JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
It were well if the English, like the Greek language, possessed some
definite word to express, simply and generally, intellectual proficiency
or perfection, such as "health," as used with reference to the animal
frame, and "virtue," with reference to our moral nature. I am not able
to find such a term;—talent, ability, genius, belong distinctly to the
raw material, which is the subject-matter, not to that excellence which
is the result of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed, to the
particular kinds of intellectual perfection, words are forthcoming for
our purpose, as, for instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even
these belong, for the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon
practice or upon art, and not to any perfect condition of the intellect,
considered in itself. Wisdom, again, is certainly a more comprehensive
word than any other, but it has a direct relation to conduct, and to
human life. Knowledge, indeed, and science express purely intellectual
ideas but still not a state or quality of the intellect; for knowledge,
in its ordinary sense, is but one of its circumstances, denoting a
possession or a habit; and science has been appropriated to the
subject-matter of the intellect, instead of belonging in English, as it
ought to do, to the intellect itself. The consequence is that, on an
occasion like this, many words are necessary, in order, first, to bring
out and convey what surely is no difficult idea in itself,—that of the
cultivation of the intellect as an end; next, in order to recommend
what surely is no unreasonable object; and lastly, to describe and make
the mind realise the particular perfection in which that object
consists. Every one knows practically what are the constituents of
health or of virtue; and every one recognises health and virtue as ends
to be pursued; it is otherwise with intellectual excellence, and this
must be my excuse, if I seem to anyone to be bestowing a good deal of
labour on a preliminary matter.
In default of a recognised term, I have called the perfection or virtue
of the intellect by the name of philosophy, philosophical knowledge,
enlargement of mind, or illumination, terms which are not uncommonly
given to it by writers of this day: but, whatever name we bestow on it,
it is, I believe, as a matter of history, the business of a university
to make this intellectual culture its direct scope, or to employ itself
in the education of the intellect,—just as the work of a hospital lies
in healing the sick or wounded, of a riding or fencing school, or of a
gymnasium, in exercising the limbs, of an almshouse, in aiding and
solacing the old, of an orphanage, in protecting innocence, of a
penitentiary, in restoring the guilty. I say, a university, taken in its
bare idea, and before we view it as an instrument of the church, has
this object and this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression
nor mechanical production; it professes to exercise the mind neither in
art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave
its scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as this.
It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out
towards truth, and to grasp it.
This, I said in my foregoing discourse, was the object of a university,
viewed in itself, and apart from the Catholic Church, or from the state,
or from any other power which may use it; and I illustrated this in
various ways. I said that the intellect must have an excellence of its
own, for there was nothing which had not its specific good; that the
word "educate" would not be used of intellectual culture, as it is used,
had not the intellect had an end of its own; that, had it not such an
end, there would be no meaning in calling certain intellectual exercises
"liberal," in contrast with "useful," as is commonly done; that the very
notion of a philosophical temper implied it, for it threw us back upon
research and system as ends in themselves, distinct from effects and
works of any kind; that a philosophical scheme of knowledge, or system
of sciences, could not, from the nature of the case, issue in any one
definite art or pursuit, as its end; and that, on the other hand, the
discovery and contemplation of truth, to which research and
systematising led, were surely sufficient ends, though nothing beyond
them were added, and that they had ever been accounted sufficient by
mankind.
Here then I take up the subject; and having determined that the
cultivation of the intellect is an end distinct and sufficient in
itself, and that, so far as words go, it is an enlargement or
illumination. I proceed to inquire what this mental breadth, or power,
or light, or philosophy consists in. A hospital heals a broken limb or
cures a fever: what does an institution effect, which professes the
health, not of the body, not of the soul, but of the intellect? What is
this good, which in former times, as well as our own, has been found
worth the notice, the appropriation of the Catholic Church?
I have then to investigate, in the discourses which follow, those
qualities and characteristics of the intellect in which its cultivation
issues or rather consists; and, with a view of assisting myself in this
undertaking, I shall recur to certain questions which have already been
touched upon. These questions are three: viz. the relation of
intellectual culture, first, to mere knowledge; secondly, to
professional knowledge; and thirdly, to religious knowledge. In
other words, are acquirements and attainments the scope of a
university education? or expertness in particular arts and pursuits?
or moral and religious proficiency? or something besides these three?
