From the time of the Egyptian priesthood downwards, the conduct of corporations, whether poHtical, ecclesiastical, or educational, has given proof of this. Some 300 years B.C., unlicensed schools were forbidden by the Athenian senate. In Rome, the liberty of teaching was attacked twice before the Christian era; and again, afterwards, by the Emperor Julian. The existing continental governments show, by their analogous pohcy, how persistent the tendency is. In the universality of censorships we see the same fact further illustrated. The celebrated saying of the Empress Catharine to her prime minister, well exhibits the way in which rulers regard the spread of knowledge. And whenever governments have undertaken to educate, it has been with the view of forestalling that spontaneous education which threatened their own supremacy. Witness the case of China, where diligently-impressed ideas, such as, " O! how magnificent are the affairs of government!" " 0! what respect is due to the officers of government! " sufficiently indicate the intention. Witness, again, the case of Austria, where, in accordance with the will of the Emperor Erancis, the training of the popular mind was entrusted to the Jesuits, that they might " counteract the propagandism of liberty, by the propagandism of superstition."^ Nor have there been wanting signs of a like spirit here in England.
That attempt in Cobbett's day to put down cheap hterature, by an act which prevented weekly publications from being sold for less than sixpence, unmistakably indicated it. It was again exhibited in the reluctance with which the newspaper stamp duty was reduced, when resistance had become useless. And we may still see it in the double-facedness of a legislature which professes to favour popular enhghtenment, and yet continues to raise a milUon and a quarter sterUng yearly from " taxes on knowledge."
« And not without success, according to Mr. Wilde, who (writing before the late revolution) tells us, by way of panegyric upon the Austrian system of education, that the people " sigh not for a state of political liberty about which they know nothing. The government wisely preventing their minds from being inflamed by those blisters upon society that have written and preached our own countrymen into the fever of discontent and disaffection, the effects of which are now so visible in Great Britain." (!)
How unfriendly all ecclesiastical todies have been to the spread of education every one knows. The obstinacy shown by the Brahmin in fighting against the truths of modem science — the fanaticism with which the Mahometan doctor ignores all books but the Koran — and the prejudice fostered by the religious institutions of our own country against the very name of philosophy — are kindred illustrations of the conduct which this self- conserving instinct produces. In that saying of the monks, " We must put down printing, or printing will put down us," the universal motive was plainly expressed; as it was, again, tlirough the mouth of that French bishop who denounced the Bell and Lancaster systems as inventions of the devil. Nor let any one conclude that the educational zeal latterly manifested by Church clergy indicates a new animus. Those who remember the bitterness with which Sunday schools were at first assailed by them; and those who mark how keenly they now compete with dissenters for the children of the poor, can see clearly enough that they are endeavouring to make the best of a necessity — that, having a more or less defined consciousness of the inevitability of educational progress, they wish to educate the people ia allegiance to the Church.
Still more manifest becomes this obstructive tendency on considering that the very organizations devised for tlie spreading of knowledge, may themselves act as suppressors of it. Thus it is said, that Oxford was one of the last places in which the Newtonian philosophy was acknowledged. We read again, in the life of Locke, that " there was a meeting of the heads of houses at Oxford, where it was proposed to censure and discourage the reading of this essay (On the Human Understanding); and after various debates, it was concluded that without any public censure each head of a house shall endeavour to prevent its being read in his own college." At Eton, too, in Shelley's time, " Chemistry was a forbidden thing," even to the banishment of chemical treatises. So uniformly has it been the habit of these endowed institutions to close the door against innovations, that tliey are amongst the last places to Tvhich any one looks for improvements in the art of teaching, or a better choice of subjects to be taught. The attitude of the universities towards natural science has been that of contemptuous non-recognition. College authorities have long resisted, either actively or passively, the making of physiolog}', chemistry, geology, &c., subjects of examination; and only of late, under pressure from without, and under the fear of being supplanted by rival institutions, have new studies been gingerly taken to.
Now, although vis inerticB may be very useful in its place — although the resistance of office-holders has its function — although we must not quarrel with this instinct of self-preservation which gives to institutions then- vitahty, because it also upholds them through a lingering decrepitude — we may yet wisely refuse to increase its natural effect. It is very necessary to have in our social economy a conservative force as well as a reforming one, that there may be progress for the resultant; but it is liighly impolitic to afford the one an artificial advantage over the other. To establish a state-education is to do this, however. The teaching organization itself, and the government which directs it, will inevitably lean to things as they are; and to give them control over the national mind, is to give them the means of repressing aspirations after things as they should be. Just that culture which seems compatible with their own preservation will these institutions allow, whilst just that culture which, by advancing society, threatens to sap their own foundations, or, in other words — ^just that culture which is most valuable, they will oppose.
