the first paragraph of this work which is still considered mental pabulum suited to the digestions of young ladies and children:—

“Name some of the most Ancient Kingdoms.—Chaldēa, Babylonia, Assyria, China in Asia, and Egypt in Africa. Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, is supposed to have founded the first of theseB.C.2221, as well as the famous cities of Babylon and Nineveh; his kingdom being within the fertile plains of Chaldēa, Chalonītis, and Assyria, was of small extent compared with the vast empires that afterwards arose from it, but included several large cities. In the district called Babylonia were the cities of Babylon, Barsīta, Idicarra, and Vologsia,” &c., &c.

[170]I shall always feel gratitude and affection for the two old ladies (sisters) to whom I was entrusted over half a century ago. More truly Christian women I never met with. But of the science and art of education they were totally ignorant; and moreover the premises they occupied were unfit for a school. As all the boys were under ten years old, it will seem strange, but is alas! too true, that there were vices among them which are supposed to be unknown to children and which if discovered would have made the old ladies close their school. The want of subjects in which the children can take a healthy interest will in a great measure account for the spread of evil in such schools. On this point some mistresses and most parents are dangerously ignorant.

[171]Having watched the “teaching” of pupil-teachers, I find that some of them (I may say many) never address more than one child at a time, and never attempt to gain the attention of more than a single child. So, by a very simple calculation, we can get at the maximum time each child is “under instruction.” If the pupil-teacher has but three-quarters of the pupils for whom the Department supposes him “sufficient,” each child cannot be under instructionmorethan two minutes in the hour. The rest of the time the children must sit quiet, or be cuffed if they do not. What is called “simultaneous” teaching in, say, reading, consists in the pupil-teacher reading from the book, and as he pronounces each word, the children shout it after him; but no one except the pupil-teacher knows the place in the book.But perhaps the dangers from employing boys and girls to teach and govern children are greater morally than intellectually. Whether he report on it or not, the Inspector has less influence on the moral training than the youngest pupil-teacher. Channing has well said: “A child compelled for six hours each day to see the countenance and hear the voice of an unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher is placed in a school of vice.” Those who have never taught day after day, week after week, month after month, little know what demands school-work makes on the temper and the sense of justice. The harshest tyrants are usually those who are raised but a little way above those whom they have to control; and when I think of the pupil-teacher with his forty pupils to keep in order, I heartily pity both him and them. Is there not too much reason to fear lest in many cases the school should prove for both what Channing has well described as “a school of vice”? (R. H. Q. inSpectator, 1st March, 1890.)

But perhaps the dangers from employing boys and girls to teach and govern children are greater morally than intellectually. Whether he report on it or not, the Inspector has less influence on the moral training than the youngest pupil-teacher. Channing has well said: “A child compelled for six hours each day to see the countenance and hear the voice of an unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher is placed in a school of vice.” Those who have never taught day after day, week after week, month after month, little know what demands school-work makes on the temper and the sense of justice. The harshest tyrants are usually those who are raised but a little way above those whom they have to control; and when I think of the pupil-teacher with his forty pupils to keep in order, I heartily pity both him and them. Is there not too much reason to fear lest in many cases the school should prove for both what Channing has well described as “a school of vice”? (R. H. Q. inSpectator, 1st March, 1890.)

[172]Since the above was written, another “New Code” has appeared (March, 1890), in which the system of measuring by “passes,” a system maintained (in spite of the remonstrances of all interested ineducation) for nearly 30 years, is at length abandoned. We are certainly travelling, however slowly, away from Mr. Lowe. Far as we are still from Pestalozzi there seems reason to hope that the distance is diminishing.

[173]This short sketch of Froebel’s life is mainly taken, with Messrs. Black’s permission, from theEncyclopædia Britannica, for which I wrote it.

[174]This office was first filled by Langethal and afterwards by Ferdinand Froebel. I learned this at Burgdorf from Herr Pfarrer Heuer, whose father had himself been Waisenvater.

[175]For this quotation, and for much besides (as will appear later on), I am indebted to Mr. H. Courthope Bowen. See his paperFroebel’s Education of Man.

[176]The educatoras teacherhas his activity limited, according to DeGarmo, to these two things; “(1) Thepreparationof the child’s mind for a rapid and effective assimilation of new knowledge; (2) Thepresentationof the matter of instruction in such order and manner as will best conduce to the most effective assimilation” (Essentials of Methodby Chas. DeGarmo, Boston, U.S., D. C. Heath, 1889). Besides this he must make his pupilsusetheir knowledge both new and old, and reproduce it in fresh connexions.