These questions I shall examine in succession, with the purpose I have
mentioned; and I hope to be excused, if, in this anxious undertaking, I
am led to repeat what, either in these discourses or elsewhere, I have
already put upon paper. And first, of mere knowledge, or learning, and
its connection with intellectual illumination or philosophy.
I suppose the prima-facie[12] view which the public at large would
take of a university, considering it as a place of education, is nothing
more or less than a place for acquiring a great deal of knowledge on a
great many subjects. Memory is one of the first developed of the mental
faculties; a boy's business when he goes to school is to learn, that is,
to store up things in his memory. For some years his intellect is little
more than an instrument for taking in facts, or a receptacle for storing
them; he welcomes them as fast as they come to him; he lives on what is
without; he has his eyes ever about him; he has a lively susceptibility
of impressions; he imbibes information of every kind; and little does he
make his own in a true sense of the word, living rather upon his
neighbours all around him. He has opinions, religious, political and
literary, and, for a boy, is very positive in them and sure about them;
but he gets them from his schoolfellows, or his masters, or his parents,
as the case may be. Such as he is in his other relations, such also is
he in his school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp, ready,
retentive; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge. I say
this in no disparagement of the idea of a clever boy. Geography,
chronology, history, language, natural history, he heaps up the matter
of these studies as treasures for a future day. It is the seven years of
plenty with him: he gathers in by handfuls, like the Egyptians, without
counting; and though, as time goes on, there is exercise for his
argumentative powers in the elements of mathematics, and for his taste
in the poets and orators, still, while at school, or at least, till
quite the last years of his time, he acquires, and little more; and when
he is leaving for the university, he is mainly the creature of foreign
influences and circumstances, and made up of accidents, homogeneous or
not, as the case may be. Moreover, the moral habits, which are a boy's
praise, encourage and assist this result; that is, diligence, assiduity,
regularity, despatch, persevering application; for these are the direct
conditions of acquisition, and naturally lead to it. Acquirements,
again, are emphatically producible, and at a moment; they are a
something to show, both for master and scholar; an audience, even though
ignorant themselves of the subjects of an examination, can comprehend
when questions are answered and when they are not. Here again is a
reason why mental culture is in the minds of men identified with the
acquisition of knowledge.
The same notion possesses the public mind, when it passes on from the
thought of a school to that of a university: and with the best of
reasons so far as this, that there is no true culture without
acquirements, and that philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a
great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us in
putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such
learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse,
to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result or any
trustworthy conclusion. There are indeed persons who profess a different
view of the matter, and even act upon it. Every now and then you will
find a person of vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon his own
resources, despises all former authors, and gives the world, with the
utmost fearlessness, his views upon religion, or history, or any other
popular subject. And his works may sell for a while; he may get a name
in his day; but this will be all. His readers are sure to find on the
long run that his doctrines are mere theories, and not the expression of
facts, that they are chaff instead of bread, and then his popularity
drops as suddenly as it rose.
Knowledge then is the indispensable condition of expansion of mind, and
the instrument of attaining to it; this cannot be denied, it is ever to
be insisted on; I begin with it as a first principle; however, the very
truth of it carries men too far, and confirms to them the notion that it
is the whole of the matter. A narrow mind is thought to be that which
contains little knowledge; and an enlarged mind, that which holds a
great deal; and what seems to put the matter beyond dispute is, the fact
of the great number of studies which are pursued in a university, by its
very profession. Lectures are given on every kind of subject;
examinations are held; prizes awarded. There are moral, metaphysical,
physical professors; professors of languages, of history, of
mathematics, of experimental science. Lists of questions are published,
wonderful for their range and depth, variety and difficulty; treatises
are written, which carry upon their very face the evidence of extensive
reading or multifarious information; what then is wanting for mental
culture to a person of large reading and scientific attainments? what is
grasp of mind but acquirement? where shall philosophical repose be
found, but in the consciousness and enjoyment of large intellectual
possessions?