The sanguine will perhaps hope that, though this has been the rule hitherto, it will not be the rule in future. Let them not deceive themselves. So long as men pursue private advantage at the expense of the common weal, that is to say — so long as government is needful at all, so long will this be true. Less marked the tendency will no doubt be in proportion as men are less unjustly selfish. But to whatever extent they lack perfect conscientiousness, to the same extent wiU vested interests sway them, and to the same extent will institutions resist change.
Did the reader ever watcH a boy ia the first heat of a gardening fit? The sight is an amusing, and not uninstructive one. Probably a slice of a border — some couple of square yards or so ■ — has been made over to him for his exclusive use. No small accession of dignity, and not a little pride of proprietorship, does he exhibit. So long as the enthusiasm lasts, he never tires of contemplating his territory; and every companion, and every visitor with whom the hberty can be taken, is pretty sure to be met with the request — " Come and see my gai'den." Note chiefly, however, with what anxiety the growth of a few scrubby plants is regarded. Three or four times a day will the httle m-chin rash out to look at them. How provokingly slow their progress seems to him. Each morning on getting up he hopes to find some marked change; and lo, everything appears just as it did the day before. When will the blossoms come out! For nearly a week has some forward bud been promising him the triumph of a fii-st flower, and stUl it remains closed. Surely there must be something wrong! Perhaps the leaves have stuck fast. Ah! that is the reason, no doubt. And so ten to one you shall some day catch our young florist very busily engaged in pulhng open the calyx, and, it may be, trying to rmfold a few of the petals.
Somewhat like this childish impatience is the feehng exhibited by not a few state-educationists. Both they and their type show a lack of faith in natural forces — almost an ignorance that there are such forces. In both there is the same dissatisfaction with the ordained rate of progress. And by both, artificial means are used to remedy what are conceived to be nature's failures. Within these few years men have aU at once been awakened to the importance of instructing the people. That to which they were awhile since indiiferent or even hostile has suddenly become an object of enthusiasm. With all the ardour of recent converts — with all a novice's inordinate expectations — with all the eagerness of a lately-aroused desire — do they await the hopedfor result; and, with the unreasonableness ever attendant upon such a state of mind, are dissalislied, because the progress li-om general ignorance to universal enlightenment has not been completed in a generation. One would have thought it sufficiently clear to everybody that the great changes taking place in tliis world of ours are uniformly slow. Continents are upheaved at the rate of a foot or two in a century. The deposition of a delta is the work of tens of thousands of yeai-s. The transformation of barren rock into life-suppordng soil takes countless ages. If any think society advances under a different law, let them read. Has it not required the whole Christian era to abolish slavery in Europe? as far at least as it is aboUshed. Did not a hundred generations live and die while picture-writing grew into printing?
Have not science and commerce and mechanical skill increased at a similarly tardy pace? Yet are men disappointed that a pitiful fifty years has not sufficed for thorough popular enlightenment! Although within tliis period an advance has been made far beyond what the calm thinker would have expected — far beyond what the past rat€ of progress in human affairs seemed to prophesy — yet do these so impatient people summarily condemn the voluntary system as a failure! A natural process — a process spontaneously set up — a process of self- unfolding which the national mind had commenced, is pooh-poohed because it has not wrought a total transformation in the course of what constitutes but a day in the hfe of humanity! And then, to make up for nature's incompetency, the unfolding must be hastened by legislative fingerings!
There is, indeed, one excuse for attempts to spread education by artificial means, namely, the anxiety to diminish crime, of which education is supposed to be a preventive. " We hold," says Mr. Macaulay, " that whoever has the right to hang has the right to educate." * Aad in a letter relative to the Manchester district- system, Miss Martineau writes — " Nor can I see that political economy ohjects to the general rating for educational purposes. As a mere pohce-tax this rating -would he a very cheap affair. It would cost us much less than we now pay for juvenile depravity." In hoth which remains this prevalent hehef is implied.
Now, with all respect to the many high authorities holding it, the truth of this hehef may he disputed. We have no evidence that education, as commonly understood, is a preventive of crime. Those pei-petually re-iterated newspaper paragraphs, in which the ratios of instructed to iminstructed convicts are so triumphantly stated, prove just nothing. Before any inference can he drawn, it must be shown that these instructed and uninstructed convicts, come from two equal sections of society, alike in all other respects hut that of knowledge — similar in rank and occupation, having similar advantages, labom-ing under similar temptations. But this is not only not the truth; it is nothing like the truth.
