§ 1. When an English University established an examination for future teachers,[109] the “special subjects” first set were “Locke and Dr. Arnold.” The selection seems to me a very happy one. Arnold greatly affected the spirit and even the organization of our public schools at a time when the old schools were about to have new life infused into them, and when new schools were to be started on the model of the old. He is perhaps the greatest educator of the English type, i.e., the greatest educator who had accepted the system handed down to him and tried to make the best of it. Locke on the other hand, whose reputation is more European than English, belongs rather to the continental type. Like his disciple Rousseau and like Rousseau’s disciples the French Revolutionists, Locke refused the traditional system and appealed from tradition and authority to reason. We English revere Arnold, but so long as the history of education continues to be written, as it has been written hitherto, on the Continent, the only Englishman celebrated in it will be as now not the great schoolmaster but the great philosopher. [220]
§ 2. In order to understand Locke we must always bear in mind what I may call his two main characteristics; 1st, his craving to know and to speak the truth and the whole truth in everything, truth not for a purpose but for itself[110]; 2nd, his perfect trust in the reason as the guide, the only guide, to truth.[111]
§ 3. 1st. Those who have not reflected much on the subject will naturally suppose that the desire to know the truth is common to all men, and the desire to speak the truth common to most. But this is very far from being the case. If we had any earnest desire for truth we should examine things carefully before we admitted them as truths; in other words our opinions would be the growth of long and energetic thought. But instead of this they are formed for the most part quite carelessly and at haphazard, and we value them not on account of their supposed agreement with fact but because though “poor things” they are “our own” or those of our sect or party. Locke on the other[221] hand was always endeavouring to get at the truth for its own sake. This separated him from men in general. And he brought great powers of mind to bear on the investigation. This raised him above them.
§ 4. 2nd. Locke’s second characteristic was his entire reliance on the guidance of reason. “The faculty of reasoning,” says he, “seldom or never deceives those who trust to it.” Elsewhere, borrowing a metaphor from Solomon (Prov. xx, 27), he speaks of this faculty as “the candle of the Lord set up by Himself in men’s minds.” (F. B. ij., 129). In a fine passage in the Conduct of the Understanding he calls it “the touchstone of truth” (§ iij, Fowler’s edition, p. 10). He even goes so far in his correspondence with Molyneux as to maintain that intelligent honest men cannot possibly differ.[112]
But if we consider it from one point of view the treatise on the Conduct of the Understanding is itself a witness that human reason is a compass liable to incalculable variations and likely enough to shipwreck those who steer by it alone. In this book Locke shows us that to come to a true result the understanding (1) must be perfectly trained, (2) must not be affected by any feeling in favour of or against any[222] particular result, and (3) must have before it all the data necessary for forming a judgment. In practice these conditions are seldom (if ever) fulfilled; and Locke himself, when he wants an instance of a mind that can acquiesce in the certainty of its conclusions, takes it from “angels and separate spirits who may be endowed with more comprehensive faculties” than we are (C. of U. § iij, 3).
§ 5. It seems to me then that Locke much exaggerates the power of the individual reason for getting at the truth. And to exaggerate the importance of one function of the mind is to unduly diminish the importance of the rest. Thus we find that in Locke’s scheme of education little thought is taken for the play of the affections and feelings; and as for the imagination it is treated merely as a source of mischief.
§ 6. Locke, as it has often been pointed out, differs from the schoolmaster in making small account of the knowledge to be acquired by those under education. But it has not been so often remarked that the fundamental difference is much deeper than this and lies in the conception of knowledge itself. With the ordinary schoolmaster the test of knowledge is the power of reproduction. Whatever pupils can reproduce with difficulty they know imperfectly; whatever they can reproduce with ease they know thoroughly. But Locke’s definition of knowledge confines it to a much smaller area. According to him knowledge is “the internal perception of the mind” (Locke to Stillingfleet v. F. B. ij, 432). “Knowing is seeing; and if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use never so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much[223] in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned authors as much as we will” (C. of U. § 24).[113]
§ 7. Here Locke makes no distinction between different classes of truths. But surely very important differences exist.