[177]“Little children,” says Joseph Payne, “are scarcely ever contented with simply doing nothing; and their fidgetiness and unrest, which often give mothers and teachers so much anxiety, are merely the strugglings of the soul to get, through the body, some employment for its powers. Supply this want, give them an object to work upon, and you solve the problem. The divergence and distraction of the faculties cease as they converge upon the work, and the mind is at rest in its very occupation.”V. to German Schools.

[178]I entirely agree with Joseph Payne that where the language spoken is not German, it would be well to discardKindergarten,Kindergärtner, andKindergärtnerin. All who have to do with children should master some great principles taught by Froebel, but there is no need for them to learn German or to use German words. The French seem satisfied withJardin d’Enfants, but we are not likely to be withChildren-Garden.Playschoolmightdo.

[179]Contrast this with what has been said by an eminent thinker of our time: “No art of equal importance to mankind has been so little investigated scientifically as the art of teaching.” Sir H. S. Maine, quoted in J. H. Hoose’sM. of Teaching.

[180]Here Jacotot’s notion of teaching reminds one of the sophism quoted by Montaigne—“A Westphalia ham makes a man drink. Drink quenches thirst. Therefore a Westphalia ham quenches thirst.”

[181]SeeH. Courthope Bowen on “Connectedness in Teaching” (Educational Times, June, 1890). Mr. Bowen quotes from H. Spencer—“Knowledge of the lowest kind isun-unifiedknowledge: science ispartially unifiedknowledge: philosophy iscompletely unifiedknowledge.”

[182]As I have said above (p. 89) these methodizers in language-learning may, with regard to the first stage, be divided into two parties which I have calledComplete RetainersandRapid Impressionists. Two Complete Retainers, Robertson and Prendergast, have, as it seems to me, made, since Jacotot, a great advance on his method and that of his predecessor Ascham. As I have had a good deal of experience with beginners in German, I will give from an old lecture of mine the main conclusions at which I have arrived:—“My principle is to attack the most vital part of the language, and at first to keep the area small, or rather to enlarge it very slowly; but within that area I want to get as much variety as possible. The study of a book written in the language should be carried onpari passuwith drill in its common inflexions. Now arises the question, Should the book be made with the object of teaching the language, or should it be selected from those written for other purposes? I see much to be said on either side. The three great facts we have to turn to account in teaching a language, are these:—first, a few words recur so constantly that a knowledge of them and grasp of them gives us a power in the language quite out of proportion to their number; second, large classes of words admit of many variations of meaning by inflection, which variations we can understand from analogy; third, compound words are formedad infinitumon simple laws, so that the root word supplies the key to a whole family. Now, if the book is written by the language-teacher, he has the whole language before him, and he can make the most of all these advantages. He can use only the important words of the language; he can repeat them in various connections; he can bring the main facts of inflection and construction before the learner in a regular order, which is a great assistance to the memory; he can give the simple words before introducing words compounded of them; and he can provide that, when a word occurs for the first time, the learners shall connect it with its root meaning. A short book securing all these advantages would, no doubt, be a very useful implement, but I have never seen such a book. Almost all delectuses, &c., bury the learner with a pile of new words, under which he feels himself powerless. So far as I know, the book has yet to be written. And even if it were written, with the greatest success from a linguistic point of view, it would of course make no pretension to a meaning. Having myself gone through a course of Ahn and of Ollendorf, I remember, as a sort of nightmare, innumerable questions and answers, such as “Have you my thread stockings? No, I have your worsted stockings.” Still more repulsive are the long sentences of Mr. Prendergast:—“How much must I give to the cabdriver to take my father to the Bank in New Street before his second breakfast, and to bring him home again before half-past two o’clock?” I cannot forget Voltaire’smot, which has a good deal of truth in it,—“Every way is good but the tiresome way.” And most of the books written for beginners are inexpressibly tiresome. No doubt it will be said, “Unless you adopt the rapid-impressionist plan, any bookmustbe tiresome. What is a meaning at first becomes no meaning by frequent repetition.” This, however, is not altogether true. I myself have taught Niebuhr’sHeroengeschichtenfor years, and I know some chapters by heart; but the old tales of Jason and Hercules as they are told in Niebuhr’s simple language do not bore me in the least.“Ein Begriff muss bei dem Worte sein,”says the Student in Faust; and a notion—a very pleasing notion, too—remains to me about every word in theHeroengeschichten.These, then, would be my books to be worked at the same time by a beginner, say in German:—A book for drill in the principal inflexions, followed by the main facts about gender, &c., and a book like theHeroengeschichten. This I would have prepared very much after the Robertsonian manner. It should be printed, as should also the Primer, in good-sized Roman type; though, in an appendix, some of it should be reprinted in German type. The book should be divided into short lessons. A translation of each lesson should be given in parallel columns. Then should come a vocabulary, in which all useful information should be given about the really important words,the unimportant words being neglected. Finally should comevariations, and exercises in the lessons; and in these the important words of that and previous lessons should be used exclusively. The exercises should be such as the pupils could do in writing out of school, andvivâ vocein school. They should be very easy—real exercises in what is already known, not a series of linguistic puzzles. The object of the exercises, and also of a vast number ofvivâ vocequestions, should be to accustom the pupil to use his knowledgereadily. (But some teachers, young teachers especially, are alwayscross-examining, and seem to themselves to fail when their questions are answered without difficulty.) The ear, the voice, the hand, should all be practised on each lesson. When the construing is known, transcription of the German is not by any means to be despised. A good variety of transcription is, for the teacher to write the German clause by clause on the black-board, and rub out each clause before the pupils begin to write it. Then a known piece may be prepared for dictation. In reading this as dictation, the master may introduce small variations, to teach his pupils to keep their ears open. He may, as another exercise, read the German aloud, and stop here and there for the boys to give the English of the last sentence read; or he may read to them either the exact German in the book or small variations on it, and make the pupils translatevivâ voce, clause by clause. He may then ask questions on the piece in German and require answers in English.For exercises, there are many devices by which the pupil may be trained to observation, and also be confirmed in his knowledge of back lessons. The great teacher, F. A. Wolf, used to make his own children ascertain how many times such and such a word occurred in such and such pages. As M. Bréal says, children are collectors by nature; and, acting on this hint, we might say, “Write in column all the dative cases on pagesatoc, and give the English and the corresponding nominatives.” Or, “Copy from those pages all the accusative prepositions with the accusatives after them.” Or, “Write out the past participles, with their infinitives.” Or, “Translate such and such sentences, and explain them with reference to the context.” Or, questions may be asked on the subject-matter of the book. There is no end to the possible varieties of such exercises.As soon as they get any feeling of the language, the pupils should learn by heart some easy poetry in it. I should recommend their learning the English of the piece first, and then getting the Germanvivâ vocefrom the teacher. To quicken the German in their minds, I think it is well to give them in addition a German prose version, using almost the same words. Variations of the more important sentences should be learnt at the same time.In all these suggestions you will see what I am aiming at. I wish the learner to get a feeling of, and a power over, the main words of the language and the machinery in which they are employed.