And yet this notion is, I conceive, a mistake, and my present business
is to show that it is one, and that the end of a liberal education is
not mere knowledge, or knowledge considered in its matter; and I shall
best attain my object, by actually setting down some cases, which will
be generally granted to be instances of the process of enlightenment or
enlargement of mind, and others which are not, and thus, by the
comparison, you will be able to judge for yourselves, gentlemen, whether
knowledge, that is, acquirement, is after all the real principle of the
enlargement or whether that principle is not rather something beyond it.
For instance, let a person, whose experience has hitherto been confined
to the more calm and unpretending scenery of these islands, whether here
or in England, go for the first time into parts where physical nature
puts on her wilder and more awful forms, whether at home or abroad, as
into mountainous districts; or let one, who has ever lived in a quiet
village, go for the first time to a great metropolis,—then I suppose he
will have a sensation which perhaps he never had before. He has a
feeling not in addition or increase of former feelings, but of something
different in its nature. He will perhaps be borne forward, and find for
a time that he has lost his bearings. He has made a certain progress,
and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement; he does not stand
where he did, he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts to which he
was before a stranger.
Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope opens upon us, if
allowed to fill and possess the mind, may almost whirl it round and make
it dizzy. It brings in a flood of ideas, and is rightly called an
intellectual enlargement, whatever is meant by the term.
And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other foreign animals,
their strangeness, the originality (if I may use the term) of their
forms and gestures and habits, and their variety and independence of
each other, throw us out of ourselves into another creation, and as if
under another Creator, if I may so express the temptation which may come
on the mind. We seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise for our
faculties, by this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, who,
having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly finds his
arms and legs free.
Hence physical science generally, in all its departments, as bringing
before us the exuberant riches and resources, yet the orderly course, of
the universe, elevates and excites the student, and at first, I may say,
almost takes away his breath, while in time it exercises a
tranquillising influence upon him.
Again the study of history is said to enlarge and enlighten the mind,
and why? because, as I conceive, it gives it a power of judging of
passing events and of all events, and a conscious superiority over them,
which before it did not possess.
And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering into
active life, going into society, travelling, gaining acquaintance with
the various classes of the community, coming into contact with the
principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and
races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and
forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike men
are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their
opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon the mind, which
it is impossible to mistake, be it good or be it bad, and is popularly
called its enlargement.
And then again, the first time the mind comes across the arguments and
speculations of unbelievers, and feels what a novel light they cast upon
what he has hitherto accounted sacred; and still more, if it gives in to
them and embraces them, and throws off as so much prejudice what it has
hitherto held, and, as if waking from a dream, begins to realise to its
imagination that there is now no such thing as law and the transgression
of law, that sin is a phantom, and punishment a bugbear, that it is free
to sin, free to enjoy the world and the flesh; and still further, when
it does enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and hold just what it
will, that "the world is all before it where to choose," and what system
to build up as its own private persuasion; when this torrent of wilful
thoughts rushes over and inundates it, who will deny that the fruit of
the tree of knowledge, or what the mind takes for knowledge, has made it
one of the gods, with a sense of expansion and elevation,—an
intoxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective state of the
mind goes, an illumination? Hence the fanaticism of individuals or
nations, who suddenly cast off their Maker. Their eyes are opened; and,
like the judgment-stricken king in the tragedy, they see two suns, and a
magic universe, out of which they look back upon their former state of
faith and innocence with a sort of contempt and indignation, as if they
were then but fools, and the dupes of imposture.
On the other hand, religion has its own enlargement, and an enlargement,
not of tumult, but of peace. It is often remarked of uneducated persons,
who have hitherto thought little of the unseen world, that, on their
turning to God, looking into themselves, regulating their hearts,
reforming their conduct, and meditating on death and judgment, heaven
and hell, they seem to become, in point of intellect, different beings
from what they were. Before, they took things as they came, and thought
no more of one thing than another. But now every event has a meaning;
they have their own estimate of whatever happens to them; they are
mindful of times and seasons, and compare the present with the past; and
the world, no longer dull, monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless, is a
various and complicated drama, with parts and an object, and an awful
moral.