The many ignorant criminals belong to a most unfavourably circumstanced class; whilst the few educated ones are from a class comparatively favoured. As things stand it would be equally logical to infer that crime arises from going without animal food, or from living in badly-ventilated rooms, or from wearing dirty shirts; for were the inmates of a gaol to be catechised, it would doubtless be found that the majority of them had been placed in these conditions. Ignorance and crime are not cause and effect; they are coincident results of the same cause. To be wholly untaught is to have moved amongst those whose incentives to wrong-doing are sti'ongest; to be partially taught is to have been one of a class subject to less urgent temptations; to be well taught is to have hved almost beyond the reach of the usual motives for transgression. Ignorance, therefore (at least in the statistics referred to), simply indicates the presence of crime-producing influences, and can no more be ^ Quoted irom a speech at Edinburgh.
called tlie cause of ciime than the falling of a barometer can be called the cause of rain.
So far indeed from proving that morality is increased by education, the facts prove, if anything, the reverse. Thus ■we are told, in a report by the Eev. Joseph Kingsmill, head chaplain of Pentonville Prison, that the proportion borne by the educated to the uneducated convicts is fully as high as that vrliich exists between the educated and the uneducated classes in the general population; although, as just explained, ■we might reasonably expect, that having had fewer temptations, the educated convicts ■would bear a smaller ratio to their class. Again, it has been sho-wn from government returns— " That the number of juvenile offenders in the metropolis has been steadily increasing every year since the institution of the Ragged School Union; and that ■whereas the number of criminals ■who cannot read and -write has decreased from 24,856 (in 1844) to 22,968 (in 1848)— or no less than 1888 in that period — the number, of those -who can read and ■write imperfectly has increased from 33,337 to 36,229 — or 2857 — in the same time." — Morning Chronicle, April 25, 1850.
Another contributor to the series of articles on "Labour and the Poor," from ■which the above statement is quoted, remarks that " the mining population (in the north) are exceedingly lo^w in point of education and intelligence; and yet they contradict the theories generally entertained upon the connection of ignorance with crime, by presenting the least ciiminal section of the population of England." — Morning Chronicle, Dec. 27, 1849. And, speaking of the women employed in the iron-works and collieries throughout South Wales, he says — " their ignorance is absolutely a-wful; yet the retmiis show in them a singular immunity from crime." — Morning Chronicle, March 21, 1850. If these testimonies are thought insufficient, they may be enforced by that of Mr. Fletcher, who has entered more elaborately into this question than perhaps any other ■writer of the day. Summing up the results of his investigations, he says: — " 1. In comparing the gross commitments for criminal oifences ■with the proportion of instruction in each district, there is found to be a small balance in favour of the most instructed districts in the years of most industrial depression (1842-3-4), but a greater one against them in the years of less industrial depression (1845-6-7); while in comparing the more with the less instructed portions of each district, the final result is against the former at both periods, though fourfold at the latter what it is at the former.
" 2. No correction for the ages of the population in different districts, to meet the excess of criminals at certain younger periods of life, will change the character of this superficial evidence against instruction; every legitimate allowance of the kind having already been made in arriving at these results.
" 3. Down to this period, therefore, the comparison of the criminal and educational returns of this, any more than of any other country of Europe, has afforded no sound statistical evidence in favour, and as Httle against, the moral effects associated with instruction, as actually disseminated among the people." ^ To all which evidence may be added that of Messrs. Gurrea and Dupin, who have shown that the most highly-educated districts in France are the most criminal districts.
The fact is, that scarcely any connection exists between moraJity and the discipline of ordinary teaching. Mere culture of the intellect (and education as usually conducted amounts to httle more) is hardly at aU operative upon conduct. Creeds pasted upon the memory, good principles learnt by rote, lessons in right and wrong, will not eradicate vicious propensities, though people, in spite of then experience as parents, and as citizens, persist in hoping they wiU. AU history, both of the race and of individuals, goes to prove that in the majority of cases precepts do not act at all. And where they seem to act, it is not by them, but by pre-existing feelings ^ Sommaiy of tte Moral Statistics of England and Wales. By Joseph Fletcher, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools.