“Ein Begriff muss bei dem Worte sein,”

says the Student in Faust; and a notion—a very pleasing notion, too—remains to me about every word in theHeroengeschichten.

These, then, would be my books to be worked at the same time by a beginner, say in German:—A book for drill in the principal inflexions, followed by the main facts about gender, &c., and a book like theHeroengeschichten. This I would have prepared very much after the Robertsonian manner. It should be printed, as should also the Primer, in good-sized Roman type; though, in an appendix, some of it should be reprinted in German type. The book should be divided into short lessons. A translation of each lesson should be given in parallel columns. Then should come a vocabulary, in which all useful information should be given about the really important words,the unimportant words being neglected. Finally should comevariations, and exercises in the lessons; and in these the important words of that and previous lessons should be used exclusively. The exercises should be such as the pupils could do in writing out of school, andvivâ vocein school. They should be very easy—real exercises in what is already known, not a series of linguistic puzzles. The object of the exercises, and also of a vast number ofvivâ vocequestions, should be to accustom the pupil to use his knowledgereadily. (But some teachers, young teachers especially, are alwayscross-examining, and seem to themselves to fail when their questions are answered without difficulty.) The ear, the voice, the hand, should all be practised on each lesson. When the construing is known, transcription of the German is not by any means to be despised. A good variety of transcription is, for the teacher to write the German clause by clause on the black-board, and rub out each clause before the pupils begin to write it. Then a known piece may be prepared for dictation. In reading this as dictation, the master may introduce small variations, to teach his pupils to keep their ears open. He may, as another exercise, read the German aloud, and stop here and there for the boys to give the English of the last sentence read; or he may read to them either the exact German in the book or small variations on it, and make the pupils translatevivâ voce, clause by clause. He may then ask questions on the piece in German and require answers in English.