Now from these instances, to which many more might be added, it is
plain, first, that the communication of knowledge certainly is either a
condition or the means of that sense of enlargement or enlightenment, of
which at this day we hear so much in certain quarters: this cannot be
denied; but next, it is equally plain, that such communication is not
the whole of the process. The enlargement consists, not merely in the
passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas hitherto unknown to
it, but in the mind's energetic and simultaneous action upon and towards
and among those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the
action of a formative power, reducing to order and meaning the matter of
our acquirements; it is a making the objects of our knowledge
subjectively our own, or, to use a familiar word, it is a digestion of
what we receive, into the substance of our previous state of thought;
and without this no enlargement is said to follow. There is no
enlargement, unless there be a comparison of ideas one with another, as
they come before the mind, and a systematising of them. We feel our
minds to be growing and expanding then, when we not only learn, but
refer what we learn to what we know already. It is not the mere addition
to our knowledge that is the illumination; but the locomotion, the
movement onwards, of that mental centre, to which both what we know, and
what we are learning, the accumulating mass of our acquirements,
gravitates. And therefore a truly great intellect, and recognised to be
such by the common opinion of mankind, such as the intellect of
Aristotle, or of St. Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe (I purposely
take instances within and without the Catholic pale, when I would speak
of the intellect as such), is one which takes a connected view of old
and new, past and present, far and near, and which has an insight into
the influence of all these one on another; without which there is no
whole and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but
also of their mutual and true relations; knowledge, not merely
considered as acquirement but as philosophy.
Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, harmonising process is
away, the mind experiences no enlargement, and is not reckoned as
enlightened or comprehensive, whatever it may add to its knowledge. For
instance, a great memory, as I have already said, does not make a
philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called a grammar. There
are men who embrace in their minds a vast multitude of ideas, but with
little sensibility about their real relations towards each other. These
may be antiquarians, annalists, naturalists; they may be learned in the
law; they may be versed in statistics; they are most useful in their own
place; I should shrink from speaking disrespectfully of them; still,
there is nothing in such attainments to guarantee the absence of
narrowness of mind. If they are nothing more than well-read men, or men
of information, they have not what specially deserves the name of
culture of mind, or fulfils the type of liberal education.
In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons who have seen much of
the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played a conspicuous
part in it, but who generalise, nothing, and have no observation, in the
true sense of the word. They abound in information in detail, curious
and entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived under the
influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious or
political, they speak of every one and every thing, only as so many
phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and lead to nothing, not
discussing them, or teaching any truth, or instructing the hearer, but
simply talking. No one would say that these persons, well informed as
they are, had attained to any great culture of intellect or to
philosophy.
The case is the same still more strikingly where the persons in question
are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and deficient education.
Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a
passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon
them there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one end of the earth
to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects, which they have
encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their
imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it were on the
wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and
they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of
great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, or
amid the islands of the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the
Andes; and nothing which meets them carries them forward or backward, to
any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a
history or a promise. Every thing stands by itself, and comes and goes
in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave the
spectator where he was. Perhaps you are near such a man on a particular
occasion, and expect him to be shocked or perplexed at something which
occurs; but one thing is much the same to him as another, or, if he is
perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, whether it is right to
admire, or to ridicule or to disapprove, while conscious that some
expression of opinion is expected from him; for in fact he has no
standard of judgment at all, and no landmarks to guide him to a
conclusion. Such is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream
of calling it philosophy.
Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the conclusion I
have already drawn from those which preceded them. That only is true
enlargement of mind which is the power of viewing many things at once as
one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the
universal system, of understanding their respective values, and
determining their mutual dependence. Thus is that form of universal
knowledge, of which I have on a former occasion spoken, set up in the
individual intellect, and constitutes its perfection. Possessed of this
real illumination, the mind never views any part of the extended
subject-matter of knowledge without recollecting that it is but a part,
or without the associations which spring from this recollection. It
makes everything in some sort lead to everything else; it would
communicate the image of the whole to every separate portion, till that
whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, everywhere pervading and
penetrating its component parts, and giving them one definite meaning.