About some physical facts our knowledge is at once most certain and most definite when we derive it through the evidence of our own senses. “Seeing is believing,” says the proverb. It may be believing, but it is not knowing. That certainty which we call knowledge we often arrive at better by the testimony of others than by that of our own senses.
Miss Martineau in her Autobiography tells us that as a child of ten she entirely and unaccountably failed to see a comet which was visible to all other people; but, although her own senses were at fault, the evidence for the comet was so conclusive that she may be said to have known there was a comet in the sky.
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On sufficient evidence we can know anything, just as we know there is a great water-fall at Niagara though we may never have crossed the Atlantic. But we cannot be so certain simply on the evidence of our senses. If we trusted entirely to them we might take the earth for a plane and “know” that the sun moved round it.
§ 8. But Locke probably considers as the subject of knowledge not so much physical facts as the great body of truths which are ascertained by the intellect. It is the eye of the mind by which alone knowledge is to be gained. Of these truths the purest specimens are the truths of geometry. It may be said that only those who have followed the proofs know that the area of the square on the side opposite the right angle in a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other sides. But even in pure reasoning like this, the tiro often seems to see what he does not really see; and where his own reason brings him to a conclusion different from the one established he knows only that he is mistaken.
§ 9. It must be admitted then that first-hand knowledge, knowledge derived from the vision of the eye or of the mind, is not the only knowledge the young require. Every learner must take things on trust, as even Lord Bacon admits. Discentem credere oportet. To use Locke’s own words:—“I do not say, to be a good geographer that a man should visit every mountain, river, promontory, and creek upon the face of the earth, view the buildings and survey the land everywhere as if he were going to make a purchase” (C. of U., iij, ad f.). So that even according to Locke’s own shewing we must use the eyes of others as well as our own, and this is true not in geography only, but in all other branches of knowledge.
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§ 10. But are we driven to the alternative of agreeing either with Locke or with the schoolmaster? I do not see that we are. The thought which underlies Locke’s system of education is this: true knowledge can be acquired only by the exercise of the reason: in childhood the reasoning power is not strong enough for the pursuit of knowledge: knowledge, therefore, is out of the question at that age, and the only thing to be thought of is the formation of habits. Opposed to this we have the schoolmaster’s ideal which is governed by examinations. According to this ideal the object of the school course is to give certain “knowledge,” linguistic and other, and to fix it in the memory in such a manner that it can be displayed on the day of examination. “Knowledge” of this kind often makes no demand whatever on the reasoning faculty, or indeed on any faculty but that of remembering and reproducing what the learner has been told; in extreme cases the memory of mere sounds or symbols suffices.
But after all we are not compelled to choose between these two theories. Take, e.g., the subject which Locke has mentioned, geography. The schoolmasters of the olden time began with the use of the globes, a plan which, by the way, Locke himself seems to have winked at. His disciple Molyneux tells him of the performances of the small Molyneux. When he was but just turned five he could read perfectly well, and on the globe could have traced out and pointed at all the noted ports, countries, and cities of the world, both land and sea; by five and a half could perform many of the plainest problems on the globe, as the longitude and latitude, the Antipodes, the time with them and other countries, &c. (Molyneux to L., 24th August, 1695.) Here we find a child brought up, without any[226] protest from Locke, on mere examination knowledge, which according to Locke himself is not knowledge at all. It is strange that Locke did not at once point out to Molyneux that the child was not really learning what the father supposed him to be learning. When the child turned over the plaster ball and found the word “Paris,” the father no doubt attributed to the child much that was in his own mind only. To the child “the Globe” (as Rousseau afterwards said), was nothing but a plaster ball; “Paris” was nothing but some letters marked on that ball. Comenius had already got a notion how children may be given some knowledge of geography. “Children begin geography,” said he, “when they get to understand what a hill, a valley, a field, a river, a village, a town is.” (Supra, p. 145.) When this beginning has been made, geographical knowledge is at once possible to the child, and not before.
