A defence of ignorance
Morley, Henry, 1822-1894
mttt ■ ■k^t; ^k ^gr3* -*fc* **"<«ss3 |Spc~j ^^S^e^339EHE°»!~^9 <3| *■ « «C_ <J§B ^<3T *3| — - I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 'Zs/xr/, /"A JTo£~?? ^Ac//.M+3M <H\ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. l\ A DEFENCE OE IGNORANCE. y DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. BY THE AUTHOR OF HOW TO MAKE HOME UNHEALTHY.1 yVX^yJsJLMj J^VtAf, "Many who will not stand a direct Reproof, and cannot abide to be plainly admonished of their Fault, will yet endure to be pleasantly rubb'd, and will patiently bear a jocund Wipe." — Barrow's Sermons against Evil Speaking. LONDON : CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1851. LONDON : BBADBUKV AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIABS. A DEFENCE OF IGNOKANCE. The Select Committee, which appointed itself to inquire into the State of Education in this country, and into any measures which may be required for the Defence of Ignorance, have talked over the matters to them referred, and have agreed to the following resolution : — Resolved. That it is the opinion of this Committee, That the Report of their proceedings may he now read and approved. The Report follows. The Committee dined. The ladies having with- drawn, the Chairman said : — This meeting, gentle- men, is of a social nature, and to be considered strictly private. Before we commence, therefore, let us instruct our secretary concerning fictitious names to be affixed to any speeches that he may report. — A Member begged leave to suggest that the secretary B Z A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. might be empowered to disguise, in his own way, the names of speakers ; at the same time, he thought that the Owl, a bird of Night and Wisdom, could be made godfather to all the company. The honourable secretary himself, who, as this committee's voice, would presently intrude upon the public ear, he begged permission to call Screech. Agreed. — The chairman, Ulula, then pouring out a glass of wine, requested silence, and began — The Opening Address. Gentlemen, — Bre meant a " mountain " in old Cornish. The Phoenicians, who got some of their tin from Cornwall, distinguished it as " Bre tin," from the same metal obtained elsewhere. Tin is a word that runs through many languages with trifling change ; here tin, there zinn, and somewhere else etain. And so this country became known to the Phoenicians, and also through them to others, as the land of Bre tin — Britain. This interpretation is a wholesome one, which nourishes and very much plumps out a modern use of the word Tin. An affectionate and thoughtful people finds in its first article of commerce a familiar name for money. The Japanese do something of this kind. Their savage forefathers subsisted on a shellfish called Awabi, so in their wealth they now serve up Awabi in their feasts, and add Awabi to their gifts. It is their salt water forget-me-not. We get our sentiment from flowers, they get theirs from fish. A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 6 You, if you please, may say molluscs ; I won't. I broke a tooth yesterday in talking botany, and must avoid zoology to-day. Our gold and silver, we rich folk might symbolise by rose and lily, but we don't. We think of our poor ancestors and call the money Tin. Bretin or Britain, then, is a Tin Mountain, or Mass of Tin or Heap of Money. We have collared Ety- mology and got a fact. This country is prosperous down to the very roots. The chairman pausing, it was understood that he desired applause. The members of the committee helped themselves to figs and filberts, and, when silence was restored, our host resumed with ani- mation : We have wealth. What does a man mean by wealth ? He means weal with a th, I fancy, or if he does not mean it, he says it ; and why does he say it : I must take for granted it is what he means. Weal signifies that which is well. And th after such a word ? In Dr. Latham's grammar, those who read such trumpery are told that it " supplies the force of an abstract idea." Wealth then i3 the abstract idea of that which is well. You cannot now stand up and tell me that it means a gross material or muck. You may do so, for you are capable of anything. But your conscience takes inevitably down its throat, as out of a physic spoon, the con- clusion that, in this country, all is well — all in ideal b 2 4 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. perfection — although some of us are not contented to let well alone. Buho. Sir, you are merely firing peppercorns into the hostile body. Ulula. They may cause it, sir, to scratch. I am now loading with a piece of china. We have an intimate knowledge of the Chinese, from often meeting with them on our cups and saucers. They have no idea of us. At the beginning of our late glorious and high-minded war with China, the Centre of the Universe informed his soldiers that their great object should be to make the English tumble down. If it were only by beating gongs, or by frightening them, so that they caused them to fall down, that would suffice ; for if the English fell they could be taken. The clothes of English soldiers, said the Brother of the Sun, are made so tight that those who are in them when they tumble down are quite unable, by any struggling, to get up again. And so the Chinese thought to ship off Englishmen