For exercises, there are many devices by which the pupil may be trained to observation, and also be confirmed in his knowledge of back lessons. The great teacher, F. A. Wolf, used to make his own children ascertain how many times such and such a word occurred in such and such pages. As M. Bréal says, children are collectors by nature; and, acting on this hint, we might say, “Write in column all the dative cases on pagesatoc, and give the English and the corresponding nominatives.” Or, “Copy from those pages all the accusative prepositions with the accusatives after them.” Or, “Write out the past participles, with their infinitives.” Or, “Translate such and such sentences, and explain them with reference to the context.” Or, questions may be asked on the subject-matter of the book. There is no end to the possible varieties of such exercises.

As soon as they get any feeling of the language, the pupils should learn by heart some easy poetry in it. I should recommend their learning the English of the piece first, and then getting the Germanvivâ vocefrom the teacher. To quicken the German in their minds, I think it is well to give them in addition a German prose version, using almost the same words. Variations of the more important sentences should be learnt at the same time.

In all these suggestions you will see what I am aiming at. I wish the learner to get a feeling of, and a power over, the main words of the language and the machinery in which they are employed.

[183]I append in a note a passage from the old edition of this book referring to the Cambridge man of forty years ago. “The typical Cambridge man studies mathematics, not because he likes mathematics, or derives any pleasure from the perception of mathematical truth, still less with the notion of ever using his knowledge; but either because, if he is “a good man,” he hopes for a fellowship, or because, if he cannot aspire so high, he considers reading the thing to do, and finds a satisfaction in mental effort just as he does in a constitutional to the Gogmagogs. When such a student takes his degree, he is by no means a highly cultivated man; but he is not the sort of man we can despise for all that. He has in him, to use one of his own metaphors, a considerable amount offorce, which may be applied in any direction. He has great power of concentration and sustained mental effort even on subjects which are distasteful to him. In other words, his mind is under the control of his will, and he can bring it to bear promptly and vigorously on anything put before him. He will sometimes be half through a piece of work, while an average Oxonian (as we Cambridge men conceive of him at least) is thinking about beginning. But his training has taught him to value mental force without teaching him to care about its application. Perhaps he has been working at the gymnasium, and has at length succeeded in “putting up” a hundredweight. In learning to do this, he has been acquiring strength for its own sake. He does not want to put up hundredweights, but simply to be able to put them up, and his reward is the consciousness of power. Now the tripos is a kind of competitive examination in putting up weights. The student who has been training for it, has acquired considerable mental vigour, and when he has put up his weight he falls back on the consciousness of strength which he seldom thinks of using. Having put up the heavier, he despises the lighter weights. He rather prides himself on his ignorance of such things as history, modern languages, and English literature. He “can get those up in a few evenings,” whenever he wants them. He reminds me, indeed, of a tradesman who has worked hard to have a large balance at his banker’s. This done, he is satisfied. He has neither taste nor desire for the things which make wealth valuable; but when he sees other people in the enjoyment of them, he hugs himself with the consciousness that he can write a cheque for such things whenever he pleases.”

[184]On this interesting subject I will quote three men who said nothinginepte—De Morgan, Helps, and the first Sir James Stephen. De Morgan, speaking of Jacotot’s plan, wrote:—“There is much truth in the assertion that new knowledge hooks on easily to a little of the old thoroughly mastered. The day is coming when it will be found out that crammed erudition got up for examination, does not cast out any hooks for more.” (Budget of Paradoxes, p. 3.) Elsewhere he says:—“When the student has occupied his time in learning a moderate portion of many different things, what has he acquired—extensive knowledge or useful habits? Even if he can be said to have varied learning, it will not long be true of him, for nothing flies so quickly as half-digested knowledge; and when this is gone, there remains but a slender portion of useful power. A small quantity of learning quickly evaporates from a mind which never held any learning except in small quantities; and the intellectual philosopher can perhaps explain the following phenomenon—that men who have given deep attention to one or more liberal studies, can learn to the end of their lives, and are able to retain and apply very small quantities of other kinds of knowledge; while those who have never learnt much of any one thing seldom acquire new knowledge after they attain to years of maturity, and frequently lose the greater part of that which they once possessed.”Sir Arthur Helps inReading(Friends in C.) says:—“All things are so connected together that a man who knows one subject well, cannot, if he would, have failed to have acquired much besides; and that man will not be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on than he who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however, is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter; for what I would aim at producing not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in itself—is always growing. And anybody will confirm this who in his own case has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon; for he must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate itself to, his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on.”In his Lecture onDesultory and Systematic Reading, Sir James Stephen said:—“Learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accumulations of human knowledge are not so many detached masses. They are all connected parts of one great system of truth, and though that system be infinitely too comprehensive for any one of us to compass, yet each component member of it bears to every other component member relations which each of us may, in his own department of study, search out and discover for himself. A man is really and soundly learned in exact proportion to the number and to the importance of those relations which he has thus carefully examined and accurately understood.”