Just as our bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the
body, as the word "creation" suggests the Creator, and "subjects" a
sovereign, so, in the mind of the philosopher as we are abstractedly
conceiving of him, the elements of the physical and moral world,
sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions,
individualities, are all viewed as one with correlative functions, and
as gradually by successive combinations converging, one and all, to the
true centre.
To have even a portion of this illuminative reason and true philosophy
is the highest state to which nature can aspire, in the way of
intellect; it puts the mind above the influences of chance and
necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and superstition,
which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds are possessed with some
one object, take exaggerated views of its importance, are feverish in
the pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly
foreign to it, and are startled and despond if it happens to fail them.
They are ever in alarm or in transport. Those on the other hand who have
no object or principle whatever to hold by, lose their way every step
they take. They are thrown out, and do not know what to think or say, at
every fresh juncture; they have no view of persons, or occurrences, or
facts, which come suddenly upon them, and they hang upon the opinion of
others for want of internal resources. But the intellect, which has been
disciplined to the perfection of its powers, which knows, and thinks
while it knows, which has learned to leaven the dense mass of facts and
events with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect cannot be
partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a loss,
cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically calm, because it
discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in every end, the law in
every interruption, the limit in each delay; because it ever knows where
it stands, and how its path lies from one point to another. It is the
[Greek: tetragonos][13] of the Peripatetic, and has the nil
admirari[14] of the Stoic,—
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.[15]
There are men who, when in difficulties, originate at the moment vast
ideas or dazzling projects; who, under the influence of excitement, are
able to cast a light, almost as if from inspiration, on a subject or
course of action which comes before them; who have a sudden presence of
mind equal to any emergency, rising with the occasion, and an undaunted
magnanimous bearing, and an energy and keenness which is but made
intense by opposition. This is genius, this is heroism; it is the
exhibition of a natural gift, which no culture can teach, at which no
institution can aim: here, on the contrary, we are concerned, not with
mere nature, but with training and teaching. That perfection of the
intellect, which is the result of education, and its beau ideal, to be
imparted to individuals in their respective measures, is the clear,
calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the
finite mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own
characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of
history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human
nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from
littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because
nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly
contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and
the music of the spheres.
And now, if I may take for granted that the true and adequate end of
intellectual training and of a university is not learning or
acquirement, but rather, is thought or reason exercised upon knowledge,
or what may be called philosophy, I shall be in a position to explain
the various mistakes which at the present day beset the subject of
university education.
I say then, if we would improve the intellect, first of all, we must
ascend; we cannot gain real knowledge on a level; we must generalise, we
must reduce to method, we must have a grasp of principles, and group and
shape our acquisitions by means of them. It matters not whether our
field of operation be wide or limited; in every case, to command it, is
to mount above it. Who has not felt the irritation of mind and
impatience created by a deep, rich country, visited for the first time,
with winding lanes, and high hedges, and green steeps, and tangled
woods, and every thing smiling indeed, but in a maze? The same feeling
comes upon us in a strange city, when we have no map of its streets.
Hence you hear of practised travellers, when they first come into a
place, mounting some high hill or church tower, by way of reconnoitering
its neighbourhood. In like manner, you must be above your knowledge, not
under it, or it will oppress you; and the more you have of it, the
greater will be the load. The learning of a Salmasius or a Burman,
unless you are its master, will be your tyrant. Imperat aut
servit;[16] if you can wield it with a strong arm, it is a great
weapon; otherwise,
Vis consili expers
Mole ruit suâ.[17]
You will be overwhelmed, like Tarpeia, by the heavy wealth which you
have exacted from tributary generations.
Instances abound; there are authors who are as pointless as they are
inexhaustible in their literary resources. They measure knowledge by
bulk, as it lies in the rude block, without symmetry, without design.