at leisure, like the turtles, after they had once been thrown upon their backs. And yet these Chinese are an educated people. Civetta. What a warning to us ! Since that war we have learned something about them. They make soup of slugs; eat lizards, toads; and if they had such things, I dare say, they would stew a five-barred gate ; the catalogue is small, of things that are not eaten by a Chinaman. A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. O Ulula. Now these ridiculous Chinese are Educa- tionists. Ridiculous, I call them ; insignificant. Tell me that without China, Europe would not have been ; that if the Chinese had not flung aside the Huns, the Huns would not have knocked against the Goths, the Goths would not have knocked down Rome, and so on; I say, Pooh ! My wife's silk dress she would have bought at an Alarming Failure without Chinese intervention. As for tea, we were much better men when we had beer for breakfast. I laugh the Chinese to scorn, and I will not believe that they invented Punch. Pun-tse, the Son of an Inch, may beat his Chinese Judy. I believe that some Chinaman must have been in England about the time of the Saxon heptarchy, and have seen Punch performed. Or how do we know that the Phoenicians when importing tin from our shores did not import from the same place into Asia Punch's shows. Nay more, are we certain that a fossil Punch will not be discovered, in the Stonesfield slate, or in the London clay ? At any rate the Chinese are ridiculous, and I will let you see down to the bed of their transparent folly. They are mighty educators. To every joss house they attach a school. So far, it is well that their schools are connected with their churches. But the absurdity of the Chinese takes all pleasure and excite- ment out of this arrangement, because they have not sense enough to make their joss houses like Christian D A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. churches, tents of warriors at bitter odds with one another. These Chinese day-schools are supported by the government, and by parents, according to their ability. There is one master to twenty or thirty boys, and there he sits, with spectacles not much smaller than saucers on his nose, a pipe in his mouth, a teapot at his fingers' ends, and a great noise in his ears. For nearly all the boys are learn- ing their lessons aloud, each at his own little table ; a mischievous young rascal is fingering his master's tail to the infinite disturbance of a dunce who is endeavouring to shriek his lesson down the master's ear. Boards are for slates, and brushes dipped in Indian ink serve for slate pencil. Writing is prac- tised by aid of transparent paper, and a big cane lashes the master's table now and then, making the saucers jump and little Chinese hearts jump with them. But the Chinese do worse than this They have in each province a chancellor of learning, class all people in their educational degrees, and reserve posts of trust and honour and emolument, for whom ? The well-born man ? No, for the raw student ! In a great hall of education, surrounded by groves and gardens, sit dominies at certain periods in each large town, to inquire into the proficiency of candi- dates for the first degree of Sew Tsae or " flowering talent." Not to have entered this class is to want respectability in Chinese eyes. They who have been admitted are exempt from being whipped, except A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. 7 by order of the emperor or of his representatives. They who have thus redeemed their skins, may at a future time present themselves for a severer scrutiny, at a solemn triennial examination. They who in this have satisfied the strict examiners, become Kew Jin, " promoted men," and are entitled — to wear boots ! A higher degree is offered every three years to those booted men who seek to win spurs at Pekin. Poverty excludes none from coming to present themselves. The emperor pays the expenses of poor victims. They who pass this third examina- tion become "introduced scholars," Tsin Se; and the three best at each examination are re- warded by the Brother of the Sun in his own person. For these there is finally reserved a short rope, if they seek a higher elevation. They who pass the examination of Ran Lin, " ascended to the top of the tree," are all the servants of the emperor, and are in due time chosen to the highest offices of state. Education is the road to fame, and these are its four stages. Screech. The only thing that saves the Chinese from extravagance of ridicule is the fact that they do tie up education within limits, making it depend upon a more or less accurate knowledge of certain time-honoured books. Just as in Oxford we read Aristotle, so they read also their classics. Ulula. If the Chinese defined education in ac- cordance with the crotchets of our English innovators, 8 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. as a trained spirit of enquiry, the Flowery Land would long ere this have run to seed. However, as it is, the Chinese certainly have gone quite far enough to make themselves fit objects for our ridicule. When we wish to become laughing-stocks we may begin to build from their designs. CrvETTA. This cry for education is the neighing of a hobby-horse. What is there that a perverted en- thusiasm will not hope to build? I could name a clever builder, now dead, who believed