Sir Arthur Helps inReading(Friends in C.) says:—“All things are so connected together that a man who knows one subject well, cannot, if he would, have failed to have acquired much besides; and that man will not be likely to keep fewer pearls who has a string to put them on than he who picks them up and throws them together without method. This, however, is a very poor metaphor to represent the matter; for what I would aim at producing not merely holds together what is gained, but has vitality in itself—is always growing. And anybody will confirm this who in his own case has had any branch of study or human affairs to work upon; for he must have observed how all he meets seems to work in with, and assimilate itself to, his own peculiar subject. During his lonely walks, or in society, or in action, it seems as if this one pursuit were something almost independent of himself, always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on.”

In his Lecture onDesultory and Systematic Reading, Sir James Stephen said:—“Learning is a world, not a chaos. The various accumulations of human knowledge are not so many detached masses. They are all connected parts of one great system of truth, and though that system be infinitely too comprehensive for any one of us to compass, yet each component member of it bears to every other component member relations which each of us may, in his own department of study, search out and discover for himself. A man is really and soundly learned in exact proportion to the number and to the importance of those relations which he has thus carefully examined and accurately understood.”

[185]This essay, which was written nearly twenty-five years ago, I leave as it stands. I take some credit to myself for having early recognised the importance of a book now famous. (June, 1890.)

[186]This proposition has been ably discussed by President W. H. Payne.Contributions to the Science of Education.“Education Values.”

[187]“The brewer,” as Mr. Spencer himself tells us, “if his business is very extensive, finds it pay to keep a chemist on the premises”—pay a good deal better, I suspect, than learning chemistry at school.

[188]Helps, who by taste and talent is eminently literary, put in this claim for science more than 20 [now nearer 50] years ago. “The higher branches of method cannot be taught at first; but you may begin by teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting, and weighing facts are some of the processes by which method is taught.... Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt; but one or two great branches of science must be accurately known.” (Friends in Council, Education.) Helps, though by his delightful style he never gives the reader any notion of over compression, has told us more truth about education in a few pages than one sometimes meets with in a complete treatise.

[189]J. S. Mill (who by the way, would leave history entirely to private reading,Address at St. Andrews, p. 21), has pointed out that “there is not a fact in history which is not susceptible of as many different explanations as there are possible theories of human affairs,” and that “history is not the foundation but the verification of the social science.” But he admits that “what we know of former ages, like what we know of foreign nations, is, with all its imperfectness, of much use, by correcting the narrowness incident to personal experience.” (Dissertations, Vol. I, p. 112.)

[190]It is difficult to treat seriously the arguments by which Mr. Spencer endeavours to show that a knowledge of science is necessary for the practice or the enjoyment of the fine arts. Of course, the highest art of every kind is based on science, that is, on truths which science takes cognizance of and explains; but it does not therefore follow that “without science there can be neither perfect production nor full appreciation.” Mr. Spencer tells us of mistakes which John Lewis and Rossetti have made for want of science. Very likely; and had those gentlemen devoted much of their time to science we should never have heard of their blunders—or of their pictures either. If they were to paint a piece of woodwork, a carpenter might, perhaps, detect something amiss in the mitring. If they painted a wall, a bricklayer might point out that with their arrangement of stretchers and headers the wall would tumble down for want of a proper bond. But even Mr. Spencer would not wish them to spend their time in mastering the technicalities of every handicraft, in order to avoid these inaccuracies. It is the business of the painter to give us form and colour as they reveal themselves to the eye, not to prepare illustrations of scientific text-books. The physical sciences, however, are only part of the painter’s necessary equipment, according to Mr. Spencer. “He must also understand how the minds of spectators will be affected by the several peculiarities of his work—a question in psychology!” Still more surprising is Mr. Spencer’s dictum about poetry. “Its rhythm, its strong and numerous metaphors, its hyperboles, its violent inversions, are simply exaggerations of the traits of excited speech. To be good, therefore, poetry must pay attention to those laws of nervous action which excited speech obeys.” It is difficult to see how poetry can pay attention to anything. The poet, of course must not violate those laws, but, if hehas paid attentionto them in composing, he will do well to present his MS. to the local newspaper. [It seems the class is not extinct of whom Pope wrote:—“Some drily plain, without invention’s aid“Write dull receipts how poems may be made.”Essay on Criticism.]