How many commentators are there on the classics, how many on Holy
Scripture, from whom we rise up, wondering at the learning which has
passed before us, and wondering why it passed! How many writers are
there of Ecclesiastical history, such as Mosheim or Du Pin, who,
breaking up their subject into details, destroy its life, and defraud us
of the whole by their anxiety about the parts! The sermons, again, of
the English divines in the seventeenth century, how often are they mere
repertories of miscellaneous and officious learning! Of course Catholics
also may read without thinking; and in their case, equally as with
Protestants, it holds good, that such knowledge is unworthy of the name,
knowledge which they have not thought through, and thought out. Such
readers are only possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it; nay,
in matter of fact they are often even carried away by it, without any
volition of their own. Recollect, the memory can tyrannise, as well as
the imagination. Derangement, I believe, has been considered as a loss
of control over the sequence of ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is
henceforth deprived of the power of initiation, and becomes the victim
of a train of associations, one thought suggesting another, in the way
of cause and effect, as if by a mechanical process, or some physical
necessity. No one, who has had experience of men of studious habits, but
must recognise the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of
those who have over-stimulated the memory. In such persons reason acts
almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly started
on any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control; they
passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the
original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to another
and go steadily forward, plodding along one line of thought in spite of
the amplest concessions of the hearer, or wandering from it in endless
digression in spite of his remonstrances. Now, if, as is very certain,
no one would envy the madman the glow and originality of his
conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect which
is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies but of barren facts, of random
intrusions from without, though not of morbid imaginations from within?
And in thus speaking, I am not denying that a strong and ready memory is
in itself a real treasure; I am not disparaging a well-stored mind,
though it be nothing besides, provided it be sober, any more than I
would despise a bookseller's shop:—it is of great value to others, even
when not so to the owner. Nor am I banishing, far from it, the
possessors of deep and multifarious learning from my ideal University;
they adorn it in the eyes of men; I do but say that they constitute no
type of the results at which it aims; that it is no great gain to the
intellect to have enlarged the memory at the expense of faculties which
are indisputably higher.
Nor indeed am I supposing that there is any great danger, at least in
this day, of over-education; the danger is on the other side. I will
tell you, gentlemen, what has been the practical error of the last
twenty years,—not to load the memory of the student with a mass of
undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that he has rejected
all. It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the mind by an
unmeaning profusion of subjects; of implying that a smattering in a
dozen branches of study is not shallowness, which it really is, but
enlargement, which it is not; of considering an acquaintance with the
learned names of things and persons and the possession of clever
duodecimos, and attendance on eloquent lecturers, and membership with
scientific institutions, and the sight of the experiments of a platform
and the specimens of a museum, that all this was not dissipation of
mind, but progress. All things now are to be learned at once, not first
one thing, then another, not one well, but many badly. Learning is to
be without exertion, without attention, without toil; without grounding,
without advance, without finishing. There is to be nothing individual in
it; and this, forsooth, is the wonder of the age. What the steam engine
does with matter, the printing press is to do with the mind; it is to
act mechanically, and the population is to be passively, almost
unconsciously enlightened, by the mere multiplication and dissemination
of volumes. Whether it be the school boy, or the school girl, or the
youth at college, or the mechanic in the town, or the politician in the
senate, all have been the victims in one way or other of this most
preposterous and pernicious of delusions. Wise men have lifted up their
voices in vain; and at length, lest their own institutions should be
outshone and should disappear in the folly of the hour, they have been
obliged, as far as they could with a good conscience, to humour a spirit
which they could not withstand, and make temporising concessions at
which they could not but inwardly smile.
It must not be supposed that, because I so speak, therefore I have some
sort of fear of the education of the people: on the contrary, the more
education they have, the better, so that it is really education. Nor am
I an enemy to the cheap publication of scientific and literary works,
which is now in vogue: on the contrary, I consider it a great advantage,
convenience, and gain; that is, to those to whom education has given a
capacity for using them. Further, I consider such innocent recreations
as science and literature are able to furnish will be a very fit
occupation of the thoughts and the leisure of young persons, and may be
made the means of keeping them from bad employments and bad companions.
Moreover, as to that superficial acquaintance with chemistry, and
geology, and astronomy, and political economy, and modern history, and
biography, and other branches of knowledge, which periodical literature
and occasional lectures and scientific institutions diffuse through the
community, I think it a graceful accomplishment, and a suitable, nay,
in this day a necessary accomplishment, in the case of educated men.