the Millenium to be at hand ; he looked forward to the erection of the Xew Jerusalem, and studied Ezekiel professionally, made calculations, and completed all the plans which he intended to send in at once, when tenders were demanded for the rebuilding of the Temple. So certain Education-mongers have drawn up some schemes, but they will not be called for. We may look over your projections, gentlemen, your elevations and ground-plans, but your phantom schoolmasters we banish from this realm of fact : on snowy plains of paper let them wander up and down, the masters of their own Siberia. Screech. As for awakening a spirit of enquiry, that I am quite sure is what no sensible man would desire : it is a thing always absurd. A spirit of enquiry means a pertinacity in putting foolish questions. There is none more foolish than the Education question. Our Royal Society wrote, once upon a time, to Sir Phili- berto Vernatti, then residing in Batavia, to ask A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. y whether it was true, that in Java there were oysters "of that vast bigness as to weigh 3 cwt." These were your learned men. People whose mouths are agape for oysters of that size must be prepared to swallow anything. Knowledge is hungry and greedy ; Ignorance fasts and is content. Civetta. The tiresome greediness of Knowledge is pourtrayed awfully in men who are attacked by the schoolmaster while in a state of nature. This was the case with the natives of the Navigators Islands, where the missionaries rang their bell and summoned all the natives into school. The consequence was, Mr. Walpole tells us, — in his book, " Four Years in the Pacific," — that Europeans walking in the woods were pounced upon at any unexpected time by savages, who brandished not clubs but slates about their heads, and shouted, " Do my sum ! " Frederic Walpole had his "walks made weariful with sums." "One fellow, with a noble head, used to bring him regular puzzlers." The victim, in revenge, set his tormentor some algebra to do, in the hope that this would keep him quiet ; but after a few days he came again, together with ten others, making a fierce hullabaloo : they all brought slates, and came to get the problem solved : — " You do it." Ulula. Can flesh and blood live to be told of absurdities and miseries like these bred out of foreign Education and not stir in the Defence of Ignorance at home ! With how deep contempt must 10 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. we regard those baby savages in the wild forests of the tropics, when we contemplate the men of our own towns and fields ? Half of us, thank Heaven, cannot make figures ; yet see how Great Britain has prospered. I wonder whether those savages feel our superiority ; whether they know, that in the country out of which their teachers come, Eight Millions of the people cannot read and write. This is a triumphant fact : here I may say stop, you tell me. " Basta cosi ; t' intendo : Gia ti spiegasti a pieuo ; ' E mi diresti rnetio, Se mi dicessi piu." Buho. Shame, sir ! Order, sir! "What jargon's that? Ulula. 'Tis perfectly in order, Buho. You are fidgetty. The tongue they speak in Naples has a claim upon us. [Hear, hear ; with murmurs of Translate.) Good ; you have said enough, you 've explained yourself perfectly well now : And you would tell me less, were you to say any more. — That 's the translation, gentlemen. Buho, a glass of wine with you ? Gentlemen, I have introduced the subject, and suggest that we discuss it now somewhat in detail. Let us take first, if you please, Egncrance of t$e iBrtiule OTIassfS. How does our account stand as regards that ? IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 11 Gentlemen, you are perhaps aware that our friend on my right, whom I will be so bold as to call Aziola — Screech. Our friend has views to state, I believe, of which he will suffer us to doubt the soundness. Aziola. Mr. Chairman, you refer to me sarcasti- cally. You hint, I suspect, at Shelley's line about the Aziola : — " Fear not, 'tis nothing but a little downy owl." "Fear not," indeed! I ridicule myself. I have no hope of ever seeing what I wish, and, being desperate, I join your party. So I take the name you give in all good humour. Screech. Spoken manfully ! But much I wish you had more cause for your despair. Ignorance does not seem to me to have a firm grasp of the Middle Class. As for Knowledge, there can be no doubt that men do learn more or less during the course of life, according to their leisure. It pains me to know that a degraded press, degraded but prolific, allures too many of my neighbours with her wanton smile. They who have leisure enough amass, in this way, a great deal of desultory knowledge ; and regret that no shelves have been put up in their heads whereon they might arrange their stock. By picking daily at the fruit of the forbidden tree, many folks come to possess a store of apples in their garret. I am shocked at this : but if they will err, on their own mature heads be the sin. Aziola. Few of them can say that, in their child- 12 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. hood, great pains were not taken to deter them from such robbery. Screech. The children of the Middle Classes go to school. Aziola. Their school is, generally speaking, part of our Defence. In the Middle Ages, when above Europe it was night, these men stood