360 NATIONAL EDDCATION.
which respond to them, that the effects are really produced. Intellect is not a power, but an instrument — not a thing which itself moves and works, but a thing which is moved and worked by forces behind it. To say that men are ruled by reason, is as irrational as to say that men are ruled by their eyes. Reason is an eye — the eye thi-ough which the desires see their way to gratification. And educating it only makes it a better eye — gives it a vision more accurate and more comprehensive — does not at all alter the desires subserved by it. However far-seeing you make it, the passions will still determine the directions in which it shall be turned — the objects on which it shall dwell.
Just those ends which the instincts or sentiments propose will the intellect be employed to accomplish: culture of it having done notliing but increase the ability to accomplish them. Probably some will urge that enlightening men enables them to discern the penalties which naturally attach to ^\Tongdoing; and in a certain sense this is true. But it is only superficially true. Though they may learn that the grosser crimes commonly bring retribution in one shape or other, they will not learn that the subtler ones do. Their sins will merely be made more Machiavelhan. If, as Coleridge says, " a knave is a fool with a circumbendibus," then by instructing the knave you do but make the circumbendibus a wider one. Did much knowledge and piercing intelligence suffice to make men good, then Bacon should have been honest, and Napoleon should have been just. Where the character is defective, intellect, no matter how high, fails to regulate rightly, because predominant desires falsify its estimates. Nay, even a distinct foresight of evil consequences will not restrain when strong passions are at work. How else does it happen that men will get drunk, though they k?iow drunkenness will entail on them sufi'ering, and disgrace, and (as with the poor) even starvation? How else is it that medical students, who know the diseases brought on by dissolute living better than other young men, are just as reckless, and even more reckless? How else is it that the London thief.
who has heen at the treadmill a dozen times, will steal again as soon as he is at liberty? How else is it that people, who have all their lives long heen taught Christianity, will not behave as Christians, though they believe that dire penalties are entailed by behaving otherwise?
It is, indeed, strange that with the facts of daily life before them in the street, in the counting-house, and in the family, thinking men should still expect education to cure crime. If armies of teachers, regarded with a certain superstitious reverence, have been unable to purify society in aU these eighteen centuiies, it is hardly likely that other armies of teachers, not so regarded, will be able to do it. If natural persuasion, backed by supernatural authority, will not induce men to do as they would be done by, it is hardly hkely that natural persuasion alone wUl induce them. If hopes of eternal happiness and terrors of eternal damnation fail to make human beings virtuous, it is hardly hkely that the commendations and reproofs of the schoolmaster will succeed.
There is, in fact, a quite sufficient reason for failure — no less a reason than the impossibihty of the task. The expectation that crime may presently be cured, whether by state-education, or the sUent system, or the separate system, or any other system, is one of those Utopianisms fallen into by people who pride themselves on being practical. Crime is incurable, save by that gradual process of adaptation to the social state which humanity is undergoing. Crime is the continual breaking out of the old unadapted nature — the index of a character unfitted to its conditions — and only as fast "as the unfitness diminishes can crime diminish. To hope for some prompt method of putting down crime, is in reaUty to hope for some prompt method of putting down all evils — laws, governments, taxation, poverty, caste, and the rest; for they and crime have the same root. Eeforming men's conduct without reforming their natures is impossible; and to expect that their natures may be reformed, otherwise than by the forces which are slowly civihzing us, is visionary. Schemes of disciphne or culture are of use only in proportioD as they organically alter the national character, and the extent to -which they do this is by no means great. It is not by humanly-devised agencies, good as these may be in their way, but it is by the never-ceasing action of circumstances upon men — by the constant pressure of their new conditions upon them — that the required change is mainly effected.
Meanwliile it may be remarked, that whatever moral benefit can be effected by education, must be effected by an education which is emotional rather than preceptive. If, in place of making a child understand that this thing is right and the other wrong, you make it feel that they are so — if you make virtue loved and vice loathed — if you arouse a noble desire, and make torpid an iuferior one — if you bring into Ufe a previously dormant sentiment — if you cause a sympathetic impulse to get the better of one that is selfish — if, in short, you produce a state of mind to which projoer behaviour is natural, spontaneous, instinctive, you do some good. But no drilling in catecliisms, no teaching of moral codes, can effect this. Only by repeatedly awakening the appropriate emotions can character be changed. Mere ideas received by the intellect, meeting no response fi.-om within — having no roots there — are quite inoperative upon conduct, and are quickly forgotten upon entering into life.
Perhaps it will be said that a discipline like this now described as the only efficient one, might be undertaken by the state. No doubt it might. But from all legislative attempts at emotional education may Heaven defend us!