“Some drily plain, without invention’s aid“Write dull receipts how poems may be made.”Essay on Criticism.]

“Some drily plain, without invention’s aid

“Write dull receipts how poems may be made.”

Essay on Criticism.]

[191]Speaking of law, medicine, engineering, and the industrial arts, J. S. Mill remarks: “Whether those whose speciality they are will learn them as a branch of intelligence or as a mere trade, and whether having learnt them, they will make a wise and conscientious use of them, or the reverse, depends less on the manner in which they are taught their profession, than uponwhat sort of mind they bring to it—what kind of intelligence and of conscience the general system of education has developed in them.”—Address at St. Andrews, p. 6.

[192]“Comme vous n’avez pas su ou comme vous n’avez pas voulu atteindre la pensée de l’enfant, vous n’avez aucune action sur son développement moral et intellectuel. Vous êtes le maître de latin et de grec.” Bréal.Quelques Mots, &c., p. 243.

[193]Mr. Spencer does not mention this principle in his enumeration, but, no doubt, considers he implies it.

[194]“Si l’on partageait toute la science humaine en deux parties, l’une commune à tous les hommes, l’autre particulière aux savants, celle-ci serait très-petite en comparaison de l’autre. Mais nous ne songeons guère aux acquisitions générales, parce qu’elles se font sans qu’on y pense, et même avant l’âge de raison; que d’ailleurs le savoir ne se fait remarquer que par ses différences, et que, comme dans les équations d’algèbre, les quantités communes se comptent pour rien.”—Émile, livre i.

[195]This is well said in Dr. John Brown’s admirable paperEducation through the Senses. (Horæ Subsecivæ, pp. 313, 314.)

[196]After remarking on the wrong order in which subjects are taught, he continues, “What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwartings, and a coerced attention to books, what with the mental confusion produced by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and in each of them giving generalisations before the facts of which they are the generalisations, what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient of others’ ideas and not in the least leading him to be an active inquirer or self-instructor, and what with taxing the faculties to excess, there are very few minds that become as efficient as they might be.”

[197]A class of boys whom I once took in Latin Delectus denied, with the utmost confidence, when I questioned them on the subject, that there were any such things in English as verbs and substantives. On another occasion, I saw a poor boy of nine or ten caned, because, when he had said thatproficiscorwas a deponent verb, he could not say what a deponent verb was. Even if he had remembered the inaccurate grammar definition expected of him, “A deponent verb is a verb with a passive form and an active meaning,” his comprehension ofproficiscorwould have been no greater. It is worth observing that, even when offending grievously in great matters against the principle of connecting fresh knowledge with the old, teachers are sometimes driven to it in small. They find that it is better for boys to see thatlignumis likeregnum, andlaudarelikeamare, than simply to learn thatlignumis of the Second Declension, andlaudareof the First Conjugation. If boys had to learn by a mere effort of memory the particular declension or conjugation of Latin words before they were taught anything about declensions and conjugations, this would be as sensible as the method adopted in some other instances, and the teachers might urge, as usual, that the information would come in useful afterwards.

[198]Mr. Spencer and Professor Tyndall appeal to the results of experience as justifying a more rational method of teaching. Speaking of geometrical deductions, Mr. Spencer says: “It has repeatedly occurred that those who have been stupefied by the ordinary school-drill—by its abstract formulas, its wearisome tasks, its cramming—have suddenly had their intellects roused by thus ceasing to make them passive recipients, and inducing them to become active discoverers. The discouragement caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, and sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises a revolution of feeling affecting the whole nature. They no longer find themselves incompetent; they too can do something. And gradually, as success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage insuring conquest.”

[199]On this subject I can quote the authority of a great observer of the mind—no less a man, indeed, than Wordsworth. He speaks of the “grand elementary principal of pleasure, by which man knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy,” he continues, “but what is propagated by pleasure—I would not be misunderstood—but wherever we sympathise with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtile combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist, and mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the anatomist’s knowledge may be connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure, andwhen he has no pleasure he has no knowledge.”—Preface to second edition ofLyrical Ballads. So Wordsworth would have agreed with Tranio: (T. of Shrew, j. 1.)“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.”

“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.”

“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;

In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.”

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