high, and used the utmost light procurable. As civilisation dawned, they sank ; they are like Pteropods, that have a wide sea for their home, and sport at mid- night on the surface, but sink lower in the water gradually, as the day advances, so that they preserve around themselves one exact shade of gloom. The teacher who would cure me of despair, must love the sun and sunny faces. He must droop before a mournful child. Like Jean Paul Richter, when he sees a child with gloomy features, he must think of it as of a butterfly, with its wings plucked and obliged to crawl. He must not copy any plan of teaching out of books, although he may digest the thoughts of others ; for, can he not eat mutton without crying baa ? Boho. Out with your heart, man. Picture any- thing that 's hopeless, for between ourselves, dear sir, it will be a quaint joke to paint in detail grapes, for the annoyance of some hungry bird. Aziola. Of course, you teacher, you must under- stand the nature of a child. A fellow with a stick in his hand shouts out, " Why, so I do ! " Look away. IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 13 master, from the knuckles of that cringing, wincing boy ; look back into the past some centuries, and see the Master of us all with children in his arms, and at his feet, declaring that their angels see his Father's face in heaven. With that wail in your ears, and that cane in your hand, dare you look back so far, and say you reverence a child ? The teacher who is not allied to Ignorance, must love all children, heartily and unaffectedly ; must be a child, as well as man, himself. You see him in his school-room, where he treads on carpets or on matting, where the walls around him wear a cheerful paper, and neat tables and chairs await the childish students. The best room in his house — the room that lets in the most light and pleasure through the windows — is the room devoted to the occupation of his children. They are young, and they know little ; but the teacher's mind is very full indeed if he has not felt the necessity of studying from day to day, to meet their daily various requirements. Here they come ; not a vast crowd of them, for though John Smith might undertake the care of fifty sheep, he cannot undertake in one day to supply the wants of fifty children all unlike each other. At the utmost, he can teach a score with a congenial assistant. They who confide in him know that, and, of course, will take care that his services are paid for properly, without a grudge. But here they come ; with chatter, laughter, and 14 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. good-will, with not a particle of fear. The youngest is immediately crawling up the legs of his instructor ; Smith is converted into a Laocoon, struggling good- humouredly with serpent children. Pretty discipline! Do you not scowl with me ? You will find worse behind, for school had not begun. Now it begins. No cane, no desk, no high stool ! Ulula. Without these, is instruction possible ? Here is the flesh of school, without the skeleton. It cannot stand. Aziola. The teacher sits where children sit, or walks among them. Study begins ; perhaps the morning and the fresh attention are devoted to those studies which, though not least needful, are the least inviting, and more pleasant subjects come as the day flags. Conversation, open utterance, is not forbidden. How can a teacher pretend to form a child's mind when he forbids it to be spoken ? In a silence broken only by words learned out of a book, how is it possible that the chief object of education can be obtained at all ? So says John Smith, and the work goes on. The children fidget, shift their places, and are suffered freely so to do : it is the instinct of their childhood. They openly make boats and chip at wood, and play with paper, when their hands are not employed. Allegiance to childhood is not insubordination. So they work cheerfully, and know themselves at school to be free agents, doing a duty. At the end of every IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 15 hour's work, they scamper out to scream and play at leapfrog. Recalled, they scamper hack as rapidly as if there were a cane for the last comer. Morning has been spent in languages, arithmetic, or algebra, and exercises which demand labour of which the pleasant fruit is not immediately to be gathered. It has imposed upon the children mental toil. The afternoon is full of mental pleasure. The history of man's deeds and works and the wonders of nature engage childish hearts more powerfully. Not as detailed in skeleton books. A dinner of dry bones makes no man fat. The teacher predetermines that he will occupy perhaps three years in a full narration of the story of the world. He begins at the first dawn of history, studies for himself with patient diligence upon each topic the most correct and elaborate records (for which purpose he requires aid of a town library), and pours all out in one continued stream from day to day, enlivened by a child-like style. The children comment as the story runs ; the teacher finds a hint sufficient at a time by way of moral, he is rather willing to be taught by the experience of what fresh hearts applaud or censure on the old worn stage of life. Natural history and science, all the -ologies, and -tics, and -nomies, succeed each other, also, as a three years' story of the wisdom