Yet another objection remains. Just as we found, on close examination, that by poor-laws a government cannot really cure distress, but can only shift it from one section of the community to another (p. 327), so, astounding as the assertion looks, we shall find that a government cannot in fact educate at all, but can only educate some by Mweducating others. If, before agitating the matter, men had taken the precaution to define education, they would probably have seen that the state can afford no true help in the matter. But having unfortunately neglected to do this, they have confined then: attention solely to the education given at school, and have forgotten to inquire how their plans bear upon the education which commences when school-days end. It is not indeed that they do not know this discipline of daily duty to be valuable — more valuable, in fact, than the disciplLue of the teacher. You may often hear them remark as much. But, with the eagerness usual amongst schemers, they are so absorbed in studying the action of their proposed mechanism as to overlook its reaction.
Now of all qualities which is the one men most need? To the absence of what quahty are popular distresses mainly attributable? What is the quality in which the improvident masses are so deficient? Self-restraint — the abiUty to sacrifice a small present gratification for a prospective gi'eat one. A labourer endowed with due self-restraint would never spend liis Saturday-night's wages at the pubUc-house. Had he enough self-restraint, the artizan would not live up to his income during prosperous times and leave the future unprovided for. More self-restraint would prevent imprudent marriages and the growth of a pauper population. And were there no drunkenness, no extravagance, no reckless multiplication, social miseries would be trivial.
Consider next how the power of self-restraint is to be increased. By a sharp experience alone can anything be done. Those in whom this faculty needs drawing out — educating must be left to the discipHne of nature, and allowed to bear the pains attendant on their defect of character. The only cure for imprudence is the suffering which imprudence entails. Nothing but bringing him face to face with stem necessity, and letting him feel how unbending, how unpitying, are her laws, can improve the man of ill-governed desires. As already shown (p. 324), all interposing between humanity and the conditions of its existence — cusliioning-off consequences by poor-laws or the like — serves but to neutralize the remedy and prolong the A A A A evil. Let us never forget that the law is — adaptation to circumstances, be they what they may. And i^ rather than allow men to come in contact with the real cii-cumstances of their position, we place tliem in artificial — in false circumstances, they will adapt themselves to these instead; and will, in the end, have to undergo the miseries of a re-adaptation to the real ones.
Of all iucentives to self-restraint, perhaps none is so strong as the sense of parental responsibility. And if so, to diminish that sense is to use the most effectual means of preventing selfrestraiut from being developed. We have ample proof of this in the encouragement of improvident marriages by a poor-law; and the effect which a poor-law produces by relieving men from the final responsibihty of maintaining their children, must be produced in a smaller degree by taking away the responsibUity of educating their children. The more the state undertakes to do for his family, the more are the expenses of the married man reduced, at the cost of the unmarried man, and the greater becomes the temptation to marry. Let not any think that the offer of apparently gratuitous instruction for his offspring would be of no weight with the working man deliberating on the propriety of taking a wife. Whoever has watched the freaks which strong passion plays in the councils of the intellect — has marked how it will buUy into silence the weaker feeUngs that oppose it — how it will treat shghtingly the most conclusive adverse evidence, whilst, in urging the goodness of its own cause, " trifles light as air are confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ" — whoever has marked this, can hardly doubt that, in the deliberations of such an one, the prospect of public training for children would in no small degree affect the decision. Nay, indeed, it would afford a positive reason for giving way to his desires. Just as a man at an expensive dinner will eat more than he knows is good for him, on the principle of having his money's worth, so would the artizan find one excuse for marrying in the fact that, unless he did so, he would be paying educationrates for nothing.
Nor is it only thus that a state- education would encourage men to obey present impulses. An influence unfavourable to the increase of self-control would be exercised by it throughout the whole of parental life. That powerful restraint which the anxiety to give children schooling now imposes upon the improvident tendencies of the poor, would be removed. Many a man who, as things are, can but just keep the master)' over some vicious or extravagant propensity, and whose most efficient curb is the thought that if he gives way it must be at the sacrifice of that book-learning which he is ambitious to give his family, would fall were this curb weakened — would not only cease to improve in power of self-control as he is now doing, but would probably retrograde, and bequeath his offspring to a lower instead of a higher phase of civihzation.
Hence, as was said, a government can educate in one direction only by Mweducating in another — can confer knowledge only at the expense of character. It retards the development of a quality universally needed — one in the absence of which poverty, and recklessness, and crime, must ever continue; and all that it may give a smattering of information.