Nor, lastly, am I disparaging or discouraging the thorough acquisition
of any one of these studies, or denying that, as far as it goes, such
thorough acquisition is a real education of the mind. All I say is, call
things by their right names, and do not confuse together ideas which are
essentially different. A thorough knowledge of one science and a
superficial acquaintance with many, are not the same thing; a smattering
of a hundred things or a memory for detail, is not a philosophical or
comprehensive view. Recreations are not education; accomplishments are
not education. Do not say, the people must be educated, when, after all,
you only mean amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits and good
humour, or kept from vicious excesses. I do not say that such
amusements, such occupations of mind, are not a great gain; but they are
not education. You may as well call drawing and fencing education as a
general knowledge of botany or conchology. Stuffing birds or playing
stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle,
but it is not education; it does not form or cultivate the intellect.
Education is a high word; it is the preparation for knowledge, and it is
the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation. We require
intellectual eyes to know withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need both
objects and organs intellectual; we cannot gain them without setting
about it; we cannot gain them in our sleep, or by haphazard. The best
telescope does not dispense with eyes; the printing press or the lecture
room will assist us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must
be parties in the work. A university is, according to the usual
designation, an alma mater, knowing her children one by one, not a
foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill.
I protest to you, gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a so-called
university, which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence,
and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide
range of subjects, and a university which had no professors or
examinations at all, but merely brought a number of young men together
for three or four years, and then sent them away as the University of
Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, if I were asked
which of these two methods was the better discipline of the
intellect,—mind, I do not say which is morally the better, for it is
plain that compulsory study must be a good and idleness an intolerable
mischief,—but if I must determine which of the two courses was the more
successful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which sent out men
the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public
men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I
have no hesitation in giving the preference to that university which did
nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with
every science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still if
results be the test of systems, the influence of the public schools and
colleges of England, in the course of the last century, at least will
bear out one side of the contrast as I have drawn it. What would come,
on the other hand, of the ideal systems of education which have
fascinated the imagination of this age, could they ever take effect, and
whether they would not produce a generation frivolous, narrow-minded,
and resourceless, intellectually considered, is a fair subject for
debate; but so far is certain, that the universities and scholastic
establishments, to which I refer, and which did little more than bring
together first boys and then youths in large numbers, these
institutions, with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a
hollow profession of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics,—I say,
at least they can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of
literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural
virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical
judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made
England what it is,—able to subdue the earth, able to domineer over
Catholics.
How is this to be explained? I suppose as follows: When a multitude of
young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men
are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to
learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; the
conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for
themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct
principles for judging and acting, day by day. An infant has to learn
the meaning of the information which its senses convey to it, and this
seems to be its employment. It fancies all that the eye presents to it
to be close to it, till it actually learns the contrary, and thus by
practice does it ascertain the relations and uses of those first
elements of knowledge which are necessary for its animal existence. A
parallel teaching is necessary for our social being, and it is secured
by a large school or a college; and this effect may be fairly called in
its own department an enlargement of mind. It is seeing the world on a
small field with little trouble; for the pupils or students come from
very different places, and with widely different notions, and there is
much to generalise, much to adjust, much to eliminate, there are
inter-relations to be defined, and conventional rules to be established,
in the process, by which the whole assemblage is moulded together, and
gains one tone and one character.
Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that I am not taking into
account moral or religious considerations; I am but saying that that
youthful community will constitute a whole, it will embody a specific
idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will administer a code of
conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and action. It will
give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the
shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci,[18] as it is
sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born, and
which imbues and forms more or less, and one by one, every individual
who is successively brought under its shadow. Thus it is that,
independent of direct instruction on the part of superiors, there is a
sort of self-education in the academic institutions of Protestant
England; a characteristic tone of thought, a recognised standard of
judgment is found in them, which, as developed in the individual who is
submitted to it, becomes a twofold source of strength to him, both from
the distinct stamp it impresses on his mind, and from the bond of union
which it creates between him and others,—effects which are shared by
the authorities of the place, for they themselves have been educated in
it, and at all times are exposed to the influence of its ethical
atmosphere. Here then is a real teaching, whatever be its standards and
principles, true or false; and it at least tends towards cultivation of
the intellect; it at least recognises that knowledge is something more
than a sort of passive reception of scraps and details; it is a
something, and it does a something, which never will issue from the most
strenuous efforts of a set of teachers with no mutual sympathies and no
intercommunion, of a set of examiners with no opinions which they dare
profess, and with no common principles, who are teaching or questioning
a set of youths who do not know them, and do not know each other, on a
large number of subjects, different in kind, and connected by no wide
philosophy, three times a week, or three times a year, or once in three
years, in chill lecture-rooms or on a pompous anniversary.
Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is
preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really
does so little for the mind. Shut your college gates against the votary
of knowledge, throw him back upon the searchings and the efforts of his
own mind; he will gain by being spared an entrance into your babel. Few
indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus and support of
instructors, or will do anything at all, if left to themselves. And
fewer still (though such great minds are to be found), who will not,
from such unassisted attempts, contract a self-reliance and a
self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but serious hindrances to
the attainment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will
not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under which they
lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks, deficiencies, and
irregularities of their knowledge, by the eccentricity of opinion and
the confusion of principle which they exhibit. They will be too often
ignorant of what every one knows and takes for granted, of that
multitude of small truths which fall upon the mind like dust, impalpable
and ever accumulating; they may be unable to converse, they may argue
perversely, they may pride themselves on their worst paradoxes or their
grossest truisms, they may be full of their own mode of viewing things,
unwilling to be put out of their way, slow to enter into the minds of
others;—but, with these and whatever other liabilities upon their
heads, they are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy,
more true enlargement, than those earnest but ill-used persons who are
forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an
examination, who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves in
thinking or investigation, who devour premise and conclusion together
with indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, and
commit demonstrations to memory, and who too often, as might be
expected, when their period of education is passed, throw up all they
have learned in disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious
labours, except perhaps the habit of application.
Yet such is the better specimen of the fruit of that ambitious system
which has of late years been making way among us: for its result on
ordinary minds, and on the common run of students, is less satisfactory
still; they leave their place of education simply dissipated and relaxed
by the multiplicity of subjects, which they have never really mastered,
and so shallow as not even to know their shallowness. How much better, I
say, it is for the active and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be
found, to eschew the college and the university altogether, than to
submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious! How much
more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of
education, to range through a library at random, taking down books as
they meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit
suggests! How much healthier to wander into the fields, and there with
the exiled prince to find "tongues in the trees, books in the running
brooks!" How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in
the poem[19]—a poem, whether in conception or execution, one of the
most touching in our language—who, not in the wide world, but ranging
day by day around his widowed mother's home, "a dextrous gleaner" in a
narrow field and with only such slender outfit
as the village school and books a few
Supplied,
contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and the
inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shepherd's walk, and
the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and the
restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and a poetry of his
own!
But in a large subject, I am exceeding my necessary limits. Gentlemen, I
must conclude abruptly; and postpone any summing up of my argument,
should that be necessary, to another day.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Discourse VI in "The Idea of a University," 1852.]
[Footnote 12: Prima-facie: based on one's first impression.]
[Footnote 13: Four-square.]
[Footnote 14: To be moved by nothing.]
[Footnote 15: Happy is he who has come to know the sequences of things,
and is thus above all fear and the dread march of fate and the roar of
greedy Acheron.]
[Footnote 16: It rules or it serves.]
[Footnote 17: Brute force without intelligence falls by its own weight.]
[Footnote 18: Genius loci: spirit of the place.]
[Footnote 19: Crabbe's Tales of the Hall. This poem, let me say, I
read on its first publication, above thirty years ago, with extreme
delight, and have never lost my love of it; and on taking it up lately,
found I was even more touched by it than heretofore. A work which can
please in youth and age, seems to fulfil (in logical language) the
accidental definition of a classic. (A further course of twenty years
has passed, and I bear the same witness in favour of this poem.)]