JOHNSON'S LIVES. 



2S1 



JOHNSON'S LIVES. 



By MATTHEW AENOLD. 



7^-4 mihi, Domine, scire quod sciendum est — 

 ~^ " Grant that the knowledge I get may be the 

 knowledge which is worth having ! " — the spirit 

 of that prayer ought to rule our education. How 

 little it does rule it, every discerning man will ac- 

 knowledge. Life is short, and our faculties of 

 attention and of recollection are limited ; in educa- 

 tion we proceed as if our life were endless, and our 

 powers of attention and recollection inexhausti- 

 ble. We have not time or strength to deal with 

 half of the matters which are thrown upon our 

 minds, and they prove a useless load to us. When 

 some one talked to Themistocles of an art of 

 memory, he answered, " Teach me rather to for- 

 get ! " The sarcasm well criticises the fatal want 

 of proportion between what we put into our minds 

 and their real needs and powers. 



From the time when first I was led to think 

 about education, this want of proportion is what 

 has most struck me. It is the great obstacle to 

 progress, yet it is by no means remarked and con- 

 tended against as it should be. It hardly begins 

 to present itself until we pass beyond the strict 

 elements of education — beyond the acquisition, I 

 mean, of reading, of writing, and of calculating 

 so far as the operations of common life require. 

 But, the moment we pass beyond these, it begins 

 to appear. Languages, grammar, literature, his- 

 tory, geography, mathematics, the knowledge of 

 Nature — what of these is to be taught, how much, 

 and how ? There is no clear, well-grounded con- 

 sent. The same with religion. Religion is surely 

 to be taught, but what of it is to be taught, and 

 how? A clear, well-grounded consent is again 

 wanting. And taught in such fashion as things 

 are now, how often must a candid and sensible 

 man, if he could be offered an art of memory to 

 secure all that he has learned of them, as to a 

 very great deal of it be inclined to say with 

 Themistocles, " Teach me rather to forget ! " 



In England the common notion seems to be 

 that education is advanced in two ways princi- 

 pally : by forever adding fresh matters of instruc- 

 tion, and by preventing uniformity. I should be 

 inclined to prescribe just the opposite course; to 

 prescribe a severe limitation of the number of- 

 matters taught, a severe uniformity in the line of 

 study followed. Wide ranging and the multipli- 

 cation of matters to be investigated belong to' 



private study, to the development of special apti- 

 tudes in the individual learner, and to the de- 

 mands which they raise in him. But separate 

 from all this should be kept the broad plain lines 

 of study for almost universal use. I say almost 

 universal, because they must of necessity vary a 

 little with the varying conditions of men. What- 

 ever the pupil finds set out for him upon these 

 lines, he should learn ; therefore it ought not to 

 be too much in quantity. The essential thing is 

 that it should be well chosen. If once we can 

 get it well chosen, the more uniformly it can be 

 kept to, the better. The teacher will be more at 

 home ; and besides, when we have got what is 

 good and suitable, there is small hope of gain, 

 and great certainty of risk, in departing from it. 

 No such lines are laid out, and perhaps no one 

 could be trusted to lay them out authoritatively. 

 But to amuse one's self with laying them out in 

 fancy is a good exercise for one's thoughts. One 

 may lay them out for this or that description of 

 pupil, in this or that branch of study. The wider 

 the interest of the branch of study taken, and the 

 more extensive the class of pupils concerned, the 

 better for our purpose. Suppose we take the de- 

 partment of letters. It is interesting to lay out 

 in one's mind the ideal line of study to be fol- 

 lowed by all who have to learn Latin and Greek. 

 But it is still more interesting to lay out the ideal 

 line of study to be followed by all who are con- 

 cerned with that body of literature which exists 

 in English, because this class is so much more 

 numerous among us. The thing would be, one 

 imagines, to begin with a very brief introductory 

 sketch of our subject ; then to fix a certain series 

 of works to serve as what the French, taking an 

 expression from the builder's business, call points 

 de repere — points which stand as so many natural 

 centres, and by returning to which we can always 

 find our way again, if we are embarrassed ; finally, 

 to mark out a number of illustrative and repre- 

 sentative works connecting themselves with each 

 of these points de repere. In the introductory 

 sketch we are among generalities, in the group 

 of illustrative works we are among details ; gen- 

 eralities and details have, both of them, their 

 perils' for" the learner. It is evident that, for pur- 

 poses of education, the most important parts by 

 far in our scheme are what we call the points de 