which begot the world. Foreign countries, not dismissed in a few dozen of the driest existing sentences, are visited in company with 16 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. pleasant travellers. Clever, good-humoured books of travel, carry the imaginations of the children round the world. In all these latter studies they take lively interest, remembering, to a remarkable extent, what they hear. On every point they have spoken freely in the presence of a teacher not desirous to create dull copies of himself, but to permit each budding mind to throw out shoots and spread its roots according to its own inherent vigour. He manures and waters, watches to remove all parasitic growths, but the true, healthy mind, expands unchecked under his care. Screech. But will the children satisfy the patience of John Smith ? Aziola. Will the rose bear colours which he did not paint — the petal of the pink have notches that he did not cut ? If he be nervous, fidgetty, exacting, he will grumble at the children frequently. He will some- times be fretted ; but when he is most himself he will perceive that he has nothing whereat he may justly fret. The children will regard him with affection and implicit trust. Their hearts have not been made ungentle ; therefore if they ever feel that they have vexed him, they themselves are penitent and vexed. Less as a prize than as a good-will offering, each child has a half yearly gift, not won by an unwhole- some rivalry, but containing a record in the first leaf of his half year's career. A childish offence during IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 17 school hours it is John Smith's plan to call " an Interruption," and to say that three such Inter- ruptious are a half day lost, and six the losing of a whole day. In the first leaf of the half-yearly prize Smith writes the number of days lost by inattention. Discipline needs no more machinery than this. If Smith were perfect, even this would not be necessary. You are aware that I am not sketching the one model after which I would have enemies of Ignorance to shape their schools. The proper spirit being established, each teacher will put it in the form most suited to his character. But I set up an imaginary case, in order that I may, by connecting together some peculiarities consistent with each other, give you a notion of the grapes you talked about. Nobody but John Smith is capable of managing John Smith's school ; but fifty other ways of management may be conceived, equally efficacious ; all alike in feeling, in expression different. I have not done with Smith's contrivances. Another is this. He parts his children evenly into two sides, calling them, we will say, the Greens and Blues, after the two factions of the Roman Circus. For these sides also conduct races. Smith does not catechise his children, they examine one another. This mutual examination * takes place not less than * Southey tells us of a schoolmaster who in this way taught spelling. His is the idea. 18 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. twice a week. Each side has in turn to ask a question of its antagonist, on anything that has been at any time a subject of the teaching common to them all. Gain and loss is calculated upon some fixed scale, and in the game the children take an active interest. Those who can finger a pen readily, take notes during the oral teaching ; all ears are alive to what is uttered, and at home books of reference are ransacked with a diligence that would be toil were it not self-imposed. To avoid personality of opposition the two «ides are occasionally shuffled. Screech. Can children collect their thoughts suffi- ciently to ask questions that are not frivolous ? Aziola. The experiment has been tried by a gentle- man whose plan is not unlike John Smith's, and who was persuaded to adopt Smith's crotchet of the Blues and Greens. He was so much surprised by the result that he determined to preserve a list of questions, writing down each of them in a book as it was asked. That book I borrowed and intend to keep. It contains questions asked by children between nine and fourteen years of age. Many refer, I understand, to information given them a year before they asked their neighbours for its reproduction. The book clears children of a misunderstanding under which it is to your interest that they should labour. Bcho. Lock it up, as an immoral production. Aziola. I will tell you, at random, six or seven IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 19 of the questions as a sample ; — only think of this : — " Why is it colder as you rise into the air, though you get nearer to the sun ? ' ' " Give the course of the chief ocean currents over the world, with your finger, on the map." " When you cut off a caterpillar's head why can it go on eating ? " " What caused the sound made by the statue of Memnon?" "Name the seven household officers at the Court of Constantine the Great." " Explain the derivation of the words clergy and laity." "Describe and account for the circulation of the sap." Ulula. I trust, for the honour of Old England, that there are many schoolmasters who would decline to answer questions like these. When I say school- masters, I mean Preceptors, for there is a college of Preceptors now. Screech. Commended to all men byits polite name. Vulgar is the vocation of a Teacher, but " your sons Preceptor" is