494 



NATURE 



[September 15, 1904 



poets are but poor educators, how great is the importance 

 of good surroundings, how the young should be reared in 

 wholesome pastures and be late learners of evil, if they 

 must learn it at all, how nothing mean or vile should meet 

 the eye or strike the ear of the young, how in infancy 

 education should be through pleasurable interest, how 

 dangerous it is when ill directed, how it is not so much a 

 process of acquisition as the use of powers already existing 

 in us, not the filling of a vessel, but turning the eye of the 

 soul towards the light, how it aims at ideals and is intended 

 to promote virtue, and is the first and fairest of all things. 



In this description, I take it, we most of us agree, though 

 some of Plato's views would doubtless elicit differences of 

 opinion amongst us, as, for instance, that education ought 

 not to be compulsory, or that it should be the same for 

 women as for men. 



One of his statements may be soothing to our English 

 self-complacency, for as is the habit of idealists in every 

 age, he says that even in Athens they care nothing for 

 educational training, one of the most brilliant of their 

 younger statesmen pleading that it does not matter, because 

 others are as ignorant as he. 



Or again, our own Milton sums it up in fewer words, but 

 very impressively, when he says true education fits a man 

 to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the 

 offices, both private and public, of peace and war. 



It is a noble aim which he thus sets before us, to make 

 our sons skilful, just, magnanimous, and every description 

 of aims and methods can be little more than an expansion 

 of it. 



Of the importance of right aims and ideals there can, 

 as Plato reminded us, be no question, because of the danger 

 of ill-directed aims, and the lasting nature of early 

 impressions. 



What we learnt at school, when all the world was young 

 to us, whether we learnt it with weariness or pain, or 

 under happier influences with a quickening pulse and the 

 glow of enjoyment, passed into the blood, as Stevenson said 

 somewhere, and became native in the memory. 



True education, then, as we all acknowledge, aims at 

 cultivating the highest and most efficient type of personality, 

 men not only appropriately and technically equipped for 

 their professional business, but men endowed with the best 

 gifts and inspired with high purposes, men who desire to 

 follow the more excellent ways and to lead others in them, 

 who love knowledge, truth, freedom, justice, in all the 

 relations of life, whether individual or social, men marked 

 by sense of duty and moral thoughtfulness, public spirit, 

 and strength of character. 



Such an education is the true basis of individual and 

 national welfare, and experience has abundantly shown how 

 necessary this is to save men from distorted views of history, 

 from wrong conceptions of patriotism and public duty, from 

 mistaken aims and disastrous policy. 



Thus, for instance, a good and true education shows us 

 that the true basis of life is moral and economic and not 

 military, and the true aim of both individuals and nations 

 is knowledge, justice, freedom, peace, magnanimity, and not 

 pride, aggression, force, or greed. 



Scientific consideration of our subject will of course deal 

 largely with such details as the relative claims of the 

 humanist and the realist, subjects and methods of instruc- 

 tion, the correlation of different grades of education, the 

 adaptation of this or that system to special needs, and so 

 forth ; but through all this these fundamental requirements 

 of the true education, as placarded before us by Plato or by 

 Milton, must always hold the chief place, and all others 

 must be kept in due and conscious subordination to these. 



This very obvious remark calls for repetition, as we are 

 so apt to lose sight of ideals amidst the dust of controversy 

 about details or methods or practical needs. 



How, then, does our English education stand when thus 

 considered? And what signs are there in our life of our 

 having fallen short or fallen behind, or missed the best that 

 was possible in our circumstances? 



It may, I venture to think, be fairly said that to a 

 reflective observer various things are patent which seem 

 to make it expedient that the subject of education should 

 have its place in the proceedings of a scientific association 

 like this, although there may be difference of opinion as to 

 how it should be handled there. 



NO. 1820, VOL. 70] 



In saying this I have to admit that some educational 

 reformers seem to have doubts as to the propriety of its 

 inclusion in your programme. 



The element of personality is so preeminently vital in all 

 education that some men say it cannot be treated as wholly 

 scientific in the ordinary sense, and that there is serious 

 risk in subjecting it too rigidly to the methods of investi- 

 gation which naturally hold the field in the main depart- 

 ments of this Association, and that men who are wholly 

 accustomed to such methods are not the best equipped for 

 dealing with the problems involved in the education of the 

 young. 



If 1 endeavour in a few paragraphs to express what, so 

 far as I understand it, is the ground of this fear in the 

 minds of some thoughtful objectors, I trust I may not be 

 thought to be wasting your time. 



This Section is still in its swaddling-clothes. It has to 

 justify its existence in the coming years. It is therefore of 

 moment that it should be started on its course of early 

 growth as free as may be from prejudice and with the 

 sympathy and support of all who, whatever be their views 

 as humanists or realists, as men of letters or men of science, 

 as teachers of religion or men of practical affairs, desire to 

 see the education of the young in our country advancing 

 and expanding on the best lines. 



On this account the misgivings or warnings of every 

 thoughtful critic deserve our attention and may be helpful. 



In what I am saying it will be understood, I hope, that 

 I am not expressing views of my own, but endeavouring to 

 act as the recording instrument, a very inadequate and old- 

 fashioned instrument, of views which come to me from one 

 quarter and another. 



The inclusion of the study of education by the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science among its sub- 

 jects of investigation is, they say, not altogether free from 

 risk. 



If you treat education too exclusively according to the 

 analytic naturalistic methods of scientific men you incur 

 the danger of unfitting teachers for the best part of their 

 worlc, which depends on the inspiring influence of personal 

 ideals breathing through all their lessons, on a vivid sense 

 of the subtle element of personality in the pupil, 

 and on their responsible exercise of the power of their own 

 personality. 



In giving the scientifically educated teacher the analytic 

 knowledge of the dissecting chamber you may possibly rob 

 him of the magnetic power of personal sympathy and in- 

 fluence. In this sense, at all events, you must not de- 

 humanise him. The most eminent psychologists, the critics 

 tell us, are beginning to recognise the danger, and they bid 

 the educator beware of science which has a great deal to 

 say about mental processes but takes too little account of 

 the emotions and the will, and seems inclined to forget that 

 men are personalities and not plants or trees or machines 

 and that boys will be boys. 



The combination of a living and fruitful e.xperience, these 

 critics assert, with systematic organised scientific methods 

 and processes is more difficult in education than in any other 

 realm of knowledge, because the data are so complicated 

 and so subtle and elusive. 



Hence, they say to me quite frankly, the risk of failure 

 to do much that will be of real value in your Educational 

 Section. 



In particular I have the impression that they set no great 

 store by presidential addresses, although the address to 

 which you are now listening has at least one merit, that it 

 has no claim to be technically scientific, but is wholly based, 

 so far as any positive conclusions or recommendations are 

 concerned, on practical personal observation and experience. 



This section, say the critics, will do its best work by seel<- 

 ing first of all to determine and to set forth : — 



(i) What field is to be covered when education is to be 

 treated as a scientific study, and what are the limits of the 

 field, taking care to give due regard to right ideals of moral 

 and social progress as a primary part of the whole. 



(2) What methods of investigation are appropriate and 

 W'hat are inappropriate to the study of education. 



Such are some of the warnings with which we are asked 

 to begin our discussions. The critics ask the men of science 

 to remember that they are leaving their accustomed field 

 of purely natural phenomena, and entering a field of investi- 