Perfect knowledge in geography, as in most other things, is out of every one’s reach. Nobody knows, e.g., all that could be known about Paris. The knowledge its inhabitants have of it is very various, but in all cases this knowledge is far greater than that of a visitor. The visitor’s knowledge again is far greater than that of strangers who have never seen Paris. Nobody, then, can know everything even about Paris; but a child who knows what a large town is, and can fancy to himself a big town called Paris, which is the biggest and most important town in France has some knowledge about it. This must be maintained against Locke. Against the schoolmaster it may be pointed out that making an Eskimo say the words:—“Paris is the capital of France,” would not be giving him any knowledge at all; and the same may be said of many “lessons” in[227] the school-room. If a common sailor were to teach an Eskimo English, he would very likely suppose that when he had taught the sounds “Paris is the capital of France,” he had conveyed to his pupil all the ideas which those sounds suggested to his own mind. A common schoolmaster may fall into a similar error.
§ 11. In the most celebrated work which has been affected by the Thoughts of Locke, Rousseau’s Emile, we find childhood treated in a manner altogether different from youth: the child’s education is mainly physical, and instruction is not given till the age of twelve. Locke’s system on first sight seems very different to this, but there is a deeper connection between the two than is usually observed. We have seen that Locke allowed nothing to be knowledge that was not acquired by the perception of the intellect. But in children the intellectual power is not yet developed; so according to Locke knowledge properly so-called is not within their reach. What then can the educator do for them? He can prepare them for the age of reason in two ways, by caring first for their physical health, second for the formation of good habits.
§ 12. 1st. On the Continent Locke has always been considered one of the first advocates of physical education, and he does, it is true, give physical education the first place, a feature in his system, which we naturally connect with his study of medicine, and also with the trouble he had all his life with his own health. But care of the body, and especially bodily exercises, were always much thought of in this country, and the main writers on education before Locke, e.g., Sir Thos. Elyot, Mulcaster, Milton, were very emphatic about physical training.
In the autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, we[228] may see what attention was paid in Locke’s own century to this part of education.[114]
§ 13. 2nd. “That, and that only, is educative which moulds forms or modifies the soul or mind.” (Mark Pattison in New Quarterly Magazine, January, 1880.)
Here we have a proposition which is perhaps seldom denied, but very commonly ignored by those who bring up the young. But Locke seems to have been entirely possessed with this notion, and the greater part of the Thoughts is nothing but a long application of it. The principle which lies at the root of most of his advice, he has himself expressed as follows: “That which I cannot too often inculcate is, that whatever the matter be about which it is conversant whether great or small, the main, I had almost said only thing, to be considered in every action of a child is what influence it will have upon his mind; what habit it tends to, and is likely to settle in him: how it will become him when he is bigger, and if it be encouraged, whither it will lead him when he is grown up.” (Thoughts, § 107, p. 86.)
Here we see that Locke differed widely from the schoolmasters of his time, perhaps of all time. A man must be a philosopher indeed if he can spend his life in teaching boys, and yet always think more about what they will be and what they will do when their schooling is over than what they will know. And in these days if we stopped to think at all we should be trodden on by the examiner.[115]
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In this respect Locke has not been surpassed. Like his predecessor Montaigne he took for his centre not the object, knowledge, but the subject, man.[116]
§ 14. In some other respects he does not seem so happy. He makes little attempt to reach a scientific standpoint and to establish general truths about our common human nature. He thinks not so much of the man as the gentleman, not so much of the common laws of the mind as of the peculiarities of the individual child. He even hints that differences of disposition in children render treatises on education defective if not useless. “There are a thousand other things that may need consideration” he writes “especially if one should take in the various tempers, different inclinations, and particular defaults that are to be found in children and prescribe proper remedies. The variety is so great that it wo............