a gentleman. The Doctors, by-the- bye, clamour for a new corporate body, I trust that they also will be genteel, and get their charter for a new " College of Medical Advisers." Buho. It is high time that we talked a little sense. Enough of Smith. c 2 20 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. Aziola. My grapes are but half painted. Civetta. You need many tools to conjure with. Ulula. And, like all conjurors, talk " Nonsense, false, or mystic, Or not intelligible, or sophistic." It is agreeable enough to feel that the chance of education such as we have just now been discussing is extremely small in England. Civetta. But after all, as we grow stronger in the feeling that these things can never be, it seems absurd to talk about them. What is a greater bore than hearing dreams told ? When gnoos, sassaybies, and hartebeests, are to be found in Smithfield market, then we shall see those educators in our schools. Why do I specify gnoos, sassaybies, and hartebeests ? Because there is a fact established concerning these creatures, which I think would turn out true of the educators also, that on opening the head, their brain is almost invariably found filled with large white maggots. Certainly the maggots of eccentric teachers have no colour in them. Aziola. John Smith may be heard occasionally telling fairy stories to his children. Screech. Well he may ; for he is but an imp of Titania dropped by his mother in her hasty rush out of our premises ; or he is codicil to Oberon's last will and testament, by accident shut up inside our ledger. Civetta. Your fancies, John, are dead at present ; you may like to say that they are torpid, but we call IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 21 them dead and buried under a heavy deposit of hard compact prejudice. Excavations may at some remote period take place, and your ideas may revive ; after the story of the cockles in America, there shall be hope even for you. This is the story of the cockles. Professor Eaton, of New York, related it in Silliman's Journal, and Mr. Sharon Turner augmented its respectability by quoting it in his Sacred History of the World. In digging the Erie Canal at Rome Village, sixteen miles from Utica, the workmen found, forty- two feet below the surface, under a diluvial deposit of hard compact gravel, hundreds of cockles, all alive. The workmen fried and ate these creatures, which must have existed in the days of Noah. In the days of Noah, you perceive. John, when your fancies have been buried for as long a time, they also may be dug up, and, by men who are to live four thousand years hereafter, it is possible that they may all be swallowed. Aziola. Another of John's fancies, — we might say his fundamental fancy — is to impress his children with an unlimited regard for Truth. He says that without Truth and Sincerity among each other and towards their teacher, his system cannot be fairly worked. Accordingly each of his pupils upon entering his school, has by some visible form the fact impressed upon him, that he will always be trusted, and that, however, all his other faults may be dealt gently with, falsehood will be regarded as a crime. 22 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. John says he will refuse to teach a pupil who shall be found to offend more than once or twice in this particular. If it were possible that children should forget the candour which is natural to them for the sake of treading upon ground which they see to be regarded with so much dread and abhorrence, John Smith would keep his word. But the occasion never will be given. Buho. Very well ; now I begin to be a little in a rage at hearing so much nonsense. Aziola. You may have no need to storm, for I will throw John overboard : he is your Jonah. The spell, however, I must finish telliDg you. I tell you that to burst the bolts of Ignorance and give free movement to the education of the middle classes, teachers must be found not scattered but in swarms, quite different from those which swarm at present. They must not look upon the child's mind as a thing to be impregnated with Latin verbs, and trained into a deep disgust at Cicero, and sickening horror at Herodotus. It is a spirit to be trained to thoughtful- ness, and to be furnished with materials of thought (herein the use of history consists) : it should receive such views of the great world of knowledge as may make the youug mind long to become one day an active traveller therein ; and to be ready for the day of travel it should acquire activity and strength, with a fair notion of the routes that lie around us. The teacher who shall send a child into the world thought- IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 23 ful, observant, seeking knowledge, and not shrinking from a little difficulty in obtaining it ; a youth with a free mind, taught to reason, and determined only upon truth, by whatever process he has come to that result ; he is the enemy of Ignorance. The pupil who has learned to teach himself will be the man to put your cause in danger, though he may have left school very backward in his Greek and Latin. Civetta. Dr. Thomas Williams, a member of the University of Cambridge, and Ph. D. of Pisa, does by no means neglect the Greek and Latin of " his young gentlemen " at Euclid Hall Academy. When Captain Harris exhibited his drawings of wild beasts to the Zooloos, they were amazed, and said, that " he undoubtedly took very strong medicine " before he could become so clever. Doubtless they knew how Englishmen are taught ? Very strong medicine and very nauseous is daily administered by Dr. Williams to his young gentlemen, whom by that means he hopes to make extremely wise. In an uncarpeted room, with dirty walls, the windows made opaque with paste, sit the recipients, fifty in number. They sit on forms that are immoveable, and they are expected to remain immoveable upon their forms. Their books are supported before them upon dull rows of unpainted, wooden desks, with inkstands fixed therein, about as far apart from one another as the raisins in the Sunday pudding. Dr. Williams struggles with nature to put bigness into his own five 24 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. feet seven. He sits on a lofty throne, before a desk or altar, and to him the rows of worshippers look up. He might be Serapis, as the god appeared before his demolition. The gigantic idol, with his arms upon the temple roof, was no less a real god in the Serapion than here in his Williamsion, Williams is sublime. When the hollow metal of the idol broke under the profane hatchet of the iconoclast, the crack was thought to be the crack of doom. The worshippers shrank to the ground, cowering with fear : these worshippers of Williams even in their dreams would shudder at the thought of a bold hand or voice up- lifted against him. Buho. I met Williams, by-the-bye, one day at a dinner-party, and the five feet seven of his height seemed then to be by five feet six too much for him ; if he could have had but an inch of himself left, where- with to run into a mouse-hole, I believe that such a temple would have then sufficed. Civetta. A nod expresses the sublime will, quickly understood among an abject crowd. The first Greek class goes up. Twelve boys stand side by side, each holding a book which slightly trembles ; they stand before the desk ; if the cane were a sacrificial knife, a picture might be drawn of Williams as a savage priest about to offer twelve youths to the God of Ignorance. I grant that this is not agreeable, and I could wish that a most useful cause, like ours, could be maintained in the ascendant by means less repul- IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 25 sive. But children seek for knowledge, and their eagerness must be repressed. The book which these youths hold is in each case the same, and open at the same page. It contains the plays of Sophocles. These boys have been dragged through grammar as through a cactus-bush. They know all about tvvtoj. Williams had not the consistency to say for them the active part, I strike, I have struck, I will strike ; he illustrated it, however, as they went along with clever cuts, and gave them a proper feeling of the passive form, I am struck, I have been struck, and so on. Delectus they were taught to find a choice of evils, and the Anabasis a going down into some lower deep. They had learned to wish that Homer's works were in a single copy, and so fell into their claws ; they knew what they would do, though they got flogged for it. They are now translating Philoctetes, wondering when Ulysses will be done with, for they are reading about him also with the French usher in Telemaque. As for the son of Poias the Melian, all they can make out is a connection between his sore foot and their sore hands. To this extent perhaps they recognise his claim to sympathy on their part, and also they can understand his hatred of Ulysses. Philoctetes agrees with the boys thoroughly about that, for Ulysses is the man " Whom of all other Greeks he would desire To lay his fist upon." The Greeks fight a hard battle, and retire to suck 26 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. their wounds. Theirs is a daily Marathon, in as far as Williams, their enemy, is concerned ; for he has as much right as Isfundear ever had to be called Xerxes, and to he represented by his consonants as doubly cross, with a dog's growl and a goose's hiss. Buho. Fiddledee, sir ! But I call this wholesome discipline. Civetta. Wholesome ! Invigorating, bracing, the true tonic, my dear sir. I send four of my sods to Euclid Hall. The Greeks go down to suck their wounds, while they translate a passage of Shakspeare, "The quality of mercy," &c, into catalectic tetra- meters. Before the awful desk their place is taken by a small herd of wild boys, who have been hunted out of the fields of arithmetic, and over the hills of algebra, into the jungle of trigonometry. Here they are con- fused with sines and cosines, and abused with com- plements, tripped over tangents, nevertheless they must on, on, through a ditch of logarithms, breaking fences of parabolas, until they are lodged safely in the pitfalls of the differential calculus. Binns Minimus now suffers torment. In a bald book of geography, winch is little more than a bad index to the contents of the world political, Binns Minimus has sinned with many an imperfect lesson. He called a well-known Isthmus, yesterday, to the dismay of the English master, Suet. As a mild punishment he was ordered to learn his duty to man IGNORANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 27 by nine o'clock on the succeeding morning. What is my duty to man, where is it ? asked little Binns, but Mr. Thunderbomb was silent. This morning the young gentleman is ignorant of his duty to his fellow- creatures, — not having remembered that it was to be found in the catechism, — the Doctor knows his duty to a boy, and so Binns Minimus now suffers torment. The days are past wherein John Jacob Hauberle could flourish. That worthy's diary of punishment, as quoted by Jean Paul, yielded through half a century of teaching 911,527 strokes with the cane ; 124,000 of the rod ; 20,989 blows with the ruler ; 10,235 boxes on the ear, with 7905 tugs ; 1,115,800 raps with knuckles on the head, to say nothing of the wooden horse, and kneeling on hard peas. Those good old times are past, and flogging now is very much on the decline. Dr. Williams frequently tells his boys that caning is as painful to him as it is to the pupil suffering. Since fifty boys still yield him a good share of work, the amount of his self-flagella- tion is extremely serious. The Dominie might be St. Dominic. But as a Zooloo warrior, who had crossed the Cape frontier, declared his delight in sticking Dutchmen ; the spear slipped into their soft unctuous skin so much more luxuriously than into the thick hide of a native, that he would much rather, he said, stick Dutchmen than eat beef ; even so the hand of wrath may find a soothing outlet on the flesh of childhood. I never enjoyed sucking-pig so much 28 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. as Dr. Williams seems to be enjoying now that ope- ration on Binns Minimus, which sends him away to where he may not even, like Arvalan, " In impotence of anger, howl, Writhing with anguish, and his wounds deplore." Buho. That impotence of anger is, in my mind, the great object of the flogging. Mere physical pain now and then does a child good, and is soon forgotten ; it will propagate no ignorance. What I like is to see a storm of anger raised in a child's heart against his teacher, all its winds tied up in a bag within him, without any hope of getting vent, except among his companions in spiteful nicknames and caricatures. Ignorance suffers when a child is taught through its affections. Therefore, I say, let us have none of that puling nonsense ; let us instil some pluck into our boys. Aziola. We do that when we pay a man to bully them, and teach them to tyrannise over each other. Ulula. Boys who have grown with greater freedom, who have been molly-coddled in your sentimental schools, will tumble about, shout, and play, like mere children — will, in their short anger, resent blow with blow ; and wrestle with each other out of mere animal joyaunce : as sanitary numskulls say, out of the activity of their muscular system in that period of life. A school so constituted never can become a model of the world, and preparation for it. Where are the rankling enmities, the party feuds, and the hot rivalries ? where is the gentlemanly tone of ICXOKANCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 29 feeling raised by this free delivery of a parcel of boys into the keeping of their own natural affectionate- ness? These bursts of passion, over so soon and unresented ; this simplicity of purpose, which prompts every one to speak truth, and believe his neighbour ; — is this any preparation for the tricks and triumphs of the grown-up world ? Screech. Certainly not. And as for the ground gone over by way of instruction, the more barren it is the better. Let the youngster learn the fallacy of hope, when, thirsty for instruction on all things surrounding him, he is mocked by a mirage of Greek. Let him find in school the dryness of a desert, and, frowning on the desert — monument of times that are no more — let the great Sphinx be his teacher. Civetta. I will not say more about Williams ; as he is a sphinx, you will excuse me for exhibiting his image only half uncovered. Of him I say, as our friend said of Smith, that he is not a counterpart of all his brethren. The friends of Ignorance assume shapes even more manifold than partisans of Knowledge. I do also regret to see, and am obliged to state with pain, that many schools which we could have pronounced to be unexceptionable twenty years ago, have suffered themselves to become corrupted. Aziola. Something, for example, is now studied of the works of God, where once there were no works looked into save those of Lindley Murray, Julius Caesar, and one or two more of their kidney. 30 A DEFENCE OF IGNORANCE. Ulula. A mean yielding to pressure I call it, when I see men advertising that they keep scientific apparatus, and deliver lectures, at stated periods, on astronomy and chemistry. True, they know little of such subjects, and, if they knew much, could not impart it by their manner of lecturing. Yet they show experiments ; they make children, in that way, attentive and inquisitive ; I am afraid they interest them. True though it be that they reply to the asking of the knowledge-mongers, not with a fish, but with a stone : yet, if the stone be shaped and painted like a fish, it still becomes an interesting object ; and I regret to think that it may lead to a more imperious desire for the real animal. Buho. We have not yet gone too far to recede ; the cane is not dropped, though in some hands the grasp of it relaxes ; the child's head is still rapped by the teacher a hundred and fifty times for every once that it is sported over with a light caress. But I shout to you that I have felt the small end of the wedge. 